sha sha sha (1/2)
sha sha sha
~16,400w; pg-13 (dk/jaehyun)
seokmin meets his first love again, three years later.
a/n: this is the result of me realizing jaehyun never talks about dk. this fic literally moves at a snail's pace, it's. so. long. dedicated to kalopsia, who reassured me that at least one person (you) would read this fic even if it turned out to be 15k, and pearlfuchsia, because seokmin is her sunshine lol! thank you for urging me on because i honestly almost called it quits halfway ♥
Seungkwan wakes up bright and early at eleven in his dorm room with the curtains still covering the windows. It’s a great start to the morning - he’s feeling refreshed as he climbs down from the top bunk to see a still-sleeping Vernon-shaped lump, unmoving in the bottom bed. But he can’t find it in himself to get annoyed that Vernon doesn’t have any Monday classes today, he’s feeling great, and reaches over the battleground that is his desk, covered with the assignments he stayed up until five to finish, to turn on his lamp -
Only to scream when he sees Seokmin laying on his floor, curled small in a fetal position, wishing it was humanly possible to crawl back into his mother’s womb.
“What the fuck are you doing in my room?” Seungkwan screeches, flipping on the lights. The Vernon-shaped lump vaguely stirs in the bottom bunk. He suddenly regrets telling Seokmin that he leaves his keycard under the flap of welcome week flyers. And his PIN code. Seokmin, still in that damn fetal position, just lets out what sounds like a cry for help.
Seungkwan squints, unable to decipher it. “What was that, hyung?”
Seokmin uncurls slightly so his mouth isn’t pressed against his right knee. “I saw Jung Jaehyun,” he says, eyes wide.
Seungkwan sighs, wondering what he did to deserve this, and kicks him.
Things could’ve gone worse, Seungkwan supplied. Things could’ve gone worse was a sentiment Seungkwan reserved only for his friends who either fucked up bad or embarrassed themselves colossally. In other words, Seokmin doesn’t feel comforted at all.
The morning was already bad to begin with. Seokmin’s last prerequisite for his major required an eight AM lecture three times a week, thirty minutes from the dorms, with a lab on top of that. He’d been up until four the night before finishing the homework for said class and woken up with a crick in his neck from passing out on the floor, and, upon realizing he’d hit snooze on his alarm twice, brushed his teeth and changed out of his pajamas in record time before speed walking to class. When he was halfway there, Seokmin realized he was wearing his pants backwards when trying to stick his phone in his non-existent butt pockets.
The only good thing about how ungodly far the lecture hall was from the rest of civilization was that there was a PokeStop right outside. It had the dual purpose of keeping him occupied whenever he showed up ten minutes early and warding off his premature mid-life crisis thoughts, which was always a plus. So there he was that Monday morning, sitting in his desired spot near the front of the hall, looking at all the Pokemon he’d caught because he had nothing better to do, wondering when he would find time to put his pants on the right way as the seats around him filled up.
As Seokmin was trying his best not to coo at how adorable the animation for Eevee was, someone tapped him on the shoulder. He calmly (Seungkwan laughed so hard Seokmin could see all the half-chewed fries in his mouth, “I bet you almost dropped your phone!”) turned to face the person.
That was when he dropped his phone.
The other boy smiled at him apologetically, familiar charming dimples denting his cheeks, fair skin still blinding even in the dim lecture hall lighting (maybe that was just the natural glow that came with being an angel on Earth). “Are you saving this seat for someone?” he said with the same deep voice that Seokmin spent half of his high school years dreamily wishing he could fall asleep to, eyes sparkling as he shook his bangs out of them. It was Jung Jaehyun and oh my god, Seokmin was still such a goner.
Seokmin swallowed, thinking about what was socially acceptable to say. Hi, I used to have a massive crush on you and I think I still do? No, that was too much. You smell nice, because he really did, like he woke up early enough to take a shower with some really nice smelling brand of shampoo. You touched me and I’m never washing this shirt again? Did he even recognize Seokmin? When he glanced up, the same expectant, sparkling eyes were still waiting for an answer. Fortunately or unfortunately for him, it didn’t look like Jaehyun knew who he was.
The answer came to him at the very last moment. “N-no, it’s free!” he sputtered, scrambling to take his backpack off the adjacent seat. The other boy smiled at him gratefully before sitting down.
“Thank you so much,” Jaehyun breathed, leaning over to take his notebook out of his backpack. Seokmin felt every nerve in his body simultaneously shooting impulses. He felt fried. “I lost my glasses so I can’t see the board from the back, and this is, like, the last seat in the front.”
Their seats were extremely close together, in the way university lecture halls like to cram as many students in as fire-hazard regulations allow. And was it just him, or was it hot in here? Seokmin let out a pathetic sounding uh-huh because he didn’t trust himself to form words.
He finally fished his phone out from where he had dropped it in his lap, hoping that scrolling through his Pokemon will help calm his nerves. It was going great for a second - the Eevee was still adorable on his screen -
And then the smell of shampoo grew a little stronger. “Oh, that one’s cute! I haven’t seen it yet,” Jaehyun said, an amicable smile on his face, leaning a centimeter closer to Seokmin in their already-cramped seating arrangement. Seokmin just looked back at him, feeling a flush creep to his face, and willed himself not to spontaneously combust.
Luckily, the professor came in that moment, already talking about reactions. Seokmin had never been so glad that lecture’s about to start.
The only problem was that Jung Jaehyun smelled really nice sitting beside him. Needless to say, Seokmin didn’t really remember what happened in the seventy-five minutes that followed.
“So,” Seungkwan says, after Seokmin’s done describing Jaehyun’s shampoo as a handsome man smell, you know, the kind when the dude knows he’s so much cooler but is still really humble about shitting over your life. In the best way. “All I’ve learned is that Jung Jaehyun is in your chemistry lecture and spoke more words to you today than he did in all of high school.” Pauses to take a sip of his soymilk. Considers. “And that he’s a Pokemon noob.”
Seokmin looks offended. “He is not a Pokemon noob!” Vernon, who had finally been woken up by Seokmin’s ultrasonic screams when Seungkwan sat on top of him, the last straw of refusing to get up off his floor, takes the seat next to Seungkwan with a plate of scrambled eggs, toast, and a smiley face drawn in with ketchup. “I appreciate how people who didn’t grow up watching Pokemon are now seeing the light,” he sniffs, putting pepper into his soup.
Seungkwan stabs a piece of sausage while rolling his eyes. “Look at you defending him already! And you called me a loser when I asked you what a PokeStop was a month ago.” He sticks the food in his mouth before pointing at Seokmin with his fork, accusingly. “I mean, who hasn’t seen a fucking Eevee yet?”
“Me,” Vernon chimes in, mixing his eggs with the ketchup smiley face. Seokmin beams at him. Seungkwan looks like he’s contemplating throwing Vernon out the window.
“You don’t even play Pokemon Go,” Seungkwan hisses. Vernon shrugs and eats his eggs.
“Anyway,” Seokmin starts again, leaning closer to Seungkwan, who refuses to look at him after Seokmin dismissed his pride. “What am I gonna do?”
Seungkwan dips a piece of sausage into Seokmin’s soup. He lets it slide because sometimes - emphasis on sometimes - Seungkwan gives him pretty good advice. Seokmin’s hoping today will be one of those times.
After a moment, a smile creeps onto Seungkwan’s lips. “You say this as if he remembers who you are,” he offers to Seokmin, like the little shit he is. Vernon laughs around a mouthful of toast.
Seokmin covers his face with his hands and groans. “I need to get new friends.”
seok (1:53pm) sos emergency
soon (1:53pm) what’s up???
seok (1:53pm) it concerns my love life
seok (1:53pm) seungkwan is a shit friend so i can’t talk to him about it HELP ME
seok (1:54pm) R U FREE RN
soon (1:54pm) o i thought this was like a real emergency
soon (1:54pm) i’m in class until 6
seok (1:55pm) THIS IS A REAL EMERGENCY
seok (1:55pm) i’m more important than ur classes ):
soon (1:56pm) jihoon wants to come
seok (1:56pm) nO
seok (1:56pm) omg is he reading these fml nvr mind i don’t wanna know
soon (1:57pm) jk he says he doesn’t have time to waste
soon (1:57pm) i quote “i’m not in the mood for a joke”
seok (1:58pm) W O W
soon (1:58pm) lbr ur love life is a joke
soon (1:58pm) no offense it’s nonexistent
soon (2:00pm) seok?
soon (2:05pm) seok???????
seok (2:06pm) im not letting u crash at my dorm anymore
soon (2:06pm) NOOOOOO
soon (2:06pm) this is what i get for telling the truth ):
soon (2:10pm) HAVE MERCY ON THE POOR SOULS THAT LIVE THE APARTMENT LIFE
soon (2:12pm) do u think minghao will let me into ur guys room
seok (2:15pm) he says u snore 2 loud
soon (2:16pm) ……….
soon (2:23pm) ok imma skip my 2:30 R U HAPPY NOW
seok (2:23pm) :D
Seokmin and Jaehyun had what Seokmin calls “history.” Seungkwan calls it a “one-sided love,” with a variation of adjectives depending on the mood he’s in when Seokmin brings it up. According to their neutral third party Soonyoung, another friend who went to their high school, pathetic was the most accurate.
It all began in eleventh grade after first semester, when they changed seats in English class. Seokmin’s teacher was notorious for being a hard-ass, which translated to a surprise quiz on the first day back from break. Seokmin, whose worst subject was English, wasn’t about to let his grade drop right after he’d gotten a clean slate, so he stayed up the night before memorizing vocabulary and practicing sentence structure until he fell asleep and dreamed in English.
The bad thing was, he’d been so bent on studying that he forgot to reset his alarm to wake up in time for the bus. In a last minute scramble to the bus stop down the road, he left his pencil case in the house, along with his pride and dignity when Seungkwan burst out laughing at the state of his bedhead on the bus.
Of course, Seokmin didn’t realize that he’d forgotten to pack his pencil case until their teacher told them to clear their desks except for pencils and erasers. In the haze of last-minute anxiety that was the teacher beginning to hand out the quizzes, he turned to his friend Mingyu, who seemed to be silently praying for the best - in his case, not having to be stuck in remedial classes again over break.
“Mingyu!” he whispered. Mingyu looked at him with the eyes of a man who was accepting his sad fate. “Do you have a pencil I can borrow?”
Mingyu frowned, his moment of zen broken. “I just put my pencil case away.” The teacher was approaching their aisle.
“For fuck’s sake,” Seokmin hissed under his breath. There was no other choice. He’d have to ask for a pencil from their hard-ass teacher, and he’d make a snide remark about it. Would that affect his grade? Seokmin had heard he held grudges over little things -
And then someone placed a pencil in front of him. It was the pretty nice mechanical kind, looking as good as new other than the whittled down eraser at the top. Seokmin looked up, confused.
“Sorry that there’s no eraser,” the boy sitting in the seat before him said with an apologetic smile. And were those dimples on his cheek? Their eyes met for the briefest of seconds before the boy turned back to the front, where the student was waiting for him to pass the rest of the tests down their row.
“Thank you,” Seokmin whispered when the boy turned around again to hand him his quiz. He - Jung Jaehyun, according to the seating chart that was still projected on the board - just shot Seokmin a wider smile before starting his test.
Seokmin’s pretty sure his heart stopped at that moment.
Soonyoung sighs, stopping Seokmin from telling his rendition of the whole incident again. The end, as he’d informed Seokmin before, was the cheesiest part. “And then it was love at first sight and you asked him to marry you but he couldn’t hear you because angels hear on different wavelengths, blah blah blah,” he says before Seokmin recovers from being offended.
“That’s not how it went!” Seokmin squeaks, loud enough so the lady sitting at the table next to them in the Student Union looks over at them warily. He clears his throat and lowers his voice. “That’s not how it went,” he repeats, trying to make a point. Soonyoung shakes his head in response.
“Only because you were too tongue-tied whenever he came within five feet of you,” Soonyoung reminds him. “Did you ever give him his pencil back?”
Seokmin thinks about how said pencil accusingly sits in his backpack right now, between their feet underneath the table. Soonyoung doesn’t have to know that, though. He presses his lips together before he betrays himself.
“But,” Soonyoung starts again, looking at him with pity in his eyes. “Did you really not know that Jung Jaehyun goes here?”
Seokmin places his chin on the table. “Do you know how hard it was for me to stop checking his Facebook in the months leading up to graduation? I had to prepare myself for separation!” He looks up miserably at Soonyoung. “I mean,” he says. “Did you know Jung Jaehyun was coming here?”
Soonyoung suddenly pretends to be engrossed with something on his phone, whistling. Seokmin starts squeaking again. “You did? And you didn’t tell me?” The lady who sat next to them gets up, annoyed, and leaves. “I can’t believe this!”
“I was going to!” Soonyoung insists. His eyes plead for Seokmin not to take away his dorm privileges. “But then you gave me that whole spiel about getting over him and not lingering on some ‘first love’ when you were going to university so I decided against it.”
Seokmin cringes, remembering that phase and the infamous “Jung Jaehyun isn’t even that great” speech he gave Seungkwan, who held out like a trooper for the whole four hours. Soonyoung does have a point, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. “But still,” he coughs.
“Hey, how bad can it be?” Soonyoung says, trying to cheer him up. He moves to the seat next to Seokmin and slings an arm around his shoulders, crushing him to his side. Seokmin only groans in response. “There’s so many people at uni, what’re the chances that you’re actually gonna see him every day?”
Seokmin’s been jinxed.
He’s at lab the next day, passing time before class starts by checking his email on his phone. When he’s done with that, there’s still seven minutes to spare, so he decides to text Jeonghan, his fourth year friend who switched into their major late on the grounds that he was “finding himself” during his first two years. He’d probably have to take a fifth year. After meeting through Soonyoung, they’d taken all their prerequisites together and tried to be lab partners whenever they were in the same sections. Seokmin was lowkey bitter that Jeonghan never showed up for lecture but always did well in class, anyway.
jeonghan’s pabo (9:53am) u know lab is required
jeonghan’s pabo (9:53am) …r u even awake rn
momhan (9:54am) shit omg i just woke up
momhan (9:54am) save me a seat imma sprint there
momhan (9:55am) pls be my lab partner?
jeonghan’s pabo (9:56am) u running??? i’ll believe it when i c it ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
jeonghan’s pabo (9:56am) also u say that like i have friends other than u in this class
momhan (9:57am) that’s my son
Deciding that was an apt place to end their conversation, also considering that Jeonghan was probably too busy trying to get ready for class, Seokmin puts his phone away and looks up only to see a familiar pair of broad shoulders leaning over and taking notes - hair clipped closer to his neck than Seokmin remembers it being in high school - sitting before him.
No. The TA tells them to pass their homework to the front of the room. Seokmin rummages through his folders, heart thumping loudly in his chest, before placing it on the desk. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god and that’s when Jung Jaehyun turns around.
He blinks in surprise. It looks like he recognizes Seokmin this time. Then, he flashes Seokmin a winning smile that makes his stomach flip inside out as he holds out his hand for Seokmin’s assignment.
“Um, hi,” Seokmin says. He doesn’t know why he says it. All they’re doing is handing in their damn homework. The girl sitting behind him is poking his back with her papers.
Jaehyun’s still smiling at him, like he doesn’t think Seokmin just made a fool out of himself. He takes the pile of assignments from Seokmin’s (shaking) hand with his steady one. “Hi,” he says back, before turning forward, preventing Seokmin from enduring more damage to his eyes from staring at his bright-as-the-sun smile.
Lab proceeds relatively normally after that - Jaehyun doesn’t turn back around, Seokmin surprisingly resists the urge to curl up under the table and whisper I’m such a fucking loser to himself over and over. The TA goes over the instructions for the lab they’ll be doing next week, writing down the key points on the board and Seokmin somehow collects himself enough to take notes. He comforts himself with the thought of booking it out of the room once section’s over, which helps take his mind off of his failure from twenty minutes ago, when suddenly Jaehyun’s looking at him again.
From the rest of the bustle in the room, Seokmin deduces that their TA just let them pick their own lab partners, which is great. What’s not great is that Jeonghan still hasn’t shown up and that Jaehyun is moving his chair closer to Seokmin, which means that for some odd reason, Jaehyun probably wants to ask if Seokmin would like to be his lab partner.
“Hey, I’m Jaehyun,” he says, flashing that winning smile at Seokmin again. Seokmin is definitely going to go blind if this continues. “Uh, thanks again for yesterday,” he rubs the back of his neck nervously and the winning smile fades into a sheepish grin on his face. It’s so adorable that Seokmin thinks he’s going to say something dumb again if he opens his mouth. “This is gonna sound pathetic, but I have no one I know in this class? So, um, would it be cool if we were lab partners?”
The world stops spinning. Lab. Partners. Jaehyun? Seokmin wonders if this is real life. “Uh…” he starts, trying to comprehend what’s going on. Jaehyun’s grin fades.
“Unless you have someone you already want to work with. That’s cool!” Jaehyun motions with his hands, looking flustered. Seokmin feels like a total dick for thinking it’s cute. “Sorry about that, I just -”
“No!” Seokmin blurts out quickly. He finds the correct words to say. “Uh, I don’t. So it’s fine.”
“Oh,” Jaehyun says, smiling again. “Awesome. We’ll trade numbers after class?”
Is this a dream? Seokmin blinks several times, wondering if he’s actually still in his dorm room, sleeping through lab. He’s not. “Yeah, sure,” he replies before their TA starts going through where to find the pre-lab.
Jeonghan pouts at him, betrayed, when Seokmin mouths a sorry to him with his most apologetic look on his face after class. He dismisses Seokmin with a shake of his head and a mutter of something along the lines of kids these days when he sees that Jaehyun is walking over to him and leaves without waiting for Seokmin. He guesses he deserves that.
“Hey,” Jaehyun starts, looking guilty after he’s put his number into Seokmin’s phone and as Seokmin is typing his into Jaehyun’s. Did he see the whole thing with Jeonghan? Seokmin wonders how to tell him that it wasn’t a big deal without looking like a horrible friend. “I just realized I forgot to ask you for your name this entire time.”
Seokmin almost says, my name is not worthy to pass through the lips of a god but catches himself, directing his attention back at entering his number in Jaehyun’s phone. “Seokmin,” he tells him when he’s done, not trusting himself to multitask in front of Jaehyun. He hands Jaehyun’s phone back.
Jaehyun takes it back. Their fingertips brush for a split second and it sends tingles through the rest of Seokmin’s body. “See you around, then, Seokmin!” he says, before walking in the opposite direction of where Seokmin’s going.
Seokmin stands there for a good five minutes, fingers still tingling, trying his best not to giggle but failing miserably.
“And then this snake!” Jeonghan says, pointing at Seokmin, who’s innocuously slurping his noodles. “Tells me he’s agreed to be lab partners with this guy…this guy named Jaehyuk!”
Seungcheol, the definition of “someone who has their shit together” in Seokmin’s book - half from being friends with Jeonghan for so long and the other half from dealing with his resident’s problems as an RA - calmly interrupts Jeonghan’s streak by correcting him. “You mean Jaehyun,” he says. Seokmin guesses this is at least the third time he’s heard this story - first from Jeonghan’s angry texts, wondering how his child (Seokmin) could abandon him, second from when Seungcheol, Seokmin, and Soonyoung were at the table, and again now that Seungkwan, Vernon, and Minghao have come back from getting the pizza they were waiting in line for. He doesn’t know how Seungcheol does it.
“Jaehyuk, Jaehyun, whatever. What matters here is that this child I raised doesn’t care about me,” Jeonghan frowns, wiping fake tears away from his eyes. Seokmin vaguely remembers the time Soonyoung told him Jeonghan wanted to be a theater major for a month. Seungcheol pats him on the back while reaching for some of Vernon’s fries.
Soonyoung laughs at him. “You’ve only known each other for two years!” Jeonghan hisses and Soonyoung just makes a face at him.
“The sad story of a once-filial child abandoning his mother for love,” Seungkwan narrates dramatically with a shit eating grin on his face. Seokmin stops mid-chew. Jeonghan wasn’t supposed to know that. Heck, even Seungcheol wasn’t supposed to know that, after hearing that he passed Mingyu some condoms to congratulate him on dating.
Jeonghan freezes. Seokmin gives Seungkwan a looks that says I thought we were friends. Seungkwan just looks satisfied with himself. Minghao, sitting next to him, looks very amused. “Seokmin likes this Jaehyun person?” he says, stiffly.
“Ever since high school!” Soonyoung pipes up. Sometimes, Seokmin thinks Soonyoung is his most empathetic friend. Other times, he’s sure Soonyoung just wants to throw everything into chaos.
Seokmin rolls his eyes so he’s looking at the ceiling. “We are not having this discussion right now,” he pleads, hoping some higher up, dining hall ceiling power will come to his aid.
To no avail. “Is that what you guys were talking about yesterday?” Vernon asks, gesturing to Seungkwan and Seokmin. Seokmin makes chopping motions at his neck for him to stop talking, but it’s too late.
Jeonghan sighs. “First I get passed up for another lab partner, and now I’m out of the loop about Seokmin’s love life?” he mutters, skewering his asparagus with his fork purposefully. “I give up on raising kids.”
“Chan’s coming here next year,” Seungkwan mentions and Jeonghan perks up. He’d taken a shine to Chan when he’d visited campus to get a tour from Soonyoung, Seokmin, and Seungkwan.
“There’s still hope in the world,” Jeonghan smiles, appeased. They all go back to eating, Seungkwan taking the silence as a chance to talk about the insistent girl who literally chased him down on his way to class, a flyer about blood donations in her hand.
That’s when Seokmin’s phone vibrates. Shit. Jeonghan frowns again. “No phones at the table,” he mock-scolds, before getting up to get more food. Vernon goes with him.
Seokmin does his best to look at the message without having Soonyoung loom over his shoulder, but when he leans to his right, it gives Minghao a good view of the screen instead. And after living with Minghao for the past two years, Seokmin’s learned that he’s secretly a snitch. In the end, Seokmin decides that they’re going to find out anyway and opens the damn thing.
Jaehyun (7:08pm) hey it’s jaehyun! what time would be good to work on the pre-lab?
Holy shit. “What happened?” Seungcheol inquires further, telling Seokmin that he actually said that out loud. He really needs to work on his brain-to-mouth filter. Soonyoung wiggles his eyebrows at him and Minghao just shrugs before cutting into his chicken thigh again.
He holds his phone up so Seungcheol can see. Seungkwan crowds over to look at it, too. He looks slightly disappointed when he settles back into his seat, as if he was expecting something better from the way Seokmin had an annoyingly large smile of simultaneous unadulterated happiness and nervousness on his face.
“Tell him all the time,” Seungkwan sighs. “With a winky face at the end. You know, let him know you’re interested.”
Seokmin makes a face at that. “We’re lab partners, Seungkwan. He didn’t even know my name until today.”
“That’s kinda just sad,” Minghao finally chimes in, totally unhelpful. Seokmin briefly thinks about signing up for room swap. And finding new friends. If only he wasn’t bad with talking to strangers.
He puts his phone away. “You know what, I’m going back to the room now,” he says, just as Jeonghan’s sitting down again.
“What happened?” Jeonghan asks when he sees Seokmin picking up his plates.
Seungcheol pats him on the back again while reaching for more of Vernon’s fries. They’re soggy now. “You should pay more attention to your children.”
Seokmin can’t feel his fingers. It’s been - he looks down at his phone - around ten minutes since he started waiting outside the small coffee shop situated near the dorms for Jaehyun to show up. It wasn’t like Jaehyun was late, Seokmin was just unnecessarily early, eager to escape the “study session” that he’d been in with Seungkwan, Minghao, and Mingyu, which was really just Mingyu and Minghao bickering over their group assignment and Seungkwan interjecting every now and then with a countdown to Seokmin’s so-called “date.” Yeah, Seokmin shivers, it was better to leave that earlier than later.
They’d seen each other in lecture again yesterday - Seokmin and Jaehyun - Jaehyun sliding into the seat next to Seokmin again, this time on his left. Again, Jaehyun had smelled too good for seventy fifty-five in the morning and almost put him in cardiac arrest with his dimples. But this time, Jaehyun actually knew Seokmin’s name, enough to say, “Seokmin right?” to which he replied with a stuttered Uh, yeah!
“Hey, you’re free tomorrow, yeah?” Jaehyun asked, opening his notebook to the page he last left off on. Seokmin had actually managed to reply to his text the night before, after two hours of wondering is it too soon now? How about now? in a dark room after Minghao had gone off to dance practice with what was, in his and Soonyoung’s opinion, a nonchalant enough “Thursday.” “Maybe we can meet up at the café around nine?”
So here Seokmin was, freezing his ass off. Coffee would be pretty nice right about now. And then Seokmin remembers he doesn’t have enough swipes after letting Soonyoung mooch off of him for dinner yesterday, which is why he was standing outside in the first place.
“Seokmin!” he hears. Jaehyun’s jogging towards him, breaths puffing white clouds into the air. For some reason, it reminds Seokmin of a baby dragon. Not like he’s seen one of those before. But he imagined it’d be cute. He really needed to stop letting his mind wander. “I thought I was gonna be early but you’re already here? Sorry, were you waiting for long?”
“No!” Seokmin says, voice squeaky to his own ears. Why did it always betray him? “It’s fine, it’s fine…I didn’t feel like starting my paper for my other class. Not that it’s due this week.” He laughs nervously.
Jaehyun grins at that, nodding in understanding, and it’s the first time Seokmin’s looked past his dimples to notice how his teeth are so even and nice. He feels a flush crawling up past his cheeks to his ears. “Wait,” Jaehyun says after they’ve walked past the doors, heater instantly thawing Seokmin’s frozen nose. “Then why didn’t you just wait inside?”
He grimaces. “I don’t have enough swipes for coffee and it’s…awkward sitting inside when you - especially when you’re alone and don’t get anything?” he tries. The last time he did the same with Seungkwan, he was told he had no balls.
“I don’t like sitting alone!” he had whined. Seungkwan clicked his tongue at him in disapproval and brought Soonyoung with him the next time, who shamelessly claimed a four-person table for them like he belonged, even though he hadn’t lived in the dorms since freshman year. Seokmin had gawked.
Jaehyun’s smile doesn’t disappear into a judging glance at Seokmin’s confession, like he half-expected it would. It’s confusing. “I hate that feeling!” Jaehyun agrees with a chuckle, looking up at the menu, and it just confuses Seokmin even more. Did Jung Jaehyun just agree with him? Did they actually have something in common?
“And don’t worry about swipes,” he continues as Seokmin’s still trying to process this sudden revelation. “I have premier, so I always have a shit ton of extras. I’ll swipe you a coffee?”
Seokmin didn’t think he could fall even more for Jung Jaehyun, but apparently he was wrong.
Two hours later and after burning his tongue four times, Seokmin found himself helping Jaehyun with acid base reactions. The initial anxious churning in Seokmin’s stomach at sitting across from Jaehyun and having to stare at his distractingly attractive face seemed to settle after he pulled up the pre-lab on his laptop and saw how long it was. Even the giddiness from breathing the same air as his crush couldn’t mask the looming doom of a sleepless night dedicated to chemistry.
“Does that make sense?” Seokmin asks, finally looking up at Jaehyun. Jaehyun scrunches his nose a little in concentration, staring hard at the paper. It’s ridiculously adorable and Seokmin averts his gaze back down to his pencil to prevent himself from doing something stupid.
It was weird - Seokmin always had this image of Jaehyun being super smart in his mind. Maybe it was from back in high school, when Jaehyun pretty much got full marks on all his English assignments. But, as Seokmin re-explained which bonds were broken and which were formed, he found this new side of Jaehyun endearing, even if it did mean that they wouldn’t be able to finish everything tonight.
“You know,” Seokmin yawns, leaning back in his chair. Jaehyun looks up from where he’s hunched over the paper, trying to work on the next part by himself. His eyes, a little tired but still sparkling, make Seokmin’s thoughts go blank. “You’re not really what I expected,” he blurts instead, tongue tripping over the words.
Oh, fuck. Jaehyun scrunches his nose a little, in that adorable confused way of his, trying to figure things out. “Hmm?” he hums amicably, waiting for Seokmin to elaborate. The pencil goes slack in his fingers, focusing on Seokmin over their assignment.
Shit, shit, shit. “Well, uh, what I mean is that…” Seokmin dawdles, trying to find something else to say than I have a huge crush on you and I thought you were a god but you’re actually not which I find really cute. “Uh, I, um, never worked on pre-labs together before with my other lab partners. It’s,” he pauses to swallow. “Not required, you know. I mean, I think you know that.”
Jaehyun patiently waits out his tide of words and gives him a wide grin before saying, “Ah,” and returning to the assignment. A quiet that makes Seokmin’s skin itch settles between them.
He starts to ramble again. Silence always did made him talk more. “Yeah,” he chuckles nervously. “’Cuz it’s like, inconvenient to meet up, you know? I mean, for them. Not for me.” Seokmin inwardly cringes at himself. Could he make this conversation any worse?
“I don’t have a life.” He could.
Jaehyun laughs lightly as if Seokmin didn’t just admit that he was basically a loser. “Same!” he says. “Especially not this semester. When I realized I was gonna have to take this class I knew I’d have to spend all the time I don’t spend procrastinating studying? My friends say they haven’t seen me since first week.”
The word procrastinating reminds him of Jeonghan. Who was not a huge fan of chemistry. “Do you not like chem?” Seokmin muses, before realizing he was distracting Jaehyun. “Oh, shit, sorry,” he says, waving his hands. “I should stop talking to you.”
Jaehyun shakes his head, making his bangs fall into his eyes, and consequently, makes Seokmin want to brush them out of his face. The thought makes Seokmin’s ears burn. “Nah,” he says, dropping the pencil and reaching his arms over his head to stretch instead. “Don’t worry about it. And yeah…I don’t hate chem, just not good at it.” He gives Seokmin an embarrassed grin. “I’m better at physics, honestly.”
“I suck at physics,” Seokmin scowls at the mention of the subject. Jaehyun looks like he’s used to hearing that.
“Maybe we can help each other out,” he suggests casually with a shrug. Wait. Did that mean Jaehyun wouldn’t mind meeting up like this even after this lab was over? Seokmin’s head jerks up to look at Jaehyun, wondering if he’s serious, but he’s looking back at the paper again, reminding Seokmin that he should keep working if he wanted to sleep at least three hours that night.
They call it quits around one in the morning, when Jaehyun’s spent the last thirty minutes twirling his pencil between his fingers and Seokmin’s been trying not to blurt out how hot he thought that was. “Hey, thanks man,” Jaehyun says before they walk their separate ways, clapping Seokmin in the shoulder. He’s glad it’s too dark out for Jaehyun to see how red his cheeks probably are. “See you tomorrow at lecture?”
“Yeah,” Seokmin echoes, half-tired, half-dazed from where the tingling sensation is starting in the place Jaehyun touched him. “At eight,” he says after a lengthy pause that could’ve been super awkward.
Jaehyun just gives him one of his winning smiles, practically high-beam headlights in the darkness, blinding. Seokmin wonders if he should consider getting his eyes checked one of these days as he walks back to his dorm.
He doesn’t sleep well that night, from what he convinces himself are the effects of caffeine on his delicate circadian rhythm, not the fact that he just spent four hours with Jung Jaehyun. Definitely not.
Group chat: SVT
dk (5:00am) oh my god guys i’m in love
dk (5:01am) lksdghaskdfshlkgj
8 (5:10am) i think we already knew that
hoshbrown (5:10am) tf y r u guys up rn
8 (5:10am) y r u up rn
dk (5:10am) bc what is sleep when there r FEELINgs
dk (5:11am) and i thought u were sleeping minghao??? wtf
8 (5:11am) who can sleep when ur tossing and turning so much
8 (5:12am) i think even soonyoung’s snores r better
dk (5:12am) D:
hoshbrown (5:12am) :D
mingU (5:13am) guys can u not rn i thought my alarm went off ):
dk (5:13am) lol
8 (5:13am) lol
hoshbrown (5:13am) lol
hoshbrown (5:14am) dammit i was last
8 (5:14am) lol
dk (5:14am) lol
mingU (5:15am) SRSLY GUYS
“What’s so great about Jung Jaehyun, anyway?” Seungkwan scoffs. It’s both a legitimate question and serving the purpose of stopping Seokmin from blabbering about how Jaehyun keeps sitting next to him during lecture when he’s “not worthy.” Soonyoung finally looks up from the game he was playing on his phone, interested, while Jihoon is still napping, as still as a rock, on the other side of the bench.
Seokmin looks scandalized. “Did you really just ask that question?”
“Tell us what you like about him,” Soonyoung tries instead, while Seungkwan throws his arms up in defeat, muttering I see how it is before going back to nibbling on the crusts of his bread.
The dreamy look settles back onto Seokmin’s face. “His eyes are so pretty. He smells so nice like, all the time. And his smile is literally the sun? Every time he smiles at me, I think I’m gonna go blind.” Seungkwan, sitting next to him, rolls his eyes at Soonyoung. “And oh my god, his dimples. Did you guys know he had dimples?”
“Okay,” Seungkwan interrupts, waving a hand in front of Seokmin’s face to bring him back down to Earth. “So Jung Jaehyun’s hot. Anything else?”
Seokmin frowns. He wasn’t done yet. “His shoulders are really broad -”
“That’s a physical trait again,” Soonyoung points out. Seokmin pauses in thought. Was it?
After another five minutes of what Seokmin thinks is deep thought, he buries his head in his arms and groans. “Do you guys think I’m shallow?” he sighs, muffled against his wrist. Seungkwan looks at him with sympathy for once. “You totally think I’m shallow.”
“It’s just that,” Soonyoung starts, searching for the words to make Seokmin feel better. He obviously doesn’t quite find them. “You’ve liked him for so long that we thought there was more to it -”
Seungkwan adds on. “Maybe just think about it more? If you come up with stuff, maybe you can even confess some time, for your sanity.” And ours, he thinks. When he looks over, Seokmin’s visibly gone pale at that idea. Wrong move.
At that moment, Jihoon stirs. “Surprised you think he’s capable of that,” he mutters, indicating that he’s been listening the whole time, eyes still closed. Seokmin, pouting, makes a motion to poke him, but Jihoon cracks an eye open before he can go through with it.
Seokmin squeaks and flinches away. Soonyoung just laughs.
Seokmin thinks about it during the coming week. What exactly did he like about Jaehyun? That winning smile of his and how it blinded Seokmin? The way his dimples dented his cheeks and how his eyes turned into happy crescents? The way he scrunched his nose like a bunny when he was confused, and how young he looked when he came to lecture with his hair still wet from his morning shower?
Of course he thought Jaehyun was hot. Like that time back in high school, when they were in different P.E classes but changed in the same locker room and Seokmin happened to see Jaehyun’s shirtless back. The sight of those attractively broad shoulders combined with the steam of the basketball team hitting the showers made Seokmin think he might faint. The way Jaehyun sometimes stretched out his arms across the table from him, rolled-up sweater sleeves showing off nice forearms, and occasionally how Jaehyun would pull on the neck of his shirts, unintentionally showing Seokmin a hint of his collarbone. But when Seokmin thinks about what he likes beyond Jaehyun’s face and body - he giggles, shy at the thought and Minghao pelts him with his pillow - he comes up with a giant blank for something he thinks he should have answers for.
He thinks back to high school, fuzzy memories where Jaehyun shines bright in them, like his sunshine-like smile. How Seokmin didn’t even notice Jaehyun was in choir with him until his section leader, Dongyoung, reassigned him to the altos. How one time during a recital, Seokmin was standing in the row right in front of him, and he could hear Jaehyun’s soothing voice singing notes different from his own in his right ear (Seokmin messed up a couple times that day). Sitting behind him still in English, wondering how to return Jaehyun’s pencil and tell him thank you for letting me use it but failing every time Jaehyun turned around to pass him something, looking at Seokmin with his all-too-attractive face. How Jaehyun actually said Lee Seokmin once, handing out some kind of advertisement for one of their school’s extracurricular clubs, and how Seokmin only silently received it, wondering if he could give Jaehyun the pencil back then.
Seungkwan telling Seokmin how unsubtly he sneaked glances at Jaehyun every time they were in the same room. Mingyu being oblivious and not noticing until their senior year - after Seungkwan and Seokmin bickered over how Seokmin should “confess before you never see him again” at least twice a week - and until they were sitting in the cafeteria, two tables away from Jaehyun and his friends, loudly saying “Oh, so you like Jung Jaehyun?” Seokmin kicking Mingyu in the shins, hard, to get him to shut up, while subtly (unsubtly) glancing at Jaehyun through the corner of his vision, who, luckily, didn’t look like he heard.
He frowns. This is always where his train of thought ends, with the unfortunate aftermath of telling his friends everything. Seokmin wishes he wasn’t such a blabbermouth, but the words usually came out before he realized it was better to keep them to himself.
Anyway, the point is that even after thinking - which he was capable of doing, contrary to what Jihoon told him was “popular belief” - he really didn’t know why exactly he liked Jung Jaehyun so much. Despite his godly good looks. And then the cycle began all over again.
“I think we should get to know each other,” Seokmin says after an, in his opinion, unsettling silence between him and Jaehyun in the library on Saturday. He’s helping Jaehyun finish his pre-lab, already done with his own, and keeps fidgeting once Jaehyun replies to his explanations with an enlightened ah and goes back to working things quietly out on his own. Basically, Seokmin has nothing better to do. And when he has nothing better to do, he starts talking.
The lead of Jaehyun’s pencil breaks. Did he really just say that out loud? “I-I mean,” Seokmin starts, wringing his fingers, trying to think of statements that could minimize the damage. Jaehyun waits for him to collect himself, looking a little caught off-guard. This was a disaster. “You know…” he trails off, wincing and hoping a hole would open up beneath him and swallow him. Then he remembers they’re actually on the second floor. “Um.”
Jaehyun squints at him, as if he’s focusing really hard on one part of Seokmin’s face. Or maybe his eyes are just tired. It is almost eleven. “You mean like friends?” he says after blinking a couple times, polite smile on his face like he’s stating the obvious.
Jung Jaehyun is his savior. Along with his everything. “Exactly!” Seokmin says, trying not to sound over eager. He fails. “Like friends,” he laughs, uncomfortably. “Because I don’t have that many. I mean, I do! But they’re all from high school other than my roommate…he’s from China.”
Jaehyun’s grin grows, either politely ignoring how awkward Seokmin is or just not noticing. “Yeah, no, that’s cool,” he says, calmly going back to finishing his assignment. “Pretty much the same for me,” and is that a hint of a blush on his cheeks? It must be the library lighting. Or Seokmin’s rose-tinted glasses of love. “Now that I’ve thought about it,” Jaehyun says, hiding his mouth behind the back of his hand. “We’ve seen each other almost every day this past week?”
“Really?” Seokmin says, gaping in surprise. So this is what heaven feels like. “I’m usually not this good with strangers,” he admits, sheepishly.
“Me neither,” Jaehyun chuckles, amused at Seokmin’s surprised expression. “But we’re friends now, right?”
Seokmin thinks he might faint.
Group chat: SVT
dk changed his name to jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!!
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:23am) :D
8 (2:24am) go to sleep
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:24am) D:
scoops (2:24am) what happened seok?
momhan (2:24am) is this about jaehyub?
hoshbrown (2:25am) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
hoshbrown (2:25am) ...jeonghan his name is right there
momhan (2:25am) who said i didn’t know that
hoshbrown (2:25am) burnnnnnn
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:25am) HE SAID WE’RE FRRNDS
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:25am) FRENDS
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:26am) FRIENDS GDI MINGHAO I HEAR U LAUGHING @ ME
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:26am) also RUDE jeonghan i thought u supported me ):
8 (2:26am) guys do u know how many times i’ve had to here this story
seungkwannie (2:26am) *hear
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:27am) hAHA KARMA who’s laughing now
8 (2:27am) guys seokmin just dropped his phone on his face
seungkwannie (2:28am) also y do u always send these messages @ 2am
mingU (2:28am) guys i thought it was monday already and that my alarm was going off
mingU (2:28am) y u do this
seungkwannie (2:29am) i just said that dumbgyu
mingU (2:29am) ur the meanest dongsaeng evarrr ):
momhan (2:30am) don’t encourage him
seungkwannie (2:30am) :D
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:30am) GUYS FOCUS
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:30am) LOOK @ HOW FAR I’VE COME
scoops (2:30am) oops i was busy doing hw but congrats seok!!!
hoshbrown (2:31am) fanboy dreams coming true
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:31am) …….
seungkwannie (2:32am) from admirer afar to admirer up close
8 (2:32am) can u guys stop so i can sleep
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:33am) Y R U GUYS LIKE THIS
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:33am) y can’t u all b more like scoops ):
seungkwannie (2:33am) bc some1’s gotta bring u back to reality
hoshbrown (2:34am) wut would u do w/o us???
mingU (2:35am) idk what’s going on anymore
mingU (2:35am) i don’t even know who’s this jung jaehyun friend guy
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:35am) …….
momhan (2:35am) i’ve taught u well mingyu
jihoon left the group chat
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:37am) ………
seungkwannie (2:37am) …….
mingU (2:37am) …….
hoshbrown (2:37am) L M F A O
momhan (2:37am) i didn’t even know he was in this chat
hoshbrown (2:38am) i thought he removed himself 2 months ago
hoshbrown (2:38am) when u and seok used this chat 2 talk about lab
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:39am) NOOO DOES THIS MEAN HE’S SEEN EVERYTHING?
8 (2:39am) i’m going to sleep
seungkwannie (2:39am) me 2
seungkwannie (2:39am) beauty sleep is more impt than gossip
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:40am) WAIT I HAVEN’T EVEN SAID ANYTHING YET
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:45am) guys?????
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:47am) )))))): is anyone still here???
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:50am) fine gnite ):
scoops (3:40am) i’m still here
( part two)
~16,400w; pg-13 (dk/jaehyun)
seokmin meets his first love again, three years later.
a/n: this is the result of me realizing jaehyun never talks about dk. this fic literally moves at a snail's pace, it's. so. long. dedicated to kalopsia, who reassured me that at least one person (you) would read this fic even if it turned out to be 15k, and pearlfuchsia, because seokmin is her sunshine lol! thank you for urging me on because i honestly almost called it quits halfway ♥
Seungkwan wakes up bright and early at eleven in his dorm room with the curtains still covering the windows. It’s a great start to the morning - he’s feeling refreshed as he climbs down from the top bunk to see a still-sleeping Vernon-shaped lump, unmoving in the bottom bed. But he can’t find it in himself to get annoyed that Vernon doesn’t have any Monday classes today, he’s feeling great, and reaches over the battleground that is his desk, covered with the assignments he stayed up until five to finish, to turn on his lamp -
Only to scream when he sees Seokmin laying on his floor, curled small in a fetal position, wishing it was humanly possible to crawl back into his mother’s womb.
“What the fuck are you doing in my room?” Seungkwan screeches, flipping on the lights. The Vernon-shaped lump vaguely stirs in the bottom bunk. He suddenly regrets telling Seokmin that he leaves his keycard under the flap of welcome week flyers. And his PIN code. Seokmin, still in that damn fetal position, just lets out what sounds like a cry for help.
Seungkwan squints, unable to decipher it. “What was that, hyung?”
Seokmin uncurls slightly so his mouth isn’t pressed against his right knee. “I saw Jung Jaehyun,” he says, eyes wide.
Seungkwan sighs, wondering what he did to deserve this, and kicks him.
Things could’ve gone worse, Seungkwan supplied. Things could’ve gone worse was a sentiment Seungkwan reserved only for his friends who either fucked up bad or embarrassed themselves colossally. In other words, Seokmin doesn’t feel comforted at all.
The morning was already bad to begin with. Seokmin’s last prerequisite for his major required an eight AM lecture three times a week, thirty minutes from the dorms, with a lab on top of that. He’d been up until four the night before finishing the homework for said class and woken up with a crick in his neck from passing out on the floor, and, upon realizing he’d hit snooze on his alarm twice, brushed his teeth and changed out of his pajamas in record time before speed walking to class. When he was halfway there, Seokmin realized he was wearing his pants backwards when trying to stick his phone in his non-existent butt pockets.
The only good thing about how ungodly far the lecture hall was from the rest of civilization was that there was a PokeStop right outside. It had the dual purpose of keeping him occupied whenever he showed up ten minutes early and warding off his premature mid-life crisis thoughts, which was always a plus. So there he was that Monday morning, sitting in his desired spot near the front of the hall, looking at all the Pokemon he’d caught because he had nothing better to do, wondering when he would find time to put his pants on the right way as the seats around him filled up.
As Seokmin was trying his best not to coo at how adorable the animation for Eevee was, someone tapped him on the shoulder. He calmly (Seungkwan laughed so hard Seokmin could see all the half-chewed fries in his mouth, “I bet you almost dropped your phone!”) turned to face the person.
That was when he dropped his phone.
The other boy smiled at him apologetically, familiar charming dimples denting his cheeks, fair skin still blinding even in the dim lecture hall lighting (maybe that was just the natural glow that came with being an angel on Earth). “Are you saving this seat for someone?” he said with the same deep voice that Seokmin spent half of his high school years dreamily wishing he could fall asleep to, eyes sparkling as he shook his bangs out of them. It was Jung Jaehyun and oh my god, Seokmin was still such a goner.
Seokmin swallowed, thinking about what was socially acceptable to say. Hi, I used to have a massive crush on you and I think I still do? No, that was too much. You smell nice, because he really did, like he woke up early enough to take a shower with some really nice smelling brand of shampoo. You touched me and I’m never washing this shirt again? Did he even recognize Seokmin? When he glanced up, the same expectant, sparkling eyes were still waiting for an answer. Fortunately or unfortunately for him, it didn’t look like Jaehyun knew who he was.
The answer came to him at the very last moment. “N-no, it’s free!” he sputtered, scrambling to take his backpack off the adjacent seat. The other boy smiled at him gratefully before sitting down.
“Thank you so much,” Jaehyun breathed, leaning over to take his notebook out of his backpack. Seokmin felt every nerve in his body simultaneously shooting impulses. He felt fried. “I lost my glasses so I can’t see the board from the back, and this is, like, the last seat in the front.”
Their seats were extremely close together, in the way university lecture halls like to cram as many students in as fire-hazard regulations allow. And was it just him, or was it hot in here? Seokmin let out a pathetic sounding uh-huh because he didn’t trust himself to form words.
He finally fished his phone out from where he had dropped it in his lap, hoping that scrolling through his Pokemon will help calm his nerves. It was going great for a second - the Eevee was still adorable on his screen -
And then the smell of shampoo grew a little stronger. “Oh, that one’s cute! I haven’t seen it yet,” Jaehyun said, an amicable smile on his face, leaning a centimeter closer to Seokmin in their already-cramped seating arrangement. Seokmin just looked back at him, feeling a flush creep to his face, and willed himself not to spontaneously combust.
Luckily, the professor came in that moment, already talking about reactions. Seokmin had never been so glad that lecture’s about to start.
The only problem was that Jung Jaehyun smelled really nice sitting beside him. Needless to say, Seokmin didn’t really remember what happened in the seventy-five minutes that followed.
“So,” Seungkwan says, after Seokmin’s done describing Jaehyun’s shampoo as a handsome man smell, you know, the kind when the dude knows he’s so much cooler but is still really humble about shitting over your life. In the best way. “All I’ve learned is that Jung Jaehyun is in your chemistry lecture and spoke more words to you today than he did in all of high school.” Pauses to take a sip of his soymilk. Considers. “And that he’s a Pokemon noob.”
Seokmin looks offended. “He is not a Pokemon noob!” Vernon, who had finally been woken up by Seokmin’s ultrasonic screams when Seungkwan sat on top of him, the last straw of refusing to get up off his floor, takes the seat next to Seungkwan with a plate of scrambled eggs, toast, and a smiley face drawn in with ketchup. “I appreciate how people who didn’t grow up watching Pokemon are now seeing the light,” he sniffs, putting pepper into his soup.
Seungkwan stabs a piece of sausage while rolling his eyes. “Look at you defending him already! And you called me a loser when I asked you what a PokeStop was a month ago.” He sticks the food in his mouth before pointing at Seokmin with his fork, accusingly. “I mean, who hasn’t seen a fucking Eevee yet?”
“Me,” Vernon chimes in, mixing his eggs with the ketchup smiley face. Seokmin beams at him. Seungkwan looks like he’s contemplating throwing Vernon out the window.
“You don’t even play Pokemon Go,” Seungkwan hisses. Vernon shrugs and eats his eggs.
“Anyway,” Seokmin starts again, leaning closer to Seungkwan, who refuses to look at him after Seokmin dismissed his pride. “What am I gonna do?”
Seungkwan dips a piece of sausage into Seokmin’s soup. He lets it slide because sometimes - emphasis on sometimes - Seungkwan gives him pretty good advice. Seokmin’s hoping today will be one of those times.
After a moment, a smile creeps onto Seungkwan’s lips. “You say this as if he remembers who you are,” he offers to Seokmin, like the little shit he is. Vernon laughs around a mouthful of toast.
Seokmin covers his face with his hands and groans. “I need to get new friends.”
seok (1:53pm) sos emergency
soon (1:53pm) what’s up???
seok (1:53pm) it concerns my love life
seok (1:53pm) seungkwan is a shit friend so i can’t talk to him about it HELP ME
seok (1:54pm) R U FREE RN
soon (1:54pm) o i thought this was like a real emergency
soon (1:54pm) i’m in class until 6
seok (1:55pm) THIS IS A REAL EMERGENCY
seok (1:55pm) i’m more important than ur classes ):
soon (1:56pm) jihoon wants to come
seok (1:56pm) nO
seok (1:56pm) omg is he reading these fml nvr mind i don’t wanna know
soon (1:57pm) jk he says he doesn’t have time to waste
soon (1:57pm) i quote “i’m not in the mood for a joke”
seok (1:58pm) W O W
soon (1:58pm) lbr ur love life is a joke
soon (1:58pm) no offense it’s nonexistent
soon (2:00pm) seok?
soon (2:05pm) seok???????
seok (2:06pm) im not letting u crash at my dorm anymore
soon (2:06pm) NOOOOOO
soon (2:06pm) this is what i get for telling the truth ):
soon (2:10pm) HAVE MERCY ON THE POOR SOULS THAT LIVE THE APARTMENT LIFE
soon (2:12pm) do u think minghao will let me into ur guys room
seok (2:15pm) he says u snore 2 loud
soon (2:16pm) ……….
soon (2:23pm) ok imma skip my 2:30 R U HAPPY NOW
seok (2:23pm) :D
Seokmin and Jaehyun had what Seokmin calls “history.” Seungkwan calls it a “one-sided love,” with a variation of adjectives depending on the mood he’s in when Seokmin brings it up. According to their neutral third party Soonyoung, another friend who went to their high school, pathetic was the most accurate.
It all began in eleventh grade after first semester, when they changed seats in English class. Seokmin’s teacher was notorious for being a hard-ass, which translated to a surprise quiz on the first day back from break. Seokmin, whose worst subject was English, wasn’t about to let his grade drop right after he’d gotten a clean slate, so he stayed up the night before memorizing vocabulary and practicing sentence structure until he fell asleep and dreamed in English.
The bad thing was, he’d been so bent on studying that he forgot to reset his alarm to wake up in time for the bus. In a last minute scramble to the bus stop down the road, he left his pencil case in the house, along with his pride and dignity when Seungkwan burst out laughing at the state of his bedhead on the bus.
Of course, Seokmin didn’t realize that he’d forgotten to pack his pencil case until their teacher told them to clear their desks except for pencils and erasers. In the haze of last-minute anxiety that was the teacher beginning to hand out the quizzes, he turned to his friend Mingyu, who seemed to be silently praying for the best - in his case, not having to be stuck in remedial classes again over break.
“Mingyu!” he whispered. Mingyu looked at him with the eyes of a man who was accepting his sad fate. “Do you have a pencil I can borrow?”
Mingyu frowned, his moment of zen broken. “I just put my pencil case away.” The teacher was approaching their aisle.
“For fuck’s sake,” Seokmin hissed under his breath. There was no other choice. He’d have to ask for a pencil from their hard-ass teacher, and he’d make a snide remark about it. Would that affect his grade? Seokmin had heard he held grudges over little things -
And then someone placed a pencil in front of him. It was the pretty nice mechanical kind, looking as good as new other than the whittled down eraser at the top. Seokmin looked up, confused.
“Sorry that there’s no eraser,” the boy sitting in the seat before him said with an apologetic smile. And were those dimples on his cheek? Their eyes met for the briefest of seconds before the boy turned back to the front, where the student was waiting for him to pass the rest of the tests down their row.
“Thank you,” Seokmin whispered when the boy turned around again to hand him his quiz. He - Jung Jaehyun, according to the seating chart that was still projected on the board - just shot Seokmin a wider smile before starting his test.
Seokmin’s pretty sure his heart stopped at that moment.
Soonyoung sighs, stopping Seokmin from telling his rendition of the whole incident again. The end, as he’d informed Seokmin before, was the cheesiest part. “And then it was love at first sight and you asked him to marry you but he couldn’t hear you because angels hear on different wavelengths, blah blah blah,” he says before Seokmin recovers from being offended.
“That’s not how it went!” Seokmin squeaks, loud enough so the lady sitting at the table next to them in the Student Union looks over at them warily. He clears his throat and lowers his voice. “That’s not how it went,” he repeats, trying to make a point. Soonyoung shakes his head in response.
“Only because you were too tongue-tied whenever he came within five feet of you,” Soonyoung reminds him. “Did you ever give him his pencil back?”
Seokmin thinks about how said pencil accusingly sits in his backpack right now, between their feet underneath the table. Soonyoung doesn’t have to know that, though. He presses his lips together before he betrays himself.
“But,” Soonyoung starts again, looking at him with pity in his eyes. “Did you really not know that Jung Jaehyun goes here?”
Seokmin places his chin on the table. “Do you know how hard it was for me to stop checking his Facebook in the months leading up to graduation? I had to prepare myself for separation!” He looks up miserably at Soonyoung. “I mean,” he says. “Did you know Jung Jaehyun was coming here?”
Soonyoung suddenly pretends to be engrossed with something on his phone, whistling. Seokmin starts squeaking again. “You did? And you didn’t tell me?” The lady who sat next to them gets up, annoyed, and leaves. “I can’t believe this!”
“I was going to!” Soonyoung insists. His eyes plead for Seokmin not to take away his dorm privileges. “But then you gave me that whole spiel about getting over him and not lingering on some ‘first love’ when you were going to university so I decided against it.”
Seokmin cringes, remembering that phase and the infamous “Jung Jaehyun isn’t even that great” speech he gave Seungkwan, who held out like a trooper for the whole four hours. Soonyoung does have a point, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. “But still,” he coughs.
“Hey, how bad can it be?” Soonyoung says, trying to cheer him up. He moves to the seat next to Seokmin and slings an arm around his shoulders, crushing him to his side. Seokmin only groans in response. “There’s so many people at uni, what’re the chances that you’re actually gonna see him every day?”
Seokmin’s been jinxed.
He’s at lab the next day, passing time before class starts by checking his email on his phone. When he’s done with that, there’s still seven minutes to spare, so he decides to text Jeonghan, his fourth year friend who switched into their major late on the grounds that he was “finding himself” during his first two years. He’d probably have to take a fifth year. After meeting through Soonyoung, they’d taken all their prerequisites together and tried to be lab partners whenever they were in the same sections. Seokmin was lowkey bitter that Jeonghan never showed up for lecture but always did well in class, anyway.
jeonghan’s pabo (9:53am) u know lab is required
jeonghan’s pabo (9:53am) …r u even awake rn
momhan (9:54am) shit omg i just woke up
momhan (9:54am) save me a seat imma sprint there
momhan (9:55am) pls be my lab partner?
jeonghan’s pabo (9:56am) u running??? i’ll believe it when i c it ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
jeonghan’s pabo (9:56am) also u say that like i have friends other than u in this class
momhan (9:57am) that’s my son
Deciding that was an apt place to end their conversation, also considering that Jeonghan was probably too busy trying to get ready for class, Seokmin puts his phone away and looks up only to see a familiar pair of broad shoulders leaning over and taking notes - hair clipped closer to his neck than Seokmin remembers it being in high school - sitting before him.
No. The TA tells them to pass their homework to the front of the room. Seokmin rummages through his folders, heart thumping loudly in his chest, before placing it on the desk. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god and that’s when Jung Jaehyun turns around.
He blinks in surprise. It looks like he recognizes Seokmin this time. Then, he flashes Seokmin a winning smile that makes his stomach flip inside out as he holds out his hand for Seokmin’s assignment.
“Um, hi,” Seokmin says. He doesn’t know why he says it. All they’re doing is handing in their damn homework. The girl sitting behind him is poking his back with her papers.
Jaehyun’s still smiling at him, like he doesn’t think Seokmin just made a fool out of himself. He takes the pile of assignments from Seokmin’s (shaking) hand with his steady one. “Hi,” he says back, before turning forward, preventing Seokmin from enduring more damage to his eyes from staring at his bright-as-the-sun smile.
Lab proceeds relatively normally after that - Jaehyun doesn’t turn back around, Seokmin surprisingly resists the urge to curl up under the table and whisper I’m such a fucking loser to himself over and over. The TA goes over the instructions for the lab they’ll be doing next week, writing down the key points on the board and Seokmin somehow collects himself enough to take notes. He comforts himself with the thought of booking it out of the room once section’s over, which helps take his mind off of his failure from twenty minutes ago, when suddenly Jaehyun’s looking at him again.
From the rest of the bustle in the room, Seokmin deduces that their TA just let them pick their own lab partners, which is great. What’s not great is that Jeonghan still hasn’t shown up and that Jaehyun is moving his chair closer to Seokmin, which means that for some odd reason, Jaehyun probably wants to ask if Seokmin would like to be his lab partner.
“Hey, I’m Jaehyun,” he says, flashing that winning smile at Seokmin again. Seokmin is definitely going to go blind if this continues. “Uh, thanks again for yesterday,” he rubs the back of his neck nervously and the winning smile fades into a sheepish grin on his face. It’s so adorable that Seokmin thinks he’s going to say something dumb again if he opens his mouth. “This is gonna sound pathetic, but I have no one I know in this class? So, um, would it be cool if we were lab partners?”
The world stops spinning. Lab. Partners. Jaehyun? Seokmin wonders if this is real life. “Uh…” he starts, trying to comprehend what’s going on. Jaehyun’s grin fades.
“Unless you have someone you already want to work with. That’s cool!” Jaehyun motions with his hands, looking flustered. Seokmin feels like a total dick for thinking it’s cute. “Sorry about that, I just -”
“No!” Seokmin blurts out quickly. He finds the correct words to say. “Uh, I don’t. So it’s fine.”
“Oh,” Jaehyun says, smiling again. “Awesome. We’ll trade numbers after class?”
Is this a dream? Seokmin blinks several times, wondering if he’s actually still in his dorm room, sleeping through lab. He’s not. “Yeah, sure,” he replies before their TA starts going through where to find the pre-lab.
Jeonghan pouts at him, betrayed, when Seokmin mouths a sorry to him with his most apologetic look on his face after class. He dismisses Seokmin with a shake of his head and a mutter of something along the lines of kids these days when he sees that Jaehyun is walking over to him and leaves without waiting for Seokmin. He guesses he deserves that.
“Hey,” Jaehyun starts, looking guilty after he’s put his number into Seokmin’s phone and as Seokmin is typing his into Jaehyun’s. Did he see the whole thing with Jeonghan? Seokmin wonders how to tell him that it wasn’t a big deal without looking like a horrible friend. “I just realized I forgot to ask you for your name this entire time.”
Seokmin almost says, my name is not worthy to pass through the lips of a god but catches himself, directing his attention back at entering his number in Jaehyun’s phone. “Seokmin,” he tells him when he’s done, not trusting himself to multitask in front of Jaehyun. He hands Jaehyun’s phone back.
Jaehyun takes it back. Their fingertips brush for a split second and it sends tingles through the rest of Seokmin’s body. “See you around, then, Seokmin!” he says, before walking in the opposite direction of where Seokmin’s going.
Seokmin stands there for a good five minutes, fingers still tingling, trying his best not to giggle but failing miserably.
“And then this snake!” Jeonghan says, pointing at Seokmin, who’s innocuously slurping his noodles. “Tells me he’s agreed to be lab partners with this guy…this guy named Jaehyuk!”
Seungcheol, the definition of “someone who has their shit together” in Seokmin’s book - half from being friends with Jeonghan for so long and the other half from dealing with his resident’s problems as an RA - calmly interrupts Jeonghan’s streak by correcting him. “You mean Jaehyun,” he says. Seokmin guesses this is at least the third time he’s heard this story - first from Jeonghan’s angry texts, wondering how his child (Seokmin) could abandon him, second from when Seungcheol, Seokmin, and Soonyoung were at the table, and again now that Seungkwan, Vernon, and Minghao have come back from getting the pizza they were waiting in line for. He doesn’t know how Seungcheol does it.
“Jaehyuk, Jaehyun, whatever. What matters here is that this child I raised doesn’t care about me,” Jeonghan frowns, wiping fake tears away from his eyes. Seokmin vaguely remembers the time Soonyoung told him Jeonghan wanted to be a theater major for a month. Seungcheol pats him on the back while reaching for some of Vernon’s fries.
Soonyoung laughs at him. “You’ve only known each other for two years!” Jeonghan hisses and Soonyoung just makes a face at him.
“The sad story of a once-filial child abandoning his mother for love,” Seungkwan narrates dramatically with a shit eating grin on his face. Seokmin stops mid-chew. Jeonghan wasn’t supposed to know that. Heck, even Seungcheol wasn’t supposed to know that, after hearing that he passed Mingyu some condoms to congratulate him on dating.
Jeonghan freezes. Seokmin gives Seungkwan a looks that says I thought we were friends. Seungkwan just looks satisfied with himself. Minghao, sitting next to him, looks very amused. “Seokmin likes this Jaehyun person?” he says, stiffly.
“Ever since high school!” Soonyoung pipes up. Sometimes, Seokmin thinks Soonyoung is his most empathetic friend. Other times, he’s sure Soonyoung just wants to throw everything into chaos.
Seokmin rolls his eyes so he’s looking at the ceiling. “We are not having this discussion right now,” he pleads, hoping some higher up, dining hall ceiling power will come to his aid.
To no avail. “Is that what you guys were talking about yesterday?” Vernon asks, gesturing to Seungkwan and Seokmin. Seokmin makes chopping motions at his neck for him to stop talking, but it’s too late.
Jeonghan sighs. “First I get passed up for another lab partner, and now I’m out of the loop about Seokmin’s love life?” he mutters, skewering his asparagus with his fork purposefully. “I give up on raising kids.”
“Chan’s coming here next year,” Seungkwan mentions and Jeonghan perks up. He’d taken a shine to Chan when he’d visited campus to get a tour from Soonyoung, Seokmin, and Seungkwan.
“There’s still hope in the world,” Jeonghan smiles, appeased. They all go back to eating, Seungkwan taking the silence as a chance to talk about the insistent girl who literally chased him down on his way to class, a flyer about blood donations in her hand.
That’s when Seokmin’s phone vibrates. Shit. Jeonghan frowns again. “No phones at the table,” he mock-scolds, before getting up to get more food. Vernon goes with him.
Seokmin does his best to look at the message without having Soonyoung loom over his shoulder, but when he leans to his right, it gives Minghao a good view of the screen instead. And after living with Minghao for the past two years, Seokmin’s learned that he’s secretly a snitch. In the end, Seokmin decides that they’re going to find out anyway and opens the damn thing.
Jaehyun (7:08pm) hey it’s jaehyun! what time would be good to work on the pre-lab?
Holy shit. “What happened?” Seungcheol inquires further, telling Seokmin that he actually said that out loud. He really needs to work on his brain-to-mouth filter. Soonyoung wiggles his eyebrows at him and Minghao just shrugs before cutting into his chicken thigh again.
He holds his phone up so Seungcheol can see. Seungkwan crowds over to look at it, too. He looks slightly disappointed when he settles back into his seat, as if he was expecting something better from the way Seokmin had an annoyingly large smile of simultaneous unadulterated happiness and nervousness on his face.
“Tell him all the time,” Seungkwan sighs. “With a winky face at the end. You know, let him know you’re interested.”
Seokmin makes a face at that. “We’re lab partners, Seungkwan. He didn’t even know my name until today.”
“That’s kinda just sad,” Minghao finally chimes in, totally unhelpful. Seokmin briefly thinks about signing up for room swap. And finding new friends. If only he wasn’t bad with talking to strangers.
He puts his phone away. “You know what, I’m going back to the room now,” he says, just as Jeonghan’s sitting down again.
“What happened?” Jeonghan asks when he sees Seokmin picking up his plates.
Seungcheol pats him on the back again while reaching for more of Vernon’s fries. They’re soggy now. “You should pay more attention to your children.”
Seokmin can’t feel his fingers. It’s been - he looks down at his phone - around ten minutes since he started waiting outside the small coffee shop situated near the dorms for Jaehyun to show up. It wasn’t like Jaehyun was late, Seokmin was just unnecessarily early, eager to escape the “study session” that he’d been in with Seungkwan, Minghao, and Mingyu, which was really just Mingyu and Minghao bickering over their group assignment and Seungkwan interjecting every now and then with a countdown to Seokmin’s so-called “date.” Yeah, Seokmin shivers, it was better to leave that earlier than later.
They’d seen each other in lecture again yesterday - Seokmin and Jaehyun - Jaehyun sliding into the seat next to Seokmin again, this time on his left. Again, Jaehyun had smelled too good for seventy fifty-five in the morning and almost put him in cardiac arrest with his dimples. But this time, Jaehyun actually knew Seokmin’s name, enough to say, “Seokmin right?” to which he replied with a stuttered Uh, yeah!
“Hey, you’re free tomorrow, yeah?” Jaehyun asked, opening his notebook to the page he last left off on. Seokmin had actually managed to reply to his text the night before, after two hours of wondering is it too soon now? How about now? in a dark room after Minghao had gone off to dance practice with what was, in his and Soonyoung’s opinion, a nonchalant enough “Thursday.” “Maybe we can meet up at the café around nine?”
So here Seokmin was, freezing his ass off. Coffee would be pretty nice right about now. And then Seokmin remembers he doesn’t have enough swipes after letting Soonyoung mooch off of him for dinner yesterday, which is why he was standing outside in the first place.
“Seokmin!” he hears. Jaehyun’s jogging towards him, breaths puffing white clouds into the air. For some reason, it reminds Seokmin of a baby dragon. Not like he’s seen one of those before. But he imagined it’d be cute. He really needed to stop letting his mind wander. “I thought I was gonna be early but you’re already here? Sorry, were you waiting for long?”
“No!” Seokmin says, voice squeaky to his own ears. Why did it always betray him? “It’s fine, it’s fine…I didn’t feel like starting my paper for my other class. Not that it’s due this week.” He laughs nervously.
Jaehyun grins at that, nodding in understanding, and it’s the first time Seokmin’s looked past his dimples to notice how his teeth are so even and nice. He feels a flush crawling up past his cheeks to his ears. “Wait,” Jaehyun says after they’ve walked past the doors, heater instantly thawing Seokmin’s frozen nose. “Then why didn’t you just wait inside?”
He grimaces. “I don’t have enough swipes for coffee and it’s…awkward sitting inside when you - especially when you’re alone and don’t get anything?” he tries. The last time he did the same with Seungkwan, he was told he had no balls.
“I don’t like sitting alone!” he had whined. Seungkwan clicked his tongue at him in disapproval and brought Soonyoung with him the next time, who shamelessly claimed a four-person table for them like he belonged, even though he hadn’t lived in the dorms since freshman year. Seokmin had gawked.
Jaehyun’s smile doesn’t disappear into a judging glance at Seokmin’s confession, like he half-expected it would. It’s confusing. “I hate that feeling!” Jaehyun agrees with a chuckle, looking up at the menu, and it just confuses Seokmin even more. Did Jung Jaehyun just agree with him? Did they actually have something in common?
“And don’t worry about swipes,” he continues as Seokmin’s still trying to process this sudden revelation. “I have premier, so I always have a shit ton of extras. I’ll swipe you a coffee?”
Seokmin didn’t think he could fall even more for Jung Jaehyun, but apparently he was wrong.
Two hours later and after burning his tongue four times, Seokmin found himself helping Jaehyun with acid base reactions. The initial anxious churning in Seokmin’s stomach at sitting across from Jaehyun and having to stare at his distractingly attractive face seemed to settle after he pulled up the pre-lab on his laptop and saw how long it was. Even the giddiness from breathing the same air as his crush couldn’t mask the looming doom of a sleepless night dedicated to chemistry.
“Does that make sense?” Seokmin asks, finally looking up at Jaehyun. Jaehyun scrunches his nose a little in concentration, staring hard at the paper. It’s ridiculously adorable and Seokmin averts his gaze back down to his pencil to prevent himself from doing something stupid.
It was weird - Seokmin always had this image of Jaehyun being super smart in his mind. Maybe it was from back in high school, when Jaehyun pretty much got full marks on all his English assignments. But, as Seokmin re-explained which bonds were broken and which were formed, he found this new side of Jaehyun endearing, even if it did mean that they wouldn’t be able to finish everything tonight.
“You know,” Seokmin yawns, leaning back in his chair. Jaehyun looks up from where he’s hunched over the paper, trying to work on the next part by himself. His eyes, a little tired but still sparkling, make Seokmin’s thoughts go blank. “You’re not really what I expected,” he blurts instead, tongue tripping over the words.
Oh, fuck. Jaehyun scrunches his nose a little, in that adorable confused way of his, trying to figure things out. “Hmm?” he hums amicably, waiting for Seokmin to elaborate. The pencil goes slack in his fingers, focusing on Seokmin over their assignment.
Shit, shit, shit. “Well, uh, what I mean is that…” Seokmin dawdles, trying to find something else to say than I have a huge crush on you and I thought you were a god but you’re actually not which I find really cute. “Uh, I, um, never worked on pre-labs together before with my other lab partners. It’s,” he pauses to swallow. “Not required, you know. I mean, I think you know that.”
Jaehyun patiently waits out his tide of words and gives him a wide grin before saying, “Ah,” and returning to the assignment. A quiet that makes Seokmin’s skin itch settles between them.
He starts to ramble again. Silence always did made him talk more. “Yeah,” he chuckles nervously. “’Cuz it’s like, inconvenient to meet up, you know? I mean, for them. Not for me.” Seokmin inwardly cringes at himself. Could he make this conversation any worse?
“I don’t have a life.” He could.
Jaehyun laughs lightly as if Seokmin didn’t just admit that he was basically a loser. “Same!” he says. “Especially not this semester. When I realized I was gonna have to take this class I knew I’d have to spend all the time I don’t spend procrastinating studying? My friends say they haven’t seen me since first week.”
The word procrastinating reminds him of Jeonghan. Who was not a huge fan of chemistry. “Do you not like chem?” Seokmin muses, before realizing he was distracting Jaehyun. “Oh, shit, sorry,” he says, waving his hands. “I should stop talking to you.”
Jaehyun shakes his head, making his bangs fall into his eyes, and consequently, makes Seokmin want to brush them out of his face. The thought makes Seokmin’s ears burn. “Nah,” he says, dropping the pencil and reaching his arms over his head to stretch instead. “Don’t worry about it. And yeah…I don’t hate chem, just not good at it.” He gives Seokmin an embarrassed grin. “I’m better at physics, honestly.”
“I suck at physics,” Seokmin scowls at the mention of the subject. Jaehyun looks like he’s used to hearing that.
“Maybe we can help each other out,” he suggests casually with a shrug. Wait. Did that mean Jaehyun wouldn’t mind meeting up like this even after this lab was over? Seokmin’s head jerks up to look at Jaehyun, wondering if he’s serious, but he’s looking back at the paper again, reminding Seokmin that he should keep working if he wanted to sleep at least three hours that night.
They call it quits around one in the morning, when Jaehyun’s spent the last thirty minutes twirling his pencil between his fingers and Seokmin’s been trying not to blurt out how hot he thought that was. “Hey, thanks man,” Jaehyun says before they walk their separate ways, clapping Seokmin in the shoulder. He’s glad it’s too dark out for Jaehyun to see how red his cheeks probably are. “See you tomorrow at lecture?”
“Yeah,” Seokmin echoes, half-tired, half-dazed from where the tingling sensation is starting in the place Jaehyun touched him. “At eight,” he says after a lengthy pause that could’ve been super awkward.
Jaehyun just gives him one of his winning smiles, practically high-beam headlights in the darkness, blinding. Seokmin wonders if he should consider getting his eyes checked one of these days as he walks back to his dorm.
He doesn’t sleep well that night, from what he convinces himself are the effects of caffeine on his delicate circadian rhythm, not the fact that he just spent four hours with Jung Jaehyun. Definitely not.
Group chat: SVT
dk (5:00am) oh my god guys i’m in love
dk (5:01am) lksdghaskdfshlkgj
8 (5:10am) i think we already knew that
hoshbrown (5:10am) tf y r u guys up rn
8 (5:10am) y r u up rn
dk (5:10am) bc what is sleep when there r FEELINgs
dk (5:11am) and i thought u were sleeping minghao??? wtf
8 (5:11am) who can sleep when ur tossing and turning so much
8 (5:12am) i think even soonyoung’s snores r better
dk (5:12am) D:
hoshbrown (5:12am) :D
mingU (5:13am) guys can u not rn i thought my alarm went off ):
dk (5:13am) lol
8 (5:13am) lol
hoshbrown (5:13am) lol
hoshbrown (5:14am) dammit i was last
8 (5:14am) lol
dk (5:14am) lol
mingU (5:15am) SRSLY GUYS
“What’s so great about Jung Jaehyun, anyway?” Seungkwan scoffs. It’s both a legitimate question and serving the purpose of stopping Seokmin from blabbering about how Jaehyun keeps sitting next to him during lecture when he’s “not worthy.” Soonyoung finally looks up from the game he was playing on his phone, interested, while Jihoon is still napping, as still as a rock, on the other side of the bench.
Seokmin looks scandalized. “Did you really just ask that question?”
“Tell us what you like about him,” Soonyoung tries instead, while Seungkwan throws his arms up in defeat, muttering I see how it is before going back to nibbling on the crusts of his bread.
The dreamy look settles back onto Seokmin’s face. “His eyes are so pretty. He smells so nice like, all the time. And his smile is literally the sun? Every time he smiles at me, I think I’m gonna go blind.” Seungkwan, sitting next to him, rolls his eyes at Soonyoung. “And oh my god, his dimples. Did you guys know he had dimples?”
“Okay,” Seungkwan interrupts, waving a hand in front of Seokmin’s face to bring him back down to Earth. “So Jung Jaehyun’s hot. Anything else?”
Seokmin frowns. He wasn’t done yet. “His shoulders are really broad -”
“That’s a physical trait again,” Soonyoung points out. Seokmin pauses in thought. Was it?
After another five minutes of what Seokmin thinks is deep thought, he buries his head in his arms and groans. “Do you guys think I’m shallow?” he sighs, muffled against his wrist. Seungkwan looks at him with sympathy for once. “You totally think I’m shallow.”
“It’s just that,” Soonyoung starts, searching for the words to make Seokmin feel better. He obviously doesn’t quite find them. “You’ve liked him for so long that we thought there was more to it -”
Seungkwan adds on. “Maybe just think about it more? If you come up with stuff, maybe you can even confess some time, for your sanity.” And ours, he thinks. When he looks over, Seokmin’s visibly gone pale at that idea. Wrong move.
At that moment, Jihoon stirs. “Surprised you think he’s capable of that,” he mutters, indicating that he’s been listening the whole time, eyes still closed. Seokmin, pouting, makes a motion to poke him, but Jihoon cracks an eye open before he can go through with it.
Seokmin squeaks and flinches away. Soonyoung just laughs.
Seokmin thinks about it during the coming week. What exactly did he like about Jaehyun? That winning smile of his and how it blinded Seokmin? The way his dimples dented his cheeks and how his eyes turned into happy crescents? The way he scrunched his nose like a bunny when he was confused, and how young he looked when he came to lecture with his hair still wet from his morning shower?
Of course he thought Jaehyun was hot. Like that time back in high school, when they were in different P.E classes but changed in the same locker room and Seokmin happened to see Jaehyun’s shirtless back. The sight of those attractively broad shoulders combined with the steam of the basketball team hitting the showers made Seokmin think he might faint. The way Jaehyun sometimes stretched out his arms across the table from him, rolled-up sweater sleeves showing off nice forearms, and occasionally how Jaehyun would pull on the neck of his shirts, unintentionally showing Seokmin a hint of his collarbone. But when Seokmin thinks about what he likes beyond Jaehyun’s face and body - he giggles, shy at the thought and Minghao pelts him with his pillow - he comes up with a giant blank for something he thinks he should have answers for.
He thinks back to high school, fuzzy memories where Jaehyun shines bright in them, like his sunshine-like smile. How Seokmin didn’t even notice Jaehyun was in choir with him until his section leader, Dongyoung, reassigned him to the altos. How one time during a recital, Seokmin was standing in the row right in front of him, and he could hear Jaehyun’s soothing voice singing notes different from his own in his right ear (Seokmin messed up a couple times that day). Sitting behind him still in English, wondering how to return Jaehyun’s pencil and tell him thank you for letting me use it but failing every time Jaehyun turned around to pass him something, looking at Seokmin with his all-too-attractive face. How Jaehyun actually said Lee Seokmin once, handing out some kind of advertisement for one of their school’s extracurricular clubs, and how Seokmin only silently received it, wondering if he could give Jaehyun the pencil back then.
Seungkwan telling Seokmin how unsubtly he sneaked glances at Jaehyun every time they were in the same room. Mingyu being oblivious and not noticing until their senior year - after Seungkwan and Seokmin bickered over how Seokmin should “confess before you never see him again” at least twice a week - and until they were sitting in the cafeteria, two tables away from Jaehyun and his friends, loudly saying “Oh, so you like Jung Jaehyun?” Seokmin kicking Mingyu in the shins, hard, to get him to shut up, while subtly (unsubtly) glancing at Jaehyun through the corner of his vision, who, luckily, didn’t look like he heard.
He frowns. This is always where his train of thought ends, with the unfortunate aftermath of telling his friends everything. Seokmin wishes he wasn’t such a blabbermouth, but the words usually came out before he realized it was better to keep them to himself.
Anyway, the point is that even after thinking - which he was capable of doing, contrary to what Jihoon told him was “popular belief” - he really didn’t know why exactly he liked Jung Jaehyun so much. Despite his godly good looks. And then the cycle began all over again.
“I think we should get to know each other,” Seokmin says after an, in his opinion, unsettling silence between him and Jaehyun in the library on Saturday. He’s helping Jaehyun finish his pre-lab, already done with his own, and keeps fidgeting once Jaehyun replies to his explanations with an enlightened ah and goes back to working things quietly out on his own. Basically, Seokmin has nothing better to do. And when he has nothing better to do, he starts talking.
The lead of Jaehyun’s pencil breaks. Did he really just say that out loud? “I-I mean,” Seokmin starts, wringing his fingers, trying to think of statements that could minimize the damage. Jaehyun waits for him to collect himself, looking a little caught off-guard. This was a disaster. “You know…” he trails off, wincing and hoping a hole would open up beneath him and swallow him. Then he remembers they’re actually on the second floor. “Um.”
Jaehyun squints at him, as if he’s focusing really hard on one part of Seokmin’s face. Or maybe his eyes are just tired. It is almost eleven. “You mean like friends?” he says after blinking a couple times, polite smile on his face like he’s stating the obvious.
Jung Jaehyun is his savior. Along with his everything. “Exactly!” Seokmin says, trying not to sound over eager. He fails. “Like friends,” he laughs, uncomfortably. “Because I don’t have that many. I mean, I do! But they’re all from high school other than my roommate…he’s from China.”
Jaehyun’s grin grows, either politely ignoring how awkward Seokmin is or just not noticing. “Yeah, no, that’s cool,” he says, calmly going back to finishing his assignment. “Pretty much the same for me,” and is that a hint of a blush on his cheeks? It must be the library lighting. Or Seokmin’s rose-tinted glasses of love. “Now that I’ve thought about it,” Jaehyun says, hiding his mouth behind the back of his hand. “We’ve seen each other almost every day this past week?”
“Really?” Seokmin says, gaping in surprise. So this is what heaven feels like. “I’m usually not this good with strangers,” he admits, sheepishly.
“Me neither,” Jaehyun chuckles, amused at Seokmin’s surprised expression. “But we’re friends now, right?”
Seokmin thinks he might faint.
Group chat: SVT
dk changed his name to jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!!
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:23am) :D
8 (2:24am) go to sleep
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:24am) D:
scoops (2:24am) what happened seok?
momhan (2:24am) is this about jaehyub?
hoshbrown (2:25am) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
hoshbrown (2:25am) ...jeonghan his name is right there
momhan (2:25am) who said i didn’t know that
hoshbrown (2:25am) burnnnnnn
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:25am) HE SAID WE’RE FRRNDS
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:25am) FRENDS
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:26am) FRIENDS GDI MINGHAO I HEAR U LAUGHING @ ME
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:26am) also RUDE jeonghan i thought u supported me ):
8 (2:26am) guys do u know how many times i’ve had to here this story
seungkwannie (2:26am) *hear
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:27am) hAHA KARMA who’s laughing now
8 (2:27am) guys seokmin just dropped his phone on his face
seungkwannie (2:28am) also y do u always send these messages @ 2am
mingU (2:28am) guys i thought it was monday already and that my alarm was going off
mingU (2:28am) y u do this
seungkwannie (2:29am) i just said that dumbgyu
mingU (2:29am) ur the meanest dongsaeng evarrr ):
momhan (2:30am) don’t encourage him
seungkwannie (2:30am) :D
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:30am) GUYS FOCUS
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:30am) LOOK @ HOW FAR I’VE COME
scoops (2:30am) oops i was busy doing hw but congrats seok!!!
hoshbrown (2:31am) fanboy dreams coming true
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:31am) …….
seungkwannie (2:32am) from admirer afar to admirer up close
8 (2:32am) can u guys stop so i can sleep
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:33am) Y R U GUYS LIKE THIS
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:33am) y can’t u all b more like scoops ):
seungkwannie (2:33am) bc some1’s gotta bring u back to reality
hoshbrown (2:34am) wut would u do w/o us???
mingU (2:35am) idk what’s going on anymore
mingU (2:35am) i don’t even know who’s this jung jaehyun friend guy
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:35am) …….
momhan (2:35am) i’ve taught u well mingyu
jihoon left the group chat
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:37am) ………
seungkwannie (2:37am) …….
mingU (2:37am) …….
hoshbrown (2:37am) L M F A O
momhan (2:37am) i didn’t even know he was in this chat
hoshbrown (2:38am) i thought he removed himself 2 months ago
hoshbrown (2:38am) when u and seok used this chat 2 talk about lab
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:39am) NOOO DOES THIS MEAN HE’S SEEN EVERYTHING?
8 (2:39am) i’m going to sleep
seungkwannie (2:39am) me 2
seungkwannie (2:39am) beauty sleep is more impt than gossip
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:40am) WAIT I HAVEN’T EVEN SAID ANYTHING YET
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:45am) guys?????
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:47am) )))))): is anyone still here???
jung jaehyun’s friend!!111!!! (2:50am) fine gnite ):
scoops (3:40am) i’m still here
( part two)