I Should Always Have My Tea
Title: I Should Always Have My Tea
Pairing: Sehun/Kai
Rating: PG-13
Genre: fluff, angst, college au
Length: 11,642
Summary: Sehun doesn’t care about anyone but himself and Jongin somehow still finds him attractive.
I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The first person to flat-out call Sehun selfish is Jung Soojung-a smart, pretty girl who is technically his girlfriend during his senior year of high school.
“I’ve tried to make this work, Sehun,” she says exasperatedly on the day the entire senior class is taking their university entrance exams. “I’ve tried and tried. But there’s no way a relationship this one-sided can survive. Tell me you want me to stay. Tell me you’ll start actually listening to me when I talk. Go on, tell me! If you tell me that, I might try to forget how selfish you are.”
But Sehun can’t bring himself to lie to her, to make promises he can’t keep, and so he watches her storm off, angrily brushing tears from her eyes, and wonders why he doesn’t feel anything-not sadness, not happiness. Merely indifference.
“Wow, what did you say to Soojung?” Chanyeol asks after school, plopping down next to Sehun on the warm concrete steps and throwing a heavy arm around his shoulders. “I heard that she spent the rest of our fifteen minute break in the bathroom crying. Her friends could barely get her out to keep taking the test.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Sehun mutters. Chanyeol gives him a searching look but doesn’t press the subject.
That night, Sehun wonders when he stopped caring about Soojung. Or if he even ever cared at all. He can remember a time when he wanted her to notice him, but he can’t untangle feelings of desire, or even of interest, from the competitive way his spirit rose to the challenge when Jongdae told him he’d never be able to land a girl like her.
He thinks about the triumphant way he’d walked through the school hallways holding her hand, daring any of his friends to tell him he couldn’t do whatever he put his mind to. He can remember the exact look on Jongdae’s face-a satisfying mixture of shock and admiration-when he’d surprised Soojung on her birthday by covering her seat in math class with white roses. Strangely enough, he can’t remember the expression on Soojung’s face that day. Had she been happy? Embarrassed? All he can recall is that she had pulled him out into the hallway and kissed him and he’d waited and waited for fireworks that never came.
When his alarm goes off early the next morning, Sehun groans, pulling himself out of bed regretfully. Why oh why had he stayed up late pondering old relationships when he knew he had a 9am class?
“Morning!” Chanyeol grins as he catches up to Sehun walking into their calculus classroom. Sehun is upset, both because he has to take this class and because no one should be allowed to be quite so happy so early in the morning. To vent some of this frustration he shoves Chanyeol hard, unfortunately sending him crashing into another student.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! Are you all right?” Chanyeol yells unhappily, extending a hand to the boy sitting on the floor looking a bit disoriented.
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” the boy says softly, ignoring Chanyeol’s hand and using the edge of a nearby desk to pull himself upright. As he does, the hood of his sweatshirt slips back and Sehun catches a glimpse of glittering eyes, full lips, and dark, messy hair before the boy slinks off towards the back of the classroom.
“Look what you made me do,” Chanyeol pouts, shooting Sehun an angry glance, but Sehun waves it off.
“Oh, he was fine,” Sehun says, dragging his eyes away from the dark figure now sliding into a seat almost at the back of the classroom. He’s so distracted that he forgets to protest when Chanyeol grabs his wrist and drags him into a seat right in the front of the class, a slip he remedies by slapping Chanyeol in the back of the head as soon as they’re seated.
“Ow!” Chanyeol whines. “What was that for?”
“For dragging me around,” Sehun says vindictively. “Use your words, Chanyeol, didn’t they teach you that in kindergarten?”
“Well, they probably did but since I got kicked out for trying to escape out the bathroom window I wouldn’t know,” Chanyeol grins. “That’s also why I can’t use scissors properly.”
“Shut up,” Sehun says with a grudging smile, settling back in his chair and preparing to sleep through what promises to be an extremely boring class. He can’t believe the university is requiring him to retake basic calculus even after he aced it in high school. His parents had suggested he ask for the requirement to be waived but Sehun had decided against that, since it would have required extended conversation with people he found annoying. It ends up being a good thing he already knows the material, because for some reason his thoughts keep turning back to the boy, and before he knows it lecture is over.
Jongdae and Baekhyun find him at lunchtime as he’s eating a sandwich and trying to get through the last few chapters of Sputnik Sweetheart for his literature class. He actually really likes the book-a rarity for something school-assigned-and he’s not particularly pleased to see the two of them. Usually when Jongdae and Baekhyun gang up on him, he ends up having to fight his way out of doing something he really doesn’t want to do.
“Sehun! Pal!” Baekhyun says jovially, clapping him on the shoulder. Sehun is immediately wary. Baekhyun is never this sickeningly cheery unless Chanyeol is in the vicinity, and even then it’s usually tempered by his paralyzing fear of doing anything Chanyeol might find even mildly unattractive. Honestly, Sehun thinks Baekhyun needs to just grow a pair and ask Chanyeol out. But of course no one cares what Sehun thinks.
“Just the person we were looking for,” Jongdae says, sitting down on Sehun’s other side. “We have a proposition for you.”
“Does it involve anything even remotely embarrassing?” Sehun asks warily. “Because if so I’m leaving right now.”
“No, no, don’t be silly!” Baekhyun laughs. “This is something extremely painless. And it’s for a good cause! We’re trying to get the student body more interested in what the student government is doing-”
“It was Junmyeon’s idea, I swear the guy is a maniac,” Jongdae adds cheerfully.
“-and all you need to do is agree to choreograph a short dance for us. You know, just something we can get some of the school’s top dancers to perform at a little showcase. Come on, it’ll be fun! We’re going to have people singing and stuff too.”
“And why can’t you just ask one of the real choreographers in the dance department?” Sehun asks with a sigh of resignation.
“Because you’ll do it for free,” Jongdae says with a wide smile. Sehun considers telling him he looks like a shark. Maybe it’s a good thing Jongdae wants to go into law.
“Okay, I suppose I can do that,” Sehun says with a grin. “But under no circumstances am I going to actually be dancing in this ridiculous ‘showcase’ or whatever. And also, I get to decide who actually dances, okay?”
“Seriously, Sehun?” Baekhyun asks with a sigh. “What, are you going to audition all of them?”
“Just send me the best people and I’ll have them all try it and pick the ones I want,” Sehun says. “Take it or leave it, Mr. Politician.”
“Fine! Have it your way,” Baekhyun says, ruffling Sehun’s hair fondly. Sehun swats the hand away only to have Jongdae’s hand take its place. “Better get busy! You’ve only got a few weeks!”
Sighing, Sehun watches them walk away, high-fiving, and wonders why he does anything for anyone. Selfish? Ha! He’s anything but.
It’s past midnight, Sehun has a huge presentation in his literature class tomorrow, and he still hasn’t finished the choreography for the bridge section of the song. The last thing he expects, or wants to have to deal with, is a knock on his door. But when he opens it and sees Jongdae standing there, looking extremely upset, he simply stands aside and lets him scurry inside.
“I’m sorry to bother you so late,” Jongdae hiccups, and Sehun can see his eyes are red, like he’s been crying. This is concerning-Sehun hasn’t seen Jongdae cry since his mother’s funeral back in Sehun’s freshman year of high school. Even though Jongdae is technically older than Sehun, Sehun sometimes feels like he’s the adult-the one Jongdae always comes to with his problems. It’s tiring-Sehun doesn’t even like dealing with his own feelings, much less other people’s. But with Jongdae looking so pathetic, it’s not like he can say no.
“What’s wrong?” Sehun asks, sitting Jongdae down on the bed.
“I did something stupid,” Jongdae says, hanging his head. Sehun threads an arm around his shoulders, pulling him closer, and Jongdae leans into the touch, sniffling a little. Sehun reminds himself to put this shirt in the wash later.
“What happened?” Sehun asks again, eyes flicking over to his computer screen where his half-finished presentation is glowing gently.
“You remember Junmyeon?” Jongdae asks. Sehun nods quickly. Jongdae’s only been talking about him nonstop for the past few months, ever since they started working on the same student government panel. “Well, we were in the computer lab today working on some pamphlets for the showcase, you know? And it was just the two of us and it was kind of dark because all the lights were off except for the annoying emergency one by the door. And then he got up to look out the window and I got up too and then I was standing next to him and-”
“What?” Sehun asks when Jongdae looks too overcome to continue. “Did he hurt you? I swear, if he did anything I’ll fucking kill him, I will find him and make sure he never has children.”
“No, no, that’s just it!” Jongdae wails, and Sehun squeezes him a bit tighter because he knows that’s what he’s supposed to do. “I…I don’t know why I did it, but I just leaned over and kissed him and then…he just looked at me.”
“He just looked at you?” Sehun asks quizzically, wondering why Jongdae is so worked up. “I don’t see-”
“He just looked at me,” Jongdae says, lifting his head from Sehun’s side so he can stare right at him, Sehun’s eyes starting to water sympathetically as he sees that Jongdae’s close to tears again. “He looked at me like I was the most disgusting thing he’d ever seen and then he started backing away from me and he basically ran out of there, look, he even forgot his cell phone, he was in that much of a hurry to get away from me-”
And here Jongdae reaches into his pocket and pulls out a sleek cell phone, waving it back and forth in the air a bit too hysterically for Sehun’s liking. Sehun quickly wrenches the phone out of Jongdae’s grasp, then pulls up Jongdae’s chin until he’s looking at him.
“Jongdae,” he says. “You just need to go talk to him. It’s possible it was all just a misunderstanding. At the very least you need to give him his phone back.”
“I was so stupid,” Jongdae moans, not even listening. “Why would someone like him ever like someone like me? He’s got everything-fancy car, top student government position, amazing grades. What do I have? Nothing. He’s probably laughing right now with his friends about how fucking stupid I was, how I thought just because he was always nice to me and gave me that smile and held my hand that one time kind of on accident-”
“Jongdae,” Sehun says loudly, cutting across his rant. “I’m serious. You need to just talk to him. Go back to your room, go to bed, and then in the morning e-mail him and tell him you want to return his phone. You’re going to have to see him anyway at that meeting on Friday, right? So pull yourself together.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” Jongdae mutters, heaving himself upright and wiping his eyes. Sehun sighs and rises as well, opening the door to his room. “Thanks, Sehun.”
“Anytime,” Sehun says, giving Jongdae a tired smile he doesn’t quite feel. As soon as the door shuts, Sehun leans against it, head pounding.
If you tell me that, I might be able to forget how selfish you are.
And Sehun doesn’t really care about what other people think of him, but he’s starting to think that maybe he doesn’t deserve people like Jongdae caring about him. He knows he’d never be able to survive without his friends. But it worries him that they don’t seem to mind that he takes and takes and barely gives anything in return.
Turning back to his computer, Sehun slumps down in his chair and tries to force his eyes to stay open. The choreography can wait until tomorrow.
He’s surprised, to say the least, when his calculus professor asks him to stay back after class on Wednesday. As he waits for the last few students to ask their questions and leave, he wonders what he could have possibly done wrong. Sure, he’s slept through every lecture but he’s also aced every test so it’s not like there’s anything to complain about, right? There was that one time his professor may or may not have caught Sehun imitating him to Chanyeol before class started. Maybe that was what this was about. Best apologetic face pasted on, Sehun’s ready when his professor distractedly waves him over.
That’s when he realizes with a start that there’s a boy standing behind the professor’s desk, half-hidden by the podium.
“Oh Sehun, this is Kim Jongin,” his professor says, motioning for the two boys to shake hands, which they do. Sehun realizes with another little start that this is the boy he nearly made Chanyeol trample the first day of class. He can’t tell if Jongin recognizes him-he’s staring determinedly at his feet, as if hoping the ground will open up and swallow him whole.
“I’m going to ask you for a favor,” the professor says. “I was wondering if you would be able to take a few hours a week and tutor Jongin here. It wouldn’t be a big commitment-anything would help, I’m sure-and since you’re my top student I’m sure you wouldn’t have any trouble.”
“I-” But protests about having a lot of work and not being able to take on any extra responsibilities die on the tip of Sehun’s tongue as he sees the way Jongin winces, seeming to fold up into himself in embarrassment. “I would love to. No trouble at all.”
The professor seems surprised, but smiles warmly. Sehun ignores him, focusing instead on the way Jongin’s eyes widen in surprise, flicking up to meet Sehun’s before falling back to the floor. Then the professor is standing, saying something about arranging meeting times themselves, and sweeping out the door, leaving the two of them alone.
“You don’t have to do this,” Jongin whispers, so softly Sehun can almost pretend he hasn’t spoken. “I’m not doing that badly. And it’s only halfway through the quarter, I’m sure I can get my grade up if I just work really hard…I think…”
“No, really, it’s fine,” Sehun says with a smile, and he’s not sure why he’s being so nice because he’s taking more than the recommended number of classes this quarter besides trying to choreograph this stupid dance for Baekhyun and Jongdae and he also wanted to start taking voice lessons but for whatever reason he doesn’t want Jongin looking so miserable. He wants to make him smile. If Jongdae were around, Sehun would look at him and say, “Challenge accepted.”
“Well, thanks,” Jongin says, in a slightly stronger voice. “Do Tuesdays and Thursdays work for you? We can do an hour each day-I don’t have much time because of dance practice.”
“You’re a dancer?” Sehun asks interestedly, but Jongin seems to be done talking. He simply stares at Sehun until he inclines his head slightly, and before Sehun can say anything more Jongin is hitching his bag onto his shoulders and rushing out the door.
“Well, that was strange,” Sehun says to himself. Turning to look at the empty classroom, he shakes his head slowly and then heads out himself, planning to grab a quick dinner before going back to his room to work.
He knows as soon as he walks into the dining hall and hears voices yelling his name that his quick dinner just evaporated into smoke.
“Sehun!” Minseok shouts, waving him over to a table where Jongdae, Baekhyun, and Chanyeol are already sitting. With a resigned sigh, Sehun shuffles over, purposefully dumping his heavy bag on Jongdae’s foot. Over Jongdae’s squeals of pain, Sehun sits down and smiles at his friends.
“What happened to you after math?” Chanyeol asks, shoving a too-big piece of chicken in his mouth. Sehun smirks at the way Baekhyun can’t seem to take his eyes off Chanyeol’s lips. “I was looking for you on the way out but you just disappeared.”
“The professor asked me to stay back, wants me to tutor some kid,” Sehun says nonchalantly, stealing a piece of chicken from Baekhyun’s plate. Baekhyun looks like he’s about to protest but Sehun shoots a significant glance in Chanyeol’s direction and Baekhyun pales before leaning back in his seat.
“And of course you said no,” Jongdae says with a laugh. “Poor kid, I wonder if he’ll ever get over the rejection.”
“Actually, I said yes,” Sehun says quickly, using Baekhyun’s chopsticks to shovel some rice into his mouth. When he looks up, everyone is staring at him in shock. “What?”
“Well, you kind of just spent the last month complaining all the time about how much work you had?” Minseok says hesitantly. “And now you’re taking on more work by agreeing to tutor this random guy from your math class? That doesn’t sound like you.”
“What can I say?” Sehun says, ignoring the way everyone’s eyes are getting wider by the second. “I’m a sucker for public service.”
“Sehun, when that charity for cancer research set up a table in the quad asking for donations, you laughed at them,” Baekhyun says, and Sehun doesn’t miss the way Baekhyun’s eyes light up as Chanyeol laughs loudly.
“Well, this is different,” Sehun says. “I don’t know, hopefully I won’t end up doing it for a long time. I just felt bad for the guy, you know?”
“Well, remind me to send him flowers, whoever he is,” Jongdae says, stuffing a piece of bread into his mouth. “He managed to do the impossible and get Sehun to feel bad for someone besides himself.”
“Oh, shut it,” Sehun snorts, but the image of Jongin’s hopeful face flashes through his mind and suddenly the room feels uncomfortably hot. Maybe Sehun’s getting sick.
Their first tutoring session the next day gets off to a bad start. Sehun gets stuck in lab for an extra fifteen minutes after some idiot named Wu Fan decides he doesn’t really need to use the fume hood for his experiment and ends up setting off the fire alarm and getting them all evacuated from the building. And then, when he rushes into the coffee shop where they’d agreed to meet, he can’t see Jongin anywhere. Worried that he left after deciding Sehun wasn’t showing up, Sehun wanders back and forth between the tables, scanning face after face for the one he’s looking for.
“Can I help you find someone?” a voice asks from behind him, and Sehun jumps around to see a frighteningly angelic-looking boy standing there staring at him. The boy is wearing an apron and a nametag that says, “Luhan” so apparently he works in the shop. Sehun eyes his crisp blue button-down, milky white skin, and fluffy golden hair distrustfully before deciding he might as well take a chance.
“Yeah, I’m looking for someone named Kim Jongin?” he says.
“Oh, Jongin!” Luhan says with a disarmingly bright smile, and points towards a table all the way at the back of the shop. “So you must be Sehun the tutor. Nice to meet you! You’re a lot cuter than I expected.”
“Um…yeah, nice to meet you too…” Sehun mumbles, a bit dazed by Luhan’s enthusiasm, before quickly heading off in the direction Luhan had indicated.
“Hey,” he says apologetically, throwing himself down in the seat next to Jongin. “I’m so, so sorry for being late! Some idiot set off the fire alarm in the chem building and we all had to evacuate and it was just a big mess. Hey, do you want to give me your phone number? That way I can contact you if something like this happens again.”
“What?” Jongin asks, staring at Sehun with something halfway between fear and what looks to Sehun like excitement. It’s kind of strange. “You want my phone number?”
“Well, yeah,” Sehun says, confused. “I mean, if we’re going to be doing this regularly, it makes sense we should be able to contact each other in case something happens.”
“Right, right,” Jongin says quickly, shoving his phone into Sehun’s hand before he can react. “Here, just put your number in, and then text me yours.”
“Oh, okay,” Sehun says, a little flustered by all the abrupt motion. That seems to be the way Jongin is-he can’t sit still for more than a few minutes, some part of him always has to be moving. It makes Sehun’s head spin a little. “So, should we start?”
“Yeah, lets,” Jongin groans, opening his textbook. “I should warn you, though, I have no idea what any of this means. The explanations in class never make any sense to me!”
“It’s fine, we’ll go through it slowly,” Sehun says, as he starts talking about derivatives and integrals-formulas and problem-solving steps he’s had ingrained in his head for so long it feels strange to think of someone not knowing them.
Jongin’s fairly quick, which pleases Sehun-he’s never been particularly patient-but he’s always second-guessing himself, treating every problem as wrong until proven right unlike Sehun, who just assumes he’s done everything right unless someone points out a flaw. But it’s nice seeing Jongin smile every time Sehun assures him he’s done a good job, and the way his warm hand keeps brushing against Sehun’s as he scribbles numbers down on the page is nice too. Sehun doesn’t even notice how much time has passed until Jongin gets a text message-the loud ding startling them both out of their reverie.
“Oh, I have to go,” Jongin says, giving Sehun an apologetic grin. “But I think this might actually work! I’ll see you Tuesday? Well, Monday in class maybe. See you?”
“Yeah, see you,” Sehun says, mesmerized by the way Jongin’s muscles stretch and flex under his thin t-shirt as he stands, shoving books into his backpack. Jongin gives him another small smile, then turns and slips into the crowd of people surrounding them, heading for the door.
“Thanks for doing this,” a voice says in his ear and Sehun jerks violently. Spinning around, he sees Luhan standing there with a lopsided grin on his face. “Sorry for scaring you.”
He doesn’t sound very sorry at all, Sehun thinks vengefully, but he can’t be too mad because of what Luhan says next.
“Jongin’s really afraid of people thinking he’s weak, that he can’t handle things on his own. It took me nearly a month just to convince him that the professor recommending he get a tutor didn’t mean he was about to get kicked out of school. So I’m glad you’re the one who’s going to be working with him.”
“Why?” Sehun asks, confused as to what he could have done to give Luhan so much trust in him. He doesn’t even trust himself to do this job right.
“You seem really patient and kind,” Luhan says with a shrug, gesturing to the books and papers still spread across the table. “Jongin needs people like that. People who can help him without making him feel like he’s a failure.”
“Well, I’ll try,” Sehun laughs nervously as Luhan turns away with a smile and a little wave. He’s pretty sure Luhan was trying to be nice, so he’s not sure why he suddenly feels like he can’t breathe.
“Sehun, I was wondering-”
“Not now, Chanyeol!” Sehun yells, continuing to throw books into his backpack at top speed. He only has ten minutes to get from calculus to a group meeting for the upcoming project on themes in British literature, and then after that he has an extra tutoring session with Jongin because they have a midterm coming up next week and he is not in the mood to deal with Chanyeol’s problems.
“I just wanted to ask you-”
“NOPE,” Sehun says, trying to simultaneously cover his ears and swing his backpack onto his shoulder. “NO TIME SEE YOU LATER.”
“Hey!” Chanyeol says, grabbing Sehun’s arms and pulling them down, ignoring the murderous glare Sehun is giving him. “I just wanted to say that you should invite Jongin to eat with us tonight. Him and those kids I always see him hanging out with. I mean, you’ve been spending so much time with him recently, we’re all dying to meet him!”
“Did Baekhyun put you up to this?” Sehun asks suspiciously, noting with surprise that a slight blush spreads across Chanyeol’s cheeks when he says Baekhyun’s name.
“No!” Chanyeol says a little too loudly, dropping Sehun’s arms before he recovers himself. “We all just thought it would be fun!”
“Well, we’ll see,” Sehun says, pushing past Chanyeol, but the gears in his head are already starting to turn. Would Jongin even say yes to an invitation? I mean, sure, Sehun’s been spending several hours alone with him every week, and Jongin’s even taken to sitting next to Sehun during class rather than hiding out at the back of the room, but Sehun wouldn’t really say they’re friends. And maybe they’ve talked a bit about their favorite music-Jongin likes country and pop and Sehun had scoffed and said that rock and electronic were his favorites at the moment-and their majors-chemistry and performing arts-and what they want to do with the rest of their lives-solve the world’s energy crisis, let people escape the real world for a while and make them smile-but that doesn’t mean they’re friends.
Still, as he sees Jongin waving at him with a bright smile from their usual table at the back of the coffee shop, Sehun can’t help but think that maybe he should go for it anyway. Who knows? Jongin might say yes.
“Wow, you look really tired,” Jongin says worriedly as Sehun sits down, running a hand over his face wearily.
“Naw, I’m fine,” Sehun laughs. “Just tired of thinking about themes in the Shakespeare play my group is analyzing for our project. There’s only so long you can examine every individual word, you know?”
“Shakespeare,” Jongin says thoughtfully, as if carefully considering the word. “I haven’t read any of his stuff since high school. Our teacher made us read those sonnets people think he wrote to his male lover or whatever.”
“Yeah, all his plays definitely have some strange romantic situations going on,” Sehun snorts.
“He must have been a pretty weird guy to come up with stuff like A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Jongin says with a smile.
“Well, of course he was weird!” Sehun laughs. “I mean, he thought he was in love with another man!”
It takes him a minute to realize that Jongin isn’t smiling along with him. Instead, he’s frozen in place, staring at a spot on the table.
“I mean, not that I-I didn’t mean it like that,” Sehun stutters quickly, trying to repair the damage he’s done. “I don’t have anything against gay people!”
“Of course,” Jongin says, recovering himself enough to give Sehun a strained smile. Oh, great, now Sehun’s offended him. “Should we start working then? I don’t want to keep you from your other projects.”
“Yeah, sure,” Sehun says, and before he can stop himself he’s adding, “and I was wondering if you might want to eat dinner with me and my friends tonight? You can bring your friends-Luhan and whoever else? I just thought…I mean, they want to meet you and I-”
“That sounds like fun,” Jongin says smoothly, eyes focused on the textbook in front of him as he slowly begins to copy out a few practice problems. “We’ll be there.”
“Oh. Great!” Sehun says, not sure why he feels so let down. Shaking his head, he decides he’s going to just try to forget any of this ever happened. Oh, and he’ll punch Chanyeol really hard the next time he sees him.
“OW!” Chanyeol yells when Sehun greets him at the table. “What was that for? What did my poor left arm ever do to you?”
“That was for making me invite Jongin to dinner,” Sehun hisses, sitting down in his chair. Chanyeol looks at him with wide, sad eyes, and Sehun groans. “It’s just going to be really awkward and weird. And stop rubbing your shoulder, you big baby, why don’t you just go get Baekhyun to kiss it better for you?”
“What are you-what?” Chanyeol gasps, whipping his head around as if expecting Baekhyun to be standing behind him. Sehun snickers, glad to see that part two of his plan to punish Park Chanyeol for putting him in this position is working.
“Oh, look, here he comes now!” Sehun says brightly, standing up to wave to Baekhyun as he enters the hall, Jongdae hot on his heels, eyes glued to the phone in his hand. He doesn’t look up, even as Sehun tries to yell something to Baekhyun and Chanyeol slaps a hand over his mouth.
“So, I’m guessing that thing with Junmyeon worked itself out,” Sehun says sarcastically, leaning over the table to look at the name on the top of Jongdae’s texting screen.
“Magnificently,” Jongdae says breathlessly, turning off his phone and placing it down on the tabletop. “We might actually go on a date soon!”
“Wait, so all that making out in the back room of the computer lab didn’t count as dating?” Baekhyun asks pleasantly, laughing when Jongdae shoots him a venomous look.
“Junmyeon is busy,” Jongdae sniffs. “But he’s very romantic. Did you know he’s put a rose outside my room every day for the past two weeks?”
While everyone is busy pretending to vomit into their plates, Jongdae turns, then starts to wave at a group of people heading towards them. Sehun, who’s just taking a sip of water, starts choking very embarrassingly as soon as he sees who it is.
“Is he all right?” Zitao asks worriedly, eyeing Sehun’s quickly reddening face and increasingly loud coughs.
“Yeah, yeah, he’s fine,” Chanyeol laughs, slapping Sehun so hard on the back he thinks he might have dislodged a lung.
“It was nice of you to invite us to eat with you,” Kyungsoo-a small, kind boy Sehun recognizes from his literature class-says politely, and Yixing elbows him in the side as he sits down, making Jongin laugh as he settles into the seat exactly opposite Sehun. Though Sehun didn’t see Luhan come in with the rest of Jongin’s posse, he’s suddenly fitting himself into the space between Yixing and Kyungsoo, slinging an arm around both of their shoulders as he greets everyone at the table.
“So how many of you watch soccer?” Luhan asks, and the conversation quickly rises into a flurry of discussions about classes, professors, sports teams, and upcoming campus events. Sehun is pretending to be interested in Jongdae’s long-winded discussion of the amazing work Junmyeon is doing with bringing more representation to the students when he realizes that Jongin is watching him.
He’s subtle about it, Sehun has to admit. The glances are so intermittent and quick that Sehun can almost pretend they aren’t happening at all. But then Jongin’s eyes will slip off whoever’s talking and instead slide across the curve of Sehun’s lips, or the column of his throat when he’s turned sideways, arguing with Yixing and Chanyeol about the best video game to play while drunk. Whenever Sehun tries to catch his eye, though, Jongin immediately looks away, becoming very interested in what Baekhyun’s saying all the way at the other end of the table. It’s frustrating, to say the least. Sehun’s not used to people trying to hide their interest in him, even if in Jongin’s case it’s probably just interest in being friends.
Soojung had always been obvious with him, constantly dropping things when he was around so she could bend down and pick them up, and later when they were actually dating she made sure to brush past him in the hallways, breasts pressing softly against his arm. He had always been annoyed when she did that-it made it hard for him to walk, and it hadn’t exactly done anything for his libido. She just hadn’t been the right girl for him. That was all it was.
“Hey! Pass a napkin, would you?” Yixing asks, snapping Sehun out of his reverie, and he almost doesn’t notice the way Jongin’s eyes narrow when Sehun hands Yixing the napkin and their hands brush.
“I think that’s all my brain can handle for today,” Jongin groans, leaning back in his chair and stretching and Sehun hates the way his eyes are immediately drawn to the thin band of golden skin that’s suddenly exposed.
“Well, I think you’re almost ready for this final,” Sehun says with a weary smile. Jongin laughs, sitting up again. The band of skin disappears.
“Luckily it’s still a few weeks away. I definitely need more practice. But I’ve been doing so much better since you decided to teach me, thank you.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Sehun say, waving away Jongin’s gratitude like he would a particularly irritating bug. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Well, I really mean it,” Jongin says, standing up and pulling on his jacket. “But now I guess I should head over to the library and memorize some lines. We have a run-through of Scene II of Arcadia in class tomorrow and I’m not ready at all.”
“Hey, I’m heading that way, too,” Sehun says, and Jongin shivers slightly. “Do you mind if I come with you?”
“Yeah, sure, let’s go,” Jongin says with a laugh that can’t quite hide the way his fingers are twitching.
It’s dark by the time they get outside, and they find their way using the light streaming out of nearby building windows. They’re walking slowly, without speaking, and Sehun notices that Jongin keeps sneaking glances at him. Sehun wonders what he’s looking for. They’re just taking a detour around the side of the language building when Sehun snaps. He can’t take this anymore-all these feelings that he doesn’t know how to interpret. Before he can stop himself, before he can think better of what he’s about to do, he’s grabbed Jongin’s arm, holding him in place. Jongin looks up at him in confusion, trying to brush off Sehun’s hand.
“Sehun?” he asks, voice low and quiet in the night air and it only serves to make Sehun more desperate.
“Jongin,” he whispers, and he hears Jongin’s breath catch at the roughness in his voice. “I want-I think-”
And then he’s leaning forward, capturing Jongin’s lips with his own, moving only a little too roughly. Jongin seems alarmed at first but he’s quick to pull Sehun closer, fisting his hands in Sehun’s sweater, gasping when Sehun bites down a bit too hard on his bottom lip. Sehun can taste blood in his mouth and he’s opening his mouth to mumble an apology when suddenly Jongin’s sliding his tongue across his bottom lip, and Sehun lets out a soft moan instead, wondering why Jongin’s lips are so much softer than Soojung’s ever were, why Jongin’s hands tracing along his shoulders, his stomach, send uncontrollable shivers whizzing down Sehun’s spine.
Sehun leans in to deepen the kiss and Jongin whines against his mouth-a thin reedy sound that Sehun can’t get enough of, and then it’s Sehun’s turn to gasp as Jongin slips a knee between his thighs, pressing gently against his groin. Sehun is already embarrassingly hard, something that’s never happened so quickly, and his head is spinning as Jongin shifts even closer, so close Sehun can feel his heart beating, can feel Jongin’s own erection pressing against his thigh. And that’s when Sehun suddenly jumps backwards, untangling his fingers from Jongin’s hair, tearing their mouths apart.
Jongin glances up at him, startled, and Sehun can’t look away fast enough to avoid seeing the way his eyes are wide with confusion and hurt, his lips swollen and glistening. Sehun runs his tongue along the back of his teeth and he can still taste Jongin in his mouth. Jongin takes a step forward, reaching for Sehun, but Sehun backs up again, avoiding his hands. Now he can’t ignore the way Jongin’s eyes are glittering a bit too brightly in the dim light filtering out a nearby window.
“I thought you wanted-I thought-” Jongin mumbles, hair falling over his eyes, and he seems to be shrinking as Sehun watches, folding up into himself just as he had the first day Sehun met him.
“Jongin, I…” Sehun tries, but trails off when he realizes he has nothing to say.
“No, don’t worry,” Jongin says bitterly, clenching his hands into fists. “It’s nothing. I should have known better. After everything you’ve said…”
“No, Jongin, wait-” And Sehun’s not sure why exactly he wants Jongin to wait, but it doesn’t matter anyway because Jongin is already whirling on his heel and stalking back into the darkness. Sehun suddenly feels very cold.
“Are you all right?” Chanyeol asks as he walks up to Sehun in the library. Sehun is technically studying, but his book has been open to the same page for the past hour, his cheek pressed firmly against the slick paper.
“No,” Sehun moans, lashing out angrily with his arm in the hopes that he’ll hit Chanyeol and maybe that will make him go away. He hasn’t gotten a full night’s sleep in a week, schoolwork and Jongin’s face preventing him from feeling rested. Last night he’d had a terrible dream-he’d looked up from his laptop and suddenly Jongin was there, in his room, pressing his against the wall, kissing Sehun so hard he couldn’t think straight, and then Jongin had pulled down Sehun’s pants, grinning widely as he’d taken Sehun into his mouth and all Sehun could do was moan and twitch as Jongin licked up the underside of his cock. And then all of a sudden Jongin had disappeared and Sehun had awoken feeling incredibly disoriented, face stuck to his desk, underwear soaked and sticky. Damn it, Sehun’s getting hard again just thinking about it. What is wrong with him?
“Okay, well, that definitely doesn’t sound like a plea for help,” Chanyeol laughs, pulling out the chair next to Sehun and settling himself down. “Come on, tell Uncle Park what’s wrong.”
“I am going to punch you so hard you’ll be called ‘teethless’ instead of ‘teethrich,’” Sehun groans, but Chanyeol just laughs again.
“Come on, it’s all going to be okay,” he says, patting Sehun sympathetically on the back. “Unless you just found out you’re suffering from a terminal illness in which case it won’t be okay.”
“I hate you,” Sehun mutters into his sleeve. But then a thought comes to him and he sits up so suddenly Chanyeol’s arm hits the back of his chair.
“Whoa, are you all right?” Chanyeol asks, massaging his wrist.
“Chanyeol, you’re gay,” Sehun says with all the tact of a rhinoceros in a china shop. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
“Is this because of Baekhyun?” Chanyeol hisses breathlessly. “Because we’re just good friends.”
“Yeah, right, we all know you want to stick your tongues down each other’s throats,” Sehun grumbles. “And you forget that I’m the only person you told about the little ‘chat’ you had with Kyunhyun back at the high school dance after your date dumped you for staring at his ass instead of hers the whole night.”
“Okay, fine,” Chanyeol says, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “What about it? Or actually, can we go back to the part about Baekhyun wanting to stick his tongue down my throat? I think I’d like to stop talking about your problems and start talking about that.”
“How did you know?” Sehun asks desperately, flopping facedown onto the table.
“Um…it’s kind of obvious?” Chanyeol says, giving Sehun’s prone body a confused look. “I mean, especially for guys it’s kind of hard to avoid noticing what sort of things make you…you know…”
“You are without a doubt the worst explainer of things in the world,” Sehun groans, rolling his head sideways so he can glare at Chanyeol.
“Why?” Chanyeol asks, poking at Sehun’s nose. “Is Sehun having some boy trouble? Is a certain incredibly attractive yet incredibly confusing Kim Jongin giving him problems?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sehun mutters, before the full meaning of what Chanyeol’s just said hits him. “Wait. What! How do you know about Jongin?”
“Okay, first of all, you all make fun of me for being oblivious, but at least I know what I want,” Chanyeol says infuriatingly. “I thought actually dating a girl was the lowest you were ever going to stoop in the whole ‘lying to yourself’ thing, but if you tell me you don’t have feelings for Jongin then I’ll be proven wrong.”
“I don’t have feelings for fucking Kim fucking Jongin,” Sehun spits viciously, ignoring the disappointed look he knows Chanyeol is giving him. “He just confuses me, is all.”
“Right,” Chanyeol says, patting Sehun on the back. “Well, I’ll leave you to that, then.”
Sehun’s not sure whether he wants to show up to their next tutoring session, but since he can’t bring himself to text Jongin and cancel he’s already waiting at the coffee shop by the time Jongin arrives, looking windswept and happy in a way that makes Sehun’s heart ache. Luhan waves at Jongin and he smiles in return-a smile so blindingly bright it reminds Sehun of the floodlights they use in the theater where Jongin performs. It washes out everything behind it, blending together all the small details and slight changes in favor of exacerbating striking differences.
“Hello,” Jongin says, a bit formally, as he sits down. Sehun shifts his chair ever so slightly to the right so they’re not touching.
“Listen, Jongin, I just wanted to tell you that what happened the other night was a mistake,” Sehun says flatly, ignoring the way Jongin’s smile crumples slightly at the edges. “I’m sorry if you thought I meant anything by it.”
“Of course,” Jongin says softly, eyes fixed on the textbook in front of him, and Sehun wants to throw up. “I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable.”
“It’s fine,” Sehun says quickly, before realizing how arrogant that sounds-accepting Jongin’s apology for something that’s out of his control, something that’s mostly Sehun’s fault. But Jongin is different from Sehun because he can’t control himself. He can’t see that what they did will only end up with Sehun’s life being complicated in ways he doesn’t want to have to deal with. Whatever there was between them is finished. It has to be.
When Jongin leaves after half an hour, claiming a headache, Sehun doesn’t blame him.
What Sehun’s not prepared for is Kyungsoo cornering him after class, glaring at him so ferociously that Sehun has trouble remembering that Kyungsoo’s actually shorter than he is.
“I don’t know who you think you are,” Kyungsoo hisses angrily, and Sehun flinches. “But I’m going to tell you right now that you’re a heartless bastard, and you could never hope to deserve someone like Jongin.”
Then Kyungsoo knees him, hard, and Sehun sinks to the ground gasping in pain as Kyungsoo stalks out. That’s where Jongdae finds him ten minutes later, helping him up and only laughing a little at Sehun’s plight.
“Remind me never to mess with Kyungsoo,” Jongdae says seriously as they walk across the grass towards Sehun’s dorm. “But seriously, what did you do to make him so angry?”
“Nothing!” Sehun whines, wincing at every step. “Well, not to him anyway.”
“What does that mean?” Jongdae asks, giving Sehun a suspicious look.
“I may have been…a little mean to Jongin,” Sehun says quickly, hoping Jongdae will drop the subject in light of his obvious distress. Of course, Jongdae doesn’t.
“Wait, Jongin?” he crows, and if Sehun weren’t injured he would be shoving him over into the dirt right now. “I knew it! But wait…what did you do to him?”
“Nothing. Never mind,” Sehun says, and he refuses to speak for the rest of the trip back to his room, even when Jongdae threatens to knee him again.
Unfortunately, even if he manages to shut out the rest of the world, he can’t shut out the traitorous murmurings of his own brain. His stupid brain, which keeps remembering how soft Jongin’s skin had been under his fingers, how Jongin’s breathy gasps had made Sehun feel so powerful and so weak at the same time, how the taste of Jongin’s mouth-a strange mixture of mint toothpaste and sugar from the hard candies he’d been eating earlier-should have been gross but wasn’t. Frantically, Sehun digs out a pile of old comics he’d been planning to throw out, paging through them until he finds drawings of big-breasted anime girls, staring hard and willing himself to feel something, anything besides mild disgust and uneasiness.
Images from his dream keep flashing through his head, the way Jongin’s lips had looked stretched around his cock, the way the touch of Jongin’s hand had made him groan with pleasure, the way Jongin had gazed at him with hooded eyes, daring Sehun to come closer, to open himself up to what he was feeling. Throwing himself onto his bed, shoving headphones over his ears, Sehun tries to will himself to sleep. But, try as he might, the image of Jongin leaving the coffee shop, eyes brimming with tears that refuse to fall, mouth twisted into a grim line, refuses to disappear.
“I’m so sorry I couldn’t get to this earlier,” Sehun gasps, nearly jogging as he tries to keep up with Baekhyun’s strides. For a short kid, he walks surprisingly fast. “I know a week isn’t very long to teach the choreography for an entire song to a large group of people, but I’ve just been so busy-”
“Sehun, it’s fine,” Baekhyun says reassuringly, giving Sehun a look so full of pity that Sehun wants to slap him. “We all know you’ve been going through a lot.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Sehun asks angrily, but Baekhyun quickly pulls open the door to the auditorium, cutting him off.
“Okay, so these are your potential dancers,” Baekhyun says, pointing towards a group of fifteen or so people spread out across the stage, stretching and chatting happily. “Run through it a few times, then let me know who you want. I’ve already got costumes all lined up so this is the last bit that needs to be finalized-”
But Sehun doesn’t hear the rest of Baekhyun’s words because he’s stopped dead, staring up at the stage.
“Sehun?” Baekhyun asks, turning around when he realizes the other boy isn’t with him anymore.
“Yes?” Sehun asks, eyes fixed on the stage.
“Everything… all right?” Baekhyun asks hesitantly, eyes widening when he follows Sehun’s gaze up to the stage. “Are you sure you can do this?”
“Of course I can,” Sehun says, brushing past Baekhyun perhaps a little more roughly than strictly necessary. He sees Jongin turn towards him as he strides towards the front of the stage before reminding himself that he’s not supposed to be looking. He’s given all that up.
“Hello, everyone, my name is Oh Sehun,” he says once he’s onstage and he has everyone’s attention. “I’m the one who choreographed this dance as a favor for my politically-inclined friends-I’m sure you know the feeling. I’m going to eventually want to cut the group down to seven or eight but for now let’s see how you all do!”
So they start, and Sehun is incredibly distracted by the way Jongin seems to pick up the choreography quicker than anyone else, the way the movements Sehun’s designed seem so much more fluid and vibrant when he performs them. Sehun starts to regret putting so many pelvic thrusts and crotch grabs into his dance. It gets a little ridiculous, especially since Jongin makes these faces when he dances, almost as if he can’t help himself, so caught up in the movement of his body that he forgets he’s being watched.
When they stop for a break, dancers flopping tiredly onto the floor, Sehun pushes his sweaty bangs out of his eyes and pretends not to see the way Jongin’s staring at him from his spot on the other side of the dance floor. Why is the kid so entirely incapable of being subtle? But then Sehun sees that Jongin isn’t resting like the rest of them-instead, he’s going through the movements again and again, motions getting a bit jerkier every time as his muscles protest the continued abuse. Eventually, Sehun can’t take it anymore and he stalks over until he’s standing directly in front of Jongin, arms crossed angrily over his chest.
“Stop it,” he hisses, and Jongin pretends not to hear him so he says it again. “Jongin, stop, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
“And why-” Jongin grunts, spinning just a little too fast, “-would you care?”
“Because I-” Sehun starts to say, but luckily he doesn’t have to think of a way to end the sentence because Jongin’s ankle suddenly gives out on the landing and he’s falling, Sehun instinctively swinging his arms up to catch him.
“Jongin, are you all right?” Yixing calls from where he’s leaning against the wall, taking long gulps of water.
“Yeah, just fine,” Jongin yells back, wrenching himself out of Sehun’s grasp and limping over to Yixing before collapsing against the wall, angrily rubbing his ankle.
“Wow, you really fucked up, didn’t you?” Baekhyun says with an annoyingly sympathetic whistle, wandering up from his spot watching from the comfort of a theater seat.
“Shut up,” Sehun spits, tearing his eyes away from the back wall, where Yixing’s now leaning down, body covering Jongin’s from sight as he helps Jongin press a cold pack against his ankle. “There was never anything there for me to fuck up.”
“You keep telling yourself that,” Baekhyun says with a sigh, and Sehun suddenly wants to say something cruel, wants to lie to Baekhyun and tell him that Chanyeol doesn’t like boys, wants to tell him that Chanyeol will never like him back because why should Baekhyun have a chance at happiness when Jongin is sitting over there resting his head on Yixing’s shoulder and Sehun can’t stand it.
But then Sehun imagines the way Baekhyun’s face would fall when he threw the words at him like knives, and for some reason Baekhyun’s face keeps morphing into Jongin’s, the expression the same one Jongin had worn when he had fled the coffee shop that day, and oh.
“Baekhyun,” Sehun says instead, eyes wide. “Was Jongin in love with me?”
“You are quite possibly the cruelest bastard I have ever had the misfortune of knowing,” Baekhyun says simply, before slipping back down the stairs and into the dark belly of the auditorium.
And even though Sehun manages to hold himself together for the next hour of going over the movements of his dance again and again, his thoughts are far away from the dance floor, images flashing wildly through his mind. Jongin staring at him over the table when he thought Sehun wasn’t looking. Jongin laughing so brightly when Sehun made a terrible joke during one of their tutoring sessions. Jongin’s hands coming up to trace soft patterns along Sehun’s collarbones when they kissed. And Sehun doesn’t know what these feelings are that are bubbling up inside of him, doesn’t know what exactly Jongin makes him feel. But he likes it. He wants more of it. And there’s only one way to get that.
“Please let me in,” Sehun says quickly, sticking his foot into the small space that opens up between the doorframe and the door before Jongin can slam it closed again.
“I have nothing to say to you,” Jongin mutters, and his voice is hard and unforgiving and Sehun almost turns around and walks away right then and there. But then he reminds himself why he’s doing this, why he decided Jongin was someone worth keeping around.
“Jongin, I…I made a mistake,” Sehun mutters, noting the way Jongin has stopped trying to shove the door closed. “I shouldn’t have just pushed you away like that. But I didn’t really know how you felt and I really didn’t know how I felt and it was all just a big mistake.”
“So kissing me was just a big mistake?” Jongin asks coldly, and Sehun curses the way his stomach curls pleasantly as he glances up at Jongin’s dark eyes, his soft mouth.
“No! That’s not what I mean!” Sehun yells, voice loud in the narrow hallway. “What was a mistake was the way I pushed you away, without any explanation. I want you, Jongin. I…I like you.”
“Why?” Jongin asks, and suddenly Sehun is at a loss for words. His brain seems to have packed up and completely abandoned him, leaving him at the mercy of his senses, which are screaming to him about the warmth of Jongin’s hands, the slickness of his tongue, the way his lithe body had curved around Sehun’s in exactly the right way. But Sehun doesn’t think that’s what Jongin wants to hear, and that’s not really all Sehun likes about Jongin, is it? After several seconds of silence pass, though, Jongin’s had enough.
“Goodbye, Sehun,” he says, slamming his whole body against the door so hard Sehun’s foot is pushed backwards, out of the way. Through the door, Sehun thinks he hears a sob, but maybe it’s just his imagination.
Part 2
Pairing: Sehun/Kai
Rating: PG-13
Genre: fluff, angst, college au
Length: 11,642
Summary: Sehun doesn’t care about anyone but himself and Jongin somehow still finds him attractive.
I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The first person to flat-out call Sehun selfish is Jung Soojung-a smart, pretty girl who is technically his girlfriend during his senior year of high school.
“I’ve tried to make this work, Sehun,” she says exasperatedly on the day the entire senior class is taking their university entrance exams. “I’ve tried and tried. But there’s no way a relationship this one-sided can survive. Tell me you want me to stay. Tell me you’ll start actually listening to me when I talk. Go on, tell me! If you tell me that, I might try to forget how selfish you are.”
But Sehun can’t bring himself to lie to her, to make promises he can’t keep, and so he watches her storm off, angrily brushing tears from her eyes, and wonders why he doesn’t feel anything-not sadness, not happiness. Merely indifference.
“Wow, what did you say to Soojung?” Chanyeol asks after school, plopping down next to Sehun on the warm concrete steps and throwing a heavy arm around his shoulders. “I heard that she spent the rest of our fifteen minute break in the bathroom crying. Her friends could barely get her out to keep taking the test.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Sehun mutters. Chanyeol gives him a searching look but doesn’t press the subject.
That night, Sehun wonders when he stopped caring about Soojung. Or if he even ever cared at all. He can remember a time when he wanted her to notice him, but he can’t untangle feelings of desire, or even of interest, from the competitive way his spirit rose to the challenge when Jongdae told him he’d never be able to land a girl like her.
He thinks about the triumphant way he’d walked through the school hallways holding her hand, daring any of his friends to tell him he couldn’t do whatever he put his mind to. He can remember the exact look on Jongdae’s face-a satisfying mixture of shock and admiration-when he’d surprised Soojung on her birthday by covering her seat in math class with white roses. Strangely enough, he can’t remember the expression on Soojung’s face that day. Had she been happy? Embarrassed? All he can recall is that she had pulled him out into the hallway and kissed him and he’d waited and waited for fireworks that never came.
When his alarm goes off early the next morning, Sehun groans, pulling himself out of bed regretfully. Why oh why had he stayed up late pondering old relationships when he knew he had a 9am class?
“Morning!” Chanyeol grins as he catches up to Sehun walking into their calculus classroom. Sehun is upset, both because he has to take this class and because no one should be allowed to be quite so happy so early in the morning. To vent some of this frustration he shoves Chanyeol hard, unfortunately sending him crashing into another student.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! Are you all right?” Chanyeol yells unhappily, extending a hand to the boy sitting on the floor looking a bit disoriented.
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” the boy says softly, ignoring Chanyeol’s hand and using the edge of a nearby desk to pull himself upright. As he does, the hood of his sweatshirt slips back and Sehun catches a glimpse of glittering eyes, full lips, and dark, messy hair before the boy slinks off towards the back of the classroom.
“Look what you made me do,” Chanyeol pouts, shooting Sehun an angry glance, but Sehun waves it off.
“Oh, he was fine,” Sehun says, dragging his eyes away from the dark figure now sliding into a seat almost at the back of the classroom. He’s so distracted that he forgets to protest when Chanyeol grabs his wrist and drags him into a seat right in the front of the class, a slip he remedies by slapping Chanyeol in the back of the head as soon as they’re seated.
“Ow!” Chanyeol whines. “What was that for?”
“For dragging me around,” Sehun says vindictively. “Use your words, Chanyeol, didn’t they teach you that in kindergarten?”
“Well, they probably did but since I got kicked out for trying to escape out the bathroom window I wouldn’t know,” Chanyeol grins. “That’s also why I can’t use scissors properly.”
“Shut up,” Sehun says with a grudging smile, settling back in his chair and preparing to sleep through what promises to be an extremely boring class. He can’t believe the university is requiring him to retake basic calculus even after he aced it in high school. His parents had suggested he ask for the requirement to be waived but Sehun had decided against that, since it would have required extended conversation with people he found annoying. It ends up being a good thing he already knows the material, because for some reason his thoughts keep turning back to the boy, and before he knows it lecture is over.
Jongdae and Baekhyun find him at lunchtime as he’s eating a sandwich and trying to get through the last few chapters of Sputnik Sweetheart for his literature class. He actually really likes the book-a rarity for something school-assigned-and he’s not particularly pleased to see the two of them. Usually when Jongdae and Baekhyun gang up on him, he ends up having to fight his way out of doing something he really doesn’t want to do.
“Sehun! Pal!” Baekhyun says jovially, clapping him on the shoulder. Sehun is immediately wary. Baekhyun is never this sickeningly cheery unless Chanyeol is in the vicinity, and even then it’s usually tempered by his paralyzing fear of doing anything Chanyeol might find even mildly unattractive. Honestly, Sehun thinks Baekhyun needs to just grow a pair and ask Chanyeol out. But of course no one cares what Sehun thinks.
“Just the person we were looking for,” Jongdae says, sitting down on Sehun’s other side. “We have a proposition for you.”
“Does it involve anything even remotely embarrassing?” Sehun asks warily. “Because if so I’m leaving right now.”
“No, no, don’t be silly!” Baekhyun laughs. “This is something extremely painless. And it’s for a good cause! We’re trying to get the student body more interested in what the student government is doing-”
“It was Junmyeon’s idea, I swear the guy is a maniac,” Jongdae adds cheerfully.
“-and all you need to do is agree to choreograph a short dance for us. You know, just something we can get some of the school’s top dancers to perform at a little showcase. Come on, it’ll be fun! We’re going to have people singing and stuff too.”
“And why can’t you just ask one of the real choreographers in the dance department?” Sehun asks with a sigh of resignation.
“Because you’ll do it for free,” Jongdae says with a wide smile. Sehun considers telling him he looks like a shark. Maybe it’s a good thing Jongdae wants to go into law.
“Okay, I suppose I can do that,” Sehun says with a grin. “But under no circumstances am I going to actually be dancing in this ridiculous ‘showcase’ or whatever. And also, I get to decide who actually dances, okay?”
“Seriously, Sehun?” Baekhyun asks with a sigh. “What, are you going to audition all of them?”
“Just send me the best people and I’ll have them all try it and pick the ones I want,” Sehun says. “Take it or leave it, Mr. Politician.”
“Fine! Have it your way,” Baekhyun says, ruffling Sehun’s hair fondly. Sehun swats the hand away only to have Jongdae’s hand take its place. “Better get busy! You’ve only got a few weeks!”
Sighing, Sehun watches them walk away, high-fiving, and wonders why he does anything for anyone. Selfish? Ha! He’s anything but.
It’s past midnight, Sehun has a huge presentation in his literature class tomorrow, and he still hasn’t finished the choreography for the bridge section of the song. The last thing he expects, or wants to have to deal with, is a knock on his door. But when he opens it and sees Jongdae standing there, looking extremely upset, he simply stands aside and lets him scurry inside.
“I’m sorry to bother you so late,” Jongdae hiccups, and Sehun can see his eyes are red, like he’s been crying. This is concerning-Sehun hasn’t seen Jongdae cry since his mother’s funeral back in Sehun’s freshman year of high school. Even though Jongdae is technically older than Sehun, Sehun sometimes feels like he’s the adult-the one Jongdae always comes to with his problems. It’s tiring-Sehun doesn’t even like dealing with his own feelings, much less other people’s. But with Jongdae looking so pathetic, it’s not like he can say no.
“What’s wrong?” Sehun asks, sitting Jongdae down on the bed.
“I did something stupid,” Jongdae says, hanging his head. Sehun threads an arm around his shoulders, pulling him closer, and Jongdae leans into the touch, sniffling a little. Sehun reminds himself to put this shirt in the wash later.
“What happened?” Sehun asks again, eyes flicking over to his computer screen where his half-finished presentation is glowing gently.
“You remember Junmyeon?” Jongdae asks. Sehun nods quickly. Jongdae’s only been talking about him nonstop for the past few months, ever since they started working on the same student government panel. “Well, we were in the computer lab today working on some pamphlets for the showcase, you know? And it was just the two of us and it was kind of dark because all the lights were off except for the annoying emergency one by the door. And then he got up to look out the window and I got up too and then I was standing next to him and-”
“What?” Sehun asks when Jongdae looks too overcome to continue. “Did he hurt you? I swear, if he did anything I’ll fucking kill him, I will find him and make sure he never has children.”
“No, no, that’s just it!” Jongdae wails, and Sehun squeezes him a bit tighter because he knows that’s what he’s supposed to do. “I…I don’t know why I did it, but I just leaned over and kissed him and then…he just looked at me.”
“He just looked at you?” Sehun asks quizzically, wondering why Jongdae is so worked up. “I don’t see-”
“He just looked at me,” Jongdae says, lifting his head from Sehun’s side so he can stare right at him, Sehun’s eyes starting to water sympathetically as he sees that Jongdae’s close to tears again. “He looked at me like I was the most disgusting thing he’d ever seen and then he started backing away from me and he basically ran out of there, look, he even forgot his cell phone, he was in that much of a hurry to get away from me-”
And here Jongdae reaches into his pocket and pulls out a sleek cell phone, waving it back and forth in the air a bit too hysterically for Sehun’s liking. Sehun quickly wrenches the phone out of Jongdae’s grasp, then pulls up Jongdae’s chin until he’s looking at him.
“Jongdae,” he says. “You just need to go talk to him. It’s possible it was all just a misunderstanding. At the very least you need to give him his phone back.”
“I was so stupid,” Jongdae moans, not even listening. “Why would someone like him ever like someone like me? He’s got everything-fancy car, top student government position, amazing grades. What do I have? Nothing. He’s probably laughing right now with his friends about how fucking stupid I was, how I thought just because he was always nice to me and gave me that smile and held my hand that one time kind of on accident-”
“Jongdae,” Sehun says loudly, cutting across his rant. “I’m serious. You need to just talk to him. Go back to your room, go to bed, and then in the morning e-mail him and tell him you want to return his phone. You’re going to have to see him anyway at that meeting on Friday, right? So pull yourself together.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” Jongdae mutters, heaving himself upright and wiping his eyes. Sehun sighs and rises as well, opening the door to his room. “Thanks, Sehun.”
“Anytime,” Sehun says, giving Jongdae a tired smile he doesn’t quite feel. As soon as the door shuts, Sehun leans against it, head pounding.
If you tell me that, I might be able to forget how selfish you are.
And Sehun doesn’t really care about what other people think of him, but he’s starting to think that maybe he doesn’t deserve people like Jongdae caring about him. He knows he’d never be able to survive without his friends. But it worries him that they don’t seem to mind that he takes and takes and barely gives anything in return.
Turning back to his computer, Sehun slumps down in his chair and tries to force his eyes to stay open. The choreography can wait until tomorrow.
He’s surprised, to say the least, when his calculus professor asks him to stay back after class on Wednesday. As he waits for the last few students to ask their questions and leave, he wonders what he could have possibly done wrong. Sure, he’s slept through every lecture but he’s also aced every test so it’s not like there’s anything to complain about, right? There was that one time his professor may or may not have caught Sehun imitating him to Chanyeol before class started. Maybe that was what this was about. Best apologetic face pasted on, Sehun’s ready when his professor distractedly waves him over.
That’s when he realizes with a start that there’s a boy standing behind the professor’s desk, half-hidden by the podium.
“Oh Sehun, this is Kim Jongin,” his professor says, motioning for the two boys to shake hands, which they do. Sehun realizes with another little start that this is the boy he nearly made Chanyeol trample the first day of class. He can’t tell if Jongin recognizes him-he’s staring determinedly at his feet, as if hoping the ground will open up and swallow him whole.
“I’m going to ask you for a favor,” the professor says. “I was wondering if you would be able to take a few hours a week and tutor Jongin here. It wouldn’t be a big commitment-anything would help, I’m sure-and since you’re my top student I’m sure you wouldn’t have any trouble.”
“I-” But protests about having a lot of work and not being able to take on any extra responsibilities die on the tip of Sehun’s tongue as he sees the way Jongin winces, seeming to fold up into himself in embarrassment. “I would love to. No trouble at all.”
The professor seems surprised, but smiles warmly. Sehun ignores him, focusing instead on the way Jongin’s eyes widen in surprise, flicking up to meet Sehun’s before falling back to the floor. Then the professor is standing, saying something about arranging meeting times themselves, and sweeping out the door, leaving the two of them alone.
“You don’t have to do this,” Jongin whispers, so softly Sehun can almost pretend he hasn’t spoken. “I’m not doing that badly. And it’s only halfway through the quarter, I’m sure I can get my grade up if I just work really hard…I think…”
“No, really, it’s fine,” Sehun says with a smile, and he’s not sure why he’s being so nice because he’s taking more than the recommended number of classes this quarter besides trying to choreograph this stupid dance for Baekhyun and Jongdae and he also wanted to start taking voice lessons but for whatever reason he doesn’t want Jongin looking so miserable. He wants to make him smile. If Jongdae were around, Sehun would look at him and say, “Challenge accepted.”
“Well, thanks,” Jongin says, in a slightly stronger voice. “Do Tuesdays and Thursdays work for you? We can do an hour each day-I don’t have much time because of dance practice.”
“You’re a dancer?” Sehun asks interestedly, but Jongin seems to be done talking. He simply stares at Sehun until he inclines his head slightly, and before Sehun can say anything more Jongin is hitching his bag onto his shoulders and rushing out the door.
“Well, that was strange,” Sehun says to himself. Turning to look at the empty classroom, he shakes his head slowly and then heads out himself, planning to grab a quick dinner before going back to his room to work.
He knows as soon as he walks into the dining hall and hears voices yelling his name that his quick dinner just evaporated into smoke.
“Sehun!” Minseok shouts, waving him over to a table where Jongdae, Baekhyun, and Chanyeol are already sitting. With a resigned sigh, Sehun shuffles over, purposefully dumping his heavy bag on Jongdae’s foot. Over Jongdae’s squeals of pain, Sehun sits down and smiles at his friends.
“What happened to you after math?” Chanyeol asks, shoving a too-big piece of chicken in his mouth. Sehun smirks at the way Baekhyun can’t seem to take his eyes off Chanyeol’s lips. “I was looking for you on the way out but you just disappeared.”
“The professor asked me to stay back, wants me to tutor some kid,” Sehun says nonchalantly, stealing a piece of chicken from Baekhyun’s plate. Baekhyun looks like he’s about to protest but Sehun shoots a significant glance in Chanyeol’s direction and Baekhyun pales before leaning back in his seat.
“And of course you said no,” Jongdae says with a laugh. “Poor kid, I wonder if he’ll ever get over the rejection.”
“Actually, I said yes,” Sehun says quickly, using Baekhyun’s chopsticks to shovel some rice into his mouth. When he looks up, everyone is staring at him in shock. “What?”
“Well, you kind of just spent the last month complaining all the time about how much work you had?” Minseok says hesitantly. “And now you’re taking on more work by agreeing to tutor this random guy from your math class? That doesn’t sound like you.”
“What can I say?” Sehun says, ignoring the way everyone’s eyes are getting wider by the second. “I’m a sucker for public service.”
“Sehun, when that charity for cancer research set up a table in the quad asking for donations, you laughed at them,” Baekhyun says, and Sehun doesn’t miss the way Baekhyun’s eyes light up as Chanyeol laughs loudly.
“Well, this is different,” Sehun says. “I don’t know, hopefully I won’t end up doing it for a long time. I just felt bad for the guy, you know?”
“Well, remind me to send him flowers, whoever he is,” Jongdae says, stuffing a piece of bread into his mouth. “He managed to do the impossible and get Sehun to feel bad for someone besides himself.”
“Oh, shut it,” Sehun snorts, but the image of Jongin’s hopeful face flashes through his mind and suddenly the room feels uncomfortably hot. Maybe Sehun’s getting sick.
Their first tutoring session the next day gets off to a bad start. Sehun gets stuck in lab for an extra fifteen minutes after some idiot named Wu Fan decides he doesn’t really need to use the fume hood for his experiment and ends up setting off the fire alarm and getting them all evacuated from the building. And then, when he rushes into the coffee shop where they’d agreed to meet, he can’t see Jongin anywhere. Worried that he left after deciding Sehun wasn’t showing up, Sehun wanders back and forth between the tables, scanning face after face for the one he’s looking for.
“Can I help you find someone?” a voice asks from behind him, and Sehun jumps around to see a frighteningly angelic-looking boy standing there staring at him. The boy is wearing an apron and a nametag that says, “Luhan” so apparently he works in the shop. Sehun eyes his crisp blue button-down, milky white skin, and fluffy golden hair distrustfully before deciding he might as well take a chance.
“Yeah, I’m looking for someone named Kim Jongin?” he says.
“Oh, Jongin!” Luhan says with a disarmingly bright smile, and points towards a table all the way at the back of the shop. “So you must be Sehun the tutor. Nice to meet you! You’re a lot cuter than I expected.”
“Um…yeah, nice to meet you too…” Sehun mumbles, a bit dazed by Luhan’s enthusiasm, before quickly heading off in the direction Luhan had indicated.
“Hey,” he says apologetically, throwing himself down in the seat next to Jongin. “I’m so, so sorry for being late! Some idiot set off the fire alarm in the chem building and we all had to evacuate and it was just a big mess. Hey, do you want to give me your phone number? That way I can contact you if something like this happens again.”
“What?” Jongin asks, staring at Sehun with something halfway between fear and what looks to Sehun like excitement. It’s kind of strange. “You want my phone number?”
“Well, yeah,” Sehun says, confused. “I mean, if we’re going to be doing this regularly, it makes sense we should be able to contact each other in case something happens.”
“Right, right,” Jongin says quickly, shoving his phone into Sehun’s hand before he can react. “Here, just put your number in, and then text me yours.”
“Oh, okay,” Sehun says, a little flustered by all the abrupt motion. That seems to be the way Jongin is-he can’t sit still for more than a few minutes, some part of him always has to be moving. It makes Sehun’s head spin a little. “So, should we start?”
“Yeah, lets,” Jongin groans, opening his textbook. “I should warn you, though, I have no idea what any of this means. The explanations in class never make any sense to me!”
“It’s fine, we’ll go through it slowly,” Sehun says, as he starts talking about derivatives and integrals-formulas and problem-solving steps he’s had ingrained in his head for so long it feels strange to think of someone not knowing them.
Jongin’s fairly quick, which pleases Sehun-he’s never been particularly patient-but he’s always second-guessing himself, treating every problem as wrong until proven right unlike Sehun, who just assumes he’s done everything right unless someone points out a flaw. But it’s nice seeing Jongin smile every time Sehun assures him he’s done a good job, and the way his warm hand keeps brushing against Sehun’s as he scribbles numbers down on the page is nice too. Sehun doesn’t even notice how much time has passed until Jongin gets a text message-the loud ding startling them both out of their reverie.
“Oh, I have to go,” Jongin says, giving Sehun an apologetic grin. “But I think this might actually work! I’ll see you Tuesday? Well, Monday in class maybe. See you?”
“Yeah, see you,” Sehun says, mesmerized by the way Jongin’s muscles stretch and flex under his thin t-shirt as he stands, shoving books into his backpack. Jongin gives him another small smile, then turns and slips into the crowd of people surrounding them, heading for the door.
“Thanks for doing this,” a voice says in his ear and Sehun jerks violently. Spinning around, he sees Luhan standing there with a lopsided grin on his face. “Sorry for scaring you.”
He doesn’t sound very sorry at all, Sehun thinks vengefully, but he can’t be too mad because of what Luhan says next.
“Jongin’s really afraid of people thinking he’s weak, that he can’t handle things on his own. It took me nearly a month just to convince him that the professor recommending he get a tutor didn’t mean he was about to get kicked out of school. So I’m glad you’re the one who’s going to be working with him.”
“Why?” Sehun asks, confused as to what he could have done to give Luhan so much trust in him. He doesn’t even trust himself to do this job right.
“You seem really patient and kind,” Luhan says with a shrug, gesturing to the books and papers still spread across the table. “Jongin needs people like that. People who can help him without making him feel like he’s a failure.”
“Well, I’ll try,” Sehun laughs nervously as Luhan turns away with a smile and a little wave. He’s pretty sure Luhan was trying to be nice, so he’s not sure why he suddenly feels like he can’t breathe.
“Sehun, I was wondering-”
“Not now, Chanyeol!” Sehun yells, continuing to throw books into his backpack at top speed. He only has ten minutes to get from calculus to a group meeting for the upcoming project on themes in British literature, and then after that he has an extra tutoring session with Jongin because they have a midterm coming up next week and he is not in the mood to deal with Chanyeol’s problems.
“I just wanted to ask you-”
“NOPE,” Sehun says, trying to simultaneously cover his ears and swing his backpack onto his shoulder. “NO TIME SEE YOU LATER.”
“Hey!” Chanyeol says, grabbing Sehun’s arms and pulling them down, ignoring the murderous glare Sehun is giving him. “I just wanted to say that you should invite Jongin to eat with us tonight. Him and those kids I always see him hanging out with. I mean, you’ve been spending so much time with him recently, we’re all dying to meet him!”
“Did Baekhyun put you up to this?” Sehun asks suspiciously, noting with surprise that a slight blush spreads across Chanyeol’s cheeks when he says Baekhyun’s name.
“No!” Chanyeol says a little too loudly, dropping Sehun’s arms before he recovers himself. “We all just thought it would be fun!”
“Well, we’ll see,” Sehun says, pushing past Chanyeol, but the gears in his head are already starting to turn. Would Jongin even say yes to an invitation? I mean, sure, Sehun’s been spending several hours alone with him every week, and Jongin’s even taken to sitting next to Sehun during class rather than hiding out at the back of the room, but Sehun wouldn’t really say they’re friends. And maybe they’ve talked a bit about their favorite music-Jongin likes country and pop and Sehun had scoffed and said that rock and electronic were his favorites at the moment-and their majors-chemistry and performing arts-and what they want to do with the rest of their lives-solve the world’s energy crisis, let people escape the real world for a while and make them smile-but that doesn’t mean they’re friends.
Still, as he sees Jongin waving at him with a bright smile from their usual table at the back of the coffee shop, Sehun can’t help but think that maybe he should go for it anyway. Who knows? Jongin might say yes.
“Wow, you look really tired,” Jongin says worriedly as Sehun sits down, running a hand over his face wearily.
“Naw, I’m fine,” Sehun laughs. “Just tired of thinking about themes in the Shakespeare play my group is analyzing for our project. There’s only so long you can examine every individual word, you know?”
“Shakespeare,” Jongin says thoughtfully, as if carefully considering the word. “I haven’t read any of his stuff since high school. Our teacher made us read those sonnets people think he wrote to his male lover or whatever.”
“Yeah, all his plays definitely have some strange romantic situations going on,” Sehun snorts.
“He must have been a pretty weird guy to come up with stuff like A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Jongin says with a smile.
“Well, of course he was weird!” Sehun laughs. “I mean, he thought he was in love with another man!”
It takes him a minute to realize that Jongin isn’t smiling along with him. Instead, he’s frozen in place, staring at a spot on the table.
“I mean, not that I-I didn’t mean it like that,” Sehun stutters quickly, trying to repair the damage he’s done. “I don’t have anything against gay people!”
“Of course,” Jongin says, recovering himself enough to give Sehun a strained smile. Oh, great, now Sehun’s offended him. “Should we start working then? I don’t want to keep you from your other projects.”
“Yeah, sure,” Sehun says, and before he can stop himself he’s adding, “and I was wondering if you might want to eat dinner with me and my friends tonight? You can bring your friends-Luhan and whoever else? I just thought…I mean, they want to meet you and I-”
“That sounds like fun,” Jongin says smoothly, eyes focused on the textbook in front of him as he slowly begins to copy out a few practice problems. “We’ll be there.”
“Oh. Great!” Sehun says, not sure why he feels so let down. Shaking his head, he decides he’s going to just try to forget any of this ever happened. Oh, and he’ll punch Chanyeol really hard the next time he sees him.
“OW!” Chanyeol yells when Sehun greets him at the table. “What was that for? What did my poor left arm ever do to you?”
“That was for making me invite Jongin to dinner,” Sehun hisses, sitting down in his chair. Chanyeol looks at him with wide, sad eyes, and Sehun groans. “It’s just going to be really awkward and weird. And stop rubbing your shoulder, you big baby, why don’t you just go get Baekhyun to kiss it better for you?”
“What are you-what?” Chanyeol gasps, whipping his head around as if expecting Baekhyun to be standing behind him. Sehun snickers, glad to see that part two of his plan to punish Park Chanyeol for putting him in this position is working.
“Oh, look, here he comes now!” Sehun says brightly, standing up to wave to Baekhyun as he enters the hall, Jongdae hot on his heels, eyes glued to the phone in his hand. He doesn’t look up, even as Sehun tries to yell something to Baekhyun and Chanyeol slaps a hand over his mouth.
“So, I’m guessing that thing with Junmyeon worked itself out,” Sehun says sarcastically, leaning over the table to look at the name on the top of Jongdae’s texting screen.
“Magnificently,” Jongdae says breathlessly, turning off his phone and placing it down on the tabletop. “We might actually go on a date soon!”
“Wait, so all that making out in the back room of the computer lab didn’t count as dating?” Baekhyun asks pleasantly, laughing when Jongdae shoots him a venomous look.
“Junmyeon is busy,” Jongdae sniffs. “But he’s very romantic. Did you know he’s put a rose outside my room every day for the past two weeks?”
While everyone is busy pretending to vomit into their plates, Jongdae turns, then starts to wave at a group of people heading towards them. Sehun, who’s just taking a sip of water, starts choking very embarrassingly as soon as he sees who it is.
“Is he all right?” Zitao asks worriedly, eyeing Sehun’s quickly reddening face and increasingly loud coughs.
“Yeah, yeah, he’s fine,” Chanyeol laughs, slapping Sehun so hard on the back he thinks he might have dislodged a lung.
“It was nice of you to invite us to eat with you,” Kyungsoo-a small, kind boy Sehun recognizes from his literature class-says politely, and Yixing elbows him in the side as he sits down, making Jongin laugh as he settles into the seat exactly opposite Sehun. Though Sehun didn’t see Luhan come in with the rest of Jongin’s posse, he’s suddenly fitting himself into the space between Yixing and Kyungsoo, slinging an arm around both of their shoulders as he greets everyone at the table.
“So how many of you watch soccer?” Luhan asks, and the conversation quickly rises into a flurry of discussions about classes, professors, sports teams, and upcoming campus events. Sehun is pretending to be interested in Jongdae’s long-winded discussion of the amazing work Junmyeon is doing with bringing more representation to the students when he realizes that Jongin is watching him.
He’s subtle about it, Sehun has to admit. The glances are so intermittent and quick that Sehun can almost pretend they aren’t happening at all. But then Jongin’s eyes will slip off whoever’s talking and instead slide across the curve of Sehun’s lips, or the column of his throat when he’s turned sideways, arguing with Yixing and Chanyeol about the best video game to play while drunk. Whenever Sehun tries to catch his eye, though, Jongin immediately looks away, becoming very interested in what Baekhyun’s saying all the way at the other end of the table. It’s frustrating, to say the least. Sehun’s not used to people trying to hide their interest in him, even if in Jongin’s case it’s probably just interest in being friends.
Soojung had always been obvious with him, constantly dropping things when he was around so she could bend down and pick them up, and later when they were actually dating she made sure to brush past him in the hallways, breasts pressing softly against his arm. He had always been annoyed when she did that-it made it hard for him to walk, and it hadn’t exactly done anything for his libido. She just hadn’t been the right girl for him. That was all it was.
“Hey! Pass a napkin, would you?” Yixing asks, snapping Sehun out of his reverie, and he almost doesn’t notice the way Jongin’s eyes narrow when Sehun hands Yixing the napkin and their hands brush.
“I think that’s all my brain can handle for today,” Jongin groans, leaning back in his chair and stretching and Sehun hates the way his eyes are immediately drawn to the thin band of golden skin that’s suddenly exposed.
“Well, I think you’re almost ready for this final,” Sehun says with a weary smile. Jongin laughs, sitting up again. The band of skin disappears.
“Luckily it’s still a few weeks away. I definitely need more practice. But I’ve been doing so much better since you decided to teach me, thank you.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Sehun say, waving away Jongin’s gratitude like he would a particularly irritating bug. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Well, I really mean it,” Jongin says, standing up and pulling on his jacket. “But now I guess I should head over to the library and memorize some lines. We have a run-through of Scene II of Arcadia in class tomorrow and I’m not ready at all.”
“Hey, I’m heading that way, too,” Sehun says, and Jongin shivers slightly. “Do you mind if I come with you?”
“Yeah, sure, let’s go,” Jongin says with a laugh that can’t quite hide the way his fingers are twitching.
It’s dark by the time they get outside, and they find their way using the light streaming out of nearby building windows. They’re walking slowly, without speaking, and Sehun notices that Jongin keeps sneaking glances at him. Sehun wonders what he’s looking for. They’re just taking a detour around the side of the language building when Sehun snaps. He can’t take this anymore-all these feelings that he doesn’t know how to interpret. Before he can stop himself, before he can think better of what he’s about to do, he’s grabbed Jongin’s arm, holding him in place. Jongin looks up at him in confusion, trying to brush off Sehun’s hand.
“Sehun?” he asks, voice low and quiet in the night air and it only serves to make Sehun more desperate.
“Jongin,” he whispers, and he hears Jongin’s breath catch at the roughness in his voice. “I want-I think-”
And then he’s leaning forward, capturing Jongin’s lips with his own, moving only a little too roughly. Jongin seems alarmed at first but he’s quick to pull Sehun closer, fisting his hands in Sehun’s sweater, gasping when Sehun bites down a bit too hard on his bottom lip. Sehun can taste blood in his mouth and he’s opening his mouth to mumble an apology when suddenly Jongin’s sliding his tongue across his bottom lip, and Sehun lets out a soft moan instead, wondering why Jongin’s lips are so much softer than Soojung’s ever were, why Jongin’s hands tracing along his shoulders, his stomach, send uncontrollable shivers whizzing down Sehun’s spine.
Sehun leans in to deepen the kiss and Jongin whines against his mouth-a thin reedy sound that Sehun can’t get enough of, and then it’s Sehun’s turn to gasp as Jongin slips a knee between his thighs, pressing gently against his groin. Sehun is already embarrassingly hard, something that’s never happened so quickly, and his head is spinning as Jongin shifts even closer, so close Sehun can feel his heart beating, can feel Jongin’s own erection pressing against his thigh. And that’s when Sehun suddenly jumps backwards, untangling his fingers from Jongin’s hair, tearing their mouths apart.
Jongin glances up at him, startled, and Sehun can’t look away fast enough to avoid seeing the way his eyes are wide with confusion and hurt, his lips swollen and glistening. Sehun runs his tongue along the back of his teeth and he can still taste Jongin in his mouth. Jongin takes a step forward, reaching for Sehun, but Sehun backs up again, avoiding his hands. Now he can’t ignore the way Jongin’s eyes are glittering a bit too brightly in the dim light filtering out a nearby window.
“I thought you wanted-I thought-” Jongin mumbles, hair falling over his eyes, and he seems to be shrinking as Sehun watches, folding up into himself just as he had the first day Sehun met him.
“Jongin, I…” Sehun tries, but trails off when he realizes he has nothing to say.
“No, don’t worry,” Jongin says bitterly, clenching his hands into fists. “It’s nothing. I should have known better. After everything you’ve said…”
“No, Jongin, wait-” And Sehun’s not sure why exactly he wants Jongin to wait, but it doesn’t matter anyway because Jongin is already whirling on his heel and stalking back into the darkness. Sehun suddenly feels very cold.
“Are you all right?” Chanyeol asks as he walks up to Sehun in the library. Sehun is technically studying, but his book has been open to the same page for the past hour, his cheek pressed firmly against the slick paper.
“No,” Sehun moans, lashing out angrily with his arm in the hopes that he’ll hit Chanyeol and maybe that will make him go away. He hasn’t gotten a full night’s sleep in a week, schoolwork and Jongin’s face preventing him from feeling rested. Last night he’d had a terrible dream-he’d looked up from his laptop and suddenly Jongin was there, in his room, pressing his against the wall, kissing Sehun so hard he couldn’t think straight, and then Jongin had pulled down Sehun’s pants, grinning widely as he’d taken Sehun into his mouth and all Sehun could do was moan and twitch as Jongin licked up the underside of his cock. And then all of a sudden Jongin had disappeared and Sehun had awoken feeling incredibly disoriented, face stuck to his desk, underwear soaked and sticky. Damn it, Sehun’s getting hard again just thinking about it. What is wrong with him?
“Okay, well, that definitely doesn’t sound like a plea for help,” Chanyeol laughs, pulling out the chair next to Sehun and settling himself down. “Come on, tell Uncle Park what’s wrong.”
“I am going to punch you so hard you’ll be called ‘teethless’ instead of ‘teethrich,’” Sehun groans, but Chanyeol just laughs again.
“Come on, it’s all going to be okay,” he says, patting Sehun sympathetically on the back. “Unless you just found out you’re suffering from a terminal illness in which case it won’t be okay.”
“I hate you,” Sehun mutters into his sleeve. But then a thought comes to him and he sits up so suddenly Chanyeol’s arm hits the back of his chair.
“Whoa, are you all right?” Chanyeol asks, massaging his wrist.
“Chanyeol, you’re gay,” Sehun says with all the tact of a rhinoceros in a china shop. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
“Is this because of Baekhyun?” Chanyeol hisses breathlessly. “Because we’re just good friends.”
“Yeah, right, we all know you want to stick your tongues down each other’s throats,” Sehun grumbles. “And you forget that I’m the only person you told about the little ‘chat’ you had with Kyunhyun back at the high school dance after your date dumped you for staring at his ass instead of hers the whole night.”
“Okay, fine,” Chanyeol says, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “What about it? Or actually, can we go back to the part about Baekhyun wanting to stick his tongue down my throat? I think I’d like to stop talking about your problems and start talking about that.”
“How did you know?” Sehun asks desperately, flopping facedown onto the table.
“Um…it’s kind of obvious?” Chanyeol says, giving Sehun’s prone body a confused look. “I mean, especially for guys it’s kind of hard to avoid noticing what sort of things make you…you know…”
“You are without a doubt the worst explainer of things in the world,” Sehun groans, rolling his head sideways so he can glare at Chanyeol.
“Why?” Chanyeol asks, poking at Sehun’s nose. “Is Sehun having some boy trouble? Is a certain incredibly attractive yet incredibly confusing Kim Jongin giving him problems?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sehun mutters, before the full meaning of what Chanyeol’s just said hits him. “Wait. What! How do you know about Jongin?”
“Okay, first of all, you all make fun of me for being oblivious, but at least I know what I want,” Chanyeol says infuriatingly. “I thought actually dating a girl was the lowest you were ever going to stoop in the whole ‘lying to yourself’ thing, but if you tell me you don’t have feelings for Jongin then I’ll be proven wrong.”
“I don’t have feelings for fucking Kim fucking Jongin,” Sehun spits viciously, ignoring the disappointed look he knows Chanyeol is giving him. “He just confuses me, is all.”
“Right,” Chanyeol says, patting Sehun on the back. “Well, I’ll leave you to that, then.”
Sehun’s not sure whether he wants to show up to their next tutoring session, but since he can’t bring himself to text Jongin and cancel he’s already waiting at the coffee shop by the time Jongin arrives, looking windswept and happy in a way that makes Sehun’s heart ache. Luhan waves at Jongin and he smiles in return-a smile so blindingly bright it reminds Sehun of the floodlights they use in the theater where Jongin performs. It washes out everything behind it, blending together all the small details and slight changes in favor of exacerbating striking differences.
“Hello,” Jongin says, a bit formally, as he sits down. Sehun shifts his chair ever so slightly to the right so they’re not touching.
“Listen, Jongin, I just wanted to tell you that what happened the other night was a mistake,” Sehun says flatly, ignoring the way Jongin’s smile crumples slightly at the edges. “I’m sorry if you thought I meant anything by it.”
“Of course,” Jongin says softly, eyes fixed on the textbook in front of him, and Sehun wants to throw up. “I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable.”
“It’s fine,” Sehun says quickly, before realizing how arrogant that sounds-accepting Jongin’s apology for something that’s out of his control, something that’s mostly Sehun’s fault. But Jongin is different from Sehun because he can’t control himself. He can’t see that what they did will only end up with Sehun’s life being complicated in ways he doesn’t want to have to deal with. Whatever there was between them is finished. It has to be.
When Jongin leaves after half an hour, claiming a headache, Sehun doesn’t blame him.
What Sehun’s not prepared for is Kyungsoo cornering him after class, glaring at him so ferociously that Sehun has trouble remembering that Kyungsoo’s actually shorter than he is.
“I don’t know who you think you are,” Kyungsoo hisses angrily, and Sehun flinches. “But I’m going to tell you right now that you’re a heartless bastard, and you could never hope to deserve someone like Jongin.”
Then Kyungsoo knees him, hard, and Sehun sinks to the ground gasping in pain as Kyungsoo stalks out. That’s where Jongdae finds him ten minutes later, helping him up and only laughing a little at Sehun’s plight.
“Remind me never to mess with Kyungsoo,” Jongdae says seriously as they walk across the grass towards Sehun’s dorm. “But seriously, what did you do to make him so angry?”
“Nothing!” Sehun whines, wincing at every step. “Well, not to him anyway.”
“What does that mean?” Jongdae asks, giving Sehun a suspicious look.
“I may have been…a little mean to Jongin,” Sehun says quickly, hoping Jongdae will drop the subject in light of his obvious distress. Of course, Jongdae doesn’t.
“Wait, Jongin?” he crows, and if Sehun weren’t injured he would be shoving him over into the dirt right now. “I knew it! But wait…what did you do to him?”
“Nothing. Never mind,” Sehun says, and he refuses to speak for the rest of the trip back to his room, even when Jongdae threatens to knee him again.
Unfortunately, even if he manages to shut out the rest of the world, he can’t shut out the traitorous murmurings of his own brain. His stupid brain, which keeps remembering how soft Jongin’s skin had been under his fingers, how Jongin’s breathy gasps had made Sehun feel so powerful and so weak at the same time, how the taste of Jongin’s mouth-a strange mixture of mint toothpaste and sugar from the hard candies he’d been eating earlier-should have been gross but wasn’t. Frantically, Sehun digs out a pile of old comics he’d been planning to throw out, paging through them until he finds drawings of big-breasted anime girls, staring hard and willing himself to feel something, anything besides mild disgust and uneasiness.
Images from his dream keep flashing through his head, the way Jongin’s lips had looked stretched around his cock, the way the touch of Jongin’s hand had made him groan with pleasure, the way Jongin had gazed at him with hooded eyes, daring Sehun to come closer, to open himself up to what he was feeling. Throwing himself onto his bed, shoving headphones over his ears, Sehun tries to will himself to sleep. But, try as he might, the image of Jongin leaving the coffee shop, eyes brimming with tears that refuse to fall, mouth twisted into a grim line, refuses to disappear.
“I’m so sorry I couldn’t get to this earlier,” Sehun gasps, nearly jogging as he tries to keep up with Baekhyun’s strides. For a short kid, he walks surprisingly fast. “I know a week isn’t very long to teach the choreography for an entire song to a large group of people, but I’ve just been so busy-”
“Sehun, it’s fine,” Baekhyun says reassuringly, giving Sehun a look so full of pity that Sehun wants to slap him. “We all know you’ve been going through a lot.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Sehun asks angrily, but Baekhyun quickly pulls open the door to the auditorium, cutting him off.
“Okay, so these are your potential dancers,” Baekhyun says, pointing towards a group of fifteen or so people spread out across the stage, stretching and chatting happily. “Run through it a few times, then let me know who you want. I’ve already got costumes all lined up so this is the last bit that needs to be finalized-”
But Sehun doesn’t hear the rest of Baekhyun’s words because he’s stopped dead, staring up at the stage.
“Sehun?” Baekhyun asks, turning around when he realizes the other boy isn’t with him anymore.
“Yes?” Sehun asks, eyes fixed on the stage.
“Everything… all right?” Baekhyun asks hesitantly, eyes widening when he follows Sehun’s gaze up to the stage. “Are you sure you can do this?”
“Of course I can,” Sehun says, brushing past Baekhyun perhaps a little more roughly than strictly necessary. He sees Jongin turn towards him as he strides towards the front of the stage before reminding himself that he’s not supposed to be looking. He’s given all that up.
“Hello, everyone, my name is Oh Sehun,” he says once he’s onstage and he has everyone’s attention. “I’m the one who choreographed this dance as a favor for my politically-inclined friends-I’m sure you know the feeling. I’m going to eventually want to cut the group down to seven or eight but for now let’s see how you all do!”
So they start, and Sehun is incredibly distracted by the way Jongin seems to pick up the choreography quicker than anyone else, the way the movements Sehun’s designed seem so much more fluid and vibrant when he performs them. Sehun starts to regret putting so many pelvic thrusts and crotch grabs into his dance. It gets a little ridiculous, especially since Jongin makes these faces when he dances, almost as if he can’t help himself, so caught up in the movement of his body that he forgets he’s being watched.
When they stop for a break, dancers flopping tiredly onto the floor, Sehun pushes his sweaty bangs out of his eyes and pretends not to see the way Jongin’s staring at him from his spot on the other side of the dance floor. Why is the kid so entirely incapable of being subtle? But then Sehun sees that Jongin isn’t resting like the rest of them-instead, he’s going through the movements again and again, motions getting a bit jerkier every time as his muscles protest the continued abuse. Eventually, Sehun can’t take it anymore and he stalks over until he’s standing directly in front of Jongin, arms crossed angrily over his chest.
“Stop it,” he hisses, and Jongin pretends not to hear him so he says it again. “Jongin, stop, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
“And why-” Jongin grunts, spinning just a little too fast, “-would you care?”
“Because I-” Sehun starts to say, but luckily he doesn’t have to think of a way to end the sentence because Jongin’s ankle suddenly gives out on the landing and he’s falling, Sehun instinctively swinging his arms up to catch him.
“Jongin, are you all right?” Yixing calls from where he’s leaning against the wall, taking long gulps of water.
“Yeah, just fine,” Jongin yells back, wrenching himself out of Sehun’s grasp and limping over to Yixing before collapsing against the wall, angrily rubbing his ankle.
“Wow, you really fucked up, didn’t you?” Baekhyun says with an annoyingly sympathetic whistle, wandering up from his spot watching from the comfort of a theater seat.
“Shut up,” Sehun spits, tearing his eyes away from the back wall, where Yixing’s now leaning down, body covering Jongin’s from sight as he helps Jongin press a cold pack against his ankle. “There was never anything there for me to fuck up.”
“You keep telling yourself that,” Baekhyun says with a sigh, and Sehun suddenly wants to say something cruel, wants to lie to Baekhyun and tell him that Chanyeol doesn’t like boys, wants to tell him that Chanyeol will never like him back because why should Baekhyun have a chance at happiness when Jongin is sitting over there resting his head on Yixing’s shoulder and Sehun can’t stand it.
But then Sehun imagines the way Baekhyun’s face would fall when he threw the words at him like knives, and for some reason Baekhyun’s face keeps morphing into Jongin’s, the expression the same one Jongin had worn when he had fled the coffee shop that day, and oh.
“Baekhyun,” Sehun says instead, eyes wide. “Was Jongin in love with me?”
“You are quite possibly the cruelest bastard I have ever had the misfortune of knowing,” Baekhyun says simply, before slipping back down the stairs and into the dark belly of the auditorium.
And even though Sehun manages to hold himself together for the next hour of going over the movements of his dance again and again, his thoughts are far away from the dance floor, images flashing wildly through his mind. Jongin staring at him over the table when he thought Sehun wasn’t looking. Jongin laughing so brightly when Sehun made a terrible joke during one of their tutoring sessions. Jongin’s hands coming up to trace soft patterns along Sehun’s collarbones when they kissed. And Sehun doesn’t know what these feelings are that are bubbling up inside of him, doesn’t know what exactly Jongin makes him feel. But he likes it. He wants more of it. And there’s only one way to get that.
“Please let me in,” Sehun says quickly, sticking his foot into the small space that opens up between the doorframe and the door before Jongin can slam it closed again.
“I have nothing to say to you,” Jongin mutters, and his voice is hard and unforgiving and Sehun almost turns around and walks away right then and there. But then he reminds himself why he’s doing this, why he decided Jongin was someone worth keeping around.
“Jongin, I…I made a mistake,” Sehun mutters, noting the way Jongin has stopped trying to shove the door closed. “I shouldn’t have just pushed you away like that. But I didn’t really know how you felt and I really didn’t know how I felt and it was all just a big mistake.”
“So kissing me was just a big mistake?” Jongin asks coldly, and Sehun curses the way his stomach curls pleasantly as he glances up at Jongin’s dark eyes, his soft mouth.
“No! That’s not what I mean!” Sehun yells, voice loud in the narrow hallway. “What was a mistake was the way I pushed you away, without any explanation. I want you, Jongin. I…I like you.”
“Why?” Jongin asks, and suddenly Sehun is at a loss for words. His brain seems to have packed up and completely abandoned him, leaving him at the mercy of his senses, which are screaming to him about the warmth of Jongin’s hands, the slickness of his tongue, the way his lithe body had curved around Sehun’s in exactly the right way. But Sehun doesn’t think that’s what Jongin wants to hear, and that’s not really all Sehun likes about Jongin, is it? After several seconds of silence pass, though, Jongin’s had enough.
“Goodbye, Sehun,” he says, slamming his whole body against the door so hard Sehun’s foot is pushed backwards, out of the way. Through the door, Sehun thinks he hears a sob, but maybe it’s just his imagination.
Part 2