frat!s.coups x sorority!reader
words: 7.3k
themes/genres: college au, frat au, fluff, rom com
warnings: suggestive! there’s a heavy makeout scene, but no sex. general college antics, including heavy drinking/partying. there’s a scene with a creep on campus.
it’s your final year of college, and you’ve been elected president of your sorority. this is all great and fine, but as the semester goes on, you find yourself having repeated run-ins with the president of the fraternity next door in a series of unfortunate coincidences (that might not actually be coincidences, as you come to discover).
or:
in which you’re trying to deal with your crush on seungcheol in a normal way, but the meddling kids are making it harder than it needs to be.
title and soundtrack: hello tutorial - zion.t feat seulgi
please reblog from this link! tumblr is dumb as usual 😡
1.
Not even a day into your senior year of college, you open the door to find Seungcheol on the other side and you immediately know you have a problem on your hands.
This isn’t the first time you’ve met Seungcheol. The two of you have been neighbors since freshman year, when he joined the frat next door to your sorority. He’s naturally friendly and likeable, everybody’s friend, and it’s no surprise to anyone when he’s elected the secretary, vice president, and then, this year, the president of Sigma Beta Tau. This isn’t a problem at all. And anyways, you’re also friendly and likeable, an organized, responsible leader, going into your senior year as the president of your sorority. That’s not the problem.
The problem is the broken glass littering the carpet of the downstairs hallway between the first sitting room and the study room, the empty window frame next to the mess, and the guiltily sulking forms of Mingyu and Seokmin towering behind Seungcheol.
“I’m here to apologize,” Seungcheol says, “on behalf of Sigma.”
You blink at Seungcheol. Just a moment ago, you had been in the hallway inspecting the mark on the wall left by the errant football, cussing out the mysterious perpetrator with a few of the other girls who were in the study room at the time of the incident. There’s a cut on your hand from a jagged piece of glass and a careless swing of your arm when the knocking on the front door had startled you.
“Seokmin and Mingyu are here to clean up the glass and board the window,” Seungcheol says, tilting his head in the direction of each boy as he mentions their name. “They were playing catch in the backyard and got careless. It won’t happen again, and Sigma will foot the bill for repairs.”
But the thing is: it’s been a while since you last saw Seungcheol. He’s gotten his ears pierced and his hair is a bit grown out and pushed back, and he’s wearing a sleeveless muscle tee that shows off his broad shoulders and well-muscled arms, and he’s so fucking hot that your brain short-circuits and all words leave you.
“Kim Mingyu,” you hear a loud voice come from over your shoulder as one of your sorority sisters rounds the corner, her hands on her hips, “tell me how I just knew that it was your clumsy ass that did this? Do you not know how to throw a football? Do I need to teach you how to aim?”
“Stop it, Minjeong” Mingyu whines, immediately putting on his puppy eyes, “Seokmin was the one who threw it-“
“And you’re the one who couldn’t catch it,” Seokmin immediately counters, pointing an accusatory finger.
“You boys are both so dumb,” Minjeong rolls her eyes, “it’s a miracle if either of you ever manages to hold hands with a girl.”
“Take that back,” Mingyu gasps, mouth falling open in shock. “Excuse me, but I’ve held multiple girls' hands before!”
“You’re the one who got dumped on Valentine’s Day last year ,” Seokmin accuses, and Minjeong’s eyes flash with rage, her mouth opening to deliver something biting and mean.
“Both of you, knock it off,” Seungcheol suddenly interrupts, his voice deep and commanding, and Mingyu and Seokmin immediately close their mouths and look guilty. You feel a not-completely-unpleasant shiver travel down your spine for some reason.
“Whatever,” Minjeong says, turning with a flip of her short hair and heading up the stairs haughtily.
“Um,” you say, opening the door a bit wider, mouth suddenly dry, “sorry about that.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Seungcheol says again, looking genuinely apologetic. “These two are clowns, and they’ll be cleaning up their mess.” From behind him, the two guilty parties in question nod sheepishly.
“We’ll handle the broken glass. We brought gloves and everything,” Seokmin says, raising a pair of leather work gloves.
“Thanks,” you say haltingly, turning to the side to let the boys in. “The broken window is in that hallway.” You point toward the opposite end of the sitting room in the direction of the disaster zone.
“Y/N!” Seungcheol’s loud voice, bordering on a shout, startles you into a jump. When he takes your hand in his own large, warm hands, your heart nearly bursts out of your chest through your esophagus. “You’re hurt,” Seungcheol says, turning your hand over and inspecting the cut on your palm.
You blink, willing yourself not to overreact. “Oh, yeah, I think I cut myself on some broken glass.”
“Let me clean that up for you,” Seungcheol says, gently passing the tips of his fingers near the site of the wound.
Your brain isn’t functioning. It’s all static, half panicked and half dazed, as you hear yourself say “the first aid kit’s in the kitchen,” and proceed to lead Seungcheol there, with your hand laying palm-up on his the whole time.
Later on, as he dabs at the cut with a damp paper towel and sprays it with antiseptic before patting it dry and placing a band-aid over it, you realize that you’ve made a terrible impression, even if it’s not your first. Seungcheol is an innate leader and his presence commands respect, and all you’ve done today is stand around dumbly and let your sorority sister insult Mingyu and Seokmin.
Seungcheol gives you his number, saving himself in your phone with a cherry emoji by his name, telling you that he’ll be in contact to arrange for repairs to the window. You thank him, graciously accept his apologies once again, and send him back on his way next door, the band-aid on your palm burning a hole into your skin and tugging at the embarrassing fluttery part of your heart, and you think: you have a problem on your hands, and it’s called Choi Seungcheol.
2.
“What the hell are you doing here?!”
The boy in front of you falls on the ground with a shout, jumping at the sound of your shriek. He turns and you recognize him as one of the new Sigma pledges, a freshman named Chin or Cham or something. “I-I’m sorry,” he stammers, scrambling up to his knees, “I was looking for a girl—“
“Obviously! But you can’t be up here,” you snarl, pulling your bathrobe tighter around your body. You’re wearing fluffy slippers and there’s a towel around your hair. Pointing the curling iron in your hand at the boy, you glare at him. “Come with me.”
He slumps, avoiding eye contact, and lets you lead him down the stairs as if you were holding a gun to his back instead of an unplugged curling iron. You’re still in disbelief at the sheer nerve of the boy to try to sneak into the upper floors of the sorority house— your sorority house, at 9pm on a Saturday night, no less.
“Sit,” you wave the curling iron at the bottom step of the staircase in the center of the large foyer, and the boy plants his ass on the hardwood ledge obediently, looking like a kicked puppy. “I’m calling Seungcheol.”
The boy’s eyes flash with panic. “Wait, I said I’m sorry!” But his pleas fall on deaf ears, and you already have your phone held up to your ear anyways. Seungcheol picks up almost immediately.
“Hey,” his voice is somehow deeper and rougher on the phone, “what’s up?”
“I caught one of your pledges upstairs, Seungcheol,” you say, narrowing your eyes at the topic of conversation. “Come pick up the kid.”
“Oh my god,” Seungcheol groans. “Who is it?”
You point your phone in the kid’s direction. “What’s your name?”
“Chan,” he supplies helpfully, looking miserable. “Lee.”
“Yeah, that’s one of mine,” Seungcheol sighs. You hear some rustling in the background. “I’ll be over in a minute.”
“Thanks,” you reply primly, hanging up.
True to his word, a minute later, there’s a knock on the door. When you open it, Seungcheol stands on the other side, wavy black hair hanging over his face and dressed in an oversized sweatshirt.
“Sorry for the kid,” he jerks his head in Chan’s direction, looking thoroughly exasperated. “Chan,” he calls out, frowning, “what’s the number one rule of sorority houses on this campus again?”
Chan pouts. “Um. Don’t break windows?”
“Wrong,” you cross your arms, letting your curling iron hang from your fingers, no longer wielding it like a police baton. “Rule number one. No boys allowed upstairs. I know it’s archaic and patriarchal, but this is literally a house full of young women with no self-preservation instinct, and college still isn’t a safe place for women, statistically. So, no boys allowed upstairs, and if we catch another one of you past the first floor again, I’ll have to ban Sigmas from this house completely.”
Chan’s jaw drops. “But Jeonghan told me that rule didn’t apply if I was invited in!”
You raise your eyebrows in disbelief the same time Seungcheol pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs a heavy, long-suffering dad sigh. “Do you think we’re vampires? And, who invited you?”
“Oh my god, Chan,” you hear a voice come from upstairs and turn to see Yerim hanging over the bannister on the third floor, lashes on, glittery makeup on her lids, wearing a tiny going-out skirt. “I was just flirting when I told you to come over! I didn’t think you’d take it literally!”
You shake your head. “We have got to raise our standards a bit,” you huff under your breath, and Yerim rolls her eyes.
“Please, sometimes I just want to have some fun with a cute himbo. We can’t all fuck fraternity presidents, can we?”
There’s a slight choking noise from Seungcheol that’s quickly drowned out by Chan and Yerim cackling in tandem and the sound of blood rushing to your face, your heart thudding in your ears, the last of your patience leaving your body. “You,” you point at Yerim with the curling iron, once again wielding it like a weapon, “go away and stop antagonizing everyone. You,” you direct the curling iron at Chan, “don’t let me catch you back here again. And you,” you turn to Seungcheol and falter, not sure why you’re angrily rounding on him when he didn’t do anything wrong. “Um. Thanks for coming over.”
“Yeah, any time,” he fluffs the hair at the back of his flushed neck and motions awkwardly for Chan to get up. “Give me a call if you need anything. C’mon, let’s go.”
The freshman gets up from the staircase and follows Seungcheol obediently, turning and giving Yerim a friendly wave before leaving and closing the door gently behind him.
“Hey Y/N, hurry up and finish getting dressed,” Yerim calls down from the third floor, “you said you’d sober-monitor us at the Nu Kaps’ party.”
It’s then when you belatedly remember that this entire exchange happened while you were still in a long fluffy bathrobe covered in a pattern of little fried eggs, fluffy slippers on your feet, a wet towel piled on your head, an unplugged curling iron in your hand with the cord dragging on the floor.
“What is wrong with me,” you huff under your breath, turning to head up the stairs.
3.
You derive a considerable amount of pleasure from being the opposite of a stereotypical machine shop hand, you with your lip gloss, sorority letters on your laptop, and Starbucks in your hand. It’s a far cry from the burly dudes that typically run the shop, but you’re a mechanical engineering major, goddamnit, and you’re smart and friendly and you love getting paid just to help other engineering students with their projects.
But perhaps the only downside to being a shop hand presents itself when Mingyu shows up at the tail end of your shift with a tupperware container of homemade cookies in his hands and a pout on his lips. “I need help,” he says, his voice small and helpless despite his towering stature and large biceps peeking under the sleeves of his tee.
“Ask Johnny,” you tell him as you replace your safety glasses on the rack and scribble your time out on the sheet hanging by the door. “I’m not the shop hand on duty anymore.”
“Um, but I want your help,” he insists, following you as you shoulder your backpack and leave the shop. “Some of the brothers are trying to build a loft and we can’t figure it out, and we need an engineer.”
“A house full of dudes, and not a single one of them can put a few pieces of wood together?” You raise your eyebrows at Mingyu. He sticks by your side as you walk back home, which, unfortunately, is the same path and direction that he takes to walk home.
Mingyu whines, “yeah, but I want your help. Did I ever tell you that you were my favorite calculus TA? And look,” he holds out the tupperware in his hands, “I made red velvet cookies stuffed with cream cheese frosting, just for you.”
For such a large, buff, fuckboy-appearing guy, Mingyu is surprisingly pathetic when he wants to be. It’s hard for you to say no when he curls his shoulders in like he’s trying to make himself small, like the world’s saddest little Victorian street urchin. “Fine,” you sigh. “I’ll help you.”
But when he leads you upstairs to the half-finished construction project, instead of the group of boys he had mentioned, you find yourself face-to-face with a sweaty, frazzled-looking Seungcheol in his bedroom, surrounded by plywood and pine beams.
“Mingyu,” he says, furrowing his brows, “I thought you were going to get Johnny.”
“Johnny wasn’t on shift when I got there,” Mingyu replies quickly, stuffing the box of cookies in your hands. “I remembered wrong, I guess, and Y/N was the shop hand on duty, so I brought her back here instead.”
Seungcheol turns to you. He’s wearing another one of those muscle tees that shows off his large arms and broad shoulders and you can smell the scent of his aftershave mixing with freshly cut wood, and suddenly your mouth is dry and you can’t find it in you to chastise Mingyu for lying.
“You don’t have to stay,” he tells you apologetically. “I think we can figure it out.”
You blink, snapping out of your trance, and step forward, walking over a stray pile of scattered power tools to frown at the mess of tiny holes in the drywall. “Do you boys not know what a stud finder is? You can’t just attach things to drywall and expect it to support any weight.”
Mingyu backs away, putting himself between the door and the doorframe. “A stud finder? Isn’t that you?” he squeaks, before escaping and closing the door behind him.
“Ignore him,” Seungcheol says, burying his face in his hands. “I just wanted more storage space.”
You don’t need Seungcheol to tell you to ignore Mingyu, however, because you’re already distracted by the materials laid out on the floor, quickly putting together a plan in your head. “Okay, so we’ll have these as horizontal supports,” you point to a stack of wood by the wall, putting the cookies down on Seungcheol’s desk. “But I don’t think the studs in your walls can support the shear that we’ll be putting them under, so we’ll want some diagonal beams too, to redirect the force this way and minimize torque,” you hold up your palm vertically and point your finger downward, then into your hand, to indicate the direction of force. “It’s all a really simple statics problem that Mingyu should have been able to solve.”
When you turn back towards Seungcheol, you’re surprised to see him staring at you, his eyes dark and intense. You’re caught off guard to see his attention so fully directed toward you. “Uh,” you lick your lips, suddenly feeling very awkward, “I have a stud finder at my place. I’ll grab some eye protection for us, too, and some drywall fasteners. I hope you don’t mind if I make you do all the heavy lifting, though,” you laugh nervously, eyeing his bulky arms. “I’ll, uh, be back in five.”
And while you’re grabbing the requisite supplies, you think, it probably wouldn’t hurt to spray a little perfume on yourself and refresh your lip gloss while you’re at it.
4.
Sometimes, you resent the mom-friend reputation thrust upon you by virtue of being a senior and the president of the sorority this year, but there’s a few good reasons why you’re usually the one sober-monitoring the girls, and most of them include the fact that you’re terrible at holding your liquor. That’s why it’s a surprise when Sooyoung offers to sober-monitor at the Sigmas’ Halloween party. She’s not the most responsible sober-monitor, usually disappearing halfway through, but at least she’s one of the older ones, and it’s been a while since you last let loose.
And, besides, it’s Halloween. In the wise words of Cady Heron: in girl world, Halloween is the one night a year a girl can dress like a total slut, and no other girls can say anything about it. Tonight, you and Yerim are in matching playboy bunny costumes, at her insistence. Despite the sexy alien costume hanging in your closet, you had let Yerim persuade you into the black lacy teddy, iconic white cuffs and collar, and mandatory bunny ears, with the promise of the Nu Kaps’ Halloween party tomorrow and the Betas’ Halloween party on Sunday.
You’re already drunk when you walk into the Sigmas’ house, arm linked with Yerim. It’s dark and there’s a fog machine somewhere and there’s an actual DJ in the corner, one of the brothers that you don’t recognize. Sooyoung greets you, her tall figure and eagle eyes giving her a vantage point over the costumed crowd, and pushes a drink in your hand. “Come on,” she grins, eyes twinkling, “it’s your designated night away from responsibility. Drink up!”
Already tipsy and bubbly-drunk, you tip the shot back, ignoring the burn of shitty vodka, and let Yerim drag you to the packed dance floor. You’re not sure how much time passes, but somewhere in the middle, you dance with a dude dressed as a sexy priest, you’re handed two more shots and another cup of the Sigmas’ homemade jungle juice, and you dance with a girl dressed as Harley Quinn. You end up drinking way more than you should, justifying it to yourself as just blowing off steam from midterm season.
At some point, you find yourself laughing and hanging off Tony the Tiger (it’s Soonyoung, but you had mistaken him for Johnny, who is also dressed as Tony the Tiger (this is somehow something that happens to Johnny quite frequently)), when you see Mingyu (a fireman who can’t seem to find a shirt) accompanied by Jihoon (the world’s most miserable teletubby). You remove your arms from around Soonyoung’s tiger-striped torso to wave at your friends.
It’s at this exact moment that you feel Soonyoung’s shoulder jerk to the side after undoubtedly having been pushed by the crowd, sending you, drunk and wobbly in your high heeled pumps, stumbling away from Soonyoung and into someone’s chest. Luckily, a pair of warm, strong arms close around you before you can fall.
You look up at your savior, and in your drunken state, it takes you a moment to realize what you’re looking at, but when your brain finally processes the visual input and translates it into a meaningful image, you bark out a short laugh. It’s Seungcheol, dressed in a maroon velvet smoking jacket, tied loosely to expose his chest.
“Cheol! You’re dressed as Hugh Hefner,” you grin, staggering to your feet.
He frowns at you. “Are you okay?”
“Y-yeah,” you blink, struggling to clear your vision. “I think I’m a little drunk.”
Seungcheol laughs, putting an arm around your waist to steady you. “I think you’re a lot drunk,” he says. “Come on, let’s go upstairs. I’ll get you some water. You should sit down.”
“‘M fine,” you mumble, but you still let him guide you away from the party and up the darkened stairs, his hand firmly placed against the dip of your waist, catching all your little stumbles and sways. You blink again, hard, and suddenly, you’re seated on Seungcheol’s bed in his room. The lights are on and Seungcheol is handing you a bottle of water.
“Drink,” he orders, uncapping the bottle and placing it in your hands. “You’ll regret it tomorrow if you don’t hydrate.”
Instead, you point to the wooden structure over his window, which now holds cardboard boxes and a few suitcases. “Our loft. It’s still up. I’m glad it didn’t collapse. It’s, like, our baby.”
“Yeah,” you hear him say, nudging your hands gently. “Water, remember?”
“Oh.” Obediently, you lift the bottle to your lips and drink, spilling some from the corner of your mouth and down your chest in your haste. When you’re done, you hand the half-empty bottle to Seungcheol, who caps it and places it on his nightstand. (His ears are strangely pink, but you forget about it almost as soon as you notice.)
The mattress dips as Seungcheol takes a seat next to you and places something heavy over your shoulders. You look down to see an oversized denim jacket belonging to Seungcheol covering your frame. With just a little bit of swimming, you manage to put your arms through the sleeves. The jacket smells like Seungcheol’s cologne, warm and spicy, mixed with the pleasant aroma of freshly cut softwood that still permeates his room.
“How are you feeling?” Seungcheol’s voice is gentle, and you can’t help but to stare at his plush lips bitten cherry-red, the pale column of his neck, the exposed V of his chest.
“Cheollie,” you whine, the nickname rolling off your drunken tongue easily, “why are you so hot?”
This time, Seungcheol flushes all the way pink. “Stop, I’m not,” he responds automatically, but you’re relentless in your current state.
“We’re matching,” you mumble, shifting closer to him until you’re almost in his lap. “We’re practically wearing a couple costume. Did you know I’d be dressing as a playboy bunny today?”
“No,” he puffs his cheeks, “the guys put me up to it. I had no idea.”
“You look so good,” you press your hand flat against his chest, tilting your head when Seungcheol shudders under your touch. “I’m normally a feminist, but I’ll make an exception for you.”
Seungcheol laughs and you feel his body vibrate underneath your palm. “That sounds like something you’ll regret saying tomorrow,” he grins, relaxing a little bit.
“Mm,” you consider his words. “That’s a problem for sober me. But Cheol, can you please just entertain drunk me for tonight? I want to kiss you so much, it’s all I can think about,” you murmur, shifting to throw your leg over his lap and straddle him.
Seungcheol groans when you rake your nails lightly up the back of his neck, burying your fingers in his dark hair. With your other hand, you reach up, sliding your palm from his chest to his shoulder and pushing away at the collar of the velvet smoking jacket.
“You’ll be the death of me,” he rasps, his hands settling on your hips and squeezing, before tilting his jaw up and meeting your lips with his. Seungcheol’s mouth is hot and slick, and he makes a small noise of surprise when you drag your teeth over his lower lip.
The party continues downstairs, floorboards rattling with the heavy bass from the music, but you’re focused on the quiet hitch of Seungcheol’s breath when you grind down on him, rolling your hips over the bulge in his pants. The tips of Seungcheol’s fingers ghost across the edge of your teddy, where the lace and satin stops, demarcating the line between your hip and thigh.
Seungcheol moves down to your throat, licking and sucking lightly at the flesh under your jaw. When you feel his teeth graze against your skin, you can’t suppress the high whimper that escapes your mouth as you press your chest against his, needing to be closer to him, closer. You want his mouth everywhere, his hands everywhere, you want him everywhere on you.
And then, you wake up.
It’s morning and the sun streams through the half-closed blinds of the window, covering the room with stripes of gold. Your head pounds with a nasty headache and you feel like something small and furry crawled into your mouth and died. You blink and, slowly, the world materializes. You’re laying on Seungcheol’s bed, still dressed in your costume from the night before, rolled on your side and propped up with a pillow against your chest so you don’t choke during the night. There’s a trash can by the bed placed to easily catch any vomit, and it’s thankfully empty.
You blink again and realize that across the room from the bed, Seungcheol is asleep on his couch, dressed in oversized sweats with the hood pulled up over his head, cheeks squished, full lips stuck in a pout, curled into a ball with his knees drawn up to his chest.
The previous night is hazy, but you can still remember some things. Soonyoung, dressed as Tony the Tiger. Yerim passing you another shot. You, straddling Seungcheol, his lips parted against yours, moaning into your mouth. Then, Seungcheol pushing you off his lap, cheeks flushed but firm in his insistence that you go to sleep despite your whines, your hands reaching out for his body. Seungcheol telling you that you’re too drunk for anything and putting you in bed.
“Oh my god,” you groan, voice hoarse. You’re a messy drunk, you know this, and you never should have let Sooyoung offer to sober-monitor while Yerim supplies you with drink after drink. You’re not sure if you can ever face Seungcheol again after your behavior the night before. “What is wrong with me,” you murmur to yourself, reaching out for the bottle of water and painkillers left on the nightstand for you.
(Later on when you get back to the sorority house, dressed in a borrowed tee and sweatpants from Seungcheol, you’re immediately crowded by Minjeong and Yerim, demanding updates. “Did you hook up with him,” Minjeong asks, following you into the bathroom and sitting on the counter.
“No,” you respond, pouring makeup remover onto a cotton pad and working at the smeared mess of mascara under your eyes.
“What?! You’re so hot,” Yerim huffs, crossing her arms. “He’s insane if he didn’t want to fuck you.”
“No, it was totally my fault.” You sigh, discarding the dirty cotton pad and wetting a fresh one with makeup remover. “I got way too drunk, no thanks to you, Yerim.”
Minjeong and Yerim share a look.
“Anyways, he was just being a gentleman. We made out, but it never went past that. He said he didn’t want to do anything while I was drunk. Remember,” you wave a finger at the two younger girls, “sex happens between two consenting adults, and you can’t consent to sex if you’re a sloppy blackout drunk bitch like I was. I was lucky that I ended up going upstairs with Seungcheol, and not some random weirdo.”
“So,” Minjeong grins, pushing right past your lecture, “you’re saying that you made out with him? Is he a good kisser? How big is his dick?”
You sigh. “Get out and let me shower,” you snap, waving them out of the bathroom. “And stop being nosy about my sex life!”)
5.
You’re drunk again, this time at a club, after having been dragged out on the insistence of Mingyu and Seokmin.
Ever since the Halloween incident, you’ve been too embarrassed to show your face around the Sigma house anymore in fear that you’ll run into Seungcheol. Which is why it’s a surprise when Mingyu and Seokmin show up at your front door, asking to see you and insisting that you join them and a few other friends to go clubbing. Predictably, all it takes for your resolve to crumble is an expertly pathetic pout from Mingyu and a whine of “I haven’t seen you in forever, I miss you,” from Seokmin.
When you arrive at the club with the two boys, however, you see a small gaggle of friends already seated in a corner booth, heads leaned together and conversing. You recognize Minjeong and Yerim instantly, but it looks like Chan and Soonyoung are also in the mix.
Yerim spots you first, turning and grinning brightly while waving her arm to flag you down. “C’mere,” she shouts over the booming music, “finish the rest of this cocktail for me, I don’t like it.”
You slide into the seat next to Yerim, pressing your thigh against hers and leaning into her side affectionately, and take a sip of the drink in her glass, only to grimace and frown. “Yerim, why would you order a long island iced tea? And, why should I trust you to hand me drinks, after what happened last time?”
“Just one drink,” she wheedles, looping her arm around yours, and you sigh, because it’s your last weekend out before you need to hunker down for finals, and because it’s Yerim and you can’t deny your favorite freshman, and because you can’t make good choices all the time.
Which is how you end up here— a little drunk, on the dance floor after having been dragged by a Seokmin who has been insisting all night that you meet one of his friends from high school, Jaehyun, who’s really cool and you’ll definitely really like, he promises, offering up his pinky when you gave him a dubious look. The guy in question, who you’re dancing with right now, is tall and broad and well-dressed, and he’s so handsome, you’re not sure you’re seeing correctly, because it shouldn’t be possible for a person to be so conventionally attractive.
You put your arm around his shoulder, cupping your hand around the back of his neck for leverage, and lean up to speak in his ear over the music. “You’re one of the Nu Kaps, right? Aren’t they throwing a party at the house tonight?”
Jaehyun shrugs. “Yeah, but Seokmin and Mingyu made me come out here,” he tells you, tilting his head toward your neck so you can hear him over the noise. “Hey, aren’t you a TA for MEC 3110? I need some help with the problem set due tomorrow. Wanna get out of here?”
You burst into laughter, tilting your head back and swatting his chest. “Is that how you flirt?”
“No,” Jaehyun grins, “but I really do need help. I’m not actually hitting on you. I don’t want to get murdered by that guy,” he jerks his head toward the crowd behind you. You turn to look over your shoulder, only to see Seungcheol making his way through the crowd with a scowl on his face.
“Oh, that’s my friend,” you turn back towards Jaehyun. “He’s not scary, I promise.”
“Not taking my chances, sorry,” Jaehyun says, his cheeks dimpling with a smile. “So, can we meet about that problem set? I got a study group and everything. That unit on combined bending and axial loading is killing all of us.”
“Fine,” you puff, patting the side of his neck as he retracts his hands from your waist. “Text me, alright?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll ask Seokmin for your number,” he calls, disappearing into the crowd just as you feel Seungcheol’s hand close around your wrist.
Seungcheol tugs on your arm, spinning you around and pulling you into his chest smoothly. “Who’s that, and why does he need your number,” he asks, holding you against him with a hand on the small of your back.
“That’s Jaehyun, a friend of Seokmin’s. He needs help with some mechanics problems,” you say, looping your arms around his shoulders easily. “He’s in my deformable bodies class.”
“He needs your help studying?” Seungcheol raises an eyebrow dubiously. “Doesn’t sound likely.”
“Maybe he has other motives. Why do you care? I’m his TA, I can’t not help,” you reply testily, frowning. Seungcheol’s hand presses tighter against the small of your back.
“I don’t care,” he says, clearly lying. “You can do whatever you want with whoever you want.”
He’s sulking, you realize. You stop dancing and stare at him. “Cheol, you’re not jealous, are you?”
Seungcheol flushes all the way to the tips of his ears and he looks away. Against your better judgement, you laugh at the sudden awkwardness that comes over him. “We’ll talk,” you promise, grabbing his hand and interlocking your fingers between his, “but not here. C’mon, let’s get out of the dance floor.” Seungcheol doesn’t put up any resistance as you pull him through the crowd, letting you lead him back to the table, linked by your clasped hands in the middle.
The two of you slide back into the booth occupied by your friends in the back, who all zero in on your linked hands.
“God,” Mingyu groans, slapping a ten dollar bill in Seokmin’s hand, “fine, you win.”
Seokmin holds out a hand in Chan and Soonyoung’s direction, raising his eyebrows. “Twenty from you two. I haven’t paid Minjeong and Yerim for Halloween, so we’ll count it as even.”
“Hold on,” you frown, pulling your hand from Seungcheol’s (you nearly miss the tiny sulky pout that he makes the second you stop holding his hand). “What’s going on here?”
The kids all freeze, eyes widening as they exchange looks.
“Um,” Mingyu squeaks, shrinking back in his seat.
“I see a friend of mine,” Soonyoung blurts, springing up from his seat and escaping onto the dance floor.
“I’ll ask again,” you frown at the remaining individuals, “what’s going on here?”
It’s Yerim who speaks up. “We had a bet,” she says, coming clean. “About you and Seungcheol, and whose idea would get the two of you together.” Yerim stares at you defiantly, ignoring Chan’s panicked swats under the table, Seokmin’s deer in the headlights stare, and Mingyu’s continually shrinking frame.
“Wait,” Seungcheol pinches the bridge of his nose with a grimace, “so the loft, Chan’s break-in incident, Halloween—“
“Yes, it was all planned,” Yerim says, still defiant.
“You guys broke a window for your dumb plan,” Seungcheol exclaims, aghast.
“No, that was an accident,” Minjeong interrupts, “Seokmin and Mingyu are really that dumb, but we all saw how obsessed with each other the two of you were then, and it just progressed from there.”
“You all do realize how inappropriate and invasive this is, don’t you?” Seungcheol scowls, and they all have the decency to at least look ashamed.
You slap your hands on the surface of the table as you get up, abruptly interrupting the conversation. “I’m leaving,” you announce. Seungcheol makes a motion to follow you, but you give him a glare that pushes him right back into his seat. “Don’t come with me,” you snarl, “any of you. I can call my own damn uber without your help.”
As you stalk through the club, you feel a lump forming in your throat while your skin burns from embarrassment. Just moments ago, you had been ready to ask Seungcheol out on a real date, bubbly with the thought that maybe you liked him and maybe he liked you too. But now, you feel humiliated. Played by everyone, your stupid crush used as the subject of a bet, reeling from the possibility that everything you thought was true may just be a lie, after all.
+1
You spend the week after that furiously avoiding the Sigmas, but you can only hold a grudge for so long against your own girls, especially when Yerim and Minjeong come into your room with a tray of homemade brownies and guilty faces, apologizing for their intrusion into your love life.
On the other hand, it’s a lot easier for you to hold a grudge against Mingyu, who approaches you for help on a 3D printing project and immediately turns around and goes to the other shop hand on duty as soon as he sees your glare, and Seokmin, who smiles and waves to you when he sees you in line at Starbucks only to lower his hand and look at the floor when you scowl at him in response.
Then, half out of spite and half because you’d feel bad letting them just struggle, on Tuesday night, you end up going to the Nu Kappa Tau house on the other side of campus to help Jaehyun and his friends study for their final. It’s almost 2am when you finish up and head back home for the night. By then, the shuttles have stopped running, so your only option is to make the thirty minute trek across the deserted campus.
It’s cold and you can see your breath as you walk. Shivering, you zip your coat all the way up to your chin and pull the hood up over your head to shield your ears from the wind, in the process muffling the sound of scattered leaves blowing in the wind. It’s likely because of the hood that it takes you so long to notice the figure following you, always maintaining a distance of about half a block behind you. You don’t really register it until you see his reflection in the windows of the darkened English building as you pass. When you pass the Psychology building, he’s still there, trailing behind you, and that’s when you start to get nervous.
This late at night, there’s nobody else on this side of campus. You take a sharp turn and loop through the liberal arts campus, your pace quickening, but when you pass by the Psychology building again and check the reflection in the windows, your follower is still there.
Panic shoots through you when you realize that you still need to walk through the quad and past the engineering campus to get home, which contains a stretch of road lined by trees and heavy landscaping. It’s lovely during the day, but at night, it’s dark and creepy.
You lower your hood to make sure you can hear everything, and then you pull out your phone. Hands trembling, you tap on the first contact that comes to mind.
Seungcheol picks up immediately. “Y/N?” He sounds confused as to why you’re calling, which you can’t blame him for, since you had iced him out even though the whole fiasco with the underclassmen’s bet wasn’t his fault at all. “Are… you still upset?”
There’s a lot to unpack, but you have more pressing concerns on your mind right now. “Seungcheol, there’s someone following me,” you say quickly, glancing backward. He’s still there. “I’m walking past the law library right now, heading down 34th street. I took a loop around the liberal arts campus and he followed me the whole time.”
There’s a pause, and then he replies urgently, “I’ll be there in ten. Can you meet me at the student center?”
“Yeah,” you mumble.
“Good,” he says. You can hear rustling in the back and the jingling of keys. When he speaks again, it sounds like he’s jogging. “Now, can you put your phone on speaker?”
“Okay,” you pull your phone away from your ear and hit the speakerphone button with numb fingers. When his voice comes out again, it’s deeper, and the volume makes you jump.
“Hey babe, what are you doing right now?”
It takes your panicked brain a moment to figure out what he’s doing, but when you realize, you thank your lucky stars that at least one of you can think clearly under pressure. “I’m heading back,” you respond, trying your best to keep the tremble out of your voice.
“Perfect,” he responds, still on the move. “I’ll see you soon then. Tell me about your day, baby.”
“Um.” You search your mind for non-identifying details that you can give. “I don’t know.” Stupid, you berate yourself. Stupid, stupid, but you can already see the student center building down the street.
“That’s okay, babe, I’ll just tell you about my day,” he says in a voice that somehow manages to soothe your frazzled nerves. “I went to the gym with some of the guys this morning, then I went to the new cafe on 14th for lunch. I gotta take you there for a date sometime, it’s really nice. I think you’ll really like the cheesecake. Did some studying in the afternoon for my MGT 4350 final.”
“Which one is that again,” your teeth chatter, “Law, Management, and Economics, right?”
“Yeah,” he sounds genuinely surprised. “You remembered.”
“Of course, Cheol, I’m not completely self absorbed.” You check over your shoulder again. You’re still being followed, but the distance is wider now. Looking back forward, you see the distant figure of Seungcheol lightly jogging over the hill towards the student center. “Look,” you say suddenly, slightly louder than you intended, “I’m sorry for what happened at the club last week. It wasn’t your fault, so I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
“What, no, you don’t have to apologize,” is his immediate response.
“Are you mad at me, Cheol?”
“No, I’m not. I was a little bummed this week when I didn’t see you, but I’m not mad, or upset at you at all.”
“Oh.” You sniffle. “Thanks for understanding. I was worried that I had fucked everything up.”
“No, no, no. I, um, I’m glad you called me.”
“Yeah, me too,” you say, walking up the well-lit path leading to the student center entrance. Seungcheol greets you there, his hair mussed, a light sheen of sweat over his forehead, dressed in pajamas with a leather bomber jacket haphazardly thrown on top, and you end the call and shove your phone back in your pocket.
Seungcheol takes your hand and pulls it into his pocket as the two of you walk back, pulling you close into his side. “You doing okay?”
“Y-yeah,” you respond, still tense, but considerably less anxious. “Can you check if he’s still back there?”
Seungcheol turns his head, craning his neck as he scans the darkened streets. “No, I don’t think so,” he frowns. You breathe a sigh of relief.
“Hurry, let’s go home,” you tug at his arm and hold him close to your side like a shield.
The walk back is silent and tense, with Seungcheol occasionally turning back to check for anybody who might be following. The whole time, you feel like you’re hyper-aware of each cracking twig and each dry rustle of the fallen leaves lining the sidewalks, so much so that even the distant hooting of an owl makes you jump and tug Seungcheol in front of you.
Eventually, the two of you make it back to your sorority house. You enter the password in the keypad with trembling hands, and when Seungcheol hesitates by the threshold, you tug him inside after you. “Stay with me for a little while,” you insist.
The inside of the house is dark. Seungcheol trails after you while you make your way through every room on the ground floor, watching as you flick on the lights and check each window and exterior door to make sure they’re all locked.
By the time you’re done, it’s 3am. The two of you are standing back in the foyer by the front door. “Um,” you tug at the sleeves of your coat, “thanks for… everything.”
“Of course,” Seungcheol smiles, “anytime.” And you know he’s telling the truth, that he’d drop everything and come to your side, to any of your friends’ sides, any time anybody needs help.
“I meant what I said on the phone earlier,” you tell him.
“I did too.”
You think you might melt under his affectionate gaze. “You know I’m going to have to kick you out now, right?”
“Yeah,” Seungcheol laughs. “Give me a call if you need anything, though. Anything.”
“Okay. Um.” You suck in a breath. Well, here goes nothing. “Thanks for pretending to be my boyfriend earlier. But you don’t have to pretend, if you don’t want to. I like you a lot, Seungcheol.”
His entire demeanor lights up. He reaches out and takes your hand in his, running the pad of his thumb over your knuckles. “I think I’ll take you up on your offer,” he grins, eyes sparkling. “I like you a lot, too.”
“Good,” you respond, letting a smile spread across your face.
Seungcheol steps forward, closing the distance between your bodies. “Can I kiss you?”
“Please,” you breathe, your heart fluttering. You feel his hand come up to cup your jaw and angle your face up toward him. When he kisses you, it’s a soft, chaste press of his lips against yours, short and sweet. It’s barely a peck, but it carries the promise of more.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he assures you as he steps back and opens the front door.
“See you tomorrow,” you grin dopily. You feel like you’re floating.
“The kids are gonna riot,” Seungcheol laughs.
“Let them riot,” you say as his fingers slip out of yours. “I got the world’s best boyfriend out of it, anyway.”
3K notes
·
View notes