It’s been five hours, and still his answer refuses to match the one in the back of the textbook. Tao groans and drops his head into his hands, the heels of his palms pressed to his eyes to try and push his brain back into place. Two more hours. Just two more hours, and then he can go home.

“What’s this?”

Tao jolts upright, eyes blinking out of his hands in a sparkle of colours. There’s a coffee cup dangling in front of his face, and when he follows the hand holding it up the arm to its owner he sees Minseok grinning down at him.

“Oh! Hi. Hello. How’s it going?”

“It’s going,” Minseok says, which could mean anything, and nods at Tao’s textbook. “Statistics?”

“Calculus,” Tao sighs.

Minseok pulls a face and waggles the cup at him again. “Come on, I’m not gonna hold it all day.”

“You…” Tao frowns, blinks at the cup, and carefully takes it from Minseok. “You bought me coffee?”

“No,” Minseok says, “I bought myself coffee, and they made it wrong, so I got an extra.” He holds up the cup in his other hand, which is clearly much emptier than the one Tao now holds clasped under his nose.

“Mmm.” Tao takes a delighted sniff at the steam curling up through the hole. “My gain. What is it?”

“God knows,” Minseok says, dropping his bag off his shoulder and slouching down into the armchair opposite Tao. “But when I was like ‘is this the soy cappuccino?’ she was just like, ‘Oh. No. I’ll make it again.’ So I have no clue, but I figure I’d better not take the risk.”

Tao sniffs the steam again, then takes a careful sip.

“It’s-” he frowns, the foam off his lip, takes another mouthful. “It tastes like… coconut? It’s kinda good, actually.” Could do with some peppermint, though.

Minseok sticks his tongue out between his teeth, his nose wrinkled up in disgust. “Oh god, coconut milk. You’re welcome to it.”

“You don’t like it?”

“Coconuts were put on this earth to disappoint us. Chocolate, cereal, cookies - you think you’ve found something good and then bam, you get a mouthful of that . No thank you.”

“I like it,” Tao decides, with a big enough gulp to just singe the edge of his throat on the way down.

Minseok makes that face again, tongue between his teeth and top lip pulled up by the scrunch of his nose.

“You like soy?” Tao ventures into the silence that falls as Minseok swirls his cup around and takes a sip.

“Sometimes,” Minseok says. “Sometimes it tastes like cardboard. It’s always a gamble.”

“Why do you drink it, then?”

Minseok raises an eyebrow. “Take a wild guess.”

“Um.” Tao shrugs. “Dairy allergy?”

“Close enough,” Minseok toasts him with his cup. “Lactose intolerant.”

“Ooh, right. Is that why you drink iced Americanos?”

“No,” Minseok smirks, “I drink iced Americanos because I enjoy the taste.”

“How?” Tao shudders.

Minseok laughs, lip dragging off the edge of the cup. “I guess I just have a more sophisticated palate than you.”

Tao grimaces and shakes his head. “It tastes like cold poison.”

“I always take my poisons cold,” Minseok grins.

Tao watches him take another sip, impish and cocky around a mouthful of foam.

“You studying for exams?” he asks, when Minseok has the moustache off his lip.

“Nope. PhD, remember? I’m only in my first year, I’ve got more than two years before I have to defend my thesis.”

“Right, of course.” Tao shifts his calculus textbook off his knee. “So what are you doing in the library?”

“Trying to figure out what the to do my thesis on.”

“Oh!” Tao can’t help a surprised laugh. “You don’t know yet? Sorry if that’s a stupid question, I don’t know how PhDs work.”

“No, it’s fine.” Minseok slides down slightly in his chair, propping one foot up on the dilapidated pouffe between them and considering the ceiling as if a thesis topic will fall from the tiles. “It’s gotta be something new, right, I can’t just rehash other people’s work and call it a thesis. But all the things I can think of to do… they’d be so meaningless to me. I want to do work that’s actually groundbreaking. I want to get at the very core of what music is, I want to do something that starts a genre. I want to be Erik Satie, you know?”

“I don’t know who that is,” Tao admits.

Minseok glances at him out the corner of his eye, then begins humming a tune that Tao vaguely recognises.

“He was such an iconic influence on 20th Century minimalism,” Minseok sighs. “He wrote these weird little ditties, and they ended up shaping a movement. Piling the tears on with strings and clarinets is easy, but do you know how incredible it is to move someone’s heart in simple 3/4 on a piano?”

Tao doesn’t know.

“Anyway,” Minseok shrugs, “I want to do something like that. I just need to figure out what.”

“You gotta… I dunno, find inspiration?”

“Yeah.” Minseok smiles at the ceiling. “Maybe I need a muse.”

“Probably. Isn’t that what all the good artists have?”

“Yep.” Minseok raises his cup to his lips, then pouts and waggles it back and forth to hear the dregs flick against the sides. “The good artists also have more coffee. You wanna come with me?”

Tao casts a baleful look at his textbook. “I’m supposed to be studying.”

“How long have you been at it?” Minseok asks.

“Since nine.”

“Then you need a walk,” Minseok declares. “Come on.” He gets up, takes Tao’s stack of notes from the pouffe and hands them to him, then waits while Tao hurriedly tips everything into his bag and slings it over his shoulder.

“Where are we going?” Tao asks, as Minseok leads the way across the library to the back entrance, in the opposite direction to Tao’s usual cafe.

“Honey Heaven,” Minseok says, and holds the door open behind him so it doesn’t swing back into Tao’s face.

Tao baulks. “I can’t go in there! I’m an undergrad.” Honey Heaven is strictly for staff and postgraduate students only, and the waitstaff have been known to possess a sixth sense for Honours and Masters students trying to sneak in for a latte to go.

“I know,” Minseok says, “but there’s no reason I can’t go in there, get coffee, and drink it outside with you.”

“That’s true,” Tao says. He tries to keep the sigh out of his voice, but he thinks he probably still sounds a touch wistful. What he wouldn’t do for a sniff of those fabled apricot fudge brownies.

They cross the courtyard and Minseok leaves Tao at the door of Honey Heaven, the coconut cappuccino still clutched between his hands as the tinted glass door swings shut between them. Tao takes a sip, finds the coffee is now lukewarm, and settles for clasping his hands around it to soak in any lingering warmth from the cup.

It’s a nice day to sit outside, he thinks. This is the first time he’s left the library all day, and in that time the clouds have cleared and the sun has warmed the paving, baking away any lingering trace of the weekend’s waterblasting so that Tao can almost feel the heat of it through the soles of his shoes. The reflection of sun off the brick buildings renders the thin wool of his sweater almost unnecessary. Summer is truly on its way.

Minseok pushes through the door, rolling it open with his shoulder as he juggles a paper bag between the two plastic cups in his hands.

“Here.” He holds out his hands towards Tao who, slightly bewildered, attempts to somehow take the whole jumble from him while maintaining his hold on the coconut cappuccino.

“Wh-”

“I’ll swap you,” Minseok says, and takes the cappuccino. “Let’s get rid of this crap.” He prises the lid off the cup and tips the coffee out under the low hedge that sections off the Honey Heaven patio, then drops lid and cup both into the recycling bin against the wall. That done, he takes one of the cups back from Tao, leaving him with the other cup and the paper bag.

“Uh, here-” Tao offers them, but Minseok just shakes his head and takes a sip of his iced americano.

“Those are yours.”

“Mine?” Tao takes a second look at the cup. He was expecting another americano, but on further inspection this one has milk swirling through the coffee.

“Iced caramel latte. Did I guess right?”

“I.” Tao blinks at the tendrils of espresso rising through the ice, the layer of syrupy caramel at the bottom. The milk has only just been poured into the cup. This was not an accidental purchase. “Yeah. Yeah, this is good.”

“You didn’t really think I was going to buy myself Honey coffee and taunt you with it, did you?”

Tao ducks his head and grabs the straw to stir the layers together in the cup, the paper bag still clutched in his hand. “Thank you. What’s this?”

“Lunch,” Minseok says, unhooking the sunglasses from the collar of his T-shirt and sliding them onto his face. “Sugar makes the brain work.”

Curious, Tao peers into the bag and feels his jaw drop. Holy hell. Apricot fudge brownie. A great big slice of it. This is not a drill.

“Close your mouth,” Minseok says, “you look like your brain’s just fallen out.”

“It has,” Tao admits. “Thank you so much, I’m- I’m so hungry.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Minseok raises an eyebrow and leads the way towards the far edge of the courtyard, the side where the hill begins to fall away below you and you can see clear across the city. “You didn’t look like you’d moved all day, I was worried you were gonna grow roots or something and become part of that ty armchair.”

They drop down onto the grass at the end of the cobbled brick, where Minseok stretches out on his back like a starfish while Tao draws his gangly legs up towards his chest. For a moment they sip their coffee in silence; Honey Heaven truly does live up to its reputation, and Tao thinks peppermint mochas may have found a new rival. On that thought, he slides his phone out of his pocket and sends a text to Sehun.

i might do a phd just for the hh coffee

That done, he drops his phone next to his bag and rolls back to arrange himself next to Minseok, careful to avoid grass-staining his sweater.

“Finally, some sun,” Minseok mutters. “I was beginning to think the Seasonal Affective Disorder was gonna be all year round this year.”

Tao hums in agreement. “I can’t wait for beach days.”

“That’ll be nice,” Minseok sighs.

In the ensuing silence, Tao pulls the brownie out of its bag and takes a bite. “Ohmygod- mm!” He smacks a hand over his mouth a second too late as every single tastebud convulses in ecstasy.

“Are you okay there?” Minseok slides his sunglasses down his nose to squint at Tao, whose cheeks are now flaming.

“I just spat everywhere,” Tao mumbles.

Minseok laughs. “You’re not alone. First time I had a Honey Heaven panini I literally gleeked every time I opened my mouth.”

“It’s so good.”

“Mhm.” Minseok closes his eyes and leans back on his hands while Tao demolishes the brownie.

When every crumb is gone and the empty paper bag crumpled into the side pocket of Tao’s backpack, Minseok rolls onto his side and props his head up on one hand to look at him.

“What’s your plan for the rest of the afternoon? More study?”

Tao grimaces. “Yeah. Nose back to the grindstone, I guess. Try and keep myself awake long enough to memorise at least half the I need for Wednesday.”

Minseok pulls a sympathetic face. “The struggle is real.” He plucks a blade of grass and starts twisting it around his finger. “You want some help studying?”

“Huh?” For a moment Tao can’t think of any more intelligent response than a clueless blink. He can’t see what Minseok’s eyes are doing, but one eyebrow raises over the sunglasses and for some reason it warms Tao’s cheeks. “Don’t you have more important things to be doing?”

Minseok shrugs. “Not really. I’m just gonna end up spending the rest of my afternoon how I spent my whole morning: sitting at the piano, getting nothing done, staring into space devoid of any imagination and wondering why the I thought I could do a PhD. It’s what I’ve been doing for about a week and honestly I’m pretty sick of it. I might as well distract myself and spend that time musing instead.” He shrugs again, then sits up and stretches his arms over his head. “You ready to head back to the library?”

“Uh, yeah.” Tao scrambles to his feet and dusts off the back of his pants. “Ready when you are.”

“Sweet.” Minseok arches his back with an audible pop. “When I’m finished with you, you’re gonna have such good grades, you won’t know what hit you.”

Tao laughs and ducks his head, pulling his phone out of his pocket for something to do other than grin at Minseok. There's a text waiting for him from Sehun, and as he opens it three more buzz in.

wtf is hh coffee

wait

honey heaven??

did u sneak into honey heaven??? boi HOW

Tao grins and darts a glance at Minseok to make sure he’s not paying attention. Minseok is polishing his sunglasses on the front of his shirt and doesn’t seem to have noticed Tao’s glee.

no, he sends back as they head back into the library.

i just made a new friend.