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ohmygirlexchange2016-12-24 11:52 am
[multiple ships] i've never said it was love (for waterpots)
Rating: T
Characters/Pairings: various platonic (Binnie/Jine, Hyojung/Jine, Mimi/Yooa, Binnie/Jiho, Seunghee/Hyojung, Yooa/Seunghee, Mimi/Jiho, and more)
Warnings (if applicable): n/a
Word-Count: 3476
Summary: and all you are, and all you’ve suddenly become to me
Author Notes: Prompt: “AU where oh my girl are college students who live on the same floor of a residence hall and stuff...” which I modified a lot more than I expected to, sorry!!! 94-96 line share an apartment, 97 line lives on the same dorm floor. Each of the lines correspond to a grade year so Binnie’s a first year, etc.
I.
Jine slices fruit thinly in the kitchen of her apartment and arranges them on a ceramic plate.
Binnie sits on a stool at the bar and eats the bananas, Jine side-eyeing her for her complete lack of assistance. "Haven’t you ever wanted to just be friends with someone?"
"You’re already friends with everyone else," Jine answers simply. “Social butterfly. Fly to her. It’s easy! Just talk to her!”
Binnie glares.
“She’s different.” Jine rolls her eyes. “Pretty much everyone I’m friends with is fun. She’s. You know. Intimidating. I think she has a boyfriend, maybe.” As if that automatically excludes her from being able to speak to others.
Jine opens her mouth in mock surprise and says “Well! You won’t speak to her so no, I don’t know. And neither do you.”
"I’m going to punch you in the face," Binnie says, losing her composure, and Jine grins. "I just overheard it in the dorm hallway," she continues coolly, flipping her short hair. “Something about that.”
“Rumors, rumors. If you just want to be friends, that has nothing to do with it?”
"It’s not that easy," Binnie says. "You don’t just, go up to people and ask if you want to be friends.”
"I do," Jine says airily.
“Shut! The hell! Up!”
Jine and Binnie became friends Binnie’s first week at the university when she gave Jine a friendly compliment about her beautiful braided hair. Jine, responsible, employed tour guide that she is, immediately launched into a tirade about how the student center they were in would become her best friend.
“And I’m not so bad myself,” Jine concluded, to the response of Binnie’s eager laughter. “I’m actually pretty amazing,” she added in a cheeky whisper. “Being friends with me would be lovely, don’t you think?”
Binnie had no idea this is what she was getting into.
"Well, look at it this way, who knows what kind of a person Jiho really is. Maybe she’s a con artist you’re better off not getting to know."
“Jine! You just told me you went to high school with her.”
“You never know though! She coulda changed! We were obviously grades apart.”
"You could try studying together, I have tons of friends who used studying as an excuse to get dates. Of course, they’re not getting into med school,” Hyojung says, stepping out of her bedroom and rushing to get to work on time.
“Here’s some advice for you, don’t take her advice, she’s a total mess,” Mimi informs Binnie, leaving the same room and walking up to steal an apple slice. “Hyojung writes all her papers at 3AM and doesn’t spell check anything, and I mean anything. I mean, she gets As anyway by magic, but.”
“First, that’s irrelevant, second, I’m a good student,” Hyojung affirms, “and I know where I’m going after graduation, meanwhile you-”
“Don’t start this.” Jine groans. The front door slams shut.
"You don't know how much I want to be her," Mimi admits with a sigh.
"I HEARD THAT!"
II.
Seunghee’s only been in university for a year but has already sealed positions of responsibility all around campus. That, and she hasn’t lost the motivation to live the way her seniors have. They meet daily in the Starbucks by the library, Hyojung and Jine in the morning queue for caffeine, Seung preparing cups behind the counter. It's especially amusing considering Seunghee makes her own coffee at the apartment every morning, which they wake up too late to drink fresh, and vehemently reject regardless.
"Just buy a Keurig!" Seunghee shouted one day, exasperated. "And a Thermos. Think of the environment!"
"Those are expensive," Hyojung and Jine chimed in tandem.
"Starbucks every single day is expensive!"
Silence.
"I hate doing the dishes," Jine said finally.
"What does that have to do with-"
"I hate washing the dishes too!"
Seunghee sighed. At any rate, their money pays her bills.
“The usual,” Hyojung says without looking up from her phone when she reaches the front of the line, frantically typing up email replies.
“I still don’t have it memorized,” Seunghee says, tapping her nails on the computer.
Hyojung moves to the side, leaving a 5 dollar bill in Jine’s hand. "She's caramel macchiato and I'm almond milk latte, larges," Jine says, sliding a credit card and saving the money to return to its hardworking owner.
“Have you guys eaten?” Seunghee asks, stuck on her shift for another 3 hours. They have a tendency to skip breakfast.
“Um.” Jine laughs sheepishly, opening her wallet again. “We’ll get sandwiches too.”
"Thank you very much," Seunghee says, behavior suddenly recalling her position. She's much too comfortable here.
The girls wait for drinks at the other end of the room. Jine's already nodding off, head bouncing on her fluffy scarf. Suddenly her face is filled with bright white color.
"Stop! What is this!"
"Blue light is supposed to prevent you from going to sleep," Hyojung says, holding her screen at full brightness to Jine's eyes. "Also I'm really, really tired of networking."
"I don't think that's how it works," Jine replies, frowning and still blinking rapidly from drowsiness, but the drinks come out and the conversation drifts.
Hyojung sips on her coffee on the way out, wincing when she burns her tongue. Jine knows it’ll happen before it does, her own cup snug in the cavity between her gloves.
"I'm very tired and already very hungry," she says when they step out of the lecture hall an hour and a half later. "But we should study."
"If we go to the library now, you're just going to say this every five minutes until we pack up and inevitably have lunch. Let's just go now." The words themselves sound rude, spoken freely, and Jine has to carefully check Hyojung's expression just to be sure what she means. But Hyojung returns her curious glance with a grumbling stomach and a huge grin. She breathes in the frosty air and skips down the sidewalk towards the cafeteria.
Jine smiles too, to Hyojung's back.
She has nothing to worry about.
III.
"I am responsible," Yooa argues over the phone.
"I agree," Binnie says. "I don't know what you're talking about but I agree."
They sit on the floor of the dance studio, Yooa in the midst of an intense conversation while Binnie stares at the mirrors and waits. She was promised a good show. It's been 15 minutes.
"I've only been ignoring you because you always nag me. You always nag me. I can take care of myself."
Binnie starts to feel nervous. "Should I leave?" she mouths, pointing towards the door.
"No, no." Yooa shakes her head. To her phone: "I'll call you back. Later. Maybe. Tonight. Don't be so mad I'm fine. I'm fine," she repeats as she hangs up. "Sorry about that."
"Don't worry about me," Binnie says with concern as Yooa stands up and stretches. She exhales, playing with her hair.
"Ok! I'm ready to go. That conversation took way too long, and Mimi still isn't even here. I'll just do the routine myself. I need more practice than she does anyway."
Binnie's reseated herself excitedly with her back to the wall and knees to her chest, next to the stereo. Two minutes into the EDM track Yooa's already sweating and the practice room door flies open. Mimi runs in, sneakers soaked with dirty melted snow, and holds out a letter. "For you. Yooa."
Binnie would like to laugh because it sounds like a pun but Mimi's not joking around. Yooa's ripped the envelope open and is reading it, hands frozen.
"I have to go." She runs out with a quick apology, hair still tied up and wearing sweats.
"Take your jacket!" Mimi calls, but she's already gone. "She'll be okay, she was just dancing after all," she tells Binnie, but she's convincing herself too. "I'll do the routine for you! It's a good one."
Binnie nods and Mimi's energy has transformed into charisma and passion, erasing all the traces of worry from her face.
-
Yooa is always out getting drunk to forget and partying with her 10 million friends and Mimi's the one at the kitchen table, on her phone at 2:30AM with her thick rimmed glasses on, waiting for her to come home.
"I'm good," Yooa says, laughing towards her friends who escorted her to the apartment door. It closes more gently than Mimi expects.
"Welcome back," she says, hitting the power button on her phone and getting up from her seat.
Yooa removes her snow covered boots, strips off her jacket. "Good morning," she singsongs.
Mimi walks back towards her bedroom, looking back by the door in a moment of hesitation.
Yooa's collapsed on the couch.
Mimi's neutral expression softens, and she drapes a wool blanket over the sequined shirt and stockings before hitting the light switch.
Seunghee will take care of her in the morning.
IV.
The number of weeks in the semester remaining dwindles, meaning good and bad things. They’re almost done. Finals approach and life is pointless.
"I’m dying," Binnie says to no one. Her cheek touches the cold surface of the dining hall table her head rests on, and she sits there alone with her eyes closed for twenty minutes.
“Are you ok?” She jolts awake, it’s Kim Jiho’s face, upside down in front of hers.
Binnie lets out a terrible shriek and Jiho flinches, raising her head back up.
Binnie scrambles to sit up properly, fix her tousled hair. "I'm totally fine, just resting," she says, realizing how silly she would have looked. An amazing 151st impression.
“Um, you dropped your phone on the ground."
She crouches down and reaches for it by Binnie's feet, grabbing it but hitting her head on the table.
Binnie can't help but stifle a laugh, and the pause in Jiho's movement makes it clear it was heard.
"You wanna fight?" she says, still from under the table. Binnie's terrified.
Jiho crawls out and grins, holding up the phone.
"Just kidding!" Binnie kind of wants to melt into the floor and disappear.
Her face really is beautiful up close.
-
Jiho is nice at first. Not cold, not condescending. “You seemed fun,” Jiho says when Binnie asks what compelled her to approach instead of oh, you know, leaving her alone like a normal person. It comes out wrong, though the tone in her voice betrays her happiness, and Jiho laughs and laughs and laughs.
“I’ll kill you so many times over Kim Jiho. You’ll wish you were never born!” She laughs, and laughs, and laughs.
“I absolutely hate Jiho," Binnie proclaims when Seunghee opens the door to their apartment, amused. "She's worse than all of you combined, and she doesn't understand-"
"Hi," Jiho says, swiveling around on the bar stool and waving. It sounds so innocent until Binnie looks at her mischievous eyes.
"I'm going to die."
"I invited her," Jine says, as if it's supposed to relieve her internal suffering.
"My best friends are devils," Binnie says with exasperation.
"I'm already one of your best friends?" Jiho asks with wide eyes.
"Oh, so you admit you're a terrible person?"
"I never said anything about that," Jiho retorts, frowning. "I'm really so sad, Bae Binnie, how could you do this to me! I'm going to cry." She makes motions with her fingers and crumples to the ground while Jine and Mimi howl with laughter.
"This is worse than any of Hyojung and Mimi's arguments," Yooa says, the smallest of smiles on her face.
V.
Seunghee is so genuine. Hyojung smiles like the sun, the first to greet you at the restaurant where she works part time on the weekends, first to vent about the unsuspecting customers behind their backs. Sunburns.
Seung's smiles are mild but warm.
"You wouldn't last a day where I work," she says good naturedly after Hyojung rattles off a list of grievances. They're on the couch in the evening, pajamas and flyaway hair, watching a crime drama. Neither of them quite pay full attention.
"Saturday nights are the worst," Hyo continues, ignoring her. "I should just quit."
"Just the other day you were telling Arin to hang in there-"
"Arin was talking about dropping out of high school! She's a baby-"
"SHE WAS JOKING."
Hyojung sighs, blowing air into the space behind her thin bangs. "I love her. She's precious, and she's alone."
"You need the money to spoil her with," Seunghee reminds her, jokingly. Hyojung pays her debts, responsibly.
"She never goes out with me anymore. It's exams this, baseball games that, evidently she has a new set of friends too-"
"You need to let her go then-"
"Seung."
They both stand up suddenly because the serial killer's got the lead in her clutches, and both of the girls scream their lungs out.
"Shut up!" Mimi calls from her room, at a comparable volume. "I'm studying! You want me to fail!"
Mouths open, they hold their breath until the tension's over. Hyojung collapses back onto the loveseat. "I hate this trope so much," she mutters.
Seunghee rolls her eyes. "Why is it always the asshole who gets the hero moment?"
"I hate this show."
"More than you hate Arin's boyfriend?"
"SINCE WHEN DOES ARIN HAVE A-"
Seung holds her hands up. "Relax. It was. A joke."
"Okay. I'm fine. Breathing normally. I wasn't mad or anything, I was just really, really surprised," Hyojung says, denial evident in her voice, locking her hands together.
"I know."
Hyojung smiles more brightly. "I'm not going to quit my job."
"Great."
Hyojung ruffles Seunghee's messy long hair and gets off the sofa. "Shower," she calls as she walks away. "Thank you," she adds as an afterthought.
"Anytime," Seunghee says, meaning it.
VI.
"I never cook at home," Jiho says. "Ever."
They're in the apartment again, halfway through finals week. It also happens to be the coldest day of the semester thus far. Obviously the best time for Jiho and Binnie to stress eat ice cream and stop at the apartment when the snowstorm blows too hard for them to want to walk back.
"I'm here to teach you! These are important life skills!" Yooa smiles enthusiastically, but Binnie's pretty sure she just didn't want to cut all the vegetables alone.
The spread in front of them is a disorder of cutting boards, half peeled potatoes and bottles of seasoning. Soup is good for the cold weather and also for the heart, Jine told them before flopping onto her bed to catch up on sleep. "Wake me up when you've cooked dinner." Not a request but a command.
"Um, first, we have to defrost the meat..." Yooa scrambles around the kitchen trying to remember what to do. "Seunghee's taught me how to do this before, I know how to do this. Definitely."
Binnie's assigned to slice carrots while Yooa teaches Jiho how to use the peeler, and they work with pop music playing quietly in the background.
"We should make dessert too? What do you guys like?"
"Cheesecake," Binnie says just as Jiho's open mouth is about to ask for brownies. They glare at each other.
"You can't make cheesecake at home," Jiho says. "It'll probably taste terrible." Yooa puts her hand to her head, cursing herself.
"Oh yeah? Says who? Yooa's a cooking master. Right?"
"I don't think we have the ingredients," she says tiredly. She figures cheesecake is made out of things they don't have and has no desire to check.
"Yay! Brownies!" Jiho cheers.
"Do we have cocoa powder..." Yooa rummages through the cabinets. "I really shouldn't have asked-"
"How do you guys not keep brownie boxes at home, I'm really so, so disappointed in you," Jiho says as Binnie gives her a snide look.
"Ok! Ok!" Yooa takes a deep breath. "We're making sugar cookies and I'm deciding not only because you guys are annoying but because we really have no other ingredients. If you're going to make fun of our food budget when you literally live in the residence halls, bring something next time."
When Jiho gets eggshells in the batter she's relegated to stirring the soup. The warm smell of finished cookies spreads through the room just as the front door opens.
"Hyojung's working," Mimi says, downcast. "And I might have failed my Business Policy exam."
"I'm sure she didn't," Seunghee says, waving her hand at Mimi and looking to the countertop. "That looks... nice," she finishes weakly, seeing the burnt edges of the cookies.
"I forgot to set the oven timer and they were in there a little too long," Jiho announces shamelessly.
"Oh, but they're good," Mimi says, having grabbed one unconcerned with appearance and munching down. "You gotta ignore the bitterness but like, they clearly overcompensated with the sugar. There's like. A lot of sugar."
Seunghee raises an eyebrow and picks one up, questioning. Yooa looks at her nervously. "It's good," she says upon the first bite, nodding. "Not bad, you guys."
The three grin. "I used the recipe you shared with me," Yooa says brightly. "Oh, and the soup, you should try it."
The rice is ready and the table's set, for once. Jine wakes up and they eat in the vibrant atmosphere, string lights and space heaters surrounding them. "It's like our unplanned holiday dinner," she says happily. "Topped with the missing family members." She texts Hyojung a blurry group selfie.
"You did a great job," Seunghee says, looking proudly towards the cooks of the night.
Jiho and Binnie beam, and Yooa's eyes are full of stars.
VII.
Winter break.
One by one they board flights to their real homes, early mornings shivering and half asleep.
"Having exams on the last day is the absolute worst," Mimi complains, lying on Jiho's bed. Her dorm room is decorated with movie posters; Mimi can't tell if the Twilight one is there ironically.
"I want to go hoooooome," Jiho repeats for the 45th time, half-assing a practice multiple choice test at her desk. It's late night and Mimi's given up on her own work, or even going back to the apartment, which is empty and incredibly lonely without four of its residents. Jiho's alone now too, so it's easy to provide an excuse for her to be there.
"Then go," Mimi says, fully well knowing she doesn't have a choice.
"I'd throw a pillow at you if I had one in my hands. I don't. I want coffee."
"Can I just sleep here?" Mimi asks, eyes closing. “Instead of on the floor like I said I would.”
"I'll wake you up when I want to sleep," Jiho says. She doesn't get a response.
She proceeds to circle random answers on the printed test under the low light of her desk lamp and her eyes shut for seconds at a time without her consent. "It's time for bed and it's not my choice," she says, yawning. Mimi is out cold, so she washes her face and gets ready for bed before coming back to shake her awake.
Mimi's long black hair is strewn all over her face, dark circles under her eyes.
Jiho has a change of heart and pushes Mimi's body to the side of the bed, not stirring her. Jiho unfolds the blankets, covers Mimi with each of the two before climbing in next to her.
The streetlamps out the window give off yellow light, and the white snow covering the ground reflects it. The glass pane blocks out the cold, traps the warmth inside, the same way Jiho's comforter does.
It's quiet but the world is bright.
-
"Did your exam go alright?" Mimi asks Jiho in an airport terminal the day after. Mimi's exam was in the morning, afternoon flight. Jiho's flight is in an hour, but she arrives at Mimi's neighboring gate just quick enough to exchange a few words before boarding.
"It went great," she responds, ignoring the multitude of questions she didn't know the answer to. She can go over that in texts later.
"That's wonderful," Mimi says, smiling, closed eyes curved. "Mine was alright, not a bad end to the semester."
The intercom crackles. "Group 3 can board now," the desk attendant announces.
"Well, that's me," Mimi says, pulling on her backpack, grabbing her suitcase. Jiho hands her the snapback on the seat next to her.
“Have a lovely break,” Jiho tells her, waving as Mimi takes each step farther away from her.
Something comes over her.
Some friendships are casual conversations while passing in the hallway. Others are slow to build and sweet when lasting. Sometimes, love is swift and unforeseen, and parting cuts deeper than expected.
There are words Jiho’s not quite ready to say, but maybe one day she will, when she understands.
Mimi disappears into the jet bridge, lost in the crowd.
For now, they simmer in her heart.
Author Notes:
The summary reflects words (un)said in a rush without thinking about them or knowing what you’re going to say next, thoughts that come to you like an epiphany but with such force and intensity when you realize relationships are valuable and important to you. Mostly that applies to the ending, but all of them are growing closer.mp3!!!
Title - victon’s your smile and you
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(Anonymous) 2016-12-25 01:15 pm (UTC)(link)lastly, in particular (although i really liked all of it), i adored this line: It's quiet but the world is bright.
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(Anonymous) 2016-12-26 03:07 am (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2016-12-27 04:41 am (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2016-12-28 11:17 pm (UTC)(link)there are a lot of lovely moments in this fic, and i would probably end up copy and pasting half whole fic if i were to state them here, but my favourite moment is probably the conversation at the end between seunghee and hyojung (SINCE WHEN DOES ARIN HAVE A—). they’re both a part of momline but they clearly look after everyone in different ways :’)
(seunghee suggesting keruigs are good for the environment hurt a little though aeaioijaetijasd)