yixing/sulli; teenage expletives
1964 words
PG for swearing
unfortunately not angst, yixing x sulli cuteness prevails
The final year of high school is the best. The most exhilarating. Yixing doesn’t know this when he’s starting out, it feels like the beginning of another term, another school year. It’s the same. The same brick buildings, the same bite of morning air against his face. The same friends, waving, punching shoulders, yelling down from second floor library. The same, the same kind of energy every year. He doesn’t feel it yet, though, that this year, it’s going to be different.
This spring term, Yixing is due to turn eighteen, the older handful of the grade. A legal adult. Yet, he feels so young. Incredibly so. Every morning starts out the same, head leaning against dirty bus window, fuzzy traffic beyond the murkiness. Earphones in, arms arranged in some kind of formation - shoulders pushed up against the glass, or arms folded another morning. Jinri gets on eleven stops down. It’s been five years, Yixing’s been counting. In ninth grade, he used to watch intently, as she’d step on - hair in braids one day, ponytail another, sometimes a bun. She slides her bus pass through the ticket scanner, faithfully says ‘good morning’ or ‘thank you’ to the bus driver.
And she sits next to him.
Every time.
He says good morning, she says good morning.
Six stops later, the dream evaporates. The other kids get on. Jongin with his eternally loose tie. Sehun is always a step behind, hands in pockets, bad sliding off just the one shoulder. Tao has one arm draped over Sehun sometimes - mid joke. Jinri waves to them and always stands to grab Soojung’s hands. Yixing can’t help looking all the time - Soojung is leggy, like a newborn foal, he always imagines. Leggy, thin, mess of black hair tossed over one shoulder. Chanshik usually brings up the rear, the quiet, cute one, and the guys are always taking the piss. He laughs all the same though, and Soojung usually defends him with her loud voice and long arms, swatting at Jongin’s rude face. Jinri leans over the back of her seat to listen and laugh.
The skirts get shorter every year too. Yixing looks away.
The bus pulls in at their school bus bay, and they step out into the light. Spring sun warms bare arms and legs and they head up, past the smell of mown football fields and over the strip of artificial grass. Jongin, Sehun and Tao usually say goodbye at this point, and sprint across the field to the basketball courts. Breaking sweat before roll call. The rest of them head to the senior common room, a never-vacuumed room set aside for the twelfth graders to perform their final act of high school.
And just like that, routine starts to set in again. High school is the same drivel, more studying, more gossip, more parties (birthdays mostly). School dances, always. The Christmas dance comes around, as always. Humid summer air clinging at skin, laughter piercing the air. The girls are all long legs and thing arms and long hair, floral dresses. Jinri has been going through a phase with flower crowns this year, and Yixing likes it a lot. They all dance together. The DJ does rudimentary mixes, but there’s always that good song, and that moment, where Yixing can’t look away, and Jinri is blissfully oblivious to his lingering gaze. He snaps out of it though, and they are dance and jump and laugh and scream when the drop comes. Bless Martin Garrix.
it’s only a few weeks later that Jinri and Soojung are invited to a New Years party with the graduating class the year above. It’s not anything different, Soojung is always chasing after Minho, and there’s always this rave, and that party which she is getting home late from. Jongin doesn’t have enough fingers to count the number of times she’s been doubled over, and Jessica has held her hair back in the middle of Soojung’s bleary drunkenness. As far as sisters go, Jessica is the type that only pulls through when her baby sister has gone too deep into alcohol and ecstasy. When it comes to school they don’t even take the same bus. Jinri usually opts out when it comes to Soojung’s escapades, but every third or second invitation, she pulls through. The grade above loves her too, Taemin is always pouring her more shots - that’s how Soojung recounts it anyway, and Yixing doesn’t like hearing it. “It’s going to be like that this time too, right?”
Soojung raises an eyebrow. They are perched on the fence, waiting for the bus that takes them to tutoring. “What’s it got to do with you? Jinri’s a smart girl. You’re not her boyfriend or anything.”
It’s scathing and she knows it. Yixing just shrugs, “She’s still our friend.”
She laughs and swings her arm around his shoulders, “I promise I’ll do my best to take care of her.”
Yixing just thinks that she’s a mess, and she’s not going to take care of shit.
The New Year passes, and Yixing admits that he’s half a hypocrite because he spent part of those early hours of the 1st of January tipping back an ungodly amount of Smirnoff variations in a riverside park. But in that moment, with good music struggling through a myriad of portable speakers their friends have brought, Yixing feels like he’s living the way irresponsible teenagers his age are supposed to live. He is fulfilling that rite of passage - the series of obviously silly choices anybody in their late teens are unconsciously taught to make. But when Yixing wakes up at 5 in the morning, pale blue-toned light dimly illuminating the chaos he and his friends are lying in, he doesn’t feel that same feeling of elation he felt the night before, head pounding with the addictive beat of music. Instead, he’s seeing Jinri, wearing next to nothing and head of hair a mess, kneeling beside him in the grass.
“Hi Yixing,” she whispers. Yixing can’t even fathom how she got here - probably one of the late night trains from the city. Grass tickles his bare arms.
He pulls himself up onto his elbows, digging into the damp grass and soil, “How was the party with the older kids?”
Jinri shrugs, “Soojung was the usual.” Her shoulders are quite angular, and pale in the blue light. Her eyeliner is smudged.
“What about you?”
“I kind of missed you guys.”
Yixing drags himself into an upright sitting position. Moonlight is glinting off the water in front of them. “I missed you too.”
Jinri glances at the empty bottle next to him. “No you didn’t.”
“I guess not.”
“I didn’t peg you to be the type.”
Yixing raises an eyebrow, “I’d say the same about you.”
Jinri laughs a little at that. “I guess that’s true.” But then again, did any of them, when they started out in high school, really think that this is how they would end up? Sleeping on the grass on the riverside. Using underage drinking as a means of satiating unrequited loves. One night of overpowered senses and strained livers to block out the day-to-day anxieties.
But those are only held off for so long. Half way through the next year, Jinri runs out of the exam hall, and Soojung and Yixing find her in one of the bathrooms after. She’s not crying, but she comes out of one of the cubicles shaking, flustered. She’d been waiting for a period for three months now, and it still hasn’t come. Not pregnancy, none of that idiocy. Just stress. The three of them go out to the closest Korean fried chicken place, trying to forget all of it. But this is how the rest of the year is going to go. All of these friends, dominoes waiting to fall.
Yixing spends more time studying with Jinri after that. A lot of chemistry revision, and writing equations, a lot of quiet, shared over library tables and dying sunlight. They’re young, and as beautiful as Jinri looks, Yixing knows that it doesn’t make sense - and he shouldn’t - think about the what-ifs. What if she likes him. What if she looks at him differently that one day?
But as Yixing clicks his pen and pretends to struggle over a maths question, he knows that this isn’t how love works. Jinri will never wake up one day and decide that she likes, let alone, loves him. Nothing will change if he doesn’t try something. But even then it’s not a guarantee.
This is the whole problem. Yixing is used to thinking of everything as some kind of equation. If he does this good thing for a friend, it would help the friend solve that problem, and then his friend will feel better. If he stays out of the way of his parents’ fights, they will both appreciate him as an obedient son. If Yixing does the right thing, the right outcome will result.
“You know that’s a fucked up way of thinking right? Like nothing in life actually works like that.”
Yixing almost gets angry there, but he holds it in, that little ball of irritation and frustration that Soojung doesn’t understand where he’s coming from. “I know, I guess.”
Soojung notices how he sounds kind of wounded. “If you really like her though, you should just ask her out. She’s never going to know if you just keep studying with her.”
This is the standard advice that Yixing already knows. And just like every other time he’s read it, or heard it, or thought it to himself after a certain kind of dream - he ignores it. He dismisses it with a well polished arsenal of the usual doubts - what if she doesn’t like him back (she probably doesn’t)? What if they try and it doesn’t work out? What if they lose the friendship from this? What if he’s totally wrong for her?
It takes him until September that year, when they graduate, and Soojung is getting piggybacked by Jongin and yelling out an open invitation to her grade to have at all the goon and vodka in her backyard, for Yixing to do something. Jinri is laughing and half-crying and shrieking at Soojung to get off Jongin before they injure themselves. Yixing is just watching, with his graduation certificate tucked under his arm and his other hand stuffed in his pocket. Jinri catches his eye for a second, mid-laugh, and Yixing knows with all of his functioning logical capacity that this is just a goddamned coincidence and he is going to move on and think platonic thoughts about how much he loves his friends and how great it is to graduate -
And she laughs and calls out to him and she’s waving for him to come over -
Yixing shakes his head at himself and goes over and gives her a hug. She squeezes him tight, arms around his neck. She starts to thank him, and whatever it was, Yixing’s patience has worn thin.
“Jinri.”
“Yixing. I was just thanking you, you cut me off -“
“I really like you. I’m just not saying the other word because I don’t want to weird you out.”
Jinri turns a deep shade of pink and buries her face in her hands. She pulls in a huge breath of air before says she really likes him too.
Yixing bends an inch towards her - he wants to kiss her so badly - but he hears Soojung scream that “it’s too damn soon for you guys to be kissing!”
Sehun tells her to fucking shut the hell up so Yixing kisses Jinri and she positively smiles into it.
It’s good. It’s so, so much better than his hormonal teenage brain could have ever imagined.
PG for swearing
unfortunately not angst, yixing x sulli cuteness prevails
The final year of high school is the best. The most exhilarating. Yixing doesn’t know this when he’s starting out, it feels like the beginning of another term, another school year. It’s the same. The same brick buildings, the same bite of morning air against his face. The same friends, waving, punching shoulders, yelling down from second floor library. The same, the same kind of energy every year. He doesn’t feel it yet, though, that this year, it’s going to be different.
This spring term, Yixing is due to turn eighteen, the older handful of the grade. A legal adult. Yet, he feels so young. Incredibly so. Every morning starts out the same, head leaning against dirty bus window, fuzzy traffic beyond the murkiness. Earphones in, arms arranged in some kind of formation - shoulders pushed up against the glass, or arms folded another morning. Jinri gets on eleven stops down. It’s been five years, Yixing’s been counting. In ninth grade, he used to watch intently, as she’d step on - hair in braids one day, ponytail another, sometimes a bun. She slides her bus pass through the ticket scanner, faithfully says ‘good morning’ or ‘thank you’ to the bus driver.
And she sits next to him.
Every time.
He says good morning, she says good morning.
Six stops later, the dream evaporates. The other kids get on. Jongin with his eternally loose tie. Sehun is always a step behind, hands in pockets, bad sliding off just the one shoulder. Tao has one arm draped over Sehun sometimes - mid joke. Jinri waves to them and always stands to grab Soojung’s hands. Yixing can’t help looking all the time - Soojung is leggy, like a newborn foal, he always imagines. Leggy, thin, mess of black hair tossed over one shoulder. Chanshik usually brings up the rear, the quiet, cute one, and the guys are always taking the piss. He laughs all the same though, and Soojung usually defends him with her loud voice and long arms, swatting at Jongin’s rude face. Jinri leans over the back of her seat to listen and laugh.
The skirts get shorter every year too. Yixing looks away.
The bus pulls in at their school bus bay, and they step out into the light. Spring sun warms bare arms and legs and they head up, past the smell of mown football fields and over the strip of artificial grass. Jongin, Sehun and Tao usually say goodbye at this point, and sprint across the field to the basketball courts. Breaking sweat before roll call. The rest of them head to the senior common room, a never-vacuumed room set aside for the twelfth graders to perform their final act of high school.
And just like that, routine starts to set in again. High school is the same drivel, more studying, more gossip, more parties (birthdays mostly). School dances, always. The Christmas dance comes around, as always. Humid summer air clinging at skin, laughter piercing the air. The girls are all long legs and thing arms and long hair, floral dresses. Jinri has been going through a phase with flower crowns this year, and Yixing likes it a lot. They all dance together. The DJ does rudimentary mixes, but there’s always that good song, and that moment, where Yixing can’t look away, and Jinri is blissfully oblivious to his lingering gaze. He snaps out of it though, and they are dance and jump and laugh and scream when the drop comes. Bless Martin Garrix.
it’s only a few weeks later that Jinri and Soojung are invited to a New Years party with the graduating class the year above. It’s not anything different, Soojung is always chasing after Minho, and there’s always this rave, and that party which she is getting home late from. Jongin doesn’t have enough fingers to count the number of times she’s been doubled over, and Jessica has held her hair back in the middle of Soojung’s bleary drunkenness. As far as sisters go, Jessica is the type that only pulls through when her baby sister has gone too deep into alcohol and ecstasy. When it comes to school they don’t even take the same bus. Jinri usually opts out when it comes to Soojung’s escapades, but every third or second invitation, she pulls through. The grade above loves her too, Taemin is always pouring her more shots - that’s how Soojung recounts it anyway, and Yixing doesn’t like hearing it. “It’s going to be like that this time too, right?”
Soojung raises an eyebrow. They are perched on the fence, waiting for the bus that takes them to tutoring. “What’s it got to do with you? Jinri’s a smart girl. You’re not her boyfriend or anything.”
It’s scathing and she knows it. Yixing just shrugs, “She’s still our friend.”
She laughs and swings her arm around his shoulders, “I promise I’ll do my best to take care of her.”
Yixing just thinks that she’s a mess, and she’s not going to take care of shit.
The New Year passes, and Yixing admits that he’s half a hypocrite because he spent part of those early hours of the 1st of January tipping back an ungodly amount of Smirnoff variations in a riverside park. But in that moment, with good music struggling through a myriad of portable speakers their friends have brought, Yixing feels like he’s living the way irresponsible teenagers his age are supposed to live. He is fulfilling that rite of passage - the series of obviously silly choices anybody in their late teens are unconsciously taught to make. But when Yixing wakes up at 5 in the morning, pale blue-toned light dimly illuminating the chaos he and his friends are lying in, he doesn’t feel that same feeling of elation he felt the night before, head pounding with the addictive beat of music. Instead, he’s seeing Jinri, wearing next to nothing and head of hair a mess, kneeling beside him in the grass.
“Hi Yixing,” she whispers. Yixing can’t even fathom how she got here - probably one of the late night trains from the city. Grass tickles his bare arms.
He pulls himself up onto his elbows, digging into the damp grass and soil, “How was the party with the older kids?”
Jinri shrugs, “Soojung was the usual.” Her shoulders are quite angular, and pale in the blue light. Her eyeliner is smudged.
“What about you?”
“I kind of missed you guys.”
Yixing drags himself into an upright sitting position. Moonlight is glinting off the water in front of them. “I missed you too.”
Jinri glances at the empty bottle next to him. “No you didn’t.”
“I guess not.”
“I didn’t peg you to be the type.”
Yixing raises an eyebrow, “I’d say the same about you.”
Jinri laughs a little at that. “I guess that’s true.” But then again, did any of them, when they started out in high school, really think that this is how they would end up? Sleeping on the grass on the riverside. Using underage drinking as a means of satiating unrequited loves. One night of overpowered senses and strained livers to block out the day-to-day anxieties.
But those are only held off for so long. Half way through the next year, Jinri runs out of the exam hall, and Soojung and Yixing find her in one of the bathrooms after. She’s not crying, but she comes out of one of the cubicles shaking, flustered. She’d been waiting for a period for three months now, and it still hasn’t come. Not pregnancy, none of that idiocy. Just stress. The three of them go out to the closest Korean fried chicken place, trying to forget all of it. But this is how the rest of the year is going to go. All of these friends, dominoes waiting to fall.
Yixing spends more time studying with Jinri after that. A lot of chemistry revision, and writing equations, a lot of quiet, shared over library tables and dying sunlight. They’re young, and as beautiful as Jinri looks, Yixing knows that it doesn’t make sense - and he shouldn’t - think about the what-ifs. What if she likes him. What if she looks at him differently that one day?
But as Yixing clicks his pen and pretends to struggle over a maths question, he knows that this isn’t how love works. Jinri will never wake up one day and decide that she likes, let alone, loves him. Nothing will change if he doesn’t try something. But even then it’s not a guarantee.
This is the whole problem. Yixing is used to thinking of everything as some kind of equation. If he does this good thing for a friend, it would help the friend solve that problem, and then his friend will feel better. If he stays out of the way of his parents’ fights, they will both appreciate him as an obedient son. If Yixing does the right thing, the right outcome will result.
“You know that’s a fucked up way of thinking right? Like nothing in life actually works like that.”
Yixing almost gets angry there, but he holds it in, that little ball of irritation and frustration that Soojung doesn’t understand where he’s coming from. “I know, I guess.”
Soojung notices how he sounds kind of wounded. “If you really like her though, you should just ask her out. She’s never going to know if you just keep studying with her.”
This is the standard advice that Yixing already knows. And just like every other time he’s read it, or heard it, or thought it to himself after a certain kind of dream - he ignores it. He dismisses it with a well polished arsenal of the usual doubts - what if she doesn’t like him back (she probably doesn’t)? What if they try and it doesn’t work out? What if they lose the friendship from this? What if he’s totally wrong for her?
It takes him until September that year, when they graduate, and Soojung is getting piggybacked by Jongin and yelling out an open invitation to her grade to have at all the goon and vodka in her backyard, for Yixing to do something. Jinri is laughing and half-crying and shrieking at Soojung to get off Jongin before they injure themselves. Yixing is just watching, with his graduation certificate tucked under his arm and his other hand stuffed in his pocket. Jinri catches his eye for a second, mid-laugh, and Yixing knows with all of his functioning logical capacity that this is just a goddamned coincidence and he is going to move on and think platonic thoughts about how much he loves his friends and how great it is to graduate -
And she laughs and calls out to him and she’s waving for him to come over -
Yixing shakes his head at himself and goes over and gives her a hug. She squeezes him tight, arms around his neck. She starts to thank him, and whatever it was, Yixing’s patience has worn thin.
“Jinri.”
“Yixing. I was just thanking you, you cut me off -“
“I really like you. I’m just not saying the other word because I don’t want to weird you out.”
Jinri turns a deep shade of pink and buries her face in her hands. She pulls in a huge breath of air before says she really likes him too.
Yixing bends an inch towards her - he wants to kiss her so badly - but he hears Soojung scream that “it’s too damn soon for you guys to be kissing!”
Sehun tells her to fucking shut the hell up so Yixing kisses Jinri and she positively smiles into it.
It’s good. It’s so, so much better than his hormonal teenage brain could have ever imagined.