Minseok sneezes with his face buried into the bend of his arm. This is why he hates spring. Sure the budding of trees and flowers with the start of May is beautiful to look at but the attack of pollen makes every blooming flower and budding tree look like cat poop. The breeze curls around the leaves and the buds, plucking them from their branches and sending them straight into Minseok’s face. He’s sure the white bud that flew into his right eye laughed at him. Rubbing his eye, his wishes the season will just hurry up and pass.

The sun shines warm and perhaps that is the only bright side to walking halfway across the city, duffel bag he stole from Tao sitting heavy on his shoulder. Stopping before a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change, Minseok is struck with a small worry of if he turned the oven off after he warmed water for his tea this morning. He also wonders if he brought his own medicine with him after remembering the note he left for Kris on the bedside table, telling the younger man to take his prescription. Shaking his head, Minseok gets rid of the random thoughts. This is not the time to be thinking about any of that. Everything is fine. The kitchen is fine. Kris is fine (and if he isn’t he’s going to have to get over himself). Playing with the ends of the sleeves of his black and white striped sweater, he crosses the street when the signal changes.

The playground and his intended destination just down the street create a warm, comfortable sensation in the center of his chest. He smiles, hugging the ratty black duffel bag closer to his body. This is what he’s wanted for the last two years and now he feels like he has at least a little bit of it. Freedom. He hasn’t dreamed of anything else but that in years. If that playground, with its creaking wood and rusting infrastructure isn’t a sign of freedom, Minseok doesn’t know what is.

Stepping into the small lobby of the apartment building, the warm feeling explodes into excitement. He’s a bit put out because his body is reacting so childishly — he’s never been in an apartment building with a lobby. It looks like a small-scale hotel. There’s no receptionist’s desk but there are chairs lined up against the wall and small tables with magazines that no one really reads stacked on top of them. The carpet is a rich golden color to offset the sandy pain on the walls. There are no cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, instead there is an elegant light fixture. The door to the stairwell is labeled with emergency and Minseok presses the call button for the elevator with a sickening combination of anticipation and apprehension. His own apartment building doesn’t have elevators and the elevator of Kyungsoo’s building always gets stuck on the sixth floor without fail.

The inside of the elevator has glass walls and he’s officially convinced this is a mini hotel and not an apartment building. No apartment building should look this nice. Minseok wonders how any one affords to live here, let alone a college student. He takes a small scrap of paper from his pocket. Written on it is Lu Han’s apartment number and Minseok presses the button to the fourth floor. When the elevator doors open Minseok feels cheated. The carpet on the fourth floor isn’t golden like in the front of the lobby (it’s a grungy forest green) and the walls are a lazy white instead of that beautiful sandy tan color. The paint is chipped in places, there is a wad of pink bubble gum matted in the fibers of the flooring, and Minseok thinks he sees drawing on the walls.

Despite the drastic difference, Minseok would still choose to live here, under a fake expensive front, than live in the dump he does now.

Lu Han’s door, according to the paper, is the second door on the left. He raps his knuckles on the door three times before taking a step back and fiddling with his sleeves again. He thought he was over this habit, having not done it in the past couple of weeks, but it seems like his subconscious tendencies aren’t ready to leave him yet.

What feels like a minute later, Minseok knocks again. The door opens to an unfamiliar face and he freezes, hand still awkwardly lifted in the air. The stranger, with most of his dark chocolate falling over one side of his face, yawns wide without covering his mouth.

“Who are you?” The man in the doorway asks once he’s finished yawning.

Minseok hesitates but bows slowly. “I’m…uh…looking for Lu Han. My name is Kim Minseok. I’m sorry if I have the wrong place.”

Something flashes in the other’s eyes and Minseok bows again, awkwardly shuffling away from the door.

“Wait,” the stranger calls before Minseok makes it to the elevator. “This is the right place. He went out to the store for a second. He’ll be right back. Why don’t you come inside to wait for him?”

Sitting on the couch in a home he’s never been in before with a man he doesn’t know sounds like a description for the start of a crap horror movie. He watches as the one who opened the door sits on the arm of the lounge chair adjacent to the couch. He’s probably only being paranoid. (He’s keeping his eyes on the broom propped up against a closed door just in case he needs a weapon).

“So you said your name is Minseok, right,” the guy asks, crossing his right leg over his left.

Minseok nods.

“I’m guessing you’re that kid from the Seoul Institute of the Performing Arts that Lu Han constantly complains about.”

Minseok shrugs and opens his mouth to say something (what exactly, he has no clue). The guy with the messy hair and drowsy looking face continues on, though.

“So may I ask what your intentions are for talking to Lu Han? Don’t take this personally, but from even just a few years of knowing him, I know the guy has questionable judgment of character. He seems to attract the off people, myself included, which is fine, but I'd say your case is a little different. I’m merely looking out for him.” Drowsy asks.

Minseok frowns, offended. “I didn’t know I needed to have specific intentions to talk to Lu Han. Is it so wrong of me to want to be friends, or at least some type of acquaintance, with someone, or should I only associate with people of my same financial standing and academic background?”

Of course his good mood has to be destroyed so early on in the day by someone’s insensitivity. Even his own friends don’t give him crap for talking to Lu Han. The only person who gives him is Kris but that’s because Kris is a possessive psycho and not because Lu Han comes from a different school (not like that would make sense anyway considering Kris hasn’t seen the light of academia since they graduated high school).

What is the problem with a little school rivalry? It’s healthy, it happens. No one has died, nothing has been set on fire or blown up, the alum of both universities are guaranteed success in some field of art or entertainment barring they commit a scandalous act or kick a kitten (and even then they’re probably have about a good week’s worth of fame if the children, who have nothing better to do but sit behind their keyboards and judge people, raise hell long enough).

Don’t take it personally? How is he supposed to take it, then? With his eyes closed so he can’t see when another verbal knife is driven through his aorta? With his nose high in the air and his middle finger on display like he did when he was ridiculed because of his uality in high school so he can go back home and cry to his mother’s always closed office door? Would any of those other options be not taking it personally because implying he has some ulterior motive for seeing his little Chinese idiot (as if he’s a serial killer gaining his next victim’s trust) cannot be any less personal.

“What is my case exactly? Do I have a record I've never heard about? Would it make me any less suspicious if I said I’m a person who is only looking for the tiniest sliver of happiness in his just-a-hairline-fracture-away-from-being-totally-ed-up life? Or would it make me more a threat to you or him or any of the other people he knows? Why can’t I talk to him because I want to and not because I’m secretly plotting to destroy everything he has or worked for? Why is it that you have no idea who I am, and I don’t know you either, but you have the nerve to prosecute me based on variables that really aren't any of your ing business.”

“Wow. Never thought I’d ever feel awkward walking into my own home.”

And suddenly Minseok wants to put his acting skills to use and play dead. Like an opossum. He settles for staring at the floor, hugging his bag to his chest, trying to chameleon into the couch. The strategy doesn’t seem to work though. His shoulders literally sting from the eyes of the two other men in the room. Wonderful. Now he feels like he overreacted. In his defense, he’s been stressed lately. But that probably isn’t enough of an excuse to have yelled at Drowsy like that in their eyes.

He spent the week getting over his pre-teenage excitement (for the record, he was not excited because of Lu Han but because he’s never stayed over someone’s house for reasons other than making sure no one jumped from the balcony in a drunken haze) and defying Kris. This morning he spent  approximately an hour fussing over his hair and if he wanted to be cool and wear mismatched Girl’s Generation socks or mismatched Spongebob socks. And having put himself in this situation, thinking back on how stupid and anxious he was being the entire time, all Minseok wants to do now is go home and cry into his pillow.

Scrutinizing the two in his living room, a tense Minseok staring at his (thankfully) recently vacuumed carpet and a distracted (as usual) Lay, Lu Han sighs and hopes the force of his exhale is enough to cut through the five-layer tension hovering in his living room like a bad joke. The not-so-stupid left half of his brain knows exactly what the problem here is but he has plastic bags, heavy with various food stuffs he doesn’t need, digging into his arms and the prickling pain has dimmed to an alarming numbness, and so he can't be bothered with whatever is going until he puts them down.

Looking to the bags in his arms, he casts a small glance to the awkward two and pads off into his kitchen toward the left, shouting; “Minseok, come help me with this.”

Setting the bags atop the tacky, pale green surface top of the counter closest to the refrigerator, he starts taking out his groceries, starting with a loaf of bread and six small cartons of white and coffee milk each. The crinkle of the plastic grates on his ears when he crumples the first empty bag and tosses it onto the floor to be picked up later. Pulling a second bag in front of him, he huffs, taps his nails along the counter.

“Minseok! I said come help me with this.”

At the sound of footsteps, he side-steps over to the refrigerator, both to give Minseok space at the counter and so he can shove the milk into the back of the fridge next to the fruit juice boxes lined up according to different fruit — apple, orange, grape. A laugh spills from his lips when Minseok nudges him with his hip.

“Took you long enough,” he pesters, knocking his own hip into the other’s in retaliation. Like factory workers, they pick up a comfortable working pace as Minseok hands over a package of eggs that Lu Han places on a shelf by itself, moving to the freezer when he’s handed three boxes of frozen pizza, a tub of vanilla ice cream, and a container of whipped cream he doesn’t even remember buying.

Shutting the door to the freezer, he smiles in Minseok’s direction only to be assaulted by the plastic wrapped loaf of bread hitting him square in the face.

“What gave you the bright idea to boss me around? Who do you think you are?” Minseok hisses under his breath, a cute small pout pushing at his lips.

Lu Han dies a little bit on the inside. Ahem.

“I think I am perfection embodied and you…you are a mere baozi meant to obey my every command,” he says with a light smile, glancing down at the bread still in the other’s hands just in case it makes a return trip to his face, when he notices something else. “Nice socks by the way.”

Minseok covers his left foot with his right, embarrassment showing in the dust of pink across his cheeks — in his indecision he chose to wear one Spongebob sock and one Girl’s Generation sock (with Sunny’s cartooned face). Possibly not his greatest decision but he was in a panic.

Before Minseok has a chance to open his mouth, and possibly hit him again with the bread, Lu Han's ears pick up on the sound of movement and he glances at the door of the kitchen out of the corner of his eyes, catching Lay heading to the front door. Lay tosses him an apologetic smile but he doesn't respond to it. When the front door clicks closed with the life ruiner's exit, Lu Han sighs and leans back against the refigerator.

“So what did my idiot of a best friend say to you," he questions, staring straight at Minseok who shrugs and lazily tosses the loaf of bread onto the counter.

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

Lu Han crosses his arms over his chest. “It can’t be nothing if it made you so upset.”

“I wasn’t upset." Minseok turns away to sift through another plastic bag, pulling out varying size bottles of ketchup, rice vinegar, and sesame oil. “Where do you want this?”

Pushing the condiments to the back of the counter, he huffs. “Come on, Minseok. I’m trying to defend you —"

Minseok sends him a short glare. “You can’t defend someone who isn’t in trouble.”

Picking up on the other's growing annoyance, Lu Han quickly changes the mood of the conversation, not wanting to make anything more awkward than it already is. That ruins the point of a slumber party. They're supposed to be happy and drama-free. “You know what? No ice cream for you. You’re gonna want some later and I’m not going to give it to you.”

He represses a smile when Minseok rolls his eyes before pretending to gasp.

“Oh my, however will I survive? No ice cream? You’re a monster.”

“Sometimes drastic measures need to be taken, Minseokkie," he says, patting the actor on the shoulder. "I’ll take it back if you tell me what Yixing said to you.”

“Just drop it, Lu. It isn’t important.”

But he can't just drop it because it bothers him that Yixing said something offensive to Minseok. Yixing is never offensive...to people other than Lu Han...and Sehun, but that's because they've known each other for a decent amount of time and they're practically like family. It's allowed. But for Yixing to verbally attack Minseok (no matter how good his intentions were) means either something happened on campus that he doesn't know about or Yixing is more of an than he previously thought.

“Did he insult my intelligence and ask if you had hidden intentions for hanging out with me?”

Minseok rapid blinking and dead silence tells Lu Han he was 150 percent correct in his guess. Only Yixing would say something like that. Tossing his arm over Minseok's shoulder, Lu Han grins so wide his cheeks being to sting.

“Don’t worry, Big Brother Lu Han loves you no matter where you come from, baby Minseok," he says, cooing and petting the other with parental affection.

“I’m older than you," Minseok deadpans.

“Age is nothing but a number these days, baby face.”

it is officially impossible for xiuhan to have a normal, not stupid conversation in this fic.

on another note, i guess you could say i'm in the middle of mourning so if this chapter is strange or doesn't make sense, i'm sorry. my mind is sort of everywhere at the moment and i'm more inclined to write when i'm feeling down.

either way, stay precious, my dears （*＾3＾）/～☆