Jaehwan and Taekwoon stared at the TV screen glowing before them. The rave of a new restaurant that had just been opened in town was broadcasting and making their already empty stomachs growl with agony.

 

        “Ugh, god I’m so hungry,” Jaehwan remarked, a scowl on his face. His hands were laced and pressed to his stomach. Taekwoon nodded in agreement, silent. His face displayed the pain of increasing starvation.

 

        “What should we do? There’s no food in the house,” Taekwoon replied. Simultaneously, Jaehwan and Taekwoon looked over to the tiny kitchen their dorm held. Sanghyuk laid spread out on the floor, wallowing in a bath of spilled alcohol and the last of the snacks that had been stocked in the cabinets. He moaned to himself, Korean gibberish and barely identifiable English dripping from his lips with his eyes, half-lidded, aimed to the ceiling. He was giggling in the meantime.

 

        Taekwoon and Jaehwan looked away, frustration clear in their face. With the resident grocery buyer of the dorm gone for the day, Hakyeon, Hongbin off shooting a drama, and Wonsik working alone for hours in his studio, the final three of the dorm were left to their own devices. Taekwoon and Jaehwan didn’t think this would end up being troublesome, until Sanghyuk got his hands on the stash of alcohol Hongbin had saved up.

 

        “I wish we could go out and get food,” Jaehwan echoed. His voice was laced with sadness and longing. A gurgle resonated in the room, and Jaehwan glanced down to Taekwoon’s stomach as he covered it with his hands in slight embarrassment.

 

        “Too bad Hakyeon hyung took the car. We can’t walk outside without getting clubbed by fans, but the car could’ve helped us avoid that. And over there ate all the rest of the food we had left in the dorm,” Jaehwan nodded his head in the maknae’s direction. Taekwoon and Jaehwan sighed at the heightened giggles of Sanghyuk who still laid in a sticky pile on the tiled floor.

 

        “Just… erder Chi-Chinese food, hic!” Sanghyuk rolled onto his side, colliding with an empty bag of chips in the process and launching his giggle fit into overdrive.

 

        Annoyed, Taekwoon furrowed his eyebrows at Sanghyuk’s nonsense. “Hyuk-ah, we don’t have phones. How do you expect us to order food when we can’t contact the restaurant?”

 

        “Noooooooo, we don’t have -hic!- phones, b-but Hakyeonnie hyung sure does!” Sanghyuk sat up, a goofy smile on his innocent features. Taekwoon and Jaehwan exchanged glances; their hope and fear shot up proportionally.

 

        “How do you know he left his phone here?” Taekwoon asked, arms folded in contempt. “That doesn’t make sense that Hakyeon would leave his phone here while he went out all day.”

 

        Jaehwan nodded in agreement, waiting on the drunkard to answer.

 

        “If you don’t believe me, look on his bedside table in the bedroom,” Sanghyuk seemed to personify the colon three emoji; he looked like a tipsy cat, b with bubbliness and giggles.

 

        Again, Jaehwan and Taekwoon glanced at each other, eyebrows cocking in disbelief and slight annoyance by the claims coming from the vacuum that inhaled the only food in their house.

 

        “I guess it doesn’t hurt to look,” Jaehwan commented. He picked himself up off the couch, slowly traipsing over to the bedroom as he pushed the door open and stared at the bedside table. He stopped in the doorway, hanging onto the frame, motionless.

 

        “Is it there?” Taekwoon asked, arms still crossed with a neutral face covering his expressions.

 

        “Yeah,” Jaehwan rasped. Taekwoon’s eyes opened up wider, and his arms instantly unfolded. He shot up from his place on the couch, striding over to look where Jaehwan was looking, and sure enough. On the tiny table situated next to Hakyeon’s ground level bed was a sleek, black phone.

 

        Taekwoon and Jaehwan gulped at the possibilities of food they could access with the handheld device. In the seconds they stood, gawking, all different types of food flashed in their heads and made their mouths salivate in anticipation.

 

        “Wait,” Taekwoon snapped from his trance. Jaehwan turned to him, a slight pout on his face. “We can’t use Hakyeon’s phone. He doesn’t even let us use his phone when he’s here, you think he’ll let us use it while he isn’t?”

 

        “So?? I’m sure extenuating circumstances such as these constitute a reason for using his phone behind his back. There’s literally nothing in this dorm, because Sanghyuk ing ate it all! I’m hungry, and nobody is coming back to the dorm tonight. Come on, let’s just take his phone and order some food with it. He won’t even know! We’ll place the phone right back where we left it once we’ve stuffed our faces with Chinese food,” Jaehwan tried to grovel.

 

        Taekwoon frowned; he had a bad feeling about this. Hakyeon always had a way of finding things out, no matter how well they were hidden. And when he found out something he didn’t like, things got troublesome real quickly. But the sting in his stomach reminded him that he needed food before he felt sick.

 

        Jaehwan noticed the howl from his torso and raised his eyebrows, knowing Taekwoon was faltering in his decision. “Come on, I know you’re hungry. I’m hungry too. Let’s just use his phone, order some Chinese food, and call it a day. We can order enough to even feed the bottomless pit that is Sanghyuk, because I know he’s probably wanting a cut,” he gestured to the rolling beanpole on the floor, still giggling to himself.

 

        Sighing, Taekwoon’s eyes flickered between Jaehwan and the phone before he made a decision. “Fine. BUT. We order Italian food instead of Chinese food,” he made the compromise.

 

        Jaehwan had began darting for the phone, but as soon as the words “Italian food” fell from Taekwoon’s lips, he paused like a statue. Standing up straight again, he looked to Taekwoon with glittering eyes and pouty lips that he knew Taekwoon couldn’t resist.

 

        “But Taekwoonie hyung, I want Chinese food. Hyuk-ah put it in my head, and now that’s what I really want,” he shimmied his shoulders. Taekwoon didn’t budge, much to Jaehwan’s surprise who was used to using this method in getting what he wanted.

 

        “If we’re going to do something as dangerous as taking Hakyeon’s phone and using it behind his back, we’re getting food that I want. I know an Italian place that delivers,” he folded his arms over. Jaehwan frowned.

 

        “But you know I don’t like Italian food. It doesn’t taste near as good as Chinese food,” he whined. And then a light bulb illuminated in his head, and he stepped closer to Taekwoon with an incriminating expression. “Unless… You’re planning on ordering Italian food because you know I don’t like it! That way you get to eat more of it!”

 

        Taekwoon’s eyes closed in an effort to compose himself so he wouldn’t knock Jaehwan’s front two teeth out from annoyance. “No, that’s not what I’m implying, but I know that you’re aware that I don’t like Chinese food, so the same could be said the other way.”

 

        “That was just what Sanghyuk suggested! I was sticking with that!” Jaehwan flung his arms around like a wacky wavy inflatable arm man.

 

        “Then it wouldn’t be a big deal to change what you had in mind since it wasn’t your suggestion or desire to begin with,” Taekwoon grit his teeth.

 

        Sanghyuk watched from the trash dump he had claimed as his own, glossy eyes flickering between his two hyungs’ faces. This wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last, that he had witnessed Taekwoon and Jaehwan at each other’s necks over food; in fact, that comprised a good 75% of their arguments.

 

        “Ugh!” Jaehwan stomped into the bedroom, grabbing the phone that laid dormant on the table and waving it around in the air. “I still want Chinese. I’m hungry, you’re hungry, so you shouldn’t be picky in times of need,” he hissed, pressing the home button to get the screen to illuminate.

 

        “Then neither should you! Give me that!” Taekwoon gritted, reaching for the phone, but Jaehwan pulled it away before Taekwoon could even lay a finger on it.

 

        The couple pounced on either other, and Sanghyuk began to giggle once more in his hazy state; taking in the rib-jabbing, hair-yanking, toe-stomping quarrel unfolding in front of him. If it weren’t for the fact they did this all the time, Sanghyuk would’ve considered breaking up the fight, but it was much too amusing, through his slowed mentality, at least, to even try.

 

        Breaking away from each other to shoot daggers, Taekwoon and Jaehwan stood on eggshells, ready to pounce again. “What if we just didn’t order anything because you’re being such a brat,” Taekwoon hissed.

 

        Jaehwan rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’m always a brat. It’s always me, never you, always me!”

 

        “Because you are one!” Taekwoon huffed, lunging for the phone still firmly grasped in Jaehwan’s hand, but missing and nearly falling to his stomach in the process.

 

        The front door to the dorm beeped, and swung open widely to reveal Hakyeon, hair slightly ruffled and t-shirt on backwards. He sighed, noticing The Battle of Empty Stomachs being waged in the living room that he stepped right in the middle of. He wouldn’t have cared much if he hadn’t spotted the shiny black device stuck to Jaehwan’s palm, glinting in the light like a shining beacon.

 

        “What are you two doing with my phone??” Hakyeon bolted towards the now frozen duo, ripping his phone from Jaehwan’s grubby hands as if it were his child, hastily shoving it into his pocket.

 

        Jaehwan and Taekwoon gawked at each other, their fight instantly behind them, as they stuttered to conjure an excuse good enough for Hakyeon to take.

 

        “W-We didn’t have enough food in the house…” Jaehwan mustered, rubbing the back of his neck.

 

        “... So we were gonna order food,” Taekwoon added to the end of Jaehwan’s comment.

 

        “With my phone??” Hakyeon asked, incredulous.

 

        “You left it here, so we thought you weren’t gonna be using it any time soon. Besides, we’re starving! Sanghyuk ate all the food because he binged!” Jaehwan threw the blame onto the maknae and his stomach respectively, hoping their leader would understand.

 

        Hakyeon pressed his index and middle fingers to his temples, rubbing as his eyelids fluttered shut in frustration.

 

        “What are you even doing here? You said you’d be out all night,” Taekwoon turned the questioning onto Hakyeon. With a new, concerned and pointed look, Hakyeon fixed his focus on Taekwoon, a slight blush running across the bridge of his nose and flourishing over his cheeks.

 

        “W-Well, it has been a while, it’s already nine!” he made the remark, but Taekwoon and Jaehwan looked at each other, Hakyeon’s excuse becoming translucent.

 

        “Say… Hyung, you haven’t been somewhere you shouldn’t be, have you?” Jaehwan closed in, a dirty little smirk on his face. Hakyeon hiccupped, backing away from him.

 

        “W-What do you mean? I was just out,” he tried to defend himself weakly.

 

        “And where was out?” Taekwoon asked, the same sly expression creeping gradually onto his features as well.

 

        Hakyeon’s eyes flickered frantically between Taekwoon and Jaehwan, a nervous and guilty look showing to them.

 

        “Perhaps… Were you with… Wons-” Jaehwan got cut off by Hakyeon slapping a hand over Jaehwan’s mouth, silencing him. Taekwoon smiled, knowing they found a loophole in Hakyeon’s confidence.

 

        “Shh! How do you two know about that?!” he asked in a hushed tone. Hakyeon had taken painstaking measures to cover up the fling he was engaged in with his fellow bandmate. As far as he knew, only he and Wonsik were privy to the relationship happening.

 

        “Oh please, you two are so obvious. There’s enough in the room between you two to be cut by a knife,” Taekwoon threw out the comment. Hakyeon gasped under his breath. Were they really that obvious?

 

        “O-Oh…” he spoke, lowering his head in slight shame.

 

        “Buuuuut, I don’t think our little maknae line is aware. If Hongbin and Sanghyuk know, they certainly haven’t let on that they do,” Jaehwan replied, making Hakyeon feel better for just a split second.

 

        “But that could all change. Sanghyuk remembers everything even when he’s drunk, so I’m sure he’d love to hear what we have to say about such a scandalous relationship going on behind closed doors,” Taekwoon roused Hakyeon’s anxiety even higher than where it currently sat.

 

        “N-No! Please, no, I’m not ready to tell them yet. Please don’t tell them,” Hakyeon bargained with the couple, who side-eyed each other with greed and amusement.

 

        “Ok. Make a deal with us: we won’t tell Hongbin and Sanghyuk anything about your relationship with Wonsik…” Jaehwan started.

 

       “... If you promise to get us whatever food we want. Now,” Taekwoon ended the sentence. Hakyeon’s innocent, panicked eyes darted between the two, his chest falling with the dread of a threat lingering in the air.

 

        “What food do you want?” he asked, shifting on his feet.

 

        “Italian!”

 

        “Chinese!”

 

         Jaehwan and Taekwoon looked at each other, an agreement passing between them telepathically before they returned another answer to Hakyeon.

 

        “Buy us both. And we’ll forget this ever even happened,” Jaehwan folded his arms, cocking a tiny smile. He and Taekwoon knew Hakyeon would cave. And neither man could hold back their excitement when their leader regrettably lifted his phone to his ear and placed an order to the nearest Chinese and Italian restaurants.

 

         Sanghyuk wondered, in his mess of spirits, why there was so much food on the counter being devoured by Taekwoon and Jaehwan, but he didn’t give it much thought before he threw up the contents of his stomach, emptying out everything he had eaten to leave Jaehwan and Taekwoon stuck starving in the first place.

 

 

 

 

 

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Hello lovelies! I hope you enjoyed the story. <3 A nice break from my normally morbid, ually-charged genre of fanfics that I write, so I hope it lived up to everyone's expectations! As always, don't forget to comment and upvote if you liked it. If you'd like to check out any of my other non-rated stories, Morning Fog and How to Adopt an Introvert are also posted here. :)