“His roommate?” Wonwoo sips on his morning coffee and takes a bite of the day-old cookies. It’s a shame that no one got to eat them fresh because they’re amazing, but it’d be more of a shame for them to go to waste. Jeonghan won’t be in until after lunch. He says it’s jetlag, Mingyu thinks it’s just because he’s taking advantage of someone covering the morning shift, “He should be out of town.”

          “He said he came back over the weekend.”

          Wonwoo shrugs, “I don’t know that much about him. I know he’s a local and that he’s a writer, but that’s about it.” Not that he’s ridiculously good looking? No? Okay.

          “Are they a thing?” Mingyu tests. And fails.

          Wonwoo catches on immediately and grins ear to ear, “A thing?” The next sip (slurp) of coffee is obnoxiously loud and drawn out, “Like, domestic?” Mingyu wanted to hear the word ‘dating’. ‘Domestic’ takes it a step further and he knows that Wonwoo’s just toying with him at this point, “I don’t know. Seungcheol comes to studio showcases sometimes. He doesn’t really talk to anyone aside from Minghao and Jihoon. For the last few months, he’s been stopping by more frequently.” He snickers, “I see Soon’s plan to have you drive Minghao home failed. He probably didn’t account for Seungcheol being in town.”

          “Doesn’t he have his own car?”

          “Oh, he does. It’s busted though. Seungcheol was supposed to fix it, but he went on vacation for a few weeks so Hao’s been taking the bus and carpooling with Soonyoung since he passes his apartment on the way home.” Mingyu doesn’t like several things about those words. One, the fact that Seungcheol is some artistic writer who looks super hot and can also fix cars is just unfair. Two, Minghao lives with this Fabio-esque fantasy man from bad romance novels. Three, Wonwoo probably knows Minghao better than he lets on. And four, who told Wonwoo he could give Minghao a nickname?

          “Great.”

          “You seem extra curious about him today. Did any part of Soonyoung’s plan work?” he smiles into the rim of his pantone mug.

          Mingyu looks at him with tired eyes, “I’m not sure what Soonyoung is planning, but I’m not that curious-”

          “With the bold offer you made last night, you sure made it seem like you care a whole lot.” He has Mingyu there. There’s no denying that the offer was out of pure bias, “So, Soon and I have a bet going. Winner gets back massages every night for the week.” Mingyu waits for the bet, trying to give Wonwoo the most frustrated eyes he can muster. He’s not very excited that his pressing matter of righting wrongs has somehow turned into a lovers’ feud, “Did you get his number?”

          He rolls his eyes and almost his entire upper body in exasperation. These two will be the end of him; he wants to curse, “No. I didn’t. He told me to get it from you.”

          “Damn.” Clearly, Wonwoo had faith in his non-existent confidence in front of Minghao, “But did you at least ask?”

          “No. He just told me to get it from you.” He makes sure to enunciate the sentence with scrutiny just to ensure that the shorter man understood every word. Wonwoo winces and pinches his brow dramatically before pulling his phone out of his pocket and tapping here and there. He turns the screen to show Mingyu Minghao’s contact card to add into his own phone’s address book. Mingyu punches in the numbers meticulously, but most of his attention is on the big, smiley profile picture. That was a face he hadn’t seen in a long time if ever. “He looks happy.” Mingyu immediately wants to vacuum up the words he let slip.

          Wonwoo flips the phone’s screen to take a look, forgetting about Minghao’s caller ID photo. He’s more focused on how frantic Mingyu is about his last comment, “Oh, this? I took it a couple years ago when they won their first competition together. Honestly, I only have Minghao’s number for emergencies and for when I can’t contact Soonyoung. We aren’t that close.”

          ‘Aren’t that close’ his .

          Soonyoung and Minghao have been friends for at least a few years and Wonwoo expects Mingyu to believe that he knows more about him than he does. That sounds like a bunch of hoopla.

          The afternoon rolls in quietly and Mingyu intentionally stays an hour later just to be there when Jeonghan meets Wonwoo. These two have made Mingyu’s work-life hell in their own unique and fun ways. Jeonghan, of course, asks about the ring, about the stars, and about why Wonwoo moved to town and is ecstatic to find out the reason why. The older male already finds Soonyoung to be the most precious thing when he asks to see a picture of him and Wonwoo cringes when he realizes that the only pictures he has of Soonyoung are incredibly personal ones. Not those kinds of personal ones, but the kinds where the blonde is spooned up in a mountain of blankets with only his head poking out or ones where Soonyoung has a flower crown on (to which Wonwoo admits that he’s the one who made it). All the other photos are of them together in different, odd places.

          This is Mingyu’s first time seeing the photos as well.

          After meeting Soonyoung in person, he’s not surprised to see that all the monumental photos aren’t taken at your typical tourist locations. There’s one from when they visited the nearby wildcat sanctuary and Wonwoo is in the background screeching from being attacked by a large locust. Soonyoung looks pleased. There’s one from when they went on a shopping trip to the city, but found a fork stuck in a tree in the IKEA parking lot and obviously had to take a picture with it. There’s one from their trip to Walmart last week when Soonyoung found an entire bouquet flattened on the pavement and decided to pose over it in a headstand. Wonwoo’s head barely makes it into the frame and it’s evident they had to take the picture several times to get it right.

          “You two are disgusting.” Is Jeonghan’s only comment.

          Mingyu couldn’t agree more. He also wants to curdle into a puddle and vomit at the same time. Wonwoo and Soonyoung are grossly compatible and he can tell that before they’re a romantic couple, they are best friends.

          The two get along well from what Mingyu can see before he leaves. Wonwoo and Jeonghan aren’t particularly loud or extroverted, so it works nicely in their workplace dynamic of calm deviance. Wonwoo probably isn’t the type to get super worked up over Jeonghan’s practical jokes and Jeonghan doesn’t mind having more serious chats on occasion. Joshua is happy to have Jeonghan back in the office since they’ve been working together since day one and the familiarity is welcomed back with open arms.

          Jeonghan stops Mingyu before he can leave the lobby, dropping a little package in his hand.

          When Mingyu gets into his car, he opens to tiny box to find that there’s a little bottle inside, filled with star-shaped sand and a few miniature shells of varying colors. The outside is painted with little waves and clouds. Mingyu’s almost revolted that there’s glitter on the lid where a pearl sits glued down. The micro-glitter rubs off on his fingertips just from holding it. Sure, he could have probably bought the same thing off Etsy for the same markup, but he appreciates the thought. Jeonghan knows that Mingyu isn’t the type for material things and because he doesn’t like clutter, large gifts aren’t the best. Arguably, buying Mingyu a tiny vile of sand instead of, say, a fridge magnet isn’t the best tourist-gift, but, hey, at least it isn’t a jar of air.

          He hangs it up on his rearview mirror next to his high school and college graduation tassels.

          He’s pretty sure that Jeonghan got the same thing for Wonwoo, too, knowing that there would be a new employee when he got back. Seokmin’s the one to receive the pretty fridge magnet and a little stack of photos that Jeonghan took of the coast. He always plays favorites. Joshua gets a bigger box, one that Mingyu would have felt troubled to receive. It’s about the size of a tissue box, but it sounded heavy and must’ve taken up quite some space in his luggage to transport home. Joshua just smiles up at him from his chair, spinning around to kick his legs out.

          Those two have had some sort of cat and mouse game going on since Mingyu can remember. However, something has changed in their dynamic since Jeonghan’s returned from his vacation. For lack of better description, it feels like they’re both tiptoeing around each other, careful not to fight or bicker. He can tell than Joshua is happy to have his longest-standing employee back in the clinic, but today just feels off. They usually pal around and throw pens at each other, flick paper footballs across the lobby. Sometimes Jeonghan will put Joshua in a headlock and sometimes Joshua will lock Jeonghan in the breakroom when he naps during his lunch break. Today they’re being professional.

          Jeonghan’s picking a piece of lint out of Joshua’s hair while he’s taking a call and straightening out his bangs, making some comment about how Joshua’s a mess if he’s not around. When Joshua hangs up, it seems like some air of normalcy has returned to them because the manager kicks Jeonghan in the after opening his present. 

          Mingyu never found out what was inside the box.