Laundry Day
sekai & baekchen
pg-13; 10k
-written for sncj-bb, originally posted here
-What starts out as a simple wash goes into the spin cycle with a pair of panties.
It’s reasonably early on Sunday morning - the time of day when most college students are sleeping off hangovers and regrettable hook-ups - when Sehun decides it’s the perfect time to wash his clothes. Hauling his laundry basket, he arrives in the basement room to find it blissfully empty. The last time he did laundry he was stuck with the one that wobbles violently, but this time he has his pick of the room, and he indulgently spreads his load of clothes between three washers, grinning as he lounges on top of the machines with the latest paperback thriller in his hands.
An hour and a half later, he’s considerably less happy as he tries not to die under the weight of his laundry basket. Bringing a wide basket down three flights of stairs was easy, but carrying it up three flights of stairs is a whole other matter.
He drags his feet as he shifts the overladen basket from side to side in an attempt to find some way of holding it that doesn’t put too much strain on his shoulders (or at least will let him see over the mound of clothes) when he hears a deep voice calling out. The greeting is neutral - a simple “hey, you!”- so it takes Sehun a few moments to realize that he’s the one being addressed, and even longer for him to turn with the bulky basket nestled against his chest.
Finally he inches his way around, his arms straining under the weight of his clothes. “Yeah?”
There’s a guy standing on the landing that Sehun just left, a mesh bag wedged between him in the wall. The bag is stuffed with clothes and- ah, he must be on his way to do laundry.
The next thing Sehun notices is that this guy is really good looking. Tousled dark hair and an open smile, tall with long legs and arms.
And in his hands is Sehun’s old middle school t-shirt. The shirt that Sehun feels slightly embarrassed that he can still fit into and has considered throwing out more than once because who even keeps shirts like that, but always reconsiders when he feels how soft the worn fabric is. The shirt that he only ever wears to bed anymore because he wouldn’t be caught dead in college wearing a tee that says “learning is great” in comic sans across the front.
But for some reason this stranger has not only seen this t-shirt, but is also holding it in his hands.
“Is this yours?” The boy’s voice is tight with repressed laughter and his lips twitch into a cocky smirk. Sehun can feel a flush beginning to crawl up his throat.
“Yes. It is.” He means for his words to be terse, but embarrassment leaks into his voice and when the sentence ends in a squeak he almost runs on the spot. (But running up a flight of stairs while being blinded by a laundry pile seems likely to end in even more embarrassing situations than the current one.)
“I see. Well, you dropped it back there.” The boy stretches out an arm to return the shirt.
Sehun begins to lean forward to take it when he realizes that both of his hands are occupied with the basket. He stares helplessly at the shirt, trying to figure out how he can grab it without spilling his laundry down the stairs, when the other boy pulls himself into a mock basketball stance.
“Three points,” he yells when the shirt lands in the laundry basket and lets out a small whoop of victory. But immediately after, he looks embarrassed at his outburst. Flushing, he swings his laundry bag over his shoulder. Then, tilting his head with a smile, he leaves.
He’s long gone before Sehun realizes that he forgot to say thanks.
Baekhyun has a biology textbook open over his lap and has just begun reading over synapses when he hears his door bang open.
He doesn’t bother to look up, continuing to read as he reaches for the highlighter on his desk. “What is it Sehun?”
Although Sehun only met Baekhyun in college, they quickly became close friends. Sehun would like to think that it’s because he’s too cute to pass up and Baekhyun would say that Sehun is too dumb to be left alone, but the truth is that their friendship was somehow a perfect balance of clinginess and general amusement.
“BAEK A HOT GUY PICKED UP MY LAUNDRY AND I DON’T KNOW WHO HE IS AND-“
Baekhyun leans over a bit to get a clearer look at the small coloured diagram of axons and dendrites. “Sehun. Breathe. And then breathe again, slower.” He highlights a few key words from the paragraph and then pens in some notes next to the diagram.
Sehun sucks in a lungful of air before trying again. “I met,” he inhales again, “a cute guy,” inhale, “but I don’t know his name.” Sehun decides to salvage his pride a bit by leaving out the part where the mysterious guy picked up his nightshirt.
“And you thought I would know?” Baekhyun finally looks up at his friend, arching his eyebrow.
“Of course. Baek, you know everyone.”
Baekhyun shrugs; it’s not like he can help it if he’s popular. He flips his textbook shut and swivels around fully.
“So tell me about this cute mystery guy.”
It’s a few days later before Sehun sees laundry guy (as dubbed by Baekhyun) around the dorm again.
It’s not for lack for trying because Sehun has been stalking out the laundry room all week. He even washed his sweaters separately just so he would have more loads to do. But either laundry guy doesn’t really like clean clothes or he has a huge wardrobe because Sehun didn’t run into him even once.
It’s not until Sehun is sitting in the cafeteria with Baekhyun and a few of their other friends when he happens to see laundry guy crossing the courtyard of their residence with a few friends in tow. The three boys crossing the small patch of grass are nudging into each other and laughing.
One of laundry guy’s friends is incredibly tall, and at first Sehun is intimidated by his height and angry looking eyebrows. But then he laughs at something laundry guy said, and his gummy smile makes his face look welcoming. The other friend is much shorter than the other two, but his sharp cheekbones and bowed lips are equally attractive.
Of course Baekhyun is the first person to realize that Sehun’s attention has wandered from the conversation, and he kicks at Sehun’s legs viciously. “HEY! EARTH TO SEHUN!”
Sehun shifts his legs out of Baekhyun’s reach. “Baek, baek, you know that guy I was telling you about?”
“You mean that ‘really cute guy’ who you won’t shut up abou-“
“Look it’s him! He’s on the quad.” Sehun breaks in before Baekhyun can say anymore. “The one in the middle.”
Baekhyun follows Sehun’s wild gesturing, falling all over Sehun’s lap in an attempt to see out the window. In the process, one of his elbows slams into Sehun’s ribs and Sehun considers just dumping Baek off of him altogether.
“Oh.” He peers out the window, then suddenly scrambles upright. “You mean laundry guy is KIM JONGIN?”
“Maybe? Who is Kim Jongin?”
“Who is- WHO IS KIM JONGIN?” Apparently Sehun just asked a really dumb question. Either that or he’s suddenly sprouted another head because Baekhyun is staring at him with the same affronted slack-jawed expression that he usually reserves for when Tao mixes up his pronouns and starts referring to Baekhyun as a female. “ONLY THE SON OF THE PRESIDENT. DO YOU KNOW HOW FAMOUS HE IS?”
“Really?!” Sehun nudges Baekhyun out of the way so he can see him through the window and the boy looks so carefree he never would have guessed that his father is actually the president. Although it would explain the air of cockiness that- ”He’s that famous?” Sehun repeats dumbly.
“God! No, Sehun! He’s some dance major that Yixing is friends with.” Baekhyun pats Sehun’s head in a way that he probably thinks is affectionate, but Sehun finds extremely patronizing and makes him feel like a dog.
“Oh.” The saying fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me no longer applies to Sehun and Baekhyun’s friendship because they never say whose fault it is when the number of times one has been fooled is in the hundreds.
But Sehun’s naivety is endlessly amusing to Baekhyun and five minutes later he’s still chuckling into mouthfuls of the stir fry special. “I can’t believe you actually believed me!”
“Shut up, Baek.”
“Sehun they don’t even have the same last name. Besides, if you ask me, his friends are better looking than he is. Did you see those cheekbones , Sehun?"
Baekhyun continues laughing as Sehun punches him in the arm.
Several times.
And on that day began Sehun’s quest to gather as much information about Kim Jongin as possible. Baekhyun had mentioned Yixing was friends with him, so when Sehun and Yixing have Korean History together the next day, he tries to casually bring up Kim Jongin.
“So. I ran into Jongin the other day…. He’s not around the dormitory very often is he?” Sehun begins as he flips open his notebook, trying to keep his tone as neutral and disinterested as possible. If Baekhyun is a butcher cutting away gossip from your carcass, then Yixing is that innocent looking goat you follow into the slaughterhouse.
“Who?” Yixing has almost his whole head in his backpack as he searches for a pen.
Sehun rolls his eyes.
“Kim Jongin,” he repeats, hoping that Yixing will answer his question soon so that he can go back to playing tetris on his phone.
Yixing sits back and tests the pen he finds on his notebook. The first few marks are dark, and Yixing beams at Sehun, but the ink quickly fades and soon there are only colourless scratches on his notebook. Frowning, he reaches down into his bag again.
Sehun is beginning to get impatient. “Here use this.” He hands over his extra pen.
Yixing’s face breaks out into a grin and he drops the useless pen onto the floor, kicking it underneath the row of seats before them.
Carefully, he uncaps the pen and tests it against the paper, smile growing wider as he sees dark marks on the page. “Thanks.”
Now that the pen issue is out of the way, Sehun can finally begin his interrogation. “So about Kim Jongin-” he starts, leaning toward Yixing eagerly.
But the rest of Sehun’s question is cut off when the professor begins his lecture, and Sehun slumps in his seat, disappointed and unsatisfied.
Sehun doesn’t get a chance to ask Yixing about Kim Jongin again until their next class two days later. This time Sehun hands over a pen before Yixing can even start to rummage around in his backpack.
“Oh, thanks.” Yixing grins as he uncaps the pen and begins to write in today’s date and the lecture number.
And because Sehun doesn’t want to run out of time he decides to ask him directly.
“Yixing, what do you know about Kim Jongin?”
Yixing’s face pulls into a small frown, but Sehun’s not sure if it’s because of his question or because Yixing is concentrating too intensely on drawing flowers over the date. “He’s a good guy.” He shrugs. “Why? What do you want to know?”
Where he went to high school. What his favourite foods are. What makes him smile. If he’s single.
If he’s gay.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sehun says instead. “I just ran into him the other day and was interested in what kind of person he is.”
Yixing chews the cap of the pen as he thinks, and Sehun wants to yell at him for manhandling HIS pen, but he also really wants to hear more about Jongin, and if he upsets Yixing the chances of that are pretty slim. So Sehun chews his lip and decides to let Yixing keep that pen once the lecture is over.
“He’s prety good at dancing?” Yixing finally offers before turning his attention back to his half drawn doodle.
And that was not worth sacrificing his pen for.
During the next few weeks, Sehun looks for Jongin on campus constantly. When he studies in the library, he peers over the tops of the carrels looking for a head of soft black hear and sloping shoulders. When he walks across the quad, he looks through the crowds hoping to catch a glimpse of his broad smile. Hardly anyone seems to pick up on Sehun’s restlessness, except for Baekhyun, who nudges him when he looks around the cafeteria for the sixth time that meal.
“Waiting for someone?” Baekhyun needles, eyes bright behind his large frame glasses. “Maybe someone who smells like Tide and teenage wet dreams?”
“Shut up, Baek.” Sehun grumbles into his tray of chicken curry.
And Baekhyun looks like Christmas came early, shifting around in his seat and making up short rhymes about Sehun and laundry and mysterious strangers. At the second verse, Chanyeol and Tao join in, despite the fact that neither of them seem to know what’s going on and Chanyeol keeps breaking off into covers of Beenzino and that’s definitely unrelated.
Groaning, Sehun shovels food into his mouth to distract himself from the pile of embarrassment that he calls his friends.
(But not before he checks the cafeteria a seventh time.)
After Sehun forces the rest of his load of laundry into the washing machine, he hoists himself onto the adjacent machine; letting his legs dangle over the front. He knocks his heels against the machine as he pulls out a battered copy of Intro to Ethics that he got second-hand from the university bookstore.
When Sehun entered university he enrolled in an Ethics course because he wanted an easy class and what could be easier than reading books about something that should already be common sense?
WRONG.
That was before he realized that the Ethics professor likes to assign 50 pages of reading and an essay every week. He’s not even sure what kind of essay he can write about Chapter One: Ethics and the Dinosaurs but he needs to figure it out before Thursday. If only Chanyeol hadn’t begged him to stay (“Please Sehun, if we take the class together we can split the readings, and everyone says that he’s an easy marker!”) he would have dropped it after the first class. Sehun kicks back into the machine a bit more viciously as he uncaps his highlighter.
“Oh, it’s you again!”
Sehun jerks up with a start, the the cap of his highlighter slipping from his fingers. He watches it roll across the floor and groans when it disappears underneath the machine opposite from him. That’s going to be a pain to get back.
“Sorry, did I startle you?”
Remembering that he’s no longer alone, Sehun tears his gaze away from where his highlighter cap disappeared and looks up at the newcomer. There are many things he’s on the verge of saying of course you startled me, do you think I go around dropping things for fun is at the very top of the list but when he turns all his words leave him because-
IT’S LAUNDRY GUY.
Sehun chokes on the breath he was currently trying to inhale because the guy that he’s been trying to find information about for the past week is standing in front of him. He’s not even dressed particularly stylishly, but something about the combination of the worn sweatshirt and the low-slung sweatpants looks boyishly endearing.
“Uh, hi.” Sehun’s not sure if the words caught in his throat or if he swallowed his tongue, but those two syllables are all he can manage before his throat closes in on itself.
“Hi.” When his lips bend into a quiet smile Sehun’s heart lurches traitorously.
A silence falls over the room as the other boy begins to load the washing machine and Sehun’s brain is screaming at him to say something further, but words keep getting jumbled in his head. Just don’t say his name, he reminds himself, don’t say his- “Kim Jongin.” Fuck.
Kim Jongin looks up from shoving his laundry into the washer, eyes widening in surprise and oh crap if that wasn’t the cutest thing that Sehun’s ever seen. “You know my name!”
“Well…”
Think Sehun, what’s something that doesn’t show laundry guy how creepy you are? “Yixing told me.”
How is that not creepy? Great now he’s going to think that you’ve been asking around about him. It’s not like you weren’t but he doesn’t really need to know that does he-
“And you’re Oh Sehun.”
Sehun glances over just in time to see Jongin smiling back. Then he turns, pushing up his sleeves before he pours laundry detergent into the machine. For a moment Jongin’s toned forearms distract him, but then Sehun remembers how to speak again.
“How do you know my name?”
Jongin doesn’t answer, only smiles, and then he’s pulling himself onto the machine across from Sehun. “Isn’t it weird that we only seem to run into each other when we’re doing laundry?”
The heavy textbook slips down his lap and Sehun barely catches it before it crashes to the floor. “Yeah.”
Jongin doesn’t seem to be fazed by Sehun’s short answers. Instead he drums his fingers on the edge of the washer and grins at Sehun. “So, how do you know Yixing?”
“We used to take dance lessons together,” Sehun answers, chewing on his lip fretfully. Learning more about laundry guy is infinitely more exciting than the etymology of the word ethics and Sehun wonders if he should give up all pretense of studying and just close his textbook altogether.
Jongin leans forward as if he’s actually interested in knowing more about Oh Sehun, and Sehun’s heart flutters. “Oh! That’s so cool! I’m a dance major actually!”
Yeah I know, Sehun thinks, but out loud he says “Oh neat.”
The conversation continues, following the stilted path that conversations between new acquaintances usually follow. (Where are you from? What’s your major?) Then they begin discussing Yixing, and while listening to Jongin recount the time that Yixing snuck back into the dance studio after hours because he forgot his lucky towel is pretty funny, he’s more interested in what kind of stupid stuff Jongin does.
Then Jongin gets a text and Sehun perks up at the short jingle.
“Zelda?” Sehun asks, although he already knows that it’s the Song of Storms.
“Yeah, you play?”
Sehun smirks. Does he play?!
He has all the games memorized.
Somehow, despite living in the same dormitory Sehun and Jongin only seem to run into each other in the laundry room. He had hoped that one day he’d catch Jongin in the cafeteria, but it turns out that their schedules are completely incompatible; with Sehun’s classes during the day and Jongin’s classes in the evening.
But both of them have the weekends free, and they come to an unspoken agreement that Sunday morning is always spent chatting while they wait for their clothes to finish washing.
Sehun enjoys these mornings a lot, always going to bed on Saturday giddy with the anticipation of seeing Jongin the next day, and through these lazy mornings Sehun starts to learn little things about Jongin.
Like that he hardly ever wears socks that match and that he’s a sucker for superhero movies.
“Did you see the graphics in the new X-Men movie?” Jongin says as he feeds bills into the change machine.
Today Sehun brought his DS down to the laundry room and he looks up from Cooking Mama, shaking his head.
“What? You haven’t seen it yet?” Jongin appears to be so outraged at the prospect that he forgets the catch the quarters spilling out of the machine, and a few of them roll over the concrete floor before colliding with Jongin’s laundry bag. Jongin reaches down to collect the wayward coins, and when he asks “Are you free Friday? Maybe we can go see it together?” Sehun finds himself staring in shock at Jongin’s butt instead of his face.
This time, when Sehun tries Baekhyun’s door, it’s locked. He rattles the doorknob, waiting for Baekhyun to hear his pitiful whines and let him into the room when the door across the hall cracks open.
“If you’re looking for Baekhyun, he went out. He even stopped by to tell me he might not be back before curfew.” Minseok stuffs some dry squid into his mouth and chews thoughtfully. “So you should stop making a ruckus in the hall before someone files a noise complaint form.”
Sehun glares at him. “Shouldn’t you deal with the complaints after they come in?”
“Hey, I’m just trying to fulfill my RA duties.” Minseok grins, holding out a piece of dried squid. “You want some? My boyfriend just got back from China and he brought back a whole bunch.”
Sehun shakes his head and Minseok shrugs, eating the piece of squid himself as he watches Sehun pull out his phone.
laundry boy asked me out on a date
Baekhyun’s response comes almost immediately: what?
well, mb it’s a date
Sehun’s phone beeps again. ok hold tight ill be bak soon
Two hours later Sehun is curled up into Baekhyun’s comforter on Baekhyun’s bed drinking tea out of Baekhyun’s mug.
“So, what about this date invitation?”
Sehun curls his fingers around the handle of the mug and retreats further into the comforter. What if it wasn’t really a date and he’s just freaking out over nothing?
“Sehun, I cut my date with Jongdae short for this so you better spill or I’m going to start revoking best friend privileges.”
He tries whimpering to gain some sympathy, but Baekhyun’s expression stays determined.
“He asked me to go see the new X-Men movie with him.” Sehun mumbles into the Chamomile herbal blend, and Baekhyun snorts.
“So what’s the problem?”
Baekhyun’s nonchalance is a bit irritating, but before he begins to defend himself, the pure panic of maybe going on a kinda sorta date thing wells within him and he yelps,”Baekhyun help me I don’t know what to do on a date!”
And Baekhyun laughs as he ruffles Sehun’s hair.
“Aww our little Sehunnie’s growing up!”
Sehun grumbles his protests as he tries to minimize the havoc that Baekhyun’s hands are wrecking on his coiffured hair.
Then his fingers still as a thought occurs to him. “Wait, who’s Jongdae?”
Sehun nervously checks his watch as he waits for Jongin to show up to their not-date date. Baekhyun helped him pick out an outfit of nice (but not too nice) clothes, and now Sehun’s standing around awkwardly wondering if his trousers and cardigan are okay or if he should have gone with jeans and a t-shirt.
Jongin shows up ten minutes before the movie’s supposed to start and Sehun has already worn a path into the carpet with his nervous pacing.
“Do we still have time to get tickets?” Sehun says anxiously when Jongin pulls out two strips of paper.
“Already got them! Now c’mon, if you don’t hurry we’ll miss the previews!”
Jongin’s hand is tight, but not uncomfortable around Sehun’s wrist as he drags him towards the theatre, Sehun’s pulse trembling against Jongin’s fingertips.
Since Jongin bought the tickets, Sehun insists on buying popcorn, and he shoves the large tub of buttery goodness in the cup holder between the two of their seats.
He secretly hopes that they’ll have one of those cheesy romantic moments where their hands brush as they both reach for the popcorn at the same time. But it seems that every time Sehun reaches over to get popcorn, Jongin is just retracting his hand and Jongin is too polite, waiting for Sehun to finish grabbing a handful before sticking his own hand into the tub. Finally Sehun decides that even coincidences need a little push sometimes. He waits until Jongin just sticks his hand into the tub before he lunges his hand in as well... and knocks over the tub of popcorn into Jongin’s lap.
“I’m sorry, I just-” Sehun begins to babble, thankful that the darkness of the theatre covers the flush on his cheeks. There are smudges of butter on Jongin's jeans and Sehun is pretty much the biggest idiot ever, getting worked up just because he wanted to touch Jongin's hand.
But then he can't speak because there's popcorn against his mouth. Jongin smiles encouragingly and Sehun flicks out his tongue to pull the kernel into his mouth.
"Don't worry," Jongin mumbles as he scoops the popcorn off his lap, alternating between stuffing pieces into Sehun’s mouth and his own.
He tries to apologize again but Jongin just waves away his apologies, and a warmth is pooling in his stomach because he's feeding him. They were barely touching hands and now Jongin's hand is brushing against his mouth and it feels like his heart just gained a zillion experience points when the tip of his tongue grazes Jongin's thumb.
Once the movie begins Sehun finds out that Jongin likes to talk during movies, so Sehun listens as Jongin tries to introduce each character that comes on screen. He has a bit of difficulty pronouncing some of the foreign names and Sehun bites back a grin as he listens to Jongin mumble through some of the more difficult ones. It’s a bit distracting to have Jongin speaking to him but he doesn’t tell him to stop because he likes feeling Jongin’s breath buffer out against his ear. But when Jongin introduces the next character, Sehun can’t keep quiet.
“It’s Professor Xavier, not Mister X.” corrects Sehun.
“Oh. I’m sorry. Professor Xavier.” Jongin exaggerates Sehun’s thick Korean accent and Sehun rolls his eyes, biting his lip to stop a smile from spreading across his face.
Sehun enjoyed the movie, but he enjoyed sitting next to Jongin even more. He liked the way Jongin's knees knocked against his during the exciting parts and later, when they walk back to the dorm at the end of the night, he leans closer to Jongin so that the backs of their hands can brush together and each brush of contact sends a flare of shivers racing through him.
"Tonight was great, I had a lot of fun." Jongin turns to face him as they reach the entrance.
Sehun smiles, "Me too."
This is the defining moment, he thinks eagerly. The moment that he'll finally know if it was a date or not. He watches Jongin's lips open slightly, watches the way his lips move slightly with every breath. Sehun's whole body thrums with nervousness and Jongin starts to lean in and Sehun thinks this is it.
Jongin holds out his hand and Sehun stares at it.
"We should do this again sometime." Jongin's smile is open and careless and Sehun's stomach twists into knots. Maybe he misread everything: the tickets, the popcorn, the whispering. His chest tightens uncomfortably.
"Yeah," Sehun agrees weakly as he shakes the outstretched hand and the adrenaline washes away, leaving him weak in the knees for nothing.
"How was your date?" Baekhyun says when he bursts into Sehun's room early the next morning.
"Mrgh?" asks Sehun. He smacks his lips a few times, but his mouth still tastes like death in the morning.
"How did you date go? I thought you were going to stop by my room afterwards but you never came and I couldn't sleep because of it." Baekhyun helpfully adds air quotes around the date, just in case Sehun forgot that the situation between him and Jongin is still a bit ambiguous.
Sehun glances at the clock. Seven o'clock in bright red numbers glares back at him and he rolls away from Baekhyun. Maybe he can still pretend that he's sleeping and Baekhyun will go away.
But instead of going away Baekhyun climbs on top of him. "See these bags?" Baekhyun points accusingly underneath his eyes as he shoves his face right next to Sehun's, and Sehun blearily cracks open his eyes, squinting at Baekhyun because he really doesn't look any different.
"Not rea-"
"These are the bags I got from not knowing if you returned home safely so you better spill." Baekhyun leans back, settling his hands on his hips.
"Get off," Sehun groans "You're too heavy." He pulls his comforter back over his head, trying to block out Baekhyun's indignant yelps that just because Sehun has Victora's Secret model legs he shouldn't make fun of people that are more- no, even less hippy than he is.
"You shook hands?"
"Shut up, Baek."
Once again the laundry room is empty except for the two of them, and they settle into doing school work. Jongin props a textbook open on his lap, and Sehun is looks through his latest Ethics essay, trying to figure out how Chanyeol got a better mark than he did. He flips through the pages idly when Jongin breaks the silence.
“Can I see you dance?”
“What?” Sehun drops his ethics essay on the floor, and then lunges for it before Jongin can see the bright red C+ marked on the first page. Apparently The Land Before Time is not an acceptable source for a college paper.
“Let me see you dance?” Jongin asks as he sets aside Economics for Dance Majors.
Sehun shuffles his papers into a reasonably organized pile before shoving them into his backpack. “What? Right now?” It’s been ages since he has seriously danced and he feels a bit uncomfortable showing off moves from middle school in front of a dance major.
“Why not?”
“There’s not really a lot of space here.” He gestures to the rows of laundry machines crowding the room.
“So?” But Sehun just stares at Jongin incredulously. “Fine, I’ll go first.” Jongin slides off the washer and stretches out before settling into position.
Because Sehun used to dance, he’s familiar with what good dancing looks like.
And Jongin is good. Each motion is fluid, yet strong, and the way that Jongin dances makes Sehun burn with envy and competitiveness. So Jongin can spin several times on the same pivot foot, but can he do the splits? His body pulses with the need to dance and he fidgets as he watches Jongin’s body slide through each movement.
By the time Jongin finishes, Sehun hops off the washer eagerly. “Now I’ll show you how it’s done,” he says with brash overconfidence, and Jongin grins at the challenge in his words.
“Oh, really?” he nods. “Let’s see then,” and Sehun takes that as his cue to start. At first Sehun’s movements are awkward, but slowly his body begins to remember the dance and the steps come more easily. He remembers how he and Yixing ran through the moves endlessly before their recital, repeating each one until the snap of each action was crisp and now the hours of practice carry him thoughtlessly through the motions.
When he ends his bangs are slick with sweat, and he's breathing heavily but he's happy. Jongin claps and Sehun flushes with pride.
Their Korean history professor is late today, but there’s supposed to be a quiz today so Sehun is using the extra time to fill in the gaps in his notes. There are a few points where he must have fallen asleep because instead of notes on shamanism in Korea there are a bunch of illegible scribbles and a few smudges of drool, and Sehun flips through Yixing’s notes to find the missing information.
At last their professor shows up and there are groans around the lecture hall when he pulls out a massive stack of papers for the TAs to hand out.
Sehun passes Yixing’s notes back to him, when he suddenly thinks about the impromptu dance session they had in the laundry room.
“Hey Yixing, do you want to try dancing together again?”
Yixing looks up from gnawing on Sehun’s his pen and grins, “Sure.”
Jongin and Sehun are in the laundry room discussing who the best Robin was when it happens.
“I don’t care what you say, Jason Todd is definitely NOT the best Robin!” Sehun is saying just as a small piece of red cloth slips from Jongin’s pile of clean laundry and flops to the floor.
The shape, once the cloth settles on the floor, is definitely underwear-like. And Sehun finds himself staring at it until- “Wow that is a lot of lace for one pair of underpants.”
Jongin snatches the underwear from the floor, his cheeks reddening. “It’s not mine, okay?”
“Sureee, it isn’t,” Sehun grabs his laundry basket, laughing as he makes his way for the door, when Jongin pushes in front of him and blocks his path.
“No, Sehun.” He grabs Sehun’s shoulders. “Look at me. They’re really not mine.”
He’s deadly serious when he looks Sehun straight in the eyes, and Sehun’s breath catches because he never noticed how long Jongin’s eyelashes are or that he smells faintly of a deodorant that smells like clean laundry (and isn’t that fitting?)
And he’s staring so intently, so earnestly that Sehun’s mouth moves before his brain can catch up, forming the words “Okay, I believe you,” before he knows it.
“Good,” Jongin sighs with relief, completely oblivious as Sehun fights off the urge to fist his hands in Jongin’s collar and pull him closer.
Baekhyun has just read through a paragraph on proteins and enzymes when his door crashes open and his desk lamp topples over. He sighs and sticks a post-it to the open page.
“Sehun, please close the door and stop overreacting.”
After two cups of tea and several handfuls of gummy worms, Baekhyun has worked out the whole story and is ready to start heavily judging.
“So you think he’s in a relationship,” Baekhyun repeats as he adjusts his glasses. He's not sure if Baekhyun really needs glasses or not, but they always seem to make an appearance when Baekhyun needs to peer over them at Sehun judgingly.
“Yes.” He has to admit that it sounds kind of dumb when he says it out loud,but Baekhyun didn’t see the sheer amount of silk and lace that went into those underwear.
“And you think this because he was washing a pair of boxers.”
“Not just boxers, Baekhyun!” Sehun trills. “These were risque. Instead of boxers it was more like lingerie or even.” He drops the volume of his voice to a whisper. “A thong.”
Baekhyun stares at him over the top of his glasses, then he bursts into hysterical laughter.
Although Sehun had asked Yixing to dance with him, the invitation had slipped his mind until Yixing called him.
"I'm five minutes away from your dorm. Be ready to dance." Yixing had said before he hung up and Sehun was left listening to a dial tone.
As soon as they got to the studio Yixing had jumped right into action. He demonstrated a few routines he was choreographing and then led Sehun through it at a mercilessly quick pace.
If Yixing is considered a space cadet then music and dance are what ground him to Earth.
"You've gotten better," Sehun whines as they finish the routine. Too tired to keep standing, he flops against the wall of mirrors.
"The last time we practiced together was several years ago," Yixing reminds him as he lobs Sehun a bottle of water."Of course I'm better now."
Sehun scrunches his nose. He's right - of course - but it does nothing to ease the ache in his muscles or the bitterness that Yixing's barely out of breath while Sehun fights to get air in his lungs. The sweat coating his hands makes the water bottle difficult to open and Sehun grumbles. He holds out the bottle to Yixing pleadingly.
Yixing flicks water at him. "Don't you dare try to use that aegyo crap on me." Despite his harsh words a smile tugs at his lips and Sehun grins, wiping his hands on his t-shirt before trying the cap again.
At least some things hadn't changed.
Friday night is movie night, so Kyungsoo treks down to the kitchen to make popcorn while Baekhyun and Chanyeol have the same squabble about who will get to sit in the comfiest armchair. A squabble that always ends in Chanyeol trying to sit on Baekhyun’s lap and Baekhyun screaming about how tall people with boney butts should just sit on the floor. Most of the time Baekhyun wins and Chanyeol sits on the couch, curling up against Kyungsoo while Sehun settles on Kyungsoo’s other side.
When the ending credits begin to roll, Chanyeol bounds up to the DVD player. “So, how about another movie? We could watch that Japanese horror one?” He shuffles through the pile of DVDs."Or maybe that Chinese comedy that Tao recommended?"
Before Chanyeol can suggest a movie that might actually tempt him into staying up longer, Sehun hoists himself off the couch. “I’d love to but I have to go to bed early tonight. I’m playing paintball tomorrow.”
The DVD case Chanyeol was holding falls to the ground, “What.”
“Paintball?” Sehun repeats, in a voice that’s more timid and uncertain that it had been just moments ago.
“Sehun you hate being hit by projectiles. Don’t you remember all those times in middle school that you faked doctor’s notes so you could sit out of dodgeball?” Kyungsoo’s voice floats up from somewhere on the floor.
“But dodgeball’s different than paintball!” protests Sehun.
Chanyeol snorts loudly, “Yeah, it’s different in that the things hitting you will be smaller and hurt more.”
Sehun wrinkles his nose, “But isn’t paintball kind of like a first person shooter? So maybe it won’t be so bad?” He looks around the room when nobody bothers to answer him. “Maybe?”
“You just keep telling yourself that,” Baekhyun says as he leans over to pat Sehun on the hip.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” is the first thing that Joonmyun says when Jongin opens the car door.
The car is the kind of old beat up car you would expect a college senior to own. There’re a few rips in the fabric of the seats and when Joonmyun was driving up, the car appeared to list to one side a bit. Jongin takes the front seat, so Sehun slips into the back.
“That’s okay.” Jongin smiles, and he and Joonmyun fall into quiet conversion as Sehun runs the rules of paintball through his mind.
Joonmyun flicks on his blinker and when he turns onto the highway the hum of the air against the car nearly drowns out the music of the stereo. “Is Luhan coming?”
“Nah, he’s busy cramming for a test.” Jongin reaches over to bump up the volume.
Sehun wants to ask who the hell Luhan is, but before he gets the chance,Joonmyun continues. “You and Luhan have been together for a long time.” Oh. Oh.
“Just since first year, I guess?” Jongin replies, laughing softly.
“I was surprised that you got along so well since Luhan’s a few years older, but somehow it worked out didn’t it?”
Twisting to face Joonmyun, Jongin agrees, “Yup, somehow.” His face slowly breaks into a grin and it’s so bright that Sehun has to look away.
Sehun stares out the window at the highway signs racing by and wonders if Luhan is the owner of a pair of very lacy red underwear.
When the car pulls up, three figures come up to greet them. Sehun recognizes the tallest as one of the friends that Jongin had waked across the quad with all those weeks ago, and Yixing is immediately distinguishable with his newly bleached hair. Then the last person turns around and Sehun is shocked.
“Wait. How do you know Minseok?”
Jongin swivels around in his seat. “Through Luhan of course!” he replies as if it should be obvious but Sehun fails to see the connection. If Luhan is a few years older, then maybe the two of them are classmates?
The car door wrenches open Yixing pokes his head into the backseat. "Are you coming or what?"
And Sehun pushes Yixing out of the way so he can get out of the car.
Sehun nudges Jongin as they’re standing in line. They're fitted with helmets and safety gear, and a paintgun rests in the crook of Sehun's arm, making him bolder than usual. “Hey, I bet I can shoot more people than you can.”
“You’re on” there’s a wicked edge to Jongin’s boyish grin as he shifts his grip on the paint gun.
The gates open and they enter the forested area, each going their own way. Sehun ducks behind a barrier made of parts of an old car as he slinks down to the ground. Dirt on his pants is a small price to pay for a good kill.
It's been awhile since Joonmyun has been out in the nature and he feels life returning to him with every breath he takes. Air in the countryside is so fresh. The leaves rustle from the breeze and patches of light flicker over the ground, and Joonmyun closes his eyes and enjoys the sunlight on his face. The whole forest is teeming with life and he's grateful to be a part of it. In fact, it's incredible that so many animals can live in one area. Joonmyun tilts his head when he hears a birdcall he doesn't recognize. What kind of bird would-
He feels something bite into his leg and he crumples to the forest floor.
Sehun cackles in the distance, “One.”
Yixing lounges against a tree, trying to catch his breath as he refills his paintballs. Soon after he entered the fenced area he ran smack into Kris and both of them had scrambled for their guns, firing wildly as they dove for cover. In retrospect, it's strange that they were a mere three feet apart and neither was able to hit the other, but Yixing is not one to dwell on the past. He can hear Kris fumbling through the forest a few yards away, and he pops open a new container of paintballs so he'll be ready when Kris comes bumbling through he foliage. He just starts to pour them into his gun when something stings against his arm and the paintballs scatter to the ground.
"Two," Sehun grins.
He wonders if Jongin has gotten anyone yet. He turns to sink back into the bushes in search of his next prey, but yelps when he feels something sting his butt.
“Three,” Minseok smirks as he lowers the gun to his shoulder. “I guess I win.”
Sehun groans from where he lies on the ground and chokes when he inhales part off a leaf.
Five hours later Sehun, bursts into Baekhyun’s room limping and hair covered in five different colors of paint. The knees of his pants are smeared with mud and there’s a leaf stuck behind his ear.
“Paintball is nothing like counterstrike!” he whines.
Baekhyun looks up from his novel. “I’m surprised that they let you in the car like that.”
When Sehun first arrives at the party he’s horribly uncomfortable, clutching a six-pack of hard lemonade in one hand and being dragged along by Baekhyun by the other. Even though he knows that he looks good in his striped shirt and trousers, he's not sure if other people know, so he tries to hide behind Baekhyun, a feat in itself when Baekhyun is about half a foot shorter than him.
“You’re only here because your boyfriend wants to get you drunk,” Sehun grumbles. “So why am I here?”
Baekhyun nods to several people they pass, and Sehun wonders who they are. “Because Jongdae is friends with your boy.”
Sehun blanches. “Don’t call him that!”
“If you don’t like it then just start going out for real so I can call him your boyfriend instead.”
“It’s not like I can go out with him if he’s already dating someone else! Besides, his name is Jongin. Why can’t you just call him that?”
Grabbing a beer from the fridge, Baekhyun snorts. It seems that Baekhyun still walks away from arguments he knows he’s going to lose because next he says, “Well, I’m off to find Jongdae,” sauntering from room as he calls “have fun” from over his shoulder.
Yixing finds him around the time he’s pouring his third shot of tequila. “Jongin’s here. Weren’t you asking me about him?” He sidles up next to Sehun and pulls the bottle of tequila from his hands.
Sehun splutters into the shot and more of it ends up on his shirt than in his mouth. It seems that Baekhyun wasn’t lying when he said that Jongdae and Jongin were friends.
“Is Luhan here too?”
Yixing’s head jerks up and he splashes some of the tequila across his hand. “You know Luhan?”
“I’ve heard of him… is he here too?” Sehun's pulse thunders in his ears. Please say no.
Yixing hums as he laps the tequila off his hand. “I think I saw him with Jongin actually.”
Oh.
Sehun spends the whole night trying to avoid Jongin while not avoiding him, all the while accepting drinks from friends he happens to run into. Tao makes him do Jager bombs with him and Chanyeol pushes a questionable blueish green cocktail into his hands that he never would have drank if he hadn’t already been several drinks past losing his cognitive reasoning abilities.
He spots Jongin several times during the night, each time talking with the same brown-haired boy. Luhan, he guesses.
The hallways of the dorm are unbearably hot with the crowds of people and Sehun clings to the walls as he searches for someplace cooler to sit down. He wanders down several different hallways before he finally finds what he’s looking for: a couch in a room free of people.
Sehun sinks into the cushions and lets his head fall back as he tries to calm his throbbing head. He can’t remember how many drinks he’s had and he definitely shouldn’t have let Yixing talk him into body shots because there’s still vodka in his belly button. He’s counting his breaths and wondering what the fine is for throwing up all over school property when he hears someone approaching the room.
“This might be the first time we’re hanging out in dorm together where we’re not doing laundry.” Jongin chuckles as he slips next to Sehun on the tattered tweed couch. The fabric used to be some pattern of plaid but all the stripes have faded to various intensities of yellow brown.
“Yeah, prolly.” Sehun is starting to slur his words a bit and that’s probably not a good sign but he can’t bring himself to care right now because he’s drunk and sitting on a couch with cute laundry guy.
“You don’t need to call me that anymore you know,” and Jongin has that stupid shit-eating grin that Sehun hates (and secretly loves) on his face.
“Mmr?”
“Laundry guy.” Jongin points at Sehun with the cup of beer in his hand and Sehun wonders why he didn’t just use his other hand, but that’s when Sehun realizes that Jongin’s other arm is slung around his shoulders and WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN. “You don’t have to call me that anymore.”
And Jongin’s words are catching up with Sehun’s brain and he’s freaking out a bit because when did Jongin hear Sehun call him laundry guy and oh god what else is he saying in his inebriated state-
“You said it again.” Jongin scolds, and his face is getting closer and either Jongin is a mind reader or Sehun has lost the ability to think without saying everything out loud and he hopes it’s the latter, although he has to admit that it would be kind of cool to be able to read minds-
“Please stop talking.”
And then Jongin’s lips are on his, swallowing up the last bits of his rambling thoughts. His lips are warm and dry against Sehun’s, and Sehun slips his tongue out to moisten them; first licking along Jongin’s bottom lip, and then into his mouth. After days of thinking and wondering, he can finally touch Jongin and his hands trace all he can reach, smoothing over his arms and then the cotton of his t-shirt, then tangling in the strands of Jongin’s hair so he can pull Jongin deeper deeper deeper into the kiss as his own eyes flutter closed.
The next morning Sehun finds himself in a dorm room. An unfamiliar dorm room.
The morning sunlight is bright across his face and he takes in the room uneasily, noting the messy pile of clothes on the floor, the extra bed, and two chaotic desks pushed next to each other.
“Where-“
And then an arm snakes around his stomach and Sehun’s self-defense training almost kicks in but instead he flips up the blanket and cute laundry guy lying next to him in just a pair of boxers and his eyes definitely don’t linger on the muscles in his back or the expanse of tanned skin.
“Oh my god.”
When Yixing tosses a water bottle to Sehun at the end of practice the bottle hits him in the gut and he groans.
"Hey, give me a warning or something!" Sehun complains as he rubs a hand over his poor stomach.
"I heard you've been avoiding Jongin." Yixing's eyes are steely and it's true that the ones that are the most laid back are the scariest when they're angry.
"There's nothing to avoid." Sehun snaps as he wrenches the cap off the bottle, dripping water on the floor in the process. "He doesn't even have my phone number. Besides I don't know anything about him."
Yixing frowns. "You know that's not true."
Sehun falls silent as he drinks, picturing Jongin stretched lazily against the washing machines.
Jongin eagerly telling him about the speed run he did in Mario Kart only using Bowser.
Jongin fitting a palm against the small of Sehun's back to pull their bodies closer together
Jongin staring at him hazily before leaning in to suck kisses along his jaw.
Sehun swallows a mouthful of water and he's unable to meet Yixing's questioning eyes.
Unsurprisingly, the next time Jongin tracks down Sehun is when he’s in the laundry room. When Jongin enters the room Sehun glares at him and ignores him, instead putting all of his attention into pouring the precise amount of detergent he needs for the next load.
“You really do always do laundry on Sunday morning.” Sehun resents the note of wonder in Jongin's voice.
“Well you do too,” grumbles Sehun.
And Jongin just leans back against the wall, stuffing his hands into his varsity jacket.
“Just because you do,” Jongin mutters at last.
Sehun doesn’t want to think about what Jongin is trying to imply so he continues stuffing clothes into the washer without giving any indication that he’s heard.
“I can’t believe you left without waking me up,” Jongin says at last, coming closer until he’s right next to Sehun. When Sehun begins to turn away, he puts his hand on the washer and now Sehun’s trapped between Jongin and the wall and he’s not really comfortable with this position.
“Well I can’t believe that you… you know… to me when you already have a boyfriend!” He tries to duck underneath Jongin’s arm, but Jongin blocks him.
“What?”
“I SAID I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU ALREADY HAVE A BOYFRIEND AND YET YOU-” Sehun’s trying not to get hysterical because Baekhyun said it’s creepy when Sehun opens his eyes wider than usual.
Jongin stares. “Whose boyfriend?”
“YOUR BOYFRIEND.” Sehun’s still trying not to get hysterical but his voice rises up several octaves of panic.
Jongin’s brow furrows. "I’m not going out with anyone.” He says each word slowly, as if Sehun is speaking another language and Sehun huffs impatiently.
“But Luhan-!”
“What about Luhan?” The furrows in Jongin’s brow deepen.
Sehun doesn’t know how anyone could be this slow. If Jongin asks him to clarify even more he’s going to lose it. “Aren’t you going out with Luhan? There was that pair of underwear and Joonmyun said you and Luhan have been together since first year and oh my god I can’t believe I became a homewrecker. Is this what it feels like to be a mistress because I don’t know if can live with this kind of strain on a daily basis.”
Jongin stares at Sehun as his eyes widen with recognition.
Then he starts to laugh, the first one light and breathy; then full out guffaws of laughter wrack through his entire body.
“Sehun, Luhan’s my roommate!”
If anything, that’s even weirder. “So you wash your roommate’s underwear?”
“No! Oh God, no!” Jongin waves his arm in frantic denial. “I don’t even know how they got into my laundry basket! Ew, just the thought of touching Luhan’s boxers makes my skin crawl.” He punctuates his sentence with several gagging motions, each one more exaggerated than the last.
“But you did touch them.”
“I had to! I couldn’t just leave them there!” Jongin is almost yelling now.
Sehun’s not sure what to say to this so he falls silent, listening to the low rumble of the washing machine and Jongin’s uneven breaths.
“Well this kind of explains last night,” Jongin muses as he leans into Sehun.
“What?” Sehun asks, even though he’s not really sure he wants to hear about it and he's a bit distracted by the narrowing distance between them.
“Basically after we’d been kissing for a bit you pushed me away, called me an adulterer, and threw up in my lap.”
“Oh.” Well that’s mortifying. Sehun tries to cover his face with his hands, but he can’t resist the temptation to look at Jongin’s face and ends up peeking at him through his fingers.
“Yeah. Luhan and I ended up carrying you back to our room because we didn’t know where your room was.”
Sehun tries to turn into the wall because he’s not really sure if he believes Jongin and he really just wants to stop hearing about Luhan, and it’s really dumb that he’s jealous that Luhan met Jongin first because it’s not really Luhan’s fault. But before he can turn away Jongin grabs him by the shoulders and pulls him back towards him.
“Sehun, do you know how much trouble I had to go through just to find out your name?” Jongin’s eyes search his, and Sehun heartbeat quickens as the brown eyes dip lower and rest on his lips. “Luhan made me clean our room for a week before he even told me the first syllable, and when you told me you knew Yixing, I practically pounced on him in the cafeteria trying to find out about how you were in high school.” Jongin's gaze shyly flickers back up to meet Sehun's.
"I'm not the one that wanted to shake hands at the end of our date night," Sehun grumbles, still bitter from hours of Baekhyun teasing him, and Jongin's composure falters.
"So you really did think that was a date? Luhan said I was being an idiot but I wasn't sure. What if you ony saw me as a friend? And I kind of chickened out." He runs his hands through his hair, and then peers back at Sehun apologetically.
Sehun knows that a blush is flooding his cheeks, and he presses his palms against them. "What did Yixing tell you about me?
Jongin’s hands slide up his shoulders, leaving pricks of excitement with every touch. Finally they rest at the nape of his neck, grazing lightly against the hairs there and pulling tremors across his skins. Jongin leans in close to Sehun's neck to whisper, “He warned me that you’re a needy brat.” And as he pulls back, Sehun feels Jongin's hair brush against his cheek.
“How come he said you’re a good guy, but I’m a brat?” He pouts up at Jongin, widening his eyes in a way that he hopes makes him look pathetic, and Jongin answers his expectations by rubbing the back of his head soothingly. Sehun leans into his touch, and for a few moments they stay like that - with Sehun’s eyes closed in appreciation and Jongin taking in every expression. Then, Jongin hand stills and Sehun opens his eyes, his gaze questioning.
“Also he said that you sometimes go commando during dance practice,” Jongin’s lips twitch as he tries to keep back a smile.
“I do not!” Sehun splutters. He reaches up to push Jongin away, but the other boy pulls them closer together and Sehun’s hands get trapped between their chests. At first he struggles weakly, wanting to get away yet not really wanting to leave, but finally he gives up, letting himself fall against Jongin's chest.
“That’s too bad,” Jongin says as he drops his hands to Sehun’s hips, fingering the top of Sehun’s jeans and when Sehun pulls back to see his expression, he sees that Jongin’s dumb grin is back.
So Sehun gets rid of it in the best way possible: by kissing it off his face.
Sehun is pretending to read his Korean history textbook on Baekhyun’s bed when his phone begins to vibrate. Flipping the textbook closed, he roots around underneath the Baekhyun’s comforter until he finds his phone. He smiles at the incoming text as he slides off the bed. “Jongin texted me so I guess I should get going,” he announces.
Grunting in acknowledgement, Baekhyun waves goodbye from his desk as he underlines the key terms covered in this chapter.
Sehun pauses in the doorway as he tugs on his sneakers. “Baekhyun, have you heard of Luhan before?”
Baekhyun closes his highlighter and flips to the next page. “You mean our RA’s boyfriend?”
"What?” He thinks of Minseok standing in the doorway eating dried squid and talking about his boyfriend from China. Of a brown-haired boy he sometimes sees coming out of Minseok's room well after the usual curfew hours. Of the giant hickeys that Minseok carelessly walks around with on his neck and shoulders.
Of those lacy red panties.
“Oh my god.”
A/N: wow it's embarrassing how many typos were in this ;w;
Thank you to Mei for holding my hand (as usual) and Jane for listening to me brainstorm at her. =w=
pg-13; 10k
-written for sncj-bb, originally posted here
-What starts out as a simple wash goes into the spin cycle with a pair of panties.
It’s reasonably early on Sunday morning - the time of day when most college students are sleeping off hangovers and regrettable hook-ups - when Sehun decides it’s the perfect time to wash his clothes. Hauling his laundry basket, he arrives in the basement room to find it blissfully empty. The last time he did laundry he was stuck with the one that wobbles violently, but this time he has his pick of the room, and he indulgently spreads his load of clothes between three washers, grinning as he lounges on top of the machines with the latest paperback thriller in his hands.
An hour and a half later, he’s considerably less happy as he tries not to die under the weight of his laundry basket. Bringing a wide basket down three flights of stairs was easy, but carrying it up three flights of stairs is a whole other matter.
He drags his feet as he shifts the overladen basket from side to side in an attempt to find some way of holding it that doesn’t put too much strain on his shoulders (or at least will let him see over the mound of clothes) when he hears a deep voice calling out. The greeting is neutral - a simple “hey, you!”- so it takes Sehun a few moments to realize that he’s the one being addressed, and even longer for him to turn with the bulky basket nestled against his chest.
Finally he inches his way around, his arms straining under the weight of his clothes. “Yeah?”
There’s a guy standing on the landing that Sehun just left, a mesh bag wedged between him in the wall. The bag is stuffed with clothes and- ah, he must be on his way to do laundry.
The next thing Sehun notices is that this guy is really good looking. Tousled dark hair and an open smile, tall with long legs and arms.
And in his hands is Sehun’s old middle school t-shirt. The shirt that Sehun feels slightly embarrassed that he can still fit into and has considered throwing out more than once because who even keeps shirts like that, but always reconsiders when he feels how soft the worn fabric is. The shirt that he only ever wears to bed anymore because he wouldn’t be caught dead in college wearing a tee that says “learning is great” in comic sans across the front.
But for some reason this stranger has not only seen this t-shirt, but is also holding it in his hands.
“Is this yours?” The boy’s voice is tight with repressed laughter and his lips twitch into a cocky smirk. Sehun can feel a flush beginning to crawl up his throat.
“Yes. It is.” He means for his words to be terse, but embarrassment leaks into his voice and when the sentence ends in a squeak he almost runs on the spot. (But running up a flight of stairs while being blinded by a laundry pile seems likely to end in even more embarrassing situations than the current one.)
“I see. Well, you dropped it back there.” The boy stretches out an arm to return the shirt.
Sehun begins to lean forward to take it when he realizes that both of his hands are occupied with the basket. He stares helplessly at the shirt, trying to figure out how he can grab it without spilling his laundry down the stairs, when the other boy pulls himself into a mock basketball stance.
“Three points,” he yells when the shirt lands in the laundry basket and lets out a small whoop of victory. But immediately after, he looks embarrassed at his outburst. Flushing, he swings his laundry bag over his shoulder. Then, tilting his head with a smile, he leaves.
He’s long gone before Sehun realizes that he forgot to say thanks.
Baekhyun has a biology textbook open over his lap and has just begun reading over synapses when he hears his door bang open.
He doesn’t bother to look up, continuing to read as he reaches for the highlighter on his desk. “What is it Sehun?”
Although Sehun only met Baekhyun in college, they quickly became close friends. Sehun would like to think that it’s because he’s too cute to pass up and Baekhyun would say that Sehun is too dumb to be left alone, but the truth is that their friendship was somehow a perfect balance of clinginess and general amusement.
“BAEK A HOT GUY PICKED UP MY LAUNDRY AND I DON’T KNOW WHO HE IS AND-“
Baekhyun leans over a bit to get a clearer look at the small coloured diagram of axons and dendrites. “Sehun. Breathe. And then breathe again, slower.” He highlights a few key words from the paragraph and then pens in some notes next to the diagram.
Sehun sucks in a lungful of air before trying again. “I met,” he inhales again, “a cute guy,” inhale, “but I don’t know his name.” Sehun decides to salvage his pride a bit by leaving out the part where the mysterious guy picked up his nightshirt.
“And you thought I would know?” Baekhyun finally looks up at his friend, arching his eyebrow.
“Of course. Baek, you know everyone.”
Baekhyun shrugs; it’s not like he can help it if he’s popular. He flips his textbook shut and swivels around fully.
“So tell me about this cute mystery guy.”
It’s a few days later before Sehun sees laundry guy (as dubbed by Baekhyun) around the dorm again.
It’s not for lack for trying because Sehun has been stalking out the laundry room all week. He even washed his sweaters separately just so he would have more loads to do. But either laundry guy doesn’t really like clean clothes or he has a huge wardrobe because Sehun didn’t run into him even once.
It’s not until Sehun is sitting in the cafeteria with Baekhyun and a few of their other friends when he happens to see laundry guy crossing the courtyard of their residence with a few friends in tow. The three boys crossing the small patch of grass are nudging into each other and laughing.
One of laundry guy’s friends is incredibly tall, and at first Sehun is intimidated by his height and angry looking eyebrows. But then he laughs at something laundry guy said, and his gummy smile makes his face look welcoming. The other friend is much shorter than the other two, but his sharp cheekbones and bowed lips are equally attractive.
Of course Baekhyun is the first person to realize that Sehun’s attention has wandered from the conversation, and he kicks at Sehun’s legs viciously. “HEY! EARTH TO SEHUN!”
Sehun shifts his legs out of Baekhyun’s reach. “Baek, baek, you know that guy I was telling you about?”
“You mean that ‘really cute guy’ who you won’t shut up abou-“
“Look it’s him! He’s on the quad.” Sehun breaks in before Baekhyun can say anymore. “The one in the middle.”
Baekhyun follows Sehun’s wild gesturing, falling all over Sehun’s lap in an attempt to see out the window. In the process, one of his elbows slams into Sehun’s ribs and Sehun considers just dumping Baek off of him altogether.
“Oh.” He peers out the window, then suddenly scrambles upright. “You mean laundry guy is KIM JONGIN?”
“Maybe? Who is Kim Jongin?”
“Who is- WHO IS KIM JONGIN?” Apparently Sehun just asked a really dumb question. Either that or he’s suddenly sprouted another head because Baekhyun is staring at him with the same affronted slack-jawed expression that he usually reserves for when Tao mixes up his pronouns and starts referring to Baekhyun as a female. “ONLY THE SON OF THE PRESIDENT. DO YOU KNOW HOW FAMOUS HE IS?”
“Really?!” Sehun nudges Baekhyun out of the way so he can see him through the window and the boy looks so carefree he never would have guessed that his father is actually the president. Although it would explain the air of cockiness that- ”He’s that famous?” Sehun repeats dumbly.
“God! No, Sehun! He’s some dance major that Yixing is friends with.” Baekhyun pats Sehun’s head in a way that he probably thinks is affectionate, but Sehun finds extremely patronizing and makes him feel like a dog.
“Oh.” The saying fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me no longer applies to Sehun and Baekhyun’s friendship because they never say whose fault it is when the number of times one has been fooled is in the hundreds.
But Sehun’s naivety is endlessly amusing to Baekhyun and five minutes later he’s still chuckling into mouthfuls of the stir fry special. “I can’t believe you actually believed me!”
“Shut up, Baek.”
“Sehun they don’t even have the same last name. Besides, if you ask me, his friends are better looking than he is. Did you see those cheekbones , Sehun?"
Baekhyun continues laughing as Sehun punches him in the arm.
Several times.
And on that day began Sehun’s quest to gather as much information about Kim Jongin as possible. Baekhyun had mentioned Yixing was friends with him, so when Sehun and Yixing have Korean History together the next day, he tries to casually bring up Kim Jongin.
“So. I ran into Jongin the other day…. He’s not around the dormitory very often is he?” Sehun begins as he flips open his notebook, trying to keep his tone as neutral and disinterested as possible. If Baekhyun is a butcher cutting away gossip from your carcass, then Yixing is that innocent looking goat you follow into the slaughterhouse.
“Who?” Yixing has almost his whole head in his backpack as he searches for a pen.
Sehun rolls his eyes.
“Kim Jongin,” he repeats, hoping that Yixing will answer his question soon so that he can go back to playing tetris on his phone.
Yixing sits back and tests the pen he finds on his notebook. The first few marks are dark, and Yixing beams at Sehun, but the ink quickly fades and soon there are only colourless scratches on his notebook. Frowning, he reaches down into his bag again.
Sehun is beginning to get impatient. “Here use this.” He hands over his extra pen.
Yixing’s face breaks out into a grin and he drops the useless pen onto the floor, kicking it underneath the row of seats before them.
Carefully, he uncaps the pen and tests it against the paper, smile growing wider as he sees dark marks on the page. “Thanks.”
Now that the pen issue is out of the way, Sehun can finally begin his interrogation. “So about Kim Jongin-” he starts, leaning toward Yixing eagerly.
But the rest of Sehun’s question is cut off when the professor begins his lecture, and Sehun slumps in his seat, disappointed and unsatisfied.
Sehun doesn’t get a chance to ask Yixing about Kim Jongin again until their next class two days later. This time Sehun hands over a pen before Yixing can even start to rummage around in his backpack.
“Oh, thanks.” Yixing grins as he uncaps the pen and begins to write in today’s date and the lecture number.
And because Sehun doesn’t want to run out of time he decides to ask him directly.
“Yixing, what do you know about Kim Jongin?”
Yixing’s face pulls into a small frown, but Sehun’s not sure if it’s because of his question or because Yixing is concentrating too intensely on drawing flowers over the date. “He’s a good guy.” He shrugs. “Why? What do you want to know?”
Where he went to high school. What his favourite foods are. What makes him smile. If he’s single.
If he’s gay.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sehun says instead. “I just ran into him the other day and was interested in what kind of person he is.”
Yixing chews the cap of the pen as he thinks, and Sehun wants to yell at him for manhandling HIS pen, but he also really wants to hear more about Jongin, and if he upsets Yixing the chances of that are pretty slim. So Sehun chews his lip and decides to let Yixing keep that pen once the lecture is over.
“He’s prety good at dancing?” Yixing finally offers before turning his attention back to his half drawn doodle.
And that was not worth sacrificing his pen for.
During the next few weeks, Sehun looks for Jongin on campus constantly. When he studies in the library, he peers over the tops of the carrels looking for a head of soft black hear and sloping shoulders. When he walks across the quad, he looks through the crowds hoping to catch a glimpse of his broad smile. Hardly anyone seems to pick up on Sehun’s restlessness, except for Baekhyun, who nudges him when he looks around the cafeteria for the sixth time that meal.
“Waiting for someone?” Baekhyun needles, eyes bright behind his large frame glasses. “Maybe someone who smells like Tide and teenage wet dreams?”
“Shut up, Baek.” Sehun grumbles into his tray of chicken curry.
And Baekhyun looks like Christmas came early, shifting around in his seat and making up short rhymes about Sehun and laundry and mysterious strangers. At the second verse, Chanyeol and Tao join in, despite the fact that neither of them seem to know what’s going on and Chanyeol keeps breaking off into covers of Beenzino and that’s definitely unrelated.
Groaning, Sehun shovels food into his mouth to distract himself from the pile of embarrassment that he calls his friends.
(But not before he checks the cafeteria a seventh time.)
After Sehun forces the rest of his load of laundry into the washing machine, he hoists himself onto the adjacent machine; letting his legs dangle over the front. He knocks his heels against the machine as he pulls out a battered copy of Intro to Ethics that he got second-hand from the university bookstore.
When Sehun entered university he enrolled in an Ethics course because he wanted an easy class and what could be easier than reading books about something that should already be common sense?
WRONG.
That was before he realized that the Ethics professor likes to assign 50 pages of reading and an essay every week. He’s not even sure what kind of essay he can write about Chapter One: Ethics and the Dinosaurs but he needs to figure it out before Thursday. If only Chanyeol hadn’t begged him to stay (“Please Sehun, if we take the class together we can split the readings, and everyone says that he’s an easy marker!”) he would have dropped it after the first class. Sehun kicks back into the machine a bit more viciously as he uncaps his highlighter.
“Oh, it’s you again!”
Sehun jerks up with a start, the the cap of his highlighter slipping from his fingers. He watches it roll across the floor and groans when it disappears underneath the machine opposite from him. That’s going to be a pain to get back.
“Sorry, did I startle you?”
Remembering that he’s no longer alone, Sehun tears his gaze away from where his highlighter cap disappeared and looks up at the newcomer. There are many things he’s on the verge of saying of course you startled me, do you think I go around dropping things for fun is at the very top of the list but when he turns all his words leave him because-
IT’S LAUNDRY GUY.
Sehun chokes on the breath he was currently trying to inhale because the guy that he’s been trying to find information about for the past week is standing in front of him. He’s not even dressed particularly stylishly, but something about the combination of the worn sweatshirt and the low-slung sweatpants looks boyishly endearing.
“Uh, hi.” Sehun’s not sure if the words caught in his throat or if he swallowed his tongue, but those two syllables are all he can manage before his throat closes in on itself.
“Hi.” When his lips bend into a quiet smile Sehun’s heart lurches traitorously.
A silence falls over the room as the other boy begins to load the washing machine and Sehun’s brain is screaming at him to say something further, but words keep getting jumbled in his head. Just don’t say his name, he reminds himself, don’t say his- “Kim Jongin.” Fuck.
Kim Jongin looks up from shoving his laundry into the washer, eyes widening in surprise and oh crap if that wasn’t the cutest thing that Sehun’s ever seen. “You know my name!”
“Well…”
Think Sehun, what’s something that doesn’t show laundry guy how creepy you are? “Yixing told me.”
How is that not creepy? Great now he’s going to think that you’ve been asking around about him. It’s not like you weren’t but he doesn’t really need to know that does he-
“And you’re Oh Sehun.”
Sehun glances over just in time to see Jongin smiling back. Then he turns, pushing up his sleeves before he pours laundry detergent into the machine. For a moment Jongin’s toned forearms distract him, but then Sehun remembers how to speak again.
“How do you know my name?”
Jongin doesn’t answer, only smiles, and then he’s pulling himself onto the machine across from Sehun. “Isn’t it weird that we only seem to run into each other when we’re doing laundry?”
The heavy textbook slips down his lap and Sehun barely catches it before it crashes to the floor. “Yeah.”
Jongin doesn’t seem to be fazed by Sehun’s short answers. Instead he drums his fingers on the edge of the washer and grins at Sehun. “So, how do you know Yixing?”
“We used to take dance lessons together,” Sehun answers, chewing on his lip fretfully. Learning more about laundry guy is infinitely more exciting than the etymology of the word ethics and Sehun wonders if he should give up all pretense of studying and just close his textbook altogether.
Jongin leans forward as if he’s actually interested in knowing more about Oh Sehun, and Sehun’s heart flutters. “Oh! That’s so cool! I’m a dance major actually!”
Yeah I know, Sehun thinks, but out loud he says “Oh neat.”
The conversation continues, following the stilted path that conversations between new acquaintances usually follow. (Where are you from? What’s your major?) Then they begin discussing Yixing, and while listening to Jongin recount the time that Yixing snuck back into the dance studio after hours because he forgot his lucky towel is pretty funny, he’s more interested in what kind of stupid stuff Jongin does.
Then Jongin gets a text and Sehun perks up at the short jingle.
“Zelda?” Sehun asks, although he already knows that it’s the Song of Storms.
“Yeah, you play?”
Sehun smirks. Does he play?!
He has all the games memorized.
Somehow, despite living in the same dormitory Sehun and Jongin only seem to run into each other in the laundry room. He had hoped that one day he’d catch Jongin in the cafeteria, but it turns out that their schedules are completely incompatible; with Sehun’s classes during the day and Jongin’s classes in the evening.
But both of them have the weekends free, and they come to an unspoken agreement that Sunday morning is always spent chatting while they wait for their clothes to finish washing.
Sehun enjoys these mornings a lot, always going to bed on Saturday giddy with the anticipation of seeing Jongin the next day, and through these lazy mornings Sehun starts to learn little things about Jongin.
Like that he hardly ever wears socks that match and that he’s a sucker for superhero movies.
“Did you see the graphics in the new X-Men movie?” Jongin says as he feeds bills into the change machine.
Today Sehun brought his DS down to the laundry room and he looks up from Cooking Mama, shaking his head.
“What? You haven’t seen it yet?” Jongin appears to be so outraged at the prospect that he forgets the catch the quarters spilling out of the machine, and a few of them roll over the concrete floor before colliding with Jongin’s laundry bag. Jongin reaches down to collect the wayward coins, and when he asks “Are you free Friday? Maybe we can go see it together?” Sehun finds himself staring in shock at Jongin’s butt instead of his face.
This time, when Sehun tries Baekhyun’s door, it’s locked. He rattles the doorknob, waiting for Baekhyun to hear his pitiful whines and let him into the room when the door across the hall cracks open.
“If you’re looking for Baekhyun, he went out. He even stopped by to tell me he might not be back before curfew.” Minseok stuffs some dry squid into his mouth and chews thoughtfully. “So you should stop making a ruckus in the hall before someone files a noise complaint form.”
Sehun glares at him. “Shouldn’t you deal with the complaints after they come in?”
“Hey, I’m just trying to fulfill my RA duties.” Minseok grins, holding out a piece of dried squid. “You want some? My boyfriend just got back from China and he brought back a whole bunch.”
Sehun shakes his head and Minseok shrugs, eating the piece of squid himself as he watches Sehun pull out his phone.
laundry boy asked me out on a date
Baekhyun’s response comes almost immediately: what?
well, mb it’s a date
Sehun’s phone beeps again. ok hold tight ill be bak soon
Two hours later Sehun is curled up into Baekhyun’s comforter on Baekhyun’s bed drinking tea out of Baekhyun’s mug.
“So, what about this date invitation?”
Sehun curls his fingers around the handle of the mug and retreats further into the comforter. What if it wasn’t really a date and he’s just freaking out over nothing?
“Sehun, I cut my date with Jongdae short for this so you better spill or I’m going to start revoking best friend privileges.”
He tries whimpering to gain some sympathy, but Baekhyun’s expression stays determined.
“He asked me to go see the new X-Men movie with him.” Sehun mumbles into the Chamomile herbal blend, and Baekhyun snorts.
“So what’s the problem?”
Baekhyun’s nonchalance is a bit irritating, but before he begins to defend himself, the pure panic of maybe going on a kinda sorta date thing wells within him and he yelps,”Baekhyun help me I don’t know what to do on a date!”
And Baekhyun laughs as he ruffles Sehun’s hair.
“Aww our little Sehunnie’s growing up!”
Sehun grumbles his protests as he tries to minimize the havoc that Baekhyun’s hands are wrecking on his coiffured hair.
Then his fingers still as a thought occurs to him. “Wait, who’s Jongdae?”
Sehun nervously checks his watch as he waits for Jongin to show up to their not-date date. Baekhyun helped him pick out an outfit of nice (but not too nice) clothes, and now Sehun’s standing around awkwardly wondering if his trousers and cardigan are okay or if he should have gone with jeans and a t-shirt.
Jongin shows up ten minutes before the movie’s supposed to start and Sehun has already worn a path into the carpet with his nervous pacing.
“Do we still have time to get tickets?” Sehun says anxiously when Jongin pulls out two strips of paper.
“Already got them! Now c’mon, if you don’t hurry we’ll miss the previews!”
Jongin’s hand is tight, but not uncomfortable around Sehun’s wrist as he drags him towards the theatre, Sehun’s pulse trembling against Jongin’s fingertips.
Since Jongin bought the tickets, Sehun insists on buying popcorn, and he shoves the large tub of buttery goodness in the cup holder between the two of their seats.
He secretly hopes that they’ll have one of those cheesy romantic moments where their hands brush as they both reach for the popcorn at the same time. But it seems that every time Sehun reaches over to get popcorn, Jongin is just retracting his hand and Jongin is too polite, waiting for Sehun to finish grabbing a handful before sticking his own hand into the tub. Finally Sehun decides that even coincidences need a little push sometimes. He waits until Jongin just sticks his hand into the tub before he lunges his hand in as well... and knocks over the tub of popcorn into Jongin’s lap.
“I’m sorry, I just-” Sehun begins to babble, thankful that the darkness of the theatre covers the flush on his cheeks. There are smudges of butter on Jongin's jeans and Sehun is pretty much the biggest idiot ever, getting worked up just because he wanted to touch Jongin's hand.
But then he can't speak because there's popcorn against his mouth. Jongin smiles encouragingly and Sehun flicks out his tongue to pull the kernel into his mouth.
"Don't worry," Jongin mumbles as he scoops the popcorn off his lap, alternating between stuffing pieces into Sehun’s mouth and his own.
He tries to apologize again but Jongin just waves away his apologies, and a warmth is pooling in his stomach because he's feeding him. They were barely touching hands and now Jongin's hand is brushing against his mouth and it feels like his heart just gained a zillion experience points when the tip of his tongue grazes Jongin's thumb.
Once the movie begins Sehun finds out that Jongin likes to talk during movies, so Sehun listens as Jongin tries to introduce each character that comes on screen. He has a bit of difficulty pronouncing some of the foreign names and Sehun bites back a grin as he listens to Jongin mumble through some of the more difficult ones. It’s a bit distracting to have Jongin speaking to him but he doesn’t tell him to stop because he likes feeling Jongin’s breath buffer out against his ear. But when Jongin introduces the next character, Sehun can’t keep quiet.
“It’s Professor Xavier, not Mister X.” corrects Sehun.
“Oh. I’m sorry. Professor Xavier.” Jongin exaggerates Sehun’s thick Korean accent and Sehun rolls his eyes, biting his lip to stop a smile from spreading across his face.
Sehun enjoyed the movie, but he enjoyed sitting next to Jongin even more. He liked the way Jongin's knees knocked against his during the exciting parts and later, when they walk back to the dorm at the end of the night, he leans closer to Jongin so that the backs of their hands can brush together and each brush of contact sends a flare of shivers racing through him.
"Tonight was great, I had a lot of fun." Jongin turns to face him as they reach the entrance.
Sehun smiles, "Me too."
This is the defining moment, he thinks eagerly. The moment that he'll finally know if it was a date or not. He watches Jongin's lips open slightly, watches the way his lips move slightly with every breath. Sehun's whole body thrums with nervousness and Jongin starts to lean in and Sehun thinks this is it.
Jongin holds out his hand and Sehun stares at it.
"We should do this again sometime." Jongin's smile is open and careless and Sehun's stomach twists into knots. Maybe he misread everything: the tickets, the popcorn, the whispering. His chest tightens uncomfortably.
"Yeah," Sehun agrees weakly as he shakes the outstretched hand and the adrenaline washes away, leaving him weak in the knees for nothing.
"How was your date?" Baekhyun says when he bursts into Sehun's room early the next morning.
"Mrgh?" asks Sehun. He smacks his lips a few times, but his mouth still tastes like death in the morning.
"How did you date go? I thought you were going to stop by my room afterwards but you never came and I couldn't sleep because of it." Baekhyun helpfully adds air quotes around the date, just in case Sehun forgot that the situation between him and Jongin is still a bit ambiguous.
Sehun glances at the clock. Seven o'clock in bright red numbers glares back at him and he rolls away from Baekhyun. Maybe he can still pretend that he's sleeping and Baekhyun will go away.
But instead of going away Baekhyun climbs on top of him. "See these bags?" Baekhyun points accusingly underneath his eyes as he shoves his face right next to Sehun's, and Sehun blearily cracks open his eyes, squinting at Baekhyun because he really doesn't look any different.
"Not rea-"
"These are the bags I got from not knowing if you returned home safely so you better spill." Baekhyun leans back, settling his hands on his hips.
"Get off," Sehun groans "You're too heavy." He pulls his comforter back over his head, trying to block out Baekhyun's indignant yelps that just because Sehun has Victora's Secret model legs he shouldn't make fun of people that are more- no, even less hippy than he is.
"You shook hands?"
"Shut up, Baek."
Once again the laundry room is empty except for the two of them, and they settle into doing school work. Jongin props a textbook open on his lap, and Sehun is looks through his latest Ethics essay, trying to figure out how Chanyeol got a better mark than he did. He flips through the pages idly when Jongin breaks the silence.
“Can I see you dance?”
“What?” Sehun drops his ethics essay on the floor, and then lunges for it before Jongin can see the bright red C+ marked on the first page. Apparently The Land Before Time is not an acceptable source for a college paper.
“Let me see you dance?” Jongin asks as he sets aside Economics for Dance Majors.
Sehun shuffles his papers into a reasonably organized pile before shoving them into his backpack. “What? Right now?” It’s been ages since he has seriously danced and he feels a bit uncomfortable showing off moves from middle school in front of a dance major.
“Why not?”
“There’s not really a lot of space here.” He gestures to the rows of laundry machines crowding the room.
“So?” But Sehun just stares at Jongin incredulously. “Fine, I’ll go first.” Jongin slides off the washer and stretches out before settling into position.
Because Sehun used to dance, he’s familiar with what good dancing looks like.
And Jongin is good. Each motion is fluid, yet strong, and the way that Jongin dances makes Sehun burn with envy and competitiveness. So Jongin can spin several times on the same pivot foot, but can he do the splits? His body pulses with the need to dance and he fidgets as he watches Jongin’s body slide through each movement.
By the time Jongin finishes, Sehun hops off the washer eagerly. “Now I’ll show you how it’s done,” he says with brash overconfidence, and Jongin grins at the challenge in his words.
“Oh, really?” he nods. “Let’s see then,” and Sehun takes that as his cue to start. At first Sehun’s movements are awkward, but slowly his body begins to remember the dance and the steps come more easily. He remembers how he and Yixing ran through the moves endlessly before their recital, repeating each one until the snap of each action was crisp and now the hours of practice carry him thoughtlessly through the motions.
When he ends his bangs are slick with sweat, and he's breathing heavily but he's happy. Jongin claps and Sehun flushes with pride.
Their Korean history professor is late today, but there’s supposed to be a quiz today so Sehun is using the extra time to fill in the gaps in his notes. There are a few points where he must have fallen asleep because instead of notes on shamanism in Korea there are a bunch of illegible scribbles and a few smudges of drool, and Sehun flips through Yixing’s notes to find the missing information.
At last their professor shows up and there are groans around the lecture hall when he pulls out a massive stack of papers for the TAs to hand out.
Sehun passes Yixing’s notes back to him, when he suddenly thinks about the impromptu dance session they had in the laundry room.
“Hey Yixing, do you want to try dancing together again?”
Yixing looks up from gnawing on Sehun’s his pen and grins, “Sure.”
Jongin and Sehun are in the laundry room discussing who the best Robin was when it happens.
“I don’t care what you say, Jason Todd is definitely NOT the best Robin!” Sehun is saying just as a small piece of red cloth slips from Jongin’s pile of clean laundry and flops to the floor.
The shape, once the cloth settles on the floor, is definitely underwear-like. And Sehun finds himself staring at it until- “Wow that is a lot of lace for one pair of underpants.”
Jongin snatches the underwear from the floor, his cheeks reddening. “It’s not mine, okay?”
“Sureee, it isn’t,” Sehun grabs his laundry basket, laughing as he makes his way for the door, when Jongin pushes in front of him and blocks his path.
“No, Sehun.” He grabs Sehun’s shoulders. “Look at me. They’re really not mine.”
He’s deadly serious when he looks Sehun straight in the eyes, and Sehun’s breath catches because he never noticed how long Jongin’s eyelashes are or that he smells faintly of a deodorant that smells like clean laundry (and isn’t that fitting?)
And he’s staring so intently, so earnestly that Sehun’s mouth moves before his brain can catch up, forming the words “Okay, I believe you,” before he knows it.
“Good,” Jongin sighs with relief, completely oblivious as Sehun fights off the urge to fist his hands in Jongin’s collar and pull him closer.
Baekhyun has just read through a paragraph on proteins and enzymes when his door crashes open and his desk lamp topples over. He sighs and sticks a post-it to the open page.
“Sehun, please close the door and stop overreacting.”
After two cups of tea and several handfuls of gummy worms, Baekhyun has worked out the whole story and is ready to start heavily judging.
“So you think he’s in a relationship,” Baekhyun repeats as he adjusts his glasses. He's not sure if Baekhyun really needs glasses or not, but they always seem to make an appearance when Baekhyun needs to peer over them at Sehun judgingly.
“Yes.” He has to admit that it sounds kind of dumb when he says it out loud,but Baekhyun didn’t see the sheer amount of silk and lace that went into those underwear.
“And you think this because he was washing a pair of boxers.”
“Not just boxers, Baekhyun!” Sehun trills. “These were risque. Instead of boxers it was more like lingerie or even.” He drops the volume of his voice to a whisper. “A thong.”
Baekhyun stares at him over the top of his glasses, then he bursts into hysterical laughter.
Although Sehun had asked Yixing to dance with him, the invitation had slipped his mind until Yixing called him.
"I'm five minutes away from your dorm. Be ready to dance." Yixing had said before he hung up and Sehun was left listening to a dial tone.
As soon as they got to the studio Yixing had jumped right into action. He demonstrated a few routines he was choreographing and then led Sehun through it at a mercilessly quick pace.
If Yixing is considered a space cadet then music and dance are what ground him to Earth.
"You've gotten better," Sehun whines as they finish the routine. Too tired to keep standing, he flops against the wall of mirrors.
"The last time we practiced together was several years ago," Yixing reminds him as he lobs Sehun a bottle of water."Of course I'm better now."
Sehun scrunches his nose. He's right - of course - but it does nothing to ease the ache in his muscles or the bitterness that Yixing's barely out of breath while Sehun fights to get air in his lungs. The sweat coating his hands makes the water bottle difficult to open and Sehun grumbles. He holds out the bottle to Yixing pleadingly.
Yixing flicks water at him. "Don't you dare try to use that aegyo crap on me." Despite his harsh words a smile tugs at his lips and Sehun grins, wiping his hands on his t-shirt before trying the cap again.
At least some things hadn't changed.
Friday night is movie night, so Kyungsoo treks down to the kitchen to make popcorn while Baekhyun and Chanyeol have the same squabble about who will get to sit in the comfiest armchair. A squabble that always ends in Chanyeol trying to sit on Baekhyun’s lap and Baekhyun screaming about how tall people with boney butts should just sit on the floor. Most of the time Baekhyun wins and Chanyeol sits on the couch, curling up against Kyungsoo while Sehun settles on Kyungsoo’s other side.
When the ending credits begin to roll, Chanyeol bounds up to the DVD player. “So, how about another movie? We could watch that Japanese horror one?” He shuffles through the pile of DVDs."Or maybe that Chinese comedy that Tao recommended?"
Before Chanyeol can suggest a movie that might actually tempt him into staying up longer, Sehun hoists himself off the couch. “I’d love to but I have to go to bed early tonight. I’m playing paintball tomorrow.”
The DVD case Chanyeol was holding falls to the ground, “What.”
“Paintball?” Sehun repeats, in a voice that’s more timid and uncertain that it had been just moments ago.
“Sehun you hate being hit by projectiles. Don’t you remember all those times in middle school that you faked doctor’s notes so you could sit out of dodgeball?” Kyungsoo’s voice floats up from somewhere on the floor.
“But dodgeball’s different than paintball!” protests Sehun.
Chanyeol snorts loudly, “Yeah, it’s different in that the things hitting you will be smaller and hurt more.”
Sehun wrinkles his nose, “But isn’t paintball kind of like a first person shooter? So maybe it won’t be so bad?” He looks around the room when nobody bothers to answer him. “Maybe?”
“You just keep telling yourself that,” Baekhyun says as he leans over to pat Sehun on the hip.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” is the first thing that Joonmyun says when Jongin opens the car door.
The car is the kind of old beat up car you would expect a college senior to own. There’re a few rips in the fabric of the seats and when Joonmyun was driving up, the car appeared to list to one side a bit. Jongin takes the front seat, so Sehun slips into the back.
“That’s okay.” Jongin smiles, and he and Joonmyun fall into quiet conversion as Sehun runs the rules of paintball through his mind.
Joonmyun flicks on his blinker and when he turns onto the highway the hum of the air against the car nearly drowns out the music of the stereo. “Is Luhan coming?”
“Nah, he’s busy cramming for a test.” Jongin reaches over to bump up the volume.
Sehun wants to ask who the hell Luhan is, but before he gets the chance,Joonmyun continues. “You and Luhan have been together for a long time.” Oh. Oh.
“Just since first year, I guess?” Jongin replies, laughing softly.
“I was surprised that you got along so well since Luhan’s a few years older, but somehow it worked out didn’t it?”
Twisting to face Joonmyun, Jongin agrees, “Yup, somehow.” His face slowly breaks into a grin and it’s so bright that Sehun has to look away.
Sehun stares out the window at the highway signs racing by and wonders if Luhan is the owner of a pair of very lacy red underwear.
When the car pulls up, three figures come up to greet them. Sehun recognizes the tallest as one of the friends that Jongin had waked across the quad with all those weeks ago, and Yixing is immediately distinguishable with his newly bleached hair. Then the last person turns around and Sehun is shocked.
“Wait. How do you know Minseok?”
Jongin swivels around in his seat. “Through Luhan of course!” he replies as if it should be obvious but Sehun fails to see the connection. If Luhan is a few years older, then maybe the two of them are classmates?
The car door wrenches open Yixing pokes his head into the backseat. "Are you coming or what?"
And Sehun pushes Yixing out of the way so he can get out of the car.
Sehun nudges Jongin as they’re standing in line. They're fitted with helmets and safety gear, and a paintgun rests in the crook of Sehun's arm, making him bolder than usual. “Hey, I bet I can shoot more people than you can.”
“You’re on” there’s a wicked edge to Jongin’s boyish grin as he shifts his grip on the paint gun.
The gates open and they enter the forested area, each going their own way. Sehun ducks behind a barrier made of parts of an old car as he slinks down to the ground. Dirt on his pants is a small price to pay for a good kill.
It's been awhile since Joonmyun has been out in the nature and he feels life returning to him with every breath he takes. Air in the countryside is so fresh. The leaves rustle from the breeze and patches of light flicker over the ground, and Joonmyun closes his eyes and enjoys the sunlight on his face. The whole forest is teeming with life and he's grateful to be a part of it. In fact, it's incredible that so many animals can live in one area. Joonmyun tilts his head when he hears a birdcall he doesn't recognize. What kind of bird would-
He feels something bite into his leg and he crumples to the forest floor.
Sehun cackles in the distance, “One.”
Yixing lounges against a tree, trying to catch his breath as he refills his paintballs. Soon after he entered the fenced area he ran smack into Kris and both of them had scrambled for their guns, firing wildly as they dove for cover. In retrospect, it's strange that they were a mere three feet apart and neither was able to hit the other, but Yixing is not one to dwell on the past. He can hear Kris fumbling through the forest a few yards away, and he pops open a new container of paintballs so he'll be ready when Kris comes bumbling through he foliage. He just starts to pour them into his gun when something stings against his arm and the paintballs scatter to the ground.
"Two," Sehun grins.
He wonders if Jongin has gotten anyone yet. He turns to sink back into the bushes in search of his next prey, but yelps when he feels something sting his butt.
“Three,” Minseok smirks as he lowers the gun to his shoulder. “I guess I win.”
Sehun groans from where he lies on the ground and chokes when he inhales part off a leaf.
Five hours later Sehun, bursts into Baekhyun’s room limping and hair covered in five different colors of paint. The knees of his pants are smeared with mud and there’s a leaf stuck behind his ear.
“Paintball is nothing like counterstrike!” he whines.
Baekhyun looks up from his novel. “I’m surprised that they let you in the car like that.”
When Sehun first arrives at the party he’s horribly uncomfortable, clutching a six-pack of hard lemonade in one hand and being dragged along by Baekhyun by the other. Even though he knows that he looks good in his striped shirt and trousers, he's not sure if other people know, so he tries to hide behind Baekhyun, a feat in itself when Baekhyun is about half a foot shorter than him.
“You’re only here because your boyfriend wants to get you drunk,” Sehun grumbles. “So why am I here?”
Baekhyun nods to several people they pass, and Sehun wonders who they are. “Because Jongdae is friends with your boy.”
Sehun blanches. “Don’t call him that!”
“If you don’t like it then just start going out for real so I can call him your boyfriend instead.”
“It’s not like I can go out with him if he’s already dating someone else! Besides, his name is Jongin. Why can’t you just call him that?”
Grabbing a beer from the fridge, Baekhyun snorts. It seems that Baekhyun still walks away from arguments he knows he’s going to lose because next he says, “Well, I’m off to find Jongdae,” sauntering from room as he calls “have fun” from over his shoulder.
Yixing finds him around the time he’s pouring his third shot of tequila. “Jongin’s here. Weren’t you asking me about him?” He sidles up next to Sehun and pulls the bottle of tequila from his hands.
Sehun splutters into the shot and more of it ends up on his shirt than in his mouth. It seems that Baekhyun wasn’t lying when he said that Jongdae and Jongin were friends.
“Is Luhan here too?”
Yixing’s head jerks up and he splashes some of the tequila across his hand. “You know Luhan?”
“I’ve heard of him… is he here too?” Sehun's pulse thunders in his ears. Please say no.
Yixing hums as he laps the tequila off his hand. “I think I saw him with Jongin actually.”
Oh.
Sehun spends the whole night trying to avoid Jongin while not avoiding him, all the while accepting drinks from friends he happens to run into. Tao makes him do Jager bombs with him and Chanyeol pushes a questionable blueish green cocktail into his hands that he never would have drank if he hadn’t already been several drinks past losing his cognitive reasoning abilities.
He spots Jongin several times during the night, each time talking with the same brown-haired boy. Luhan, he guesses.
The hallways of the dorm are unbearably hot with the crowds of people and Sehun clings to the walls as he searches for someplace cooler to sit down. He wanders down several different hallways before he finally finds what he’s looking for: a couch in a room free of people.
Sehun sinks into the cushions and lets his head fall back as he tries to calm his throbbing head. He can’t remember how many drinks he’s had and he definitely shouldn’t have let Yixing talk him into body shots because there’s still vodka in his belly button. He’s counting his breaths and wondering what the fine is for throwing up all over school property when he hears someone approaching the room.
“This might be the first time we’re hanging out in dorm together where we’re not doing laundry.” Jongin chuckles as he slips next to Sehun on the tattered tweed couch. The fabric used to be some pattern of plaid but all the stripes have faded to various intensities of yellow brown.
“Yeah, prolly.” Sehun is starting to slur his words a bit and that’s probably not a good sign but he can’t bring himself to care right now because he’s drunk and sitting on a couch with cute laundry guy.
“You don’t need to call me that anymore you know,” and Jongin has that stupid shit-eating grin that Sehun hates (and secretly loves) on his face.
“Mmr?”
“Laundry guy.” Jongin points at Sehun with the cup of beer in his hand and Sehun wonders why he didn’t just use his other hand, but that’s when Sehun realizes that Jongin’s other arm is slung around his shoulders and WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN. “You don’t have to call me that anymore.”
And Jongin’s words are catching up with Sehun’s brain and he’s freaking out a bit because when did Jongin hear Sehun call him laundry guy and oh god what else is he saying in his inebriated state-
“You said it again.” Jongin scolds, and his face is getting closer and either Jongin is a mind reader or Sehun has lost the ability to think without saying everything out loud and he hopes it’s the latter, although he has to admit that it would be kind of cool to be able to read minds-
“Please stop talking.”
And then Jongin’s lips are on his, swallowing up the last bits of his rambling thoughts. His lips are warm and dry against Sehun’s, and Sehun slips his tongue out to moisten them; first licking along Jongin’s bottom lip, and then into his mouth. After days of thinking and wondering, he can finally touch Jongin and his hands trace all he can reach, smoothing over his arms and then the cotton of his t-shirt, then tangling in the strands of Jongin’s hair so he can pull Jongin deeper deeper deeper into the kiss as his own eyes flutter closed.
The next morning Sehun finds himself in a dorm room. An unfamiliar dorm room.
The morning sunlight is bright across his face and he takes in the room uneasily, noting the messy pile of clothes on the floor, the extra bed, and two chaotic desks pushed next to each other.
“Where-“
And then an arm snakes around his stomach and Sehun’s self-defense training almost kicks in but instead he flips up the blanket and cute laundry guy lying next to him in just a pair of boxers and his eyes definitely don’t linger on the muscles in his back or the expanse of tanned skin.
“Oh my god.”
When Yixing tosses a water bottle to Sehun at the end of practice the bottle hits him in the gut and he groans.
"Hey, give me a warning or something!" Sehun complains as he rubs a hand over his poor stomach.
"I heard you've been avoiding Jongin." Yixing's eyes are steely and it's true that the ones that are the most laid back are the scariest when they're angry.
"There's nothing to avoid." Sehun snaps as he wrenches the cap off the bottle, dripping water on the floor in the process. "He doesn't even have my phone number. Besides I don't know anything about him."
Yixing frowns. "You know that's not true."
Sehun falls silent as he drinks, picturing Jongin stretched lazily against the washing machines.
Jongin eagerly telling him about the speed run he did in Mario Kart only using Bowser.
Jongin fitting a palm against the small of Sehun's back to pull their bodies closer together
Jongin staring at him hazily before leaning in to suck kisses along his jaw.
Sehun swallows a mouthful of water and he's unable to meet Yixing's questioning eyes.
Unsurprisingly, the next time Jongin tracks down Sehun is when he’s in the laundry room. When Jongin enters the room Sehun glares at him and ignores him, instead putting all of his attention into pouring the precise amount of detergent he needs for the next load.
“You really do always do laundry on Sunday morning.” Sehun resents the note of wonder in Jongin's voice.
“Well you do too,” grumbles Sehun.
And Jongin just leans back against the wall, stuffing his hands into his varsity jacket.
“Just because you do,” Jongin mutters at last.
Sehun doesn’t want to think about what Jongin is trying to imply so he continues stuffing clothes into the washer without giving any indication that he’s heard.
“I can’t believe you left without waking me up,” Jongin says at last, coming closer until he’s right next to Sehun. When Sehun begins to turn away, he puts his hand on the washer and now Sehun’s trapped between Jongin and the wall and he’s not really comfortable with this position.
“Well I can’t believe that you… you know… to me when you already have a boyfriend!” He tries to duck underneath Jongin’s arm, but Jongin blocks him.
“What?”
“I SAID I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU ALREADY HAVE A BOYFRIEND AND YET YOU-” Sehun’s trying not to get hysterical because Baekhyun said it’s creepy when Sehun opens his eyes wider than usual.
Jongin stares. “Whose boyfriend?”
“YOUR BOYFRIEND.” Sehun’s still trying not to get hysterical but his voice rises up several octaves of panic.
Jongin’s brow furrows. "I’m not going out with anyone.” He says each word slowly, as if Sehun is speaking another language and Sehun huffs impatiently.
“But Luhan-!”
“What about Luhan?” The furrows in Jongin’s brow deepen.
Sehun doesn’t know how anyone could be this slow. If Jongin asks him to clarify even more he’s going to lose it. “Aren’t you going out with Luhan? There was that pair of underwear and Joonmyun said you and Luhan have been together since first year and oh my god I can’t believe I became a homewrecker. Is this what it feels like to be a mistress because I don’t know if can live with this kind of strain on a daily basis.”
Jongin stares at Sehun as his eyes widen with recognition.
Then he starts to laugh, the first one light and breathy; then full out guffaws of laughter wrack through his entire body.
“Sehun, Luhan’s my roommate!”
If anything, that’s even weirder. “So you wash your roommate’s underwear?”
“No! Oh God, no!” Jongin waves his arm in frantic denial. “I don’t even know how they got into my laundry basket! Ew, just the thought of touching Luhan’s boxers makes my skin crawl.” He punctuates his sentence with several gagging motions, each one more exaggerated than the last.
“But you did touch them.”
“I had to! I couldn’t just leave them there!” Jongin is almost yelling now.
Sehun’s not sure what to say to this so he falls silent, listening to the low rumble of the washing machine and Jongin’s uneven breaths.
“Well this kind of explains last night,” Jongin muses as he leans into Sehun.
“What?” Sehun asks, even though he’s not really sure he wants to hear about it and he's a bit distracted by the narrowing distance between them.
“Basically after we’d been kissing for a bit you pushed me away, called me an adulterer, and threw up in my lap.”
“Oh.” Well that’s mortifying. Sehun tries to cover his face with his hands, but he can’t resist the temptation to look at Jongin’s face and ends up peeking at him through his fingers.
“Yeah. Luhan and I ended up carrying you back to our room because we didn’t know where your room was.”
Sehun tries to turn into the wall because he’s not really sure if he believes Jongin and he really just wants to stop hearing about Luhan, and it’s really dumb that he’s jealous that Luhan met Jongin first because it’s not really Luhan’s fault. But before he can turn away Jongin grabs him by the shoulders and pulls him back towards him.
“Sehun, do you know how much trouble I had to go through just to find out your name?” Jongin’s eyes search his, and Sehun heartbeat quickens as the brown eyes dip lower and rest on his lips. “Luhan made me clean our room for a week before he even told me the first syllable, and when you told me you knew Yixing, I practically pounced on him in the cafeteria trying to find out about how you were in high school.” Jongin's gaze shyly flickers back up to meet Sehun's.
"I'm not the one that wanted to shake hands at the end of our date night," Sehun grumbles, still bitter from hours of Baekhyun teasing him, and Jongin's composure falters.
"So you really did think that was a date? Luhan said I was being an idiot but I wasn't sure. What if you ony saw me as a friend? And I kind of chickened out." He runs his hands through his hair, and then peers back at Sehun apologetically.
Sehun knows that a blush is flooding his cheeks, and he presses his palms against them. "What did Yixing tell you about me?
Jongin’s hands slide up his shoulders, leaving pricks of excitement with every touch. Finally they rest at the nape of his neck, grazing lightly against the hairs there and pulling tremors across his skins. Jongin leans in close to Sehun's neck to whisper, “He warned me that you’re a needy brat.” And as he pulls back, Sehun feels Jongin's hair brush against his cheek.
“How come he said you’re a good guy, but I’m a brat?” He pouts up at Jongin, widening his eyes in a way that he hopes makes him look pathetic, and Jongin answers his expectations by rubbing the back of his head soothingly. Sehun leans into his touch, and for a few moments they stay like that - with Sehun’s eyes closed in appreciation and Jongin taking in every expression. Then, Jongin hand stills and Sehun opens his eyes, his gaze questioning.
“Also he said that you sometimes go commando during dance practice,” Jongin’s lips twitch as he tries to keep back a smile.
“I do not!” Sehun splutters. He reaches up to push Jongin away, but the other boy pulls them closer together and Sehun’s hands get trapped between their chests. At first he struggles weakly, wanting to get away yet not really wanting to leave, but finally he gives up, letting himself fall against Jongin's chest.
“That’s too bad,” Jongin says as he drops his hands to Sehun’s hips, fingering the top of Sehun’s jeans and when Sehun pulls back to see his expression, he sees that Jongin’s dumb grin is back.
So Sehun gets rid of it in the best way possible: by kissing it off his face.
Sehun is pretending to read his Korean history textbook on Baekhyun’s bed when his phone begins to vibrate. Flipping the textbook closed, he roots around underneath the Baekhyun’s comforter until he finds his phone. He smiles at the incoming text as he slides off the bed. “Jongin texted me so I guess I should get going,” he announces.
Grunting in acknowledgement, Baekhyun waves goodbye from his desk as he underlines the key terms covered in this chapter.
Sehun pauses in the doorway as he tugs on his sneakers. “Baekhyun, have you heard of Luhan before?”
Baekhyun closes his highlighter and flips to the next page. “You mean our RA’s boyfriend?”
"What?” He thinks of Minseok standing in the doorway eating dried squid and talking about his boyfriend from China. Of a brown-haired boy he sometimes sees coming out of Minseok's room well after the usual curfew hours. Of the giant hickeys that Minseok carelessly walks around with on his neck and shoulders.
Of those lacy red panties.
“Oh my god.”
A/N: wow it's embarrassing how many typos were in this ;w;
Thank you to Mei for holding my hand (as usual) and Jane for listening to me brainstorm at her. =w=