SH 2015: Certamine (for kriscasso)
For: kriscasso
From: ANONYMOUS until May 22, 2015
Title: Certamine
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s)/Focus: Suho/Kris + (bffls!BaekYeol)
Length: 6,300 words
Summary: Kris is a jock prince and Joonmyun's a nerd princess... or maybe it's the other way around?
Notes: thank you first and foremost for the mods for not crucifying me and being patient with this silly author. secondly, thank you to my recipient for giving me a wonderful lists of prompts to chose from; hopefully you'll enjoy this ^^
There’s something about Kim Joonmyun that draws Yifan's eyes to him. It’s not because Joonmyun is especially attractive; in fact he might most accurately be described as plain or ordinary. It's not Joonmyun's personality either. Yifan has never even spoken to him, the boy that always sits as far away from others as seemingly possible. He doesn't even know him at all.
Yifan's brain can't process why he keeps staring at the shorter male whenever they cross paths, which isn't often. They have only one shared class this semester; an introduction to poetry course. Yifan's only taking it because he heard the teacher was an easy-grader (that and the comics class had already filled up come Yifan's time to make his schedule). None of the students appear interested in the lecture, the teacher going on and on about accentual-syllabic verse, trochaic feet and a whole slew of things Yifan won't remember for his exam.
There is one person listening however. The boy in the first row on the far right, with jet black hair styled neatly and clothes Yifan would only wear on Halloween as part of a 'nerd costume'. It’s also the boy that Yifan can't take his eyes off of.
"Will we need to know scansion for our exam?" asks said boy, his hand raised at a perfect 180 degree angle from his body. Why is Joonmyun so stiff? Yifan wonders. Although his classmate is sitting with a perfectly straight posture, his body still seems closed off. Yifan's friend, Jongdae, who's working toward his psychology major, might be able to tell Yifan what Joonmyun's body language means. For now, he just stares, too transfixed on understanding the boy in the corner to listen to the lecture.
"Yes, half of your final exam will involve scanning metrical patterns; I hope everyone attended the last few classes," their teacher replies. Yifan sucks in a breath.
Yifan doesn't skip class, he can't afford to, literally, when tuition is so high. However, he looks towards his notebook; it’s composed of 90% doodles and 10% words (and the words are just a conversation he and Baekhyun were trying to have about where to eat lunch a few classes ago).
"Fuck," Yifan hisses under his breath. He turns his eyes back to where they had previously been pinned, and thanks to his 20/20 vision, he can tell even from the other side of the classroom that Joonmyun's notes are neat as hell. Probably neater than anything Yifan could hope to ever write-even if he typed them up-complete with little sticky notes and colour-coded highlighted sections. The notes of mere legends.
"Hey, what are you staring at? The only thing over there is that kid, Joon-something," Baekhyun suddenly questions. Yifan is shocked from his reverie, noting with distaste how Baekhyun refers to Joonmyun as a 'thing'.
"Sorry, I was just dozing off; I was staring into space," Yifan comebacks, making a point to not stare at the other side of the classroom. His fingers (and grades) are itching to take a look at the kid's notes, maybe take a picture with his Samsung GALAXY s5.
"That kid is weird huh? How come he doesn't sit next to anybody? The chairs next to him are all empty," Baekhyun wonders, peering across the room as if Joonmyun will spontaneously jump from his seat and give Baekhyun an answer.
He doesn't, but the boy does turn around, probably since Baekhyun's voice isn't exactly quiet (Yifan hopes Joonmyun's just following the sound of Baekhyun's voice and hasn't heard any of their conversation). He makes eye contact with Yifan, and as Yifan feels an itch on the back of his collar, Joonmyun looks full-out flustered, before turning back to the front of the class.
"Whoa! Did you see that? That kid's like totally intimidated by you. Wow, did you do something to him, 'cause I doubt there's anyone in this whole school that thinks you’re actually cool."
"Hey, I am plenty cool. Also I've never even spoken to him before; it must be my amazing sex appeal."
Baekhyun guffaws and their professor glares at them, before he suddenly freezes and looks thoughtful, "you know, maybe it is your (non-existent) sex appeal! I bet you five dollars he has a crush on you," Baekhyun is smirking and Yifan knows already that means trouble.
"As tempting as a whole measly five bucks sounds, I know you’re broke, also that's weird why would someone like him have a crush on me?"
"Don’t take this so seriously man, I was just kidding, but... now I have an idea," Baekhyun having ideas pretty much guarantees that bad things are about the happen. Yifan needs to remember to make Baekhyun shut up more.
"Please leave my innocent soul out of your crazy ideas, Baekhyun, might I remind you how terribly your April Fools prank on Chanyeol was?"
"It wasn't that bad!" Baekhyun protests. They’re both about 5 seconds away from getting booted out of class, except their teacher seems to be doing a good job at ignoring their 'back of the class whisperfest'.
"Chanyeol ended up in the emergency room due to you nearly poisoning him with glue!"
"Okay, how was I supposed to know he was gonna eat it? I don't swallow my toothpaste that's fucking disgusting!"
"The fact still remains you replaced his toothpaste tube with glue. What concerns me most however is that he didn't even notice until he started feeling sick...."
"The perfect crime," Baekhyun winks, "and this time I'll make it worth your while. If you can do it, I'll pay you twenty dollars! It’s all the money in my bank account but it'll be so worth it, I assure you."
"Okay, well at least tell me what it is first," uh oh, was that the sound of Yifan giving in?
"Your mission: get that Joon-whatever kid to admit that he likes you within a week from today. Complete this task, and the money is yours, also whatever money Chanyeol has on him the next time I see him."
'Baekhyun, isn't that a little...mean?"
"Mean? No, mean is sending your best friend to the hospital, this is fucking hilarious!"
***
Yifan might not be the smartest of kids; he might have always fit into that nice, comfortable 'jock' stereotype due to his height and basketball skills, and his friends might be idiots, but one thing he will never be is a bully. And this included pretending to be interested in someone for the sole sake of a bet!
He was not going to listen to Baekhyun, no way no how. Besides, Yifan didn't even know how to woo anybody in the first place. In fact, he’d never had a real relationship before.
Still, he has relationship standards, and going in on a bet doesn’t quite reach them.
So instead of spending his break the next morning with Baekhyun, in retaliation, he was going to do the one thing Baekhyun hated above all else… studying. He made his way to the library and sits down in some corner, hoping for some privacy in case one of his friends were to find him (although the last time he had seen Baekhyun in the library was when he’d been missing his pants and not exactly alone…).
His poetry final is on Monday, and Kris can’t remember anything other than how boring his class is. He digs into his backpack, scavenging for class handouts, and luckily finds one or two. It’s not like Yifan to not take notes, but it was also not like Yifan to take classes with his idiot and distracting friends. Damn, this was all Baekhyun’s fault!
He’s in the midst of deciding whether looking up the topics from the class outline on Wikipedia would be an appropriate way to study (because what the fuck is a villanelle??) when he hears a hushed voice coming from the other side of the bookshelf that he’s currently hidden himself behind.
He peers through the rows of books-not a creepy way to spy at all-and is shocked to see it’s Joonmyun from his class. The boy has his nose buried in a book, probably trying to tackle an essay, or maybe Joonmyun’s just one of those guys that reads dictionaries and shit for fun Yifan muses from his creepy position between letters U and V of an encyclopedia.
Joonmyun exhales, closes whatever he had been reading, and instead pulls out a notebook. It’s one of those small, black notebooks that you can’t buy at any old dollar-store. Joonmyun even takes his note-making materials seriously.
Yifan’s eyes open twice as wide when he can make out ‘poetry’ scribbled across the front. Its Joonmyun’s notes that he spied in class; the notes of his wet dreams!
I need it Yifan screams internally, not feeling unlike SpongeBob in Sandy’s dome…what? Cartoons were an important part of his childhood!
The first step to acquiring notes from a classmate, Yifan remembers, is not to do it through a bookshelf. He discreetly walks around the shelf and pretends to be checking out some books before doing his best to casually notice Joonmyun.
Apparently casually notice was a synonym to trip on your shoe laces and fall into a bookshelf causing about 30 heavy-ass art history encyclopaedias to rain down on you. Yifan loves tattoos, but a book-shaped bruise on his ass didn’t quite cut it.
“Hello,” Yifan finally mutters, helping to unbury his shorter classmate from the debris. Joonmyun looks surprisingly unfazed, although maybe the red in his cheeks is a little more prominent.
“Um,” is Joonmyun’s reply. His voice comes out soft, like a gasp, and Yifan is taken aback. Joonmyun’s voice always sounded sure and confident in class; but right now was a different story.
“I see… you have your poetry notes?” Yifan asks, pointing at the black notebook for emphasis.
Joonmyun tilts his head to the side, “yes, I came here to study?”
It’s phrased as a question which is a sign that Yifan needs to stop acting like a boob.
“Can I take a look at them? I mean, I didn’t take any notes, not because I’m lazy but uh… yeah I don’t want to fail the final,” Yifan asks while being super cool. Goddamn, he’s already sweating and he’s only wearing a T-shirt! “I’ll pay you!”
“…” Joonmyun looks up confused, “you want…my notes?” he’s unsure, as if Yifan had just offered to shine his shoes in the middle of the library or offer him tango lessons.
“Please?” Yifan pleads, about 2 seconds away from getting on his knees and begging. Poetry is the only class he might not pass, and if that happens, he might end up having to take on another semester, or worse…summer classes. Some people are poets, and some people are just normal people, but hardly do these things ever mix (Yifan obviously being the latter).
“Uh,” Joonmyun looks flustered, his eyes fixed on his notes like there’s still something perplexing about Yifan’s request; something he doesn’t understand. He tentatively takes hold of his notebook, as if he’s scared it’ll fall and shatter.
“I mean, you don’t have to…” Yifan trails off because obviously the shorter boy in front of him doesn’t want to fork over his meticulous work to a failing basketball-jock like Wu Yifan.
“No!” Joonmyun cries, and his thrusts his notebook into Yifan’s face, about an inch away from slamming into his nose and quite possibly breaking it, “here! You can take them!”
Yifan blinks a couple times, staring at the words ‘poetry’ right in front of his face.
“But… don’t you need your notebook to study too? I mean, I can take pictures with my phone,” Yifan points out, waving his cell phone in front of Joonmyun’s face similarly to how he had previously done to Yifan with the notes.
“No, no,” Joonmyun explains, “take them and photocopy them and then you can give them back to me in class tomorrow,” he now shoves the little black book into Yifan’s hands. The medium-sized notebook almost looks too tiny when Yifan holds it, and he wonders just how small Joonmyun’s hands are anyways; after all, his classmate was over a head shorter.
Yifan stands awkwardly, “oh… thank you, I promise I’ll bring them back in one piece.”
Joonmyun smiles; it’s a little smile, just a faint twitching of lips, but it makes his face softer, and Yifan gulps before bounding over to the copying machines.
***
Yifan’s an honest man, he never goes back on his promise, that’s why he sees red the second the milkshake makes contact with the machine, leaking inside.
“CHANYEOL!” Yifan screams, opening the photocopier to retrieve the notes he’d borrowed, but he’s too late. The pages have already soaked up the strawberry milkshake, and continued to drip a steady stream of said dairy drink as Yifan holds it up in disbelief.
“Sorry,” Chanyeol exclaims. Yifan can detect the obvious sarcasm.
“Don’t ‘sorry’ me, isn’t it against the rules to bring drinks into the library, much less rest them on the photocopier?” Yifan’s eye is twitching. It only does that when he’s working on 30 minutes of sleep and 3 cups of coffee, or when he has someone he needs to strangle. Chanyeol’s long but fragile neck should do the trick.
“Well, what was I supposed to do? Throw it out?” Chanyeol asks, probably attempting to be rhetorical. Milkshakes only cost like a dollar, Yifan is quite sure Chanyeol could always dig up coins from under a vending machine to buy himself another one. Now both of Yifan’s eyes are twitching; he probably looks like serial killer. Honestly speaking though, crushing Chanyeol’s puny skull inside the copier machine doesn’t seem like such an irrational decision anymore.
“You could always ask Baekhyun to hold onto it the entire 4 minutes it takes me to copy these notes,” Yifan grumbles, trying to shake out as much milkshake as possible. The ink writing is still visible, but the whole thing smells terribly like strawberry, and there’s no way those pages will ever dry properly.
Chanyeol rolls his eyes and pouts, “but Baekhyun would drink half of it!”
“Well,” Yifan grits out, “you just spilt all of it!”
“I said I’m sorry, what do you want me to do?” Chanyeol groans, pulling a purple lollipop out of his pocket and sticking it into his mouth.
“I want you to stop ruining my life!” Yifan growls, pulling the lollipop out and tossing it into the trash
Chanyeol squawks, “Hey that was my last one!”
“No more sugar for you!”
Chanyeol has been accused of being on drugs before, even almost lost his scholarship because of it. Yifan knows the truth though; he knows about Chanyeol’s unhealthy and unnatural addiction to sweets is what causes his friend to be a bundle of hyperactivity and irrational behaviour.
“Ew, first I spill my drink because of you, next you take my candy. That’s it I’m going to find Baekhyun and see if he has a quarter for the vending machine,” Chanyeol crosses his arms and turns to the head to the side, doing his best to make Yifan guilty. Yifan no longer cares.
Instead, his chest is seizing with panic because Joonmyun’s notes are ruined dumbass!!! If Yifan had a volcano handy he would throw himself in it. He’s a class A fuckup… that’s almost as bad as Chanyeol.
Night = ruined.
***
Yifan checks the time and groans, the sound a mixture of physical anguish and anxiety. It’s 5 o’clock in the morning. He’s so far been up all night recopying the notes he … sobs destroyed into a crisp new notebook he had picked up after fleeing the library in shame.
His eyes are watering and he swears his vision has decreased approximately 40%.
It’s not that Joonmyun had a large amount of notes; Yifan only has about 25 pages total to recopy. The thing is that Joonmyun’s notes are written so professionally, just writing every word-extremely carefully-is the least of his problems. He also has to highlight and color code, re-add sticky notes which also have highlighted text.
God, he feels exhausted. His class starts at 9am; will he still be functioning by then? He fucking hopes so, because he needs to return these notes like he promised. Yifan isn’t a dweeb that goes back on his promises.
Although he has to admit, he’s enough of a dweeb to spend all night copying notes then passing out at 8am and nearly drooling over the notes he’d just painstakingly remade.
***
Yifan shows up to his poetry class half an hour late wearing sun glasses and a large Starbucks Frappuccino. He discretely shuffles to the back of the class and sits beside Baekhyun, who’s zoning out so bad he’s unintentionally leaning into his pen and marking up his chin. It’s a nice look, too bad Baekhyun can’t grow even the fuzziest of peach fuzz, let alone anything worth shaving.
The teacher resumes lecturing and Yifan slumps onto the desk, hoping for the sweet embrace of death, or at least the professor’s boring talk to lull him to sleep.
He’s disturbed to learn he actually understands what the teacher is talking about. Sestina? Yeah Yifan remembers that… 6 refrain words… 6 stanzas and an envoi…wait, where was this knowledge coming from?
That’s when Yifan is reminded why he feels like he’s hungover or on his deathbed; the poetry notes. He could still see the endless white pages and black ink of his ball point pen burning behind his eyelids.
It turns out that not only had he recopied the notes, but he’d actually taken in what he’d recopied and highlighted? Yifan sits up in his seat, mulling this over. His giant fuck up had actually helped him study. Last night he’d killed a bird with 2 stones without even realizing it.
Yifan, to get in the habit, listens to the teacher’s lecture and actually scribbles a few notes in his own notebook. It’s nothing like the one he has in his bag, neatly tucked between two binders so he doesn’t mess it all up again.
He ends up dozing off near the end of class, Baekhyun’s already using Yifan’s (now asleep) arm as a pillow. With the semester drawing to a close, the stress of finals is looming over his head, a constant reminder to get his ass in gear.
Yifan lets out a long exhale, he still doesn’t have a photocopy of the poetry notes.
That thought reminds him though, that he has something he has to return. He nudges Baekhyun off him-who attempts to cling on like a koala-and hurries over to the other side of the classroom, where a smaller figure is calmly packing their things.
Joonmyun’s wearing a simple cream cardigan with black slacks, and terrifyingly ugly argyle socks that Yifan wants to rip off his feet and feed to the monster of garbage and shame that lives under his bed. Still, Joonmyun looks… nice. In a way that Yifan thinks it wouldn’t bother him if Joonmyun had a penchant for spilling milkshakes or drooling on his arm.
Joonmyun looks up, face muscles taut in confusion as he sees the figure of Yifan blocking his view.
“Hello?” Joonmyun asks, voice wavering.
“Um, yeah,” Yifan replies with a superb amount of tact, “I have your notes.”
“Oh, right,” Joonmyun says, as if he forgot he had lent them to Yifan in the first place. Though he obviously hasn’t.
“Yeah, they’re right in here…somewhere,” Yifan answers, voice muffled as he sticks his head in his bag and searches for the little black notebook. He for sure hasn’t forgotten it; he checked three times before leaving that morning. “Found it!” he cries and drops it into Joonmyun’s outstretched hands.
Joonmyun stares at it, and speaks before even opening it, “how come this isn’t my notebook?”
Uh oh, busted. Yifan runs his fingers through his hair and tries to not seem like a twelve year old who just got caught for shoplifting a pack of gum, “um, well, that’s a funny story. Some unforeseen events occurred yesterday that damaged the notes you gave me. So… I decided to recopy them all for you.”
He waits for Joonmyun’s response, hoping it’s not anger. Yifan, for his height and amazing levels of swag unrivaled by any other person in the galaxy, doesn’t always do that well when people raise their voice at him.
Instead, Joonmyun looks more curious than ever, pink lips turning into a pout, and eyes almost narrowing, “you didn’t give me the wrong notes, did you?”
“Excuse me?” Yifan asks.
“You know, you didn’t purposely recopy the wrong notes down so that I’ll fail the final, did you?” Joonmyun’s voice is so sincere in his inquisition Yifan can’t help but feel overwhelmed with guilt and panic.
“No, no of course not!” Yifan exclaims, “I stayed up all night to make sure I wrote them down exactly right!” Yifan would never do something horrible like that, not even to Baekhyun!
“Oh,” Joonmyun says, looking relieved as his shoulders visibly become less tense. “Is that why you’re wearing sunglasses?”
Yifan gasps, “No! I’m wearing them because I’m cool! Glasses ae cool! I’m cool! I play basketball I’m super cool!” he gushes, feeling embarrassed. Damn, maybe Joonmyun could see his bloodshot eyes behind the tinted lenses, or the purple bruises lining his eyes.
At that moment Joonmyun lets out a little puff of air, an almost-silent giggle, the noise high and sweet. Yifan can’t believe how beautiful one little sound is; it sounds like an angel’s choir. He needs to hear it again.
“Okay, well, thank you for giving these back,” Joonmyun says, breaking Yifan’s awed silence.
“N-no problem,” he stutters and gives a court wave before turning around.
***
“You’re trying to tell me you’re too tired to come out with us tonight?” Baekhyun gasps as he clutches two bottles of Tequila in each hand.
Yifan wipes his tired eyes under his sunglasses, body lying horizontally of Baekhyun’s dorm bed.
“I’m too exhausted…” he mumbles, pressing his face into his friend’s pillow before realizing ew that’s where Baekhyun’s face goes . Yifan had thought that getting some caffeine and sugar would into his system would pump him up, but now that’s its evening and his Frappuccino has long worn off, he feels like a man on his death bed. His only regret is he never met Oprah.
“But dude, it’s Friday, time to turn up before we all inevitably wake up tomorrow and begin stressing about finals,” Chanyeol interjects. Yifan’s other friend may or may not have already downed a significant amount of Baekhyun’s booze and is frowning at Yifan with crossed eyes.
Yifan groans and buries himself under Baekhyun’s bedsheets; he wants a break too. He wants to relax and unwind, but at the moment getting drunk and stopping Baekhyun from making out with every living thing sounds horribly unappealing. Right now, Yifan’s in more of an order-pizza-then-pass-out-at-7pm type of mood.
“I know, but I didn’t sleep last night,” Yifan grumbles. You would think college students would be used to getting minimal hours of shuteye, but his body was still trying to extract its revenge.
“Why not?” Baekhyun asks, “May I offer you a shot of tequila while we listen to your woes? Vodka? Grape juice?”
Yifan glares at him and makes a point by making grabby hands at the already-opened bottle of tequila. He defiantly takes a few sips from the bottle, before choking and sputtering. His eyes are burning, Goddamn fucking Byun Baekhyun.
“I was recopying notes for poetry,” Yifan mumbles, after downing a glass of water to chase away the taste of death . He should have accepted the grape juice.
“Are those the notes you ruined …yesterday?” Chanyeol pipes up, pausing mid-sentence to foreshadow how fucked up he was going to get in approximately an hour. Chanyeol’s self-control was never more than -5.
“You mean the ones you ruined?” Yifan narrows his eyes. His cheeks are burning but for all intents and purposes he’s going blame it on the a-a-a-alcohol.
“Wait!” Baekhyun announces, abruptly interrupting, “something doesn’t add up here. Yifan has no notes to recopy in the first place; you never take notes in poetry class! That’s why both of us are going to fail the final together, right?”
“Excuse you, I don’t fail exams,” Yifan remarks, “and also I borrowed notes from someone else.”
“Who? You don’t talk to anyone one else-oh!”
Oh?
Baekhyun’s face breaks out into a malevolent smirk and Yifan swears the Grinch has just been reincarnated, “you sly dog!”
Chanyeol’s interest is peaked and Yifan feels a sense of impending doom wash over him.
“You got them from Joonmyun, right? Trying to snare that little lovebug on your web of lame romance? Still a few days left; can you do it?” Baekhyun’s grin is pulled so tight Yifan wonders for the safety of his friend’s face.
“I was just getting notes! I’m not taking you up on that bet anyways,” Yifan retorts. His face is definitely not red and he’s definitely not blushing in any way, shape or form. Just in case, though, he takes another good swing from the bottle of tequila. He had forgotten how insufferable Baekhyun is to deal with when sober.
“Sure, sure, just notes. Next you’ll be taking his first kiss, his virginity, and lastly my money!” Baekhyun pretends to weep at the hypothetical loss of his entire life savings.
Yifan sputters. He’s already begun feeling lightheaded, but one was never drunk enough for Baekhyun’s bluntness. Basketball legends like Wu Yifan weren’t supposed to choke on their saliva at the thought of having sex. In fact, if he were to turn his legendary skills up to level 300 he’d be in bed with like twenty hot chick right now getting it oooon.
“Aw, Baekie, I think we should just go already and leave Yifan to his pathetic blanket-burrito solitude,” Chanyeol suggests, grabbing Baekhyun’s wrist and tugging the shorter male’s body to the door so violently they both almost fall over. This sets off a chorus of giggles as Yifan whines pitifully from under Baekhyun’s blankets.
“Thanks, Chanyeol… a true friend…”
“Anytime,” Chanyeol winks, and just like that he and Baekhyun are off to have some highly illegal fun.
Yifan doesn’t even wait five minutes to call for pizza.
***
He can’t fall asleep. Usually light drinking followed by pizza has him ready to curl up in bed and sleep for twelve hours, but its past midnight and Yifan is wide awake.
There’s something weighing him down, something invisible squeezing his chest and it’s causing him to lie on his back in bed, blinking up at the ceiling.
Yifan thinks he knows what it is, but he doesn’t want to name it-or rather who.
He tries for fifteen more minutes, but nothing, he can’t even close his eyes. He’s caught between mixture of wanting to think too much and wanting to not think at all. If only Baekhyun had left him enough alcohol to induce unconsciousness.
He shuffles out of bed, limbs heavy even if his body refuses to shut down, and he waddles to the sink to get a drink of water.
A flickering light catches his eye, it’s the television. He’d been flipping through it before, but found nothing and had decided to just sleep instead. Yifan yawns and collapses in front of it, grabbing the remote to unmute the volume.
There’s a drama playing, something he would have enjoyed watching back in high school-not that he would ever admit that. Yifan decides he might as well watch a few episodes if sleep isn’t coming to him. It’ll help keep his brain distracted.
The story is typical-romance dramas are all the same anyways.
The plot is simple but it’s not doing a very great job of catching his attention. The girl is chatting with her friend at school when a particular part of the dialogue has Yifan’s hand curling around the remote.
“What’s this feeling in my chest? As if a fire has been ignited, but it’s gone out of control. It burns but it’s keeping me warm. Something sweet yet painful, what could it be?”
“Oh, silly, that’s the feeling of love!”
Yifan’s not in love. He loves many things, like new basketball shoes and Chanyeol running into glass doors, but being in love is different-that takes time.
Yifan reflects on the girl’s description, and wishes he wasn’t knowing exactly how she felt.
No, Yifan isn’t in love with anybody.
But…in that case, what was he feeling? If it’s not love then…?
The diagnosis is different; this time it’s a crush.
Yifan has a crush on Kim Joonmyun.
***
It’s Monday morning. It’s been a week since Baekhyun made that ridiculous suggestion; only a week!
Yifan feel frustrated, and he’s pleased to find the basketball court empty. Yifan isn’t on the school team, but he has a reputation between his friend’s as being a hardworking and decent player.
He shoots at the first basket and curses as it misses. Playing ball doesn’t exactly distract him, but it stops him from panicking at least.
Yifan doesn’t know when this crush started. Real men didn’t have crushes! And especially not on the quiet kid in their class that dresses like they’re about to take off mid lecture and play golf with a couple of American past-presidents.
Yifan shoots. The ball goes through the hoop. He doesn’t know when it started, but it couldn’t have only been last week. It had to be earlier. Yifan does his best to reflect on the last semester. He’s overwhelmed suddenly with the amount of times he’d just drifted off in class and contemplated the mystery that was Kim Joonmyun, or better yet, stared adamantly at the back of his head. Maybe… maybe this hadn’t been prompted by Baekhyun, maybe… this had been a long time thing that Yifan was only realizing now?
He dribbles around the court. Basketball isn’t doing its usual trick of keeping him calm. He has a goddamn crush on someone he’d spoken no more than four or five times.
Yifan remembers, fifteen baskets and about twenty minutes of brooding later, that he has class in ten minutes.
Fuck.
Never minding the fact that he’s wearing sweaty gym clothes, he takes off. He can’t miss poetry class, no, not when it’s almost the final!
He does his best not to trample people on his way down the halls. He managed to pull a clean shirt over his head at some point, but he’s got five minutes before starting time, and he’s not even in the right building. He sprints across the field to the English department building, not caring that he’s totally sweating through his shirt again.
He doesn’t want to miss too much of the lecture, so he does his best to hurry up. When confronted with the stairs, he takes steps two at a time. It’s a great trick for climbing stairs efficiently, except when you step on your shoe lace and lose your balance.
Yifan swears he hears dramatic music play as he falls backwards. It all goes in slow motion, as if his life is really just one big dramatic movie. He should really learn to tie his shoes.
So this is how I die… we’ll meet in another life, Oprah…
He’s winded when his back hits the floor. It hurts like fuck. He’s sure to any passing students he just gave them the visual of a man slipping on a banana peel.
“Are you okay?” Yifan hears a voice.
A figure looms overhead.
It’s an angel.
“Are you okay?” the angel asks again.
“I think my back might be broken but all’s good,” Yifan laughs between gritted teeth.
Yifan regains his vision and realizes he’s not in heaven being greeted by an angelic superior being.
He’s on earth next to an angelic human, Kim Joonmyun.
“Do you want to me to call 911? I have bandages in my bag, and gauze, and pain killers, and I have a cold pack, and I hot pack, and I have a juice box too,” Joonmyun gushes, pulling safety item after item out from his bag.
“No, no,” Yifan says before pushing himself up with a pained grunt, “I think I just bruised my back a little. I’m fine, just mostly experiencing shock,” he admits.
“Are you sure, you seem a little hot?” Joonmyun comments placing his hands on Yifan’s cheeks. Of course he’s burning up with embarrassment, but he’s struck with something else burning low in his stomach as Joonmyun’s hand brushes his face.
Perhaps he hit his head as well, but suddenly rationality no longer has any control over his movements. Body acting on autopilot, he brings his own hand up to brush against the soft, pale skin of Joonmyun’s own face.
Yifan can see Joonmyun trying to read his expression, but Yifan pays it no matter and surges forwards.
Joonmyun’s lips are soft, like kissing cotton candy. Yifan holds his lips against Joonmyun’s and waits, waits for Joonmyun to pull away, or hit him, or maybe, if this is all a dream, disappear the second Yifan opens his eyes.
But he opens them and Joonmyun is still there. Yifan pulls away slowly, looking into Joonmyun’s eyes. They’re darted towards the ground, which makes Yifan panic, until he notices Joonmyun’s cheeks and neck are a violent shade of red, but one that can never match the cherry-red allure of his lips.
“Joonmyun,” Yifan says, and Joonmyun’s eyes make contact with his. Yifan sees nervousness, confusion, but small traces of excitement. Yifan’s embarrassed too, flush probably a worth contender to Joonmyun’s red cheeks and skittering eyes.
“Joonmyun,” he repeats, softly, like a whisper.
They’re both still sitting on the floor at the foot of the stairs, and Yifan leans in a second time.
Except he’s interrupted by a loud voice screaming, “NICE ONE!!!!!”
Fucking Byun Baekhyun.
Yifan startles too his feet as Baekhyun turns around the corner, looking ridiculously smug. Joonmyun stays on the floor, apparently too shocked the move.
No need to hesitate in predicting what wipes out the human race, it’ll be Baekhyun.
“Well, it seems you succeeded in our little bet, you’ve rightfully earned my money. There were points in time where I didn’t believe in you, I admit, but now you’ve shown me that anything is possible if you just try hard enough and lame enough,” Baekhyun pretends to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye and Yifan desperate tries to think of a hand motion that can convey his current state of ‘get the hell out of here you’re ruining my life’.
“Yifan?” Joonmyun asks, still sitting on the floor like a little, baby animal; oh god, if Joonmyun’s the sheep, then Yifan’s the big bad wolf, coming to fuck everything up.
“Um,” Yifan doesn’t really know how to begin to clarify the situation when the world is in the midst of collapsing, “I can explain!”
He pauses for five seconds in case Joonmyun wants to get up and slap him around a bit before he continues talking. Yifan is just dramatic like that.
“Oh, this is gonna be great,” Baekhyun remarks unnecessarily as he sits down on the stairs, and wears the same expression he does when Chanyeol is determined to drink himself into oblivion. At this moment, Yifan really wants to ship his friends off to the North Pole.
“This stupid, tiny excuse of a human being tried to make a bet about whether or not you liked me. But I swear, I wasn’t talking to you only for that reason, the other reason is,” Yifan takes a deep breath, “I like you, I’ve liked you probably since the first time I saw you walk into class. I can’t stop thinking about you. I don’t care about Baekhyun’s pea-sized brain’s ideas; I… I just like you.”
Yifan looks at the floor, waiting for the upheaval. He can’t bring himself to look Joonmyun in the eyes, scared the boy might look hurt, or upset.
“Oh, I already knew about that?”
What?
“What?” Baekhyun asks from off to the side, obviously unaware of a little thing called privacy.
“I mean, you guys aren’t exactly quiet in class; I could hear you from the beginning.”
“Wait so how badly do you want Yifan if you already knew he was in a bet?” Baekhyun asks, probably judging Joonmyun in a way that Yifan would disapprove, but right now his brain is too distracted by malfunctioning because whaaaaat??
Joonmyun looks embarrassed for a second, he bites his lips and sways from foot to foot, “because Yifan always stares at me in class so I kind of already has some intuition that he liked me. Also, not offence, he doesn’t seem like the type of guy to gamble with people’s feelings.”
Yifan’s brain has officially melted into goo, “what does this mean?”
“It means take your 20$ prize money and buy me a nice dinner.”
Yifan’s face splits into a grin, and Joonmyun shoots him back a smile; one that’s confident and oh so very beautiful.
“Oh my god, I can smell the cheese from here, you guys! Wait… guys? Come back! I was joking, don’t ditch me, oh my god!”
So what if this cheesy, Yifan wonders as he makes his escape, hand-in-hand with Joonmyun. If life’s a gamble Yifan just hit the jackpot. A little cheese never hurt anybody, he concludes as he squeezes Joonmyun’s hand.
Yifan may be a dweeb, but he’s a dweeb who eventually gets a B+ on his poetry final, and a dweeb who’s somehow managed to woo an angel.
He may not know everything about Joonmyun yet, and Joonmyun may not know everything about him, but its summer vacation now; they have all the time they need to fall in love.
From: ANONYMOUS until May 22, 2015
Title: Certamine
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s)/Focus: Suho/Kris + (bffls!BaekYeol)
Length: 6,300 words
Summary: Kris is a jock prince and Joonmyun's a nerd princess... or maybe it's the other way around?
Notes: thank you first and foremost for the mods for not crucifying me and being patient with this silly author. secondly, thank you to my recipient for giving me a wonderful lists of prompts to chose from; hopefully you'll enjoy this ^^
There’s something about Kim Joonmyun that draws Yifan's eyes to him. It’s not because Joonmyun is especially attractive; in fact he might most accurately be described as plain or ordinary. It's not Joonmyun's personality either. Yifan has never even spoken to him, the boy that always sits as far away from others as seemingly possible. He doesn't even know him at all.
Yifan's brain can't process why he keeps staring at the shorter male whenever they cross paths, which isn't often. They have only one shared class this semester; an introduction to poetry course. Yifan's only taking it because he heard the teacher was an easy-grader (that and the comics class had already filled up come Yifan's time to make his schedule). None of the students appear interested in the lecture, the teacher going on and on about accentual-syllabic verse, trochaic feet and a whole slew of things Yifan won't remember for his exam.
There is one person listening however. The boy in the first row on the far right, with jet black hair styled neatly and clothes Yifan would only wear on Halloween as part of a 'nerd costume'. It’s also the boy that Yifan can't take his eyes off of.
"Will we need to know scansion for our exam?" asks said boy, his hand raised at a perfect 180 degree angle from his body. Why is Joonmyun so stiff? Yifan wonders. Although his classmate is sitting with a perfectly straight posture, his body still seems closed off. Yifan's friend, Jongdae, who's working toward his psychology major, might be able to tell Yifan what Joonmyun's body language means. For now, he just stares, too transfixed on understanding the boy in the corner to listen to the lecture.
"Yes, half of your final exam will involve scanning metrical patterns; I hope everyone attended the last few classes," their teacher replies. Yifan sucks in a breath.
Yifan doesn't skip class, he can't afford to, literally, when tuition is so high. However, he looks towards his notebook; it’s composed of 90% doodles and 10% words (and the words are just a conversation he and Baekhyun were trying to have about where to eat lunch a few classes ago).
"Fuck," Yifan hisses under his breath. He turns his eyes back to where they had previously been pinned, and thanks to his 20/20 vision, he can tell even from the other side of the classroom that Joonmyun's notes are neat as hell. Probably neater than anything Yifan could hope to ever write-even if he typed them up-complete with little sticky notes and colour-coded highlighted sections. The notes of mere legends.
"Hey, what are you staring at? The only thing over there is that kid, Joon-something," Baekhyun suddenly questions. Yifan is shocked from his reverie, noting with distaste how Baekhyun refers to Joonmyun as a 'thing'.
"Sorry, I was just dozing off; I was staring into space," Yifan comebacks, making a point to not stare at the other side of the classroom. His fingers (and grades) are itching to take a look at the kid's notes, maybe take a picture with his Samsung GALAXY s5.
"That kid is weird huh? How come he doesn't sit next to anybody? The chairs next to him are all empty," Baekhyun wonders, peering across the room as if Joonmyun will spontaneously jump from his seat and give Baekhyun an answer.
He doesn't, but the boy does turn around, probably since Baekhyun's voice isn't exactly quiet (Yifan hopes Joonmyun's just following the sound of Baekhyun's voice and hasn't heard any of their conversation). He makes eye contact with Yifan, and as Yifan feels an itch on the back of his collar, Joonmyun looks full-out flustered, before turning back to the front of the class.
"Whoa! Did you see that? That kid's like totally intimidated by you. Wow, did you do something to him, 'cause I doubt there's anyone in this whole school that thinks you’re actually cool."
"Hey, I am plenty cool. Also I've never even spoken to him before; it must be my amazing sex appeal."
Baekhyun guffaws and their professor glares at them, before he suddenly freezes and looks thoughtful, "you know, maybe it is your (non-existent) sex appeal! I bet you five dollars he has a crush on you," Baekhyun is smirking and Yifan knows already that means trouble.
"As tempting as a whole measly five bucks sounds, I know you’re broke, also that's weird why would someone like him have a crush on me?"
"Don’t take this so seriously man, I was just kidding, but... now I have an idea," Baekhyun having ideas pretty much guarantees that bad things are about the happen. Yifan needs to remember to make Baekhyun shut up more.
"Please leave my innocent soul out of your crazy ideas, Baekhyun, might I remind you how terribly your April Fools prank on Chanyeol was?"
"It wasn't that bad!" Baekhyun protests. They’re both about 5 seconds away from getting booted out of class, except their teacher seems to be doing a good job at ignoring their 'back of the class whisperfest'.
"Chanyeol ended up in the emergency room due to you nearly poisoning him with glue!"
"Okay, how was I supposed to know he was gonna eat it? I don't swallow my toothpaste that's fucking disgusting!"
"The fact still remains you replaced his toothpaste tube with glue. What concerns me most however is that he didn't even notice until he started feeling sick...."
"The perfect crime," Baekhyun winks, "and this time I'll make it worth your while. If you can do it, I'll pay you twenty dollars! It’s all the money in my bank account but it'll be so worth it, I assure you."
"Okay, well at least tell me what it is first," uh oh, was that the sound of Yifan giving in?
"Your mission: get that Joon-whatever kid to admit that he likes you within a week from today. Complete this task, and the money is yours, also whatever money Chanyeol has on him the next time I see him."
'Baekhyun, isn't that a little...mean?"
"Mean? No, mean is sending your best friend to the hospital, this is fucking hilarious!"
***
Yifan might not be the smartest of kids; he might have always fit into that nice, comfortable 'jock' stereotype due to his height and basketball skills, and his friends might be idiots, but one thing he will never be is a bully. And this included pretending to be interested in someone for the sole sake of a bet!
He was not going to listen to Baekhyun, no way no how. Besides, Yifan didn't even know how to woo anybody in the first place. In fact, he’d never had a real relationship before.
Still, he has relationship standards, and going in on a bet doesn’t quite reach them.
So instead of spending his break the next morning with Baekhyun, in retaliation, he was going to do the one thing Baekhyun hated above all else… studying. He made his way to the library and sits down in some corner, hoping for some privacy in case one of his friends were to find him (although the last time he had seen Baekhyun in the library was when he’d been missing his pants and not exactly alone…).
His poetry final is on Monday, and Kris can’t remember anything other than how boring his class is. He digs into his backpack, scavenging for class handouts, and luckily finds one or two. It’s not like Yifan to not take notes, but it was also not like Yifan to take classes with his idiot and distracting friends. Damn, this was all Baekhyun’s fault!
He’s in the midst of deciding whether looking up the topics from the class outline on Wikipedia would be an appropriate way to study (because what the fuck is a villanelle??) when he hears a hushed voice coming from the other side of the bookshelf that he’s currently hidden himself behind.
He peers through the rows of books-not a creepy way to spy at all-and is shocked to see it’s Joonmyun from his class. The boy has his nose buried in a book, probably trying to tackle an essay, or maybe Joonmyun’s just one of those guys that reads dictionaries and shit for fun Yifan muses from his creepy position between letters U and V of an encyclopedia.
Joonmyun exhales, closes whatever he had been reading, and instead pulls out a notebook. It’s one of those small, black notebooks that you can’t buy at any old dollar-store. Joonmyun even takes his note-making materials seriously.
Yifan’s eyes open twice as wide when he can make out ‘poetry’ scribbled across the front. Its Joonmyun’s notes that he spied in class; the notes of his wet dreams!
I need it Yifan screams internally, not feeling unlike SpongeBob in Sandy’s dome…what? Cartoons were an important part of his childhood!
The first step to acquiring notes from a classmate, Yifan remembers, is not to do it through a bookshelf. He discreetly walks around the shelf and pretends to be checking out some books before doing his best to casually notice Joonmyun.
Apparently casually notice was a synonym to trip on your shoe laces and fall into a bookshelf causing about 30 heavy-ass art history encyclopaedias to rain down on you. Yifan loves tattoos, but a book-shaped bruise on his ass didn’t quite cut it.
“Hello,” Yifan finally mutters, helping to unbury his shorter classmate from the debris. Joonmyun looks surprisingly unfazed, although maybe the red in his cheeks is a little more prominent.
“Um,” is Joonmyun’s reply. His voice comes out soft, like a gasp, and Yifan is taken aback. Joonmyun’s voice always sounded sure and confident in class; but right now was a different story.
“I see… you have your poetry notes?” Yifan asks, pointing at the black notebook for emphasis.
Joonmyun tilts his head to the side, “yes, I came here to study?”
It’s phrased as a question which is a sign that Yifan needs to stop acting like a boob.
“Can I take a look at them? I mean, I didn’t take any notes, not because I’m lazy but uh… yeah I don’t want to fail the final,” Yifan asks while being super cool. Goddamn, he’s already sweating and he’s only wearing a T-shirt! “I’ll pay you!”
“…” Joonmyun looks up confused, “you want…my notes?” he’s unsure, as if Yifan had just offered to shine his shoes in the middle of the library or offer him tango lessons.
“Please?” Yifan pleads, about 2 seconds away from getting on his knees and begging. Poetry is the only class he might not pass, and if that happens, he might end up having to take on another semester, or worse…summer classes. Some people are poets, and some people are just normal people, but hardly do these things ever mix (Yifan obviously being the latter).
“Uh,” Joonmyun looks flustered, his eyes fixed on his notes like there’s still something perplexing about Yifan’s request; something he doesn’t understand. He tentatively takes hold of his notebook, as if he’s scared it’ll fall and shatter.
“I mean, you don’t have to…” Yifan trails off because obviously the shorter boy in front of him doesn’t want to fork over his meticulous work to a failing basketball-jock like Wu Yifan.
“No!” Joonmyun cries, and his thrusts his notebook into Yifan’s face, about an inch away from slamming into his nose and quite possibly breaking it, “here! You can take them!”
Yifan blinks a couple times, staring at the words ‘poetry’ right in front of his face.
“But… don’t you need your notebook to study too? I mean, I can take pictures with my phone,” Yifan points out, waving his cell phone in front of Joonmyun’s face similarly to how he had previously done to Yifan with the notes.
“No, no,” Joonmyun explains, “take them and photocopy them and then you can give them back to me in class tomorrow,” he now shoves the little black book into Yifan’s hands. The medium-sized notebook almost looks too tiny when Yifan holds it, and he wonders just how small Joonmyun’s hands are anyways; after all, his classmate was over a head shorter.
Yifan stands awkwardly, “oh… thank you, I promise I’ll bring them back in one piece.”
Joonmyun smiles; it’s a little smile, just a faint twitching of lips, but it makes his face softer, and Yifan gulps before bounding over to the copying machines.
***
Yifan’s an honest man, he never goes back on his promise, that’s why he sees red the second the milkshake makes contact with the machine, leaking inside.
“CHANYEOL!” Yifan screams, opening the photocopier to retrieve the notes he’d borrowed, but he’s too late. The pages have already soaked up the strawberry milkshake, and continued to drip a steady stream of said dairy drink as Yifan holds it up in disbelief.
“Sorry,” Chanyeol exclaims. Yifan can detect the obvious sarcasm.
“Don’t ‘sorry’ me, isn’t it against the rules to bring drinks into the library, much less rest them on the photocopier?” Yifan’s eye is twitching. It only does that when he’s working on 30 minutes of sleep and 3 cups of coffee, or when he has someone he needs to strangle. Chanyeol’s long but fragile neck should do the trick.
“Well, what was I supposed to do? Throw it out?” Chanyeol asks, probably attempting to be rhetorical. Milkshakes only cost like a dollar, Yifan is quite sure Chanyeol could always dig up coins from under a vending machine to buy himself another one. Now both of Yifan’s eyes are twitching; he probably looks like serial killer. Honestly speaking though, crushing Chanyeol’s puny skull inside the copier machine doesn’t seem like such an irrational decision anymore.
“You could always ask Baekhyun to hold onto it the entire 4 minutes it takes me to copy these notes,” Yifan grumbles, trying to shake out as much milkshake as possible. The ink writing is still visible, but the whole thing smells terribly like strawberry, and there’s no way those pages will ever dry properly.
Chanyeol rolls his eyes and pouts, “but Baekhyun would drink half of it!”
“Well,” Yifan grits out, “you just spilt all of it!”
“I said I’m sorry, what do you want me to do?” Chanyeol groans, pulling a purple lollipop out of his pocket and sticking it into his mouth.
“I want you to stop ruining my life!” Yifan growls, pulling the lollipop out and tossing it into the trash
Chanyeol squawks, “Hey that was my last one!”
“No more sugar for you!”
Chanyeol has been accused of being on drugs before, even almost lost his scholarship because of it. Yifan knows the truth though; he knows about Chanyeol’s unhealthy and unnatural addiction to sweets is what causes his friend to be a bundle of hyperactivity and irrational behaviour.
“Ew, first I spill my drink because of you, next you take my candy. That’s it I’m going to find Baekhyun and see if he has a quarter for the vending machine,” Chanyeol crosses his arms and turns to the head to the side, doing his best to make Yifan guilty. Yifan no longer cares.
Instead, his chest is seizing with panic because Joonmyun’s notes are ruined dumbass!!! If Yifan had a volcano handy he would throw himself in it. He’s a class A fuckup… that’s almost as bad as Chanyeol.
Night = ruined.
***
Yifan checks the time and groans, the sound a mixture of physical anguish and anxiety. It’s 5 o’clock in the morning. He’s so far been up all night recopying the notes he … sobs destroyed into a crisp new notebook he had picked up after fleeing the library in shame.
His eyes are watering and he swears his vision has decreased approximately 40%.
It’s not that Joonmyun had a large amount of notes; Yifan only has about 25 pages total to recopy. The thing is that Joonmyun’s notes are written so professionally, just writing every word-extremely carefully-is the least of his problems. He also has to highlight and color code, re-add sticky notes which also have highlighted text.
God, he feels exhausted. His class starts at 9am; will he still be functioning by then? He fucking hopes so, because he needs to return these notes like he promised. Yifan isn’t a dweeb that goes back on his promises.
Although he has to admit, he’s enough of a dweeb to spend all night copying notes then passing out at 8am and nearly drooling over the notes he’d just painstakingly remade.
***
Yifan shows up to his poetry class half an hour late wearing sun glasses and a large Starbucks Frappuccino. He discretely shuffles to the back of the class and sits beside Baekhyun, who’s zoning out so bad he’s unintentionally leaning into his pen and marking up his chin. It’s a nice look, too bad Baekhyun can’t grow even the fuzziest of peach fuzz, let alone anything worth shaving.
The teacher resumes lecturing and Yifan slumps onto the desk, hoping for the sweet embrace of death, or at least the professor’s boring talk to lull him to sleep.
He’s disturbed to learn he actually understands what the teacher is talking about. Sestina? Yeah Yifan remembers that… 6 refrain words… 6 stanzas and an envoi…wait, where was this knowledge coming from?
That’s when Yifan is reminded why he feels like he’s hungover or on his deathbed; the poetry notes. He could still see the endless white pages and black ink of his ball point pen burning behind his eyelids.
It turns out that not only had he recopied the notes, but he’d actually taken in what he’d recopied and highlighted? Yifan sits up in his seat, mulling this over. His giant fuck up had actually helped him study. Last night he’d killed a bird with 2 stones without even realizing it.
Yifan, to get in the habit, listens to the teacher’s lecture and actually scribbles a few notes in his own notebook. It’s nothing like the one he has in his bag, neatly tucked between two binders so he doesn’t mess it all up again.
He ends up dozing off near the end of class, Baekhyun’s already using Yifan’s (now asleep) arm as a pillow. With the semester drawing to a close, the stress of finals is looming over his head, a constant reminder to get his ass in gear.
Yifan lets out a long exhale, he still doesn’t have a photocopy of the poetry notes.
That thought reminds him though, that he has something he has to return. He nudges Baekhyun off him-who attempts to cling on like a koala-and hurries over to the other side of the classroom, where a smaller figure is calmly packing their things.
Joonmyun’s wearing a simple cream cardigan with black slacks, and terrifyingly ugly argyle socks that Yifan wants to rip off his feet and feed to the monster of garbage and shame that lives under his bed. Still, Joonmyun looks… nice. In a way that Yifan thinks it wouldn’t bother him if Joonmyun had a penchant for spilling milkshakes or drooling on his arm.
Joonmyun looks up, face muscles taut in confusion as he sees the figure of Yifan blocking his view.
“Hello?” Joonmyun asks, voice wavering.
“Um, yeah,” Yifan replies with a superb amount of tact, “I have your notes.”
“Oh, right,” Joonmyun says, as if he forgot he had lent them to Yifan in the first place. Though he obviously hasn’t.
“Yeah, they’re right in here…somewhere,” Yifan answers, voice muffled as he sticks his head in his bag and searches for the little black notebook. He for sure hasn’t forgotten it; he checked three times before leaving that morning. “Found it!” he cries and drops it into Joonmyun’s outstretched hands.
Joonmyun stares at it, and speaks before even opening it, “how come this isn’t my notebook?”
Uh oh, busted. Yifan runs his fingers through his hair and tries to not seem like a twelve year old who just got caught for shoplifting a pack of gum, “um, well, that’s a funny story. Some unforeseen events occurred yesterday that damaged the notes you gave me. So… I decided to recopy them all for you.”
He waits for Joonmyun’s response, hoping it’s not anger. Yifan, for his height and amazing levels of swag unrivaled by any other person in the galaxy, doesn’t always do that well when people raise their voice at him.
Instead, Joonmyun looks more curious than ever, pink lips turning into a pout, and eyes almost narrowing, “you didn’t give me the wrong notes, did you?”
“Excuse me?” Yifan asks.
“You know, you didn’t purposely recopy the wrong notes down so that I’ll fail the final, did you?” Joonmyun’s voice is so sincere in his inquisition Yifan can’t help but feel overwhelmed with guilt and panic.
“No, no of course not!” Yifan exclaims, “I stayed up all night to make sure I wrote them down exactly right!” Yifan would never do something horrible like that, not even to Baekhyun!
“Oh,” Joonmyun says, looking relieved as his shoulders visibly become less tense. “Is that why you’re wearing sunglasses?”
Yifan gasps, “No! I’m wearing them because I’m cool! Glasses ae cool! I’m cool! I play basketball I’m super cool!” he gushes, feeling embarrassed. Damn, maybe Joonmyun could see his bloodshot eyes behind the tinted lenses, or the purple bruises lining his eyes.
At that moment Joonmyun lets out a little puff of air, an almost-silent giggle, the noise high and sweet. Yifan can’t believe how beautiful one little sound is; it sounds like an angel’s choir. He needs to hear it again.
“Okay, well, thank you for giving these back,” Joonmyun says, breaking Yifan’s awed silence.
“N-no problem,” he stutters and gives a court wave before turning around.
***
“You’re trying to tell me you’re too tired to come out with us tonight?” Baekhyun gasps as he clutches two bottles of Tequila in each hand.
Yifan wipes his tired eyes under his sunglasses, body lying horizontally of Baekhyun’s dorm bed.
“I’m too exhausted…” he mumbles, pressing his face into his friend’s pillow before realizing ew that’s where Baekhyun’s face goes . Yifan had thought that getting some caffeine and sugar would into his system would pump him up, but now that’s its evening and his Frappuccino has long worn off, he feels like a man on his death bed. His only regret is he never met Oprah.
“But dude, it’s Friday, time to turn up before we all inevitably wake up tomorrow and begin stressing about finals,” Chanyeol interjects. Yifan’s other friend may or may not have already downed a significant amount of Baekhyun’s booze and is frowning at Yifan with crossed eyes.
Yifan groans and buries himself under Baekhyun’s bedsheets; he wants a break too. He wants to relax and unwind, but at the moment getting drunk and stopping Baekhyun from making out with every living thing sounds horribly unappealing. Right now, Yifan’s in more of an order-pizza-then-pass-out-at-7pm type of mood.
“I know, but I didn’t sleep last night,” Yifan grumbles. You would think college students would be used to getting minimal hours of shuteye, but his body was still trying to extract its revenge.
“Why not?” Baekhyun asks, “May I offer you a shot of tequila while we listen to your woes? Vodka? Grape juice?”
Yifan glares at him and makes a point by making grabby hands at the already-opened bottle of tequila. He defiantly takes a few sips from the bottle, before choking and sputtering. His eyes are burning, Goddamn fucking Byun Baekhyun.
“I was recopying notes for poetry,” Yifan mumbles, after downing a glass of water to chase away the taste of death . He should have accepted the grape juice.
“Are those the notes you ruined …yesterday?” Chanyeol pipes up, pausing mid-sentence to foreshadow how fucked up he was going to get in approximately an hour. Chanyeol’s self-control was never more than -5.
“You mean the ones you ruined?” Yifan narrows his eyes. His cheeks are burning but for all intents and purposes he’s going blame it on the a-a-a-alcohol.
“Wait!” Baekhyun announces, abruptly interrupting, “something doesn’t add up here. Yifan has no notes to recopy in the first place; you never take notes in poetry class! That’s why both of us are going to fail the final together, right?”
“Excuse you, I don’t fail exams,” Yifan remarks, “and also I borrowed notes from someone else.”
“Who? You don’t talk to anyone one else-oh!”
Oh?
Baekhyun’s face breaks out into a malevolent smirk and Yifan swears the Grinch has just been reincarnated, “you sly dog!”
Chanyeol’s interest is peaked and Yifan feels a sense of impending doom wash over him.
“You got them from Joonmyun, right? Trying to snare that little lovebug on your web of lame romance? Still a few days left; can you do it?” Baekhyun’s grin is pulled so tight Yifan wonders for the safety of his friend’s face.
“I was just getting notes! I’m not taking you up on that bet anyways,” Yifan retorts. His face is definitely not red and he’s definitely not blushing in any way, shape or form. Just in case, though, he takes another good swing from the bottle of tequila. He had forgotten how insufferable Baekhyun is to deal with when sober.
“Sure, sure, just notes. Next you’ll be taking his first kiss, his virginity, and lastly my money!” Baekhyun pretends to weep at the hypothetical loss of his entire life savings.
Yifan sputters. He’s already begun feeling lightheaded, but one was never drunk enough for Baekhyun’s bluntness. Basketball legends like Wu Yifan weren’t supposed to choke on their saliva at the thought of having sex. In fact, if he were to turn his legendary skills up to level 300 he’d be in bed with like twenty hot chick right now getting it oooon.
“Aw, Baekie, I think we should just go already and leave Yifan to his pathetic blanket-burrito solitude,” Chanyeol suggests, grabbing Baekhyun’s wrist and tugging the shorter male’s body to the door so violently they both almost fall over. This sets off a chorus of giggles as Yifan whines pitifully from under Baekhyun’s blankets.
“Thanks, Chanyeol… a true friend…”
“Anytime,” Chanyeol winks, and just like that he and Baekhyun are off to have some highly illegal fun.
Yifan doesn’t even wait five minutes to call for pizza.
***
He can’t fall asleep. Usually light drinking followed by pizza has him ready to curl up in bed and sleep for twelve hours, but its past midnight and Yifan is wide awake.
There’s something weighing him down, something invisible squeezing his chest and it’s causing him to lie on his back in bed, blinking up at the ceiling.
Yifan thinks he knows what it is, but he doesn’t want to name it-or rather who.
He tries for fifteen more minutes, but nothing, he can’t even close his eyes. He’s caught between mixture of wanting to think too much and wanting to not think at all. If only Baekhyun had left him enough alcohol to induce unconsciousness.
He shuffles out of bed, limbs heavy even if his body refuses to shut down, and he waddles to the sink to get a drink of water.
A flickering light catches his eye, it’s the television. He’d been flipping through it before, but found nothing and had decided to just sleep instead. Yifan yawns and collapses in front of it, grabbing the remote to unmute the volume.
There’s a drama playing, something he would have enjoyed watching back in high school-not that he would ever admit that. Yifan decides he might as well watch a few episodes if sleep isn’t coming to him. It’ll help keep his brain distracted.
The story is typical-romance dramas are all the same anyways.
The plot is simple but it’s not doing a very great job of catching his attention. The girl is chatting with her friend at school when a particular part of the dialogue has Yifan’s hand curling around the remote.
“What’s this feeling in my chest? As if a fire has been ignited, but it’s gone out of control. It burns but it’s keeping me warm. Something sweet yet painful, what could it be?”
“Oh, silly, that’s the feeling of love!”
Yifan’s not in love. He loves many things, like new basketball shoes and Chanyeol running into glass doors, but being in love is different-that takes time.
Yifan reflects on the girl’s description, and wishes he wasn’t knowing exactly how she felt.
No, Yifan isn’t in love with anybody.
But…in that case, what was he feeling? If it’s not love then…?
The diagnosis is different; this time it’s a crush.
Yifan has a crush on Kim Joonmyun.
***
It’s Monday morning. It’s been a week since Baekhyun made that ridiculous suggestion; only a week!
Yifan feel frustrated, and he’s pleased to find the basketball court empty. Yifan isn’t on the school team, but he has a reputation between his friend’s as being a hardworking and decent player.
He shoots at the first basket and curses as it misses. Playing ball doesn’t exactly distract him, but it stops him from panicking at least.
Yifan doesn’t know when this crush started. Real men didn’t have crushes! And especially not on the quiet kid in their class that dresses like they’re about to take off mid lecture and play golf with a couple of American past-presidents.
Yifan shoots. The ball goes through the hoop. He doesn’t know when it started, but it couldn’t have only been last week. It had to be earlier. Yifan does his best to reflect on the last semester. He’s overwhelmed suddenly with the amount of times he’d just drifted off in class and contemplated the mystery that was Kim Joonmyun, or better yet, stared adamantly at the back of his head. Maybe… maybe this hadn’t been prompted by Baekhyun, maybe… this had been a long time thing that Yifan was only realizing now?
He dribbles around the court. Basketball isn’t doing its usual trick of keeping him calm. He has a goddamn crush on someone he’d spoken no more than four or five times.
Yifan remembers, fifteen baskets and about twenty minutes of brooding later, that he has class in ten minutes.
Fuck.
Never minding the fact that he’s wearing sweaty gym clothes, he takes off. He can’t miss poetry class, no, not when it’s almost the final!
He does his best not to trample people on his way down the halls. He managed to pull a clean shirt over his head at some point, but he’s got five minutes before starting time, and he’s not even in the right building. He sprints across the field to the English department building, not caring that he’s totally sweating through his shirt again.
He doesn’t want to miss too much of the lecture, so he does his best to hurry up. When confronted with the stairs, he takes steps two at a time. It’s a great trick for climbing stairs efficiently, except when you step on your shoe lace and lose your balance.
Yifan swears he hears dramatic music play as he falls backwards. It all goes in slow motion, as if his life is really just one big dramatic movie. He should really learn to tie his shoes.
So this is how I die… we’ll meet in another life, Oprah…
He’s winded when his back hits the floor. It hurts like fuck. He’s sure to any passing students he just gave them the visual of a man slipping on a banana peel.
“Are you okay?” Yifan hears a voice.
A figure looms overhead.
It’s an angel.
“Are you okay?” the angel asks again.
“I think my back might be broken but all’s good,” Yifan laughs between gritted teeth.
Yifan regains his vision and realizes he’s not in heaven being greeted by an angelic superior being.
He’s on earth next to an angelic human, Kim Joonmyun.
“Do you want to me to call 911? I have bandages in my bag, and gauze, and pain killers, and I have a cold pack, and I hot pack, and I have a juice box too,” Joonmyun gushes, pulling safety item after item out from his bag.
“No, no,” Yifan says before pushing himself up with a pained grunt, “I think I just bruised my back a little. I’m fine, just mostly experiencing shock,” he admits.
“Are you sure, you seem a little hot?” Joonmyun comments placing his hands on Yifan’s cheeks. Of course he’s burning up with embarrassment, but he’s struck with something else burning low in his stomach as Joonmyun’s hand brushes his face.
Perhaps he hit his head as well, but suddenly rationality no longer has any control over his movements. Body acting on autopilot, he brings his own hand up to brush against the soft, pale skin of Joonmyun’s own face.
Yifan can see Joonmyun trying to read his expression, but Yifan pays it no matter and surges forwards.
Joonmyun’s lips are soft, like kissing cotton candy. Yifan holds his lips against Joonmyun’s and waits, waits for Joonmyun to pull away, or hit him, or maybe, if this is all a dream, disappear the second Yifan opens his eyes.
But he opens them and Joonmyun is still there. Yifan pulls away slowly, looking into Joonmyun’s eyes. They’re darted towards the ground, which makes Yifan panic, until he notices Joonmyun’s cheeks and neck are a violent shade of red, but one that can never match the cherry-red allure of his lips.
“Joonmyun,” Yifan says, and Joonmyun’s eyes make contact with his. Yifan sees nervousness, confusion, but small traces of excitement. Yifan’s embarrassed too, flush probably a worth contender to Joonmyun’s red cheeks and skittering eyes.
“Joonmyun,” he repeats, softly, like a whisper.
They’re both still sitting on the floor at the foot of the stairs, and Yifan leans in a second time.
Except he’s interrupted by a loud voice screaming, “NICE ONE!!!!!”
Fucking Byun Baekhyun.
Yifan startles too his feet as Baekhyun turns around the corner, looking ridiculously smug. Joonmyun stays on the floor, apparently too shocked the move.
No need to hesitate in predicting what wipes out the human race, it’ll be Baekhyun.
“Well, it seems you succeeded in our little bet, you’ve rightfully earned my money. There were points in time where I didn’t believe in you, I admit, but now you’ve shown me that anything is possible if you just try hard enough and lame enough,” Baekhyun pretends to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye and Yifan desperate tries to think of a hand motion that can convey his current state of ‘get the hell out of here you’re ruining my life’.
“Yifan?” Joonmyun asks, still sitting on the floor like a little, baby animal; oh god, if Joonmyun’s the sheep, then Yifan’s the big bad wolf, coming to fuck everything up.
“Um,” Yifan doesn’t really know how to begin to clarify the situation when the world is in the midst of collapsing, “I can explain!”
He pauses for five seconds in case Joonmyun wants to get up and slap him around a bit before he continues talking. Yifan is just dramatic like that.
“Oh, this is gonna be great,” Baekhyun remarks unnecessarily as he sits down on the stairs, and wears the same expression he does when Chanyeol is determined to drink himself into oblivion. At this moment, Yifan really wants to ship his friends off to the North Pole.
“This stupid, tiny excuse of a human being tried to make a bet about whether or not you liked me. But I swear, I wasn’t talking to you only for that reason, the other reason is,” Yifan takes a deep breath, “I like you, I’ve liked you probably since the first time I saw you walk into class. I can’t stop thinking about you. I don’t care about Baekhyun’s pea-sized brain’s ideas; I… I just like you.”
Yifan looks at the floor, waiting for the upheaval. He can’t bring himself to look Joonmyun in the eyes, scared the boy might look hurt, or upset.
“Oh, I already knew about that?”
What?
“What?” Baekhyun asks from off to the side, obviously unaware of a little thing called privacy.
“I mean, you guys aren’t exactly quiet in class; I could hear you from the beginning.”
“Wait so how badly do you want Yifan if you already knew he was in a bet?” Baekhyun asks, probably judging Joonmyun in a way that Yifan would disapprove, but right now his brain is too distracted by malfunctioning because whaaaaat??
Joonmyun looks embarrassed for a second, he bites his lips and sways from foot to foot, “because Yifan always stares at me in class so I kind of already has some intuition that he liked me. Also, not offence, he doesn’t seem like the type of guy to gamble with people’s feelings.”
Yifan’s brain has officially melted into goo, “what does this mean?”
“It means take your 20$ prize money and buy me a nice dinner.”
Yifan’s face splits into a grin, and Joonmyun shoots him back a smile; one that’s confident and oh so very beautiful.
“Oh my god, I can smell the cheese from here, you guys! Wait… guys? Come back! I was joking, don’t ditch me, oh my god!”
So what if this cheesy, Yifan wonders as he makes his escape, hand-in-hand with Joonmyun. If life’s a gamble Yifan just hit the jackpot. A little cheese never hurt anybody, he concludes as he squeezes Joonmyun’s hand.
Yifan may be a dweeb, but he’s a dweeb who eventually gets a B+ on his poetry final, and a dweeb who’s somehow managed to woo an angel.
He may not know everything about Joonmyun yet, and Joonmyun may not know everything about him, but its summer vacation now; they have all the time they need to fall in love.