Chapter Text

A tall building stretches high above Jun, the siding speckled by lights belonging to residents who must be awake at stupid o'clock. He enters it through the parking garage, taking the stairs instead of the elevator because he's full up with this antsy feeling like he's going to crawl out of his skin if he's still for too long.

Outside of his destination he checks his phone to make sure he's at the right door, takes a breath to steel himself, then knocks.

He’s here because he called Jieqiong in the middle of the night to ask if she’s busy, of all things, and somehow, some way she’d invited him over because maybe his voice had sounded a little more torn up than he’d hoped it would, and maybe they’ve never been soul-baringly close because he’s never given them a real chance to be close, y’know?

Because he can't talk to Minghao about this; it's far too raw and embarrassing. He can't talk to his mom who doesn't know or Seungcheol who would in all likelihood respond with a defeated, ‘again?’. Wonwoo's sick and he can't burden him like this, and he doesn't want anyone in the team to know about it whatsoever, for that matter, because the things that she said would hurt them, too. Talking about it wouldn’t be a salve for him right now, besides.

“Hey,” Jieqiong says, door open; the light of the hallway pours into her darkened common room to reveal her pajama-clad form. She’s barefaced and her hair is nearly dry from a shower, cascading tousled over her shoulders and down her front. “Come in.”

She widens the door and Jun follows her, pulling off his shoes on the way to the couch. It’s late and the common area is dark save for the side table lamp from which a small glow of yellow light spills.

“What’s going on, Jun?” Jieqiong asks, folding her legs beneath her to sit on the couch beside him.

“There’s just some . I don’t really want to talk about it right now,” Jun says, draping himself onto the couch more so than sitting. The quiet pat of rain begins; the summer storms are unrelenting this year.

“O…kay?” she replies, dragging the word out skeptically but she doesn’t pry. She waits for him to continue. He’s here, so there must be a reason.

“It’s just… am I a loser, Jieqiong? Honestly,” he struggles to say, stumbling over his words, tugging them out syllable by syllable.

Jieqiong snorts, but stills her laughter when she sees that he’s utterly serious in asking so.

“Do you ever get asked a question to which the answer feels so obvious, so glaring that it seems ludicrous to even ask in the first place?” She starts. Jun nods. “This is like that. Jun, of course you’re not. What would ever even prompt you to say that?”

He ignores the question, taking her hand and guiding her closer to him; she complies slow and lacking in understanding until he is kissing her, threading his hands through the hair at the base of her scalp, gentle gentle.

Where the kiss the other day was fireworks, this is smolder. It’s artificial sweetener, an almost-right version of what he really wants. It’s still good enough.

Because ultimately it comes down to want, not need. And if Tzuyu doesn’t want him—which she so plainly, obtusely doesn’t—then it doesn’t matter if this isn’t her. What matters is Jieqiong’s hands rising to his jaw and splaying out over his skin, the tiny sighs that escape her, and fact that she is kissing him back.

“Where… where did that come from?” she asks, breathless, when he tilts his forehead to hers to give pause.

“You didn’t like it?” he murmurs, kissing down her jawline.

“I didn’t say that,” she says, the gusto out of her voice at his ministrations. “It’s just… what about Tzuyu?”

“Why do you say that?” he demands, pulling back inches, fixing her with a pointed, intent look. She startles the tiniest bit at his abrupt movement, her eyes flashing wide for a scarce moment.

“Isn’t it obvious? I mean, Jun, I’ll kiss you and that’s nice and it’s alright but you know it doesn’t mean the same thing between us.”

Christ, is he that transparent? He came here for a distraction and yet is slapped in the face, again. Has to explain himself, again.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he grumbles, collapsing into Jieqiong’s chest, boneless in his exhaustion from the day and the fight and… everything, really. Every aspect of every thing bearing down on him lately.

“Is that why you’re here?”

“I said, I don’t want to talk about it,” he repeats, slightly edgy, and gives her arm a squeeze to punctuate it.

“Okay, okay,” Jieqiong says, threading her fingers through his hair and dragging her nails across his scalp in a manner that makes all poisonous thoughts momentarily clear his brain. “You’re here for respite. I get it.”

He’s relieved that Jieqiong gets it, that he doesn’t have to explain himself, because he needs this. It doesn’t have to mean anything; it’s better that it doesn’t. And he knows that Jieqiong has been cooped up too, needs this affection too; she’s usually amidst vast swaths of people she scarcely trust and needs something to make her feel alive, just as he does. It’s only human. He doesn’t know her body the same way as others before, but he’s a fast learner.

Several days pass, and Tzuyu begins to be able to forget what’s happened for pockets of time, until it all comes rushing back and ice fills her veins. She keeps reminding herself that this feeling will fade. This guilt is fleeting but consequences are forever.

She summons all of her fortitude and attempts to move on with her life: filming, photoshoots, practice, repeat. Jun is silent, and the group chat is dead save for a single message from Minghao which neither she nor Jun answered. She’s undecided on whether or not that’s a relief.

This is what she wanted. This is how life is supposed to be. She is course correcting. There was fallout but it’s less than there would be in other circumstances. It hurts but it’s for the best.

These become her mantras.

Take a shower; remind yourself it was for the best. Spend an hour getting hair and makeup done; remind yourself that you are moving on. Go for a long ride in the van to a schedule; remind yourself that this is how life is supposed to be.

She knows it’ll be okay. She knows it’ll take time. She knows one day that her gasping, aching heart will heal and that it’ll all be fine. She knows, she knows, she knows.

Well, that’s the narrative she’s spun for herself.

Jun continues on with his work, and as Seventeen’s started promoting for ‘Very Nice’ it’s easy to be distracted from unkind thoughts all day. He focuses on the fact that he’s center for the dance break, going over and over and over the choreography and his expressions. He doesn’t have time for his confidence to falter.

He draws in on himself, still. He’s there with everyone but it’s hollow, and he begins to feel awkwardness grow between himself and the other members. He feels the distance because he’s hiding something, hiding a lot, actually, and one side of him feels that he owes him the truth of why he’s become more subdued and withdrawn lately, but how would he even begin?

He tries not to think about what happened, really. Still, he struggles with the competing thoughts of ‘what if she’s right?’ and ‘no, she can’t be.’Being in front of a deafening crowd helps to reinforce the latter. There’s nothing else he can do but move forward. Time heals all wounds, he reminds himself endlessly.

Until he forgets his choreography onstage, while he’s in the center. The guys laugh it off because what else is there to do? His group members know him to be an endless pit of confidence (verging on self-absorption, allegedly), so he laughs it off with them, promising to do better next time. But still, it gnaws away at Jun, in his unsettled, sleep-deprived mind.

Until now, he’s been angry at Tzuyu. Angry at her for being so mean, angry at her for what she said to him.

But he berates himself, because he’s not an amateur, this is is job, and he’s made an unthinkable error.

In the shower, he lets the hot water pour over him and hopes to wash all of the heaviness of the day away, an intangible thing pairing with the water swirling the drain, binding to the molecules on an imperceptible but incontrovertible level.

The shower floor is probably all manner of disgusting but he sits, unable to hold himself upright any longer; he’s out of the mental energy rather than his body giving way. It’s all crumbling and he with it.

He’s not one for crying—hasn’t in a year? He can’t even remember, excepting the hint of tears when they won for the first time on Show Champion—but feels burning at the back of his eyes and knows that today is the day that breaks the streak.

Because underneath it all—underneath the rejection and the swell of emotion that comes from freshly relieved stress—she’s right. She’s right. She’s so right about him, and today only proved it. He’s given the opportunity to be the face of the group, and he chokes.

Why would someone like her want to be with someone like him? He’s a nobody by comparison; nearly every person in Asia and a few in the West would know her name, even if they’d never heard of Twice. He’s Junhui, just Junhui: an expendable member of ascending group that’s on the precipice of solidifying their position but that still hasn’t quite. It feels like there’s a gasping, aching puncture in his chest, thinking about it. He tries not to, always. He tries to mask it all behind cocky self-assurance and brotherly bonds but in reality, he feels like dust in the wind.

(Okay, handsome dust. He’ll always have that going for him, he thinks, trying to level with himself.)

After reveling in misery, he picks himself up, finishes his shower, and accepts it. Because the only thing there is to do is to move forward, because today’s not a good day to fall apart.

Hiding things from Minghao proves to be well and truly futile. There’s requisite summer downpour roaring just outside their dorm, and someone has opened a window so the heady, fresh air fills the room. Jun’s sat on the floor, back against the couch, when Minghao sidles up next to him.

“What’s wrong?” Minghao asks in Mandarin.They’re mostly alone, aside from Hoshi and Dokyeom in the kitchen, from which a non-negligible amount of crashing and banging is going on.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Jun replies casually, eyes glued to his phone.

So Minghao sits on him.

“I’m not getting up until you tell me what has been wrong with you lately,” Minghao says, giving Jun a threatening look, his hands placed firm but warning on Jun’s shoulders.

“You know I can pick you up, right?” Jun says, miffed. He eyes Minghao; the look contains a hint of a challenge.

“My point stands. Ever since the birthday party, you and Tzuyu have been super weird and I’m in the middle of it, so I’d like to know what exactly I’m in the middle of, please and thanks,” Minghao counters, the formality tacked onto the end dripping with sarcasm.

“Why don’t you ask her, then.” Jun grumbles, pushing Minghao off of him to stand.

“Hey,” Minghao cuts in, incensed, and grabs Jun’s hand to keep him from turning away. “Whatever it is that you’re fighting with her about, don’t take it out on me. Okay?”

That gives Jun pause, and he considers just how their wall of silence must be affecting Minghao. Minghao is friends with both of them, too, and must have no idea what’s going on or why, and both of them have left him floating in limbo for the last week. Jun would normally confide in him, so this shouldn’t be any different.

Jun sighs, sitting back down.

“I guess I should start at the beginning,” Jun starts, playing absently, anxiously with the hem at the bottom of his shirt. “So, at the birthday party we kissed. Which isn’t bad in and of itself, but long story short is that it turned out to be a bad, bad idea.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Oh, and to top it all off, she was drunk, which makes it all disingenuous. And it makes me feel like , both for not noticing that she was and for taking advantage of it. Not that I meant to, but you know what I mean. Just the fact that it happened.”

Minghao fixes Jun with a look like his head has fallen off, and then he begins to laugh. This incenses Jun, because here he is practically baring his soul, talking about his guilty feelings because Minghao all-but-demanded it, and now Minghao’s laughing at him?

Through his laughter Minghao shakes his head and says, “no, she wasn’t.”

“That’s what I thought at first too, but apparently she was and—why are you laughing?” Jun asks in exasperation as Minghao continues to do so.

“No Jun, I don’t think you understand. I know she wasn’t drunk because I gave her the alcohol.”

“You what?"

Honestly, Minghao begins to make less and less sense as time passes.

“Relax. It was this low-proof liqueur. At maximum, three drinks in total, which she drank over the entire party. You do the math. I just wanted her to loosen up for once, you know? Like if she thought she was drinking, she’d relax and do what she wanted. And what do you know, I was right.”

“So she… she…” Jun grapples to find the right words, and to get his mind around the consequences in the context of all of the events that have passed since.

“Did exactly what she wanted to,” Minghao finishes the sentence for him, with a nod and a self-satisfied smirk. Moral issues aside, it casts a new light on the situation.

“Then why… Jesus, why did she say all of that …”

“What ?”

“We fought. It was pretty bad.”

This may be the understatement of the year, Jun thinks.

“What did she say?”

“Well first that everything that happened between us was a misunderstanding, which I thought and still think is bull.”

“Definitely. You should see the way she ogles you.”

“Yah!”

“It’s true though…”

“I doubt it. I mean, at the end she said…” Jun hesitates, looking away from Minghao in a mix of shame and self-consciousness, “she said this stuff about how she wouldn’t stoop down to my level. How she’s so much more popular than I am, and basically that I’m dirt on the bottom of her shoe.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah. Verbatim, ‘what makes you think someone like me would get with someone like you?’”

“What. The ? That is not okay.”

“Yeah, I know. And the way she said it had such venom. It was just… cruel. Especially since we’re friends, and good friends. Or so I thought. I don’t know anymore, Minghao. Jesus.”

“She is not gonna get away with this,” Minghao says, an ominous quiet to his voice.

“I don’t like the sound of that…” Jun says warily, visions of Minghao throttling Tzuyu dancing in his head.

“You shouldn’t.”

Lights speckle the skyline and refract off of the river, creating a whizzing, glittering cityscape on the other side of the van window, all refracted through the summer rain thrumming against it. Tzuyu’s curled up in the back seat alone, drained from today’s schedules, while Dahyun occupies the middle row. The two have just finished filming for a variety show—Girls Who Eat Well—which Tzuyu likes because she gets to eat and doesn't have to worry about fumbling over her Korean while the cameras bear down on her. Not that she minds speaking, but it's a welcome change.

Still, after filming all day she and Dahyun need a break from one another. There's no animosity and they've always gotten along fine, but their dispositions are such that they need a little space every now and then.

Their manager parks the car and sends the girls up the elevator in the car park ahead of her. The elevator dings at the girls’ floor and they step out, making their way down the hallway.

What Tzuyu doesn't expect, though, is to find Minghao sitting on the floor outside of their front door.

“How did you get up here?” Tzuyu asks upon the sight of him. There’s several security barriers to entry just to get into the building and how he managed to get past them, she’s keen to know.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says dismissively. There’s a terse quality to his body language and manner of speaking, so Tzuyu doesn’t pursue it further.

He follows them into the dorm, and Tzuyu lets Dahyun have their bedroom to herself and instead leads Minghao downstairs to the basement salon in their dorm. It goes without saying that they’d ought to be alone for whatever conversation they’re about to have.

She flicks the lights on and is suddenly acutely aware of how cluttered the room is with clothing racks, shelves full of accessories, hair tools, and tables near-obscured by makeup. Though tidy, the sheer volume of it makes it look like it’s in disarray. All told, the salon isn’t an ideal place to talk, but at least it’s private.

She turns to Minghao, who is tall and thin as a wire; he has his hair parted handsomely and still wears remnants of makeup, likely from some filming earlier in the day. It’s the strangest juxtaposition of youth and adulthood, like he’s playing dress up. Though, the same could be said of her, for all of her elegant styling that seeks to mask her true age.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Tzuyu?”

There seems to be so much of people asking her this lately. His words punctuate the silence and seem to ring in the air, echoing through her mind, because damn, there is a lot that’s wrong with her lately, and she’s been asking herself the same question.

“I know what you said to Jun. And before you get indignant that he told me, remember that you’re in the wrong here and have no right to be upset,” he says when she opens to interject. She shuts it again, looking sheepish. “You realize that by saying those things about Jun that you’re saying them about me too, right Tzuyu? And about Seungcheol, and all of the rest of the guys. Regardless of if there was any truth to it, saying it like that—like it makes you better than us and you wouldn’t stoop down to our level—is all sorts of messed up.”

She’s doing this all for her career—the breaking friendships and stifling her feelings—but at what cost? It’s painful for her, and for Jun of course, but had she been blind to the true reach of the fallout? She never meant for it to affect so many people, but it’s her own fault for allowing and encouraging these boys to wend their way into her life. The weight of realization makes her heart sink, a feeling much like she’s swallowed a stone pulling heavy in her chest.

“I’m sorry, Minghao. I’m sure that’s not enough to make you feel better, but I never meant to say that about you. And the truth is… with Jun…” she hesitates, gaping and at a loss for words because she knows that whatever she says to Minghao is like letting the truth out into the universe. When only she knows, it’s contained and could never get out to others. As much as she values Minghao’s friendship and doesn’t think he’s a snitch, there’s still the chance that some way, somehow, someone else could find out, whether it be from him intentionally telling Jun, or saying it when he’s drunk, or even just hinting at it in a benign way that would lead to its reveal. It’s so hard to say, but really, she owes it to him. “I was—am—scared.”

“I don’t follow. What are you scared of?” He’s still defensive, but the indignant frown he wore moments ago relents in his surprise at her admission. Maybe he’d expected a fight.

“I’m scared of a scandal. Of another scandal, that is. And I didn’t trust myself not to… not to… not to take things further with him—we kissed, I’m sure you know by now. I knew I had to ruin our friendship because it was too dangerous. What I went through, Minghao, I can’t… I can’t go through that again,” she says, her voice breaking on the last word. She crosses her arms and looks up to the corner of the room where the wall meets the ceiling. She tries to focus on the cobweb growing there, because god, she does not want to cry right now. It would be so ridiculous, after all that she’s done, to play the victim.

“So, you like him so much that you had to hurt him?” Minghao says, his speech slow and oddly paced, like he’s trying to fit the two opposing ideas together.

“Basically.”

"Christ on a bike, the pair of you are so dramatic," Minghao says under his breath. He lets out a sigh. “You should apologize to him, definitely."

"I wish. I know he deserves it. But that would defeat the entire purpose of what I said."

"Did it ever occur to you, Tzuyu, that you could have just told him all of this that you’ve said to me?"

She purses her lips.

"It's too risky, Minghao. It's one thing to agree to nothing happening between us and it's another to follow through."

Minghao lets out a quiet laugh, looking away from Tzuyu while he pulls his bottom lip under his top teeth and shakes his head in resigned exasperation. Then he meets her eyes.

"Why do you have so little faith in yourself? And in Jun?"

She gapes for a moment in an uncanny likeness of a goldfish. Because on one hand he’s right, and she should trust herself and one of her closest friends to care for her enough to understand the situation, but on the other she and Jun could fall prey to the same weaknesses as anyone.

“Because. People are fallible.”

"Then why are you punishing him for that, Tzuyu?” Minghao says, anger rising in his voice. “Do you know how much he must be worrying about the demeaning things you said? About the fact that you were drunk?—which I know you lied about, by the way. Jesus, are you only thinking of yourself right now?"

Each question is said with the same disparate vigor, frustration in every line. Thing is, she knows she deserves it. She knows that this is mild in comparison to the things she’s said, pure intentions behind both tongue-lashings aside.

But the thing that is hardest to admit, now that all’s said and done: Minghao is right.

Tzuyu dredges into the dorm after a long day filled with photoshoots and the dorm is oddly a ghost town. It’s odd because the rest of her group members have had a break this evening, but perhaps they’ve gone out to dinner or to a shop. Before checking on things, she heads to her room to shed her belongings, and to see if at least her roommates are home.

However, she walks in to her bedroom to find Jun sitting on her bed, shoes off, legs crisscrossed.

“Hey?” She asks hesitantly, allowing her bag to slide down her shoulder to the floor.

“Hey. Chaeyoung made me come. There was something to do with talking to Minghao. Everyone thinks we should talk or whatever.” Jun says flatly, his body language curled in on itself and defensively, before making hesitant eye contact with her. She stays silent. He shifts in his seat, visibly discomfit. “I guess I should go.”

He says it, but he doesn't move to get up. There’s a long silence where Jun sits, eyes fixed to the wall behind Tzuyu, and she stays still, because she feels paralyzed in surprise and shame.

"Did you mean it, Tzuyu?” He asks, his voice betraying his vulnerability. “All that stuff that you said about being above me? Because I've been turning it over in my head and God, it makes me feel like . I'm sorry if I pushed you. I never meant to; I always thought you wanted it too, but that's my fault."

Hearing him apologize is the thing that puts pressure on the fault lines in her, and makes them crack and slide unfixably. She knew she was too weak for this; it's why she'd tried to shove him so far away that he'd never come back.

She sinks to her knees, misery overtaking her features before she presses her hands to her face.

"I can't do this Jun, I can't,” she says, distraught.

"Tzuyu, what do you mean? I—”

There’s alarm in his voice, and if anything that makes it worse.

"I can't do this! I can't pretend like I don't… like I don’t want to be with you so much that it literally, physically hurts. I can't... I..." As she speaks she rakes her hands through her hair, huffing after she’s finished. He stands and pads over to her.

"What?... But then why did you say...?" His voice is weak with uncertainty. He crouches down and tries to take Tzuyu’s hands in his but she pulls them out of his grasp.

“Why do I always have to be the one in control here, Jun? Answer me that.” Tzuyu’s voice is shrill with desperation, set off by his gesture. “You know just as well as I do the consequences and yet you keep pushing. It makes me think you don’t care about me at all.”

Jun is quiet when she’s finished.

“Is that what you really think of me?” He asks softly.

“I don’t want to. It’s just this heinous double standard between boys and girls and I’m sick of it, you know? You push, I have to resist. It’s such a tired narrative. I’m tired of it.” She stands, jittery anger commanding that she move. “And the worst thing? The onus is on me, in the end. If we get in trouble you’ll get a slap on the wrist and I’ll get ashes. Not even just from our companies. Look at every damn scandal that has happened. The girl gets villainized. Every. Time. And yet you keep pushing, and it’s reckless!”

“Tzuyu,” he says, calm and tempered, as she paces before him.

“What?” she fires back, a wild look in her eyes and heat rising in her cheeks.

“I need you to take a deep breath, ok?” He says softly.

She closes her eyes and furrows her eyebrows, realizing how worked up she’s gotten. Her chest rises and falls in a caricature of a deep breath, and her head tilts back on the exhale. She opens her eyes and the light fixture she’s staring at blazes against her retina. She stares at it for a moment too long, burning the shape of the glow into her vision.

“So what you said, the other day?” Jun asks.

“I was trying—and failing, I guess—to push you away.”

“So you didn’t mean…?” he trails off, leaving his sentence incomplete. He doesn’t have to say it for her to know.

“No.” She says it after a long, reluctant pause. Because she doesn’t want to hurt him, but this seals the fact that she’s undone all of the protections that she tried to lay, and they both suffered for naught. Frankly, she feels quite dumb.

“Tzuyu, you know, if you would talk to me, I would know all of these things that have been weighing on your mind.”

“But how am I supposed to do that? Was I supposed to say ‘hey, I can tell that you like me but you shouldn’t’?”

“Would’ve been a damn sight better than ‘what makes you think someone like me would get with someone like you’,” Jun replies, humor edging his voice; still, the point is unmistakable.

“The thing is, Jun—god, I can’t believe I’m admitting this—the truth is that I didn’t say anything because part of me liked it. Liked it too much. The attention, the feeling like someone cared for me, it was so good. I have to pretend to reciprocate feelings for people on a daily basis, and actually feeling it? It was too alluring to deny. And it felt dangerous in a good way. But it went too far.”

These are all the things she has been so loath to realize, and to admit them now is to admit them to herself, too. Because she did encourage him, and she did like it, and neither of them are blameless in all of this.

“Did it?”

“Think what would happen if anyone saw us,” she fires back, worry cutting thick through her voice. Jun sighs heavily and looks to the ceiling as though he’s trying to gather his thoughts.

After a pause, he speaks.

“Ok, Tzuyu. I get it. I get everything you’re saying about fear, about the divide in consequences, all of it. It’s upsetting to know that you thought all along that I didn’t understand that. But for one, I think it's possible to be careful about things—about anything. It doesn't have to be either obeying the rules, or scandal. I've lived most of my life in the spotlight, is the thing. You can't be afraid of everything. That's not living.”

And it’s true; the realization in his wisdom is humbling. How does she deign herself to know more than him when his life and public scrutiny have been synonymous for nearly as long as she has been alive? She nods, and allows him to continue.

“Second off, I do care about you, and your well being, and notably I never said we should date or be together so it makes me sad when you act like I'm just blundering through things without consideration for you or your career and consequences you could face. We kissed and it happened, okay? We don’t have to date, you know. We can just be friends.”

She doesn’t deserve this, and she full well knows it. He’s been far too forgiving and understanding and she feels it, the undammable thing welling up in herself again.

“Yeah, friends,” she echoes, voice quiet.

He holds out his arms and she steps closer into them automatically, resting her cheek against him as his arms drape around her shoulders and hers circle his waist, her fingers sinking down into his skin to prove that this is tangible and real. It’s such a simple thing but it feels like all is right with the world, with this. All of her concerns feel buffered by these soft, pink feelings.

"Jun?" She says, pulling back the tiniest bit to look up at him.

"Hm?" He hums contentedly, looking down at her with a bemused upturn at one corner of his lips.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s… it’ll be okay.”

Jun hesitates, because he’s forgiven her, but the wound is still far too fresh for all to be well.

She doesn't say anything so he halfway pats her head, which turns into a down her hair where his hand comes to a rest on her shoulder.

Everything, everything, everything in her wants to kiss him. Because they are too close right now and they’ve just bared their souls and this is the most contented she’s felt in nearly a month. And he is right: she can’t live inside of her comfort zone cage forever, paralyzed by fear.

She is strong but she has her limits, too.

She presses up to her tiptoes and her lips brush his for such a brief moment that it almost feels like it didn't happen.

It’s a truth she’s been running from, far and fast, and ultimately it had to catch up to her. It seems like no matter how she resists, when they’re alone she gets pulled back in by his gravity and fighting it is to uselessly avail herself of peace. This is what she was right to be fearful of.

"Don't do this if you don't mean it," Jun says; his voice is deadly quiet.

He looks her in the eye, face set with a complicated sentimentality, his expression laden with worry, still.

"You said it yourself: we're friends," she says assuredly, closing the gap between them once more, and then they are soaring, and for this moment, everything bad falls away and there is only this, and it is at once electric and terrifying and so, so good.

Author's note: sorry this took so long!! I had to pick up my life and move at the last minute so that threw me for a serious loop. I do hope you like this chapter.

As always, comments give me the motivation to finish this story!! So please do!! Other writing projects have been pulling my attention but I really want to finish this properly.

I'm at rgywrites.tumblr.com and I'm always on. Discussions, requests, questions, etc are welcome.