A/N: Final part! Please see my end post linked at the end of this chapter for further notes.

"I'm never moving again."

Sooyoung laughed as she flopped onto the chair by her desk, eyes gleaming as she watched Hyoyeon stretched out on her bed. She was on her back with her arms opened, taking up as much space as possible. It had become a familiar sight, to say the least.

"I mean it," Hyoyeon continued. "I'm never getting up and out of this bed again."

Wishing she could say just how happy that would make her, Sooyoung stretched uncomfortably. She couldn't deny the slight ache in her lower back, but it was to be expected. They had spent most of the day at the police station, being interviewed, questioned and interviewed again. Hyoyeon hadn't been able to get much sleep the night before, and while she didn't want Sooyoung to know that, her dark circles spoke for themselves.

But that part was over now. All that was left was to wait.

"If you want, I'll tell Taeyeon not to come home today," she offered, and let her long legs rest over her desk.

Hyoyeon laughed, rolling over on her side to face Sooyoung. "I like how your first impulse is not to invite both Tiffany and Taeyeon to hang out with us, but just to kick Taeyeon out for the night. Some best friend you are." She smirked. The old playfulness Sooyoung remembered so well was back in full action.

Sooyoung grimaced. "I just don't want to risk getting waking up in the middle of the night because they can't keep their hands off each other." The shuddered at the thought, and Hyoyeon's eyes widened a little.

"Do you think they would?" she asked, rolling over on her stomach, body twisted a little to face Sooyoung as she leaned on her elbows.

"It wouldn't surprise me," Sooyoung said, narrowing her eyes. "Those two are so touchy with each other nowadays, have you noticed that?"

Hyoyeon gave an uncommitted grunt. "They're in love."

"Well, you know, as a friend, I'm very happy for them," Sooyoung replied, "but as a single person, I wish they wouldn't be in love in front of me. It's offensive."

Hyoyeon snorted in response, but couldn't hold back a chuckle. "Alright," she said, rolling over on her back again, "I'll stay. But I have some conditions."

"Shoot," Sooyoung said, pulling her legs down from her desk again.

"First off, the question 'how are you' and any variations of it are off limits." Sooyoung raised her eyebrows, and Hyoyeon laughed at her dumbstruck expression. "I'm so sick of constantly talking about what I feel and being asked how I am," she explained. "It's like I'm not allowed to forget about even for just one moment."

"Okay," Sooyoung nodded. "Fair enough. And sorry."

"No, don't apologize," Hyoyeon said, glaring at her. "I get that you're worried, but since everyone I know are asking me the same questions..."

"I get it," Sooyoung cut her off. "What else?"

Hyoyeon 'hmm'ed. "If you snore, you can't be mad if I hit you or record you and upload it for the world to hear."

"Hey," Sooyoung said, outraged, but holding it in as the other girl laughed. Hearing it was becoming more and more common, and Sooyoung couldn't be happier. "I swear, you're going to make a career as a criminal mastermind in the future."

"Phew! My future is saved," Hyoyeon replied dramatically with the back of her hand against her forehead. "Okay," she said, slowly pulling herself up and sitting down on the edge of Sooyoung's bed. "Last one. You have to tell me how you are for once."

Sooyoung merely blinked at her. It was true she didn't share much of her problems with the other girl, but she wasn't alone in that. All the girls were worried and wanted to make life as easy as possible for Hyoyeon, and it was hard to know where the borders were. But they were getting better, Sooyoung thought, little by little.

She took a deep breath, trying to find a good answer to the question. "I'm..." She gestured with her hands, looking around as if searching for a good answer. "You know." A good answer had been found. Gold star for effort. And she felt the moment coming, like she had for the past few weeks, stronger and stronger every day, the moment when she could get her thoughts and feeling out into the open and not have to restrict herself anymore.

Hyoyeon stared back at her. "Well, no, I don't, which is why I'm asking."

"Uh," Sooyoung said, feeling warm as she stood up. "I have to tell you something."

Hyoyeon followed her with nervous eyes. "What?"

"Don't worry, it's not something awful," Sooyoung said, holding up her hands to calm the other. "I'm fine, but I think I have to tell you this now, or I never will."

Her words didn't seem to calm Hyoyeon much. "Okay?" she said, frowning.

Sooyoung struggled to breathe properly. Out of all the countless times she had done this, this was definitely the most difficult. And she knew now, after all this time, why that was: because this was for real. For the first time in Sooyoung's life. "Uhm," she said, nervously scratching the back of her head. "I have something for you."

Hyoyeon looked taken aback. "What?" she asked.

"It's, uhm..." Sooyoung tried, tried her hardest to snap out of this nervous, jittery feeling with complimentary sweaty hands and a racing heart, but to no avail. "It's a surprise. So close your eyes."

The older raised an eyebrow, staring at her suspiciously with a knowing smile on her face. "I swear to god, if you prank me—"

"Jesus, woman! What do you take me for?" she half-shouted, trying to smile as Hyoyeon laughed, but finding it increasingly hard to do so when threatened to close up. "Hurry up and close your eyes so that I can give you the thing!"

"Alright, alright," Hyoyeon agreed, closing her eyes firmly. "I'll trust you this time. But I swear, if you do something bad, I'm never trusting you again."

Sooyoung snorted, shaking her head. "No peeking."

"No peeking," Hyoyeon repeated.

Sooyoung waited for a few seconds to make sure the other was actually keeping her eyes closed, and then she rounded her chair and made her way over to the desk, heart pounding a little faster in her chest. She realized, in the midst of everything else, that she loved this feeling, just like she had that night when she wrote Hyoyeon's song. If she relaxed, it wasn't so much a nervous feeling as a fluttery one. And, she thought as she threw another glance to her right to check on the other, she knew that with Hyoyeon, she had nothing to lose.

She had cleared out a drawer in her desk many months earlier, simply to make room for a dead, dried bouquet of flowers. She hadn't showed them to anymore, as she hadn't wanted to explain to anybody why she kept them. It was hard even for Sooyoung herself to say why she hadn't just thrown them out, but now she was glad. The flowers had come to symbolize many things for her.

She lifted them out of the drawer carefully, wincing as some of the petals cracked and fell off, and decided to waste no time. She hurried back to her bed and took a deep breath before she laid the flowers down on Hyoyeon's lap. "You can open your eyes now," she breathed, sitting down on her chair again.

"What is this?" Hyoyeon said, still with her eyes closed, carefully touching and poking at the bouquet. She opened her eyes after a few moments, looking down to her lap, eyes uncomprehending. She stared at the flowers, then up at Sooyoung, her eyes expressionless. Down to the flowers again, and back up at Sooyoung. Her lip curved in an apologetic smile. "...Pretty."

Sooyoung shook her head. "On the night that you left," she explained, "I picked these for you. When I went to meet you at the bus stop."

Hyoyeon looked down at the flowers again, mouth open in a silent 'oh', and she scooped them up into her hands. "You kept them all this time?"

"I wanted to give them to you," Sooyoung said, nodding, her voice shaking a little. "And I guess, after a while, throwing them out meant I was giving up on ever seeing you again."

The flowers crackled and more petals fell as Hyoyeon held them in her hands. She wouldn’t apologize for not showing up that night, not again, whether she wanted to or not.

"Maybe this is a bad time to say all this," Sooyoung continued, "but I wanted to give these to you and tell you... some stuff." She cleared . "A lot has changed since then, though."

"What did you want to tell me?" Hyoyeon asked seriously, eyes still locked on the flowers.

"I wanted to tell you that I had feelings for you," Sooyoung said, and Hyoyeon's eyes shot up to meet hers. "Which I did," Sooyoung went on, feeling heat rise in her cheeks. "I wanted to say that I thought you were too beautiful to be real, but that you had been through some bad things and needed to be protected. That I wanted to be that person for you, the one who protected you."

Hyoyeon exhaled slowly, holding her bouquet tighter, and her gaze didn't waver.

"I've realized that I was wrong," Sooyoung continued, and the words were too cheesy, too unlike herself for her to be able to meet Hyoyeon's gaze properly. "You didn't need my protection. And these feelings that I have for you is not because you're beautiful ­– well, not only that, at least," she interrupted herself with a laugh. "And it's not because you're hilarious, so much fun to be around, so easy-going, wonderful or anything else. It's because you're strong. Much, much stronger than I ever knew."

Hyoyeon pushed the flowers aside and laid them down on Sooyoung's bed. Then she inched closer to the Sooyoung, who was leaning her elbows on her knees as she spoke, and took her hands in hers.

"Me too," she said, voice low. "I have feelings for you, too."

Sooyoung finally let her breath out in something that resembled a laugh. "Do you really?"

"Of course I do," Hyoyeon replied, holding her hands even tighter. "I have for a long time. I thought of you every day when I was gone, even though I tried my hardest not to." She smiled, almost unhappily. "I wanted to tell you, but with everything that's been going on..."

"I understand," Sooyoung said, heart seeming to race beyond its limit. She felt as though the only reason she hadn't fainted yet was because being so in love with someone that you physically pass out before you have even kissed them seemed a little too embarrassing for her mind to bear. "That's why I didn't want to tell you either, but it's been too long, I just..." Hyoyeon nodded, eyes big and clear and full of expectation, and Sooyoung's eyes found her lips, disappearing in and out of focus, and Hyoyeon's smile died, but Sooyoung couldn't tell if that glint in her eyes was anticipation or something else. She had already started leaning in before she realized this, and she hovered in mid-air between them, indecisively shifting her gaze between Hyoyeon's lips and eyes.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," Hyoyeon growled, catching Sooyoung's face between her hands and kissing her hard on the mouth. The kiss was short and firm, and when they separated it was with a loud smack of their lips. They stared at each other, both as surprised by Hyoyeon's action, and then Sooyoung leaned forward properly, one hand on Hyoyeon's cheek and the other behind her neck, pulling her in to kiss her softly, properly, almost like the way she had imagined it so many times, but still so completely different. Hyoyeon's body was warmer, more enticing, more inviting than Sooyoung had ever been able to picture in her wildest dreams, and her breath caught in almost immediately as their lips moved against each other.

"I'm not made of glass, Sooyoung," Hyoyeon said when they pulled apart, faces still hovering near each other.

"I know that," Sooyoung replied, weak in the knees and every other cliché she could think of. "I'm just so scared of making things worse for you after everything you've been through."

"Oh, Sooyoung," Hyoyeon said, clasping her hands behind the younger's neck. "You don't even realize that I probably wouldn't even be alive without you right now, do you?"

Sooyoung shook her head. "You're strong, remember? You'd be alive whether I had been here for you or not."

"Is that so?" Hyoyeon questioned, grinning. "Maybe. But I'm much happier to be alive thanks to you."

"I'll take that," Sooyoung said, laughing before pressing their lips together once more, softly, carefully, trying to get used to the feeling and trying to get her heart to stop doing backflips in her chest. It was starting to give her heartburn.

"And you don't have to protect me anymore," Hyoyeon continued. "If there's something I'm not ready for, I will tell you, okay?" Sooyoung nodded in response, trying to get the words into her head. "I really like you a lot, Soo. And I want to be with you."

Sooyoung wondered if something was physically bubbling under her skin, if it was possible for happiness to start boiling. "So you don't need protecting," she mused. "Can't I protect you simply because I want to?"

Hyoyeon appeared to be considering it. "If you stop being so dense about it, then yeah, that's okay."

Holding back a laugh, Sooyoung smiled. "I've been trying for the longest time, but the doctors are all telling me I'm a lost cause."

Their lips met again, now more hurriedly, deeply and feverishly. "Hm, I'll just live with it," Hyoyeon murmured, and they laughed, pressing closer against each other until they fell onto the floor, Sooyoung's lips ending up on Hyoyeon's chin, and they laughed, kissed and laughed again until they lost track of time.

Many hours later, Sooyoung was sitting by her piano, while Hyoyeon had finally found her way back to the bed. She the piano keys, trying to get back into the feeling after having neglected it for months on end. She scanned the music sheet in front of her, rediscovering the song she had written before everything had gone wrong, then worse, and eventually right again. More right than ever before, she thought, glancing at her excited girlfriend, sitting on her knees on her bed.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

Hyoyeon nodded animatedly. "Hit me."

And Sooyoung played it, the song appearing new to her own ears again. When she had written it, autumn had fallen outside and she had dreamt of spring. Now, spring was already making room for summer to take over. And she knew, with sudden clarity, that this girl, this love that pulsed through her veins, had opened up an undiscovered storage of numerous songs that were still written.

So she sang.

In your smile, that's like a spring day...

Date started: 2012-06-06
Date finished: 2014-11-27

Ending notes