Somewhere along the way it all becomes habit.

He wakes up to find his phone either wedged uncomfortably somewhere underneath his spine or glued to the drool on the side of his face, the message alerts winking at him. He bends over the edge of the bed to pet Dino on the head (because sleeping-Dino is always his favourite) as he groggily tries to unlock his phone and the phone flashes ‘sorry, wrong code, try again’ until he chucks it away and goes to brush his teeth so that his mouth doesn’t taste like dead-cat anymore.

When he is awake and clean enough he stumbles into the kitchen and fixes himself two big bowls of cereal, because why not?, and proceeds to shove it in his mouth as he double checks all the appointments and deadlines Jongin has for the day. he throws in some packets of chips in his bag alongside his Samsung tab and other paperwork because god knows he will be hungry in about another 10 minutes. The rest of his time goes to dressing up and fixing his hair just right and admiring his own stunning profile in the mirror.

Right before he steps out of the house he puts on the coffee machine because his aunt likes to wake up to the smell of it wafting about the house and makes sure to pick up a grumbling Dino and throw him on Sejung’s bed. Sejung wakes up hair flying around like its caught in a hurricane and Sehun can hear her banshee-like screams all the way down the hallway to the elevator. Just a nice wake up call for his neighbors, he thinks, as he smiles at himself in the elevator mirror, all pleased and smug.

The 20-minutes in the taxi on the way to work has always been for mentally preparing himself for another day of ing at Jongin and making sure he doesn’t screw up but now he uses the time to properly read Chanyeol's messages – mostly they are like ‘the bats and the whole sonar hearing thing – cool as !’ or  ‘dude, which SHINee member should we make marching band when we take over the world???’ or ‘you fell asleep again didn’t you -__- loser.’

Sehun texts back with a smile on his face, which he thinks freaks out the taxi ajhussi a little because he is only used to Sehun muttering angrily in the morning or staring daggers out of the window.

It feels nice, he thinks, when his face does the whole smiling thing – it makes him hate the world a little less.

Chanyeol's replies always come around 1 in the afternoon, because like the vampire bat he is he stays up late and wakes up around noon. Sehun had once asked him “how do you even pay your rent without a job?” to which Chanyeol had answered with a “I get by with my amazing good looks”.

The SM building is home to many companies in different floors and each three floors share one break room. Entertainment companies, recording studios, economic magazines, professional escorts, legal counseling, detective services, advertising, you name it, SM has it. Which is why, each break room often witnesses its fair share of weird people mingling in weird ways, so Kyungsoo is pretty used to running into strange situations in their break room, especially with people like Yixing and EunHyuk around.

But today as fast as he hurries into the break room he backs out of it and takes a deep breath. Then he peeps in slowly to assess the situation. Out of all the weird things he has witnessed these past 5 years in the SM building, including that one time he ran into Kris from the service upstairs teaching Taemin, the mail boy, how to undress and redress in less than 15 seconds, he thinks this has to be the strangest - Sehun looking actually happy and like he has a soul instead of a black, bottomless void inside his body.

Kyungsoo inches into the room making sure not to startle Sehun.

“Hey Kyungsoo.”

“He-hey Sehun.”

Sehun looks down at his phone and a small giggle escapes him, ending in a little hiccup. It would have been adorable any other time, but right now Kyungsoo is just really, really freaked out.

“Sehun, buddy, are you-are you alright?”

“Yeah.” Sehun says in his ‘duh, of course I am, doofus’ voice. “why?” Sehun smiles at him serenely and Kyungsoo's brain short-circuits. The maximum Sehun can manage even on a really good day is a ‘ha-ha I loathe this whole world on basic principle but I can tolerate you a tiny bit so I will change my facial muscles a few millimeters for you’ kind of smile.

“WHY ARE YOU SMILING AT ME?” Kyungsoo clutches a teaspoon hard in his hand as if this could be used to fend off any attacks against his tiny self.

Sehun, startled, jumps off the countertop he is sitting on and Kyungsoo flattens himself against the coffee machine like a cornered animal. “Kyungsoo? What’s wrong? You are looking….well, weirder than usual. Don’t look at me like that. What if your eyes pop out and roll across the floor – I’m way too fabulous to clean up a mess like that.”

Kyungsoo breaths loudly at him in response. “you are- you are all-WHY ARE YOU HAPPY? WHERE DID YOU HARVEST A SOUL FROM? WHO DID YOU KILL IT TO GET IT?”

Sehun blinks at him and then a red blush suffuses his cheeks. “I was just texting Chanyeol.” He stubs the toe of his shoe against the ground shyly.

“WHAT THE HELL IS A CHANYEOL?”

Sehun raises his eyebrows at him and for the first time since Kyungsoo walked into the break roo