What Junmyeon practiced over and over again in his head, to his friends, and in front of his mirror: "Hi, I'm Junmyeon. You're really beautiful."

("Boys aren't beautiful," Baekhyun had argued--unhelpfully. "Shut up, ," Junmyeon ordered, "He's beautiful to me." Later, when Luhan found out about the conversation he refused his boyfriend any kisses until Baekhyun apologized multiple times and even shouted from the school rooftop "Luhan is the most beautiful boy in the whole world.")

What Junmyeon actually said: "Your hair is the color of honey, can I taste it?!" (What. Even.)

Baekhyun and Luhan, entwined and distracted but still standing behind their friend as some strange sort of wingmen, could be heard giggling intermittently between the vaguely wet sound of lazy kisses. (Gross.) The object of Junmyeon's affections, Chinese exchange student Zhang Yixing, merely smiled uncertainly, bowed in polite greeting, and walked away without a word. And Junmyeon himself was left standing awkwardly at the front of the lunch line with a killer blush and a rejected confession, but without a food tray.

"Your love life ," Baekhyun commented bluntly. Junmyeon turned to face his friend, ready to defend himself, but instead got an eyeful of Luhan the underside of Baekhyun's right ear and gagged. He turned his gaze away from his friends--they were kissing again anyway--and watched forlornly as Yixing settled comfortably into an empty seat at a table full of his own friends. When the Chinese boy looked up and caught Junmyeon staring, Yixing smiled again.

"It's not fair," Junmyeon complained not long after, clutching a hand to his broken heart as he followed Baekhyun and Luhan all the way back to the back of the line. "I can't even be upset that he basically ignored my confession. Those damn dimples."

"Life's not fair," Luhan replied before Baekhyun could. (Aish. Those two, really. Junmyeon swore they were the same person sometimes. He'd even make jokes about them being related if it weren't for the fact that Baekhyun could punch really hard for someone so unbelievably tiny.) Junmyeon's two friends exchanged a satisfied high five and resumed giggling at his expense.

~~~

When Junmyeon told his biology partner, Yifan, about the whole debacle later that day, the Chinese giant's response was to giggle too. (The sight of Yifan's caterpillar eyebrows dancing across his face as he laughed in high pitched spurts was actually really disturbing to Junmyeon's psyche. And maybe also his mental development.) Yifan seemed more amused than Baekhyun and Luhan combined, though. Since he wasn't even there to witness Junmyeon's great embarassment for himself, Junmyeon knew something was up and bugged Yifan about it until the other boy caved.

"Dude," Yifan guffawed as quietly as he could so as to avoid getting in trouble with the teacher while they dissected their frog. "Yixing is deaf. It doesn't matter what you said to him. He didn't hear it anyway."

"Oh." Well that certainly explained some things, particularly the accent Yixing had which Junmyeon originally attributed to his crush's foreign roots. (That and the fact that Yixing hadn't responded to Junmyeon's splutters.)

"Yeah," Yifan agreed through his chortling, "Oh."

With shoulders still shaking in silent mirth, Yifan returned his attention to the poor amphibian they'd abandoned mid-autopsy. Unfortunately, that left Junmyeon to consider all the ways he must have betrayed his country in his past life because there was no other way for his present life to be such a mess. (A hot mess, of course. He might have currently identified as high school loser, but Junmyeon was still hot.) He slammed his head as hard into their lab table as he could without dislodging Frogger--in other words not very hard at all--then whimpered when he felt a jolt of pain anyway and heard Yifan's clear laughter despite the ringing in his ears.

~~~

Before his disastrous confession, whenever Junmyeon watched Yixing eat with his friends during lunch, the Chinese boy was the sole focus of Junmyeon's attention. Post-rejection, in an effort to get over his painful crush, Junmyeon stopped looking at Yixing and started looking around him. ("Why do you have to look at all?" Luhan had wanted to know. Junmyeon hadn't had an answer, but that didn't keep him from attempting to strangle both his friends when Baekhyun arrived the next day with a neatly wrapped present of eyeshades.) Except looking at Yixing's surroundings meant that Junmyeon's gaze essentially still orbitted Yixing, and instead of making his feelings disappear, seeing the way Yixing and his friends interacted made Junmyeon fall even more. One of Junmyeon's classmates in particular caught his concentration, and Junmyeon spent days observing Kyungsoo and Yixing's animated sign language conversations before he worked up enough courage to corner Kyungsoo in the hallway after their shared Lit class.

"Teach me," Junmyeon demanded, mentally berating his inability to make his mouth say what his brain prepared. (Which was something much more polite like "If you're free sometime would you mind teaching me to sign because I really like your friend and I want to tell him." Yeah, something like that.)

"Excuse me?" Kyungsoo glared back, arms crossed confrontationally over his chest as he stood unintimidated before Junmyeon's slightly taller form. He was against the wall but didn't seem to care, and it was instead Junmyeon who ended up feeling trapped. "I know you didn't just try to boss me around."

"Um," Junmyeon was unsure what to say because technically that's exactly what he'd just done. "No?"

Kyungsoo nodded. "That's what I thought."

The smaller student uncrossed his arms and took a step forward, shoulder brushing against Junmyeon's as he began to walk away. At the absolute last second, Junmyeon practically shouted "Kyungsoo wait!"

"Please teach me," he tried again, apologetically and managing to frame his statement like an actual request this time. When Kyungsoo raised an eyebrow but stopped walking and recrossed his arms, Junmyeon knew he'd been given a second chance. (Maybe he hadn't been horribly evil in his past life after all.) "Sign language. For Yixing. I want to learn."

Kyungsoo looked both curious and wryly amused but Junmyeon didn't really care how Yixing's friend felt about Junmyeon's crush. "You like him?" Kyungsoo asked after a beat. Junmyeon didn't answer--he didn't trust himself to not say something mortifying--but the blush dusting his cheeks and pooling in the top tips of his ears was confirmation enough. "Fine," Kyungsoo said with a sigh. "What do you want to know?"

The shorter boy was probably expecting Junmyeon to ask to learn something cute and cliche. "I like you" maybe, or else "Wanna date?" Instead, Junmyeon blew those expectations out of the water--out of the atmosphere even.

"Everything," he breathed out gratefully. "I want to learn everything."

~~~

Learning sign language was way harder than Junmyeon expected. (Kyungsoo was an of a tutor too, so that probably didn't help.) It hadn't occurred to Junmyeon that sign was just as grammatically and structurally complex as any verbal language, but his crush on Yixing was all-consuming and so his learning curve was steep but constantly improving through sheer strength of will..

"Why are you learning this?" Kyungsoo signed the question to Junmyeon one Thursday afternoon as they sat across from one another at one of the desks in the library. When they first started, Kyungsoo had given Junmyeon a list of youtube videos to watch on basic sign language things like letters and numbers. Then he'd spent a few of their tutoring sessions--every Tuesday and Thursday during study period--drilling basic grammar into Junmyeon's head, making sure to sign everything as he said it aloud. Now, they'd progressed to the point where there was no audible communication at all, just fast signs on Kyungsoo's end and slowly constructed, poorly executed ones on Junmyeon's.

"He's worth it." Junmyeon painstakingly spelled out the word worth because he didn't know how it was signed and hadn't thought to just say something easy like "I like him."

An alarm beeped on Kyungsoo's phone, earning the two boys a piercing glare from the librarian on duty. Junmyeon heaved a relieved sigh.

"You've got to stop thinking so complexly," Kyungsoo told him once he'd turned off the alarm. "I know we're only doing one minute conversations at this point, but soon we'll be moving on to five minute ones and you've got to be able to sign/spell more than three sentences in that time frame."

Junmyeon huffed. (It wasn't his fault his brain refused to simplify his sentences once he'd gotten in mind what it was he wanted to say.) "I can't help it," he whined quietly. "And five minutes is so long, Soo. How about three?"

His attempts to negotiate were nipped in the bud when Kyungsoo sat up straighter in his chair and uncrossed his arms. They'd spent enough time together by that point that Junmyeon understood what that meant: Kyungsoo was done listening.

~~~

One minute did eventually become five, and five became 15. Before Junmyeon knew it, Christmas holiday was just around the corner and he could hold an entire 30 minute conversation with Kyungsoo without uttering a single word. He was understandably ecstatic about his speedy progress, and even Kyungsoo could admit that his pupil was a good one. (Actually, Kyungsoo's exact words had been "You're alright." But since he'd been Yixing's friend and had studied sign language from the very beginning, any comment that wasn't strictly negative counted as a compliment in Junmyeon's book.) Sometimes, though, Junmyeon's extra-curricular activities with Kyungsoo bled into his normal routine, much to Baekhyun and Luhan's continued annoyance. (And Junmyeon's great joy.)

"You sure are spending an awful lot of time with Kyungsoo recently," Baekhyun pointed out from where he was draped over Luhan's lap, stealing his boyfriend's fries when he thought Luhan wasn't looking.

Junmyeon's mouth was full of "Meat Lover's Special" so rather than waiting to finish chewing and swallowing his food, he signed a crisp "Shut up, " in Baekhyun's direction.

"I don't know what that means," Baekhyun complained to his boyfriend with an overpronounced pout that Luhan was more than happy to kiss away.

"Use your imagination," Junmyeon deadpanned, looking away from the bile-producing sight of his best friends making out and accidently catching Yixing's gaze. The Chinese boy smiled at Junmyeon like he always did and Junmyeon practically melted into the floor at the utter perfection of Yixing's dimples. When he'd been staring just long enough for things to get weird, Junmyeon forcibly returned his gaze to his plate, taking another bite of the goop masquerading as his lunch and grimacing dramatically. (He should have asked his mom to pack him something when she offered. Damn his fragile teenage masculinity.)

~~~

"I think you're ready," Kyungsoo told Junmyeon the Tuesday before the school let out for break. He signed it, of course, but they'd long stopped timing their conversations. The fact that this offhanded comment occurred way past the set half-hour mark of their study period didn't faze Junmyeon in the slightest. Signing for him was becoming as seamless as speaking Korean, so practically speaking, Junmyeon could admit that Kyungsoo was right.

"I don't feel ready," he argued back anyway, hands flailing a little and earning him a frown for bad form when Junmyeon's nerves got the better of him for a brief moment. "Sorry," Junmyeon apologized sheepishly. (He'd caught Kyungsoo's arms beginning to unfold from where he'd crossed them over his chest while Junmyeon responded.) "But still, I don't feel it."

"If you don't do it now, you never will," Kyungsoo countered sagely. Junmyeon sighed, but gave in with little more than a shrug of his shoulders and a nod. He was never that good at arguing against Kyungsoo anyway.

"Besides," Kyungsoo added cheekily a few minutes later, this time using his voice since Junmyeon wasn't looking at him. "If you make me sit through any more conversations discussing the merits of Yixing's left dimple versus his right one, I swear to god, Junmyeon, I'll kill something. Probably you."

Junmyeon gulped into his textbook. He also tried signing "Jerk" behind Kyungsoo's back, but the other boy caught him anyway and gave him a hard smack on the back of Junmyeon's head.

~~~

What Junmyeon practiced over and over again in his head, to his friends (but mostly just Kyungsoo), and in front of his mirror: "Hi, I'm still Junmyeon. And you're still beautiful."

("Oh god," Kyungsoo had groaned, hands curling as he switched from signing to speaking. "I can't even sign because of the cheese." Junmyeon made sure to hide behind a confused Yifan before signing back a saucy "Shut up, .")

What Junmyeon actually signed: "Your hair is the color of honey." (Because it was, okay.)

He didn't get as far as he had before because thankfully his brain was still slow enough while signing to stop him from making the same stupid mistake twice. Yixing didn't seem surprised. Instead, he grinned brilliantly.

"Do you still want to taste it?" He asked a gaping Junmyeon as his smile morphed into a mischevious smirk. The accent, though slight, was more noticable now that Junmyeon knew to listen for it, but at that point Junmyeon was far too embarrassed to notice anything.

"Kyungsoo told me. He's a pretty good teacher," Yixing answered Junmyeon's unspoken question and added the indirect compliment once Junmyeon's blush had settled and the Korean boy could meet his crush's eyes again. "But I might also read lips."

(Later, after Junmyeon got over his shock and a vaguely apologetic Yixing invited the Kim boy to eat lunch with him and his friends, Junmyeon again tried signing "Jerk" behind Kyungsoo's back. He still got caught.

Baekhyun and Luhan, ever the useless wingmen, found the whole situation too hilarious for words.)