GLOW-UP

22 | birthday surprise

there are lots of things in life, taeil was beginning to realise, that were very much a blank page.

his unwritten relationship with lee taeyong was a blank page. his knowledge and experience when it came to dating was a blank page. his height difference with johnny seo was also probably the length of a blank a4 page.

but the biggest blank page in his life right then was, undoubtedly, the blank page sitting in front of him that said:

YUTA + SICHENGIE BIRTHDAY

and that was it.

in all the excitement getting ready for halloween and his supposed 'date' with taeyong looming just over the horizon, taeil had completely forgotten about his housemates' birthdays. and now he was slumped over an empty piece of paper in the science lab in college, fretting about what the fuck he should do about it.

why did yuta and sicheng have to be born on almost the same day anyway? it was so inconvenient. the 26th and the 28th... and right before halloween. taeil couldn't stop daydreaming about halloween either, which was a major distraction from what he was trying to achieve.

someone snorted from behind him and doyoung shuffled quietly round to sit at their desk. "great progress," he snarked.

taeil would have slapped him, but half his brain was full of taeyong, and the other half was busy worrying about letting his housemates (and quite possibly his only friends) down. after all, you only have one birthday a year, and taeil didn't want to fuck this one up.

taeil just glared at him instead.

"isn't it yuta's birthday today?" doyoung remarked, squinting down at taeil's condensed handwriting.

"yes, i know that," taeil sighed in exasperation, "which is why i'm in the middle of panicking over here, thanks."

it was indeed yuta's birthday, and by now it was pretty much impossible for taeil to forget that fact. sicheng had jumped on the japanese man early that morning and waited eagerly for him to open an enormous boxset of his favourite animes which yuta had squealed over and engulfed the chinese boy in a massive hug (whilst taeil had been in the kitchen mustering up a fry-up for breakfast as some kind of birthday gesture. after that, he'd rummaged through his new clothes that still had the tags on and chose a huge oversized sweater johnny had picked out in red and pink, covered in rose prints. he was really going to miss that sweater. he also felt terrible about the cast-off birthday present.)

"isn't it sicheng's birthday on thursday?" doyoung added as he fished his scientific calculator out of his rucksack.

"yes." taeil slammed the pen down on the desk and inhaled deeply. "it is."

"well, shouldn't you be throwing them a party or something-"

"you want to tell me what was going on at jaehyun's on the weekend?" taeil interrupted shortly, raising an accusatory eyebrow in doyoung's direction.

doyoung's ears turned red in an instant under the fluff of his hazelnut hair. "n-nothing was going on!" he denied.

"hanging out in your hot neighbour's apartment at nearly midnight and he's got no shirt on does not count as 'nothing's going on'," taeil disagreed.