#12

[kpopvalentines]

Five requests:
1. shinee, onkey, sometimes i think we're all nuts, any rating [Filled]
2. shinee, taekey, "i'm afraid i tend to disappear into an anxious state when you draw near", any rating
3. dbsk, yunjae, survival tactics, yes to porn! [Filled]
4. 2pm, taecjay, "what do you normally do when i'm gone?" | "wait for you to get back", any rating [

Comments

#4 - taecjay 1/2

[warmboys]

To OP: I'm terribly sorry if this isn't what you wanted. It's also AU >_<;;

PROMPT: 4. 2pm, taecjay, "what do you normally do when i'm gone?" | "wait for you to get back", any rating

The Invisible Us

Before he moved to a new school, with its dull autumn colors and generic plaid uniform, he and Taecyeon were best friends. Looking back now, Taecyeon wouldn’t call them best friends, but at the time he might’ve been surer. Time probably beat that out of him, as it was wont to do. But that was its job, and Taecyeon didn’t begrudge it anything he wouldn’t begrudge himself.

Before Jay moved, long before, once upon a time, Taecyeon had been the new kid. He walked into the classroom, carrying his legs like they were newly formed, and smiling through his awkward teeth. He was nervous only in the temporary sense, because he knew it would soon dissipate and then this school would just be another activity he was really good at. Knowing, though, didn’t dry his slightly sweaty palms or make that rehearsed self-introduction any easier. Still, he didn’t stumble over any of the words or flinch when the teacher explained to everyone that he’d skipped a year to join them. He didn’t mind people knowing he was smart, because denying who he was would cause more trouble in the long run, and he didn’t want to do that to the future himself.

“Can you teach me that trick?” The spiky-haired kid next to him asked one day.

It was the first time anyone had spoken to him in class. “What trick?”

“The factoring trick. I saw you do it on the board. It wasn’t like what we got taught. You did it faster,” the kid explained. Taecyeon looked at him blankly. “Oh yeah, I’m Jay,” he added as an afterthought.

“You know,” Jay went on. “You wrote the numbers out in two columns, and did something in your head, and then you got the answer mad fast. Tell me how to do that. I’m failing math.”

“You’re not failing,” Taecyeon said. “No way.”

Jay gave him a look, like no, really. “Okay, not failing failing, but Asian failing. You’re Korean too, right? You know how it is. A B’s like failing.”

Taecyeon had never gotten a B before, but he laughed and said, “Yeah. Sure.”

“So teach me that thing. I need all the help I can get.”

So Taecyeon helped him. And at that age, helping someone with their homework was a natural step towards becoming friends with them. So, naturally, they became friends. Not only the kind of friends who ate lunch together and sat next to each other on the bus during field trips but the kind that waited up for the other when one got out of a test early, the kind of friend that you’d brought home so many times your mom would set an extra plate at dinner without asking. “Is Taecyeon coming? I’m making his favorite,” Jay would mimic his mom saying. “And I was like, what about my favorite? I’m a growing boy, too.”

“I don’t think you’re gonna grow much,” Taecyeon said, and then ducked out of harm’s way.

“You’re a freak of nature,” Jay said, putting his hands in his pockets. “I’m gonna take growth hormones and then shoot up like a rocket. You’ll be looking up at me, where I’ll be chillin’ with the sun.”

“I think you just contradicted yourself, man,” Taecyeon said. “You’d be fried.”

Jay stared at him like he did when he didn’t think something was funny, and the look itself was always enough to make Taecyeon laugh, just by himself, kind of moronically. “Wow. Sometimes I don’t get why we’re friends.”

Taecyeon was still laughing at his face.