The rain is falling heavily over their heads and the honking of cars echoes in the distance.  An umbrella lands head first onto the wet pavement.  Kyungsoo hates the feeling of clothes soaking through and plastering against skin, but he pushes down the discomfort in an effort to look at the young woman equally drenched, of not more than him, breathtakingly beautiful and currently screaming herself hoarse in front of him. 

 

Why do you care, she cries, what the hell does this have to do with you?

 

Everything, he wants to yell back at her.  Everything that involves you, and your stupid decisions that you make thinking they are right for everyone’s happiness, matters to me.

 

He instead says nothing, and watches the little final speck of light in her eyes flicker, and then die out. 

 

Once we marry, we’ll immediately move out.  No. 

 

Our family has always been a burden to your family.  You were, but I never complained about it.

 

I’ll stop being the thorn on your side.    I’ll stop liking you.

 

Don’t go, his heart betrays his mind and tries to voice it out of his lips, but they clamp together like stone, hard and unyielding. 

 

I like you.

 

I like you. 

 

This matter has nothing to do with you anymore, she turns away, nothing at all!

 

He grabs a hold of her wrist, pulling her back and traps her in the iron-lock cage that is his arms.  Her skin is icy cold in his grasp but it is so soft, so delicate, with the faint beating of her pulse rate strong and whole underneath his thumb and Kyungsoo has never felt so alive. 

 

“I like you!”  He rages to an indignant Joonmyun.  “You cannot like someone else, you cannot even be thinking of marrying someone else, because I like you and you are only allowed to like me!” 

 

Don’t smile in front of me, because it makes me want to kiss it off and keep that happiness for myself.

 

Don’t cry in front of me, because it makes me want to hug you and beat the bastard – that would be me —who doesn’t deserve to see your tears.

 

“The fact that you're even thinking of being with someone other than me!”  Kyungsoo says, rainfall clouding his vision as he desperately finds purchase in the memory of her turning back to him, affection in her eyes and a secret confession through her lips. 

 

I love you, Kyungsoo-yah.

 

Because it makes me want to run after you and god forbids if he is ever proven real, never let you go for the rest of our lives. 

 

He doesn't even register if he says those last words out loud, but nonetheless lays his heart on the table.  Red, vulnerable, and all hers. 

 

She takes it, cradles it like a child, and kisses him back.

 

Her lips are as soft as he remembers, tasting like rain, forgiveness and love.  Kyungsoo holds her closer, losing himself in flushed state of her cheeks and the way their breaths seem to mingle and wrap around each other with every parting.

 

This is … the third time we’ve kissed, he hears Joonmyun whisper in a hushed voice. 

 

And I don’t intend this to make it my last, Kyungsoo wants to say but instead he responds, in a murmur much like the calming drizzles of a receding storm, “It’s okay, you can stop counting now.”

 

 

---

 

Note: inspired by Itazura No Kiss and that ridiculously cheesy monologue by Baeksoochen on SSTP.  I still preferred Baek's take, but Soo fits the role of Naoki too well to change characters.  Haha.