Under the lamp-shaded fluorescent lights that hadn't needed to be changed since the first day at the dorm, Suho felt a cold sweat coming on. He sat cross-legged on top of the thin blankets on his mattress, thumbing the edge of one of the silkier layers. Hands at work fraying the end of what was fortunately not campus property, the boy stared at the door from behind his black bangs which were usually combed up out of his face, but after his shower earlier he had jumped right into fixing up his room and hadn't worried about his own appearance. Now, he waited eagerly for the arrival of four more helping hands and critical eyes.

A knock on the door put Suho's wait to an end and his body into motion. Right after the sound had been made to alert the lone boy of other people's presence, he was there in front of them with no door to block the view. The two guys outside the room stood frozen, Tao's eyes as wide as they could go, Kris' fist hanging in the air moments after knocking.

"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you," Suho coughed, "Come in!" He scrambled to get out of their way and the tall boys got to the center of the room in just a few steps.

"It's fine," Kris spoke smoothly, as usual, tucking his hands in his pockets and peering around the room, "But why did you call us up here so late on a Monday night?" Tao raised his eyebrows, visibly awaiting an answer to Kris' query. Suho clasped his hands together as he stared up at them with equally expectant eyes, and his lips poked out in the way that they always did when he had to talk in a weird situation.

"I just wanted to know... Does it look nice?" His big eyes shined and Tao wasn't sure whether the fluttery feeling in his stomach was because he thought it was cute or he was grossed out. Either way, he drew back and kept looking down at Suho as if the boy was younger than him. The brunette paid the judging look no mind as he took his turn waiting for an answer.

"You mean your room?" Kris asked. Suho blinked at him and Kris took that as a yes. Sighing, the long-limbed man turned this way and that, scrutinizing each part of the dorm room. Once he had a look over Suho's shoulder, he titled his chin back a bit and said, "Your bed is a mess." He wasn't expecting Suho's face to break into a smile at that, but he watched as it happened.

"That's fine, I just did that when I hopped off of it to answer the door. I make the bed all the time, anyway, so that's not something I need to worry about before the new guy comes around," the brunette reasoned, straightening his back and letting his hands fall to his sides. Then he walked away and plopped right back down on the bed. Tao made a face at him. "What?" Suho asked. "Sit down or something, jeez. You've been here before." Tao huffed and puffed about it but took a seat in a chair anyway.

"I guess I'll go check the kitchen for any disorder," Kris said. The others knew that meant he was going to check for anything delicious and "help his pal Suho get rid of it."

"I'm sure you will," Tao mumbled once the other Chinese boy had turned away. Kris promptly turned back around and smacked him upside the head. That was all it took to put a tight lipped smile on the other boy's face and make him keep his mouth closed before Kris went on his way. However kind-hearted Suho was, the young man didn't even try not to laugh.

At that moment, he decided to speak up over the noise of Kris messing around in the kitchen. "I'm glad we're friends," Suho said. Tao just rolled his eyes.

In a pretty little building not too far off, six young men were glad to be friends as well. Getting drunk together and telling stories did wonders (and horrors) for new relationships, but the goal they all had to learn about one another had definitely been met. It didn't matter that they had learned through occasionally invasive and embarrassing ways; everything was fair play, and everything they played appeared fun through beer goggles.

Chanyeol and Baekhyun were having a ball seeing who could shine the brightest, and Sehun and Lay were happy to be judges as well as keep an eye on the house. Sometime throughout the series of silly yet dangerous games, Kai and Luhan had up and vanished. Apart from freaking out about Kai's "mad teleportation skills," the other four put no thought into where the pair had gone or what they were doing. Chanyeol was doing too good a job of lighting himself on fire for them to worry about anything else.

That was all fine, because Luhan and Kai had a great deal to talk about outside on their own. So far, as they both giggled and stumbled around and used trees to hold themselves up, they weren't getting many words out. They had a lot on their minds and were building up to mentioning it, but where their thoughts were headed still didn't include much talking.

"Look at you!" Luhan finally spouted a full sentence, his words riddled with laughter as he pointed at the slouching Kai. The dark-skinned boy glowered at him and shrugged against the tree trunk that was helping him stand, slurring the question, "What?"

Luhan flitted over and clapped his hand against the younger man's chest, grinning as he said, "You're like a baby!"

"Well, duh," Kai said, swatting his pretty little hand away. "I'm younger than you." Luhan breathed in and out loudly as he stared at the boy and nodded his head.

"Yeah," the blond breathed, shaking a finger in Kai's direction, "Yeah, you are, aren't you!" The fingers on his hand uncurled for the few seconds it took to grab hold of the collar of Kai's shirt, and Luhan leaned in and squinted. "How old are you, exactly?" he questioned in a hiss.

"First year in college," Kai answered before sticking his tongue out and cocking his head to the side, not bothering to swat Luhan's hand away this time.

"Did you start college right after high school?" Luhan asked, his eyes growing impossibly thin.

"Yeah," Kai responded without missing a beat, sticking his tongue out further.

"Are you telling me," Luhan whispered as he began to pull Kai forward, "that you," their faces were uncomfortably close now and Kai ultimately put his tongue back in his mouth, "were a high school student last year?!" Luhan shrieked and began to shake Kai back and forth and Kai still let his head loll to the side.

After a few seconds of silent shaking, Kai finally turned to look at the older guy, lifting a hand in what first looked like an attempt to loosen Luhan's grip on his shirt. But Kai didn't reach for Luhan's hand. Instead, he placed his palm smack-dab in the middle of the older man's face.

"Yep," was his answer to the question of his age before he shoved Luhan backwards by his head.

Luckily for the brunette, the blond was not actually a violent drunk. While some other men would have beaten the bold college first-year to a pulp for touching them like that, Luhan barely even noticed he had just been hit by his junior. There was something else on his mind, and he made that evident in a moment's time.

"A high school kid stole my girlfriend!" his gasp earned a pat on the back from Kai.

"Man, I didn't even like her. She tried to go out with me for a while, though! It didn't work, but that happens a lot... It's cause I'm y," Kai gurgled, wrapping an arm around the thin man's shoulders. Luhan swiftly pulled away and turned to find out the validity of that statement.

"I don't see it," he disagreed bluntly.

"What do you mean? Are you even looking at me? You've got to be kidding." Luhan sniffed cockily and went to turn away, but Kai smacked his lips and grabbed Luhan's face to keep him from looking anywhere else. "Ah, ah, ah," he warned. The older man pouted like a child and said that he was cuter than Kai. Kai was determined to prove otherwise.

"Let me tempt you, then," said the younger of the two to the older, looking him in the eye. Luhan shook his head free but staid directly in front of Kai to see what the kid had to show him. He crossed his arms and put on his best critic face and told the boy to go ahead. In a split second, Kai was rid of drunken droopiness and was acting like a model.

Slowly looking him up and down, Kai took Luhan's hand and pulled him to a place under the trees where the moonlight could illuminate his tan skin. He gazed up from under his long eyelashes, and bit his bottom lip in a way that told Luhan he had done this before. That, and so did the scrambled thoughts he was receiving, such as, "Hell yeah! You like that, don't you? Everyone always loves that." Luhan was torn between laughing at Kai's thoughts and silently watching in approval of his unexpected skill at being seductive, so he bit his lip in a way that he hoped didn't look like he was making fun of Kai. The younger man noticed, if his thought of, "Aw, yeah! Bet you want to kiss me, don't you?" was any indication.

Making up his mind to laugh anyway, Luhan cupped Kai's face with both hands, much to the young drunk's surprise. Basically thinking "Why not?" and being the mischievous person he was, Luhan gently pressed his lips to Kai's. Luhan couldn't see as the boy's eyes slowly closed, but he felt the as he relaxed and returned the kiss. As they tilted their heads and parted their lips, they were introduced to the faint tastes of the drinks they had each had earlier. Luhan noticed and leaned away with a smirk before his lips. Kai lingered a bit before straightening up himself.

"Well," Luhan chirped, patting the boy's cheek before letting his arms fall away, "I guess you showed me!"

He didn't have to look into his mind to know that Kai was seeing stars.

With Luhan leading, they ran back upstairs and into the welcoming arms of their boozed up buddies. Sehun questioned how long Kai had been outside and how long they had all been hanging out. Rather than replying, everyone fell silent.

Just like that, what had started as a night of light-hearted fun seemed to be coming to a bad end as the four young men realized just how much time they had wasted getting wasted at their new friends' house. It had been a long time since those two new friends had seen anyone freak out like the drunk kids in their condo were at the time.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, just calm down!" Lay's voice rose above the wailing of the handful of younger men who were throwing themselves about in a panic in his home.

"But, I mean like, how? Why am I even here, oh my god I need to leave-" Sehun continued rambling without a care, squinting and shaking his head, gesturing sporadically in confusion and worry. He pitter-pattered over to the door, picked up his shoes and then put them back down.

His shoulders sank and Lay could see his mouth moving, but he heard nothing seeing as the young boy's friends were all preoccupied with their own wellbeing and no one else's. Lay inched closer and managed to catch what sounded like, "They're going to smell this on me!"

In what was an equally amusing and freaky coincidence, both Sehun and Kai covered their faces and let out some of the loudest, most whale-like sighs Lay had ever heard. Needing just a moment to recover from flinching away from Kai's sudden howl, the second oldest of everyone there sat next to the youngest.

"Sh, shh," Lay hushed the boy, gently uncurling Sehun's fingers from the heel tabs of his tennis shoes. Giving Sehun's hand a reassuring pat and a small dose of his mind-healing aura, he said, "You can just stay here."

Behind them, Luhan could be heard saying something similar to the three remaining visitors.

"Don't worry," the blond enunciated surprisingly clearly for his level of intoxication, "We can take you wherever you need to go in the morning."

"But we go to three different schools," Chanyeol spoke for the silent, fidgety Baekhyun and Kai, who were frozen in the same position that they had been in since Kai had groaned earlier. Kai was pressing his fingers against his temples while Baekhyun had his arms crossed and was looking off to the side. Luhan looked back and forth between the three of them as Chanyeol sputtered, "A-a-and, Kai and I have stuff to do afterwards! Places to go!"

Baekhyun belatedly joined the conversation, raising his eyebrows and reminding Chanyeol, "It's not like we're going to stay here the whole day tomorrow."

Luhan raised his shoulders up slightly. "Well... you could if you wanted to."

The blond had stopped stepping into the mind's of his company long ago, so there was no doubt of the source when he picked up the thought of, "Well this isn't your house to be hoarding people at."

He shot his friend a look and hoped his inner voice was sassy when he thought, "You just said they could stay the night, so what's a few more hours?" Lay did not share his ability to read minds, so the exact meaning of Luhan's glare was lost, but the brunette's subsequent nod showed that he managed to get the picture anyhow.

"Like I said," the fair-haired man insisted in a soft voice, "we can take you anywhere you need to be. We've got free time and three cars, plus there's space for you all to sleep, and a shower and a washing machine that you can use before you head home."

With the relieved looks the others were beginning to give each other, Luhan felt that he got his point across, but it didn't hurt to add, "Do you really want to go back to wherever you live hung over, anyway?" A cringe copied and pasted itself onto each of the college boy's faces before they officially dropped the idea of going back to each of their homes. Luhan smiled at them and went over to Lay, telling them that they'd be right back with blankets and whatnot.

Baekhyun and Chanyeol unsurprisingly sat right up next to each other on the couch, squished together on one side while Kai and Sehun sat comfortably beside each other near the other armrest.

Chanyeol tossed his head back and sighed, saying, "Man, I'm glad I'll be moving in with other students soon. I hope D.O. introduces me to people tomorrow."

"Me, too, man," Kai said, leaning over so he and Chanyeol could see each other. He sighed as well. "You're lucky you have someone to show you around in your area. I don't really know anyone at my school except for this guy," he jabbed his thumb in Baekhyun's direction.

"Nice, guys, rub it in my face that I'll still be living with my family," Baekhyun grumbled sarcastically.

"You don't have to be," his friends all bombarded him with reassuring pats on the shoulder as Kai told him, "There's plenty of space in the dorms, you just better decide before Friday because people will be moving around once Summer break starts." Baekhyun had closed his eyes and had been shaking his head in stubborn refusal, but as Kai gave his knee a supportive squeeze he opened one eye and tilted his chin up.

"You had nothing to do with it, but maybe I will." Baekhyun's words sent the other three into a fit of laughter and they resumed patting his back and shaking and cheering for him enough that he just had to laugh too. At that moment, with arms overflowing with soft bed sets, Luhan and Lay wandered back into the main room and noted that the playful air meant they had done a good job calming everyone down earlier.

But as the linens the pair carried made their way into the reach of the four drunk students, all it took was one phrase to throw the house into havok again. Grabbing a cushion from the now-alert Luhan's hands, Chanyeol shouted the deadly words:

"Pillow fight!"