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"Uhm, sir, please wake up."
Sejun could hear the voice drifting in and out of his ears, warm and earnest. The sentence was repeated again, this time accompanied with a soft nudge at his shoulder. His eyes blinked open briefly to recognize a dark figure leaning over him. No, in fact, everything was dark, and the darkness lulled him back to sleep in a matter of seconds. He stretched out on his back like a cat and turned to the side to continue his half-finished nap.
And immediately consumed a fistful of sand through his nose.
Sejun's eyes flew open, which was another mistake, since they too came into contact with the sand. He sat up in a panic and felt his lungs rattling with the choking cough that forced its way up his throat. His left eye burned with possibly more than a stray grain of sand, but Sejun was too busy coughing out his whole insides to whine about it.
"Oh my god! Oh no! Are you alright?"
The voice sounded as alarmed as Sejun felt, maybe even more so. A gentle hand was alternating between patting and smoothing down Sejun's back as his chest heaved with the coughs. A cold bottle was pushed into his own hands and Sejun took it like a lifeline. He tipped the content into his mouth to gargle out the grainy feelings in his throat, probably looking like a whole idiot in the process.
"Eye- there's sand in my eye," Sejun said as soon as he got his voice back. It was pitched somewhere in the dolphin frequency range.
"Oh- okay, hold on, can you keep it open I'm gonna rinse it with water. It won't feel good but we'll get the sand out. Please stay calm."
The voice had lost the panicky edge, now sounding like an experienced school nurse giving instructions, and Sejun could only follow, literally blindly. The cold water hitting his eye made him yelp, but after a while he could blink and not feel the gritty sand anymore. It took him a minute to get his body to settle down and open his eyes properly to look at his current companion.
Who had the roundest pair of eyes. Ones that radiated nothing but concern, for Sejun.
Who also was wearing a white singlet that clung to his body with sweat and hid nothing underneath. Not that there was anything that should have been hidden.
It was Sejun’s eyes that went round then. He blinked again, for good measure. Sweaty handsome man was still gazing at him, his brows drawn down a little in confusion.
The question hung in the air between them, unasked. Because apparently this man was too polite to ask Sejun why the hell he was sleeping in the children’s sandbox.
Sejun opened his mouth to say something. He seemed to take too long and the stranger beat him to it.
“Are you alright? I’m sorry for waking you up like that. It’s gotten dark and the park is closing soon,” Sejun belatedly wondered what time it was, “I must have startled you, I’m so sorry.”
And he actually looked so sorry, eyes round and lips a little pursed in his speech, like an oversized puppy. Sejun’s eyes flitted down again and back up.
The whole thing just didn’t match. Puppy and hot should never exist in a single line of thought.
But Sejun and stupid seemed to always go hand in hand. Because what came out of his mouth next was, “Can I buy you a drink?”
Hanse and Byungchan were right in telling him to never open his mouth in a first meeting and ruin that precious first impression that his pretty face couldn’t salvage. Sejun was always bad at listening.
“W-what?” The stranger said, masking his confusion with a hesitant smile.
A smile? That was better than what Sejun expected. “I mean, you just used all your water on me,” he ploughed on, mentally patting himself for the save, “Thank you for that by the way. Let me get you something else. There’s a convenience store across the park’s entrance.”
Even though it was the first time Sejun heard it, the stranger’s startled laugh was addictive. His eyes crinkled up, lips parting to show a perfect row of teeth. It was more than a little charming.
“There’s really no need. It’s just water.”
“You look like you need some now though, you know, you look h-” Sejun’s mouth was again faster than his brain. He completed the rest of the sentence by gesturing vaguely at the person in front of him. If he hadn’t looked like an idiot before, he definitely sounded like one now.
There was something pleased in the stranger’s smile.
“I really wish you had finished that. I’ve never had a stranger in a park tell me I look hot before,” he laughed a bit more, the bright sound warming Sejun up all the way from his insides. “But I’m drenched from my run and smelling horrible and, uhm, you are covered in sand. I don’t think they will let us in.”
Sejun only stared down at himself then. Though his clothes didn’t look too bad, there was sand everywhere his skin was visible, on his neck and his back where his shirt had ridden up during the nap. He could feel the grains inside his shoes, and if he was honest with himself, he would be sure to find more inside his underwear when he got home.
His sense of embarrassment seemed to kick in a little, accompanied by meek disappointment. The deflated look on his face must have been obvious, because the stranger immediately added on.
“But! We could exchange numbers! I wanna treat you to something to apologize for what happened just now. Uhm, we could hang out. If you want to, that is!”
Sejun’s mood recovered quickly, way too quickly, but the stranger met his stupid excited grin with a grin of his own.
The stranger’s name was Seungsik, Sejun later learned. And if he spent that whole dinner drafting his first message to Seungsik as Hanse and Byungchan droned on and on about “waiting at least a day to make yourself look less desperate, maybe?”, it was none of their business.
*******
[09:07] sejun: do you do that often?
[09:08] seungsik: do i do what often?
[09:08] sejun: show concern for weirdos sleeping in public parks?
[09:10] seungsik: i suppose i do?
[09:10] sejun: oh :(
[09:13] seungsik: but i don’t give my number to any of them, do i?
[09:13] seungsik: :')