Chapter Text
Park Sunghoon, by all means, is no idiot.
Sure, he's awkward and emotionally dense at times, but he's sure that being friends with Jake made him somewhat sociable enough for him to get social clues. And all of the clues he has right now hint at the one thing he's been complaining about for the past ten minutes of breakfast.
"I'm just saying, seeing his face irritates me!" he argues through a mouth full of food, spitting rice grains into Jay's (unimpressed) face.
"You‘ve been saying it every day, for two months now," he points out, voice tinged with irritation that‘s also clearly shown on his (grainy) face, ”We get it, bro. You can’t stop thinking about Sunoo’s face.”
Which is not true at all.
Kim Sunoo, their groups newest ‘friend’ as they’d like to say, was introduced to them by Jungwon, who’d ceremoniously dragged him to their suffer table in a cafe one fateful late summer afternoon, all smiles and crescent eyes and shiny black hair and oversized baby pink sweaters and in his first year of college.
It goes without saying that Sunghoon spent the entire afternoon with his nose buried between the same two pages of his textbook, (obviously) staring up through his lashes at the new face.
At first, Sunghoon thought he was seeing Jungwon double. Jungwon, if he was less of a cat and more of a Bichon, and hadn’t died his hair a blazing red color two weeks prior. Jungwon, if he made it his mission to trigger Uncanny Valley in Sunghoon, and give him goosebumps all over. Jungwon, if he was a social chameleon that bounced off the others’ energy like he’d known them for years instead of a few hours, and that thrived on attention and being doted on.
It took Sunoo two days to win over Riki, who went from shying away from all conversation with Sunoo on day one at all costs (such as jumping out of a window into a bush) to dragging him across the floor by his feet over a cup of vanilla pudding on day two.
Even Heeseung, who tends to be more reserved around people who are objectively speaking cute (Sunghoon has eyes and a somewhat working brain), suddenly proclaimed Sunoo “his favorite dongsaeng” after a week of knowing him, much to Riki’s distress, who dragged Sunoo away from Heeseung by his feet again while loudly whining in Japanese until Jungwon was begging Heeseung to take it back.
Sunghoon’s apartment, that he shares with Jake and Jay, is closer to some of their lecture halls than the dining halls, which means that Jay, who suddenly loves spoiling people with homecooked meals without guilt tripping them into owning him a favor, has not invited Sunoo over for dinner less times than Sunghoon has eyeballs. (Not that he’s complaining, he loves leeching off his best friend who goes to culinary school and spares no expenses when it comes to ingredients in true “daddy’s got money” style.)
And Jake is friends with everyone. The fact that he just clicked with Sunoo right away was no surprise whatsoever.
“Argue with me later,” Jay shoots him down and collects their dishes to dump into the sink while gesturing for them to put on their shoes, “We gotta get to class.”
“Let’s argue now,” Sunghoon decides almost too happily, as of talking about Sunoo makes him feel good or anything remotely close to a positive emotion.
“You haven’t even talked to him properly,” Jake points out and ushers him out of the apartment, “Maybe get to know him better, you know, have more than a one-sided ‘hello’ before you say anything about him.”
Which is exactly why Sunghoon’s saying something. Sunoo had more than his shy, cheerful ‘hello’s not answered, no.
Sunghoon, introverted and tormented by a big friend group as he is, hasn’t been unlucky enough to be caught in a one-on-one conversation with Sunoo except for the one time he got ambushed while doing the dishes (after losing a game of rock-paper-scissors that he insisted on) and almost dropped the plate in his hands when he heard Sunoo say “I want to be close to you, too, hyung” which he graced with a panicked giggle as reply. He spent the entire night awake and dreadful of their next encounter. Which never came because it was never private enough for Sunghoon to not start pretending like he was listening to Jay debate whether he should put double chocolate or just singular chocolate chips into his next batch of cookies every time he caught Sunoo’s intense eyes on him. It’s unsettling, and it has Sunghoon’s intestines in knots every time he thinks about it.
Which, Sunghoon realizes while drowning out his professor’s lecture about sentence structures, is all the time. It doesn’t help that the lecture is boring enough to melt Sunghoon’s brain, doesn’t help that Jungwon is sitting next to him in a hoodie that Sunghoon knows he bought to match with Sunoo, doesn’t help that he can imagine Sunoo drowning in the deep blue fabric, with the sleeves covering his hands and the hood tucked behind his ears to make him look -
Sunghoon falls out of his chair to interrupt his own train of thoughts.
—
The sudden urge to slam his face against the table repeatedly grabs Sunghoon so suddenly, that he doesn’t even know what made him to want to do that at first. Then, he spots the reason entering the dining hall with Jungwon hanging off his broad shoulders like a clingy kitten, a cheerful grin spread across round rosy cheeks, his laughter louder than anything else in the room, and his previously black hair dyed in bubblegum pink.
Kim Sunoo wants him dead.
“He’ll notice soon enough,” Heeseung says through gritted teeth and hardly supressed laughter, Sunghoon’s hyung looking at him with enough glee to rival a child on Christmas eve. Sunghoon forces his gaze back to Heeseung, wants to say anything to defend himself, snaps his mouth shut -
and catapults the piece of eggroll into his windpipe.
The attempt on his life has Heeseung, Riki and Jake in shambles, all three of them almost falling out of their chairs while they double over with laughter that will haunt Sunghoon in his late-night trips down the ‘embarassing moments’ memory lane when he’s trying to sleep. All while he’s hackling on a piece of eggroll that Jay would’ve Heimlich-maneuvered out of him, was he sitting next to Sunghoon.
Speaking of Jay, where is he? Usually, when Heeseung and Jake are too busy trying to teach Heeseung maths, and Jungwon is busy being oblivious to Riki begging for his attenting by showing him cat videos and saying “That’s you, hyung”, Jay is there to dive headfirst into whatever rant about whatever topic Sunghoon isn’t the least bit interested in, so Sunghoon can pretend to be immersed in the conversation instead of directly ignoring Sunoo’s attempts at talking to him. Today, however, Jay is nowhere to be seen, and he hasn’t read any of the 79 text messages that Sunghoon had sent him in the last twenty minutes, which can only mean one thing.
“I think Jay’s being kidnapped and held for ransom,” Sunghoon blurts out when Sunoo pulls back the chair next to him, his big eyes widening in surprise.
“Jay-hyung just texted me that there was a fire in the kitchen and not to wait for him,” Sunoo tells him and carefully places a tightly packed lunch box under Sunghoon’s nose. Sunghoon stares at the box, and while he’s banned from his own kitchen, he knows his tupperware enough to know that this is not one of his. First, because it’s not stained yellow from all the curry Jay tends to make, and second, because it has a purple lid, which would clash with all of Sunghoon’s monochrome, brown, and red wardrobe. A fashion disaster caused by something that’s supposed to nurture him with food and Jay’s brotherly love and fruit that are cut in cute little heart shapes.
Cute little heart shapes?
“What’s this?” he asks nobody in partiular, mainly because everyone is too worried about Jay’s kitchen catching on fire to listen to him.
“Jay-hyung asked me to give it to you,” Sunoo says quickly and shrugs, a smile tugging his pink lips upwards.
It would’ve looked innocent instead of devilish, if Sunghoon wasn’t sure that Sunoo was lying to him straight through his rows of perfectly white teeth. Jay would never hand him purple tupperware when Sunghoon is wearing his maroon jacket. Maybe he’d rip it from his hands and hit him over the head with it, but he’d never give him purple tubberware. And while Sunghoon gets daily, almost hourly reminders, that Jay loves him like a brother, he’d never go as far as cutting him honeydew into heart shapes. This purple tupperware heartshaped fruit, much like the eggroll that’s been placed in his mouth, is an attempt to kill him with food.
Sunghoon might be an idiot, but he’s not foolish enough to get himself poisoned. Gingerly, he picks up the wrap that’s been cut and placed to look like a heart, and eats everything but the fruit.
It doesn’t help calm the unwell feeling in his stomach that it’s shaped anatomically correct.
The unsettling feeling doesn’t leave him for the rest of the day. He bids his friends goodbye, shoots Jay another text message that he’s left on ‘delivered’ on, and attends the rest of his classes while his insides feel like they’re being gripped and twisted and squeezed like the universe is telling him to just. spit. out. the. food. Sunghoon pushes the feeling down (or maybe it’s his breakfast and lunch), takes Gaeul on a walk to the park, then drags himself and Gaeul back to his apartment like he isn’t about to turn into the beginning scene of a gorey zombie movie, and collapses onto the couch with a weak whimper.
He stays there for God knows how long, time turning into liquid, his limbs turning into liquid, his thoughts turning into Sunoo, and his brain turning into liquid. Hours, minutes, seconds, drag on and all that Sunghoon can do is lie on the couch and greet Jake and Jay with pained groans when they come home and turn to ignore him. At least Jay has the heart to feed Gaeul with the most expensive brand of dog food that Sunghoon has to drive two hours out of town for, when he sees that Gaeul’s owner is temporarily weakened by death.
By the time Sunoo and Riki burst through the door just in time to wait for dinner, he feels nauseous enough to throw up his intestines, dizzy enough to do it in a circle and weak enough just do it right where he’s splayed on the couch instead of dragging himself to the toilet.
“Jay-ah!” he calls out pathetically with a whine in his voice, “What did you put in my lunch?”
“I was too busy surviving a kitchen fire to make you lunch,” Jay answers and pokes his head out of the kitchen to look at Sunghoon’s pathetic existence suffering on their livingroom couch, surrounded by Jake, Sunoo and Riki on the floor around the coffee table, and Gaeul perched on top of his chest with her feet digging into his lungs, “You look sick.”
“Why, thank you,” Sunghoon has half the mind to roll his eyes before his head decides that it’s too much movement in his vision and sends a shooting pain straight to his smoothened brain, “It must be the Prada belt and my awesome penguin socks.”
“Nevermind, if you can make unfunny jokes, you’re healthy enough,” Jay decides and disappears into what Sunghoon likes to call ‘the witches’ cave’ whenever Jay cooks because all of them save for Jungwon will be immediately kicked out before they can ‘burn water in a kettle’. Not that Sunghoon’s done that before, nope.
“Oh, hyung, are you lactose intolerant?” Sunoo suddenly speaks up, and Sunghoon’s never had a better excuse than the fact that he’s literally dying on his couch to avoid looking at him. If only Sunoo had stayed seated on the ground, instead of twisting his entire body around to loom over Sunghoon like he wants to steal Gaeul from his weak arms and replace her by stabbing him in the chest with his Samsung phone. Now, with Sunoo close enough for Sunghoon to feel the younger’s breath fanning his cheeks, and Sunghoon weakened by an unknown force (that is definitely not lactose intolerance), he has nowhere to run.
“No,” he denies at the same time as Riki says, “Almost deadly.”
“I won’t let myself be killed by dairy,” Sunghoon announces solemnly but he can tell his end is near, “Lactose is intolerant to me.”
“I don’t even know why dairy affects his brain,” Jake cackles, clearly he enjoys seeing Sunghoon suffer. Just wait until he has to drag Sunghoon’s dead body from the third floor to the graveyard. “What the fuck did you eat?”
“Don’t question the leader of the 02z, I’m gonna eat you.”
“First of all, you’re not the leader. Second, no thank you.”
“The chicken wraps I made today were with yoghurt sauce!” Sunoo exclaims and wraps his hands around Sunghoon’s arm to shake him back to life - and maybe sanity, “Hyung, don’t die!”
“You made my lunch? Why would you try to poison me, Sun?” Sunghoon groans, close to throwing up his life, and head swimming in the tears welling up in Sunoo’s beautiful, beautiful eyes of a warm honey color and - wait, what.
He puts one hand over Sunoo’s, fingers grazing surprisingly rough, warm skin, looks him into his teary doe eyes, then down to his grin, and whispers,
“What have you done to me?”
before he passes out.