Jiyong stood against the counter watching Youngbae and Daesung argue over how to cook their breakfast and smiled.

“And you all try to say we're like a cute old married couple.”

Bae turned around and threw a small piece of red pepper at the rapper, but he was smiling.

Seunghyun laughed and pulled his tattooed lover to him and gave him a small kiss before rubbing their noses together, causing the younger to giggle and bury his face in the crook of Seunghyun's neck.

“You guys are still puke-worthy cute though.”

“Seungri, you’re just jealous because you’re still single.”

The maknae pouted and sat on his stool waiting for his breakfast. The next few moments were filled with random chatting until Daesung and Bae were done cooking.

            ^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^

It was nearly noon and all five of them were sweating and panting from moving the living room and office furniture in. They had everything where they wanted it, so Bae suggested they take a break before moving on to the downstairs guest rooms and organizing the bathrooms and kitchen.

They flopped down on the couch and in chairs and all sighed.

“Okay, hyung, this may have been a mistake.” Youngbae looked at Daesung, a questioning look on his face.

“Why babe?”

“Because I don’t think any of us are inclined to get back up now that we’ve sat down. The couch feels too good.”

“Kang Daesung, if you take a nap, I will hurt you.” Bae said, but his voice held no threat as he was feeling sleepy as well.

“Yeah, I’m with Dae on this one. I don’t want to move now, and you know that Seunghyun will be asleep if we stay here more than 5 minutes.”

The eldest swatted his lover, giving him a half-hearted glare. “I’m not that lazy Ji Ji.”

Jiyong groaned. “You’re never gonna quit are you?”

The rapper chuckled. “Nope, but did you really expect me to?”

Ji rolled his eyes. “How long do we want to sit here and make the living room stink?”

They all laughed. “We do kind of smell.” Seungri mumbled from his position face down on the chaise lounge.

“Kind of? Panda get your nose out of the cushion and take a whiff.” Daesung commented.

Seungri did as he was told and immediately shoved his face back against the pillow. “Ok, so we really stink. Damn, someone should open a window.”

They all laughed. Jiyong stood and walked to the window, pushing it up and smiling as the fresh air flooded his senses. He turned around and leaned against the frame, laughing as the others sighed happily as the breeze reached them, the open window bringing in the noise of the workers filling the pool.

“You know what we should do?”

The others looked over to their leader, identical looks of questioning on their faces.

They were silent for a moment, which Jiyong took to mean they were waiting for his response.

“We should have a pool party and barbeque tomorrow night so we can get to know our neighbors. After we get done with furniture and stuff we could go shopping and get food and drinks. I think it would be a good way to start out our living here.”

Bae sat up. “That’s a good idea. It’ll make a good first impression on the neighbors too. And we’re almost done, so we’d have most of this afternoon to shop and tonight to get some salads made.”

The others made noises of agreement. Jiyong smiled. “Then it’s decided. Let’s get back to work. After we shower, we can decide who should go shopping and get a list made up.”

The others stood up and split off to different rooms to put the finishing touches in the guest rooms and downstairs bathrooms.

^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^

By 2:45, everything was done and everyone had showered. Jiyong was sitting on the corner of the dining room table telling Bae things they would need to buy for the barbeque when the doorbell rang.

“Dae!”

“Yeah?” came the distant reply.

“Can you come help Bae with the grocery list while I get the door?”

Daesung walked into the dining room, smiling. “Sure.”

Jiyong walked out into the hall and meandered around the last few boxes to answer the door.

When he opened it, a couple in their mid-thirties was standing there with a plate of cookies.

“Hello!”

Jiyong smiled. “Hi!”

“My name is Chris and this is my wife Charlotte. We just wanted to come over and welcome you to the neighborhood.” Charlotte held out the plate, which the rapper took with a smile.

“Thank you so much! My name is Jiyong. You know, we actually were going to see if some of our new neighbors wanted to come over tomorrow night for a barbeque. We want to get know everyone and thought that would be a good way to socialize.”

“Oh that would be lovely! We’d love to! Do you need some help getting the word out?”

“Yes, that would be amazing! We’re writing up a list of things to go and buy, are there any particular dishes we should or shouldn’t make? I don’t want to have anyone have an allergic reaction or anything.”

Chris looked thoughtful. “I think the only person with a food allergy in the community is Fred and Rachel’s son. He’s allergic to seafood. But otherwise I think anything would be fine.”

“Alright, thank you for telling me.” Jiyong smiled. “We’ll be sure there isn’t any kind of seafood.”

The couple smiled back. “Happy to help. Do you know what time you want to start the barbeque?”

“I’d say people could start showing up around 3 or 4 and just hang out and go in the pool. We’d probably start grilling around 5:30. Would that work for people?”

Charlotte laughed. “That would be perfect. I cannot say how glad I am that we finally have a kind neighbor in this house.”

“Oh? What were the last owners like?” Jiyong tried not to show he was excited for community gossip already.

“Oh heavens, they were scary. They had a few unfriendly pit bulls wandering the back yard and one of them got arrested for dealing heroin. It was always a bit scary seeing anyone that used to live here. They were definitely not a good crowd.”

“Wow! Yeah, that sounds a bit frightening. Well, we should be quiet neighbors so no worries with us.”

The couple laughed. “Well you answered the door, so you’re off to a much better start.”

Jiyong was laughing with them when he felt someone behind him. He turned and smiled wider.

“Seunghyun, these are some of our neighbors, Chris and Charlotte.” The elder shook hands with each of them with a smile.
 

“It’s nice to meet you.” They smiled back.

“Likewise. So how many people moved into here with you?”

“There’s 5 of us. Plus some fur babies.” Seunghyun snorted.

Ji looked at him. “What?”

“Fur babies, huh?”

Their neighbors laughed before Charlotte spoke again. “Not to sound rude, but are you two together?”

They both smiled and nodded. “How did you know?” Seunghyun asked.

Charlotte smirked. “The way you keep looking at him. It’s a look full of love.”
 

Jiyong blushed and chuckled. “Our friends, the others that moved in here, always say we’re obvious. I guess they’re right.”

Chris smirked in a manner very similar to his wife. “I guess they were. Just so you guys know, this community is very LGBT friendly, so you don’t need to worry about people knowing here.”

The rappers both smiled. “That’s good to know, huh Ji Ji?”

Jiyong rolled his eyes, but still found himself smiling.

“We’ll, I imagine you guys have still got a bit of unpacking to do, so we’ll let you go. And we will be sure to let people know about tomorrow. I can’t wait!”

Charlotte and Chris walked away, waving as the rappers stepped back into the house.

“They were really nice.” Ji said as he closed the door and followed his lover back to the dining room.

He set the plate of cookies, which looked like chocolate chip and no bake cookies, on the table in front of the others, taking the cling wrap off.

They all grabbed a cookie.

“Make sure we don’t have any kind of seafood on the list. A couple of our new neighbors came over and I mentioned the barbeque. Someone’s kid is allergic.”

Bae nodded and crossed an item off the list. “So shrimpless macaroni salad then. Everything else is okay, right?”

“Yeah, it should be. That looks like a pretty good list, so we should go before it’s gets too late.

They all filed out of the dining room and out to the cars, Seungri complaining that whoever he rode with, he’d be the third wheel. When they pulled up to the grocery store and went inside, they all split off, Jiyong and Seunghyun went for produce and Seungri and the other two went to pasta and snacks, to buy various items on the list in an attempt to be as quick as possible.

Jiyong was  pushing the cart, the elder keeping up with him easily, reading off things occasionaly and watching as his tattooed lover would add random things that he thought might be helpful to the cart.

As they rounded the corner to go into the frozen aisles, they watches Youngbae pushing Daesung around in the cart, followed by a pouting Seungri. The rappers just stared as the others disappeared into a different aisle.

“Looks like at least 2 of them are having fun.”

“Poor panda. Doubt he’d be much better with us, we’re being boring.”

Jiyong laughed. “We are not boring, we’re being efficient.”

“Babe, that’s boring.”

Jiyong swatted him on the hand, causing him to laugh. “Are we almost done with our part of the list?”

Seunghyun looked at the paper in his hand and pursed his lips. “Yeah, looks like we just need to go to a different store because they were out of the right kind of tomatoes and they didn’t have the onions you wanted.”

“Hm. Well, let’s go track those yahoos down and pay.”

Jiyong and Seunghyun found the others and went to the checkout. Seunghyun and Jiyong drove to another store, but had the others go home to start preparing some of the food.

By the time they got home, Daesung was in charge of the kitchen and had the other 2 on track.

“Found the last things.”

Jiyong handed the produce to Bae when he reached for it. “What can we do?”

Daesung set them to work on making a gargantuan bowl of potato salad.

^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^

Early the next afternoon, they all were in the kitchen finishing up a few dishes and getting excited about meeting their neighbors.

“So, what all did we get to drink? Did we get enough?” Jiyong inquired as he put the lid on a bowl of fruit salad.

“Uh, we got a few different kinds of pop, like Dr. Pepper,Mountain Dew, and Coke. And we got a few kinds of juice too. And we bought beer for the adults to have with dinner if they want it.” Seungri replied as he put a plate of hamburgers he’d just formed into patties in the fridge.

The young rapper nodded. “That sounds good. And it’s warm today, so I think a lot of people will want to swim.”

Jiyong looked outside to where they had got tables set up and extra lawn chairs. “I hope we have enough places for people who want chairs.”

Daesung laughed. “If someone wants a chair they could always tell a kid to move and make them sit in the grass.”

Jiyong shrugged. “I guess.” He felt strong hands on his shoulders.

“Baby, you’re overthinking this. It’ll be fun, everyone will have enough food and places to sit. Just relax.”

The younger man leaned back and sighed. “I know. It’s just that I can’t help but worry about if this will go well.”

“Hyung, you planned this really well, especially considering it was a last minute idea.”

Jiyong smiled at Daesung as the doorbell rang. “Oh crap, what time is it?”

“3:35. Well, let’s get this party started.” Seungri said waggling his eyebrows.

Hope you enjoyed! <3 I'd love some feeback? What do you like about my story? Let me know!