hello it's been a while anyways this has been in the works since nov 24th of 2014 and i just finished it today so yes but also some explanations before you read if you're unfamiliar with the party game paranoia:

so there's a circle of people sitting together. one person starts by whispering a question to someone beside them (left or right, it doesn't matter) in which the answer has to be someone else in the group (e.g. "who has the nicest hair?" "who's wearing the ugliest shoes?" "who would you go out with?" etc.). the answer's spoken out loud so that the person who was the answer knows they're being called out. then the person who asked the question and the person who answered play rock paper scissors; if the person answered loses,  they have to say the question out loud. if the person who answered wins, the game just continues and no one ever knows what the question was. therefore the person being called out is left in a state of paranoia and anxiety bc ???!?! tF WHAT WAS ASKED ABOUT ME I NEED TO KNOW anyways it's a pretty ty game if you're with a ty group of people who ask offensive things but it all depends and yes that's all

“You’re kidding me!”

                “Let’s not play this – this game , okay? We’re just gonna –“

                “Can we agree to only ask nice questions?”

                “Don’t listen to him, he just hates being mean –“

                “Well, who actually likes being mean –“

                “Guys!” Woohyun interrupted, silencing the entire group’s complaints. “This is my party, I choose the game we play. I say we’re doing paranoia, we’re doing paranoia.”

                “Some party, there’s only seven of us,” Sungjong scoffed to the edge of his mouth.

                “Sungjong, if you don’t shut up I’m going to answer with your name every time and then I’m going to win every single round of rock paper scissors just to taunt you,” Woohyun snapped back.

                “I hate paranoia.”

                “Thank you for your input, Sunggyu, you can start,” Woohyun grinned to the boy on his right.

                Across the room, Myungsoo did his best to wipe his sweaty palms on the sleeves and hem of his sweater. He hated this game more than Sunggyu did, more than Sungjong did, hell, more than any of them did – combined. His life was essentially built on what other people thought of him, and their outlook on him always managed to affect the way he saw things. So the fact was, if they were going to talk about him right in front of his face without him even knowing what it was about, he was going to hate it.

                He watched with careful eyes as Sunggyu leaned over to Dongwoo’s ears, smacking the younger boy when he giggled at Sunggyu’s ticklish breath. Myungsoo was scared out of his wits when Sunggyu leaned back to his previous stance, the smuggest look placed on his face.

                Dongwoo bit his lip in thought, then after a while nodded and said, “Woohyun.”

                At this, Woohyun perked up and gave the two beside him a look.

                “You called for the game, Woohyun.”

                Simply shooting another look in Hoya’s direction, Woohyun nodded at Dongwoo as a way to tell them to play rock paper scissors.

                Myungsoo breathed in relief when he saw Dongwoo win; he did in fact hate it more than anything when he couldn’t figure out what was being said about him, but it was better off that Woohyun and others of the like didn’t know because then drama would just ensue.   

                The second oldest then beckoned Sungyeol over to him, and the boy nodded eagerly and placed his ears somewhere near Dongwoo’s lips.

                The rest of the group could tell that Dongwoo was somewhat either excited for the question or excited to get the game over with because he was nearly jumping in his seat.

                Sungyeol’s eyes widened for the longest time and he then leaned back to glance around the rest of the room, squinting his eyes at each person he came across. When he made eye contact with Myungsoo, his head did a small tilt and he answered, “Myungsoo.”

                The entire world seemed to stop revolving in those mere seconds and Myungsoo felt his breath completely cease. .

                Dongwoo looked somewhat pleased with Sungyeol’s answer, his shoulders coming up in an accepting shrug that really didn’t ease Myungsoo’s increasing anxiety.

                This was why he didn’t want to play the game, this was what he hated more than anything, this is why he wanted to go home right now and never leave his room ever because games like this were just dumb and why was Sungyeol smirking when he called his name what the hell was with that and everything was stupid and dumb.

                “Myungsoo, chill.”

                He nearly wanted to shoot Sungjong with his finger gun (read: he was going to poke the younger in his side and hope that he was ticklish) but he didn’t. He already had enough on his plate to worry about, he didn’t need another hit on the head by Hoya for touching the precious youngest.

                But by the time Myungsoo’s focus was back onto the game, the only thing he could see in straight up slow motion was Sungyeol pulling out scissors and Dongwoo flattening out his hand.

                .

                Now he was really ready to pull his hair out in distress.

“Hey, do you need a ride home?”

                Myungsoo’s eyes narrowed at Dongwoo, the older’s teeth brightening up the dark streets. The party had ended barely a minute ago and Myungsoo was the first person out the door, Dongwoo trailing not too far behind.

                After three rounds of paranoia, he was done and if he wasn’t curled underneath his blankets in half an hour something bad was going to happen. Luckily for him, his name was never called for the rest of the game, but that didn’t stop the Sungyeol Incident (dubbed so in his own paranoid mind) from clawing at him.

                “Are you…okay?”

                “I’m fine,” Myungsoo answered abruptly. “I’m…yeah. Yeah, I  need a ride.”

                “Cool, you left really fast so I wasn’t sure. We just need to wait for Sungyeol since his mom can’t –“

                “No!”

                Myungsoo’s interruption made Dongwoo still in his spot, his neck jumping back a bit. “Um.”

                “I’ll get a ride home with Sunggyu, I mean. I already wasted enough of your gas when you gave me a ride here, I don’t want you having to drive me and Sungyeol both home.”

                “Oh, it’s okay!” Dongwoo grinned after coming back to his senses. “Sungyeol said that he could just crash at your house tonight since I don’t know where his house is. And it’s kinda really dark out and driving on new roads kinda psych me out.”

                “My…house?”

                “Yeah,” Dongwoo nodded. “Sungyeol said you still had some of his stuff from the last time he stayed over?”
                “Oh. Oh…”

                “So is that an okay? I bet Sungyeol’s almost out anyways.”

                At this point, it wasn’t as if Myungsoo could say no. It didn’t matter if their entire group of friends had only met Sungyeol maybe a month ago or so, he was one of them now and Myungsoo had no real reason to say no to the guy wanting to stay over. Even if he had invited himself.

                A sudden scream ripped Myungsoo away from his thoughts and when he turned his head, he saw Sungyeol holding two large bags of opened chips and screaming goodbyes to the people left in Woohyun’s house.

                Seeing Sungyeol, for some dumb reason, just seemed to make Myungsoo so much  more frustrated than he already was. The older looked so fine, so content with life, so okay with everything, always going along with the flow.

                Probably because he was actually able to find out that his name was the answer to Sungjong’s question of Who’s wearing the ugliest color?

                Nobody liked puke beige and even Sungyeol knew that. He just laughed it off.

                At least he could laugh it off.

                “Hey hyung, what was your question to Sungyeol?”

                “Huh?” Dongwoo looked at Myungsoo, confused by the random question. “What?”

                “The paranoia question. When he answered my name.”

                “Oh. Oh.” Dongwoo couldn’t stop himself from giggling, bringing a hand up to cover his mouth. “It’s okay, it wasn’t anything bad.”

                “But I need to know.”

                “That takes the fun out of the game, though.”

                “It’s not fun if you’re stressing over it –“

                “What’re we talking about?”

                Myungsoo’s words seem to lose their want to come out of his mouth when Sungyeol appeared with a smile that could most definitely rival Dongwoo’s (and win. Maybe. He was biased, except for whatever reason, he didn’t really know).

                “Nothing,” Dongwoo laughed off. “Who calls shotgun?”

                “I’ll sit in the back,” Myungsoo offered. He wasn’t really in the fighting mood anyways.

                “I’ll sit with Myungsoo,” Sungyeol shrugged, a shocking outcome to the other two. “Hey, you’re good with me staying over, yeah?”

                Myungsoo just gave him a constricted nod and made his way to Dongwoo’s car without any other sign of a response.

                “Is he okay?” he heard Sungyeol ask quietly from behind him. “He hasn’t talked to me all night, and – “

                “Nah, it’s nothing,” Dongwoo dismissed, laughing a little to himself. “He’s just a bit…paranoid.”

                The only thing Myungsoo could do was roll his eyes as he stood on the other side of the car in the street, waiting for the oldest to unlock the doors. Sungyeol looked plain confused.

The car ride was awkward to say the least. Dongwoo played his usual radio station, except they were always some upbeat unknown hip hop song that nobody in the car could rap to or recognize but him. Myungsoo did nothing but hold his posture – back straight, legs straight, hands carefully folded into his lap.

                “Chip?” Sungyeol offered from his right, holding out one of the bags he’d taken from Woohyun’s. While Myungsoo was sitting in his own silence, Sungyeol was devouring more junk foods by the second.

                “I’m good,” Myungsoo stiffly replied despite the comfort his mind forced him to have. “Not hungry.”

                “Oh. Okay. Dongwoo?”

                “I can’t drive and eat at the same time,” Dongwoo answered from the front, moving his lower half a bit to the music. “Or at least eat chips. My fingers get all greasy and the steering wheel feels like it’s gonna fall out of my hands.”

                “It’s connected to the car.”

                “Still,” the oldest protested. “Hey Myungsoo, your house is the one at the end, right?”

                “Yeah,” Sungyeol popped in before Myungsoo even had a chance to look outside the window and make sure. “There’s always a light on – yep, you’re nearing the right one.”

                If Sungyeol had turned to his left just a bit, he would’ve seen Myungsoo give him the most incredulous look; except he didn’t, he was still looking forward and pointing out directions to Dongwoo.

                “You sure go to Myungsoo’s house a lot if you know all this,” Dongwoo chuckled.

                “It’s common sense,” Sungyeol shrugged. “And I mean, you see it once and it kinda stays in your head forever, you know?”

                Maybe Dongwoo’s paranoia question was whose house had a light on outside all the time, Myungsoo thought. Regardless of how hard he tried, his mind always went back to the paranoia game. What was with the look on Dongwoo’s face? And why did Sungyeol look so sure of himself? All of this, he demanded answers to all of them.

                When the car halted in front of his house, Myungsoo opened the door immediately and stepped out. Sungyeol followed suit, only one bag of chips still in his grasp – the other one he’d thrown at Dongwoo as a compensation for the gas money.

                “I’ve always wondered,” Sungyeol started, following Myungsoo, “why the lights are always on outside your house. And see, the lights are off inside, so why are they still on outside?”

                “It’s whatever my mom wants to do, to be honest. We don’t usually – wait. Wait you’re right, why are the lights off inside?”

                Myungsoo continued to grow more frantic, forgetting about his stiff posture and worried thoughts, and ran to the front door. He began to furiously ring the doorbell, scared of what he thought was going to be true to be true.

                “I completely forgot,” he groaned, leaning back against the door and stomping a foot in distress. “My parents took my brother to see my cousin at the hospital. And I didn’t even bring my keys. Seriously, why is this happening to me?”

                “It’s alright,” Sungyeol tried. “I mean, at least it’s Friday, right? No school tomorrow?”

                “Yeah,” Myungsoo muttered, “but still. I’ve been so damn frustrated all night, I just wanted to go inside and eat some ice cream and calm down.”

                Sungyeol bit his lips, fingers tapping on the chip bag. His eyes darted around until he finally sighed, rolling his eyes as if he were giving up. “Fine. Come on, stop your hissy fit and let’s go.”

                Hissy fit? Excuse me. Myungsoo let none of his thoughts out, but he still frowned. “Go where?”

                “My house,” Sungyeol answered casually. “My mom went to my grandma’s house and my brother’s sleeping over at his friend’s so it’s just as lonely as your house, except we have a key hidden under the mat.”

                “Smart.” The younger froze for a second. “Wait – “

                “Chill, we’re not going on a midnight walk across town. I live across the street.”

                “What.”

                Sungyeol shrugged and beckoned Myungsoo to follow. “Kinda just wanted an excuse to spend the rest of the night with you, don’t blame me.”

                As Myungsoo followed him, he tried not to think too hard about what Sungyeol had just said – all despite the fact that his cheeks were starting to tint pink.

“Your house is nice.”

                “It’s exactly like yours,” Sungyeol half-laughed, half-scoffed out. “You hungry?”

                Myungsoo stared down at the bag of chips the other was offering him and scrunched his nose. “Not for chips.”

                “Ah, right. Ice cream. We don’t have any.”

                “Your house is useless.”

                “I’m sorry we don’t have ice cream,” Sungyeol apologized sarcastically, nodding for Myungsoo to go up the stairs so he could turn off the downstairs light.

                “So…you live across the street?” Myungsoo asked in attempt to make conversation as they went up the stairs.

                “Yeah,” the other nonchalantly replied. “I mean, it wasn’t a big secret? When we moved here, we went around introducing ourselves because my mom’s into this entire ‘Go Out and Become A New Person’ after the divorce. We went to your house, but your mom said you didn’t feel like coming down so that happened.”

                My house? When was – Myungsoo heard himself groan against his will, throwing his head back. He wasn’t big on leaving his room, his mom knew. But he still should’ve asked about the neighbors that gave them the greatest chocolate cake he’d ever tasted.

                “I liked the cake,” Myungsoo tried in an attempt to compensate ignoring Sungyeol’s entire family that day.

                “Thanks, I didn’t make it.” Sungyeol gave him a little nod and opened the door to his room. “Well, make yourself comfortable. I don’t really have much since most of my stuff is at my old house with my dad.”

                Myungsoo nodded in understanding, taking in the basically empty room with nothing but a light brown bookshelf on the left side with a matching desk beside it, and one mattress in the corner.

                “Do you switch between your parents a lot then?”

                “Nah,” Sungyeol shook his head, throwing himself on the mattress. “My old house is super far away.” He patted the space beside him and Myungsoo, although slightly hesitant, took a seat.

                “My brother and I weren’t really sure who we were gonna live with, you know, because we didn’t wanna go to different schools every other week,” Sungyeol continued, leaning back and crossing his legs on the mattress. “At first both of us really just wanted to stay with my dad because who really wants to move, you know?” He looked down at his hands, playing with his nails a bit. “But the thing is, my dad’s basically the epitome of a workaholic and he was just super into his job. And my mom was super into taking care of us. We had an entire talk when my mom decided to move here and my dad gave us this long lecture about how it would honestly be the best decision for us to go with Mom. We could always visit him during holidays, and my mom would take losing us a lot harder than he would.”

                Myungsoo almost felt himself go frozen and silent because, honestly, he didn’t know what to say. His family, albeit separate at times, never went through horrifically difficult decisions.

                “So…so what did you do?” Myungsoo asked, leaning forward and feeling his throat tighten a bit.

                “Me and Daeyeol, my brother…we didn’t want to, you know? Like, you don’t feel it in the moment, but teenagers are pretty selfish. Neither of us wanted to uproot ourselves and just start over at a new high school in the middle of the school year, but our dad just told us to give the new school a try. If we hated it, we could always come back.”

                Sungyeol stopped talking for a moment, looking over to take notice of Myungsoo’s reaction. The younger looked no different, completely fascinated with whatever the other was saying. It only took a single glance at Myungsoo’s twinkling eyes (What? His eyes twinkle, I’m not lying, Sungyeol defended to nobody) for him to crack a smile and say, “Hey, do you wanna hear a story?”

                Myungsoo’s stare broke and he blinked a few times, then nodded. “Oh…okay.”

                “First day of my new school, right?” Sungyeol started, the corner of his lips coming up. “I’m so determined to hate it because there’s no way I’m going to ditch everyone for this dumb place. So I spend the first half of my classes texting Niel – my best friend back home, by the way – paragraphs amongst paragraphs of why I hate the place and everyone there. Even the uniforms are dumb, like, who wears metal nametags anymore?”

                It didn’t take long for Myungsoo’s content face to start falling apart bit by bit because this story didn’t seem very fun.

                “Anyways,” the older continued, “I get to my last class of the day and it’s history. I hate history because who doesn’t?” (I don’t, Myungsoo thought, but made a note to keep that to himself.) “By this point I’m so ready to just run home and scream at my dad over the phone and demand to be go back home because this place was awful and horrific in all senses of the term and everything was better at home. But I keep my word and stay for the last class, and you don’t know how happy I was that I did. Because just when everyone’s settling in and the teacher wants to start class, this kid comes running in, papers everywhere and hair just all over the place and he doesn’t seem to have any of his items in order.

                “At first I was like, ok, this school is full of screw ups, but then the kid runs over to this guy I’m sitting next to and throws half of the things on his desk. And you know what he says? ‘Jinyoung, you left your history essay in the library printer.’ Like, he saves this kid’s because the teacher is some strict old man who won’t let anyone leave even for the bathroom unless they can recite all 56 states in America, or whatever. And then he gives me this really shy look and sits on the floor next to me because apparently I was sitting in his seat and there weren’t any more chairs in the entire class and he didn’t want to ‘disrupt me’.”

                And at this point, Myungsoo wasn’t too sure how to feel. Because this story was seeming quite familiar and he didn’t even realize his hair was that much of a mess on the day he met Sungyeol.

                Sungyeol, not even taking the slightest notice at Myungsoo’s horrified face, continued talking. “Here I was, literally just sending text after text to Niel about how this school was just full of snobs who couldn’t bother to say ‘excuse me’, while there was this kid sits on the ground without even thinking twice.”

                “In my defense, Mr. Yoon was glaring at me,” Myungsoo meekly offered. “Even if I wanted to shove you off I couldn’t.”

                Immediately, Sungyeol gasped and looked at him. “You wanted to shove me off?”

                “You looked kinda pissed off. And scary, if I remember correctly. I couldn’t figure out why back then, but I mean, now I have an idea.”

                “And here I was, about to confess to you. Wow, just my of luck to have the guy I like think I’m an .”

                “No, I thought you were an –“ Myungsoo tried saving himself before he fully comprehended what Sungyeol had just said. “Wait, what?”

                “You didn’t even let me finish my story,” Sungyeol said, rolling his eyes. “There was an entire other ten minutes about how I so gracefully apologized and the sad child said it was okay and ended up introducing me to his friends. And because of that, I decided to give the school another day, and just my luck, we ended up being partners for the history project. That’s when I found out you were the kid who refused to say hi to my mom when we made the neighborhood rounds.”

                “Did you just call me a sad child?” 

                “Did you see how much you moped during the game today?” Sungyeol laughed. “After Dongwoo’s question? You were a sad ball for literally the next three hours.”

                “Because I was scared, you guys were talking about me behind my back – “

                “It wasn’t even anything bad, okay?”

                “Then what was the question?”

                “Well – “ Sungyeol stopped and Myungsoo nearly screamed because he was so close. But instead, Sungyeol’s eyes narrowed at him and said, “No, I’m not going to tell you until you respond to what I said before.”

                “What?”

                “I flat out told you I liked you? Did you have a memory lapse?”

                “Oh.” Myungsoo stopped to think for a minute. “I thought I said I liked you back? I guess that never came out? Well, um, I think I like you and I think I actually just figured that out today because I was freaking the out whenever I was near you.”

                “See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Sungyeol grinned, nudging Myungsoo.

                “We’ll worry about feelings later,” Myungsoo shook off. “What was the question?”

                He had priorities.

                “Oh, that? Dongwoo just asked me who had the best .”

didN'T SEE THAT COMING DID U nah probably did

this was supposed to be a simple game of paranoia but it stemmed to be much greater and i'm not sure why really ? but it gets confusing in some parts so if you're confused just ask away bc this is just 3k of personified mess-ups

anyways i hope u guys had/have a great saturday/sunday!! ♥ don't let the dumb heat keep you back 

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