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Jaehyun wasn’t sure which he disliked more; the fact that he was pitifully single, or Johnny hovering over his shoulder while hounding him to go on a blind date. He was leaning more towards the latter. Johnny could be especially nosey when he wanted to be, and it seemed it was one of those times.
“Jae, you can’t be sad and lonely forever man. Just one date. I swear this guy’s nice. Plus, he fits all of your ideas for an ideal type!” Johnny stated earnestly, ignoring his large plate of french fries in his quest to persuade his friend.
They were sitting in the campus quad, eating lunch. The day was sunny, and they had both mutually decided that the cafeteria was too stuffy on such a fine day. It wasn’t often that they ate lunch together, since their schedules weren’t similar most days. But for once Johnny’s class was canceled. Jaehyun didn’t count it as a blessing at the current time.
“Should I be feeling offended?” Jaehyun asked nobody in particular as he reached over and stole a fry from the plate. While he wasn’t taking Johnny’s words seriously, he was getting a bit annoyed at all the attention to his nonexistent love life.
He would admit that he wasn’t the best at flirting. Hell, he rarely even made efforts to try to go out and find someone. Johnny, on the other hand, was a good flirt when he wanted to be. He even had a loving boyfriend named Ten. Jaehyun had became a third-wheel to their hangouts way too many times.
“What you should be feeling is pitiful. It’s been like what, three… four years since you dated? Your river is all dried up. Where’s the drive? The thirst??” Johnny responded with feeling. He finally put attention to his food, taking a few fries and shoving them into his mouth, grimacing at the slight soggy taste. University dining was subpar at best.
And while yes, he was correct, it has been a while since he dated, Johnny didn’t have to shove this fact into his face. Jaehyun shot the older a look, “First, never compare my lack of relationships to that of a dried up river. Secondly… why are you so invested? You have Ten, go bother him.”
Johnny spoke around his mashed fries, “You look so lonely when you’re not hanging with me. How am I supposed to give the love of my life the attention he deserves when I’m over here constantly worrying about my best friend dying alone?” At this, he reached over to grab his drink, sipping it to rid away the sandy aftertaste of soggy fries.
Jaehyun rolled his eyes. If there was one thing that Johnny was good at, it was being dramatic. His flair for dramatics is what made him and Ten work so well together. He knew that the older was only being like this because he genuinely cared, but it didn’t make it any less bothersome. It was probably his simmering annoyance that made his mouth move before he thought about it.
“Stop being like this. Besides, I just went on a date. I’m not the casanova type.” He said, nearly biting his tongue at the end. Beside him, Johnny choked on his cup of Dr. Pepper, spraying some of the soda onto the remaining fries. Grimacing at both his lack of proper thought and the mess his friend made, Jaehyun pulled a few napkins over and threw them in the direction of the spillage. “Must you be so messy?”
Johnny ignored the comment, leaning forward to stare at his friend with accusing eyes. “What the fuck, Jaehyun. Is this what our friendship really is? You went on a date and didn’t even tell me??” He prompted rapidfire, “who was it? Do I know him? I probably do, don't I? I know everyone.”
Which, Johnny wasn’t wrong. Unlike Jaehyun, Johnny was rather social and thrived on conversation and meeting others. Considering their different personalities, it was a wonder how they even became such close friends.
But since Johnny wanted to be a social butterfly, Jaehyun was at a crossroad. He didn’t know anyone that the older wasn’t already friends with. Jaehyun tried to distract himself by taking his own bottle of soda and taking a big sip, clearing his throat as the carbonation burned.
“Why are you interrogating me?” he complained, purposefully not answering the questions.
“Holding out on your best friend warrants an interrogation. Stop avoiding the question, who the hell did you go out with?” Johnny demanded, waving away Jaehyun’s complaints. Jaehyun sighed and looked out across the campus quad, just deciding to just point out someone random bypasser. It wasn’t like Johnny would notice fully anyway.
He briefly people-watched as he stalled, muttering out “You don’t know him.” absentmindedly. His friend continued his complaints, doggedly urging a name out of him, when Jaehyun finally spotted someone of interest.
He was dressed in a fluffy red sweater paired with ripped black jeans. His backpack was slung over just one shoulder as he walked down the sidewalk towards the Union building, eyes focused on his phone with one earbud stuck in his ear. What really had caught Jaehyun’s attention though, was his shock of pink hair. It was bubblegum pink and brushed softly against forehead. He was on the small side, a tiny figure against the wide view of the greenery of the quad, and was essentially cute.
“Oh, what a surprise. He’s right there.” Jaehyun said as casually as he could, pointing a finger in the pretty boy’s direction. Johnny whipped his head around quickly to catch a peek, and immediately snapped his head around to look back at Jaehyun. “Who the hell-- I’m going to talk to him. Be right back.”
Oh. Oh no.
“Johnny-” Jaehyun broke off mid-sentence as the other man climbed his way out of the bench and towards the pretty boy, already hollering to get his attention. When the pink haired man turned around to face Johnny, Jaehyun groaned and hurried to get up from the table and go over to the two. As he neared, he already could hear Johnny’s loud voice as he talked with him.
“Hey, you went on a date with my boy Jaehyun right? Where did you guys go? He won’t tell me. What’d you guys do?” Johnny was asking. Pretty Boy looked a bit confused at the sudden onslaught of questions, and looked over at Jaehyun questioningly.
“Johnny,” Jaehyun said, reaching out and grabbing onto the older boy’s arm, “leave him alone, he’s busy.” Of course, Jaehyun didn’t actually know if he was or not, but he wanted to give them all a chance to avoid this embarrassment.
“Oh, I just got out of class, actually. Who’s this?” Pretty Boy said in response, shooting Johnny a curious look. “Wow, first secret dates and now a lack of information about your best friend,” Johnny shook his head at Jaehyun before he brought his attention back to Pretty Boy, “I’m Johnny.”
Pretty Boy hummed, nodding his head in greeting to him. “Oh, I’ve heard about you before. I’m Taeyong, I think you know my roommate, Yuta?” He introduced back. At the question, Johnny made a noise of confirmation. “Ah! You’re Yuta’s roommate? I see. Okay. Is that how you and Jaehyun met? Through Yuta?” He asked, as if Jaehyun weren’t there. The ignored man sighed, shifting his weight as he looked between the newly named Taeyong and Johnny.
What currently confused Jaehyun was Taeyong’s utter lack of attempt to escape this obviously weird conversation. Rather, he had slid his phone into his back pocket and had tucked his earbuds into the collar of his sweater to give them his full attention. “No. We have a general communications class together. We’ve talked then,” Taeyong denied, much to both Johnny and Jaehyun’s surprise. “Really?” They both chorused, though Jaehyun’s was much quieter.
Johnny rounded on Jaehyun with accusing eyes, “General communications, huh?” He muttered.
Still (playing along?) talking, Taeyong made small gestures with his hands as he spoke, switching off between looking at Jaehyun and then Johnny. “We just went to get coffee the other day before class, if you wanna consider it a date. I mean, I’m not against it,” he said, the bold-faced lie slipping easily from his lips. Jaehyun could distinctly remember never getting coffee with such a (beautiful) guy before that class, though he wasn’t going to pipe up about it. Instead, he just shot him a thankful yet confused look at the statement.
“Ahh, I see. Ok. Thanks for humoring this old friend,” Johnny said suddenly, reaching over and clapping his hand down onto Jaehyun’s shoulder, making him jump slightly in surprise. “I’ve got to bring this guy here back to our dorms, but I’m sure you two will see each other later.”
With that, Johnny began to drag Jaehyun backwards towards the south dormitories. Taeyong seemed to take it all in stride, simply waving goodbye to them with a call of “see you!” as they disappeared around the corner of the cafeteria building.
The rest of the week seemed to go by quickly. Johnny had given Jaehyun a pass about his “date” (given in quotations due to the false validity of said event) and stopped asking about it to him. At least directly. Up until the next tuesday when he had his general communications class again, Johnny was religiously bringing up Taeyong in the most unsubtle of ways ranging from asking about if he went on another date recently to blatantly asking if he was texting him every time he chanced a glance at his phone.
Besides the sudden permanent thorn in his side- courtesy of Johnny’s lack of being subtle -he’d nearly forgotten about the lie up until tuesday morning when he just barely managed to stumble his way into his 8am communications class, finding one of the last possible seats near the back of the room.
He fumbled briefly with his backpack as he pulled out his notebook and tried to find a pen, quietly groaning when he came up empty. He contemplated just saying fuck it and catching up on the 4 hours of sleep he missed the night previously (don’t judge, okay? He had a Very Important battle on Destiny that needed his attention) when someone tapped on his shoulder. He shifted and turned around only to see that familiar shock of pink hair. Taeyong shot him a small smile and held out a pen.
“Need a borrow?” he asked quietly, not trying to draw their professor’s attention.
Mildly dumbfounded at the sight, Jaehyun could only nod and reach for it. “Oh- uh... thanks.” He said belatedly, much to Taeyong’s amusement. “No problem. Just return it to me after class, okay?” He said back.
The hour and fifteen minutes of class went by rather quickly considering how distracted Jaehyun immediately became upon realizing that Taeyong was in fact not lying about sharing a class with him. He was half-assedly taking his notes to the ultimate degree, barely even writing onto his notebook since he was busy trying to think about the man currently sitting directly behind him. (How he even missed seeing him as he came in, he had no fucking clue)
Suddenly, the professor dismissed them, and Jaehyun shoved his notebook back into his bag before he stood and turned around to face Taeyong again. The other male was all packed up, and only stood from his chair when Jaehyun had given him his attention once more. “Thanks again for the pen,” Jaehyun stated while holding it out to him.
Taeyong smiled at him again and took the pen out of his grasp, simply placing it in the side pocket of his backpack. “Like I said; no problem.” He repeated with a light tone. He moved around the table and went down a staircase step to be even in height with the other man.
“You have class now?” he prompted curiously, smiling again when Jaehyun shook his head. “Want to actually get some coffee?” He asked.
Jaehyun blinked, surprised at the sudden question.
“Oh. Sure.”