Hearts Awakened, Live Alive

Hongjoong: Rate of Reaction

Hongjoong sat in his usual spot for his Friday chemistry lab course. He felt unreasonably anxious about what he was going to do in approximately seven minutes. He'd arrived earlier than he normally would have—normally he'd be exactly on time or five minutes late—to switch around lab partner assignments. Every day before class, the lab TAs would assign two people to a lab bench to carry out that day's procedure. Now usually, due to overworked graduate students almost always acting as their TAs, they were assigned the same partners every class period. So all Hongjoong had to do was change around the chart that was kept on the whiteboard at the front of the classroom. He couldn't just change around his and Seonghwa's partners, though, that'd look entirely too suspicious, especially after the stunt Wooyoung and San had pulled yesterday when they had run into Seonghwa at the station. So, he had reorganized the entire class. He just hoped he hadn't left anyone off...

He watched students slowly start to file in as it got closer and closer to two o'clock. They all looked confusedly at the chart before finding their new seats for the day and probably the rest of the year because Hongjoong saw no need to ever reorganize it again after today. When Hongjoong caught sight of platinum blonde hair walking through the door, he immediately made himself look busy. Digging through his backpack to pull out his supplies, he watched his target walk to the front board to look for his new partner. Hongjoong's nerves spiked once more when the tall, handsome blonde started walking his way. He took a few deep breaths. He could do this, no problem.

"Umm... excuse me?" A quiet voice asked him. He stopped digging through his mess of a backpack, pretending to have just noticed Park Seonghwa's presence.

"Hey," Hongjoong responded, putting on his most charming smile. Seonghwa averted his eyes for a second before continuing.

"I think we're partners for today," he said.

"Oh really?" Hongjoong asked, looking towards the board for added effect.

"If—If you don't want to, I understand. I can—"

Hongjoong immediately cut him off.

"No, no it's fine." He then added: "I want to."

Seonghwa's eyes went wide for a split second before he looked away and started turning red again. So Wooyoung had been right. Seonghwa did seem to be into him; he felt a little flattered if he were being honest. Hongjoong didn't have a lot of experience in dating and by that, he meant he had no experience at all. He knew he was gay, but that was about it. So, to have someone like Seonghwa—though he was the enemy—he was undeniably handsome and Hongjoong had always had a thing for tall guys. Maybe this wouldn't be so hard after all... Besides, the man was devastatingly cute with how shy he was being.

"Kim Hongjoong," he introduced.

"I—" Seonghwa cleared his throat. "I know... I'm—"

"Park Seonghwa," Hongjoong said with another smile. "I know."

Seonghwa smiled shyly at that; Hongjoong nearly melted.

He took back what he said earlier. This was going to be challenging. Not with getting close to Seonghwa; that was turning out to be an easy task. No, the challenge would be stopping himself from getting too attached. He did have a rather nasty habit of doing that...

His assignment just kept getting worse and worse.