Day 2: Firsts
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The Chemicals Between Us
He was twelve when he had his first crush. He was sitting on the grass field by himself behind the school, waiting to be picked up by his nanny. He had been new to the school, entering in a grade where people had already created tight groups, and with a quiet personality like his, it didn’t do him any favours in making friends.
Sitting with his head down, Thomas briefly considered doing some homework while he waited, but that thought quickly went away as he caught sight of a boy of asian descent from across the field. He was laughing at something, surrounded by his friends who were poking each other and joking beside him.
Thomas gazed at the group of friends, wishing he had some of his own. In his last school, he was in the ‘popular’ group, had a good set of friends; not the kind that would talk behind his back. They were accustomed to his quiet demeanour and didn’t try to force him into conversations. He had grown comfortable knowing things weren’t expected out of him.
After his mom got transferred to Greendale though, all that had changed. He was the newbie—or ‘Greenie’ as he had been called a couple times—with silence as company, and it wasn’t the comforting kind anymore.
His eyes kept drifting back to Minho, who clearly seemed like the leader of the group, or at least the most boisterous of the group. Thomas wasn’t quite aware when he started developing his crush on Minho, just that one day it happened and then wouldn’t go away. Almost like he could sense eyes on him, Minho turned around looking directly at him.
Thomas quickly ducked his head and kept it there the remainder of the time, playing with blades of grass on the hill he sat on. Minho and his friends sat in the playground just at the foot of the hill, but Thomas kept his head bent in case one of the others caught him staring in their direction.
Five minutes later, Clara his nanny came down and sat with him. “Ready to go?” “More than ever!” Thomas looked so relieved to see her, he literally tripped in his enthusiasm to leave. Slightly red-faced, he hoped no one saw his clumsiness. Especially Minho. —
Highschool seemed to be conspiring against him, Thomas decided after the first day of freshman year. It had been pure luck that Minho never had classes with him in middle school, except for p.e. which didn’t require a lot of interaction. Minho was the athletic type, playing forward or always in the fray of things. Thomas was happy in the sidelines, and the only thing he was good at was sprinting. Cross-country only arrived once a year in summer, so his interaction was pretty minimal when it came to Minho.
Now though, Minho was in at least two of his classes on the first day, one of them included Science. It wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact the teacher decided to change up the seating arrangements and Thomas was the lucky guy—insert sarcasm here—that got to be Minho’s science partner.
After an exchange of polite hellos, that lapsed into awkward silence, he sincerely hoped it would get better in time. It was ten minutes into class, when Minho turned to him suddenly, and Thomas started panicking inwardly.
“Are you okay, dude?”
“What? Ye—yeah I’m fine.”
“You sure? You look like you’re going to be sick.” Minho whispered, and Thomas wanted to burry his head in his cubby hole and never resurface. His expression must have twisted into the discomfort he was feeling for Minho to jump to that conclusion. Shit. Shit!
“Uh..no. I’m…okay. I’m okay.” he repeated lamely, not looking at his crush. He saw Minho nod in his peripheral vision. That was the end of it, and when the bell rang, Thomas picked up his books and shot out with the rest of the class, eager to get home.
He slowed down when he turned the corner and sighed. Reaching his locker, he dumped his books inside not caring to see if any of the pages folded as they fell down with a clang. He had one day finally admitted to Clara of his crush on Minho. Her advice had been to get to know Minho as a person. Then either it was good or it was bad, and if it was bad..then the crush would end.
Thomas highly doubted he could one, actually open his mouth without making a complete fool of himself, and two, find enough flaws in his crush to get over him.
“That bad a day?” A tenor voice asked from around his locker door and Thomas turned to see Newt standing beside him, eyebrows raised.
“He’s my science partner.” Thomas mumbled. He didn’t even have to explain who he was talking about. Newt was well aware of his crush on Minho having to sit beside Thomas’ grumbling in middle school.
“Tough luck,” Newt said sympathetically. “Or…”
“There’s no ‘or’ Newt. I’m screwed. The universe hates me.” Thomas slammed the locker door, and Newt rolled his eyes at Thomas’ dramatics, before walking beside him towards the exit. — The second week science class was the first time they had to do an experiment in class. Before that, Thomas and Minho had simply nodded to each other before taking their seats. There had been some moments where Minho would ask for a pencil, or Thomas would make a sarcastic comment about the teacher under his breath and Minho would huff a laugh. Small things.
This though. This required an actual conversation. As the teacher explained what they were supposed to achieve, and gestured for them to start, Thomas swallowed down his nerves and took a deep breath, turning towards Minho.
“Okay, so—“
“Do you—“
Thomas and Minho started talking at the same time. They stopped at the same time and looked at each other smiling. “You were saying?” Minho spoke first.
“Um,” Thomas willed himself not to blush seeing as Minho’s attention was on him. “I was wondering which part you’d like to do?” he gestured in front of him, “the observing or the writing?”
“We can both do it?” Minho suggested, leaning on his arms which pushed him slightly into Thomas’ space.
“Do it?” Thomas asked, mind going straight to the gutter.
“Yeah,” Minho said, “We can individually look into the microscope and discuss our findings, then write it down.”
“Okay,” Thomas nodded. “You can go first.” He watched as the other boy put his eye to the microscope and dimpled as he exclaimed at how cool this was. Thomas smiled at his partner’s reaction, thinking for the umpteenth time, how fucked he was. This crush on Minho wasn’t going anyway any time soon. It was getting worse. — “Does this look okay?” Thomas turned to Newt wearing a jean jacket over a red shirt.
Newt rolled his eyes, sprawled on Thomas’ bed, arms stretched on either side of him. This was the third outfit Thomas had tried on “It’s a high school party, thrown by rebellious seventeen year olds, shank. And I’m pretty sure we got invited by accident. Or Minho was just being nice. Pick one.”
“I know that!” Thomas huffed. “I just—“ He turned to Newt, “You could have said no.”
Newt raised his eyebrows, “So could you.” Thomas gave him a look. “Yeah yeah I know; he still affects you.” he sat up on the bed, “Ready to go?”
“I guess.”
Arriving to the party the two of them quickly realized this was an invite only party, with only a few people attending. It would be petty easy to spot them. “Uh..on second thought, we don’t have to—“ Thomas turned around when Newt gabbed his shoulders.
“Nope. We’re here and we’re going in.” — Thomas had just steeped into the house, when a girl with short black hair grabbed him, “Hey, you! You’re coming with me.”
“What?”
“We need more people for the game. Come on!” She dragged a protesting Thomas the whole way. Thomas looked over his shoulder at Newt to rescue him, but Alby had come over to chat with Newt, which left Thomas to be towed away by this girl.
She sat him down in the circle and it was then that he saw the bottle in the middle with a circle of people around it.Oh no. Nononono! This—he— Thomas’ thought was cut short when his eyes fell on his crush who was smiling as he sat diagonally across from him. Thomas shyly waved at him.
He no longer stammered while talking to Minho which was a huge improvement. There was a hierarchy in high school and not surprising at all, Minho was in the popular crowd. They continued to have some classes over the years, but it was one of those things where you only chatted in class. Minho got invited to parties all the time. Thomas didn’t. That’s just how things were.
Thomas sat in the circle, only half paying attention to the game, mostly dreading his turn and who he would share his first kiss with. He hoped it wouldn’t be Gally or Newt who also got roped into playing the game. How awkward to would be kissing your best friend?
He was so lost in thought, it took a nudge from his neighbour to realize everyone was staring at him. His face flushed realizing everyone knew he hadn’t being paying attention. Looking in front of him, his heart thudded in his chest when he saw the bottle pointing to him.
“Uh…” Thomas eyes flew to movement on his right, as Minho sat down in front of him. “Hi,” Thomas heard himself say faintly before soft warm lips met his. Thomas was too shocked to close his eyes but it was over pretty quickly anyways.
He sat dazed for a couple seconds, hardly believing that actually happened. As the bottle seemed to move closer to him, he made a quick excuse to get out of the game, and retreated to the kitchen where there weren’t a lot of people. No one tried chatting him up which was a relief.
His mind was freaking out and confused. Minho kissed him. Minho had actually kissed him!. Given it was a dare or a game..whatever, but he kissed his crush. Or his crush kissed him. He didn’t remember if he had responded or not.
He was so caught up in his thoughts, that he jumped when someone tapped his shoulder.
“You are too easy to sneak upon, shank,” Minho smirked as Thomas flushed with embarrassment. “Glad you could come. I hope this doesn’t make things awkward between us or anything.”
“No no, its fine. It was a pretty decent for a first kiss.” Thomas said, nerves making him honest.
For a second Thomas thought he was going to make fun of him, but Minho smiled, “It was my first kiss too.”
“Really?”
Minho laughed at Thomas’ surprise. “Why’s that so hard to believe?”
Thomas shrugged his shoulders, not wanting to go into explaining his presumption was due to Minho’s popularity and how easy it would be to kiss someone because he was so attractive. Thomas was sure dozens of people would want to kiss Minho.
Minho continued. “We’re good then?”
“Yeah,” Thomas nodded at his feet before returning his gaze back to Minho. “We’re good.”
They stood awkwardly in front of each other for a second or so, then Minho stepped closer to Thomas, making him raise his eyes up at him and he found himself wondering why Minho was suddenly in his personal space.
The other boy answered that the next second, when he cupped Thomas’ cheeks, pulling him forward for a kiss. Thomas’ eyes slipped shut as he leaned forward responded in kind.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Si— Thomas rocked back on his heels when Minho moved away, letting go of the back of his neck—he didn’t even remember when Minho’s hand had gone there—and his jaw dropped, his eyes wide as Minho smirked.
“Good that.” He said and left Thomas standing dumbstruck in the kitchen by himself.
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A/N: This is embarrassingly late late for Thominho Week but I wrote it especially for this, so I’m tagging it as such. I decided to do a couple firsts in one :) Hope you like it. Cheers
