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Jihyo's actually super chill about this.
She comes to this conclusion immediately after they've all gasped (Dahyun), and let out shouts of surprise (Jihyo) and stared with careful, narrowed eyes (Tzuyu). Now they're standing in the changing room of a hotel sauna at 2 A.M. in a supremely awkward stand-off, and Jihyo has never been more chill about anything, ever.
“Unnie,” Dahyun is the first to break the silence. Her eyes have the glossy sheen of someone unaccustomed to drinking who just had a few shots in celebration of their tour’s last stop for the year. Her mouth is very red. “Can you— I'm sorry,” she grimaces.
Tzuyu smoothly takes over. “Can you not tell the others about this? We don't want it to be a big thing.”
Her hand is large on Dahyun's waist. They're both in one piece swimsuits and shorts, more modest than most of what they wear on stage, but the fabric is wet and glued to their flushed skin. Jihyo's so throughoutly distracted she doesn't say the obvious maybe you shouldn't be sucking face in a public space, then.
"I'm very chill about this," she says instead.
Dahyun is looking at anywhere but them, cheeks the same deep red as her mouth, a cherry ready to pop. Tzuyu raises a skeptical eyebrow. "I can tell."
It's way too late to have this conversation. "I'm going to sleep," she says, her plans to sweat off the rest of the concert's adrenaline forgotten. "You two should probably do the same," she adds pointedly, and Tzuyu looks somewhat chastised at this. It's the first real expression she's made since Jihyo walked in on her licking a stripe up the side of Dahyun's neck.
"Sorry," Dahyun squeaks, "I'm so sorry, unnie."
Tzuyu's still holding her, fingers spread. The whole size of it probably spans the entirety of Dahyun's torso, Jihyo thinks. Her mind produces a snapshot—that same hand holding Dahyun down—and Jihyo turns on her heel and walks away before she can do something stupid like ask to see for herself.
_______________
“You need to be cool about this,” someone whispers in her ear at the same time something touches her shoulder, and Jihyo jumps about two meters off the ground before she realizes it's Yoo Jeongyeon.
The shooting pauses because of her scene; she bows in apology to the director and staff before turning to Jeongyeon with a scowl, watching from the corner of her eye as Dahyun smiles and dances along with Sana and Momo. Tzuyu is currently hidden away in hair and makeup, a fact Jihyo takes about as well as a deer smelling a tiger that is currently out of sight.
“I am cool about this.” Jihyo's the third coolest member, generally speaking, after Chaeyoung and Tzuyu. Fourth, if you don’t count how much time Mina spends playing online games. She is unflinchingly, unflappably, so very cool about this. “Also, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“They need you to be cool about this,” Jeongyeon emphasizes. She’s still speaking lowly, but with a casualness incongruent with the matter at hand. How is she so cool about this? Is Jihyo the only one hypothetically unable to deal with the sight of Tzuyu's tongue anywhere near Dahyun's body?
Hypothetically, were she not the type of person who is so cool and so chill about this.
“How do you even know about that?” Jihyo asks in a harsh whisper. They have maybe five minutes before the next trio—Jihyo, Jeongyeon and Chaeyoung—is called in front of the cameras. Chaeyoung is distracted showing Mina something on her phone, thank goodness, because Jihyo cannot have this conversation with a straight face.
“That Dahyun and Tzuyu are together or that you're freaking out about it?”
“Keep your voice down!” She hisses, regretting it when at least two managers turn their heads to look at them. Dahyun is listening intently to the director, and Tzuyu is still worryingly out of sight. “I'm not freaking out,” she says.
“Right,” Jeongyeon says in a dubious tone.
Dahyun, Sana and Momo are done with their take, and Jihyo can see the director waving them over. Tzuyu is still nowhere to be seen. They're just shooting promotional content for an upcoming fanmeeting, surely she should be done with hair and makeup by now. Nayeon and Mina are.
The director starts talking before Jihyo can worry further about it, simple instructions for what he wants, and as they move into place—oh, oh, there she is, arm slung over Dahyun's shoulder, head tilted down so she can listen to whatever Dahyun's saying into her ear. Her eyes meet Jihyo's and don't let go.
The music starts playing in the studio and Jihyo automatically smiles and spins in time with it, back vulnerable and on display. “Not so fast,” the director admonishes when she faces him once again, signaling for a start-over, and Jihyo seeks that gaze in the small crowd.
Tzuyu observes carefully, Dahyun in her arms, as Jihyo spins and spins and spins, catching her eyes after each one. Jihyo does her best not to blink, stomach tightening with awareness; anything could happen, she thinks, in the moments she doesn't keep careful watch. Jihyo better not miss it.
_______________
Sana: our dahyunie is such a good actress
(˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶) .ᐟ.ᐟ
Chaeyoung: i'm crying already…. the drama is so good well done unnie
Nayeon unnie: Is it on right now??
Jeongyeon: You still don't know when it airs?
Nayeon unnie: Nevermind, I'm watching it. Congratulations to our Dubu ❤️
Dahyun: Thank you unnie 🤍 Thank you everyone 🤍
Tzuyu: ❤️❤️
Nayeon unnie: By the way I still need confirmation on who's coming to my Christmas party
Jeongyeon: Me
Sana: i'll have to miss it again (ㅠ‸ㅠ)
Chaeyoung: me too TT
Momo: I'm going… especially considering it's at my place. And congrats Dahyunie ❤️
Dahyun: Thank you unnie 🤍 I'm going too!
Tzuyu: me too
Nayeon unnie: Well, Mina already told me she's not going
@Jihyo?
Nayeon unnie: I know you saw the message @Jihyo
Jihyo: was busy, sorry. i'm going too
Jihyo: congratulations, our dahyunie 🤍
Dahyun: 🤍
Tzuyu: 🧡
_______________
“You're late,” is the first thing Nayeon says as Jihyo lets herself in using Momo's door code, as if she can't tell the time.
“Merry Christmas to you, too,” Jihyo says, even though it's technically Christmas Eve. She bends down to pet Boo and Dobby, catching Jeongyeon's eyes as she comes to greet her by the entrance.
“Everyone else is already here,” she informs. It's what Jihyo expected, but she still takes those few seconds to mentally prepare herself before she walks further into the apartment, circumventing a wall before she finds herself face-to-face with the rest of them.
The dogs rush to join Momo on the couch, and she welcomes them with the same enthusiasm she does Jihyo—a drunk, beaming smile. She looks ready to sink down between the cushions, and Jihyo smiles in return, amused. It freezes on her face as she looks to the other couch on Momo's left.
They're not sitting together, a space between them that she presumes was occupied by either Nayeon or Jeongyeon, but it's so easy to see them as a fixed set. Dahyun has two different headbands on, a pair of reindeers and another of santas bouncing on top of her silky hair, whilst Tzuyu looks the slightest bit dishaveled—perhaps like one of those headbands had been on her own hair, instead.
Tzuyu's more housecat than tiger, now, long stretched legs and lazy smile, languid and beautiful. She has a customized sweater with Kaya and Butter wearing Christmas hats on it. Jihyo remembers her at a similar party years ago in this very apartment, with squinted, unfocused eyes, kneeling next to her on the floor. I want cuddles, unnie, she'd demanded, and when has Jihyo ever been able to deny her maknae anything?
She decides to acknowledge Dahyun first. “Congratulations on your award,” she says, and it's still hard to look her in the eyes but the affection is nothing but genuine.
Dahyun blooms under the praise, cheeks flower-pink and lovely, eyes curving into crescents with the force of her smile. “Thank you, unnie,” she says. “Why don’t you sit down?”
She’s pointing at the empty space between her and Tzuyu. Jihyo considers it as a mouse might consider a cheese cube neatly placed on top of a snap trap, and it is with that same awareness that she sits down and waits for the kill.
“Hi, unnie,” Tzuyu leans in, mouth barely brushing her ear, and Jihyo has to suppress a shiver.
“We're doing gifs at midnight,” Nayeon ambles into the room before Jihyo can respond, Jeongyeon in tow. She plops down next to Momo, invading her personal space, and Momo shifts an arm to accommodate her. “There are drinks in the kitchen if you want.”
“Great hosting,” Jihyo says.
Nayeon shrugs. “It's Momo's house,” as if she hasn’t been calling it her Christmas party since she's decided they should throw another one.
“I can get you one,” Dahyun offers sweetly, turning a little to face her. Her knee brushes Jihyo's thigh, and Jihyo swears she can feel the heat of it through the combined fabric of their pants.
She smacks her lips, swallows. “I'm not thirsty,” she says. “Thanks, Dahyunie.”
“Are you sure?” Tzuyu asks. She pushes down on a cushion to help shift positions, settling somehow even closer than before. Her pinky presses firmly on Jihyo's leg, and Jihyo twitches as if electrocuted.
“Yeah,” her voice cracks embarrassingly, and she looks at the other couch in alarm. Nayeon is thankfully in her own Momo world, nursing her beer and watching as Momo scrolls on her phone. Jeongyeon is, unfortunately, staring straight at her with a rather self-satisfied smirk.
Still cool? She mouths. Jihyo wonders if it's disrespectful to the Christmas spirit to think about how much she wants to kill her.
Jihyo just got here, but she still checks her phone to be sure: still twenty minutes to go until midnight. She bites back a sigh. At the last party, they'd consumed enough alcohol that everything by this time of night had been irrevocably funny. Now, Momo is the most obvious one, but Jihyo can see the way Nayeon is just the tiniest bit more uncoordinated than normal, and how Jeongyeon is scratching a spot on Dobby's neck with unusual focus, an empty bottle on the floor by her side.
Dahyun and Tzuyu, however, are undoubtedly, distressingly sober. They're both on their phones now, fingers tap-tapping on the screen, and Jihyo has the paranoia-inducing thought that they're texting each other.
The next, wholly paranoid thought: and what if they're texting each other about—
She gets up so suddenly she can feel Tzuyu and Dahyun bounce a little on their seats from the change in weight distribution. “I'm going to—” get that drink, she was thinking on saying, but the rational part of her brain blares a red warning sign about that being a horrendous idea. And well, Jihyo's sober. She can make good choices. “—to the bathroom.”
“Okaaay…” The gesture is enough to pull Nayeon's attention from Momo, if only just. She looks at Jihyo as if she’s just grown three heads. “Did you forget where it is?”
She shakes her head, clearing her throat. “Just saying,” she mutters, and walks away before she gives Jeongyeon any more ammunition to tease her for the foreseeable future.
After peeing, Jihyo considers her options. She could hide here for the next fifteen minutes and return just before midnight, as if nothing happened. She has her phone with her, she can entertain herself. Or she could just fake a stomach bug and leave altogether, hoping Jeongyeon will be too hungover tomorrow to give her too much shit about it.
She's so engrossed in these possibilities the sound of a knock on the door is enough to startle her. She curses under her breath; she hasn't even dried her hands yet.
“Unnie? Are you okay?” That’s Dahyun's voice, unmistakable and so, so sweet. She has a new cadence to it since becoming an actress, almost imperceptible—she enunciates her syllables a bit more carefully, now. Jihyo likes it more than she has any right to.
“Unnie's fine, Dahyun-ah!” She turns on the faucet again, hoping the loud splash of water on the sink will serve as a deterrent.
There's murmuring on the outside, then Dahyun again. “I'll wait!” She calls out. “I need to go too.”
Or Jihyo can just go out and face the people she's known for over a decade. Not as good, but also a possibility. She pastes on a smile, opens the door, and comes face to face with Dahyun and Tzuyu.
“Tzuyu-ah!” She exclaims, surprised. “Do you need to go too?” She talks before realizing the implications of this—Dahyun and Tzuyu locked inside the bathroom together—but Tzuyu seems entirely unaffected.
“She was worried about you,” Dahyun offers. “You were taking so long here.”
“Upset stomach,” Jihyo says, wishing this to be the end of it. Maybe she should’ve chosen a ‘drowning herself in the toilet’ option instead.
“How unfortunate,” Tzuyu deadpans.
“Well,” Jihyo says loudly, “Dahyun said she needs to go, so I should get back.”
“Actually,” Dahyun says, voice careful. She's looking at Tzuyu, something passing silently between them, which can only be a terrible sign. “I lied. We just wanted to talk to you.”
“I'm still feeling kind of sick,” she tries, gulping when Dahyun shoots her a reproachful look. The headbands bounce on top of her hair, and angry Dahyun has always been terrifying.
“You've been acting so strange since that night,” Dahyun says, a dangerous downturn to her mouth. “We never meant for this to happen. We never wanted what we have to harm anyone.”
And oh, if a mad Dahyun is scary, then a sad, disappointed Dahyun is downright ruinous. Jihyo expects her organs to shrivel up and her skin to turn inside out at the sheer emotional devastation of it. Tzuyu frowns, and whether it is out of sympathy or displeasure, Jihyo can't tell.
“I'm so sorry, Dahyun-ah. I didn't mean to—I don’t know what's happening to me,” she confesses. “But I'll work on it, I promise.”
She tried to understand it by talking with Jeongyeon, but she'd been more frustrating than usual. Jihyo asked, Don't you find it weird? and Jeongyeon answered, Why would I? Jihyo said, They were on a technically public space, where anyone could walk in, and Jeongyeon replied, Is that really what’s bothering you? And when Jihyo asked, But how did you know about them anyway? Jeongyeon answered, I have eyes. Isn't it obvious? And Jihyo ended the conversation before she could hear about what other obvious things Jeongyeon saw.
“Your problem is pretty simple, unnie,” Tzuyu says. “It's called denial.”
Her first instinct is to deny it—a lifetime of experience arguing with younger siblings and Yoo Jeongyeon is what saves her. “I thought you said you wouldn't psychoanalyze us,” she says instead.
“No, I said I wouldn’t psychoanalyze you because that's literally a job and I don't work for free. But in this case I'm actually gaining something.”
Jihyo feels coincidentally close to gaining a new trauma. She tries to plan an escape, but Dahyun is blocking a surprising length of the threshold. The mere thought of forcefully moving past her feels akin to punching a kitten.
Her eyes are wide and round as she regards Jihyo's silence. “Don't you want to know?” She asks, moving a bold step closer. Behind her, Tzuyu follows. “Don't you want to know what we gain from this?”
Jihyo is a cornered animal, retreating further into the bathroom as they advance, Dahyun with her headbands and Tzuyu with her Kaya-Butter sweater. Tzuyu reaches behind her, closes and locks the door, trapping them inside.
“I think it'll be easier if we just show her,” she murmurs to Dahyun, then she bends down and kisses her.
By instinct, Jihyo's brain focuses on the familiar—thanks to the acting, it’s not her first time seeing Dahyun kiss someone. And with that acknowledged, here's all her brain has never known: the way Dahyun sighs when Tzuyu backs her against the sink; her small hands travelling between hips-arms-back before settling on Tzuyu's neck to draw her impossibly closer; Tzuyu’s fingers getting caught on those damn headbands, the contrast between gently untangling them from Dahyun's hair and tossing them to the ground without a care.
They land by Jihyo's feet. Tzuyu fists a handful of that long, silky hair, and pulls the slightest bit. The responding sound Dahyun makes will haunt her forever.
Everything is amplified in confined spaces—their breaths reverberate, the slickness of meeting tongues hits the walls and bounces back to embed into the gray matter inside Jihyo’s skull. Fabrics rustle, caresses whisper, and above it all, a persistent pounding she takes too long to realize comes from her own heart.
Jihyo can only watch as Tzuyu raises a hand to her own nape, curves it over Dahyun's and slots their fingers together before guiding their arms parallel to the floor. Without breaking the kiss, both their hands extended in Jihyo's direction, palms up. Inviting her in.
She doesn't know how long she stares, trembling before a possibility she never dared to dream about. Tzuyu and Dahyun keep kissing, tongues in mouth and playful pecks, until presumably their arms grow tired and they return to their previous position on each other's bodies. The loss of it stings like the hand that feeds, and the dog that bites it out of fear.
Jihyo steps closer in the unsteady legs of a newborn fawn, shakes her head when the angle between their bodies widens to welcome her. “No, don't stop,” she pleads with a shaky voice, breaking the near quiet of before, and they don't.
She touches Dahyun first, the soft fabric on her waist, feeling how the muscles jump when she gasps. Jihyo can see their mouths so closely now, tongues slipping and sliding, spit accumulating on the corners and coating cupid's bows. She experiments light caresses and heavier strokes, waist and hips and back, intent on the changes in her breath and the way Tzuyu immediately responds.
Jihyo feels clammy inside her skin, feverish. The bathroom is too cold, and it is that difference in temperature that makes her shiver, fingers slipping under a hem and seeking a source of heat.
Dahyun's skin is silky soft and sunkissed warm. Jihyo squeezes the curve of her waist, and when Dahyun moans the kiss finally breaks, Tzuyu wrenching her head away with a distressed sound. She regards Jihyo with pupil-blown eyes.
“Can I?” Tzuyu asks.
Jihyo's still holding onto Dahyun. “I'm scared,” she admits. They're standing side by side, now, facing forward and leaning against the bathroom sink, Tzuyu in front of them.
“We were, too.” Dahyun says. “But after you give in, it's just so…”
“Easy?” Jihyo tries.
“Not quite.” Tzuyu smiles, and Jihyo shudders when she feels a soft hand brush her cheek, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear in a gesture impossibly tender. “Not exactly easy, but… it becomes the most natural thing in the world.”
Jihyo slides her hand from Dahyun's skin, searching until she finds fingers to fit between her own, squeezing Dahyun's hand as if to draw strength from it. She licks her lips, and watches how Tzuyu follows the motion.
She nods, and Tzuyu dives in.
Jihyo tries to be careful with it, closes her eyes and fits their lips neatly on top of each other, learning the feel of her. Pretty, young Tzuyu, who Jihyo always wanted to protect. Beautiful Tzuyu, just two years younger than her, who tilts her head and licks inside Jihyo’s mouth.
Jihyo's whine reverberates in the bathroom, and Tzuyu kisses her harder, wet tongue gifting her their combined spit. Someone draws a sharp intake of breath, and she realizes it’s Dahyun, untangling their fingers and moving closer.
A hand on her hair and on her hip, her mouth on Tzuyu's mouth, Dahyun panting right next to her ear. “Unnie,” Dahyun gasps, pleads, asks, and Jihyo leaves Tzuyu with a wet slide and turns her head to the side to kiss her.
Her mouth is soft, air-dried, and Jihyo does her best to rectify that, takes both lips to suck and bite down on and drinks the noises she lets spill. Jihyo's hands on Dahyun’s hip and Tzuyu's hair; she pulls the latter closer, tries to fit her in a mess of spit and tongues until she has to lean away, overstimulated and so horny she can't think.
They stare at each other for a loaded moment, skin flushed and kissed stupid, until a harsh knock sends them springing apart like repelling magnets.
“Guys???” Nayeon's voice on the other side, loud and most definitely drunk. “It's almost midnight! What the fuck are you doing in there?”
“We have a stomach ache!” Dahyun yells. Tzuyu snorts, a quick hand raising to Jihyo's mouth to prevent the laughter from coming out.
“All three of you?” A beat. “You know what, whatever, now's not the time. If you don't come out in five minutes we're doing gifts without you.”
One of those minutes is spent listening to her walking away, steps loud and unstable. They've huddled together again, Tzuyu and Dahyun glued in an united front, Jihyo on the outside.
Tzuyu's the first one to break the silence. “This doesn't have to be a one time thing, you know.” They're gripping each other tightly, Dahyun nodding in agreement, and Jihyo realizes they're nervous.
She looks at them, with their silky hair and Kaya-Butter sweater, and smiles. It doesn't come naturally yet, and it probably won't for a while, but something tells Jihyo to be optimistic: they have a brand new year ahead of themselves, after all.