“You seem distracted today. What’s up? Didn’t see a you fancied last night?”

Trust his lab assistant to make fun of him like that. Donghae shot Kyuhyun a dirty look and fired his finger gun at him, but he refused to duck. “Don’t you have something else better to do, like writing research reports or something?”

“Maybe you knocked your head against the observation glass window too hard?” Kyuhyun remarked, tidying up a sheaf of papers before dumping the whole lot on Donghae’s desk. “Here’s your report. I finished it yesterday while you were out playing— no, dicking around.”

Donghae rolled his eyes and flipped through the report, skimming over a few pages before pushing it over to his growing ‘IN’ pile. He was going to have a lot of catching up to do. “I’ll take a look at it later. And for the record, I wasn’t playing or dicking around, excuse you. It’s all serious research.”

“Yeah, I know. I wrote the abstract for your paper. Must be some hard work, watching over ten or twenty hard .”

“Yah, watch your language, Cho Kyuhyun.”

“Aww, it’s alright if you didn’t get laid last night either.”

“Cho Kyuhyun!” Donghae half-yelled in amusement, chucking a notebook at the other’s smugly grinning face. “It was ing two a.m. by the the time we got back to my apartment and I needed my beauty sleep, okay? You wouldn’t know because you’d already left at what, ten? Ten-thirty?”

“Ooh, who’s the ‘we’?” Kyuhyun latched on, a knowing smirk on his lips as he drew closer to the professor. “Can’t be Siwon hyung because he asked me this morning if you’d come in yet. And you only showed up, like, ten minutes after he dropped by.”

Donghae narrowed his eyes at the other and sighed, wondering why nothing ever slipped the snarky lab assistant’s ears. He held his head in his hand and peeked at his lab assistant. “What are you trying to imply?”

Kyuhyun pulled up a rolling chair and plopped onto it, excitement clear in his eyes. “Let’s see, last night before I left, there were only three more people in the lab — you, Siwon hyung, and your cute little -devourer.” 

Donghae spluttered at the name, but Kyuhyun just ignored him and went on. 

“So let’s solve this difficult riddle with the process of elimination, shall we?” He put up three fingers in the professor’s face and grinned. “Now, we know that there’s an obvious love triangle going on here. Siwon hyung likes you, you like Devourer, Devourer likes… Well, you, and you also kinda like Siwon hyung. Ehh, wait. This isn’t a triangle, it’s just a ing straight line.”

“If you put it that way—”

“Doesn’t matter. Nobody’s straight here anyway.” Donghae snorted and rolled his eyes as Kyuhyun just shrugged and continued. “So, as I said earlier, you couldn’t have gone home with Siwon hyung, otherwise, he wouldn’t have called to ask if you’d arrived because you would have arrived at the same time as he did.”

“We drove there separately—”

“I’m sure you’d still have left his place around the same time and therefore my deduction is not completely off-tangent.”

“You call yourself a researcher yet you base your arguments on assumptions.”

“I’m merely hypothesising, sheesh, calm down hyung,” Kyuhyun laughed and spun around in his chair. “So that just leaves you and mister Devourer. Which means I can conclude, from my findings, that you brought him back last night for a little taste, you know, him being into you and all and you being the little devil I know you are underneath that false naivety and angelic appearance—”

“Cho Kyuhyun!”

“— and he actually wanted to get it on with you, but you were just being a tired old man and so he offered to devour your and you happily accepted, which is what put you in such a good mood this morning because ‘damn he’s one heck of an -devourer’ and you’ve both already made plans to meet and again later today to make up for the lack of it last night!” Kyuhyun finished smugly. “Am I right or am I right?”

Once Donghae was sure that Kyuhyun was done with his mini-speech, he stood up, clapped three times, and smacked the other’s forehead with a notebook. “I should send you to Siwon to get you scanned for brain damage.”

“No thanks, I don’t want him to me in the machine.”

“Yah, that’s not what I meant!”

Kyuhyun snorted and folded his arms over his chest. “Don’t change the subject. So you dare to tell me you didn’t bring the boy back home last night?”

“I never said I didn’t,” Donghae pouted. When he saw how Kyuhyun just kept leaning closer and closer to him for more juicy details, he threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. “Fine, I did! But I brought him home with me only because it was past curfew and I didn’t want him to get demerited. I just offered him a place to sleep in my spare bedroom and sent him back to his dorm this morning. But we didn’t . I swear.” That wasn’t the full truth, but Kyuhyun certainly didn’t need to know that they and cuddled and kissed and shared a bed and cuddled and kissed and some more in the morning. Nope. 

“Ah… that’s a huge disappointment. You’re no fun,” Kyuhyun huffed and went back to his seat. “Are you sure you both didn’t, like, accidentally ? Not even third base?”

“Oh just stop sticking your nose into my private life. I’m sticking with my good ole -buddy for the foreseeable future. Care to join me?” Donghae just laughed when Kyuhyun let out a shuddering groan and rolled away on his chair. He stuck his tongue out at his assistant. “Buy me coffee.”

“No. Go get it yourself.”

“Aish. That’s what I get for telling you what you’ve been wanting to hear?”

“That’s what you get for being a no-jam hyung.”

Donghae raised his eyebrow at Kyuhyun and suddenly let out a loud snort. “Maybe you’re the one who needs to get laid instead.”

~

To: Lee Hyukjae

Did you get to class on time?

To: Prof Lee ;)

Hey Prof, yeah I did, thanks for asking (─‿‿─)

To: Lee Hyukjae

Good to hear that. Study hard! ;)

To: Prof Lee ;)

Thanks ( ´ ω ` ) Um Prof, I’ll be practising at the studio this Friday afternoon… do you wanna come over to watch? It’s okay if you don’t want to or if you’re busy though, I totally understand!

To: Lee Hyukjae

Sure, when’s your practice? My evening class ends around 5pm

To: Prof Lee ;)

We’ll be there from 2 till 6, you can drop by anytime (´｡• ᵕ •｡`)

To: Lee Hyukjae

I’ll see if I can get off early for you ;) Do I get my own private show after?

To: Prof Lee ;)

(｡⊙_⊙｡;) 

To: Lee Hyukjae

Does that count as a yes? ;))

To Prof Lee ;)

Yah, don’t say things like that! (>﹏<)

To: Lee Hyukjae

Just kidding, see you tomorrow! ^^

“Ooh, who are you texting?”

Sungmin snatched the phone out of Hyukjae’s hands, dashing ahead and cackling in glee when the latter let out an anguished yell. 

“Yah Sungminnie, come back here this instant!”

Hyukjae ran after Sungmin and caught onto his bag, forcefully tugging the elder backwards to try getting his phone back. But Sungmin wasn’t called a martial arts genius for nothing. With a few quick moves, he’d manoeuvred out of Hyukjae’s grip and ran ahead again, stopping only a few more steps away to finally read through the messages on the screen. “Prof Lee with a winky face?” Sungmin squealed as he scrolled all the way to the top and started reading. “ARE YOU BOTH A THING NOW?”

“Shut up, Min, don’t be so loud about it!” Hyukjae hissed, finally wrenching his precious phone back from the elder’s hand and checking to see if anything got accidentally sent, or worse, deleted. 

“I demand an explanation!”

Hyukjae flinched. Seeing the other students around them starting to give them nasty glares and raised eyebrows, he pulled the protesting Sungmin aside and tried to pacify him. “Yah, I was going to tell you later.”

Sungmin crossed his arms in front of his chest and frowned. “Since when did you go from crushing on him to dating him?”

“Shush, not so loud!” Hyukjae groaned. “We’re not dating, I swear.” His neck grew warm at the thought of what happened at the lab, but he quickly shook his head and recomposed himself. “It’s only a couple of texts. We talked again after that embarrassing incident with the red icing — which reminds me, my shirt is now completely ruined, thank you very much — and then we talked a bit about dancing and I, uh, kind of invited him over to watch us practise.”

“Did you get his number from the uni website? Isn’t that a business number? The uni monitors that! YOU CAN’T FLIRT WITH HIS BUSINESS NUMBER OR YOU’LL GET CAUGHT.”

“Ah, no, it’s fine,” Hyukjae mumbled in response. “I asked him for his personal number.”

“YOU— oh.” Sungmin looked impressed. “Not bad at all. So how did he respond?”

“He was pretty chill about it,” Hyukjae said with a soft grin. “But then again, I told him it was so I could let him know when we were practising, not for me to st