Work Text:
There’s a special place in hell for people who stand in line at Starbucks at 7:55 and start rattling off drink orders with more add-ons than caffeine.
The girl in front of Donghyuck stares at the screen before licking her lips and ordering a soy latte with hazelnut and caramel drizzle and whipped cream, and Donghyuck wants to just get up and leave. It’s only a superhuman amount of patience and pure, unadulterated desire for caffeine that keeps Donghyuck there in line, feet stuck to the ground.
Twenty-five minutes later, Donghyuck shows up at the back of the lecture hall, iced coffee clutched in one hand and phone open to the campus map in the other because hey, the buildings all look the same and none of them have any identifying markers on them to point unassuming students in the right direction.
Fuck, she thinks as students start to surreptitiously sneak glances at the idiot who showed up to class twenty minutes late with Starbucks without trying to look like they’re being nosy. She’s probably going to end up on someone’s story with the caption “lmao its 8:20 and the prof just stopped lecturing to stare,” and someone’s going to post her on the campus Facebook meme page with the hashtag #unsubtleasiantraits. Well, if any photo of her is going viral, she’s glad that it’s going to be one where she’s clothed.
“Today was literally a fucking disaster,” Donghyuck announces to the room at large when she walks into her apartment, tossing her backpack onto the kitchen table. “Just shoot me now.”
“That bad?” Jeno says sympathetically, peering up from her laptop. Donghyuck yanks a chair out with an ear-piercing screech and slumps into it, her body immediately going boneless and limp. “Wow, it was that bad.”
“I think I have decided to quit school forever. I have no more desire to continue living like this. A slave to the machine.”
“That’s what you said last semester. And the one before last. And every time you take literally any exam.” Renjun doesn’t even look up from his phone as he speaks, tapping away at the screen with a single-minded intensity as he’s sprawled out on the couch. “When will you learn that you are but a cog in the machine?”
“Excuse me, Mister I Have Two Majors and Neither of Them Are Even Real. Some people have to take real classes like bio-fucking-chemistry, okay? Listen, when I walked into that damn lecture hall I wanted to die. Wanted to remove myself from this plane of existence because everyone was staring at me.”
“Why was everyone staring at you?” Jeno blinks up at Donghyuck like some Hollywood starlet, which she instantly feels a surge of irritation at. Bold of her to be acting cutesy when all three of them know what Jeno’s gotten up to in the dingiest and stickiest basements around campus.
“It’s because I walked in twenty minutes late with a Starbucks, Jeno,” Donghyuck hisses, and Jeno “ahh”s in understanding.
“You’re one of those,” Renjun says. “Figured.”
“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”
Renjun shrugs, a roll of his shoulders that can’t be easy while he’s horizontal, and his eyes track up to Donghyuck’s, deliberate in their slowness. “It means whatever you want it to mean, kiddo.”
“You’re such an asshole, I don’t even know why they even let you on the air to help people who have problems,” Donghyuck gripes. “Especially since you’re not doing a particularly good job of it right now.”
“Oh no, I’m so sorry.” Renjun sits up on the couch, setting his phone to the side and steepling his fingers underneath his chin. His eyes are wide and bright and absolutely, positively mocking. “Welcome to Renjun’s Dreamers’ Corner, where I’ll do my best to soothe everyone’s restless hearts with my voice. Do you have a worry you want to tell me about?”
Donghyuck pauses. Even Jeno closes her laptop and turns to stare at Renjun, then back at Donghyuck, like she’s spectating a tennis match.
She knows she’s being made a fool of. That Renjun would never offer his services as the host of one of their campus’s weekly advice columns for free. But he’s offering, so why the hell not? Also, it’s free, and Donghyuck has never been one not to shoot her shot.
Donghyuck sucks in her chest and takes a deep breath and opens her mouth.
“Alright, so there’s this absolute fucking bastard in my lab class, and his name is—”
“Yukhei Wong, that’s my name. Don’t forget it.”
Donghyuck blinks up at the guy who’s just pulled over a seat next to hers, extending a hand for her to take.
“You can call me Lucas if you want, or Xuxi is fine, too, whichever is easiest for you. You wanna be lab partners?”
Donghyuck keeps staring, and the smile on the guy’s face drops just a little bit. He looks oddly familiar, his face in her memories blurred around the edges, and she squints at him, trying to figure out just where she’s seen him before.
Then it hits her, a bolt of lightning that threatens to knock her down from where she’s sitting. She tastes cheap beer and smoke on her tongue, smells the musky cologne he’d been wearing that night, feels the warmth of his body against hers. Remembers dancing with him, his hands on her hips, his chest pressed against her back. It was dark, and there were way too many bodies in that frat house that night, but she remembers him, the way he fit so nicely against her. He looks different under the bright glare of the overhead lights, but he’s still the same, the curve of his mouth still familiar.
“Sure,” Donghyuck says, recovering brilliantly, and she gives him as bright of a grin as she can muster. “I’m Donghyuck Lee, it’s good to meet you.”
“I just wanna get this straight,” Renjun says. “You hate him because he didn’t remember you after you ran away from him at a party? Is that it?”
“Okay, to be fair, I only left because I was trying to save Jeno’s drunk ass from sleeping with everyone there, and I couldn’t find her. It’s not like I did it on purpose or anything.”
Renjun blinks. “Uh, but she did. Hook up with someone there, I mean.”
Donghyuck whirls around to stare at Jeno, who’s attempting to do her best to sink into the chair with the guiltiest look ever on her face. “You said you wanted to go home early so that’s why I went to find you!”
“Well, yeah, I was on my way out but then I found Jaemin and— yeah. Anyway, I told Renjun to make sure you got home alright, and I swear I was going to tell you someday, but school started and now I don’t even know where I’m going with this.” Jeno slumps down even more until only the top of her head is visible above the kitchen table. “But it’s still nothing between us, I swear to god. And also to Campbell’s Biology, 9th edition.”
“Jeno, you fucking dumbass,” Donghyuck hisses, “I thought I told you to stop hooking up with him like last semester! What the hell?”
“I know,” the lump from underneath the table wails, “but he just looked so good with the snapback and he said I smelled nice and you know my type in boys is disaster fuckboy…”
Donghyuck resists the very strong urge to take a pull from the handle of tequila she and Renjun stashed in the cupboard, a remnant of Donghyuck’s sorority formal last year. But she has other things to worry about, like Yukhei Wong and focusing her energies on hating him for forgetting who she was. Never mind that Lab Donghyuck is a completely different person from Party Donghyuck, a college sweatshirt pulled over a pair of black leggings as opposed to a crop top and pleated skirt. Never mind that they danced for, like, five minutes tops.
If she’s thought about him in the time between last week and now, it doesn’t seem fair at all that she hasn’t crossed his mind at least once.
To: Jennie, Junnie
From: Hyuckie
I will literally pay one of you hoes to end my life
I can’t live here like this anymore
To: Hyuckie, Junnie
From: Jennie
Omg what why :(
To: Jennie, Junnie
From: Hyuckie
Literally just two words
Yukhei
Wong
To: Hyuckie, Junnie
From: Jennie
Nooo it’s okay!!!!! MEN ARENT SHIT
You WILL get through it
To: Hyuckie, Jennie
From: Junnie
Actually
Can you confirm that I will not be charged with a crime
If I aid and abet in the completion of a murder
Because if so I’ll do it
For all of our sakes
To: Hyuckie, Junnie
From: Jennie
RENJUN NO
To: Hyuckie, Jennie
From: Junnie
RENJUN YES
To Donghyuck’s horror, Yukhei is actually a good guy. And a pretty good lab partner, if she’s willing to be honest enough with herself to admit that. She watches as he dumps the agarose they’ve already weighed out into a flask and adds some buffer to it with expert hands, and she leans against the bench.
“So, do you do this often?” She winces. Shit. Didn’t mean to come off like a desperate guy at a bar. She picks up her pen and starts clicking it like it’ll dispel some of the awkwardness that’s settled in. “Shit, uh. I mean, you seem pretty good with the equipment and calculations. Do you work in a lab?”
Thankfully, Yukhei doesn’t seem to notice or care. He swirls the flask around, mixing the agarose into the TAE buffer, before hands it over to Donghyuck. “Yeah, actually. I’ve been working in a lab since I was a freshman. I’m just taking this lab class since I forgot it was a pre-req for graduation. Can you help me pop that into the microwave?”
Donghyuck follows his cue, dutifully plopping the flask into the microwave and setting the timer to five minutes. “Are you one of those premeds then?”
“Nah. I’m trying to go into academia, maybe do clinical lab work. I dunno, I think it’d be fun to teach for a bit. I’ve always liked kids. You?”
“Oh, no. Oh, god no. I’m actually a psych major but somehow, my roommate managed to convince me to do a chem minor so she’d have someone to suffer with in classes. And then she ditched my ass and went to a different track, so now I’m stuck here. Measuring agarose to make some gels. Fun.”
“Well, at least your company isn’t the worst, huh? I can’t be that bad on the eyes, and I’ll be your hands for labwork. I’m a pretty good catch, if I say so myself.”
Donghyuck’s thumb stills on the pen, and she looks up at Yukhei. No, she wants to say. You’re pretty fucking handsome, and you know it, sly bastard. Do you use this line on everyone you meet? What comes out instead is: “You’d be so lucky.”
“Yeah?” Yukhei replies, and Donghyuck is sure she’s not imagining the way his voice goes just a bit deeper, just a bit huskier. “You wanna bet?”
Whatever Donghyuck was going to say immediately dies out in her throat as she sniffs the air. “Hey, do you think something’s burning?”
Yukhei pales. “Oh shit. Our agarose.”
They rush over to the microwave, and Yukhei presses the button to unlatch the door. The flask is bubbling, the boiling agarose threatening to spill out of its container, and Yukhei rushes back to their bench to grab some heat proof gloves, slipping them on over his nitrile gloves and picking up the flask. He gives Donghyuck a wry smile as they walk it back to their bench, and it kinda-sorta soothes Donghyuck’s mind to see that nearly everyone else is doing the exact same thing. Failing.
“It’s fine,” Yukhei says. “No biggie. We just gotta—”
“Add some ethidium bromide and pour the mixture into the mold,” Donghyuck finishes, and she inwardly preens when Yukhei looks over at her. “Yeah, I actually read the lab manual, are you surprised?”
“Not at all. You wanna grab the pipette?”
From there on, it’s easy enough to just pipette some of the ethidium bromide into their agarose, swirl it around until the red disappears, and then pour it into the mold.
“And now we wait,” Yukhei says sagely. “Just gotta prep our samples while the gel cools down. You wanna take care of the measuring? I’ll just write everything down into my lab notebook, and you can take a picture of it to copy down for your own.”
“That sounds good to me,” Donghyuck replies. She’s already started calculating the exact amounts of everything else they need for the rest of the experiment, zipping through unit conversions and dimensional analysis, and Yukhei bends down over his bench to start writing down what they did earlier. Honestly, she’s starting to feel like they make a pretty decent team.
To: Donghyuck Lee
From: Unknown Number
Hi
To: Unknown Number
From: Donghyuck Lee
Uh
Who is this?
To: Donghyuck Lee
From: Unknown Number
Guess
Cutie ;)
To: Unknown Number
From: Donghyuck Lee
I’m going to block you
Weirdo
To: Donghyuck Lee
From: Unknown Number
ITS YUKHEI
DONT BLOCK ME
To: Unknown Number
From: Donghyuck Lee
Omg wtf why didn’t you just say so
Hold up
To: Eyebrows
From: Donghyuck Lee
There
Hi :)
To: Donghyuck Lee
From: Eyebrows
Hey again :)
The thing is, Donghyuck actually doesn’t really party much anymore. She’s tired now, without any of that bright-eyed bushy-tailed enthusiasm for getting absolutely shitfaced that she was full of in freshman year. Saturday night was an aberration in the norm, a blip outside of the careful linearly regressed approach of her life. She doesn’t even hang out with her sorority sisters much either, when all that’s left is paying her dues every semester and going to all of the mandatory events and probably being shanghaied into doing all sorts of ridiculous shit for fall rush and trying out for song, but at least it’s better than ending every weekend throwing up in a stranger’s toilet.
Which she’s only done three times, by the way. The only reason it isn’t higher is because Jeno, bless her mothering soul, always swoops him to gently be her mom and drag her out of whatever frat house she’s found herself in that night. She used to think it was annoying and boring as hell, being at a party with someone with a sixth sense for every time Donghyuck even looks at anyone the wrong way, but after too many drunk assholes have tried to feel up her thighs, she’s started to appreciate her little guardian angel.
Anyway, she’s totally retired from that lifestyle now. Getting wasted just isn’t worth it anymore when you have fifty billion papers to read and ninety thousand assignments to write and eight hundred reviews to go over. Being a student is hard, especially when you’re paying tens of thousands of dollars for a world-class education, or whatever the fuck that means anymore.
It’s why Donghyuck is so totally done with this shit when Jeno waltzes into her room and says, “Kickback next week at Mark’s, you in?”
This is what she should say: “Jeno Lee, you crazy bitch, can you go a single weekend without getting trashed?”
And because she has no self control and some borderline dumbass desire to see the guy she and Jeno and Renjun all nursed a crush on for a semester again, this is what she ends up saying instead: “What the fuck, count me in. When is it again?”
To: Donghyuck Lee
From: Eyebrows
Hey
Do you remember the percentage of the gel we made?
My roommate’s hamster spilled water on my notebook before I typed it up
Lost all of my calculations :(
To: Eyebrows
From: Donghyuck Lee
Yikes wtf
Uh I can send you pics
Or do you wanna meet up somewhere? I can let you borrow mine
To: Donghyuck Lee
From: Eyebrows
Wait that’d be great actually
Do you live on campus?
I can swing by your place
To: Eyebrows
From: Donghyuck Lee
No
I’m off campus
But we can meet at the village if you want
I’m done w class for today actually
To: Donghyuck Lee
From: Eyebrows
AN ANGEL
Meet you there in an hour?
To: Eyebrows
From: Donghyuck Lee
Ok
Donghyuck is in her rattiest pair of sweatpants and an ugly neon t-shirt she got on sale from the H&M by her house when Yukhei shows up at the cafe, looking for all the world like he’s just stepped out of a Burberry catalogue.
“Hey,” Yukhei says, pulling out the chair opposite hers and dropping into it. He stares expectantly at her. “You got the goods?”
“Yeah.” Donghyuck reaches for her bag, pulls out her lab notebook. It’s in pristine condition, save for the time Jeno used the cover as a coaster for her yakult soju concoction, but she passes it over to Yukhei all the same. “I’ll just go now if you can give it back to me next time we have class or something. Sorry to hear that about your roommate’s hamster though.”
“It’s fine, she’s just a baby. Maybe I shouldn’t be letting her play on my desk when I have drinks out. Much to think about,” he mumbles, flipping open the notebook before his gaze darts up to where she’s getting up to leave. “Hey, where are you going?”
“Uh. Home?”
“Let me buy you a drink at least. Or lunch. For your trouble.” Yukhei gives her some pretty impressive puppy dog eyes. “Please?”
She sits back down, her fingers tapping restlessly against her thigh as her dreams of getting out of here to spend more quality time interrogating Jeno about her Definitely Not Just a Friend With Benefits.
“What do you wanna get? Have you had lunch? They have pretty good sandwiches here, I like the Korean cheesesteak. How does that sound?”
“Sounds good to me. Are you sure you wanna pay? I can split with you if you want.”
“Nah,” Yukhei says, and the smile he directs at her is bright and wide, and Donghyuck tries valiantly not to let it affect her too much. “It’s my treat.”
What can she say? She’s always liked a guy with a nice smile.
To: Hyuckie, Junnie
From: Jennie
Guess what
I went to the village to grab something from the Amazon locker
And guess who I saw at Dulce
[Image attached: 0906.jpg]
HYUCKLES AND YUKHEI SITTING IN A TREE
K I S S I N G
To: Junnie, Jennie
From: Hyuckie
What the fuck you stalker
ALSO THERE IS NO KISSING WTF
I’M JUST EATING
THERE’S NOTHING GOING ON
To: Hyuckie, Junnie
From: Jennie
Dw I will be interrogating you later
My pretty
:)
True to her word, Jeno jumps Donghyuck as soon as she gets home, swinging her arms around Donghyuck’s shoulder and nuzzling her face against Donghyuck’s. “Tell me all about your new man,” she coos, her nails digging into Donghyuck’s skin. “What’s he like?”
“He’s not my new man,” Donghyuck grumbles, marching to her room with Jeno still wrapped around her like a particularly persistent octopus. “I don’t even like him. And he’s not my new man.”
“When was the last time you willingly went out to eat with a guy who wasn’t Renjun?” Jeno snorts, following Donghyuck into her room. “Face it, you like him. You’ve talked about him literally every single day that you had lab, and even on regular days you’re still like, ‘oh my god, his dick is so big, I just wanna ride him, please tell me not to ask him to fuck me.’”
Donghyuck can feel her entire face heat up as she pushes Jeno away from her. That’s just low, using something she said when she wasn’t even 100% sober against her. And for the record, it was just mild speculation on whether or not height correlates to size, not any of this farfetched guesswork Jeno’s doing.
“You forced me to do, like, four shots when I said that! I refuse to be held liable for the shit Four-Drink Donghyuck says!”
“I didn’t force you to, I poured some out for myself and Renjun and you wanted in!” Jeno sets her lip, and Donghyuck does too, crossing her arms over her chest. “Don’t blame me for your own words when you were the one who said it was no biggie, your tolerance is so much better now.”
Donghyuck glares at her again, just to make a point, before she deflates. “I mean, I don’t like like him, but he’s just a cool dude. Who forgot my name after we danced together but you know what? It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m over it.”
“Sounds like you aren’t,” Jeno says, soft.
“I will literally pay you to ask him out. Chances are, he was probably so shitfaced that he doesn’t even remember that night.” Donghyuck looks over to where Renjun’s standing in the doorway, his hand still on the doorknob. “Didn’t you say it also took you some time for you to remember where you saw him from? Maybe it’s the same for him. Just give him some time. I’m sure it’s fine.”
And there, bracketed in by the weight of Jeno’s gaze and Renjun’s words, Donghyuck sighs, a long and slow sound. It’s hard, admitting that the universe isn’t always out to get her and that, hey, it was probably just a simple mistake. She can’t exactly fault him for that, can’t hold a missed connection against him when it barely lasted minutes.
“Fine,” Donghyuck says sullenly, and she flops down onto her bed so she can avoid thinking about anything at all. “I guess I just wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Oh, Hyuck.” Renjun’s voice drips with honey. “You just don’t think. Period.”
“Same,” Jeno echoes before she throws herself bodily onto Donghyuck, who screeches and tries her best to throw Jeno off. “No! This is your payment for making me listen to all of your whining this entire month! Renjun, get your ass over here!”
Ten minutes of hard-fought battle later, Donghyuck finally manages to toss Jeno off of her and onto the ground. She gives both Jeno and Renjun a single-fingered salute before she goes fishing for her phone, which she distinctly heard go off with incoming texts while they were scuffling.
Three unread messages from Eyebrows.
“Who’s Eyebrows?” Jeno asks from over Donghyuck’s shoulder, and Donghyuck elbows her out of the way. “Ow!”
“None of your business. Back for more tickling?” Donghyuck turns, curling her hands into claws and wiggling them, and Jeno screams in mock terror, dragging Renjun out of the room with her and back to their own double. Donghyuck rolls her eyes, totally mystified at how brainless Jeno can be sometimes, before she opens the messages.
To: Donghyuck Lee
From: Eyebrows
Heyy
Finished up with your notebook
Thanks so much btw
I’ll bring it back next lab
To: Eyebrows
From: Donghyuck Lee
Yeah no problem
Glad to help
To: Donghyuck Lee
From: Eyebrows
Yeah you were a real lifesaver haha
Btw, I’ve got a party going Saturday night
You in?
To: Eyebrows
From: Donghyuck Lee
Omg I can’t…
Already made plans :(
To: Donghyuck Lee
From: Eyebrows
Ugh bummer
Was looking forward to spending more time w you
Well there’ll always be next time right?
To: Eyebrows
From: Donghyuck Lee
Haha yeah
That Saturday night, Renjun peeks into Donghyuck’s room as she’s getting ready.
“Hey.”
Donghyuck doesn’t look up from where she’s pulling up her jeans, shimmying into them before giving it a nice wiggle to get the jeans all the way up her hips. “What?”
“You wearing that tonight?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I think you should wear that skirt you like a lot. That white one, the one with the pleats.”
Donghyuck cranes her neck to look up at Renjun, who’s shifting his weight from one foot to another. Doesn’t look suspicious at all, totally. She narrows her eyes at him. “Why? You’ve never cared what I wore to a kickback. Besides, it’s just you and me and Mark and Jeno right?”
“And his roommates, dipshit,” Renjun retorts. “Up to you, but I really think you should go for that skirt today. Just saying.”
There’s a lot to be said about the power of reverse psychology— at least, about the fact that Donghyuck spends a good five minutes staring at her reflection in the mirror and wondering if maybe she should wear the jeans just to spite the hell out of Renjun Huang or if she’s going to just follow his advice like a herd of blind sheep.
Well. She does like that skirt a lot, so there’s no real harm in not wearing it. Donghyuck shimmies back out of her jeans and fishes around in her closet for her skirt. It’s a little wrinkled, but hey, it’s not like Donghyuck’s going to meet anyone new enough and cute enough to matter tonight.
Donghyuck’s a little tipsy by the time she makes it to Mark’s— she and Jeno and Renjun took out their collection of Hite from last year’s retreats and house parties, and Jeno was quick to jump up and grab them all glasses of water, but it was too late. The damage was done as soon as the first drop of beer touched Donghyuck’s tongue, and she was instantly horizontal, sprawled across Renjun’s lap and staring at the ceiling.
“Drunk-ass bitch,” she vaguely remembers Renjun sighing before he lifted her up so Jeno could pinch her face.
Okay, so maybe she’s more than just a little tipsy, but for what it’s worth, she hides it pretty well.
“Markles,” she coos when Mark Lee, KASA treasurer and freshman orientation leader and the first crush-slash-ideal-campus-boyfriend for literally everyone who meets him, opens the door. “It’s been soo long.”
“Yeah, it kinda has, huh?” He gives her a wide grin, warm around the edges, and pulls her into a half-hug, an arm around her shoulders. “Glad you guys could make it.”
“Me too!” Jeno squeezes into the space between them, leaning up on her tiptoes to press a kiss onto Mark’s jawline before darting into the apartment. Donghyuck is quick to detach herself from Mark so she doesn’t have to see the way Mark is definitely going to lean forward to try to scoop Renjun up in his arms, and she finds Jeno in the kitchen, staring at a tray of bite-sized brownies.
“Do you think they’re…?”
“Nah,” Donghyuck says decisively, thinking about all of the times he told them in freshman year that a clean campus was a happy campus. “Mark would never.”
“Hmm.” Jeno plucks one off of the tray and pops it into her mouth. “We’ll see in like fifteen minutes, I guess.”
“Suit yourself, dude.” Donghyuck ambles over to Mark’s couch to leave Jeno there staring at the brownies, where she’s quickly joined by some guy she doesn’t quite recognize. He’s holding out a cup of— something, she’s not sure what exactly it is before she takes a sip, but when she does, the familiar and comforting taste of some expensive and smooth vodka hits like nothing else. There’s some other stuff mixed with it, something that makes the drink go down easily, and when she’s done with it, she looks up over the rim of the cup. “Haven’t I seen you before?”
“Yeah, actually. I’m Hendery,” the guy says. “We met at a KASA meeting like last year? I’m one of Mark’s roommates.”
“Mark has more than one roommate?” Donghyuck asks, because that’s clearly the point that her brain is choosing to focus on, other than chatting up the cute boy talking to her.
Hendery has a nice laugh. And a nice smile. Not bad. She wants to keep talking. “Three, actually. Me, Dejun, and—”
“Yukhei, it’s you!” Donghyuck’s attention gets immediately diverted when she spots out of the corner of her eye someone creeping into the kitchen with a red cup in his hand: someone tall and handsome and very, very familiar. Her vision swims. “C’mere!”
Yukhei looks like a deer caught in headlights, his eyes wide before he seems to shake it off, stepping closer to the couch before he flops down on the other side of Donghyuck. “Come here often?”
“You’re the third roommate?” Donghyuck asks instead of responding to his question— which, of course she doesn’t go to Mark’s place often, that’s Renjun’s job.
“Yeah, we were all freshman dorm buddies. Does that surprise you?”
Donghyuck mulls it over for a bit. “Nah,” she decides. “It makes sense.”
“You two know each other?” Hendery pipes in, peering around so he can see the two of them, and Donghyuck is just a little displeased to note that this action pushes her just a little bit closer to Yukhei.
“Just a lil bit. Lab partners.”
“We’re totally besties now, I don’t even know you anymore,” Yukhei says flippantly, and Hendery laughs.
“I’ll leave you two to it, then.” Hendery reaches over to pat Yukhei’s shoulder before he ambles over to the kitchen where Jeno’s still scarfing down bronies.
What follows next is an awkward silence between them, and Donghyuck starts to feel like even the noise of everyone talking and drinking around them gets drowned out by the pounding in her head.
She can’t tell if it’s the alcohol talking or not when she says, “Besties?”
“Would just a regular lab partner come to Dulce with me after all of her classes just so I can copy down some calculations into my notebook? Doubt it.”
Donghyuck resists the urge to say that that’s what any half-decent lab partner would do. Instead, her brain to mouth filter decides that that very moment to totally shut down, because the next thing she says is: “But would a bestie forget me?”
She claps her hand over her mouth, but it’s too late. She watches as confusion settles over Yukhei’s face, clouding his gaze, and she starts blabbering away, trying to divert the topic to something else, anything else that won’t ruin their lab partnership and almost-friendship. “I mean, it’s totally nothing, we only met for a few minutes and it’s not like you would remember me—”
“I did, though.”
Donghyuck stops dead, words staying half-formed and unsaid at the tip of her tongue. “What?”
“I said I did. I mean, I do. Remember you, that is.” Yukhei coughs into a fist. “You were wearing a skirt just like this one. It— it looked real nice on you. Looks real good on you today, too.”
“Then why’d you act like you didn’t know me?” Donghyuck demands, vodka coursing through her veins and giving her the courage of a Russian black bear during hunting season. She can do anything right now, including confronting her biggest worries, her biggest regrets. Her biggest “what if”s. “That first day we met. You didn’t remember me.”
“Oh, that’s. Um. There’s actually a very good reason for this, and it’s because I just didn’t recognize you.”
“What?” What kind of answer is that?
“Like, you know. You had your makeup on and this skirt and your hair was all done, and when I saw you in class you were, uh. Not wearing that. And I’m really, really bad with names and faces.”
Donghyuck scoffs. “It’s not like girls are always wearing a full face of makeup or something, you know.”
“I know,” Yukhei says earnestly, and he scoots closer to Donghyuck on the couch. “Actually, do you wanna hear a secret?”
“Sure, why not?”
Yukhei motions her over before cupping his hands against her ear, whispering, “I never stopped thinking about you.”
Donghyuck jerks away, the brush of his voice so close to her almost as startling as the words he said. It makes something in her chest grow tight, the thought that he actually hadn’t forgotten her, the thought that her one-sided antagonism was just that, the thought that maybe they could’ve had this earlier if she hadn’t been so preoccupied with pretending to hate him in the beginning. “You did?”
“Almost every day. It felt like you were Cinderella or something, the way you just totally ran away. I didn’t know if it was something I did, but I’m sorry if it was.” Yukhei looks like a kicked puppy, and Donghyuck curses Jeno a hundred times over for being the reason she left that night. “Was it my fault?”
Jeno fucking Lee.
“No, of course not, it’s my idiot roommate’s fault,” Donghyuck says, and she clambers into Yukhei’s lap and smushes his face between her hands. She’s then acutely aware of how damn close they are right now, the heat of his body underneath hers, the way a flush rises high on Yukhei’s cheeks as she leans in. “Are you going to remember this tomorrow? Because I’ve decided to forgive you.”
“Are you going to remember this tomorrow?” Yukhei rebuts, but his hands find their way onto Donghyuck’s hips, resting just above the waistband of her skirt. “You look pretty gone.”
“All an optical illusion, I’m so sober I almost wish I was drunk,” Donghyuck mumbles. “So can I kiss you?”
Instead of a verbal response, Yukhei tugs her closer and kisses her, his teeth scraping against her lip. It’s not the most coordinated of kisses, nor the best one, and Yukhei tastes like shitty bear and gummy bears, and Donghyuck’s teeth clack against Yukhei’s when she pulls away from him.
“Sorry, that was sooo bad,” Yukhei moans, dropping his head onto the back of the couch, his grip still tight on Donghyuck’s waist. Donghyuck pats his cheek, and the words it’s okay, no one’s perfect are on the tip of her tongue when Yukhei sits back up again, shifting Donghyuck until she’s sitting squarely on his crotch. Her face heats up and she squirms around just a bit, and Yukhei looks at her with a single-minded gaze, a look of want that’s directed straight at her.
“Do you want to try again?”
And Donghyuck can’t quite bring herself to say no to him anymore.
To: Jennie
From: Hyuckie
I was right
You owe me $50
:)
To: Hyuckie
From: Jennie
Wait
Why
OH
OH MY GOD
To: Hyuckie
From: Jennie
PICK UP YOUR PHONE I HATE YOU
To: Jennie
From: Hyuckie
My lips are sealed :)
To: Hyuckie
From: Jennie
I hate you :(
To: Jennie
From: Hyuckie
You love me
Feel free to Venmo me whenever