A/N: WOW it's been forever since I last updated. I got inspired to write again by Gary's return visit, news of RM's continuation, and the many great Monday Couple fics that have been uploaded recently. I'm sorry that it took me this long!

“Aargh!” Jihyo grumbles loudly as soon as her brother Joongki opens the door to let her in. She stomps inside his room and flops face-down on his bed, ignoring the curious looks she gets from him and Kwangsoo, his best friend who is apparently over to visit.

Kwangsoo mouths “What’s up with her?” to Joongki, whose only response is a shrug. Joongki jerks his chin towards Jihyo’s general direction.

“Ask her,” he mouths.

“Me? Why me?” Kwangsoo mouths back urgently. “You do it.”

Joongki shakes his head and points back at him.

Oblivious to the silent conversation going on in the room, Jihyo lets out another groan and pounds her fist into a pillow, frustrated. Suddenly, she lifts her face off of the pillow and sits up straight, as if possessed.

“That’s it, adeul-ah,” she intones, eyes wild. “I’m going to run away to France and marry the first man I see when I get off the plane.”

Kwangsoo, slightly alarmed, jumps up and reaches out to feel Jihyo’s head for a fever. “Her temperature’s normal, so that means… Noona you can’t be serious! That is a bad idea. A very bad one. How would you get there? Your dad would stop you immediately. And do you know how many bad men there are out there in the world? How do you know the first man you see is going to be a good guy?”

Joongki pulls Kwangsoo’s arm to make him sit back down on his seat. “Relax. She’s just joking. She’d never do that. She likes Gary-hyung too much to actually pull through.”

“I’m serious, Joongki-ya. I’m so done with father, with the Chen Bolin dude, and especially with that Kang Gary. I’m so done.”

Joongki turns to face her. “So this is about Gary-hyung. What he’d do this time?”

Letting out a harrumph, Jihyo flops back down on the bed. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Joongki asks, raising an eyebrow. “Then why are you mad at him?”

“It’s precisely because he does nothing that I’m so mad,” Jihyo seethes. “Kang Gary is a friggin’ rock. An immovable, emotionless, stubborn, thickheaded rock that does absolutely nothing no matter what I try.”

She’s tried flirting with him. She’s tried coaxing, wheedling, playing stupid games with him. But it doesn’t matter what she tries; he remains unaffected and tightlipped, stubbornly refusing to admit that he’s liked her for all these years.

“What makes you so sure that Gary-hyung likes you in the first place?” Kwangsoo asks. Jihyo sits up and throws her brother’s pillow at him so fast that he falls out of his chair.

“Yah. I just know, okay?” Jihyo retorts, trying to sound confident. But honestly, she’s not so sure anymore. What if she’s been reading the signs wrong all this time? What if his avoidance of answering her confession directly actually means that he doesn’t like her? What if, during that time he took her hand and ran from the audition, or the time when he almost leaned in to kiss her, or that time when he leaned over and almost touched her face while she slept, she’d just been overthinking the whole thing? That it’s just been her, one-sidedly getting ahead of herself the whole time?

But then there was the time when he ran to the nearest town on foot to buy her a coffee when she had a photoshoot in the countryside. Or the time when she’d sprained her ankle while filming, and he’d rushed in even before the director had a chance to scream, ”Cut!”, scooped her up in his arms, and carried her to the hospital. The silly song he made up for her in the car to cheer her up after an argument with her father. The look he gave her sometimes when he thought she wasn’t looking. The warmth of his hand on the small of her back, guiding her through the hordes of fans even when he could do so without touching her. There were countless times and countless situations; too many occasions where he showed his affection, showed that he cared for her to just brush them off as nothing. Her heart certainly didn’t think they were nothing.

She’s suddenly filled with a strong urge to see him.

“… meet up with Jongkook-hyung at the usual place in twenty,” Joongki is saying, holding his phone away from his ear while he talks to Kwangsoo. Jihyo hasn’t been listening to their conversation, but her ear perks up when she hears her brother mention one of Gary’s friends.

“Call,” Kwangsoo nods his head in agreement.

“Call,” Jihyo butts in. Joongki murmurs something to the caller, then ends the call and turns to Jihyo.

“Call what?”

“You’re going to the club with Jongkook-oppa, right? I’m coming too.”

Joongki blinks up at his sister. “Are you kidding me right now? Why would you go anyway? It’s just a thing with the guys. And besides, in case you didn’t know by now, you’re a famous person. You can’t just waltz into a club with a bunch of men and not expect people to recognize you and take pictures of you. Also, what would I say if Father finds out? He’d kill me!”

“Oh hush,” Jihyo reassures him, heading to her room for a bag and blindly throwing her cellphone and a makeup compact into it. “I’ll wear a cap and sunglasses and nobody will know. Okay?”

Joongki follows her into her room. “You just want to go to see Gary-hyung. I don’t know if he’s going to be there, anyway.”

“That’s not true,” Jihyo protests. Not the whole truth, anyway. “I just… want to get out of here for a bit.” That part isn’t a total lie. She always feels stifled in this house, where she’s hidden away most of the time if she isn’t at work. You’re a lady, her father always said, even before she became an actress, before she had to be hidden from the public eye. What use do you have for going out? Stay in the house.

It feels more like a jail than a home to her, honestly.

Joongki must sense the urgency in her voice, because he finally breathes out a sigh. “Alright. But you can’t let anybody see you, and you can’t get drunk. We’ve got to get you back to the house before Father gets home, too, which means we’ll have to leave at twelve, ok?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jihyo rolls her eyes and pushes him out the door, though she’s secretly pleased. “Whatever you say. Am I the older one or are you?”

They arrive at the club, where they’re immediately ushered to a hall with several VIP rooms. Joongki pushes her into one with a strong warning to stay still while he and Kwangsoo fetch drinks. Jihyo rolls her eyes and waves them away.

Several friends of Jongkook, many of them celebrities, fill the semi-crowded room. Even still, a furtive glance around the room tells Jihyo that Gary isn’t there, and her shoulders sag a little.

Of course. As her luck would have it, she would come out to a club for the first time, a club that Gary frequents very often, and he’s not even there.

She huffs a sigh and sinks into a plush red couch across from the door, waiting for Kwangsoo and Joongki to get back. In time, a familiar head pops into the doorway, but it’s not one of her favorite dongsaengs. He catches her eye, looks surprised, then strides over to her with a smirk stretched across his face.

“Go away,” she grumbles, shifting away uncomfortably when he sits down next to her and crosses his legs at the ankles. “You shouldn’t even be in here. This is a private VIP room.”

“My, are we grumpy today!” Bolin drawls. She glares at him, and his eyebrows raise. “Why are you so mad at me? You should be bowing in appreciation every time you see me. I’m your potential savior, the one hope you have at being with your precious poor lover boy!” His voice drips with sarcasm, and Jihyo edges further away from him.

“You’re insufferable,” she hisses, not even bothering to say the words in English. Bolin doesn’t seem to care, however, and the sly grin slides across his face once more.

“Ah. Trouble in paradise? Mr. Kang still hasn’t reciprocated his feelings for you?” He makes a tsk-ing sound and shakes his head. “I’m telling you, you should just give up before you get hurt. It doesn’t look like he’ll be coming around anytime soon. And judging from how he’s not shown any sign of resistance even though it’s been almost two weeks since we’ve gotten engaged, it doesn’t look like he even cares in the first place. ”

 “Shut up. I haven’t told him yet. About the… engagement.” The last word tastes foul, as if she has bile in .

Bolin raises his eyebrows. “Oh? And why haven’t you told him?” He peers at her intently before his seemingly-permanent smirk resumes. “I see. You’re scared! You’re scared that, even after telling him that you might be marrying someone else, he’ll just be as indifferent and unmoved as ever!”

His words sting her like salt in a wound, building upon the frustration and anxieties already piled mountain high in her heart.

“Of course I’m scared!” To her horror, hot and angry tears begin pushing out of her eyes. “This is the most important moment of my life. I mean, I trust that Gary-oppa does like me. There’s no way I can be wrong about that. But I’m always scared of that ‘what if’, you know? He’s such a stubborn, selfless, noble idiot and I’m just scared that he won’t admit his feelings until it’s too late, you know? For my sake or some stupid reason like that. Because that’s the kind of person he is,” she says, voice soft. “That’s the person I love.”

It’s like the noisy room around her has faded and she’s in Gary’s arms again, feeling the matching, urgent pounding of his heart and footsteps as he runs the two miles to the hospital, watching the sweat trickle down his face, looking into his worried, worried eyes darting down to her face every once in a while, keeping her grounded in the pain, making her feel loved.

Bolin squints his eyes at her. “You really do like this Gary guy, don’t you?” There’s a touch of intrigue in his tone of voice, and it annoys her, snapping her back into reality.

Jihyo rolls her eyes and wipes a few stray tears away. “Thank you, Captain Obvious. What gave it away?”

He ignores her sarcasm, drifting to a far point across the room.

“And you’re sure that he likes you back?”

“I’m sure,” she says firmly. “He likes me too. I just know it. But why are you asking-”

Bolin points towards the front of the door, which is what he’d been staring at all this while. “Is that your Gary?”

Her head whips around to face the entrance of the bar, and sure enough, Gary has just come in, flanked by Haha and Jongkook. Their eyes meet, and she gasps. His eyebrows draw together in a confused frown.

That’s the last thing she sees before Bolin turns her chin towards him with a rough hand. Her eyes open wide with surprise. He smirks again.

“Only one way to find out,” he says, and then leans down to kiss her.

Except that he doesn’t; his lips hover close to , not even touching her, but she knows that from Gary’s angle, it looks like they’re kissing. She tries to pull back hastily, but Bolin has her in a tight grip.

“Get off me!” She tries to shriek, but Bolin only holds her closer. He moves his lips close to her ear.

“You said that you were sure that he likes you back. I’m just trying to help you, to help him be honest about his feelings for you.”

She continues to struggle in his grasp. “By kissing me?” She exclaims, her voice going high in panic.

“Oh relax. I’m not even really kissing you. Haven’t you heard of a little thing called jealousy? It works like a charm. If your man really likes you, as you’re so certain about it, he’ll be jealous to see his girl with some other guy and might finally confront his feelings and make a move.” He moves away from her finally, and she glances quickly at the doorway. Gary’s frozen there, an shocked expression on his face.

Bolin turns her face towards him again. “Don’t stare. Pretend like you didn’t see him, and pretend like we’re talking about something interesting.” He lets out a laugh, out of nowhere, and she gapes at him like he’s a madman.

It’s Bolin’s turn to roll his eyes. “Are you an actress or aren’t you? Pretend! Laugh like I said something funny.”

She lets out a weak laugh as best as she can, using her hand to cover as she whispers, “Are you sure this will work?”

Bolin reaches out an arm and drapes it across her shoulder, and it’s all she can do not to shrug it off in disgust. “Trust me.”

So she faces Bolin and pretends to be deeply engaged in a riveting conversation with him, laughing gently and slapping his forearm flirtatiously in between “comments”, all the while glancing to the side to look at Gary’s face, to see if he’s been moved at all.

 But the next time she looks over at the doorway, he’s already gone.