disclaimer: all allusions to finance may or may not make sense; i took my last finance class two years ago.

also @ my corp fin prof: fk u for making finals' 55% u gave me sleepless nights girl

enjoy! <3

epilogue | this is what distance does

In a universe where love is a form of currency, Doyoung believes that the Johnny’s of the world will always win.

Even back in university, when they discussed their stock market ventures, he has always noticed Johnny’s indifference towards sunk costs, detailed analysis of opportunity cost at every stage of the investment and decisiveness when it comes to exercising call options. Johnny always believed in win-win situations, so he would never get himself caught up in toxic and mutually detrimental situations.

The same could be said about his relationships. With the number of relationships he has walked away from, he knows that Johnny thinks he isn’t able to make anyone stay, that he’s going to take a while to settle down, but Doyoung knows otherwise. It takes another form of self-preserving courage to walk away from a relationship that no longer serves your growth, to cut your losses and learn to transfer the investment of your feelings in the search for a more suitable person.

While Doyoung has always been firm in his career choices, he hadn’t been able to replicate the same decisiveness in his relationships.

Everyone around him thinks he knew about the affair four months before he had broken things off with her, but Doyoung knows better. It had been close to a year before the wedding date, that he had received an anonymous email, presumably from Inhee’s co-worker, that she was cheating on him. And as the image of his girlfriend on another man’s lap had loaded pixel by pixel, when he had his fist clenched so hard that his knuckles turned white, when his blunt nails had dug into his skin and the hand on his mouse started to tremble, Doyoung had vowed, albeit in brief, revenge for such an affront to his ego.

But on the drive home, once he had calmed down, what struck Doyoung most wasn’t the hurt that he should have felt because of a lost love, but the betrayal of trust, as if that was all his relationship with Inhee had been about - the mutual trust and respect for each other.

That night, when he had returned home to a smiling girlfriend, when she had straddled him and pulled his shirt over his arms after dessert, Doyoung had silently uttered an apology to Inhee, looking at her with the same gaze she had mistaken for desire. An apology because of his cowardice and his selfishness. An apology because, even though it could set both of them free of this convenient relationship, a break-up wasn’t in the cards for him.

Maybe love wasn’t for him, he had mused the next morning. He had spent the last two years of high school studying for entrance exams, the whole of university in search for a suitable career path; a relationship had just been something he picked up along the way. But then as he looked up that morning, watching a familiar figure cursing under her breath as she almost spilled his coffee, looking back down and pretending to focus on his work while his heart had beat faster listening to her make her way over to him, Doyoung realized it had always been about finding the right person.

And Haewon, with the lightness she had about her, the curious lilt in her voice, the endearing way her eyes lit up when someone recommended a restaurant to her, her relentlessness in pursuing the things she believed in - these were just some of the things about her that brought a smile to Doyoung’s face everyday.

So now, as he flies halfway across the world to a city he’s never set foot in, Doyoung just hopes there’s still a space left for him in Haewon’s life.

The international airport he finds himself in isn’t as big as Incheon airport, but it’s still a bigger crowd than Doyoung had anticipated. He’s flipping through the texts in his phone since he has landed, in search for any of Johnny’s texts that indicated where to get a cab after he has left the arrival hall, and almost doesn’t feel it when there’s a tap on his shoulder.

He swings around, fully expecting to tell the person that he’s new to the airport too, and that he wouldn’t be able to deliver directions in English, when he meets eyes with the person he’s wanted to see for a year now.

Haewon’s hair is lighter than it was a year ago, thrown back in a messy bun held by a pencil, and she has the biggest grin on her face when he turns around. Her face is almost devoid of any make-up, and there are tiny crinkles at the corner of her eyes as she smiles now, but she looks beatific. Doyoung finds himself smiling too, as the people traipsing around and about them seem to slow down and blur out. His eyes are so warm from smiling so wide, and his chest feels so tight from looking at her like this, but he feels like he’s in the right place now.

“How did you know?” His voice comes out tighter than usual.

Haewon rolls her eyes endearingly. “Johnny texted me this morning - it took me a few minutes to realize he wasn’t on the plane. I could only guess it would be you.”

“Well,” he chuckles, “I hope you like your surprise.”

She looks at him for a moment, her eyes pearly and twinkling, and her smile falls slightly.

“I thought you might get lost,” she says, the corners of her lips rising again, “I know you hate crowds, just like me.”

Doyoung can’t fight the feeling of breathlessness that follows.

Once Doyoung has loaded his luggage into the trunk of her big silver Ford, it’s just default routine behavior that leads him to the driver’s seat, but a raised eyebrow from Haewon reminds him of where he is.

“You don’t even know the roads here, boss,” she tilts her head to gesture him to the passenger seat as she drops his messenger bag in the backseat.

Doyoung climbs into her car albeit reluctantly, “Johnny says you at driving though.”

Haewon whistles at the dig. “Johnny’s always speeding, does he really get to say that?”

(“I kissed Haewon before she left,” Johnny had confessed just a couple of months ago. “I had a crush on her for a while and I kissed her.”

Doyoung had found himself riveted in his seat, unable to say anything or even make a sound. That something could have transpired between Johnny and Haewon wasn’t something he could have anticipated or even imagined. He tries to fight the twinge of jealousy arising from the pits of his stomach, and then wonders if that’s what Johnny has had to experience all this time.

“She rejected me though, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

“That’s between you and Haewon,” Doyoung tries, uncertain if the words are said for Johnny’s sake or for his own, “why are you telling me—”

“Of course I have to,” Johnny turns to him with a smile, and Doyoung isn’t sure if the redness of Johnny’s cheeks is because of the cold, the beer or the memory.

“Only you would be dumb enough to think that she could’ve forgotten about you after a year.”)

“-But I stayed ‘cause I wanted to experience Providence in the summer - I’ve heard that it’s really different and I have to agree, there’s a lot more happening… Are you listening to me, boss?”

Doyoung turns to look at her somewhat dazedly, his eyes grazing over the pencil in her hair and how her sunglasses perches on her head, her sun-kissed cheeks, the intent of her gaze on the road. Then he realizes they’ve been on the road for five minutes and haven’t discussed the living situation at all.

“I booked a hotel just in case—”

“Nonsense,” she interrupts quickly, “you’re staying with me. I’ve a spare room, Johnny stays there when he comes anyway.”

“Well, I didn’t want to assume anything.”

Haewon frowns and signals left, and when she turns to reply she finds Doyoung’s eyes on her. They exchange a lingering look, too loaded with potential meaning to begin to interpret. Then she looks down and laughs, a little too brightly than what should be considered appropriate for their situation, especially given the bite of the words that had been exchanged at their last meeting.

“It’s not like you’re here to visit anyone else, why would you stay anywhere else?”

Doyoung finds something hot and heavy slash across his chest - he isn’t sure if she is intentionally being facetious or just trying to stave off the impending heavy conversation. Save for their short-lived moment at the airport, the conversations they’ve had since they walked towards her car have been surface-scratching.

“Ha, no, you’re right,” he hears himself saying, and feels more than sees Haewon’s turn towards him, and he knows she’s still wondering what exactly had precipitated this sudden acquiescence.

Perhaps it’s premature to discuss the lines that run deeper between them, Doyoung tells himself. After all, he did show up without a warning, and Haewon has never been good with surprises. But even amidst the chaos in his brain, there’s a thought that he can’t shake off, rattling in his head like an old screen door:

Because it is only then that something dawns on Doyoung - something he probably blanked out of his system and disregarded as an insecurity - that in the time Doyoung took to decide on his next move, Haewon could have changed her mind.

Thankfully, the conversation on the rest of the road - and even as they take the lift to her apartment - is free of hiccups. He tries to slip in the idea that this trip to visit her is to segue into a work trip he has to make to the New York headquarters,  to hopefully dispel any pressure she might be feeling upon his arrival. And it works - the conversation does become more casual. Doyoung learns that in the short span of a year, Haewon, expectedly, is doing well enough in her classes, has become more of a coffee addict than him, and has actually written a short story that earned the interest of local publishers. On the other end, Haewon learns that Doyoung has finally taken time off work and spent it with his family, and that his brother is getting married in the fall. She’s also really excited to hear that he’s painting again.

“That’s incredible, boss,” her smile is soft and genuine, “I’m so proud of you.”

Doyoung can’t stop the smile forming on his face, so he nods embarrassedly and looks away, turning his attention to her apartment around him, taking in his minimalist surroundings and the sleek modern furniture that greets him. On the left, there’s the closed door of what is presumably her bedroom, and on his right, a small study room with a clean but disorganized wooden desk, and he can make out the end of what he thinks is a blue sofa bed.

He wonders if there has been another man in her apartment before. It’s not out of jealousy, he tells himself, it’s not like I’m her boyfriend. It’s just… curiosity.

“Your walls are bare,” he comments offhandedly, and hears a chuckle escape her lips as she walks to his side.

“That’s the first thing you notice? I thought you’d definitely say something about my desk.”

“Well as it is, you’re markedly less organized than I’d thought.”

She makes a face. “Isn’t the lack of organization befitting of the starving artist trope?”

“Look at this place - you’re hardly starving.”

She bursts into a tiny fit of laughter, shrugging off her cropped denim jacket to reveal a casual burnt orange maxi dress.

“Fine, enough about my apartment. I know you’re a little jet lagged, but I made a reservation at this—”

And even though he feels the question rising in his chest, he doesn’t know what prompts him to say it, and when he does his voice has automatically lowered into a gentle timbre,

“Did you read the book I gave you?”

It’s a question he’s wanted to ask for a year now, when she’d texted him a simple ‘thank you for the book’ once she’d landed. The answer he’s waited for with bated breath, but by the look of her face right now, he feels like he shouldn’t have said anything at all.

He hears Haewon swallow abruptly, and then she’s removing the pencil holding her bun, her hair cascading over her shoulders.

She drops the pencil on the table next to her, and Doyoung is still waiting.

“I did.”

Her answer is as clear as day, but it isn’t a happy answer that greets Doyoung. Instead, in the aftermath of those two words, Doyoung isn’t sure how to continue.

“So you saw…”

“I did.”

“And when you texted me to say thanks, you knew—”

“I did,” Haewon lapses into a refrain she finds frustrating herself, but there is a form of resolution and collection in her voice, and her chin is lifted a little, as if daring him to say something, anything else.

They are rooted to where they stand for a long time, their eyes speaking the words their mouths are unable to say. Then Doyoung hears a buzz, and he thinks he’s imagined it, until the buzzing doesn’t stop and Haewon regretfully tears her eyes away from his and reaches for her phone on the table. She walks into her room as she picks up her phone, and Doyoung carries his luggage into the study, presumably where he would sleep for the rest of the trip.

His heart drums loudly in his ears as he thinks of the way her eyes had looked when he’d asked her about the book, and all he really wants to do is to pick that memory up and bury it deep in his chest, because only there would it not seem real.

He’s so deep in thought, he almost doesn’t see the images playing as a screensaver on her desktop, until there’s a photo that flits into the center of the screen, and his lungs are robbed of his breath.

It’s definitely developed from a film camera, the background dark and blur and almost Polaroid-like, undeniably taken on the night before she left.

They aren’t smiling to the camera in this photo, Haewon’s mouth is slightly open and she looks as if she’s about to say something to the person behind the camera. Her hair is still dark, still straight, and she looks exhausted.

Right next to her is Doyoung himself, his arm around her shoulder and a glass of white wine in the same hand. He isn’t smiling, but he might as well be, looking at her with the softest expression he didn’t know his face could form.

So this is how he looks like when he looks at her, he thinks. He looks… happy.

Does she see it?

Then the image shrinks back into another one, which fades into another one, but Doyoung only looks up from the desktop when there’s a cough at the door.

“Hey,” Haewon’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes, but she tries to shrug it off as she drops her wallet into her bag, “we should go. I need to pick up something—”

“You’ve been calling me ‘boss’.”

“What?” Haewon looks up from her bag to meet Doyoung’s eyes, and watches as he gets up from his crouched position on the floor. The warmth of the late afternoon summer sun filters through the window of her study, but even as Doyoung gets up she can feel the sun against her, casting its golden hour rays onto the both of them and peeking from behind his shoulder.

“From the airport and then all the way here, you kept calling me ‘boss’, even though you are no longer working for me,” Doyoung says, his voice measured and low. “Is that what’s left of us?”

The smile on his face is tight, and as she tries her best to ignore the glare of the sun, Haewon can’t stop herself from asking the next question.

“Why’re you here, Doyoung?”

The diminishing glare of the sun still feels too bright for her, and Haewon finds herself dropping her gaze onto the neighbour’s balcony opposite the study.

“Why’re you really here, honestly?”

His smile falters, but it feels like he has lifted something off his chest when he says, “do you remember when you told me you didn’t want to like me?”

“That was a year ago…” And now her voice is cracking, loud and shaky, rising up into the huge space above them, “you still remember that?”

Doyoung still feels too far away.

“Have things changed?”

Haewon falls silent, choosing to focus her gaze on a pot of sunflower in her neighbour’s balcony instead. She’s wrestling with her feelings, desperately trying to keep the very potent – and yet very tenuous - glimmer of hope (that she doesn’t want to admit still exists) from being unearthed again.

“Because I hope they haven’t. And not just that, I want you to be okay with liking me. So then maybe…” he bites his lip, taking one step towards her, “it’ll be okay for me to like you too.”

“Doyoung…” And suddenly all she can see is Doyoung, as his eyes sparkle with a desire that has been displaced for too long.

“I should never have let you say those words. I should have told you how much you make me feel, how in love I am with you, how I never want to lose you, the night before you left. But I couldn’t, I just kept thinking… I’ve missed my chance, and now I can’t stop her from leaving.

“I used to think that what Johnny was always saying – the concept of ‘the one’ – was just over-glorified. That soulmates were a myth, there are only people who are more compatible for each other. And I still don’t know if that’s true, but from the moment I met you, there has been an insistence in me that was never really there before.”

Haewon can feel her face contort, and she doesn’t stop the tears from falling this time.

“You knew that if you had asked me to stay, I would’ve-”

“I know, I know.” Doyoung’s hands are cupped against her face, brushing the tears away with his thumbs, “But I couldn’t let you do that. This was your shot. I couldn’t bring myself to take it away from you.”

“But now,” he drops his hands and laces their fingers together, “I’m taking mine.”

“Could you give me a chance to love you?”

She looks up at him, taking in the line of his chin, his eyes and long lashes, the way his fingers are brushing a bit of her hair off her face, entwining themselves in the strands there. So nearby now, after the distance before. But he is here, and this is all that matters to her as she wraps her arms around his shoulders and buries her face in the crook of his neck.

“I never needed a dramatic love declaration,” she says between sobs against his neck, “I never needed you to fly all the way here to ask me to be with you. I just needed to know that you were willing to take a chance with me.”

She feels a kiss against her temple, and shuts her eyes as she relishes in the warmth of his embrace.

“Thank you for waiting,” he whispers into her ear. “From now on, let me be the one to take care of you.”

They have a long way to go, so many things to work out, but for now, Haewon thinks, this is enough.

w/n: sooooo unfortch that's really the end.

it got cheesy at the end - oops. as usual my stories are always a cringefest (like are we even surprised lmao no) alsO i still have no idea how to end fics, hence.

i recently read from an interview that Doyoung said that an action that could possibly make him fall for someone (i think?) is that which makes him feel like they’re taking care of him. it made the crybaby cry. long story short it gave me so much DOFEELS - i had to write it in. he’s so cool I’m so done

please leave a thumbs-up / comment if you enjoyed it! thank you. if anyone has any pressing questions i can compile a list like i did for TLP too, so ask away! never worry about asking earlgrey_ too many questions. she loves people.

also something may or may not be in the works, if school and work doesn't consume me i may have something up soon; else december. 

thank you!! :-)) lov u guys i lov aff so much even tho it screws up my formatting