[exo] why like this | one
why like this | baekyeol (side kaisoo, taoris) | nc17 | humor, college au
in which baekhyun is a classical pianist with social anxiety problems and chanyeol has no major.
a/n: originally written for itachibana13 for the Run and Gun fic exchange.
jupiter-sized thank-you's to my bro konnie for her support and being willing to have a mutual cry-fest when the deadline got too near. you're the best, truly. hugs and stars in my eyes for chang (changdictator) for being so enthusiastic about this story and making me want to finish it! you're too kind for words. more love and hugs and chocolate and the korean pop idol of your choice to all my dear friends that listened to me bitch and moan about this story over the past few months, and a special, yunho-in-a-cake thank you to melissa, who inspired me to write this in the first place -- my dear little sister, all of this happened because i fell in love with a stranger at the library and you saw a story in it; your friendship means so much to me and ily.
The title comes from a song by Teebs and the two piano pieces I mention baekhyun working on are Chopin’s Ballade No. 4, Op. 52 in F minor and Rachmaninoff’s Prelude No. 5, Op. 23.
most of baekhyun's character was taken from my own experiences at music school, so i hope you enjoy, and after such a long author's note, i think i should probably say, "on with the show!"
Why Like This
“Um. Baekhyun. What are you doing.”
Baekhyun looked at Jongin shiftily from behind the fort of books he had carefully constructed in front of himself on the table about five minutes earlier.
“I’m studying,” he said seriously.
Jongin nodded and tapped the end of his pencil on his textbook thoughtfully. After a few more minutes of watching Baekhyun shifting shiftily in his chair and creeping creepily around the edges of the stacks of books that blocked him from the rest of the library like the world’s worst spy, he asked, “What are you studying then? You don’t even have a book open.”
Baekhyun snorted loudly, almost blowing his own cover before ducking down behind the books again.
“Don’t be stupid. I’m not studying for school,” he hissed, as though it were the most outlandish idea in the world. “I’m a music student. This is the first time I’ve seen the inside of the library since tours our freshman year.”
Jongin looked down mournfully at his accounting homework and almost missed the way Baekhyun leaned forward through a gap between the towers, breathing, “I’m studying him.”
“What.”
“Come here.” Baekhyun waved him over and Jongin, intrigued, scooted next to him and crouched to peer between the stacks.
“Him?” Jongin nearly yelped, making half the library turn around and look at them, and Baekhyun dragged him down by the collar until he was practically sitting on the floor. Whispering, he tried again: “You’re spying on ‘Yeol the Troll?”
“Don’t call him that! It’s not his fault he’s tall.”
“He’s not tall,” Jongin said ominously. “He towers.”
“Well so does that Chinese exchange student but I don’t see you giving him a nickname.”
“You mean Wu Fan the Man? I call him that because he’s awes - ”
“A mean nickname.”
“Fine. You’re spying on Park Chanyeol?”
The boy in question, Park Chanyeol, was completely oblivious to anything going on around him, let alone the two boys a few tables down whispering about him. He reached up, ruffling his own hair as he stared down hard at the papers in front of him, his huge glasses slipping down his nose.
Jongin jumped as Baekhyun let out a girlish exclamation that sounded something like, “KYAAAAH!” while pushing his fists into his cheeks adorably at the sight.
“I’m going to be honest and say, as your friend, this is hard to watch.” He went back to sit in his chair, shaking his head. “Never thought I’d see the day where you fell for a classics major.”
“I thought he did biomedical engineering?” Jongin shrugged and Baekhyun ignored him, trying to find a more comfortable position in his chair. “And I’m not spying. I’m just … waiting for the opportune moment to approach him. Someday, that moment will come. And I’ll be here.”
Chanyeol pushed his glasses back up his nose, scrunching it up at the same time and Baekhyun bit his lip to stop himself from making another embarrassing sound.
“Okay, here’s what you do,” Jongin started reasonably. “You go up to him, ask him something stupid like where the bathroom is or if you can borrow a book or something, and then say thanks and introduce yourself. Boom: you know each other.”
Baekhyun looked at Jongin as though he were trying to explain nuclear physics. “It’s not that easy, Jongin.”
Jongin sighed patronizingly, stuffing his notebook back inside his bag and standing up. “No, but it really is.”
He walked over to a boy sitting in the corner of the room, a baby-faced thing chewing on the end of his pencil thoughtfully, with the swagger of someone who knew how good-looking they were and asked him easily, “Hey, could you tell me what time it is?”
The boy’s eyes went even wider than before, probably taking in all of Jongin’s lean frame and solicitous eyes as they steadfastly ignored the clock right in front of him, hanging over the other boy’s head.
“Um. I think it’s about 3:30?”
“Awesome, thanks. By the way, I’m Jongin. I was about to go grab a coffee. Feel like joining me?”
He smiled then, and Baekhyun could practically see the boy’s spine melt into jelly. “Sure. I just - “
“Ugh,” Baekhyun muttered darkly from his perch, scowling at the two of them. “Lucky guess.”
Jongin helped the boy - Kyungsoo, apparently - gather his stuff, causing Baekhyun’s eyes to roll again, and walked out of the library with him, gesturing wildly at Baekhyun to go talk to Chanyeol from behind Kyungsoo’s back.
Once they were gone, he sighed and sat back in his chair, dejected.
Stupid Jongin. Of course it wasn’t that easy. Jongin’s smiles just had the same effect as those deep-water fish stings where they made you feel all pleasant and mushy right before you went to your death, and that was the kind of thing that really shouldn’t be used on unsuspecting -
“Excuse me,” a low voice jolted him out of his wallowing and Baekhyun jumped when he saw Chanyeol’s bispected face peering down at him.
So maybe Jongin was kind of right: he towered a little.
“Are you using these?”
“Uh.” Baekhyun looked at the stacks of books in front of him on the table. “Yes. I am using all of these books. For. A thing. I mean, a project. Yes.”
His eye caught the binding of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare propped on top of a bound collection of The Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology and Plain English for Lawyers and felt himself flush.
“Well, do you think I could borrow this one for a bit?” He held up a huge textbook entitled Fundamentals of Physics and did a sort of half smile that only reached one of his eyes. “I only need it for a couple minutes. Accidentally left my copy at home.”
Baekhyun was sure he could feel his heart in his throat and he sucked in a breath. “Yeah. I don’t need that one though. Take it.”
“Great, thanks! I’m Chanyeol, by the way. I think I’ve seen you around before?”
He held out his hand for Baekhyun to shake. This was the opportune moment he’d been waiting for!
“I - “
Whatever brilliant reply Baekhyun had been going to make was cut off by his phone going off, the dulcet tones of “Gee” sounding loudly in the quiet of the library. He lunged at his bag to turn it off and Chanyeol covered the lower part of his face with the book, so Baekhyun wasn’t sure if he was laughing or embarrassed to be seen talking to the boy whose phone had gone off in the library.
“Right, well. I’d better get back.”
Definitely embarrassed, Baekhyun decided, and he wilted in his chair as Chanyeol walked back to his seat, long legs taking him further and further out of his reach.
That opportune moment he’d been looking for? He’d just missed it.
In true artistic fashion, Baekhyun wallowed in his failure through the beginning of the next semester, still thinking about it sullenly as he waited for Jongin at their coffee shop on the last day before classes started again.
“Hey,” Jongin said as he slid into the chair across from Baekhyun. “Sorry I’m late. I was at the library.”
“The library.” Baekhyun narrowed his eyes to show how much he disliked the library, simply because it had been witness to his failure. “The semester hasn’t even started yet. What were you doing there?”
“I had some work the finish up. I was too busy with stuff at home to do it there.”
“Too busy having Skype sex with Kyungsoo is more like,” Baekhyun muttered sourly and Jongin’s head whipped around.
“What did you say?”
“I said ‘too busy sending texts to Kyungsoo is more like.’”
Jongin nodded disbelievingly and then went to go order himself a drink. The boy that Jongin had picked up so smoothly in the library two months before had, to Baekhyun’s surprise, stuck around. As a general rule, the people Jongin dated lasted an average of two weeks, so the fact that Kyungsoo was even still speaking to him was mind-blowing. That he had actually heard Jongin refer to him as his boyfriend once barely even computed.
“So what classes do you have this semester?” Jongin slid back into his seat holding some sugary drink with a ridiculous twirl of whipped cream on the top.
“Counterpoint and music history and um, lessons. Collaborative piano. The usual. Ugh,” he put his head down on the table after a moment, “I almost forgot. I have calculus tomorrow morning. Been putting it off this whole time.”
“Suck it up. We all have to take it.”
“8AM academic class.” He smacked his forehead mournfully on the surface of the table. “I am going to die.”
“Relax. Maybe Park Chanyeol will be in your class. He’s a math major or something, isn’t he?”
“I thought he was in International Studies? And besides, I don’t want to be in a class with him,” Baekhyun said, looking at him as if he were insane. “What if he remembers what happened?”
He had spent most of the end of last semester avoiding Park Chanyeol, who, now that he had seen Baekhyun completely embarrass himself, seemed to suddenly show up everywhere Baekhyun tried to go in some sort of very backwards type of stalking.
Jongin sighed. “You’ve got to let that go. That was last November.”
“I can’t let it go.” Baekhyun leaned in and hissed, “He’s brilliant and perfect and probably thinks I’m a complete moron who hoards books, and does projects involving cross-cultural psychology and - and physics, and then breaks the holy silence of the library by leaving my phone on!”
Jongin looked around the coffee shop as if to make sure no one had heard. “I am embarrassed to know you.”
Baekhyun sneered, “Yes, well I’m embarrassed being seen with you in that jacket but I’m not - “
“Hey, sorry I’m late.” Kyungsoo rushed up to their table, smiling cheerfully. “My new roommate needed to be picked up from the airport and his plane was delayed.” Jongin shook his head, smiling and slipping his hand into Kyungsoo’s back pocket, and Baekhyun gagged exaggeratedly. “Hi Baekhyun! How was your vacation?”
“You invited Kyungsoo on our coffee date?” Baekhyun asked, sounding offended. They both stared at him. “Jongin, I thought we really had something special together.”
Jongin snorted. “The last time we had something special together was that project we did for freshman English.”
“Fine. I’ll just go talk to Junmyeon then. At least he values my company.”
“No, he just puts up with you because you live together and you’re the one that owns the N64.” He tugged Kyungsoo down for a kiss, missing the rude gesture Baekhyun threw at him before he walked out of the shop, pouting.
He really had the most rubbish friends. It was bad enough that he couldn’t stand most of the other music students. But really, he thought, tugging his hood up over his head to keep his ears warm, Jongin was the worst kind of -
Something large and very solid walked smack into him and sent him stumbling backwards, butt smacking down hard onto the pavement. Pain rocketed up his spine, making him cry out.
“Ow! Motherfu - “
“I am so sorry! I was in a hurry and didn’t see you!” Baekhyun’s litany of swear words caught in his throat as he followed the arm of the hand that had been offered to him to see the concerned face of Park Chanyeol. “Are you okay?”
“I,” Baekhyun said, the throbbing pain in his tailbone suddenly disappearing at the endearing sight of Chanyeol’s eyes through his glasses as he crouched down to Baekhyun’s place on the ground. Practically lifting him off his feet while helping him up, Chanyeol attempted to dust Baekhyun off, chattering away all the while.
“Sometimes I just don’t see people and trip over them and Wu Fan says sometimes he has the same problem so we think it’s because we’re so tall and some people just aren’t in our field of vision and - “ He seemed to catch Baekhyun’s slightly dazed look, because Chanyeol was standing really close to him and still had his hands oh Baekhyun’s shoulder under the pretense of trying to get snow off and even though he couldn’t quite identify what it was, Baekhyun had suddenly noticed that Chanyeol smelled really good. “Um, are you sure you’re okay?”
“Oh. I’m. Um. I’m fine.” Baekhyun shook himself a little and reached to pick up his backpack from where it had landed earlier, attempting to smile and probably failing. “Well, I gotta - gotta go practice. Eight hours to do today and I haven’t even started!”
“Practice what?” Chanyeol looked at him curiously through his glasses and Baekhyun swallowed hastily.
“Piano.”
“Ohhhhh, that’s so cool! Is that your major?” He plowed on before Baekhyun could do anything more than nod, “I play the drums sometimes but I haven’t got my set out this semester because Wu Fan - he’s my roommate - hates all the noise and - “
“Your roommate is Wu Fan the Man?”
Chanyeol stared at him and Baekhyun resisted the urge to slap his hand over his mouth. “… People actually call him that? Wow. I thought that was just a joke.”
Baekhyun damned Jongin to hell and glanced at his naked wrist with wild eyes. “Look at the time!”
The mental imagine he was having of Chanyeol playing drums was making him flustered and overheated and if he didn’t leave immediately, he would probably embarrass himself again and if that happened Baekhyun was positive he was going to dissolve into a puddle of pure mortification, because, oh my god, how was this his life. “Must be off!”
“Oh, okay. Bye!” Baekhyun saw Chanyeol wave out of the corner of his eye and then call, “Wait, I never got your name!”
Luckily, Baekhyun chose that exact time to duck around a corner of a building, knocking his head back against the brick and swearing.
This whole having-a-crush-on-Park-Chanyeol thing was really not going well.
It was lucky that Baekhyun’s roommate, Junmyeon, was a morning person. Normally he hated it and wished death on Junmyeon every time the older boy “accidentally” dropped a pan in the kitchen before the sun even had a chance to rise, but Baekhyun could honestly say that his roommate’s loud morning habits were the only reason he made it to his first 8AM math class of the semester on time.
In one of his rare moments of mothering, Junmyeon had shoved a travel mug of coffee in his hand before he left, and so the probability that he might stay awake for class had been increased to a positive percentage.
He took a seat five minutes before class was supposed to start, choosing one near the back that wasn't near other people and hopefully out of the teacher’s line of sight. Taking out his notebook, he rested the side of his face on it mournfully and closed his eyes. He was just managing to drift off into a light doze when he felt someone tap him on the shoulder.
He groaned and snapped without moving, “What.”
“Mind if I sit here?"
“Does it look like I ca - “ He opened his eyes as the persons voice sank in, praying that he had heard wrong.
Of course, he hadn’t.
Park Chanyeol was grinning down at him, eyes crinkling behind his glasses and if Baekhyun hadn't been in the middle of a total crisis he would have noticed the adorable case of bed-head the taller boy was sporting.
Chanyeol seemed to take his wide-eyed look as agreement and slid into the seat next him. "Byun Baekhyun, right?"
Baekhyun slowly lifted his head, peeling his cheek off of the notebook. He squinted at Chanyeol. “How do you know my name?”
Chanyeol shrugged, taking his textbook out. "I asked around."
“What.”
“Yeah, I asked if anyone knew a male piano major, short and kind of awkward.”
"!!!" Baekhyun started and Chanyeol grinned at him again, pushing his glasses up his nose.
“You’re pretty cute when you're sleepy, you know?"
"I - “ Baekhyun attempted to collect himself. “I am a pianist! We’re not built for mornings. Musicians are creatures of the night!"
The taller boy laughed as the teacher called the class to order saying, “Since it's the first day of class, we'll take it easy. Just a review of basic integrals to wake up your brains!"
Pouting, Baekhyun clutched at his travel mug. "I feel victimized by being forced into taking this class, you know."
Instead of offering him some comfort like Baekhyun though he should, Chanyeol snorted loudly into his textbook.
It was an unspoken tradition that Baekhyun’s group of friends all got together on Wednesday nights to play video games together. Since the divorce five years before, Baekhyun’s parents, and now his step parents had developed the handy habit of buying him whatever he asked for, and so when he and Jongin joined forces, they had basically every game and gaming system they could get their hands on.
Tonight though, was Kyungsoo’s first time with the whole rest of the group and so they were all taking it easy with some Super Smash Bros.
Or at least everyone else was.
Baekhyun, on the other hand, was ranting, slowly driving himself closer to an aneurism as he recounted the incident before math class that morning, controller forgotten and poor Kirby motionless on the screen as the fighting continued around him.
"... And then," Baekhyun finished darkly, “he laughed at me."
“You know," Jongin said, eyes still on Link as he jumped up the side of the building, "he really sounds too normal for you. I feel like I should warn him that you’re a freak or something."
Baekhyun scowled. “He said I was short!"
“You are short, Baekhyunnie.”
"I'm the same height as Kyungsoo!”
"I know, and Kyungie is short too. But he’s cute, so it’s okay.” Jongin paused in pulverizing Kyungsoo’s Pikachu onscreen and pinched his cheek while everyone else gagged.
Sehun sighed and had Samus kick Kirby off the side of the building, using up Baekhyun’s second-to-last life.
“Hey!” Baekhyun finally seemed to remember he was supposed to be playing and glared. Sehun smirked.
“Here’s what it sounds like to me," Junmyeon said from his place on the back of the couch, where he was watching and eating all the popcorn. “He went out of his way to find out your name, sat next to you by choice, and actually tried to talk to you before noon - something even your mother doesn’t even attempt. I'd say he probably likes you. So cut him a little slack, okay?"
Baekhyun felt his eyes widen and he dropped the controller, saying shrilly, “You think he likes me?”
Junmyeon sighed, stuffing another handful of popcorn into his mouth and cheering as Sehun had Samus methodically punch the shit out of Kirby until he fell off the edge of the screen again.
“Is it always like this?” Kyungsoo asked, sounding torn between amusement and concern.
“Nah,” Jongin said absently as Baekhyun slowly slid from his chair onto the floor, eyes still wide and feeling like his whole world was breaking around him. “Sometimes I’m Mario instead.”
So Park Chanyeol was in his math class.
It really wasn’t a big deal.
It was just - Chanyeol insisted on sitting next to him, saying that he didn’t know anyone else in the class, and he would earnestly take notes, even though it was practically the crack of dawn (as far as Baekhyun was concerned), and his handwriting was full of messy loops and scrawls, and sometimes he would make cute little doodles in the margins, and Baekhyun was really on the way to finding every little thing about Park Chanyeol attractive and it was kind of starting to drive him crazy.
“Hey.”
There was a nudge to Baekhyun’s ribs and he tore his eyes away from the spot on the board that he’d been staring at for the last five minutes in an effort not to ogle Chanyeol, who was looking particularly adorable that morning in a blue sweater that was rolled up to show his forearms.
A coffee travel cup was pushed in front of him and Baekhyun blinked.
“You seem a little out of it,” Chanyeol was smiling at him, all his teeth showing, and his glasses had slid down his nose a little. “I don’t know how you like your coffee, but maybe this’ll help?”
Baekhyun blinked at him again. “Um. Thanks.”
Picking up the cup cautiously, he took a sip and grimaced, sticking out his tongue. He couldn’t stand sugar in his coffee. In fact, it kind of made him want to throw up.
“What’s wrong?”
Chanyeol looked genuinely concerned and so Baekhyun hitched a smile back on his face. “Nothing!”
But Chanyeol continued to look at him, eyes widening cutely behind his glasses - not cutely, Baekhyun reminded himself, there was a reason Chanyeol was called ‘Yeol the Troll’ and part of it was because he was kind of unintentionally creepy - and so he steeled himself and took another big drink from the coffee cup.
Chanyeol seemed satisfied and went back to looking at the board, leaving Baekhyun with a mouth full of sugary coffee that his throat refused to swallow. He absolutely was not going to spit it out, not back into the cup or onto the table. The coffee puffed out his cheeks a little. He was a man, he could do this.
Baekhyun pushed the coffee to the back of his throat and gulped it down in one swift movement, barely stiffing a quiet gag.
He followed along in the textbook halfheartedly, fiddling absently with the cup so it looked like he might be drinking it until Chanyeol moved to take it from him. Their fingers brushed and Chanyeol’s eyes flicked to his with a strange smile that sent heat zinging straight to the pit of Baekhyun’s stomach. He felt a blush start working its way across his cheeks and luckily, the professor began announcing their assignment for next class. He hoped Chanyeol had looked away before he had a chance to see.
He methodically put away his pen and textbook in his bag, watching Chanyeol out of the corner of his eye. The taller boy didn’t seem to notice and dragged a hand through his hair while frowning down at his planner. Baekhyun ignored the thought that that was possibly the cutest frown he had ever seen and stood up to pull on his coat and hat
“Come on.” There was a tug on his sleeve and Baekhyun looked up at Chanyeol strangely, trying to figure out how he had gotten his things packed up so quickly. They walked out of the building together, morning cold biting at Baekhyun’s cheeks, and were at the bottom of the steps when Chanyeol said, "I figure you probably want something to wash down what I gave you." He grinned. “Not a big fan of sugar in your coffee?"
Baekhyun’s shoulders sagged. “Was it that obvious?"
“A bit." He smiled again, this time more widely, so that one of his eyes sqwunched behind his glasses and jerked his head to the side. “This way.”
Baekhyun had to walk a little faster than normal to keep up with Chanyeol’s long strides as they walked together down the sidewalk, both their hands stuffed in their pockets until they reached the entrance of the cafe.
Chanyeol held the door to the school coffee shop open and Baekhyun was reminded again just how much taller than him Chanyeol was, his arm holding the door a good foot about Baekhyun’s head.
The cafe was fairly crowded with students getting their first cup of coffee before classes and as they walked up to the counter, Baekhyun caught sight of Jongin, Kyungsoo, Sehun and some boy he didn’t know across the cafe. Jongin’s jaw was practically on the floor it was hanging open so far and Baekhyun resisted the urge to make a face at him. Following his boyfriend’s look, Kyungsoo spotted Baekhyun and Chanyeol together and laughed, while Sehun simply smirked and whispered something into the other boy’s ear.
“What do you want?" Chanyeol put his hand on Baekhyun’s arm to get his attention and he whipped his head around, nearly smacking into the other boy’s chest in the process. He steadied himself by clutching Chanyeol collar and their breathing seemed to stutter in unison.
They just exhaled into each other’s airspace for a minute, and Baekhyun avoided looking at the dip in Chanyeol’s pretty lower lip like the plague. That smell he had noticed before, the really good one, was back and it was making his brain a little fuzzy.
“Um.” He let go of Chanyeol’s jacket and took a step back. “Just plain coffee is fine. But you don't have to - “
Chanyeol waved him off as he paid and there was an extremely unsubtle whistle from across the cafe.
He was going to kill Jongin, and no one was ever going to find the body.
“Hey are those your friends?” Chanyeol asked, looking over in the direction of the whistle as they waited to pick up their coffees. “We can go sit with them if you - ”
“No!” Baekhyun said loudly and Chanyeol looked a little taken aback. He tried again. "I mean, um. Let’s not. They’re all idiots anyway."
There was that little smile again, the one that seemed to say that Chanyeol thought he was a little baffling. “Right. Well, I - “ He looked at his watch he picked up their cups and made a face. “Ugh, I’ve got to run to my next class.”
“Oh.”
“No, I - look. My friend Yixing is having a party this weekend.” Fumbling with a pen, he scribbled something on the side of Baekhyun’s coffee cup. “You should come. Your friends can come too, if you want.”
Chanyeol handed him the cup, and then his face split into a devastatingly wide smile, all teeth and gums, and Baekhyun bit back the stupid giggle that threatened to come out of his mouth because there was nothing about the situation that should make him act like a schoolgirl.
Reaching up, Chanyeol’s eyes shifted to something above Baekhyun’s head. He flicked at the ball on the top his hat. “Hope I’ll see you there.”
He watched Chanyeol go, raising his hand in a sort of halfhearted wave before stopping himself because he probably looked like an idiot.
“Baekhyun! Over here!” Jongin was waving him over and he made his way to their table, frowning.
“Grabbing each other in the cafe, eh?” Jongin waggled his eyebrows.
“He’s too tall for you. I’m surprised he even noticed a garden gnome like you,” Sehun smirked at him and the boy next him smacked his arm.
“Did he give you his number?” Kyungsoo asked, looking curious.
Baekhyun looked at the phone number Chanyeol had written on his to-go cup. “He invited me to a party this weekend.”
Jongin sat back, looking satisfied. “Told you he liked you.”
“Jongin,” Kyungsoo frowned, “that was Junmyeon who said that.”
“Whatever. So are you going to go?”
“Oh, you have to!” The boy next to Sehun clapped his hands excitedly as Sehun said, “If you do you have to take us, you know that right?”
Baekhyun sat down in an empty chair and said, sounding a little shell-shocked, “He flicked my hat.”
Jongin rolled his eyes and pulled Kyungsoo in closer to his side. “Whatever, you know you loved it.”
There was never any real question of whether Baekhyun was going to go to the party, not after Jongin knew about it anyway.
The real question was exactly how much he was planning on drinking before he got there.
“If you get there already wasted,” Jongin advised him while in the process of mixing himself another drink, “then you won’t feel nearly so self-conscious and hopefully end up banging him in the bathroom before midnight.”
Sehun shot him a disgusted look from his spot on the couch with the boy from earlier that day, whose name was apparently Luhan, and muttered, “Raised by wolves, I swear.”
Junmyeon took away the bottle that Jongin was holding and said, “Or, you could do the sensible thing, and have a drink or two to loosen your nerves and stop before you do something stupid.”
“Bunch of squares.” Jongin shook his head and did a final mix to his drink. He held it out to Baekhyun. “Here. This should do it.”
He stared down at the glass and then thought of how Chanyeol and how their fingers had brushed when they had reached for the same coffee cup, his incredibly wide smile, the way he seemed to tower over Baekhyun whenever they stood together. When he got to thinking about his own awful propensity to freeze up in social situations, he took a drink.
“Holy shit,” Baekhyun gagged feeling a little bit like his throat was going to burn out of his body. “What the hell did you put in that, Jongin?”
“Hopefully enough alcohol to stop you from doing that thing that you do when you get uncomfortable socially.”
“What?”
“You know, that thing.” Jongin made a face and looked at Junmyeon for confirmation. “Where he acts like the Queen Mother who’s just been asked an uncomfortable question about her sex life.”
Baekhyun sputtered into his glass. “I do not!”
Junmyeon shrugged a little. “He… kind of has a point.”
“It’s really irritating,” Sehun chimed in.
Baekhyun made one of his “!!!” noises and looked around, feeling very offended.
“Just,” Jongin patted him on the shoulder in consolation. “Just drink more.”
Baekhyun felt a little bit like he had his own entourage when he walked through the front door into the party with five people in tow.
"I don't know who your boyfriend is, but this place is fucking nice!”
Jongin was always excited by parties, energized by the crowds of people and the dancing and alcohol, but in this case, he happened to be right. The apartment was really nice; with an entryway leading to a large living room, another room that seemed to be a dance floor, and a hallway that looked like it lead to the kitchen. There were a fair amount of people and Baekhyun craned his neck, trying to spot Chanyeol in the crowd.
“Chanyeol doesn’t live here. His friend Yixian or something does." Then Baekhyun sputtered, head swiveling around as he realized what Jongin had said. “And he's not my boyfriend!"
“Took you long enough. I forgot what a lightweight you are."
His friend was probably right. The edges of everything were a bit fuzzy and his limbs were doing that light thing that they always did when he was just on the edge of drunk. Baekhyun looked around again, trying to decide exactly how bad it was that he was this tipsy when he had only just gotten to the party.
Junmyeon was already talking to a pretty girl over on one of the couches and Sehun and his (new?) friend Luhan had disappeared into the party practically the minute they’d walked in the door. Kyungsoo had Jongin’s arm around his shoulders but he was talking to a tall guy that Baekhyun vaguely recognized as the captain of the basketball team, and also apparently Chanyeol’s roommate, Wu Fan.
Jongin, of course, was too busy laughing at Baekhyun to notice.
“Why are you such an asshole?” Baekhyun pouted and Jongin clapped him on the shoulder encouragingly.
“That is because I am being forced into pursuing a college degree that I hate by my tyrannical father - “
"That's a bit dramatic," Baekhyun muttered, having met Jongin’s father before and while he had found him a bit stern and humorless, he was hardly tyrannical.
Jongin went on as if he hadn’t heard, " - and so I compensate by being sarcastic, having lots of meaningless sex, and drinking like a fish."
“How do you explain Kyungsoo then?"
Jongin smirked his old playboy smirk, the one Baekhyun had been seeing at parties for years, right before he picked up some lucky, unsuspecting person and disappeared into the night. “Small lapse in judgment."
“Hey,” Kyungsoo said into Jongin’s ear and the bad boy expression he had had on softened so quickly it might as well have been made of butter. Lapse in judgment Baekhyun’s ass. He was willing to bet Jongin liked Kyungsoo a great deal more than he would ever be willing to admit. “Wu Fan says there's a DJ in the other room. Wanna go dance?"
Kyungsoo bit his lip and looked at his boyfriend imploringly, eyes wide, and Jongin shoved Baekhyun’s shoulder, saying, “Your lover boy’s just spotted you. Don’t come looking for me because I'm busy. And don’t forget to use protection!”
Baekhyun sputtered wordlessly for a few seconds before he registered that Chanyeol was walking over, a wide smile on his face.
He was dressed in some impossibly tight jeans that made his legs look even longer than Baekhyun remembered them being and his blue shirt set off the little bit of red in his hair. He wasn’t wearing his glasses and the shiny, rounded shape of his eyes made something flutter in Baekhyun’s stomach.
“Hi.” Chanyeol seemed to look him up and down and Baekhyun felt suddenly extremely self-conscious in his T-shirt.
“Um. Hi." He fiddled with the hem of his shirt a little and felt the tips of his ears burn. Still smiling, Chanyeol’s fingers curled around his wrist to stop him from fiddling and he tugged a little.
“Come on.” He walked towards a group of three or four boys talking together and said, “This is my friend Yixing. And my roommate Wu Fan you've probably heard of, Minseok and Jongdae.” They all nodded as Chanyeol pointed them out. “Guys, this is Baekhyun.”
“Ohhhh so he's the one - “ Jongdae began tactlessly and Yixing kicked him in the shin.
“Thanks for coming, man," Yixing shook his hand and then turned to Chanyeol, asking, “Have you seen Luhan? He said he was coming with someone - “
A light bulb went off inside Baekhyun’s head: Luhan was that boy Sehun had been bringing around. “Oh, him. He’s here with my friend Sehun. I think they went to go dance or something."
Chanyeol’s friends all looked at him a little strangely and Baekhyun tried to correct himself, stuttering, “Or. I mean, I think it was him. Maybe. But uh."
Chanyeol put a light hand on the small of his back. “That must be the programming major he’s been talking about lately. Baekhyun, did you want something to drink?"
"I," he stared as Chanyeol steered him away, an annoyed look on his face.
“Sorry about them. You're not the only one who has idiots for friends apparently." He frowned and surge of affection for Chanyeol’s stupid facial expressions rose in Baekhyun’s chest. He had never met someone with such an expressive face in his life.
“No, it’s fine. I’m - ”
Baekhyun stumbled over his words for a second, having a hard time figuring out how to explain that he wasn't so good with people because he’d spent most of his life in a practice room with a piano or being carted back and forth by his mother for music lessons and competitions. The friends he did have, like Jongin or Sehun, had known him for long enough that they'd learned to ignore most of his quirks, and while he really, really liked Chanyeol, it was just that he didn’t quite know how to show it -
But before he could get any of that out, Chanyeol was accosted by a large group of grad students he thought might be from Chanyeol’s department, whatever that was (economics? Political science? Pre-law? The fact that he still didn’t know was beginning to verge on ridiculous) and on an intensely uncomfortable impulse, Baekhyun slipped away towards the kitchen, hoping there was a balcony in the back where he would be allowed to smoke.
It was cold out, making him glad he hadn’t had a chance to take off his coat and as he slipped quietly out the door, he was grateful that everyone else seemed to be staying inside because of the chill. Watching his breath mingle with the air, Baekhyun slipped a cigarette out of the pack in his pocket and lit it, leaning back against the railing and sighing.
It was stupid of him to have come.
He had never really been good with large groups of people and Chanyeol was too - too - too something. It made him so uncomfortable he could practically feel his skin crawl.
Taking another drag, he tried to distract himself by going over the most difficult part of the Chopin Ballade he was supposed to have ready by his next lesson. He was midway through, humming it to himself as best he could with the cigarette glowing between his fingers, when the door to the balcony opened.
“Baekhyun?”
He froze with the cigarette halfway to his mouth at the sound of Chanyeol’s voice.
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
The long list of things that they didn’t know about each other made Baekhyun’s eyes roll as he said, “I’m a classical pianist. Of course I smoke. That’s what we do.” He frowned and amended hastily, “Besides practice, of course.”
“Must have missed that stereotype somewhere,” Chanyeol said, walking over to where Baekhyun was leaning up against the railing. “You okay?”
“I,” Baekhyun started and then that thing happened again, where all the thoughts he was having got tangled up on the way to his mouth, leaving him tongue-tied. Chanyeol studied the light above them intently, giving him a chance to pick his words. No one had ever done that for him before and it kind of sent Baekhyun for a loop. His mother certainly had never let him get in a word edgewise and his father was about as good at communicating as Baekhyun was, while his friends weren’t really in the habit of asking hard questions that required a lot of soul searching.
He took a breath. “I’m not very good at parties.”
Chanyeol nodded, still not looking at him, and Baekhyun was sort of glad.
“Jongin is always taking me to them, but I usually leave when he starts doing his pick-up routine, so I don’t have to talk to too many new people. You - you’re someone that people like when they meet and you can talk to someone you don't know without making a fool of yourself. And you know that day in the library when you asked me for that book? I wasn’t even studying. I had come by to give something to Jongin and I stayed to watch you like some kind of creep."
"I know."
“What?” Baekhyun remembered how carefully he had constructed his fort of books under the disapproving watch of Jongin and frowned.
"I saw you behind all those books.” Chanyeol laughed almost to himself, “I actually wasn't even taking physics last semester."
“Then you - you came over on purpose?" Baekhyun was gob smacked. “Why?”
Then Chanyeol did one of his wide smiles, the one that made his eyes crinkle and always stunned Baekhyun a bit, and shrugged. “Because I didn't think you would ever come talk to me."
He could feel his mouth hanging wide open, cigarette slowly turning to ash in his hand as Chanyeol went on, "I'd seen you once or twice before and always wanted to talk to you."
Baekhyun suddenly remembered Jongin saying, ask him something stupid like if you can borrow a book or something, and then introduce yourself, and resisted the urge to put his face in his hands because he hated himself and his friends and his stupid fucking life. Instead, he asked incredulously, “But why?”
Chanyeol’s cheeks were a little pink but Baekhyun wasn't sure if that was from the cold or something else. He looked down at him, eyelashes low. “I thought you had really pretty eyes."
Baekhyun felt his mouth “O” in surprise before he managed to finally school his face into its usual unimpressed expression. “Is that all?"
Chanyeol was standing much closer now, causing Baekhyun to have to tip his head back to look him in the eye. Leaning down a little so Baekhyun could feel his warm breath on his face, Chanyeol shook his head. “You have really pretty lips too."
And Baekhyun would have scoffed at the obvious line, but he was too caught up in the way Chanyeol’s lashes lowered the rest of the way as he leaned down and pressed their mouths together, soft and warm. Their noses bumped a little because of the angle until Chanyeol shifted slightly, tilting and catching Baekhyun’s bottom lip between his and then he became suddenly very aware that he was being kissed by Park Chanyeol.
Rather than kissing back, he went very still and Chanyeol pulled away, looking concerned. Baekhyun’s mind had gone kind of hollow with the realization and he let out an absent, “Oh.”
Kissing.
Chanyeol licked his lips and the color had left his cheeks. “Oh?”
Park Chanyeol.
Baekhyun was seventy-five percent sure that any moment now, he was going to have an apoplectic fit.
There was something, it might have been irritation, rising in his chest as the events of the last few months came back to hit him on the back of the head with a heavy thunk.
Oh.
Flustered, Baekhyun poked Chanyeol in the chest and said accusingly, “You like me!”
He looked a little taken aback. “I - is that a problem?”
Baekhyun floundered around for what to say, trying to decide between, of course not are you an actual idiot and I don’t even know what your major is, before giving up. Instead, he curled his fingers into Chanyeol’s open collar, rising up onto the balls of his feet - practically onto his toes with his head tipped all the way back - so that he could kiss him.
It had been a long time since Baekhyun had kissed someone, years even, and so when the taller boy didn’t immediately respond, there was a part of him that thought wildly, oh God, am I doing this right? Have I actually forgotten how to kiss someone?
But then Chanyeol made a small sound, it wasn’t even a moan or a whimper (it sounded a bit like relief actually), and the noise slid down somewhere behind his navel, coiling there hotly as he traced Baekhyun’s hairline, his jaw with his fingertips. Baekhyun felt himself go limp, neck straining to keep his lips in contact with Chanyeol’s and he huffed, a small cloud of mist puffing between their faces.
“Too tall,” he mumbled against Chanyeol’s lips, breathing in the scent of his skin as it mixed with the cold night air. Baekhyun tugged at the shirt collar gripped tightly in his fingers. “Get down.”
Smiling, Chanyeol ducked again, this time slipping his tongue into Baekhyun’s mouth and his hands under his jacket to pull him closer, their chests rubbing together.
“Ha!” Baekhyun jumped at the exclamation from the porch door and turned to glare at Jongin. His friend called back inside obnoxiously, “Hey Sehun, come look at this! Our Baekhyunnie is making out with ‘Yeol the Troll!”
Baekhyun was halfway through giving his friend the finger, when Chanyeol began to laugh, pulling him in tightly for a hug. Baekhyun’s cheek ended up pressed into Chanyeol’s shoulder as the taller man buried his nose into his hair.
“Baekhyunnie,” he thought he heard Chanyeol croon into his ear and felt something in his heart swell big enough to burst, making his chest ache.
He frowned. “Don’t call me that.”
“Shhh,” Chanyeol gripped his waist a little tighter and a delicious shiver ran up and down Baekhyun’s spine as Chanyeol’s breath brushed against his neck. “Don’t ruin it.”
part two
in which baekhyun is a classical pianist with social anxiety problems and chanyeol has no major.
a/n: originally written for itachibana13 for the Run and Gun fic exchange.
jupiter-sized thank-you's to my bro konnie for her support and being willing to have a mutual cry-fest when the deadline got too near. you're the best, truly. hugs and stars in my eyes for chang (changdictator) for being so enthusiastic about this story and making me want to finish it! you're too kind for words. more love and hugs and chocolate and the korean pop idol of your choice to all my dear friends that listened to me bitch and moan about this story over the past few months, and a special, yunho-in-a-cake thank you to melissa, who inspired me to write this in the first place -- my dear little sister, all of this happened because i fell in love with a stranger at the library and you saw a story in it; your friendship means so much to me and ily.
The title comes from a song by Teebs and the two piano pieces I mention baekhyun working on are Chopin’s Ballade No. 4, Op. 52 in F minor and Rachmaninoff’s Prelude No. 5, Op. 23.
most of baekhyun's character was taken from my own experiences at music school, so i hope you enjoy, and after such a long author's note, i think i should probably say, "on with the show!"
Why Like This
“Um. Baekhyun. What are you doing.”
Baekhyun looked at Jongin shiftily from behind the fort of books he had carefully constructed in front of himself on the table about five minutes earlier.
“I’m studying,” he said seriously.
Jongin nodded and tapped the end of his pencil on his textbook thoughtfully. After a few more minutes of watching Baekhyun shifting shiftily in his chair and creeping creepily around the edges of the stacks of books that blocked him from the rest of the library like the world’s worst spy, he asked, “What are you studying then? You don’t even have a book open.”
Baekhyun snorted loudly, almost blowing his own cover before ducking down behind the books again.
“Don’t be stupid. I’m not studying for school,” he hissed, as though it were the most outlandish idea in the world. “I’m a music student. This is the first time I’ve seen the inside of the library since tours our freshman year.”
Jongin looked down mournfully at his accounting homework and almost missed the way Baekhyun leaned forward through a gap between the towers, breathing, “I’m studying him.”
“What.”
“Come here.” Baekhyun waved him over and Jongin, intrigued, scooted next to him and crouched to peer between the stacks.
“Him?” Jongin nearly yelped, making half the library turn around and look at them, and Baekhyun dragged him down by the collar until he was practically sitting on the floor. Whispering, he tried again: “You’re spying on ‘Yeol the Troll?”
“Don’t call him that! It’s not his fault he’s tall.”
“He’s not tall,” Jongin said ominously. “He towers.”
“Well so does that Chinese exchange student but I don’t see you giving him a nickname.”
“You mean Wu Fan the Man? I call him that because he’s awes - ”
“A mean nickname.”
“Fine. You’re spying on Park Chanyeol?”
The boy in question, Park Chanyeol, was completely oblivious to anything going on around him, let alone the two boys a few tables down whispering about him. He reached up, ruffling his own hair as he stared down hard at the papers in front of him, his huge glasses slipping down his nose.
Jongin jumped as Baekhyun let out a girlish exclamation that sounded something like, “KYAAAAH!” while pushing his fists into his cheeks adorably at the sight.
“I’m going to be honest and say, as your friend, this is hard to watch.” He went back to sit in his chair, shaking his head. “Never thought I’d see the day where you fell for a classics major.”
“I thought he did biomedical engineering?” Jongin shrugged and Baekhyun ignored him, trying to find a more comfortable position in his chair. “And I’m not spying. I’m just … waiting for the opportune moment to approach him. Someday, that moment will come. And I’ll be here.”
Chanyeol pushed his glasses back up his nose, scrunching it up at the same time and Baekhyun bit his lip to stop himself from making another embarrassing sound.
“Okay, here’s what you do,” Jongin started reasonably. “You go up to him, ask him something stupid like where the bathroom is or if you can borrow a book or something, and then say thanks and introduce yourself. Boom: you know each other.”
Baekhyun looked at Jongin as though he were trying to explain nuclear physics. “It’s not that easy, Jongin.”
Jongin sighed patronizingly, stuffing his notebook back inside his bag and standing up. “No, but it really is.”
He walked over to a boy sitting in the corner of the room, a baby-faced thing chewing on the end of his pencil thoughtfully, with the swagger of someone who knew how good-looking they were and asked him easily, “Hey, could you tell me what time it is?”
The boy’s eyes went even wider than before, probably taking in all of Jongin’s lean frame and solicitous eyes as they steadfastly ignored the clock right in front of him, hanging over the other boy’s head.
“Um. I think it’s about 3:30?”
“Awesome, thanks. By the way, I’m Jongin. I was about to go grab a coffee. Feel like joining me?”
He smiled then, and Baekhyun could practically see the boy’s spine melt into jelly. “Sure. I just - “
“Ugh,” Baekhyun muttered darkly from his perch, scowling at the two of them. “Lucky guess.”
Jongin helped the boy - Kyungsoo, apparently - gather his stuff, causing Baekhyun’s eyes to roll again, and walked out of the library with him, gesturing wildly at Baekhyun to go talk to Chanyeol from behind Kyungsoo’s back.
Once they were gone, he sighed and sat back in his chair, dejected.
Stupid Jongin. Of course it wasn’t that easy. Jongin’s smiles just had the same effect as those deep-water fish stings where they made you feel all pleasant and mushy right before you went to your death, and that was the kind of thing that really shouldn’t be used on unsuspecting -
“Excuse me,” a low voice jolted him out of his wallowing and Baekhyun jumped when he saw Chanyeol’s bispected face peering down at him.
So maybe Jongin was kind of right: he towered a little.
“Are you using these?”
“Uh.” Baekhyun looked at the stacks of books in front of him on the table. “Yes. I am using all of these books. For. A thing. I mean, a project. Yes.”
His eye caught the binding of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare propped on top of a bound collection of The Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology and Plain English for Lawyers and felt himself flush.
“Well, do you think I could borrow this one for a bit?” He held up a huge textbook entitled Fundamentals of Physics and did a sort of half smile that only reached one of his eyes. “I only need it for a couple minutes. Accidentally left my copy at home.”
Baekhyun was sure he could feel his heart in his throat and he sucked in a breath. “Yeah. I don’t need that one though. Take it.”
“Great, thanks! I’m Chanyeol, by the way. I think I’ve seen you around before?”
He held out his hand for Baekhyun to shake. This was the opportune moment he’d been waiting for!
“I - “
Whatever brilliant reply Baekhyun had been going to make was cut off by his phone going off, the dulcet tones of “Gee” sounding loudly in the quiet of the library. He lunged at his bag to turn it off and Chanyeol covered the lower part of his face with the book, so Baekhyun wasn’t sure if he was laughing or embarrassed to be seen talking to the boy whose phone had gone off in the library.
“Right, well. I’d better get back.”
Definitely embarrassed, Baekhyun decided, and he wilted in his chair as Chanyeol walked back to his seat, long legs taking him further and further out of his reach.
That opportune moment he’d been looking for? He’d just missed it.
In true artistic fashion, Baekhyun wallowed in his failure through the beginning of the next semester, still thinking about it sullenly as he waited for Jongin at their coffee shop on the last day before classes started again.
“Hey,” Jongin said as he slid into the chair across from Baekhyun. “Sorry I’m late. I was at the library.”
“The library.” Baekhyun narrowed his eyes to show how much he disliked the library, simply because it had been witness to his failure. “The semester hasn’t even started yet. What were you doing there?”
“I had some work the finish up. I was too busy with stuff at home to do it there.”
“Too busy having Skype sex with Kyungsoo is more like,” Baekhyun muttered sourly and Jongin’s head whipped around.
“What did you say?”
“I said ‘too busy sending texts to Kyungsoo is more like.’”
Jongin nodded disbelievingly and then went to go order himself a drink. The boy that Jongin had picked up so smoothly in the library two months before had, to Baekhyun’s surprise, stuck around. As a general rule, the people Jongin dated lasted an average of two weeks, so the fact that Kyungsoo was even still speaking to him was mind-blowing. That he had actually heard Jongin refer to him as his boyfriend once barely even computed.
“So what classes do you have this semester?” Jongin slid back into his seat holding some sugary drink with a ridiculous twirl of whipped cream on the top.
“Counterpoint and music history and um, lessons. Collaborative piano. The usual. Ugh,” he put his head down on the table after a moment, “I almost forgot. I have calculus tomorrow morning. Been putting it off this whole time.”
“Suck it up. We all have to take it.”
“8AM academic class.” He smacked his forehead mournfully on the surface of the table. “I am going to die.”
“Relax. Maybe Park Chanyeol will be in your class. He’s a math major or something, isn’t he?”
“I thought he was in International Studies? And besides, I don’t want to be in a class with him,” Baekhyun said, looking at him as if he were insane. “What if he remembers what happened?”
He had spent most of the end of last semester avoiding Park Chanyeol, who, now that he had seen Baekhyun completely embarrass himself, seemed to suddenly show up everywhere Baekhyun tried to go in some sort of very backwards type of stalking.
Jongin sighed. “You’ve got to let that go. That was last November.”
“I can’t let it go.” Baekhyun leaned in and hissed, “He’s brilliant and perfect and probably thinks I’m a complete moron who hoards books, and does projects involving cross-cultural psychology and - and physics, and then breaks the holy silence of the library by leaving my phone on!”
Jongin looked around the coffee shop as if to make sure no one had heard. “I am embarrassed to know you.”
Baekhyun sneered, “Yes, well I’m embarrassed being seen with you in that jacket but I’m not - “
“Hey, sorry I’m late.” Kyungsoo rushed up to their table, smiling cheerfully. “My new roommate needed to be picked up from the airport and his plane was delayed.” Jongin shook his head, smiling and slipping his hand into Kyungsoo’s back pocket, and Baekhyun gagged exaggeratedly. “Hi Baekhyun! How was your vacation?”
“You invited Kyungsoo on our coffee date?” Baekhyun asked, sounding offended. They both stared at him. “Jongin, I thought we really had something special together.”
Jongin snorted. “The last time we had something special together was that project we did for freshman English.”
“Fine. I’ll just go talk to Junmyeon then. At least he values my company.”
“No, he just puts up with you because you live together and you’re the one that owns the N64.” He tugged Kyungsoo down for a kiss, missing the rude gesture Baekhyun threw at him before he walked out of the shop, pouting.
He really had the most rubbish friends. It was bad enough that he couldn’t stand most of the other music students. But really, he thought, tugging his hood up over his head to keep his ears warm, Jongin was the worst kind of -
Something large and very solid walked smack into him and sent him stumbling backwards, butt smacking down hard onto the pavement. Pain rocketed up his spine, making him cry out.
“Ow! Motherfu - “
“I am so sorry! I was in a hurry and didn’t see you!” Baekhyun’s litany of swear words caught in his throat as he followed the arm of the hand that had been offered to him to see the concerned face of Park Chanyeol. “Are you okay?”
“I,” Baekhyun said, the throbbing pain in his tailbone suddenly disappearing at the endearing sight of Chanyeol’s eyes through his glasses as he crouched down to Baekhyun’s place on the ground. Practically lifting him off his feet while helping him up, Chanyeol attempted to dust Baekhyun off, chattering away all the while.
“Sometimes I just don’t see people and trip over them and Wu Fan says sometimes he has the same problem so we think it’s because we’re so tall and some people just aren’t in our field of vision and - “ He seemed to catch Baekhyun’s slightly dazed look, because Chanyeol was standing really close to him and still had his hands oh Baekhyun’s shoulder under the pretense of trying to get snow off and even though he couldn’t quite identify what it was, Baekhyun had suddenly noticed that Chanyeol smelled really good. “Um, are you sure you’re okay?”
“Oh. I’m. Um. I’m fine.” Baekhyun shook himself a little and reached to pick up his backpack from where it had landed earlier, attempting to smile and probably failing. “Well, I gotta - gotta go practice. Eight hours to do today and I haven’t even started!”
“Practice what?” Chanyeol looked at him curiously through his glasses and Baekhyun swallowed hastily.
“Piano.”
“Ohhhhh, that’s so cool! Is that your major?” He plowed on before Baekhyun could do anything more than nod, “I play the drums sometimes but I haven’t got my set out this semester because Wu Fan - he’s my roommate - hates all the noise and - “
“Your roommate is Wu Fan the Man?”
Chanyeol stared at him and Baekhyun resisted the urge to slap his hand over his mouth. “… People actually call him that? Wow. I thought that was just a joke.”
Baekhyun damned Jongin to hell and glanced at his naked wrist with wild eyes. “Look at the time!”
The mental imagine he was having of Chanyeol playing drums was making him flustered and overheated and if he didn’t leave immediately, he would probably embarrass himself again and if that happened Baekhyun was positive he was going to dissolve into a puddle of pure mortification, because, oh my god, how was this his life. “Must be off!”
“Oh, okay. Bye!” Baekhyun saw Chanyeol wave out of the corner of his eye and then call, “Wait, I never got your name!”
Luckily, Baekhyun chose that exact time to duck around a corner of a building, knocking his head back against the brick and swearing.
This whole having-a-crush-on-Park-Chanyeol thing was really not going well.
It was lucky that Baekhyun’s roommate, Junmyeon, was a morning person. Normally he hated it and wished death on Junmyeon every time the older boy “accidentally” dropped a pan in the kitchen before the sun even had a chance to rise, but Baekhyun could honestly say that his roommate’s loud morning habits were the only reason he made it to his first 8AM math class of the semester on time.
In one of his rare moments of mothering, Junmyeon had shoved a travel mug of coffee in his hand before he left, and so the probability that he might stay awake for class had been increased to a positive percentage.
He took a seat five minutes before class was supposed to start, choosing one near the back that wasn't near other people and hopefully out of the teacher’s line of sight. Taking out his notebook, he rested the side of his face on it mournfully and closed his eyes. He was just managing to drift off into a light doze when he felt someone tap him on the shoulder.
He groaned and snapped without moving, “What.”
“Mind if I sit here?"
“Does it look like I ca - “ He opened his eyes as the persons voice sank in, praying that he had heard wrong.
Of course, he hadn’t.
Park Chanyeol was grinning down at him, eyes crinkling behind his glasses and if Baekhyun hadn't been in the middle of a total crisis he would have noticed the adorable case of bed-head the taller boy was sporting.
Chanyeol seemed to take his wide-eyed look as agreement and slid into the seat next him. "Byun Baekhyun, right?"
Baekhyun slowly lifted his head, peeling his cheek off of the notebook. He squinted at Chanyeol. “How do you know my name?”
Chanyeol shrugged, taking his textbook out. "I asked around."
“What.”
“Yeah, I asked if anyone knew a male piano major, short and kind of awkward.”
"!!!" Baekhyun started and Chanyeol grinned at him again, pushing his glasses up his nose.
“You’re pretty cute when you're sleepy, you know?"
"I - “ Baekhyun attempted to collect himself. “I am a pianist! We’re not built for mornings. Musicians are creatures of the night!"
The taller boy laughed as the teacher called the class to order saying, “Since it's the first day of class, we'll take it easy. Just a review of basic integrals to wake up your brains!"
Pouting, Baekhyun clutched at his travel mug. "I feel victimized by being forced into taking this class, you know."
Instead of offering him some comfort like Baekhyun though he should, Chanyeol snorted loudly into his textbook.
It was an unspoken tradition that Baekhyun’s group of friends all got together on Wednesday nights to play video games together. Since the divorce five years before, Baekhyun’s parents, and now his step parents had developed the handy habit of buying him whatever he asked for, and so when he and Jongin joined forces, they had basically every game and gaming system they could get their hands on.
Tonight though, was Kyungsoo’s first time with the whole rest of the group and so they were all taking it easy with some Super Smash Bros.
Or at least everyone else was.
Baekhyun, on the other hand, was ranting, slowly driving himself closer to an aneurism as he recounted the incident before math class that morning, controller forgotten and poor Kirby motionless on the screen as the fighting continued around him.
"... And then," Baekhyun finished darkly, “he laughed at me."
“You know," Jongin said, eyes still on Link as he jumped up the side of the building, "he really sounds too normal for you. I feel like I should warn him that you’re a freak or something."
Baekhyun scowled. “He said I was short!"
“You are short, Baekhyunnie.”
"I'm the same height as Kyungsoo!”
"I know, and Kyungie is short too. But he’s cute, so it’s okay.” Jongin paused in pulverizing Kyungsoo’s Pikachu onscreen and pinched his cheek while everyone else gagged.
Sehun sighed and had Samus kick Kirby off the side of the building, using up Baekhyun’s second-to-last life.
“Hey!” Baekhyun finally seemed to remember he was supposed to be playing and glared. Sehun smirked.
“Here’s what it sounds like to me," Junmyeon said from his place on the back of the couch, where he was watching and eating all the popcorn. “He went out of his way to find out your name, sat next to you by choice, and actually tried to talk to you before noon - something even your mother doesn’t even attempt. I'd say he probably likes you. So cut him a little slack, okay?"
Baekhyun felt his eyes widen and he dropped the controller, saying shrilly, “You think he likes me?”
Junmyeon sighed, stuffing another handful of popcorn into his mouth and cheering as Sehun had Samus methodically punch the shit out of Kirby until he fell off the edge of the screen again.
“Is it always like this?” Kyungsoo asked, sounding torn between amusement and concern.
“Nah,” Jongin said absently as Baekhyun slowly slid from his chair onto the floor, eyes still wide and feeling like his whole world was breaking around him. “Sometimes I’m Mario instead.”
So Park Chanyeol was in his math class.
It really wasn’t a big deal.
It was just - Chanyeol insisted on sitting next to him, saying that he didn’t know anyone else in the class, and he would earnestly take notes, even though it was practically the crack of dawn (as far as Baekhyun was concerned), and his handwriting was full of messy loops and scrawls, and sometimes he would make cute little doodles in the margins, and Baekhyun was really on the way to finding every little thing about Park Chanyeol attractive and it was kind of starting to drive him crazy.
“Hey.”
There was a nudge to Baekhyun’s ribs and he tore his eyes away from the spot on the board that he’d been staring at for the last five minutes in an effort not to ogle Chanyeol, who was looking particularly adorable that morning in a blue sweater that was rolled up to show his forearms.
A coffee travel cup was pushed in front of him and Baekhyun blinked.
“You seem a little out of it,” Chanyeol was smiling at him, all his teeth showing, and his glasses had slid down his nose a little. “I don’t know how you like your coffee, but maybe this’ll help?”
Baekhyun blinked at him again. “Um. Thanks.”
Picking up the cup cautiously, he took a sip and grimaced, sticking out his tongue. He couldn’t stand sugar in his coffee. In fact, it kind of made him want to throw up.
“What’s wrong?”
Chanyeol looked genuinely concerned and so Baekhyun hitched a smile back on his face. “Nothing!”
But Chanyeol continued to look at him, eyes widening cutely behind his glasses - not cutely, Baekhyun reminded himself, there was a reason Chanyeol was called ‘Yeol the Troll’ and part of it was because he was kind of unintentionally creepy - and so he steeled himself and took another big drink from the coffee cup.
Chanyeol seemed satisfied and went back to looking at the board, leaving Baekhyun with a mouth full of sugary coffee that his throat refused to swallow. He absolutely was not going to spit it out, not back into the cup or onto the table. The coffee puffed out his cheeks a little. He was a man, he could do this.
Baekhyun pushed the coffee to the back of his throat and gulped it down in one swift movement, barely stiffing a quiet gag.
He followed along in the textbook halfheartedly, fiddling absently with the cup so it looked like he might be drinking it until Chanyeol moved to take it from him. Their fingers brushed and Chanyeol’s eyes flicked to his with a strange smile that sent heat zinging straight to the pit of Baekhyun’s stomach. He felt a blush start working its way across his cheeks and luckily, the professor began announcing their assignment for next class. He hoped Chanyeol had looked away before he had a chance to see.
He methodically put away his pen and textbook in his bag, watching Chanyeol out of the corner of his eye. The taller boy didn’t seem to notice and dragged a hand through his hair while frowning down at his planner. Baekhyun ignored the thought that that was possibly the cutest frown he had ever seen and stood up to pull on his coat and hat
“Come on.” There was a tug on his sleeve and Baekhyun looked up at Chanyeol strangely, trying to figure out how he had gotten his things packed up so quickly. They walked out of the building together, morning cold biting at Baekhyun’s cheeks, and were at the bottom of the steps when Chanyeol said, "I figure you probably want something to wash down what I gave you." He grinned. “Not a big fan of sugar in your coffee?"
Baekhyun’s shoulders sagged. “Was it that obvious?"
“A bit." He smiled again, this time more widely, so that one of his eyes sqwunched behind his glasses and jerked his head to the side. “This way.”
Baekhyun had to walk a little faster than normal to keep up with Chanyeol’s long strides as they walked together down the sidewalk, both their hands stuffed in their pockets until they reached the entrance of the cafe.
Chanyeol held the door to the school coffee shop open and Baekhyun was reminded again just how much taller than him Chanyeol was, his arm holding the door a good foot about Baekhyun’s head.
The cafe was fairly crowded with students getting their first cup of coffee before classes and as they walked up to the counter, Baekhyun caught sight of Jongin, Kyungsoo, Sehun and some boy he didn’t know across the cafe. Jongin’s jaw was practically on the floor it was hanging open so far and Baekhyun resisted the urge to make a face at him. Following his boyfriend’s look, Kyungsoo spotted Baekhyun and Chanyeol together and laughed, while Sehun simply smirked and whispered something into the other boy’s ear.
“What do you want?" Chanyeol put his hand on Baekhyun’s arm to get his attention and he whipped his head around, nearly smacking into the other boy’s chest in the process. He steadied himself by clutching Chanyeol collar and their breathing seemed to stutter in unison.
They just exhaled into each other’s airspace for a minute, and Baekhyun avoided looking at the dip in Chanyeol’s pretty lower lip like the plague. That smell he had noticed before, the really good one, was back and it was making his brain a little fuzzy.
“Um.” He let go of Chanyeol’s jacket and took a step back. “Just plain coffee is fine. But you don't have to - “
Chanyeol waved him off as he paid and there was an extremely unsubtle whistle from across the cafe.
He was going to kill Jongin, and no one was ever going to find the body.
“Hey are those your friends?” Chanyeol asked, looking over in the direction of the whistle as they waited to pick up their coffees. “We can go sit with them if you - ”
“No!” Baekhyun said loudly and Chanyeol looked a little taken aback. He tried again. "I mean, um. Let’s not. They’re all idiots anyway."
There was that little smile again, the one that seemed to say that Chanyeol thought he was a little baffling. “Right. Well, I - “ He looked at his watch he picked up their cups and made a face. “Ugh, I’ve got to run to my next class.”
“Oh.”
“No, I - look. My friend Yixing is having a party this weekend.” Fumbling with a pen, he scribbled something on the side of Baekhyun’s coffee cup. “You should come. Your friends can come too, if you want.”
Chanyeol handed him the cup, and then his face split into a devastatingly wide smile, all teeth and gums, and Baekhyun bit back the stupid giggle that threatened to come out of his mouth because there was nothing about the situation that should make him act like a schoolgirl.
Reaching up, Chanyeol’s eyes shifted to something above Baekhyun’s head. He flicked at the ball on the top his hat. “Hope I’ll see you there.”
He watched Chanyeol go, raising his hand in a sort of halfhearted wave before stopping himself because he probably looked like an idiot.
“Baekhyun! Over here!” Jongin was waving him over and he made his way to their table, frowning.
“Grabbing each other in the cafe, eh?” Jongin waggled his eyebrows.
“He’s too tall for you. I’m surprised he even noticed a garden gnome like you,” Sehun smirked at him and the boy next him smacked his arm.
“Did he give you his number?” Kyungsoo asked, looking curious.
Baekhyun looked at the phone number Chanyeol had written on his to-go cup. “He invited me to a party this weekend.”
Jongin sat back, looking satisfied. “Told you he liked you.”
“Jongin,” Kyungsoo frowned, “that was Junmyeon who said that.”
“Whatever. So are you going to go?”
“Oh, you have to!” The boy next to Sehun clapped his hands excitedly as Sehun said, “If you do you have to take us, you know that right?”
Baekhyun sat down in an empty chair and said, sounding a little shell-shocked, “He flicked my hat.”
Jongin rolled his eyes and pulled Kyungsoo in closer to his side. “Whatever, you know you loved it.”
There was never any real question of whether Baekhyun was going to go to the party, not after Jongin knew about it anyway.
The real question was exactly how much he was planning on drinking before he got there.
“If you get there already wasted,” Jongin advised him while in the process of mixing himself another drink, “then you won’t feel nearly so self-conscious and hopefully end up banging him in the bathroom before midnight.”
Sehun shot him a disgusted look from his spot on the couch with the boy from earlier that day, whose name was apparently Luhan, and muttered, “Raised by wolves, I swear.”
Junmyeon took away the bottle that Jongin was holding and said, “Or, you could do the sensible thing, and have a drink or two to loosen your nerves and stop before you do something stupid.”
“Bunch of squares.” Jongin shook his head and did a final mix to his drink. He held it out to Baekhyun. “Here. This should do it.”
He stared down at the glass and then thought of how Chanyeol and how their fingers had brushed when they had reached for the same coffee cup, his incredibly wide smile, the way he seemed to tower over Baekhyun whenever they stood together. When he got to thinking about his own awful propensity to freeze up in social situations, he took a drink.
“Holy shit,” Baekhyun gagged feeling a little bit like his throat was going to burn out of his body. “What the hell did you put in that, Jongin?”
“Hopefully enough alcohol to stop you from doing that thing that you do when you get uncomfortable socially.”
“What?”
“You know, that thing.” Jongin made a face and looked at Junmyeon for confirmation. “Where he acts like the Queen Mother who’s just been asked an uncomfortable question about her sex life.”
Baekhyun sputtered into his glass. “I do not!”
Junmyeon shrugged a little. “He… kind of has a point.”
“It’s really irritating,” Sehun chimed in.
Baekhyun made one of his “!!!” noises and looked around, feeling very offended.
“Just,” Jongin patted him on the shoulder in consolation. “Just drink more.”
Baekhyun felt a little bit like he had his own entourage when he walked through the front door into the party with five people in tow.
"I don't know who your boyfriend is, but this place is fucking nice!”
Jongin was always excited by parties, energized by the crowds of people and the dancing and alcohol, but in this case, he happened to be right. The apartment was really nice; with an entryway leading to a large living room, another room that seemed to be a dance floor, and a hallway that looked like it lead to the kitchen. There were a fair amount of people and Baekhyun craned his neck, trying to spot Chanyeol in the crowd.
“Chanyeol doesn’t live here. His friend Yixian or something does." Then Baekhyun sputtered, head swiveling around as he realized what Jongin had said. “And he's not my boyfriend!"
“Took you long enough. I forgot what a lightweight you are."
His friend was probably right. The edges of everything were a bit fuzzy and his limbs were doing that light thing that they always did when he was just on the edge of drunk. Baekhyun looked around again, trying to decide exactly how bad it was that he was this tipsy when he had only just gotten to the party.
Junmyeon was already talking to a pretty girl over on one of the couches and Sehun and his (new?) friend Luhan had disappeared into the party practically the minute they’d walked in the door. Kyungsoo had Jongin’s arm around his shoulders but he was talking to a tall guy that Baekhyun vaguely recognized as the captain of the basketball team, and also apparently Chanyeol’s roommate, Wu Fan.
Jongin, of course, was too busy laughing at Baekhyun to notice.
“Why are you such an asshole?” Baekhyun pouted and Jongin clapped him on the shoulder encouragingly.
“That is because I am being forced into pursuing a college degree that I hate by my tyrannical father - “
"That's a bit dramatic," Baekhyun muttered, having met Jongin’s father before and while he had found him a bit stern and humorless, he was hardly tyrannical.
Jongin went on as if he hadn’t heard, " - and so I compensate by being sarcastic, having lots of meaningless sex, and drinking like a fish."
“How do you explain Kyungsoo then?"
Jongin smirked his old playboy smirk, the one Baekhyun had been seeing at parties for years, right before he picked up some lucky, unsuspecting person and disappeared into the night. “Small lapse in judgment."
“Hey,” Kyungsoo said into Jongin’s ear and the bad boy expression he had had on softened so quickly it might as well have been made of butter. Lapse in judgment Baekhyun’s ass. He was willing to bet Jongin liked Kyungsoo a great deal more than he would ever be willing to admit. “Wu Fan says there's a DJ in the other room. Wanna go dance?"
Kyungsoo bit his lip and looked at his boyfriend imploringly, eyes wide, and Jongin shoved Baekhyun’s shoulder, saying, “Your lover boy’s just spotted you. Don’t come looking for me because I'm busy. And don’t forget to use protection!”
Baekhyun sputtered wordlessly for a few seconds before he registered that Chanyeol was walking over, a wide smile on his face.
He was dressed in some impossibly tight jeans that made his legs look even longer than Baekhyun remembered them being and his blue shirt set off the little bit of red in his hair. He wasn’t wearing his glasses and the shiny, rounded shape of his eyes made something flutter in Baekhyun’s stomach.
“Hi.” Chanyeol seemed to look him up and down and Baekhyun felt suddenly extremely self-conscious in his T-shirt.
“Um. Hi." He fiddled with the hem of his shirt a little and felt the tips of his ears burn. Still smiling, Chanyeol’s fingers curled around his wrist to stop him from fiddling and he tugged a little.
“Come on.” He walked towards a group of three or four boys talking together and said, “This is my friend Yixing. And my roommate Wu Fan you've probably heard of, Minseok and Jongdae.” They all nodded as Chanyeol pointed them out. “Guys, this is Baekhyun.”
“Ohhhh so he's the one - “ Jongdae began tactlessly and Yixing kicked him in the shin.
“Thanks for coming, man," Yixing shook his hand and then turned to Chanyeol, asking, “Have you seen Luhan? He said he was coming with someone - “
A light bulb went off inside Baekhyun’s head: Luhan was that boy Sehun had been bringing around. “Oh, him. He’s here with my friend Sehun. I think they went to go dance or something."
Chanyeol’s friends all looked at him a little strangely and Baekhyun tried to correct himself, stuttering, “Or. I mean, I think it was him. Maybe. But uh."
Chanyeol put a light hand on the small of his back. “That must be the programming major he’s been talking about lately. Baekhyun, did you want something to drink?"
"I," he stared as Chanyeol steered him away, an annoyed look on his face.
“Sorry about them. You're not the only one who has idiots for friends apparently." He frowned and surge of affection for Chanyeol’s stupid facial expressions rose in Baekhyun’s chest. He had never met someone with such an expressive face in his life.
“No, it’s fine. I’m - ”
Baekhyun stumbled over his words for a second, having a hard time figuring out how to explain that he wasn't so good with people because he’d spent most of his life in a practice room with a piano or being carted back and forth by his mother for music lessons and competitions. The friends he did have, like Jongin or Sehun, had known him for long enough that they'd learned to ignore most of his quirks, and while he really, really liked Chanyeol, it was just that he didn’t quite know how to show it -
But before he could get any of that out, Chanyeol was accosted by a large group of grad students he thought might be from Chanyeol’s department, whatever that was (economics? Political science? Pre-law? The fact that he still didn’t know was beginning to verge on ridiculous) and on an intensely uncomfortable impulse, Baekhyun slipped away towards the kitchen, hoping there was a balcony in the back where he would be allowed to smoke.
It was cold out, making him glad he hadn’t had a chance to take off his coat and as he slipped quietly out the door, he was grateful that everyone else seemed to be staying inside because of the chill. Watching his breath mingle with the air, Baekhyun slipped a cigarette out of the pack in his pocket and lit it, leaning back against the railing and sighing.
It was stupid of him to have come.
He had never really been good with large groups of people and Chanyeol was too - too - too something. It made him so uncomfortable he could practically feel his skin crawl.
Taking another drag, he tried to distract himself by going over the most difficult part of the Chopin Ballade he was supposed to have ready by his next lesson. He was midway through, humming it to himself as best he could with the cigarette glowing between his fingers, when the door to the balcony opened.
“Baekhyun?”
He froze with the cigarette halfway to his mouth at the sound of Chanyeol’s voice.
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
The long list of things that they didn’t know about each other made Baekhyun’s eyes roll as he said, “I’m a classical pianist. Of course I smoke. That’s what we do.” He frowned and amended hastily, “Besides practice, of course.”
“Must have missed that stereotype somewhere,” Chanyeol said, walking over to where Baekhyun was leaning up against the railing. “You okay?”
“I,” Baekhyun started and then that thing happened again, where all the thoughts he was having got tangled up on the way to his mouth, leaving him tongue-tied. Chanyeol studied the light above them intently, giving him a chance to pick his words. No one had ever done that for him before and it kind of sent Baekhyun for a loop. His mother certainly had never let him get in a word edgewise and his father was about as good at communicating as Baekhyun was, while his friends weren’t really in the habit of asking hard questions that required a lot of soul searching.
He took a breath. “I’m not very good at parties.”
Chanyeol nodded, still not looking at him, and Baekhyun was sort of glad.
“Jongin is always taking me to them, but I usually leave when he starts doing his pick-up routine, so I don’t have to talk to too many new people. You - you’re someone that people like when they meet and you can talk to someone you don't know without making a fool of yourself. And you know that day in the library when you asked me for that book? I wasn’t even studying. I had come by to give something to Jongin and I stayed to watch you like some kind of creep."
"I know."
“What?” Baekhyun remembered how carefully he had constructed his fort of books under the disapproving watch of Jongin and frowned.
"I saw you behind all those books.” Chanyeol laughed almost to himself, “I actually wasn't even taking physics last semester."
“Then you - you came over on purpose?" Baekhyun was gob smacked. “Why?”
Then Chanyeol did one of his wide smiles, the one that made his eyes crinkle and always stunned Baekhyun a bit, and shrugged. “Because I didn't think you would ever come talk to me."
He could feel his mouth hanging wide open, cigarette slowly turning to ash in his hand as Chanyeol went on, "I'd seen you once or twice before and always wanted to talk to you."
Baekhyun suddenly remembered Jongin saying, ask him something stupid like if you can borrow a book or something, and then introduce yourself, and resisted the urge to put his face in his hands because he hated himself and his friends and his stupid fucking life. Instead, he asked incredulously, “But why?”
Chanyeol’s cheeks were a little pink but Baekhyun wasn't sure if that was from the cold or something else. He looked down at him, eyelashes low. “I thought you had really pretty eyes."
Baekhyun felt his mouth “O” in surprise before he managed to finally school his face into its usual unimpressed expression. “Is that all?"
Chanyeol was standing much closer now, causing Baekhyun to have to tip his head back to look him in the eye. Leaning down a little so Baekhyun could feel his warm breath on his face, Chanyeol shook his head. “You have really pretty lips too."
And Baekhyun would have scoffed at the obvious line, but he was too caught up in the way Chanyeol’s lashes lowered the rest of the way as he leaned down and pressed their mouths together, soft and warm. Their noses bumped a little because of the angle until Chanyeol shifted slightly, tilting and catching Baekhyun’s bottom lip between his and then he became suddenly very aware that he was being kissed by Park Chanyeol.
Rather than kissing back, he went very still and Chanyeol pulled away, looking concerned. Baekhyun’s mind had gone kind of hollow with the realization and he let out an absent, “Oh.”
Kissing.
Chanyeol licked his lips and the color had left his cheeks. “Oh?”
Park Chanyeol.
Baekhyun was seventy-five percent sure that any moment now, he was going to have an apoplectic fit.
There was something, it might have been irritation, rising in his chest as the events of the last few months came back to hit him on the back of the head with a heavy thunk.
Oh.
Flustered, Baekhyun poked Chanyeol in the chest and said accusingly, “You like me!”
He looked a little taken aback. “I - is that a problem?”
Baekhyun floundered around for what to say, trying to decide between, of course not are you an actual idiot and I don’t even know what your major is, before giving up. Instead, he curled his fingers into Chanyeol’s open collar, rising up onto the balls of his feet - practically onto his toes with his head tipped all the way back - so that he could kiss him.
It had been a long time since Baekhyun had kissed someone, years even, and so when the taller boy didn’t immediately respond, there was a part of him that thought wildly, oh God, am I doing this right? Have I actually forgotten how to kiss someone?
But then Chanyeol made a small sound, it wasn’t even a moan or a whimper (it sounded a bit like relief actually), and the noise slid down somewhere behind his navel, coiling there hotly as he traced Baekhyun’s hairline, his jaw with his fingertips. Baekhyun felt himself go limp, neck straining to keep his lips in contact with Chanyeol’s and he huffed, a small cloud of mist puffing between their faces.
“Too tall,” he mumbled against Chanyeol’s lips, breathing in the scent of his skin as it mixed with the cold night air. Baekhyun tugged at the shirt collar gripped tightly in his fingers. “Get down.”
Smiling, Chanyeol ducked again, this time slipping his tongue into Baekhyun’s mouth and his hands under his jacket to pull him closer, their chests rubbing together.
“Ha!” Baekhyun jumped at the exclamation from the porch door and turned to glare at Jongin. His friend called back inside obnoxiously, “Hey Sehun, come look at this! Our Baekhyunnie is making out with ‘Yeol the Troll!”
Baekhyun was halfway through giving his friend the finger, when Chanyeol began to laugh, pulling him in tightly for a hug. Baekhyun’s cheek ended up pressed into Chanyeol’s shoulder as the taller man buried his nose into his hair.
“Baekhyunnie,” he thought he heard Chanyeol croon into his ear and felt something in his heart swell big enough to burst, making his chest ache.
He frowned. “Don’t call me that.”
“Shhh,” Chanyeol gripped his waist a little tighter and a delicious shiver ran up and down Baekhyun’s spine as Chanyeol’s breath brushed against his neck. “Don’t ruin it.”
part two