15: Sehun really wants to do the science fair because he knows his volcano would kill it if he did. He just has to pass science first. Pairing!Sekai, MiddleSchool!AU, ScienceFair!AU

Kai had not been happy when his science teacher had paired him with Sehun for their end-of-the-year bottle rocket project. He supposed the Oh kid wasn't too bad, but they needed a good grade on this in order to do the science fair and Kai was pretty skeptical of his classmate's abilities. And aside from that, Kai just wasn't trying to fail—he wanted to move up to Grade 8, okay?

Now, though, as Kai crept after Sehun, following the other boy into a fancy looking lab area where Sehun had said they could work on their project, Kai couldn't help being pretty impressed.

"Cool." He was in awe, his hands ghosting over everything he could reach and his eyes roaming everywhere as they tried to take it all in. "Awesome."

Sehun nodded, pleased that Kai was impressed, but hid his smile behind a nonchalant shrug and a passive, "It's whatever."

"Are you kidding me?" Kai was nearly shrieking, his excitement evident as he forgot for a moment that science geeks weren't supposed to be cool and he let his inner academic out to roam free. "Awesome," he said again, and this time Sehun just rolled his eyes.

"Now," he ordered, dropping his backpack on a nearby chair and turning to his science partner, "if we break anything, my dad will kill me, okay? So, don't."

"It's cool, man," Kai defended himself, hands in the air to show Sehun that he wouldn't even dream of harming any of the interesting equipment that filled the room. "No worries."

"You're so chill," Sehun muttered to himself, "I hate it." He only hated it because it wasn't his personality at all, and he sometimes even envied Kai for being so nonchalant about things yet still ending up with the grades, friends, and idyllic life that all middle schoolers wanted and that Sehun had to work really hard to get. Turning away from Kai to fish through his bag for their rubric, Sehun pushed his bags out of the way of his eyes and began reading the instructions under his breath.

After a few seconds of this, Sehun sighed loudly and tossed the paper to Kai before slumping dramatically into the empty chair next to the one holding his bag. "This is impossible," he muttered. "There's no way I'll get to show my volcano at the science fair."

He pouted until Kai looked at him strangely and said, "Dude. Show your volcano? Is that like another way of saying, you know, um, pulling down your pants and letting it all hang free?"

"Ew!" Sehun was out of his chair in an instant and his cheeks were probably the same color as a fire engine by the time he managed, "No! What is wrong with you? Jeez!"

Kai's gaze was playfully serious. "I'm a 12 year old boy. It's to be expected."

"Well I'm 12 too," Sehun countered, "and you don't hear me being nasty!"

"No," Kai agreed, before he winked in a way that made Sehun very worried. "But do you do the nasty?"

This time, Sehun made no dramatic reaction at all. "Gross," he dead panned seriously as he snatched the rubric out of Kai's disinterested grip and went back to worrying. "If I fail science and have to repeat all of seventh grade, I blame you."

Kai didn't seem to care, though, because he bent down to where he'd dropped his own backpack at his feet and searched through the disorganized mess of papers to find one that matches Sehun's. "I don't understand why you're freaking out. The rubric split it into four parts; if we do this one part at a time, you'll totally get to show your volcano."

Kai winked and waggled his eyebrows as he said this last part, but Sehun was too busy freaking out to notice. "There's a writing portion too?"

"Well yeah, science is still, like, words and stuff," Kai confirmed Sehun's worst fear and the latter suddenly looked pale. "It's okay though," Kai reassured unknowingly, "there's no writing yet. That comes later." He glanced around the room again before settling his gaze on Sehun. "Right now we start finding our materials."

Sehun's gaze followed the same path Kai's had just taken before a thought occurred to him. "I'm not sure my dad's lab is going to have what we need." He checked the rubric once more. "It says we have to use a 2 liter soda bottle."

Nodding, Kai bit his lip and gestured toward a table at the back of the room that was covered in rows and rows of labeled test tubes. "Can't we just use one of those things?"

For the first time since they'd entered the lab, Sehun thought Kai sounded like an idiot; the feeling was refreshingly rare and Sehun made the most of it. "Those are made of glass, idiot."

Seemingly unperturbed by the rude moniker, Kai just shrugged. "Let's buy some soda then."

Sehun looked at Kai like the other was on a roll of idiocy. "Do you have any money?" He prompted, trying to make his partner understand why his suggestion was a bad one.

"I do!" Kai perked up for a moment before he remembered something and his shoulders drooped. "I mean, I don't anymore. The Legos I bought with it are cool though."

"Legos are so last year," Sehun remarked coldly. His watch beeped once to indicate a change in the hour and Sehun's blank expression turned to one of fear. "We have to get out of here."

Kai was confused. "I thought you said it was okay for use to work here!"

"I lied, okay?" Sehun was nearly shouting as he rushed to pack up his back back and sling it over his shoulders. "I'm not allowed here ever. But you like science and I like you and I thought you'd like this!" He confessed this all with a single breath before running out the door and leaving a surprised Kai in his wake.

"Oh Sehun likes me?" He asked this aloud, to himself as he bent down again to pick up his bag and stuffed the rubric paper into his back pocket. "Oh Sehun likes me?"

He probably would have repeated himself another time if Sehun hadn't come bursting back through the door with an extreme sense of urgency. "Come on, Kai!" He cried. "My dad always checks the lab before he leaves. That's in like two minutes, okay? Come on!"

Sehun's rush to vacate before getting caught lead him to unconsciously grab Kai's hand so he could drag the other boy behind him as they ran. The hot, slightly sweaty feeling of Sehun's still-growing hand clasped tightly in Kai's made Kai stop suddenly, also bringing Sehun unintentionally to a halt as he did so. "But I like you too," Kai realized, thinking back to the various expressions on Sehun's chiseled face, the excitement in his voice as he talked about the science fair, their playful bickering, and finally that warm touch of Sehun's hand in his. "I like you," Kai repeated.

"That's great," Sehun's response wasn't as excited as Kai had hoped, but he didn't realize that inside Sehun was practically swooning. "But you stopped running. I'm serious! Let's go!"

They began to run once more, still hand-in-hand, but this time things felt different to both of them. A little happier, a little lighter, for Sehun there was a little less care about possibly failing science, for Kai, a little less fear of what would happen to his burgeoning popularity of people found out his nerdy hidden passion. Neither one was really old enough yet to know what it meant to be in a relationship with another person; or to know what it meant in their society for two boys to be boyfriends; or even that there was more to dating than just holding hands, eating school lunches at the same table, texting past their bedtimes, and kissing shyly during sleepovers and after school and in the middle of a video game and whenever they could, really. They were young, but they were learning, and they were doing that together.

(This learning, though, didn't really include how to make a bottle rocket. Not for Sehun, at least. Kai ended up doing most of the work that got them an A on their project, but neither one cared because both got to do the science fair.

Kai chose to make a model of the solar system because "Balls," he'd said to Sehun before dissolving into a pile of immature giggles. He popped back up again pretty soon, though, to tease with a sly smirk, "Hey Sehun! I know you want to show your volcano and all, but wouldn't it be cooler if together we made it erupt?" Sehun had groaned in horror at the poor use of the euphemism as a joke, but Kai had just waggled his eyebrows suggestively again and grinned.)