Thump. Thumpthumpthump. Thu-thump. Thump.

If there was a recording camera in the room, Taekwoon would have looked up into it like he was in The Office. But there wasn’t, so he settled for raising his head from the essay he was trying to write and stared blankly at the wall in front of his desk. It wasn’t like this was new to him though – it was Saturday night, which meant business as normal: 613 was throwing a party and him in 513 was suffering. He would have complained a long time ago to the RA only 613 was as quiet as mice during the week and sometimes when the party upstairs got a little too crazy Taekwoon would wake up to one or two bottles of beer outside his door the next morning in apology. Strange apology, but Taekwoon was a poor struggling college student and he wasn’t going to say no to free beer. Buying his silence hardly took any effort, he knew, and every week he still debated whether free alcohol really made up for five to seven hours of mayhem and chaos.

Taekwoon ran a hand through his hair and pushed it out of his eyes, reaching over to Hongbin’s side of their shared desk to grab the thin hairband Hongbin used at home. He put it on, sliding his fringe out of the way, and tried to concentrate once more. Midterms were still some time away but he had learnt the hard way last semester what kind of hell descended on him once he left everything too late. He never wanted to relive trying to write six papers at once in the span of a week again.

THUMP THUMP THUMP

Taekwoon exhaled impatiently through his nose, only a moment later realising that the banging was coming from the apartment’s front door and not his ceiling. Taekwoon flicked a look at his phone: 1:32am. Hongbin said he wasn’t coming home today and he had his key anyway, so who the hell at this time –

Taekwoon got up and went to get the door, the banging getting more insistent by the second.

“Alright, alright, I’m here,” Taekwoon muttered, swinging open the door and then having to look up a bit, something he wasn’t generally used to.

The boy in the doorway squinted first at him and then past him into the empty apartment, swaying rather dangerously on the spot. “Where did everyone go?”

Taekwoon stared, nonplussed, at the very obviously-drunk person standing on his welcome mat. “Are you looking for 613?”

The boy squinted at him even more. “What?”

“The party,” Taekwoon tried to force himself to stay patient. “Upstairs. Not here.”

“Oh.” The boy said, then started to giggle. “I thought everyone had suddenly disappeared.” This was apparently starting to be somehow hilarious to the boy, because the giggling turned into outright guffawing that he failed to keep in despite one hand clamped across his mouth. “Everybody, just – pfffff-”

“The stairs are over there,” Taekwoon hinted strongly, pointing over to the right, wanting very badly to get back to his paper.

The boy turned his head in the direction Taekwoon was gesturing too fast for his drunk senses to keep up with, swayed, stumbled, and keeled over at Taekwoon’s feet, Taekwoon rearing back in alarm. Once on the floor he clearly decided to set up residence, because then he promptly passed out.

Taekwoon took a very deep breath, and sighed.

*

“How come Sanghyuk is sleeping on our couch?”

Hongbin had poked his head into Taekwoon’s room, Taekwoon awake and checking his phone but yet to emerge from his cocoon of blankets. Taekwoon had heard him come quietly in an hour ago – no matter how quiet Hongbin always tried to be when he spent the night out Taekwoon was the lightest of sleepers and woke up anyway – and wondered absently which lucky schoolmate of theirs it was this time that had had the pleasure of Hongbin’s company last night. He couldn’t keep up with Hongbin’s boy- and girlfriends.

“Sanghyuk? That’s his name?” Taekwoon’s voice was still sleep-rough, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “How do you know him?”

Hongbin frowned. “He’s in the basketball team, freshman. If you don’t even know his name what’s he doing on our couch?”

Taekwoon sat up blearily, not wanting to get out of the bundle of warmth he’d carefully cultivated during the night. The apartment’s heating really wasn’t the most reliable. “He passed out outside our door last night. Believe me, I almost left him out there.”

“Random acts of kindness, huh, hyung? Rescuing stray puppies now?” Hongbin grinned, flashing the dimples Taekwoon rather thought was half the reason so many people still turned up to watch his games. It certainly had nothing to do with how well the team played, that was for sure.

“So he’s in your disaster of a team, is he?” Taekwoon said, finally finding the willpower to push the blankets aside and swing his legs out of bed.

“’Disaster’ is such a strong word,” Hongbin said breezily, his head disappearing as he headed presumably into their small kitchen. “I think I prefer ‘spectacle’.  Or ‘feast for the senses.’”

Taekwoon snorted, emerging from his room and trodding to the bathroom. “’Feast for the senses’ my . What is there to feast on, besides a grand display of failure?”

“Well, there’s me, for one thing,” Hongbin said, totally serious, head in a cupboard. “Are we out of cereal?”

Taekwoon couldn’t argue with that. “It’s in the fridge,” he said, before closing the bathroom door.

“Why the hell does he put everything in the fridge,” Hongbin muttered, taking the cereal and milk out and wondering at the same time if he should wake Sanghyuk up or let him sleep. He put the food down on the tiny fold-out table they used as a dining table and craned his neck to look at Sanghyuk stretched out – and there was a lot of Sanghyuk to stretch – on their couch. He was still dead to the world, his party clothes looking terribly incongruous in their small bare apartment. He’d never really seen Sanghyuk outside of basketball practice and it was interesting to see him all dressed up like this – tight jeans, nice shirt, and because Taekwoon hadn’t bothered to take off poor Sanghyuk’s shoes he could see that they went really well with the rest of his outfit too. Not bad. He approved of people with good fashion sense.

Hongbin snagged his phone from next to the sink and took a picture of Sanghyuk’s feet, sending it to Wonsik.

nice kicks, huh? when he wakes up i’ll ask him where he got them. looks like something you’d like.

*

Wonsik pursed his lips, looking at the photo, and then Hongbin’s message, and then the photo again, only to glance up at Hakyeon watching him with an expectant look on his face.

“How’s he yanking your chain this time?”

Wonsik rolled his eyes but slid his phone over their Starbucks table to Hakyeon anyway, wondering how damn transparent he had to be that Hakyeon could tell with just one look at his face whom it was who had messaged him. Clearly he had a special ‘Hongbin’ expression which was made up of one part misery, one part ual frustration, and one part general pathetic-ness, his brain supplied helpfully.

“’When he wakes up’, huh,” Hakyeon said, pushing the phone back towards Wonsik. “It doesn’t have to mean that Hongbin ed him, whoever this is. I mean, it probably does, but it doesn’t have to. Maybe that’s what he wants you to think.”

“Nobody keeps their shoes on in bed, right?” Wonsik asked hopefully, feeling the word ‘loser’ tattoo itself across his forehead.    

Hakyeon nodded supportively, the look on his face only slightly condescending. “Wonsik, I-”

“Don’t say it,” Wonsik warned, taking a big sip of his iced coffee. “I know, okay? I know.”

Hakyeon said it anyway. “I really think you should try to find someone else.” Wonsik exhaled, letting himself fall back into his chair. “Someone who would actually treasure you, not treat you like this when he obviously knows how you feel about him.”

“Hyung, if it were that easy I would have done it years ago,” Wonsik leaned forward again, emphatic. “Anyway, it has to mean something that he does like this. Like he wants to keep me interested.”

“Because he’s an who likes the attention!” Hakyeon cried, forgetting to keep his voice down. “Honestly, you drive me insane. I’ve never known anybody who likes suffering as much as you do.”

“It’s been three years,” Wonsik said stubbornly. “I will never love another.”

Hakyeon closed his eyes, looking like he was expending a mighty effort to restrain himself. “Fine,” Hakyeon said finally, opening his eyes and breathing deeply. “Fine. Let’s go to work.”

“Is it bad that we always drink Starbucks before going to work at Caffébene?” Wonsik asked, getting up from their table, Hakyeon shaking his head in fond annoyance behind Wonsik’s back as he followed Wonsik out of the café.

“You’re right. It’s a crime. We need to confess to the manager.”

“Really?” Wonsik turned around, eyes wide.

Hakyeon really wanted to hit him sometimes.

*

Sanghyuk had been sleeping for nearly eleven hours.

Taekwoon looked at him, and looked at the clock again. It was a Sunday, which meant he had nowhere he needed to be, but he also couldn’t let someone he didn’t know colonise his couch indefinitely. He wasn’t sure if he should wake Sanghyuk up or just keep waiting for him to get up on his own, and Hongbin had unhelpfully left him alone in the apartment to go for his study group which meant all decisions pertaining to unconscious six-foot-tall people on his couch came down to him. He put his hands on his hips and looked down at Sanghyuk, drooling onto a cushion.

“Hey,” Taekwoon said cautiously, shaking Sanghyuk a bit by his shoulder. “Sanghyuk.”

No response. He shook harder. “Sanghyuk, wake up. Wake up.”

Sanghyuk finally cracked open one eye and peered up at Taekwoon like it was hurting him to do so. He stared blankly for a few seconds and then rolled over, groaning, to press his face into the back of the couch.

Taekwoon blinked, wondering if he should let this continue. Maybe the kid could be sobered up by coffee and then subsequently kicked out of the house.

He went to make a strong cuppa, initially considering using some of his good coffee but then deciding at the last minute that Hongbin’s instant would be enough for drunken home invaders. When he got back from the kitchen the boy was sitting up, albeit leaning over with his head in his hands; Taekwoon presented the mug to the kid, holding it helpfully a few inches from his nose.

Sanghyuk looked up first at the mug, then Taekwoon, and then gagged hard, hands flying to his mouth. Taekwoon gasped in panic, quickly setting down the coffee on the floor and grabbing the boy by the upper arms and yanking him to his feet. He manhandled Sanghyuk to the bathroom and shoved him in, the sounds of retching following bare seconds after. Taekwoon closed his eyes in relief, his heart still pounding – there but for the grace of god went his living room rug.

It took a while for Sanghyuk to re-emerge to a backdrop of the toilet flushing, looking pitiful and slightly green in the face.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “I’m really so-” His eyes widened, and he rushed back into the toilet once more.

The whole process repeated itself twice more, Taekwoon giving up and settling himself down on the couch to wait until Sanghyuk had finished throwing up the entire contents of his stomach. He drank Sanghyuk’s coffee, making a face at the taste of instant java.

After about twenty minutes Sanghyuk finally appeared, sitting down sheepishly at the end of the couch and finding it hard to meet Taekwoon’s eye.

“I’m so sorry,” he said once again, this time to the rug he had thankfully not puked on. “Um.”

“Do you feel better now?” Taekwoon asked, at a loss for what else to say. The usual etiquette for such a situation was beyond him.

“Kinda. Not really. But I don’t think I’m going to throw up anymore.” Sanghyuk answered, swallowing. “Um, who are you? Whose apartment am I in?”

“You don’t remember?” Taekwoon asked, eyebrows raising. “You were probably at the party upstairs. I don’t know if you got lost or what but you knocked on my door and then passed out.”

Sanghyuk screwed up his face in mortification. “Oh, god.”

“You know someone who lives here, actually. Hongbin. He’s my roommate.”

“Hongbin sunbae lives here? Did he see me?” Sanghyuk demanded in horror, turning to Taekwoon sharply, apparently all awkwardness forgotten.

“Of course?” Taekwoon answered. “You’re not exactly inconspicuous.”

“Oh, god,” Sanghyuk moaned into his hands. “Of all the apartments it had to be his!”

Taekwoon frowned slightly, feeling miffed. “I’m the one who had to drag you inside, you know.”

Sanghyuk lifted his head quickly, both hands outstretched placatingly. “Oh, no, I didn’t mean it like that, I’m sorry to you too, I mean, most sorry to you, I really don’t know why I did that. I’m really sorry. Please let me make it up to you somehow?”

Taekwoon shook his head, standing up. “It’s fine. Just forget about it.”

“It’s not,” Sanghyuk insisted, standing up as well, face the very picture of misery. “I don’t even know you and I was so much trouble. I nearly threw up on your rug. Oh my god, what if I had thrown up on your rug?”

“Yes, but you didn’t, so-” Taekwoon answered, trying to gently buffer Sanghyuk towards the door.

“I can clean your apartment for you. Or run any errands you need running. Or wash your car. Does your car need a wash?”

“I don’t have a car, but thanks,” Taekwoon said, still herding.

“Hongbin sunbae is going to hate me,” Sanghyuk said sadly, finally ending up at the door.

“He doesn’t hate you,” Taekwoon assured Sanghyuk, opening the door. “He’s generally supportive of the concept of spending the night in strangers’ apartments.”

Sanghyuk stopped, cocking an eyebrow. “So the rumours are true?”

“You didn’t hear it from me,” Taekwoon replied primly, feeling satisfaction bloom at the sight of the kid finally, finally out of his apartment. A strange sense of déjà vu stole over him, the kid looking at him from where he was standing on Taekwoon’s welcome mat only without the swaying and squinting of the night before.

“Well, thank you,” Sanghyuk said, cracking a small, shy smile for the first time, Taekwoon marvelling at how young and soft it made him look. “And I’m sorry again.”

“It’s fine, really,” Taekwoon said, allowing himself a smile in return. “Watch yourself next time.”

Sanghyuk nodded, ducking his head in embarrassment. “Bye.”

Taekwoon settled for a short wave before going back inside and closing the door. Peace, at last.

*