c-jkookies

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in my dreams you love me back💫[blog is currently in the making~] 18+

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Just A Moment With You

just a moment with you

pairing: hoshi x gn!reader

wc: 3.8k

summary: after a series of disasters, you find yourself on a long-winded detour from your senior trip with kwon soonyoung, local life of the party and the boy you may have just a little tiny crush on.

or the one where you fall in love with the boy you've fallen in love with every friday night.

notes: college!au, fluff, humor, friends to lovers, lots of alcohol mentions and romcom cliches

originally written for mads's @neonun-au birthday, and thank you to madison (@heartkyeom), vampy (@vampyrescript) , and eva (@bfwonu) for helping with edits!

It wasn't supposed to go like this.

You'd like to say you awoke to the smell of sandalwood, maybe room service or a foot massage.

Instead, you're roused by a hand cramp and the dull smack of your head against the window of Soonyoung's sedan as he speeds over what may be the deepest pothole you've seen in your entire adult life.

"Shit..." You blink, bleary-eyed, at the clock (4:39 PM, a full hour after you were supposed to get to the hotel), and then at Soonyoung, who's humming along to your music and driving with one hand as if absolutely nothing is wrong.

You've noticed he hasn't stolen the aux cord from you even though you were supposed to switch off ages ago. It's one of the many small graces you've noticed from him today—you almost forgive him for letting you sleep through the entirety of the playlist you curated specifically for this trip. He lifted your bag into the back of his car (fair, because it was embarrassingly heavy), bought you Starbucks (he probably needed the stars or something), and didn't lose his patience when you asked him the nth question about ballet (you have no explanation for this one. If you were him, you definitely would have lost it the fifth time you had to explain what a jeté was.).

Yet again, you feel like something more than just a casual friend in the leftovers car on your senior trip.

"Rise and shine, sleeping beauty," he chirps. "Sleep well?"

You gaze out the window, watching the ribbon of green trees unfurl over the sprawling asphalt road. Once you get past Soonyoung's obvious speeding, it's nice, perfect even.

Until you remember you're on a trip to the beach. Not the middle of the forest.

"Soonyoung?"

"Yeah?"

"Where exactly are we?"

Without thinking, Soonyoung replies blithely, "I don't know. When you were asleep, Jeonghan called me and told me to detour and make a pit stop somewhere down this highway." A near comedic pause. "Also my phone's dead."

Then the music stops, signaling the death of your phone and the last tether you have to civilization.

You remember you're in Soonyoung's shitty 1990-something car with manual window cranks instead of phone chargers. And so it's just you, Soonyoung, and the road until you find some hillbilly death town to get gas at and figure out how to contact the rest of your friends, who are likely already sunbathing on the beach.

"So we're lost."

Soonyoung laughs, and it's almost enough to ease the wave of anxiety currently climbing your bones.

"Fuck. Oh my god," you groan. "We're in a horror movie, aren't we?"

"Ok, maybe, but we would totally survive a horror movie. Right? Come on. You're smiling."

"We are literally gonna be the first people to die. Like in the first thirty minutes."

For a moment you catch yourself tracing Soonyoung's grinning silhouette against the glow of the window, almost in admiration.

"What? You can't see me heroically rescuing you? I could absolutely take a zombie down. Seriously. We'd definitely make the hour mark."

"Not when you can't even keep our phones charged," you lament. "Or take the right exit. There, there, god, please check your blind spot!"

The town that you drive into is ripped straight from a postcard, thankfully, and not from the cover of a slasher movie.

It's almost incredible how, instead of drinking out of a coconut and watching Seokmin trip over his feet in an unnecessarily competitive game of beach volleyball, you're looking for parking spots on a street where it looks like cars haven't been invented yet.

But you don't really mind. In fact, as Soonyoung almost swerves off the road to point at a cute dog tied to a lamppost, you find this whole debacle a little endearing.

"Maybe we can park in front of this café and charge our phones there?"

"Yes, ma'am," Soonyoung replies, and that's how you find yourself seated in the cutest little booth, at a table so small, your knees are almost touching his.

In true disaster movie fashion, his phone charger is too frayed to be of any use, and so he peruses one of the sticky plastic-cover menus while you watch the slow creep of your phone battery to a serviceable percent.

"You like blueberry?" he asks.

"Sure."

You notice he's a foot tapper—always moving to some imaginary beat, never able to stay still. It'd normally bug you a little, but instead you're wondering what song he's dancing to. Almost as if reading your mind, he promptly sits on his hands and apologizes—"Sorry, 'm shaking the table," he laughs. "Bad habit."

"No, it's ok." You see an unreadable expression cross his face. But it's not a bad one—instead, it makes you curious. "I like trying to figure out what song you're thinking of."

"One of the songs from your playlist. I like your taste in music."

It flatters you more than it should, and to break the post-compliment tension you've invented in your own mind, you decide to call Jeonghan and set things straight while Soonyoung orders—blueberry pancakes and two coffees, please.

"Jeonghan, what the fuck," is the first thing you say to him, and Soonyoung laughs from across the table.

"Where are you guys?" is his languid reply, and, just as you predicted, you hear the telltale wail of Mingyu's voice complaining that Seungcheol was hogging all the shade. "Still driving?"

"What do you mean? Soonyoung told me that you told us to pull off at a rest stop."

"Hm?" He pulls the receiver away to holler at someone in the background (You can at least try to keep the ball in bounds, and someone, Seungkwan, maybe, yells something back). "Sorry, bad timing. I gotta go."

"What? Where? What the hell is going on?"

"You must have gotten lost." You can almost perfectly picture his nonchalant shrug, the dumb bucket hat he's got askew on his head. "Guess we shouldn't have put the two most directionally challenged people in the same car. Just stay the night wherever you are—we're not finishing all the alc today. Just most of it."

"Jeonghan—" And the receiver goes dead. "Jeonghan!"

It's over the welcome plate of pancakes Soonyoung ordered where you're able to fully contemplate your situation.

Of course it's the one time you're alone and sober with him where everything seems to go wrong.

You met Soonyoung at one of Jeonghan's parties. He was drinking from a wine bag, right from the spout, and it was then and there you knew you just had to be friends with him.

And it did happen—somehow, among college socialite Jeonghan's seemingly endless friend circles, you and the dance major fell into a steady rhythm of seeing each other on the weekends and vastly enjoying each other's presence.

Ever since, he was that friend for you. Your steadfast beer pong partner, the guy who texted you almost exclusively nonsensical memes and requests for philosophy notes (never without the pleading eyes emoji), and someone who was always down to split a milkshake with you at the midnight diner when the rest of your friends wanted real food (Isn't ice cream somewhere on the food pyramid? Soonyoung had always joked, to which Jihoon pointed out that Soonyoung ate like the pyramid was a circle labeled "junk". Says the guy who pisses straight Diet Coke, Soonyoung had replied, pouting, and it never failed to make you laugh.).

You had a comfortable friendship, one that was never less, never more, although you'd be lying if you said you never wished it was otherwise.

Now, looking at him, doused in the afternoon light and quietly listening to you ramble about your film minor, you never would have matched up this Soonyoung to the Soonyoung who did push-ups for an hour to attempt doing a keg stand by himself.

You push back the memory aching in your mind, that one night you walked him home after one too many margaritas.

"Shouldn't it be the other way around?" you had joked, and he turned to you, fully serious, and said you looked really pretty tonight. You remember the way his lips formed around the words, like it was the only thing he really knew in that moment.

And for once you felt relieved that he likely wouldn't remember a thing from that night, because you felt all the blood in your body, every single cell, rush to your head.

Maybe we both got a little too drunk, you had told yourself, but there was no way you could forget the way he had looked at you, and worse, that traitorous little flutter in the hollow of your chest.

He's saved you the last pancake.

"Whatcha thinking about?" he asks, more softly than you expect. "I know you're probably worried—" (Spoiler alert. You are.) "But...we're here now. Might as well have fun."

"I guess I can tolerate you for another 24 hours." You playfully roll your eyes, but not before catching the way he smiles at you. Yeah, he might smile at everyone like that, but this one, carved by maple syrup and sunlight, feels special.

"It'll be fun! Promise."

You make him pinky promise, even though you already believe him. You notice his hands are soft; you make him swear again just to hold them again, one more time.

As expected from a series of increasingly more unfortunate events, Soonyoung has dragged you into a souvenir shop for some tacky memorabilia to remember your trip by.

"Should we get them a postcard? We can write fuck you on the back," he says, scrunching his face up at the spinning rack of watercolor prints.

"Brilliant."

You join him by the display, and he promptly shows you the seven different postcards he was considering.

Too bright, too Hallmark, too Thomas Kincaid, you tell him as he shuffles through his stack,and even though he doesn't know who the fuck you're talking about, he takes your opinion like it's gospel and narrows it down to a painting of the sun over the lake, a big fat orange hovering above the little town you've found yourself in.

"If we're here, we might as well see the sunset. I think I saw a picnic area by the water," you say, watching him traipse over to a shelf of tourist trap hats. He tries one on, and you can't find it within yourself to tell him that, as cute as he is posing for you, it's not worth thirty dollars.

"Let's do it. I can show off my new hat."

Soonyoung grins at you, and it's like meeting him in reverse.

For some godforsaken reason, he knows what you look like mid-breakdown over a boy, and you know what his favorite hangover cure is (jasmine tea and a bowl of plain rice). And yet, you're both still figuring out the little things. When he pays for his goofy hat and the postcard, you catch that he has a little birthmark on his wrist.

"I still can't believe you cried watching Cars," you tell Soonyoung as you exit the gift shop.

"No amount of higher education could make me deny Mater's impact," he replies, hand over his heart, and you can't do anything but laugh. "Please tell me you'll write your thesis on him."

"Maybe if you look a little more pathetic, I'll think about it."

He doesn't hesitate to give you his best puppy eyes, and you actually feel your heart lurch a little.

"Hm. I'm listening."

And so you let Soonyoung lay out his master plan for your unwritten dissertation on Mater and Lightning McQueen's brotherhood, and it doesn't bypass you that he was actually listening to you talk about all that complicated movie lingo earlier.

He's a good listener even when he's not drunk. Actually, he's a better one sober, and it makes you feel kinda funny.

When he looks at you, stars in his eyes, you see the same Soonyoung that you've spent all those midnights with, except he still acts like he's known you for years you haven't had together.

You find yourself wishing that you knew him on nights other than Friday ones, that you knew his ups and downs, that you knew him as not just a drinking game partner, or a seatmate or another one of Jeonghan's friends or the guy you subject to mimosa therapy on bottomless Sundays.

You find yourself wishing you knew all of Soonyoung, and it's the moment you settle on that thought that you know you're doomed.

"So that's first position."

"Yup."

You watch Soonyoung's lithe fingers dance across the canvas of the tote bag you've laid out across both your laps, as you sit side by side on a bench by the lakeside. The air is warm and muggy with summertime, and there's no one out but the two of you.

"Arabesque into pas de ciseaux." A dash to stage right (the corner where your leg and the tote bag meet), and he pirouettes onto the bare skin of your thigh. His touch is featherlight, but it gives you goosebumps, something you desperately try to swallow down as his hand spins back for a final jump and bow.

"That's the jeté," you manage to say, and you can swear he's never looked happier to hear something.

"Yeah, you got it," he says, slow and soft. "See, you could do ballet too."

"Nowhere as good as you, not even close. I don't know if you saw me, but I've been to your shows before. You're incredible."

"No, I remember. I always look for you in the audience," he replies. "Because of that one time you asked me about my show, during that Chi Omega party." He lowers his eyes to his hands, now fidgeting in his lap. "You were the only one who did."

"I can't imagine not wanting to see your performances," is the only thing you can think to say (you're too busy fighting the butterflies in your stomach), but it seems okay, because Soonyoung leans on your shoulder. That mop of blonde hair smells like oranges and the sun, and you lean right back into him.

Some unexplainable feeling threatens to claw its way out of your chest.

It's familiar, intimate, too intimate. Yeah, maybe he wiped your tears with an McDonalds napkin when you cried in the drive-thru the day after you broke up with Minghao, but this is different. It didn't feel like a facehugger from Alien was going to fuck your shit up, not even close. (Although, Soonyoung's shitty jokes and the piss-poor absorbency of the napkin were more reasons to laugh than to catch feelings.)

"I like that about you," Soonyoung says. "You care."

"What do you mean? Of course I care."

"I don't know." He slips into that mumble talk again. "Sometimes it seems like all I am to people is the life of the party, that's all. Just the guy who's really good at beer pong. You're different." A pause. "Although, you've gotta admit, I have saved your ass more times I can count."

"Ok, fair. Never said I was the better half of our team." And when you manage to make him laugh, you add, "And I like that about you too. I don't think anyone else in the world would have let me go on that long about 70 millimeter film."

He laughs again, a pretty one that blossoms from his chest and shakes the two of you, bodies still connected.

The sound lingers in the air, and you let the dusk and the crickets and the smell of his cologne wash over you. You like how your knees are touching, how he rests on your shoulder like it's the most natural thing he's ever done—it's different than the Soonyoung that clings to you, crying about the power of friendship, because he can't walk straight after two beers, but you like it. You're coming to realize that they're two halves of the same picture, the same Soonyoung with a heart he wears on his sleeve.

It feels like an eternity before he breaks the silence. He sits up straight, and your stomach folds into itself a little.

"Do you remember that kickback we went to? Right after my Swan Lake performance?" Soonyoung's voice is low, casual, like he's sharing a secret between you and the universe. "We played truth or dare and you said you wouldn't mind kissing me?"

"Thought you were too drunk to remember. Everyone else was," you laugh, suddenly feeling too shy to meet the gaze you know is falling on you. You're falling, falling, careening down a mile-long cliff, with no intention to stop—somehow it's that part that scares you the most.

The memory's another one of those in-betweens, forgotten glimpses of a boy you felt only you knew. The sweaty, euphoric, post-practice Soonyoung you bumped into when your political theory class ran late, the whispered jokes in between tequila shots, the stumbling, drunken conversations about the universe and everything in it on the long walks home.

The fact that all of these little precious seconds also lived in Soonyoung's mind, that they're as real to him as they are to you, makes your heart feel raw, seen.

"How could I forget something like that?" is his simple response. The gravity of the moment settles into your bones; you're breathless, giddy. "I'm asking because—," he pauses, taking your expression into his eyes, writing you into memory. The sudden intimacy of it all makes you want to cry. "Because I want to kiss you. Will you let me?"

The words hang in between you, just one more secret between you and the universe.

Maybe it's hopeless, maybe it's just another one of those passing moments, but you don't think you would ever forgive yourself if you let it go by. And so you close the distance between the two of you, feel those heart shaped lips on yours.

At first he's so gentle, as if he's buffering a little. And then he clicks into motion, heart possessing his body, and kisses you back like it's a fairytale.

"You make me so shy," he murmurs. You're so close, you think he can feel your heart beating out of your chest. "I almost chickened out of it."

He punctuates his sentence with another kiss, which you gladly lean into. This one is more giggly, impulsive (Sorry, I couldn't help it, he says against your lips, and you're so happy you could die right here, right in front of the lake in the middle of nowhere, in the arms of the stupidest, hottest ballerino you know).

"Shy? Me?"

"Yeah. You're cool, and you're smart and funny—" You watch him stumble over the words as you meet his eyes, which is so cute, it physically pains you. "And you're good at karaoke, which is really fucking hot."

"Oh, so that's what got you, huh?"

You remember the night he was talking about, the one right after you were positively sure you flunked your stats final, where you rolled into Jeonghan's frat house two hours late looking no better than a wet rat. You grabbed the mic and lost your goddamn mind, which in no way was attractive or sexy, but you guess Soonyoung's of a different breed.

"What can I say, I'm a simple man," he replies, nose pressed to yours.

You're soaking into the moment, the hazy warmth of the lakeside and the way your heart seems to leap right into Soonyoung's lap every time his eyelashes skirt over your cheek. And then you remember everything else, like the fact that this is not some Lifetime movie and that you still have to find a place to stay and a way to get to the beach tomorrow.

"We need to get a room."

"Already?" Soonyoung almost jumps out of his skin. "I, uh—"

"Not for that, idiot," you scoff affectionately. "We're stuck here for a night, remember? Before we get to, you know, the trip we're supposed to be on?"

"Ohh, fuck." He looks at you with those big, vacant eyes, and you know he's totally lost the plot. "How the fuck are we gonna tell everyone we're, like, a thing now? We're a thing now, right?"

"I hope so," you laugh, reveling in the relief that floods through Soonyoung's features. "As for telling everyone, I’m starting to think they set us up, actually. It all kinda makes sense now."

You're not exactly anticipating Jeonghan's shit-eating grin when you tell him it actually worked, but you know this whole plot was him looking out for you in his own special way. (You're not keen on finding out just how obvious your crush was to everyone except the two of you, though).

Although, it does kind of feel like a Lifetime movie—when you walk to the local motel, your hands brush against each other with all of the pent-up tension of a first love, until you finally just grab his hand and feel it melt into yours.

"I've always wondered what this would feel like," he says, thumb brushing over the back of your hand.

"What, holding hands? That's supposed to come before the first kiss, you know."

"I mean we can kiss again. And just forget about the first one if you want to do it in order."

Who are you to deny him, you think, and gladly, gladly indulge him.

"Were you in on this whole thing?" you ask when you're finally able to pull him off you.

"No, but I get why, 'cos I can't really keep a secret," he replies, sheepish grin on his face. "Oh, wait, so you're saying Jeonghan got us lost on purpose. Ohhh."

His eyes get all big and shiny, and you know you're down bad when you find the fact that he just got it more than a little cute.

If he weren't so convincing, though, you would have thought this was a group effort, because when you open the door to the only vacant room in the entire motel, there is exactly one tiny little bed.

"You've gotta be kidding me," you laugh, but the second you see Soonyoung drop all the bags to immediately begin building a pillow barrier, you fall for him all over again.

And as if on cue, your phone dings with a text from Jeonghan.

You owe me a drink, it reads. Classic.

Just A Moment With You

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