(for teatimetaemint) I'm A Born Roommate Hater
For: teatimetaemint
Title: I’m a Born Roommate Hater
Pairing: Jongin/Xiumin
Word Count: ~4,000 words
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: swearing
Summary: If your roommate from hell is the reason you meet the hottest guy on this side of the Eastern Hemisphere, who the fuck actually wins here?
Author's Note: dear recip, some things: i’m sorry for this and i’m sorry if you like bobby.
Shit.
There’s shit in the trash can.
Of course there’s shit in the trash can, Jongin thinks to himself, aiming the Febreeze at it like a handgun and spraying until the aerosol can sputters and dies in his hands. But shit shit?
Now, Jongin is a reasonable guy. He understands that, as men, doing laundry more than once a year is out of the damn question. His dick, for example, is entirely too well-acquainted to fly burn and denim rash. (Seriously, brotip, just wash your fucking boxers. Your dick will thank you.) He also understands that no, nothing belongs in the closet, and the floor is clearly the best place for anything-books, schoolwork, clothes, food, sex. Well, maybe not sex. He still has a scar over his eyebrow from where he accidentally smashed his face against the heater vents, so ixnay on the oorsexflay.
But seriously, there is shit in the trash can and the last time Jongin checked, shit is a biohazard. Even under a cloud of Frosted Pine Air Effects™, he can smell it. It’s more effective than his alarm clock.
“Uhm,” he asks when he door opens. His roommate slouches in in his bedheaded glory, clearly having attended his eight AM lecture without having looked in the mirror. “Why is there number two in our trash can?”
Jiwon, or as he likes to be called, Bobby, peers at the unassuming dollop of of digested dinner. “I dunno,” he grunts more than says. “Wasn’t there when I went to sleep last night.”
“Okay. You know what was there when I went to sleep last night, though? My last Shin ramyun.” Jongin eyes, pointedly, the cooling bowl of reddish-orange broth on Bobby’s desk, which he glances at sheepishly before rubbing the back of his head.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” he says, not meeting Jongin’s gaze. “Look, I’ll make it up to you. I’ll get you boba.”
“Can you just,” Jongin gesticulate uselessly, “keep your side of the room clean and ask me when you want my food. It’s okay if you want it, just give me a heads up instead of going behind my back and taking it.” Which, loosely translated, is Jongin saying please don’t shit in our trash can no matter how wasted you were last night and for the love of God’s sperm banks keep your filthy rat hands out of my food, but he wasn’t raised in the jungle. Jongin knows better than that. Joonmyun taught him better than that.
“Yeah, for sure, for sure,” Bobby says. “Sorry about it, really. I’ll take out the trash now. I’m sorry, dude.”
Sehun is unsympathetic.
“He is the worst,” Jongin complains, propping his feet up on his desk. “You know once he threw up in his bed from getting too drunk the night before, balled up his sheets, and just took the blanket from my bed. He was too lazy to just do his own laundry. The room smelled like vodka vomit. Vodka vomit. It literally smells like ass, Sehun.”
“I fail to see how that’s a problem,” Sehun says, shoveling Velveeta into his mouth. It’s almost noon on the eastern seaboard of the States, where he’s studying abroad this semester. Jongin had distress called him an hour earlier to rant about his tragedy of a roommate situation this year. “I mean, you eat ass. You look at bootyholes and think, ‘Aw, yeah, I’m gonna ram my fucking tongue into that. That’s what I’m all about.’ What was that one guy’s name? Kyungsoo or some-”
“Anyway,” Jongin says loudly, glaring right into the webcam so Sehun can see how displeased he is, “I’m out of options. I think I’m going to start sleeping in the hallway soon. I will just live in a cardboard box. No one can stop me.”
“Housing administration can.”
“You had one job and it was not to make my night worse.”
“What were you expecting, dude?” Sehun asks, mouth full, spewing melted Kraft cheese like a disgusting teenage boy. “You’re a third year living in undergraduate dorms, with random roommate assignment. You’re lucky you didn’t get slotted with a freshman. I don’t know what to tell you. Remind me again why you didn’t go live with Jongdae?”
“Because he has friends,” Jongin protests. “Like, he lives with a bunch of scary-looking upperclassmen.”
“Jongin, you are an upperclassman.”
“Oh. Huh. You’re right.” Jongin considers this. “Still.”
“Have you ever even met them? I’m sure they’d understand if you told them what kind of trash you’re living with now. If they really are so upperclassmen, they probably know the struggle.”
“Hey, Bobby’s not that bad,” Jongin protests, and Sehun fixes him with dead eyes. “Okay, I mean. He can be classy trash. You know once he played two girls at once?”
Sehun furrows his eyebrows. “Dude, no. That’s not even classy. He’s just trash.”
So on Sehun’s sound advice, Jongin texts Jongdae the next afternoon asking to meet up over some nachos, maybe a burrito, are you sure you don’t want a chocolate milkshake to go with that?
“A roommate from hell, huh?” Jongdae says, crunching down on a chip. He licks clean a loaded spoonful of guac and salsa into his mouth from the side. “You should have subleased the apartment with me and my roommates when you still had the chance. I told you that I would even hold a spot open for Sehun once he gets back next semester, but nooo-”
“I was just wondering if it was okay if I crashed on your couch,” Jongin asks. “I totally get it if you say no, but I’m not going to take any of your food or use your housewares or electricity if I can help it. Oh, and I’ll pay for Wifi if I use that. And if I get shit on the floor I’ll clean it up. I’ll stay out of your hair for most of the day since I’ll be on campus most of-”
“I’m going to need you to chill out for a hot second,” Jongdae says, spreading guac over his nacho chip with chef’s precision. Jongin inhales deep, not realizing he hasn’t taken a breath through his spiel. “We’re cousins, aren’t we? Family is family. I’m not going to chew you out for using some of our things, and if it gets to be a problem, I’ll tell you. We’ll make you like, buy us takeout.”
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“I’m worried, but not about you,” Jongdae admits. He smiles anyway, kittenish and slightly too mischievous for Jongin to be fully convinced. “Let me talk to my roommates. They should be okay with it, though. Don’t worry about it.”
The story about Jongdae’s roommate situation is this: he lives with two grad students and two fifth-year superseniors to make a household of five extremely college boys that react to Kim Jongin’s presence as if he were newly acquired labradoodle puppy.
Well, two of them, anyway.
“Aren’t you that dancer in Urban?”
Jongin is impressed that he noticed. His name is Baekhyun. He’s small and unassuming, but arguably the loudest of the bunch. Jongin can’t be quite sure. That Park Chanyeol hasn’t opened his mouth yet.
“I am,” Jongin says with mild surprise. “I’m not sure if you mean someone else by ‘that’ dancer, but I’m in Urban. We perform at football games and basketball games. Maybe you’ve seen me there.”
“God, Jongdae, you’ve been holding out on us,” Baekhyun shouts into the kitchen, sashaying away to leave Jongin alone on the doormat with his twenty or so books slung over his shoulder. “You never told us that you had fucking Vogue models for cousins. What else should I know? Do you know other equally hot Kim Jongs?”
“You should see his friend Sehun. Put them together on any given day and you’ll feel like a pasty twat next to them.” Jongdae sticks his head out of the kitchen. “Make yourself at home. Pizza bite?”
Home, to chinguline, as Jongdae fondly calls them, is a humble apartment a few blocks off the main campus. It’s on the third floor right across the street from a frat house, with dusty brown carpet and stains in the floor right at the doorway. The pizza bite is too hot on his tongue, burning the insides of Jongin’s mouth. The couch has mismatched cushions, never mind pillows; from what Jongdae has said, “it pulls out ;) ;)” and is currently half buried under a mountain of microbiology textbooks. On the other half is a deflated Rilakkuma body pillow.
“Where is everyone else?” he asks, taking another pizza bite.
“Uhh.” Jongdae looks at Chanyeol blankly, who whips out his iPhone.
“Kyungsoo is staying late on campus for a peer resource and sexual health seminar,” he recites, and at the name Jongin inhales his pizza bite into his sinuses. Chanyeol flails wildly in a panic, Baekhyun shouts something about having first aid and paramedic training, he swears the B- in that class is not an accurate reflection of his hands-on knowledge, and Jongdae just hands him a Crystal Geyser and several thumps on the back.
“Are you okay?”
“Spectacular,” Jongin chokes. “Fantastic. Peachy. Did you say you live with Do Kyungsoo?”
“We do,” Baekhyun says. “Why, do you know him?”
The honest answer is well, I know his butthole better than I know him, but sure, but Jongin settles on “Uh, kind of.”
“Oh. Well, that’s awesome! Because Kyungsoo’s the hardest one to crack out of the five of us, so if you guys are acquainted already, there’s nothing to worry about.”
There’s a lot to worry about when you’re going to be hanging out in the apartment of someone whose ass you’ve eaten on two separate occasions, but Jongin decides not to address this matter until it is absolutely pressing. “Who’s the last one?”
“Oh, yeah, Minseok. Kim Minseok. He’s a grad student like Kyungsoo, but he’s older than all of us by two years. He’s actually a student instructor! If you ever take upper division business administration, you might run into him.”
“Damn.” A grad student instructor. He can’t be much older than the rest of them. “Cool. Awesome. Thanks, you guys. I’m going to head off to class now, so I’ll see you later!”
Meeting Minseok is an embarrassing affair that Jongin will never quite forget.
A few days after Jongin starts crashing at the apartment in earnest, turning the living room into his second home and redefining the phrase couch potato. He hasn’t seen hide nor hair of Bobby in the last seventy two hours, not woken up by the fourteen or so alarms he sets for his early lectures. Honestly, it is the life.
“You sound like you’re just pressed there’s some freshman that’s a better dancer than you on the team. Which, by the way, let me remind you that you guys are a team. Chill out.” Sehun’s voice is crackly over speakerphone.
“I can’t believe him!” Jongin says, voice loud in the late, quiet evening. “He sweeps into auditions and everyone half falls in love with him, and he’s out here helping people through difficult choreography like he’s been on the team for months. Bye. Bye, bitch.”
“What’s his name?” Sehun asks.
“Jeon Jeongguk.”
Sehun is silent for a few breaths. Then, “Well, at least he’s hot.”
“Literally fuck you. Honestly. Bye, Sehun.”
“Hey, wait! How’s living with Jongdae? Or whatever your living situation is right now.”
Jongin thinks. He’s still walking back to the apartment, having just gotten off from his shift at the student center and dance practice, tired in his bones and muscles and blood. He feels exhaustion dabbed in the corners of his eyes and dusted over his cheeks but those midterms are waiting to be studied for.
“It’s nice. Better than Bobby.”
“That’s not a very clear image. Are all the roommates okay?”
Jongin remembers the incident yesterday where Chanyeol had returned early from class, very ill with the flu, and Baekhyun had tried to Prove A Point by attempting to fry an egg on Chanyeol’s head. “Aesthetic,” he’d declared.
“They’re fun,” Jongin says, climbing the stairs up to the apartment. “Two of them are kind of, uhm, weird. Fun, but weird. I think they’re fucking or whatever. They’re gay af.”
“Stop saying af, Jongin, it’s not a thing.”
“It is too a thing,” Jongin shoots back. “Anyway. Holy shit, did you fucking know Kyungsoo lives with Jongdae?”
“Kyungsoo?” Sehun squawks. “Like, delicious ass globes, Do Kyungsoo?”
“Yeah,” Jongin says, letting himself in. “LIke, as if eating his ass twice hadn’t been bad enough choices, I run into-oh, fuck.”
There’s someone he doesn’t recognize, sitting where he usually sits on the couch. He’s wearing black frames without lenses and a grey knit over a blue button up. From here Jongin can’t see his entire face, but Jongin doesn’t need to see his entire face to know that Baekhyun is a fucking idiot, because you honestly could fry an egg on this guy. Not Chanyeol. But this guy, hot damn. You would probably burn said egg. Actually, you might be better off trying to roast meat on him. On his abs. Oh, yeah.
“Hello?” Sehun asks.
“Talk to you later, bye,” Jongin says, hanging up without another word. By now, the guy on the couch has looked up and Jongin’s brain goes into lockdown. Essentially the only thing he can think of right now is the hothothot_-_piratesofthecaribbean.mp3 and hope he doesn’t look like a supreme dumbass.
“Hey. Are you Kim Jongin? Jongdae mentioned you.”
“I am the Kim Jongin,” Jongin says intelligently. “I mean, I am Jongin. Kim. Kim Jongin. That Jongin. The Jongin that is the Kim.”
He’s never going to watch The Emperor’s New Groove ever again.
“I’m Minseok,” the guy says, a laugh in his voice. “It’s nice to meet you. Sorry, I’m moving my ass in a second. I just need to edit a few slides real quick.”
Jongin withholds any and all remarks about Minseok’s nice ass and stands awkwardly in the doorway until he gets up. The very tips of Minseok’s spiked hair probably don’t even reach Jongin’s eyebrows, yet somehow Jongin feels so tiny in his presence. He gives a little salute and disappears down the hallway, before Jongdae sticks his head out from the kitchen with the worst smile in the history facial emotion.
“Wow,” he says. “I mean, I know Minseok was a thirst trap, but g-fucking-g, Kim Jongin.”
Jongin doesn’t get many chances to see Minseok at all, which explains how he hadn’t run into him until three days after these living arrangements were made. According to Chanyeol, he is a busy man.
“He’s two years older than us, a graduate student, and an instructor, so his responsibilities are a little different from ours,” he explains. “He’s actually really great to talk to for advice if you want it cold and blunt. Two years ago, when I added a major to double in, I spent days and nights panicking about my future, but he sat me down and talked me through it. He was-a first year grad student then? Or a senior? I forget, but yeah. Minseok’s bomb, if you can get him around long enough to talk to him.”
“You think he could offer any help on my hopeless roommate situation?”
Chanyeol shrugs. “Wouldn’t hurt to try, right?”
Well, Jongin doesn’t want to come off as a whiny little pisslord to Kim Minseok. But if what Chanyeol says is true, then perhaps he could learn a thing or two from him and score some, well. Friendship points. That could eventually accumulate to date points.
But baby steps first, and foxtrot steps later. Jongin manages to catch Minseok on a slow night several weeks after their first encounter. True to form, Minseok is so busy that his entire presence is mostly him rushing in and out of the apartment, exchanging supplies and grabbing graded tests. Kyungsoo force feeds him lunch in Tupperwares, and he takes them gratefully.
“Uh, excuse me. Minseok-ssi?”
Minseok looks up from his laptop, seemingly startled by the honorific. “Yes, Jongin. Call me hyung, I almost thought you were one of my students.”
“Sorry,” Jongin apologizes. He slinks into the kitchen where Minseok is working, presumably on his next class’s review sessions. “Chanyeol says you’re good with giving honest advice, so uh-I have a problem, and I was wondering if you could offer any wise words on it.”
“Well, I’m not a counselor,” Minseok says, folding his hands over his trackpad, “but l can give you a shot, sure.”
“Okay, well,” Jongin says, taking a breath. “It’s my roommate.”
“Ah,” Minseok says, understanding bleeding into his voice. “The roommate from hell.”
“Look-you know, I try to be civil. I like to think I’m an alright roommate. Respect my space, I’ll respect yours; if you want to use or eat anything of mine, please ask; don’t set enough alarms to wake up the entire building and I won’t need to hang you off the Gwangju bridge by your dick. You know, standard roommate courtesy, right?”
“Mhm. And he’s still a nightmare?”
“A night terror. Seriously. The day I came begging at your guys’ doorstep, I’d found a number two in our trash can. And this was also after the vomit incident…I won’t elaborate.”
“Hmm.” Minseok rests his chin in his hands. “This is a tragedy. I’m sorry to hear you have to live with someone so difficult.”
“I don’t know what I did to deserve this, honestly.”
“The thing about living and working with people we hate, Jongin,” Minseok says, “is that, if they continue to be assholes after we ask them to change their ways, then their actions are no longer in our control. Ideally, you should cut those people out of your life, but too often we find that we don’t have a choice.”
“Yeah.”
“The only thing we can change is how we feel about it,” Minseok says. “So, at face value, this situation sucks. No one can say it doesn’t. You can’t sleep in your own bed, sit at your own desk, or chill in your own room without being bothered, right?”
“Nope.”
“But,” Minseok says, holding up a finger, “if your roommate wasn’t an asshole-if you lived with your friends, would you have met us? Chanyeol, Baekhyun, Jongdae, Kyungsoo-well, from what I’ve heard, you and Kyungsoo have some, er, history. My point is, being forced out of your room is unfair and annoying as hell, but would you have met us if you had a wonderful roommate instead?”
“Hmm.” Jongin frowns. Minseok has a point. He wouldn’t have met either Chanyeol or Baekhyun if not for Bobby’s antics, or ever had a chance to get to know Kyungsoo on surprisingly comfortable, platonic terms, or reconnect with his witty cousin Jongdae again. And frankly, he wouldn’t be here, sitting across the table from Kim Minseok, if it hadn’t been for Bobby. “You have an interesting point.”
“I mean, I’m not saying that this is right, or this is how you should live your life,” Minseok says. “It just helps me cope when things don’t work out between all of us graduate student instructors. We don’t always see eye to eye on things, and once one of them even dropped out of the department with no warning…” Minseok sighs, and shakes his head and some memory that Jongin doesn’t know of. “Anyway, I hope that helped a little. If at all.”
“No, no! It’s good. Thanks, hyung.”
“I’m glad to help. Is there anything else you wanted to ask, or is that it?”
Jongin swears he wasn’t going to ask. He was going to close this session with Kim Minseok and go on his well-to-do way, and pine after Minseok in his own private misery. His brain-to-mouth filter, however, decides to miraculously malfunction and this particular opportune moment and Jongin finds himself blurting, “Souhmcouldwegetlunchtogethersometimeorsomethinglikethatwouldbereallynice.”
(Like, as if it isn’t hard enough for Minseok to understand that, good fucking luck trying to read it.)
Minseok stares at Jongin over the edge of his laptop for the most painful second of Jongin’s life, before he laughs and says, “I’m not going to say no to a lunch invitation.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Minseok says, looking back down at his computer screen. “Besides. Kyungsoo tells me that dancing isn’t the only thing you’re good at.”
“Oh my fucking God.”
“Hey, Bobby.”
“Yo.”
“I love you, man.”
“Uhhh. Really? Even if I-”
“Yeah, dude. I love you. Thank you so much.”
“Uh, sure. Anytime, bro.”
“Just don’t shit in the trash can again.”
“Right. Sorry bro.”
Title: I’m a Born Roommate Hater
Pairing: Jongin/Xiumin
Word Count: ~4,000 words
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: swearing
Summary: If your roommate from hell is the reason you meet the hottest guy on this side of the Eastern Hemisphere, who the fuck actually wins here?
Author's Note: dear recip, some things: i’m sorry for this and i’m sorry if you like bobby.
Shit.
There’s shit in the trash can.
Of course there’s shit in the trash can, Jongin thinks to himself, aiming the Febreeze at it like a handgun and spraying until the aerosol can sputters and dies in his hands. But shit shit?
Now, Jongin is a reasonable guy. He understands that, as men, doing laundry more than once a year is out of the damn question. His dick, for example, is entirely too well-acquainted to fly burn and denim rash. (Seriously, brotip, just wash your fucking boxers. Your dick will thank you.) He also understands that no, nothing belongs in the closet, and the floor is clearly the best place for anything-books, schoolwork, clothes, food, sex. Well, maybe not sex. He still has a scar over his eyebrow from where he accidentally smashed his face against the heater vents, so ixnay on the oorsexflay.
But seriously, there is shit in the trash can and the last time Jongin checked, shit is a biohazard. Even under a cloud of Frosted Pine Air Effects™, he can smell it. It’s more effective than his alarm clock.
“Uhm,” he asks when he door opens. His roommate slouches in in his bedheaded glory, clearly having attended his eight AM lecture without having looked in the mirror. “Why is there number two in our trash can?”
Jiwon, or as he likes to be called, Bobby, peers at the unassuming dollop of of digested dinner. “I dunno,” he grunts more than says. “Wasn’t there when I went to sleep last night.”
“Okay. You know what was there when I went to sleep last night, though? My last Shin ramyun.” Jongin eyes, pointedly, the cooling bowl of reddish-orange broth on Bobby’s desk, which he glances at sheepishly before rubbing the back of his head.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” he says, not meeting Jongin’s gaze. “Look, I’ll make it up to you. I’ll get you boba.”
“Can you just,” Jongin gesticulate uselessly, “keep your side of the room clean and ask me when you want my food. It’s okay if you want it, just give me a heads up instead of going behind my back and taking it.” Which, loosely translated, is Jongin saying please don’t shit in our trash can no matter how wasted you were last night and for the love of God’s sperm banks keep your filthy rat hands out of my food, but he wasn’t raised in the jungle. Jongin knows better than that. Joonmyun taught him better than that.
“Yeah, for sure, for sure,” Bobby says. “Sorry about it, really. I’ll take out the trash now. I’m sorry, dude.”
Sehun is unsympathetic.
“He is the worst,” Jongin complains, propping his feet up on his desk. “You know once he threw up in his bed from getting too drunk the night before, balled up his sheets, and just took the blanket from my bed. He was too lazy to just do his own laundry. The room smelled like vodka vomit. Vodka vomit. It literally smells like ass, Sehun.”
“I fail to see how that’s a problem,” Sehun says, shoveling Velveeta into his mouth. It’s almost noon on the eastern seaboard of the States, where he’s studying abroad this semester. Jongin had distress called him an hour earlier to rant about his tragedy of a roommate situation this year. “I mean, you eat ass. You look at bootyholes and think, ‘Aw, yeah, I’m gonna ram my fucking tongue into that. That’s what I’m all about.’ What was that one guy’s name? Kyungsoo or some-”
“Anyway,” Jongin says loudly, glaring right into the webcam so Sehun can see how displeased he is, “I’m out of options. I think I’m going to start sleeping in the hallway soon. I will just live in a cardboard box. No one can stop me.”
“Housing administration can.”
“You had one job and it was not to make my night worse.”
“What were you expecting, dude?” Sehun asks, mouth full, spewing melted Kraft cheese like a disgusting teenage boy. “You’re a third year living in undergraduate dorms, with random roommate assignment. You’re lucky you didn’t get slotted with a freshman. I don’t know what to tell you. Remind me again why you didn’t go live with Jongdae?”
“Because he has friends,” Jongin protests. “Like, he lives with a bunch of scary-looking upperclassmen.”
“Jongin, you are an upperclassman.”
“Oh. Huh. You’re right.” Jongin considers this. “Still.”
“Have you ever even met them? I’m sure they’d understand if you told them what kind of trash you’re living with now. If they really are so upperclassmen, they probably know the struggle.”
“Hey, Bobby’s not that bad,” Jongin protests, and Sehun fixes him with dead eyes. “Okay, I mean. He can be classy trash. You know once he played two girls at once?”
Sehun furrows his eyebrows. “Dude, no. That’s not even classy. He’s just trash.”
So on Sehun’s sound advice, Jongin texts Jongdae the next afternoon asking to meet up over some nachos, maybe a burrito, are you sure you don’t want a chocolate milkshake to go with that?
“A roommate from hell, huh?” Jongdae says, crunching down on a chip. He licks clean a loaded spoonful of guac and salsa into his mouth from the side. “You should have subleased the apartment with me and my roommates when you still had the chance. I told you that I would even hold a spot open for Sehun once he gets back next semester, but nooo-”
“I was just wondering if it was okay if I crashed on your couch,” Jongin asks. “I totally get it if you say no, but I’m not going to take any of your food or use your housewares or electricity if I can help it. Oh, and I’ll pay for Wifi if I use that. And if I get shit on the floor I’ll clean it up. I’ll stay out of your hair for most of the day since I’ll be on campus most of-”
“I’m going to need you to chill out for a hot second,” Jongdae says, spreading guac over his nacho chip with chef’s precision. Jongin inhales deep, not realizing he hasn’t taken a breath through his spiel. “We’re cousins, aren’t we? Family is family. I’m not going to chew you out for using some of our things, and if it gets to be a problem, I’ll tell you. We’ll make you like, buy us takeout.”
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“I’m worried, but not about you,” Jongdae admits. He smiles anyway, kittenish and slightly too mischievous for Jongin to be fully convinced. “Let me talk to my roommates. They should be okay with it, though. Don’t worry about it.”
The story about Jongdae’s roommate situation is this: he lives with two grad students and two fifth-year superseniors to make a household of five extremely college boys that react to Kim Jongin’s presence as if he were newly acquired labradoodle puppy.
Well, two of them, anyway.
“Aren’t you that dancer in Urban?”
Jongin is impressed that he noticed. His name is Baekhyun. He’s small and unassuming, but arguably the loudest of the bunch. Jongin can’t be quite sure. That Park Chanyeol hasn’t opened his mouth yet.
“I am,” Jongin says with mild surprise. “I’m not sure if you mean someone else by ‘that’ dancer, but I’m in Urban. We perform at football games and basketball games. Maybe you’ve seen me there.”
“God, Jongdae, you’ve been holding out on us,” Baekhyun shouts into the kitchen, sashaying away to leave Jongin alone on the doormat with his twenty or so books slung over his shoulder. “You never told us that you had fucking Vogue models for cousins. What else should I know? Do you know other equally hot Kim Jongs?”
“You should see his friend Sehun. Put them together on any given day and you’ll feel like a pasty twat next to them.” Jongdae sticks his head out of the kitchen. “Make yourself at home. Pizza bite?”
Home, to chinguline, as Jongdae fondly calls them, is a humble apartment a few blocks off the main campus. It’s on the third floor right across the street from a frat house, with dusty brown carpet and stains in the floor right at the doorway. The pizza bite is too hot on his tongue, burning the insides of Jongin’s mouth. The couch has mismatched cushions, never mind pillows; from what Jongdae has said, “it pulls out ;) ;)” and is currently half buried under a mountain of microbiology textbooks. On the other half is a deflated Rilakkuma body pillow.
“Where is everyone else?” he asks, taking another pizza bite.
“Uhh.” Jongdae looks at Chanyeol blankly, who whips out his iPhone.
“Kyungsoo is staying late on campus for a peer resource and sexual health seminar,” he recites, and at the name Jongin inhales his pizza bite into his sinuses. Chanyeol flails wildly in a panic, Baekhyun shouts something about having first aid and paramedic training, he swears the B- in that class is not an accurate reflection of his hands-on knowledge, and Jongdae just hands him a Crystal Geyser and several thumps on the back.
“Are you okay?”
“Spectacular,” Jongin chokes. “Fantastic. Peachy. Did you say you live with Do Kyungsoo?”
“We do,” Baekhyun says. “Why, do you know him?”
The honest answer is well, I know his butthole better than I know him, but sure, but Jongin settles on “Uh, kind of.”
“Oh. Well, that’s awesome! Because Kyungsoo’s the hardest one to crack out of the five of us, so if you guys are acquainted already, there’s nothing to worry about.”
There’s a lot to worry about when you’re going to be hanging out in the apartment of someone whose ass you’ve eaten on two separate occasions, but Jongin decides not to address this matter until it is absolutely pressing. “Who’s the last one?”
“Oh, yeah, Minseok. Kim Minseok. He’s a grad student like Kyungsoo, but he’s older than all of us by two years. He’s actually a student instructor! If you ever take upper division business administration, you might run into him.”
“Damn.” A grad student instructor. He can’t be much older than the rest of them. “Cool. Awesome. Thanks, you guys. I’m going to head off to class now, so I’ll see you later!”
Meeting Minseok is an embarrassing affair that Jongin will never quite forget.
A few days after Jongin starts crashing at the apartment in earnest, turning the living room into his second home and redefining the phrase couch potato. He hasn’t seen hide nor hair of Bobby in the last seventy two hours, not woken up by the fourteen or so alarms he sets for his early lectures. Honestly, it is the life.
“You sound like you’re just pressed there’s some freshman that’s a better dancer than you on the team. Which, by the way, let me remind you that you guys are a team. Chill out.” Sehun’s voice is crackly over speakerphone.
“I can’t believe him!” Jongin says, voice loud in the late, quiet evening. “He sweeps into auditions and everyone half falls in love with him, and he’s out here helping people through difficult choreography like he’s been on the team for months. Bye. Bye, bitch.”
“What’s his name?” Sehun asks.
“Jeon Jeongguk.”
Sehun is silent for a few breaths. Then, “Well, at least he’s hot.”
“Literally fuck you. Honestly. Bye, Sehun.”
“Hey, wait! How’s living with Jongdae? Or whatever your living situation is right now.”
Jongin thinks. He’s still walking back to the apartment, having just gotten off from his shift at the student center and dance practice, tired in his bones and muscles and blood. He feels exhaustion dabbed in the corners of his eyes and dusted over his cheeks but those midterms are waiting to be studied for.
“It’s nice. Better than Bobby.”
“That’s not a very clear image. Are all the roommates okay?”
Jongin remembers the incident yesterday where Chanyeol had returned early from class, very ill with the flu, and Baekhyun had tried to Prove A Point by attempting to fry an egg on Chanyeol’s head. “Aesthetic,” he’d declared.
“They’re fun,” Jongin says, climbing the stairs up to the apartment. “Two of them are kind of, uhm, weird. Fun, but weird. I think they’re fucking or whatever. They’re gay af.”
“Stop saying af, Jongin, it’s not a thing.”
“It is too a thing,” Jongin shoots back. “Anyway. Holy shit, did you fucking know Kyungsoo lives with Jongdae?”
“Kyungsoo?” Sehun squawks. “Like, delicious ass globes, Do Kyungsoo?”
“Yeah,” Jongin says, letting himself in. “LIke, as if eating his ass twice hadn’t been bad enough choices, I run into-oh, fuck.”
There’s someone he doesn’t recognize, sitting where he usually sits on the couch. He’s wearing black frames without lenses and a grey knit over a blue button up. From here Jongin can’t see his entire face, but Jongin doesn’t need to see his entire face to know that Baekhyun is a fucking idiot, because you honestly could fry an egg on this guy. Not Chanyeol. But this guy, hot damn. You would probably burn said egg. Actually, you might be better off trying to roast meat on him. On his abs. Oh, yeah.
“Hello?” Sehun asks.
“Talk to you later, bye,” Jongin says, hanging up without another word. By now, the guy on the couch has looked up and Jongin’s brain goes into lockdown. Essentially the only thing he can think of right now is the hothothot_-_piratesofthecaribbean.mp3 and hope he doesn’t look like a supreme dumbass.
“Hey. Are you Kim Jongin? Jongdae mentioned you.”
“I am the Kim Jongin,” Jongin says intelligently. “I mean, I am Jongin. Kim. Kim Jongin. That Jongin. The Jongin that is the Kim.”
He’s never going to watch The Emperor’s New Groove ever again.
“I’m Minseok,” the guy says, a laugh in his voice. “It’s nice to meet you. Sorry, I’m moving my ass in a second. I just need to edit a few slides real quick.”
Jongin withholds any and all remarks about Minseok’s nice ass and stands awkwardly in the doorway until he gets up. The very tips of Minseok’s spiked hair probably don’t even reach Jongin’s eyebrows, yet somehow Jongin feels so tiny in his presence. He gives a little salute and disappears down the hallway, before Jongdae sticks his head out from the kitchen with the worst smile in the history facial emotion.
“Wow,” he says. “I mean, I know Minseok was a thirst trap, but g-fucking-g, Kim Jongin.”
Jongin doesn’t get many chances to see Minseok at all, which explains how he hadn’t run into him until three days after these living arrangements were made. According to Chanyeol, he is a busy man.
“He’s two years older than us, a graduate student, and an instructor, so his responsibilities are a little different from ours,” he explains. “He’s actually really great to talk to for advice if you want it cold and blunt. Two years ago, when I added a major to double in, I spent days and nights panicking about my future, but he sat me down and talked me through it. He was-a first year grad student then? Or a senior? I forget, but yeah. Minseok’s bomb, if you can get him around long enough to talk to him.”
“You think he could offer any help on my hopeless roommate situation?”
Chanyeol shrugs. “Wouldn’t hurt to try, right?”
Well, Jongin doesn’t want to come off as a whiny little pisslord to Kim Minseok. But if what Chanyeol says is true, then perhaps he could learn a thing or two from him and score some, well. Friendship points. That could eventually accumulate to date points.
But baby steps first, and foxtrot steps later. Jongin manages to catch Minseok on a slow night several weeks after their first encounter. True to form, Minseok is so busy that his entire presence is mostly him rushing in and out of the apartment, exchanging supplies and grabbing graded tests. Kyungsoo force feeds him lunch in Tupperwares, and he takes them gratefully.
“Uh, excuse me. Minseok-ssi?”
Minseok looks up from his laptop, seemingly startled by the honorific. “Yes, Jongin. Call me hyung, I almost thought you were one of my students.”
“Sorry,” Jongin apologizes. He slinks into the kitchen where Minseok is working, presumably on his next class’s review sessions. “Chanyeol says you’re good with giving honest advice, so uh-I have a problem, and I was wondering if you could offer any wise words on it.”
“Well, I’m not a counselor,” Minseok says, folding his hands over his trackpad, “but l can give you a shot, sure.”
“Okay, well,” Jongin says, taking a breath. “It’s my roommate.”
“Ah,” Minseok says, understanding bleeding into his voice. “The roommate from hell.”
“Look-you know, I try to be civil. I like to think I’m an alright roommate. Respect my space, I’ll respect yours; if you want to use or eat anything of mine, please ask; don’t set enough alarms to wake up the entire building and I won’t need to hang you off the Gwangju bridge by your dick. You know, standard roommate courtesy, right?”
“Mhm. And he’s still a nightmare?”
“A night terror. Seriously. The day I came begging at your guys’ doorstep, I’d found a number two in our trash can. And this was also after the vomit incident…I won’t elaborate.”
“Hmm.” Minseok rests his chin in his hands. “This is a tragedy. I’m sorry to hear you have to live with someone so difficult.”
“I don’t know what I did to deserve this, honestly.”
“The thing about living and working with people we hate, Jongin,” Minseok says, “is that, if they continue to be assholes after we ask them to change their ways, then their actions are no longer in our control. Ideally, you should cut those people out of your life, but too often we find that we don’t have a choice.”
“Yeah.”
“The only thing we can change is how we feel about it,” Minseok says. “So, at face value, this situation sucks. No one can say it doesn’t. You can’t sleep in your own bed, sit at your own desk, or chill in your own room without being bothered, right?”
“Nope.”
“But,” Minseok says, holding up a finger, “if your roommate wasn’t an asshole-if you lived with your friends, would you have met us? Chanyeol, Baekhyun, Jongdae, Kyungsoo-well, from what I’ve heard, you and Kyungsoo have some, er, history. My point is, being forced out of your room is unfair and annoying as hell, but would you have met us if you had a wonderful roommate instead?”
“Hmm.” Jongin frowns. Minseok has a point. He wouldn’t have met either Chanyeol or Baekhyun if not for Bobby’s antics, or ever had a chance to get to know Kyungsoo on surprisingly comfortable, platonic terms, or reconnect with his witty cousin Jongdae again. And frankly, he wouldn’t be here, sitting across the table from Kim Minseok, if it hadn’t been for Bobby. “You have an interesting point.”
“I mean, I’m not saying that this is right, or this is how you should live your life,” Minseok says. “It just helps me cope when things don’t work out between all of us graduate student instructors. We don’t always see eye to eye on things, and once one of them even dropped out of the department with no warning…” Minseok sighs, and shakes his head and some memory that Jongin doesn’t know of. “Anyway, I hope that helped a little. If at all.”
“No, no! It’s good. Thanks, hyung.”
“I’m glad to help. Is there anything else you wanted to ask, or is that it?”
Jongin swears he wasn’t going to ask. He was going to close this session with Kim Minseok and go on his well-to-do way, and pine after Minseok in his own private misery. His brain-to-mouth filter, however, decides to miraculously malfunction and this particular opportune moment and Jongin finds himself blurting, “Souhmcouldwegetlunchtogethersometimeorsomethinglikethatwouldbereallynice.”
(Like, as if it isn’t hard enough for Minseok to understand that, good fucking luck trying to read it.)
Minseok stares at Jongin over the edge of his laptop for the most painful second of Jongin’s life, before he laughs and says, “I’m not going to say no to a lunch invitation.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Minseok says, looking back down at his computer screen. “Besides. Kyungsoo tells me that dancing isn’t the only thing you’re good at.”
“Oh my fucking God.”
“Hey, Bobby.”
“Yo.”
“I love you, man.”
“Uhhh. Really? Even if I-”
“Yeah, dude. I love you. Thank you so much.”
“Uh, sure. Anytime, bro.”
“Just don’t shit in the trash can again.”
“Right. Sorry bro.”