Work Text:
“Is.. Is he okay?” Youngbin waves a hand in front of his eyes.
Jake leans over the table. “Is he even breathing?”
“I honestly don’t think so.” Jungwon mumbles, holding a hand under his nose.
“Y’all, he hasn’t blinked in the past six minutes.” Kyungmin checks a stopwatch on his phone.
“Y-you’ve been keeping count?”
“Shut up, Jaebeom”.
Quarterly exams.
It’s around halfway through the second semester, so of course Geonu saw them coming—but the thing about stress, especially exam stress, is that it hits you like a truck.
It hits you like a fucking truck, and there’s no relief until the thing is over.
The feeling just sits with you, uncomfortable and disgusting and fucking annoying, staying for as long as it pleases.
Geonu can’t sleep.
He can barely eat, barely think of anything other than his grades and all the studying he has to do—
“I don’t see the problem,” Daniel says innocently, “Isn’t he, like... Always.. Studying? What’s the difference now?”
Yoonwon whistles.
Jaeho sighs. “You’re on your own for this one, kid.”
Sometimes, when exams roll around, Geonu forgets to comb his hair. Sometimes he forgets his glasses at home and has to squint all day. Sometimes he forgets to do the normal, human things—blinking, breathing and the like have to be done manually instead of automatically—to a point at which the entire table crowds around him and tries to figure out whether or not he’s alive.
It’s unhealthy, he knows it is.
“Is he dead? He can’t be dead, right?”
“He’s not dead, Taki, for god’s sake.” Niki rolls his eyes.
Heeseung props his head up on a hand. “Quick, someone say something controversial. He’ll snap out of it for sure.”
Sungcheol snorts.
Geonu cracks a half-smile at that, and half the table sighs in relief.
“Man, what the fuck?” Nicholas sighs, collapsing back in his chair.
Euijoo’s hand flies to Geonu’s forehead, checking his temperature.
This happens. This is normal. Lee Geonu loses his mind about four times a year, it’s almost common knowledge at this point.
It’s fine. He just needs to graduate, and then everything will be okay.
(There’s still university, and all, but Geonu doesn’t want to think about that.)
“You’re going to be the death of us.” Sunghoon groans.
“He’s going to be the death of himself, first.” Jimin replies, and the whole table collectively turns to him.
If looks could kill, Jimin would be in his grave already.
“I’m fine, really.” Geonu speaks up, receiving more than one skeptical glance.
“You’re really not. Do you, like, take breaks?” Taeyong raises an eyebrow.
“Drink water?” Sunoo appends.
Jay looks up nervously. “... Sleep?”
Geonu nearly laughs.
The bell rings, and even Kei and Seon give him odd looks on his way out.
Even Hanbin, who Geonu has never spoken to in his life, gives him a raised eyebrow and a tilt of his head in the hall.
Is it that obvious? Does he really look that beat up?
(The answer is yes.)
It’s midnight already.
Words and numbers are blurring into one, jumbles of symbols that Geonu doesn’t recognize on all of these pages and then more pages and then blank spaces and whole papers left for any and all coherent thoughts that Geonu might manage to pull out of his brain.
The light from Geonu’s desk lamp doesn’t seem nearly as bright anymore.
He wipes the tiredness from his eyes and reaches for his phone, sitting forgotten under his books.
Dear god, even the numbers and letters on that damn screen are illegible.
Geonu opens messages and presses on the first contact that comes to mind.
He has to start a new conversation, which should tell him something.
Geonu types a feeble ‘hey’. Sends it.
Doesn’t have time to regret it, because within 10 seconds, he gets a reply.
‘coming’.
And that’s it. Geonu squints.
He leans back in his chair, his eyebrows knit together as he wonders if he got the wrong number.
He didn’t.
Approximately five minutes later, the persistant honking of a horn is heard outside of Geonu’s window.
He ignores it for as long as possible before it starts to hurt his head. Geonu peeks out.
Jungwon leans out the driver’s side window of a small car, cups his hands around him mouth and screams, “Oi!”
Geonu’s eyes widen. He pushes the window open and looks back down, the cold air all but physically smacking him in the face. “Are you insane?” He hisses.
Geonu glances back and forth down the street, not knowing what he’s looking for.
Jungwon narrows his eyes. “What?”
“You’ll wake my parents up, I swear—“
“Oh, just—“ The boy gestures indistinctly, and Geonu worries that he’ll fall out the car window. “Just come down!”
“I’ll wake up my parents up!”
“Come out the window then.”
“N-no?!”
“You’re not that high up!”
Geonu looks down. He’s pretty high up. Jungwon’s giving him an innocent look.
“I hate you.”
“You texted me!”
Geonu blinks. “I didn’t mean that you should show up at my house, at...” He checks his watch. “12:16 AM!”
“Well, I did it.” Jungwon grins.
A pause.
“You did, didn’t you?”
Only after Geonu manages to sneak out (through the front door, mind you) does he realize that he still has work.
Jungwon smiles his anime-character smile, leaning over to pull the car door shut behind Geonu.
Geonu quickly forgets what he was going to say (and all his previous thoughts, exams who?) and all he can manage after a second of hesitation is, “You can drive?”
“I’m 16.” Jungwon replies, looking at him sideways.
“You’re a fetus.”
“I-I’m 16, hyung.”
“Anyone who has to call me hyung is a fetus.”
“Then I’ll just, like, not.”
Geonu glares, but Jungwon pays him no mind. A beat passes.
“Don’t, then.”
“I won’t.”
Jungwon turns on the radio. Some bubblegum pop song is playing, and Geonu reflexively changes it.
Jungwon changes it back.
Geonu turns it off.
Jungwon turns it back on.
Geonu gives up, letting Twice’s unnervingly sweet vocals infiltrate his brain.
It’s mind-numbing. Jungwon looks quite happy with himself.
“Where are we going, anyways?”
Jungwon ignores the question, instead doing a double take at Geonu and furrowing his brow.
“What?”
“Your hair.”
Jungwon reaches out and cards his fingers through Geonu’s hair.
Geonu tries to slap him away, but to no avail. “Look at the road, you’ll crash the car—!”
“No, I won’t.” The car swerves a little bit.
“I—stop!”
“Fuck off, hyung.”
Jungwon doesn’t retract his hand for an uncomfortably long period of time, even as Geonu sinks lower and lower in his seat.
He finally smooths out Geonu’s hair and pulls away.
“You’re weird, you know that?”
“It looked like a fucking bird’s nest.”
Geonu self-consciously runs a hand through his hair again.
His wire-rimmed glasses slide inconveniently down his nose.
Jungwon pushes Geonu’s glasses back up so far that the nosepiece stabs him in the eye. “There.”
“Both hands on the wheel, please.” He grumbles.
“Killjoy.”
It takes a few minutes of driving in silence (save for, of course, the girl group songs constantly blaring over the radio and clouding Geonu’s thoughts) before Jungwon parks the car.
Geonu looks out the window at a flickering neon sign and fluorescent lights reflected through glass windows. “Why are we at a grocery store?”
“Reasons.” Jungwon smiles sweetly, unbuckling his seatbelt and opens Geonu’s door.
“But why is it even open? It’s almost 1 AM?”
Jungwon rolls his eyes. “You ask too many questions. Come on.” He grabs Geonu’s hand roughly and runs.
“Hey—“
“You’re stressed. This is de-stressing.”
They duck into the store, virtually running into a wall of warm air.
“Isn’t de-stressing, like, candles and tea and shit?”
Jungwon looks at him like he’s crazy. “Well, you must have been doing something wrong.” He grabs a cart.
Geonu comes to the semi-startling realization that he’s broke.
Very broke.
“I’m... Uh...”
“Destitute? I know.”
Ouch.
“We’re window shopping.” Jungwon says easily.
Geonu raises an eyebrow. “We’re window shopping in a grocery store?”
“We’re taking shit but putting it back.”
“That sounds like torture.”
“It’s better torture than Calculus.”
Geonu cannot argue with that.
“So,” He starts, as Jungwon pushes the cart through one of the many empty aisles, “Do you do this often?”
Jungwon turns around, taking a box of sugary cereal off a shelf and placing it in the cart. Geonu still doesn’t get the point of this whole thing.
“I’ve never done this before.”
“Oh. Huh. Why’d you think of it now, then?”
Jungwon rolls his eyes, clapping a hand over Geonu’s mouth as he grabs a box of powdered sugar donuts. “Too many questions.”
“Right.” Geonu says. It comes out muffled, of course.
They walk through, with Jungwon taking random shit and putting it in the cart.
There’s literally no one in the store save for the girl operating the single open check out aisle. She doesn’t seem to care too much about what the pair of them are up to, though.
Once they reach the produce section, Geonu takes a single potato (for some reason) and tosses it into the cart.
Jungwon raises an eyebrow, slowly retracting his hand from Geonu’s mouth.
“Yeah, uh... Why?”
Geonu does not know, but what comes out of his mouth is, “You eat too much sugar.”
Both of Jungwon’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, and one potato is going to fix that?”
“Maybe?”
Jungwon takes a bag of carrots and drops them in. “You’re a blind bitch.” He says, by way of explanation.
Oh, so this is what they’re doing.
Geonu drops a pack of artificial sweetener into the cart without a word.
“Ouch, that one hurt.”
Jungwon adds a small eggplant to the steadily growing pile of shit in the cart, and Geonu just stares at it for a long second.
By the time he realizes, Jungwon’s already sprinting full speed, the cart still being pushed in front of him.
“Hey!”
Geonu (being a man of great intelligence) picks up a pineapple as a weapon and runs after Jungwon.
The little bitch is cackling in the distance, of course he is.
Geonu’s going to kill him.
Jungwon turns a corner, and there’s a crash. “Oh, for fuck’s sake!”
Geonu drops the pineapple. It lands with an unnecessarily loud thud. “Oh my god-“ He says, reflexively, and he only gets a short laugh in response as he turns the corner behind Jungwon.
The cart is on its side, wheels still spinning. Jungwon is sitting in the middle of the aforementioned pile of shit, laughing quietly and looking like an idiot overall.
“You absolute shithead.” Geonu says, for no reason at all.
Jungwon laughs harder.
“We should probably put all this back, huh?” He asks after catching his breath, a smile still in his voice.
“Maybe.” But does Geonu want to?
Nope.
Jungwon’s still on the floor, sitting with his legs crossed and his hands on the floor behind him. He looks up. “Should we?”
Geonu takes the first thing he sees off the shelf and tosses it. It hits Jungwon square in the chest before landing on the floor and sliding across the tile pathetically.
“Hershey’s Kisses?”
“I-I like chocolate.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Jungwon stands up, righting the cart and putting all the stuff back in. “Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to help me?”
“I’ll help you, I guess.”
Jungwon glares.
“I’ll help you.”
The girl gives them a knowing look before they leave, and Jungwon bursts out laughing. “Oh, lord.”
“Shut up.” Geonu says through his teeth.
It’s colder still, and Geonu shivers as they walk through the automatic door.
“I still have the cart.” Jungwon says, staring down at the thing.
“Oh, I can take it.”
There’s still quite a distance between them and the car, and Geonu figures since Jungwon has been pushing it the whole time...
Well, Geonu can be a nice person too on occasion.
He pushes it for a short distance before Jungwon starts running.
Geonu isn’t even surprised at this point. “Man, what are you doing?”
He jumps over and smoothly lands in a heap in the cart. “Oh, ow.”
“Why’d you do that? What was the logic?” Geonu doesn’t stop pushing the cart even as Jungwon tries to right himself in it.
“There was none.” He turns to face Geonu and shoots him yet another anime-character-like grin.
Geonu’s arms lock up, but he keeps walking.
“Well?” Jungwon asks, crossing his legs in the cart. “Are you any less stressed?”
Pretending to think about it, Geonu answers with a short, “Maybe.”
Jungwon raises an eyebrow.
“I can’t tell for sure.”
“I guess we’ll have to do this again, then.”
Geonu sighs. “Aw, darn it.”
Jungwon rolls his eyes at that, but can’t refrain from giggling like an idiot.
Geonu does it too, just to keep him company.