Petty Not Pretty (HueningKaiXReader They/Them Pronouns)

6

It had been about a month since that 'incident'. Not only had I grown closer with Kai, but I was closer to his friends. Not as close as I was with Kai, but close enough that we were all comfortable around each other. We could act like buddies.

They visited at lunch sometimes. Not often, but every once in a while. The visits consisted of lots of teasing, especially of Kai. Whenever his friends were around, they tried their hardest to tease Kai. His friends weren't always teasing him though. They were actually really chill. Soobin has helped me with homework a few times and Taehyun finally noticed my presence in his classes.

Today Kai and I decided to eat lunch with his friends, seeing as they always begged for it to happen just once. I assumed it was because they wanted a larger window of time to tease Kai, but who really knows?

"You finished that chemistry stuff, right?" Soobin asked as I sat down.

"Yeah. I hated it though," I sighed, rubbing my aching temple. Today had been a tough day. I had stayed up late to finish said chemistry stuff and had troubles falling asleep, my mind plagued with images of balancing chemical formulas. I woke up late because my alarm decided that today was a good day to just, not ring, so I didn't have time for any sort of breakfast and I had to run to school. When I got to school, all teachers decided that either pop quizzes or monotone lessons would be perfect for today. And if that didn't make the pounding in my head bad enough, we were assigned more homework assignments, all due the next day.

The pounding in my head was almost enough to drown out everything happening around me. I really could've used this lunch period listening to Kai play the piano to ease the painful thumping that plagued my head, but alas, today was the only day we decided to not play.

"I hate chemistry too. Balancing chemical formulas is so tough. I'm glad we can use a calculator," he grumbled, starting to eat his lunch.

"It isn't that bad. You just hate the math part," Yeonjun responded.

"Math is useful," Taehyun said, eating his food.

"We have calculators! We don't need to know these complicated math calculations!" Soobin protested, obviously heated about how much he hated math.

"You never know when you'll need to properly factor polynomials," Kai joked.

"Never. Never in my life will I ever need to know how to properly factor a polynomial. Never in my life will I have to even use a polynomial," Soobin stressed.

"Anyways..." Beomgyu raised his voice over Soobin who was about to start passionately explaining how useless something like the quadratic equation would be in real life. "When are you two gonna do that sickeningly adorable piano thing again?" Beomgyu asked, clearly only asking so he can change the subject so that it doesn't get heated again like it (apparently) had in the past.

  "Sickeningly adorable piano thing?" Kai asked, clearly not sure what he meant.

  "You know, that thing where you both play the same part on the piano where one of you does right hand and the other does the left hand and instead of sitting on corresponding parts of the bench, you just cross your arms like the sickeningly adorable people that you are." Beomgyu explained.

  "Yeah, when're you gonna do that again?" Taehyun asked.

  "I dunno," Kai shrugged.

  "My mom couldn't get over the video. She asked me several times if that was really you," Yeonjun laughed.

  They continued to talk about how adorable yet gross they found the little 'performance', saying that if it was anyone else, it would've been vomit inducing but seeing as it involved Kai, that's what turned it from vomit inducing to just sickeningly adorable. I tried to chip in to the conversation and pay attention to the conversation but the pounding in my head worsened and drowned out the conversation that bubbles up around me. I abandoned my food and began rubbing my temples. It didn't help. I tried to think of anything that could've soothed the thumping in my head but the noise level only made it worse and soon I couldn't even focus on acting like I was okay. I grabbed my water bottle and took a sip, thinking that maybe I was just dehydrated, but even if I was, the pain wouldn't ease up for a while. I had no painkillers and the school nurse was busy today. It was an incredibly hot day and many people had gone to the nurse's office to be treated for sunburn or heat stroke so going to see the nurse wouldn't work. Both of my parents were at least an hour away for work, so I couldn't even call them. I would have to grit my teeth and bare the painful throbbing in my head.