Just a Game | Eugene Lee Yang x Reader fanfic

Friendship First.

I fell into a nice pattern with work, and I enjoyed it a lot. I had more friends, but I was still an honorary Try Guy, which had earned me the nickname of "Honor" around the office. It was cute, so I went with it. There was something different about the way Eugene was looking at me after we went out to lunch, and at first, I thought it was because I'd brushed off any further attempts to flirt with me, but he didn't seem upset. Just... curious. 

The real change came the next morning when I got a text from work.

Pretty Boy: if you're free before work, wanna grab coffee?

Okay, I may have stopped calling him that in person, but he was still in my phone with his nickname. I'd seen his phone to know I was still in it as Honeybun too. 

Me: Sure. 

I was wondering if anyone else would be there, but I did like him as a friend and didn't want him to think I didn't. Okay. I was pretty sure it was more than a friend, but he didn't, so oh well. I got dressed early, heading down to a coffee shop a few doors down from the office. He was already there and had ordered for both of us, which was sweet. 

"Morning," I said, sitting down and took a sip, nodding to him in thanks.

"Hey," he greeted with that stupid perfect smile of his. 

"What's up?" I asked, wondering if he just wanted to hang out if there was a meaning behind this meeting. 

He shrugged. "Not much. Just figure we're always at the office or with a group, it'd be cool to hang a bit one on one," he explained.

My brow quirked a little, involuntarily, but nodded nevertheless. "Sounds cool to me."  

"We should play a game or something, get to know each other better," he commented. I wasn't sure what he was getting at, but I tried to shrug it off.

"I bet there's a Buzzfeed article for this," I teased, opening up the search tab on my phone, looking for questions to ask to get to know someone better. A couple of weird ones popped up, but I settled on one. "Technically it says they're for a first date, but they don't seem to be romantic, so we can do it anyway," I commented, holding up my phone. "It was your idea, wanna start us off?" I asked.

"Sure, wanna go down the list, or pick random ones?" he asked.

I shrugged. "Pick random ones, and we can repeat, just not right after another," I said, giving him my phone so he could pick. There was nothing scandalous on it anyway. 

He scrolled through, reading the questions. "What's one topic you can talk about forever without having to Google?" he asked.

I considered that for a minute. "Life. The meaning of life, basically. The only thing I'd have to Google is quotes because I hate paraphrasing," I responded. 

"Probably a good thing when working for a company that quotes stuff a lot," he said, handing me my phone back for me to pick.

I looked through them before asking "what's one thing you did as a kid that seems insane now?" I asked, looking over at him. 

"Let other kids tell me who I was, or my self-worth. I mean, it's still a work in progress, but it really did get to be when I was younger," he explained. 

"That was deep," I said, only like.. a third teasing, just enough to lighten the mood. 

"Okay, going to stick with the deep questions for a bit," he said, finding one in the article. "What's one thing you would tell your 15-year-old self?" 

That took a minute. I could probably lecture your fifteen-year-old self for a good hour but didn't want to put poor Eugene through that. "You'll survive. You'll live past 18, eventually get your shit together, and you'll be glad you did," I said, staring at the dark liquid in front of me, before taking the phone back, not sure about meeting his gaze after that answer. "If you had to spend a day without your phone, what would you do?" I asked, finally looking up at him.

The curious look was back, but he pushed it off to answer it. "Drink," he said, answering the question lightly. "Or play on my computer," he joked.

I laughed softly, giving him back the phone. "Okay, what did you do as a kid you think is insane now?" he asked, turning a previous question back on me.

"How I did my makeup! I mean, I'm no goddamn beauty guru, but it was awful. A lot of smudged eyeliner that wasn't even, and I literally put black eyeshadow on my lips because I didn't have black lipstick. I know there are ways to do that now where it doesn't look bad, but it was literally just powder on skin. I like a matte lip but that was... ugh, no, cringe," I shuddered at the memory, making us both laugh.

"Worst date you've ever been on?" I asked.

He thought about that for a minute while he drank his coffee. "Probably one I went on where the girl literally did nothing but text. Like, I like my phone too and all, but this was not being present in the conversation, completely engrossed in the phone," he explained through pursed lips.

"I totally would have just got up and left, just to see if they'd notice. Yeah, sometimes I'll check my phone, but I can multitask, so I'll listen and even verbally tell someone I'm listening so they know I'm there," I nodded.

"See, that's fine, but yeah, she was totally checked out," he replied. "When was the hardest time you ever laughed?" he asked.

"Probably one time that I was hanging out with my sister after we went to dinner together. We had way too much sugar, and the smallest thing was funny to us. We kept saying our dessert was spiked. We got a Crème brûlée and kept saying that it wasn't burnt sugar on the top, it was some sort of crystallized crack," I explained, laughing softly at the memory. "We just couldn't stop laughing. We'd start to calm down and something would pop into our head or one of would say something, and we'd start all over again. I think I lost like five pounds just from laughing," I said. 

We went through the questions, picking new ones, sometimes throwing old ones back at each other. Sometimes they were deep, other times they were questions that had us laughing. We had to call it quits when it was time for work though, and we headed down the street to work, still talking about a few different things that had come up. It was actually really nice to hang out and have a conversation with him, and not really worry about what it meant. Eugene was a wonderful friend, and even if there was no romance, I was happy with what was starting.