Choi: 1. Jeon: 0.

It was 7.38 AM when the door to Seungcheol’s roommate’s room was pushed open with a whiny creak. Seungcheol looked up from his laptop where he’d been peering over the schedule for his upcoming exams and watched the tall, lanky freshman Wonwoo stubbornly kept on insisting ‘wasn’t his boyfriend’ — even though Seungcheol had never seen Wonwoo grow quite so attached to anyone as quickly before in all of the seven years he’d known him — carefully step out of the room and close the door behind him.

“… ‘morning.” The guy mumbled awkwardly, greeting him with a nod and wearing what Seungcheol assumed was a hastily thrown on T-shirt (because he recognised it as a shirt Wonwoo had brought back from one of those concerts he liked to attend in their sophomore year, meaning it definitely wasn’t this freshman’s) and no pants.

Seungcheol quirked his eyebrows and gave the other a tentative smile.

“… Good morning.”

He watched the relaxed slouch of the guy’s back as he shuffled past him and locked the door to the bathroom after himself before he returned to his computer, attempting to memorize the final schedule of his classes while he listened to the soft sound of the toilet lid being raised and then the steady stream hitting the water in the basin as his roommate’s not-boyfriend did his business.

Seungcheol picked at his phone and checked the time. 7.43 AM. Hansol’s early wednesday morning lecture would finish at 8.15, and they’d agreed to meet up for breakfast afterwards. Considering they lived just five minutes from campus, Seungcheol saw no need to leave early. The sound of the toilet flushing pulled him from his thoughts and the door to the bathroom opened as Mingyu — It was Mingyu, right? Seungcheol was fairly certain that was the name Wonwoo had offhandedly mentioned to him once or twice — reemerged into the cramped space of the two junior’s small two-room-apartment-styled dorm.

“I’m gonna make coffee, d’you want some?”

It amused Seungcheol to some extent how familiar Mingyu was with the cupboards in their kitchen already, and although the younger wasn’t looking at him he shrugged his shoulders.

“Sure. Thanks.”

It wasn’t exactly uncomfortable to have the freshman around, mostly just a little awkward when it was just the two of them since Wonwoo actually never bothered to properly introduce them to one another. Seungcheol liked to think it was because even though Wonwoo expressed that Mingyu, — quote — wasn’t his boyfriend —unquote — to Seungcheol, he wasn’t able to phrase himself that way to the freshman’s face.

Seungcheol knew better to make Wonwoo’s relationships his bussiness, but he couldn’t deny that he had made a habit of observing the two of them — Mingyu and Wonwoo, Wonwoo and Mingyu — when they were together and he happened to spot them across campus or around town, and he had developed a sensation of guilty pleasure that he experienced whenever he caught them doing anything even slightly domestic that couldn’t be considered to be strictly platonic, like sharing their coffee with each other or sneaking away from their group of friends at a party to ‘smoke alone’ (but always together.)

It served as an entertaining distraction from their studies, if nothing else, and sometimes Seungcheol could use the moments he’d witnessed to tease Wonwoo who wasn’t usually easy to rile up, so it was all good fun for him. In the end he didn’t really care what was going on between the two as he figured it was between the two of them to figure their out, or whatever, so he didn’t dwell too deeply on it. (However, that didn’t mean he wasn’t secretly cheering them on in the back of his head whenever there was notable tension going on between them.)

Maybe Seungcheol could blame the lack of development in his own romantic adventures on his odd obsession with the relationship between his roommate and the dorky freshman that he was only watching from the sidelines.

7.48 AM. Mingyu was boiling water on the stove and Seungcheol was still messing around on his phone on the couch when the door to Wonwoo’s room opened again and the man of the hour himself groggily stepped out.

“’Morning.” He grunted, his voice low and grovelly and his face scrunched in an exhausted grimage. Seungcheol bit his tongue before he could make a sauve remark along the lines of ‘long night?’ and moved his bag from the couch to allowed Wonwoo to sink down besides him on the cushion and lean his entire weight (which wasn’t much, to be honest. Scrawny is what he was) against Seungcheol.

“Good morning.” Seungcheol replied evenly, chewing on his bottom lip to keep the unflattering grin off of his face. He decided to settle for, “Tired?” as he lifted a pillow and placed it against his shoulder so that Wonwoo could rest his head against it more comfortable, and Wonwoo looked content as he laid down.

“Mm, yeah.” He groaned and squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing a hand over his cheeks before he ran it through his hair and messed it up further. Seunghceol spotted a hickey behind Wonwoo’s ear and had to hold his breath to stiffle a laugh he knew would’ve come out shrill and unappealing and made him sound absolutely silly.

Mingyu’s back was turned towards them as he pulled cups from one of their drawers.

“I’m making coffee. Would you like some, babe?” He announced absentmindedly and Wonwoo hummed sleepily, probably still half-asleep.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Mingyu placed a third cup on the older male’s counter and continued to brew the coffee while Wonwoo sighed listlessly and nestled against Seungcheol, probably about to fall back asleep without a bother in the world since he was relieved of classes on Wednesdays.

Seungcheol was the only one who had startled at the interaction, his reaction to the slip of tongue from Mingyu reminiscent of one of those comically exaggerated drawings of a person whoms jaw detached from their skull and fell to the floor as he looked between his roommate and his ‘not-boyfriend’ (my !)

Mingyu was done preparing the well-needed caffinated drink and poured them each a cup, bringing two of them over and placing them on the coffee table before he went back to fetch his own cup, and it seemed that neither of the other two had taken note of the far from platonic exchange.

“… Babe?” Seungcheol repeated, no longer able withhold the smug tone from his voice, and Wonwoo’s eyes abruptly snapped open as it dawned on him that they’d just outed the true colours of their relationship to his roommate.

It took every ounce of strength in Seungcheol to not cackle manically at Wonwoo’s reaction, jump up and point to his roommate in childish glee and declare ‘A-hah! I win! This guy is totally your boyfriend! It was lies! All of it, lies!’ and he almost trembled from the effort of holding himself back.

Wonwoo pulled away from him hastily with a loud goran at the same time as the freshman stumbled over his own feet behind them, spilling coffee over their floor as Seungcheol’s words finally hit him too.

“…!” He cursed, and Seungcheol’s roommate whipped his head around to nail the clumsy male with a vexed glare.

“Mingyu—” (His name was Mingyu. Score. Seungcheol mentally patted himself on the shoulder for recalling it accurately.)

“S-sorry!” Mingyu squeaked and put his coffee aside. “I’ll clean it up!” He started to look around for a towel or some paper and Seungcheol watched Wonwoo’s ears turn a fascinating shade of red as he bristled.

“That’s not—!”

“Okay, both of you, chill.” Seungcheol couldn’t subdue his laughter anymore and it rang above the other two male’s bickering easily. He patted his roommate’s shoulder in hopes to ease the stiffness that had raised them high above their apendix. “Mingyu, the coffee is fine, don’t stress over it, and Wonwoo, don’t pop a vein. I’ve sort of been suspecting that there’s been something going on between the two of you for a long time already — you know this.” He directed at his roommate.

Mingyu deflated where he was crouching on his knees on the floor, stilling his fervent wiping of the stain, his cheeks staining a light pink as he looked up at Seungcheol. “O-oh.” Was all he managed to embarrassedly stammer as he learnt that their sneaking about hadn’t exactly been as discreet as they had thought.

Wonwoo scowled at Seungcheol, but his roommate’s glare lacked the edge of true anger as it him.

“Don’t. It isn’t like that.” The dark haired male snapped clippedly, but it lacked in the intimidating impact he was going for as his cheeks too were a darker shade than usual, and Seungcheol also knew that his roommate was only arguing because he didn’t want to let Seungcheol think he’d been correct about them from the start and wanted him to shut up. Of course Seungcheol wouldn’t let him have that.

Throwing a glance at the time on his phone, (7.54 AM) Seungcheol decided he might as well leave early. He didn’t mind waiting, and it gave him an excuse to abandon the other two in their own embarrassment. Gathering his laptop and charger and the notes of his classes randomly scattered over their table he shoved it all into his bag and stood, shooting his roommate a smug grin meanwhile.

“Okay. Yeah, no — totally not. I understand. You have a hickey right there by the way.” Seungcheol tapped the spot behind his own ear and in his mind he was twisting and turning with laughter as his roommate quickly slapped his hand up to cover the bruise and before he could spit a snarky reply at him, Seungcheol quickly headed past his roommate and went for their door.

Passing Mingyu who looked uncomfortable and uncertain on the floor, Seungcheol clapped his shoulder firmly twice and gave him a crooked, toothy grin.

“Hey, I know he can be difficult sometimes, but don’t give up on him yeah?”

The freshman quickly jerked his head in a shake and Seungcheol noted how big and shiny the male’s eyes were as he looked up at him.

“Didn’t plan on it.”

Seungcheol’s smile softened and he squeezed the freshman’s shoulder, deciding that he definitely liked Wonwoo’s not-boyfriend-but-actually-really-boyfriend.

“You’re a good kid.” Mingyu shyly returned his smile, and then Seungcheol added in a slightly louder voice so that Wonwoo would hear him, and only partly serious because his roommate could be insensitive sometimes and after recieving such an honest reply from the young guy beneath him Seungcheol felt like he owed him some warning of sorts of his roommate’s sometimes -ish behaviour. “Don’t let him ruin you, OK?”

“If you’re going to talk , just—” His roommate bristled on the couch but Seungcheol drowned out the rest of his sentance with his laughter as he opened the door.

“I’m leaving!” He called before he added, “Mingyu, you can have my coffee.” And then he shouted to his roommate, “Bring your boyfriend around next time we go out with Hansol~! It can be like a double date.”

The last thing Seungcheol saw was the adorably innocent flush on Mingyu’s face and the last thing he heard was the start of a very nasty cussword directed after him by his roommate before he shut the door firmly behind himself.

As he strode down the corridor, Seungcheol fished his phone out of his jeans pocket and quickly navigated to the messenger application, eager fingers flying over the keyboard before he pressed send and listened to the ‘whoosh’ of his message as it flew through the cyber net to the intended receiver.

Hansol would be in his lecture for another 18 minutes and would probably only see it as he was on his way to Seungcheol, but there was no way Seungcheol could keep the bubbling excitement he felt about his roommate and his freshman to himself.

To: Vernon

[ Wonwoo’s not-boyfriend has been promoted to definitely-boyfriend. ]
^{Sent 7.57 AM}

He was pleasantly surprised when his phone buzzed a couple of minutes later with two notifications of replies from Hansol.

From: Vernon

[ ??? ]
^{Received 8.02 AM}

[ How, when, DETAILS man! ]
^{Received 8.02 AM}

Seungcheol grinned stupidly at his phone as he composed his reply, sharing the embarrassing story with his friend.

To: Vernon

[ Accidentally called each other BABE in front of me !!! ]
^{Sent 8.02 AM}

From: Vernon

[ Oh yeah~ Nice ]
^{Received 8.03 AM}

Pocketing his phone, Seungcheol smiled to himself as he imagined his emotionally constipated roommate and his awkward totally-boyfriend sitting beside each other on their couch and blushing in embarrassment as they sipped on their coffee in a strained but not entirely uncomfortable silence, and he found himself agreeing with Hansol.

It really was nice.

A/N:

This small drabble was inspired by a prompt on tumblr~ Something about A and B seeing each other in secret but A ending up calling B honey (although I changed it to babe lmao) I always end up writing really long fanfictions (call it ambition or foolishness, either one is fine) so it's been really long since I wrote a one-shot. It was very refreshing to keep it simple. Less is more and all that~ I also had fun writing Seungcheol as Wonwoo's roommate. It's a concept I really like for some reason. Maybe my inner woncheol is shining through ;;; 

Hope you enjoyed!