Cheer for Your Heart (1/3) ✿ for EVERYONE
Title: Cheer for Your Heart
Rating: NC-17
Side pairing/s: Baekyeol and like 0.5 seconds of xiuhan/kaisoo/fanxing/seho
Word Count: 23730 words
Summary: Having a straight girl crush on Baekhyun has been a shit idea since day 1 but Jongdae’s got it down pat, or at least until Chanyeol walks in. Cheerleading!AU.
Warning/s: none
Tuesday afternoons are reserved for cheer practice.
Baekhyun blows her whistle, the shrill sound ripping through the outdoor court. “Hold it there, Yixing,” she says, waving the brunette over and away from the formation. “Repeat that T jump for me.”
“Got it.” Yixing nods and tucks her legs together, arms at her sides.
“Five, six, seven, eight-”
Baekhyun furrows her eyebrow at Yixing’s jump.
“Was that okay?” Yixing asks nervously, biting at her fingernails.
Baekhyun smiles and ruffles her cheer squad member’s short, brown bob. “You did good,” she insists, and Yixing’s face lights up at the praise from her captain. Baekhyun corrects some minor movements and has Yixing perform the jump again before calling it a day.
“Alright, good work, guys.” She gives all five members an encouraging pat on the shoulder as she walks past. At the end of the line Jongdae flashes her a big grin and follows up with a hi-five. The skin of her hand tingles where it touches Baekhyun’s slim and pretty fingers.
Crushes on straight friends are sad and painful.
The girls head back inside the gym. Luhan wipes at her sweaty face with a towel, surreptitiously peeking at Minseok shimmying out of her skirt on the other side of the changing room.
“Got work today?” Baekhyun asks Jongdae, shoving her own towel back into her duffel bag.
“Always.” Jongdae’s lucky her extra-curricular cheerleading activities and her part-time job are both organized to fit in on the same day, twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her boss is an angel and it makes co-ordinating everything so much easier without different things going on every day.
“I’m going to head off first. I need to grab some groceries from the supermarket,” Baekhyun announces. She slings her backpack over a shoulder and waves, all tidied up and hardly resembling the cheerleader that had been practising tuck jumps and helping her team mates warm down not even twenty minutes ago. “I’ll swing by for ice cream when I’m done, okay?”
Jongdae shoos her away. “Okay. See you soon.” Her eyes linger a little too long on Baekhyun’s hips, swaying from side to side and walks out with a flip of her magenta curls over her shoulder. Luhan doesn’t hesitate to call her out on it.
“You’re such a puppy,” she teases. “Idolization would be an understatement.”
Jongdae is tempted to make a snarky remark until Luhan’s hairbrush gets caught in a tangle in her blonde locks, and Jongdae decides karma is enough of a bitch. She can forgive Luhan because really, they’re both puppies still trying to catch their attention of the owners they want.
***
“Here you go, madam. Enjoy!” Jongdae flashes the lady a smile and goes to rinse the ice cream scoop in a small bucket of warm water, replacing it back with the other scoops. She pats her hands dry on her apron and her brown ponytail swishes back and forth as she turns around to serve the next customer. “Hi there, what can I get you?”
Having a part-time job at an ice cream parlour is pretty cool. Jongdae gets as many free samples of ice cream as she wants, and her boss lets her try all the new flavours before they go into the freezer.
Baekhyun’s blood type is probably ice cream. It’s her and Jongdae’s ‘thing’ to walk down to Suho’s Scoops after cheerleader practice together when they can. Where Jongdae’s literally vanilla in her choice of ice cream flavours, Baekhyun’s preferences fluctuate with whatever’s occupying her mind at the time. Passionfruit for assignment-writing days, rocky road for sunny days in town, lime swirl for days when she’s not in the mood for ice cream but drops by to keep Jongdae company anyway.
The door buzzer goes off and Jongdae hands a customer her double scoop berry sorbet as Baekhyun waltzes in, laden with shopping bags from the supermarket. She waves in Jongdae’s direction as best as she can before unloading them onto a small table in the corner.
“Ooh,” she says excitedly, her face lighting up as she peers into the ice cream freezer. “Can I have the last of the goody gumdrops?”
“Sure you can,” Jongdae’s boss replies, coming out from the back of the shop. Only the top of Joonmyun’s blond hair is visible, the man’s short stature partially obscured by the giant box of waffle cones he’s carrying. “Was going to clean the last of it out earlier but I figured I’d wait until you came in first.” He winks and Baekhyun giggles behind her hand.
“Gumdrops?” Jongdae prompts her, rolling her eyes at Joonmyun’s greasy antics. She holds up a waffle cone.
“Yes, please!” Baekhyun gives her friend a super cute smile and Jongdae’s heart melts faster than the ice cream she sells on sweltering summer days. “Hey, come sit with me if you’re not busy.”
Even though she knows the answer’s going to be yes, Jongdae looks questioningly at her boss. Joonmyun is a great listener and he knows all of Jongdae’s secrets, crushes and embarrassing moments back to front. Jongdae’s not sure if that’s entirely a good thing since Joonmyun likes to think he can set up his employee with Baekhyun, but she’ll let him dream. Joonmyun nods and she grabs a plastic tester spoon to go and share Baekhyun’s ice cream.
“Oh yeah, I bumped into that new transfer guy in my classical history paper,” Baekhyun chirps, licking avidly at her ice cream. She lets Jongdae scoop out a gum drop with her spoon and eat it. “He was at the cafeteria with Jongin and Kyungsoo, oh god Jongdae, Taemin is such a cutie. He got all embarrassed when I asked what sports clubs he joined and, and… oh, Jongdae, sorry I did it again-”
Jongdae honestly tries to pay attention whenever Baekhyun accidentally forgets that her friend isn’t all that overly fond of the male specimen and starts gushing about cute boys in her classes, she really does, but it’s not Baekhyun’s fault and Jongdae doesn’t have it in herself to tell her to stop enjoying the things she likes.
“No, no,” Jongdae waves it off and steals another portion of Baekhyun’s ice cream, “keep talking.”
“Well, okay, I was actually looking for Jongin so I could give him Kyungsoo’s phone since she left it in the library when she was studying with me - oh no, that reminds me, I still haven’t finished the reading Professor Lee gave us to do over the weekend, he’s so mean…”
Baekhyun’s quite the chatty type; she bounces from subject to subject and often spazzes about her current obsessions, but Jongdae thinks it’s adorable and lets her talk endlessly about Kyungsoo’s boyfriend Jongin’s toy poodles or how sweet Yixing is when she bakes fudge for the team or the maple walnut ice cream she had the other day.
The two of them sit and chat in the corner for as long as Jongdae can get away with, and Baekhyun demolishes the last of her cone before hugging her friend with crumbs still around her mouth and flying out the door with her groceries in tow.
Jongdae rushes into cheer practice slightly late on Friday afternoon to find Luhan avidly shaking Baekhyun’s arm. Minseok is trying to drag the blond away but Luhan is very manly when she chooses to be.
“Tell us what it is!” Luhan whines. She gives her captain the googliest, wateriest eyes she can muster and Jongdae swears she can see Minseok’s grip slacken. “Pleeeeeease?”
Baekhyun ducks out of Luhan’s grip when she spots Jongdae joining them on the outdoor court. “You’re here!” she exclaims. “What took you so long?”
“Sorry, Mr Nam wanted to talk project grades with the class.” Jongdae dumps her bag with the others and is about to stuff her hair into a messy bun when she realises nobody’s standing in formation. Practice actually hasn’t even started yet. “What’s happening?”
Baekhyun’s smile stretches wide at the question. “Well,” she begins, making excited ‘come closer’ motions at the rest of her team. She unfurls the piece of paper rolled up in her fist and holds it up for everyone to see.
Minseok peers at it curiously. “A competition?”
“That’s right!” Baekhyun flaps the poster for emphasis. “The annual inter-college cheerleading competition date was released this morning. We’ve got six weeks, we’re entering, and we’re not going down without a fight. Who’s with me?”
“I bet you signed us up already,” vice-captain Kyungsoo snickers. Jongdae hides a grin.
“Uh… yeah. I did, actually,” Baekhyun says sheepishly. “Since they cancelled the competition last year so I really really wanted to take part this year-”
“Doesn’t matter,” Luhan interrupts. She grabs Minseok’s hand and holds it up. “Count us in!”
“Me too,” Jongdae adds, inciting a flurry of happy high-fives from the other girls. She wants to see this, her captain at her finest, proudest. Cheerleading is Baekhyun’s first love.
The next thing the team knows is Baekhyun crushing them with ecstatic hugs. “Thank you guys so much,” she sniffs dramatically, dropping the poster and flinging her arms around Minseok and Luhan again. “You’re the best! Oh wow, this is going to be so much fun-”
“Not so fast.” Kyungsoo swipes up the fallen paper and scrutinizes it with the gaze only law majors like her have. “Who else is taking part this year?”
Baekhyun stops to ponder her question. “JYP’s got 2PM and a rookie ream this year. I haven’t heard anything about Cube. One of my friends at TS says they’re gonna do it for the first time.” She taps her chin thoughtfully. “Oh! YG will be there too; they’re gonna be our biggest rivals for sure.”
“Sounds feasible. I guess I’m in since you all are.” Kyungsoo shrugs and has to sidestep an emotional embrace from her squad captain.
***
“Mffg gis putgg hauhf,” Baekhyun mumbles around a mouthful of hokey pokey ice cream. She points at several things on the sheets of paper covering her desk in the ice cream parlour and looks at her team mate for her opinion.
Jongdae tilts her head in confusion, her tester spoon sticking out of the corner of her mouth. “What?”
Baekhyun swallows and scribbles something down in her notes for routines. “I was saying we should add this part here. No, here. I wonder what we can pull off in that space, hmm… oh, but I forgot about Minseok!”
It’s like she’s not even talking to Jongdae anymore. The brunette watches her cross out words here and draw arrows there, bottom lip tucked between her teeth as she tries to capture ideas for the cheerleading competition before they vanish. Baekhyun doesn’t know it, but she’s got a smile on her face.
“…Should probably use Kyungsoo as centre, Jongdae, what do you think?”
Jongdae thinks her passion is beautiful. This is her home turf, her element.
The door buzzer goes off and a family of four traipse in. There’s no one behind the counter so Joonmyun must be out in the store room or in his office.
“I’ll be back,” Jongdae promises, pushing back her chair and hurrying to where she’s supposed to be behind the ice cream freezer. Baekhyun nods, her pen racing wildly across paper.
A group of teenagers come in as soon as the family of four leave and Jongdae has to fetch her boss to give her a hand. Even after her last customer walks out with her double cone, Baekhyun still hasn’t moved an inch from her seat. She chews on the end of her pen as she gazes out the window, twirling a lock of purple hair around a finger, seemingly lost in thought.
“Go and confess,” Joonmyun whispers, like he does every time he walks past when Baekhyun’s in the shop. He slides open the freezer and pulls out the now-empty chocolate ice cream. “Come on, you have stars in your eyes.”
“I wasn’t staring,” Jongdae hisses.
Joonmyun blinks. “I didn’t say you were,” he drawls, before making a beeline for the store room freezer.
Jongdae’s eyebrow twitches. “I told you like a hundred times that she’s straight,” she fumes at her fleeing boss. She’s not even sure if Joonmyun knows anything about the trials and hardships of being homosexual. Hell, Joonmyun’s probably still single, married for eternity to the balls of ice cream he scoops every day.
***
Kyungsoo is absent for the first practice after Baekhyun’s competition announcement, having been stuck with her law tutorial changing its scheduled time due to unavailability of the tutor. Baekhyun had given her the go-ahead and waved her off, hardly worrying because Kyungsoo’s a fast learner and won’t have a problem catching up later.
“Okay, let’s take a break!” Baekhyun shouts. She blows her whistle shrilly and the team disperses to the benches by the wall for a quick rest. The sound of heavy rain pounding against the roof continues to echo in the whole gym, which had been divided and shared with the college basketball team for the afternoon when the wet weather forced the girls off their outdoor court. Yixing dating the basketball team captain sure came in handy sometimes.
Baekhyun takes a long drink from her water bottle as she watches the boys run drills on their side of the gym. Jongdae knows better; Baekhyun’s probably busy doing her fair share of ‘appreciation’. Kris is leading the drills, his Air Jordans squeaking loudly as he intercepts a poor pass and throws the ball into the net with ease. Yixing claps from the sidelines and he blows her a kiss.
“Look at Minho,” Baekhyun sighs. “And Chanyeol. Even Coach Yunho…”
Jongdae gasps, slightly scandalized. “Baekhyun!” Coach Yunho is married and his oldest daughter is a big fan of the caramel sundaes at Suho’s Scoops.
Baekhyun laughs and hits her friend on the arm. “I’m kidding!” she giggles. “I’m not really into the whole age gap thing anyway.”
***
Jongdae leaves early for work after practice, when the patter of raindrops stop while the girls are in the changing room. She lets Baekhyun know that she doesn’t have to visit the ice cream parlour today since it’s raining and jogs down to Suho’s Scoops before the downpour starts up again.
Business at the ice cream parlour is always slow on rainy days. Jongdae almost regrets having told Baekhyun she didn’t have to come today because it now means she has to spend long hours in the shop with her greasy boss.
“Let’s eat ice cream,” Joonmyun suggests, appearing with two small bowls and brandishing them at her. “Nothing much else to do, right? Grab me some soft serve. With sprinkles.”
Jongdae salutes her boss with the sprinkle shaker. “Soft serve with sprinkles coming up.” The two of them sit out the front of the store chatting, watching the rain outside. People huddle safely under the protection of their umbrellas, feet splashing through puddles as they walk past.
Jongdae’s phone buzzes in her pocket. She pulls it out to find a message on the screen from Baekhyun.
I’m coming for ice cream, it reads. Don’t get bored at work without me! A series of smiley emojis follow. Jongdae frowns for a minute before slipping her phone back into her pants, her heart beats a little faster in her chest. Baekhyun’s the type who would probably plough through a snowstorm to bring soup to sick people.
Joonmyun’s gone into the back to do some cleaning in the storeroom when Baekhyun finally shows up, cheeks red from the icy wind and the tips of her hair dripping with water. Jongdae’s served a grand total of two people since she was texted. She chivvies Baekhyun inside and makes her sit at the table closest to the warm air blasting out of the air conditioner.
“I thought I said you didn’t have to come today!” Jongdae scolds her. “We don’t even have anything to warm you up!” It’s an ice cream parlour, for heaven’s sake.
“It’s okay,” Baekhyun insists, her voice muffled in her scarf. She pulls it down so she can talk properly and starts digging around in her purse for coins. She smiles cheekily up at her friend. “Can I have the banana berry today? I wanna tell you something.”
Jongdae pauses on the other side of the ice cream freezer, waffle cone in one hand and ice cream scoop in the other. Baekhyun usually only tries new flavours when she’s doing new things.
“Banana berry, right?” she repeats, just to make sure.
“Yep. Make it a big one and we can share.”
Jongdae scoops a double cone for her, takes a tester spoon and brings the ice cream over. She samples the ice cream as Baekhyun bites into some of the berry ripple.
“Oh, this is yummy.” She nods in approval.
“Of course it is.” Jongdae steals some more ice cream from her. “So what’s the goss?” she asks, curiosity piqued.
“Okay, well… you know how we were with the basketball team in the gym today?” Baekhyun nibbles at her ice cream. She’s already leaning forward, her butt on the edge of her chair.
“Did you do something to them?” Jongdae teases her.
Baekhyun swats at her with a pink napkin. “No! After you left for work I went to go give Kris the key to lock up the gym, but they just finished so I hung around outside to wait until they got changed.” She leans even closer over the table, so close that Jongdae can see the pores on Baekhyun’s nose that she knows the cheerleader captain hates with a burning passion. “And you know Park Chanyeol, right? Music major? Tall, cute doofus who plays the drums in that really noisy band?”
“…Yes?” Jongdae knows who Park Chanyeol is, and definitely isn’t sure that she wants to know the rest of the story, but judging by the way Baekhyun can’t sit still it’s more than obvious what happened.
“He asked me if I wanted to go out with him,” Baekhyun stage-whispers, taking another bite of banana berry.
Well, crap.
“And what did you say- ”
“Of course I said yes!” she exclaims excitedly. She suddenly reaches out and prods Jongdae with a finger. “Oi, what’s with that look on your face?”
“Uh, my face?” Jongdae quickly stuffs her mouth with ice cream. “…Ice. I was cleaning the freezer and some ice got into the ice cream,” she lies. “I think I just ate some of it. Yuck.”
A small part of her is bubbling nastily with jealousy, while her head tells her she’s in no position to have such feelings about someone who’s not even in a relationship with her. Jongdae sure as hell was there first and has been there the longest. But dammit, Baekhyun doesn’t even swing her way, and this was exactly why crushes on straight friends were always terrible ideas.
“Aw, see, you’re making that face!” Baekhyun pokes her friend again. “Are you actually eating ice at all? Don’t worry, we’ll still be friends. Or are you like stuck on that Chinese Culture assignment or something?”
Baekhyun can be a little dense, but Jongdae’s never going to tell her the truth. Not in a billion years.
“Yeah, Luhan won’t help me with the research,” Jongdae mumbles. “She said she was already busy helping Minseok.” Minseok and Jongdae are both majoring in Chinese and language teaching, albeit they’re different year students than her. Luhan is here on an exchange spanning the course of her degree, studying composition. Jongdae pokes fun of how biased Luhan is towards Minseok on a regular basis, but all in all Luhan is probably the only one who understands close to anything about homosexuality.
Baekhyun waves it off. “Ask Zitao. He’s in your class, isn’t he?”
“He’s scary, Baekhyun.”
“You’re a wimp, Jongdae. But you’re lucky since you’re my favourite wimp.”
At least they’ve diverted away from the now-forever-awkward topic of Park Chanyeol. Baekhyun seems to have caught on that the workplace is hardly the ideal place to discuss relationships so she reins in her excitement, and decides she can always spam Jongdae with texts later on.
“Just start your assignment without Luhan, ‘kay? Once Minseok’s got the help she needs she’ll tell Lu to go away.”
The lock clicks as Joonmyun turns the key and locks up the ice cream parlour for the night.
“The rain doesn’t look like it’s going to let up any time soon,” he remarks, glancing up at the darkening sky. “Do you want a ride home, Jongdae?”
Well, if he was offering… “Yes, please.” Jongdae stuffs her umbrella back into her backpack and hops into the passenger seat of Joonmyun’s car. Her boss puts the key in the ignition and they start the crawl through the sluggish traffic from the wet weather.
“So what’s Baekhyun up to?” he asks. “I could hear the two of you from the store room.”
“Baekhyun’s dating,” Jongdae says gloomily, watching raindrops race each other down the window. “She got a boyfriend.”
“Well. This is a bit of a pickle, isn’t it?”
“…Not really.” Jongdae makes a face. “There was no pickle. It wouldn’t have worked out between me and Baekhyun anyway. She likes boys and I’m not one.”
“Oh, Jongdae.” Joonmyun stops at the red lights and looks over at her. “You poor thing. What are you going to do now?”
Jongdae shrugs. She leans her head on the window and closes her eyes. “I don’t know,” she says. “I need to stop liking Baekhyun. But I’m going to be support her. I want her to be happy.”
Joonmyun smiles and sticks out a hand to ruffle Jongdae’s brown hair affectionately. “That’s the kind of Jongdae I wanted to see.”
***
Jongdae doesn’t see Baekhyun on Wednesday or Thursday, replying to all her invitations with ‘I’m busy sorry!!’ or making excuses about having to do her assignment in order to fend her off. She tries to ignore the string of texts Baekhyun sends her because more than half of them are about Chanyeol.
omGGGGG jongdae he asked if he could kiss me today!
Hey look at this cute ring. I wonder if they have couple ones?
lol chanyeol left his jacket on my bed, haha. It really smells like him.
It’s like a piece of Jongdae dies every time her phone vibrates with a new message. This whole supporting thing is starting to become difficult when Baekhyun insists on shoving it in her face, whether she was doing it on purpose or not.
Jongdae manages to avoid Baekhyun until Friday’s cheerleader practice, in which Baekhyun suffocates her in a hug like it’s been years since they’ve last seen each other.
“How’s things going with Chanyeol?” Jongdae asks weakly. She feels like she’s obliged to ask, and Baekhyun nods emphatically.
“Really good,” she answers, smiling until her mouth becomes the trademark rectangle-like shape her friends like to make fun of. “He’s so sweet to me, Jongdae, I love him so much.”
Jongdae’s glad she’s still being hugged, otherwise Baekhyun would be able to see the mix of dismay and forced happiness on her face. Thankfully, the captain lets go and rounds up the team onto the court into a little circle.
“So I’ve done some work on routines we can use for the competition,” she announces, spreading out the bundle of papers she’s been holding in front of them. “These are just some ideas but I’m sure we can put them together. See there’s this one here, but the formation’s a little tough since we don’t have enough people, but- ”
“Hey, who’s that?” Minseok asks, pointing over Baekhyun’s shoulder.
“Huh?” Baekhyun turns around to see a tall figure approaching the court, waving his gangly arms in their direction. Her mouth drops open in surprise. “Chanyeol? Oh. Uh, hold on,” she stammers, peeling away from the team to run over to him. The other girls glance back and forth at each other, possible scenarios and theories coming to life in their heads.
“Who’s that?” Kyungsoo mouths. She nudges Jongdae in the side for an answer.
“Baek didn’t tell you?” Jongdae frowns, and Kyungsoo shakes her head. “She’s going out with Chanyeol.”
There is a quiet, collective chorus of ‘ohhh’s from Minseok and Luhan, and a quirked eyebrow from the vice-captain.
“Actually, I do remember seeing them talking after last practice,” Minseok recalls. “Aw, cute.”
“What are you whispering about?” Baekhyun demands behind them.
“I’m calling you guys Baekyeol,” Luhan declares, and Baekhyun’s whole face instantly turns red. “Woo hoo! Am I right or am I right?”
Baekhyun blushes even harder. Jongdae just wants to put her arms around her and whisk her away from these evil people who call themselves her team mates.
“It kind of happened,” Baekhyun mumbles. She twiddles her thumbs. “You all know Park Chanyeol, yeah? He said he just wants to chill and watch us practice.”
“Do you mean watch you practice?” Luhan waggles her eyebrows. The teasing is going to be merciless, but as cute as Jongdae thinks a blushy tomato Baekhyun is, she jabs her elbow into Luhan’s side to make her shut up and redirect the topic of the conversation to back to the cheerleading competition routine. Baekhyun passes her a look of relief.
As it turns out, Chanyeol doesn’t really do much other than sit on the bleachers and watch them from a distance. He pulls out his phone every now and then but he’s probably fixing his hair or playing games because how interesting could their cheer practice possibly be? Particularly as they were only in the beginning stages of preparation; they didn’t even have anything to practice.
They pack up at the end and head off to the changing rooms. Chanyeol carries Baekhyun’s books and bags for her, earning himself a peck on the cheek that Jongdae turns her head away from to pretend she didn’t see, and waits for his girlfriend outside the gym.
Fortunately for Jongdae Luhan corners Baekhyun in the corner of the changing room to drill her with questions about Chanyeol, so Jongdae manages to get changed super-fast and hightail it out of there before Baekhyun can go with her to the ice cream parlour. She takes one of the side doors of the gym so she can avoid Chanyeol as well, leaves crunching under her shoes as she walks along the path between the trees that grow at the back of the building.
“Don’t like him much, do you?”
Jongdae stops in her tracks and spins around to find Kyungsoo following her. She must’ve been in such a rush to leave that she didn’t notice the other girl at all.
But Kyungsoo’s sharp, and she takes several longer strides to catch up to Jongdae. “I doubt you were taking this path for the scenery,” she comments. “Are you going to work?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll come with you,” Kyungsoo offers, and Jongdae doesn’t really have the grounds to refuse so they start walking together to the ice cream parlour. “You don’t look like you’re having a nice day.”
Baekhyun had once described her vice-captain as ‘if you were an anime character, you’d totes be the cool type’. She wasn’t wrong. Kyungsoo’s the calmest, most level-headed of the team, with plenty of guts and power, never looking like she’s breaking a sweat. She flicks off all the boys with the back of her hand and has been voted multiple times as the one most likely to wear the pants in her relationship with Jongin.
“I’m fine,” Jongdae blatantly lies.
“So what do you think about Chanyeol?” Straight to the point is Kyungsoo’s specialty.
Jongdae thinks about it. “I don’t really know much about him,” she says lamely.
Kyungsoo nods. “So why so grumpy?”
There’s no logical reason to dislike Chanyeol, Jongdae finds herself realizing with a sinking feeling. The guy didn’t have a bad reputation, he was probably a nice person and the only reason she even knew his name was because one of the other girls who worked at Suho’s Scoops made her go with her to a concert where Chanyeol’s band was in the line-up.
In essence, Jongdae just dislikes him because he’s dating Baekhyun, and now that Kyungsoo had made her see it from that perspective she feels a little mad at herself for being so childish.
“You okay?” Kyungsoo asks, surveying her friend with a critical eye.
“Kyungsoo, what do you think about Chanyeol?” Jongdae asks.
The vice-captain seems caught off-guard by the question. She opens her mouth and closes it again, like she’s carefully choosing her response. “He’s okay. He’s just a name to me but he’ll be good for Baekhyun,” is all she says. “Which leads me to wonder if you have a bone to pick with him, since you looked like you wanted to light him on fire as soon as he showed up.”
“You really are observant,” Jongdae laughs nervously, jamming her sweaty hands into her pockets, “but I, uh, don’t- ”
Kyungsoo halts without warning, her black hair swinging with the abrupt movement. She catches Jongdae’s arm as the latter walks past.
“Jongdae,” Kyungsoo says slowly, and the back of Jongdae’s neck suddenly prickles uncomfortably, “do you like Baekhyun?”
Jongdae doesn’t reply. She stares at the concrete of the path, away from Kyungsoo’s laser-like gaze. It’s been her secret for a long time now, one that she’s only shared with Joonmyun at work because he caught her staring at Baekhyun once too many times, and one that Luhan figured out on her own because she ‘could tell from a mile away, ew, you’re so obvious.’
Jongdae tries to pull away but Kyungsoo’s hold on her wrist is iron. “I’m sorry if it makes you uncomfortable,” she mumbles apologetically.
“Really, Jongdae, you don’t give me enough credit,” Kyungsoo sighs. She releases Jongdae and loops their arms together, and forces the two of them to start walking again. “I had my suspicions for a while but at least now it makes better sense. Don’t feel like you can’t talk about anything with me, okay?”
Well, that makes Baekhyun, Luhan and now Kyungsoo in on Jongdae’s starting-to-not-be-so-secret secret about her sexuality.
But the sinking feeling Jongdae had felt is gone, like part of some invisible weight’s just vanished off her shoulders. Bless her friends; two years is all Jongdae’s spent at college, but her cheerleading squad have made her feel anything but lonely. It’s going to be hard once Minseok graduates at the end of this year and Luhan returns to Beijing.
So she takes a deep breath, and tells Kyungsoo some things.
***
“How was practice?” Joonmyun inquires. He hands Jongdae an apron with the Suho’s Scoops logo emblazoned on it and she puts it on, tying her hair up into a ponytail and rolling up her sleeves.
“It was okay,” she mutters. “Until Chanyeol came.”
“Uh-oh.” Joonmyun picks up the bottle of chocolate sauce to see if it needs a refill. “Why? What did he do?”
Jongdae shuffles her feet along the ground as she goes to the freezer to scrape out the last of the cookies and cream. It’s there again, that simmering envy that won’t go away.
“Nothing,” she admits. “Just sat there and watched us practice.”
“Okay? What’s wrong with that?”
Nothing, Jongdae wants to scream at him. I’m jealous. That’s what’s wrong.
But Joonmyun’s not dumb. He probably already knows, and Jongdae’s lack of answer confirms it. Before he can ask her anything else, the buzzer goes off and two customers enter the ice cream parlour. Jongdae glances up from cleaning the chocolate sauce bottle pump and sees it’s Baekhyun, with Chanyeol. They have the cute-couple appearance, with their noticeable height difference and the way Baekhyun hangs onto his arm and every word.
“Hi, Jongdae!” she trills, waving an arm. Chanyeol waves too.
Jongdae smiles back, but it’s a pretty sad excuse for one. It’s the generic kind that she gives customers, like hello I am very happy to serve you today, please tell me what you would like!!! She hopes her expression is not too contorted.
Baekhyun leaves Chanyeol behind to bounce up to the glass of the display where Jongdae is putting in the new cookies and cream. “You left so fast after practice I didn’t even see you go!” she accuses her friend.
“Sorry,” Jongdae says sheepishly. She wishes she still had Kyungsoo’s company so this wouldn’t be so awkward, but they had split ways several blocks before the ice cream parlour so she could go home. “Sehun wasn’t feeling well and left early so I quickly came to cover the end of her shift.” She feels eyes on the back of her head and realizes Joonmyun is listening to her spin her web of lies. Sehun doesn’t leave early. Sehun never leaves early, especially if it means less time to unlawfully stare at her hot boss.
“Oh, that’s okay then. I was coming to get ice cream anyway since you were working.”
And just like that Jongdae knows she’s forgiven. You can’t do this forever, a voice inside her says. She ignores it and grabs a waffle cone from the stack.
“Of course you were,” she jokes. “You can’t leave me here all by myself to talk to the ice cream.”
Baekhyun grins cheekily back and for a split second everything’s all right again, no boys and no dating and no nothing, just best friends. “Ice cream whisperer.” She pokes her tongue out at her friend. She points at a green ice cream in the freezer. “Get me a single scoop of mint chocolate chip.”
Jongdae squints at her. “Baek, do you even like mint chocolate chip?”
The answer’s no because she knows for a fact Baekhyun strongly believes that the only things that should be mint-flavoured are actual mints and toothpaste.
“I’m trying new flavours!” Baekhyun pouts back, sticking her bottom lip out at Jongdae. “Right, Chanyeol?” Of course. New things.
“Sure,” Chanyeol rumbles with a toothy smile, and Jongdae reckons he could be a rapper with that voice if drumming didn’t work out for him. “Mint chocolate chip’s my favourite too,” he adds.
Baekhyun’s mouth is an ‘o’ of surprise. “Let’s both get one then!”
Jongdae’s gut curls with envy as she watches Chanyeol pull out his wallet to pay for the two ice creams. She’s stuck serving the line of other customers in the shop so she has to turn down Baekhyun’s invitation to sit with them, gritting her teeth as they even take the special seat in the corner that she and Baekhyun always sit in.
“Um, miss, I asked for the french vanilla,” the middle-aged lady Jongdae’s serving tells her, and Jongdae realizes she’s so distracted that she’s scooped a plain vanilla one by mistake.
“Ahh, I’m so sorry!” she yelps, frantically taking a new cone, “I’ll get you another one, please wait!” She scoops from the right vanilla this time and makes sure to make the balls of ice cream a little bigger for the customer. “Here you are, sorry about that.”
It doesn’t stop there. Jongdae inadvertently eavesdrops on Baekhyun’s next conversation about the cheerleading competition and accidentally crushes the cone she’s holding in her hand. She puts nuts on a sundae for someone who hadn’t wanted nuts and Joonmyun ends up taking her aside to ask if she’s okay.
“Are you sure? You can go home if you want to,” he offers, surreptitiously throwing a glance at the couple tucked away in the corner. “I’ll manage, or I can see if Sehun wants to come back in- ”
“I’m fine,” Jongdae mutters under her breath. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Baekhyun get out of her chair to leave. That’s one less distraction, she supposes. “I’m just tired.”
Joonmyun doesn’t seem sure but he lets it slide, because Jongdae looks like she’s really not in the mood to talk to about it.
“I’m going now!” Baekhyun calls over the counter. “I’ll see you later, ‘kay?”
“Bye,” Jongdae pretends to wave her goodbye and busies herself with cleaning the freezer display to avoid her boss’s concerned expression.
Stepping out into the crisp evening after work is like a breath of fresh air after spending an afternoon cooped up in the ice cream parlour. Jongdae stops by at the grocery store to get some ramyun for dinner and heads home, scuffing her shoes and kicking violently at stones in her path. She mumbles a greeting to the other occupant of her dorm and goes straight into her room mope on her bed.
She wakes up at noon with a growling stomach and a bunch of texts on her phone from Yixing. She lifts her head up groggily to feel her cheek unstick itself from her laptop and remembers that she’d fallen asleep last night watching a drama, having cried buckets at the last remaining episodes of It’s Okay, That’s Love. She’s glad it’s Saturday and she doesn’t have class.
She scrolls through Yixing’s invite to the movies tomorrow night.
Luhan and Baekhyun are coming but Kris refuses to watch scary movies. He’s such a big baby :/ Kyungsoo’s bringing Jongin too. You wanna come with us???
Jongdae rubs at her eyes sleepily. Was Chanyeol coming? She hopes not.
What about Baek and Chanyeol? she texts back.
The lightning-fast reply indicates the ever-hopeful Yixing has probably been waiting with her phone in her hands for an answer. Yep!
Jongdae groans and drops her phone back onto her bed and her head into her pillow. She makes up an excuse about her assignment being due very soon and almost feels bad for the rest of the day for rejecting Yixing.
***
“Five, six, seven, eight!”
The team executes their cheer well, Baekhyun clapping and fist-pumping triumphantly in approval. They’re trying out something a little more complicated today and half the team crumple to the ground, moaning about sore muscles when Baekhyun lets them have a break.
Chanyeol’s there again too, sitting on the bleachers by himself. He’s watching incredibly intensely for what’s just a practice, but Jongdae figures he’s probably just staring at Baekhyun. Not that she herself doesn’t stare sometimes, but hey, Baekhyun’s really pretty and could be anybody and everybody’s dream girl.
“Okay, guys, I want to combine what we did before with this part here.” Baekhyun’s pointing out parts of her notes on her routines to her team. “Although I think we should swap Kyungsoo to the other side. We still need you two as bases since we only have Jongdae as flyer, and finish here for that bit, hey, do you think we could go for a toss?”
Luhan’s sips from her water bottle and raises her hand. “What about me?”
“Back spotter for now.”
Luhan deflates a little but Baekhyun doesn’t notice, her attention lost to cheerleading. Minseok and Kyungsoo have permanent positions as bases, whose job it is to toss Jongdae for their stunts.
“Let’s try it out!” Baekhyun whoops, and drags them all back onto the court. “Alright, into position… and one, two, down, up!”
Jongdae can hear the grunt of Minseok and Yixing supporting her as they hoist her up into the hair, with one foot in the hands of the two bases in formation beside her, and she prepares to flip off to lead into the opening of the next part.
“Okay, go!”
Jongdae pushes off, ready to tuck herself in when she suddenly sees Chanyeol on the bleachers take out his phone and hold it up in their direction. Was he taking a picture of them? Taking a selca? Creepy.
Her concentration slips for a second and she lands awkwardly on both feet, wobbling to the side and stumbling over. Her practice kicks in and she manages to fall and roll properly to reduce the impact. Her leg stings from being grazed on the concrete.
Baekhyun’s at her side in a flash, patting Jongdae on the cheek to check her state of consciousness and doing a once-over of her limbs for injuries. “Jongdae! Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
Jongdae sees Baekhyun’s face and her purple hair in her view and gingerly sits up. “Yeah… sorry,” she mumbles. “Just gotta practice that bit some more, I think.” She wiggles her toes and her fingers, and her left wrist seizes up with a bolt of pain. “Ow…”
“Whoa, what happened?” Minseok appears next to them, crouching on her knees. Yixing’s already run to her bag to get some sticky plasters and whatever other first aid she likes to carry around because she’s an angel.
“Oh my god, I’m gonna take you to the hospital right now.” Baekhyun fusses around with Jongdae, helping her up and dashing over to collect their belongings from the bench. Jongdae blushes but she can hear Baekhyun telling Chanyeol that he can go home and doesn’t have to wait for her. It’s a bad but good kind of feeling that Baekhyun’s attention is not on her boyfriend for once, but on Jongdae.
“You weren’t concentrating, were you,” Kyungsoo tsks, but says it like she knows the truth.
Jongdae grumbles inwardly. How she’s managed to even keep her sexuality and stupid crush on Baekhyun hidden from Kyungsoo for so long must have been a miracle.
It’s embarrassing enough that Jongdae has to turn up at the emergency department red as beetroot and cradling her sore wrist, but it gets even worse when the doctor orders the x-ray just in case and the results come back totally negative. It was just a hard bump, nothing major. She gets discharged with painkillers and they leave the hospital, Baekhyun sighing with relief.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” she keeps asking. The concern on her face makes Jongdae warm and gooey inside.
“Stop worrying. I’m okay, see?” she reassures her. Only then does she realize she’s going to be late for work and hurriedly calls her boss to let him know.
“You hurt yourself?” he screeches on the other end of the line. Baekhyun giggles. “You’re not coming in to work. Stay away, Kim Jongdae, I’m calling Sehun in.”
“But I didn’t even- ”
The phone disconnects and Jongdae is left shaking her head on sidewalk.
“Listen to Grandpa Ice Cream for once,” Baekhyun chortles. “Go home and rest. I’ll text you later.”
***
For the most part Baekhyun does check up on her at regular intervals and asks if she needs help moving things or cooking or if Jongdae would possibly like food brought over (which she declines because her pantry’s still full of ramyun from the other day). And as usual, the topic of the conversation trails back to Chanyeol.
He says we’re going to have a pretty good shot at the intercollege competition because our team has the best captain. So cheesy omg.
Jongdae’s puzzled. Chanyeol looks like the kind of guy who would know the least about cheerleading, but she supposes he’s just going along to keep Baekhyun happy. She vaguely remembers that time Yixing told Kris she was working really hard on her footwork for a jump and he was like ‘yeah, ok’ and Yixing was so devastated that Kris forced himself to make her tell him all about it and show him and then congratulate her on her efforts.
The rest of Jongdae’s week sails by on a happy tune. Her assignment is actually due soon so she knuckles down in the library after classes to get it done. Baekhyun pesters her with texts to make sure she’s 1000% okay and even makes Minseok sneak into Jongdae’s Intermediate Chinese lectures to check up on her.
Jongdae blocks Chanyeol’s existence from her mind until Friday’s cheerleading practice, where he turns up to watch them from the bleachers again. But Baekhyun’s happiness is infectious, being ecstatic that Jongdae’s back in good shape and engulfs her in a flurry of bouncy magenta curls and arms thrown around her neck. She pushes the team harder today, like she’s trying to suck out the last of their life before the weekend hits them. Jongdae’s feet feel like they’ve been on hot coals and Luhan is wailing that her legs have given up on life and fallen off.
Baekhyun takes a long drink from her bottle and wipes her sweaty forehead with her hand towel. “Good job, everyone! Let’s finish for today!” she calls, going around and patting them on the back like she does after most practices. She waves cutely at Chanyeol afterwards. “Did I do well?” she asks hopefully.
Chanyeol fondly messes up her hair with his hands, which Jongdae sees but is too tired to care about. “Didn’t expect anything less from my girlfriend,” he says, and gives her two thumbs up.
“They’re so cute. Look at them,” Yixing gushes to Luhan.
“You and Kris make me want to spew too,” she replies, and Yixing pouts.
Jongdae blatantly ignores them and heads for the changing room, Kyungsoo’s eyes following her retreating back as she shakes her head in pity. Jongdae quickly slips out of her practice uniform and stuffs her gear into her duffel bag, spraying some deodorant on before stuffing that in too, and tries to leave the gym before Baekhyun notices.
“Gotta go,” she says to Minseok as she goes past and pushes open the door.
“Bye Jongdae!” somebody calls after her, but it’s not Minseok.
Dammit. Baekhyun’s waving at her too, not even half out of her skirt, and Jongdae has no choice but to acknowledge her.
“I’ll see you for ice cream!” Baekhyun yells just as Jongdae leaves the building. She ought to give Baekhyun a little more credit, she thinks. Despite now constantly being attached to the arm of her boyfriend, she still puts time aside for small things with friends - but it’s a Baekhyun thing, and Jongdae is reminded exactly of why she fell for her captain in first place.
Joonmyun’s relieved to see she’s better today, leaving her out in the front of the shop to hum TVXQ songs and scoop ice creams while he drives out to the supplier to get some more stock.
“Here we are, one double scoop jelly tip and a single rocky road with chocolate dip.” Jongdae places them in the ice cream cone-holder and drops the scoop back into the bucket of water.
“Can I get you anything else?”
“Can I get a few more napkins?”
She gets the old man what he wants and takes his money. She shuts the till and looks up, a smile ready on her face for the next customer, when she pauses in mid-greeting. “Oh, hi Luhan.”
“Yo,” the blonde says, peering into the ice cream freezer. “Strawberry sundae; extra whipped cream, chocolate sprinkles and cherries.”
Jongdae slides open the freezer and scoops out two balls of strawberry into a sundae cup. “Where’s everyone else?” she asks. Did she invite the rest of the team?
Luhan shakes her head. “Nope, just me,” she says. “I heard you wanted some help on your Chinese culture assignment.”
Oops. Help didn’t even come close; Jongdae was on task to complete the whole thing this weekend. As much as she liked writing about the intricacies of tea ceremonies and dim sum it was more or less done and Luhan’s help hadn’t even been required anywhere along the way. She vaguely remembers having lied to Baekhyun about needing help for it and now karma was coming back to bite her in the ass.
“U-uh,” she stammers, and bends over to forage around in the little fridge to buy her some time. She straightens with a can of whipped cream in her hand and douses Luhan’s strawberry ice cream in it. “Um, yeah, but that was like last week and I’m pretty much finished.”
“Oh! Er, sorry if you really needed a hand, cos Minseok was working on her speech for her paper and I got tied up with helping her with that.” Luhan spins a lock of hair around her finger sheepishly as she watches chocolate sprinkles cover her sundae.
Jongdae sticks lots of cherries into the cream because she knows Luhan loves them, and hands the dessert over the counter. “It’s okay. Don’t worry!”
“I won’t then. Hey, is Baekhyun here?” Luhan scans the ice cream parlour for the purple-haired girl. “I thought she always comes in when you work.”
Jongdae checks her watch, and shrugs. “I dunno,” she says. “She said she was coming in. She’s probably on her way.”
“’Kay. Come chat with me when you’re free!” Luhan slides over a couple of bills and goes to find a place to sit down and eat, plucking out a cherry by the stem and popping it between her lips as she weaves her way between the tables and chairs.
Jongdae serves the two remaining girls waiting in line and sends them off with a frozen yoghurt each. She scoops herself some chocolate ice cream into a paper cup and joins her team mate at her table.
She’s not as close to Luhan as she is with Baekhyun, but the blonde is a precious confidante. Jongdae had met her the day she signed up for the cheerleader squad. It wasn’t like Jongdae had even stated her sexuality; after chatting and introducing themselves Luhan had draped an arm around her shoulders, winked knowingly and quietly said, “You and I bat for the same team, don’t we?” And that had sealed their friendship like heat melting plastic together.
Jongdae always finds herself comparing Luhan and Baekhyun together.
Where Baekhyun brims with cute and dollish charm, Luhan is a bucketful of confidence so strong it’s nearly intimidating. Her Achilles heel is none other than Minseok, the down to earth girl-next-door member of their cheerleading team.
Luhan pines for her but Jongdae doesn’t want to get any further into their complicated dynamics, lest she become a go-between for the two of them. As far as she’s aware, Minseok hasn’t even come out yet - or if she even likes girls. It’s a mess and Jongdae has enough messes of her own to deal with.
“So…” Luhan licks strawberry ice cream off her spoon. “Is Park Chanyeol going to make you give up on Baek any time soon?”
Jongdae shoots her a look. “Are you going to give up making googly eyes at Minseok any time soon?”
Luhan’s tongue pauses on the spoon’s silver surface. “Touché.”
“He’s done nothing and I hate him. I’m starting to turn into a dickhead.” Jongdae stares sullenly at her ice cream, the chocolate starting to turn into little pools of brown.
Luhan is sympathetic. “Don’t beat yourself up over it,” she says, reaching over to pat Jongdae’s hand. “I’d feel exactly the same if I were you. Everyone gets kinda jealous sometimes, right? But we walk away from it stronger.”
Jongdae’s lips turn downwards in a sour expression. “I don’t know what to do and I don’t really want to keep talking about it,” she grumbles, stabbing her ice cream viciously with the wooden tester spoon.
“Let’s talk about something else then,” Luhan suggests, and her team mate sighs silently in relief. Jongdae spoons a blob of chocolate into her mouth and asks how things are going with Minseok, at which Luhan makes a long-suffering noise.
“I dunno!” she whines. “How do I even approach her without being really weird? Sometimes she’s really happy to be next to me and stuff and I don’t want to scare her away and argh, I’m almost as bad as you…”
1 | 2 | 3
Rating: NC-17
Side pairing/s: Baekyeol and like 0.5 seconds of xiuhan/kaisoo/fanxing/seho
Word Count: 23730 words
Summary: Having a straight girl crush on Baekhyun has been a shit idea since day 1 but Jongdae’s got it down pat, or at least until Chanyeol walks in. Cheerleading!AU.
Warning/s: none
Tuesday afternoons are reserved for cheer practice.
Baekhyun blows her whistle, the shrill sound ripping through the outdoor court. “Hold it there, Yixing,” she says, waving the brunette over and away from the formation. “Repeat that T jump for me.”
“Got it.” Yixing nods and tucks her legs together, arms at her sides.
“Five, six, seven, eight-”
Baekhyun furrows her eyebrow at Yixing’s jump.
“Was that okay?” Yixing asks nervously, biting at her fingernails.
Baekhyun smiles and ruffles her cheer squad member’s short, brown bob. “You did good,” she insists, and Yixing’s face lights up at the praise from her captain. Baekhyun corrects some minor movements and has Yixing perform the jump again before calling it a day.
“Alright, good work, guys.” She gives all five members an encouraging pat on the shoulder as she walks past. At the end of the line Jongdae flashes her a big grin and follows up with a hi-five. The skin of her hand tingles where it touches Baekhyun’s slim and pretty fingers.
Crushes on straight friends are sad and painful.
The girls head back inside the gym. Luhan wipes at her sweaty face with a towel, surreptitiously peeking at Minseok shimmying out of her skirt on the other side of the changing room.
“Got work today?” Baekhyun asks Jongdae, shoving her own towel back into her duffel bag.
“Always.” Jongdae’s lucky her extra-curricular cheerleading activities and her part-time job are both organized to fit in on the same day, twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her boss is an angel and it makes co-ordinating everything so much easier without different things going on every day.
“I’m going to head off first. I need to grab some groceries from the supermarket,” Baekhyun announces. She slings her backpack over a shoulder and waves, all tidied up and hardly resembling the cheerleader that had been practising tuck jumps and helping her team mates warm down not even twenty minutes ago. “I’ll swing by for ice cream when I’m done, okay?”
Jongdae shoos her away. “Okay. See you soon.” Her eyes linger a little too long on Baekhyun’s hips, swaying from side to side and walks out with a flip of her magenta curls over her shoulder. Luhan doesn’t hesitate to call her out on it.
“You’re such a puppy,” she teases. “Idolization would be an understatement.”
Jongdae is tempted to make a snarky remark until Luhan’s hairbrush gets caught in a tangle in her blonde locks, and Jongdae decides karma is enough of a bitch. She can forgive Luhan because really, they’re both puppies still trying to catch their attention of the owners they want.
***
“Here you go, madam. Enjoy!” Jongdae flashes the lady a smile and goes to rinse the ice cream scoop in a small bucket of warm water, replacing it back with the other scoops. She pats her hands dry on her apron and her brown ponytail swishes back and forth as she turns around to serve the next customer. “Hi there, what can I get you?”
Having a part-time job at an ice cream parlour is pretty cool. Jongdae gets as many free samples of ice cream as she wants, and her boss lets her try all the new flavours before they go into the freezer.
Baekhyun’s blood type is probably ice cream. It’s her and Jongdae’s ‘thing’ to walk down to Suho’s Scoops after cheerleader practice together when they can. Where Jongdae’s literally vanilla in her choice of ice cream flavours, Baekhyun’s preferences fluctuate with whatever’s occupying her mind at the time. Passionfruit for assignment-writing days, rocky road for sunny days in town, lime swirl for days when she’s not in the mood for ice cream but drops by to keep Jongdae company anyway.
The door buzzer goes off and Jongdae hands a customer her double scoop berry sorbet as Baekhyun waltzes in, laden with shopping bags from the supermarket. She waves in Jongdae’s direction as best as she can before unloading them onto a small table in the corner.
“Ooh,” she says excitedly, her face lighting up as she peers into the ice cream freezer. “Can I have the last of the goody gumdrops?”
“Sure you can,” Jongdae’s boss replies, coming out from the back of the shop. Only the top of Joonmyun’s blond hair is visible, the man’s short stature partially obscured by the giant box of waffle cones he’s carrying. “Was going to clean the last of it out earlier but I figured I’d wait until you came in first.” He winks and Baekhyun giggles behind her hand.
“Gumdrops?” Jongdae prompts her, rolling her eyes at Joonmyun’s greasy antics. She holds up a waffle cone.
“Yes, please!” Baekhyun gives her friend a super cute smile and Jongdae’s heart melts faster than the ice cream she sells on sweltering summer days. “Hey, come sit with me if you’re not busy.”
Even though she knows the answer’s going to be yes, Jongdae looks questioningly at her boss. Joonmyun is a great listener and he knows all of Jongdae’s secrets, crushes and embarrassing moments back to front. Jongdae’s not sure if that’s entirely a good thing since Joonmyun likes to think he can set up his employee with Baekhyun, but she’ll let him dream. Joonmyun nods and she grabs a plastic tester spoon to go and share Baekhyun’s ice cream.
“Oh yeah, I bumped into that new transfer guy in my classical history paper,” Baekhyun chirps, licking avidly at her ice cream. She lets Jongdae scoop out a gum drop with her spoon and eat it. “He was at the cafeteria with Jongin and Kyungsoo, oh god Jongdae, Taemin is such a cutie. He got all embarrassed when I asked what sports clubs he joined and, and… oh, Jongdae, sorry I did it again-”
Jongdae honestly tries to pay attention whenever Baekhyun accidentally forgets that her friend isn’t all that overly fond of the male specimen and starts gushing about cute boys in her classes, she really does, but it’s not Baekhyun’s fault and Jongdae doesn’t have it in herself to tell her to stop enjoying the things she likes.
“No, no,” Jongdae waves it off and steals another portion of Baekhyun’s ice cream, “keep talking.”
“Well, okay, I was actually looking for Jongin so I could give him Kyungsoo’s phone since she left it in the library when she was studying with me - oh no, that reminds me, I still haven’t finished the reading Professor Lee gave us to do over the weekend, he’s so mean…”
Baekhyun’s quite the chatty type; she bounces from subject to subject and often spazzes about her current obsessions, but Jongdae thinks it’s adorable and lets her talk endlessly about Kyungsoo’s boyfriend Jongin’s toy poodles or how sweet Yixing is when she bakes fudge for the team or the maple walnut ice cream she had the other day.
The two of them sit and chat in the corner for as long as Jongdae can get away with, and Baekhyun demolishes the last of her cone before hugging her friend with crumbs still around her mouth and flying out the door with her groceries in tow.
Jongdae rushes into cheer practice slightly late on Friday afternoon to find Luhan avidly shaking Baekhyun’s arm. Minseok is trying to drag the blond away but Luhan is very manly when she chooses to be.
“Tell us what it is!” Luhan whines. She gives her captain the googliest, wateriest eyes she can muster and Jongdae swears she can see Minseok’s grip slacken. “Pleeeeeease?”
Baekhyun ducks out of Luhan’s grip when she spots Jongdae joining them on the outdoor court. “You’re here!” she exclaims. “What took you so long?”
“Sorry, Mr Nam wanted to talk project grades with the class.” Jongdae dumps her bag with the others and is about to stuff her hair into a messy bun when she realises nobody’s standing in formation. Practice actually hasn’t even started yet. “What’s happening?”
Baekhyun’s smile stretches wide at the question. “Well,” she begins, making excited ‘come closer’ motions at the rest of her team. She unfurls the piece of paper rolled up in her fist and holds it up for everyone to see.
Minseok peers at it curiously. “A competition?”
“That’s right!” Baekhyun flaps the poster for emphasis. “The annual inter-college cheerleading competition date was released this morning. We’ve got six weeks, we’re entering, and we’re not going down without a fight. Who’s with me?”
“I bet you signed us up already,” vice-captain Kyungsoo snickers. Jongdae hides a grin.
“Uh… yeah. I did, actually,” Baekhyun says sheepishly. “Since they cancelled the competition last year so I really really wanted to take part this year-”
“Doesn’t matter,” Luhan interrupts. She grabs Minseok’s hand and holds it up. “Count us in!”
“Me too,” Jongdae adds, inciting a flurry of happy high-fives from the other girls. She wants to see this, her captain at her finest, proudest. Cheerleading is Baekhyun’s first love.
The next thing the team knows is Baekhyun crushing them with ecstatic hugs. “Thank you guys so much,” she sniffs dramatically, dropping the poster and flinging her arms around Minseok and Luhan again. “You’re the best! Oh wow, this is going to be so much fun-”
“Not so fast.” Kyungsoo swipes up the fallen paper and scrutinizes it with the gaze only law majors like her have. “Who else is taking part this year?”
Baekhyun stops to ponder her question. “JYP’s got 2PM and a rookie ream this year. I haven’t heard anything about Cube. One of my friends at TS says they’re gonna do it for the first time.” She taps her chin thoughtfully. “Oh! YG will be there too; they’re gonna be our biggest rivals for sure.”
“Sounds feasible. I guess I’m in since you all are.” Kyungsoo shrugs and has to sidestep an emotional embrace from her squad captain.
***
“Mffg gis putgg hauhf,” Baekhyun mumbles around a mouthful of hokey pokey ice cream. She points at several things on the sheets of paper covering her desk in the ice cream parlour and looks at her team mate for her opinion.
Jongdae tilts her head in confusion, her tester spoon sticking out of the corner of her mouth. “What?”
Baekhyun swallows and scribbles something down in her notes for routines. “I was saying we should add this part here. No, here. I wonder what we can pull off in that space, hmm… oh, but I forgot about Minseok!”
It’s like she’s not even talking to Jongdae anymore. The brunette watches her cross out words here and draw arrows there, bottom lip tucked between her teeth as she tries to capture ideas for the cheerleading competition before they vanish. Baekhyun doesn’t know it, but she’s got a smile on her face.
“…Should probably use Kyungsoo as centre, Jongdae, what do you think?”
Jongdae thinks her passion is beautiful. This is her home turf, her element.
The door buzzer goes off and a family of four traipse in. There’s no one behind the counter so Joonmyun must be out in the store room or in his office.
“I’ll be back,” Jongdae promises, pushing back her chair and hurrying to where she’s supposed to be behind the ice cream freezer. Baekhyun nods, her pen racing wildly across paper.
A group of teenagers come in as soon as the family of four leave and Jongdae has to fetch her boss to give her a hand. Even after her last customer walks out with her double cone, Baekhyun still hasn’t moved an inch from her seat. She chews on the end of her pen as she gazes out the window, twirling a lock of purple hair around a finger, seemingly lost in thought.
“Go and confess,” Joonmyun whispers, like he does every time he walks past when Baekhyun’s in the shop. He slides open the freezer and pulls out the now-empty chocolate ice cream. “Come on, you have stars in your eyes.”
“I wasn’t staring,” Jongdae hisses.
Joonmyun blinks. “I didn’t say you were,” he drawls, before making a beeline for the store room freezer.
Jongdae’s eyebrow twitches. “I told you like a hundred times that she’s straight,” she fumes at her fleeing boss. She’s not even sure if Joonmyun knows anything about the trials and hardships of being homosexual. Hell, Joonmyun’s probably still single, married for eternity to the balls of ice cream he scoops every day.
***
Kyungsoo is absent for the first practice after Baekhyun’s competition announcement, having been stuck with her law tutorial changing its scheduled time due to unavailability of the tutor. Baekhyun had given her the go-ahead and waved her off, hardly worrying because Kyungsoo’s a fast learner and won’t have a problem catching up later.
“Okay, let’s take a break!” Baekhyun shouts. She blows her whistle shrilly and the team disperses to the benches by the wall for a quick rest. The sound of heavy rain pounding against the roof continues to echo in the whole gym, which had been divided and shared with the college basketball team for the afternoon when the wet weather forced the girls off their outdoor court. Yixing dating the basketball team captain sure came in handy sometimes.
Baekhyun takes a long drink from her water bottle as she watches the boys run drills on their side of the gym. Jongdae knows better; Baekhyun’s probably busy doing her fair share of ‘appreciation’. Kris is leading the drills, his Air Jordans squeaking loudly as he intercepts a poor pass and throws the ball into the net with ease. Yixing claps from the sidelines and he blows her a kiss.
“Look at Minho,” Baekhyun sighs. “And Chanyeol. Even Coach Yunho…”
Jongdae gasps, slightly scandalized. “Baekhyun!” Coach Yunho is married and his oldest daughter is a big fan of the caramel sundaes at Suho’s Scoops.
Baekhyun laughs and hits her friend on the arm. “I’m kidding!” she giggles. “I’m not really into the whole age gap thing anyway.”
***
Jongdae leaves early for work after practice, when the patter of raindrops stop while the girls are in the changing room. She lets Baekhyun know that she doesn’t have to visit the ice cream parlour today since it’s raining and jogs down to Suho’s Scoops before the downpour starts up again.
Business at the ice cream parlour is always slow on rainy days. Jongdae almost regrets having told Baekhyun she didn’t have to come today because it now means she has to spend long hours in the shop with her greasy boss.
“Let’s eat ice cream,” Joonmyun suggests, appearing with two small bowls and brandishing them at her. “Nothing much else to do, right? Grab me some soft serve. With sprinkles.”
Jongdae salutes her boss with the sprinkle shaker. “Soft serve with sprinkles coming up.” The two of them sit out the front of the store chatting, watching the rain outside. People huddle safely under the protection of their umbrellas, feet splashing through puddles as they walk past.
Jongdae’s phone buzzes in her pocket. She pulls it out to find a message on the screen from Baekhyun.
I’m coming for ice cream, it reads. Don’t get bored at work without me! A series of smiley emojis follow. Jongdae frowns for a minute before slipping her phone back into her pants, her heart beats a little faster in her chest. Baekhyun’s the type who would probably plough through a snowstorm to bring soup to sick people.
Joonmyun’s gone into the back to do some cleaning in the storeroom when Baekhyun finally shows up, cheeks red from the icy wind and the tips of her hair dripping with water. Jongdae’s served a grand total of two people since she was texted. She chivvies Baekhyun inside and makes her sit at the table closest to the warm air blasting out of the air conditioner.
“I thought I said you didn’t have to come today!” Jongdae scolds her. “We don’t even have anything to warm you up!” It’s an ice cream parlour, for heaven’s sake.
“It’s okay,” Baekhyun insists, her voice muffled in her scarf. She pulls it down so she can talk properly and starts digging around in her purse for coins. She smiles cheekily up at her friend. “Can I have the banana berry today? I wanna tell you something.”
Jongdae pauses on the other side of the ice cream freezer, waffle cone in one hand and ice cream scoop in the other. Baekhyun usually only tries new flavours when she’s doing new things.
“Banana berry, right?” she repeats, just to make sure.
“Yep. Make it a big one and we can share.”
Jongdae scoops a double cone for her, takes a tester spoon and brings the ice cream over. She samples the ice cream as Baekhyun bites into some of the berry ripple.
“Oh, this is yummy.” She nods in approval.
“Of course it is.” Jongdae steals some more ice cream from her. “So what’s the goss?” she asks, curiosity piqued.
“Okay, well… you know how we were with the basketball team in the gym today?” Baekhyun nibbles at her ice cream. She’s already leaning forward, her butt on the edge of her chair.
“Did you do something to them?” Jongdae teases her.
Baekhyun swats at her with a pink napkin. “No! After you left for work I went to go give Kris the key to lock up the gym, but they just finished so I hung around outside to wait until they got changed.” She leans even closer over the table, so close that Jongdae can see the pores on Baekhyun’s nose that she knows the cheerleader captain hates with a burning passion. “And you know Park Chanyeol, right? Music major? Tall, cute doofus who plays the drums in that really noisy band?”
“…Yes?” Jongdae knows who Park Chanyeol is, and definitely isn’t sure that she wants to know the rest of the story, but judging by the way Baekhyun can’t sit still it’s more than obvious what happened.
“He asked me if I wanted to go out with him,” Baekhyun stage-whispers, taking another bite of banana berry.
Well, crap.
“And what did you say- ”
“Of course I said yes!” she exclaims excitedly. She suddenly reaches out and prods Jongdae with a finger. “Oi, what’s with that look on your face?”
“Uh, my face?” Jongdae quickly stuffs her mouth with ice cream. “…Ice. I was cleaning the freezer and some ice got into the ice cream,” she lies. “I think I just ate some of it. Yuck.”
A small part of her is bubbling nastily with jealousy, while her head tells her she’s in no position to have such feelings about someone who’s not even in a relationship with her. Jongdae sure as hell was there first and has been there the longest. But dammit, Baekhyun doesn’t even swing her way, and this was exactly why crushes on straight friends were always terrible ideas.
“Aw, see, you’re making that face!” Baekhyun pokes her friend again. “Are you actually eating ice at all? Don’t worry, we’ll still be friends. Or are you like stuck on that Chinese Culture assignment or something?”
Baekhyun can be a little dense, but Jongdae’s never going to tell her the truth. Not in a billion years.
“Yeah, Luhan won’t help me with the research,” Jongdae mumbles. “She said she was already busy helping Minseok.” Minseok and Jongdae are both majoring in Chinese and language teaching, albeit they’re different year students than her. Luhan is here on an exchange spanning the course of her degree, studying composition. Jongdae pokes fun of how biased Luhan is towards Minseok on a regular basis, but all in all Luhan is probably the only one who understands close to anything about homosexuality.
Baekhyun waves it off. “Ask Zitao. He’s in your class, isn’t he?”
“He’s scary, Baekhyun.”
“You’re a wimp, Jongdae. But you’re lucky since you’re my favourite wimp.”
At least they’ve diverted away from the now-forever-awkward topic of Park Chanyeol. Baekhyun seems to have caught on that the workplace is hardly the ideal place to discuss relationships so she reins in her excitement, and decides she can always spam Jongdae with texts later on.
“Just start your assignment without Luhan, ‘kay? Once Minseok’s got the help she needs she’ll tell Lu to go away.”
The lock clicks as Joonmyun turns the key and locks up the ice cream parlour for the night.
“The rain doesn’t look like it’s going to let up any time soon,” he remarks, glancing up at the darkening sky. “Do you want a ride home, Jongdae?”
Well, if he was offering… “Yes, please.” Jongdae stuffs her umbrella back into her backpack and hops into the passenger seat of Joonmyun’s car. Her boss puts the key in the ignition and they start the crawl through the sluggish traffic from the wet weather.
“So what’s Baekhyun up to?” he asks. “I could hear the two of you from the store room.”
“Baekhyun’s dating,” Jongdae says gloomily, watching raindrops race each other down the window. “She got a boyfriend.”
“Well. This is a bit of a pickle, isn’t it?”
“…Not really.” Jongdae makes a face. “There was no pickle. It wouldn’t have worked out between me and Baekhyun anyway. She likes boys and I’m not one.”
“Oh, Jongdae.” Joonmyun stops at the red lights and looks over at her. “You poor thing. What are you going to do now?”
Jongdae shrugs. She leans her head on the window and closes her eyes. “I don’t know,” she says. “I need to stop liking Baekhyun. But I’m going to be support her. I want her to be happy.”
Joonmyun smiles and sticks out a hand to ruffle Jongdae’s brown hair affectionately. “That’s the kind of Jongdae I wanted to see.”
***
Jongdae doesn’t see Baekhyun on Wednesday or Thursday, replying to all her invitations with ‘I’m busy sorry!!’ or making excuses about having to do her assignment in order to fend her off. She tries to ignore the string of texts Baekhyun sends her because more than half of them are about Chanyeol.
omGGGGG jongdae he asked if he could kiss me today!
Hey look at this cute ring. I wonder if they have couple ones?
lol chanyeol left his jacket on my bed, haha. It really smells like him.
It’s like a piece of Jongdae dies every time her phone vibrates with a new message. This whole supporting thing is starting to become difficult when Baekhyun insists on shoving it in her face, whether she was doing it on purpose or not.
Jongdae manages to avoid Baekhyun until Friday’s cheerleader practice, in which Baekhyun suffocates her in a hug like it’s been years since they’ve last seen each other.
“How’s things going with Chanyeol?” Jongdae asks weakly. She feels like she’s obliged to ask, and Baekhyun nods emphatically.
“Really good,” she answers, smiling until her mouth becomes the trademark rectangle-like shape her friends like to make fun of. “He’s so sweet to me, Jongdae, I love him so much.”
Jongdae’s glad she’s still being hugged, otherwise Baekhyun would be able to see the mix of dismay and forced happiness on her face. Thankfully, the captain lets go and rounds up the team onto the court into a little circle.
“So I’ve done some work on routines we can use for the competition,” she announces, spreading out the bundle of papers she’s been holding in front of them. “These are just some ideas but I’m sure we can put them together. See there’s this one here, but the formation’s a little tough since we don’t have enough people, but- ”
“Hey, who’s that?” Minseok asks, pointing over Baekhyun’s shoulder.
“Huh?” Baekhyun turns around to see a tall figure approaching the court, waving his gangly arms in their direction. Her mouth drops open in surprise. “Chanyeol? Oh. Uh, hold on,” she stammers, peeling away from the team to run over to him. The other girls glance back and forth at each other, possible scenarios and theories coming to life in their heads.
“Who’s that?” Kyungsoo mouths. She nudges Jongdae in the side for an answer.
“Baek didn’t tell you?” Jongdae frowns, and Kyungsoo shakes her head. “She’s going out with Chanyeol.”
There is a quiet, collective chorus of ‘ohhh’s from Minseok and Luhan, and a quirked eyebrow from the vice-captain.
“Actually, I do remember seeing them talking after last practice,” Minseok recalls. “Aw, cute.”
“What are you whispering about?” Baekhyun demands behind them.
“I’m calling you guys Baekyeol,” Luhan declares, and Baekhyun’s whole face instantly turns red. “Woo hoo! Am I right or am I right?”
Baekhyun blushes even harder. Jongdae just wants to put her arms around her and whisk her away from these evil people who call themselves her team mates.
“It kind of happened,” Baekhyun mumbles. She twiddles her thumbs. “You all know Park Chanyeol, yeah? He said he just wants to chill and watch us practice.”
“Do you mean watch you practice?” Luhan waggles her eyebrows. The teasing is going to be merciless, but as cute as Jongdae thinks a blushy tomato Baekhyun is, she jabs her elbow into Luhan’s side to make her shut up and redirect the topic of the conversation to back to the cheerleading competition routine. Baekhyun passes her a look of relief.
As it turns out, Chanyeol doesn’t really do much other than sit on the bleachers and watch them from a distance. He pulls out his phone every now and then but he’s probably fixing his hair or playing games because how interesting could their cheer practice possibly be? Particularly as they were only in the beginning stages of preparation; they didn’t even have anything to practice.
They pack up at the end and head off to the changing rooms. Chanyeol carries Baekhyun’s books and bags for her, earning himself a peck on the cheek that Jongdae turns her head away from to pretend she didn’t see, and waits for his girlfriend outside the gym.
Fortunately for Jongdae Luhan corners Baekhyun in the corner of the changing room to drill her with questions about Chanyeol, so Jongdae manages to get changed super-fast and hightail it out of there before Baekhyun can go with her to the ice cream parlour. She takes one of the side doors of the gym so she can avoid Chanyeol as well, leaves crunching under her shoes as she walks along the path between the trees that grow at the back of the building.
“Don’t like him much, do you?”
Jongdae stops in her tracks and spins around to find Kyungsoo following her. She must’ve been in such a rush to leave that she didn’t notice the other girl at all.
But Kyungsoo’s sharp, and she takes several longer strides to catch up to Jongdae. “I doubt you were taking this path for the scenery,” she comments. “Are you going to work?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll come with you,” Kyungsoo offers, and Jongdae doesn’t really have the grounds to refuse so they start walking together to the ice cream parlour. “You don’t look like you’re having a nice day.”
Baekhyun had once described her vice-captain as ‘if you were an anime character, you’d totes be the cool type’. She wasn’t wrong. Kyungsoo’s the calmest, most level-headed of the team, with plenty of guts and power, never looking like she’s breaking a sweat. She flicks off all the boys with the back of her hand and has been voted multiple times as the one most likely to wear the pants in her relationship with Jongin.
“I’m fine,” Jongdae blatantly lies.
“So what do you think about Chanyeol?” Straight to the point is Kyungsoo’s specialty.
Jongdae thinks about it. “I don’t really know much about him,” she says lamely.
Kyungsoo nods. “So why so grumpy?”
There’s no logical reason to dislike Chanyeol, Jongdae finds herself realizing with a sinking feeling. The guy didn’t have a bad reputation, he was probably a nice person and the only reason she even knew his name was because one of the other girls who worked at Suho’s Scoops made her go with her to a concert where Chanyeol’s band was in the line-up.
In essence, Jongdae just dislikes him because he’s dating Baekhyun, and now that Kyungsoo had made her see it from that perspective she feels a little mad at herself for being so childish.
“You okay?” Kyungsoo asks, surveying her friend with a critical eye.
“Kyungsoo, what do you think about Chanyeol?” Jongdae asks.
The vice-captain seems caught off-guard by the question. She opens her mouth and closes it again, like she’s carefully choosing her response. “He’s okay. He’s just a name to me but he’ll be good for Baekhyun,” is all she says. “Which leads me to wonder if you have a bone to pick with him, since you looked like you wanted to light him on fire as soon as he showed up.”
“You really are observant,” Jongdae laughs nervously, jamming her sweaty hands into her pockets, “but I, uh, don’t- ”
Kyungsoo halts without warning, her black hair swinging with the abrupt movement. She catches Jongdae’s arm as the latter walks past.
“Jongdae,” Kyungsoo says slowly, and the back of Jongdae’s neck suddenly prickles uncomfortably, “do you like Baekhyun?”
Jongdae doesn’t reply. She stares at the concrete of the path, away from Kyungsoo’s laser-like gaze. It’s been her secret for a long time now, one that she’s only shared with Joonmyun at work because he caught her staring at Baekhyun once too many times, and one that Luhan figured out on her own because she ‘could tell from a mile away, ew, you’re so obvious.’
Jongdae tries to pull away but Kyungsoo’s hold on her wrist is iron. “I’m sorry if it makes you uncomfortable,” she mumbles apologetically.
“Really, Jongdae, you don’t give me enough credit,” Kyungsoo sighs. She releases Jongdae and loops their arms together, and forces the two of them to start walking again. “I had my suspicions for a while but at least now it makes better sense. Don’t feel like you can’t talk about anything with me, okay?”
Well, that makes Baekhyun, Luhan and now Kyungsoo in on Jongdae’s starting-to-not-be-so-secret secret about her sexuality.
But the sinking feeling Jongdae had felt is gone, like part of some invisible weight’s just vanished off her shoulders. Bless her friends; two years is all Jongdae’s spent at college, but her cheerleading squad have made her feel anything but lonely. It’s going to be hard once Minseok graduates at the end of this year and Luhan returns to Beijing.
So she takes a deep breath, and tells Kyungsoo some things.
***
“How was practice?” Joonmyun inquires. He hands Jongdae an apron with the Suho’s Scoops logo emblazoned on it and she puts it on, tying her hair up into a ponytail and rolling up her sleeves.
“It was okay,” she mutters. “Until Chanyeol came.”
“Uh-oh.” Joonmyun picks up the bottle of chocolate sauce to see if it needs a refill. “Why? What did he do?”
Jongdae shuffles her feet along the ground as she goes to the freezer to scrape out the last of the cookies and cream. It’s there again, that simmering envy that won’t go away.
“Nothing,” she admits. “Just sat there and watched us practice.”
“Okay? What’s wrong with that?”
Nothing, Jongdae wants to scream at him. I’m jealous. That’s what’s wrong.
But Joonmyun’s not dumb. He probably already knows, and Jongdae’s lack of answer confirms it. Before he can ask her anything else, the buzzer goes off and two customers enter the ice cream parlour. Jongdae glances up from cleaning the chocolate sauce bottle pump and sees it’s Baekhyun, with Chanyeol. They have the cute-couple appearance, with their noticeable height difference and the way Baekhyun hangs onto his arm and every word.
“Hi, Jongdae!” she trills, waving an arm. Chanyeol waves too.
Jongdae smiles back, but it’s a pretty sad excuse for one. It’s the generic kind that she gives customers, like hello I am very happy to serve you today, please tell me what you would like!!! She hopes her expression is not too contorted.
Baekhyun leaves Chanyeol behind to bounce up to the glass of the display where Jongdae is putting in the new cookies and cream. “You left so fast after practice I didn’t even see you go!” she accuses her friend.
“Sorry,” Jongdae says sheepishly. She wishes she still had Kyungsoo’s company so this wouldn’t be so awkward, but they had split ways several blocks before the ice cream parlour so she could go home. “Sehun wasn’t feeling well and left early so I quickly came to cover the end of her shift.” She feels eyes on the back of her head and realizes Joonmyun is listening to her spin her web of lies. Sehun doesn’t leave early. Sehun never leaves early, especially if it means less time to unlawfully stare at her hot boss.
“Oh, that’s okay then. I was coming to get ice cream anyway since you were working.”
And just like that Jongdae knows she’s forgiven. You can’t do this forever, a voice inside her says. She ignores it and grabs a waffle cone from the stack.
“Of course you were,” she jokes. “You can’t leave me here all by myself to talk to the ice cream.”
Baekhyun grins cheekily back and for a split second everything’s all right again, no boys and no dating and no nothing, just best friends. “Ice cream whisperer.” She pokes her tongue out at her friend. She points at a green ice cream in the freezer. “Get me a single scoop of mint chocolate chip.”
Jongdae squints at her. “Baek, do you even like mint chocolate chip?”
The answer’s no because she knows for a fact Baekhyun strongly believes that the only things that should be mint-flavoured are actual mints and toothpaste.
“I’m trying new flavours!” Baekhyun pouts back, sticking her bottom lip out at Jongdae. “Right, Chanyeol?” Of course. New things.
“Sure,” Chanyeol rumbles with a toothy smile, and Jongdae reckons he could be a rapper with that voice if drumming didn’t work out for him. “Mint chocolate chip’s my favourite too,” he adds.
Baekhyun’s mouth is an ‘o’ of surprise. “Let’s both get one then!”
Jongdae’s gut curls with envy as she watches Chanyeol pull out his wallet to pay for the two ice creams. She’s stuck serving the line of other customers in the shop so she has to turn down Baekhyun’s invitation to sit with them, gritting her teeth as they even take the special seat in the corner that she and Baekhyun always sit in.
“Um, miss, I asked for the french vanilla,” the middle-aged lady Jongdae’s serving tells her, and Jongdae realizes she’s so distracted that she’s scooped a plain vanilla one by mistake.
“Ahh, I’m so sorry!” she yelps, frantically taking a new cone, “I’ll get you another one, please wait!” She scoops from the right vanilla this time and makes sure to make the balls of ice cream a little bigger for the customer. “Here you are, sorry about that.”
It doesn’t stop there. Jongdae inadvertently eavesdrops on Baekhyun’s next conversation about the cheerleading competition and accidentally crushes the cone she’s holding in her hand. She puts nuts on a sundae for someone who hadn’t wanted nuts and Joonmyun ends up taking her aside to ask if she’s okay.
“Are you sure? You can go home if you want to,” he offers, surreptitiously throwing a glance at the couple tucked away in the corner. “I’ll manage, or I can see if Sehun wants to come back in- ”
“I’m fine,” Jongdae mutters under her breath. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Baekhyun get out of her chair to leave. That’s one less distraction, she supposes. “I’m just tired.”
Joonmyun doesn’t seem sure but he lets it slide, because Jongdae looks like she’s really not in the mood to talk to about it.
“I’m going now!” Baekhyun calls over the counter. “I’ll see you later, ‘kay?”
“Bye,” Jongdae pretends to wave her goodbye and busies herself with cleaning the freezer display to avoid her boss’s concerned expression.
Stepping out into the crisp evening after work is like a breath of fresh air after spending an afternoon cooped up in the ice cream parlour. Jongdae stops by at the grocery store to get some ramyun for dinner and heads home, scuffing her shoes and kicking violently at stones in her path. She mumbles a greeting to the other occupant of her dorm and goes straight into her room mope on her bed.
She wakes up at noon with a growling stomach and a bunch of texts on her phone from Yixing. She lifts her head up groggily to feel her cheek unstick itself from her laptop and remembers that she’d fallen asleep last night watching a drama, having cried buckets at the last remaining episodes of It’s Okay, That’s Love. She’s glad it’s Saturday and she doesn’t have class.
She scrolls through Yixing’s invite to the movies tomorrow night.
Luhan and Baekhyun are coming but Kris refuses to watch scary movies. He’s such a big baby :/ Kyungsoo’s bringing Jongin too. You wanna come with us???
Jongdae rubs at her eyes sleepily. Was Chanyeol coming? She hopes not.
What about Baek and Chanyeol? she texts back.
The lightning-fast reply indicates the ever-hopeful Yixing has probably been waiting with her phone in her hands for an answer. Yep!
Jongdae groans and drops her phone back onto her bed and her head into her pillow. She makes up an excuse about her assignment being due very soon and almost feels bad for the rest of the day for rejecting Yixing.
***
“Five, six, seven, eight!”
The team executes their cheer well, Baekhyun clapping and fist-pumping triumphantly in approval. They’re trying out something a little more complicated today and half the team crumple to the ground, moaning about sore muscles when Baekhyun lets them have a break.
Chanyeol’s there again too, sitting on the bleachers by himself. He’s watching incredibly intensely for what’s just a practice, but Jongdae figures he’s probably just staring at Baekhyun. Not that she herself doesn’t stare sometimes, but hey, Baekhyun’s really pretty and could be anybody and everybody’s dream girl.
“Okay, guys, I want to combine what we did before with this part here.” Baekhyun’s pointing out parts of her notes on her routines to her team. “Although I think we should swap Kyungsoo to the other side. We still need you two as bases since we only have Jongdae as flyer, and finish here for that bit, hey, do you think we could go for a toss?”
Luhan’s sips from her water bottle and raises her hand. “What about me?”
“Back spotter for now.”
Luhan deflates a little but Baekhyun doesn’t notice, her attention lost to cheerleading. Minseok and Kyungsoo have permanent positions as bases, whose job it is to toss Jongdae for their stunts.
“Let’s try it out!” Baekhyun whoops, and drags them all back onto the court. “Alright, into position… and one, two, down, up!”
Jongdae can hear the grunt of Minseok and Yixing supporting her as they hoist her up into the hair, with one foot in the hands of the two bases in formation beside her, and she prepares to flip off to lead into the opening of the next part.
“Okay, go!”
Jongdae pushes off, ready to tuck herself in when she suddenly sees Chanyeol on the bleachers take out his phone and hold it up in their direction. Was he taking a picture of them? Taking a selca? Creepy.
Her concentration slips for a second and she lands awkwardly on both feet, wobbling to the side and stumbling over. Her practice kicks in and she manages to fall and roll properly to reduce the impact. Her leg stings from being grazed on the concrete.
Baekhyun’s at her side in a flash, patting Jongdae on the cheek to check her state of consciousness and doing a once-over of her limbs for injuries. “Jongdae! Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
Jongdae sees Baekhyun’s face and her purple hair in her view and gingerly sits up. “Yeah… sorry,” she mumbles. “Just gotta practice that bit some more, I think.” She wiggles her toes and her fingers, and her left wrist seizes up with a bolt of pain. “Ow…”
“Whoa, what happened?” Minseok appears next to them, crouching on her knees. Yixing’s already run to her bag to get some sticky plasters and whatever other first aid she likes to carry around because she’s an angel.
“Oh my god, I’m gonna take you to the hospital right now.” Baekhyun fusses around with Jongdae, helping her up and dashing over to collect their belongings from the bench. Jongdae blushes but she can hear Baekhyun telling Chanyeol that he can go home and doesn’t have to wait for her. It’s a bad but good kind of feeling that Baekhyun’s attention is not on her boyfriend for once, but on Jongdae.
“You weren’t concentrating, were you,” Kyungsoo tsks, but says it like she knows the truth.
Jongdae grumbles inwardly. How she’s managed to even keep her sexuality and stupid crush on Baekhyun hidden from Kyungsoo for so long must have been a miracle.
It’s embarrassing enough that Jongdae has to turn up at the emergency department red as beetroot and cradling her sore wrist, but it gets even worse when the doctor orders the x-ray just in case and the results come back totally negative. It was just a hard bump, nothing major. She gets discharged with painkillers and they leave the hospital, Baekhyun sighing with relief.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” she keeps asking. The concern on her face makes Jongdae warm and gooey inside.
“Stop worrying. I’m okay, see?” she reassures her. Only then does she realize she’s going to be late for work and hurriedly calls her boss to let him know.
“You hurt yourself?” he screeches on the other end of the line. Baekhyun giggles. “You’re not coming in to work. Stay away, Kim Jongdae, I’m calling Sehun in.”
“But I didn’t even- ”
The phone disconnects and Jongdae is left shaking her head on sidewalk.
“Listen to Grandpa Ice Cream for once,” Baekhyun chortles. “Go home and rest. I’ll text you later.”
***
For the most part Baekhyun does check up on her at regular intervals and asks if she needs help moving things or cooking or if Jongdae would possibly like food brought over (which she declines because her pantry’s still full of ramyun from the other day). And as usual, the topic of the conversation trails back to Chanyeol.
He says we’re going to have a pretty good shot at the intercollege competition because our team has the best captain. So cheesy omg.
Jongdae’s puzzled. Chanyeol looks like the kind of guy who would know the least about cheerleading, but she supposes he’s just going along to keep Baekhyun happy. She vaguely remembers that time Yixing told Kris she was working really hard on her footwork for a jump and he was like ‘yeah, ok’ and Yixing was so devastated that Kris forced himself to make her tell him all about it and show him and then congratulate her on her efforts.
The rest of Jongdae’s week sails by on a happy tune. Her assignment is actually due soon so she knuckles down in the library after classes to get it done. Baekhyun pesters her with texts to make sure she’s 1000% okay and even makes Minseok sneak into Jongdae’s Intermediate Chinese lectures to check up on her.
Jongdae blocks Chanyeol’s existence from her mind until Friday’s cheerleading practice, where he turns up to watch them from the bleachers again. But Baekhyun’s happiness is infectious, being ecstatic that Jongdae’s back in good shape and engulfs her in a flurry of bouncy magenta curls and arms thrown around her neck. She pushes the team harder today, like she’s trying to suck out the last of their life before the weekend hits them. Jongdae’s feet feel like they’ve been on hot coals and Luhan is wailing that her legs have given up on life and fallen off.
Baekhyun takes a long drink from her bottle and wipes her sweaty forehead with her hand towel. “Good job, everyone! Let’s finish for today!” she calls, going around and patting them on the back like she does after most practices. She waves cutely at Chanyeol afterwards. “Did I do well?” she asks hopefully.
Chanyeol fondly messes up her hair with his hands, which Jongdae sees but is too tired to care about. “Didn’t expect anything less from my girlfriend,” he says, and gives her two thumbs up.
“They’re so cute. Look at them,” Yixing gushes to Luhan.
“You and Kris make me want to spew too,” she replies, and Yixing pouts.
Jongdae blatantly ignores them and heads for the changing room, Kyungsoo’s eyes following her retreating back as she shakes her head in pity. Jongdae quickly slips out of her practice uniform and stuffs her gear into her duffel bag, spraying some deodorant on before stuffing that in too, and tries to leave the gym before Baekhyun notices.
“Gotta go,” she says to Minseok as she goes past and pushes open the door.
“Bye Jongdae!” somebody calls after her, but it’s not Minseok.
Dammit. Baekhyun’s waving at her too, not even half out of her skirt, and Jongdae has no choice but to acknowledge her.
“I’ll see you for ice cream!” Baekhyun yells just as Jongdae leaves the building. She ought to give Baekhyun a little more credit, she thinks. Despite now constantly being attached to the arm of her boyfriend, she still puts time aside for small things with friends - but it’s a Baekhyun thing, and Jongdae is reminded exactly of why she fell for her captain in first place.
Joonmyun’s relieved to see she’s better today, leaving her out in the front of the shop to hum TVXQ songs and scoop ice creams while he drives out to the supplier to get some more stock.
“Here we are, one double scoop jelly tip and a single rocky road with chocolate dip.” Jongdae places them in the ice cream cone-holder and drops the scoop back into the bucket of water.
“Can I get you anything else?”
“Can I get a few more napkins?”
She gets the old man what he wants and takes his money. She shuts the till and looks up, a smile ready on her face for the next customer, when she pauses in mid-greeting. “Oh, hi Luhan.”
“Yo,” the blonde says, peering into the ice cream freezer. “Strawberry sundae; extra whipped cream, chocolate sprinkles and cherries.”
Jongdae slides open the freezer and scoops out two balls of strawberry into a sundae cup. “Where’s everyone else?” she asks. Did she invite the rest of the team?
Luhan shakes her head. “Nope, just me,” she says. “I heard you wanted some help on your Chinese culture assignment.”
Oops. Help didn’t even come close; Jongdae was on task to complete the whole thing this weekend. As much as she liked writing about the intricacies of tea ceremonies and dim sum it was more or less done and Luhan’s help hadn’t even been required anywhere along the way. She vaguely remembers having lied to Baekhyun about needing help for it and now karma was coming back to bite her in the ass.
“U-uh,” she stammers, and bends over to forage around in the little fridge to buy her some time. She straightens with a can of whipped cream in her hand and douses Luhan’s strawberry ice cream in it. “Um, yeah, but that was like last week and I’m pretty much finished.”
“Oh! Er, sorry if you really needed a hand, cos Minseok was working on her speech for her paper and I got tied up with helping her with that.” Luhan spins a lock of hair around her finger sheepishly as she watches chocolate sprinkles cover her sundae.
Jongdae sticks lots of cherries into the cream because she knows Luhan loves them, and hands the dessert over the counter. “It’s okay. Don’t worry!”
“I won’t then. Hey, is Baekhyun here?” Luhan scans the ice cream parlour for the purple-haired girl. “I thought she always comes in when you work.”
Jongdae checks her watch, and shrugs. “I dunno,” she says. “She said she was coming in. She’s probably on her way.”
“’Kay. Come chat with me when you’re free!” Luhan slides over a couple of bills and goes to find a place to sit down and eat, plucking out a cherry by the stem and popping it between her lips as she weaves her way between the tables and chairs.
Jongdae serves the two remaining girls waiting in line and sends them off with a frozen yoghurt each. She scoops herself some chocolate ice cream into a paper cup and joins her team mate at her table.
She’s not as close to Luhan as she is with Baekhyun, but the blonde is a precious confidante. Jongdae had met her the day she signed up for the cheerleader squad. It wasn’t like Jongdae had even stated her sexuality; after chatting and introducing themselves Luhan had draped an arm around her shoulders, winked knowingly and quietly said, “You and I bat for the same team, don’t we?” And that had sealed their friendship like heat melting plastic together.
Jongdae always finds herself comparing Luhan and Baekhyun together.
Where Baekhyun brims with cute and dollish charm, Luhan is a bucketful of confidence so strong it’s nearly intimidating. Her Achilles heel is none other than Minseok, the down to earth girl-next-door member of their cheerleading team.
Luhan pines for her but Jongdae doesn’t want to get any further into their complicated dynamics, lest she become a go-between for the two of them. As far as she’s aware, Minseok hasn’t even come out yet - or if she even likes girls. It’s a mess and Jongdae has enough messes of her own to deal with.
“So…” Luhan licks strawberry ice cream off her spoon. “Is Park Chanyeol going to make you give up on Baek any time soon?”
Jongdae shoots her a look. “Are you going to give up making googly eyes at Minseok any time soon?”
Luhan’s tongue pauses on the spoon’s silver surface. “Touché.”
“He’s done nothing and I hate him. I’m starting to turn into a dickhead.” Jongdae stares sullenly at her ice cream, the chocolate starting to turn into little pools of brown.
Luhan is sympathetic. “Don’t beat yourself up over it,” she says, reaching over to pat Jongdae’s hand. “I’d feel exactly the same if I were you. Everyone gets kinda jealous sometimes, right? But we walk away from it stronger.”
Jongdae’s lips turn downwards in a sour expression. “I don’t know what to do and I don’t really want to keep talking about it,” she grumbles, stabbing her ice cream viciously with the wooden tester spoon.
“Let’s talk about something else then,” Luhan suggests, and her team mate sighs silently in relief. Jongdae spoons a blob of chocolate into her mouth and asks how things are going with Minseok, at which Luhan makes a long-suffering noise.
“I dunno!” she whines. “How do I even approach her without being really weird? Sometimes she’s really happy to be next to me and stuff and I don’t want to scare her away and argh, I’m almost as bad as you…”
1 | 2 | 3