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Minho would like to believe that she’s gotten to know her roommate significantly well over the course of the last semester; she’d guess that she’s accumulated enough knowledge to create a small rolodex dedicated entirely to Jisung—not that she'd ever actually sit down to make one.
She knows how Jisung takes her coffee—the same exact way every single time. Knows that, in spite of the heavy boots and leather jackets that her wardrobe almost solely comprises of, Jisung can't sleep without at least four pillows. Minho knows the exact look she gets on her face the moment an idea for a new song lyric strikes her, brow furrowed and lips twisted into an inadvertent pout. She knows how Jisung cries at the end of movies, even if they aren't that emotionally compelling, because in spite of the black painting both her nails and her eyelids, she's tender-hearted almost to a fault.
Minho knows that Jisung's internal clock leaves her practically nocturnal, and hass lost count of the number of times she's woken up in the early hours of the morning to begin her day just as Jisung's been preparing to go to bed—which is how she also knows that the sight of Jisung's bare, sleep-swollen face, eyes barely open by the time she wakes up in the afternoon just as Minho's returning from her morning classes makes her heart pound out an uncomfortably quick rhythm in her chest.
She knows that Jisung's not one for the entire rager college party scene, and that she has a small, close-knit circle of friends who she prefers to spend her time with. And Minho had been pleasantly surprised to learn within the first week of moving in together that the both of them ran in significant number of the same circles as well. It made crossing over the awkward line between roommates and genuine friends easier, and Minho likes to believe that even if their current living situation had been different, they still would have crossed paths and ended up as close as they are now.
And, because she knows Jisung, Minho’s also aware that she's allergic to both cat and dog fur. She'd found out when the both of them had been cutting through the park just off campus and ran into Hyunjin, leash in hand, and Jisung had exclaimed, "Puppy!" before spending at least ten minutes cooing over and petting their friend’s dog. She'd then proceeded to sneeze consecutively for a full minute, wheezing until Minho pulled her off their course back to the dorms and to the nearest pharmacy to grab the first antihistamine she could off the shelves.
She also knows that, in spite of the fact that she’s allergic to them, Jisung has always been particularly fond of cats; one of the first things Minho had pulled out of her boxes on move-in day had been a small, framed picture of her own cats. Which, upon spotting, Jisung had immediately asked each of their names. Minho wouldn’t consider herself a romantic, and the concept of love at first sight has always eluded her; but she can't deny that she'd gotten a feeling then, that, maybe not immediately, but eventually, she'd fall in something with Jisung. The thought crossed her mind for only a minute before she'd stowed it away and avoided pulling it back out again.
The fact that she knows all of this about Jisung is why Minho isn't surprised now to find her standing in the hall in front of their door, right hand raised where she’d been urgently rapping her knuckles against it, soaked to the bone and clutching the bunched up bundle of her favorite faded leather jacket to her chest with her free arm, teeth chattering as she says, “Quick, hurry!” before passing the jacket to Minho and stumbling into the room. She shuts the door behind her and slumps against it when it closes with a click, and it's when she finally catches her breath that Minho realizes how winded she'd been.
The fact that Jisung looks two minutes away from catching pneumonia is worrying, but at the sight of the small grey tabby swallowed between the folds of soft leather once Minho peeks down at the jacket forced into her arms, it quickly makes sense. The sound of Jisung’s boots falling to the floor with a thump makes her look back up; she quickly deposits their guest onto the bed nearest to her and pulls her hoodie over her head, passing it over to Jisung without a word and rubbing a palm over the skin of her own arms, now bare in her tee shirt and exposed to the draft that's somehow always managed to make it into their room.
It's so the residual body heat warms her up faster, Minho tells herself; justifying why she didn't just grab Jisung's own hoodie off the back of her desk chair to her own traitorous mind. Her throat clicks around a swallow as she gets a clear view of Jisung in her white muscle tee, now nearly sheer and sticking tight to her body; thin rivulets of rainwater trickling down her biceps and dripping off her elbows. She quickly looks away when Jisung grabs the hem of her shirt and begins peeling it off, finding a clean towel for her while she gets dressed.
Minho turns back just in time to see Jisung’s head pop up through the collar of the blue hoodie, pulling a face as she pushes back the wet blond hair sticking to her forehead. It’s all she’s put on, Minho realizes after a second; the hoodie’s already big on her, and on Jisung, the hem of it hits just a couple of inches above her bare knees. They nearly knock together when she shivers, and she pulls the excess fabric of the sleeves falling past her fingers into her palms while she bunches her fists.
She tries not to think about Jisung’s bare legs—which Minho has already seen countless times, she reminds herself—as she directs her to sit on the bed, next to the cat who’s quietly curled in on itself and blinks slowly at them; then, leaning down, gently dries Jisung’s hair for her. The grateful smile she gets in return makes Minho pull the towel down over Jisung’s face, ignore the small cry of indignancy she lets out, and finally turning her full attention to the kitten Jisung’s smuggled in.
Minho crouches down so she’s at face level with it, holds her hand out with her fingers curled into a fist and allows it to lazily sniff at her, before it rubs its small face against her knuckles. She smiles softly, stretching one finger out to tap against the kitten’s chin.
“Am I an accomplice to a catnapping?” she asks, turning to Jisung with one hand now gently scratching between the cat’s ears. Jisung huffs and blows a strand of half dried hair out of her eyes.
“You’re an accomplice to a cat rescuing, if anything. Found the poor baby hiding under one of the cars outside the library.” She rolls her eyes. “Of course I’m the one who has to do all the work getting it to let me even get close enough to help, and it falls in love with you instantly.”
“Maybe it knew you’d end up sneezing all over it and didn’t want to end up wet and covered in snot, too.”
Jisung narrows her eyes in a glare, and it’s not as intimidating as it might usually be—which, in Minho’s opinion, is nothing near intimidating, not in the slightest—when her nose is red and twitching and her waterline is near brimming with cat fur induced tears.
“I think you’re just a kitty magnet, unnie,” she finally says. To prove her point, she nods towards the cat that’s now nibbling on Minho’s fingertips and purring like a small motor. “Which at least means we won’t lose it.”
Minho quirks a single brow. “And what’s that supposed to mean? You wanna keep it in here? You know that Chan’s gonna have a stroke if he finds out.” She doubts their RA is going to actually care that much, but she can’t be entirely sure.
Jisung snorts. “Even more reason to keep it with us, then.” Her smile falters for a moment. “I mean, you will help, right? I figured you’d be alright with it since you already have cats, so taking care of it shouldn't be hard, but it’s okay if you don’t want to. I can ask someone else.”
The idea of Jisung sharing custody of her new cat with someone who isn’t Minho leaves an uncomfortably tart taste on the back of her tongue.
“Don’t worry, your contraband kitty can stay with us, Sungie,” she says, as if she wouldn’t easily let Jisung smuggle an entire zoo into their dorm if she asked Minho with the same smile she gives her now: lips pulling into a heart and nose scrunched up in a way that makes Minho look away before she does something ridiculous like try to kiss it.
She reaches beneath the bed—which she’d recognized as her own—and pats her hand around until she finds her electric kettle, another contraband item. Standing back up, wincing as her knees crack, she sets it on her desk to begin the task of boiling water for a mug of tea. Once she has it going, she turns back to Jisung, ready to order her to go take a hot shower. Her voice gets stuck before it’s even halfway up her throat.
The sight of Jisung on her bed, in her clothes, stroking a kitten with one tentative finger peeking out from a sleeve shouldn’t hold this much power over her, yet here Minho stands, reminded to move only when the cat meows loudly and paws over to curl over on the foot of the bed. Jisung frowns.
“Hey, I’m the one who saved you! Show some respect,” she says, though she sounds more disappointed than annoyed.
“Maybe it’s just tired,” Minho suggests. Then, “Go take a shower, the tea should be done by then.”
Jisung’s not the biggest fan of tea, which Minho knows, but she also knows that she hates instant coffee and their felonious ways haven’t quite made it to them bringing a coffee maker into the dorm, and so, they make do with tea. Minho almost scoffs—a coffee maker is too much, but a small living creature is perfectly acceptable.
She obeys with little protest, too cold to argue, and by the time Minho finishes up the mug of tea Jisung’s still in the shower. Minho hesitates for only a second before grabbing a pair of sweatpants from Jisung’s drawers and all but running down to the laundry room. She sticks them in one of the dryers; ten minutes and she heads back up to their room with quick steps.
When she re-enters, Jisung’s back on her bed; she’s opted to wear Minho’s hoodie again, hair damp and just hitting the towel around her shoulders while she blows over the cup of tea in her hands. She perks up at the sound of the door opening, sets the cup down on the side table just in time to catch the sweatpants Minho tosses at her.
“Fuck yes, toasted pants!” she cheers with a grin, wiggling around so she can slip them on without having to get off the bed. Minho wishes the sight of Jisung squirming around out of pure laziness didn’t warm her insides as much as it does.
“Drink that,” she says, pointing at the cup and grabbing Jisung’s duvet off her bed to throw over her lap. Jisung beams at her as Minho tucks it around her outstretched legs, takes a sip of the tea, and immediately pulls her mouth away from the cup with a grimace.
“Is this ginger ? Did you think you could trick me into drinking pure ginger?” she demands.
“It’s good for you and you need it and you'll drink it,” Minho replies cooly.
Jisung rolls her eyes and lets out a long-suffering groan. “Fine.” She sips a mouthful, chokes it down with a grimace, and says, “You know unnie, you’re gonna end up being a real good milf. You already have the whole stern voice and home remedies thing down.” She says it so matter-of-factly that Minho’s the one who now chokes.
Finally she manages to say, “Ginger’s actually good for you, though. Don’t compare it to those weird home remedies that all the aunties insist can cure cancer.”
Jisung snorts into her cup, and Minho crawls up behind her on the bed to dry her hair the rest of the way.
They end up taking the kitten to Seungmin the following day. Jisung suggests the idea after pointing out the fact that the both of them probably won’t have enough for a proper visit to the vet, and Seungmin’s major in physiological sciences is the next best option that they have. Minho doesn’t point out that the majority of his learning is geared towards the pre-dentistry course he’s taking, and that virtually has nothing to do with animals—it’s not as if she has any better suggestions.
The fact that he lives in the same residence hall doesn’t make sneaking the kitten up to his dorm any easier. Jisung insists on carrying it, arguing that she popped an antihistamine in the morning so she should be fine. She wears an oversized hoodie and first tries to fit the kitten into the large pocket at its front. When there’s a noticeable lump sticking out, she tries holding the cat inside her hoodie against her chest, except it keeps squirming too much for her to hold still.
Finally, they end up putting the kitten in the hood of Minho’s hoodie. Her hair’s longer than Jisung’s and she ties it up easily, letting her ponytail fall over the cat to hide as much as they can and nearly sprinting upstairs when the cat starts batting at her hair and nearly falls out.
“You know I’m not going to be able to help you any more than a Naver search can, right?” are the first words out of Seungmin’s mouth when Jisung shoves past him into his room, waving at Felix sprawled across his bed while he types away on his laptop, before gently lifting the kitten out of Minho’s hood.
He inspects the kitten anyway, conducting a mini examination on his desk while Minho and Jisung make themselves comfortable waiting on his bed.
Finally, he switches off his desk lamp, takes his glasses off, hooking them onto the collar of his shirt. And, with a voice serious enough that Minho could almost believe they were at an actual clinic, says, “Congratulations, you two have a healthy baby boy right here.”
Jisung gasps, clutching Minho’s arm and wiping nonexistent tears from her eyes as Minho takes the kitten from Seungmin’s arms and gently cradles it to her chest.
“What should we call him, jagi?” she asks Jisung softly, running her finger carefully down the kitten’s small face.
“You can choose, baby,” Jisung replies, voice equally low. “Mommy’s pick.”
“We’re both the mommies here, Sungie.”
“Did we not just have this conversation yesterday?” Jisung quirks a brow.
“I think you’re both useless lesbians who should give it a name already,” Seungmin cuts in.
“Hey, leave them alone,” Felix says, finally speaking up from where he’d been watching the entire scene unfold over the top of his screen. “This is an important moment in their lives. You only get to be new parents once!”
“I think,” Minho says, “we’ll call him Dori.” Seungmin snorts loudly, and Felix sticks a leg out to kick him in the back of the shin. Jisung fake gasps dramatically again.
“It’s perfect! Our baby Dori.” She peeks up at Minho from where she has her face tipped down to watch the kitten, gazes at her through the thick curtain of her lashes, and Minho’s only saved from staring back at her dumbly when Felix asks if he can be the first uncle to hold their child.
“You’re the luckiest baby in the world,” he says after swaddling the obedient little kitten in a throw blanket and holding it in his lap like he’s at an actual baby shower. “Lesbian mommies and your two gay uncles.” He pats the space next to him until Seungmin sits down next to him and nods in agreement.
“Wanna be the godparents?” Minho asks. “No way am I letting dog people anywhere near our child. Chan and Hyunjin can live knowing they’re only second favorite.”
“Does Chan even know about this?” Seungmin asks.
Minho shakes her head. “Nope, and neither does Hyunjin, and neither of them are gonna find out, either.”
“If either of you put our baby in danger then it’s over for both of you,” Jisung adds. “I know about the hot plate and I’m not afraid to let that information go public.”
Dori had slept soundlessly the first night after Jisung had brought him home, understandably exhausted from the day’s events of being caught in a downpour and subsequently being rescued. Minho wishes the kitten would have slept the same the second night as well.
She’s awoken to cat fur in her mouth and a set of soft paws on her nose while Dori bites it with a set of small teeth. She sputters and quickly lifts the kitten away from her face, setting it down over her chest instead and hoping it’ll be comfortable there. She’s proven wrong when Dori immediately crawls back up to bat at her chin. A soft whisper is what makes her actually open her eyes.
“Unnie?” Jisung asks, tentative, voice low. A rustle of fabric and the sound of Jisung’s feet hitting the floor before she quickly shuffles over to Minho’s bed and groans. “Come on, you get the cat cuddles too now?”
“I don’t think it counts as cuddles if he's trying to bite my nose off.”
Jisung snorts, and Minho can hear the sly look on her face. “Understandable, you have a very nice nose.”
Minho’s glad the dark covers the burn she feels in the tips of her.
“You can take him,” she says, and feels the weight of the kitten leave her chest after Jisung quickly picks him back up and heads back to her bed.
Minho’s awoken not ten minutes later to a rough tongue on her forehead and groans.
“Jisung, your baby’s awake,” she groans.
“I think you mean our baby’s awake,” Jisung’s hoarse voice replies as she pads back across the room to Minho’s bed. “Don’t try pulling that straight man argument on me, unnie. We’re both responsible here.” She picks Dori back up, turns around and heads back to her bed; grabs three pillows off it, then turns around and heads back over to Minho.
“Scoot over,” she says, and Minho slides to the side until she meets the wall and lets Jisung crawl in beside her.
It’s nowhere near the first time they’ve slept in the same bed, The first month together they’d learned that the poor central heating wasn’t nearly enough for Jisung, whose body ran colder than Minho’s own, and an extra duvet had done little to help her compared to pressing herself against Minho’s back and leeching off her body heat.
Minho blames the cat for the painful swell of affection in her chest once the three of them are situated in her bed. It’s for the cat, she tells herself as Jisung slips one knee between Minho’s own. Affection for the new kitten that’s reminded her of how much she misses her other two cats back at her parents’ house.
She tells herself that even when it takes her another twenty minutes to fall back asleep after listening to the soft sounds of Jisung breathing in her sleep beside her.
They end up having to work around a schedule that allows at least one of them to be with Dori at all times. He’s too small for Minho to feel comfortable leaving alone, and Jisung, who spends most of her time in their room playing with the kitten, has no objections.
Coming back to their dorm room after hours of lectures to the sight of Jisung trying to work around the cat laying across her keyboard, making offers and trying to coax it into settling for her lap instead, almost makes Minho believe she can give up her afternoon coffee.
The problem arises just over a month later, when Hyunjin invites them for drinks with the rest of their friends.
“It’s been forever since we’ve all done something, and we’re all free at the same time for once,” he insists as he unplugs his phone from where it had been hooked up to the speakers of the studio they’d rented for the day.
“It’ll just be some chicken and beer,” he continues. “It’s about the company, noona,” he adds.
Minho hums and pretends to think it over. “Maybe.”
“Jisung already agreed,” Hyunjin adds.
“And that affects my decision because?”
“Because you’d jump off a cliff if she said that’s what she wanted to do tonight.” He says it with both conviction and an eye roll that make Minho knock her knuckles hard against the back of his head.
“I’ll see,” she says. She needs to ask Jisung how she’d planned on taking the both of them out for the night while leaving Dori alone first.
Jisung’s answer, when Minho drops herself down on her desk chair and asks, is that, “He’s a big boy now! And it’s not like he can open the door and leave the room even if he wanted to.”
She has a point, and it’s not that often that Jisung agrees to go out for the night anyway. Minho folds after spending ten minutes pretending to think it over so she doesn’t look too eager to agree with whatever Jisung says.
Minho can’t say she didn’t enjoy herself, because she did. Hyunjin was right, it had been a while since all of them had been at the same place at once, and the opportunity to catch up had left her with a pleasant feeling at the end of the night.
It had also left her with a small stone of worry in her gut. Jisung had caught on quick enough, leaning in and asking if she was alright. Minho had waved her off; she was fine, and she knew Jisung was enjoying herself as well. It wasn't a lie, but she still drags them up to their room now, unlocking the door and pulling Jisung in the second it’s open.
The relief that washes over her once she spots Dori asleep on Jisung’s pillow makes her physically deflate, and Jisung doesn’t miss it.
“What, you were worried about the cat?” she asks with a disbelieving huff as she shrugs the leather jacket off her shoulders and drops it over the back of her desk chair.
“It was his first time home alone!” Minho protests.
Jisung places a hand on each of Minho’s shoulders, looks her dead in the eyes. “Unnie,” she says solemnly. “I think you need to be careful or you’ll end up a helicopter parent.”
“You can’t helicopter parent a cat. Where's he going to go, cat school for cats?.”
Jisung snorts unattractively, and it really shouldn't be making Minho’s throat feel as tight as it does. “Who said anything about the cat? I was talking about when you’re a future milf giving our child unnecessary anxiety.”
“I—our what ?” Minho’s sure she misheard, but then Jisung lifts a hand off her shoulder to sheepishly rub the side of her neck, gaze flicking to the side.
“Shit.” She laughs nervously. “Sorry, I just—maybe I got it wrong, but I thought we had a thing going.”
Minho’s mouth runs dry.
“A thing?”
Jisung lets out a strangled noise somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “I just figured that, you know, with all the flirting—”
“The flirting,” Minho states more than asks; Jisung finally looks at her to give her a puzzled look.
“Yes? I mean I call you baby, I thought that at least counted for something.”
“Jisung, you called me baby for the first time a week after the semester began.”
“I know.”
“You kno—oh my god.” Minho can feel her lips twitching into a hopeless smile against her will. “You’re so fucking dumb, oh my god.”
“Dumb in a sexy way?” Jisung bites her lip, but Minho knows the look in her eyes too well; trying to overcompensate for worry with faux cockiness.
She rolls her eyes, but she brings her own hands up to cup Jisung’s cheeks and says, “Yes, dumb in an extremely, unfortunately sexy way.” Minho nearly cringes as she says it, but the way Jisung’s eyes light up and her smile pushes her cheeks up beneath Minho’s palms makes warmth drip down along her spine.
Jisung tips her face up almost imperceptibly, and Minho just barely opens her mouth to ask, “Can I?” when a movement in the corner of her eye catches her attention; Dori, stretching before curling back into a tiny ball. Jisung turns around to follow her line of sight and scoffs.
“I promise one kiss in front of our sleeping cat baby won’t traumatize him,” she says, and Minho doesn’t argue.
She’d known that Jisung’s lips are almost perpetually chapped, both from biting them and subconsciously licking them any time she was lost in thought; Minho had expected it when she tilted her head down to press her own against them. What she hadn’t been expecting was the taste of garlic—which she should have, considering the fact that they’d only just come back from eating late night chicken—and Jisung must not have either, because she pulls away almost immediately.
“You taste like garlic,” she complains.
“You taste like garlic.”
Minho kisses her again anyway, and she knows the feeling of Jisung’s lips smiling against hers, until she’s grinning to wide to continue, forcing them to break apart so she can tug MInho along to brush their teeth, a feeling she’s only felt once so far, is already her new favorite thing that she knows about Jisung.