“You’re hot when you’re mad.”
▓█ in universe ▬▬▬▬ present day ▬▬▬▬ potential starter
“This wasn’t the drink I ordered,” he insists, patience clearly wearing thin, and the bartender blinks up at him with wide, apologetic eyes. She’s honestly terrible at her job, clearly hesitant to give Jeongguk a drink in the first place, likely because of how young he looks. His best guess is she purposely messed up his drink in hopes that he would leave, instead of outwardly saying she wouldn’t serve him anything. He’s already lost all respect for her, as well as his willingness to let her have her way.
“Make a new one,” he demands, and he slides the glass across the counter to her, eyes boring a hole in the floor as she scurries away and he rests his elbow on the counter, chin on his palm.
She interrupts his thoughts with her voice, and for as surprisingly as her words are, he isn’t surprised to see her. He’s not used to anyone seeing him as something other than a child, or little brother at best; he intimidates some, but is never someone to be found attractive, and if he is, it isn’t often, in his experience. She puzzles him more than anything, and for every ounce of confusion he posses in relation to her, he holds just as much mistrust.
Surely, no one simply finds him attractive and flirts with him just for the amusement of it. It’s too hard to believe, so he’s sure her motives run deeper than anything on the surface. He’s encountered her like this in enough places like this to make it too strange to be coincidence; he’s also encountered her enough to steel himself and his nerves.
It’s like a game now-- like a challenge, and he doesn’t know if he’s more fond of anything.
“I’m always mad,” he sighs, the sound too dramatic to lack playfulness, expression a mix of a well-timed pout and hint of a smirk.
Still, she’s pretty-- soft, yet undoubtedly one of those beautiful things with edges capable harm when handled too roughly. He cannot think of words to describe her in a mind so dominated by numbers and calculations, but he studies the curves of her face like she’s some kind of equation he’ll learn the answer to if he searches long enough.
It makes him want to ask her how she got here, but he’s afraid she’ll ask him, too, and he doesn’t know.