Kris gets progressively less awkward and intimidating the longer Kyungsoo discusses business with him. By the time the two are discussing budgets for the next three months, Kyungsoo feels comfortable enough around the man to not let his touchiness affect him. He figures that that's just the way Kris is. Jongin was a snorer, and Kris was clingy; he figures the two are both natural instincts, right? 

"I think we can finish this all today and move on with the project by next week for sure." Kris says happily, and Kyungsoo realizes it's a Friday. 

"Do you think we'll be able to?" Kyungsoo asks skeptically. "We still have to do the reports and make up those graphs." 

"Is there anywhere we can work after my meeting this afternoon?" Kris suggests.

Kyungsoo thinks briefly, considering the options. The office closed early because it was a Friday, the library didn't seem appropriate to do real business work, and if he stayed after work, he'd have to lock up. He briefly considers what Jongin would do if he brought someone from work home, and decides that the boy would at least act decent in front of guests. 

"How about my house? I have a fully functional office." Kyungsoo questions, and Kris nods almost immediately. His weird feeling slowly starts coming back, but he pushes it back with a smile.

"Sounds good, Kyungsoo." Kris smiles widely and slides his phone across the table. 

Kyungsoo eyes him warily, punching in his number and saving it under 'Do Kyungsoo'. 

"Text me your address and I'll show up after my meeting. Probably around six?" 

"Okay, see you then." Kyungsoo barely flinches when Kris claps him on the back roughly. To be honest, he kind of expected it. 

--

Jongin's muscles are aching from the exertion, and he can feel himself struggling to take in breaths. He bends down to rest on his knees, watching as Hyoyeon lands a jump. She turns around and holds out her arm, like the choreography tells her to, and waits for Jongin to come over and try lifting her. Again. Jongin couldn't even count how many times he'd tried in the last two hours, but his arms felt like rubber. Hyoyeon smiles and gives him a look of 'you can do it'. 

He reaches for her, lifting right at the perfect time, and twists her so that they are spinning. He laughs slightly and drops her back down to her feet. 

"You did it!" She laughs, relieved. "You've done it before. I knew you could!" 

"I thought I was gonna die, noona." Jongin sighs, finally sitting down to catch his breath. 

"Don't call me noona! We've been partners for years. And I don't want to be reminded that I'm leaving this year, okay?" 

"Okay, okay." Jongin complies to her request. His eyes are closed as he takes a rest and so he doesn't see Hyoyeon take a seat next to him, but he feels her body heat instead. "You're sweaty." 

"If I'm sweaty, you're a waterfall." Hyoyeon jokes. Jongin opens his eyes to look down at his arms. He's wearing a tank top and so every inch of his arms up to his shoulders are soaked.

"Gross." He agrees. 

"Did you convince your parents to come to the performance Sunday?" Hyoyeon asks through gulps of water. 

"My mom is. My dad's off doing business in Thailand, I think." 

"What about your husband? He must be coming, right?" Hyoyeon giggles, still unaccustomed to Jongin having a husband. She could never imagine him dating anyone, much less getting married on such short notice. She figures the guy must've been really special. 

Jongin shrugs and stays quiet, drinking out of his own water. Hyoyeon sits up, shocked. 

"What? You don't know?" She scoffs in disbelief. She stares at Jongin, eyes wide. 

"I don't know. I haven't told him. I don't think he'd like it." Jongin says nonchalantly. 

"That's bull." Hyoyeon sighs. "He's your husband! Even if he doesn't like it he has to go! That's the rules!" 

"He's stubborn, noona. Also, I think he's mad at me right now." 

"What'd you do?" Hyoyeon does a complete 180, her angry eyes now pointed directly at Jongin. He gulps, not knowing how to answer. 

"I don't know. He just is. I don't want to talk about it, okay?" Jongin pleads. Hyoyeon nods solemnly, deciding to drop the subject. 

They sit in silence for a few minutes, both trying to calm down after hours of practice, before Hyoyeon jolts suddenly, looking down at her phone. 

"Oh my god. I'm so stupid. I was supposed to take Seohyun and Yuri out for dinner after practice and it's already six." She squeals slightly, jumping up to grab her jacket. She slips it on quickly and sniffs herself, nodding approvingly at the result. 

"Do you need a ride?" Jongin asks, already starting to stand up. Hyoyeon shakes her head, no. 

"It's fine. It's right off campus. I'll see you tomorrow for final rehearsals, okay?" She waves before grabbing her bag and jogging out of the practice rooms. 

Jongin sighs and stands up, deciding that he may as well go home too. 

It's after his ten minute ride back home and an extremely tiring realization that Kyungsoo will probably still ignore him that Jongin pulls into the driveway. The first thing he notices is that there is a car that doesn't belong to Kyungsoo or himself. He frowns and parks on the side of the street instead. He has to back out, which only ticks him off more, before he reaches the front door. He grabs his keys and goes to put it in the lock, but the door is already unlocked. Jongin's heart starts racing. 

What if someone had come and broken into the house and Kyungsoo was lying dead on the bathroom floor? How was he going to defend himself and call the police? He thinks briefly of Kyungsoo trying to fight off murderers and he feels almost sick to his stomach. He pushes through slowly, looking around in terror for any intruders. 

Instead, he hears voices from the office next to their bedroom. He takes a deep breath and dials 911, ready to hit call anytime. He walks slowly towards the office door and peeks inside. Kyungsoo is alive and wearing his "reading glasses" (though Jongin has figured out by now that he needs them all the time, he's just stubborn). The owner of the foreign car in his driveway must be the tall man sitting next to Kyungsoo, he figures out. He notices they're doing something with graphs and figures out dumbly that it's work related. Oh. 

"Here, look at this document." The unknown man says in a deep voice, handing over something to Kyungsoo. His hands touch Kyungsoo's and don't retreat until the shorter visibly pulls away, uncomfortable. Jongin watches with displeasure as the man slings an arm around Kyungsoo's chair and leans in even more. He can tell that Kyungsoo is getting freaked out, yet the tall man does nothing. 

 Jongin decides to make his presence known to both when Kyungsoo scoots his chair away and tall man follows. 

"I'm home." He says lamely, not knowing how else to introduce himself. He absentmindedly notices that his finger is still hovering over the call button and quickly shuts off his phone. He doesn't think he'll need police reinforcements anymore. 

Kyungsoo spins around, looking relieved, which surprises Jongin immensely.  

"Ah, your husband?" Tall man asks, never actually looking at Jongin. Instead, he focuses on Kyungsoo and only directs his questions to the shortest male. 

Jongin feels even more ignored than when he tried to talk to his friends at school earlier that week. It makes him feel uncomfortable in ways that he can't explain, but his gut feeling tells him that he wants this man out of their house. 

"Don't we have that thing tonight?" Jongin asks. He knows they have nothing scheduled despite it being a friday night, but he can tell that Kyungsoo isn't enjoying this guy's company either, and so maybe the older boy will play along with it. 

Kyungsoo meets his gaze with wide brown eyes. Jongin opens his a little larger, almost willing Kyungsoo to go along with him. 

"Ah!" He acts shocked, like he just remembered something extremely important. "We do! Oh no, what do I do?" 

Jongin almost wants to laugh at how realistic his acting is. If he hadn't just made the plan, he would've believed Kyungsoo in an instant.

In that moment, Kris moves closer to Kyungsoo again, seeming to be worried for him missing an appointment. Jongin feels the need to push tall guy out of his chair and make him leave, but refrains from taking action, deciding to hint more with words that he wanted him gone. 

"Yeah, I don't think they'd be happy if we canceled again, right, honey?" 

It's the first time Jongin has ever really used a pet name and it feels foreign on his tongue. The light pink that dusts Kyungsoo's cheeks make it worth saying, and he wants to call him it a thousand more times.

Kyungsoo looks shocked for real this time, and he almost loses his composure, fumbling to make a response. His heartbeat thumps a little louder, and he turns to look at Kris, meeting his eyes. Kris seems to believe everything is normal and makes a friendly smile. 

"I should probably get going, then. Bye, Kyungsoo." Kris says, standing up and grabbing his files. He nods to Jongin on the way out, leaving Jongin staring after him in disbelief. 

"He didn't even introduce himself to me. . ." Jongin mumbles angrily. He hears Kyungsoo stand up from the computer chair and turns to watch as the shorter boy makes his way over. 

"I'm still mad at you, but thanks. He was weird." Kyungsoo says nonchalantly as he brushes past Jongin to leave the room. In the same second he hears the front door close, signalling that his business was really gone.

"I thought you said you weren't mad at me!" Jongin yells as the boy walks down the hallway. He can hear Kyungsoo's footsteps take a brief stop as he waits for a response. 

"Shut up." Kyungsoo says back, although Jongin can't detect any real harshness in his statement. 

--

Jongin lies there, willing himself to sleep, but his body won't allow it. He's so tired physically, but his brain won't shut off. He stares at the ceiling, listening to Kyungsoo's soft breaths on the other side of the bed. He knows the older boy isn't asleep-- at least, not yet-- because his breath hasn't gotten slow enough. Jongin also knows that whenever Kyungsoo falls asleep, he almost always rolls over immediately after, and the boy hasn't moved in twenty minutes. 

He contemplates everything for awhile, but it starts to hurt his head. Why did he let his parents force him into marriage? And why had he stopped crying over it? It was baffling him. Early on, he'd huddle in the corner and cry about letting his family ruin his life. Kyungsoo would scoff and act like he couldn't hear him, like being there itself was a punishment. But he guessed he'd gotten used to it. To living in the same house and sharing the bed and listening to how Kyungsoo falls asleep. 

He worries about why watching that tall man touching Kyungsoo felt so weird. He knew that a real husband would be insanely jealous, but he wasn't real. He worries over why Kyungsoo has been mad for the last two days. He worries if he'll be able to do okay in the dance performance this weekend. He worries what will happen after this year in college when he has to start helping out at the company more. He worries if he'll still be married to Kyungsoo, or if the deal will be long gone by then. He sighs deeply, closing his eyes, deciding that now was the time to sleep, whether he liked it or not. 

"Can you stop sighing? It's distracting me." Kyungsoo says this softly, like he's extremely tired. Jongin stiffens and closes his mouth, feeling bad. 

"Sorry. I'll go to sleep now." 

"No, you won't. You keep thinking about stuff." 

"How'd you know I was thinking about stuff?" Jongin asks quietly, matching Kyungsoo's tone. Kyungsoo, with his back to the younger boy, groans. 

"Because you kept mumbling about stuff and I can literally feel your leg fidgeting." Kyungsoo replies. Jongin watches as his back relaxes again and he shoves his head deeper into the pillow. 

"Oh." 

It's silent. For a minute no one speaks and Jongin thinks that's all he has to say. But then Kyungsoo rolls over to face him, glaring slightly with sleepy eyes. 

"I'm mad at you because I saw you kissing Krystal on the balcony. At a public event! That was stupid; someone could've seen you two." Kyungsoo asserts angrily.

His face and tone don't match the anger in the words, but Jongin knows it's only because he's tired. Jongin thinks back, panicked suddenly. When did he kiss Krystal? Did that happen? Suddenly, he remembers Krystal leaning in to kiss him on the cheek at the dinner just the night before. 

"That?" Jongin asks incredulously, watching Kyungsoo's face change from calm to angry.

Kyungsoo opens his mouth to presumably yell at Jongin, but the younger shakes his head before he can speak.

"Well, you see, when I was little I did something wrong on accident at a party and basically someone yelled at me in front of everyone. And I cried and felt really embarrassed. So whenever I'm around a lot of people I feel kind of. . . scared? I don't know if that's the word." 

Kyungsoo eyes him suspiciously, nodding for him to keep going with his explanation. 

"Krystal and I have been friends since we were babies, so she knew about it. And we made up this game where the loser has to kiss the other on the cheek. I think it was more because we'd seen adults kiss there, and we didn't really know much else about it. So every time we went to a party and I started getting nervous, we'd play the game to calm us down because people always laughed and thought it was cute when we kissed each other's cheeks. So it didn't make me feel as nervous or anything. And I was getting a little nervous because I got lost in the party and I couldn't find you." 

Jongin's cheeks redden and he fears for a second that Kyungsoo will notice, but then remembers that it's so dark in the room he can only make out Kyungsoo's main features.

"And I ran into Krystal and she noticed me freaking out. So we went outside to cool off, and she suggested playing the game to help calm me down. I thought it was funny because we hadn't played in years-- I kind of got over it when I was in high school--" 

"So you weren't off having an affair in the middle of a business party?" Kyungsoo questions, suddenly sounding more awake. Jongin watches his eyes get bigger, and they seemed to light up the room for a minute, before he smiles to the older. 

"No." Jongin adjusts the way he's laying so he's further up on the pillow before shaking his head. "I know it's fake and all, but we're still married. I wouldn't do that." 

"That's good then. I didn't want the press to see you and have a field day." Kyungsoo shrugs. Jongin watches in wonder as Kyungsoo rolls back over, seemingly done with the conversation.

He doesn't see Kyungsoo smiling into his pillow, and he can't feel how relieved Kyungsoo is at the new revelation. What he does hear though, is enough to make him mimic Kyungsoo's actions on his side of the bed, smiling widely. 

"Earlier when you called me honey. . . I guess that's okay. For public stuff, you know." 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

YAY I FINALLY FINISHED THIS CHAPTER AND FINALS AND THIS SCHOOL YEAR ((i passed everything....thank god.....))

this is rlly cheesy idk what this chapter even is i planned for there to be like 2,000 more words but i'll just make that next chapter or something *wink wink* 

oh and the whole scene where they're fooling kris was just based off of kyungsoos face in this gif 

BYE ILY