3:03 in the morning and Kyungsoo is up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and fumbling with the latch of his front door. He should be used to the early morning knocks at the door by now but he isn’t, so when the door swings open to reveal his extremely tipsy former-classmate-turned-friend-that-takes-advantage-of-his-free-food his mouth is open and ready to .

“Hyung,” Jongin says, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder and a pair of dance shoes dangling from his neck, “let me stay with you.”

It’s so different from his usual faked abashedness and giggling fits when he’s drunk that Kyungsoo actually steps aside without saying a word. While Jongin collapses on the smelly green couch like he owns the place, Kyungsoo shuffles to the kitchen in his bunny slippers and flannel pajama pants. There he boils a kettle of water and reaches into his Jongin cupboard to extract the last tin of green tea leaves he got as a present from Luhan at the last high school reunion.

By the time the tea is ready Kyungsoo is completely awake and Jongin’s eyes are just beginning to droop. This is a phase Kyungsoo knows well in the chronology of Jongin’s drunkenness--sleep. He hands over the mug, waiting a full five seconds before letting go to make sure Jongin’s got a good grip on it.

Jongin sips the tea carefully and wrinkles his eyes, a signal for Kyungsoo to rub at his temples and whisper sweet reassurances into his ear. By the time the tea is half gone Jongin is dead to the world and Kyungsoo reaches under the couch for the quilt he put there after around his fourth early morning awakening. It takes a while for him to place his limbs around Jongin’s comfortably because Jongin seems to have forgotten the shoes around his neck and this throws off all of Kyungsoo’s usual arrangements.

This is how easily the two of them come to live together, easy as a cup of Chinese tea and an Afghan quilt whose origins are still unknown.

…

3:03 in the morning and Kyungsoo wakes up from a dream about high school. As he thinks about it he turns over and his back is exposed to the cool winter air. Immediately he snuggles back into the warm body next to him and sighs in contentment, closing his eyes again.

He remembers the dream very well. EXO was together again, lounging on the untouched green grass in the front of the South Meadow School for the Arts and talking about how next year they would be graduating and moving on to places like Juilliard and Yale. They were saying how in ten years they would still be the best of friends, still with the dreams that held them together, and when Kyungsoo remembers this his heart feels a pang of regret.

It’s funny that such a dream would come at a time like this, though, because Kyungsoo can safely assume that a month earlier the memories of what he had once worked so hard for would have sent him into a depression for weeks. Now though, he can just as safely say that he’s perfectly happy with what he has, and no amount of dreaming could make him want to leave it.

He feels sleep beginning to creep back up on him when a hand reaches through the darkness and pulls Kyungsoo’s torso closer to its owner. Kyungsoo rolls and makes a muffled grumbling noise as his face collides with a set of shoulders.

“Why are you awake all of a sudden?” he accuses.

“My heart is connected to yours,” the younger boy sings out. “When you wake, I wake. When you cry, I cry. When you--”

“Or you’re just as light of a sleeper as I remember,” Kyungsoo offers. “Or that.”

“Well why did you ask me if you knew the answer?” Jongin pouts.

“Maybe I figured out the answer while I was talking to you,” Kyungsoo retorts, wrapping a leg around the other’s and squeezing Jongin’s midsection to his chest, filling a space he didn’t know was there.

“That’s stupid.”

“You’re stupid.”

“Your mother is stupid.”

(The next morning as he towels his hair dry Kyungsoo swears he’s not going to allow another early-morning argument/tickle match--he’s going to get Jongin good and tired before bed.

The expression on Jongin’s face earns him a pillow in the face.)

…

3:03 in the morning and Kyungsoo is listening to strange noises coming from his kitchen, almost what it would sound like if a certain someone was trying to get a head start on that birthday breakfast he promised. There’s the clanging of pans and the fizz of cooking spray and the whistling of a teakettle and the sizzle of frying pancakes and amidst it all the insistent beeping of a timer.

It’s been two months since Jongin showed up at his doorstep with a hyung and a let me stay with you but it already feels like life couldn’t be any other way. The four hangers in his small closet reserved for Jongin’s clothing, the extra pair of shoes by the doorway, the new way the mattress curves now, all seem completely necessary to the functioning of Kyungsoo’s everyday life.

He still hasn’t asked what turned their relationship suddenly from old acquaintances and occasional makeout partners to regularly ing roommates, but he supposes it’s something to do with the classifieds on the bed stand and the banishment of the dance shoes to the back corner of their shared closet.

He doesn’t know why he hasn’t asked either, but he supposes it’s something to do with the way he looks forward to finding a familiar face in his bed and spending afternoons watching The Big Bang Theory marathons on the now broken couch.

…

3:03 in the morning and Kyungsoo sits up in bed when he hears a key turn in the front door. There’s the squeak of sneakers on wood and then the shuffle of slippers on tile as Jongin walks into the kitchen, tossing his duffel bag on the couch.

Kyungsoo rubs his eyes in an effort to stay awake but Jongin takes too long and by the time he climbs into bed Kyungsoo is drifting off to sleep.

“Are you awake?” Jongin whispers, and Kyungsoo remembers why he drank a cup of coffee before bed when he hates coffee.

“How did the audition go?” he asks anxiously, turning over onto his stomach.

“I made it,” Jongin says, in a voice that is still disbelieving. “After all these years, I finally made it. We’re leaving for London next week.”

Kyungsoo doesn’t know whether to feel happy for Jongin’s success or sad that he’s leaving. The only thing he feels right now is disbelief and a faint sense of annoyance, that a kid that’s younger than him can just waltz into his life, turn the container that holds everything in place on its side so that all of Kyungsoo’s hopes and dreams start trickling out, and then just leave.

…

3:03 in the morning and Kyungsoo is up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and fumbling with the latch of his front door. He should be used to the early morning knocks at the door by now but he isn’t, so when the door swings open to reveal his extremely worldly friend-turned-boyfriend-lover-roommate-bane-of-existence-only-reason-for-existence his mouth is open and ready to .

“You lost your key again,” he states.

Jongin shrugs. “So what if I did?”

Kyungsoo bites back the so maybe someday some crazy Brazilian is going to break into our apartment one day and steal your precious phone case collection.

“I thought your flight was delayed,” he says instead. “You could’ve called.”

“I didn’t want to wake you,” Jongin replies, grinning.

Kyungsoo stares in disbelief. “And what am I now?”

“No, hyung,” Jongin says, rolling his eyes, “I wanted you to be sleepy when I did this.”

He takes one step forward and closes the distance between them, shutting the door behind him. Dropping his bag to the floor, Jongin presses his lips to Kyungsoo’s and whispers something inaudible. He smells like mint and detergent and his lips taste like beeswax lip balm. Kyungsoo opens his mouth, shuddering, and his hands work their way around Jongin’s waist and to the small of his back.

It’s all too familiar, and when Jongin’s fingers ghost over that same soft spot on Kyungsoo’s hipbone, Kyungsoo can only think about how unfair it is that the same cheeky cuteness can infuriate him and then make him want to kiss the life out of its owner.

He could complain, but he doesn’t. After all, there’s only one person in all the world he’ll put up with at 3:03 in the morning.