The call came near midnight, the sound a shock to his senses. His head shot up from the papers that had become his temporary pillow, his eyes registering the name on the screen but his mind only catching up a few heartbeats after.

"Is it Jeonghan?" His tone came out unnaturally clipped as he answered. There was silence on the other end, a crackle of static, before a familiar voice came over the line, words clear but hesitation evident.

"Yah, Jisoo. Sorry." Jisoo sighed at the other person's tone, his fingers raking through his dark brown locks as he struggled for calm. He let the pause draw out for a moment, all the promises he made himself fighting for dominance in his head, but the words that left his lips negated them all.

As he knew it would.

"Where, Seungcheol?"

Seungcheol quickly rattled off an address, injecting apologies every so often (it wasn't his fault, really, but Jisoo didn't have the energy to reassure him at that moment.) He already had his keys in one hand and a jacket in the other by the time the other man had winded down enough for his reply to be heard.

"I'm coming. Make sure he doesn't do anything worse."

He was striding out of the doorway as he ended the call.

The place - a frat house, by the looks of it - wasn't that far from campus, thankfully. Still, the night air was biting as he stepped out of the car, and he instinctively wrapped his jacket tighter around his frame.

Move, Jisoo - the cold spurred him on as he headed up to the main door, sending Seungcheol a text to tell him he arrived. Already, he could hear the thrum of the bass, the jeers and shouts of inebriated college students through the walls. He grimaced, steeling himself before opening the door-

-a burst of sound, like he was wearing headphones and someone had suddenly turned it up to full volume.

The house was crawling with people, bodies flush against one another. He saw a few familiar faces in the crowd, but none of them belonged to the person he was looking for. Jisoo began making his way across the room, belatedly realizing how warm it would be in the thick of the crush - when a hand shot out from seemingly nowhere and grabbed his elbow.

"He's this way!" Seungcheol didn't bother with explanations, hauling the other boy towards another part of the house. Jisoo stumbled after him, quickening his pace slightly to match with Seungcheol's, though in the end he still lagged behind.

"What happened?" Jisoo yelled over the music, focusing on the back of Seungcheol's head rather than whatever was going on in shadowed hallways and secluded corners - was that Mingyu he just spotted?

"Jeonghan went overboard." Was Seungcheol's simple reply, and it took the other boy's startled yelp for Jisoo to realize his grip had tightened painfully on his.

"Sorry." Jisoo muttered, loosening his hold.

"I know you're upset Jisoo, hell you have every right to be, but maybe you can cut Jeonghan some slack - at least for now? The guy just failed his midterms, after all..." Seungcheol trailed off, seeing the look on Jisoo's face - stunned, if he had to hazard a guess; also furious, but that was harder to identify, and he couldn't really associate the emotion with the usually calm Hong Jisoo.

Still, Seungcheol's throat bobbed painfully as he swallowed, realizing only in that heartbeat the consequences of his careless statement.

Jisoo hadn't known.

And Jeonghan was going to murder him.

"Let's revisit that issue when all of us, I mean most of us, are sober, yes?" His sigh of relief was nearly audible when Jisoo nodded, though somewhat curtly. Seungcheol decided at that moment it would be in his best interest to keep his mouth shut for the rest of the way.

"Jisoo-hyung! Seungcheol-hyung!" Junhui straightened from his position against the wall, seeing the two older boys round the corner. He'd been assigned by Seungcheol to guard the door, and despite being somewhat tipsy himself, he thought he'd done a bang up job of it.

Jisoo's eyes softened somewhat seeing him, and he patted Junhui's shoulder in mute thanks. Nodding once more towards Seungcheol, Jisoo tried to steady his racing pulse before he pushed open the door.

"Urgh." Jeonghan groaned, his mind surfacing from its haze for a moment only to register that his head - nay, his entire body - was hurting. He tried sitting up, pushing sweat-soaked locks away from his forehead, only to register with a start that he was seated in the front seat of a car. A ing familiar car.

(The fact he recognized the dashboard, even in the dark, told Jeonghan he was still in too deep.)

"How do you feel?" Jeonghan exhaled out a breath, letting his eyes slide shut. Though Jisoo's question showed concern, there was no inflection in his tone - as if he just said it because it was expected of him, because he was the ing well-mannered Hong Jisoo.

"How do you think I feel?" Jeonghan countered, not liking the way his voice cracked at the end. God, just hearing him speak, after days on end of not seeing each other, and this is what it did to him. He was so ing hopeless.

"Regretful?" A rare note of dryness entered Jisoo's tone, and Jeonghan couldn't help but snort out in laughter. It soon transformed into a hacking cough, but once he got over his sudden fit they fell once more into painful, awkward silence.

"Why did you come get me?" He told himself he shouldn't ask if he couldn't bear to hear the answer, but the words left his lips unbidden. Jeonghan's fingers dug into the leather seat when Jisoo didn't reply, his heart hammering erratically against his ribcage - stupid, stupid Yoon Jeonghan...

"Seungcheol called me." Jisoo finally spoke, and Jeonghan should have left it at that, he should have...

"That's not what I meant." But he couldn't ing help himself, could he?

This time the silence was absolute and Jeonghan could add his chest to the list of things that were hurting.

"We're here."

Jisoo's voice was soft, but still it startled Jeonghan out of his drowsiness.

Jeonghan glanced out the window, his eyesight still adjusting to the sudden light. It seemed that 'here', as Jisoo so eloquently put it, referred to his dorm, and Jeonghan tried desperately not to think about how Jisoo would have brought him straight to his apartment before, where he'd often end up spending the night.

"Right. Thanks." It was an automatic, conditioned thing - Jeonghan turned towards him and leaned forward over the gearshift, only to freeze halfway at the look on the other boy's face.

"Forgot. Sorry." Even he could hear the bitterness in his mutter and he winced. He was about to draw away, his gaze already averting, before he felt Jisoo reach out to touch him, a featherlike brush of his fingers against his jaw.

How could that small point of contact break him and make him whole at the same time?

"Take care of yourself, Jeonghan." Too short, too short - already Jisoo had drawn away his hand, his eyes focusing on the street ahead, as if he couldn't get away fast enough.

Jeonghan nodded jerkily, hating himself for the sliver of hope that wormed its way into his heart. He knew it was petty, but he never claimed to be the mature one anyway in their relationship, and slamming Jisoo's door as he walked away gave him some much needed therapeutic healing.

"Where have you been, hyung?"

Jisoo only answered with an inarticulate sound of exhaustion, to which Jihoon raised a brow. He knew his friend well enough to know what - rather, who put that deep furrow between his brows, had drawn his face in strained lines.

"You should tell Seungcheol to stop calling you if something's up with Jeonghan. You can't protect him forever, Jisoo-hyung." Jihoon, as always, was perfectly blunt with his words, but Jisoo knew deep down he meant well. From their group of friends, he was probably the most patient in dealing with such statements, which probably led to Jihoon requesting him as a roommate.

"I know, Jihoon-ah. I know." Jisoo threw his jacket on his bed, an uncharacteristic gesture, and it was with a start that he realized that the jacket, in fact, was not his.

...

Their team was down by a few points. Normally, Jisoo had no vested interest in sports (especially basketball, for some unfathomable reason) but he would faithfully attend each one of Jeonghan's games, even if the other boy hadn't asked him to.

He was seated somewhat far off, but he swore he could still pick the blonde out - then again, Jeonghan's long hair was hard to miss but he was more of a romantic then and pegged it on love. If it were anyone else playing, he would have been completely bored already, but Jisoo couldn't help but hold his breath, leap up agitatedly from his seat, drum his fingers in an incessant beat against his thigh as they drew closer and closer, second by second, to the final winning score.

He remembered Seokmin screaming into his ear when Jeonghan's shot cleared the ring, Seungkwan grabbing his neck from behind and shaking it from sheer excitement. Despite the furor, his eyes were locked on a single figure, and when their gaze met across the hundreds of people there Jisoo knew he wasn't being fanciful.

It was love, the best one he ever had.

When Jisoo had run to meet him after the game, a cheer escaping his lips as soon as he saw him, the blonde had laughed and drew him into an embrace, which would have lasted the entire night had not he joked that Jeonghan smelled and felt all sweaty.

"Clean-freak." Jeonghan had , affection laced in his tone, and as they headed to the car so Jisoo could drive them to the celebratory dinner, Jeonghan had slipped his letterman jacket over his shoulders, to symbolize he said how all things went right for him on that day.

...

"You've got that look on your face again, hyung."

Jihoon's voice broke him from his reverie and Jisoo flushed in embarrassment, having been caught daydreaming by the younger male. Smiling weakly in his flatmate's direction, Jisoo grabbed the jacket from where he threw it and hung it, oh so carefully, at the back of his desk chair.

Whether it was wise or not, Jihoon made no comment.