swxtched. | jhs

DÉJÀ VU

❝ just when i think that we're through, you make me come right back. ❞

•

❝ I WANT TO help them before we graduate and go on our separate ways," Green confessed to Hoseok in her room, lying on the bed and hearing her breathing.

"Oh my god, you can remember college under all of this?"

"It's a pressuring matter, Hoseok. How can you forget? You're a senior."

"But I'm still a teenager," he retorted, pouting in her desk chair. Green let out a sigh.

"You're also an adult."

"Almost. My birthday's on the eighteenth. February."

Hoseok stood up and moved to lay in her bed beside her. The two gazed up at the uninteresting ceiling, lost in the silence, when his fingers snaked around to find and link his fingers with hers. Unfortunately, he was on her right side, meaning he felt her prosthetic arm.

Tenderly, he stroked the plastic. "Sometimes, I feel really, really bad for you," he quietly admitted, lying on his side and reaching up to stroke her hair. "Having your passions shoved away from you seems like the worst thing in the world."

"It probably is," Green acknowledged, leaning into his touch. "But I'm still alive."

"You know, Jungkook would sometimes say to me, 'Living without passion is like being dead.'"

"He's probably right."

Hoseok paused for a minute, shaken by the sad look in her eyes. "What colleges have you applied for?"

"I know this doesn't sound smart, but I think I'll just take a gap year. I have applied for a few community colleges to save money, but I still don't want to go."

"But you don't want to lose your smarts," Hoseok said jokingly, but Green didn't even crack a smile.

"I can't handle the stress of figuring out a new passion after pursuing music and dancing for so long. Adjusting is so much harder than I thought," she mumbled, bringing up a hand to her face to cover it.

He sat up, disheartened by her words, and left her bed to walk up to her cabinet. He opened it up and shuffled through her CDs in cases, finding the case he was searching for. Holding it up for her to see, she sucked her cheeks. "Hoseok, no, you know I—"

"Let's watch it together," he said softly, offering a grin. She couldn't find the heart to say no.

Taking her laptop, Hoseok brought it to the bed with the CD, and popped the disk into the slot. Clicking on the file, he pulled up Green's freestyle contemporary performance for Heroine.

"Min Geurin, performing 'Save Your Goodbye,'" was announced. Green tried to cover her eyes, but Hoseok brought both of them in his as he hugged her from behind, trapping her between his legs and spooning her.

"You're watching all of it," he teased in her ear, sounding husky enough for her to shiver.

Watching her performance from only last year gave her even more shivers. Her graceful, lithe movements made her hopelessly wistful. The expression on her face in the video as she danced in a slim-fitting white dress that flowed with her in silk and satin, ribbons in both hands twirling with her, was foreign to her.

Seeing it all over again made her eyes water. "You coconut head," she sniffed, as Hoseok smiled at the déjà vu and brought his chin to her shoulder, wiping her tears.

"Aren't you beautiful? No wonder you won," he said soothingly, pressing a chaste kiss to her neck. She shivered.

"But what's the point of winning if I didn't win anything in the end?"

"Yes, this was you," Hoseok spoke, embracing her securely. He pecked her cheek. "But did I like past you before you now? No. So what does it matter? You're smart and skillful in so many other ways, unlike me. Dancing is all I know. Music is all I know."

"But that's all I wanted," she whimpered, tilting her head back to his shoulders to close her eyes and resist the urge to cry more. "Music and dance was all I wanted, it was practically all I knew. I loved the piano as much as Yoongi-oppa did. But now, I— I still want to, but I can't."

"Can you sing?"

"What?"

"Can you sing?" he repeated, more firmly this time. "Sing for me."

"Why all of a sudden—"

"You can play the piano with one hand and make music. Can you sing? Can you mix music?"

"Hoseok—"

"You can dance without the prosthetic arm weighing you down. I tried in your body, and you still move just fine. I'm amazed at how you feel when I dance as you, even. Geurin, I don't understand why you're hurting yourself and cutting yourself off completely from music and dance when it's still possible. When you loved it so much. And something tells me you still do."

"It hurt my brother," she released finally. She wrapped her arms around herself, the plastic uncomfortably poking at her ribs. "It hurt my parents. They might not seem like the best parents, but they're still my parents. They still raised me and supported my dancing until the end. It all seemed so promising to all of us. I felt like they cut me off after they cut my arm off, so I... cut it off too."

"So that's why," he whispered into her hair, cradling her withering form. "And that's why I'm here."

"To remind me of my pain?"

"Stop it. I'm here to remind you that you should still go for your passions despite everything going against it," Hoseok replied, turning her around to press his lips to her forehead and hug her one more time.

"You don't know how much that means to me, Hoseok."

When he pulled away, Green tugged him back down and kissed him.

•

❝ you know i love it when you look like that. ❞
『 written on 2017.10.29. | 2017.11.15. 』

【 NOTE 1—please save my embarrassment for having this chapter song title here and don't look up the lyrics thank q sws so much bye
NOTE 2—i am the dumbest human on earth. i thought stuff like "bts af" meant "bts asf" if ya know what i mean but it means aPPLY FIC RIP 】