#(also be real with me yall;was my pocketsized!sicheng a flop?????)

[jenoptimist]

prompt:

“I’ve been madly in love with you for years but I said something terrible when I was drunk and now you won’t even look at me and no one will tell me what I said” AU

–

The words swirled around your mind, vividly remembering the contempt in his voice. Before the incident, when people would say that drunk words are sober thoughts, you didn’t believe it–thought that it was ridiculous, that there was no way it was true. However as you laid in bed, plagued by the events that ensued during the night, you began to think that maybe you were in the wrong for believing it to be untrue.

~

The pounding headache that Johnny woke up to was expected. The previous night was wild–so wild, in fact, that he had drank one shots too many and completely blanked about what happened. He assured himself that it was a great night even though there were remnants of regret in his mind as he sluggishly prepared himself for work. A strong, black coffee to-go would have to do the trick, seeing as he had no time to make hangover soup.

The loud chatter in the office became subdued when he stepped in, although the tall man barely noticed it as he took a sip of his steaming beverage. There were a million thoughts going through his mind–mainly increasing regret for not calling in sick for work. But alas, there he was in his cubicle just about making it through the skin of his teeth.

Normally, he would greet you excitedly and proceed to annoy you throughout the day. Unfortunately that wouldn’t be the case that morning considering how he was feeling, although he loved when you took the bait because your reactions were always the best, but he supposed that he could a manage a quick ‘hello’ as he waited for his computer to buffer.

With another swig of his coffee, he swung his eyes from the desktop in front of him to his above his monitor where he knew you would be directly facing him–looking beautiful as always. Instead of being graced by your presence, however, he found himself staring at an empty seat. Frowning, he looked to his left.

“Hey Jaehyun,” his friend hummed, eyes glued to the screen as he typed ferociously. “Where’s y/n?” The question had Jaehyun’s fingers faltering. He glanced at Johnny for a split second before refocusing his gaze onto his screen, clearing his throat.

“They haven’t arrived yet.” He began typing again as he added uncertainly, “I think they called in sick.” Johnny’s frown deepened. For as long as he had worked with you, you have never called in sick. Not even when you were seriously ill with the flu, your eyes watery and swollen as you sniffled profusely–you were sent home that day, of course, but he found it inspiring that you still came in despite your condition.

“Oh,” he replied, “that’s weird. Are they alright?”

Jaehyun shrugged at him in a non-committal manner in return, grumbling something about needing to finish the report he was working on so Johnny could you please leave me alone, thank you. Deciding to do his own work, he left his friend to work on his task in peace.

Midway through his own report, as he finished his third cup of coffee for the day, he was undeservingly blessed by the sight of you while you settled into a comfortable position on your seat. Even though you looked as if you had gotten the shortest amount of hours of sleep, Johnny still thought you looked like a vision in your monochromatic office attire.

“Hey y/n!” He welcomed brightly, internally wincing at the sound of his voice. One would think that after the amount of caffeine he has had that he would be much more awake and alert than earlier. Well, one would think wrong–he still felt as terrible as he did that morning. In fact he felt even worse but seeing you made him feel a little bit better, the office just wasn’t the same without you to banter and suffer with.

When he received no reply from you, not even the slightest bit of acknowledgement, the smile was wiped off of his face. Perplexed, he continued to chat incessantly at you. When he came to the conclusion that his attempts were fruitless, he decided to tease you about some stuff from your high school and college years. Frustratingly, you didn’t rise to the bait. Instead you carried on as if you didn’t hear him. Heck, you didn’t even raise your eyes to look at him! Not even when he threw scrunched up paper your way. Eventually he gave up, knowing when to quit. Perhaps you were just tired–he knew the feeling so he wouldn’t hold it against you.

After Johnny saved his work, he stretched out his arms as he yawned. Finally, after four hours of torture, he could go on his break. From the lack of typing over on your side of the cubical, he assumed that you were heading over to the canteen for your break as well. However before he could even sound out a letter, you were already zooming away. All he could do was watch as you ran over to where Doyoung and Jungwoo were waiting by the elevator. Johnny was taken aback when Doyoung glared at him icily the moment they met eyes. He searched his brain for anything he did that would warrant Doyoung to look at him like that, but nothing came up. He and Doyoung were normally on good terms, too, so it didn’t make much sense for him to suddenly look at him as if he wanted to burn him to a crisp.

“Alright boys,” Johnny said as he dropped his tray of food. Taeyong, Yuta and Jaehyun stared at him, waiting for him to finish his sentence as he settled in while they chewed on their food. “Tell me the truth, did I do or say anything weird last night?”

There was a strange moment where it was as if the three of them held their breaths and he would have chalked it up to his fatigue, if not for the way they exchanged shady glances with one another. None of them seemed willing to be forthcoming about the information he needed, though, choosing to remain mute. The longer the silence continued, the more his internal fretting increased. Oh God. He did do something, didn’t he? Hopefully it wasn’t anything too embarrasing.

“Well,” Yuta finally spoke, “it depends on what you define as weird.” He said the words slowly, like he was choosing his words carefully.

“Oh you know,” Johnny snuck a glance at your direction. You sat with Doyoung, Jungwoo and that new guy, Lee ‘call me Mark’ Minhyung. He greedily took in your appearance as you threw your head back while you laughed before turning back to face his friends. “Declare my undying love for them, or something, no biggie.”

“No,” Taeyong said, “you didn’t say anything like that.” Although Johnny felt himself sag in relief, thanking the skies above that he didn’t do anything of the sort, he noticed how shifty Taeyong was being which made him narrow his eyes every so slightly.

“You’re lying,” Johnny said as he looked Taeyong up and down, “you’re being too”–he waved a hand at his friend’s general direction–“weird.”

The response was immediate. “No I’m not,” Taeyong glanced quickly at Yuta and Jaehyun, “right guys? I’m not being weird at all.”

Jaehyun snorted, stuffing his face with food as he rolled his eyes. “Look,” he said, his mouth full of food while he addressed Johnny with his chopsticks, “if you wanna know, you gotta ask them. It wasn’t us you said it to.”

“But I don’t even know what I said!”

“So find out.” Yuta quipped, his tone aiming for boredom but the awkwardness that laid just beneath was heard loud and clear by the table.

Johnny sputtered. “They won’t even talk to me!”

“You’ll think of something man, don’t worry.” Jaehyun assured him while he took some meat from his food. Johnny resisted the urge to slam his head onto the table, settling on sneakily watching you while you spoke with your peers cheerily.

“Why can’t you just tell me.” Johnny whined as he pouted. The sooner he knew what he said, the quicker he could sort it out.

Taeyong shrugged, “it’s not our place. And I don’t know about these two but I don’t really feel comfortable with telling you since it wasn’t me that it was directed at.”

“Okay,” Johnny conceded, “I’ll try find out for myself.”

*

One week passed with you avoiding all sorts of communication with him; you didn’t sit beside him at the weekly meetings anymore, Mark and Jungwoo always took you to the canteen and whenever he managed to get a moment alone with you in the photocopy room Doyoung would appear out of nowhere–as if he had super senses that alerted him whenever the two of you were within vicinity of each other. Two weeks passed, then three and by that point you even voluntarily moved cubicles so that Taeil could occupy your place.

Even though his friends noticed that his mood had somewhat dropped as he spiralled into a constant state of fret caused by billions of possible reasons as to why you didn’t even look him in the eye, none of them involved themselves in the situation. They seemed content with him sorting it out for himself. It had gotten to the point where he started being plagued by nightmares, thinking of the worst case scenarios. When those nights occurred, he always called his mom for comfort.

“Alright, Suh,” Donghyuck said, his hands on his hips as he tapped his foot, “I’m sick of seeing you like this. You look so”–he gave him an unimpressed once over–“pitiful and it doesn’t suit you.”

Johnny shrugged passively as he continued to type. The fifth coffee he just demolished did him no good, in fact it made him even more tired. It wasn’t that he wanted to give up but there were only so many failed attempts to reconcile with you before he had enough. What he needed was a break from trying and if him downing unhealthy amounts of caffeine, eating ill adviced amount of fast food and binging romcoms on Netflix was what he chose to do to fill the hole in his heart, then it was nobody’s business but his own. No matter what his friends said.

Donghyuck groaned dramatically, grabbing onto his arm and tried his best to haul him up. Once Johnny had enough, he saved his work, stood up and turned to stare at the smaller man.

“Where are we going?” He asked as Donghyuck led him around the office. As they passed by your cubicle and he frowned when he noticed that you weren’t present–although neither were Mark, Jungwoo and Doyoung so you probably went to grab some lunch. There was no answer, instead the other man just grumbled a string of words to himself that he was unable to decipher.

“Have at it,” Donghyuck told him as he gestured to the photocopy room. When he caught Johnny’s blank look he opened the door and shoved him inside. “You’re not coming out until you sort this out. Goodbye! Have fun!” And with that he shut the door closed, there was a telltale sign of a click that followed and Johnny knew he was in trouble.

There wasn’t a reason as to why Donghyuck would trap him inside a room other than to fix things with you, which was made obvious by what he said after he pushed him inside. When he spun around he found you leaning on the counter, your arms crossed as you stared at the ground.

“Hey,” Johnny whispered after a few minutes of silence that seemed to go on for aeons. When you didn’t look up, he walked over to stand on the opposite counter and mirrored your pose. He chewed on the inside of his mouth as he though of what to say, he thought about this moment for so long and yet now that he was finally in the correct position to confront you, it seemed like everything that he wanted to say was wiped clean from his mind. “I don’t know what I did or what I said but I really want to fix it,” he disclosed after another moment of silence. “I miss you. So can we please, please fix things?”

Johnny watched with a bated breath when he noticed that you hugged your arms closer to yourself as you slowly lifted your head. The expression that he was faced with broke something inside of him. Even though you didn’t meet his gaze, choosing instead to show him your cheek, there were telltale signs of tears in your eyes that he was able to see from the white lightbulb. Jesus. What was it that he said that made you look utterly heartbroken? He didn’t push for an answer, simply waited until you were ready to speak.

“You really don’t remember what you said?” It was heaven to hear your voice although he couldn’t help but notice that you spoke lowly, almost a whisper, which was the complete opposite of how you normally spoke to him–confident and loud, sometimes fondly exasperated.

You mumbled something that he couldn’t hear. “What?” He asked, leaning his body forward. “Sorry I couldn’t hear what you said.”

“I said,” you paused, shrinking into yourself further, “that you told me that you couldn’t stand looking at me.”

That had Johnny gaping, unable to believe what he just heard. There was no way he would say that to you, would he? Obviously he did since you couldn’t bear to look or talk to him for weeks–you weren’t even looking at him even though the two of you were the only ones in the damn room. Why the hell did he say that? Jesus Christ. What was wrong with him?

“What? No! I didn’t mean it!” The words came tumbling out of his mouth as quick as lightning and, surprisingly, you allowed him to ramble on and on. Eventually he came to a stop when he noticed that you were shaking your head slowly at him.

“You didn’t hear the way you said it,” he felt like he was suckerpunched in the stomach when you finally looked into his eyes, “and the look on your face. God, I’ve never seen you look like that.”

Johnny was at a loss for words as he watched you quickly wiped away the tears that escaped. “I’m so sorry, y/n,” the hate he felt towards himself increased as more tears flooded your cheeks, “you have to know that I didn’t mean it! I promise! There’s no way I could mean it because–” he stopped himself, knowing that revealing his feelings for you would do nothing to eradicate the situation. However, there could be a slight chance that you would understand that he would never intentionally say anything of the sort with how he felt for you.

“Because what?” Well it seemed that he would have to tell you since you asked and he wanted to be completely transparent with you.

“There’s no way that I could say that and mean it because”–his heart was racing, palms sweating as he continued–“I love you. And I figured out that I loved you since we were in college when that jackass broke your heart, but my crush on you started when we were paired up for that stupid project in Nam’s class.” Johnny allowed you to take in the load of information that he dumped on you. “I know it isn’t going to erase what I said, and believe me I hate myself for saying it in the first place, but you have to believe me when I say that I never meant it. I don’t even know why I said it in the first place.” Johnny averted his eyes down to his hands, wishing that he could turn back time and prevent himself from drinking too much and causing you such pain.

“I accept your apology,” you sniffled which made his head snapped up to look at you in disbelief. “But I don’t know if I can forgive you at the moment. What you said really hurt me, you know?”

Johnny nodded understandingly. “You can slap me if you want.” He offered, not hesitating to present his cheek to you.

That coaxed a faux scoff escaped you. “I’m not going to do that.” There was a beat of silence before you added, “I’ll accept a hug though.”

The long, warm hug was interrupted by the door opening. Neither of you pulled apart, not until a throat was being cleared exaggeratedly. Johnny cursed internally when he saw Jaehyun standing at the door, eyes flicking back and forth between you and him.

“I better get going.” You said as you stepped back, smiling awkwardly at Jaehyun but stopped just as you reached the door. Johnny raised his brows when he saw you turn back and look him straight in the eye. “I’ve also loved you since college, too.” After that revelation, you zoomed off, leaving him dazed.

“I called it!” Jaehyun exclaimed, punching his fist in the air.

Johnny didn’t even bother to ask as he exited the room, feeling like he was on cloud nine for the rest of the day.