Until he has a definitive answer on how he feels after Yifan’s confession, Joonmyun tries to forget everything. With his new position at work, he hopes that the amount of work and longer times he spends at the building are enough to take his mind off of things, but it’s not enough. It seems that lately all he can think about is Yifan; from the kiss, to the confession and the amount of nights he’s stayed up in bed with the memories plaguing his mind are beginning to show.

Yifan hasn’t called him or come to visit him since the confession. Once his clothes had been dried and he was properly dressed, he had promised Joonmyun that he would leave him alone and give him to think everything over.

“I won’t push you to make a decision” he had said “You’ll know where to find me when and if you ever come to a decision”

Yifan kept to his promise and hadn’t bothered Joonmyun since. No annoying phone call just to because he was so easy to wind up, no late night visits when the world looks to be too much for him and he needs somewhere to crash, nothing. Joonmyun should be appreciating the space that Yifan is giving him, yet all it does is frustrate him. All of it frustrates him.

Yifan kissing him out of the blue like that frustrates him, Yifan’s confession after turning up soaked on his doorstep frustrates him, the lack of sleep he’s getting from work frustrates him, the falling number of annoying calls he usually gets frustrates him… not knowing how to feel over the whole situation frustrates him!

“Joonmyun, are you alright?” Sunyoung asks one morning, walking past his desk and finding him with his head in his hands

“Huh? Yeah, of course of I am!” Joonmyun replies with as wide of a smile as he can muster “Just… work that’s all”

Lies. In fact, Joonmyun’s pretty sure Sunyoung knows he lying, but what’s he supposed to tell her? That he was feeling absolutely awful because the guy he though was his mortal enemy had kissed and then confessed to him? That now he was extremely confused as to what happened next? If Joonmyun thought that Sunyoung would have the answers, he was more than happy to sit there and listen to what she had to say because he had no idea himself right now!

“Is there something on my face?”

Since joining Joonmyun for his lunch break, Baekhyun had done nothing but sit there staring at him. He would look away for the occasional bite of his sandwich, but straight after that Joonmyun wouldn’t even have to look up himself to know that Baekhyun was back to staring at him once again.

“No, no, there’s nothing on your face” Baekhyun replies

“Then why have you been staring at me like that from the moment you sat at the table?” Joonmyun asks and expects Baekhyun to start making up some excuse, to say that oh no everything was fine and would attempt to go back to being ‘normal’. How wrong he was.

“What’s been up with you lately?” he asks “You look like you’ve been so distracted, you hardly eat anything, and you look like you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in ages!” when Joonmyun shakes his head and opens his mouth to reply however he’s cut off before he can say anything “Don’t try and deny it! The receptionist of this place- Sunyoung? - even she was that concerned that she came to find me and ask what was wrong!”  

There was no way Joonmyun was going to get out of this one. If it had just been Baekhyun, he probably could have wormed his way out somehow, but with Sunyoung now expressing her concern he knew he wasn’t going to be so lucky this time.

“U-uh”

“Well?”

He could probably try and lie his way out of it, though Baekhyun was a lot smarter than he gave himself credit for, so there was no use in that. Joonmyun couldn’t tell him the truth though could he? He was still having trouble comprehending his current predicament himself, let alone having to imagine how Baekhyun would possibly react to the news!

“O-oh you wouldn’t understand!” he exclaims in frustration, more frustrated towards himself than towards Baekhyun

“Well maybe if you spoke to me I could try!” Baekhyun replies “I know I’m not as wise or mature as Luhan, but I want to be a good friend”

Baekhyun’s right, they both know that out of the three of them, Luhan’s the one who is probably the most mature and- arguably- the wisest out of the three. Joonmyun would have probably gone to him for advice but it wasn’t easy when Luhan was in a completely different country and probably on a completely different timetable to the two of them. Baekhyun was being a good friend in a time of need when Luhan couldn’t be there.

“I-if I tell you this, please promise me that you’ll repeat this to no one” he begins as Baekhyun frowns and tilts his head

“Why?”

“Just promise me! Please!” Joonmyun begs

“Okay, okay, I promise” Baekhyun hurries to reply when sees how flustered Joonmyun was becoming. Once he was sure Baekhyun was going to keep his promise, Joonmyun takes a deep breath in to calm himself down before he begins talking again.

“Well… it’s gonna sound weird but I’ve had a few incidents with Yifan outside of work” he begins “There have been times where he’s turned up at my house, or I’ve bumped into him during events that my brother has been involved in. One day I got so angry at him because he’s so difficult to work out that when I went to confront him he… kissed me”

“What?” Baekhyun shouts out straight away, Joonmyun quickly leaning over to clamp his hand over his mouth before he could shout anything else out.

“A-and that’s not all” Joonmyun continues as Baekhyun takes his hand away from his mouth

“What do you mean that’s not all?” he asks “No, no, let’s start from the beginning. Tell me everything”

Joonmyun spends the next few minutes giving Baekhyun a quick summary of what has happened so far in this whole Yifan fiasco. For the most part Baekhyun sits there looking at him in disbelief and when Joonmyun finishes, he sits there for a moment in complete silence.

“But you hate him” he mutters “And he hates you”

“According to his confession, it’s apparently the opposite” Joonmyun says

“You hate him” Baekhyun points out again as Joonmyun drops his gaze to the floor “You do hate him, don’t you Joonmyun?”

“Of course I do!” Joonmyun exclaims but he doesn’t sound convincing

“Joonmyun”

“W-well I do, right? I mean he was so rude to me, a-and all those phone calls, but then the times he wouldn’t call just drove me crazy because it would only be a matter of time before he called me again to annoy me and just… oh I don’t know!”

Joonmyun buries his face in his hands and starts groaning to himself. This is what happens when Yifan springs a confession on him like this and he doesn’t know what to think or how to feel.

“How about this; how did you feel when he kissed you?” Baekhyun asks

“Surprised, obviously” Joonmyun replies

“No, no, not like that. How did you feel?” Baekhyun asks again

“I-I don’t know what you mean. Like, if I liked him kissing me?” Joonmyun asks “Because if so it was so quick that I didn’t have the time to react”

“Well, maybe you should go do it again” Baekhyun suggests “Do it yourself so you can pace it out and just… see if you like it”

For one moment Joonmyun thinks he’s kidding and begins laughing at Baekhyun’s ‘joke’. When he realises he’s not kidding around, he stops laughing immediately.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me right?” he asks but Baekhyun shows no signs that he is joking around “Oh my God you’re actually being serious”

“It’s the only way you’ll be sure”

“What? No way! There is no way I’m going to just go and kiss him like that! I can promise you that!”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this”

Joonmyun’s trying to save any ounce of pride he has left in him as he drives over to Yifan’s place, cursing under his breath as he does so. He didn’t plan on taking up Baekhyun’s advice and actually go find Yifan, but their whole conversation previously- where Joonmyun couldn’t even string an answer together as to whether he liked Yifan or not- had been bothering him to no end. If he didn’t get it over and done with soon it was going to drive him insane.

“Oh, hello Joonmyun” Qian greets when she opens the door “Yifan’s in his study, you can go right in”

Having no trouble getting in this time, Joonmyun mutters a thank you and quickly makes his way in, following the route to the room he was in last time. Stood outside the door, he takes the chance to compose himself and knocks on the door.

“Come in” Yifan says from the other side, sounding neither too happy nor angry and Joonmyun thinks it’s a bad idea, thinks about just turning around and running out, but stops himself and tell himself to just go for it, before opening the door.

Yifan doesn’t look up immediately when Joonmyun enters the room. It’s actually not until Joonmyun’s walked over to the desk and is stood across from him does he look up, surprise clearly evident on his face.

“Oh, hi”

“I-I’m going to do something now. It’s going to be crazy- possibly stupid- but you’re going to let me do it and afterwards we won’t speak about it again, got it?” Joonmyun asks as he walks around to the side of the desk and stands in front of where Yifan is sitting, confusion written across the latter’s face.

“What are you talking ab-“

Yifan’s cut off when Joonmyun leans down and kisses him. It’s not as quick as when Yifan had kissed him, but Joonmyun doesn’t hold it for much longer neither. Releasing it, Yifan sits there in shock as Joonmyun clears his throat and drops his gaze to the floor.

“S-so I’m gonna go now” he stutters out

“Huh? Oh, okay” Yifan replies, still in a daze

“I’ll see you around” Joonmyun adds as he walks over to the door

“Y-yeah, thanks for stopping by” 

Awkward goodbye’s exchanged, Joonmyun hurries out the door, out of the house and straight back to his car. There was no way he was going to able to forget about this for a long time.

If you hate me for what I did in this chapter, you're going to hate me even more in the next chapter

Until then...