Chapter Text
There is nothing unusual about that Monday, not to begin with anyway.
Oh Sehun is a man of routine: his alarm rings at 7:30am and he’s out of the shower by 7:50. His polished loafers find themselves on the rain-soaked pavement outside Artificial Love at 8:15 sharp, and his order is the same as it always is: a double shot cafe latte. He's trying to cut down on caffeine, but things haven't started moving in that direction quite yet. By 8:35 he should be wrestling open his office door with the warm beverage tucked precariously against his chest but, as it were, it’s at this exact moment that Sehun’s morning diverges sharply from usual.
“Hello.” A tight, sheepish smile greets him by the glass door to his desk. For exactly 37 seconds Sehun stares unblinkingly at his ex-boyfriend of four years, because if he’s being honest, Vivi standing outside his door in a three-piece suit would be a less abnormal.
Kim Jongin is not an infrequent sight at the company; they see each other reasonably often at stuffy office parties and lunches, and the occassional meeting. But all their interactions — as minor as they are — are always awkward and stilted enough to have Sehun cringing for weeks. He'd assumed that the mortification was mutual, so he can't imagine why Jongin would actively seek him out on this particular morning.
It goes something like this: at 23, Sehun had been broke, busy, and sustained nearly entirely by his love for the man standing in front of him. At 28, Sehun is less broke, less busy, and Jongin is a complete stranger. Maybe a few years ago the thought would’ve made Sehun upset, but it feels too far in the past to keep him up now.
Jongin looks much the same, hair soft and shirt wrinkled. And, Sehun notes gleefully, he's wearing suede shoes, which is a mega-shitty choice for this weather. But that probably won't stop them from burning a hole into Sehun's rug with Jongin's frantic pacing.
“Jongin.” Sehun interrupts a particularly vigorous stride. “It’s too early for all this movement, please," he gestures to the visitor chair across from him, "sit."
"Right, of course. Sorry.”
Jongin looks mildly embarrassed but doesn’t say anything even after he sits, palpably nervous as he stares down at his own lap.
Sehun squints at him. “Have you sustained a head injury recently?”
Jongin looks up for the first time that morning, confused, “—No?”
Sehun squints harder. “Is it temporary amnesia and you, uh, I don't know, you think we're still dating?”
“No? Sehun, what?”
Sehun puts his palms out placatingly. “I had to check! It seems like the sort of thing this stuff usually leads up to.”
“Wha—nevermind.” Jongin sits up straighter. He seems ready to talk now, hands steepled together as he leans his elbows on the table. “I need a favour.”
Sehun’s eyebrows fly up, “from me?”
Jongin's eyes slide to the left. "Yes. As hard as it is to admit."
“Can't be that hard because here you are.” Sehun huffs, arms coming to fold stubbornly over his chest.
Jongin doesn't rise to the bait. "Would you help me, please?”
He looks earnest, and Sehun is curious. “I can try, yeah. Is—is everything okay?”
Jongin waves his hand dismissively. “Everything’s fine, it’s a work thing.”
Sehun’s brow furrows, “oh is Seungwan not in today? She’s the one from Marketing that I usually work wi-”
“No- no it’s not that sort of work thing—it’s kind of-” Jongin clears his throat. “It’s like a—like a personal work thing.”
"A personal work thing.” Sehun repeats carefully, and wishes he had his glasses on so he could set them low on his nose and scrutinize Jongin over them.
Jongin inhales deeply before speaking. “Do you know Kim Wonshik, from-”
“-Marketing, yeah. I’ve worked with him a couple of times. Is he bothering you?”
Jongin squirms. “No, not exactly. We're, um, we're actually seeing each other.”
Sehun leans back, surprised “Oh! Congratulati- wait. Wait, hang on." He tilts forward in confusion. "Aren’t you two in the same department? That’s-”
“-Against company policy.” Jongin grouses. “What’s the fucking point of that policy, anyway? Why is it okay for me to, I don't know, simultaneously date four people from other departments, but I’ll get fired if I date one person from my own!?”
Sehun nods placatingly at the outburst; it's the same way he nods at Vivi when he decides to pee on his pee-pad and not the couch leg. He's trying to be encouraging. It's probably a good thing to have healthy communication with you exes, right? Even if said ex decides they want to start communicating on a cloudy Monday morning while parading their incredibly inappropriate choice of footwear.
“No it’s pretty stupid you're-”
“Great! You agree!” Jongin claps his hands. “So I need you to come with me and tell Tiffany we’re dating.”
Sehun blinks.
“Sorry?”
“Here’s the thing.” Jongn leans forward, palms flat against the table top like he's about to lay out an incredibly expensive incredibly risky marketing pitch to the finance department. “In two months Wonshik will be moved to R&D and then we won’t be breaching company policy anymore. I just need you to pretend to be with me until then.”
Sehun stares blankly. “You can’t be serious.”
Jongin clearly doesn't catch the disbelief in his voice because he continues. “Wonshik and I are both lined up for promotions, we can’t risk it. If I’m dating you on paper, no one can accuse me of being with him—at least not without making it fucking awkward. And, in return I’ll buy you lunch everyday.”
Sehun breaks out of his shocked reverie at that and scoffs.
“Lunch with you does not sweeten the pot, not even little? When we spoke at the Chuseok brunch last year you looked at me like I'd personally thrown up in your rib sauce. I could be spending my lunches with people who actually want to hang out with me.”
“I want to hang out with you!I totally want to hang out! We're hanging out right now! This—this—can be closure for both of us.” Jongin declares desperately.
“You,” Sehun arches a brow, “are dating someone new, and it’s been four years since we broke up. I think that’s plenty of closure.”
“But Sehun-ssi—the food! Every day! Wherever you want!” Jongin whines, hands thrown up in supplication.
"Why me?" Sehun asks after a pause. "You could ask anyone, heck, for free lunch I think Yerim would pretend to be your fiancé."
Jongin nods like he'd been anticipating the question. "It's not realistic enough with anyone else. People know we have, uh, history -- it's not that crazy for people to get back together. I need this to work, and the best ruses have a little bit of truth to them, don't they?"
After a thorough pros-and-cons deliberation that mainly consists of Sehun asking if there was a price limit on these lunches and finding out that there was, in fact, none (Jongin was a desperate bastard and maybe Sehun was a glutton, whatever. Life had thrown him a lemon and he was going to drizzle it over as many oysters and sea-urchin lunches as he could), they found themselves on the threshold of their HR manager’s office.
“Okay, so you'll ask for the forms right? Part of why I’m doing this is because I can’t lie to Tiffany for shit,” Jongin mumbles as he puts his hand out for Sehun to take.
Sehun rolls his eyes even as he laces their fingers together. “Can’t you guys just be—I don’t know—discreet? Like every other couple dating in the same department.”
“No? No, you know how I get when I’m-” Jongin stops abruptly when he realizes where that sentence was headed and flushes.
“Forget I asked.” Sehun suppresses a shiver and answers, just as the door in front of them flies open.
For someone who makes a living off of weeding people out for policy violations, Tiffany Hwang always looked angelic and poised. Today was no different, her enigmatic smile was framed by pristinely applied coral lipstick and the pussy-bow on her silk blouse had been ironed to pathological perfection.
“Oh!” She titters, perfectly-winged eyes catching on their intertwined fingers. “You boys have something to tell me?”
Jongin makes an aborted move to his side, gesturing jerkily to Sehun. “I have a Sehun—I mean a news. I mean. We, uh, we have news.”
Jongin sags uselessly to his side, wilting away from his dumpster fire delivery (they had a script, how hard was it to stick to it??). Sehun sighs.
“He means we need the CRD forms.”
Tiffany gasps, melodramatically clasping her hands to her chest. "My two favorite worker-bees back together again?”
Sehun isn't sure if she expects an answer, but after a few moments of awkward quiet as they watch Tiffany hold her pose for an impressive amount of time, he scratches the back of his head with the hand not caught in Jongin’s sweaty, sweaty hold and dryly attempts: “you know how it is, if it’s meant to be.”
He shrugs evasively at her in a way that he hopes conveys ideas like fate, and love, and destiny, and not his palpable desperation to get Out of Here.
Tiffany coos, “I was rooting for you guys you know?”
Then she turns to the filing cabinet behind her desk, spindly fingers combing through the rows and rows of cream-coloured folders with frightening efficiency. God knows why they can't just email her these forms.
“Even when Chenle told me he suspected that Jongin-ssi was dating Wonshik-ssi from the same department, I knew that couldn’t be right,” she mutters distractedly.
Jongin flinches violently beside Sehun.
““-Oh! Here we are! sit- sit." Tiffany return excitedly and waves at the cushy chairs opposite her own. “Here.”
She slides across two sheets of paper, and instead of brand new Consensual Relationship Disclosure forms, Sehun watches as two old and yellowed sheets of paper drift into place before them. Even before he’s read the first letter, Sehun’s gut lurches painfully, eyes already scanning the familiar, familiar handwriting.
Jongin starts, “oh Tiffany—”
“Cute right?” Tiffany giggles, “I usually shred the forms after people break up and nullify, but I was cleaning the other day and I realized I hadn’t thrown your old ones out.”
For the first real time that morning, Sehun feels distinctly uncomfortable. Feels like he’s been laid bare on Tiffany’s desk, gutted and exposed. It’s embarrassment, he realizes as he reads the chicken-scrawl on the sheets. He’s embarrassed by these stupid forms from five years ago.
‘Oh Sehun employed under Accounts and Finance,’ it reads, ‘and Kim Jongin employed under Marketing, hereby notify 3.6.5 Ltd. that we have entered into a consensual and mutual personal relationship.
All the letters were tilted into each other, like the person filling out the form was in a hurry—and he was; Sehun remembers rushing out of Tiffany's office and into the bathroom to kiss Jongin breathless, brimming with joy and blinding hope for their future.
“—anyway you can keep those! A little souvenir,” Tiffany claps her hands together blithely, entirely unaware of the memories she had unleashed upon the two men before her. “Fill these new ones out, and you’re good to go!”
Sehun fills in his details unseeingly, each letter upright and a careful distance apart. His mind still feels sluggish after the storm of emotions that had just blazed through it. When they finally leave the office, Jongin seems slightly shaken too.
“I was not expecting her to bust these out.” he laughs wryly, eyes still studying the sheet in his hand. They’re both still holding their forms like idiots, and Sehun wonders why he isn’t halfway to the paper-shredder by now.
"You’re telling me." He sighs. "I still don’t know why I’m doing this.”
Jongin pouts, then adds self-effacingly, “it's not that bad c'mon. Just a few lunches and then we can go back to avoiding eye contact in the elevator."
Sehun snorts. “Does Wonshik know about this?”
“Yeah, of course,” Jongin smiles warmly. “He suggested it actually.”
“Your boyfriend,” Sehun begins sceptically, surprised he hadn't thought to ask earlier, “suggested that you pretend to be in a relationship with me—your ex?”
“Yeah, so we don’t get caught. Obviously, he knows there’s nothing between you and me anymore.”
Sehun shrugs, “Yeah obviously.” He bites back the urge to scrutinize it any further. He’s not going to tell other people how to manage their relationships, least of all an ex-boyfriend.
Jongin slaps his shoulder comfortingly, far too friendly and familiar for their current setup. “Look don’t worry about it, no one is gonna accuse you of being a boyfriend-stealer. I’ll see you at lunch, okay? You pick the place.”
The remainder of his morning is blissfully free of any more deviations from routine. At 12:10pm Sehun stares forlornly at the dumpster alley outside his window, trying to look poetically miserable as he ponders the soul-sucking dullness that is working in Accounts and Finance.
Sehun does it for 15 minutes everyday, like meditation. But today, his serene reflections are interrupted by a seagull taking a massive shit on his window while he’s still staring out of it.
He groans, loud and anguished, before standing up and stomping his way to Yerim’s desk.
“Can you tell Mr. Sung to call the window cleaners the next time he comes around?”
Yerim looks up from where she’d been clacking away pleasantly, “a seagull again?”
“No Yerim it was me. I decided to shit on my window this time.”
Yerim grimaces, “ugh, no need to be disgusting, I’ll talk to Mr. Sung when he comes by.”
“Thanks.” He turns to leave but has to pause when she speaks again.
“Oh by the way, congratulations! I overheard Chenle talking to Jisung; I didn’t know you were seeing Jongin-ssi again.” She pauses to frown, and leans forward to whisper conspiratorially, “I probably shouldn't say but last week, I was sure he was seeing Wonshik-ssi and I was waiting for Tiffany to haul them up for policy violation— but I’m happy for you!”
She finishes with a beaming smile that Sehun sullenly attempts to return. He’s starting to see why Jongin had decided to take such drastic measures to cover up.
Sehun tells him as much when they meet in the lobby for lunch. “If Yerim knows about it, Tiffany would have been onto you by the end of the week.”
Jongin nods seriously, “I know, Chenle is always on our floor and I could feel him watching us.” He visibly shudders before continuing, “anyway I’ve been working towards this promotion for too long to take any risks right now.”
The rain still hasn't let up, so Sehun decides to spare them both the trouble by pointing to the company cafeteria. He figures it’s probably a good idea for them to be seen together anyway, especially now while the news is fresh. He doesn’t know when he got so invested in Jongin’s ill-conceived ruse, but he might as well do what he’s being fed for.
They sit by the floor to ceiling windows at the edge of the cafeteria, close enough to be seen but not heard, and after his first sip of watery doenjang-jjigae Sehun finally asks what he’s been wondering about all day:
“How did you and Wonshik start seeing each other?”
Jongin glances up at him, startled, eyes wide and cheeks bulging with stew. He silently holds one finger up, swallowing and clearing his throat before answering.
“It happened eight-ish months ago? We were, um, hooking up before that and he’d been trying to take me out but I didn’t want any strings. Then one day I realized how much I liked spending time with him, and now here we are.”
Sehun nods thoughtfully. “You know,” he starts tentatively, studying his tray instead of looking at Jongin, “I always felt like he was hitting on you when we were together.”
He risks a glance at Jongin who looks slightly taken aback, and rushes to apologize, “—but that’s just me! It doesn't matter, it's nice that you ended up together eventually."
Jongin's answering smile is polite, if not a little reserved. “No- no it’s fine, he did say he’s liked me for a long time. Maybe it was just a little crush back then. I didn’t realize.”
"Yeah exactly, a crush” Sehun agrees vehemently, already regretful. It was not just a crush, Sehun had caught the man leering from the opposite end of the open-plan marketing floor.
Jongin lets the silence simmer for a few moments before cleverly changing the subject. “How is home? Your parents and Vivi?”
Sehun nods, grateful for the change in conversation. “Good! Yeah all fine, Vivi's overweight so the vet has him on a diet and he hates it, but he’s back with my parents for now. You?”
Dogs are a safe subject, dogs are good. If he talks about Vivi, he won't have to bring up how much his mother whines and whinges about Jongin being the best boy he’s ever brought home. Or how his father had bought a small bear keychain from the shop on the boardwalk because ‘it looked so much like Jonginie, Sehunah I couldn’t help it.’
“Yeah same, everything’s good. Jagda’s really old now and she sleeps all day, but her mind’s as sharp as always. She nearly bit off the delivery man's knees last week.”
Jagda had been eight when Sehun had last seen her, and the toy poodle had slept in his lap the entire week he’d been at Jongin’s family home for Christmas five years ago.
“She’s a big girl now,” Sehun says, gentle and nostalgic.
For a moment Jongin looks caught off guard by the tenderness, but then his eyes soften too. “Yeah,” he nods, “she’d probably still remember you.”
They don’t talk about how Sehun will probably never come by again for them to test the theory.
Oh Sehun is a man of routine: by 7:00pm he clocks out of work, blows Yerim a kiss as he walks to the elevator because she has to stay back to finish a report. Every time he sees her, Sehun is glad that he’s passed that particular rung of the corporate ladder. By 7:22 he pulls into the basement of the sleek highrise he’s proud to live in, carefully backing his baby into its usual parking spot. He orders takeout from the Japanese place down the street before he stepping into the elevator, and by 8:05, Sehun is showered and parked in front of the TV with a crispy, greasy tempura pinched between his chopsticks.
He usually spends the remainder of the evening watching one of the ridiculously cheesy romcoms playing on TV. On some days, he’ll call someone over for the release and for the company. On some other days, he’ll facetime Chanyeol, or call Baekhyun over, or go out drinking with Junmyeon. But tonight, Sehun feels distinctly uncomfortable, restless like no matter how high he raised the volumen he was too distracted to pay attention.
It’s like a subcutaneous itch, maddening but unreachable. Sehun isn’t stupid, he knows it has to do with the fact that in the span of a singular morning, Jongin and him had gone from pretending the other is invisible, to being budding friends with a careful avoidance of their shared past.
Sehun thinks about the stupid CRD forms from five years ago, he thinks about how Jongin’s form is probably at the bottom of his trash can, or in ribbons in the belly of a shredder. Then he thinks about his own form—tucked safely into the bottom drawer of his desk because something had held him back from subjecting it to the same fate.
And that’s really it, isn’t it? Sentiment. For the briefest of seconds, every time Sehun sees Jongin, all he can see is his angry, tearstained face as they scream at each other from across their apartment. Four years is a long, long relationship—and four years in your early-twenties is practically a decade, Sehun knows this. And for all the politeness and pleasantry and insouciance of the morning, there’s still so much more that Jongin represents to him. Mistakes and memories and some of the best and worst days of Sehun’s life.
And a part of him, an unfair and small part of Sehun that’s suddenly woken from dormancy, keeps thinking that they should’ve tried harder. Sehun’s moved on, he has, but he wonders what it would’ve been like if he had never had to.