January 31st, Thursday

“Where’s Jinki?”  Taemin asked in his usual softspoken manner, his voice amplified slightly in the small room.  The tiny conference room had proven to be of little use for holding actual conferences over the years, so it had become a kind of habitual morning meeting place for their small group of faculty members.

Jonghyun checked his watch and replied, “I was about to ask that.  He’s never this late.”

“Do you think watches are becoming obsolete?”  Taemin took a sip from his coffee cup, looking at the other professor.  “I mean…mostly everyone checks the time on their phones now.  And there are working clocks in all the classrooms—or well, most of them are working, anyway.”

“Taemin,” Jonghyun replied, looking at him seriously from across the width of the conference table, “you teach history.  You should know better than anyone than that it’s harder to ignore the sands of time when they are strapped to your wrist.”

Taemin popped the lid off his cup, picking up a spoon and stirring the coffee thoughtfully.  “That was pretty poetic.  I can see you’re qualified to teach that composition class you fought so hard to get.”

They had time to exchange smiles before the door burst open to admit a panting, disheveled Jinki who stumbled in and set down a tray full of various coffee cups before collapsing into a chair at the head of the table.  He shrugged off his jacket and untied his scarf with one hand, running the other through his tousled hair.

Jonghyun watched him catch his breath, amused.  “Are these all for us?” he asked, gesturing to the tray.  “I appreciate your generosity, but the semester just started.”

Jinki draped the scarf over the back of his chair along with his jacket before addressing Jonghyun’s question.  “No…they’re all for me, actually.”

This effectively shocked Taemin into silence and Jonghyun into blurting out unintelligibly,  “But…you don’t…you’ve never…we’ve been sitting here every morning for at least a year drinking coffee while you just eat scones.”

“Well…I…” Jinki hesitated.  “I sort of impulsively asked someone out for coffee and I feel like it’d be weird if I went on a coffee date and then didn’t drink coffee,” he finished in one breath.

“Sorry, what?  I thought you said you asked someone out…” said Jonghyun, catching Taemin’s eye and they both dissolved into laughter.

“I’m actually serious,” said Jinki, a pink tint spreading over his cheekbones as he adjusted his glasses.  “I got these so I could see what they all taste like and that way I’ll know what to order and it’ll look like I actually--”

“And that’s what you were doing this morning before you got here? Buying coffee?” Jonghyun was able to steady his voice long enough to ask, though his shoulders were still quaking with suppressed laughter.

“Well, I had nothing to go on after a life of refusal to give in to the temptations of caffeine, so now I need to sample all these,” Jinki said with a heavy sigh.  “Is a mocha latte too kiddish? Should I go with something more refined, like a cappuccino? Is that too girly? Maybe just an Americano, can’t really go wrong with that...”

“Hyung. If you want to impress a woman, you should just order plain coffee, drink it black, and add exactly one packet of sugar,” Key said seriously and Jinki stared at him, his bafflement all over his face.

“He means you should stop worrying about it, hyung. Just be yourself,” Minho said, also helping himself to a cup of coffee.

Jinki rubbed his temples as the others slowly began getting their things together to teach their first classes. “You’ll be fine, hyung.” Minho patted his shoulder. “Let us know how it goes.”

February 4th, Monday

“Taemin?”  Jonghyun gently shook the sleeping history professor’s shoulder.  He didn’t stir except to turn his head to the opposite side, dark red hair splaying out over his folded arms.

“Taemin.”  Jonghyun shook a little harder.

“Mm…”

Jonghyun reluctantly withdrew his hand from Taemin’s warm shoulder.

“Jjongie…” the other murmured quietly.

Jonghyun froze, surprised to hear his name.  “Are you awake?”  He waited for what felt like at least a whole minute.  “Taemin-ah?”

The younger finally sat up, leaning back and stretching his arms over his head, squeezing his eyes shut.  When he opened them and met Jonghyun’s gaze, he almost fell out of his chair.  “Jesus, hyung, how long have you been standing there?”

Jonghyun’s eyebrows knitted together.  “I’ve been trying to wake you up for the past few minutes.  I thought you heard me.”

“Oh, wow.  I guess I’m more tired than I thought.”  He accepted the coffee cup Jonghyun had brought with gratitude.

“What were you dreaming about?” Jonghyun slid into a chair across from the redhead.

Taemin placed his cup down with more force than necessary, a couple drops escaping from the small opening.  He wiped them off the table with the edge of his scarf.  “Who says I was dreaming about anything?”

Jonghyun’s lips couldn’t help but curve upwards.  “You were calling my name in your sleep.”

“I never thought this day would come. I feel like a proud parent.”  Key suddenly entered the room with his usual fanfare, dragging a rather embarrassed looking Jinki by the wrist.

“What happened, did that Sehun kid finally pass English 101?” Minho asked as he strode in a few seconds later.

Key snorted.  “Nice try, but no.  Our Jinki-hyung went on an actual date, with an actual girl.”

“Can we stop acting like this is some kind of miracle?” Jinki said, breaking the open-mouthed silence Key’s words had caused.  “I’ve had plenty of opportunities to date, I just hadn’t met the right person until now.”

Key still looked amused but said nothing.

“So tell us about her, hyung,” said Minho, trying to diffuse the awkwardness.  “How’d you meet?”

“She’s a family friend,” Jinki started, still looking embarrassed.

“Who introduced you? Your mother?” Key prodded.

“Is that really important!” Jinki spluttered.

“So...your mother,” Key confirmed, sending everyone else into laughter again.

“Don’t laugh,” Jinki moaned, burying his head in his arms. “I’m not going to talk about this if you keep on interrupting!”

“Okay, okay, sorry,” Key said, finally calming down. “Please continue.”

“How about later?” Jinki replied. “It’s almost 8:30 already.”

“Fine, fine, always have to be punctual...” Key said with a resigned sigh and followed Jinki and Minho out as they collected their things and vacated the room.

Taemin and Jonghyun were alone again, the only two whose first classes began at 9:00 rather than 8:30.  Taemin had picked up his red pen as soon as the other three left and scribbled something on the paper he was grading.

“You almost done with those?” Jonghyun asked.

Taemin nodded, not lifting his eyes from the page.  “Two more to go after this one.  Thirty minutes until class starts.  I can do this.”

Jonghyun gave him a thumbs up that Taemin probably didn’t see and scooted forward in his chair, letting his head drop back.  “So Jinki found a girl…” He mused, staring at the ceiling.  “What about you, Taemin?  Don’t you want to be dating?”

“Aish, I should have finished already but I fell asleep last night just before I could get through these last few—wait, what?”

“Don’t you—” Jonghyun began to repeat himself.

“I heard what you said, it’s just…why are you asking this?”  Taemin flipped to the next page and tapped his pen against his chin as he read.

“Well, I mean, you’re in the prime of your life, we all are, do you ever think about, you know, marriage or…being in a relationship?”

“No, not really.”  Taemin began writing comments on the bottom of what looked like the last page of the paper.

“Not even---”

“No.”

“But—”

“I don’t really…care…about that.  I want to focus on my career.”  Taemin flipped back to the first page, circled the grade at the top, and moved on to the next paper.

“Taemin, you’re a professor. You have an advanced degree already.”

Taemin looked up and met Jonghyun’s eyes for the first time in the conversation.  “What’s your point?”

Jonghyun sat up straighter.  “My point is that…well…that…maybe it’s time to focus on other aspects of your life.”

Taemin pursed his lips as Jonghyun started to look uncomfortable.  “Is there some reason why you’re so concerned about my love life?”

“I was just asking a question.  Do I need to have a reason?” he huffed.

Taemin’s eyes returned to his grading.  “No, no reason required, hyung.  It’s cool.”

February 5th, Tuesday

“Where have you been?” asked Minho as Key walked in, the last to arrive the next morning.

“Department meeting,” he answered.

“Oh.” Minho nodded sympathetically, likely expecting the usual laments of how boring it was.

“I overheard something I probably shouldn’t have, but it made for a rather interesting start to the morning,” Key said, and the others paused in their last-minute grading to look up at him.

He was clearly going to remain silent until someone prompted him, so Jonghyun took the bait. “What is it?”

“Supposedly,” Key said, swinging into an empty seat at the meeting table, “there’s a professor who’s been fooling around with a student...not sure which department, but definitely within the college of arts and sciences.”

Key’s words were greeted with silence as Minho simply exchanged a glance with Jinki and Taemin went back to grading papers.

Jonghyun was the first to speak, not shy about voicing his disappointment in the quality of the other’s tidbits. “Is that all? We hear those kinds of rumors all the time. I expected more from you, Kibum.”

Key pointedly ignored him, as he did whenever anyone used his real name.  “Any ideas who it is?” he prodded them.

Taemin propped an elbow up on the table and leaned his temple on his hand as he wrote. “Let’s not gossip.”