Archive of Our Own

despite the pasta and octopus waiting outside her hotel room right now, it’s easy to pause by the door when megan tells her to wait. 

megan’s laptop is still playing soft music. she’s sprawled out across the covers, eyes trained unabashedly on yoonchae. something about the fact that megan isn’t even pretending not to care if yoonchae goes or stays makes a world of difference. she takes off her hat before crawling back onto the bed, dropping it on the nightstand, and megan reaches for it, pinching the brim between her fingers. 

“it’s weird that this is red,” she hums. “they’re kind of famously the blue team.”

yoonchae shrugs. she doesn’t really remember where she got the hat. there’s a blue one somewhere in her apartment, something innocuous to cram over grown-out roots that won’t draw the internet’s attention. or megan’s attention, for that matter. 

“but it’s okay,” megan is saying, picking up the hat and fitting it over her own head. “it’s still cool. and i bet no one else would even notice.”

yoonchae’s words are coming slowly tonight, which is strange, because around megan they usually flow fast. she swipes her fingers over the trackpad of megan’s laptop instead. the picture of them—blurred, overexposed, hands over their faces on an airplane—dissolves into the login screen, and she types megan’s password into the little box. 

the computer opens to megan’s spotify. 

“i had to make sure nothing explicit was gonna play,” megan says. she’s returned yoonchae’s cap back to the nightstand. her hair is slightly mussed, a few strands sticking out at odd angles. yoonchae reaches out to smooth them down, watching as megan’s eyes flutter. 

“sorry,” megan whispers. “you should get your food. before the cleaners get to it.”

yoonchae shrugs. “it will be okay.” 

megan wiggles closer and drops her head down to yoonchae’s shoulder. as she scrolls through the tracks on the playlist, yoonchae discovers a handful of wave to earth songs clustered at the bottom, recently added. 

“i wish we could make music like this,” megan admits quietly, jabbing her finger at an artist yoonchae only vaguely recognizes the name of. she’s heard the music before, trying not to doze in the passenger’s seat of megan’s car after a long practice. 

“what’s cicada?”

“oh.” megan shifts to face her, but she doesn’t pick her head up off yoonchae’s shoulder. her nose brushes the underside of yoonchae’s jaw, breath warming the skin there. “it’s a bug. they’re kind of loud and they’re usually around in the summer.” 

yoonchae lets that hang in the air for a while. now that megan’s clarified, she knows exactly what cicada is. the korean word for it sounds a little like megan’s nickname. 매미. maemi.

of all the things she keeps a secret, she thinks the fact that megan’s name slips out of her mouth sixty percent of the time as mei when they’re alone is one of the most embarrassing. there’s something about it that feels more intimate than knowing what megan looks like mid panic attack or too high or pissed off over whatever is going on inside her phone.

megan doesn’t really call her anything other than yoonchae. a few times, she’s said aegi, but it’s usually teasing and meant to annoy yoonchae about her age. once, when yoonchae was half-delirious with a bad fever, she thought she might’ve heard megan call her aegi for real, but she’d been too distracted by the floor swaying beneath her to know for sure. megan’s arms had been warm when she’d caught her before hitting the ground. she knows that for sure. 

“have you been making songs recently?”

she remembers megan nearly busting her and sophia’s front door with a hard drive of demos to show them, chock full of unlicensed samples and vocals that had made sophia lean forward in her seat. that was months ago now. 

“not as much. it’s hard with—” she waves a hand in front of them. her nails are a soft pink. “all this.”

“i have nice headphones,” yoonchae says. “if you want to borrow.”

megan wraps both hands around her bicep, hugging yoonchae’s arm against her chest. 

“i know. thanks. it’s just not a good time now, i guess.” 

australia is a tiny continent. ever since they touched down, yoonchae’s been feeling like her mind is too big for her body and her body is too big for this place. it’s the quietest stop they’ve had since their early debut days. they’ve been to a zoo and played a venue small enough for an impromptu meet and greet afterwards. megan doesn’t go out at all here. she goes to bed before midnight and texts yoonchae in the morning with koala emojis tacked onto the end of every other message. 

she tips her head down against megan’s, inhaling the scent of her hair product. she’s not sure exactly what it’s supposed to smell like, but it’s comfortingly familiar.

if she lies here for too long, she’ll fall asleep. the unfortunate truth about megan is that she makes a really nice pillow. yoonchae’s lost count of how many times she’s dozed off against her shoulder on plane rides, van rides, the backseat of lara’s car rides—so maybe it’s just all the forward motion, but it happens other places too, like here, in a hotel bed that isn’t at all nicer than hers. and her food is waiting for her. if she doesn’t get it soon, the cleaners will take it again. 

megan sighs and shifts, pressing closer. yoonchae feels whatever resolve she’d managed to gather to get up slip away. 

“i’m glad you’re here,” megan says quietly, and she doesn’t clarify whether she means her room, or australia, or katseye, or just alive at this specific point in history, but yoonchae doesn’t think she needs her to. 

“me too,” she replies, and she doesn’t clarify whether she means that she’s glad she’s here too or she’s glad that megan’s here. she means both anyway. she knows that much for sure.

so things aren’t weird, really, they’re just different. and they’re always different. it’s kind of the nature of their jobs. 

she’s blonde now, and she lives alone. it’s something she repeats to herself often as an odd kind of mantra. 

i’m blonde and i live alone in LA. 

she’s not sure how much longer she’ll be able to keep saying it, because sooner or later, both of those things won’t be true anymore. she won’t be blonde forever and she certainly won’t live in LA forever. 

she tells megan as much while they’re picking up their mic packs, casual as anything, like she’s letting her know about a blocking issue. 

“what?” megan asks. she looks like she’s been slapped, stunned and unsure. 

yoonchae repeats herself and the expression she gets in return is chilling. megan doesn’t say anything else before she’s storming away without her mic pack and yoonchae looks down at the hunk of plastic and wires in her hands. 

she feels like she should chase after megan to apologize, but she’s not sure what she’d even be apologizing for. sorry my hair is dying from all the bleach. sorry i still don’t really have any friends here in LA. sorry we never hang out at my place or yours. 

she can’t really get the mic pack to settle in the way that she likes it on her own. usually, she asks megan for help. she makes do with sophia instead, and shrugs when the older girl asks her what her plans are for the evening. megan and her had been planning to watch a movie, but she’s pretty sure that isn’t happening anymore. 

“sleeping,” she says finally, not wanting to leave sophia hanging. “i guess i will be sleeping.”

australia is over faster than yoonchae’s ready for it to be. megan is back to acting normal. she’d knocked on yoonchae’s door with her laptop the same night as i won’t live in LA forever and had dropped her head boldly into yoonchae’s lap mid-movie, shifting restlessly until yoonchae buried a hand in her hair. 

“ugh, i can’t wait to sleep in my own bed again,” megan tells her, pushing her sunglasses up her nose. 

yoonchae nods. “me too. my heater works.”

megan snorts. “if you’d taken me up on my offer, you wouldn't have been so cold.”

what she means: yoonchae had fallen asleep in megan’s bed that night she ordered pasta and octopus. she’d conked out with her nose buried in megan’s hair and hadn’t woken up until it was so late it was practically early again. still, she couldn’t find it in herself to be annoyed. she had no pasta, no octopus, and a crick in her neck, but to megan’s point, she’d been warm. 

“you sleep like an octopus,” she says instead, splaying her arms out wide to demonstrate. “i would have no bed.”

they’re in public, which is kind of the only reason she’s saying this. dani is like, two steps away. she’s probably not even listening, but yoonchae still doesn’t want to admit that she’s voluntarily slept practically on top of megan before. we’re actually a lot closer than you guys think. 

megan’s face twists up and it’s cute, which only makes yoonchae want to double down even harder. you take up the whole bed and you snore, she could say, which isn’t even true, but megan would probably believe her if she said it.

“your loss,” megan chirps before yoonchae can add anything else. she turns her phone around, presenting yoonchae with a twitter video of a panda falling off of a rock. “look at this. he kinda reminds me of sophia.”

“sophia is not so clumsy,” yoonchae hums, which is true, but she can kind of see what megan’s getting at. she just doesn’t want to agree with her for some reason. 

megan pulls the phone back and slides it into her pocket. 

“whatever,” she sighs. 

yoonchae’s boarding time isn’t for another two hours, even though everyone else gets on their plane in about thirty minutes. lara is dozing on sophia’s shoulder a few seats away. sohey is playing the crossword in an actual paper newspaper. early morning light streams in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, through which yoonchae can see a plane taxiing for takeoff. for a split second, as it bumps awkwardly before it leaves the ground, she thinks the whole machine is going to explode. she’d thought the same thing about her mic pack last night when she’d gotten off stage and the plastic casing was so warm that it left a tender red mark when she’d unstuck it from her skin.  

but the plane’s wings catch the air smoothly and the wheels retract into the body of the thing, and it’s up without any issues at all. yoonchae blinks and tries to imagine no planes anywhere. they’d have to sail to australia to perform here again. fifty-odd days of being on a boat with the girls and their staff. then she’d have to get on another one to get to korea, and then get back to LA somehow. 

she shudders internally. 

“do you like boats, megan?”

megan is staring out the windows too, but she looks more like she’s brooding than contemplating methods of transportation.

“are you asking me that because of the rat sickness thing? that cruise ship?”

she sounds a little annoyed and yoonchae folds her arms across her chest without really thinking about it. 

“no,” she says, and she wants to ask what megan’s talking about, but she turns back to the window instead. a tiny cart is taking luggage from the building to a different, larger plane. the workers in their yellow vests remind her of the little green figurines sophia keeps around her apartment. they glow in the dark. yoonchae knows because she slept on sophia’s couch once when her apartment was being painted, and she’d spent what felt like half the night staring at one trying to put its socks on. “i was just asking to know.”

megan might be doing the puppy-eyed apology thing, but yoonchae doesn’t turn to check, because she might also just be scrolling on her phone again, or glaring out the window, and both of those things would do funny things to her stomach if she saw them happening. 

she’s not sure when her age started catching up with her maturity like that. the yoonchae of a year ago wouldn’t have refused to look at her—at megan just because she was worried she might be a little upset. 

she breathes out hard through her nose, standing abruptly. 

“do you want to come with me? i’m going to look for a new charger. mine is broken,” she tells megan.

dani looks up briefly, mouth opening. she has a charger coiled up in the seat beside her, and yoonchae thinks her plan is about to be smashed to pieces, but when she makes eye contact with dani, the other girl clamps her mouth shut and looks back down at her phone. 

megan stands up like it’s some great annoyance, but the corners of her mouth are pulling upwards. she’s too expressive to keep things a secret, really. 

“i thought you’d never ask,” she says, because she knows that this is an apology and is apparently willing to take it. she loops her arm through yoonchae’s and yoonchae does not pull away. there’s basically no one here at this hour anyway. “lead the way.”

and she does. because she’s mature like that. and she does technically need a new charger. her old one is like, too short, or something. 

megan is warm where their arms press together and yoonchae feels so, so unsteady. 

what it really is, she decides, is that she’s just a little scared. she isn’t used to being scared and not knowing about it, so it takes a few drawings coming out more ominous than she meant them to be before she understands.

“do you ever think,” she leans forward to adjust the napkin holder between her and lara, needlessly, “about the future?”

real hardball question. lara almost laughs before she catches herself, realizing quickly that yoonchae isn’t joking. she stirs her straw in her ice water for a long moment before she says anything. this is something yoonchae likes about lara. she’s intentional. 

“of course i do,” she nods finally. “i want to settle down at some point. i’ll produce music in my basement studio and live off checks from record labels.”

she’s messing around a little, yoonchae knows. if she had to guess, she’d say lara doesn’t really know what she wants in the future either. 

“that would be cool. are you going to have a dog?”

lara laughs into her water glass, high and bright. they’re sitting outside and the sun is making the glittery makeup around her eyes gleam. yoonchae thinks about adjusting the umbrella sticking up from their table so it’ll block the light better, but she’s already done that twice now to no avail, and standing up to try again feels rude. 

“maybe, but definitely not the same breed as bala. i’ve never been chewed on so much in my life,” lara says dryly. she pushes her glass away from her. it’s half empty already and if yoonchae knows LA restaurants, they won’t be getting their food for another half hour at least. “what about you? you gonna get a dog?”

she shakes her head. 

“no dog. maybe cat,” she hums, thinking about the auto-feeder taking up an entire corner in her family’s kitchen. then she remembers the litter box hanging out by the coat closer and wrinkles her nose. “or maybe not. they stink.”

lara says something else about the bathroom situation regarding pets, but yoonchae’s drifting again, like the boats she still isn’t sure if megan enjoys. she’d probably like having a cat. they’re good pets to have when you aren’t around all the time. she would still have to board it to go visit her family in korea, though, or get someone to watch it. sophia would probably catsit even though she likes dogs better. 

it strikes her that she’s thinking about this like she’d still be in LA and it’s so dizzying that she grabs at the edge of the table to steady herself.

“woah, hey,” lara says gently, cutting herself off. “are you okay? is it too hot out here?”

yoonchae isn’t really built for warm weather. touring latin america had been a test of her ability to hit all their choreo counts when the corners of her vision are going dark. she’d learned the hard way how to breathe carefully to keep herself from passing out, steadying herself on someone’s shoulder after her and megan’s part of their dancebreak for gnarly. 

“no,” she remembers to speak, to keep lara from flagging someone down and asking them to bring ice. “i’m not hot. i’m—i’m thinking.” 

lara accepts it, bless her, and yoonchae stares at the tiny white bread plate in front of her until everything feels a little steadier. she still feels vaguely like they’re somehow dining on a huge boat in the middle of the ocean, big enough not to be able to see the water from where they’re sitting, but on a boat that big, she wouldn't be able to feel the motion of the waves, and anyway, it would sink before it got anywhere. 

“i’m thinking,” she repeats. lara nods. another thing yoonchae likes about lara—she hasn’t seen lara’s phone this whole time. it’s tucked away somewhere, not making any noise. “i don’t know if i will live in LA forever.”

when she looks up to see lara’s face, it’s the first time she realizes her conception of the future doesn’t really involve katseye. gracefully, lara does not act like this is weird. 

“yeah? do you want to move back home?”

i might move to south korea,” she says carefully. lara’s brows tick upwards. she hasn’t been calling korea home for a while now. she hasn’t really been calling anywhere home. “i don’t know. maybe i will stay here. but i never…i wanted to be in katseye. then i got into katseye. and then—”

she waves her hands around in front of her, which feels like such a megan thing to do that she wonders if it’s obvious to lara how much time they’ve been spending together. except, not really, because she flew to korea and back to LA a week later, and she’s been back for two days and she still hasn’t seen megan. 

“yeah,” lara murmurs. “i get it. i had all these plans for how my life was going to go. and then this happened and now…”

she copies yoonchae copying megan. 

“now we’re here,” yoonchae finishes. 

“now we’re here,” lara sighs. 

a waiter comes by with their food and yoonchae stares down at her salad a little sadly. there’s a huge chicken cutlet tucked awkwardly against one edge of the plate, and she’ll have to cut it herself, which is always awkward and time consuming. 

lara pokes at her sandwich a few times. she looks about as dissatisfied as yoonchae feels. 

“you wanna swap?” 

yoonchae’s runs through her lists of dos and don’ts so quickly that her brain just shuts off entirely, shorting out, and what comes out is:

“sure.”

they swap plates and lara’s sandwich does look better than the salad did, and lara just slides the chicken onto the little bread plate to cut it up, which yoonchae never would’ve thought of, and they eat in comfortable silence. 

after a while, lara starts talking about her dog again, and she doesn’t offer up any kind of advice for thinking about the future. in the grand scheme of things—of LA, of katseye, of the stupid, endlessly spinning world—she’s probably just as lost as yoonchae is, which strangely makes her feel a little bit better.

megan asks her twice if she wants to go out with her and her friends. she says no both times and is really, genuinely surprised when megan shows up on her doorstep the second time instead of leaving her on read like she did the first time. 

she’s in a dress that makes yoonchae’s head spin a little bit, and her purse dangles awkwardly from one hand. her eye makeup is a smudged, just barely. 

“what’s wrong?” is the first thing that makes its way out of yoonchae’s mouth. 

she steps back to let megan into the apartment and tries not to let the door make any noise as she closes it, like it might somehow startle megan back out into the hallway. 

“do you wanna do something?” megan asks, standing stiffly in the entryway. she’s in heels that make her ever so slightly taller than yoonchae.

“i don’t want to go out,” yoonchae cautions, but megan is shaking her head before the words are even fully out of her mouth. 

“we can do whatever you want.”

she doesn’t sound drunk, and she’s probably not high because yoonchae thinks she’d be able to smell it, but megan’s good at pretending she isn’t those things when she really wants to be. 

“i’ll get some clothes for you,” she says to buy herself some time. 

when megan doesn’t move out of the entryway, she puts one hand on each of megan’s shoulders and steers her down the hallway and through the kitchen, into her own bedroom, pushing her down on the bed. 

megan looks up at her with wide eyes and yoonchae feels dizzy all over again as she turns to rummage through her closet. she tries not to think too hard about what megan looks like with her hair mussed and knees slightly apart on her bed. she accidentally grabs the same tank top twice and gives up when it ends up in her hands for the third time, turning back to megan with the top and a pair of sweatpants. 

“you can have a hoodie too if you’re cold,” she says, already moving for the door. “knock when you’re done.”

she would just turn and face the wall any other time, but the night feels fragile. she feels like she might do something stupid if she isn’t careful, and hearing megan shimmy out of the dress she’s in might be enough to make her stop being careful.

it doesn’t take long for the knock to come, and yoonchae goes back in to see megan sitting on the bed again in the sweatpants and tank top, her dress a crumpled pile on the floor. she stoops to pick it up, grabbing an empty hanger from her closet to hang it on. megan watches quietly the whole time. she doesn’t really move when yoonchae tosses her a hoodie, so yoonchae steps in close and grabs it by the hem, guiding it over megan’s head. 

it makes her feel about seven feet tall, so far off the ground, when megan lets her head thunk against yoonchae’s stomach when she’s done. she brings a hand up to megan’s hair instinctively, resting it lightly on the back of her head.

“what’s wrong?” she asks again. 

megan’s arms loop around her waist, clinging. 

“nothing’s wrong,” she says into the fabric of yoonchae’s shirt. her breath is warm. “i just wanted to come here instead of going out.”

“did you drive?”

megan shifts, propping her chin just above yoonchae’s belly button so she can look up at her. 

“we were in the area already. i walked.” 

LA is one of the least walkable cities yoonchae has ever been to. 

“i’m going to have to give you shoes too,” she says, thinking of the heels now discarded by her bedside. 

megan’s arms tighten around her waist. 

“are you kicking me out?”

yoonchae sighs and puts her arms, finally, around megan’s shoulders in return. 

“no, mei,” she shakes her head. “of course not.”

they have rehearsal in the morning, which is the reason yoonchae had cited for not wanting to go out. it had been mostly a lie, but megan is gracious about things like that. 

“did you already have dinner?” megan asks, hiding her face again now that she knows she isn’t being kicked out.

“did you not?”

megan shakes her head silently. yoonchae bats gently at the back of her head. 

“you were going out without food?”

she doesn’t get a response, which is maybe fair. she’s not trying to parent megan, but she’s not not concerned. 

“i will cook,” she says instead of offering up takeout, because she feels kind of jittery and she wants something to do with her hands. in lieu of an answer, megan’s fingers curl into the back of her shirt, which is maybe the most confusing possible thing she could’ve done. 

yoonchae loses track of how long she stands there hugging and being hugged, but it’s long enough that her knees lock up a little. she tries not to let it show in her gait as she leads megan into the kitchen by her hand and pushes her into one of the stools at her counter. 

“bossy,” megan comments, which is a step back in the direction of normal. she doesn’t really say anything else as yoonchae dumps rice into the rice cooker and fishes a few old-ish vegetables out of the fridge to fry in a pan with the bulgogi she picked up yesterday. 

she fidgets with the little coin purse yoonchae left sitting on the counter, opening it and snapping it shut again rhythmically. it all feels strangely routine to cook with megan sitting there, and yoonchae moves easily around her when megan gets up to get a glass of water. 

she doesn’t sit back down when she’s done, choosing instead to hover a half step to yoonchae’s side as she dumps the veggies into the pan and jabs at them with her chopsticks. 

“we could watch a movie,” she murmurs, taking the cutting board from yoonchae to put in the sink. after a beat, she flips on the water and grabs the sponge. “if you wanted.”

“even a cartoon movie?”

she’s just joking, but megan nods seriously, looking over her shoulder at her. 

“whatever you want,” she intones, and accepts the dish yoonchae passes to her. 

“can you get the rice when you’re done?”

megan is shockingly helpful in the kitchen. she has bowls out and manages to find the jugeok in one of the drawers by the time yoonchae turns the heat down on the pan. 

like lunch with lara, yoonchae’s dinner with megan passes by in relative silence. they eat standing up, shoulders pressed together because yoonchae eats with her right hand and megan eats with her left. yoonchae stops herself from drinking straight out megan’s glass, but her hand is halfway there before her brain catches up. 

megan thanks her shyly for the food when they’re done and tries to finish the dishes as “payment,” but yoonchae sends her over to the couch to figure out what movie they’re going to watch instead. she rinses their bowls and puts them in the dishwasher, dropping both sets of chopsticks in the sink to clean later. 

her phone is still sitting on the kitchen table where she’d dropped it when she’d gone to get the door and she picks it up to see several missed notifications from lara and sophia. 

half of them are asking if she knows where megan is, which feels silly because they both have megan’s location before she realizes megan’s phone is probably dead. she texts them both in the same chat that yes she knows where megan is, that megan is here with her and she’s fine, before putting her phone face down on the table again so she won’t have to see whatever it is that they say next. 

she knows they’re both mildly disapproving of this. whatever it is. the thing where megan can show up at yoonchae’s apartment like this and stay, and yoonchae can call her from a random part of the city at odd times of day and ask for a ride home, and neither of them really talk about why that is. 

we’re a lot closer than you guys think. 

she’s still not sure why her instinct had been to ask are we? 

megan is curled up into a tiny ball in the corner of yoonchae’s couch, chin pressed to her knees as she taps at the remote. she’s still wearing makeup, and yoonchae briefly considers going to get remover wipes before megan is reaching out a hand and pulling her down at her side. 

“okay,” megan says, “i found some cartoon movies. but you have to decide which one.”

the lineup megan has chosen is so impossibly megan that yoonchae has to suppress a laugh. she shakes her head at the incredibles and a minion movie, nodding when ponyo pops up on screen instead. the first time she’d watched the movie, she’d filled her sketchbook with watery doodles. that had been back before any of the girls knew she likes to draw and before she knew which ones she’d end up spending years of her life around.

“i’ve never seen this.” megan keeps her voice low even though it’s only the studio credits that are playing on screen. 

“i like it,” yoonchae says instead of it’s good or you’ll like it. 

it happens kind of like spring when it does, slowly and then all at once. megan shifts to lean against her shoulder, and yoonchae leans back against the cushions, and suddenly, by the time the flood is on its way in the movie, yoonchae has megan almost completely on top of her. she’s fading fast, yoonchae can tell. her eyes, though trained on the screen, keep slipping shut and taking a few seconds too long to reopen. she’ll be upset when she wakes up that she hasn’t taken her makeup off, but yoonchae can’t find it herself to tell megan to get up. she traces a hand up megan’s spine instead and watches as her eyes flutter shut and stay that way. 

it shouldn’t feel so natural to do this, she thinks. it shouldn’t feel so natural to gather her friend—her best friend? her bandmate? yoonchae isn’t sure what to call megan anymore—up in her arms and keep her there. 

sometimes, sophia tells her stories about her friends from home that start with when i was your age and end with but we don’t really talk anymore. 

laying there, on the couch her dad helped her pick out in the apartment her mom co-signed the lease for, yoonchae tries to imagine how she and megan could possibly end up as we don’t talk anymore. they’d have to have a huge falling out, something bigger than the infamous beef, or maybe yoonchae would move across the world again and the phone lines would go down, and megan would lose the post-it note with her address and never send a letter. 

she blinks up at the ceiling, hand stilling in megan’s hair. or maybe, they could do this, whatever it is, forever. she tries to imagine that instead. 

she doesn’t move across the world. megan knows where she lives and she shows up randomly on nights she’s not supposed to. or she doesn’t have to show up at all. she’s just down the hall, taking mirror selfies or journaling or calling yoonchae for help with the a/c unit. they’re still in katseye or they’re not and they’re okay either way. 

so that’s two possible versions of the future. yoonchae knows which one she likes better. 

megan shifts, nose brushing against yoonchae’s bare collarbone. in the morning, yoonchae thinks, if they get there, she will suggest that they get matcha before practice and megan won’t even complain. 

yoonchae has a car that she can’t legally drive. it’s one of the less responsible purchases she’s made in her life, but it comes in handy on occasion. megan hums appreciatively when she sinks into the driver’s seat. 

“not bad, babe,” she says, fumbling with the ignition. 

“it was used,” yoonchae mumbles, which is true. it’s not an especially nice car. she picked out a model that’s identical to half of the cars in LA, white body and too-bright headlights. 

they show up to practice five minutes late holding coffee carriers with their best approximations of everyone’s usual order. if yoonchae knows the other members at all, they’ll only sip to be polite and forget them against the mirror for the rest of practice. but that’s okay. she really only suggested they do this so the others wouldn’t comment on the fact that megan is wearing yoonchae’s clothes and yoonchae is walking a little funny because her back hurts from sleeping on the couch all night. she’s already bracing for lara’s comment about nighttime activities. 

because the thing is, it’s not like her and megan are subtle. even if they were, they all spend too much time around each other for them to keep their relationship—whatever it is—a secret. dani pretends she doesn’t have any idea what’s going on. sophia teases them both because she was there when they were fighting and seems to think they can work their way through anything, even what lara has called a ‘hopeless situationship.’ she’s not supposed to know about that, though. megan had shown her the texts out of something that could be called loyalty, blushing furiously all the while. when yoonchae had asked what situationship meant, megan had buried her face in her hands and stayed there until their dinner arrived, mumbling an explanation through her fingers.

and yoonchae misses manon, who used to send them tiktok edits in their group chat with just the three of them alongside three rows of heart-eyed cat face emojis. she’d put in six orders of coffee without thinking and left the extra on the counter, trying to herd megan out of the cafe before she could see it. 

“what’d you do this time?” lara asks megan when she’s handed her cup, and megan scowls, still sensitive over recent headlines and some pointed instagram posts that had made even sophia roll her eyes disapprovingly. 

“i didn’t do anything. we’re just being nice,” she replies, and whatever lara was going to say next gets lost to grant walking into the room, clapping his hands for their attention. 

their practices are long and grueling, but yoonchae’s always appreciated that. it’s hard to think about other things once she’s sweating, focused on not stepping on dani’s foot through a turn or toppling off a chair. 

still, as her body moves through counts automatically, she finds herself wondering how much longer these instinctual reactions to their music will be useful. one day, inarguably, there will be no use for all this information she has crammed into her head. all the steps and lines and note changes. the best way to thread the wire of her earpiece through her hair. how far to hold the microphone from her mouth, what to say when people stop her on the street asking for pictures, the practiced responses to interview questions. maybe even the english slang words she’s picked up. 

it’s just a question of which day, and how far away it is. 

“yoonchae,” grant barks, tearing her away from her thoughts. “more oomph.”

he makes a face, baring his teeth in the way that yoonchae’s gotten used to seeing on dani. 

and of course she listens. it’s what she signed up for. 

“nothing ever changes,” she groans, dropping an unopened paint can onto sophia’s carpet with a little too much force. “except the walls.”

sophia’s spare bedroom is an odd shade of green, something hovering between puke and mint that yoonchae’s surprised sophia didn’t take care of sooner. 

“everything is always changing,” sophia hums as she comes into the room holding a huge plastic sheet and a roll of blue tape. “you’re blonde now. you weren’t blonde before.”

yoonchae uses her brown hair tie to tie up her blonde hair and tries not to scowl. 

“but i will have brown hair again soon. it’s all circles,” she retorts. 

sophia hands her one edge of the plastic sheet and they separate, draping it over the carpet. yoonchae already lugged all the furniture out into the hallway. there wasn’t much of it—just an empty full-sized bedframe and two mismatched bedside tables, but sophia had been too ‘busy’ with something in the kitchen to help. 

“if this is about megan, i think you know what i’m going to say,” sophia tells her gently once they’ve smoothed out the plastic sheet. 

“not everything is about megan.” she manages not to snap at sophia, but it still comes out harsher than she intended. “sometimes things are just about me.”

sophia hands her the roll of blue tape. 

“put strips over the baseboards, around the window, and by the outlets, okay? i’ll do the ceilings when you’re done. i’m going to get the ladder.”

she leaves before yoonchae can say anything else, which means take a second to cool down. 

putting down the tape strangely does help. when sophia comes back lugging a gleaming metal ladder, yoonchae stands up to apologize. 

“are you more confused now than you were a year ago?” sophia asks her from above, balancing on the ladder that yoonchae’s bracing with both hands. 

yoonchae’s stomach flips over and she swallows hard.

“about what?”

“life. what you want. things like that.” 

it’s a softball question. sophia could be asking much more pointed ones. 

“maybe.” 

softball answer. yoonchae grips the metal tighter, watching the skin over her knuckles go white. 

“i thought i knew what katseye was going to be like,” she offers. “but it’s different. and i liked that it was different.”

“past tense?” 

sophia climbs down the ladder and they shift it a few steps over. she climbs back up and yoonchae stares at the pukey-minty wall. 

“i still like it. it’s just…” she falters, realizing that the lack of words coming to her brain isn’t because she can’t find the right english ones. she can’t find any at all. 

she tries to grasp at anything concrete, any half-twisted metaphor she could try to explain, but all she has are these huge amorphous blobs of feeling. whenever she tries to pin one down and give it a name, it changes and the name doesn’t fit anymore, so she has to come up with a new one. the new one doesn't fit either because things are always changing and there are rules about these things that yoonchae doesn't think she could explain very well either. 

but sophia seems to know what she means, because when she climbs back down the ladder again, she gets up on her tiptoes to loop her arms around yoonchae’s neck. 

yoonchae wants to drop her head down to sophia’s shoulder like she has before, in the way that kind of reminds her of hugging her mom or her older sister, but she doesn’t, because sophia is pressing her face into yoonche’s shirt. 

“i wish i had better answers for you,” sophia says quietly.

the unsteady feeling from before, from the airport and her own couch at home, slams into yoonchae. she wants to blame it on the paint fumes, but the can isn’t even open yet. it isn’t often that she hears sophia sounding unsure of herself. she grips at sophia’s shoulders a little tighter, trying to breathe the dizziness away. 

“i’ll always be here for you, okay?” sophia pulls back a little to look up at her seriously. “i mean always, yoonchae. i promise you.”

the weighty sincerity makes everything feel ordered and more off kilter at the same time. yoonchae can’t tell if she’s still dizzy or if it’s just the motion of the world as always. she tilts forward into sophia again, and this time, she doesn’t stop herself from hiding her face in sophia’s shoulder like a kid. 

someone goes on vacation and megan ends up with a cat in her apartment that she’s, at best, clumsily adequate at caring for. she calls yoonchae for help the first night after the cat hacks a hairball up on her ottoman. 

“please, you gotta come help me, i—no luna, stop—”

yoonchae presses her laughter into her hand, listening to megan scold the cat over the line without enough real conviction to get her to listen. 

“you sound like you’re asking her politely to stop,” she says. 

megan huffs and yoonchae pulls the phone away from her ear at the rush of sound. 

“come help me then if you’re such a cat whisperer,” she goads. 

what megan doesn’t need to know is that yoonchae called an uber after the first time she asked. she pretends to hem and haw for a few minutes longer before she gets the pickup notification and has to scramble around her apartment gathering her things. 

she doesn’t bother texting megan when she arrives at the building because megan never locks her door even though she really should. the apartment is strangely quiet when she walks in and she calls megan’s name softly, dropping her things on the counter. 

“over here,” megan’s voice floats up from the floor. 

yoonchae finds her laying on her stomach on the carpet in her living room, chin propped on her hands. she’s staring into the dark space beneath the couch forlornly. 

“oh,” yoonchae hums, getting down onto the floor beside her without hesitation. 

“i think i scared her,” megan murmurs. 

her head comes to rest against yoonchae’s elbow. dani called megan a barnacle once and megan had gotten so embarrassed about it that she spent two days wandering around with her hands in her pockets to stop herself from reaching out for anyone. 

“maybe. but she’ll come around eventually.”

“can’t you like, pspsps at her or something?” megan asks. 

she sounds so genuinely distressed about the cat hiding away under the couch that yoonchae obliges just to make her feel better, sticking a hand out and making a few of the kissy sounds that usually got oreo to listen to her back at her parents’ apartment. 

megan shifts to put her cheek on her hands instead of her chin, watching yoonchae instead of the space beneath the couch. 

“oreo is too big to fit under the couch,” yoonchae informs her. 

she feels the air shift around her hand and goes very still. something soft brushes up against her palm.

“don’t you guys have that robot feeder thing?”

“mhm.”

“should i get one of those for luna?”

yoonchae snorts despite herself and hears nails skittering against the floor in response. she pulls her hand out from under the couch. 

“how long will you have her?”

“one week,” megan says, rolling over onto her back. her hair fans out across the carpet and yoonchae puts her hand back into the darkness so she won’t be tempted to touch it. 

“so no, mei.” 

she nudges megan’s thigh with her knee and megan kicks out with one socked foot, narrowly missing yoonchae’s calf. 

“i just want to be a good cat aunt.” 

yoonchae wiggles her fingers and swallows down a yelp when she feels little paws latch on. slowly, she starts to drag her hand back. she gets a good couple of inches before the cat lets go again and she lets out a small sigh. 

“she needs some time, i think.”

she rolls over, letting her body list towards megan’s. she wants to ask about boats again, but the silence between them is comfortable, and she doesn’t want to break it with something silly like that. 

“what are you thinking about?” megan pokes a finger into her side. 

“boats.” yoonchae doesn’t know how to lie to megan in private. “you never told me if you like them.”

this time, megan doesn’t make a joke about viruses or classic movies that yoonchae might never watch. 

“i think so,” she says. “i haven’t been on very many boats. why?”

yoonchae shrugs. 

“i just wanted to know.” 

“do you like boats?”

she has to think about whether or not she likes boats and decides that no, she doesn’t like them very much, which prompts megan to launch into a story about how she went whale watching as a kid and her brother got really seasick, yoonchae, like so sick, it was disgusting. 

they lay there on the floor for a long time. the shadows cast across the floor by megan’s various pieces of furniture and fake plants grow taller and taller before disappearing completely. at some point, yoonchae feels something walking across her hair and grabs for megan’s wrist, squeezing when she finds it. 

“be cool,” she instructs. 

megan stiffens with the effort of staying completely still, breathing shallowly as luna picks her way across the tiny gap between them. she pauses by their hips and kneads at the floor before settling down with her front paws on yoonchae’s waistband. 

“cat whisperer,” megan hisses.

she bats half-heartedly at megan’s arm and lets her hand fall to rest on her stomach. she can feel it rising and falling in time with megan’s breaths. 

“i have a question,” she says, feeling brave. megan tilts her head to look at her. she isn’t wearing any makeup and her glasses are crooked on her nose. “i like your glasses.”

“that’s not a question,” megan teases. there’s pink riding high in her cheeks that yoonchae pretends not to notice. 

“okay. my question is—” she moves her hand off megan’s stomach and puts it carefully on luna’s back. “would you still want to hang out with me without katseye?”

she’s expecting megan to laugh and tell her yes, but only if you keep buying me food, but instead, megan props herself up on one arm, brows furrowed fiercely. 

“of course i would,” she affirms seriously. “i’ll always want to hang out with you.”

yoonchae blinks a few times, pressing her lips together. it’s the second time in as many days that someone’s unbridled sincerity has made her choke up. when she speaks again, it’s almost a whisper, and megan leans closer to hear it.

“even after katseye?”

megan’s hands are on her face then, wiping at tears she hadn’t wanted to let spill, lips brushing chastely at her hairline. she smells a little bit like soju, but maybe yoonchae is just making associations. 

“yeah, yoonchae,” she rasps, and yeah, maybe yoonchae is just making associations, but that’s all thinking really is. “even then.”

it happens on a completely normal day. down the hall from their practice room is a small two-stall bathroom, which megan barges into while yoonchae is washing her hands. she beelines for the mirror, leaning in close to check her makeup. 

“hey,” she says as she turns her face this way and that. “is my lipgloss smudged? i can’t tell if it is or if i’m just sweating.”

yoonchae squints at the mirror, but megan’s hand lands on her shoulder and pushes gently. they end up face-to-face, and yoonchae’s eyes drop down instinctively. she forgets what she’s meant to be doing for a long moment, glancing back up and down again. 

“it looks fine to me,” she croaks finally. 

megan swipes her thumb over her mouth, nails cherry red. yoonchae can’t help but track the motion with her eyes. she follows megan’s hand all the way up to her ear, where it tucks hair back. her own hand twitches at her side. megan missed a few strands. 

“what?” 

“you’ve got—here—”

she reaches up and suddenly they’re closer than they were before, megan’s hand resting on yoonchae’s hip. their noses bump and yoonchae thinks her eyes might slide shut, head tipping instinctively to one side and there’s air ghosting warmly over her lips, megan’s hand tightening around her hip. 

the door bangs open and they spring apart. megan’s talking immediately, trying to distract whoever just walked in, and yoonchae’s whole face is on fire, heart hammering away in her chest. she braces both hands against the sink, letting her chin fall against her chest. it’s not subtle, exactly, but she’s got that spinning feeling again and she’s focused only on the sound of her heartbeat loud in her ears. 

she’s still not sure who it is in the bathroom with them. their voice is blending cleanly with megan’s, making it hard to tell who’s saying what. she doesn’t pick her gaze up off the porcelain sink to check. she doesn’t move until she hears her own name over her heartbeat, which has slowed only slightly in the time that she’s been hunched over the sink. 

“yoonchae? you good, girl?”

it’s lara. it’s just lara. she nods, trying for a thumbs up that is probably less convincing than she wants it to be. 

“too much dancing,” she manages, and breathes a little easier when lara’s tinkling laugh bounces off the walls of the room. 

“i feel you,” lara says. 

she runs her hands under the water at the sink next to the one yoonchae is at for a long moment, and yoonchae lifts her gaze long enough to make brief eye contact. lara tips her chin down just slightly, which could mean a thousand things and yoonchae has no idea what any of them could be. 

the door swings shut behind lara with a bang and they’re left alone together again. it feels like some kind of testament to time or growth or something that megan doesn’t run out the door right behind lara. she steps closer instead, eyes wide and cautious. 

“hey. you actually good?”

yoonchae is so glad megan isn’t trying to run away. she turns and means to say as much, but megan is looking at her with undoing eyes and she ends up shuffling forward awkwardly instead. 

“sorry,” she hears herself say. 

megan shakes her head and lifts her arms, and that’s more than yoonchae would’ve asked of her, but she doesn’t hesitate to fall into them. there’s the sweat smell from practice, but underneath it is the familiar mystery scent that yoonchae still hasn’t been able to figure out. she’s got a new theory now, and it’s that it has more to do with megan’s perfume than her hair products.

megan’s hand comes up to the back of her head, light at first and then firmer, holding her close. yoonchae can feel her mouth moving against her hair when she speaks. 

“it’s okay. don’t be sorry. everything’s okay, yeah?”

it’s hard not to believe megan with her thumb fitted warmly behind yoonchae’s ear, right where the cherry blossom tattoo is on her own body. 

it does seem like everything is okay, though. they almost kissed in the bathroom and everything is okay. yoonchae pulls back to look at megan, to see if her expression is saying something different than her words, but she finds only calm. megan blinks at her slowly, catlike. 

“everything’s okay,” she repeats.

would everything still be okay if lara hadn’t walked in? yoonchae isn’t sure if they’d be standing here having that same conversation, but they might be kissing about it instead, and the thought doesn’t totally make her skin crawl. it doesn’t make her skin crawl at all, actually, and she can’t even pretend to be surprised with herself. 

they go back to the practice room after that. lara doesn’t spare them a second glance and neither does anyone else. yoonchae kind of wants to tell sophia about this just to know what the older girl would have to say. 

megan shoots her a small smile right before they start up the choreo again and what really gets yoonchae about it all is that it feels so normal. it doesn’t feel wrong to almost kiss megan in the bathroom in the middle of dance practice and it doesn’t feel wrong to want it to happen again in LA with her hair still blonde.

that’s another version of the future. blonde yoonchae kissing megan in LA. it doesn’t sit as heavily on her chest as some of the other versions. 

she must be thinking a little too hard, because sohey changes the song abruptly to one that isn’t theirs and tells them to dance it out, which he does sometimes when it’s just him and no other staff running practice. 

megan runs to yoonchae first, grabbing her hands to spin them around in circles, and the dizziness that comes with that only makes her laugh. 

“go, yoonchae!” megan cries, and yoonchae doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be doing, but she lets her grip go slack and stumbles across the room, her momentum carrying her right into sophia who squawks as they both go down. 

 one day, they will have to talk about this. at some point, there won’t be contracts keeping them together or apart and things will be different.

the music is thrumming in her ears but she can hear megan’s laughter over it anyways, and sophia squeezes her hand before she gets up, and maybe yoonchae has to stay on the ground to keep herself from toppling over, but it feels okay to lay there for a minute with the world spinning endlessly.