“Forsan miseros meliora sequentur” (For those in misery, perhaps better things will follow.)

 

 

Jongin puts his trust in many things. The pages of his favorite textbooks. Intriguing and inspiring latin quotes that he’s collected over the years and scrawled messily into several notebooks. His favorite red sweater he’s had since sophomore year in high school with holes in the sleeves and a stain on the front (that still magically fits him even after his growth spurt). The used car he’s had since he was seventeen that’s always on the verge of death, but somehow manages to trudge on and on. They are all things that have proven to him, after many years of faithful servitude, that they deserve his undying faith.

There are some things, or in this case more of a person than a thing, he has learned he should never trust.

This person comes in the shape of a man with short, auburn hair, eyes constantly rimmed in thick eyeliner, and fingers that, according to said person, could be used for modeling “rings or some in a magazine.” A friend whom Jongin foolishly entrusted with the task of finding him a new roommate by the fall semester because he’s been too lazy and introverted all summer to take time out of his busy summer class schedule to find his own roommate.

It didn’t seem that dumb in the very beginning. He hadn’t really expected Baekhyun to take him seriously to be honest. He was actually content with living on his own even if the cost of living in an apartment for two was a bit out of his price range. Joonmyun, his old roommate, had recently moved into a new apartment with his fiancee, Eunji, so for economic reasons it seemed like a good idea. But in the end even Joonmyun agreed that letting Baekhyun choose a roommate for him was pretty stupid. They have always had very different friend groups, despite growing up together. Or more like Baekhyun has a group of friends and Jongin has, well, Baekhyun and Joonmyun.

Jongin’s not dumb though. He’s just selectively smart, focusing his energy on learning things like history instead of how to be social and keep up with modern times. Most people don’t care about history, but he guesses he’s just not most people. Most people would rather concern themselves with buying genetically modified pet dragons that come in all colors of the rainbow than how the past could potentially shape the future. So no, he’s not dumb. Not entirely. He just isn’t interested in mainstream things. But he’s so not hipster. Not remotely. Hipster people buy pet dragons in plaid patterns or buy glasses accessories for their pets and then take grungy photos of them and post them on instagram with weird filters.

But yeah, the dumbest thing he’s certainly ever done by far, even more dumb than that time he tripped down the spiral staircase in the library and tumbled down three flights of stairs (lost his shoe in the process), is trust Baekhyun to find him a roommate.

The reason why Jongin suddenly feels like disowning his one of two friends is due to the man standing before him with a hand outstretched in greeting. He’s very blonde and decently tall, though not as tall as Jongin himself. Beneath his button nose and large crinkling eyes is the smile of a man that Jongin has had the strongest desire to punch for roughly four months now.

“Hi, I’m Luhan.” Blondy smiles brightly and grabs at Jongin’s unwilling hand. “And you’re Jongin right? From my History of Dragons lecture last spring? The one who nearly hurled in front of the entire class.”

Jongin takes in a pained breath and tries to extract his hand from Luhan’s vice-like grip of icy fingers. “That’s me, hehe,” he says awkwardly, suddenly remembering all the things about last spring he’s spent all summer trying to forget. This is terrible. “Where’s Baekhyun? He said he was helping you move in.”

“He’s coming,” Luhan says dismissively with a wave of his hand as he steps further into the apartment. “So, did you even pass that class?”

“Of course I passed,” Jongin scoffs at him. He doesn’t like how Luhan is gradually forcing his way into the apartment, two large suitcases in tow, though he supposes this is Luhan’s apartment now too.

“Oh good. Baekhyun assured me you aren’t as dumb and intolerable as you look,” he says cheerily. Jongin can’t tell if he’s joking or being serious, but either way it annoys him.

Luhan leaves his suitcases at the entrance of the apartment and makes his way over to Jongin’s couch. With an exaggerated sigh he falls down onto the cushions and drapes himself across the whole couch, propping his feet up on one of the armrests. “I’m tired. I hope Baekhyun brings the rest of my stuff up with him. That was an exhausting hike up all those stairs. Whoever built apartments without elevators was dumb as . Too bad this place isn’t more modern.”

Yeah, this was probably just a really dumb idea, but not a reflection of his overall intelligence.

“Make yourself at home why don’t you?” Jongin mutters petulantly to himself. It’s not like he built this apartment building himself. He’d looked at apartment buildings with elevators. They were more expensive.

After a few minutes of Jongin making angry faces at Luhan and the suitcases by the door, Baekhyun shows up at the front door and slaps Jongin out of his dumbfounded stupor because, , this is actually happening. Luhan, the man he’s been wanting to give a good kick in the shins to for the past half a year, is going to be his roommate.

He watches Baekhyun pull a griping Luhan off of the couch and back out to the car to pick up some more of his belongings before he sullenly sneaks off to his room. Better to hide from the man he’s going to be forced to live with for as long as he possibly can than to cause himself unnecessary suffering.

 

 

In the past week before classes have started, Jongin has mastered the art of hiding. Since Luhan’s arrival, they’d had one awkward “family” dinner together with the addition of Baekhyun to dispel the tension. Luhan had spent most of the evening recounting how Jongin had nearly vomited in front of the entire class during his final presentation. It had taken an immense amount of self-preservation for Jongin not to shove the chicken bones on his plate down Luhan’s throat.

From then on, Jongin stuck to hiding in his room or taking on extra shifts at the university’s library where he’d been working since freshman year. One “family” dinner was enough for him, even though it turned out Luhan was a decent cook. He just couldn’t face the thought of having to sit across from the person who liked to mock him for his inability to control his bowels in front of a lecture hall of over 100 students. When not hiding in his room or working at the library, he spent the rest of his time glued to Joonmyun, either at his apartment or in his graduate student office.

“You do realize that when Eunji moves in tomorrow you can’t just lounge around in our apartment all the time, Jongin,” Joonmyun teases lightly, but Jongin knows he’s not joking. He really doesn’t want Jongin taking over his living room every day now that they aren’t living together. Not because he doesn’t like Jongin or anything like that, but because he’d rather spend time with Eunji in his lap instead of him. Jongin can’t really blame him.

“Why did you have to move out? Can’t you be engaged and still live with me?” Jongin whines. He’s currently taking up half of Joonmyun’s couch, pre-reading some of his books for this semester because, yes, he loves history that much.

“Don’t be silly. What’s so bad about Luhan anyways? He can’t be any worse than Baekhyun, and you’re friends with him.”

“Baekhyun doesn’t mock my intelligence on a daily basis. Nor does he walk into my apartment piss drunk and try to crawl onto my lap while I’m reading. It’s only been one week and I swear Luhan’s tried to drunk- me at least three times. I thought he was supposed to be smart.”

Joonmyun snorts and sits down on the couch next to Jongin. Idly, he picks up one of the books and shuffles through the pages. “He is smart. Probably one of the smartest students on campus, but just because he’s smart doesn’t mean he never has any fun, even if fun for him means getting drunk. Besides, the semester hasn’t officially started yet. Maybe things will change.” Joonmyun smiles and puts the book down on the coffee table.

“Sober Luhan will still never let me live down History of Dragons.”

“You did nearly vomit on his project.” Joonmyun says it gently but it irks Jongin just the same. The thing about Joonmyun is that, even though he teases Jongin just as much as Baekhyun does, the soft way he says things, with too much earnest honesty and kindness, sometimes makes him more annoyed than Baekhyun’s obnoxious taunting.

“I made it to the trashcan in the hallway perfectly on time,” Jongin mopes. “And it’s not just that. He definitely thinks I’m an idiot or something. He asked me if I even passed that class. Of course I passed. I’ve never failed anything except maybe almost geometry.” 

“You just have different mindsets,” Joonmyun says reassuringly, reinforcing his words by giving Jongin’s knee an encouraging squeeze. “Luhan’s into science and math and your expertise is more historical. It’s just different forms of intelligence and interest. I’m sure the two of you will find some sort of happy medium. You just have to get to know each other. If I were you, I would take this as an opportunity to get to know him better. Maybe exchange some knowledge. Just because Luhan’s pre-vet and you're a history major doesn’t mean you can’t get along.”

“He’s not just pre-vet though. He’s pre-vet specifically for dragons, which is ridiculous. I can’t believe dragons have become so domesticated that they now get trained like puppies and people can major in pre-dragon-veterinary. He’s probably into all those poor, genetically modified creatures that come in all colors of the rainbow. It’s just sad. I’m terrified of them, but I’m almost tempted to start a campaign called Dragons with Dignity, returning back to the old days when dragons were wild, but friendly.”

Joonmyun pats Jongin’s knee sympathetically and smiles. “You know just as well as I do that before dragons were domesticated they used to burn and pillage every village. Way back in the day, before Hiccup discovered the ability to train dragons, they just set fire to everything for one reason or another. Stole lots of sheep, too. If anything, that irrational fear of yours would be thousands of times worse, and far less irrational, if dragons hadn’t been domesticated.”

Jongin pokes his tongue out sourly at Joonmyun but nods his head in agreement. Of course he  knows this. How could he not? He spent four months last spring semester learning about this dragon history . He just doesn’t care. To him domesticating dragons is like turning rabid jaguars into pets, or deducing grizzly bears to the size of bunnies and dying them pink. It’s just not right. The world is far too focused on creating the next biggest trend in consumer products, which unfortunately currently falls under the task of turning dragons into pets.

“I should have been born during the Roman Empire. I’d fit in much better back then,” Jongin sighs.

“And I should have lived during the Renaissance,” Joonmyun says whimsically. “But humanity has yet to develop a teleportation device, so stop moping. We’re supposed to meet Baekhyun for dinner in fifteen minutes.” Joonmyun gives Jongin’s thigh a good squeeze and detaches the book from the younger boys hands. “You’ll have plenty of time to read later.”

Even though Jongin would much prefer to just keep reading and not have to deal with Baekhyun hopping on the “Nag Jongin About Luhan” bandwagon, there are few things that come between Jongin and food. Especially when it’s fried chicken. It’s possible the only thing he will ever think as highly of as classical studies.

 

 

The Sunday night before classes start, Jongin and Luhan almost have a bonding moment. Almost. For once, Luhan doesn’t stumble into the apartment with the afterglow of a party that leads him to lying face down in Jongin’s lap. This time, when he looks up from where he’s seated on the living room couch, he sees Luhan cradling a box of textbooks from the university’s bookstore. For a millisecond, he thinks it’s cute how Luhan’s hugging them to his chest like some sort of precious child or kitten, thin arms wrapped around the box with care.

Intrigued by Luhan’s by sudden expression of love for knowledge, and deciding that he’s probably safe from him landing in his lap, Jongin makes the decision not to run directly to his room and hide away from all humanity. He watches Luhan settle on the opposite of the couch, resting the box at his feet before digging through it.

“Finally bought your books?” he questions cautiously. They haven’t actually spoken much since he moved in, most likely due to Jongin’s ninja-like hiding abilities.

Luhan hums in agreement as he nods his head.  “You have no idea how long I’ve been dying to take this class.” He grins when he finally pulls out the book he’s been looking for and starts flipping through the pages. His eyes practically sparkle with excitement as he flips through a couple of pages. This is the most enthusiastic Jongin has seen this supposed genius boy act about something related to education.

Jongin unintentionally scrunches up his face when he sees the title of the book. Principles of Dragon Genetics. That sounds disgusting.

“Don’t judge.” Luhan frowns. “I’ve seen your eyes light up about the First Council of Nicaea about a thousand times and we’ve only been living together for a week. No one even cares about that stuff anymore. It’s all about science these days, keeping up with modern times.”

“So you’re saying I’m no one, then?” Jongin growls at him. “Because I care. Joonmyun cares. People still care.”

“Woah, jeez, no need to get so offended.” Luhan rolls his eyes and hugs his book tightly to his chest. “I’m just saying your history books aren’t going to teach you anything of value to build a better future. It’s cool and all, but it won’t cure cancer or solve world hunger.”

“And attending to little dragon boo-boos is gonna change the world?” Jongin snaps 

sarcastically. “Tell me when that cures cancer, ,” he snorts, and promptly stomps out of the room. Luhan will just never understand how much he cares about history.

For all of his lack of understanding, however, he’s not really a terrible roommate (aside from the drunkenness at times). He never makes a mess of the place. Always washes his dishes promptly after he dirties them. Takes the trash out without being told to. Keeps his belongings neat and organized instead of in shambles all over the living room or kitchen. Jongin suspects he may even be a stress cleaner, which is great because Joonmyun was exactly the opposite, the level of filth reflecting the amount of chaos in his life at any given time. (Sometimes it makes Jongin afraid for Joonmyun’s fiancee.)

After their failure at bonding the night before, Jongin almost feels a little sorry for snapping at him when he leaves his room the next morning and trips over an apology note that’s been slid under his bedroom door. It’s simply written in neat block lettering on a piece of notebook paper with a winky face at the end that makes Jongin snort out of amusement for once instead of annoyance.

I’m sorry I offended you. Let me make it up to you sometime ;)

“Yeah, okay.” Jongin rolls his eyes. He’s not really sure what Luhan making it up to him will entail. Just so long as it doesn’t involve copious amounts of alcohol and partying he thinks he’ll be okay. Or maybe he can ask Luhan to permanently stop offending his love for history, though that may be a little much to ask for considering his brain to mouth processing seems to lack about a thousand different filters. He’ll probably forget he even offered to make it up to him anyways, or if he does he’ll just say something offensive two minutes later and they’ll be back where they started.

Unwilling to let anything related to Luhan ruin his first day of classes, Jongin crumples the note and tosses it on his desk before stumbling to the bathroom to brush his teeth. This semester is going to be amazing. He’s all set to smother himself in Greek and Roman studies for the remainder of his college career after finishing up all his icky gen eds. If he’s lucky, he’ll even be able to fit in a semester abroad.

With a peppy skip in his step, he finishes getting ready for classes. Puffs of his fluffy brown hair poke up erratically as he pulls on a simple t-shirt and clean jeans. He spends two seconds trying to smooth down the tiny flick of hair on the top of his head that keeps poking up like a tiny unicorn horn, but promptly gives up. Bed-head it is, he concludes before slipping out the front door with his backpack and a  granola bar in hand.   

There’s a desk in the front row of his Myth in Ancient Greece and Rome lecture with his name written all over it and he can’t wait to claim it. Screw Luhan and his disdain for his love for his major, nothing can stop him from enjoying his classes.

 

 

There is relative peace between them for three weeks after their first little spat. Luhan, much as Jongin had suspected, never brought up the whole “let me make it up to you” thing, but he certainly tried to keep his commentary on Jongin’s interests to a minimum. One time, he even managed to close his mouth before he said something incredibly insulting about Greek Mythology. Jongin could tell because he looked like he was about to choke on air. Or maybe he was just choking on his own spit.

They even sort of study together. This mainly involves Luhan using him as a human notecard, making him read off all of the review questions in Luhan’s textbooks and then getting annoyed when he, unlike a note card, doesn’t have the correct answer written down anywhere. It’s a bit exasperating, and Jongin has probably learned more about science than he has ever cared to know in his whole life, but at least Luhan repays him by cooking him food or buying him snacks.

Even Joonmyun is proud of how well he’s managing to cope with Luhan, though he occasionally still plants himself on Joonmyun’s comfy leather couch and groans about his roommate returning at three or four in the morning, sometimes not at all. He could whine endlessly about how Luhan stumbles in on unsteady feet and manages to find his way into Jongin’s room and pass out practically on top him. He hates it because he’s not one for close contact unless he’s the one initiating it, and it’s not like they’re best friends or anything. They just mildly tolerate each other. Luhan’s room is easier to get to anyways, so he doesn’t understand how he always manages to end up on his bed or his lap when he’s sitting on the couch writing a paper at three in the morning. Tipsy Luhan is always too touchy for Jongin’s taste.

Eunji and Joonmyun are always kind enough to let him get all of his complaints out of his system even if he sounds like a whiny brat. They encourage him to talk things out with Luhan if it becomes too annoying, and they always feed him nice, home cooked food when he’s over for dinner. They’re practically like his second family, except nicer and less critical of his life choices.

There’s always Baekhyun too, though Baekhyun would rather laugh at Jongin’s misfortunes than be supportive. He thinks being smothered by a drunken Luhan is funny, though that’s probably because Luhan and Baekhyun go out and drink and party together. Not to mention Baekhyun has no problem with touchy people, being a touchy person himself, so he probably doesn’t care when wasted Luhan smothers him with affection.

During the second week of school Baekhyun had tried to convince Jongin to come out of his cave and have some fun with the two of them, but all it took was one thought of drunk Luhan draping himself all over Jongin for him to immediately decline.

“But it’ll be fun,” Luhan had quipped, already slinging an arm around Jongin without the slightest bit of alcohol in his system. “You should meet my friend Yixing. You’d like him. The two of you could geek out about studying or something. Plus he’s a funny drunk. Jongdae’s nice too, unless you give him too much vodka. Then he’ll shred every ounce of your humanity.”

Luhan had smelled like too much cologne and hair product as he’d pulled Jongin in close and given him a crinkly smile, eyes rimmed thickly in dark eyeliner to make them stand out instead of blend into his pale face and bleached hair. Glitter from his eyesore of a shirt sprinkled onto Jongin’s hoodie from their close proximity.

“You could borrow some of my clothes. We could dress you up all nice and style your hair,” Baekhyun had grinned and given Jongin’s head a soft pat. “You might even enjoy yourself. Bet you’d get all the ladies with that pretty face of yours.”

Jongin just smiled politely and shook his head, slipping out of Luhans embrace and shoving them towards the door. “I have a paper to write. And you know I’m not interested in all the ladies.”

“It’s Friday night, Jongin.” Luhan rolled his eyes. “You have all weekend to write your paper.”

“I don’t like to procrastinate. And I have to be up early for work tomorrow, so no. I think I’ll just stay in and continue to look unattractive in this ratty sweater and baggy sweatpants. Thanks though, really. But no.”

Baekhyun snickered at him as he shoved the two of them out the front door. “If you change your mind, you’ve got my number!” he yelled back as the two of them headed down the hallway.

“Pfft. Like he’d ever do that. Unless we’re going out drinking wine with the Romans he’ll never want to come.” Jongin remembers being very offended by whatever Luhan said after that, but he’d shut it out of his mind for the sake of their roommate relationship.

But just like Jongin has learned from his history classes, peace is a fleeting thing.

One scorching Monday afternoon, he walks into his apartment, ready to relax for maybe an hour before he starts writing an essay for one of his classes. Sweat makes his shirt stick to the skin of his back. Despite it being September it’s still disgustingly hot and humid outside. In the process of trying to dump his backpack on the living room couch, he nearly trips over a lump on the carpet. With the grace of a wobbly, newborn pup, he narrowly misses the lump by no more than a centimeter as tumbles face first onto the couch. If it weren’t for the resulting mouthful of couch cushion that he receives upon impact he’d squeal in terror like a newborn pup too.

The most terrifying thing, though, is that the lump he nearly stepped on does scream, and it moves. That is just not what inanimate objects should do. Not unless they’re a robot.

Jongin’s body goes rigid on the couch when he realizes that the lump is most definitely not inanimate and happens to to have fluttering wings and eyes the look up at him in terror as he pokes his head over the edge of the couch to glare at it. When he sees the wings on the lump flutter again he really does scream.

“LUHAN! GET OUT HERE! THERE IS A WINGED INTRUDER IN OUR LIVING ROOM!”

His  voice is so alarmingly loud that the poor little lump of a thing pees, causing a dribble of wet spots to streak across the carpet as it runs for the safety of the coffee table.

“LUHAN IT’S GETTING AWAY. IT PEED ON MY CARPET AND NOW IT’S MAKING A RUN FOR IT. MY GRANDMOTHER MADE THIS RUG FOR ME ON THE DAY I WAS BORN, LUHAN. THIS IS A FAMILY HEIRLOOM.”

“Calm down. Jesus. I’m coming. I’m sorry I can’t make myself go to the bathroom any faster,” Luhan yells from the restroom in the hallway.

“HOLD YOUR PISS IF YOU HAVE TO. JUST COME OUT HERE NOW.”

Jongin panics when the thing makes a fluttering movement with its wings once more and flaps away to hide behind the television. Little pinpricks of fear spread across his skin and his fingers twitch nervously. That thing could fly directly at him if he’s not careful.

As a precaution he gathers all of the couch cushions around himself to make a cocoon of pillows. Unfortunately he’d dropped his backpack a couple feet away from the couch when he’d tripped, so he can’t gather it up into safety unless he exposes himself. It will have to remain unprotected out in the piss covered dangerzone.

Even the sound of the toilet finally flushing and the trickle of water from the bathroom sink as Luhan washes his hands doesn’t bring an ounce of relief. What if Luhan can’t save him from this terrible winged terror?

When Luhan finally makes his way into the living room, the first thing he does when he sees a fear stricken Jongin all huddled up on the couch is laugh. His whole body shakes with the sudden outburst of sound as his jaw drops open in the largest “o” shape Jongin’s ever seen any man’s mouth make. Jongin would glare at him, except he’s so mortified by the new bubblegum pink of Luhan’s hair that his mouth just flaps open and closed like a dying fish. He looks ridiculous, like a stick of cotton candy fluff sold at a theme park.

“You’re too cute,” Luhan laughs. His eyes crinkle up again like they had that night when he and Baekhyun had tried to convince him to go out for drinks. “So, where is she? Where’s Minseok?”

“Minseok?” Jongin’s eyes reluctantly travel away from the monstrosity of Luhan’s hair to the where the thing is hiding.

“Yeah! Our new pet baby dragon!” Luhan says eagerly just as she pokes her head out at the sound of Luhan’s voice. “Isn’t she cute?” He waggles his fingers at her invitingly to draw her out from her hiding spot. She still looks a bit frightened as she flaps over to where Luhan is standing and lands softly at his feet.

“Dragon?” Jongin says hoarsely and curls himself deeper into his pillow cave. “You bought a dragon as a pet. Oh my god. This is my worst nightmare.”

“I’ve always wanted a dragon,” Luhan prattles on, completely oblivious to the tremor of fear laced in his roommate’s voice, “and like everyone likes pets right? Who doesn’t want pets? Since this apartment allows pets I thought it’d be nice. Plus, I sort of thought this could be part of me making things up to you for being an that first week.”

“This is the worst way you could make things up to me,” Jongin whispers. He should have seen this coming when Luhan never brought it up again after writing him that note. Leave it to Luhan to be so oblivious about Jongin’s dislike, or rather fear, of dragons that he’d see buying a baby dragon as a way of making it up to him.

Minseok may be tiny, perhaps only as large as Jongin’s foot, but she’s still every bit as terrifying to him just by being a dragon. A line of spikes trails down her back and tail. Jongin wonders if they’re sharp enough to draw blood. Her scales are just as horribly pink as Luhan’s freshly dyed hair and her head looks ridiculously big in proportion to her the rest of her body, except maybe her eyes which are large and kittenish. Jongin is more than mildly frightened by how she’s currently sniffing Luhan’s foot as if she’s about to make it her next target for a line of marble sized fireballs.

“She’s just a baby, but she won’t grow too big. I purposely picked a small one. It’s the trendy thing to do, apparently, at least in urban areas. If we lived a little further out of town I might have picked a miniature Night Fury. Did you know those came in miniatures these days? Well, anyways, I chose a Terrible Terror because I figured they’re a good size and just look how cute she is!” Luhan bends down and wrangles an unwilling Minseok into his arms. “Look Jongin, look at her cute little face.” Luhan coos and walks over to the couch so he can hold Minseok at eye level with Jongin.

Jongin shrieks, ejecting himself out of his invaded pillow cocoon. “Get her out of my face!” he yells as he runs towards the safety of his room. “What if she breathes fire right into my eyeballs?!”

“Don’t worry! She’s all out! Hiccuped out her flames in her crate on the drive back here. She must be excited to have a new home!” Luhan bounds after Jongin, clutching Minseok to his chest even though she squirming for freedom.

“Get her out of my room! No, get both yourself and that lizard out of my room!” Jongin squeaks and tries to push Luhan away, but instead his palms come into contact with the baby dragon huddled in Luhan’s arms and he screams. “I t-touched it!” Jongin wails and dives for the safety of his bed sheets and curls the blanket over his head.

No, this is not happening. There is not baby dragon in his room. Better yet, there is no Luhan in his room. There is nothing in his bedroom but himself. He’s not really on the verge of hyperventilating. If he can’t see anything, then that clearly means there is nothing there. Except there’s a sudden dip in his mattress and the muffled sound of a hiccup followed by the smell of burning cotton, and that’s definitely Luhan muttering “, I thought she was out” before furiously swatting at the blanket, which consequently means smacking Jongin’s thigh repeatedly.

He pokes his head out from under the blanket, frightened for what he’s potentially going to see. His limbs are shaking with nerves.

“What the ?!”

His blanket is on fire and Minseok looks like she’s about to spit another tiny ball of flames out of .

Luhan looks up at Jongin with a startled expression, more disturbed by his loud exclamation than the flames that are consuming Jongin’s bedspread.

“Put it out! Put it out!” Jongin screams, kicking at the blanket and Luhan furiously until both of them end up toppling off the bed. In the panic of kicking both Luhan and his blanket off of his bed he manages to squander the fire as well as frighten Minseok so much that she ends up swallowing her next fireball, burping out a puff of smoke instead of incinerating his mattress.

“Calm down, Jongin. You’re scaring her,” Luhan whines, looking completely unperturbed by the situation at hand. Minseok is trying to bury herself under Luhan’s shirt in fear.

“I’m scaring her? She set my blanket on fire! I’m the one that’s scared! Oh my god. Get. Out. Of. My. Room.” Jongin is furious now. Perhaps Minseok can tell because she flutters out of his room in a matter of seconds. Luhan, on the other hand, is rolling around on the floor on top of the singed bedsheets, cackling at him.

“Such a baby, ~Jonginnie~,” Luhan giggles. There’s ash smearing across his jeans from rolling around in the burnt blankets.

“Get out, get out!” Jongin kicks at him. “Get out or I’ll kick you out of this apartment. I’ll ask the landlord to evict you!”

“Alright, alright. I’m leaving,” Luhan chuckles and sits up. Jongin kicks him in the nose and he lets out a pained grunt. “Don’t be a little er. I said I’m leaving. I’ll give you some time to adjust and then we can discuss our lovely new pet. You’re going to love her. I promise. I bet you already do. She’s cute, like you.”

Jongin kicks Luhan’s arm for being an . “There’s nothing cute about her or me, now get the out.”

“Okay, gosh, I’m leaving. We can talk about this over dinner. We’re having spaghetti.”

There’s no room in Jongin’s stomach for spaghetti tonight. There’s only enough room for his nerves, fear, and maybe a glass of water.

 

 

Luhan manages to coax Jongin out of his cave sometime around midnight with a reheated plate of spaghetti with extra cheese. Jongin, as a result, is very upset by his stomach’s betrayal and Luhan’s decent cooking when he slurps cautiously at his noodles. Flecks of sauce sprinkle across his cheek as he gobbles up the food, but he pays no mind to it, too focused on scanning his surroundings for signs of the tiny ferocious beast that now inhabits his apartment. The more quickly he eats, the sooner he can return to his sanctuary. 

Jongin insists that Luhan sit with him at the kitchen table to guard him from the beast. With a sigh, Luhan situates himself across from Jongin with a textbook in hand and starts reading. By the way his right eye keeps twitching, Jongin can tell the slurpy, lip smashing noises he makes as he eats are destroying Luhan’s focus on his textbook.

Serves him right, Jongin thinks smugly as he eats. He brings home a pet dragon without my consent, the least I can do is annoy the out of him with my eating habits.

After a particularly loud slurp, Luhan looks up and grimaces when he sees that a large glob of tomato sauce has attached itself to Jongin’s chin.

“You look gross,” Luhan says. He picks up a napkin from the napkin holder in the center of the table and chucks it at Jongin’s face.  “I don’t know if you know this, but having a face full of tomato sauce won’t stop dragons from you. And you don’t have to eat so fast to get away from her. She’s sleeping in her crate right now, and will probably remain sleeping unless you start slurping those damn noodles too loudly.”

Jongin glares down at the offensive napkin ball that bounced off of his nose and landed in the middle of his spaghetti.

“You shouldn’t have bought a dragon, Luhan,” Jongin pouts as he picks up the napkin and starts dabbing at his chin with the clean portion of it. “At least not without asking me first. No wait, you just shouldn’t have bought one in general. You should take her back.”

“Don’t be silly. We can’t just return her. She already loves us. I’m sure of it. She’s probably snuggling up all nice and cozy with some of our ratty old clothing, comforted by our scent.”

“Our clothing? You stole my clothes and put them in that crate with that thing?” Jongin stiffens in his chair and grimaces. That is the last place he wants anything remotely flammable to be. “Will you ever ask me for my permission first before you do something stupid? I know we share an apartment but that doesn’t give you ownership over everything in this building, especially my stuff. You can’t just take my things and buy flame breathing dragons without my consent.”

“I figured it wouldn’t be that big a deal,” Luhan shrugs and looks back down at his textbook, tapping idly on the pages with a closed highlighter. “I just took that disgusting looking red hoodie and a pair of ripped socks. It’s supposed to help make her feel at ease and get accustomed to our scent. You know, like what you do with puppies sometimes?”

“You put my favorite sweater in that crate with her?” he screams. “Oh my god…. it’s gonna turn into ashes.” He slams his fist against the table in annoyance. Luhan almost falls out of his seat in surprise.

Every ounce of Jongin’s being is infuriated. That sweater, along with a plaque his mother had bought him at a Latin Convention a few years ago (proudly on display above the sink in the kitchen), is one of his most prized possessions. An artifact, so to speak, of his childhood. An encapsulation of his memories. A historical object from his past. And now it’s sitting in a crate with a living matchstick, ready to burn it into nothingness with an accidental hiccup. This is more tragic than The Great Fire of Rome that Jongin’s been reading about recently.

“Luhan, why are you such a terrible person? Of all things to take, why that?”

“It seemed like it was falling to pieces anyways. She won’t burn it. Minseokie is a good little dragon,” Luhan coos, turning his head to face Minseok’s crate to make googly eyes of adoration at it.

“She’s vile. She’s pink, like you’re stupid ing hair. She peed on my rug, and now she has my favorite sweater,” Jongin hisses.

“I’ll dry-clean the rug and the sweater if you’re going to be this petulant about things, okay? Don’t take it out on her, though. She’s young. We have to potty train her. And the older she gets the easier it will be for her to control her flames.” Luhan pouts.

“Well how am I supposed to know how to train her? She’s your pet. Not mine. Not my responsibility.”

“She’s our pet. We share this apartment, we share this pet,” Luhan says simply.

“That is not how this work,” Jongin grumbles. His lips pucker in a sour frown as he pokes his spaghetti noodles. They’re getting cold and Jongin is losing his appetite the further Luhan drags him into pet dragon induced hell. “I did not buy a genetically modified baby dragon to cuddle with. I don’t remember sharing pet responsibilities as part of the housing contract either.”

Luhan huffs in annoyance and leans back in his chair. “I didn’t realize you were so anti-pets.”

“Of course you didn’t. You never asked.”

“I know you like dogs,” he says unhelpfully.

“Cute little puppy does not, in any way shape or form, equal that flaming ball of doom sleeping in that crate, Luhan.” He jabs his fork angrily in the air in the direction of Minseok’s crate. A few flecks of sauce fly off and splatter the table, but he doesn’t care. He considers it a mild form of revenge. If Luhan gets annoyed with the mess he can clean it later.

Unfazed by the dirtied table, Luhan pouts, fiddling with the corners of his textbook as he tries to con Jongin’s dragon-hating heart into submission. “Look, just give her a chance. She’s really cute. I’ve had my eye on her for a few weeks. You’re both really alike. If you just get over the flame thing I’m sure things will be fine. I even signed us up for dragon training class to teach us how to do this properly, to be good dragon owners. And I’ve bought some books on proper dragon pet care too.”

“No, no, no, no, no. I can’t go to dragon classes, Luhan. I can’t even be near one dragon. I’m the type of person who runs away from pigeons, and those don’t even breathe fire. And I am nothing like her,” Jongin snorts. “Do I look like I can spit fire out of my mouth and flap around my apartment with my non-existent wings?”

“Well-”

“Stop, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. You’re probably going to say something disgusting like ‘both of you are cute’ or ‘she also likes ratty old sweaters’ and I might be tempted to smash my plate of half-eaten food on your head.”

“But you are cute,” Luhan smiles and leans across the table to try to pinch Jongin’s cheek. It’s that eye crinkling smile that makes Jongin’s insides do weird things, like spark the desire to claw his roommate’s eyes out or something. Jongin tries to fend him off with his fork, but he’s unsuccessful. Pale, slender fingers manage to squish at his cheeks as he tries to lean away. He should buy a bigger table. One where touchy, obnoxious Luhan can’t lean across and grab at his cheeks.

“Cutey little Jonginnie who runs away from pigeons and has an irrational fear of dragons, but likes dogs.”

“I’m not cute.”

“If you’re anything, Jongin, aside from being a history nerd that is, you’re cute,” Luhan winks and sits back down in his chair. “And Minseok is too. So just give her a chance. First training class is this Saturday. At least try to survive this week with her and the first class, and then we can reevaluate the situation.”

With a sigh of defeat, Jongin takes one final bite of his pasta and then pushes it away. “Fine. One week. But you better keep your promise about cleaning my rug and my hoodie. And you should maybe also buy me food.”

 

 

Giving Minseok a chance, at least by Jongin’s understanding, means escaping his apartment as much as possible and praying she doesn’t burn the whole thing down while he’s gone. It’s like he’s reverted back to the first week Luhan moved. He’s either working, purposely taking on as many extra shifts as he can, moping around in in Joonmyun and Eunji’s apartment, and eventually bringing himself to such a low level that he begs Baekhyun to let him sleep on his dorm room floor.

“Have you even showered in the past four days, Jongin?” Baekhyun sniffs at him. Tufts of his currently maroon colored hair fall in front of his eyeshadow clad eyes and he has to do that whole Justin Bieber ~hair flip~ thing to get it out of his line of vision. That’s Baekhyun for you though, always hiding behind his hair, makeup, or technology.

The two of them are sitting in one of the tiers of the library that smells like dead rats, cheetos, and sweat. No one really likes to study in the tiers because, along with smelling like death, it’s also balls hot. Jongin can feel the sweat sliding down the nape of his neck. Even Baekhyun’s forehead seems to glisten, though he would have you believe that he’s impervious to such a human thing. Apparently he’s “too cool to sweat” or something stupid like that.

Jongin turns his head and tries discretely to sniff at his armpits without actually having to lift his arms. He’s too afraid to reveal the giant circles of dampness that have been growing under his arms for the past hour as his body melts in heat.

“I showered… when you lent me your dorm keys to get into the bathroom that first night I stayed over.”

“Gross. That was three days ago.” Baekhyun wrinkles his nose as his grimaces. Jongin tries not to think about how it sort of reminds him of Luhan’s disgusted look when he’d had tomato sauce all over his chin a few days ago.

“ it’s hot in here. Why are we in the tiers, Jongin? We could be on the main floor, where it’s air conditioned, and the air is breathable, and we might actually live to see another day.”

“Because I have to find five sources. And, like, you know, study some… stuff. I have an essay due in two days.”

They were both supposed to be studying. Except Baekhyun had only gotten one page into his work before pulling out his phone, started texting people, and presumably play Candy Crush (he always makes this really funny constipated face when he’s stuck on a level). So now it’s more Jongin studying and Baekhyun’s doing, well, whatever it is that Baekhyun does, which involves hardly any studying.

“You already have your sources. That’s a bull excuse.”

“I like it up here?”

“More bull.” Baekhyun rolls his eyes at his phone. He’s so addicted to the silly piece of technology that he can’t even look up at Jongin to direct his eyerolls at him.

“It’s quiet.” Jongin says with finality, and goes back to taking detailed notes for his essay.

The truth is, Jongin doesn’t want to go to the first floor. Today is a Wednesday, and Luhan always meets with his weird, pre-vet study group on the first floor in the library cafe at this time on Wednesdays, and Jongin does not want to see him. Doesn’t want to look him in the eye like a scared kitty and try to run and hide behind the book shelves so Luhan can’t ask him why he hasn’t been coming home, if he even still has a home left with the fireball living in it.

“The first floor can be quiet too,” his friend says after a few minutes of silence, only broken by the buzzing of his phone as he receives a series of texts.

“Baek please, can you just drop it? Or leave? Or work on something like you’re supposed to?” Jongin sighs.

Without looking up from his book, Jongin can tell Baekhyun’s rolling his eyes at his phone again.

“Is this about Luhan?” he chirps. Now he’s tapping angrily at the glowing screen, probably trying to align all the pretty candies in a crushable order.

“Why would this be about Luhan?”

“Because everything these days is about Luhan when it comes to you acting like a hissy little kitten. And he just texted me to see if I wanted to get some coffee at the cafe downstairs and told me to bring you.” Baekhyun looks up from his phone and gives Jongin a pointed stare. “It’s obvious you’re avoiding him.”

“Not him necessarily. Just… something related to him,” Jongin mumbles, face deflating into a pout. “He… bought a dragon.”

Baekhyun blinks at him like this is old news and it makes Jongin irritated, makes him wonder if maybe Baekhyun already knew Luhan had intentions of buying a pet dragon weeks ago and just failed to mention it to him.

“Yeah, I know. I picked her out with him,” he shrugs.

“Are you kidding me right now?” Jongin says flatly. His hand curls into a stiff fist around his pencil. “You knew he was going to go off and buy a dragon without telling me?!”

“I figured he’d talked it over with you, the way he was talking. ‘Oh Jongin will just love her, isn’t she cute?’ and so on,” Baekhyun says, flapping his hands animatedly in a very Luhan like way. “I mean, the way he kept cooing at her and talking about you made it seem like it at least.”

“Or you’re just extremely unobservant with very selective hearing. I’m terrified of dragons,” Jongin grumbles with irritation. “You know that, Baekhyun. I’ve been terrified of them since basically birth.”

“I thought you grew out of it. Just like you grew out of your Pororo phase. You used to make me call you Krongin until you were, like, thirteen.”

“This is not even remotely similar to that situation.” Jongin slams his head down onto his book in embarrassment. Thank god they’re the only people sitting in this tier right now, or he’d have to murder them and Baekhyun. “I don’t think I’ll be joining you for coffee.”

Across from him, Baekhyun sighs and places his phone down on the wooden table with an agitated thud. It buzzes against the worn surface a few times before Baekhyun finally speaks. “Don’t be a baby, Jongin. He’s your roommate, you can’t avoid him forever, or the dragon. Besides, I know for a fact she’s pretty cute. She was the most tame one there. Very shy, but cute. Don’t be a to Luhan just because of her. I’ll drag you down to the café by force if I have to. Pull you along by your toenails until they bleed and fall off.”

“I’ll claw your face off,” Jongin growls into the book. It smells disgusting, like moist dust sweat. Briefly, he wonders how many other people have touched this book with grubby fingers. Yuck.

Baekhyun reaches across the table and gives Jongin’s hair a rough tug as a threat. “I’ll tell Joonmyun all about your cowardice. What will your hero think of you then?”

Jongin snorts into the book and then coughs from the sudden inhalation of grossness.

Brining Joonmyun into things is far more than a low blow to his ego. It’s a serious threat. Joonmyun’s been so busy these days with grad school stuff and arranging everything for his wedding that, even though he’s more than happy to have Jongin’s company, he’s easily irritated and stressed, not to mention Jongin just spent too much time at his apartment the past few days.

The last time he was over, Joonmyun had sighed, handed him a cup of tea and then given him that look, the one that Jongin makes feel like an ashamed little kid. All last year, when they had been roommates, Joonmyun had done his best to encourage Jongin to go out and make new friends instead of endlessly spending his days either in the library or their apartment, but after six months he’d given up and started giving Jongin that pitiful look, like “ah, what am I going to do with this helpless kid?” Sort of reminiscent of the look his parents used to give him in high school. Jongin doesn’t want to deal with it anymore.

“Fine,” he wheezes. “But I’m just going to get myself some tea and then leave.”

“Good,” Baekhyun grins. He extends his hand across the table and pets the top of Jongin’s head like he’s a little puppy dog in need of encouragement, something that both him and Luhan seem to be fond of doing. “And tonight you’ll go home and shower and sleep in your own damn bed instead of my floor.”

“Yeah, fine,” Jongin sighs.

Despite his agreement to meet with Luhan and his weird vet friends, Baekhyun still has to drag him out of his chair after he makes no noticeable effort to remove himself from it. Baekhyun pulls him up by his armpits and then makes a snide comment about it’s like lifting a moistened sponge, but more unsanitary. If Jongin weren’t about to walk to his potential doom he would be embarrassed. Perhaps he should just go with his initial plan of clawing his friend’s face off and then maybe escape the country.

When he’s been successfully manhandled down all of the stairs and shoved into the air-conditioned café, Luhan’s sparkling eyes spot him within a millisecond. Unconsciously, Jongin tries to shrink away from Luhan’s gaze, automatically taking a step back right on top of Baekhyun’s toes. His friend lets out an annoyed yelp and shoves Jongin over in Luhan’s direction.

“You got dirt on my shoe,” Baekhyun hisses in his ear.

Jongin just rolls his eyes and tries to pretend it was just an accident and not his body’s automatic reaction to seeing Luhan. He’s almost as afraid of the pink haired faerie boy as he is of the damn dragon. It’s humiliating.

There are two other people sitting with Luhan that Jongin recognizes from seeing Luhan study down here with them before. One has sharp cheekbones and eyes that wrinkle even more than Luhan’s, if such a thing is possible, when he smiles. His black hair pokes out in all manner of directions as if he’s rubbed a balloon all over his head. The other guy looks more absent, eyes slightly dead as he stares down at his textbook, smiling at what appears to be the skeleton of some form of animal. Jongin does not want to know. Anyone that smiles at skeletons must be slightly mental.

Before they even make their way over to the table, Luhan stands up and rushes towards them like he knows Jongin is on the verge of fleeing. The staticky hair guy watches Luhan walk over to them with a smug expression on his face.

“Hey, glad you came,” Luhan smiles at them. Jongin wants to poke out those damn crinkly, sparkly eyes with a straw from someone’s frappuccino. Apparently a week with their absence has intensified his abhorrence for them.

“Anything to get out of the tiers,” Baekhyun gripes and glares at Jongin. “I feel like my eye makeup’s dripping off of my face now. I’m gonna go make Yixing buy me a nice cold drink and bask in the glory that is air conditioning. I’m ever going in one of those tiers again.”

“It’s only a little smudgy,” Luhan laughs. He pokes one of Baekhyun’s cheeks and the tip of his finger comes away a little damp, covered with a thin layer of makeup. Baekhyun slaps at the offensive hand with a huff and a grumble about needing to reapply whatever it is the Luhan just wiped off.

“Good luck with getting Yixing to buy you a drink. He’s too transfixed by fetal pig anatomy to even listen to Jongdae, and Jongdae is loud and demanding.”

“That makes my life easier. I’ll just take his wallet then and he won’t even notice,” Baekhyun shrugs and then scowls. “After I fix my face, that is. I’ll be back.”

Jongin lets out a pitiful gurgle and half attempts to reach out a hand to pull Baekhyun back, but his gesture goes unnoticed as Baekhyun walks off. With a bubbling sense of dread, Jongin watches his friend walk away. He doesn’t want to be left alone with Luhan, but he knows he can’t just follow Baekhyun to the bathroom. Besides, Luhan’s already got a hand on his wrist, gently tugging him into line so he can order a drink. The pad of his thumb presses into the palm of Jongin’s hand as Luhan gives his wrist a light squeeze. Jongin gulps awkwardly and does his best not to shy away from Luhan’s touch. It’s something he fears he’ll never quite get used to.

“Look, I know I’ve upset you,” Luhan says quietly beside him as they shuffle their way forward in line, “and I’m sorry for that. But, you promised me you’d give Minseok a chance, you know? And this avoidance thing, this isn’t giving her a chance. At all. This is just being a coward.”

The word coward stings and Jongin finally flinches out of Luhan’s grasp. He knows Baekhyun and Joonmyun have been thinking it this whole time, but somehow hearing it from Luhan’s mouth hurts more. Or at least more than it should. At least Joonmyun and Baekhyun know him well enough to be able to say that to him, but Luhan… Luhan hardly knows him well enough at all. Or maybe it just stings more because Luhan’s hardly known him as long as Baekhyun and Joonmyun and he’s already figured him out.

“You can hate me all you want right now. That’s fine. I guess I kind of deserve it. But don’t hate her when you don’t even know her. She’s just a little baby dragon. She never did anything to you.”

“She peed on my rug.”

He knows that at this point he’s just being a brat. Really he was going to agree to go home from the very beginning, but there’s just something about Luhan’s presence that seems to bring out the worst in him. If he’s a brat to everyone else, he’s ten times the brat to Luhan.

“I cleaned the damn rug, Jongin.” Luhan gives Jongin an exasperated shove forward in line and then reaches for his wrist again.

It’s confusing to Jongin why Luhan always does this, has an affinity for pulling Jongin in closer to him even if he’s just pushed him away. Perhaps it’s something Luhan does with everyone. There’s just something about how his brain works that makes it second nature for him to reach out and touch people. Even if he’s angry, and Jongin can definitely tell that Luhan’s more than a little miffed right now, he’s still eager to touch people.  

Jongin pulls his wrist loose. “Buy me tea and maybe I’ll come home.”

“Brat.” Luhan pinches Jongin’s waist, eliciting a yelp from him. He tries to pull away again, but Luhan curls his finger into Jongin’s shirt.

“I mean yes, I’ll go back to the apartment tonight.”

“Hmm, good boy,” Luhan hums approvingly and gives the top of Jongin’s head a quick pat of approval. He’s been getting that a lot recently. From Baekhyun too, but mainly from Luhan. Like he’s treating Jongin like some adorable puppy in need of reassurance. Maybe he does. “So, what kind of tea? Iced? Hot? Green? Black?”

The same way that Jongin knows Baekhyun is making at faces at him without even looking, Jongin can sense that Luhan’s eyes are doing that stupid sparkly, crinkly thing again. He doesn’t look because he doesn’t want to feel the awkward flip flops that his stupid face tends to cause. Instead, Jongin makes a mental note to add Luhan’s ability to transition too quickly from annoyed to happy to the list of “Traits that Make Luhan Weird” and pretends to squint at the beverage menu instead.

“Iced peach tea.”

“Even your tea standards are high strung,” Luhan remarks. He lets go of Jongin’s shirt and nudges him in the direction of where his friends are sitting. “Go sit down. I’ll bring it to you.”

Although a few minutes ago Jongin was nervous to be left alone with Luhan, he’s even more reluctant to be left alone with Luhan’s friends. The one making love eyes at his textbook seems harmless, but the guy with the staticky hair has been staring at them throughout the whole exchange, and Jongin’s not sure he wants to have to deal with anything he might have to say about it.

“Uh… I’ll just stand in line, it’s fine,” he says.

This time he’s the one reaching out to cling to Luhan. Jongin does not like how that seems to make spiky hair man smile at them even more, so he quickly lets go. But then the guy kind of laughs and that makes Jongin annoyed. The laughter prompts him to reason his actions by telling himself that he’d do the same to anyone, Luhan just happened to be the nearest familiar object within reaching distance. If Baekhyun were here instead of fixing his stupid, already perfect face, he would have just as easily reached out to grab him over Luhan in the first place.

Luhan clucks his tongue and turns to see what Jongin’s staring at, and then he laughs too.

“Jongdae is harmless, I promise. Go sit. Yixing probably won’t even notice you joined the table.” He presses his palm into the center of Jongin’s back (which is probably still sweaty and gross from earlier, but Luhan either doesn't notice or doesn’t care because he doesn’t flinch away like Baekhyun does when he encounters Jongin’s sweat) and gives him a gentle push.

“He doesn’t look very harmless,” Jongin says skeptically. “But, um, okay.”

He can do this. He just agreed to go back to his dragon infested apartment. This can’t be any worse than that. Strangers don’t spit flames at people. Or shouldn’t spit flames at people. Based on Jongdae’s hair though, Jongin wonders if he’s more likely to get electrocuted. That boy looks like he’s been rubbing one too many balloons all over his head.

“You’re Jongin, right?” Jongdae, Jongin assumes, extends his hand in greeting.

Jongin almost expects his first encounter with Luhan’s friend to go the same way it had gone with Luhan himself. But there’s not follow up. No “you’re that guy from History of Dragons, the one who vomited”, just a simple extension of a hand and sharp, but friendly smile.

“Yeah. Luhan’s roommate,” Jongin says sheepishly as he shakes the offered hand and then settles himself down in a chair next to who he assumes is Yixing. As predicted, Yixing is so deep into La La Land with his anatomy book that he doesn't even register Jongin’s presence.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Jongdae, and this,” Jongdae jabs his hand in the other man’s direction “is Yixing. But don’t expect him to say hello anytime soon. He’s fallen in love with his textbook again and probably won’t resurface until the apocalypse.”

Jongin smiles and shifts into a more comfortable position in his chair, trying to let his body relax and overcome the nerves of having to talk to someone he’s never met before. “It’s okay, that happens to me sometimes too. Just… not usually when looking at drawings of pig innards.”

“Great. You’ll get along just fine then. I, on the other hand, abhor my textbooks. I’d much prefer a hands on experience to dissecting photographs.”

Jongin just laughs nervously because he’s not entirely sure how to respond to that, plus the mental image of Jongdae’s unpracticed hands trying to stitch together various animal parts without knowing how they actually fit together is a bit jarring. Also Jongin loves textbooks so what can he really say that won’t make Jongdae gag?

Luckily, he doesn’t have to worry for very long because Baekhyun finally returns and any form of malice or mirth that could potentially be directed at Jongin is directed at Baekhyun instead. Especially when he tries to snatch Yixing’s wallet unnoticed and Jongdae’s eyes pinpoint his actions in a matter of seconds. But apparently, because Jongdae is “nice” and slightly annoyed that Yixing’s currently more in love with pig skeletons than him, he actually lets Baekhyun take five bucks for his beverage fund.

By the time their bickering exchange is over and Baekhyun’s standing in line, Luhan has returned with a very large iced tea for Jongin and a cookie for himself. Of course, being Luhan, he sits a little too close for comfort, pressing their thighs together as he squeezes into the open seat next to him. Jongin wants to blame it on the table being too small for the number of people trying to fit, but he can’t quite fool himself enough. Again, this is just part of Luhan’s natural tendency, like how he pats Jongin’s head reassuringly if he’s done something good, or how his drunken instincts always lead him to Jongin’s lap or bed. This is just Luhan being Luhan. He doesn’t really want to think much of it beyond that.

He doesn’t pull away though, the warmth of Luhan’s thigh causing an odd sense of comfort to settle in his stomach, washing away the nerves of being forced to meet new people. Joonmyun would be proud, he thinks. Today he’s maybe made new friends, and he’s about to go home and face a dragon

 

 

“Facing a dragon” mainly involves Jongin cowering like a sissy behind Luhan when the pink she-devil flitters over happily to greet them. He forces Luhan to stand between him and Minseok at all times, especially after she tries to sniff his foot when he removes his shoes. It takes a lot of coaxing from Luhan to stop him from running directly to his room. Lots of promises of ordering fried chicken for dinner and committing to being on bathroom cleaning duty for two weeks.

After a considerable amount of Luhan’s manhandling, Jongin and Minseok find a happy medium on the living room couch that involves Jongin sitting on one end while he works on his paper, and Luhan sitting on the other with Minseok practically glued to his lap. She seems rather content there, body curled up on Luhan’s thighs with her head resting on one of his arms, peering curiously at Jongin. While it’s immensely distracting to have Luhan cooing at his weird pet for the hour or so that they sit there, he figures he’d much rather deal with Luhan’s grossness than have a wild dragon baby all over his lap.

It isn’t until after they’ve eaten dinner that Luhan lets Jongin shrink back into the safety of his room, and that’s probably only because Minseok starts sneezing, and apparently dragon sneezes are flammable. Seeing his kitchen table blaze up like a bonfire is the last thing he wants to witness.

They scrape by for the rest of the week like that, Luhan bribing Jongin into staying out of his room with food or promises to clean things. He’ll sit on the couch or at the kitchen table doing school work while Luhan distracts Minseok. Sometimes she just sits in Luhan’s lap as he does homework, eyes typically fixated on Jongin, other times Luhan has her chasing after some ridiculous fireproof feather toy. A few times, she gets so carried away chasing it that she skids on the floor and crashes into the furniture or smashes into the wall. It is… kind of cute. Except Jongin is never willing to admit it when Luhan starts prying the second he sees the tiniest smile stretch across his lips.

Each day Luhan sits a little closer to Jongin and Minseok follows in his footsteps. Sometimes he even forces Jongin to give her little treats when they stop her from peeing on things. This mainly involves Jongin throwing random snacks at her from about five feet away because he does not want to get anywhere near that flaming mouth of hers. The snacks always bounce right off her nose because Jongin’s aim . Luhan always laughs how ridiculous he is and then ruffles Jongin’s hair.

On Saturday, Jongin almost forgets that he has to attend a whole class full of dragons until Luhan rudely ruins his Saturday sleep in habits by flopping himself across his bed at 9 a.m.

“Wake up, sleepy head! It’s time to get ready to take Minseok to her first class!” Luhan screeches in his ear. The entire length of his body presses Jongin into the mattress. For some reason sober Luhan feels like he weighs fifty pounds more than a drunk one.

Jongin groans and tries to shove him and his gross coffee breath off of him. At this point, normal people would just yank off the blankets and shock him with the cold air of his room. But Luhan is not normal. Instead, he snuggles in closer and tucks his chin in the crook of Jongin’s neck. It’s about ten times more annoying but ten times more effective. Makes his skin crawl and he itches to shove him away.

“Get off. Now.”

“I made you breakfast.” Luhan’s breath is hot on his neck. It’s really ing gross. So Jongin knees him in the groin. He squeals so unpleasantly that Minseok flies into Jongin’s room like she’s on a rescue mission, and then Jongin starts squealing too because he doesn’t want his blankets set on fire again. If Luhan weren’t in pain from being kneed in the balls, he’d probably be laughing.  

After a few minutes of flopping around like a dying fish on top of Jongin, Luhan wrangles him out of bed and shoves buttered toast and orange juice in his face, then shoves him back into his room to get dressed. He’s so hyper and excited that it starts to rub off on Minseok. She starts flying like a crazed bee all over the apartment and burps out a ball of fire onto a couch cushion that Luhan has to scramble to put out before Jongin leaves his bedroom.

It isn’t until they’re a block away from the training facility Jongin has a mental breakdown in the car and forces Luhan to pull over to the side of the road. His fingers are shaking so badly he has to ball them into fists to try to make it stop. Perhaps Luhan hasn’t noticed, but for almost the entire drive Minseok has been hiccuping fireballs in her crate from excitement. If she’s this hyper and firey right now, he can’t imagine what she’ll be like in a room full of other dragons, not to mention what all the other dragons will be like. Baekhyun said Minseok had been the most tame. So if this is tame, what are all the others going to be like?

“I can’t do this, Luhan.”

Luhan sighs and wraps his hand around one of Jongin’s fists, slowly prying his fingers apart and lacing them with his own. If he notices that Jongin’s hands are clammy and gross, he’s kind enough not to say so.

“Don’t be silly. Of course you can. You’ve been doing just fine with Minseok. We don’t have to stand near anyone else. We can be off to the side. And we can tell the instructor to keep us a little further away from all the others. You won’t have to worry about them. Just focus on Minseok.”

“I can’t even cope well with Minseok.” Jongin’s voice is tight and so are his fingers, wrapped so securely around Luhan’s that he’s sure his nails are going to leave crescent marks behind on his hand.

“You fed her a treat this morning all on your own. Of course you can cope with her.” Luhan rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. The kind of smile that would make Jongin angry if he weren’t freaking out. The crinkly kind with the sparkles. It’s lethal.

“I threw that at her from, like, five feet away. It bounced off her nose again.”

“But you did it unprompted. Before, you wouldn’t even think of giving her a treat without me telling you to. She’s growing on you. Think of this as more time to bond. She’s obviously interested in getting to know you, so stop being a baby and let her. You promised. And I’ll be there. I promise I’ll never make you do this alone, okay?”

Jongin hunches up his shoulders and slouches further into his seat. He did promise. He knows that. It’s just turning out to be more difficult than he expected it to be.  When he speaks, his voice comes out as barely a whisper. “Okay… I. Guess. We can go.”

Luhan grins at him at him and detaches their hands. On reflex, he pats the top of Jongin’s head, and then restarts the car. Jongin hates to admit this, but he’s starting to find these little head pats weirdly reassuring. His shoulders loosen a little bit as Luhan pulls away from the curb, but not enough to be completely relaxed.

When Luhan reaches for his hand as they walk towards the training center, Jongin doesn't even pull away. He feels silly for for being so afraid, like being terrified about going into a room full of dragons is somehow as irrational as his fear of sitting on Santa’s lap back when his mom used to take him to the mall for pictures. They’re domesticated dragons, after all. Born and bred to love their human masters. Certainly that means they have less intentions of setting everything on fire, right? Especially their beloved owners.

Minseok bounces on happily beside them, flying to the end of her leash and tugging a little bit before looping back towards them and then flying back out again. Each time she comes close, Jongin struggles not to flinch away.

A severe looking man with beaky lips and thick eyebrows greets them as they enter the training facility and directs them to a circle of chairs that have been set up in a large, gymnasium-like room. He introduces himself as Kris, their instructor for the beginner level of dragon training. Jongin just smiles at him politely and tries not to think about how he looks almost as intimidating as the dragon beside him, which is massive, ugly, and blue with a face that reminds him of a mutated carp with sharper teeth. Minseok looks like a puny rodent compared to that thing.

As they walk towards their seat, Luhan jokes about Kris looking like a constipated dragon-human hybrid. Although he agrees, he hopes Kris doesn’t hear a single word that pops out of Luhan’s ridiculous mouth. They’re entrusting the next hour and a half of their life to this man and his very large, intimidating dragon after all.

“I think that one’s a Flightmare,” Luhan says excitedly as they sit down. “I’ve always wanted to see what they look like at night. Apparently they glow in the dark because they eat a special kind of bioluminescent algae.”

“Ick.” It’s not fair that Luhan is totally geeking out right now and he’s trying his best not to vomit for the second time in front of him.

“Oh come on, you have to admit that’s kind of cool.”

“I’m kind of too worried about dying to think anything is cool right now.” Jongin’s voice cracks. It’s very embarrassing.

Kris had assured them, upon entry, that the training facility is the most up to date facility in the region in terms of safety. Not a spec of wood or flammable material in sight. At every little set of chairs there’s a fire extinguisher just in case. It should be reassuring, but instead it just makes Jongin’s throat constrict because that’s like admitting that things are going to eventually burst into flames.

“You’ll do fine. Minseok won’t let any of the other dragons touch you.” Luhan winks.

Jongin laughs nervously and refuses to look at anything besides his shoelaces because he’s pretty sure every dragon in this room is about ten times the size of Minseok. Even with all of Luhan’s endless prodding, he doesn’t look up until Kris officially introduces himself to the class and training begins.

Dragon training, Jongin soon discovers, is a lot like puppy class. Just with more accidental fires and poisonous teeth. Puppies are also better than dragons. Less fear inducing.

They start out with the basics, like teaching them sit and stay. Normal things that you’d teach any pet, like how to potty train them and teaching them to come to you when you call their name. About halfway through the class Kris starts lecturing them on how to prevent fires and signs that most dragons show before they finally spit out the flames.

There’s a really hideous looking warty dragon (a Gronkle, apparently) named Chanyeol that keeps uncontrollably burping fire everywhere once they start practicing fire extinguishing techniques that sends Jongin into a panic for more than half the class. Kris eventually has to intervene at some point and feed Chanyeol something to drain his fire power. Even after that, Jongin’s still too worried to let Minseok or Luhan near him. When Minseok gets thirsty he doesn’t even let her drink out of the water dish at the front of the room for fear that Chanyeol will set her on fire too.

It helps that Minseok is already naturally shy when it comes to interacting with the other dragons. Less for him to worry about. Luhan, however, is not. He keeps walking up to everyone else during breaks and introducing himself and Minseok. He asks them about their dragons, prattles on and on about how he’s a pre-vet student that wants to specialize in dragon health. Jongin just sits in his chair, clinging to the fire extinguisher, palms and underarms even sweatier than when he forced Baekhyun to sit in the tiers with him. He probably looks like he’s just run marathon. To be honest, it’s taking about just as much effort for him to keep sitting in this room as it would for him to run a marathon. But then Luhan eventually returns and gives Jongin that eye crinkly smile and he feels a little better.

When class is over for the day he feels like he’s given himself a sponge bath with his clothes on with how much nervous sweating he’s been doing, but at least he’s in one piece and still has all his limbs. There was a moment when Chanyeol set his owner’s pant leg on fire, but other than that they seemed to be the only ones who found their fire extinguisher to be most necessary. Minseok always aimed her little baby flames in the opposite direction of wherever Jongin happened to be at the time, aware of Jongin’s fear.

On the drive back, Luhan orders Jongin a chai frappuccino at a drive through Starbucks as a treat for surviving his very first dragon training class. Jongin feels a little swell of pride bubble up in his chest because he didn’t die and he didn’t run away. Not that he could escape. Luhan and Kris and his dragon probably wouldn’t have let him. But what counts is that he didn’t even try to run.

Minseok passes out in her crate on the way home like an exhausted puppy. It’s maybe, sort of, really cute.Maybe.

 

 

They fall into a routine after that, with Luhan waking Jongin up on Saturday mornings by smothering him and then force feeding him whatever it is that he’s made for breakfast. Sometimes it’s something good, like pancakes or scrambled eggs, but most of the times it’s just toast and orange juice because he’s too busy bouncing off the walls like a madman with Minseok in his wake. A few times Luhan even wrangles Baekhyun into joining them for class and then they go out for donuts afterwards.

“So you’re finally making friends?” Joonmyun smiles proudly.

Jongin’s in the kitchen helping Joonmyun shred lettuce for a salad while Eunji and Luhan are playing with Minseok in the living room. She’d invited them over for dinner claiming it was because Jongin hadn’t been around in a while, but he suspects it’s more because she’s trying to convince Joonmyun that they should get a pet dragon too.

“I guess? I mean, it’s really just Baekhyun and Luhan and sometimes his friends. I’m not like, going out and partying like a wild man or anything.” Jongin shrugs and tosses more lettuce in the serving bowl. He can hear Eunji squealing in the living room as she plays around with Minseok.

“That’s still good. You’re being less of a hermit than usual. And you help take care of Minseok. That’s a lot more than just stacking books at the library and studying. It’s been good for you. You haven’t even complained about wanting to murder Luhan these days.”

Jongin gives a noncommittal hum. It’s true that he’s had less urges to strangle his roommate, but that doesn’t mean he’s completely accustomed to having him in his life yet. There are still nights when Luhan stumbles into their apartment at unreasonable hours, breath stinking of alcohol and limbs a little too jelly like for him to be anything but smashed.

Now that the weather’s getting colder, Jongin has taken to curing his midnight chills by making late night cups of hot chocolate. He’s usually standing near the stove top when Luhan stumbles in, eyes getting lost in the swirl of his spoon as he mixes together milk and chocolate into drinkable perfection. Luhan will slide up behind him, slink his spaghetti-like appendages around the front of Jongin and bury his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. He usually presses his forehead against the back of Jongin’s neck and mumbles something about how nice and warm he is and Jongin has to do everything in his power not to violently stab at Luhan with his spoon to get him off. Drunk Luhan is just something he’ll never get used too. Always too cold with icy fingers that dig into his stomach as they curl into his hoodie.

During dinner, Luhan shoots off a million and one questions, asking how their wedding planning is going and what grad student life is like. Just as bubbly and effervescent as ever. Eunji is more than willing to answer every question, from the color of the table cloths at the reception to the type of flowers in her bouquet. The date for the wedding is set to be on New Year’s Eve, and they’ll be sending out invitations soon. They’re ready and stacked on the coffee table.

Minseok spends the entire meal sitting in Eunji’s lap with her head propped up on the table. It goes entirely against everything they’ve been taught in dragon training, but Luhan thinks it’s too cute to stop her and Eunji wholeheartedly agrees. Joonmyun spends most of the meal looking rather perplexed and exasperated, like he’s meeting his fiancee for the first time.

“You should take Luhan with you to the wedding,” Eunji whispers in his ear as they leave. She slides a wedding invitation in between his hands. “I like him. He’s nice.”

Jongin blushes and mumbles “I’ll think about it” while avoiding Luhan’s curious gaze. He focuses on tying a perfect knot with his shoelaces instead of the weird feeling in the pit of his stomach at the thought of taking Luhan as his plus one. He doesn't necessarily like Luhan like that, but he certainly doesn’t hate him like he used to. But at the same time, he knows the little tingly feeling in his stomach when Luhan directs his stupid, sparkly eye smile at him isn’t based on something purely platonic either.

“Don’t think too hard,” Eunji laughs. She gives his shoulder a tight squeeze and then walks over to give Minseok a goodbye pat on the head.

 

 

This year, much to the pleasure of the majority of the university’s students, Halloween falls on a Friday. That means they get Thirsty Thursday, plus extra wild parties on Friday night. Luhan and Baekhyun are bent on taking advantage of both events, though they save most of it for Friday. Luhan decks himself out in a ridiculously tight pair of white skinny jeans and a white and gold shiny shirt. To finish the look, he adds on a weird looking pair of angel wings and a thick layer of gold eyeshadow. Everything pure white and gold except for the forever bubblegum pink of his hair.

“You’re not really going dressed as an angel, are you?” Jongin chokes on his cup of tea. He’s spending the evening in, hiding away from the majority of humanity and their drunken Halloween tendencies.

“Well, duh.” Luhan rolls his eyes and waves his hands down the length of his body. All he’s missing is the halo above his head that he most definitely doesn’t deserve.

“You look weird.”

“I look perfect,” he sniffs defensively. “At least I’m not being a party pooper, like you.”

“I’m not being a party pooper, I’m being responsible. We have to take Minseok to class tomorrow morning. I can’t afford to be whatever it is I might be tomorrow morning if I actually go out with you and Baekhyun tonight.”

“You’d be fine. I wouldn’t let you get wasted. Not intentionally at least.” He grins. His eyes are twinkly. It’s upsetting.

Jongin frowns and sets his cup of tea down on the table top. “I don’t entirely trust you. Hence why I’m staying in. But you better be back before three a.m. at least, please. You promised me you’d never make me go alone.”

“And it is a promise I shall keep,” Luhan says solemnly, raising his hand to cover his heart. “I’m headed out now, though.  Happy Halloween, kid.” He gives Jongin’s head a condescending pat and then rushes out the front door.

Jongin sighs and glances over at Minseok. Their relationship has progressed a lot since he first met her, but being alone with her still makes him a little queasy. Right now she’s being silly, rolling around on the living room carpet like how Jongin assumes Jongdae rubs his head in balloons. Her pink tongue pokes out from between her sharp teeth as she wiggles around on her back. Jongin tries to imagine what she’d look like right now if she had fur, hair puffed out, staticky, fluffing her up like a frightened cat.

“So I guess it’s just you and me tonight?” he says lamely.

Minseok stops wiggling around on her back and rolls on her side to stare at Jongin, eyes wide and unblinking. She stands up and walks over to her food bowl before plopping herself down in front of it with a huff.

“I’m not going to feed you. Luhan already did that before he left.”

She pokes the bowl with her tail, stares at it for a second, and then looks back up at Jongin.

“Uh… I can give you water?” Hesitantly, he removes himself from his seat, fills a glass from the cupboard with water and then pours it into her bowl.

Minseok snorts out a puff of smoke in annoyance, but laps up some of the water anyways. It makes Jongin feel unnecessarily guilty, so he feeds her a chicken flavored snack as well. After weeks of going to training with her, he finally feels comfortable enough to let her take it from his hand instead of throw it at her face.

“Good girl,” he coos and then gags because of how much he momentarily sounds like Luhan. Ew.

For the rest of the night, Jongin settles on the couch with Minseok sitting a respectable distance from him. She’s learned not to sit directly on his lap unless he reaches out for her. He sifts through a couple of channels on the t.v. before settling on one that’s marathoning horror movies. He’s a bit of a pansy when it comes to watching them, though, so he has to stand up and make sure he turns on every light in the apartment before settling back onto the couch. Since he knows he’s a giant baby when it comes to scary things, he lets Minseok snuggle next to his thigh, and he has to put the volume on low so the screaming and screechy, high tension music doesn't put his senses into overdrive.

The first two movies have him whimpering like a baby and clutching at the couch cushions. This was probably a terrible idea, but he felt like had to do something Halloween related. Minseok is bored though. She keeps sighing every time Jongin yelps at the t.v. screen. Her eyes constantly drift towards the apartment door, watching for Luhan’s return.

By the third film, Luhan still hasn’t returned. It’s nearing two a.m. now. He’s starting to feel a little anxious that he hasn’t even heard from Luhan saying he’s on his way back or that he’ll be back soon, but he brushes it off as the after effects of watching scary movies. Must be all that blood and gore and ghostly creatures getting to his head.

As a precaution, he sets an alarm on his phone for nine a.m. Usually Luhan wakes him up by breathing his disgustingly hot breath down his neck, but since he’s not so sure that Luhan will even make it back tonight he doesn’t want to risk it. He even sends Luhan a text to see if he’ll be back soon.

When he glances at the digital clock below the T.V. again it’s 2:45. On the screen, some poor, clueless college student is getting their guts ripped out. Fake blood splatters everywhere and paints the scene red. Despite the fact that it looks like ketchup it’s still really gross. If it weren’t for the nerves already twisting his stomach at Luhan’s lack of a response, it would probably make him feel queasy. Luckily he’s spent more time locking and unlocking his phone screen, hoping to see the little red text message indication number, but the only message he’s received all night is from Joonmyun, telling him not to eat too much candy.

At three thirty, his eyes are drooping with sleep and there’s still no text or missed phone calls to speak of. Minseok has given up on watching the door with hopeful eyes.

“Luhan is a bag,” Jongin growls sleepily.

As if in agreement, Minseok nods her tiny dragon head and curls into Jongin’s body.

The blood and gore are failing at keeping him awake. He stretches out his legs along the length of the couch and re-adjusts Minseok so that she’s sitting in front of his chest. He runs his fingers along her pink scaled back and tries to soak in the heat from her tiny body. She’s so very warm.

By five a.m., the two of them are completely passed out on the couch. One of his arms is curled tightly around Minseok, the other hangs of the side of the couch with his phone loosely held in his grip. Drool dribbles out from between lips as his mouth falls open. There’s not a single sign of Luhan’s existence to speak of.  

At nine a.m. his alarm screeches at him to get up like a  wild Amazonian bird. It was the most obnoxiously loud setting he could choose and it works really well, except it’s also mentally jarring and heart attack inducing. It scares him so much that he ends up rolling over Minseok and squishing her beneath him on the floor. Jongin isn’t even surprised to see that Luhan wasn’t the one to wake him up, but just to be sure he runs to Luhan’s room and flings the door open just to see if he managed to make it back to his room.

As expected, he’s greeted with an empty room. The bed sheets are slightly ruffled and there’s a few articles of clothing tossed on it, but there’s nothing that hints at Luhan coming home, even if only for a second.

“Et tu, Brutus?” Jongin grunts at Luhan’s bed.  He suddenly can identify with Caesar.  Getting betrayed by someone you trusted . Jongin slams the door shut and stomps over to the kitchen to feed Minseok breakfast. He angrily dumps a scoop of dragon kibble in her bowl and pours some water in her water dish before stomping off to his room to get dressed.

The anger doesn’t last long before the nervous fear starts setting in. He reaches for a shirt and pulls on his favorite red sweater over it as a comforting habit, then pulls on a clean pair of underwear and jeans before heading to the bathroom to brush his teeth. His mouth tastes extra sour and disgusting from falling asleep without brushing his teeth first. When he looks in the mirror he snorts at his reflection because his hair is all staticy and pokey like Jongdae’s.

When his teeth are clean he runs back to the living room to check his phone again. There’s still no word from Luhan, so he decides to call him instead. Of course no one answers. It goes automatically to voicemail because his phone probably died while he was out.

“You have got to be kidding me,” he groans. It’s 9:20 right now. Class starts at 10:15 and it takes at least twenty minutes to get there by car, but he’s very inconveniently low on gas at the moment. He’d ask Joonmyun but he’s meeting with his in-laws for brunch this morning and Baekhyun is no doubt passed out somewhere like Luhan.

Jongin lets out a strangled cry of frustration. Although he’d rather just skip class and lock himself in his room so he doesn’t have to deal with this alone, he knows he shouldn’t. Minseok has been following him around all morning, bouncing from place to place with excitement like she does every Saturday morning. It’s become her Saturday routine just as much as it’s become Jongin’s. Her eyes are all big and sparkly and excited like Luhan’s would be if he were here trying to shove toast in his mouth. Seeing her so happy makes him feel ashamed that he’d even consider skipping class just because he’s afraid to go alone.  

But Luhan promised him he’d never let something like this happen, but where is he now? Will he even be there when Jongin arrives? There’s no way to know for sure since his phone is either off or dead at the moment.

With his limited options, he decides that the only way he’ll be able to make it is by bike. They don’t allow pets on public transportation and walking will definitely take too long. Luckily, he has a bike with a plastic crate attached at the back of it where he sometimes shoves his backpack on the way to class. It’ll have to do in terms of transportation for Minseok. Sure she can fly, but what if she gets tired and collapses before they make it there? Or if she flies into random pedestrian or other cars? Jongin shivers distastefully at the thought of her flopping to the ground and getting all caught up in the wheels of his bike.

“This’ll have to do,” he grumbles as he straps her into her harness, clicking the leash onto the little metal loop at the front of it.

Minseok stares up at him excitedly, big eyes shimmering in anticipation. She’s so excited that she flies down all the stairs instead of walking, like Jongin would prefer, and won’t stop fluttering around when he ties her leash securely to the holes in the crate on the back of his bike, trying to restrict her mobility as much as possible. The last thing he wants is for her to be able to fly into something.

“Well at least one of us is going to enjoy this,” he mutters.

She blinks at him, not quite registering his words, but still happy.

“Now just stay put and don’t try to escape,” he warns and gives her head a stiff pat that she nestles her head into, trying to reach for more when he pulls his hand back. It’s not typical for him to display such affection, but she deserves it every now and then he supposes, especially if it keeps her alive.

With Minseok secured in the back, he hops on his bike and begins pedaling. The wind is cold and it bites at his nose as he speeds through the streets. He can hear Minseok making little gurgly sounds of excitement as the wind whips around them. People in their cars turn to giggle and make googly eyed faces at them when they’re stopped red lights. Minseok soaks in all the attention, bouncing around on the back of Jongin’s bike. It throws off his balance a bit, but he manages to avoid any real wipeouts.

They arrive at the training facility just barely on time, right when Kris is about to close the door. He’s more strict on keeping things punctual than Jongin’s university professors, and more terrifying because he brings his dragon to work. Kris gives him a nice, tight-lipped smile in greeting as he steps into the room and walks towards his usual spot. Chanyeol, who’s still ridiculously over-eager and uncontrollable in terms of firepower, is exactic to see Minseok, but Jongin’s not about to let that lousy oaf of a Gronkle anywhere near her.

He’s so upset with Luhan that he doesn’t even feel nervous to be here alone anymore. Minseok responds just as happily to his commands as she would Luhan’s, if not more so because she’s just so happy to have all of his attention for once. She behaves so well that Kris asks Jongin and her to show an example of the next trick their learning to the class. Despite the way it makes him feel a little queasy to have to do it in front of everyone, Minseok seems so gung ho about it that he does it without too much protest.

Forty-five minutes into class, Luhan finally graces them with his presence, sneaking into the room when Kris is distracted by trying to stop Chanyeol from gnawing off some other poor dragon’s hind leg. There’s a guilty grin on his face and an apology on the tip of his tongue when he walks over to them, but Jongin doesn’t want to hear it. He just snaps at him to go sit down and refuses to let him take part in any of the exercises, shooing him away when he makes a grab for the bag of dragon treats.

“I’m quite capable of doing this myself,” he growls and turns his back on Luhan. Even Minseok seems upset with him, choosing to focus the majority of her attention on Jongin instead. She doesn’t even try to run over to him to sniff him in greeting.

Luhan reaches for Jongin’s wrist like he always does but he yanks his hand away. “Look I’m really sorry,” Luhan whispers, trying not to draw to attention to them.

“If you were sorry, you wouldn’t have gone out. You wouldn’t have promised me you’d come back,” Jongin snaps a little too loudly. A few of the other people in the room eye them wearily, but quickly look away when they catch Jongin glaring back at them.

“Okay, I know this looks really bad right now, but I meant what I said about not letting you do this alone. I ed up kinda bad and got here late, but I have a reason. You just have to let me explain. But not right now. This isn’t really the place to talk about it.” Luhan laughs nervously and eyes a couple that’s being nosy and staring at them.

Jongin is angry, but it’s weird to see Luhan laughing at him without sparkly eyes, so his resolve softens a little.

“Fine, but until then I haven’t forgiven you. And if it’s a excuse I still won’t forgive you.” He pulls at Luhan’s wrist and slaps a couple of treats into the palm of his hand. “Now go teach Minseok how to play dead.”

He lets Luhan take over for the rest of training and opts to sit in his crappy, foldable chair for the remainder of class with his shoulders hunched up like a grumpy child. He pulls up his hood to hide his hideous bed hair and shoves his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie as he slouches forward. Minseok seems a little sad to switch from working with Jongin to Luhan, but she doesn’t mind so much when Luhan starts feeding her a lot of treats.

On the way out of class, Kris gives them a cryptic smile that makes Jongin’s stomach crawl with the heebie jeebies. He probably overheard their little spat earlier and thinks it’s some silly, little lovers quarrel. Jongin is so disturbed by this thought and how it makes his stomach flutter for an entirely different reason that he considers riding his bike home instead of trying to squish it into Luhan’s trunk and letting him drive back.

“I’ll explain in a minute, I just really need some coffee,” Luhan mumbles once Jongin has successfully smushed his bike in the trunk. Minseok refuses to settle in the back of the car and decides to flop on top of Jongin’s lap instead.

“Okay.”

For the first time all morning, Jongin turns to take a good look at Luhan. He looks like . His glittery eye makeup is completely smeared all over his face, like he’s been wiping it with his hand a lot. There’s still gross gel in his hair that’s dried his usual pink fluff into little crispy bits. He’s even wearing the same skin-tight white pants and gold and white shirt as the night before, only now there’s a few mysterious stains on them that he isn’t sure he wants to know where they came from.

“You need a shower. And your car smells kind of like vomit.”

Luhan grimaces as pulls up to the same drive-thru Starbucks he’d taken Jongin to the first time. “Baekhyun almost threw up in the back seat. There could be some residual splatter.”

“Oh yuck. I did not need to know that,” Jongin gurgles unpleasantly. He runs his fingers along Minseok’s pink scales and then partially rolls down his window to let in some fresh air.

He waits until Luhan has a very large mocha frappuccino in hand before prodding him about his excuse.

“So, I can’t actually explain everything because it’s not my story to tell,” Luhan starts and then takes a sip of his drink “but the brief version is that Baekhyun was having a very rough night for various reasons that aren’t mine to explain. I had to help him get home, but it wasn’t safe to leave him alone because I didn’t want him to choke on his vomit or something and die, so I stayed to make sure he was okay. By then it was like four a.m. And I had every intention to text you and tell you I’d pick you up in the morning for class but my phone died and Baekhyun only has a stupid, ing iphone and Apple products so I couldn’t charge mine. So I figured I’d just drive by the apartment in the morning to get you, but then you weren’t there, so I drove here, and got here really super late because apparently everyone also had somewhere they needed to get to this morning and I’m really, really sorry.”

“Urgh.” Jongin’s not quite sure what to say to that. A part of him still wants to be mad at Luhan just because he feels abandoned, and Luhan did break his promise.  But the rest of him understands that Baekhyun probably needed him more.

“Yeah, urgh,” Luhan sighs. He looks exhausted, even if he’s consuming his sugary, caffeinated beverage at an alarming rate as he drives. There’s glitter smudges all over the back of his hands from rubbing them on his face. Minseok keeps sniffing at it when he rests one of his hands on the gear shift.

“So, uh, did that pass the Jongin Test?”

Jongin scrunches up his nose. “Yeah I guess. But I’m still pissed, kind of, just because you could have told me before your phone died. And I was maybe going to ask you to come to Joonmyun’s wedding with me, but clearly I’m not important enough, and then you made me angry, so I guess I shouldn't bother.”

“Go to Joonmyun’s wedding with you? Like a date?” Luhan his head to the side and looks at Jongin curiously. The annoying sparkle that Jongin loves and hates is creeping back into his eyes.

“Well, no? But, like, sort of? Not really a date, just as the person I’m bringing with me. I asked Baekhyun earlier this week but he said he had someone he wants to ask and I don’t want to go alone so… yeah.”

Luhan huffs out a laugh, but the expression in his eyes is still sparkly and pleased. “So you’re using me as a last resort?”

“Maybe?” Jongin squeaks and plays with the spikes on Minseok’s tail.

“I should feel offended, but I’m not,” he chuckles. “Sure, I’ll go, if you forgive me.” Luhan grins. Now his eyes are doing the full on crinkly, sparkle thing that irritates Jongin most, except he’s maybe coming to realize it’s not actually irritation that he feels, and that’s maybe the most terrifying realization he’s had all day.

 

 

A few days later, Jongin mails off the R.S.V.P. for Joonmyun’s wedding. It probably would have taken him weeks to remember to send it in if Luhan hadn’t pestered him about it for three days straight.

“You’re more excited about this wedding than I am,” Jongin gripes as he slips the envelope into the mailbox. They’re taking Minseok for an afternoon walk so she can play in the piles of dead leaves that have been accumulating on campus, though she seems to prefer to set them on fire rather than roll around in them.

“Of course I’m excited. Free food and an excuse to dress up.” He smiles and watches Minseok as she sniffs the mailbox and then proceeds to pee on it.

Jongin squints at her. “Are you sure you bought a female dragon and not a male dog?”

“You dare doubt the pre-vet student?” Luhan snorts.

Minseok gazes up at them proudly, like she’s just accomplished some great feat.

“You haven’t proven to be one hundred percent trustworthy in the past.” Jongin pouts. “And don’t you dare say ‘I’ll make it up to you’, because the last time you said that you bought a baby dragon and that was the worst mistake ever.”

Luhan clucks his tongue and pokes Jongin’s lower back as they walk towards their apartment. “Well I already bought one baby dragon, and I don’t do repeat gifts so I wouldn’t even try. But I will make it up to you, I promise.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Jongin retorts.

“That’s a one time thing, I swear. You know I couldn’t have just let Baekhyun choke on vomit. Stop being a brat.” He pinches Jongin’s waist and doesn’t even flinch when his wrist gets slapped away.

“Yeah I know.” No, he is not remotely jealous that Luhan chose Baekhyun over him. Nope. That’s definitely not what’s prompting him to act like such a petulant child.

“Good,” Luhan grins and ruffles his fingers through Jongin’s fluffy hair. Jongin’s heart does a little flip flop. It’s those stupid sparkly eyes. They just do things to you. “I really will make it up to you though. Assuming we don’t freeze our asses off out here. You are walking at the pace of a leisurely snail right now. My toes are going to freeze off.”

“It’s forty degrees out. That’s barely cold all.” Except he knows that Luhan’s body temperature seems to automatically run twenty degrees below average even when it’s boiling outside. There have been too many nights when Luhan has dug his icy cold fingers into his side.

Luhan shrugs at him and just keeps smiling. He’s been so bubbly since their conversation in the car, even though he’d looked so wrecked beforehand. Sometimes he still comes home looking a bit sad, usually after he’s talked to Baekhyun (who by the way has currently shut himself off from the entire world except Luhan, but Luhan keeps saying it’s not his place to tell Jongin why), but then he sees Jongin sitting on the couch with Minseok by his side and his expression visibly brightens. It makes Jongin a little giddy that Luhan smiles like that for him, but at the same time he doesn’t want to think about why it makes him happy, so he just keeps acting like his typically bratty self.

When they aren’t being students and attending lectures and studying, Luhan does everything in his power to be nice for Jongin. He doubles down on cleaning sprees and cooks the foods that Jongin has shown the most liking towards since they’ve started living together. He’s like the original Luhan from the beginning of the year who cooked and cleaned, except on steroids. Every normal duty performed with an extra ounce of exuberance and it keeps making him confused. Recently he’s even managed to dial back teasing Jongin about his major. He’s not sure if he likes it any more or less than before. It’s just… strange.

“You’re being really weird,” Jongin mumbles into his bite of meatloaf a few nights later. Minseok is passed out under the table near Jongin’s feet at the moment, otherwise she’d probably be trying to get little morsels of meat off of them.

Luhan crunches on a piece of broccoli and shrugs. “Don’t you always think I’m weird?”

“Well yeah, but like… you’re almost being too nice? I’m not used to it.”

“So you want me to be mean?” His eyes are twinkly. Jongin hates that he loves it.

“Uh no, but like is this part of the whole make it up to me thing? Because you could just buy me tea or something and call it quits. You don’t have to pretend to be nice to me.” He pokes at the vegetables on his plate, scooting them around on the white dish to give his eyes something to look at that’s not Luhan’s face.

“You think I’m pretending?” Luhan narrows his eyes at him and continues to gnaw on his broccoli. Tiny bits of green get wedged between his teeth. “I don’t really do pretend. I’m pretty damn honest about everything I say, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Oh.”

“And I think I’ve thought of a way to make it up to you. You aren’t doing anything this Friday, right?”

Jongin shakes his head. “Am I ever doing anything on Fridays?”

“Well considering how you have practically no life and Baekhyun’s shut himself off from the world and Joonmyun is busy, I’d say no,” Luhan chuckles.

“Okay, I maybe take back what I said about you being nice,” he frowns. “But you’re right.”

“Good. Don’t do anything with the people that you don’t know, because I have thought of plans.”

Jongin is affronted, but he nods his head in agreement none the less.

 

 

On Friday morning, Jongin runs into Baekhyun during his shift at the library. He’s restacking books in the tiers when he spies the familiar mahogany colored head slouched over one of the tables. Just in case it’s actually an illusion, though, he sneaks in between the various shelves of books with his book cart to pretend he’s just restacking things as usual. The last thing he wants to do is walk up to a random stranger and ask where they’ve been for the past week.

Baekhyun actually spies him first when Jongin stations himself in the aisle nearest Baekhyun.

“Hey.” Baekhyun grins sheepishly. As per usual, his eyes are rimmed in their typical layer of eyeliner, but they look tired and red. Maybe even if a bit puffy. Like he’s been crying for the entire week that Jongin hasn’t seen him.

“Hi.” Jongin smiles back.

“So, um, I heard things are going well with Luhan these days?” For once, Baekhyun is having a conversation while looking at Jongin’s face instead of staring down at his phone.

“Yeah. Things are fine I guess. I heard you maybe almost vomited in his car.”

Baekhyun grimaces and looks down like he’s expecting to have a phone screen staring back at him as reassurance, but instead he just gets a wooden table. “Look, about that, I’m sorry I kind of ruined your Saturday? I know that’s like, your bondy day with Luhan and Minseok. Just, some things happened Friday night that got a little out of control and yeah.”

He feels awkward standing next to the book trolley while talking to Baekhyun, so he pulls out a chair opposite his friend and sits down.

Baekhyun relaxes a little when Jongin sits down. The tension lessens in his shoulders, but his fingers drum nervously on the table top.

“Can I ask what happened or is it some super, special, secret?” Jongin asks after a minute or two of silence. It’s so strange for him to see his friend like this, though he has to admit that if he’d paid more attention over the years he probably would have noticed more of Baekhyun’s nervous undertones. He’s always been a bit of a mystery.

Baekhyun squints at the table and traces his fingers along the patterns in the wood. “I don’t really feel comfortable talking about it yet, except for with Luhan because he witnessed most of it. It’s probably really silly anyways. I guess… I guess I’ll tell you more about it once work up the courage to figure out the truth and maybe ask Kyungsoo to be my date for Joonmyun’s wedding.”

“Kyungsoo? Do Kyungsoo, the guy that works at the coffee shop downstairs?” Jongin his head to one side and stares at his friend.

“Um, yeah. The one and only,” Baekhyun says lamely and gestures absently through the air with his hand.

“Huh. All these years I never knew you had even the slightest interest in guys.”

“It’s been sort of an ongoing struggle for a while, trying to figure myself out. But I’d rather not talk about stuff until I sort my brain out.” He smiles. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m kind of sorry about Saturday and I’ll stop being a and isolating myself from the world now. We could do something tonight if you want? Not go out and party because you’ll probably murder me if I don’t do it to myself first, but we could hang out?”

“Um, I actually have plans with Luhan tonight. Part of his terrifying ‘I’ll make it up to you’ promises that he likes to make. Last time involved buying a dragon, this time who knows what?” Jongin grins. He’s actually kind of looking forward to it.

“Oh yeah, I remember him saying something about that.” Baekhyun smiles. It’s borderline evil, and it actually kind of makes Jongin worried and happy at the same time. Worried that maybe he should actually be terrified about what Luhan has planned, but happy because it makes Baekhyun look more like his normal, self. “Well have fun with that. I need to go get my phone fixed. I kind of smashed it on the ground last Friday.”

“Yikes. Go get that fixed. Give me a call tomorrow maybe and we can do something. I can, like, coach you on how to seduce men or something. Or we can take over Joonmyun’s apartment and embarrass him in front of Eunji.”

“Okay no, that is never happening,” Baekhyun cackles and stands up to leave. “If I’m going to get advice from anyone, it’s definitely not going to be you. I’d rather ask Luhan first.”

Jongin frowns like a kicked puppy. “I was your friend first.”

“And you’ve dated like one person in your entire lifetime. So no, not asking you. Sorry. Go back to work. You need to earn money to feed your baby dragon.”

“She’s not mine, she’s Luhan’s.” Jongin pokes out his tongue sourly.

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. See you later Jongin. I hope Luhan has plenty of nice surprises in store for you.”

 

 

This time around, Luhan’s version of “I’ll make it up to you!” is a million times less fear inducing. It doesn’t involve any new pets or flammable things or dragon pee. It is, in fact, surprisingly tame, but still not quite acceptable by Jongin’s standards.

“We’re going to have a family movie night!” Luhan says excitedly as he shoves open the front door. The smell of cheap takeout wafts from the large paper bag he’s struggling to carry. In his other hand he holds a bag of treats for Minseok and a DVD.

Jongin purses his lips disapprovingly. Before Luhan had come bursting through the door with his exuberance, he’d been peacefully studying for his exam on Monday, having forgotten about Luhan’s promise as the day had progressed. Minseok had taken it upon herself to act as his personal foot heater by curling up in a ball at his feet and falling asleep. Her surrounding warmth had been keeping his toes far too warm for the past hour. She’d insisted on resting her head right on top of his right foot despite him constantly trying to poke her away.

“What movie?” Jongin asks unenthusiastically, slamming his textbook shut and tossing it onto the coffee table.

“How to Train Your Dragon,” Luhan grins and starts unpacking various boxes of food next to the book. It smells like a watered down version of sesame chicken and fried rice. Hopefully it’s more edible than it smells. “I thought it would be fitting to watch the film of Minseok’s history. Something historical for you, but cute, animated, and considerably less boring for me.”

“How thoughtful of you. But I still don’t like dragons,” Jongin says and flexes his toes under Minseok’s head.

“But you love Minseok!” Luhan says eagerly and bends down to vigorously rub the top of her head.

“She’s an exception.”

Minseok blinks open her ridiculously large eyes to glare at Luhan for disturbing her slumber and puffs out a cloud of smoke. The food on the table distracts her though, making her nostrils flex as she inhales the scent of bad Chinese food spreading throughout the apartment. When her eyes land on the plastic bag of treaters she perks up considerably.

“I fed you, pig,” Jongin mutters and wiggles his foot again. She lets out a gurgle and rolls over to expose her belly and stretch. Jongin runs his toes along her stomach and it makes her sigh happily.

“Cute,” Luhan coos. He reaches out to her stomach but she squirms away from his touch.

Ever since the one night that he didn’t come home, she started clinging more to Jongin than him. Usually she would sleep in Luhan’s bed, but since that night she’s been trying to worm her way into Jongin’s room to sleep. Some nights he wakes up with a mouthful of scales and an odd burning sensation on his face because she just had to sleep right on top of it. Other times he’s woken up to her snuffling, dragon snores in his ears.

“She’s picking up your bratty tendencies. Ugh,” Luhan grumbles unpleasantly to himself as he pops the movie into the DVD player.

Jongin grins down at her and then bends over to scoop her up and drop her in his lap. She snuggles into his stomach, burying her head into his abs like she’s burrowing into a blanket. While she situates herself on his lap she makes happy gurgling noises, too ecstatic to be shown so much affection from him.

Once Luhan has dimmed the lights and pressed play he settles into the couch next to Jongin. Of course he sits too closely, because this is Luhan and Luhan always has to be touching someone, but recently Luhan’s extra touchiness has been making him feel uncomfortable. Or maybe uncomfortable is the wrong word, because it’s not an entirely unpleasant feeling, it’s just a bit too overbearing. He doesn’t like how Luhan’s touch is starting to do things to him, just like his stupid, crinkly, sparkling smile.

During the movie, Luhan’s head somehow manages to find his shoulder, puffs of his styled pink hair prickling his neck. For some reason he finds the warmth of Luhan’s cheek on his shoulder a little shocking. For a man with such icy fingers, the rest of him is too warm pressed into Jongin’s side.

“Get off me. Your cottoncandy hair is irritating my skin. I think I’m having an allergic reaction to it’s obscene shade of pink.” Jongin shakes his shoulders to try to knock Luhan’s head off with minimal effort. Minseok is sleeping on his lap so he doesn’t want to move too much or he’ll wake her up.

“Don’t be a . You’re hogging all the pillows, so let me use your shoulder. You’re nice and warm,” Luhan says, snuggling further into Jongin’s side. He loops his arm around Jongin’s shoulders(?) and presses in so close that every possible inch of them of Jongin’s right side is touching him.

“I refuse.” Jongin flicks a finger at Luhan’s forehead. Luhan yelps in protest, but he shoves his head away anyways. Because he’s nice, he tosses one of the pillows he’s been using at him, but because he’s not that nice he makes sure it smacks him in the face.

To get over the sadness of being pushed away, Luhan decides to eat his feelings by opening of a box of takeout. He doesn’t even spoon himself some onto a separate plate, just digs his chopsticks right in and starts munching away with a pouty expression. Bits of rice get stuck to his lips that he tries to swipe away with his tongue. In his peripheral vision he can see Jongin watching him as he eats, eyes tracing the movement of his tongue as he the rice away, so he turns and smiles.

Jongin blushes when Luhan catches him staring, but then he puckers his lips disapprovingly to try to cover it up. “And you always complain about me being a messy eater.” Gingerly, without disturbing Minseok, he leans forward and grabs a napkin to toss at Luhan’s face. Because Luhan is still giving him that sparkly eye smile, he aims for directly between his eyebrows to make him blink. He misses, though, and ends up bopping him in the nose instead.

“Thanks,” Luhan hums. He dabs gently at his face, making sure to wipe his lips and then them for good measure.

Jongin definitely does not watch this time. He’s obviously too busy watching Hiccup fail at life on the T.V. screen to watch Luhan’s pink tongue flick across his lips.

Not even five minutes after Luhan finishes eating and very seductively wiping his face, he ends up in Jongin’s lap. Minseok had woken up and abandoned it in favor of curling up at his feet again, which apparently meant it was now prime property for Luhan’s disgustingly pink head.  

“Stop touching me,” Jongin snaps and gives the offending man’s cheek a vicious poke.

“Why? Minseok touches you all the time and you don’t push her away, at least not anymore,” he whines. To be more annoying he rubs his head on Jongin’s thigh.

Jongin rolls his eyes. As if you can even properly compare Luhan to Minseok. For one, he’s human, and knows exactly when he’s being a head. And secondly, Minseok is a pet. You’re supposed to pet your pets, right? They’re the only thing he feels he has the slightest obligation to touch. Luhan, on the other hand, needs to keep his stupid, sparkly eye self off of him.  

“Minseok doesn’t insult me on a daily basis like you do, and unlike you she can’t help that she’s pink.”

Luhan scrunches up his nose and ruffles his pink, fluffy, head. “You’re really that offended by my hair?”

“Yes? No? It’s a combination of things. Just stop trying to touch me so much. It’s annoying.”

“You don’t seem to mind when I pat your head, or run my fingers through your hair. I think you find it comforting.”

“Of course I mind. I just give up on stopping you because you’re always so grabby, like a baby.”

“Or you’re just unwilling admit that you do like it.” Luhan suddenly sits up and leans in, face just inches away from Jongin’s. He watches the awkward bob of the younger boy’s adams apple.

“I definitely am not, because I definitely do not like it.” His voice comes out surprisingly hoarse, hormones and emotions betraying him. He almost feels as embarrassed as when he nearly vomited in front of everyone. At least this time it’s for an entirely different reason.

“Really? Because I thought that, maybe, when you asked me to go to the wedding with you, you liked me just a little.” Luhan is grinning at him in the way that makes his stomach sink, eyes bright and crinkling at the edges, like creased paper. “I know you think I’m mean to you because I’m a horrible person that, god forbid, loves dragons, but I really only do it because I think you’re cute, especially when you're flustered. You’re just too easy to tease. But then again I also like the way you appreciate head pats like an adorable puppy and how you think history is going to save the world, and the way you get angry at me when try to touch your favorite sweater. I even thought you were cute last spring when you nearly upchucked on my A+ worthy final project.”

“Vomiting is not cute.” Jongin’s mouth goes dry so his words come out scratchy and stilted. A confession was not something he expected from this at all, but then he remembers the wicked grin on Baekhyun’s face in the morning when he’d mentioned he was doing something with Luhan, and now it sort of all makes sense.  

“But you are.” Luhan rests his palm on the side of Jongin’s face and runs his thumb across the corner of his lower lip. His eyes are so sparkly and bright and pretty that it makes Jongin want to punch things, but for once not his face.

“You’re not.”

“Stop deflecting me. I can see the defeat in your eyes. You like me. Just admit it.”

“No. I refuse. These past few months have been absolute torture, and that’s mostly your fault.”

“Then let me make it up to you, Jongin. I make for an excellent date. I promise.” Luhan winks and it’s the most disgusting thing Jongin thinks he has ever seen in his life, but he doesn’t get to say so because Luhan leans in and presses their lips together. It’s a sweet kiss that leaves him wanting more by the end of it, but that’s okay, because Luhan has forever to make up for it.

“Okay. I… maybe like you.”

Luhan grins, and his eyes are so crinkly that Jongin’s heart almost bursts. But then of course his brain to mouth filter is suddenly absent and the moment is ruined. “You’re at kissing.”

“I’m breaking up with you.” Jongin frowns and  punches Luhan’s shoulder.

“You’re such a brat. You haven’t even said you’ll date me yet.”

“Fine then. I’ll date you. But that means you’ll have to deal with me being a brat forever. And probably teach me how to kiss better.”

Luhan runs his fingers through Jongin’s fluffy hair, gently scraping his nails across his scalp. “I don’t mind. We can always work on that. We could even start now.” He leans in again to pull Jongin’s lower lip between his but stops suddenly when the faint scent of burning fabric reaches his nostrils. His eyes snap away from Jongin to see Minseok rapidly flitter out of the room.

“NO. MY RUG.”

Luhan can’t stop himself from laughing as he gets up to look for the fire extinguisher that they’ve started keeping under the kitchen sink. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it up to you.”

 

p.s. i'm sry if there are any typos that i missed~