Work Text:
current day - august 2021
There’s a message in Dayeon’s Instagram DMs that’s burning a hole in her phone.
She’s been on edge for weeks. Filming wrapped back in July, and now it’s August and the press conference is at the end of the week.
Four episodes down, eight to go. That’s if she’s lucky.
She’s spent most of the break between home and the dance studio. Spending time with her family and friends and putting in insane hours practicing helped ease her nerves some, but the thing she’s been avoiding is starting to wear away at her like a chisel to stone. That something, rather, that someone, who’s been living in her head, in the back of her mind since months ago, who’s pissed her off to no end.
Dayeon stares out the window at the sunset, watching the late summer sun disappearing behind the Seoul skyline. She chews absentmindedly at a nail, fishing her phone out of her pocket. Maybe if she makes the action casual, it’ll do something to quell the anticipation bubbling up in her chest. Maybe it’ll do something to ease the expectation that sits in that one message.
She opens Instagram. Her last post was months ago because of the show’s rules, but she’s been checking her name and all the comments on her pre-show content. Mind on autopilot, she thumbs through her feed, buying herself time until she’s finally ready to open her messages.
The last DM, sitting at the top of her inbox, jumps out at her from her phone screen. Dayeon keeps chewing at her nail, reading the message over and over again. She crosses her legs, uncrosses them. Shoves a hand in the pocket of her hoodie.
•••
Hey
I know if you don’t want to talk about it that’s OK
But I liked it. I like you
I’m sorry.
I’m staying at xxxxx if you want to see me
[Address Pin]• 5d
•••
Fuck her. Dayeon’s been trying to forget about what happened for a month now, and she’s bringing it up? It’s been wearing on her mind, gnawing away at her until she’s nothing but a bunch of nerves, caught in a tug of war between pure hatred and curiosity.
Dayeon tasted something dangerous in her mouth when she kissed her. She tells herself it was just pure frustration, that she was at her worst and she was there, enabling Dayeon with her presence when she couldn’t be better. She took out that frustration on her, all the anxiety, all the things she wanted to say but didn’t, ranging from I wanted to be the leader, to Your part distribution’s fucking stupid, to Sometimes I wonder what you’d look like naked and I hate myself for it.
The kiss tasted like lipstick and sweat and uncertainty, but worst of all, it tasted like something more, because she was the one who kissed her first. Almost as if she liked Dayeon at all. That’s what she said, after all.
Dayeon doesn’t even want to think about what came after that. (Or who.)
From the moment she walked into the room for the signal song practice, to the way she strutted on stage for her audition, her gaze deadly and her voice full of determination. Dayeon liked that drive, and she chose her cell for the mission because she’d thought that drive could help her. She chose strong performers for The Eve, and she regretted it, for more than just the line distribution.
Granted, she’d been harboring a tiny crush on her since before then, but teaming up with her made it so, so much worse. It turned something that was pure innocent fun into something serious for her.
She was supposed to be a team with her, but it felt like she was competing against her instead. Not just for vocal parts, but to prove to herself that she didn’t need her. That she was able to dig her way out of her feelings, that she was able to put them away because she was strong. But with each setback, paired with her failures at preventing her heart from jumping every time she winked or looked her way, she wanted to run away. Run away and stop overthinking.
Dayeon felt unbelievably small at the time, but right now, looking at Yaning’s profile picture next to her messages, she feels even smaller.
She types and lets her reply sit unsent for a moment. She watches the orange of the sunset turn into a murky purple-red before she actually sends it, heart thrumming with anxiety. She doesn’t let herself think this is one of the worst decisions she’s ever made in her life, even though she’s sure it is.
•••
dayeon_you: can i come over? • 1m
•••
Part of her wishes Yaning would say no, that she was busy, or better yet not respond at all, but the reply is almost instantaneous and Dayeon curses under her breath. There’s no getting out of this, but Dayeon clamps down on the part of her mind that tells her she should be ashamed for being glad that she can’t.
•••
fuyaning_fyn: Yeah • 1m
fuyaning_fyn: ;) • just now
•••
Dayeon slams her phone face down on the table, squeezing her eyes shut. She can feel those full lips on hers, the hands on her waist, and she can taste that lipstick again. This break's been hard, and the whole don't-think-about-her plan she'd been trying to follow has been a complete, utter failure.
Fuck Yaning.
•••
⏪
1 month ago
It seems impossible, but all plants start as seeds, lying dormant until the right opportunity allows their full bloom.
The profile photoshoots are fun. It feels like a trial run of the show, when the hard part hasn’t started yet and they’re all like kids in a candy store, running around in their training clothes, with a bunch of silly props to take pictures with. Dayeon grabs the skateboards. These are right up her alley, and she can’t help but to skate up and down the empty hallways, waiting for her turn.
She passes right by a trainee who’s coming out of the room, the prop heart sunglasses still on her head. Dayeon stops at the end of the hallway, kicking the board up into her hand, ready to enter the photo room.
A voice comes from her left. “So cool!”
It’s Fu Yaning. Dayeon actually doesn’t recognize her at first, since she’s out of the high ponytail and sharp blazer that helped her cement her strong first impression. The fiery ginger of her hair is strong as ever, though, and Dayeon chides herself for forgetting that about her. Dayeon notices Yaning’s dorky grin, how her eyes light up. She’s really cute like this, nothing like that cold, bossy aura she’d commanded the room with during the auditions.
Dayeon can’t help but to shyly smile back, a bit of warmth tinting her cheeks. She takes her eyes off Yaning’s button nose, the curve of her jaw, and notices again that she’d forgotten to take off the sunglasses.
“Ah!” Dayeon says, pointing to the top of her head, then making a pinching gesture and motion like she’s taking off glasses. Yaning looks confused for half a second, then she’s squeezing her eyes shut.
“Oh, my bad,” Yaning says. She slips the heart glasses off, pouting. The younger woman swoons a bit, this is nothing like Helicopter Yaning. Dayeon wets her lower lip, offering an outstretched hand.
“I’ll put them back for you,” she offers, and Yaning puts the glasses in the palm of her hand.
“Thank you,” Yaning pauses, “Wow Thing? What’s your name, again?”
“You Dayeon,” she reminds her, fighting back the bubbling in her chest at the fact that she remembers her audition performance.
Yaning bows easily, walking away. “Bye, Dayeon!”
Now she really can’t hold back anymore, she grins and waves before turning away, opening the door to the room and getting on with the photoshoot. She returns the skateboard and the glasses. She feels a bit lighter on her feet now, for some reason.
Dayeon lays awake in bed that night, running through the interaction in her head. Skating, a thirty-second conversation. A smile, a name, then goodbye. That was all. It was strange, though, how she remembers every detail, how it felt like unknown territory. Was talking to Fu Yaning really the highlight of her day?
Dayeon shifts, laying her head on her hands. Ruowei and Rei are sleeping peacefully in their beds on either side of the room. She mentally compares Helicopter Audition Yaning, the killer rapper and dancer who refused to smile, the person who dissed Choi Yujin and scared one of the Planet Masters on the panel, to the Yaning from the hallway, bright and bubbly, unafraid to give compliments, seeming friendly as anyone else here. She doesn’t know what to think, so she just thinks of Yaning’s smile.
She’s really pretty. All the girls are.
(She’s never been good around pretty girls, but she shoves that thought into the far recesses of her mind.)
She lets sleep wash over her along with the thought of Yaning.
•••
Little glances. Shy smiles. A finger heart here, a hug there. It’s all for show, she tells herself, watching all the other girls forming fast friendships, some just for the camera, some for real. A mix of both, for most of them.
They’re just keeping up with the others, but it doesn’t feel that way to Dayeon.
Once, they’d been practicing the signal song and Yaning had sidled up to her, pointed to the camera in the far right of the room, and kissed her on the cheek before running away. Dayeon didn’t have time to react with anything other than genuine shock, her face settling into a bashful expression. She hopes that moment’ll get aired, and that she doesn’t look as red as she feels. Yaning isn’t shy at all, she learns, and she’s rather blunt with her words, too.
“But you don’t” is nothing compared to the “Dayeon jjang!”s thrown her way, the hand on her shoulder after a long day of practice, the fucking winks that steal the breath out of her lungs.
It’s foolish of her to think of their tentative friendship as anything but, but she can’t help but to do it anyway.
“I don’t think about things much. I just do them,” Yaning tells her at break, when they’re waiting backstage during the theme song filming. Dayeon shrugs, nudging her with her shoulder, looking at the floor to hide her expression.
The beginnings of a realization are dawning on her. Dayeon’s nothing like Yaning, she overthinks like it’s her job. She keeps things to herself, for better or for worse. She plans everything out carefully. At times, she envies Yaning’s spontaneity.
It’s like they say: opposites attract, and Dayeon feels herself being pulled more and more into Yaning’s gravity every day. She doesn’t know how to feel about that.
“I’m kind of the opposite of that,” Dayeon says, and it’s her turn to pout now. “I think too much.”
Yaning grabs her hand, and Dayeon lets her hold it. The older woman brushes the back of her hand with her thumb, and Dayeon squeezes her palm. Gathering the courage to look up, she meets Yaning’s eyes, the corners of her lips tugging up. She doesn’t know what this is. It probably looks normal on the outside, that they’re just two trainees getting to know each other. No one else is watching, everyone is busy hanging out or getting in some last-minute practice.
They giggle, Yaning’s eyes crinkling in the most adorable way, and Dayeon’s heart soars. She kind of wants to kiss Yaning. She wonders what that’s like. She totally would, if she could, all it would take is for her to lean in and just do it.
Panic rises in her mind at the same time the heat reaches her cheeks.
But a parallel rhythm ingrains itself into her mind, too, telling her there should be an opposite and equal reaction to Yaning. A way for her to knock it off when she gets too high.
She can’t be Icarus, flying too close to the sun with wax wings, destined towards something, or in this case, someone she can never have.
•••
For the connect mission, Dayeon calls up Nonaka Shana’s cell first, not Fu Yaning’s cell. She’s deemphasizing Yaning’s importance to herself, and she has to start somewhere right?
(She’ll never be able to listen to The Eve again without being reminded of her mistakes, but that’s not the worst part. She’ll never be able to listen to the song ever again without thinking of her crossing her arms over her head in that point move, her gaze catching Dayeon’s in the mirror during practice like there was something more to it.)
Then the competition hits, and now Yaning isn’t just a friend, she’s a rival, and the things about her that Dayeon had once fallen for now make her bitter. Bitter, because now there’s a layer of gross jealousy coating the fluttering in her chest, staining what used to be pure and beautiful.
She doesn’t challenge Yaning for leader, partly because of Yaning’s swiftness in claiming the role, and partly because (she can’t stand the fact) she would be more than okay with submitting to Yaning. She loses the killing part to Ruiqi, and Vocal 1 to Yaning.
Yaning’s voice sounds perfect for Vocal 1, all warmth and vibrato, and she has to balance being awestruck with being disappointed and mad at herself.
Dayeon doesn’t complain about the fucked up part distribution method either, because the others had agreed to it. She starts getting desperate, and in the space of an afternoon she’s cried, embarrassed herself, and twisted herself into an emotional pretzel.
Plan A didn’t work. Plan B didn’t work, either, and Plan Get Over Yaning is the worst failure of all.
She brushes Yaning off a little too hard when they’re taking a break from practice. “I cry when I’m mad,” she snaps, turning away and standing up to start the choreo over from the top, iPad in hand. Yaning looks stunned, as if Dayeon had slapped her. In the mirror, Jiyoon gives her a strange look, and Suyeon glances furtively at Shana, who shrugs. Ruowei doesn’t look at her, and Ruiqi seems vaguely pissed off. Rei and Hikaru are frozen in the corner, no longer watching the EXO stage on the laptop.
The whole team’s getting thrown off.
Dayeon wishes it didn’t hurt her to hurt Yaning, but in a perverse way, it makes her feel better, knowing that she can. Dayeon's stupid crush on Yaning has done much more to hurt her, anyways, compared to the possibility of Yaning's nonexistent feelings for Dayeon hurting the older woman. Really, this is payback. Somehow.
When she faces the wall during the interim meeting with the masters, she realizes she’s fucked up massively, not just with Yaning, but with the whole team. With herself, too.
The cameras are on her now, and she knows they’ll air this.
•••
⏪
1 month ago
Dayeon sits in the practice room, long after everyone’s left. She asked the staff with a smile on her face if she could have the practice room late at night, so she could get some extra practice in. It worked for Cai Bing, and apparently it worked for her. She hopes the crew filmed her request. God knows she’ll need some positive screen time after what happened today.
Half an hour ago, she was running through her new lines, but now, she’s choked up and sitting on the floor, face buried in her knees, arms around herself.The tears on her face dried a long time ago, but her shoulders are still shuddering every now and then.
She can’t help but to feel inadequate at times like this, and her burgeoning feelings make it all worse. It makes her sick and a little bit dizzy, knowing that her feelings have to end here. She has to take back control, look as strong as she wants to make others believe. This is a competition, after all. Everyone needs to see what she’s really about. She wants to be a leader, and she should have said something about it when they were discussing it, but she couldn’t.
The Eve team isn’t much of a team, and it’s all of their faults, really, but Dayeon focuses on one person.
If not for Yaning, she’d be leading the team, listening to everyone and distributing the lines fairly, not one shot per person. They’d be running through the choreo together, moving like a real team and not a bare minimum collaboration of soloists. If not for Yaning, Dayeon would be on camera, looking as strong and confident as she wished, leading a team whose members were all on the same page. Not breaking down in front of the masters and getting strange looks.
Dayeon’s desperate for another try, another glittering chance at success. They all are.
She’s frustrated and more than a little lovesick, both emotions directed at the same person. She'd refused to admit it to herself until now.
There’s the Yaning that impressed her, the one with a high ginger ponytail and red lipstick, looking sharp in her grey blazer, and the one she’s falling for, the one with a yellow jersey and glasses on top of her head, with a wide smile and a cute side. Neither side of Yaning will let her breathe, neither the fierce on-stage persona nor the off-stage, real person behind it all. Dayeon screams, mouth closed, face still buried in her knees, arms wrapped tight around herself. She wants the ground to swallow her whole and relieve her of these ridiculous feelings, feelings she can’t afford to have.
The door chooses that exact moment to swing open. Dayeon whips her head around, eyes widening in shock and embarrassment. She’s prepared to tell the staff member that everything’s alright, that she’s going to bed, thank you very much.
It’s Yaning. Dayeon’s eyebrows reflexively furrow in irritation, and she hopes her eyes don’t look puffy. Suddenly, her cheeks feel warm, and she swears at herself for blushing.
“Were you crying?” Yaning’s expression immediately changes to that of worry, and Dayeon shuts her eyes in irritation, sucking in a sharp breath through her nose.
She exhales. “No.”
“Don’t lie.” Yaning’s Korean is good, and getting better each day. She sits down next to Dayeon against the back wall. Dayeon turns away from her, missing the hurt that flashes across Yaning’s face. She looks at them in the far mirror, at the Chinese woman’s head of messy ginger hair and her own jet black hair, also mussed after a day of filming and hard practice. Dayeon thinks Yaning looks nice despite it. She always does.
“Are they filming us?” Dayeon asks. She turns back around to face Yaning. She’s not in the mood to practice anymore, and if Yaning offers to help her, she’ll turn her down. She wants to get this conversation over with and go home. Yaning being right next to Dayeon, the two of them alone in the same room, isn’t doing her runaway imagination any favors.
“No. They all left already. Went home.” Yaning shrugs. She opens her mouth to say something, but stops herself.
Dayeon raises an eyebrow. Her patience is running thin. She's tired, and self-conscious from being alone with Yaning.
“What?” The single word answer comes out really short, and it seems to anger Yaning, her expression going tight, mouth drawn in a thin line.
Yaning huffs.
“Do you have a problem with me?”
Dayeon blinks once, twice, saying nothing. It’s her turn to shrug. “No. Honestly, no.”
It’s a half truth. Her problem is half with herself and half with her crush. She’s 23 fucking years old, and she has a crush. Would that count as a problem for Yaning?
“Don’t lie,” she says again. There’s a hand on her knee, and Dayeon almost jumps out of her skin at the touch. Yaning sighs, taking her hand off, and Dayeon wants to melt away into the ground and disappear forever. She’d rather be doing anything but this.
“I know you’ve been acting weird. You don’t want to talk to me or the other girls, you don’t want to speak up, and you don’t even want to look at me,” Yaning says, all in one loud, desperate stream of consciousness. She gestures around, trying to find the next words to say.
“I know you told the masters because you were upset. I really couldn’t tell. You didn’t say anything.” Dayeon rolls her eyes. She studies Yaning’s face. The older woman looks exhausted. There’s no pretense here, Yaning’s just tired and her expression has I have no idea what’s going on written all over it.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry because I seem,” Yaning pauses, breathless. Her eyes are wider than Dayeon’s ever seen them. The ginger haired woman runs her hand through her hair in frustration, the language barrier catching up to her.
“Am I scary? Mean? Annoying? I don’t mean it, I swear,” the older woman says.
Dayeon chews on her bottom lip. This time, she doesn’t miss the way Yaning stares at her mouth. Her cheeks heat up at the implication of her own realization, and she smacks herself mentally.
None of that, Dayeon thinks, you’re none of those things. Well, you’re annoying, but that’s because I like you and I wish I didn’t.
“I get it, you’re just trying to be strong,” Dayeon mutters. She feels like all the air’s been sucked out of her lungs. This conversation’s tiring her out, and now she really just wants to go to bed and forget about it. For good.
“I’m sorry I came on too strong. I really like you, you know. You’re pretty.”
For some reason Yaning looks tense, but Dayeon just laughs at the last sentence, a harsh, sardonic bark that echoes in the practice room. She knows that “you’re pretty” just means “you’re alright” in idol language. Yaning doesn’t mean it like that. It’s probably the language barrier, again.
She doesn’t sit there and look at Dayeon thinking she’s pretty, doesn’t lay in bed at night with thoughts of Dayeon running through her head, right? Because Dayeon thinks Yaning is pretty and she doesn’t mean that she’s just alright. She actually fucking means it.
“You think I’m pretty?”
Yaning nods once. “Really pretty. Sexy, too.”
Yaning sounds blunt but genuine, and something about the way she lets her words hang in the air hits Dayeon right in the gut. She presses the heels of her hands against her eyes, rubbing them.
“Oh, my god. Don’t say shit you don’t mean.”
Dayeon doesn’t take her hands off her eyes to look at Yaning, but she lets her continue.
“I do mean it,” the older woman insists, and Dayeon groans. Is this a joke? Is there a cultural barrier she’s not aware of? Did something get lost in Yaning’s brain when she translated Mandarin into Korean?
“I really like you.” A beat.
“Like-like,” and then it’s Yaning’s turn to groan and cover her face. Dayeon turns to look at Yaning, confused. Her eyes are darting all over the place. Yaning takes in an exaggerated breath, scratching at the back of her neck. She laughs, in that goofy way Dayeon’s learned is her way of diffusing tension.
What?
“Why did it have to be like this,” Yaning says, finally meeting Dayeon’s confused eyes. She looks embarrassed, sheepish. It’s an odd emotion to see, coming from her.
“Was I not obvious enough?”
Dayeon rewinds the past month of memories in her head. There’s ordinary skinship, then sometimes she’d catch Yaning staring. Other times, she’d see Yaning sending a finger heart or finger guns her way. Sometimes she’d return Dayeon’s hug, Yaning’s arm slung protectively over her shoulders, the one sneaky cheek kiss. Standard things just for the cameras, moments they’d hope would get aired. It was all just for show, right?
“You can’t be serious!” Dayeon says, flabbergasted. Yaning’s expression morphs from embarrassed to straight-up fearful. It’s another look she’d never expect to see from Fu Yaning.
“I thought it was just for fun! You were flirting with me when you did that stuff? You did it to everyone else, too!”
Yaning just sits there, her face red. She doesn’t say anything, and the silence hangs in the air, neither of them wanting to break it. But Yaning does, eventually.
“You think I held everyone else’s hands like that? Just for show?”
Dayeon thinks back to that one moment when they were backstage. Of course she remembers it, it was the moment she realized she wanted to kiss Yaning, the turning point when she started to fight back against her feelings.
She shrugs. She was, after all, beating herself up because she thought Yaning didn’t feel the same way. “Yeah. I did.”
Yaning rests her chin in her palm, sighing dramatically. “The good thing about trying to flirt with a girl: no one gets suspicious. The bad thing about trying to flirt with a girl: she doesn’t get suspicious either.”
Dayeon snorts, a half smile finding its way onto her lips. She’s never tried, flirting with a girl, that is. Yaning’s got one up on her in that department.
She really doesn’t know what to say now. She opens up, because she feels like it would be unfair to leave Yaning hanging after that botched confession. So she tells her, in one shot.
“I’m self conscious because I want to be stronger, more like you. I don’t have a problem with you, but it’s hard because I like you too. And I thought you never liked me back.”
Dayeon takes a deep breath, voice quieter than it's ever been.
“I thought I made it all up in my head.”
There it is. Short, simple sentences, impossible to lose between cultural barriers. A month’s worth of complicated feelings out of her mouth in 10 seconds. Dayeon wishes dealing with the aftermath would be easier than this, but at least there’s a weight off her shoulders now.
Yaning looks surprised. Dayeon thinks Yaning looks pretty, in a way she’s sure would get her kicked off the show if the producers, or really anyone else, knew. They’ve somehow moved closer to each other, and their knees are touching. Dayeon can kiss her, and now she realizes she can, if she wants to. Her gaze shifts to Yaning’s full, red lips.
She doesn’t get the chance to ask her or explain herself because in the blink of an eye, those lips are on hers, and Yaning’s kissing her hard.
At first she’s surprised, but then it hits her all at once that wow her lips are really as soft as they look and that this is actually happening. Heat surges through her, and her lips move accordingly, returning Yaning’s aggressiveness. She groans, grabbing the back of Yaning’s neck, and the older woman breaks the kiss to get Dayeon to sit in her lap.
The same heat that’s bubbling in her chest now pools lower, and she refuses, pushing Yaning’s shoulders so that she’s laying flat on the ground, Dayeon straddling her hips. She’s dreamt of this situation more times than she’d ever admit. She dips down to kiss her again, and Yaning sits up to meet her halfway, propping herself up on her elbows.
They kiss for a couple more minutes, and in a daze Yaning meets her eyes, pupils completely blown. This time, when their lips meet again, suddenly Yaning’s tongue is in her mouth and she moans, fighting her every step of the way. It’s addicting, it’s too much and not enough at the same time. Something deep within her shushes the voice in the back of her mind that’s telling her they’re moving too fast.
Dayeon feels Yaning shift underneath her, pushing the younger woman down a bit, slotting a thigh between Dayeon’s legs. When the pressure hits her right where she needs it, she whimpers, fucking whimpers, and rolls her hips experimentally against Yaning’s leg, not wanting to stop. They break apart for air, gasping, Dayeon finding a rhythm, an all-too-familiar tension building in her core.
“Fuck,” Dayeon gasps. Fuck, she thinks, again, against the waves of pleasure, she’s wet and she hasn’t done anything like this since she was with her high school boyfriend years ago. She’s not going to last long.
“So hot,” Yaning mumbles against her lips, tilting her head to kiss Dayeon again. Their bodies are so close, and Dayeon takes advantage of that, sliding her hand under Yaning’s shirt and jersey, brushing against the soft skin at her side. She relishes in the way the older woman shudders underneath her, and Dayeon feels a perverse satisfaction at having Yaning weak for her. She keeps grinding against Yaning’s thigh, her other hand fisting ginger locks.
There’s an unspoken agreement between them: don’t stop.
The tightness in her core is reaching a breaking point, and with the boldness she feels, she moves her hand under the fabric of Yaning’s bra, tweaking her nipple between two fingers. That makes Yaning break away from her completely, foreheads knocking against each other as she moans, a deep, raspy sound that sparks something deep in Dayeon.
Dayeon’s hips stutter as she comes, a loud moan escaping her mouth, and Yaning has to kiss her again to keep her quiet. Her ears are ringing, her breathing heavy, and she collapses right on top of Yaning, knocking her to the ground with an oof.
She’s almost having an out of body experience when she hears Yaning’s voice again.
“Oh my god,” Yaning says, low and unsteady. Dayeon finds the strength to sit up, wincing as she feels her underwear sticking to her underneath her practice shorts. Yaning’s looking up at Dayeon through her lashes like she’s the only thing in her world, her eyes half open and dark, hair fanning out under her. Yaning makes a come hither motion with her left hand, wanting her to finish what she’s started.
And Dayeon really wants to. She’s on top of the world, she’s got the woman of her dreams under her and she wants to make her come hard, wants to tear her clothes off and take her right there on the floor of the practice room. The fire in her abdomen reignites, but then she freezes, her post-orgasm high crashing down as the gravity of their situation hits her. She scrambles away from Yaning, standing up on shaky legs.
Yaning sits up, still panting. “Fuck, what the fuck,” she says in English.
Dayeon just stands there dumbly. She catches sight of herself in the mirror, an absolute mess with tangled hair, and her reflection stares back at her, eyes disbelieving when she sees the red of Yaning’s lipstick kissed right off, onto her own lips. There’s still a throbbing ache between her legs.
Yaning gets to her feet too, pulling her shirt down. She faces Dayeon, still dazed, and this is a side of her she’s never seen before. This is a situation neither of them have been in before.
“This never happened,” Yaning says, staring at herself in the mirror. She seems to be convincing herself more than anything. “Forget about it.”
Dayeon can’t believe what she’s hearing. “What the hell?”
Yaning mutters to herself in Mandarin, both of her hands yanking at her hair in frustration, and this time Dayeon hears the rising panic in her voice as she turns around, her back to Dayeon.
“Please. Don’t tell anyone.” Yaning looks like she just swallowed a needle. Dayeon just nods, a bitter feeling setting in the pit of her stomach. Again, they both understand the implications.
What would she even say to anyone, anyways? Would she go back to the dorm and tell her roommates, treat this like the evening’s new gossip?
Hey, I was just finishing up practice and me and our scary leader confessed to each other and she got me off?
“We can’t do this,” is Yaning’s next sentence, slow and deliberate, and Dayeon blanches. She nods again, though.
Sure. What could she even say to argue against it? It’s true.
We can. We can be a couple, we can work this out even though we’ve probably just fucked everything up by going too fucking fast. Also, we’re both women and both idols and you’re probably leaving the country for good after the show and we’ll never see each other again but we can make it work.
“Okay,” Dayeon says, nodding quickly, swiping at her mouth to get the lipstick off. She combs at her hair with her fingers, trying to make herself look presentable. Yaning meets her eyes in the mirror while tying her hair up, a look full of shame and something else she can’t quite place her finger on. Desperation? Longing? Yaning looks more vulnerable than Dayeon’s ever seen her, and it makes her want to take it all back.
Dayeon can’t stand to be in the same room as her for any longer. She shakes her head, the wordless, mutual understanding solidifying between them to forget about it. Like the last hour didn’t matter, like they weren’t skating around each others’ feelings for weeks, like they’d never met each other at all. For better or for worse.
Yaning leaves without a word after composing herself, and Dayeon would think she was just fine, if not for her wilting shoulders. She’s going to leave this room acting like she’d scolded Dayeon, probably. Back to her stage persona, back to the normal Yaning, the one everyone else knows.
Dayeon, on the other hand, is a wreck, and she bottles up the anxiety welling up inside her. The scandal of hooking up with another trainee in the practice room, her feelings about boys vs girls that she thought she’d left in high school, her little crush spiraling into something she can’t even name, the fact that out of anyone here, she just had to fuck with Fu Yaning.
Five minutes after Yaning leaves, Dayeon turns the lights off in the practice room, determined to forget about it even if the taste of Yaning’s lipstick lingers in her mouth and she’ll never forget about any of this, no matter how hard she tries.
•••
Rehearsal is unbearably awkward, and their teammates pick up on it too. Suyeon frowns when Dayeon takes an extra step away from Yaning when they’re standing side by side, and Ruiqi just scoffs when she sees Yaning intentionally keeping her distance from Dayeon in the dressing room. The two of them are probably just chalking up their attitudes to anger, ego, and the fallout from the check-in with the masters, and Dayeon prays that’s all they think. It’s better, not to mention much easier, to keep up the façade of anger that’s plagued them for the past week.
They go through the motions for the team huddle backstage, because all the teams are being filmed. Dayeon feels ill at the sight of Yaning being chipper and happy in front of the camera, while Ruowei and Ruiqi look like they’re attending their own funerals. Maybe she is a shitty leader. She should do something about this team atmosphere, right? Or maybe she’s putting all her energy into acting normal and not a wreck? Either way, Dayeon looks at the camera with a neutral expression, hoping that she doesn’t look unhappy as she feels.
The performance goes off without a hitch, but it’s to be expected when the masters beat them down over the lack of teamwork, which certainly hasn’t gotten better in the past two days. They tie with Pretty U but lose the tiebreaker with the judges’ scores. In the masters’ eyes, the team probably didn’t live up to their high expectations, with their lack of teamwork apparent.
No one can disagree with that. They’re all strong personalities, after all. Especially Yaning, the tyrannical, insensitive leader, and Dayeon, the selfish crybaby.
•••
Everyone seems to be ready to go on break after they’re done filming the connect mission, and the moving out process is finished quickly. The Korean trainees will be going home or back to their company dorms, and the Chinese and Japanese trainees will be staying in the hotels their companies get for them. Dayeon just wants to go home and recover from this absolute hell.
She runs into Yaning on the last day, and Dayeon tries to keep moving, doing a poor job of keeping her eyes forward instead of sneaking a peek through her peripherals. There’s no one else in this particular hallway at the moment, and all the doors are open, revealing empty rooms.
Yaning grabs her arm and Dayeon resists the urge to yank it away. She shuts her eyes, focusing on the touch of Yaning’s hand, and her walls break down. She turns around and Yaning looks truly hurt. Like a kicked puppy. Another look she’d never thought she’d see.
“Wait,” Yaning half-whispers, pleading. Dayeon doesn’t know if she’s gonna continue and insist that it’s over, or if she’s gonna spring another confession on her, begging her to give her another chance. Give them another chance, despite the odds and their fucked up history of moving too fast. Dayeon realizes she doesn’t want to know. She just shakes her head, eyes getting misty, and she curses herself because now’s not the time.
“Just don’t,” she says, scanning the hallway again to make sure they’re alone. She steps closer to Yaning and tucks a few stray ginger strands behind her ear. Dayeon thinks about kissing her, but before she can act on an impulse, she steps back and turns away, lugging her suitcases behind her. She moves quickly before she regrets it, which she does immediately after she gets outside and into the car.
Dayeon knows this’ll be a rough break.
•••
Five weeks later, she gets a message on Instagram from Yaning and she knows she can’t put this off anymore.
•••
⏩
August 2021
1 month later
When Dayeon exits the elevator and knocks on Yaning’s door, she doesn’t feel like she’s ready for what’s on the other side. In an abstract sense, though, she knows she’s gonna get exactly what she paid for.
(She knows what Yaning’s rich ass company paid for. They’d paid to put her and Luofei up in this nice penthouse in Seoul during this month-long break.)
She knows they’re not just gonna talk. They’ve never been good at that, and besides, there’s no point in having a conversation. They can’t be, and Dayeon swallows hard at the word, girlfriends, or something. It would always be like this, secret meetings and secret words exchanged that no one will ever hear of.
The press conference is in two days, and she’ll have to face Yaning sooner or later. She convinces herself that she deserves a pat on the back, because she’s choosing sooner. It’s like doing your homework early or getting chores out of the way, she figures, but when the door swings open, her heart jumps right into her throat.
Yaning’s hair is dyed a silvery gray, no longer ginger, and she’s wearing a long black sweater that stops mid thigh. She grins like the Cheshire Cat and Dayeon can’t help but to think about how much she’s missed seeing that stunning smile.
“Hey hey,” she says, and Dayeon can’t stop herself from smiling too. Somehow, the awkwardness from their split and the past two months doesn’t matter.
They walk down the long hallway, into the living room. It’s nicely decorated, but it definitely seems too big for one person. She’s really entering the lion’s den, right now.
Dayeon attempts to make conversation. “Where’s Luofei?”
Yaning flops face down on the couch, rolling on her side to face Dayeon. Dayeon forces herself to ignore the newly exposed sliver of skin showing where Yaning’s sweater rides up. She’s not wearing pants, either, and Dayeon has to force herself to ignore that fact along with Yaning’s long legs and the lacy white trim of her panties. Fuck.
“She’s got her own house downstairs,” Yaning says, her gaze drifting over Dayeon’s chest with zero subtlety. Dayeon opted for a tight striped one-piece that would be easy to take off. She’s under no false assumption that they’re gonna play checkers and talk, but she still feels the urge to cross her arms over her chest protectively.
She’s always like this, Dayeon realizes. Blunt, to the point. She’s unwavering, she says exactly what she’s thinking and won’t take any shit for it. It’s what Dayeon likes about her, she brings out something within Dayeon that’s different from her usual all-in-her-head ways. There’s less overthinking and more doing when she’s with Yaning, who nudges her in the right directions and makes her let go of her neuroses.
But at the same time, Yaning’s never failed to make her feel vulnerable, despite lending her courage. It’s not her fake-fierce diva persona that scares her. It’s the fact that the only person who’s been allowed to see this side of herself is someone she’s known for less than 3 months, someone she’s supposed to hate.
Someone she’s tried to hate, but can’t.
Dayeon’s just falling for her, period.
Dayeon sits on the couch next to Yaning, who sits up to be next to her. Their knees are barely touching. There’s a sense of deja vu from that night in the practice room, and it makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
There’s music playing on the sound system, some American R&B songs she’s not familiar with. The space is littered with little things here and there, like a keyboard in the corner, scattered papers ripped out from a notebook on the desk next to it. Yaning’s grey Helicopter blazer is draped over a chair in the front, seemingly not in its place in the wardrobe. It’s like she’d dropped it off as soon as possible after moving out of the dorms and never bothered to put it in its place.
Dayeon feels like she’s seeing something she’s not supposed to. All these things, these conclusions she’s drawing about what exactly makes Yaning tick. Music, yeah, and something else that betrays Yaning as a hard worker, a perfectionist with a soft side. Other things that haven’t occurred to her yet, and if she stays long enough, she might uncover them. It’s exciting and unnerving at the same time.
Just being in the house makes her feel like she’s getting to know Yaning for real, and it scares her.
“So,” Yaning starts, hands behind her head. She’s not wearing her usual cat-eye eyeliner, and it makes her look softer and more... wholesome. Cuter, even. Like a girl who’d bring her flowers, not write a diss track towards her.
(Dayeon’s sure she could take her in a diss battle anyways. She wasn’t on Show Me The Money for nothing.)
“We don’t have to talk about it.”
Dayeon shrugs, allowing herself to sink into the couch, studying Yaning’s face a bit more. She’s clearly taking her in, guilty as charged. Yaning cocks an eyebrow, looking a little more like the Yaning she knew a month ago onstage. The two are starting to blur in her mind. They’re both Yaning.
“I wasn’t planning to,” the black-haired woman retorts. “I’m pretty sure we weren’t planning to anyways,” she continues, and Yaning just blinks. Now, she raises the other eyebrow, and Dayeon’s face crinkles when she realizes something.
“Does anyone ever tell you you look like that one emoji? When you do that with your eyebrows.” Dayeon giggles a bit in spite of herself. Yaning goes blank, then she rolls her eyes. “Not my fault.”
Dayeon slaps her on the arm, and Yaning purses her lips. “I swear!”
“The fans say that you move your eyebrows a lot. Makes you look scary.” Dayeon admits to watching the first episode’s teaser online. Mnet really latched right onto Yaning’s tough girl schtick. There’s a lot more where that came from, but also a lot of stuff that would destroy that narrative. Like the signal song cheek kiss, Dayeon muses, amused at the thought of them using all that footage of her and Yaning attached at the hip. Surely not, if the teaser is any indication.
“You check on me?” Now Yaning looks really interested, leaning against Dayeon’s side. She’s warm, and she smells nice. Like lavender. “What did you want to know?”
She’s impossibly close now, half draped over Dayeon, and this feels so natural, like they’ve known each other in a past life. Never mind the tense atmosphere of the past, or the botched confessions, or the rushed hookup they’ve mutually agreed to pretend doesn’t exist. Dayeon’s not even thinking about what comes next, like she usually does. Everything just is with Yaning.
“Nothing you can’t tell me yourself,” Dayeon says, coy. Yaning reaches out to touch her hair, running through it lightly with slim fingers. She’s leaning in, focused on Dayeon’s mouth with half-lidded eyes.
There’s no delay this time when Dayeon tilts her head, leaning in to kiss Yaning. When their lips meet, the leftover tension in the room dissipates. No more talking. No more expectations.
Yaning climbs into her lap properly, one hand cradling Dayeon’s head, the other copping a feel and Dayeon makes a noise of displeasure, annoyed that she’s not the one with the upper hand. It feels nice, but she doesn’t want to be the one getting fucked again, flushing at the thought of getting Yaning under her. She breaks away, flipping them so that Yaning’s got her back against the armrest and Dayeon’s on top.
“This seems familiar,” Yaning quips, and Dayeon can only suppress her laughter before latching onto Yaning’s neck, gently nipping under her jawline. She whispers against the soft skin there, “what about now?”
Dayeon knocks Yaning’s legs apart and lazily brushes a hand against the crotch of her underwear, the barely-there pressure enough to turn Yaning’s breathing into the scratchy, hitching kind that’s almost a moan. She’s not giving in yet. Dayeon wants to make her.
“Not enough?” Dayeon hears the smugness in her own voice. She can’t see Yaning’s face, but she has a pretty good idea of what’s going on when she deliberately presses three fingers against her clit and Yaning cries out, “oh, fuck.”
There we go.
Dayeon sits up, grabs at the material of Yaning’s sweater, ready to lift it over her head, but Yaning slaps her hand down.
“Not here. Bedroom.” The look on Yaning’s face tells her that the older woman’s been waiting for this for a while. Dayeon must have the same expression, because it’s the same way she feels. She’s been waiting a while to feel this again, indulge that urge she’s been getting for the past few weeks, the one that doesn’t go away until she’s slipping her hand under the elastic of her underwear, thinking of Yaning underneath her. Dayeon wants the real thing, and now she’s gonna get it if it fucking kills her.
She lets herself be dragged to the bedroom, and when Yaning shoves her onto the bed, hands slipping up past the hem of her dress, scratching her nails against her inner thigh, Dayeon realizes she’s not totally in control.
Maybe, she thinks when she’s throwing the dress on the floor and Yaning’s kissing her neck, she likes losing control sometimes.
•••
Yaning unhooks her bra and Dayeon just lets her grab her boobs. She arches into the sensation when Yaning has her mouth on her nipple, tongue teasing it until it hardens and a bolt of arousal goes right between Dayeon’s legs. She moans.
Dayeon reaches down to kick off her underwear, breathless as Yaning runs her palms up her thigh. She realizes Yaning’s getting Dayeon off first, properly this time, last time not even in mind, and when the pads of her fingers press against her clit, she understands that Yaning’s saying sorry for everything.
Dayeon whimpers against Yaning’s mouth when there’s two fingers gliding up and down her slit, collecting the ample wetness there. Yaning asks, “is this okay?” and Dayeon can only manage a strangled please and then those fingers are inside her, filling her and it hurts so good that all she can do is whine into the crook of Yaning’s neck. The older woman finds the right way to angle her wrist, the right rhythm to keep up, and she pumps her fingers in and out of Dayeon.
“You should see yourself right now,” Yaning rasps, and Dayeon shakes her head because the words make her core burn and she’s getting closer with every passing moment.
“Fuck, Yaning, god,” she mumbles, and then Yaning’s fingers are curling themselves right into that one rough spot in her and then Dayeon’s teetering dangerously over the edge, walls fluttering in anticipation. She wants to come, but then again she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want this to end at all, she’s drunk on the way Yaning’s fucking her just right.
But Dayeon has no choice when the older woman starts rubbing her clit with her thumb, middle and ring fingers still massaging that one spot in her with each stroke. She moans, loud, loud enough for the neighbors to hear, just so close but she doesn’t come until-
Yaning’s mouth is against her ear, voice low and like magic to Dayeon, and she’s gone when Yaning says, “You’re such a good girl.”
She comes hard around Yaning’s fingers, completely boneless underneath her, the waves of her orgasm washing over her as Yaning fucks her through it. She almost wants to say sorry for coming first again. She’s never been good at saying sorry herself, anyways.
But Dayeon ends up saying sorry too, with extra emphasis on apologizing for not finishing her off last time. Yaning’s sweater comes off, and her pretty white underwear, and Dayeon’s proud of herself when she’s kissing a trail of marks down Yaning’s taut stomach, finishing it off by sucking a bruise into her inner thigh.
She smirks against wetness when Yaning grabs a fistful of her hair, pretty noises falling out of her mouth when Dayeon uses the strokes of her tongue to write her name on her clit, then backwards, lapping at her with broad strokes and Yaning’s arching off the bed, curses mixed with Dayeon, Dayeon, Dayeon. Dayeon makes Yaning come easily, much quicker than herself, and she files that away for future reference. (She also notes that Yaning tastes like something she wouldn’t mind tasting again, and again, and again.)
(Later, Dayeon realizes that the marks she left will make it hard for Yaning to wear the purple uniform. Oh well.)
•••
They’re lying spent under the covers, Dayeon laying on Yaning’s chest, Yaning fiddling with her phone. It seems like Yaning doesn’t mind the fact that Dayeon’s a cuddler, because she laughs when Dayeon tucks her face into her neck, long arms hugging Yaning tightly. She idly traces random patterns on Yaning’s shoulder with a fingertip.
Her and Yaning could stay like this forever, and she wants them to, but outside these four walls, they have to go back to being sworn enemies. She doesn’t know how they could go back to that, after you know, the whole falling for and fucking each other thing.
“You know, we’ve confessed but we’ve never talking about dating,” Dayeon whispers, listening to Yaning humming some song. Yaning pauses, raising an eyebrow. Dayeon giggles, which makes Yaning laugh, and the sound is something she’s starting to love.
“No,” Yaning agrees, turning her phone off. She runs her fingertips along Dayeon’s jawline and Dayeon nuzzles into Yaning’s hand, comfortable in her touch, eyes closed. “We didn’t.”
It’s kind of silly, thinking about them dating. Dayeon wonders if there’s an alternate universe out there, where the two of them are a normal couple doing normal couple things. She can’t imagine it.
“We don’t have to, though. We don’t have to talk about any of that if we don’t want to,” Yaning says, playing with Dayeon’s hair. It’s an acknowledgement of their circumstances, being idols and on TV and whatnot, but at the same time the statement is freeing. Dayeon feels like she can breathe, knowing that Yaning is just as uncertain as her about their arrangement. It’s all new, and strange, and scary, but moments like these? They’re fine.
Dayeon sits up so she can kiss Yaning properly, and when they’re locking lips it feels like a truce. For now, they’re not at war, on or off the stage. The past is behind them. When Dayeon slides a hand down between their bodies for round two, Yaning shuddering into her touch, she thinks this is so much better than talking about being a couple.
•••
They film the PR videos in groups of nine. Dayeon snorts when she sees Yaning in the same group as Choi Yujin, filming a cute little routine for their video. She’ll check it out on Youtube later.
When they cross paths in the hallway, ready to go home for the day, she sees Yaning coming but doesn’t rush up to her side, doesn’t grab her hand or smile at her. Not here, not in front of all the other trainees and staff watching them with eagle eyes. No, to them The Eve was the last interaction they had, and they were on less than cordial terms.
In other words, everyone else thinks they fucking hate each other.
(Later, when Dayeon watches the episodes, she agrees with everyone else. It would be better to let them think that, than for them to know about the truth.)
Dayeon holds her head high, and Yaning sets her gaze straight forward, but their eyes end up making contact for a brief second. Yaning’s in her stage element, the fierceness turned up to 11, and Dayeon sets her jaw as they walk past each other. Dayeon feels some stares from the other trainees in the hall, some hushed whispers. She knows Yaning hears them too.
No one else sees the stars in their eyes, the strange agreement they have with each other, or the real feelings they share.
No one else is allowed to see what’s between them, especially not when it’s showtime.
Four episodes down, eight to go. That’s if they’re lucky.