no strings, no hooks, no faulty ties
title: no strings, no hooks, no faulty ties
pairing: gab/baekhyun
rating: g
Gabriella May has known Byun Baekhyun for a total of eleven months, one week, and three days, been in love with him for exactly ten months, one week, and three days, and you would think she constantly reconsiders her choice in partner with how she talks about him, but never in her life has she seriously done it.
Ask her to describe Baekhyun in less than five words and she will always say a variation of, “A sack of shit.” Ask her to describe Baekhyun with no limitation of words and she will tell you that he’s “an arrogant piece of shit who spews offensive things half the time and nonsense the other, and he sucks.” But if you listen to the silence, if you watch her stare at him with a calm sense of happiness on her face, you will hear the sound of the wind turning into love songs, see the sparks in her eyes turn into fireworks, and you will, without a doubt, realise that she is truly in love.
Day One
Gab hears from somewhere that there’ll be a new kid in class, a transfer student from Korea, and she rolls her eyes when she hears her classmates say, “I hope he’s good-looking.” All she hopes for is that he’s not another catcalling perverted teenage boy.
He comes to school wearing skinny jeans so tight she wonders if he can even sit down in them, and a short-sleeve button down shirt. His black hair is cut right above his eyes, and she bets that every teacher he encounters today will pester him to cut his hair. She stops paying attention to him and continues her previous task of staring at the windows, waiting for their teacher to walk down the halls.
It’s seven-thirty when their teacher comes inside the classroom, and the class stands in the lazy manner usually shown by teenagers who still haven’t fixed their sleeping pattern. They say their greetings, and after the morning prayer, their teacher makes them introduce themselves.
Gab has her introduction down to a simple, “I’m Gabriella Roque. Call me Gab,” queue the mandatory pause, “I… do I have to say anything else?”
The new kid, obviously awkward standing in front of the class, pats down his fringe and begins introducing himself. “My name is Byun Baekhyun. Hello! Nice to meet you.”
Day Two
“Hey! Hey!” an all too familiar voice calls out to Gab, and she turns around to see her tallest friend walking to her, a certain Byun Baekhyun in tow.
“Hey,” Gab replies, finding amusement in Chanyeol’s constant excitedness. She glances at Baekhyun, whose hair is now styled up and away from his face - probably so that the teachers won’t accuse him of having too long hair. “Hi.”
Baekhyun grins at her, then looks at Chanyeol and tugs the sleeve of his uniform.
“This is Baek, he wants to be friends.”
Day Five
Baekhyun, who originally sits at the back in the portion of the class near the door, is now beside Gab, who sits near the aircons and in the second row. He’s sitting with his legs in between the chair he’s sitting on and Gab’s chair, staring at her but not saying anything.
After a while, he finally says, “Chanyeol told me you sing.”
Gab pauses, then nods slowly. “I guess so.”
Baekhyun lights up, smiling as he replies, “Sing for me.”
“We’re in class,” she tells him, and he gives her a look she translates as, So? “No.”
“Pleeeeaaaase.”
She narrows her eyes at him and shakes her head, chuckling.
Day Twelve
“Chanyeol, bring out your guitar.”
It’s five in the afternoon and Chanyeol, Baekhyun, and Gab are still in school. Baek is still in pursuit of the sound of Gab’s singing voice, and though Gab usually sings for anyone, it’s amusing to see Baekhyun whining and shouting his requests.
Chanyeol, sitting down on the floor with his big guitar that doesn’t seem so big on him, starts strumming a song Gab isn’t familiar with, and she sees Baekhyun standing in front of both of them, focused and breathing deep. Gab has never seen him like this, without the goofy smile perpetually stamped on his face. He starts singing, and Jesus Christ, it’s like an angel’s voice. It starts out slow, the song about love and tired eyes, and when he reaches the near end, his voice sends shivers down her body.
“This is the beat inside my chest. You should know there’s nothing left, I’ve laid it all before your eyes….” He looks at her, licking his lips before he gives a shy smile and continues singing, “I love you more than you should know, and if you need, I’ll let you go. But only if you tell me to, I want whatever’s best for you.”
Day Seventeen
“Do you actually sing?” Baekhyun narrows his eyes at Gab while they’re in the cafeteria line.
She raises her eyebrows at him, and shakes her head in disbelief at how stupidly persistent he is. “I do.”
“Then sing.”
“Not for you.”
Baekhyun pouts, and for a second Gab thinks he’s actually upset, but then he turns away from her and says, “Maybe you’re scared to sing now that you’ve heard me. Because I’m better than you.”
Gab rolls her eyes and steals Baekhyun’s water.
Day Twenty-nine
Baekhyun, despite what you would think because of his aura of stupidity, isn’t actually academically ignorant. Although what he is, is very lazy. He arrives at school at six o’clock along with Chanyeol, and then steal their friend Jongdae’s homework.
And Gab, who arrives at seven in the morning, is sometimes forgetful, and cannot be blamed for forgetting that last week’s Math assignment is due today. It doesn’t help that their first subject is Math, but what does help is the fact that Byun Baekhyun is there, finished homework out on his desk.
“Baek,” she calls out. He turns and smiles at her, opening his mouth to say something, but she continues, “I need you.”
“Uh…?” is all Baekhyun can say, the apples of his cheeks tinted with pink, and his mouth hanging open.
Gab starts laughing, then rephrases her statement, “I need your homework, fuck, don’t get so excited.”
Baekhyun is about to hand her his Math notebook, but he pauses, smirks, and withdraws his arm. “Sing for me.”
“Baek! Not the time.”
“Well, have fun with your score of zero.” Baekhyun moves in his seat and opens the notebook, starts skimming through the pages as if to show off.
“Fine, you bastard.”
So she starts singing, decides to only sing a few lines, but she makes the mistake to look at Baekhyun staring at her like she hung the moon, his eyes dazed and shining. She continues singing, finishes the song before she even realises it. She tells herself it’s because Baekhyun has waited for a long time to hear her voice, she tells herself it’s not because of the look of pure admiration on his face, the look of something that might be love.
Day Thirty
On the thirtieth night of Gab knowing Baekhyun, she dreams of him. She doesn’t actually see him in the dreams, doesn’t remember seeing his shining eyes or his thin fingers, but she remembers his loud laugh and the way he said her name.
‘Gab,’ he rolls the name off his tongue the way you do your favourite word, chuckling at something. ‘Gab, we’re stuck in this car. I don’t think we can go out.’
Gab remains silent, but Baekhyun keeps laughing. Just laughing and laughing and laughing, until his laugh no longer sounds like laughter but like music instead.
‘Gab, I wish… I wish I could -’ he pauses, takes a deep breath. ‘I wish I could kiss you.’
‘What’s stopping you?’ Gab asks him, and the song of laughter plays again.
‘You, I guess. Me, maybe. Us, probably.’
‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘I know.’ He giggles, then sighs dramatically. ‘Let’s just sleep.’
She wakes up in the middle of the night, squirming in her bed. She rubs her hands over her face before deciding to go back to sleep.
Day Thirty-three
For once, Gab gets to school before Baekhyun. It’s six-thirty in the morning, and Gab’s forehead is pressed against her arms crossed on her desk. She finds herself restless, constantly glancing at the door to see if the thin, stupid, black-haired boy has finally arrived. Ten times in seven minutes, she checks, but he doesn’t show his face, and she wonders why time passes by so slow.
She taps her fingers on her desk, walks around the room, walks up and down the halls, she wastes her time for thirty minutes, but he’s still not there. There’s a sinking feeling in her stomach, and she thinks she’s just hungry, but what she wants isn’t food, it’s Baekhyun beside her.
Baekhyun does, eventually, get to school. At eight-thirty, he walks into the room with a slip of tardiness, catches Gab looking at him, and he waves at her and grins. Something in her chest begins to ache, and she can feel her heart beating faster, her lungs feeling like it needs more room.
She realises then and there that she’s very, very fucked.
Days Thirty-four to Forty-six
She doesn’t ignore him per se, she just gets too embarrassed to act the way she used to around him, and it comes off as avoidance. She’s not distancing herself at all, she’s always there by his side, they eat lunch together, spend dismissal together, text each other at night. But somehow, everything she’s doing brings a frown on Baekhyun’s face. Somehow, it makes him look at her with sad eyes, the bright glint in his eyes still there, but muted. Somehow, everything makes her feel pain.
Day Forty-seven
It’s Friday night, and there’s a party being held at one of their classmates’ house, and Gab, of course, is there. Around her are teenagers, way too underaged to be drinking the vodka in their hands. She doesn’t drink, just observes as her friends make fools of themselves, one of them dancing despite the lack of music, and another lying down on the floor passed out.
Chanyeol is in the kitchen making out with some girl Gab hears is from another school, and Baekhyun is - well, Gab doesn’t know where Baekhyun is. She knows he’s here, she saw him enter with Chanyeol, and they had greeted each other with awkward smiles. She’s asked around, but no-one knows where he is, and Chanyeol is too busy shoving his tongue down someone’s throat to tell her.
It’s when a fight breaks out between two best friends, something about the fucking ‘Bro Code’ and stealing someone’s girl, that Gab decides she’s had enough. She walks out of the house for some fresh air, and she sees a dark figure sitting on the sidewalk. She approaches it - him - and sees it’s just Baekhyun. Baekhyun drunk as fuck with an almost empty bottle of vodka in his hand.
“Baek?” she calls him, “Baek!”
He turns his head slowly, looking at her with empty eyes, like the liquor had drowned all of his soul.
“Baek,” she calls again, settling down beside him and grabbing the bottle of vodka. He lets it go, doesn’t even put up a fight.
“What… what’re you doing here?” he asks her, eyebrows furrowed in concentration, and she would find it funny if she wasn’t so concerned.
“I should be asking you that.”
“But I asked first, so… I win!” he shouts the last two words, putting his hands up with his fists balled, then looking left and right at his arms in confusion before putting them down.
“Guys inside are fighting, thinking they have authority over women again. Like we’re some fucking thing to just own,” she bites out, almost throwing the vodka bottle in frustration. She sighs, shakes her head, and looks up at the sky.
“I’m sorry that we’re shitty.”
Gab looks at him, sees him staring at her with an apologetic face, his eyes no longer as empty as before, and she smiles. “Not you.”
“Sometimes me,” he retorts, and they both laugh.
“Yeah, sometimes you. It’s fine. Just try not to be gross.”
“Okay.” He nods seriously, bumping his shoulders with Gab’s.
They look up at the stars, not that there are a lot since they’re in the city, but there are still a few, and those few are still breathtaking. It’s quiet, the only things they can hear are their breath and the wind.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Gab asks, voice small, so she doesn’t break the calm silence between them.
Baekhyun stares at her for a while, his eyes staring into hers. He realises how captivating his eyes are, how bright they are, how the light in his eyes look like stars, like he has his own galaxy inside of them.
He takes a deep breath, smiling like he’s just remembered something funny. “What am I doing here?” he repeats. “Well, let me tell you what I’m doing here. Gabriella May, right now? I’m falling in love with you.”
+
Byun Baekhyun’s laughter is not just a song, it is its own kind of music - it is every happy love song ever written. Byun Baekhyun does not have a galaxy in his eyes. He has multiple galaxies under his skin, buzzing and making him shine bright. Byun Baekhyun, to Gabriella May, is the air around her, the song the wind sings, the kisses of the ground to her feet. Byun Baekhyun, to Gabriella May, is the universe.
pairing: gab/baekhyun
rating: g
Gabriella May has known Byun Baekhyun for a total of eleven months, one week, and three days, been in love with him for exactly ten months, one week, and three days, and you would think she constantly reconsiders her choice in partner with how she talks about him, but never in her life has she seriously done it.
Ask her to describe Baekhyun in less than five words and she will always say a variation of, “A sack of shit.” Ask her to describe Baekhyun with no limitation of words and she will tell you that he’s “an arrogant piece of shit who spews offensive things half the time and nonsense the other, and he sucks.” But if you listen to the silence, if you watch her stare at him with a calm sense of happiness on her face, you will hear the sound of the wind turning into love songs, see the sparks in her eyes turn into fireworks, and you will, without a doubt, realise that she is truly in love.
Day One
Gab hears from somewhere that there’ll be a new kid in class, a transfer student from Korea, and she rolls her eyes when she hears her classmates say, “I hope he’s good-looking.” All she hopes for is that he’s not another catcalling perverted teenage boy.
He comes to school wearing skinny jeans so tight she wonders if he can even sit down in them, and a short-sleeve button down shirt. His black hair is cut right above his eyes, and she bets that every teacher he encounters today will pester him to cut his hair. She stops paying attention to him and continues her previous task of staring at the windows, waiting for their teacher to walk down the halls.
It’s seven-thirty when their teacher comes inside the classroom, and the class stands in the lazy manner usually shown by teenagers who still haven’t fixed their sleeping pattern. They say their greetings, and after the morning prayer, their teacher makes them introduce themselves.
Gab has her introduction down to a simple, “I’m Gabriella Roque. Call me Gab,” queue the mandatory pause, “I… do I have to say anything else?”
The new kid, obviously awkward standing in front of the class, pats down his fringe and begins introducing himself. “My name is Byun Baekhyun. Hello! Nice to meet you.”
Day Two
“Hey! Hey!” an all too familiar voice calls out to Gab, and she turns around to see her tallest friend walking to her, a certain Byun Baekhyun in tow.
“Hey,” Gab replies, finding amusement in Chanyeol’s constant excitedness. She glances at Baekhyun, whose hair is now styled up and away from his face - probably so that the teachers won’t accuse him of having too long hair. “Hi.”
Baekhyun grins at her, then looks at Chanyeol and tugs the sleeve of his uniform.
“This is Baek, he wants to be friends.”
Day Five
Baekhyun, who originally sits at the back in the portion of the class near the door, is now beside Gab, who sits near the aircons and in the second row. He’s sitting with his legs in between the chair he’s sitting on and Gab’s chair, staring at her but not saying anything.
After a while, he finally says, “Chanyeol told me you sing.”
Gab pauses, then nods slowly. “I guess so.”
Baekhyun lights up, smiling as he replies, “Sing for me.”
“We’re in class,” she tells him, and he gives her a look she translates as, So? “No.”
“Pleeeeaaaase.”
She narrows her eyes at him and shakes her head, chuckling.
Day Twelve
“Chanyeol, bring out your guitar.”
It’s five in the afternoon and Chanyeol, Baekhyun, and Gab are still in school. Baek is still in pursuit of the sound of Gab’s singing voice, and though Gab usually sings for anyone, it’s amusing to see Baekhyun whining and shouting his requests.
Chanyeol, sitting down on the floor with his big guitar that doesn’t seem so big on him, starts strumming a song Gab isn’t familiar with, and she sees Baekhyun standing in front of both of them, focused and breathing deep. Gab has never seen him like this, without the goofy smile perpetually stamped on his face. He starts singing, and Jesus Christ, it’s like an angel’s voice. It starts out slow, the song about love and tired eyes, and when he reaches the near end, his voice sends shivers down her body.
“This is the beat inside my chest. You should know there’s nothing left, I’ve laid it all before your eyes….” He looks at her, licking his lips before he gives a shy smile and continues singing, “I love you more than you should know, and if you need, I’ll let you go. But only if you tell me to, I want whatever’s best for you.”
Day Seventeen
“Do you actually sing?” Baekhyun narrows his eyes at Gab while they’re in the cafeteria line.
She raises her eyebrows at him, and shakes her head in disbelief at how stupidly persistent he is. “I do.”
“Then sing.”
“Not for you.”
Baekhyun pouts, and for a second Gab thinks he’s actually upset, but then he turns away from her and says, “Maybe you’re scared to sing now that you’ve heard me. Because I’m better than you.”
Gab rolls her eyes and steals Baekhyun’s water.
Day Twenty-nine
Baekhyun, despite what you would think because of his aura of stupidity, isn’t actually academically ignorant. Although what he is, is very lazy. He arrives at school at six o’clock along with Chanyeol, and then steal their friend Jongdae’s homework.
And Gab, who arrives at seven in the morning, is sometimes forgetful, and cannot be blamed for forgetting that last week’s Math assignment is due today. It doesn’t help that their first subject is Math, but what does help is the fact that Byun Baekhyun is there, finished homework out on his desk.
“Baek,” she calls out. He turns and smiles at her, opening his mouth to say something, but she continues, “I need you.”
“Uh…?” is all Baekhyun can say, the apples of his cheeks tinted with pink, and his mouth hanging open.
Gab starts laughing, then rephrases her statement, “I need your homework, fuck, don’t get so excited.”
Baekhyun is about to hand her his Math notebook, but he pauses, smirks, and withdraws his arm. “Sing for me.”
“Baek! Not the time.”
“Well, have fun with your score of zero.” Baekhyun moves in his seat and opens the notebook, starts skimming through the pages as if to show off.
“Fine, you bastard.”
So she starts singing, decides to only sing a few lines, but she makes the mistake to look at Baekhyun staring at her like she hung the moon, his eyes dazed and shining. She continues singing, finishes the song before she even realises it. She tells herself it’s because Baekhyun has waited for a long time to hear her voice, she tells herself it’s not because of the look of pure admiration on his face, the look of something that might be love.
Day Thirty
On the thirtieth night of Gab knowing Baekhyun, she dreams of him. She doesn’t actually see him in the dreams, doesn’t remember seeing his shining eyes or his thin fingers, but she remembers his loud laugh and the way he said her name.
‘Gab,’ he rolls the name off his tongue the way you do your favourite word, chuckling at something. ‘Gab, we’re stuck in this car. I don’t think we can go out.’
Gab remains silent, but Baekhyun keeps laughing. Just laughing and laughing and laughing, until his laugh no longer sounds like laughter but like music instead.
‘Gab, I wish… I wish I could -’ he pauses, takes a deep breath. ‘I wish I could kiss you.’
‘What’s stopping you?’ Gab asks him, and the song of laughter plays again.
‘You, I guess. Me, maybe. Us, probably.’
‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘I know.’ He giggles, then sighs dramatically. ‘Let’s just sleep.’
She wakes up in the middle of the night, squirming in her bed. She rubs her hands over her face before deciding to go back to sleep.
Day Thirty-three
For once, Gab gets to school before Baekhyun. It’s six-thirty in the morning, and Gab’s forehead is pressed against her arms crossed on her desk. She finds herself restless, constantly glancing at the door to see if the thin, stupid, black-haired boy has finally arrived. Ten times in seven minutes, she checks, but he doesn’t show his face, and she wonders why time passes by so slow.
She taps her fingers on her desk, walks around the room, walks up and down the halls, she wastes her time for thirty minutes, but he’s still not there. There’s a sinking feeling in her stomach, and she thinks she’s just hungry, but what she wants isn’t food, it’s Baekhyun beside her.
Baekhyun does, eventually, get to school. At eight-thirty, he walks into the room with a slip of tardiness, catches Gab looking at him, and he waves at her and grins. Something in her chest begins to ache, and she can feel her heart beating faster, her lungs feeling like it needs more room.
She realises then and there that she’s very, very fucked.
Days Thirty-four to Forty-six
She doesn’t ignore him per se, she just gets too embarrassed to act the way she used to around him, and it comes off as avoidance. She’s not distancing herself at all, she’s always there by his side, they eat lunch together, spend dismissal together, text each other at night. But somehow, everything she’s doing brings a frown on Baekhyun’s face. Somehow, it makes him look at her with sad eyes, the bright glint in his eyes still there, but muted. Somehow, everything makes her feel pain.
Day Forty-seven
It’s Friday night, and there’s a party being held at one of their classmates’ house, and Gab, of course, is there. Around her are teenagers, way too underaged to be drinking the vodka in their hands. She doesn’t drink, just observes as her friends make fools of themselves, one of them dancing despite the lack of music, and another lying down on the floor passed out.
Chanyeol is in the kitchen making out with some girl Gab hears is from another school, and Baekhyun is - well, Gab doesn’t know where Baekhyun is. She knows he’s here, she saw him enter with Chanyeol, and they had greeted each other with awkward smiles. She’s asked around, but no-one knows where he is, and Chanyeol is too busy shoving his tongue down someone’s throat to tell her.
It’s when a fight breaks out between two best friends, something about the fucking ‘Bro Code’ and stealing someone’s girl, that Gab decides she’s had enough. She walks out of the house for some fresh air, and she sees a dark figure sitting on the sidewalk. She approaches it - him - and sees it’s just Baekhyun. Baekhyun drunk as fuck with an almost empty bottle of vodka in his hand.
“Baek?” she calls him, “Baek!”
He turns his head slowly, looking at her with empty eyes, like the liquor had drowned all of his soul.
“Baek,” she calls again, settling down beside him and grabbing the bottle of vodka. He lets it go, doesn’t even put up a fight.
“What… what’re you doing here?” he asks her, eyebrows furrowed in concentration, and she would find it funny if she wasn’t so concerned.
“I should be asking you that.”
“But I asked first, so… I win!” he shouts the last two words, putting his hands up with his fists balled, then looking left and right at his arms in confusion before putting them down.
“Guys inside are fighting, thinking they have authority over women again. Like we’re some fucking thing to just own,” she bites out, almost throwing the vodka bottle in frustration. She sighs, shakes her head, and looks up at the sky.
“I’m sorry that we’re shitty.”
Gab looks at him, sees him staring at her with an apologetic face, his eyes no longer as empty as before, and she smiles. “Not you.”
“Sometimes me,” he retorts, and they both laugh.
“Yeah, sometimes you. It’s fine. Just try not to be gross.”
“Okay.” He nods seriously, bumping his shoulders with Gab’s.
They look up at the stars, not that there are a lot since they’re in the city, but there are still a few, and those few are still breathtaking. It’s quiet, the only things they can hear are their breath and the wind.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Gab asks, voice small, so she doesn’t break the calm silence between them.
Baekhyun stares at her for a while, his eyes staring into hers. He realises how captivating his eyes are, how bright they are, how the light in his eyes look like stars, like he has his own galaxy inside of them.
He takes a deep breath, smiling like he’s just remembered something funny. “What am I doing here?” he repeats. “Well, let me tell you what I’m doing here. Gabriella May, right now? I’m falling in love with you.”
+
Byun Baekhyun’s laughter is not just a song, it is its own kind of music - it is every happy love song ever written. Byun Baekhyun does not have a galaxy in his eyes. He has multiple galaxies under his skin, buzzing and making him shine bright. Byun Baekhyun, to Gabriella May, is the air around her, the song the wind sings, the kisses of the ground to her feet. Byun Baekhyun, to Gabriella May, is the universe.