Chapter Text
Rin’s predicament started in Professor Yim’s Nikara History class.
It was one of their few minor subjects for their programs, with her majoring in Chemical Engineering, and Nezha with his Marine Biology and Business Administration double degree, but it was required and still had the weight of 3 units, which was still a big deal when computing their general weighted average, so Rin still took it incredibly seriously because of her scholarship.
Yim assigned a partner project for them to research and write a paper on a particular prominent figure in Nikara history, but the catch was none of them got to pick their partners, much to their consternation—Yim chose their partners randomly for them. Rin was partnered with Nohai, one of the few people from her early elective classes in her first year at Sinegard University, who mostly kept to himself and got good grades, so she wasn’t too upset with the pick.
And Nezha was partnered with a girl named Chunhua, who they were sharing a class with for the very first time in this subject.
Rin can admit to herself that Chunhua is pretty, with warm dark brown eyes that crease when she smiles, and dimples in her peach skin, and she seems easygoing, amicable, bubbly, and just a pleasant person to be around.
Nezha had told Rin as much when they were let out of class.
“Guess Professor Yim saved me from a slew of migraines,” he’d told her smugly, which she responded to with a middle finger.
“Go fuck yourself. I am a great fucking partner; we’ve gotten perfect scores for every single paper.”
Nezha had snorted, and replied, “True, but don’t deny it—if we became partners, we both know exactly what was going to happen. We were going to fight over who to do a paper on until the weekend before the deadline, then pull two all-nighters just to catch up and blame each other for the delay.”
Rin rolled her eyes, grumbling under her breath. But Nezha wasn’t finished talking.
“She gave me her number,” Nezha said, taking his phone out and a piece of paper Rin hadn’t noticed him holding. He inputted her number into his contacts, and typed out a message. A few seconds later, his phone buzzed, and Nezha nodded, looking satisfied. “Good to go. You have Enro next, don’t you?”
Rin nodded, groaning. “Anatomy and Physiology will end up killing me.”
Nezha snorted. “I’ll be sure to throw a party when it finally does.”
“At least bring the good alcohol.”
“Of course, I’m not a fucking heathen.”
Rin was about to retort when his phone buzzed again. She frowned as Nezha typed a response.
“Who was that?” she’d found herself asking.
Nezha didn’t look up from his phone when he answered. “Chunhua. She wants to meet up after her last class to talk about the paper.”
Her frown deepened, a weird twinge in her stomach.
“The deadline is in two months.”
“Not everyone wants to do shit last minute, Rin.”
“Aren’t we heading over to Venka’s tonight to study for Jun’s long exam, though?”
Nezha blinked, as if he’d forgotten they were going to do that in the first place. The weird twinge became a knot now, making her feel wildly unsettled. Maybe what she ate for lunch didn’t sit well with her.
“I’ll catch up. It shouldn’t be too long, we might just pick a person.”
“Oh,” Rin responded, very intelligently. “Fine, then.”
“I’ll beat your ass in that exam, don’t worry. A pretty girl won’t distract me, if that’s what you’re so concerned about. I won’t let you show me up,” Nezha retorted, pocketing his phone disinterestedly.
Her chest tightened at the words ‘pretty girl’.
What the fuck?
Maybe she needed to go to the campus physician. She might be getting heartburn or something.
Before she could make sense of what she was feeling, though, Nezha’s stupid little smartwatch beeped, signaling that they had five minutes to get to their next class. He’d bumped her shoulder and told her not to die climbing the stairs to the Medicine Wing before he left for his class with Sonnen.
He was an hour late that night, and didn’t even bother texting ahead to any of them, the inconsiderate fuck.
That was three weeks ago.
~*~
Rin and Nohai decide to write about Speerly Queen Mai’rin’nen Tearza. Nohai is surprisingly easy to work with, doesn’t complain, and does whatever he’s tasked with diligently, so she doesn’t have many qualms or arguments about it. They write both a critique and a defense of her role in the annexation of Speer, and Nohai has some insightful points to make about what kind of sacrifice leading a country entails. It’s dramatic stuff, but Rin was often criticized for being too biased and nitpicky in her papers, so this might be the humanizing touch needed to balance everything out.
All in all, the paper is a breeze, and Nezha had been right: they finish and turn it in weeks early, and Yim saved her so many headaches and useless fights.
At least for Rin.
For some reason, however, Nezha and Chunhua aren’t as efficient in writing their own paper, which makes them end up researching their person a table away from Rin at the Sinegard library, where she’s reviewing for a quiz for Jima’s class.
“That’s ambitious,” she hears Chunhua comment, and Rin immediately stiffens.
“It is, but you can’t write about the Dragon Emperor without giving the Vipress and the Gatekeeper a mention,” Nezha replies, typing something on his laptop. “So we might as well dedicate a section to each of them.”
“Wouldn’t Yim dock points for that?” Chunhua asks.
“It won’t be about the three of them, per se,” Nezha elaborates, eyes still trained on his laptop. “Just the contributions they’ve had to the Dragon Emperor’s reign. It would be impossible to write this paper otherwise.”
Chunhua makes a noise of agreement.
Rin’s textbook lay forgotten on her desk, her eyes fixated on the two of them. Nezha’s concentrating on summarizing information for whatever it is they’re writing, but Chunhua’s not. No, she’s staring at Nezha intently, almost as if admiring his features. A small smile plays on her pink, glossed lips.
Gods, she really is pretty, isn’t she?
What the fuck?
Rin tries to think about something else—Nezha’s decided to write about the Dragon Emperor. She’s certain it’s his idea, because she knows him well enough to know he enjoys a challenge, which, in this case, entails detailing the lives of three people so intertwined separation would be a disservice and almost misinformation. Nezha has always had a weird distaste for the Trifecta, for reasons Rin can’t quite understand.
She also knows for a fact that if they were partners, she would veto the idea. The Trifecta were some of the most famous figures in Nikara history, second only to the Phoenix Goddess and the Dragon Marshal, and even the Red Emperor himself. Rin would argue that they need to stand out, because there have been so many papers written about the Trifecta it’s bordering on academic cliché.
Nezha would also 100% fight her on choosing Mai’rin’nen Tearza, on the grounds that technically, she isn’t Nikara. Then they would go on to have a big argument about Speer’s relevance in Nikan’s history and it’ll be a huge stink that would end up getting them kicked out of the library for the day because they got too loud.
Rin can picture it so vividly; it sort of concerns her.
She’s brought back to the present when Chunhua’s arm brushes against Nezha, the tips of her fingers touching the side of his hand.
She doesn’t know how the hell she even noticed that.
“Hold on, the Gatekeeper, the Dragon Emperor, and the Vipress’ relationships were never confirmed in records. You can’t presume they’re romantic by nature,” Chunhua points out, leaning closer to the laptop screen, their faces inches away from each other.
Nezha pauses, then gives her a smile. Cue a sharp twist in Rin’s chest and a weird flash of irritation.
“Huh. Never realized that. I always thought they were like The Red Emperor and Tearza.”
“I heard that’s how people from the South tell their folktales, but there’s no clear document that corroborates it in any of our books or archives.”
Nezha hums in agreement, and Chunhua beams with that pretty smile of hers and a perfect set of pearly whites.
For some reason, Rin can’t watch this. It makes her feel way too strange, like she’s intruding upon something, and it’s not something she even wants to see.
She stands up, gathers her things and shoves them in her bag hastily, and bolts out of the library, still feeling fucking unpleasant.
Her phone beeps with a message as she’s hurrying back to her and Kitay’s dorm.
Nezha: You okay?
Rin halts in her steps as she reads it, the weird knot in her chest loosening.
What. The. Fuck?
She types out a quick response.
Rin: what
Nezha: You left early. The librarians usually have to kick your ass out before you leave.
Rin: and how is that any of your business
Nezha: Nevermind. Sue me for trying to be concerned about you.
She’s about to type out a response, then remembers he probably wants to go back to working on their History paper, and clutches her phone so hard she thinks she could have cracked the screen.
The moment she gets to her dorm, Rin greets Kitay absentmindedly, plops onto their living room carpet across from him, and Googles her symptoms on her cheap, crappy, secondhand laptop.
She looks up ‘abdominal pain’ first, and is met with a slew of possible illnesses ranging from indigestion to pregnancy, which almost makes her choke on her own spit. But this pain isn’t acute or persisting. So she crosses those possibilities out. Her searches of chest tightness and strange flashes of aggression yield no better results.
“Is everything okay?” Kitay asks suddenly. “You’re typing on your keyboard like you’re sending another strongly-worded complaint letter to Jiang.”
“I think I’m sick,” Rin says, and he straightens. “But I can’t seem to find anything that matches what I’m feeling completely.”
“And what are you feeling, exactly?”
“My chest gets tight, my stomach feels strange, and I get really irritated out of nowhere.”
Kitay raises an unimpressed brow.
“More irritated than usual,” she concedes, rolling her eyes. “But it doesn’t happen all the time. It feels… conditional? In the past few weeks.”
“Conditional how?” he drawls skeptically.
“It’s only happened a few times.”
“When was the most recent one?”
“At the library, just now. I was reviewing for Jima’s quiz, and it just happened? Nezha was there with his History partner too, they were still working on their paper—” Rin didn’t know why she added that specific detail in, but it was out of her mouth before she could really think the relevance through.
And it seems like telling Kitay that is a big mistake.
He leans back, arms folded across his chest, understanding dawning on his face. Of what, Rin doesn’t know. But she doesn’t like it.
“You’re jealous,” he concludes, clasping his fingers together and nodding solemnly.
What.
The.
Fuck.
“Fucking pardon ?” Rin splutters.
“You’re jealous,” Kitay insists, a knowing smile curling on his face that makes Rin want to light herself on fire.
“I am not jealous. Why the fuck would I be jealous?”
“Oh, I don't know. Why would you be jealous?” he asks, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.
Rin glares at him, crossing her arms stubbornly.
“My best friend is growing up. Or growing a heart, like the Grinch. I’m so proud,” he proclaims dramatically, wiping an invisible tear from his eye before grinning like a lunatic.
“I am not fucking jealous. So what if Nezha’s partner is a pretty girl? I don’t care. Why would I fucking care?”
“I never said it was Nezha you were jealous of,” Kitay points out, and if Rin didn’t love him so much, she would have contemplated smacking the grin off his face.
“ Chen Kitay, if you don’t shut the fuck up— ”
“There’s nothing wrong with being jealous. I mean, we all saw it coming—”
“Excuse me?!”
“Come on, Rin. It’s alright,” Kitay says soothingly, teasing her by squeezing her shoulder in mock assurance. “Nezha’s a pretty guy, and he’s an absolute loser for you. It’s hard to resist, but try not to think about it too much.”
“You’re disgusting .”
Kitay shrugs, pushing himself up and going to the kitchen to get a snack. “You’ll get over your denial eventually. Do you want a soda?”
“Fuck off. Get me a Coke.”
Rin has never said this about Kitay before, because he’s never been wrong, but he is 100% wrong about this one.
She is not jealous.
Nezha can go jump off a cliff for all she cares. He can spend time with any girl he wants, can go on stupid dates, and hold hands and kiss them how much he wants—
The tightness in her chest comes back, this time, with a sharp pang of pain.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh fuck no .
~*~
After that incredibly helpful realization, Rin does what she does best when it comes to emotions: ignore the problem so she doesn’t have to confront it.
The new issue is, now that she’s aware of said problem, she notices it everywhere.
She’s not an idiot; Rin was aware that Nezha is a very attractive person from the get-go. Gratingly so, in fact, with his pristine complexion in the likeness of porcelain, his full, pink lips with the Cupid’s bow arc, and his lovely, almond eyes. Rin hates how good-looking he is, at times, and his self-awareness of it translates into an irritating smugness in the best of times.
So really, it should be a no-brainer that, like Rin, other people would notice Nezha’s looks and decide they are attracted to him, and if they’re feeling particularly bold, try to make a move.
But she guesses she never really realized what that entailed.
Strangers’ eyes trail him as he walks past, service workers treat him extra nicely, and most importantly, people try to flirt with him. Many people try to flirt with him. She can’t count the number of drunk girls she’s seen who’ve tried to cling to his arm as they stumbled through college parties.
Rin wonders if she bangs her head hard enough through a glass window, she’ll fuck her head up enough to forget this realization.
Gods, she’s not a teenage girl daydreaming about experiencing becoming a rom-com’s leading lady. She’s never even thought about romance or being in love or all that stupid bullshit because it’s not like those would be useful for her in the foreseeable future—it’d just end up being a distraction from her studies.
Damn Nezha. He never fails to ruin everything.
But what can she do, really? Physically fight every person who tries to lay their hands on him?
So she just decides to white-knuckle it the entire time, even if she thinks stabbing her own hand with a fork would be more enjoyable.
“What’s your order?” Nezha asks, kicking her leg from underneath the table.
Rin jolts, not realizing she’d been staring absentmindedly at the diner menu. Nezha had apparently been waiting for her outside the library while Kitay and Venka were holed up at her apartment finishing their own pair project for Jun’s class so she doesn’t walk home in the dark. Then he proceeded to complain that Rin took too damn long at the library and demanded they eat dinner before he starved to death, which made her want to smack him because it’s not like she fucking asked him to wait for her.
“Haven’t decided yet. You?”
“What the fuck’s taking you so long?”
Before she can answer (see: insult him), the waitress assigned to their table approaches them and gives them a greeting. Rin spouts the first thing she sees on the menu as her order, which makes Nezha snort, earning him a glare.
“And what about you, Sir?” asks the waitress, turning to Nezha.
Rin doesn’t miss the way her hand lands on Nezha’s arm, a saccharine smile on her face. She leans closer, pretending to peek over the menu items he’s pointing to even though Rin knows she can hear his order perfectly fine.
God fucking damn it.
“Do your specials include the fries or do I have to order them separately?”
She has the urge to wrench the waitress’ hand away from Nezha’s arm, and wipe that stupid flirty simper off her face, since the fucking idiot doesn’t want to do it himself, still nodding along and smiling at her politely like she isn’t invading his personal space.
Fucking hell. She’s going insane.
After what seems like forever, the waitress finally leaves to put their orders in.
Rin sits and stews, scrolling on her phone and pointedly ignoring Kitay’s teasing texts about her ‘date’ with Nezha. She continues to do so when their food arrives and the waiter flashes Nezha another coy smile and contemplates smashing a plate at her head so she doesn’t have to endure this again.
Out of nowhere, he pushes the tray of fries toward her.
“What?”
“You always want fries. No, correction: you always steal my fries.” Nezha says, raising an eyebrow. “So there, have that.”
Once she gets over her brief surprise, she starts shoveling her food into her mouth, eager to just get home and pass out and forget this ever happened.
When they get the bill, however, Rin notices something scrawled behind it.
The waitress’ phone number. On their fucking receipt.
Nezha’s eyes barely gloss over the receipt—he never checks the price when he pays, one of the perks of being filthy fucking rich, Rin guesses, and she’s kind of thankful for that now.
So when he stands up and doesn’t take it like always, Rin does, rips it up into little pieces, and throws it in the trash can.
Yes, she’s aware she’s acting like an idiot. Yes, logically, Nezha didn’t even flirt back or even show the slightest amount of interest in the waitress. Funnily enough, he never does reciprocate, only with replying with terse and detached politeness that had been ingrained in him by his upbringing.
(Or maybe he does, and it’s just a way of flirting Rin isn’t familiar with because Nezha has never been the most forthcoming or really, normal kind of person. But she doesn’t want to think about that possibility.)
But gods if throwing that number away didn’t make her feel better.
~*~
Rin, in her opinion, should win an award for her stellar acting in keeping her fucking cool around Nezha.
So she’s jealous. Fine. Fine.
But he doesn’t have to know that. He’d never let her live that down.
And Rin thinks she’s doing a fantastic job convincing Nezha that absolutely nothing is wrong (save for that one incident where she almost punched him in the face again because she was texting Kitay about The Issue and he popped up behind her, but that’s really on him ), if she does say so herself. She’ll just wait until this dumb, irrational crush on him fades.
That’s what she keeps telling herself.
(Kitay keeps telling her she’s a tad bit delusional, but what the hell does he know?)
Rin ends up in the faculty lounge completely by coincidence. Jiang was being a pain in the ass again and had her running back and forth from his lecture room to do completely arbitrary tasks to screw with her.
Nezha and Chunhua walk in while she’s reorganizing Jiang’s documents alphabetically in reverse order, approaching Professor Yim who’s lounging at his desk, sipping his afternoon tea. Nezha hands him the pristine folder labeled neatly with their names—it must be their report; still early by a week, but longer than what Rin had expected for them.
Yim thumbs through the pages, skimming their work before giving them a nod of dismissal.
Rin turns away, praying she wasn’t caught watching them with a glare.
She needs to pull it together.
“Thanks for the help, I think we did a good job,” she hears Nezha say just outside the faculty lounge.
“It was my pleasure. You’re so easy to work with,” Chunhua replies lightly.
Nezha lets out a short laugh. “I bet some people would disagree with you.”
Rin is definitely kicking him for that one.
She thinks that’s the end of the conversation when Nezha bids Chunhua goodbye, but Rin freezes when she hears her calling him back.
“Wait, Nezha, I was just wondering…”
“Yes?”
Chunhua pauses, and Rin thinks she hears a shuddering breath. She sneaks a peek.
“Would you like to go out sometime?” Chunhua asks, her cheeks rosy pink, looking hopefully up at Nezha. “On a date?”
Fuck. Fuck.
Nezha’s eyebrows shoot up, clearly surprised.
“A date?”
A hum of assent. Rin doesn’t realize she’s crumpling the papers she’s organizing when her hands ball into fists.
Nezha is quiet for a moment, and dread rises inside Rin, threatening to suffocate her.
“Listen, Chunhua—” Nezha begins tentatively, voice quieter now, and she strains her ears to listen in. “You’re a great girl—”
“Runin, do you hate the first years so much you want to destroy their essays?”
God fucking damn it.
Rin has contemplated murder many times before—an alarming number of times, according to Kitay, but again, what does he know?—but never has she been so close to committing it than right this moment.
Jiang clicks his tongue, prying her hands off the papers. “Next time, try to keep my things out of your violent tendencies. It’s so ever inconvenient.”
“You’re not even paying me to do this shit!”
“Ah, but I do give you grades that raise your GPA, is that not the same thing?”
Rin grumbles obscenities under her breath, and only sees Nezha and Chunhua part ways.
Fuck.
If Rin printed a photo of Jiang and tossed darts at his face that night, much to Kitay’s confusion, could you really blame her?
~*~
“You’re avoiding me.” Nezha grits out, cornering her in the otherwise empty library.
Rin fixes her eyes on the top button of his shirt collar, mustering a scowl together.
“I’m not avoiding you,” she drawls. “Why are you so fucking full of yourself to think I would ever consider you important enough to avoid?
She is definitely avoiding him. Rin didn’t know what Nezha’s response was to Chunhua’s invitation, and really, she didn’t really want to find out at that point. If she never confirms it, then it’ll never be real, it’s that simple.
(Kitay may have had a point when he told her she was being delusional.)
Nezha scoffs, crossing his arms. She can almost imagine the expression on his face—perfectly shaped brows furrowed, lips down-turned in a disbelieving scowl, his almond eyes flashing with irritation.
“Bullshit. I saw you leave through the window from Jiang’s lecture when you saw me waiting by the door.”
“That was for an entirely different reason. The world doesn’t revolve around you, idiot.”
“Rin.”
She stands up, gathering her things and shoving them into her bag. “Leave me fucking alone, Nezha.”
“ Rin. ”
“I have my next class.”
“No, you fucking don’t, you don’t have afternoon classes on Wednesdays.”
“Oh, now you know my schedule better than me?” Rin snaps, even though he’s right, and how the fuck does he know that?
“Tell me what’s wrong,” Nezha demands.
“Nothing’s wrong. Move out of my way.” She tries to sidestep him briskly, but he moves in front of her again, blocking her path effectively.
“What the fuck is it? Did I do something? At least fucking tell me.”
“I don’t owe you anything, you prick, now move .”
She tries to move past him again, but this time, Nezha’s hands latch onto her shoulders, holding her in place. Her temper flares, trying to shrug it off, but his hands are firm in their hold.
“I’m going to start screaming,” Rin bites out.
“I’d really rather you don’t.”
“So let me go.”
“Not until you tell me what I did.”
“You didn’t do anything,” she spits, finally looking up to glare at him.
His expression is strange—the frustration is there, yes, but it looks almost… pleading, too. Softer, in a way she’s never seen his anger before.
“Then why?”
Rin tightens her jaw, looking away.
“Just tell me.”
She counts to ten in her head, willing the entire situation away. Let this be a nightmare she’s going to wake up from any moment now.
“Please?”
Fucking hell .
“I’m fucking jealous,” she blurts out. “I’m jealous, alright?”
Silence.
Nezha looks stunned, recoiling from her—his cheeks take on a dark crimson shade, and his mouth is open, gaping at her.
“You—” he chokes out. “You’re jealous…”
“There, you asshole, are you happy?” she seethes. “Yes, I’m fucking jealous that other people keep flirting with you, and that your partner asked you on a date, and yes, I’m an idiot, I know I have no right to be, I know we’re not dating, we’re barely even fucking friends, we fight all the time, so I don’t even know how this fucking happened, and oh God, I just know you’re gonna gloat over this so just get on wi—”
She doesn’t get to finish her rant.
Nezha cups her face and presses his lips to hers.
Now, she’s thought this many, many times in the past month or so but:
What the FUCK.
Rin’s arms hook around Nezha’s neck, pulling him closer to her, desperate to feel his touch. He gladly obliges, his hand moving from her face to her waist, fingers brushing on the base of her spine, making her shiver. Her heartbeat is ringing in her ears, veins pumping with adrenaline because holy shit, Nezha is kissing her. Her. Voluntarily.
When he pulls away, she almost lets out a whine in protest ( almost, because that would have been humiliating), but it turns into a gasp when he begins peppering her neck with kisses. He shivers at the sound, grip on her tightening.
“You are an idiot,” he murmurs against her skin, punctuating each word with a soft kiss on the length of her jaw.
“What?” is the only thing she manages to reply, brain scrambled by the scent of his most-likely over-expensive perfume. He pulls away, his hand on her cheek, tilting her head to look up at him.
His hair is tousled, lips swollen, pupils blown out, turning the warm brown almost black.
Holy fuck.
“Did you honestly notice all those people flirting with me,” he asks breathlessly, gaze piercing through her, “but not me flirting with you ?”
“What?” she says again, the only word in her vocabulary while her mind hard reboots itself because really, what?
“You’re a bigger moron than I thought.”
“Watch yourself, asshole,” Rin manages to bite back. “Don’t you have a date?”
Nezha rolls his eyes, exasperated.
“I told Chunhua no, you fucking eavesdropper. I told her there was another girl I’ve liked for a while now.”
“Oh.”
Rin definitely needs to look something up on WebMD again because she’s dizzy at this point. The fact that Nezha admitted that without a gun to his head makes her feel as if something in the universe flipped on its axis.
“Yeah, oh. Hell, she guessed who it was right away, but told me she thought it was still worth a shot.”
Rin blinks. “She knew?”
“Yeah, she’s a smart girl. Unlike someone I know—”
“Oh, go fuck yourself, you conceited bastard—”
He leans in and kisses her again.
“Now I know how to shut you up,” Nezha says when he pulls away.
She punches him in the arm.
~*~
“Wipe that smug smile off your fucking face, asshole,” Rin mutters with a glare, which, of course, only eggs the bastard on.
They’re watching a film in their dormitory, Rin sitting on Nezha’s lap with his arms wrapped around her waist and his chin resting on her shoulder. Kitay had entered at one point, took one look at them, muttered, “It took you two long enough,” and bolted back out the door before Rin could hurl a throw pillow at him.
“You were jealous,” he says in a singsong tone halfway through the movie.
“I will murder you and bury your body in the courtyard,” she hisses.
“Even if you do, that doesn’t change the fact that you were jealous.”
Rin pinches him in the arm, earning her a yelp and a glare from him.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“You like me,” Nezha drawls, pressing a kiss on the shell of her ear, and nuzzling his nose into her neck. “You like me so much you were jealous of other people flirting with me.”
“Please,” she retorts, giving Nezha a look. “Like you would be any better.”