Jiho is working on some lyrics – he’s been writing a lot the past several days, thanks to a certain someone ing up all of his feelings – when said someone’s rear end plants itself firmly on top of his notebook.

He looks up, trying to hide his surprise with annoyance. “Can I help you?” he demands, eyebrow quirked.

Emily only smirks down at him, legs crossed primly. “There’s a paint party tonight,” she says.

Jiho gives her an unimpressed look. “Yeah, so? You’re always going to parties.”

“I know you guys are going to follow me anyway, so I’m telling you in advance,” she replies, glancing around the room at the rest of the boys. They’re all hanging out in the lounge at the studio, listening to hers and Jiho’s conversation while pretending they’re not. “Besides, it’ll be fun. The more the merrier, right? So you’ll come, right?”

“I’ve never been to a paint party,” Jihoon piped up, pursing his lips in an interested sort of way. “It could be really fun.”

“Yeah,” Yookwon agrees. “I mean, I’m in if that’s cool with you, Jiho.”

Jiho hesitates. All his boys are looking to him for guidance. On the one hand, he wants to go. A paint party does sound fun, and anyway, he’ll never be able to get a good night’s sleep while he’s worrying about Emily and what she’s getting up to. On the other hand, he doesn’t want to look too eager to hang out with her. The guys are already giving him a hard time, and he doesn’t need to invite more speculation.

But the boys look interested, even Minhyuk, so he shrugs. “If that’s what everyone wants, then that’s fine. We can go.”

Emily’s smirk widens into a genuine grin. “Great! Make sure to wear clothes you don’t mind ruining, because the paint will get everywhere.”

“Yeah, yeah. I got it,” Jiho mutters. “Now can you please get your off my notebook? I’m trying to do some work here, you know.”

Emily only chuckles and hops off the desk, sauntering out of the room on bare feet.

“Think this is a good idea?” Kyung asks Jiho later that night. They’re all at the dorm, getting ready to go out to the paint party, sorting through their old clothes to see which ones they don’t mind ruining.

Jiho glances up from where he’s trying to decide between two different white shirts of varying age and shabbiness. “What, going to the party?”

“Going to the party with Emily,” Kyung clarifies, giving his best friend an exasperated sort of smile.

Jiho frowns. “I haven’t decided,” he admits. Then he wrinkles his nose. “Weren’t you the one telling me to go for it before?”

“I just think you should be careful,” Kyung clarifies. “That’s all.”

When they meet up with Emily at the party an hour and a half later, she’s dressed in white shorts, a white tank top, and white shoes. She’s even wearing a white ribbon in her blonde hair; she’s gone all out.

She also seems thrilled to see them. All of them, not just Jiho, which he hates to admit makes him a little jealous.

“I’m so glad you decided to come!” she cheers, throwing her arms around each of them in turn. “They’re waiting until midnight to start the paint, so for now let’s just drink and dance!”

“No drinking,” Jiho tells her sternly. “You can have fun for one night without getting -faced.”

Emily looks like she’s going to argue with him – her face gets that pinched sort of look that it gets before she throws one of her tantrums – but in the end she just sticks out her tongue at him and goes to find a place on the dance floor. Jiho is secretly grateful that she hadn’t put up more of a fuss about it. He just doesn’t want to deal with another scene like the last time they went dancing.

Only Emily doesn’t seem to have any intention of recreating the scene from last time. In fact, she dances with everyone in the group except Jiho. He dances by himself while she switches from partner to partner, swaying her hips, grinding, running her hands almost seductively along their arms and hips. Jiho is seething after only a little bit.

“Man, you’re so jealous I can practically see it,” Kyung laughs.

Jiho huffs grumpily. “Shut up. I’m not jealous.”

“You are, and that’s okay,” his friend assures him. “If it bothers you that much, go and dance with her. She’s probably just waiting for you to make the first move anyway.”

Jiho hesitates, but then he’s grabbing Emily’s arm and jerking her away from where she’d been dancing with Jaehyo, who is known for being particularly handsy. She looks surprised at first but, when Jiho puts his hands on her his and begins dancing, she smiles and starts to move as well.

The paint starts not long after that. At first it’s just a few people stationed up on platforms above the crowd, shooting water guns full of paint out over the crowd. Immediately the dancers start screaming and screeching in excitement. Then water guns are passed around on the dance floor and everyone begins shooting one another, slipping and falling in the paint, clinging to one another, howling with laughter.

Emily holds onto Jiho, cackling as she shoots him repeatedly with the bright blue paint in her water gun. Everything is a haze of color and screaming people and everyone is bumping into him right and left, but Jiho realizes he’s having fun. Once Emily stopped dancing with everyone else, the paint party is fun.

The party ends about three o’clock in the morning, and of course Emily comes back to their dorm with them. Taeil has laid out towels in the car to keep paint from getting everywhere.

“I’ll get you some blankets and you can sleep on the couch,” Jiho tells Emily, yawning. He’s so exhausted that he’s going to wait until he wakes up to take a shower, paint be damned. His sheets are washable.

Emily pouts, tugging on his arm. “The couch is uncomfortable. I don’t want to sleep there.”

“Where do you want to sleep then?” Jiho demands impatiently. “We don’t have anything else.”

“Let me sleep in your bed,” she says.

He groans. “Then where am I supposed to sleep?”

“You can sleep on the floor next to the bed,” she suggests, still pouting. “Come on, Ji. I’m a guest.”

He grumbles a bit more. “How long are you going to play this guest card?” he demands, but in the end he lets Emily sleep in his bed and he makes a pallet on the floor beside it.

It’s probably just after dawn when he’s woken by a sniffling and whimpering coming from the bed. At first he’s incredibly confused, not only by the noises but also by the fact that he’s sleeping on the floor. Then he remembers that Emily is sleeping in his bed and he sits up.

“Em?” he whispers uncertainly, but she doesn’t answer.

He gets to his knees, shuffling over to the bed. “Emily?” he says again, but again she doesn’t answer. She’s still asleep, tossing and turning, face twisted up as if she’s having a horrible nightmare.

Jiho reaches out and gently touches her arm. She stops fidgeting and the expression on her face smoothes out, like the nightmare is gone.

The second he retracts his hand, however, she starts whimpering again.

Jiho sighs and crawls into the bed beside her, wrapping his arms around her. She stops trembling and whimpering at once, snuggling closer, tucking her head under his chin and settling in, still asleep. Jiho hopes his pounding heart doesn’t wake her.

Eventually he must drift off to sleep again himself, because the next time he wakes up it’s about mid-morning – probably closer to noon than morning – and the bed where Emily had been laying is empty.

Jiho panics at once.

Had he overstepped his boundaries? He hadn’t meant to make Emily uncomfortable. He had only wanted stop her from having nightmares. What if she hates him now? What if she runs to her uncle and tells him that Jiho is some sort of ert? What if-

His internal panicking stops when Emily steps through the door, dressed in a pair of boxers and a t-shirt that he recognizes as his own, towel-drying her hair. “Morning,” she says easily, tossing the towel over the back of his desk chair. “I borrowed some of your clothes. Hope you don’t mind.”

“No, that’s fine,” Jiho mumbles, almost wanting to laugh as the relief floods through his veins. “How long have you been up?”

She flops back down on the bed, snuggling into the spot where she’d lain all night. “An hour or so,” she admits. “I felt gross being covered in paint.” She picks at a piece of flaky paint on his arm. “You should probably go shower.”

Jiho wants to ask her about the night before. He wants to ask her if she’d been bothered by him crawling into bed with her, to explain that he’d only been trying to comfort her. He wants desperately to ask her what she’d been dreaming about that had bothered her so badly. But she’s not bringing it up, any of it, and so he doesn’t either. If she wants to talk about it, he supposes she will. He doesn’t want to push her too far and scare her away.

So he goes to take a shower and hopes that she’ll open up to him one day about it. 

Hmmm I wonder what Emily's nightmare was about...