Work Text:
“Can I talk to you?”
Soonyoung looks up from where he’d been staring intently at his phone screen, trying in vain to decipher his own Google calendar, to find Jun looming over him, big eyes practically staring right through him. Her eyes must be insanely strong: he swears she needs to blink less often than the average person.
“Sure, we can talk,” he says easily, giving up on his calendar with no small amount of relief. The thing about using any sort of code is that you’re eventually going to want to decode it later, something past Soonyoung obviously didn’t stop to consider. He thinks he might have to give up the whole thing, start living in the moment instead.
Jun opens her mouth only to close it again, weirdly hesitant, and Soonyoung frowns up at her in confusion. She’s here to practice today but she sat the whole thing out, said she had cramps. Honestly, Soonyoung’s pretty sure she usually just uses that excuse as it suits her, but he’s not stupid enough to ever say that out loud. He’s glad he didn’t, today, because it seems like maybe she’s got something wrong for real.
“You have a car, right? Like, one you can use?”
Soonyoung nods. He and his sister share a beat-up grey Hyundai, a gift from their dad when they both ended up moving to the city at the same time. They only really use it to drive to their parents’ house or to Costco, so it’s basically always available if he needs it.
“Can you drive me somewhere? An appointment?”
“Sure,” Soonyoung agrees again. “What kind of appointment?”
“The secret kind,” Jun says, offering him a square shaped smile, full of teeth. She offers a hand to pull him up and Soonyoung takes it, lets her heave him up to his feet. When he’s up he pretends to stumble just so he can drape himself over her in a giant hug, laughing at the way she takes a staggering step backward, arms coming up to steady him as she lets out a squawking grunt.
“When is it?”
Soonyoung doesn’t think to ask until they’re out of the practice room, fiddling with the lock so they don’t get in trouble with management again.
“Next weekend,” Jun hums, eyes on her phone screen. Jun uses her phone for four things, generally: reading webtoons, playing games, taking pictures of herself and, very occasionally, replying to messages. Right now her fingers are moving but she’s not holding it sideways, so it must be the last one.
Soonyoung wonders who the lucky person is — he’s pretty sure his last three texts to her are still on read. He takes out his own phone, only to sigh immediately as he realizes this means he’s going to have to make another attempt at his calendar.
“Can you just message me the day before?” he asks. “I won’t forget, I swear, I just need a reminder.”
Jun shrugs, still looking at her screen, then nods.
“Sure,” she says, snapping her phone shut and tucking it into her bag. She digs around in there for a little while, until finally her hand emerges again, triumphantly clutching a container of gum. She grins at him, her seriousness from earlier all gone as she shakes the plastic hard, a rattling sound that would have Minghao scolding her for sure, if she were here. “Want one?”
Soonyoung laughs and holds his hands out, accepting the three pieces she shakes into his palm and gracelessly shoving them all into his mouth at once.
“Ooh, berry blast,” he slurs around a mouthful of spit and half-chewed gum. “My favourite.”
“Mine too,” Jun grins at him, sly, like they’ve got a little secret between the two of them. Which there is, he guesses. A secret appointment.
How mysterious.
***
If Soonyoung had a different personality he’d wonder more about it, probably. Maybe even ask around, try to see if any of Jun’s friends knew anything. Jun misses practice again on Wednesday, and Soonyoung asks Minghao if it’s cramps again but Minghao frowns, says Jun told her she had to do a group assignment in the library.
“She didn’t tell you?”
Soonyoung shakes his head as he pitches forward to try and reach his toes.
“Not a peep,” he grunts. He stays down there until Minghao jerks him back up, expression unimpressed.
“You’re purple,” she says flatly, which makes Soonyoung laugh so hard he’s nearly blue, and by the time they get back on track he’s forgotten the way Minghao looked when Soonyoung first asked her, concern lurking somewhere just underneath her frown.
Soonyoung is, after all, both chronically uncurious and prone to forgetfulness, so he’s already mostly forgotten about Jun’s secret appointment, only a vague prickle at the back of his neck letting him know there’s something he’s supposed to be remembering.
The prickle isn’t much more forthcoming than that, though, and by Friday he’s mostly convinced himself he’s forgetting an assignment until Jun sends him a reminder, as promised (secret appointment tomorrow!!!!!!!!! pick me up at 8am!!!!!!!!), and it all comes back to Soonyoung in the middle of his Intro to Psych lecture, interrupting him as he’s hovering his hands over his laptop keyboard and trying to look like he understands enough to be taking notes.
tomorrow at 8!!!!!!!!!!!!! i’ll be there!!!!! he types in the chat box, honestly the most productive he’s been all class. The person next to him jerks his head up at the sound of Soonyoung slamming the exclamation point button thirteen separate times, scowling his disapproval. Soonyoung grins back at him until he looks away, then reacts to Jun’s message with a heart, for emphasis.
Jun sends a thumbs up and then, somewhat inexplicably, a stopwatch. Soonyoung sends her a tiger in return, grinning, and that’s that.
***
Jun’s in a black t-shirt and black leggings when he picks her up on Saturday morning, a black ballcap pulled down low over her head, hair visible only where it’s sticking out in little tufts at the back.
“What’s with the outfit?”
“Secret appointment,” Jun reminds him, and Soonyoung’s mouth drops open in immediate understanding. He takes a second to reevaluate his own getup: a white t-shirt with a bright green and purple dinosaur, paired with his lucky red shorts.
“I missed the memo,” he says sadly. “Do we have time to stop?”
“I don’t — ” Jun starts, but before she can finish her sentence Soonyoung’s cutting her off with a yelp, twisting in his seat to paw through the gym bag he left in the back seat months ago for the black shirt and track pants he always keeps in there.
“Ha!” he crows, holding them up to his nose for a quick sniff check. Good enough — he immediately strips his dinosaur shirt off in favour of the black, narrowly avoiding elbowing the horn as he wriggles his arms and head through the corresponding holes.
“You gonna do your pants, too?” Jun asks interestedly once he’s finished, eyes on the — admittedly cramped — space between the lower half of his body and the steering wheel.
“I probably can,” Soonyoung says thoughtfully, reaching for the lever on the side of the seat to slide back a little, give himself a little leg room. “Wanna bet?”
“What are we betting?”
Jun leans in close, a mock serious expression on her face. The two of them don’t always get along when it comes to work, but when it comes to shenanigans Jun’s generally willing to enable, if you can pull her away from her phone for long enough. Soonyoung really appreciates that about her.
He lets out a theatrical, drawn out hum. Jun grins, all teeth.
“Loser buys snacks on the way home,” he says, finally.
“You’re on.”
Jun spits in her hand and holds it out, face solemn, and Soonyoung does the same. If Minghao were in the car she’d be gagging and demanding to be let out — they should have brought her, Soonyoung thinks. It would make everything funnier. He wipes his wet hand on his shorts and then gets started, careful to hold his boxers up with one hand as he wriggles his shorts down his legs. It’s easier than he thought it would be once he gets the hang of it, reaching down to grab where the fabric has pooled at his feet and then holding it up with a triumphant grin.
“Halfway there,” Jun says, eyebrows raised as she hands him his pants. She looks pretty impressed, which is gratifying. Soonyoung grins over at her and gets started.
He only bangs his knee on the steering wheel once, in the end, which he thinks is a pretty good display. Jun laughs the whole time, delighted, mouth open wide like she can’t believe what she’s seeing.
“You owe me shrimp chips,” Soonyoung crows, triumphant, wiggling a little in his seat for emphasis. Jun shoves at his shoulder, still laughing, letting out these these hiccupping, gasping noises like she really can’t breathe, so ridiculous it’s impossible for Soonyoung to do anything but laugh along.
“You really can’t tell me where we’re going?” he asks as Jun enters the address into the GPS app on his phone, fixing it to the dash so he can see the route.
“Secret,” she reminds him, gesturing at his black-clad body.
“Does that make us secret agents?” Soonyoung asks thoughtfully. Jun snorts out an ungraceful laugh.
“Agent Kwon?” she suggests.
“Sure,” Soonyoung laughs. “Agent Moon.”
“We’ll need code names, too,” Jun says, turning her gaze out the window just in time to watch the big outlet centre pass by.
“Dibs on Tiger.”
“What does that make me, then?”
Soonyoung darts a glance over at her, then focuses on the road. He frowns in concentration, both at Jun’s question and the upcoming lane change. What does that make Jun?
“I don’t know,” he says, finally. “You’re Moon Jun.”
“Anticlimactic.” Jun comments lightly. She doesn’t sound disappointed, but then sometimes with Jun it’s hard to tell. Once she was upset about something Soonyoung said at practice for an entire week and he never even knew, had to find out a month later from Minghao.
“Are you disappointed?” Soonyoung figures it’s always better to just ask. “I can try to think of something better.”
“It’s okay.” Jun shrugs. When she catches Soonyoung looking she gives him a cute little smile, blinking and holding it until he looks back at the road. As soon as his eyes are off of her she reaches forward to fiddle with the radio dials.
“It has to be on my phone,” Soonyoung begs, swatting at her hand. “If you play music on there I can’t hear the instructions.”
“I can just yell them to you,” Jun offers, but she still reaches for his phone like he asked. “There’s a lot of dick music on here,” she comments off-handedly, scrolling furiously through his music selection, and Soonyoung frowns.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means what it means,” Jun shrugs, hitting play on something that is definitely not from Soonyoung’s downloaded library. It isn’t even in Korean. “This good?”
“Sure,” Soonyoung lies, even though the song sounds like a Chinese version of the rock music his dad used to listen to with his uncle when he was younger. He would always beg them to play fun music instead, until his sister made fun of him and made him stop. “This is fine,” he says now. Personal growth, or whatever.
He glances down at his phone screen. An hour and forty-six minutes remaining. The address they’re headed to isn’t far — just outside the city — but there’s no clear route there, and it’s an awkward, roundabout drive. Soonyoung’s glad Jun asked him to drive her. A taxi would be way too expensive, and if she took public transportation she’d be on the bus all day.
“Let me know if you have to pee,” he says abruptly, shifting in his seat. He’s never really been good at sitting in silence for any extended amount of time. Jun hums agreeably. “Or if you need coffee or something,” he adds, and Jun hums again. She’s distracted by whatever phone game she’s obsessed with right now, or maybe she’s editing pictures again. Soonyoung can’t look over long enough to catch what’s on the screen.
“Are you playing a game?”
“Webtoon,” Jun says distractedly. “She just met the crown prince, it’s really getting good.”
“She?” Soonyoung prompts, trying to get Jun to tell him more, because her music is boring and the freeway is boring and Soonyoung doesn’t think it’s right, personally, for a mysterious secret adventure to be boring.
“The main character,” Jun says. “She looked into a magic mirror at the cat café and it pulled her through to another universe. She’s trying to figure out how to get back in time to make it to her viola recital.”
Jun’s still looking at her phone the whole time, but one hand comes up to gesture as she explains, her voice getting faster towards the end. It’s pretty cute.
“What’s the other universe like?” Soonyoung asks, so she’ll keep going. Jun struggles through a meandering explanation of some sort of cat kingdom and Soonyoung only understands half of it, maybe, but he’s still disappointed when she trails off into silence, focusing on the screen again.
***
“Okay, I need to pee,” Soonyoung announces with thirty-five minutes left on the GPS. Jun looks over at him, then shrugs.
“Okay,” is all she says. She’s been silent for the past twenty minutes, staring intently down at her phone screen the whole time. Soonyoung doesn’t understand how she hasn’t gotten carsick by now.
When Soonyoung pulls up to the rest stop Jun stays in the car, seatbelt on, eyes still on her phone screen, waving him off when Soonyoung tries to ask if she needs anything.
He checks his messages when he’s waiting in line, finds two texts from Minghao timestamped fifteen minutes earlier.
have you talked to jun today???
she’s not answering her phone
Soonyoung frowns down at the screen, confused. There's no way Jun missed Minghao’s call, not when she’s been staring at her phone for the entire trip.
yeah, she’s with me, he types carefully, still frowning. There must have been some miscommunication, he thinks. A misunderstanding. she’s fine, we’re driving, he adds, in case Minghao’s worried or something. Minghao gets kind of intense about stuff like that sometimes.
?????? tell her to call me
Minghao’s response is immediate — she was obviously waiting for him. The line shifts just as Soonyoung goes to respond and he curses quietly, awkwardly typing out an ok before he has to shove his phone into his back pocket.
When he’s finished he stops at one of the stands outside the bathroom to get them both drinks before he heads back to the car, arms too full to check his phone again. He bangs on the window on Jun’s side to get her attention, nodding down meaningfully at the door handle.
Jun’s head whips up at the sound, eyes wide and startled, but her expression crumples into a frown as she presses the button to roll down the window.
“Did you tell Minghao I’m with you?” she demands immediately, head tilted like a bird, the words out before Soonyoung’s even managed to offer her drink.
“Um,” he says intelligently, faltering. “Was I not supposed to?”
“It’s a secret appointment,” Jun says slowly, stretching the words out like Soonyoung really is stupid. He steps back a little bit, hurt. He’s never heard her sound as mean as that. “I told you it was a secret.”
Soonyoung’s mouth gapes open.
“It was just Minghao,” he says uselessly. He didn’t think — he didn’t tell Minghao anything important. He doesn’t even know anything important to tell. He doesn’t even know where they’re going.
“It was a secret,” Jun repeats, louder, and she doesn’t sound mean anymore, just upset. Like a little kid who’s about to cry, helpless and frustrated.
Soonyoung doesn’t think he’s ever seen Jun cry.
“I’m sorry.” His hands are starting to go numb from holding the drinks for so long, wet condensation dripping over his fingers. “Jun-ah. I’m really sorry, okay? I didn’t know it was a secret from Minghao too, that’s all. And I didn’t tell her anything else, I promise.”
Jun stares at him for a long moment. Her frustration fades away to nothing, her mouth set in a flat line, and it’s impossible to read the expression on her face until she shrugs, finally, deliberately casual.
“It’s fine,” she says, in the specific tone of voice people only use when it isn’t actually fine at all. Soonyoung’s heard it from his sister more times than he could possibly count. “Just get in the car, yeah? Let’s just go.”
He never gave her the drink, he realizes when he gets to the driver’s side, awkwardly juggling the two cups in his hand to get the door open and slide in. He’s mostly successful — only a little bit spills on his hand.
“This is for you,” he says as soon as he’s sitting, holding out the iced latte for Jun to take. For a horrible split second he worries she’ll refuse it just to spite him, the kind of thing his sister used to always do before they both grew out of fighting with each other over the tiniest perceived offence, but Jun reaches for the cup easily, their fingers brushing as she takes it.
“Thanks,” she says quietly. Soonyoung can’t actually remember the last time he felt this uncomfortable, and he still isn’t even really sure why.
He kind of wants to make sure she isn’t really mad at him, make sure he hasn’t fucked it up for real, but he and Jun don’t usually talk about stuff like that. He wouldn’t know how to ask.
Jun’s still quiet next to him, but after a moment she reaches for his phone, silently opening Melon again. It’s already attached to the dash so he can see the GPS as he drives, and Jun leans forward to tap at the screen instead of trying to unclip it; she’s scrolling through his recently played tracks when the messages from Minghao start to appear, one after the other, clear as anything at the top of the screen.
would you please just tell her to call me back???
what is wrong with her
she’s unbearable sometimes
i swear to god
Soonyoung freezes, breath catching. His eyes dart from the screen to Jun’s face. Maybe there’s a chance she didn’t read them, he thinks hysterically. Maybe they were too fast, maybe —
Jun read them. It’s obvious in the way her face has gone totally still, her hand frozen where it was reaching to change the song.
“Jun,” Soonyoung says, and then falters. He has nothing to say after that. “Look, I’m sure it’s just — ”
Jun shakes her head once, fast, a wild jerk. Soonyoung watches, still frozen, as she swipes down to show the notifications, all of Minghao’s messages showing up in a neat row for her to read. She taps to show the full conversation, but then instead of trying to type anything she opens a call instead. Soonyoung opens his mouth to ask her if that’s a good idea, but before he can get the words out Minghao’s already answering, voice spilling through the speakers in a panicked rush.
“Oppa? Is she with you?”
Soonyoung’s eyes widen. Minghao almost never calls him that. He doesn’t know what it means that she did; maybe it’s just that she’s worried, or maybe she’s trying to butter him up. Sometimes he teases her, trying to get her to say it, but now it just feels weird.
“Yah, Xu Minghao,” Jun snaps, cutting Soonyoung off again. She switches to Mandarin immediately, words slurring out in a hurry, tripping over her tongue the same way she always does in Korean. Soonyoung can’t understand any of the words, but her tone speaks pretty clearly on its own — overly-loud and clipped at the edges, already pissed off before Minghao’s even had a chance to say anything.
Whatever Minghao says in response makes it worse, not better. Soonyoung flattens himself back against the seat, eyes widening, as Jun raises her voice to cut Minghao off, leaning in towards the phone as she speaks, raising steadily until she’s mostly just yelling. Minghao snaps out something in response, sharp and mean and too loud, but before she’s even finished Jun’s leaning forward even more and jabbing the button to end the call, cutting her off mid-sentence, and then the only sound in the car is Jun’s breathing, heaving in huge gulps of air like she just came back from doing cardio. Soonyoung stares at Jun, waiting for her to say something, and when she stays silent he stares at the phone screen instead, still open to the conversation with Minghao.
Total silence on Minghao’s end, too.
“Um,” Soonyoung starts, hesitant, mentally urging Jun not to direct any of her Minghao-related anger towards him. “Is everything — okay?”
He winces as soon as he’s said it.
Stupid question.
“It’s fine,” Jun says flatly, dismissive. She has her phone open again, maybe to actually do something important or maybe just to ignore him.
“It didn’t sound fine,” Soonyoung pushes, just a little, because he couldn’t understand anything they just said but he knows it was mean, vicious in the way people only get when they’re really hurt. He’s fought with his sister enough times to know. “You guys were fighting.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Soonyoung doesn’t want to but he can feel himself getting angry, too, frustrated by Jun’s stubbornness and Minghao’s stubbornness and by the way neither of them will ever tell him anything, dragging him into the middle of their fight without even explaining why.
Soonyoung’s always like this; patient until he’s not.
It’s always funny until it’s not, and right now it doesn’t feel very funny. Soonyoung thinks Minghao might be really, genuinely mad at him — not just at Jun but at him, too, and he doesn’t even know why.
“Well, I want to talk about it! You still never even told me where you’re going,” Soonyoung bursts out, then, all his frustration pouring out of him all at once. “Can you at least tell me why you guys are fighting?”
Jun’s jaw clenches.
“It’s just how she is,” she mutters. She’s still looking at her phone, only Soonyoung can clearly see it’s just open to one of her app folders, so he doesn’t know who she’s trying to fool. “You know.”
Soonyoung really, truly, and emphatically does not know.
“Jun-ah,” he says gravely. “You know me. You know I’m stupider than that.”
Jun snorts out what Soonyoung thinks is supposed to be a laugh, only halfway through it gets kinda garbled, a mangled cat noise like she’s coughing up a hairball.
“Holy shit,” Soonyoung says without thinking, then winces as Jun brings a hand up to her face, dragging the back of it underneath her nose. “Shit. Are you crying?”
“No,” Jun laughs, except it’s pretty suspiciously wet, and also Soonyoung’s watching a tear trace its way down her face in real time, so.
Not her best work.
“What Minghao said was really mean,” he tries tentatively, not even really sure why she’s crying. He’s heard her and Minghao say worse to each other, honestly — sometimes it takes them a little while to switch to Mandarin so they can really lay into each other, and they don’t exactly hold back in Korean either. “She shouldn’t have messaged me like that.”
“It’s fine,” Jun says, sniffing again, loud in the horrible silence of the card. “I deserved it. It’s whatever.”
Soonyoung grimaces. He has a really bad feeling about this.
“I’m sure you didn’t,” he tries, weakly. “She could have been nicer….”
“I ignored her for two days,” Jun says flatly, the effect ruined by another wet sniffle. Soonyoung makes a face and leans over her, pressing to open the glove compartment, rifling through the junk in there until he comes up with a single McDonald’s napkin. He pulls himself back awkwardly, catching his balance with a hand on her thigh, muttering an apology as Jun laughs again, accepting the napkin only to crumple it in her fist immediately.
“Thanks,” she says, casting her glance out the window. “Sorry for being a mess.”
“No, you’re fine,” Soonyoung says slowly, mostly because now that she’s crying he can’t exactly say it isn’t fine. And like, it’s not totally a lie — no matter what, Jun’s still his friend. He doesn’t like seeing her upset, and he doesn’t want her to cry. “You really don’t wanna talk about it, huh.”
Jun hiccups out another laugh-sob. She’s still wearing that baseball cap so it’s hard to look at her face properly, her eyes obscured by the brim. Soonyoung can see the way her nose has turned red, though, and the way her hand shakes when she rubs it again.
Soonyoung watches her for what feels like ages but is honestly probably more like ten seconds, knowing his own impatience, and then he turns and starts to shift the car out of park slowly. It’s stupid, maybe, but he’s half-waiting for Jun to flail an arm out and tell him to stop, to open her mouth and finally tell him something.
She doesn’t. She doesn’t say anything, her lips pressed together, jaw set tight as she stares resolutely out the window. She never turned the music back on after she hung up on Minghao and Soonyoung doesn’t want to bring it up, so it’s silent in the car as he pulls onto the access road to merge back onto the highway. It’s not the most uncomfortable he’s ever been in the car, but it isn’t exactly pleasant, either. Soonyoung watches out of the corner of his eye as Jun brings one hand up to her mouth and starts to gnaw on skin around her thumbnail, an audible snapping noise when she catches the nail. He winces. Minghao’s always barking at her to stop when she does that, but this feels like a bad time to point that out.
The next twenty minutes of the drive are silent, broken only by the sound of Jun ruining her fingernails and the voice of Soonyoung’s GPS chiming in every thirty seconds to update the route.
He kind of misses Jun’s Chinese dad music.
Soonyoung veers right to exit the highway and Jun tenses, her hand coming down from her mouth to grip her own knee instead.
“Sorry,” he says. Minghao always says he drives like a crazy person. Or, well. She doesn’t say it, exactly, but the way she gasps every time he takes a left turn kind of speaks for itself.
Jun only hums. Her face has gone all weird and smooth, when he glances over at her. He can’t read her expression at all. One strand of hair has come loose from her tiny ponytail, awkwardly stuck to her cheek. It’s gotta be itchy but Jun doesn’t move to push it away, just keeps grabbing her own knees.
“You good?” Soonyoung tries tentatively, and Jun jerks her head in a nod. The voice filters out from Soonyoung’s phone again, interrupting whatever he was going to try and say next. Seven more minutes. “We made good time,” he offers.
Jun hums one more time, and then it’s silent again, seven minutes of no sound but the GPS. Jun isn’t even chewing her fingernails anymore.
Soonyoung eyes the nondescript building after what feels like an entire ice age, breathing out a sigh of relief. It’s at least six stories, covered with signs for different types of clinics. He winces when he sees the sign for paid parking, a bright red zero lit up above it signalling that the lot is full.
“Do you want to get out and go right in? I have to find somewhere to park.”
Jun nods, so Soonyoung flicks on his hazard lights and eases into a spot in front of the Baskin Robbins on the first floor of the building, looking over at her.
“Which floor are you going to? I can come meet you after I park.”
Jun shakes her head. She hasn’t actually said anything since the rest stop. Soonyoung watches as she takes in one breath, then another. Before he knows what he’s doing he’s reaching over to brush the strand of hair back from her cheek. It isn’t short enough to tuck behind her ear so he smoothes it back as best as he can. Jun stares at him, holding herself very still as he does it.
“Minghao was wrong,” he blurts into the awkward silence, because it seems like maybe Jun needs to hear it. “You aren’t unbearable. You could never be unbearable.”
Jun keeps staring at him, not blinking. Crazy eye muscles, Soonyoung thinks to himself, and has to muffle a wildly inappropriate urge to laugh.
“I’m getting an abortion.”
Soonyoung’s laugh dies in his throat.
“What?”
Jun pulls her gaze away to look straight ahead, keeping her head up as she fishes with one hand for where she dumped her bag by her feet.
“Jun,” Soonyoung says, voice coming out a little mangled. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say. He never would have thought she was — and don’t you have to go to a hospital for that? He thought it was like. Surgery. Isn’t Jun going to need someone to stay with her? Shouldn’t someone else be here? “Does Minghao know?”
Jun shakes her head, eyes still facing forward. Her ruined fingertips dig into the soft cloth of her bag.
“She already thinks I’m a flake.”
Her voice sounds totally dead, not like her at all.
“Jun, come on,” Soonyoung tries, silently willing her to at least look at him. “She doesn’t think that.”
He didn’t actually understand any of what Minghao said to Jun on the phone, but he knows she loves her. They love each other, in a weirdly fierce way Soonyoung has only ever observed, never experienced for himself. It’s way more intense than any friendship he’s ever had, that’s for sure.
“She does,” Jun says. She reaches into her bag to pull out a face mask, fitting the straps over her ears before she finally turns to look Soonyoung in the eye, expression obscured by black fabric. “It’s okay, really. It’s not like she’s wrong.”
Soonyoung stares at her, horrified.
“She is wrong,” he tries, but Jun obviously isn’t listening. She’s already got her fingers on the door handle. “Wait,” he says, too loud, and her hand freezes.
Soonyoung takes a deep breath, trying to figure out what he’s supposed to do next.
“How long is it gonna be?”
Jun shrugs.
“I dunno,” she says. “A few hours, maybe.”
“Call me if you need anything,” Soonyoung says — begs, almost. “I’ll wait there, okay? But I can come get you when you’re done.”
He jerks his head towards the coffee shop at the corner, fixes her with his best pleading expression when Jun hesitates.
“Okay,” she agrees finally, but she doesn’t sound thrilled about it. She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, muffled by her mask. “I’ll text you.”
“Okay,” Soonyoung nods, feeling sick as he watches her climb out of the car onto the sidewalk, then disappear into the building entrance, sandwiched in between the Baskin Robbins and a pharmacy on the other side.
“Okay,” he repeats to himself, flicking off the hazard lights to merge back onto the road. “Okay.”
He finds parking four blocks away and walks back to the coffee shop, orders a mango smoothie and plants himself in the corner booth and then realizes he probably should have taken a walk first, or found somewhere to go in the meantime. Now he’s just gonna have to wait here for — a few hours, Jun had said. Soonyoung takes out his phone and thinks about googling ‘how long does an abortion take,’ then has a weird hysterical thought that the coffee shop will be able to track it through the wifi and dismisses the idea, setting his phone facedown on the table and huffing out a breath.
It’s been four minutes. A third of his smoothie is gone.
Soonyoung flips his phone back over, hesitates before he unlocks it. His home screen is his family but his lock screen is the dance team, a picture of the four of them from their final competition last year. Soonyoung with Chan in a headlock in the front, Minghao and Jun with their arms around each other in the back.
Soonyoung sighs and unlocks it, reopens the conversation with Minghao from earlier and calls her back.
“It’s me,” he says as soon as she answers, just in case she thinks it’s Jun sneak-attacking her again. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Minghao says warily. There’s a fuzzy sound in the background but it cuts out suddenly to dead air, silence from her end as Soonyoung breathes too hard and tries to figure out why he called.
“Um,” Soonyoung starts, stabbing at his smoothie with the straw and staring at the table in front of him. “Are you mad at me?”
Minghao snorts into the phone, somehow managing to make the most ungraceful of sounds come out weirdly delicate.
“Why would I be mad at you?”
Soonyoung grimaces. He hates when she gets cryptic.
“I don’t know,” he mutters. “Harboring a fugitive?”
“I’m not mad at her, either,” Minghao says, giving up the cryptic front to cut straight to the point. Soonyoung pinches the top of the straw, then lets it go.
“Does Jun know that?”
“How would I know? She won’t answer my texts.”
Soonyoung makes a face and wishes, for a shameful split-second, that Jun had just asked Chan to drive her instead. Then he thinks about Jun in the waiting room, probably, or maybe already seeing the doctor, and feels like absolute shit.
“Well, maybe you could send her something nicer,” he says to Minghao, glancing up at the clock on the wall across from his table. Seven minutes since he sat down. “You could apologize.”
“She could apologize first.”
Soonyoung coughs out a noise that he intends to be a laugh, he really does, only it’s meaner than he meant it, and he knows as soon as he’s done it that Minghao will be able to tell.
“Would you quit being so stubborn? Just text her that you’re sorry for saying that about her.”
He snaps it more than he says it, fingers digging into the smoothie cup in front of him before he notices and makes himself relax. There’s another long pause from the other end of the line — Minghao’s a quiet breather, even over the phone. There must be some trick to it, like tilting the speaker away or something. Obviously, Soonyoung’s never bothered to learn.
“Where are you guys?”
Soonyoung freezes.
“What?”
“Where did you go? You’re together, right?”
“Um,” Soonyoung says, wincing, trying desperately to think of a way to answer. He’s a shit liar; Minghao’s gonna know immediately. “She didn’t want me to tell you,” is what he settles on. Minghao breathes in, sharp; so much for hiding the sound.
Or maybe she’s just too upset to care.
“Kwon Soonyoung,” she says, voice higher than usual. “Where are you? Is she in trouble?”
Soonyoung presses his hand to his forehead.
“Just say you’re sorry, okay?” he forces out. “She’s gonna be fine. I’ve gotta go.”
“She’s going to be fine?” Minghao asks, voice somehow rising even higher, thin with strain. Soonyoung shakes his head, even though she can’t see it.
“I’ve gotta go,” he repeats. “Text her.”
He ends the call before Minghao can say anything more, staring down at the screen as it lights up with incoming messages immediately.
you better be right, kwon soonyoung
i’ll come to your house
i’ll go to your mom’s house
don’t think i won’t
“Shit,” Soonyoung mutters.
do no t dot hat, he types out as fast as he can. it’s rly fine
then why isn’t she answering her phone?
Soonyoung hisses out an impatient breath.
bc she’s in the doctors office!!! he types out, scowling. just say something nice and then give her space!!!
He sees the ellipses show up to show Minghao’s typing and winces, forcing himself to type faster.
IM NOT TELLIGN U WHY
its her buisness shell tlel u when she want sto
prob faster if u text her firs t
He closes the app and then, after a moment, powers off his phone, only to immediately realize he can’t get Jun’s text if his phone is off and turn it back on.
ok is all Minghao has sent, though, when his phone finishes loading and he reopens their conversation. i trust you
Soonyoung’s stomach squirms. He hopes she’s right. He hopes he’s right.
He ends up taking a walk around the block after he finishes his smoothie, loitering in the nearby CU for almost 30 minutes as the cashier glares at him before he moves on to the phone store, then a women’s clothing store, then the stationary store. He’s poking around the stickers when his phone lights up with a text.
im almost done
Soonyoung nearly drops the eraser he was holding, muttering a quiet swear and then immediately glancing around him to check for kids.
He doesn’t buy the eraser, booking it out of the store to power walk back to the building, texting Jun on the way. which floor?
She doesn’t respond, which is kind of typical for Jun, but not really helping Soonyoung’s anxiety right now.
As soon as he makes it through the building entrance there she is, though, leaning against the wall outside the elevators waiting for him, casual as anything.
“You should have texted me earlier,” he chides, trying to get a good look at her face. “I would have come up to get you.”
Jun shrugs, ducking away to start taking long strides towards his car.
“I didn’t need it.”
Soonyoung frowns and follows.
“Do you feel okay?” he asks as soon as they’re in the car, twisting to peer at her properly before he even bothers with his seatbelt.
“It didn’t really hurt,” Jun shrugs again, although the stiff way she’s holding her body kind of says otherwise. “If you do it early I guess it’s just like a really bad period. Kinda.”
Soonyoung has absolutely no frame of reference for that. He nods along anyway.
“Do you feel like eating?”
Jun shrugs.
“Maybe something small,” she says. Her voice sounds too casual for it to be real; she’s obviously doing it on purpose to try and make Soonyoung feel better, or to make him stop paying so much attention.
Not really an option, given that she’s the only other person in the car right now, not to mention the only one who just underwent a minor medical procedure.
“We could just stop for snacks,” Soonyoung tries. “Do you wanna go to the CU?”
Jun shrugs again.
“I can just go by myself,” Soonyoung offers. “You sit here and wait.”
Jun shakes her head at that, though, reaching for the door handle to get back out. There’s nothing for Soonyoung to do but follow her lead, casting a quick glance to make sure he’s not opening his door into oncoming traffic before letting himself out and hurrying to catch up with her.
“What do you want?” Jun asks as soon as they’re through the convenience store door, turning to look back at him. Soonyoung thinks she looks a little pale, maybe, but it's hard to tell for sure. She’s still wearing the mask. She’s also rooting through her bag for her wallet, Soonyoung realizes belatedly, and he reaches out without thinking, fingers against her wrist to try and stop her.
“What are you doing?”
“The bet, remember? Loser buys snacks.”
Soonyoung kind of feels like he’s going to throw up.
“Yah, Moon Jun,” he says uneasily. “It was just a joke, right? You don’t really have to do that.”
Jun crosses her arms in front of her, wallet clutched firmly in one hand. She’s almost as tall as he is, even taller than Minghao; she’s got broad shoulders and she’s strong from dancing. Soonyoung’s never thought of her as particularly fragile. She’s holding herself very tightly, though, fingers digging into her own ribcage. Soonyoung wonders if she’s supposed to be doing that. He’s not a doctor or anything, but it seems like she should be careful about squishing stuff in there right now.
“I want to do it,” Jun repeats, an insistent edge to her voice. She’s stubborn when she wants to be; Soonyoung knows she’ll fight him all the way to the counter. She’ll win, too. It’s not like he can wrestle her for her wallet right now. Soonyoung chews at his lip and nods, finally, opening the door for her to let her in first. Jun doesn’t even dig her elbow into his waist for pulling something like that, which is a glaring red flag.
“What do you want?” she asks again in the chips aisle, staring blankly at the display in front of them. Soonyoung shrugs. He doesn’t actually want anything. For once, he’s too nervous to eat. Or — not nervous, exactly. He doesn’t know what to call the feeling swimming in his stomach, the sour, twisting sensation. He doesn’t think it’s something he’s ever felt before.
Jun glances over at him, frowning, but Soonyoung doesn’t know what to say back to her. Her mouth twists as she thinks, eyebrows still furrowed together, until suddenly her expression clears. She winks once, quick, elbow darting out to catch him between the ribs.
“Let’s complete the mission, Agent Kwon,” she says quietly, face smoothing back into a fake-serious expression as she turns back to the display. “In and out, let’s go.”
Soonyoung falters for a second, confused at the sudden shift in her demeanour, before he catches up and smiles at her, straightening, mirroring her posture and turning his focus towards the chips.
He reaches forward and snatches a bag off the shelf, tucking it neatly into the crook of his arm. “Shrimp chips are a go,” he mutters into his shoulder. Jun snorts, quietly, amused by him or embarrassed by him or honestly possibly both.
“Beverages on my count,” Jun says quietly, holding up three fingers, and Soonyoung smiles at her and nods.
He still feels guilty letting her pay even after she insisted earlier, averting eye contact with the cashier like somehow she’s going to judge him for it. He’ll just have to make it up to her later, Soonyoung decides. He’ll treat her to a really good dinner, once she’s feeling better.
The weather’s good and Jun says she’ll get sick if they eat in the car, so they sit on the bench to eat. Jun cracks open her tea to takes tiny sips as Soonyoung tries to open the shrimp chips without exploding them everywhere.
“Thanks,” she mutters, when he sets the open bag so it’s tilted towards her. She takes one but doesn’t actually eat it, just keeps it in her hand as it comes to rest on the table.
They sit like that in silence for a while, Soonyoung punctuating bites of chips with loud slurps of cola as Jun keeps sipping at her tea, a lot more demurely than her usual huge gulps.
“So, um. I didn’t know you had … someone,” Soonyoung says hesitantly. He isn’t really sure what the protocol is here: usually he’d just charge forward, ask anyway, but something about the way Jun’s sitting gingerly on the edge of the bench makes him slow down, trying hard to think before he speaks. He doesn’t want to say the wrong thing. It got kind of ugly in the car, before.
Jun makes a face.
“You don’t know him,” she says, one thin shoulder coming up in a halfhearted shrug. “It was whatever.”
It really does not seem like it was ‘whatever.’
“He said he didn’t want it,” Jun continues as she stretches her arms out in front of her, hands clasped. She’s brushed them free of shrimp chip dust already, a clear signal that she’s finished eating. “He gave me the money, so.”
Soonyoung frowns.
“He gave you the money but he didn’t come with you?”
Jun shrugs again. One of her hands comes up to her mouth, teeth biting viciously at the skin around the nail once more. If she keeps at it she’s gonna bleed.
“I didn’t want him to.”
Her voice is dull as she says it, though. Flat, like a balloon with all the air let out of it. Soonyoung scoots a little closer, but not close enough to touch. Just so she knows he’s there.
What a stupid thought, he chides himself. Of course she knows he’s there. She’s talking to him.
“Do you have any smokes?”
Jun’s voice cuts through the silence between them after a heavy moment and Soonyoung gapes at her, trying to catch up.
“You know I don’t smoke.”
“So?” She shrugs, seemingly indifferent. “I don’t, either.”
She kind of does, he’s pretty sure. Like, not for real, but if she’s at a party and a guy offers. That kind of thing. Soonyoung doesn’t even do that, though, and not just because he’s not a pretty girl and no one’s ever offered like that.
“I could buy you a pack,” he offers, even though he knows Jun knows the reason he doesn’t is that he doesn’t actually approve. He’s lectured Minghao about it in front of her, even.
“Would you?”
Soonyoung takes the chip bag with him as he stands, shoving it into the trash at the back of the convenience store before he goes back to the front to face the cashier.
“Hi,” he says, smiling. “I need a pack of cigarettes for my friend. What’s the weakest kind you have? She doesn’t usually smoke. I think she just wants to hold it and look cool.”
The cashier stares. Soonyoung smiles at her serenely until she turns and gets a pack from one of the bottom sections, dropping it onto the counter without a word. Soonyoung snatches one of the lighters from the display at the front at the last minute, setting it down next to the carton, and holds out his card.
“6000 won.”
Soonyoung offers the cashier a cheery salute before he heads back out to the table.
“I don’t know what brand you like,” he lies as he dumps them in front of Jun.
“This is fine.”
She tilts the pack towards him after she’s opened it, but Soonyoung shakes his head against the silent offer.
“Thanks,” Jun remembers to add after she’s lit her cigarette, smoke pouring out of her mouth around the word. Soonyoung shrugs it off, takes another slurping sip.
“If it makes you feel better.”
Jun grimaces on her next inhale.
“I feel fine,” she insists, the fingers of her free hand tapping against the splintered wood of the picnic table. “It really wasn’t a big deal.”
“Okay.”
Soonyoung sets his bottle on the table, and then his elbows. Jun lets out another breathful of smoke.
“Let’s just go,” she decides, stubbing the cigarette out and dropping it in the ashtray, then standing up with her bag in one smooth movement. Soonyoung blinks, a little blindsided, before he grabs his drink and follows her.
“Am I taking you back to your house?” he asks once they’re back in the car, his half-finished Coke in the cupholder and Jun’s gaze heavy on the side of his face.
Jun shrugs.
“Yeah,” she says, in that same fake-casual voice from before. “Where else would I go?”
“I dunno.” It feels weird to just — drop her off. Aren’t you supposed to be observed, after stuff like this? It’s kind of freaking Soonyoung out that she isn’t still in the hospital, honestly. “We could go to my mom’s house, if you want. It’s not that far from here.”
It is, kind of, because they’re edging later into the afternoon, and wherever they go there will be traffic. Soonyoung doesn’t particularly care. If Jun said she wanted to go he’d do it, no question.
Jun barks out a laugh.
“Why would I go to your mom’s house?”
She doesn’t say it in a mean way; mostly she just sounds incredulous. Soonyoung shrugs, turning to look at her properly. Her face is really pale. Soonyoung’s pretty sure she thinks she got away with it, but he knows she didn’t actually eat any of the shrimp chips.
“I don’t know,” he says again. “I thought you might want — she makes really good soup.”
“Soup?” Jun repeats on another half-laugh, still sounding confused more than anything. Soonyoung doesn’t really get what’s so hard to understand about that.
“Like, if you still feel sick,” he clarifies. “She could make us dinner.”
“She doesn’t have to do that,” Jun says immediately, sounding honestly kind of weirdly defensive about it. “I’m fine.”
“I know that,” Soonyoung says slowly. “But she’d want to.”
“She doesn’t even know me,” Jun protests. “And anyway, it was my — ”
But she cuts herself off before she can finish, mouth pressing together tight. Soonyoung glances over at her, worried.
“It was your what?”
“Nothing.”
“Jun-ah.”
“Nothing,” Jun repeats, insistent.
Soonyoung stares at the license plate of the car in front of them, squinting a little. The sun’s going down, now; the glare makes everything hard to see. Not like it matters much. The car’s barely moving.
Jun reaches for his phone. When music fills the car it’s her old rock music again; familiar and unfamiliar all at once. It makes Soonyoung want to talk to his dad.
“I’m thinking of bleaching my hair,” Jun says offhandedly, still looking out the window. Soonyoung startles at the sudden non sequitur, glancing over at her.
“You should,” he says, eyes back on the road. “It’ll look good on you.”
“You think so?”
“I think everything looks good on you, Moon Jun.”
When he looks over again there’s a tiny smile at the corner of her mouth. It’s barely anything at all, but it still makes Soonyoung feel proud.
“We’d match,” Jun says, nodding towards Soonyoung’s own hair, bleached nearly white and spiked, the product of a particularly ambitious salon appointment the month before.
Soonyoung grins at her, delighted at the idea, and he’s rewarded with a real smile in return. Maybe Minghao was right to trust him, he thinks, a warm feeling of reassurance spreading through him.
He hopes she was.
***
With traffic it takes almost twice as long to get home, Jun conked out against the headrest for almost half of it. She’s snoring, a little bit, which Soonyoung would definitely be recording for future evidence under almost any other circumstances.
“Yah,” he says quietly, reaching out to tap her shoulder. “Yah, Moon Jun. Wake up.”
Jun’s whole body goes tense as her eyes open wide, blinking around like she can’t remember where she is.
“We’re at your apartment,” Soonyoung says, nodding out the passenger’s side window. Jun turns slowly to follow, eyes still blinking sluggishly.
“Oh,” she croaks around a jaw-cracking yawn. “Already?”
She was asleep for over an hour — the sun finished setting while she was out. She must have really needed the sleep.
“Is your roommate home?”
Soonyoung’s never met Jun’s roommate, but he’s heard plenty about her. Mostly from Minghao, and mostly negative. Jun’s never said anything bad, though, so Soonyoung doesn’t really know what to think.
Jun shrugs, then shakes her head.
“She’s in Gapyeong with her boyfriend, I didn’t wanna bother her.”
Soonyoung frowns.
“You’re just gonna go up there alone? Can’t you call someone?”
Jun coughs out an awkward laugh, mouth opening wide, shoulders rounded over with it.
“Like who?”
Before Soonyoung can think of an answer she’s shaking her head again, one hand coming up to fix the same strand of hair as before. She tucks it up into her hat properly, this time, before she turns to face him.
Soonyoung and Jun don’t have the kind of relationship where they talk about things seriously. They don’t have the kind of relationship that’s serious at all. But the look on Jun’s face is weirdly grave, the last trace of her giggles faded completely.
“Thanks for doing this, seriously,” she says, reaching behind her to get the car door. “You’re a really good friend.”
Soonyoung honestly doesn’t feel like he did much of anything at all. He nods anyway, because he doesn’t want to seem rude. Jun tilts her head to the side, considering.
“You wanna come up? I think my roommate has orange juice.”
Soonyoung has never once, in Jun’s presence or possibly ever in his life, expressed a particular affinity for orange juice.
“Sure,” he says anyway, already twisting the key to turn the car off.
Jun’s apartment is a total mess, clothes strewn everywhere and a pair of heels directly in front of the door; Soonyoung barely catches himself from faceplanting immediately.
“Sorry,” Jun laughs, stretching out one long leg to kick them to the side. “My roommate’s a slob.”
“It’s fine,” Soonyoung shrugs. Honestly, he’s seen worse, and it’s not like Jun was expecting him. She didn’t exactly have time to clean it up.
Not that he thinks she would have, even then. He’s seen the inside of her dance bag.
“The orange juice is in the fridge,” Jun says, dropping her bag on the floor next to the couch and then continuing on towards what Soonyoung assumes is her bedroom. “I think. Whatever you find in there is fair game.”
Soonyoung ambles towards it mostly for something to do, not really planning on getting one until he pulls the fridge door open to find a shockingly large collection of beverages. There is, indeed, orange juice. There’s cola. There’s soju. There’s what appears to be a single bottle of every herbal tea available at the convenience store.
There’s a single giant bag of mozzarella cheese, and there’s not much else.
“Wow,” Soonyoung says quietly to himself as he reaches in, bypassing the orange juice for a corn silk tea. He twists the top off and takes a gulp, closing the refrigerator door and looking around him. The kitchen is just as messy as the rest of the apartment, which isn’t a huge surprise. There are multiple mugs of tea lying forgotten on the counter, and none of the drawers have been closed properly.
Soonyoung leans against the counter to sip the tea while the shower runs, zoning out a little. He should send Minghao a text. Maybe call his mom.
The shower switches off. There’s a muffled thump, then a startled squawk.
“You good?” Soonyoung calls without moving. If he leaves the kitchen he’ll be in clear view of the bathroom door, and he doesn’t know if Jun wants him to see her in a towel.
“Fine!” Jun yells back. He hears one door open, then another, then silence. It stretches on long enough that Soonyoung gets curious, leaves his tea on the counter next to an open, half-empty water bottle and pads towards Jun’s bedroom on socked feet. It’s been long enough that there’s no way she’s still naked in there, but he knocks on the doorframe before he goes in anyway. Just in case.
Jun’s bedroom is just as messy as the kitchen, clothes draped over most available surfaces, open makeup containers scattered all over the top of the dresser. Her backpack is sitting on top of the crowded desk, zipped open with papers spilling out everywhere. Jun herself is curled up on top of a pink checkered bedspread, damp hair splayed out over the pillow, eyes closed. She cracks one open when Soonyoung gets close enough to perch at the edge of the bed.
“Hi,” she says quietly. “I got tired. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Soonyoung says, smiling down at her. He reaches down to poke her cheek. “Do you have medicine or something? I can get it for you.”
“I took it already.”
“Okay.” Soonyoung glances towards the table next to her bed. There’s another open water bottle, a paper envelope from the pharmacy next to it. Soonyoung thinks about making a joke about Signs, but he doesn’t know if Jun’s seen that movie and he doesn’t want her to take it the wrong way, so he just pats her hand instead. “Do you feel okay?”
Jun shrugs. She’s still all in black — a tank top and shorts this time, smooth skin everywhere he looks. Her toenails are painted purple. He can smell her shampoo, even from here; some kind of tropical fruit.
Her boyfriend was a real idiot.
Soonyoung scoots up onto the bed for real, squirms until he’s curled up facing her, like they’re two matching shrimps. Jun’s quiet, eyes still open, watching him. She doesn’t tell him to get up. Soonyoung doesn’t ask her to say anything.
“I would have kept it,” Jun whispers into the silence, looking him right in the eye as she says it. A horrible sadness twists in Soonyoung’s chest, sudden and sharp. “Before he said — I wanted to, I think.”
Soonyoung doesn’t know what to say, throat weirdly swollen all of a sudden. He only nods, squeezing her hand.
“I was disappointed when he gave me the money.”
The words are so quiet Soonyoung can barely hear them, even with no other sound in the room to drown her out.
“He’s a fucking idiot.”
Saying it isn’t even really a conscious decision; it’s more like he opens his mouth and the words just fall out. Jun gasps out a laugh and it sounds almost hysterical, like she doesn’t know whether to believe him or not.
“I wouldn’t have done that,” Soonyoung insists, voice cracking a little on the last word. He clears his throat, drops his voice almost to a whisper, low and honest. “If it were me. I wouldn’t have asked you to do that.”
Jun’s laughter fades, her expression sobering slowly until finally she’s just staring at him, eyes wide.
“Do you mean it?”
Soonyoung nods solemnly.
“I think you’d make a great mom,” he says, and then, really thinking about it, “I’d hold your hair back if you had to barf a lot.”
Jun snorts, and then falls quiet.
“Chan would probably babysit,” she offers, finally, after a long enough stretch of silence that Soonyoung was just starting to think he’d overstepped it. Gone too far, like he nearly always does.
He should have known better, though. Jun never thinks Soonyoung’s gone too far. More often than not she’s the one laughing next to him, playing along.
“We could teach it to dance.”
“We could teach it how to swear in three languages.”
Soonyoung bursts out laughing at that one.
“I think it’d be really nice,” he declares confidently. “I think we’d be good at it.”
Somewhere behind her Jun’s phone chimes three times in a row, the sound cutting itself off every time. Her body goes a little tight, her smile fading. She doesn’t move.
“You should check it,” Soonyoung urges, thinking of his earlier phone call to Minghao. He hopes she said something kind. “It might be important.”
Jun only shrugs, lifting her head just far enough to resettle herself on the pillow, nestling in. She doesn’t look like she’s planning on moving any time soon, so before she can really get comfortable Soonyoung pushes at the comforter, nudging her until she gets the picture and shuffles up, letting him it tug it free and then over the two of them, tucking it neatly under her chin.
“I’ll read it tomorrow,” Jun says. It’s not really that late, but her eyelids are fluttering shut for real this time, words starting to go a little slurred like it hit her all at once. “It can wait.”
Soonyoung’s feeling tired too, even though he didn’t really do anything today except drive. Maybe it’s the heavy sound of Jun’s breathing, the warmth of her body next to his. Maybe it’s the dimness of the room, lit only by a Moomin nightlight in the corner. Soonyoung’s mom loves Moomins. He has the weird, half-asleep thought that she’d really like Jun.
He should tell Jun that.
“You can do it in the morning,” he agrees, sleep tugging at him, warm and inviting.
They can both do it in the morning.