Chapter Text
Donghyuk hates Thursdays.
Why the hell is it even possible to schedule a biology lab at night? And why did Donghyuk of all people get stuck with this schedule? Of course he had to take it, he needs biology to apply for medical school. The only other option was to not take it. Frankly, he didn’t want to deal with the consequences of figuring out another career plan outside of medical school just because he couldn’t suck it up for a night lab.
It’s a windy mid-November evening. The sun had long disappeared, shrouding the campus in darkness occasionally interrupted by the faint orange glow of streetlamps. Donghyuk digs his hands deeper into his jacket pockets as he walks along the dimly lit sidewalk to the North Centre of Technology (NCT for short), chin tucked into his chest and looking down at his beat-up sneakers so his eyes stop watering from the cold air. His ears get sweaty under his beanie as he picks up his pace.
With final exams quickly approaching, Donghyuk’s days have become a blur. It doesn’t really matter what day of November it is. The last birthday of the year he has to care about is Chenle’s, and he’ll just send a text to the group chat once Jeno does. Jeno’s always the first to send birthday wishes in the group.
All that matters right now is that this is the last biology lab before the end of the course, he just put in a request for time off from the campus bookstore to study for finals, has dinner tonight with a professor that he absolutely cannot postpone anymore, and his first exam is for his calculus course. Donghyuk wishes he studied more for it. Hopefully he gets the opportunity over the next two weeks.
Few people are on campus after 6 pm. Why would they be? Most classes and labs are during more regular hours in the morning and early afternoon. Donghyuk walks alone for the most part, until he sees the heels of someone’s shoes enter his vision of the sidewalk as he accidentally walks head first right into someone’s back.
“My bad,” Donghyuk apologizes as he starts to snake around the individual. If he doesn’t pick up his pace now he’ll be late for the lab. Once you’re more than 5 minutes late, the TA starts docking lab grades. Donghyuk would much rather avoid that.
“Hm? All good.”
Donghyuk looks up at the sound of the familiar voice to see Renjun, back still turned to him. His face was illuminated a light blue from his phone screen as he squinted down at it, eyebrows brought together in concentration. Whatever it was must have been pretty serious given Renjun stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to investigate, completely unfazed by Donghyuk almost putting him face first into the ground.
“Oh hey! Ready for the lab?” Donghyuk pats him twice on the shoulder, hoping this will spur Renjun to start walking with him.
Renjun shoves his phone into his pocket as he heaves a sigh, “yeah, let’s get it over with.” He storms ahead without looking back at Donghyuk. He doesn’t mind, attributing it to stressing over finals. He’s sure Renjun will be okay, and right now he appreciates the haste with which Renjun moves. At this rate, they won’t be late. Well, maybe two minutes late at most.
As they push past the glass doors and enter the NCT, Donghyuk sees the rest of the guys who also got stuck with the Thursday evening lab. They’ve piled their backpacks in front of the door to the wet laboratory and are throwing their lab coats on. Donghyuk tosses his bag on top of the pile after pulling out his tragically wrinkled and stained lab coat that was half hanging out of the side pocket originally meant for a water bottle. The faded stains accumulated over the years of general and organic chemistry laboratories are absolutely beyond salvaging. As long as it lets him into the laboratory, Donghyuk can’t be bothered to deal with it.
“Dude, careful! My laptop’s in there,” Mark whines as he hears the thud before whipping his head around to see Donghyuk’s bag land atop his own.
“Sorry. Did you do the prelab?”
“Obviously. The fuck do I look like? Here.” Mark more often than not has an abrasive way of speaking, but it’s not out of malice. He hands Donghyuk the prelab to copy the answers before the TA arrives.
About halfway through the semester, Donghyuk stopped asking Mark if he can copy the prelab answers because Mark started offering them to him whenever he saw Donghyuk in front of the laboratory's doors. It’s a nice system they got going on, albeit incredibly one sided. Donghyuk wonders how Mark will redeem all the “I owe you one”s Donghyuk has uttered over the course of the semester. He knows Mark keeps a meticulous record of everything.
Donghyuk copies as much as he can before the recognizable squeak of the TA’s shoes approaches.
“You’re cooked” Chenle laughs as he peers over Donghyuk’s shoulder. He isn’t even halfway through the first page of the prelab. There’s three pages in total. He returns Mark’s prelab as he elbows Chenle in the ribs, earning him whispers of the rest of the first page’s answers. Right or not, he can’t be bothered anymore as long as it’s complete. If he tanks this lab but gets at least an 80% on the final exam, he can finish the course with an 85%. Trust, Donghyuk loves his grade calculating spreadsheet.
“Prelabs out guys, you know what to do” Hendery announces as he positions himself at the doors to the wet laboratory.
The boys all line up, ripping the prelab pages out of the course booklet to hand in to Hendery.
There’s thirteen of them in total. Mark enters first after handing Hendery his neatly arranged and already stapled prelab.
Nerd, Donghyuk thinks to himself, rolling his eyes at the sight.
After Mark, Jeno and Jaemin followed suit. Jeno quietly gave Hendery a single nod as he handed his prelab, intently listening to Jaemin who had him locked into a one-sided conversation. Jaemin interrupts his own flow with a quick “how’re you doing?” to Hendery as he hands over his prelab.
Donghyuk quickly passed his pile of prelab sheets to Hendery, the three pages folded in at the top left corner to hold them together enough to survive the handoff. He purses his lips and nods as he enters the laboratory. There were two stations set up, one group of six and one group of seven. He sees Mark, Jeno, and Jaemin already at the table for seven and joins them.
“The guy I matched with last night on Bumble keeps texting me throughout the day despite working full time. Then, after maybe not texting me for like, two hours straight, he says ‘I’m so sorry for ignoring you, I hate when people are poor communicators. I shouldn’t have ignored you for so long.’ My brother in Christ, it was just two hours? I was in classes all day, and I already had your notifications silenced from the start. I promise I didn’t notice” Jaemin vents as Donghyuk takes the vacant seat next to Mark.
The rest of the guys file in one at a time. Chenle, Jisung, and Renjun complete their station. They all engage in small talk, sharing the usual stress of finals and discussing whose exams are when. Any attempts to make group plans fall apart as they realize they all have vastly different exam schedules and go home for the holidays immediately after they’re all done. The other station is almost filled as Taeyong, Yuta, Doyoung, and Jaehyun take their seats.
Just as Hendery is about to explain today’s lab, Johnny and Jungwoo push through the glass doors, apologies for being late tumbling out of their mouths as they haphazardly throw their lab coats on. Hendery looks at the clock at the front of the room.
“Guys, it’s 6:07. That’s 5% at least.”
“Dude we’re so sorry, it was out of our control!” Johnny started.
“Coach held us back way later than expected. We had to run from the courts all the way here!” Jungwoo finished with his hands on his knees as he caught his breath.
Right. They’re on the basketball team, and the season either starts or ends around now. Donghyuk isn’t really sure. All he knows is that the courts they usually have practice at are on the opposite side of campus, tucked away in the social sciences sector. On a good day it’s at least a fifteen-minute walk. Must’ve been quite the sprint, he empathizes as he sees them negotiating their grades with Hendery.
“Y’know what, it’s the final lab, and it’s been a long semester. Just have a seat, we’ll say you got here on time. Dr. Kun doesn’t need to know.”
Their sighs of relief filled the room as they joined the other four at their station.
“You’re the realest, thank you” Johnny expresses once he’s seated.
They all finally settle as Hendery explains the lab. Donghyuk tries to pay attention, but it doesn’t last long.
If I can catch the 9:05 pm bus that stops at NCT I can make it to Dr. Ten’s house in time for dinner. I shouldn’t stay too long since I have the opening shift at the bookstore tomorrow and I need to sleep early. If I leave his house by 9:45, maybe 10 pm at the latest, I can get home by 10:30, study a bit of calculus, and be in bed by 11:30. Fuck, that’s so ambitious. And what about the petri dish? When will I have time to deal with th- Huh?
“Hey, can you smear this petri dish?” Jisung asks again as he waves the dish in front of a clearly distracted Donghyuk.
“Sure, Jisung.”
“It’s Andy.”
“The fuck? Since when?”
“I’m trying something new. I, uh, don’t think I use my free will to its fullest extent. Can you please call me Andy for the foreseeable future?”
“Were there no other ways to experiment with free will available to you?”
“No,” Andy smiles as he places the petri dish in front of Donghyuk and leans back in his seat.
“How long d’you think the Andy phase will last?” Chenle asks the table, carelessly smearing the petri dish. It’s definitely contaminated, and Chenle definitely doesn’t care.
“A day,” Mark replies immediately without looking up from his own petri dish. He seems to know what he’s doing. Donghyuk watches him carefully as he waits for the right moment to ask for help with his own.
Chenle snorts. “What do you guys think?” He asks, turning to Jeno and Jaemin.
“Hmm,” Jeno tilts his head back to look up at the ceiling and give it about five seconds of thought. “I’d say a week.”
“I think till the start of the new semester. Hear me out,” Jaemin starts, setting down his petri dish as he fully immerses himself in this question.
“We only have about one to two more weeks of classes, which gives him time to get used to being called Andy. This assumes that everyone he asks to call him Andy does in fact oblige. After this, we’ll be in the exam schedule, so we’ll really only see people at exams. It’s too little opportunity to be called Andy, but just enough time to sit with the idea of being called Andy. I guarantee he’ll fold by the first day of the next semester.”
“Jesus,” Donghyuk mutters under his breath, still watching Mark.
“Dude you’re fucking crazy,” Chenle laughs. “Renjun, Donghyuk, what do you think?”
“What Mark said,” Renjun replied, absolutely disinterested as he finishes labelling his smeared petri dish and starts cleaning up his area of the station.
“No clue man, I still think this shit’s a bit weird” Donghyuk replies.
Andy looks at all of them, surprised at the lack of faith his friends have in him.
“Man fuck you guys,” he starts to whine.
“No thanks,” Donghyuk smiles. “Mark, can you show me how to smear this dish without contaminating it? Hendery might actually fail me if I do that again. I only fucked up like, twice before, but he’s so strict.”
“Uh, I’m kind of bad at explaining things. I’ll just do it for you if you want,” he offers as he takes the dish out of Donghyuk’s hands. Donghyuk flashes a bright smile of gratitude. What a gentleman. He knew this was exactly what Mark would do. And if he didn’t, Donghyuk was planning on pushing Mark’s buttons to irritate him enough to smear the dish for him by asking countless redundant questions about the equipment, the technique, you name it.
The rest of their time in the laboratory drags on as they move through their tasks and fill out the rest of the lab sheets in the course booklet. Donghyuk keeps checking the clock above the door. It’s now 8:50 pm. He has to be out the door by 9 pm sharp to catch that 9:05 pm bus.
Just as everyone finishes handing in their lab sheets to Hendery, the door at the back of the lab opens, and the course director, Dr. Qian Kun, walks in.
“Hey everyone! Since it’s the last lab of the semester, we wanted to give you a treat on behalf of the department. We feel bad that you guys got stuck with the night lab schedule instead of the daytime lab options.”
Hendery walks past Dr. Kun, returning to the laboratory with a tray of pastries. It’s hard to tell what they are, considering they’re really fucking ugly. At least they don’t smell bad.
Donghyuk watches the clock as Hendery and Dr. Kun walk towards their station first.
“Please, help yourselves guys!”
The boys are hesitant at first, but they each reluctantly start taking one. The guys from the other station gather around Hendery to help themselves too.
Donghyuk gets up and takes a step back. “Thank you so much Dr. Kun. And Hendery! But I’m incredibly sorry, I have a meeting tonight that I really can’t miss.”
“I’ll save you one” Renjun says without looking at him.
“Thanks, I owe you one.”
“It’s fine.”
“Well, let us know how it tastes once you try it!” Dr. Kun grins as Donghyuk smiles back before turning to leave, abandoning his lab coat at his seat.
Once Donghyuk is out the door and everyone else has eaten their pastries, they look at each other with a mutual understanding to be polite.
“It’s… good,” Yuta starts.
“Definitely a baked good,” Doyoung adds.
“Who made this?” Taeyong started “I want the recipe.”
“No you don’t,” Chenle jumps in, oblivious to the bullshitting going on as everyone turns to glare at him.
Dr. Kun laughs. “It’s okay. We’re scientists, not chefs!”
“Did you maybe use almond butter or something? I’m allergic to almonds so I don’t feel too great,” Jaehyun says as he folds his half-eaten pastry into a paper towel.
“Dude, what’re you feeling right now? Because my hands feel like they’re on fire. Maybe that’s from the lab earlier though,” Andy wonders.
“Wait, my ears are tingling” Chenle voices as his eyes widen with panic.
“That’s because you’re so fucking loud all the time. Take a vow of silence for once” Jaemin pleads as he brings his hands together in mock prayer. Chenle flips him off.
“My vision’s a bit blurry,” Jaemin continues, ignoring Chenle. “Maybe I’ve just been wearing my contacts for too long. This never happened before though.
The complaints continue. Mark’s hands are jittery, Yuta felt dizzy and had to lie down with his feet elevated. Johnny felt like he was experiencing vertigo even though he’s not really sure what vertigo is. Jungwoo felt disembodied and everyone wondered what he meant by that. Doyoung’s throat felt itchy, Jeno felt sluggish, Renjun felt nauseous, and Taeyong felt like his arms were falling out of their joints.
Yeah, Taeyong voicing that freaked everyone out a bit.
In the corner, Hendery was furiously writing in a notebook, the sound of pen scratching paper filled the silence as Dr. Kun deliberated over what to say next.
“Well, I’m really sorry these pastries sucked,” he clasps his hands together, “But nevertheless! Thank you so much for sticking around at the end of an already long and late lab. All the best on your exams, guys. Please study the lecture slides and lab materials.”