Sunshine {1/2}
baekhyun/chanyeol; pg-13; 14k; college AU ; generic warning postbyun baekhyun doesn't like the sun, because it brings back memories of things he'd rather forget
SUNSHINE
Byun Baekhyun doesn’t like the sun. It’s too bright and too warm and it brings back unpleasant memories of the time his girlfriend broke up with him during a hot summer many years ago. He keeps his curtains drawn on sunny days, cancels any plans he has with his friends and even skips classes if he sees the little sun symbol in the morning’s weather report. Anything to remain in the cool, shaded safety of his room. But as if nature likes to purposely play games with him, it’s more often than not that on the days when Baekhyun absolutely cannot change his plans and absolutely must go out, whether it’s to stock up on his fast diminishing groceries or to attend the class about that super difficult topic he knows he won’t be able to cover by himself, the sun will be out, bright and cheerful and everything that Baekhyun hates.
He meets Chanyeol on a cloudy day. It’s on the way to campus and by complete chance that they bump into each other, because Baekhyun is normally a careful person and Chanyeol assures him that he is too. Chanyeol laughs as he picks himself up of the floor, exclaiming with a huge grin that it’s strange how Baekhyun managed to knock him to the ground and stay upright himself when Chanyeol is so much obviously the bigger of the two. Baekhyun’s in a good mood because the weather is dull and sun-free so he laughs along, even if it’s at the expense of his own size. They exchange names and then, once they realise they’re both heading to the same college, course details too. Chanyeol is a second year student studying Mechanical Engineering, and his faculty building is right next to the School of Social Sciences where Baekhyun takes second year Economics modules.
“You must be smart then, doing such a difficult subject,” Chanyeol says with a grin. Baekhyun answers with a noncommittal shrug; he doesn't like blowing his own trumpet, but he's not going to disagree.
They walk onto campus together, past the shops and the dorms and straight to the back where all the various subject buildings are. Once they get to the Engineering school, Baekhyun turns to bid his new friend goodbye, but the smile on his face disappears when he spots something above Chanyeol’s head. Chanyeol strains his neck trying to follow his gaze and scrunches his face up when he can’t see anything aside from a few birds flying around in the sky.
“You don’t like pigeons?”
Baekhyun just stares at him and Chanyeol notices he’s still not smiling. “The sun is out,” is the only answer he gets.
Chanyeol doesn’t say anything in response and Baekhyun shakes his head, turning to leave.
“Wait!” A large hand encircles Baekhyun’s wrist and Baekhyun realises, as he mentally compares the size of Chanyeol’s hand against his own, that Chanyeol really is big, almost twice his size.
“You don’t have to be afraid of the sun,” Chanyeol says.
Baekhyun’s eyes bulge out of his head. “What the hell-”
But Chanyeol is already pulling him back, leaning over him in such an intimidating way that he’d probably feel a little threatened if Chanyeol’s face wasn’t twisted up in such a dumb expression. “I can protect you. From the sun, I mean. I’m tall, much taller than you. If I stand in front of you, the sun won’t reach you anymore. See? Problem solved.” He gestures with a hand to the area in front of Baekhyun and Baekhyun notices that Chanyeol’s large shadow is completely shielding him from the sun.
But being in the sun isn’t the problem in the first place. It’s the fact that it’s still sunny around them, that the atmosphere is still warm and bright, that Baekhyun still has to squint his eyes to see properly at times, partly because of the sun’s glare and partly because even now, six years down the line from when it happened, he can hear Jinhee’s voice loud and clear as she tells him he’s not good enough for her and it still brings tears to his eyes.
He doesn’t have the heart to tell Chanyeol that simply covering him in shade isn’t solving anything. Not when Chanyeol’s grinning so widely it looks like his face will break any second.
--
He’s not quite sure when he signed up to this, but every day since then, he walks to college with Chanyeol. They meet at the same place they initially met at first, a few blocks from the gate, but then they're discussing addresses one day and Chanyeol points out that hey, we live pretty close and eventually it comes to a point where every day at 8:15 am there is a loud knock on Baekhyun’s front door and by 8:20 they’re on their way to campus together.
On the cloudy days, they talk a lot. Chanyeol tells Baekhyun about all of his classes, and Baekhyun does the same. Mechanical Engineering turns out to be a very math-based subject, much to Baekhyun’s surprise, and there are even a few modules that overlap between their courses.
“I thought I finished with differentiation back in high-school. It’s the only reason I didn’t learn it properly, and now it comes up every year without fail.” Baekhyun complains. Chanyeol nods so hard next to him that Baekhyun thinks he might have a spring loose in his neck. He refrains from reaching up and checking for himself.
On sunny days, they talk a lot less. Baekhyun walks around wearing dark sunglasses, face obscured behind a mask and fluffy hair stuffed into a baseball cap. Chanyeol thinks he looks cute, but he doesn’t like the way it prevents him from seeing Baekhyun’s face and hearing Baekhyun’s voice properly. He tells him on a particularly sunny day that hates the sun too. Baekhyun’s eyebrows rise, almost invisible between the top of his glasses and the brim of his hat.
“Why?” he asks, voice muffled by his mask.
For the first time since they’ve met, Chanyeol isn't smiling. “Because it steals my friend away from me.”
--
Chanyeol asks for his number in the third week of knowing him and Baekhyun gives it to him in the completely cliché way of taking the phone out of Chanyeol’s large hands and typing it in himself. He saves himself under Byunbaek and later on Chanyeol puts himself as Superchan in Baekhyun’s contact list. When asked about the name, Chanyeol just smiles.
He makes sure Baekhyun is completely distracted before turning his phone's camera on and snapping a candid photo of him. Baekhyun screams and jumps up to get the device out of his hands, but all Chanyeol has to do is raise it above his head and it’s automatically out of Baek-territory.
“You can't just take photos of me without asking!” Baekhyun whines. They'd swapped birthdates just the day before and came to realise that Baekhyun was actually the oldest of the pair, but Chanyeol continues to believe his own theory of Baekhyun being a 13-year old prodigy kid who’s skipped ahead by about five grades or so; in any case, there is no way he's going to start referring to the older-by-a-few-months boy as 'hyung'.
“I wasn’t ready!” Baekhyun is fixing his hair now, looking at Chanyeol with a pout. “Delete that picture and I’ll let you take a proper one of me.”
Chanyeol just smiles and shakes his head. “I’m sure you look fine, Byunbaek. And even if you look ugly, it’s only me that’s going to see it.” The words are unnecessary, Chanyeol thinks, because there’s no way someone like Baekhyun could ever look ugly. Baekhyun drops the matter with a huff, storming into the Social Sciences building without as much as a goodbye.
Chanyeol waits until he's safely seated at the back of his Thermodynamics class before reopening the picture, eyes tracing over Baekhyun’s lightly smiling face again and again until he's committed every detail to memory and could probably recreate it on another medium with his eyes closed. He renames the file ‘nosunbaekhyun’. It is, in his opinion, the prettiest version of Baekhyun there is.
--
Baekhyun leaves his Introduction to Financial Accounting class with Kyungsoo at 6pm one day and is surprised to see Chanyeol waiting outside his classroom. Chanyeol’s eyes twitch as he waves him over with a huge smile and Baekhyun is a little too surprised to move. He’s never seen Chanyeol this late on in the day. They had established pretty soon that Baekhyun’s classes ran late into the evening whereas Chanyeol’s all finished by midday and so it made no sense for them to walk home together. They part ways front of the Engineering building just before 9 everyday and he normally doesn’t see Chanyeol until the next morning, at 8:15, on his doorstep.
“Byunbaek!” Chanyeol’s loud voice pulls him from his thoughts and he realises with a pang of guilt that Chanyeol is still waving at him. He motions with his own hand for him to come over, and Chanyeol walks up to the pair in two long strides.
“Chanyeol,” Baekhyun says, and he doesn’t know why his voice is coming out so quietly, “What are you doing here?”
Chanyeol points to the window opposite instead of answering. It’s two metres up the wall and clearly out of both Baekhyun and Kyungsoo’s visibility range. Baekhyun looks at him questioningly. “The sun is out,” he finally responds. He points again and Baekhyun now sees what Chanyeol wants him to; the stream of light filtering into the building. He points to the cap on his head in reply and pulls the sunglasses off the front of his shirt, slipping them on. “I know; I came prepared.”
Chanyeol’s smile falters for only a second before it’s back in place, bigger and brighter than ever. “I came prepared too!” he says excitedly. He shoves a hand into his backpack, rummaging around as he looks for something. When he finds it, he presents it in two hands in front of Baekhyun, as if it’s a medal he’s waiting to be congratulated for. Baekhyun can feel Kyungsoo’s gaze shifting from between him and Chanyeol. He thinks that maybe now would be a good time to introduce the two. He also thinks that, possibly, that’s not what Chanyeol wants.
His eyes flick over the things in Chanyeol’s hands. There’s a rumpled white snapback and a pair of white aviators. Chanyeol puts them both on, his copper hair sticking out at awkward angles under the hat and the aviators covering his large brown eyes. Baekhyun tries not to notice how the items are clearly too small for someone as large as Chanyeol. Instead he says a quick goodbye to Kyungsoo and slips a hand into one of Chanyeol’s, giving him the biggest grin he can manage. Baekhyun doesn’t usually smile on sunny days, heck, he normally doesn’t even leave his room on sunny days, but for once he finds that the sun isn’t bothering him that much. Chanyeol tries to pull his hand free but Baekhyun just tightens his grip.
“What are you doing?” Chanyeol asks. Baekhyun just tugs him outside the building and out into the sun.
“You stayed behind to walk me home, right?” he says as they make their way towards the gate. Chanyeol’s hand is warm and sweaty in his hold but he kind of likes the feel of it there.
Chanyeol’s face flushes a deep red and Baekhyun smiles mischievously, plucking the cap off of Chanyeol’s head and replacing his own with it; just as he's expecting, it's a perfect fit. Chanyeol reaches for the hat in Baekhyun’s hand in retaliation but Baekhyun pulls it out of reach.
“You look better without a hat,” he says in response to Chanyeol’s puzzled face. Chanyeol just stares at him dumbfounded. “Aren’t you supposed to be protecting me from the sun?” Baekhyun asks, raising an eyebrow. "Better do your job, Superchan."
They walk home, hand in hand, and Chanyeol’s shadow covers Baekhyun the entire way home.
-
Baekhyun doesn’t like examinations. More than the actual exams themselves, he hates the whole exam period. He hates the stress of it all, the tension that builds up slowly in the months leading to it, only to increase tenfold in the final few weeks. He’s a relatively good student, getting decent grades in most of his subjects without doing much in the way of studying, but now, in his penultimate year, he finally feels the drive to push himself to do better.
Chanyeol, he finds, is the complete opposite.
It turns out his newest friend is a natural-born genius, always ranking at the top across all of his subject classes. The second smartest boy on his course - Yixing, Chanyeol says his name is - hates his guts, but Chanyeol is too much of a happy-go-lucky person to care. Baekhyun recalls back to their first meeting, when Chanyeol had called him smart, or at the least, insinuated it.
"Were you hoping I would say the same back so that you could tell me that you are, in fact, ten times smarter than I'll ever be?" he asks with a bitter scoff.
"I'm good with numbers," Chanyeol answers with a smile. "Economics is theories and arguments and application skills. No matter how high my grades are, I think you're probably smarter than me when it comes down to it."
Baekhyun is in the middle of opening his mouth to argue when Chanyeol suddenly grabs his hand. "The sun is shining really heavily today, huh, Byunbaek? Walk behind me and I'll cover you." All of the things Baekhyun was planning to say fly out of his mind. He allows himself to be tugged along.
--
Midterms are fast approaching. They sit in the main library together most days now, Baekhyun slaving away over his books and Chanyeol by his side, going through his notes in record speed and spending the rest of the time reading manga on one of the computers. Sometimes Kyungsoo comes along too, when the topic is a complex one and Baekhyun needs someone to break it down for him step-by-step. The rest of the time Kyungsoo studies with the rest of his and Baekhyun’s friends in the Social Sciences library. They’ve begun to have weekly study sessions, and Baekhyun thinks that maybe it’s time that he starts going. He’s still got a lot to cover and his friends can probably help him understand the things he’s still struggling on. It’s a shame, he thinks, that Chanyeol can’t.
He voices his concerns to Chanyeol over breakfast the next morning. Most of their classes are out for study-break so they go to school later now. Chanyeol still turns up to his door at 8:15 but now instead of waiting outside for five minutes, he comes in and makes himself at home. Neither Baekhyun nor Chanyeol is a good cook so they normally eat whatever cereal is in Baekhyun’s cupboard. Today it’s Coco Pops and Chanyeol is happily slurping up the chocolate milk left in his bowl when Baekhyun drops it on him.
“You don’t want to study together anymore?” He looks shocked, maybe even a little hurt, and Baekhyun finds himself wishing he could take the words back, at least word them a little more nicely. He also finds it weird that he’s so concerned about hurting Chanyeol’s feelings. Sure, they’re friends, but Kyungsoo is his friend too. So are Joonmyun, Kai, Minseok and the rest of the boys from Economics that he’s been neglecting while he’s been spending time with Chanyeol. Baekhyun makes sure to keep his face blank as he stares across the table at him, carefully gauging his face for any more reactions as he speaks.
“It’s not that I don’t want to study with you, Chanyeol. It’s just that I need to study with the people on the same course as me. Kyungsoo has gone over regression with me several times and I just can’t wrap my head around it. I want to see if any of my other friends can help me out. And maybe you could study with your friends from Engineering?”
Chanyeol answers him with a small smile before he finishes his cereal and gets up to put his plate in the sink. “That’s a good idea,” he says as he walks outside. When he comes back in a few minutes later, he’s already wearing his shoes and coat, ready to go. “I’m sure Kris is going crazy looking for me, to be honest. I normally help his thick brain understand all the complicated formulae we need to learn for exams. I’ll study with him today.” A quick glance to his watch then he’s out the door, already walking down the path by the time Baekhyun gets up from his chair. Baekhyun almost thinks he’s been left behind but then Chanyeol deep voice resonates into the house from out by the gate which he’s leaning against, waiting. “Hurry up, Baekhyun,” he says.
It’s the first time Chanyeol has called him Baekhyun since they swapped nicknames, and Baekhyun has to pretend that it doesn’t sting.
--
Baekhyun goes straight to the Social Sciences library once they get to college, sighing with relief when he spots his friends around a table in the far back, the seat next to Kyungsoo vacant. He slips into it with a grin, glancing at each of friends in turn. None of them so much as look up at him.
“What’s up guys?”
Joonmyun is the only one to acknowledge his greeting, looking up mid-sentence to give him a smile before going back to whispering to Kai about how the IS-LM model works. The rest opt to ignore him, Minseok frantically copying down formulae and Sehun decorating a bunch of flashcards that hold more random drawings on them than actual information. He settles back in his chair with an elongated sigh, pulling out his books and getting to work quietly. It’s only when he angrily crosses a line through his work for the tenth time that Kai looks up, eyes dark and mouth twisted in annoyance.
“Stop being so noisy, Baek! I’m trying to study here.” Baekhyun lowers his eyes apologetically and Kai sighs.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, gesturing to the paper in front of Baekhyun. Baekhyun immediately covers it up and shakes his head. Kai gives a quick look to Kyungsoo and then, before Baekhyun can react, the paper is snatched out of his hands and tossed over to Kai.
“Regression?” he says, looking over the various graphs Baekhyun has drawn and then scribbled out.
Kyungsoo looks at him and frowns. “You still don’t understand that?”
Baekhyun clutches his hair in his hands, dropping his head onto the table dramatically. “I’m never going to understand it,” he wails, “I’m doomed!”
“We went over it last week, hyung,” Sehun pipes in, “Joonmyun hyung went through it all and explained everything really well.”
“Maybe if you came to the study sessions we texted you about...” Minseok says. When Baekhyun looks up, the ever-smiling boy is scowling at him.
“I’m sorry,” he says, taking the paper back and stuffing it inside his workbook. “I’ll just keep going over it myself. Sorry for disturbing you guys, I’ll go sit at a separate table.” He hasn’t even picked up his bag when Minseok hits him on the back of his head and Kai rolls his eyes with the kind of sass Baekhyun’s never known him to have.
“Don’t be stupid, Byunbaek,” Joonmyun says. His words are harsh, but he’s smiling. “We’ll go through it with you until you understand it. I’m sure one of us here can explain it in a way you get it.” Baekhyun goes to say something but Joonmyun puts a hand up, as if he already knows the words that are going to leave his mouth. “Don’t thank us. What are friends for?”
--
After three torturous hours and Joonmyun’s, Sehun’s, Minseok’s and even Kai’s best attempts, Baekhyun comes to the realisation that his brain just wasn’t made to comprehend the relationship between dependant and independent variables. His vision is swimming from all the graphs he’s looked at and his hands are covered in ink from Sehun’s blotchy pen that he’d used to cross through all of Baekhyun’s wrong answers. His friends had offered to continue to study session tomorrow, Joonmyun even going as far as offering to ask another boy from their course, Kyuhyun, to help him, but he’d refused, saying that he was sure he was just overwhelmed, that by tomorrow he’d understand it perfectly. Even as he said it, he knew it was a lie. Baekhyun will simply fail the question if it comes up, and if it’s happens to be the 60-mark question then Baekhyun will just fail the whole exam.
He trudges home with a heavy heart, knowing that his perfectly average GPA is about to take a trip to the dark side. He wouldn’t have noticed the package sitting on his doorstep if he didn’t trip over it, face meeting the wooden surface of his front door with a resounding smack. He curses the postman, the person who sent it, that person’s mother, their family, all the way back to their ancestors. He’s just finished mentally cursing the grandmother of the grandmother of the sister of the person-who-posted-it’s father when his eyes fall on the writing at the front. Instead of an address, there’s only a name, his name, scribbled on the brown paper with messy handwriting and glittery pink ink. He tears it open right there in his front yard, pulling out the pile of cards inside in confusion. They look similar to the ones Sehun had earlier. Flashcards.
He flips through them, each one with a graph or a formula drawn on one side and a few notes scribbled on the other. His eyes scan over the titles of the cards; linear regression, ordinary least squares, polynomial, nonlinear. Each diagram is drawn perfectly, a replica of its textbook equivalent. As he reaches the end of the pile, the cards get more difficult, dealing with things like isotonic regression. He remembers how Joonmyun had tried to explain it to him, shoving a bunch of formulae and rules at him and telling him to memorize them. This card breaks them down, labelling each component in small writing and explaining not only how to calculate the figures, but what they mean too. The n stands for the number of variables involved; the small i, according to the card, ‘an overly complicated way of saying you sub in the constraint given in the question.’
The card after that is blank. The one after reads ‘good luck’ in big, bright capital letters. On the second-to-last one is the name his closest friends call him: Byunbaek. The last one has his heart beating wildly in his chest. It’s written in black ink, scribbled in even messier handwriting than the rest of them. Two simple words, but Baekhyun can’t help the goofy grin that stretches across his face. Love, Superchan. Baekhyun finds himself wondering how he was lucky enough to find such a wonderful friend.
--
The day of his Macroeconomics exam, Baekhyun is a jittery mess. Wedged in between Joonmyun and Minseok on the bench outside the exam hall, he bites on his nails frantically, eyes glued to the clock as he counts down the final minutes before they are summoned in. The majority of the flashcards are tucked away at the bottom of his bag, inside his textbook. He’s spent every waking moment of the past week with them, memorising and rewriting all the information until he’s sure he could recite it all in his sleep. He’s practiced too, using the formulae and looking up regression graphs on the internet, identifying the type of correlation they show and rechecking against Chanyeol’s ‘correlation type’ flashcard. The last two of the pile are in his jeans pocket. He’s not technically supposed to have anything on his person during an exam, but he can’t think of anything majorly bad happening if a card with his name and another with Superchan on it are to be found on him.
He feels Joonmyun shift beside him and sees that the doors to the hall are now open. He gets up, whispering a quick good luck to the boys around him before going to the front where his seat happens to be the first in the row because no one’s surname ranks before his alphabetically. The rest of his friends are nearer to each other, Kai directly behind Joonmyun and Minseok two seats behind Kai. Sehun is in the middle of the last row, only a scattering of students in the seats behind his. Chanyeol would be behind him if he were in this class, Baekhyun thinks. He shakes his head and whispers regressions formulae under his breath before anymore random thoughts come to mind.
“Welcome, EC2010 students. Your exam today is two hours long and you must answer both questions. The first one counts for 40%, and the second one for 60%. We’ll be starting at 2 on the dot and finishing at 4.” A small pause and then, “You may begin now. Best of luck.”
Baekhyun breezes through the 40-marker, an essay explaining how macroeconomic policy can be used to increase a country’s GDP. He’s always been good at writing essays. Even though his macro knowledge isn’t the greatest, he namedrops a whole bunch of theories and organises it such a way that it looks like he knows what he’s talking about. Satisfied, he glances up at the clock and sees he has a little over an hour left. His heart pounds in his chest as he turns the page, eyes taking in the big, bold question at the top - just as he predicted, regression's come up. When he finds that he can answer it perfectly, he wants to scream at the top of his lungs. Too bad a move like that would get him thrown out. He settles for a whisper under his breath. “Thank you, Superchan.” He chooses to believe that the words somehow reach Chanyeol’s ears.
--
He sees Chanyeol again the next day, bright and early outside his front door. Instead of letting him in, Baekhyun jumps on top of him, pushing them both outside. When Chanyeol questions him, he just hugs him tighter, nuzzling his head against Chanyeol’s chest.
Chanyeol’s arms are awkward and stiff by his side. He thinks that maybe he should put them around Baekhyun, just so Baekhyun won’t fall. Baekhyun’s arms are currently wrapped tightly around his neck, but if he lets go, he’ll fall. And it’s a rather long drop from being six foot in the air to going back down to five. Hesitantly, he places a hand on the small of Baekhyun’s back. When Baekhyun does nothing to push him away, he sets the other one next to it, gently lifting Baekhyun up. Baekhyun’s legs go to wrap around his waist, and Chanyeol thinks he might just die on the spot.
“Baekhyun?” he questions. “Did I do something to deserve this?”
Baekhyun scoffs and pulls his head away, leaning back and looking up into the sky. Chanyeol does the same, only to end up looking straight into the sun.
“Ow, I think I’m blind! Shit, Baekhyun, you could have warned me or something.”
Baekhyun’s laughter rings loudly in his ears and Chanyeol realises that it’s the first time he’s hearing it.
“The sun is out,” Baekhyun says with a smile. Chanyeol just fakes a glare at him in return.
“Why, thank you, Captain Obvious.”
“Look at my face.”
Chanyeol’s eyebrows rise up at the strange command but he follows it anyway, noting how happy Baekhyun looks as he grins back at him. Maybe no-sun Baekhyun isn’t the prettiest version of Baekhyun after all; this version, the one who’s in his arms, smiling at him as the sun illuminates his face and brings out the gold flecks of his brown eyes, is pretty damn beautiful too.
“Is there something I’m supposed to be seeing?” he asks. As much as he’s enjoying this, it’s strange to see Baekhyun like this. So comfortable, so... care-free.
“Can you see the sun on my face?”
Chanyeol nods, still not getting it, and then suddenly Baekhyun leans in, all traces of a smile gone from his lips. When he speaks, his voice is the lowest Chanyeol’s ever heard it, breathy and soft and Chanyeol has to strain to catch his words; “Protect me, Chanyeol. You said you wouldn’t let the sun get to me.” Chanyeol doesn’t understand; Baekhyun’s the one who came out here willingly. He begins to head inside but Baekhyun’s rolling his eyes and then there’s a painful grip on the back of his neck as he’s pulled forward and Chanyeol almost forgets how to breathe when Baekhyun presses soft pink lips up against his mouth.
When he pulls back, Baekhyun is smiling in a different way to normal, and Chanyeol just really wants to whip out his phone and take a picture of his face and name it perfectbyunbaekhyun because that’s truly the only word that can even begin to describe the boy in front of him.
--
Baekhyun sees Chanyeol less and less over the next week. Chanyeol sends him a text two days after their kiss, saying he won’t be accompanying him to school anymore since he has to study and prefers to do so at home. Baekhyun ignores the pang of disappointment in his heart and sends a text back wishing him the best of luck and telling him to crush Yixing. He gets a smiley face in response and spends the better part of his morning staring at it.
He spends his own days inside his room, going through his accounting notes alone. Kyungsoo and the others text him about the new study group but he opts out this time. Unlike macro, accounting is something that Baekhyun is fairly good at, and he’s sure that he can easily get a good grade with a little practice. On the mornings when the sun is out, he keeps the curtains drawn. But when he is on his breaks, he goes to sit by the window, parting the fabric so that a small stream of light enters his room. The cap he stole from Chanyeol now lives on a shelf along with the rest of his accessories. He finds that when he wears it, the sun is a little more bearable.
He sits through his last exam with a massive smile on his face. It’s got little to do with the fact that the paper turns out to be the easiest one he’s sat in his life and more to do with the fact that not only him but Chanyeol as well will be free as soon as the final bell rings. The invigilator has barely dismissed them and he’s already running to the back where his bag is and then back to the front, out the door, across to the Engineering building where he can already see that the students are filing out. He slows down, eyes scanning the crowd for Chanyeol. The students around him disperse, some going home, some out to kick-start their week off from school with a celebration. His friends are back at Social Sciences, waiting for him. They’re supposed to go to a karaoke bar. Baekhyun wants to invite Chanyeol along.
Chanyeol is pretty much the last person to leave the building. He steps out clumsily and Baekhyun’s already half-way to his side when he notices that Chanyeol isn’t alone. Another boy, of the same height as Chanyeol, is behind him, hands on Chanyeol’s back as he pushes him forward. Baekhyun watches, confused, as Chanyeol continues to walk on, pausing every few steps. The boy shakes his head and goes to Chanyeol’s side, slipping his arm around Chanyeol’s waist and pulling Chanyeol’s arm over his own shoulder. The whole thing looks way too intimate and Baekhyun can’t help but feel like he’s not meant to be watching. But he can’t seem to tear his eyes away as the unknown boy and Chanyeol walk off together. Chanyeol doesn’t even notice him standing there. The sun beats down upon Baekhyun’s uncovered face.
--
Karaoke is horrible, just like he’s expecting it to be. The only reason he’s even bothered to show up is to stay in his friends’ good books. Joonmyun passes him a mic and he takes it reluctantly. He sings the words on screen so half-heartedly that Kyungsoo ends up punching him in the shoulder.
“You’re supposed to be my amazing high-note-reaching partner, Baek, what are you doing? You’re letting Joonmyun’s team win!”
He doesn't want to be Kyungsoo's partner. He wants to sing songs with Chanyeol, hear Chanyeol compliment him on his voice so that he can have something to show off about where Chanyeol has his intelligence and his personality and his smile and his everything. He wants to introduce his friends to the guy who's been taking up all his time recently so they can like Chanyeol as much as he does. He wants them all to laugh together at Chanyeol's stupid jokes and he wants to hear Chanyeol sing IU's Good Day in that deep baritone voice of his because even though it would be the funniest thing ever, he thinks that maybe, he'd prefer Chanyeol's version to the original because he really does love Chanyeol's voice.
"We're going to lose, Byun Baekhyun." Kyungsoo sounds like he's about to have an aneurysm.
“Yeah, well, life doesn’t always work out the way you want it to.”
The second punch, Baekhyun feels, is deserved.
--
Chanyeol’s avoiding his calls. It’s been three days since their last exam; there are only four days left until they’re due back at school. He normally shuts his friends out during holiday periods but his friendship with Chanyeol isn’t one he wants to put on hold. The tenth time he hears the welcome to the LG voicemail service message, he throws his phone across the room. It hits the wall with a loud crack and breaks into two uneven pieces. He cries over the bitter irony that now he needs Chanyeol more than ever. He’s an engineer, after all; he would know how to fix it.
The next day, he puts his SIM card into Joonmyun’s old Blackberry, making up an excuse about how he dropped his phone on the sidewalk and thanking him for the loan. The keyboard is easier to use than the annoying touch screen one his iPhone had and it’s thirteen sent messages later than he realises that maybe he’s overdoing it. He goes to sleep at 9pm that night. It’s pitch-black in his room and he can’t remember ever having felt so utterly low before.
Chanyeol doesn’t show up at his door on the first day back to school and Baekhyun almost skips even though the weather is dull and miserable and perfect. He sits through every class silently. Kyungsoo asks with a smile what he spend his week off doing; Baekhyun doesn’t grace him with a response. The next day is the same, the one after that too. His doorbell rings at 8am on Thursday morning and he almost trips down the stairs in the rush to answer it. The postman is standing on the other side, looking bored as he passes over a clipboard with a paper to sign. Baekhyun writes his name, signs it and writes a big fat ‘fuck you’ underneath, snatching the parcel from his hands and slamming the door in his face. He drops the unopened box at the foot of the staircase and crawls back into bed. A day of missed lectures won’t kill him, he reasons, and if it does, he can’t say he’d protest the action too much.
On Friday morning, he wakes up feeling pretty good. It’s literally pouring outside, the sky a dull grey even though it’s early morning. He checks the weather with a huge smile on his face. Rain all day, snow later on in the evening; not a single symbol of sunshine anywhere in sight. He pulls on a tank top, a t-shirt, a pair of shorts and runs outside with arms wide open. By the time he reaches school, he’s a soaking, shivering mess and the Social Sciences receptionist doesn’t even let him enter the building, glaring at him from the entrance and issuing him to the nurse.
“I’m not sick,” Baekhyun argues.
“You will be if you stay in those clothes.”
“As if you give a shit about whether I get sick or not.”
“You’re right, I don’t. But you’ll ruin the carpet with all that water.”
Baekhyun shakes his hair out all over the floor on his way out.
--
The nurse is nice. He knows that because he’s been before, back in first year with Kyungsoo when Sehun had accidentally cut his friend’s arm open. She’d patched up Kyungsoo’s arm slowly and gently, patiently putting up with all of his non-stop wailing and even giving him a sticker for being a ‘brave boy!!’. He knows that she doesn’t deserve to put up with his shit so he decides he’s going to be nice. But when he walks into the nurse’s room, it’s not her. The woman sat in the seat looks older, meaner. She gives Baekhyun and his wet clothes a double-take and is quick to judge him, displeasure written all over her face.
“What do you want?” She doesn’t even have the decency to feign politeness. Baekhyun pulls his wet outer top off and throws it at the desk in front of her face with a smirk.
“Get me a replacement.”
At least she has the decency to look embarrassed, Baekhyun thinks with a laugh as she scrambles out of her seat and disappears into the back where lost property is located. He looks around the room, wondering what happened to the nice nurse. He hopes she didn’t get fired. Mean nurse is back in a few minutes, holding a lime-green sweater, black pants and a fur coat that looks suspiciously like the one Sehun lost last winter. He takes the items and starts pulling them on.
“Not here!” the nurse screams.
Baekhyun ignores her and does up the zip on the coat. He still needs to change his pants but he figures he can do that in the boys’ room or something. Baekhyun is shameless, but not that shameless. He gives her a cheeky salute and is leaving the building when he hears a familiar voice. He listens for a few seconds, wondering if he imagined it, but there it is again. The nurse is waving her hands at him, telling him to go, but he pays her no mind. The voice... Chanyeol? He starts walking in the direction of it, pushing past a door marked No Entry and down a corridor until he reaches the room the voice is coming from. It’s definitely Chanyeol, he thinks as he presses his ear against the door. But what is Chanyeol doing in the nurse’s room? Mean nurse is about five seconds from busting him, and in the small amount of time he's got left he strains his ears, hoping to hear something, anything that could explain what’s going on. He even considers going inside, but the right to that decision is lost when the door is opened from the other side.
He freezes as he comes face to face with the nice nurse, who’s looking at him with a mixture of confusion and recognition. Behind her is Chanyeol, topless. Next to him is the same boy who stole Chanyeol away from Baekhyun before, back on the day of their last exam. His hand is on Chanyeol’s naked shoulder. Baekhyun turns on his heel and bolts out of the nurse's building as fast as he can. Three distinct voices are clearly shouting out his name; he chooses to ignore them all.
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