Yerin likes to bite, everyone knows this.

She’s not supposed to leave marks, but Yuju just bruises too easily. Just the spots out of sight then, the older whines, cuddling into her. Her refusals are lukewarm and halfhearted, and it was always hard to refuse kisses, soft and insistent as they were. She had grown to like those kisses.

That those kisses sometimes escalate into more should have been expected, but sometimes it is hard to remember in the heat of the moment. They have more privacy now, but sometimes Yuju isn’t sure that is always a good thing.

She remains uncertain, even though Yerin loves to mark territory in a very physical way. The older’s affection is always very direct, leaving no question that her sole attention is on you. Like you’re her whole world, the only thing that matters, and that promise was seductive.

But Yuju knows she is not the only one Yerin showers affection on. Flowers to SinB, cuddling with Sowon and Eunha, endless compliments to Umji. Yerin is a ray of sunshine to everyone, giving them exactly what they need, when they need it. She was the hug you needed, the hand that helps, the smile that cheers you up. Her heart overflowed for everyone.

And was never only just hers. In a way, Yuju understands. Both of them had their own social circles, and were comfortable with a certain amount of space between them most of the time. When you lived together, it was necessary to draw a line somewhere. Even the best of friends needed breathing room from each other.

But were best friends normally so handsy with each other? Yuju wasn’t sure. She doesn’t cling often, but she didn’t hate physical contact either. On the contrary, she is comfortable with hugs and never shies away from holding hands or linking arms with her members. She might be a beat off from the conversation at times, but even slow as she was, she was always ready to be there for the others. 

Yerin though, was a bit confusing at times. As similar as they were, Yuju wasn’t sure if she completely understood the other girl. In many ways, they mirrored each other, but just as it was with Eunha, Yuju didn’t really get what they were thinking. Both the Jung girls seemed to read her intuitively, often coming up to her and giving her an encouraging hug (Eunha) or a surprise kiss (Yerin) when she needed a boost, but Yuju felt oddly dejected by her own inability to keep up with them in that way.

Little wonder that Yerin and Eunha got along really well. Yuju lets out a minute sigh, which turns into a yelp when teeth sink into her collarbone, low enough that a high neck top would cover the mark, but would exclude anything more revealing than that. 

“Pay attention,” Yerin breathes into her ear a second later, nibbling at the soft skin between the lobe of her ear and her neck. Yuju’s ear pinks from the contact, especially when a hot tongue laps upwards to trace the curve of her tiny ear. Yerin’s other arm wraps possessively around the younger’s torso, slipping under the loose t-shirt she wore at home. Fingers splayed across toned abs, and Yuju’s breath hitches unconsciously, feeling a familiar heat race downwards.

“Not so distracted now?” Yerin teases playfully, using her free hand to grab at Yuju’s chin, turning the younger girl’s head sideways to face her. They were somewhat awkwardly positioned on the couch, and Yerin shifts to unfold her tucked leg, swiftly inserting herself into a more comfortable position to settle around the puppy-like main vocalist who was still halfway spacing out.

“You’re home.” Yuju’s eyes light up, though it dims in the next second when her nose picks up the faint traces of an unfamiliar perfume mingled in with Yerin’s familiar scent. 

“I’ve been home long enough to change clothes, silly. You didn’t notice?” Yerin nuzzles up to Yuju, greedily at her scent with her nose buried in the singer’s neck. 

Indeed, the lead dancer had already changed out of her outdoor clothes and removed her makeup, and if the towel slung around her shoulder was any indication, had been on the way to take a shower before getting distracted by the sight of Yuju sitting quiet and unmoving in the unlit living room. It had given her enough pause to make a detour to the couch, which had then led to the very direct means of getting her attention.

“I thought it was just Umji coming back from her walk with Sowon-unnie,” Yuju admits with a tiny shrug, leaning into Yerin’s touch. She places a hand over Yerin’s wandering one on her abs though, because sometimes it just wasn’t a good idea to start something she wasn’t sure she could stop later.

Yerin rests her chin on Yuju’s neck, a thoughtful look in bright eyes as she takes in the distance in the slightly guarded stance from her puppy. While Yuju was usually open and friendly, the main vocal also had her own moods that often led her away from the rest. At least Yuju wasn’t rejecting her closeness, even if the younger girl was stopping her from feeling her up further. 

Well, that just wouldn’t do. Yerin adjusts her grip, lacing her fingers with Yuju’s hand and letting the combined weight rest on the flat stomach. She squeezes the long fingers, feeling Yuju exhale in a half sigh as she leans in close again.

“Yuna.” Yuju’s ear twitches at the mention of her real name, a little jolt running up her spine at the intimate note in Yerin’s tone. The older girl was practically draped over her from behind at this point, and was pressing one cheek to hers. 

“Something’s bothering you.” A thumb ran up and down the back of her hand. “Wanna talk about it?”

A pause, and Yuju’s head dips forward a little. Her hair is loosely bunned up at her neck, and Yerin’s cuddling antics had made it come undone in the meantime, unruly strands tangled between them. Yerin puffs out a breath, blowing away the stray hairs tickling at her face.

“I’m going to start kissing you if you don’t tell me.”

Yuju lets out a sharp bark of laughter at that, the rumble vibrating in .

“When has that ever stopped you from kissing me?”

Yerin smiles into Yuju’s neck as she lowers her lips, pressing feather light kisses inward towards the main vocalist's throat. It takes some effort to not use her teeth, especially when she grazes the throbbing artery hot underneath Yuju’s heated skin. Yuju’s skin is pale, not quite as pale as her own, but clear and flawless in its own right. A perfectly empty canvas, lacking only a more personal touch, and Yerin always wants to leave her own mark all over it.

She feels Yuju tremble underneath her attentions, and though her puppy shifts a little away from her insistent lips, she does not push her away, and Yerin, as always takes it as consent to do more. Yuju never refuses her. It is the one thing that always reassured, no matter what happens.

Allowing herself tiny nibbles that wouldn’t bruise too badly, Yerin nevertheless halts herself before she goes further, and Yuju makes a tiny whine almost unconsciously, tilting her head to try and find Yerin’s eyes in the darkness of the hall.

“Were you waiting for me?” Yerin’s voice is husky, almost raspy with something akin to desire, and something tightens inside Yuju, coiled like a string ready to snap. 

“No.” That was a lie. Maybe. 

She had been sitting there all evening, knowing Yerin was out with one of her best friends. Nothing to it, of course. Yuju went out with her friends too. They never really discussed it, just living their own lives, and were essentially independent of each other most of the time. If work had not brought them together all those years before, their paths would never have crossed, never have found themselves entwined in this strange embrace they were currently in.

Did friends kiss this much? Touch each other intimately like this? Yuju didn’t know. It always seemed like a joke to Yerin, who only seemed too happy to be touchy with pretty girls anyway.

Yuju hadn’t always been comfortable with it either. Years of Yerin suddenly hugging her, touching her, stealing kisses...it had slowly worn down her barriers, adjusted what was normal for her. She had simply accepted that this was Yerin, just one more way of showing affection. Different from her, but people were different from each other. 

Yuju accepted this, was happy to please her unnie where the other girls eventually seemed to reject the more overt displays of affection as they grew older. It was only harmless kisses anyway, and hugging wasn’t a terrible burden. She could take that, and it made her happy to be close to someone she already liked.

But as Yerin’s focus lasered down into her and her only, sometimes, the boundaries slipped. Here and there a hand went a little further, the kisses lingering a little longer, the intense gazes just a little more penetrating. Yerin dials it back a little when there were cameras, but even then, sometimes, the mask slips, and Yuju doesn’t know what to do, how to feel, when it does.

It felt like it was too much, too fast, too far. The worst part? Yerin doesn’t even bother to keep it up constantly, often running off to play with others and leaving Yuju hot, bothered and utterly confused in her wake. She did not understand before, and does not understand now. 

Here, away from the cameras, they had the room to themselves, and no audience to play up to. Yuju doesn’t understand if Yerin is serious, or just playing. And she isn’t sure how to ask.

It would be easier to just go along with the flow as always, just a touch or two over the line, kisses a little more than is called for between normal friends. Easier to write it off as friendly affection, maybe a little experimentation between people comfortable with each other. It wasn’t like they could try it with anyone else anyway, even though the company never restricted them from dating. Any idol knew the risks that came along with relationships, and all of them prioritized their career over something as trivial as romance. It was just good sense.

The thought gives Yuju pause. She had always known, deep down, that perhaps the physical intimacy she shared with Yerin was coming dangerously close to crossing certain lines. It wasn’t like Sowon hadn’t hinted about it to her before, quietly and in confidence, and Yuju doesn’t doubt that the leader had also spoken to Yerin before on this. 

Which only really resulted in Yerin withdrawing from her for a while, and only in public. In their private time, Yerin was as cuddly as always, perhaps more really, now that she was restricted in time and place for her affections. Keep it quiet, Sowon only said. She never told them to stop.

“You’re not being honest, Yuna.” There was a teasing lilt to Yerin’s voice, a smug confidence that was both titillating and annoying. Yerin’s free hand wanders up to Yuju’s chest, cupping one almost casually as she thumbs the already hard tip, drawing a full body shudder from the girl in her arms. 

This late at night, Yuju wasn’t wearing a bra, and it had given the older girl easy access that way. Yuju purses her lips into a thin line at this, pushing Yerin’s wandering hands away more firmly this time, and removes herself from Yerin’s grasp, scooting halfway across the couch with a defensive scowl on her face, arms crossed over her chest.

Yerin is visibly surprised at Yuju’s abrupt refusal, and the heady wave of desire that had overtaken her cooled off slightly, returning just a smidge of sense back to the vitamin of the group. It was always dangerous when they were so close to each other in the dark, that much Yerin could admit to herself. Under cover of darkness, she could be bold, and the throb of Yuju’s racing heartbeat had driven her half wild with desire. It always excites her when Yuju was responding to her touch, and her little reminders to herself to just push a little were quickly forgotten under the temptation.

How had it started? Yerin had always been drawn to beautiful women, but most of the time, appreciating from afar was enough. With Yuju though, her beautiful girl was just as bold and playful as she was, and willing to indulge her whimsies. 

It had really just been for fun at first. It was cute to see Yuju pout and whine and try and scramble away halfheartedly, but push enough buttons, and the puppy would bite back. Yerin liked it when she bit back, even if it sometimes surprised her.

Curiosity was the beginning of everything, and she only been wondering how far Yuju would let her get away with being physically needy and clingy. The others had drawn boundaries once they hit a limit, and Yerin always respected those. Boundaries were important.

But Yuju kept coming back, and as time went by, Yerin sort of forgot that boundaries probably should be a thing when it came to her. Sure, they had to keep it down when in public, but on their own time, curiosity made Yerin keep pushing the envelope just to see how far it could go. 

It helped that Yuju was cute. They shared a few kisses, lip to lip, at first by accident, then not. Those brief moments, stolen in between outpourings of stress and heightened emotional states, were casually passed over on both sides, and Yerin watches Yuju intently every time, trying to decipher the real meaning behind deceptively clear orbs. 

Yuju’s eyes sparkled like distant stars taken from the horizons, and were just as indecipherable. There is affection, yes, but as far as Yerin could tell, it seemed untainted by anything more than that. There is a purity of emotion, an innocence, almost. 

Unlike her. That much Yerin could admit, in moments alone in the shower, cold water running down her body as she tried to exorcise the dark fire Yuju evoked within her. She was deeply, hopelessly, attracted to her fellow bandmate, and only in the privacy of her dreams could she embrace the younger girl in exactly the way she wanted.

And now, separated by no more than a few handspans in the dark, Yerin finds Yuju’s eyes unerringly, bright points in shadow. What she sees then thrills her; Yuju’s eyes are darkened with a familiar emotion, same as that which was reflected in her own. Her puppy was no less affected by what had just transpired between them, and there was a nervous uncertainty in those wide, dark eyes.

The sight strikes a soft spot in Yerin, and she shifts onto her knees, reaching forward carefully to avoid startling a clearly unnerved Yuju. Yuju flinches slightly when Yerin’s fingers brush her arm, but relaxes into the familiar touch almost involuntarily.

Yerin doesn’t push her this time, maintaining a careful distance as she her arm soothingly, the older girl watching the younger carefully, not wanting to frighten her away. Despite the physical distance, Yerin instinctively sensed that this was the closest they had been, teetering on the cusp of something.

She could be patient, just this once. She had waited for years for Yuju to be ready. She could wait a little longer now.

“You always do this...” Yuju whispers, lowering her eyes as she places a hand over where Yerin was currently caressing her arm. “Why me?”

Because I want you. Yerin resists the urge to blurt that out, switching instead to a safer, but also true declaration. “I like being close to you.” Also because if I don’t hold on to you, it feels like you might drift away, Yerin does not add, a tinge of uncertainty creeping into her own eyes. 

Yerin wasn’t sure if Yuju would ever be receptive to her true feelings. It would have been, oddly enough, so much easier if her attraction to Yuju was purely physical. It was a major factor, that much she could admit, but the more time she spent with the younger girl, the more she wanted to keep her all to herself. They were so similar, yet so different at the same time. 

In Yuju, Yerin saw someone almost radically opposite to her in the ways that mattered, but yet mirroring her closely in others. They were not the same, even with the skin-deep similarities. It was as if God had taken a single imprint and created entirely different works with the same pattern; that was how close she felt to Yuju, yet they were far enough that she feared letting her slip through her fingers.

There were so many different things holding Yuju’s attention, and the girl was so often off in her own world, where Yerin couldn’t follow, not like Umji could have. There was a small jealousy there, sometimes, because those two shared topics she couldn’t seem to breach. 

The main vocalist was also a social butterfly, and had so many demands on her time that didn’t involve her in any way. There were like two parallel lines running side by side, but never quite touching, not unless Yerin made the effort to impose herself into Yuju’s world.

Kissing her, touching her; these things were reserved for her and her alone, and no one else. Yerin never thought she could be so possessive, but she was, she was, and Sooyoung often laughed at her over it, whenever she groused about how dense Yuju could be.

You should tell her sometime, if you want her to notice, said her best friend and confidant, who probably should be elevated to sainthood for putting up with all her frustrated grumbling.

“You’re close to others too,” Yuju points out, not without cause. It sounded all too much like an accusation, and was that a hint of jealousy she read in the main vocalist’s tone? Yerin swallowed, trying hard not to hope, but her eyes were burning.

“Not like this.” Yerin shuffles forward a couple of inches, carefully tugging one of Yuju’s hands to her lips, pressing a careful kiss against her knuckles. Yuju had drawn her legs close to her body, hugging them to herself, and most of her face was currently hidden behind her knees.

There was a time to be cautious, and a time to be bold. Yerin wasn’t about to let this chance pass her by, not when she sensed an opening.

“I don’t go around doing this to just anyone,” Yerin husks lowly, her breath sending warm tingles across the back of Yuju’s hand. “You’re special to me.”

“You’re just saying that.” Like it means anything, Yuju does not add, but the implications were obvious. There was a thick mistrust in the singer’s tone, making her seem oddly vulnerable, especially with her eyes peeking over her knees the way it was now, like a tiny kitten afraid of the big bad monster lurking outside.

Yerin chuckles in a way that was half-sigh, scooting determinedly up to the defensive shell Yuju had put up around herself and planting either knee around Yuju’s skinny frame, before wrapping Yuju up in a firm hug as she rests her chin on the top of Yuju’s head.

The physical contact relaxes her, and it is obvious it has an effect on Yuju as well. The tension in her shoulders visibly relaxed, but her puppy was still being stubborn, refusing to acknowledge her openly. Yerin takes a deep breath, burying her nose in the silky strands of hair on the top of Yuju’s head. It was all or nothing now.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking right now, Yuna. I never did, and unless you tell me, I never will.” Yerin begins slowly, the small of Yuju’s back gently. 

“I don’t know why you don’t trust that you are special to me...do you really think I go around doing this to anyone and everyone?” There was a tired resignation in Yerin’s tone, and some self-reflection was going on at the same time: did she really act overly affectionate to other people too?

“You hug everyone.” Yuju mumbles under her breath. “What makes me so special?”

At this, Yerin chuckles, loosening her grip around Yuju as she sinks back to rest on her calves, looking Yuju straight in the eye as she slips a hand around the knees in the way to cup the singer’s face.

“I definitely don’t go around doing this to everyone, and you know it.”

Yuju’s lips part to shoot off a retort, but she is taken off guard as Yerin lifts her face and leans forward, capturing her full lips in an open mouthed kiss that takes her breath away.

Their previous kisses could just as easily have been written off as innocent displays of affection, but this one, this time, was most definitely not. Yerin’s kiss was forceful, demanding, hungry. It was possessive and dominating and most definitely not innocent, not when her tongue had slipped in during Yuju’s earlier moment of inattention, and was exploring unknown territory right now. Yuju felt Yerin on her lower lip greedily, and she was suddenly aware of her own desperation, and how her own arms had gone automatically around the older girl’s neck, pulling her close, as if the world was going to fall and the only safe place was here.

She couldn’t pretend it was habit, not when they had never done this before, not with Yerin taking her breath away like this, their hands tangled up in each other’s hair. Her knees had slipped downwards, legs unfolding and relaxing as Yerin pushed into her, straddling her against the couch as the back of her neck hit the arm of the settee. 

The sudden jolt makes Yuju gasp, a small whimper of pain from the impact. Yerin was not so far gone in her impulsive act that she didn’t notice, and withdraws an inch, panting, her eyes painted with concern for her puppy’s wellbeing. 

“Did I hurt you? Are you okay?” The new angle they were at was awkward, but looking up at the genuine worry in Yerin’s eyes, Yuju suddenly realizes that maybe, just maybe, Yerin wasn’t lying to her about this. The dull ache in her neck had made her eyes water, and that was the story Yuju was telling herself. She certainly wasn’t going to cry over this. Not her.

Yerin pulls Yuju up carefully, still sitting on the younger girl’s thighs while trying to make sure Yuju hasn't hurt her neck or worse. She was so wrapped up in her concern that it doesn’t register at first how intimate their new position was, but Yuju wasn’t blind to it. 

Now it is the lead dancer’s turn to be taken off guard as Yuju loops her arms around her neck, pulling her close until they are face to face with each other, their breaths hot on each other's skin. Yuju’s full lips were swollen from the attention Yerin had given them earlier, and Yerin felt her breath hitch as Yuju nuzzles at the corner of her lips, affectionate and teasing at the same time.

“Yuna?” Her voice had gone raspy, fully aware of their bodies pressed flush against each other. Yuju plants another soft kiss on her cheek, her low voice a murmur in the dark.

“Can I trust you?” Another kiss, closer to the jaw. “Will I always be special to you?”

“Always.” Yerin rumbles, her voice thick with desire. “I’ve wanted you for so long, you have no idea…”

“There can be no one else.” Yuju pulls away, eyes glittering like diamonds in the dark. Yerin meets her gaze, feeling something shudder inside her as she did.

She had thought she was possessive, but Yuju was no less demanding in that respect. The thought excites her, and it was never in question what her answer would be.

“You’re my only one. Always have, and always will.”