Points of Inflection
Points of Inflection
Block B: Jaehyo/Kyung
1760 words, rated PG-13
Summary: There comes a point when something changes. Kyung reaches that point on a Tuesday in November.
It all starts because of Jiho.
Kyung thinks there are too many stories that begin that way, but there is no other reason he would be in a fraternity house on a Friday night. He carefully moves his beer from the table when an eager couple finds that maybe a table is flat enough to fuck on.
He draws his knees up, his feet rest on the edge of the sofa, and his chin peaks over his knees. And maybe if he really thinks about it-thinks of anything other than blankets of cigarette smoke and public fornicaiton-he could say he had a good time.
But as the clock ticks away another hour, pages he could have read, he thinks that maybe he should just leave Jiho in this dystopic society of beer, sex, and takeout.
He is in the middle of doing just that when his face collides with someone's rather unsteady body.
"Sorry," Kyung mutters as he weaves past the guy, who by now has probably found the sofa and a pretty girl to soothe his pain.
But he does look back when the crowd parts enough for him to breathe, just to check. The man is stretched out, knees bent over the arm of the sofa and arms behind his head. Clearly, he is fine.
Kyung meanders through writhing bodies and spilled alcohol in an attempt to find his sanity. He leaves behind memories of a beautiful guy and awkward encounters. He brushes it off with every step back up to his dorm room.
On a campus with 540,000 undergraduates, it is statistically unlikely they will ever meet again anyway.
He isn't sure why the results bother him so much.
"You left early," Jiho says as he sinks into a yellow bean bag.
Kyung shrugs. "I have better things to do than get humped by strangers."
"If you would ever leave your room or the library, then maybe they wouldn't be strangers."
"Maybe." Kyung finishes the last of Jiho's algebra homework, circling all of his answers so Jiho knows where one starts and the other ends. "But if I went out all the time, then when would I do your work?"
Jiho inspects the pages and hums while doing so. "Just try to get out more. This is supposed to be fun, you know? All that shit about the rest of our lives doesn't come until we're juniors."
Kyung just sighs.
Kyung spends most of his first semester locked away in his room, frantically deciphering trajectories of space particles and discovering the bearings of a train that never seems to get anywhere.
It is a Tuesday, cold and quiet, when he finds himself walking past the library in favor of sitting under the biggest tree on campus. He slides down the trunk, digging the toes of his shoe into the dirt as he creeps lower.
"Why does it take you so long to sit down?"
Kyung loses his focus, his balance, his thoughts. He plops down next to someone that looks eerily familiar with a thud.
The man beside him looks at him for a moment or two. His eyes are big and round, straight nose and high cheekbones. He is pretty attractive, by conventional standards, and maybe in another time, he would care to chat for a bit. However, he doesn't have time for idle chatter or pheromones right now.
"I know you from somewhere," the man finally says. Kyung is two seconds away from standing, but all ongoing actions to that halt then. "Oh, I know, you're the guy I keep running into. Ahn Jaehyo, by the way."
The guy, Jaehyo, smiles. Kyung doesn't have time for beautiful smiles, either. "I don't remember running into anybody. Well, except for that guy at the party." Kyung is speaking more to himself than Jaehyo, but at the mention of the party, Jaehyo nods.
"Yeah, yeah. Thought that was you. I keep seeing you during my off period. Do you always walk with your head down? I try to dodge you when I can. You almost broke my spine at the party."
Kyung stares at Jaehyo's lips as he talks, really unable to do much else.
"Heard you've been talking to hot guys lately," Yukwon says as he tosses his backpack onto his bed. His body follows suit, albeit a little more gracefully.
Kyung closes his book, all thoughts of logarithms and relativity closing with it. "I have only talked to one guy recently. But I do talk to two losers named Yukwon and Jiho."
"So, hot guys," Yukwon repeats with emphasis on the plurality. "Tell me everything."
"Ahn Jaehyo, junior. Business major as of right now, but who knows how long he'll stick with that. Decent voice, but talks too much. I think he's in Jiho's fraternity, but I don't know. Didn't ask."
"So you're in love with some party hard frat boy?"
Kyung notices the writing in the margins of his paper, complex division and multiplication when he wants to be certain. He counts the number of times Jaehyo's name appears. Of all the things that pop in his mind, Jaehyo shouldn't appear eight times. The probability of it coming up is less than one percent.
Yukwon snaps his fingers in front of Kyung's face. "Well?"
Kyung grimaces. "He's not some party hard frat boy. He's just an idiot."
"And you're in love with him."
Kyung opens his book back up, unsure of where he stopped at. This is totally out of character.
"I like him a lot," he realizes.
Kyung decides that there is something romantic about the Pythagorean identities of trigonometry toward the end of November. He is sitting under the tree, wrapped tightly in a red sweater with Jaehyo beside him and a book spread over his lap.
"You can't be serious."
Kyung cocks his head to the side. "Of course, I'm serious. Watch this."
He writes sin squared x plus cos squared x equals one. He hears Jaehyo laughing at his side.
"Man, I don't think anyone else will find that romantic."
Kyung swats at Jaehyo's thigh. "It is, though. You didn't see the rest of it."
He quickly draws a portion of a sine wave, then underneath he draws a cosine wave. It's nothing more than a cycle's worth, but it is enough. "Do you see it?"
Jaehyo leans closer to the paper and squints. "Sorry, Kyungie, I don't see a thing."
Kyung sighs. "They are two different waves, two functions. Yet, they move in the same fashion. They are always constant, and look at how often they intersect. It's love, I tell you."
Jaehyo smiles, tracing his fingers along the sine wave. They accidently touch Kyung's, and Kyung tries his best to hide his smile.
"I gotta go. Marketing starts in less than ten minutes. See you?"
When Jaehyo is out of sight, Kyung traces the wave of cosine.
The sun sweeps by, dragging strands of orange and pink across the sky. Suddenly, the world becomes darker, lonelier. Jaehyo sits a few breaths away-might as well be a few light years away-with legs outstretched and hands busy rubbing away the chill of late afternoon. Kyung digs his shoes into the dirt as he bends his fingers around the edge of the bench. Jaehyo sighs and white puffs float in the space above his lips; Kyung is too distracted to react when his index finger brushes against dried gum.
"What are you doing later?" Jaehyo asks.
Kyung can barely see the gleam of Jaehyo's dark eyes because of the tiny clouds of hot air. He wishes Jaehyo would shut up; he looks better like this. The glow of dusk is fading, and the streetlights are barely burning.
(Kyung wishes Jaehyo would kiss him; he imagines the taste of lip balm and the scent of aftershave. Jaehyo doesn't shave all that well, and the effects of that would scratch Kyung's tender skin. And maybe that would be alright, in the long run.)
A shake of the head, a rattle of thoughts. "I've got to get up early. Exams and stuff, you know," Kyung starts. Jaehyo nods and slides his hands down the length of his thigh. Kyung swallows and continues, "And I told Jiho I'd help him with something. And."
"Okay, then. Guess I'll see you tomorrow," Jaehyo says. He's practically forever away before Kyung registers this is goodbye, not goodnight.
Kyung doesn't know the difference between them, of course. He guess he won't figure it out tonight, either.
It's a knock on his door at five in the morning. Yukwon is sleeping, per usual, but manages to mutter something about how Kyung needs to fucking kill the person at the door.
Kyung hops out of bed, raking his fingers through his hair just in case it's something important.
He opens the door to a panting Jaehyo, who just seems to look at him like he's the one that's crazy.
"Can I come in?" Jaehyo whispers, every other syllable sounding less breathless than the last.
Kyung moves to the side to let Jaehyo sweep past him. There is something about the way Jaehyo looks down, the way he looks nervous. Kyung is expecting the worst in the most silent way possible.
Just as Kyung is about to ask Jaehyo what's wrong or why he's here this early, Jaehyo leans closer and kisses him. Soft, warm, and fleeting. Kyung can't think of a more tragic description of a kiss.
When Jaehyo pulls back, his eyes are larger than normal. He digs in his pocket, and Kyung thinks about breathing almost half as often as probably needed.
"Um, here," Jaehyo says. He sounds more breathless than when he was panting at his door.
Kyung delicately unfolds the notebook paper. When he sees the formula printed, he smiles. But he brightens even more when he sees the question at the bottom.
sin squared x plus cos squared x equals one
Will you be my cosine?
Kyung laughs a bit; Yukwon yells from his bed about the noise level.
"Are you serious? This is a Pythagorean identity," Kyung says.
"It's the most romantic thing I know. So?"
Kyung wraps his arms around Jaehyo's neck, pulling him closer for another kiss. This one is warm and sweet. Kyung thinks those are much better adjectives.
"Just so you know, I'm the sine wave," he whispers as close to Jaehyo's ear as he can get.
Jaehyo laughs and nuzzles Kyung's neck. "Whatever you say."
Written for the amazing inbrevity for Block B Time Exchange 2013. Special thanks to Dizzy Moon, you are the best!
Prompt: math major on dating ("this encounter is statistically unlikely to occur again.")
Block B: Jaehyo/Kyung
1760 words, rated PG-13
Summary: There comes a point when something changes. Kyung reaches that point on a Tuesday in November.
It all starts because of Jiho.
Kyung thinks there are too many stories that begin that way, but there is no other reason he would be in a fraternity house on a Friday night. He carefully moves his beer from the table when an eager couple finds that maybe a table is flat enough to fuck on.
He draws his knees up, his feet rest on the edge of the sofa, and his chin peaks over his knees. And maybe if he really thinks about it-thinks of anything other than blankets of cigarette smoke and public fornicaiton-he could say he had a good time.
But as the clock ticks away another hour, pages he could have read, he thinks that maybe he should just leave Jiho in this dystopic society of beer, sex, and takeout.
He is in the middle of doing just that when his face collides with someone's rather unsteady body.
"Sorry," Kyung mutters as he weaves past the guy, who by now has probably found the sofa and a pretty girl to soothe his pain.
But he does look back when the crowd parts enough for him to breathe, just to check. The man is stretched out, knees bent over the arm of the sofa and arms behind his head. Clearly, he is fine.
Kyung meanders through writhing bodies and spilled alcohol in an attempt to find his sanity. He leaves behind memories of a beautiful guy and awkward encounters. He brushes it off with every step back up to his dorm room.
On a campus with 540,000 undergraduates, it is statistically unlikely they will ever meet again anyway.
He isn't sure why the results bother him so much.
"You left early," Jiho says as he sinks into a yellow bean bag.
Kyung shrugs. "I have better things to do than get humped by strangers."
"If you would ever leave your room or the library, then maybe they wouldn't be strangers."
"Maybe." Kyung finishes the last of Jiho's algebra homework, circling all of his answers so Jiho knows where one starts and the other ends. "But if I went out all the time, then when would I do your work?"
Jiho inspects the pages and hums while doing so. "Just try to get out more. This is supposed to be fun, you know? All that shit about the rest of our lives doesn't come until we're juniors."
Kyung just sighs.
Kyung spends most of his first semester locked away in his room, frantically deciphering trajectories of space particles and discovering the bearings of a train that never seems to get anywhere.
It is a Tuesday, cold and quiet, when he finds himself walking past the library in favor of sitting under the biggest tree on campus. He slides down the trunk, digging the toes of his shoe into the dirt as he creeps lower.
"Why does it take you so long to sit down?"
Kyung loses his focus, his balance, his thoughts. He plops down next to someone that looks eerily familiar with a thud.
The man beside him looks at him for a moment or two. His eyes are big and round, straight nose and high cheekbones. He is pretty attractive, by conventional standards, and maybe in another time, he would care to chat for a bit. However, he doesn't have time for idle chatter or pheromones right now.
"I know you from somewhere," the man finally says. Kyung is two seconds away from standing, but all ongoing actions to that halt then. "Oh, I know, you're the guy I keep running into. Ahn Jaehyo, by the way."
The guy, Jaehyo, smiles. Kyung doesn't have time for beautiful smiles, either. "I don't remember running into anybody. Well, except for that guy at the party." Kyung is speaking more to himself than Jaehyo, but at the mention of the party, Jaehyo nods.
"Yeah, yeah. Thought that was you. I keep seeing you during my off period. Do you always walk with your head down? I try to dodge you when I can. You almost broke my spine at the party."
Kyung stares at Jaehyo's lips as he talks, really unable to do much else.
"Heard you've been talking to hot guys lately," Yukwon says as he tosses his backpack onto his bed. His body follows suit, albeit a little more gracefully.
Kyung closes his book, all thoughts of logarithms and relativity closing with it. "I have only talked to one guy recently. But I do talk to two losers named Yukwon and Jiho."
"So, hot guys," Yukwon repeats with emphasis on the plurality. "Tell me everything."
"Ahn Jaehyo, junior. Business major as of right now, but who knows how long he'll stick with that. Decent voice, but talks too much. I think he's in Jiho's fraternity, but I don't know. Didn't ask."
"So you're in love with some party hard frat boy?"
Kyung notices the writing in the margins of his paper, complex division and multiplication when he wants to be certain. He counts the number of times Jaehyo's name appears. Of all the things that pop in his mind, Jaehyo shouldn't appear eight times. The probability of it coming up is less than one percent.
Yukwon snaps his fingers in front of Kyung's face. "Well?"
Kyung grimaces. "He's not some party hard frat boy. He's just an idiot."
"And you're in love with him."
Kyung opens his book back up, unsure of where he stopped at. This is totally out of character.
"I like him a lot," he realizes.
Kyung decides that there is something romantic about the Pythagorean identities of trigonometry toward the end of November. He is sitting under the tree, wrapped tightly in a red sweater with Jaehyo beside him and a book spread over his lap.
"You can't be serious."
Kyung cocks his head to the side. "Of course, I'm serious. Watch this."
He writes sin squared x plus cos squared x equals one. He hears Jaehyo laughing at his side.
"Man, I don't think anyone else will find that romantic."
Kyung swats at Jaehyo's thigh. "It is, though. You didn't see the rest of it."
He quickly draws a portion of a sine wave, then underneath he draws a cosine wave. It's nothing more than a cycle's worth, but it is enough. "Do you see it?"
Jaehyo leans closer to the paper and squints. "Sorry, Kyungie, I don't see a thing."
Kyung sighs. "They are two different waves, two functions. Yet, they move in the same fashion. They are always constant, and look at how often they intersect. It's love, I tell you."
Jaehyo smiles, tracing his fingers along the sine wave. They accidently touch Kyung's, and Kyung tries his best to hide his smile.
"I gotta go. Marketing starts in less than ten minutes. See you?"
When Jaehyo is out of sight, Kyung traces the wave of cosine.
The sun sweeps by, dragging strands of orange and pink across the sky. Suddenly, the world becomes darker, lonelier. Jaehyo sits a few breaths away-might as well be a few light years away-with legs outstretched and hands busy rubbing away the chill of late afternoon. Kyung digs his shoes into the dirt as he bends his fingers around the edge of the bench. Jaehyo sighs and white puffs float in the space above his lips; Kyung is too distracted to react when his index finger brushes against dried gum.
"What are you doing later?" Jaehyo asks.
Kyung can barely see the gleam of Jaehyo's dark eyes because of the tiny clouds of hot air. He wishes Jaehyo would shut up; he looks better like this. The glow of dusk is fading, and the streetlights are barely burning.
(Kyung wishes Jaehyo would kiss him; he imagines the taste of lip balm and the scent of aftershave. Jaehyo doesn't shave all that well, and the effects of that would scratch Kyung's tender skin. And maybe that would be alright, in the long run.)
A shake of the head, a rattle of thoughts. "I've got to get up early. Exams and stuff, you know," Kyung starts. Jaehyo nods and slides his hands down the length of his thigh. Kyung swallows and continues, "And I told Jiho I'd help him with something. And."
"Okay, then. Guess I'll see you tomorrow," Jaehyo says. He's practically forever away before Kyung registers this is goodbye, not goodnight.
Kyung doesn't know the difference between them, of course. He guess he won't figure it out tonight, either.
It's a knock on his door at five in the morning. Yukwon is sleeping, per usual, but manages to mutter something about how Kyung needs to fucking kill the person at the door.
Kyung hops out of bed, raking his fingers through his hair just in case it's something important.
He opens the door to a panting Jaehyo, who just seems to look at him like he's the one that's crazy.
"Can I come in?" Jaehyo whispers, every other syllable sounding less breathless than the last.
Kyung moves to the side to let Jaehyo sweep past him. There is something about the way Jaehyo looks down, the way he looks nervous. Kyung is expecting the worst in the most silent way possible.
Just as Kyung is about to ask Jaehyo what's wrong or why he's here this early, Jaehyo leans closer and kisses him. Soft, warm, and fleeting. Kyung can't think of a more tragic description of a kiss.
When Jaehyo pulls back, his eyes are larger than normal. He digs in his pocket, and Kyung thinks about breathing almost half as often as probably needed.
"Um, here," Jaehyo says. He sounds more breathless than when he was panting at his door.
Kyung delicately unfolds the notebook paper. When he sees the formula printed, he smiles. But he brightens even more when he sees the question at the bottom.
sin squared x plus cos squared x equals one
Will you be my cosine?
Kyung laughs a bit; Yukwon yells from his bed about the noise level.
"Are you serious? This is a Pythagorean identity," Kyung says.
"It's the most romantic thing I know. So?"
Kyung wraps his arms around Jaehyo's neck, pulling him closer for another kiss. This one is warm and sweet. Kyung thinks those are much better adjectives.
"Just so you know, I'm the sine wave," he whispers as close to Jaehyo's ear as he can get.
Jaehyo laughs and nuzzles Kyung's neck. "Whatever you say."
Written for the amazing inbrevity for Block B Time Exchange 2013. Special thanks to Dizzy Moon, you are the best!
Prompt: math major on dating ("this encounter is statistically unlikely to occur again.")