Needless to say, Doyoung was mad at them and Taeyong constantly stared at them with his practiced kicked puppy pout, the one mothers did whenever they witnessed their children doing something stupid.
After that, the mood was even worse and while the others tried to make it bearable, it didn't really help.
Jaemin - at the very least - didn't promote with Renjun and Jeno for now. Xiaojun and Shotaro turned out to be funny companions and Jaemin got used to the both of them pretty quickly (they had yet to add Sungchan and Shotaro to the chat, Doyoung had already complained about that).
Taeyong had meanwhile allowed Jaemin to get back to one espresso a day (like every other normal human being would consume, to be honest).
And that was when the next problem started.
Jaemin was obviously mad at Jeno and Renjun. He wasn't sure why exactly but he just knew that he was. Maybe because they both acted ridiculously childish, maybe because he was stressed or because they claimed him like some toy that you could buy in a store. He had plenty of reasons to be mad at them and he was.
But that didn't mean that he didn't miss their friendship.
Jeno has always been one if his closest friends in the group, maybe next to the other Dreamies or even ahead of that. They just clicked differently, it wasn't the same as with for example Mark - who was like an older brother - or Jisung - whom he treated like his child just to annoy him. Jeno was a friend like he rarely had them in school; a best friend, he'd dare to say.
Renjun was less on that level and still, really dear to him. He pretty much grew up with Renjun during a phase in his life where friends were most important; teen age. He shared a dorm with him, they walked to school together, ate lunch and let each other drink from their water bottle when one of them already drank all of it during dance practice. Renjun was a friend like Donghyuck, like Chenle and Johnny, like every member in their chaotic family called NCT.
He missed their friendship, their late-night-talks, their bickering and movie nights. He missed waking up to a sleepy Jeno or getting scolded by Renjun when he was getting on his nerves a little bit too much. He missed cuddling with them, he missed doing the things with them he was doing with everyone else just like he always did.
Jaemin was now stressed because of something else and that something was guilt. He felt guilty because he somehow felt like he couldn't really blame them like that. He felt rude, he felt too strict, too...unforgiving. And yet, he was still mad and disappointed and just really bothered by the fact that the two of them still didn't apologize - to no one.
Stress resulted to thinking which resulted to not sleeping which resulted to; sleep deprivation. Again.
Which was the current problem itself; Jaemin needed coffee, desperately, or he'd seriously fall asleep just by blinking. But Taeyong was watching him like a hawk (which was funny, considering Sicheng called himself a hawk in their chatroom).
And so, Jaemin didn't buy himself a few pairs of new socks with the money his manager offered him - he used it for coffee. But not any coffee, no; Biohazard Ground Coffee.
The strongest coffee known on planet earth.
If a few shots of that thing wouldn't keep him awake, Jaemin didn't know either.
Taeyong looked really confused when Jaemin got himself a big cup instead of the small espresso one he usually picked out of their kitchen to make himself a drink in the morning. He seemed satisfied when Jaemin simply smiled at him and told his leader that he'd try to drink normal coffee for once.
He didn't tell him that the coffee wasn't normal though. Or that he didn't put any almond milk inside the mixture (he couldn't eat dairy products you know). Or that he even added three sugar cubes just because he felt like it.
The coffee was bitter - even with the sugar cubes. It smelled as strong as it tasted and Jaemin felt significantly better as soon as he was done with his cup.
How Na Jaemin got drunk (or something like that) on Coffee
Start from the beginning
