GLOW-UP

08 | coolness oppa

"Wow, Banana Boy, wow," Doyoung drawled as Taeil sat down in the science lab.

"You can't ruin my mood, Bunny Teeth!" Taeil countered in a sing song voice. He was on top of the world, and no one - not even his stupid opinionated lab partner - could bring him down.

"Oh, shut up." Doyoung turned away from him and continued scribbling away at his papers. When Taeil glanced over, it was a surprisingly neat cursive.

"Jung Jaehyun's still got you doing his homework?" Taeil asked curiously, peering over Doyoung's shoulder to get a better look.

"No!" Doyoung denied. "God, stop pretending to be confident already, Johnny Suh must be rubbing off on you."

"Well it was all your idea in the first place, stupid," Taeil told him. "Anyway, you are doing his homework - it says Jung Jaehyun at the top of the page."

Doyoung snatched his papers out of Taeil's view and frowned at him. "It's not homework, okay? I'm just writing up some notes he missed... and I didn't tell you to get Johnny to be your senpai!"

"You kind of did."

"Didn't."

"Did."

"Fuck off," Doyoung mumbled, but his tone wasn't so harsh anymore. "By the way, I saw what you said at lunch."

Taeil looked up, halfway through getting his books out of his bag. "You did?" he asked, glancing around him nervously. "Has everyone seen it?"

Doyoung paused and slowly nodded. "It's all over the internet," he said. "Pretty much the whole college will have seen it by now. And... I just wanted to say, I don't know... what you said to that guy - it's good that someone's standing up for people."

Taeil frowned, not quite seeing what doyoung was getting at. "What people?" he thought aloud. As far as he was concerned, he'd just been standing up for himself.

Doyoung turned away to hide the way his cheeks flushed in embarrassment. "It doesn't matter," he muttered. He went back to writing up the notes for Jaehyun, and Taeil couldn't get another word out of him for the rest of the hour.

Despite his lab partner being weird, and the tears he'd shed that day (courtesy of Johnny Suh, that piece of shit) Taeil skipped along home in a surprisingly good mood. He didn't like to admit it but maybe Johnny was right. Taking the shit for that dumb video and confronting his own feelings about it was the only way he could move on.

And somehow, after all of that, he'd become a tiny bit more confident as a result.

"I'm back!" Taeil called as he got home, stepping into the apartment and taking off his shoes.

His housemates didn't appear for a few moments, and Taeil wondered if they were even in. He shuffled down the hall, sliding along the slippery wooden flooring in his socks and humming quietly to himself.

"Yuta? Sicheng?"

Taeil stuck his head around the door into the kitchen, only to find both of his housemates already inside. Yuta's head obscured Sicheng's, but they were extremely close, bodies almost pressing together.

"Guys?"

Yuta and Sicheng jumped apart, startled, and gaped at Taeil in the doorway. Sicheng's ears turned pink under his fluffy blonde hair, whilst Yuta scratched at the nape of his neck.

"Sichengie had something in his eye," Yuta explained quickly, offering Taeil a nervous smile.

"You did?" Taeil asked, looking concerned, for the younger. "Did you get it out?"

Sicheng nodded fervently, avoiding eye contact. "Yuta got it out for me," he answered.

Taeil gave him a look of understanding and patted his shoulder, moving past the Chinese boy to reach the kettle. "Did it hurt a lot?" he asked worriedly.

Yuta stared at Taeil, amazed that he'd accepted such a bullshit excuse so easily.

"Hm?" Sicheng's head shot up in his direction. Yuta nudged him and he blinked, rubbing at one eye. "Oh, yeah... ow."

"You're in a good mood," Yuta remarked carefully, changing the subject. He and Sicheng exchanged a quick glance, and then Sicheng hopped up to sit on the countertop.

"Mm," Taeil agreed, without much additional explanation. "Do you want tea, Sicheng?"

"Can I have green tea, hyung?" Sicheng asked after pondering over it.

"Don't I get any?" Yuta complained.

"No," Taeil told him bluntly, "because you're the fucktart who told Johnny where my secret hiding place is."

He turned around with the boiling kettle in his hand, looking like the grim reaper himself as he raised an eyebrow. Yuta opened his mouth to object, but quickly closed it again, watching the steam from the scalding water rise from the kettle.

Taeil turned around and continued making tea.

"Okay, look-" Yuta began, but was instantly cut short by Sicheng.

"Speaking of Johnny Suh," Sicheng interrupted in a sly tone, "I didn't realise you two were so close, hyung."

Taeil froze. Then he put the kettle down with a loud thud. "We're not."

"Really?" Sicheng pressed. "Because it didn't look that way to me at lunch."

Taeil stirred the tea in the mugs and handed one to Sicheng. "Has everyone really seen that damn video?" he sighed in exasperation.

"Pretty much the whole campus," Yuta said, not very helpfully.

"What even was that, hyung?" Sicheng asked, his curiosity overwhelming him.

Taeil exhaled and took a sip of his tea. "Okay, this is gonna sound weird," he said, trying to gather his thoughts to explain how the fuck Johnny Suh became his Upgrade Senpai.

"As weird as Sichengie's yaoi animes?" Yuta put in.

Sicheng stuck an elbow in his ribs. "Shut up!" he hissed. "You're the one who recommended them to me."

Yuta let out a yell in pain at the force of Sicheng's sharp elbows, but just started chuckling to himself. "I don't remember giving you any hentai ones," he remarked, smirking at Sicheng's reddening cheeks.

"Canyoujustexplainhyung?" Sicheng blurted, his words coming out in an rambling chain as he turned back to Taeil in order to ignore the Japanese boy beside him.

Taeil snapped back to reality and blurted, "Johnny is my Coolness Oppa."

Then his eyes nearly flew out of their sockets as he clamped a hand over his mouth. He did not mean to say that out loud.

"Wait, what?" Yuta spluttered.

Taeil facepalmed, twice. "I meant that Johnny is, um, helping me become cool," he managed, "so I won't be a fucking awkward mess anymore."

"So you can ask out Lee Taeyong?" Sicheng asked gently.

"Uh, y-yeah," Taeil stuttered, "if I ever get round to that."

"I'm sure you will, hyung," Sicheng encouraged him. "Now, let's go watch a movie together and drink tea, yeah?"

"Anime?" Yuta suggested.

That earned him a hard smack.

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a | n
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