Jonghyun was in love.

It was an innocent kind of love, filled with heart eyes and love notes and forgetting to eat because all he needs to live is love.

Only problem is that it’s with his bandmate.

The wonderful, adorable, innocent, and entirely too dense Lee Taemin.

And that’s why Jonghyun goes to his extremely capable leader to ask him how to woo Taemin.

It’s a bit embarrassing to sit in front of Jinki and confess his love, he won’t lie, but it’s nice to finally be able to tell someone.

Jonghyun is a little upset, though, when Jinki has almost no response to his confession. He just nods and says, “Okay.”

Rather than dwell on his lackluster response, Jonghyun asks him, “Well, I really need help confessing to him, and was wondering if you could help me? I want to make it really nice, and something that he would appreciate, but I don’t want to make him uncomfortable with it or anything. And I have no ideas.”

Jinki sighs and runs a hand over his face, and looks at Jonghyun and says, “Okay, I think I can come up with something. You just have to be committed to it. You are committed, right?” Jonghyun nods so firmly that his neck begins to hurt. Jinki smiles. “Great. Now, you’re going to need a lot of ribbons and balloons…”

A few days later Jonghyun is standing in the living room of SHINee’s shared dorm, holing flowers and chocolates and his heart in his hands, waiting for Taemin to walk through the door.

When he does, Jonghyun is entirely disappointed.

Not by the way he looks, no, but by his reaction. His face turns up in a grimace and Jonghyun can feel his heart fall to his stomach.

“I’m sorry hyung,” Taemin begins and Jonghyun can feel his face heat up and his heart fall apart and oh no, he’s ruined everything, it’s going to be so awkward now– “but I don’t think this is very funny.” And then Jonghyun’s bright read face drains and the tears gathered in his eyes dry up and he’s just confused as Taemin asks shyly, “can I still keep the flowers and chocolates, though?” He doesn’t even register nodding yes but he does see Taemin’s beautiful smile as he bounces away, down the hall, holding Jonghyun’s bouquet of flowers and box of chocolates.

He looks over, still entirely confused, to see Kibum leaning against the wall eating popcorn out of a cheap paper bag and laughing. He asks him, “What just happened?”

Kibum just laughs some more before finally looking up at Jonghyun. Wiping at the tears that gathered in the corner of his eyes, Kibum responds, “I told you he was dense. And you also picked a terrible day. I mean, April Fools? Really?” Jonghyun’s face pales when he realizes Kibum is right, and it is indeed the first of April and wow he’s an idiot.

Walking down the hallway with his head hanging and feeling like a complete idiot, salt is only rubbed into the wound when Kibum yells down the hall, “You’re gonna have to try harder than that if you want to capture his heart! He’s almost as dense as you are!”

***

After his horrific fail on Monday, Jonghyun goes to Kibum and asks him what he thinks he should do about the Taemin situation.

Legs perched across Minho’s lap, on the couch with pink hair dye in his bangs, Kibum looks up and says, “I don’t know ask Minho,” and then goes back to reading his magazine

Jonghyun kind of wants to choke him but refrains from doing so because he really needs Kibum’s help. Minho would be his absolute last resort (because the man was way too stiff for Jonghyun’s type of love), and he really didn’t want to have to try whatever his idea is, because there is no way that it will be any help to him.

Jonghyun is so desperate that he unconsciously pulls out his puppy dog eyes, and Kibum looks up at him and immediately melts. “Ugh, okay, fine. Just stop looking at me like that,” he says and Jonghyun perks up so fast that it nearly gives Kibum whiplash.

“Take him out for dinner tonight. Somewhere nice. Dress up well. Then, you can confess. There is no way he can take that the wrong way. Unless he really is just that dense,” Kibum says under his breath and Jonghyun chooses to ignore it in favor of jumping up and immediately going to make a reservation at Taemin’s favorite restaurant, Chicken and Waffles and Everything In Between, when Kibum shouts out that “Chicken and Waffles is not somewhere nice!” and Jonghyun deflates.

Eventually he settles on a place that is so expensive that he’s pretty sure he’s only going to be able to afford to kimbap for the next month, but Taemin is worth it. Taemin is so worth it.

Jonghyun has always found it kind of rude when other celebrities use their status to get into places, but if he uses his name as SHINee’s Jonghyun to get a place in the restaurant, well, all’s fair in love and war.

A few hours later he has a suit clad Taemin sitting across from him, eating something that their Korean tongues couldn’t pronounce properly, Jonghyun just feels awkward. And really uncomfortable in his suit.

Taemin doesn’t look to be enjoying his food very much, and Jonghyun refuses to even touch his. And it was so expensive.

Taemin sighs and says, “Look, neither of us are enjoying ourselves very much. Why don’t we ditch this place and go to Chicken and Waffles and Everything In Between?” As mad as Jonghyun wants to be at Kibum, he really can’t when his heart is swelling so much. Gosh, he loves Taemin and he just knew it. He knew he would enjoy chicken and waffles more.

Jonghyun nod