“Sup,” Sehun announced himself casually, and eleven heads swivelled around to stare at him. He stopped at the classroom doorway, midway through eating a potato chip. The eleven boys kept their wide eyes trained on him, gazes unwavering. Sehun paused, and then swallowed his chip excruciatingly slowly. “Uh…why is everyone looking at me? Is there something on my face?”

“You dog,” Luhan answered him, his face breaking out into a grin, and suddenly he was pulled into the room, eleven pairs of hands slapping on his back in approval.

“Nice job man,” someone said passionately.

“Yeah, we really didn’t see that coming-”

“Who knew the maknae was such a playboy-”

“You really took one for the team, buddy, we’re so proud-”

“Our little boy is just growing up too fast-”

“Let me pinch his cute little cheeks-”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Sehun protested when someone began mussing up his hair. “Not that I don’t love you all grovelling me like peasants, but…” He glanced hesitanly around at them. “What exactly did I do?”

“Oh, you know,” Chanyeol said cheekily, pulling Sehun into a bearhug and eliciting a high pitched squeak.

“I actually don’t,” Sehun corrected him, his voice muffled under Chanyeol’s warm embrace.

“You got it ooon,” Baekhyun crowed.

“Miss Kan is cougar!” Jongdae howled after him, and the two broke down into snickers.

“We’re so proud of you man,” Chanyeol grinned goofily, and released Sehun with a rough, loving push.

“What are you guys- how even-” Sehun spluttered. The eleven boys advanced at him in a circle of which he was the donut hole, all wearing scarily wide smiles. “Everyone hold up! I got it on with who? Miss Kan is a what? You’re so proud of me why?”

“You banged the principal’s assistant!” Luhan informed him cheerily. “And I guess you must be one hell of a love-maker, because she put in good word to the principal and our budget for grad just got doubled!” He gave him another approving slap on the back as Sehun stared at him, flabberghasted.

“I don’t know if you intended for that to happen,” Junmyeon told him in a slightly more serious tone. “You know I am strictly against students-fraternizing- with the staff, but in the case...” He gave a little shrug.

“Was she good?” Jongin snickered, looping an arm around Sehun’s shoulders. “She doesn’t really strike me as your type. A little mousy, you know?”

“Nobody who is pushing forty strikes me as your type,” Yixing added lazily.

“Sehun’s not very picky though,” Jongdae snorted from beside him, his hand comfortably in Yixing’s back pocket.

“Even I know that,” Kyungsoo said from behind in a slightly horrified tone, his eyes widening as if reliving a memory.

“So how was she?” Zitao repeated from his left.

“What on earth are you guys going on about?!” Sehun exploded, and pushed Jongin’s arm off his shoulder. “I did not have with Miss Kan! I’ve don’t even talk  to her, where did you even-?! How?! I-!” He stopped, exasperated, and put his arms up defensively.

“Dude, the whole school knows you did,” Kris said bluntly. “Don’t deny it. You shouldn’t be embarrassed man, we’re proud of you.”

“I didn’t!” Sehun screeched again. The eleven pairs of eyes just stared at him. Sehun took in a deep breath, attempting to calm himself, and then pushed through the boys so he could sit down at a desk. “Look,” he began after a moment of resting his head in his hands, “I don’t know who told you that, but I did not the assistant teacher.”

“You sure?” Minseok asked him. “’Cause Lisa said she was in the office and she heard Miss Kan talking to the principal, and she said-”

“ ‘Oh Sehun really sealed the deal with me last night,’ ” Jongdae broke in, speaking in an awful falsetto, attempting a very poor imitation of Miss Kan.

“ ‘It was soooo good, too,’ ” Baekhyun continued, crooning in an equally awful high-pitched voice.

“ ‘He just gave me exactly what I needed-’ ”

" 'It really just was something exquisite-' "

" 'I enjoyed it quite thoroughly-' "

“ ‘-so no worries, Mr. San, I’m sure he’ll be just as great to you,’ ” Baekhyun finished. He and Jongdae glanced at each other and broke down into peals of laughter. 

“And lo and behold our budget gets doubled!” Jongdae howled in between laughs, tears nearly rushing down his face, and the rest of the group burst into guffaws.

Sehun stared at them open-mouthed. “Guys,” he started calmly after they had finally begun to calm down. “Miss Kan is also the head of the school newspaper.”

“Your point?” Luhan asked, wiping his eyes with a grin on his face.

“Mr. San wanted a main journalist but he wasn’t sure who to pick so he had Miss Kan organize an audition article for all the prospective journalists," Sehun explained slowly. "She asked me to write an article on grad committee. I e-mailed it to her last night. She was probably talking about my article. Not my .”

There was a sweet moment of blissful silence as the rest of the boys let this sink in. Sehun watched all their faces drop. He folded his arms across his chest, feeling a dizzying sense of satisfaction, and smirked. 

Then, “You write?” Kyungsoo asked incredulously, breaking the silence.

“Yeah,” Jongin swiftly agreed from beside him. “Since when did you write?”

Sehun shrugged vaguely, feeling his cheeks tint a slight pink. “I don’t know…since always…? I appreciate you thinking my love-making is good enough to double our budget though. Jesus. Did you think my was magic or something?”

“What did you even write about?” Luhan demanded.

“I don’t know…” Sehun said again. “You know. Grad. How great this committee is. Although I’m starting to want to go back on that statement, you heads.”

There’s another moment of silence.

“So…our budget got doubled because of your article?” Junmyeon asked slowly after a few seconds.

Sehun shrugged again.

“Oh.”

Silence.

“Well…we’re still proud of you,” Yixing said reluctantly. The rest of them nodded.

Just like that they were all moving again, grabbing lunches from bags. Within moments Sehun was completely forgotten and the eleven boys had spread themselves out across the desks of the empty classroom, munching on japchae and jiggae, busy in conversation.

-

“So, what are we going to do with the extra money?” Junmyeon asked thoughtfully. It was a usual Tuesday night round-up and he was positioned at the mantle of his living room fireplace, facing nine other boys. They were all restless because the food still hadn’t arrived. Neither had Jongdae or Yixing.

“I had a few ideas,” Junmyeon continued fretfully, and pointed to the white board he had set up beside him, which was covered in colourful notes, organized to the T. The boys stared with a glazed-over dissatisfaction, clearly hungry, but Junmyeon soldiered on, having long ago realized that talking to the boys while they were hungry and bored was much better than attempting to talk to them while they could otherwise occupy themselves with fried noodles and soda.

“Where’s Jongdae and Yixing?” Baekhyun interrupted him mid-sentence, clearly feeling Jongdae’s hyper absence.

“I don’t know,” Junmyeon answered curtly. “But we don’t have time to waste to wait for them.” He had already given them five minutes, and waiting any longer would cause the gap between the boredom-induced hunger and food to whither away to nothing.

He raised his pointer to the white board to continue, but then as if on cue, Yixing burst into the living room, dragging a half-asleep Jongdae behind him.

“Hey dudes,” Yixing smiled languidly, raising a lazy hand to wave. As he waved, he began to make little circles with his fingers, giggling, and the nine others turned to stare at him.  Junmyeon felt his heart drop. He was high as . And judging by Jongdae’s distressed murmuring into Yixing’s shoulder, so was he.

“Hey!” Baekhyun answered him, brightening, and he snuggled closer to Chanyeol so there would be room for the two of them on the couch.

“I’m just…so glad…to see you,” Jongdae mumbled incoherently, and sat himself down beside Baekhyun. “All of you…you’re all such blessings in my life…eleven… blessings…” He paused to yawn.

“Ok, sit down and be quiet,” Junmyeon snapped, uncharacteristically sharp. He wasn’t even through a quarter of his notes.

After a thoroughly one-sided discussion (mostly consisting of Junmyeon reading off his notes, waiting for replies, and then replying to himself, along with occasional unrelated questions from Yixing and Jongdae), Junmyeon still hadn’t come to a conclusion.

“Guys,” he said desperately. “I’ve really tried to give you all the information you need- so should we spend it on better decorations, food, music-”

“-we could buy dragons, like little chocolate covered ones, and then you could breathe fire after you ate them-”

“-or a better venue?” Junmyeon ignored Yixing’s interruption. “Guys? Hello?”

“Why don’t we split it evenly four ways?” Kyungsoo asked cautiously with wide eyes. Junmyeon felt a rush of affection for the newbie, glad that he was still at least trying to help. 

“It’s not really worth it,” Junmyeon replied. “We could split it two ways, maybe be three, but if we split it four ways we wouldn’t even be really able to upgrade anything. So if we’re going to split, we still have to decide which ones are most important.”

“Food,” Luhan said carelessly.

“I already told you,” Junmyeon reprimanded him impatiently. “The pizza will arrive at seven.”

“No,” Luhan waved his hand. “I meant food is the most important.”

“Oh,” Junmyeon said. “Wow, that was your first contribution all evening.” He erased part of his board and wrote down food in large letters. “Ok, what else?”

“Music,” Kyungsoo and Baekhyun said together. There was a chorus of agreeing noises.

“Ok,” Junmyeon nodded, and wrote that down too. Wow, progress, he thought with a laugh, and then turned back to the group. “So if we get upgrades for those two, we still have a little bit of money left over. Not really enough to do any other significant upgrades- I guess we could get some other decorations? Or maybe-”

“Picture time,” Jongdae drawled from the couch, staring at the colourful board with a mystified expression on his face. “I love pictures. You love pictures. Everyone just loooooves pictures. Portraits. Landscape. Selfies-” he began to giggle, and Yixing punched him affectionately on the shoulder. “Don’t touch me!” he squeaked, fighting back against Yixing, and then suddenly before anyone else knew what was happening, the two were all over each other, making out with such drug-induced passion that Baekhyun opted to jump off the couch in disgust.

“Ugh, get a room,” Zitao wrinkled his nose from the other couch, where he was curled up in Kris’s lap, his hand resting underneath his shirt by the waistband of his jeans. “No one wants to see that.”

“He actually has a point though,” Kyungsoo said hesitantly. “We could spend the extra money on a professional photographer.”

“Huh,” Junmyeon said, mulling over the numbers in his head. “I suppose that would work. Maybe three hours…three hundred dollars, yah, that would be perfect for our budget, actually.”

“Good thinking,” Jongin smiled awkwardly at Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo half-smiled back, his cheeks tinting pink. The tension between them still hadn’t quite faded since Kris’s fateful party.

“He’s a genius!” Yixing pronounced giddily, coming up for air from Jongdae’s mouth to say it. Jongdae giggled from underneath him and then swiftly pulled him back down.

“Oh god,” Sehun grimaced. “Remind me to never get high with these two.”

As he finished his sentence, the doorbell rang and the whole group let out a grateful collective breath.

“Pizza’s here,” Junmyeon said unnecessarily. “Come on guys,” he glanced back at Yixing and Jongdae. “…we’ll eat in the dining room.”

-

“So,” Sehun began, sliding himself between the subway train doors next to Jongin. “Who’re you taking to grad?”

“W-what?” Jongin started, stumbling a bit as the train began to move. “Sehun, it’s not even November. Why are you thinking about that now?”

Sehun shrugged lazily. “We are on grad committee, dude. Why are you not thinking about it? But, uh, I was hooking up with this girl yesterday and she kind of mentioned it. I was drunk so…I think I already have a date. I’m not sure.”

“You said yes?” Jongin asked incredulously. “What happened to the football sophomore?”

“He got busy with football,” Sehun answered simply. “Anyway, who are you taking?”

“I don’t know yet,” Jongin said slowly. “It’s too early to start thinking about that stuff.”

“Oh c’mon,” Sehun insisted with a grin. “You have someone in mind, don’t even try to pull that one with me.”

“I do not-” Jongin protested.

“-Kyungsoo,” Sehun cut him off. “You haven’t shut up about him since he started here. Trust me. I know. I spend way more time with you then I should. I know.”

Jongin’s face quickly turned a bright shade of red and Sehun laughed. “Dude, just ask him out.”

Jongin hesitated slightly. “It’s been a little weird lately.”

Sehun rolled his eyes. “Whatever, you guys made out once drunk. It’s chill. That’s like…literally half our gym class for me. Anyway, you still like him, don’t you?”

Jongin refused to answer out loud, instead giving a reluctant, barely perceptible nod.

“Then fix it!” Sehun admonished him, and walked towards the door as the train slowed to his stop. “Fix it, man.” With that he waved goodbye and stepped out onto the train platform.

Jongin gave a weak wave back, watching as the doors closed behind his friend, and then sighed heavily. Fix it. 

A/N: Hi there again! Look, I wasn't lying when I said I would continue this! I hope you enjoyed this, even if it was a little short. Anyway, thanks for reading. I can't believe I actually have subs like wow. Thanks again <3