Chanyeol is drunk. Not -faced drunk, but drunk enough to be mumbling already. There’s a party on the campus, and he decided to bring out some beer that Sehun made for him and Suho, the one with wolfsbane. Suho hasn’t touched it, but Chanyeol has, and now he’s wobbly on his feet.

“Yeol,” someone says. He looks up to see Suho looking down at him. “Are you okay? You look ready to become the Sleeping Beauty.”

And then someone crashes onto Chanyeol’s lap. He’s on the couch, so he doesn’t end up on the floor (thankfully). He’s a bit dizzy, but he still reacts as if ready to catch whoever is falling onto him. He quickly recognizes Youngjae. The boy has spread his legs all over Chanyeol’s lap and took the rest of the couch for himself. He’s very sweaty.

“I just had the most passionate dancing session ever,” he says.

“You say that every time we go out to party,” Chanyeol tells him. He slaps him on the , and Youngjae yells, shooting upright. He stares at Chanyeol, offended, his mouth open in a gasp.

He closes his mouth with a click.

“I hope you step on a Lego.” He deadpans. Suho bursts out laughing. Chanyeol looks very hurt; he clutches at his heart and lets out a shaky exhale.

They go on partying, Suho staying sober while Chanyeol and Youngjae drink beer together, and a few hours later, Chanyeol can barely understand what’s going on around him anymore. He supposes this is how college life should look like. Then again—

“Oh, hey, Chanyeol!” someone says happily. He looks to the voice to see a girl – she’s in Chanyeol’s class. He can’t remember her name. “Didn’t think I’d see you here. So I get that you finished your essay?”

The color drains from Chanyeol’s face.

“What—what essay?” he blurts out.

The girl goes from open and happy to sorry and scared. “Uh…the one about ethnocentrism?” she says shyly. “I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

Chanyeol’s brain is overheating.

“Ethnocentric,” he whispers to himself. “Ethnocentritsmsms.”

“Sorry?”

Chanyeol walks away from her, swaying on his feet, and heads straight to his room. He sits down by the desk, opens his laptop, and starts typing. Once he thinks he’s done, he puts the document on his flash drive, and smiles to himself.

He goes to print it out.

*

Chanyeol wakes up with his head aching and his throat very dry. It doesn’t take long to realize that he’s hung over. It does take a while, however, to realize that Suho is very angry with him.

Welp.

“Did you know how worried I was yesterday?” Suho asks him. Chanyeol hisses at the volume. Suho is standing angrily in front of Chanyeol’s bed. How can anyone stand angrily? Suho suddenly reminds Chanyeol of his mother. “You disappeared so suddenly and when I first came to check if you’re here, the room was open, but you weren’t inside! If I wasn’t a werewolf, I’d have called campus security!”

Chanyeol blinks at him. “But you didn’t,” he says groggily.

“Well, obviously, because I found you passed out on the corridor!”

Chanyeol’s head swims. “Wait, seriously?” he asks, disbelief visible on his face. “I—okay.”

“You overdid it.”

“Did I vomit?”

Suho rolls his eyes and crosses his arms on his chest. “No,” he says. “But something might’ve happened to you.”

“Okay, mom, calm down,” Chanyeol says with a smile. “I’m safe and sound.”

“Because I bodily dragged you all the way down here!” Suho says, raising his voice slightly and waving his hands around. Chanyeol feels dizzy at the movement – his head spins. Good thing he’s a werewolf – he can already feel his senses come back, his blood pumping out all the remaining alcohol in his system. “I found you in front of your teacher’s office! What if he saw you like this?!”

“They all know we drink and party, I’m sure they’ve seen worse things,” Chanyeol counters. Then his brain catches up. He sits up a bit too quickly, vision blurring. He focuses his eyes on Suho, but since his head is swimming, he goes cross eyed. “Wait, what teacher?”

“Why does that matter? He didn’t see you.”

“Suho,” Chanyeol says, his voice deep and scared. “Was it Professor Kim’s office?”

“Do you know how many Professor Kims are at this university?”

Chanyeol slaps him on the forearm and Suho jumps back, offended. “Don’t be smart!” Chanyeol says angrily. “What teacher was it!”

“I honestly don’t know!” Suho replies, pouting. He grabs his bag and heads for the door, fuming. “Irresponsible drunken idiot, why do I even bother—“

The rest of his monologue gets muffled by the door, but Chanyeol can still hear him muttering something as he walks down the corridor. Chanyeol spends another five seconds in bed, trying to focus and remember what he was doing yesterday.

The essay. He wrote the essay. He printed it out. He—

“Oh ,” he says, jumping out of his bed.

*

“What are you doing?”

Chanyeol jumps three feet in the air, werewolf grace and super hearing be damned; he whips around, almost hitting Youngjae in the face, and collapses onto the wall behind him.

“Why did you do that!” he says, whispering but hissing at the same time; Youngjae takes a step back, gives him a weird look, and leans closer towards Chanyeol. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”

“Why are you sneaking around?” Youngjae questions. Some student walks past them, shooting them both a sideway glance. Chanyeol outward glares at her and Youngjae raises his brows at that. “Chanyeol. Are you still drunk?”

“I’m as sober as a newborn baby,” Chanyeol assures, pointing a finger at his friend.

“That’s a weird reference.” Youngjae deadpans.

“Yesterday, when I was drunk, I wrote an essay on ethnocentrism.”

Youngjae nods, waiting for the rest of the story, but then Chanyeol hears footsteps inside Professor Kim’s office and he freezes. He plasters himself onto the wall and peeks around the corner, ever so slightly, to take a look at the said office’s door. Youngjae stands next to him, confused, and when the door begin to open, Chanyeol yanks him back behind the corner, and shushes him (even though Youngjae hasn’t yet said a word).

Professor Kim exits his office and locks the door behind himself. Then he heads into the opposite direction to where Chanyeol and Youngjae are. Once he’s disappeared down the corridor, Chanyeol turns towards Youngjae, and he looks slightly hysterical.

“I was drunk, and it was very, very bad.” He says, his eyes burning holes in Youngjae’s. Youngjae can do as much as nod in confusion. “I need to get it back.”

And with this, Chanyeol turns on his heels and heads for the office, almost jogging towards it. He pulls a lockpick out of the pocket of his jeans, and he hears Youngjae’s high pitched voice.

Before he can bend down and even try to open the door, Youngjae throws himself at Chanyeol’s back. Chanyeol sways on his feet, surprised, and yells, tripping over his own feet and almost ending up face-first on the floor. Still, he catches Youngjae around his legs out of habit.

“Cameras!” Youngjae tells him, still on Chanyeol’s back. Chanyeol’s eyes go wide and he looks up at the ceiling.

“You make an excellent point,” he hisses.

That’s when a group of students decides to round the corner and come eye-to-eye with Chanyeol giving Youngjae a piggyback ride. Chanyeol panics and lets go of Youngjae’s legs, but it’s not a wise decision – Youngjae ends up almost choking Chanyeol with his arms once he loses all the support from under his legs.

Chanyeol tilts back and they both end up on the floor. The group of students, naturally, laughs at them.

*

“Amber, I need your help,” Chanyeol says into his phone.

“Shoot,” Amber replies.

“I need you to hack the school cameras.”

Silence fills the line. “Dude. You want me to hack the cameras from here?” she asks. “That’s—I’m not sure I can do that.”

“You hacked the NIS!” Chanyeol exclaims a bit too loud. A few students turns their heads at him. He cringes at his own stupidity and goes to hide behind a huge plant that they, for some reason, decided to put at the campus’ cafeteria. “Please, Amber.”

“It’s different,” Amber sighs. “The school cameras aren’t in the—web. I don’t have access to them. Why, though? Did you do something and want it deleted?”

“I want to break into my professor’s office,” Chanyeol explains.

“Then go about it the old school way!” she says. “Cover the cameras with something and go about your business. There’s rarely full-time security watching all the cameras on campus, right?”

Chanyeol opens his mouth to tell her why he can’t do that, but comes up with nothing. Amber can probably hear his hesitance.

“You didn’t think of that?” she asks, amused. “Are you hungover?”

“How would you know that?” Chanyeol asks, hissing.

“A wild guess.”

*

Chanyeol breaks into his professor’s office half an hour later, and forces Suho to watch his back.

It’s the most stressful five minutes of his life, and the worst thing is: he doesn’t find his paper.

“I can’t find it!” he hisses, sticking his head out of the office. Suho’s staring at him wide-eyed and on full alert, and his eyes actually go blue for a second as he gets surprised by Chanyeol’s sudden outburst. “Help me!”

“How?” Suho asks in disbelief, opening his mouth widely to emphasize the word. “You know how it looks like!”

“But it’s not here!” Chanyeol argues. “I went through all the papers in this room and I can’t find it!”

“Then maybe he carries it with him!” Suho says, exasperated. “Chanyeol, we need to go.”

So Chanyeol closes the door behind himself, locks it with his picklock, and heads for the camera that’s been pointed at them this whole time and that he’s covered with a beanie. He jumps up to take it off, careful to not get caught on tape and praying to all existing gods that there’s no one in the security room who’s watching him right now.

*

“He carries it with him,” Chanyeol says before he even enters their room. Suho lets out a sigh and shuts his eyes; he wishes to be asleep right now. Youngjae is behind Chanyeol, and he looks slightly concerned for his giant, red-haired friend. “He carries all the newest papers with him, so that he can grade them in-between lectures.”

“What is even in that essay of yours that you don’t want him to see?” Suho questions, beginning to feel impatient. “What did you write?”

Chanyeol stops in his tracks, with his hands on his hips, and stares at Suho. His face is blank, his eyes out of focus, and he looks like he’s remembering something. Then he suddenly shivers, throwing his arms onto his back, like he’s trying to give himself a hug.

“It’s a mess,” he says dramatically and then does a hairflip. Youngjae tries to stop himself from laughing, but he still lets out a choked-off snort; Suho stands up from his bed and stomps over to Chanyeol’s laptop. Chanyeol opens his eyes widely when Suho lifts the lid. “What are you doing?”

“Where’s that essay?” Suho asks him. Chanyeol’s laptop was hibernating, so Suho can already see the desktop. “School?” he reads the name of a folder. Chanyeol is quiet, so Suho turns around to look at him, raising his brows questioningly.

“I—yes,” Chanyeol mumbles. Suho clicks at the icon and sees a list of different essays and presentations, and a few more folders for research and graphics.

“Let me guess.” he says, “Is it the one titled ‘yes’?”

Youngjae loses it. He high-fives himself and walks over to where Suho’s sitting, Chanyeol growing uncomfortable at the sight. Youngjae looks over Suho’s shoulder as he opens the Word document.

It goes as follows:

This os an essay on ethnocentrism
Give me 100%
Standards of culture of one country judging other countries bsed on these standards
Extremists worry abt their culture ethnic grouo concerned of theirf language custmos and especisddaly religion 
It is considered bad even tho it has roots inb human psychogloy
When do we stoop worrying about our culture and race and genegalogy we change a lot
Weare transient
My head feels weird I really want some ramen
Oh right formal essays mean no first prson
Head has felt weird, ramen has been wanted
Ethnocentrism is about ramen too because it’s a traditional culture dish
Democracy

To conclude
Yes

“To conclude, yes,” Suho reads quietly. Chanyeol is frozen, and Youngjae is barely holding in his laugh. Then he completely loses it and almost ends up hitting his head on the chair Suho’s sitting in.

*

Chanyeol is jumpy. They’re eating lunch, but he hasn’t touched his food and he’s jiggling his legs under the table. It’s driving Suho crazy. Youngjae, on the other hand, is having a blast.

“I always thought I was the unlucky one,” he says for the fifth time today.

“If he’s already read it, there’s no chance I’m gonna finish his course,” agonizes Chanyeol, also for the fifth time today.

“He hasn’t.” Suho rolls his eyes. “If he did, I’m sure you’d be seeing him in his office already.”

“Right,” Chanyeol says, nodding energetically and nervously his lip. He’s looking around like a cat waiting for a bird to fly by; Suho doesn’t know what’s all this about.

“Chanyeol, he’s not going to come to the cafeteria,” he says, snapping his fingers in front of Chanyeol’s face. The other boy startles.

“What? No,” he says. “I’m not waiting for professor Kim.”

Suho deflates at that. “Who are you waiting for, then?”

“Oh God, here they come,” Chanyeol says, his face going from nervous and attentive to relieved and tired; he stands up and starts waving to someone, forcing Suho to look over his shoulder and Youngjae to stick his head up and try to see.

Suho spots Eun and Daehyun entering the room, and he opens his mouth in surprise.

“What?” he says, mostly to himself.

“Who’s that?” Youngjae asks. “Ohh, is that Chanyeol’s girlfriend?”

“Eun!” Chanyeol cries out, his voice cracking. Suho hides behind his hand, ashamed, and some students laugh at them. It’s nothing new – Chanyeol always brings attention to himself and he’s always dumb.

Eun and Daehyun finally reach the table, and Chanyeol scoops Eun up and traps her in a fierce hug.

“My friends!” he says dramatically. He sees Daehyun trying to take a step away, so he quickly grabs the boy by the neck and pulls him into the hug as well. Daehyun squirms and squeals and tries to get away, but it’s no use. “My loved ones! You’re the only ones who’d come to my rescue!”

“You wouldn’t need rescuing if you didn’t act stupid in the first place,” Suho mumbles, standing up to greet his friends as well. Instead of answering him, Chanyeol pulls him into the hug as well, and since he’s taller and bigger than any of them, he somehow manages to have them trapped for the next five seconds. That is, until Daehyun starts tickling him.

Meanwhile, Youngjae is a bit shocked. It’s just that people aren’t usually this…affectionate around each other. Youngjae knew that Suho and Chanyeol are close, and he saw them being  warm and caring around each other, but this is taking everything to a new level.

He finds it quite freeing, actually; most Koreans don’t show emotion easily, and there’s not this much hugs involved in their lives.

He watches as Chanyeol pushes a boy he doesn’t know away from him, but doesn’t let go of Eun. Suho and Eun laugh about something as Chanyeol scolds the first boy, and then he pushes him towards the chairs.

“Sit down you ungrateful little hobbit,” he says.

“You being tall doesn’t make me a hobbit!” Daehyun replies, outraged. “Also, I’m the one that came to help, so you should be kissing my feet right about now.” Chanyeol sticks his tongue out at him. Daehyun sits down on the chair opposite of Youngjae’s, and their eyes meet for the first time.

Daehyun goes completely still.

He’s not even done sitting down properly; he’s still holding the chair under himself, half bent towards the table, half upright. Youngjae’s staring at him. Chanyeol, Eun and Suho are sitting down, and once they do, Suho notices that there’s something weird happening.

“Dae,” he says a bit harshly, worried. Daehyun snaps out of his daze, blinks a few times and looks at Suho.

“Huh?” he says. Suho frowns at him. Chanyeol snorts.

“You can sit down,” he tells Daehyun.

“Ah,” Dae mutters. His cheeks go a bit pink. “Right. Sorry.”

“Eun, Daehyun, this is Youngjae,” Chanyeol introduces, pointing at Youngjae. “The unlucky one.”

“Nice to meet you!” Eun says, smiling widely. Daehyun sends Youngjae a tight smile.

“You too,” Youngjae says, feeling a bit antsy all of a sudden. He glances at Eun, then back at Daehyun, and their eyes meet again. They both look down awkwardly. Youngjae clears his throat. Chanyeol and Suho are both frowning, while Eun’s eyes are jumping from Youngjae to Daehyun, and again. She smirks then.

“Okay,” Chanyeol says. “Uh…I called them to help me get my essay back,” he explains. Youngjae looks at him.

“What?” he asks. “How are they going to help?”

“I’m pretty handy,” Daehyun says with a shrug, leaning forward and placing his elbows on the table. Youngjae follows the movement and his eyes stop on Daehyun’s hands. Then he looks up.

Daehyun winks at him.

Oh boy, he thinks.

*

“There,” Chanyeol whispers, pointing at a pile of papers on professor Kim’s desk. The professor himself is sitting by the desk, writing something down and waiting for more people to come to his lecture. It starts in three minutes. “It must be one of these. On the pile.”

“Unless he already graded it,” Daehyun whispers back. They’ve purposely chosen the seats in back, where there’s least people around. “Okay.”

He places his elbow on the wooden surface in front of himself and outstretches his hand slightly, like he’s about to take something from someone. He looks at the pile of papers, and then one of them shows up in his palm. Just like that. No poof, no lights, no nothing; one second an essay is on the pile on the teacher’s desk, the next – in Daehyun’s hand. Chanyeol lets out a surprised, awed sound. Eun, who’s sitting next to Daehyun as well, opens widely.

“I’ve never seen you do it so closely,” she whispers. Daehyun looks down on the paper he’s holding and sees a name he doesn’t know.

“Not this one,” he mutters, putting the paper away and stretching his hand out again towards the pile. Another essay shows up in his hand; Chanyeol is looking around, listening in, and generally using all the heightened senses he has to make sure nobody sees Daehyun doing his thing. Eun is carefully watching the professor, but he’s too busy grading another student’s work.

Daehyun does the same thing another six times, and on the seventh, he sees Chanyeol’s essay.

“Got it,” he says, smiling widely. He takes all the essays he’s apported from the professor’s pile and outstretches his hand with them in it; they all disappear, and Eun notices that the pile on Lee’s desk is bigger now. “Done.” Daehyun looks down at Chanyeol’s essay again, then snorts. “Dude. To conclude, yes?” he reads, laughing.

“Shut up,” Chanyeol scolds. Then he pulls the right essay – one that he’s actually worked on – and hands it to Daehyun. “Can you put it on the pile?”

Daehyun nods, still stifling his laugh, and makes Chanyeol’s essay appear amongst the ones on professor Kim’s desk.

Chanyeol breaths out with relief.

“I owe you one,” he says, clapping Daehyun on the back.

“I know what you can do for him,” Eun speaks up, leaning towards Daehyun and Chanyeol. Daehyun is sitting in-between them. “Tell Youngjae how awesome he is.”

Daehyun goes completely red. Chanyeol frowns, not sure why he should do that, but if Eun says so, it must be a good idea. 

Any DaeJae shippers around?