[ fic ] feeling, feeling, feeling

[alonewithsheep]

Title: feeling, feeling, feeling
Fandom: Seventeen
Pairing: Vernon/Seungkwan
Rating: G
Word Count: 2134
Prompt: Written for a Spotify Wrapped meme. Requested by ninamonday: 33 (Seventeen, Aju Nice) + Verkwan.
Summary: Aju Nice AU. Hansol and Seungkwan get caught in the effects of someone else's spell, and have to clean up a minor mess once it breaks.

Hansol and Seungkwan are together when the spell breaks in an explosion of smoke and confetti.

Hansol's never felt anything like it before, not even last semester, when Seokmin, Soonyoung, and Seungkwan accidentally cursed the entire lecture hall with exploding hiccups during their final presentation on the Second Golden Age of Harmonic Hexes. That'd been pretty terrible, and possibly the worst fifteen minutes of anyone's academic career, their lecturer included. (Or so Professor Cho had claimed; no one was entirely sure they believed him, given that he'd been a TA at the legendary disaster that had been the Incheon Conference.)

This, though? As bad as it'd been to hiccup fireworks and breathe smoke, that had honestly felt more like moderate acid reflux than anything more serious. This feels like series of electric shocks directly to his heart and through it, almost like what he imagines being shot through in the chest would be like. It knocks the breath out of Hansol even before he hits the ground, laying him flat on his back. For a moment that feels like forever, Hansol stares up at the fluttering plumes of pink and silver confetti that drift across the clear blue sky, carried along by a gentle breeze. There's a part of him that knows he's just stunned by the magical rebound of a forcible undoing; that understands that he's just experiencing a physical reset and nothing more serious.

A larger part, though—the part of his brain that works off of instinct—wonders if he's dying, and if this is really how he's going to go: laying beside the boy he's in love with after a spell-induced shouting match that neither of them had gotten to apologize for or even meant to get into.

"This isn't how I wanted to die," Hansol tries to croak mournfully, but his ears are ringing so badly that he's not sure he manages to make it anywhere near intelligible. He takes in what feels like more of a wheeze than a breath and lolls his head to the side, looking over at Seungkwan. "Hey."

Seungkwan looks just as dazed as Hansol feels, his eyes wide and a little frightened. One of his hands scrabbles at his chest, where a terrible little hole in his shirt expels sad puffs of confetti. Hansol panics a little more—though he knows deep down that he doesn't need to—and uses all his strength to roll over and pat at Seungkwan's chest, looking for an injury, for—

Seungkwan groans. Hansol retracts his hands immediately.

"Hey, what—Did that hurt? Are you hurt? Talk to me," Hansol says in a rush, trying his best not to let the dizziness of being upright get to him. "Can you hear me?"

Seungkwan blinks at him blearily, then shakes his head as if to clear it. "Yeah," he says. "What happened? Are we dead? I feel dead."

Hansol looks down at Boo Seungkwan with his disheveled hair and a ragged, circular hole in his shirt and confetti floating all around them both, and breathes out a long, deep sigh. He seems fine, so Hansol carefully drops back down onto the ground, laying his head beside—not on—Seungkwan's shoulder.

"I feel dead, too," he admits in a mumble. The ringing in his ears seems to be fading a bit, which is nice. "I don't think we are, though, just de-spelled. It's the rebound."

Seungkwan groans, deep and feeling. He shifts around until his hand lands on Hansol's head and cards through his hair. "What happened? What... Wait. Ugh. Oh, no. I think... I remember... Oh no."

Hansol grunts an agreement and tries his best not to succumb to the urge to burrow into Seungkwan's body, to press his face into Seungkwan's neck and breathe deep. They're laying on the paving stones of the casters' dueling quad, out in broad daylight, and even if fairly secluded and there's no one else around currently, Seungkwan will remember where they are soon enough. "Yeah. Lim Seoyeon cast the Mass Adulation Spell instead of the Tender-Heart Incantation. You followed Kim Jihye around for three days straight."

Seungkwan groans again. "Well, at least I didn't ask her out to the skate park! You don't even own a skateboard! You had to borrow Kang Yeosang's!" He doesn't seem genuinely offended, though; Hansol knows from the way Seungkwan's fingers brush over the tip of Hansol's ear, familiar and comforting and kind of sweet. "Ugh. I can't believe we fought about this."

Hansol grimaces. He doesn't really remember the specifics of what started the fight—or rather, he does, but from a distance, and he doesn't remember why it made sense at the time. He guesses that it didn't, or it wouldn't to someone in their right mind, but neither of them were. Regardless, he remembers that they fought, and that Seungkwan said some things that hurt, even through the fog of the curse, and Hansol said some things that were meant to hurt in kind, but probably...

Probably just ended up revealing a little too much about Hansol and his own feelings for Seungkwan. He can't imagine that Maybe if you treated the people who love you like they're people instead of puppies, they'd take the chance and confess to you instead of finding someone else! made much sense in the context of a fight over who had the better date with Jihye, but, well.

That's out there now, Hansol figures. There's not much he can do about it. Either Seungkwan remembers it or he doesn't, and if he does remember, either he'll get it or he won't.

"Hansol-ah?"

"Oh," Hansol says, taken out of his thoughts both by Seungkwan's voice and the gentle pinch to his earlobe. "Yeah, no. That was... pretty stupid." He sighs. "I'm sorry, by the way. I think I was pretty hurtful to you. Or I tried to be hurtful, and that's just as bad. I didn't mean any of it. Or I don't now."

Seungkwan's fingers still against the shell of his ear, then resume their motions. "Oh, Hansol-ah," he says, full of fond mirth, "I know. Me, too. I didn't mean what I said, okay? Well, I do think you should be more outgoing, and say what you want, but... Anyway, I didn't mean the rest of it. You know, about—"

"I know," Hansol says, because he does, and because he'd rather not hear Seungkwan repeat that line about how maybe people lose interest because you take too much time to open up and hardly ever show them when you like them! He shoots Seungkwan a little smile. "It's okay. It was the spell."

"It was the spell," Seungkwan echoes, smiling back faintly. He has confetti in his hair and Hansol probably should help him pick it out, but he doesn't want to. Not yet, not when he looks so pretty like this. "Ahh, this is why they say you shouldn't mess with emotion spells. Tender-Heart isn't even that strong, especially if you have good intentions, but too much can go wrong. Look at all this mess. I don't understand why people even try."

"I do," Hansol admits after a beat, finally carefully lifting himself back into a sitting position and ignoring the way something in him twinges when it makes Seungkwan's fingers fall away. He waits a moment to gauge for any lingering dizziness, then draws his knees up a little and wraps his arms around them loosely. After a moment, Seungkwan follows him upright, mirroring his posture.

"You do?" he asks doubtfully. Hansol nods.

"Yeah, kind of. I get it. It wasn't the right thing to do, but I kind of get why she'd do it."

"She was trying to manipulate someone else's feelings," Seungkwan says in that way of his that makes it sound like he's scolding and disapproving when he's really just stating a fact. Hansol is used to it by now, and doesn't get offended or get his hackles up. "She just made a mistake in her pronunciation or she would've succeeded, and that poor girl she's in love with never would've known the difference. It's awful."

"It is awful," Hansol agrees readily. "I'm not saying it isn't. I'm just saying I understand wanting to do it. Sometimes you love someone so much that you'd think about doing something awful just to get them to soften up and truly look at you for a few days." He shrugs. "But yeah, I mean. Thinking about it is way different from actually doing it."

"And you wouldn't, right?" Seungkwan asks a bit hesitantly, then rushes to add, "I'm just making sure! I don't think you would, I'm just—Don't look at me like that!"

"Okay, okay," Hansol says placatingly, and tries to school his face out of whatever half-incredulous, half-incensed expression it'd twisted into. "And for the record, I wouldn't. Ever."

"I know," Seungkwan says, grabbing Hansol's hand and lacing their fingers in a way that's so easy and natural that it makes Hansol smile. "You wouldn't have to, anyway. You're Chwe Hansol. How could anyone as handsome as you have an unrequited love? Anyone would accept your confession."

Hansol glances at Seungkwan sidelong, surveying him, taking in the wistful set to his smile and the fondness in his eyes—the affection that never seems to leave them whenever he looks at Hansol—and something clicks.

Huh, Hansol thinks, and starts putting things together. Huh.

"Hey," Hansol says, and scoots over, moving close enough for their bodies to press against each other in a warm line from shoulder to hip to knee, hands still clasped. He hopes he's right about this, or it's about to be incredibly awkward. "Hey. Seungkwan-ah."

"Huh?" Seungkwan's brow furrows, but he doesn't lean away, just looks taken aback by their sudden proximity. "What? Yes? What's wrong? Did I say something wrong? Did I make you uncom—"

"Do you mean that?" Hansol interrupts, which would normally set him off into a barrage of complaints; but Hansol doesn't even let him start. "Do you really think anyone would accept a confession from me?"

Seungkwan's brow smooths, though his expression goes complicated, then more neutral than pleased. "Oh. Well—Well, yes. Of course. Why—Of course I think so. And not just because of your face. It's a nice face, but I think—I think it's also... everything else about you." Seungkwan fiddles with their hands and looks everywhere but Hansol's eyes. "Why? Are you thinking of—"

"Yes." He doesn't even let Seungkwan finish. "To you. I'm thinking of confessing to you." He watches as Seungkwan's head snaps up, and feels his mouth stretch into a wide grin in response. "Or, uh, I guess I'm just confessing. Not just thinking about it. Because I like you, Boo Seungkwan, and I'd rather you treated me like a boyfriend than like a puppy."

Seungkwan makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat and goes very, very red.

"Like, I mean. I really want to date you." Hansol bumps their shoulders lightly, teasingly, trying his best not to let on that his heart—his poor heart, already put through so much in the last half hour—is racing away, thundering in his chest so hard it feels like it might bruise against his ribs. "I want to ask you to come to the skate park with me even though I don't know how to skateboard. And I don't mind if you follow me around or sing Wonder Girls songs under my window or send me lov—"

Seungkwan's free hand clamps over Hansol's mouth. He's redder than Hansol has ever seen him, but his eyes shine bright with something like joy. Hansol hopes it's joy.

"Chwe Hansol, you—! Aish, really, you—Right now? Like this? Right after being spelled? You—"

Hansol pulls Seungkwan's hand away from his mouth and folds it in his own. "Yeah. Right now, like this. You did tell me to be more outgoing, you know. So..." He squeezes Seungkwan's hands. "...Did I read it wrong? Should I have waited? Or—"

"No, you didn't, you shouldn't, it's fine, that's—" Seungkwan snatches one hand out of Hansol's, gently socks him in the chest, and then buries his face in Hansol's neck. It's a little confusing, but very Seungkwan. "You better not take me to the skate park, Chwe Hansol! You better take me on the best dates and—and hold my hand and..."

Hansol bites the inside of his cheek. "And... kiss you?"

Seungkwan doesn't bother to answer, just fits his arms around Hansol's middle and lifts his head and looks at Hansol, equal parts mortified and happy and expectant and—

Kissing Seungkwan isn't quite like an explosion of electricity and smoke and fire, but there is confetti, and that's more than enough.