prompt: kaisoo's relationship from kyungsoo's pov

this...turned out a lot fluffier than i expected like much much fluff i mean i literally finished this and went 'ew what am i' 

so there it is that's your warning if you intend on keeping your lunches

—∞—

                Steady is a nice change.

                Kyungsoo hasn’t done steady since, well, high school, when he was dating Minah through all four years of it. A lot of things factored into their break-up, and although they haven’t spoken since Kyungsoo is glad to remember that they’d ended things cleanly, without drama, without mess. For Kyungsoo he’d almost been feeling a little caged in, and with the transition from high school to college he’d thoroughly welcomed the opportunity for another fresh start, for the chance to let everything go and jump head-first into something completely new, and, to some degree, it also meant letting go of the one person his entire life had revolved around for the entirety of high school. But, considering Minah has since left the country to study abroad in France, Kyungsoo figures continuing their relationship probably would’ve felt like he was holding her back from the bigger things in life too.

                After that Kyungsoo kept all significant others purely to no-strings-attached flings, trying instead to put more focus in getting involved with campus life during his first year. Clubs were something Kyungsoo tried his hand in at the time, lots of them, really, and he honestly doesn’t remember how it happened that he’d settled for the freshly-crowned EXO dance group. Part of it might’ve been the contagious energy of their previous club president Hyoyeon; part of it might’ve been that he was rooming with Luhan anyway, who helped Kyungsoo get to know the other members a lot faster than if Kyungsoo had been working solo; part of it might’ve been because his cooking suddenly seemed under-appreciated before in comparison to the way everyone in the club worships it now. But he likes the club, a lot, considers its members like a second family to them and speaks of them just as fondly.

                Even on days like today.

                “THEN HIS NOSE DOESN’T ING GROW!!” Kris is screaming as Kyungsoo walks into the clubroom, who decides to omit the hellos today and just moves towards his beanbag chair in silence to listen in on the conversation.

                “But then if it doesn’t grow then that means he lied,” Luhan says, who looks like he’s having the time of his life, grinning widely at an increasingly frustrated-looking Kris.

                “What’s going on?” Kyungsoo asks Sehun as he sits down.

                “Luhan’s just given Kris a riddle and he can’t solve it so his brain is overheating.”

                “SEHUN YOU SHUT THE UP.”

                “Hey Kyungsoo,” Luhan calls out then, leaning back in his desk chair a bit, “if Pinocchio says ‘My nose is going to grow’ does that mean his nose actually grows or no?”

                “Wait,” Minseok frowns, “explain to me again why it doesn’t work if I say his nose actually grows?”

                “Cause if his nose actually grows then that means he was telling the truth, but that also means that his nose shouldn’t have grown because his nose only grows when he tells a lie.”

                “I’m going to stab myself in the face,” Kris says, head bent over and both hands fisted into his blond hair like he’s on the verge of tearing it out.

                Kyungsoo blinks, looking at the members one by one. “Isn’t that a paradox? That’s not a riddle, you guys just gave him a paradox. Kris can’t actually answer that.”

                Kris looks up at Kyungsoo, face blank. “What?”

                “Wow, Kyungsoo, really?” Luhan spins in his chair and gives him a disapproving look. “I actually had him going for a full ten minutes on that one.”

                “Wait,” Kris interrupts, staring really hard at Kyungsoo, “what?”

                “New topic,” Chanyeol interrupts quickly then, spinning in his chair to face the rest of the group, “who’s free February 15th?”

                “You mean the 14th?” Luhan frowns.

                “No, the 15th.”

                “. . .You’re not talking about Valentine’s Day?”

                “No—and what the hell would I be doing on Valentine’s Day with the lot of you anyway? No, I’m talking about the day after. I wanna go to the mall and buy all the unsold discounted chocolate.”

                “I’m down,” Kris says, immediately snapping out of his state of shock and giving Chanyeol his full attention.

                “How the hell do you not have pizza face with all the chocolate you eat?” Minseok says incredulously. “You’re skin’s always like, immaculate.”

                Chanyeol shakes his head. “Not really. I use concealer when I get zits.”

                “. . .You know how to apply concealer?”

                “Shut up.”

                The clubroom door opens then. “Good, no one’s screaming,” a familiar voice says, and Kyungsoo looks up to find Jongin walking into the clubroom, already smiling widely at Kyungsoo as he makes his way over. “Hey.”

                Jongin had come as a complete anomaly in Kyungsoo’s life. Sure, Kyungsoo knew that he was into guys by the time he first saw Jongin and Sehun standing inside of the clubroom, and he vaguely remembers off-handedly labelling Jongin as adorable when Jongin spluttered a thank-you after being offered a drink, but as far as first impressions go Kyungsoo hadn’t made too much of it. So they now had a couple of cute freshmen joining the club—definitely not unusual protocol when it comes to this group. (Luhan finally admitted one day that his reasoning for persuading Kyungsoo into the club was because he’d described Kyungsoo as being “an adorable little baby penguin” and the unanimous response had been to bring him in.)

                And then for a while after that it had been a matter of continuously misreading the signs because, well, Kyungsoo’s admittedly a little dense. He knew all the tricks and signs that pointed towards a having bit of harmless fun, but he didn’t know what it meant when Jongin ducked his head or tripped over his sentences every so often or gave this little laugh when he was unsure or embarrassed of what he’d just said, because all those things easily could’ve meant that Jongin was just shy or introverted and just needed a bit of time to adjust.

                (“INTROVERTED,” Luhan half-snorted, half-screeched when Kyungsoo told him that a couple weeks after recruitment, nearly choking on his rice. “YEAH, OKAY. INTROVERTED.”

                To this day Kyungsoo has still never forgotten about it.)

                But then Kyungsoo finally got the right idea when Jinri came to visit and Jongin had suddenly pulled him outside, looking almost distraught and practically breaking out in an uncomfortable-looking cold sweat as he asked “Do you like her?”, and Kyungsoo remembered, right then, how tense Jongin had been around Jinri and how completely silent he was when she was in the same room as him and how he’d suddenly turned moody and withdrawn from everyone at the same time. Kyungsoo had even talked it over with Jinri, that’s how drastic of a turn Jongin’s behaviour took. And when Kyungsoo finally got his breath back after laughing hysterically and asked why he wanted to know, Jongin had started telling him about some friend who had a crush on him that sounded a lot like...

                Well.

                Suddenly all the flustered behaviour made sense, and even when Kyungsoo had proceeded cautiously, to make sure he wasn’t just jumping to conclusions, it was completely unnecessary; literally everything Jongin did just kept adding fuel to the flame of his realization. Not to mention that the hints Luhan started dropping were anything but subtle.

                (“THAT’S THE DUMBEST THING I’VE EVER HEARD, A FRIEND WHO HAS A CRUSH ON YOU? HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THAT KID WITH ANY OTHER FRIENDS? HE’S ALWAYS EITHER WITH YOU OR IN THE CLUBROOM, HE DOESN’T HAVE ANY OTHER FRIENDS, HE LITERALLY JUST HAS SEHUN AND YOU.”

                “Yeah, and we all know where Sehun’s interest is,” Kyungsoo muttered calmly over his bowl, which effectively shut Luhan up into an incoherent sputtering mess.)

                But, anyways. Point being is that Jongin was an amazing change in Kyungsoo’s love life.

                “C’mon,” Jongin says, grabbing Kyungsoo’s wrist and tugging on it. “Let’s go chill.”

                Sehun starts, “But you’re already—”

                “Away from here.”

                “Wow, rude.”

                “Should I bring my bag?” Kyungsoo asks as he gets tugged up.

                “Nah, I can get you back here in time.”

                Kyungsoo raises an eyebrow, interest piqued, but he lets Jongin lace their fingers and lead him out of the clubroom.

                It’s a nice day out, so Kyungsoo’s thinking that Jongin wants to take him to one of the park benches strategically placed to give a nice view of the surrounding campus and green space, but to his surprise Jongin tugs him past all that and straight through the tree line, into one of the small patches of dense wood that lined the campus at random.

                “Are we even allowed to walk around in here?” Kyungsoo asks, as Jongin keeps leading him along.

                “I doubt they care. This is pretty much backyard for everyone who lives on rez, and I know we’re not the first ones to be walking through here.”

                “So this isn’t the first time you’ve done this,” Kyungsoo guesses.

                He’s spot on. Jongin fumbles for a moment, slightly embarrassed. “No,” he admits. “But I want to show you something I found the other day anyway.”

                “Okay.” Kyungsoo doubts they’ll get in much trouble if they’re caught anyway.

                It doesn’t take too long. For another minute or so it’s just the two of them trekking over last autumn’s leaves, now dry again since the snow’s long since melted, and then Jongin’s saying “Here it is” and they’re stopping in front of this little oak sapling. Someone’s carved something into the bark, but it’s not initials encircled in a heart. Kyungsoo steps in and leans forward for a closer look.

                “It’s my old school’s motto,” Jongin says quickly, as Kyungsoo reads over the foreign language. “Translated it means something like ‘happy is the man who knows the reasons for things.’ I don’t really remember, but it just made me think that someone who went to my old high school went to this college once too, and had to trek all the way out here for his classes. Or maybe he moved to this part of the city.” Jongin pauses. “I dunno, I just thought it was kind of cool.”

                Kyungsoo looks over at Jongin then. He’s staring at the engraving, and for the most part there’s nothing too complicated about his expression, but Kyungsoo understands that Jongin wouldn’t have gone out of his way to show him this if it were so simple.

                “What was it like coming to this college?” Kyungsoo finds himself asking. “At the beginning of the year, I mean.”

                Jongin shrugs, gaze still focused on the carving. “It kind of felt good. Like I was being really independent and stuff, which is a nice feeling. But it was really intimidating too. There’s so many people here, and I didn’t know any of them. I was just struggling to figure everything out on my own. It was kind of hard.”

                Must’ve been lonely. Kyungsoo can only imagine, since Jongin wasn’t really even talking that much to Sehun before they joined the club. He suddenly wonders if that’s what this is about, if Jongin wondered whether the person who carved this little piece of home into this tree had been lonely too.

                “Did you want to carve something into it too?”

                Jongin finally looks over to meet his gaze. “Like what?”

                “I don’t know, did you want to put our initials on it?” Kyungsoo grins.  

                “What the , no,” Jongin says, an embarrassed blush filling his cheeks. Sometimes Kyungsoo feels a little guilty teasing him as much as he does, but if he’s going to be honest with himself he’ll probably never get enough of the way Jongin gets so easily flustered in front of him. “That’s...no.”

                Kyungsoo laughs. “Yeah, you’re right. Tree looks good enough the way it is now anyway.”

                Jongin seems to relax a little at that, almost as if he’d been showing it for Kyungsoo approval, and when he looks back at it the fondness in his expression is much more evident. “Yeah, I like it this way too.”

                “It’s cool,” Kyungsoo says. “Maybe you could show Sehun this. He’d probably appreciate it.”

                “Yeah, probably,” Jongin says thoughtfully. Then, “But we’re not bringing the whole club out here though. Half of them will probably get on my case about being a sentimental mush and then we’d probably get in real trouble for screaming too and for loitering on...”

                “School property?”

                “Prohibited school property.”

                “Yeah, not looking forward trying to get ten grown men out of that mess.”

                “I think ‘grown men’ is a very strong exaggeration and downright lie if we’re talking about certain people within those ten.”

                “No comment.”

                Jongin chortles, before squeezing Kyungsoo’s hand. “Thanks for, like, not making fun of me and my weird tree thing,” he says after a moment.

                “Well, that’s just cause I’m not the rest of the club. You’re lucky it was me.”

                “That’s all I ever think about some days to be honest.”

                And then, because Kyungsoo is admittedly a little dense, it takes him a long while, when they’re all actually at the mall buying discounted chocolate and Chanyeol’s saying something like “Hey you wanna know why there’s so many people with birthdays in November?”, for the full meaning of Jongin’s words hits him right then. Kyungsoo looks up with a start, quickly turning to look over at Jongin, and he’s talking with Jongdae and carrying bags loaded with all the chocolate he’s bought for Kyungsoo (ie the two of them) to eat and wearing that massive goofy smile that he gets on his face a lot nowadays.

                And that’s when Kyungsoo kind of realizes for the first time that it doesn’t take much for Jongin to make his cheeks turn pink either.

a/n

FRIENDLY REMINDER THAT I AM CURRENTLY NOT TAKING MORE PROMPTS i've still got quite a few that need finishing and i'm hella busy with school and whatnot like i'm not gonna have any real free time until like, may

i'm sorry for being so slow but i'm doing what i can just have faith in me okay

and also many thanks for the subs and upvotes wow you guys were really waiting on this huh