Wonyoung was still in bed when her phone went off the next morning, and she grumbled incoherently as she pressed it to her ear. “Hello?”

“Wonyoung, hi! Sorry, my bad… still sleeping?”

That voice was enough to get Wonyoung’s eyes open, though not quite enough to get her to sit up. She frowned at her alarm clock, trying to make her eyes focus on the numbers, and she groaned when she saw it wasn’t even 10:00 yet. “Yujin, what the hell...it’s early.”

“Nooooo! 7:00 is early. It’s practically midday!”

“What do you want?” Wonyoung complained, rolling over and burrowing back into her nest of pink blankets. was still a little dry and scratchy from the night before, and she coughed a little.

“Come over and paint with me!” She could hear the grin in Yujin’s voice, and she sort of hated the way it made her heart speed up. She buried her face in her pillow. No. She was tired and hurt. She was going back to sleep. “Please? I’ll buy you breakfast~”

“Bribery won’t get you anywhere.”

“Aww, you’re no fun...”

Someone as loud and annoying as Yujin shouldn’t be able to pout so well. It really wasn’t fair.

“Gosh...Fine, I’ll come over. But I demand coffee. Iced vanilla latte. Soy latte to be exact."

“Awesome! Wonyoung, you’re the best!”

“I know, I know,” she grumbled, finally sitting up and rubbing her tired eyes. This was stupid. She didn’t know why she was agreeing to this.

Except that she did.

And she wasn’t sure if that was terrifying or thrilling. “I’m hanging up now.”

“Okay! See you soon!”

She raked a hand through her hair and wondered what “paint with me” meant. Another portrait of her? Surely Yujin had to be sick of her face by now. She didn’t feel much like modeling, head still a little heavy with sleep and throat raspy, but Yujin had asked nicely. And was going to buy her breakfast. She’d be a fool to turn that down.

♡

Wonyoung was feeling a little better, by the time she had some coffee and some cream bread in her, though she wondered if that might have also had something to do with Yujin’s laugh and feet that kept knocking her under the table. She didn’t know how Yujin was so bright at this hour, when they’d been out half the night, but that smile was infectious with those dimples so dangerous. She’d meant to complain more about being dragged out of bed for this, but she found that she didn’t really want to. She sipped the last of her coffee and traced the handle with a fingertip as Yujin ran around setting up a canvas and arranging supplies.

“What’s this one for?” she asked, tilting her head to the side. “I thought midterms were over.”

“For fun!” And Yujin grinned, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. She waved Wonyoung over excitedly. “I thought it’d be fun to paint with you this time, so come here. I haven’t tried this before, so we’ll see what happens!”

“Paint with me?” Wonyoung frowned, a little confused. Yujin clapped a hand onto her shoulder and guided her over to the easel, rolling up her sleeves for her and shoving her gently towards the paint.

“Yeah! Let’s try it together this time!”

“Maybe I didn’t make this clear before, but I’m a pre-med student. I don’t paint,” Wonyoung said flatly. She was pretty sure Yujin had lost it. Weren’t paints expensive? It seemed like such a waste for her to even touch it, when Yujin made such beautiful art on her own.

“Just try it!” Yujin insisted, dragging Wonyoung by the wrist and plunging her hand into the brightest orange. Wonyoung yelped at the cold, the paint thick and sort of gross to the touch, and she shot Yujin a look. “Don’t make that face. Paint!”

“It might be easier if you told me what we’re painting.”

Yujin dipped a fingertip in yellow and smeared it along the upper edge of the canvas, and she grinned down at Wonyoung. “Abstract art! Just paint whatever you feel like.”

Wonyoung sighed. That was so unhelpful...and, pre-med or not, she was fairly positive that wasn’t how abstract art worked. She should’ve known by now, though, that that was about the best she could expect from Yujin. She pressed two of her fingers to the canvas, dragging them down in an arc. Yujin added a splatter of red while Wonyoung went for lilac, and the color combination was ugly – but the tips of Yujin’s fingers brushed the side of her palm, and that made it more than okay.

She only stepped back to survey the damage when the paints were so mixed up she couldn’t tell sea green from indigo and her hands were dripping color everywhere. “This is...awful,” she said, and she couldn’t stop herself from laughing at the brownish blackish mess they had created together. Yujin blinked at it for a moment, and then she started laughing, too– that laugh