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Seokjin had made two grievous mistakes in all his twenty-one years of living. The first was when he had decided to cut his own hair in middle school (terrible, horrible, he had to wear a hat for a month) and the second was when he had aced his very first calculus exam, and thus decided he could do math for the rest of his life.
His first year of university had been a breeze, but his second had brought a terrible imposter syndrome which was then ruthlessly beaten out of him after his third year, as he was too busy to even breathe, much less feel sorry for himself. And now he was finally starting his final fall semester, when everything was supposed to finally pan out and make sense.
It still didn’t. Seokjin didn’t think it ever would, but he still held tightly onto his three covenant rules that had served him well thus far:
1). Math was fun, and he just had to sludge past these fucking integrals until it’d be fun again.
2). That hour-long drama episode would, 99% of the time, taste sweeter if he finished his homework first.
3). Electives should always, always, be an easy A.
“Organic chemistry?” Jimin asked skeptically as he glanced over Seokjin’s schedule. “That’s not a class you can just tack on. I mean, it was easy for me, but that’s because–”
“—your other classes are sooo abnormally hard, I know, we all know, you can shut up about it now.” Seokjin rolled his eyes, snatching his planner back. It was the day before classes started, and he was already starting to regret that his roommate of choice was Park Jimin–perfectionist and notorious workaholic, who was also a freak who took organic chemistry his first year.
“It’s the engineering student in me that complains,” Jimin responded primly. “It’s part of our culture.”
“Chemical engineering,” Seokjin scoffed. “That’s the least engineering of all engineering.”
“Yeah, yeah, laugh all you want.” Jimin’s focus went back to the cup noodles in his hand–and Seokjin was a saint for allowing him to eat on his bed. “At least my biology specialization makes sense, you’re a glorified math major.”
“Bioinformatics,” Seokjin corrected. “It’s different.”
Jimin waved his chopsticks. Seokjin winced as a drop of kimchi-flavored broth splattered on his sheets. “Same thing. Boring stats stuff.”
Seokjin opened his mouth to snap back that, no, it was incredibly different, that was like conflating Python and MATLAB, but decided the argument wasn’t worth starting today. “I thought it’d be kinda fun,” he offered instead. His major was an amalgamation of math, computer science, and biochemistry, but he had never taken a lab course outside of general chemistry. And it was always good to diversify, wasn’t it? “I have extra space for another course, and all the biology classes I want are slated for next semester. I’m not gonna take fucking Ecology.”
“There’s nothing wrong with ecology,” Jimin said, as if he didn’t spend last spring semester shitting on environmental engineers after one stood him up on a date. “Hands-on is fun but not when it’s at eight in the morning.” He raised an eyebrow. “Four hour lab. Starting at eight AM. Ending at twelve. You will die.”
“Not everyone is you, who sleeps in ‘til 2 pm on weekends.” Seokjin leaned forward and rapped Jimin’s forehead with his knuckles. “I, for one, can maintain a healthy sleep schedule if I want to.”
Jimin scrunched his nose and batted Seokjin’s hand away. “Fine. If you need any help, I think I can find my old notes from last year. But don’t come crying to me when it kicks your ass.”
“It’s not gonna kick my ass,” Seokjin replies, with a confidence that really should have dried up three semesters ago. “I can do one measly 8 AM.”
Seokjin must be a masochist. Or just plain stupid. Most likely both, at the same time.
He could not do 8 AM’s.
After sleeping through his alarm three times, his body kindly decided that now—i.e, twenty minutes before lab—was the time to get up. He just barely managed to brush his teeth and splash water on his face in ten minutes, then proceeded to blindly grab whatever combo of clothing seemed passable.
Just as he was about to sprint out the door, Seokjin longingly looked at his kettle (and Jimin’s deadweight body, fast asleep), before deciding he couldn’t survive four hours without caffeine, and spared two minutes to down a still-boiling hot cup of shitty instant coffee.
(His third bad idea of the semester. He was breaking a new record!)
Seokjin’s scalded throat had not yet healed by the time he reached the chemistry building, and he just barely managed to snatch a glance at his reflection in the glass windows as he pushed open the door. Well. Who needed perfect hair or perfect clothes if his face more than made up for it?
Luckily, the TAs were still sorting themselves out when he entered the lab, so he quietly snuck over to his assigned space and tucked his backpack under the table. There were about forty students, all seated in pairs at long tables, with fume hoods behind them. Stealing a glance to the right of him, he took in who was to be his partner for the semester.
The student in question was taller than him by a few inches, most likely a year or two younger. He looked surprisingly built under his lab coat—not that Seokjin was staring, of course—with messily combed dark hair pushed up away from his forehead. He caught Seokjin’s eye and offered him a tentative smile. Dimples, Seokjin noted.
He looked relatively normal, at least.
“Hey,” Seokjin greeted him. “I’m Seokjin. Any good at chemistry?”
His partner looked a bit taken aback by his bluntness, but recovered quickly all the same. “Namjoon. And it’s not my favorite subject, but it comes easy enough.”
“That’s all I need to hear,” Seokjin sighed.
The introductory spiel had Seokjin dozing off—there wasn’t anything he couldn’t find on the syllabus, anyway—but Namjoon was staring at the TA with full attention, foot tapping nervously. When they were given the go-ahead to start, Seokjin eyed Namjoon, hoping he absorbed it all.
“It seems straightforward,” Namjoon mused, scanning the instruction sheet. “The tricky part is figuring out which solvent to use, but even that is simple.”
“Uh.” He should probably know what a solvent was. That was introductory, high school level chemistry. He pinched his eyes. It was too early. “Simple?”
“Yeah.” Namjoon, to his credit, took Seokjin’s cluelessness in stride. “It’s just solubility.”
Well, Seokjin thought, failing to grasp what exactly solubility had to do with crystals, at least one of us can carry.
Namjoon, bless his sweet dimples, was not the team leader Seokjin had hoped he’d be.
After Seokjin had scanned through the step-by-step instructions (firmly ignoring the clusterfuck of chemistry terms that was the background information), he came to realize that the lab itself was easy. It was similar to baking, and while cooking had always been his strong suit, Seokjin could make a mean batch of cupcakes, if he did say so himself.
Reading and following instructions was no problem at all, regardless of the science behind it. Retrieve chemicals from various cabinets, measure them out, set a boiling plate to temperature…it was almost relaxing.
Well, almost in the sense that he not only had to navigate possibly carcinogenic chemicals, but an extremely unhelpful Kim Namjoon.
Namjoon wasn’t clueless, he was just…
Overeager.
Much like an excited puppy, he was eager to help Seokjin with any instruction he gave, but it was like his mind was going a million miles a minute: picking up the wrong chemical, nearly knocking over beakers, accidentally skipping ahead in the procedure. He was disgustingly smart, Seokjin could tell that even from a few words, but wrangling all those brain cells together was another beast, and one that Seokjin was certainly not built for.
“That’s not distilled water, that’s acetone.” Seokjin plucked a bottle out of Namjoon’s hand. “Read the labels.”
“That’s not distilled water either!” Namjoon protested. “That’s isopropyl alcohol.”
Seokjin stared down at the chemical in hand, which was, indeed, isopropyl alcohol, and felt like weeping. “This is your fault, you’re making my neurons wither one by one.”
“It’s not my fault that my incompetence is making you incompetent–”
“So you admit you’re incompetent?”
They bickered throughout measuring chemicals, then bickered more while labeling vials, then bickered even more as they waited for the heat plate to warm to temperature, before realizing neither of them had plugged it in.
“Remember the boiling stick.” Seokjin hovered nervously as Namjoon nestled a vial of hexane onto the plate. “Also hexane has a low boiling point, so we should keep it on low heat.”
“Seokjin-ssi,” Namjoon said, looking a little exasperated, “heat is heat.”
Seokjin was stunned into silence. Well…yeah. What could he say to that? Heat was heat.
(When the hexane overheated and shot out of its tube, Seokjin wordlessly pushed Namjoon aside to dissolve the rest of the solvents.)
They ended up finishing thirty minutes later than everyone else. Their TA told them they should socialize a bit less, and Seokjin refrained from being the first person to ever murder someone with a Bunsen burner.
After they had cleaned their station for the day, Namjoon caught Seokjin before he left. “We should exchange numbers just in case.”
Seokjin shot him a finger gun. “Already missing our chemistry?”
Namjoon stared at him.
Seokjin sighed. “Yeah, not my best work.” He took Namjoon’s offered phone and tapped in his number, making sure to save his name as JIN !!! <3333, just because. “Are we doing our lab report individually?”
“Yeah,” Namjoon said, unperturbed. “Just solubility, remember? It’s easy enough.”
Seokjin opened his mouth to protest that, no, he still wasn’t very confident in his chemistry knowledge, before he thought better of it. Namjoon seemed like a smart guy, and if there was one thing Seokjin had learned in his years as a STEM major, it was to never, ever give a smart guy a reason to think you were not.
So, instead, he plastered on a smile, nodded, and tried not to induce a stress-based meltdown one week into the new semester.
Organic chemistry lab only ran once every other week, leaving Seokjin blissfully free to be terrorized by his other classes in the downtime.
The beauty of studying the intersection of computations and biology was that Seokjin lived the double-life of having to deal with biology majors who treated code like a mystical language from a fourth dimension, and compsci majors who read one booklet on cellular respiration and figured they were experts on the matter. But, in the end, he wouldn’t have chosen any other way. He’d thought about switching out once, gone through the long list of possible majors in his head, from STEM to humanities, and he always ended up back here.
He slipped into his design class a few minutes early, but the majority of its students were already seated. His saving grace was the cluster of six girls that had adopted him over the past few years. Sometimes, a friendship was nothing more than the shared trauma of being in computer science.
And none of them believed the rumors, which was nice.
Seokjin was long past the days when classes would ease into the curriculum, so today was a full lecture, with a brief overview of the class structure. It’d be project-heavy, with pre-assigned groups they’d keep for the semester. Which was fine, Seokjin told himself. Sure, he preferred his small circle of trusted classmates, but he could handle working with others. It wasn’t like anyone treated him that much differently, and it had been two years since everyone turned their backs on him.
Seokjin’s pen blotted through his notebook after holding it in one place for too long. He clicked his tongue and moved onto the next line.
All he did was walk out of a TA’s office hours and have a pretty face. That was it.
Class ended a bit early, so he met up with his new group at the back of the classroom with the spare time—a group of three other boys Seokjin had scarcely talked to. After they exchanged numbers, Seokjin quickly scanned the syllabus once more. Four projects spread throughout the semester, and each one with a presentation and report.
“We could divide up the work now,” Seokjin suggested. “If anyone has a preference for which slides they want...”
His very brave, praiseworthy attempt at being a functioning group member went completely ignored. The other boys continued to talk amongst themselves.
Seokjin let out a sigh. This was just so high school.
He gave up after another five minutes of attempting to steer the group back on track, before abruptly excusing himself and stalking out of class. They looked at him, like what is this guy even doing here? before turning back to each other. Were they all friends? Or did most of his classmates just have a camaraderie that Seokjin wasn’t privy to? The latter, unfortunately, seemed more likely.
Confirmation, then, that rumors held strong, and a good chunk of his major still believed he slept with a TA to pass fucking differential equations.
Seokjin could do differential equations in his sleep. Seokjin could fall forward on his pen and a perfectly written differential equation could shit itself out. Seokjin passed that class with an A+ and he skipped half the recitations. But none of that mattered when Seokjin was the only openly gay student in the class and just happened to have an insecure TA who couldn’t handle a rejection because Seokjin was just there to ask about the homework grading, not to suck a dick. Contrary to popular belief.
It was a small major. One word, and the rumor had spread like wildfire.
He shouldered his bag as he hurried through campus, half-wondering what he’d do with the spare hour between this class and his next. Rumors like these mattered little to the classmates he actually liked: the kind ones, the ones who would help Seokjin with his homework and text him when exam grades were loaded onto their online portal. They mattered even less to the greater campus, who didn’t know or care about his woes. It wasn’t like he was being bullied relentlessly. It was just that he got stuck with the unfortunate impression that he was type to be weeded out in the first semester, and that rumor was the nail in the coffin. None of his A’s, none of his internships, were ever taken seriously.
And, yeah, maybe Seokjin shouldn’t give a fuck about what the majority of his backwards classmates thought. But, well, look at him now. Still thinking about it.
Seokjin always worked better when fueled by spite, so when he reached his dorm at the end of the day, he ended up marathoning all the homework given this first week. He had just finished his modeling homework a week early and was feeling rather good about himself, when his stomach dropped. He forgot about the lab report.
Seokjin raked a hand through his hair, giving a desperate glance out the window as if it’d save him. But, alas, the black sky only served to remind him that it was nearing midnight, and the due date was inching closer by the minute.
Jimin was usually open to help, but as soon as Seokjin called out to him, his roommate swiveled in his chair and fixed him with a glare that meant he was between god and mass balances. Seokjin had learned the hard way to never interrupt Jimin while he was working.
That left him one last option, and he let out a sigh as he reached for his phone, and pulled up the one contact he never wanted to use. Great, now his lab partner would also think he’s an idiot, except it would actually be warranted this time.
seokjin
hey do you know what the answer to #3 is? its the structure/solubility one
namjoon
uh i dont want to share my exact answers lol but i can help with the concepts!
seokjin
its due in an hour i promise u can just send me answers
namjoon
sorry i can answer questions abt the material but i dont condone plagiarism…
Seokjin groaned, letting his head fall onto his desk. Of course. Of course. He was one of those.
seokjin
and after i carried us during the lab? after you made us both late?
namjoon
:/
sodium 4-amino-1-naphthalenesulfonate is soluble in water :/
hope that helps idk
seokjin
fine ill turn to naver like a fucking plebian
Then, because he needed some moral support,
seokjin
Im gonna kill my lab partner
yoongi:
did you try to cheat off him
lmao
deserve
seokjin
shut up
i hate you
you’re never on my side
i hope the makerspace is full of freshmen compscis
yoongi
im never helping u with C++ ever again
Seokjin buried his head in his hands. Jimin, from across the room, wordlessly threw him a box of tissues.
“How did the lab report go?” Namjoon asked, like the cheeky little biology major he was, who would probably go on to sell his soul to academia only to work as a measly lab assistant while Seokjin and his bachelors in statistics would go on to tackle actual real world problems (read: sit at a computer and spreadsheet for eight hours).
“It went perfectly,” Seokjin bit back, with just the right balance of sarcasm and sincerity, since Namjoon’s question seemed to be annoyingly genuine.
"Oh, I’m glad to hear it,” Namjoon replied, confirming Seokjin’s worst fear: that he may be the asshole in this situation.
Today’s lab was an acid-base extraction, and Seokjin’s stomach flipped in apprehension of the oncoming report. He had never been good at telling the difference between the two. Something about hydrogen ions…?
Namjoon seemed to be waiting for Seokjin to start, based on their last disastrous lab, so Seokjin hesitantly began reading the instructions. Immiscible layers…low and high polarity...insolubility…he had no idea why half these terms were relevant, but once he skipped the background information, the step-by-step instructions weren’t complex, just like last time.
“We just have to label everything well,” he murmured, more to himself than Namjoon. He looked at his partner. “Can I trust you to keep track of the test tubes?”
Namjoon nodded with all the diligence of a good listener, so, of course, each test tube ended up unlabeled.
“It’s all in here.” Namjoon tapped his head. “As long as they’re in order, I can remember them.”
“...Fine.”
Seokjin was not a control freak. He truly wasn’t. Last semester, he baked cookies with Taehyung in the shitty dorm kitchen, and he was quite happy to let the latter lead the way, even when they all came out a little lumpy. This, however? This was driving him insane. Kim Namjoon combined with the pressure of achieving an A was turning him into a monster.
It was a miracle they managed to finish the experiment on time. The pair working next to them kept throwing them dirty glances. Seokjin was convinced the TA was one second from throwing them out. The sharps bin had never seen a worse day.
After a grueling three hours, Seokjin finally threw up his hands. “Let’s compromise,” he suggested. “I’ll finish the lab without throwing the chemical waste bin at you. You help me complete the lab report. Deal?”
“Did you actually need help?” Namjoon asked, looking a bit chagrined.
Seokjin skillfully ignored him. “I’ll probably be free this weekend. Can you text me by then?”
Namjoon nodded. “Preferably sooner than later. I don’t like to procrastinate.”
I should’ve taken Ecology, Seokjin thought.
Namjoon’s text came randomly at 11 AM on Friday. It was blunt, a little impersonal, and straight to the point. Seokjin responded thirty-five minutes later, and was tempted to make it an even thirty-six, but decided he wasn’t that petty.
namjoon
Can we work on the report tomorrow at 1?
seokjin
yeah wanna meet at the library? the second floor isnt too crowded on weekends
namjoon
Sounds good :)
Seokjin was fairly sure the campus library was old enough to have an asbestos problem, but it also had an infinite amount of working outlets, so he really wasn’t in the mood to be picky. The second floor was largely used for study groups, so the background noise was low enough not to disturb, but loud enough that he and Namjoon could comfortably talk.
Namjoon was easy to spot. He was taking up half a table by himself, with pens, highlighters, and notebooks scattered around him. Seokjin strode over to him, dumped his backpack on the ground, and pulled out the chair next to him. “What the hell is that?”
“Uh…” Namjoon began surreptitiously sliding his mess away from Seokjin;s side of the table. “The textbook?”
“You actually paid for it?” Seokjin spared the behemoth a look of disbelief, before pulling out his laptop and opening the lab report. It was, unfortunately, nothing more than a blank document at this time. “Even if you couldn’t find it online, everyone passes around a pdf during the first few weeks of classes.”
Namjoon ducked his head sheepishly. “I just transferred here this semester. I don’t really know anyone yet.”
“Oh.”
Namjoon shrugged. “It’s okay, I thought you knew. It’s why I’m taking organic chemistry in my third year. My university didn’t require a lab section, so my credits didn’t transfer over.”
“So you’re only a year younger than me?” Seokjin blinked. “That’s nice to know, I thought the class would’ve been packed with sophomores.”
“You’re a senior?” Namjoon frowned. “Why are you taking this? Missed a prereq?”
Seokjin shrugged. “I needed something to fill time.”
Namjoon continued to stare at him, baffled, and Seokjin scowled. “Yeah, yeah, I’m well aware it was a terrible idea. But I’m committed now, okay! So help me figure out…” He gestured at the million tabs he had open, “all of this.”
That seemed to kick Namjoon into gear. A slow smile tugged at his lips, one that accentuated the way his dimples stuck out. “We worked on acids and bases in general chemistry,” he explained. “Remember those?”
Seokjin was beginning to miss his beloved trigonometric integrals. “I remember the pH scale,” he said hesitantly. “With seven being neutral. And the values above that are…” Oh, god, he had a fifty-fifty shot here. “...acidic?”
Namjoon looked at him sympathetically. Fuck. Something must’ve read in Seokjin’s face, because Namjoon hesitated. “If you’re free today, we could just go over the concepts today and work on the lab report some other time. We’ve got a week, anyways.”
Seokjin blinked. “What, an impromptu study session? What’s in it for you, though?”
Namjoon opened his mouth, then closed it again. “What’s in it for me,” he mumbled, huffing out a laugh.
Seokjin bristled. These past years had made him hate being left in the dark about inside jokes. Just another form of passive-aggressive ridicule. “What’s funny?”
“I like tutoring,” Namjoon answered, which didn’t really clarify anything. “It’s like studying for me, so it’s not a waste of time."
“...Okay,” Seokjin said reluctantly. Still, half-convinced Namjoon was about to ridicule him, he squinted at the page the textbook lay open to. “Tell me all about…zwitterions? What the fuck?”
Namjoon, Seokjin had to admit, was a good teacher. Better than the TA’s they currently had, and certainly better than some of the professors Seokjin suffered through. His explanations were clear, concise, and slow, and he corrected Seokjin without a hint of condescension. But not even Namjoon’s grace could salvage the utter despair Seokjin felt when Namjoon seemed dedicated to teaching him the entirety of basic organic chemistry in one sitting.
“What is this.” Seokjin felt mildly like weeping. “What element is ‘Ph’?”
“That just means phenyl group,” Namjoon explained, too kind for this world. “Sometimes textbooks use that notation because it’s simpler than drawing hexagons.”
“I just didn’t expect this many shapes,” Seokjin cried.
After three hours of Namjoon’s crash course, Seokjin was ready to tap out. “I think if I memorize anything else, I’m going to pass out,” he announced. “I need my midday coffee, now.”
Namjoon gathered the papers he’d been scribbling notes in and handed them all to Seokjin. “Had a late night? I’ll text you when I’m next free for the report.”
“Later than it needed to be.” Seokjin scrunched up his nose as slipped the notes securely in his notebook’s front pocket. “I spent an hour fixing my group members’ slides because no one could center images or choose a common font, apparently.”
Namjoon winced. “Wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”
“It is what it is.” Seokjin hesitated, halfway through shoving his laptop in his bag. “Thanks, by the way.”
Namjoon blinked. “For this? I wouldn’t have been able to finish the lab without you,” he replied dismissively. “You don’t need to thank me.”
Seokjin shifted, suddenly becoming very interested in fiddling with his backpack’s inner pockets. “It’s not just about the lab report. You’re a good teacher. You don’t make me feel stupid. So, thank you for that.”
Namjoon paused and looked up at Seokjin. Something flickered in his eyes. “Do people do that? Make you feel stupid?”
Seokjin shrugged, hurriedly zipping his bag. “Ah, it’s nothing really. Comes with the major, I guess. Pretty face, inflated egos. They make assumptions. I don’t have it nearly as bad as the girls, but it can be…a lot.” He slung his backpack over his shoulder, already feeling his ears heating up. “Thanks for being a decent human being, is all I’m trying to say.”
Namjoon opened his mouth, clearly at a loss for words, so Seokjin took that as his cue to hurry away. That was a dumb thing to say, he scolded himself. He doesn’t want to hear any of that.
It lingered in his mind, however, that look Namjoon gave him. Soft, but not pitying. Warm, but not condescending. Something that said I just want to know you more.
Or maybe Seokjin was projecting.
(The next lab, Namjoon and Seokjin immediately started squabbling over the vaccum filtration. The rest of the class ended up watching their argument in stunned stupor, until the professor stepped in to break them up. But while they were getting lectured, Seokjin could have sworn that Namjoon was biting his cheek to hide a smile).
“You could’ve just dropped the class,” Hoseok was saying, his gaze fixated on his own nails as he carefully painted them black. The smell of nail polish remover tragically reminded Seokjin of when Namjoon spilled acetone all over his pants. “Organic chemistry isn’t even that useful for your major.”
“I know,” Seokjin groaned. “But by the time I realized I was in over my head, it was too late to drop it without penalty.”
“Mm.” Hoseok finished with his nails and very, very carefully rested them on the table. It was the first time all of them—well, all of them aside from Yoongi, who was holed up in his dorm—had gotten together in their designated study-area-slash-shittalking-safe-space. The second floor of the life sciences building was relatively empty and full of sunlight, and there were just the right amount of outlets under the tables for all of them. “I just can’t believe you have two classes with incompetent group members. You have the worst luck.”
Seokjin shifted awkwardly, suddenly thinking of the way Namjoon’s dimples peeked out when he smiled. “He's really not that bad. He’s just a bit heavy-handed.”
“A four hour lab sucks even with the perfect partner,” Hoseok agreed. “I hated the general chemistry labs.” He shuddered. “Wet labs. I’ll never touch them again. Jimin told me about the cells he’s been culturing and I nearly threw up.”
Jimin glanced up from where he was huddled up with Taehyung over a laptop, sharing earbuds. “It’s not my fault I’m working with living beings while you can eat lunch on your samples!”
Hoseok wrinkled his nose. “I don’t see the appeal in biology that still has…fluids.” Fitting for Hoseok to say: a geology major who, despite his insistence on cleanliness, knew way more about dirt than Seokjin had thought possible.
“You two should team up,” Jungkook piped up. “If Hoseok switches gears to paleontology, then he and Jimin’s bioengineering can tag-team a real life Jurassic Park.” He grinned. “I vote we bring back the giant sloths.”
Jungkook, an overeager freshman Jimin and Taehyung had known from high school, was decked in all-black, complete with big, chunky boots and the beginnings of a tattoo sleeve. He chose to major in astrophysics because it was “cool”, and was subsequently disappointed when his first physics class was not, in fact, about building rockets and instead about the trajectory of a bouncy ball.
Currently, he was engaged in Newton's third law of motion, which meant that every time he kicked Seokjin with one of his boots, Seokjin would have the equal and opposite reaction of pushing him back.
Seokjin yelped when one of Jungkook’s heavy boots stomped right on his toes. “Taehyung,” he complained to the one person who maybe could put up a physical fight against Jungkook, “control this monster.”
Taehyung popped out his earbud and ignored Seokjin smoothly. “When are we meeting up tonight, by the way?”
“Tonight?” Seokjin frowned. “What’s tonight?”
“I texted the groupchat, check it,” Taehyung whined. “There’s a party tonight. Jimin’s gonna introduce me to some of his engineering friends. All pre-vetted, of course. Think that whittled it down to three people.”
“Yeah, it’ll be fun,” Jimin said, who didn’t look very enthused. Well, when they inevitably got into a jealous, drunken fight and started crying at the 24-hour kimbap shop at 4 am, Seokjin would send Hoseok to deal with all that.
“Hyung, you’re coming too, right?” Jungkook shook Seokjin’s arm. “You'll have a good time, promise.”
To say Seokjin wasn’t entirely thrilled would be an understatement. “Who goes to house parties anymore?” he mumbles. “Can’t we just hit the bars like proper adults?” Preferably one of those quiet, sit-down bars where he could sip a fruity little drink and eat snacks.
“You can leave anytime,” Hoseok promised. “What color do you want for your nails? Pink like last time?”
“Light blue,” Seokjin replied. “It’s just...a lot on a Friday night. I’ll have to finish my homework early.”
“Well, Seokjin has a tough semester, you can’t blame him for not wanting to go,” Jimin chimed in. He nudged Taehyung. “Unlike you, with your Fridays completely clear. How many credits are you taking again? Is your major even STEM?”
“The only reason I’m not upset at how you belittle me is because I know majority of your coursework is vastly unenjoyable until senior year so all you have to bank on currently is that these hours of torture will result in a decent paycheck when you go into industry,” Taehyung said serenely.
Jimin threw a mechanical pencil at him. “Fucking psych majors.”
“It’s actually cognitive science.”
“Please don’t make me go,” Seokjin whispered desperately to Hoseok, who patted his arm encouragingly and began painting his nails pink anyway.
The party wasn’t really Seokjin’s scene, which came as a surprise to exactly no one.
Hoseok had been whisked away from Seokjin’s side the moment they entered. He had the decency to throw a beautiful, apologetic heart-shaped smile towards Seokjin as he was flocked by every friend, acquaintance, and possible arch-nemesis, desperate to catch up. Seokjin knew better than to try and keep up with him. Last time, he ended up being swallowed by the dance club.
It wasn’t as if Seokjin hated people. He liked talking, he liked going up to random strangers on the street and asking them questions, to the embarrassment of his friends. And yet there was something about crowded, unfamiliar events that stripped all that bravado away, leaving a meek shade in its place.
Seokjin sighed, leaning against the wall, distinctly alone but casual enough to blend in with the rest. He had never been very good at approaching people in places like this, and it wasn’t as if people approached him.
He looked intimidating, he knew. He’d been vaguely aware of his looks ever since he’d been scouted not once, not twice, but three times by major entertainment agencies, all of whom had told him he was wasting his face in STEM. Jimin liked to call him an ice prince for his cold, regal looks, and a resting face that intimidated more than it allured. Maybe that was the problem—that his reclusiveness looked purposeful instead of a bad case of introvertism mixed with anxiety.
Feeling more and more uncomfortable by the minute, Seokjin fished out his phone and mindlessly scrolled through it, before finally opening up MapleStory. He never liked playing on mobile, but it somehow felt less embarrassing than opening up a webtoon.
By now, one of his friends would’ve saved him. Hoseok would’ve fought his way back to him, or Taehyung and Jimin would’ve sought him out to cuddle, affectionate and drunk off their asses. Yoongi usually liked to stay at his side and Jungkook tended to wind up next to him after his social battery was exhausted. But it was loud, and crowded, and the first party of the semester. If he couldn’t find any of them, he doubted they could find him.
Seokjin grimaced. He should just leave at this point.
He was just about to figure out which door he could most gracefully exit out of, when someone settled beside him. Seokjin on instinct drew back, then realized who it was.
“Namjoon.” His mouth fell open. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
He looked different when he was at ease, shoulders relaxed and face open. His dimples were on full display, gentle smile dancing on his lips. “Have you…been standing here the entire time?” Namjoon ventured.
“Uh.” Seokjin looked down at his game. His character was stock-still as it waited for him to instruct it. “Yeah? It’s a very comfortable wall, I’ll have you know.”
Namjoon leaned against the wall, head tilted towards him. “Never took you as the type to be an introvert.”
“Really?” Seokjin blinked. "I fit my major's stereotype, don't i?"
Namjoon shrugged. “You weren’t introverted when you scolded me within your first minute of meeting me.”
Seokjin snickered. “Fair. I just don’t do well in party settings. Anyways.” He waved his hand. “Don’t let me get in the way. You said you just transferred, right? You should go meet some new people.”
Namjoon hesitated. “Is that Maple Story?” he asked instead.
Seokjin looked down at his phone. “I’m about to beat my high score,” he said lamely.
Namjoon sank down to the floor, knees propped up near his chest, back still against the wall. After a moment’s hesitation, Seokjin followed suit, phone held open between them. Namjoon nodded at the screen, their legs pressed up close against each other. “Can I watch?”
“That bored?” Seokjin hedged, but he was smiling a little. His finger slipped on the screen, and his character was sent tumbling back down to the start.
“You have to actually jump on the platforms,” Namjoon pointed out unhelpfully.
“Don’t backseat game!” Seokjin elbowed him and Namjoon yelped. “What, do you want to try?”
“No, you’ve got this,” Namjoon said wisely, perhaps sensing the trap he had just walked into.
It took Seokjin considerably more time to clear the level than it usually would have, too busy being ribbed by Namjoon and ribbing back, but when his character fell at the very last jump, Namjoon laughed so hard his head ended up buried in Seokjin’s shoulder, and that gave Seokjin a euphoric rush he hadn’t felt since high school.
Still giddy with warmth, Seokjin turned off his phone, toying with it in his hands. When he looked up, Namjoon was watching him, eyes soft and crescented, even in this dim lighting. “What brings you here, anyways? Honestly, I thought you'd also be on the introverted side.”
“No, I need people or I go a little insane,” Namjoon admitted. “I came with some classmates I met this week. Trying to get out and meet people before I get too busy to think about it.“
“Guess you make a better impression outside the lab than in it,” Seokjin said, before he could stop himself. “Seriously, I don’t even want to imagine you in the kitchen.”
“Sometimes,” Namjoon replied, thoughtful, “I don’t feel like a person with arms and legs. I feel like just a little mind observing the world, and these limbs are an unwieldy extension of me. It’s difficult to keep everything in tandem, like that.”
“Huh,” Seokjin said, and let that sit with him for a moment. “I still think you shouldn’t have worked with HCl outside of the hood.”
“I’m usually not that clumsy,” Namjoon protested. “I’m just nervous.”
“Nervous?” Seokjin repeated, incredulous. “What would you be nervous about? The professor isn’t that intimidating.”
“You’re just–” Namjoon bit his lip, flushed, and looked away.
Seokjin sat up a bit straighter, spine tingling. “I’m what?”
“Hyung!” And there was Jungkook, a beacon in this darkness as he pushed his way towards him. “I lost you!” With no regard for the strangers around him, he splayed out on the floor, looking up at Seokjin with big eyes. “Hoseokie-hyung was worried you got accosted by the theater kids again.” He caught sight of Namjoon, eyes widening as he took in the shape of him. “Oh, sorry, were you two…busy?”
“No,” Seokjin said quickly, before Jungkook could make a wild assertion and text it to the groupchat. “Namjoon’s my…” Lab partner? Classmate? Personal headache? “Namjoon’s my friend.”
If Namjoon was surprised at that label, he didn’t show it.
Friend was clearly too boring of an explanation for Jungkook. “Jin-hyung,” he said, very seriously, “I think I need fried chicken. Now. And I think I need it charged to your card.”
“Brat.” Seokjin rolled his eyes. “Is it just you, or am I gonna have to feed Taehyung too?”
“Oh, great idea.” Jungkook said, already opening his text messages. “I’ll tell him to meet us outside.”
Seokjin groaned and looked at Namjoon. “Gotta take care of the little ones,” he explained. Usually he’d be more than happy to jump on an opportunity to leave, but the noise and clutter of the party had dissolved while he was talking to Namjoon, too far drawn into his orbit. “You can join us, if you want.”
Namjoon smiled, but he shook his head. “I’ll see you in the lab Monday, hyung.” He tilted his head. “Can I call you hyung?”
“Showing me more respect than this one,” Seokjin replied, and cuffed Jungkook’s head. Jungkook giggled and Seokjin sighed exasperatedly. “Yeah, you can call me hyung.”
Namjoon smiled, and Seokjin was caught off-guard once more. His features were very nice when they weren’t obscured by giant safety glasses.
“Oh!” Seokjin hurriedly took out his phone. “I forgot to text you all these links.” He quickly copy-pasted what he had written from his notes app and into his messages with Namjoon. A few seconds later, Namjoon’s phone buzzed.
“Those are invites to different Kakao groupchats,” Seokjin explained. “They get passed around so I did some digging and sent you the ones that seemed relevant. I also added the website where I pirate all my textbooks. Oh, and the one good microbiology professor puts all her lecture videos online, so I sent you a link to that too, in case you don’t have her.”
“Oh.” Namjoon looked a little stunned. “You did this all for me?”
“Who else was going to?” Seokjin replied, unperturbed. Jungkook tugged at his hand insistently and he grinned at Namjoon. “That’s my cue to go. See you in class?”
Namjoon was still looking at him with a strange sort of light in his eyes, but he smiled back. “See you, hyung.”
Taehyung was waiting for them outside, endearingly watching an anthill under a streetlight. When Seokjin and Jungkook approached him, he hopped up and looked at Jungkook. “Was the guy Seokjin was talking to hot?”
“How do you know about Namjoon already?” Seokjin demanded.
“Man,” Jungkook said, “his thighs.”
“His thighs?” Seokjin repeated. “I’m not thinking about his thighs. I’m not thinking about his biceps, either for that matter. What are we talking about?”
Taehyung slung an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in close. “There’ll be a section reserved for you in the DSM-6,” he assured him.
The sparse lab sessions–despite lasting for four hours at a time—left Seokjin feeling cold and restless every week he was without Namjoon. Were they friends now? Did Namjoon actually enjoy his quips, or were they grating? Did Namjoon even like him?
Distracting, useless thoughts. But as his classes ramped up, with the semester now nearly a quarter way through, he could bury himself in work and not think about Kim Namjoon and the frustrating way he had smiled that one night.
Dimples. Seokjin let out a pitiful sound and let his head fall onto the table, eyes fluttering shut. He needed to get it together.
Someone prodded at his shoulder and Seokjin groaned. “I’m not asleep, I promise,” he mumbled. He was currently residing in a small study room in the library, one that could be booked out online by students. Just his luck that someone came in while he was having a mild meltdown.
“...Hyung?” Seokjin jolted upright. And there was the distraction in question, standing over Seokjin with his hair pushed messily up out of his face, glasses crookedly balancing on his nose. Automatically, Seokjin reached up to straighten them. Namjoon blinked and Seokjin hastily withdrew his hand.
“Sorry.” He flushed. “That’s the flesh-eating bacteria that resides in my brain. Anyways. You have this room booked?” Well, so much for Seokjin’s unproductive study session.
Namjoon’s own hand came up to fiddle with his glasses. “Yeah, just for an hour.”
“Give me a sec and then I’ll be out, promise.” Seokjin stretched, wincing as his back cracked. Namjoon’s eyes flickered towards his waist and Seokjin quickly tugged his sweatshirt down when he realized a sliver of bare skin was peeking out.
Namjoon cleared his throat. “You don’t have to leave.”
“No, no, I won’t bother you.” Seokjin pulled his notebook towards him, and the pens resting on it bounced onto the floor. “Oh, fuck, can you grab that one, please–”
Namjoon knelt down, fingers scrabbling for the wayward pen. When he handed it back to Seokjin, he was still awkwardly perched on one knee before him. “I’m serious, hyung,” he said, looking up at Seokjin with shining eyes. “Stay.”
Seokjin swallowed and took the pen. Their faces were very close like this. “Okay. Sure.”
Namjoon stood up, wobbling a little under the uneven weight of his shoulder bag. He looked down at Seokjin, their positions once again reversed, then, with a painful awkwardness, asked, “How are you?”
“Terrible,” Seokjin replied, latching onto the thread of conversation like a lifeline. He wiggled his laptop’s trackpad to wake it once more. “My p-value is 0.08. Does that make any sense to you?”
“Uh.” Namjoon shifted. “No?” There was another beat of silence, until Seokjin gestured to the seat across from him.
“Well?” he said impatiently. “I’m sure you have your own homework to be stressing over.”
Slowly, a smile spread across Namjoon’s face as he shouldered off his bag and sat down. “I have to design a primer and it’s making my head spin.”
“No idea what that means,” Seokjin said as he fiddled with his code and it spat back ten different errors at him. He watched as Namjoon opened his bag and unloaded it, a little messily, but Seokjin was finding that endearing when there were no carcinogens around.
“You seem more high-strung than usual,” he observed. “Everything good?”
Namjoon looked at him carefully, as if he was trying to discern whether or not Seokjin was asking genuinely. “Just been trying to find a lab for next semester. One that’s related to plant microbiology, preferably, and is open to undergrads.”
“You’re thinking of applying to grad school?” Seokjin guessed.
“I kinda have to, if I want to specialize.” Namjoon waved a hand. “Biology’s just so…broad. I like what I’m learning now, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t dig into the really fun stuff until I start my PhD. You’re probably set with a bachelor’s though, right?”
Seokjin shrugged. “I don’t really think much about the future,” he said breezily. “I specialized in bioinformatics and computational biology on a whim, then I minored in math out of spite because my advisor said it was useless. Maybe I won’t even touch any of that and end up at a help desk for the rest of my life. We’ll see how it goes.”
“But what if you end up in a job you’re not passionate about?”
Seokjin furrowed his eyebrows. “Is that really so bad?”
Namjoon pursed his lips. “I think, to me, it would be.”
Seokjin tapped his pen on the table, thinking. “Just because I’m not passionate about computational biology doesn’t mean I dislike it,” he said slowly. “I wouldn’t have survived these classes if I didn’t like it. I just think I can find happiness outside this subject. I think I can be happy without a large dream. Everyone thought I’d go into game design, actually, but I like keeping a side of coding to myself, where it’s not attached to my grades or my paycheck. I can have a decent, boring job and clock out after 5 pm and do everything I want afterwards.”
“Huh.” Namjoon tilted his head. “I never thought about it like that.”
“You could sell your soul to biopharma, then blow all that money on a garden.” Seokjin grinned. “How does that sound?”
“Like a nightmare,” Namjoon said truthfully. And that was okay. That was why Namjoon could dedicate years working for an advanced degree and Seokjin couldn’t.
Namjoon was still examining him curiously, the same way he’d stare at a particularly difficult chemistry concept. Seokjin felt flayed under his gaze, raw and open and red, and yet he craved to pull Namjoon in deeper.
“Hey,” Seokjin said boldly. “Any plans for dinner? We could eat together after we’re done.”
“No plans at all,” Namjoon said in a rush, the breaking of a dam. “We’ll pass by the Agriculture department’s aquaponics system on our way to the dining hall, if you’re into seeing some prawns and sweet potatoes.” He hesitated. “I mean, if you want, I just find it pretty fascinating–”
“Namjoon,” Seokjin said patiently, and Namjoon’s mouth snapped shut. “I watch videos about math proofs for fun.”
“Oh, god,” Namjoon said and Seokjin clapped his shoulder in solidarity.
Seokjin and Namjoon’s teamwork had improved by the next lab, although Seokjin did almost ragequit when he spent five minutes meticulously attempting to weigh out 0.5 g, and Namjoon eyeballed it in three seconds.
The experiment today consisted of nothing but boiling, and waiting, and drying, and evaporating, and boiling again and waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Seokjin was definitely not regretting his decision to skip breakfast this morning.
Four hours of lab work. Four hours of producing what was probably very impressive chemistry, but looked to Seokjin like little white crystals. And after all that meticulous work, their final yield came out to be—
“12%,” Seokjin said finally, staring at the pathetic scraps of crystal. He turned to Namjoon. “Think we could round that up to–”
“No.”
Seokjin took in a breath. “What time is it?”
Namjoon winced. “Nearly noon. There’s no way we can stay late to repeat it.”
Seokjin cradled his head in his hands and tried not to weep. “Okay,” he whispered. “Okay. We just have to do really well on the lab report to make up for the docked points. I am not letting a class I chose for fun ruin my GPA.”
“And I’m not tanking my GPA over a class I’m only taking because my credits wouldn’t transfer,” Namjoon muttered. “How is this my worst class? I’m actually a very competent student; you make all my neurons short-circuit, I think.”
“You’re half the problem,” Seokjin shot back. “What about my neurons, huh? Do you think they’re faring any better?” He pinched his eyes. “You have class soon, right?”
Namjoon nodded. “We could meet up at three?”
“Come over to the life sciences building,” Seokjin suggested. “I’ll show you my favorite study spot.”
Seokjin ended up at the life sciences building a little past three, trying to use the little bit of mental fortitude he had left to figure out how to open the door. He was currently balancing two iced coffees in each hand, having swung by one of the few decent cafes on campus, and was now kicking at the door in hopes it would read his mind and swing open.
“...Jin-hyung?”
“Namjoon!” Seokjin said brightly. “Could you grab the door? My hands are kinda full.” He turned around, only to see Namjoon mirroring his exact predicament.
“I got you a coffee,” Namjoon said lamely.
“Oh.” Seokjin stared down at his own hands. “Well, double the caffeine!” He watched as Namjoon elbowed the handicap door button, and the door swung open with no effort on his part.
148 IQ, Seokjin thought. Built different.
“I’m not showing you this sacred spot because I like you,” he said as he led Namjoon to the most perfect table on campus. “It’s because I know you have no friends to rat this out to.”
“What?” Namjoon said, clueless. Ah, so he hadn’t come to learn of the importance of study spots on this campus. In time, Seokjin thought sagely, he’ll learn.
“My friends will probably trickle in as the day goes on,” he said. “Doing homework in one place is kinda the main way we hang out.” He grinned at Namjoon. “Don’t worry, I’m the only compsci major in the group.”
“Oh, that’s good to know,” Namjoon replied, with a bit too much sincerity for Seokjin’s taste. Only he got to throw shit on his major!
They hit a rhythm while writing the lab report together that Seokjin had previously thought unattainable for the misfit pair, and ended up finishing in an hour. Unfortunately, this meant that with the spare time they now had, Namjoon was once again determined to tutor Seokjin until he understood every concept in organic chemistry.
“You should like it,” Namjoon was saying, tapping his pen on his notes. “Organic chemistry is a lot like math.”
Seokjin fixed him with his most unimpressed, disgusted stare.
“Nononono, hear me out.” Namjoon pushed the notes towards Seokjin. “See these groups reacting? It’s like you add them together, and they equal a product.”
“Yeah, but I can understand two plus two equaling four,” Seokjin complained. “An alcohol and a carboxylic acid does not magically make me think ester.”
“Just memorize that you have to write an R here,” Namjoon sighed, circling in red pen. “Is that easier?”
Seokjin stared at the red marks, contemplative, then decided he could indeed memorize where to write an R. “Sounds good enough. Are we done now?”
Namjoon’s fingers twitched, and suddenly he was turning the notebook to a fresh page and jotting down figures. “No, I don’t feel good about letting you go like this, let’s go over electron-pushing arrows again…”
Seokjin’s salvation came in the trio that was Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook. When Jimin caught sight of them, he bounded forward, eyes wide. “It’s the lab partner!” he gasped as Namjoon shot Seokjin a quizzical look.
“Shut up,” Seokjin hissed to Jimin, tugging him to sit down. Jungkook immediately stole one of Seokjin’s iced coffees. “Don’t you have cells to feed?”
“They all died and now it's the grad students’ problem,” Jimin said cheerfully. “Don’t let me distract you, I skipped class yesterday so now I gotta read through the textbook to catch up.”
“You guys are paying attention in class?” Jungkook blinked at them owlishly. “I just zone out and then teach myself everything the weekend before the exam.”
“And he still gets straight A’s,” Taehyung mumbled.
As Jungkook and Taehyung dissolved into bickering, with Namjoon occasionally adding in a comment that seemed neutral but was in actuality very egging, Jimin nudged Seokjin, eyebrows raised. “Hyung,” Jimin whispered. “He’s hot.”
“...Okay?” Seokjin said. “So is our entire friend group. It’s a bit disconcerting, actually.”
Jimin simply held up his fist for Seokjin to bump. Seokjin, baffled, could do nothing but oblige.
The semester moved on, and Seokjin was surviving, somewhat.
He spent an hour asking the TA’s clarifying questions while the rest of his group fucked off to god knows where, which somehow ended up convincing them that he was the incompetent one. But it was fine. He was still fixing their terrible slides and still organizing their haphazard schedule and still fixing their introduction paragraphs to actually be readable.
As the days grew colder, Seokjin sought the warmth of the communal study spaces, and found himself dragging Namjoon along with him. Because they did that now: walking each other to classes, catching dinners together when they could, spending the free time they had watching YouTube videos and talking all the way through them.
Today, they were sprawled on one of the couches in one of the computer labs commonly reserved for compsci majors, although no one noticed Seokjin smuggling Namjoon in. Namjoon had apparently stolen his younger sister’s Nintendo Switch from home and was playing some blocky, colorful Pokémon game while Seokjin was somewhere in the ninth circle of hell with Python.
Unceremoniously, Seokjin shoved his laptop off from where it was balancing precariously on his knee and rolled over to where Namjoon was sitting.
“I need a hit,” he despaired. “I need a hit of something that's not coding.”
“Would seeing Tangela help?”
Seeing Tangela, Seokjin conceded, would help, so Seokjin peered over Namjoon’s shoulders to watch the colorful 3D render toddle around Namjoon’s screen.
A few of his classmates passed by, raking their eyes over Seokjin as he sat pressed up against Namjoon. Seokjin’s shoulders tensed as they exchanged a few whispers, and slowly pulled himself away from Namjoon.
God, he wasn’t fucking every man he was friends with. Although—
Oh, that was dangerous territory to get into.
Namjoon, thankfully, did not seem to notice the ten different emotions Seokjin had cycled through, and pushed at Seokjin’s shoulder playfully. “Go play games on your laptop,” he complained. “Or is it too busy overheating with all those programs?”
Seokjin swatted him back. “It’s functional!” he defended himself. “It doubles as a heater during winter!”
Namjoon exited out of his game, then tossed the console to Seokjin. “Fine, judge my gaming skills.”
“I would never judge you!” Seokjin said, aghast, already opening Animal Crossing. “Now let me evaluate your terraforming.”
Namjoon’s Animal Crossing world was the ugliest thing Seokjin had ever seen. It was painfully underdeveloped, with villager homes placed haphazardly around the area. The island held no decorations, because every inch of available space was full of fish: large tanks, small goldfish bowls, swimming pools of oarfish. At least five horseshoe crabs sat outside Namjoon’s house.
“I really like fish,” Namjoon said weakly.
Oh no, Seokjin thought, as a terrible fondness flooded his body.
Seokjin prided himself on being a walking anomaly. Sometimes, the most emotionally intelligent person in a friend group could simultaneously be the absolute worst at confronting his own feelings. So when Seokjin cued into the fact he may be developing feelings for a certain lab partner, the rest of his body rejected the idea. Violently.
Either that, or it was just a nasty case of the common cold.
“Jimin….” Seokjin moaned pathetically from where he was burrowed under his blankets. His head pounded mercilessly. “Jimin, today the cafeteria is serving jeyuk, Jimin you have to promise me to bring some back for me.”
“I’m not coming within an inch of you,” Jimin declared from his bed, holding a pastel highlighter in front of him defensively, as if that would exorcise whatever illness had taken hold of Seojkin. “If I get sick before my Kinetics exam this Thursday, I’m ending you and your bloodline.”
Seokjin flung an arm over his eyes. “What time is it?”
“7:30 AM,” Jimin said. “You woke me up with all your thrashing.” Then, because Park Jimin could never free himself of his sweet heart, he was clambering down from his bed and worriedly pressing a hand to Seokjin’s forehead. “You don’t look too good, hyung.”
“I have to get to lab,” Seokjin groggily sat up.
“You’re sick,” Jimin pushed at Seokjin’s shoulders to try and force him back in bed. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“I can’t miss a lab,” Seokjin insisted. “They’re so strict with attendance, they don’t like handing out make-ups. And Namjoon can’t function without me. I’ll wear a mask, I’m probably just vitamin-deficient anyways.”
“Seokjin…” Jimin said warningly. When Seokjin stubbornly swung himself off the bed, wobbling a little as his feet found purchase, Jimin sighed. “Then I’ll at least walk you down so you don’t pass out in front of the chemistry building.”
The chilled air felt good on his feverish skin, almost so that he could ignore his swimming stomach. Jimin was a good distraction as they walked, mindlessly chattering about how the quote-un-quote power couple of the engineering department dissolved when one professor served her husband divorce papers in the middle of his thermodynamics lecture.
When they reached the chemistry building, Jimin bid Seokjin a goodbye after giving him another scrutinizing once-over. Bless Park Jimin, Seokjin thought as he entered the lab. Jimin’s first class today was at 1 PM, and he still pulled himself out of bed for Seokjin.
He was feeling quite a bit more lucid when he slid on his lab coat and glasses and joined Namjoon at the bench. “Kind of a long one today,” Namjoon said in lieu of a greeting, leafing through the procedure.
“Oh,” Seokjin said queasily. “How long?”
“Fractional distillation, it’ll take the full four hours,” Namjoon said remorsefully. He flipped the procedure back to the front, then furrowed his eyebrows. “You look a little pale.”
Seokjin tapped his mask. “Just a little sick. I’m fine, promise.”
Namjoon seemed extra careful in measuring out all their samples, making sure to double-check the instructions each time when Seokjin, embarrassingly, found his focus slipping. After Seokjin poured cyclohexane into a flask (carefully, so carefully, his hand was shaking unusually), he set it down on the bench, then frowned at it.
“What’s up?” Namjoon asked, trying and failing to screw the cap back on.
Seokjin didn’t tease him like he usually did. “What are those black spots?” he asked, leaning closer to the glass and squinting.
“What black spots?” Namjoon frowned, and Seokjin’s vision promptly went dark.
It would have been less embarrassing if he had actually passed out. What happened instead, unfortunately, was Seokjin shrieking as his vision went black, fumbling blindly around for help, and eventually gripping Namjoon’s hand like a lifeline.
When Seokjin’s vision finally cleared, he was lying on the couches in the building’s main lobby, dimly aware that Namjoon had helped walk him into the elevator and down to the first floor. He struggled to sit up from where he was half-splayed out onto the cushions, and his eyes landed on Namjoon.
Strangely, it made his throat tighten.
Namjoon was reading one of those paperbacks he always carried around, one hand mindlessly thumbing at a worn page, and the other playing with the hem of Seokjin’s pants, right where it rode up near his ankles. Sensing Seokjin's movement, he looked up and set aside the book. He reached over, splayed the back of his palm onto Seokjin’s forehead. “How are you feeling?”
A sharp spike of pain pierced Seokjin’s temple, and he fell back towards Namjoon. “Not great. What happened to our experiment?”
“They’re actually gonna let us make this one up without penalty,” Namjoon reassured him. “Turns out blacking out in front of everyone is better than a sick note.”
“Okay.” Seokjin was too miserable to even celebrate. “Yay.”
“I called Hoseok,” Namjoon continued. “He has a car so once he gets here, we’re gonna ride to the clinic, then pick up some food and drop you off at your dorm.”
Seokjin’s hand shot out and curled into Namjoon’s sleeve. “Are you going to–” He swallowed harshly. “Stay? Just for a minute?”
“Be there the entire time,” Namjoon promised. His hand came up to cover Seokjin’s, cool against Seokjin’s feverish skin.
Seokjin closed his eyes and leaned his head against Namjoon’s shoulder as Namjoon quietly picked his book back up and began to read.
His design group ended up imploding without Seokjin there to wordlessly pick up the slack. But Seokjin could hardly find himself to care, especially when the make-up lab was just Namjoon, a bored TA dozing off in the corner, and Seokjin himself, who got to sit on a stool and direct Namjoon through the entirety of the procedure. If Seokjin got too much delight out of that and the way Namjoon’s arms would bracket him to grab a pipette, well. Taehyung could psychoanalyze it for him later.
November was always when bad luck struck Seokjin. Consequently, like clockwork, everything went to hell at the campus library on an innocuous Monday in November.
It was a little bit his fault, Seokjin thought, anxiety mounting on him as he exited and reopened his coding program. He had left his code open for his computational biology project and had darted away from his laptop for one second, work unsaved. When he returned, the program was closed, and all traces of his code were gone.
The program could’ve overloaded and crashed. The mouse could have fritzed out and clicked around until it closed itself. But Seokjin knew. He knew someone must have closed it. His laptop had just been restarted and updated last night. The program he was running wasn’t heavy at all—at least not for a laptop of this caliber. He never, ever, ran into issues leaving it unattended for a few minutes before. And his save file wasn’t to be seen, anywhere.
Seokjin slammed his laptop shut, body feeling cold and wrong from panic. It was fine. He still had his physical notes. He had an old save that he could workshop off of. The whole project wasn’t due anytime soon, he just needed to show progress for a preliminary check-in. And if he ran to his professor now, she could give him an extension until next week, if he begged hard enough.
Trying to swallow down his mounting panic, Seokjin headed out to the other side of campus. His professor’s office hours weren’t until tomorrow, so he figured he could enlist the TA’s help for now. Their office hours were going on now; he could make it if he rushed.
When he reached the designated classroom, Seokjin paused with one hand on the doorknob. There was a conversation occurring inside.
“The average has been low this semester,” one of the TA’s was saying. “Think the curve’s gonna be more generous than usual?”
“Don’t think they’ll be that lucky. There's always the top students to balance it out,” the other replied, and Seokjin listened as he began to rattle off names.
Seokjin’s name wasn’t mentioned, that was for sure. Nor any of the girls, or the international student, all of whom Seokjin knew were performing well above average.
Huh. Interesting.
Who cares? Seokjin thought. The TA’s graded fairly either way. He didn’t need to prove anything to them. He was familiar with underestimation. But now, the thought of barging in and admitting to them he needed an extension felt stomach-turning. Like he proved them right, and dragged his fellow forgotten classmates down with him.
Seokjin’s fingers curled over the straps of his backpack. He turned and walked away.
Roaming aimlessly through campus, his fingers clumsily unlocked his phone, and before he knew it, he was calling Namjoon.
“Hi, hyung,” Namjoon said absentmindedly, because he always has a million things happening in his brain. “Everything good?”
“Hey,” Seokjin said. “I’ve got a code I need to rewrite by today. Keep me company as I work on it?”
He waited with bated breath in the few seconds Namjoon took to reply. He just– really needed Namjoon. Just his presence, just his voice, just anything.
“Yeah, come to my dorm,” Namjoon answered easily. Nothing about today felt easy. “Text me when you get there.”
When Seokjin reached Namjoon’s dorm building, Namjoon was already outside, examining the flowerbeds out front.
“Nothing but ornamental kale,” he commented to Seokjin as he approached. “I know it’s fall, but they could stand to be a bit more creative.”
Seokjin smiled despite himself. “You could’ve just unlocked the door, you didn’t have to come down here to meet me.”
“The elevator’s broken,” Namjoon explained. “I live on the tenth floor and your backpack weighs a million pounds because of your laptop.” And before Seokjin could even process that, Namjoon was tugging his backpack off his shoulders and slinging it on his own. “C’mon, hyung.”
Seokjin maybe started crying, right then and there.
“Hyung!” Namjoon jumped forward, alarmed.
“I’m fine.” God, it had been some time since Seokjin last had a school-related breakdown. He swiped at his eyes, and only succeeded in smearing his tears around his face. “You’re very nice and I’m so stressed and I think I need to cry this one out.”
Namjoon understood, of course he did. His face softened and he patted Seokjin’s back, a bit awkwardly, but comforting all the same. “We’ll walk up the stairs slowly,” he replied, hand dropping to tug gently at Seokjin’s elbow.
Seokjin’s tears had mostly dried up by the time they reached Namjoon’s dorm room, which meant he didn’t have to code with his vision all blurry. He took in a shuddering breath, Namjoon respectfully averting his eyes as he allowed Seokjin a moment to gather himself in the calm of Namjoon’s dorm.
Unlike the buzz of campus, here it was quiet except for the thrum of Namjoon’s mini fridge. He lived alone; his roommate had ended up transferring out five weeks into the semester. The now-abandoned desk had been fully taken over by plants, crowded as close to the window as possible in an effort to maximize the small amount of sunlight the room received.
“Take a seat, hyung,” Namjoon said softly, patting his small lofted bed.
Almost relieved at being given an instruction, Seokjin swung himself up onto the bed, took a moment to flutter his eyes shut. When he opened them, Namjoon was standing in front of him.
Namjoon braced his fingers on the side of the bed, one hand on either side of Seokjin’s legs. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Seokjin said back, words sticking strangely to the back of his throat. “Don’t worry about me. A project I’ve been working on was deleted. I have to start all over again.”
It felt both gratifying and validating to see horror stretch across Namjoon’s face. “Shit,” he said. “Well, I have four different types of energy drinks if you want to marathon this until 3 am.”
Ignoring the disastrous implications this had for Namjoon’s health, Seokjin asked tentatively, “I can stay that long?”
Namjoon’s hand came to rest on Seokjin’s thigh, his warmth seeping through the denim of Seokjin’s pants. “As long as you need to. You finish your code and I’ll finish my research paper and then we’re getting ice cream after this. Okay?”
Seokjin inhaled. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Namjoon said, searchingly. He withdrew, taking his warmth with him, as Seokjin sat back. With Namjoon on the other side of the bed, Seokjin tentatively opened his laptop, and was met with the intimidating blank screen of his coding program staring back at him. No more time for tears, he told himself firmly. Gather all your spite, and just get going.
About two hours in, Seokjin’s head was spinning from having so many tabs and windows open, and he lolled his head back to relieve the crick in his neck. Namjoon had ducked out to use the bathroom, so he took this time to decompress a little, stretching out on Namjoons’ bed and staring up at the ceiling blankly.
If he woke up early and skipped his class tomorrow…finishing his project on time was definitely possible. Judging from the document lying open on his laptop, Namjoon had also made good progress on his paper, so maybe they really could finish early and grab ice cream together.
Namjoon’s phone, sitting a foot away from Seokjin on the bed, buzzed. Seokjin propped himself up one hand to peer at it.
It was the contact name that snagged his attention: Lee Minhwan. He was one of the members of Seokjin’s disastrous design group. Why on earth would Namjoon be talking to him? Seokjin inched forward.
Orgo tutoring, seriously? the text read. Seokjin frowned, snatching the phone and holding it closer. He was the only one Namjoon was helping, wasn’t he? Then, a second text popped up. Is he getting on his knees for you too?
Seokjin inhaled sharply, reeling back. The phone fell out of his fingertips, and he scrambled to pick it back up once more. He re-read the texts, then dropped the phone again.
Oh, all right, then.
Mechanically, he gathered his laptop and notebook. Shoved them into his bag. That sick feeling from this morning, the one he had just recently vanquished, was now back in full force. A blanket of panic enveloped his brain, like a bucket of cold water had sent all his nerves haywire, and all he could tell his body was to get out.
(Later, he ended up finishing his project on time. It felt like no victory at all).
“You’re not overreacting,” Jimin told him, whose long blonde hair and glossy lips and penchant for wearing women’s shirts brought its own fair share of grievances. He was curled up next to Seokjin in their dorm, head nestled in the crook of Seokjin’s neck. “Even if he didn’t say anything himself, he’s clearly entertaining talk like that.”
“I think it’s ‘cause I liked him so much,” Seokjin replied, a lump in his throat. He had been resolutely ignoring Namjoon for the week, but he knew he’d eventually have to confront him during lab. And he would hear Namjoon out, he owed their friendship that much, it was just…
The possibility of Namjoon, all this time, laughing behind Seokjin’s back, seeing him as nothing more than a pretty face and a vapid personality…it made his stomach turn.
Jimin smiled, gentle and sweet. “He’s been texting me, y’know. I didn’t say much, don’t worry, but I told him to be patient.”
“God.” Seokjin closed his eyes. “What did he say?”
Jimin scrunched his nose. “Well, he didn’t really ask to see you. He just wanted to make sure you were eating well.”
“That pisses me off even more,” Seokjin muttered.
“Well, that's why I haven’t castrated him yet.” Jimin nuzzled his head back into Seokjin’s shoulder. “Let me know how it goes, hyung. I’ve got everything ready if the cadaver lab is getting a new friend.”
There was a distinctly frosty air in the chemistry lab on Friday. Namjoon kept catching Seokjin’s eye, pleading and desperate, but Seokjin buried his head in the experiment procedure, resolutely refusing to give him an inch.
“Seokjin,” Namjoon tried, as Seokjin wordlessly shoved a weigh boat at him. “I don’t know what I did, but –”
“Could you grab the benzoin?” Seokjin asked brusquely, and Namjoon swallowed hard, and obeyed.
No other experiment had been wrapped up so smoothly, so quickly, so mind-numbingly boring. Seokjin thought he hated organic chemistry lab before, but no. This was what he hated. He had never wanted a mixture to recrystallize faster.
Afterwards, he busied himself by wiping down their counters three times too many, as Namjoon waited for him to turn around.
“You have class,” Seokjin said, refusing to look up.
“I’ll skip it,” Namjoon replied, adamant. “I just want to talk.”
Seokjin cracked and turned around, strung out from the stress of this week. “I’ll text you tonight,” he finally said. “Sorry for dropping off the face of the earth, but–” He stopped himself. He really did not want to hash this out when the students at the bench next to them were clearly eavesdropping.
“It’s okay,” Namjoon said softly, which made everything a million times more confusing. “Come to me when you’re ready.”
Seokjin wasn’t really sure why he was getting convenience store ice cream with the guy he may-or-may-not hate right now, but Namjoon did promise it to him, and the starved college student in him wasn’t about to turn that down.
It was thirty degrees too cold, but they sat outside on a bench to eat it anyways, Seokjin’s leg jostling nervously. Namjoon had his Melona still wrapped, but Seokjin was already biting into his sweet corn ice cream, because he might as well eat it while his stomach was not yet wreaked with anxiety.
Namjoon was quiet, looking at Seokjin out of the corner of his eye. He was so unsubtle about attempting to be subtle, that Seokjin, despite himself, couldn’t help but crack a smile.
“I saw the texts Minhwan sent you,” Seokjin said, unwilling to drag it out anymore. “The ones about me.”
Understanding dawned on Namjoon’s face, before it screwed up in disgust. “Ignore him,” he told Seokjin fiercely. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“I know he’s full of shit!” Seokjin said hotly. “Why are you even talking to him? Why does he feel comfortable saying that shit to you? Is he always comfortable saying that shit to you?”
“Well–” Namjoon blanched. “Yes, kinda, but I can explain–”
“Please,” Seokjin demanded, “go ahead.”
Namjoon rubbed the back of his neck. “I was nice to him once when he was drunk and now he thinks he can open up to me,” he explained in a rush. “The only reason I tolerate it is because he’s cheating on his girlfriend with one of his high school friends, and I’ve been sending her the evidence so she can eviscerate him in her own time.”
Seokjin opened his mouth then closed it. Okay, he had been bracing himself for many explanations but this was…not one of them. “What is this–a sting operation?” he spluttered. And then he was laughing, a little hysterically. “You’re so– oh my god, Kim Namjoon, you’re ridiculous.”
“I give him dry responses and he still dumps everything on me!” Namjoon protested. “It doesn’t even take any effort on my part.” He paused, looking Seokjin over as if he were still trying to check if he was mad at him. “He’s a nepo baby to a huge tech company and still got rejected from its internship program,” Namjoon added, “if that also makes you feel better.”
“It does,” Seokjin gasped, feeling a bit lightheaded from this swing of emotions. “It really does.”
“If you were wondering,” Namjoon continued, “I did fully defend your honor. I don’t think he’s going to be talking to me again.”
Seokjin hesitated, the wind picking up just enough to tousle his hair. “Don’t you want to ask what it meant? Why he would say something like that?”
“He said something like that ‘cause he’s a piece of shit,” Namjoon said unceremoniously. Then, carefully, “Do you want me to ask?”
“No,” Seokjin said, and realized he really didn’t. Such an inconsequential rumor, something that his classmates only clung onto out of jealousy, did not need to take up more of his life than it already did. “You pretty much summed it up with that, I think.”
Namjoon was quiet for a bit. “I’ve never thought the worst of you,” he said. “Not now, not ever. You’re my first friend here, you know that, right?”
“I was worried,” Seokjin started, “that in your attempts to make friends, you were gonna end up with the wrong crowd.”
“Nah.” Namjoon shook his head. “I ended up finding a really good study group in my pathology class. And I’ve already stolen Yoongi from you, ‘cause we spent three hours talking about architecture the other day.”
A smile curved on Seokjin’s lips. “Jungkook likes you too,” he said. “He’s just too shy to speak much.”
“High praise from a guy who is definitely gonna end up on the moon.” Namjoon finally unwrapped his Melona, looking as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. “So I think I’m doing well, all things considered. Better than last year, at least.”
“It’s been almost a semester since you started here,” Seokjin said softly. “Why did you transfer in the first place? I’ve never asked.”
Namjoon took a bite out of his ice cream, then winced slightly at the cold. “I told myself it was because this university has better funding,” he started, “but I really just needed to get out. I needed a change. I was burnt out, depressed, spending all day in my dorm…it was self-imposed, I think, but it was like the entire campus had infected me. Nothing could shake me out of the slump. I just had to leave and hope it’d get better.”
The Melona dripped down the side of Namjoon’s hand. Seokjin watched as Namjoon’s tongue darted out to lap it up, then averted his gaze. “Did it?” Seokjin asked, eyes fixed down on the ground. “Get better, I mean.”
He couldn’t see Namjoon’s expression, but one of his shoes bumped Seokjin’s, gently. “It did.”
Seokjin was very much not built for a casual relationship. He didn’t like to date around or have easy flings, and the “hot girl summer” Hoseok encouraged him to experience consisted of him driving an hour out to the beach and fishing with a bunch of ajusshis he had met five minutes prior. Liking Namjoon was all or nothing, and right now it seemed to be a devastating nothing.
Seokjin was just a guy, after all. A guy who happened to have the face of Adonis. And Namjoon wasn’t shallow enough to appreciate that, he was so fucked.
“He’s probably straight anyways,” Seokjin despaired to Yoongi, who was a great person to open up to, because all their conversations could be done without any eye contact. “He’s going to go get a PhD because he’s so fucking smart and he’ll find some beautiful graduate student perfectly on his level and then they’ll make beautiful smart babies together while I eat two-ingredient bibimbap out of my fridge for the rest of my life.”
“You–” Yoongi paused. “What do you mean, two ingredients? Rice and gochujang? Seokjin, you’re not gonna eat rice and gochujang for the rest of your life.”
“That’s what will happen,” Seokjin said mournfully, “if I lose Namjoon’s to the jaws of academia.”
“The–what? Is this still about your crush on him?”
Seokjin was being perceived. How horrible. “That’s weird,” he said. “You’re weird. I don’t—Namjoon isn’t even—Don’t talk to me again.”
“Yeah, okay,” Yoongi said, snapping back on his headphones. Seokjin buried his head in a pillow and tried not to scream.
After a minute of Seokjin writhing on the bed, Yoongi finally sighed and spun around in his chair to look at him. “Seokjin,” he said. “You know you can just ask him out, right?”
“What do I have going for me?” Seokjin said tragically. “He’s even better at mental math. Yoongi, I’m taking measure theory for fun and I still use my fingers to count.”
Yoongi raised an eyebrow. He was being very patient with Seokjin, which kind of made Seokjin just want to annoy him even more. “What, you don’t think you’re smart? Or funny? Or charming?”
“Are you going to tell me I’m all those things?” Seokjin simpered.
Yoongi threw his headphones at him. “I hope Kim Namjoon fixes whatever’s wrong with you,” he replied and Seokjin rolled back onto his stomach to continue his mental breakdown in peace.
Seokjin spent the next day allowing himself to be ragebaited in League just to feel an emotion other than utter heartbreak. (“I think this is the most unattractive thing about you,” Jimin said in awe, when Seokjin nearly hurled his mouse at his screen.) After that, Seokjin spent the rest of the afternoon outside despite the cold, because he could see an ominous future where he gamed like that for a week.
He had his final design presentation before the class ended for the semester on a bright and early Monday morning. His wayward group managed to pull through at the end, even if Seokjin had to field every question the professor had thrown their way. Minhwan had refused to meet his eyes since he had sent Namjoon that text, which made Seokjin deathly curious, but also was rather inconvenient for group work.
He came up to Seokjin after class, awkwardly lingering at his desk as Seokjin methodically packed away his notebook and pens until he deigned to acknowledge his presence. “If this is about problem three for the machine learning assignment,” Seokjin said, “no one knows the answer, so there’s no point in asking me.”
“It’s not about that,” Minhwan said. He shifted from foot to foot. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? For believing all that shit they said about you.”
And spreading it, Seokjin thought wryly, but he supposed taking actual responsibility was a step too far for this man. He probably knew who deleted Seokjin's code too, but what difference did it make if it were Minhwan, or Seokjin’s other useless group members, or any other classmate that chose to demean him from the start? There was a rot here, and it wasn’t easily cured by a single apology.
His classmate was still looking at Seokjin guiltily, so he shook his head, amused. “Man, what did Namjoon say to you?”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Seokjin slung on his backpack. “How’s your girlfriend?”
Confusion flitted across Minhwan’s face. “Huh? She’s fine. Why are you–”
“No, I meant the other one,” Seokjin replied, and got to watch his face turn three different shades of purple.
“And I was reading this research paper about how these scientists injected algae into a frog,” Namjoon was saying as they cleaned up their designated lab counter. They had just finished their last lab of the semester with a proud zero incidents, and Seokjin was gonna miss this place. Kind of. Not really. “And I’m all for scientific breakthroughs, but I gotta ask why photosynthesizing tadpoles is where we’re at.”
Seokjin snatched a flask from Namjoon before he could accidentally dump it down the sink, and redirected him to the chemical waste bins. “I’m kinda into the idea of plant-hearts,” Seokjin said. “Maybe I could have an acorn implanted in mine.”
“An acorn?” Namjoon said. “No, you wouldn’t suit an oak tree. Although they can communicate with each other through chemical distress signals, did you know that?”
Namjoon was the most beautiful when he talked like this: eyes bright and passionate, words nearly tripping over themselves in an effort to find their way out. Seokjin could drown it.
Seokjin leaned against the counter. “So what tree would I be, then?”
“Laburnum,” Namjoon decided. “Also called golden chain tree. They can form these beautiful walkways of draping golden flowers. I imagine walking under them is a little like being with you. I think they’re poisonous too, which might also be a bit fitting—”
“I like you so much,” Seokjin interrupted, and Namjoon promptly dropped a vial of 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine. It shattered on the floor. “Shit, please tell me I did not just accidentally blind you.”
“Uhh,” Namjoon said, as the reagent solution began to seep through his labcoat.
Seokjin had an intimate relationship with the eyewash station at this point, so he gave the TA a charming smile, dragged Namjoon under the faucet, and ruthlessly helped him flush out his eyes.
“I’m good,” Namjoon spluttered, after being blasted by a jet of water. “It didn’t contact my skin, I think this constitutes as waterboarding now—” He patted his face dry with a paper towel Seokjin provided, then proceeded to stare at him a little longer.
“What did you say?” Namjoon finally said, faintly.
Hm. Seokjin was rather hoping that the 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine would have induced amnesia. He patted Namjoon’s forearms. His very nice forearms. “Nothing at all. I’m just spouting some bullshit. Don’t worry your hetero head about it.”
Namjoon opened his mouth and closed it again. Seokjin braced himself for a hard rejection, but what Namjoon said instead was, “I’m not straight.”
Ohhh. Oh, yeah, Seokjin probably should have noticed that. “Congrats!” Seokjin said, steadily backing out of the lab. “Love is love. Haha. See you next semester!”
On the weekend before finals, Seokjin woke up strangely at peace, after having full-speed sprinted away from the chemistry building the day before. He ate a fully balanced breakfast, went to the gym for the first time since September, and organized a semester’s worth of notes. He bunkered down with his friends within his major and they spent seven cathartic hours working through old homework assignments and shit-talking all their professors.
And, for the very first time since the start of the semester, he wrote his organic chemistry report alone.
It was shockingly simple. The chemistry clicked in his mind, as easy as breathing, and it was made even easier that he actually saw what looked like a bunch of bullshit on paper come together to synthesize something real. He didn’t feel the urge to text Namjoon a single question. God, he was going to have to thank Namjoon later. Maybe when he had fled the country.
He stayed late at the library to study, then got kicked out when the building closed and moved to the dining hall, and got kicked out of that too. He ended up at the business building, lights half-off and long-abandoned by any students. The glorious emptiness meant Seokjin was free to take up as much room as he wanted, which ended up being a stretch of table that ran along the main hall, with long benches pressed up against the wall instead of chairs.
The building's double glass doors flew open, but Seokjin paid it no mind. Probably a business major prepping for finals. Wait– did business majors prep for finals, or did they just do Shark Tank-style pitches for a day?
“Seokjin!” Seokjin blinked as Kim Namjoon barrelled to a stop in front of him. He bent down to catch his breath, hands bracing on his knees, before snapping back up again, face flushed. “Why are you on this side of campus? I ran around every STEM building searching for you.” He took a few quick breaths, then tilted his head back towards the ceiling. “Business? Really?”
“It’s got nice seats,” Seokjin said defensively. “You can really tell they have a nice budget. Do you think they love or hate Shark Tank over here?”
“Shark–what?” Namjoon took a step closer to Seokjin, whose body couldn’t really tell the difference between Namjoon approaching and an apex predator descending with its jaws unhinged. “I messed up during lab, I know, but you can’t just—you threw a nuke at me while I was holding a chemical!”
“We should forget that happened,” Seokjin said wisely, fingers curling tight on his pen. “I mean– it was just silly of me.”
“I don’t want to forget it, what are you on about, hyung, I need to–” He sat down heavily beside Seokjin and pointed at his water bottle. “Sorry, could I–?”
Seokjin handed him his bottle over, a flicker of a smile worming its way onto his lips as Namjoon took a drink. Up close, he could see the thin sheer of sweat against Namjoon’s forehead, the way his chest still heaved up and down. “You really ran around campus looking for me?”
“Everywhere.” Namjoon sat back against the bench, but his eyes never left Seokjin. “Hoseok saw me sprinting like a madman, I think he’s going to check me into the wellness center.”
“You like me,” Seokjin realized, stunned.
“Well.” Namjoon shifted, looking a little defensive. He was backlit by the few lights that were still kept on, their harsh artificial white glow softened by the lines of his face. “You like me, too.”
Seokjin swallowed, feeling just as breathless as Namjoon looked. This was the part where he confessed again, right? What came out instead was, “Are you sure?”
There were a lot of things Namjoon could have done. He could have complimented his looks, perhaps. Could have swept him into a kiss, could have told Seokjin a million different love confessions.
Namjoon just looked at him, easy and open, and said, “You're really admirable, hyung, you know that, right?”
“Ah,” Seokjin said faintly. His fingers were trembling. “No, I don’t think I’m–”
“You are,” Namjoon replied, earnest. He inched forwards, their knees knocking clumsily together. “You work so hard, harder than anyone I know. You’re always helping everyone, do you know how much the underclassmen adore you? And you’re just…god, you’re so smart. I could listen to you talk about systems biology, life philosophy, algorithmic bias, why I shouldn’t be an idiot and dump water into a beaker of HCl.”
Seokjin’s eyes fluttered shut. He pressed his forehead against Namjoon’s, opened his eyes, and saw Namjoon was still there: real and open. A knuckle skimmed his cheek, before moving to cup his face. Seokjin inched forward, unsure whether to make the first move but wanting, wanting, wanting–
Namjoon drew back and Seokjin’s stomach dropped. He still held Seokjin’s face in his hands, but his eyebrows were furrowed, jaw clenched, like his mind was racing.
“Knob into hole,” Namjoon finally said.
“Knob into what?” Seokjin repeated, half-scandalized. “Is that…an instruction, or–”
“No,” Namjoon said frustratedly, as if Seokjin were the one who said something incomprehensible. “It’s an antibody design approach. I can use that for my paper. I’ve been stressing over that for a week and it was such a basic concept–”
“Okay,” Seokjin said, nonplussed. “Do you need to write that down or can you remember it?”
Namjoon frowned. “I can remember it.”
“Great,” Seokjin said, and laced his fingers behind Namjoon’s neck to reel him into a kiss.
Namjoon went slack in Seokjin’s hands. It was a light kiss, Seokjin’s lips a fleeting thing against Namjoon’s. He drew back quick, heart kickstarting with nerves. “Was that okay?” he asked nervously. “I just—I couldn’t wait any longer.”
“Seokjin,” Namjoon breathed, and hooked two fingers under Seokjin's jaw to tilt his face back towards Namjoon's. He bumped their nose together, smile sweet and teasing, then pressed their lips together once more: harder, deeper, insistent.
A soft noise escaped from the back of Seokjin's throat as he melted into the kiss. Namjoon shifted forward, one knee sliding between Seokjin's legs until it pressed solidly against his inner thigh. Seokjin gasped into Namjoon's mouth, a hand catching itself on Namjoon's legs as he pushed himself needily forward.
“Right there,” Namjoon murmured, voice ragged, and wrapped a solid hand beneath Seokjin's ribs to hold him in place before delving back to capture his lips once more. Seokjin slipped his tongue between Namjoon's parted lips, swallowing his low groan as he slid forward to straddle Namjoon's legs.
Namjoon was everywhere, like this. The burn of his fingertips through the fabric of Seokjin’s shirt, his other hand tangled in Seokjin’s hair to keep them close. Seokjin felt like a desperate thing, fingers scrabbling at Namjoon’s shoulder as he kissed him, again and again.
It was torture to pull apart, but Seokjin finally leaned back, taking in a breath. It was silent save for the tangled twin sound of their breathing, and the building’s distant, electrical hum. Seokjin looked down at Namjoon, still half on his lap.
“The antibody design,” Seokjin prompted. “You remember it, right?”
“What?” Namjoon had a dazed look in his eyes. His eyes kept dipping down to Seokjin’s lips, who then couldn’t help but rub them self-consciously under the attention. That action didn’t seem to help Namjoon much.
“Knob-into-something-or-other,” Seokjin tried.
“What,” Namjoon said again.
“A win for my ego.” He’ll text Namjoon a reminder later. Seokjin reluctantly swung his legs back down so his feet were resting on the floor, away from his lap. And just like that, his nerves had crept back up again.
“Now what?” A poster hanging behind Namjoon, in obnoxiously loud colors, advertised Venture Funding 101. “Did we really have to do this in enemy territory?”
“No, it’s okay,” Namjoon said, still a little out of it. He brushed away a strand of hair that was clinging to Seokjin’s forehead. “Even I succumb to rainbow capitalism sometimes.”
Seokjin leaned into his touch. “We can keep doing this, right?”
“Dating?” Namjoon’s eyes crinkled. “Yeah, I want to date you, hyung.”
Seokjin grinned, burying his face in Namjoon’s shoulder. “I like that I can be stupid and silly with you,” he confessed, because it was easier to talk into Namjoon’s shirt, “and you don’t think I’m stupid or silly.”
“That’s really sweet,” Namjoon whispered, sounding a little pained, “but please tell me that’s not the bar you've set.”
Seokjin shook his head, then reluctantly pulled back to look at Namjoon properly. “I think I’ve liked you ever since you watched me redraw the chair conformation six times without getting impatient.”
Namjoon hummed, tangling their fingers together. “I've liked you longer than that,” he admitted.
“Since the first lab?” Seokjin shuddered. “That wasn’t very romantic.”
Namjoon’s dimples made a grand appearance. “Longer.”
“Longer?” Seokjin sputtered. “You’ve only been on campus this semester! How much longer could it have been?”
Namjoon laughed. “You don’t remember,” he said fondly. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Tell me now,” Seokjin insisted.
“No, it’s getting late.” Namjoon squeezed his hand. “If I remember your finals schedule correctly, you have an exam at 2 PM tomorrow, and I know you want to wake up early to review—”
“Couldn’t even last a full night, ‘cause I already want to break up with you,” Seokjin mumbled. Then, he tugged Namjoon forward and kissed him, long and deep, until the rest of the lights shut off, because he was already ruined anyways.
Dating wasn’t really possible in the midst of finals week, but Namjoon would let Seokjin charge his laptop over his own if there was only one outlet, and that was peak romance in itself. They’d grab dinner together if possible, and send text reminding each other to eat when it wasn’t. And when they studied together in Namjoon’s dorm room, Namjoon would kiss him, and Seokjin would close his eyes and see the after-image of functional groups, since they were now burned into his retinas.
“Should I be jealous?” Namjoon asked, when Seokjin complained to him about it.
“No, because I can count this as studying,” Seokjin replied and pushed himself up to kiss Namjoon some more.
Namjoon’s hand loosely encircled his wrist when he drew back. “You’re staying for a bit, right?”
Seokjin nodded. “I’ve got an hour to spare before my next exam.” He nudged his laptop open. “My computational biology project was graded today.” One of his friends had texted him frantically about it, but he hadn’t gotten the courage to check it yet. “The one that got deleted? This is gonna make or break my day.”
“You worked hard on it, I know you did well,” Namjoon promised him. “And if you didn’t? It’s not the end of the world.”
“Okay. Yeah.” Seokjin took in a breath. “It’s gonna be okay.” He quickly logged into the classroom portal, and, with shaking fingers, clicked on the tab where he could see his grades.
The first thing that registered was the color: not a triumphant green or an ominous red, but the simple shade of yellow. He read the number three times just to be certain. “I got a C,” Seokjin breathed.
“Oh.” Namjoon tilted his head. “I mean. It could be worst, at least you passed–”
“Namjoon!” Seokjin grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “The average is a 43! I got a C!”
“Oh.” Namjoon said, eyes clearing. “Oh! That’s gonna be curved to an A! Seokjin! You got an A!”
A giddy smile spread across Seokjin’s face. Suddenly nothing mattered anymore. Not his exam in an hour, nor the stress of his final GPA. “Did I mention how much I love this professor? He’s such a great teacher.”
“Didn’t he tell your class verbatim that you weren’t stressed out enough and then stopped giving out test and homework answer keys?” Namjoon asked.
“Everyone has their off days.”
“Didn’t he randomly change a singular homework assignment to instead be worth 5% of your overall grade, then moved the due date to be the week of Chuseok, then flew out of the country for two weeks?”
“What are human beings without their flaws?” Seokjin said loftily. “Some just have more than others.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Namjoon said. “You’re just as grade-obsessed as everyone you complain about.”
“Yeah, speaking of, you should be studying,” Seokjin shot back. “Tryptophan?”
“Polar and hydrophobic,” Namjoon automatically replied, and Seokjin hit him with a pillow.
It was lightly snowing by the time Seokjin left Namjoon’s dorm, soft flurries that would melt away come evening. He rocked back and forth on his heels, loath to go.
“Well,” Seokjin said solemnly, “I suppose this is it. It all ends today.”
Namjoon tilted his head in perfect confusion.“...It’s just your last exam.”
“I head back home Tuesday,” Seokjin continued, despairingly, “and we won’t be seeing each other anymore.”
“Don’t you live twenty minutes away?”
“Shut up,” Seokjin said, and reached up to wick snowflakes away from Namjoon’s hair. “I want to live out my rom-com dreams where you chase me down at the airport.”
“I can chase you down from the subway,” Namjoon offered.
“Jump over the gates for me,” Seokjin said, satisfied. “That’s the princess treatment I deserve.”
Namjoon smiled at him, scrunching up his eyes and nose. "Come pick me up after my last exam," he said, "and I'll tell you when I first fell for you." He looped his arms around Seokjin’s waist to pull him closer and drew him into a kiss, slow and wanting.
Seokjin closed his eyes, sinking into Namjoon’s warmth. Then, he snapped them back open, sighing. “God. I still see nothing but alkyl groups.”
Namjoon’s first day at his new university was going swimmingly, until it wasn’t.
His credits transferred without a fuss. His move-in was quick and painless. The few students he’d talked to had all been perfectly sweet and sociable. Figuring out where all his classes were located before the semester started should’ve been easy, too, but…the buildings here didn’t make a modicum of sense.
Namjoon stood, dumbfounded, with the little arrow on his maps app spinning uselessly. He should ask for help, right? He should definitely ask for help. People probably got lost all the time. And yet standing here, with the flow of students around him, each one moving to their own rhythm, Namjoon had never felt more alone.
“Are you lost?” a kind voice said and suddenly Namjoon was eye-to-eye with The Most Beautiful Man in the World.
“Uh,” Namjoon stuttered. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m just—” He fumbled to show The Most Beautiful Man in the World his schedule, which was currently also acting as his phone lockscreen. “I’m trying to find my microbiology class before it starts on Monday.”
“Ohhh.” The Most Beautiful Man in the World clapped his hands. “Oh, that’s a fun one.” He turned to one of the students he was with. “You go on ahead, he’s never gonna find this on his own.”
“Are you sure, Jin-hyung?” the friend said. “I can tag along, Yoongi won’t mind waiting.”
“Well, you don’t know where this building is, either.” The student—Jin?—said teasingly. “It’s fine, keep him company.”
“Oh, you don’t have to–” Namjoon started feebly, but Jin gave him a look that had him shutting up immediately.
“You’re not going to find it on your own,” Jin pointed out. When Namjoon frowned, he shook his head. “You don’t understand. The biology building is actually three different buildings attached to each other,” Jin explained. “Your biochemistry class is in the third building, but because they’re all out of order, it’s actually located in the middle of the other two. And room 2501 looks like it should be on the second floor but actually it’s on the basement level and it’s on the side with all the even-numbered rooms. Oh, also if you take a wrong turn you might end up at the greenhouses, so be careful when opening doors.”
“What,” Namjoon whispered.
“I know,” Jin said sympathetically. “Just follow me.”
Feeling distinctly like a lost maiden swept away by a prince in a vast, unfamiliar world, Jin led Namjoon through the old, interconnected biology buildings, taking him around confusing turns and down a flight of stairs that was deceptively tucked away in the corner.
“Ah, here we are.” Jin pushed open some decrepit double doors and Namjoon was met with a rush of humid air, the earthy smell of dirt, and lush greenery.
“These are…”
“The greenhouses,” Jin supplied. “Told you they were connected. I saw that Jirisan National Park keychain on your bag, I thought you’d be interested?” His ears had pinkened a little, fingers fidgeting with each other.
A rush of warmth flooded through Namjoon. “I do like plants,” he said, the words stumbling over themselves. “Thanks.”
A smile blossomed on Jin’s face, radiant against the filtered sunlight. Just like that, the hours Namjoon spent wandering around campus, utterly lost, were all worth it.
After Jin led him to his classroom, then back out the building, he clapped Namjoon’s shoulder. “Good luck on your first day,” he said, then checked his phone. “Oh, Yoongi’s gonna kill me, I gotta get going. See you around!”
“See you,” Namjoon replied, a bit uselessly, because Jin was already turning away. Missed connection, he thought, since it sounded a bit romantic. Oh, well.
Fall semester had become nothing more than an afterthought once December hit, and Seokjin promptly began to forget every piece of knowledge he once had about organic chemistry. But, hey, at least he now had a boyfriend to romanticize winter with.
They were at one of those trendy, youthful, and definitely overpriced cafes that specialized in baking fluffy buns shaped like cute animals. Namjoon insisted he didn’t want one so Seokjin, good boyfriend that he was, bought two.
He sat back, chin perched on his hand as he observed Namjoon. He rather liked Namjoon in winter, he thought privately. He was still a bit pinkened from the cold, blush sitting prettily on his cheeks. Seokjin would like to try and get that pink to spread elsewhere, later.
“Our orgo lab professor just set out an email,” Namjoon announced, scrolling on his phone.
“Read it out loud,” Seokjin said, taking a bite of a pastry. It tasted like styrofoam.
“They’re running the lab again next semester, so they’re asking selected students to TA for it.” Namjoon read out. “Nothing too difficult, just helping out the grad students. The offer’s been extended to anyone who received an A.”
“Hm.” Seokjin leaned over. “Are our names on there?”
Namjoon was silent as he scanned through the list of names. “...I think they put everyone who got A’s on this list except for us.”
Seokjin gasped, indignant. “We spilled HCl once,” he declared, “and they think we’re not capable of wrangling together a lab?”
“I think we’re only incompetent when we’re paired together,” Namjoon said mournfully.
Seokjin huffed. “Well, they don’t need us. Where’s the fun in a lab that isn’t at risk to explode? Have a boring and quiet semester for all I care!”
“To cheer you up,” Namjoon offered, “we can review-bomb every professor that’s wronged you.”
Seokjin grinned. “You know the way to my heart.”
“I still think we should take another class together,” Namjoon insisted. “Next semester, I'm enrolled for a morning genomics class that you would enjoy…”
“Yah, Kim Namjoon,” Seokjin said solemnly, even as Namjoon reached over their two shitty pastries and overpriced coffees to take his hand. “I really cannot do 8 AM’s.”