[ Mistakes Have Been Made and the Price Has Been Paid ]

Male lead from BTS: Suga

Name of female lead: Im Hyena
Description of plot: Yoongi and Hyena is in a "some" type of relationship (mutual understanding) which means Yoongi is kind of cheating on his girlfriend (who is attending a different university).

I actually wanted to call this fic 'The Fic in Which Yoongi's an ,' but I figured that would've been too rude, so I changed it, even if it captured the essence of this entire one-shot.  There's also a lot more explaination that was sent in with the request, I just didn't want to burden readers with the bulk of it.

xx

Pretty.

Hyena was pretty, there was no point in lying about that, but she wasn’t beautiful, wasn’t gorgeous.

She had a decent bout of acne that liked to hang around most the time, but that was common of the university’s student population, so I never thought much of it.  I myself seemed to be afflicted by a good deal of everything every once in a while.

She had straight teeth and top-bottom retainers to keep them that way, though she rarely wore them around me.

Her face was thinly angled, slim, sharp.  She looked like a figure whittled from a piece of wood, chunks of unneeded space chipped away, sliced off, leaving a skinny stick of a girl with gangly limbs, funny bends, and pleasant curves.  She was double-jointed, had a hitch-hikers thumb, and could move both eyebrows independently or in sync.

Im Hyena was unique, a bit dark-minded, different, and there was something about that that drew me like a moth to fire; to make it work, I had to learn to live with the flames, learn to keep my distance.

But there wasn’t supposed to be anything to make work; I had a girlfriend who was gorgeous and could’ve done much better than me but didn’t because she saw something she liked; she should’ve learned to live with the flames, learned to keep away, because apparently, I wasn’t able to.

God… I ed things up big time.

“Dude, when the hell are you gonna hook up with the hottie you keep hangin’ ‘round?” Namjoon hissed, spitting in my ear by accident.  I cringed and shoved him back into his seat beside me.

When we’d been assigned neighboring seats in our Music Theory seminar, I had responded to his enthralled exclamations with a rather ambiguous “great;” he was often distracted when the topic didn’t thrill him, and I was his only recourse to easing the boredom.

“Like, for real, if you don’t walk through that door of obvious opportunity, I might just-”

“-Obvious opportunity?  Are you calling her easy, Namjoon; because that’d be funny, coming from the guy that practically falls into bed with every girl who spares him a word,” I whispered back with an edge.  He was joking about her, I knew, like he always did.  He knew about my relationship with Yoona, and had had a few conversations with her older brother, Seokjin.

I could feel him smile.

“Whatever you say, man.”

“It is whatever I say, Joon.  The world awaits my command.”  He smiled wider and sent back a quiet, chuckling consent.

Class ended and he jogged off to Dance Class, one he was failing, without saying goodbye.  I headed off for the dorms; I had a free period where I’d dropped Music Production.  On the way I pulled my cell from my pocket and dialed Hyena’s number.  In my head, I could hear Hoseok, quietly commenting just the day before.

“You gotta be careful Yoongi; some things are more important.”

As if he understood.

I thought I understood.

I didn’t.

I nearly drowned in the ocean of warnings, of hints he had dropped like rain.  A flood held behind a dam, that was what his advice added up to be.  I ignored it, forgot about it at times, until a thing called karma broke over my head and it was too late to listen to seemingly the one person who grasped the situation for what it was.

Turns out, Hoseok did understand.

Oh, and karma’s a .

“Do you think I should go out with him?  I mean, I already kind told him…  I don’t know; what do you think?”

Her hair was almost glowing in the moonlight.

Her eyes were wide in interest, and her lipstick bold; I didn’t get why she put makeup on to visit me at eleven p.m.  I understood it; just didn’t get it.

My door was always open for her, regardless of the certain roommates that floated in and out of occupancy.  She could show at my dorm in the dead of the most tired night, and I’d pull back the door, let her in, and let her pour her often veiled heart right into my hands.

It wasn’t even that much makeup…

“I don’t know either,” I yawned, though I knew.  “It’s not like he asked me out.”  I didn’t want her to go out with him; I knew him from a seminar I had with Hoseok, and I knew he was sympathetic, smart, hard-working.  He was great during group-work.

I liked him for that.

Better than me.

I hated him for that.

“Well, I don’t even know if he’d accept my, you know, ‘acceptation.’  I told him I had a boyfriend already, but that if anything happened, I’d go to him.  What it stupid to say I’d go to him?  Does that sound like I’m demoting him or something?  I wasn’t really thinking when I said it; he just appeared outta nowhere; caught me off guard.”

“Why’d you tell him you have a boyfriend?”  I paused, and swallowed the unnatural, unexpected lump of excitement in my throat.  “Who is it?”

She stared deeper into my eyes and asked again.

“Should I tell him to forget about it?”

There was some kind of a contest stretched between us, a dare to the other to look away.

“Yah, I think so.  I’ve heard some nasty things about him anyway.  Someone like you wouldn’t want to get caught up with someone like that; not a good mix.”  She bit back somewhat of a grin.

“Someone like me?  What’s that mean?” she asked, the earlier conundrum forgotten in a moment.  I kicked the wheeled-chair she was sitting on away from the bed I was laying on; she spun and her hair twisted, and her smiles couldn’t be masked by any of it.

“I don’t know; someone perfect doesn’t deserve someone who’s an .”

I was right about that one, I just wasn’t talking about the right person.

I should’ve begged her to go out with him.

I should’ve kept my door shut.

I burst into laughter as Hoseok fell onto his with a thump.  He groaned and sat straight, taking with him the dust he hadn’t swept up before we arrived.  Namjoon was sprawled on the couch, eyes closed and lips mumbling about some girl he said he wanted to talk to us about; I had rejected it by saying I didn’t want to hear about his trips.  In return, he said he didn’t believe me, seeing that I never took the time to have any of my own.

I briefly wondered if you could mentally cheat on someone, the notion brought about by the mere thought of Namjoon’s jackpot of a contact list, and pondered whether or not whatever Hyena and I were could be considered so.  Then I remembered we weren’t anything besides friends, and refocused on the man that was brushing off his backside.

“I did say you shouldn’t climb that,” I scolded, honestly feeling like his fall was the best thing to happen that day.  “No one ever listens to me.”  His complexion darkened a bit, his smile still shining.

“I’ve got the same problem.”  And then we were in the kitchenette, determining whether or not we should attempt to make our own dinner, or order pizza from the joint downtown.

“I’ve only got a ten; everyone’d have to chip in,” Namjoon muttered, and I slapped a twenty on the counter.

“I’ll pay for it all as long as I get to choose the toppings.”

“But you always order mushrooms; who orders mushrooms on a pizza?” Hoseok whined, and I snorted.

“A lot of people; are you going to pay or what?”

“Yah, I’ll pay.”

“Good, I have to buy movie tickets tomorrow.”  They both looked up in curiosity.

“What’s that mean?” someone asked, my attention drawn to something else.  It sounded like Hoseok.

“That new horror movie came out the other day, you know, and Hyena wants to see it.  I told her I’d take her so she wouldn’t have to go alone,” I replied, unlocking my phone to make a call to the pizza place.  Someone began tapping his foot.

“She can go alone; she’s a big girl.  You don’t have to babysit her 24/7.”  They were Hoseok’s words, but it was Namjoon’s foot, his lips pressed tight.

“I’m not a babysitter, and I just don’t want her to have to go alone.  You know how other people treat her sometimes; it’s not fair, and I just wanna…  You know what I mean,” I continued.

“That’s a lot of ‘you know’s, especially when I don’t.  What am I supposed to know Yoongi?”  It was a different type of staring contest, and the tone in his voice wasn’t one he used often.  It was demeaning, degrading, derogative, and all directed at me.  I tried to ignore it.

“There’s nothing to know, right Yoongi?” Namjoon broke in, all smiles, hands half-held up between us.  “Nothing besides the fact that Yoona hasn’t had time to visit in a while; we should invite her, Seokjin, and Hyewon over to my place soon, we could make a party out of it.  Have a few drinks, talk over the last couple months…  For now, just order the pizza.”

It was enough to subdue the two of us for the moment and we settled into a night of relaxed binge-watching; Hoseok even laughed at my jokes.

He always laughed, especially when everything was wrong.

“Not now, babe,” I whispered back over the phone, a smile somehow finding its way into my lips despite the gnawing sense that I shouldn’t call her that.  Yoona giggled and a clicking on the other end told me she had dropped the lip-gloss stick into the sink by accident.  “I need to tidy up, and talking to you’ll just distract me.”  She giggled again.

“But I haven’t talked to you in a while.”  She got real quiet, like someone was listening through her bedroom door.  “I’ve missed you Yoongi.”

Something ripped through my chest and I swallowed a lump of discomfort.  “I’ve missed you too, babe.”  There a moment of silence before she bounced right back into her regularly cheerful attitude.

“Good, then tonight will be great, just the two of us out and about.  Maybe we can go back to my place afterwards; I bought some things: a new dresser, new table, new bed,” she teased, and I heard the clatter of something else plunking into the sink.  “Crap; I actually liked that one.”

“See!  You’re distracted too.  I’m hanging up to go get ready and I’ll be over in something like a half-hour.  Sound good?” I said, already shuffling through my closet for an appropriate shirt.  She sighed and the tinkling of glass mixed in with her voice.

“Yep; love you!”

“See ya.”

When I put down my cell, I in a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.  Just the thought