"So Kai-ssi," the host prods, "do you have an answer for me?"

"Uhh.......—"

He doesn't.

Jongin has only ever dated one girl, and she had been a pusher. She planned everything out for the both them. In fact, she had asked him out in the first place. He didn't have to put any sort of thought into their relationship at all, something which he had greatly appreciated at a time when he was a very busy trainee. She'd call him up and say we're going out Friday for pizza or you and I are hanging out in Gangnam-gu tomorrow, and Jongin would just have to nod and follow her around the way his puppies do with him.

His hesitance drags on for more than what is considered appropriate onstage, and he starts to panic a little, because what is he supposed to say when he really really doesn't know what he'd do for his dates? He hasn't even figured out how to ask him out yet.

"Monggu's house?"

Jongin snaps back into alertness at the sound of Baekhyun's voice. "What did you say?"

Baekhyun grins at him encouragingly from a few chairs away. "I thought you'd bring your date to Monggu's house."

He laughs at that like it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard, but inside his head Jongin's brain is working overtime. 

Should I just go with it? Is that what I should say? Would your date even like it?

Is it the kind of thing you'd like, hyung?

In the end he decides to go with a safe alternative and says that he'd take her into his arms and snuggle up with her instead, or something equally as cheesy and greasy.

Baekhyun apparently thinks this way about his answer too, because Jongin can hear him snorting from all the way down in his own seat.

I guess he's not a fan of that idea, but even as he's contemplating this Jongin is smiling like an idiot to himself. He reckons he finally has a masterplan to woo Baekhyun.

Monggu's house it is.

Except that there's a problem: there is no 'Monggu's house'.

Jongin's family home in the outskirts of Seoul is spacious with an enormous yard, but apart from his mother's chilli patch there isn't really anything else of note lying around there.

He has had Monggu for years now. When he was 16, he and his dad had came up with a school holiday project of building Monggu his very own doghouse over a rowdy boys-only dinner of doenjangjjigae and watered-down maekju. They had gone to the hardware store the very next day, splurging on lacquered wood and white roof eaves. All that was left to be done was some nailing and proper sweat-shedding.

Sadly, this never happened. Come summer, Jongin was rarely home as he was doing, what else, but training, and dad has always been a rather hopeless handyman. He hadn't trusted himself enough to do it on his own.

Thus Monggu, and later Jjanggu and Jjangah as well, are forced to be content to sleep on the pile of fluffy pillows they have in the corner of the living room, which for all intents and purposes is not bad at all. But now Jongin has a renewed resolve to resurrect the project.

Must. Woo. Baekhyun. Hyung, he chants as he sprints home the very minute Exo gets a day off.

After kissing his mother's cheek by way of saying hello, Jongin locates the now-dusty pile of wood and eaves, lugs them all out to the yard, grabs the tool box from the tool shed, and starts hammering away.

Monggu's house had been up for a week before Jongin finally asked Baekhyun out.

It was surprisingly easy getting him to say okay, when it came down to it. Jongin had been tossing and turning in his bed for nights prior, rehearsing what he'd say and do. He stammered as if his life depended on it when he did the deed all the same.

Jongin popped the question one night when it was just the two of them left in the dance studio. Exo would be performing a special stage for Inkigayo soon, and Baekhyun was facing the ceiling-to-floor mirrors, polishing up the steps to his solo stretch in their dance.

"Umm.... hyung?"

Baekhyun stopped moving around and looked at Jongin's reflection in the mirror. "Yup?"

"Do you think.... are you gonna.... um maybe–"

"Yes?" Baekhyun repeated, turning around to stare at Jongin in the flesh instead. Jongin could practically feel his nerves fraying around their edges because Baekhyun is staring at him and sweating prettily at the same time and a drop of it is sliding slowly down his neck and dear lord, is this how your brain short-circuiting feels like?

Baekhyun watched Jongin gaping instead of answering, and rolled his eyes. He moved in closer to grab Jongin's towel off his shoulder to wipe the sweat off his own face. "Jongin," he began, "if you're not going to spit anything out, I'm calling it a day and going home."

Jongin spluttered, but thankfully his motor functions revved back to life in an instant, although he blurted everything out with typical Jongin-level finesse. Which is to say, not much finesse at all.

"Wouldyouliketocomeovertomyhousefordinnerthisweekend?"

It is telling just how much time these two have spent with each other, because Baekhyun miraculously understood Jongin's slur.

"......is that it? Was that so hard to say?" Baekhyun laughed and flicked Jongin's forehead fondly. "Is this because eomeonim misses me," he stated more than asked, -eating grin on his face.

Jongin restrained himself from groaning in annoyance as he soothed the sore spot on his forehead. It's not actually untrue. His mother had been asking him to bring Baekhyun along with him whenever he visits home for a while now. 

"That's one of the reasons," he conceded. "But I also have a surprise for you, hyung." 

Baekhyun narrowed his eyes at Jongin's non-revelation, but didn't push any further. Instead he started clapping excitedly at the prospect of finally seeing Mrs. Kim again, wondering aloud whether our chilli patch is growing well or not.

It doesn't go as planned.

He had intended to whisk Baekhyun away into the yard as soon as they arrived at the Kims' house, but Jongin's mother takes one look at Baekhyun being adorably snuggly in his glasses and oversized sweater, and absolutely refuses to relinquish him to anybody else for the rest of the night.

Jongin watches on with a kind of frustated amusement as his mother drags Baekhyun to the chilli patch, then to see the dogs before moving on to the kitchen and finally, the dining table for dinner. She sits him down next to her and would not stop cooing over him all throughout the meal of haemuldoenjang and oodles of banchan. Jongin thinks his dad looks slightly miffed.

Baekhyun takes everything in stride. In fact, he looks like he is enjoying himself immensely. He doesn't get to go back to Bucheon nearly as much as he'd like to anyway, and being showered by this much motherly affection must be something he misses terribly.

Jongin finally manages to wrench him away from his competition when his mother gets preoccupied with washing the dishes and fussing over his sulking dad. He might have wheedled his dad into agreeing to do this, though after what was maybe the thirtieth show of his mother pinching Baekhyun's cheek and squealing at how squishy he is he didn't really need that much wheedling.

As he leads Baekhyun towards Monggu's house, Jongin's heart begins to beat erratically. This is it, he thinks. He'll know how I really feel.

He had expected that the older would understand as soon as he sets his eyes on the doghouse. In his hopeful mind, Jongin had predicted that Baekhyun would maybe take some time to digest the information, look shocked and confused, but eventually realize that he feels the same way for him and —

Jongin blushes as his imagination goes wild with what might happen next.

Again, it doesn't go as planned.

Baekhyun's eyes do light up when he notices the wooden house. He does shriek and jump around like an excited child, yelling how cute at the top of his lungs. He does pat Jongin's back in stunned awe when he tells him that he had put it together himself.

But when he peeks his head into the house and sees nothing but a bare interior, he frowns. "There's nothing here, Jongin."

"Huh?" That's not what he had expected to hear at all.

"There's nothing in it. Does Monggu even sleep here?"

"Uh, no," Jongin admits. "We haven't gotten around to filling it up with stuff that would get him feeling comfortable in it yet."

Then suddenly, a brilliant idea pops up in his head. He may not have achieved his goal this time, but his dad had thought him that should he fail on a first try at something then try and try again.

"Say hyung," he starts, "why don't you come over again next weekend? We could decorate it together."

Baekhyun's face positively brightens up the whole yard as it breaks into a huge smile. "I'd love to."

It's a horrible thought, but Jongin is relieved that when he and Baekhyun reached his house the next Sunday morning his mother was already at church.

All week long, Jongin, during lulls where they had nothing to do, had been hard at work designing how Monggu's house might look like. Baekhyun had insisted on running down to Euljiro to pick up everything they needed by himself.

Jongin settles the tools and decorative items on the small yard table. 

"So what do you need me to do first?" Baekhyun is holding up a hammer in one hand, and a glue gun in another. Jongin had to try very hard to contain himself.

He takes a peek at his must-do list. "Well, maybe you could start by putting the letters up to spell Monggu first."

Baekhyun nods, grabs what he needs, and enters the enormous doghouse to get started.

Meanwhile, Jongin breaks out a tub of lacquer. The wood already has a layer of it, but years of disuse had rendered it dull. He carefully brushes it on, enjoying the easy work as he listens to Baekhyun hammering away within.

They work for hours on end. Baekhyun is done with his first task before Jongin's even a halfway through his, so he sets out for the house to grab the dogs' pillows and plush toys to have them transferred to their new home. Jongin repaints the roof in a dark shade of green, Baekhyun's actual favourite colour. 

He joins Baekhyun inside as his dogs are running around excitedly around the doghouse. 

'Isn't it pretty now?" Baekhyun beams whilst looking around, admiring his own handiwork. "It doesn't look bare anymore." He suddenly jolts and rushes out, before returning to a baffled Jongin. "I forgot I had something. A surprise for you too." He holds out a frame with a picture of Jongin happily surrounded by his dogs for him to see, then proceeds to glue it onto an empty space on the wall.

"There," he says as he dusts the sawdust off his hands. "It's finally done. It finally feels like a home." 

Baekhyun turns to smile softly at Jongin, and the latter's heart begins pounding so quickly he thinks it might just burst out of his chest. He was about to do something very brave, like maybe kiss Baekhyun the way he's always wanted to, when he hears a sharp screech coming from somewhere outside.

"Baekhyun-ah, you're here!" 

But of course.

The day ends with Jongin sitting back in defeat as Baekhyun gets monopolized yet again by his own mother until it was time for them to go back to the dorms, and who, before allowing them to take their leave, suffocated his hyung in a tight bear hug and a ton of packed food along with an order for him to come back soon.

Jongin decided it was time to get expert advice. He was starting to get hives from this cycle of inflation and deflation of anticipation.

He cornered Sehun in their room one day and railed off the whole entire story to him within minutes.

"What do you think I should do," he asked, chewing on his lips.

Sehun is an expert at wooing. He must have had ten girlfriends, though that might be an exaggeration on Jongin's part. He is the go-to person for pick-up lines in the dorm, and Jongin's convinced that he'd heard Kris hyung use one of them on a stylist noona once. It had worked too, so if anyone has an answer for him, Jongin's pretty sure it's his best friend.

But instead of devising a bizarre plan for Jongin, Sehun only looked at him blankly and said, "Why don't you just tell Baekhyun hyung that you like him?"

And Jongin thought that ah, this is why you're the relationship expert here.

He gives his dad a call ahead the next time he'd coaxed Baekhyun to come along with him to see Monggu's house to make sure his mom is not home. That's mean of him, but this is necessary. He promises himself that he'd be twice as clingy to his mother in the coming weeks to make it up to her.

Baekhyun says hello to the dogs as they scurry around the yard, then ducks into the doghouse to check how it's doing.

"It's really warm and nice in here. Get in!"

Jongin takes a deep breath to calm down before doing just that. He settles against the wall opposite to where Baekhyun is wiggling his into a soft pillow. He swallows, throat dry, brain abandoning him once more.

After a few moments of silence, Baekhyun opens his mouth to ask if Jongin's okay. Something about his voice seems to always get to Jongin, because straightaway the wheels of his mind start working again.

"Umm...... hyung," he mumbles.

"Yes?"

"I have something to tell you."

".......okay. Shoot."

He's practiced this, Jongin tells himself. He has this in the bag.

"Do you know why I asked you here? I wanted to show you Monggu's house."

Baekhyun gives him the same stare blank Sehun had blessed him with yesterday.

"Anyway, remember the question we were asked at the showcase? I brought you here, hyung..... because I, well..... I like you. I want to date you."

Jongin keeps his gaze down. He is certain his cheeks are the colour of the red chillies they have growing out a few feet away on the patch right now. But he keeps soldiering on. He has had everything written down and memorized yesterday, so why isn't this a piece of cake to do?

"Monggu's house is a metaphor of my heart, hyung. And you helped me decorate the insides of it. That means you..... helped decorate the insides of my heart too."

He chances a glance up to see Baekhyun blinking so rapidly he's worried his eyeballs may burn from the friction. Jongin starts to fidget when he remains that way, saying nothing, for what felt like ages.

Then suddenly hands start snaking up Jongin's arms and around his back, and before he registers what's going on Baekhyun has already nestled his face into Jongin's shoulder.

"Pffftt," he scoffs softly. "You really are the cheesiest and greasiest person I know, Jongin." But Baekhyun nuzzles even closer, nose brushing against the side of Jongin's neck, his eyelashes fluttering so near to Jongin's cheek that he could feel a slight tickle wherever they touch.

"Hyung," Jongin manages to mutter in his daze. "What are you doing?"

"I'm saying I like you too, dummy," Baekhyun answers, snuggling further into Jongin's arms as he does so. "And now I'm giving you that other thing you'd like to do on a date too."

They only pull apart from each other when they hear a delighted shriek coming from the direction of the open doorway.

Mothers, Jongin sighs.

Baekhyun had to wait until Exo-M has a separate schedule from his own subunit before he manages to take Jongin to Yanggu-gun to meet his grandmother and eat a ton of sweet potatoes. 

He figures he'd make it up to Yixing hyung some other time.

A/N: blame my friend jinah for making me write this

but then again don't lol i had fun