#like they used her music and superficially made her character into a rockstar while also taking away any personality or drama or like...

[mmmthornton]

She was so real for this

[blvejeanbaby]

Pairing: Johnny x Y/N Word count: 2395 Part: 1 | 2

warning: slightly minutely suggestive at the end but nothing major

The air was hot with summer and expectations. Johnny felt it as he halted halfway across the Pont d’Arcole, placing his hands on the bridge railing. The sun was setting in the distance, the lights around him already having come to life. The purple and pinks of the sky were reflected in the river Seine, a dinner boat filled with tourists floating by slowly. Johnny could faintly hear the accordeon players on the other side of the bridge, their playing drowned out by the sounds of rush hour - as in this busy spot in Paris, it was always rush hour. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he heard a voice to his right side. As he looked up, away from the water, the hospital that resembled a castle, the top of the Eiffel Tower in the distance, his eyes met those of a stranger, a girl. Her hair a dark brown, almost black, a sundress that reminded Johnny of places he had imagined often before, like the hills of Italy and cities of Spain. “Yes, it is,” Johnny said.

He turned back to the view. It wasn’t often he found himself speaking to strangers. Everyone almost promised that a solo traveller would easily make friends with other travellers when abroad. Johnny had become quite accustomed to the thought that he wasn’t going to be that type of solo traveller. He sometimes liked solitude, for it was not loneliness. Not if you didn’t let it be. “Are you from Paris?” the stranger asked. Without taking his eyes off the fading sunset, the world around him slowly turning a deep shade of blue, only to later fade to black, Johnny answered: “No. Are you?” Another question. He was surprised to find himself speaking so much. Perhaps it was the comfort he found in your voice, as if you also weren’t used to addressing strangers like this. “No. I don’t speak a word of French.” “Quel dommage!” Johnny said, finally turning to look at you again. The wind picked up now the sun had disappeared fully beyond the horizon, and it blew the girl’s dress around her bare legs. Surely she must be cold. “Did you just curse?” she said. He chuckled. “No. I said it was a pity. French is a beautiful language.” The girl nodded. “The language of love. I was hoping to find a Parisian to show me around the city. Not just the tourist gems.” She gestured in the distance towards where the Notre Dame was located. “I haven’t seen it yet but I know it will disappoint me. Like all the touristy things do. They’re fun for a moment, until you notice the crowd and you realize that all that was beautiful about the sight is taken away by the tourists.” “I disagree,” Johnny said. He looked at the girl thoughtfully before extending his hand toward her. “Johnny.” She shook it. “Y/N.” When she let go of his hand, she said, with a smile playing around her lips: “You should show me why you disagree. Take the Notre Dame as a case study.” Johnny knew he ought to say no, knew he ought to take the closest mode of transportation back to the hotel, for it was… He estimated it would be about a 45 minute walk, judging by the sunset. Johnny knew he ought to return, that tomorrow would be a busy day, but looking at Y/N, he knew he couldn’t. “Okay, I’ll tell you everything I know.” He began walking, Y/N following close behind, as he recounted the little amount of information he had retained from the tour guide that afternoon, showing him and the rest of the NCT 127 members and their staff around the city in a double decker tourbus, one of those silly touristy things that Y/N would probably have some comment about. After Y/N had agreed to give a pass on the Notre Dame, for it was beautiful enough from the front and the sides they saw to ‘tolerate it’, as she put it, with a wink added to Johnny, she exclaimed she was famished. “I know just the thing,” Johnny said, feeling the overwhelming need to impress Y/N with whatever knowledge of Paris he had. Which was, admittedly, slim to none. He at least knew from the little research he had done that the Quartier Latin, the Latin Quarter, was only steps away from the Notre Dame and served great food. Johnny let Y/N pick the restaurant, a place that proclaimed itself to serve authentic Italian food. The main room of the restaurant was brightly lit by white fluorescent lighting, making the assembly of black-and-white pictures on the walls stand out like ghosts among the living. The place was owned by two very clearly non-Italian men, who chatted excitedly as they recommended Y/N all sorts of dishes in their native language, which they appeared to think she spoke as well. Johnny had to admit Y/N looked to be of many places and he was curious to find out where she was really from. Eventually, Y/N ordered a steak and frites while Johnny stuck to a margherita pizza. He wasn’t particularly hungry but he wanted to stay and listen to Y/N as she recounted her first day in Paris. How she had spent it mostly travelling down from Amsterdam, only to end up at Galeries La Fayette by accident. Johnny knew of the place, a large mall-like setting where one could buy from luxury brands. Taeyong and Haechan had went there straight after dinner. “I don’t know what I was doing there,” Y/N said, taking a hair tie from around her wrist and tying her hair back. “I’m honestly too broke to even be on this trip.” “Where are you from?” Johnny asked her, but Y/N didn’t get to answer because their plates were put in front of them. The pizza made his mouth water and Y/N, as famished as she had claimed she had been, started attacking her steak. It was odd, Johnny thought as he watched her eat, that he felt so utterly comfortable around her. It was clear she had no idea who Johnny of NCT was, and he felt pleasant enough in her presence, almost as if Johnny of NCT was no longer even part of him, as if he was only Johnny in Paris, worthy of being in Y/N’s radiant company. When they had paid the restaurant owners, who wished them well in three different languages - they still hadn’t figured out which one Y/N spoke, but Johnny guessed perhaps they could only speak French, Arabic and German and learning English had never occurred to them despite the large amount of English speaking tourists from all over the world flocking to visit their restaurant - Y/N claimed she wanted to see the Louvre. “They’re not open,” Johnny reminded her. “I don’t care, I just want to see the building and the pyramids and the Jardin des Tuileries.” “So you do speak French.” “Un petit peu.” A little bit. She stuck out her tongue at him and took off down the cobblestoned street, leaving Johnny to bite his own tongue and follow her. There was nothing in the world that could get him back to his hotel now that Y/N had compelled him to follow her to the Louvre. To get there, they crossed the Pont des Arts, the bridge that had previously held all the love lockets. “I never understood why people do that,” Y/N said as she looked out at Paris stretching out on all sides around her. “Do what?” Johnny asked, oblivious to the bridge’s previous purpose, aside from allowing passage across the Seine. His full attention was on Y/N in a way he could not describe. He started thinking maybe it was Paris making him think that he was forming a rarely occuring, deeply consuming bond with Y/N over their shared (in)competence in French, over their deep hatred for the sour type of mayonaise French people used on their sandwiches, over their love for all types of music, whether genuinely good or genuinely guilty pleasures. Perhaps he was turning into the main character of a cheesy romcom, in which they meet in Paris, fall in love in Paris and do everything in Paris, together, until they part ways. “Hang lockets on bridges to say they love each other. There’s nothing as unromantic as purchasing a locket and a key and pretending it’s your hearts forever locked together.” Her expression turned thoughtful. “Now that I put it like that, it actually sounds like something I would do. Just to prove that love is not dead. How about you?” “Me? I’m entirely living.” Y/N laughed, the sweet laugh that sounded like bells chiming on the wind. It occurred to Johnny that perhaps the fluorescent lights of the faux Italian restaurant had made him delirious. “You’re adorable,” she said, twinkling stars shining in Y/N’s eyes as she looked up at Johnny, towering over her. They had reached the other side of the bridge and now passed underneath an archway, out onto the square of the pyramids. It was still warm, no longer suffocatingly hot, and this caused there to still be a group of people at the square. As Y/N took out an analogue camera - what else had Johnny expected of her? - and snapped some pictures of the pyramids and the Louvre building, Johnny stood to the side, leaning against a wall as he watched her. The way she moved, the way the tip of her tongue poked out in her efforts to get the right shot… Johnny had to slap himself to wake him up. What was happening to him? He had never really thought of himself as a romantic person. Of course he had liked girls in the past, had thought he loved them, even. There were girls he hadn’t loved at all, girls he had only used for his own pleasure. He didn’t feel guilty about it, since the girls had only had shallow feelings for him as well. It was the life of a rockstar, his friends had told him. They thought he was living the dream. But perhaps it was all more of a nightmare, if the only people that you could ever lovingly caress, were people that only pleasured themselves with superficiality. Y/N was different. Whether that was because Johnny wanted her to be or because she truly was, he didn’t know, but for now, at least, he wanted her - in ways he could not explain. Perhaps it was not just the girl but also the city, Johnny thought as he followed Y/N across the square and to the park. Truly, it was the perfect night to visit a park like this, so far away from the busy streets of Paris but so in the middle of it. The city breathed ancientry and what Johnny had always thought was a particular movie romance idea, which he assumed would never be real. But following Y/N across the park until they reached an octogonal pond, surrounded by grass and chairs, he realized that perhaps he had been most pessimistic about love and movies and how movies depicted love. And truly, with all the people around… He wished they would all disappear except for her. “Let’s sit,” she said then, settling on the grass, not bothering with the nearby chairs. And Johnny sat next to her. And he watched her as she opened her bag and handed him a bottle of wine. “Have you been carrying that with you all day?” “I was waiting for the perfect moment.” “And this is it?” Johnny asked, feeling like he was a child on Christmas morning, being handed the bottle. “It might be.” She took out a collection of plastic cups. “This is wasteful. But I’ll recycle them, I promise.” She didn’t even seem to speak to him, Johnny thought as he filled the plastic cups to the brim with red wine, almost causing them to overflow. Y/N took the cup from him and they sat for a while. First in silence, then in a wild flurry of silly conversation. Sparked by the third cup of wine, Johnny said: “Come to my hotel with me.” And he could see she wanted to refuse, but perhaps she felt what he did, maybe only a little bit but perhaps. She nodded. If this had been a movie, Johnny thought, they would be playing some French victory song. Or perhaps not. They finished the wine and walked the last 15 minutes to the hotel. Due to Yuta matching up with a staff member - it had been because of an argument, but Johnny was thankful for that argument now - Johnny didn’t have to share his room this evening. But he did anyway, guiding Y/N through the velvet draped, shiny parquet floored lobby of the hotel to the elevators, a golden button waiting to be pressed. The hallways upstairs were much of the same, some fanciness and luxury, the place breathing of a far away, historian Frenchness. Johnny saw from the look on Y/N’s face that she was impressed, if not by the place around her by the fact that he could walk so confidently and unbotheredly around it. After a day at the hotel, and many hotels like these, Johnny had become accustomed to the beauty. Perhaps there would one day be something that would still shock him to take time and appreciate it - like the sunset at the bridge this evening or Y/N. But those were intangible things. He thought of Y/N as intangible as she entered his hotel room, took off her shoes as if to not destroy the burgundy carpeted floors. She spun around once, taking in the room and Johnny taking her in. “The wine made me tired,” she said. “Just lay down,” Johnny said, gesturing at the large bed. “Do you need something to sleep in?” “Nah. Come lay down with me.” Y/N lay down and patted the spot beside her on the bed. “I don’t know if I should.” He was tipsy. “I think you should.” She wasn’t tipsy. Johnny lay down anyway, making sure not to touch her. Until she turned and started pressing kisses to his cheek, creeping down to his neck. “Johnny Suh…” she mumbled against his neck. Huh, Johnny thought, he had not remembered telling her his last name…