Jongdae had clearly underestimated how distracting Junmyeon would be during their tutoring sessions. Or maybe the lesson was really that uninteresting.

“Hey.” Junmyeon threw an eraser at Jongdae. “Are you even paying attention?”

“Nope,” Jongdae said, grinning shamelessly when Junmyeon glared at him. He stared down at the long list of definitions. Eighty-nine problems. What kind of assignment was that? “Why do these definitions have to be word for word?”

“The CSAT’s aren’t all going to be multiple choice. Focus.” Junmyeon reached over and flicked Jongdae’s forehead. He seemed to believe that hurting Jongdae (not that it actually hurt) would help him retain the information.

Jongdae stared back down at his work, which was covered more with doodles than actual information. He added another small doodle in the corner, something that was meant to be a swan but ended up looking more like a snake.

Junmyeon’s phone rang, and Junmyeon glanced at the screen before rejecting the call for the tenth time since the beginning of the session. Jongdae looked at it with mild interest.

“Clingy girlfriend?”

“Don’t have one.” Junmyeon tossed the phone onto his bed.

“The clinginess or the girlfriend part?” Jongdae pressed.

Junmyeon stared at him for a long time, and Jongdae briefly worried that he’d overstepped his boundaries (but when did Jongdae ever care about boundaries?). “The girlfriend part.”

“Oh.” Jongdae paused a moment to process the information before asking, “Then is the mafia after you?”

Junmyeon gave him an unimpressed look as Jongdae drew a mother duck in the margins of his page. Maybe Mr. Hwang was secretly an art lover and would be impressed by his drawings than his actual work. Or maybe not.

“Explain light dependent photosynthesis.”

“It depends on light,” Jongdae said, scribbling “sunlight” and “electron” into the blank.

“Jongdae. You have to pay attention—”

“I was.” Just maybe… on something else. Jongdae added “photosystem” and “thylakoid” to the answer and drew a bubble around it, hoping the answer would make sense. “Muffin?” he offered with an innocent smile, since Junmyeon was looking slightly annoyed.

Junmyeon complied, opening his mouth. Jongdae placed a small piece of muffin into it, brushing his fingers along the side of his mouth. His lips were such a sweet, sweet pink. Junmyeon chewed on his muffin slowly, looking up through his eyelashes at Jongdae. After another second, Jongdae moved away, dropping his hand and grabbing a muffin of his own.

“Sentences.” Junmyeon spoke around his mouthful of food, and Jongdae drew a pufferfish next to his work.

“He didn’t say we had to,” Jongdae protested, but he erased the random phrases and rewrote them with symbols in between the words so they made more sense.

“Light independent photosynthesis,” Junmyeon said, pointing at the next blank.

“No light,” Jongdae said, scribbling key terms on the lines.

Junmyeon looked over his shoulder, eyeing the doodles critically. “That’s not very descriptive.”

“Then you explain it.” Jongdae broke off another piece of the muffin. The six muffins he’d bought were nearly all finished by now.

“It takes place in the stroma.” Junmyeon raised an eyebrow as Jongdae continued staring blankly at him, suggesting that he should probably write down what he was saying.

Jongdae wrote down “stroma,” then drew a pair of eyebrows above the word.

Before Junmyeon could bother him about the ineffectiveness of his notes, his phone rang again. Jongdae grabbed it first, glancing at the screen. They only had five minutes of the allotted hour left. “You should answer it,” he said, handing the object to Junmyeon. “It’s better than just staring at it.”

Junmyeon rejected the call again, only to have it ring once more a few minutes later.

“Someone’s popular,” Jongdae observed, glancing down at his own phone. Baekhyun had texted him two dozen times over the past hour, each expressing various shades of concern. The last one, sent five minutes ago, had been a quite suggestive “have fun~.” Jongdae rolled his eyes and texted back with “do u have a life.” Baekhyun’s reply was almost instantaneous:  a picture of him and Kyungsoo eating ice cream together. In any other situation, Jongdae would have been jealous, but he replied with a picture of the nearly finished muffins.

“Don’t text,” Junmyeon chided, and Jongdae slipped his phone into his pocket, ignoring the buzz signaling Baekhyun’s reply. “We only have a few minutes left.”

“Let’s finish the muffins,” Jongdae said, sliding the box closer to himself. So maybe they hadn't been entirely efficient the entire time—or, more accurately, Jongdae hadn't been entirely efficient—but he was still proud of what he’d accomplished so far. Besides, the muffins couldn’t go wasted. Jongdae was totally not using the muffins to get closer to Junmyeon.

“We’re finishing the problems.” Junmyeon’s tone didn’t leave much chance for an argument, but Jongdae broke off a piece of muffin anyway.

“Say ah!” Junmyeon didn’t protest as Jongdae fed him, nor did he protest as Jongdae brushed away (nonexistent) crumbs from the corner of his mouth.

Junmyeon’s lips were so soft against his fingertips, Jongdae noted absently. He wondered if it would feel as soft against his own lips.

They only broke away when Junmyeon’s phone rang again. This time, Junmyeon let it ring, the default ringtone disturbing the silence.

“You know, you should give me your number,” Jongdae said conversationally, looking at the lit-up screen. This caller was different from the previous one, judging from the different array of foreign characters across the screen.

“You live two doors away.”

“Still.” Jongdae shuffled his papers. He didn’t have that many problems left; he could finish them in an hour, max. “If I make higher than a ninety on the next test, will you give it to me?”

“You should get a good grade anyway.” Junmyeon’s judging look wasn’t very intimidating.

“And I could get your number from Minseok,” Jongdae pointed out.

Junmyeon laughed. “Okay, deal.”

“Finish the muffins?” Jongdae peered into the box. There was only half a muffin left.

He was in the middle of feeding Junmyeon when Kyungsoo walked in, sparing them an unamused look as he threw his books down.

“Am I interrupting something?”

Junmyeon stood. “Nothing. We were finishing.”

“What are you doing here?” Jongdae asked, immediately attaching to Kyungsoo’s side. He was not going to let Baekhyun outdo him. “Are you here for a tutor session too?” Kyungsoo didn’t look like he needed one; from what Jongdae could tell, Kyungsoo was doing extremely well in all of his classes.

Kyungsoo hesitated, his eyes flickering across the room to meet Junmyeon’s. “Ah. I’m actually staying here.”

It was only then that Jongdae noticed the extra suitcase in the corner of the room, as well as the neatly folded blankets next to it. He frowned thoughtfully. “I thought you roomed with Jongin.” Kyungsoo’s reluctance clearly suggested that he didn’t want to say any more about the subject, but there never was any harm in asking, right?

Before Kyungsoo could formulate a response, Junmyeon cleared his throat and walked over towards them. “Are you guys ready for dinner?”

Jongdae stared at Kyungsoo, reluctant to give up on his lead. He wasn’t just being nosy; Kyungsoo looked like he was troubled by something, and wasn’t it a friend’s duty to comfort another friend? “Yeah.”

“Are you guys fighting?” Jongdae asked softly as they walked out of the room. Junmyeon shot him a clear warning look over his shoulder, but didn’t make any move to stop their conversation. Yet.

“Kind of?” Kyungsoo scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “I just don’t want to stay there for a while.”

“Oh.” Jongdae nodded wisely; dorm fights weren’t exactly uncommon. “Well, the best way to make up to Jongin is to get him food.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Kyungsoo smiled, but Jongdae could see the uncomfortableness in his expression behind the tight lines around his mouth.

“Hey.” Jongdae touched Kyungsoo’s shoulder lightly. “If you need anything, we’ll be here for you, okay?”

Kyungsoo smiled again, and this time, there was more warmth in it. “I know.”