misfits
Title: 'cause people always say that i'm dripping with good looks
Author: achtling
Pairing: Jongin/Taemin
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Jongin shares, Taemin.... cares (???), or high school outcast au that reads like the infamous enounter in the rain from some kinda loser shoujo manga. Two dorks, one umbrella. ~2003 words
'cause people always say that i'm dripping with good looks
The only soul in the library that afternoon has terrible posture. It’s a sorry sight: Kim Jongin, resident aloof transfer student, slumped over on his forearms with a dog-eared sci-fi novel balanced precariously in hand, dead to the world.
Outside it rains like it’ll never stop, the clouds a seal over the sky. The view beyond the library’s tremulous glass windows reveals nothing but dark, dull shapes, each like deeply tarnished silver. The gloom seems to isolate the academy, the library hall, its sole occupant, from everything else.
Since Jongin is the only one inside, it feels like a personal dream of his; he slips through all states of focus and consciousness over the course of a few hours. At the third hour, he can feel a grumble of hunger reverberating through every lazy bone of his. That’s when he groans “yahhh” under his breath and accepts the unpleasant reality of walking home in the rain at a 6 pm that feels more like a 10 at night.
Jongin almost faceplants in the hallway, catching himself with skittering feet and a quick hand to the wall. He’s glad nobody is around to see. He scowls at the linoleum tiles underfoot-they’re wet all over. There is a line of sporadic little puddles across the hallway, down the stairs to the first floor. Jongin only pays it enough mind not to slip again under the spotty lighting. Bruising his ass would not be a favorable way to end the week.
Peripherally, he supposes the freshly soaked floors mean that recently someone else was here, someone inconsiderate. That sums up most of his schoolmates. The promise of a late dinner calls to him more than ever; he shrugs his uniform jacket on a bit tighter, opens his sister’s regrettably girlish umbrella, and lets his meandering thoughts fall away to the first rush of wind.
Jongin heads toward the front gates under the school’s concrete overhang and that’s when he sees him. First, by the back, uniform draped dark on his slightish form, a sogging second skin. Shoulders hitching at the chill, fingers shivering and curved behind a column the tentative way you’d touch the small of someone’s back. Looking out, poised on his toes just then. His pitch hair, damp and gleaming. Jongin’s close enough to see the water droplets fly when the other boy’s head turns, and there’s the pièce de résistance: his face, famous, made more unreal by the aesthetic enhancements of being drenched and a cartoonish look of bafflement.
Jongin’s heart stutters. He didn’t mean to make eye contact. Lee Taemin is a weird kid. Which is not something Jongin can say without a fair share of hypocrisy, considering his plans for this weekend (every weekend) are, to the letter, stay home, eat, sleep, hold one-way conversations with gaggle of (his precious!) puppies, master one-player video games, sleep, eat, sleep.
He didn’t mean to immobilize entirely, either. Lee Taemin, weird, beautiful kid as he may be, is five feet and eight inches of fair skin and lithe bone and reputational pacifism. No reason for Jongin to stop in his tracks, muddled by apprehension. It’s just… the way he’s being looked at.
Jongin is standing there like a total douchebag: prolonged silence, mussed hair, dropped lip, a wide-eyed expression that says his heart has taken up lodging behind his adam’s apple. He can’t possibly look as gallant as Taemin’s searching, hopeful eyes would suggest.
But he is clutching the handle of an umbrella, decked with polka dots and protruding cat ears. Sleepy and forgetful, he grabbed it on accident this morning. It is probably half the reason he decided to wait out the rain. It is probably large enough to accommodate two scrawny teenage boys. It is probably a cosmic punishment of some kind.
Taemin is damp, not dripping. And Jongin is aloof, but… not an asshole.
“Do you live far from here?” he asks, stiff with obligation. It still manages to sound kind of like a pick up line. Eagerness springs to Taemin’s face and posturing, but he at least has the good graces to answer somewhat shyly.
Jongin decides not to hold anything against him. If he’s willing to walk home under this pink abomination, in close quarters with Jongin of all people, he must have been really against heading into this storm sans umbrella. There’s a certain frailty about him, at least to the eyes. Jongin’s heard other things here and there- gleaned that, apparently, Lee Taemin can take a beating.
He finds himself scanning for some telltale splotch, a bruise, a cut, a wince on the wings of his absent-minded thoughts, as Taemin explains that he lives ten minutes away, past such and such bus station, at such and such street, and wouldn’t you know it, Jongin realizes they’re near-neighbors. What he says is, “OK.”
And then he kind of wishes the ground would swallow him up, or that the last vestiges of kindness had been ripped out of him long ago. In less words he offers the shared use of his umbrella, pure love comic style.
He shuffles to the side and lifts his arm enough that Taemin can slip right under beside him, fitting snug in his scarf, shouldering his book bag. Once comfortable he has the good graces to look regretful. Quietly, “Thanks, man. It’s nice of you.” Jongin probably swallows his spit a little as he nods. This is so ridiculous. This is so. This.
A bit sickly-warm huddled side by side like this, they step out into the torrent of rain. Jongin keeps his feet pointed straight forward, takes great care not to veer this way or that. He has no idea what expression he is making but glum would probably be a fair word for it. He takes great interest in the raindrops sloughing off the side of the kitty cat umbrella plastic, and continues to do so until Taemin speaks up.
“I’m Taemin.” His toes scuff the wet concrete as they slip past the gate.
Jongin considers voicing his thoughts- “I know,” even but guarded- but he opts for pleasantry. He nods sullenly. “Jongin.” That’s pleasant for him, lately.
“I know,” Taemin replies, cheerful, “I’ve heard a lot about you.” Jongin thinks he is maybe being made fun of. He goes from glum to sore.
“...Like what?”
Taemin averts his eyes and Jongin wonders if he’s realized a social misstep a second too late, the way Jongin does. Then he sees the hike of his cheek rise-no, that’s not it. He’s smiling.
“You transferred here last semester,” he enthuses. “The girls thought you were hot- mysterious bronze-skinned transfer student, swoon-until you opened your mouth.”
Taemin’s eyes pick over to find Jongin’s. He somehow looks like he wants him to smile, too, rather than gape in embarrassment. What? What. Jongin can’t smile about it. However, Taemin’s tone is so conversational that Jongin can’t quite be mad either. He almost wants to interject, but he’s too slow-spoken and so Taemin only continues, dredging up the memory as if it bridges something between them.
“Your voice cracked during your self-introduction. Like, really badly.”
He winces. Right. That.
“How could I forget.”
Taemin shrugs. His ruthless laughter, petering out with the rain, does not go unnoticed. Jongin deadpans at him-tries to, anyway, but ends up seeming plain unhappy. “I didn’t forget, actually.”
“Now you spend all of your free time alone in the library looking like you want to die,” Taemin adds, and Jongin is speechless, “Or like you are dead.” The shorter boy chuckles a touch awkwardly as he shuts his eyes and does this open mouthed impression of Jongin snoring on the desk. If Jongin smiling at all, it’s because his facial muscles have gone into shock, and certainly not because he’s a little pleased at the interest.
“One of us is going to really be dead if you don’t cut that out,” he mumbles, surprised at how easily the empty threat falls out of his mouth. If Taemin heard him, he wouldn’t know it, because he’s still sneaking glances and smiling, smiling, smiling. Their shoulders bump companionably. After an inch of silence, for the sake of entertaining this unprecedented bluntness, Jongin ventures: “What else did you hear?”
There’s a considerate pause. “They also say you laugh really weird.” That one’s new.
The umbrella overhead shifts as Jongin sets his free hand over his mouth, realizing he was open-mouthed on the verge of laughing just then. With some effort he falls silent but Taemin’s laughter breezes between them instead; Jongin glowers at him, smiling behind his hand.
“If you think it’s so funny maybe I should just leave you here,” he says once he’s collected himself. Taemin makes this little pffffft noise, obviously unthreatened, and stares straight ahead. For a moment he seems to lose focus.
“If you do that, then I guess I’ll get sick.” He cards a hand back through his hair, preoccupied with some train of thought that Jongin can’t see. “I’ll get really sick and I won’t have to go to school.”
Jongin considers this in silence, flexing his fingers around the umbrella. In Taemin’s words, he can hear the familiar strain of dreading Monday. It has become the story of Jongin’s sad boring teenage life. If only it was so easy as getting soaked, getting sick, and never having to deal with grueling classes or hazing hands or vexing whispers ever again.
Taemin is still facing forward, continuing with a tired, flippant smile. “I won’t have to go to school, so I’ll just sit at home.” Yeah. Sounds good to Jongin. “There’ll be nobody around-- no people at all. I’ll be alone.” Sounds familiar to Jongin, actually. “I’ll lay down and stare at a wall. I’ll become close friends with the wall.” Wait, what?
Jongin shoots Taemin a confounded glance. Taemin returns it blankly but earnestly. “We’ll have a conversation,” he explains, “The wall and me. ‘Taemin-ah, you’ve worked hard...’”
They stare at each other like there has been a severe misfire in communication. And then Jongin sputters. The umbrella shakes in his grip and, like a quick-thinking cat, Taemin jolts a little closer to him to avoid getting wet. He smiles incredulously at the way Jongin’s whole chest vibrates with laughter, how his nose scrunches up and his hands get restless and clumsy.
Through his peals of impassioned, high-pitched giggling, Jongin gasps out, “What the hell?” and thinks it’s great. It’s great. Usually he’s the one saying something nobody understands, sniggering at his own joke until the stony, unamused faces of his classmates shut him up.
Taemin just looks pleased with himself. He kicks somewhat sheepishly at a puddle. “I think it’s cute.”
Jongin’s shoulders are shaking just the slightest with the last of his giggles when he finds his voice again. He coughs and grins through his confusion. “Sorry, what?” He thinks he might have to be on his toes when Taemin says anything at all now.
Taemin makes eye contact like it’s nothing. “Your laugh,” he clarifies. ”I like it.”
At a loss, Jongin laughs again, this time brief and flustered while he tries to think of something witty to say. “It’s still weird,” Taemin assures him.
“You’re weird,” he retorts dumbly, immediately, lavishing his syllables with great frivolous importance. He leaves out the part where he wants to profess gratitude. Because he might have offered Taemin shelter from the rain, but, if he's reading this right, Taemin is also offering him something.
Taemin side-eyes Jongin’s (still flustered) face. “But you like me, anyway,” he concludes. The words have weight without him trying. It surprises them both.
“Don’t push your luck,” Jongin mumbles, letting the storm drown out his concession. “Maybe a little.” He’s not sure how long his parents plan to have him enrolled here before their work schedules inevitably rip the ground out from under his feet, as they always do. But he thinks, here, here he might have finally found something good.
He likes how Taemin laughs, too.
---
author's notes:
- wow i'm sorry that ending!!! that fic in general!!! i just wanted to get it done ;;;;
- there's no real suffering in this one, rejoice (unless u count suffering from corniness. hey, i said shoujo manga au)
- the title is the an ohshc reference hahaha
- taemin and wall-san
Author: achtling
Pairing: Jongin/Taemin
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Jongin shares, Taemin.... cares (???), or high school outcast au that reads like the infamous enounter in the rain from some kinda loser shoujo manga. Two dorks, one umbrella. ~2003 words
'cause people always say that i'm dripping with good looks
The only soul in the library that afternoon has terrible posture. It’s a sorry sight: Kim Jongin, resident aloof transfer student, slumped over on his forearms with a dog-eared sci-fi novel balanced precariously in hand, dead to the world.
Outside it rains like it’ll never stop, the clouds a seal over the sky. The view beyond the library’s tremulous glass windows reveals nothing but dark, dull shapes, each like deeply tarnished silver. The gloom seems to isolate the academy, the library hall, its sole occupant, from everything else.
Since Jongin is the only one inside, it feels like a personal dream of his; he slips through all states of focus and consciousness over the course of a few hours. At the third hour, he can feel a grumble of hunger reverberating through every lazy bone of his. That’s when he groans “yahhh” under his breath and accepts the unpleasant reality of walking home in the rain at a 6 pm that feels more like a 10 at night.
Jongin almost faceplants in the hallway, catching himself with skittering feet and a quick hand to the wall. He’s glad nobody is around to see. He scowls at the linoleum tiles underfoot-they’re wet all over. There is a line of sporadic little puddles across the hallway, down the stairs to the first floor. Jongin only pays it enough mind not to slip again under the spotty lighting. Bruising his ass would not be a favorable way to end the week.
Peripherally, he supposes the freshly soaked floors mean that recently someone else was here, someone inconsiderate. That sums up most of his schoolmates. The promise of a late dinner calls to him more than ever; he shrugs his uniform jacket on a bit tighter, opens his sister’s regrettably girlish umbrella, and lets his meandering thoughts fall away to the first rush of wind.
Jongin heads toward the front gates under the school’s concrete overhang and that’s when he sees him. First, by the back, uniform draped dark on his slightish form, a sogging second skin. Shoulders hitching at the chill, fingers shivering and curved behind a column the tentative way you’d touch the small of someone’s back. Looking out, poised on his toes just then. His pitch hair, damp and gleaming. Jongin’s close enough to see the water droplets fly when the other boy’s head turns, and there’s the pièce de résistance: his face, famous, made more unreal by the aesthetic enhancements of being drenched and a cartoonish look of bafflement.
Jongin’s heart stutters. He didn’t mean to make eye contact. Lee Taemin is a weird kid. Which is not something Jongin can say without a fair share of hypocrisy, considering his plans for this weekend (every weekend) are, to the letter, stay home, eat, sleep, hold one-way conversations with gaggle of (his precious!) puppies, master one-player video games, sleep, eat, sleep.
He didn’t mean to immobilize entirely, either. Lee Taemin, weird, beautiful kid as he may be, is five feet and eight inches of fair skin and lithe bone and reputational pacifism. No reason for Jongin to stop in his tracks, muddled by apprehension. It’s just… the way he’s being looked at.
Jongin is standing there like a total douchebag: prolonged silence, mussed hair, dropped lip, a wide-eyed expression that says his heart has taken up lodging behind his adam’s apple. He can’t possibly look as gallant as Taemin’s searching, hopeful eyes would suggest.
But he is clutching the handle of an umbrella, decked with polka dots and protruding cat ears. Sleepy and forgetful, he grabbed it on accident this morning. It is probably half the reason he decided to wait out the rain. It is probably large enough to accommodate two scrawny teenage boys. It is probably a cosmic punishment of some kind.
Taemin is damp, not dripping. And Jongin is aloof, but… not an asshole.
“Do you live far from here?” he asks, stiff with obligation. It still manages to sound kind of like a pick up line. Eagerness springs to Taemin’s face and posturing, but he at least has the good graces to answer somewhat shyly.
Jongin decides not to hold anything against him. If he’s willing to walk home under this pink abomination, in close quarters with Jongin of all people, he must have been really against heading into this storm sans umbrella. There’s a certain frailty about him, at least to the eyes. Jongin’s heard other things here and there- gleaned that, apparently, Lee Taemin can take a beating.
He finds himself scanning for some telltale splotch, a bruise, a cut, a wince on the wings of his absent-minded thoughts, as Taemin explains that he lives ten minutes away, past such and such bus station, at such and such street, and wouldn’t you know it, Jongin realizes they’re near-neighbors. What he says is, “OK.”
And then he kind of wishes the ground would swallow him up, or that the last vestiges of kindness had been ripped out of him long ago. In less words he offers the shared use of his umbrella, pure love comic style.
He shuffles to the side and lifts his arm enough that Taemin can slip right under beside him, fitting snug in his scarf, shouldering his book bag. Once comfortable he has the good graces to look regretful. Quietly, “Thanks, man. It’s nice of you.” Jongin probably swallows his spit a little as he nods. This is so ridiculous. This is so. This.
A bit sickly-warm huddled side by side like this, they step out into the torrent of rain. Jongin keeps his feet pointed straight forward, takes great care not to veer this way or that. He has no idea what expression he is making but glum would probably be a fair word for it. He takes great interest in the raindrops sloughing off the side of the kitty cat umbrella plastic, and continues to do so until Taemin speaks up.
“I’m Taemin.” His toes scuff the wet concrete as they slip past the gate.
Jongin considers voicing his thoughts- “I know,” even but guarded- but he opts for pleasantry. He nods sullenly. “Jongin.” That’s pleasant for him, lately.
“I know,” Taemin replies, cheerful, “I’ve heard a lot about you.” Jongin thinks he is maybe being made fun of. He goes from glum to sore.
“...Like what?”
Taemin averts his eyes and Jongin wonders if he’s realized a social misstep a second too late, the way Jongin does. Then he sees the hike of his cheek rise-no, that’s not it. He’s smiling.
“You transferred here last semester,” he enthuses. “The girls thought you were hot- mysterious bronze-skinned transfer student, swoon-until you opened your mouth.”
Taemin’s eyes pick over to find Jongin’s. He somehow looks like he wants him to smile, too, rather than gape in embarrassment. What? What. Jongin can’t smile about it. However, Taemin’s tone is so conversational that Jongin can’t quite be mad either. He almost wants to interject, but he’s too slow-spoken and so Taemin only continues, dredging up the memory as if it bridges something between them.
“Your voice cracked during your self-introduction. Like, really badly.”
He winces. Right. That.
“How could I forget.”
Taemin shrugs. His ruthless laughter, petering out with the rain, does not go unnoticed. Jongin deadpans at him-tries to, anyway, but ends up seeming plain unhappy. “I didn’t forget, actually.”
“Now you spend all of your free time alone in the library looking like you want to die,” Taemin adds, and Jongin is speechless, “Or like you are dead.” The shorter boy chuckles a touch awkwardly as he shuts his eyes and does this open mouthed impression of Jongin snoring on the desk. If Jongin smiling at all, it’s because his facial muscles have gone into shock, and certainly not because he’s a little pleased at the interest.
“One of us is going to really be dead if you don’t cut that out,” he mumbles, surprised at how easily the empty threat falls out of his mouth. If Taemin heard him, he wouldn’t know it, because he’s still sneaking glances and smiling, smiling, smiling. Their shoulders bump companionably. After an inch of silence, for the sake of entertaining this unprecedented bluntness, Jongin ventures: “What else did you hear?”
There’s a considerate pause. “They also say you laugh really weird.” That one’s new.
The umbrella overhead shifts as Jongin sets his free hand over his mouth, realizing he was open-mouthed on the verge of laughing just then. With some effort he falls silent but Taemin’s laughter breezes between them instead; Jongin glowers at him, smiling behind his hand.
“If you think it’s so funny maybe I should just leave you here,” he says once he’s collected himself. Taemin makes this little pffffft noise, obviously unthreatened, and stares straight ahead. For a moment he seems to lose focus.
“If you do that, then I guess I’ll get sick.” He cards a hand back through his hair, preoccupied with some train of thought that Jongin can’t see. “I’ll get really sick and I won’t have to go to school.”
Jongin considers this in silence, flexing his fingers around the umbrella. In Taemin’s words, he can hear the familiar strain of dreading Monday. It has become the story of Jongin’s sad boring teenage life. If only it was so easy as getting soaked, getting sick, and never having to deal with grueling classes or hazing hands or vexing whispers ever again.
Taemin is still facing forward, continuing with a tired, flippant smile. “I won’t have to go to school, so I’ll just sit at home.” Yeah. Sounds good to Jongin. “There’ll be nobody around-- no people at all. I’ll be alone.” Sounds familiar to Jongin, actually. “I’ll lay down and stare at a wall. I’ll become close friends with the wall.” Wait, what?
Jongin shoots Taemin a confounded glance. Taemin returns it blankly but earnestly. “We’ll have a conversation,” he explains, “The wall and me. ‘Taemin-ah, you’ve worked hard...’”
They stare at each other like there has been a severe misfire in communication. And then Jongin sputters. The umbrella shakes in his grip and, like a quick-thinking cat, Taemin jolts a little closer to him to avoid getting wet. He smiles incredulously at the way Jongin’s whole chest vibrates with laughter, how his nose scrunches up and his hands get restless and clumsy.
Through his peals of impassioned, high-pitched giggling, Jongin gasps out, “What the hell?” and thinks it’s great. It’s great. Usually he’s the one saying something nobody understands, sniggering at his own joke until the stony, unamused faces of his classmates shut him up.
Taemin just looks pleased with himself. He kicks somewhat sheepishly at a puddle. “I think it’s cute.”
Jongin’s shoulders are shaking just the slightest with the last of his giggles when he finds his voice again. He coughs and grins through his confusion. “Sorry, what?” He thinks he might have to be on his toes when Taemin says anything at all now.
Taemin makes eye contact like it’s nothing. “Your laugh,” he clarifies. ”I like it.”
At a loss, Jongin laughs again, this time brief and flustered while he tries to think of something witty to say. “It’s still weird,” Taemin assures him.
“You’re weird,” he retorts dumbly, immediately, lavishing his syllables with great frivolous importance. He leaves out the part where he wants to profess gratitude. Because he might have offered Taemin shelter from the rain, but, if he's reading this right, Taemin is also offering him something.
Taemin side-eyes Jongin’s (still flustered) face. “But you like me, anyway,” he concludes. The words have weight without him trying. It surprises them both.
“Don’t push your luck,” Jongin mumbles, letting the storm drown out his concession. “Maybe a little.” He’s not sure how long his parents plan to have him enrolled here before their work schedules inevitably rip the ground out from under his feet, as they always do. But he thinks, here, here he might have finally found something good.
He likes how Taemin laughs, too.
---
author's notes:
- wow i'm sorry that ending!!! that fic in general!!! i just wanted to get it done ;;;;
- there's no real suffering in this one, rejoice (unless u count suffering from corniness. hey, i said shoujo manga au)
- the title is the an ohshc reference hahaha
- taemin and wall-san