The school hallways are comfortingly familiar to Luhan as she weaves through the crowds of people down two flights of stairs to the cafeteria. The crowd is thick and Luhan recognizes a lot of the people she’s surrounded by, although she doubts they notice her the way she notices them as they talk animatedly to their friends.

She gets a cup of coffee from the cafeteria and weaves her way back up the stairs, having gotten what she came for. It’s harder going back up than going down since she’s going against the tide of students, but she manages without spilling the coffee.

She stops at the second floor of her school and finds Minseok waiting for her in one of the narrower, less populated staircases. No one uses them because it leads out to the back of the school where no student has any business going, the teachers say, so every time Luhan texts Minseok that she’s in one of her moods, that’s automatically where they meet.

Minseok is sitting in a corner, sandwich between her teeth and hands zipping up her lunch bag before throwing it to the other corner where her backpack is. Luhan hands Minseok her coffee when she finishes, throws her bag next to Minseok’s, and sits down next to her, easily slipping her hands around Minseok’s waist and burying her face in Minseok’s neck. They’re positioned a little bit awkwardly, Luhan’s slightly longer legs bent uncomfortably, but it doesn’t matter to them.

Minseok brings her free hand up to Luhan’s blonde hair, down her ponytail, and the two sit there in silence like that.

Everything the cafeteria serves tastes like , and the coffee is no exception, but coffee is coffee, and Minseok rarely complains about the pathetically watered down taste anyways, so she just alternates between sipping quietly from her cup and chewing on her sandwich while Luhan clings to her like a koala.

Luhan’s breathing is uneven and shallow, but not hurried, and Minseok tries to even her own breathing, knowing Luhan sometimes tries to match it.

They spend the lunch together like this, breathing in sync, tangled together without a single word spoken between the two, and by the time the bell rings Luhan seems to be back to normal again. She unravels herself from Minseok a little bit reluctantly, and picks up her backpack from where it was abandoned next to Minseok’s.

Luhan’s next class is with Minseok, so they leave together, Luhan carrying Minseok’s lunch bag as a terrible way of showing her thanks.

“Your hair is pink now,” Luhan comments off handedly, and Minseok runs a hand down her hair as if just realizing it herself.

“Um. Yeah,” she says. “I wanted it to be red actually; I don’t know what went wrong when I dyed it.”

“It looks nice.”

~~

They both have those days, and today just happened to be one of those days where they’re both kind of off.

It didn’t take long for Minseok to learn that Luhan liked to be cuddled when she was having a bad day, and it was easy to see the signs. Luhan’s normal exuberance would be gone, replaced by silence and lethargy, and she would be a hell of a lot clingier - nosing at Minseok’s neck and hair when they’re seated together in class, playing with Minseok’s fingers and holding her hand in the halls, scooting her chair closer to Minseok’s when they were in the cafeteria. Minseok stopped being concerned after the first few times it happened, just accepting it, letting Luhan sit in her lap whenever she liked for however long she liked, running her hand comfortingly down the other girl’s spine.

It took Luhan a little longer to learn Minseok’s quirks when she was in her moods though. Minseok was quieter than Luhan to begin with, but in her moods her sarcastic remarks would become less frequent, and more biting. She was more liable to scowl and storm off, and Luhan learned quickly not to try and make light of any situation when Minseok was like that. Luhan would sometimes berate her friend when she thought Minseok had gone too far, been a little too hurtful, but otherwise she would just act a little more subdued, making small talk and holding Minseok’s hand whenever she could, sometimes even going so far as to kiss the tips of Minseok’s fingers when they were sitting in the cafeteria so she could see that small twitch at the corner of Minseok’s lip because she was trying to stay angry.

Luhan did that a lot, kiss Minseok, that is. She’s never kissed her on the lips before, or, God forbid, anywhere under Minseok’s regular clothing, but quick stolen kisses to Minseok’s cheeks, hands, neck, ears, eyelids, were common. Their friends found it both adorable and hilarious when Luhan did that, since apparently when Luhan wasn’t around Minseok had a reputation for glaring down people who stood in her personal space. Luhan was surprised by that actually, but she couldn’t deny that it made her feel warm and fuzzy and special that Minseok acted differently around her than around others.

Today, Luhan sat next to Minseok in the front row of their history class. The guy who, according to the seating plan, should sit next to Minseok skips class a lot, so sometimes Luhan would sit at his desk instead of her own. The teacher lets them without complaint, though Luhan suspects that it’s because he knows he couldn’t separate them if he tried.

~~

Luhan halfheartedly flips through her science notebook in the cafeteria, glancing at the clock every two minutes. Minseok was in the library, cramming for a test, and had explicitly told Luhan that she’s too distracting and can’t come along. Luhan sniffs indignantly just at the memory of that conversation, and flips another page.

Baekhyun and Yixing appear beside Luhan just then, wrapped up in coats and scarfs and armed with steaming cups of Starbucks.

“Where’s Minseok?” Baekhyun asks, cheeks flushed a pretty pink from the cold.

“She’s cramming for dance history in the library.” Luhan says, reaching for the cup in Baekhyun’s hands.

Baekhyun hands it over and grabs a seat next to Luhan. Yixing does the same on Luhan’s other side.

“Well since she isn’t here right now, guess what Baek and I heard Kris saying?” Yixing says, shrugging off her thick jacket.

“What?”

“Apparently Chanyeol’s been harbouring a crush on Minseok for a while, and he plans to confess with the Send-A-Rose thing our school is doing.” Yixing says.

“So you know what that means,” Baekhyun continues. “You have to confess to Min before Chanyeol does.”

~~

Luhan knows she shouldn’t confess over text, knows she shouldn’t even confess at all, but her phone is in her hands and Baekhyun’s words at the front of her mind, and before she knows it she’s taking Baekhyun's advice, texting furiously in all caps because this is an all caps situation.

IF I TELL YOU SOMETHING AND THINGS GET AWKWARD BETWEEN US DO YOU PROMISE TO PRETEND I NEVER TOLD YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE

Sent at 7:49pm

Luhan’s phone makes a little whoosh noise when it sends and Luhan thinks that’s funny, that’s exactly how I imagined it would sound when the Earth decides it’s finally had enough of my bull and opens up a chasm underneath me so I can fall into the pit and never see the light of day again.

She feels a tiny bit nauseous when a bubble appears next to Minseok’s profile picture to show that she's typing something back.

is this the part where you confess your undying love for me

Sent at 7:49pm

Alarm bells start ringing in Luhan’s head and she panics for half a torturous second like how did she know before she realizes that Minseok was being sarcastic, and it’s just especially hard to tell from the way she texts with a complete lack of punctuation or emojis.

ACTUALLY YES

Sent at 7:50pm

There isn’t a reply. There isn’t even a bubble showing up. Luhan worries at her lip anxiously and just kind of goes it and types out a mini paragraph.

LIKE I KIND OF REALLY LIKE YOU LIKE IN /THAT/ WAY AND I DON'T EVEN WANT TO GO INTO WHY BECAUSE THERE IS A VERY LONG LIST OF REASONS THAT STARTS WITH YOU'RE CUTE AND ENDS WITH YOU'RE REALLY COMFORTING AND KIND OF JUST OVERALL PERFECT AND I REALLY LIKED YOU FOR A WHILE AND I WANNA KISS YOU BUT MORE THAN I ALREADY DO AND MAYBE ON THE LIPS SOMETIMES AND GO ON DATES BUT ACTUALLY CALL THEM DATES AND IT WOULD PRETTY MUCH BE THE WAY WE ARE NOW BUT WITH FEELINGS BUT LIKE FEELINGS THAT AREN'T PLATONIC PLEASESAYYES

Sent at 7:52pm

Minseok’s reply comes almost immediately.

Luhan, I’m aro

Sent at 7:52pm

Well . Luhan stares at that short message, blearily registering in the back of her mind that Minseok actually used some proper grammar, which just goes to show the magnitude of the situation. Mostly though, Luhan thinks she might just die now. She’s about to put her phone away when another message comes.

but i love you too

Sent at 7:52pm

just not like that

Sent at 7:53pm

And just like that, Luhan’s heart does this little thump-thump and she hugs to phone to her chest happily because hey, she’ll take what she can get.

~~

ayo waddup krease

Sent at 10:34pm

ayo wasuUUp

Sent at 10:34pm

nothing much, i confessed to minseok today

Sent at 10:34pm

how’d it go?

Sent at 10:35pm

she said she already liked someone else

Sent at 10:35pm

hhhA

Sent at 10:35pm

.

Sent at 10:36pm

A/N

lol i'm so sorry yall had to suffer through reading all of that but yayyy valentine's day!

maybe next year i'll do the no-homo dudebro krisyeol sequel to this lol who knows?

k i'm off to enjoy myself reading about other people's relationships and internally crying like i usually do

♡  ┐(・。・┐) ♪