Jongin’s Saturday morning begins with an abrupt wake-up call from Sehun.

                The loud, obnoxious ringtone of Cher Lloyd’s “Want You Back” blares into the heavy silence of the room, the ringtone compliments of Sehun himself. Jongin forces his eyes open with extreme effort and, recognizing the song, groans loudly and rolls over before attempting to drown out the noise with his pillow.

                Sehun calls him another two times before Jongin finally snatches up the phone and answers it. “What.”

                “Can you come pick me up now? I’m at Humberside,” Sehun yawns into the phone.

                Jongin blinks and sits up, a little more awake now. What was Sehun doing at their old high school? “Why are you at Humberside for? You live out in like, Ellesmere,” he says, rubbing his eyes.

                “Well some of the guys called me up and asked if I wanted to hang out and I said yes. The guys from our old class, not the guys from the clubroom,” Sehun clarifies. “Also is it cool if I take a shower at your house?”

                “Wait, did you just wake up? Where are you right now?”

                “…On a park bench.”

                Jongin groans. “What were you doing last night?”

                “…Um.”

                “Did you sleep on that park bench all night?”

                “…Um.”

                “On a scale of one to ten, based on how you look right now, how obvious would you say it is that you did not have a full night’s sleep in your bed last night?”

                “…Um.”

                Jongin groans again. “Kris is gonna kill you.”

—∞—

                Sehun doesn’t actually look to be in much of a bad shape once he’d showered properly and cleaned himself up a bit. According to Kris, Minseok and Tao had arranged to have makeup and wardrobe prepared for the photo-shoot as well, so he just ended up borrowing a clean hoodie from Jongin and slipped into the passenger seat of Jongin’s car armed with a cold water bottle and a pair of sunglasses.

                “At least now you don’t have to drive to my house,” Sehun says as they pull out of the neighbourhood and onto the major road.

                Jongin side-glares at him. “Dude, driving to your house would’ve actually made the trip to Scarborough a little more worthwhile. If Kyungsoo finds out that I drove all the way east just to pick him up he’ll think that he wasted my time and I don’t want to give him a weird guilt trip.”

                “I thought he was rooming with Luhan? Aren’t we picking him up too?”

                “He’s at his class at St. George, remember? He would’ve been the first person to pick up if you hadn’t slept on a park bench at Humberside.”

                “Or the last. You could’ve picked him up on the way back.”

                “…Never mind, just forget it.”

                Sehun stares. “You’re not mad, are you?”

                “You kind of woke me up about two hours earlier than I was planning to get up.”

                “Right, sorry about that. Wanna get some coffee?”

                “Yeah, there’s a McDonalds drive-through we can go to to get some. I think they’re doing that small coffee deal for free right now.”

                “Cool.”

                “You should text Kyungsoo and Luhan to ask if they want one.”

                “Oh yeah.” Sehun pulls out his phone to do so, and Jongin glances at it just long enough to see that he’s changed the screensaver to a picture of him and Luhan. Someone else had taken it—either purposely or when the two of them hadn’t noticed, Jongin didn’t know, because neither of them were looking at the camera. They had an arm around each other’s shoulders, and Luhan’s free hand was poised in the air as if he were about to flick Sehun in the forehead. They were looking at each other and smiling.

                “You’ve gotten pretty chummy with Luhan lately,” Jongin says.

                Sehun looks up at him. “Yeah, because I like him.”

                “Oh yeah—wait, what?!”

                The car swerves a little too much to the left for either of their liking, causing one of the cars in the other lane to honk at them, and Sehun yells, “Dude, don’t run the car off of the ing road!”

                “Sorry, sorry! Jesus, what the hell, Sehun—”

                “If any of us should be praying to Jesus right now it’s me, I almost got in a car crash because of you—”

                “What did you expect? You just threw that on me all of the sudden!”

                “I didn’t think it’d be so drastically life-changing that you had to almost end mine!”

                “, sorry.” Jongin runs a hand through his hair. “I just wasn’t expecting that. Like, at all. I mean, you guys are definitely closer but I didn’t realize…I mean, I didn’t even know you…”

                “That’s because I’m not making it so completely obvious twenty-four hours a day.”

                Jongin glowers at him. “I said I was sorry already.”

                “Keep your eyes on the ing road, will you?...That wasn’t meant to be an insult. Well okay yeah it kind of was, but the point is, I have to be a lot more careful around Luhan when it comes to this kind of thing. It’s not like you and Kyungsoo.”

                “What do you mean?”

                “Kyungsoo’s like that one super-oblivious and innocent anime character in all of the romantic dramas where she just acts like herself and then the other person just falls ridiculously in love with her but the girl never ever realizes it. He’s like Sakura from Cardcaptors.”

                “…Does that mean I’m Li Syaoran?”

                “Pretty much. You should watch the original version. He reminds me exactly of you,” Sehun snickers.

                “I have watched the original version, actually, because my sister insisted on it, so I know what you’re talking about. And thanks a lot,” Jongin sulks.

                “Huh. Guess you’re not as much of a Twinkie as I thought.”

                “Look, weren’t we talking about you and Luhan?”

                “Oh yeah.” Sehun drums on the surface of his phone with his thumbs. “Well, for starters, Luhan isn’t as…oblivious. And he’s four years older than me, which is a huge . Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered as much if we were older, but we’re not. It’s almost the same as if he was a first-year and I was still a high school freshman.”

                “So…”

                “So I’m scared,” Sehun says simply. “I’m worried that he’ll think I’m too naïve for him. I’m scared that he won’t take me seriously because he’ll think I’m too young to know what love is. So I can’t just fumble around and blush all the time. I have to prove that I’m mature enough for him before I do anything too drastic.”

                They were at a red light, so Jongin turns to look at Sehun, and he could see that from behind his sunglasses Sehun staring off hard into the distance. If Oh Sehun was saying that he needed to act more mature, then this was serious business. “You really like him, huh?” Jongin asks.

                Sehun looks down and allows himself a small, shy smile. “Yeah.”

                Suddenly Jongin was scared. Kyungsoo wasn’t four years older than him, but they weren’t the same age either. What if Kyungsoo didn’t date younger people? What if he didn’t take Jongin seriously enough to see him that way? He grimaces, thinking of all the times that he’d blushed so hard he thought he was going to pass out or the times where he’d stammered nervously like a prepubescent school girl. Suddenly Sehun seemed like he was handling his problem a lot better off than he was.

                “Oh, , totally forgot,” Sehun says suddenly, unbuckling his seatbelt as Jongin started to pull into the McDonald’s drive through.

                “What are you doing?” Jongin says in alarm as Sehun suddenly starts clambering into the backseat.

                “Forgot that I had to sit in the back so Kyungsoo could sit up front with you.”

                “You mean so you could sit in the back with Luhan,” Jongin grins.

                “No, I mean so Kyungsoo could sit in the front with you.”

                “I’m pretty sure that’s code for you sitting in the back with Luhan.”

                “Don’t act so cocky, Sherlock, you didn’t even know I liked him until three minutes ago.”

                Jongin reaches around to backhand Sehun’s head before he could sit down.

—∞—

                When they arrive at the Rotman School of Management building some twenty minutes later, Luhan is sitting on a park bench with a shoulder bag at his side, sunglasses propped on his nose bridge as he scrolls through his phone. He looks up when Jongin pulls up in front of him, and Jongin raises an eyebrow at him before motioning towards the backseat. Luhan gets up and saunters over to the car before pulling the door open with a weak tug.

                “Morning,” Luhan croaks as he slips into the backseat.

                Jongin stares at him in the rear-view mirror. “Don’t tell me you’re hung over too.”

                “Too?”

                “Sup,” Sehun says then, deliberately pushing up his sunglasses.

                Luhan laughs, which sounds oddly breathy due to his hoarse voice. “Man, Kris is gonna have our heads.”

                “I don’t believe this,” Jongin shakes his head as he pulls away from the curb. “I thought you had class this morning.”

                Luhan tips his head forward so that he was staring at Jongin from over the rim of his glasses. “Like you never went and got drunk the day before you had classes.”

                “…Point taken.”

                “Is this mine?” Luhan points to the coffee cup sitting in the pull-out cup holder next to him.

                “Yeah. Sehun paid for that,” Jongin says, staring hard into the rear-view mirror and watching for his reaction, now that he knew what was up.

                “Thanks, babe,” Luhan says, reaching out and patting Sehun’s cheek, but Sehun just hums in response without looking up from his phone.

                Disappointed, Jongin returned his gaze to the road. “Why are you drinking coffee anyway, if you’re hung over?”

                “I had like a gallon of water this morning before I left the house, I think I’m good,” Luhan responds, reaching into his bag and pulling out some aspirin to wash down with the coffee. “Although I had to pee like five times during lecture.”

                “Smart.”

                “Whatever. So we’re picking Kyungsoo up, right?”

                Jongin’s finger starts drumming Morse code on the steering wheel. “Yup.”

                “Did you guys do that kimchi spaghetti date thing yet?” Luhan starts rubbing at his eyes from beneath his sunglasses.

                “Not a date. And don’t rub so hard, I don’t want to play ‘Where’s Waldo’ with your contacts again. Once was enough.”

                Luhan drops his hand heavily and sighs. “Don’t you think he’s had enough?”

                Jongin frowns. “What?”

                “Kyungsoo. Don’t you think he’s waited long enough?”

                Jongin tightens his grip on the steering wheel. “What makes you think he’s waiting for me?”

                Jongin can’t tell, but Luhan’s rolling his eyes behind his sunglasses and he raises his hands in defeat. “Alright, I give up. You two win Idiot Couple of the Year, I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

                “Wait, what the are you talking about? Why are you talking so cryptically? If you’re trying to piss me off by being mysterious it’s working.”

                “Hahaha, just leave him hanging,” Sehun laughs. “This is getting fun.”

                “Shut up Sehun, Luhan what were you talking about?”

                “I don’t know, Jongin. What was I talking about?” Luhan challenges, wiggling an eyebrow at him.

                “You guys are .”

                “Are we, Jongin? Are we ?”

                “Speaking of which, how do they put on transgenders?” Sehun asks, eyebrows dipping behind his sunglasses as they furrowed. “Like does it still work? Don’t they have to give girls all of the extra stuff that makes it work properly? Actually, can you still call a girl a girl right before she has the operation? Cause she technically thinks of herself as a boy, right?”

                “Sehun, it’s eleven in the morning, I don’t feel like discussing how transgenders get their right now,” Jongin says wearily.

                “Or do you?” Luhan says, wiggling his fingers at Jongin.

                “Okay, Luhan, I get it, that’s enough—”

                “Is it, Jongin? Is it?”

                Jongin bangs his head against the steering wheel. “God help me.”

                “I thought you were an atheist?”

                “Shut the up Sehun.”

—∞—

                “Hey Jongin,” Sehun grins as they pull into UTSC’s parking lot, “I bet you’re wondering what Kyungsoo’s room looks like, huh?”

                Jongin groans. “Don’t do this—”

                “I bet you’re wondering how big his bed is.”

                “Stop.”

                “I bet you’re wondering if it’s sturdy enough to hold two people, if you know what I mean.”

                “Please,” Jongin begs.

                “Not that I’d ever like to know that, either,” Luhan grimaces. “I’ve actually started knocking on Kyungsoo’s door lately when I want something. You guys are progressing pretty slowly but it’s funny what terrible judgement and alcohol can do to a university student.”

                “Oh my god,” Jongin throws an arm across the steering wheel and buries his face in it, cringing with embarrasement. “Why would you tell me that—?”

                “Here he comes,” Luhan says brightly, and Jongin shoots back up and straightens himself out in his seat as Kyungsoo approaches the car. Then, like an idiot, he reaches across to try and open the passenger’s side door before Kyungsoo can reach it, but of course his fingertips just kind of brush the handle and Kyungsoo ends up opening the door on his own anyway, so Jongin quickly retracts his arm while Luhan and Sehun snicker in the backseat.

                “Morning,” Kyungsoo says as he slides into the passenger seat, and there’s a bit of a cold breeze that wafts in with him when he enters the car and he smells all fresh and citrusy and Jongin has to refrain from biting his lip because how the hell does he smell so damn delicious.

                “Morning,” Jongin chokes out, internally kicking himself for forgetting his cologne this morning.

                Kyungsoo turns around with a knowing smirk to look at Luhan, and Jongin’s stunned because he’s never seen Kyungsoo smirk and it’s kind of refreshing to see. And also kind of hot.

                “And how are you feeling?” Kyungsoo asks, and Jongin realizes he probably got to see Luhan stumble home drunk early this morning.

                “Peachy,” Luhan replies dryly, readjusting the glasses on his face.

                “Sup,” Sehun greets Kyungsoo, nodding at him coolly.

                Kyungsoo stares. “You too?”

                “Yep.”

                “Kris is gonna rip your throats out.”

                “Funny how we all agree it’s Kris who’s doing the throat-ripping,” Sehun giggles as they pull out of the lot.

                Jongin looks at his watch. “We’re kind of early. It’s only twelve. Do you guys all have money? Want to get something to eat?”

                “Yes,” Sehun and Luhan gasp at the same time.

                “Where should we go? Make it somewhere downtown so we don’t need to drive far. And preferably where we can find some parking.”

                “I heard there’s a new ramen place that opened up around the corner from the Eaton’s Centre,” Luhan says, leaning back in his seat again. “It’s supposed to be the real authentic Japanese .”

                “Didn’t Joonmyun say to watch what we eat before the photo-shoot?”

                “What’s wrong with ramen?”

                “It’s full of lard and salt and crap.”

                “Can we get, like, all-day breakfast?” Sehun asks.

                “Breakfast food is seriously no better than ramen. And you already had breakfast.”

                “Do you have a problem with second breakfast?”

                “Calm your , Peregrin Took.”

                Sehun shoves Luhan’s arm at this last remark.

                “We could always go for sushi,” Kyungsoo suggests. “I mean, that’s what people eat when they wanna be skinny or something, right?”

                “I’m down for that,” Sehun says, gulping the last of his lukewarm coffee and dropping the empty cup into the holder before leaning forward so that his head was sticking between the front seats. “Did you get a new stereo system?”

                “Yeah, I did,” Jongin says, glancing at the brand-new stereo in all of its sleek black glory.

                “Cool, turn it on so I can hear it.”

                Jongin reaches out and turns the radio on with ease. There’s a short beeping noise before the song fades in, and Jongin scrunches his nose up when he recognizes the voice. “Ugh, man, Taylor Swift has really been getting on my nerves lately—”

                “What’s that?” Luhan perks up. “You don’t like Taylor Swift?”

                “Yeah—wait, no, no no no no no, don’t—”

                “I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU!” Luhan and Sehun suddenly yell, which nearly causes Jongin to swerve into the other lane again. “WE, ARE NEVER EVER EVERRRRR GETTING BACK TOGETHER—”

                “Wow.”

                “We-EEEEE—” (Both of them purposely screech out the high note, making Jongin wince) “ARE NEVER EVER EVERRRRR GETTING BACK TOGETHER—”

                “Weren’t you idiots supposed to be hung over?”

                They both ignore him and continue wailing.

                Kyungsoo chuckles and shakes his head, and Jongin looks over at him. “You’re not gonna join in?” he asks, hoping that he’ll get to hear Kyungsoo’s singing again and have something to drown out the two people in the back at the same time.

                But Kyungsoo just pinks a bit and smiles. “Maybe some other time.”

                “YEAH WE-EEEEE ARE NEVER EVER EVER EVERRRRR, GETTING BACK TOEGTHER…”

—∞—

                “Hey,” Sehun says, looking up from his bowl, “this is kind of like a double date.”

                Jongin and Luhan both promptly choke on the complimentary noodle broth. “Not a date,” they reply in unison, glaring.

                “Okay, whatever helps you sleep at night.”

                Luhan reaches over and flicks Sehun in the forehead, who yelps in response and rubs the offended spot with a sour look on his face.

                “Actually, speaking of which,” Kyungsoo says, looking up from his menu over at Jongin, “I should be free next Friday, if you’re still interested in learning how to make kimchi spaghetti.”

                Jongin blinks, and Luhan and Sehun make a huge show out of stopping what they’re doing and looking up to stare between Jongin and Kyungsoo from behind their sunglasses.

                “Uh, yeah, I’m free,” Jongin replies, still blinking rapidly.

                “Cool. We can do it at the apartment. That’s cool with you, right?” Kyungsoo says, looking at Luhan now.

                “Yeah, that’s totally fine, I’m probably gonna be holed up in my room studying or something. Or maybe the library. Yeah, the library sounds better,” Luhan responds, lips twitching as he struggled to keep a straight face.

                “That’s good. I’m going to the restroom, if the waitress comes by I’m getting the bento box set,” Kyungsoo says, tapping on Luhan’s menu before getting up. “With the salmon.”

                “Sure thing.”

                They all stare after Kyungsoo as he leaves, and when Jongin turns back around again Luhan and Sehun are grinning at him.

                “So,” Sehun says, gloating, “not a date, huh?”

                “Don’t deny it,” Luhan adds before Jongin could protest, taking off his sunglasses dramatically and propping his elbow on the table so he could lean forward and smirk. “You heard him. He said ‘speaking of which.’ After Sehun brought up double dating. Dates in general. As in ‘speaking of dates.’ It’s a date.”

                Jongin colours deeply. God. He needed to do something about his stupid blushing. “I don’t think so. He was probably just…being…”

                “Nice? Friendly? There’s no such thing as ‘nice’ or ‘friendly’ if he just established the date context,” Sehun says, drumming on the rim of his bowl with his chopsticks.

                Luhan frowns and reaches over to place a hand on Sehun’s, stilling them. “Don’t play with your chopsticks, it’s bad luck.”

                “Is it bad luck or bad manners?” Sehun asks, reaching up to remove his sunglasses and shake out his hair. “Cause I’ve heard a million different bad chopstick manners.”

                “Like what?” Jongin asks, relieved for the topic change.

                “Like stabbing at food with it,” Sehun says.

                “Or pointing at people with them,” Luhan jumps in.

                “Or passing food from one set of chopsticks to another.”

                “Or placing them across your bowl.”

                “Or sticking them up your nose.”

                “Wait, what?” Luhan turns towards Sehun at this last one.

                “What, you never did that with your chopsticks as a kid?”

                “Uh, no.”

                “Are you guys serious? I’m pretty sure I’ve broken all of those rules at least once,” Jongin stares.

                “Don’t worry,” Sehun reaches over to pat Jongin’s hand. “You’re pretty white-washed so no one’s blaming you.”

                “Hey—!”

                “But you should definitely never ever ever let your chopsticks stick out of your rice bowl,” Luhan says seriously. “It’s the sign of the dead people.”

                Jongin drops his head in his hands. “Dammit.”

                “What are we talking about?” Kyungsoo sits down again.

                “Chopstick etiquette.”

                “Oh yeah,” Kyungsoo laughs. “I was so paranoid about that when I went to Tokyo last summer.”

                “You’ve been to Tokyo?” Jongin asks admiringly.

                “Hey, I’ve been there before too!” Sehun pipes up.

                “Same. Except my family had this brilliant idea to go in the dead of summer.” Luhan shudders. “Never again.”

                “You guys have all been to Japan?” Jongin says incredulously.

                Kyungsoo, Luhan and Sehun all look at him like it was no big deal and say, “Yeah.”

                “God damn.”

                “What’s the matter?” Luhan grins. “Are you starting to doubt the extent of your Asian blood?”

                “Shut up.”

                “You poor, poor Twinkie.”

A/N

Well this turned into a long- thing

 For those of you who don't know who Peregrin Took is

He is my spirit animal

EXO IS BACK MOTHERERS for those who would like to see my initial reaction to the comeback but mostly to the reactions of other fans who claimed to have been turned Kyungsoo-biased please click here 

The photoshoot officially begins next chapter prepare yourselves for the glory and six-packs to come