holding on (2/2)
There’s a knock on his door. Checking his phone, he couldn’t help but furrow his brows. The brightness of his phone was blinding, and that added onto his frustration. The time was late - actually, kind of early - and he can't imagine who could possibly be at his door at this time of the day.
As soon as he opens the door, the figure standing in front of him looks up at him. A slight smile tugs at the edge of her lips as she welcomes herself in. “Taekwoon-ah.”
She’s drunk. He’s never even seen her drunk before, but he can tell she’s drunk. Her speech is slurred, and she can’t seem to walk straight. His instincts force him to grab onto her arm so she doesn’t fall, but she’s alarmed by the sudden physical contact, causing her to stop in her tracks.
They stay like that for a moment, and he’s too busy staring into her eyes in hopes that something had grown back into them. Nothing. There was nothing in them. They were still empty.
He’s about to lead her into the bedroom so she can get some rest and sleep off the alcohol, but she’s firm on her standing, refusing to move. Bewildered, he stares at her, waiting for her to say something or do something. Anything.
His wish is fulfilled, but not by what he was hoping. It only takes her a split second to pull on his arm, bringing him close to her. Her arms are wrapped around his body, and he could feel her warmth. Joohyun was always warm.
Her next move, however, catches him off guard. She had pulled on his shirt, bringing him down to her height, and she slowly leaned forward, connecting their lips together. He’s not sure what to do, and he’s torn between pulling her in closer and pushing her away.
But her lips feel so nice on his, and the warmth of her body has him feeling like they’re back in high school when everything seemed perfect. Before he could help it, he had already brought a hand up behind her head, bringing her closer to him.
That’s when he realizes it. This isn’t right. Nothing about this is right.
Opening up his eyes, he slowly tries to push her off of him, but he’s always been too gentle with her, and he can’t bring himself to force her off of him. And he’s too afraid to admit that he likes having her in his arms even if this is the only possible way.
“Don’t you still want me?” Her arms are wrapped around his neck, and he could smell the alcohol from her breath. He never thought she would be the type to drink (but there seemed to be a lot that he didn’t know of her anymore).
Joohyun stared deep into his eyes, but he still couldn’t tell who he was looking at. This wasn’t the Bae Joohyun he used to know, no, this girl’s eyes were too empty. They were full of nothing.
“Joohyun-ah, stop. You’re drunk.” He closed his eyes and let out a concerned breath as he grabbed her arms and unwrapped them from where they were. However, the alcohol seemed to make her stronger. Catching him off guard, she had grabbed onto his arm again, pushing herself onto him.
Her eyes never once left his as she brought a hand up to caress his face. “Just once. Tell me just once.”
But before he could respond, her lips make their way back onto his. The kiss is nothing romantic; it’s nothing like the ones they used to share. This one is needy, rough, and uncharacteristic for someone like Joohyun.
It takes every nerve in his body to scream at him to push her away for him to finally to do so, and he stares at her in disbelief while gasping for breath. “Bae Joohyun. What are you doing? This is nothing like you.” Shaking his head, he rubs his temples with his hand. “Let’s just get you to bed.”
All that’s roaming in his head is how she’s not going to remember this the next morning, and that she needs to sleep this off. Unfortunately, she seemed to have other thoughts.
Her arms are around his waist, pulling him tightly against her. Her lips attach themselves onto his neck, and she’s giving him soft kisses that make his knees go weak. Closing his eyes, Taekwoon grabs her hands and pull them off of him, using the force to push her up against the wall.
Staring down at her, he leans in close, his lips hovering over her’s. “Not like this, Joohyun. Not like this.” They stay like that for a few more seconds as he hopes that the message has finally made its way into her mind.
As if to verify his wishes, he can see the tears starting to run down her face. There were so many sides of Joohyun that weren’t there in the past but exist now, and he had been discovering them out one by one: this was another one of them. She seemed to be a lot more emotional now. And not in the best way.
He brings his hand up to her face, wiping the tears away. It hurts him to see her like this, but she won’t tell him why, and so he can’t do anything but watch. “You’ve changed.” The two words come out closer to something like a whisper, but he knows she heard it from the way she closes her eyes and looks down at the floor, her tears falling onto the floor.
“People change. Some for the better and some for the worst.”
A moment of silence passes as he simply stares at her, the tears now drenching his shirt because of how close they were. He breaks the silence with a simple question. “And which do you think you are?”
She stares up at him with those same empty eyes. “I have no idea.”
( She’s busy. She’s probably just busy. Taekwoon does his best to try to assure himself as to why Joohyun hasn’t been answering his calls nor responding to his texts nor even listening to him during class. He wants to ask, but it seems she has a lot going on in her head, and he isn’t sure if he should interrupt them or not.
“Just ask her what’s going on,” his best friend says, bringing him back to reality. Hakyeon always knew what was going on his head. Running a hand through his hair, he looked up at his friend before nodding. He had to figure out what was wrong. Whether he was doing something wrong or if… if she was getting sick of him. He prayed it wasn’t the latter.
He catches her out in the hallway talking to some junior. He thinks he remembers her name; it’s something along the lines of Seulgi, Seulmi, something like that. She seems to be close to Joohyun so he makes a note of which classroom she walks into, hoping he could talk to her if Joohyun doesn’t give him a clear answer.
Almost passing by him unnoticed, he grabs onto the female’s wrist, giving her a concerned look. She knew what was on his mind (it seemed everybody but he knew what was going on in his head), and she gives him an assuring smile as if to tell him that everything’s okay, but he can see the bags under her eyes as well as the lost of color in her eyes - everything about her seemed dead.
“Taekwoon-ah, are you listening to me?” she’s staring up at him with an equally concerned look, and it snaps him out of his observation, and he’s forced to shake his head, a little embarrassed.
Thankfully, she isn’t mad. Instead, she gives him another bright smile before going on her tip toes to pat his head. “You must be as tired as me,” she states as a forced chuckle leaves her lips. “I was saying, can you meet me at the park in front of your house tonight? I have something to tell you.”
Too bad he was too dumb to realize that this was another way of saying ‘let’s break up’.
The next day, she was gone. Both from school and his life.
He doesn’t know why she left. He doesn’t know what he did to have her leave him. He wished he was smart enough to read between the lines so it didn’t hurt so much to have to hear it from someone else. Because it hurt so much to hear it from someone else.
“She’s gone, man.” )
He definitely never wanted to come back here again.
While the club was the place where Joohyun was brought back into his life, the constant loudness and public display of affection was uncomfortable for someone so reserved as Taekwoon. However, Sanghyuk insisted that he come because the last time they were all here, he was the only one that ‘got close to getting laid’.
Letting out a groan, he looked around in search for the younger boy along with his other friends when something else caught his eye.
Dressed in red, a bright yet dark red, was her. Her arms wrapped around some old man, a fake smile spread across her face as her delicate fingers traveled down his face. Even before he could be disgusted, his feet were already making his way over to the table.
They teach you in school that your brain controls all the motions of your body, but in this moment, it seemed that his brain didn’t have time to wrap around the situation; it was more his heart that pushed his feet to move and snatch her away from the table, not looking back as he pulled her out of the club.
“What are you doing?” Rather than coming out as a question, however, it left his lips as more of a scream. Has his voice ever been this loud? Probably not. Did he care? Probably not.
Before she could give him a proper answer, he’s already dragging her out and trying to get her as far away from the table as possible. His expected reaction to this was her tearing up, maybe telling him thank you, but what he gets is completely opposite.
She pushes his hand off of her, and she’s running out to the exit. She’s about to run away from his life again, and he’s not letting her go.
“Joohyun, wait-”
“Stop! Just stop!”
He can’t help but stop in his footsteps at the sudden change of tone in her voice. It was the first time he’s heard her raise her voice so loudly. She was Bae Joohyun. She was supposed to be quiet and gentle. She was always the calm and collected one.
“I’m not some damsel in distress waiting for you to save me! I’m not--” She seemed to hesitate for a moment as she closed her eyes and bit down on her bottom lip as if she was thinking through what she was going to say. Habits are hard to break, and she was always one to filter her words.
“I’m not 18 anymore. We’re not 18 anymore. I’m not the girl who needed you to hold her hand before a presentation because she was a nervous wreck whenever she had to stand in front of people. I’m not the girl who needed you to whisper sweet words into her ear before finals because she was always a hundred percent sure she would fail. I don’t need your help anymore. I don’t want your help anymore.”
She’s been staring straight into his eyes as she said everything, but it takes him a while to realize that she’s crying. He wants to take a step forward towards her to tell her everything will be okay, but he stops instead and remains where he is standing right now, staring at her in shock. Had he been the one hurting her all along? Was he selfish for wanting to return to what they used to be?
Joohyun brings a hand up to wipe the tears that have fallen on her face, and she takes off the jacket he had draped around her shoulder, handing it back to him. He’s still in too much shock to move, and so she proceeds to wrap it back around his shoulders, giving him one last grim look before stepping back into the club.
She walked away from him for the second time in his life.
And he didn’t stop her.
Again.
After what had occurred last night, he’s been in deep thought. There are questions floating around in his head, but there’s no clear answers; it’s been keeping him up all night. Who knew Jung Taekwoon could be so dumb?
Drowning in his own thoughts, he almost misses the light knock on his door, and he already knows that it’s going to be Hakyeon at the door, and he wants to be alone, but he also knows how persistent is friend is.
“Cha Hakyeon, you better have a good reason to be here or something,” he beings to speak even before opening up the door, an exhausted sigh leaving his lips as he looks up, ready to meet eyes with his best friend, but he’s instead met with a pair of eyes that look almost as dead as his own.
“Bae Joohyun,” is all he manages to get out before he falls silent. He doesn’t know what to say to her. If yesterday never happened, he would be welcoming her in, asking what she’s doing here and possibly asking her to stay forever, but now he’s scared. He’s scared to say anything in fear that it’ll be the wrong words once again.
There’s something in her hands and before he can start guessing what it is, she brings it up, handing it over to him. “I hope you still like lattes, Taekwoon-ah.” Her voice is quiet and gentle, and he swears he can hear her accent again; her accent that now only appears when she’s nervous or comfortable. He can’t tell which it is (or if it’s both).
“Yeah. I do.”
He takes the cup of coffee, but he can’t stop staring at her face. The last time she ended up in his apartment, it ended in a mess with Joohyun on the floor crying and falling asleep in his arms and then leaving the next morning. It seems that nothing good ever happened when she ended up at his home, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to risk letting her in because of that reason.
“Can I come in?” The request is a little hesitant, and Taekwoon wants to say no, but she’s looking at him with those eyes of her’s again, and he slowly steps back, letting her slide in between the door and himself.
Every little move of her’s proves that she’s not really sure why she’s here either. The way she walks into his house resembles someone walking on thin ice: careful, hesitant and scared. Looking down at the drink, he’s surprised that she remembered what kind of drink he liked.
“I’m sorry.” Before he can question her words, she’s already speaking once again.
“About what happened last night, about how I completely just left that one time when I came with Hakyeon, about how I couldn’t give you a proper explanation that night we first met again, and most importantly I’m sorry about walking out like that back in high school. But I had my reasons. Reasons I couldn’t tell you back then, but now I’m ready to, and I don’t expect you to understand it at all, and you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I feel like I can’t move on if I don’t.”
He’s taking all her words in, swallowing slowly because he’s not sure if he wants to hear an explanation. Being left hanging was what’s been keeping him thinking of her all this time, and he’s not sure if he’s ready to let go of her just yet.
“My mom was sick. Like really sick. I don’t even know where to begin with how sick she was, but I’ll just say that she couldn’t really do anything around the house on her own anymore. She needed my help making her way over to the bathroom, and she couldn’t eat on her own anymore, and it was just bad. I knew if I told you then you would offer to help me out and to be honest, Taekwoon, I don’t think I deserved your kindness. I never said this back then, but you were the best thing that happened to me. I was the new kid from Daegu with the accent, but you helped me adjust to my new surroundings so quickly, and I was really thankful for that.”
Taking a breath, Taekwoon could see her eyes starting to tear up, and he could feel his own heart starting to beat faster. She was never good at expressing her feelings, but here she was telling him everything he’s ever wanted to hear from her.
“It got worse and eventually, Seoul wasn’t a big enough city for treatment. That’s how we ended up going to Boston on such a short notice, and I stayed there until my mother passed away a few months ago. There was no reason for me to stay anymore at a city that I could never call my own, and so I decided to come back, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t even attend school properly in America which is why I ended up doing what you saw me doing,” she paused for a moment to look up at him, the tears now flowing down her face.
“Did I want to do it? No. But did I have a choice? No. It paid pretty well,” she spoke with a sad laugh following soon afterwards, and he could tell that she didn’t really ever regret picking up the job. “And hey, I got to meet you again, didn’t I?”
Taekwoon hadn’t said a word throughout her whole story mainly because he couldn’t think of what to say. He was never much of a talker, more of a listener, and a man of actions. As if to prove this point, he stepped forward and pulled her into his embrace.
Her arms envelop around his figure, and she’s pulling him tighter, and he can feel her tears soaking his shirt as she starts relieving everything that she’s held in for six years. He can feel her fingers tugging on his sweater, and he pulls her back ever so slightly to see her face, wiping the tears from her face.
“Jung Taekwoon. I’m so sorry,” she manages to get out as her hand travels up to caress his own face, and he goes weak in the knees because the Joohyun he used to be so in love with is back. A slight smile creeps up onto his smile as he grabs the hand on his face, bring it into his own and squeezing it ever so slightly.
She's finally back, and he's managed to make her stay.
"Please don't walk away from me again."
There's a comfortable silence in the room, and he takes that as a yes.
extra author's note: i just realize that hakyeon appears more than irene in the fic. hakyeon's so lovable though. also, join me in the ship. i dare you too. they're both such shy and fluffy people who are super wild with just their members, and they both get startled really easily which is so cute. taekwoon likes to drink lattes and joohyun only drinks green tea lattes, and if that does not scream cute!!!! to you, you are a cold hearted human being.