Chanyeol stares at the burnt piece of bread sitting in his toaster. Shrugging, he plucks the charred piece of bread from the appliance and bites into it. Walking out of his suffocatingly small kitchen and into his just slightly larger living room, he lazily rolls a saliva sodden chunk of bread around his mouth, noting how it vaguely tastes like a mix of sand and volcanic ash — or at least what he thinks volcanic ash tastes like. He ignores the questionable taste, as well as the scent of burning charcoal lingering beneath his nose, continuing to eat anyway. Coming to rest against the side of his couch, he hears the rustling of sheets in his room. At the same time, there is a knock on the door. He’s starting to get seriously annoyed at the person on the other side of his front door, the same person who kept him from getting to sleep last night, their knocking reverberating throughout his living room louder than the ticking clock.

Finishing his toast first, he then pushes himself away from the couch to walk down the hall to his bedroom. Outside his doorway, he raises his voice at the lump on his bed. “I know you’re awake in there, Princess. Get up and go home so Zitao can stop trying to break my door down. He’s been knocking nonstop since you refused to talk to him last night.”

“Did you just call me Princess? Because you can kiss my , Park Chanyeol,” Minseok grumbles, unmoving.

Chanyeol groans. He hates when Minseok gets like this: angsty, stubborn, and more stupid than usual.

“Minseok, I will forcefully remove you from the bed.”

“Kiss. My. ~” Minseok sings, lifting his arm and shooing Chanyeol away.

Gritting his teeth, Chanyeol peels back the thin blanket and clamps his hand down over Minseok’s ankle, jerking his arm back and yanking the man off the bed in one quick motion. Minseok doesn’t even have a chance to make a sound; he’s just suddenly on the floor.

Pushing his bottom lip out, Minseok crosses his arms over his chest and glares at Chanyeol through his eyelashes.

“You think that cute face is going to work and it’s not. Get off your and talk to Tao.”

Minseok continues to pout.

“What? Do you want a kiss?” Chanyeol mockingly puckers his lips.

“I don’t think your girlfriend will be too happy to find out that you’re making moves on me.” He laughs. “Go let Tao in. I’ll be out in a second.”

“How could you call me and not let me in?! What did you do to Xiumin? Where is he?”

Minseok walks out of Chanyeol’s room to see Zitao staring down the assistant mechanic with narrowed eyes. Sighing, he ruffles his hair. “Tao, stop yelling at him,” he says.

The Chinese man glances at him over his shoulder, sharp glare dissolving as soon as they meet eyes. Minseok twitches his fingers in a short wave. He stiffens when Zitao wraps his arms around his torso.

“I’m so glad you’re okay, Xiumin.”

And then Zitao is running his hands over the small Korean man’s body, checking for major injuries. Minseok looks everywhere that isn’t at Tao. He tries to make SOS signals to Chanyeol but the latter raises an eyebrow before turning around and walking into the kitchen. The traitor.

“It’s Minseok.”

Pausing his rendition of an airport security pat-down, Tao looks up at Minseok, hands frozen on the actor’s stomach. “What?”

“My name is not Xiumin. It’s Minseok.”

Zitao frowns. “We’ve been through this before. You —”

“No.” Minseok holds up a hand. “My name is not and has never been Xiumin. It’s not my birth name.”

Chanyeol saunters back into the living room, another slice of burnt toast in hand. He takes one look at the two men and snorts. “Oh! Am I just in time for the drama to start?”

“Hush,” Minseok hisses, threatening to hit his sorry excuse of a best friend.

Rolling his eyes, Chanyeol flags down Tao’s attention. “What he’s trying to say is that he’s been lying to you ever since you first met.”

Pursing his lips, Minseok sits on the cheap couch. He props his elbow up on the armrest and rests his chin in the palm of his hand. “I’m going to tell you what I’ve been keeping from you.”

Zitao nods, his confusion showing clear on his face.

“Your friend, Xiumin, has dissociative identity disorder — multiple personalities if you don’t know what that is. I’m Minseok. His second personality. You, like pretty much everyone else in the world, think we're the same person and we're not.”

Minseok is unaffected by the heavy silence that settles as he stares at an unblinking Tao. The ticking of the clock above the television, though, is bothersome. Preoccupied with thoughts of the annoying clock, he flinches when Tao splutters and falls into laughter. He looks at Chanyeol. “And this is why you’re the only person who knows.”

Chanyeol shrugs, playing with the last little bit of crust on his toast. “Kris knows.”

“Yeah, but that’s Xiumin’s fault.” Snapping his fingers at Tao, Minseok levels him with an unamused look. “I don’t care if you think it’s funny, but Xiumin’ll be upset if he finds out you’re making fun of our condition.”

“I don’t know how you except anyone not to laugh when you’re making bad jokes like that, Xiumin.”

Having respect for the people Xiumin makes long-lasting relationships with aside from Yifan, Minseok tries his hardest to not blow up at Zitao. It’s getting progressively hard with his patience thinning. He frowns. To be honest, he’s not very fond of Tao. He stopped liking Zitao back in high school, when the panda faced boy let Kris stomp all over Xiumin and didn’t do anything to help. Pretty comforting words and poorly done first-aid didn’t do anything to stop Xiumin from coming home with bruised ribs and blistering welts.

“What is my name?” Minseok asks.

“Kim Xiumin,” Tao answers easily.

“Wrong. What is the name Minseok to you?”

“Your nickname?”

“Wrong. You might be Chinese but you’re been here long enough to know that Minseok sounds nothing like a nickname. The purpose of a nickname is to shorten the given name, is it not?” Minseok fights a smile when Tao’s face morphs into a mix of annoyance, amusement, and confusion. “What does Kris call me?”

“…Both names.”

“Exactly. Why? Because he knows Xiumin and I are two different people. What is my relationship to Chanyeol?”

“You hate him and you’re terrified of him.” Tao looks between the two men. “Or, at least you used to? I don’t know.”

Minseok shakes his head. “I’ve never been afraid of Chanyeol. He’s like a puppy. Xiumin, on the other hand, doesn’t understand how Chanyeol works like I do.”

“Why are you talking about me like I’m not here,” Chanyeol interjects, leaning over the back of the couch.

Minseok flops onto his back and slaps his cheek playfully. “Because no one cares about you right now, that’s why.”

“You wound me, Min. You wound me.”

“Whatever.” Minseok tilts his head to look at Chinese man. “Zitao, I’m not saying you have to believe me — believe us — one hundred percent, but neither I nor Xiumin have any reason to lie to you about this and we’d appreciate it if you were a little more respectful about something we can’t exactly prove.”

“What would you do if I dropped out of school and became a stripper?”

“Lu Han,” Sehun starts, picking at his nails uninterestedly, “shut up.”

Rolling over onto his stomach, Lu Han buries his face into his freshly washed sheets, the scent of the detergent still clinging to the threads. How he wants to do nothing but lie here all day, enjoying the soft comfort of his mattress beneath him and making fruitless attempts to suffocate himself with his pillow every fifteen minutes. He’s still a little depressed (which is sort of pathetic because it's been four days since he met Minseok's boyfriend), having not yet returned to his usual carefree self, but he’s not as dejected as before. He’s not sure if he’s upset because Minseok is off the market or because the cute little Korean didn’t tell him he was dating in general, keeping the information away from him as if it was some terrible secret Lu Han wasn’t allowed to know about. If Lu Han found someone to call his own, Minseok would have been one of the first people he told — right after Sehun and Yixing.

Shooting his arms out, he digs his nails into his pillow and pulls it over his head. He holds his breath until he has no choice but to blow out warm air against the sheets. Maybe he isn’t upset because Minseok didn’t tell him; maybe he’s upset because it’s been half a week and yet he can’t stop thinking about Minseok in general. As if all that matters is MinseokMinseokMinseok which is complete crap because Lu Han’s been in love before and had his heart broken before so why is he so caught up on it now?

“What is wrong with me!?” he yells, voice slightly muffled under the fluff of the pillow. Throwing a tantrum, he kicks his legs around.

“Everything,” Sehun replies quick and effortless.

Lu Han stills, collecting his breath. When his chest doesn’t shake under the pressure of breathing, he turns onto his back and stares at the ceiling, hugs the pillow to his chest. “Don’t talk to me like that when you’re just as out of it as I am.”

“I’m perfectly fine.”

Pressing his cheek against his sheets so he can stare deadpan at the boy sitting backwards in a chair stolen from out of the kitchen, Lu Han raises his eyebrows. “You’ve downed two large strawberry bubble teas, have one half empty in your hands, and two more in the kitchen. You’re bothered about something just as much as I’m bothered about Minseok.”

Sehun glances at the plastic cup in his hands. “I’m perfectly fine,” he repeats.

“Sure you're fine,” Lu Han says slowly, emphasizing his disbelief. He narrows his eyes when Sehun looks away from him and curls his lips around the wide opening of his straw. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing. I’m just going through bubble tea withdrawal.”

“I haven’t seen you drink this much boba since your mom told you she was getting remarried —”

“Seriously, Lu Han, shut up.”

Lu Han opens his mouth, buzzing with slight annoyance at the attitude Sehun’s flinging at him, but decides to not push the obviously vulnerable kid to his limits. Pitiful men like them have to stick together. “Can I have one of the bubble teas in the kitchen?”

“No.”

Baekhyun takes immense pride in the sharp exhale he draws from the bug-eyed singer arms dealer. Slinging his arm back over the couch, he grins down at the man and balances his weight, bouncing lightly atop the man until he feels comfortable.

Kyungsoo lowers his phone to glare at the sculptor perched happily on his stomach.

“What?” Baekhyun grins as if he’s innocent. “If you’re gonna invite me in, you should at least entertain me. We’ve been sitting around for an hour now. I could have been finishing my project.”

“Why entertain you when you’re obviously amusing yourself right now?”

Baekhyun strikes his palm into Kyungsoo’s chest, eliciting a grunt and a nasty glare. “Because causing you pain isn’t as fun as I thought it would be.”

“Aw, does that mean you care about me?” Kyungsoo says, widening his eyes to a circumference Baekhyun never thought humanly possible and blinking rapidly.

If that’s his attempt at the doe-eyed look, Baekhyun thinks he’s doing a terrible job.

“No, it means I have a short attention span,” Baekhyun explains plainly and completely serious.

Kyungsoo relaxes his facial features, choosing to raise a simple questioning eyebrow. “Were you always like this?”

“Yes.”

The singer hums and Baekhyun watches as a distant look shadows the younger man’s eyes. “I guess I was disillusioned back when we still went to school together.”

Baekhyun tilts his head to the side. “How so?”

“I always thought you were this sweet kid. Guess I should have listened to all those people who said you were an insensitive jerk.” Kyungsoo shrugs.

Cooing, Baekhyun bends over to pinch Kyungsoo’s cheeks until they’re a darling, blossoming pink. “You were my biggest fan. How cute.”

“Do you mind getting off my stomach?”

“Look at you, trying to change the topic.” Chuckling, the artist leans down and pecks Kyungsoo’s nose before sliding off the flushed man. “It’s okay if you thought I was perfect. At least one person from that school didn’t want me to get jumped by a trio of thugs.”

Wandering into the kitchen, Baekhyun steals a can of coke. When he passes by the couch Kyungsoo is still lying like roadkill on, he waves at the dazed man. “You’ve distracted me from my work long enough. Call me when you want to start my singing lessons.”

Back in his apartment, Baekhyun’s barely toed off his shoes before his phone rings from deep inside his the small abode. Hurriedly kicking off his right shoe, he traces the sound to his bedroom. Scooping his phone from underneath his pillow and dropping the can of soda onto the bed, he answers the call without paying attention to the name highlighted on the screen.

“Hello,” he mumbles into the phone as he single-handedly fumbles with the button of his jeans.

“If you hang up on me, I will find you.”

“I should hang up on you just to be spiteful.” In the short silence that looms, Baekhyun shimmies out of his pants, kicking them into the corner next to his laundry basket. “I mean, you didn’t even give me a proper hello.”

“Hello, Honeydew.”

Yanking a pair of sweatpants from his closet, Baekhyun clumsily pulls them on, still holding his phone in his hand. Collapsing onto his bed, he curls into himself and hugs a pillow to his chest.

“That’s much better,” he says.

"Considering you've been ignoring all my texts for the past couple of days, I didn't think you were worthy of a non-threatening greeting."

Baekhyun picks at a loose thread on the pillowcase. “That’s a lie.”

Sehun laughs dryly. “No, it's not. I have proof if you want to take it to court."

"I've been busy with work. And stuff. You can't really be upset with me over a few unanswered texts."

“Whatever, Chocopie. I didn't call to talk about how you're a terrible person. We're going out to dinner in two days. Just the two of us. Forget and you’ll regret it.”

Baekhyun stares at his phone after Sehun hangs up, wondering what in the world the kid's thinking about and what he's getting himself into. Planting his face into his pillow, he lets the cool pillowcase swallow his screams. Cursing, he sits up and turns his attention back to his phone. He types out a quick text message to Kyungsoo —

want to catch dinner with me and a friend saturday?

— regretting it as soon as he sends it but unable to take it back. He should call his mother and tell her he loves her. Because Sehun is going to murder him in cold blood.