for sake of ages, banghim are seniors, daejae are juniors, and jonglo are freshmen. I know jonglo aren’t actually the same age but it was funnier to have freshman gup so c:

Kim Himchan, genius musician extraordinaire, self-proclaimed captain of life and everything, the coolest senior ever to live, is not amused.

“Bbang,” he hisses, holding up a stapled stack of papers, “I told you I wanted someone cool as a roommate.”

“He is cool,” said man replies, eyes shifting over slightly at the rather lost-looking freshman standing a few feet over. “He matched everything on your roommate questionnaire!”

Himchan highly doubts that the meek-looking kid standing slightly behind Yongguk actually likes traditional Korean instrumental music, iced Americanos, cheesy dramas, and sleeping for at least ten hours every night, but then again he’s always thought that Yongguk’s had more than one screw loose and probably thinks everyone has the capability to get along.

“He’s a freshman!” he stage-whispers, shaking the papers again. “I can’t room with a freshman! You’re the RA, shouldn’t you do something about this? Why couldn’t I just room with you?”

“Himchan, you know I can’t do that. I don’t have the kind of authority you think I do—”

“Yongguk, I swear to god—”

“If there’s a problem,” the freshman pipes up, “I can move, y’know?”

Yongguk gives Himchan a firm shove to the chest and sends the freshman (Moon Jongup, Yongguk hisses into his ear, you can’t keep calling him ‘freshman,’) a warm-ish smile.

“There’s no problem here. You see, Jongup-ah, Himchannie here’s a little bad at making friends.”

Himchan huffs. “I am extremely good at making friends. Do you see this face? This face is not the face of a person who’s bad at making friends. Your face is a face that’s bad at making friends.”

“I’m good at making friends! That’s why I’m the RA!”

“Don’t listen to him, they just gave him that position because he’s the only one around here that can settle fights without actually knocking a few heads around.” Himchan tucks his papers firmly under one arm and grabs his suitcase with the other. “We’re in 405A. Hurry your up or I’m locking you outside.”

“I have a key!” Jongup protests, bounding after him, suitcase rolling behind. “Wait, what’s going on, again?”

*

Luckily for Jongup, he arrives right as Himchan’s about to slam the door shut, wedging his suitcase between the doorframe and the door.

Himchan raises an eyebrow, but lets him in nonetheless, releasing his hold on the doorknob and turning around to resume dumping out the contents of his suitcase.

“I’m taking this bed,” he tells Jongup, his voice leaving no room for discussion. “It feels better to me.”

“Okay,” Jongup says, shrugging, and pulls up his own suitcase to the other bed. He doesn’t unpack, but instead sits down on the bare mattress, knees tucked up to his chin, watching Himchan’s every movement.

…okay. So maybe his roommate is a bit out of the ordinary. Himchan shivers involuntary as he takes out the last of his socks, arranging everything in neat piles on his bed.

“Do you mind if I put up some posters?” Jongup asks, breaking the silence. “I’ve never been away from home before, so that would kinda, like… make it more homey?”

Himchan shrugs. “Do what you want. I don’t care as long as there’s no and no blood.”

Jongup beams, bunny-teeth on full display and Himchan’s heart squeezes a little bit. Maybe this’ll just end up being like an extended babysitting gig. Only he’s not getting paid, and Jongup’s a little older than the neighbor’s kids from across the street.

Now it’s Himchan’s turn to watch as Jongup takes out a roll of painter’s tape and a cardboard tube from his suitcase and pops open the top, unrolling something. He rips off bits of tape and rolls them up, sticking them on the backside of the poster, and unfurls the whole thing, positioning it above his bed.

“Uh, Himchan-hyung—can I call you hyung?—can you help me hold up the other side?”

Himchan rolls his eyes and walks over, holding up one side of the poster as Jongup sticks a corner to the wall.

“What exactly is this?” he asks, squinting his eyes at the Japanese characters and trying to recall the kanji from his high school lessons. “Shingeki no… kyojin?”

“Attack on Titan,” Jongup nods, giving the taped corners one last pat to make sure they’re sticking. “It’s my favorite anime. Do you watch anime?”

Himchan’s only real encounter with anime was accidentally watching some freaky tentacle when he was at a classmate’s house when he was doing a project, and he shudders.

“…no.”

“Oh, that’s a shame. You seem kinda like the type that might be into it.” Jongup tilts his head to the side and gives him an appraising sort of look that makes Himchan feel decidedly uneasy.

“Uh, no, not really. I don’t really have a lot of time to watch any of that stuff, anyways. I spend a lot of time playing instruments.”

“You have a cosplay face,” Jongup says, and while Himchan’s familiar with the word, he associates it more with those chicks online with enormously creepy contact lenses and sailor outfits than his own face.

Himchan hums noncommittally and returns back to his own bed, sitting down to face Jongup.

“So, now that you’re here, we’re going to have to set down some ground rules.”

Jongup tilts his head to the side, and no, he does not look like a lost puppy, Himchan, snap out of it.

“Rule number one: if I’m sleeping, you do not wake me up, unless I am in danger of missing one of my classes. My class schedule will be taped up here,” Himchan points to a spot on the wall near the foot of his bed, “so if you’re in the room, please attempt to wake me up at least twenty minutes before class starts so I can at least attempt to look nice. If you get me coffee I might be a little less likely to accidentally kill you upon waking.”

Himchan watches the emotions play across Jongup’s face with some amusement—the poor kid looks terrified and confused.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds, really. Rule number two is no one comes in here while I’m also in here unless you give me at least one hour of warning. This is so I can attempt to make things look not ugly and gives me a chance to leave in case I actually do want to leave. Also, if you’re gonna have in here, do it while I’m out, or at least put a sock on the doorknob so I can go bother Yongguk.”

Jongup looks positively horrified now. “Hyung!”

“You never know. My roommate last year was into some pretty interesting stuff and I made the mistake of coming in while he was wearing cat ears and not much else. And rule number three is no parties, no smoking, and no drugs in here. Alcohol is okay as long as you don’t get faced, though. I don’t have time to clean up your vomit, nor do I particularly want to. That’s pretty much it, but it all sort of boils down to ‘don’t piss me off and I won’t piss you off.’ If you’re not sure about something, ask, because I’d rather you piss me off by asking than piss me off by doing something without asking.”

“Should I have taken notes?” Jongup mumbles, reaching into his suitcase to pull out his bedsheets.

They’re printed with kunai.

Himchan kind of wants to suffocate himself with his pillow.

*

Jongup is not the worst roommate Himchan’s had (that honor would have to go to the freaky aforementioned junior roommate), but he’s not the best either (that honor goes to no one, because Himchan doesn’t believe in giving first place to anyone by default), but he’s starting to feel out where Jongup should be placed.

He’s cute, for the most part, with this weird habit of smiling all the ing time, and he sleeps almost as much as Himchan does, which has lead to some unfortunate near-misses of classes, although it does mean that neither of them wake each other up at ungodly hours at the morning for anything as mundane as sports practice (Himchan is reminded of his sophomore roommate, who had crew, and woke up at 4 AM every morning to go jog around a goddamn lake, and wasn’t even quiet about it). He likes burgers, anime, dancing, and Chris Brown (not necessarily in that order, and honestly, that’s got to be the weirdest combination of interests that Himchan’s ever heard of in one person. But then again, Jongup’s not exactly a normal person.)

He’s got an equally smiley but ten-foot-tall friend named Junhong who likes to drop by and watch anime on Jongup’s iPad. Himchan’s not sure why those two didn’t just room together, since they seem pretty attached to each other anyways, but doesn’t dwell on it too much. Junhong’s like a cute little bunny (as much as a kid taller than him could actually be a cute little bunny) who also likes Attack on Fiery Wall (Himchan doesn’t remember what the show’s called, no matter how many times Jongup tells him, so he just calls it that because that’s what the poster looks like) and following Yongguk around, because Himchan is a terrible role model and Yongguk is an angel on earth who’s willing to put up with his prattling about rap and skateboarding.

Himchan’s glad he got Jongup, actually, because if he had to pick between the two, he’d pick Jongup in a heartbeat, because Jongup’s a lot less hyperactive.

However, this doesn’t mean that Jongup’s perfect.

For one thing, Jongup has a habit of wearing nothing when they’re alone in the room.

Which would be perfectly fine if he wore like, boxers or something, because he does have a very nice body and Himchan is perfectly fine with looking at his roommate’s nice body (in a platonic, platonic, platonic way), but he doesn’t.

Jongup is content to lie on his bed, completely and completely oblivious to the maybe slightly upperclassman no more than ten feet away.

“Jongup-ah,” Himchan says, after this has happened for the third consecutive day in a row, “don’t you think you should put some pants on?”

Jongup looks down at his , then back up at Himchan, and Himchan gets the distinct impression that the freshman is comparing them for reasons completely unknown.

“But why?” he asks, and Himchan nearly short-circuits.

“Because it’s human decency?” Himchan manages to squeak out, and Jongup looks down again.

“Well, I mean I do kinda like the freedom,” he says, “but all my underwear somehow managed to get stolen over the weekend while I was doing laundry, so I couldn’t really wear underwear even if I wanted to.”

“Then why didn’t you go buy more?”

“Because I spent all my money on my convention tickets,” Jongup says, like this should be completely obvious.

It’s not, and Himchan grabs his wallet and phone off the desk and bolts out the door, intent on finding somewhere to hang low for several hours until his raging decides to calm itself down.

But after two hours practicing the janggu and one hour of drinking do nothing to clear his thoughts (rather, a certain someone’s body likes to flit through his subconscious at the most inappropriate of times, and he’d made a game of taking a shot every time it happened, until he realized that he’d taken three in the span of two minutes and really needed to stop), he decides to crash at his friend’s place off-campus.

“Yah,” he says, mumbling into his phone after spending five minutes wrestling it out of his pocket and trying to remember how to unlock the screen. “Youngjae-yah.”

“Why are you calling me.”

“Pick me up,” Himchan drawls, leaning over the bar, “I drank too much.”

“Regular place?”

“Yeah.”

He can practically hear Youngjae rolling his eyes over the phone, followed by the sound of a wet kiss and a muttered “I’ll be back in fifteen, yeah, Himchan-hyung’s being a dumbbutt again.”

He hangs up, because he doesn’t want to listen to any more of Youngjae’s mushy stuff with his incorrigible boyfriend, Daehyun, and groans again.

Youngjae, to his credit, comes relatively quickly, appraising the situation with a raised eyebrow and rolling his eyes before hauling Himchan up over one of his shoulders.

“Come on, you oaf. Let’s go.”

Himchan stumbles to Youngjae’s car; the younger dumps him unceremoniously in the backseat before getting in and driving them to his and Daehyun’s apartment.

Youngjae doesn’t try to make conversation and Himchan’s grateful for that, because his head doesn’t feel quite screwed on right and he’d probably end up saying something really really dumb.

Which, of course, is exactly what happens when Daehyun starts bombarding him with questions upon entry into the apartment, and Himchan shouts something that’s either “my roommate is a ” or “I really like my roommate’s ” in return and promptly collapses face-first onto the sofa.

“Is he dead?” he hears Daehyun ask, followed by several sharp prods to his . Himchan swats feebly at the perpetrator, but doesn’t manage to land a hit, his arm flopping down to the side. He turns his head to the side, because he’s suddenly struck with inexplicable urge to breathe, his vision blurring but still clear enough to see Daehyun crouched down next to him.

“Go ‘way,” Himchan mutters, but Daehyun just smiles patronizingly in response, patting him on the head.

“There, there, Channie-hyung,” he coos, and Himchan kind of wants to bite his head off. “You’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“Don’ wanna feel better ‘morrow,” he grumbles, “wan’ head clear now.”

“Then you shouldn’t have drank so much,” Youngjae chastises from behind him. “You know your tolerance is .”

“Still not as bad as the time he got piss-drunk after he saw us for the first time in the room,” Daehyun snickers, and Himchan watches him bounce back up and walk away. “That was golden.”

“Use the sock, you ers,” Himchan growls, screwing his eyes shut as unfortunate images of Daehyun swim to the forefront of his mind, followed by images of Jongup, and wow he really didn’t want to go there tonight but it looks like it was going to happen anyways.

Youngjae pats Himchan on the shoulder. “Sleep tight, hyung. Try not to suffocate yourself.”

Himchan makes an incoherent grumbling noise in response, shifting on the sofa to try and alleviate some of the pressure on his lower regions.

(He fails, but passes out soon after, so he figures it really doesn’t matter.)

(He dreams of shadow clones and destroying walls and Jongup and wonders how his life got to such a sorry state.)

*

If Himchan was expecting anything at all when he came back to his dorm room early the next morning, fully intending on sitting in bed all day with a hot bowl of ramyun and finishing up Heirs (it’s a drama, honestly, but Kim Woobin’s eyebrows amuse him enough to suffer through the rest of it), it definitely isn’t the sight that greets him as he toes off his shoes carefully, both hands full of assorted snack foods and drinks that he needs to keep around at all times because Jongup and his stupid tall friend eat like the world is ending in half an hour.

He walks into the bedroom to stick the drinks in the mini-fridge, only to have what feels a lot like what he thinks a heart attack feels like.

Sitting on Jongup’s bed is a giant, well, thing, hairless, with giant ing teeth all the way up its jaw, and red muscle sinewy things all over its body. If Himchan looks closely, he can see the thin line around its neck where it looks like there’s a skintight shirt, but he really doesn’t want to look closely.

Himchan squeezes his eyes shut, counting bac