“You’re sure it doesn’t look weird?” Baekhyun asks, looking down at thin brown cotton t-shirt he was wearing again with a slight frown.

                “Seriously, Baek, it looks fine,” Chanyeol replies reassuringly, who was standing near the monitors to watch him get his singles done. Being together for a little over two years, they were pretty much over their lovey-dovey “just married”-like phase by now, and it wouldn’t have surprised nor offended Baekhyun if Chanyeol had decided to hang around with the others in the waiting area instead, but it was like Chanyeol to catch him off guard every once in a while by doing something uncharacteristically cheesy or romance-y for this stage in their relationship—in this case, standing by to support Baekhyun while he got his singles done with a warm smile on his face—and although Baekhyun would never admit it, it’s the simple things like this that got him falling a little for the brutally tall and childlike idiot all over again.

                “Besides, there are worse shades of brown,” Chanyeol adds.

                “Unfortunately that doesn’t actually make this shirt any better. You think they’d let me change into something else or will the wardrobe crew go for my neck?”

                “Depends. How many of them look like they’ve been working since early morning?”

                Baekhyun ponders over this. “Huh.”

                Chanyeol pulls out his phone then and looks down at it for a moment. “Hey, I’ll be right back, Tao just texted me, apparently it’s something urgent?...I doubt it…but I’ll be back in a minute, ‘kay?”

                “Yep.”

                Chanyeol waves and walks off, and the photography president shows up just then to oversee one of the other club members who would be taking his singles shots.

                Guess it’s too late to ask about the shirt, Baekhyun sighs inwardly, when he spots something out of the corner of his eye that makes him turn and squint between the hot lights. Something that looks suspiciously like a person with fluffy blonde hair holding an overly suspicious-looking giant- box.

                “Luhan? Is that you?”

                “Alright, start getting into position,” the president calls out.

                Luhan puts the box down on the ground at his feet before fiddling with it, and Baekhyun realizes it’s a boombox. Not just any boombox, but a boombox that looked like it had been yanked straight out of some 80’s movie, right out of John Cusack’s hands.

                “Luhan? What the hell is that? Where did you even get that thing? Luhan why aren’t you saying anything?”

                Luhan pushes one of the buttons down and somehow manages to hoist the thing high over his head, and he looks Baekhyun dead in the eye with an absolute straight face as the sound of a flute and skin drums begin to fade in from the boombox.

                “No,” Baekhyun deadpans, recognizing the tune, “no, no, Luhan, I swear to god—”

                Luhan cuts him off and starts singing loudly. “You think I’m an ignorant savage—”

                “ing Jesus.”

                “And you’ve been so many places, I guess it must be so...”

                Offside, sitting on one of the waiting area couches, Chanyeol looks up from where he’s been trying to teach Tao how to play Sudoku for the past five minutes—why this had been of such dire importance, Tao had refused to tell him—but now he’s starting to get an idea when he hears a nostalgia-inducing song accompanied by Luhan’s purposely off-tune singing. “What is that?”

                “What’s what?” Tao asks blankly, feigning innocence.

                “Why is Luhan playing Disney songs to Baekhyun’s photo-shoot?”

                “To mess up his game?” Tao shrugs.

                Chanyeol turns to look at him. “You were in on this, weren’t you.”

                “Maybe.”

                “You were just assigned to be a distraction.”

                “Quite possibly.”

                “You actually know how to play Sudoku, don’t you?”

                “...I don’t really know why that would matter, but yes.”

                “HAVE YOU EVER HEARD THE WOLF CRY TO A BLUE CORN MOON?!” Luhan shrieks, deliberately cracking his voice at the opportune moments.

                “PUT THAT THING AWAY OR SO HELP ME GOD I WILL USE IT AGAINST YOU—”

                “OR ASKED A GRINNING BOBCAT WHY HE GRINNED—”

                “AT LEAST SING IT PROPERLY!!”

—∞—

                “So you’re telling me,” Jongdae says slowly, fiddling with the Rubik’s Cube in his hand, “that cats basically have spikes on their so they can’t pull out until the deed is done?”         

                “Exactly,” Sehun says, nodding. “Or something.”

                “Normally I would’ve stopped this conversation a while ago, but it’s sad to say that I’ve heard this one before,” Kyungsoo sighs.

                “What, actually? You knew about this, Kyungsoo?”

                “Yeah, it’s pretty much common knowledge,” Minseok says, sipping his drink.

By this point Tao’s group had already finished their singles and left, while Kris and Joonmyun were getting cleaned up and waiting on Minseok and Jongdae so they could head home. Sehun had completed his shots as well, and now it was just a matter of getting Luhan and Kyungsoo’s shots before they could leave, too.

                “Seriously? Are you telling me that the majority of the population knows that cats have spikes on their ?”

                “Yeah, pretty much.”

                “Why wasn’t I informed of this?”

                “Hey, a Rubik’s Cube,” Luhan says, approaching the group after emerging from the dressing room. “Wanna see how fast I can solve that?”

                Everyone looks up and stares, shock and disbelief etched across their faces. “What. The. ,” Minseok chokes.

                Besides the pair of well-fitted jeans that sat on his hips, Luhan was wearing a red, grey and white letter jacket, but the only button that was done up was the one at the very bottom and he wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath, revealing a smooth, toned six-pack. Not the large chunky kind that you saw on weightlifters or lifeguards, but it sure as hell wasn’t anything to scoff at either.

                A long stream of colourful swears start spewing out of Jongdae’s mouth.

                “I can’t even, like, comprehend what I’m seeing,” Jongin says over Jongdae’s cussing, eyes shifting back and forth the between abs and face and blinking as if he was staring at a mirage. “You look like a Barbie doll that accidentally got assembled with Ken’s torso. Your body is literally defying all the laws of physics right now.”

                “Did you just call me a Barbie doll?” Luhan scowls.

                “What the !” Jongdae finally finishes, almost a whine. “How is this possible? How is this even fair?”

                “Is it really that weird? I work out,” Luhan says defensively.

                “Think about it. Your arms and wrists and hands are like really small and dainty and and you’ve got like a pale little face with googly eyes, and then you’ve got a mothering six pack,” Jongdae enunciates with extreme emphasis. “It’s just not right, dude.”

                “It’s pretty weird,” Kyungsoo admits. “I’ve been rooming with you for a year and it’s still a major shock. If anything your abs look even better than last year.”

                Minseok makes a face. “You totally came here like that just to show that off, didn’t you?”

                “Although that does sound incredibly tempting and worthwhile, I was actually trying to button it up a second ago but one of the wardrobe crew swooped in and ripped it back open again.”

                It’s only then that Luhan finally turns to look at Sehun, who’s been staring at him in silence the whole time, but his stare was completely different from the incredulous looks on the others’ faces. His gaze was smouldering, eyes raking up and down the expanse of Luhan’s chest and stomach like a wild panther would its prey. Luhan looks back at him with this stunned open-mouthed expression for a moment before pulling the letter jacket over himself and crossing his arms, all of the blood rushing to his perfectly-shaped ears.

                “Wh-what are you looking at?” Luhan stammers. “I mean what are you doing? I mean——stop doing that, you’re freaking me out!”

                “Okay, I’m just going to slowly back away now,” Jongdae says, getting up with Minseok in tow and shoving the Rubik’s Cube into Luhan’s hands, “aaaaand you guys can get yourselves sorted out.”

                Luhan throws a desperate don’t-leave-me-here-with-that-kid-and-his-ravenous-bedroom-eyes look at Jongdae, but Jongdae just smirks and salutes him with two fingers as he walks away, dragging a somewhat apologetic but more so amused Minseok with him.

                “Something wrong?” Sehun asks calmly, and Luhan kind of flinches and eyes Sehun nervously. Jongin can only imagine how confused Luhan probably was right about now—here was the same dip who asked about overdosing on vitamins and used to get on sugar highs by eating whole bunches of bananas, acting like the cool guy all of the sudden and looking just about ready to devour him. If Kyungsoo suddenly him like that Jongin didn’t think he would last either.

                “Luhan? Are you okay? You can button your jacket if it’s bothering you,” Kyungsoo says worriedly, standing up and prying Luhan's arms away from his body so he can button it up for him.

                “I’m fine,” Luhan shoves Kyungsoo’s hands away gently before giving Sehun a pointed glare. “You should get changed so we can leave once I’m done.”

                Sehun shrugs. “Sure,” he says, and stuffs his hands in his pockets before shuffling towards the change room. Luhan quickly hurries out of the way and gives him a wide berth to pass, eyes trained on Sehun the whole time for any sudden movements, but Sehun just walks past him without glancing at him again.

                It’s not until Sehun’s out of hearing range that Luhan sighs and relaxes, dropping onto the couch heavily. “Christ, he scared the out of me with that look.”

                “Are you saying that a mere first year has shaken the great Luhan?” Jongin smirks, relishing the opportunity to get back at him for all of his earlier jabs about him and Kyungsoo. “And here I thought you were actually cool.”

                "Says the kid who’s drinking orange juice out of a champagne glass,” Luhan shot back, rapidly solving the Rubik’s Cube in his hands out of agitation. “You’re a true boss, I’ll give you that.”

                “Hey, at least I—” Jongin stops mid-sentence, distracted. “You know, I’m pretty sure there’s a specific method to solve that quicker.”

                “There is, but I’d kind of like to not be a er and search it up on the internet,” Luhan replies, fingers flittering across the cube as a symphony of clicking noises fill the air.

                Kyungsoo watches Luhan as if he were performing a circus act. “Whoa, you’re moving that so quickly. How fast can you solve it?”

                “About twenty seconds,” Luhan replies.

                “I’m timing you on that.”

                “What the—” Luhan goes bug-eyed as Sehun reappears and snatches the Rubik’s Cube out of his hands, hair still tousled from the photo-shoot but now dressed in the clothes he arrived in. “How did you—”

                “Wait, hang on, I’m gonna this up so you can do it again from the beginning.”

                “No, seriously, you literally just strolled to the change room, how did you get changed so fast?”

                “I can take off my clothes pretty quickly,” Sehun replies nonchalantly as he fumbles with the Rubik’s Cube, and Jongin quickly throws a hand over his mouth to stifle his laughter at the not-so-subtle ual innuendo.

                “Okay here, now let me get my phone out so I can time you,” Sehun says, throwing the Rubik’s Cube back at Luhan before pulling out his phone.

                “Dude, calm down, I said about twenty seconds, I don’t know if—”

                “OKAY GO!”

                “WHAT THE ,” Luhan yells as he frantically begins to turn the sides of the cube.

                “Weren’t you just telling him to calm down? Why are you freaking out?” Jongin asks as he watches Luhan tearing through the multi-coloured puzzle.

                “I get competitive, okay?! Games put me under of a lot of intense pressure!”

                “He’s just timing you—”

                “STOP DISTRACTING ME!”

—∞—

                “Thanks for driving us home,” Kyungsoo says, as they pull up in front of the Joan Foley apartments, before reaching around to smack Luhan’s knee.

                “Thanks for driving us home,” Luhan parrots monotonously.

                “You’re welcome, Kyungsoo,” Jongin says pointedly, staring at Luhan.

                Luhan just rolls his eyes. “Well, it’s been fun, kids, but now I need to go and wash all this hairspray off of my head,” he says, throwing the door open lazily.

                “Wait, can I use your bathroom? I need to take a piss,” Sehun says.

                “You live like twenty minutes away, can’t you just—”

                “No, I need to take a piss right now,” Sehun insists, pointing at Kyungsoo from behind his chair so that Kyungsoo wouldn’t see him.

                “Oh. Oh. Yeah sure, just don’t spray on the toilet seat.”

                “What makes you think I’m gonna piss on your seat? I’m not that uncoordinated,” Sehun argues as he clambers out after Luhan.

                “Don’t pretend like I didn’t see you drinking the champagne glasses at the studio, you cheeky little snot.”

                The car door slams behind them, and Kyungsoo turns to look apologetically towards Jongin as he unbuckles his seatbelt. “Sorry for the headache.”

                “That’s their fault, not yours.”

                “I know, I just thought you needed to hear that anyway.”

                Jongin smiles. “Thanks.”

                Kyungsoo smiles back and opens the car door, moving to step out, but then something came over Jongin, something that may or may not have had to do with Sehun’s words from the car ride earlier haunting him all day, and before he knew what he was doing his hand shot out to grab Kyungsoo’s wrist and keep him in place. Kyungsoo stops and turns to look at him curiously, waiting.

                “Um…” Jongin struggles for the right words. If he didn’t clear this Friday mess up now then it was very likely that he would be arguing about it with the others for a very long time. “This thing that we’re doing on Friday, me coming over and stuff…is this a date?”

                Kyungsoo blinks, leaving Jongin to stew in the echo of his words and the blood pounding in his ears for a few moments, completely silent. When he finally does react, though, it’s with a raised eyebrow and a curious look.

                “Depends. What does your secret admirer friend have to say about it?”

                Oh my ing god I knew it, Jongin starts breaking out into a sweat, wishing for all the world that he could just abandon the car and run away into the bushes, , he totally thinks that I’m a sleazy backstabbing jackass now, way to show how loyal you can be Jongin you stupid ing—

                Kyungsoo starts laughing all of a sudden, so that now it’s Jongin’s turn to look confused. “Easy there, don’t break a blood vessel,” Kyungsoo chuckles. “I was just pulling your leg. This friend doesn’t exist, right?”

                Jongin’s mouth hangs open. “H-How did you…?”

                “Figure it out? Luhan kind of helped with that.”

                “Luhan?” Jongin exclaims loudly in disbelief. What the could Luhan possibly say to Kyungsoo about him?

                Kyungsoo nods. “After I brought it up the first time he was forever insisting that you having a friend with a crush on me can’t exist because you don’t have any other friends besides me and Sehun to begin with. Normally I’d kind of brush off anything Luhan says to me and would’ve given you the benefit of the doubt, but you do spend the majority of your time on campus with me and you’re always in the clubroom otherwise and…well…”

                There was nothing Jongin wanted more in that moment than to simply blend into the leather of his car seat.

                A loner. He was now officially classified as a loner, thanks to Luhan.

                Well, better friendless than .

                “Spectacular,” Jongin growls. “I’ll have to have a talk with Luhan sometime.”

                “I’m just messing with you again, you probably have a ton of other friends,” Kyungsoo grins good-naturedly. “But at least we have that cleared up.”

                Jongin’s gaze sinks to the gear shift between them. “Sorry for not being honest with you.”

                “Hey, don’t beat yourself up over it, it’s fine. Although next time you don’t have to make up an excuse to ask about my personal life,” Kyungsoo says, patting Jongin’s head.

                Jongin can feel his face heating up at the contact. He swallows. “So…I mean…do we have a date, then?”

                Kyungsoo’s hand pauses on the top of his head for a moment, before reaching down to brush the fringe out of Jongin’s eyes carefully. “If you want it to be,” he replies gently.

                Jongin stills. Suddenly there wasn’t enough oxygen going to his brain and his skin felt numb where Kyungsoo’s fingertips had brushed it. The air inside of the car felt dense, pressing in on him from all sides, along with the weight of Kyungsoo’s stare, and Jongin thinks for one fleeting second, heart nearly stopping in his chest, that something was going to happen, that this was about to turn into something—

                But then Kyungsoo gives him this tiny smile, without any sign or signal of this being the right moment, and then the tension’s gone, the air breathable again.

                “You looked really good during your topless photo-shoot, by the way,” Kyungsoo says shyly, before opening the car door again and stepping out for real this time. He closes it shut and leans forward a bit to wave goodbye, and Jongin dumbly lifts a hand and waves back before watching Kyungsoo’s backside retreat into the building.

—∞—

                “. . . Hello? Jongin? Dude what are you calling me for I’m not even taking that—”

                “YOOOOOOOOOOO GUESS WHO JUST SCORED A DATE MOTHERER!!”

                “—long. Bout time .”

                “I am literally in such a good mood that I could not care less about what you just said.”

                “Apparently that also includes not waiting two ing minutes for me to get back to the car before you gave me the big news.”

                “Why are you not ecstatic about this? You should be shedding tears of joy on my behalf right now.”

                “Because Kyungsoo already mentioned it being a date at lunch retard, you’re the only one out of eleven who took five hours to process that.”

                “Whatever, , it’s official now.”

                “. . . What? Oh, right.”

                “What are you doing right now?”

                “Uh, nothing. So tell me more about how you finally managed to reach this amazing revelation.”

                “I just ended up asking him and he said yes. Sorta. He actually said ‘it’s a date if you want it to be.’ Wait, that still counts, right? That counts as a date, right?”

                “Yeah dude, it counts—”

                “No, , wait, he didn’t actually say yes, what if he didn’t want it to be a date?”

                “Hey man, you’re doing that thing again, you know that thing where you use your brain and start thinking—”

                “ing Jesus Sehun what if he doesn’t actually want this to be a date? What if he didn’t want to say yes so he left it up to me—?”

                “But then you start using it too much and it starts overheating and then you do that other thing you’re doing now with the screaming and the not listening—”

                “What the do I do now? How am I supposed to make this a date? What if I make it a date and he doesn’t enjoy himself because he feels like he’s being pressured I don’t want to pressure him Sehun but I don’t want to friend-zone this thing either oh god dude you’ve got to help me...um. What was that.”

                “What?”

                “That crashing noise. I heard a crash. And I can hear insane hyena noises in the background.”

                “Oh, that’s just Luhan. He sort of fell off his couch and onto the floor in the process of dying of laughter.”

                “...I can hear the grin in your voice. Why are you grinning.”

                “What? I’m not grinning.”

                “Yes you are, what’s going on? How come Luhan’s laughing? Can he hear me? Why can he hear me?”

                “Cause I put it on speakerphone a while ago. Oh, and I should probably mention that Kyungsoo’s standing here with me.”

                “. . .”

                “Or not really, he’s kind of leaning against the wall right now trying really hard to keep quiet.”

                “. . .”

                “Hahaha, now he’s trying to get me to stop cause he doesn’t want to embarrass you, isn’t that sweet?”

                “. . .”

                “Jongin? Jongin are you still there? Jongin are you alive? Jongin can you hear me?”

                “. . .”

                “Guys—hold on for a second, Jongin—guys I think he might be dead...yeah no, he’s not responding and...ow ow ow ow ow, wait, Kyungsoo, KYUNGSOO, KYUNGSOO LET GO I’M SORRY PLEASE—OKAY OKAY I’LL APOLOGIZE! I’LL APOLOGIZE, I SWEAR! I’M GOING, I’M GOING RIGHT NOW, NO PUT THE PAN DOWN I’M GONE! DO YOU SEE THIS?! I’M GONE! . . .sorry, where were we?”

                “. . .”

                “Oh, and Kyungsoo says to tell you that it’s definitely a date so don’t worry so much about it.”

                “. . .”

                “. . .Oooookay, I think I’m just gonna take the bus home.”

A/N 

Hey guys remember this

Yeah me too

I've just been informed that the second is photoshopped but I'm just going to keep believing in my dreams

I have literally edited this chapter so many times that it's impossible for me to like it anymore so iunno you guys can decide if it's a piece of poop or not

Also I would like to take a moment to thank everyone personally for allowing me to reach 300 subs and then surpass it. Honestly I was just happy with the comments I recieved but...wow. You guys are all just so amazing and I can't thank you enough for subbing to this...whatever it is

So to those who have been there since the beginning, thanks for sticking it out with me, and for those who have just arrived, welcome *stares lovingly at all of you*