Tao opens the door when Jongin knocks, offering him a lazy smile when he sees who it is. “Hey, first year, you made it. And…who is this?” he asked, looking pointedly at the person with the Justin Bieber haircut replica standing behind Jongin.

Jongin doesn’t hear him; he’s too busy balking at the inside of the room over Tao’s shoulder. “What the hell is this?”

Apparently, you could only book classrooms temporarily for club meetings, but the room looked as if someone was running a corporation inside of it. It was a large room, so there were two bookcases against the back wall, with one huge desk sitting between them, marked with a golden President nameplate. In the centre of the room stood a two-sided double desk, seating four PCs, and a couple of one-sided double desks pushed up against both walls, housing two more PCs apiece and creating a grand total of eight office spaces. In the corner directly to their left sits a microwave, a table covered with every different type of coffee maker known to mankind, and a small beat-up fridge. To their right, a small circle of three beanbag chairs are parked near a large outlet, presumably for people with laptops.

Tao turns around and kind of scans the room for a second as if expecting to find something else there, but when he realizes Jongin’s just talking about the room in general, he says, “Oh, the stuff. This place used to be the old office for the anthropology department.”

“And you guys own this place? How the hell did you do it?”

“We have…” Tao drops his voice dramatically, “connections.”

“Really.”

“Yes, really. The Freedom Funkers are a pretty new organization, but our events were popular last year.  And our old president had this really eerie way of getting everything she wanted. She’d just disappear for a few hours and come back with the goods. She’s too busy to play president now, but she said as long as we got done we could keep the room.”

Jongin wasn’t sure if the fact that this mysterious woman was no longer president was a good thing or a bad thing.

“Your friend?” Tao says pointedly, and Jongin suddenly remembers the extra body he’s dragged along, who was still gaping open-mouthed at the coffee table.

“This is Sehun,” Jongin says, lazily slapping the back of his hand against Sehun’s chest. “He can dance, sort of.”

Oh Sehun was the one other soul from Humberside Collegiate who attended UTSC like Jongin, although they’d gotten to know each other from the old dance school Jongin used to go to. Of course, Sehun actually lived close to campus, but that was a different matter.

“Sort of,” Tao echoes, then shrugs. “We’ll take it.” He swings the door wide open and steps back. “Come on in, I’ll introduce you.”

There’s already seven others assembled inside, the majority of them taking up the little office spaces at the desks. They all look up, some with more lingering interest than others, but most of them just focus back on what they were doing before the first years’ arrival.

Tao starts in on the left. “This here is Baekhyun and Chanyeol, our stage and tech crew,” he says, pointing to a tall giraffe of a kid with a curly ginger hair and a considerably shorter kid with really pretty hands sitting next to each other at the double-desk pushed against the wall. “They get us our permits for lighting and audio and all that junk and then set us up.”

Both Baekhyun and Chanyeol give them wide smiles. “Hey,” Chanyeol booms, in a shockingly low bass that contrasted to his boyish elf look.

“This here is our vice president, Jongdae,” Tao says, pointing at the kid sitting across from Chanyeol. “He’s kind of like an advisor, but really VP’s just a title round here.”

“Gee, thanks,” Jongdae says with excess sarcasm, rolling his eyes before waving his hand dismissively. “Don’t listen to him, he just thinks he’s the cause he can handle a wushu stick.”

“How convenient that you should mention it, I was just about to demonstrate. Care to let me use your head?” Tao threatens.

“Cool it, guys,” the guy sitting next to Jongdae says without looking up from his computer screen.

“Our secretary, Joonmyun,” Tao says, patting Joonmyun’s shoulder. “He does minute taking and phone calls and all of that usual secretary crap. More importantly, though, he keeps this place from burning to the ground.”

“Amen,” Baekhyun pipes up, furiously pounding away at his keyboard in what looked uncannily like a security system hacking attempt.

Tao points at the person with the eerie resemblance to Sohee from Wonder Girls seated at the computer screen opposite Joonmyun’s. “That’s the other event coordinator, Minseok. He’s stuck here cause he skimped out on the breadth requirements and wasn’t able to graduate last year, so he’s officially a fifth year undergrad.”

“Could you not announce that to everyone first thing?” Minseok says wearily, scowling at Tao.

“He’s taking the weirdest ing major too. Nobody has any idea what it is or how to pronounce it.”

“Diaspora and Transitional Studies, and I told you, it’s—”

“Aaaaaaand finally,” Tao interrupts, sweeping his arm out to motion at the person sitting at the double desk against the right wall, “we have Goldie, our treasurer. We don’t really know why he’s treasurer, though, he’s totally unreliable with money and Jongdae’s majoring in mathematics to boot.”

 “It’s not Goldie, it’s Luhan,” the boy with the fluffy head of marigold hair snaps, “and I have a bachelor’s in business administration, , I think I can handle money just fine.”

“You have a bachelor’s already?” Sehun interrupts, the first he’s spoken since entering the room, and suddenly all eyes swerve onto him.

“Hey,” Baekhyun grins, “say that again.”

Sehun frowns. “What?"

“Say something!”

“Say what now?”

Baekhyun doubles over with maniacal laughter. “Oh my god, you have the cutest lisp I’ve ever heard!” he gasps, tearing up.

Sehun sputters, “It’s not cute—”

“It is kind of cute,” Luhan agrees, and for some reason this shuts Sehun up, leaving him standing there with a conflicted expression on his face as Baekhyun continues to howl with laughter.

“So, wait,” Jongin says, looking around, “you guys only have seven people in the group so far?”

“Ten, actually. Twelve once you guys are made official. Our President, Kris, likes to come half an hour late so that way he can arrive last and make a grand entrance, the narcissist. Oh, and his name isn’t actually Kris, it’s like Wufan or Yifan something—”

 Someone pipes up, “No, I’m pretty sure it’s Jiaheng—”

 “Whatever, the guy has like ten different ing Chinese names so we forced him to settle for something simple, so you can just call him Kris. But anyways, besides him we’ve still got two more people coming.”

“Okay, who?” Jongin asks, just as the door opens up again behind him.

“Food’s here,” a cheery voice calls.

“YES!” Jongdae yells, voicing everyone else’s excitement as they shot up from their desks and rushed at the door, much to the confusion of both Jongin and Sehun, who both stand dumbfounded until Tao pulls them aside to avoid getting run over by the onslaught of hungry group members.

“Oh my god, I can’t remember the last time I had a ing burger—”

“Are you kidding me? I’ve been eating their burgers for a month now. Kind of craving some Wendy’s or something, actually.”

“I know, right?! I’m so done with Tim Hortons, don’t get me wrong they’re super cheap and stuff but I’ve got a god awful craving for Starbucks when there isn’t one to be found for miles—”

“The are you ordering coffee at Tim Hortons for? We’ve got a coffee machine! We’ve got ten coffee machines! We can make better coffee!”

“Thanks for getting the food, Kyungsoo,” Joonmyun yells over the noise. “Oh, and you too, Yixing.”

“How thoughtful of you,” a second voice replies sarcastically.

The boys finally separate and disperse back to their desks to eat their Hero burgers, revealing Joonmyun patting the shoulders of the two newest arrivals. One of them, Chinese by the looks of it, has an extraordinarily fresh-faced look to him, like he could star in every skin care commercial on the planet and nobody would complain. The other one is rather short, with pale skin, thick eyebrows, full bow-shaped lips and the widest eyes Jongin had ever seen on an Asian boy. It made him look as though he could stare into your soul with them. Equal parts daunting and mesmerizing, although the latter was clearly the stronger of the two since Jongin couldn’t tear his eyes away.

The one with the clear skin spots them in the corner and raises an eyebrow. “Those are the new recruits?” he said impressively. “Not bad, Tao. Didn’t expect you to snag the better-looking of the faces around here.”

Tao rolls his eyes. “My cousin, Yixing,” he says.

“You’re cousins?” Sehun asks, and Baekhyun almost inhales his burger as he bursts out laughing again.

“Yeah. Yixing was actually voted President by popular vote, but Kris wouldn’t claw off the title, so for the time being he’s just one of the few people around here who can actually dance.”

“I didn’t bring enough food,” the boy with the wide eyes says worriedly, looking between Sehun and Jongin. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know they were coming today.”

“Relax, they don’t need to eat—”

“Hey!” Sehun protests.

“—so just let it go this one time, I’m sure they can handle it. Right, guys?” Tao says, staring pointedly at Sehun.

Sehun just scoffs.

“Anyways, this kind soul is Kyungsoo, part of the food crew. He takes care of getting permits to serve food and securing suppliers and stuff like that, but when we don’t actually have any events planned he’s in charge of bringing the food for the club meetings.”

“Nice to meet you,” Kyungsoo says warmly, and Jongin stares a little too hard and a little too long at his face, because on top of everything else, Kyungsoo has the most genuine smile he’s ever seen in his life. It spreads wide across his face, showing well cared-for pearly whites and turning those huge owl eyes of his into crescent moons, and an unexpected warmth spreads upwards from the pit of Jongin’s stomach because it felt…exclusive. Like they were sharing an inside joke or scheming something up together. Like that smile was meant just for him.

He keeps staring until Sehun finally elbows Jongin in the ribs with a snicker, and then he snaps out of his daze.

“Yeah, same to you,” Jongin says quickly.

Tao checks his watch. “2:26. We’ve got a couple more minutes before Kris makes his entrance.” He claps Jongin and Sehun on the back. “Since we kind of ran out of desk space, you guys are gonna have to chill in those beanie bags in the corner for the time being. Any problems with that?”

“Can I go get food?” Sehun asks, raising his hand as if he were in class.

“…Yeah, sure, if you think you can make it in—”

Sehun bolted out the door.

Tao stares at the empty door frame for a second before turning to Jongin. “Hey. You sure that kid can pull his weight?”

“Maybe. Not really. Can’t guarantee anything. He can still dance, though,” Jongin offers.

Tao sighs. “We’ll take it.” He grabs the remaining grease-stained bag in Kyungsoo’s hands and shuffles towards his desk.

“I didn’t get your name,” Kyungsoo says then, and Jongin gulps because he’s giving him that smile again.

“It’s Jongin.”

“Cool. Nice to meet you, Jongin. So, have you met everyone already?”

“Um…” Jongin looks over at everyone sitting at their desks, completely absorbed in their food, “sort of.”

Kyungsoo laughs. “Knowing Tao, he probably didn’t tell you the stuff worth remembering.” He lowers his voice and points over to where Baekhyun and Chanyeol are sitting. “There’s a couple things you should probably know. Those two are passionate about one thing and one thing only. For Baekhyun it’s film, and for Chanyeol it’s coffee. If you don’t want to start any trouble first thing, it’s probably a good idea not to get in the way of either of those things.”

“What do you mean by film?”

“You’ll see in a minute, Tao usually gets on his case right about—”

“Hey Baekhyun,” Tao says, spinning around in his chair a little too nonchalantly. “I finally saw Looper last weekend.”

“What’d you think?” Baekhyun says excitedly, turning to look over at Tao. 

“It was pretty good.”

“I know, right?! They actually made Joseph Gordon-Levitt look like Bruce Willis and the torture scene was so original and—”

“It kind of reminded me of that other time-travelling movie.”

Baekhyun’s smile freezes a little bit on his face, not comprehending Tao’s remark. “What time-travelling movie?”

“You know, the one with Leonardo DiCaprio,” Tao says calmly, biting back a grin.

“Leonardo DiCaprio wasn’t in any…” And then a sudden realization dawns on Baekhyun’s face and he says, in a panic-stricken voice, “Oh my god, you’re not talking about Inception, are you?”

Tao snaps his fingers, “That’s the one!”

Baekhyun lets out a wail of anguish and practically falls out of his chair. “Oh my god, you did not just say that to me! You did not just tell me that Inception was a movie about time travel! How could you do this to me?! You’ve seen that movie three times! I made you watch it the extra two times!”

Jongin looks over at Kyungsoo. “Dude,” he said, a little scared now, “I’ve never seen Inception.”

Kyungsoo laughs. “Don’t worry, I’ll send you Baekhyun’s ‘must-watch’ list. At least, the ones on the list that he absolutely expects you to have watched without his help. There are many others that he’ll eventually force on you.”

“JUST BECAUSE TIME MOVES MORE SLOWLY IN THE DREAM DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE MOVIE WAS ABOUT TIME TRAVEL! LEONARDO DICAPRIO SAID IT HIMSELF, THE BRAIN FUNCTIONS MORE QUICKLY IN YOUR SLEEP AND THEREFORE TIME MOVES MORE SLOWLY! WEREN’T YOU PAYING ATTENTION??!!”

“As you can see, Inception is definitely on the ‘must-watch, no exceptions’ list.” Kyungsoo points to Chanyeol. “Chanyeol’s a little simpler. Just don’t get caught buying coffee off campus, ever, or he’ll take it as a personal insult, since there’s better coffee to be drinking around here.”

“Clearly,” Jongin says, eyeing the various espresso machines and French presses.

“Joonmyun is kind of like the unofficial mom around here. He’s actually a big pushover, but nobody really messes with him or goes against his word cause it’s just not cool. Minseok, on the other hand, is the guy that everyone likes to mess with because he’s just too much fun not to mess with. Well, mostly everyone. Baekhyun makes himself a pretty easy target too.”

Jongin nods, staring as Tao keeps up playing stupid with Baekhyun, drawing out further screeches from the latter.

“Yixing kind of just likes to ignore everything around him. He’s really good at going into this kind of Zen mode where he just blocks everyone else out. Unless you throw something at him, he probably won’t interfere no matter how weird the situation gets.”

Jongin looks over to see Yixing reading something on his computer whilst eating his French fries, without the slightest indication of being able to hear anything going on around him.

“As for Jongdae, he’s usually one of the more sane ones, but on occasion he likes a good joke too. He’ll jump in every once in the while, but most of the damage points around here go to Kris and Tao. You’ll notice pretty quickly that they tend get on each other’s nerves a lot.

“And then there’s Luhan. Luhan’s not into starting the fire so much as…fanning it. Usually either Kris or Tao will spark the flame and then Luhan keeps the fuel coming.”

As if on cue, Luhan turns in his chair with what looked to be an earnest frown, save for the mischievous glint in his eye. “So Cobb wasn’t dreaming, then?”

Baekhyun’s only response was a strangled howl. 

Jongdae laughs. “Hey, you sound like the Earl of Lemongrab when you do that.”

“Come on, that’s actually a valid question!” Luhan protests innocent-like. “You could argue either way—”

“You could, but there’s only one correct answer.”

“I’m so confused,” Jongin whispers.

“I suggest watching the movie twice, then, if you’d prefer not to be lectured on it.”

A/N

So I'm just gonna 

leave that there

And also for those of you who don't know Tim Hortons is like this Canadian coffee chain but apparently they don't have it in the west side of Canada? (Get your together Canada)

And the Earl of Lemongrab is an Adventure Time reference MEHEHEHEHEH

Comment and subscribe if you dig

(edited 13/05/2013 because Chanyeol does not have maroon curls wtf was I writing)