f.t island; college swing; jaejin/seunghyun.

[augmenti]

college swing.
f. scott fitzgerald once said "action is character," and seunghyun is inclined to agree.
jaejin/seunghyun; pg-13; 3,265 w.

note: I used a recent interview to decide what everyone would be doing for college besides music. The only one who didn't manage to make it in was Jonghun, which never ever happens. ♥ this is the mentioned anti-smoking ad Seunghyun has on his wall. :D

When Seunghyun moves into his dorm the week before college starts, he’s plagued with butterflies in his stomach and cotton in his throat. His roommate is his upperclassman by a year, who he doesn’t see until the evening. He finds out that his name is Lee Jaejin and he’s studying accounting from the information tag outside the door. Jaejin’s side of the room is neat and tidy and the side of the room left to Seunghyun is cluttered with boxes filled with all the things he’s convinced himself he’ll need. He’s in the middle of putting away his clothes in the spare dresser drawers when the door opens and two boys come in. Seunghyun squishes his shirts into the drawer and beams at them. “Hi!” “Oh, hey. You must be Seunghyun,” Jaejin grins and holds out his hand. The boy behind him that looks just a bit older than Seunghyun is and almost as handsome. “I’m Jaejin, this is Kibum, he lives down the hall from us.” “Nice to meet you!” Seunghyun is all smiles as he shakes hands with Jaejin. His grip is comfortable, and if handshakes could tell anything about a person, Seunghyun could already be in love with him. “What are these posters?” Kibum asks, raising an eyebrow at them. Seunghyun throws a glance over his shoulder. “They’re old anti-smoking ads and stuff.” He grins, jerking his thumb at one with two cowboys. The one that says ‘Bob I’ve got emphysema,’ is kinda famous.” “I’ve never heard about it,” Kibum said, raising an eyebrow. Seunghyun mirrors his expression, unsure whether or not Kibum’s supposed to be the know-all end all about advertising jokes or not. You never can tell, really. Seunghyun grinned, “I think they’re ironic.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Because I smoke, you know?” Jaejin’s laugh is loud and covers Kibum’s scoff. Seunghyun kind of thinks it’s musical even if its really loud. “I like it, I like you,” he grins and clasps Seunghyun on the shoulder with a smile Seunghyun can’t help but echo. He takes the happy jolt in his stomach as satisfaction for being accepted. “Are you, um, crazy?” Kibum asks, eyebrows raising above his hairline. Seunghyun kind of likes that he’s as direct as he is, it definitely makes it easier to be deadpan around him. “No,” Seunghyun laughs, but his eyes are completely serious. “My mom had me tested.” Kibum breaks into a loud laugh and Seunghyun feels like he was just inaugurated into the cool club, or something, when later he even asks him if he would like to come hang out with them and meet the other guys. - Things start off really well at school. He takes a bunch of classes that have nothing to do with acting and makes sculptures out of cafeteria food. He provides much secondhand embarrassment to the people he’s around. He deals with homesickness by making a friend out of a quiet kid named Minhwan who wants to be a wrestler for some reason. “You’re going to end up deaf,” Seunghyun says, and Minhwan just laughs at him. “If that happens, it happens,” he shrugs, and steals one of the waffle fry walls supporting Seunghyun’s newest sculpture. “You’re going to get emphysema.” Seunghyun laughs so hard he falls backwards in his seat and Minhwan has to help him back up. He had one acting class that he managed to squeeze into his schedule on top of the other useless core classes he had to take. There he meets Hongki, a loud boy who had no problems with pushing everyone around in the room as though he were the best. In Seunghyun’s opinion, Geunsuk was much better than him, but there were some things you have to keep to yourself. An actors pride is important, he’d heard somewhere. “You’re saying the lines wrong,” Hongki complains about his tone. “You need more feeling!” “No I’m not,” Seunghyun gives him a smile that might be exasperated. “I have feeling, it’s just different from your interpretation.” The professor overhears their conversation and gives Seunghyun a pat on the shoulder as he walks by. Somehow, he gains Hongki’s respect after that. Which is a generous term for being abused a whole lot more than before. Not that he really minds too much. Hongki treats him to dinner when he feels guilty, which is nice compared to other times, when Hongki “forgets” his wallet. Seunghyun has to keep a twenty on him at all times, just in case one of these spontaneous events happen. They have weekly assignments in class to memorize bits of script to act out in class, and this weeks choice play is Rent, and the scene he receives, with a familiar pat on his shoulder, is the Duet with Angel and Collins in ‘I’ll Cover You.’ And of course, he has Angel’s parts highlighted. He thinks that someone must be laughing at him, somewhere in the universe, as he swallows hard. His teacher seems to know that he doesn’t get embarrassed easily with roles that people don’t usually want to play, and he says that it’s both his biggest strength and his biggest flaw. “The most important part about acting, even in musical theater, is to draw emotions out of the audience.” He taps Seunghyun on the nose with the feather stick he likes to wave around and Seunghyun sneezes in retaliation. Hongki’s good at that. The emotions thing. He could draw emotion from a stone statue, but it’s not like Seunghyun’s bitter. It’s just weird how a man who’s practically a brick wall of sarcasm and snide comments can be such a natural. “You have to be able to work through your ‘self’ and focus on the character you’re playing.” He puts a hand on one of the girls - Sunyoung’s - shoulder and pats it twice before moving back down the line in front of the row of students. This whole forget yourself thing is what they’ll be quizzed on, but Seunghyun can’t get past the part where he has to be hopelessly in love with someone. He most definitely has never been in love like Angel has before. That night, he’s laying backwards on his bed, his head pillowed by a mound of his blankets. He’s rolling an unlit cigarette back and forth between his lips idly as he memorizes the lines - or more rather - the song. He’s never done a musical number before in his life, but the professor assures him that it’s highly important for him to try his best, even if he can’t sing well. What’s more important is the feeling. He furtively glances over at Jaejin and takes the unlit cigarette out of his mouth. Jaejin is bent over his homework, his bangs falling over his face gently, his brow creased as he works some calculus problem out on scratch paper. He waits until he lifts his head, a sign that he’d finished his problem, and gathers his courage. “Hey, Jaejin?” “Hmm?” “Can I kiss you?” Seunghyun hears Jaejin’s pencil lead snap against his paper. “What?” His voice cracks in surprise. When he whirls around in his chair, he nearly drops out of it. His glasses slip down his nose and he pushes them back up with a disgruntled expression. “What?” He repeats, a little more calmly as he finally accepts the information. Seunghyun winces at his tone and gestures to the script in his hand. “I need to practice before class, because practice makes perfect, you know?” Jaejin frowns, “why not ask Lizzy? You like her, don’t you?” “She’s a friend,” Seunghyun enunciates. And then he shrugs. “And anyway, it needs to be with a guy, because that’s who I’m kissing.” “A guy,” Jaejin repeats. Seunghyun can almost see him going through his mental catalogue of all things theater. “What are you...” “Rent,” Seunghyun supplies, slipping off his bed and leaving his cigarette on his bedside table. “See, I’m playing Angel, and I need someone to play Collins, and you’re the only person I know who...” He freezes and redirects his sentence. “You’re the only person I know who doesn’t think I’m weird.” He’d been about to say “You’re the only person I know who I like in that way.” But thankfully, he didn’t get that far. “I think you’re plenty weird.” Jaejin points out, folding his arms over his chest. “But that doesn’t mean I want to kiss you.” “Why not?” He frowns. “Maybe you’ll like it.” His heart is pounding too hard in his chest. This is the feeling he needs to remember. For acting. “Well, you’re a guy, for one.” Jaejin says. Seunghyun slides over to him and drops to his knees. “Please?” He licks his lips. “Pretend I’m a girl. Pretend I’m...Seungsoon or something.” He grips the side of Jaejin’s chair and leans upwards until their noses are almost touching. He’s never noticed before, but Jaejin has really long eyelashes. He also has a really thin mouth. “Ugh, too close,” Jaejin complains, looking down as though Seunghyun’s lips are foreign objects or something. Seunghyun takes the moment his mouth is still open to twitch his chin up a little and catch Jaejin’s lips with his own. He feels Jaejin freeze under the hand he’d placed on his knee. It’s soft and at first, Jaejin’s resistant, but Seunghyun leans up and presses down and then Jaejin gives in to him. He tastes kind of like coffee, he realizes, and it’s nice and sweet and he can’t get over the warmth playing in the pit of his stomach, warming him all over. He feels Jaejin pull back and opens eyes he didn’t know were closed and smiles at him, slow and warm. “Only one thousand more to go!” he says with a grin, slapping his script. “Yah!” Jaejin smacks him in the shoulder as hard as he can (which isn’t really that hard at all). Laughing, he turns away from Jaejin’s stunned expression to mold his tingling lips between his fingers. - Seunghyun isn’t sure if the Collins that he plays opposite of him in class is really good or really bad. He wonders if he really practiced, but Jay is adamant that he did, and his voice is rich and deep compared to his own, and the kiss scene works, but only because Seunghyun’s thinking of Jaejin turned Collins. They break apart and step back and the professor claps them both on the back. “When we put the production of Rent on, you two must audition for these roles. I won’t take no for an answer.” Seunghyun swallows and gives him a shy smile, and he sits down on the bleachers next to Hongki and blames nerves for the way he can’t seem to get his hands to stop shaking. He thinks he has a problem. That’s all there is too it. And it’s not as though he’s ever really payed attention to things that are “normal,” but he knows that other people do, especially Jaejin. He rushes out of the theater room for the first time ever as soon as it’s done, and doesn’t look back, even when Hongki calls to him to go to eat. He ends up eating with Minhwan instead. Seunghyun is staring off, idly watching some girl with long dyed blonde hair converse with another girl across the cafeteria. He feels nothing from her, wants nothing from her, and he doens’t know if he should really be caring so much about something like this. “What’s wrong?” Minhwan asks as he slides some of his carrots on to Seunghyun’s plate while he’s distracted. Seunghyun glances down and finds half of the vegetables from Minhwan’s dinner occupying the space between his curry rice and his own carrots. “If I told you I like guys, what would you do?” Seunghyun asks, leaning forward, resting his chin in one hand. He carefully catalogued the way Minhwan froze mid scrape as he took the information in. “I’d say never go out for wrestling,” Minhwan laughs, relaxing a little. “Once I was wrestling with someone who had a boner. It was kind of awkward.” He shrugs, looking up to meet Seunghyun’s eyes. “It’s not like I’m not going to be your friend, or something. You are who you are, right?” Seunghyun grins. “Right.” He jabs at some broccoli with his fork and stuffs it in his mouth. Swallowing, he points his fork at him. “Did you win the fight?” Minhwan sits back, “yeah.” Seunghyun snickers at him. “Maybe you’re gay, too.” He enjoys the theory that anyone who wants to have the occupation of throwing men around and touching them all over their body might actually harbor feelings. Minhwan chokes on his drink in response. “I have a girlfriend!” He rasps when he’s done dying, all red in the face, and Seunghyun just leans in, smirking. “Are you sure?” He waggles his eyebrows at him and Minhwan flicks a carrot at him in retaliation. - A few nights later, he’s just about to drift off to sleep when Jaejin stumbles into the room, kicking the door shut and tripping over his own feet. He catches himself on the side of Seunghyun’s desk. He can hear his soft curses as he toes off his shoes and crashes into the chair Seunghyun accidentally forgot to push into his desk and topples over onto the foot of Seunghyun’s bed. Seunghyun winces as Jaejin’s cheek comes into contact with his shinbone. “Ouch!” Jaejin moans, and slips down to the floor in a motionless heap. Seunghyun sits up, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and leans over to turn his lamp on. He winces at the burst of light and squints at Jaejin. “Too much light,” Jaejin groans, throwing an arm over his eyes. “Are you...drunk?” Seunghyun tries, vaguely surprised. Jaejin doesn’t seem like the type, but then, they are in college. Jaejin hums in response and Seunghyun takes it as a yes, slipping out of bed to haul his roommate up into a seated position. Jaejin falls back against him like a limp noodle and tugs on his hand until he plops own on the floor next to him. “Jinwoon had a party,” Jaejin grins a little. “You should a’ come.” Seunghyun grins at him. “Yeah?” “He had everything there, if you know what I mean,” Jaejin smiles, almost whimsically. Seunghyun doesn’t really know for sure, but he can guess, so he just nods. “Who all went?” “Oh, just me, and Kibum, and Dongwoon.” Jaejin frowns. “And Chulyong. Nicole was there too but that’s because her and Jinwoon are tight,” he crosses his index and middle fingers. “It was kind of fun.” He lays his head on Seunghyun’s shoulder, and Seunghyun stiffens a little. Jaejin’s too drunk to notice, though. They sit in silence, save for Jaejin’s heavy breathing and Seunghyun’s heartbeat in his ears. Finally, Jaejin breaks it again. “I wish you’d been there,” he mumbles, tilting his head back until he was looking at Seunghyun, who realized that if he turned his head just a little more, their lips would be touching. The thought drops a heavy metal ball into the pit of his stomach. “Next time, invite me then,” Seunghyun murmurs, barely above a whisper, breath dancing across Jaejin’s skin, they were so close. Jaejin hums in agreement and tilts his head just a little bit so that their lips touch. Seunghyun freezes, heart beating in his chest so loudly that he’s sure he’s going to die of a heart attack. He pulls back just enough to shift so that he was facing him. Holding Jaejin’s head between his palms, he kisses kisses him softly, unable to stop himself. “You’re such a good kisser,” Jaejin mumbles when they pull away, and Seunghyun smiles. “Just nine-hundred and ninty-nine to go, right?” “Right,” Seunghyun swallows against the pang behind his ribcage. “You need to get into bed.” “Whyyyy?” Jaejin whines, throwing himself against Seunghyun, who falls back from the added weight. His head hits the floor with a soft thunk against the carpeting he’d bought. Jaejin grins at him, all but laying on his chest. Seunghyun could think of five thousand reasons why Jaejin should go to bed. However his “you’re drunk” sounded particularly weak. Even to him. “Lots of people make out when they’re drunk,” Jaejin points out, logical even now, as he twists his hips around. Seunghyun swallows hard against the warmth that suddenly pools in his groin, making his pants tight. “But, you’ll hate me in the morning,” Seunghyun weakly protests, but it ends up being more of a question. He curses internally. Jaejin’s hands slip under his shirt and he leans down until their mouths touch again. Seunghyun returns the kiss with a desperate moan. “Stop,” he gasps, and sits up so abruptly that their foreheads bump. Jaejin’s breath smells like alcohol, his face is half hidden in shadow save the curve of his lips and the shine in his eyes. He curls one hand around the back of Jaejin’s neck, fingers twisting in his hair. He can’t help but give him another kiss, hot and needy, but he pulls back and up and all but runs into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. He frowns at himself, looks at his shaking hands and clenches them until his nails bite into his skin and leave angry red marks. Gay he might be, but he won’t be someone who takes advantage of a guy he likes while he’s drunk. - The next morning, Seunghyun is shaken awake to Jaejin, who looks a little too perky for him at 9 a.m. Especially for having been drunk the night before. “Seunghyunnie,” Jaejin grins, and Seunghyun grunts at him. And because Seunghyun wasn’t really ready to be alive yet on a Saturday morning, he rolls over on him and buries his face into his pillow. “Oh come on,” Jaejin says, voice muffled. A finger wiggles its way through the blankets and right into his ribs and Seunghyun yelps in surprise flailing under the covers and smacking Jaejin in the head with his pillow. He sits up, breathing heavily, hair askew, and gapes at him. “What do you want?” Seunghyun asks, a little more gruff than he thought. Jaejin spreads his arms out wide. “No hangovers!” He does a little jig. “Kibum and I had a bet on who would have a hangover or not. And I didn’t, so I’m going to win.” He plops down on the side of Seunghyun’s bed and it caves in a little bit. Jaejin bends down and picks his pillow up from the floor, and when he bends back up, he keeps bending backwards until their faces are inches apart. Seunghyun attempts to scoot his head backwards, but Jaejin has a hold on the back of his neck suddenly, and leaning in until their lips are touching, and really, Seunghyun doesn’t have to kiss back, except he is. His hand is warm on Jaejin’s thigh and he makes a small noise in the back of his throat when Jaejin pulls away. “Morning!” He grins, shoving the pillow into his face. “Just nine-hundred and ninety-seven kisses left to go, right?” Seunghyun sticks his tongue out at him. “You’re the one with the major with numbers,” he grins. “Right, so I know,” Jaejin prods him until he gets out of bed. “Get dressed, I’m hungry! I want toast, and eggs and waffles and pancakes and-” “You goat,” Seunghyun snickers, and ducks a flying pillow as he runs into the bathroom.