imminent disasters: what you get when you're plastered, for ceruleanquill [1/2]
Title: imminent disasters: what you get when you’re plastered
Pairings: Sehun/Jongin, side!Zitao/Baekhyun, mention of Chanyeol/Kyungsoo
Rating: PG-13
Length: 10,817
Summary: “I can’t hurry this, man, I’m shitting!”
Warnings: slight profanity
Author's note: tried to get Jongin laid but i couldn’t... sorry about that.
This is why it happens.
Four entire years of university together, running in the same circles, getting late to the same classes, and eventually sharing the same dorm room. It didn’t just stop there, though, of course. There was plenty more so-called evidence that kept everyone’s go-to bag of quips full to bursting, group jokes always ready to pour onto them like a heavy rain of vaguely irritating, misled and delusional information. The frequency with which they faced this... the details aren’t worth getting into.
Now, when they come up with the plan - that is to say, when Sehun comes up with it - Jongin’s iPod is playing La Liste. Which is really weird, because first of all, it's usually Jongin with the ridiculous ideas, and second, neither of them remember ever downloading French music. And yeah, they download their music together. They do it in turns, using Sehun’s iTunes this week, Jongin’s the next. At the end of the month they torrent trap beats together and pool their choices for dance practice tracks. Everyone says they’re nightmares when it comes to organization, but they've actually got their system worked out pretty decently. Fuck what everyone says, anyway. Everyone thinks they're dating. Everyone is wrong.
But the coming up with the plan part comes later. That’s the how of it. Back to the why: senior year is the breaking point, when they not only undergo everything else, but also share a miserable nine by ten foot room with zero space to stretch their legs on their separate beds and then negative space for their other things.
An irrelevant but important point: Sehun never flushes. Jongin has tried time and time again, but nothing gets him to flush.
“Maybe if you didn’t screech so loudly every time you see my excrement,” Sehun had said, two weeks into their rooming arrangement. “I wouldn’t get tempted to hear it so much.” He blew a bubble and let it pop, bright pink chewing gum faded to light grey with excessive usage. His record at the time had been five weeks. Trying to be a male, non-fictitious Violet Beauregard or something.
“So what you're saying is that you do this just for the reaction,” Jongin had poked his head out the bathroom door, aghast. “What kind of sadist wants to hear me yelling three times a day?”
“Not sadism if it's music to my ears.”
Jongin has given up on him. Jongin gave up on him long ago. (Here, if Zitao decided to narrate their story, the dude might wax poetic about how they're like a married couple and how Jongin's the 'wife’ and Sehun ‘wears the pants’ and all that gross, stereotypically cis and hetero dynamic, and how Jongin gave up the second he met Sehun. Although, that last part has some truth; Sehun had been wearing a plastic garbage bag with holes for a shirt, peanut butter in his hair for shampoo, and nothing else - ragging wasn’t taken lightly four years ago. But Zitao is not narrating their story, thank fuck, and Jongin is not the wife of the relationship. There is no relationship. Also, Sehun wears capris, not pants, most of the time. Because he's backward and has trash fashion sense, ragging or no. Take note that this is coming from Jongin, the guy who sees nothing wrong with wearing sandals and socks at the same time. In winter.)
Anyway, senior year is when shit gets really serious. When Zitao never stops calling them boyfriends, when Chanyeol actually asks Jongin for advice on how to be a good boyfriend, complete with covert glances at Kyungsoo, when Baekhyun comes to them with his boy problems - “What the fuck,” Sehun had said, stoic, and closed the door in their unfortunate friend’s face - when Jinyoung gets emotionally close to Jongin at an incredibly fast rate and then confesses to him after midnight one night that he’d always wanted a gay best friend. “You're gay yourself, dude,” Jongin had told him, but Jinyoung was already asleep, drooling all over his problem set.
Shit gets so serious, in fact, that Taemin, the RA across the hall, blasts SHINee's Why So Serious the whole second half of the first semester. The entire floor’s occupants sit outside his door in a petition for him to stop - and it works, but only marginally. He plays 4Minute's Crazy after that, and although that's a change that works in Sehun’s and Jongin’s favor because the beat is sick and it’s actually kind of catchy, Sehun ends up with a migraine when it plays for the third day straight.
“Can't think.”
“Mmm,” Jongin nods, absently. Then, “Wait. You're capable of cognitive functions?”
He gets a pillow shucked at him. “Cognitive doesn’t even apply here,” Sehun mumbles into his textbook. “Stop trying to be a smartass.”
Jongin squints to get the title on the cover. Something to do with Edgar Allan Poe, apparently. No wonder Sehun has a migraine. Wasn’t that guy really depressing?
“Stop reading Edgar Allen Pony,” Jongin advises. “That shit's getting to you.”
“That song is getting to me,” Sehun lifts his head to fix him with a glare, but it’s half-hearted, and he drops painfully back into his book. “Can’t even listen to soothing shit, earphones make it even worse.” In the background, Jiyoon's rap on Gossip Girl and calling her boyfriend rents through the air.
“Why does our culture glorify American television shows that glorify socialite girls with multiple boyfriends?” Jongin muses, lying back and folding his hands behind his head. “Double glorification. Glorification squared? Glorincepti-”
“I have a migraine,” Sehun reminds him. “So shut up.”
It's around this time that Sehun has his first Idea of the day: drink away the migraine. Neither of them are sure if it’s ever worked, because Sehun becomes either an increasingly silent drunk the more he drinks, or a weak candidate for Show Me The Money.
In Jongin’s defense, he does try to look out for his friend. “Look, dude. Maybe you get so quiet because the pain is killing you inside.”
Sehun raises an eyebrow, turning around from the counter, bottle already in hand. “I also bust sick rhymes. Fucking kill those MCs.”
“No, seriously,” Jongin tries harder this time, “You know, when something is so devastating that you know if you don’t just keep your mouth shut, you’ll start wailing like a... like one of those things that have barely been in the world three seconds.”
“You’re referring to newborns,” Sehun brings the bottle to his lips, squints, then lowers it to take out the cork. “And I don’t know what you’re talking about. You're the only with soul-crushing history in this room.” With that parting shot, he pops open the bottle and takes what seems to be the beginnings of a gigantic swig. Jongin looks on apprehensively. The gigantic swig lasts approximately two seconds, and Sehun resurfaces, choking, spluttering and eyes watering.
“How d’you feel,” Jongin ventures.
“Like shit,” Sehun mumbles, and jumps a little to get a seat on the counter. “Alright, here goes. Don’t stop me until I've finished the bottle.”
Jongin lies back in his bed and tries to get his mind back on this guy called William and his various advances in mathematics, but Sehun keeps coughing after each two-second sip, so that doesn't really work out. “Sehun,” he says, finally, once Sehun’s halfway through. “I think you should stop.”
“Not done with the bottle.”
“No, you are,” Jongin lies. “You’re too drunk to see. You’re blind.”
“You think I get drunk with a bottle? You really think I get drunk with bottles?”
“Sehun.”
“No, for real. I get drunk with people. And you’re so silent right now you barely count as a piece of furniture. Further-” he hiccups, “- furthermore, this bottle is not finished. I will tilt this bottle.” He's getting animated in his agitation, now, waving his hands around while his eyebrows disappear into his hairline. “I will tilt this bottle by forty five degrees, and may God cut off your philtrum if I so much as get one little drop on my tongue.” He tips the entire thing down his throat, and gets an alcoholic face wash and ruined pyjamas for his efforts. The bottle goes flying and miraculously just lands on the bed, bouncing to a stop there. Sehun just lies down on the counter and curls up. His head bumps the toaster, which falls over on the stove.
“My philtrum hasn't gotten cut off yet,” Jongin comments, after a few minutes have passed in silence. “Either God hates you, or there’s a vacation going on up there.”
“Blasphemy,” Sehun sighs wearily, but he smiles a little and slides to the floor, legs first. He pads over to Jongin’s bed. They end up sitting crosslegged, Sehun behind Jongin, his head lolling against Jongin’s shoulder. Jongin focuses on biographies of famous mathematicians; he’s moved on from the William to an Evariste, when Sehun shifts to hook his chin over Jongin’s shoulder and tells him that he’s being a lowlife with no sense of humor.
“I’m trying to read ahead for tomorrow's lecture, Sehun,” Jongin murmurs, frowning in concentration. Once he gets distracted, he’ll be reading the same paragraph over and over for the next hour without getting a single thing.
“Reading ahead,” Sehun drawls with such force that his head slips off Jongin’s shoulder completely, and Sehun ends up lying down. “Okay, I mean. Go ahead. Read! Do that. Get great grades-”
“Sehun.”
“- and when you get valedictorian of the year -”
“Sehun.”
“- remember me, okay? Remember poor old Oh Sehun who you left in the trash for a shiny Dean's list medal. You greedy piece of shit.”
“Dude.” Jongin frowns down at him. “Not cool.”
“Bro,” Sehun groans, and makes a sad, dry sound. “I can’t stand being the only useless lightweight drunk in a three foot radius. Get a bottle and start chugging.”
Jongin knows that this is not what he should be doing, definitely not what anybody hoping to get into the Dean’s list this year would do, but Sehun is drunk and sad. And a bro helps a bro out. And Jongin’s never been able to say no to this guy.
“Jongin,” Sehun raises a finger and pokes him in the shoulder.
“Ow,” Jongin supplies, although he barely felt anything. But his reply has the desired effect: Sehun smiles tiredly and closes his eyes. Jongin clambers off the bed and takes out a six-pack from the fridge. He prefers dependable grocery store beer over Sehun's neverending collection of wines that probably date to 300 B.C. or something.
“You and your unclassy beverages,” Sehun shakes his head, then winces.
“You and your stuffy snob liquor,” Jongin says. “What do you even call that thing you like. Charriot? Charred riot. Chatty ruse.”
“Chartreuse,” Sehun yells, tearing up. Although that’s probably because of the migraine. “And that shit is so strong, J-man my homie, it’d give you a nosebleed because all you drink is ninny grocery beer.”
“Chartreuse,” Jongin mimics. “Says the guy who got excited over Mountain Dew last year.”
“Says the guy who drank strawberry milk up until tenth grade because he liked pink.”
That’s the trouble with having a best friend in college and getting really drunk with him on a bi-monthly basis. Jongin’s told him his entire life story, and all Sehun does is pick up the petty, emotionally blackmailing material that he only uses when he wants Jongin to get wasted.
Of course, Jongin reminds himself as he opens the first can and the foam starts leaking out, it could be worse.
By the second can, Sehun has joined in and drunk two already, meaning there are three cans left for Jongin and two minutes left until Sehun either shuts down completely or starts trying to convince him that he, Sehun, is a rap-or-bust kinda guy, that he, Sehun, is the next Bobby Kim, albeit decidedly older, that he, Sehun, is the biggest monster the university has seen, will ever see, and is seeing - Jongin breaks in to confess that he’s glad they’re friends when he’s reached his third, to which Sehun just grunts and tries to hum Ariana Grande.
This is when things start to go wrong, because Sehun never hums Ariana Grande. He's more for Nicki Minaj, due to the Inner Rapper Within, Inside. (That title is actually redundant as fuck but it's what Sehun refers to his alter-ego as, so that's what Jongin goes with.) The next thing that goes wrong is that Sehun decides he isn’t content with just sitting next to Jongin. He climbs into his lap, turns around to face him, and says bluntly, “In this position, our dicks are touching.”
Jongin doesn’t even care. “Yeah, they are.”
“We aren’t dating, though,” Sehun tells him.
Jongin agrees immediately. “For sure. I don’t know why everyone thinks we are.”
“Right?” Sehun finds this answer very pleasing. He’s towering over Jongin in this position, which kind of bums Jongin out because he likes being taller than people younger than him, but oh well. He’ll deal. Then Sehun says something else. “It's like, two guys who like guys can’t just be friends, can they? That’s like saying, girls who like guys can’t be friends. Or some shit.”
“No, you’re putting it the wrong way,” Jongin shakes his head, feels the world slightly elongate at the edges. He pulls himself together. “Like, incompletely. Girls who like guys can be just friends, but it’s not just because they can’t like each other because of the sun.”
“Wait, the sun?” Sehun frowns.
“No, the Kinsey scale. Where did the sun come from? Seriously. It’s like... why can’t people just be friends. I mean. Sexual orientation matters a lot, but why does it have to be so important when you’re just trying to hang out and not have sex. I don’t get it.”
“I don’t get anything you just said.” Sehun leans back, and falls onto Jongin’s books. “Fuck.”
“I'm lucid,” Jongin says, affronted. “I’m really good at this.”
“All you’re good at,” Sehun accuses, “Is not coming up with good arguments when everyone says we're dating. You just freeze up and get embarrassed.”
Jongin sits up straight at once, and if their crotches connect in a moment of friction that feels niceish, he ignores it because his pride is on the line here. “It's embarrassing! I’m not dating you, and people think I am! That embarrasses the crap out of me!”
“Not a good argument,” Sehun says. “Maybe you just suck at them in general. Is that why you're never in debate teams?” And then, without waiting for an answer, he sits up too, inducing another moment of friction that feels niceish, and whispers, “I have an idea.”
The way he says it, Jongin knows that’s an idea with a capital I. An Idea. Sehun’s second Idea of the day, and the clock says it’s only nine p.m.. This isn’t good. “What is it,” Jongin whispers back. Sehun shifts a little, and they're both breathing a little faster now.
“Fuck the system.”
Jongin's eyebrows lower, breathing returning to normal. “That’s it?”
Sehun waves his lack of enthusiasm off with a regal hand-flap. “They say we’re dating? We’ll give them dating. We’ll date each other so fucking hard, they’ll be sorry they laid eyes on us. They’ll be miserable they opened their mouths. They’ll be crying their eyes out and selling their brains. They’ll block us on Facebook. They’ll deactivate their pathetic little Twitter accounts. They’ll resign from life and drop out of school.”
Oh.
“Uh,” Jongin says, intelligently, and Sehun leans down and kisses him. It tastes... gross. French liquor and grocery beer don’t mesh well together in flavor.
“A little warning,” Jongin rasps, when Sehun sits up again and beams down at him.
“I’m that good, huh,” he grins, and Jongin just can’t say no to the guy, so he settles for glaring a hole through Sehun’s shirt.
Abruptly, Sehun rolls off him, bumps off the bed, hits the floor, curses, and reaches for the phone on his own bed. Taemin has probably turned in, because Crazy stops playing across the hall, which Jongin doesn’t understand because he needs a soundtrack that makes sense right now, and Crazy actually works. At least, to describe Sehun in this moment.
“Okay,” Sehun says, typing on his phone. “Here is the plan.” He doesn’t say anything else for a few minutes, so Jongin puts his iPod on the dock, as an excuse for something to do.
The first song that comes on shuffle is called La Liste. He barely has time to process the fact that this is really weird because neither of them have gone into what sounds like indie acoustic French music, before Sehun is shoving his phone, a list-making app on the screen, in Jongin’s face. Huh.
This is how it happens.
Two really badly intoxicated guys trying to get petty revenge on friends after having it up to their necks for an entire four years of bullshit. It's ridiculous, really, but what petty revenge plan outlined by desperate drunk people isn’t.
“What’s that song,” Sehun frowns, pausing in the middle of expounding on his great Idea.
Jongin blinks at the sudden change in conversation and leans over to his iPod to get the title again. “It's, uh, La Listy. Like, List, but with an e at the end. Probably pronounced like a normal ‘list’ I guess.”
“What’s it about.”
“I dunno... I just know this one funny cat joke in French, nothing else - wait, you wanna hear it,” Jongin turns and grins at him. “It has puns.”
Sehun heaves a resigned sigh. “Lay it down, bro.”
They don’t actually find out what the song is about, but the title is good enough motivation for them. They make a list of things. It takes them hours. Jongin doesn’t see why it has to be so long, but Sehun insists that for them to be a real couple, they have to do a lot of things, but since they’re not a real couple, they have to list it down in case they forget and do not seem like a real couple.
“Make out really grossly... in public,” Jongin reads aloud, at two a.m.. “Like, what the fuck, man?”
“They've told us so. Many times. To get a room. When all you do is smile at me if I get a good grade,” Sehun says, in an oddly cracked, crying kind of voice. “I'm fucking done with it. I’m fucking ending them all.”
“By making out with me in public,” Jongin tries to confirm.
“Yes. Then they will have a real reason to tell us to get a room. And we will not listen to them. We will continue our sexually abrasive actions. Unless someone actually starts freaking out or something. You know. We will have limits.”
There's a red light blinking at the both of them, one foot away; Sehun’s camcorder is settled precariously on a pile of clothes on two chairs stacked together, as a makeshift tripod stand.
They’d decided to snapchat the idea to each other first, but then Jongin had pointed out that it would self-delete, and they need concrete, fertile evidence. Sehun made sure Jongin knew that fertile meant the stuff that made grass fit for growing and Jongin had emphasized that no, fertile meant stuff that meant the soil was fit for growing, and Sehun tried to understand what that had to with evidence, whereupon Jongin said he was too drunk to get it, and although Sehun secretly thought that Jongin was too drunk to make sense, they both went with it and decided to tape themselves planning everything out. Jongin had promised on his elder sisters' sorority, and Sehun on his cousin’s frat. It made the whole mess a lot more sacred, meaningful, and unbreakable.
“We don’t even know their oaths, do we,” Jongin had said when they were done, voice low.
“Just the house names,” Sehun had conceded, and they went into hysterics over that until they caught sight of the empty cans and lone socks strewn around their room.
Right now, Jongin decides to voice some doubts on this legislation. “I’m not good at PDA, dude, what if I chicken out?”
“You’re just not good at relationships or people in general, don't flatter yourself,” Sehun turns over and yawns. “It’s late, we’ll get the rest of this all planned out tomorrow.”
part ii