“Oh, yes, sure,” Luhan agreed flatly after Yifan trudged into the room and dove, face first, into the sea of pillows atop Luhan’s dorm room bed. “Please make yourself comfortable in my sacred space.”

Yifan waved a hand limply and released a muffled groan. Unimpressed, Luhan grabbed a neon green mini stapler, coincidentally the nearest item from off his desk, and chucked it at Yifan’s head.

“Get up, you oaf,” Luhan whined when he missed his target by a few inches and hit Yifan’s shoulder instead.

With a grunt of pain, Yifan finally lifted his head and cried, “I’m having a crisis here, Lu! Let me wallow.”

“You’ve just finished exams and winter holidays start tomorrow,” Luhan declared. “You’re not allowed to wallow.”

“Why is Yifan wallowing?”

Kyungsoo, with Baekhyun peeking over his shoulder, appeared in the doorway to ask this right as Luhan was saying, “Tonight we’re celebrating the end of exams, Fan; you’re not allowed to wallow.”

“I’ll wallow if I want to,” Yifan replied grumpily, returning his face to the solace of Luhan’s pillows. “My life is over, after all.”

Kyungsoo was about to repeat his earlier question—“Why is Yifan wallowing?”—but Luhan beat him to it.

“Ugh, fine, I’ll bite,” the Chinese boy conceded. “What happened?”

“I’m in love,” shared Yifan dreamily. A moment later his expression became distraught again. “And I’m royally screwed because of it.”

Something about his statement set Baekhyun giggling furiously into Kyungsoo’s nape. “Never would have pegged you for a bottom,” he chortled, voice rough from a cold that he’d contracted from Luhan and had apparently yet to get over. And actually, that explained why he’d been so uncharacteristically silent; Baekhyun wasn’t exactly known for being the most subdued of the three, after all.

At Baekhyun’s comment Kyungsoo started laughing too, though much more quietly, and Luhan quickly joined his boyfriends in making fun at Yifan’s expense. “Pegged,” he managed to repeat through his amusement. “Baek, you kill me.”

And this is why Yifan generally avoided going to Luhan for advice. The guy was his best friend—he’d come to study with Yifan in Korea and everything—but he was sort of a tool, and since he’d started dating Kyungsoo and Baekhyun, Luhan had been more than a little distracted.

“Guys,” Yifan said, trying to reign his three friends in before he lost their attention completely. When that didn’t work he tried again, just a little louder. “Guys!”

“Oh my god,” Luhan muttered, not trying particularly hard to keep Yifan from overhearing. “You’re so needy.”

Yifan rolled his eyes. “I’d go to Junmyeon with this if I could,” he said. “But you’re the only person I know who’s dating two people at once. If anyone can help, it’s you.”

With that it seemed that Yifan had finally arrested Luhan’s complete attention; Baekhyun and Kyungsoo’s too, apparently, because it was Baekhyun, and not Luhan, who rasped out “So who’re the unlucky bastards you’re pining after?”

Yifan resisted the urge to make a rude hand gesture, if only because he knew Kyungsoo wouldn’t hesitate to hit him for any perceived slight against either of Kyungsoo’s lovers. “They’re twins,” Yifan ground out, his self control slipping as he watched the matching grins on his friends’ faces grow. They were enjoying his suffering a little too much, in his opinion.

“Shut up,” he pouted about 30 seconds later when no one was saying anything and the smirks had yet to disappear. Kyungsoo, still hovering by the door, shrugged unapologetically, the movement of his shoulders jostling Baekhyun just enough to make the still-recovering boy feel ill. Face suddenly green, Baekhyun took a few shaky steps toward Luhan’s occupied bed, and Luhan was quick to unceremoniously shove Yifan to the floor when it became clear that Baekhyun wasn’t going to make it much farther.

“I’m not feeling too good,” Baekhyun groaned into the pillows that had, until just recently, been providing a similar service to Yifan. Speaking of, the Chinese boy hadn’t moved from where he’d fallen since Luhan had chosen his boyfriend over his best friend. Yifan considered commenting that he wasn’t feeling too good either; after all, he’d bared his heart to them and they’d been of absolutely no help. Rather than risk Kyungsoo’s wrath, though, Yifan again reconsidered and instead reached up to pat blindly at Baekhyun’s thigh.

He hoped the gesture came across as conciliatory, and that neither Luhan nor Kyungsoo would think Yifan was trying to cop a feel. Thankfully Baekhyun’s boyfriends understood Yifan’s action for what it was, and, after Kyungsoo disappeared to search through Luhan’s bathroom cabinets for cold medicine, Luhan’s attention returned to the real problem at hand: the sudden, and problematic, existence of Yifan’s love life.

“So,” he prompted, his grin returning now that Baekhyun was tucked in and being looked after. “Twins, huh?”

Yifan nodded, feeling as miserable as Baekhyun looked. “A boy and a girl. They're perfect, both of them, and I just—” he floundered helplessly for a moment, in which time he also opened and closed his mouth repeatedly like a fish out of water. “What do I do?”

Luhan seemed entirely unperturbed by Yifan’s situation. “You don’t even know they’re both interested,” he pointed out as he ran his fingers through his boyfriend’s hair and tried to get him to succumb to sleep.

His efforts proved in vain, however, when Baekhyun’s eyes opened slightly and the sick boy said, “Or that even one of them likes you.”

Yifan didn’t like to think about his love being unrequited—just that there were two objects of his affection was trouble enough. He glared between his friends and remarked drily, “That was very unhelpful, Baekhyun.” Then, to Luhan, “I think you two spend too much time together.”

Baekhyun smiled but dutifully closed his eyes again when Luhan gave his ear a light tug of reprimand. As Luhan turned back to Yifan, the look in his eyes was one of fond exasperation.“I can never spend enough time with this one,” he whispered lovingly down at Baekhyun, smiling at Kyungsoo when he finally returned with a bottle of Nyquil and adding, “Kyungsoo too.”

Kyungsoo raised an inquisitive eyebrow. He mouthed “What about me?” at Luhan, who shot his boyfriend a hand heart and winked. Yifan, even more depressed by the three’s obvious happiness, huffed in exasperation and finally stood up from the floor.

“I’m leaving,” he told Luhan and Kyungsoo. He kept his voice low so as to not wake a now softly snoring Baekhyun, and waved goodbye over his shoulder as he crept out the dorm room door.

“Wait!” Luhan called out after his friend, and followed Yifan out into the dorm’s tiny common area. “Come out with me tonight. There’s a party over at Yeol’s and Soo says he’s going to spend the night here so Baek’ll be taken care of. If we’re lucky, your baes will be there.” Yifan grimaced at the slang term but found himself unwittingly nodding along with Luhan’s suggestion.

“And if they’re not there?” he asked, slowly warming to the idea of forgetting his love problems, if only for a night, “Then what?”

Luhan winked; the sight was repulsive and Yifan stuck out his tongue at his best friend’s aegyo. “Then we’ll find you someone else to get lucky with.”

“You’re gross,” groaned Yifan, but he was smiling.