Title: ride
Rating: K
Fandom: The Inheritors, The Heirs, 상속자들
Characters: Choi Young Do, Cha Eun Sang, Kim Tan, Choi Dong Wook
Summary: A boy, a bike, and control. Set in episode 15.
Notes: Zero is such a stereotype but whatever I love him. Kim Woo Bin is the Tom Hiddleston to my Tumblr.
She hasn't put her hands in his pockets, he notices. Well, he didn't really expect her to, but it was worth a try. Last time he checked, jackets didn't bite.
Why does he bother with her? There are plenty of other girls who would like his attention – plenty of other girls who have liked his attention – so why does he trifle with this prideful pauper? At first it was the novelty of socialising with a legitimately poor person, and then it was purely for the fun to be found in pissing off Kim Tan, and after that...
A broken bird, that's what she was, no matter how tough she behaved. It amused him to save her, to bask in her gratitude, however brief, and then turn on her. Like the cat he had seen once, batting a long-dead bird around. He had snatched it from the cat's claws and thrown the bird's tiny body into the toilet. His father had fumed, but Young Do didn't care for his father's tantrums back then like he does now. His father only got rough with him when he started high school.
But now, Cha Eun Sang has grown strong, hollow bones filling with steel. She throws his words back in face, chuckles when he threatens her and even smiles when she sees him coming. She's prettier when she smiles, but he misses her wide brown eyes and shaking knees too. Maybe that's why he's trying to push her away, despite the guilty twinge he feels every time she frowns at him.
"Choi Young Do?" And she speaks, fingers clenching the leather of his jacket.
His mind scrambles for a comeback. "Sorry!" he ends up saying, voice pitching up. "I haven't made my mind up yet as to what favour you'll do me." There are ideas in utero forming at the back o his mind, but half of them make him wonder exactly when he let himself become so depraved. He has to come up with something original, not something weak, like 'Be my slave for a month!'
She chuckles at that. "No... I was wondering, why do you drive a motorcycle?"
"Duh. They look cool." He hopes she'll stop there, but she ploughs on.
"That's not it, is it? Cars look cool as well, and they're faster. Why?"
He falls silent, all 150 points of his IQ struck dumb.
"Are you serious?" He says the words menacingly, but Cha Eun Sang does not flinch.
"Answer me." And there it is, the new steel in her voice that confuses him.
As they approach a stop light, he opens his mouth to answer. "...On a motorbike, you are alone. There is no driver, no one to accompany you unless you let them. You are solitary. Unattended. Free." He pauses. "There. Was that answer good enough?"
She nods behind him, fingers digging slightly into the dip between his ribs.
When he returns after dumping her outside the Kim compound, he stops at that stoplight and wheels his bike to the side of the road.
He was, of course, lying. Half his words to Cha Eun Sang are lies. He doesn't know what to tell her, so he fibs like the little kid he is. Why does she always throw him off?
He drives a motorbike because it is the closest he'll ever get to standing on his own two feet. There is no driver. You are self-sufficient, you are independent, you are autonomous. This motorcycle is probably the only thing Choi Young Do will ever have control over in his entire life.
He pushes his hair back (the fringe is still strange to him, but it's a hell of a lot easier than gelling it up every morning), dons his helmet, and gets on his bike.
(He takes the long way home.)