Year 1

They meet for the first time at the Registrar’s office. Minseok’s scholarship comes in late and he is forced to register for classes in person instead of online. Luhan is an international student and doesn’t even have the option of registering online.

All it takes is both of their names being called to separate counters at the same time, an unfortunate collision that knocks Luhan flat on his , and a cool “No problem, man” muttered in Mandarin in response to Luhan’s tentative and overly formal “Thank you” in stuttering, clearly non-native Korean, and the two are friends for life. Minseok pipes up to help out when the lady behind Luhan’s counter doesn’t even try to understand the Chinese boy’s heavily accented request for English 101 at noon. Luhan grins widely when he hears Minseok register for the same class at the same time and makes sure to suggest a really good and authentic Chinese hole-in-the-wall for lunch on him to express his thanks.

“You didn’t have to,” Minseok mumbles around a mouthful of mapo tofu. It’s delicious, of course.

“You didn’t have to help me either,” Luhan counters smoothly, like he’s expecting Minseok to be so bashful.

Minseok swallows the bite he’s been chewing and flashes his gums at Luhan in an enormous smile once his mouth is empty. He has a chili flake stuck between two of his upper teeth but the overall sight is adorable and Luhan doesn’t even bother to say anything because he decides Minseok’s cute no matter what food gets left behind in his teeth. Luhan’s basically a goner already, but then Minseok follows up his grin with an eager “I guess that just means next time is on me,” and suddenly Luhan’s in love.

He takes a napkin from the table and holds it out. “You’ve got something here,” Luhan says, but he doesn’t give Minseok the chance to shut him out in embarrassment before he adds, “And I’d love that. I’ve been looking for someone to show me the true gems of Korean cuisine since I got here.”

Luhan later finds out from Jongdae, his roommate and a close friend of Minseok’s from high school, that Minseok can barely make cup ramen without burning off his eyebrows and as such is possibly the worst choice for a food tour guide. They do eat an inordinate amount of ramen that semester, but there isn’t much else for poor college students to binge on when they’re up and cramming for midterms at ungodly hours of the early morning.

“I’m going to look like a chipmunk in the morning,” Luhan moans this complaint with his face pressed into the stuffed bear that always sits on Minseok’s bed. “Too much sodium. So bloated.”

“Welcome to my life,” Minseok teases with far too much wit for how little sleep they’ve gotten recently.

Luhan pouts. “Stop being funny,” he commands, “I’m too tired to laugh.”

Sehun sits up in bed and squints hard at Minseok’s corner of the room. “I’m too tired for all the talking you’re doing,” he whines, sounding every bit like the maknae he is. “Either get out or go back to studying, but I swear to God, Luhan, Dae and I will have on your bed if you don’t shut up.”

That’s far too much information for either Minseok or Luhan; also, Luhan’s bed is sacred. They stop talking and return to their books, and if Minseok’s head is now resting against Luhan’s thigh and Luhan’s fingers are running through Minseok’s hair, there’s no one to notice except Sehun and he’s already fast back asleep.

Midterms come and go. They both pass in all their classes but Sehun, who’s in English with them, doesn’t do as well as he hopes and goes to their professor to request a tutor.

Professor Park is more than happy to help. “You’re friends with Kim Minseok, aren’t you?” They’re roommates, actually, so Sehun feels like friends is appropriate only when loosely applied but agrees with a polite nod anyway. “I probably shouldn’t be sharing this information with you,” Professor Park Chanyeol pauses to wonder under his breath if grades are confidential, “but he set the curve for the midterm. I’m sure he’d be happy to help you.”

“Minseok’s too busy studying with Luhan,” Sehun grumbles. He already knows that Minseok’s only going to tutor him if Sehun comes up with a good enough bribe—or else convinces Luhan that it’s a good idea—and he doesn’t even bother this time to keep his thoughts to himself.

“Luhan in our class?” Professor Park wants to know. His smile is a little creepy and he seems very excited when Sehun murmurs a confirmation, but Sehun’s too caught up in his brainstorming to notice. “I didn’t realize,” Chanyeol says and Sehun regains his senses then, but it’s too late and Chanyeol’s already planning to make Minseok and Luhan partners for the end-of-semester project that he always assigns instead of a final exam.

He doesn’t always make class time for his students to work in their assigned pairs, but Chanyeol’s got the idea of Minseok and Luhan together stuck in his head now and it simply won’t leave him alone. The students are happy for the extra time they get to work; Chanyeol is happy to lounge at his desk and peek surreptitiously at his newest OTP over the papers he’s pretending to grade; Minseok and Luhan are happy that neither one of them is stuck working with Sehun. Really this whole situation is a win-win(-win), and when December rolls around and the due date draws nearer, Minseok and Luhan spend a lot of time with their ankles tangled under library tables and a steaming hot mocha shared between them when they decide to study at the campus café.

“They’re definitely dating,” Chanyeol gushes to his colleague and boyfriend, Baekhyun, who’s sitting on his lap and chewing absentmindedly on the straw that’s sticking out of his mango smoothie. They’re coincidentally in the same café as Minseok and Luhan and now Chanyeol is actually grading papers while Baekhyun peaks down at his boyfriend’s work every once in a while to offer a snarky comment about Chanyeol’s handwriting.

“You should have been a doctor,” he tells Chanyeol after a particularly illegible note is scrawled in the margin of one of the essays. Normally Chanyeol would pout and Baekhyun would end up appeasing him with kisses, but Minseok gets a bit of foam on his upper lip and when Luhan uses his thumb to wipe it off before sticking that same thumb into his mouth to the foam clean, Chanyeol almost falls out of his seat.

“You’re distracted,” Baekhyun whines then, not liking how Chanyeol’s fan-girling moment practically sent him falling off Chanyeol’s lap and onto the floor.

Chanyeol repeats himself, “They’re definitely dating,” and all Baekhyun can do is sigh.

“Just you wait,” Chanyeol warns his boyfriend as he puts his pen down, wraps his long arms around Baekhyun’s waist, and pulls the smaller man close. “They’re both Lit majors, if I remember correctly. Three months teaching them in the same Classics 101 course next semester and you’ll be shipping them too.”

Baekhyun’s pretty sure he’ll be doing anything but, actually, but Chanyeol’s so earnestly into the idea of the two students dating that Baekhyun doesn’t have the heart to keep arguing with him and so he stops. This act of love works out in Baekhyun’s favor anyway because Chanyeol ends up being totally right. Baekhyun spends three months teaching Minseok and Luhan and ends the semester swearing that there’s something going on between the two.

Summer hits with a literal heat wave and Baekhyun spends the months they have off work comparing notes with Chanyeol and trying to rope their other friends and colleagues into shipping the XiuHan couple too.

Year 2

They’re sophomores now and, honestly, Luhan can’t really believe it. If anyone told him when he was a sophomore in high school that he’d survive this long, he probably would have outright laughed in their face. As it is, he barely makes it to midterms in late October and decides that his survival is still questionable at this point.

Luhan and Minseok don’t have classes together this semester because Minseok decides sometime mid-July that Literature just doesn’t do it for him. He ends up switching to Communications since the credits from his first year transfer over, and they choose to room together anyway so they still see each other all the time. This leaves Jongdae living with Sehun in the second room of their two-room, four-person suite; they’ve got a kitchenette this year too so now instead of ankles tangled under library tables, its Luhan’s feet on Minseok’s lap hidden under the tiny excuse for a table that’s the only thing they could find to fit the space. They don’t really go the café anymore either because Luhan buys Minseok a percolator for his birthday and they’re no less poor college students this year than they were the year before.

Chanyeol still grades papers with Baekhyun resting distractingly on his thighs but he and his boyfriend unfortunately only teach intro courses to freshmen. Professors Park and Byun content themselves with gossiping about Minseok and Luhan to the teachers of Poetry 201 and Public Speaking 101, Professors Kim and Do, respectively. Kyungsoo couldn’t care less about the dating lives of his students, but Jongin, who comes from a very conservative background and never had the chance to be one half of a campus couple, lives vicariously through Minseok and Luhan every time Luhan comes class. He completely abandons his syllabus and spends the entirety of the semester lecturing about love poems and reciting them to the students

“Professor Kim’s either a complete artistic genius or a total nutcase,” Luhan says to Minseok of his Poetry 201 professor when Jongin announces sometime in November that his students can either write a 15 page final essay on the Shakespeare sonnet(s) of their choice, or else select, memorize, video record, and confess with a sonnet of their choice to the person of their choice. The videos would be played on the last day of class and Jongin sincerely hopes that everything they’d learned about love over the course of the semester would help some poor lonely soul get lucky.

Luhan adopts Professor Kim’s lazy tone when he repeats Jongin’s words to Minseok. “He said, ‘It worked for me with my husband,’ like it wasn’t totally random and sort of inappropriate to be talking about his personal relationship to the entire class.” Luhan snorts and Minseok doesn’t voice the opinion that it’s sort of a cute idea for a final grade because he knows Luhan’s been disappointed by Jongin’s total deviation from the syllabus.

“You’re almost done,” Minseok comforts instead. “Just do what you have to for that A, and be done with him.”

Luhan slumps forward in his seat and burrows his face into the space between Minseok’s neck and shoulder. He groans and the vibrations against his skin make Minseok shiver. Sehun chooses that moment to enter their suite, shoots an annoyingly knowing look at Minseok because of their closeness, and slams his bedroom door on purpose just so Luhan will jump away from Minseok in surprise.

Minseok’s not surprised when Luhan chooses to write the paper, but he is surprised when his Public Speaking professor asks him about Luhan’s choice after class one day. As far as Minseok knows, there’s no connection between the two classes or the professors who teach them, so Minseok leaves the conversation feeling totally confused. This feeling is only exacerbated when Luhan comes home that same day and replies to Minseok’s story that, actually, Professor Kim asks about Minseok all the time. They’ve got the same last name so Luhan once assumed that maybe Minseok and Jongin were just somehow related, but now that he thinks about it, it is sort of weird that both of their professors are so interested.

“The faculty here is strange,” Minseok concludes to Jongdae. Luhan’s at office hours to consult about the first draft of his final paper, otherwise Minseok would be at lunch with him instead.

Jongdae’s taking poetry with Luhan as an elective and agrees. He reveals to Minseok that Jongin’s going to guest lecture sometimes for the course on media consumption that Minseok’s signed up to take in the spring and says, “Don’t worry, Min, they’ll get stranger.”

Minseok rolls his eyes at that because really, Jongdae’s still barely a sophomore himself, what does he know about the professors at their school?

But Jongdae actually knows a lot, apparently. On the days when Professor Kim isn’t guest lecturing, he’s sitting in the back like he’s a student himself. Then, when Minseok’s actual professor goes on maternity leave sometime in March, Jongin takes the class over for the rest of the semester.

“I’m not sure what someone with a doctorate in poetry can teach me about consumption,” he complains to Luhan when they spend a week at the beach together for spring break. Sehun and Jongdae are there too. “We barely learn anything in that class as it is.”

Sehun throws a bottle of sunscreen at him and it hits Minseok in the thigh with a loud smack. “We’re on holiday,” he whines. “Show some respect for my vacation.”

Luhan looks at Minseok and rolls his eyes. Jongdae grins before mussing Sehun’s hair while Sehun cries about Jongdae making him look ugly.

“Too late,” Luhan and Minseok chorus, and Sehun’s answering pout is far cuter than it should be. It’s one of the few times when Minseok can actually understand what Jongdae sees in his slightly younger boyfriend. Most of the time Sehun is a brat who whines when he’s not spoiled and complains when he is; but sometimes—albeit very, very rarely—Sehun’s adorable and Minseok, who personally hates it when someone pinches his own cheeks, wants to do exactly that to Sehun.

Their spring break is over before it really begins and suddenly their sophomore year is almost finished. Minseok makes a short film about the dangers of too much media consumption and presents it to his fellow students in lieu of taking a final exam. He uses Luhan as his sole actor and follows the Chinese boy all around Seoul for a day with a legitimate video camera in hand. They visit all the tourist spots Luhan has yet to see, get their obligatory shots of Luhan on his phone and missing all the beauty of Seoul, then spend the rest of their time at each place taking silly selcas and having the time of their lives together. Minseok gets an A for the project and he goes home for the summer with Luhan in tow, Jongin completely forgotten.

Jongin remembers Minseok and Luhan, though, and when he shows Minseok’s film to Kyungsoo he’s very satisfied with Kyungsoo’s “Ah, I see what you mean. They’ve got brilliant chemistry.”

Jongin responds with a fervent, “I know right?!” but has to call up Baekhyun and Chanyeol so they can go out for barbecue and gossip when that ends up being all Kyungsoo will say on the matter.

Year 3 (Sort of)

Its summer still and technically they aren’t juniors in university quite yet, but Minseok and Luhan run around Minseok’s home town like they own the place. Minseok’s parents absolutely adore Luhan—more than their own son does, possibly—but even they get tired of having the two boys around all the time.

Minseok and Luhan take day trips to see Jongdae and Sehun who are spending the summer on Jeju Island working as camp counselors for chaebol kids. They take day trips back to Seoul to see their school in the light of summer. They go back to the beach again.

Luhan calls up his parents to let him know he’s alive. They’ve barely got two weeks before classes start again and Luhan hangs up the call feeling nervous about his future. His parents told him he needs to start being more responsible and to start looking for a job or an internship or something to occupy his free time.

“They think you’re a bad influence on me,” he confides to Minseok . He’s forced to speak into the hard flesh of Minseok’s abs because he’s resting his head on Minseok’s stomach so when he turns his head to face Minseok Luhan’s met with a mouthful of bare skin.

Minseok chuckles lightly and his belly vibrates under Luhan’s head. He runs his fingers through Luhan’s hair, then lifts one of Luhan’s hands to kiss at the tips of each of Luhan’s fingers. “The absolute worst,” he agrees.

Luhan smiles and presses his own kiss into Minseok’s skin. His parents don’t know what they’re talking about.

There's a second part in the works (to be titled Quantum Entanglements) but this is the whole fic that was posted for the fest. When Part 2 is finished, I'll just post it as a sort of sequel instead of a second chapter here.