I'm Here For The Angstttttt - Tumblr Posts
their convo on the last part is so so sooo satisfying *chef kiss*
enough for you | lee haechan
title: enough for you | sequel to traitor
pairing: ex!lee haechan x oc/fem reader (no descriptions, no name, written in third person) | side members: huang renjun, lee jeno
genre: angst, song-fic, friends to lovers to exes, (a bit of) fluff, happy ending | requested and inspired by enough for you by olivia rodrigo
summary: all she ever wanted was to be enough for Haechan, even now that they aren’t together anymore. Until someone opens her eyes and makes her realize that she is already enough the way she is.
warnings: angst (but it's not that bad, it's more focused on the healing process)
words: 5.002k
a/n: i hope you’ll like it! let me know what you think with comments, reblogs or asks ♡
Looking back at what had been between her and Haechan she should’ve known. Should’ve seen some red flags before, instead of being so surprised when everything crumbled apart.
Sure, it was all there. But she didn’t feel like blaming herself too much when he did nothing but fool her. She had no idea what kind of Haechan she would’ve had in front of her, every day changing into someone she didn’t know.
But she loved him. Deeply, too much to really hate that push and pull. She loved him too much to see how much all that was getting to her head.
And even now that Haechan wasn’t hers anymore, now that they broke up, those doubts filled her mind.
Her confidence had crumbled into pieces, it was worse than when they started dating when he had to whisper sweet words to her hear and tell her how beautiful he found her.
“Why are you changing so much?” Renjun asked her when he met her in the corridors of their campus.
“What are you talking about?” She asked, fixing her bag full of books on her shoulder, and starting to walk to the library with her friend.
He sighed, rolling his eyes. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“No, I don’t,” she replied, chuckling.
“You never wore make-up,” he pointed out. Renjun wanted to add ‘not that style, not the kind of make-up Bora wears,’ but didn’t. She knew it.
She sighed, pushing the heavy door and waiting for him to walk inside. “Wanted to change,” she shrugged. “New break-up, new me.”
“Sure,” he huffed, pulling out a chair for her before sitting next to her. “You’re just hurting yourself.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied, hiding her face in her bag to look for the books they needed to study.
“You gave him everything you had to give,” Renjun said. “If he’s dumb and doesn’t see the value in you it’s not your fault.”
She lifted her face, glaring at him. “I’m doing this for myself.”
“Yeah, just like you started going to the arcade for you, right?” He asked, placing his elbows on the table, staring at her, making her roll her eyes. “Jeno saw you, you were more concentrated on Bora and Haechan laughing because she got herself killed every two seconds than your own game.”
She wanted to deny it, but she knew there was no point. She saw Jeno too, they made eye contact and then drifted away, but it was too late. And neither he nor Renjun were dumb to don’t know she didn’t care about video games at all.
“He never let me play with him,” she confessed. “He always got mad at me because I wasn’t good. And now he’s laughing with her for the same mistakes I made.”
“And knowing it will make you feel better?”
She chewed her lower lips, head lowered as she pulled a hangnail on her thumb. “No, but I don’t understand. How can she be so much more exciting than me? What does she have that I don’t?”
“He’s an asshole, that’s the only answer you need to give yourself,” Renjun insisted.
“No,” she replied. “You know her better than me, you don’t have to lie. I know she’s more exciting. It took me one night to get she had everything to swipe him off his feet.”
“Her being interesting doesn’t make you less.”
She hummed. Of course, Renjun was going to say something like this to her, but she didn’t want his pity. She didn’t even know what she wanted. No, she knew. She wanted Haechan back and that was something she couldn’t have.
“Let’s study,” she said, opening the first book. “I don’t want to think about him.”
But she thought about him a lot, more than she should’ve.
Every time that she was in her kitchen preparing coffee, she couldn’t help but remember their mornings together.
“I promise coffee is not that bad,” she laughed at Haechan’s disgusted face as he pushed the cup back.
“That’s like a shot of venom,” he said, trying to clean his tongue and get rid of the strong flavor.
“It’s an espresso, of course, it’s strong,” she said before turning around and opening the fridge. “Wait, let me make it better.”
“Yeah, throw it away.”
She rolled her eyes, sitting next to him and pouring the milk into the small cup. “Drink it now, come on.”
Haechan lifted his eyes on her, a furrow on his face, and then hesitantly grabbed the cup. “Just because it’s you,” he said before bringing it to his lips, tongue sticking out to try to taste just a bit before drinking it all.
“So?” She asked, big bright eyes looking at him with hope.
He sighed. “Hate to prove you right, but it’s good.”
She clapped, letting out a squeal, “I told you! You never trust me.”
“You nearly killed me before.”
“I’d never kill you, I can’t live without you.”
And it was true. Because now that he was gone it felt like she was carrying around an empty shell of her body. And she hated the way his favorite songs popped in her mind at the most random times. And she could still hear his angelic voice singing over them when he would let her lay her head against his chest and she could feel it vibrate and then drift to sleep into his hold while his voice lulled her.
She couldn’t move on when he was in every corner of her house. She still had those self-help books she bought just to impress him, to make him think she was smart. Like she had to prove something to him when her history major was going so well, when she always aced everything since she was six. It still wasn’t enough. Somehow Haechan always found a way to don’t make her feel smart enough.
“It’s not like you’re not smart,” he said, resting on the couch with one leg falling out, dangling back and forth. “You’re too emotional. You let that part of you get the best of you and you end up looking stupid.”
“There’s nothing wrong with emotions,” she retorted, trying to push away the painful emotion she felt at his words.
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “You panic over anything. The other day you got mad at me just because I was a bit more annoyed over the phone.”
“Lately you are always annoyed,” she replied. “And not only over the phone.”
“I told you, I’m tired,” he cut her off. “Anyway, you should read some self-help books, they might help you.”
And she did, she listened. Starting from one and then reading so many more just to make him happy. But it wasn’t like they worked. She kept being her paranoic, obsessive little self because Haechan gave her enough reasons to be. No book was going to take away the way he acted and how much he pushed her back.
“I thought you were smarter than this.”
The last person she expected to ever talk to her approached her one day, making her turn around with a furrow on her face.
“Shouldn’t you be at your table with your friends?” She asked when Jeno sat next to her in the university cafeteria, ignoring his words because she couldn’t get what he wanted from her, and she couldn’t care about it either.
“Don’t want to deal with Bora and Haechan stuffing their tongues in each other mouths,” he said, making her gag just imagining them so close. “You were much less annoying.”
“Is this a way to slap to my face how much better he’s doing without me?”
Jeno shrugged, grabbing his chopsticks and starting to eat. “No,” he mumbled after swallowing. “I told you, I don’t get why you’re still obsessing over him.”
She snorted, rolling her eyes when she got that he had no intention to leave her alone, and started to eat too. “I don’t care about him.”
Jeno almost choked from laughing at what she said. “Please, be serious,” he said, looking at her up and down. “Look at you, baggy pants, neon tops, sneakers? What happened to your dresses and skirts and pastel colors? From looking like a fairy to looking like a hip-hop dancer.”
“People can’t change?” She asked, tilting her head to look at him, still trying to understand what he wanted from her and why out of all the people he cared.
“Sure,” he said, “but it would be less embarrassing if you didn’t try to be her copy.”
She placed the chopsticks down and turned to him. “Leave.”
“No,” he retorted, turning to face her. “He’s not worth it. He’s not worth none of the hurt you’re putting yourself through.”
“You are his friend, not mine,” she said, not getting why he was acting like that. Were those words coming from Haechan? Maybe he saw her changes and found her annoying once again but didn’t dare to confront her?
“I know, and I also told you I can’t stand them.”
“Sure, it didn’t seem like you couldn’t stand her when he was dating me,” she huffed, going back to her food.
“I guess he made you feel incredibly insecure, but,” he said, stopping for a moment because he didn’t know how to let her know what he thought without looking weird. “You are interesting. And you’re not annoying or whatever he made you believe,” he confessed.
She stopped eating again, looking at Jeno with a furrow on her face. “Do you have a fever by chance?”
“Oh, shut up,” he groaned, slapping her hand away from his forehead. “I’m serious.”
“How do you know?” They never talked much, well, now that she thought about it, they never went past greetings and other small talks when they ended up being alone during their group hangouts.
“You don’t want to know,” he said, drifting his gaze from her.
“Oh, no, I do. You sound like a stalker.”
“I’m not, you can be sure about that,” he defended himself immediately.
“Then what it is? I don’t need your sympathy or worse your pity, Jeno. I already have Renjun filling me up with bullshits to make me feel better and trust me, it doesn’t work,” she snapped, raising her voice, making him look around, panicking when people turned around to look at them.
“I didn’t eat,” she whined, barely grabbing her bag and trying to don’t fall on her steps as she hardly followed him when he grabbed her wrist and dragged her outside.
“We’ll skip the last lessons and I’ll pay for something outside,” he said, starting to walk out of campus, still holding her hand.
“Jeno, what the hell,” she complained but then gave up. She couldn’t care less about university either, two hours skipped weren’t going to make her fail.
“I know,” he whispered once they were outside of the garden, walking through Seoul, his hands hidden in the pockets of his jeans, his backpack on one shoulder, and his black hair hiding his face.
“Yeah, how?” She asked, getting inside of his car once they reached it, not even sure why she was following him and maybe ending up getting more hurt than she already was.
“Is there something of your heart left to break?” He asked, lifting his eyes to meet hers and when she looked behind him, he got that yes, there was something more to break. “Nevermind.”
“I want to know anyway,” she begged, grabbing his arm without thinking before letting him go, pulling away.
Jeno sighed, starting the car and driving to a place where they could eat. “Haechan talked a lot about you…” he confessed. “And not always in a positive way.”
She was expecting to feel pain, to hurt more, but maybe there truly was nothing left of her heart to break. There was nothing left of her that Haechan could break because he had already destroyed everything. Her heart, her confidence, her passions, her intelligence.
“I honestly couldn’t get half of the critiques about you,” he admitted, his gaze was concentrated on the street, but she felt a weird nervousness in his voice, and she couldn’t understand why. He always seemed like the confident type, and he wasn’t her friend, so he had no reason to be afraid of hurting her. But she shrugged it off, she, unfortunately, had other things to worry about, like her ex-boyfriend talking shit behind her back when they were together. “A bit because you seemed the total opposite of what he used to tell and also because I couldn’t find flaws in many of the things he hated about you.”
“Hated?” She asked, a look of disbelief on her face. Over the past months, she had come to the conclusion he couldn’t stand her anymore, but she never thought Haechan hated her.
Jeno nodded, not daring to turn around and see her wrecked face. “Maybe your story became too much,” he guessed. He truly couldn’t comprehend how they fell apart. He was there since the start and imagined them to be together for eternity. She had been by Haechan’s side when nobody else was and Jeno couldn’t understand how Haechan could be so stupid to let her go, especially like this. And he couldn’t get an answer from his friend. Not that he asked, it wasn’t his business after all.
“What did he hate about me?” She dared to ask, looking down at her thighs because she felt tears at the corner of her eyes. But they threatened to fall even harder because Jeno was right, she looked pathetic trying to be Bora. She hated those clothes. She wasn’t like her. She wasn’t the kind of girl Haechan wanted and no matter all the clothes she could change, or lipsticks on her face, she was never going to be her.
“Why would you do this to yourself?” He asked, parking the car before signaling her they had arrived.
“You started talking to me,” she reminded him, closing the car door behind and following him as they walked toward the place.
“And not to hurt you,” he said, scratching his neck, and she saw his mouth open again to say something, but no other words came out of his lips.
“Then why?”
He shrugged, avoiding her gaze. “Because I think you’re smarter than this dumb thing of trying to be a copy of her. And because…nothing. We’re here,” he said, turning left and pushing the door open before looking for an empty table.
“No, finish,” she insisted, sitting in front of him, and now it was harder to escape her interrogating gaze.
“Because you deserve better than him,” Jeno confessed, cheeks reddening.
“I will never have him back,” she replied with a bitter chuckle as she felt her heart clench as the realization hit her again.
“That’s why I wish you stopped acting like this,” he said before handing her the menu. “It’s on me, get whatever you want,” he added. “What?” He asked when a smile curled her lips and she hid her face behind the papers.
“Nothing,” she mumbled. “I thought you hated me and here you are, paying for my lunch, trying to wake me up from my fantasies about my ex.”
“You thought I hated you?” He asked, raising a brow, eyes widening in surprise.
“Let’s say you weren’t the most welcoming of his friends,” she explained, smiling at him again before focusing on the menu.
“Let’s say you’re not good at reading people considering how you let him treat you,” he whispered but she heard anyway.
“You do stupid things when you want to keep somebody by your side,” she replied, but she wasn’t mad, not at Jeno at least, because he wasn’t wrong. She was terrible at reading people, especially when she loved them.
“Yeah, but now?”
She hesitated before answering, “I know… but I can’t help but still want to be enough for him. I meant too much for him. I have no idea how I…” she had to stop, feeling her eyes wet again and a gulp form in her throat. “I don’t get how he couldn’t care less about someone that loved him so deeply. I don’t get how after everything that tied us he could forget me that easily.”
Jeno nodded. “I don’t get it either. And I know you don’t want me to be the one saying those things but as I said before, you don’t deserve all this pain.”
“I don’t know how to make it go away,” she confessed. “I don’t know how to make him go away.”
“Or maybe you didn’t even try,” Jeno whispered with a hesitant voice, shily meeting her eyes, and feeling his heart clench seeing that they were off, nothing of her old bright eyes was there anymore.
“I just… I want myself back but I feel that he’s such a big part of me and I know this is wrong, but he took so much of me, Jeno. I cannot erase so many years of my life in the blink of an eye.”
And he wanted to tell her that yes, she could, just like he did. He wanted to tell her that the way he moved on so easily should’ve been enough for her to do the same or to at least don’t let him have so much power over her. But when he looked in front of him and saw her shaking as she tried to hold back the tears, he realised that Haechan was right. She was too emotional for this, too emotional for his careless way. She loved too much and Haechan didn’t know how to deal with so much love. Now that she looked at him, apologizing when a tear rolled down her cheek and ranting about how pathetic she looked and how weird this all was, he realized why she and Haechan didn’t last.
“Hey,” Jeno called her, grabbing her hand that was moving frenetically to fix the bottle with flowers she made fall by mistake, “look at me. It’s alright,” he said, smiling before he wiped her tears away. “Why don’t we eat without thinking about him?”
She nodded, slumping back in the seat, hating herself a bit more because she wasn’t so sure she could’ve avoided thinking about Haechan. Not now that she knew that he truly started slipping out of her hold much longer than that and only God knew how many other girls made him turn his head because she had never been enough for him. Because she was not enough and too much at the same time and she had no idea how to deal with it. Jeno was wrong when he said that their story became too much. The heavy thing that dragged them to the bottom of the sea was her. She was too much to take and at the first chance Haechan got, he ran away.
But weirdly enough Jeno was good at keeping her mind off her ex. He listened to her, something nobody did in ages. And he was funny, unlike the times they hung out together and his jokes never hit. Sure, it wasn’t the kind of humor that anybody could get, but right now it was enough to make her crack a laugh and feel her heart less heavy.
And with time, it turned out that Jeno in general was really good at don’t make her think about Haechan. She had no idea when they started hanging out so much, probably after he had asked for help for a class he was about to fail because he couldn’t even memorize the basis and they spent afternoons in the library studying, occasionally with Renjun’s company, that was finally happy to see that she didn’t look so heartbroken anymore.
“So, you’re finally stepping out of the house without me dragging you by the hair,” Renjun joked, they were sitting on the sidewalk while they waited for Jeno to bring them their orders from the street food stand in Hongdae. “And most importantly,” he said, looking at her dress and the make-up on her face, “you got back to being yourself.”
“You were right, it was dumb trying to be like her,” she said, resting her head against his shoulder. “Also, I look better in pink than in bright colors.”
Renjun chuckled, and then asked, “And your heart? Got back to beat for someone else?” He pointed his head to Jeno that briefly turned around to smile at them while he waited in line.
“What are you talking about?” She asked, pushing him off.
“You know what I mean.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s just a good friend, like you.”
“Are you sure?”
She hummed, biting her nails, before saying, “I’m getting back up on my feet, but I’m still hurt, Injunnie. And…sometimes I still think about you know who.”
Renjun laughed before pinching her cheek. “Take your time, baby. And, next time, fall for someone that won’t hurt you this bad.”
“That someone that hurt me that bad is your friend.”
“And? You have no idea how much I fought with him for the way he treated you.”
Before she could say anything else, Jeno came back.
“Teobokki for my favorite girl,” he said, handing her the cup, making her lower her head and mumble a low ‘thanks’ and then he turned to Renjun, “and a tornado potato for you.”
“Thanks,” Renjun said. “Should we start walking again?”
The other two hummed and started walking through Hongdae again to enjoy more local singers or dancers covering songs. But she couldn’t help but think about what Renjun had told her.
She wasn’t feeling anything for Jeno, right? No, of that she was sure, at least, she believed her heart was too wounded and broken to start beating again. And she also knew that when she occasionally crossed Haechan she could feel a weird sensation in her stomach, but she couldn’t tear the butterflies and the venom apart.
On the other hand, she knew that Jeno made her feel good. But she couldn’t call it love.
She liked the way he would rest his face on his crossed arms and listen to her talk no sense for hours, his eyes crinkling up every time he laughed or smiled at something she said.
She liked the way he never made her feel stupid, even when her emotions would take over and tears fell a bit too easily from her eyes.
She liked the way he listened to her repeat for her history exams and didn’t find it boring even if she knew that it was terribly boring for him and he couldn’t care less about wars, politics, and social dynamics all around the world.
She liked hearing him talk about dance without mocking her when she didn’t understand some specific terms, or when they tried choreographies together and she couldn’t keep up with him. Most of the time it lead to them laughing on the floor like fools while they struggled to breathe from the laughs and the fatigue. And when she laid there, at his side, so close to him feeling light, she could feel her heart beat just a bit faster than usual. And maybe her stomach twisted when he turned around and smiled at her, his shaky hands moving a strand of hair out of her face.
But it was too soon, it definitely wasn’t love, and she couldn’t jump into another relationship without looking. She couldn’t use him as a replacement, she couldn’t hurt him when she was the first one to know how painful being used and betrayed was, so she left Jeno there, in the back of her heart, under the ‘friend’ label because she knew she wasn’t ready for another heartbreak.
“So, Jeno’s the lucky one.”
When she heard those words and that voice she felt her heart drop to the floor, her stomach clenched uncomfortably and she felt struck on the spot. But she still turned around, the lights of the party weren’t enough to don’t make her see Haechan standing there behind her, unfortunately for her with the same handsome face of always. And the music wasn’t loud enough for her to pretend she didn’t hear him.
“Jealous?” She asked, tilting her head and holding the glass in her fingers tighter.
“I just think that it’s just a low move to go with one of my closest friends,” he said.
She laughed, not a chuckle or a smile, a laugh, loud enough to make some others at the party turn around and stare at them before Haechan glared them off. “You talk about what’s a low move or not. You have some gut to come here and teach me a lesson.”
“You broke up with me,” he replied.
“Of course,” she chuckled, shaking her head, “how long has it been? Two months since we spoke last and you still don’t get it, you still don’t get all the pain you put me through.”
“I told you, I never cheated,” he said, taking a step forward but she stopped him with a glare.
“Yeah, because cheating is the only painful thing you can do, right? Don’t you think I loved you too much to be used and discarded? Don’t you think I loved you too much to think I deserve nothing? Not even respect. I’m not asking you to love me, I don’t need it anymore. No, worse, I don’t want it anymore. But you could at least stop coming in between my happiness. Why are you mad? Because your best friend can give me all the love you were never able to give me?”
“I loved you and you know it. You can’t delete five years of our story just for someone that arrived in your life in what? Two months?” He told her and when she looked at him with a serious face, eyebrow raised and a smirk on her face, it hit him. That was exactly what he did to her but two weeks after they broke things off. He was getting mad at her for the same thing he did, but he did even worse, he hurt her more than she could ever do now.
“So, is it clear now? Do you feel at least half of the pain I felt? Do you feel betrayed like I felt?”
Haechan didn’t answer, he stood there, staring at her while all his mistakes crumbled on his shoulders and pushed him to the ground. He was the reason their story fell apart. He had hurt her. He had betrayed her. And he couldn’t get mad at her for moving on with anybody else, not even if it was Jeno, not even if that meant seeing them together all the time.
That was her payback, and all of a sudden, he realized he had no more reasons to be mad. And probably, it would’ve been better if he simply avoided approaching her in the first place. But he did that, and they were there now, and he deserved it, he deserved to feel all the humiliation he was feeling right now.
But she was glad he did. Sure, those past months not talking to him helped her, but this conversation made him realize what he had put her through. And she loved to see that he was finally bleeding too. Sure, revenge wasn’t a virtue, but she couldn’t care. She was tired of his smug smile, of his confidence when he broke her apart. She was tired of seeing him walking around like a God without realizing all the pain he was causing.
And right now, in front of her, there was a broken-hearted Haechan and she had no idea if he was regretting it because he missed her, because he had realized that Bora couldn’t give him what she gave him, or if simply because he didn’t like losing and his pride now was eating him alive. Knowing him, well, finding out over time who he truly was, she would’ve bet on the latter, but she truly didn’t care.
Haechan wasn’t her problem anymore.
She was done with this story, with him, with his lies, and his games.
And since he seemed to have no intention to talk again, she started walking past him. She had a party to go back to, and an entire night to dance between arms that weren’t his, between the arms of someone that made her feel good and enough. A feeling she had forgotten all these years by his side.
“And for your information,” she said, turning around again because she needed to put an end to this with a light heart, “between me and Jeno there’s nothing. But who knows, someday I’ll be everything to somebody else. And they’ll think that I’m so exciting. And maybe then, only then, you will be the one who’s crying.”
Haechan didn’t dare to meet her eyes, the floor wouldn’t have hurt as much as meeting her cold heart would’ve, the floor couldn’t remind him that she wasn’t his anymore and it was all his fault.
“All I ever wanted was to be enough for you, Haechan,” she said, looking into his eyes when he lifted them, and not feeling pain, not feeling anything anymore. “But thanks to you I found out I was already enough for someone else. And I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not. I don’t have to hurt myself just to keep them. They don’t leave me all alone crying, wondering what I did wrong.”
“You were enough for me,” he tried to stop her from leaving him again, grabbing her hand but she swiftly pulled away from his hold, making a crack form in his heart.
“No,” she replied, a bitter smile painted on her face as she stared into his brown eyes, “I don’t think anything could ever be enough for you.”
HAPPIER (finale): READ HERE