a/n: they're both the same age here

one

Sanghyuk opens his math textbook to the place the teacher stopped last lesson to find a note folded and tucked snugly between the pages. It’s written on the notebook paper all of them have, but when he unfolds it and sees the ridiculousness written on it it can only have come from one person.

roses are red, violets are blue (aren’t they more purple tho???)

meet me behind the bleachers so i can kiss you

Sanghyuk turns around in his seat, risking reprimand from the teacher to level a stare at the boy sitting in the next column, two rows down. The boy’s been watching him, waiting for Sanghyuk to find the note, and when he makes eye contact he grins brilliantly and puckers his lips in a quick kiss.

Sanghyuk lifts up the note, crumples it in his fist and lets it fall to the floor, steel gaze unfaltering.

“Lee Jaehwan, pouting like that is very unattractive in a boy of seventeen,” the teacher raps out. “Perhaps you’d like to explain what I’ve been talking about for the past five minutes? Just so I can check if you’ve been paying attention?”

Sanghyuk hides a delighted look as Jaehwan gets to his feet, already smiling his most charming smile and obviously getting ready to unleash utter bull in place of actually knowing what’s been going on while he’s been staring at Sanghyuk.

He has to stand for the rest of the lesson as punishment. Sanghyuk enjoys it.

“So, bleachers?” Jaehwan murmurs wickedly when he makes his way over to Sanghyuk’s desk after the final bell has gone, and Sanghyuk throws a crumpled-up ball of paper at his face – Jaehwan’s poetry from earlier.

“Can we at least try not to be so obvious?” Sanghyuk asks him sweetly, and then breaks off to wave and yell a goodbye at their friends leaving the classroom. “And you know I can’t, I’m trying out that new cram school later. First lesson.”

“When?” Jaehwan frowns, and Sanghyuk looks at his watch.

“Now,” he sighs. “I’m going to have to rush.”

“Without lunch?”

Sanghyuk shrugs, and Jaehwan walks him to the bus stop outside the school with the air of a disapproving parent. Sanghyuk wants to laugh.

“No kissing, no lunch,” Jaehwan grumbles, ping his bag and rummaging around inside it for a few seconds. “Here. Take this.”

He makes Sanghyuk accept a bar of chocolate and a roll of kimbap from him, Sanghyuk peering into his bag interestedly to see what other food is going to magically emerge from it.

“Why do you have a whole roll of kimbap in your bag?” Sanghyuk asks, tucking it and the chocolate bar safely into his knapsack like precious cargo.

“For emergencies,” Jaehwan answers like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and Sanghyuk can’t help but smile at him. Jaehwan catches his eye and smiles back, just as helpless; four seconds, five seconds, six.

Sanghyuk’s bus comes and Sanghyuk has to go – he brushes the backs of their hands together briefly in farewell.

“Thanks,” he waves, walking backwards. “I’ll text you when I’m done!”

Jaehwan salutes him and leaves, not wanting to stay waiting at the bus stop staring after Sanghyuk like a lovesick fool. He settles for carrying a warm glow around in his chest like a lovesick fool instead as he turns back into school to go find his friends at the futsal courts, disproportionately pleased that thanks to him Sanghyuk isn’t going to go hungry until dinnertime.

He wonders if he should have told Sanghyuk that the kimbap is a day old.

*

two

Sanghyuk pulls Jaehwan’s hoodie – ex-hoodie; it’s Sanghyuk’s pajamas now – over his head and gets into bed for the night, but fully intending to stay up at least another hour or so texting Jaehwan like he always does. It’s never anything serious or important, but the words don’t matter. Sanghyuk just likes falling asleep with Jaehwan on his mind.

- should i get a haircuuuuuut~

- You should, your hair is starting to take over your entire head

- OMG WHAT IF MY HAIR IS SOME KIND OF ALIEN SPECIES THAT’S COLONISING MY BODY FOR SCIENCE???

- How the hell did you pass biology last term.

- bc park seonsaengnim has a crush on me ofc

- Dickhead, Park seonsaengnim doesn’t have a crush on you omfg. That’s gross stop saying it

- jealous??? :DDDDDDDDD

- Of Park seonsaengnim’s imaginary crush on you? Right.

- hehet i love you~~~ ლ(́◉◞౪◟◉‵ლ)

- Lol go away

Sanghyuk can’t say it back yet.

Sanghyuk wonders if he’s worrying over nothing, because Jaehwan loves everything – he loves tonkatsu, he loves football, he loves singing, he loves flowers, he loves the lunch lady, he loves shoes – and apparently, he loves Sanghyuk, too.

Sanghyuk stares at the last message with its silly emoticon and decides he can let himself beam at it, here in his room with no one around to see. His boyfriend is ridiculous.

“My boyfriend,” Sanghyuk whispers into the darkness, and presses a smile into his pillow.

*

three

“Okay, so, I’m taking you out for your birthday,” Sanghyuk announces as they trail behind the rest of their class on the walk down from their classroom to the sports hall for gym, Jaehwan on one side and Namjoo on the other. “If you hate the idea then Joonam came up with it. If you like it then it was my idea.”

 “He’ll love it, Hyuksang,” Namjoo scoffs. “I don’t ever have bad ideas.”

“What is it?” Jaehwan demands insistently, breaking up the best friends’ bickering. “Am I being pampered? Am I being spoiled? Are you buying me expensive things?”

Sanghyuk gives Namjoo a look as if to say, this is what I put up with, and she rolls her eyes at him, shoving him into Jaehwan before hopping down the last few steps of the staircase. That meant: as if you don’t want to.

“We’re going to the Yeouido cherry blossom festival,” Sanghyuk says, watching Jaehwan’s reaction apprehensively. “I’m going to pack a picnic lunch and we’ll spend the day out. There’s performances and a parade and street food, and this is the best part.”

“What is?” Jaehwan asks.

“All the flowers will be blooming just for your birthday, babe.”

“Oh my god,” Namjoo sends Sanghyuk a disgusted look at his cheesiness, a direct contrast with Jaehwan’s delighted expression.

“I like that concept,” Jaehwan decides, smiling prettily. “I like that very much.”

“Babe,” Namjoo pretends to throw up as Jaehwan laughs along.

Sanghyuk tsks sharply at her and she continues to pretend-squirm as they enter the sports hall, carefully dropping the subject now they’re around the rest of their classmates.

“I told you he’d like it,” she grabs his arm and whispers at him before she goes off to join the other girls for warm-up, and Sanghyuk takes a deep breath. He’d be hard pressed to admit it because she’ll milk it for years, but he’s very thankful Kim Namjoo is in his life.

He lets Jaehwan tug him away to where the boys are gathered and then spends the next half an hour going deaf at Jaehwan screaming blue murder and dire threats during dodgeball.

*

Jaehwan in fluffy oversized sweaters with the sleeves too long is one of Sanghyuk’s most favourite things in life.

This particular one is a soft pink – “So I can blend in with the flowers,” Jaehwan explains very seriously – and extremely fuzzy. Sanghyuk has to stop himself from touching Jaehwan too much as they walk under the trees heavy with cherry blossoms, so abundant that the very air is perfumed.

Sanghyuk would be lying if he said he made all the food he’d brought for the picnic – but he’s going to say it anyway and Jaehwan can it up. He’d bought fried chicken and jokbal and tuna cheese kimbap and tteokbokki, none of which are traditional birthday foods but they’re all the kind of unhealthy junk food Jaehwan adores. It’s not even strictly his birthday anymore since the actual day fell on a weekday, but that just means Jaehwan gets to celebrate his birthday twice. Truly spoiled, as usual.

It’s madness – Yeouido Park is absolutely crawling with people, which Sanghyuk by right should have anticipated since the cherry blossom season is exceptionally short and not only locals but tourists come to see it. They have a hard time finding a tree without anyone already sitting under it on colourful spread-out picnic mats, and when they finally find one they make an excited beeline for it before someone else steals the spot.

“Safe!” Jaehwan cries out, sliding home like a baseball player, and Sanghyuk has to apologise for him to the people nearby.

They immediately start on the food, Sanghyuk lying through his teeth about how he’d stayed up all night cooking and Jaehwan indulging him with an amused twinkle in his eye, ooh-ing and ahh-ing in all the right places.

“You need to give my mother your jokbal marinate recipe,” Jaehwan tells him as he finally lays back against the cherry tree trunk, stuffed to the gills and with sticky fingers.

“Of course,” Sanghyuk replies magnanimously. “I’ll even show her how to make it if she wants.”

They sit together for a while in silence, digesting and people-watching. Jaehwan points out passersby to Sanghyuk, playing a silly game of making up strangers’ identities and histories, and they try to outdo each other with how outrageous they can make their stories. It all ends in manic giggling, despite Sanghyuk having to cradle his stomach in discomfort because of how full he is.    

“Jyanie,” Sanghyuk begins, and Jaehwan immediately breaks into a heartbreaking smile at the nickname rarely used. “Is this okay? I mean, we could have gone to an amusement park or something. Something more exciting for your birthday.”

“Oh, no, this is good,” Jaehwan pats his stomach. “I’ve had your wonderful cooking, all the people here have come to pay their respects to me, and I’m the prettiest flower here today.”

Sanghyuk shakes his head in his usual talking-to-Jaehwan combination of disbelief and extreme fondness.

“Plus, you’re here.”

Jaehwan gives him the cheesiest grin ever, and it being Jaehwan, that’s saying something; but for the life of him Sanghyuk can’t find it in himself to tease back.

“Han Sanghyuk… you’re not blushing, are you?”

Sanghyuk tries his best to turn his face away from Jaehwan who’s so delighted by this development that it turns into a small wrestling match to make Sanghyuk look at him, but Sanghyuk wriggles away and snatches up their trash, determinedly walking away to the nearest garbage bin to the sound of Jaehwan laughing happily behind him.

*

- You sure you enjoyed today?

- yes i did!!! stop asking, you loser

- I can’t believe I’m going to be younger than you for the next 3 months

- you can call me hyung ԅ(≖‿≖ԅ)

- You’d like that, wouldn’t you. Dream on. And what the hell kind of emoji is that?

- it’s me being flirty! see, this one is you (￣ω￣)

- That does not look like me wtf

- IT DOES.

- No it doesn’t.

- IT DOES.

- No.

- IT DOES.

- I said no.

- I SAID IT DOES AND I AM YOUR BOYFRIEND WHO LOOKS AT YOU EVERY DAY SO I KNOW.

Sanghyuk curls up on his side and buries his face down into the fabric of Jaehwan’s hoodie, grinning stupidly while inhaling deep. It’s starting to lose Jaehwan’s scent; he’s going to have to ask Jaehwan for another thing for him to sleep in.

- Fine.

- remember you have to give me your jokbal recipe

- Ok. Tomorrow.

- time to sleep!

Sanghyuk takes a deep breath, and then another.

- Happy birthday, Jyanie. Love you.

- omgomgomgomgogmogmogmogmgomdofmgdlfgjdfkgjkfdjg DID YOU JUST SAY YOU LOVE ME????? HAN SANGHYUK?????

Sanghyuk rolls his eyes and slides his phone underneath his pillow. As Jaehwan said: time to sleep.

*

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