SeulRene, requested by Yolongsy <3

“Good job, Seulgi.” Irene nodded, panting, any attempt at seizing air being stolen as her eyes went cloudy with exhaustion. She spoke to Seulgi through her fatigued reflection in the mirror.
The latter stuttered, with a sweaty strand of the flowing, newly dyed blonde hair from her crown stuck to her temple. “Thank you.” Every swallow came hoarse, came difficultly.

They were to come back as a subgroup, see, two years after Red Velvet’s debut and around January time. Working together thrilled them immensely; no two had been alongside each other longer, or felt more protected by each other. But they both knew they pushed just a tad bit too hard.

“Good job.” Irene muttered again, as if fully supported by the phrase, breathing with even more gravelly strength than she had just danced with through her petite nose. Imprinted rap lyrics stung at the base of her tongue. “We,” she swallowed delicately, blinking the foggy blots on her eyesight away, “we probably don’t need to practise that anymore.”

It was then that she turned towards Seulgi, the non-reflected Seulgi. She seemed a few hundred times more exhausted in her fully dimensioned form than that from the mirror, and Irene knew must have been killing her and blood must be pounding even more so in her nose from all of the vocal techniques she had to muster. “Yeah.” Seulgi almost spat getting herself to utter a word, creasing her lips together and trying at a smile.
She looked so shattered, and even more shattered when she put everything into masking it, and Irene furrowed her brows with so much concern that it lodged a real pit of guilt in Seulgi’s stomach. They both knew, rammed right to the back inches of their minds, that they really did not need to put those extra few hours in – yet they did. They always did. As if, constantly, they wanted to prove that they wouldn’t give up on one another, or let each other down. They danced through their blood, through unconfessed love.

A bleat from Irene’s rucksack broke away a part of her cloudy daze. Seulgi softly heaved in a strained breath and teetered towards the purple bag; her face distorted a bit as she fished out the leader’s phone to find many, many texts in their group chat, littered with increasing concern; the two hadn’t noticed these loud bleats, due to the muffling a very loud MR brought over them. Irene titled her head, and Seulgi accepted a call from Joy with great haste.

“Sooyoung-ah.” She exhaled, her breathing still dappled with gravel.

“You started practising at three in the afternoon.” Their maknae claimed in a tone so fuelled by worry that you’d mistake her for being furious, “It’s what- nearing 2am now? What…what have you guys been doing?”

Seulgi’s eyes stung sore, threatening to shut and protruding red. “Right,” she pinched the bridge of her nose, “Right. I don’t know what happened. We – majorly – lost track of time.”

All she could remember was the determination in Irene’s strong eyes as she drained her soul into perfecting herself, as if she wasn’t already there. She wrung out all she had for Seulgi.

Joy chuckled a forced chuckle that was aching, sending a blurrier and louder form of Seulgi’s statement to Wendy somewhere in the room, then asking, “Have you just been practising this whole time, without a single break?”
Seulgi didn’t have a single alive vessel in her neck in order to respond with a white lie. Irene was nervously scratching at the swollen bruises on her knees a few paces away. She lurched forwards and towards the younger, though it remained to be a gentle action; hushed, “Is something wrong over there?”

“It’s been years since you properly celebrated Christmas.” Joy’s particular words gnawed sensitively and echoed in the dancer’s mind. There wasn’t time enough to respond in any way to Joy’s anxious and concerned sigh before the receiver clicked and the line hummed lifeless. Seulgi let her pupils sway before fixing on her companion, “Not over there,” and Irene’s tenser shoulders released, though it could only ever be brief. “But, look - certainly with us.”

Bae Joohyun had seen Kang Seulgi fatigued after hours, but it only seemed to be this moment where her thick strength disintegrated. And her tears fell as gently as the first snow.

--

Two days later, and Irene really cannot sleep. Of course, Seulgi can; Wendy’s in the kitchen at some ungodly hour, fumbling with mince pies and pumpkin juice and whatnot, and Joy is snoring so oddly elegantly. Insomnia makes your sheets feel clammy and skin crawl – the air hangs heavy, the very faint light that drips in in angles across the modest window blinds seems deadly annoying. But tracing the light and seeing where it casts over Seulgi’s sleeping complexion, Irene finds it enticing. In that corner, across the bunk, the taller girl with her sharp eyes screwed shut, something about the seeping, yellow street light makes Irene want to thank it for indulging in their company. For running over Seulgi’s stunningly carved little face.

Irene doesn’t know what encouraged her to wake this sleeping beauty up. “Seulgi-ah.”

It took a harsh pinch on Seulgi’s adorably pointed ear five minutes later to finally get her to bat open an eyelid. Her groan was muffled and pathetic, as she rustled her face into her teddy bear-print pillow, and Irene chuckled quietly. “Seulgi-ah, it’s not even dawn yet, but wake up.”

“Why?” Platinum blonde hair was cast over the younger girl’s heavy, sleepy eyes as she groggily disassembled herself from this (as always) bizarre sleeping position. Irene could only quirk a little eyebrow mischievously at her, staring a-grin. “Joohyun unnie, what’s up? You look like a maniac.”

With a nod to the outside world and a thrilling urge to do something reckless, the leader exhaled. “It’s been years since we’ve properly celebrated Christmas.”

--

Seulgi never knew a dark sky to seem so enchanted. In her lifespan, she had worked through many dark skies, many pitch-black early mornings in frantic sheens of sweat, many collapses into her bed sheets without a light to be seen; never had she been to a place like this. Commonly, she had been acquainted with adverts displaying in full glory the place where dreams come true, or the happiest place on earth. She had shrugged. Always, through the deep, blurry strain and loneliness of a young trainee, she’d been only exposed to limited environments. And yet, as if a motto to herself, she had always been happy. Such places as Disneyland only seemed like a largely emphasized fantasy restricted to the very lowest ages, but now pacing forth surrounded by silhouettes of cartoon characters and the most captivating nebula lights, a new form of understanding blinked in her mind.

was hanging open, stunned, dry.

Irene laced her frail, slightly chilly fingertips between the younger girl’s – Seulgi, who was now jailed within her eight year old self – and poked slightly at her dropped chin. “Have you never been before?” she cooed.
She hadn’t, and Seulgi began to rapidly shake her head, but wondered whether this was the correct situation for a vigorous shake or nod. She then went with a short nod, all the while her eyes twinkling and dazed.

“So,” Seulgi began, and Irene felt Seulgi’s shivering pulse through her hand, in complete contrast to her wide, gleaming and overtaking smile. “What do you want to do first?” There was something odd in her tone. It felt…hollow, empty, verging on ‘curious’ but not quite out of ‘timid’. It was as if after nine years of confinement and becoming accustomed to it, she was finally encountering freedom. And still after testing the waters she was unsure. Even being sharp and emotionally strong, change was never something she agreed with too well.

Though powerfully flooding her vision were lights and dreams, all set in pastel-painted plastic over fairytale-esque streets. Her eight year old self was willing to explode.

“Let’s start by warming you up.” Irene grinned charmingly and hung her whole weight over Seulgi’s side, steering her forth into a land amplified out of beloved childhood storybooks.

“This is so cool!” Irene exclaims excitedly, voice decorated with her adorable snort-laugh, kitten eyes alive as they dance around one of the merchandise shops. This one is decorated to look like Minnie Mouse’s house; she remembers it somehow well. She remembers herself fifteen years beforehand being incredibly intrigued by that fake, giant paper cake baking away within a gloriously pink fake oven, and even though clearly it has she feels as if nothing has changed.
Seulgi loves her leader in this maknae form the most. Indeed, after years of giving the older girl some incredibly confused looks, watching her laugh endlessly at a simple light-switch prank to the point where tears leaked with sparkles from her eyes, she thought she had seen the very extent of her childlike nature. Though Disneyland was a whole new level. A whole new super-level, and all it could ever do was make her smile.

She’d been completely mesmerised by Irene’s joyfulness and beauty that she didn’t notice a person trying to carve his way past, so with an exchange of hesitant “Sorry”s they weaved through. The bear-like girl breathed more closely to Irene’s ear. “Everyone here speaks like Seungwan.” She hushed, laughing, and Irene nodded with more animation than she’d ever seen in her life.

“Seungwan!” Irene paused, as if biting into a familiar but forgotten taste; “I wonder how her and maknae took our note.” Seulgi responded with a knitted brow, before a wintry draft coursed through the open door and she shuddered bitterly again. Irene took her hand again, naturally, guiding her towards something she’d noticed Seulgi flickering glances towards since they’d entered the shop.

“I’ll buy it for you. It’d definitely keep you warm.” Her grin was very petite – she anticipated a generous, unique burst of laughter from Seulgi next and as always, it came, and it rung through her ear like a pleasant little melody.

“Oh my god, a Winnie the Pooh onesie?” Seulgi scoffed in between laugh-coughs.

“Please, don’t act like you don’t desperately want it.”

Irene held her laughter within as she stared blankly at the taller girl. The urge to laugh tingled ferociously in her neck and she was worried she’d exert it suddenly all at once. Seulgi’s eyes formed into crescents alongside her amusement, and pursing her lips she turned from the crimson and amber bear nightwear to this ridiculous inner six year old she’d flown to Orlando with.
Her laugh burst out of her like a distorted choking squeal, but she didn’t even care because Irene’s laugh after being suppressed sounded twice as weird as hers. “I do, Joohyun unnie,” she spoke with mock haste as Irene brought the onesie down from a hanger, “I do, I do, I really do.”

“I never knew you liked candy floss this much.” Irene had stated to lock Seulgi out of this unusual little daze, and she’d blinked in confusion, studying the subtle and tender movements of the older girl’s face. “Your head’s been tilting towards that candy floss stand since we first walked through those gates.” Irene reasoned. Seulgi didn’t know whether it was the embarrassment of being so observant or the nip of the cold that reddened Irene’s cheeks all of a sudden, but she reasoned with the weather.

Seulgi spoke warmly. “How do you notice so many things about me?”  

“I do?” Irene’s eyes widened a tad and her youthful laugh became sharper and more nervous, but her grip on Seulgi’s fingers only increased. She rambled into another topic, drunk on this feeling of childhood. “Do bears like candy floss? Did Winnie? I though Winnie the Pooh liked honey.”

“You always have,” the younger girl hummed, tailing back onto the actual conversation, as she broke her hand away. The petite little Pooh bear ears on her hood had fallen – she toyed with them for a moment. When she linked hands with Irene again her hand shivered a slight bit more, so by instinct she blew on her palm and affirmatively closed it over the soft skin, continuing, “It’s really touching. It’s like I always feel understood by someone.”

They shared a little moment, face to face as the ‘street’ hubbub continued around them, seeming far, far away from them.

Irene broke the silence and brought them closer to the stall. Startling the grown man behind the little pine counter dressed proudly as a Christmas elf with their two ethereal, beautiful smiles, he stuttered something neither of them could comprehend. They looked bemused, but he did, too, staring with a dropped jaw at Irene in her stunning little purple coat, this gawp breaking into an endless smile as his eyes scanned over Seulgi in her Pooh onesie.

Irene tilted her head, blinking slowly at Seulgi with so much affection. “Which colour would you like?” On brightly painted shelves stood outsized pastel sachets of fluffy white, pink, green and blue.

But Seulgi had long before made her candy floss decision. Just pink. Pink was Irene.

The statement was ready to be said, but alongside a tiny mumble she lingered. She shook her head while her hopes burned sour and shy into her tongue. “Let’s go with blue and green, so we don’t forget the others back at home.” She laughed after too much of a pause.

Irene giggled cutely anyway. And absurdly, the elf man seemed ferociously lit with twinkles in his eyes, suddenly laughing too while practically drooling over the leader from his stand. Seulgi dismissed the unwanted pang in her stomach. “But that just makes me feel bad, Seulgi-ah. It’s like…we’ve totally abandoned them but, hey! At least we remember them through mainly air, sugary fluff which practically tastes of nothing.”

Pink was the only colour that stood out to Seulgi when she stared into the enchanting Disney castle lights, and the only thing that covered her vision when she closed her eyes. “Pink is pronounced the same in English, anyway.” She grinned, shrugging with her final sentence and attempting to seem nonchalant.

“Pink it is.” Irene’s eye smile overtook every other dynamic on her face; she turned with this eye smile to the elf man. He, already, had rashly yanked down a pastel pink candy floss packet, so obviously he had been studying their conversation with slightly startling detail. Neither thought to mind, though; he wasn’t within their bubble.

Seulgi tore open the packet with the greatest haste once it had fallen into her hands, a hefty amount of fluff into and yet still pulling off this side of finesse.

“Shame there wasn’t a tangerine colour.” Irene murmured. With a shock crossing through her veins, Seulgi wondered if ever-perceptive Irene had picked up why she’d desperately chosen pink.

Kang Seulgi had become very used to dulling that firework-like wave and prickle in her stomach whenever Bae Joohyun initiated close skinship with her. At first her mind had been bombarded with questions and bleating alarms, for this beautiful girl she’d only barely met was tugging at her fingers and hanging onto her waist, but years into knowing her it just became one of those things that softened right underneath your skin. Irene was the type of person who’d wake up Joy with a solid kiss on the cheek, or pat Wendy’s out of habit without even realising she was; she was an interestingly rare one, in that way.
But when Irene playfully pressed her lips to Seulgi’s smiling cheek while moving closer to the main night-time parade, it still burned. It burned even more so when they were alone, and she wished it wouldn’t. As a group they’d built their own little circle fit for the four of them and had assumed the role of sisters – unfortunately Seulgi, since day one, had slapped herself for feeling anything remotely intimate.

As it became more apparent that the youngest children and elderly visitors had left the premises, and now only the more stronger bred young adults stood illuminated by wintry Disney lights, Seulgi’s eyes became drowsy and blurry. It was too late for a person so fond of sleeping.
She let Irene’s firm, loving grip on her wrist drag her across this fairytale land, people chiming through well-wishes in character costumes all blurring into one cherished memory. Irene had a humoured grin on her face, feeling the heavier stumble a step or two after her. Bewildered Seulgi had always been exceedingly adorable and had warmed her into the tingling crevices of her chest, making those tired evenings more bearable, but bewildered Seulgi in a Winnie the Pooh onesie – that was a level of cuteness she never knew possible or ever thought she’d encounter.

“People are going to think you’re drunk.” She laughed. But her laugh was this expressive, strange combination of elegant, timid and maniacal. The lethargic bear clutching onto her paused and rapidly led her back like a heavyweight.

“Joohyun unnie, Look! They’re all lining up. Gross.” Seulgi pointed towards a mob of couples across the ‘street’, waiting to stand underneath this rather decadent and unrealistic piece of giant mistletoe.

And Irene laughed, all of a sudden pecking her light-heartedly on the cheek, but so softly, and Seulgi knew she should’ve seen that coming what with the theme. Yet in this preoccupied state of sleepiness she couldn’t muster any sort of cover up for how shocked she was every time Irene did something like this.
Years and years into this friendship, this explosive, disconnected push and pull of romantic feelings, drowsy Seulgi figured she couldn’t contain herself any longer. Her sharp, striking eyes glowed. Her whole body froze.

“Seulgi, are you okay?” Irene looked a slight bit embarrassed, but that went unnoticeable compared to Seulgi’s flush of abrupt crimson.

“You kissed me on the cheek.” She specified, quietly, and she only wished she could conceal how much she was beaming.

Irene quirked a delicate little eyebrow on her delicate face, looking at Seulgi’s bashful smile with the most delicate eyes. “Yes?” It was a very confused response.

A bell tolled somewhere surrounded by a unified cheer, and probably manufactured snow started to trace over their shoulders. The wind blew in well-tempered gusts.

“Nothing, nothing,” Seulgi shook her head, this time in the correct situation for a head shake, determinedly spinning the shorter leader round to face her. Complicating matters and being honest wasn’t so important to her anymore as long as this girl she loved so much was with her. “Merry Christmas.” Irene’s petite size fit so well into Seulgi petite frame when she brought her into a hug, perfectly resting her long, strong arms over Irene’s ever so gentle snow-dusted shoulders. Ever so caring shoulders.

And Irene was still incredibly confused, but she almost leapt. “Merry Christmas to you too, Seulgi.” It was like a whisper. Something within her tightened . Beside her, she picked up a sweet scent of sugar and knew the other, candy floss adoring girl was smiling so widely into this hug. Irene laughed at nothing in particular; she couldn’t quite remember when she’d last felt this unexplainably happy. Confessions could come later, but her heart was on fire.

Like pure nature with Seulgi, it always felt as if she had this whole chamber in her heart reserved just for her.

A/N: First of all, SORRY. This is so late for Christmas and even after so much checking over this I still don't feel like it's completely right. I wish I was better at fluff lol. Merry very belated Christmas everyone and Happy New Year, I hope 2015 treats you well ^^