third wheel, spinning
Rating PG-13
Word Count 14k
Pairings Chanyeol/Baekhyun, You/Chanyeol, Baekhyun/You
Genre Drama, Deathless Angst, Fluff
Summary Chanyeol, effectively, is your first love. The thing is, Baekhyun is his.
a/n: this is written in second person.
part i || part ii
{ t h i r d w h e e l, s p i n n i n g }
What’s unfair is that you fell first.
It was his smile that knocked you off kilter, that genuine grin he flashed you as he pulled you up off the asphalt with his grubby third grader hands, ignoring the crowd’s caws of “cooties” as he made sure you were okay. Of course you knew he was doing it out of responsibility, it had been he who caused you to fall and hit the blacktop in the first place, too focused on his quest to chase down a fleeing tennis ball that he had smacked straight into you, sending you straight to the ground.
“Sorry, are you okay?” he had asked tentatively, messy black hair flopping over his eyes as he peered down at you. The moment after you nod in response is the precise moment that he bought your affection, unknowingly purchasing your heart with a sunny smile.
You go slightly numb after that, lips parting slightly as a certain warmth begins to creep into your cheeks, some sort of novel rhythmical yearning from your heart begins to echo into your ears. You’re struck and stuck, unable to give anything more than a slight nod in response, because you hadn’t seen him-or anyone really- swathed in a sort of metaphysical rosy hue before.
You may had been out of it, but he noticed the blood trickling down your elbows, a thin stream of crimson mixing with the gravel stuck to your arm, the physical symptom of the searing pain you had since forgotten when he charmed you out of your wits. And so he proceeded to pull you further into your budding crush with a firm tug of your wrist, marching you straight to the school nurse’s office with a purposeful expression stamped on his face.
You told him he didn’t have to stick around, and he promptly ignored you, hopping onto a waiting room chair and swinging his legs for the next twenty minutes as you waited together. He’s friendly, and so he jabbered to pass the time. That’s how you get to know little things about him, like how he doesn’t like math, how he plans on being a zombie for Halloween, how his ferret almost ran away the day before, oh, and how he likes the color of your hair (at that, you blushed and shied away).
Most importantly, you discover your mutual love for foursquare. That was the real launch of your friendship, especially when he learned that you knew how to skid the ball low and fast with a well-placed kick, and with renewed interest lighting up his eyes, he leaned over the chair handle and asked if you would teach him.
You said sure, of course, a little tentatively because you thought he was hyping your abilities. But his excitement is infectious, and you felt a bit of pride thrum in your chest when he gave a little jump and whooped about how, with your help, he was going to kick Jongin’s butt in the next game. Anything more was cut off when the nurse called your name, and you were gently led into a back room to be patched up and sent on your way. He gave you a little wave as you turned the corner, and you bite your lip to harness your smile.
The next day when the bell rings for lunch, he runs up to you and slams his hands on the desk, startling both you and your friends. Ready, he asked you rhetorically with a certain fire in his eyes, and you nodded, quickly apologizing to your friends before racing out after him onto the blacktop. He’s a quick learner, and before lunch was even a quarter over he’s mastered the move. But before your disappointment can even set in, he cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered, summing the ranks of his friends for an impromptu foursquare tournament.
She, he declared through his snickers, pointing at you with a confident index finger, will kick all of your asses.
Amid the collective gasps, you felt slight anxiety and glare at your new personal hype man. But he begged for forgiveness with a cheeky beam, and you forgave him faster than you’d like to admit.
But you go on to win, he hugs you, and with cheeks flaring red, you feel like you win again.
And after that, your days become substantially brighter whenever he’s around.
○
You remain steadfast friends for the years that follow, something that only gets easier when in middle school your single-gender social circles decide to merge. You get to hang out with him all the time now during your breaks at school, rather than compromising time with your other friends to get a few minutes here and there. Your spot becomes the shaded picnic benches under the pine trees, where you hang out with about twenty others, milling about and talking about nuances as you wait lunch out.
What gets harder is your awareness of yourself and your relationship with him. You find that it’s much harder now to look him in the eye-not just because he’s taller-but also because novel feelings are zipping through your veins. Whenever he’s nearby, your heart begins to flutter so hard your speech stutters and your face heats up as if on cue.
You also find yourself swept up in his pace. His interests become your interests, and soon you find yourself buying a guitar you can’t quite remember wanting before Chanyeol brought one to school the other day and flipping to your local rap station whenever you listen to the radio.
But it goes even further than that, and you find yourself shedding the things that you’ve come to like to his beck and call.
“What are you listening to?” He plops himself besides you during study break, plucking out one of your earbuds and placing it into the shell of his own ear. Without waiting for your response he provides his own answer, wrinkling his nose as he flicks to homescreen button on your phone. “Girl’s Generation? Really?”
“They’re good if you give them a try.“
Chanyeol wrinkles his nose, “Eh.”
Six songs later he’s still very unconvinced, and so you give up and resign yourself to writing another band off your list.
“Let me show you this other group,” he yanks the earbud out before thumbing a playlist on his own phone. “Listen to this, I think you’ll like it.”
He predicts incorrectly and the synth and hip-hop aren’t really your taste. But you really don’t want to disappoint him and the way he smiles pushes your head to a gentle spin, and so you find yourself bobbing your head along with the beat. He goes on to eagerly show you the rest of their discography, his excited expressions melting off bits of your heart as you’re reduced to lump whose only capability is to give an affirmative nod. In a week, your mother will bemusedly ask you how to pronounce the name on the new poster adorning your wall.
And you’ll flatten out the curl on the poster, forgetting about the fact that there’s one with another band crumpled at the foot of the bad, forgetting about the fact that you can barely name the members, flashbacks of the way Chanyeol’s lips curved with the words slipping into your mind instead.
“Twenty-One. I like them now.”
○
The need to impress him only grows by the day, and the need seek his favor grows into something of a contained obsession. He doesn’t intentionally exert control over you, but you let his opinions single-handedly sway your worldview. Your vision of the future was never very sharp, but your hindsight’s always been 20/20. So you regret in retrospect how you willingly moved to the beat of his drum.
But what bothers you at the time was the fact that you were far from being the only one.
He was always popular, and only gets more popular in middle school, especially towards the end when he begins puberty and his looks flourish under the grace of genetics. Girls who are far more comfortable with the bodies than you are begin to stop him in the halls and approach him at his locker where they stand in giggling chains of threes to fives, social polymers of the silly variety clutching their books to their chests and inclining their heads just so as they ask Chanyeol about inconsequential things such as how was his day.
It’s called flirting, one of your other friends lets you know one day. And they’re doing it because they like Chanyeol, she says, swinging the ‘li’ up like it’s something special
“I know what flirting is,” you laugh, even though your only first-hand experience has been watching acted versions of carefully scripted lines from the movies. You never realized it’s something that could be done in real life, much less on people that you know. “But they like Chanyeol? A lot of people like Chanyeol.””
“No I mean, like in as in that way,” your friend folds her fingers into a heart.
“Ew,” you say because you’re young and still conditioned to mock romantic love.
“Yeah, ew,” your friend halfheartedly mutters. But her fidgeting betrays that she doesn’t agree.
In a month or so, she begins to speak incessantly about a name scribbled repeatedly in her diary. She only mentions him by his codename. But it’s Yoda, and so you don’t even have to ask who it is.
The thing is, you don’t feel happy for her. And this is because you want him for your self, you realize one day as you watch him make that friend laugh. He always makes other people laugh, and you’re uncomfortable with how uncomfortable you’ve recently become about watching him work his charismatic magic on other people. You swallow as you turn your heel and stalk away.
Jealousy tastes bitter against your tongue.
o
You’re still not entirely ready to admit that you the way you feel about Chanyeol is different than the way you feel about your other guy friends. What exactly is holding you back, you’re not entirely sure. All you know is that something like this is considered a milestone, and it will concretely change how you deal with your friendship with Chanyeol.
Of course you still find the room to hold the tiniest hope that he feels the same way about you, and you begin to involuntarily check for this with self-developed tests, hyper analyzing things like keeping track of home many times he smiles at you within a day or certain voice inflections he reserves exclusively for you. You’re convinced he might feel something back as you catch him looking in your general vicinity for the third time that week in history.
So of course you take note of it when he doesn’t ask you to the back to school dance, but you’re more or less okay with it because he doesn’t ask anyone else. And you’re also okay, because during the last slow song, he steps up to you with his tooth-rich smile, draped in his father’s dress shirt and blinking down at you because he’s beginning to grow like a weed, and asks you if you want to dance. It’s awkward because he’s not used to the length of his limbs, and he steps on your toes more than once, but you like the feel of his hands wrapped securely around your waist, and you rope your hands around your neck and pull him in so you can feel the slow beat of his heart closer to your chest.
You languidly think, as you get drunk of his scent, arms comfortably resting on his bony shoulders, that you could get used to this.
Maybe that’s you can’t sleep that later night as you lay staring up at the ceiling as you replay the night in your head. His hands were warm, and his hold was warmer. You feel like your heart is about to beat out of your chest and your mind is pregnant with thoughts that are a little more than a scramble of raw ecstatic emotions.
This feeling, you finally admit with your head buried in your pillows, is love.
○
I have a crush on Chanyeol, you confess between your hands during a truth or dare session at your next sleepover. The coos begin to start, and several of your friends reassure you that you’d look cute together. You hug your pillow to your chest, grinning broadly as you received a majority of your friends’ approval.
Shortly after, your friends begin to wear short shorts and indulge makeup. For a while you resist, but peer pressure and curiosity are soft powers that easily domesticate your independence, and eventually you let your friends collar you with manicured fingers around your wrist and drag you to the bathroom to an obedience training doled out in the form of a dizzying array of creams and cosmetics. Your face feels foreign when your friends are finished, and the first degree of self-awareness hits the moment you look at the mirror. You realize, you think as you lean towards the mirror, you look pretty.
This, as you blink at your reflection, is the first time you realize the word “beauty” can be applied to you.
He notices the difference the next day when you take your usual seat next to him in social studies, causing him to lean over and scrutinize your face. You’ve settled for something simple and natural-more of a result of your current makeup abilities than anything else-but still you’re quite self-conscious. He’s close enough that you can pick out that signature mole that dots the corner of his lip, but you will yourself not to shy away.
“Something’s different,” he mutters as he squints his eyes. “Did you put on makeup?”
“What about it?” You say slightly defensively, covering the bottom of your face with a piece of paper as you warily narrow your eyes at him.
“It looks…nice,” he finally says as he leans back.
There’s an undercurrent of something discontented in his tone that’s whisked into the blasé cheerfulness that always punctuates his words. It makes you uneasy for a minute until the blinding smile he fashions with his lips washes away any doubts. He disconnectedly nods in approval for a second before turning his attention back to the board.
“You look good,” his side profile informs you, his lips moving even if his eyes are trained forward. He hesitates, but then rephrases it like he means it.
“You look pretty.”
This may be the reason why you don’t leave the house without makeup again for years.
○
If you’re awkward around him, he doesn’t notice.
He treats you the same way he’s always treated you, for better or for worse. The way he interacts with you is neither the way he tiptoes around most girls nor how he mingles with of the bros, yet that’s the fence you’ve sat on since day one. You’re clearly very special to him, and that’s a fact that’s universally recognized, so you bask in your special position, beginning to mark your territory whenever you interact with him by using privileges that no one else has the position to do-texting him from midnight to four in the morning, fixing his hair with the tips of your fingers, stealing piggyback rides in the middle of the quad. Eventually it becomes less of a display of dominance and more of something you’re compelled to do. His smiles are your drug, addictive and compelling, even the slightest quirk of his lips able to cast a spell of bliss over you.
This is about when other boys begin to take interest in you. That rich kid Junmyeon just won’t stop sending you texts, that dancer Jongin seems manage to give you hugs six times before you leave school, and basketball prodigy Kris seems like he wants to hang out with you ever other day.
Being hit on serves paradoxically as a dual confidence booster and muter. While their attention is flattering, you can see glimpses of yourself reflected in their actions. And that’s what bothers you, because their desperation mirrors your own. The hours you spend hesitating replying to their texts are uncomfortably familiar with Chanyeol’s own long response delays to yours. You constantly wonder if Chanyeol can see through to your true motives behind your thinly-veiled requests as easily as you can see through theirs. And perhaps most worrying is that you’re never quite sure whether Chanyeol’s truly “too busy” to hang out, because that is a tried and true excuse of your own.
The problem about love, you find, is that optimism clings to you like herpes. It doesn’t take much to coax the hope from the clouds of gloom.
And so even when he doesn’t hang out with you after school for four straight weeks in preparation for a talent show (his first real “gig” he tells you), and you’re dejected enough that one of your close friends bakes cookies for you (“you looked kind of down lately”), you forgive him in a heartbeat when he hands an unevenly cut piece of paper.
“Front row seats, just for you.”
The world looks unbelievably brighter when your heart’s singing in your chest.
You ask your friend to help you get ready as you hand her back her cleaned cookie tupperware, and she comments that night, softly, as she takes a lock of your hair and wraps it around the curling iron.
“Since when did you like long hair? You were always complaining about the impracticality when we were younger.”
“Since I started to grow it out.”
“I guess I’m asking…why?”
You eye her in the mirror, but no reasonable response makes it to your mind.
She runs her fingers through a section of your tresses thoughtfully, “Did Chanyeol tell you he liked long hair?”
It’s rhetorical, both of you know, and there’s no conversation to muffle the clack of the iron’s wire against her dresser as she skillfully weaves another part of your hair around the tool.
“Maybe…” She sucks in a breath as she tugs it into place. “Maybe, you should think about letting Chanyeol go?”
“Why?”
She sprays your hair down, eyes trained on your defensive expression, her brows knitted into a sympathetic frown.“…Nevermind.”
That night, you can barely hear your thoughts over the pulsating sounds, and you’re slightly lonely since you’re the only one you know there. But you forget all of your misery when he looks into the crowd, stage lights dancing in his eyes, fingers curling around the head of the mike and points at you.
“This one’s dedicated to one of my best friends.” He grins at you, and your heart subsequently explodes, sending red flares all the way up to the tips of your ears and complete forgiveness into your agenda.
He keeps you close that night during the after party, dismissing drinks for you as he wraps a secure arm to protect you from something -you’re really not really sure what-as he introduces you to the rest of the band. He walks you back to your parent’s house too, slinging his coat over your shoulders against the will of your protests as he braves the cold. Between a sneeze and a wave, he bids you goodbye and you find yourself unable to break away from watching his back recede down the street, guitar in tow.
You fantasize about your future that night, imagining yourself curled up on a sofa in the penthouse of some high-rise city apartment, a soft cardigan worth a small fortune wrapped around your shoulders, eyes half-lidded as you watch Chanyeol serenade you to sleep with his guitar.
It’s an image you like a lot, so much that it becomes your default daydream, and eventually, your plan for the future. The smiles and words he exclusively saves for you carve the foundations of hope, raising pillars strong enough that how you’ll make your dreams a reality is no longer the question you ask yourself. You, instead, begin to wonder when.
Of course life doesn’t always go as planned, and here’s the wrench fate gratuitously slings at your way:
Chanyeol falls second.
○
You meet Baekhyun the first day of high school.
What’s remarkable about it is how quickly you become friends. By his sixth sentence you figure out the two things he doesn’t lack are charisma and words, and by the end of study hall he’s managed to weasel half of your life story, your favorite color, and two of your greatest fears out of you. When the bell rings, he trundles off to Spanish class with a wave, your cell number in his contacts and your spontaneous verbal promise to eat lunch together.
Your face feels sore for the rest of the day from smiling a lot harder and longer than you usually do.
But perhaps what’s even more remarkable is how quickly Chanyeol becomes his best friend. They also meet on the first day of school, desk mates in precalc, they tell you, when you find them sitting next to each other beneath the tree your friend group has claimed during lunchtime, bent over Baekhyun’s fingerprint-smudged smart phone.
“He’s really good at Tetris,” Chanyeol lets you know, eyes wide and grin evident in the second he spares you before he hunches his head back down over the game.
“Not that good,” Baekhyun shakes his head modestly, expression set in a concentrated frown, long fingers flying over the screen at the speed of light.
“Dude. Please,” Chanyeol mutters, watching the game intently, almost as if it were his own, bouncing his leg against the ground as his eyes grow wide. Suddenly he lets out a loud cheer, grabbing Baekhyun’s arm as he begins to jabber, “What the…You’re insane at this. Mad skills, you seriously need to teach me. Like how do you even…?”
Baekhyun shrugs, smile genuine and wide, but his modesty apparent through the slightest uncomfortable expression sitting on his face amid the onslaught of praise, “I’ve been playing for a while.”
“So have I,” Chanyeol marvels, shaking his head at what presumably is a good move on Baekhyun’s part as he continues to watch Baekhyun like he’s the best thing in the world. He clutches his head so exaggeratedly it’s comical, “But I’m not as good as you.”
You, who have never seen such intensity in the realm of something like Tetris, let a muffled giggle escape past your fingers.
Slightly misinterpreting you, both Baekhyun and Chanyeol simultaneously raise fists in your direction and jokingly exclaim, “Ay, what are you laughing at?”
You giggle again, prompting them to glance at each other and shake their heads.
Of course, they only grow closer after that.
○
Baekhyun fits into your life like the piece you never knew was missing.
His presence is often the brightest thing in the room, and the lack of it creates a noticeable void. He has a talent of wrapping every person he meets around his finger, coaxing even the coldest and coolest out of their shells, and soon he’s on a first name basis with at least half the school.
Somehow, given the pick of the land, he makes Chanyeol and yourself his mainstay friends, and you become a buddy band of three. And you definitely don’t mind it, because you get to spend more time with the guy who makes your heart pound like no tomorrow and the guy who can coax a smile from you with a flick of his finger. Sandwiched between the two, you’re the happiest you’ve ever been.
Of course there are times when you feel like the wheel out in the front, especially when Baekhyun and Chanyeol degenerate the conversation into bro-speak about sports you don’t watch or games you don’t play. It happens more frequently as the year flies by and they become more familiar with each other (the five classes they share together tends to do that, you suppose). But you don’t mind it. You take a certain joy out of having the privilege to a front row seat to their bantering, your hands tucked between your legs and the cool concrete barrier as you remain mum, a constant grin tugging your lips as they shoot back and forth at each other. You think it’s nice that Chanyeol has finally found a guy best friend, because this is the happiest you’ve ever seen him.
And when he’s happy, you think like a saint, closing your eyes as the breeze ruffles past your hair, carrying the sounds of Chanyeol chortles and Baekhyun’s snickers past your ears, then you’re happy.
○
You underestimate just how fond Baekhyun is of you.
This results in quite a bit of surprise during homecoming season when Baekhyun bursts into your journalism class, jazz-band guitarist Yixing and warbling Jongdae in tow as he serenades a homecoming dance invite to you in front of the whole class. Of course predictably your first reaction is the slackening of your jaw, and just as predictably your second reaction is to steal a glance at Chanyeol, who’s assigned seat is straight across from yours.
While “miserable” is something Chanyeol could never pull off, there’s his own brand of subtle discomfort, lips pressed firmly against a smile as he huddles a pair of crossed arms against his chest. He’s never had a great hold on his emotions, because he’s the kind of guy who wears his heart on his sleeve, and so you can easily pick out the unhappiness in his eyes.
The importance of questioning whom or what exactly he’s resentful of doesn’t even cross your mind.
It’s you, you think with a thump of your heart. He’s jealous because he wanted to ask you.
The song is good, however, since Baekhyun’s quite the singer. So it’s actually not embarrassing at all, and he finishes his jingle to resounding applause and takes several bows to the entire class. You say yes, of course, giggling appropriately as he presents a bouquet of grocery-store tulips to you in a sloppy one-kneed proposal, not only because you, by society’s standards, would be considered an asshole if you said no, but also because you are good friends. Dances are fun with friends, you know from experience, and Baekhyun is the life of the party, so you will, at the very least, be guaranteed salvation from an awkward time.
There a good portion of your heart, however, that’s beginning to bruise with a diluted depression. You ultimately wanted Chanyeol to ask you, after all. And you know he’s been practicing a song on his guitar that you accidently caught him practicing after school a few days ago, innocently stepping into the orchestra room to find him sitting next to Luhan, strumming his guitar and warbling (slightly off-key) into afternoon air. He looked shocked when he saw you standing in the doorway, prompting him to immediately stash away his guitar and make you promise not to tell Baekhyun. That had struck you as slightly odd until today, when you finally piece together a conclusion.
He avoids both you and Baekhyun like the plague for the next few days, citing instances of work or group projects as the cause. You find him hanging around Kris, Luhan, and Minseok over the next few days, lounging around with body language that clearly tells you he has nothing imminent due. But you don’t call him out on it. You still have English class together as a three, and it pains you to see him ignore Baekhyun like that, answering Baekhyun as brusquely as he does. But your sympathy is limited because the way Chanyeol treats you the same pains you even more. He’s unable to hold eye contact for more than a second, preferring instead to stare at the ground, and his tone is uncharacteristically flat when he speaks to you, words soft and deliberately monotone as if he’s putting in effort to restrain himself from something less than kind.
To compound on the stress, you’re not entirely convinced that Baekhyun’s approaching this as platonically as you are, if the increased one-on-one “hangouts” he starts asking you to go on are anything to go by, or the way he’s begun to walk with you around campus with a touch hovering just over the small of your back. And while you don’t want to come across as egotistical, you feel like you need make the line clear. He’s an awesome guy and seems like he could be great boyfriend material. But your heart’s been occupied with someone else for the past few years, and as a creature of habit, you just don’t have it in you to consider anyone else.
So the night of the dance, after you carefully pin the boutonniere to his chest-pale pink petals stark against black-you stand on your tiptoes and whisper into his ear.
“Hey, we’re just going as friends, right?” You mutter with carefully lacquered lips as you brush a stiff curl of bangs away from your eyes, mascara weighing down on your lashes as you blink.
He doesn’t miss a beat, and his tone sounds light and teasing, “Of course,” he pauses, and before the relief can tide into your chest, he adds, tone almost a little too bright, “I wouldn’t be able to replace Chanyeol.”
Your expression involuntarily waxes into a smile at that, but whether or not he actually knew is something you never find out. There are small seedlings of doubt sown into your mind, because you know he’s a good actor, and because you can’t see his expression. He’s not looking at you when you lower yourself to ground level, rather at someone over your shoulder. When you twist around, you realize his eyes are trained Chanyeol, who has just stepped though the door. He, again, has come stag, and he’s staring at the two of you, expression devoid of a smile, his signature eyes wide. He is pulled away by Kyungsoo a second later, presumably for a photo op, and is whisked around a corner before you can even say hello.
You don’t get a chance to speak to Chanyeol until later that night.
○
Baekhyun is a great dance partner, you find out.
Not because he’s especially good at dance-although admittedly he can hold a beat-but because he’s fun and he holds you like you’re someone special. Baekhyun’s not that tall, so when he holds you gently from behind, his mouth ends up right next to his ear, and he’s able to whisper a barrage of funny anecdotes as you mindlessly sway to the music. You regret, for a moment, how deep Chanyeol is lodged in your heart, because being with Baekhyun makes you feel completely at ease.
Baekhyun even manages to make the first slow dance entertaining, clutching your hands dramatically and marching straight through other couples that you know as if you were some sort of ballroom battleship. You can’t stop giggling as he makes sound effects, motorcycle-esque vrooms as he initiates the charge and subsequent voice-box explosions as you strike your unfortunate targets.
Chanyeol mostly hangs out on the fringe of the circle, awkwardly shuffling with the other stags in a little blob that hangs off of the couple circle. You never catch him looking your way, though you actually can’t pick him out of the darkness more than half the times you glance in his direction. He leaves during the slow dance, and you see his silhouette out in the lit lobby talking casually to one of your female classmates. Even from where you are you can see him laugh, and a bit of jealously burns in your stomach and clouds your mood before Baekhyun whisks you in the other direction.
Somewhere in the second hour during a Skrillex remix, Baekhyun suddenly disappears from behind you, his hands slipping away from your waist without a word, and he himself disappearing into the crowd before you can turn around. You awkwardly look for him as the dance raves on, lost as you begin to call his name with hands cupped around your mouth.
And suddenly a pair of familiar hands wrap around your waist, fingers coming to a rest on your hips. You jerk with shock from the unexpected shock, but before your mind can even fire the impulse to turn around, the back of your head hits a sturdy chest.
And you know instantly whom it belongs too.
“Hey,” you breath in, the thin scent of his cologne filling you rlungs.. Your heart rears and gallops forward at two hundred beats per a minute as you tilt your head up to see his face.
Chanyeol responds, monotonously, “Hey.”
He’s not looking at you, rather his eyes are trained forward, uncharacteristically steely and distant. Your excitement falters for a moment, and so you take the extra step to reassure him, craning your neck back to look up at his face again.
You mutter, sliding your hands over his, “We’re just going as friends you know? Nothing more.”
He visibly relaxes and a slight look of astonishment crosses his face as he looks down at you for the first time. His nose brushes against your hair and his voice tickles your ear, “really?”
“Really,” you nod, acutely aware of the fact that his lips are less than an inch away from your face.
Chanyeol grins as he raises his head again, relief unwinding nearly all of his tension. He rests his chin on top of your head after that and sways comfortably to the beat on the music. When he lets you go, an easy smile you haven’t seen in a while dances on the tips of his lips and he even gives you one last cheesy twirl before he hands you back to Baekhyun, who subtly mutters something that sounds oddly like hey, thanks for dancing with her before he whirls you in another direction. You nearly trip over your heels and Chanyeol laughs, face splitting in two.
And just like that, everything in your world is balanced once again.
○
Dances are still not entirely your thing, and so after a few more songs you decide you need a breather from the pounding music and the stifling air. With a few words, you slip out of Baekhyun’s hold and clop out of the gym in your stilettos, making your way towards the water fountain almost mindlessly, bending down and gulping cool water like it’s for your survival.
A stereotypical slow song begins to play over the speakers, and hopefully curious where Chanyeol was headed, you look back at the dance floor.
Unexpectedly, you see him dancing with Baekhyun, slightly stooped over to better accommodate for their height difference, and their apparent reconciliation puts you at peace. It’s a joke, if Baekhyun’s beaming grin is any indication of that as he tries to squirm away from Chanyeol’s arms.
You try to catch their attention for a bit, first by staring intently and then with a small-directed wave. Baekhyun notices almost instantly and waves back, bringing an ear-splitting grin to your face. But to your disappointment, Chanyeol never takes his eyes off of Baekhyun, and so you slowly let your hand fall back to your side.
“They’re cute together,” you hear a girl next you sigh. “Especially the tall guy and the way he’s looking at his date.”
You clear your throat without thinking, an impulsive clarification almost past your lips before you catch your self.
“Damn,” her friend laments, clutching her hands near her heart. “I want a boyfriend like that.”
You turn back and you realize between the glimpses the strobe lights permit you that there’s a certain softness in Chanyeol’s eyes that you’ve never seen before. He’s clasping Baekhyun’s waist with a type of gentleness you’re pretty sure he didn’t handle you with, and he’s holding him a lot closer than he’s ever hugged you.
He looks almost like he’s in another world. And that’s when vines of worry wrap and constrict your chest. You know a beginning when you see one.
After a moment of struggle, Baekhyun finally gives in, biting his lip and grinning up at Chanyeol before laying his chin on Chanyeol’s shoulder. Charmeus and tulle fold easily in your tightening grip as you find it harder and harder to breathe.
“Do you think they’re together?” the first girl giggles as she turns to her friend.
“No idea,” the second girl coos. “But they should be.”
You’ve always been a little paranoid, and dread takes its typical seat in your chest. Baekhyun hesitantly loops his arms around Chanyeol’s neck, weaving the tips of his fingers together with waning uncertainty.
You don’t like the starry look in his eyes one bit.
○
There’s something dangerously familiar about the look in his eyes whenever Baekhyun’s around, a certain longing that subtly influences the flex in his brows, the lilt of his voice, the curve in his lips. He laughs louder when Baekhyun’s around, smiles harder, and gets that certain glint in the corner of his eyes.
You accidently overhear him talking to Sehun the day after homecoming as you stand outside your classroom, waiting for your biology teacher to arrive. He doesn’t see you as he turns the corner (he doesn’t see you after either), and you catch Sehun snickering.
“-the afterparty is a prime example of why you should never be allowed near to alcohol-“
And your heart stops, because one you never knew Chanyeol drank, and two, you had no idea there was a homecoming afterparty. You’re quick to rationalize things though, dismissing the alcohol as an issue you’ll deal with later and remembering how Chanyeol went home with a slightly different group of friends than the one you both came with. Baekhyun probably didn’t go either, you invent, as reassurance to yourself.
“Shut up,” Chanyeol hisses shoving Sehun’s head.
“And you around Baekhyun the whole damn time,” Sehun hoots as they pass you. “Ahah oh my fucking god, you're embarrassing. I still can’t believe you did that, how do you even live with yourself?“
“So just don’t believe it.”
“Pictures don’t lie.”
“WhAT?” Chanyeol spits. “You better fucking delete them or-”
Luckily your biology slams the door open and cuts off the conversation. As you numbly sink into your seat, it was a boys-night-out type of thing, you decide. It meant nothing. That’s why you weren’t invited. Most people drank by this age anyway. It meant nothing. What happened between Chanyeol and Baekhyun was probably platonic. It meant nothing. The look Chanyeol gave Baekhyun today in English class. It meant nothing.
Of course it takes a mantra to keep the panic at bay, and so you find yourself later that night, toes and fingers curled in your sheets, repeating it for what was likely the three-thousandth time.
It meant nothing.
○
It seems like you’re meant to be in the wrong places at the wrong time.
At least that how you think you’ve found yourself frozen just around the corner of the history wing, accidently eavesdropping on your two friends.
“I have two tickets to the amusement park,” Chanyeol says nervously, toying with his lanyard as he leans against the wall. “Do you wanna go with me this weekend?”
“Seriously?” Baekhyun peers around the door of his locker. “How did you get them?”
“My sister,” Chanyeol shrugs, shifting awkwardly. The unpleasant thought that he’s never offered a similar opportunity for you bubbles up from the swamp of your thoughts, and it takes a reasonable amount of effort for you to push that into the back of your mind.
“Oh awesome,” Baekhyun nods, closing his locker gracefully with those fingers you’ve always been jealous of. “Yeah, I’d definitely like to go.”
“Cool.” Chanyeol attempts to look suave about it, lowering his voice and slumping his shoulders further. But you know how to read him better than books, and the pink on his ears betrays his bottled up excitement.
“Anyone else going?”
You cling to one last shred of hope, ear perking slightly.
“Well,” Chanyeol shifts awkwardly as he mutters, “I was thinking it’d just be the two of us.”
Your heart sinks straight down in your chest.
“But if you wanted other people-“
“No,” Baekhyun beams, a newfound shyness tinting his expression as he tucks a few strands of hair behind his ear. “Just the two of us is fine.”
“Awesome,” Chanyeol gives a little dance. “Man, I’m excited.”
“I can see that,” Baekhyun laughs.
The bell rings just then and Chanyeol scoots away, swinging by a slouching Sehun on his way to history. You watch from afar as Sehun gets up and Chanyeol prattles about something you’re unsure of, until he raises a fist in victory.
He said yes. You read on his lips before he extends a fist and Sehun bumps it with his own.
You’ve never felt so out of the loop.
○
There are other things you catch them doing alone, like one day you find them seated in a patch of sunlight inside the chorus room, Chanyeol folded with his gangly legs as he tries to sing. You fold back into the shadows, a little surprised in an unpleasant way. Chanyeol’s never showed interest in singing for all the times you’ve offered to teach him.
“Higher,” Baekhyun motions with his hands. “You’re slightly flat. Sit straighter, you’ll be able to push out the air better.”
“Oh, uh, do,” Chanyeol tries again, squirming to fix his posture
“Better,” Baekhyun winces before laughing. “At least you’re getting there. But it’s more like do.”
“Honestly I can’t tell the difference,” Chanyeol wrinkles his nose.
“I don’t think you’re cut out for this singing thing then,” Baekhyun says with mock disdain as he makes the movements towards standing up. “In that case I have about 100 better things I can do with my time-“
“No Professor Byun,” Chanyeol releases a hoarse wail, before he sings in the style of Mike Posner. “Please don’t GOOO~”
Baekhyun pauses knotting his brows together as he mock-grimaces at Chanyeol.
“If I wake up tomorrow, will you still. Be. Here~?” Chanyeol sings again, throwing his hand out for emphasis and cracking at the notes slightly out of his register. “I don’t KNOOOOOW~”
Baekhyun promptly sits down, clutching his temples. “Okay, okay, okay, I’ll stay if you stop doing that.”
“Chanyeol puts a hand on Baekhyun’s shoulder and lets his head hang. Underneath his arm, you can see the broadest of smiles.
Chanyeol also starts attending one of the choral concerts, much to your surprise. You’ve never bothered to invite him yourself (you figured he’d find it boring) and so he was the last person you expected to spot as you habitually scanned the crowd. You pick him out the darkness in the center of the audience, attention rapt and mouth slightly agape as he watches your performance (not in astonishment, you know, he’s always had problems keeping his mouth closed).
During one of the breaks, with a quick skip of your heart, you catch him brilliantly smiling and waving, a strange expression on his face. Slightly confused, but incredibly happy, you lift your hand to respond, but just before you begin to wave, Baekhyun catches your eye to the right with a wave of his own. Turning slightly, you realize they’re mimicking each other strange expressions, and Chanyeol splits in to a grin, silent laughter causing him to convulse in his chair.
You’ve been so beaten down lately that you’re really not expecting much after the show, but Chanyeol swings by you, tossing a bouquet into your arms.
“What’s this?” You balk in surprise as a bundle of yellow roses land on your silk skirt.
“Congratulation flowers, courtesy my mom’s front yard,” Chanyeol laughs before walking away. “Great job, you really can sing.”
You’re so happy you skip around to some of your friends, burying your face in bundle of yellow and inhaling the scent. You’re so giddy your hands are slightly shaking, much to your friends’ hilarity, and they tease you liberally for it.
Of course this sets you up on a pedestal so high off the ground, you’re completely winded when you see him talking with someone in the corner of the choral room. It doesn’t take a second glance to know it’s Baekhyun, with his fingers wrapped around a similar bouquet of roses, red ones, as he smiles up at Chanyeol.
Chanyeol flushes scarlet, turning away and prompting Baekhyun to erupt with laughter.
You’ve never wanted to be someone else so badly before.
○
While you’re not entirely sure what exactly prompts you to ask, the question far from out of the blue for you, since you’ve been obsessing over it for weeks. But Chanyeol looked as if the question fell straight from the sky.
“Could you repeat that,” He asks weakly, blinking rapidly as he does, lips drawn into a polite grin.
“Do you like him?” you ask him rhetorically the next afternoon.
“What do you mean?” His voice wavers, and he tries (and fails) to keep his voice steady.
“Do,” you repeat, blinking slowly as your tone soaks up your impatience, “ You like him?”
Chanyeol’s smile freezes. “You mean as a friend?”
You regard him levelly, taking stock on how Chanyeol instinctively knows who you’re referring to. It’s a subtle confirmation, but you feel the need to finish what you’ve started and so you press forward, “You know what I’m talking about.”
He just shrugs, uncomfortably averting his gaze as his shoulders jerk upwards a little too quickly.
It’s not a confirmation but you’re not stupid so take it as one. You wander slowly throughout the rest of the day in a sort of miserable haze, your heart pumping gallons of the bitter burn of heartbreak through your veins.
By now your friends have gotten used to your moping, and so as you lay in a fetal position on the metal picnic benches, one of them throws you a question.
“Well have you ever told him you liked him?” She mumbles through a sandwich.
“…What?” You roll to face her, getting a good angle of the underside of her chin.
“Like did you ever make it clear you were interested in him?” She blinks. “I mean guys are horrible at reading subtext.”
“It wouldn’t make a difference, you haven’t seen the way he acts around Baekhyun.”
“Well, true,” She shrugs. “But you should give it a shot anyway. Not everyone is fixated on one person like you are. Some are. But not everyone.”
You think for a second, seriously considering the possibility, “Well, what if he says no?”
“Then he says no and you have your answer. That’s when you move on,” She balls up her trash and chucks it at the bin. “Win-win.”
“What if I don’t want to move on?”
“Then I can’t help you.”
You grab her arm and hug it to your chest, “That’s not very helpful.”
“I just don’t want to see you so unhappy all of the time, you know?” She pops a can of soda open with her thumb. “But I’m starting to get to impression that you actually derive happiness from being miserable.”
“I don’t!”
“Then do something about it,” She looks at you levelly before she chugs her soda. “I’m serious. Staying passively stuck on one guy like this isn’t healthy. It’s time for you to move forward.”
○
You decide to do it on a Tuesday.
There’s no particular significance about Tuesday other than it’s the day after your friend commanded you to commence your ultimatum. But the day sticks in your mind because you spend the majority of it terrified out of your mind.
You’re so scared your hands are shaking for the entire day. It gets bad enough that two of your teachers ask you if you’re feeling alright (“are you sure? You’re kind of pale.”), and fainting doesn’t seem like that bad of the option when you spot him across the quad during break. You try to remind yourself that guys are expected to do this all of the time, but some how that fails to serve as effective condolence, and you find yourself dreading the end of seventh period more than death.
“You got this,” your friend flashes a thumbs up when the bell rings. She points at Chanyeol slouching in the corner and winks, “Go get him, tiger.”
The walk seems like distance of the marathon and eventually you make it to Chanyeol’s side, tugging on his sleeve until he turns to you.
“Can you come with me for a second?” You ask softly.
He glances at Kyungsoo, silently signally the end of their conversation before nodding and following you out of the classroom.
You walk for about a minute before you stop. In brick-layered corner between the gym and the math wing, you whisper to him you have something to tell him. He cocks his head to the side, lips pulled in a teasing grin as he jams his hands into his pockets. He’s so woefully unaware, you think, that you feel almost like you’re somehow duping him.
“What do you need to tell me?” Chanyeol says as he rocks back and forth from his heels to his toes. “You’re being unusually secretive.”
“I just have a question,” you draw on all of your will to keep your lunch in your stomach.
“Okay?”
“It’s kind of personal though.”
“We’re good friends,” Chanyeol shrugs., jamming his hands in his pockets. “I won’t judge you.”
And so you take a deep breath, and ask him out.
○
|| part ii ||
Word Count 14k
Pairings Chanyeol/Baekhyun, You/Chanyeol, Baekhyun/You
Genre Drama, Deathless Angst, Fluff
Summary Chanyeol, effectively, is your first love. The thing is, Baekhyun is his.
a/n: this is written in second person.
part i || part ii
{ t h i r d w h e e l, s p i n n i n g }
What’s unfair is that you fell first.
It was his smile that knocked you off kilter, that genuine grin he flashed you as he pulled you up off the asphalt with his grubby third grader hands, ignoring the crowd’s caws of “cooties” as he made sure you were okay. Of course you knew he was doing it out of responsibility, it had been he who caused you to fall and hit the blacktop in the first place, too focused on his quest to chase down a fleeing tennis ball that he had smacked straight into you, sending you straight to the ground.
“Sorry, are you okay?” he had asked tentatively, messy black hair flopping over his eyes as he peered down at you. The moment after you nod in response is the precise moment that he bought your affection, unknowingly purchasing your heart with a sunny smile.
You go slightly numb after that, lips parting slightly as a certain warmth begins to creep into your cheeks, some sort of novel rhythmical yearning from your heart begins to echo into your ears. You’re struck and stuck, unable to give anything more than a slight nod in response, because you hadn’t seen him-or anyone really- swathed in a sort of metaphysical rosy hue before.
You may had been out of it, but he noticed the blood trickling down your elbows, a thin stream of crimson mixing with the gravel stuck to your arm, the physical symptom of the searing pain you had since forgotten when he charmed you out of your wits. And so he proceeded to pull you further into your budding crush with a firm tug of your wrist, marching you straight to the school nurse’s office with a purposeful expression stamped on his face.
You told him he didn’t have to stick around, and he promptly ignored you, hopping onto a waiting room chair and swinging his legs for the next twenty minutes as you waited together. He’s friendly, and so he jabbered to pass the time. That’s how you get to know little things about him, like how he doesn’t like math, how he plans on being a zombie for Halloween, how his ferret almost ran away the day before, oh, and how he likes the color of your hair (at that, you blushed and shied away).
Most importantly, you discover your mutual love for foursquare. That was the real launch of your friendship, especially when he learned that you knew how to skid the ball low and fast with a well-placed kick, and with renewed interest lighting up his eyes, he leaned over the chair handle and asked if you would teach him.
You said sure, of course, a little tentatively because you thought he was hyping your abilities. But his excitement is infectious, and you felt a bit of pride thrum in your chest when he gave a little jump and whooped about how, with your help, he was going to kick Jongin’s butt in the next game. Anything more was cut off when the nurse called your name, and you were gently led into a back room to be patched up and sent on your way. He gave you a little wave as you turned the corner, and you bite your lip to harness your smile.
The next day when the bell rings for lunch, he runs up to you and slams his hands on the desk, startling both you and your friends. Ready, he asked you rhetorically with a certain fire in his eyes, and you nodded, quickly apologizing to your friends before racing out after him onto the blacktop. He’s a quick learner, and before lunch was even a quarter over he’s mastered the move. But before your disappointment can even set in, he cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered, summing the ranks of his friends for an impromptu foursquare tournament.
She, he declared through his snickers, pointing at you with a confident index finger, will kick all of your asses.
Amid the collective gasps, you felt slight anxiety and glare at your new personal hype man. But he begged for forgiveness with a cheeky beam, and you forgave him faster than you’d like to admit.
But you go on to win, he hugs you, and with cheeks flaring red, you feel like you win again.
And after that, your days become substantially brighter whenever he’s around.
○
You remain steadfast friends for the years that follow, something that only gets easier when in middle school your single-gender social circles decide to merge. You get to hang out with him all the time now during your breaks at school, rather than compromising time with your other friends to get a few minutes here and there. Your spot becomes the shaded picnic benches under the pine trees, where you hang out with about twenty others, milling about and talking about nuances as you wait lunch out.
What gets harder is your awareness of yourself and your relationship with him. You find that it’s much harder now to look him in the eye-not just because he’s taller-but also because novel feelings are zipping through your veins. Whenever he’s nearby, your heart begins to flutter so hard your speech stutters and your face heats up as if on cue.
You also find yourself swept up in his pace. His interests become your interests, and soon you find yourself buying a guitar you can’t quite remember wanting before Chanyeol brought one to school the other day and flipping to your local rap station whenever you listen to the radio.
But it goes even further than that, and you find yourself shedding the things that you’ve come to like to his beck and call.
“What are you listening to?” He plops himself besides you during study break, plucking out one of your earbuds and placing it into the shell of his own ear. Without waiting for your response he provides his own answer, wrinkling his nose as he flicks to homescreen button on your phone. “Girl’s Generation? Really?”
“They’re good if you give them a try.“
Chanyeol wrinkles his nose, “Eh.”
Six songs later he’s still very unconvinced, and so you give up and resign yourself to writing another band off your list.
“Let me show you this other group,” he yanks the earbud out before thumbing a playlist on his own phone. “Listen to this, I think you’ll like it.”
He predicts incorrectly and the synth and hip-hop aren’t really your taste. But you really don’t want to disappoint him and the way he smiles pushes your head to a gentle spin, and so you find yourself bobbing your head along with the beat. He goes on to eagerly show you the rest of their discography, his excited expressions melting off bits of your heart as you’re reduced to lump whose only capability is to give an affirmative nod. In a week, your mother will bemusedly ask you how to pronounce the name on the new poster adorning your wall.
And you’ll flatten out the curl on the poster, forgetting about the fact that there’s one with another band crumpled at the foot of the bad, forgetting about the fact that you can barely name the members, flashbacks of the way Chanyeol’s lips curved with the words slipping into your mind instead.
“Twenty-One. I like them now.”
○
The need to impress him only grows by the day, and the need seek his favor grows into something of a contained obsession. He doesn’t intentionally exert control over you, but you let his opinions single-handedly sway your worldview. Your vision of the future was never very sharp, but your hindsight’s always been 20/20. So you regret in retrospect how you willingly moved to the beat of his drum.
But what bothers you at the time was the fact that you were far from being the only one.
He was always popular, and only gets more popular in middle school, especially towards the end when he begins puberty and his looks flourish under the grace of genetics. Girls who are far more comfortable with the bodies than you are begin to stop him in the halls and approach him at his locker where they stand in giggling chains of threes to fives, social polymers of the silly variety clutching their books to their chests and inclining their heads just so as they ask Chanyeol about inconsequential things such as how was his day.
It’s called flirting, one of your other friends lets you know one day. And they’re doing it because they like Chanyeol, she says, swinging the ‘li’ up like it’s something special
“I know what flirting is,” you laugh, even though your only first-hand experience has been watching acted versions of carefully scripted lines from the movies. You never realized it’s something that could be done in real life, much less on people that you know. “But they like Chanyeol? A lot of people like Chanyeol.””
“No I mean, like in as in that way,” your friend folds her fingers into a heart.
“Ew,” you say because you’re young and still conditioned to mock romantic love.
“Yeah, ew,” your friend halfheartedly mutters. But her fidgeting betrays that she doesn’t agree.
In a month or so, she begins to speak incessantly about a name scribbled repeatedly in her diary. She only mentions him by his codename. But it’s Yoda, and so you don’t even have to ask who it is.
The thing is, you don’t feel happy for her. And this is because you want him for your self, you realize one day as you watch him make that friend laugh. He always makes other people laugh, and you’re uncomfortable with how uncomfortable you’ve recently become about watching him work his charismatic magic on other people. You swallow as you turn your heel and stalk away.
Jealousy tastes bitter against your tongue.
o
You’re still not entirely ready to admit that you the way you feel about Chanyeol is different than the way you feel about your other guy friends. What exactly is holding you back, you’re not entirely sure. All you know is that something like this is considered a milestone, and it will concretely change how you deal with your friendship with Chanyeol.
Of course you still find the room to hold the tiniest hope that he feels the same way about you, and you begin to involuntarily check for this with self-developed tests, hyper analyzing things like keeping track of home many times he smiles at you within a day or certain voice inflections he reserves exclusively for you. You’re convinced he might feel something back as you catch him looking in your general vicinity for the third time that week in history.
So of course you take note of it when he doesn’t ask you to the back to school dance, but you’re more or less okay with it because he doesn’t ask anyone else. And you’re also okay, because during the last slow song, he steps up to you with his tooth-rich smile, draped in his father’s dress shirt and blinking down at you because he’s beginning to grow like a weed, and asks you if you want to dance. It’s awkward because he’s not used to the length of his limbs, and he steps on your toes more than once, but you like the feel of his hands wrapped securely around your waist, and you rope your hands around your neck and pull him in so you can feel the slow beat of his heart closer to your chest.
You languidly think, as you get drunk of his scent, arms comfortably resting on his bony shoulders, that you could get used to this.
Maybe that’s you can’t sleep that later night as you lay staring up at the ceiling as you replay the night in your head. His hands were warm, and his hold was warmer. You feel like your heart is about to beat out of your chest and your mind is pregnant with thoughts that are a little more than a scramble of raw ecstatic emotions.
This feeling, you finally admit with your head buried in your pillows, is love.
○
I have a crush on Chanyeol, you confess between your hands during a truth or dare session at your next sleepover. The coos begin to start, and several of your friends reassure you that you’d look cute together. You hug your pillow to your chest, grinning broadly as you received a majority of your friends’ approval.
Shortly after, your friends begin to wear short shorts and indulge makeup. For a while you resist, but peer pressure and curiosity are soft powers that easily domesticate your independence, and eventually you let your friends collar you with manicured fingers around your wrist and drag you to the bathroom to an obedience training doled out in the form of a dizzying array of creams and cosmetics. Your face feels foreign when your friends are finished, and the first degree of self-awareness hits the moment you look at the mirror. You realize, you think as you lean towards the mirror, you look pretty.
This, as you blink at your reflection, is the first time you realize the word “beauty” can be applied to you.
He notices the difference the next day when you take your usual seat next to him in social studies, causing him to lean over and scrutinize your face. You’ve settled for something simple and natural-more of a result of your current makeup abilities than anything else-but still you’re quite self-conscious. He’s close enough that you can pick out that signature mole that dots the corner of his lip, but you will yourself not to shy away.
“Something’s different,” he mutters as he squints his eyes. “Did you put on makeup?”
“What about it?” You say slightly defensively, covering the bottom of your face with a piece of paper as you warily narrow your eyes at him.
“It looks…nice,” he finally says as he leans back.
There’s an undercurrent of something discontented in his tone that’s whisked into the blasé cheerfulness that always punctuates his words. It makes you uneasy for a minute until the blinding smile he fashions with his lips washes away any doubts. He disconnectedly nods in approval for a second before turning his attention back to the board.
“You look good,” his side profile informs you, his lips moving even if his eyes are trained forward. He hesitates, but then rephrases it like he means it.
“You look pretty.”
This may be the reason why you don’t leave the house without makeup again for years.
○
If you’re awkward around him, he doesn’t notice.
He treats you the same way he’s always treated you, for better or for worse. The way he interacts with you is neither the way he tiptoes around most girls nor how he mingles with of the bros, yet that’s the fence you’ve sat on since day one. You’re clearly very special to him, and that’s a fact that’s universally recognized, so you bask in your special position, beginning to mark your territory whenever you interact with him by using privileges that no one else has the position to do-texting him from midnight to four in the morning, fixing his hair with the tips of your fingers, stealing piggyback rides in the middle of the quad. Eventually it becomes less of a display of dominance and more of something you’re compelled to do. His smiles are your drug, addictive and compelling, even the slightest quirk of his lips able to cast a spell of bliss over you.
This is about when other boys begin to take interest in you. That rich kid Junmyeon just won’t stop sending you texts, that dancer Jongin seems manage to give you hugs six times before you leave school, and basketball prodigy Kris seems like he wants to hang out with you ever other day.
Being hit on serves paradoxically as a dual confidence booster and muter. While their attention is flattering, you can see glimpses of yourself reflected in their actions. And that’s what bothers you, because their desperation mirrors your own. The hours you spend hesitating replying to their texts are uncomfortably familiar with Chanyeol’s own long response delays to yours. You constantly wonder if Chanyeol can see through to your true motives behind your thinly-veiled requests as easily as you can see through theirs. And perhaps most worrying is that you’re never quite sure whether Chanyeol’s truly “too busy” to hang out, because that is a tried and true excuse of your own.
The problem about love, you find, is that optimism clings to you like herpes. It doesn’t take much to coax the hope from the clouds of gloom.
And so even when he doesn’t hang out with you after school for four straight weeks in preparation for a talent show (his first real “gig” he tells you), and you’re dejected enough that one of your close friends bakes cookies for you (“you looked kind of down lately”), you forgive him in a heartbeat when he hands an unevenly cut piece of paper.
“Front row seats, just for you.”
The world looks unbelievably brighter when your heart’s singing in your chest.
You ask your friend to help you get ready as you hand her back her cleaned cookie tupperware, and she comments that night, softly, as she takes a lock of your hair and wraps it around the curling iron.
“Since when did you like long hair? You were always complaining about the impracticality when we were younger.”
“Since I started to grow it out.”
“I guess I’m asking…why?”
You eye her in the mirror, but no reasonable response makes it to your mind.
She runs her fingers through a section of your tresses thoughtfully, “Did Chanyeol tell you he liked long hair?”
It’s rhetorical, both of you know, and there’s no conversation to muffle the clack of the iron’s wire against her dresser as she skillfully weaves another part of your hair around the tool.
“Maybe…” She sucks in a breath as she tugs it into place. “Maybe, you should think about letting Chanyeol go?”
“Why?”
She sprays your hair down, eyes trained on your defensive expression, her brows knitted into a sympathetic frown.“…Nevermind.”
That night, you can barely hear your thoughts over the pulsating sounds, and you’re slightly lonely since you’re the only one you know there. But you forget all of your misery when he looks into the crowd, stage lights dancing in his eyes, fingers curling around the head of the mike and points at you.
“This one’s dedicated to one of my best friends.” He grins at you, and your heart subsequently explodes, sending red flares all the way up to the tips of your ears and complete forgiveness into your agenda.
He keeps you close that night during the after party, dismissing drinks for you as he wraps a secure arm to protect you from something -you’re really not really sure what-as he introduces you to the rest of the band. He walks you back to your parent’s house too, slinging his coat over your shoulders against the will of your protests as he braves the cold. Between a sneeze and a wave, he bids you goodbye and you find yourself unable to break away from watching his back recede down the street, guitar in tow.
You fantasize about your future that night, imagining yourself curled up on a sofa in the penthouse of some high-rise city apartment, a soft cardigan worth a small fortune wrapped around your shoulders, eyes half-lidded as you watch Chanyeol serenade you to sleep with his guitar.
It’s an image you like a lot, so much that it becomes your default daydream, and eventually, your plan for the future. The smiles and words he exclusively saves for you carve the foundations of hope, raising pillars strong enough that how you’ll make your dreams a reality is no longer the question you ask yourself. You, instead, begin to wonder when.
Of course life doesn’t always go as planned, and here’s the wrench fate gratuitously slings at your way:
Chanyeol falls second.
○
You meet Baekhyun the first day of high school.
What’s remarkable about it is how quickly you become friends. By his sixth sentence you figure out the two things he doesn’t lack are charisma and words, and by the end of study hall he’s managed to weasel half of your life story, your favorite color, and two of your greatest fears out of you. When the bell rings, he trundles off to Spanish class with a wave, your cell number in his contacts and your spontaneous verbal promise to eat lunch together.
Your face feels sore for the rest of the day from smiling a lot harder and longer than you usually do.
But perhaps what’s even more remarkable is how quickly Chanyeol becomes his best friend. They also meet on the first day of school, desk mates in precalc, they tell you, when you find them sitting next to each other beneath the tree your friend group has claimed during lunchtime, bent over Baekhyun’s fingerprint-smudged smart phone.
“He’s really good at Tetris,” Chanyeol lets you know, eyes wide and grin evident in the second he spares you before he hunches his head back down over the game.
“Not that good,” Baekhyun shakes his head modestly, expression set in a concentrated frown, long fingers flying over the screen at the speed of light.
“Dude. Please,” Chanyeol mutters, watching the game intently, almost as if it were his own, bouncing his leg against the ground as his eyes grow wide. Suddenly he lets out a loud cheer, grabbing Baekhyun’s arm as he begins to jabber, “What the…You’re insane at this. Mad skills, you seriously need to teach me. Like how do you even…?”
Baekhyun shrugs, smile genuine and wide, but his modesty apparent through the slightest uncomfortable expression sitting on his face amid the onslaught of praise, “I’ve been playing for a while.”
“So have I,” Chanyeol marvels, shaking his head at what presumably is a good move on Baekhyun’s part as he continues to watch Baekhyun like he’s the best thing in the world. He clutches his head so exaggeratedly it’s comical, “But I’m not as good as you.”
You, who have never seen such intensity in the realm of something like Tetris, let a muffled giggle escape past your fingers.
Slightly misinterpreting you, both Baekhyun and Chanyeol simultaneously raise fists in your direction and jokingly exclaim, “Ay, what are you laughing at?”
You giggle again, prompting them to glance at each other and shake their heads.
Of course, they only grow closer after that.
○
Baekhyun fits into your life like the piece you never knew was missing.
His presence is often the brightest thing in the room, and the lack of it creates a noticeable void. He has a talent of wrapping every person he meets around his finger, coaxing even the coldest and coolest out of their shells, and soon he’s on a first name basis with at least half the school.
Somehow, given the pick of the land, he makes Chanyeol and yourself his mainstay friends, and you become a buddy band of three. And you definitely don’t mind it, because you get to spend more time with the guy who makes your heart pound like no tomorrow and the guy who can coax a smile from you with a flick of his finger. Sandwiched between the two, you’re the happiest you’ve ever been.
Of course there are times when you feel like the wheel out in the front, especially when Baekhyun and Chanyeol degenerate the conversation into bro-speak about sports you don’t watch or games you don’t play. It happens more frequently as the year flies by and they become more familiar with each other (the five classes they share together tends to do that, you suppose). But you don’t mind it. You take a certain joy out of having the privilege to a front row seat to their bantering, your hands tucked between your legs and the cool concrete barrier as you remain mum, a constant grin tugging your lips as they shoot back and forth at each other. You think it’s nice that Chanyeol has finally found a guy best friend, because this is the happiest you’ve ever seen him.
And when he’s happy, you think like a saint, closing your eyes as the breeze ruffles past your hair, carrying the sounds of Chanyeol chortles and Baekhyun’s snickers past your ears, then you’re happy.
○
You underestimate just how fond Baekhyun is of you.
This results in quite a bit of surprise during homecoming season when Baekhyun bursts into your journalism class, jazz-band guitarist Yixing and warbling Jongdae in tow as he serenades a homecoming dance invite to you in front of the whole class. Of course predictably your first reaction is the slackening of your jaw, and just as predictably your second reaction is to steal a glance at Chanyeol, who’s assigned seat is straight across from yours.
While “miserable” is something Chanyeol could never pull off, there’s his own brand of subtle discomfort, lips pressed firmly against a smile as he huddles a pair of crossed arms against his chest. He’s never had a great hold on his emotions, because he’s the kind of guy who wears his heart on his sleeve, and so you can easily pick out the unhappiness in his eyes.
The importance of questioning whom or what exactly he’s resentful of doesn’t even cross your mind.
It’s you, you think with a thump of your heart. He’s jealous because he wanted to ask you.
The song is good, however, since Baekhyun’s quite the singer. So it’s actually not embarrassing at all, and he finishes his jingle to resounding applause and takes several bows to the entire class. You say yes, of course, giggling appropriately as he presents a bouquet of grocery-store tulips to you in a sloppy one-kneed proposal, not only because you, by society’s standards, would be considered an asshole if you said no, but also because you are good friends. Dances are fun with friends, you know from experience, and Baekhyun is the life of the party, so you will, at the very least, be guaranteed salvation from an awkward time.
There a good portion of your heart, however, that’s beginning to bruise with a diluted depression. You ultimately wanted Chanyeol to ask you, after all. And you know he’s been practicing a song on his guitar that you accidently caught him practicing after school a few days ago, innocently stepping into the orchestra room to find him sitting next to Luhan, strumming his guitar and warbling (slightly off-key) into afternoon air. He looked shocked when he saw you standing in the doorway, prompting him to immediately stash away his guitar and make you promise not to tell Baekhyun. That had struck you as slightly odd until today, when you finally piece together a conclusion.
He avoids both you and Baekhyun like the plague for the next few days, citing instances of work or group projects as the cause. You find him hanging around Kris, Luhan, and Minseok over the next few days, lounging around with body language that clearly tells you he has nothing imminent due. But you don’t call him out on it. You still have English class together as a three, and it pains you to see him ignore Baekhyun like that, answering Baekhyun as brusquely as he does. But your sympathy is limited because the way Chanyeol treats you the same pains you even more. He’s unable to hold eye contact for more than a second, preferring instead to stare at the ground, and his tone is uncharacteristically flat when he speaks to you, words soft and deliberately monotone as if he’s putting in effort to restrain himself from something less than kind.
To compound on the stress, you’re not entirely convinced that Baekhyun’s approaching this as platonically as you are, if the increased one-on-one “hangouts” he starts asking you to go on are anything to go by, or the way he’s begun to walk with you around campus with a touch hovering just over the small of your back. And while you don’t want to come across as egotistical, you feel like you need make the line clear. He’s an awesome guy and seems like he could be great boyfriend material. But your heart’s been occupied with someone else for the past few years, and as a creature of habit, you just don’t have it in you to consider anyone else.
So the night of the dance, after you carefully pin the boutonniere to his chest-pale pink petals stark against black-you stand on your tiptoes and whisper into his ear.
“Hey, we’re just going as friends, right?” You mutter with carefully lacquered lips as you brush a stiff curl of bangs away from your eyes, mascara weighing down on your lashes as you blink.
He doesn’t miss a beat, and his tone sounds light and teasing, “Of course,” he pauses, and before the relief can tide into your chest, he adds, tone almost a little too bright, “I wouldn’t be able to replace Chanyeol.”
Your expression involuntarily waxes into a smile at that, but whether or not he actually knew is something you never find out. There are small seedlings of doubt sown into your mind, because you know he’s a good actor, and because you can’t see his expression. He’s not looking at you when you lower yourself to ground level, rather at someone over your shoulder. When you twist around, you realize his eyes are trained Chanyeol, who has just stepped though the door. He, again, has come stag, and he’s staring at the two of you, expression devoid of a smile, his signature eyes wide. He is pulled away by Kyungsoo a second later, presumably for a photo op, and is whisked around a corner before you can even say hello.
You don’t get a chance to speak to Chanyeol until later that night.
○
Baekhyun is a great dance partner, you find out.
Not because he’s especially good at dance-although admittedly he can hold a beat-but because he’s fun and he holds you like you’re someone special. Baekhyun’s not that tall, so when he holds you gently from behind, his mouth ends up right next to his ear, and he’s able to whisper a barrage of funny anecdotes as you mindlessly sway to the music. You regret, for a moment, how deep Chanyeol is lodged in your heart, because being with Baekhyun makes you feel completely at ease.
Baekhyun even manages to make the first slow dance entertaining, clutching your hands dramatically and marching straight through other couples that you know as if you were some sort of ballroom battleship. You can’t stop giggling as he makes sound effects, motorcycle-esque vrooms as he initiates the charge and subsequent voice-box explosions as you strike your unfortunate targets.
Chanyeol mostly hangs out on the fringe of the circle, awkwardly shuffling with the other stags in a little blob that hangs off of the couple circle. You never catch him looking your way, though you actually can’t pick him out of the darkness more than half the times you glance in his direction. He leaves during the slow dance, and you see his silhouette out in the lit lobby talking casually to one of your female classmates. Even from where you are you can see him laugh, and a bit of jealously burns in your stomach and clouds your mood before Baekhyun whisks you in the other direction.
Somewhere in the second hour during a Skrillex remix, Baekhyun suddenly disappears from behind you, his hands slipping away from your waist without a word, and he himself disappearing into the crowd before you can turn around. You awkwardly look for him as the dance raves on, lost as you begin to call his name with hands cupped around your mouth.
And suddenly a pair of familiar hands wrap around your waist, fingers coming to a rest on your hips. You jerk with shock from the unexpected shock, but before your mind can even fire the impulse to turn around, the back of your head hits a sturdy chest.
And you know instantly whom it belongs too.
“Hey,” you breath in, the thin scent of his cologne filling you rlungs.. Your heart rears and gallops forward at two hundred beats per a minute as you tilt your head up to see his face.
Chanyeol responds, monotonously, “Hey.”
He’s not looking at you, rather his eyes are trained forward, uncharacteristically steely and distant. Your excitement falters for a moment, and so you take the extra step to reassure him, craning your neck back to look up at his face again.
You mutter, sliding your hands over his, “We’re just going as friends you know? Nothing more.”
He visibly relaxes and a slight look of astonishment crosses his face as he looks down at you for the first time. His nose brushes against your hair and his voice tickles your ear, “really?”
“Really,” you nod, acutely aware of the fact that his lips are less than an inch away from your face.
Chanyeol grins as he raises his head again, relief unwinding nearly all of his tension. He rests his chin on top of your head after that and sways comfortably to the beat on the music. When he lets you go, an easy smile you haven’t seen in a while dances on the tips of his lips and he even gives you one last cheesy twirl before he hands you back to Baekhyun, who subtly mutters something that sounds oddly like hey, thanks for dancing with her before he whirls you in another direction. You nearly trip over your heels and Chanyeol laughs, face splitting in two.
And just like that, everything in your world is balanced once again.
○
Dances are still not entirely your thing, and so after a few more songs you decide you need a breather from the pounding music and the stifling air. With a few words, you slip out of Baekhyun’s hold and clop out of the gym in your stilettos, making your way towards the water fountain almost mindlessly, bending down and gulping cool water like it’s for your survival.
A stereotypical slow song begins to play over the speakers, and hopefully curious where Chanyeol was headed, you look back at the dance floor.
Unexpectedly, you see him dancing with Baekhyun, slightly stooped over to better accommodate for their height difference, and their apparent reconciliation puts you at peace. It’s a joke, if Baekhyun’s beaming grin is any indication of that as he tries to squirm away from Chanyeol’s arms.
You try to catch their attention for a bit, first by staring intently and then with a small-directed wave. Baekhyun notices almost instantly and waves back, bringing an ear-splitting grin to your face. But to your disappointment, Chanyeol never takes his eyes off of Baekhyun, and so you slowly let your hand fall back to your side.
“They’re cute together,” you hear a girl next you sigh. “Especially the tall guy and the way he’s looking at his date.”
You clear your throat without thinking, an impulsive clarification almost past your lips before you catch your self.
“Damn,” her friend laments, clutching her hands near her heart. “I want a boyfriend like that.”
You turn back and you realize between the glimpses the strobe lights permit you that there’s a certain softness in Chanyeol’s eyes that you’ve never seen before. He’s clasping Baekhyun’s waist with a type of gentleness you’re pretty sure he didn’t handle you with, and he’s holding him a lot closer than he’s ever hugged you.
He looks almost like he’s in another world. And that’s when vines of worry wrap and constrict your chest. You know a beginning when you see one.
After a moment of struggle, Baekhyun finally gives in, biting his lip and grinning up at Chanyeol before laying his chin on Chanyeol’s shoulder. Charmeus and tulle fold easily in your tightening grip as you find it harder and harder to breathe.
“Do you think they’re together?” the first girl giggles as she turns to her friend.
“No idea,” the second girl coos. “But they should be.”
You’ve always been a little paranoid, and dread takes its typical seat in your chest. Baekhyun hesitantly loops his arms around Chanyeol’s neck, weaving the tips of his fingers together with waning uncertainty.
You don’t like the starry look in his eyes one bit.
○
There’s something dangerously familiar about the look in his eyes whenever Baekhyun’s around, a certain longing that subtly influences the flex in his brows, the lilt of his voice, the curve in his lips. He laughs louder when Baekhyun’s around, smiles harder, and gets that certain glint in the corner of his eyes.
You accidently overhear him talking to Sehun the day after homecoming as you stand outside your classroom, waiting for your biology teacher to arrive. He doesn’t see you as he turns the corner (he doesn’t see you after either), and you catch Sehun snickering.
“-the afterparty is a prime example of why you should never be allowed near to alcohol-“
And your heart stops, because one you never knew Chanyeol drank, and two, you had no idea there was a homecoming afterparty. You’re quick to rationalize things though, dismissing the alcohol as an issue you’ll deal with later and remembering how Chanyeol went home with a slightly different group of friends than the one you both came with. Baekhyun probably didn’t go either, you invent, as reassurance to yourself.
“Shut up,” Chanyeol hisses shoving Sehun’s head.
“And you around Baekhyun the whole damn time,” Sehun hoots as they pass you. “Ahah oh my fucking god, you're embarrassing. I still can’t believe you did that, how do you even live with yourself?“
“So just don’t believe it.”
“Pictures don’t lie.”
“WhAT?” Chanyeol spits. “You better fucking delete them or-”
Luckily your biology slams the door open and cuts off the conversation. As you numbly sink into your seat, it was a boys-night-out type of thing, you decide. It meant nothing. That’s why you weren’t invited. Most people drank by this age anyway. It meant nothing. What happened between Chanyeol and Baekhyun was probably platonic. It meant nothing. The look Chanyeol gave Baekhyun today in English class. It meant nothing.
Of course it takes a mantra to keep the panic at bay, and so you find yourself later that night, toes and fingers curled in your sheets, repeating it for what was likely the three-thousandth time.
It meant nothing.
○
It seems like you’re meant to be in the wrong places at the wrong time.
At least that how you think you’ve found yourself frozen just around the corner of the history wing, accidently eavesdropping on your two friends.
“I have two tickets to the amusement park,” Chanyeol says nervously, toying with his lanyard as he leans against the wall. “Do you wanna go with me this weekend?”
“Seriously?” Baekhyun peers around the door of his locker. “How did you get them?”
“My sister,” Chanyeol shrugs, shifting awkwardly. The unpleasant thought that he’s never offered a similar opportunity for you bubbles up from the swamp of your thoughts, and it takes a reasonable amount of effort for you to push that into the back of your mind.
“Oh awesome,” Baekhyun nods, closing his locker gracefully with those fingers you’ve always been jealous of. “Yeah, I’d definitely like to go.”
“Cool.” Chanyeol attempts to look suave about it, lowering his voice and slumping his shoulders further. But you know how to read him better than books, and the pink on his ears betrays his bottled up excitement.
“Anyone else going?”
You cling to one last shred of hope, ear perking slightly.
“Well,” Chanyeol shifts awkwardly as he mutters, “I was thinking it’d just be the two of us.”
Your heart sinks straight down in your chest.
“But if you wanted other people-“
“No,” Baekhyun beams, a newfound shyness tinting his expression as he tucks a few strands of hair behind his ear. “Just the two of us is fine.”
“Awesome,” Chanyeol gives a little dance. “Man, I’m excited.”
“I can see that,” Baekhyun laughs.
The bell rings just then and Chanyeol scoots away, swinging by a slouching Sehun on his way to history. You watch from afar as Sehun gets up and Chanyeol prattles about something you’re unsure of, until he raises a fist in victory.
He said yes. You read on his lips before he extends a fist and Sehun bumps it with his own.
You’ve never felt so out of the loop.
○
There are other things you catch them doing alone, like one day you find them seated in a patch of sunlight inside the chorus room, Chanyeol folded with his gangly legs as he tries to sing. You fold back into the shadows, a little surprised in an unpleasant way. Chanyeol’s never showed interest in singing for all the times you’ve offered to teach him.
“Higher,” Baekhyun motions with his hands. “You’re slightly flat. Sit straighter, you’ll be able to push out the air better.”
“Oh, uh, do,” Chanyeol tries again, squirming to fix his posture
“Better,” Baekhyun winces before laughing. “At least you’re getting there. But it’s more like do.”
“Honestly I can’t tell the difference,” Chanyeol wrinkles his nose.
“I don’t think you’re cut out for this singing thing then,” Baekhyun says with mock disdain as he makes the movements towards standing up. “In that case I have about 100 better things I can do with my time-“
“No Professor Byun,” Chanyeol releases a hoarse wail, before he sings in the style of Mike Posner. “Please don’t GOOO~”
Baekhyun pauses knotting his brows together as he mock-grimaces at Chanyeol.
“If I wake up tomorrow, will you still. Be. Here~?” Chanyeol sings again, throwing his hand out for emphasis and cracking at the notes slightly out of his register. “I don’t KNOOOOOW~”
Baekhyun promptly sits down, clutching his temples. “Okay, okay, okay, I’ll stay if you stop doing that.”
“Chanyeol puts a hand on Baekhyun’s shoulder and lets his head hang. Underneath his arm, you can see the broadest of smiles.
Chanyeol also starts attending one of the choral concerts, much to your surprise. You’ve never bothered to invite him yourself (you figured he’d find it boring) and so he was the last person you expected to spot as you habitually scanned the crowd. You pick him out the darkness in the center of the audience, attention rapt and mouth slightly agape as he watches your performance (not in astonishment, you know, he’s always had problems keeping his mouth closed).
During one of the breaks, with a quick skip of your heart, you catch him brilliantly smiling and waving, a strange expression on his face. Slightly confused, but incredibly happy, you lift your hand to respond, but just before you begin to wave, Baekhyun catches your eye to the right with a wave of his own. Turning slightly, you realize they’re mimicking each other strange expressions, and Chanyeol splits in to a grin, silent laughter causing him to convulse in his chair.
You’ve been so beaten down lately that you’re really not expecting much after the show, but Chanyeol swings by you, tossing a bouquet into your arms.
“What’s this?” You balk in surprise as a bundle of yellow roses land on your silk skirt.
“Congratulation flowers, courtesy my mom’s front yard,” Chanyeol laughs before walking away. “Great job, you really can sing.”
You’re so happy you skip around to some of your friends, burying your face in bundle of yellow and inhaling the scent. You’re so giddy your hands are slightly shaking, much to your friends’ hilarity, and they tease you liberally for it.
Of course this sets you up on a pedestal so high off the ground, you’re completely winded when you see him talking with someone in the corner of the choral room. It doesn’t take a second glance to know it’s Baekhyun, with his fingers wrapped around a similar bouquet of roses, red ones, as he smiles up at Chanyeol.
Chanyeol flushes scarlet, turning away and prompting Baekhyun to erupt with laughter.
You’ve never wanted to be someone else so badly before.
○
While you’re not entirely sure what exactly prompts you to ask, the question far from out of the blue for you, since you’ve been obsessing over it for weeks. But Chanyeol looked as if the question fell straight from the sky.
“Could you repeat that,” He asks weakly, blinking rapidly as he does, lips drawn into a polite grin.
“Do you like him?” you ask him rhetorically the next afternoon.
“What do you mean?” His voice wavers, and he tries (and fails) to keep his voice steady.
“Do,” you repeat, blinking slowly as your tone soaks up your impatience, “ You like him?”
Chanyeol’s smile freezes. “You mean as a friend?”
You regard him levelly, taking stock on how Chanyeol instinctively knows who you’re referring to. It’s a subtle confirmation, but you feel the need to finish what you’ve started and so you press forward, “You know what I’m talking about.”
He just shrugs, uncomfortably averting his gaze as his shoulders jerk upwards a little too quickly.
It’s not a confirmation but you’re not stupid so take it as one. You wander slowly throughout the rest of the day in a sort of miserable haze, your heart pumping gallons of the bitter burn of heartbreak through your veins.
By now your friends have gotten used to your moping, and so as you lay in a fetal position on the metal picnic benches, one of them throws you a question.
“Well have you ever told him you liked him?” She mumbles through a sandwich.
“…What?” You roll to face her, getting a good angle of the underside of her chin.
“Like did you ever make it clear you were interested in him?” She blinks. “I mean guys are horrible at reading subtext.”
“It wouldn’t make a difference, you haven’t seen the way he acts around Baekhyun.”
“Well, true,” She shrugs. “But you should give it a shot anyway. Not everyone is fixated on one person like you are. Some are. But not everyone.”
You think for a second, seriously considering the possibility, “Well, what if he says no?”
“Then he says no and you have your answer. That’s when you move on,” She balls up her trash and chucks it at the bin. “Win-win.”
“What if I don’t want to move on?”
“Then I can’t help you.”
You grab her arm and hug it to your chest, “That’s not very helpful.”
“I just don’t want to see you so unhappy all of the time, you know?” She pops a can of soda open with her thumb. “But I’m starting to get to impression that you actually derive happiness from being miserable.”
“I don’t!”
“Then do something about it,” She looks at you levelly before she chugs her soda. “I’m serious. Staying passively stuck on one guy like this isn’t healthy. It’s time for you to move forward.”
○
You decide to do it on a Tuesday.
There’s no particular significance about Tuesday other than it’s the day after your friend commanded you to commence your ultimatum. But the day sticks in your mind because you spend the majority of it terrified out of your mind.
You’re so scared your hands are shaking for the entire day. It gets bad enough that two of your teachers ask you if you’re feeling alright (“are you sure? You’re kind of pale.”), and fainting doesn’t seem like that bad of the option when you spot him across the quad during break. You try to remind yourself that guys are expected to do this all of the time, but some how that fails to serve as effective condolence, and you find yourself dreading the end of seventh period more than death.
“You got this,” your friend flashes a thumbs up when the bell rings. She points at Chanyeol slouching in the corner and winks, “Go get him, tiger.”
The walk seems like distance of the marathon and eventually you make it to Chanyeol’s side, tugging on his sleeve until he turns to you.
“Can you come with me for a second?” You ask softly.
He glances at Kyungsoo, silently signally the end of their conversation before nodding and following you out of the classroom.
You walk for about a minute before you stop. In brick-layered corner between the gym and the math wing, you whisper to him you have something to tell him. He cocks his head to the side, lips pulled in a teasing grin as he jams his hands into his pockets. He’s so woefully unaware, you think, that you feel almost like you’re somehow duping him.
“What do you need to tell me?” Chanyeol says as he rocks back and forth from his heels to his toes. “You’re being unusually secretive.”
“I just have a question,” you draw on all of your will to keep your lunch in your stomach.
“Okay?”
“It’s kind of personal though.”
“We’re good friends,” Chanyeol shrugs., jamming his hands in his pockets. “I won’t judge you.”
And so you take a deep breath, and ask him out.
○
|| part ii ||