Friday’s meeting arrived and was approaching its end with still no sign of Sehun.

“Has anyone talked to him this week?” Minho asked.

“I tried to,” Jongin sighed, “unsuccessfully.” He clicked dejectedly on something on the computer screen.

Jongdae pursed his lips as he looked around the room, one eye squinting behind his glasses in apparent concentration. Then suddenly he leapt up from his seat, stuffing his phone into the back pocket of his jeans. “Just leave Sehun to me,” he declared, striding from the room before anyone could ask what he meant by that.

Everyone seemed to take Jongdae leaving as permission to leave as well. Chanyeol raised an eyebrow, getting up from his seat. “Anyone want to guess what he’s planning?”

“Not really,” Baekhyun said. “But it’s probably something manipulative.”

“I don’t think anything Jongdae does is going to convince Sehun to come back,” Jongin said. “He’s pretty stubborn when he wants to be.”

Youngjae turned to look at the younger writer, catching the sad smile that spread across his face as he got up from his chair and he felt a pang of sympathy for him. He seemed to blame himself for something, and Youngjae didn’t pretend to be a mind reader, but he would still say that the rift between him and Sehun appeared to be about more than unedited stories.

“Youngjae?”

Daehyun’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts. “Hm?”

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure, what is it?” he asked hesitantly, wondering what this could be about. He realized with a particularly harsh beat of his heart that the others had cleared out already and they were now the only two left in the room.

“Well...” Daehyun looked fidgety, twisting his fingers together and it made Youngjae even more nervous. “It’s the end of the week already, Sehun’s still not here, and we need an editor to take his place. Would you be up for the job? I know you’re new and you’re not all that comfortable yet, but you’ve done great so far and I really think you’d handle the extra responsibility just fine.”

Youngjae blinked as the words sunk in. “Oh, I don’t know if I--”

Youngjae was so focused on crafting a polite way to decline the offer that he practically jumped out of his skin when Daehyun dropped swiftly to one knee in front of him and grasped one of his hands with both of his own. His large eyes were blinking up at him through long lashes and Youngjae’s throat constricted. He hadn’t even said anything else to convince him yet but Youngjae already felt his resolve crumbling. “Please? Please, Youngjae? I’m begging here...have mercy on your editor-in-chief...please say you’ll do it...”

“I...I...” Youngjae started, trying to acquiesce and agree that he’d try, but somehow unable to get the words out. The warmth of Daehyun’s hands on his seemed to be interrupting the pathways of the nerve signals necessary for making words.

“Why would I listen to you?!” A horrified squawk came from out in the hallway, and Daehyun moved toward the door to take a look. Youngjae’s hand was still tingling where Daehyun touched him and he stuffed it aggressively into his pocket, wishing he could get a grip on himself for more than thirty seconds at a time with him in the room.

He peered out the door at where Daehyun was looking to see Jongdae and Sehun standing on opposite sides of the hallway in the midst of what appeared to be a shouting match.

“Why is it that everyone I know acts as if all my words are said with malicious intent?” Jongdae asked, blinking innocently behind the round frames of his glasses.

“Do you really want me to answer that?” Sehun muttered darkly, arms folded over his sweatervest.

Jongdae huffed. “Look, this is simple. Elementary, really. Downright uncomplicated. You like Jongin, right?”

Sehun continued to glower at the other beneath his dark brows, but most of the anger in his eyes dissolved into hurt after a moment. “So what?” he tried to retort, most of the bite gone from his voice already.

“So come back,” Jongdae said simply.

“What will that do?” Sehun tried to snap again, failing. To Youngjae’s amazement, he looked to be actually considering it.

“I know you want to forgive Jongin, but, frankly, you’re an uncompromising egomaniac most of the time so you want him to beg at your feet, like Daehyun is probably doing to Youngjae in there right now so he’ll take over your job.”

Youngjae accidentally exchanged an embarrassed glance with Daehyun and looked away faster than he knew his eyes had the ability to move.

Sehun immediately opened his mouth to argue, but Jongdae kept talking over him. “It doesn’t take someone with my impressive IQ-GPA combo to figure that out. But don’t worry. Coming back to the paper will let Jongin know that you forgive him, without you even having to say a word,” he finished smugly, leaving Sehun gaping at him with poorly disguised awe.

“I know I’m right, you don’t need to say anything,” Jongdae said after a few more seconds of silence. “All you have to do is show up on Monday morning. I’ll take care of the rest.” 

“Jongin’s not even an editor, he doesn’t need to be there Mondays, so why would that help me?” Sehun asked, having regained his voice.

Jongdae smiled at him in that way of his that might have been friendly but was also somehow impish. "I told you, I'll take care of it. All you have to do is show up, ok?" He hoisted his backpack strap up higher on his shoulder and reached up to pat Sehun’s head as he walked off.

Youngjae looked further down the hallway, past Sehun’s perplexed face, to see Kyungsoo leaned against a row of lockers scrolling idly on his phone, clearly waiting for Youngjae. He turned back to Daehyun. “I have to go, so...I guess I’ll see you...” He took an unsteady step toward the door.

“On Monday,” Daehyun said.

Youngjae stopped his ascent forward. “What?”

“You’ll be here on Monday morning to edit in case Sehun doesn’t show up, right?” Daehyun asked, almost pleading again.

Youngjae hesitated for just a second before he nodded. “Okay.”

Daehyun’s mouth broke open into an impressively wide smile, but his lips quickly closed again, as if he was forcing himself not to look too excited. “Thank you,” he said quietly as Youngjae offered a small smile back and left to meet up with Kyungsoo.

“What was that about?” Kyungsoo asked as he lifted his head to see Youngjae approach.

“He asked me to take over Sehun’s editing,” Youngjae told him.

Kyungsoo blinked, pocketing his phone. “That’s all?”

“What do you mean, ‘that’s all?’ Isn’t editing a pretty important job?” Youngjae watched his friend, confused.

“Of course it is, I just meant, well, I sort of thought...” Kyungsoo trailed off and caught his bottom lip between his teeth as he smiled.

“You look creepy when you do that, you know,” Youngjae said, focusing his eyes on the floor tiles as they made their way to the front doors.

Kyungsoo laughed. “Sorry.”

“You don’t even seem impressed that he asked me to edit,” Youngjae added with mock-disappointment.

“Well, Daehyun’s been complimenting you nonstop even though you’re new and you’ve never written anything in your life unless you’re forced to, and I see him staring at you way too often for it to be a coincidence,” Kyungsoo said.

“What do you mean?” Youngjae asked cautiously.

Kyungsoo sighed shortly. “I mean that I sort of thought he was coming onto you! My little scheme of getting you to join the paper worked like a charm!”

Youngjae shook his head and tried to laugh. He didn't want to admit that there might have been a second or two for which he hoped the same thing. “It’s nothing like that. He just likes my writing, for some...odd reason.”

“Your writing is good. And don’t be so quick to dismiss my intuition, either. I’m never wrong about things like this,” Kyungsoo said firmly.

“Really. What about last year when you were convinced that Baekhyun-hyung liked you and then it ended up that he only chose you to be his lab partner over Chanyeol so he could copy your answers to the--”

“Oh my god, shut up, that never happened, remember?”

Youngjae smirked in victory, but he couldn’t help wishing Kyungsoo was right anyway.

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A/N: This was actually supposed to be the last update, but I decided to split it into two instead, hence the slightly shorter length of this one. Will have the final part posted in the next couple days~~