Jaemin Scenario - Tumblr Posts

the 1 [NJM] (M)

Description: Six years ago, you decided to move away to a different country to go to school. The catch? You had to leave Jaemin behind, and you refused to drag him along. Now you're back and, for some reason, he doesn't quite seem to hate you in the way you thought he would.

(this is inspired by the Taylor Swift song by the same name, listen to it here)

Genre: Fluff/Smut/Angst TRIPLE THREAT (?? am i okay)

Content Warnings: Explicit sex, break ups, the angst isn't too bad I don't think. Just break up stuff l o l (also don't judge any typos or repetitions I didn't edit this because I wrote this whole thing today someone save me from myself) (also also I am totally working on all requests still, I just get random inspo sometimes and when it hits, it hits)

Word Count: 10,012 (yoo for why did I make this so long help)

Pairing: Na Jaemin x Reader (this is a non-canon AU, Jaemin is a lil businessman and the rest of Dream make appearances here. PS, Best Friend!Donghyuck y'all)

Juliet's Masterlist

Honestly, you never thought you’d make your way back to Seoul. Not when you didn’t have much to come back to. Leaving for college was the scariest decision you’d ever made, but you’re so much better off for it. The experience of living in another country—even if it just for school—is the best thing you’ve ever done.

But Seoul is home. Home is where the heart is, and yours has always resided here, even long after you left. You wonder about the friends you left behind, knowing you haven’t been the best at keeping up with them.

You especially think of Jaemin. The two of you were both twenty-two when you left and, at the time, you would’ve said you were in love with him. You’d been dating for a year before you made your decision.

You don’t think of him in a way that you still have feelings for him, but rather, you want the best for him. If anything, you want to know he’s been as successful as you after you walked away from him.

“America?” Jaemin raises his eyebrows, recoiling at the thought. “I mean, that’s a great opportunity, but wouldn’t it be hard?”

“Of course, it’ll be hard. I think I need to do this before it’s too late for me.” You look down at your hands to avoid eye contact with him. The last thing you want to do is break his heart. Hell, you’ll be breaking your own, too. But being in love with Jaemin doesn’t mean you have to stop everything going on in your life to make sure you keep him.

“How long?” he asks.

“The standard degree path is four years over there, but it could take longer.”

He pauses, gulping. “Wow. You’ll be gone for four years?”

“Yeah.” You pick at your nails and clear your throat. “This is…This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, Jaem. I can’t miss it.”

“I know. I wouldn’t want you to. Um, I guess I’m just nervous as to what that means for us.”

“I love you.” You reach for his hand, intertwining your fingers. “I love you so much, but I can’t ask you to wait for me for four years. Or longer.”

“It’s not like we won’t talk. We have calls, FaceTime, we have everything. However long you need, we’ll work it out.” He tilts his head. At your hesitation, worry spreads across his face.

“I…I don’t know if I’ll come back at all, is what I mean.” You finally meet his gaze and watch the shock course through him.

“Okay, then I’ll move there, too,” he replies, as if it were simple. His forehead wrinkles as he frowns. “If that’s what you want, I can do that. We’ve only been together a year, (Y/N), that’s not long enough for me. I need forever. I promised you forever and I meant it.”

“I won’t ask you to do that.” You shake your head, feeling your eyes well with tears. “Your family’s here. Your friends. We both know you wouldn’t want to move away from your mom forever.”

Jaemin lets out a short breath, tugging his hand away from yours and running it through his hair. “So that’s it? There’s no way I can convince you?”

“You deserve someone who wants the same things you do. The same life. If I can’t give that to you, someone else will. I love you, but sometimes, love isn’t always enough if we’re being pulled in different directions.”

“I won’t just forget about you. You’re just going to disappear?” He wipes away a tear, rolling his eyes.

“You don’t have to forget about me. I’m not forgetting about you. I just need to do something for myself, and I can’t force you along with me.”

The barista jolts you from your trance, asking you if there’s something she can help you with. You clear your throat, hoping you’ll be able to talk past the lump in your throat. After ordering your favorite coffee, you stand off to the side to wait for it.

The door dings behind you, but you think nothing of it. You continue about your business, checking your phone for the time and waiting for your drink. A message comes through from your friend Donghyuck asking if you’d gotten everything settled already.

You and Jaemin had the same friend group. That’s how you met, actually. Donghyuck brought you over to one of their group hang outs, and you and Jaemin clung to each other like glue. It was inevitable that you two would end up dating, and when you did, literally not one of them were surprised.

You send him a quick message back saying everything’s good, and then the barista calls your name. Smiling at her, you walk up to grab the steaming hot cup. Nearly groaning to yourself about how good it smells, you turn around to walk toward the door.

That’s when you see him.

Jaemin.

You haven’t seen him in years. Sure, you still had each other on social media, but you never went out of your way to look at him. Five years has done him well and, at first, you’re unsure if you should say anything. He’s staring right at you, but it doesn’t feel like an invitation. It feels weird.

He’s clearly not the same Jaemin he was, but he’s Jaemin.

And right when you think he’s going to storm off in the other direction and want nothing to do with you, he smiles widely and approaches you. His smile is as gorgeous as it was before, maybe even more so. Normally, this would do little to bother you. You two ended on somewhat good terms, so there’s no reason for either of you to be holding a grudge all this time later.

He wears black pants with a pale pink button-down tucked into them. There isn’t another word to describe him other than divine. He looks good. 

With his hands buried in his pockets, he makes his way over. “I thought that was you.”

“Yeah, it’s me.” You laugh shortly, surprised that you don’t feel too awkward now that he’s in front of you. “Wow, how long has it been?”

As if you don’t know.

“Five years?” he says it like a question. “It hasn’t been that long since we’ve talked though. I guess things are just hard with time zones, aren’t they?”

You give an exaggerated nod. “Totally get that. Well, how have you been?”

“Busy.” He snorts, widening his eyes. “Busy like you wouldn’t believe. Did you end up getting your degree over there? Have you been to see Donghyuck yet?”

“I got the very expensive piece of paper, yes. And I haven’t seen him yet, no. I got back two days ago and have been trying to get things settled before I take a break.” You sip your coffee, almost sighing at the taste of vanilla on your tongue.

“I’m proud of you.” He purses his lips. “Not sure if that means much, but I am. I’m glad it worked out the way you wanted.”

“Thank you. It means a lot, especially from you. What did you decide to do here?” you ask him, tilting your head a bit.

“I’m surprised you didn’t hear,” Jaemin says. “Renjun, Chenle, Jeno, and I opened a business a couple years back. We’ve been doing pretty well, but it doesn’t really leave us with much time for anything else.”

“Holy shit, Jaem, that’s awesome.” You can’t help but grin at him. “I always knew you guys were destined for great things.”

You think back to when you’d hang out with all of them—Jaemin, Mark, Renjun, Jeno, Donghyuck, Chenle, and Jisung. Every Saturday night, you’d all get together for drinks at someone’s house, a constant rotation of happiness, friendship, and pure adoration. You love all of them, albeit in different ways, you feel a strong connection to them all. Being without them for so long has certainly made you nostalgic, but you’re sure you’ll at least see some of them now that you’re back.

You’re not sure if Jaemin will ever be comfortable hanging out with you. Neither of you were particularly bitter in your breakup, but it wasn’t mutual. You didn’t even want it, and he certainly didn’t either. But Jaemin has always been understanding—almost to a fault. He would never ask you to do something if it was against what you wanted to do.

“You know.” He pauses, running his tongue over his teeth. “Are you busy? I’m on my lunch, so if you want to catch up a little, I have the time.”

You hesitate, unsure if it’s a good idea. Before you and Jaemin dated, he was an excellent friend, too. Your only worry at this point is if things will be awkward between the two of you, but it doesn’t seem to be that way yet.

“Yeah, actually.” You take another sip of your coffee, cradling your jacket over your arm to your chest.

He gives you another dazzling smile and gestures over to a small table by the window. “After you.”

You sit down, shrugging your purse from your shoulder and hanging it from the back of the chair. He follows your lead, black hair falling like a curtain over his forehead as he leans forward to bring the seat closer. An odd urge to brush it away overtakes you, but you grab your coffee instead.

Your past with Jaemin is long gone. He’s definitely moved on to bigger, better things, and so have you. Your time in America wasn’t wasted, and you knew from Donghyuck the moment Jaemin moved on from you. It didn’t hurt the way you thought it would. You wanted him happy and cared for, and if you couldn’t do it, you hoped and prayed someone else would.

That was three years ago, but Donghyuck never talked about Jaemin to you again, unless it was something small that happened in a group setting. At that point, you’d also moved on, so as long as he was alive and thriving, you didn’t need to hear about it. Everything was okay.

You’ll always hold an unmatched adoration for the man sitting in front of you. He was your first real love, but everyone knows not everything in your early twenties lasts. It’s true what they say—that you never truly forget your first love. That, and how once you love someone, you’ll always hold some sort of affection for them in your heart.

You tell Jaemin of all the things you got to do in America, and he listens intently. In turn, he tells you about his business and how they grew it from the ground up. It’s one of the largest companies in South Korea, and your heart warms with pride.

Everything you did makes sense. You did it for a good reason. If he had dropped everything and come with you to America, he wouldn’t be doing what he loves. Eventually, you were sure he would’ve grown to resent you if he had gone.

Before you know it, the two of you have been talking for well over an hour. Your coffee is gone, the small bit left at the bottom chilled. On a whim, he checks his watch and recoils in shock.

“Oh shit,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry, I didn’t even realize how long we’d been here.”

“It’s no big deal,” you reply, waving him off. “I’ll get going though.”

“Actually…So the guys and I still do Saturday nights. If you want to come this Saturday, it’s at my place. If you want, I can text you the address.” He taps his fingers on the table.

“Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. It’ll be nice to see everyone. I did get a new number though, so let me give it to you.” You reach into your purse for your phone so you can find it. Since you had to switch plans when you moved back, you don’t really know it yet either.

You read it off to him, and he purses his lips while he sends his address to you in a text message. Afterwards, he stands up and brushes off his pants.

“It’ll be just like old times. Jisung is finally old enough to drink, too.” Jaemin chuckles to himself before running his fingers through his hair to push it back. “I’ll see you Saturday? We start at six.”

“Absolutely. I’ll be there.” You watch as he retreats away from you, head held high as he walks out of the coffee shop. He was confident back when you dated, but he’s even more so, and for good reason. No matter what, it’s like he gets increasingly attractive as he ages.

As soon as he’s out of sight, you tap your cheeks to get the slight blush off of them. You didn’t expect to run into him like that, not so soon, but you’re glad you did. Everything happens for a reason, and you’re glad he’s okay with everyone hanging out. You’d hate to lose out on your friends because they have to pick sides.

The encounter stays heavy on your mind even until the next day when you’re supposed to meet Donghyuck for lunch. Your apartment is on the smaller side, since most of your savings was spent to get over here.

The living room is a little under furnished, but it’s nothing you won’t accumulate as time goes on. You have a soft loveseat, a TV mounted to the wall, and a small hallway off to the side that contains your kitchen and all the appliances. Your bedroom is on the left side, big enough only for your bed and a dresser.

You stand in front of the bathroom mirror, trying your best to look at least presentable. You’ve been exhausted lately. Moving countries, across the world, takes a toll on you. At least today is Thursday. You have a job interview tomorrow, and then you’ll get to see your friends on Saturday. Your heart aches for them. They were the best friends you ever had, a complete, close knit group of people who just function so well together. There wasn’t anything else in the world like it.

You go to the small sandwich shop, finding Donghyuck already sitting there waiting for you. His face lights up like a Christmas tree at the sight of you, and his chair scrapes across the floor as he hurries to get up and hug you. He squeezes you so tightly, you almost can’t breathe. You laugh anyway, returning the gesture the best you can.

“My God, I feel like I haven’t seen you in years!” he says, smiling widely. “Shit, you’re not allowed to move out of the country again.”

You roll your eyes, nudging him. “You came to visit six months ago.”

“Six months is still half a year, (Y/N). Never again.”

“Luckily for you, I do plan on staying.” You wait for him to release you before the two of you head over to the line to order.

“Every time I see you, it’s like you’ve grown up more.” Donghyuck fakes a pout, shaking his head. “Look at you, being an adult in the world.”

“Shut your mouth,” you say. “You’re only a year older than me.”

“A year is plenty of time for extra wisdom.” He crosses his arms over his chest, raising his eyebrows like his point is valid.

He orders for both of you, insisting on paying even though you’re about ready to wrestle his wallet out of his hands. It doesn’t matter if you had a billion dollars, he would still insist. That’s always what he’s been for you, your best friend. He takes care of you even when you don’t need it.

“So, when’s your interview?” he asks, accepting the cups from the person at the counter. Handing it to you, he leads you over to the fountain, filling his with Coke Zero.

“I’m glad to see some things never change.” You grin, picking your favorite drink as well. “It’s tomorrow. I’m hoping it works out, because job searching is so tiring.”

“Tell me about it. I’m sure it’ll go great. You’re multilingual and stuff. Employers love that shit.”

Before you respond, the order is ready. You two walk back to your table, conversing back and forth about random things. The conversation takes a turn, and you’re surprised when he actually brings it up.

“Jaemin said he invited you for Saturday.” Donghyuck sips his drink. “Are you going?”

You frown. “Well, yeah. I wouldn’t miss something like that. It’s been too long since I’ve seen everyone.”

“I know that. It’s not weird with you and him, though?”

“Not at all.” You chew the inside of your cheek as you contemplate. “I was worried it would be, but we caught up a little. He seems to be doing really well. If it’s not awkward for him, it won’t be for me. I’d love to be reinstated in the friend group.”

“Reinstated?” He scrunches his nose. “That implies that you were ever un-instated.”

“Is…is that a word?” You chuckle.

“I don’t know. Sounds right to me.” He shrugs, taking a large bite of his sandwich. “I did tell them you were coming back, but also that I didn’t know if you’d be comfortable with that. They all miss you. I swear, Jisung has been talking my ear off asking when we’ll all get together. He’ll be so happy you’re coming.”

Jisung has always been the baby of the group. Even as a full grown adult, you all treat him like a child. He doesn’t complain about it, and he feeds into it probably a bit more than he should. You learn Mark and Donghyuck live together, Jaemin, Chenle, and Jeno live in their own places, and Jisung and Renjun live together. You’re a bit shocked by the last pairing, but you don’t say anything about it.

“Just promise me that if it does get weird, you’ll tell me?”

“I’ll tell you. Promise.” You nod. “I don’t think it will. It was years ago, Hyuck. He moved on, I moved on, and we’re completely different people now. Neither of us are mad.”

“Good. It’ll be nice to have the family back together again.”

After lunch, Donghyuck drives you home. You thank him for the ride, and you head up to your apartment. Regardless of what you say out loud, your brain truly is whirling like crazy after your time with Jaemin.

You didn’t expect seeing him to send you for a loop like this, but you can’t help but think back to how happy you were with him. You two were…something. Maybe not perfect, but it was fun. Magnetic. Passionate. Everything you’ve tried to replicate, even though it’s impossible. No other man could ever be Jaemin.

Your mind drifts off, and you lose yourself in memories.

Saturday nights were a novelty. You sit on Chenle’s couch with Jaemin practically hung over you, the rest of the guys talking simultaneously and incredibly loudly. You didn’t mind it. In fact, you loved it. It reminded you how many people you had by your side, and how many of them were truly like you.

Jaemin kisses your temple, pausing there for a moment. It’s late, and you know he’s getting tired. Even though these are your best friends, you understand his need to wind down after a long night. You bring your wine glass up to your lips, finishing it off.

“Ready?” he asks softly.

You glance over at him and nod, smiling. “Yeah, let me go put this away.”

When you stand up, hardly anyone notices. Chenle and Jisung are basically yelling at each other about something you can’t discern. You laugh when Chenle argues with dramatic hand motions. That’s how you know it’s serious.

You’re pretty sure Renjun has Jeno in a headlock, but you go into the kitchen before you get a good look. It’s a bit quieter in here, and you take a deep breath. You place the glass gently into the sink, closing your eyes and craning your neck back in an attempt to relax. Saturday nights drain you in the best ways, and exhaustion is starting to creep in.

Before you know it, a pair of arms snake around your waist, tugging you back gently. You find yourself against Jaemin’s chest, and you instinctively lean your head on his shoulder.

“And I thought I was tired,” he mumbles, kissing your hairline. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. Can I stay with you tonight?” You turn to face him, lost in the way the lights glitter in his deep brown eyes. He truly is the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen, and you don’t have to restrain yourself from reaching up to cup his cheek. His skin is so smooth beneath your touch, you want to touch it forever.

“You don’t even have to ask.” He nods. “You’re always allowed to stay with me.”

Jaemin tells the boys you’re leaving. Chenle and Jisung halt their argument to give you a hug, and even Renjun allows Jeno some breathing time so he can say goodbye, too. Jaemin’s place isn’t far from Chenle’s, so you sit in silence for the ride, sleep threatening to take over on the way.

His fingers intertwine with yours over the center console, and his thumb rubs gently on your skin. You hum in content.

“Don’t fall asleep yet,” he whispers, careful not to startle you. “We’re almost there, my love.”

You try your best to listen to him. When you finally pull into his building’s parking lot, you’re barely able to keep your eyes open.

This week had been extra long, and you weren’t sure if you’d be able to go to Chenle’s tonight in the first place. You’re glad you did, but you’d much rather be curled up with Jaemin. He unbuckles his seatbelt and gets out, striding over to your side of the car.

Opening your door, he reaches across you to take your seatbelt off. “You okay? Do you want me to carry you?”

“Carry me? Jaem, you live on the fourth floor. I’ll be fine, just help me up.” You hold your hand out to him, but he clicks his tongue and slides his hands beneath your back and knees.

“You underestimate me,” he teases you, pulling you into his chest. “I’ll get you upstairs.”

Instead of arguing, you let your head fall onto his chest and you listen to his steady heartbeat. You’ve been together for six months now, and everything has been perfect. At this point, you’re pretty sure you want to marry Jaemin. You don’t know if he feels the same way, but you know you’d be damn lucky if that’s how things go.

He’s caring. Loving. All the things you could ever ask for. Hell, he’s carrying you into his apartment building so you don’t have to walk. He’ll make breakfast in the morning like he always does when you stay the night, and he’ll brush your hair and braid it if you want.

When you finally make it up to the fourth floor (via elevator, thankfully for Jaemin), his heart is still steady in his chest, and he brings you inside his apartment easily. He immediately brings you into his bedroom, setting you on his bed.

“Want a shirt, love?” he asks, heading over to his dresser.

“Please.” Your eyes are closed as you rest on his pillow, sinking into the soft mattress as if you’re on top of a cloud.

Jaemin grabs one for you, helping you sit up so he can help you take your blouse off. He pulls it over your head, the cotton fabric settling on your skin. It smells of his laundry detergent, so you take a deep breath to appreciate it.

“Okay,” he mutters. “Lay down now.”

He guides you back down, and he finds the button on your jeans. You aide him in taking them off of you, and then he kneels on the floor next to you, eye level with you.

“I love you,” he says, brushing your hair behind your ear. “Forever. I promise.”

“Me too,” you reply, voice quiet. “Love you forever.”

With a soft smile, he leans forward to kiss your forehead. “Get some sleep, my love. I’ll be back to cuddle in a few minutes.”

You watch him walk into his bathroom, but you’re fast asleep before he comes back out.

Forever. You scoff at your ceiling. What a concept. A novelty, really. You’re not even sure if it exists at this point. If a man like Jaemin wasn’t your forever, who the hell would be? Nobody interested you enough. You don’t think you want Jaemin anymore, but you don’t want anyone else either.

A cat. That’s what you need.

You try to distract yourself with the thought of that, but it doesn’t take long for another memory to completely consume you.

“Is this okay?” he asks, chest heaving while he hovers above you as his hand rubs up and down your side. “Tell me if you’re not comfortable.”

“I love you,” you tell him easily, as if the words are second-nature when they come to him. “I’m ready. I want you.”

Seven months in, and you and Jaemin were just now preparing to have sex for the first time. You’d touched each other, explored each other, but he always insisted he wanted it to be perfect. This, you decide, is perfect. He’s perfect. Nothing about him makes you nervous, and you’re more than ready to take the next step with him.

Neither of you are virgins, but it’d obviously been a while for you both. He lines himself up with your entrance and groans.

“You’re so wet,” he murmurs, as if he’s mesmerized. “I love you.”

To quell his nerves, you pull him down into a soft kiss, letting your mouths work together in perfect harmony while he slowly, carefully pushes inside you. His lips part, still pressed to yours, once he’s fully in.

Your eyes desperately want to flutter shut, but you don’t dare look away from him right now. He stays there for a moment, relishing in the feeling of the two of you finally being connected like this. Jaemin is deeply sentimental, so you know how much it means for him to take this step with you.

“You’re so beautiful,” he groans, taking your bottom lip between his teeth and tugging gently. “God, you feel so good.”

A small whimper leaves you at the sensation, and you rock your hips in response. “Move,” you tell him.

He drops his head to your neck, kissing, sucking, and nipping as he sets his pace. Oh so careful not to break you, he moans into your skin, the vibrations making your whole body tremble. The slide of him against your walls is intoxicating, and all you can do is take it, legs locked firmly around him as he takes you to a new world.

“Jaem.” You sigh, running your fingers through his hair for encouragement.

He continues to thrust, his breathing starting to increase when he gets closer to the edge. Without missing a beat, he reaches between the two of you to rub circles on your clit. You moan a bit louder than you should, but you don’t care.

Suddenly, you’re floating, brain going fuzzy when you reach heights you never thought you could. Your back arches into his body, nails digging into his shoulders as the world tilts off its axis.

“Shit,” he gasps, hips bucking. “You’re squeezing me so tight.”

You let out a shuddering breath, body slumping when you land from your free fall. Weaving your fingers through his hair, you pull him up to kiss you, swallowing his breathy whine as he cums.

Both of you sit there for a few moments, the only sounds are from the panting. He rests more of his weight on top of you, enveloping you in all the heat pouring out of his body. With a sweet kiss, he hums into your mouth.

“We’re gonna have to do that again.” He chuckles, his nose nuzzling your cheek. “You’re so fucking perfect.”

“Says you,” you retort.

“I’m so serious.” Jaemin frowns at you. “I’m going to make love to you forever. We’ll get old and gray and I’ll still find you sexy.”

You laugh, smacking his chest. “You’re ridiculous. But you better mean that.”

“I’ve never meant anything more.”

When Saturday rolls around, you head into your closet to pick out an outfit. You don’t want to wear anything too fancy, but not too casual either. Settling on a flowy, pale pink top and a pair of jeans, staring at yourself in the mirror for much too long.

No part of today has to be weird. You’ll show up, have a great night, go home, and repeat it again the next week. Even knowing that, you’re more nervous for tonight than you were for your interview yesterday.

You think you got the job, but you’d hear back for sure on Monday. Logically, you have nothing to worry about on either end.

You put Jaemin’s address into the map on your phone, and you see it’s not too far from your apartment. Donghyuck offered to pick you up, but you decided it’d be best if you got there on your own. That way, you don’t have to make Hyuck leave early if things aren’t going well for you.

You slide on your boots, checking your pockets to make sure you have everything before you walk out into the street. Locking the door behind you, you make your way over. It’s a little before six, but everyone knows you’re chronically early. Even when you and Jaemin were dating, you were at least fifteen minutes early for every occasion.

You’re excited to see Jaemin again, but you know you shouldn’t be. In fact, you distract yourself with the idea of all the other boys. You saw Hyuck already, but seeing all the others for the first time in years is going to be a great experience.

When you arrive at the building, you blink in surprise. With him being a successful businessman, you knew he probably didn’t live in the same place, but this one shocked you. It’s huge. There are probably dozens of floors, and you have to look at his text message again to see which one he’s on.

Twenty-four? Holy shit.

You step into the lobby, and the man at the front desk also serves as an elevator guard. When you approach, he raises his eyebrows at you.

“Where are you needing to go, ma’am?” he asks.

“Twenty-fourth floor, it doesn’t say a number on the text, though—”

“Let me call up there to confirm. What’s your name?”

“(Y/N),” you reply, shifting on your feet.

“One moment, please.” He grabs the phone off the hook and dials quickly. “Mr. Na, I have a woman here to see you. Her name is (Y/N).”

It only takes a second for the man to nod and hang up the phone. He bows his head to you and gestures behind him. “He said he’s expecting you.”

The doors part for you and you step inside, and somehow, the button for the twenty-fourth floor is already pressed. You wait patiently inside as you ascend, the nerves beginning to sink in. Jaemin might be expecting you, sure, but you’re probably going to be the first one there. You always are.

When the elevator dings and opens, you expect a hallway. Instead, you’re walking straight into Jaemin’s living room. The wall across from you is all glass, the buzzing city view below making your heart drop. Hardwood flooring covers the expanse of the room, a faux fireplace on with a large sectional in front of it, a coffee table, and several other seating arrangements.

A few bottles of rosé are in a bin of ice on the coffee table, with ten glasses set out. You frown, letting your mind wander on who they could be for.

“Oh, you’re here!” It’s not Jaemin’s voice you hear.

When you turn toward it, you’re surprised to see a woman. She’s beautiful, with long black hair and shining brown eyes, and it takes you less than a split second to realize who she is. What did you expect? Jaemin moved on, and you shouldn’t be surprised. Your ribcage shouldn’t be constricting as hard as it is right now, but you laugh as she gives you a hug.

“Sorry, I’m a hugger.” She chuckles as she pulls away from you. “I’ve heard so much about you. The boys get so crazy when good things happen. It’ll be nice to have another girl around here, Jiyoon and I are pretty close to insane. I’m Yeeun.”

She holds her hand out to you and you take it, overwhelmed by the information she’s given you. Jaemin walks out from the kitchen, his white button-down shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows and the bottom hem tucked into a pair of blue jeans.

“Don’t scare her away.” Jaemin grins, shaking his head at her. “She’s kind of shy.”

“I’m not shy,” you retort.

“And that’s why you’re only one step inside, right?” Jaemin quirks an eyebrow, leaning his shoulder against the wall. “Make yourself at home. Lord knows everyone else does.”

“Where should I put my stuff?” I ask.

“The couch is fine. Everyone should be here soon.” Jaemin gestures over, but before you say anything else, he heads back into the kitchen.

“He’s so serious.” Yeeun cringes, walking with you to the couch. “Sometimes I think he’s got a stick in some places.”

“I can hear you,” Jaemin says.

You have to hold back another laugh.

“That’s the point,” she shouts back.

You take a seat and cross your legs, taking in the grandeur of Jaemin’s apartment. Various paintings hang on the walls and, in the midst of your concentration, something jumps in your lap. You gasp, throwing your hand over your mouth.

Thankfully, it’s just a kitten.

“Oh, that’s Luna.” Yeeun reaches over to give her a quick pet. “Jaemin’s got three cats. Luna, Lucy, and Luke. They kinda look similar, but you’ll learn them eventually.”

You stare at the animal in shock, wondering what convinced Jaemin to get three at once. Shrugging it off, you pick her up and hold her to your chest, running your hand over her soft fur.

“Chenle should be here any minute,” Yeeun says under her breath, glancing down at her phone. “Let me c—”

The elevator dings again, and Chenle walks in without a second thought. He tosses his jacket on the table and rolls his shoulders as if he’s done a bunch of work. Yeeun launches from the couch, and you can’t say you’re not relieved when you see her plant a kiss firmly on his lips. She’s not Jaemin’s girlfriend, she’s Chenle’s.

“You miss me after not seeing me for an hour?” he teases her, his arm wrapped around her waist.

“You’re so mean.” She scrunches her face, grabbing his hand and leading him over to the couch.

Chenle grins widely when he sees you and gives you a quick hug. “You finally decide to come back after five years?”

“Don’t be a brat.” You snort. “You’re elated I’ve returned.”

“We all are,” he says easily. “If I have to hear Hyuck cry one more time about you being thousands of miles away I might end him.”

“You and me both.”

“Oh, I had Yeeun come a little early. I knew you’d be atrociously early because you’re you, and I thought it might be weird with you and Jaemin alone, so…” Chenle lowers his voice.

“I appreciate you.” You smile, taking your spot back on the couch. “I’m okay, though. Really.”

Especially now that you know Jaemin’s not dating Yeeun.

“Chenle, I swear to God, if you eat all of this fucking board before everyone else gets here, I’m going to kill you.” Jaemin reenters, placing a charcuterie board down by the wine. “This took hours, dude.”

“I’ll leave it alone.” Chenle holds his hands up in mock surrender, sitting next to Yeeun and throwing his arm over her shoulders.

The next one to show up is Hyuck, who brings Mark in tow. They both hug you, and by now, conversation is flowing with everyone. Jeno is next, then Renjun and Jisung. You’re not sure what you were expecting from him, but he’s definitely turned into a grown up since the last time you’ve seen him.

“Holy shit,” you say, practically in awe. “Did you have seven growth spurts?”

“Actually, I think it was only one.” He laughs, patting your back. “I didn’t believe Hyuck when he said you were coming. Told him I’d have to see it with my own eyes first.”

When everyone is finally sitting down around the couch, you notice Chenle already eating some of the cheese. Jaemin glares at him, but he eventually gives up. You sit between Yeeun and Donghyuck, fading into the conversation in the way you used to. It warms your heart, and you have to fight the overwhelming feeling of having missed so much time.

Leaving was worth it. The experience you had was unlike any other, but you regretted not staying in contact with all of them—even Jaemin. Mark opens the wine first, pouring it into nine of the glasses.

“Where’s Jiyoon?” He frowns, directing his gaze to Jisung.

He shrugs. “She’ll be here soon. Her grandparents are in town, so she’s staying with her mom until they leave. But she shouldn’t be any later than seven-thirty.”

Your mind whirls at how they’re reacting to Jisung having a girlfriend like it’s normal. He’ll always be your baby brother in your eyes, regardless of blood relation.

“How’d your interview go?” Donghyuck asks you, roping you into the conversation.

“Oh, I think it went well. I find out for sure on Monday, so I’ll let you know.” You grin. “I’m ready to start making more money.”

“Why don’t you just come work for us?” Chenle offers. “I’m surprised Hyuck didn’t tell us you were looking for a job still.”

Donghyuck drops his head into his palm. “No shit, sherlock. Think about why I wouldn’t.”

“It doesn’t need to be like that,” Jaemin interjects, sighing. “(Y/N) and I are good. There’s no eggshells to walk on. Just let it go. Pretend it never happened.”

Pretend it never happened?

Your heart ping pongs around your chest, and you choke on your sip of wine. Everyone turns toward you and you chuckle nervously.

“Sorry. I wasn’t expecting this topic.” You set the glass down on the table, suddenly much less interested in it.

“If that’s what she wants, she can absolutely do that,” Jaemin continues. “If we’re ever going to be normal, we can’t be the only ones over it.”

You stare down at your lap, fidgeting with your hands as you try to ignore all the attention on you.

“Um.” You clear your throat. “I’m gonna go grab some water.”

You shoot up from your spot, darting into the kitchen before anyone can say anything else. Once you reach the island, you brace your palms on it to keep you afloat. You close your eyes and let out a deep breath.

“Hey,” Jaemin murmurs, stopping next to you. “Are you okay? I’m sorry if that was too much.”

“I’m fine.”

“Did I say something?” He furrows his eyebrows and shifts closer so you have to look at him.

“No, Jaemin, I promise. Everything’s good. I just need a minute.” You run your fingers through your hair and glance around the room. “Do you have water bottles?”

“In the fridge,” he replies.

Crossing his arms over his chest, he rests his back on the edge of the island, watching you as you grab one. You twist off the cap and take a sip.

“I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. That was never my intention.” Jaemin sighs.

“Regardless of your intention, I’m not uncomfortable. Everyone’s just so…different. But the same. And I missed you guys, you know? I missed Saturday nights and being around my favorite people, but it’s…Forget it. Please.”

“Okay.” He nods. “Come back out whenever you’re ready, then.”

Jaemin walks away from you, looking back once over his shoulder before he disappears around the corner. You bury your head in your hands, but you refuse to let anyone think you’re upset. About anything. Jaemin especially.

You take another drink of water before you follow him out to the living room. When you make it back to your spot between Hyuck and Yeeun, he leans over to whisper, “I got up to follow you and he looked like he would rip my head off if I moved another muscle.”

You snort. “Yeah, sure.”

Shortly after that incident, Jiyoon finally shows up. She’s a bit taller than Yeeun, with dyed blonde hair and brown eyes. Jisung introduces the two of you, and she greets you kindly. Mark fills her glass and hands it to her.

 You hear funny stories from Jeno, listen to Renjun scolding Jisung about something, and rest your head on Hyuck’s shoulder. He doesn’t seem to mind, so you don’t plan on moving. He’s having a heated discussion about something to do with stocks with Jaemin and Mark. You happily tune them out, because you have no idea what they’re talking about.

You finish your glass of wine and pour yourself another one. Chenle’s taken care of most of the charcuterie board by now, and Yeeun is showing him videos on her phone. You take a moment to appreciate everyone around you, something you never did before, and realize change may not be a bad thing.

Yes, everyone is different, but so are you. It’s magical when people grow up in the same direction, even past time, distance, and space. They’re all the same at their core, but older. Wiser. Happier. More mature.

You’re on your third glass by the time the night deepens. It must be past ten o’clock at this point, but you don’t feel tired at all. You’re surprised when Chenle and Yeeun leave first. They both hug you on their way out.

Apparently, they broke the seal, because Jisung and Jiyoon are next, followed closely by Renjun. Jeno doesn’t leave until eleven, and Mark and Donghyuck are packing up to leave as well.

“Do you need a ride home?” Hyuck asks.

“I’m okay.” You shake your head. “I’ll leave in a few minutes, don’t worry.”

He hesitates, but eventually listens to you. You’re left alone with Jaemin, much to your surprise, and he’s not kicking you out at the first opportunity he gets.

“Did you want help cleaning up?” you question.

“There’s not much to clean,” Jaemin replies, standing from his seat. “I won’t say no to help though.”

“Of course.” You chuckle and get up, brushing off your jeans. 

Grabbing a few of the glasses, you carry them into the kitchen and put them by the sink. Between the two of you, you’ve got everything in the kitchen within a few minutes.

“I’m glad you came,” Jaemin says, running the water to rinse out the dishes.

“Me too.” It’s not a lie. You love being in this group, but you wonder if there was a better way to ease back in.

“I…Can I say something?” he asks. “If it’s too weird, you can tell me no.”

“By all means.”

“You know I’m not mad at you, right? I’m not bitter and I don’t hate you. I missed you a lot, actually. But I don’t want you to think you can’t come around because of me.” He pauses, taking his bottom lip between his teeth. “I’m really proud of you. Of all the things you’ve accomplished, and I know we couldn’t have done the same things if we had stayed together.”

You don’t mean to let out a relieved breath, but his words take a weight off your shoulders. “Thank you, Jaem. I’m proud of you too.”

“Have one more drink with me? For old times’ sake?” 

“I’d love that.”

So that’s how you end up next to Jaemin on his couch, his feet kicked up on his coffee table. You make jokes, talk about everyday things, but the more you drink, the more you crave to know about the past, about what happened after you left.

“Is the past off-limits?” You turn to look at him, almost blushing when you realize how close his face is to yours.

“I don’t think so.” He shakes his head. “But for every question you ask me, I get to ask you one.”

“That sounds like a good deal.” You smile. “But you go first.”

He gives you a half-smile before pursing his lips as he thinks. “Was it easy for you? Over there, I mean.”

“I wouldn’t say it was easy. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact experience because things are so different here…but I don’t think I’d go back. It was a good experience, and I loved it, but this is where I belong.” You stop, contemplating your own question. “How were you?”

“Is complete honesty okay?” He quirks an eyebrow.

“It’s preferred, actually.” You take another sip.

“It took me a long time to recover. And I don’t want to make you feel bad, because what’s done is done, and we both needed the room to grow. You know, if you never hurt, you’ll never learn. Life is full of learning experiences. But yeah, I was a mess for a while. I loved you long after you left.” He smiles, as if loving you is a fond memory. “Do you miss me?”

Present tense. Miss. Not did you miss me, but do you miss me.

You chuckle, pursing your lips. “Yeah, I do.”

When you meet his gaze again, you see the soft look he gave you whenever he saw you before. He gulps, wetting his lips. Your heart twists in your chest as you realize what this means for you. No matter how much time passes, you’ll never stop loving Jaemin. It doesn’t matter how far apart you’ve been or for how long, because all of you yearns for all of him.

Your voice shakes when you ask your next question. “Where would we be if I hadn’t left? If I changed that, would everything be different?”

“Um.” He’s only inches away from you, studying your face with fervor. “In my mind, I definitely thought we’d be married by now. In love and happy, making babies that hopefully look more like you.”

You try not to let the tears form, but they sting your eyes anyway.

“Is that what you wanted?” he whispers.

“Well, I kinda wanted them to look more like you, but yeah.” You laugh as a tear falls, and you move to wipe it away, but Jaemin beats you to it. His thumb swipes across your cheek.

You’re not sure what’s happening between the two of you, but every part of you craves this.

“We were pretty great, huh?”

“Is that your question?” He smiles. “Because yeah, we were.”

“If that was mine, that one counted as yours too.” You lean into his touch, letting the warmth seep through your skin. “God, I wish it had been you. I wish you were the one.”

His lips part, but it sounds as if his words catch in his throat. He blinks rapidly for a second, gulping. “Who said I can’t be?”

He leans closer.

“I’m gonna kiss you now.”

Your heart drops, but you give him a tiny nod, aching for him. “Jaemin.”

He stops right before your mouths connect, and he lets out a sigh.

“Jaemin,” you repeat. “I have to say something first.”

“Okay.”

“I thought I got over you, but it’s only because I didn’t see you for years. Being with you right now…I might still love you, and if you’re not kissing me for the same reasons, we should stop before we both get hurt again.” You clench your eyes shut, refusing to look at him while you make a fool of yourself.

“I was hoping you’d say that.” He doesn’t give you the chance to respond, kissing you hard. You melt into him, much like the ways you used to.

He shifts to cup both of your cheeks, his mouth working against yours in that perfect harmony you’d only ever found with him. You grasp onto his sleeves. When he pulls away, he rests his forehead on yours.

“I…” he trails off, wetting his lips. “I want you.”

His voice is raspy as he says it, and it sends heat between your legs. You clench your thighs together.

“Me too,” you reply. “I want you, too.”

“Are you sure?” he asks.

“Of course.” You lean forward to kiss him, and as your lips meet his, he pulls you onto his lap. Straddling him, you weave your fingers in his hair and hold him close to you.

His hands dip down to your ass, squeezing it and pushing you a bit forward. You groan when you feel his tongue slide across your bottom lip, and you give him access. Without a fight, you let him dominate your mouth. When you grind down, you gasp when you feel him hardening beneath you.

“You’re so perfect,” he whispers, only breaking the kiss for a split second.

He lets out a small whine when you pull away from him, but he’s quickly silenced when you tug your blouse over your head. While he stares at your black lace bra, you work on unbuttoning his shirt.

 “Not here,” he interrupts you, grabbing your hands. “There’s only one place I want to have you right now.”

He stands, holding onto you tightly while you wrap your legs around his waist. For a brief second, you think about what Hyuck would say to you right now—if he would be okay with it or if he would call it a mistake—but you chase the thought away as fast as it comes.

Jaemin carries you to his bedroom, kicking the door shut behind him. He sets you delicately onto his bed, the familiar softness making you sigh. After he finishes taking his shirt off, he climbs on top of you, kissing your cheek, your jawline, down the pulse thundering in your neck, your collarbone, the swells of your breasts. He leaves marks on them before continuing his descent.

And then he’s at the hem of your jeans. He looks up at you, eyebrows raised. “Can I?”

“Please.”

Jaemin is a unique lover. He memorizes all the things you love, what makes you tick, and what he can do to elevate your pleasure. You’ve never had to fake it with him.

“It’s been a while for me,” he mutters. “It might not be…the best.” He clears his throat awkwardly, but pops the button and unzips the zipper.

“I’ll be happy with whatever you can give me,” you say.

His confidence returns after that, and he moves to tug your pants down your legs. You try your best to help him get them off of you, and he finally makes it back between your legs. He rubs his thumb over the obvious wet spot in your panties, humming to himself.

“Time doesn’t change how wet you get for me, huh?” He tsks, pressing a kiss to your clit through the fabric.

When he tugs them down, he admires you before leaning forward. You don’t expect the electric shock you feel when his mouth comes in contact with your core, but it has your back arching when he’s hardly done anything. Your hand immediately finds his hair, gripping it.

His tongue slides along your entrance, barely dipping inside before flicking your clit. He teases you like this a few times, but then his lips wrap around your sensitive bud and he sucks. His fingers trail up your thigh, and he extracts a moan from you when he pushes them inside you.

You inadvertently clench your thighs around his head. He moans against you, the vibrations sending pleasure shooting up your spine. You don’t mean to push him closer to you, but you can’t help it. Everything inside you feels like it’s crumbling and coming together at the same time under his ministrations.

You writhe much more than you should, and if it were anyone other than Jaemin, you’d be embarrassed.

“You taste so good,” he groans against you, thrusting his fingers faster. “So beautiful when you drip for me like this.”

He curls his fingers, and you slap a hand over your mouth to muffle your pleasure. One last flick of his tongue on your clit has your back arching, the bubble bursting inside you as you grind into his face.

After he’s helped you ride through your high, you sit up, sending him back a bit. You quickly reach for his pants, squeezing the prominent bulge before undoing the button and zipper. He steps out of them , pulling you toward the edge of the bed.

“We don’t have to,” he says, breathless. “We can wait if you’re not sure.”

“Jaem,” you reply, cupping his cheeks. “I’ve never wanted you more than I do right now.” You tug him down, kissing him with all your might. You taste yourself on him, but it does little to bother you. All you want is him.

His tongue explores your mouth while he finds the clasp of your bra. He pulls it away from you, guiding you back down onto the bed. His kiss trails down once more, stopping at your breast so he can take your nipple into his mouth. He swirls it, teeth gently scraping.

Finally, he’s shoving his underwear down and grabbing a condom from his nightstand. He rolls it on before joining you on the bed once more, and you feel his tip prodding at your entrance.

“You’re absolutely sure?” He pauses, giving as serious of a look as he can muster. “If we do this, you’re mine again, you know that, right?”

“I’ve always been yours, Jaemin,” you remind him, lifting your hips. “That never changed.”

You barely have time to finish your sentence before he’s pushing inside you, face contorting with pleasure as he bottoms out. Heart pounding, you grip onto his shoulders and wrap your legs around his waist.

“You okay?” he whispers, leaning down to kiss your neck. His eyelashes flutter across your skin, your body already slightly sticky from a thin sheen of sweat from your first indescribable high.

“Please move,” you whimper.

Jaemin moves slowly at first, allowing you both to get used to the feeling of being connected again. It’d be a long while since you’d done anything, too. He pants, nipping and sucking at the sensitive part of your throat.

His hips rock steadily, making sure to press as deep as he can every time. You're already a moaning mess below him, holding onto him for dear life.

“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I’m not gonna last long.”

In response, you tighten your legs around him and flip him over, leaving him on his back and you on top. His eyes trail all over your body. You roll your hips. He sits up, grabbing your waist and pressing your chest against his, his dark, hardened gaze meeting yours as if this is a challenge.

“Lay back,” you tell him, running your hand down the hard planes of his chest as you gently push him back down. “Just watch.”

He gulps, but does as you say. His hands relax on you and he allows you to set your own pace. You lift up, shuddering at how he feels rubbing on your walls. His fingers twitch as if he wants to pull you back down.

“Baby,” he groans.

You set a steady pace, a bit faster than what his was. He traces down your body, leaving goosebumps in his wake as he moves downward until his thumb is pressed to your clit. You bite your lip to stop your moan, leaning back and bracing yourself on his thighs. He’s a mess beneath you, pleasure written across his face. It makes you want to do more, to work harder to bring him to his edge.

You’re so wet, slick sounds of him entering you fill the silence between sounds of euphoria. His thumb glides back and forth so easily, you have to pick up the speed. Everything around you begins to go fuzzy, and you know you’re approaching your second orgasm of the night much faster than you’d like.

Mid-way through your lift-up, your high hits, forcing you back down on his cock to finish with him buried deep inside, stretching you out. He sits back up, guiding you up and down as you slump onto his chest. He meets you halfway, thrusting up as he pulls you down.

He lets out a deep groan and holds you close to him, gently rocking his hips. He gasps for breath, pressing gentle kisses to your shoulder.

“I love you,” Jaemin whispers. “Don’t go again.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” You shake your head. “I love you, too.”

He opens his mouth to say something, but you both frown when you hear the elevator ding.

“Who is that?” you ask, climbing off of him on shaky legs to try and find your clothes.

“Not a clue.” Jaemin frowns, quickly disposing of the condom and putting his underwear and pants back on. He comes back to kiss your cheek. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

He walks out into his living room, but you get dressed quickly so you can follow him out. You hear him conversing with someone, but you’re not sure who it is. You’re finally back in your jeans and shirt, so you head out to check out what’s going on.

You know your hairs a mess, your makeup is definitely smeared, and your face is red, and on top of all of that, you’re coming out of Jaemin’s room. Anyone with a brain would see what’s going on.

Chenle moves over to the couch and grabs a purse, which is presumably Yeeun’s, and claps Jaemin on the shoulder before he notices you.

“(Y/N)?” He blinks in surprise, glancing between you and Jaemin. “This is a new development.”

“It’s not really that new,” Jaemin says. “Um, we were kind of…busy, though. If you could…”

“Right.” Chenle shakes his head. “Right. You two have fun. Not too much fun, and make sure no one gets hurt this time, please?”

“Are you going to tell Donghyuck?” You scrunch up your nose.

“I’ll give you a twenty-four hour head start.” He grins, saluting you both. “Take care of each other, dipshits.”

You massage your forehead with a sigh, and Jaemin approaches you.

“You got dressed.” He pouts.

“Well, yeah. Somebody was here.” You chuckle.

“Were you wanting to leave?” he asks, eyebrows furrowing. “It’s okay if you do, I just…thought we’d spend the night together.”

“I don’t want to leave,” you tell him. “I told you I’m not leaving you again, Jaem. I meant it.”

“Then let’s get back to bed.” Jaemin massages your shoulders gently as he guides you back to his room.

He gets you a T-shirt to wear to bed, and once you’ve changed into it, you crawl onto his mattress and wait for him to join you. Instead, he stares at you, a smile on his face.

“I never thought I’d get you like this again.”

“You were always the one for me, Jaemin. It just wasn’t the right time.” You rest your head on one of his pillows, patting the spot next to you. “Now come over here.”

He finally listens, climbing under the comforter and pulling you to him until you’re pressed into his chest.

Kissing the top of your head, he hums. “We’ll have everything we ever wanted.”

a lesson on style - i . [ ljn | njm ]

pt. i, pt. ii, pt. iii, pt. iv.,  pt. v, pt. vi

you’ve always been content with being associated with one word and one word only: average. average in looks, academics and social skills, you’re just looking to graduate high school without causing disasters you’ll have to live with until you kick the bucket. when you’re paired with school king lee jeno for the semester-long physics thesis, you can’t help but think the entire situation has pretty much set itself up for failure. that is, until you strike a deal with your partner.  alternatively: an au tale involving lessons in popularity, eleven consecutive B­ minuses, a secretly sensitive, chess­-loving jock, and an amateur sex tape.

pairing: jeno x fem!reader, jaemin x fem!reader verse: high school au { jocks!nomin ft. a super cute whiny ap physics genius renjun } rating: M chapter warnings: none word count: 6.1k

author’s note: this is actually an old exo cast fic of mine from my old blog that i had to put on hiatus (alongside myself, actually), for many, many terrible moons (see : 3 years, for a master’s diploma that is simply collecting dust), but upon re-reading it, i thought that it would be a pretty good fit for a dreamie cast instead!! i’ve been thinking about branching out and writing for different groups for a while now, and as a slow return to writing, i’ll be posting the edited already written chapters up slowly so i can also write ahead! for anyone who might have found this blog and recognizes this fic, welcome back! i hope you still enjoy it! for people who’ve encountered it for the first time, i also hope you enjoy it! :) this is unbeta’d (even after all this time pls), so please do point out any errors i might have missed while editing!

                                                        *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

There are three things you had intended for your very average, simple, girl-next-door life:

1. Graduate high school with an average GPA, a diploma and a sigh of relief, without any type of valedictorian honors or the requirement to make a teary/educational/sentimental/hopeful speech about the past/present/future.

2. Get a desk job as the vice-vice-vice senior-vice president of an average paying company, pushing papers and typing numbers you don’t fully understand into a pirated version of Microsoft Excel 2000 to be able to pay your not very steep rent and eat take-out every other night.

3. Get married to an average-looking guy either named Jaehwan or Minhyuk, and have children that, like you, will have no particular special talents and will also live their lives as the average people that basically exist to make glamorous people appear more fabulous.

The back up plan is to stay single and have a very lazy, fat cat that eats more than you do.

There were three things you did not intend for your very average, simple, girl-next-door life, though:

1. Break your leg trying to do a somersault you can’t, even at gunpoint, imagine why you would agree to doing in the middle of the last pep rally of the season as – get this – a cheerleader.

2. Be asked to the homecoming dance by not one, but two very popular, very good-looking jocks who both, for some odd reason, manage to actually talk to you without either yawning or simply walking away while shaking their head.

3. Be asked to professionally join a teen-to-adult entertainment agency, after a 24-minute long supposedly private amateur sex tape starring you is leaked onto the internet and goes viral around the entire cyberspace.

In other words, your younger brothers have seen you naked. Online.

                                                        *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

“_____________, I just don’t understand why you like him so much.”

Some people might think you’re an optimist. Others might brand you an idealist. The least kind label would be absolutely deluded.

It doesn’t matter to you, though — you, knowing exactly what Lee Jeno looks like. Wasn’t that knowledge already a good enough reason in itself for you to spend a very creepy, alarming amount of time wishing, just wishing, he would walk over and say hey?

And it’s not just that he’s so chiseled and his face is perfect and his lips are so kissable. It’s not that he’s got an amazing body, and is tall and muscular but lean at the same time.

It’s his eyes.

They’re like, god. Great pools of molten chocolate with just the slightest hint of swirled creamer and – ugh. Behind those eyes, you’re sure there’s a sweet, sensitive man who’s looking for the right kind of girl. His soulmate, if you’re feeling a little more like a hopeless romantic today. You sincerely, genuinely, desperately hope you’re that girl.

Yeah, it’s weird. You’re in high school. Your hormones are probably kind of raging.

“Like, he’s just some dumb, boneheaded jock,” comes the continuation from beside you. You roll your eyes in response, but say nothing to contribute out of a desire to simply not. “And that’s all he’ll ever be. He’s failing nearly everything, except physical education. Why can’t you have a semi-obsessive crush on someone who might actually have a future?”

“For your information, Huang Renjun,” You snap, turning to your best friend. You’re seated in the cafeteria, supposedly enjoying a simple lunch meal. That was, of course, until you had realized you were three tables behind where Lee Jeno and his best friend, Na Jaemin were seated, also enjoying their lunches in some very cool, very manly sort of silence. So you’d looked, and let out a long sigh.

It was just a sigh, for the love of God. It’s not like you had run over and fallen to your knees in front of him. And yet Renjun had just put down his triangle gimbap, shook his head, and asked you why you had chosen, out of the thousands of perfectly acceptable (in his opinion) people in the student body, Lee Jeno to give you unreciprocated affections to.

And your response had been, and will always be: just look at him and tell me –- why the hell not?

“Jeno isn’t what you so assume as a boneheaded jock. He’s a classy, athletic student who just… happens to care more about sports than the mundane task of having to read a textbook for hours on end,” you shrug. That had come out more articulately than you’d imagined, which shocks Renjun as much as it actually surprises you — something that you notice with a twinge of belligerence after his eyes widen. “He’s probably going to get himself a top notch varsity scholarship.”

“Yeah, if he can even graduate,” Renjun shoots back contemptuously. “And even then, what’s a varsity scholarship going to get him? Do you know the amount of people who actually get into professional athleticism? He’s probably just going to end up a janitor or something.”

“Don’t you dare,” you growl.

“Come on, __________, the guy is a douche! Why do you have to pick him of all people?”

“He’s not a douche! And for your information, Jeno isn’t failing. He’s gotten a good number of D’s.”

“Yeah, I bet his teachers have gotten a load of D’s too,” Renjun replies snidely.

“Hey, not everyone can be a star student, Huang Renjun-nim with all the straight-A’s to brag about,” you sniff. “And Jeno’s not like that. He’s a gentleman.”

“Uh huh,” he said, sounding supremely unconvinced.

“Why do you hate him so much? He’s not really a bully. And he’s not done anything to you.”

“I don’t hate him him, I hate that you like him.” 

You shake your head. As if that had made it clearer. “What’s not to like? He’s funny, athletic, sweet —”

“I’m sure you know all that because you spend so much time with him.” Renjun sighs. “Why can’t you just like someone else? Why can’t you moon over, I don’t know – Mark Lee, the very smart, also very athletic and very active student body president? Or  Donghyuck, the physics lab assistant who, though not particularly into sports, has one of the highest GPAs around here? Or – I don’t know, someone like me?”

“Like what?” you say, distracted – Jeno had just stood up along with Jaemin, and had begun to clear their table, piling their trash onto their trays.

“Like – you know — you know – just —“

“He’s coming this way,” you hiss, effectively cutting Renjun off. Even though he doesn’t like it, he’s forced to turn away with you, even though he hadn’t really gotten a good look and wasn’t exactly trying to hide his presence from Jeno to begin with.

“So what?” He whispers before suddenly realizing he doesn’t know why he’s even keeping his voice down. “Are you going to offer to throw his stuff for him now? Is this what we’ve come to?”

“No, I want to leave.”

“What?” Renjun looks at you, then at his unfinished triangle gimbap, then at you again. “Why?”

“Because — I don’t want him to see me like this —“ you also whisper, starting to get up. Renjun, however, holds your arm, visibly confused and no small amounts annoyed.

“See you like what? So he’s coming, and now we have to leave?”

“I just – I don’t want – I just – can we please just go?” you beg weakly, watching them approach from the corner of your eye.

“No, there’s absolutely no reason as to why you have to leave just because he’s coming here,” he says stubbornly.

“Let go of my arm, please-“

“Just sit down, ____________.”

“No, I can’t, I don’t want to make eye contact with him — I don’t even want him to really see me right now—"

“Who said you have to make eye contact with him, anyway? Just eat your food.”

“Let’s just go —” You yank your arm back violently — just in time too, as Jeno and Jaemin pass by your table, trays in hand.

It happens all at once:  your chair falls over as you shoot upward from the force of pull, and you reel back as Renjun lets out a surprised yelp. You don’t go far — just enough to make an impact on the person behind you with your forearm and elbow.

That person being, of course, Lee Jeno’s best friend, whose can of soda was just by the edge of his tray – an edge it fell off of the moment you collide with his arm.

You hear three things after that, all close to being simultaneous with one another:

One, a very loud Oh, shit! from the guy behind you, who you had just bumped.

Two, a chair scraping as your best friend stands up from his seat, eyes wide in horror.

And, three, a bloodcurdling shriek from your own mouth as Na Jaemin’s half-full diet Coke splashes down the back of your shirt.

There’s a brief hush that falls over the room. The words that come after seem a thousand times louder.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry…”

The fizz of the soda pops and crackles against your skin, causing the now-translucent fabric to stick to your back like overly carbonated flypaper. Your mouth hangs half-open in shock, trying to find the appropriate words for the situation. Renjun looks up at you, his eyes mirroring a fraction of your horror from witnessing the situation.He mouths something that vaguely looks like “let’s go,” but you don’t want to dwell on what it could have actually been, otherwise you might strangle him. 

A warm hand gently rests on your back, pushing the sticky, soaked cloth even further closer to me. You wince at first, mildly disgusted by the feeling.

But a warm thought strikes you in that instance – what if, maybe, it’s Jeno trying to comfort you, about to say something sweet and caring that would ultimately show Renjun up, and perhaps lead to the beginning of a wonderful romance that would blossom between the both of you?

Well, you like being idealistic about your future – especially when the thought of it involves Jeno.

The idea of Lee Jeno pressing his palm against your back, his hand only obscured by a thin layer of fabric, suddenly sends unnatural tingles down your spine. Color rushes to your cheeks, and you bite the inside of your cheek to keep yourself from smiling at the strangely embarrassing but not altogether revolting thought. Renjun catches it and throws you a slightly quizzical look that suddenly changes to mild exasperation.

“Are you okay?”

It’s the same question you’d expected, but it was not asked in the sexy, careful, and husky drawl you’d often heard Jeno speak in. You deflate noticeably, turning slowly to the best friend of the man of your dreams.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” you say quietly.

“God, I’m so sorry, I really am —” Na Jaemin bites his lip, trying (see: failing) not to gawk at your blue and brown-all-the- way-down-the-back shirt. “I swear — it was an accident, I really didn’t mean to —-”

You shake your head. “No, it’s fine. I should have watched where I was going. My… bad eyesight, you know.” Your eyesight is fine. You don’t even know why you’d said that. The situation in itself was already sufficiently uncomfortable without a lame medical lie. 

Physically, of course, sure, what with your back still kind of popping and fizzing from the coke stain. But more socially, considering you now have two attractive boys right in front of you, unsure of what to do about said stain, while whoever is still present in the dwindling population of the cafeteria stares, very pityingly, at the still-spreading new pattern of Coca Cola on your shirt.

But what really knots up your insides is the fact that this coke stain, the obvious focal point of the situation, is probably the one striking reminder of the day Lee Jeno actually had his attention fully on you, for the first time in your life.

Which, considering what everything was, really isn’t the best way to make your mark on someone.

There’s a long, awkward pause. Suddenly, Jeno pipes in for the first time since the scene had gone awry, speaking in the slow, bass tone he had claimed as signature. “Do you need a jacket?”

Oh god. He’s talking to you. Not around you, not near you, not over you, not out of a conversation you’d eavesdropped – no, sorry, overhead. To you. In that, sweet, nonchalant cloud of sound that fills your ears like some one-man angelic chorus. You let out an involuntary, dreamy sigh.

Renjun, obviously hearing your response (or lack thereof), clears his throat, trying to prompt you to reply to him. Well, shit. What did he say?

“Uh — sorry —- what?” you breath out, still dazed.

“Do you,” Jeno repeats patiently. “Need a jacket?”

Oh, god. He’s going to offer you his jacket. Offer you. His jacket. The one that says Lee in that super cool varsity font that makes his name look even yummier. And that’s literally the closest you’ll ever be to him.

“Hey,” Renjun hisses to you in a low, annoyed voice. “Say something.”

You snap out of a mental monologue again, flushing a funny shade of red for at least the third time today.

You open your mouth, but no words come out -– at best, a very pitiful sort of squeak lodges itself in your throat and dies there. Your lips simply part and shut like a fish trying to process oxygen. You can practically hear the sound of Renjun rolling his eyes, probably going so far back he can see all the creases in his big brain.

“Yeah, she’d appreciate it, probably.”

Yes. Yes, definitely.

There’s the sound of rustling cloth, and hands, gentle on your shoulders, carefully place the jacket on your back. You catch a whiff of the freshly laundered cloth, peppered with the subtly faded scent of cologne that’s been religiously sprayed onto the fabric many times before. It’s heavenly. With a wide grin on your face, you turn to the two of them, more or less ready to lay down your life at Jeno’s feet.

But his jacket, pristine and crisp, is still on him, devilishly unbuttoned and lightly clinging to his sides. He raised a questioning eyebrow as you stare, a little too long, at the jacket that you’d thought had been wrapped around you moments ago. Maybe he has two jackets. Maybe you’re in the matrix. 

You turn your head, trying to read the lettering on the back. You only had to see one “N” in order to realize that the embroidery read “Na”, and not “Lee”.

It’s somehow embarrassingly difficult to hide your disappointment, but you thank Jaemin nonetheless. He seems genuinely troubled, making sure your arms are well into the sleeves of his letter jacket before backing away, hands up like you’re robbing him on the bus.

“I’m really, really sorry,” he repeats. You don’t know how much more apologetic he could manage to look.

“It’s fine,” you mumble. “Sorry about your coke.”

He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter — what I’m worried about is -–”

“No, it’s no big deal — nothing some laundry time won’t get rid off,” you wave another round of apologies away. “Thanks for the jacket.” A bit of sadness makes its way into your voice; thankfully, it goes virtually unnoticed by all but Renjun, who makes an unpleasant face everyone who does notice it (see: you) decides to ignore.

“It’s the least I can do. Sure it’s okay?”

“Yeah, thank you.”

The first bell’s ring, signaling five minutes before the next period, punctuates the short and uncomfortable exchange. Most seniors have a free period or two for “studying” – except, only Renjun actually takes that seriously. You usually spend it with him, which is, truthfully, a big bore, so you generally end up falling asleep on the desk until he wakes you up for the next actual class.

“Hey, Jaemin, hurry,” Jeno says suddenly, checking his watch. “I want to catch that new action movie – next showing’s at half past one.”

Or, sometimes, if you had a car, guts and a whole lot of charm, you could sneak out of school for the three-hour downtime and go to the nearest mall, grab a bite or watch a movie if you could afford it. Fortunately for him, a car, guts and charm were pretty much Lee Jeno’s strongest selling points.

“Oh, yeah,” Jaemin said halfheartedly, his eyes flickering to you. “You’ll be alright?”

“Yeah,” you reply. “I’ll have your jacket with you, fresh and clean, tomorrow morning.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he shakes his head, smiling. It looks genuine, but for some reason, you feel like that can’t be too right.

“Na Jaemin,” Jeno repeats. Jaemin backs away, offering you a last small, apologetic look before nodding back at Jeno.

“Later,” he raises a hand in farewell. Jeno begins to walk ahead, not even glancing back at you. It seems he had more important things on his mind. Maybe he’d been trying to figure out what was going to go down in the new Mission Impossible movie. That seems like a valid train of thought for him to be so unconcerned about anything else. 

When they’re clear out of earshot, Renjun gives a very audible, very heavy sigh. You wheel around to him, frowning.

“What’s so —” you imitate his sigh.

“Oh, nothing.”

“Come on, Renjun, I may not be grade A but I’m not that dumb.”

“You were like a one eyed pony crippled by a shiny unicorn,” he shakes his head. “And by unicorn, I did indeed mean Lee Jeno, which is actually a significant downgrade.”

“Don’t say his name so loud, people might hear.”

“Everyone in this part of town knows you like him, _________. It’s really not a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle,” he chuckles, though a bit sardonically.

“Liar,” you mutter under your breath.

“Fine, let’s agree to disagree, then.” He rolls his eyes. You note he’s been doing a lot of that today. “You could have at least handled the situation better. Most people would have actually managed to say something other than uhhhhh…”

“I did say something!” you defend yourself, rather affronted. “I said thank you, and it was fine —”

“Yeah, to Na Jaemin. In case you didn’t notice, that stuff doesn’t really funnel down to Jeno —”

“It as good as does.”

“All I’m saying is that if you wanted to make some progress, you could have at least looked him in the eye and not choked on your own saliva.” He’s amused. You can tell. Except you’re not in the mood to laugh at all, so you settle with sniffing — very angrily — pursing your lips, and saying nothing. “What? It’s true!”

“Just shut up, Renjun,” you say tiredly. “Maybe I didn’t want to make progress then, have you thought about that?”

“Not likely,” he snorted.

“Oh – really? Really? You thought it would have been a fantastic time for me to strike up a hi hello, how do you do, would you care to have a cup of coffee with me some time? while I was drenched in coke from the waist down?”

“I’m just saying, if you’re trying to be an opportunist, you can’t really be picky about when you make your move.”

“I don’t understand you,” You throw your hands up in the air. “First you tell me to stay away from him, and now you’re telling me to think back upon the fact that I didn’t make a move when I should have?”

“It’s called reverse psychology,” he said, after a moment’s pause of consideration. “Like, I’m telling you now yeah, go for it, but then in your mind, another voice is going maybe it’s not such a good idea, especially if the only time we ever get to talk is when I’ve been splashed by coke and I can’t even form coherent sentences.”

“Oh, well, shit,” You mutter sarcastically. “Why didn’t I figure that out?”

“Given time, you might have. I have so much faith in your intelligence, even though you refuse to use it.”

“I doubt it.” You mumble under your breath. He falls quiet, and you sniff again, not because you really feel the need to but because you want to express how miffed you are at the very, very sudden and bad turn of events.

“___________,” Renjun begins in a slower, considerably kinder tone after moment of actual silence. “Are you all right?”

“Fantastic,” you sigh. “Got coke dumped on my back, in front of forty percent of the student population, I smell like a soda parlor and I choked on my own saliva in front of Lee flipping Jeno.”

“That’s a good estimation — forty percent,” Renjun approves.

“Wow, thank you.”

“Hey, it’s not all bad. For the rest of the day, your last name is Na,” he says, trying to cheer you up. You sniff for the third time in a row, nose now raw with the habit.

“I’d much rather it were Lee.”

                                                         *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

You part ways in last period, Renjun heading off to what he calls AP Physics and what you like to call AP Torture. You, however, had managed to stay very happily in the physics lesson for normal people, despite Renjun’s constant badgering for you to just work harder so that you both could be AP Torture lab partners together. You’ve declined, quite politely, on more than one occasion. Average is your specialty.

Never mind the fact that Lee Jeno was in your Physics class, only three stations away from you. It’s not the reason you’re staying, but you’d be a liar if you ever said it hadn’t served as one of the many excellent justifications.

He’s already there when you walk into class, yawning and twirling his pen in between his fingers. Your breathing hitches a little as you take the glorious sight of him in, but you scold yourself for a hot minute, reminding yourself that cool people don’t ever show when they’re feeling any other emotion than the one called cool. You do a pretty good job (well, it feels like a good job) of making yourself seem calm and aloof, remaining seemingly unaware of his presence as you walk past him over to your station to sit down on your stool.

You should have been able to skate by with the whole act, too, except you stupidly take the time to sneak a glance at him, causing you to miss the surface of your station and drop your books so loudly you feel like the people in the next classroom hear it too.

Face burning to about the average temperature of a summer’s day in the Sahara Desert, you scoop up all your books and shove them onto the untrustworthy station table. Luckily, when you cast a furtive look at Jeno, he makes no indication that he had noticed the racket you’d made. His head is still turned to the front, finger performing a mini-exhibition of pen twirling.

“Hey,___________, have a good term break?”

“Hey, Donghyuck,” you greet, sliding into your seat. “Pretty good, how was yours?”

Lee Donghyuck, another physics genius with a strangely buddy-buddy relationship with the head of the Natural Sciences Department at school. He and the chair, Choi Jiwoo (who Donghyuck fondly refers to as “Jiwoo-nim”, for some inexplicable reason), are pretty tight, which is probably why Donghyuck landed himself a position as ‘teaching assistant’ in the basic Physics class, where he can tell you what you’re doing wrong and grade your quizzes instead of having to attend whatever boring lecture they had going in AP Physics, which he probably would have aced anyway. You’re not sure if he gets paid, or whatever, but you know it sure beats the hell out of staring at a Powerpoint all day.

You’re also pretty sure they put you in a station close to the teaching assistant’s desk because of that weird chemistry incident last year when Park Gaeun got her eyebrows burned off.  You know they think it had been your fault because you were the one who had screamed and filled a beaker of water to splash onto her face when she was screaming (too) and going around in small circles like a blind chicken.

Except it wasn’t your fault – you don’t even know how it had happened. You had sworn it couldn’t have been you, because…

Well, because you’d had your back turned to Park Gaeun. Because you had been busy staring at Jeno, who was filling his graduated cylinder with hydrogen peroxide, his brow all scrunched up from concentrating. Which, by the way, makes the top 10 cutest things of the year every year.

But it still doesn’t change the fact that Park Gaeun lost her eyebrows and now has to draw them on with a pencil until they grow back, and it doesn’t sway your theory that you had been put in the station next to Lee Donghyuck’s teaching assistant’s desk so that he could keep an eye on you, in case you decided to like, accidentally electrocute someone.

“It was good,” he replies, smiling. “Do anything interesting?”

Well, you had tried to add Lee Jeno on Facebook, if that counts. Not that he’s rejected you; he just hasn’t accepted it.

Maybe today, he will. If not, there’s always tomorrow.

“No, not really. Mostly stayed home and slept,” You shrug, deciding to keep that Facebook thing to yourself. You and Donghyuck aren’t that close to begin with. “You?”

“Graded stuff,” he taps a stack of papers piled neatly upon his desk, and you raise a quizzical eyebrow.

“They let you grade the final exams?”

“Yeah.” He leans in conspiratorially. “Wanna know what you got?”

“No,” You pause, reconsidering. “Yeah. Nah – it’s low, isn’t it?”

“I wasn’t going to tell you either way,” he chuckles. “I’ll leave it as a fantastic surprise.”

“Fantastic,” you echo hollowly, knowing that must mean you had gotten a zero.

“It’s not as low as you might think. Besides, you can more than make up for it this term.”

Before you can ask what was happening this term, the door slams shut, and you spin towards the front of the classroom. Hwang Taehyung, the non-AP Physics teacher, stalks in, looking moodier than ever.

There are three things everyone knows about Hwang Taehyung:

One, he’s bitter because he’s consistently turned down for the AP Physics slot, which is also consistently handed over to newer and seemingly more qualified instructors. The latest AP Physics teacher is a young new graduate, Jung Yoorin, who is an average babe: pretty, fair-skinned, a slightly above-average bust size, with a surprisingly very, very above average IQ. You think the fact that she’s smoking hot kind of makes Hwang Taehyung a lot sulkier.

Two, he has one thing and one thing only in his wardrobe: a grey suit. Day in, day out, grey suit. Going to class? Grey suit. Going to a meeting? Grey suit. Catch him in the mall? Grey suit. Going to a wedding? Probably the grey suit. Maybe with a flower on the lapel, or something, to spice things up a little.

And the third, most important thing about him: He’s always, always in the process of getting a divorce with his wife.

And it’s not like he’s a ladykiller and is trying to get all these hot bitches off his back to protect whatever assets he may have accumulated with his teacher’s salary over the years. No, it’s the same wife, who is as old as he is and about sixty times bitchier, from the way you hear it. Except, you don’t know why he can’t just get rid of her. Or why the divorces never push through. Some people think it’s the really disturbing notion of make-up-break-up with a lot of old people sex involved. You prefer to stick to the theory of there not being an actual wife, and he just files with an imaginary spouse so that he can get continual pay raises for “divorce bills” that don’t exist. It’s not like the school does a really extensive background check, anyway. If you can teach and don’t presently do hashish, you’re pretty much hired.

“Donghyuck, give out the papers, please,” Hwang instructs, tossing down a clipboard onto the desk. Donghyuck jumps up and begins handing back your final exams from last term. “And are you sure you got this list right?”

“Absolutely, sir,” he says, sliding a paper over to you.

Ugh, a B minus. Not your worst, but definitely not your best. Meanwhile, Renjun is probably celebrating another well deserved A-plus in his AP Physics finals from last term.

“Fine, since I’m too lazy to look it over the class list,” Hwang swivels to the board, scrawling some unreadable shit that looked weirdly like Penis Tum Roadjet.

“Your Physics Term Project,” you stifle a laugh that Donghyuck shoots you a look for. “Will require you to work in pairs on a four-month-long investigatory research and experiment that involves any physics concept or breakthrough. And – yes, what is it?”

Park Gaeun, eyebrows half grown in, had raised her hand. “Sir, do we get to pick our partners?” You notice she’s pointedly looking at you, and you turn away, trying to look innocent. Judgy bitch. Maybe you should have roasted her eyebrows off.

“No, Lee Donghyuck over here has already laid out a masterlist.” The statement is met with a disapproving noise. “Now, as I was saying – what is it now?”

Another student, Moon Jonghyun raises his hand as well. “Sir, any physics concept? Say – if it involves the trajectory of a car falling off a cliff as it drives two hundred miles an hour –”

“If you can find a way to simulate that and prove what kind of significance it has to today’s society, I won’t stop you,” Hwang Taehyung says dryly, though his tone suggests that if anyone did manage to simulate a speeding car falling off a cliff again and again for this project, they might as well give themselves an F and be done with it. Moon Jonghyun sobers down, looking sulky. Clearly, he’d cottoned on as well.

“Now, when I read your name off the masterlist, find your partner – I’m assuming you’re all familiar with each other? You should be. You can spend the rest of the period discussing what you want to do. Turn in your short proposals by the end of the week.”

Everyone sits up a bit straighter, listening very hard for their names attached to their partners.

“Jeong Jisoo and Kim Minhyuk. Park Gaeun, Oh Taekyung. Min Taehee, Moon Jonghyun. Lee Jeno, ____________.”

As though in slow motion, you watch his head turn, his eyes searching briefly before they land on you. You feel your mouth go dry, and you see him, as though from a dream, stand up and walk towards your station.

Oh God, oh God, oh God. What are you going to do? Shit, shit, he’s still looking at you. Okay, be cool. Oh God, You’re going to have a heart attack.

As he takes the last few steps towards you, you run a hand through your hair. You think, maybe you should smile. But would that creep him out? But would it make you seem too cold if you didn’t smile? The end result of that debate is a painful, lopsided thing that looked more like a grimace than a grin.

“Hey,” he greets, setting his book down atop the station. He blinks once, very briefly, and it looks like all the lights in his head have gone out before something clicks in his mind. “You’re that girl right? The one in the cafeteria?”

He remembers you, though. You nod, speechless — actually, not trusting yourself to speak.

“How’s your shirt?”

You lick your lips, trying to get them to move again. “Fi-fi-fine?” You say breathlessly.

“Cool,” he blinks once again. “So — uh, I’m Jeno, by the way.”

And then he sticks out his open palm and holds it in midair. You have to hold your wrist to stop your fingers from trembling against his. You briefly grasp his hand, and he holds it for a brief moment before letting it go.

“I’m – I’m __________.”

“___________,” he repeats. “Okay, __________. Know anything about this physics stuff?”

“Well – I – uh,” You push your books back with your elbow, covering your embarrassing B-minus in case he wants to see what you’d gotten. “I’m… I’m cool with it.” Only because Renjun forces you to study with him and sometimes has to shove the new lesson down your throat when you'd rather be on Facebook trying to beat your Everwing high score.

“Oh, well, cool. Because, you know, I gotta be honest with you,” he shrugs. “Physics blows for me. We don’t get along. You know what I mean?”

“Mmm,” you reply, more or less entranced by the very confused, very beautiful look on his face.

“So, uh, will you be okay with taking the reins on this one? Get us a cool grade, and all?”

“Mhmmm,” you answer dreamily, watching the corners of his mouth turn up. He’s so cute.

“Fantastic. You’re a cool kid, ___________. Not sure why I haven’t spoken that much to you before,” he stands up, and you instinctively straighten up to look at him, eyes still following his every movement. He gives you a light pat on the shoulder, and all you can think of is how he’s touched you twice today. “So -– is that it? Are we good here?” He asks. You don’t know where your voice is again, so you just nod in response. “Cool. See you tomorrow.”

He glances at the now-empty teacher’s table — Hwang had left the class alone to plan — and then over at Donghyuck, who’s looking through an unclaimed exam paper of an absentee and probably laughing at all the stuff they got wrong.

“Hey, Lee Donghyuck, I’m going ahead.” Without waiting for a response from the teacher’s assistant, he eases out of the station and exits the room. No one seems to find this the least bit unusual.

“You’re with Jeno; that’s tough,” Donghyuck frowns, putting down the exam paper. You notice that there’s a really large, proud D on it that he must have really taken the time to write out. “He’s not doing well in this class. It looks like he’s going to need at least a B-plus to get him to graduate.”

“We’ll get whatever grade he needs,” you reply, your eyes still on the door as if you’re expecting he’d come back through and take you with him.

“Yeah – so you got a plan, already? You guys planned quickly. Everyone else just sat down.”

“Yeah, we have a plan.”

“So? What are you doing?”

“It’s – well, it’s a secret; I can’t give it all away, can I?” You snap out of your daze long enough to give an answer that isn’t just parroting back whatever you can hear above the noise in the room.

“Okay, okay,” he chuckles. “Keep your secrets then. But it better be good. You know I’m grading fifty percent, right?”

“Well, you better give me that fifty percent, then,” You raise your eyebrows.

“We’ll see,” he laughs, standing up from his spot. He pats you once lightly on the shoulder before leaving to walk around to see what kind of progress everyone else is making. You note that it feels nothing like how Jeno had done it. 

It’s only now that you realize you’ve hit a big snag by making that brash promise to Jeno. You don’t know anything about physics.You chew on your bottom lip, watching everyone draw up ideas left and right for the term project. Some people already have five ideas written down. You have zero. Plus, your partner’s already gone.

You knead your brow in frustration, slightly hating the moony-eyed part of yourself and wondering why you always let it take the reins during important situations. You can’t let Jeno down, but there’s no one you can ask for help here either; this class is a competition now, not collaboration. You think about asking Donghyuck for some tips before remembering that you had already told him you and Jeno had a plan. Besides, whatever question you’d come up with, he’d probably just laugh at hysterically inside; nothing could match his AP Phy–

AP Physics.

And if there were a moment you would choose to thank a God you don’t fully believe in for making Huang Renjun your best friend, it would pretty much be right now.

a lesson on style - ii . [ ljn | njm ]

pt. i, pt. ii, pt. iii, pt. iv.,  pt. v, pt. vi

you’ve always been content with being associated with one word and one word only: average. average in looks, academics and social skills, you’re just looking to graduate high school without causing disasters you’ll have to live with until you kick the bucket. when you’re paired with school king lee jeno for the semester-long physics thesis, you can’t help but think the entire situation has pretty much set itself up for failure. that is, until you strike a deal with your partner. alternatively: an au tale involving lessons in popularity, eleven consecutive B­ minuses, a secretly sensitive, chess­-loving jock, and an amateur sex tape.

pairing: jeno x fem!reader, jaemin x fem!reader verse: high school au { jocks!nomin ft. a super cute whiny ap physics genius renjun } rating: M sexual themes chapter warnings: none word count: 5.2k

author’s note: what if i said i wanted to post all 6 chapters of this already but i also need a ton of time to update so there’s no lag but i’m too excited for this fic so what do i even do with my life ANYWAYS enjoy :) 

                                                         *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

“_________, is that you, honey?”

“Yes, mom, it’s me; I’m home,” you sigh, shutting the door with your foot. You hear the pounding of footsteps, and your mother appears, clutching the railing that prevented her from toppling over from the second landing. She grins widely, and you try not to comment on the fact that there’s still some powdery white stuff peppering the edges of her nose as you ascend the stairs.

You’re well aware that your parents had been the poster children for the hippie age, with their whole liberal, make love not war perspective towards life that they carried on with as they raised you and your siblings. Your mom still believes in all that ouija board, negative energy/positive energy bullshit with the weird healing crystal thing, and you’ve also seen your dad’s flamboyantly colored bell bottom pants with the super manly floral pattern at the ankles. While they are totally loving, totally nurturing parents who want the best for their children, sometimes it’s tricky to tell when they’re snorting it up in their bathroom. Once, you had walked in on them when you were looking for a pair of pantyhose you could borrow from your mom for some business attire thing you needed for school. You politely declined their offer to join them — you know, even if it was supposed to be a parental bonding moment, and stuff.

Other than that, though, they’re great. You guess.

“How was school, honey?” She coos, as though you’re five and not graduating from high school in the next few months.

“Oh, it was okay,” you walk into your room, and she follows you in as you pull Jaemin’s jacket off your back. “We’re having a Physics Term Project, mom, and you’ll never guess who my partner is — ”

“Baby, what happened to your shirt?” She interrupts you.

“What? Oh, that–” You try (see: fail) to glance at your back. “Yeah, it was just an accident, I’ll put it in the wash.”

“Oh, no need; let me,” without further ado, she approaches you and, with a tremendous tug, yanks your shirt up your torso and over your head.

“Mom!” You cry as she struggles momentarily with your shocked, writhing body.

“Hold still – ah. Here we go.” She looks triumphant as she detaches you from your clothes.

“Could you warn me next time?” You wrap your arms around your body, wrinkling your nose. She rolls her eyes.

“_________, I am your mother. I’ve seen you naked ten million times. I even birthed you from my womb, and you were naked then.” She ignores the affronted look that crosses your face. “Now, what were you saying about this physical project?”

“Physics,” You correct her. “Anyway, we got partnered up today, and guess who my partner is.”

“Ooooh, guessing games. I love guessing games. Did you know your father and I were planning to host a murder mystery party for our last anniversary? Okay,” she taps her lips with her finger. “Renjun?”

“No, he’s not even in my class.”

“Oh, that Chenle boy you went to junior prom with?”

“No,” You say, swallowing down the embarrassment that threatens to rise in your throat.

“Shame, I liked him.”

“Yeah, well he’s dating another one of your daughters now, so don’t feel too bad.”

“Huh. Oh, that really good looking boy who plays football next door? The one with the nice smile,” she says, and you cringe. She means Jaemin. Na Jaemin, your neighbor, who you’re pretty sure your mom has a mild crush on. Which is super duper weird.

“Ew, mom, don’t say stuff like that.”

“Well, he is cute! So is it him?”

“No, it’s not him. Close, though, they’re friends.”

“Okay, I give up. Tell me!”

“You give up so easily. Reconsider that murder mystery thing.” You pause, out of hesitation or perhaps for dramatic effect. “Lee Jeno.”

Her eyes widen in surprise. “Isn’t that the boy you’ve been stalking all year?”

“I haven’t been stalking him!” You defend yourself, before muttering an addendum. “And it hasn’t been just a year.”

“Is he the one with the small eyes who’s always in the boy next door’s house?”

“Yea – how do you know that?”

“I have a window and eyes, honey, it’s really not that hard to notice.”

“Oh, well, yeah. That’s him.” How much time does your mom take ogling at Na Jaemin? Is there something going on that you need to know about? You’re fairly certain you weren’t up for anything happening like they do in those suburban TV shows from America – you know, where your classmate suddenly becomes your stepfather, and you have to call him “dad” in the hallway, and all the kids make fun of you and you become a social pariah, etc.

“He’s also good-looking, isn’t he? That Jaemin boy?”

“Yes,” you reply to cut the conversation short. “Mom, do you know how weird it is when you think one of my schoolmates is good looking?”

“I’m just commenting on them for you, honey. Your father is all the good-looking I need.”

“Uh huh,” you pick up Jaemin’s jacket, passing it to your mom. “Do you think that’d be done by tomorrow?”

“Which, the jacket?” She turns it over, examining the lettering at the back with an amused face. “Yes, I’ll have it dried by tonight. Why do you have the boy next door’s jacket?”

“Let’s just not relive the moment,” you suggest, and your mother shrugs.

“All right, fine.” She proceeds to exit your room, but not before calling out, “Just remember, I’ll end up assuming my own things!”

Ew. You hope she doesn’t go around assuming anything malicious, like that you’d snagged Na Jaemin’s letter jacket from him after you’d banged in the supply closet at school just before the janitor came in.

You sit down on your bed, taking your phone out from its dock. Deciding Renjun would be home from school by now, you punch in his number, humming a tune to the ringing. The fifth ring is cut short by a click and an out of breath male voice.

“Hello?”

“Renjun, you’ll never guess what happened today, all right, fine, I’ll tell you, I’ve been partnered up with Jeno in my Physics term project and oh my god, right, I can’t believe it either, anyway, I need your help, I told him I’d figure something out for our proposal and it’s due tomorrow but I haven’t got a clue what to do but I really need to impress him with something that’ll get us and A-plus for sure, so do you have anything that you could maybe sort of suggest for us to do?”

A pause blossoms.

“__________, this is you, right?” Renjun sounds miffed.

“Yes.”

“Jesus Chr— I’ve just gotten home, and I need to pee.”

“All right, fine, but hurry up,” you say impatiently, listening to the phone clatter down on a surface. Five minutes later brings a slightly less crabby Renjun back on the phone.

“Okay, kindly repeat, with more punctuation marks, your hopeless Lee Jeno delusion.”

“It isn’t a delusion,” you argue. “It’s for real, we’ve been partnered up for Physics and it’s great, but I don’t know what to do the project on.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“Help!” You frown at his unwillingness to cooperate.

“Help how?”

“Help me think of something for the project!”

“You mean, do the work for you,” Renjun snaps.

“Never mind, thanks for the support,” you say tartly, preparing to hang up.

“Hey, ___________, it’s not that I don’t want to help you, but you’ll just spend all your time mooning over Lee Jeno and fall into a black hole with the project, so I’ll have to save the day and do everything the night before you pass it just so that you won’t fail.”

“So you don’t want to help me,” you challenge.

“I want to help you; I don’t want to help him,” he clarifies, like this makes everything better. “I’d gladly cross an ocean of burning coal for you, but I refuse to help that Jeno guy get an A he doesn’t deserve.”

“It’s a group grade, I deserve it!” You say defensively.

“If you’d stop swooning over him for like one semester you could get straight A’s, you’re totally capable of it.”

“Please,” you snort. “The only straight A’s I’ve ever had are sitting on my chest, and I’m not proud of it.”

He lets out a heavy sigh that the phone mixes with static.

“So? Will you help me?”

“Yes, fine, but I expect a lot of verbal worship for this,” he sounds resigned, and you bite back a huge smile.

“Great, can you come over?”

You hear him groan softly. “All right, all right. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. You could start researching.”

“You know I won’t.”

“Oh my go—”is the last thing he says before the line goes dead. Feeling accomplished, you put the phone back in place and slipped out of the room, strolling casually down the stairs. You enter the kitchen with full plans to raid the fridge for a snack (and, you know, maybe something for Renjun), only to find your sister seated at the table.

“Oh, _________, you’re off the phone, good.” She stands up and crosses to the kitchen phone. You can’t help but notice that the nape of her neck is speckled with little silver dots.

“Sooyeon, why do you have glitter all over yourself?”

“Oh,” she glances down at her body briefly. “The new cheerleading outfits are super sparkly, we tried them on today for flexibility issues.”

“Are you sure it’s not going to blind everyone in the stadium?”

“Yeah, they’re taking out the ones on the skirt, so it’ll just be on the top. But they look fabulous. Don’t you think so, baby?” She’s addressing the boy she’d left seated at our dining table, and you turn to him, watching him go slightly pink in the face.

“Um – yeah, of course.”

You went to junior prom with Zhong Chenle last year, after your parents had met his parents, new to town at the time, at their one-week attempt to “participate actively in religious activities”, and while that night was certainly a night to remember, it wasn’t exactly one you’d tell your grandchildren about with a sweetly nostalgic tone in your voice. You’d plucked up the courage to talk to Lee Jeno that night, especially since that was the only time you thought you’d get to look actually good in school, and for some strange reason you’d deluded yourself into fantasizing that he’d fall madly in love with you, sweep you off your feet and ask you to elope with him on some obscure island in Micronesia.

Of course, you’ve matured since then, but seeing him with Lee Gyuwon wrapped around his lean body just as you’d approached him kind of made you snap that time. In your fury and embarrassment (more of the latter), you walked the entire way home barefoot, presently forgetting about poor Chenle, who’d panicked, thinking you’d been tricked into having undignified sexual encounters with someone behind a bush.

Seriously. He’d checked all the greenery.

Of course, you’d talked to him the following day, and it was a painfully embarrassing experience for both of you (especially when he got to the part when he thought you’d lost your virginity behind a plant in the school greenhouse), but, luckily, Sooyeon had just been leaving the house for cheerleading practice and spotted him.

Long story short, you get to have mega awkward encounters with him almost everyday now, and your younger sister always stands there in witness.

Though, truth be told, if Lee Jeno didn’t exist in the world, Zhong Chenle wouldn’t be a bad choice, or something. He’s smart, in the same AP Physics class as Renjun (apparently, everyone’s in AP Physics but you), and he’s all gentlemanly and stuff, considering his parents are like pastors or saints or something super religious. Sooyeon adores him, and, thanks to the bubbly attitude that comes with being a resident high kicker at every football game our school participated, seems to make him much happier than you could ever. Alternatively, he makes up for whatever C’s she gets on her Chemistry tests. For some people, it really does work out.

“Why’d you need the phone?” You ask, turning away from the still-blushing Chenle to look into the fridge. You take out a donut from the half-emptied box.

“We’re ordering pizza; Chenle’s staying over for dinner.”

“Oh, okay.”

She puts the phone up to her ear before turning back to you, her eyes sparkling.

“_________, have you talked to Jisoo lately?”

“No,” you reply, mouth half-full of donut. “He’s always shut up in his room these days. I expect he’ll come out with a nuclear reactor soon.”

Sooyeon shakes her head, still smiling. “You haven’t been listening closely, have you?”

“Of course not. If there are noises coming from there, I really don’t want to be a part of the audience.”

“Oh you – hang on. Yes, I’d like to order a large pepperoni pizza, please, and…” she cuts herself off, now addressing the phone.

You and Chenle wait patiently for her to finish ordering, trying to avoid staring too long at each other. You both do your best to engage in a bit of conversation here and there, things like “So how’s school?” and “Fine,” but it’s clear no interesting things are going to be bouncing off the walls of the kitchen today.

When Sooyeon chirps the last “thank you!” and hangs up, you turn back to her, and she slides down into the chair she’d previously occupied.

“Aren’t you going to sit down?”

“Well I – yeah, okay,” you concede, wondering briefly if you should wait near the door for Renjun, who’s always impatient, before settling yourself down into the seat beside her.

“So, anyway, Jisoo’s taken to locking himself up in his room recently, and I noticed he’s also been tying up the phone sometimes late at night, which never happens —“

“So, he’s really ordering parts for a nuclear reactor?”

“And he’s taken to reading the magazines I accidentally leave in the bathroom; I saw him sneaking off with one and taking it into his room—“

“So he’s gay?” All the magazines you’d ever seen your sister own involved weird tips on how to make your boobs look two sizes bigger (something you probably should have perused at one point) and how to make men orgasm more than once (something you don’t for some reason, feel very ready for). You’re not sure if you’re surprised at the thought that Jisoo could be gay. On the one hand, no one in the house would bat an eyelash, but on the other hand, he also seems more likely to build a robot boyfriend than go out and get one.

“No,” A peal of laughter escapes your younger sister’s lips. “I’ve noticed he’s not eating much either, and he’s been asking me all these really odd questions about girls…”

“Oh.” Something began to dawn in the back of your mind. “Oh. You mean, there’s a… thing. A tiny one. With… yeah?”

“A girl, yes. I think.” Sooyeon grinned. “Isn’t it cute? Jisoo finally has a crush on someone!”

“I don’t really know if the word is cute…”

At that precise moment, Jisoo, with his eleven-year-old lanky figure and large glasses, walks in, holding an empty glass. Wordlessly, he walks to the sink, and begins to rinse the glassware. After a minute of silence, he speaks, his back still turned to all of you.

“Why are you all staring at the back of my head?”

The three of you turn away, unsure of why you’re embarrassed but definitely feeling like you should be.

“Sorry,” you reply sheepishly – well, you and Chenle do, while Sooyeon leans back forward to address Jisoo. “Hey, Jisoo.”

“Huh?” He mutters distractedly.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, never better, why?”

“Nothing, you’ve just been acting a bit odd these days,” she remarks before adding, “Oh, but not in a bad way, just in… an odd way.”

You want to do something, like kick her under the table, but your legs are too short, and you’re frankly afraid of what Chenle will do to you if he sees you roughing up his precious girlfriend. You content yourself to fuming at her and trying to catch her attention with ugly faces. Neither of these methods work.

“No, I’m fine,” Jisoo replies slowly.

“You sure? You know you can tell us anything.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, you know – things about school, friends, your dreams, hopes… girls… That sort of thing.”

You see the unmistakable red begin to creep around the base of the back of his neck. It’s a nasty family thing — the bright scarlet that makes you all look like you’re about to implode when you’re embarrassed or angry. He clears his throat. “Yes, yes, thank you, Sooyeon —“

“I mean, especially about girls.”

“Yes, I got it the first time around.” With finality, Jisoo puts the glass back in the cupboard and, without so much as a glance towards you, hurries out of the kitchen and back upstairs. You hear the door open and, for a brief moment, the music inside your brothers’ room grows louder until it’s once again muffled by the door closing shut. Metal. Ugh, that dumb, senseless noise.

“What about Jiho?” You think of your youngest brother, who’s the source of half the noise pollution that comes from this house.

“What about him?”

“I mean, has he got – I don’t know. A girl… thing?”

“Oh. Jiho? No. I’m pretty sure he’d sell his soul to a devil warlock or something before he went near anything with lady parts. Although,” she adds as an afterthought. “I have noticed he seems rather shifty whenever I walk in and he’s on the computer…”

The kitchen falls into a very, very heavy state of awkward silence. In that time, your mind forces you to envision your thirteen-year-old brother, in his goth-emo-punk-metal-almost-satanic phase, sitting in front of a monitor, trying very hard to conceal the fact that he’d just been perusing a 30-minute 480-px video equivalent of the kama sutra.

The doorbell rings just as you make a horrified face, and you get up, relieved to be able to leave this highly elevated state of discomfort. “That’s probably Renjun, bye,” you announce weakly, standing up and inching away from the kitchen.

“Is Renjun staying for dinner?”

“I don’t know; I’ll ask.” You hurry to the door and open it to reveal a somewhat out of breath Huang Renjun. You eye him and his body-wide sheen of sweat suspiciously.

“What happened to you? You look like you’ve just come from a jog across the border.”

“Excuse me for being late, your highness. You’d have trouble catching your breath too if you lugged this bag along,” with that, he slings off the strap of his backpack and flings the thing unceremoniously onto the ground. Wincing, he massages his shoulder.

“What,” you demand, eying his bag. “Is in there?”

“Well, everything we could – and probably will – need,” he kicks it inside, and you move to let him in. As you shut the door, you find Renjun staring at you with an odd expression across his face. You snap your fingers in front of his eyes, and he shakes himself out of the trance.

“Oh, sorry,” he blinks owlishly. “You look terrible.”

“Says the guy who’s wheezing like an old bat.”

“No, you look all… pale and sick. What did Lee Jeno do, drain your life source?” He chuckles at his own remark; you, on the contrast, don’t find it particularly amusing. “Did you just come from staring out the window into Jaemin’s house again? I saw his car parked in front of the driveway.” You resist perking up at this new information, choosing to morph your face into a sour, haughty look that Renjun doesn’t really buy.

“Ha ha.”

“No, really, _________, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” you slump down onto the couch, trying to drag Renjun’s backpack of books across the floor. You’re too much of a weakling, so it’s not working out too well.

“You look bothered.”

“I am not bothered.”

“Did Lee Jeno steal your soul?”

“No -– I’m sorry, quantum physics?” you demand, pulling out a book after glimpsing the title from the mouth of the bag, the zipper having given way as you’d tried to fruitlessly yank at the bag.

“Be prepared for everything — you know what they say.”

“You really think I’m going to end up doing a project about… I don’t know, string theory?”

“That’d be a fun challenge,” he tries.

“Not even the smart people have proven it; do you expect me to?”

“You and your beloved Lee Jeno could.” He pauses, as if he’s just said the punch line of a joke, but you don’t laugh, and he decides not to either. “Alright, fine — no string theory, then.” Renjun takes the book from your grasp and tosses it onto the floor. “What do you want to do?”

“If I knew, you wouldn’t be here.”

He rolls his eyes but says nothing, choosing to pull out his books from his all-but-split bag. You lean back onto the couch and cross your arms.

“Sooyeon told me weird things today.”

“What? Has someone on the cheerleading team got crabs again?” He asks distractedly, leafing through a few pages.

“No, it’s about my brothers.”

“Oh, scary and scarier?” You grunt in confirmation, choosing not to comment on a terrible but slightly true set of nicknames. “What about them?”

“Jisoo might be building a nuclear reactor —”

“Really.”

“Or might be into a girl.”

“Omo.”

“And Jiho might be sacrificing his soul to the underworld—”

“Right.”

“Or he might be watching porn.”

“Well, your life certainly never lacks color, does it?” Renjun laughs. “Though some of those assumptions are a bit alarming.”

“Oh, no, it’s perfectly normal to want to put up your soul for sale,” you reply sarcastically.

“It’s all just phase stuff,” Renjun shrugs. “At least they’re not having sausage fights in their shared bedroom.” This is, perhaps, the most uncomfortable and agonizing pause you’ve experienced all day. Even Renjun has to shift in discomfort at his own words.

“Well, with that super nice suggestion, shall we move on then?” You prompt.

“Yes, please.”

                                                         *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Two hours and twenty-five minutes later finds you on your laptop, scrolling through your news feed on Facebook, while Renjun, ever the responsible best friend/tutor, tries to pull you away from it.

“__________,” he snaps. “Focus. This is your project.”

“I am listening!”

“All right, what did I say last?”

“Something about the water thing with a funny name that starts with M.”

“The Mpemba Effect,” he says tartly. “and I said that like an hour ago.”

“But that was nice, why can’t we do that one? I love water? Oh, that’s funny,” you chuckle, clicking the like button on one of those stupid cat meme posts.

“______________.”

“Look, Renjun, it’s a cat praising Jesus in a kitchen, you can’t tell me that’s not funny— ” you try showing him the picture, but it doesn’t seem to lighten his mood.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake — give me that—”

“No wait, I wasn’t done reading Lee Gyuwon’s super annoying status update—”

“_________, focus on your physics thing— ” His voice begins to rise dangerously.

“I am focusing,” you retort. “I’ve just been taking a break—”

“For two hours,” he snaps. “Not counting your five minute bathroom break!”

“A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do; that’s nature—”

“Fine! I give up!” He throws his hands up into the air, stuffing at least three books in one go back into his backpack.

“Renjun!” you whine as he gets up and begins to put on his jacket. “Renjun, come on, don’t be like that! I’m sorry—”

“__________, you asked me to come here and help you, and you’ve left me to do all the work once again and I cannot believe I wasted another two hours of my life being under appreciated again— ”

“I do appreciate you!” you cry. “I appreciate you so much!”

“Clearly not as much as a religious cat in a fucking kitchen!”

“You know I’m a stupid kid! Anyways, if you had a like button on you, I’d click it a million times!”

He pauses in the act of buttoning and eyes you warily, as though waiting for you to continue groveling – which, of course, he is.

“Come on, you know I think you’re much cuter and funnier than a cat.”

“It isn’t about the cat.”

“Then what’s it about? Look, I’m sorry, okay, it’s just —- physics really isn’t my thing, you know that, I can’t even pay attention in class.” You frown.

“It’s… ___________, come on, it’s not even about that. It’s like I’m not even here; you don’t -– are you even listening to me?”

“Wait, shh,” you raise a palm up, distracted. Your eyes are fixed on the screen, slowly widening in shock. Two notification bumpers had appeared in the bottom-left hand corner of your monitor while you had been trying to defend yourself.

“_______, I was just talking to you. This is exactly what I mean —“

“Renjun, look, look,” you beg.

“Oh, what is it now? If it’s another stupid obese cat with a burger, I’m going to strangle myself.”

“No, look,” You point at your screen, your voice growing hushed. A groan escapes his lips, but, after a moment of hesitant sulking, his curiosity gets the better of him, and he leans down to see what you’d been staring at. Following your finger, the expression on his face changes from confusion to irritation to defeat. He breathes out an immensely heavy sigh of exasperation.

Lee Jeno has accepted your friend request. Write on Lee Jeno’ timeline.

Na Jaemin has sent you a friend request.

“Jeno added me as a friend,” you whisper, as if the notification doesn’t make the fact clear enough.

“Uh huh. So did Jaemin.”

“Lee Jeno,” your voice is rising uncontrollably now. “Wants to be my friend.”

“Why are you acting like this is such a big deal?”

“Jeno added me on Facebook,” you near-scream at Renjun, even though his face is like five inches away from yours and he has to lean back to avoid the one grain of spit that leaps off your bottom lip.

“Facebook isn’t even real friendship! If Jeno were your friend, he’d be here helping you with your group project instead of me. I am the real friend here.”

“You don’t understand. I’ve been trying to add him for months. He’s finally added me back.”

“And that makes you feel good?”

“I feel like I could do anything now,” you laugh, giddy. Renjun isn’t sharing in your enthusiasm, though; he looks pretty sour, and his fingers rise up to his chest to continue buttoning his jacket.

“Well, I’m happy for you,” he mutters, and you ignore the fact that he doesn’t sound happy at all. “Why don’t you just text me when you need me again, like you always do?”

“Huh?” You look up distractedly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ve been helping you for hours, and you’re paying more attention to a stupid friend request than me. You keep ignoring me for Jeno.”

You glance between him and the screen, confused. “I’m not trying to ignore you. I’m just… excited. I’m just happy. I really like him. I feel like this could be my one shot. Is acting this way so wrong? You know I’ve wanted to be friends with him forever. Maybe something more.”

You and Renjun stare at each other for what feels like hours; his Adam’s apple is quivering, like he wants to say something else but is just swallowing it. His cheeks are flushed, and his bottom lip is jutted out, but you have no clue why he can’t just be happy for you.

“Renjun —”

“No, you’re right,” he cuts you off, and his voice is weird now; kind of forced and thick, like he’s been eating too many lemons. “I’m sorry. I know how much this means to you. I know how much you like him.”

“You’re mad. I’m sorry if I wasn’t paying attention earlier. Really. The cats aren’t as important as you. I just get so bored of schoolwork easily. It doesn’t have anything to do with me not appreciating you.”

“I’m not mad about the cats, ________, I’m —”  He raises his hands, like he wants to punch the wall, but it’s not his house, and your mom could come down from all the yelling, so he just forces them down along with whatever he had been planning to say. “I’m not mad. I’m not mad, okay? But I really have to go now.”

“You’re not staying for dinner? Sooyeon ordered pizza. Pepperoni.”

“I do like pepperoni,” he mumbles, wavering. “But I… think my mom wants me home for dinner.”

“Oh. Okay,” you chew on your lip, unsure of what else to say; luckily, Renjun is bustling around, gathering his books and ripping out papers from the pad he’d been writing on while you’d been reading Lee Gyuwon’s status. He hands two sheets to you.

“Here. There’s a list on it that you can use. Research them first so you can see if you can do it. You can message me if stuff isn’t clear to you, but at least try using Google first.”

“I will,” you promise, standing up as he walks towards the door, letting the night breeze carry in as he opens it and checks his pockets for his valuables.”Um, Renjun?”

“Hm?”

“I’ll call you later, okay?”

He pauses for a second, letting out a sigh that escapes through the open door. You’re worried for a second that he’s going to make up a blatant excuse not to talk to you, but he nods slowly.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll text you when I get home.”

A feeling of relief spreads over you, and you wave him goodbye, telling him to be safe walking back.

When you run back to your laptop, you see that there’s a new message waiting for you. Virtually no one but Renjun and your aunt in Beijing messages you on Facebook, so you’re surprised to see it’s a new name. That surprise washes out quickly, however, because the excitement at the idea that it could be Jeno is quickly overridden by the actual reality that it’s from Jaemin.

Na Jaemin: i didn’t know we weren’t friends on here yet.

Na Jaemin: sorry again for what happened in the cafeteria. ㅠㅠ

You: it’s fine!

You: i’ll have your jacket back clean tmr

Na Jaemin: don’t worry about it!

Na Jaemin: i don’t need it any time soon

Na Jaemin: you can keep it if you need it ^^

You: I have my own jackets

You: it’s fien i’ll give it back

You: *fine

You missed a call from Jaemin.

Na Jaemin: sjdg

Na Jaemin: sry

Na Jaemin: Jeon is

Na Jaemin: Jeno is asking about the project ?

You: is he there with you?

You: please tell him i started working on it already ^^

Na Jaemin: he’s here

Na Jaemin: he

Na Jaemin: he’s adding you on fb he says

You: yes i saw!!

Na Jaemin: ajarf

Na Jaemin: sorry jneo is playing with my dog and the laptop

Na Jaemin: keeps getting hit

You: it’s fine!!!

Na Jaemin: he says okay abt teh project

Na Jaemin: he

Na Jaemin: he says nice profile picture

a lesson on style - iii . [ ljn | njm ]

pt. i, pt. ii, pt. iii, pt. iv.,  pt. v, pt. vi

you’ve always been content with being associated with one word and one word only: average. average in looks, academics and social skills, you’re just looking to graduate high school without causing disasters you’ll have to live with until you kick the bucket. when you’re paired with school king lee jeno for the semester-long physics thesis, you can’t help but think the entire situation has pretty much set itself up for failure. that is, until you strike a deal with your partner. alternatively: an au tale involving lessons in popularity, eleven consecutive B­ minuses, a secretly sensitive, chess­-loving jock, and an amateur sex tape.

pairing: jeno x fem!reader, jaemin x fem!reader verse: high school au { jocks!nomin ft. a super cute whiny ap physics genius renjun } rating: M for sexual themes chapter warnings: none word count: 5.6k

author’s note: because like two people have said they want chapter 3 i, a textbook people pleaser, have arrived :^) 

                                                         *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Your Facebook boasts a picture of you in Jeju-do last summer.

You actually haven’t changed it since then because you don’t think that a profile picture is worth anything, but apparently, Lee freaking Jeno really likes that shot of you standing by the shoreline in your I ❤️ JEJU t-shirt and your knee-length cut-offs, a disturbingly huge orange starfish in hand. He likes it so much that he’s not only looked at it, but he’s also asked his friend to tell you he has, which is just about the most flattering thing you could do with regard to someone’s profile picture without actually being the one to personally do anything about it.

In conclusion, the butterflies in your stomach aren’t just going crazy; they’re screaming their tiny lungs out.

Your first reaction is to call Renjun and tell him, but he’s only on his way home now, and, somehow, you don’t really know if he’s in the right mood to talk to you about Jeno (or, rather, to listen to you talk about him). You’ve also been staring way too long at your laptop screen without doing anything substantial, so much so that Jaemin is back on his keyboard, according to the three little dots that appear in the chat box again.

Na Jaemin: did I scare u off

You: no no omg I was just

You: taking notes

Na Jaemin: for wht?

Na Jaemin: by teh wa y is Zhong Cjelne at your house?

Na Jaemin: *Cehnel

Na Jaemin: *CHENLE

You: yes! why

You: do you need me to call him

Na Jaemin: no but can you pas s a messge

Na Jaemin: can u tell him isf]

Na Jaemin: jesus fuck ing crihtst

You: I don’t know how to pronounce that

Na Jaemin: sorry can u just tell him he needs to get his LT back from me

Na Jaemin: he didn’t make it to class 2day

You: sure!

You: by the way, can you tell Jeno thank you?

Na Jaemin: oh yeah sure

Na Jaemin: he says for what

You: for the profile pic thing

Na Jaemin: oh

Na Jaemin: ur welcome lol

Na Jaemin: for the record I think that’s a pretty cool starfish

You: thanks!

Na Jaemin: oh brbb dinner i see the baemin guy

Na Jaemin: nvm I think that must be your pizza then

Na Jaemin: enjoy!

It’s strange that you have to be constantly reminded that Jaemin only needs to look out his bedroom window to see what’s happening in front of your house, but you don’t really take the time to dwell on this when the doorbell rings and you have to get off your ass to answer it. Once you’ve paid for the food and shut the door, you call out to the rest of your family; you can hear doors opening and closing mixing in with the low thrum of groggy voices. Sooyeon and Chenle, however, have hardly left the kitchen aside from very briefly taking a walk down the block in the middle of your supposed brainstorming session with Renjun, and you find them in almost the exact same way you had left them, only their faces are morphed into these strange expressions that unnervingly remind you of how you sometimes look when you catch your reflection in the mirror as you daydream about Jeno. Except, well, they’re sharing a mutual look, in comparison to you just… fantasizing. You feel kind of intrusive, and Chenle’s smile suddenly shifting from adoring to abashed may have really set the awkward mood, but your sister remains supremely unperturbed, a quality you kind of wish you always had. She looks up at you with the same bright look she’s just shared with Chenle, which isn’t exactly the most comforting thing at present.

Or, maybe, she might just be beaming brightly at the pizza in your hands.

“Oooh, smells great,” she pipes up in a manner that suggests you’ve just slid it out of the oven instead of just dishing out 30,000 won for it. “I’ll get the paper plates.” You share another moment of silence with Chenle, who’s resorted to scratching the back of his neck weakly to alleviate any internal tension he might be feeling, until you remember you’re supposed to play virtual mailman.

“Oh, um — Jaemin says, er —“ you’re momentarily derailed when his wide eyes fix on you. “Jaemin says you need to get your long test back from him.”

“Na Jaemin?” He sounds slightly incredulous. “I didn’t know you guys knew each other.”

“Yeah. He lives next door.”

“I know that. But I didn’t know you were friends.”

“Oh — we’re not.” It’s your turn to scratch the back of your neck. “He just messaged me, I guess to tell you that.”

He hums in thought. “Okay. Thanks for passing the message. I’ll pass by his house before I leave.”

“Okay.” You know it’s not really any of your business, and you’re not dying to know the answer either, but you press on anyway. “Why does he have your LT though? I didn’t know you two were close either.”

“We’re not that close.” Something like a smile passes his face, so briefly that you may have imagined it. His eyes start traveling around again, watching your sister set out plates for everyone as the rest of your family trickles in. “He’s the TA for the class.”

“He’s the huh?”

“The TA — teaching assistant? For the AP Physics class. Didn’t Renjun tell you that? I’m sure he would have mentioned it. He’s been grading our tests for half the year.”

“No, he didn’t,” you can’t take out the surprise in your voice despite the intense desire to. “I didn’t know he was… like…”

“The TA?”

“No, I just… I didn’t know he was smart smart.”

Chenle has laughed in front of you, but you don’t think he’s ever laughed because of you. This feels like a momentous occasion only marred by the fact that your youngest brother is lifting his shirt up gracelessly to rub at his stomach as he yawns. Even still, you feel a little foolish. Not that you’ve ever asked Renjun about it — you’ve sort of felt like AP physics was a world not easily understandable and, thus, a world that you had no interest in actually attempting to understand. More than that, you’ve somehow felt like people on varsity don’t really care that much about academics; you’d always just chalked up not seeing Jaemin in your class as him being in another section of regular physics.

“Jaemin’s popular with the teachers. He’s been in every AP class I’ve been in. His older brother was kind of the same, so he probably has a lot to live up to. So far, he doesn’t seem to be letting anyone down.”

“Yeah…” you have no clue what to contribute to this conversation; you feel like you’re processing so many things the wrong way and in much too slow a pace, so you decide to just let go any desire you have to respond to Chenle and just sit down across him, still a little dumbstruck.

Dinner is uneventful because everyone apart from your sister and your mother look tired, and you feel like the last twelve hours have already taken their toll on your mental capabilities. They’re the only two people talking animatedly; Chenle doesn’t count because he doesn’t converse as much as he does make noises of affirmation when Sooyeon asks for it. You assume that you’re going to be able to go up and maybe actually think about your physics project (with intermittent fantasies about Jeno) in peace, and you almost do. Almost.

“By the way, _____________,” your mom’s mentioning your name brings you out of your stupor. “I have an early day tomorrow, so do you just want me to be the one to return that jacket you had me wash?”

“What?” You say, pretty stupidly.

“I can just pop on over next door and give the jacket back before I leave for work —“

“No,” you cut her off, alarm rising in your voice. “That’s fine; I’ll give it back myself.”

“Are you sure? You sometimes forget to —“

“Mom,” you beg, as your brothers and father, one by one, start falling back down to earth as well and blearily looking up from their pizzas to focus on you. “Please. Just let me handle it. I won’t forget.“

“Okay,” she shrugs, her tone enigmatically sing-song. “I’m just offering.”

“Wait, are you talking about Na Jaemin?” Sooyeon finally cottons on, which had been the uncomfortable start to a situation you were desperately trying to avoid. “He gave you his jacket?”

“He lent it to me.”

“Football players only give their jackets away to girls when they’re dating,” your sister's eyes are shining so terrifyingly, and your dad has actually straightened up his posture to look at you. Even your younger brothers look somehow interested in this development, probably because they can’t remember a time in their short lives where you’d actually had any dating news to share. “Are you dating Na Jaemin?”

For some reason, it’s Chenle’s face that makes you the most uncomfortable; he looks… amused, which isn’t bothersome, but it’s indicative of the questions he must be asking himself, like how could you have not known he was the TA to the AP Physics class when you were sucking face? You put down the crust of your pizza onto your paper plate, the bread having turned to cardboard in your mouth when this horrible conversation had launched.

“I’m not dating him. I’m not dating anyone. And if I did, it wouldn’t be him.”

“Why not? You don’t have to hide anything from us. Jaemin-sunbae is great. Did you actually know my cheerleading coach wanted him on the team because he’s so flexible?”

Jiho makes a gagging noise over her last few words that signals a bite of pizza had gone down the wrong pipe, but everyone ignores him.

“That… is totally not relevant. And a little weird for me to know. Anyway, he spilled coke on me this afternoon and just gave me the jacket to cover up the stain for the rest of the day. It’s no big deal.”

“Oh,” Sooyeon sounds disappointed, but it’s a mystery to you why she would. “That sucks. It would have been pretty cool if we could all go on like, double dates and stuff. And you could finally get dragged to a school football game without me having to do all the heavy lifting in trying to convince you.”

“Pass and super pass.” You fold your paper plate around your crust, standing up and tossing it into the garbage bag your sister had laid out for easy clean up. “I’m going up. I need to figure out the proposal for my term project.”

“I’ll lay out the jacket for you so you don’t forget it,” your mom brings up the same damn topic again, and you just choose to turn a deaf ear to it.

“I can give it to him,” your sister offers. “We practice on the same field.”

“Everyone, please,” you’re the only one standing up, which makes you feel even more like you’re giving a sermon. “Please just stay away from Na Jaemin’s jacket.”

“You don’t have to be possessive of it.”

“Will you shut up?” your sister desists when you emphasize the threatening undertone of your words, but she’s still smiling widely even when you leave the table, and she’s already poised to lean forward to talk to your mom, who looks equally as suspicious and nosy. Birds of a feather.

You make a beeline for the stairs and away from the dinnertime chatter, taking two steps at a time to your room, and your door swings open just in time for you to hear the message notification noise from your laptop, still open and running on 3% on your bed. After saving it from certain death, you lay down stomach-flat in front of it, surprised to see that a new set of messages have invaded your account.

Huang Renjun: home. See you tomorrow

Na Jaemin: also wait is it just me or was Chenle your date to junior prom last year

Na Jaemin: I swear I remember him asking me if I had seen you go into an empty classroom with someone else 

You ignore both open windows, minimizing Renjun’s and closing Jaemin’s entirely, all because a new window, blinking between white and blue, has caught your eye. 

Lee Jeno: hey 

Heat climbs up to your cheeks at an alarming rate, and you can see from the weak reflection of your face on your laptop screen that you’re grinning. Your fingers hover over the keyboard for an intense minute of you thinking about what to reply, and you type out various possible responses ranging from “how’s it going?” to just a single wink emoji, but your brain at least takes control at the last second and lets you type back a similarly casual “hey.” 

Less than two minutes pass, and the three telltale dots appear right next to the minimized version of Jeno’s profile picture. Your breathing catches at the sight of this, and you devour the words that appear in the consequent chat bubble. 

Lee Jeno: how’s the project coming along? 

You: it’s going great!

You: I have some ideas if you feel like discussing them a little 

Lee Jeno: I wouldn’t really know what to discuss

Lee Jeno: anything on that list of ideas that’s going to give me a sure pass in this subject lol 

Okay, so you don’t have ideas. That’s what Renjun was supposed to be here for, but you hadn’t gotten anything done. So far, you had that water thing with the weird name and zilch. 

You: um I guess it kind of depends on what you’re interested in! 

Lee Jeno: physics isn’t my strong suit so I’m letting u take the lead here 

You: okay, how about the Mpemba effect? 

Lee Jeno: which is? 

You:  something to do with water?

Lee Jeno: oh, cool, like swimming? 

You’re shot of ideas already. You don’t even know what it is, and you’re pitching it to meet Jeno’s pretty high expectations, which is just depressing. Quickly reopening your chat with Renjun, you send a panicked message. 

You: RenjNun HELP 

Huang Renjun:  ????

You: Jeno’s asking me for the topic for the term paper and I’ve got NOTHING

You: can you please re-explain the Mpemba effect and how I’m supposed to turn that into a good term project

Read 8:48 PM 

You see the little green dot disappear from beside Renjun’s name, and your heart plummets. Maybe he’s just having dinner really suddenly. Like, life or death, have-to-eat kind of situation. It would make sense, and it’s a lot less painful as an alternative to what could actually be the reason behind him suddenly ghosting on you. 

You: you know what, how about we just talk about the topic tomorrow? You: maybe we can decide then if we really want to do it 

Lee Jeno: oh, okay, sounds good to me

Lee Jeno: lunch tom? 

You: works for me! 

Lee Jeno: cool! see you : ) 

You only realize you’ve been holding your breath for the last part of the conversation when you exhale fiercely, fanning yourself with an open palm. So you’re having lunch with Jeno tomorrow. That’s… cool. More than cool. It’s a big fucking deal. An even stupider grin crosses your face as you roll onto your back, and you pay very little mind to the new message that pops up onto your screen. 

Na Jaemin: if you need any help with your project, don’t hesitate to ask! ^^ 

                                                *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

You’d spent the entirety of the morning really looking forward to your lunch date with Jeno (date being a term you’d added yourself, but it seemed like a reasonable addendum), and you’d been trying to figure out what to pitch to him, even doing a quick Google search of easy term projects right before homeroom. You’d had many expectations for the one glorious hour you’d be eating with him, but in your excitement to get to that point in your day, you’d left out a pretty important factor. 

In your defense, Renjun hadn’t replied all night, so of course you were bound to put him on the back burner, right? Still, it’s common knowledge — tradition, even — between the both of you to spend your lunch break together, and Renjun wasn’t really prepared to suddenly forego this custom today, considering he didn’t know about your more important plans (which, again, was his fault considering he hadn’t bothered to message back). This little snag is the reason why you find yourself sitting next to a sullen best friend who’s more interested in picking out the sesame seeds from atop his gimbap roll than talking to you. 

“It’s not a big deal,” you attempt to get him to see reason again. “It’s just one lunch. You don’t even have to listen! He’s not going to stop you from eating.”

“Not verbally, but his presence will nauseate me so much that I’ll end up without an appetite anyway.”

You have to give it to him — Renjun’s penchant for drama is completely unmatched. Your temper flares a little, but you try to swallow it down to avoid any more huge scenes in the cafeteria. “You’re being stupid.”

“I’m being stupid? Suddenly you can tell when I am but you can’t see it in all of Jeno’s F’s?” 

“Will you stop taking jabs at him? We’re talking about your behavior, not his grades.”

“We barely have any classes together. Lunch time is the only time we really have these days,” Renjun’s voice has a twinge of bitterness to it that’s way too sharp to the ears. “Is it that hard to just meet him when I’m not around?” 

“For the record, I’m not forcing you to stay.”

“Oh, so you’d prefer it if I leave, then,” there’s no denying the sting in his tone. “Okay, that’s how it is.”

“Renjun, come on — of course I don’t want you to leave. Having lunch with you is always great; it’s just one other person for one day.”

“Any other person on multiple other days is fine! But not this person, ________________!”

“I can’t believe how many times I have to keep asking you why you hate him so much!”

“And I can’t believe how many times I have to tell you it’s the fact that you like him that I can’t stand!” 

“Ahem.”

A new voice joins the fray; both of you look up to see Jeno towering over your table, tray in hand and looking fairly confused. His eyes skip between your abashed expression and Renjun’s livid one, but he has the good sense to set his tray down carefully onto the table, choosing to keep his vision fixed on you. 

“We… were going to talk, right?” 

“Yes! Of course — sorry. We were just… chatting.” 

You pointedly ignore the disbelief in Renjun’s face, more relieved at the fact that Jeno at least seems to buy your stupid lie, taking a seat in front of you. He unwraps his sandwich, taking an endearingly large bite and chewing as he looks up at you with that extremely lazy, extremely sexy expression he often gets during class lectures. 

“So,” he starts. 

“So I have this list of possible topics, if you want to take a look at them really quickly before deciding—” You pull out a piece of paper to the tune of Renjun’s scoff. “We can totally go for something else if none of them match your goals.”

“Oh cool,” his mouth is still half-full of ham and white bread as he reaches over and takes the paper, skimming over it with an expression that could, to the untrained eye, be considered somewhat glassy. To you, it simply says casual interest. Very trendy. 

“So what is your goal, Jeno?” Renjun pipes up after ten minutes of uncomfortable silence and Jeno’s attempt to read through your atrocious handwriting, using one of his chopsticks to spear a piece of gimbap viciously. “Graduate somehow without getting anyone pregnant?”

Two pairs of eyes move to Renjun’s mouth, which is opening up a horrendously and unnecessarily huge way to accommodate his food. Your face is much more appalled than Jeno’s is, though, since there’s still a tinge of thoughtful confusion swimming around in his eyes.

“I mean, I haven’t really thought about it that much, but I guess that’s as good a goal as any.”

“I bet it is,” Renjun’s mouth curls up into a horrible smirk. “For you.”

“You know what I was thinking,” you cut him off, and Jeno, thankfully, turns his attention to you, deprived of the time to process Renjun’s comment. “We could try doing that one about the most efficient material to use as sunshade for automobiles since… since you… like cars. Don’t you?” 

“Cars are cool,” he hums nonchalantly. “We could do that.”

“Cars are cool,” Renjun mocks under his breath. You throw him another warning look, which he responds to by devouring another piece of gimbap. 

“If that doesn’t really float your boat, then there’s this one —“ you hesitate in reaching for the paper, but you’re already halfway through the process of leaning in, so you end up with your torso in an awkward horizontal position on the surface of the table. Jeno turns the paper slightly towards you, and you point to an item on the list. “This thing about the relational frequency between notes in harmony sounds pretty interesting too. I think.” 

“Oh, yeah,” he turns the paper back to himself, squinting at the words. “That sounds pretty cool too, actually.”

“How cool?” Renjun butts in again, ignoring you when you punch his thigh under the table, save for a wince that goes as suddenly as it comes. “Like, on a scale of one to ten, ten being as cool as skipping class for the new Fast and Furious movie, and one being as cool as taking advantage of naive girls to do work for you while you half-ass your way through the rest of the year.” 

The silence that ensues is common in all but nature. Renjun’s is a smug silence, while Jeno’s is one of total astonishment. Yours, on the other hand, stems from the rage bubbling in your chest, and it’s taking all of your energy not to blow a fuse. Angry you isn’t cute, and Jeno should never have to see you in a negative light. 

“Actually,” Jeno starts slowly, clearing his throat when his first word comes out a little raspy. “I… just remembered Jaemin and I were supposed to meet at the field at half past noon, so… I gotta go.” 

This is the closest you’ve felt like dying this year, which is saying something, because just yesterday you had had the contents of a coke can spill down your back. You barely manage an “okay” before Jeno gets up, taking his tray with him and walking towards the return corner in long strides. Briefly, you think you should apologize to him, but this thought is derailed by Renjun burping unceremoniously and patting his stomach in satisfaction. 

“Our cafeteria makes the best gimbap. Ever. I said it from day one, and I’ll say it until the day I die.” 

“Well,” you snap your head back towards him, lower lip quivering. “I hope that day comes soon.” 

“Woah,” he lifts his palms up defensively. “I literally asked him, like, two harmless questions. Does that really call for murderous intent?” 

“You insulted him! Your stupid questions were totally uncalled for, and you could have just kept your mouth shut, but you couldn’t even sit fifteen minutes with him and just let us talk about our project?” 

“Oh, right, your project, in the plural,” he rolls his eyes. “The one he’s contributing so much to, right?” 

“We’re bouncing ideas! I’m sorry we can’t be as intelligent as you in your high and mighty advanced placement classes, but we’re doing our best!” 

“Wait – we are doing our best? When are you going to stop talking for him?” His voice is rising now too, and a couple of freshmen sitting at the next table glance back at the both of you in mild interest. “He can’t even defend himself! He knows he’s just taking advantage of you, so why are you still defending him?” 

“Oh, right, of course!” You feign smacking your forehead, except the intensity of your movement actually does cause your palm to make contact, leaving what would be a slightly pink mark just below your hairline. “I forgot! I’m a naive girl that doesn’t know what she’s doing and is just so stupid that she doesn’t even know she’s letting some guy walk on her!” 

“You are letting him walk on you! You’re already busting ass on something he doesn’t even care about!” 

“I know what I’m doing!” You half-yell, slamming down your chopsticks with finality. “You think I don’t know I’m acting like a total fool? You keep making fun of me, telling me I’m stupid for liking him because he’ll never like me back. I get it, okay? I know what you think of him, and I know what you think of me, too.” 

“_____________, that’s not what I meant. I’m just saying you could do —“ 

“Better — yeah, I know! You keep saying that, but all I’m hearing is that you can’t just let me like him, you can’t just let me be happy, you can’t just support me even when this crush isn’t doing anything to you.” Your chair makes an awful scraping noise as you push it back, picking up your tray and ignoring Renjun’s shell-shocked face. “I know I’m acting like a total idiot around him, but I like him. And I know he’s never going to like me back, but I’m happy just liking him like this, and sometimes when you like someone, you’ll do stupid things for them. It’s just a harmless crush. You don’t have to be such a dick about it.” 

He opens his mouth to say something — a retort, or maybe an apology. You don’t feel like hearing either of those things, though, so you spin on your heel before he can utter anything, heading for the return corner first and slamming your tray down on the cart before storming towards the cafeteria door. It swings open just when you’re about to push (probably kick) it open, and you jump back, glaring a little blindly at the person coming through. 

“Woah,” Jaemin keeps the door open, stepping aside so you can pass. “Hey, _________________. I thought you and Jeno were supposed to — are you okay?” 

“I’m fine,” you huff, your voice indicating the total opposite. “Just reconsidering my long-standing relationships.” 

“… Meaning?” 

“Meaning I have a best friend position open right now if you know anyone willing to apply.” 

“Oh,” he looks a little befuddled; his fingers are playing against the bar on the door. “I’ll… keep that in mind, then. Did you and Renjun—?” 

“Who?” 

Jaemin’s mouth is hanging open, possibly at a loss for words at your vicious tone. You breathe in, the inhale shaky as it enters your lungs, and your fingers tremble as you wave the topic of Renjun away. “Sorry. I have to go. Jeno’s probably out on the field looking for you, or whatever.” 

“Oh — thanks,” he still looks flummoxed, but he doesn’t press, and he allows you to walk off in your cloud of anger and embarrassment in silence, his jaw still slightly slack.

                                                *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

You spend the rest of lunch break and your free period crying in the library. You’re not even sure why you’re crying at all; all these horrible emotions overlapped and settled in your chest, and the only logical course of relief seemed to be just to cry next to the non-fiction aisle. In between hiccups, you bring your phone out, drafting messages to Renjun first then Jeno, both in paragraphs, but deleting them after reading them over and finding redundancies and typographical errors, simply allowing the next wave of tears to come streaming down. In the end, you only manage to send one message. 

You: I’m sorry. For snapping at you. You didn’t deserve that. 

Na Jaemin: No apology needed ^^

Na Jaemin: Totally unrelated, of course, but I heard that chamomile tea is good for calming ^^

At the end of the day, you get kicked out of the library for sobbing a little too loudly in the last half hour of your free period, and you just wander aimlessly through the second floor before sluggishly heading down for class. As you approach the classroom, however, the numbness that had replaced your frustration had been pushed aside by a grown dread; knowing that you have to see Jeno, that you have to sit next to him, and that you have to apologize for Renjun’s stupid behavior when you can’t even string two really nice sentences around him is stressing you out, and you walk into the room with your teeth gnawing at the skin around your nail. 

Jeno is already there, a sheen of sweat on his brow, his eyebrows knit together as he stares down at a piece of paper on the table. You shuffle up to him, trying to sniffle very quietly to avoid startling him, and he looks up at all the noise you make, his expression morphing into something that looks… apologetic? 

“Hello,” your voice sounds disgusting, like you had spent the better part of your day stuffing tissues up your nose — which, come to think of it, you kind of had. 

“Hey,” his response is careful, and it doesn’t invite any more immediate discussion, so you sit down, and he turns his attention back to the paper. Out of the corner of your eye, you see that it’s the list of topics you’d written down. His long fingers tap between a couple of lines idly. 

You don’t know why, but this somehow is… comforting. Couple that with the fact that he now keeps stealing glances at you, like he’s trying to figure out how to open another conversation at the right time. 

“Um…” he lifts his head up at the sound of your voice. “Jeno, I just —“ 

“I’m sorry,” he cuts you off suddenly, and his voice bursts like he’s been holding it in for the longest time. You’re perplexed, to say the least; was he trying to fill in the blanks for you, or something? This theory is just debunked when he plows on. “I’m sorry, _________________. I didn’t really —“ 

“Wait,” you had never imagined you would find yourself stopping him from talking, considering how much you liked listening to him talk, but you feel like the need to clarify the situation is more pressing at the moment. “Wait, why are you apologizing? I was supposed to apologize.”

“What for?” He looks genuinely shocked, and your hands make random gestures to the abstract past. 

“For — for what happened! During lunch!” 

“That’s what I was going to apologize for. That was just… it was terrible. I’m sorry.” 

“I know it was, but that’s why I was apologizing,” you feel like you’re missing something totally fundamental considering that Jeno’s face is just growing more confused by the second.

“You were the one that had to sit through that mess.” 

“Me? No, I’m — it’s not about me,” his brows lift in disbelief. “I mean… your friend said some pretty wild stuff, but —“ 

“Yeah, so I’m — sorry, are we even talking about the same thing–-?” 

“I’m saying sorry because —“ he inhales, a hand coming up to knead at his temple briefly. Oh, good. He’s having a similarly hard time understanding this, too. “Because you didn’t have to go through that. That was humiliating.” 

“For you, yeah, I’m sure —“ 

“But also,” Jeno raises a hand, silencing you. “Because your friend — despite all the shitty things he said, he was right.“ 

“What… do you mean?” 

His hand touches his lips, fingers skating across his lower one as if it’s trying to will the right words to come out faster. “I… I mean, I told you. I’m not good at this physics stuff. And I just don’t have the brain power to get this done. So I really was kind of hoping you’d… you know. Do it. With as little help from me as possible preferably. I’m not proud of this,” he adds quickly. “I’m just really used to skating by. And I kind of knew you would let me, anyway. And I’m sorry for thinking of you that way. I deserved that call out.” 

He looks so terribly hurt that you can’t imagine what other emotion you’re supposed to feel apart from sympathy. “It’s okay, Jeno.” 

“That’s the thing; it’s really not. I’m not supposed to be taking advantage of other people like this. Especially not someone like you.” 

Someone like you? You’re quickly going through all the possibilities of what that implies, so much so that you miss the moment in which Jeno leans a little closer to you. You come back down to earth to see him a lot more clearly than you had a second or two ago. 

“Can I make it up to you?” 

“Can you h-hu-h—“ you blubber, collecting yourself at the last second. “Make it up to me?” 

“I’m never going to be of any real help in this project, so it’d be unrealistic if I told you I’d pull equal weight. But I’ll do what I can, if and when you need me to,” he slips the paper of topics back to you. Vaguely, you notice he’s circled a topic in blue pen. 

“That’s… I’m fine with that.” 

“In exchange for you taking the reins on this one,” he taps the paper. “I’ll make sure you graduate as the coolest girl on campus. Deal?”

love on the floor | njm

exactly when does vice president na turn from the company’s worst nightmare into your favorite daydream?

pairing: chaebol!na jaemin x secretary fem!reader rating: vaguely M, but will very quickly escalate into a hard R in coming chapters genre: romance, fluff, (eventual) smut (in later chapters), chaebol!au warnings: jaemin isn’t really a total asshole but he isn’t great at the beginning either and i think that should be a warning, there’s probably some language use that deserves a bit of caution i GUESS, but tbh nothing much here because we want to pretend that this is a fic of chaste circumstances and not a lead-up to raunchy, depraved smut  word count: 16.4k

author’s note: first of all, the development of this fic is absolute SHIT because i love context too much and refuse to shut up at the beginning only to get antsy for the ending so if the pace is a little stop and go … it’s because i’m a Fewl !! and i totally own up to that !! and second of all, this is actually just a set-up for about two more shorter (?? what’s shorter) works that i’ve already been wanting to write but felt like i would be remiss in doing so without some kind of build-up to the relationship so :^) here we are ! heavily unbeta'd and miss lucy is a bit rusty but we carry on for the sake of enjoying oneself (and practicing writing once again) muah enjoy!

At least this job gets you free medical. 

Actually, all things considered, this is an excellent job with limitless benefits. You never have to worry about the three-level insurance, you have monthly paid-for visits to the dentist, and you sometimes get to use the company car for personal errands for as long as you meticulously check everyone else’s schedules and butter up the head secretary, Son Seungwan, just enough so that she feels mollified enough to let you have this favor (but not too much to the point that she catches on and gives you a ten minute lecture on the rising prices of gas post-the-turn-of-the-decade). Your rent’s well paid-for, and the apartment you’re staying at is comfortable, albeit a little smaller than most, although that’s just because you prefer spending your money on once-in-a-lifetime type things, like front row seats to a Paul Kim concert. You get 50% discounts at the company cafeteria, which boasts a pretty nice salad bar with more than just perilla leaves as the greens. The bathrooms even have luxury soap installed into the automatic hand dispensers, so you always come out clean and fancy smelling. 

All in all, the job’s pretty perfect, to the point that you don’t think leaving will ever truly be in the cards — except for the fact that you barely see your boss, which, as nice as it sounds on paper, is actually the most stressful part of the position. 

You’ve always been of the opinion that if Vice President Na Jaemin put his mind to something, he’d actually do it very well, but the running issue is that he hardly ever puts his mind to anything, especially when it comes to work. In fact, the only thing he ever seems to take seriously is having eleven hours of uninterrupted sleep, which you personally think is an extremely hard thing to achieve, leading you to the firm belief that if he channeled that energy into something less dead-to-the-world and a little more productive, things would be amazing. 

And maybe things would also be a little less distressing if his family would just accept him for who he is instead of expecting too much (or, actually, anything) from him, but Vice President Na is the only son of the family that owns the largest telecom company in the country, so his parents have a ton of huge expectations for him. His father, in particular, is clearly trying to prepare him to take over the entire business, something that the Vice President clearly isn’t keen on doing, based on the many arguments you’ve had to sit through alongside Head Secretary Son. The result is a lot of tension that’s only exacerbated by the Vice President’s desire to avoid more conflict, which he does by suddenly disappearing from the office for hours — sometimes days — at a time. 

So for as much medical, dental, and reasonably priced caesar salad as you’re getting from this job, you’re not entirely sure how worth it those things all are if they come with the task of you having to sit through twenty minutes of lecturing in place of Vice President Na Jaemin himself. 

“This is the last time,” President Na roars — not necessarily at you, but at you, in your general direction, while you stand helplessly in front of his desk, your hands folded across your lap and your head hung low. You don’t really feel terrified or hurt — more than knowing that the President isn’t shouting at you for your incompetence, you’ve also gotten used to being on the receiving end of these weird, indirect lectures and have thus come to know the exact standard of ‘sorry’ that you have to look for it to be over as quickly as possible. Still, you’re kind of annoyed that this particular spiel is taking up precious minutes from your afternoon break. Then again, you don’t know what you’d expected to begin with when you’d come back from the cafeteria after lunch and found the Vice President’s chair abandoned, leather cold, indicating that he’d been gone for quite a while. It’s about four o’clock now, and he still hasn’t come back, and all your messages to him have gone unread, as you’ve also grown used to. “You tell my no-good son if he isn’t back within the hour, he can live the rest of his life without my last name.”

You’re not sure if the implications of that will really sink into the Vice President’s heart enough to trigger the guilt it’s clearly trying to elicit, but you know better than to voice your opinion. You nod once, then bow at a perfect ninety-degree angle. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

“Four years of this, and he hasn’t learned a single thing,” the President continues, completely ignoring your useless and vaguely insincere apology. “Where’d he run off to this time?” 

You don’t know. You never really know. Since he actively tries to avoid all work-related things, he also actively tries to avoid you, something he does by never picking up the phone or telling you the details of his daily schedule anyway. You can only share what you do know, which is very little and, therefore, extremely useless, but you try to say it in a way that appears relatively helpful. “His schedule says he was supposed to have lunch with the foreign investors that are trying to connect Prime Video to the Korean market, but it seems he didn’t show up for that.”

Which essentially translates to: you have no clue. Again, all parties in the room — inclusive of Head Secretary Son, who constantly has to bear witness to the many threats Vice President Na receives via you — know this isn’t your fault, but it doesn’t make the vein that’s about to pop out of the President’s temple any less pronounced, nor does it stop you from bowing and apologizing again when he says “get him back in here before five o’clock or tell him he’ll never be able to step foot in this building again!” even though you know that the threat would probably sound more like a gift than anything else to Vice President Na. 

“And you,” the President points a vaguely accusatory finger at you. Your eyes widen slightly in surprise. “If he isn’t back here at that time, you can kiss your job goodbye too. You go ahead and tell him that. Let’s see if Jaemin will finally get off his ass if he knows someone else is going to have to suffer for his behavior.” 

The only person who sees your jaw fall open is Head Secretary Son, who’s now leading you away from the President’s desk and towards the door; the President has taken to staring at this huge family picture of himself, his wife, and the Vice President that’s hanging just behind his executive’s chair, all looking considerably happier than anyone in this situation feels. You hear him mutter something that sounds like “where did I go wrong with you, you punk?” before the door shuts close behind you.

“I’d say he doesn’t mean that, but we don’t actually know to what lengths he’ll go to get the Vice President on board.” Head Secretary Son admits, lifting two fingers to gently shut your mouth, still agape. “If I were you, I’d figure out how to keep him on a leash. The fact that he’s never around is probably ninety-percent of our current problems.”

“I can barely get him to respond to schedule reminders,” you groan; your fingers pinch the bridge of your nose like this will somehow stop the oncoming migraine. “Let alone get him to stay still. I was just about to put in a down payment for a car of my own, too.” 

You’ve never really been considerably attached to this job, mostly because there isn’t much to actually attach yourself to, but if you think about it now, it really is better than most, and this economy isn’t really kind to people who get fired from their jobs. You feel like puking at the thought of losing the free unlimited coffee in the pantry and trading it in for a life behind a convenience store counter, which is probably where you’ll end up, pessimistically speaking.

You excuse yourself from Head Secretary Son, who has the heart to look a little pitying as you trudge towards the elevator. You don’t even know where you’d start looking for the Vice President, especially since he spends quite a lot of his efforts trying to avoid having to communicate with you. You don’t even know what his habits are, which means you can’t make educated guesses on where he might have run off to, so the only route to go is to look in the immediately surrounding area and widening your search diameter as time passes.

Until five o’clock, of course — a deadline that, if unmet, will likely mean you also won’t be returning to the office either. 

You start off at the nearby bookstore, extremely skeptical that the Vice President would ever willingly go to a place that requires more effort even after you make a purchase. As expected, he isn’t there, but he isn’t in the nextdoor candle shop (also unlikely) either, nor do you find him in the hand-cut noodles shop next to that as well. You walk down the entire street for a good twenty minutes, pressing your face against the windows of stores shamelessly, to the ire of many startled and disgruntled staff, trying to look for a familiar head shape in the small crowds in them, but to no avail. Then, you think about calling him again, but when you pat the pockets of your jacket, you realize your phone is still on your desk, where you’d left it when you’d been summoned to see the President. With a loud groan and an annoyed clip clop of your heels as you stamp your feet on the pavement, you walk back to the office. 

In your frenzy to find the Vice President, you’d gone quite a distance, and your shoes simply aren’t made for long, aggravated walks; they start hurting your feet halfway back, and you’re pretty sure you have a blister behind the strap of the left one. Pride would tell you to tough it out, but you’d thrown that out at the thought of losing your job at the expense of a single man, so you don’t even hesitate to take them off and run back to the building. The big digital clock above the elevators says you have ten minutes left to find your boss, and you start thinking about using that time for better things — like packing your stuff up neatly in a box for when you get sacked. 

With the situation seemingly hopeless, you trudge to the first floor cafe, where the return counter has a pitcher of water and a stack of tiny paper cups. They’re tiny tiny, like the size of your thumb, so you have to keep refilling it just to start feeling a little more human. 

You’re on your third refill when you hear a giggle come from across the space. The barista’s just finished laughing at what must have been an extremely hilarious joke, or she might be flirting with whoever’s leaning over the counter to talk to her. A whoever that seems to be the exact same height and build as the elusive Vice President of this company. 

You accidentally toss the paper cup in the plastics bin in your desperation to get moving, worried that if you’re not fast enough, he’ll disappear into thin air again. Luckily, his attention’s completely focused on the barista, so he can’t go anywhere when you finally reach his side and huff, loud enough to interrupt what seems like an intimate-ish conversation between them. 

“Sorry, I was just — oh, it’s you.” The Vice President’s smile fades when he sees it’s you, someone he can’t charm out of what they’re supposed to be doing. You don’t think you’ve ever seen the Vice President smile at you in any capacity, anyway, except for maybe one or two slightly sarcastic smiles that are probably more fit to be classified as grimaces. “What do you want?” 

“I’ve been looking all over for you, sir,” you say, stiffly and a little quietly because you still don’t want to embarrass him in front of the slightly confused barista. “You haven’t answered my texts.”

You don’t have any way to check, but you’re pretty sure this is a safe enough assumption, which is corroborated by the Vice President bringing his phone out and checking the screen lazily before turning it back off. 

“Sorry. I don’t answer unknown numbers.”

You guess it makes sense that he wouldn’t want to save your number when he hates hearing about work, which is all you really try to communicate with him about, but it still stings considering it’s been two years and you’ve been using the same number since high school. It’s fine, you think. You really can’t expect much from him. 

“Well, your father’s been looking for you, too. He wants to meet you.”

“I’ll take a rain check, but thank you.”

“Sir,” your voice quivers with poorly quelled exasperation. “This isn’t an optional thing. This is very serious.” 

“I can see that, Briar Rose,” his eyes are trained towards your shoes, still dangling from your grasp, with a level of unabashed amusement. “Did he summon me from deep within the woods, or is this a new casual Friday look I should get in on?”

When his words are met with a stony silence, he sighs, pushing himself off the counter. His half-finished Americano is collecting a small pool of condensation under it, and you offer him the little handful of tissues you had gotten from the return counter and had originally been planning to use to wipe your tears in case you cried after getting fired so that he doesn’t waste time looking for something to hold his cup. He takes them without even a word of thanks, opting to instead say ‘lead the way, miss.’ You don’t miss the fact that he meets the barista’s eye with a considerably more genuine grin, raising a hand in goodbye to her before he strides ahead — before you even get a chance to lead the way at all — towards the elevators with you, hobbling on one foot to slip your shoe back on, not far behind. 

The President’s office must be sort of soundproof for instances like this. For the first time, you’ve been asked to wait outside with Head Secretary Son as the Vice President gets chewed. It doesn’t matter; you don’t really want to be in the middle of yet another round of shouting that has nothing to do with you in the same afternoon, plus you also know how the conversation usually goes: the President making very agitated threats and talking about his heart condition (even though the medical reports from their private doctor say he’s in perfect health) that the Vice President, who just spends the time looking boredly at his nails, will inevitably trigger. When you press your ear to the door for a minute, you actually hear something like ‘... strike you out of the will so that when you kill me, you won’t get a single won!’, and you can imagine Vice President Na’s exasperated sigh punctuating the statement. 

Ten minutes later, the room has gone quiet, and you step aside just in time for the Vice President to open the door and step out. You don’t even understand how he can look so unaffected after being ripped apart, but you suppose he’s also heard the lecture as many times as you have and is pretty much immune to all the insults. He doesn’t really have to make a show out of not caring, though, with his hands in his pockets and his lips pursed to allow him to whistle idly as he strolls down the hall to his barely used office. He’s been in it so few times that after long, inexplicable vacations, he sometimes forgets how to get there. You’ve always had to walk behind him just in case he gets lost or, worse, tries to make a run for it. You’ve never had to tackle him to the ground reciting the Miranda warnings, or anything, but he has faked left a few times just to give you a mild heart attack for the fun of it all. 

This time, he just walks, not bothering to joke you into trying to create a human wall he could just as easily push away. When he gets to his office, he lazily plops down onto his couch, extracting the Rubik’s cube he’d been working on for a few weeks now from underneath himself and spinning the top layer idly. He’s only ever finished the blue side. 

You just stand there, kind of perplexed and unsure of how to start the conversation. He’s still whistling, and you’re not sure if talking over him will count as interrupting him, which isn’t something you’re supposed to do. Thankfully, he stops after about two minutes of fiddling with the yellow side of the cube, looking up at you with a slightly surprised expression that somehow makes you want to cry. 

“Can I help you with something, Secretary ___________?” 

“Well, I…” You stutter for a bit, unsure of how to politely point out that he should be asking you for help with his job instead of the whole other way around. “Because… I just thought…”

“You can always leave a message with my secretary if you need time to figure it out.” He grins. “Oh, wait a minute.”

“Sir, don’t you think you should… I don’t know. Figure out your schedule, or something? Prepare for… anything?” 

“What’s that smell?” He lifts his nose to the air, suddenly curious, and because he looks so serious, you also start sniffing, but you can’t really smell anything out of the ordinary. “Smells… fresh. Very clean. A little like green tea.”

“Oh.” You awkwardly shift your weight from leg to leg. “I think that’s my perfume, but I don’t see w—”

“You smell very expensive, Secretary _____________.” He sounds genuinely surprised that you do, like he’s somehow saying he hadn’t expected you to have good taste. You have no idea where this conversation is coming from, so you chalk it up to him wanting to derail you from talking about work. “I like it. Very classy. Not too strong.”

“Sir, I don’t think now’s the time to be talking about perfume scents.”

“You’re actually quite pretty.” He sounds genuinely surprised again, but this time, it stings a little more. “I never noticed that before. How come?” 

You want to say that it’s because he spends most of his time and energy playing long-term hide-and-seek with you, but there’s also no polite way of putting that into words; even if there were, with the way you’re now bristling under his gaze, you’re not really sure you’d go the courteous route, anyway. You just decide to ignore the comment and question entirely, which you almost get to do.

“Wouldn’t you like to take a look at some of our upcoming projects? For instance, we’re just about to start negotiating the terms of this new partnership with Huawei —”

“You’re pretty, but you’re also pretty tense.” He cuts you off again, now looking a little dejected at this newfound information. You can’t understand why this disappointment in you actually hurts your feelings a little. “I think the cafe downstairs serves some tea, if that kind of stuff helps you.”

“Sir,” the one syllable is laced with weariness, and you knot  your fingers together in front of your lap. It probably looks polite, but it’s mostly so that you can feel like you have some semblance of control over anything, even if it’s just your own body fighting off the urge to grab him by the collar. “Please. If you could just take a look at your schedule — even just for tomorrow —”

“What’s the point?” His shrug is nonchalant, and he’s turning the cube over in his palm now, more interested in looking at it than witnessing your tired expression. “It’s almost six o’clock. I’ll deal with tomorrow tomorrow, you know what I mean? If my dad finally loses his marbles, I’ll deal with it all then. In fact, I might actually be okay with losing this department if it finally actually gets him off my back. I’ll also deal with that when it happens, probably.” 

Another long, uncomfortable silence blooms as his words sink in; not for the first time today, President Na has threatened the existence of your job, now alongside a good twenty other people’s, all for the sake of snapping some sense into the Vice President. However, like everything else, it seems to just be backfiring; Vice President Na doesn’t seem to care about anyone else in this department, most likely because he’s barely interacted with anyone else. You’re surprised he even remembers your last name, considering he once called the department accountant ‘Heejin’ even though her nametag clearly spelled out ‘Jinhee.’ 

It makes sense that the threat of abolishment means absolutely nothing to him, but it doesn’t make the knowledge of that any less distressing. He watches you curiously as you tug back at your ponytail, like it’ll once again stop the crawling migraine. 

“Sure a cup of chamomile tea isn’t in the cards today? I think I have the company card in here somewhere, although I can’t be sure that it hasn’t been cut off, based on my dad’s last threat—” 

“I’m fine; thank you.” You mumble, checking the clock. He’s wasted what’s left of the hour anyway, and the lack of change in his position just means he’s not going to change his mind for the rest of the time. “At least let me give you tomorrow’s agenda.” 

“Boring, but okay. Give it to me, then.” He yawns to make a point, and you offer him the tablet you tote around with you everywhere you go, just in case Vice President Na finally decides he wants to do his job. To clarify: that’s two whole years of you carrying that heavy thing around, with the Vice President only having touched it a handful of times. You’re mildly shocked that he actually opens it to check, because he barely does even that, but that all goes away when he yawns again, his expression glassy as he scrolls down aimlessly. “This is a lot. Can’t you just clear my schedules tomorrow? Actually, if I can make demands for real, I’d like to clear out my schedule for the rest of the year.” 

He stretches when he stands, ignoring your slightly agog expression as he pats you on the back, smacking his lips sleepily. “Good day’s work, Secretary _____________. Want to grab a beer? Have ourselves a little intra-department party? I’m pretty sure ‘intra’ stands for ‘us two,’ or am I wrong?”

You sincerely hope he doesn’t mean a goodbye party, but with his attitude right now, that might very well be. You shake your head, and he shrugs, like he wasn’t really expecting you to agree in the first place. “No thank you, sir. I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

He’s already halfway out the door, waving dismissively with his back turned to you. When you peek out of the space he leaves by opening the door, you can see about half the entire department’s watching, not even bothering to pretend to scurry back to their seats as he saunters out of the office. He calls out to you, his voice ringing clear even though he’s already out of sight. 

“We’ll see about that.” 

You come up with a master plan, but not before you scope potential jobs. 

You actually stayed an hour overtime at your desk looking for positions, but all of them pay lower than average or are about an hour’s commute away from where you live, so none of them seem worth it. The search ends when some people from the department come over to say goodbye and see your computer open to SaramIn, at which point they connect the dots and start to panic about their insurance. You shut your monitor off and spend another useless twenty minutes calming Jinhee, who’d started having a mild panic attack. 

In that time, your resentment builds. Why can’t Vice President Na simply get his act together? You suppose that there’s some indescribable burden to being in his position, but between him, a rich heir who owns two sports cars and lives in a paid-for house, and you, a public-transport-using, pays-by-the-month nine-to-five worker, you can’t really understand why he would be having it worse than everyone else who works under him.  If he worked even just half as hard as everyone else did here, he might scrape by. 

You can’t know if President Na’s anger was only short-lived or if he actually meant to downsize the company by getting rid of your department entirely, but you also know that if he’s serious, then there’s nothing much you can do about it, short of terrorizing the Vice President into stepping into bigger shoes.

So, that becomes your master plan.

It isn’t very refined, mostly because you think about it on the bus home, but the heart and spirit are there, and those are probably the most important things anyway. It’s that heart and spirit that motivate you to get up an hour earlier than you usually do, dressing quickly for the day before taking the company car from your place to downtown Apgujeong. You usually don’t take it on days that Vice President Na doesn’t come into work, which is practically every other day, but this time, you’re determined to see him into the office. The ride with Hyunsung, his official company driver, is quiet, save for the question he asks when you roll up to the Vice President’s driveway. 

“Are you sure about this?” 

“No,” you admit. He’d probably seen you chewing down on your thumb, some of your confidence taking a hit when you belatedly realize you could be shot with a huge privacy lawsuit if this doesn’t go the way you plan. But you do know a lot of secretaries that do the morning calls for their superiors, so this should be fine. Not that you’ve ever heard from those secretaries ever again. 

Vice President Na’s laziness seems to extend to all aspects of his life, including the fact that he doesn’t ever change his door’s passcode; it’s still the same numbers as it had been when he first bought the house a year ago and had you install his lock while he was missing in action from work, yakking it up with some farmers up in the Netherlands. He likes to do that — ‘see the world,’ or whatever, even though his wanderlust makes everyone else’s lives very difficult. At least it makes your life easy now, and you step through the door and walk quietly across his unnecessarily large living room. 

You’ve never been in here exactly, and you only realize very belatedly that this house’s design would be very frustrating for a break-and-enter criminal because nothing seems to be where it’s supposed to be. You learn the owner’s suite is actually on the basement floor, so all the climbing of those slippery stairs was for nothing. 

Vice President Na’s bedroom is bigger than your whole apartment, which also means he has a sizable bed and, thus, is completely out of sight under his gigantic covers. The only indication that he’s even still in there is that they’re rising and falling in a rhythmic pattern. You stand by the edge of the bed, on the side he’s closest to falling off of, clearing your throat at the tuft of hair peeking out from under the comforter. 

“Vice President Na? It’s time to go to work.” 

Your voice has been tempered down by years of this professional work, and this is easily the loudest and most demanding you’ve ever heard it. You’re not even sure you can do it again, but the muffled groan from under the covers is all the motivation you need to try. 

“Sir, you have a ten o’clock meeting with Samsung’s representatives for Apple. President Na also asked that we contact Amazon right away to reschedule the Prime Video deal.” 

“How,” his voice comes out first before he does, squinting up at you, completely disoriented. “The hell did you get in here?” 

“Sir, I’m your secretary.” You sigh, skimming over the fact that you’d walked into his big kitchen twice through two different entryways before coming into his bedroom. “I’m supposed to be able to get in here.”

“Except this is a first.” You think he’s about to get up, but he just shifts his weight, rolling over so he can cocoon himself tighter into his blankets. “Goodnight. There are eggs in the fridge if you’re hungry.”

“I’ve already eaten, like a normal, functioning human being with a very important job that starts precisely at nine o’clock would.” 

“This seems like a very targeted comment, Secretary ____________. I’m not sure I appreciate it.” 

“Since we’re already having this conversation, I’m guessing you’re conscious enough to get dressed.”

To your relief, he actually does throw the covers off of him, leaning up on his elbows. You try not to balk at the fact that he’s shirtless, although you’re also not sure why this should surprise or bother you to begin with. He doesn’t even seem to mind; he just yawns, wide and unashamed, as he looks over at the clock. 

“It’s seven-thirty. This is insanity.”

“No, this is a wake-up call.” You offer him a neatly folded towel that he eyes suspiciously. “We need to get you in the office on time.”

“There’s really no point,” he sighs, scratching his head idly. “It’ll just be another boring day of talking to people I don’t care about. Someone who cares about it should talk to them. You care about it, don’t you?” 

“I won’t talk to them for you, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Because, frankly, I don’t get paid enough to be doing that.” 

He once again stares at the towel like he’s trying to will it to evaporate, but in the end, he only sighs louder and takes it from you, kicking his blankets off completely. You look up at the ceiling, not in prayer but to avoid the more embarrassing fact that he’s only in his boxers after all. Well — it’s embarrassing for you. He doesn’t even seem to care. 

“Something’s different.”

“Usually I don’t wake you up,” you offer the painfully obvious. “Or come here. Or talk to you.”

“Yeah, all that stuff,” he says dismissively, halfway through a yawn. “Did you have a life-changing experience recently?”

“Something like that.”

“Couldn’t it have been one where you decided to leave me alone for good instead?” He grumbles, more to himself instead of to you. It doesn’t matter, anyway; you already see he’s up and fishing socks out of his drawer, so you’re marching out of his room to avoid having to hear more of his complaints (and, quite frankly, to avoid looking at his broad back). 

However, the day thereafter doesn’t go as planned. You thought that waking Vice President Na up for an early day of work might shock him into doing something with the knowledge that it was urgent, but you’re not sure why you didn’t anticipate a scenario in which he’d fall asleep in the car on the way to work and you’d have to shake him into waking in the stuffy parking lot. He spends the rest of the morning out of sorts, ignoring you point blank when you try to brief him on the meeting. The meeting in and of itself doesn’t go any better, with him excusing himself fifteen minutes in by saying the pitch doesn’t seem all too exciting and innovative. You didn’t even know he knew the word innovative and, by the shocked faces of the Samsung people, they were of the same mind. 

By lunch time, you’re more exhausted than you’ve ever been, and a part of you is wondering why you wanted Vice President Na in the office in the first place when you’re already used to the much simpler routine of get up, work, eat lunch, get yelled at, work again. Sometimes, on slow days when Vice President Na is completely out of town for the week and President Na is out of things to yell at you about, you even get to just sit back at your desk and play old crossword puzzles. 

Now, you’re basically handholding him, but the weight that keeps him down is so heavy that you’re being dragged down, too. 

“You mean people do this every single day?” He shuts the folder with a contract that requires his signature that you’d given him just now, not even bothering to peruse the first page, much to your rapidly increasing ire. “This is ridiculous. Working makes no sense.”

“All employees come to work to do that, sir. It’s literally what makes up half their lives.”

“Except it shouldn’t,” he sighs, like this is a true global issue and not a problem of his own making. “Everyone needs to be able to do what they want and live life to the fullest.” 

“Not everyone can,” you point out flatly. “Some people don’t have the luxury of time even for that.”

“Then, they should. The more I’m in this situation, the more it feels like it might be better for everyone to have a little work break for — I don’t know. The next year or so.”

Vice President Na has his arm outstretched, handing the folder back to you. You don’t know if it’s what he says that causes your blood pressure to rise, or if its the completely unconcerned look on his face, or if it’s the fact that he’s holding the folder so lazily that the papers are starting to slip out on your end, requiring you to use two hands to keep them all from falling apart and creating a mess you’ll end up having to clean up anyway. Whatever it is, you snatch the folder from him with a little more aggression than necessary (or that you’d even care to admit). Even though it’s out of place, you can’t help but feel a small sense of triumph at the slight surprise in his eyes. 

“Did I say something wrong?” 

“No, sir.” You pause, mostly because you can tell he doesn’t believe you — Vice President Na is nonchalant, not stupid — and you want to give yourself a little bit of time to grapple with your pride before you admit the truth. “Yes, sir. It isn’t fair to your entire department for you to talk that way.”

“I’m saying the entire department doesn’t have to work this hard. It’s senseless. How are you supposed to live a good life if all you’re doing is sitting behind a desk?”

“Like I said, not everyone has the luxury of living your life. If they want even a little bit of that comfort you enjoy, they have to work very hard for it first.” 

“Then they should at least do something they enjoy. If this department goes down the drain —”

“If this department is abolished,” this is your first time interrupting a superior, and it already makes you want to throw up. “Then people will have a very difficult time finding a job in this market. More than that, a lot of people enjoy working for this company — quite genuinely, in fact. I don’t think it’s right to think that they’ll be happy while they’re jobless and floundering in this economy.”

“So you’re happy like this? You really want this job — this whole working under me situation?” 

“Well…” you trail off, your voice taking on a slightly thoughtful tone. It’s been a relatively long time since you’d entered this job, but you do faintly remember the feeling of excitement at getting this position — the desire to want to learn from the best in this industry, the anticipation of being able to meet and network with interesting and important people. Your first few weeks of work had involved wanting to spend as much time in Vice President Na’s shadow, in case you could pick up some important business tidbits from an entrepreneurial master… until, of course, you realized there wasn’t much you could stand in the shadow of to begin with. “These days, it isn’t ideal. But this job is a really good thing for most of the people who work here.”

“Then it sounds like you have more to gain from me working hard than I do.” 

You can’t contain your disapproving frown, and your voice comes out a little sharper than you intend. “Doesn’t it bother you at all, sir? Knowing almost twenty people could lose their jobs in the blink of an eye? Think about all the people who look up to you and rely on you — they’ll have to suffer because of this. They might never find a job that matches their needs, and a lot of them have families to take care of, too. If you can do something to make sure they have these good lives you keep talking about, why not do it? I know you’re capable of that. You’re capable of doing much more than what you’ve been doing thus far.” 

Vice President Na is quiet for a moment before leans over on his desk, lacing his fingers into a loose combined fist and putting his weight on his forearms. One of his forefingers detangles itself from the pile of digits and curls inwards, beckoning you closer. Your grimace is probably obvious, and you lean in a little warily. He lifts himself off his chair slightly so he can whisper in a low voice, as if you two aren’t the only people in this wide office. 

“If you care about it so much, then ask a little more nicely.” 

Your light breakfast almost makes a reappearance, and you draw back in mild shock. He also leans back, significantly more relaxed than you, looking unperturbed as he settles back against his chair. You two engage in a very uneven staring match, until he gestures for you to proceed, looking expectant. 

“You want me to beg for my job?”

“Not what I meant, but I could accept that,” he hums. “I just think you could throw in a please while you’re guilting your boss, at least.”

Gawking probably doesn’t suit you, but you do it anyway, wondering how you managed to find yourself in this position. This morning, you had been strictly guiding him through what to do, and now you’re paralyzed in front of the Vice President, feeling very foolish for saying so much out of turn. You couldn’t even get through a whole work day before seeing your grand master plan slip down the drain.

But there is, at least, some small comfort in what he said — the part about guilting, which, if you squint hard enough, seems to be implying that this conversation has left him with a small amount of guilt. You don’t think it’s that much, but it’s a miracle he feels it at all, so you take the horribly subtle win and inhale deeply.

“Please, sir.” The words are very thick and reluctant, unsticking from your throat. “This department really needs you.” 

He stares, very unnervingly, without saying anything, but there’s something in his gaze that makes you vaguely certain he’s actually thinking about it. In fact, he actually looks a bit serious, which isn’t anything you’d ever think you’d be able to characterize him by. That impression easily falls apart when he claps his hands, once but very loudly, startling you into jumping a little. 

“Ah, how could I turn down such a nice request?” Vice President Na is grinning from ear to ear, something you’ve never seen him do in the context of the office, much less a few feet away from you. His smile is actually kind of nice, if you don’t think about the fact that it seems to be smug at your expense. “Since you asked, I guess I’ll have to try my best, or whatever it is people do in this damn company. I guess that means you owe me now, Secretary ____________. You’re very welcome.” 

The silence that once again blooms as you stand, motionless, in front of Vice President Na is suddenly interrupted by the sound of chairs scraping back all at once. The floor vibrates a little as the entire department troops out to the elevator area so they can go to lunch. You only watch stupidly as he also stands, shrugging off his jacket and flinging it over the back of his chair. “See you, then.”

“Where are you going, sir?” 

He looks a little surprised that you even ask. “To lunch. Do I have to ask for your permission for that, too?” 

“Are you… coming back?”

“You want to come along with me and make sure I don’t run away?” He smiles even wider, which you didn’t even think was possible. It makes you awkwardly uncomfortable to know he’s taking a lot of pleasure in joking around with you, mostly because you were kind of hoping you’d get him to take things seriously in a serious manner, not in a … whatever this is that’s making you feel like you’ve lost a game manner. 

“A little bit.”

“Ask a little more nicely, then.” 

“Never mind,” you mumble. “Have a good lunch, sir.” 

He snaps his fingers a little comically before turning to the door, flinging it open so he can join the now thinning throng of people leaving the floor. “Thought I almost had you there. Well, if you need me, you know where to find me. Or not.” 

In the end, to your utmost relief, Vice President Na does, in fact, stay inside the entire time he has lunch. You’re not sure if this is the product of you sitting two tables away, trying to will an imaginary chain to his wrist so he doesn’t bolt off or because he’s still feeling a little affected by everything you said earlier on, but whatever it is, it works. He just eats his club sandwich in peace, picking off the crust easily and double dipping the fries that come with it in his ketchup. At some point, he looks up and notices you burning holes into his torso, so you quickly have to avert your eyes in shame. You think he laughs at this, but you can only see out of your peripheral vision at this point, so you can’t be sure. 

You’re supposed to have one hour for lunch, but he eats quickly and gets up before the whole hour is over, so you end up throwing your half-eaten wrap and following him. Again, you’re not sure what’s funny, but he’s chuckling to himself as he holds the elevator door open, waiting for you to run in next to him. 

“Relax, miss secretary. I already said I was going to do my best.”

“No offense, sir, but I don’t know what that looks like, so I have to be careful.”

“Fair enough.” He hums, letting the door close on its own. “But you should still take it easy. You’re pretty t—”

“Tense. You said so yesterday, sir.”

“That’s two times you’ve cut me off in a single day.” He doesn’t sound very annoyed about it; in fact, he’s still got that amused, inside joke tone to everything he’s had all morning. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were gunning for an insubordination report.”

You don’t think that’s fair for him to say, especially since you haven’t really had much of an authority figure to be subordinate to for most of your career in this company, but you keep your mouth shut since saying so is exactly what would be on the first line of an insubordination report. 

When you arrive back at his office, you take the time to discuss what you should be doing from now on. It’s an extremely messy exchange, with you two grappling between terms you can’t agree on. For instance, Vice President Na thinks that it seems only fair that he should really only be coming in after one o’clock, but you’re insistent on making sure he gets to work on time, since most important meetings happen within that time period (a fact he already seems to know but chooses to ignore anyway). You end up agreeing on bringing him in for the standard nine-to-six for as long as he never has to work overtime. You also find it necessary to iron out the fact that if he has lunch outside, he has to actually come back, a statement he once again finds very amusing for some reason, as if you’re the weird one in this conversation. 

And to his credit, he tries to stick to his word. It isn’t exactly a walk in the park, especially not during the first couple of weeks, but you suppose that habits are very difficult to break when they’ve been so easy to acquire and nurture over many years. More than once, you’ve arrived late to meetings to the disapproving gazes of Head Secretary Son and President Na. However, the latter finds he has less to say these days because Vice President Na’s presence in said meetings had, before this time, been nothing but a pipe dream for everyone. 

You also notice he starts taking the time to ask about things he doesn’t understand, as opposed to his initially brash or sometimes completely unresponsive approach, which has turned out better results when it comes to business lunches with investors and potential partners. Even the Samsung people, who are extremely wary of him during the callback meeting, come out of their next encounter with the Vice President looking vaguely more satisfied than they did the last time (the bar isn’t that high, considering they’d left shell-shocked previously, but you’ll still take the improvement).

Of course, with all the time you end up spending with, chasing after, and vaguely lecturing (only when the need truly arises) Vice President Na, you also learn some things about him that you hadn’t expected, like how he doesn’t really like milk in anything he drinks (but especially coffee) and that every third Sunday of the month, he meets his old high school friend Lee Jeno, the son of the guy that owns half the residential high rise condominiums on this side of the Han. Apparently, they play badminton together — he had told you that when he’d caught you wondering about the super out of place little kid’s karate trophy among other more adult, official ones in his living area. The trophy goes to whoever wins the match of the month, and according to the Vice President, he’s been ‘wiping the floor with that bastard’s handsome face for half a year straight.’ Although you can’t verify this by anything more than the slight blanket of dust on it, you think it takes nothing out of your pride to applaud him like this is an amazing thing. It also does you no harm to see him swell with misplaced pride about a kid’s karate trophy. 

You also notice that despite how healthily he eats at the office, he has a bad habit of craving deep fried food in the afternoon, which is why, over the last few weeks, you’ve been accompanying him to the corndog street stall two blocks away, a few days a week. He’s even had to borrow loose change from you a few times to because he always forgets that no street vendor likes to receive crisp, fresh-out-of-the-bank fifty-thousand won bills, but you just let him have it; his heart’s in the right place when he orders an extra one for you without even asking. You realize that he has a fairly good memory for as long as he’s concentrating, and that he likes to spend late nights watching the shittiest horror movies ever known to man (his words, much to your bemusement), and that when he listens attentively to you telling him about the day’s agenda, his left ear twitches a little when your voice hits it. 

Somewhere along the way, you realize that Vice President Na is a charming, outgoing, and fairly capable person, and in doing so, you also realize that he seems to be, for lack of a better word, your style. 

You can’t really believe it either, and you’re not even sure when it started. In between sitting with him in the company car and handing him forty-page agreements he has to look over carefully (very carefully, as you’ve taken to reminding him, so often that he starts saying it before you do now, which has only somehow endeared him further to you and not annoyed you the way you were sort of hoping it would), the small non-work related part of your consciousness had decided that it needed a more complicated situation now that things were going relatively well.

To be fair to yourself, liking him isn’t a huge distraction; most of the time, you’re both so engrossed in something you desperately have to finish that you don’t even have time to think about it. Instead, it kind of catches you off-guard, like when he’s double dipping his french fries into his ketchup, or when he smiles at you (politely to him, probably, but overwhelmingly charmingly to you) before he leaves the office, or when his brow’s furrowed in (a total shocker) concentration as he reads. 

Then again, everything about Vice President Na seems to be catching you off-guard these days. This much is proven by the fact that instead of the normal silence that you’ve grown accustomed to being greeted by when you enter his house, there’s a lot of noise coming from one area that can only mean either that someone had broken in to mug him or for some reason, he’s up before you need to wake him. 

It’s nothing you have to call 911 for, but it still paralyzes you to see him, surrounded by opened jars and a particularly dirty bread knife as he stands in front of his fancy toaster, drumming his fingers on the counter impatiently. 

“If you have a minute to spare, could you bring my laptop into the car?” He asks without turning around. His hand, still holding the bread knife, points towards the bar counter on the far end of the kitchen, where the laptop is still whirring away. 

“Of course, sir. Um,” you gingerly shut the monitor, putting the laptop to sleep and tucking it under your arm. “Were you… working this morning?”

“No, I was playing a riveting game of bridge against the computer AI.” He turns to you, grinning. “Of course I was working, miss secretary. What do you think I’d be up this early for?” 

You try to think of an answer, but nothing comes to mind — Vice President Na hasn’t ever woken up early for anything to your knowledge, anyway — so you just nod and bolt, unwilling to bear witness to his smile this early in the day. When you come back, particularly less red in the face, you find him topping one of two sandwiches with the last slice of bread to complete it. He takes one, as you expect he would, and you stand there, trying to look polite as you essentially observe him eat.

This isn’t something very unusual; ever since the first time you’d done it, you’ve been watching him out of habit. So far, only the motivation’s changed from you wanting to make sure he doesn’t bolt to you simply enjoying the view of his profile when he eats. Of course, he probably doesn’t know this, but he’s also just gotten used to you watching him and probably finds it funny — as suggested by his perpetually amused expression — that you still think, after all this time, that he’s going to make a run for it. You don’t actually mind it; you get to watch him for free, and he has something to laugh about, so everyone kind of wins. 

He’s halfway through the sandwich when his expression turns quizzical. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

“Eat,” you echo hollowly. “Eat what, sir?”

“A delicious, handmade, gourmet peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich.” When you don’t move, he pushes the plate with the untouched sandwich forward towards you like he thinks you can’t understand anything he’s saying. “What? Are you allergic to something?”

“No, but…”

“But?”

There’s no but; you don’t have a good reason to decline other than the fact that accepting it feels weird, but refusing him when he’s looking at you this expectantly is just as awkward. You rub the back of your neck as you walk over, not missing the look of triumph that crosses his face as you pick up the sandwich and take a bite. It’s good, but you don’t really think that has anything to do with his culinary skills, based on what it is; still, he looks like he’s patting himself on the back for this feat. 

“Thank you, sir.”

“Secretary ____________, I hope you can count this as a momentous occasion for the both of us.” He chuckles. “You get free breakfast made especially for you by your direct superior in the comfort of his own home, and I finally get to learn what all the settings on my toaster are for. Between you and me, I think mine’s the better achievement.” 

You’re still in the middle of eating when you laugh, and you hastily raise a hand to cover it — only Vice President Na catches your wrist halfway through, so quickly you vaguely choke on the bread that’s only partially down your throat.

“I’ve never seen you laugh,” he looks as surprised as you feel, although probably for a different reason. “I don’t even think you’ve ever smiled at me, specifically.”

“Oh.” You need time to respond, mostly so you can swallow but also because you need to collect yourself from your shock. There seems to be a lot of that going around this morning. “Sorry. Should I do that more often?”

“I mean, if you ask like that, it’s kind of disingenuous,” he laughs. “But I like it. I like knowing you’re not just in a constant state of stress because of me. Feels even more momentous than the toaster thing.” 

He loosens his hold, and you manage to take your hand back, now refusing to meet his eye. “I’m not… stressed by you.”

“Not anymore.”

“Not anymore,” you agree, and he looks particularly delighted when he sees the corners of your lips turn up again. “Not for a while. And not that my opinion matters, but you’ve been performing above expectations, sir.”

“You’re right,” he hums, taking the plate and putting it in the sink — a problem he seems to be saving for later. “It doesn't matter. But I like it, all the same.”

You’re willing to chalk the morning off as a wonderful anomaly, especially since the rest of it passes as it normally does, with a generally quiet car ride (you’ve also learned that Vice President Na likes to listen to rap music on days when he wants to avoid falling asleep in the backseat, which is equal parts amazing and amusing) and a fifteen minute briefing of what he has on his plate today. He disappears for the better part of the morning and even the whole lunch hour, but you expect this because he has a business lunch with the representatives for some Norwegian appliance company that’s looking to break into the Korean market. You can’t imagine many people want a state of the art rice cooker alongside their monthly internet bill, but it’s polite for him to go anyway, and the prospective partner seems very on edge about company secrets. It’s one of those meetings you aren’t allowed to come along to, which means that you’re missing out on a few hours of Vice President Na trying to iron details out with a couple of old guys. 

While you eat, you’re once again struck with the random notion that it feels weird not to be around the Vice President. You’ve been working together regularly and in a very close capacity, which basically means that you’re always in his shadow. It’s the life you were kind of hoping to have at the beginning and were deprived of for a good two years. Now that you have it, it feels weirdly natural — so natural that it’s unnatural to not have his voice ordering you around in that easy tone or his aftershave lingering in the air directly above you. 

You throw the tissue you used to wipe the oil from your egg toast off your mouth onto the table, crumpled and wilted. 

You miss him, which is ridiculous considering you don’t even know what there is to miss. Your relationship, while admittedly lightyears ahead of the starting point it had been at back then (again, not a great standard, considering you didn’t even have a relationship before this period of time), is nothing close to the point of being what it should be for one to miss the other. 

And yet, you look forward to seeing him, watching him do something from afar, helping him whenever he needs you. You like the fact that he still sometimes fakes left when you’re accompanying him back to his office, and you do this thing where you pretend to be annoyed even though it makes you happy to know he won’t go anywhere. You like the little sounds he makes when he eats his super unhealthy corndog as if he’s eating it for the first time every single time (see: very unnerving and slightly disturbing but altogether amusing mmmmmmmmmms). In fact, if you didn’t have a vivid memory of telling him off from way back then, you feel like you could easily convince yourself that things had always been like this — that you two had always been together, happily at work. 

You’re not surprised that he isn’t back from his meeting even when you get back to your desk after lunch, but you do feel a pang of dejectedness that lasts for a few more hours — time which you spend lazily looking over a contract he’d signed yesterday that needs a fair amount of amending and re-signing. It’s hard to pretend to care today, for some reason, especially since your mind keeps going back to peanut butter sandwiches and some ridiculous vision of Vice President Na standing in the middle of your tiny studio apartment’s kitchen area. 

Your reverie’s broken when an envelope falls onto your desk, covering the page of the contract you’d been glassily staring at for the last hour and a half. You’d drawn the same circle about twenty times already, and the paper’s all dented from your efforts. When you look up, Vice President Na is staring down at you, grinning from ear to ear. 

“Miss me?” He drums the envelope, the paper muffling the noise of it all. “Oh? I was joking, but it looks like you actually did. That’s twice in a single day, Secretary ____________. You’re setting a very high record.”

You try to tamp down the smile on your face upon seeing him, clearing your throat so that you have an excuse to press your lips together. You guess it doesn’t work because he just keeps smiling, anyway, or maybe he’s just in a really good mood. “Did your meeting go well, sir?” 

“Is Lotteria the national fastfood chain? Too bad I don’t work for anyone because it kind of feels like I deserve some kind of reward.”

“Could we say that this partnership is its own reward?” 

“It doesn’t have the same ring to it,” he sighs. Once again, his forefinger taps the envelope, calling your attention a little more clearly to it. “I know we’re on a tight schedule for this, and I hate to ask this so late of you, but —”

“Of course, sir; I’ll have it in your hands first thing tomorrow.” 

You’re already gathering it up along with your other (vaguely unfinished) paperwork when his whole palm comes down, trapping the envelope and everything else you’d been intending to carry under it. Your hands go up like you’re being held at gunpoint, your eyes wide. 

“On second thought,” Vice President Na muses, a little too serene for someone who’d just scared the living daylights out of someone else. “How about I take care of the Samsung deal you’re looking over, and you can handle the Norwegian contract?”

“I haven’t… really made a lot of headway with it, if I’m being honest.” You’re hoping he doesn’t ask you why because you’re too embarrassed to come up with a lie on the spot and will inevitably have to confess your random attraction to him under these terrible circumstances if he does. Luckily, he just shrugs.

“All the more reason to split the work, then.”

The still mildly stern part of you is begging to point out that he’s giving you a whole new set of documents to look over anyway, so it’s not even like you’ll have less to do, but the larger, more endeared part of you tells it to shut up and mind its own business. “I thought the crux of our agreement was that you’d never have to work overtime.”

“Because I look like such a stickler for the rules, don’t I?” He snorts, waving you in with the same envelope, and you concede.

Working next to Vice President Na isn’t anything new to you; you’ve been doing it everyday for a while now, especially if he needs you to be quick on call. Ever since you’ve realized his presence makes your heart beat a little faster, you’ve promised yourself not to let that fact show at all when he’s around, something you’ve been quite careful about perfecting. 

Something’s different, though, when it’s after official hours. Maybe it’s because the floor is quieter than it is during the day, so there’s nothing you can listen to but the sound of pen scratching on paper and Vice President Na’s steady breathing. The only real interruption is when Hyunsung knocks on the door to ask if the Vice President is going home; the look on his face is panicked and confused, like a puppy that’s just been dropped off at the mouth of a dumpster site, when he’s told that Vice President Na will drive himself home, so he can just leave the keys. 

Maybe it’s also because it’s pretty dark outside, and while you’ve worked into the night a few times, it’s usually alone or with some other poor sap that has even more backlog than you do — it’s never been just you and the Vice President, who seems supremely unperturbed by the fact that he isn’t at home doing… whatever he does at home after work. You can only guess at it (or wish you knew). 

That makes one of you that’s keeping busy, although you know it should be two. The fact that you’re distracted by his presence all of a sudden is only exacerbated by the mutually exclusive headache that the paperwork you’re looking over gives you. You don’t know why you had expected it to be in Korean, but you and your intermediate level English struggle to keep up with all the little things you have to look through. Sometimes, you can’t tell if the clauses are actually confusing or if you’re just the poor product of your middle school education. It strikes you more than once that Vice President Na had gone through this, somehow, himself — talked to people in a completely different language, probably with ease. You can at least be proud of yourself for being right: for as long as the Vice President puts his mind to something, he’s able to do it — perhaps even well. 

What shocks you after an eternity of silence is the hand that extends towards you, forefinger lightly nudging your chin. You sit up straight like a bolt of lighting had gone through you, meeting Vice President Na’s thoroughly and inexplicably amused expression. Your jaw slackens in shock, but his finger just stays there, like it isn’t invading your personal space. Like it just belongs there.

“What are you doing?”

“What—” you splutter, bemused at the fact that you hadn’t asked the question first. “What are you doing?”

“You keep moving your mouth. What — are you praying or something?”

“No, I —-” You gesture at the contract page you’ve been trying to stumble through for the past twenty minutes. “No, I’m just… I’m reading?”

“You’re…” The start of a laugh escapes him, and you really don’t know what’s so funny. “You’re reading aloud?”

“I wasn’t making any noise, I think,” you grumble, sounding a little more defensive than you’d care to admit. 

“You read silently aloud, then.” His eyes twinkle at this information, although why it should elicit this reaction also completely escapes you. “Why? Because it helps you memorize it or something?”

“My English isn’t that great,” you admit begrudgingly, suddenly feeling a little exposed. “Sometimes I need to mouth the words to understand it.”

And he does the most outrageous, inexplicable thing: he gently cups your chin, making sure you can’t turn your head to look away in embarrassment. Now you have to look at him, red in the face and close to exploding. 

“Don’t you think that’s a little too much, miss secretary?”

You can’t ask what; your voice isn’t working. You just open and close your mouth around the syllable, and after a couple of attempts, he starts copying you, evidently having a better time than you are based on the grin stretched across his face.

“What? What? That you’re doing something this cute in front of me is what I mean. You’re obviously going overboard, and I don’t think it’s very nice.”

He retracts his hand as quickly as he’d used it to close the distance between you, and your hand immediately comes up in its place, almost cupping your jaw like he did. It definitely doesn’t give you the same tingly feeling, so that’s an obvious bust.

You and Vice President Na have a sudden staring contest with amended rules: you blink a hundred times a minute at him while he laughs quietly, leaning back on his chair like he doesn’t have a care in the world. It confuses you and kind of enrages you, but you also find your heart thumping away in your ears like it’s trying very hard to remind you that Na Jaemin makes you feel alive. 

“I— I just—”

“Coffee? I could use some coffee. You look like you could use some too.” He stands, buttoning his blazer with one hand like he has someplace important to go. You’re still so shell-shocked that you don’t even try to stand up to help him, a fact which he notices very clearly. “Oh no, I’ll do you this favor. You sit tight and read your contract. I’ll be back. Keep doing that cute thing with your mouth.” 

Vice President Na finds you exactly as he left you: still wondering if you should be offended at his teasing or enamored by his touch and, more importantly, what the hell his deal is. You have a million questions that need answering, but the only thing you blubber out when he comes back is “Why?” 

“Because you’re amazingly fun to tease,” he responds simply. “And because it’s true. I find it extremely cute. I find you very cute, Secretary _____________, in a kind of good girl, cool girl kind of way. It’s a little confusing to me too, but I think this slightly stern but overall gentle aesthetic of yours is actually growing on me a little.”

“Sir, I—”

“While we’re taking a break,” he interrupts you. You guess it’s probably the right time for a break considering there’s no way you can work in peace now. “Do you constantly have to call me that?” 

“What else would I call you?”

“My name,” he suggests, taking a sip of coffee. You ignore the shit, that’s hot that comes out of him as he puts the paper cup down gingerly on his desk, looking a little bit betrayed by his drink. “Jaemin. Many people call me that.”

“People who are close to you, you mean. Like your family or… your friends.”

“Are you saying you don’t think we’re close? Or that we aren’t friends?”

“Sir, I work for you.” 

“So by that alone, we simply can’t be friends? Et al?I think you really are being too much now, Secretary ____________.” He folds his arms across his chest, tutting disapprovingly as he leans back on the edge of his desk. You try not to think too hard about the fact that he does it very close to you, at an angle optimal for viewing the leanness of his form. “After all those times you broke into my house—”

“To get you ready for work.”

“— walked into my bedroom—”

“Only whenever necessary—”

“— gone through my things while I’m half naked in bed like you’re trying to organize a charity drive—”

“Because you need to get dressed, not because I have some perverted agenda —”

“—eaten the food off my kitchen counter, too—”

“You told me to!” You get to your feet, the contract slipping from your lap in your enthusiasm to defend yourself. “You offered it to me!”

Whatever happens next is completely out of your control, and you know this because the room spins without you moving by your own will. Vice President Na must have been an expert dancer in his past life, or something, because after that one dizzying moment, you find yourself leaning against the edge of the table he had been just a second ago. Warm hands are on your waist, tucked under your cardigan, the heat bleeding through your shirt. 

And the Vice President’s smile is inches away from your face, still mischievous but much gentler than any other time before. 

You’re not sure if you’re paralyzed or if you just don’t want to move, but the reason doesn’t affect the outcome: all you can do is stare up at him, once again dumbfounded after a small outpouring of words that ends in some kind of forced defeat. Except this particular surrender doesn’t feel so sore, for some reason. 

“Even when you’re angry, you’re still pretty, you know that?”

“I wasn’t… angry,” you mumble under your breath, afraid that talking louder will scare him off. You don’t even think he’s listening all that much to you, considering that all he does is tuck your hair behind your left ear and completely change the topic. 

“So, tell me, Secretary ____________. Is this still a situation where we’re not close at all?” He pauses for a moment, probably to let you answer, but you don’t say anything. You’re pretty sure your swallowing nervously is the only true sound you make. He seems to be eager to do a lot of the talking anyway, which is absolutely fine by you. “Or have I completely misread all your cute little signals?”

“Well — no, but I didn’t send any signals.” Obvious ones, at least. You’d been pretty sure you had tried to keep it under wraps as much as possible, but you’re starting to realize it’s a little possible you’re not as great at pretending as you think you are. 

“Not on purpose, probably. Although you really almost got me with the one-man show vibe you have during lunch hour.”

“I… didn’t think you knew, if I’m being honest.” Honesty is the only thing you have right now, anyway, especially since Vice President Na has pretty much confirmed, in his own way, that he knows about how you feel. Now you can only wonder if he’d noticed before you even came to terms with it yourself, and the thought of that being a real possibility urges you to grab the still-steaming cup of coffee and douse yourself with its contents. 

“For a while, I was pretty sure you were messing with me. I would never,” he adds just as you say it too, mimicking your astounded tone up to the lilt. “Which is why I started thinking about why else you might be looking at me so intently. You weren’t sitting there objectifying me, were you, miss secretary?”

“Sir, I would never,” you repeat, and he mouths the same words again in his amusement, although silently this time. 

“I think I would have been okay with it if you were. Or would be, even until now. For the record.” 

“I wasn’t.” 

“You sure? No shame in it. Totally fine. Not sure about anyone else, but I’m totally okay if someone else thinks I’m eye candy in the privacy of their own minds. I am, I think, a fine specimen of a human, if I do say so myself.”

“I really wasn’t, sir.”

“You should have, then. Lost opportunities.”” 

“I could argue that I was just worried you’d leave and not come back.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that to you,” he hums. “Not anymore, anyway.” 

The ‘to you’ is what stumps you into another silent spell, but this time, Vice President Na doesn’t attempt to fill in the void. He just starts running his eyes over your face, like he’s trying to read something there or maybe memorize your features, or something. At some point, you start thinking about how this kind of silence isn’t exactly uncomfortable, contrary to your expectations and with interesting consideration of the fact that he’s still holding your hips. Apart from the idle skimming of his thumb over the curve of your pelvic bone, he doesn’t move — nearer or closer, which is probably for the best since you don’t know which one you really want more at this point.

Again, when you gather some part of your wits, the only thing you still know how to ask is “Why?”

“Because,” he replies immediately, simply, like the answer has always been very clear and you’ve just been too ignorant to figure it out. “You said that I could, not that I had to.” 

It’s hot. Isn’t it hot? You don’t know what he’s talking about, but your body already reacts on principle, and you have to stand-half-lean there with your entire face burning and Vice President Na’s body heat washing over yours like an electric blanket.

“I don’t know what that means, sir.”

“It means I didn’t do this for my dad or just because you told me off in the comfort of my own office.” He bites down on his lower lip to keep himself from laughing (yet again) at you as he witnesses, from the best seat in the house, your face turning almost purple with the effort of keeping down your embarrassment. “Although that played a bit of a factor in it. I couldn’t tell if it was rude of you to say so much or kind of cute that you did despite knowing you were being rude. But that’s besides the point.”

Good, you think. If he manages to hit you with another cute in this timeframe, you may easily cease to exist. 

“You know firsthand, anyway, what my dad always says. You must take on the responsibility you were born with. You have to do your job. You must remember that you owe your life to my achievements.” He mimics his father’s gruff, booming voice amusingly well, to the point that you can’t stop yourself from laughing. His facade breaks easily, and you think you hear him mumble cute under his breath again, although you choose to ignore it so your knees don’t buckle completely (something that you think would be very embarrassing with you so close to him). “I don’t think he’s ever once said an encouraging word to my face. And if there’s anything I can confidently say I won’t do, it’s doing what people only say I need to do. It’s my life, you know what I mean? I’ll do what I want.” 

“You’re saying you suddenly wanted to work because I said you could?” 

“More like I wanted to see if you were right.” He muses. “I was pretty sure I didn’t have the personality for it. Or the attention span. Or the skill, either.”

“I think a couple of those things are still up in the air, sir.”

“One compliment and you’re already gunning for another insubordination report.” Vice President Na’s voice is a low, casual hum, but you notice the grip around your waist tightens for a brief moment. “At first, I figured I’d just show up to get everyone off my back, but I realized along the way that I’m pretty good at this being at the helm business. I’m sure you’ll agree. Hopefully because you want to, not because you also have to.”

“I do agree.” Your reply is wholehearted, and the Vice President’s smile widens. Your chest swells so much that you think you might explode right in front of him. “Because I want to.”

“Please don’t misunderstand me, miss secretary. I’m not attributing all my successes to your impulsive words.” He teases, although his eyes stay gentle despite his tone. “The efforts were still all mine. However, I’m not too proud to admit I had a very responsible first mate by my side, for whom I am very grateful. Although I hope this doesn’t mean she’ll pluck up the courage to ask for a raise considering how well I pay her. I think. Does she get paid well? Maybe I should ask Park Jinhee from accounting.” 

“She won’t,” you laugh softly, not missing the fact that he’s finally learned her name. “And she’s not really doing this for the salary, even if it is a nice bonus.” 

“What’s she doing it for, then?” 

As a job, this was really mostly about yourself — or it was, in the beginning. You’d terrorized Vice President Na to some degree because of the innate tendency towards self-preservation, and when that felt a little one-sided, you also considered everyone who might lose their jobs if the department got cut. It had been, for the most part, an act of pure desperation, so strong that you were willing to point fingers and raise your voice (only a few decibels, because you’re not a crazy person) at your boss. Now… that wasn’t really part of the equation. Maybe you had gotten used to the fact that the Vice President wouldn’t be going anywhere, so you’d stopped worrying about your and everyone else’s jobs, which all seem to be on a smooth path alongside the captain of the ship.

But if you had to be honest to yourself, part of the reason you’d grown a bit complacent about thinking about the fate of the department also had to do with the fact that you genuinely enjoyed being next to the Vice President. Mornings spent helping him prepare for work were regular highlights in your week, and the looks of approval you received from him every time you helped him finish a particularly difficult task were second to none. Always being close to him, always being the first and last to see him in the day, simply being able to look at him -– silly as that all sounds, they now play an undeniable factor in your desire to wake up and go to the office every single day. 

“I did it for you.” You answer, and because the answer’s honest, it feels completely natural to say. A pause slowly lengthens between you two, though not nearly as tense or borderline uncomfortable as you thought it might be this time around. A slow smile stretches over the Vice President’s face, but his words don’t easily take the straightforward route this time, either.

“Should I take up with the human resources department the fact that you’re outright breaching the terms of our contractual workplace relationship? How am I?” He speaks over, with you again, your voices overlapping. You can’t help it — you laugh at the absurdity of how well he’s come to know your responses, from the word choice to the lilt in your voice that signals some level of affront. When, exactly, did Vice President Na start committing the things you said and did into memory? “You’re seducing me, miss secretary. Before you say you’re not — you are. You are, without even knowing it. You’re winning me over, telling me all these sweet nothings to tickle my heart — I believe in you, Jaemin. I love working with you, Jaemin. I did it all for you, Jaemin, because you’re obviously the best in the whole world, ho ho ho.”

“I never said it like that.” 

“You might as well have.” 

“Should I stop believing in you so that we can avoid a scene, then, or is the damage to your good standing too far gone?”

“Rather than stopping something already in full motion, I think it might be better to make certain amendments to our current agreement.” Vice President Na reaches for the pen tucked into his breast pocket — the gold clip catches the fluorescent light and momentarily blinds you as he brings it up between you. He brings it to one side, then to another, and your eyes follow it, amused but also admittedly a bit hypnotized.

“What kind of trance are you putting me under, sir?”

“The kind that gets you to stop calling me that,” he chuckles. “Among other, more important things on my agenda.” 

You have an excellent view of Vice President Na’s stellar smile from the back of the meeting room. 

The deal he closes three days later goes even better than expected; not only does he bring Amazon into the fold after weeks of (surprisingly consistent) hard work and no small amount of beguiling charm (owing to the fact that he’d offended said Amazon representatives earlier on in his still relatively short-lived career), but he also manages to snag Samsung Electronics’ participation. As an already existing subscriber to the company-provided phone plan, you’re pleased to find out that you’re entitled to twelve guilt-free months of Prime Video as part of a new promotional deal, which you can now enjoy on nights you aren’t working overtime — something you’ve racked up more of as you’ve found yourself striking more of a work-life balance, thanks in large part to the Vice President’s steadily active involvement in all things on the ‘work’ aspect of the scale. Your first goal is to finally get past the first episode of an animation everyone in the department is raving about (but that you haven’t seen more than five minutes of, in actuality, because the horrible subtitles and sluggish 144px stop motion-esque have, until recently, adamantly deterred you from enjoying anything about the story).

Standing a fair distance away from the executives, you wait for the flurry of handshakes and accompanying congratulatory statements to die down; it takes quite a while, considering the sheer volume of people, and the thickest throng has come to gather around Vice President Na. At one point, all you can see of him is the slightly unruly lick of hair that’s sticking out above the rest of the considerable crowd of balding men around him (the sole crow’s feather a mountain range of gray). All their voices overlap, and you’re only able to catch key phrases — brilliant young mind… knack for business! … just like the President… bright future ahead, you know? 

Fifteen minutes of conversation and bellowing guffaws pass before Vice President Na emerges, adjusting the front of his blazer as a result of too much handshaking. Behind him, still speaking to one of the  marketing executives, is President Na, who shoots his son a surreptitious look you’ve never seen him wear in your considerable number of years in the company’s employ  — one of triumph and pride. The Vice President, however, is intently loosening his tie and scanning the room, stretching himself just a fraction taller above everyone else to get a better view throughout. 

You wait, wondering if he’s looking to speak to someone, lost in that host of black and gray suits — the Amazon media director, perhaps, or the in-house designer that also seems to be trying to catch his eye, for some reason (you sense the needy greed for a sudden promotion that seems highly unlikely in such a setting), but even though his vision passes over them, however briefly, Vice President Na doesn’t seem satisfied.

That is, until his eyes land on the corner of the room you and Secretary Son have backed yourselves into to allow the higher-ups room to mingle. 

One beat later, and the corners of his mouth are pulled up — a soft, knowing smile directed in your general direction. You glance at Secretary Son, maybe out of instinct, maybe somehow out of panic — as though you worry she’ll somehow come to chastise you, but she’s too busy trying to re-buckle her thin coat belt with rapid-fire tsks. She seems acceptably preoccupied, so your eyes flit back to the Vice President, whose eyebrows are now slightly raised, the telltale signs of a growing grin now playing on his lips as the front of his teeth begin to peek out from the seam. Another cock of his eyebrows, lifting them higher, tells you he’s waiting for some kind of message — an indication that you see him too, maybe, or… perhaps, oddly, any sign that you’re as proud of him as everyone else in the room is. 

You can’t help it  — you laugh, louder than you’d have originally liked to, a hand coming up over your mouth as Secretary Son’s head snaps up from her waist, bamboozled at your quick but sudden outburst. She throws you a look that suggests she firmly believes your mind has snapped, quite like a stale breadstick in a derelict Italian restaurant, but it’s worth it; Vice President Na looks satisfied at this — though, why he would be, you haven’t a true clue. 

As the managers and members of the board file out of the room, both you and Secretary Son inch closer to your respective direct superiors; you both stand a few steps away as the last of the executives drag their feet, still hoping to share one last handshake with either of the two, until an elderly Mrs. Kwon’s surprisingly firm grip is finally shaken off by a sheepish President Na. He turns to his son, who’s still hosting the remnants of a genial smile on his lips, clearly poised to say something. For some reason, you expect the senior to berate the former, simply out of sheer habit, but he does nothing of the sort. 

“Jaemin-ah,” his voice is gruff but not at all begrudging; it’s a low rumble of triumph. “Who’d’ve thought? My boy… you brat…”

“Don’t tell me you’re getting sentimental now, dad,” the Vice President teases, to which the President chortles heartily. 

“Old men like me have the right, much more than anyone else.” You’ve never seen the President wear an expression even remotely close to softness, but you see it in his gaze now; it strikes you, then, that although you’ve always known the two to be related, this is the first time you can confidently say they resemble each other to the cores of their being — a view of happiness, somewhat mirrored in each of them. “I’m proud of you, son. You did everything I hoped you would — no, no… more than that, even.” 

“I’ll take most of the praise, thanks,” Vice President Na replies with his characteristic cheek. For a moment, so quickly you think you may have missed it, his eyes flicker to you. “But I can’t say I could’ve done it alone.” 

“Punk,” President Na snorts, yanking on his son’s earlobe; you and Secretary Son have to avert your eyes with expert speed to avoid being caught snickering at the slightly juvenile “ow, dammit,” that the Vice President groans out. “One big closed deal, and your head’s this big? I better not catch you floating away to a Las Vegas casino after all this.” 

“Give me some credit; I’d at least visit the desert first.” This time, when the Vice President glances at you, his father’s head turns too, and you stand up straighter at the unprecedented onslaught of attention. “Besides, I’ve got someone here to keep me anchored now.”

“Good work, Secretary ____________,” President Na offers you a rare smile that truly has you feeling like the world has turned upside down: the President in an agreeable (almost ecstatic, though you’d never say that out loud) mood, the Vice President doing his job not just in general but actually commendably well, and not a single strand of baby hair sticking up from out of your ponytail. Inconceivable. 

You bow, murmuring a thank you, and Secretary Son quickly follows suit for the formality of it all before she strides over to the President, who’s leaving his son with one last thunder-like clap on the back before he’s leaving the meeting room, still jovial when he catches up with the suspiciously lagging figure of Mrs. Kwon by the door. 

Vice President Na starts to follow suit, walking towards the other end of the meeting room; you quickly scurry behind him, still clutching your tablet, blinking a low battery warning, to your chest. You’ve come to grow accustomed to the ‘secretary’s pace’ over the last few weeks as well — always close enough to help, never too close enough to step on a superior’s toes.

But in the moment you fumble to silence your device, you end up stepping into someone’s shadow; glancing up at the Vice President, you find yourself looking at not the familiar view of his back but that of his side profile (one you’re actually also familiar with, though you refuse to admit to the level of familiarity). He’s slowed his pace considerably, allowing you to naturally fall into step with him, and even this, he expects a response from you somehow — he asks for it with yet another wiggle of his eyebrows. You laugh again, shaking your head, and yet, inexplicably, it seems to be exactly the reaction he hopes to see.

The department floor erupts into applause when the two of you pass through the glass doors; a flash of mollification crosses the Vice President’s features before he’s back to his signature light humor, raising a palm up in receipt of praise. Park Jinhee is clapping with only her left hand smacking the side of her mug, a few drops of coffee streaming down the handle side on impact. One of the team managers rushes forward, eager to shake Vice President Na’s hand, and, riding his high, also yours, pumping it up and down with so much vigor that you mumble a quiet ow behind a strained smile. Only the Vice President’s hand on your shoulder, steering you away, saves you from what feels like possible dislocation. 

He’s still waving at them like this is a pageant and not his day job, even as he guides you towards his office door; you have to use your elbows to push it open and effectively help you both avoid ramming into frosted glass. The applause dies down as your somewhat conjoined figures disappear through the doorway — you first, albeit convolutedly, your heel still holding strong in the job of keeping the door wide open enough for Vice President Na to saunter through before you let it swing shut to a now relatively silent office floor. 

His hold on your shoulder doesn’t let up, though; it’s still urging you forward, towards his desk, and you open your mouth to say something along the lines of I’m gonna break my hip if we keep going this way, but just as your throat conjures up the first syllable, he turns you around, letting you rest light against the edge of the table. 

In a pattern reminiscent of three days prior, Vice President Na’s hand finds its way to your waist, utterly comfortable in a way that mystifies you; he acts like it belongs there, as natural as the smile that’s still playing on his lips. 

“Sir, you realize it’s the middle of the day?” 

“You realize that we had a deal,” he corrects you, brow furrowing in feigned sternness. “Hold up your end of it, miss secretary.” 

“Only if you stop calling me that.” 

“Now, that absolutely was not part of the contract.” 

When you laugh this time, he chimes in; there’s a harmony in your voices that has your posture softening. You feel airier, your heart much lighter, and when you look up at him, you can’t help but flush at his expectant gaze. 

“You realize it’s the middle of the day,” you repeat, carefully, the words suddenly somewhat unfamiliar on your tongue — the next two syllables, most of all. “Jae… min.” 

Odd as it is, you’re rewarded with the pleased look that takes over his features; he takes a moment to exaggeratedly revel in this new occurrence. 

“Better. Much better. You could still be a bit more comfortable with it, I’d say, but… baby steps?” 

“Please re-prioritize your day, si— Jaemin.” The terse tone you’re going for is brutally marred by your blunder, which has his shoulders shaking from laughter. “Someone could very easily walk in.” 

“Who’s going to fire me?”

“I can think of one person.”

“You heard him. I’m proud of you, Jaemin. You’ve completely exceeded my expectations, Jaemin. You are the light of my life — my favorite son, Jaemin, ho, ho, ho.”

“Sir,” you sigh. “You’re his only son.”

“We had a deal,” he repeats, letting the return to habits slide, and there’s a laughably childish air to his words. “I’ll… file an insubordination report. Breach of contract as well. Tsk, tsk, miss secretary. Not on such a momentous occasion.” 

“Some might classify this as threatening behavior.” Your eyes are soft, though, when they meet his humored gaze. “If you want a reward… ask a little more nicely.”

A soft snort — his fingers dig lightly into your waist, and the next second, he’s lifting you off your feet and settling you lightly atop his desk. his palms never leave you, even after you’ve been placed; they’re increasingly warm beyond the fabric of your top. 

“____________,” he murmurs, saying your name so naturally that you could almost believe he’s referred to you as nothing else for as long as you’ve known him. “Kiss me.” 

Your own hands find their way behind his neck, but he does most of the work in closing the gap anyway; you’re not even sure who, between the two of you, gave that first sigh of longing, of relief. Perhaps it was both of you, all at once. 

Jaemin still tastes like the coffee you’d given him this morning — not a trace of richness, but a bittersweet and earthy twang that’s signature post-Americano. There’s even a hint of mintiness from the nervous handful of Tic Tacs he’d had just before the meeting started; you find that out the moment his tongue swipes against yours, leaving behind the invisible bite of menthol. And then there’s you, a clean taste that settles against his teeth, subtle first but growing stronger until you’re satisfied with the notion that you may linger there for some time — even after you pull away, slightly breathless.

“Congratulations to me,” he breathes out, trademark grin flashing bright again. “So what happens if I close next month’s Disney Plus deal?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer; his hand’s already skimming down, over your hips, following the path of your thigh. Your hand reaches out on instinct to stop him, but he’s oddly more aware of his surroundings than you give him credit for (or maybe, you’re just that predictable to him). He meets your palm, fingers lacing into yours and allowing him to lift your wrist to his lips. There, you feel the warmth of his kiss again, and he uses his hold to bring himself even closer, until he’s able to press his face into your neck. 

“Sir—”

“Jaemin. You call me Jaemin from now on, remember?”

“Sir.” You’re adamant. “It’s work hours.”

“You’re not tense.” 

He doesn’t move his head; in fact, you feel him burying his face further into your shoulder. In this position, there’s no real way for you to pull away — there’s also no real desire for you to do so, anyway. 

“No, I’m not.”

“Good.” Warmth again on your skin — his lips leave an invisible mark just above your collarbone. “I like you best like this.”

“What? Not tense?”

“Happy,” he corrects for accuracy. “Happy that you’re with me.” 

You fall silent, not because you’re not sure of what to say, but because you don’t need to tell him that he’s right. 

Moments later, his fingers find their way into your ponytail; the index hooks into the elastic, bringing your hair down. You feel his shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath, he’s inhaling your perfume again. 

“Green tea. Something floral. Jasmine? Maybe a little bit of citrus.” He lifts his head but stays close, warm breath washing over you. “It’s so you. Fresh. Pure. Beautiful.” 

The gap between the two of you doesn’t last for too long thereafter; he kisses you again, and your heart lifts to find that your taste still lingers somewhere there. It’s longer because it’s slower — less playful and more exploratory, until he pulls away to a much more breathless you. How he finds the air to talk even after is miraculous to you. 

“Be mine, miss secretary.” 

You blink — once, twice, at his serious expression, wondering if it will break and give way to more humor. But he waits, unwavering, until the last piece of resistance you’ve clung onto is washed away — the last thing that made you, for a second, deny that you were in love with him. 

His smile slowly mirrors yours as it grows. 

“Like you could ever get rid of me, Na Jaemin.” 

a lesson on style - vi . [ ljn | njm ]

pt. i, pt. ii, pt. iii, pt. iv., pt. v, pt. vi

you’ve always been content with being associated with one word and one word only: average. average in looks, academics and social skills, you’re just looking to graduate high school without causing disasters you’ll have to live with until you kick the bucket. when you’re paired with school king lee jeno for the semester-long physics thesis, you can’t help but think the entire situation has pretty much set itself up for failure. that is, until you strike a deal with your partner. 

alternatively: an au tale involving lessons in popularity, eleven consecutive B­ minuses, a secretly sensitive, chess­-loving jock, and an amateur sex tape.

pairing: jeno x fem!reader, jaemin x fem!reader verse: high school au { jocks!nomin ft. a super cute whiny ap physics genius renjun } rating: M chapter warnings: none word count: 8.1k

author’s note: this was actually supposed to go on for a lot longer but... it might've reached a solid 13-15k and i just thought it would be better to split it into half-ish, so nothing major happens, although i definitely enjoyed yet another mc/jaemin real talk session that i also hope you enjoy! :^)

tagging: @justalildumpling, @spiderrenjunfics (no longer available, please give me your new url if you're still interested!)

You think now is as good a time as any for you to say something that’ll easily impact the trajectory of your life forever; after all, Jeno’s essentially given you the floor after such a strange and honestly shocking turn of events. You’re aware of the fact that his thumb is still traveling across your cheek, more idle as an action than anything else, but you seem to be experiencing the feeling as something closer to an out-of-body experience than an actual first-hand one; the tingles they send to your heart are weird and blurry, like your body can’t process his touch well enough to understand it fully. You suppose it’s because of your confusion at what he’s saying, which leads to your second option: asking him what he means. 

There’s little to interpret at face value, but what his words do is essentially unlock a torrent of other weird questions in your head. For instance: how long had he known that you liked him? Had he known this entire time? Did something you did make it painfully obvious? If he wants you to like him — and, as he says, only him — does that mean he’s essentially accepting your feelings? Does this mean… he likes you back? 

You assume this is one of those moments where, because your mind is going a million miles a minute, a lot of time feels like it’s passed even though it’s just been a small handful of seconds. This assumption is quickly broken by Jeno’s expression of concern. 

“_______________? Say… something.”

“Um,” you start before you can even figure out what you want to say. The easiest answer comes to mind: It’s always only been you. But that’s weird, and this isn’t a 90’s Western movie, and if it were, you certainly wouldn’t be the eloquent main romance interest, even if Jeno’s gaze could easily fool you into thinking that. You think about making a joke, but you’re befuddled and also fresh from tears that — if Jeno’s abrupt story is actually true — were totally useless and unfounded in nature. 

Also, you’re really not that funny to begin with.  

“I just…” you try again, and his eyebrows raise slightly in anticipation for your next words. Nothing else comes out after a few seconds, though, and he realizes this is just another false start, his hand falling onto your shoulder (maybe he’s tired of trying to coax it out of you with the thumb-on-cheek method, which admittedly had you clamping up more than anything else). 

“You can just tell me how you really f—”

“I think I have to go.” 

No. No. Why would you say that? The surprise on his face quickly morphs into something that looks almost crestfallen, an expression you’d never imagine seeing on bright, confident Lee Jeno, let alone ever be the cause of. His hand slips from your shoulder quickly, like he’s now worried touching you will electrocute him. 

“Oh. I’m sorry — I didn’t… mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“I’m… I’m not.” You’re not, are you? “Maybe a little, but it isn’t really you —”

“Something I said, then—?”

“No, I…” Your fingernail digs into the pad of your thumb, with you trying to use the sting of the pain to jolt you out of this nervous, inarticulate state. “I just don’t think… I have anything of value to say right now.”

“What makes you think that?” 

“Because…” Grappling for words is like trying to break through the surface of water; you’re almost there, but somehow you’re still floundering, and that only seems to be making it much worse. “Because I never really thought about what I’d do… if you really found out I liked you.” 

When you say it, it suddenly makes sense. For some reason, you’d always lived your life shuttling between point A (liking Jeno quietly in the comfort of your own mind palace) and point Z (fantasizing about your life with him where you live in a quaint townhouse with a cute mailbox and three kids), but you’d never really given much thought to all the points in between, especially not one that contains a scenario in which he’d find out and seemingly be okay with it, which, based on the current conversation, somehow seems like a reasonable thing to assume about him. 

You’ve always wanted it — him knowing, him accepting it, maybe even him liking you back —  but it kind of felt like, deep down, you hadn’t really believed it would ever happen. 

And you were kind of content with that, because you wouldn’t ever really have to deal with the complications of it. Right now, you’re feeling unprepared and a little exposed, weirdly vulnerable to his gaze. It once again, for the hundredth time tonight, it seems, triggers some kind of flight instinct in you that has you looking anywhere but at him all of a sudden. 

“You can think about it… now,” he suggests carefully. Being put on the spot doesn’t really ever bring out the best in you — a fact that might be known to people who were actually paying attention to your failed impromptu speech about whale hunting in your sixth grade English class — so you just pretend that the silhouette of Jaemin’s front yard tree is supremely interesting to you all of a sudden, never mind the fact that it’s about a few inches from Jeno’s ear from your vantage point. You don’t really want to see his expression right now, especially if that means it’ll only fluster you back into speechlessness. 

“I don’t really know if I can,” you admit. From your peripheral vision, you see what seems like a flash of discomfort pass across Jeno’s face; you’re sure you just imagined it, considering you’ve never imagined cool, aloof, king of your heart Lee Jeno as exuding anything other than utmost confidence. Still, his next words do make you question that notion twice over. 

“Did I… misunderstand something? Is it that you don’t have feelings for me?” 

“No, I… you know. I… yeah, I do, but I just —”

“You’re seeing someone else?” 

“No,” you say more fiercely, and for a brief moment, you’re so appalled at the thought that your eyes flicker to his, which ends up being a terrible mistake because the confusion in his gaze is so profound that the guilt in you swells tenfold. 

“Because I thought… maybe the reason Renjun and you —”

“He’s — honest to God — he’s just my friend.” 

“And Jaemin is…?”

“My… next door neighbor?” You blink rapidly at the lights still coming from his house, wondering now what Jaemin has to do with all of this in the first place. For someone who seems like he would be extremely uninvolved in this general progress of events, he seems to crop up time and again, weirdly always around when you need someone. Maybe it’s a neighbor thing, or maybe he’s a little nosier than you thought. But thinking about another element in this situation is starting to give you a headache, and you’re way past the time you’re usually already in bed avoiding homework and watching shitty dating reality shows instead. “I don’t really understand what he has to do with this either. I just don’t think I’m prepared to have this conversation at all.”

“But you like me, don’t you?” 

It’s weird, actually, now that you think about it — why does he have to confirm the fact time and time again? It’s almost like he’s worried, although you can’t imagine why he would be. More than anything, you’d kind of assumed that he would find that information pretty repellent, but with the way he’s asking in earnest, it almost seems like he wants to keep the knowledge of that like a talisman. 

“I do,” you admit, mostly because it’s out in the open, but also partially because you’ve made the mistake of looking at him again, and you start wondering how he could even wonder when everyone seems to like him (you, perhaps, to a somewhat unhealthy degree). 

“More than them?” 

“I—” Your brow furrows, another wave of confusion washing over you. But his eyes are much too honest in their questioning, and you speak before anything else can come to mind. “More than anyone, Jeno.”

What looks oddly like relief settles on his face, and you notice only then that his shoulders have been tensed up because he seems to relax them all of a sudden. “Oh. Good. Great. So listen, now that we’re on the same page, I—”

Jeno’s interrupted by one of the guys in a university sweater calling out to him from across the two lawns, voice booming to a degree that sets off a few annoyed dogs in your area. Jeno raises a hand to signal him to wait, his mouth still open on whatever words he wanted to complete his sentence with, but the sounds he was trying to make quickly die into silence anyway, drowned out by a huge crash inside Jaemin’s house. 

You’re not entirely certain of what he wants to say — on the bright side, he could have been ramping up to a point that could easily make all your dreams from middle school to now a perfect reality, but he also could have been setting you up for some kind of grand, embarrassing failure — not by his design or by malice but just by the pointing out of the fact that you two lead different lives and things would likely never work out, anyway, but it’d be cool that you liked him in your own time, and he’d allow it as long as you didn’t get drool all over his notebook in class. 

Either way, you don’t think now, with a bunch of inebriated college people shouting profanities on Jaemin’s lawn and a gaggle of high school kids panicking about what sounds to be a broken table and a whole bunch of pizza on the floor, is the best time to be processing those things.

“I actually,” Jeno turns his gaze to you again, strangely alert, like you’d just whistled for a dog’s attention. You’ve never seen him like this, and it’s weird to think that, at this awkward moment, you can still find him painfully endearing. You have to shake yourself out of the grip of the already beckoning force that tells you to sigh dreamily about how adorable he is. “Think I should really be heading inside. Looks like they also need you for some kind of damage control, anyway.”

The same college kid calls for Jeno again, dragging out the vowels of his name kind of annoyingly. Jeno sighs, nodding slowly enough for you to know he’s caught on — this probably isn’t the right time to have such a weirdly heavy conversation.

“Yeah. I probably need to help clean up, anyway. No one’s going to want to do it, and Jaemin’s already chewed me out for bailing on mop duty a few times.”

“Why’d you bail?” 

“Just… got busy, personally.” He looks sheepish, and it doesn’t take a bunch of lightbulbs going off for you to cotton on as well. Now, you’re just wishing you hadn’t asked, so you didn’t ever have to imagine it. Still, what’s done is done. You have to focus on keeping the discomfort out of your face this time. “Um… that’s not important, though. Anyway —I’ll talk to you soon, okay, ________________? Like… maybe we can catch up at school? You know, talk about our thing — the project, I mean — and like… et cetera?”

“Yeah, for sure.” Your smile’s weak, and so is your joke, but you should at least try to hold up casual pretenses as much as he does, even though he’s obviously much better at it. “I’ll tell on you to Hwang if you don’t, you know.” 

His laugh is soft, but it at least sounds genuine; his smile still reaches his eyes, which already makes your heart feel a little lighter. But instead of trekking off immediately, he lingers, strangely, until his grin winnows down into just the ghost of a smile on his lips. Even weirder are his hands, slightly outstretched towards your waist, like he’s trying to cross the gap between you (even if it’s admittedly very minimal) but suddenly decides not to. The result is him looking strangely stiff and uncharacteristically hesitant, but you chalk it up to him simply not knowing how to end such a weirdly situated conversation. You know you’d have an even worse time doing it if it were up to you, so you can’t really blame him. 

In the end, he closes the dialogue with ‘see you around, ________________,’ and a quick pat on the shoulder, which, if you think about it, seems a little disappointingly different from when he’d had his hand against your cheek a few minutes ago. Then again, you’re not sure you could handle something like that again, anyway. 

You watch him walk off back towards Jaemin’s house, and some pitiful, pathetic part of you is expecting him to look back, say one last goodbye to you, or something, but the university guy that had belted his name out so vigilantly just swings an arm around Jeno’s neck and drags him to a corner where a bunch of other similarly dressed people, to whom Jeno starts talking to almost immediately. 

Cutting this conversation short was probably for the best, anyway; you have no idea what he would have said, but you’re very sure you wouldn’t have been prepared for it either way. You trudge into your house and up into your room, already mentally prepared to spend the rest of the night obsessively mulling over what it all meant and what he had really been planning to say at the end. The process starts some time in the shower, while you’re shampooing your hair and you embarrassingly remember the feeling of Jeno’s hand tangled in it. The moony expression that the thought of it leaves on your face is present up until you see how stupid it looks in the fogged up bathroom mirror. 

Renjun still hasn’t texted you, which is honestly starting to be a source of mild anxiety because you can’t be sure if he’s dead in a ditch somewhere or just ignoring you for some unknown reason. Whatever it is, you leave like three messages wondering where he’s at and asking him to call you. You’re on your fourth message, which is asking to confirm about tomorrow’s movie (something you’d almost forgotten about save for the fact that you’d remembered this would be a point of argument for you both once again if you spaced on it) when a notification pops up that once again gives you a heart attack. 

Lee Jeno: u looked pretty tonight, btw :) 

You: oh!! thank you…!

You: you looked great tonight too…! :) 

Lee Jeno: haha… cute :) 

Lee Jeno: goodnight, ____________ :) 

This is the most emojis you’ve ever seen used in a single brief conversation, and you can’t help but feel like it might be a little juvenile, but it doesn’t even matter because Lee freaking Jeno called you pretty and cute in the span of five minutes. Your thumbs are shaking as you type back a typo-laden goodnight that takes you a full other minute just to edit before waiting a little more, but nothing else comes. Maybe he’s driving home, or something. You toss your phone onto your bed, away from easy reach, before you can start overthinking what this silence means again. 

Your reflection in your window mirrors the same scene you’d encountered in the bathroom: you, hair bundled up in a wet towel, bare-faced with a stupid grin across it. You’re so caught up in the act of reeling from Jeno’s three texts that you belatedly notice a square of light beyond your bedroom window. You almost duck out of sight when you see a shadow there, thinking about crying bloody murder, until you realize it’s Jaemin, who’s watching the ridiculous expression on your face with a curious gaze from a distance. He’s still in the same clothes he’d worn to the party, but you can see, even from this far away, that there’s this dark patch on it that looks suspiciously close to the way your shirt had on the day his coke had emptied itself out on your back. That must’ve been from the crash earlier, you deduce. 

You think he’s just zoning out facing in your direction, and you find there’s no need to meet his gaze, but there’s still something a little unsettling about having someone spacing out in your general direction, so you reach up to pull your blinds down. Your hand almost reaches the string, but Jaemin’s hand suddenly starts going up too, like it’s trying to follow you, and you freeze in your movements. His keeps going, though, up until it’s close to his face, and suddenly, he’s moving it side to side, in some weird regular pattern.

He’s waving, your tired, overworked brain tells you belatedly. The string of your blinds tickles the tip of your fingers. 

Unsure and a little self-conscious, you wave back, hoping he doesn’t notice that you were about two strong pulls away from drawing yourself out of sight. This is clearly the right response, because even from this distance, you can see the brilliant white of his teeth as he smiles, fully and unabashedly, at you. 

The first thing you do when you wake up the following morning is check your phone. You’re not even really sure what you’re looking for — maybe a text from Jeno, who, if you think about it now, probably has nothing to say in response to your boring ‘goodnight’ anyway (but you can still dream), or maybe a missed call or two from Renjun, who should at least be offering you some explanation as to why he was completely out of sight after parting ways with you and Mark Lee last night. 

Unfortunately, there’s nothing on your screen, apart from the stupid 번장 notification that tells you the pocket punch board you’ve been wanting for no good reason has been discounted by the seller to a price you still can’t reasonably afford anyway. 

You certainly can’t do anything about Jeno’s lack of contact, and to be completely honest with yourself, you’re not even really that sure if you want to. Something about yesterday’s conversation, while not exactly a train wreck, makes you very nervous to have a full conversation with him, and you’d much rather it stick to very basic, kindergarten-level things, like ‘you look cute’ and ‘haha’ and ‘:)’, but since that isn’t completely in your control, you decide you simply don’t want to do anything about it.

Renjun, however, is a completely different matter. You don’t understand why he’s ignoring you if he is, considering you had spent the better part of the night (at least, the parts during which you weren’t crying on your lawn) looking for him, so this silence, if deliberate, doesn’t seem fair or even reasonable. You decide that it’s much too early to be getting an earful from you in the end, so you just send a very emphatic ‘WRU?????????????????’ through both text message, KakaoTalk, and Facebook Messenger to him, hoping the repetition of both sentiment and punctuation mark through multiple platforms is enough to faux-yell to him what you’d otherwise be real-yelling to him over the line. You can’t tell if it gives you any sense of comfort to see he hasn’t been online and active for the last 15 hours. 

All the tossing and turning of last night, courtesy of the endless loop replay of “I want you to like me — just me” Lee Jeno edition, had consequently left you worse for wear; you’d gotten up at the rising of the sun (something you’d sworn never to do during the weekend) and had opted to just stay in bed for another hour, trying so hard to get over the feeling of his fingers against your skin that you end up committing it to long-term memory. The sunlight peeking through your blinds is what gets you to throw off your covers and admit defeat to the fact that sleep would never come back at this rate, and you decide to just head down, rubbing the lethargy out of your eyes before you make a poor man’s breakfast. You’re halfway through the jelly slice of your sandwich when your sister comes through the doorway, yawning loud to announce her presence. 

“G’morning, bedhead baby,” she greets, and you use the non-knife-holding hand you have free to rake through your hair. “Big rager last night, huh?” 

“Yeah — wait, how’d you know?” 

“We live a door down from Jaemin oppa’s house? Na Jaemin? Our next door neighbor and his whole family? We can see out the window into his lawn? Sometimes we get our sidewalk trash cans mixed up with theirs? Hello?” Sooyeon smirks, albeit a little sluggishly, as you wave her grating words away. “I saw you out there with him, you know.”

“With who? Where? Who?” You demand, your jelly-laden knife freezing in mid-air, the grape blobs slipping dangerously off the edge onto the middle of your bread.

“You. And Jaemin oppa,” she says each syllable slowly. “In front of our house.” 

“Oh.” 

“So usually how these conversations go is: I bring up a juicy piece of information pertaining to you, and because you experienced it first hand, you have to then expound on the piece of information, thereby making it juicier. ‘Oh’ doesn’t cut it. Not by a long shot.” 

“There’s not much to tell.” You wonder, briefly, if you’re now obligated to bring up the Jeno aspect of the night — which, for all intents and purposes, honestly felt like more of a big deal than anything else — but you quickly decide against it, chickening out when she approaches you at the counter and starts unscrewing the lid of the peanut butter jar. That might be giving too much away, considering she didn’t even seem to notice that you’d been bawling when you’d crossed the property line. “He just walked me back here.”

“Oh, yeah, because that’s what people who live next to each other in a not-so-close-knit community do: walk each other two steps home, to keep the baddies away.” 

“He’s just a naturally nice person, I think. Most people are, aren’t they?”

“I thought you guys were close. Didn’t he give you his varsity jacket? That sounds like a closeness thing.” She knots her index and middle finger together, and you slap it away. 

“We’re close only in the same way as you are.” When she gives you a quizzical look, you sigh. “Proximity-wise.” 

“Still doesn’t explain why he was out there, caressing your hair lovingly.”

You freeze, as opposed to Sooyeon’s comically relaxed posture as she scrapes the peanut butter across your other slice of bread. “He… was not. Caressing me. My hair. Lovingly.”

“I have eyes for the sake of seeing.”

“There was just something in it. In my hair. A leaf.” 

You’re not sure why you lie; the largest part of the reason is that you don’t want to have to go into the horrifyingly awkward details of your emotional state last night, but there’s something oddly nagging at you that you can’t quite place. It takes a minute of staring at your sister spreading the peanut butter evenly across the bread and humming to herself while closing the sandwich up that you realize that you don’t want her getting the wrong impression about anything.

Which is weird, because there’s nothing to misunderstand. 

Jaemin, albeit the fact that he’s been chattier to you as of late, more so than any other time in your life, is still just your neighbor. Maybe he’s graduated from being your sort-of acquaintance to something that vaguely resembles an arm-distance-ish friend, but the notion that you’re anything closer than that makes you feel a bit strange — almost like it… scares you, which is extra weird to think about, because there’s actually nothing inherently harmful about being casual buddies with some guy who lives close enough to wave at you from his window. 

Maybe it’s because it’s Jaemin, and that’s what might be tripping you up the most. He’s not just Jeno’s friend; he’s practically some kind of counterpart to him, and it feels weirdly like a line you can’t cross. Or maybe it’s because… Jeno had asked you about him last night, which had made you feel even stranger. Like he’d been worried about something — like Jaemin was a no-go zone for him, specifically. 

As you dully watch your sister take a bite off of your breakfast, it dawns on you: maybe you just don’t want people to think you like anyone other than Jeno. 

“Okay, well, you know better than I do,” she singsongs in a tone that tells you that you actually don’t. Sooyeon doesn’t press, but she also doesn’t make you feel like the conversation is over — even if she trills I’m going back up; thanks for the sandwich in that same voice before leaving you alone in the kitchen with half of it on the plate. 

Because the truth is that you don’t really know; you don’t know what’s so unsettling about being associated with Jaemin. Your sister’s not aware of the intricate ins and outs of your (delusional) relationship with Jeno, apart from your (apparently evident to everyone) crush on him, but you also know she’s not really deeply invested in where your heart lies; all she does is make conversation, as is her personality, as a form of bonding you’ve never really quite been able to navigate well. 

You just don’t get why the mention of Jaemin, now, makes you feel… something. What that is, you’d rather not dwell on. So you just won’t. 

You’re walking out of the kitchen, cheeks filled with peanut butter and jelly, when you see block letters on cloth, spelling out a familiar last name: Na. 

You still haven’t given back Jaemin’s stupid jacket. 

Today is the day, you decide. This seems to have started the whole conversation to begin with: the jacket that somehow brought Jaemin two steps closer into your life, the article of clothing that had opened the door to what shouldn’t even be a talking point between you and anyone else. 

This should be the proverbial swan song for this whole topic; you snatch up his jacket (and immediately regret doing so in such a brutish manner, noticing you’ve got a few specks of breadcrumbs on the lettering) and head out of your house, your bedroom slippers absorbing morning dew as you march yourself over to your neighbor’s. You should’ve done this earlier, really; there was no reason for you to hold on to it. 

Honestly, you’d just forgotten, given that you were more preoccupied with things that started with L and ended with ee Jeno, but you’d rather not extend any more misunderstandings. 

And even if Jeno isn’t here to see this grand closing gesture, maybe, just maybe, this will help you stop feeling so cagey about everything he’d asked last night. 

I want you to like me — just me. 

Because why would he even think you liked Jaemin at all? Or make it sound like he thought you did? Ridiculous. Unfounded. Kind of alarming. 

There’s noise in the air the closer you get to the Na household porch; it sounds a bit muffled, like it’s fighting the breeze, but you realize thereafter that it’s music coming from a tiny speaker sitting on the hand railing. It’s playing Dongbangshinki’s Here I Am, and something about that song stirs your stomach into swooping ten miles down as you approach. 

Your initial plan was to ring the doorbell and pray that Jaemin was still knocked out cold on a Saturday morning so you could pass the jacket off to one of his parents and be done with it, but you’ve no such luck; it seems like he’s an early riser, considering how he’s seated right there, on a wicker chair by his door, hunched over a half-played chess board. There’s no one across him to block his view of you coming up the steps, and he looks up the moment he hears the creaks of the wood under your feet. 

“Hey, ______________,” he doesn’t look surprised; in fact, he looks a bit relieved, for some inexplicable reason. “Didn’t think you’d be up so early.”

“Could say the same for you.” You have no idea what causes heat to flush across your cheeks; has Na Jaemin’s gaze always been this intense? “Um. Good morning?”

“Morning.” His laugh is an easy one; it always has been, and it kind of suits him, you note, before you realize how weird it is to think that. “What’ve you got there? Gift for me?” 

“Wha — oh, yeah, I mean — no, but it is for you.” You hold up his jacket, hooked on your forefinger, to reveal it to him. “Sorry it took so long to give it back.”

This time, he actually looks a bit taken aback. “Did you stop needing it?” 

“Um… I haven’t really used it, if I’m being honest.”

“Oh. Well, there wasn’t any rush. You could’ve kept it for as long as you needed. No pressure, or anything. I’ve got others.”

“You don’t need it at practice, or anything like that?”

“No; most guys don’t even keep theirs. They give them away, for… you know. So it’s no big deal.”

You fall silent; for some reason, his tone makes it seem like he wants you to keep it, which is just preposterous. You instead hang the jacket onto the back of the wicker chair opposite him and step back, like you’ve just set up a land mine you’re afraid of detonating. 

“Well, thank you all the same. I really… appreciate your help. That day. You know.” You’re not sure why you can’t form any sentences long enough to signify you do actually belong in the same year level as him, but he at least doesn’t comment on your ineloquence.

Instead, he just stares for a bit, at the jacket and your retreating hand, before piping up over his music. 

“You wanna play a round?” 

“What? Oh, I’m…” You wave your hands aimlessly. “I’m not good at chess. Actually, I barely know the rules. Plus, you seem kind of busy playing against… your imaginary friend?”

He chuckles again. “Just playing myself.”

“Trying to outfox the old fox?”

“Sometimes it helps to know how you’d get out of a sticky situation you made by your own doing. Helps you see what your opponent sees when it all boils down to it.” He gestures again at the chair across him. “Humor me a little. It’s not as fun just talking to yourself.”

You hesitate for a second; you came here to return the jacket, and that much was done easily, albeit a little more awkwardly than you ever wanted to. Jaemin’s aura is laid back and friendly, but you’re not sure why you’re teetering on the edge of panic again. Jeno’s words seem to be echoing in your head.

And Jaemin is…?

Jaemin is your next-door neighbor, it’s true, but you can’t say that’s really your only point of connection; if it were, he wouldn’t be expectantly waiting for you to take the seat across from him. And when you look at his hand now, idle against the chessboard, you can’t say you aren’t thinking of the way it patted your hair soothingly the night before. All that does is make you wonder the exact same thing Jeno asked you. 

What is Jaemin to you? A friend, perhaps, and definitely a nice person — nice enough to help you out, keep you company during a few low points. He’s a person willing to listen to you, funny enough to lift your spirits, and genial enough to not break your fingers for returning his things way too late (a low bar, but a good one nonetheless). Na Jaemin is a good individual, with pretty good music taste (based on the fact that his playlist, trudging on next to him, is now playing H.O.T.’s Happiness), and a good disposition about him that seems to make no small amount of people gravitate towards him. 

But you don’t really want to dwell on what Jaemin is to you; more than that, you can only really be reminded of what he isn’t. 

He isn’t Jeno. 

And Jeno knows you like him; he’s not only noticed it but confirmed it multiple times in a single conversation. Surely, then, nothing else should matter to him — or, for that matter, to you. 

You swallow down the refusal and nod, trying not to read into the fact that Jaemin’s face lights up when you pull the chair back and settle down on it. 

“So let me get this straight; you don’t know how to play chess?”

“I know a couple of pieces go in weird directions,” you admit. “That’s about it.” 

“Perfect.” His long fingers drum against the wood of the table. “I’m going to whip you into competitive chess-playing shape, my young pupil.” 

What starts off as a casual, humor-filled lesson on the roles of each chess piece suddenly becomes an actual lecture; you’re not sure if Jaemin is getting a kick out of instructing a rookie like you on the different plays — which are infinite, a fact he’s drilled into you several times — or if he’s really just enthusiastic about the game (no, sorry, sport, since he’s chastised you about three times on this terminology already), but whatever the reason is, you have chess pounded into your brain for the better part of an hour. By the time he asks you to actually start playing against him, the sun’s fully up in the air and you’ve had to tie your hair up to keep it from sticking to your neck. 

“I’m glad you got home safe last night,” he hums, pushing his black pawn to meet yours in the middle of the board. The Italian Game, he called it — not to be confused with serenading someone over pasta, a different kind of Italian game. That had gotten a long laugh out of you. Your hands flit over the white pieces, unsure of your memory. You only respond when you’ve moved your bishop to the same row. 

“Well, it was a very long and tumultuous journey, but I managed, with some help.” 

His knight comes out next, smoothly and quickly; you pause, rubbing the back of your neck. Surely, there was something else he’d taught you? 

“What a chivalrous, ah, knight, that person must’ve been.” He raps a knuckle onto the table, starting you out of the act of racking your brain. “Perfect joke. Well-timed. Excellent chess pun. I think I deserve an award.”

“Does whooping my ass two moves into the game count as a prize?”

“I don’t want to rob you of the feeling of hope this early in the match. Take your time,” he chuckles, leaning back against the throw cushion behind him. He fiddles with the speaker, and the songs skip one by one, until he lands on a song you don’t know — some Japanese track that sounds suspiciously like an animation opening. It’s lively and admittedly a bit loud, and Jaemin hums to the guitar riffs with surprising accuracy. “Anything interesting happen when I left?”

You freeze for a moment, your fingers still hovering over your own knight in hesitation. You know what he’s asking, and for some reason, you’re tempted to tell him — then you remember that it actually isn’t really his business, and you don’t want to embarrass yourself. 

“Not really.” You feign casual disinterest as you move your knight above your pawn line; from here on out, you have no clue what to do. Jaemin, on the other hand, is so sure-footed about his own skills (which are infinitely more advanced than yours) that he doesn’t even take his eyes off you to look at the board as he moves his next piece. You’re stuck thinking about what to do again — in the game, that is. Not about his gaze, which you try to avoid. “Just, you know. Talked with Jeno for a bit. Nothing major.”

Nothing major to him, you remind yourself. To you, your entire world had just been flipped over onto its belly.

Jaemin hums again, this time in understanding, but you notice (from your very surreptitious glances of him) that this time, it seems like he’s choosing what to do. You think it’s for the game, but when he counteracts your own (poorly planned) move with a swift response from his own pieces, you get the odd feeling he’s trying to choose his words carefully. 

“Was it a conversation where you all got along?”

You hadn’t argued, but you’d never really thought about the whole stint long enough to classify it as good or bad. You supposed it wasn’t anything horrible in the end, although the fact that it had robbed you of precious hours of sleep wasn’t exactly the best outcome. But Jaemin’s not watching your expression now; he’s intently looking at the board, even if he’s not the one about to make the next move. 

You get the feeling he’s suddenly avoiding eye contact too, which is weird, because he’s never been one to shy away from looking you straight in the eye. For some reason, that makes you feel like he doesn’t want to hear an answer. 

“It was fine. Nothing… bad happened.” You know that’s true, but somehow you feel like it’s still not truth. “He explained… stuff. Who she was. Why it happened. Totally understandable stuff, I think.” 

You choose not to mention anything apart from that — that he’d asked you to like him, nor that he’d asked you about your relationship with Jaemin. More than deciding it wasn’t going to be anything contributive to the conversation at hand, you also just didn’t want to. 

Jaemin stays silent for a while; he moves his piece, then taps his queen — for some reason, he’s letting you know something about his next move. What it is, you haven’t puzzled out; it’s not like you know which direction he’d be taking, and even if you did, you’d surely not know how to respond to it, anyway. You guess he’s just throwing you a bone, but why he would, you also just don’t see the reason for. 

You’re pushing your pawn hesitantly diagonal to capture one of his when he speaks up again. 

“Did he tell you how it ended? With the two of them, I mean.”

He says it so calmly, capturing your bishop with his queen in the process, that you feel like you’re just talking about the weather and who won yesterday’s league basketball match. You shift uncomfortably in your seat, clearing your throat, but you only actually manage to shake your head. 

“She cheated on him. Some college guy that she met during her orientation; you know she’s older than him, right? He’s never dated seriously since then. I think he was really hung up on her for a while — until recently, that is. I think. He hasn’t been that close to many girls.” 

“That’s… that’s awful.” You’re not sure why Jaemin’s telling you this; it honestly feels illegal to know. “I didn’t think… anyone would. Cheat on him, I mean.” 

“Even good-looking bastards like him can have rotten luck.” Jaemin’s smile borders on wry. “I don’t know why she showed up, honestly. Word probably got around… but she probably just wanted to know what would happen if she stirred something up with him one last time. He likely didn’t see it coming.” 

You stare at the board, unsure of what to say. It makes sense, but something doesn’t really sit right with you either — why Jeno would let her come close to him at all, let alone allow her to completely eliminate the distance between his mouth and hers for longer than a second. Even thinking about it makes you want to throw up all over again. 

“But deep down, I don’t know if Jeno completely got over her.” Jaemin continues, snapping you out of your short trance. “For a while after, they kept in touch. I think they even tried to work it out, but… obviously, it wasn’t easy. Until now… I’m not really sure.” 

“Why,” you swallow hard. “Why… are you… why should I…”

“It’s not easy to be a player when you don’t know much about the game, is it?” He’s still staring at the board, but you get the sense that he isn’t just talking about chess. “Like I said, Jeno’s a pretty complicated guy. It’s not really my place to say anything, but…” Jaemin’s eyes flit upward for a second, and he offers you a small, almost pitying smile. “I think you need to know anyway.” 

“But it has nothing to do with me. His life… I mean, his ex, and stuff.”

“I’m not too sure about that. If you like him that much… doesn’t that just mean you want to be part of his life?” He topples a pawn of yours, but you barely register the clattering noise or the fact that he drags it unceremoniously off the board. “I think you should at least know what you’re getting into. Jeno hasn’t liked someone seriously for a while, but you seem… to be the opposite. How much do you actually know about what he’s like?”

You don’t know why that kind of hurts your feelings; maybe it’s just because you have to face some kind of truth about how you don’t know much about Jeno’s private life, as badly as you want to. You even have to hear about it from someone else — someone easily kicking your ass in a dumb chess match. 

“I think everyone has baggage,” you say slowly, pushing your rook forward. You realize it’s trapped behind two different pawns, so you’ve essentially backed the piece into its own corner. Jaemin doesn’t seem to care; he’s too busy executing what clearly is a ten-stage strategic win on the other side of the board. You don’t really care.

“That’s true,” he concedes, toppling your knight. “But some more than others, I think.” 

“If he wanted me to know, he would’ve told me, right? Yesterday, I mean.”

“That’s may also be true, although I can’t say that with absolute certainty.” He looks thoughtful, and the pause gives you a bit of reprieve — enough to make a bad move that you instantly regret the moment you put your one remaining bishop on a square. Something like amusement flickers across Jaemin’s face, but he doesn’t make a move immediately. “Do you know what makes chess such a great game? In my opinion, anyway.” 

“No?” The uncertainty in your voice is from a lack of understanding at the sudden shift in topic. 

“Whenever you play someone, you get to see what they’re like — what their priorities are, you know?” His finger lands on a rook, inching it back and forth with idle intent. “You see how their mind works, what they’re like when they’re winning or losing, and what they think of you. Check, by the way.” 

You’re silent as his rook captures your bishop, and he picks your fallen piece up and sets it aside with his growing pile of white. 

“I’ve actually asked Jeno to play with me a few times, just for the fun of it. Sore loser,” he laughs lightly, one hand reaching out to lower the volume of his music. You notice the opening bars of Winner’s Really Really come through moments before it’s toned down. “Doesn’t really know or care about the rules, but he really likes to win. That’s kind of what makes him the star player on the team, actually. He really hates being backed into a corner, but all that focus on winning kind of tunnels his vision sometimes. Leaves him open to some attacks from another angle. He really hates that — which is probably why we barely play chess together in the first place. Apart from the fact that he thinks it’s boring.” 

You’re staring at your pieces, now very pitifully winnowed down in number, and you feel stuck. You’re not sure what to do, but you’re pretty sure any move is going to make you look dumb in front of Jaemin, who’s clearly a pro — so much so that he seems to know what you’re going to do before you even decide yourself. 

“You know what I like about your playing style, though?” He interrupts your train of thought again. You look up from the board, bemused; you’ve just been struggling to humor him since your first move, and it obviously isn’t working, since he seems more invested in the conversation than in the game. “You’re just trying your best, even if you’re new at this — even if you think you’re going to lose.” 

“I just don’t want you to think I’ve forgotten everything you just said,” you respond, smiling weakly. 

“You can’t always predict what’s going to happen in a game, even if you know the pattern anyway. Isn’t that just natural about anything in life?”

“You seem to know, though,” you grumble, tugging on your ponytail. You throw in the only option you have left: pushing your queen in front of your king as a last line of defense. “You’re barely paying attention to the board.”

“It’s just constant practice — a lot of hard work on my part. I don’t mind the grind of it, if it gets me somewhere good in the end.” 

“So is that the kind of player you are? Just… a hard worker?” 

“Maybe. I like to look at things from every possible angle. I guess that’s why I like chess when most people find it a headache.” He picks up his queen, rolling it in his palm. “Although, I guess Jeno and I have one thing in common — as players, that is.”

“What’s that?”

“I also really hate to lose.” 

His queen knocks over your own with a pitiful clatter, taking its place on the board. When he picks up your piece, instead of adding it to his knockout count, he offers it to you. You take it gingerly, opting to focus more on it than on the soft smile that’s now playing on Jaemin’s lips. 

“Checkmate,” he announces lightly. “Good game, _____________. You’ve got the makings of a star player.” 

“You’re patronizing me, aren’t you?” You sigh as the two of you start resetting the board; you have to watch Jaemin’s pieces get rearranged to position your own. 

“Only a little bit. I see a lot of quiet drive in you.” 

You place the last of your pawns in a neat row; the board looks like it hadn’t even been touched. “Jaemin, how did you and Jeno become this close? You seem… I don’t know.”

“Yeah, we’ve definitely got our unique quirks,” he chuckles softly. “But Jeno and I… we just go way back, I think. When you’re friends with someone from a young age, you tend to grow with them. He’s a good dude, really, even if our personalities are different, and it’s always a fun event so long as he’s around. Well — mostly. I’d say a good ninety-nine percent of the time.” 

You pointedly ignore the sheepish smile he throws your way. 

“You said before that you’re not the type to… you know, share your feelings, and all that. Then how do you… like what do you guys even talk about?”

“What do you and Renjun usually talk about?” Jaemin grins. “Anything and everything, really. Movies, games, why the jerk from Yongsan International gets on our nerves when he chews his gum. We just… have a tendency to be interested in the same things, no matter if our perspectives are different.” 

While talking to Jaemin is fun, you can’t help but feel like he has a tendency to speak in riddles. You still don’t really see any strong similarities in their approaches to their interests, similar as they may be, but what do you know, anyway? It isn’t like you and Renjun are exactly peas in a pod on paper.

His eyes lose focus for a second, hitting somewhere behind your ear before they quickly turn back to you. You have no idea why this makes you feel a little put on the spot. 

“Hey, you want to have brunch here? My mom makes a mean soybean paste stew.”

“Oh,” you press your hand against your stomach, wondering if the swooping feeling in it is from hunger or something unrelated. “No, I actually just ha—”

“_____________?” 

You swivel around in the chair, and your heart stops; you're not the least bit prepared to see Lee Jeno standing at the foot of Jaemin’s porch steps, a quizzical look very clearly etched on his sharp features.

the emotions you go through whilst falling in love with jaemin are so unexplainable that it feels as if his love is otherworldly.