imminent disasters: what you get when you're plastered, for ceruleanquill [2/2]

[chuyeol]

Tomorrow comes with a hangover for Jongin and none for Sehun.

“This is, like, fate and faith and balance in the Universe,” Sehun jumps on Jongin’s bed at half past six. Apparently the guy can philosophize on life without alcohol in his system. “I have a migraine before I drink? No hangover after! I should do this more often.” Well, softcore philosophize.

Jongin rolls over and pulls the blanket over his head. “Go away.”

“Jongin, darling,” Sehun pulls the blanket back. “We have a date today.”

Jongin sits up slowly, with increasing dread. “I didn't dream that up, then.”

“Nah, bro,” Sehun gets off his bed and pulls on a shirt at random. It's Jongin’s, which is probably going to work for that whole look haha we're dating! vibe. “We're all set to elope and shit.” He’s out the door before Jongin can tell him to take that shirt off because he's been meaning to put it in the laundromat for weeks, and also before Jongin can ask if Sehun’s actually serious about this eloping development, because if it is, then it's alarming, and they should call it off.

Destitute, deserted, and very much alone, Jongin turns around to view the room and catches sight of the camcorder. It’s still there on the clothes, comfortably nestled on top of what looks like a pair of neon yellow briefs. Its red light blinks at him, looking more like the low battery warning than the recording signal. Jongin drags himself out of bed and makes his way over to it.

I could delete this entire video, his inner voice croaks, but then he thinks about Sehun sitting back up and grinning, Sehun saying, I'm that good, huh. And so, for some shitty, incomprehensible reason, this is what stops Jongin from bulldozing their terrible plan to the ground. (This is the part where he should realize that something is off, that perhaps he is madly in love with Sehun and has been for the past two centuries, throughout all his incarnations and the lives and vessels that he's occupied - but he doesn’t. Zitao is not narrating this story. Zitao is busy going down on Baekhyun at quarter to seven in the morning. And nobody needs to know that.) So Jongin just swallows a miserable lump in his throat, stops the video, charges the camcorder, and goes to brush his teeth.

One step at a time, Kim Jongin, he tells himself. His reflection stares back at him. One step at a time.

Step translates to bullet point in Sehun's dictionary, because they have a whole lot of those on The List. “Why do we continuously call it The List,” Jongin complains, petulant. “It makes everything sound so dangerous and life-threatening.”

Sehun stares at him oddly. “Well, okay, change it if you want.” But Jongin can’t come up with anything else, so they continue referring to The List as, in fact, The List.

The first thing on it is to hold hands.

“Holding hands is very relationship,” Sehun explains, as if Jongin doesn’t know.

They're sitting in the library, it’s ten to ten, and the place will close in a few. After banging on the keyboard for the majority of his assignments due either today or tomorrow, Jongin only wants the sleep he deserves for all his hardcore, heavy metal level of bullshitting. “Very relationship,” he runs a hand over his face. “You're turning into Zitao. We're very boyfriends.” He’s expecting Sehun to pull a face and say 'oh hell no’ or something, but -

“We are,” Sehun nods, deadly serious. Jongin feels like a bucket of ice cold water just greeted his face.

“You’re serious,” he says, carefully, and Sehun just gives him a puzzled frown.

“Bro. We did that useless sorority frat swear thing. Very serious.”

“Yeah,” Jongin smiles, extremely uneasy. “We totally did. Bro. Who I am fake-dating.”

Sehun doesn't catch anything wrong with Jongin’s expression because he's too busy reading up on Cosmo sex tips, but he raises a hand to high five. “That’s the spirit!”

Jongin pats the hand daintily.

He’s fucked five ways to Saturday, and that’s without Sehun trying to implement Cosmo sex tips on him.

So anyway, they hold hands. They hold hands all the damned time. Sehun grows so happy and comfortable with this that he gets up in the middle of the lecture, holding Jongin’s hand, bends down to whisper into Jongin’s ear (while holding Jongin's hand), that he, Sehun, needs to go to the bathroom, and then he leaves the auditorium, holding Jongin’s hand, to go to the bathroom, where he almost forgets to stop holding Jongin’s hand so he can unzip his pants and take his dick out to pee.

What the fuck, Jongin thinks to himself, and tries to decide how he feels about this. He can't. His parents, his sisters, his education, his life experiences, none of them have prepared him for this. But then Sehun leans down and kisses him on the cheek and says thank you for escorting me to the bathroom, monsieur, and Jongin reminds himself that this is all an elaborate joke because his best buddy wants to let out some steam. That's okay. Isn’t it? Yes, it is.

His cheek feels super hot though. Like, really warm and heated.

Sehun washes up, flushes the urinal (Jongin coughs furiously in surprise), and reaches for Jongin’s hand again. “Yo,” he says, and that takes the soft edge off a bit, kind of ushers in a bro-ish comfort zone. They go back to class, still holding hands. Baekhyun wiggles his eyebrows, Zitao gives Jongin a thumbs-up. When they get into their seats, Sehun is sorely disappointed. They should be grossed out, he scrawls onto his notes.

Jongin feels a little sad. The experience had felt nice. Sort of. He reminds himself again that this is a joke.

Well, it’s a pretty tame start, he writes back, and Sehun scribbles a hmmm. He doesn't write anything other than world history notes for the rest of the class, but Jongin finds himself peeking over Sehun's elbow a few times just in case the guy does stray from the topic.

Next up on The List is going on a date, but they’re inviting friends along so that everybody gets ‘grossed out’, as Sehun puts it. “We could just find a porn video of our Japanese lookalikes on the internet and send it to everybody,” Jongin suggests, as they go over potential date plans. The cinema, the amusement park, the museum and the water park are all crossed out. At this rate they’ll be having a date in the convenience store, huddled over the ice cream freezer. Jongin isn’t sure there’s space for ten people to stand around it and watch two extras discreetly hold hands and hear them call each other sickeningly sweet pet names. Speaking of, he should let Sehun know that he doesn’t appreciate being called a tiger, of all animals.

“Everybody watches porn of our Japanese lookalikes, honeybun. They’ll know it's a fake straight away.”

Honeybun. Jongin spaces out in slight terror.

“Hey, koala bear,” Sehun purrs, “Earth to my brofriend.”

“Haha,” Jongin mumbles, “Brofriend.”

And then Sehun leans forward and closes the space between them, tilting his head and kissing him straight on the mouth. It's very short and chaste, but Jongin feels inexplicably cute-ified and small and his toes curl in his Hello Kitty socks. Sehun's lips are soft, dammit.

“Right,” Jongin laughs uneasily, after Sehun sits back. “Clearly. We are brofriends. Let's, uh, go on a picnic.” The last sentence he blurts out because he has nothing better to say, but Sehun seems to be taken with the idea and the plan is sealed.

The year is 2015, two millennia after the death of Jesus H. Christ, and two twenty three year old men about to throw off the undergrad title from their resumes are going on a picnic for a date and inviting their entire social circle. Because, as Jongin said so succinctly, clearly they are brofriends. (If Baekhyun were narrating this, he would say that this is why good people can’t have nice things: because morons like Sehun and Jongin constantly mess shit up. But he isn’t narrating this, because Zitao is sucking him off. And nobody needs to know that.)

The picnic is a disaster; anyone could have seen that coming, except Sehun.

“I can’t believe you actually thought this was a good idea,” Jongin yawns and kicks the kinks out of his legs. He’s lying spread eagled on a huge checkered tablecloth, while Sehun sits primly on the side and checks his phone for the time every few minutes.

“A picnic is nice! It's filial but can also be romantic if need be! It was a flexible idea, everybody got free food, and we got to hold hands even more!”

“For them to be grossed out, or for your own needs of physical affection?” Jongin grins and stretches. The confused silence that Sehun provides him is a small victory.

“Shut up,” Sehun says, sounding a little uncertain, and Jongin takes that as his cue to sleep.

He's probably napped for half an hour when Sehun leans close and whispers, “KFC,” seductively in his ear.

“You’re asking for a kick in the ass,” Jongin warns him, blearily, still mostly asleep. “I know. Broke my heart too many times. Just like this. KFC, y’say. And then no KFC. Liar. Bastard.”

Sehun snickers. “Come on, I got you flowers.”

Jongin rolls over and opens his eyes, frowning against the sunlight. “Got me what?”

Sehun's holding a posy of daffodils, daisies and purple tulips. The kind that grow around the trees on pavements, in the park, everywhere. It's nothing special, and the chances are ten to one Sehun plucked them because he was bored, but Jongin hasn’t really received flowers before.

“Flowers,” Sehun pokes a tulip petal up Jongin’s nose and Jongin spends the next two minutes sneezing.

“Fuck,” he gasps, eyes getting watery and red. “Alright, alright.”

Sehun looks pleased with himself. “Keep them fresh, like our love.”

Jongin's fingers curl around the stems, a little hesitant. “Right,” he says. “Our love.”

Sehun gets up and drags the tablecloth from under him. “And now we go home. This was a terrible idea. I can’t believe nobody turned up.”

“At least I slept,” Jongin offers, rolling on the grass. He keeps his wrist angled carefully, so the flowers don’t get crushed.

Jongin has successfully moved on from William and Evariste’s lives and is working on topology and Euler’s formulae, when Kyungsoo and Zitao knock on the door. He knows it’s them because only Kyungsoo knocks three dainty raps in quick succession, and only Zitao laughs in that wild, high whoop.

Zitao’s still laughing when Sehun opens the door, and he makes a beeline for Jongin. Something about his prospective internship, probably, or some new joke Baekhyun came up with. “Jongin,” he says, breathlessly, and flings an arm around his neck as he lands on the bed. He’s charmingly oblivious to the papers he sends flying off the mattress, but his eagerness to share whatever he’s got to say makes up for it. “Jongin,” he repeats, and starts talking. Somewhere in the middle he gets fired up and starts spouting Mandarin, which is alright except for the fact that Jongin has to struggle to keep up before he eventually resigns himself to just listening.

“Nice flowers,” Kyungsoo comments, from his seat on the floor, and Sehun replies before Jongin can say anything.

They leave, eventually, when Kyungsoo gets back the notes he’d lent to Sehun, and Zitao’s done venting about whatever he’d been venting about, and Jongin curls up with his slightly crinkled topology notes. He has a ridiculous, niggling urge to ask Sehun if he’d just called Kyungsoo over so he could tell him about the damned flowers, but he resists. Is he getting emotionally invested? Nah. Just bummed. It’s fine.

“Yo,” Sehun says, tumbling into the room. He trips over a sock and lands flat on his face in a very unceremonious manner.

Jongin doesn't blink. “Mmm,” he says, then turns a page. He's reading The World's Greatest Crimes of Passion, which is primarily about mad ex-lovers and cuckolded individuals shooting each other. He’s getting more alarmed by the paragraph. The things these people do! Maybe it’s a good thing he isn’t actually dating Sehun. What if he accidentally got a horrible temper and hacked him into thin, cold ham slices? Jongin forces himself back into the present, where a very whole and put together Sehun is telling him that his TA is going to set up a watch party tomorrow for the comet that’s supposed to be shooting somewhere or other.

“Is it Haley?” Jongin says, looking up from his book. Sehun’s still on the floor, propped up on his elbows, face flushed pink. There’s a soft sheen of sweat on his forehead, and Jongin clutches the pages tighter. It is very good that he isn’t really dating Sehun because, well, what if they killed each other in a fit of madness, right? Wrong, he tells himself, automatically. That's all bullshit and Sehun’s already told me that he likes forehead kisses.

“Not Haley,” Sehun laughs, getting to his knees and then standing up properly. He stretches, and his shirt rides up. Jongin rivets his eyeballs back to the page immediately. An appalling crime of passion was reported from Paris in the Times in 1981. Something about a dude actually eating his girlfriend. Wait, this guy was a cannibal?

“I actually forgot the name,” Sehun’s saying. He's standing still now, with his arms by his sides, shirt very much covering his stomach, so Jongin closes the book. Cannibals are disturbing, and his brofriend is cute. “I’ll ask again. But it’s going to be pretty, and it won’t just be the Astronomy department's thing, you know. You can come too.”

“We can go together?”

“It's why I asked!”

The rendezvous is eleven thirty p.m., and Jongin is yelling at Sehun to hurry up at eleven forty five.

“I can’t hurry this, man, I’m shitting!”

“Why couldn't you have shat earlier!”

“I didn’t need to!”

Jongin waits anxiously, staring out the window. “You're making us so fucking late,” he mumbles, and then he hears the sound of the flush.

Sehun pops his head out of the door, then does a double take. “You’re wearing a jacket?”

“The weather's freezing out,” Jongin tells him. “It's February, remember?”

“Not really,” Sehun mutters, grabbing a hoodie at random. It's Jongin’s, again, probably short at the sleeves and definitely in need of a wash, but Sehun has already jammed his feet into his sneakers and run out. “Jesus,” Jongin sighs. He locks the door behind him and jogs to catch up.

It really is icy, especially on the football field. The bright lights are all off, and a group of around ten to twelve people is huddled on the mats on the grass. Jongin's breath comes in wisps ahead of him, and he shivers a little as he tries to make out where Sehun is; he’s off to the edge, as usual, shoulders bowed and head down. Jongin laughs. Comet sighting in the sky, and this guy’s staring at his feet. Jongin puffs his way over to him. “Boo,” he whispers, over his shoulder.

“Babe,” Sehun whispers back, and Jongin wants to facepalm.

“I meant boo as in I’m a ghost, be scared!.”

Sehun starts shivering dramatically. “I’m so scared, Jongin, save me.”

Jongin shoves him over, and Sehun trips on his own laces. He’s about to fall but Jongin, panicked, grabs arm and pulls.

“Shit,” Sehun hisses. “No need to dislocate my shoulder.”

Jongin's spotted Sehun’s bedraggled, untied laces and bends down. It’s cold and kind of dark, grass long and sharp against his fingers. Sehun’s laces have been muddied and dried to near rigidity, so Jongin has to expend a considerable amount of energy and cussing to get the job done, but he manages it.

When he stands back up, Sehun is staring at him owlishly, and Jongin can’t figure out the look on his face when more than half of it is in shadow, and he doesn't have time to, either, because right then Joonmyun yells. “There it is!” And they all turn their attention to the flickering trail of light. It takes around a minute for it to cross one end of the sky to the other. It's in the middle that Sehun’s hand crawls over his and holds it fast.

“Help me,” Sehun whispers, dramatically. Jongin rolls over, still half asleep.

“Guh,” he manages to say, and they both flinch at his morning breath.

“My assignment,” Sehun prods Jongin’s thigh with his toe. “Do it for me.”

Jongin rolls over the other way, so his back returns to face Sehun. “Nuh.”

“Jongin. Please. I’ll. Shit,” Sehun pauses, thinking of bait. “Hmm. I’ll love you forever if you do.”

It's very weak bait, but Jongin’s response is automatic; he rolls off the bed and sits up. “What is it.” When he looks over at Sehun’s surprised, slightly amused face, he realizes he shouldn’t have gotten up so fast. That's not what he'd normally have done. But Sehun...

“I managed to write it myself, if you’ll believe it. Just wanted nerdy brofriend to check my grammar.”

Something feels tight in his stomach. “Nerdy brofriend,” he repeats, and pulls a face that makes Sehun laugh, but it feels forced. Still, at least someone's having a good time.

Two weeks later, Jongin’s pretending to focus on his history notes, and Sehun is probably actually paying attention to the lecture video he's watching on his laptop. His bright yellow earphones are plugged in, and he keeps pausing in the middle to type notes on a Notepad file. The guy has some kind of downright obsession with yellow. Last year he’d even dyed his hair blond.

But back to Jongin pretending to focus on his history notes. He's pretending for two reasons: a) they’re not history, they’re actually a random wad of papers he’d found in his closet, and have to do with a fantasy and fable literature analysis elective. Which is weird, because that had been a summer course, and he thought he'd packed that stuff away. And b) he's actually trying to work up his nerve so he can ask Sehun out. Amazing, right? Who would have thought that asking out the guy you’re fake dating would be this stressful!

Jongin's been trying for two days, but his throat either freezes up, or he says something completely irrelevant the second his mouth opens. Like, “Hey, Sehun, want some fries?” or, “How’s that back zit you were talking about other day, should I prick it for you,” or, “Man, I'm tired.” The kind of shit his anus would be jealous of spewing, honestly. He stares at his handwriting from last semester and wonders at how it’s changed. Has it gotten a little neater, or a little messier? Hmmm. The first sign of this connection is shown with the first wife, who spoke aloud her wish of having a child. Saying this, under the tree, she immediately felt as if "her heart suddenly grew light" (p. 320).

“Hey,” Sehun mumbles. “You on the Mughals, yet?”

“Ah,” Jongin smiles uneasily. “The Mughals. No actually, I’m still revising the first, uh, section. The different, er, periods of pre... prehistory! Prehistoric periods. Just revision.”

“Nice,” Sehun says, typing, and for once Jongin’s relieved that Sehun hadn’t been paying attention to a thing he just said.

Jongin continues to stare at him for a few seconds, resting his head against arm. Then he starts talking abruptly, before all his resolve vanishes. “Actually, Sehun,” he says, “I think we should go on a date.”

“Great,” Sehun says, and Jongin feels a confused swoop of confidence - confidence because Sehun agreed, and confusion because, well, that was easier than Jongin expected. “Wait,” Sehun says, frowning. He takes his earphones out. “What did you just say?”

Jongin allows the world to slowly crash around him and give way beneath his feet for the time period of exactly half a second before he repeats himself. “I think we should go on a date.” He tries to put confident gestures into his hands and a self-assured expression on his face, but Sehun just narrows his eyes and frowns harder. From his peripheral vision, Jongin sees Baekhyun approach them. As if this needed to get worse.

“But we already went on a date,” Sehun shakes his head. “You know, the picnic.”

“Picnic!” Baekhyun repeats, gleefully, as he passes by. “And how was the turn out, lovebirds?”

“Pretty good,” Sehun says. “Mostly because your sorry ass was nowhere to be seen!” He yells the last few words out, and earns the collective glare and hiss of everyone around him. Right, they’re in the library.

“Well, yeah, we did have a date,” Jongin whispers, “But it was a disaster, and I slept through it.”

Sehun tilts his head to the side and yawns. “So why put ourselves through it again?”

“Well, it won’t be another picnic, for starters,” Jongin shrugs. “Besides, hey. My brofriend deserves better, right?” He bumps their shoulders together, a little shy.

Sehun smiles at his keyboard. “Damn right.”

Since it’s Jongin who asked Sehun out, it’s Jongin who chooses the place. And the best place, he decides, is a cafe.

“You have zero imagination,” Sehun says, once they're seated at a table next to the display window. “The nearest cafe on campus?”

Dude has a point. “Well,” Jongin taps his fingers on the table. “At least I have the common sense to stay awake?” And almost unconsciously, he adds, “On a second date, no less.” He changes to his smooth salesman voice, “Aiming to make fake relationships more realistic. Coming soon, near you!” The quiet hangs between them after he’s said that, save for a small chuckle from Sehun, and Jongin thinks, a little annoyed with himself, about where all this is leading him.

“What,” Sehun says, finally. “You seem a little off.”

Jongin looks up. Sehun does look worried. Of course he does! They’re friends. Friends worry about each other. It's normal. “Nah,” Jongin brushes it off. “Just exams. You know how it is.”

Sehun grins at that, as the barista gets them their orders. “Do I? I don’t think so.”

“Yeah,” Jongin rolls his eyes, taking a sip of his espresso. “Forgot you have zero dedication. Which, by the way, is more important than imagination for a GPA, actually.”

“Depends on your major,” Sehun shoots back, at once.

They can’t let that slide without arguing it over, of course, so they go on and on about whether creativity or focus is more important for good grades, and it's a pretty useless debate. Somehow they wind up incorporating strippers, Einstein and the Doppler effect into it (Jongin’s surprised Sehun even remembers that from tenth grade physics), all of which seem irrelevant after five cups of espresso.

“C’mon,” Sehun says, voice a little shaky and fingers even shakier, “Let’s take this date somewhere else.”

Jongin has his misgivings as they split their bill, and they increase when Sehun grabs his hand, but he just leads Jongin to the dance studio, where they attempt to smooth out the jitters.

“Free days, huh,” he pants out, when they finish practice, standing by the door. They’re tired and sweaty and Jongin hasn’t felt better in weeks.

“Free days,” Sehun lets his head fall against the wall, then rolls his neck. Hands hanging loosely at their sides, their wrists touch, and Sehun squares his shoulders. Jongin glances up through his bangs. One second Sehun's looking at him, intense and full of concentration, and the next he's kissing Jongin, walking them both up against the mirror, and Jongin is helpless.

Both their eyes are wide open, Sehun staring like he’s got something to prove, Jongin just searching for something he can’t seem to find. It doesn’t help that this guy gets better at kissing the more hyperaware he is - which is not a real compliment, but then Sehun tugs at Jongin’s lower lip with his teeth, and Jongin's eyelids flutter shut, and wow. Jongin would be sliding down if it weren’t for Sehun’s knee between his thighs, and when Jongin realizes this, he inches forward slightly, then slides back. Not real grinding or anything, but Sehun breathes out through his nose, tongue flicking over Jongin’s teeth, and Jongin buries his hands in Sehun’s shirt.

The door creaks open, and they spring apart. Yixing coughs, face a little pink, eyes downcast as he mutters an apology before quickly shuffling out.

They’re breathing heavily, alone in the room again, and Jongin wants to say ‘huh, that was chill’, but he also wants to accuse, and that’s what he ends up going with. “So that was so Yixing could see?”

Sehun looks panicked and a little lost when he looks up at Jongin. “No! No, actually...” He seems like he's about to say something else, but then he doesn't.

Jongin traipses through the rest of the day, half asleep and half awake, muddling over what the hell that was supposed to mean. It gets him cranky, so he takes it out by ingesting copious amounts of ice cold water. (If Zitao were narrating this, he would point out that this is proof that Jongin is madly in love more than ever, but Zitao isn't narrating. Zitao has a fever and is getting laid tonight because Baekhyun has some kind of fever kink, and nobody needs to know that.)

Not everything is all sad blues and Taylor Swift’s songs on heartbreak, though - there are some upsides to this whole thing. Nice little favors that aren’t on The List, and hidden, thoughtful post-it notes that get Jongin either really happy, like a middle school girl, or really confused about his feelings (also, incidentally, like a middle school girl). Sehun sharpens Jongin’s pencils for sketching and outlining, charges up their laptops before they leave for dance practice, has Jongin’s cereal ready before Jongin gets up. In addition, he actually flushes the toilet. If Jongin will be honest with himself, it's that last thing that touches his heart the most.

“Jongin,” Sehun mumbles, “What you doing.”

“You seemed tired,” Jongin says, straddling his back. “Just working the kinks out.”

“Mmm,” Sehun says, wiggling his shoulders as Jongin massages them. “Kinky.”

“Dude,” Jongin stops, annoyed, and Sehun laughs into his pillow.

“Alright, I’m sorry! Continue, by all means. C'mon,” he adds, as Jongin makes to get off him. “Please?”

Stray glances and accidental touches, they’re all beginning to mean so much. Sehun staring at Jongin’s mouth while he talks, Jongin brushing away an eyelash from Sehun’s cheek. They progress through The List. Oddly enough, what bothers Jongin isn’t that he has to do all these things - he sets a picture of Sehun as his lockscreen, Sehun FaceTimes him at inopportune moments, they cook (and burn) each other’s lunches - it’s that all these things make him happy. Being with Sehun like this makes him smile before his brain can even begin to process and churn up (like it used to) all the potential disasters that could happen just being around the guy.

And Jongin’s bothered by how sometimes Sehun seems to feel the same, sometimes doesn’t. He’ll break Jongin’s reveries with you’re looking cute - and some days he’ll look around to make sure someone heard that, and others he’ll just grin at his shoes, when Jongin shakes his head, and go pink in the face.

Jongin stays up some nights, unable to sleep. “What are you thinking?” he asks the ceiling once, exasperated. Sehun stirs in his bed, and Jongin shuts up at once.

The kisses are the most confusing. On the shell of his ear, nicking his shoulder when they pass in hallways; these Sehun gives him like secrets. But when there’s an audience - a group of friends, random passersby - Sehun’s either all in or all out, and Jongin doesn’t know what to tell him.

Sehun, it’s obvious you’re faking it. Sehun, you’re either too weirded out or too forced, and it’s not convincing. Sehun, let’s hold hands some more instead. It’s safe and we both like it. Sehun, if we had this without all the confusion, I’d like it so much. I already like it so much. Sehun. You fucking bro with your dumbass brofriend terminology. Fucking fuck, Sehun. Jongin shakes his head violently and goes back to trawling through torrents. Next to him, Sehun grins at some joke he’s just read.

Chanyeol has everyone hyped up for this concert which his favorite indie band will play the opening show for, and right now they’re all on the bus on the way there. Once again, Sehun’s sitting on top of Jongin, his dick touching Jongin’s. Except this time they’re both sober, and Jongin’s sensory receptors are all ten times less numb and ten times more awake. Ah, the friction.

Jongin, ever the voice of reason, warns Sehun that they are in public. They are on a bus. There are people around them, people who are alive and breathing and probably homophobic as well as repugnant to PDA of any orientation and level.

Sehun, ever the heedless, presses on. Quite literally. Their crotches are not only aligned, but really going at it. In a desperate attempt to make themselves look less juvenile and horrific in the eyes of the elderly people on the bus, Jongin leans up and kisses him. This is supposed to mask the lowkey grinding, but they end up making out instead. Jongin’s pretty sure an ajhumma passes out, and by this time they’re both so hard it’s actually uncomfortable.

Chanyeol, standing next to them in the aisle as he hangs onto the handles, clears his throat. Jongin’s sure another ajhumma is about to pass out. This is terrible. Sehun is mouthing along Jongin's jaw and down his neck, fingers curling around Jongin’s collar, and Jongin is making really pathetic moaning sounds and Jongin is getting turned on and Jongin is getting lightheaded and Jongin can’t think straight.

Enter Jongdae, a voice of reason so clear and resonating that when he says, “Please don’t,” Jongin almost chucks Sehun right out of his lap. Sehun is kind of offended. “Dude,” he hisses, “What the fuck.” He limps back to the seat next to Jongin’s. “Didn’t have to hit my balls if you wanted to stop.”

“Uh,” Jongin says, flustered. “Sorry. About the balls.”

“Well,” Sehun breathes, a little calmer. “It's okay. I'm sorry, too.”

To say that the rest of the bus ride is a bit of a downer is the understatement of the entire year, and it's only March.

Jongin sticks his cheek against the cold window and stares out, dark green trees and dark gray sky and freshly carpeted road whizzing off together. The occasional car honks as it speeds away, and next to him Sehun keeps shaking his leg, hand hovering close over Jongin’s every few minutes before retracting. This is stupid, Jongin thinks. Then he also thinks about the fact that he feels maybe a little bruised and definitely way too used - what had all this been if not for show? - so he curls his hands into fists and stuffs them in his pockets. Jongin feels a bit better at that, like he's made a statement, but half an hour on (how much longer to Seoul? he's about to ask Chanyeol), Sehun’s head droops softly onto Jongin’s shoulder, and quiet snores flutter through the air.

Jongin feels like shit.

The venue's atmosphere is great: people packed in the queue that Baekhyun swears goes for kilometers, everyone buzzing with excitement, merchandise sellers passing around with T-shirts over their shoulders and keychains bunched in their fingers. Sehun gets two T-shirts, glances at Jongin, then keeps both of them under his arm. Their turn comes in an hour, and Chanyeol excitedly brushes Joonmyun’s offer aside and goes in the lead, handing the tickets out carefully, then herding them all to their seats. “Alright,” he keeps saying, visibly shivering with excitement.

The opening act really are pretty fantastic. Chanyeol always has that weird but surprisingly good choice in bands, and by the end of it they're all on their feet, and the fire display shoots up from the stage. “Come on,” Sehun says in Jongin’s ear. “Let's take a picture.”

“Sure,” Jongin replies, tonelessly. He steps closer to him, with a peace sign and a small smile, while Sehun twists around (Jongin can almost feel Sehun's relief wash over the both of them, and for a long moment he feels so, so guilty) and kisses the top of his head. Jongin almost feels like asking him what he’ll caption it with when they get home, knows it’ll be something about how they’re so close when they’re not - not in the way Sehun's going to keep implying. It all feels like such a huge lie, such terrible pressure, especially with reality seeping into what he does and how he thinks when he’s around Sehun these days. Because there are moments when he really means everything: from what he says, to the shoulder squeezes and the head pats, even the fucking kisses. He means it when they kiss. It’s gotten to the point that when Jongin closes his eyes, he wishes Sehun would mean it all too.

The concert goes on, of course. Everything goes on as planned. Next to him, Sehun is excited as everyone else, eyes bright and hands in the air. Jongin just stands, shuts out everything except the music. The concert lasts two and a half hours, and Jongin shuts everything out except the band on the stage, and the sound.

“Hey,” Sehun says, breathless and content, when they head back. “That was great, wasn't it?”

Jongin lets himself smile, lets himself nod. He doesn’t say a word. And it's okay, because he gets like this sometimes, and Sehun won’t mind. This makes it perfect, this means nobody will realize anything's wrong. Who isn’t tired after a concert? But Sehun keeps staring at him as if he’s worried, and he probably is worried, but Jongin’s way too exhausted for this. He lets it slide past, and doesn't really register it when someone in their group whispers, “Oooh, they had an argument,” or when Sehun snaps at them to shut up.

The mood doesn't get any better during the long hours they ride back. When they reach, Jongin matches every step for Sehun's until the last one in front of their room. “I’ll be back in a bit,” he says, voice a little hoarse, and he turns away.

Baekhyun's always got a bed to spare, although that does have something to do with how Zitao is one of the clingiest boyfriends known to mankind. “Dude,” Baekhyun greets him lazily, his head in Zitao's lap. They’re both on their respective laptops, and the bed on the far right is neat and made. “When’s the last time you slept in this?” Jongin jokes as he sits down, but Baekhyun takes him seriously.

“Hmm,” he says. “I think, maybe a month? Since we started going out.”

Jongin doesn’t miss the little smug smile that Zitao gives Baekhyun, and it hurts a little. It hurts a lot, and he doesn't get why all these feelings are unloading on him now, in the middle of this mess. He’d been perfectly fine before, honestly. Honestly honestly honestly. He wishes Sehun were here, and not two floors down in their own room.

“Hey,” Zitao cuts into his thoughts. “Come on.” He nods at the huge clock on the wall. It's in the shape of a rabbit, and definitely Zitao's choice. “Late late, time for bed.”

So Jongin just ends up crashing there, alone on his bed while Zitao and Baekhyun probably breathe in sync and do couple-y shit like sleep in each other’s arms and think happily about each other and all that. Stop attending this self-pity party, Jongin tells himself sternly, and for once, he listens to himself right away. He turns on his side and falls fast asleep.

Jongin avoids Sehun for all of twenty seven hours.

When he wakes up, his first instinct is to run to Sehun because what in the shit is this strange, neat bed in this strange, neat room, but then Baekhyun ambles in from the bathroom and croaks a, “What the fuck is up, buttercup,” which calms him down. Zitao whines and kicks Baekhyun in the ass, and that makes Jongin feel better, too. He’s in the middle of rinsing his mouth with toothpaste - not enough willpower to get his toothbrush from their bathroom, it’s too far away - when he remembers that he can’t really go to their bathroom. He remembers yesterday in all its ridiculous clarity, and if he feels embarrassed about his reaction, or frustrated with everything, he pushes it away. Out of sight should mean out of mind.

Today is Sunday, and thankfully none of them have extra electives or assignments that are due on Monday. Zitao takes Baekhyun and Jongin out to the skate park. He brings along an old, weary skateboard, and sets about teaching them how to ride it. The catch: he’s forgotten how to himself. “Ah,” he grins, ruefully. “Just last year I was a pro, I tell you guys.”

“Last year?” Baekhyun teases. “You sure your memory isn’t glossing over the entirety of high school and gluing bits together?”

Zitao frowns in concentration, then understands and slaps his shoulder. “Hey, no disrespect!” he says. “I’m taller than you.”

Baekhyun snorts. “My respect is earned by other lengths, friend.”

At this, Jongin stops desperately trying to wiggle his entire body to get the board moving. “You mean Zitao’s dick is -” he raises his brows.

“Lies and slander,” Zitao interrupts, calmly. “And last I heard, Jongin was not dating me, so he does not need to know about the proportions of my penis.”

“Proportions!" Baekhyun repeats, doubling over, and Zitao stands and stares at them both, arms akimbo, smiling surreptitiously.

Then they get ice cream and try the cinema, but the movie, Cries and Whispers, is really useless and they walk out after ten minutes. “Don’t let rules get you,” Zitao says, seriously. “Too many things already drag you down. Rules are just eh. Trash on the sidewalk.”

“That's a refreshing point of view,” Jongin supplies, hands in his pockets. And it is. The whole day is a sharp change, from constant pretense and trying to divine what was really there in someone's face and someone's words and what wasn’t. They amble through the campus, through the streets outside. Sometimes they lapse into silence, sometimes Baekhyun talks, sometimes Zitao. Jongin stays mostly quiet, just listening.

Neither Baekhyun nor Zitao say anything about Jongin following them back to their room and sleeping over a second night, and for that he is so grateful. He tries to tell them that, but they won’t hear it. ”A bro,” Baekhyun yells, before faceplanting into the bed. “Is a bro!” He lifts his head up and stares at Jongin with comical intensity. “Is a bro, is in turn a bro, is moreover a bro, is thereby a bro, is a bro, is a bro, is a -”

“Baekhyun,” Zitao says. “Jongin is smart. He gets it.”

“Right,” Baekhyun says, and lets his head fall back into the mattress.

At two a.m., Sehun texts him. Hello, is all it says, and Jongin is in his feet and stealing out the door in seconds. When has Jongin ever been able to say no?

Their door's open a crack, and Sehun is sitting on his bed, hugging his knees and staring at the wall. He starts when Jongin comes in. “I didn’t think you'd come,” he says, and Jongin just gives him a crooked smile. Already he's regretting coming, but Sehun said hello, Sehun probably wants something, and Jongin will always give it, goddammit it if he doesn’t.

“I think,” Sehun starts, unsure, and Jongin takes a tiny, shaky breath because it's only been a day but hearing his voice makes him feel better, even if it makes him feel angry, even if it reminds him that he’s sore all over. “I think,” Sehun says, “We need to talk.”

Jongin takes another breath. “And?”

Sehun blinks, eyes on his face for a second before he return his gaze back to the wall. “And I need to apologize.”

Jongin closes the door behind him, steps properly inside. “We can work with that.”

Sehun looks up at him again, and this time he keeps looking. “We can?”

“You’ve been looking good,” Zitao elbows him a few weeks later, after History of Mathematics is over. “Happier?”

Jongin grins. “Uh huh.”

“Yo,” Sehun says. “So there’s this thing happening on Facebook.”

“Uh huh.”

“It’d be cool if you checked it.”

Jongin nods, closing the sushi cat game tab before opening Facebook. He checks it like once a week, now. The feed is pretty slow since the craze died down half a decade ago. Besides, he's only got around twenty friends - and that’s including his parents.

He’s got a four notifications, so he checks them out, then chokes on his spit. Over on his own bed, Sehun fidgets, nervous.

Jongin looks up at him. “Really? You’re three feet away from me, and this is how you ask me out.”

“I’m scared!”

Jongin just shakes his head, and clicks Accept.

“Okay okay okay,” Sehun’s saying, cutting through Jongin’s dark world of dreamy nothingness. Jongin tries to wrench his eyes open but it doesn’t really work. “Okay,” Sehun says, and Jongin realizes Sehun's talking to himself, so he tries to go back to sleep and give him some privacy.

“I’m doing this,” Sehun says, which makes Jongin change his mind and feel very strongly that no, this is not a time for privacy if Sehun is going to dump a bucket of water on him, or release a bag of wasps or who the fuck knows what the shit, so he frantically tries to get his eyes to open. He feels Sehun close in by the second, but dammit there's gunk and his eyelids are stuck close because gunk is apparently biological superglue, and he can’t even swat at Sehun because his arms are numb under his pillow and his back, and why does he sleep in such terrible positions - he feels a soft, warm mouth on his forehead, and then Sehun clears his throat nervously. “Good morning, sunshine,” he tries. Jongin can feel the cringe Sehun's face is going through right now, so Jongin just grins, eyes still closed, and reaches for Sehun’s hand. It takes a few tries, but he brings it to his mouth and kisses it in return.

He doesn’t say good morning back until he’s brushed his teeth, though. “Sorry,” Jongin explains. “You know my morning breath.”

i hope you guys (especially, you, dear recipient) somehow find it in yourselves to like this trainwreck of a fic. this was really refreshing to write!!! thanks to j for great advice and l for constant belief. xo