bras, panties, and sleepwear - oh my!
title: bras, panties, and sleepwear - oh my!
pairing: sehun/jongin
genre: crack?! idek, man
rating: pg
words: ~3k
summary: in which jongin buys sehun lingerie every year for his birthday, and sehun doesn't complain.
notes: you can blame den for this one. i'm sincerely sorry for the weird crack that follows.
It all started the week before Sehun’s seventh birthday.
Jongin’s mother had suggested that he buy his best friend candy, or a gift card, or maybe a new soccer ball to kick around the backyard. But for the small (and notoriously enthusiastic) boy, none of these ideas were good enough. This was Sehun’s seventh birthday, after all. Seven was a special number, and so his present needed to be special, too. It was an absolute necessity, and so a resigned mother dragged her husband with her to the mall so they could help their son pick out “the perfect gift.”
The outing started out innocent enough - Jongin running through the toy aisles deliberately picking up each thing and weighing its value before setting it back down, his mother and father trailing not far behind. It wasn’t until nearly an hour had passed that anything got out of hand. Jongin’s mother, fed up with her son’s indecisiveness, made for an escape to the women’s clothing section of the store. She had been expecting Jongin to continue picking out his gift with his father. She hadn’t been expecting him to abandon his other parent and follow her, instead.
She hardly even noticed his presence until she heard a cry of “Mommy!” and looked over to see him with a pair of lacy lingerie in his hands.
Immediately, she erupted in mild hysterics. “Jongin! Put those down. Those are not for little boys,” she said in a hushed but stern tone. Her face was flushed red with embarrassment and she sincerely hoped that nobody in the store saw her son waving around ladies underwear. “Go back to your father and pick out Sehun’s gift.”
“But mommy,” a young Jongin whined. He still held the pink and black piece of fabric in his hands. “I want to give this to Sehunnie.”
Her eyes widened in horror and she reached to take the underwear out of her son’s grip, but Jongin didn’t want to give it up. Quick and lithe, he maneuvered his small body away from his mother and managed to stay out of her grasp, all the while clinging to his chosen gift for Sehun.
“Jongin! Give that back right now,” she chastised, trying her best to ignore the attention she was attracting from the other shoppers. “That is not a good gift for Sehun. Go back to the toy aisle and find him something else, please.”
Jongin pouted and stopped running away, but his tight hold on the panties remained. “I don’t want to get him something else,” he wailed, stomping is feet in protest. “I want his birthday to be lucky so he has to have these.”
The woman could clearly tell that her son was spewing nonsense. “Lucky? No, Jongin, put them back.”
“Lucky like the number seven!” Jongin shouted. People were definitely staring now. “The boy on TV said these gave you luck. He got some that looked just like it and he said he got lucky. I want Sehun to get lucky too!”
Realization dawned on the woman’s face and she made a mental note to strangle her husband later for ever letting Jongin watch his racy television shows with him. “Sweetie, listen to me,” she said, kneeling down to her son’s level to try a softer approach to things. “Those are for grown-ups like Mommy. The luck only works on certain people, and I don’t think it will work on Sehun. He’s too young.”
“Oh…” Jongin’s little face fell and the woman let out a deep breath, figuring the worst was over. But it wasn’t. “Well, that’s okay! He can save them for later!” Before she could process what was happening, the young boy was running over to his father, proudly showing off what he had found.
Jongin’s father found the whole ordeal much funnier than his mother did, and somehow, they ended up buying the lingerie for him, along with a small box to wrap it in.
“You get to be the one to explain this to Sehun’s parents,” the mother sneered on the way home from the store. The father laughed.
“What’s the big deal? Jongin likes them. Sehun will too,” he replied, a relaxed smile on his face.
“The bows are my favorite part!” Jongin shouted from the back seat of the car.
His father grinned.
“See? The bows are his favorite part.”
The disgruntled woman merely glared, clearly unhappy with how their day had gone. She only hoped she could forget it as quickly as possible.
*✲ﾟ*｡⋆*
But she never forgot it. Nobody did. Not ever.
Sehun’s parents had found the whole ordeal hilarious, and Sehun liked the pink bows and frilly lace almost too much. Jongin promised with a triumphant grin to get him more just like it every year so that by the time he was a grown-up, he’d be the luckiest guy in the world.
He did just that, too. Each year after that, Sehun received an article of lingerie from Jongin for his birthday. Sometimes it was underwear, sometimes a night shirt, or sometimes something else. But it was always lacy, and it always had bows on it.
Of course, by the time they got a little older, they realized just how…odd…their tradition was. Jongin now clearly understood why his mother had been so adamant against purchasing the lingerie that first day oh so long ago, but he didn’t care. Actually, now that he knew, he found it funny as hell and vowed never to skip a year, no matter what.
“I can’t believe we used to think girls’ panties would give you luck,” Jongin snickered from his spot on Sehun’s living room floor, cuddled up in his sleeping bag. It was the younger’s thirteenth birthday, and they were having a sleepover.
“Hey, I only believed it because you told me so,” the birthday boy protested, flushing a slight red color. He had taken the harsh truth of Jongin’s inappropriate gifts a little harder than Jongin himself did, finding the whole ordeal more awkward than funny. He got his fair share of laughs out of it, of course, and he still secretly enjoyed the gifts - but the fact that he now had a whole dresser drawer dedicated to not-actually-lucky-at-all women’s delicates made him slightly uncomfortable. (It was a shame they weren’t lucky, too, because now he was thirteen and thirteen was a very unlucky number, according to Jongin.)
“Maybe you shouldn’t believe everything I say, then,” Jongin replied, rolling his eyes and laughing. “I’m pretty stupid, after all. But hey...you still like the gift, right?”
Sehun nodded vigorously in response before remembering that the lights were off and that his best friend probably couldn’t see him very clearly. “Yeah, totally,” he said. “Thanks.”
Jongin grinned. He was glad that his gift was appreciated, regardless of how strange it was. This year, he had bought it himself, because his mother refused to put up with the “immaturity of preteen boys” any longer. He spent his (not so) hard earned allowance on the nicest two piece set he could afford rather than the new video game he’d been craving to play for so long. Needless to say, the looks he got from the man working the cash register were priceless.
“You’re welcome,” Jongin laughed. A mischievous smirk donned on his face and he hopped out of his sleeping bag, suddenly attacking Sehun in a giant, suffocating bear hug. “Happy birthday, loser,” he cooed, pinching his best friend’s cheeks.
Sehun was too busy trying to pry his greasy friend off of him to protest to being called a loser. Besides…he knew it was true, anyway.
*✲ﾟ*｡⋆*
When they were fourteen, Jongin and his family were on vacation during Sehun’s birthday, so he had to have his gift specialty shipped from some store online. When they were fifteen, he delivered his present at school and Sehun almost got in trouble with the principal for allegedly “raiding the girls’ locker room.” When they were sixteen, the cute girl in Jongin’s science class saw him while he was shopping and he had to hide in the clothes racks for an hour to avoid questioning.
When they were seventeen, Sehun’s father got a transfer at work and his parents announced that they would be moving within the next few months.
This, obviously, did not sit well with Jongin. He and Sehun were best friends forever, not best friends until age seventeen, dammit. It said so on the (so not lame at all) friendship rings they made in the second grade. Sehun couldn’t move, that meant they’d be apart, and…they were never apart. He was convinced that he was going to go through withdrawals or something, but he didn’t know for sure because they’d never actually been separated. That just wasn’t a thing that happened.
Instead of dealing with this news like a mature, responsible (almost) adult, Jongin decided to handle the matter more like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum.
“YOU CAN’T LEAVE ME WHAT WILL I DO WITHOUT YOU IT’S SENIOR YEAR THIS ISN’T FAIR CAN’T YOU JUST LIVE ON MY COUCH I’LL BAKE YOU COOKIES JUST SDKGHOIT5KWESD!”
It took a good forty five minutes or so to pry a sobbing Jongin off of Sehun’s leg, where he was clinging like a koala. Sehun was upset too, of course, but he had learned long ago to let Jongin be the dramatic one in their duo. He was just the sidekick - the Watson to his Holmes, the Robin to his Batman, the Pikachu to his Ash…or something along those lines. He didn’t rightfully care, to be honest.
“Jongin, relax, it’ll be fine,” he said once his best friend was finally done ripping holes through his jeans with his fingernails. The older boy let out another stifled sob but nodded, knowing Sehun was probably right. It would be fine, really. They’d just have to call each other every day and have Skype dates and play Fifa over XBOX Live, and maybe Jongin could sneak out of school and visit sometime and then just never leave or -
Okay, so that probably wasn’t necessary. He was tempted, though.
This temptation never got to be indulged, however, because when they were eighteen Sehun decided to throw his first ever birthday party with actual people, and Jongin didn’t like actual people.
Or rather, he didn’t like it when they pretended to love Sehun more than he did. Psh, idiots. That was nearly impossible.
*✲ﾟ*｡⋆*
During the party, Jongin tried his best to be polite, but all of these new faces were freaking him out and he just wanted to cuddle with his best friend in his sleeping bag like he used to when they were little. It was making him very upset that he couldn’t do that, and it was making him even more upset that he had to pretend to like all of these weird, creepy classmates of Sehun’s.
One of them - a particularly creepy and particularly tall guy with a smile that reminded Jongin of a crack dealer - wouldn’t stop talking about how good the cake Sehun’s mom had made was. This made Jongin scoff; he totally could have made a better cake. And by totally he really meant not actually, but still. Did the guy seriously have to keep smiling at him like that? They weren’t friends, god.
This other guy made him scoff, too, when he claimed that Sehun had left his jacket at his house after they went to get bubble tea the other day. Jongin found this outright ridiculous, because 1) Sehun never wore jackets; he was always freakishly acclimated to the cold; that was his thing - and 2) Sehun most certainly didn’t like bubble tea. And even if he did, why would he go out of his way to go get some with this doe-eyed pretty boy? The two of them had always been adamant against any sort of social activities that required leaving their couches and putting on pants. As far as Jongin was concerned, going out for bubble tea was not a Sehun-ish thing to do in the slightest.
When he voiced this out loud, he was not met with the laughter and assurance that he had been expecting. Instead, Sehun gave him a weary look and awkwardly chuckled before declaring that maybe it was about time they started opening presents.
Frowning, Jongin pushed past the two short dweebs that were arguing about which member of some girl group was prettiest and went to retrieve his gift from the pile by the kitchen door. He was a little angry at Sehun for making new friends, and he was sad that he even needed to be angry about that in the first place, but he still wanted his best friend to have a good birthday. As the rest of the party guests began to grab their presents and shove them in Sehun’s face, Jongin kept a firm grip on the small pink box in his hands. He adjusted the bow on the top with care as everyone gathered around the living room couch; it had taken him twenty minutes to properly wrap this gift. The bow was his favorite part.
“Who’s next? Jongin?”
The words broke him out of his reverie and Jongin glanced up at the many smiling faces around him. Why were they all staring at him like that? It was getting really irritating.
Resisting the urge to start screaming and throwing wild punches, Jongin held out his gift to his best friend. “Here,” he said flatly.
Sehun looked a little worried as he took the box, and Jongin couldn’t decide if it was because he could tell he was upset or because he was anticipating lingerie and didn’t want everyone else to laugh at the gift. Neither were ideal situations, of course, but Jongin couldn’t be bothered to dwell on it too much, at least not before the birthday boy was ripping open the present.
His expression went from weary to surprised almost instantly, and Jongin could see the confusion on his best friend’s face as he pulled out a watch.
“A…watch?” Sehun asked, looking up at Jongin quizzically.
“Yep!” the elder grinned. “A watch. Not just any watch, either. I got it from McDonald’s. See, it has a Pokemon on it. I don’t know which one it is though because it’s from the newest generation and all of those are stupid as fuck, but hey, it’s cute, right?”
“…I…guess…” Sehun chuckled nervously and set the watch back into the box, a light frown on his face. By now he must have been thoroughly perplexed by Jongin’s behavior, but hey, what fun was a party without a little ~mystery?
For the next ten minutes, Sehun continued opening gifts and Jongin continued judging everyone in the room for various and ridiculous reasons. (That guy is wearing brown shoes. Brown shoes are so tacky. And that guy…what’s with his hair? Who does he think he is, Justin Beiber?) When that was finally over, most of the guests dispersed to either play some games on the Wii or to graze on appetizers in the kitchen. After “accidentally” tripping at least three of Sehun’s new friends, Jongin finally grew bored of reigning terror on everyone and stepped outside to the hallway.
To his surprise, he found Sehun there, just hanging up from what was presumably a “happy birthday” call with some relative.
“Jongin,” he said upon realizing his best friend’s presence. “What are you doing in this part of the house?”
Jongin frowned. “You’re not wearing your watch,” he said, reaching out to grab the younger boy’s dainty wrist. “I bought like, four happy meals just to get the cutest one, you know. I almost threw up because I was so full afterwards.”
“You didn’t have to eat them all, idiot,” Sehun said that same light frown still on his face. He hesitated before continuing. “…why did you buy me a watch?”
Jongin laughed. He knew this question was coming, and he was prepared for it. “What, you mean you don’t like it?” he asked, that mischievous glint in his eye once again. “I can return it and get you another one if you want. Well wait, actually I probably can’t, considering it was a free gift with my chicken nuggets…but I have like all the other ones too so…you know. You’ve got options.”
“You’re an idiot,” Sehun said, rolling his eyes.
“Thank you.” Jongin grinned, still holding onto the other boy’s wrist. They stood like that for a while, Sehun giving Jongin weird looks and Jongin wiggling his eyebrows for no particular reason, until finally the latter burst out laughing and pulled something out of his jacket pocket.
“I’m kidding, dude. Here. Did you really think I would abandon an eleven year old tradition? I just didn’t want to embarrass you in front of your new friends. Plus I wanted to get back at you for making me come to this lame party.”
Sehun’s eyes lit up as the lingerie was placed in his hands, but his expression fell quickly once he remembered that he wasn’t supposed to enjoy this that much. It was too late, though. Jongin had already seen the relief flash across his face, and it sent him into a fit of giggles.
“You were really sad about not getting any, weren’t you,” he accused, clutching his side to stop himself from doubling over in laughter. Sehun pouted and stowed his new gift away in his back pocket.
“No,” he said. It was a lie. They both knew it was, and that was why Sehun’s straight face didn’t last very long. “You’re being really mean to my friends,” he laughed. “They keep asking me if you have some sort of stick up your ass.”
“Well, what did you tell them?” Jongin asked with a grin.
“I told them you were just jealous because you’re madly in love me,” Sehun replied, shrugging.
Jongin laughed. “It’s true,” he said.
“I know,” Sehun snorted. “So, did you really only get me a plastic watch and one pair of lacy underwear? It’s my eighteenth birthday, I thought maybe you’d get me something more…I don’t know, special.”
“Hey,” Jongin said, feigning hurt. “You’re a man now. All that luck should be kicking in pretty soon. I’d say that’s plenty special enough.”
“Luck? You said that was all a load of bullshit.”
“Yeah, well, we won’t know until we wait and see, right?”
Sehun stared, lips pursed and eyes narrowed. “…you’re so weird.”
A shrug. A grin. Then a hug - a big, suffocating one of the bear-like variety that Sehun has missed so much these past few months. “Happy birthday, loser,” Jongin says. Sehun blushes but hugs his best friend back all the same.
“Whatever,” he mumbles.
Happy birthday indeed.
pairing: sehun/jongin
genre: crack?! idek, man
rating: pg
words: ~3k
summary: in which jongin buys sehun lingerie every year for his birthday, and sehun doesn't complain.
notes: you can blame den for this one. i'm sincerely sorry for the weird crack that follows.
It all started the week before Sehun’s seventh birthday.
Jongin’s mother had suggested that he buy his best friend candy, or a gift card, or maybe a new soccer ball to kick around the backyard. But for the small (and notoriously enthusiastic) boy, none of these ideas were good enough. This was Sehun’s seventh birthday, after all. Seven was a special number, and so his present needed to be special, too. It was an absolute necessity, and so a resigned mother dragged her husband with her to the mall so they could help their son pick out “the perfect gift.”
The outing started out innocent enough - Jongin running through the toy aisles deliberately picking up each thing and weighing its value before setting it back down, his mother and father trailing not far behind. It wasn’t until nearly an hour had passed that anything got out of hand. Jongin’s mother, fed up with her son’s indecisiveness, made for an escape to the women’s clothing section of the store. She had been expecting Jongin to continue picking out his gift with his father. She hadn’t been expecting him to abandon his other parent and follow her, instead.
She hardly even noticed his presence until she heard a cry of “Mommy!” and looked over to see him with a pair of lacy lingerie in his hands.
Immediately, she erupted in mild hysterics. “Jongin! Put those down. Those are not for little boys,” she said in a hushed but stern tone. Her face was flushed red with embarrassment and she sincerely hoped that nobody in the store saw her son waving around ladies underwear. “Go back to your father and pick out Sehun’s gift.”
“But mommy,” a young Jongin whined. He still held the pink and black piece of fabric in his hands. “I want to give this to Sehunnie.”
Her eyes widened in horror and she reached to take the underwear out of her son’s grip, but Jongin didn’t want to give it up. Quick and lithe, he maneuvered his small body away from his mother and managed to stay out of her grasp, all the while clinging to his chosen gift for Sehun.
“Jongin! Give that back right now,” she chastised, trying her best to ignore the attention she was attracting from the other shoppers. “That is not a good gift for Sehun. Go back to the toy aisle and find him something else, please.”
Jongin pouted and stopped running away, but his tight hold on the panties remained. “I don’t want to get him something else,” he wailed, stomping is feet in protest. “I want his birthday to be lucky so he has to have these.”
The woman could clearly tell that her son was spewing nonsense. “Lucky? No, Jongin, put them back.”
“Lucky like the number seven!” Jongin shouted. People were definitely staring now. “The boy on TV said these gave you luck. He got some that looked just like it and he said he got lucky. I want Sehun to get lucky too!”
Realization dawned on the woman’s face and she made a mental note to strangle her husband later for ever letting Jongin watch his racy television shows with him. “Sweetie, listen to me,” she said, kneeling down to her son’s level to try a softer approach to things. “Those are for grown-ups like Mommy. The luck only works on certain people, and I don’t think it will work on Sehun. He’s too young.”
“Oh…” Jongin’s little face fell and the woman let out a deep breath, figuring the worst was over. But it wasn’t. “Well, that’s okay! He can save them for later!” Before she could process what was happening, the young boy was running over to his father, proudly showing off what he had found.
Jongin’s father found the whole ordeal much funnier than his mother did, and somehow, they ended up buying the lingerie for him, along with a small box to wrap it in.
“You get to be the one to explain this to Sehun’s parents,” the mother sneered on the way home from the store. The father laughed.
“What’s the big deal? Jongin likes them. Sehun will too,” he replied, a relaxed smile on his face.
“The bows are my favorite part!” Jongin shouted from the back seat of the car.
His father grinned.
“See? The bows are his favorite part.”
The disgruntled woman merely glared, clearly unhappy with how their day had gone. She only hoped she could forget it as quickly as possible.
*✲ﾟ*｡⋆*
But she never forgot it. Nobody did. Not ever.
Sehun’s parents had found the whole ordeal hilarious, and Sehun liked the pink bows and frilly lace almost too much. Jongin promised with a triumphant grin to get him more just like it every year so that by the time he was a grown-up, he’d be the luckiest guy in the world.
He did just that, too. Each year after that, Sehun received an article of lingerie from Jongin for his birthday. Sometimes it was underwear, sometimes a night shirt, or sometimes something else. But it was always lacy, and it always had bows on it.
Of course, by the time they got a little older, they realized just how…odd…their tradition was. Jongin now clearly understood why his mother had been so adamant against purchasing the lingerie that first day oh so long ago, but he didn’t care. Actually, now that he knew, he found it funny as hell and vowed never to skip a year, no matter what.
“I can’t believe we used to think girls’ panties would give you luck,” Jongin snickered from his spot on Sehun’s living room floor, cuddled up in his sleeping bag. It was the younger’s thirteenth birthday, and they were having a sleepover.
“Hey, I only believed it because you told me so,” the birthday boy protested, flushing a slight red color. He had taken the harsh truth of Jongin’s inappropriate gifts a little harder than Jongin himself did, finding the whole ordeal more awkward than funny. He got his fair share of laughs out of it, of course, and he still secretly enjoyed the gifts - but the fact that he now had a whole dresser drawer dedicated to not-actually-lucky-at-all women’s delicates made him slightly uncomfortable. (It was a shame they weren’t lucky, too, because now he was thirteen and thirteen was a very unlucky number, according to Jongin.)
“Maybe you shouldn’t believe everything I say, then,” Jongin replied, rolling his eyes and laughing. “I’m pretty stupid, after all. But hey...you still like the gift, right?”
Sehun nodded vigorously in response before remembering that the lights were off and that his best friend probably couldn’t see him very clearly. “Yeah, totally,” he said. “Thanks.”
Jongin grinned. He was glad that his gift was appreciated, regardless of how strange it was. This year, he had bought it himself, because his mother refused to put up with the “immaturity of preteen boys” any longer. He spent his (not so) hard earned allowance on the nicest two piece set he could afford rather than the new video game he’d been craving to play for so long. Needless to say, the looks he got from the man working the cash register were priceless.
“You’re welcome,” Jongin laughed. A mischievous smirk donned on his face and he hopped out of his sleeping bag, suddenly attacking Sehun in a giant, suffocating bear hug. “Happy birthday, loser,” he cooed, pinching his best friend’s cheeks.
Sehun was too busy trying to pry his greasy friend off of him to protest to being called a loser. Besides…he knew it was true, anyway.
*✲ﾟ*｡⋆*
When they were fourteen, Jongin and his family were on vacation during Sehun’s birthday, so he had to have his gift specialty shipped from some store online. When they were fifteen, he delivered his present at school and Sehun almost got in trouble with the principal for allegedly “raiding the girls’ locker room.” When they were sixteen, the cute girl in Jongin’s science class saw him while he was shopping and he had to hide in the clothes racks for an hour to avoid questioning.
When they were seventeen, Sehun’s father got a transfer at work and his parents announced that they would be moving within the next few months.
This, obviously, did not sit well with Jongin. He and Sehun were best friends forever, not best friends until age seventeen, dammit. It said so on the (so not lame at all) friendship rings they made in the second grade. Sehun couldn’t move, that meant they’d be apart, and…they were never apart. He was convinced that he was going to go through withdrawals or something, but he didn’t know for sure because they’d never actually been separated. That just wasn’t a thing that happened.
Instead of dealing with this news like a mature, responsible (almost) adult, Jongin decided to handle the matter more like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum.
“YOU CAN’T LEAVE ME WHAT WILL I DO WITHOUT YOU IT’S SENIOR YEAR THIS ISN’T FAIR CAN’T YOU JUST LIVE ON MY COUCH I’LL BAKE YOU COOKIES JUST SDKGHOIT5KWESD!”
It took a good forty five minutes or so to pry a sobbing Jongin off of Sehun’s leg, where he was clinging like a koala. Sehun was upset too, of course, but he had learned long ago to let Jongin be the dramatic one in their duo. He was just the sidekick - the Watson to his Holmes, the Robin to his Batman, the Pikachu to his Ash…or something along those lines. He didn’t rightfully care, to be honest.
“Jongin, relax, it’ll be fine,” he said once his best friend was finally done ripping holes through his jeans with his fingernails. The older boy let out another stifled sob but nodded, knowing Sehun was probably right. It would be fine, really. They’d just have to call each other every day and have Skype dates and play Fifa over XBOX Live, and maybe Jongin could sneak out of school and visit sometime and then just never leave or -
Okay, so that probably wasn’t necessary. He was tempted, though.
This temptation never got to be indulged, however, because when they were eighteen Sehun decided to throw his first ever birthday party with actual people, and Jongin didn’t like actual people.
Or rather, he didn’t like it when they pretended to love Sehun more than he did. Psh, idiots. That was nearly impossible.
*✲ﾟ*｡⋆*
During the party, Jongin tried his best to be polite, but all of these new faces were freaking him out and he just wanted to cuddle with his best friend in his sleeping bag like he used to when they were little. It was making him very upset that he couldn’t do that, and it was making him even more upset that he had to pretend to like all of these weird, creepy classmates of Sehun’s.
One of them - a particularly creepy and particularly tall guy with a smile that reminded Jongin of a crack dealer - wouldn’t stop talking about how good the cake Sehun’s mom had made was. This made Jongin scoff; he totally could have made a better cake. And by totally he really meant not actually, but still. Did the guy seriously have to keep smiling at him like that? They weren’t friends, god.
This other guy made him scoff, too, when he claimed that Sehun had left his jacket at his house after they went to get bubble tea the other day. Jongin found this outright ridiculous, because 1) Sehun never wore jackets; he was always freakishly acclimated to the cold; that was his thing - and 2) Sehun most certainly didn’t like bubble tea. And even if he did, why would he go out of his way to go get some with this doe-eyed pretty boy? The two of them had always been adamant against any sort of social activities that required leaving their couches and putting on pants. As far as Jongin was concerned, going out for bubble tea was not a Sehun-ish thing to do in the slightest.
When he voiced this out loud, he was not met with the laughter and assurance that he had been expecting. Instead, Sehun gave him a weary look and awkwardly chuckled before declaring that maybe it was about time they started opening presents.
Frowning, Jongin pushed past the two short dweebs that were arguing about which member of some girl group was prettiest and went to retrieve his gift from the pile by the kitchen door. He was a little angry at Sehun for making new friends, and he was sad that he even needed to be angry about that in the first place, but he still wanted his best friend to have a good birthday. As the rest of the party guests began to grab their presents and shove them in Sehun’s face, Jongin kept a firm grip on the small pink box in his hands. He adjusted the bow on the top with care as everyone gathered around the living room couch; it had taken him twenty minutes to properly wrap this gift. The bow was his favorite part.
“Who’s next? Jongin?”
The words broke him out of his reverie and Jongin glanced up at the many smiling faces around him. Why were they all staring at him like that? It was getting really irritating.
Resisting the urge to start screaming and throwing wild punches, Jongin held out his gift to his best friend. “Here,” he said flatly.
Sehun looked a little worried as he took the box, and Jongin couldn’t decide if it was because he could tell he was upset or because he was anticipating lingerie and didn’t want everyone else to laugh at the gift. Neither were ideal situations, of course, but Jongin couldn’t be bothered to dwell on it too much, at least not before the birthday boy was ripping open the present.
His expression went from weary to surprised almost instantly, and Jongin could see the confusion on his best friend’s face as he pulled out a watch.
“A…watch?” Sehun asked, looking up at Jongin quizzically.
“Yep!” the elder grinned. “A watch. Not just any watch, either. I got it from McDonald’s. See, it has a Pokemon on it. I don’t know which one it is though because it’s from the newest generation and all of those are stupid as fuck, but hey, it’s cute, right?”
“…I…guess…” Sehun chuckled nervously and set the watch back into the box, a light frown on his face. By now he must have been thoroughly perplexed by Jongin’s behavior, but hey, what fun was a party without a little ~mystery?
For the next ten minutes, Sehun continued opening gifts and Jongin continued judging everyone in the room for various and ridiculous reasons. (That guy is wearing brown shoes. Brown shoes are so tacky. And that guy…what’s with his hair? Who does he think he is, Justin Beiber?) When that was finally over, most of the guests dispersed to either play some games on the Wii or to graze on appetizers in the kitchen. After “accidentally” tripping at least three of Sehun’s new friends, Jongin finally grew bored of reigning terror on everyone and stepped outside to the hallway.
To his surprise, he found Sehun there, just hanging up from what was presumably a “happy birthday” call with some relative.
“Jongin,” he said upon realizing his best friend’s presence. “What are you doing in this part of the house?”
Jongin frowned. “You’re not wearing your watch,” he said, reaching out to grab the younger boy’s dainty wrist. “I bought like, four happy meals just to get the cutest one, you know. I almost threw up because I was so full afterwards.”
“You didn’t have to eat them all, idiot,” Sehun said that same light frown still on his face. He hesitated before continuing. “…why did you buy me a watch?”
Jongin laughed. He knew this question was coming, and he was prepared for it. “What, you mean you don’t like it?” he asked, that mischievous glint in his eye once again. “I can return it and get you another one if you want. Well wait, actually I probably can’t, considering it was a free gift with my chicken nuggets…but I have like all the other ones too so…you know. You’ve got options.”
“You’re an idiot,” Sehun said, rolling his eyes.
“Thank you.” Jongin grinned, still holding onto the other boy’s wrist. They stood like that for a while, Sehun giving Jongin weird looks and Jongin wiggling his eyebrows for no particular reason, until finally the latter burst out laughing and pulled something out of his jacket pocket.
“I’m kidding, dude. Here. Did you really think I would abandon an eleven year old tradition? I just didn’t want to embarrass you in front of your new friends. Plus I wanted to get back at you for making me come to this lame party.”
Sehun’s eyes lit up as the lingerie was placed in his hands, but his expression fell quickly once he remembered that he wasn’t supposed to enjoy this that much. It was too late, though. Jongin had already seen the relief flash across his face, and it sent him into a fit of giggles.
“You were really sad about not getting any, weren’t you,” he accused, clutching his side to stop himself from doubling over in laughter. Sehun pouted and stowed his new gift away in his back pocket.
“No,” he said. It was a lie. They both knew it was, and that was why Sehun’s straight face didn’t last very long. “You’re being really mean to my friends,” he laughed. “They keep asking me if you have some sort of stick up your ass.”
“Well, what did you tell them?” Jongin asked with a grin.
“I told them you were just jealous because you’re madly in love me,” Sehun replied, shrugging.
Jongin laughed. “It’s true,” he said.
“I know,” Sehun snorted. “So, did you really only get me a plastic watch and one pair of lacy underwear? It’s my eighteenth birthday, I thought maybe you’d get me something more…I don’t know, special.”
“Hey,” Jongin said, feigning hurt. “You’re a man now. All that luck should be kicking in pretty soon. I’d say that’s plenty special enough.”
“Luck? You said that was all a load of bullshit.”
“Yeah, well, we won’t know until we wait and see, right?”
Sehun stared, lips pursed and eyes narrowed. “…you’re so weird.”
A shrug. A grin. Then a hug - a big, suffocating one of the bear-like variety that Sehun has missed so much these past few months. “Happy birthday, loser,” Jongin says. Sehun blushes but hugs his best friend back all the same.
“Whatever,” he mumbles.
Happy birthday indeed.