Taeil wakes up to the autumn sun straggling through the dorm window and someone splashing and shouting in the shower next door. The dorm is deserted apart from him, duvets and pyjama bottoms screwed up at the ends of the beds and an abandoned coffee cup in the exact centre of the floor like a lone island. The sheets are far too warm to move straight away, so he enjoys a cosy five minutes adjusting to the reality of the chilly air and the messy dorm instead of the underwater aquarium he had been dreaming about. Then his phone starts screaming next to him - Jihoon must have turned the volume up again, well aware of Taeil's ability to completely ignore it. He counts to five, lets out a deep breath and answers.

"Hyung, you have to get up now!" Jihoon whines from the other end. An echo of the same words comes from just outside the cracked open bedroom door. Taeil leans over slightly to see if he can catch a glimpse of their younger member, and true to form his cherry red hair is visible lurking just behind the door.

"Why did you have to ring me?" he yells, and hears a pained squeak from the other end before Jihoon pops his head in, looking guilty.

"I didn't know if you were awake yet. You looked really peaceful."

"I was peaceful," Taeil grumbles, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and rolling off the mattress inelegantly. He has to remember to change his ringtone.

"Sorry." Jihoon doesn't look even slightly sorry, and confirms this by chasing up after Taeil and leaping on his recently vacated bed, bouncing on impact. He reaches out and plucks at the elder's shirt. "PD wants us in practise an hour early today."

Taeil disentangles himself from the fingers twisted in his shirt and begins ambling about the floor, locating clean clothes and a towel. "He probably just wants us there on time for once."

"Kyungie's not even awake yet."

"Go bother him, then."

"I thought I'd get you first so you can get to the shower. Minhyuk-hyung is almost done in there." On cue, the thrumming of the shower cuts out, and Taeil hurries his searching. He appreciates being warned like this, but it's becoming an almost daily occurence and it's starting to feel like Jihoon is kind of like a carer dog, there to coach him through the difficult parts of every day life. Briefly he imagines himself walking down the road with a white stick and Jihoon leading the way in a high visibility jacket, and snickers.

"Go on and annoy Kyung then. I think I can manage the shower by myself."

"Okay. Oh - " Jihoon produces something beige from under his jumper and tosses it at Taeil. "I saved a clean towel for you too." He grins, bounces up and dashes off. His level of activity is definitely not appropriate for the early hour. Taeil just feels sorry for whoever's been sitting with him while he was sleeping in.

He finds out who this was as soon as he enters the kitchen, still drying his hair off: Kwon has his chin resting on his arms, which are folded on the table, and a half-lidded expression that suggests he's about to give up entirely and fall off his chair. Minhyuk, with wet hair and bleary eyes, is sitting opposite, nursing a coffee and a bruise on his upper arm - another fight over the coffee which Jaehyo still maintains is his and no one else's. For some reason there are broken biscuits all over the floor.

"Seriously. Eating them right out of his hand. It's just kind of creepy."

Minhyuk nods placidly in response to Kwon's monotone grumbling, and Taeil sighs as he drops into the chair next to him. "You know you shouldn't talk to Jihoonie about how much you want a dog."

"Tama sent me a picture of this really adorable one though," Kwon says, flipping his phone around to display it. "I couldn't help it.  You know, if you tell most people you want a dog, their first response isn't to start pretending to be one. I don't think I'm in the wrong here."

"He could have cleaned up the biscuits at least," Minhyuk puts in as he shifts his feet and they all hear a distinct crunching sound.

"Oh, that's Zico's fault. Make him do it." Kwon goes back to his phone, although how he can see it with his eyes almost completely shut remains a mystery. Taeil draws his legs up under him and reaches over to slide Minhyuk's coffee away from him and steal a sip. He twists his arm around to display the forming bruise to the smaller boy.

"Look at that. Vicious."

"Jaehyo needs to cut his fingernails," Taeil observes, seeing how they've almost broken the skin.

"Jaehyo needs to stop being a ing prima donna." If Jihoon is a dog, Taeil decides, Jaehyo is a lion. He doesn't do an awful lot - actually he spends most of his time lying around in the sun, dozing or browsing online - but he still manages to be pretty impressive to people who don't know him very well. He thinks Jaehyo would very much enjoy living with a big group of females who bring him food all the time. That means they have a big cat and a small cat in their group, because - as Minhyuk says, reaching over to pet Kwon's fluffy blonde head as he completely loses his will to stay upright and slumps over the table: "We don't need any more animals around here, right kitty?" Kwon raises his head enough to give his fellow dancer a dirty look, but allows him to continue scratching his ears.

"Only Tama gets to call me that."

"Bull. You were our kitty before you were hers." 

The taxonomy is correct, Taeil thinks, because Jaehyo likes to be admired and regarded as impressive, whereas Kwon would much rather curl up in a comfy spot - most preferably someone else's comfy spot - and isolate himself until he decides he wants some attention again. He imagines himself tossing raw steaks to Jaehyo over a wire fence. He'd probably chuck them back and that they weren't cooked properly.

"Ow," Kwon says as Minhyuk accidentally tugs his hair, and pulls his head away sniffily. Minhyuk doesn't know his own strength sometimes. He retreats as well, still eyeing the bruise on his arm with annoyed nostril twitching.

"I think he's gone back to bed anyway," he huffs. "Coward." He props his forehead up in his hands and Taeil can see his eyes closing. He makes a mental note to stay between the two of them once both Jaehyo and Minhyuk are awake enough to fight properly; if this is how the day began there's every chance of it ending in a serious risk to their beloved ulzzang's face. Minhyuk is placid enough, but unstoppable once he gets riled, and nobody riles him quite like Jaehyo, for reasons Minhyuk summarised once in a growl behind gritted teeth: "He whines too much." This, along with the dancer's notoriously strong arms (frequently employed in wrestling two warring members away from one another when things become too heated) and the immovable lump he becomes when asleep makes Taeil think of a bear. 

"I'll get him later," Minhyuk affirms behind a yawn. 

"I'd expect you to understand territorial dispute," Taeil mumbles, earning himself a confused sideways look.

A screech erupts out of the other dorm: someone has resorted to Method X to get Kyung out of bed. The culprit appears shortly after, a much too pleased with himself Zico with a dripping sponge in his hand and apparently no recollection of the last time he did this and the amount of bruises he ended up with. "I shouldn't enjoy doing that so much," he says, aiming the sponge at the sink and missing by a metre. "Lazy er."  He finds a spare seat and drapes himself across it - maybe it's the long limbs but Zico seems physically incapable of sitting like a normal person. His feet are already invading Taeil's seat; Taeil shifts back and sits on them determinedly, ignoring how uncomfortable it is.

"My sheets are all wet now, you ," Kyung yells across the hall.

"They were wet anyway, you dirty bastard," Zico returns, and laughs like a drain. His wide open mouth and long eyes put Taeil in mind of an ape - a chimpanzee, maybe, with its permanent grin and knuckles dragging on the ground. A trickster, smarter than he looks, cute but dangerous - that sums their leader up fairly well. Zico rocks his chair back on two legs, still sniggering to himself.

"That was so harsh, hyung." Jihoon appears again, looking equally delighted with their trick despite the reprimand. The dog and the monkey; that's an animated film Taeil thinks he could really get behind.

"He sleeps like he's hibernating," Zico shrugs. "I tried everything else short of shoving him out of the bed." This tactic, they have all learned, is not worth the resulting scratches. Kyung is also like something which seems cute and cuddly but is actually vicious, only without any outward warning signs like Zico's visibly sharp teeth - a badger, Taeil decides, especially in the way he likes to hole himself up in whatever warmth he can find (with whatever food he can find). Badgers also have a tremendously tenacious bite. Kyung holds grudges like he thinks someone's going to mug him for them.

Zico begins leaning past everyone else to scratch the back of Kwon's neck.

"Get off," Kwon says, voice muffled against the table. "You scarred me for life."

Zico cackles again. "A dog is for life, not just for breakfast."

"You're not abandoning me already, hyung?" Jihoon gets in on the act, kneeling by Kwon's chair and making his eyes wide and moist.

"I hate both of you."

"We can't keep him. He keeps peeing on the furniture," Taeil giggles.

"Are you going to clean these biscuits up?" Getting to his feet, Minhyuk plods off, either to find the broom or to take his revenge on Jaehyo, still snoring in the living room.