He came to terms with the fact last night.

Yes, Mingyu was extremely attractive. Like, really, really attractive. And yes, Wonwoo was attracted to him. Wonwoo figured that meant he wasn’t like... 100% straight, but he was still like 99.9% (okay maybe 99.4%) straight so he still insisted that he was straight to Jeonghan, even after he finally admitted that he was attracted to Mingyu.

Mingyu was just an exception to the rule.

But no, he didn’t want to date Mingyu. He wasn’t jealous of Minghao or anything. It was just physical attraction, which would fade easily with time, he thought. That gave him reassurance to just it up and stop being a self-loathing and awkward douchebag because of it.

And so, the next time Wonwoo saw Mingyu the following morning, he apologized for avoiding him the previous day, and told him that he was willing to forget about the bed thing too. Mingyu seemed relieved.

“So, how was your date yesterday?” Wonwoo asked him casually, trying to create conversation between them that would make them truly forget about that stupid encounter.

“It went well,” Mingyu said, his eyes brightening.

“So, are you guys like… official now?” Wonwoo asked, unsure of how else to put it.

“Well, I asked him to be my boyfriend, and he called me a desperate motherer. I took that as a rejection, but then a minute later, he asked the desperate motherer himself. He’s so… precious,” Mingyu said, smiling vividly. Wonwoo wondered if Mingyu was saying that sarcastically, but he didn’t seem sarcastic.

“Well, congratulations,” Wonwoo said, suppressing a laugh. “Glad it worked out.”

“Thank you. But seriously, don’t tell anyone, okay? He’s still in the closet.”

“I won’t.”

“I can’t tell anyone else. He only let me tell you because you’re my roommate and you’re bound to notice,” Mingyu said. “But if I tell anyone else, he threatened to cut my off, I think he was serious.” Mingyu was smiling as he said it.

“How… cute,” Wonwoo said with a slight grimace, causing Mingyu to burst out laughing.

“He really is,” Mingyu said when the laughter died down. “Think of his face saying it. So ing cute.”

Mingyu was smiling stupidly as he said it, and Wonwoo found it amusing how smitten he seemed with this baby-faced little Chinese dude with a dirty mouth.

He was happy for Mingyu, truly. He liked seeing Mingyu so delighted. Somehow, it made Mingyu so much more attractive in Wonwoo’s eyes.

-

Minghao and Mingyu had been dating for about a week now, and Mingyu and Wonwoo ironically grew closer because of it. Because Wonwoo was the only one who knew about the relationship, he was the only one who could listen to Mingyu rave on and on about him. If there was one word that would sum up what Mingyu thought of Minghao, that word would be ‘cute.’

Most of these rants about Minghao took place at night, when Wonwoo was in his sleeping bag and Mingyu in his bed. It seemed like Mingyu was sometimes itching to talk to Wonwoo about him, and Wonwoo always gave him the time of the day, because, well, it was entertaining (except when Mingyu shamelessly brought up their life. “Too much information!” Wonwoo would yell, and Mingyu would laugh out loud but continue saying it anyways).

Besides Minghao’s cuteness, their second most-talked-about thing would be that stupid heater that Mingyu was thinking of replacing.

Because Wonwoo burned himself twice sleeping next to that thing, Mingyu had resolved to move furniture around so that Wonwoo was no longer right beside it. And so, he moved around his bed and a couple of cupboards to make space elsewhere, so that Wonwoo was out of the way, but this time, Mingyu was closer to it.

Turning the heater off made it too cold to sleep, and turning it on made it a little too hot. And so Mingyu often complained about how hot it was and about how much he hated the stupid heater and about how expensive heaters were.

Sometimes, Wonwoo would doze off in the middle of Mingyu’s rants against the heater or his soliloquys proclaiming Minghao the cutest boy in the world, but Mingyu didn’t mind. It seemed like they were good enough friends that something like that was not really taken personally.

And honestly, Wonwoo liked having Mingyu as a roommate. It was fun. Mingyu was a fun person to be around, not to mention attractive.

Yes, Wonwoo’s attraction to Mingyu remained intact, but of course this attraction never really took form or manifested in any way. Wonwoo never talked about it, never even gave as much as hint to Mingyu about it. It never manifested except in Wonwoo’s private fantasies.

-

Wonwoo’s class was cancelled, and so he decided to go back to the dorm to catch up on lost sleep. He knew that Mingyu was also in class at this time, and so he looked forward to sleeping on the bed and not the floor

But as he was making his way back, he spotted Minghao walking towards the building from afar. Minghao was not alone though, there was another boy with him.

Wonwoo would not have spared the two a second thought, if it were not for the fact they were holding hands. It was pretty strange, especially since the hand-holding seemed far from platonic. But Wonwoo did not want to jump to any conclusions. He just watched them for a while from far away.

But the more he watched the more convinced he was that something was so wrong. Not only the way they held hands, but from the way the other boy would just wrap his arms around Minghao. The way he looked at Minghao: with desire? It was strange.

Stranger still when Minghao took the boy’s hand and pulled him into the building. Wonwoo waited for a bit before following them discreetly.

He waited until Minghao’s door closed to make his way up the stairs. He stood outside the door, wondering if it were ethical to eavesdrop. In the end, he dropped all question of ethics and put his ear against the door.

It wasn’t really very helpful to eavesdrop, because they were speaking Mandarin. But Wonwoo kept listening anyways, until a few minutes later, he heard sounds that definitely confirmed Wonwoo’s original suspicions. If Minghao and that boy were only friends, then they were certainly friends with benefits.

With this new information in mind, the only thing Wonwoo could think of was how hurt Mingyu would be if he found out.

A/N: it might take a week for the next chapter but I’ll try to update earlier if i can I promise!