Winning Gong Minji's Heart..., CL/Minji (kpopvalentines)
Title: Winning Gong Minji's Heart In Five Twelve Many Easy Steps
Pairing: CL/Minji
Rating: PG
A/N: Written in response to phonebook's kpopvalentines prompt: "if we can land a man on the moon, surely i can win your heart".
"Minji?"
Minji looks up at Chaerin through the mirror, one hand still in her tousled hair, the other holding her straightening iron. The towel she's wrapped herself in is a little too small for her.
"I love you. Just so you know."
She looks like a doe when she's confused, head cocked and eyes wide. Then she grins and laughs dismissively and Chaerin's stomach does a happy little flip, as it usually does whenever Minji is being way more of a bad-ass than she has any right to be at her age. "Okay, unnie, whatever."
Chaerin turns on her hair dryer and vows to win her over somehow.
***
Minji wakes up early to train with foreign choreographers, and the bento lunch Chaerin has prepared and left on the counter for her is epic. The rice is dyed pink and shaped into teddy bears, for one, and she cut up all of Minji's favorite fruits and vegetables into cute little stars and flowers, and she sent their manager on a two-AM run for a jar of peanut butter just to make cookies that will make Minji keel over from sugary happiness and then fall in passionate love with her.
The note she left with the bento is clear enough, she thinks:
i stayed up just for minkki ;o;
do ur best today!
xoxo cl
ps ilu <3
"How was your lunch?" she can't help but ask when Minji gets home later that afternoon, her hair in a messy ponytail and her cheeks flushed from the cold.
"Good," she replies, then eyes Chaerin sideways as she unlaces her shoes, a little grin spreading on her face. "You're crazy, unnie. And Master Hwang said I can't eat cookies."
"Oh." Chaerin realizes she sounded like a crestfallen puppy and quickly straightens her back and clears her throat. "Well, I'll give them to Teddy."
"Teddy, Teddy, Teddy," Minji chants amusedly, then dumps her gym bag next to Chaerin. "I love you, Teddy. Marry me, Ted--"
"Hey, I made them just for you, okay! It's not my fault you don't want them."
She injects a little extra hurt into her voice - not that it takes too much effort - and cheers inside when Minji flops down and pulls the bento box from her bag with a dramatic roll of her eyes. She breaks one cookie in two ("see, this is what you're doing to me," Chaerin says as she points to her half of the heart-shaped treat, but Minji only laughs and kicks her in the ankle), and they eat it and the next one in companionable silence.
"They're really good," Minji says, licking the crumbs from her lips. She contemplates the last cookie, then crams it into her mouth and slaps the lid back onto the bento box. Chaerin feels incredibly satisfied, at first, because holy crap Minji is breaking her diet just for her, but then she remembers that Minji also broke her diet the previous night and the night before that, and the subsequent lack of passionate thank-you kisses or declarations of undying love is enough to crush the last of her hopes.
***
It shouldn't be this difficult. Much stranger things have happened: Eunjoo apparently fell in love with Yang Hyunsuk, of all people, and Youngbae has been smiling and fidgeting around his manager in a way that sets off Chaerin's well-honed radar. Stranger things happen all the time, in fact. Men have walked on the moon and some woman in France had a face transplant a few years ago and Chaerin's latest trip to the convenience store yielded a bottle of cucumber-flavored Pepsi. Cucumber-flavored Pepsi. Winning Gong Minji's heart is clearly within reach of human accomplishment.
Being straightforward clearly isn't working, though, so Chaerin channels her papa and the whimsical stories he filled her head with during her childhood and starts preparing for Valentine's Day. She even enlists Teddy's help after realizing she'll need an accomplice, because she'd trust him with her life and she knows he won't tell Minji, no matter how amused he is by the whole thing.
Minji only laughs, though, when they come home from a day of filming and she sees the red roses on her bed. "Ah, that's so cheesy! Is it a fan gift?"
The card simply says "meet me on Monday night". Chaerin had Teddy write it for her, just to muddle things a bit more. Minji turns it over and frowns down at it. "It doesn't say where."
It takes only a few minutes before she discovers where, scribbled on another card and hidden among the tiny cinnamon hearts that now completely fill her nightstand. The time of their rendez-vous she finds just before bed; Chaerin hears her disbelieving laughter filtering through the bathroom door as the candy in the medicine cabinet clatters to the floor.
"Maybe it's Youngbae," she says in the darkness once they're all in bed and the lights are off. Dara barks out a laugh and Chaerin bites her tongue.
***
"Maybe it's a dancer. Do you think it's a dancer?" she asks, breathing cinnamon in Chaerin's face.
Chaerin wants to kiss her. A lot. She shrugs instead. "I don't know, is there a dancer you like?"
"Hmmm." Minji spends a minute surveying the dance room, her eyes lingering, Chaerin notes sadly, on a few of the youngest male dancers. "Not really. I hope it's Youngbae."
"You really think he'd do something like that?" Bom cuts in, then shoots Chaerin a discreet, sympathetic glance. Chaerin pulled her aside that morning and told her everything before asking her to write the latest note, to be left on Minji's pillow with a spicy chocolate. Spicy things suit her.
"Well-- Well, I don't know. He likes to play around sometimes."
With his manager. Chaerin stares ahead and presses her lips together, because there's no use breaking Minji's heart just yet. Maybe she'll be disappointed on Monday, but she's spent the past couple of days smiling softly to herself, a radical change from her usual butter-wouldn't-melt demeanor, and Chaerin doesn't want to see that disappear just yet. "Uh-huh."
"Bom won't tell me who it is." Minji looks over at her. "I recognized your handwriting, you know."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Bom replies smoothly. She's been bribed with a box of Corn Pops cereal from Teddy's secret stash of American crap.
***
Chaerin has been watching Minji try to make Meaningful Eye Contact with Youngbae for ten painful minutes. She's knitting a scarf and grinning in his direction across the cafeteria, because the note on her pillow said "I wish you'd knit me a scarf too, but just thinking of you is enough to keep me warm so I guess it's okay".
The stripes on the scarf complement the colors of the winter jacket Youngbae's been wearing often lately. Chaerin wants it anyway. She can just buy a new jacket to go with it.
***
Chaerin isn't impressed with the way her Saturday is going - her hair looks all weird on one side, she feels bloated, and the last place she wants to be is on a treadmill with Master Hwang droning on about nutrition and weights and reps next to her.
"UNNIE! Oh my God, guess what I just saw Youngbae do," Minji hollers as she bursts into the gym, grinning, and Chaerin really, really wants to go back to bed and stay there for several days.
"What?" she manages, panting. At least Master Hwang isn't talking anymore.
"He kissed Boram I can't believe they're gay IT'S SO GROSS!" Minji says all in one breath. Chaerin's foot lands wrong but she manages to grab onto the handles of the treadmill and keep jogging. This isn't going to be a pleasant conversation. At least Minji, ever the bad-ass, looks mostly amused and outraged rather than heartbroken.
"Well-- you don't think-- I'm gross, so--"
"Did you know already?!" she asks, then blinks. "Wait, what? Were you serious with all the--"
"Can we-- just-- hold on--" Chaerin jabs at the rows of tiny buttons on the shiny new treadmill YG chose to buy for their shiny new gym.
"OH MY GOD, YOU'RE THE ONE LEAVING ME NOTES AND CANDY AND STUFF."
Master Hwang finally steps closer and stops the treadmill, his face betraying no reaction whatsoever to the avalanche of mortifying things that have tumbled out of Minji's mouth over the past minute or so. Chaerin would make a mental note to buy him some candy, too, but he wouldn't eat any of it.
"Yeah, it's--" Chaerin has to stop talking and catch her breath, still clutching the treadmill with one hand as she wipes her forehead with the other. "I just thought..." This is a disaster. "Never mind, I guess."
Minji's frowning at her. Probably because that wasn't anywhere close to coherent. "... So what was the surprise?" she asks quietly after giving Master Hwang a side look. He's already at the other end of the gym, examining a dumbbell that probably doesn't need to be examined. "For Monday, I mean."
"It's stupid, never mind." Chaerin flexes her sore ankle and looks down at it. Not that looking at it helps, but her lungs are burning and her hands are shaking and she hates losing control of the situation like that--
"Well, I wanna see anyway."
She raises her head and Minji looks like a doe again, all seriousness and curious wide eyes. "Oh, okay." Her voice is thin and too high and could she sound more ridiculous. "Fine, just pretend you don't know who it is," she adds after taking a steadying breath, then congratulates herself on having made a complete sentence.
***
Chaerin manages to fling herself behind Teddy's couch right before Minji walks into the studio. The surprise has already been spoiled, so it doesn't really matter anymore, but she's sticking to her original plan, as promised. The studio is spotless - Teddy was considerate enough to dust and Febreeze the hell out of it before retiring to Choice's studio for the night. The lights are dimmed, and a few vanilla-scented candles are placed here and there where they won't "get knocked over when you start making out" (she socked Teddy in the arm for that one, but followed his advice just in case).
"Wow. ... Chaerin, are you in here?"
"No," she calls out, crouched into an awkward ball. "You're supposed to--"
She hears a faint crunching sound and figures Minji has found the trail of cinnamon candy that leads from the door to the small table she and Teddy stole from the cafeteria.
"The floor's gonna be sticky," Minji mutters to herself. "Ohh, is that wine?"
Chaerin listens to the crunch-click-crunch-click of her footsteps, and then Minji bursts out laughing. Chaerin assumes she's found the lioness plushie on the table. "Unnie, that's too easy! I would've guessed right away!"
So maybe she's gone on one too many diatribes on the fact that having eyes set far apart makes her look like a large feline predator, not a fucking brontosaurus like Minji so kindly implied a few weeks ago. "Shut up and read the notes!"
"Okay, okay."
The silence stretches on. Chaerin shifts her weight from foot to foot, then chances a peek around the side of the couch. Minji, sitting obediently on the chair and sipping her champagne, meets her eyes and snorts loudly into her glass, then tries in vain to cover her wide grin with her free hand.
"You were supposed to close your eyes!" Chaerin says, indignant.
Minji frowns and turns to examine the tiny heart-shaped post-its stuck to the table, bottle of champagne, and plate of chocolate-dipped fruit. "It doesn't say that!"
"Yes, it does! It's on the--" And then Chaerin notices the red post-it stuck to the very tip of her shoe. "Close your eyes <3" is written on it in her best handwriting. She does just that, resting her forehead on her knees and wondering what else can possibly go wrong at this point.
"Fine, they're closed."
Chaerin takes a deep breath, stands up and smooths out her sweater dress. She remembers just in time to peel the stupid post-it off her shoe before stepping out from behind the couch. Minji is waiting with her glass held in her lap and a smile lingering on her face, and she looks so beautiful in the dim light that Chaerin has to stop and just take it in. This is all a joke to her and she wore that tight dress and leather choker just to be a tease, no doubt, but Chaerin can't help but appreciate the result.
Minji's head turns slightly to follow the sound of her footsteps, but she keeps her eyes closed until Chaerin is standing behind her. "Are you going to kiss me or something?"
"Shhh." She runs her fingers through Minji's hair a few times before starting to rub her shoulders. This, at least, she knows won't go wrong; Bom always goes to her for foot rubs when they're forced to spend the day in uncomfortable shoes, and she has very fond memories of accidentally giving Teddy a hard-on when he was tired and sore enough to let her knead his shoulders after an especially grueling recording session.
"Your hands are small, unnie, I can tell you're a girl."
"Shhh!"
Minji finally shuts up, reaching blindly for the plate of fruit until her fingers find a chocolate-covered cherry. She alternates pieces of fruit with sips of champagne as Chaerin works, and lets out a soft sigh after a few minutes, letting her head loll forward. "That feels really nice," she murmurs.
Chaerin wants to kiss the nape of her neck. She bites her lip and keeps up the massage instead, wanting all the tension gone from Minji's shoulders.
She stops only when she shifts to find a better angle and strikes something with her foot. There's a small gift bag on the floor, partly hidden under the table and overflowing with pink tissue paper.
"Oh, that's for you," Minji says, head still down.
Chaerin crouches down and pulls the bag closer, curious. Hidden under the layers of paper is the scarf Minji was working on, now finished. One end of it abruptly goes from dull greens and browns to Chaerin's favorite, violent shade of blue. It looks ridiculous and Chaerin can't stop grinning.
She stands up, steps forward resolutely and sits on Minji's knee. Minji perks up but keeps her eyes closed, a smile playing on her lips. Her eyeshadow and mascara are perfect and her lipstick marred with chocolate. She holds the champagne flute out to Chaerin but it's almost empty, so Chaerin takes it from her and pours more into it.
"Can I open my eyes?"
"No," Chaerin replies, and tosses back most of the champagne - liquid courage - before pressing her lips against Minji's. There are no stars and no fireworks and no melting into each other. When she pulls away, though, Minji smiles and ducks her head, and Chaerin can tell from her flushed cheeks that it's a good kind of smile, not a this-is-hilarious kind of smile.
So Chaerin's grand romantic gesture sort of worked, in the end. She isn't sure how long she spends grinning stupidly at Minji before she gets impatient and finally opens her eyes. Judging by the surprised laugh she lets out, Chaerin must look as giddy as she feels. "Don't just stare at me like a creep!"
"I could kiss you again," Chaerin offers.
Minji snorts at her but closes her eyes again and simply waits, her lips parted slightly. She's determined to be as much of a petulant bad-ass about this as she is about everything else, apparently. Chaerin's happy to let her - she's seen the shy sweetness that's hidden under the smoke and mirrors, and she's confident, as their lips touch again and Minji's hand reaches for her own, that she's accomplished exactly what she set out to do.
Pairing: CL/Minji
Rating: PG
A/N: Written in response to phonebook's kpopvalentines prompt: "if we can land a man on the moon, surely i can win your heart".
"Minji?"
Minji looks up at Chaerin through the mirror, one hand still in her tousled hair, the other holding her straightening iron. The towel she's wrapped herself in is a little too small for her.
"I love you. Just so you know."
She looks like a doe when she's confused, head cocked and eyes wide. Then she grins and laughs dismissively and Chaerin's stomach does a happy little flip, as it usually does whenever Minji is being way more of a bad-ass than she has any right to be at her age. "Okay, unnie, whatever."
Chaerin turns on her hair dryer and vows to win her over somehow.
***
Minji wakes up early to train with foreign choreographers, and the bento lunch Chaerin has prepared and left on the counter for her is epic. The rice is dyed pink and shaped into teddy bears, for one, and she cut up all of Minji's favorite fruits and vegetables into cute little stars and flowers, and she sent their manager on a two-AM run for a jar of peanut butter just to make cookies that will make Minji keel over from sugary happiness and then fall in passionate love with her.
The note she left with the bento is clear enough, she thinks:
i stayed up just for minkki ;o;
do ur best today!
xoxo cl
ps ilu <3
"How was your lunch?" she can't help but ask when Minji gets home later that afternoon, her hair in a messy ponytail and her cheeks flushed from the cold.
"Good," she replies, then eyes Chaerin sideways as she unlaces her shoes, a little grin spreading on her face. "You're crazy, unnie. And Master Hwang said I can't eat cookies."
"Oh." Chaerin realizes she sounded like a crestfallen puppy and quickly straightens her back and clears her throat. "Well, I'll give them to Teddy."
"Teddy, Teddy, Teddy," Minji chants amusedly, then dumps her gym bag next to Chaerin. "I love you, Teddy. Marry me, Ted--"
"Hey, I made them just for you, okay! It's not my fault you don't want them."
She injects a little extra hurt into her voice - not that it takes too much effort - and cheers inside when Minji flops down and pulls the bento box from her bag with a dramatic roll of her eyes. She breaks one cookie in two ("see, this is what you're doing to me," Chaerin says as she points to her half of the heart-shaped treat, but Minji only laughs and kicks her in the ankle), and they eat it and the next one in companionable silence.
"They're really good," Minji says, licking the crumbs from her lips. She contemplates the last cookie, then crams it into her mouth and slaps the lid back onto the bento box. Chaerin feels incredibly satisfied, at first, because holy crap Minji is breaking her diet just for her, but then she remembers that Minji also broke her diet the previous night and the night before that, and the subsequent lack of passionate thank-you kisses or declarations of undying love is enough to crush the last of her hopes.
***
It shouldn't be this difficult. Much stranger things have happened: Eunjoo apparently fell in love with Yang Hyunsuk, of all people, and Youngbae has been smiling and fidgeting around his manager in a way that sets off Chaerin's well-honed radar. Stranger things happen all the time, in fact. Men have walked on the moon and some woman in France had a face transplant a few years ago and Chaerin's latest trip to the convenience store yielded a bottle of cucumber-flavored Pepsi. Cucumber-flavored Pepsi. Winning Gong Minji's heart is clearly within reach of human accomplishment.
Being straightforward clearly isn't working, though, so Chaerin channels her papa and the whimsical stories he filled her head with during her childhood and starts preparing for Valentine's Day. She even enlists Teddy's help after realizing she'll need an accomplice, because she'd trust him with her life and she knows he won't tell Minji, no matter how amused he is by the whole thing.
Minji only laughs, though, when they come home from a day of filming and she sees the red roses on her bed. "Ah, that's so cheesy! Is it a fan gift?"
The card simply says "meet me on Monday night". Chaerin had Teddy write it for her, just to muddle things a bit more. Minji turns it over and frowns down at it. "It doesn't say where."
It takes only a few minutes before she discovers where, scribbled on another card and hidden among the tiny cinnamon hearts that now completely fill her nightstand. The time of their rendez-vous she finds just before bed; Chaerin hears her disbelieving laughter filtering through the bathroom door as the candy in the medicine cabinet clatters to the floor.
"Maybe it's Youngbae," she says in the darkness once they're all in bed and the lights are off. Dara barks out a laugh and Chaerin bites her tongue.
***
"Maybe it's a dancer. Do you think it's a dancer?" she asks, breathing cinnamon in Chaerin's face.
Chaerin wants to kiss her. A lot. She shrugs instead. "I don't know, is there a dancer you like?"
"Hmmm." Minji spends a minute surveying the dance room, her eyes lingering, Chaerin notes sadly, on a few of the youngest male dancers. "Not really. I hope it's Youngbae."
"You really think he'd do something like that?" Bom cuts in, then shoots Chaerin a discreet, sympathetic glance. Chaerin pulled her aside that morning and told her everything before asking her to write the latest note, to be left on Minji's pillow with a spicy chocolate. Spicy things suit her.
"Well-- Well, I don't know. He likes to play around sometimes."
With his manager. Chaerin stares ahead and presses her lips together, because there's no use breaking Minji's heart just yet. Maybe she'll be disappointed on Monday, but she's spent the past couple of days smiling softly to herself, a radical change from her usual butter-wouldn't-melt demeanor, and Chaerin doesn't want to see that disappear just yet. "Uh-huh."
"Bom won't tell me who it is." Minji looks over at her. "I recognized your handwriting, you know."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Bom replies smoothly. She's been bribed with a box of Corn Pops cereal from Teddy's secret stash of American crap.
***
Chaerin has been watching Minji try to make Meaningful Eye Contact with Youngbae for ten painful minutes. She's knitting a scarf and grinning in his direction across the cafeteria, because the note on her pillow said "I wish you'd knit me a scarf too, but just thinking of you is enough to keep me warm so I guess it's okay".
The stripes on the scarf complement the colors of the winter jacket Youngbae's been wearing often lately. Chaerin wants it anyway. She can just buy a new jacket to go with it.
***
Chaerin isn't impressed with the way her Saturday is going - her hair looks all weird on one side, she feels bloated, and the last place she wants to be is on a treadmill with Master Hwang droning on about nutrition and weights and reps next to her.
"UNNIE! Oh my God, guess what I just saw Youngbae do," Minji hollers as she bursts into the gym, grinning, and Chaerin really, really wants to go back to bed and stay there for several days.
"What?" she manages, panting. At least Master Hwang isn't talking anymore.
"He kissed Boram I can't believe they're gay IT'S SO GROSS!" Minji says all in one breath. Chaerin's foot lands wrong but she manages to grab onto the handles of the treadmill and keep jogging. This isn't going to be a pleasant conversation. At least Minji, ever the bad-ass, looks mostly amused and outraged rather than heartbroken.
"Well-- you don't think-- I'm gross, so--"
"Did you know already?!" she asks, then blinks. "Wait, what? Were you serious with all the--"
"Can we-- just-- hold on--" Chaerin jabs at the rows of tiny buttons on the shiny new treadmill YG chose to buy for their shiny new gym.
"OH MY GOD, YOU'RE THE ONE LEAVING ME NOTES AND CANDY AND STUFF."
Master Hwang finally steps closer and stops the treadmill, his face betraying no reaction whatsoever to the avalanche of mortifying things that have tumbled out of Minji's mouth over the past minute or so. Chaerin would make a mental note to buy him some candy, too, but he wouldn't eat any of it.
"Yeah, it's--" Chaerin has to stop talking and catch her breath, still clutching the treadmill with one hand as she wipes her forehead with the other. "I just thought..." This is a disaster. "Never mind, I guess."
Minji's frowning at her. Probably because that wasn't anywhere close to coherent. "... So what was the surprise?" she asks quietly after giving Master Hwang a side look. He's already at the other end of the gym, examining a dumbbell that probably doesn't need to be examined. "For Monday, I mean."
"It's stupid, never mind." Chaerin flexes her sore ankle and looks down at it. Not that looking at it helps, but her lungs are burning and her hands are shaking and she hates losing control of the situation like that--
"Well, I wanna see anyway."
She raises her head and Minji looks like a doe again, all seriousness and curious wide eyes. "Oh, okay." Her voice is thin and too high and could she sound more ridiculous. "Fine, just pretend you don't know who it is," she adds after taking a steadying breath, then congratulates herself on having made a complete sentence.
***
Chaerin manages to fling herself behind Teddy's couch right before Minji walks into the studio. The surprise has already been spoiled, so it doesn't really matter anymore, but she's sticking to her original plan, as promised. The studio is spotless - Teddy was considerate enough to dust and Febreeze the hell out of it before retiring to Choice's studio for the night. The lights are dimmed, and a few vanilla-scented candles are placed here and there where they won't "get knocked over when you start making out" (she socked Teddy in the arm for that one, but followed his advice just in case).
"Wow. ... Chaerin, are you in here?"
"No," she calls out, crouched into an awkward ball. "You're supposed to--"
She hears a faint crunching sound and figures Minji has found the trail of cinnamon candy that leads from the door to the small table she and Teddy stole from the cafeteria.
"The floor's gonna be sticky," Minji mutters to herself. "Ohh, is that wine?"
Chaerin listens to the crunch-click-crunch-click of her footsteps, and then Minji bursts out laughing. Chaerin assumes she's found the lioness plushie on the table. "Unnie, that's too easy! I would've guessed right away!"
So maybe she's gone on one too many diatribes on the fact that having eyes set far apart makes her look like a large feline predator, not a fucking brontosaurus like Minji so kindly implied a few weeks ago. "Shut up and read the notes!"
"Okay, okay."
The silence stretches on. Chaerin shifts her weight from foot to foot, then chances a peek around the side of the couch. Minji, sitting obediently on the chair and sipping her champagne, meets her eyes and snorts loudly into her glass, then tries in vain to cover her wide grin with her free hand.
"You were supposed to close your eyes!" Chaerin says, indignant.
Minji frowns and turns to examine the tiny heart-shaped post-its stuck to the table, bottle of champagne, and plate of chocolate-dipped fruit. "It doesn't say that!"
"Yes, it does! It's on the--" And then Chaerin notices the red post-it stuck to the very tip of her shoe. "Close your eyes <3" is written on it in her best handwriting. She does just that, resting her forehead on her knees and wondering what else can possibly go wrong at this point.
"Fine, they're closed."
Chaerin takes a deep breath, stands up and smooths out her sweater dress. She remembers just in time to peel the stupid post-it off her shoe before stepping out from behind the couch. Minji is waiting with her glass held in her lap and a smile lingering on her face, and she looks so beautiful in the dim light that Chaerin has to stop and just take it in. This is all a joke to her and she wore that tight dress and leather choker just to be a tease, no doubt, but Chaerin can't help but appreciate the result.
Minji's head turns slightly to follow the sound of her footsteps, but she keeps her eyes closed until Chaerin is standing behind her. "Are you going to kiss me or something?"
"Shhh." She runs her fingers through Minji's hair a few times before starting to rub her shoulders. This, at least, she knows won't go wrong; Bom always goes to her for foot rubs when they're forced to spend the day in uncomfortable shoes, and she has very fond memories of accidentally giving Teddy a hard-on when he was tired and sore enough to let her knead his shoulders after an especially grueling recording session.
"Your hands are small, unnie, I can tell you're a girl."
"Shhh!"
Minji finally shuts up, reaching blindly for the plate of fruit until her fingers find a chocolate-covered cherry. She alternates pieces of fruit with sips of champagne as Chaerin works, and lets out a soft sigh after a few minutes, letting her head loll forward. "That feels really nice," she murmurs.
Chaerin wants to kiss the nape of her neck. She bites her lip and keeps up the massage instead, wanting all the tension gone from Minji's shoulders.
She stops only when she shifts to find a better angle and strikes something with her foot. There's a small gift bag on the floor, partly hidden under the table and overflowing with pink tissue paper.
"Oh, that's for you," Minji says, head still down.
Chaerin crouches down and pulls the bag closer, curious. Hidden under the layers of paper is the scarf Minji was working on, now finished. One end of it abruptly goes from dull greens and browns to Chaerin's favorite, violent shade of blue. It looks ridiculous and Chaerin can't stop grinning.
She stands up, steps forward resolutely and sits on Minji's knee. Minji perks up but keeps her eyes closed, a smile playing on her lips. Her eyeshadow and mascara are perfect and her lipstick marred with chocolate. She holds the champagne flute out to Chaerin but it's almost empty, so Chaerin takes it from her and pours more into it.
"Can I open my eyes?"
"No," Chaerin replies, and tosses back most of the champagne - liquid courage - before pressing her lips against Minji's. There are no stars and no fireworks and no melting into each other. When she pulls away, though, Minji smiles and ducks her head, and Chaerin can tell from her flushed cheeks that it's a good kind of smile, not a this-is-hilarious kind of smile.
So Chaerin's grand romantic gesture sort of worked, in the end. She isn't sure how long she spends grinning stupidly at Minji before she gets impatient and finally opens her eyes. Judging by the surprised laugh she lets out, Chaerin must look as giddy as she feels. "Don't just stare at me like a creep!"
"I could kiss you again," Chaerin offers.
Minji snorts at her but closes her eyes again and simply waits, her lips parted slightly. She's determined to be as much of a petulant bad-ass about this as she is about everything else, apparently. Chaerin's happy to let her - she's seen the shy sweetness that's hidden under the smoke and mirrors, and she's confident, as their lips touch again and Minji's hand reaches for her own, that she's accomplished exactly what she set out to do.