X.

Henry mutters a small foreign greeting as he he heads to the dressing room, blinking rapidly as he tries to remember the rest of the language that’s been slowly leaking out of his brain. His Chinese has been steadily getting worse and if his mother was here, she’d nag him endlessly.

A group of trainees greets him along the way and he smiles and does a typical sunbae thing where he congratulates them on their performance (even though he didn’t had the time to watch it) before entering the dressing room. He finds Zhoumi fixing his hair (again) in front of the mirror and Amber on the couch, doing something on her phone. He smiles and plops down next to her, worries about his horrible Chinese forgotten as he greets her in English.

“Hey stupid.” He grins and Amber looks up from her phone just to flick his ear.

“You’re stupid.”

Henry’s grin widens. “What are you doing here?”

“Soojung doesn’t want to play, Luna’s practicing, Vic is asleep and I’m bored.”

“Of course.” he chuckles.

Amber makes a face. “Be thankful I chose to come to you.”

“Like you’d choose anyone else.”

“I would!” Amber exclaims and Henry laughs this time.

With Amber, he doesn’t have to rack his brain for words; with her, he doesn’t have to worry if he’s saying the right things or if he’s completely mispronouncing everything because with her, he doesn’t have to think.

With Amber, Henry just lets go.

XI.

Amber sighs as she finishes up her project proposal, relieved that she’s finally getting stuff done after half a day of lazing around on the couch with Henry, who was now preparing a nice dinner for them as a punishment for allowing her to slack off.

She was about to close her laptop when she hears pans clattering in the kitchen followed by Henry screaming. Alarmed, she gets up from her seat and runs to the kitchen, finding her boyfriend backed into a corner with his arms around himself, his pan collection scattered on the floor along with the cooking utensils.

“What happened?” she asks, worry etched on her face as she approaches Henry. He looks up and immediately engulfs her in a hug, burying his face on her shoulder, arms tight around her. Now she’s even more worried. He’s almost shaking.

“There’s a spider.” Comes Henry’s muffled reply on her shoulder.

Amber breathes a sigh of relief. A spider. It was only a spider. Henry has always been afraid of bugs and insects. Especially spiders.

“Where is it?” she asks, gently nudging him to let her go.

Henry ignores her nudge and holds her tighter, trying to stop himself from trembling. He doesn’t have good memories with spiders. He tries to take care of bugs and insects by himself but not spiders. Definitely not spiders.

“It’s under the purple pan.” He mumbles again, burying his face further into her shirt.

“Okay, then you need to let go of me if you want it to be taken care of.” She says, gently patting him on the back. Henry didn’t budge but she waits until he sighs before reluctantly letting her go. She smiles and pats his cheek, taking a rag and a bug spray (they have tons because Henry gets paranoid sometimes) from one of their cupboards before lifting up the purple pan. The spider is big but not that big. She could probably kill it with a few sprays. She hears Henry squeak from his corner as she showers the spider with bug spray. After making sure that it’s dead, Amber takes the rag to pick it up before throwing it in the trash.

“There, it’s gone.” Amber smiles and Henry finally steps out of his corner to hug her again, sighing in relief.

“Thank you.” Henry murmurs.

Amber squeezes him gently. “I’ll take care of the bugs if you always take care of dinner.”

Henry laughs and holds her tighter. “Deal.”

a/n: i'm sorry there are only two this time. everything i write lately turns out ty so i don't bother haha