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They’re in the van on the way back from rehearsal, her head in the older girl’s lap because she just wants to be able to lay down longer than ten minutes at a time.
“You’re going to die,” Heehyun tells her, blunt because she’s Heehyun.
“That’s nice,” Chaeyeon responds in kind. She’d roll her eyes but they’re too heavy, weighed down by what feels like cement, or one too many schedules, whichever. “Tell my parents I loved them.”
Heehyun tucks her hair behind her ear. “I’ll do you one better,” she promises dryly, specks of light reflecting off the windows causing her eyes to shine, “I’ll fake a note you wrote on your deathbed. It’ll be touching.”
“Awesome,” agrees Chaeyeon, too tired to add anything else. Her comeback with I.O.I is only a few days away and she’s already spent, weak from not getting enough rest. Heehyun looks over her shoulder to the backseat, mumbles a question she can’t quite make out, and a moment later, Eunjin’s jacket is thrown over her as a blanket.
She thinks she even overhears Heehyun quietly ask their manager to go slowly over speed bumps, but she falls asleep not long after so Chaeyeon can’t be sure.
When she wakes up, it’s dark and Heehyun is shaking her gently, murmuring her name until she makes a noise in the back of her throat that certainly makes it sound like she’s dying.
“I know,” Heehyun is sympathetic. She shifts her legs and Chaeyeon wraps an arm around her knees in vain to keep her there. It’s fine, Chaeyeon thinks. She has to be up in an hour anyway. She can just sleep here. Heehyun seems to have other ideas, though. “Come on, you need to wash and sleep in your own bed.”
“What if I just die before my next schedule,” the younger girl mumbles, slowly rousing anyway. She makes a half-hearted attempt to get up but slumps over a second later, sprawled over a comfortable lap.
Heehyun pushes her hair out of her face, lightly massaging her scalp and Chaeyeon whines. If this is Heehyun’s plan to get her up, it won’t work. If anything, it makes her want to stay in the van even more.
“Chaeyeon-ah,” Heehyun calls, voice tinged with amusement and regret all at once.
“I mean, I am dying,” Chaeyeon huffs, burying her head in the other girl’s sweatshirt. “We went over that. I think.”
Heehyun hums. “We did,” she confirms, and then - regretfully, too, holds the other girl by her arms and tries to push her into a sitting position, “We’ll work on your bucket list later, but while you’re still with us you still have to follow me and manager oppa.”
“I already have a bucket list,” answers Chaeyeon with a frown, reaching up with one hand to rub at her eyes. She’s still leaning over Heehyun, their faces close together enough she can see the shimmer off her eyeshadow. “You have to help me cross everything off it. Dying girl’s wishes.”
She’s met with a smile.
“Okay,” Heehyun nods, “What’s on it?”
Chaeyeon is a little too sleep warm and pliant when she wraps her arms around her neck, but she stays awake as Heehyun carries her all the way from the van to the dorm. Heehyun takes the stairs and she loses her step once and fears for both their lives, but Chaeyeon laughs into her hair and it settles somewhere inside her too deep to ever get out.
It’s not exactly new, how she’d walk to the end of the earth for Chaeyeon on unsteady feet and with a foolish heart.
Also on the list of unsurprising facts:
Jung Chaeyeon is pure, and not necessarily just in the way she’s only had one loser boyfriend to speak of. It’s Heehyun’s job to notice things, and she doesn’t once miss the way Chaeyeon always pushes the other members forward when the attention lingers a little too long on herself. In every schedule they have, every radio show, every variety appearance - there she is, quietly nudging someone to speak and never once losing her own smile. She bows a full ninety degrees when she leaves fan signs early on the way to another job, apologizing over and over to their fans until she’s finally whisked out of sight.
Heehyun remembers how hard she’d worked to lift the other girl up to status on Produce 101, and how once Chaeyeon had gotten it, she’d turned around and tried to give it to everyone else.
It was only a matter of time until she’d fallen for her. Heehyun had almost seen it coming.
She taps a finger absently against her thigh, watching the others kids on the floor of their living room with the only television. Her phone buzzes and Heehyun pretends not to hold onto it with both hands like something as precious as gold.
“Unnie,” Yebin complains when she’s dislodged from her shoulder when the older girl had all but dived for it, without even a note of anger because it’s Yebin and Heehyun is endlessly grateful. She murmurs a quick apology, fingers sliding against the lock screen until the message appears.
she’s okay
And Heehyun blinks at Chungha’s message, the way there’s a pause between typing until the little dots continue, and then -
she knows you’re checking up on her
our chaeyeonie’s scary ㅠㅠ
A new alert pops up. Chaeyeon just sends her an angry face.
I have to make sure you’re alive, Heehyun texts back.
Chaeyeon responds with a heart. Heehyun settles back onto the couch and lets Yebin burrow into her side like a small woodland creature seeking refuge, and without even looking at the screen says, “tell Chaeyeon I said hi.” They’ve always worked like this, of course.
(Some of her fans say she’s the one always quietly taking care of Chaeyeon, but the thing is:
Heehyun wasn’t always the leader, isn’t even the oldest still, and she remembers coming back from the company meeting when the change hadn’t been discussed so much as abruptly handed to her. She had walked in a daze back to the dorm where Chaeyeon was, pressing the sleeves of her sweater over her face and -
“It had to be you,” Chaeyeon had said to her then.
What Heehyun gives to her, she wants others to know, Chaeyeon has never not given back.)
Chaeyeon texts her when she's on the way home from a late night filming for her drama, dramatic in every word of her i’m dying, unnie, prepare my casket for me - make it pretty though
“That’s not a meal,” Heehyun frowns over the cup of mango yogurt she’s eating when the girl walks in. “You're dying because you don't eat.”
Chaeyeon changes into slippers and joins her in the kitchen, taking her time with her half-finished strawberry latte to spite her, naturally.
“It’s too late for real food,” she answers back, the straw scraping against the inside of the plastic cup as she fiddles with it. Heehyun tracks the movement of her hands, how frail her wrists look peeking out from her sleeves.
“Jung Chaeyeon.”
“Ki Heehyun,” Chaeyeon pauses, “Unnie.”
She gets an eye roll in return. The problem is her disapproval is tempered by softness, and even though anyone that knows her would say she’s this way despite appearances, it’s different with Chaeyeon.
“I need you around,” Heehyun says. With Chaeyeon, she may as well be a dog, rolled onto her back and exposing her underbelly for all the power she feels slip through her fingers. “We need you around,” Heehyun tells her quietly, not an order but a request. She couldn’t boss the younger girl around if she tried.
Chaeyeon looks at her for a long time. “One of the things I wish for on my bucket list is an omelette,” she says finally, “A pretty one.”
And Chaeyeon, for what it’s worth - too much, Heehyun tries not to think - has never made her have to. Chaeyeon’s gaze is warm as she pulls up a stool to watch as she cooks in their tiny kitchen, the only sounds disrupting the silence a whisk against a bowl and then the sizzle of a frying pan, and the rest of the world is quiet.
The rest of the world fades away, like it always does.
“I couldn’t do this without you, you know,” Chaeyeon admits softly one night, as though reading her mind. She had all but been carried to her bed by Heehyun when she had stepped into the landing of the dorm, ready to sleep on the nearest available surface if she’d been left to her own devices.
Heehyun just smiles - small and luminescent, bits of stardust in the lines of her mouth. “Yeah, you could,” she says, gripping the tail of her pillow, and then, while smacking it into her face: “You’d miss me, though.”
Chaeyeon scowls, tugging the pillow out of the older girl’s grasp. Heehyun lets it go easily at pout she receives.
“Yeah, well, lucky for me, I’m dying,” she declares childishly, rolling over on her side, “so I don’t have to miss you. I’m going first!”
Heehyun only laughs, and she knows it’s just pretend, but she’d never let Chaeyeon exist in any universe without her by her side anyway.
“Write about me,” Chaeyeon says once. She doesn’t add it’s on my bucket list.
And instead of saying, I already have, in the pocket notebook she carries with her everywhere, on napkins across from her in cafes, in the privacy of her own mind somewhere between a song and lines of poetry, Heehyun shrugs.
“Sure.”
Her manager decides to tell them after their fan sign.
Not to say that’s what actually happens, it’s just the plan, which - if Heehyun has learned anything after being in this business, it’s that things rarely go according to plan. As it is, there are things like SNS and dutiful fans that look at her with wide eyes and ask things like how’s Chaeyeon and is it serious, so -
“I don’t know what you mean,” she says, hand stuttering mid-signature. She draws a small star where she’d made her mistake before handing the glossy album jacket back to the boy.
He holds up his phone to her, a grainy video that buffers until she sees it’s from a music show broadcast - and there, right during her part of the song, Chaeyeon collapses. A few of the I.O.I members pause, unsure whether to carry on, but Nayoung and Doyeon help her into the arms of staff as she’s taken off stage, and then the clip ends and begins to loop.
She taps her marker against the table. “Don't worry too much,” Heehyun settles on, remembers him from a past fan sign. “You have exams coming up, right? Chaeyeon would be upset if you didn't study.”
Their manager waves him down the row, but the girl next is still finishing up with Eunice. Heehyun cuts her eyes to his when he drops a water bottle next to her.
“I was going to tell you,” he says, earnest, and stressed, too - Heehyun can tell by the knit of his eyebrows and the slope of his forehead creasing. “She's being monitored. We can see her tonight.”
“Oppa,” she tells him, shaking her head, “I understand.” She looks down the row all the way down to Eunchae and back. She fiddles with the label of the bottle and watches the fan wave goodbye Eunice out of the corner of her eye.
Heehyun breathes. She's a professional, you know.
The others go first. Chaeyeon seems to be in good spirits, however tired and worn out she looks, exasperated but pleased at all the attention. When they were able to finally make it to the hospital, the rest of I.O.I were preparing to leave, and Heehyun offers a chagrined smile at the nurses overwhelmed at their combined numbers.
“Hey,” she says, catching Nayoung by the shoulder as the leader herds them out of the room before really, the nurses are going to ban all ten of them out indefinitely. “Thanks.”
Nayoung gives her a look. “She's our family, too,” the other girl answers slowly, casting a quick glance over her shoulder as Chaeyeon laughs at something Yebin has said. “I don't know how much of an influence I have, but I’m going to talk to staff. She needs some time off.”
They all do, Heehyun wants to say, the last remains of Nayoung’s stage make up almost worn off for the night. There are dark circles underneath her eyes, too.
“Thanks,” she finds herself saying again.
“It's difficult,” Nayoung admits in an almost sigh. “She's just a kid.” She pats her arm, but Heehyun just shakes her head.
“She hasn't been a kid in a long time,” Heehyun replies. None of them have.
One of the many prices they pay in the shuffle of company contracts and too many eyes waiting for this exact moment, but not what comes after. They’ll watch Chaeyeon fall, of course, but they aren't the ones who see her push herself leading up to it - they don't have to see her try to stand even now, as the rest of the girls push her back into bed with cries of protest.
Nayoung nods. This is, after all, life as only they know it. Not polished to the nines and shining like jewels but sweaty and worn and with the weight of the world threatening to crush their spines with one misstep.
There are pros, too, of course. Heehyun just can't think of them right now.
“Hey, champ.”
Chaeyeon moves to sit up and Heehyun breathes a laugh, reaching for her arm and pushing her gently back onto her pillow.
“You've got to stop doing that,” she admonishes, tilting her head and watching the younger girl stare at her, furrowing her eyebrows as she blinks the sleep out of her eyes.
“Did you,” Chaeyeon stops to yawn, not bothering to cover her mouth and Heehyun can only look on fondly at the sight, “did you stay overnight?”
She slides her chair over to be closer to the other girl. “The nurses,” Heehyun grins, “would have had my head. Not that I didn't ask after you passed out on the others last night.” She waits a beat. “I came by myself this morning.”
Then, she leans over to flick the girl on the forehead.
“You worried a lot of people,” she frowns. “How many times have I told you to tell someone when you're not feeling well?”
Chaeyeon glowers, looking about as threatening as a small girl in a hospital bed could. “Can it be on my bucket list to curse at you just once?”
“All these things on your bucket list to stay alive for and you can't even stay upright for a prerecording,” Heehyun counters, and it hits a little too close to home by the way Chaeyeon’s gaze drops. “Yah.”
But the other girl won't look at her, and Heehyun huffs, taking Chaeyeon’s hand in hers.
“You're not a machine,” she intones, frustrated, not entirely at Chaeyeon, but herself, too. It's times like these she wishes she were better at speaking the way she feels. She's always been the type to carry the words with her instead until they could be put to paper.
“If you were, my life would be a lot easier,” Heehyun continues, “You’d talk back less. Maybe give me less gray hairs.” She squeezes the girl’s hand. “But you're not and I don't want you to be.”
“So I can annoy you?” Chaeyon’s gaze lifts, eyelashes framing her eyes as the sun rises against the sky and through the window, casting her face with soft light. Heehyun’s breath catches in her throat.
“So you can annoy me forever,” she confirms with a single nod. There are worse fates out there. “Does that give you unlimited bucket list wishes? I’m not sure.”
Chaeyeon scoffs at her. “You've done a terrible job at helping me fill them anyway,” she criticizes, something light wavering at the edges of her mouth, something like a smile waiting for its chance. “I bet you haven't written about me at all.”
And Heehyun doesn't know how to meet her eyes suddenly, dropping them to their conjoined hands. “I bet you're wrong,” she admits.
“Oh,” Chaeyeon teases, “Is it a rap?”
Heehyun looks up cautiously. “It's a love song.”
“Oh,” says Chaeyeon again, differently this time. Her eyes fall to their hands now, too, but she doesn't shift hers away. Her cheeks fill with heat, the color of pink roses against snow.
The last love song she’d written had been about spring. But there's a charm to winter, too, if Heehyun thinks about it - the way snow dusts the street in white, when people in love share scarves and walk with their hands clasped inside one person’s coat. How everything seems a little more quiet, a little more mystical like -
“I guess I should get better soon,” Chaeyeon says quietly, “so I can hear it well. The acoustics in here are probably terrible.”
“Probably,” agrees Heehyun, and then, “It's a song that compares love to magic.”
“I want to hear it.” Chaeyeon is firm.
“You will,” Heehyun promises, as soft as the first fall of snow.
(A cold day in December, Heehyun sits across Chaeyeon in a cafe. She wraps her coat more tightly around herself after she’d given her scarf to the other girl, who had forgotten hers.
The barista calls their orders out and when Chaeyeon gets up to retrieve them, she uncaps a pen and reaches for the napkin dispenser.
She isn't finished by the time Chaeyeon gets back, leaning forward with her chin propped up by her palm and doing her best to read upside down.
“The mysterious title finally unveiled?” Chaeyeon raises her eyebrows, playful as Heehyun turns the napkin right side up for her to read.
merry christmas, i love you
“It's not the title,” Heehyun clarifies. Chaeyeon finds magic in it all the same.)