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mixtapedoh · 2 months

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cupid is so dumb | c.s.

welcome back to SVTU ! lost your way? refer to our campus map for directions

pairing: choi seungcheol x gn!reader with guest appearances from y. jeonghan, k. soonyoung, and more !

word count: ~8.7k genre: best friend's brother warnings: language, a potentially rushed ending (forgive me, it was getting Lengthy™), one allusion to drowning, reader is bad at pottery (r.i.p. if you're an art major as a trade)

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olive's notes: apologies for this taking far longer than expected. i was half done with it and then i was suddenly accosted with responsibility and work??? cruel and unusual punishment. i know all of you would never treat me this way.

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now playing... ılı.lıllılı.ıllı. ... ⌜ adore you — harry styles ⌟

CUPID IS SO DUMB ☄. *. ⋆

— seungcheol had long been comfortable taking risks.

just flip through his life like you would a resume, or skim it like you would a textbook that you're not particularly riveted by, but have a test on the next day; it doesn't take a close read to realize that seungcheol had grown quite accustomed to living life on the edge. becoming perhaps... too comfortable with the idea of "no risk; no gain."

i mean, just consider the cliff notes: he was jeonghan's blood relative, to start (one didn't exactly be the Older and More Responsible half to Jeonghan Nonsense™ without growing quite fond of hazard); when choosing a minor in college he decided to say fuck it to logic and choose sculpture of all things; consider also that time he invested real money into thomas the train seungkwan's youtube career or shua's random ass print-on-demand merchandise business venture; or consider even singular moments like when he was roped in skydiving; literally any activity he cosigned on with jeonghan; those illegal u-turns he did every day when trying to turn into the parking for sunset plot; that time he followed minghao through a convincingly haunted graveyard at night to shortcut back to the dorms from a party (hao might not have been phased, but ghosts are real, thank you very much, and the nightlife cheol saw that night was certainly not natural); again, his living alongside yoon jeonghan for almost all of his life; and, perhaps most daring of them all, having a very-secret, very-manageable, not-at-all-concerning-or-annoyingly-insistent crush…

a very inconvenient crush on a very lovely (though still inconvenient) you.

— so yes. take it all in. breathe deeply in the knowledge of choi seungcheol's comfortability and perhaps audacious affinity toward peril.

if one lived their life on the edge, perhaps nothing could conquer them.

to be quite honest, seungcheol prayed that adage (something likely made up out of thin air by jeonghan specifically to convince cheol to err on the side of risk many years ago) would hold true. after all, he was far too deep in to get out without an egregious stain, now.

— you see, choi seungcheol was a man of risk, that much has been established. however, and conversely, he was also a man with a great amount of common sense. to him, an alarming amount of things in life were apparent.

that he should just shut his mouth when it came to the feelings bubbling over for you, was simply one of those easily observed phenomena.

— you were jeonghan’s best friend, for fuck’s sake! had been since perhaps the ripe age of 6? 8? it wasn’t all that important to know the exact age when you had started to stick to jeonghan like glue, all that mattered was that you seemingly spawned into cheol’s life one summer when jeonghan was still small enough to tear up when he’d get scrapes on his knees, and in your very first meeting, you publicly shamed him.

he! choi seungcheol!

jeonghan had fallen after one of their many elaborate adventures led to climbing over a chain-link fence to retrieve something the both of them… magically misplaced. (certainly they hadn’t thrown it over the fence. they? throwing large objects over a fence? into property that was not theirs? just what sort of children did you take them for? delinquents? certainly not, you were mistaken. they had a very strict halmeoni at home that would not allow naughty children to rest under their family’s roof, thank you very much.) so, yes, jeonghan had fallen and thus, seungcheol had been the one to scale the fence himself, throw their things back over the fence, and climb back the way he’d come in record time. jeonghan was still understandably teary-eyed and sniffling at his grim fall, his appalling scraped knees, and the horrible holes in his shorts that would need mending, but seungcheol was there with a comforting hand…

and a persuasive voice begging him to not tell their family what had happened, of course.

— and let’s just set the record straight, alright, because cheol was not shaming jeonghan for crying. please. even at the ripe age of ambiguously preadolescent, cheol wasn’t buying into that toxic masculinity, boys can’t cry rhetoric. he was woke! he had been born with modern sensibilities! but he couldn’t very well walk home with a crying jeonghan in tow. that would raise questions. even more than the already present problem of ripped clothing.

cheol was the (barely) older brother, here! do you realize what it would do to his privileges if jeonghan came home crying?

he was merely trying to cajole jeonghan into a grin and sworn secrecy. sue him.

— but of course, you would take this opportunity to confront him about it.

“confront” being your words, should the matter of your initial meeting ever be brought up, of course. according to cheol, your words that day would always be “berating,” “publicly shaming,” “slapping his wrist” (though you did have to give him that one — you did, in fact, slap his wrist) and any other exaggeration that would get you to snort.

— in the end, though, you had helped seungcheol come up with a convenient lie involving the swingset at the park just across from your house, and so i suppose one might judge the situation a net positive.

— you came over to jeonghan the next time you saw him out and about and asked him how his knees were — even going so far as to offer him a choco pie you had all but smashed in your pocket, so, of course, the two of you were immediate and lifelong friends.

— and now, for another round of clarity, cheol did not fall in love with you upon first meeting you.

— please. being publicly humiliated (*cue your interjection here to remind cheol that for your first meeting being such a public event, there was, truly, a strong lack of public to view the exchange. there were perhaps a handful of people with the opportunity to witness the event. and even fewer actively attending to the bickering exchange of random children by a nondescript chain-link fence.) was not the prepubescent meet cute one might be inclined to consider.

besides, do you really think cheol was slick enough to hide something like that for more than a decade? you believe too strongly in his relational opacity. he could barely hide mere distaste for a professor during a single semester course. you really think he could keep this shit on lock for the better part of his whole existence? your faith is admirable, but horribly, atrociously misguided.

— his feelings wouldn’t really blossom for another ambiguous handful (8? 10?) of years. deepest apologies for not knowing the exact number of years or the precise age when all of this turned about. seungcheol’s never claimed to be gifted at recollection. besides, being a little clueless is a little endearing, no? charming? perhaps adorable and begrudgingly loveable?

stfu, just let him have this.

— all you really need to know is that it was a stupid and trite moment when the neurons fired and the dots connected and cheol realized he was in deep shit.

— it was in ceramics class (not at all helpful to aid in placing this exact moment in time — cheol started taking ceramics every year from the moment it was offered to him, and you joined him in the classes through high school, an entertaining enough art credit, and hey, if things ever weren’t Turning Out Right, cheol was there to fix it for you, so as long as you bought him a cherry coke every so often and amused him with good enough conversation; ceramics meant a social hour and easy grade. a sweet deal, really. you’d long become accustomed to taking those). you and cheol were side by side doing a wheel throwing project, and quite unprompted, you began convincing him to pursue art fully — as in, dedicate those long, exhausting college years to ceramics or sculpting! anything, really, that was artsy and hands-on. he had a knack for it, according to you, and it would be simply devastating if he squandered it for business of all things.

you kept everything he’d ever made for you or handed off to you in passing when his parents started to suggest there was a growing lack of shelf space for all his assignments and passion projects, so you’d vouch for his talent; and you continued on, talking about how cool it would be to become an artist and get your artwork displayed, and the different ways it could be impactful beyond artistically fulfilling... but cheol was sort of still stuck on your first admission. that you kept it all — even those shitty pots he made at twelve years old, with subzero points in functionality, and probably a strong lack of aesthetic value.

it just… stuck with him. that you had kept some small, unrefined part of him and were advocating for more.

— and, well, it didn’t exactly hurt that you looked strikingly beautiful through it all. a sort of uneven smile on your face, dried clay streaking your cheek from when cheol marked you after stealing a sip of his drink (though you had teasingly called him “cheollie” as a portmanteau of his name and the beverage he’d grown an affinity towards since you always seemed to have one on you, and it seemed well worth it, in the end, to share. he was perhaps not-so-secretly hoping the name would stick.), and your eyes… all the warmth of wonder mixed with rapt attention at the dilapidated vase you were attempting to form in your hands.

cheol laughed when one of the sides collapsed and you swore baldly, apologizing sheepishly when your teacher looked at you with blinking surprise.

“here, let me…”

and he leaned over to help even it out, not minding the proximity until after, when you thanked him warmly the way you always had, sticking that stupidly endearing “cheollie” nickname on the end, and making his gaze flick to you — grinning and impossibly close. so close - too close - if he moved a single muscle he’d be right close enough to…

he reeled back at the nearness of you, laughing even more, trying to hide that flustered feeling of his insides unexpectedly turning inside out with a half baked plea that the nickname was too mushy, when really, it wasn’t the word but his heart that was turning too-soft at the thought of you.

but at the very least, his contagious giggling got to you, and the moment was made beautiful by the sound of your laughter mixing with his.

— yes, high school was when cheol fell in love with you. he didn’t really clock the depth of his newly conscious crush on you for a month or so more, but it set in with a vengeance not long after, and so it was lucky for him, truly, when your parents took you abroad for the final few months of that school year.

— jeonghan’s teasing had become unbearable at that point (the bastard was swearing he clocked it years prior to cheol himself, and the part that stung the most was that it almost seemed believable. the minor kink in jeonghan’s claim was the lack of pointed teasing before cheol became Obviously Down Bad, but hannie’s reasoning for that was airtight - that he was letting it marinate because victory would be so much sweeter when cheol realized it himself while jeonghan proved to be all-knowing. not that such a turn of events was surprising, of course.) so it was, truly, the benevolent hands of fate that spirited you away for those few months.

— or maybe fate was not-so-benign.

after all. cheol had been, at the time, stuck in the very awkward, very unbearable position of Having A Big Ass Crush and also being Quite Totally Incapable Of Hiding It. he had almost gotten the wherewithal to just come out with it on more than one occasion, but the timing was always all off, and then he’d stumble upon some head empty advice funneled his way via his ever meddling brothers that would talk about the inherent dangers of The Confession in a group of friends.

and like… yeah, cheol was a risk taker, but uhh…

— so maybe all of that risk taking was a little less representative of his true personality and a little more influenced by the fact that he was always The Older One™ — the leader of his little ragtag circus of friends, if you will — and him putting on a brave face and always just doing the damn thing was really a way to care for his friends. show them they weren’t alone.

like, consider that throughout their childhood, seungcheol mostly supported jeonghan’s wild plots and exploration simply so his younger brother would never get into trouble alone. little hannie? suffering consequences of his actions?? solo??? that was something cheol could simply not bear.

and the skydiving: little kwannie was starting to get cold feet, of course cheol wouldn’t let him do it alone. the graveyard mishap? what was he going to do, let hao do it on his own?? was chivalry found dead on a sketchy-looking canal bank, more on this story at 5??? cheol was born a ride or die. no skeleton in your closet could be too unsightly — do you wanna pop it in the incinerator or are you more inclined to digging graves? — trust that if you were at all close to choi seungcheol’s inner circle, you would never have to face the music alone.

he would be right there next to you, a steady hand to hold and a casual wink to throw your way should you begin to lose your resolve.

— so yeah, cheol got cold feet anytime the opportunity to confess to you presented itself. sue him.

but maybe just hold off for a bit before filing the papers — jeonghan had once been considering attorney as a potential career path, but swerved from the course after binging four separate political dramas one summer (your influence, of course). at the moment, cheol didn’t exactly have a go-to for legal action, but give him a day or two; being a student ambassador meant the better part of his daily was dedicated to networking. he could charm anyone within a mere 10 minutes of knowing them — 5, if they were particularly weak in defenses (but never tell them that, of course).

— it had been an excruciating time in high school, when He Was Aware and You Were Present, and it had been a double-edged opportunity when you had left and there was little to be done. but then you had just… stayed that way. gone. abroad. across oceans and timezones and sure, still there in the confines of his phone, but not the same, really.

after all, you had always been jeonghan’s friend before his.

and more and more, he’d been finding it hard to hold a conversation without turning stupidly shy at any joke or innuendo or light prodding that might coax something out of him he was oh-so-tirelessly trying to push down.

— so sure, the two of you talked and still kept a general rapport. but it wasn’t like he was your first point of contact when you wanted to learn anything about what was happening “back home”

— which directly informed why, in seungcheol’s opinion, you hadn’t told him beforehand when all but four days ago you transferred from another university to svtu, flying all the way back to him home.

— jeonghan had been oddly insistent that cheol meet him for lunch sometime that week — even going so far as to skip a class (a vapid lecture, jeonghan was quick to assure him. modern political theory was apparently not the rigorous headache promised, per the grave tone of the syllabus) so as to work around the many events cheol was negotiating and fixing for the showcase the college of business was going to have rather soon.

— cheol knew something was up.

chat, is it inherently suspicious when your brother is actively taking time off so the two of you can go get a meal together at the tung-tung grille — one of those overpriced, trendy places that pop up on college campuses for date nights and celebrations you certainly can’t afford?

no? oh, forgive him, did he mention the brother in question was the yoon jeonghan?

— needless to say, some spidey-senses were tingling. anytime cheol would attempt to glean greater depth from this seemingly random outing, jeonghan would masterfully steer the conversation elsewhere. annoyingly and transparently so — he knew that seungcheol was wise to what was happening, and yet, frankly, my dear, jeonghan didn’t give a damn. in fact, a betting man might even posit that jeonghan knew that cheol was wise to his machinations and the fucker gleaned some sort of glee and sinister schadenfreude from the whole affair.

“hannie, just tell me what this is about—”

“should i bring anything that might be relevant—”

“who else is going to be there?”

“is it just brothers? should i call s—”

“won’t you just tell me—”

“no, listen, listen—”

“yoon jeonghan—”

— this fucker.

or, more aptly, this fucker²

— becase please, pray tell, when, why and how you had crossed the oceans and timezones, country lines and memories to be sitting here, across the table from seungcheol, now???

and of course, jeonghan had the gall to tease him about his apparent fish out of water behavior.

so sorry for the inconvenience, hannie! cheol had gotten quite used to life without random revelation and secret sneak attack in the years since the jeonghan-y/n alliance had been uprooted, and he wasn’t at all prepared for anything like this.

— violently choking on his tonkatsu might not have been the most sophisticated or charming reaction to finding out your old crush was back in town, but it certainly conveyed his surprise, if nothing else.

but by the sound of your laughter as cheol recovered from death by pork cutlet, you were endeared by the whole affair.

… that was endearment, right?

— so sue him for wanting to cash in on charm of the loser variety in front of his massive, years-long crush!

don’t act like jeonghan is any better — ever since he settled down with his beau, the man was down so atrocious it was sickening.

and as for you… well, cheol had never seen you crush on anyone, really, since middle school when all of your embarrassing affection meant waxing poetic about the object of your affections and then pulling cheol into hiding should you run into them anywhere outside of the protection of your school desk. if he thought about it enough, he could still recall the feel of your hand in his as you dragged him behind increasingly comical barriers — around corners, behind doors, kiosks at the mall, even massive plant pots with overgrown foliage. he’d always laugh and poke you in the ribs and you’d scowl until the ticklish feeling gave way to begruding mirth.

— and you still had that crooked sort of mischievous grin, now.

“you transferred to svtu?”

“yeah!” and you divulged all the details of your transfer process: the major you were undertaking, the classes you had been attending since the semester’s start a week ago, and even the accommodations at phantom studios — the building all on-campus transfer students stayed in for at least one year after arriving to svtu’s main campus.

and all while you talked, cheol just sat there, still far too stunned to take in even half of it. here you were, after years of being apart (4? 5? literally stop grilling him over this, guys.), somehow not at all what he would have expected, and yet precisely the same. your words were all different, but your smile was the same. the light in your eyes shifted, but somehow when it caught the light to glisten, time had never passed at all and you were still there, next to the busted chain-link fence where all of this began, and cheol’s world was so wide, yet intimately familiar.

— how can a moment be new and nostalgic, exciting yet tinged with mourning?

“wahhh, s.coups, look at what n/n is still wearing.”

and, of course, how can a moment always manage to be punctuated by jeonghan’s persistent, dulcet tones?

— you were rolling your eyes and slapping jeonghan’s wrist as he attempted to grab yours — there rested a thin, woven bracelet. a friendship bracelet. an old memory. “where’s yours hannie? when we made them you swore up and down you’d never take it off.”

— “ah, well, cheolie—”

— “who showed you around campus?”

(oddly, jeonghan seemed rather pleased to be interrupted.)

— see, that was bothering cheol. you were a new student — freshly transferred and started at svtu all but a week ago, when the semester had began. as a student ambassador, cheol was more than familiar with the ins-and-outs of the admissions office and transfer student resources — he knew the process for applying for anything at svtu. he had walked enough people through it himself, sat right beside them on that (very unforgiving) couch in the admissions office.

— because of that, cheol knew all too well that all new students — transfer or otherwise — were generally given a tour from a student ambassador. ideally, it would be someone from your same college offering the tour (camaraderie and networking and all that — setting each student up with the beginnings of a support system that all universities love to tout), but in practice, people sort of just chose whatever ambassador they liked best or had a more-open schedule. after all, the gist of the tour was always the same.

you’d been given the option to schedule a tour online when you were filling out your transfer application, a whole page dedicated to slapping a photograph of every student ambassador on your screen. you would have seen his face with a bolded sunset orange “SCHEDULE A TOUR WITH C. SEUNGCHEOL” button right beside.

call him insecure, but cheol wanted to know why you hadn’t picked him. who did you choose instead of him? soonyoung?

— he was pouting, and jeonghan was filled with glee.

“ah — i deferred a tour, actually.”

(maybe that softened his pout… just barely.)

— so not soonyoung, then. did jeonghan show you around? maybe both of his brothers, together?? speaking of, where was s—

“i wanted to let jeonghan have his surprise. but after… i was planning on booking you.”

— oh, vindication is sweet.

“who else could i choose? what was his name - kwon soonyoung?”

— and so passed the rest of your lunch date.

— the next time cheol saw you in person (the siblings + 1 group chat had been reinstated, and so of course hannie and cheol took the opportunity to shame their youngest brother for missing out on the welcome home feast that he hadn’t known was even planned; he promised to make it up to the very benevolent y/n, though, claiming there was nothing a coffee and gossip session couldn’t fix) was for the campus tour you’d officially scheduled through the svtu homepage.

(cheol had shown you how to do it at tung-tung grille after jeonghan had left, leaning over your shoulder from behind and coaxing you to tell him all about your time abroad — the sights, the sounds, the food, the art, the love… and maybe getting a little too lost in the moment and losing track of time, making it late to boxing because he simply had to drive you back to where you were going. please. take the campus shuttles? walk? cheol would never allow that. he had a perfectly good passenger seat, thank you very much, and now that you were here, well, it sort of had your name on it, right?)

— but yes, the campus tour. he met you at the heart of campus in his dorky svtu polo shirt (a mandated uniform for such appearances, i fear) where the tours always began. the two of you would be taking the flower path walking past some of the best and most useful buildings first, and then move on to explore your particular section of the absolutely massive campus, as dictated by your major.

you had poked fun at his ugly ass polo, and then poked quite literally at his dimples when they appeared, having coaxed them out with that old nickname that still only belonged to you: “cheollie.” it had flustered cheol so bad he reverted to that annoyingly shy sort of giggling that he thought he’d long conquered since it hadn’t been quite so bad since the distance of you.

he laughed and you grabbed his hand in yours and pulled him down the sidewalk, initially setting off in the wrong direction for your tour, though cheol was quite happy to lead you back the way you’d come.

— you spotted the friendship bracelet on his wrist, then, and badgered cheol until he told you a story of how he won it off of jeonghan when they were playing poker one night and hannie failed to cheat well enough to win.

you scoffed at the idea that your silly little friendship bracelet held any kind of monetary value, but the idea of it warmed you nonetheless.

— and if, afterward, he insisted on getting something to eat (paying for it, of course; despite any protests you could conjure, cheol was dead set on treating you like visiting royalty — he had so much lost time to make up for, after all) and drive you to your next class (it was on his way! he swore up and down he had business in the library of the very same building), well… he was just taking the long and devoted road to re-acquaintance. so much time had passed, after all. it would only be natural for you to have changed in your time apart — become someone with new facets to discover and old habits to rekindle.

and you had changed — in so many beautiful ways, it seemed. you had grown different and occasionally disparate, but somehow the adjusting seemed to be a familiar dance, and in a way that was unfortunate only because it made him feel like a schoolboy, it seemed that the feelings cheol had whenever he was around you (the giddy kind that made him feel like he was taking that ill-advised jump for a skydiving free-fall) were all too familiar, too — imperishable, damn them.

and when you were leaning in the window of the passenger's side, bathed in sunlight and grinning as he dropped you off for whatever was next, you poked the divot of his dimple once more. “text you soon, cheollie.”

— and he was a blushing idiot all over again, desperate for more.

CUPID IS SO DUMB (CONT.) ☄. *. ⋆

— if there was one thing you’d learned since transferring to svtu, it was that your roommates were people people, as in, two very people-oriented individuals. as in, lots of friends, lots of desire in connecting with and supporting those friends, and a Very Distinct Drive to introduce you to and connect you with all of said friends.

which i rather think explains the density of your social calendar.

— of course, it wasn’t as though yuta and nicha forced you to join them in their myriad social outings, it was simply that there was always an explicit invitation given should they be going out that day (which was almost everyday — especially after yuta made friends with a frat house and nicha quickly established a friend group that spanned so many different colleges and social groups it was beyond impressive), and always the promise (lovingly followed through) of actually spending time with you should you accompany them, and, well… why not live a little? you’d come to svtu for something new, right? might as well take full advantage of that your first year, when you were the most eager to start anew.

which should rather explain why you were at the norebang that night.

— to be quite honest, it was a little lost in translation why everyone was meeting up at the norebang. it wasn’t as though it was a club holding an event, and it wasn’t someone’s birthday (as far as you knew) — the point was, there were two vip rooms bought out and perhaps 60 people or so between them, and despite the fact that there was no alcohol allowed in the family friendly establishment, there were all manner of drinking games with the loser chugging as much soda as they possibly could before choking on their own aspirations.

and like, okay, maybe there was some alcohol involved, but everyone kept quiet about it. the norebang was just off campus and a very popular spot for college students to celebrate, but because it was a family-friendly joint, there was an explicit no-spirits policy, and did you want to be the one who got everyone banned just because you couldn’t hide the flasks from old man park jin-young?? be so serious, rn.

— but the norebang truly was so much fun. you had started the night in vip room 1, nicha dragging you there so you could meet the rest of her friends that you hadn’t get become acquainted with (you were already friendly with yuqi and shuhua, who lived at sunset plot, too, but nicha was dead set on your meeting all the girls and finally unlocking the backstory to half of the inside jokes that would have nicha giggling at 2 am, you or yuta throwing a pillow at her for waking you up right when you were about to drift off to a land of dreaming). you sang more than a couple songs and forced both your roommates to join you, and you even had the unique displeasure of having nearly drowned attempting to chug a 2 liter container of Mountain Dew’s latest Crime Against Humanity (you had lost more than a few times already, and with every misfortune, the crowd demanded more cringe fail punishment than the last).

— when you had finally tasted your fill of artificially colored carbonation (both slightly ✨enhanced✨ and otherwise), you decided to try your luck at vip room 2 before heading out for the evening. yuta had told you he was headed over there to hang with johnny suh and a couple others (sue you for not knowing all of yuta’s friends. you swore his friend group grew by the day, always with some new member, like a little cult or something), and you wanted to check up on at least all of your roommates before leaving for the night.

— now, when yuta invited you (and nicha… and all of nicha’s friends, by extension) to norebang night, he had kept it light and said a vague "everyone" was welcome — that everyone would be a friend of a friend, and so it would not be weird at all for anyone to be invited. not weird at all; not strange, in the slightest.

and yet, it still felt very strange, indeed, to see seungcheol in vip room 1.

you walked into the disco ball filtered, purple and blue lit room, and in 0.2 seconds flat spot him: s.coups.

you pointed at him and he followed suit, and for a minute you were that spiderman meme, an HD 4k .jpeg of mutual “???”

— so of course you decided to stay at the norebang for just a little bit longer.

— and quite naturally, your first instinct would be to throw the (stupidly handsome) cheollie off of his rhythm by hitting him with a classic, “who invited you???” as you sat down next to him (perhaps slightly closer than necessary, but hey, you could blame it on needing to hear him over the din of the 8-part harmony — surprisingly decent — of the cheesy ballad playing).

— and that is how your innocence died, wailing.

“the WHAT????”

and bless seungcheol’s soul for laughing through it, because having to reiterate to the uninitiated that this get together was funded and planned by the Big Tiddie Committee would be enough to kill anyone — fully dedicated to the bit, or otherwise.

“and you were extended a personal invitation?”

“mingyu is the secretary.”

“he’s the what”

which of course, would only summon the man himself, mingyu bounding over to the both of you asking brightly, “who brought you here?”

“not the secretary of the Big Tiddie Committee, the fuck…”

— and so the night dragged a little longer, seungcheol convincing you to do a song with him, you confronting yuta about his belongingness to the B.T.C. framework (he wasn’t a member, something that he laughed about you being so sure of, but johnny suh was), and mingyu bribing you with the promise of A Premium Secret when he found out that you were an ace at claw machines. you won him the puppy plushie, ofc, but when you asked for your payment, he suddenly got all cagey and said he’d tell you soon enough; right as you were about to say it wouldn’t possibly be good enough repayment, cheol said he could more than pay you back in gyu’s place, with an endless supply of stories for the journey back to your dorm.

suspicious, but you took it. might as well have mingyu in your debt for later, and hey — cheol was offering embarrassing stories about him and his brothers. a win-win, truly.

— so that’s how you set off, saying your goodbyes to both your roommates and taking a bus, then a campus shuttle, and finally walking the last leg of your journey to phantom studios, cheol’s arm slung over your shoulder the whole way.

— it was when you were both getting tired, the weight of the evening pushing conversation to gentle ellipses, that you walked past a line of vending machines. you pulled cheol to a stop and fished in your pockets for coins, but when you came up dry (probably all used at the claw machine), cheol passed you a bill instead.

— the sound of the vending machine was louder than it usually was in the relative still calm of night, and the bright neon lights of the buttons made for starry reflections in your eyes as seungcheol watched you key in your selections, your fingers drumming on the metal as they dispensed your goods. you had told him all about your unfortunate encounter with mountain dew infinite swirl (2 liter, decidedly unchilled) and he was surprised you’d grown into such a soda junkie that you were back for another carbonated delight so soon, but then you pushed the can into his hands and popped it, and he saw what you’d bought.

a cherry coke.

— “repayment for walking me home.”

— and he laughed a bit before tipping the can back, downing the drink in one go. his adam’s apple bobbed, he gave you a wink, and cheol could have sworn he saw something he wasn’t quite expecting flit across your face before you turned back to the vending machine, fishing out your second purchase while cheol finished the can.

it was a chocopie, of course, and you split the treat down the middle as you finished your slow, meandering walk to your final destination.

cheol had rested his arm over your shoulder, again, and spoke in a softer, low sort of voice that had you leaning in moreso than before, and on occasion, you swore you could hear the beat of his heart: bump, bump, bump — faster than you thought it should have been.

— “so, should i expect to see you at the next Big Tiddie Committee party I get invited to?”

the name was so bad it had you cringing. how unserious could they be?

— “if mingyu invites me i’ll let you know.”

— and your logic faltered for a second, and your mouth started talking before your brain could catch up with what it was saying, and in half-horror, you heard yourself say: “you mean you’re not a member?”

— and sure, it wasn’t the most damning thing ever, but your surprise and cheollie’s clear laughter made it clear that you both knew the shock in your voice came from the fact that in the short time you’d made it back into seungcheol’s company, you appraised him as having big enough pecs to be in a group dedicated to big tiddies.

— “well if you’d come swimming with hannie and i last week i’d know if you at least belonged.” you were pouting.

cheol was smitten.

— “i’ll take off my shirt the next time i walk you back to your dorm, (n/n).”

— and you went to scoff, but it sort of caught in your throat and became a sort of choking surprise that left cheol feeling rather good about himself. clever and smug. chat, does it always feel this good to flirt with your longtime crush?

— you recovered with a strained “alright then” and a rushed goodnight, and as cheol watched you rush inside phantom studios, half of your choco pie still in his hand and something warm in the night air, he figured that maybe he could have quite a lot of fun with this, indeed.

and thus ended Night at the Norebang™.

CUPID IS SO DUMB (CONT.) ☄. *. ⋆

— at this turning point, I think it absolutely vital that we understand two things.

first and foremost, that choi seungcheol has always been a fool in love.

secondly, and most newly developed in our tale, choi seungcheol is a flirty fool in love.

— what gave him the confidence to wint at you, his crush? to bite his lip with one perfectly arched brow raised? the adrenaline rush? the knowledge that it flustered you as badly as your entire being set off a surge of giddiness in him?

cheol wasn’t quite sure himself. all he knew was that all the nervous energy building up in him would come out somehow — in nervous acts or in controlled, thrilling flirtations. he quickly assessed that the latter was more favorable.

you were just so cute to catch off guard, after all.

— and so rather quickly, seungcheol became a menace to you, specifically.

the flirty looks were his go-to for Specific Acts of Menace™, of course.

but he also found that an increased expression of one of his most innate traits seemed to work wonders as well.

that trait being, of course, his protectiveness.

— never was there a fucker more protective than choi seungcheol.

— even in the little things! man was erring on the side of comedy and everyone around him enabled it.

— consider, if you will, the fact that after that one (1) time kwannie convinced you and cheol to go to a baseball game with him and you got lost in the stadium after going back to the car real quick to grab a portable phone charger, cheol had you share your phone location with him and always had you screenshot your percentage before heading to classes.

— or that time you were volunteering to help the dance in culture club set up for their performance showcase, and the longer you worked in the heat of the day, the more cheol fret until he somehow found one of those behemoth 128 oz. water bottles and insisted you drain it all to stay hydrated — a comical request, but one he took with solemn earnestness, the same.

— bringing you meals, picking you up when it began to rain, always being your designated driver or having him in your emergency contacts, sometimes even randomly sending you money for “vitamins” or “stacking your fridge with something nutritious” when you both knew that the funds would be spent on something superfluous that you’d send a picture of to cheol with some stupid caption… cheol would be consistently generous and randomly staunch about certain things that would make you giddy bordering on embarrassed, and cheol would have that self-satisfying grin on his face — proud of his good work.

— things were in a good spot. cheol was enjoying the occasional (frequent) flustering of you, you were finding great pleasure in settling back into a life you’d forgotten you so dearly missed, and summer semester was cooling into fall with a gentle sort of settling that made for long, satisfying sighs.

— of course, there was always finals to worry about (and worry you did) but with yuta to walk with you to the library to study (quizzing you on your way there, ofc) and nicha to cajole you into setting down the books for a much needed self care night, you made it through.

— a good thing to have them for the better part of it, too. they were busy people (almost chronically so, one might say) but they were there.

— see, cheol had called you one night when you were drowning, and when you hadn’t picked up 3 of his calls and dozens more of his messages, he made his way to your dorm and demanded the two of you go on a walk.

past phantom studios, past the vending machines, walking still beyond the stop you always sat at for the campus shuttles, and further to the union building where you met all too often after classes, to catch cheol while he was starting or finishing a tour, ruffling his hair with an unsurprising “boo.”

— you didn’t talk about finals or why you hadn’t picked up his calls, or anything heavy, at first. cheol just told you stories about life, or that time when he had brought kkuma to campus and it took the darling princess all but 10 minutes to get so dirty her coat could barely be considered white. she’d been a good sport, though, and stuck by cheol’s side the whole time, even when there were all manner of enticing people and food on campus.

the stories reminded you of good times — better times — and that’s all it took for the reminiscing to start, and the comfort to flow, and you were infinitely glad that svtu had a daycare on campus and a swing set available to use, because there was something like easy breathing on that swing, with seungcheol next to you and your whole life swinging high.

— “thank you, cheollie,” you said at last, when the quiet that settled between you was warm enough to grasp. you’d slowed your swinging at that point, your feet solid on the ground, just rocking from heel to toe to sway. your gaze was set to the rubber surfacing on the ground — suddenly humility pulling you gently downward.

and then you felt his lips on your skin.

— your forehead.

so soft.

— he’d kissed your forehead.

— it shouldn’t have been so surprising but it was.

— choi seungcheol kissing your forehead, gently, in acceptance of your gratitude. with a smile that overrode that nervous giggling that always captured him, betraying the purest of fondness, when you looked up at him, still so close you could just about reach out with either hand and kiss him proper. how soft would his lips feel, then, when they met yours?

“you used to kiss my scrapes and bruises all the time when we were younger,” you were soft to recall.

and he said something sweet, then, in warm response. a cool wind blew and it tempered the heat in your chest, and you consigned the rest of that moment to fond secrecy.

— but !!!!!!!!!!!!

— you survived your first semester at svtu! how was it? harder than you expected? surprisingly comfortable? well, just you wait, because in this institution of education there was always more to be had. of it all.

and this semester, you had some Very Unforgiving Professors, indeed.

— but haha… at least now you were used to campus and all of it’s charming idiosyncrasies. at the very least, this semester there was no chance of yuqi finding you in the hallway of phantom studios at 2am, begging with a door and keycard, on the verge of sleep-deprived tears to just let you in, damnit; you had been up to hour ungodly finishing a program assignment and had a morning class,,, you just wanted to SLEEP… yes, that would be a memory you’d never have to relive, moving forward… mostly because you’d gotten so good at memorizing your dorm room number you’d never get it mixed up with her neighboring dorm ever again, of course, but also consider the fact that this semester, you had an intimate knowledge of svtu’s very soul. you could save yourself so much humbling embarrassment this time around, and that’s the true win.

harsher professors for a more hardened academic warrior.

a learning curve ♡

— you’d also learned the hours when you were best able to get a seat in the library to study. a godsend, to be sure.

not that it saved you from distraction, of course, but you were very good at ignoring those.

… so long as they weren’t in the form of one (1) choi seungcheol.

— you were diligently working on an assignment one unassuming thursday afternoon when cheollie found you.

you knew the moment he approached that there would be absolutely zero productivity to follow, but you smiled the same.

— he looked over your shoulder uninterestedly to see what you were working on, and when he seemingly deemed the activity to be quite under-stimulating, indeed, cheol began his convincing you to abandon the work for something he oh-so-vaguely "wanted to show you."

he’d help you with your work later, too, he promised.

you pretended as though his generosity was what swayed you and not his infuriating persuasive grin, somewhat lopsided as he balanced a sucker in his mouth, drawing unreasonable attention to his lips (of which you’d certainly been having Very Normal Thoughts Over™, thank you very much. Nothing Amiss Here, why would you ask?).

— you must have been staring because cheol’s lips moved: half puckered, gently pursed (revelation? surprise?) and it was only half a second later that he’d fished another sucker out of his pocket and held it out to you.

a cherry sucker, off-brand, the svtu college of business emblem gaudily stamped on the wrapper.

cheol had a plethora of them after helping orient new business majors for the beginning of the semester, he shared with a laugh. they were notoriously bland, and who had even decided that suckers of all things would be the welcome treat to invest in? see, the college of medicine leaning into handing out suckers would make sense — doctor’s office protocol and all — but the college of business? when the product was of questionable quality to begin with? it probably explained the reason why he still had so many, all these weeks later.

— you took a sucker from him, if only for the compulsion to take something offered when he was standing there before you, hand outstretched.

it really was a subpar sucker.

“bland! i told them we should have bought pens instead.”

“still, it’s fitting that they’re cherry.”

and cheollie hummed in agreement, mouth pursed around the lollipop, lips staining red around the edges. not that such a thing was significant, of course.

“so what is it you want to show me?”

— and cheol promised you that wherever you were headed, you’d love it.

and hey, as soon as you guys got in the car, cheol routed to the nearest place to get you both a silly little drink, and he handed you the aux, so could you truly complain?

— a few intensely rapped k-pop hits later, the two of you were parked outside the cluster of fine arts buildings on campus.

(parallel parked, of course. cheol would always take any and all opportunities to flex his superior parking skills.)

— cheol pulled you into the sculpture building, and it wasn’t long before you were marveling at his work in the gallery room (it was a sculpt of kkuma!!!! with her darling cherry hair pin!!!!) while cheol put on an apron. he grabbed another for you, and after tying it around you properly (smiling bashfully against all your praise, of course), steered you to the room at the end of the hall, a handmade sign over the doorway reading “ (✿˵◕‿◕˵) visitors welcome! V●ᴥ●V ”

it was a pottery studio.

wheel throwing, to be specific.

— “ready to see how my pottery skills have improved?”

— you laughed brightly, and the warmth in the expression lingered in the air around you, revisiting your chests every once in a while, drawing deep rooted laughter and embarrassed giggles out of the both of you. your leftover skill in pottery didn’t quite transfer through the years, but cheol was there next to you to fix your creation from falling flat, should you ask.

“i told you to be careful, y/n!” “and you thought just telling me would work?”

— in the end, both of your creations — one beautifully formed mug and another lovingly approaching it’s aspired shape — turned out well enough. it would be time yet before they’d be fired and completed, but for now, you had incredibly dry hands and messy aprons to show for your labors.

true to his word, cheol helped you finish up your assignment afterward, the two of you grabbing lunch (on your card, you’d insisted) from the food trucks that always set up around the union building and claiming a shaded picnic table.

— the weather was perfect, your assignment was slowly becoming clear, and cheol was leaning over your shoulder, his face set in a concentrated pout as he attempted to decode the work set before you. his eyes shined, and the tree above you dappled cheol’s hair and set it to glow. “y’know, you’re going to completely screw my sense of the perfect date if you keep pulling shit like this.”

and he blinked for a half-second — stunned — before speaking. “your standards should be high. if i were really taking you out on a date, it would be better than this.”

“really?” and you leaned back against him, craning your neck to still look him in the eye. “what would we do?”

and cheol laughed.

“what?”

but for the longest time he couldn’t stop. no matter how you jokingly pushed him, demanding he tell you what was so funny.

“you’re asking me what we’d do if i took you on a date?!”

“you’re the one who brought it up!”

“yeah, well i didn’t expect you to bite,” cheol grumbled, turning awkwardly away, but you weren’t going to let him off that easily.

— you squirmed into your seat, adjusting until you were turned towards him properly, and reaching out, cupped his face with both hands until you turned his flushed face to look at you head on. he couldn’t help himself, he was shyly giggling. “well..?”

— “y/n, i’ve been planning and thinking about that since high school.”

— for a moment the air froze in your lungs. seungcheol — your seungcheol — was sat right across from you, all red faced embarrassment and laughing, brighter than anything.

— you kissed him on the cheek. “then out first date better be perfect.”

☄. *. ⋆