Work Text:
As a general rule, everything goes to hell when Shim Jaeyoon gets involved.
Well, that’s not true. Everything goes to hell the second Park Sunghoon starts it.
Where Sunghoon goes, Jake follows.
Where Jake goes, Sunghoon follows.
And suddenly, they’re fighting.
They’re always fighting.
Sometimes it’s good-natured fun, sometimes it’s not. But there has never been, and never will be a time where Sunghoon and Jake are within 10 feet of each other and aren’t glaring at each other, or yelling at each other, or staring dumbly and quietly planning murder.
Whatever’s going on between the pair of them can be mistaken (and is mistaken—persistently—by Sunghoon’s pathetic excuse of a best friend, Lee Heeseung) for... something that it’s not.
Heeseung calls it sexual tension.
(Jake stiffens.
“You call everything sexual tension.” Jungwon mutters.
Nicholas laughs, but refuses to make eye contact with any of them.
“Not this again.” Sungcheol groans. “You do this every time, I swear.”
Awkward silence ensues, and Heeseung tries to break it with a remark that Sunghoon conveniently tunes out.
He wants to leave.)
It’s healthy competition, is what it is. One might call it rivalry, but Sunghoon finds that far too dramatic a term.
They’re friends, of course. Good friends. But nothing horrible will happen if that’s forgotten about for a little while.
Like most things, this mess began and existed as something small. Irrelevant.
At the ripe old age of 13, Sunghoon had lorded a score of 94 on a test over Jake’s 89.
Jake went on to beat him on every test for a month.
And then, Jake tried out for the school play. Sunghoon tried out for the same role.
Sunghoon got it, for the record.
But it went on like this, and is still going on, 5 years later. There is no end in sight.
Sunghoon joined the track team. So did Jake.
Jake could hold his breath for a minute and a half. Sunghoon tried to beat him, and found he could only hold his for 45 seconds.
Small things and bigger things are one and the same. Everything is a competition.
And strangely enough, Jake never seems to lose. Sunghoon wants to change that, of course he does.
That’s kind of the whole point.
When they were sophomores, Sunghoon’s mother had rolled her eyes and asked her son, “If Jaeyoon jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?”
“Sure.” Sunghoon had replied with an innocent smile. “The difference would be that I’d survive.”
Somewhere, a record scratches. The epic montage ends.
“Hold on a second, though.” Niki blinks a few times. “I thought...”
Youngbin sighs. “You thought what all of us thought.”
“What is it that all of you thought?” Jake asks, refusing to look at Sunghoon.
“Nothing.” Sunoo squeaks.
“You seriously can’t tell?” Euijoo giggles.
Even Jay raises an eyebrow, and Geonu finally looks up from his work.
Sunghoon can’t even remember how the conversation started. Ha.
“Are we really doing this right now?” He manages, trying to end it here before Heeseung gets involved and screws everything up.
Sunghoon needs to stop hanging out with Heeseung.
“Yes.” Jake replies easily, raising an eyebrow in Sunghoon’s direction.
“Stop it, seriously.” He sighs.
“Make me.”
“Maybe I will.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“This is why we think the things we think!” Yoonwon covers his face with his hands.
Heeseung’s eyes have been traveling between Jake and Sunghoon for the past who knows how long, and Sunghoon is preparing for his own inevitable demise. Heeseung’s just about to open his mouth say something when the bell rings.
“Oh, we’re saved.” Daniel exclaims, getting up and sprinting full speed out of the cafeteria.
“You guys are another level of oblivious.” Kyungmin remarks, only to receive a routine “shut up” from Jaebeom and a weak slap.
“Not me, just him.” Sunghoon mutters under his breath.
And one by one, everyone leaves until only Sunghoon and Jake are left, and wow, even this is a challenge.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?”
Jake grins the way that he does.
Sunghoon attempts to respond with another equally sickly-sweet smile, only to realize that he’s already doing it.
“Like that.”
His grin disappears immediately, but Jake’s does not waver.
“Huh.” He says, standing up. “Cute.”
Sunghoon is left alone, watching Jake as he leaves and wanting nothing more than to punch the smug smile off his perfect face.
It only sinks in about an hour later.
Sunghoon drops his pen and it slides pathetically down the page he’s writing on before landing on the ground with an unnecessarily loud clatter.
The whole class turns to look at him, sitting there like a dumbass with his hand still poised above the paper and his face (wearing a blank expression) going redder and redder by the minute.
Holy shit. Jake called him cute.
And it was disgusting.
Is this a challenge?
Either way, Sunghoon accepts.
Alas, Sunghoon’s plans do not go according to... plan.
The first thing he does the next morning upon arriving at school is confidently bomb a quiz.
Sunghoon realizes, with a start, that his grade inevitably sinking is the least of his concerns. His first thought is that, wow, Jake’s going to hold this over his head for the next month at least.
That’s his first thought.
Good lord.
Maybe it’s time for the pair of them to... maturely re-evaluate whatever’s going on.
This feels unhealthy.
Sunghoon holds his binders close to his chest as he walks through the hallway.
The pale fluorescent lights built into the ceiling above flicker a few times.
And then go out completely.
Sunghoon stops in his tracks as the entire school (and soon the entire town, but he doesn’t know that yet) goes dark.
What the fuck.
He doesn’t even get a second to quietly freak out because someone screeches, “Oh, Jesus Christ!” and jumps directly into Sunghoon’s arms.
Startled, he drops his binders and lets (well, not lets, but does he have a choice?) himself be thrown into the row of lockers behind him.
His head hits the metal with an extremely unsatisfying crashing noise. “Ow, what the hell?”
Sunghoon’s brain rattles a bit, he can feel it.
“Oh my god, sorry.” The person scrambles off of Sunghoon and offers him a hand.
“No, it’s fine.” He takes the hand and proceeds to try and pull himself up off the ground, other hand involuntarily flying to the back of his head.
“Wait, Sung—“
He’s cut off as someone else screams in the distance and half of the people in the hallway that they’re stuck in starts laughing.
Sunghoon, who can’t even see his own hands in front of him, laughs nervously.
An alarm goes off somewhere, and the person next to Sunghoon latches onto his arm. “Oh, fucking shit.” He whispers.
The voice is familiar, but Sunghoon can’t quite place it with the blaring in the distance.
“Bro, where do we go?” Someone (Jaeho!?) calls.
“Outside?”
“Ah, Taeyong, you fucker!”
The voices start to blur together.
“It’s raining!”
“Get off me, Hanbin!”
Sunghoon turns towards the figure next to him, feeling the grip on his arm increase in intensity until it’s positively vice-like. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah.” An audible gulp. “I just don’t like the dark.”
Sunghoon feels a sudden urge to protect the kid, his heart pausing in its racing to do a little jump.
The intercom comes on with its usual ringing sound, but only a rush of static and sharp microphone feedback are heard through the speakers distributed through the building.
“Where are the teachers?” Another voice screams.
“Fuck if I know!”
There are quick, loud footsteps as someone runs down the hall. “C’mon!”
If the scuffling is any indication, the majority of the people in the hall move to follow the figure, but Sunghoon asks, “Where are we going?”
He receives no reply, just someone farther away (who sounds much like Kei, not that Sunghoon can really tell? yelling, “Has anyone seen Taki?”
Definitely Kei.
“He’s here, he’s here!”
“Oh—Seon, thank god.”
This is a mess. This is a fucking mess.
“Hurry up!” Someone yells.
Sunghoon turns and walks (with purpose!) directly into the wall that he just collided with a few minutes ago, tumbling backwards and dragging the dude next to him down with him.
He laughs, and Sunghoon can feel his cheeks burn.
They stand after a second of lying on the floor like idiots and run (this time in the right direction), trying desperately not to step on each other’s feet.
The boy slips on the linoleum tile a few times, and Sunghoon has to reach over and grab his other arm to stop.
Sunghoon tries not to think about how ridiculously awkward this would be if the lights were on.
Then again, that is decidedly not the case.
When they finally stop (by running into someone’s back and almost sending a whole bunch of kids falling like dominos), Sunghoon has one arm wrapped around the boy, his blood circulation being cut off by the boy’s hands on the other.
Sunghoon hasn’t the slightest idea where they are, but sound-wise, someone seems to be fiddling with switches and buttons and trying desperately to get the lights back on.
He can hear the boy’s unsteady breathing far too close to him, and damn if that doesn’t freak Sunghoon out more than anything that’s happened all morning.
There’s more fiddling, a mix of distant screams and laughs and a few thuds that sound particularly painful.
And then the lights come on.
There’s a collective cheer that erupts through the school.
Sunghoon’s eyes close reflectively at the sudden brightness, as they’d quickly grown accustomed to the dark.
“Everyone say ‘thank you, Jimin!’” Someone calls out.
Surprisingly, more than half of the people within earshot repeat that, and Sunghoon hears a distinct laugh.
He cracks an eye open, feeling his brain immediately scold him as throbbing pain rushes to his temples.
Still, he opens both (stupidly) and is greeted by the sight of general chaos.
People are running around the small corridor—one that Sunghoon hasn’t truly noticed before, probably hidden strategically because of the large control panel at one end—and a lot of shouting.
The bell rings through the intercom, delayed by more than a few minutes.
Sunghoon feels the hand on his arm shift, and looks down reflexively.
Oh.
Well, Sunghoon should have seen this one coming.
Jake has his eyes squeezed shut, his eyebrows furrowed and his face stuck in a frozen expression of panic.
He looks so small, tucked into Sunghoon’s chest like this.
His heart does yet another of its little jumpy things, and Sunghoon prays that Jake can’t feel the way it’s pounding.
Quietly, feebly, he asks, “Are you going to let go?”
Jake’s grip loosens significantly, but the boy still refuses to open his eyes.
“Nope.” He replies.
Sunghoon smiles, despite himself, as his ears naturally tune out the persistent hollering and screeching from the mob around him.
“You can look at me, you know.”
Jake smiles awkwardly. “No, thanks.”
“Why not?”
Jake groans, opening his eyes and blinking a few times. “Just shut up, ugly.”
He’s still holding on, and makes no moves to let go.
Sunghoon laughs, letting Jake hold him for as long as he needs. “Shutting up.”