Do check out 7.5, posted yesterday (I renumbered a bit).  It helps get you set up for this ^^

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Luhan woke up in bed alone, which probably would have made him a lot more upset if the reason he had woken up at all had been anything other than what it was, a giant crash emanating from the kitchen.  Luhan quickly hopped out of bed to investigate.

The sight that greeted him when he reached the kitchen made him laugh.  Minseok was standing there in front of an open cabinet in the kitchen, shocked expression still on his face as cups rolled across the floor.

Luhan knelt down and picked up one that had managed to reach the edge of the kitchen.  "So, I guess you've learned that the cups sometimes fall out."

"Uh... Yeah I guess so."  Minseok responded as he knelt down and started gathering the cups around him.  "Does this happen often?"

Luhan shrugged as he reached Minseok with a stack of cups in his hands.  "Often enough.   You have to remember, block when you reach for the ones in the back."

"So I've learned."  Minseok answered as they both placed the stacks back into the cabinet.

"Did you at least succeed in getting out what you wanted?  Now that we've put everything back in of course."  Luhan asked turning to Minseok with a laugh.

Minseok echoed his laughter as he picked up a mug from the counter.  "I did manage that."

Luhan shook his head as he took in the sight.  "I told you to cut back on the coffee."

"If you’d just stop y trapping your cupboards, it wouldn’t kill me."  Minseok responded as he reached out and poured hot water from the electric kettle into his cup before adding a packet of instant coffee.  "Besides I need something to help me get through this morning." 

“So you are going to tell me."  Luhan said as he set about preparing his own cup, completely understanding Minseok’s feelings.  Although, he did make a point of holding back the other cups in the cupboard as he sought out another mug, preventing another avalanche. 

"I promised I would."  Minseok responded as Luhan got his cup together.

"Not everyone keeps their promises." Luhan observed as he turned away from the counter, cup in hand, to face Minseok who had moved to the middle of the kitchen.

"True, but I'd like to become someone who does."  Minseok acknowledged with a nod. 

Luhan nodded back.  "So would I."

They fell into silence after that.  Luhan didn't really know what to say next and apparently neither did Minseok.  After the silence had gone on for several seconds Luhan swallowed before opening his mouth awkwardly.  “We can sit on the couch.”

“Yeah…”  Minseok said voice trailing off as he looked over to the couch for a couple seconds before walking towards it and sitting down.

Luhan followed suit sitting on the opposite edge.

There were another few moments of silence as they both sipped their coffee. 

“So, now what?” Minseok finally ventured.

Luhan sighed as he finished off another sip.  “I don't know.”

Minseok nodded in understanding.  “Well what do you want to know?

Luhan didn’t have to think twice about that, although he’d admit that his answer wasn’t very specific.  “Everything.”

“Everything is a pretty long story.”  Minseok said warily.

“I’ve got time.”  Luhan responded instantaneously.

“Figures.  God where do I even start?”  Minseok groaned.

Luhan considered that.  He didn't really know where to start either, but as Minseok continued to sit there looking completely stuck, Luhan decided that he had to come up with something. He just hoped it wasn't going to make Minseok completely clam up like usual.  “How about you start with telling me whether or not you’re actually gay?”

Minseok laughed.  “Gay.  God, very, very gay.  I've never even tried to date a girl.  Not that I dated many boys in high school either.  It was just Leo and me back then you know.  And we've never really seen anything more in each other than friends so yeah, gay with limited dating experience, which was part of the problem really because when I — I’m rambling aren’t I?”

Luhan shook his head.  “No you’re not.”

“Yes I am.”  Minseok argued back.

“Okay, maybe a little bit, but I’d rather you did that than not say anything.”  Really, Luhan was fairly sure he had just learned more about Minseok in three sentences than he’d learned in two weeks.  He didn’t really mind if it was a little disjointed so long as things stayed like that.

“What good does it do if it doesn’t make sense?”  Minseok sighed heavily.

“I’ll make it make sense.”  Luhan reassured.

Minseok eyed him critically.

“Okay, I’ll ask questions if it doesn’t make sense.  Fair?”

Minseok nodded, satisfied.  “Okay.  Where was I at?”

“Gay with limited dating experience,” Luhan offered gently.

Minseok took a deep breath.  “Yeah, that.  I dated a few random guys for a while once I got to college, but nothing was really serious until I met him.”

“The guy who keeps calling you?”  Luhan asked as Minseok stopped talking for a second.

“Yeah, him.  I… god it sounds so cheesy, but I fell in love with him almost instantly.”

“It can happen to the best of us.”  Luhan offered, tone rife with understanding as he hoped to make Minseok feel better.

“Has it happened to you?”  Minseok asked, clearly picking up on Luhan’s tone.

“Something like that.”  Luhan admitted softly.

Minseok wasn’t satisfied with that response.  “Hey wait, if I’m doing full disclosure, shouldn’t you have to do it to?”

Luhan laughed.  “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?”

“It’s only fair.”  Minseok argued back.

Luhan sighed.  It was fair, and they were getting off topic, and he’d already said, well more like admitted to it with all his yelling yesterday anyways so… “Yeah, it’s happened, with you.”

Minseok’s eyes widened in shock.  “Oh, um—“

Luhan raised a hand to cut him off.  “It’s your turn again.  What happened with your ex?”

“We’re talking about that later.”  Minseok cautioned.

Luhan nodded in agreement.  They needed to talk about that later, especially considering he still didn’t really know how Minseok felt about him.  “That’s the entire point of this conversation, isn’t it?”

“Assuming you still like me when it’s over.”  Minseok responded.

Luhan sighed.  “Why do you keep saying that?”

“Because you might not.”

“Just how little do you think I care about you?”  It was getting annoying really, Minseok’s lack of faith.

“It has nothing to do with how much I think you care.”  Minseok argued back.

“Yes it does.  You don’t trust me enough to believe I’ll still like you after you tell me everything.  Why—“Luhan stopped for a second.  He was getting upset, again, and that wasn’t the point.  The point was to have a conversation, a real one.  He took a deep breath before continuing to speak.  “Why can’t you trust me?”

Minseok had taken in Luhan’s rant in silence.  Now he opened his mouth to respond.  “Because the last time I trusted someone who said they loved me, it all went to hell, and this, this is very hard for me, and I know it may not seem like it, but I’m trying really hard and—“

Luhan raised a hand to his head with a sigh, rubbing his brow.  “I know that.  Well actually, I didn’t know the first part, but I kind of knew the second part and you know what, I think we’re both really bad at this.”  He finished off with a wry smile, turning his head, still in hands, to look at Minseok.

Minseok nodded, “Yeah, probably, but my therapist told me that just trying is important, so at least we have that.”

“Therapist?”

“We’ll get there eventually, but first I think I was supposed to be telling you about my ex, so let’s try that again.”

“Yeah, let’s.”  Luhan answered calmly even as his mind raced a mile a minute.  Anything that involved a therapist couldn’t have been good, at least not in his mind.

“Well, yeah, like I was saying, I stupidly fell in love at first sight or something along those lines, and well, he wasn’t really gay to begin with, probably barely even bi, but I was nothing if not persistent and eventually, we got together, and things were great, for a while…”

“Until?” Luhan prompted, already having several theories as to where this was going, none of them favorable.

Minseok sighed.  “The first few times I found an errant lip gloss or a tube of mascara, I just brushed it off as leftovers from girls before me, and after a couple months, when that explanation became pretty much invalid, I said something, and like a magician, he knew just what to say to put me instantly at ease.  He assured me nothing was going on.  Then when it was apparent something was, he assured me it was just a one-time thing. Then it was only a physical thing, but he still loved me more.”

“That’s just…” Luhan had no words.

Minseok looked up to meet Luhan’s eyes, sad smile in place.  “Ridiculous right?”

Luhan was beginning to be able to think of many words to describe what it was, and ridiculous wasn’t among them, but before he could tell Minseok that, Minseok kept talking.  The words seeming to flow more easily the longer he went on.

“Even more ridiculous is that I believed every word of it.  Every goddamned word.  I loved him, and if he couldn’t get enough from me, then clearly that meant I just needed to be better, to do everything perfectly.  So that was what I did, or tried to do, for months.  I was probably more a servant that a boyfriend really, but what was I supposed to know?  It was the only long-term relationship I’d ever really had, and then he went abroad to study this fall, and…”  Minseok let out a sigh and leaned forward to place his mug on the coffee table before leaning back into the couch.

“And?”  Luhan prompted as he mirrored Minseok’s actions, having finished his own cup as well.

“It wasn’t only girls.”  Minseok’s voice was quiet as he said it, but it carried across the couch right to Luhan’s ears, and it made his heart twist in a way that was entirely unpleasant.

“So then?”  Luhan ventured, tone also soft.

Minseok nodded as he continued.  “A picture got posted up on Halloween of him all over another guy, in, in every way, and I…. I broke.  I didn’t say anything, just unfriended and blocked him and didn’t take any of his skype messages, once he started sending them, which was two weeks after by the way so that tells you how much he cared.”

Luhan didn’t have words for this either, but as he scrambled to find a few, he tried to move closer to Minseok.  It was simply becoming too hard to watch this from so far away.  Even if he was only at the opposite end of the couch, it was beginning to feel like they were split apart by the length of twenty football fields.  “I’m so—“

“I’m not done.”  Minseok said, cutting Luhan off and freezing him in place half way across the couch with ten football fields left to go.

“What else is there?’  Luhan asked gently.

Minseok put both hands to his face, covering it entirely before he dragged them down slowly, turned to Luhan, fingers still over his lips and said, “You really promise not to hate me?”

Luhan blinked once, then twice, then moved, because this time he wasn’t upset as those words passed Minseok’s lips.  He understood all too well why they were there now, but those final ten football fields were far too great a distance for everything he needed to convey to convince Minseok they were unnecessary because Luhan was fairly certain in that instant that there was nothing Minseok could say to convince Luhan that he should hate Minseok.  Nothing. 

“I promise.”  He whispered, finally getting close enough to pull Minseok into his body, arms wrapping around him to hold him close. 

Minseok’s body sagged against him as his hands fell down to fiddle with the tips of Luhan’s fingers.  Luhan was just about to break the silence when Minseok stopped his movements, hands falling to rest on Luhan’s and said, “Like I said, I broke.”

Luhan’s grip tightened like vise, suddenly extremely nervous about where being broken could lead because his brain was getting quite good at math and therapists plus trying to be perfect plus breaking wasn’t exactly adding up to anything positive.

Minseok noticed the reaction.  His own reaction was to move his hands in order to loosen Luhan’s grip as he let out a bitter laugh.  “I didn’t try to kill myself so there’s no need for you to be holding on that tight.”

Luhan relaxed his grip slightly, but he didn’t let go, confident that whatever Minseok was going to say still warranted him holding on.  (At the very least, it made him feel better because even if he knew he needed to know this, it was becoming increasingly difficult to not feel bad about making Minseok say all of it.) 

Minseok, after noting the slight decrease in the strength in Luhan’s grip, continued speaking, tone thoughtful as he carefully picked out his words.  “Then again, maybe I was trying to kill myself, but in a more… symbolic rather than literal way.  I didn’t want to feel the way I did.  I didn’t want… to be me.”

Luhan nodded against his shoulder, not trusting his words at that moment, but wanting Minseok to keep talking none the less.  He did so after letting out a heavy sigh.

“That night, after I saw those pictures, I went downtown and got drunker than I had ever been before in my life, and then, I went home with the first guy to hit on me.  The next night, I did it again and again and—“

“Hey, you can stop.”  Luhan whispered.  Minseok’s body was trembling, and besides, Luhan didn’t really think he needed to hear more about this, but Minseok was shaking his head just moments after the words passed Luhan’s lips.

“No, I need to finish.  I’m not even at the worst part yet.”

“It gets worse?”  Luhan wasn’t sure he was ready for worse.

Minseok nodded before continuing to speak, “Of course.  I didn’t care anymore.  I just wanted to not feel anything, and so for a span of maybe three or so weeks, the number of times I woke up in my own bed was probably less than five, and obviously that didn’t go unnoticed.”

Luhan let out a breath, instantly understanding.  “What did Leo do?”

Minseok laughed.  “What do you think he did?  He tried to stop me from going out because he was afraid I really was going to kill myself, but well, I was so far down that it didn’t really help.  Instead, I found all the alcohol we had in our place, drank it, and tried to seduce Leo as he sat on the couch.”

“What?” Luhan pulled back a little to be able to see Minseok’s face.

“You said you wouldn’t hate me,” Minseok reminded softly.

“I… I don’t but… wasn’t Leo dating Ken by then?”  Luhan wasn’t sure.  They’d never gone into specific timelines before, but it seemed like he should have been.

Minseok nodded slowly.  “He was.  He very much was, but I didn’t really care about that.  I just wanted to not feel anything and the only way I knew how to do that was to get drunk and have , so that was what I tried to do.”

“That can’t have ended well.”  Luhan pulled Minseok back into him as he responded. It seemed they were better at talking like that.

Minseok let out a short laugh.  “It didn’t, although Leo could have, and probably should have, done a lot more than what he did.” 

“What did he do?”  Luhan really couldn’t even envision a reaction beyond the fact that it couldn’t have been good.

“Well, once he got me off him, which probably took a while, but I don’t really remember that all that well, he dragged me into the bathroom and dunked my head in the sink before making me really look at myself while he told me two things.  One, if I slept with him, I was no better than my ex, and two, if I was going to keep doing what I was doing he wasn’t going to stick around to watch.”

“Okay, the second one I understand, but the first one—“

“Was exactly what I deserved to hear, or at least, what I needed to hear considering it worked.  The next day marked me trying to get my life back in order.  I sat down with Leo and apologized.  Did the same to Ken too, who Leo had told everything to because he didn’t think he should keep it a secret.  I started attending my classes again to get my grades up and didn’t touch or even look at another alcoholic beverage until after finals, when I had a single celebratory drink downtown with the guys before I went home for break, and that was when my parents decided I should see a therapist for a while, which was a pain, but was probably a good thing since it helped me get my head on straight.”

Luhan nodded, brain still trying to process all the information he’d just had thrown at him, which Minseok seemed content to let him do as he proceeded to once again fiddle with the tips of Luhan’s fingers.  Finally getting his bearings, Luhan ventured a comment, “Okay, so that should get us up to when you met me, right?”

“Yup,” Minseok confirmed with a nod, “But I think it’s your turn again.  I need a break.”

Luhan laughed.  He needed a break too.  “What do you want to know?”

“Why did you answer my phone the other day?”

Luhan sighed.  “I knew I shouldn’t, but it just wouldn’t stop ringing, you know?  I convinced myself that maybe it was someone else, or that perhaps it was something important and I answered it even though deep down I knew it was going to be the same person it had been all evening…”  Luhan took a few moments to gather his thoughts before continuing, “I guess, the real reason I answered it was because I was tired of not knowing things, and in a moment of weakness, I decided it was time to find out a few.  I won’t answer it again, I promise.”  He had learned his lesson the first time.

Minseok shrugged his shoulders.  “There’s probably not going to be much left for you to want to find out after today, but thanks.  I won’t answer yours either.”

“Okay…  Was that break long enough?” Luhan asked.

“I think so,” Minseok responded as he sat up slightly in Luhan’s arms, “we were at when I met you, correct?”

“Yeah, unless there was anything else that happened before then.”  Luhan really hoped there wasn’t.

Minseok shook his head, “I think we covered about all of it, although I guess I technically made the rules before I met you.”

“Rules?”  Luhan asked confused.

“Well, I had a rough fall semester right?”

“Yeah.”  Luhan nodded.  Rough was perhaps putting it lightly, but it was one way to describe it.

“So yeah, I decided that the best way to have a better spring was to set some rules for what I’d be focusing on doing this spring.  They were simple enough really, one, no skipping class because I still ended up destroying my GPA last fall, two no more getting drunk, three…”

“three?”  Luhan encouraged.

Minseok groaned and turned his head into Luhan’s armpit.  “I am about to sound like such a girl.”

Luhan couldn’t help but be amused by Minseok’s sudden distress, given everything else he’d already revealed.  “Look, it really can’t be any worse than saying anything else you’ve already had to say.”

Minseok shook his head as he pulled away.  “It’s not worse.  It’s just, urgh”

“Okay, is it important that I know three?”  Luhan asked, trying to find a way around this unexpected road block.

Minseok nodded, tone sincere.  “It is.  It’s really important.”

Luhan nodded back.  “Okay then, would you like me to guess what I think three is?”

“You know?”  Minseok asked, surprised.

Luhan shrugged.  “I have a few theories.”

“Well?”

Luhan picked over the few options he’d arranged in his head as he had pieced together earlier comments and what he know knew.  He eventually opted for the one that felt the most accurate.  “The one I’m leaning towards currently is that you swore off relationships entirely, or something along those lines”

Minseok gave a small sigh and a nod.  “Yeah, the basic rule was no dating, and I was pretty committed to it until yesterday when I realized the better rule would have been no dating until I was really over what happened before.”

Luhan decided not to read too much into that yet because, “Either way, when you met me, you still weren’t over it.”

“I don’t know what I was really, but I definitely wasn’t expecting to show up to a yoga class and find it being taught by someone that looked like you, who was, moreover, both gay and available.”

“And so you intentionally implied you were straight?”  Luhan asked, slowly started to piece together the events of that first evening.

Minseok nodded.

“To avoid dating me.” 

“Well initially it was more like to avoid any more one night stands, but then once it became apparent that wasn’t a problem, the dating thing became the main issue yeah.”

“Wait.  What?”  Luhan thought he had been doing a fairly good job following everything Minseok was saying, but he hadn’t followed that mental leap at all.

Minseok sighed.  “The way you just came out with things over dinner had me flashing back to all my hookups in bars, and I really knew I wasn’t looking to do that again, so I carefully avoided saying anything that would make me available.  Then, after that, as I began to realize that you might like me, I figured it’d be best to stay unavailable to avoid making things more complicated.  It didn’t work, but that was the plan.”

“You do know when I said that I wasn’t looking for anything like that, correct?”  Luhan asked while still processing this new insight into Minseok’s decisions over the past few weeks.

“I know that… now.  To be honest, most logical people would have probably known it then.  It’s just, I’m not most people…” Minseok trailed off with a sigh.

“No, you’re Minseok, and that’s a good thing.” 

“It is?”  Minseok asked, turning to look up at Luhan.

“It is.”  Luhan confirmed with a smile, looking down at him.

Luhan found himself frozen there, unable to move as his eyes met Minseok’s and then, suddenly, Minseok was leaning forward and laying what Luhan was certain was the quickest kiss he had ever received upon his lips before turning back around and shimmying his way closer in Luhan’s side, resuming picking at his hands as he said, “That counts as your turn so, back to me.  I assume you want to know about what happened yesterday after you left, right?”

Luhan nodded dumbly, still trying to understand what had just happened.  It’d been so fast he hadn’t even had a chance to close his eyes, and yet, he was certain it had happened.  Minseok had kissed him, and he really didn’t care if it was the quickest kiss in the universe because even it was, it had to mean something, something very good as far as Luhan was concerned, and that had his head in the clouds for a few seconds before Minseok’s words were bringing him back to reality.  A reality where Minseok may want to kiss him, but also still had a lot left to say.

“My ex came back from his study abroad this month on winter break from his school.  Since he came back, he started calling constantly, saying he wanted to meet up.   I was surprised.  He’d given up on trying to get in touch after a couple weeks before, I figured that was the end of it, but he was determined, calling multiple times a day.  Obviously, I didn’t want to talk to him.”

Luhan nodded again.  That explained Minseok’s immediate ignorance of the calls through dinner.  Luhan wouldn’t have wanted to talk to that guy either.

“However, after yesterday, well Leo answered the phone and decided that we should talk.”

“What?”  Luhan asked.

“Believe me, I wasn’t happy with the idea either.  In fact, it scared me, so I ran away to the park for a few hours to prepare myself, and as I sat in front of the lake, throwing rocks into the water like a child, I realized some very important things that made me a lot less afraid of talking to him, although I was still not very thrilled about it.”

“What was that?”  Luhan asked.

Minseok took a deep breath before answering.  “I wasn’t in love with him anymore, and nothing he could say to me was going to change that.”

Luhan nodded slowly against Minseok, resisting the urge to read into that more than he should.  “And so, you went back and you talked.”

Minseok nodded in agreement.  “Yes, we talked.  About a lot of things really.  It actually might have been our first real, honest conversation since the first couple weeks of our relationship, and even if I disagreed with some of it, by the end as he was walking out the door, I was so relieved I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time before I suddenly remembered that everything else was still so messed up and I collapsed back onto the kitchen table in despair.”

“Why despair?”  Luhan asked.

“Because I knew the reason I had been able to hold a conversation with him at all really was because…”

“Because?”

Minseok took a deep breath before continuing.  “Because, I was over him completely, but I was far from over you.”  

Luhan’s grip tightened again, and the clouds were back again for a few seconds as Minseok squeezed his hands and kept talking.  “And that was a problem because at that moment, I didn’t know how we were going to get through this.  How I was going to be able to tell you any of this, or how you’d feel once I was done.  Heck, I didn’t even know if you still wanted to know at all.  All I knew was that I had been really, really stupid the past two weeks because I had somehow managed to convince myself that just because I wasn’t dating you, I didn’t like you and that was bull.”

Minseok’s tone was dripping with annoyance at himself by the end, but Luhan was still on cloud nine, and so, it amused him, making him laugh.  “Well, objectively speaking, I think that’s a good thing for me.”

After a couple moments of surprise, Minseok laughed back.  “Well, if you still like me then yes, I guess it is.”

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” 

“Yeah, I suppose you are.”  Minseok said with a smile as he turned back again.

Luhan leaned down to kiss him this time, and he didn’t pull away nearly as fast, but he finally did, creating enough space to ask, “Why did you cry last night?”

Minseok sighed and turned his body so that he rest his head against Luhan’s chest.  “You were supposed to be asleep.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Clearly.”

“So?” 

“You first, why didn’t you tell me you were awake?”

“I didn’t know what to say.  I had agreed to tomorrow morning.  It wasn’t morning yet.”

Minseok nodded against Luhan’s chest.  “Fair enough.  I was crying because it took me a lot to even gather my courage and drag myself over to your place and knock, and then, the second I saw you, everything I had gathered vanished, and I was back to the mess I’d been earlier in the day because all I could think was that it may be the last time I saw you, which was why I ended up just asking to stay, and then you were just so nice, like always, even if everything was still so wrong, and between that and everything else that had happened during the day, I just cried, and honestly, it’s probably a good thing you didn’t say anything, because if my breakdown at the door was any indication, my limit for truly difficult and emotional conversations really is three per day.”

Luhan smiled down at the top of Minseok’s head, “Well, hopefully I won’t have to worry about that particular rule very often anymore.”

“I should hope not.”  Minseok agreed.

It was silent for several moments after that.  Luhan didn’t really mind.  He was finally starting to feel like he knew where he was at again, where they were at, and he just wanted to enjoy that a little bit longer, but finally, he did, because there were some things he felt still needed to be said, and some others that still needed to be clarified.

“I’m sorry about yesterday.  I was being a brat, and then a jerk, and it wasn’t really fair to you.”

“It’s not like I made things any better.”  Minseok answered back

“Yeah, but I could have still tried to do things differently.  Saying we were nothing and delivering an ultimatum wasn’t exactly the mature approach.”

“Neither was pretending to not be gay so as to avoid dating you, but then hanging all over you anyways.  I should have realized how much that was messing with you a lot sooner, and if I had, you wouldn’t have had a reason to get so upset in the first place, so let’s call it even, deal?  Minseok looked up again.

Luhan laughed.  “Deal,” he whispered as they sealed that promise with another kiss.

“You know,” Luhan continued as he pulled back, “I would not have thought you’d kiss me first.”  Or that they’d keep doing it, not that Luhan minded, at all.

Minseok laughed.  “I wanted to.  It was only a short while ago that I began to really think being me was good thing.  It was nice to hear someone else say it.”

“And the rest?”  Luhan asked with a smile while making a mental note to remind Minseok every chance he got that being himself was a good thing.

Minseok shrugged.  “I already opened the door, and besides, I like kissing you.  Do you not like kissing me?”

Luhan laughed.  “It’s not bad.”

“I should hope that kissing me is better than just not bad.”  Minseok sad with a little huff.

“I don’t know, I think the sample size is still too small for me to tell.”  Luhan teased with a smirk.

Minseok shook his head with a matching smile.  “I think we need to fix that.”

Luhan nodded.  “So do I, but first, Minseok, what exactly are we doing now?”

Minseok blinked, expression puzzled for a few seconds before he ventured a response.  “We’re dating, aren’t we?”

“Despite the no dating rule?”  Luhan asked because that was the answer he wanted, but he still wanted to make sure to cover all his bases.

Minseok laughed as he gained a better understanding of Luhan’s current concern.  “My rules are in need of some revisions.  I figure you can help me with that the next time you come over, if you want.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”  Luhan answered.

“Me too.”

“And me three, thank god.”  A voice said from the corridor.

Luhan and Minseok both jumped before turning to look towards the hallway to see Lay standing there, a smile on his face.

“Now I don’t have to be one you hug on that couch.”  Lay continued as he moved into the kitchen to get a glass of orange juice.

“You hug him on the couch?”  Minseok asked, pulling back to look at Luhan in the face.

Luhan blushed, it seemed Lay remained determined to embarrass him regardless of his relationship status.  “Once, the other day.  Suho was even there.”

“I’m not sure that makes it better.”  Minseok said, becoming amused as he came to understand the situation.

“Exactly.”  Lay helpfully supplied from the kitchen.

Luhan just sighed.  He was going to have to get used to this.

As Minseok laughed at something else Lay called out from the kitchen and his arms squeezed a little bit tighter around him, Luhan realized he didn’t really mind.

---

This chapter was a long time coming.  I hope you’re not disappointed.