GLOW-UP

06 | foreign swaggers

In the college there was a large open area full of picnic benches which served as both a study area and a canteen. Taeil didn't usually eat there, but he was looking for Yuta or Sicheng (either would do) and the ice hockey team often ate there so he figured it was a good shout.

Needless to say, he didn't expect to be eating lunch with Johnny Suh that day.

"Oh, Moony! Over here!"

Taeil spun around to see Johnny at one of the central tables, laughing and joking round with a bunch of his friends. He waved him over with one hand, and it wasn't a hand you could just ignore, as much as Taeil wanted to. With extreme reluctance, he gave a deep sign and shuffled over to Johnny's table.

"Come sit with us, slave," said Johnny in that easy-going manner of speaking he always seemed to adopt.

"Slave?" asked a small foreign-looking guy in English, and raised an eyebrow with a suspicious smirk.

"Yeah, we got a deal going on, Ten," said Johnny casually. He raised a hand to pat the seat beside him for Taeil to sit on, but the bench was full both sides. "Uh... just sit here, Moony," he added, and patted a thigh with one hand, like it wasn't even a big deal at all and his friends, even reluctant ones, sat on his lap all the time. (Taeil didn't think he was one of those friends yet.)

Taeil blinked. "Sit on your... your-"

"My lap, yes," Johnny interrupted briskly. "Now hurry up before I change my mind."

So instead of making an escape, or continuing his endless search for his housemates, Taeil found himself sitting on Johnny Suh's lap that day. The others on the table didn't seem to care too much, except for maybe Ten - who found the entire ordeal particularly amusing. As for the others... Taeil recognised Jung Jaehyun from the ice hockey team - and from the terrible handwriting he'd seen on the book Doyoung had been scribbling into yesterday. But Jaehyun wasn't eyeing up the lap situation or anything - he was just trying to finish some homework. The last guy at the table was much younger, probably a freshman, and was absorbed in some sort of game on his phone which required insistent tapping and seemed extremely frustrating. Ten - the foreigner with the suggestive look in his eyes - was still smirking at Taeil whilst he licked his ice cream off the spoon.

"Oh, these are my friends, by the way," Johnny spoke up, almost as if he'd been reading Taeil's mind. He gave the three of them an Squad Introduction that rom-coms would probably rate about a minus eleven out of ten. "Jaehyun's across from us, Mark over there, and this is Ten."

(Ten didn't seem like the sort of person who even needed an introduction. But when it came to meeting new people, he was more than happy to give his own.)

"Ten?" Taeil repeated.

"Yeah, I'm from Thailand and my real name is Chittaphon but nobody can fucking pronounce that shit," Ten explained with a surprisingly friendly smile. "So I figured it would be easier for people to just call me what I am. A ten, that is. Out of ten."

"Ah..." Taeil laughed awkwardly as the Thai boy winked at him, "I see..."

The joke made a lot more sense in English than in Korean.

"Anyway!" Johnny interrupted, slapping a hand to the picnic table. "We want pizza, and you're going to order it for us."

Taeil tried to squirm around to glare at Johnny, but since it was impossible he just kicked his shin with the back of his heel instead.

"Hey, what was that for?!" Johnny protested loudly. He wrapped his arms tightly around Taeil's waist and rested his chin on his shoulder, pouting with the expectation of his request.