Sungyeol pauses in his steps as he enters the living room to see stack upon stack of manhwa, arranged into what looks like some sort of fort. He can’t help but raise an eyebrow, knowing Myungsoo has to be behind this. Who else even has this much manhwa?

“Myungsoo-yah?” he questions lightly, continuing further into the room to stand a couple of feet away from where Myungsoo is. “It’s Christmas Eve, what the hell are you doing?”

There’s a rustling at the so-called fort and Sungyeol rolls his eyes, peeking down into the large space to see Myungsoo sitting with his legs crossed, a volume of something or another in his lap. His iPhone is beside him, along with a couple of bags of snacks and a water bottle placed by his knee.

“Reading,” Myungsoo answers simply, as if he hadn’t made a manhwa fortress in the middle of their dorm living room. Sungyeol supposes he should be thankful Woohyun is upstairs at the other dorm and Sungjong is out with his family for the day.

“No , Sherlock, but—this—” Sungyeol gestures wildly at the manhwa with his hands.

“I was bored.” Myungsoo hasn’t once looked up from whatever (most likely romantic and cheesy and vomit-inducing) manhwa he’s reading and Sungyeol crosses his arms.

“Bored,” Sungyeol repeats in a murmur, and it’s then that he gets an idea. “Alright,” he muses, and Myungsoo just hums, nodding.

Sungyeol wonders if there’s something other than water in that bottle but shakes his head and makes his way to his bedroom. If this is how Myungsoo wants to spend his Christmas Eve, then Sungyeol has an even better way.

Myungsoo’s in the middle of drinking some water when Sungyeol emerges from the hallway, blankets and pillows trailing after him, and after that, a cat.

He blinks in confusion, setting the water down and his lips. “Yeollie?”

Sungyeol either doesn’t hear him or is ignoring him—Myungsoo believes it’s the latter—and begins pulling chairs from the kitchen over at the empty space across from Myungsoo, and it dawns on him what he’s doing.

He lets out a laugh and tries to disguise the snort that comes out as a cough; Sungyeol turns around to look at him with a steady glare and Myungsoo just holds his hands up in defense.

He says nothing as he watches Sungyeol make a pillow and blanket fort out of the furniture in the kitchen and what Myungsoo hasn’t blocked off with his own fort in the living room, and he briefly thinks on if the fans only knew how they spent their holidays.

Jureumi is standing near the hallway, tail swishing back and forth lazily as she glances at her owner in what Myungsoo knows has to be a judging look. He coughs out another laugh, and when Sungyeol gives him a glare this time he just combats it with a dimpled smile.

Sungyeol rolls his eyes, muttering something under his breath that Myungsoo is too far away to catch.

It’s not long before there’s a decent sized fort in the living room, and Sungyeol finally crawls under the blankets hanging from the kitchen table.

Myungsoo stares at the apparent entrance, knowing Sungyeol has to be planning something.

“I declare war on the Kingdom of Kim!”

Myungsoo just blinks. “What?”

Sungyeol’s head pokes out from a ton of pillows stacked on top of each other near some blanket-covered chairs—Myungsoo wonders where the hell all of the pillows and blankets came from—and he gives Myungsoo an exasperated look. “I’m declaring war on your fort, you idiot.”

Myungsoo’s too used to being called names by his best friend that he brushes the insult aside, tilting his head. “I guess I should’ve made this bigger then, huh,” he mumbles, glancing around at the circle he had made around him that barely reaches the top of his head, and that’s sitting how he is now, slouched over a bit.

Sungyeol snorts, a smirk forming on his lips. “I’ll go easy on you,” he assures him, but Myungsoo’s known Sungyeol long enough to tell when he’s lying.

Myungsoo has a few spare manhwa in his room, he thinks, along with some regular books that he can use, but he knows if he leaves his spot Sungyeol will take the chance to destroy his little place.

“Go right ahead, Sungyeollie,” Myungsoo frowns in thought, trying to come up with a solution so he doesn’t lose. He and Sungyeol are known to make bets and be competitive against each other, and although it’s a silly...whatever this is, he still doesn’t want to lose.

“How about the winner gets 50,000 won?” Myungsoo suggests.

Sungyeol’s eyes light up, but they soon narrow into a glare. “You may beat me at board games and console games but this is one thing you won’t win!” He sounds a bit too enthusiastic for a dumb bet, especially as his head is still poking out of the pile of pillows and his arm is ed upwards in the air.

And Sungyeol says he’s the crazy one.

“You good for nothing cat, get up!” Sungyeol nudges Jureumi gently with his foot, and she just yawns, stretching a little bit along the floor as she does indeed finally get up; Sungyeol swears he’s been bothering the feline for at least fifteen minutes. He thinks she’s becoming too lazy.

“Now go spy on Myungsoo. I’m sure he has something up his sleeve,” Sungyeol waves his hands around to get Jureumi out of the space below a kitchen chair.

Jureumi sends him a look that Sungyeol chooses to ignore because like hell is he going to be stuck in the dorm on Christmas Eve with his idiot of a best friend and do absolutely nothing. He’s going to have fun, goddamnit. And if building a pillow and blanket fort is what he wants to do, then so be it.

Jureumi lets out a mewl and soon exits the fort, Sungyeol nodding his head. “Good luck!” he exclaims after the cat, deciding for now he can just lay down and wait until she comes back.

Sungyeol discovers that letting Jureumi leave was a terrible idea. It’s been, according to the phone Sungyeol’s been playing Candy Crush on, twenty minutes and Jureumi isn’t anywhere in his fort. He’s crawled all around it (which is quite difficult with his long limbs) and nothing.

Sungyeol groans, placing his phone down on the floor as he starts making his way towards an exit, ducking his head under the kitchen table and pulling himself out, running a hand through his hair. He can see the top of a black haired head over the manhwa fort, and Sungyeol swears it’s as if Myungsoo hasn’t even moved.

“Do you not know the meaning of a war, Kim Myungsoo?” Sungyeol sighs loudly, crawling his way towards the other side of the room.

“Oh, come on,” he mutters as he reaches it, only to see Myungsoo reading another volume of something or another (the cover is different than what Sungyeol had first seen), Jureumi curled up next to him as his free hand scratches behind her ears.

“Traitor,” Sungyeol snaps at the cat, who doesn’t even bat an eyelash.

“I think it’s safe to say I won, Sungyeollie. I got the cat,” Myungsoo replies, looking up with a wide grin.

Sungyeol doesn’t know where the hell Myungsoo comes up with these things. “Getting a cat doesn’t mean you won a fort war, Myungsoo,” he says quietly, dangerously close to pouting.

“Ah, but it does, dear Sungyeollie,” Myungsoo starts. “Jureumi was part of your side, was she not? So now that she’s over here, I’ve won,” he points out.

Sungyeol wishes he was standing up so he could stomp his feet. “That’s not—you’re such a !” he settles with, tone slightly whiny.

Myungsoo keeps his smile, extending out the hand Jureumi. “50,000 won, my darling Sungyeollie,” he teases.

“ no, you’re not getting any of my money until you retaliate,” Sungyeol mutters, childishly crossing his arms over his chest.

“Retaliate? You didn’t even do anything,” Myungsoo raises an eyebrow in confusion. “Just come over here, there’s enough room.”

Sungyeol stands up this time, eyes narrowed. “No.” It’s with that that Sungyeol stomps his way back to his fort and he grabs a pillow, throwing it in Myungsoo’s direction.

A yelp signals he hit his target and Sungyeol chuckles, only for it to be cut short as something hard slams into his back.

“, that hurt!” Sungyeol exclaims, rubbing the place subconsciously. He bends down to pick up what had hit him and he almost rolls his eyes.

Orange, volume three.

“There, I retaliated,” Myungsoo says from behind him.

“With one of your romantic manhwa. I’m shaking in my boots,” Sungyeol says dryly.

“I’m not throwing you my food, what else do you expect me to retaliate with?” Sungyeol knows if he was looking at Myungsoo he’d be pouting and he hates that it’s one of his weakness so he clears his throat, holding the manhwa as he drops to his knees to crawl back under the fort.

“Just come over here Sungyeollie, we can join forces and put our forts together.” Myungsoo’s close to whining at this point and Sungyeol’s hesitant on whether or not he wants it to happen.

“Not a chance,” Sungyeol calls out, finding his way to the stack of pillows and grabbing one, tossing it at Myungsoo’s fort again.

“That almost knocked over my water! You’d have to pay for a new copy!”

Sungyeol rolls his eyes, sitting up straight as there’s nothing above his head. “You stole my cat, I don’t think I have to pay for anything of yours.”

“Who gave you a laptop for your birthday last year?!”

Sungyeol barely ducks in time as a manhwa sails in his direction, and it lands outside the fort of pillows behind him. “You ,” he muses, ignoring Myungsoo’s question.

“Yah! Answer me!”

“Yes, yes, you got me a laptop for my birthday. That was over a year ago, Myungsoo-yah, I think you need to get over it and pick something else to hold over my head,” Sungyeol replies.

Another manhwa comes to him this time and Sungyeol catches it, raising an eyebrow as he studies the cover. “Do you seriously have a comic book about a cat named Chi?” he asks in half disbelief, half amusement.

There’s silence from the other side of the room, until Myungsoo starts sputtering out protests. “It’s cute! You’re the one that wanted me to get this war started!”

He actually has a point. “Right,” Sungyeol clears his throat, and he grabs a pillow, throwing it at the fort this time.

He smirks in triumph as one side of Myungsoo’s fort collapses to the ground.

“ you,” Myungsoo hisses, now in mostly full view, and Sungyeol’s smirk widens, although the sight of Jureumi still cuddled by Myungsoo’s side makes the sting of betrayal come back.

It soon fades, however, as Myungsoo grabs a stack of his ammunition from the back of his fort and begins launching them at Sungyeol, one by one.

“Yah! Kim Myungsoo!” Sungyeol tries to shield himself and he grabs a pillow, holding it in front of him. “Kim Myungsoo!” he keeps repeating, as it’s like an endless slew of hit after hit, and he really hopes Woohyun doesn’t mind his pillow possibly being destroyed.

He grabs a cushion he had gotten from the couch and throws it in Myungsoo’s direction, still keeping the pillow in front of his face.

Now this is what he’s talking about.

When Sungjong walks into the dorm that night and promptly trips over a pillow, he curses under his breath and his eyes take in what he thought was their living room but is now a complete mess of pillows, blankets, and manhwa. He grimaces as he spots a few of their chairs overto the floor and the kitchen table just sitting near the door.

“What the hell happened?” he grumbles, and it’s when he finds Sungyeol and Myungsoo sprawled out in the middle of it all, laying on a pillow with one of Sungyeol’s arms thrown across his stomach, the other beneath Myungsoo’s head and one of Myungsoo’s legs over Sungyeol’s with Jureumi curled up above their heads, that he learns where the mess came from.

He just rolls his eyes and steps over everything carefully, walking to his room. “Idiots.”