On Tuesday morning, Yunho walks into school with a lot less trepidation than he had the day before, but he still keeps his head on a swivel. Just because he didn't happen to see the Jaejoong guy yesterday doesn't mean it might not still happen today, and he needs to remain vigilant if he wants to avoid that weirdness at all costs.

Last week had been normal enough. He had a quiz on Monday, Sooyoung broke up with him on Tuesday, morning hapkido practise on Wednesday, Yuri asked him out on Thursday, and they had a date on Friday. Pretty typical week for him, girlfriend parts included. (Through no effort nor encouragement on his part, he often gets asked out by a new girl within a few days of the previous girlfriend breaking up with him. He doesn't question it.)

The weirdness commenced immediately afterwards. He longs for the return to his previous cycle of studying, hapkido practise, and making time to hang out with his friends; but a strange classmate he had never met before just had to insult him and insist on a very suspicious, slipshod plan to address perceived personality flaws he isn't convinced he has.

An optimistic part of his heart believes if he can just make it through the week with nothing particularly noteworthy happening to him, that comforting routine will resume.

This illusion is shattered immediately after school when he finds Jaejoong inspecting his motorbike. He tampers down his dread and tries to remain optimistic about the impending interaction. "Can I help you with something?"

"Yeah, what's the engine capacity on this thing?" the other student asks as he squeezes the handlebars and pokes around until he finds the horn. Yunho would rather he didn't, but he is willing to let Jaejoong play pretend with his ride if it means the conversation can remain normal.

"50 cc," he answers haltingly. "I can't drive anything more powerful than that until I can get my car license; that was the deal I made with my mom in order to get the bike." Jaejoong nods but doesn't say anything to that, instead flipping up the kickstand and settling into the seat. He makes grabby hands for the helmet in Yunho's grip, and Yunho watches him clumsily fit it over his head.

He faces Yunho and lifts up the shield. "Is that a lot?"

He knows staring is rude, but Yunho can't help it. "Why would you ask if you wouldn't know what the answer meant?"

Jaejoong shrugs. "I heard my dad say it once, and it seemed like the thing to say. I totally sounded like I knew what I was talking about, though, right?" He grins, waiting for Yunho to be impressed.

Yunho keeps him waiting. He is currently preoccupied by striving to make peace with the fact that if the other student was not here to talk about automobiles, he must be here for the other reason. The weird reason. He takes a deep breath. "Can I help you with something?" he tries again.

Jaejoong hops off the moped without properly setting down the kickstand, and Yunho rushes to right his tilting vehicle. "I'm here to help you, remember? I'm going to teach you how to date! We're starting today."

"I didn't agree to this." He wants to sound authoritatively disencouraging, but the slight whine under his words probably dampens the effect.

"Doesn't matter; I'm not doing this for you." Jaejoong gestures with his hand for Yunho to follow him, and Yunho tells himself he only does so so that he can retrieve the helmet still snug on the other's head.

Speaking of heads, something clicks in his. "Is this for Sooyoung? Are you trying to get me back together with her?"

"Oh my god, no," Jaejoong refutes immediately. "Even after I'm through with you, you will not be good enough for her."

Yunho elects not to debate that. "So why are you putting us through this?"

Jaejoong leads them around the perimeter of the school's campus until they reach the narrow alley between the auditorium and the gymnasium. There are cigarette butts and fast food wrappers littered on the ground, but the sun is still providing enough illumination so that the space doesn't feel cramped and grimey.

He flexes his torso to avoid collision when the other makes a sharp stop at the mouth of the alley and faces him. "I'm getting the sense you don't want to do this," Jaejoong starts rhetorically, "so why don't you just tell me 'no'?"

Yunho wants to stare into a fourth wall camera, mockumentary-television-style. "I did."

"Actually, you didn't," Jaejoong retorts pedagogically. He takes off Yunho's helmet and kneels to set it on a relatively unadorned square meter of concrete, continuing, "On Friday you denied needing any help at all; and just earlier you simply said you did not agree to my tutoring; yet here you are, standing in the Backstreet with me without even questioning where I was taking you."

Yunho stumbles a step back when Jaejoong springs up to look at him with peering eyes. "So I'll ask again: why don't you just tell me 'No, I'm not going to do this'?"

He opens his mouth, willing his larynx to utter that first syllable, to tell Jaejoong off for all the ways he's insulted him in their brief hours of acquaintance, to say anything—but nothing comes out.

Jaejoong pulls back with a decisive nod. "That's what I thought. Alright, first test! Ask me out on a date."

Now would be a great time to learn how to say 'no'. An incredulous "But you're a dude!" comes out instead.

He doesn't like the resulting smirk on Jaejoong's face. It makes him feel like he telegraphed his attack to his opponent, and all he can do is wait for the winning blow to strike him. "That will continue to be true for every lesson in the curriculum, so I suggest you get over that quickly."

Getting things over with quickly sounds like a great idea, actually. "Okay, fine. Would you like to go get Lotteria with me this afternoon?"

Jaejoong rolls his eyes so hard his neck and head go with it, and Yunho begins to understand there will be no speedrunning this game. "What was wrong with that?" he demands.

"I'm not even going to comment on your tone of voice because I know some girls like the whole -with-a-heart-of-gold shtick, but what the hell is up with you and Lotteria? Fast food chains are not first date material! I get that we're in high school; but even if that's all you can afford, you should at least take it to go and continue the date somewhere more romantic. There's a park literally five blocks from there."

Yunho's defensiveness lowers to make room for realization. He honestly never thought of that before.

Jaejoong facepalms. "I see I have my work cut out for me."

Yunho does not let himself be bothered by the statement. With his new understanding, he is eager to try again, but Jaejoong holds out a hand to stop him before he could open his mouth. "The moment passed. Try again when I'm not expecting it."

"You were expecting it earlier though…?" Yunho tries to point out, but Jaejoong shakes his head. "Yeah, but at least I didn't know what you were going to say or suggest we do. If you ask me again right now, where's the shock value? The anticipation?" He punctuates his argument with a satisfied smile that borders on condescending, and that's Yunho's last straw.

When Jaejoong moves to step around him and leave, Yunho sticks his arm out to his side to block him. The alley is narrow enough that his palm is almost flush with the brick of the building, and it only takes one step to crowd into Jaejoong's space and force him against the wall.

Their bodies aren't quite touching, but Jaejoong's surprised exhale still easily reaches the skin between Yunho's nose and lips. His perpetually teasing eyes seem deeper now, or maybe they just look that way because of how intently Yunho is looking into them.

"How's this for shock value?" His words are only loud enough for Jaejoong to hear him clearly, and his voice naturally goes gravelly from the low volume.

Jaejoong's eyes narrow back into amused slits. "You have my attention."

"Good. We should go on a date this afternoon. Grab some food, go somewhere. I know a place."

Jaejoong quirks an eyebrow, then his gaze breaks from Yunho's to study his arm, then his face, then the position they're in. If this is an intimidation tactic, Yunho refuses to budge.

Finally, he frowns in impressed approval. "This will do, Jung, but it won't work for a second date." He swipes Yunho's arm away with no further warning and smoothly ducks out of the new opening. It is only the reflexes honed from years of hapkido that save Yunho from losing his balance against the wall.

He turns to find Jaejoong picking up Yunho's helmet and propping it between his arm and his hip. "I hope you have some extra headgear because I plan on travelling by motorbike tonight."

Later, when he'll think of Jaejoong, the sight of him framed by the alley entrance, backlit by the high sun and taunting, will be the image his brain supplies for reference.

"... So I have him pinned; I'm centering myself, preparing to throw him; and when I crouch for extra leverage, crzrhszhrshzhrshhh!" Yunho mimes a ripping motion in the air. "My pants are literally split into two halves, right down the center seam."

He has to raise his voice to be heard over Jaejoong's boisterous laughter. "I still won the match, though."

"Oh my god, of course you did! You can't lose after showing the entire gymnasium your underwear!"

"It helps that red's my lucky colour."

"Got it. You wear red when you wanna get lucky." Jaejoong keeps his voice deadpan, but his eyebrows still waggle, and it's Yunho's turn to laugh.

The park that Jaejoong mentioned is one Yunho has been to plenty of times before, but he can't recall the most recent time he went. It's an awkwardly long and narrow stretch, having originally been zoned as a residential block before someone along the way decided that it should be greenspace in order to attract families to the neighbourhood. Most of the block is taken up by grass and trees except for a children's playground on one end and a paved, oblong walking path that more or less follows the perimeter of the block.

After picking up their food, they walked to the park and wordlessly agreed to take a few laps on the path. He finished and trashed his meal a while back, but Jaejoong still has his drink in one hand and a pouch of fries in the other.

"I gotta say," Jaejoong says after a while of companionable walking, "I was dreading this first date, but you're doing great so far."

"Thanks," Yunho says without gratitude.

"Seriously. Why weren't you this talkative last Friday?"

He frowns. He thought that had been one of his better first dates, the fact that Yuri didn't ask him out again notwithstanding. Unfortunately, however, he knows he has a habit of exactly what Jaejoong is describing, so he speaks generally.

"I don't know how to talk to girls, man. I get that the point of the first date is to discover whether we have anything in common, but all I do is hapkido and study. Girls get tired of those topics really quickly, and I never have anything else to talk about. It's easier to just let them say whatever they want and then react accordingly."

Jaejoong stops himself from taking another sip of his drink to respond, and the ice in his cup clinks loudly as he uses that hand to gesticulate. "No, no, no. Here's the thing: the stuff you're trying to find in common are not necessarily hobbies, though that's great too. What you're actually looking for are matches in personality. You can discover a little bit of that through the things people do to occupy their time, sure, but you discover a lot more in the way people talk about those things. The topic doesn't matter as much as the presentation. Like, just now, you were telling that story about your hapkido tournament. It wasn't fun because it was a funny thing to happen to you but because you had fun telling it! Treat all your conversations like that, and you'll never have an awkward date again."

That's all well and good, but, "It's different with you! I'm not trying to date you."

Jaejoong purposefully steps in front of Yunho and halts their walk. "As of today, you are, though. That's why we're here." He shakes his ice cup in Yunho's face for emphasis. "We're on a date."

Yunho forgot, honestly. Sometime between parking the moped and arriving at the park, he stopped feeling observed, and it just felt fun.

"Do we have to go on dates? Can't you just tell me all the things you think I need to know? You did a great job earlier, explaining the personality and presentation stuff."

The other frowns but takes a moment to think. Yunho hopes this means that the next time he and Jaejoong hang out, it will be a normal meetup.

By the way Jaejoong snaps his fingers a few seconds later, Yunho knows his hopes are dashed. "You've taken chemistry already, right?"

Ah. He lolls his head backwards in resigned understanding. "Okay, fine. You learn the theory, you conduct an experiment to observe the concepts in practise, and the results underscore the lesson. Fine, I get it. We go on dates."

His head snaps upright when Jaejoong rams his elbow into Yunho's arm. "You weren't supposed to say all that smart stuff!" the other complains.

"What?!"

"You were supposed to be like, 'Uh, yeah, why?' and then I'd be like, 'Well, it doesn't count because you've never taken chemistry taught by me~' and it was gonna be charming enough to convince you, but now I can't because it sounds dumb compared to your really good point!"

Jaejoong elbows him again, and Yunho lets him because it is so powerless and ineffectual. "Hitting me is not very charming."

"Everything I do is charming!" Jaejoong refutes, but he stops immediately. When Yunho resumes their walk, he follows along without raising his hand again except to facilitate the stubborn slurping of his remaining drink.

When they round the bend that would take them back to the park entrance closest to Lotteria, Yunho opens, "So, got any more nuggets of wisdom for me before our date wraps up, Prince Charming?" The sun isn't obviously setting, but the world does seem cast in more orange than it did a few hours ago when they left the school.

Jaejoong narrows his eyes at him. "You're teasing me, but joke's on you because I like that nickname. And yes: the advice I gave you before only applies while you're doing the talking, but there's nothing a girl likes less than being talked at instead of talked to… You can't just let her talk either, though. Ask her questions; be curious about her. Bonus: it'll hide the fact you've run out of things to say, since you're worried about that."

Yunho considers this. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"I'm being curious about you. If you're so charming and you've amassed all this great dating knowledge, why aren't you dating anyone?"

Jaejoong straightens up. "Who says I'm not?"

"I highly doubt she'd be okay with you going on dates with me instead of her if she were real."

Jaejoong deflates. "He probably wouldn't be, you're right," he says with a wry smile.

Oh. "Yeah, okay, I see how that could pose some challenges."

The other student waves his hands and loses a fry for his troubles. "It's not a challenge. I haven't been looking, and I'm not just saying that so that I don't look pathetic in front of the guy who's had more girlfriends than I have pimples."

Yunho does a quick scan. "Your skin is clear."

"Thank you." Jaejoong bounds for a garbage can up ahead, and Yunho follows at a slower pace. "I'm the understudy for the lead in the spring musical, and I'm trying to get the lead in both productions for my final year. It involves a lot of hard work and kissing . I'm also an alternate for the badminton club and trying to keep my GPA above a 2.5. A boyfriend would just cut into my time."

"And this tutoring thing you're trying to do for me wouldn't?"

"Don't worry about my schedule," Jaejoong counters snippily, "This is all about you. Speaking of…"

They exit out of the park, and Yunho raises an eyebrow when Jaejoong doesn't follow him back towards where they parked. "Mini lesson: You should always take your date home, but don't worry about today. I'm gonna take the bus," he says with a thumb over his shoulder, pointing to a bus stop Yunho knows is stationed down the block. "I have to run an errand for my mom."

Yunho nods in understanding and feels distantly grateful for the abrupt end to their time together. Walking Jaejoong to his front door on their first date is a little bit too much for him.

He figures this is goodbye, but Jaejoong keeps talking. "You haven't asked me for my cellphone number yet, by the way."

"I was supposed to?"

"Uh, yeah. I'm not just your dating tutor; I'm your pretend girlfriend! 'Observe the concepts in practise,' remember?"

This naturally begs the question, "Why aren't you my pretend boyfriend, then?"

"Is that what you want to be telling your hapkido friends when you explain to them why you can't hang out after school on date nights?" Jaejoong claps his hand to underscore his point. "'Concepts in practise,' hello!"

His brain unhelpfully reminds him that he didn't say 'no' to Jaejoong's question earlier in the Backstreet, and that is why he is having this inane conversation. Then he gets an idea. "Okay, well, if I'm practising…" He straightens, tries to affect a serious aura. By the other's raised eyebrows, he thinks it worked. "Jaejoong, I like you. Learning from you, that is. Can I be your practise boyfriend?"

Jaejoong doesn't say anything for a second, long enough for Yunho to actually feel really stupid about asking in the first place, but then he smiles. It's not tinged with ulterior motives or hinting at a teasing comment, but unrestrained and happy. It actually looks kind of good on him—until he forcibly suppresses it.

Yunho smirks. He hoped to fluster Jaejoong, but he still considers this a success. "This is the first time anyone's ever asked to be your boyfriend, isn't it?"

"No!" but it's rote and futile.

"I should find myself a more qualified dating tutor. Someone who's honest with me and has more experience."

"Good luck finding anyone with the patience." Jaejoong sneers and turns to walk to the bus stop, but Yunho rushes around to make Jaejoong face him. He smiles in conciliation. "If it makes you feel any better, it's also the first time I've asked to be someone's boyfriend."

Jaejoong purses his lips, but he doesn't avoid looking at him. Yunho grins. "Well, come on. Don't leave me hanging. What do you say?"

Like earlier, Jaejoong quirks an eyebrow before breaking his gaze from Yunho's to study him. Unlike earlier, Yunho doesn't feel like this is a test he can possibly fail.

"Yes," he finally says, and Yunho will question later why he is relieved by the syllable. "We're officially practise dating."

A/N (4.4.2023): I've introduced the ways Jaejoong and Yunho spend their free time, but I don't intend on exploring those much unless it directly concerns their emotional development. Just know that in the background, the spring musical and a hapkido tournament are imminent for the two. Thanks for reading this far!