Sometimes Sweetly, Sometimes Achingly

Chapter 3

Jaehyun, Taeyong learned, smiled a lot, but only when people weren’t looking.

The first time he noticed was a few days after the dinner party. Taeyong was bustling around the hallways of D&E while searching for Jongdae, one of the vocal coaches. He turned a corner and the next thing he knew, his nose collided with a shoulder.

“Ouch,” Taeyong whimpered, reeling back and clutching his nose in pain. It wasn’t bleeding, thank god, but it still hurt more than it probably should.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” a deep and familiar voice interrupted Taeyong’s self-pity party. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.”

Taeyong’s head snapped up, his nose forgotten. “Jaehyun? What are you doing here?” He exclaimed with wide eyes.

Jaehyun rubbed the back of neck with a sheepish set to his mouth (Taeyong totally wasn’t fixated on the way his arms looked in that white dress shirt. Obviously he wasn’t). “Yunho-hyung’s car got totaled yesterday, so he’s making me drive him around. He told me to come inside though because he has some boxes or something he needs to load,” Jaehyun explained.

“Ah…” Taeyong trailed off awkwardly. He cleared his throat, said, “Well, uh, he just finished his last class like ten minutes ago, so you’ll probably find him in—”

“Jaehyun!”

“—his office. Or here, I guess.”

Yunho jogged down the hall with a stack of boxes so high he couldn’t even see over them. “Hey, Jae, I still have a few more in the office, so can you take these down first? Oh, hi Taeyong,” he added on as an afterthought when he noticed the other’s presence.

“What the hell even is all this,” Jaehyun stared at the pile in bewilderment.

Yunho let out a deep sigh. “A few days ago Hyukjae told me that my office is turning into a hoarder’s den of cleaning supplies, and he told me that if I didn’t get rid of them by today he’d kick me out and let Taeyeon have my office. Sucks for him though, because I hid some air freshener in my desk.” He shot Taeyong a worried look. “Uhh, Taeyongie, you definitely won’t tell him, right? Please don’t. If Taeyeon gets my office she’ll tell Sooyeon and then she’ll never let me live it down.”

Taeyong, who knew all too well the struggle of trying to squeeze between all of Yunho’s cleaning supplies, giggled. “Sure, hyung.”

 
(A few months ago, Hyukjae had forced Taeyong to do the exact same thing. Except Taeyong to do this day still had a locked filing cabinet of Febreeze)

“Right,” Jaehyun still looked less than convinced. “So why couldn’t you have done this when you still had your car? Why did you wait until now?”

“Because you’re my younger brother and I have power over you,” Yunho replied smoothly. “Now start loading the car. I need to get the rest of the stuff,” he called over his shoulder as he walked back to his office.

 
Jaehyun shook his head. “Unbelievable,” he muttered under his breath. “Hyung is something else.”

 
Taeyong, who’d been about to politely excuse himself and continue his search for Jongdae, paused. Maybe it was just a trick of the light (unlikely because artificial light didn’t do that), but Taeyong saw Jaehyun smile—a genuine one with dimples—and the sight was too much for his heart.

Then Jaehyun shot him a strange look, effectively snapping Taeyong out of his swooning stage. “Aren’t you going to help?” Jaehyun said with the slightest of smirks.

Taeyong blinked. “Oh…I actually have to go find someone right now—oh!” He yelped as Jaehyun got closer and closer to him, until suddenly one of the large boxes appeared in Taeyong’s arms.