Author's Note: Short and sweet one-shot about Tabi. Again. Written out of pure boredom and because I made GTOP Promises with @kannie87 about posting this fluff if she updates her story, Get U Home. Really good, non-linear story. If you're not reading it, go read it now. Also, thank you, bb, for helping me write part of this, since I took your words verbatim.

Anyway, here it is. Not edited, just posted. And slightly disliked by the author (me) because it seemed rushed. 

So, enjoy. :]

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“You’re lying,” Seunghyun’s deep voice bellows in the room, echoing all around me, disbelief evident in it.  He stood on the other side of my kitchen, looking at me through the partition between the dining area (his side), and the kitchen (my side.)

The corners of my lip twitch up into a smile as I shake my head, as I set a heavy kettle of water on my now heated stovetop. 

“Nope,” I reply, quite content that I wasn’t. Lying, that is.

“B-but, I’ve never seen it!” he argues, too stubborn to just give in.

“Just because you’ve never seen it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, Seunghyun-ah,” I remind him, smile still on my face.

“Then why have you never shown me? Or even mention it?”

“Because you never asked!”

He stands there quietly for a while, arms resting on the countertop, jaw dropping slightly and eyes widening slightly, obviously dumbfounded by my revelation. He shakes the stupid - albeit cute - look off his face once the realization sinks into his mind.

“Yah! You’re only saying that because you wanted to impress Jiyong-ah!  You don’t really have a tattoo!” he says harshly, still not wanting to believe the truth.  Then, he drops his voice slightly, as if he’s embarrassed about what he’s going to say next. “Especially...under your....”

I chuckle a little, my head dropping.  My hair follows in the direction of my head, flowing as I shake it, still finding Seunghyun’s shock adorable and amusing. 

He’s wrong, though. I really never brought up the topic of my tattoo to impress Jiyong.  It was just something that was brought up through dinner that night. And randomly, at that.      He and I were having dinner with the rest of Big Bang and their dates, and the topic of tattoos came up somehow.

It was like any other dinner conversation, something that was brought up by Seungri, who had mentioned (or complained, rather) how Jiyongie’s tattoos seemed to be multiplying by the year.  Then, slowly but surely everyone elaborated on the topic, weighing in their opinions. It hadn't seemed like such a big deal to me, so I stayed quiet. I really wouldn't be telling people about my own ink just to impress, anyway. Let's face it, you mention having a tattoo, and people want to see it. I certainly wasn't about to flash half a restaurant just to indulge curiosities. 

Apparently, Jiyong was more than willing to share that bit of information with the rest of the rest of the world for me. 

“Yah, Sofia noona!” he shouted at me, above everyone else’s noisy chatter. His focus was right at me, eyes widening and hands waving erratically in the air across the table, trying to catch my attention. When I looked up, sliding a fork out of my mouth after indulging on a chocolate cake Seunghyun and I were sharing, he jabbed a boney, ring-accentuated finger in my direction.  “Why are you so quiet? Don’t you have a tattoo of your own?”

The silence around the table was short-lived, but still so palpable, you could taste. But the life picked back up a beat later, when it was revived by the soft hum of everyone’s surprise that Choi Seunghyun’s classy, sophisticated, and very proper girlfriend actually had something she was hiding. 

"I just don't get it," Seunghyun is now saying, bringing me back to our present conversation, in the calm of my kitchen. 

"What's there to get? It's not so exciting that I feel like I need to tell people," I respond to him, giving an apathetic shoulder shrug.  I step away from the front of the stove, to my right, so that I can lean over my countertop, hands resting under my chin, as we wait for our water to boil.

"That's the thing though!" he replies, gesturing wildly. "Don't people get tattoos to show them off? I mean, what's the point if you don't want someone to see it?”

“Some people have their reasons,” I say, shrugging my shoulders again. 

 “And Young Bae!" he exclaims, ignoring what I’d just said, his arms stretched out wide, as if gesturing his disbelief. "Before, you couldn't pay him to keep his clothes on! And now he's got a new one, and he's like a nun. It makes no sense!"

“He probably has his reasons for hiding those, too,” I remind him, referring to Youngbae’s newest tattoo, the one none of us besides Jiyong has seen yet. 

But again, he ignores me and continues his silly rant about tattoos and why people hide them. 

“And then there's you who had one, and I had no idea!” he exasperates, his deep groan booming around my dimly apartment. 

A smile creeps onto my face as I remember the surprised looks on everyone’s faces when the truth of my hidden tattoo was revealed. None was more surprised than Seunghyun’s, who actually leaned back and away from him, gobsmacked, like someone told him they sold all of his Be@rbricks. 

Now, though, I look up at him, watching as he cranes his neck to face upward, his well-sculptured jawline more definite as he does this. He looks pensive, not even bothering to look at me as he says that, like he’s trying to figure out why I’d hid it from him for so long.

After a while, he lowers his head, eyes already narrowed, and stares down at me, thick eyebrows knitted together, and says, “Yeah, you probably just said all of that to shut Jiyong up. Or impress him,” he scoffs.  “Really.”

I shake my head, laughing softly, as I stand up straight, dragging my arms across the counter and toward my body. 

“I assure you, nothing I said tonight at dinner was a lie or anything I made up to impress Jiyong,” I tell him honestly, my voice light, though I just wanted to be over with this conversation.  I look at him, the smile on my face growing wider with amusement.  “Besides, it’s you I want to impress. And only you.”

He keeps his eyes on me, the dumbfounded look back on his face. But this time, it’s slightly less dopey, but just as cute.  I can see his cheeks reddening, even under the dim glow of my stove light, the only lighting in the room.  

“Ahh...” he Seunghyun says shyly, the sound reverberating off the walls like a peaceful hum. He places a hand on the back of his neck and begins to rub the skin there awkwardly, probably fazed by my small confession.

I admit, I was blushing as I said that, too. Only because we hardly ever spoke our feelings to each other.  In fact, in the seven months we’d been together, we’d never been intimate with each other. 

Emotionally, anyway.  Expressing his feelings wasn’t a strong suit for either Seunghyun or me.

Physically, we were somewhat there. Physically, Seunghyun and I had no problems whatsoever with lip-locking, full-frontal making out, engaging in certain types of skinship.  Lock us in a dark room together, and it would be guaranteed that our lips could find their way to each other without any light. Only...the moment my hand slips under his shirt, gripping the hem and readying myself to strip him , he’ll pull away and insist we stop what we’re doing. Yeah, we were somewhat there physically.

The shrieking whistle of the tea kettle breaks our awkward silence, and then breaks my train of thought.  I stand up straight and walk back over to the stove and shut it off, before picking up the kettle and placing it on a cooling mat on the counter.  I can feel Seunghyun’s eyes still on me as I turn my back to him to fetch some mugs and a couple bags of Earl Grey from my cupboard. 

I turn back around and see a very intense-looking Seunghyun, eyebrows and jaw relaxed, his entire face looking unnerved, hands folded together.  His intensity, though, tips me off that something is on his mind.  Those dark, brown eyes just don’t stare heavily at you for with no motive.

“Something wrong?” I ask, arching an eyebrow.  I set the two mugs down on the counter  and drop the tea bags into the cups. 

As I concentrate on pouring water into the cup, I hear Seunghyun clear his throat in front of me. When I finish, I pass him his mug, as I start to sip from my own, still waiting for him to say something.  After a few more moments, he does.

“I want to see it,” he says, his long index finger, adorned with a ring, runs along the rim of his mug.  He blinks his eyes a couple of times, as if calculating his words, then decisively nods his head. “Yeah, I want to see it.”

“What?” I say. I crane my head outward, stretching my neck toward my boyfriend.

“I said,” his voice a little louder, as if to not be misunderstood or not heard, “I’d like to see your tattoo.”

“You do?” I ask him, the tone of my voice teasing.

He nods his head eagerly, like a little child. “You said you wanted to impress me. So...impress me.”

I scoff at him, closing my eyes.  “You know that would require me take my shirt off? Or lift it up to my bra, right?”

He smirks, an eyebrow pointedly lifting.  “Yes.”

“So you should know what I’ll say next, right?” 

His eyebrows furrowed, confused.

I lean over the counter to get closer to him, my chest resting on my arms, my toes touching the ground.  I look at up him seductively, lowering my voice.

“I’ll show you mine,” I say in a low, sultry voice. “If you show me yours first.”

Seunghyun takes a step away from the counter, his eyes wide.

“Show you what?” he asks, suspiciously.

“Show me your body,” I reply, jutting my chin in his direction.

“Why?” he asks in a low growl.

I shrug a shoulder, smirking because it’s my turn to now.  “Because, you want to see a very intimate part of my soul, so I want to see part of yours - your body.”

I lean backward, crossing my arms over my chest, watching the anxiety and worry flushing over his face.

“No,” he says firmly.

“But Seunghyun...” I try to whine.

He shakes his head only once.  “No.”

“But I thought you wanted to see my tattoo?” I ask him.

“I don’t want to see it that badly,” he sniffs, hurt by my request.

I cluck my tongue at him, my nostrils flaring at his stubbornness.  I narrow my eyes at him, eyes staring him down. 

“Kojitmal,” I simply say, shaking my head.

“Why is seeing my body so important to you?” he asks me, his tone serious.

“Why is seeing my tattoo so important to you?” I throw right back at him, my voice more teasing than serious. 

“Because I’ve never seen it!” he replies right away, frustrated with me. I already know that much.

“It’s not that amazing,” I reassure him, shaking my head incredulously at his current behavior.

“I won’t know unless I see it,” he argues, still.

“Then, same goes for you!” I spit back at him, lightly hitting the counter with my hand, our little argument escalating into something a little serious. “I’ve never seen it before, either. And I know you’ve been training with Hwang Ssabu-nim lately! So there’s really nothing you should be ashamed of! I can see the definition through your clothes. Why won’t you show me?”

“That’s different,” he sighs, exasperated.  He runs a hand through his short, dark hair, before sighing again, already anticipating my follow up question of ‘How?’  “Look, my body is sacred. I’m not just going to show it off to anyone, and for no reason. I’m not Youngbae, for crying out loud.”

“Oh, so dating you for seven months still just makes me ‘anyone’ to you, and not your girlfriend?” I snap at him.

“You’re putting words in my mouth,” he says, irritation clear in his voice.   He straightens out those fake glasses of his, which, because of my current irritation with him, just look stupid on him.  “What I’m saying is that it’s not necessary for me to take off my shirt. Not to me, anyway.”

“And it’s not necessary for me to show you my tattoo!” 

“It is, though,” he begs to differ. He and I mirror each other by raising an eyebrow at each other.  But then, he relents, his face relaxing from frustration down to minute worry.   “It’s just...it’s like you’re keeping a secret from me. Like, this was a tattoo you’re ashamed of because you got it done on a whim of a drunken night. Or an ex-boyfriend’s name. Either way, it’s something you want to keep secret, and I don’t know why.”

“Well,” I begin, staying as patient as I can with him, “To me, we’ve been together for about seven months, and we’ve never once slept together, Hyunie. And that’s frustrating to me because it’s like you don’t want to ever sleep with me at all.”

When I finish, I purse my lips together and wrap my hands around my warmer mug, holding on to it tightly as I walk out of my kitchen and into my living room to have a seat on my couch.  I hear Seunghyun’s footsteps lightly follow behind me. As I wait for him to join me, I place my mug on the coffee table in front of me before settling into my couch. He does the same once he reaches me.

“You know why we don’t sleep together, Sofia,” he reminds me, his voice low, but strained, as he’s fighting off a yawn while he stretches his arms and legs.  “And don’t think it’s because I don’t care about you or don’t want to at all.”

I shrug a shoulder, nonchalantly brushing my short, black bangs away from my eyes.   Then, I pick up a throw pillow resting on the free space of my couch and rest it on my lap. “Could’ve fooled me, though.” 

“It’s not that at all,” he tells me, reassures me after withdrawing a long sigh. He leans over, resting his elbows on his thighs, his hands clasped together. He rests his chin on his folded hands and turns to me.  “It’s just that, it’s still hard for me to come to terms with my body image. You know how insecure I can get.”

I smile sympathetically at him. I know. I’ve always known how insecure he’s been with his body image.  It’s something he was honest about since the beginning of our relationship, and something I honored and respected throughout the course of our relationship. Up until that night, however.  In my head, I decide to stop playing around with him, seeing as how I didn’t want to make this fight more of an issue than it already was, and I wanted to keep respecting him. 

I sigh, a subtle sign of my acceptance of defeat, as I brush my hair back and sweep it to rest on my right shoulder. Then, I lean into Seunghyun’s body, resting my head on his right shoulder.

“Fine,” I finally say softly.  “You don’t have to show me your body.”

Even though I’m not looking at him, I can feel his head lean down closer to mine, his warm breath spreading over the top of my head, a pair of lips kissing the crown.

“Thank you, jagi,” he whispers softly, as he readjusts his body so that he’s a little more comfortable.  “And I guess you won’t have to show me your tattoo, then. Just to be fair.”

I smile softly again as I lift my eyes up at him, only to find him staring back at me.

“Jeongmal?” I ask quietly, playing with the corners of my throw pillow. He closes his eyes and nods his head.

“Ne. We’ll just drop both issues,” he says, kissing my head again as I let out a content sigh. 

We fall into a more comfortable silence this time, as Seunghyun wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me in closer. As I listen to his breathing and press my ear against his chest, listening to his heartbeat, I start to feel Seunghyun playing with the ends of my hair. 

“Yah, what is it of anyway?” Seunghyun whispers so softly, it’s almost like he didn’t intend for me to hear it. 

“What?” I ask him as I place my hand on his abdomen.

“Your tattoo,” he replies simply.  “What is it of?”

“I thought we were dropping both issues, Seunghyun?” I say, sitting upright and away from him, the look on my face incredulous at his relentlessness. 

He shrugs his shoulder apathetically. Then, I just watch as he leans over toward the coffee table and reaches out for his tea. 

“I was just curious, thinking out loud,” he replies, as if that excuses everything.  He takes a sip of his warm drink, the looks over at me, both hands holding on to the mug.  “I mean, I know you’re hiding it from me for a reason. It is probably an ex-boyfriend’s name.”

“Yeah, and if you don’t drop this issue, I’ll dump you and return to that whose name I stupidly got inked on my skin.”

I don’t miss that he raises an eyebrow at me.  “So it is an ex-boyfriend’s name!” 

“Yah!” I exclaim in frustration. I tilt my head backward and pinch the bridge of my nose, repeatedly saying “aigoo” over and over again, frustrated with his behavior. Then, I slam the pillow that was resting on my lap, down on the free space beside me, angry that he would bring it up after saying he was going to drop the issue. I’d had enough.

I slide away from him on the couch as I roughly grab the hem of my top, jerking it upward to reveal my torso.  Then, I lift my left arm up, using my right hand to hold up, not only the cloth of my blouse, but also, lift the underwire of my bra.  And there, written in loopy English cursive were three words: Hope Springs Eternal.

Seunghyun, surprised by my sudden actions, takes his time for every action to sink into his head. I watch as he shakes the dumbfounded look off his face and squints his eyes and lifts the stupid glasses off his face to read the words over and over again. He mouths them out, like he’s sounding them out, silently, before he deliberates finally on the pronunciation.

“Hope springs eternal,” he says after a long while.  Then he repeats it before looking up at me.  “What does that mean?”

“Well, basically means no matter what happens in a person’s life, that person will always hope, always expect the best. Like, trying to be optimistic,” I explain, still holding up my shirt and bra.  “It’s an excerpt from Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man.” 

With my tattoo still revealed, Seunghyun invites himself to lean forward toward me, reaching out his hands so that his warm fingers can touch the dark ink, the two of us staying silent.  At first, his four fingers roamed over the words, written under the curvature of , curving right by my ribcage.  Then, he uses his index finger to trace each word: Hope, Springs, and then Eternal. 

When he’s finished, he looks up at me, a slight hint of worry in his eyes, and asks, in a voice so soft, “Why this?”

I smile softly, as he leaves his hand there, gingerly placing over my tattoo.

“I was going through a rough time, a long time ago before I met you,” I start to explain to him., finding it particularly easy opening up to him, seeing as how he and I both shy away from specifics of our past, and the promise of intimacy that brings us to it.   “It’s wasn’t anything major or life-threatening. It wasn’t as I seriously depressed or anything.  Just...typical post-graduate stress.”

I place a hand on his knee, which he covered with his free hand, giving it a little squeeze to encourage me to continue, that he’s right there if this gets too emotional for him.  I was comforted by the reassurance, only because he can’t say it to me out loud, I appreciate it a lot more when he expresses it through smaller gestures.  Letting go of my blouse so that it covers my hand, I smile up at him, and returns the favor. 

“It was just getting too hard to get by and live.  I couldn’t find a job, plus rent was getting hard to pay with the job I already had. And don’t get me started on that ex-boyfriend of mine, that good for nothing...” I stop my ranting and look up at Seunghyun, whose dark eyes are watching me with amusement. I giggle at the look on his face. “What?”

He shakes his head.  “Nothing,” he replies simply.  Then, he pats my tattoo again.  “It’s just that...this could’ve been his name instead of Hope Springs Eternal.”

I break out into a bigger laughter, shaking my head at him, as he joins in my laughter.  “I’m not that stupid, babo. I wouldn’t ever get that written on me, unless I knew it would be forever.” 

As his laughter dies down, he traces the words on my body again, before saying, “So you have this on you as a constant reminder to keep being positive.”

I nod my head. “Ne.” 

“Has it been working? By keeping you positive, I mean?” 

I think about this, tilting my head upward as I contemplate if it had any affect on me.  Then, I look back down at Seunghyun’s face - his soft features like his button nose and soft lips, and compare them with the sharp contrast of intense eyes and jaw structure.  Then, I follow the length of his arm as it leads me to his hand, still pressed against my own body, covered by my blouse. My eyes then travel back to his face, eyebrows arched in confusion.

“Mwo?” he asks simply.

“It has been working, I suppose,” my the right corner of my lips tugging upward into a slanted smile.   “I mean, it’s kept my head held up long enough to find the job I have now, which pays for this amazing apartment I have in a good neighborhood in Seoul.”

“I suppose that’s true,” he agrees with me, nodding his head.  

“It also kept me optimistic enough to know that I’d be able to find true love one day,” I say playfully, knowing this will get his attention.

“Has it?” he asks, an eyebrow arched.

I shrug my shoulder passively, ignoring his look of mock hurt.

“I’ll let you know when I find out,” I reply nonchalantly, leaning toward my dresser for my tea.  I sip on it, feeling his eyes boring into me.  Then, I finally look at him, a smile playing on my lips.  “Mwo?”

“Yah!” he scolds, pushing me softly where his hand laid. I shake my head at him, laughing at his bruised ego. 

“I’m only joking, babo,” I tell him, leaning in for a kiss.  He leans forward, too, meeting my lips with his own. As we pull apart, I tell him, “Finding you was the hope I was looking for.”

He finally pulls his hand away from my body and wraps his arm around my shoulder, pulling me closer to his side before kissing my temple. 

“I’m glad I could be of help,” he says, voice deep but low.  “And thank you for sharing that story with me.”

I turn to smile at him again.  “Thanks for listening.”

Quickly, he recoils he arms from my shoulders and gets up from his seat, an arm reaching out toward me. The expression on his face is lit up with excitement, a wide grin beaming from his lips.

“Come on, ka ja,” he says, as I scrunch my eyebrows at him, amused with his sudden burst of excitement. 

“Where are we going, Hyunie?” I ask him as I place my tea on the coffee table, then give him my now free hand before he pulls me up.

“We’re going to the bedroom,” he says, still not giving me any substantial information. When he sees the question in my eyes, his smile grows wider, before he leans down to me to kiss me. When we pull apart, he says, “I’ll show you mine, since you showed me yours first.”

“What?” I ask, rooted in my spot by confusion. And just as quickly as he jumped up out of his seat, Seunghyun, spins on his feet, his back now to me, as he quickly makes his way toward my bedroom.

I stare down at the ground, eyebrows scrunched, wondering what had just happened, when I hear him in the hallway, calling out to me. 

“Come on, jagi!” he hollers.

And as I look up at his direction, I only catch a glimpse of him walking into the darkness of my hallway, spotting more flesh than clothes. And that’s when it lands on me, Seunghyun’s blue button-down shirt, and it finally clicked. He’s shirtless.

“Yah! Choi Seunghyun! Jjinja?!” I ask as I begin to chase down my topless boyfriend.

Hope springs eternal, indeed. 

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Hope you enjoyed it. Review, please and thank you. :]