Molten Wax [3/3]
One week later, Yifan was looking in disgust at the price tags of the sweaters around him. Somehow, Chanyeol had convinced him to go shopping with him to find a present for his friend, Kyungsoo, since his birthday was coming up soon. All Yifan remembered about him was that he had eyes that looked like they could dig up his deepest, darkest secrets with one glance.
“Excuse me, do you need assistance?” A carefully groomed employee asked, biting her lips a little as she smiled at him.
“No thank you,” he said.
“Are you sure? Are you looking for something in particular?” The coy way she phrased it made sound like she was saying like me in response to her own question.
“Um,” he said, not used to how forward she was.
“He’s not,” a cool voice cut in. Chanyeol’s gaze was chilly as he put his hand on the back of Yifan’s elbow. “Now if you’ll excuse us. Everything in this store is too expensive anyway.”
The woman deflated a little and she pursed her lips. As they walked away, Chanyeol’s grip still firm, Yifan heard her mutter under her breath that contained the words all the good ones and taken.
Bewildered, Yifan instinctively followed Chanyeol’s brisk steps. He wasn’t blind. Chanyeol’s spine was rigid with possessiveness, and even the way his fingers were curled around his elbow made them seem like lovers to outsiders. Once they walked a certain distance from the store, Yifan dug his heels in, stopping Chanyeol as well.
“What - ” was that was what he wanted to say, but then Chanyeol turned to him with a bright grin.
“Let’s get lunch. I’m hungry,” he said. “Didn’t you always want to go to that place with the piglet on the front window?”
Yifan let it go, partly because there was an almost desperate tone in Chanyeol’s voice. “It’s a boar, not a piglet.”
“Potato, po-TA-to.” His hand was still there, and Yifan was all too aware of it. He swallowed, but pretended like his heart wasn’t threatening to pound through his chest.
“Come on, it’s that way. We’re walking in the opposite direction.”
“Oh.”
A group of teenage girls gave them a side-glance and giggled to each other. “They’re so cute together,” one of them whispered, and Yifan heard her anyway because dragon hearing or whatever.
Delusional girls. He still couldn’t help the helplessly smitten look from entering his eyes though as Chanyeol went on about some other stores they could check out after lunch. He was probably the most delusional of them all.
-
“How is it?” Yifan leaned back on the kitchen counter as he watched Chanyeol’s reaction carefully.
“Really good.” Chanyeol’s tongue swiped out to lick away some of the sauce around his mouth. The room suddenly felt a little warmer than before. “Is this seriously your first time making pasta?”
“Yup. I’m a genius,” Yifan said, tasting the sauce, and then putting in a little more salt before turning off the fire.
“Yifan…” Chanyeol, all of a sudden, sounded so lost that he immediately turned to him. He saw the phoenix standing dejectedly, eyes hooded.
“What?” He breathed.
“I don’t want to but,” here Chanyeol took a quick inhale, almost like a hiccup, “I think I’m going to have to break up with Baekhyun.”
Unable to move a muscle, Yifan asked, “Why?”
“When he told me that he loved me, I couldn’t say it back.”
Yifan took a step closer. “That’s not any reason to break off a relationship, Chanyeol.”
Chanyeol’s eyes darted around the room, and he shook his head. “No, that’s not it - I - ”
“What?” He asked quietly. Chanyeol looked up and met his eyes. Yifan almost froze because his eyes were frightened.
“I - ” Here the words seemed to be stuck in his throat. Then he looked back down onto the floor, and sighed. “This is going to hurt him so much.”
Frustrated, but not wanting to push Chanyeol any further, Yifan wordlessly pulled him into his embrace. Chanyeol’s arms tightened around him and Yifan could feel him deeply inhaling against his shirt.
There was a fast staccato rhythm against his ribs, and Yifan wasn’t sure if it was his heartbeat or Chanyeol’s.
-
The week after Chanyeol and Baekhyun broke up, Chanyeol seemed almost subdued. Sometimes Yifan caught him glancing at him with melancholy rimmed around his eyes. Not sure what was wrong, but needing to see Chanyeol’s one-eyed smiles, Yifan did his best to distract him. That seemed to work, because soon enough, they were back to the way things were.
Or close to how they were, Yifan amended, because Chanyeol was clinging onto him even more. What really drove him crazy was when Yifan tried to initiate contact with him and Chanyeol would jolt away a little to avoid it.
New Year’s was approaching, and they had a tradition of eating duck noodle soup on the last day of the year. Chanyeol blew on the surface of the liquid and the steam flew into Yifan’s face. He didn’t dare do the same thing because there were random times where flicks of flame came out of his mouth when he exhaled. Lighting soup on fire was never a good idea.
Yifan picked up the duck meat with his chopsticks and stared at it, as if he was trying to intimidate it into cooling. Chanyeol hid a chortle behind his hand at the sight. Mock-glaring at him, Yifan took his first bite and chewed, wincing a little when little pieces of duck bone got stuck in his teeth.
Chanyeol liked to make slurping noises when he ate noodles, and Yifan found that it was an almost reassuring sound to him now. Like background noise, in a way. Lifting his head up, Chanyeol tilted his head sideways in a questioning manner at Yifan’s look.
“You eat with your face,” Yifan commented, reaching for a napkin to wipe some soup from Chanyeol’s face. Their eyes made contact, and Chanyeol was still when Yifan gently cleaned the corner of his mouth. There must’ve been some kind of strange expression on Yifan’s face, or something in his eyes that made Chanyeol’s eyes widen a little as if he had gotten an epiphany and a tiny oh escaped his mouth like a sigh.
Yifan blinked in confusion. There was a light in the phoenix’s eyes as he kept staring at Yifan, looking like he had just been hypnotized and zapped by lightening at the same time. Before Yifan could ask, Chanyeol broke their eye contact and continued on slurping the noodles.
That incident went unexplained until a month passed. Yifan was a little unnerved whenever he looked up those past few days to see Chanyeol looking right back at him. He was still doing that when they were walking in the park close to their apartment, the snow crunching under their shoes.
Yifan sat down on the closest bench after wiping away the snow with his gloved hand. He settled down with a sigh of relief. The tree branches around them were drooping under the weight of the snow, and not many people were out and about like they were. Chanyeol, after making fresh footprints on the snow, sat down next to him.
“I wonder why we feel the cold even though we’re supposed to be fire creatures,” Chanyeol said, huddling close to Yifan.
“Probably because we’re more human than anything,” Yifan said. Chanyeol was pulling Yifan’s glove off on his left hand. He traced the lines on Yifan’s palm, looking fascinated.
“Your hands are always warm, though,” Chanyeol said, and then looked up. Yifan had been looking straight at Chanyeol’s face, and he had been caught in the act. He held his breath as their gazes tangled together.
“I can’t believe I never noticed before,” Chanyeol said, and then rapidly blinked, which indicated that he hadn’t meant to say that.
“Huh?” Yifan’s condensed breath came out to be a white cloud in the cold air, and mixed with Chanyeol’s breath.
“That you were always looking at me.” Yifan’s hand tensed. “And only at me.” Chanyeol’s eyelashes fluttered as he looked back down on their hands. He continued: “And whenever I needed you, you were there.” He fit their fingers together so that they intertwined.
Yifan’s heart had jumped so high it was in his throat. Perhaps that was why he couldn’t say a word.
“How long, Yifan?” Chanyeol had looked back up, and he pulled them closer using their connected hands. “How long since you - ?”
“I think it was ever since we built our first snowwoman together,” Yifan said. He gave a shaky laugh, never looking away from Chanyeol’s flame-lit eyes. “Maybe even before that.”
At that, Chanyeol’s breath openly hitched, and he closed the distance between them. Yifan closed his eyes, gasping against Chanyeol’s lips before wrapping his arms around Chanyeol’s waist to pull him flush against his body. Chanyeol tasted like the blueberry muffins he ate for breakfast, and underneath that was a layer of flavor that was distinctly Chanyeol. It was a kiss that lasted for only two seconds, simple and chaste, and yet Yifan felt his whole body shaking from the heat and electric currents running through his veins.
That was it. No cheesy confessions. Just Chanyeol pulling away, eyes a little dark with desire and something that Yifan saw in his own eyes sometimes when he looked into the mirror. Something like love. Silently, they sat side by side, regaining their oxygen and hands tightly clasped together.
When they were walking home, hands slightly swinging in the air between them, Chanyeol turned to him with an eye-smile and said, “Yifan? You know that I’m always going to need you, right?”
Stomach still jittery with nerves, he said, “Yeah.” He had never felt so comfortably warm before.
-
Yifan paused for a moment to trace his eyes over Chanyeol’s profile, before joining him on the couch. The TV was playing Shinhwa Broadcast, and Eric was doing some kind of weird dance with a wig on. Chanyeol, without taking his eyes off the screen, shifted closer to Yifan. Yifan wrapped himself around Chanyeol so that they molded together in all the right places. Chanyeol gave a little sigh of content, and put his head back on Yifan’s shoulder with familiarity.
“Do you want to go on a date?” Yifan asked. Chanyeol’s laughter vibrated against his chest.
“But we’ve been on plenty of dates already, Yifan.”
“None of them were official dates,” he argued. Chanyeol gave him an amused little grin, before pecking his mouth. Yifan leant in for more, and Chanyeol obliged with several longer, toe-curling kisses.
“Fine. I’ll let you take me out to an expensive restaurant. And you’ll open the door of our crappy convertible like the gentleman you are and then you’ll ask for the reservation that you made in the restaurant. And then we’ll sit down and you’ll stare in horror at the prices and we’ll end up eating at a hot dogs stand in the end anyway.”
Yifan couldn’t help himself from smiling, mouth stretched from mirth. The amount of pure adoration he held for this man curled up against him was going to explode out of him at this rate. “Sounds like our type of date.”
“Mhm.” Chanyeol’s head lolled sideways as Yifan pressed open-mouthed kisses onto his neck. “You’re distracting me from Shinhwa.”
“Mission accomplished,” Yifan said, and then held Chanyeol closer to him.
“Oh yeah,” Chanyeol murmured. “Lu Han called earlier today. Right before I was going to leave for work.”
Yifan paused. “What did he say?”
“He and Minseok got engaged.”
“About time.”
Chanyeol put his hand over Yifan’s. “That’s what I said. We’re invited to the wedding. You’re the best man.”
Yifan groaned, head tipping forward on Chanyeol’s shoulder. “He’s going to make me go through hell, asking me which color goes best with which kind of flower and gah. I bet he wants there to be flying koi fish floating around the reception, too.”
“I can imagine that.” Chanyeol twisted out of Yifan’s grasp and rested his knees on the sides of Yifan’s legs. He planted his hands on both sides of Yifan’s head and grinned, a sly glint in his eyes. “What about for our wedding?”
It was said with a tint of humor, like he was joking, but Chanyeol’s eyes were serious. Yifan’s adrenalin sky-rocketed above the roof. He put his hands on Chanyeol’s hips and said, “I haven’t even proposed yet.”
“You don’t need to,” Chanyeol said. “There better be lots of cake at our reception.”
“Okay,” he said, and pulled Chanyeol down and kissed the living daylights out of him.
-
Yifan wasn’t sure how they got to this point. He had a flushed Chanyeol on his bed, chest heaving from their heavy make-out session. Yifan had not been home for four days because he was sent to another city by his company. The moment he got home, Chanyeol was on top of him, body shaking from need and want. Resistance had been futile, and Yifan had been waiting way too long for this anyway.
He pulled Chanyeol’s shirt up to his chest, leaning in to skim his lips against Chanyeol’s stomach. Chanyeol was watching him with half-lidded eyes and his stomach tensed when he breathed on it. Flickers of flame were dancing on Chanyeol’s exposed skin and embraced the fire exhaled through Yifan’s mouth.
“Yifan,” Chanyeol said, a yearning in his voice. He dragged his hand through Yifan’s hair roughly, and then grabbed the back of his neck to pull their lips together hungrily.
Nipping on Chanyeol’s bottom lip, Yifan realized that he was never going to get enough of him. A surprised moan emerged from Chanyeol’s mouth when their hard cocks rubbed against each other. Yifan shakily breathed in and froze.
“No.” Chanyeol’s hand clenched on Yifan’s shirt. He looked sinfully sensuous. “Don’t stop. Please.”
His control, which was thin before, stretched and snapped. He gave Chanyeol’s collarbone a gentle kiss and then helped him to sit up. All of his attention was focused on getting that goddamn shirt off Chanyeol, and the phoenix realized that and helped him in tugging it over his head. Chanyeol growled, trying to tug Yifan’s shirt off but set it on fire instead. They both watched it disintegrate into ashes.
“Well,” Chanyeol said, quirking up the edges of his mouth, “That take cares of it.”
“Good thing I didn’t like that shirt,” Yifan said. Chanyeol had taken advantage of his shirtless state to run his hands reverently up and down his sides. Yifan let out a groan, and then grabbed Chanyeol’s hands, eyes dark. “You’re driving me crazy.”
“Good,” Chanyeol said. He leaned forward, tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth teasingly. “I achieved my purpose.”
Yifan latched his mouth onto Chanyeol’s right nipple and was awarded with a yelp. He grinned up devilishly, and then grazed his hand over Chanyeol’s belt. Chanyeol encouraged him with a jerk of his hips, and Yifan pulled the zipper down.
“Have you - ?” Yifan asked. Chanyeol wound his hand into Yifan’s hair and shook his head.
“Never that far.”
Then a moment later, they were both divested of their jeans, legs twined together. They were pressed against each other like they were each other’s oxygen supply. The dragon inside Yifan purred in pleasure, and he swore that the phoenix in Chanyeol responded with a satisfied trill. Yifan leaned down and left teeth marks on the bottom of Chanyeol’s neck, dragging his tongue across the hickey after. Chanyeol’s breathless laughter shook them both.
“Possessive much?” Chanyeol asked. Yifan gave him a smirk, and pressed their lips together. He broke away to open the bottom drawer next to his (well, more like theirs now that Chanyeol usually slept next to him every night because apparently his mattress was more comfortable. Or so Chanyeol claimed) bed and took out a bottle of lube and condoms.
“You’re prepared. I approve,” Chanyeol said. Yifan pressed three fingers against his lips and Chanyeol instinctively opened his mouth. Yifan closed his eyes, overwhelmed with the sensation of Chanyeol’s tongue dancing and coating saliva onto his fingers. He pulled them out, and Chanyeol gave him a cute little pout at the loss of contact and Yifan leant in to heatedly kiss him again. His arms were almost shaking with the effort of holding himself up already. Chanyeol’s back arched when Yifan’s fingertips circled his anus.
“Relax,” he murmured before pushing one finger in. Chanyeol gasped at the sensation before wriggling on his finger. “Ugh. Who does that?”
Chanyeol’s teeth showed in his laughter, but he looked nervous still. “More, Yifan.”
Complying, Yifan slowly put two more in one by one. Chanyeol’s arms were squeezing the nape of his neck. Yifan kissed his nose, which wrinkled at the affectionate peck and he could already see the you’re so cheesy Yifan in Chanyeol’s eyes, before continuing. He made scissoring motions with his hands, nerves catching up to him now that the realization that they were finally doing it for the first time. He had no experience in this field, and he was only following what the informational books told him and what if he was doing this wrong? The thought made him almost hyperventilate.
Chanyeol gazed up at him and said, “I think you should relax, too.”
Yifan breathily laughed. “How do you feel?”
Chanyeol’s forehead scrunched up as he thought. “It feels really weird. But not in a bad way. And - huhnnghh!”
His body jolted when Yifan experimentally pushed his fingers inwards more forcefully.
“Good? Bad?” He asked worriedly.
“Good,” Chanyeol gasped. “Definitely good.”
Yifan licked his own lips before pulling his fingers out. Chanyeol exhaled at the loss, and his pupils were dilated with want.
“I’ll help you with that,” Chanyeol said, picking up the condoms and carefully ripping open the package. His eyebrows were scrunched together as he took the protection and tried to put it on Yifan’s erect cock. Yifan helped guide his lover’s shaky hands, trying to keep his eyes from rolling back at the sensation of Chanyeol’s hands brushing against his dick.
He poured liberal amounts of lube on it, and then clenched his teeth as he slowly pushed into Chanyeol. His body was trembling because Chanyeol around him felt so mind-numbingly amazing. Chanyeol’s breath was coming in short, like he had just ran a marathon, and he clenched around Yifan. He almost came right there.
Instinct took over as he moved, trying to take his time as he pulled out a little and then thrusting in. Chanyeol’s hair surrounded him like a halo as he jerked with Yifan’s movements. Their mouths crashed together, frantic, and Chanyeol desperately swallowed the flames licking out from Yifan’s breaths. He was making sounds without meaning to, little moans and then a holy fuck when Yifan pressed against his prostate. Shuddering at the delicious sight of Chanyeol utterly debauched on his sheets, he moved faster, feeling like he was going to burn up from the flames enveloping them and the molten lava boiling in his blood. There was so much pleasure it was almost painful, and Chanyeol was half-sobbing from the over-stimulation.
When Chanyeol was approaching his peak, he grabbed Yifan’s hand and intertwined their fingers. With the other, he jerked himself off. He tipped his head back as his orgasm made his whole body tremble, and Yifan came from that after giving one exhausted last thrust. They lied with Yifan on top and still inside Chanyeol for a good minute or two before Yifan summoned up the energy to pull back out. He winced when he noticed the stickiness clinging to their skins and the mess they left behind.
“I think we need to buy fireproof sheets,” Chanyeol said with a curled up smile. His eyes reflected complete contentment and a glow almost shone out of them. Yifan looked down, and couldn’t even be bothered to care that his soft cotton sheets were mostly half-burnt. The fire that they had ignited was dissipating into air like it was never there in the first place.
“Shower first,” Yifan said, trying to get up, and ending up flopping face-first onto the pillow. “Never mind. I need some time to recover.”
“So do I.” Chanyeol, with some difficulty, turned and splayed his arm over Yifan’s waist. “By the way, I get to top next time.”
“You’re already thinking about next time? Haven’t gotten enough?” Yifan moved his head sideways so that he was looking directly into Chanyeol’s eyes, which were giving off mischievous sparks.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of you,” Chanyeol said, and then paused. “Oh gods, after sex is making me cheesy like you.”
Yifan lightly laughed and deposited a butterfly kiss against Chanyeol’s lips. “Cheesy is good. I like cheese.”
Now Chanyeol rubbed his head against Yifan’s chest, complaining, “Now you’re making me hungry.” Yifan was still laughing.
-
The full moon that night was particularly bright. The moonlight against Chanyeol’s face accentuated his eyelashes, and Yifan pressed his lips against Chanyeol’s just because he could. Chanyeol leaned into him, gazing right into his soul, eyes wild. The addicting smell of molten wax that always followed Chanyeol around enveloped both of them. All Yifan could think was what did I do to deserve you? His phoenix gave him a brilliant smile.
“Let’s fly,” Chanyeol said. Yifan already felt like he was soaring in the air whenever he was by his phoenix’s side, but he just held Chanyeol’s face with one hand and rubbed his thumb against his cheek like he did years ago.
“Let’s,” Yifan agreed.