THE PIERCING HAD ME GOING CRAZYYYYY - Tumblr Posts

"i did a thing."

— in which hyunjin needs an expert opinion about his newest piercing.

words・1.4k / pairing・idol!hyunjin x gn!makeup artist!reader / genres・fluff, established relationship / author's note・takes place in the same universe as places, places! and crying lightning but can be read on its own. @astraystayyh your children are back :’)

The parlor door jingles. Hyunjin emerges onto the chilled pavement with his phone pressed to his ear, and you pick up on the fourth ring.

“What is it? I’m busy.” The way your voice shrinks substantiates this claim, like you’ve darted to the other end of the room promptly after accepting his call. “And you’re on speaker.”

Hyunjin ducks into his car and sits back against the nylon with a grateful sigh. He finds himself constantly ill-prepared for Seoul’s Januarys. “Busy with who? Remind me.”

“You wanna say hi?” You ask the person in your company. Who is it? He hears them ask, to which you answer: Hyunjin. You say it softly, in the sense that you’re far away and speaking under your breath, but softly, in the sense that your tongue caresses every syllable of his name with that tacit fondness he’ll never tire of.

He notices the ditzy smile on his face only when he glances into his rear-view. He’s long given up on wiping it off.

A familiar voice drifts into your receiver. “Mr. Hwang!”

Ah, that’s right—you’re working on Aespa’s new music video for the next two weeks. Today must be the first day of filming.

“Hey, Ningning! How are you?”

“In a predicament, honestly. I have the biggest crush on my stylist, but so does this other guy…”

“Wow, sounds rough. Best of luck.”

“Oh, I won’t need luck. I said predicament, not competition.” 

His jaw hits his wheel. “Okay, we’re boxing. Let’s go. Earrings off.”

“Say less.”

You’ve withstood enough. “Alright, nobody is boxing anyone—do not touch your earrings, Ning, what’s wrong with you? God, Hyunjin!”

Now you say his name sternly, hopelessly, like he’s just knocked ten years off your lifespan. He almost likes this version more. He fell in love with you listening to it, after all.

“Did you call for any reason aside from threatening my clients?”

Oh, right. He did.

Hyunjin glances into the rear-view again, intentionally this time. He moves aside a lock of maroon hair to review the silver studs glinting off his right eyebrow.

He smirks.

“Am I allowed on set?”

Half an hour later, Hyunjin reaches the filming site and runs into a few staff members who are so surprised to see him they nearly forget to question what he’s doing there.

But they do their job, and he humors them, utters your name and the word “boyfriend” back to back. Then he watches their eyebrows disappear into their hairlines and basically prances into the dressing rooms.

He loves that everyone knows you. He loves that everyone knows that he loves you.

You were out of bed before he opened his eyes this morning, and he blooms at his first sight of you today, alone in the lounge, curled up on the couch and browsing through your phone. Eyeshadow stains your fingers and a pen sits behind the cuff of your ear. Your figure is framed in a (his) white cardigan with a red heart stitched over its left lapel. So professional, so pretty, that he doesn’t know what to do with himself, so he uses his words instead.

“I did a thing,” he says, plopping onto the cushion next to you.

You look at him, shut off your phone. “I figured.”

“Promise me you won’t get mad.”

“No.”

It was worth a shot. “Can you blink, at least? You’re scaring me.”

In turn, you stretch open your eyes and hold them there. “A blink would be more than you deserve right now.”

Insufferable. He unleashes a bashful laugh and singular clap and looks back at you just in time to see a matching smile on your cordate lips. And to see you blink.

“Seriously, though, no more suspense,” you plead. “What on earth did you do? Should I be worried?” 

You tuck your hand around his bicep and tug lightly at his arm, and his insides pirouette at the gesture.

“No, no,” he answers, letting you pull him close, pressing a kiss to the corner of your mouth. “I was being dramatic. It’s nothing, really.”

You catch him as he’s trying to leave. A light finger hooks beneath his chin, an anchor to keep his face a mere few inches away from yours.

You look him in the right eye, then in the left, your expression stoic, scrutinizing. He doesn’t remember where he looks, in the meantime. He’s slipping and sliding out of his right mind, drinking in your long lashes and curved cheeks, wondering what heroic deed he performed in his last life to be able to study beauty in such proximity in this one.

“It’s not nothing, is it?” You query, tracing the tip of your pointer finger over Hyunjin’s cupid’s bow.

“No,” he exhales. “It’s not nothing.”

“Did you get it on your face?”

Of course you already know.

He nods, and the finger moves to his lower lip, gently indenting the glossy plush. 

“Hot or cold?” 

“Cold.”

The finger runs over the bridge of his nose, then the perimeter of its prominence, like the drag of a feather. 

“Warmer.”

You lift a brow, give the side of his face a small nudge, and say, turn. The word comes out in a very stylist-esque manner, and you and Hyunjin realize this at the same time, judging by the synchrony of your quiet chuckles.

“Force of habit,” you murmur, and move his hair out of the way and lean in to examine his ear. Nothing new there. He turns his face the other way before you have to ask. Nothing new there, either.

When he looks at you again, your gaze has locked onto his eyebrows. You cock your head slightly to one side as it dawns on you what he’s done.

“Warmer,” he offers anyways, his smile small, his pulse rapid.

With a flourish of movement, you push his purple locks all the way off his forehead. Hyunjin holds his breath. Your expression goes blank. 

But it’s not blank, not really. One just has to know where to look. (He does.)

Your eyes darken fast as if caught in a solar eclipse, your pupils doubling in size, your irises quivering slightly. Your mouth opens, then closes, then purses into a thin line as if suppressing something explosive. Your cheeks blush at their very outskirts, along the edges of your face and the slants of your cheekbones, like how the first rays of sunlight always skim the mountaintops first.

He hardly notices the finger you bring to brush over the studs, so carefully he doesn’t feel the contact.

He’s too busy basking in his victory.

Neither of you say anything for a long while. You lean back, then right, then left, your hand pinned to his hairline, your gaze superglued to his brow. He simply sits still, feeling like one of your French girls, simpering, simping.

“You really did it,” you finally say.

“I did,” he chirps. “Any notes?”

At the next part of your lips, your waiting smile overtakes them at long last. You duck your head to conceal it like he hasn’t already melted at its mere image. You deliver your answer to your knees.

“No?” He repeats incredulously, teasingly. “That’s a shame. I really could’ve used an expert opinion.”

You roll your eyes hard enough for them to tug at your sockets. His boyish grin wipes away your feigned irritation like warm cotton.

“Fine,” you grouse. “Look at me.”

He does. You look back.

“It's nice," you deadpan.

Your resolve wobbles.

"Complements your face…shape.”

The ‘p’ sound pops, and you lose your shit.

The sun fully risen now, you bury your burning face into your hands, your shoulders shaking with silent laughter. Meanwhile, the raucous cackle that leaves Hyunjin’s lips causes the intern hurrying past the lounge outside to jump so high he actually lets go of his coffee cups before snatching them back out of the air with a relieved groan. He doesn’t get paid enough. 

You think you’re getting paid too much. 

“I love it, Hyun,” you whisper. “You’re beautiful. I don’t tell you that enough."

His heart beats so rapidly he thinks it might take off into a sprint; his laugh dwindles into a ditzy smile, one he’s long given up on wiping off.

“You know nothing about that word,” he replies, softly.

You bring your lips to his. His fingers wrap around the crook of your elbow. Yours begin curled in the silken hair at the back of his head. The pen behind your ear falls into the cracks of the couch.

“I’m still mad at you,” you sigh against his mouth, your own statement debunked by the inevitable drift of your touch back to the metal lodged in his face.

He doesn’t need to call you out. You do it yourself: “Ugh. I’ll be mad at you later.”

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