“Wipe your mouth, you have drool at the corners, loser.”

Jongin snaps out of his daydream and lifts the back of his hand to his mouth naturally, only pausing when he makes out Baekhyun sniggering at him from the corner of his eyes.

“I hate you.” He pouts and pushes his huge thick-framed glasses further up the bridge of his nose, ducking his head in embarrassment. Jongin knows there’s a furious blush across his cheeks too. Across them, a group of old ladies watching them collectively fawns over the boy because he’s just too goddamn adorable.

“Oh please, you love me—” Baekhyun coos and pinches Jongin on the cheek lightly, which eventually teases a small smile out of the latter to show he’s forgiven.

Jongin’s too nice to hold grudges anyway, and the fact that he has been best friends with Baekhyun all his life, actually the other is his only friend, he knows Baekhyun had only said what he said to rile him up on purpose.

Not that he isn’t already hot and bothered by someone’s presence across the pool.

“—but of course, not as much as you love Mr. hot-damn-i-want-to--his-abs lifeguard over there.” Baekhyun points blatantly in Kyungsoo’s direction, and Jongin lets out a loud squawk when he sees said lifeguard staring back at them in the distance. All the blood drains from his face.

Please tell me he didn’t hear.

But who is he kidding? Baekhyun’s whisper is one that can be heard all the way across the Pacific.

“I will kill you!” Jongin shrieks. The next second, he jumps up and smothers his best friend’s mouth, uncaring that he’s causing a mini commotion as others on the pool chairs surrounding them turn their attention to the two boys suddenly engaged in a wrestling match.  

It’s awhile later that Jongin halts his murder of the other when Baekhyun releases his grip over Jongin’s wrists and taps at his sides anxiously, pointing to someone behind him. A quick glance down at the tiled floors reveals a person’s familiar outline in the form of a shadow.

Familiar only because Jongin had spent the most of his summer committing it to memory.

Oh . He feels helpless all of a sudden.  

“Is there a problem here?” Deep like the ocean and calming like waves, Jongin’s heart and mind is at peace when he hears Kyungsoo’s voice. Baekhyun inhales and exhales exaggeratedly when Jongin finally lets go of his mouth, but the latter refuses to turn around to greet Kyungsoo.

He’s shy enough in school for fellow students to think he has social anxiety, but when in the face of his crush, Jongin turns into a provoked hedgehog, curling in on himself and wishing nothing more than to hide away from the world.

“Kyungsoo! Hi!” Baekhyun finally breaks the silence, propping his body up with his elbows and looking past Jongin’s shoulder to greet their schoolmate.

“Hey, Baekhyun,” the other replies.

From Jongin’s position, he doesn’t see the way Kyungsoo glances at him, seemingly worried at his sustained silence and stubborn refusal to look at him. It isn’t common for someone to ignore only the most popular boy in school; someone who has both girls and boys falling at his feet wherever he went.

But Baekhyun does see the slight hurt that flashes in Kyungsoo’s eyes and he smirks, filing away a fascinating thought for future blackmail.

“I didn’t know you and Jongin were a couple.”

Jongin tenses up at Kyungsoo’s comment.

“Anyway, try to keep stuff like that in the bedroom, okay? There are kids around and their parents would probably not appreciate tainting their innocence here,” Kyungsoo says.

Jongin exchanges a horrified look with Baekhyun, probably only just realising how compromising their position was with Jongin straddling the other. They jump three feet apart from each other immediately.

“We’re not dating!” Jongin practically yells in Kyungsoo’s face. The latter even takes an involuntary step back at the volume the younger had projected his voice. It’s very unusual behaviour for the soft-spoken sophomore. “W-We’re n-not...” Jongin’s voice drops to a shy whisper, and he flaps his hands in the air weakly.

He finally decides to hide his face in his hands after he happened to tilt his head up a fraction and catches sight of Kyungsoo’s defined abs once more. Holy smokes. It looks so much better close up. Across them, the group of old ladies lets out a collective coo.

“Definitely not,” Baekhyun confirms when Kyungsoo looks at him.

The relief in the other man is so obvious from the way his shoulders turn slack and a smile grows on his face that Baekhyun thinks Jongin is incredibly oblivious and blind for believing all the time that his feelings for the senior are purely one-sided.

“Well, okay then. Now that we’ve ascertained there’s nothing wrong here, I shall head back to my post.” Kyungsoo shuffles on the spot awkwardly, as if he’s tempted to say more, but he eventually decides to take his leave.

Baekhyun can only shake his head and let out a deep sigh when he sees Jongin peeking out from between his fingers, letting out a soft whine he thinks no one hears while staring at Kyungsoo’s retreating back longingly.

===

Today finds Jongin not parked on a pool chair but a beach chair because his favourite lifeguard has been rotated to the bay watch shift. The country club they are in is a huge one with recreational spaces spilling over to a public beach leading to the clear blue waters of the Pacific Ocean.

Kyungsoo looks y as usual some meters away, in his black shades and red boardshorts, chiseled upper body bared for the world (and Jongin) to drool over, atop his lifeguard tower.

“Turn around and let me put some sunscreen on you, Nini.” Baekhyun pats him on the back and makes rotating gestures for him to turn around. “You’ll burn at this rate.”

Jongin pouts. He doesn’t want to turn around. Because turning around means he’s facing away from Kyungsoo.

“No!” He says like a petulant child. But in the next second, Baekhyun practically manhandles him and pushes him down on the chair having anticipated his response. Before Jongin can even protest, he feels the other pulling his shirt up and squirting the sticky fluid on his back, slowly rubbing him down after. He thrashes for awhile to try and buck Baekhyun off, but eventually gives up and lays silently.

“Are you done yet?” Jongin asks after a minute. It’s only his back and arms afterall. He doesn’t know why the other is taking so long for such a simple task.

“Not yet,” his best friend lands a playful slap on his , which has him yelping. “Be patient and hold still.”

“Okay,” Jongin replies glumly, adjusting his glasses for the nth time that afternoon.

What the younger doesn’t know is that Baekhyun is rubbing slow circles around his lower back, despite the skin there being already covered, on purpose. It looks almost sensual to those who don’t know better. And Baekhyun is getting a good kick out of watching Kyungsoo grow jealous at the display.

“Up you get.” He finally releases Jongin when the lifeguard turns his back on them and busies himself with reading some files left on his small desk.

The younger pops up enthusiastically and immediately glances over to Kyungsoo. The smile on Jongin’s face slides off when he sees the other isn’t looking in his direction.

“He didn’t look over once?” He asks Baekhyun.

“Nope,” the latter replies after a second’s pause. Baekhyun is deriving too much pleasure from teasing Jongin and Kyungsoo, so he’s happy to continue playing the devil until one of them breaks and confesses.

“Do you think if I pretend to drown, he’ll look at me?”

“Ow!” Jongin yelps when he receives Baekhyun’s slipper to his face.

===

“Hey, what is that?” Jongin points at the shore and turns around, only to find Baekhyun already running towards the ice cream truck on the pier screaming “very berry strawberry!” like a schoolgirl who has just inhaled a helium balloon. It’s barely six in the evening, and the jolly man manning the truck hasn’t even rang his bell to attract his customers yet, but Baekhyun’s already first in line.

Jongin gives a disappointing shake of his head and turns back around. The more he studies the unmoving lump on the edge of the water, the more he makes out the shape of an animal beneath strands of seaweed and twigs. Jongin lets out a loud gasp and sprints forward at once.

“No! No,” he falls to his knees and starts untangling the poor thing — a puppy on closer look — who didn’t look like it was breathing anymore. His heart is crushed at the thought of a creature so young and innocent suffering. It’s definitely a stray from the lack of a collar around its neck. Jongin hadn’t even noticed it playing by the water earlier, granted his attention was taken elsewhere.

“Help!” He calls out to no one in particular when he finally frees the puppy and clutches it to his chest, at a loss and panicking, he’s desperate for any help. “Please!” Jongin tries to flag down a lady jogging by, but she doesn’t notice because of her headphones.

He feels a hand on his shoulder a couple of seconds later, only noticing it’s Kyungsoo taking the puppy from him and laying it down on the sand on its side when the other bends down and starts pumping at the puppy’s chest with three fingers. By now, they have the attention of most on the beach, and Jongin makes out Baekhyun’s figure running back to him (ice cream cone clutched in his hand) through the well of tears he didn’t even know was there in his eyes.

“Come on, little guy,” Kyungsoo huffs and bends down to prop his ear against the puppy’s mouth, probably to check for breathing. “Come back, please.” The lifeguard straightens and continues to give compressions.

“Jongin!” Baekhyun kneels beside him and wraps a comforting arm around the younger. “What’s going on?”

“The poor puppy, Baek.” Jongin attaches himself to his best friend and hides his face in Baekhyun’s neck, too afraid to look in Kyungsoo’s direction. He had a pet dog once, and to date he’s still emotionally scarred from when it passed away.

It’s impressive that despite Baekhyun’s body being jostled back and forth by Jongin’s weight, his hold on his cone never weakens. “It’s going to be okay,” he pats awkwardly at the younger’s back and brings his cone up to his lips for a bite.

“I can’t believe you’re still eating that ice cream now,” Jongin gives him the stink eye and ignores Baekhyun’s weak protests that it was already starting to melt.