The first time Park Jinyoung was in his care, Jaebum still wasn't in medical school but the days were slowly but surely counting down, and despite all the years of preparation he was still painfully inexperienced. Hours of reading textbook descriptions of the functions from the spleen to the scapula swam stupidly in his head. He had no idea how he was going to be ready for the real thing.

It was a Sunday and curtains of rain were rapping at Jaebum's window in wild lashes, the room bitter with a blue chill. Youngjae was out at his part time job, leaving him to eat his soggy cereal alone in their dorm, which was a seemingly permanent mess of scattered musical scores and medical notes. So when there was knocking at his door, he had half a mind to do a quick sweep and shove everything under their beds lest that his guest was someone of importance.

Hah.

On one hand he could count the number of people who would visit him, and on one digit were the ones that were actually important. His mom and dad, which in all fairness worked as a pair and might as well be grouped as a single unit. So instead he kicked a pile of Youngjae's clothes under his bed before walking to the door.

The moment he swung his door open he was greeted with rainwater in his face. Vigorously shaking his umbrella in the hallway, Jinyoung smiled up at him, hair plastered to his forehead. The fabric of his jacket was drenched ten shades darker and the soles of his shoes glistened with water; the offensively yellow tip of his umbrella, which seemed to be defective considering the state Jinyoung was in, was rhythmically leaking puddles onto the corridor.

"You can go get a change of clothes," Jaebum ushered him in, not too concerned with the state the carpet was getting into, "You look like you just walked through a monsoon."

His friend laughed, wiping the water off his face, "I feel like I swam through an ocean." He ran a hand through his hair, unplastering it from his forehead and Jaebum decided that a towel was really very necessary.

Toeing off his wet sneakers and leaning the (still hideous) umbrella against the wall, Jinyoung peeled off his jacket and draped it over a chair, heading straight towards the closet, the fabric of shirt clinging to his skin. Jaebum kept his gaze averted as he changed.

"Hyung, do you have anything warmer," he said, once dressed in a change of clothes, as he rifled around, "and clean?" he added, crinkling his nose pointedly at the floor.

Jaebum shrugged, not even sheepish, "Laundry week's been...slow." He wrapped a fresh towel around Jinyoung's shoulders, studying the drops of water trickle down his pale neck and disappear down his collarbones.

"Can you believe this weather?" He looked out the window. The wind was still howling, reminiscent of a ghost, "One minute it's alright and next I'm running through a torrential downpour."

Accustomed to all levels of melodrama that Jinyoung indulged himself in, Jaebum didn’t need to roll his eyes anymore. Jinyoung began to dry his hair vigorously. Turning to return to his cereal, the highlighter-yellow of the umbrella caught Jaebum’s eyes, burning his corneas with its sheer vibrancy. He had never seen it before and he was certain he would have remembered if his friend ever bought such a monstrosity.

"Where did you get that?" He pointed to the limp thing, sad and lonely in its corner, probably not unlike himself five minutes ago.

"Hm? Oh that." Jinyoung looked up from where he was foraging through Youngjae's clothes, his hair sticking up at strange angles, "Some stranger gave that to me. Cool isn't it? They just handed it to me, a free umbrella."

The suspicion that morphed onto his face isn't missed. Jinyoung raised an eyebrow. "What? You think it's laced with radioactive material or something?" he laughed, "It's fine, if I see them again I'll return it."

That’s probably the idea, Jaebum doesn’t say. He sighs instead. For Jinyoung's sake, he hoped that he would avoid whoever this person was and their dubious pick up techniques. Their taste in weather shielding apparel probably reflected their poor choices in life and accessories.

"Aw, you're just jealous cause people don't give you free . Maybe if you didn’t look like you were always asking for beef all the time." Jinyoung teased, the corners of his lips turned upright and those ridiculous dimples and smile lines of his appeared. Jaebum bit down on the inside of cheek a lot harsher than intended, the taste of iron filling his mouth.

"Ow ."

"Did you say something?"

"Nothing," he grabbed one his hoodies and threw it at him, "Just wear this, you already know that Youngjae's clothes won't even fit you."

Settling on his unmade bed, Jinyoung slipped the soft material over his head and Jaebum did not stare at the sliver of stomach that peeked. Swallowed by the size of his clothes, where the fabric was usually pulled taut by his own shoulders, it folded and draped over Jinyoung's narrower ones.

"So," he sat down next to him, hips and thighs touching, "why're you here?"

It wasn't uncommon for Jinyoung to drop by his and Youngjae's dorm. Thankfully it was always during the reasonable hours of the day, unlike the spontaneous energy that was Jackson who at times showed up at six in the morning looking for someone to jog with. Jinyoung only came knocking on their door when he was in his more sociable moods, and instead of hiding in his apartment he would go to him to complain about anything arbitrary or to pry off a free lunch from him.

And Jaebum, though he'd rather not admit it, was rather weak to his desires and indulged in his whims. Unaccounted hours had been spent listening and reasoning with Jinyoung's annoyances about a novel's plot, and his wallet had definitely seen greener, more plenty days.

Nevertheless, Jaebum thought as he looked at Jinyoung fiddling with the length of the sleeves and the hood of the sweater, he didn't exactly regret anything.

"What, I can't just visit you? Do I need an ulterior motive?" Jaebum gave him a look, "Alright, alright. Hyung, we all know you're very hardworking but Jackson says, and I quote, 'you're so tight-assed it’s like someone shoved an entire hospital up there'."

Jaebum honestly didn’t know how to reply and in the weird translation of Jinyoung's mind, he began to awkwardly ramble.

"Mind you he was in one of those honest confessional moods and also he then proceeded to call Bambam a narcissistic long-legged giraffe with a maturity complex to rival every twelve year old on the planet. But I digress—"

He suddenly sneezed. A great, big, avalanche of a sneeze that left the room eerily shocked. Jinyoung's eyes bulged as he recovered, both of them silent for a heartbeat before Jaebum blinked, laughed, and blessed him while laughing. Scowling, in an act of pettiness, Jinyoung wiped his nose with his sleeve, which was as a matter of fact not his sleeve.

Jaebum groaned, pushing his shoulder, "That's disgusting, Jinyoungie."

His friend just sniffed, "You should give up being a doctor if you can't handle some snot, hyung. Do you have a tissue?"

Jaebum stretched toward the other end of the bed, reaching for his desk where a box of tissues sat and he handed it to him, whose nose was turning an ill shade of pink.

"Thanks." he murmured, eyeing him.

"You can keep the hoodie." Jaebum looked pointedly at the sleeve, swatting it away from him.

"For real?"

"Seriously."

"Maybe I should sneeze on your things more often," Jinyoung laughed, his voice muffled, "Prepare you for the life of a doctor and get free crap."

Please log in to read the full chapter