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It’s Minah who opens the door.
“Hi!” she waves enthusiastically, a red cup in her hand. “Welcome to the party!”
Hakyeon shoves himself through to the front of the group, his elbow sinking into Taekwoon’s side. “Hey gorgeous,” he says, trying and failing to wink. It looks like a blink.
Playfully rolling her eyes, Minah reaches for his hand and pulls him into the house. “I’ll take this annoying one off your hands, if you don’t mind.”
“No, go right ahead,” says Wonshik, smirking. “Have fun.”
Hakyeon silently fist pumps when Minah turns her head and leads him through the crowded kitchen.
“He’s not coming home tonight,” mutters Hongbin.
“Of course not,” says Jaehwan, turning his head. “Now where’s-- Sojin!”
Taekwoon’s stomach drops and he freezes in place, Sanghyuk at his side. He notices Sojin’s legs are bare and her hair is red, and he reflexively steps back, crushing Hongbin’s toes with his heel.
“Fuck,” Hongbin grabs Taekwoon and shoves him forward, cussing under his breath.
“Sorry,” says Taekwoon, trying to turn his head, trying to run away, but Sojin is already right there, talking animatedly with Jaehwan and she’s. Beautiful. Freshly dyed red hair, the kind Taekwoon has only seen in fantasy movies, tumbles over her shoulder in a loose ponytail. Her skirt, small and black, clings to her thighs and ass.
Startled, Taekwoon lets out a little choked noise when Jaehwan grabs him by the shoulder and says, “You know Taekwoon.” The pregame buzz has long wore off, leaving Taekwoon cold and stiff.
“Hi Taekwoon,” Sojin smiles at him. “I know I’m not allowed to say this but you did very well on your orgo test. Don’t tell any other TA I told you, okay?”
Jaehwan’s grip tightens on Taekwoon’s shoulder. Taekwoon takes a deep breath and says, “I won’t.” He takes another breath, then several more, manually breathing until his head is a little clearer. By this time, Jaehwan has engaged Sojin in conversation, still keeping a steely hold on Taekwoon so he’s rooted there, listening to his voice and her giggles. “--he’s so shy,” Jaehwan is saying, pushing a little at Taekwoon’s shoulder. “We call him our gentle giant.”
“Oh, really?” Sojin’s eyes are on Taekwoon again. “You know, Taekwoon, I’ve always felt like you don’t like me much. You’re always so quiet around me.”
Somewhere behind Taekwoon, Wonshik snorts and Hongbin elbows him in the ribs. Sanghyuk whispers, “I need a drink.” “I’ll go with you,” says Wonshik. “Can’t stand this soft core flirting shit anymore.”
Soft core flirting? Taekwoon hasn’t even said anything. He still can’t say anything now, not when Sojin is looking at him, talking to him outside of their customary TA sessions and thinks he doesn’t like her. He? Doesn’t like her?
Not even Jaehwan can keep a straight face. “He’s like that with everyone,” Jaehwan insists. “Really, but Taekwoon is really nice under his scary face. He’s just too shy for his own good.”
Taekwoon glowers at Jaehwan, not knowing if he wants to punch him or hug him embarrassingly tight, but then Sojin is touching his arm, saying, “Taekwoon, you don’t have to be shy around me. We should be friends.”
Standing right behind Taekwoon, eavesdropping on all of this, Hongbin makes a low, half sobbing noise.
Taekwoon has to bite his lips to keep from smiling. “Yes,” he says quietly. “That’d be… nice.”
This has to be a dream. Only he knows that it isn’t because there are too many people around and surely, if this were a dream, Taekwoon would only get as far as the front door before Sojin is imitating Minah and pulling him up to her room.
Jaehwan pats his shoulders, “I’m going to get something to drink. Want anything?”
“No,” Sojin shakes her head.
Taekwoon follows her lead. It’s only when Jaehwan has disappeared for more than five minutes that Taekwoon understands Jaehwan is never coming back. Hongbin, Wonshik, and Sanghyuk have also disappeared. They've all given him an opening and Sojin is still standing right there, talking to another girl on her right. The moment her head starts to turn, Taekwoon is already trying to take as many deep breaths as possible in the hopes he can live through an actual, social interaction with her. “So,” she leans against a far wall, looking up at him. He follows her. “Do you like the party so far?”
“It’s okay,” says Taekwoon. “I don’t… I don’t really like parties much.” He pauses. Then, “Sorry,” and ducks his head.
Over the music and the cacophony of the several different conversations happening around them at once, he hears her laughter followed by, “It’s okay. They’re fun in moderation but you can easily get tired of doing the same thing all the time. Minah wouldn’t let me throw another ‘boring’ Cards Against Humanity party, even though she’s a beast at that game. If you don’t like parties, what do you like?”
I like you, he thinks so hard he’s practically internally screaming it. I like you so much. Taekwoon’s stomach buzzes and turns, clenching and loosening, and he’s suddenly thankful he hadn’t added an unnecessary amount of hard liquor to this cauldron. Humming, he leans back against the wall with her and says, “I like…” Video games? He’ll sound like a kid. Sports? A meat head. Math? That one’s not even true. “Music,” he finally decides on. It’s a socially acceptable answer with minimal repercussions. Who doesn’t like music?
Sojin could not like music, and he’s already mentally working out a way to backtrack when he hears, “Oh? What kind? Do you play anything? I’ve done violin for fourteen years. I’m actually a…a music and chemistry double major.”
Taekwoon stares down at her. How are you a real person?
Sojin giggles, sliding a stray strand of hair behind her ear, and says, “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Blinking out of his momentarily daze, Taekwoon drops his eyes. “Sorry,” he mumbles.
“You know.” Then Sojin leans closer to him, their shoulders touching. Taekwoon hunches over so she doesn’t have to strain on her toes. “You don’t have to apologize for everything. I don’t mind if you stare.”
I don’t mind if you stare. This is a dream. Any moment, Taekwoon will wake up from this, hard and embarrassed as per usual, and he’ll remember the closest he’s ever come to Sojin had been during office hours as she went over some of the more challenging nucleophilic attack reactions.
Taekwoon bites the inside of his lip and shit, it stings. Sojin’s hair is tickling his shoulder. She’s warm. The party is loud, but they’re both quiet and if he could make himself, he would grab her hand and say a very Hakyeon-like, “Wanna go somewhere else, just us?”
But he’s not Hakyeon, he’s Taekwoon and Taekwoon is standing with Sojin in the corner of a party, against the wall, and she’s just. She just said… This is really happening.
I don’t mind if you stare. What does that even mean? Where did Jaehwan go? He needs to come back here and translate or at least be Taekwoon’s microphone and tell Sojin that he likes her just fine, he likes her a lot, in fact. When he’s quiet, it doesn’t mean he’s ignoring her or thinking about how much he wants to be somewhere else, he’s doubling back over his thoughts, trying to forge coherent meanings out of phrases he’s never heard before.
Oh God, now he’s taken too long to respond. Sojin is going to step away from him, and Taekwoon will feel like one of those shitty secondary characters in terrible CW shows, the ones who always looking longingly across the party floor at the retreating backs of their love interests but never make a move.
Swallowing down every bit of impending disappointment, Taekwoon turns his head. Red. Sojin’s still here. Standing with him. Not looking at him, she’s looking out at her guests, her head back against the wall. Her neck, so smooth and perfect. Taekwoon licks his lips, seeing only bright hickeys, hearing only his mental approximation of Sojin’s moans. “You should…” He clears his throat. “You should go out there. Dance. Have fun.”
Sojin looks up, “Why? You don’t want me here?”
Taekwoon chokes down the most embarrassingly porn-like line he’s ever thought of -- “You don’t know how much I want you” --and says, “No, no.” As in no, that’s not what I meant but then he realizes it could be understood as no, I don’t want you here. He stutters out, “N-No, that’s… that’s really not what I meant, I just…you…”
Sojin smiles. “Me?”
Fuck. “You just… you don’t… you don’t look like you’re having any fun here… that’s all.” Any fun here with me.
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t having fun,” she says and then she leans into his side again, speaking right into his ear, “You know, you’re really cute when you don’t know what to say.”
Taekwoon opens his mouth and then closes it. His ears are on fire. “I…” He tries again. Then he hears, he feels her laughter, her warm breath on the side of his face, and his tongue swells in his mouth. He thinks he can feel the moment his brain shrinks to the size of a pea and becomes too clustered to properly function.
Oh God, he’s going to die here and Hakyeon is going to get his XBox after all. He hasn’t made the proper alterations to his will yet.
“Sorry,” Sojin suddenly says. Now she’s the one ducking her head and Taekwoon has to strain to hear her, hunching his shoulders more. “Was that… too much?” A pretty redness is spreading across the tops of her cheeks, and she laughs, hiding her face behind her hand.
Taekwoon says, “I… you…” He shuts his mouth with a clink of his teeth, ears so hot he worries moths are going to start smashing into them. “Sojin.”
It’s not the first time he’s said her name aloud, but God, he doesn’t want to think about those frustrating dreams when Sojin is right there. Right here, touching her cheeks with the back of her hand and exhaling big breaths. “Yes?” When she looks at him, her eyes are bright. This close, he can see the blue ring of her contacts, the places on her mouth where her gloss has been licked off.
“I’m really… really bad at this...” Taekwoon gestures. “Talking thing. But I don’t… I don’t dislike you.” Man, if she only knew. “I’ve never disliked you.” Understatement.
The tiny Hakyeon who lives in Taekwoon’s head rolls his beady little eyes.
“I know you don’t,” says Sojin. “I was only playing with you, I just wanted to hear you say it. And, as for the other thing…”
The other thing. Taekwoon lets her go on.
“I really…do think you’re cute, but not only when you don’t know what to say. It’s more like… I think you’re cute all the time?” She laughs, twirling her ponytail around her fingers. Her finger nails are a dark purple and it’s quickly becoming Taekwoon’s favorite color, along with the new color of her hair.
Still alive for some reason, Taekwoon exhales and remembers to inhale this time. In between the party the little Hakyeon in his brain is throwing and how close he is to puking, he manages, “Oh, that’s…” Great? Incredible? You don’t know it but I’m trying not to hyperventilate right now? All of the above. “You’re… you’re really pretty.”
You’re really pretty, said the middle schooler to his homeroom teacher.
The crushing embarrassment makes Taekwoon’s knees wobble. His stomach roars and then he has to swallow back hard on the beer flavored stomach slush that’s creeping up his esophagus. God, if every conversation with Sojin is going to be like this, Taekwoon will need to check up with a gastroenterologist. This can’t be good for his digestion.
“Oh,” Sojin’s eyelashes flutter. She hasn’t stopped smiling since this conversation began. “You’re--“ The sudden blaring of a Top 40 song cuts her off. All the party guests seem to scream at the same time and stumble to the middle of her living room, grabbing wrists and laughing as they pull others to dance. Distracted by the loud noise, Taekwoon jumps when Sojin taps his shoulder and says, “Hey, want to get out of here? My room is quieter.”
When Wonshik sees Sojin leading Taekwoon upstairs, holding hands, he falls to his knees and yells, “Thank you, Lil B Based God, for this blessed night. May our lives forever be in your hands, amen.”
Sanghyuk pretends to cry into his red solo cup, “They grow up so fast!”
Glaring, Taekwoon thinks about grabbing them and shutting them up with his fists but then he catches sight of Sojin’s fingers intertwined with his and. They can wait.