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fic: jealous is a four letter word
Title: jealous is a four letter word
Fandom: Reply 1997
Characters/Pairings: Shi Won/Yoon Jae/Joon Hee
Rating: PG-13
A/N: I'm not even going to pretend like this is good, but I wanted to write something for my friends who have just seen the show and this is what happened. Hopefully I'll write more for this fandom and it will be better. *kisses to you-know-who-you-are*
Summary: "You can’t just decide to share a person, Shi Won. He’s not a pot of ramyun.” Shi Won has the greatest idea ever.
--
She comes up with the plan a few days after Yoon Jae bursts into her life again at the coffee shop. Joon Hee’s over at her place, of course, since they can’t (read: she refuses to) go to his (when he’d told her he’d moved in with Yoon Jae, she’d pummeled him and yelled in his face for five minutes while he just blinked at her. When she’d settled down he said, “I knew you’d react like that,” and she pouted and treated him to ice cream in apology), the two of them lying on their backs on her bed like always because there’s really no other space to be comfortable in her tiny studio apartment. They’re sharing a bag of licorice ropes (well, Shi Won’s chomping her way through the bag while Joon Hee slowly eats each a single strand of candy) and Shi Won’s been pounding her bare feet against the wall—she’ll hear from the neighbors later, but who cares? She’s going through something traumatic, okay?—and whining about why stupid Yoon Jae has to be back in her stupid life when the idea pops into her head.
Shi Won isn’t one to keep ideas to herself when she can possibly share them, especially with Joon Hee, so she flops over onto her stomach and smacks Joon Hee on the forehead with her licorice rope. “Hey,” she says. “What if we share him?”
Joon Hee does that thing where he looks at her for a very long time. She knows he knows exactly what she means because when they say ‘he,’ they’re only ever talking about one person, but he still takes his time in reacting. Shi Won jerks off a bite of candy while she waits; she loves nearly every single thing about Joon Hee, but how he takes his time is the one thing about him that drives her absolutely crazy. She chews furiously as she waits.
Finally, he says calmly (because he’s Joon Hee and he’s always calm, and there have been times in her life when his calmness is the only thing that’s kept her from losing herself completely), “You can’t just decide to share a person, Shi Won. He’s not a pot of ramyun.”
“I know I know!” She smacks her hand down on the bed beside her and chews on the candy with her mouth open. “But what if he agrees?”
Now Joon Hee rolls his eyes at her, and he almost never does that, no matter how crazy her suggestions are, so she knows he must think this one is really crazy. “He doesn’t like guys, Shi Won. He doesn’t want me.”
Shi Won is too buoyed by the energy of her idea (a fantastic idea, by the way) to notice that tiniest twist to his mouth when he says the words, and even if she weren’t, she still probably wouldn’t have noticed (Shi Won is not the most observant of people). “How does he know? Has he ever tried?” Her eyes sharpen and she looks at Joon Hee suspiciously. “Have you ever kissed him?”
“Shi Won—“
“If you kissed him and you haven’t told me, I’ll kill you. I told you! I told you everything, I always tell you everything, why wouldn’t you tell me? You jerk, you have to tell me things!”
Joon Hee catches her by the hands and pulls them down so they’re no longer smacking his chest. “Shi Won. Just. Stop, okay?”
And that’s when she realizes that this is hurting him. Not the smacking—he’s used to that and it’s not like she puts any muscle behind it (the last thing she’d ever want to do is hurt Joon Hee) and it’s part of their everyday interaction. But the idea—the idea is hurting him, and she’s really not sure why because it’s a fabulous idea, maybe the best she’s ever had. It solves everything and everyone would be happy and why doesn’t he see that? Joon Hee is so smart, just like Yoon Jae, but sometimes she just doesn’t think either of them have a brain at all.
He climbs off the bed and reaches out for his white fancy-doctor’s coat off the back of her desk chair. She rises onto her knees to watch him as he lays it carefully over one arm—he probably irons it, knowing him (Shi Won doesn’t even own an ironing board). “My shift starts soon, I need to go, okay? Try not to make the neighbors too angry with your temper tantrums, Shi Won.”
Shi Won pouts, because she always hates it when he leaves her, and holds out her arms demandingly. “Hug me,” she commands, and he smiles at her, his quiet, lovely smile that she thinks is better than anyone’s smile in the world (except maybe Yoon Jae’s, not that she’d ever admit it) and comes back to the bed to hug her. He holds her strong and firm but gently too (and that’s just who Joon Hee is, all those things together), and (as always) she hugs him so hard he groans something about her cracking his ribs before he pulls away and kisses her on the forehead and lets himself out, and she flops back down on the bed and grabs another licorice rope and pounds her feet against the wall again because she hurt Joon Hee and she doesn’t know why.
She thinks a lot over the next couple of days, every spare moment she has (and maybe some not-so-spare ones, and maybe she gets yelled at by her bosses more than a few times, but it’s not like she’s not used to that) about why Joon Hee had been so hurt by her suggestion. After all, wouldn’t it be the perfect thing—they both love Yoon Jae and they both love each other and she knows Yoon Jae loves both of them, so what’s the problem? They can all live together in one apartment and Joon Hee can make breakfast for them and it’ll be perfect.
When she finally realizes that the reason it hurts him is because he doesn’t believe it’ll ever happen—that anything involving him and Yoon Jae could ever happen—and it so it hurts hearing about something he’s always wanted but will never have, she rolls her eyes (she’s much better at it than Joon Hee because she gets way more practice) and snorts and says to herself, “We’ll see about that.”
The first time (second time, whatever time—the first time now that they’re adults) Yoon Jae kisses her, she’s kind of caught up in the whole thing (not that she’d ever admit that), but the second time, she manages to think, “Joon Hee would like this a lot—he should get to do it, too.” Because it’s really amazing, kissing Yoon Jae (not that she’d ever admit that, either), and he seems to be really good at it and he smells good and he’s warm against her and it’s Yoon Jae and everything about it is good except for the fact that Joon Hee doesn’t know what it all feels like. She tells Joon Hee about it because she can’t not tell Joon Hee, and he’s happy for her and she knows he really means it because Joon Hee loves her and wants her to be happy, but she’s paying attention now and she sees something wistful in his eyes and smile, so she doesn’t talk too much about what Yoon Jae smells like (they live together, Joon Hee probably already knows) or what he tastes like (Joon Hee doesn’t know that, but she’s going to make sure that he finds out). Yoon Jae used to always say that she can’t ever think of anyone but herself, but that’s not true. She can think of Joon Hee, too.
She thinks of Joon Hee a lot, and Yoon Jae, too—actually, they’re pretty much all she thinks about now. And the more she thinks about them, the more she knows that the only acceptable thing is the three of them together.
The only problem is convincing the two of them of that.
She tries to come up with some sort of plan, but the thing is, she’s not very good at planning things that aren’t fan club meetings. So she tugs on her hair and moans for a while over how stupidly hard the boys are making this whole thing, and then she decides to keep it simple. When she tells the two of them that she’s coming over for dinner Friday night (she knows Joon Hee doesn’t have a shift that day), Joon Hee says something about going out with some friends from the hospital, but she makes it clear that he better be there too if he doesn’t want to die. Yoon Jae looks a little disappointed (stupid guy. He probably thinks she’s going to let him kiss her or something. But he won’t get to do that at all unless he’s going to be sharing the kisses with Joon Hee), but Shi Won just commands Joon Hee to make something good for dinner (she’d thought about cooking something herself, but Yoo Jung had made her promise she wouldn’t: ‘Do you want to burn their fancy apartment down, Shi Won? Is that really what you want to do?’) and then claps her hands with excitement once she gets out into the parking lot and hums “Candy” all the way home. She just knows that things are going to work out.
They both look a little bemused when she bursts through their front door (the key-code is Yoon Jae’s dad’s birthdate—he never told her that, but she knows) on Friday night, but she doesn’t care. They’ll both be happy by the end of the night, she’s sure of it.
Joon Hee grabs the bottle of wine from her immediately (‘Here, let me—before you drop it’) while she pushes her coat into Yoon Jae’s arms, and he looks impressed when he reads the label. Shi Won beams; it had been a gift from some celebrity or another to one of her bosses and she’d passed it along to Shi Won because she’d just gone on a diet that restricts alcohol intake (Shi Won can’t imagine ever wanting to lose weight enough to commit to something like that) so Shi Won hadn’t really known if it was good or not. She’s not really a wine person; soju’s more her style. But wine is romantic, right? And she knows that alcohol loosens people up a lot and makes them more open to new ideas, so she’d thought it was a good thing to bring.
Yoon Jae comes back from putting her coat on the coat rack (he may or may not look really good in those jeans with the sleeves of his button-down rolled up. Not that she’d notice) and makes a face at her. “Are you turning into a grownup, Sung Shi Won? You brought a host gift and everything?”
“Shut up,” she orders. “I can be polite.”
Yoon Jae laughs at that; behind her, Joon Hee bites his lip to keep from smiling, but she doesn’t notice because she’s too busy kicking Yoon Jae’s legs with her slippered feet.
That, of course, turns into her messing with his hair (she likes his hair messy, not that she’d ever tell him that) and him yelling “Ya!” a bunch of times in some lame attempt to scare her into stopping (like that would ever work), but finally Joon Hee gets them pulled apart and over to the table.
Dinner is really, really good, and Shi Won congratulates herself on what a good idea it was to get Joon Hee to make it. She could have shown up with carry-out, of course, but this is better because it shows Yoon Jae how good Joon Hee is at this sort of thing. Shi Won knows enough about herself to know she wouldn’t make a good housewife; her idea of decorating is to hang up a bunch of framed H.O.T. posters (okay, so the framing was Yoo Jung’s idea, but whatever) and she only cleans in fits and starts and even her mom won’t let her help in the kitchen when she goes home (though maybe that’s because she doesn’t like listening to Shi Won insist that they don’t need that much kimbap, Mom, really). But Yoon Jae and Joon Hee are both clean and whoever decorated this apartment probably did a good job (Shi Won’s never really cared much for interior decorating) and Joon Hee can cook, so it all works out perfectly, doesn’t it?
She and Yoon Jae only snap at each other six times over the course of dinner and she only throws her napkin at his face twice and she only gets up to hit him upside the head once, so that’s pretty much a success. Joon Hee smiles at them (fondly, she thinks, and it makes her feel almost as warm as when Yoon Jae grabs her butt when she’s returning to her seat after she hit him, not that she’d ever admit that) and shakes his head and changes the subject when he thinks they’re getting too ridiculous. She has three glasses of wine, but Yoon Jae and Joon Hee only have two and one respectively no matter how hard she tries to get them to drink more. Yoon Jae makes a disgusted face at her as she coaxes Joon Hee into pouring her that third glass (‘If you end up getting drunk and crying over Tony-oppa, I’m kicking you out, don’t think I won’t’) , but she just sticks her tongue out at him.
After she sets her glass down on the table with a big ‘Ah!’ and a smack of her lips (Yoon Jae glares some more, but she doesn’t care), she’s feeling warm and loose in just the right way, and decides she might as well get this show on the road. Yoon Jae and Joon Hee pile all the dishes in the sink and then end up by the TV, trying to decide which movie to watch, which Shi Won thinks is a stupid idea because if they’re going to be sitting in the dark watching a movie, they should at least all get the chance to sneak kisses some, but that won’t happen because her plan hasn’t happened yet. So she clearly can’t allow watching a movie to happen.
So she walks into the middle of the room, props her fists on her hips, and announces, “Joon Hee and I have decided to share you.”
Yoon Jae fumbles the DVD case he’d been examining, doesn’t quite manage to hold onto it, and it clatters to the wooden floor. Shi Won rolls her eyes at how dramatic he is and looks at Joon Hee. His eyes are very big and his face is very pale and she knew she should have gotten him to drink another glass.
Yoon Jae’s mouth is moving and he’s making small sounds like a fish and why does Shi Won even put up with him? She and Joon Hee should just kick him out on his stupid butt and live here together forever.
“Shi Won!”
Shi Won has never heard Joon Hee hiss in their entire lives—she hadn’t really thought he was the kind who even could hiss, but somehow he just managed it. Yoon Jae turns and speaks his fish-language to Joon Hee now.
Joon Hee must be able to understand it or something (he’s so smart) because he shakes his head hard. “I didn’t—I didn’t decide anything—I didn’t say anything,” he says, and though his voice is almost as calm as it ever is…it’s only almost. Yoon Jae turns his attention back to Shi Won and Joon Hee looks at the floor.
“Shi Won, have you completely lost your mind?” Yoon Jae finally manages to say in human language, and Shi Won decides she prefers it when he’s speaking fish language because it’s much easier to ignore.
“It’s a perfect idea. You know it’s a perfect idea.”
“How is this a perfect idea, huh? Tell me how this is a perfect idea!”
She doesn’t like the sound of his voice so much when it goes shrill like that, so she crosses her arms. “Joon Hee loves you and I like you okay or whatever—” (not like she’d admit to anything else—he doesn’t need to hear it any more than absolutely necessary) “—and you love both of us and we’d all be good together, so how is this not perfect?”
“Shi Won, you’re my girlfriend, Joon Hee is my best friend, it’s not—“
“You love him, don’t you? You love Joon Hee?”
“Of course I do!”
(Joon Hee is still looking at the floor and doesn’t raise his eyes at all, but Shi Won will worry about that in a minute when Yoon Jae stops being a drama queen.)
“Well? What’s the problem then?”
“Shi Won, I like women! Is that not clear to you?”
Shi Won shrugs. “Just because you like women doesn’t mean you can’t like men, too. Or at least Joon Hee. He’s really handsome, are you blind?”
Joon Hee ducks his head. “Shi Won….”
Yoon Jae eyes are huge. “I don’t like men!”
“How do you know?” Shi Won shoots back. “Have you ever given one a try?”
“You’re crazy,” Yoon Jae announces, turning to look around the room with his arms spread like he’s appealing to a jury. Such a drama queen. “You ought to be locked up. I knew it all along but I got distracted by how pretty you are and—“
Normally Shi Won would take a moment to beam at being called pretty (he always insists she’s ugly, but she knows he doesn’t really think so), but not right now. Right now there are more important things. She marches over to Yoon Jae and grabs the arm of his shirt and drags him over to Joon Hee. Yoon Jae is too busy ranting about how insane she is to realize what she’s doing until his face is inches from Joon Hee’s, and then his words cut off, staring at Joon Hee. Joon Hee flushes and tries to take a step back, but Shi Won grabs his arm and pulls him back.
“Go on,” she commands Yoon Jae, who’s staring at Joon Hee like he’s never seen him before, even though Joon Hee won’t meet his gaze. “Kiss him and tell me you don’t like it.”
“Shi Won—“ Joon Hee protests, trying to pull his arm away, but she just tightens her grip.
“Do it! And if you really don’t like it I won’t bring this up again.” (That last part may or may not be true, but that’s irrelevant right now.)
“Shi Won!” In all the time they’ve known each other, Joon Hee’s voice has never been that sharp, especially not when aimed at her, and the roughness with which he jerks his arm out of her grip is new, too. Now it’s her turn to stare at him like she’s never seen him, and maybe she hasn’t, because she’s been looking at him for years and years and she’s never seen him look this way before—almost…desperate, maybe. (It scares her.)
“Shi Won, please stop. Please.” She’s never heard him beg like that either and all of a sudden tears are welling up in her eyes because she’s done it again, she’s hurt him, and she didn’t even mean to, she just wants him to be happy, she wants all three of them to happy because there’s nobody she loves more than the two of them, and she’d thought this was the way and—
“Joon Hee,” Yoon Jae says suddenly, and both of their heads turn so they can look at him, and then he says it again, “Joon Hee,” but it sounds different this time (different in a way that makes goosebumps break out even on Shi Won’s scalp, like the first time she ever saw H.O.T. live) and then he’s taking a step closer to Joon Hee and his hand is on the back of Joon Hee’s neck and—
And okay, wow, that’s—wow. She’s written thousands (hundreds of thousands) of words about Tony and Woo Hyuk kissing (and doing a lot more than kissing), but she’s never actually seen two guys kiss and it’s—well. She’s always thought Joon Hee is the handsomest person in the world and Yoon Jae is Yoon Jae, but this—right now she thinks not even Tony and Woo Hyuk would look better this way. They aren’t even really kissing that deep or anything, not tongues tangled in torrid battles like the way she used to write, but she’s still starting to tingle all over like when she’d find a really good slash fic and—
And then Joon Hee pulls away (why would he do that? She could tell he was enjoying it!) and his back is to them and he’s breathing really, really hard, his shoulders rises and falling with the force of it, and she doesn’t think it’s just because of the kissing (they hadn’t kissed anything like enough to lose your breath like that) and Yoon Jae is staring at the back of Joon Hee’s head and his hand is opening and closing into a fist and Shi Won had known it.
She wishes she could be squealing at Joon Hee right now (‘It was good, wasn’t it? So good? I told you!’) while he just grins at her and Yoon Jae protests that she’s acting like a fangirl again and she should grow up, because that’s the way things should be, but not yet. Not yet.
The wine that’s still in her system seems to be flowing faster and hotter now and so she doesn’t even hear the shrillness of her own voice overly loud in the quiet apartment when she says, “You liked it!”
Yoon Jae turns away from Joon Hee and stares at her. “Shi Won—“
“You liked it! Don’t lie! I could tell you did! You liked kissing him just as much as you like kissing me and I told you you would! Now you have to agree it’s perfect!”
Yoon Jae’s face crumples up in that way it sometimes does and he shakes his head hard like he’s trying to shatter some moment. “How is this perfect, Shi Won? So what if I love you both? So what? How is this supposed to actually work?”
His voice is raw and a little something like desperate (like Joon Hee’s was a minute ago), and Shi Won doesn’t like it at all. They’re all supposed to be happy now. That’s the way it’s supposed to be now that he’s admitted it. She’s not stupid enough not to know why he held out for so long—he didn’t think he could have both of them so he chose her. Because she’s the one he’s known all his life and she’s the only one society would approve of him being with and it didn’t matter how much he wanted Joon Hee because he had to pick one and it was always going to be Shi Won.
But that’s the stupidest thing ever because now she’s given him permission to love both of them and why doesn’t he see that?
“It’ll be easy!”
The laugh Yoon Jae lets out is ugly; she likes it even less than his desperation. “Yeah, easy,” he sneers and she’d forgotten how annoyingly good he is at sneering.
“Yeah! Easy! You and I’ll get married and we still have an extra bedroom so we can just tell people Joon Hee’s our flatmate and he doesn’t actually have to use that room—we can all use one room, all three of us—and no one else ever has to know!”
“Is that fair to Joon Hee? You and me married and him just sneaking around to be with us? Is that fair to him?”
“Of course it isn’t!” How is he so stupid? He’s a judge, for Tony’s sake! Aren’t they supposed to be smart? “Nothing’s ever going to be fair to Joon Hee! No matter who he’s with he’s going to have to sneak around! He might as well do it with us!”
Neither one of them have noticed Joon Hee turning very slowly and quietly to face them, his breathing under more control now and his eyes watchful and guarded. They’re too busy glaring at each other, especially when Yoon Jae messes with his hair with frustrated hands and lets out a exasperated noise and starts to pace.
“Even if that works—even if it does—do you really think you two can share me? You really think that will work? Do you know how many people end up in my courtroom because they were so jealous over their lovers that they committed a crime? People can’t share people! I see this every single day! And you’re seriously telling me you wouldn’t ever be jealous? That it wouldn’t end up in a giant mess because one of you starts to feel hurt or left out or bitter? You’d never, ever resent each other, not for a minute?”
Is he serious? Shi Won makes sure her look tells him just how stupid she thinks that question is. “Not if it’s Joon Hee.” Is he seriously this dense? It’s Joon Hee.
He freezes mid-stride, gapes at her for a moment, then turns to Joon Hee. “And you? You’d be okay with this craziness, too?”
Joon Hee shrugs helplessly, face contorted with more emotions than Shi Won has ever seen there before, and Shi Won rolls her eyes at how complicated they’re making this. Men.
“Joon Hee?” Yoon Jae prompts, and maybe it’s something about the way he says the name that makes Joon Hee answer.
“Not if it was Shi Won,” he whispers.
In the silence that follows, Yoon Jae looks from her to Joon Hee and back again with that narrow-eyed confused look he gets sometimes that makes Shi Won want to kick him.
She tries not to do it much anymore because everyone says it’s childish, but right now she can’t help it: she stamps her foot (it’s either that or sitting down right on the floor and having a tantrum, and she mostly manages not to do that anymore. Mostly). “Why are you making this so hard? Why don’t you trust us? This is what you want! It’s what we all want! Why are you being so stubborn?”
“Well, excuse me for not wanting to risk losing my relationships with the people I care about most just for the sake of one of your stupid ideas!”
“Stupid? Stupid? It’s the greatest idea in the world.” (In the back of her head, Shi Won can hear Yoo Jung’s voice: ‘You really aren’t attractive when you roar like that, Shi Won,’ but right now she just doesn’t care.)
“It’s too good to be true! Nobody gets everything they want!” Yoon Jae isn’t very attractive when he roars back either (well, at least that’s what she tells herself).
“Maybe that’s because they’re too scared to really go for it! That’s what this is—you’re scared!”
“Of course I’m scared! Only an idiot wouldn’t be scared! If this backfires, all three of us lose everything. How can you not understand that?”
“I understand that you’re more scared than you love us!”
“What—what the hell does that even mean?”
“It means if you really loved us more than anything you wouldn’t let being scared get in the way!”
Yoon Jae’s mouth snaps shut, and in the silence that follows, Shi Won can hear just how hard she’s breathing. She looks at Joon Hee and sees that he’s staring at the ground again while Yoon Jae stares at nothing, his face totally blank.
That won’t do. This has dragged on way further than it needs to. Shi Won is putting a stop to this stupidity now.
She marches up to Yoon Jae, grabs him by the front of his shirt and jerks his head down so she can kiss him. It’s the first time she’s kissed him and they’ve never kissed this hard before and his tongue is just a little rough against hers and his mouth tastes a little like wine and she thinks maybe she can smell just a little bit of Joon Hee on him and—
She senses Joon Hee shift behind her when she lets out a little moan, so she decides to wrap up the kiss. She pulls back—Yoon Jae still has his lips thrust out like he doesn’t know what happened and he is such an idiot—and she reaches back and pulls Joon Hee to him. Joon Hee tries to pull away again but then Yoon Jae reaches out for him again and—
And yeah, she really likes to watch them kiss. Really a lot. A lot a lot. Yeah.
When their lips finally part (why did they have to stop?), Yoon Jae keeps hold of Joon Hee’s shirt and presses his forehead against Joon Hee’s. And Joon Hee’s eyes sink closed again and there isn’t anything Shi Won can do but go and wrap her arms around both of them and rest her head on Joon Hee’s shoulder and listen to them breathe.
“I want this,” she finally says softly, and she never says anything softly, so maybe they’ll know she means it. “I want it. And Joon Hee wants it too.”
Yoon Jae opens his eyes and focuses them on Joon Hee’s face and after a moment Joon Hee opens his too. They just look at each other for a long moment and then Joon Hee turns his head just a little and looks deep into her eyes and she isn’t sure what he’s looking for, but he must find it, because he looks from her to Yoon Jae and whispers, “I want this, too.”
And that’s when Yoon Jae finally closes his eyes and slumps into their arms.
They end up in Yoon Jae’s bed, all three of them, but not like that (she’s not going to let Yoon Jae have want he wants that easily. She knows now why he takes his laptop everywhere and she is not impressed). The bed smells like Yoon Jae and she presses her nose deep into the pillow a few times and giggles (okay, maybe she’s a little giddy, on wine and on this finally being real and how her plan totally worked). She catches Joon Hee doing the same thing a couple of times (though without the giggles) when he thinks no one’s looking and when she winks at him he blushes a little. He looks dazed, keeps staring at her and Yoon Jae like he can’t believe they’re beside him, keeps staring at Yoon Jae’s arm around his waist or Shi Won’s leg hooked through his (they keep changing positions because she and Yoon Jae keep arguing and messing with each other and that requires a lot of movement). She commands them to kiss more than once, and both of them glare at her (and Yoon Jae yells that she can’t boss them around, but she just scoffs at that), but they don’t seem too upset to obey. And she lets Yoon Jae kiss her a few times, too (back to pretending she doesn’t want him to because she can’t let him get smug—she hates it when he’s smug), and she cuddles with Joon Hee some (Joon Hee is the very best cuddler in the world) and when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she’s on top of Yoon Jae and Joon Hee is pressed up against both of them and the world is warm and soft and smells like both of them mixed together and she thinks her heart is going to explode from happiness (she’s never been this happy, not even when she met Tony-oppa. Not even then).
The next time she wakes up, she’s the only one in the bed and the sunlight is mellow around her and the sheets beside her are cool. She kicks her way out of the tangled covers and walks over to the window to yawn and stretch and look at the city stretching out below her. Then she pulls off her now-wrinkled shirt (she’d shed her bra at one point last night, extracting it from under her shirt without disturbing the shirt at all, and Yoon Jae’s eyes had gone kind of hazy at the sight and Joon Hee had just laughed) and pulls on a clean one of Yoon Jae’s and pads out into the hallway.
She can smell something sizzling in the kitchen and follows the scent to find that Joon Hee is sautéing something at the stove and Yoon Jae is standing behind him, chin on Joon Hee’s shoulder. She can see from the stillness of Joon Hee’s shoulders that he’s not entirely relaxed, and she thinks maybe it’s going to take a while for Joon Hee to believe this is real.
But she’s not worried. He’ll believe it eventually. They’ll give him all the time he needs, because they love him.
She jumps into the kitchen behind them with a BOO! that makes Yoon Jae jump and scowl at her, shouting at her not to sneak up on people like that, but she just grins and tickles him under the chin and kisses his cheek—he runs his hand over her face that way she hates in retaliation—and then she kisses Joon Hee on the cheek too and goes to set the table.
She knows they can’t be like this every morning for a while. She’s got to make appearances at her own apartment so her neighbors won’t get suspicious. But soon—who knows how long, she won’t worry about that now—she and Yoon Jae can get married and she can move in for good and then they’ll all three be together for good (she knows that things will still be complicated, especially if kids get involved, but she’ll worry about that later. Besides, she’d rather have Yoon Jae and Joon Hee than kids anyway. There are lots of things to work out, but that’s what time is for).
Until then, there’s this, and this is just as good as she’d known it would be.
(She knew she was right.)
Fandom: Reply 1997
Characters/Pairings: Shi Won/Yoon Jae/Joon Hee
Rating: PG-13
A/N: I'm not even going to pretend like this is good, but I wanted to write something for my friends who have just seen the show and this is what happened. Hopefully I'll write more for this fandom and it will be better. *kisses to you-know-who-you-are*
Summary: "You can’t just decide to share a person, Shi Won. He’s not a pot of ramyun.” Shi Won has the greatest idea ever.
--
She comes up with the plan a few days after Yoon Jae bursts into her life again at the coffee shop. Joon Hee’s over at her place, of course, since they can’t (read: she refuses to) go to his (when he’d told her he’d moved in with Yoon Jae, she’d pummeled him and yelled in his face for five minutes while he just blinked at her. When she’d settled down he said, “I knew you’d react like that,” and she pouted and treated him to ice cream in apology), the two of them lying on their backs on her bed like always because there’s really no other space to be comfortable in her tiny studio apartment. They’re sharing a bag of licorice ropes (well, Shi Won’s chomping her way through the bag while Joon Hee slowly eats each a single strand of candy) and Shi Won’s been pounding her bare feet against the wall—she’ll hear from the neighbors later, but who cares? She’s going through something traumatic, okay?—and whining about why stupid Yoon Jae has to be back in her stupid life when the idea pops into her head.
Shi Won isn’t one to keep ideas to herself when she can possibly share them, especially with Joon Hee, so she flops over onto her stomach and smacks Joon Hee on the forehead with her licorice rope. “Hey,” she says. “What if we share him?”
Joon Hee does that thing where he looks at her for a very long time. She knows he knows exactly what she means because when they say ‘he,’ they’re only ever talking about one person, but he still takes his time in reacting. Shi Won jerks off a bite of candy while she waits; she loves nearly every single thing about Joon Hee, but how he takes his time is the one thing about him that drives her absolutely crazy. She chews furiously as she waits.
Finally, he says calmly (because he’s Joon Hee and he’s always calm, and there have been times in her life when his calmness is the only thing that’s kept her from losing herself completely), “You can’t just decide to share a person, Shi Won. He’s not a pot of ramyun.”
“I know I know!” She smacks her hand down on the bed beside her and chews on the candy with her mouth open. “But what if he agrees?”
Now Joon Hee rolls his eyes at her, and he almost never does that, no matter how crazy her suggestions are, so she knows he must think this one is really crazy. “He doesn’t like guys, Shi Won. He doesn’t want me.”
Shi Won is too buoyed by the energy of her idea (a fantastic idea, by the way) to notice that tiniest twist to his mouth when he says the words, and even if she weren’t, she still probably wouldn’t have noticed (Shi Won is not the most observant of people). “How does he know? Has he ever tried?” Her eyes sharpen and she looks at Joon Hee suspiciously. “Have you ever kissed him?”
“Shi Won—“
“If you kissed him and you haven’t told me, I’ll kill you. I told you! I told you everything, I always tell you everything, why wouldn’t you tell me? You jerk, you have to tell me things!”
Joon Hee catches her by the hands and pulls them down so they’re no longer smacking his chest. “Shi Won. Just. Stop, okay?”
And that’s when she realizes that this is hurting him. Not the smacking—he’s used to that and it’s not like she puts any muscle behind it (the last thing she’d ever want to do is hurt Joon Hee) and it’s part of their everyday interaction. But the idea—the idea is hurting him, and she’s really not sure why because it’s a fabulous idea, maybe the best she’s ever had. It solves everything and everyone would be happy and why doesn’t he see that? Joon Hee is so smart, just like Yoon Jae, but sometimes she just doesn’t think either of them have a brain at all.
He climbs off the bed and reaches out for his white fancy-doctor’s coat off the back of her desk chair. She rises onto her knees to watch him as he lays it carefully over one arm—he probably irons it, knowing him (Shi Won doesn’t even own an ironing board). “My shift starts soon, I need to go, okay? Try not to make the neighbors too angry with your temper tantrums, Shi Won.”
Shi Won pouts, because she always hates it when he leaves her, and holds out her arms demandingly. “Hug me,” she commands, and he smiles at her, his quiet, lovely smile that she thinks is better than anyone’s smile in the world (except maybe Yoon Jae’s, not that she’d ever admit it) and comes back to the bed to hug her. He holds her strong and firm but gently too (and that’s just who Joon Hee is, all those things together), and (as always) she hugs him so hard he groans something about her cracking his ribs before he pulls away and kisses her on the forehead and lets himself out, and she flops back down on the bed and grabs another licorice rope and pounds her feet against the wall again because she hurt Joon Hee and she doesn’t know why.
She thinks a lot over the next couple of days, every spare moment she has (and maybe some not-so-spare ones, and maybe she gets yelled at by her bosses more than a few times, but it’s not like she’s not used to that) about why Joon Hee had been so hurt by her suggestion. After all, wouldn’t it be the perfect thing—they both love Yoon Jae and they both love each other and she knows Yoon Jae loves both of them, so what’s the problem? They can all live together in one apartment and Joon Hee can make breakfast for them and it’ll be perfect.
When she finally realizes that the reason it hurts him is because he doesn’t believe it’ll ever happen—that anything involving him and Yoon Jae could ever happen—and it so it hurts hearing about something he’s always wanted but will never have, she rolls her eyes (she’s much better at it than Joon Hee because she gets way more practice) and snorts and says to herself, “We’ll see about that.”
The first time (second time, whatever time—the first time now that they’re adults) Yoon Jae kisses her, she’s kind of caught up in the whole thing (not that she’d ever admit that), but the second time, she manages to think, “Joon Hee would like this a lot—he should get to do it, too.” Because it’s really amazing, kissing Yoon Jae (not that she’d ever admit that, either), and he seems to be really good at it and he smells good and he’s warm against her and it’s Yoon Jae and everything about it is good except for the fact that Joon Hee doesn’t know what it all feels like. She tells Joon Hee about it because she can’t not tell Joon Hee, and he’s happy for her and she knows he really means it because Joon Hee loves her and wants her to be happy, but she’s paying attention now and she sees something wistful in his eyes and smile, so she doesn’t talk too much about what Yoon Jae smells like (they live together, Joon Hee probably already knows) or what he tastes like (Joon Hee doesn’t know that, but she’s going to make sure that he finds out). Yoon Jae used to always say that she can’t ever think of anyone but herself, but that’s not true. She can think of Joon Hee, too.
She thinks of Joon Hee a lot, and Yoon Jae, too—actually, they’re pretty much all she thinks about now. And the more she thinks about them, the more she knows that the only acceptable thing is the three of them together.
The only problem is convincing the two of them of that.
She tries to come up with some sort of plan, but the thing is, she’s not very good at planning things that aren’t fan club meetings. So she tugs on her hair and moans for a while over how stupidly hard the boys are making this whole thing, and then she decides to keep it simple. When she tells the two of them that she’s coming over for dinner Friday night (she knows Joon Hee doesn’t have a shift that day), Joon Hee says something about going out with some friends from the hospital, but she makes it clear that he better be there too if he doesn’t want to die. Yoon Jae looks a little disappointed (stupid guy. He probably thinks she’s going to let him kiss her or something. But he won’t get to do that at all unless he’s going to be sharing the kisses with Joon Hee), but Shi Won just commands Joon Hee to make something good for dinner (she’d thought about cooking something herself, but Yoo Jung had made her promise she wouldn’t: ‘Do you want to burn their fancy apartment down, Shi Won? Is that really what you want to do?’) and then claps her hands with excitement once she gets out into the parking lot and hums “Candy” all the way home. She just knows that things are going to work out.
They both look a little bemused when she bursts through their front door (the key-code is Yoon Jae’s dad’s birthdate—he never told her that, but she knows) on Friday night, but she doesn’t care. They’ll both be happy by the end of the night, she’s sure of it.
Joon Hee grabs the bottle of wine from her immediately (‘Here, let me—before you drop it’) while she pushes her coat into Yoon Jae’s arms, and he looks impressed when he reads the label. Shi Won beams; it had been a gift from some celebrity or another to one of her bosses and she’d passed it along to Shi Won because she’d just gone on a diet that restricts alcohol intake (Shi Won can’t imagine ever wanting to lose weight enough to commit to something like that) so Shi Won hadn’t really known if it was good or not. She’s not really a wine person; soju’s more her style. But wine is romantic, right? And she knows that alcohol loosens people up a lot and makes them more open to new ideas, so she’d thought it was a good thing to bring.
Yoon Jae comes back from putting her coat on the coat rack (he may or may not look really good in those jeans with the sleeves of his button-down rolled up. Not that she’d notice) and makes a face at her. “Are you turning into a grownup, Sung Shi Won? You brought a host gift and everything?”
“Shut up,” she orders. “I can be polite.”
Yoon Jae laughs at that; behind her, Joon Hee bites his lip to keep from smiling, but she doesn’t notice because she’s too busy kicking Yoon Jae’s legs with her slippered feet.
That, of course, turns into her messing with his hair (she likes his hair messy, not that she’d ever tell him that) and him yelling “Ya!” a bunch of times in some lame attempt to scare her into stopping (like that would ever work), but finally Joon Hee gets them pulled apart and over to the table.
Dinner is really, really good, and Shi Won congratulates herself on what a good idea it was to get Joon Hee to make it. She could have shown up with carry-out, of course, but this is better because it shows Yoon Jae how good Joon Hee is at this sort of thing. Shi Won knows enough about herself to know she wouldn’t make a good housewife; her idea of decorating is to hang up a bunch of framed H.O.T. posters (okay, so the framing was Yoo Jung’s idea, but whatever) and she only cleans in fits and starts and even her mom won’t let her help in the kitchen when she goes home (though maybe that’s because she doesn’t like listening to Shi Won insist that they don’t need that much kimbap, Mom, really). But Yoon Jae and Joon Hee are both clean and whoever decorated this apartment probably did a good job (Shi Won’s never really cared much for interior decorating) and Joon Hee can cook, so it all works out perfectly, doesn’t it?
She and Yoon Jae only snap at each other six times over the course of dinner and she only throws her napkin at his face twice and she only gets up to hit him upside the head once, so that’s pretty much a success. Joon Hee smiles at them (fondly, she thinks, and it makes her feel almost as warm as when Yoon Jae grabs her butt when she’s returning to her seat after she hit him, not that she’d ever admit that) and shakes his head and changes the subject when he thinks they’re getting too ridiculous. She has three glasses of wine, but Yoon Jae and Joon Hee only have two and one respectively no matter how hard she tries to get them to drink more. Yoon Jae makes a disgusted face at her as she coaxes Joon Hee into pouring her that third glass (‘If you end up getting drunk and crying over Tony-oppa, I’m kicking you out, don’t think I won’t’) , but she just sticks her tongue out at him.
After she sets her glass down on the table with a big ‘Ah!’ and a smack of her lips (Yoon Jae glares some more, but she doesn’t care), she’s feeling warm and loose in just the right way, and decides she might as well get this show on the road. Yoon Jae and Joon Hee pile all the dishes in the sink and then end up by the TV, trying to decide which movie to watch, which Shi Won thinks is a stupid idea because if they’re going to be sitting in the dark watching a movie, they should at least all get the chance to sneak kisses some, but that won’t happen because her plan hasn’t happened yet. So she clearly can’t allow watching a movie to happen.
So she walks into the middle of the room, props her fists on her hips, and announces, “Joon Hee and I have decided to share you.”
Yoon Jae fumbles the DVD case he’d been examining, doesn’t quite manage to hold onto it, and it clatters to the wooden floor. Shi Won rolls her eyes at how dramatic he is and looks at Joon Hee. His eyes are very big and his face is very pale and she knew she should have gotten him to drink another glass.
Yoon Jae’s mouth is moving and he’s making small sounds like a fish and why does Shi Won even put up with him? She and Joon Hee should just kick him out on his stupid butt and live here together forever.
“Shi Won!”
Shi Won has never heard Joon Hee hiss in their entire lives—she hadn’t really thought he was the kind who even could hiss, but somehow he just managed it. Yoon Jae turns and speaks his fish-language to Joon Hee now.
Joon Hee must be able to understand it or something (he’s so smart) because he shakes his head hard. “I didn’t—I didn’t decide anything—I didn’t say anything,” he says, and though his voice is almost as calm as it ever is…it’s only almost. Yoon Jae turns his attention back to Shi Won and Joon Hee looks at the floor.
“Shi Won, have you completely lost your mind?” Yoon Jae finally manages to say in human language, and Shi Won decides she prefers it when he’s speaking fish language because it’s much easier to ignore.
“It’s a perfect idea. You know it’s a perfect idea.”
“How is this a perfect idea, huh? Tell me how this is a perfect idea!”
She doesn’t like the sound of his voice so much when it goes shrill like that, so she crosses her arms. “Joon Hee loves you and I like you okay or whatever—” (not like she’d admit to anything else—he doesn’t need to hear it any more than absolutely necessary) “—and you love both of us and we’d all be good together, so how is this not perfect?”
“Shi Won, you’re my girlfriend, Joon Hee is my best friend, it’s not—“
“You love him, don’t you? You love Joon Hee?”
“Of course I do!”
(Joon Hee is still looking at the floor and doesn’t raise his eyes at all, but Shi Won will worry about that in a minute when Yoon Jae stops being a drama queen.)
“Well? What’s the problem then?”
“Shi Won, I like women! Is that not clear to you?”
Shi Won shrugs. “Just because you like women doesn’t mean you can’t like men, too. Or at least Joon Hee. He’s really handsome, are you blind?”
Joon Hee ducks his head. “Shi Won….”
Yoon Jae eyes are huge. “I don’t like men!”
“How do you know?” Shi Won shoots back. “Have you ever given one a try?”
“You’re crazy,” Yoon Jae announces, turning to look around the room with his arms spread like he’s appealing to a jury. Such a drama queen. “You ought to be locked up. I knew it all along but I got distracted by how pretty you are and—“
Normally Shi Won would take a moment to beam at being called pretty (he always insists she’s ugly, but she knows he doesn’t really think so), but not right now. Right now there are more important things. She marches over to Yoon Jae and grabs the arm of his shirt and drags him over to Joon Hee. Yoon Jae is too busy ranting about how insane she is to realize what she’s doing until his face is inches from Joon Hee’s, and then his words cut off, staring at Joon Hee. Joon Hee flushes and tries to take a step back, but Shi Won grabs his arm and pulls him back.
“Go on,” she commands Yoon Jae, who’s staring at Joon Hee like he’s never seen him before, even though Joon Hee won’t meet his gaze. “Kiss him and tell me you don’t like it.”
“Shi Won—“ Joon Hee protests, trying to pull his arm away, but she just tightens her grip.
“Do it! And if you really don’t like it I won’t bring this up again.” (That last part may or may not be true, but that’s irrelevant right now.)
“Shi Won!” In all the time they’ve known each other, Joon Hee’s voice has never been that sharp, especially not when aimed at her, and the roughness with which he jerks his arm out of her grip is new, too. Now it’s her turn to stare at him like she’s never seen him, and maybe she hasn’t, because she’s been looking at him for years and years and she’s never seen him look this way before—almost…desperate, maybe. (It scares her.)
“Shi Won, please stop. Please.” She’s never heard him beg like that either and all of a sudden tears are welling up in her eyes because she’s done it again, she’s hurt him, and she didn’t even mean to, she just wants him to be happy, she wants all three of them to happy because there’s nobody she loves more than the two of them, and she’d thought this was the way and—
“Joon Hee,” Yoon Jae says suddenly, and both of their heads turn so they can look at him, and then he says it again, “Joon Hee,” but it sounds different this time (different in a way that makes goosebumps break out even on Shi Won’s scalp, like the first time she ever saw H.O.T. live) and then he’s taking a step closer to Joon Hee and his hand is on the back of Joon Hee’s neck and—
And okay, wow, that’s—wow. She’s written thousands (hundreds of thousands) of words about Tony and Woo Hyuk kissing (and doing a lot more than kissing), but she’s never actually seen two guys kiss and it’s—well. She’s always thought Joon Hee is the handsomest person in the world and Yoon Jae is Yoon Jae, but this—right now she thinks not even Tony and Woo Hyuk would look better this way. They aren’t even really kissing that deep or anything, not tongues tangled in torrid battles like the way she used to write, but she’s still starting to tingle all over like when she’d find a really good slash fic and—
And then Joon Hee pulls away (why would he do that? She could tell he was enjoying it!) and his back is to them and he’s breathing really, really hard, his shoulders rises and falling with the force of it, and she doesn’t think it’s just because of the kissing (they hadn’t kissed anything like enough to lose your breath like that) and Yoon Jae is staring at the back of Joon Hee’s head and his hand is opening and closing into a fist and Shi Won had known it.
She wishes she could be squealing at Joon Hee right now (‘It was good, wasn’t it? So good? I told you!’) while he just grins at her and Yoon Jae protests that she’s acting like a fangirl again and she should grow up, because that’s the way things should be, but not yet. Not yet.
The wine that’s still in her system seems to be flowing faster and hotter now and so she doesn’t even hear the shrillness of her own voice overly loud in the quiet apartment when she says, “You liked it!”
Yoon Jae turns away from Joon Hee and stares at her. “Shi Won—“
“You liked it! Don’t lie! I could tell you did! You liked kissing him just as much as you like kissing me and I told you you would! Now you have to agree it’s perfect!”
Yoon Jae’s face crumples up in that way it sometimes does and he shakes his head hard like he’s trying to shatter some moment. “How is this perfect, Shi Won? So what if I love you both? So what? How is this supposed to actually work?”
His voice is raw and a little something like desperate (like Joon Hee’s was a minute ago), and Shi Won doesn’t like it at all. They’re all supposed to be happy now. That’s the way it’s supposed to be now that he’s admitted it. She’s not stupid enough not to know why he held out for so long—he didn’t think he could have both of them so he chose her. Because she’s the one he’s known all his life and she’s the only one society would approve of him being with and it didn’t matter how much he wanted Joon Hee because he had to pick one and it was always going to be Shi Won.
But that’s the stupidest thing ever because now she’s given him permission to love both of them and why doesn’t he see that?
“It’ll be easy!”
The laugh Yoon Jae lets out is ugly; she likes it even less than his desperation. “Yeah, easy,” he sneers and she’d forgotten how annoyingly good he is at sneering.
“Yeah! Easy! You and I’ll get married and we still have an extra bedroom so we can just tell people Joon Hee’s our flatmate and he doesn’t actually have to use that room—we can all use one room, all three of us—and no one else ever has to know!”
“Is that fair to Joon Hee? You and me married and him just sneaking around to be with us? Is that fair to him?”
“Of course it isn’t!” How is he so stupid? He’s a judge, for Tony’s sake! Aren’t they supposed to be smart? “Nothing’s ever going to be fair to Joon Hee! No matter who he’s with he’s going to have to sneak around! He might as well do it with us!”
Neither one of them have noticed Joon Hee turning very slowly and quietly to face them, his breathing under more control now and his eyes watchful and guarded. They’re too busy glaring at each other, especially when Yoon Jae messes with his hair with frustrated hands and lets out a exasperated noise and starts to pace.
“Even if that works—even if it does—do you really think you two can share me? You really think that will work? Do you know how many people end up in my courtroom because they were so jealous over their lovers that they committed a crime? People can’t share people! I see this every single day! And you’re seriously telling me you wouldn’t ever be jealous? That it wouldn’t end up in a giant mess because one of you starts to feel hurt or left out or bitter? You’d never, ever resent each other, not for a minute?”
Is he serious? Shi Won makes sure her look tells him just how stupid she thinks that question is. “Not if it’s Joon Hee.” Is he seriously this dense? It’s Joon Hee.
He freezes mid-stride, gapes at her for a moment, then turns to Joon Hee. “And you? You’d be okay with this craziness, too?”
Joon Hee shrugs helplessly, face contorted with more emotions than Shi Won has ever seen there before, and Shi Won rolls her eyes at how complicated they’re making this. Men.
“Joon Hee?” Yoon Jae prompts, and maybe it’s something about the way he says the name that makes Joon Hee answer.
“Not if it was Shi Won,” he whispers.
In the silence that follows, Yoon Jae looks from her to Joon Hee and back again with that narrow-eyed confused look he gets sometimes that makes Shi Won want to kick him.
She tries not to do it much anymore because everyone says it’s childish, but right now she can’t help it: she stamps her foot (it’s either that or sitting down right on the floor and having a tantrum, and she mostly manages not to do that anymore. Mostly). “Why are you making this so hard? Why don’t you trust us? This is what you want! It’s what we all want! Why are you being so stubborn?”
“Well, excuse me for not wanting to risk losing my relationships with the people I care about most just for the sake of one of your stupid ideas!”
“Stupid? Stupid? It’s the greatest idea in the world.” (In the back of her head, Shi Won can hear Yoo Jung’s voice: ‘You really aren’t attractive when you roar like that, Shi Won,’ but right now she just doesn’t care.)
“It’s too good to be true! Nobody gets everything they want!” Yoon Jae isn’t very attractive when he roars back either (well, at least that’s what she tells herself).
“Maybe that’s because they’re too scared to really go for it! That’s what this is—you’re scared!”
“Of course I’m scared! Only an idiot wouldn’t be scared! If this backfires, all three of us lose everything. How can you not understand that?”
“I understand that you’re more scared than you love us!”
“What—what the hell does that even mean?”
“It means if you really loved us more than anything you wouldn’t let being scared get in the way!”
Yoon Jae’s mouth snaps shut, and in the silence that follows, Shi Won can hear just how hard she’s breathing. She looks at Joon Hee and sees that he’s staring at the ground again while Yoon Jae stares at nothing, his face totally blank.
That won’t do. This has dragged on way further than it needs to. Shi Won is putting a stop to this stupidity now.
She marches up to Yoon Jae, grabs him by the front of his shirt and jerks his head down so she can kiss him. It’s the first time she’s kissed him and they’ve never kissed this hard before and his tongue is just a little rough against hers and his mouth tastes a little like wine and she thinks maybe she can smell just a little bit of Joon Hee on him and—
She senses Joon Hee shift behind her when she lets out a little moan, so she decides to wrap up the kiss. She pulls back—Yoon Jae still has his lips thrust out like he doesn’t know what happened and he is such an idiot—and she reaches back and pulls Joon Hee to him. Joon Hee tries to pull away again but then Yoon Jae reaches out for him again and—
And yeah, she really likes to watch them kiss. Really a lot. A lot a lot. Yeah.
When their lips finally part (why did they have to stop?), Yoon Jae keeps hold of Joon Hee’s shirt and presses his forehead against Joon Hee’s. And Joon Hee’s eyes sink closed again and there isn’t anything Shi Won can do but go and wrap her arms around both of them and rest her head on Joon Hee’s shoulder and listen to them breathe.
“I want this,” she finally says softly, and she never says anything softly, so maybe they’ll know she means it. “I want it. And Joon Hee wants it too.”
Yoon Jae opens his eyes and focuses them on Joon Hee’s face and after a moment Joon Hee opens his too. They just look at each other for a long moment and then Joon Hee turns his head just a little and looks deep into her eyes and she isn’t sure what he’s looking for, but he must find it, because he looks from her to Yoon Jae and whispers, “I want this, too.”
And that’s when Yoon Jae finally closes his eyes and slumps into their arms.
They end up in Yoon Jae’s bed, all three of them, but not like that (she’s not going to let Yoon Jae have want he wants that easily. She knows now why he takes his laptop everywhere and she is not impressed). The bed smells like Yoon Jae and she presses her nose deep into the pillow a few times and giggles (okay, maybe she’s a little giddy, on wine and on this finally being real and how her plan totally worked). She catches Joon Hee doing the same thing a couple of times (though without the giggles) when he thinks no one’s looking and when she winks at him he blushes a little. He looks dazed, keeps staring at her and Yoon Jae like he can’t believe they’re beside him, keeps staring at Yoon Jae’s arm around his waist or Shi Won’s leg hooked through his (they keep changing positions because she and Yoon Jae keep arguing and messing with each other and that requires a lot of movement). She commands them to kiss more than once, and both of them glare at her (and Yoon Jae yells that she can’t boss them around, but she just scoffs at that), but they don’t seem too upset to obey. And she lets Yoon Jae kiss her a few times, too (back to pretending she doesn’t want him to because she can’t let him get smug—she hates it when he’s smug), and she cuddles with Joon Hee some (Joon Hee is the very best cuddler in the world) and when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she’s on top of Yoon Jae and Joon Hee is pressed up against both of them and the world is warm and soft and smells like both of them mixed together and she thinks her heart is going to explode from happiness (she’s never been this happy, not even when she met Tony-oppa. Not even then).
The next time she wakes up, she’s the only one in the bed and the sunlight is mellow around her and the sheets beside her are cool. She kicks her way out of the tangled covers and walks over to the window to yawn and stretch and look at the city stretching out below her. Then she pulls off her now-wrinkled shirt (she’d shed her bra at one point last night, extracting it from under her shirt without disturbing the shirt at all, and Yoon Jae’s eyes had gone kind of hazy at the sight and Joon Hee had just laughed) and pulls on a clean one of Yoon Jae’s and pads out into the hallway.
She can smell something sizzling in the kitchen and follows the scent to find that Joon Hee is sautéing something at the stove and Yoon Jae is standing behind him, chin on Joon Hee’s shoulder. She can see from the stillness of Joon Hee’s shoulders that he’s not entirely relaxed, and she thinks maybe it’s going to take a while for Joon Hee to believe this is real.
But she’s not worried. He’ll believe it eventually. They’ll give him all the time he needs, because they love him.
She jumps into the kitchen behind them with a BOO! that makes Yoon Jae jump and scowl at her, shouting at her not to sneak up on people like that, but she just grins and tickles him under the chin and kisses his cheek—he runs his hand over her face that way she hates in retaliation—and then she kisses Joon Hee on the cheek too and goes to set the table.
She knows they can’t be like this every morning for a while. She’s got to make appearances at her own apartment so her neighbors won’t get suspicious. But soon—who knows how long, she won’t worry about that now—she and Yoon Jae can get married and she can move in for good and then they’ll all three be together for good (she knows that things will still be complicated, especially if kids get involved, but she’ll worry about that later. Besides, she’d rather have Yoon Jae and Joon Hee than kids anyway. There are lots of things to work out, but that’s what time is for).
Until then, there’s this, and this is just as good as she’d known it would be.
(She knew she was right.)