Chapter Text
Why is Megan Skiendel hopping a fence in the middle of the night to steal alcohol, at the ripe under-drinking-age of nineteen?
Why, Lara Raj, of course. Best friend, roommate, partner-in-crime; Lara is the usual mastermind behind these nefarious plots that inevitably end in screaming, slaps-on-the-wrist, and in that one case a raccoon on the dance floor. Funnily enough, Lara is not present at tonight’s scene of the crime. Figures, Megan huffs as she peeks through the wooden slats into the backyard.
The underage drinking is par for the course as second year college students. It’s also legal, like, everywhere else in the world at their age, including Singapore and Sweden, so it’s basically Megan’s blood-right. Maybe not in India though. But that’s Lara’s problem.
Actually, the real problem, as Lara had announced unceremoniously three hours ago, is that she lost her fake ID. Her older sister is traveling so they can’t beg her to supply, and she was their contact for the ID, and there’s a queer bash tomorrow night that they absolutely have to pre-game for because these gay boys will drink the establishment dry by the time they even get there.
So Megan is here, creeping outside a random house party Lara heard about, feeling around for a foothold so she can hoist herself over this fence. The substance abuse gods are looking out for her tonight, because she finds a couple of loose pickets, and it’s with buttery ease that she is able to swing them up and slip through into the backyard shadows.
The party seems focused mostly out here, the DJ in the corner and the main mass of bodies congregated around him. She shuffles from dirt to concrete and begins her mission to locate the drinks table. No one seems to have noticed her shady entrance, and she feels kind of badass. Like a secret agent. She would have slayed in D.E.B.S. Emboldened, she approaches the DJ, just a guy with a laptop and headphones, and ask-yells if he’s taking requests.
“You should play some STAYC,” she says, because he has Le Sserafim on right now, and figured he has taste. He kind of just doesn’t respond though, so maybe Le Sserafim is the limit for K-pop infiltration into mainstream LA college party mixes. Oh well.
Side quest failed, she moves on. Drinks, drinks, drinks — she spies red solo cups in hand, but where is the damn table? Not out here, she realizes after a minute, and groans. She thought she might be able to just swipe a handle and book it back into the shadows. Now she has to go inside, and maybe make use of the empty reusable bottle she has tucked in the pouch pocket of her hoodie. I’m just pouring water, she rehearses as she tugs open the sliding door into the house. Hydration is the key to good skin!
It’s a lot quieter inside. The couple she passes in the hallway who are arguing in another language become more muted, more intimate with the bass a distant thrum instead of booming inside her chest. Confidence, Megan, she tells herself, steps quickening as she finally spots drinks scattered on the kitchen counter. There’s only a couple of people around, and they’re looking at their phones. I’m just pouring water. Except all the big bottles of Titos are devastatingly empty, and the only things intact are some untouched cases of — flavored soju? on the floor.
So she’ll have to break open the cardboard and unscrew every individual little bottle and pour those into her Hydroflask.
Or, fuck it. She leans down to lift the case in its entirety.
A hand on her arm freezes her in place.
“What are you doing?”
It’s a guy. One of the people who was on their phones. His hair is slicked back and he smells like cheap cologne and bad news. Megan thinks of her excuse; hydration, something, skin.
“I have psoriasis,” is what she ends up blurting. The guy stares. His eyes narrow in suspicion.
He asks something that Megan doesn’t quite catch, and he looks even more skeptical as he repeats himself in English.
“Who are you?”
And Megan, because she was raised to be polite and not a breaking-and-entering thief, automatically answers: “Oh, I’m Megan!” And she’s already doxxed herself, so like, guess she’s running with this. She frees her arm from his grasp and raises her other one for a handshake.
It’s taken by a different hand.
She turns to look, and is met with the prettiest girl she’s ever seen in her entire life. Shiny, long black hair; vaguely feline features. A grey pleated skirt and a barely cropped top sit under her perfect face, and even though her expression is blank, her aura alone manages to repel even the guy’s smell.
Megan would never, ever have the confidence to approach someone who looks like this.
And she’s holding Megan’s hand.
The guy says something sharp, and it finally clocks that it’s in another language, the syllables rounded and vaguely familiar. The pretty girl responds in kind, coolly.
“No friends allowed, only partners,” the guy says in English, pointedly, probably so Megan understands she is not wanted here. So oh — this is like an exclusive, invite-only party. Megan is going to kill Lara.
Pretty girl glances at her, and does the unthinkable: she doubles down.
Her fingers shift and interlock with Megan’s. She snips it shortly, but Megan knows this one from K-dramas — she just said girlfriend.
The guy is clearly taken aback, but recovers quickly. He crosses his arms and leans back all cocky and sneers something that, based on the vibes, has to be something like, “Prove it.” And Megan will never, ever want to even entertain the thought of kissing another girl for the male gaze, but her brain does an Olympic-level gymnast routine to subtract the male gaze from this equation, and like, what if.
But pretty girl stiffens and says something steely that Megan hopes is fuck off. Because hot. And then she’s leading them away from the kitchen, away from the guy and the other background people who were not looking but very clearly listening in, and Megan’s got one hand in pretty girl’s and the other still clutching onto the case of soju. They don’t speak until they’re alone in the bathroom together. Pretty girl finally drops her hand to lock the door, which, it’s just one of those knob button push ones, so she could have just used her other hand, but whatever. She stares at Megan so intently that she starts to squirm.
“Why are you here?”
Lara freaking Raj, Megan thinks. “I, uh, heard there was a party.”
Does she even blink? “You are part of KASA?”
This means absolutely nothing to Megan.
“Korean American Student Association,” the girl spells out for her, and — oh. Oh. The music, the soju, the — the Korean. What up, I’m Dumbass, I’m nineteen, and I never fucking learned how to read.
She opens her mouth, but what can she possibly say. She sucks her lips back in and just bobs her head, slowly, not really side-to-side denial but not up-and-down either.
Pretty girl seems to come to a decision after a long moment. She pulls out her phone — yo, that cute skirt has pockets? Sick. Megan, focus — taps on a bright yellow app out of muscle memory, closes that, and opens Instagram. She offers the screen to Megan. It’s her turn to stare.
“Add,” the girl says impatiently.
Suddenly scared to touch pretty girl’s hands, Megan searches up her own handle, tapping with her pointer finger like a boomer so she doesn’t have to actually hold the phone. She hesitates over the follow button, but the girl lifts her phone into Megan’s finger, sealing the deal. And suddenly she’s leaning in close, into Megan’s space, reaching around her and Megan’s heart starts to race, and—
She flushes the toilet. Oh, right. They’re using the bathroom.
She draws back, and Megan thinks there might be a flicker of amusement under that careful, blank expression.
“You should probably go.” Her eyes flit to the box of soju, but she doesn’t say anything. So Megan takes her cue and exits the way she came, because even though she’s girlfriend, it most likely wouldn’t be a good look to strut out the front door with the last of the club’s dregs.
Si c’est moi, si c’est moi, bass-boosted STAYC chants as the fence slats swing back in place, and fuck that DJ.
She slams their dorm door as hard as she can on the way in.
“Oh shit, you actually did it!”
“Lara Rajagopalan!” Megan seethes, marching over to her roommate. “Did you know that was a whole KASA event?!”
Lara shrugs from her desk, nonchalant. “That’s why I sent you in,” and okay — no, Senator, I’m Singaporean — so Lara knows what it stands for.
“I’m not even Korean!”
Lara holds up a fist and points to the skin on the back of it. “And I am more not Korean than you, so. Deal.”
Megan considers chucking the case of soju at her, but that would defeat the whole purpose of the most trying night of her life. She collapses onto her bed facefirst, ignoring the dig of her water bottle in her stomach.
“Next time, you are hooking up with a senior and making them buy for us,” she groans into her pillow.
“Oh,” Lara exclaims, like the thought had never occurred to her. “I could totally do that. Manon’s a junior, I think she’s twenty-one.”
Megan blindly flings the Hydroflask at her. Lara shrieks, and the bottle bounces and clangs all over the room.
“Girl, you could have killed me!”
True, but Megan was mostly aiming for another concussion, and tells her so. She doesn’t think about Instagram for the rest of the night, and it’s only in the morning when she’s lying in bed going through the motions of checking her socials, that she sees the notification.
y0on_cha3 started following you.
There’s a DM.
All the remnants of sleep rush out of her body.
Hello Megan. Can we talk?