Title: "I like you. I like you. I like you."

Pairing: Kangin/Leeteuk

Rating: PG

Warnings: AU

A/N: 'Saem' is short for Seonsaeng-nim, which means teacher in Korean.

Have coffee with me after school?

Two pairs of eyes bored into the offending piece of paper and its line of large, obnoxious letters scrawled across the entire page; Jungsu furiously, Youngwoon blankly. The two were on opposite sides of Youngwoon’s student table, with no one else in the bleak room to slice through the thick, suffocating tension.

“What is the meaning of this?!” Jungsu turned his piercing glare from the paper to his student, who shrugged. “It means exactly what it says, Park Saem.” 

Jungsu exploded. “Not only did you play a childish prank with such a cheesy pick-up line, you chose to do it on an entire page of your test! Ten marks gone, just like that! And what bugs me the most is that you left three out of five pages completely blank!” Jungsu sighed. He didn’t know what to do with this trouble student anymore, for his antics were beyond ridiculous. “Do you want to graduate or not?”

“Not if it means I won’t be seeing you anymore.” Youngwoon propped his head up with arms on his desk, grinning cheekily. Throwing his hands up in exasperation, Jungsu barked, “Take out your foolscap and copy a hundred times of ‘I will take my tests seriously’!” He marched back to his table, gulping a mouthful of instant coffee to rehydrate his throat parched from yelling at Youngwoon, only to scald himself on the boiling drink. Youngwoon snickered.

Jungsu wouldn’t pretend he understood Youngwoon, even after two years of being his Mathematics teacher. Youngwoon was a delinquent. He scored poorly in Math examinations due to writing silly answers on a regular basis, usually pick-up lines Jungsu supposed he was practicing before using on his girlfriends. Jungsu’s heard that Youngwoon used to be infamous for playing truant three to four times a week, and the days he did come to school he spent sleeping on the rooftop or in class. 

However, since Jungsu started teaching him, such behaviour seemed to have stopped, and Youngwoon reports to school on time daily. Though he has heard complains from other teachers about Youngwoon daydreaming or chattering non-stop in class, Youngwoon was always intently staring at him while he taught.

There was once when, in the light of a case of neighbouring-school students caught smoking, Jungsu jokingly commented in class that he would hate to have a lover who smokes or drinks. Right after that class, other teachers were gossiping in the staff room that there was a rumour Youngwoon smoked in the school toilets and frequents bars after school. Afraid he had hurt Youngwoon with his comment, Jungsu sought him out after school, only to have Youngwoon swear off his vices in front of him. Now, two years later, the rumours had died down, and he had yet to witness his student drink or smoke. The cause of that solemn promise still bewildered him.

And Youngwoon might be a delinquent, but he was a smart and rich delinquent. His parents were wildly successful business owners who have sponsored more than half of the school’s activities, and teachers had been hinted by the principal a good number of times to let Youngwoon’s questionable antics slide. Youngwoon, following in their footsteps, scored well in any subject that was not Mathematics, considering his lack of attention in class.  

Jungsu thinks about the two years of extra classes after school he had taught Youngwoon. Most students went in and out of these classes based on how well they did for examinations, but Youngwoon had always attended every lesson, yet his results never improved. Jungsu was constantly puzzled by this, for he did not understand the logic of scoring well in subjects one cared little for, but poorly in a subject one spends so much time on. He reasoned that the man was just bad at Math, and when students had to choose the subjects they wished to pursue last year, he had advised Youngwoon against taking Mathematics. With his results, Youngwoon wouldn’t have been able to choose Math anyway. But that was under normal circumstances. To his great bafflement, Youngwoon had gotten his parents to bribe the school to allow him into Jungsu’s class again.

He peeked at Youngwoon from behind his stacks of worksheets, which would stay unmarked for however long he stayed in the classroom with Youngwoon. Youngwoon tended to have that effect on him. The man was a math question he couldn’t solve, no matter how long he frowned at him. And Jungsu gets frustrated with math questions he couldn’t solve.

“Youngwoon!” The other man jumped at the sudden break of silence he had been working in while Jungsu lost himself in thought, the little upward curve of his lips startled away. “This is a punishment! Why are you looking so smug?” Jungsu knew he was being unreasonably whiny, but he didn’t particularly care. He eyed Youngwoon suspiciously. “Are you doing your lines properly?”

Youngwoon inconspicuously (or rather, conspicuously), concealed the piece of paper he was writing on.

“I said do your lines! Do I have to spell it out for you?” Jungsu glowered at him. “Now write! Do you want to stay here forever?”

“Of course,” Youngwoon smirked. “This is my dream come true.” At Jungsu’s confused expression, he pointed to the teacher’s mug of coffee. “You’re having coffee with me right now, aren’t you?” Then Youngwoon took out a can of latte from his school bag, opened it, and proceeded to toast Jungsu with a lift of the can towards his direction, before draining it in one go.

With a defeated ‘thump’, Jungsu banged his head on the hard grey desk. “What do you want from me?” He groaned, and remained with his face squashed against the desk, too tired to get up.

Youngwoon stood up abruptly, his chair making a loud scrapping sound against the floor. Walking over to the surprised Jungsu, he placed both hands onto the desk, which was now the only thing between them, and leant forward. He was centimetres away from the side of Jungsu’s face, and Jungsu was made very aware of the man’s breath tickling the shell of his suddenly over-sensitive ear. He could almost feel Youngwoon opening his mouth —

“Do I have to spell it out for you?” Jungsu could hear the mocking in his voice.

“Youngwoon!”

“Alright, alright.” Youngwoon drew back, and Jungsu didn’t know why he was holding his breath when the other man went back to his own seat. 

The sound of pen on paper resumed, and within another half hour, Youngwoon stood up and walked towards the teacher’s desk again. Jungsu was surprised when he saw a serious look on his usually smirking face as he handed the papers onto Jungsu’s desk.

“Since Park saem said it bugs you the most…” He shrugged, not completing his sentence. Jungsu looked down at Youngwoon’s papers, and found that they were actually two stacks. 

“I’m actually really good at Maths.” By the time Jungsu looked up, he only saw Youngwoon’s back as he headed out of the classroom, bag slung over his broad back. “See you, Jungsu.” He suavely raised a hand up in goodbye.

A part of Jungsu was wondering when he had given Youngwoon the permission to leave, and another part was squealing indignantly at the use of his first name by a student, but most of him was preoccupied with thinking ‘that was cool’.

He looked down at the stacks of papers, noting that one of them was a few foolscap of lines, the other one the test papers which caused all these trouble,now filled up with Youngwoon’s black-penned chicken scrawls. 

All the math questions had been solved, when he looked back at the other stack, and saw a hundred lines of

“I like you. I like you. I like you.”