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dawnpil · 6 years ago

Text

first draft

summary: you were raised to be careful with your heart around witches, but one pretty word witch is determined to change that. pairing: young k x reader genre: fluff bc honestly what else do i write notes: a continuation to a series i started literally a year and a half ago, oops (stone witch!wonpil)

you know about the day house boys, of course

you’re starting your junior year and they’re the most popular people on campus, after all

hell, you’ve got one of wonpil’s hematite rings for focus

your favorite scarf is one dowoon knitted warmth into the fabric of

you’ve seen brian around the house, but you’ve never gone to him for his magic

out of the witches his magic can do the widest variety of things, which means he charges the steepest price, and you’re just a broke college kid

your friend, who goes to brian every full moon, tries to explain how his prices work

but you’re not having it; you need your voice too much to lose it for three days, and you’re not sure you have anything else he’d want

here’s the thing: word magic evolves constantly, and word witches always need to know what phrases are going in or out of style

so from what you’ve gathered, brian’s price for his magic is to take a customer’s words for varying durations of time

and you can’t have that, not with your three a.m. spot on the campus radio

besides, you don’t really have a need for his magic: you’re never in enough trouble that dowoon’s woven charms don’t work, or wonpil doesn’t have some sort of stone for your problems

you avoid his magic successfully for two and a half years, but you don’t avoid him

he’s in your fundamentals of linguistics course your second semester, soft black hair falling in his face as he takes diligent notes

when you go to pick up dowoon’s charms at the start of fall sophomore year brian’s curled up untangling thread with nimble fingers, and he throws a soft little smile your way

you’re not sure what makes you proceed to drop your wallet and dowoon’s charm four times before you make it back out the door, but your friend is convinced it was brian’s smile and won’t accept any other answer

you shove their arm, tell them that they shouldn’t be projecting their own infatuation onto you

but it happens again near winter break, when you’re selecting a few pieces of onyx and rose quartz for your friends back home

brian’s wandering wonpil’s shop, inspecting the little baskets of crystals, and when you turn to head to wonpil’s register you nearly run into brian

startled, you start to take a step back, eyes wide, but he reaches out to stop you

it’s a good thing he does, or you’d have knocked over the table of crystals, and you really don’t have the money for that

his hands are warm on your shoulders, his dark eyes apologetic, and this close his chest is a whole lot broader than you’d thought from a distance

“sorry,” he says, and his voice is more musical than you’d remembered from linguistics. “i should have been more careful.”

this time you don’t lose your fine motor skills, but you do forget how to speak

he’s just. beautiful, this close up

so you stare at him and try to remember how to form words and after a moment he laughs gently, the sound honey-sweet

“i didn’t even have to cast seen and not heard to enchant you. interesting.”

is he flirting? you think maybe so. your friend thinks definitely so.

that really kind of terrifies you; it’s not that you don’t trust the day house witches, just that you were raised with tales of enchantments and love potions and falsities, and that kind of cautionary bedtime story is hard to forget

so you take to avoiding him as much as possible; you send your friend to get your hematite and carnelian recharged, and even as the warmth charm in dowoon’s scarf starts to fray you refuse to go get a replacement

if you could never set foot in day house again you’d be perfectly content

despite this you still think about him, about the silk in his voice when you go to karaoke night, about the way you always seem to find him in the library hunched over his textbooks at odd hours with coffee cups littering the table, about the way sometimes you daydream about holding his hand on the way to the coffee shop just off campus

you try to ignore these thoughts, try to ignore him, and bury yourself in your work for the rest of sophomore year

but the thing about junior year is that your classes are getting more serious, and as a creative writing major you’re expected to have new work for two different classes almost every week, and it’s draining

your carnelian is losing its charge quicker than ever, because this far into the semester you’re struggling to find creativity this constantly and on top of all your other work

it completely loses charge a day before a ten-page story is due for workshop and you’re stuck with a blinking cursor and a blank page

your roommate looks over when you slam your head onto your desk and understands immediately

“go to brian,” they say. “he’s got a spell for writer’s block, according to momo.”

if you weren’t so tired, so frustrated, so desperate you would never have considered it

but it only takes a few minutes’ persuasion for you to be lacing your boots and shoving your laptop into your bag and heading for the familiar little house

jae’s the one to open the door for you, feathers in his blond hair, and he grins

“please tell me you’re here for younghyun. he won’t shut up about you, not after the open mic last tuesday.”

you consider turning around and leaving—the poem you’d read at the open mic was much more personal than you’re usually comfortable sharing, and to think brian was so focused on it terrifies you a little

but then you think about how close you were to crying out of frustration, about the days of staring at that blank page and ticking cursor, and you nod at jae

“he’s upstairs,” jae says, “third door on the left.”

brian’s playing guitar when you find his room, sitting on his bed plucking at chords with his black hair falling over his face as he bends over the instrument

you freeze, in the doorway: you had no idea the room jae was sending you to was brian’s bedroom, since wonpil has the shop set up downstairs and sungjin works out of the kitchen. this is oddly intimate, and you almost turn tail and run

before you can brian looks up, his fingers stilling, and he smiles, and your resolve melts

he beckons you in to sit at his desk chair, and he sets the guitar aside to look seriously at you. “what are you here for?”

“writer’s block.” you run your hand through your hair with a sigh of frustration, and he smiles sympathetically

“writer’s block like you don’t have any ideas or writer’s block like you don’t know how to start putting them into words?”

there’s no magic in his voice, not yet, but there might as well be, with the enchanting lilt in every syllable. you could listen to his voice forever, you think

“the—um, the second one,” you say, fidgeting under his dark eyes, and again he nods

“my price is your words for a period of time.” it’s your turn to nod. “with this spell it’s usually a day, but i know you’ve got the radio show in a few hours and i wouldn’t want you to not be able to do your job.”

he pauses, considering, and you tug at your sleeves as you try to find a way around having your words taken away

“why...why do you take people’s words? like, what about them is the reason they’re your price, when you could be making money or something?”

“it’s how my magic works,” brian explains. “the more people use a certain phrase, the more power it’s imbued with, so i take people’s words to see if they can give me new spells.”

this fascinates you—your parents had never let you learn about magic, and as a result hearing the littlest bit about it is making you think of questions you never knew you had, and you want to learn everything about this

it’ll be good for stories, anyway, you think, good world-building and maybe an opportunity for new types of characters and stories

and you might have a way out of this, a way to pay brian fairly while keeping your words

“what about languages other than english?”

he pauses at this. “i have a few korean spells i got from my mom, but i hadn't thought about other languages. which one were you thinking?”

you’ve taken spanish courses for a few years, and you speak it with your roommate and their friend, enough to be reasonably conversational, and when you explain this to brian he nods and you spend another five minutes hashing out a schedule for you to come over and teach him

finally the business has been arranged and you set up your laptop at the little table he keeps in his room for this purpose, and he sets a mug of coffee and a bagel next to your things

“odds are you’ll be writing for a while, and the spell makes it hard to take breaks. if you need anything else let me know and i’ll grab it for you.”

his eyes are soft obsidian, and despite your overall hesitation about magic you wonder if there isn’t some sort of enchantment that’s making your heart beat like this

but a second later he sets his hand on your shoulder and murmurs “use your words”

it’s like a dam bursts: suddenly your fingers are flying over the keys, your mind racing sentences ahead faster than your hands can manage, and the story you’ve had rattling around in your head is taking shape on the formerly blank page

when you resurface a few hours later, a completed draft sitting in front of you, brian smiles as you take a bite of the bagel

“got something finished?” you nod, and return the smile

“it’ll need editing, but i got the draft done for workshop, and that’s what’s important.”

a glance at the clock says you barely have enough time to rush to the dorm basement the radio uses as its studio, so you gather up your things and down the last of the coffee and clamp the bagel between your teeth as you tie your boots

you’ve got one foot out the door when he calls your name and you turn, a question in your eyes since there’s bread in your mouth

“call me younghyun,” he says. “younghyun’s for friends.”

is that what you are now? you debate this with yourself for a week; you’ve only gone to him for one spell, though the first of your spanish sessions goes well

he’s got plans for de nada and de tal palo tal astilla freaked you out a little bit when he used it to perfectly replicate the origami rose you got from a girl in one of your workshops last semester

you think if you aren’t friends yet you’d like to be, now that you’re losing your fear of his magic

on the nights you lie awake staring at the fairy lights strung above your bed thinking of obsidian eyes and nimble fingers and lilting words you let yourself admit maybe you want to be more than friends

it takes another two weeks for anything to happen

it’s the last of your spanish sessions, the last of your payment for the spell, the last of your excuses to spend time with brian

he seems nervous the whole time, too distracted to remember en boca cerrada no entran moscas and as a result he has yet to make the silencing charm work

no matter how much you coach him through the syllables slowly, his attention is elsewhere

to be fair, yours is as well: trying to figure out where his mispronunciations are is giving you an excuse to stare at his lips, and regardless of whether he works magic into his words his voice is ridiculously easy to lose yourself in

before you know it the time is over, and you sigh and remind him of the list of phrases you’ve given him so he can strengthen the spells without your help, and he hesitates with his backpack slung over one shoulder but can’t seem to bring himself to say anything

as you study his now-familiar features you give in, and this time you’re the one to stop him halfway out the door

“one more phrase,” you say, and he turns and you square your shoulders

“tú me gustas.” i like you.

he’s like a deer in headlights, eyes wide, but he recovers fairly quickly and crosses back to you

“i thought you weren’t a witch,” he says, a smile playing on his lips

“i’m not,”you say, though your voice barely makes it above a whisper; his hair is flopping into his eyes and all of your restraint is going into keeping your fingers out of the dark curls

“then how can one sentence be so enchanting?”

he grins when this time you’re the one to get flustered, and he reaches out and takes your hand and your words get stuck in your throat

“what kind of word witch am i if i can’t find the words to confess to the person i like?” he says, then shrugs. “since you confessed first, can dinner be my treat?”

the first time younghyun kisses you he meets you just offstage when you finish a reading of one of your short stories in the little student-run coffee shop: your papers are still clutched in the hands you throw around his neck, and there’s a smile on his lips as they press against yours, and the moment weaves an enchantment you know has nothing to do with younghyun’s magic and everything to do with younghyun and the way the two of you fit against each other like a perfectly-crafted metaphor

dating younghyun is coffee shop dates to people-watch and pick out threads of language, is borrowing his hoodies even when it gets too warm for them, is laughter and falling in love with the way he scrunches his nose when he’s acting cute, is resting your head on his shoulder at a poetry reading and pressing kisses to his jaw between poems

dating younghyun is him waiting outside the studio at 3 a.m. with hot chocolate and that assignment you needed to print, is running your fingers through his hair until he relaxes enough to sleep after getting anxious about a test, is teaching each other the languages you speak and rewarding each other with kisses when you remember vocab, is closing his laptop and pulling him to bed when he refuses to stop working, is coffee and ink-stained hands and switching languages mid-sentence

more than anything dating younghyun is like a story, a draft that gets better the more you pour time and effort and love into it, is the magic of surprising turns of phrase, is a collaboration you couldn’t ask for a better co-author for, and you know for a fact this is going to be your magnum opus.

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