Chapter Text
Liyu thought the crush would only last a day. A week at most. Woojin had never had a crush before. If he did, he would have told his best friend.
So Liyu knew it was serious when Woojin told him about this one.
Yoon Sera. She’s pretty. Popular. Has a lot of friends. Doesn’t play any sports, studies a normal amount to have good grades but not too much to be called a nerd. It makes sense.
It makes sense why Woojin would like someone like that. Someone to be confident for him, to complete his shy self. Someone with enough popularity that he wouldn’t feel self conscious anymore. He’s much less popular than Liyu. Call him selfish, but Liyu likes that. He likes having Woojin all to himself.
Liyu noticed at basketball practice, right before it was over. Woojin was on the benches texting someone looking sad, and usually he isn’t texting anyone besides his mom and is never looking like that type of sad.
In the locker room, Woojin’s still on his phone.
“Who are you texting?”
A few more seconds of staring at his screen. “Sorry?”
“Your phone. What are you so focused on?”
Woojin puts his glasses back on and puts his phone down. Finally.
“I.. made a new friend. Sera. Do you know her?”
Liyu furrows his eyebrows. “Sera? Of course I know her. I’m friends with some of her friends. What about her?”
Woojin nibbles the inside of his cheek and turns his head towards his locker, instead of facing towards Liyu.
“I think I like her, hyung.”
Liyu drops the towel he’s holding. Stands still for a bit.
“Hyung?” Woojin turns back to face Liyu, so he now has to look like he doesn’t really even care at all.
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s-that’s great, Woojin. She seems really nice. Why all out of nowhere though?” Liyu picks the towel back up and walks towards the bin behind him to throw it in so Woojin can’t see what his face is right now.
“She just.. seems so cool. Smart, and, and confident, and pretty. She has a lot of friends.”
“Yeah. Yeah, she does, doesn’t she.” Liyu smiles and tosses Woojin the sweatshirt he let him borrow the other day. It’d be weird if he kept onto it for longer, wouldn’t it?
Woojin catches it and grins shyly to himself. “Yeah…” He shuts his eyes and hugs the sweatshirt tightly, before seeming to remember something and opening his eyes in mild concern. “She said she’s in a bad mood, though. Do you think that’s code for ‘I don’t want to talk to you ever again’?”
Liyu doesn’t want to ask how Woojin got Sera’s number. Doesn’t even want to think about it. Or how he referred to Sera as his “new friend” when Sera might’ve given him her number. He doesn’t want to think about what she could’ve meant through that. Liyu knows Woojin is way too shy to give her his number though, so there’s that.
“I don’t think so. I think it means ‘try to cheer me up’ or something. Besides, you’re already texting her. Doesn’t that show you’re kinda close to her?” Liyu grabs some of the bullshit in his locker and places it in his bag. “Do you think she’s into you too?”
He doesn’t wanna know the response, actually. Why did he ask that?
Woojin finally starts packing his stuff up, too. “There’s no way of telling, to be honest. I can’t tell if she’s just nice to me or she acts this way around everybody. Are popular kids usually this nice?”
“I’m popular, and I’m nice.”
“Oh, yeah. But that doesn’t count, cuz it’s you.”
Liyu zips up his bag and pulls it over his shoulder, not trying to think too hard about what that could mean.
“Well, do something nice for her tomorrow, then. Isn’t she in our first period? What do girls like that cheers them up in the morning?”
Woojin zips up his bag shortly after, hard in thought. “A drink? I don’t know, but I like it when you buy me drinks sometimes in the morning, so maybe that’ll work on her?”
They both stand up and head out the locker room door, to the outside basketball court of their school they’ve been using to practice. Woojin’s probably the best one on the team. He likes baseball more, though. Liyu’s been practicing basketball more than him to catch up.
Woojin is the best mainly because of his height. He’s 6 foot 2 inches, for fucks sake. Liyu has to remind himself when he’s around him that he’s not short either, but there’s still around a three inch height gap. It might seem small to others but before Liyu met Woojin, he’d never met someone his age as tall as him, much less taller.
In their first year of high school, Liyu didn’t really know anyone due to having just moved to the area. He made friends quickly, though. Woojin sat next to him in biology. Liyu didn’t know anything about him, besides that he was shy, tall, and didn’t have many friends. He liked being lab partners with him, which led to hanging out even outside of school, which led to becoming best friends. Liyu loves being Woojin’s best friend.
They never really talked about things like this. Crushes. Girls in general, unless it was whatever new k-pop group Woojin was obsessed with, or whatever fun thing he and his mom did during the weekend. They mostly talked about fun, stupid stuff, like music, and art, and anime, and fashion. Never anything serious.
But Liyu could tell this was serious. Is that why he was so opposed to this? Because it was such a shift in their normal topics? He couldn’t tell Woojin that, of course. Woojin is allowed to like whoever he wants. Liyu just wished he could’ve had him all to himself for just a little longer.
After the two of them part ways and head back to their respective homes, Liyu finds a small white teddy bear keychain with a blue bow on it sitting in the middle of the sidewalk. Barely dirty at all. Someone must have lost it. He pockets it. Woojin would definitely like this.
Sometimes, Liyu wishes he and Woojin lived closer. They live about the same distance from the school, but on opposite sides. It actually isn’t that far, but it ends up making them hang out around their school, most of the time. Naturally, they would rather hang out as far away as possible from that cursed place, but just down the street is their favorite karaoke place, so that makes up for it.
Liyu thinks it would be awesome if they were neighbors. He could just see Woojin anytime then, and they could have their own basketball court right in between their houses. Maybe even a baseball field. Liyu doesn’t know the rules at all, but for Woojin he most certainly wouldn’t mind learning them.
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The next day, Woojin is freaking out. They went to a random cafe thirty minutes before the school day even starts, just so he could pick out a drink for Sera. Liyu doesn’t mind. He even offers to pay for it.
“Do you think she’d like coffee more, or something fruity?”
“Woojin, I don’t think it matters. Now pick one before we hold up the line any longer.”
Despite it being only 7:30 in the morning, the cafe is filled with early work and school-goers and clearly the people behind them were not happy about waiting so long. Woojin finally decides on a strawberry smoothie for some reason (personally, Sera seems more like a latte person to Liyu, but he doesn’t mention that). They rush to school after receiving their order and Woojin is practically shaking.
“I hope she likes it. I love strawberry smoothies. Should I give it to her, or leave it on her desk? Should I write something on it?” Woojin asks while carefully opening his locker with one hand and holding the drink in the other.
“Idunno, man,” Liyu mumbles, yawning as he takes out his calculator. “If she’s already in class by the time we get there, you’re gonna have to give it to her yourself instead of leaving it on her desk.”
Woojin frowns as if he hadn’t realized that earlier. As if he’s annoyed at the thought of having to talk to his own crush in person. It’s just nerves, Liyu realizes. Woojin’s nervous. That’s what you do when you have a crush on someone you don’t know too well. It’s nerve-wracking.
“Well, hurry up then, hyung!” Despite holding the smoothie, Woojin somehow balances all of his books in his other hand and is speeding towards the classroom in record time. Liyu walks as fast as he can to catch up to him, annoyed he has to move around this much so early in the morning.
Woojin stops at the classroom entrance, looking relieved to see Sera hasn’t arrived yet. He slowly walks down the steps of the seminar-style room and places the smoothie on the desk he’s seen Sera sitting at since the new quarter started and they received assigned seats.
“So… Do I put a note on it? Write something nice?” Woojin asks, his face clearly showing a mix of distress and excitement. He pulls out a pink stack of sticky notes from his pocket and a glittery pink pen. Liyu eyes it and raises his eyebrows at the other.
“What? It’s cute.”
“Yeah, it matches you.” Liyu blushes slightly and turns away, hoping the other wouldn’t think too hard about what he just said. But thankfully, Woojin seemed to be too stuck on thinking about something else.
“Wait.. I’ve got it, hyung! I’m gonna put on it-“
Liyu puts his hand up. “You don’t need to tell me, Woojin. It’s your crush; seems kinda personal to me.”
Woojin looks at him with an unreadable expression, eventually clicking the pen and beginning to write. “Ok, whatever you say..”
Liyu turns around and heads up the stairs to his seat in the last row, right behind Woojin’s, coincidentally. He was burning with embarrassment and a different emotion that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Why did he even care this much? Why didn’t he even want to see what Woojin was about to write on the stupid, meaningless sticky note?
It’s just different, he repeated to himself. You’re not used to Woojin caring so much about other people, is all.
Liyu sat down at his assigned seat and shortly after Woojin did as well. Class wouldn’t start for another seven minutes, and Woojin kept turning around to talk to Liyu, instead of sitting with the other boy until class started like he always does.
Guess he wants to be sitting in own seat to see what his crush thinks of his drink..
Liyu doesn’t really pay attention to what Woojin is talking about. Some new level he unlocked in a video game? He really couldn’t care less. The only thing he’s thinking about now is Sera, her long black shiny hair flowing after her as she walks into class.
She looks as well-put together as always, with her makeup flawless and natural looking, clothes cute and not a single wrinkle in sight, and not a hair out of place. She’s talking to a friend, walking sideways down the steps to communicate with the girl behind her. She doesn’t glance at her desk.
Liyu almost says something to Woojin. He can’t tell what his best friend is looking at, from this view behind him. Sera’s getting closer to her desk, still completely immersed in whatever interesting conversation she’s having right now, and still walking backwards. Her backpack gets closer and closer to the smoothie. Until — bam.
Liyu reaches his hand out, and almost says something—but what would he even say that could stop it?
The drink lies on the classroom floor, spilling out the small hole in the top for the straw.
Woojin puts his hand to his forehead, looking to be more in disbelief than anger or sadness, if anything.
Liyu doesn’t say anything to him about it. He can imagine how Woojin feels. Liyu just sighs. That smoothie was too expensive for this bullshit.
Sera and her friend clean up the mess on the floor. The sticky note is unreadable, due to having way too much sugary strawberry goodness smeared all over it. Liyu knows Woojin wanted to go help clean it up, but he also knows he doesn’t want to risk it. It’s all understandable.
Still, throughout class Woojin keeps writing little notes on his worksheet. Things about confession, and her.. face? Seems kind of pointless. Liyu’s getting annoyed. He was going to ask him about question #4, but Woojin hasn’t even finished the first one.
Liyu eventually notices the teacher is staring at Woojin, clearly displeased with the lack of schoolwork he seems to actually be doing. Liyu rolls his eyes and throws some of his scratch paper at the back of his best friend’s head, hoping just that small hit will somehow knock the sense back into Woojin. As if to say, Stop writing weird.. poetry(?) and get to work. I already know you’re gonna ask me later, ‘what did we even learn today in first period?’ as if you weren’t there yourself.
Liyu can’t tell if the crumpled ball of paper actually does get that message through Woojin’s head, but it certainly does make him focus on the worksheet, and that’s good enough, he supposes.
A few minutes later, Liyu notices something odd. Sera is on her phone. Sera is never on her phone during class.
She’s looking up a specific keychain online—the same one Liyu found on the sidewalk yesterday.
Well, shit.
“Do you think three paragraphs is too short? Should I write more?”
Liyu shrugs and messes with one of the multiple silver necklaces dangling from around his neck. “I don’t know, man. Do you think I’ve ever written a love letter?”
“I don’t know. You could’ve and not told me.”
“Okay, well, I tell you everything, and the answer is no, I haven’t ever written one.” Liyu grabs the letter out of Woojin’s trembling hands and quickly examines it, while still doing an impressive job of not really reading any of it directly. “You’re fine. Girls like stuff like this. Here, take the keychain, before she comes back out.”
After class ended, Liyu told Woojin his spectacular plan. And because Woojin is unpredictable like that, he actually agreed to it.
First: write a letter of confession to Sera. Works better than a text or in person.
Also: give her the teddy keychain Liyu is 90% sure belongs to her. If it doesn’t, well, it’s still a cute gift that she was online shopping for.
Finally: Wait by Sera’s locker after school to try to give her the 3-paragraph love letter and adorable lost keychain that may or may not belong to her.
Liyu moves a bit farther down the hall from Woojin, so he’s not as close to the big moment when it happens. He’s still pretty noticeable considering there’s no one else in this part of the hallway, but that seems like a minor detail at the moment.
Woojin is waiting, clearly impatiently, for the moment Sera turns the corner. His left foot taps against the tiled hallway floor and he keeps glancing left towards where Sera’s locker is and right, where Liyu is standing in what he hopes is a nonchalant pose.
Liyu’s completely normal about this. Woojin’s about to confess to his crush. Of course he’s normal about this.
He should have left already. Why's he even still here? This is Woojin’s big moment, not his. So why does he even care to see this? She shouldn’t matter this much.
Liyu doesn’t want Sera to matter more to Woojin than he does. But he’s normal about this, and helping Woojin too, because that’s what good friends do when their friends have crushes.
Sera finally turns the corner, leaving her locker. Woojin stares at her. She doesn’t notice him. She’s walking down the other side of the hallway, away from Liyu. And Woojin is letting her get away.
Woojin looks at her with an unreadable expression, even if he can only see her back. He’s clutching the letter and mini teddy bear like it will run away to her on its own if he lets it go. Sera’s almost out of the building before Woojin turns to face Liyu. His expression is still unreadable, but Liyu’s glad his gaze is fixed on him and not her anymore. Woojin is frowning slightly, his eyes looking slightly wet. Was he shaking this much before?
He’s just nervous to confess. It’s natural. He really likes her. Woojin likes Sera, so of course he’s worried she won’t like him back. It makes sense. He wants to be close to her, and give her love letters, and his poetry about her face or whatever. He wants to text her like how he was yesterday. He wants to make her feel better. He wants to spend time with her. He wants to be her boyfriend.
Woojin, be someone’s boyfriend?
Unimaginable. He spends too much time with me.
Liyu sighs and brings his palm to his forehead.
Shit. I’m in love with him, aren’t I.