Chapter Text
Jeongin was a decent enough replacement for his cats, Minho supposed. The way that the boy lounged on his unmade bed and idly watched Minho lug in and unpack his luggage was definitely reminiscent of how his cats watched him prepare their dinners. That was probably the biggest reason why Minho let him get away with being so lazy on move-in day.
Well, that, and the fact that his friend was so visibly nervous, but he didn’t have to admit that part out loud.
“Jeongin-ah, the hell did you even put in these? Rocks?” He complained instead. The boxes he carried were heavier than anything Minho had brought. He dropped them down at the foot of Jeongin’s bed and stretched his arms over his head, sighing in relief at the pop of his joints. Changbin or Chan would have been great help with this, he thought morosely. Unfortunately, Changbin had his hands full with helping Seungmin and Hyunjin with their unpacking – because god knows Hyunjin couldn’t pack lightly if you paid him to – and Chan helping Jisung fix some last-minute issue with his class schedule.
“It’s not my fault,” Jeongin whined, “My mom kept shoving things at me that she ‘swore I needed’ and I felt too bad to throw them out.”
Minho raised his eyebrow at him. “You’re hardly the first of her kids to go to college. She doesn’t freak out like this over your brother, does she?”
Jeongin made a sound like he was deflating. “Hyung’s college is a lot closer to home than this one. She doesn’t have to worry as much about him.”
“Aish… She’s got so little faith in us,” Minho tsked and shook his head. He walked over to Jeongin and patted his leg. “We’re just gonna have to parent you even harder to prove ourselves, then. Which of these boxes has your bed stuff?”
Jeongin rolled his eyes and made a face as Minho’s comment, but obediently pointed at a box that Minho had brought in earlier. Minho mimed pinching his cheeks before sauntering over and beginning to unpack. Sometime during his unfolding-and-refolding bedsheets and blankets Jeongin had pulled one of his boxes up onto the bed with him and began to sift through it, albeit with a restless, far-away look.
Minho glanced up at him from his spot unpacking on the floor. “Hey,” he hummed, “what’s going on in that head of yours?”
Jeongin jumped and turned to look at him. “Huh? Oh, um. It’s nothing, hyung,” he said with a slight shake of his head.
“Jeonginnie…”
“It’s just – I dunno,” Jeongin said. He idly rifled through the box in front of him, which appeared to be full of décor for the dorm from what Minho could tell. He tugged on his ear as he visibly gathered his thoughts, for which Minho waited patiently for. Eventually, he repeated, “I don’t know.”
“Nervous? Homesick already?” Minho suggested.
Jeongin shrugged. “Maybe? Probably. I just – Mom was right in a way, I guess. I really haven’t been this far from home before.”
Minho watched him from the corner of his eye and nodded along.
“Also – maybe I’m a little nervous about all of us being together again? Which is weird, I know, but like – “ He dropped a decorative figurine that was definitely given to him by his mother back into the box and flopped backwards on the bed, “ – it’s just been so long since it’s been all seven of us. Y’know? And – And I get that it’s only been a year since Jinnie, Sungie, and Minnie hyungs came here, so I wasn’t really alone for that long back home, and you all came to visit for breaks anyway, but –“
“Hey,” Minho interrupted, “breathe, Innie.”
Jeongin did. He took a deep breath and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. Minho gathered up the newly-refolded sheets he’d unpacked and padded back to his side. He dropped the sheets on top of the boy, who let out a quiet ‘oof’, and then picked up the box he’d been going through earlier and set it back down on the floor. Jeongin removed his hands and blinked up at him, his eyes swirling with nerves.
“Hey,” Minho said again, “it’s okay. Between you and me, Channie hyung’s the exact same way. You should’ve heard him last year when the three idiots enrolled. You’d think he was a deadbeat dad trying to figure out what his kids wanted for Christmas with the way he was acting.”
Jeongin scrunched up his nose. “Ugh, hyung. Don’t compare me to him and then make him sound so old. I’m just a baby.”
“Too much of a baby to make your own bed while I unpack your luggage?” Minho asked dryly. He flicked his friend on the nose. “I won’t tolerate this lazy-bones kind of behavior after today, you know.”
“Yeah, yeah…”
“Ahem.”
“Yeah, yeah, hyung.”
Minho huffed. Raising Jeongin in his image was a double-edged sword. On one hand, the boy was hilarious to sic on others; On the other, his attitude didn’t discriminate against its creator. “You’re lucky you’re so cute,” he said threateningly. His tone, of course, had no effect on his protégé.
This year had ought to be interesting, he thought as he got back to unpacking. He’d been roommates with Changbin last year, same as he’d been when they first came to university, with the three (then) first-years having a single dorm to themselves, as well. He hadn’t hated rooming with him – on the contrary, they’d turned out much closer than they’d ever been in high-school by the end of it. This year, though, Chan had finally snatched up a three-bedroom apartment close enough to campus to be convenient to visit, and Changbin and Jisung had leapt at the chance to live with him instead of in the dorms.
Minho didn’t blame them. He also didn’t envy their neighbors. Between Chan’s odd work hours and Changbin and Jisung’s personalities it was bound to be an…interesting living situation, to say the least.
Despite the new gap in their group – or perhaps because of it – Hyunjin refused to give up his spot as Seungmin’s dormmate. Seungmin pretended to be annoyed at the whole thing, but Minho saw how his shoulders relaxed somewhat when Hyunjin had loudly announced it a few weeks ago.
The whole thing had left Minho in need of a dormmate, and the incoming Jeongin in need of a dorm. It only made sense for Minho to request (re: tell) the boy to just dorm with him. It wasn’t exactly normal for third-years and first-years to room together, but they’ve known each other for so long at this point that it didn’t feel strange at all. From Minho’s personal experience the years prior, all of them flocked to each others’ rooms for sleepovers so often, anyway, that rooming arrangements like these were mostly just for show.
“Do you think Jinnie and Minnie hyungs are done unpacking yet?” Jeongin asked, breaking Minho out of his thoughts. Minho looked over and saw that Jeongin had finished neatly making his bed and was now going through a box of clothes.
Minho snorted. “Seungmin, maybe. Hyunjin? Definitely not. He’s probably had Changbin hang up and take down the same poster in different spots for the last half hour.”
Jeongin snickered at that, Minho noted smugly. “Minnie hyung’s probably moving stuff behind their backs just to get Jinnie hyung to yell at Binnie hyung.”
Probably. “That’s what he did last year,” Minho said. “Neither of them noticed.”
Jeongin smirked. He looked over his shoulder at Minho. “Hey, if we finish before them, can we go out for coffees and rub it in their faces?”
Minho put down the stack of notebooks he’d been going through and put a hand on his heart. “Innie-ah, you’ve read my mind,” he said sweetly. “Best get to it, then. Your mom definitely overpacked.”
“Yes, hyung!”
Lee Minho met who would soon become his best friends at the very beginning of his second year of high school. The first of those three years had been – unremarkable, really. He preferred not to think about it too much, if possible. Apart from that small accident he’d been in towards the end of the year, nothing of note had particularly happened. It had just been yet another year of him keeping his head down and working on homework through lunch breaks in empty teachers’ lounges.
After that summer, though, something changed.
There was this one spot in the more suburban part of town where Minho liked to spend his free time. It was a little run-down corner store tucked away off the path of where the residential areas turned onto main street. Minho liked it because he hardly ever saw any other customers wandering around. In fact, he had a feeling that the only reason the auntie behind the counter let him loiter out on the steps for hours a day was because, some days, he was the only person to actually spend money there.
It was a deal that worked just fine for him. He slowly bought out her supply of ice creams and packaged sandwiches, and in return, she gave him a space to exist outside of his lonely apartment. He’d sit out in front of the shop with his elbows on his knees and listen to the far away sounds of cars on the road as he nibbled idly on whatever snack he’d bought that day. He’d nap, sometimes, in the patches of grass a little further away from the entrance. On especially hot summer days or especially cold winter ones, the auntie would let him waste his time inside the shop itself with either the air conditioning or heating on. He’d help sweep or reorganize shelves in thanks, though she always scoffed when he did, and they had made a slight game of seeing if she could manage to slip a few bills onto his person to pay him for the chores.
The point was, he spent a lot of time at that corner store in his younger years. In all that time, he’d never seen another person his age shop there – until that second year, that is.
He’d just been minding his own business, chatting with – no, lost in thought while wandering the road leading away from the store after finishing his ice cream, when he heard a few voices calling out. They sounded just a bit younger than himself. At first, he’d thought to ignore them, thinking it was just a group of middle schoolers messing around unsupervised. But then, the shouting continued, and he realized they were calling out to him.
When he stopped, perplexed and more than a little shy, two boys dragging along bikes came running up to him. They were wearing the same school uniform as him, but he didn’t recognize them, and surmised that they must have been first years. They came in front of him, one of them looking inordinately excited, and the other looking somewhat skeptical.
“Hey, hyung!” The excited-looking boy exclaimed, a heart-shaped smile stretching wide across his face.
Minho blinked and did not fidget despite how badly he wanted to. “Hello…?” He said questioningly. The boy kicked out the stop for his bike and then put his hands on his hips, giving Minho and appraising look up-and-down. Again, Minho did not fidget.
The boy then spun and turned to his friend. “See! What’d I tell you, Min? He’s perfect!”
“I guess,” the other boy, Min (?), said sulkily, “I could’ve found him first, though...”
The first boy rolled his eyes and then turned back to Minho. “Hyung!”
Minho was confused, and a little uncomfortable, but he’d just met these boys and they were already calling him hyung, so he didn’t want to snap at them. “Yes? Can I help you?” He asked instead.
“You can, actually!” The boy said with a smirk. “How would you feel about being in a movie?”
And, well. What was Minho supposed to say? No?
Those two – who he’d soon learned were named Han Jisung and Kim Seungmin – would, over the week, proceed to drag him back and forth across school campus and throughout town to, in their own words, “get a better feel of his vibe” before sitting him down for an official meeting with the rest of their so-called production team. They were all preparing for an upcoming indie film festival that sported a home film contest and had, apparently, just been waiting for someone to take the lead actor spot before they got started.
Minho had always wanted to go to the film festival. He’d just never had the chance to, much less participate like this. He had his doubts, but Y – but he would have been a fool to turn them down.
And so, he became the lead actor in the short little project that Jisung and Seungmin had cooked up. And so, his afternoons once spent killing time watching the clouds move over the world’s least visited corner store all alone became occupied with rehearsals and production debriefs and people.
He hadn’t even wanted to spend much time with the team. With the exception of Jisung and Seungmin, who were the first ones he met and worked most closely with, he hadn’t really been all that interested in getting to know the other four. But then –
But then, Jeongin, who was in his last year of middle school, shot off a sharp quip during the set-up of one of their scenes one day, and it had been the exact snarky response that Minho had been refraining from making, and he couldn’t help but snort at it.
But then, Hyunjin, in the same year as Jisung and Seungmin, when Minho had gotten a little too frustrated at memorizing a certain line and snapped at him, had just stuck out his tongue in response and grinned when Minho called him gross for it.
But then, Changbin, who Minho hadn’t even realized was in the same math class as him until a few weeks into production, went to get snacks and coffees for everyone and had gotten Minho’s favorites exactly right despite Minho only ever having mentioned it off-hand one time.
But then, Chan, recently graduated and attending the local community college until he decided what larger university he wanted to transfer to, went out of his way to walk Minho home after a filming session ran particularly long, and treated him to dinner, and didn’t say a word about the fact that Minho’s apartment was dead silent and empty.
But then, Yong –
But then.
It was as if he blinked and suddenly, he was surrounded by life and love. Even when all the finishing touches on their film were finished, and the festival was over and done with, and they had no real, tangible reason to be around him, he was still surrounded. Those that could constantly sought him out at school, and those that couldn’t were constantly showing up at his doorstep. He would always find pages upon pages of late-night texts to back scroll through while he got ready for school. He barely had a moment of peace to himself anymore.
And he loved it. He loved his boys. All sev – six. All six of them.
The day before university classes officially start up, they all decide to hit the town as a last hoo-rah!. It was mostly for Jeongin’s sake, really, so that he could get somewhat familiarized with the city off-campus.
Minho wasn’t complaining, though. Even though he sort-of would have rathered a quiet evening in his dorm to psych himself up for dealing with classmate and professors again, he couldn’t deny how content he was watching all of his friends finally joking around together as a group. The lot of them had just left a BBQ restaurant for an early dinner and were now on their way to a cheap (but not too dingy) karaoke joint to pass the rest of the night away. Minho lingered at the back of the procession, walking next to Chan, who wore the dopiest grin that Minho had ever seen on a real human being.
“You look like an idiot,” he said, because he was an honest person. Chan startled and glanced at him, but the grin never once left his face.
“Huh?”
Minho tapped at his own lips. “You look like an idiot,” he repeated.
Chan snorted. “I can’t just have one sappy moment, huh?”
“No. It’s embarrassing. I’m embarrassed to be seen around you like this.”
“Uh-huh,” Chan drawled. He got a look in his eyes, then, and then suddenly threw his arm around Minho’s shoulders. Minho hissed and tried to elbow the man off, but as short as Chan was, he was still much more muscular that Minho and remained stubbornly attached. “You can hide it, but I know you’re happy too, Minnie.”
Minho grunted. “You’re delusional.”
“I know you are ~” Chan sang.
Minho tried to elbow him again. Chan only snickered and squeezed him tighter, making kissy noises in his ear. Minho tried not to gag. “I can’t wait until Jeongin-ah remembers how sick he is of you,” he said. “I give it about a week before you come crying about him refusing your love.”
At that, Chan pouted. He pulled away – slightly. “Why’d you gotta go and jinx me like that?”
“You deserve it,” Minho said. He looked away and back toward their loud gaggle of friends in front of him. Not because if he looked at Chan’s puppy eyes any longer he’d actually give in and let the man smother him, of course. Definitely not. “Anyway,” he continued, ignoring his friend’s huff, “did you and Sungie get his schedule fixed?”
Chan hummed an affirmative. “We did. Had to drop one of his electives to make room, which he was pretty bummed about, but they’ve got a similar class next semester that he should be fine taking when the time comes. He’ll be done with his gen eds by that time now, at least.”
“That’s good.”
“What about you?” Chan turned to him, then. “You were pretty wishy-washy about which theater classes you wanted to take this term.”
Minho shrugged. He hadn’t been particularly attached to either one, truth be told, but he didn’t have enough room in his schedule to take both at the same time. He wound up just flipping a coin to see which one he would sign up for, but if he told Chan that, the poor man would have a conniption. “I talked to some seniors about them, and ended up with the one with Professor Oh,” he lied instead.
“I’ve heard good things about Professor Oh, that’s nice,” Chan said.
Well, that seemed to work out in the end, Minho thought. The two of them lapsed into a comfortable silence after that. Chan’s fingers idly drummed against Minho’s shoulder as they walked side-by-side and Minho didn’t bother pretending to hate it this time. They watched their younger friends bounce around the street and cause a general ruckus in their excitement, snickering and sighing in equal turns when they caught bits of conversation and argument. The boys were definitely a handful, but they were their handful, he supposed.
“Hey, hyung!” Hyunjin called out to them suddenly. He squeezed through their throng of friend and approached them – or rather, approached Minho, considering he was pointing straight at him. “Hey! I have a bone to pick with you!”
Minho shared a brief glance with Chan before looking back at Hyunjin. “Do you, now?” He asked.
“As a matter of fact, I do!” Hyunjin crossed his arms and scowled. “How come you never told me you were taking dance this year? I had to find out from Innie!”
“You’re taking dance?” Chan asked, looking a bit surprised.
Minho raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know I had to tell you every single class I was planning on taking,” he said.
“Come on, Minho. You know how much I like dance. And you kept this from me?!”
Minho shrugged off Chan’s arm – who finally allowed him to do so – in order to jab his fingers into Hyunjin’s side and make him squeal. “Who taught you to speak so disrespectfully, huh?” He snarked. “It’s not the same dance class that you’re taking, if me surprising you first day of class is what you’re worried about. I checked with Seungminnie.”
Hyunjin managed to bat away his hands and scowled at him again, though the effect was lessened somewhat by his cheeks still being bright red from the tickling. “So what if it’s a different class? It’s still dance. I didn’t know you even liked dance. How come you never said anything?”
“It’s not like I’m taking it on as a minor, or anything. I needed an elective, and it looked better than the other options,” Minho said. “I wasn’t exactly hiding it from you on purpose. I might end up transferring out of it in a month, who knows?”
Hyunjin’s shoulders relaxed at the reassurance that Minho hadn’t been intentionally keeping his “interest” in dance a secret. “Fine,” he said, more calmly, “but you know this means you have to practice with me sometimes, right? I’m totally dragging you to the dance studio with me now. No escaping.”
Minho rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure. Fine by me.”
Hyunjin grinned, finally, and then ran back to the rest of their friends. From what Minho could tell when he tried to tune into their overall conversation, there seemed to be an ongoing discussion about which off-campus cafes were better, and it was getting oddly heated for such a tame topic. He made the conscious decision to ignore it and refuse to get involved… mostly because his favorite café happened to be a cat café that the others didn’t know about, and he didn’t feel like sharing its location. It was his safe space. Sue him.
“We’re definitely not getting them back to their dorms at a reasonable time, are we?” Chan sighed. There was fondness laced with his resignation.
Minho snorted. “Absolutely not. Not that that should be much of an issue for you, Mr. Insomniac.”
Chan groaned and shook his head. “C’mon, man. It’s not my fault melatonin hardly works on me.”
“It is when you use it the wrong way. Which I’ve told you you do, by the way. Multiple times.”
Chan acted as if he hadn’t heard him at all, the bastard. “I really don’t want Jeongin to be sleep deprived on his first day of classes, though.”
“If that boy can stay up all night playing video games and be just fine in high school, then I’m sure he’ll survive his class at eleven tomorrow,” Minho pointed out. Chan sighed.
“Still,” he said. Minho tsked and patted him on the back.
“Keep worrying about little things like this and your hair is going to turn gray, old man,” he said, barking out a laugh at Chan’s dramatic groan.
“Never mind. You guys can be as exhausted as you want in the morning. I don’t care anymore.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I mean it.”
“Sure, hyung.”
Minho smirked to himself as the youngest members of their group quickly caught a whiff of the blood in the water. Soon enough, they had migrated towards the two of them and were making their own teasing comments towards Chan, despite not really having any context for why they started. It was incredibly enlivening to watch.
It was really bound to be a good year, he thought to himself. It really was.