fic / a door is not a door if it's ajar iv
#007
baekhyun + chen, chanyeol + d.o., lay + kai, suho + sehun / pg / 1657 words
mermaid!au: jongdae stages an intervention
“So,” Jongdae begins, nibbling the end of a chip at their table in the library, “you know the dorm party on Friday? I was wondering if we should invite S-”
“The Ex, you mean.”
He frowns at Kyungsoo, who hasn’t even so much as looked up from his textbook. “Junmyeon STILL isn’t over that? I mean, I was okay with appeasing him for a while, but isn’t this getting ridiculous now? It’s been…” Jongdae flips out a planner diary and counts through a few pages. “Two weeks and two days. That’s how long they’ve been fighting. That’s how long Junmyeon has been missing fifteen minutes of every lecture to avoid S-”
“-the Ex-”
“-and nobody even knows what the whole thing was about. AND nobody is dense enough to think they actually broke up-broke up.”
Kyungsoo sighs, then leans back in his chair and huffs at the ceiling. He actually leans back too far and has to catch himself on the edge of the table before he falls and knocks himself out on the ugly green carpet, but manages to retain some sketchy dignity. “I don’t know what you expect me to say, Jongdae. Just because everybody knows it’s ridiculous doesn’t mean we can do anything about it.”
At this, Jongdae grins and stuffs a few more chips into his mouth. “So help me stage an intervention,” he conspires through a mound of mushed fried potato. “It’s about time.”
Kyungsoo hisses, then makes a pinched face like he’s just had a slice of lemon shoved up his nose. “I’m going to regret agreeing to this.”
“Trust me, Kyungsoo. This is serious stuff. If Friday’s party is going to be any sort of fun, we NEED Sehun to be there.”
☆ ☆ ☆
Jongdae manages to get everybody on board with the plan, which involves a lot of elaborate stories and, at one point, an army of balloon animals and pulpy orange juice. That is, until Kyungsoo pisses all over their parade and says, “Right, now back to the actual plan. When do you think we should drag them across campus to meet and what room is the best one to lock them both in until they sort out their problems?”
A pathetic whine arises from Baekhyun, who sits on the floor of the dorm room they’ve crammed into. “Why do you have to hate fun so much? How do you even like Chanyeol? He’s, like, two hundred percent sunshine and you’re a vertically-challenged stormcloud.”
“Baekhyun,” Chanyeol sniffles, lying upside-down on a bed made with an Iron Man quilt cover and holding a hand over his chest.“I never knew you felt this way about m-”
“Because I don’t have time for your antics. Now, the best location?”
“...The cleaning closet on level three of the music building is pretty good,” Baekhyun sulks, sending wobbly glares in his direction. “Pretty private, cosy space, great place to get a blowjob.”
For a moment, there is a pause in the conversation. Then, “I don’t want to know how you know tha-”
“It’s actually a pretty bad place to get it on after they make up,” Jongin interjects from the wheely chair at the desk. He toes at the socked sole of Jongdae’s foot, causing him to squeal and almost fall off Baekhyun’s lap. “Your back digs into the shelves and things fall and I mean, it’s doable and a lot of fun, but only in a spontaneous context.”
“OKAY THEN.” Yixing springs up from where he had been leaning against the other bed in the room and opens the door, a dark pink dusting his cheeks. “Now that we’ve finished our little TMI session, can we all agree to let them meet in the common at the end of the hall? It’s usually fairly empty around mid afternoon. Now, everybody get out of my room.”
“Okay, but now I kind of want to know-”
“Now.”
“No need to be shy, Xing-”
“OUT.”
☆ ☆ ☆
Theoretically speaking, it would have been best to give the troubled couple a semblance of privacy when they confronted each other. Theoretically speaking, the interfering friends of said couple have a shred of respect for personal space.
Things rarely work according to theory.
As it is, the very nosy friends are all conspicuously lurking in the room when Sehun walks in with Jongin. He does stop, confused and suspicious, when he notices Chanyeol lying down behind the couch and Kyungsoo standing behind the lampshade, but shrugs it off when Jongin pushes him to sit down.
A few minutes of watching the old tv later, sounds come up the stairwell. Sehun visibly freezes and Jongin grabs onto his arm, keeping him in place as a familiar voice titters nervously, “Baekhyun, are you sure he’s not here? I have a distinctively bad feeling and I’ve never been wrong about this kind of thing before, it’s a river adaptation…”
Sehun wrenches out of Jongin’s grip and stands just as the door opens up to a very sour Junmyeon, squeezing his arms to his sides with hands visibly balled in his pockets. There’s a tense staring contest for a few moments, in which the boys scattered around the room begin to think that maybe this isn’t such a Good Idea. Junmyeon, surprisingly enough, is the one to break it.
“I’m not going to give back the Lord of the Rings discs.”
His voice is a bit high and tightly strung, but puts forth a shaky determination. Sehun blinks. Baekhyun, still standing beside Junmyeon, blinks. In fact, everybody blinks. It’s a big confused blinking fest.
“What,” whispers Jongdae.
“I don’t care about the Lord of the Rings discs,” Sehun replies. He sounds miserable. It’s more than most of the people in the room have ever heard him emote. “I want to know why you keep avoiding me, hyung.” He ignores Junmyeon’s flinch at the title. “Is it because I said Bulbasaur was a better starter than Squirtle? Because I hope you know that’s ridiculous. Pokémon is great and if you want debate then sure, though I won’t change my mind, but why? Why would you ignore me over that? It’s not important-”
“It IS important though!” Junmyeon cries, hands tugging at the bottom of his shirt. His lower lip is wobbling and his eyes are shining and he looks like he’s going to start wailing. “It’s important because if you don’t even like Squirtle, how are you going to like me when you find out I’m a mermaid? I like y-you so much a-and I don’t-t want you to ha…” he takes a deep breath, sniffing, “hate me.”
The breath leaves Sehun’s lungs, and slowly, tentatively, he walks up to Junmyeon, who lets him wrap his arms around the older and gently run his arm up and down his back.
“Hyung,” he begins, humming a soothing note, “hyung. Look at me.” He tilts Junmyeon’s chin up. “Pokémon is just a game. I don’t care if you are a mermaid or not, and I don’t hate you, so please stop avoiding me and please still let me be your boyfriend.”
“O-okay, Sehunnie. I’m sorry.”
And then they kiss and make up. There is discrete applause (read: loud, obnoxious, inappropriate cheering and cat-calling) around the room. Sehun flips off a particularly enthusiastic Chanyeol, then uses his sleeve to dab off the rest of Junmyeon’s tears.
The sweetness of it all is simultaneously adorable and gross.
“Aw,” Baekhyun coos, leaning on Jongdae, “that’s cute. How come you weren’t romantic and shit when I told you?”
Jongdae wraps an arm around his boyfriend’s waist, gazing at the disarray of their friends around the room. He’s exhausted and content from resolved second-hand stress.
“Because Baekhyun,” he replies, “if you ignored me for two weeks and two days you would have to do a lot more than reluctantly show up in my presence to make it up to me.”
☆ ☆ ☆
Sehun does, after that, attend the dorm party. And just as Jongdae promised, he is the life of it - until he gets dragged into a drunk argument with Junmyeon over which Star Wars movie is the best, which is entertaining in itself. Kyungsoo finds them passed out on top of each other on the couch later into the night, and snorts. He’s happy the two idiots sorted out their shit.
He does not find Baekhyun and Jongdae, which is not surprising. He does not find Jongin or Yixing either, which is more surprising, but he supposes that last he saw them they were doing shots of smuggled tequila, so perhaps not.
He finds Chanyeol mostly sober, bouncing to the music in the common. With a smile, he coaxes him back to the room they share on the fourth floor, nudging a head under his arm as they head up the stairs. Chanyeol presses a soft kiss into Kyungsoo’s hair once they make it inside, and gives him a sleepy smile as he drops onto the edge of the bed.
“Soo. Soo, hey, Soo,” he whispers, tugging on Kyungsoo’s hands to draw him between his legs. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Kyungsoo replies, and they flop onto the same covers, just as they usually do.
(“So,” Chanyeol begins as he falls down next to Yixing on Monday morning. The hair at the back of his head is sticking up and his grin is too bright for this hour of the day. The other boy squints at him. “The music building’s third floor cleaning closet, huh?”
Yixing shoves a piece of toast in his face, and he laughs too loud. Yixing thinks he needs to never speak again.
“If you lean against the back wall, you know next to where they lean the brooms? You might have more success. The shelves are even high enough for Jongin to fit.”
With food flying after him, Chanyeol cackles though a narrow escape from Yixing’s mortified screeching.)
notes:
This is the end of mermaid!au ☆☆☆ I'm sorry it's really terrible and not very funny to compensate for that, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway!