His brain didn’t seem to like him at all that morning. He had been spending his morning in the library, reading some textbooks that he might be able to use for his summer-break assignment. Yet nothing seemed to be relevant, and nothing seemed to get through his brain. It wasn’t just that morning if he had to be honest. It had been this way for a couple of days and he swore to God that if this continued, he might have to kill someone. Yeah, someone.

“Hyung… are you okay?” Minhwan whispered.

Jaejin tore his gaze away from the textbook, finding Minhwan’s eyes fixed on him. Right. He almost forgot that the younger guy was there with him. Seunghyun went back to his brother’s place over the weekend, something that he did every now and then and he would only be back later that day – which also meant that Minhwan would cling to Jaejin even more than he normally would. Not that Jaejin minded though.

“Yeah. I just can’t concentrate. That’s all,” Jaejin mumbled. He put his pencil down, leaning his back against the wooden chair while sighing.

“Did something happen? You seem pretty off for the past few days.”

There was concern in Minhwan’s eyes and this was why he loved the younger boy. Minhwan was the quiet type, especially compared to Seunghyun, but his feeling was always sincere. And that would be what Seunghyun and Minhwan had in common. Sincerity. They both might be so different, but they were so different that they were complimenting each other well and one single common trait was enough for them to be close friends. Sometimes Jaejin wasn’t sure how he fitted to the picture.

“Nothing. Just feeling out of the game lately. Maybe the summer heat,” he answered.

“Okay then. If you say so…”

So they spent their morning trying to get some work done, which Jaejin realized was pretty much such a waste of his time because Minhwan seemed to get more work done than him. That never happened before.

This was all that stupid Choi Jonghun’s fault.

---

Jonghun swore to God that he had never seen Hongki looking like that. Hongki had a lot of expressions that he always showed, but this definitely wasn’t one of those that Jonghun had seen before. One of Hongki’s eyes was widened while the other one was pierced. His lips were twisted in a way that Jonghun didn’t know was possible.

“You look… incredibly creepy, right now,” Jonghun commented.

Hongki’s weird expression quickly changed, inhaling deeply as if he was trying to control his emotion. The beer on Hongki’s side was getting warm, had remained untouched since the time the waiter served it there. It was just supposed to be a night out at the pub to relax because Jonghun couldn’t seem to get himself together at work, but of course once they got there, Hongki forced him to spill the beans.

“Creepy?! Who? Me?! Speak for yourself, you weirdo!” Hongki’s voice rose.

“Sssshhhh… Chill…” said Jonghun, eyes wondering around the booth they were sitting on, was glad that the live music was loud enough to distract people from his best friend’s little outrage.

“How can I chill?! You kissed a dude! Aren’t there enough chicks on this planet for you to hit on? Dude, I know you’re a playboy, but seriously… chicks aren’t challenging enough now?”

“You’re exaggerating. It was just a kiss,” Jonghun said.

Hongki went quiet, finally grabbing his pint of beer. Jonghun couldn’t read what possibly was going through Hongki’s mind right now. Most of the time he couldn’t anyway, but that was the fun of being friends with Hongki. It was always full of surprises. Though he wouldn’t call this one fun at all.

“It’s just a kiss for you. That poor kid might think differently,” Hongki sighed.

“How so?”

“Well… he might hate you for the rest of his life. And if you are interested in him the way you were interested in that long list of ex girlfriends of yours, you might want to feel really worried right now.”

That made sense, Jonghun thought.

“You should say sorry to him,” Hongki suggested.

“I did. After he punched me on the face. I said sorry more than once in fact. Like when he was literally kicking me out of his apartment.”

“Then maybe you haven’t said enough sorry. Send him a card or something.”

They both sighed in unison, the live music wasn’t as interesting as it was supposed to be and the nachos that they ordered hadn’t arrived yet. Jonghun never knew that kissing a guy could feel a lot more complicated than kissing some girl that he met at the dance floor or something.

“Wait… are you actually trying to help me? I thought you were disgusted by the fact that I kissed a guy,” he suddenly realized.

“I’m not helping you. I was just saying what I was thinking.”

“Don’t play the tough love thing on me,” Jonghun laughed.

“I’m not playing the tough love thing on you. I’m just…”

“Just what…?”

“Do you really like him?” Hongki asked, this time sounding calmer than before.

“I don’t know. Maybe yes. Maybe not. Maybe it was just an impulse,” he shrugged.

Hongki stared at him, pursing his lower lip forward out of habit. Ah, Jonghun knew this. He might not be able to read Hongki’s mind most of the time, but he knew Hongki’s patterns. Hongki had habits that would tell Jonghun what he was about to do or say. And the one that he was currently doing showed Jonghun that he was about to say something rather well thought of.

“I don’t care if you hit on girls… or guys, for heaven knows why, and God bless this guy over here, please,” Hongki looked up, staring at the ceiling as if he was trying to get his message across to the higher power. “But… just don’t play with their hearts. I know that you’re not like that. But… this one is rather different. So just be careful. It might not just be a punch on the face next time. I don’t want to rush to the hospital in the middle of the night because my producer gets shot by the guy that he has a crush on.”

At times like this, Jonghun usually remembered why he had this annoyingly loud guy as a best friend.

---

“…what are you doing here?” Jaejin blinked, hand gripping tight on his front door knob, getting ready to close it again.

“Are you free?” Jonghun asked, grinning awkwardly.

“None of your business,” Jaejin mumbled, this time closing the door for real.

Much to his surprise, Jonghun’s hand was fast enough to hold the door and the other guy was at the advantage with the muscles that he had. Jaejin tried to pull his door, but Jonghun was way too strong for him – the door not moving for even an inch no matter how hard Jaejin tried.

“No seriously, are you free? I’m…” Jonghun paused. “…I’m here to say sorry about the other night.”

Jonghun let go of the door, but Jaejin was too caught up with what the other guy just said to remember that he was about close the door. Besides, it felt rather pathetic to avoid the guy just because of a kiss. Well a bizarre one. And it was more of a peck than anything else. But still, Jaejin thought he was stuck in the middle of a very bad dream when it happened.

“You’ve said sorry,” Jaejin replied. “This would be the… I don’t know how many times you’ve said sorry to me. But I do remember that you kept on saying sorry that night.”

“Oh… you remember.”

“I do. Now get lost.”

He kind of just stood there waiting for Jonghun to take his leave, but the guy didn’t seem to plan on moving at all. It felt awkward. Even more awkward than when Jonghun kissed him (and just why on earth Jonghun kissed him?). To make it worse, his neighbour actually looked like he was really sorry.

“…just come on in…” Jaejin mumbled at the end. He turned around and walked back in, leaving the front door open.

It was very hard for him to say no to people. Seunghyun had once pointed that out to him, and openly admitted that he had used this trait of Jaejin’s to his advantage. And right now, he was having a hard time to actually mean what he said when he told Jonghun to just get lost.

“Sorry, I was rude,” he apologised.

“No, no. It’s fine,” Jonghun quickly replied, seemingly pretty awkward to be in the apartment again.

“Coffee?” Jaejin offered.

“Sure…”

He didn’t waste more time, quickly heading to his kitchen to make them both coffee. Jaejin still had a lot of work to do that night, so he really needed coffee and he wasn’t going to offer Jonghun anything else. “Sorry it’s such a mess. Uni’s stuff…” Jaejin apologised again, wasn’t sure why he was the one that kept on apologising now. He did nothing wrong, Jaejin tried to assure himself. It was a perfectly normal reaction to avoid someone that was being inappropriate to him.

“Uni can be such a . It’s understandable,” Jonghun answered, this time there was a small smile on his face. “Though I wouldn’t know how hard it was for those that weren’t in music major. I figured it might be as bad as my music history class back then.”

Jaejin laughed – surprised in the same time that he could do so – before he then walked to the living room where Jonghun were standing, two mugs of coffee on his hands. He handed Jonghun his share of coffee, cleared up his table that was messy from his journal articles and then put his own mug there.

They didn’t really say anything for the next couple of seconds. Jonghun was looking at everything but Jaejin, then finally sitting down when he realised that Jaejin was already settled on the couch. Jaejin himself could only steal glances at Jonghun from behind his glasses, his brain trying to think of something to say.

“Were you drunk?” was what he managed to say at the end.

“Eh?”

“You know… when you kissed me. I mean, we drank a couple of cans so maybe…”

“Oh… no. I wasn’t,” Jonghun answered honestly.

“Then why?”

He watched Jonghun sipping to his coffee, seemingly trying to think of a good reason to tell Jaejin. If he had to be honest, Jaejin wasn’t disturbed that a guy had kissed him. Seunghyun had kissed him before, but Seunghyun had kissed everyone else too. Though he remembered that Minhwan was so mad when Seunghyun kissed him and refused to take Seunghyun’s reason that they were all friends and that there was nothing wrong about kissing your friends. Yeah, Seunghyun's logic.

Jaejin, somewhat, was upset about things that he didn’t really know what. Maybe because it was so out of the blue, or that because they both were barely close friends.

“I was just caught in the moment, I guess,“ Jonghun admitted.

“…of course you were,” Jaejin rolled his eyes sarcastically.

“I wasn’t thinking, you know. You were good. I mean, like… when you played the bass. I don’t have that many friends from work, so I don’t really have anyone to have some random jamming session with. Hongki at guitar; it would be more towards me teaching him the right chords than actually having a great time. But you… you knew what to play when I played random chords. And you improvised a lot with the notes too. You guessed the progression correctly even without looking at my fingers. It was great! So I thought…” Jonghun stopped when he realised that he got way too excited for a guy that was supposed to beg for forgiveness. “Gosh, that was such a lousy explanation.”

But then, Jaejin thought it was such an adorable explanation. He had never expected to see this side of Jonghun. When the other guy hit him with his car, he was panicked but well composed. When they went for the groceries shopping, Jonghun seemed to be just another typical man that didn’t talk much, as well as looking like the type that didn’t get excited easily. He wasn’t as excited as this when they were playing Xbox that night.

“Oh well. Let’s just pretend it never happened then,” Jaejin finally said.

“Okay… are we cool then?”

“Sure. Why not? It was just a kiss. Seunghyun kissed me before, my mum kissed me before, my sister kissed me before. Well it wasn’t like you forced me to make out with you or anything. I was just over-reacting because I didn’t know you well, I guess. Still don’t know you well, by the way,” said Jaejin.

“Hahaha. Glad that you think so then. That means we can jam together again when we are free?” Jonghun concluded.

“Yeah. I would love that. Seunghyun at guitar too. Well not that bad actually, he’s learning fast. But still long way to go before he can play as good as you. And yes, you are good. Though I guess it’s your job, so you have to be good.”

“We have a deal, it seems~.”

Jaejin chuckled. “Yes we do.”

“And who’s Seunghyun?”

“Oh… the other guy that stalks you with Minhwan,” Jaejin laughed. “Very weird, but he’s a good kid. I should introduce you to him. Maybe you can teach him more about guitar.”

---

Jonghun rushed back to his apartment, his steps weren’t exactly light and he didn’t seem to look all that contented. Fair enough, Jaejin had forgiven him and all. They would be able to hang out again in the future and whatnot. He also had managed to stay longer than he expected he would at Jaejin’s place, doing pretty much nothing but watching some random football match on TV while Jaejin was doing his project. They talked every now and then, small conversations that he kind of enjoyed.

But there was something he had to rant about, and he could not rant about it to Jaejin. He slammed his door before quickly walked over to his living room’s window, taking a quick peek at Jaejin’s apartment from the small gap of his blinds while dialling Hongki’s number.

“…it’s ing 3am… you stupid Choi Jonghun,” Hongki groaned on the other line of the phone.

“I know. But dude, this is massive. I need to tell you this. I went to Jaejin’s place to say sorry and all. He forgave me, and I stayed there till just now.”

“…okay… Then what? Jaejin asked you out? Pffttt…”

“No. That would be lovely, but no, he didn’t,” Jonghun frowned.

“Then let me go back to sleep, …”

Throwing himself to his leather sofa, Jonghun took another glance at his window, noticing that Jaejin’s light was still on and the guy was actually still where he was when Jonghun left him. “I think I have some competitions. He keeps on talking about his two juniors!! I mean, I don’t care about them, I want to get to know him better, not them!”

“Go to sleep, Jonghun…” Hongki mumbled lazily.

“I’m not done! Stay awake and listen to me,” he exclaimed. “And this Seunghyun guy. Oh God, you wouldn’t believe me. He plays guitar too! Jaejin said he’s not as good as I am – of course he’s not – but Jaejin keeps on talking about everything that he finds interesting from Seunghyun. This freaking Seunghyun has kissed him too! I don’t know the details, but bottom line, he has kissed him too. And it was before my kiss with Jaejin!”

“…see you at work tomorrow… night~…” Hongki murmured.

“Don’t you fall asleep on me!! Lee Hongki!!! Oiiiii! Your best friend needs someone to rant to. Hongki?! You there…? Hongki-ah? Ah damn it!”

Jonghun threw his phone to his sofa and groaned in annoyance. He definitely didn’t like competitions.

Though why did he even think that he had to compete? He frowned at the thought. It wasn’t like he was trying to ask Jaejin out.

…right?

------

I was free the whole day and my muse was loving me, so here I am with another update. Wasn't expecting it to be this fast, to be honest XD. Hope you like it :D