Chapter Text
chapter one: spoiler alert! they’re dead (except for sunghoon, ‘cause he’s a killjoy)
to be honest, sunghoon expected himself to be farther along in life than this.
this Sudden, Depressing Epiphany hit him as he sat on the couch at four in the morning, sharing a punch bowl of lucky charms with three unemployed vampires who happened to be his roommates. enjoy your youth, sunghoon thought sarcastically. now, this was, by no means, the most s.d.e. he’d ever had, but it was definitely a jolt to the system, especially so early in the morning. he slumped back down onto the couch.
“what happened?” heeseung asked, raising his eyebrows.
“i was thinking,” sunghoon started. this was met with booing from the other boys around the punch bowl.
“you’re not supposed to do that,” jay said, sounding genuinely distraught, “you’re the bimbo.” sunghoon threw an impressively aimed lucky charms marshmallow at him, but jay just caught it in his mouth and crunched it at him. sunghoon stuck his tongue out.
“he’s becoming sentient,” jake gasped, “the experiment has gone awry.” sunghoon groaned and looked to heeseung for help.
“quiet,” heeseung said, and jay and jake both promptly shut up. “so,” heeseung started, “you were thinking…?”
“yeah.”
“about what?”
“life.”
“god, i don’t know if i can take another existential crisis around the cereal punch bowl,” jay groaned. apparently this had been a common occurrence even before sunghoon had moved in with them.
“sorry,” he mumbled, going back to picking out the marshmallows from the cereal. jake smacked his hand.
“you can’t do that.”
“since when?”
“since, like, forever.”
“he’s been doing that since he moved in,” heeseung pointed out, “i think he should be allowed to.” heeseung and jake both looked to jay, the tiebreaker.
“what?”
“should sunghoon be allowed to pick through the cereal for the marshmallows?”
“dude, he’s been doing that forever,” jay gestured to sunghoon, “i vote yes.” sunghoon went back to picking them out while jake watched, looking personally offended.
“anyway,” heeseung said, quietly now, “if you want to talk about your existential crisis later, my door will be open.”
“you don’t even have a door anymore,” jay laughed. he was right: heeseung’s door had been ripped off of its hinges in an unidentified incident which was never really discussed around sunghoon.
“it’s a saying,” heeseung frowned, “don’t rub it in.”
“what happened to it, anyway?”
“nothing for you to worry about.” heeseung patted his shoulder and sighed with an oddly paternal air. “isn’t it past your bedtime?”
“yes, dad,” sunghoon huffed, “it is. i’ve got work in… three hours.” he pulled the blanket around his shoulders a little tighter: he was squished between heeseung and jake, and they were both freezing, as usual.
“no more marshmallows, then. you’re going to stay up all night, at this rate.” jake said, reaching for sunghoon’s spoon.
“you’re taking this spoon out of my cold, dead hands,” sunghoon hissed, wielding the utensil like a weapon, “and i’m not a little kid. i don’t need a bedtime anymore,” he complained, picking a rainbow marshmallow out of the bowl. jay was hyper-focused on the cereal, trying to eat it before it started to get soggy.
“if you didn’t have a bedtime, you’d never sleep.”
“would too.” heeseung raised his eyebrows and sunghoon conceded. “okay, fine. maybe just not a lot. i got along just fine before you, though.”
“you weren’t ‘getting along,’ you were on the verge of death,” jake frowned, pressing a bit closer.
“i was fine,” sunghoon huffed, “just a little tired.”
“sure, sure.” jake huffed back. “jay, we’re going out, so quit eating. sunghoon, go to bed. and for the love of god, actually get some sleep instead of thinking any more.”