Chapter Text
Johnny knew Kun. Of course he did. Everyone knew Kun.
That is to say, Johnny didn’t know Kun personally. The two of them had an intro to philosophy course together Johnny’s sophomore year, Kun’s freshman year. And when you attend a university as small as the one that they do, it’s hard not to run into people from time to time in passing. Even if you’ve only spoken to them once, you still always give them a little wave and say hello. It’s polite. There’s no way to avoid them. Especially not in the singular dining hall on campus. It’s a terrible amalgamation of cheaply made, unhealthy food. But students are required a meal plan, and it’s the only place to eat, so they make do with what they’ve got.
And everyone’s seen how weird Kun acts in the dining hall.
It’s not unusual for students so smuggle some food back to their dorms. Hell, it’s economical. Johnny did the math once his freshman year when he got pissed off at the undercooked, unseasoned chicken the dining hall forced him to eat. Each meal at “Kitchen” costs twenty dollars. If you were going to spend that much money on mediocre food, you might as well smuggle pastries--the only good thing there--into the paper coffee cups to take home and enjoy during a midnight study session as a reward.
But Kun was different. Kun took Tupperware containers to Kitchen and filled them with servings of bad macaroni and cheese. Or plain pasta with nothing on it. Or an entire container just of dry cereal. He loaded his backpack with clementines from the bowl on the counter. On Fridays, he would take one cookie back with him too. It was weird. It had always been weird, and it was a marvel to Johnny that none of the dining staff had ever confronted him about it. But none of the other students ever questioned him either. It felt...rude. Like an invasion of privacy.
“What do you think he does with all of it?” Johnny asked, turning to his roommate, Taeyong, who was currently poking at the most pathetic looking salad Johnny had ever seen. “There’s no way he eats it all. He’s too skinny.”
“What does it matter?” Taeyong asked. “Maybe he has friends over or something.”
“Kun doesn’t have friends,” Johnny pointed out.
“He’s friends with that Ten guy.”
“Ten’s skinnier than Kun, he’s not eating six containers of mac and cheese.”
“Maybe he hoards it like a dragon,” Taeyong said before taking a bite of his food. “Is that what you wanna hear?” he asked, his mouth still full of salad.
Johnny admittedly did get a little chuckle out of the idea of Kun sleeping on top of a large pile of bad campus food. The pasta would be squishy, at the very least, given how overcooked it always was. Maybe he’d never know what Kun did with all of the food. But when you went to a small college in a small town in the middle of nowhere, any strange mystery was enough to keep people talking. And Kun, for his part, never addressed any of the rumors. He had to know people were talking about him. But he never refuted any of what they said. He simply let them talk. He had to wonder why that was.
Johnny, on the other hand, had never been able to keep his mouth shut. The previous year, when he had caught wind of a rumor that he and Taeil had been using Taeil’s TA office hours to fuck, he had been quick to shut that shit down. He had been fucking Taeil, just not during office hours. He had some respect for the fact that Taeil had really needed that position for his resume. Johnny didn’t give a shit what the people here said about him--as long as it was the truth.
Taeyong was different, he knew. Taeyong had people-pleaser syndrome and was constantly worried that the people around him were speaking negatively about him behind his back. They never were--at least from what Johnny could tell. People, as a rule, didn’t ever have anything too bad to say about Taeyong. They might make a comment here and there if they were doing a group project with him because his roommate had a nasty habit of micro-managing. But they stopped complaining once they got their grades back. Taeyong was meticulous, and it meant that they got their work done early and well.
“Aren’t you fucking Ten?” Johnny wondered out loud.
Taeyong nearly choked on his food. “I’m--we’re--”
“Fucking,” Johnny finished.
“ No,” Taeyong countered. “We fool around, but we’ve never...no, we haven’t fucked.”
“Why not? You’re ridiculously into him, everyone knows that.”
“Not everyone. ”
“You’re right, clearly you have some delusions on the matter.”
“It’s just physical, he wouldn’t--”
“We’re not having this fight again,” Johnny said, pointing his fork towards Taeyong in a vaguely threatening, accusatory manner. “He’s into you. He brought you tea when you were having that breakdown two weeks ago. Casual flings don’t bring tea for their casual flings.”
“They do if they’re Pisces,” Taeyong shrugged.
“You need to stop hanging out with Yuta and his star charts.”
They sat bickering like that for a little while longer. It was all in good fun, it wasn’t an actual fight. Taeyong and Johnny had been roommates since their freshman year of college, and they had only gotten into two real fights. The first had been their second weekend at school their first year when it became clear to Johnny that his vaguely messy single-child habits were not going to fly. They hadn’t actually screamed at each other, but their voices had been raised so much the RA had been called over and Johnny had actually considered asking for a roommate switch. He was now more than thankful that he hadn’t. The second had been the previous year when Taeyong had accused Johnny of self-destructive behavior.
He hadn’t been wrong, really. Johnny had found himself in a cycle of work-sleep-mess around with Taeil that hadn’t been exactly healthy. But he hadn’t actually recognized the problem with it until Taeyong had pointed out that he hadn’t seen anyone besides him or Taeil in three weeks. Yuta was getting worried--which was saying something because Yuta was the most reckless, carefree person that Johnny knew. If Yuta was worried, there was an issue. And looking back, Johnny knew the exhaustion must have shown in his face. And it must have been hard for his roommate, who’d always had too much “I want to save the world” in him, to watch. But he had always been defensive, so they had a row about it where Johnny told Taeyong that who he slept with was none of his business, and Taeyong fought back by saying he didn’t give a crap who Johnny slept with, but when was the last time he’d called his mom?
That had been the last straw. But it also made Johnny pause. He called his mom every Friday night. And they talked for at least an hour. Often longer. And it was only after Johnny had snapped at Taeyong that he wasn’t his mom and that he needed to stop nagging him that he realized...he hadn’t called his mom once that month. That was a problem. So he sorted himself out. He went into the hall and apologized to his mother. He stopped isolating. Slowly, not all at once, but it was progress nonetheless. And two months after the argument, once Johnny was back to his normal routine, he apologized to Taeyong. He didn’t admit the other had been right, he had too much pride for that. But he did say he was sorry for snapping. In the end, he couldn’t be happier with his choice in roommate. The two of them were a ridiculous pair, but they fit. The two of them, along with Yuta, and Taeil, before he graduated, had been the perfect friendship circle. He wouldn’t change anything.
Even if sometimes Taeyong flung damp lettuce at him while they were having a non-argument.
“That Johnny guy’s staring at you again,” Ten hummed from his seat across from Kun, a few tables away from where Johnny and Taeyong appeared to be having an in-depth argument that involved the throwing of produce.
Kun rolled his eyes. “People are always staring at me in here. He’s probably wondering why I took such a large helping of the world’s worst spaghetti and meatballs today.”
“To be fair, if I didn’t know why I’d think it was really fucking weird too.”
Kun just shrugged. It didn’t bother him any, the way people spoke about him. It didn’t affect him any. He was still getting nearly straight As. If he got his masters--which felt like a pipe dream, if he was to be honest--he might be able to work as a children’s school counselor, which was all he actually wanted to do. He didn’t think he’d be able to, though. Not with his current circumstances. Ten was endlessly optimistic about it, recklessly so. Sometimes it was exactly what he needed to push forward. Sometimes it just made him feel like Ten wasn’t looking at reality correctly.
But Ten had always been like that. Ten could waltz right into traffic and the cars would all stop for him. The universe seemed to bend to his command. It was impressive if Kun really thought about it. Maybe if Ten said it would all work out fine for him, then it would.
“Speaking of Johnny--well, speaking of Johnny’s roommate anyway, you’re gonna want to bust out the heavy duty headphones tonight.”
Kun groaned and buried his head in his hands. “I love having a single room,” he said. “But I hate being your next door neighbor.”
“Not my fault he’s a screamer,” Ten mused, his eyes alight with near disgusting levels of mischief. “I’ve put my hand over his mouth before, it doesn’t stop him.”
Kun had said once, relatively early on into his friendship with Ten, that he really didn’t need to know all of the dirty exploits of his hookups. Ten seemed to take this as a suggestion rather than a rule. At this point, it just took up less energy from Kun if he didn’t argue it. It had stopped phasing him after about a year. At at least this time Ten seemed to be hooking up with someone he might actually have real feelings for. It was about damn time. And Ten was going to ask that Taeyong out on a date if Kun had to drag him by the ear to do it. Ten deserved to be happy. He deserved to be happy with the boy that he liked, even if Ten might be loathe to admit it.
“I still don’t believe that you two have never actually fucked.”
“It’s the truth!” Ten chimed. “And if he makes noises like that just from getting eaten out, I can’t wait to hear what he sounds like when we--”
“Just tell me what time he’s coming over so I can be blasting music and cartoons long before then.”
“Eight, and you’re no fun. I’m still holding out the invitation to join. I think he’d be into it.”
“You wish,” Kun scoffed with a heavy roll of his eyes.
“You know I do!” Ten whined. “And the fact of the matter is that you haven’t gotten laid in the last year and a half, and it’s making me sad.”
“You know why I haven’t,” Kun pointed out, giving Ten a near lethal look. That wasn’t fair. Ten of all people knew why Kun didn’t go out, why Kun didn’t party, or attend any clubs, or do anything but go to his classes, the dining hall, and his dorm. He hated when Ten tried to hold it against him when he knew the reason he didn’t go out far outweighed any reason to socialize.
“I could watch him while you go have fun for one night,” Ten offered. “Or Doyoung could--you know he adores Doyoung. And Doyoung loves him right back.”
Kun considered that for a moment. They’d had this conversation before. They had it at least once a week. It never got easier. He knew it would probably be good for him--it would probably be good for both of them if he did. But every time he thought about it, there was a painful tug in his chest that called him selfish for even thinking about it.
“I can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “He needs me, Tennie.”
Ten sighed. He hated this fight--and it was a fight, even if it never exploded like one. It was a fight because Kun would never give in as much as Ten tried to argue. Kun always erred on the side of self-sacrificing too much. And Ten had known Kun long enough to chalk it up to his need for self-sufficiency and his deep-seated fear of being in anybody’s debt. But that didn’t make it any less frustrating to watch. Sometimes he wanted to smack Kun upside the head and remind him that he’s twenty years old and doesn’t have to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.
But it’s not like Kun would listen anyway.
“Listen, I know Doyoung has to buckle down for an orgo exam this weekend. So he can do it in your dorm. And you and I can go out for a couple of drinks, and it’ll be fine.”
“I can’t drink, Ten!” Kun exclaimed like Ten had just suggested the two of them go rob a bank.
“You can have one drink,” Ten countered in return. “And you can have fun for a few hours. And, get this, it won’t kill you.”
“Sounds fake,” Kun said. “But…” he sighed. “His favorite show is having a marathon Friday night. We have three hours where he won’t even notice if I’m gone. If you can get Doyoung to be there...I’ll go.”
“Thank God, ” Ten sighed, feeling a sense of utter relief and like maybe, maybe for the first time in a while that he might be getting somewhere with Kun.
Taeyong had left to go to his last lecture of the day (“Why does anyone start a lecture at six thirty pm? To make me miserable? Is that it?”), which left Johnny munching on bad French fries by himself at the table. He tossed more than one cursory glance over at Kun, who was still sitting with Ten over at his table. He couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but he didn’t need to. He wasn’t particularly interested in their conversation.
But his bored, idle curiosity was interested in Kun.
He’d dyed his hair blond recently. Johnny had never been able to imagine the younger male with any hair color other than they honey brown he had been sporting for as long as Johnny knew him. But this was nice too. It was...cute if he lacked a better word for it. The October chill was starting to settle in, and so gone were Kun’s usual pastel linen shirts to be replaced by sweaters of various levels of chuky knit. This one was white, and it looked to warm for weather that wasn’t actually that cold yet. But he didn’t seem to mind it much. If he was too hot, he didn’t show it. He was too busy laughing at whatever Ten had just said.
When there were about five hundred people in your entire school, you knew everybody. And you knew at least something about everybody--especially their dating history and sexual exploits and who they made out with during that stereotypical game of spin the bottle at the fine arts party that one time. Which meant that Johnny should have anything on Kun. But he didn’t. As far as anyone was aware, Kun hadn’t dated anyone since he started school. He hadn’t hooked up with anyone. He didn’t even go to parties as a rule. He went to class, he went to work, he went back to his dorm. Sometimes he had Doyoung or Ten in tow--which had started a rumor, once, that the three of them were in a polyamorous relationship. That quickly got shut down when someone caught Doyoung and Jaehyun together during homecoming--but usually alone.
That surprised Johnny for reasons he couldn’t put into words. Not that he cared who Kun dated or if he dated. It didn’t matter to him. He couldn’t speak for the kind of person Kun was. But from what Johnny understood from the class they had together, Kun seemed like a nice guy. He was kind, hardworking, seemed to have his heart in the right place. And if he had to say so...Kun wasn’t bad to look at. So it wasn’t that Johnny cared who Kun was dating. It just seemed strange to him that nobody was trying to.
When Kun’s phone rang, he frowned down at it and started frantically gathering his things as he offered Ten an apologetic expression. Ten, for his part, seemed to understand that whoever was on the other end of the phone was more important than whatever conversation they had been having. Which just made Johnny all the more curious. He had only ever seen Kun hang out with him or Doyoung, and he didn’t think Doyoung would warrant such a reaction.
Kun was fiddling with his jacket about a table away from Johnny, his phone balanced between his elbow and his ear as he spoke.
“Shh, shh, Chenle,” Kun said into the phone. “No, baby, shh, please don’t cry.”
It was quiet. Johnny shouldn’t have been able to hear. And he definitely shouldn’t be listening to what was clearly a private call. But…
“I’ll be home soon, okay? I promise. I’m on my way. I’ve got dinner.”
There was a pause, and then Kun’s face lit up into a bright smile. “There’s my boy. I love you too. See you soon.”
Johnny watched Kun go down the hall. Johnny had thought that conversation would answer things for him as to why the strange, but pretty boy brought so much food home. Instead, he found that he just had more questions.