Work Text:
Propping open the front door and wading through the congregation of twenty-somethings, Doyoung surveyed the Starbucks. It was, put simply, crowded.
Of course it's crowded you idiot, it's a campus Starbucks in the middle of the day during dead week.
Looking down at the black Lenovo laptop in his hand, Doyoung could see the screen flashing angrily: LOW BATTERY WARNING: 10% BATTERY REMAINING. PLUG IN YOUR DEVICE RIGHT AWAY.
"Shut the fuck up," he muttered under his breath. Where the hell are the plugs?
The dark-haired boy scanned the floor, cords were jammed into every outlet as college students stressed and crammed their way through the final week before exams. Doyoung didn't recognize any of their faces, but he was sure they were all suffering the same fate as him, panicking over term papers and agonizing over why they didn't take better notes in class.
Then he saw it. A lone outlet at a table by the window.
Perfect.
Doyoung raised his eyes from the outlet near the floor, up one jeaned pantleg to see the face of the student currently sitting at the table, and-
Fuck.
His eyes rested on the dimpled smile of one Mr. Jung Jaehyun. College jock. Campus golden boy. Doyoung's arch nemesis.
WARNING! BATTERY CRITCALLY LOW.
Doyoung sighed. He marched over to Jaehyun's table, where the younger boy was distractedly playing on his phone.
"Can I sit here?" Doyoung asked.
Jaehyun tapped faster at the game of Tetris he was playing, without looking up.
"Can I sit here?" Doyoung said again, more forcefully. No reply.
Fed up, Doyoung dropped his laptop on the table, causing Jaehyun to jump.
"Oh dude, what's up?" Jaehyun asked.
"Can I sit here? Because you're sitting at the only remaining outlet in this entire Starbucks, playing Tetris, during dead week nonetheless," he hadn't tried to keep the disdain out of his voice, but the beaming smile on Jaehyun's face told him the younger boy hadn't caught on anyway.
"Sure, take a seat," Jaehyun offered, but Doyoung was already halfway through plugging in his laptop and taking out his notebooks to notice.
After about five minutes of Doyoung incessantly hammering away at his keyboard to the point that Jaehyun swore his laptop was going to spontaenously combust, the younger boy decided to be friendly and start a conversation.
"Weren't you in one of my classes last semester?"
"Yeh," Doyoung said without glancing up.
"Oh, I thought you looked familiar, which one? Was it... history? No, psychology? No... maybe astronomy-"
"Astronomy's a bird course why the fu- why the heck would I be taking that?" Doyoung retorted, eyes not leaving his screen.
"So... then it's..."
"POL101," Doyoung's exasperated voice replied.
"That's right! God, that class was awful, I can't even remember what happened but I know I hated it,"
The vein in Doyoung's neck started pulsing as he thought back to last semester and the hell on earth that was his political science class.
He doesn't remember what happened? Just ignore this asshat and write the goddamn paper, Doyoung.
The older boys hands flew across the keyboard at lightning speed. He glanced at the clock. 11:06am. In just under an hour he'll have to have this paper finished and submitted. He wasn't far off really - just needed to sum up a few arguements and write the conclusion - but he'd been working on the awful thing since his shift at the GAP ended last night, and he hadn't slept yet.
"So... watcha working on?" Jaehyun grinned, leaning over the lid of Doyoung's laptop, obscuring the screen with a mop of dyed hair.
Just keep typing. Just. Keep. Typing.
"... the pi-pivotal moment in Vict-or Hugo's... "
"Jung Jaehyun if you DON'T stop it, I WILL kill you," Doyoung seethed between gritted teeth, swatting at the blonde mass of hair blocking his screen.
"Well... Mister.... Mister..."
"Doyoung. My name is Kim Doyoung."
"Well Mr. Kim Doyoung, I was just trying to take an interest in your life since we're table buddies and all there's no reason to get so upset."
"We're what?"
"Table buddies," Jaehyun smiled.
"We are not table buddies, we are not any kind of buddies, I'm only here because I was desperate for an outlet and you were the only one with the space. We are NOT under any circumstances friends,"
There was a long pause as Jaehyun thought this over.
"If we're not friends..."
"We're not," Doyoung interjected.
"... then you can't use my outlet," Jaehyun huffed unplugging the other boy's laptop with a defiant flourish.
WARNING: BATTERY CRITICALLY LOW flashed across Doyoung's screen once again.
"Plug it in, plug it in right now for fuck's sake Jaehyun,"
"Not until you say we're friends," Jaehyun teased, holding the cord up for effect.
"Oh my fucking god I can't remember if hit save, if this thing dies I will literally... I mean I really will slaughter you..."
"Then you'd better say it..."
"But we're not..."
"SAY IT,"
"We're friends okay we're table buddies, whatever, just plug it back in please I'm begging you, I have like 30 minutes left and I will cry if you don't just let me finish this," Doyoung conceded.
Satisified, Jaehyun returned the cord to it's proper place in the wall socket. The small battery icon on Doyoung's taskbar returned to its 'plugged in' status, and he finally began to breathe again.
11:34am. God help us all.
After another solid five minutes of virtually burning a hole through the keys on his keyboard, Doyoung felt the presence on the other side of the table shift.
Maybe he's bored of me and he's leaving. Thank god.
This was only wishful thinking, as a few minutes later a soft thunk on the table signalled Jaehyun's return. Doyoung looked up to see a tall iced americano being pushed towards him.
"Cuz we're table buddies and you don't look like you've slept much,"
Doyoung stared suspiciously at the drink, wondering if it was poisoned or if Jaehyun had come up with some other way to absolutely destroy his academic career. But he had to admit he was exhausted and he needed the caffeine to get through the final paragraph and the review.
"Thanks," he mumbled, more out of habit than anything. Taking the green straw in his mouth he gulped down the caffeinated liquid.
At 11:52am Doyoung had entered the home stretch. He was finished writing, all that was left to do was polish up, and then submit. He was generally good at typing so he didn't need to do too much editing, but a few tweaks here and there never hurt.
After making sure his citations were all in order, because he absolutely refused to get an academic penalty due to sloppy work, Doyoung saved his file as a word document AND a pdf and submitted both through the university's online learning portal at exactly 11:58am.
It was as close as he'd ever come to a deadline, but as a lifetime procrastinator the stress and thrill of it all had always pressed Doyoung to do his best work.
Taking a final sip of his coffee Doyoung leaned back in his chair.
"Finished it." he said smugly to the blonde who had been staring at him in wide-eyed anticipation.
Jaehyun broke into a dimpled smile, throwing up a hand for a high five. "Yes, I knew you could do it, table buddy!"
"Thanks," Doyoung replied sheepishy, returning the gesture.
What are you doing Doyoung? High-fiving the enemy?
"Anyway, now that that's done... I need to crash," Doyoung said, standing up to stuff his laptop and cord into his bag. "Don't you have somewhere to be as well?"
"Not really my class started an hour ago so I've pretty much missed it by now,"
"An hour ago. You mean like, ten minutes after I asked you if I could use this goddamn table?"
"Pretty much,"
"So why didn't you go to your class. The one that started an hour ago aka ten minutes after I sat down to try and write the most excruciating term paper of my life in peace and quiet?"
"You looked pretty stressed out, actually... you always look stressed out. I don't remember much about that class we had together but I do remember you were kind of high-strung. And you always sat alone at the front of the class, so I thought maybe we..."
"I sat alone at the front of the class because you and your dumbass friend Jordan or whatever-"
"Johnny,"
"Okay, you and your friend Johnny were always talking through the entire lecture and I couldn't focus."
Jaehyun opened his mouth to say something, but closed it. His ears started to turn pink around the edges and he looked down at Doyoung's empty coffee cup.
"You... may have a point..."
"I'm not done yet, Jung Jaehyun. Not ONLY were you loud and distracting through the ENTIRE lecture, you also threw paper airplanes at the professors head when his back was turned, like we were in GRADE school,"
By this point Doyoung's voice had climbed to be alarmingly loud, and somewhat high-pitched, causing Jaehyun's blush to deepen as he felt the entire coffee shop staring in his direction.
"But his ... his bald head really looked like a plane runway didn't it..." the younger boy argued weakly.
"IN ADDITION..." Doyoung carried on, channelling every debate club president who ever lived, "When I got paired up with you for in-class assignment number seven, you not only failed to do anything for the entire 45 minutes, but you also flunked me on my peer review, causing me to lose an entire percentage point off my final grade, and for what reason I ask you-"
"Wait, wait, wait, what? I never failed you. Why would I do that?" Jaehyun countered defensively.
"On the rubric you gave me a one out of five in every category."
"Yeah..."
"Exactly. So, you failed me."
"No, because one is the best so I gave you one out of every category because one is the best..."
The dark-haired boy stared, mouth agape. A long silence spread out between the two, and onlookers continued to stare. Doyoung was pretty sure he could hear a group of freshman girls snickering in the back corner, but the shock of Jaehyun's words made everyone else in the room feel like they were miles away.
"I need to... sit down," the older boy said suddenly, flinging himself back into his seat. He threw his arms across the table and buried his head in them.
"I'm sorry if I made your grades drop or something..." Jaehyun said quietly.
Doyoung propped his chin up on his arm and stared into Jaehyun's pleading eyes.
"No, no that's fine I mean I still got a 95," Doyoung said, waving it off, "But... Jaehyun you do know that if it's marked out of five then five is the best and one is the worst, right?" his voice was suddenly calm and soothing, moreso than he himself even expect.
"I'm beginning to realize that, yeah..."
"I honestly hated you for so long, I thought you had some sort of problem with me this whole time and you just didn't understand the rubric..."
"If you had've just asked me, I could've told Airplane Head it was a mistake!" Jaehyun squeaked.
"AIRPLANE HEAD..." Doyoung burst into laughter, the kind of laughter that can only come from being way too tired with way too much caffeine. "That's pretty funny actually," he said, wiping a tear onto the sleeve of his sweater.
"Isn't it? I came up with that one," Jaehyun beamed, "Hey... tell you what... to make up for costing you that one percent... I'll be your table buddy and buy you coffee whenever you need?"
Doyoung froze, searching Jaehyun's face for some sign of sarcasm. He could tell why he was the campus golden boy, the one that had all the girls chasing him even if all he ever did was fall asleep in class and make stupid jokes and have his phone accidentally blast Drake music whenever he got a call because he seemed to have forgotten that a silent function even existed. He was gorgeous, from the light curl of his ash blonde hair to the warm timbre of his laugh.
"For real? Whenever I need?" Doyoung countered.
"Yeah, why not?"
"Well what's in it for you?"
Jaehyun paused for a minute before leaning in to Doyoung and whispering, "Honestly... I already beat every level of Tetris. And you're more entertaining."
"JUNG JAEHYUN," Doyoung yelled. The younger boy threw a hand up without turning back and disappeared through the glass doors.