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SPRING FLING I

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"Do you even have a date?" Sehun her hip and stares up at Chanyeol boredly. They had agreed to go to the mall to hang out instead of lazing around Chanyeol's house. They were looking around a clothes shop that neither of them have ever bought clothes from when Chanyeol grinned and suggested they look for dresses for the spring fling.

"I'll just go with Jongin," Chanyeol shrugs. She pulls a baby blue floral print dress up to her frame and makes a noise of question.

Sehun shakes her head both at her choice of date and choice of dress. "You're going to spend a ton on a dress and a ticket just to go with Jongin? I know you like--"

"You're such a downer, Sehun. I just wanna go to say I did," Chanyeol says as she returns the dress to the shelf.

"I'm just saying." Sehun frowns, shrugging. "School dances are totally overrated."

"And how would you know, freshman?" Chanyeol teases, pushing Sehun's shoulder lightly. Sehun thins her lips as she rocks off balance, leveling Chanyeol with a blank stare. "You should go too. And ask that Yifan guy or whatever to go with you."

Sehun blinks. "I'm not asking Yifan to be my date," she refuses. Realizing they're no longer looking at clothes, she turns on her heel to the exit of the store.

Chanyeol pouts and waddles along behind her. "Why not? You like him, right?"

"Because," Sehun sighs heavily, "I'm scared." She looks at Chanyeol with a look that says if Chanyeol laughs at her, there will be consequences. "And school dances are overrated."

Looping her arm around Sehun's shoulder, Chanyeol directs them to the food court. "But what if he likes you too? I heard from Baekhyun who heard from…I don't know Baekhyun knows too many people. But he said Yifan talks about you a lot. I think you should go for it."

Sehun rolls her eyes and mumbles out a quiet 'whatever' but she can't help the faint pink that burns her cheeks or the way her heart beats just a little bit faster at the thought of Yifan liking her back.

 

 

As soon as Henry ends practice, Sehun weaves through the loitering club members and up to Jongin who's talking to Yixing. Catching him by the neck, she attempts (and fails) to jump on his back and almost sends them toppling over into Yixing who takes a step back with a small smile.

"God, Sehun. You're gonna kill me one day," Jongin groans once he regains his balance.

"And that will be the greatest day of my life." Sehun continues to cling to his neck and borrows his shoulder as a head rest. Meeting Yixing's amused gaze, she shyly nods her head in greeting. Even though he's only a year older than her, Sehun always feels so below Yixing. Like she isn't allowed to breathe the same air as him - which is stupid (because he's friends with Jongin and Jongin is the textbook definition of a complete loser) but Yixing is just so laidback, so cool.

"Good work today, Sehun." Yixing smiles like he's actually proud of her.

Sehun nods again, teeth digging so far into her bottom lip it hurts. "You too."

Yixing pats Jongin on the shoulder and says he'll text him later before grabbing his things and leaving the studio.

As soon as he turns his back, Sehun tightens her arm around Jongin's neck until he chokes. "You're going to the dance with Chanyeol."

Jongin makes a noise of confusion as he tries to peel her arm away from his source of oxygen. "I am?" Sehun flexes her arm. "Okay, I am," he wheezes.

"And I'm being pressured into asking Yifan to be my date."

"Sehun, if you don't get to the point I'm gonna die and then who will you have to help you with whatever is bothering you?"

"Jongin, I'm having a mental breakdown. I've never asked anyone out. How do I get guys to like me?"

"You stop being such a psycho," Han offers as he passes by to get to the door.

"Screw you, Lu."

"You're the one who asked."

Jongin sighs and slips out of Sehun's arms so he can gather their things and lead them out of the practice room. Sehun takes her backpack when he hands it out to her and follows him when he walks out into the hallway. Something strikes her then.

"Why am I asking you? You can't even talk to girls. How are you supposed to help me? Maybe I should ask Han."

Jongin makes an indignant noise. "I can talk to girls!" he defends.

Sehun snorts. "Do you remember when I introduced you to Tao and you broke out in cold sweat when she asked when you started to like dancing? Or when we first met for a class assignment and I threw our textbook at you cause you wouldn't stop playing with your fingers and stuttering."

"I'm a little shy!"

"You still think girls have cooties," Sehun jeers. Patting Jongin on the shoulder in sympathy. "I think I'll figure this one out on my own so I don't spread my Girly Disease."

"Sehun, I can help!" Jongin shouts, quickening his pace when he realizes he's falling behind. "Maybe…"

 

 

jongin:you goin to the dance?
yixing: nope
han: da i look like going to the dance
yixing: i was with you when you bought your ticket han
han: we need to have a talk about ur honesty, xing
yixing: yeah mhm
han: traitorrrrrr
jongin: anyway
jongin: chanyeol is making sehun ask yifan
yixing: he's a bigger than han though
han: we really need to talk yixing
han: but it's true
han: i'm like 80% 20% perfect boy next door
han: he's like 99% 1% air
jongin: shut up ffs
jongin: are you going with anyone han
yixing: no
han: zhang yixing i swear
jongin: are you going to ask anyone
han: i let girls ask me
jongin: so ur going alone
jongin: good
han: what why
jongin: oh time for dinner
han: why
jongin: bye
han: jongin WHY IS IT GOOD

 

 

Chanyeol kicks a shoebox near her bed as she walks into her room, Jongin not noticing behind the 12 liter bottle of soda and the two medium sized pizzas in his arms. He almost trips over it in his quest to safely reach her desk and Chanyeol giggles out a sorry as she tosses the bags of chips she was carrying onto her bed in order to heave the soda from the crook of his elbow.

"I told you to leave this downstairs and get it after we brought the food up but noooo," Chanyeol taunts.

"I wasn't gonna drop it." Jongin slides the pizza onto her desk and turns around with a playful glare. "And I would have made it problem-free if your room wasn't an obstacle course."

"One pair of shoes, Jongin." She pushes him out of the way so she can place the cola next to the stacked boxes.

"As long as there's one obstacle, it's an obstacle course," Jongin points out.

Sighing in mock exasperation, Chanyeol grabs his wrist and drags him back through the 'course'. "C'mon, we still need plates and cups."

"So what color are you wearing to the dance?" Jongin asks as they trot downstairs to the kitchen.

Chanyeol tightens her grip around his wrist unconsciously. "What?"

"Shouldn't I like match my tie or something?" Jongin scratches his cheek. He's not really sure how school dances work but he's seen a lot of dumb high school movies. He shakes his wrist out of her hand once they reach the kitchen, immediately going for the plates. "Or is that just a prom thing?"

"I didn't know we were going together," she replies as she opens a cabinet and grabs two cups. They haven't talked about the dance other than to see if they both planned to go and even though she was thinking about it, Chanyeol hadn't yet brought up if the two of them could go as a pair.

In the middle of taking down a second plate, Jongin looks at her out of the corner of his eyes. "Who else would you go with?" The plates clank together when he stacks them.

"Are you saying that you're my only choice for a date?"

Jongin tries to picture her with some dumb kid and he frowns. "Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying." Other than the fact that Sehun told (demanded?) him to go with Chanyeol.

"Were you always this conceited?" Chanyeol laughs as she opens the freezer. "Ice?"

Jongin declines the ice. "It's not conceit. Is it wrong that I want to go to the dance with my best friend?"

Filling her own cup with ice, Chanyeol shuts the freezer. "I thought Sehun was your best friend," she notes, walking back to Jongin who starts toward the stairs.

"Semantics." He waves off with his free hand. He trips over the air as they cross the living room and Chanyeol fears for the plates for a second. "Either way, do you not want to go with me?"

Chanyeol sighs softly. She knows she's not exactly open about her feelings towards Jongin (because there's no way he thinks of her as more than a childhood friend after all these years) but she still thinks he's dumb for asking such a question. "My dress is salmon. If you don't want to buy a tie to match, that's okay," she says in place of an answer.

Jongin briefly looks over his shoulder with a bright smile and almost falls up the steps. They make it back to her room before he asks, "what the hell is salmon? Is that orange?"

Chanyeol shakes her head. "You're such a boy."

 

 

Slamming down her tray sloppily enough that the soup she picked today spiĺled over the edge of the bowl, Sehun plops down onto the round seat at an empty table. She usually sits with Tao but the other girl didn't come to school that day and she's left alone to look like some loser with no friends.

As she lets her brocolli and cheese soup pool into the cup of her spoon, a tray is slid onto the table across from her and she looks up.

"What's up, Oh?" It's Yifan, Tao's cousin and point guard of the basketball team. They hang out sometimes when she and Tao drop by after basketball practices and they've exchanged phone numbers but they're not all that close.

Not that Sehun doesn't wish they were close. She's pretty much had a crush on Yifan since Tao introduced them but he just seems so unattainable.

"Hey," Sehun replies, already feeling a blush starting to burn under her skin. The thing about Sehun is that while she has a lot of backbone and prides herself as being immune to bull (especially from dumb teenage boys), her kryptonite happens to be teenage boys who are impossibly gorgeous. Yifan is one of those impossibly gorgeous boys.

"Mind if me and a couple guys sit here?"

She opens to answer but he continues on.

"Yeah, thanks." He sits down without waiting for her to give the okay.

There's a part of her that's annoyed by the fact that she never gave him permission but it's blocked out by the part that smiles lightly and mumbles out a shy 'no problem'. She focuses on her soup as two of his friends find their way to the table, one of them sitting next to her and the other beside Yifan. They're other members of the basketball team and they both greet her cheerfully.

She's tunes them out for the most part, uninterested with their talk about what happened in class earlier and what they plan to do after school. She spoons a heap of broccoli into just as the boy next to Yifan, Sungyeol, turns to her with a wide smile.

"Are you going to the dance, Sehun?"

Swallowing, she briefly glances at Yifan who has turned his attention to her. "I was thinking about it but I don't know. I have a friend who's going but she has a date and I don't want to third wheel," she answers, lying a little bit because there's no way she could be third wheel to Chanyeol and Jongin who'll never be a couple unless Chanyeol makes the first move.

"You hear that Yifan? She doesn't want to third wheel," Sungyeol jibes, nudging Yifan in the side with his elbow. "I wish you had that kind of consideration for me."

Sehun raises an eyebrow at her crush. Is Sungyeol saying what she thinks he is? "Do you not have someone to go with?"

"I do," Yifan answers. "Sungyeol and his girlfriend." He picks up his water bottle.

"That's awkward," she points out, stirring her soup mindlessly.

"Exactly." Sungyeol claps his hands, happy that someone else said so.

This is perfect. She can totally ask him under the pretense of being a good friend. She knew she could do it without Jongin's help even if this isn't exactly the confession of her feelings she thought she would have to do. But she'll take what she can get. Maybe she can properly ask him out at the dance. "Why don't we go together? Since neither of us have anyone to go with and we're already friends." Her face is just the tiniest bit red.

Having took a swig, Yifan sets his water on the table and looks Sehun up and down. "You're not really my type."

Sehun halts her stirring.

"What does it matter? You'd be going as friends, not a couple," Taekwoon, the kid beside her, finally turns his attention away from his lunch.

"So? Everyone would think we were a couple."

"Is that so much a bad thing?" Sehun wonders, voice unusually small.

Taekwoon looks at her but Yifan doesn't seem to hear as he continues talking.

"If I'm gonna go with someone one on one they at least gotta be cute. No offense or anything, Sehun."

Sehun's very offended but she only can stare wide-eyed at Yifan who throws her an unapologetic smile.

"I think she's cute," Taekwoon tries to alleviate the situation. Sungyeol nods.

"You would. You're into dudes," Yifan snorts.

"Yifan, that's--"

"You can't tell me she wouldn't look like a kid in drag."

"But who's to say that I actually want to be seen with some douchebag stain like you?" Dropping her spoon, Sehun fixes Yifan with a heated glare. "I was only trying to help you not look like some loser leeching of his friend's time with his girlfriend because he's too to have one of his own but you can my imaginary ."

Grabbing her tray, she leaves the table. As she thinks of somewhere else to sit, she realizes she's lost her appetite and takes a detour to the trash. She tosses the soup and slides the tray onto the rack to be cleaned. She sighs and turns around, only to run into the person behind her.

"Ah, sorry," she apologizes without bothering to look at the kid she bumped into. She continues walking in the opposite direction of Yifan and the others, hand reaching for the ends of her short-cut, naturally black hair. She feels dumb for being upset but she can't help but feel attacked. She always thought she was super cute and it's not like this is the first time someone has said she looked a little boyish but none of those people were the person she had been crushing on for months.

Finding a seat near the cafeteria entrance, she slides onto it and buries her face in her arms.

Boys are dumb. She's never liking another boy ever again.

"Sehun?"

She doesn't want to look up because her eyes are wet and she doesn't want to look vulnerable but then a hand cups her shoulder and she feels like she has no choice. Lifting her head, turns over her shoulder. Behind her is a seemingly disinterested but still obviously worried Han.

"Since when did you have this lunch period?" she asks, voice thick and shaky.

"Are you okay?" Han answers her question with a question.

Sehun fakes a laugh. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Han's frown only deepens. "You bumped into me and didn't even argue about whose fault it was like you usually do when we run into each other." He pauses. "You're also crying."

"I am not." But that only makes her bottom lip tremble and a stream of tears finally make their way down her face.

Han sighs and grabs her arm, pulling her up to stand. "C'mon, I'll take you to the nurse's office."

Sehun allows him to drag her out of the cafeteria and through the halls, feeling oddly hollow and unable to get mad at being manhandled. She glances at him and he faces her with a raised eyebrow.

"What?"

She sniffs and shakes her head. She chooses to watch her feet as she walks.

Han doesn't pry and tries to ignore how uncomfortable the silence is. Even if it doesn't escalate to yelling, they're always arguing with each other. It's what they do. He isn't used to a dejected Sehun.

It's kind of scary.

 

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some people were curious about what happened to sehun/why jongin is so protective

this part was cut in two--next is the actual dance. expect cute chankai.

 

and question: i didn't plan for this story to go in order (there's no real plot i just write whatever) but would you guys be interested in a chapter from when minseok transferred and things from when they're all older (like college age+) or when chankai were younger? or do you rather i just keep it in this time frame?