Heung Soo snorted when Nam Soon lay down in his school clothes.

Nam Soon narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“You’re going to sleep in your school clothes?”

Nam Soon did a horizontal shrug.

“Weird .”

“Your face is weird .” Nam Soon flipped him the bird; smiled when Heung Soo’s eyes narrowed in mock anger and then curled into smiling half-crescents.

Heung Soo sighed and jumped out of his futon. He returned to the room carrying something and threw it at the lump in the other futon. “Go hang your school clothes somewhere. I’m not waiting for you afterschool if you get detention again.”

Nam Soon burrowed into his blankets with the clothes. The blanket began to look like a tortured ghost ripping at its own essence.

A sound of disbelief. His head poked out from under the blanket.

“The is this supposed to be?” He shook the offending clothes to prove his point.

“Clothes. So you won’t wrinkle your uniform. Be grateful, giseki-ah.” Heung soon grinned back at him.

Nam soon gave him one of his famous What-Kind-Of-Crack-Has-Byun-Ki-Been-Giving-YOU look and glanced at the clothes again.

“Hey I actually went and got them for you so you’d better wear them!” He threatened.  He had actually had to negotiate with his sister about borrowing her nightdress too and promised to return it washed and ironed, but no need to mention that.

Nam Soon squished his lips together in that thinking way. “If I wear these, you buy me next month’s Shounen JUMP.”

Heung Soo shrugged non-committally. Nam Soon decided to humor him. Partly because he was still being nice for ruining his best friend’s soccer career and subsequently his life and partly because he really wanted next month’s Shounen JUMP.

He disappeared under the blankets again. Heung Soo considered tell him that the light filtered through the cloth and made his silhouette very obvious, and then snickered and decided to just about the width of his chicken legs later.

A while later, a bedraggled Nam Soon poked his head out of the blankets. His hair was all static-y and he looked out of breath.

The blanket fell off his shoulder. “Happy?”

Heung Soo stared.

“I should have known you’d be into some creepy after you started worshipping Teacher Kang.”

Heung Soo dragged his eyes away from his best friend with difficulty. He could feel his ears turn red.

“…You hung your pants up too, huh.” He muttered, and it was true. Under the frilly white nightie, there were star-spangled boxers…and then just thighs. Glorious, milky white, skinny-as- thighs.

His mouth went dry when Nam Soon dragged his futon closer to his. He shouldn’t panic, he reasoned. It was Nam Soon. Freaking Nam Soon only sleeping at the same proximity they always slept at. He snored like an elehant. He had peed his pants in third grade. He can’t eat a burger without getting mayo all over his face. He’s disgusting.

He swallows again.

“It’s actually pretty comfortable. It’s like wearing a wifebeater and boxers, except you know, gayer.” Nam Soon rolled his eyes. His back was to Heung  Soo . They was a handspan’s width of space between their futons.

This was not okay, Heung  Soo decided an hour later, when Nam Soon had fallen asleep and was already on his way to top the Richter scale with the magnitude of the shuddering breaths he took. His back shook with every breath. This was normal. What wasn’t normal was the fact that the blanket had slipped off and so had the damn nightie (he had half a mind to burn the stupid y thing as soon as Nam Soon got out of it) so he was getting unobstructed view of the smooth skin at the nape of Namsoon’s neck and his back. He could see a beauty mark on his left shoulder in the dim light. Another one smack dab between his shoulder blades.

He could make out entire constellations of beauty spots. He could star gaze on Nam Soon’s skin, if only he didn’t feel like there was a special place in hell for getting this by his best friend in a skimpy nightie.

Heung Soo huffed. Flopped on his other side, with his back to Nam Soon. Lay there in silence for exactly two minutes before he turned over again and brought the blanket around the other boy’s shoulders.

He was ready to disown his hand when it lingered on Nam Soon’s cool, smooth skin for longer than strictly necessary.

He couldn’t sleep.  He took out his phone and began to play Angry Birds for a while, before a murderous Nam Soon jabbed his side. “It’s two AM!”

Heung Soo looked at his phone. So it was.

“Go to sleep!” Nam Soon let out an ‘aish’ and hit him over the head for good measure. Heung soon was doing all he could to avoid looking at him. It was weird.

“…Can’t sleep?” His voice softened. Heung Soo mocked a yawn. “I guess I shouldn’t have had that Americano.”

“Hmm.” Nam Soon snuggled back under his blanket (much to the relief of Heung Soo, who could finally stop looking at his non-existent manicure).

Fifteen minutes passed. Nam Soon wasn’t snoring, which meant he wasn’t asleep yet, Heung Soo reasoned. He tried to think of something to say but nothing seemed appropriate.

Another ten minutes later the taller boy sat up angrily and threw his pillow at him. “You idiot, now I can’t sleep either!”

“So then don’t.”

“Move over then. I’m switching spots with you. You come and sleep here, maybe it’ll help.”

Heung Soo was about to say that he didn’t really want to be on the cold side of the room, and that trick only worked when they were in different rooms to begin with, but before he could, Nam Soon crawled in his futon.

“Now get out.” He growled, only half-jokingly.

“You didn’t even ask if I wanted to go there!” Heung Soo protested.

He was poked. “Shoo! I need to sleep!”

“You sleep all day in class anyways!”

He was prodded harder this time.

“Well that’s too bad then.” Heung Soo said when Nam Soon was tired of poking him and he hadn’t budged. “You shoo.”

Something rude and probably R-rated was huffed in return but Heung Soo couldn’t hear anything over the hitching of his breath. They had somehow ended with Heung Soo back-hugging his best friend and Nam soon smelled like soap and that perfume that short-haired bubbly chick always wore. It would have been normal if only they Nam Soon had a shirt on. For the nth time that night, Heung Soo vowed to burn that nightie.

“…You smell like a girl.” He muttered.

“It was Gang Joo. She sprayed me.”

Snores filled the room not long afterwards so Heung Soo was left to open and close his eyes against his Nam Soon’s back, wondering if the other boy could feel the eyelashes that raked across his skin. He figured that after this night is over, he’ll go and finally take up on Byun Ki’s offer to get a girl for his hyung-nim and forget all about the dumb nightie and the fact that Nam Soon has the constellation Pieces on his back.

Until then, however, Heung Soon breathed in his best friend’s scent and pressed a kiss on the expanse of skin that had been haunting him all night. Little pleasures.

Turns out Nam Soon had no tact. Well, he had always known it, but it was official now.

The next morning, while Nam Soon poured rice out of the cooker for the both of them; “So you’re into some pretty weird stuff nowadays.” Conversationally.

Heung Soon eyed his friend warily. “For the last time, I don’t worship Teacher Kang. I just think he’s cool… for being able to pull off those turtlenecks and stuff.”

Nam Soon gave him a look. “I meant more like kissing your best friend’s neck when they’re pretending to be asleep.”

Heung Soo choked on his rice. He was starting turning red before Nam Soon dropped his defensive posture and rushed to get water.  He pounded his back with more force than was strictly necessary, but then again, little pleasures. “You were pretending to be asleep?!” Heung Soo croaked, as soon as he could breathe again.

“Well you were pretending to be thinking about my detention when you gave me that nightie!” Nam Soon retorted, sticking his tongue out childishly.

“I didn’t make you take off your pants too!” There was a moment’s silence in which Heung Soo wished the earth would swallow him whole and Nam Soon realized that he really, really wanted that issue of Shounen JUMP.

He said as much.  “I just wanted my Shounen JUMP.”

“Wow. “ Eyeroll. “Really mature, giseki-ah.” Heung Soo ate some rice to hide his smile.

“At least I’m not some closet ert!” Nam Soon was fighting to contain a grin and Heung Soo knew it.