Third Wheeling For Dummies | on hold

seven

It's only two days later that he actually gets a call from Ten.

"Hey, listen, I didn't think you'd actually wanna call me up to check on me, okay?" Ten raises his eyebrows exaggeratedly. "I thought you'd have fun babysitting your Beethoven enthusiasts."

"You could have picked up." Jungwoo frowns. "I thought you died or something."

"Right."

"Well." He pushes the shopping cart along the freeze-dried aisle, and the wheels refuse to rotate properly, screeching and basically not working the way they're supposed to. "I met this girl."

Ten snorts. "Right."

"No, really!" Jungwoo insists as Ten grabs two boxes of cookie dough and drops them in the already overflowing cart. "She had short hair and these piercings, and liked punk...I think. I mean, she did play those songs..."

"Like that one?" He asks, gesturing distractedly behind him. Jungwoo turned, and immediately his manner turns flustered.

"That's her." He hisses, yanking Ten's collar as he begins to bend down to pick up a cola. "That's her, you idiot!"

"Did you just call me an idiot?" The boy scoffs, indignant, and walks forward to the girl, who's not more than a few feet away. "Hey, no touching!"

When Jungwoo finally managed to get Ten to follow him, he pushes the screeching cart forward again, only to find that Jaesun has disappeared. "Thanks a lot, Ten."

"Why? Don't tell me you were actually going to hit on her." Ten rolls his eyes, hands on hips. "You got no balls."

"I wasn't going to hit on her." The blond cranes his neck to look back at the amused male. "But I could if I wanted to."

He snorts loudly, making an old lady at the freeze-dried section look at him with wide eyes. "Sure."

Jungwoo huffs, but doesn't reply.

"You know, Kim," Ten says distractedly, picking up a tomato and turning it in his fingers, "I could teach you a lot about how to pick up girls...or guys. Hey, which one are you again?"

Jungwoo lets out a dry laugh. "You don't know anything about picking up girls."

"That just proves that you don't know crap about me." Is the superior reply.

"I definitely know that you sneaked melted peppermint ice cream into our first sex education class in eighth grade." Jungwoo raises an eyebrow.

"That's not—"

"And that you puked out all of it on Doyoung when the teacher started talking."

Ten widens his eyes at him, throwing the cola can at his face. Jungwoo dodges with a short laugh, and it sails into the cart.

The ravenet tries to change the subject. "Well, at least I'm a good shot—"

"And then he bitch-slapped you in front of your crush." The blond continues innocently, reveling in finally being the one who isn't being made fun of in the duo.

"People are watching, you headass! You don't know all of those supermarket grannies—"

"And then you—"

Being completely preoccupied by his process of exposing his friend in front of the rumoured supermarket grannies, Jungwoo doesn't notice the person in front of him until his cart crashes into the said person's same.

"Oof—" Jungwoo is cut off, being thrown back into an unaware Chittaphon, both of them toppling back like dominoes onto the cold floor of the aisle.

The wind is absolutely knocked out of him, and he's afraid to move, not trusting his digestive system to hold in a building fart.

The usual chatter around them subdues, and Ten groans underneath him as he hears someone snicker.

"Well," Jaesun stares down at them with a nervous smile, clenching and unclenching her hands around the handlebar of her grocery cart. "Who bitch-slapped who?"

Neither of them seem to be much amused, and Ten elbows Jungwoo in the crack of his butt, making the latter painfully aware of their unfortunate position. "Get off me, you pervert." He hisses, voice considerably breathy by the impact of the floor.

Stars dance in front of the boy's eyes, rendering him more than a little incapable of getting off, but he raises his arms blindly into the air like a newly born crybaby.

Jungwoo whimpers quietly and grabs the first thing his hands grab onto, making an effort to hoist himself up, but without much success as an army of cola cans rain down on him and his fallen comrade.

A sharp hiss elicits from between Jaesun's lips, somewhat close to an empathising wince. She tries to get past her cart, but the aisle is too thin to fit two metal-bags-on-wheels as well as one stick-like punk teenage girl.

"I can help with that." She tries to sound hopeful, but Ten is already trying to grasp his friend's ass and haul himself up.

"Please do." Jungwoo whines, and when the annoyed voice of a grumpy second-shift worker cuts in, things are looking bleak.

"Try opening your eyes to see where you're grabbing, dumbass." Ten offers helpfully, apparently having found that he cannot escape by solo effort.

Jungwoo opens his eyes, and Jaesun's panicked face seems to swim less now.

Then, the last can from the section finally topples over and nails him right in the forehead.

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fun story, this scenario has happened to me once. don't get hit by cola cans, kiddos.

the next few chapters are going to be pretty much fun and initiation sessions, but i hope you're ready for some angst (it's not possible to exclude sOrRy)

namanana enthusiasts where you at

love,
Manx.