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Yoonji has never felt closer to needing an intervention. She tries telling herself there’s no reason why she should be sitting on top of the closed toilet inside Jimin and Taehyung’s bathroom while the rest of their little group is having dinner in their kitchen, spending her time commiserating over her current situation. Absolutely none. She had just needed a moment to breathe, and that’s really the only reason why she’d stepped out of the room with a mumbled excuse and locked herself in.
Denial doesn’t help. She resists the urge to bury her hands in her hair and pull, a small frustrated groan still slipping past her lips as she holds her flushed face between her palms. It was getting ridiculous. Namjoo hadn’t even said anything too bad, this time - she’d just leaned over the table, so close to Yoonji’s face they could have bumped foreheads, and fixed her bangs with a delicate brush of her slender fingers. She’d pulled back before Yoonji could react, a dimpled smile on her face.
For one horrible moment, she'd thought Namjoo would curl the strand behind her ear. She’d been bracing for it, even, but Namjoo had limited herself to just pulling her hair out of her eyes as Yoonji was busy cutting the meat that Soojin had set out for all of them.
“Thank you,” she’d managed to croak out, and Namjoo had replied with a bright and cheery “No problem, unnie,” and Yoonji had been almost bowled right over by how much she wanted to just grab Namjoo’s lovely face and -
Anyway. It’s been a difficult month.
The flirting hadn’t been that bad before Namjoo had gone and stayed with her grandparents for the whole summer break. To be honest, Yoonji would very much like to blame her current situation on the technological divide between hyper-modern cities and rural areas with little to no infrastructure. As a general topic, it's probably something there’s essays and dissertations about - but the way it applies to her is a lot more personal. There are some very specific joys of modern technology she cannot help but be thankful for, like shiny new recording equipment, or the electronic keyboard that lets her practice playing well into the night. She just hadn’t thought selcas made that specific list until she’d been deprived of them for four long summer weeks.
See, if only Namjoo had sent pictures, Yoonji had complained to Soojin - well, she knows she still wouldn’t have been at all prepared for everything that followed. But the fact that Namjoo hadn’t spammed her Kakaotalk with her outfits and her jewelry and the clips in her hair to ask for Yoonji’s opinion on them for four long weeks had been a tragedy in and of itself - mostly because it meant Yoonji couldn’t even see her best friend through pixels on a screen while she was away on vacation and Yoonji was stuck in Seoul.
Namjoo had spent all of their summer break at her grandparents’ house out in the countryside, with little to no phone service and absolutely no wifi. Meanwhile, Yoonji had spent those same weeks being dragged out to bars and food stands along the street by Taehyung and Jimin and the sheer power of their puppy eyes combined with whiny calls of noona, come with us, come on, you’ll have fun, we promise!
They were right, and she did have fun - but she’d never spent more time glued to her phone than she had in those four weeks, waiting for Namjoo’s twice-a-week-when-I-can-bike-to-the-only-spot-with-phone-service-here text updates. Yoonji had been looking forward to spending time with her all semester, both of them so busy with classes and assignments during the last month of uni before break it felt like they hadn’t hung out in years - and then it turned out she would also have to miss Namjoo’s selcas and random song links and cute pictures of the dogs she meets while biking near the park spamming her chat, and not only Namjoo herself.
Namjoo's chosen method of communication at the time had been postcards, all of them depicting the countryside and forests near her grandparents' house. When the first one had arrived, reading miss you!! followed by a small doodle of a cat in Namjoon’s familiar, neat handwriting, Yoonji had stuck it to their fridge and resolutely ignored Soojin’s pointed eyebrow waggle in her direction. It was soon joined by a second, a week later, and then a third, and soon Yoonji and Soojin were betting on whether Namjoo or the last postcard would get to Seoul first.
Yoonji got her answer to that in the form of Namjoo herself, showing up at their doorstep with a backpack on her shoulder, her train ticket still poking out from the little pocket on her half open button-up shirt. She had been leaning on her suitcase, and almost tipped it over with her as she stumbled when Yoonji opened the door.
“You’ve got mail, unnie,” she’d said, pulling herself upright again, with a grin on her sweet face that Yoonji hadn't seen in way too long. The curve of Namjoo’s smile was familiar like an old sweater, plump lips open to reveal straight, white teeth, but the rest of her was - just a little different, and Yoonji couldn’t help but take in every little change in her appearance.
Namjoo’s hair was shorter and dyed back from blonde to its natural black, tied up in a little ponytail, a few strands escaping the hair tie and framing her face. Her eyes glinted in the artificial light of Yoonji’s apartment entrance from behind her sunglasses, perched on the tip of her button nose as it wrinkled with the force of her smile, and her skin had that lovely golden glow Namjoo always got whenever she stood out in the sun for more than five minutes.
The shorts she had been wearing left her long, long legs bare, showing off her tan and the muscles she got from biking everywhere all the time. Her arms and shoulders looked a lot more defined, too, and for a moment, Yoonji wanted nothing more than to undo the last few buttons on Namjoo’s shirt to find out if she’d gone and gotten abs in the four weeks she hadn’t seen her. She tried not to stare too much in that general direction, afraid she’d get too fixated on the curve of Namjoo’s breasts, her cleavage on show a lot more than usual. She looked gorgeous. Yoonji could do little else but gape in her general direction, reaching out for the postcard in her hands with a weak “Thank you, Joo-yah, but did you come here straight from the station?”
Namjoo had dragged her suitcase into the apartment without much ceremony, her answer half-muffled by the sound of wheels on her floor. All Yoonji could catch was something that sounded like I missed you, having no time to react to it before Namjoo had kept going.
“And anyway, your apartment is on the way back to mine, and I wanted to come surprise you since I knew you would be home! I haven’t seen you in so long. I almost forgot what your pretty face looked like, unnie,” Namjoo had concluded, stopping the suitcase in its tracks. She’d turned in her direction, wrapping her arms around Yoonji’s shoulders and leaning back to look at her, underlining that last sentence with a sly smile and a wink.
Yoonji’s mouth had dropped open, unable to answer as she glanced down at herself, even as her arms flew up to circle Namjoo’s waist, looking for contact without a second thought. She’d been wearing a pair of threadbare sleep shorts she’d had for years that were maybe a little too tight and a tank top she’d stolen from Jimin that was definitely an outlier in her wardrobe of oversized shirts. She’d been busy trying to clean, and her hair had been held up by a pencil, her overgrown undercut peeking under the hastily-made bun. She knew she had huge dark circles under her eyes, and a pimple above her left eyebrow, and she was probably sweaty enough she needed a shower.
All in all, she looked like she’d been run over by a cart of cleaning supplies, and yet - and yet, Namjoo had winked at her, sounding completely serious, and a lot flirty. She’d winked.
That had only been the beginning.
The rest of the evening had gone by the same way their hangouts always did. Namjoo had sat down on Yoonji’s couch while Yoonji made a list of all the new music releases Namjoo had missed during break, the two of them gushing over their shared passion and friendly ribbing at each other’s tastes. Even through the buzz of excitement of having her best friend back, though, some part of Yoonji could still feel Namjoo’s arms around her, the way she’d winked replaying on a loop in the back of her brain.
Back then, she’d chosen to shut that train of thought as quickly as she could, choosing to focus on finally having Namjoo back in Seoul, dismissing the moment as Namjoo being weirdly more affectionate than usual.
From a purely detached standpoint, Yoonji knows Namjoo is a bit of a flirt. She wasn’t when they’d first met, back at the beginning of university, when she was still coming into herself and was a lot more closed off, with Yoonji and with everyone else. Namjoo had confessed to her, after a year of knowing each other, that for a long time she’d felt like a lot - too tall, too clumsy, too excitable, too quick to speak her mind. Witnessing her settle into her skin felt like something that was supposed to happen all along, like watching the sun peek out from behind the clouds after a storm. Yoonji had looked over at her sitting in the library one day, sunset gold catching on Namjoo's freshly-bleached blonde hair, and realized with a start that she’d forgotten to shield her eyes along the way.
She just hadn’t expected Namjoo would ever turn the look she reserves for people that buy her drinks at clubs (or people she buys drinks for) on her. She’d been wholly unprepared for the smiles, and the compliments, and the teasing comments that veered a little off of purely platonic - especially when they’d all come out of nowhere, appearing right after Namjoo came back from break.
(Or maybe not right out of nowhere. Namjoo has called her cute, and pretty, and has complimented her before - it just never felt quite like this. Yoonji has no idea whether it’s her own fault, her own feelings growing too big to handle after spending one month apart, or if Namjoo really is acting different than usual.)
And now she’s waxing poetic about it while sitting on a closed toilet.
Before she can let out another groan, her train of thought is interrupted by a knock.
“Yoonji-yah? You there? Jungkook has been cooking most of it, but there’s still some meat left to grill-”
“Yeah, yeah, unnie, I’m here,” Yoonji sighs, getting up. No time to mope, it seems. When she opens the door, Soojin is looking at her weird. She barely bites back a what and tries to sidestep her as she walks out, but she’s stopped by Soojin’s hand on her shoulder.
“Everything okay?”
Her perfectly shaped eyebrows are a little furrowed, and she looks legitimately worried, and now Yoonji is going to have to tell her that she’s having a perfectly reasonable freakout over her best friend that she’s in love with flirting with her constantly, thank you very much.
“You know,” she says, almost whispering, and Soojin’s perfect eyebrows furrow a little more.
“I don’t, actually,” she replies, matching her volume. “Why are we whispering?”
“She could hear us,” Yoonji hisses, willing Soojin to understand who she means through inflection only. Thankfully, being roommate with someone for years has its perks - Soojin’s expression straightens out and then curls again, this time into a smirk.
“And what’s the problem with that,” Soojin teases her, biting back laughter. She’s still whispering, though, so Yoonji can’t be too mad about it. “I knew it. Are you having another crisis?”
Yoonji almost doesn’t dignify her with a response, shoving her hands in the pockets of her shorts just to have something to do, but Soojin’s face is expectant and Yoonji knows she wants an answer before she lets her go back to the kitchen with everyone else. Considering how much she’s been complaining to her and Hosook about this whole situation, she kind of owes it to her.
“I just wanna know what her deal is,” Yoonji groans, still trying her best to keep her voice low. “She can’t be serious,” she continues, ignoring the way Soojin purses her lips at the words. They’ve had this argument before, and Soojin knows not to push her and Hosook’s Namjoo Is Actually Extremely Serious agenda too much - not when Yoonji is mostly convinced Namjoo has been just joking around and teasing her all this time.
(She isn’t sure, of course, and she also knows Namjoo would never try to hurt her. They like to poke fun at each other and argue and bicker, but she’d never be this casually cruel. Either she thinks Yoonji doesn’t mind, or she doesn’t know how much it’s been affecting her, even if the chances of that are so very slim. Namjoo is a little oblivious, sometimes, but there’s no way she’s missed Yoonji’s pink cheeks and the flustered faces Yoonji knows she makes whenever Namjoo flirts with her.)
“You could ask,” Soojin replies, and this, too, is something that’s been mentioned countless times before. Yoonji opens her mouth to reply exactly that, but Soojin’s hand that’s still on her shoulder grips her a little tighter in a request to hear her out. “No, listen - she’s only like this with you, and you know it. I just think that if it’s gotten to the point of hiding in bathrooms, then maybe it might be time to confront her about it. If only to protect your own feelings in all of this.”
At the mention of feelings, Yoonji sighs, resisting the urge to open her mouth and let out a louder, frustrated screech. Soojin knows how she feels about Namjoo - because of course she could immediately tell when Yoonji had become stupid enough to catch feelings for her best friend. She only mentions them outside of subtle jokes when she really, really needs to. Apparently, right now the situation calls for it.
All in all, though, she has a point. Yoonji has never felt the need to hide in a bathroom because of this before - let alone hide in a bathroom from Namjoo for any reason. She’s going to ignore the way Soojin mentions Namjoo is only like that with Yoonji, because she can’t be sure about it, but everything else is accurate. She knows she has to hand it to her.
“You might have a point,” Yoonji begins, and Soojin’s face brightens immediately at the words. “But how would I even ask? Hey, Namjoo, what the fuck, care to tell me what’s going on? And when would I even bring that up?”
She lets just the slightest amount of whining tinge her voice. She knows Soojin is fully in her unnie mode, now, and after years of being roommates Yoonji can tell just by the line of her mouth - which means it doesn’t matter if Yoonji wants to spend the next three hours whining about this or slam her head against a wall or groan in frustration or just drink wine with her while they complain. Soojin will still try to help.
“No time like the present,” Soojin shoots back. “Just think about it, next time she flirts - just ask her hey, Namjoo, do you mean that? It doesn’t have to be too complicated.”
“Doesn’t mean it still isn’t hard,” Yoonji mutters, eyes downcast. More than just hard, it’s terrifying - there’s the very real possibility that she might end up making herself more vulnerable than she wants to.
Would it be that bad, though? To be vulnerable with her, a little voice in the back of her mind whispers, listing down every time Namjoo has been there for her before, ready to listen to Yoonji and support her no matter what. It wouldn’t be that bad.
“Ah, but you know, Yoonji-yah,” Soojin replies, shaking her out of her thoughts, her voice dropping into an approximation of Namjoo’s tone. “It’s just like Plato said, fine things are difficult. And clearly,” she goes back to her normal voice, “Namjoo thinks you’re very fine.”
Soojin slips right out of reach when Yoonji tries to swat at her shoulders, cackling loudly, uncaring of whether the others can hear while Yoonji holds back a pained screech at the joke.
“Can’t believe you would use Namjoo’s philosophical ramblings against me, unnie,” Yoonji grumbles, but tragically, Soojin’s giggling is too contagious to ignore, and she finds herself hiding a smile as she holds her face between her hands.
“Seriously, though. It would be worth it, wouldn’t it?” Soojin asks, when she’s managed to rein her giggles back in. Yoonji can’t help but agree, just a little. It’s just a bit ridiculous, how much of her brain is occupied by Namjoo and her smile - and how much of it has been busy replaying every one of Namjoo’s flirty comments and compliments over and over, dissecting them to wonder what they’ve all been for, trying and failing to ignore how they made her heart stutter in her chest.
Unnie, you look cute in that shirt, said with a hand curled around Yoonji’s waist, just for a moment, or Yoonji-unnie, you should wear your hair like that more often, it suits you so well after Yoonji had put it up in a little bun, showing off her undercut, or unnie, your eyes are so pretty! They’re sparkling, are you wearing colored contacts?
(And then the worst of those incidents - the one Yoonji doesn’t think about lest she ends up combusting - Namjoo’s wow, unnie, at finding her stretching in the living room after an impromptu basketball game with Jimin, forever immortalized by Jungkook in one of his vlogs. Yoonji could probably recall every pixel of the frame where Namjoo’s eyes had dropped to her ass from memory.)
There’s no way to find out what does it all mean without confronting her about it, and Yoonji has to know, even if it might mean uncovering too much of her own heart in the process. She has to.
“Alright. Alright, I’ll do it. I’ll talk to her,” she replies, hands clenched, nodding determinedly. Soojin claps her hands together, overjoyed, and almost lets out a squeak.
“Let unnie handle this, okay? You wanna talk to Namjoo, I can get you alone with her, no problem,” she tells her, and Yoonji has no time to protest before Soojin all but runs back to the kitchen and their friends. Maybe they’ve been gone for a little too long. Yoonji sighs, before joining her, and resigns herself to waiting to see what her unnie has in mind, trying to cling to her decision.
The rest of the evening passes by in a blur, Yoonji’s resolve building up with every smile Namjoo sends her way and crumbling just as quickly a few moments later, coming and going in waves. It reaches its lowest point when dinner is over and they’re all getting ready to leave.
Soojin announces, loudly and in the tone of a news anchor getting the scoop of the evening, that she’s going to be sleeping over at Hosook’s, complaining about rehearsals keeping her away from her girlfriend. She silences Namjoo’s wail of protest easily by pointing at Yoonji, telling her that she could just go stay over for the night at theirs if she didn’t wanna be bothered during her beauty sleep.
Yoonji glares hard enough in her direction she’s surprised Soojin doesn’t spontaneously combust. She said soon, but why would Soojin make it that soon -
Her traitorous roommate just mouths no time like the present at her, and Yoonji would give her the finger if it weren’t for the way Namjoo suddenly appears in her field of vision.
“Can I stay, unnie? Please? I don’t want to have to witness them being gross,” she asks, hopeful expression on her face, as if Yoonji would ever refuse her anything - even when she knows she’s blatantly exaggerating. Hosook and Soojin are two of the most private people she knows, keeping most of their displays of romance behind closed doors, never getting beyond hugs and cheek kisses and hand holding when they have company. Yoonji still finds herself smiling back at her, nodding.
“Of course, Joo. I can give you a change of clothes to sleep in,” Yoonji replies, and ignores Hosook when she calls out a loud You two wear the same clothes anyway! from where she’s helping Taehyung with the dishes in the kitchen. It’s worth it for the happy smile that paints itself on Namjoo’s face, and the excited wave of her hands as she almost skips over to end up right in front of her. She looks like she wants to say something, but as soon as she opens her mouth, she’s interrupted by Jimin’s voice coming from the apartment entrance asking her Namjoo-noona, I think I almost swapped your backpack with Jungkook’s, are you carrying rocks in it, why is it so heavy?
“It’s all books!” Namjoo calls out, and steps beside Yoonji to go rescue her backpack and its contents. Right before, though, she clasps Yoonji’s shoulder with one hand, turning to her with the same, blinding smile and a cheery “Thank you, unnie!” that Yoonji is wholly unprepared for. She’s even less prepared for what follows.
“It’s been a while since we’ve hung out, just the two of us,” Namjoo tells her, in a much lower register, her mouth too close to her cheek. Her breath hits the shell of Yoonji’s ear, and she can feel a flush build up in her cheeks at the realization of exactly how much Namjoo has to lean down to be close enough to kiss. She can still hear the smile in Namjoo’s voice as her fingers wrap around her shoulder, just for a moment, before Namjoo lets go, stepping away from her.
Yoonji tries hard not to shiver, willing the surge of heat in her stomach to simmer down to lower temperatures. For fuck’s sake, she thinks to herself. Her hands shake a little when she clenches her fists. She can’t take a second more of this. She’s gonna do it. She’s gonna talk to Namjoo, no matter what, and confront her about all of this, and tell her to stop acting like that if she wants to spare Yoonji’s feelings - and it will be awkward but at least… At least she’ll get some peace of mind.
Her resolve stays steely through getting her jacket, walking with Namjoo out of Jimin’s and Taehyung’s apartment to the bus stop, and through the entirety of the bus ride. It doesn’t waver even when Namjoo offers Yoonji the sweatshirt tied around her waist when she realizes that despite her jacket, Yoonji is shivering a little in the chilly September night air. Yoonji just needs to find the right moment, and then she can say something.
It’s only when they’re walking up the stairs of Yoonji’s building up to her apartment that said moment falls into her lap. Thw elevator is broken, and they save their breath while climbing up the stairs instead of talking. The conversation between them doesn't halt, just lulls to an easy stop: even with their recent developments, they’ve known each other for so long that small talk is easy as breathing, and once they've reached the right floor Yoonji finds herself grumbling something about how gross she feels after sweating through six flights of stairs.
“Ah, of course it’s not sweat, unnie, you just have a healthy glow,” Namjoo replies with a laugh, and if they were having this conversation months ago, Yoonji would have just rolled her eyes and tried not to laugh. She knows this one is a joke, because it doesn’t carry the same weirdly intense energy of Namjoo’s other comments. It’s almost like having their old dynamic back, just for a moment, but then Namjoo keeps going.
“Your nose gets all shiny. It’s cute,” she says, and there’s that shift in her tone. Yoonji takes out her keycard from her wallet and stares valiantly at her front door, feeling Namjoo’s eyes on the back of her head, willing herself to reply.
“Kim Namjoo,” she begins, because she doesn’t know what else to say. “I’m not cute. I resent that,” she keeps going, trying to keep her tone joking and light.
“Objection. Unnie is very cute, all the time. No matter what you do,” Namjoo tells her, tone completely serious, except for a breathy giggle right there at the end. It’s tinged with something Yoonji would call nervousness, if she didn’t know better - Namjoo is just teasing, she tells herself. Yoonji doesn’t turn towards her, hunched over herself as she is. She grimaces at the way her stomach still does somersaults at the words, even after a month of Namjoon’s shameless flirting.
Still, though. She had a point to make. She swipes her keycard, trying to find the right words and resist the urge to look back at Namjoo as she waits for the door to click open.
“Unnie doesn’t think this is very funny at all,” Yoonji finally mumbles, her eyes not leaving the lock under her hands, bracing herself for Namjoo’s reaction. If all this time Namjoo has been making fun of her- she’d-
Well. She doesn’t know what she would do. She still doesn’t look back at Namjoo, walking through the threshold of her apartment, and for a terribly long moment, Namjoo is completely silent.
Yoonji’s front door clicks closed behind the two of them, and Yoonji still doesn’t turn back towards Namjoo even as she swaps her sneakers for her slippers and steps further into the apartment, throwing her jacket on the back of the couch despite knowing how much Soojin hates that. It’s only when she’s out of excuses to keep her back turned that she finally turns to face her.
She doesn’t know what she’d been expecting to find, but it wasn’t the look Namjoo currently has etched on her face.
“Wait,” Namjoo begins, the word sounding more like a what?
Her brows are furrowed, mouth slightly open, and Yoonji’s eyes travel across her face, finding nothing but genuine confusion.
“You like it when people call you cute,” Namjoo keeps going, as if it has anything to do with the subject at hand. She’s still standing right in front of the closed door, her shoes still on, seemingly frozen.
“Take off your shoes,” Yoonji replies, because her brain has her priorities in order, apparently. Namjoo obeys, almost on autopilot, and she’s stuck following the motion. “And - I don’t like it when it’s not serious,” Yoonji trails off, eyes stuck on the way Namjoo hobbles on one socked foot while she tries to unlace her boots standing up.
At the word serious, Namjoo loses her balance enough Yoonji’s first instinct is to take a step towards her to break her eventual fall. Namjoo seems to right herself at the last moment, though, and Yoonji has enough time to feel a little embarrassed at how quick she was to react.
Namjoo kicks off her other shoe, and it lands on the side next to her other boot she’d left next to the door. She turns towards Yoonji, stepping forward, but then thinks better of it, and turns back to put both shoes in the shoe rack under the coat hangers. Yoonji watches her push each boot carefully into the small space that isn’t occupied by Yoonji’s sneakers and Soojin’s sandals, and wonders if every moment spent watching Namjoo is supposed to feel like she’s falling in love for the first time.
When Namjoo turns to her once again, the entrance clear of stray footwear, her eyebrows are furrowed.
“What do you mean, not serious?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean,” Yoonji replies, voice gruff, stepping further into her apartment once again, wanting nothing more than to get a couch pillow and scream into it for as long as she can. She keeps her eyes off of Namjoo as she keeps going. “You don’t mean it, do you? I just don’t think it’s very funny, Namjoo.”
“I don’t mean it?” Namjoo asks again, and Yoonji’s patience is wearing thin. Before she can tell Namjoo exactly that, Namjoo admits it herself. “Sorry, sorry, unnie, I’m just parroting things back at you, but - why would you think I wasn’t serious?”
At that, Yoonji has to turn around, incredulous. “Because why would you be? We’ve known each other for ages! You’ve never said anything like that to me before!”
Yoonji can feel herself getting a little riled up, her lisp slipping into the syllables a little harder than usual. It feels like this conversation is getting away from her before it’s even actually begun.
“I’ve definitely called you cute before,” Namjoo begins, before Yoonji glares at her, and she grimaces. “No, okay, you’re right, not the point - I just wanted to let you know - you know. And Hosook said maybe flirting a little more once I got back from vacation wasn’t a bad idea,” Namjoo mumbles, her hands fiddling with the hem of her shirt, right where it reaches the top of her thighs, covering about half of her very short shorts. Yoonji wills herself not to get distracted by the skin of her legs, looking back up at Namjoo’s face, the smug grin she’d had just the slightest bit less sure.
Through it, Yoonji can spot a glimmer of her Namjoo, she thinks with a hint of possessiveness - the one she’d first met, sweet and smart and beautiful and a little awkward but only because she’s so earnest, and sometimes what she’s thinking ends up tumbling out of her mouth without her permission. The one that had ended up growing into the most beautiful person Yoonji’s ever met in her entire life, and -
It takes a second for Namjoo’s words to actually hit her.
“I don’t know, actually - but also, Hosook said what,” she starts, not even a real question - Namjoo holds her hands up in front of herself, the blush now even higher on her cheeks.
“She said,” Namjoo begins, looking everywhere except Yoonji’s eyes, “I should start testing the waters. To see if you might be interested.”
Her voice drops on the last few words, doubt seeping through her tone. Yoonji’s brain, unprompted, presents a list of all the times she’d sent Hosook distressed messages about Namjoo’s increasingly flirty behaviour in the last month. Hosook had known and encouraged this.
“Joo-yah, you would help unnie dispose of a body, yes?”, Yoonji asks, trying to keep her tone even. What the fuck.
“You love Hosook too much to lay a single finger on her delicate bird bones,” Namjoo replies immediately, and Yoonji groans. Namjoo is right, but it doesn’t mean she has to like it. “Was she really that off the mark?” Namjoo asks, almost offhandedly, trying to sound like she is only slightly invested in the answer, which obviously means she cares about it to an extreme degree.
Like a switch being flipped, Yoonji’s brain suddenly tunes into a million different things at once that she’d been glossing over all along. The gentleness with which Namjoo touches her every time she’d reaches out for her, the glint of fondness in her eyes behind every teasing comment, the way Namjoo’s hands now keep clenching and unclenching, clearly nervous, a pink flush high on her cheeks and ears.
“Oh,” Yoonji begins, “You meant it.”
The words come out very matter-of-fact, which makes sense. Yoonji currently feels a million miles away from her body, trying to rearrange her entire worldview into a version of it where Namjoo had been flirting with her because she meant it.
Namjoo’s face disappears behind her hands as she steps backwards and lets herself fall on Yoonji’s couch.
“Of course I meant it,” Namjoo groans, sprawled over the couch cushions, her voice muffled by the fingers she’s holding over her mouth. “I thought you knew.”
“Of course I didn’t,” Yoonji shoots back, finding herself stepping closer to Namjoo. “Why would you flirt with me,” she continues, and sits herself down right next to her. Namjoo doesn’t seem to notice.
“What do you mean, why would I flirt with y-” Namjoo begins, before letting out another groan, face still hidden. “God, this conversation is a mess. Of course I wanna flirt with you. You’re Yoonji,” she says, like it explains anything. Yoonji is pretty sure that she’s about to combust, her brain full of static - there’s no other possible outcome for her, not when her best friend she’s in love with is loudly declaring that yeah, of course she wants to flirt with her. Of course she’s meant it all along.
“What has Hosook got to do with it, though?” Yoonji asks, because apparently she’s chosen to focus on all the wrong bits, even as her hands are shaking, because holy shit.
“Hosook suggested it. Said that I should flirt and wait and see if you’d make a move, and then I could say something, and then we’d date. Hopefully. One day,” Namjoo mumbles, face red as a tomato as she finally moves her hands away, still not looking at her. Yoonji would tease her for that, but she’s kind of missed Namjoo’s embarrassed purse of lips. Especially when the version of her she’d kept seeing for a month was smooth and suave and ready to fluster Yoonji at every turn.
“What kind of fucked up weird mating ritual is that,” Yoonji comments, even as her brain keeps replaying we’d date we’d date we’d date like a broken record. Namjoo groans again, her arms flying open into an overexaggerated shrug. “The kind where you’re supposed to flirt back, unnie,” her tone exasperated. “There was no method in the madness.”
“There really, really wasn’t,” Yoonji comments, steeling herself for what she’s about to say. She’s still nervous, even though Namjoo has basically confessed already. She’s still not looking at Yoonji, though, which is something that needs to be rectified immediately.
Namjoo’s left hand is resting between them on the couch cushion while Namjoo is still lying there, arms open like a starfish. She only raises her head to look at her when Yoonji covers her hand with her own, intertwining their fingers.
“You’re lucky I love you, you know,” Yoonji says, steady and sure, because Namjoo hasn’t said it, not in so many words, but - Yoonji knows, and Namjoo deserves to know, too.
It’s not the first time they’ve said I love you to each other, truth be told. It’s happened before, as a thank you for carrying the other through a difficult time, or just for being there, or once they had both gotten wine drunk and too emotionally invested over the state of the world and had ended up wrapped up in each other on Namjoo’s couch for comfort.
It still feels like the first for Yoonji as she watches Namjoo’s face transform. Her eyes get really, really big, and her mouth drops open. Yoonji has to bite back a giggle, but Namjoo’s fingers tighten around her hand, even as she stares at Yoonji, frozen.
“You do?” Namjoo asks, her voice a million miles away, and really, why is she even surprised.
“Are you shocked? Of course unnie loves you. I wouldn’t have put up with the horrible flirting otherwise,” Yoonji shoots back, relishing in the way Namjoo’s breath hitches at the words.
“You seemed to like the horrible flirting,” Namjoo replies, because she can’t help being a smart-ass no matter the way she looks like she’s been run over by a truck. She’s still gaping, just a little, when Yoonji leans a little closer, but she still tries to pull out a coherent sentence. “I just - I just wasn’t sure if you liked it because of me or because I - well, I kinda look like your type. The kind of girls you usually find pretty? So maybe that could have skewed the, uhm, results.” The last sentence trails off into an embarrassed cough, and Yoonji wants to grip her best friend by the shoulders and shake.
The type of girl Yoonji usually goes for is taller than her, muscular enough they could probably pick her up in their arms, with bright smiles and tan skin. If she had a checklist, there’d be really only one person she knows who would check all the boxes - the last one being is Kim Namjoo. When she thought she couldn’t hope for that, she’d tried and failed to settle for someone else, but it hadn't been fair to anyone involved. Now, though -
“The results? Yeah, Namjoo, when you’re done with your scientific study, think long and hard about why I’m into girls that look like you. I truly wonder why that is. All that brain and none of it gets put to use, I swear,” Yoonji exclaims, waving the hand that’s still holding Namjoo’s around to make her point. Showing all her cards like that would be a little embarrassing, if Namjoo weren’t looking at her like she’s her new favorite work of art.
(It’s still a little embarrassing. Yoonji will push through it if it means Namjoo will keep her eyes on her.)
“Oh,” Namjoo says, and Yoonji grips her hand tighter. “That changes things.”
“I kind of hoped the I love you would do that, not gonna lie,” Yoonji jokes, her heart light as a feather - and then she adds, “So what are your findings, oh great scientist of our time?” because Namjoo doesn’t have the monopoly on being a smart-ass.
“I’m a philosophy major,” Namjoo mumbles, but she pulls their still joined hands close to her mouth, leaving a kiss on Yoonji’s knuckles, much too tender for Yoonji to bear.
“Can I kiss you, Joo?” Yoonji asks, because if she doesn’t get Namjoo’s mouth on her right now, she’ll have to take drastic measures. Namjoo doesn’t reply - she just groans as her head drops down to their hands, resting her forehead against them, just for a moment, before she pulls Yoonji in.
“Can dish it out, but you can’t take it, right, Joo-yah?” Yoonji whispers, when they’re close enough they’re breathing the same air, and she can see the flush of Namjoo’s skin and the way she’s biting the inside of her cheek in expectation up close and personal.
She expects Namjoo’s eyes to flutter closed, or for her to be flustered again, but she’s once again surprised. For a moment, the Namjoo that has spent a month flirting shamelessly in her direction reappears - her eyes narrow in that laser-focused expression she pulls out whenever she needs to give something her full attention, and Yoonji follows the way her jaw clenches, entranced.
A hand curls on the back of Yoonji’s neck, pulling her in as close as possible - and then she’s being kissed, and she doesn’t think of anything at all except for Namjoo’s mouth on her, the way it presses against her lips, more intense that she’s been bracing herself for. She kisses back with an urgency that builds up inside her faster than she thought it would, her own free hand clinging to the back of Namjoo’s shirt, pushing her closer, before wrapping itself lower around the waist, her thumb finding warm skin where Namjoo’s shirt ends and her shorts begin.
Namjoo’s tongue pushes against her lips in the exact moment Yoonji realizes she has miles and miles of long legs to touch, letting go of Namjoo’s hand she’s been holding to lean forward enough she can grip two handfuls of them with no problem, still not breaking the kiss. The muscle under her hands is solid, and Namjoo’s thighs spread out, just a little, so that Yoonji can settle between them while Namjoo’s tongue licks into her mouth. They might be moving too fast, but Yoonji can’t find it in herself to care. She’s been wanting this for so long, that’s the thing - something at once steady and intense like the push and pull of the moon and tides. With every press of Namjoo’s mouth against hers, she’s more convinced that she’s found it years ago in Namjoo’s smile.
She almost whines when Namjoo pulls away, breaking their kiss, leaving a last peck on Yoonji’s lips before resting her forehead against hers. Namjoo’s hand is still curled behind her neck, her thumb rubbing against Yoonji’s undercut, and the sensation makes her shiver - even more so when it’s joined by Namjoo’s eyes looking straight into hers.
“I didn’t get to say it, earlier,” Namjoo begins, and Yoonji doesn’t have to ask what she’s talking about. “I think you already know but - unnie, I love you. I love you too.”
Yoonji has already said her piece, and her happiness feels like a stormcloud inside her chest, charged and buzzing. She smiles, and kisses Namjoo again, and laughs when Namjoo pulls her into her lap like Yoonji weighs nothing at all.
“Showoff,” she tells her between the press of their mouths, and Namjoo grins as she wraps her hands around Yoonji’s waist.
“Just for you,” Namjoo replies, only half-joking, in the same low, flirty tone she’s been pulling out for weeks. Yoonji clearly has no choice but kiss her again - but not before proposing they relocate, her mouth close to Namjoo's ear, one hand climbing up underneath Namjoo’s shirt to find the edges of her bra and sliding under the soft fabric. It’s barely some light teasing - but Namjoo almost topples them both over in her haste to get up from the couch, kissing her again as soon as they both regain their balance. Yoonji holds her hand out for her to take, her laugh echoing in the apartment threatening to wake up her neighbors, and she pulls her further in towards her bedroom. Namjoo's smile is blinding when she follows.