Tell me your wish (I’m Genie for you, boy!) - baekyeol
Title: Tell me your wish (I’m Genie for you, boy!)
Rating: pg13
Pairing: Chanyeol/Baekhyun
Wordcount: 6.7k
Warning: mentions of underage handjobs
Disclaimer: EXO belongs to themselves and SME
Notes: TOTALLY UNBETAED. WORDS BLOB. HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHANYEOL. GENIE!AU. title comes from SNSD's Genie.
Summary: Chanyeol receives a mysterious oil lamp for his birthday. With the lamp come three wishes, a wicked genie and true love.
First wish
The lamp was a gift. Siwon’s gift, to be accurate, and that already should’ve warned Chanyeol. You don’t just accept gifts from your distant relative who raises baby dragons and hunts fairies for a living. But it was Chanyeol’s birthday, and Siwon totally looked like he had forgotten about it and had been forced to come out with a random gift fished from the first antique dealer’s storage closet he had found on his way home.
Honestly, Chanyeol had wanted a Play Station 4 and he couldn’t care less about oil lamps, hence his gift ended up being thrown inside a drawer, totally forgotten, at least until Chanyeol decides to come back home from Minho’s party at three in the morning, more than a little tipsy. He’s looking for some Aspirin when his fingers knock against the spout of the lamp. He curses Uncle Siwon and takes the oil lamp in his hands. It’s strangely heavy, considering that it’s empty.
Maybe it’s the booze, but the arabesques on the old bronze seem to dance to an arcane music, a rhythmic, hypnotizing beat that Chanyeol wishes he was sober enough to write down because it’d look perfect on one of his new songs. He leans closer, but there’s an opaque patina on the surface of the lamp and his eyes catches nothing more than rust and dirt.
“Oh hell,” he swears, already regretting the decision to pick up the old thing. He wishes he could throw it back inside the drawer and go to sleep, but he feels strangely attracted to it.
Unsatisfied with his first inspection, he takes a hem of his shirt and uses it to wipe away the grime.
That’s when he hears a soft pop, and violet smoke erupts from the spout and invades the room and Chanyeol’s lungs, clouding his eyes. He’s coughing and tearing up when the smoke takes the shape of a person, a boy.
Chanyeol wants to scream because there’s a stranger in his room, and the stranger just came out of the lamp and he’s dressed like a One Thousand and One Nights character.
The stranger smirks, taking in Chanyeol’s height and his toned arms.
“Someone got lucky this time! No perverted old geezers for Baekhyun. Jongdae will burst from envy.”
“Who the hell are you.”
“Relax pretty boy, you can put the bat down. I doubt it’d be effective against me, you know?”
Chanyeol tighten his hold on the baseball bat he’s holding, ready to swing if this strange kid wrapped in violet and turquoise silk does something strange.
“I asked you a question,” he threatens.
The boy pouts, a lethal combination of heavy kohl and tender lips on his handsome face that makes Chanyeol gulp hard. Baekhyun joins elegant hands with long fingers in front of his face, kneeling down until he’s sitting on Chanyeol’s floor. He bows his head and licks his lips, looking exotic and alluring and so, so unreal.
“I am Baekhyun, the genie of the lamp. Your wish is my command, Master.”
This, Chanyeol thinks, is what a catastrophe must feel like.
“Uncle, care to explain why I have a boy dressed like an Arabian whore sitting on my bed and calling me his master?”
“Oh, so you finally met Baekhyun,” beams Siwon on the other side of the world. “I’m so glad you decided to summon him. The kid needed company and your love life has always been kinda boring.” Chanyeol splutters, but Siwon doesn’t leave him time to talk. “I’m sorry dear nephew, I’m quite preoccupied at the moment. There’s this witch who’s trying to behead me. If you don’t mind…” With that, he shuts the phone in Chanyeol’s face.
“I can’t believe that old man. I wish he was here, because I want to strangle him with my own hands.”
Baekhyun, sitting on the bed, lights up and claps his hands once. Another cloud of purple smoke explodes in the room. When Chanyeol can open his eyes, ready to strangle Baekhyun too, Siwon is in front of them. There’s a bleeding gush on his neck.
“Oh, thank you kids. You saved my life,” he says, looking at them with spirited eyes. “Though you shouldn’t really have wasted your first wish on me, Chanyeol-ah. Oh well, look at the time, I better go now if I want to go back to Mexico before that witch actually kills someone else. Bye.”
“Bye Siwon-ssi,” Baekhyun waves happily, “it was a pleasure saving you, again.”
“Always so charming, take good care of my nephew, Baekhyun-ah!”
And with that is gone. An awkward silence falls on the room.
“Okay, it’s five in the morning and the only thing I got out of this whole mess is that you’re a genie, a true genie. You can grant wishes, right?”
Baekhyun nods, eager and excited, like a puppy. A puppy with a lot of eyeliner. “Yes, three of them. I have limits though. I can’t overcome the boundaries of death and true love, but everything else can be yours. You’re a lucky kid, Park Chanyeol,” he says, but there’s a wicked glint in his eyes.
“You’re not fooling me, princess Jasmine,” Baekhyun snorts at the nickname, “I’ve read the book. Genies are usually evil and whatever wish I make you’ll end up turning it against me, right?”
“Oh, come on, I may have done this sometimes, in my long, boring life. But you’re pretty, so let’s try to get along, alright? You give me what I want and I may try to be benevolent and not turn your remaining two wishes into a nightmare, do we have a deal, Park Chanyeol?”
“And what do you want?” asks Chanyeol, more than a little worried.
Baekhyun smirks, fucking smirks, and disappears, dissipating in a quick cloud of smoke. A second later Chanyeol feels a weight on his chest, pinning him to the bed, and the little shit is all over him, his strong smell of orange flower and jasmine filling Chanyeol’s nostrils.
“What do I want, he asks… A fucking eternity holed up in a lamp, all alone, no one to comfort me…” He licks his lips and Chanyeol can’t help but follow his movements, eyes glued to the pink little tongue. “What do you think I want?”
Chanyeol opens his mouth to answer and Baekhyun kisses him, open mouthed and hungry. His lips move messily over Chanyeol’s for a moment, then that little sneaky tongue is licking inside his mouth, taking and taking until Chanyeol can’t breathe anymore. His hand scramble at the fabric of Baekhyun’s vest, a bad move because the other boy is wearing nothing under, and when Chanyeol tears, the embroidered flowers scrape against Baekhyun’s nipples, making him spill a moan inside Chanyeol’s mouth.
Chanyeol’s hands blindly grab Baekhyun’s hair, tearing their mouth apart, and as soon as he can breathe on his own, he pushes Baekhyun away with a choked “What the fuck?”
The faint echo of Baekhyun’s laugh invades his ears as the boy disappears again, only to find fall on Chanyeol’s body one more time, crushing him with his body and attacking him with his lips.
“Wait, wait, wait,” protests the taller boy, when he manages to break free again. “You’re not doing this right.”
Baekhyun’s eyes flash with amusement, “Am I not?”
He’s so infuriatingly smug, despite being flushed and panting and wrecked on top of Chanyeol.
Something in Chanyeol snaps and he’s reverting their position. Baekhyun lets him, hooking a hand on Chanyeol’s hip and dragging him down. He’s pliant and eager when Chanyeol kisses him, and it’s so easy to just lose focus and drown in his lips and push him against the mattress, closing the space between their bodies.
Chanyeol can still feel the alcohol singing in his veins, luring him into do reckless things, and Baekhyun is so excited and exciting.
Chanyeol’s head throb, his muscles shaking with fatigue and an unreleased energy. His erection throbs too, trapped in his pants and underwear, begging to be trashed against the beautiful boy under him. Baekhyun is wearing silk pants, how lewd would it be to just rub the head of his cock against the smooth fabric?
He stutters at the thought, stopping the motion of his hips, moving in tiny involuntary circles against Baekhyun’s responding hardness, and ends up thrusting down roughly. Baekhyun’s whole body tenses under him for a moment, teetering on the edge of the precipice, then the genie snaps and jerks as he’s forcefully brought at the peak of pleasure by a second powerful thrust. Baekhyun’s teeth close on Chanyeol’s lips hard enough to draw blood and Chanyeol growls down in his throat and kisses him through the orgasm, his mind hazy and only focused on reaching his own completion.
“That’s enough,” pants Baekhyun against the roof of Chanyeol’s mouth, the words barely perceptible over the heated dance off tongues and teeth and lips. Chanyeol whines when the other boy sucks on his tongue hard one last time, before driving it out of his pretty mouth.
The genie disappears, again, and Chanyeol is really beginning to hate this vanishing in smoke power of his. He pants, chest heaving up and down and cock straining and burning.
Baekhyun reappears on the edge of the bed. There’s a wet spot on the front of his pants, Chanyeol notices, the silk looks slippery and wet at the touch. It makes him blush.
Baekhyun’s mouth still glistens with Chanyeol’s saliva and Chanyeol stares, undoubtedly turned on, when his tongue darts out to have a taste.
“I think it’s enough for today. Congratulations, Chanyeol, you’ve offered me efficient compensation for your first wish.”
“Wait, what do you mean? It wasn’t even a conscious wish, you can’t make me pay for that one too.”
“I can and I just did,” affirms Baekhyun, matter-of-factly. “I could’ve teleported here your uncle and the witch, and then she could’ve beheaded the both of you. Bow down to my greatness, Master.”
Chanyeol finds it a little contradictory that Baekhyun dares to order him around and then call him master, it just adds insult to the injury.
“Well, but couldn’t you wait a minute? I was this close to coming,” he whines.
Baekhyun looks down at his pants, painfully tight, the outline of Chanyeol’s cock prominent. He licks his lips, a nervous fixation that is starting to drive Chanyeol mad.
“That is a big pity. Emphasis on the big part… You look terribly well-endowed down there. But the payment is about me, not you. And I am satisfied enough.”
Chanyeol’s mouth hangs open. “WHAT?”
“I’m going to retire to my lamp, if you want to excuse me.”
A string of insults and curses falls out of Chanyeol’s lips as Baekhyun waves him goodbye and explodes in the usual cloud of purple fog. The oil lamp sucks him in with a mocking pop.
“You know that I could always summon you out of that damn lamp and ask you to finish your job, right?” he asks, feeling his head spin between the booze, the irritation and one good share of sexual frustration.
Baekhyun’s head comes out of the bottle, surrounded in purple smoke. “Oh, please, do that. I want to see you wasting your second wish on a flimsy drunken blowjob.”
Chanyeol bites his lips, trying to come up with a smart remark.
“Good night, Chanyeol.” Baekhyun’s voice follows him back inside the lamp.
Chanyeol is left alone, sitting on his bed, with a raging hard on between his legs.
“You asshole,” he screams at the lamp. “You perverted ungrateful asshole! I’m never going to summon you out of the lamp, do you hear me? Never again!”
There’s only a little hiccup of violet coming out the spout, “Good luck with the handjob, handsome, I’ll enjoy the view.”
Chanyeol throws the lamp back inside the drawer and slams it closed before actually going to the bathroom and jerking off to Baekhyun’s sweet scent and rosy tongue. So fucking unfair.
Second wish
“What if I ask to be forever young?” asks Chanyeol on a whim, three months later, to a very silent oil lamp. He has to duck a whip of red smoke, coming tight out of the spout. “Oh, come on, there’s no need to be such a party pooper Baek.”
The only answer is a dignified grunt, followed by a loud raspberry.
“Pinky promise, next time you’re extra annoying I won’t take revenge by wrapping you around my dirty underwear. I swear.”
Maybe it’s the remind of the actual offense, but the thin thread of smoke that was coming out of the oil lamp becomes a steaming jet, and Chanyeol is forced to let go of the suddenly burning lamp.
“Very funny. Who thought you could’ve been so cranky.”
Nothing more comes out. Oh, then Baekhyun is giving him the silent treatment.
Chanyeol sighs. In the last three months, he’s had to deal with the prissy genie and his terrible attitude more times than he can count. At least now he has a fairly good idea of what he can and can’t do - even if he has to admit that the underwear thing was pushing it a bit too far.
“Come on, Baek, get out of the lamp,” he purrs, in the low, rough voice that makes Baekhyun so nicely pliant and cooperative. The oil lamp trembles in his hand, grumbling like a teapot.
“Aren’t you bored, in there? Year after year, with no one taking care of you?”
Baekhyun’s voice comes out metallic and distorted, but undoubtedly whiny.
“At least no one ever stuffed me inside dirty laundry, you monkey. The stink!”
“Oh, poor baby,” he coos, “my bad, my bad, Baekhyunnie. I was an insensitive jerk.”
“You were!”
The words come out as a yelp, and Chanyeol fights the urge to chuckle because Baekhyun can be really predictable. Not that he’s ever telling him that. He wants to keep his dick intact for when the genie will finally surrender to Chanyeol’s chase.
“If you come out, I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
The lamp shake, it seems a little torn. Then, finally, Baekhyun appears in a puff of blue smoke, falling right on top of Chanyeol.
“Blue, this time? Are you depressed dear?” he asks, scooting over so that Baekhyun can snuggle against him on the bed, nosing at his jawline.
“You were being mean to me, of course I am depressed.”
He pouts and Chanyeol’s heart misses a beat. All his plans to tease his genie vanish like the colorful clouds that accompany Baekhyun’s wicked presence.
“Did you listen to me or were you too intent on scowling?”
“I heard everything,” proclaims Baekhyun, even as he chases Chanyeol’s warmth face, just like a puppy.
“And?”
Baekhyun hides his head in the crook of Chanyeol’s neck, refusing to say anything else. Chanyeol knows better than trying to tear an answer out of him when he’s like this, needy and exposed. He wonders how starved he’d be for human warmth if he was trapped in a bottle for so many years.
Finally, Baekhyun lets him go. “Are you stupid? Your question didn’t even deserve the time I’m wasting to answer you.”
Chanyeol makes a puzzled face.
“Dumb Yeol. Being forever young means living forever. Not even the mighty Baekhyun can change that.”
“Oh.” Chanyeol feels suddenly dumb. He hadn’t thought about that. “Never mind then.” He shrugs. “And then what about…”
“Shut up, question time is over. I bothered to dress up and get out of the lamp, so it’s your turn to entertain me.”
Chanyeol looks down and Baekhyun is indeed wearing new clothes. He looks good in red, a little too good. Good enough to eat.
“You’re such a little vixen,” he jokes, to lighten up the mood. Sometimes even just looking at Baekhyun is difficult for him. He makes everything so heavy, so difficult for Chanyeol. One moment they’re joking and a few breaths later Chanyeol wants to seal him inside the bottle and never let him go. He wonders what will happen, after he makes his last wish. Will Baekhyun disappear from his life forever? Somehow, he dreads to ask that question.
“What am I, your pet? You only seek me for my beautiful body,” he pretends to cry. Baekhyun just punches his chest.
“Shut up, as if you’re interested in me for my dashing personality.”
“No, I want you for the endless magic powers,” he teases, but maybe he just said the wrong words because Baekhyun’s lips, painted the color of amarena, tremble slightly before he evaporates out of Chanyeol’s arms, leaving his embrace painfully empty. This time, the smoke is black.
Chanyeol spends his entire evening calling for Baekhyun and apologizing, but the lamp stays cold and unresponsive.
It’s a whole new level of fucked up.
He knows he could always give Baekhyun an order and he’d be forced to face him, but he’s reluctant to do so. Maybe it’s the fact that Baekhyun has opened up to him, just a little, in the last few months. Sometimes, after Chanyeol has kissed him for so long that both their mouths hurt and their bodies tingle with the need for more, a more than Baekhyun has never let Chanyeol take, sometimes Baekhyun talks.
He tells Chanyeol stories of his past, or what’s inside the lamp. He’s never said how he became a genie of the lamp, but Chanyeol knows the legends. Genies are usually tricked and tied inside an object, forced to grant wish for the rest of eternity. They’re creature of hate and resentment, and they only bring pain and despair upon those who are unlucky enough to cross their paths.
But Baekhyun, Baekhyun is just lonely, sad. Alone.
Baekhyun has told Chanyeol about the other genies, about the king of pranks Jongdae and about Yixing, a healing spirit who inhabits a little toy unicorn. He can talk to them through a magic mirror in his room, inside the oil lamp. Chanyeol can keep it in a single hand, but inside the lamp there’s an entire castle all for Baekhyun, like a giant playground for an only child.
It must have been awful. Baekhyun had been awful, at the beginning. Always mocking Chanyeol and making his life a living hell and pulling his pigtails, and Chanyeol could work with impossibly annoying Baekhyun who didn’t know how to make friends because he hasn’t had any in more than one lifetime. He can work with annoying Baekhyun and with puppy Baekhyun curled on his bed because he wants to be cuddled, and melancholic Baekhyun who wants to go out and begs Chanyeol to go somewhere and just take the lamp with him because he wants to see a slice of the world.
But Chanyeol doesn’t know what to do with hurt Baekhyun, especially if he’s the one who hurt him.
He doesn’t have the courage to call Baekhyun out of the lamp after that episode and Baekhyun doesn’t come out on his own. He still brings it around wherever he goes, hoping that the other boy can still see outside and enjoy the view.
He takes the train every weekend and goes to a different place every time, trying to give Baekhyun snippets of his own time and homeland. The lamp always stays unresponsive, but Chanyeol doesn’t give up. He talks to Baekhyun at night, tells him about his day. He never forgets to say goodnight.
A few months after the fight, he finally gives in and rubs the lamp.
“I summon you, Baekhyun.”
It takes a moment until a thread of grey smoke escapes the spout, no colors, no loud sound effects, no makeup on Baekhyun’s face. He’s wearing grey, today. He suits him in the way it makes him look a pale Victorian heroin, so pale and thin.
There’s a faint sheen of worry in his little eyes, and Chanyeol knows it’s because he looks even worse. He opens his mouth to apologize, because it was really not his place to call him out of the lamp since Baekhyun had showed him no sign to be looking forward another meeting. Baekhyun beats him.
“You look like shit,” he says, fast and brisk.
“Wow, thank you. You’re not exactly the portrait of wealth, princess. Where are the tacky whore rags?”
Baekhyun’s face reddens, a hint of color in his dreary appearance. “I’m keeping them for someone who enjoys my company, not my ability to grant any wishes.”
Touché. Chanyeol takes the blow well, at least.
“I have a wish,” he says, and he hopes his voice doesn’t tremble because he’s going to start crying like a lost kid.
“Your word is my command, Master.”
Baekhyun’s eyes flash daggers, his lips set in a tight line. He looks like he wants to argue, but Chanyeol doesn’t have the time. Not today.
“My sister got in a car accident, yesterday,” he begins, and his voice really breaks. Baekhyun’s eyes widen.
“You know I can’t, Chanyeol, there are rules, death is not something…”
“She’s not dead,” he cries. “She’s not… She’s in a coma. Please, Baek, I just…”
Baekhyun nods. He licks his lips, as he always does when he’s focusing. Chanyeol doesn’t even dare to hope because he’s seen Yura on that hospital bed, barely breathing and he can’t even think of the worst case.
“Fear not, my Master.” He claps his hands, once. “A piece of cake,” he says.
“Don’t worry,” he adds at Chanyeol’s apparent lack of reactions, “I didn’t mess this up. I’m not this petty to put your sister’s health on the line just because you’ve been an asshole to me.”
It’s not like that, it’s not like that at all, and Chanyeol wants to say it out loud, that he never doubted that Baekhyun could be bale to do something like that to him. Because he thinks they’re friends.
He stills, glued to the floor, as his phone starts to ring.
“Hi mom?” He listens to the voice of his mother, speaking in his ear. He only hears half of what she’s saying, about how Yura woke up, how she’s talking, how she’ll be fine.
Only when the phone calls ends Chanyeol can falls to his knees as a wrecked sob is torn out of his mouth. He doesn’t realize he’s babbling in relief, constantly thanking Baekhyun over and over again, when the other boy speaks in a grim tone.
“Now that my services are no more required, am I allowed to go, Master?”
Chanyeol doesn’t answer, just stares wide-eyed as Baekhyun turns his back to him.
He’s going to go away, to disappear again inside that lamp. He’s given Chanyeol the greatest gift he could imagine, and now he’s leaving before Chanyeol can even thank him properly.
“Wait,” he says, and without thinking he grabs Baekhyun’s sleeve, holding it tight. Baekhyun stares, confused. “What?”
“You didn’t take your compensation,” he says, and it’s his last bet. He hopes Baekhyun understands. It’s not a vain hope, because when Baekhyun turns around to face him, his eyes are just as troubled as Chanyeol’s.
“And what do you think I should take from you, Chanyeol?”
“Just a hug,” answers, pleads, the genie, and something twists in his gut when Baekhyun pauses, considers, hesitates.
“Just a hug,” he asks, not even a question, just a string of empty words. He’s just as unsure as Chanyeol is. “Just a hug is fine,” he says, and for the first time since Chanyeol knew him he looks awkward.
Baekhyun has always owned the space, exploding and vanishing at a fingers snap and conquering every inch of land he happened to lay his feet on, including Chanyeol. Now he just seems tied to the spot. He his arms, barely, but Chanyeol takes the cue. Baekhyun is not going to jump on him like the other times. This time, he has to go.
So he runs towards him, wrapping the genie in his arms and holding him tight. The beast inside his heart, this gnawing, scratching, howling anxiety is gone, melted away with Baekhyun’s magic and Baekhyun’s steady pulse under Chanyeol’s arms.
Baekhyun still smells like orange flowers and jasmine. His hair is soft under Chanyeol’s nose and his sobs don’t make any sound against Chanyeol’s chest. Baekhyun doesn’t let his tears fall, he just shakes and leans forward until he annihilates the space separating them, like he’s trying to sink inside Chanyeol and lie there within him forever. Chanyeol wouldn’t mind that.
“I missed you,” his words are lost in the folds of Chanyeol’s shirt, as if they’re coming from a faraway place. Chanyeol’s limbs are so long that his hands can easily reunite behind Baekhyun’s back, so he tangles his finger together. He doesn’t want Baekhyun to be able to back out from his hug. He still doesn’t know if the restraint he’s created with his body can be for his genie a nest, a place to be happy and peaceful, or a cage, just another lamp to despise. He hopes that Baekhyun doesn’t mind his egoistic desires. Baekhyun muffles another “I missed you” in Chanyeol’s chest.
“I missed you too.”
Third wish
Chanyeol has been thinking. He thinks about immortality and loneliness and about tiny prisons and voices loud enough to fill the vacuous spaces until the farthest corner. Chanyeol thinks about true love and wishes that can’t ever be granted and tricks and legends and the curve of Baekhyun’s smile, the way his lips tugs upwards when Chanyeol does something that makes him happy.
It’s not something that started last day, or last week, or last month. He’s knows Baekhyun for almost a year now, and he knows, he’s seen what Baekhyun can do. An entire world of possibilities spread in front of his mind like the Arabian fan of ostrich feathers that Baekhyun once brought out of the lamp when he dashed in Chanyeol’s lap, awfully noisy and whiny, complaining about torrid weathers and the metal of the lamp burning and turning his room into a furnace.
He could ask for wealth, he could ask for power, he could even ask for magic. Chanyeol goes to school every day keeping a power that could overturn and rule entire countries comfortably snug inside his pocket. Chanyeol’s third wish hangs like a death sentence on his and Baekhyun’s friendship.
Not that they can still call it friendship, he thinks, staring at Baekhyun’s hair spilt on his pillow, the translucent veil that covers his shoulder all wrinkled and tangled up under Chanyeol’s sheet. Chanyeol’s parents would have a fit if they were to enter his room right now. They’d think that Chanyeol has snuck his girlfriend inside from the window, or something equally dangerous and stupid, it wouldn’t be the first time it happens. Except Baekhyun couldn’t pass for a girl even like this, with his face buried in the pillow and his pretty hands in sight and his indecent see-through indigo outfit. He’s too flat.
“Why are you still awake?” mumbles Baekhyun. His drowsy voice is raspy, rough in Chanyeol’s ears.
He pats the genie’s head, stroking the black hair in the way he knows makes Baekhyun arch his spine like a cat and purr low in his throat. “Nothing,” he answers. He lets the rhythmic pace of his fingers lead Baekhyun back into the world of dreams.
Before he falls asleep, Chanyeol catches a shiny reflex of an outside streetlamp on the surface of Baekhyun’s prison, the cursed oil lamp. He dreams of promises and together and doing the right choice.
“Baekhyun, what happens after my third wish?”
It’s not a good question because he can see Baekhyun freeze and pale with the corner of his eye. He pretends to be engrossed with his Biology notes, trying to pass it off as a mere curiosity.
“After your third wish you are not formally my master anymore,” replies Baekhyun in a staid voce. He seems almost reluctant to talk about it.
“That means that I’d still be able to see you, right? You always come out of the lamp on your own, anyway.”
“No, Chanyeol. After your third wish I won’t be able to come out of the lamp anymore. Only the touch of my new master can open the door again.”
The silence that falls after Baekhyun’s revelation is tense.
“Don’t worry, I’ve waited for Siwon to find me for more than three hundred years. The lamp had been buried in the tomb of the Dragon King, in Mongolia. I hope I can meet one of his reincarnations some day. Did you know that he became king with my help? And he had nerve to have me thrown in a hole with his corpse.”
“Why did he do that?”
“Because he didn’t want anyone else to have me after his first three wishes. That’s kinda sad, don’t you think?”
Chanyeol doesn’t think it’s sad. He think that this Dragon King was a real asshole and that Baekhyun deserved better. He deserves better.
Little hands creep up on his chest, gripping the shirt. “Chanyeol, can you promise me that you’ll give my lamp to someone else after you’re done with me?”
Baekhyun’s eyes are begging, shiny. Maybe Chanyeol understands the Dragon King a little more now, because he realizes that he doesn’t want to had the lamp over to someone else. He wants Baekhyun to always be with him. He wouldn’t stand the thought of him falling on someone else’s lap with a waterfall of sparkles.
“Don’t worry, I haven’t expressed my last wish yet, right? Until that moment, you don’t have to worry, Baekhyunnie.”
Not even his words can’t erase the shadow of worry from Baekhyun’s hooded eyes.
The first wish was an accident, the second an unavoidable necessity. Chanyeol’s third wish is a gift.
It’s his birthday, again, and uncle Siwon finally got him a Play Station 4. Better late than never, thinks Chanyeol, even as his mom complains because he’s a man now, he’s going to university next year.
Uncle Siwon smirks at Chanyeol all the time with his piercing, knowing eyes, acting like he totally knows what thoughts are spinning in his nephew’s heavy head, but Chanyeol is too nervous to care about that right now. He feels like his heart is punching against his ribcage, begging to be left outside, free to run away, but Chanyeol has thought about this for too long.
The oil lamp glimmers in the darkness of his room. If he looks closely, he can see it almost the air around it throb in anticipation.
He doesn’t need to call Baekhyun, because the boy is rolling out of his magic cage, wearing the same smirk of their first encounter, a feline grin that haunts Chanyeol’s dreams at night and makes him wake up startled and aroused.
“Hi, birthday boy,” he purrs, and Chanyeol feels his resolve break and his legs give up as Baekhyun manhandles him on the bed and starts sucking on his tongue.
Chanyeol’s hands ends up on Baekhyun’s nape and Baekhyun tenses and snaps like a bow, his spine a beautiful arch that makes his crotch rub against Chanyeol’s. It’s so easy to fall in his little game of give and take, push and pull. The hands that push Chanyeol away when he gets too close are the same hands that pull him back on Baekhyun’s chest, as if his absence is an invisible burn on Baekhyun’s honey skin.
Months of careful observation have taught Chanyeol a few things about his personal genie. Just like the sharp pieces of a broken china can only show the pattern when they’re glued back together, little by little Chanyeol has collected fragments of Baekhyun, of the person Baekhyun used to be or could have been.
Baekhyun craves for affection and intimacy as if he can never be sated, but he’s ready to let Chanyeol claim so much of him in return. Baekhyun loves without conditions or restraints, without doubts, without fear, without keeping anything of himself for himself. He’d give his whole everything to Chanyeol in exchange for Chanyeol’s heart, but the problem is he can’t.
Chanyeol’s hands run over golden skin and luscious silks until they stop on Baekhyun’s wrist, over the golden cuffs where embossed arabesques and mythological animal chase each other in an eternal hunt, the same that can be barely perceived with the pads of careful fingers on the surface of the old oil lamp. The cuffs are exquisite, like the most beautiful piece of jewelry, and scary, because they’re the proof of Baekhyun’s slavery.
Chanyeol’s fingers linger on the bracelets too long and Baekhyun snatches his arms away. There’s a faint veil of shame on his cheeks, his eyes are too guarded, in a way they only used to be during the early stages of his and Chanyeol’s friendship. Silence looms over them, only broken by two boys’ broken panting.
“I have a wish,” says Chanyeol, and Baekhyun’s eyes widens in something akin to betrayal. “Are you surprised?”
“I knew it was going to end like this, eventually, I just thought…” His moves a rebel strand of hair out of this face. His smile is sour and doesn’t reach his eyes. “I didn’t think it would be this early, Chanyeol. I was looking forward to spending more time with you.”
He teleports with a crack just out of Chanyeol’s reach and the fingers that wanted to caress his face only barely grace their target. Chanyeol can only watch as Baekhyun swallows his sadness and forces himself to relax as he kneels on the ground, in a submissive position. He licks dry lips before he speaks.
“Your wish is my command, Master.”
Chanyeol’s heart misses a beat and the urge to cradle Baekhyun in his arms and never let him go is overwhelming. It could be so easy, because Baekhyun belongs to the lamp, but the lamp belongs to Chanyeol and Chanyeol could simply let life unfold in front of his eyes, year after year, with the adamantine certainty that Baekhyun will ever be at his beck and call, an eternal nymph with tantalizing eyes and secret smiles.
But Baekhyun is so much more than that and what Chanyeol wants the most is something that no cuffs nor magic lamps can jail, something that only Baekhyun can give him on his free will.
“I have a wish,” he repeats, “but I don’t know if you can grant it. After all, I think it has something to do with true love.”
He doesn’t dare to look at Baekhyun. His heart is pounding anxiously against constricting chest walls.
“I wish that you could be free, Baekhyun.”
It takes just a pop, a silly, stupid pop like the sound of a fortune cookie breaking in half. Baekhyun exhales with a soft, almost inaudible moan. The clink of something metallic falling to the ground.
“Chanyeol…”
Chanyeol screws is eyes shut until they hurt and white dots start to dance in his vision field. Baekhyun’s voice is the same, but there’s something different, a whole universe of different.
“Chanyeol.”
Baekhyun’s hands come to rest on his face, cupping the chin, tilting his head upwards until Baekhyun is kissing him. It’s caste and wet, too wet, and he doesn’t need to open his eyes to see that Baekhyun is crying.
“Chanyeol,” implores Baekhyun, stealing the sound of his name between trembling kisses, like a prayer. “Chanyeol, thank you.”
His hands move blindly and awkwardly until he finds Baekhyun’s neck. He goes for the nape, because it never fails to make Baekhyun relax in his hold.
“Why are you crying?” he asks. His eyes burn from the salt of his own tears.
“Because I have to go. This was your last wish and now we can’t stay together anymore. It was your last wish and you used it for me. I’m so happy, Chanyeol, and so sad. Thank you, thank you Park Chanyeol.”
His voice is thin. He cries in silence, but Chanyeol can still hear it in the way is voice breaks painfully when he has to exhale against the knot in his throat.
“What will happen to you?”
“I don’t know,” he says, sounding so lost. “I don’t know.”
“I’d wish you only good things, but I’ve run out of wishes,” he tries to joke.
Baekhyun sobs against his mouth, pulls Chanyeol’s hair until the roots hurt, coaxes his lips open and kisses him until they’ve both sucked licked the salt of their tears away from their mouths and all that remains is just a kiss, a gesture so little, revolutionary and explosive.
When Chanyeol opens his eyes, they hurt. There’s light around Baekhyun, little stars that chase each other on his collarbone, the hollow of his throat, his elbow, in a game of hide and seek.
“The magic is ending,” says Baekhyun, leaning down until he’s nosing Chanyeol’s hair. “We have no time.”
“No time for what?” asks Chanyeol, breathless.
Baekhyun smiles and Chanyeol is sure he’ll take this perfect image with him for the rest of his life.
“My compensation, obviously. Kiss me, Chanyeol. Kiss me.”
Chanyeol kisses along his body, marking him, and for every kiss there's a spark exploding with a snap, residual magic that loathes to leave Baekhyun's skin that Chanyeol must chase away with his tongue and teeth. Butterflies kisses on his cheekbones, on his lips, on his fluttering lashes, until they’re both dying from the dull pain that blooms like a flower of pleasure every time their lips meet again.
The lamp shrieks and darkens but they don’t look at it. Baekhyun looks at Chanyeol and glows. Chanyeol looks at Baekhyun as he slowly starts to disappear, slipping away from his hold, no matter how tight he holds on. Chanyeol looks at Baekhyun and tries to chase away the shadow of regret. But when Baekhyun looks at him, his eyes filled with stars and music and flowers and the sea and every thing that Chanyeol considers beautiful in this world, he knows he’s done the right thing.
Baekhyun disappears in a flash of light and all Chanyeol has left is an old, dirty empty lamp that doesn’t sing arcane songs anymore.
(Tell me your fantasy without holding back.
I’ll show you the genie’s path.
Tell me your wish without holding back.
I, your genie, will grant them)
Chanyeol recognizes Baekhyun almost immediately, like a gem shining in the crowd of freshmen during the annual welcome tour. He’s wearing a backwards baseball cap, a graphic tee and a pair of worn out Converse.
Chanyeol doesn’t have the chance to talk to him for a few months. They don’t run in the same circles and the boy seems to disappear every time Chanyeol is in sight. They finally meet at the end of November in front of the vending machine near the southern dorms. It’s night, it’s cold and someone spiked the orange juice with vodka back at Chanyeol’s birthday party at Kris’ flat.
“Did you leave the purple silk at home, this time?” he asks, feeling bold and stupid and drunk and incredibly happy.
“Excuse me?”
The boys stares at him, looking torn between calling the police or an ambulance. Of course, he doesn’t remember. Chanyeol doesn’t care.
“I have a wish. Please become my friend.”
Baekhyun squints. He’s wearing sweatpants and slippers. He gauges the weight of the bottle in his hand to see if he can use it against Chanyeol in case things get strange.
“Are you drunk?” he asks.
“A little, but it’s my birthday. I think you owe me a gift.”
Baekhyun laughs. His laugh is the same, rich and pretty.
“You’re so strange, you know? But you really look like someone I know. This isn’t the first time we meet, right?”
Chanyeol scratches his head, a little unsure.
“You were my genie of the lamp for a whole year.”
Baekhyun laughs longer.
“You’re completely wasted. Oh, I like you. Ok, let’s do this. It’s your birthday, after all. I’m Byun Baekhyun, by the way.”
Oh, I know.
“Park Chanyeol, nice to meet you.”
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PLEASE FORGIVE ME IT'S 3AM I HAVE TO GET UP IN FOUR HOURS AND I FINISHED WRITING THIS TEN MINUTES AGO AND I HAVEN'T EVEN READ IT YET SO IT'S PROBABLY RUBBISH BUT I WANTED TO DO SOMETHING FOR CHANYEOL'S BIRTHDAY WHY AM I ALWAYS SO LATE AND LAST MINUTE AND EPIC FAIL. BYE.
i'm deleting this tomorrow in shame when i'll be lucid enough to realize what the fuck i did wrote in the last part.
Rating: pg13
Pairing: Chanyeol/Baekhyun
Wordcount: 6.7k
Warning: mentions of underage handjobs
Disclaimer: EXO belongs to themselves and SME
Notes: TOTALLY UNBETAED. WORDS BLOB. HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHANYEOL. GENIE!AU. title comes from SNSD's Genie.
Summary: Chanyeol receives a mysterious oil lamp for his birthday. With the lamp come three wishes, a wicked genie and true love.
First wish
The lamp was a gift. Siwon’s gift, to be accurate, and that already should’ve warned Chanyeol. You don’t just accept gifts from your distant relative who raises baby dragons and hunts fairies for a living. But it was Chanyeol’s birthday, and Siwon totally looked like he had forgotten about it and had been forced to come out with a random gift fished from the first antique dealer’s storage closet he had found on his way home.
Honestly, Chanyeol had wanted a Play Station 4 and he couldn’t care less about oil lamps, hence his gift ended up being thrown inside a drawer, totally forgotten, at least until Chanyeol decides to come back home from Minho’s party at three in the morning, more than a little tipsy. He’s looking for some Aspirin when his fingers knock against the spout of the lamp. He curses Uncle Siwon and takes the oil lamp in his hands. It’s strangely heavy, considering that it’s empty.
Maybe it’s the booze, but the arabesques on the old bronze seem to dance to an arcane music, a rhythmic, hypnotizing beat that Chanyeol wishes he was sober enough to write down because it’d look perfect on one of his new songs. He leans closer, but there’s an opaque patina on the surface of the lamp and his eyes catches nothing more than rust and dirt.
“Oh hell,” he swears, already regretting the decision to pick up the old thing. He wishes he could throw it back inside the drawer and go to sleep, but he feels strangely attracted to it.
Unsatisfied with his first inspection, he takes a hem of his shirt and uses it to wipe away the grime.
That’s when he hears a soft pop, and violet smoke erupts from the spout and invades the room and Chanyeol’s lungs, clouding his eyes. He’s coughing and tearing up when the smoke takes the shape of a person, a boy.
Chanyeol wants to scream because there’s a stranger in his room, and the stranger just came out of the lamp and he’s dressed like a One Thousand and One Nights character.
The stranger smirks, taking in Chanyeol’s height and his toned arms.
“Someone got lucky this time! No perverted old geezers for Baekhyun. Jongdae will burst from envy.”
“Who the hell are you.”
“Relax pretty boy, you can put the bat down. I doubt it’d be effective against me, you know?”
Chanyeol tighten his hold on the baseball bat he’s holding, ready to swing if this strange kid wrapped in violet and turquoise silk does something strange.
“I asked you a question,” he threatens.
The boy pouts, a lethal combination of heavy kohl and tender lips on his handsome face that makes Chanyeol gulp hard. Baekhyun joins elegant hands with long fingers in front of his face, kneeling down until he’s sitting on Chanyeol’s floor. He bows his head and licks his lips, looking exotic and alluring and so, so unreal.
“I am Baekhyun, the genie of the lamp. Your wish is my command, Master.”
This, Chanyeol thinks, is what a catastrophe must feel like.
“Uncle, care to explain why I have a boy dressed like an Arabian whore sitting on my bed and calling me his master?”
“Oh, so you finally met Baekhyun,” beams Siwon on the other side of the world. “I’m so glad you decided to summon him. The kid needed company and your love life has always been kinda boring.” Chanyeol splutters, but Siwon doesn’t leave him time to talk. “I’m sorry dear nephew, I’m quite preoccupied at the moment. There’s this witch who’s trying to behead me. If you don’t mind…” With that, he shuts the phone in Chanyeol’s face.
“I can’t believe that old man. I wish he was here, because I want to strangle him with my own hands.”
Baekhyun, sitting on the bed, lights up and claps his hands once. Another cloud of purple smoke explodes in the room. When Chanyeol can open his eyes, ready to strangle Baekhyun too, Siwon is in front of them. There’s a bleeding gush on his neck.
“Oh, thank you kids. You saved my life,” he says, looking at them with spirited eyes. “Though you shouldn’t really have wasted your first wish on me, Chanyeol-ah. Oh well, look at the time, I better go now if I want to go back to Mexico before that witch actually kills someone else. Bye.”
“Bye Siwon-ssi,” Baekhyun waves happily, “it was a pleasure saving you, again.”
“Always so charming, take good care of my nephew, Baekhyun-ah!”
And with that is gone. An awkward silence falls on the room.
“Okay, it’s five in the morning and the only thing I got out of this whole mess is that you’re a genie, a true genie. You can grant wishes, right?”
Baekhyun nods, eager and excited, like a puppy. A puppy with a lot of eyeliner. “Yes, three of them. I have limits though. I can’t overcome the boundaries of death and true love, but everything else can be yours. You’re a lucky kid, Park Chanyeol,” he says, but there’s a wicked glint in his eyes.
“You’re not fooling me, princess Jasmine,” Baekhyun snorts at the nickname, “I’ve read the book. Genies are usually evil and whatever wish I make you’ll end up turning it against me, right?”
“Oh, come on, I may have done this sometimes, in my long, boring life. But you’re pretty, so let’s try to get along, alright? You give me what I want and I may try to be benevolent and not turn your remaining two wishes into a nightmare, do we have a deal, Park Chanyeol?”
“And what do you want?” asks Chanyeol, more than a little worried.
Baekhyun smirks, fucking smirks, and disappears, dissipating in a quick cloud of smoke. A second later Chanyeol feels a weight on his chest, pinning him to the bed, and the little shit is all over him, his strong smell of orange flower and jasmine filling Chanyeol’s nostrils.
“What do I want, he asks… A fucking eternity holed up in a lamp, all alone, no one to comfort me…” He licks his lips and Chanyeol can’t help but follow his movements, eyes glued to the pink little tongue. “What do you think I want?”
Chanyeol opens his mouth to answer and Baekhyun kisses him, open mouthed and hungry. His lips move messily over Chanyeol’s for a moment, then that little sneaky tongue is licking inside his mouth, taking and taking until Chanyeol can’t breathe anymore. His hand scramble at the fabric of Baekhyun’s vest, a bad move because the other boy is wearing nothing under, and when Chanyeol tears, the embroidered flowers scrape against Baekhyun’s nipples, making him spill a moan inside Chanyeol’s mouth.
Chanyeol’s hands blindly grab Baekhyun’s hair, tearing their mouth apart, and as soon as he can breathe on his own, he pushes Baekhyun away with a choked “What the fuck?”
The faint echo of Baekhyun’s laugh invades his ears as the boy disappears again, only to find fall on Chanyeol’s body one more time, crushing him with his body and attacking him with his lips.
“Wait, wait, wait,” protests the taller boy, when he manages to break free again. “You’re not doing this right.”
Baekhyun’s eyes flash with amusement, “Am I not?”
He’s so infuriatingly smug, despite being flushed and panting and wrecked on top of Chanyeol.
Something in Chanyeol snaps and he’s reverting their position. Baekhyun lets him, hooking a hand on Chanyeol’s hip and dragging him down. He’s pliant and eager when Chanyeol kisses him, and it’s so easy to just lose focus and drown in his lips and push him against the mattress, closing the space between their bodies.
Chanyeol can still feel the alcohol singing in his veins, luring him into do reckless things, and Baekhyun is so excited and exciting.
Chanyeol’s head throb, his muscles shaking with fatigue and an unreleased energy. His erection throbs too, trapped in his pants and underwear, begging to be trashed against the beautiful boy under him. Baekhyun is wearing silk pants, how lewd would it be to just rub the head of his cock against the smooth fabric?
He stutters at the thought, stopping the motion of his hips, moving in tiny involuntary circles against Baekhyun’s responding hardness, and ends up thrusting down roughly. Baekhyun’s whole body tenses under him for a moment, teetering on the edge of the precipice, then the genie snaps and jerks as he’s forcefully brought at the peak of pleasure by a second powerful thrust. Baekhyun’s teeth close on Chanyeol’s lips hard enough to draw blood and Chanyeol growls down in his throat and kisses him through the orgasm, his mind hazy and only focused on reaching his own completion.
“That’s enough,” pants Baekhyun against the roof of Chanyeol’s mouth, the words barely perceptible over the heated dance off tongues and teeth and lips. Chanyeol whines when the other boy sucks on his tongue hard one last time, before driving it out of his pretty mouth.
The genie disappears, again, and Chanyeol is really beginning to hate this vanishing in smoke power of his. He pants, chest heaving up and down and cock straining and burning.
Baekhyun reappears on the edge of the bed. There’s a wet spot on the front of his pants, Chanyeol notices, the silk looks slippery and wet at the touch. It makes him blush.
Baekhyun’s mouth still glistens with Chanyeol’s saliva and Chanyeol stares, undoubtedly turned on, when his tongue darts out to have a taste.
“I think it’s enough for today. Congratulations, Chanyeol, you’ve offered me efficient compensation for your first wish.”
“Wait, what do you mean? It wasn’t even a conscious wish, you can’t make me pay for that one too.”
“I can and I just did,” affirms Baekhyun, matter-of-factly. “I could’ve teleported here your uncle and the witch, and then she could’ve beheaded the both of you. Bow down to my greatness, Master.”
Chanyeol finds it a little contradictory that Baekhyun dares to order him around and then call him master, it just adds insult to the injury.
“Well, but couldn’t you wait a minute? I was this close to coming,” he whines.
Baekhyun looks down at his pants, painfully tight, the outline of Chanyeol’s cock prominent. He licks his lips, a nervous fixation that is starting to drive Chanyeol mad.
“That is a big pity. Emphasis on the big part… You look terribly well-endowed down there. But the payment is about me, not you. And I am satisfied enough.”
Chanyeol’s mouth hangs open. “WHAT?”
“I’m going to retire to my lamp, if you want to excuse me.”
A string of insults and curses falls out of Chanyeol’s lips as Baekhyun waves him goodbye and explodes in the usual cloud of purple fog. The oil lamp sucks him in with a mocking pop.
“You know that I could always summon you out of that damn lamp and ask you to finish your job, right?” he asks, feeling his head spin between the booze, the irritation and one good share of sexual frustration.
Baekhyun’s head comes out of the bottle, surrounded in purple smoke. “Oh, please, do that. I want to see you wasting your second wish on a flimsy drunken blowjob.”
Chanyeol bites his lips, trying to come up with a smart remark.
“Good night, Chanyeol.” Baekhyun’s voice follows him back inside the lamp.
Chanyeol is left alone, sitting on his bed, with a raging hard on between his legs.
“You asshole,” he screams at the lamp. “You perverted ungrateful asshole! I’m never going to summon you out of the lamp, do you hear me? Never again!”
There’s only a little hiccup of violet coming out the spout, “Good luck with the handjob, handsome, I’ll enjoy the view.”
Chanyeol throws the lamp back inside the drawer and slams it closed before actually going to the bathroom and jerking off to Baekhyun’s sweet scent and rosy tongue. So fucking unfair.
Second wish
“What if I ask to be forever young?” asks Chanyeol on a whim, three months later, to a very silent oil lamp. He has to duck a whip of red smoke, coming tight out of the spout. “Oh, come on, there’s no need to be such a party pooper Baek.”
The only answer is a dignified grunt, followed by a loud raspberry.
“Pinky promise, next time you’re extra annoying I won’t take revenge by wrapping you around my dirty underwear. I swear.”
Maybe it’s the remind of the actual offense, but the thin thread of smoke that was coming out of the oil lamp becomes a steaming jet, and Chanyeol is forced to let go of the suddenly burning lamp.
“Very funny. Who thought you could’ve been so cranky.”
Nothing more comes out. Oh, then Baekhyun is giving him the silent treatment.
Chanyeol sighs. In the last three months, he’s had to deal with the prissy genie and his terrible attitude more times than he can count. At least now he has a fairly good idea of what he can and can’t do - even if he has to admit that the underwear thing was pushing it a bit too far.
“Come on, Baek, get out of the lamp,” he purrs, in the low, rough voice that makes Baekhyun so nicely pliant and cooperative. The oil lamp trembles in his hand, grumbling like a teapot.
“Aren’t you bored, in there? Year after year, with no one taking care of you?”
Baekhyun’s voice comes out metallic and distorted, but undoubtedly whiny.
“At least no one ever stuffed me inside dirty laundry, you monkey. The stink!”
“Oh, poor baby,” he coos, “my bad, my bad, Baekhyunnie. I was an insensitive jerk.”
“You were!”
The words come out as a yelp, and Chanyeol fights the urge to chuckle because Baekhyun can be really predictable. Not that he’s ever telling him that. He wants to keep his dick intact for when the genie will finally surrender to Chanyeol’s chase.
“If you come out, I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
The lamp shake, it seems a little torn. Then, finally, Baekhyun appears in a puff of blue smoke, falling right on top of Chanyeol.
“Blue, this time? Are you depressed dear?” he asks, scooting over so that Baekhyun can snuggle against him on the bed, nosing at his jawline.
“You were being mean to me, of course I am depressed.”
He pouts and Chanyeol’s heart misses a beat. All his plans to tease his genie vanish like the colorful clouds that accompany Baekhyun’s wicked presence.
“Did you listen to me or were you too intent on scowling?”
“I heard everything,” proclaims Baekhyun, even as he chases Chanyeol’s warmth face, just like a puppy.
“And?”
Baekhyun hides his head in the crook of Chanyeol’s neck, refusing to say anything else. Chanyeol knows better than trying to tear an answer out of him when he’s like this, needy and exposed. He wonders how starved he’d be for human warmth if he was trapped in a bottle for so many years.
Finally, Baekhyun lets him go. “Are you stupid? Your question didn’t even deserve the time I’m wasting to answer you.”
Chanyeol makes a puzzled face.
“Dumb Yeol. Being forever young means living forever. Not even the mighty Baekhyun can change that.”
“Oh.” Chanyeol feels suddenly dumb. He hadn’t thought about that. “Never mind then.” He shrugs. “And then what about…”
“Shut up, question time is over. I bothered to dress up and get out of the lamp, so it’s your turn to entertain me.”
Chanyeol looks down and Baekhyun is indeed wearing new clothes. He looks good in red, a little too good. Good enough to eat.
“You’re such a little vixen,” he jokes, to lighten up the mood. Sometimes even just looking at Baekhyun is difficult for him. He makes everything so heavy, so difficult for Chanyeol. One moment they’re joking and a few breaths later Chanyeol wants to seal him inside the bottle and never let him go. He wonders what will happen, after he makes his last wish. Will Baekhyun disappear from his life forever? Somehow, he dreads to ask that question.
“What am I, your pet? You only seek me for my beautiful body,” he pretends to cry. Baekhyun just punches his chest.
“Shut up, as if you’re interested in me for my dashing personality.”
“No, I want you for the endless magic powers,” he teases, but maybe he just said the wrong words because Baekhyun’s lips, painted the color of amarena, tremble slightly before he evaporates out of Chanyeol’s arms, leaving his embrace painfully empty. This time, the smoke is black.
Chanyeol spends his entire evening calling for Baekhyun and apologizing, but the lamp stays cold and unresponsive.
It’s a whole new level of fucked up.
He knows he could always give Baekhyun an order and he’d be forced to face him, but he’s reluctant to do so. Maybe it’s the fact that Baekhyun has opened up to him, just a little, in the last few months. Sometimes, after Chanyeol has kissed him for so long that both their mouths hurt and their bodies tingle with the need for more, a more than Baekhyun has never let Chanyeol take, sometimes Baekhyun talks.
He tells Chanyeol stories of his past, or what’s inside the lamp. He’s never said how he became a genie of the lamp, but Chanyeol knows the legends. Genies are usually tricked and tied inside an object, forced to grant wish for the rest of eternity. They’re creature of hate and resentment, and they only bring pain and despair upon those who are unlucky enough to cross their paths.
But Baekhyun, Baekhyun is just lonely, sad. Alone.
Baekhyun has told Chanyeol about the other genies, about the king of pranks Jongdae and about Yixing, a healing spirit who inhabits a little toy unicorn. He can talk to them through a magic mirror in his room, inside the oil lamp. Chanyeol can keep it in a single hand, but inside the lamp there’s an entire castle all for Baekhyun, like a giant playground for an only child.
It must have been awful. Baekhyun had been awful, at the beginning. Always mocking Chanyeol and making his life a living hell and pulling his pigtails, and Chanyeol could work with impossibly annoying Baekhyun who didn’t know how to make friends because he hasn’t had any in more than one lifetime. He can work with annoying Baekhyun and with puppy Baekhyun curled on his bed because he wants to be cuddled, and melancholic Baekhyun who wants to go out and begs Chanyeol to go somewhere and just take the lamp with him because he wants to see a slice of the world.
But Chanyeol doesn’t know what to do with hurt Baekhyun, especially if he’s the one who hurt him.
He doesn’t have the courage to call Baekhyun out of the lamp after that episode and Baekhyun doesn’t come out on his own. He still brings it around wherever he goes, hoping that the other boy can still see outside and enjoy the view.
He takes the train every weekend and goes to a different place every time, trying to give Baekhyun snippets of his own time and homeland. The lamp always stays unresponsive, but Chanyeol doesn’t give up. He talks to Baekhyun at night, tells him about his day. He never forgets to say goodnight.
A few months after the fight, he finally gives in and rubs the lamp.
“I summon you, Baekhyun.”
It takes a moment until a thread of grey smoke escapes the spout, no colors, no loud sound effects, no makeup on Baekhyun’s face. He’s wearing grey, today. He suits him in the way it makes him look a pale Victorian heroin, so pale and thin.
There’s a faint sheen of worry in his little eyes, and Chanyeol knows it’s because he looks even worse. He opens his mouth to apologize, because it was really not his place to call him out of the lamp since Baekhyun had showed him no sign to be looking forward another meeting. Baekhyun beats him.
“You look like shit,” he says, fast and brisk.
“Wow, thank you. You’re not exactly the portrait of wealth, princess. Where are the tacky whore rags?”
Baekhyun’s face reddens, a hint of color in his dreary appearance. “I’m keeping them for someone who enjoys my company, not my ability to grant any wishes.”
Touché. Chanyeol takes the blow well, at least.
“I have a wish,” he says, and he hopes his voice doesn’t tremble because he’s going to start crying like a lost kid.
“Your word is my command, Master.”
Baekhyun’s eyes flash daggers, his lips set in a tight line. He looks like he wants to argue, but Chanyeol doesn’t have the time. Not today.
“My sister got in a car accident, yesterday,” he begins, and his voice really breaks. Baekhyun’s eyes widen.
“You know I can’t, Chanyeol, there are rules, death is not something…”
“She’s not dead,” he cries. “She’s not… She’s in a coma. Please, Baek, I just…”
Baekhyun nods. He licks his lips, as he always does when he’s focusing. Chanyeol doesn’t even dare to hope because he’s seen Yura on that hospital bed, barely breathing and he can’t even think of the worst case.
“Fear not, my Master.” He claps his hands, once. “A piece of cake,” he says.
“Don’t worry,” he adds at Chanyeol’s apparent lack of reactions, “I didn’t mess this up. I’m not this petty to put your sister’s health on the line just because you’ve been an asshole to me.”
It’s not like that, it’s not like that at all, and Chanyeol wants to say it out loud, that he never doubted that Baekhyun could be bale to do something like that to him. Because he thinks they’re friends.
He stills, glued to the floor, as his phone starts to ring.
“Hi mom?” He listens to the voice of his mother, speaking in his ear. He only hears half of what she’s saying, about how Yura woke up, how she’s talking, how she’ll be fine.
Only when the phone calls ends Chanyeol can falls to his knees as a wrecked sob is torn out of his mouth. He doesn’t realize he’s babbling in relief, constantly thanking Baekhyun over and over again, when the other boy speaks in a grim tone.
“Now that my services are no more required, am I allowed to go, Master?”
Chanyeol doesn’t answer, just stares wide-eyed as Baekhyun turns his back to him.
He’s going to go away, to disappear again inside that lamp. He’s given Chanyeol the greatest gift he could imagine, and now he’s leaving before Chanyeol can even thank him properly.
“Wait,” he says, and without thinking he grabs Baekhyun’s sleeve, holding it tight. Baekhyun stares, confused. “What?”
“You didn’t take your compensation,” he says, and it’s his last bet. He hopes Baekhyun understands. It’s not a vain hope, because when Baekhyun turns around to face him, his eyes are just as troubled as Chanyeol’s.
“And what do you think I should take from you, Chanyeol?”
“Just a hug,” answers, pleads, the genie, and something twists in his gut when Baekhyun pauses, considers, hesitates.
“Just a hug,” he asks, not even a question, just a string of empty words. He’s just as unsure as Chanyeol is. “Just a hug is fine,” he says, and for the first time since Chanyeol knew him he looks awkward.
Baekhyun has always owned the space, exploding and vanishing at a fingers snap and conquering every inch of land he happened to lay his feet on, including Chanyeol. Now he just seems tied to the spot. He his arms, barely, but Chanyeol takes the cue. Baekhyun is not going to jump on him like the other times. This time, he has to go.
So he runs towards him, wrapping the genie in his arms and holding him tight. The beast inside his heart, this gnawing, scratching, howling anxiety is gone, melted away with Baekhyun’s magic and Baekhyun’s steady pulse under Chanyeol’s arms.
Baekhyun still smells like orange flowers and jasmine. His hair is soft under Chanyeol’s nose and his sobs don’t make any sound against Chanyeol’s chest. Baekhyun doesn’t let his tears fall, he just shakes and leans forward until he annihilates the space separating them, like he’s trying to sink inside Chanyeol and lie there within him forever. Chanyeol wouldn’t mind that.
“I missed you,” his words are lost in the folds of Chanyeol’s shirt, as if they’re coming from a faraway place. Chanyeol’s limbs are so long that his hands can easily reunite behind Baekhyun’s back, so he tangles his finger together. He doesn’t want Baekhyun to be able to back out from his hug. He still doesn’t know if the restraint he’s created with his body can be for his genie a nest, a place to be happy and peaceful, or a cage, just another lamp to despise. He hopes that Baekhyun doesn’t mind his egoistic desires. Baekhyun muffles another “I missed you” in Chanyeol’s chest.
“I missed you too.”
Third wish
Chanyeol has been thinking. He thinks about immortality and loneliness and about tiny prisons and voices loud enough to fill the vacuous spaces until the farthest corner. Chanyeol thinks about true love and wishes that can’t ever be granted and tricks and legends and the curve of Baekhyun’s smile, the way his lips tugs upwards when Chanyeol does something that makes him happy.
It’s not something that started last day, or last week, or last month. He’s knows Baekhyun for almost a year now, and he knows, he’s seen what Baekhyun can do. An entire world of possibilities spread in front of his mind like the Arabian fan of ostrich feathers that Baekhyun once brought out of the lamp when he dashed in Chanyeol’s lap, awfully noisy and whiny, complaining about torrid weathers and the metal of the lamp burning and turning his room into a furnace.
He could ask for wealth, he could ask for power, he could even ask for magic. Chanyeol goes to school every day keeping a power that could overturn and rule entire countries comfortably snug inside his pocket. Chanyeol’s third wish hangs like a death sentence on his and Baekhyun’s friendship.
Not that they can still call it friendship, he thinks, staring at Baekhyun’s hair spilt on his pillow, the translucent veil that covers his shoulder all wrinkled and tangled up under Chanyeol’s sheet. Chanyeol’s parents would have a fit if they were to enter his room right now. They’d think that Chanyeol has snuck his girlfriend inside from the window, or something equally dangerous and stupid, it wouldn’t be the first time it happens. Except Baekhyun couldn’t pass for a girl even like this, with his face buried in the pillow and his pretty hands in sight and his indecent see-through indigo outfit. He’s too flat.
“Why are you still awake?” mumbles Baekhyun. His drowsy voice is raspy, rough in Chanyeol’s ears.
He pats the genie’s head, stroking the black hair in the way he knows makes Baekhyun arch his spine like a cat and purr low in his throat. “Nothing,” he answers. He lets the rhythmic pace of his fingers lead Baekhyun back into the world of dreams.
Before he falls asleep, Chanyeol catches a shiny reflex of an outside streetlamp on the surface of Baekhyun’s prison, the cursed oil lamp. He dreams of promises and together and doing the right choice.
“Baekhyun, what happens after my third wish?”
It’s not a good question because he can see Baekhyun freeze and pale with the corner of his eye. He pretends to be engrossed with his Biology notes, trying to pass it off as a mere curiosity.
“After your third wish you are not formally my master anymore,” replies Baekhyun in a staid voce. He seems almost reluctant to talk about it.
“That means that I’d still be able to see you, right? You always come out of the lamp on your own, anyway.”
“No, Chanyeol. After your third wish I won’t be able to come out of the lamp anymore. Only the touch of my new master can open the door again.”
The silence that falls after Baekhyun’s revelation is tense.
“Don’t worry, I’ve waited for Siwon to find me for more than three hundred years. The lamp had been buried in the tomb of the Dragon King, in Mongolia. I hope I can meet one of his reincarnations some day. Did you know that he became king with my help? And he had nerve to have me thrown in a hole with his corpse.”
“Why did he do that?”
“Because he didn’t want anyone else to have me after his first three wishes. That’s kinda sad, don’t you think?”
Chanyeol doesn’t think it’s sad. He think that this Dragon King was a real asshole and that Baekhyun deserved better. He deserves better.
Little hands creep up on his chest, gripping the shirt. “Chanyeol, can you promise me that you’ll give my lamp to someone else after you’re done with me?”
Baekhyun’s eyes are begging, shiny. Maybe Chanyeol understands the Dragon King a little more now, because he realizes that he doesn’t want to had the lamp over to someone else. He wants Baekhyun to always be with him. He wouldn’t stand the thought of him falling on someone else’s lap with a waterfall of sparkles.
“Don’t worry, I haven’t expressed my last wish yet, right? Until that moment, you don’t have to worry, Baekhyunnie.”
Not even his words can’t erase the shadow of worry from Baekhyun’s hooded eyes.
The first wish was an accident, the second an unavoidable necessity. Chanyeol’s third wish is a gift.
It’s his birthday, again, and uncle Siwon finally got him a Play Station 4. Better late than never, thinks Chanyeol, even as his mom complains because he’s a man now, he’s going to university next year.
Uncle Siwon smirks at Chanyeol all the time with his piercing, knowing eyes, acting like he totally knows what thoughts are spinning in his nephew’s heavy head, but Chanyeol is too nervous to care about that right now. He feels like his heart is punching against his ribcage, begging to be left outside, free to run away, but Chanyeol has thought about this for too long.
The oil lamp glimmers in the darkness of his room. If he looks closely, he can see it almost the air around it throb in anticipation.
He doesn’t need to call Baekhyun, because the boy is rolling out of his magic cage, wearing the same smirk of their first encounter, a feline grin that haunts Chanyeol’s dreams at night and makes him wake up startled and aroused.
“Hi, birthday boy,” he purrs, and Chanyeol feels his resolve break and his legs give up as Baekhyun manhandles him on the bed and starts sucking on his tongue.
Chanyeol’s hands ends up on Baekhyun’s nape and Baekhyun tenses and snaps like a bow, his spine a beautiful arch that makes his crotch rub against Chanyeol’s. It’s so easy to fall in his little game of give and take, push and pull. The hands that push Chanyeol away when he gets too close are the same hands that pull him back on Baekhyun’s chest, as if his absence is an invisible burn on Baekhyun’s honey skin.
Months of careful observation have taught Chanyeol a few things about his personal genie. Just like the sharp pieces of a broken china can only show the pattern when they’re glued back together, little by little Chanyeol has collected fragments of Baekhyun, of the person Baekhyun used to be or could have been.
Baekhyun craves for affection and intimacy as if he can never be sated, but he’s ready to let Chanyeol claim so much of him in return. Baekhyun loves without conditions or restraints, without doubts, without fear, without keeping anything of himself for himself. He’d give his whole everything to Chanyeol in exchange for Chanyeol’s heart, but the problem is he can’t.
Chanyeol’s hands run over golden skin and luscious silks until they stop on Baekhyun’s wrist, over the golden cuffs where embossed arabesques and mythological animal chase each other in an eternal hunt, the same that can be barely perceived with the pads of careful fingers on the surface of the old oil lamp. The cuffs are exquisite, like the most beautiful piece of jewelry, and scary, because they’re the proof of Baekhyun’s slavery.
Chanyeol’s fingers linger on the bracelets too long and Baekhyun snatches his arms away. There’s a faint veil of shame on his cheeks, his eyes are too guarded, in a way they only used to be during the early stages of his and Chanyeol’s friendship. Silence looms over them, only broken by two boys’ broken panting.
“I have a wish,” says Chanyeol, and Baekhyun’s eyes widens in something akin to betrayal. “Are you surprised?”
“I knew it was going to end like this, eventually, I just thought…” His moves a rebel strand of hair out of this face. His smile is sour and doesn’t reach his eyes. “I didn’t think it would be this early, Chanyeol. I was looking forward to spending more time with you.”
He teleports with a crack just out of Chanyeol’s reach and the fingers that wanted to caress his face only barely grace their target. Chanyeol can only watch as Baekhyun swallows his sadness and forces himself to relax as he kneels on the ground, in a submissive position. He licks dry lips before he speaks.
“Your wish is my command, Master.”
Chanyeol’s heart misses a beat and the urge to cradle Baekhyun in his arms and never let him go is overwhelming. It could be so easy, because Baekhyun belongs to the lamp, but the lamp belongs to Chanyeol and Chanyeol could simply let life unfold in front of his eyes, year after year, with the adamantine certainty that Baekhyun will ever be at his beck and call, an eternal nymph with tantalizing eyes and secret smiles.
But Baekhyun is so much more than that and what Chanyeol wants the most is something that no cuffs nor magic lamps can jail, something that only Baekhyun can give him on his free will.
“I have a wish,” he repeats, “but I don’t know if you can grant it. After all, I think it has something to do with true love.”
He doesn’t dare to look at Baekhyun. His heart is pounding anxiously against constricting chest walls.
“I wish that you could be free, Baekhyun.”
It takes just a pop, a silly, stupid pop like the sound of a fortune cookie breaking in half. Baekhyun exhales with a soft, almost inaudible moan. The clink of something metallic falling to the ground.
“Chanyeol…”
Chanyeol screws is eyes shut until they hurt and white dots start to dance in his vision field. Baekhyun’s voice is the same, but there’s something different, a whole universe of different.
“Chanyeol.”
Baekhyun’s hands come to rest on his face, cupping the chin, tilting his head upwards until Baekhyun is kissing him. It’s caste and wet, too wet, and he doesn’t need to open his eyes to see that Baekhyun is crying.
“Chanyeol,” implores Baekhyun, stealing the sound of his name between trembling kisses, like a prayer. “Chanyeol, thank you.”
His hands move blindly and awkwardly until he finds Baekhyun’s neck. He goes for the nape, because it never fails to make Baekhyun relax in his hold.
“Why are you crying?” he asks. His eyes burn from the salt of his own tears.
“Because I have to go. This was your last wish and now we can’t stay together anymore. It was your last wish and you used it for me. I’m so happy, Chanyeol, and so sad. Thank you, thank you Park Chanyeol.”
His voice is thin. He cries in silence, but Chanyeol can still hear it in the way is voice breaks painfully when he has to exhale against the knot in his throat.
“What will happen to you?”
“I don’t know,” he says, sounding so lost. “I don’t know.”
“I’d wish you only good things, but I’ve run out of wishes,” he tries to joke.
Baekhyun sobs against his mouth, pulls Chanyeol’s hair until the roots hurt, coaxes his lips open and kisses him until they’ve both sucked licked the salt of their tears away from their mouths and all that remains is just a kiss, a gesture so little, revolutionary and explosive.
When Chanyeol opens his eyes, they hurt. There’s light around Baekhyun, little stars that chase each other on his collarbone, the hollow of his throat, his elbow, in a game of hide and seek.
“The magic is ending,” says Baekhyun, leaning down until he’s nosing Chanyeol’s hair. “We have no time.”
“No time for what?” asks Chanyeol, breathless.
Baekhyun smiles and Chanyeol is sure he’ll take this perfect image with him for the rest of his life.
“My compensation, obviously. Kiss me, Chanyeol. Kiss me.”
Chanyeol kisses along his body, marking him, and for every kiss there's a spark exploding with a snap, residual magic that loathes to leave Baekhyun's skin that Chanyeol must chase away with his tongue and teeth. Butterflies kisses on his cheekbones, on his lips, on his fluttering lashes, until they’re both dying from the dull pain that blooms like a flower of pleasure every time their lips meet again.
The lamp shrieks and darkens but they don’t look at it. Baekhyun looks at Chanyeol and glows. Chanyeol looks at Baekhyun as he slowly starts to disappear, slipping away from his hold, no matter how tight he holds on. Chanyeol looks at Baekhyun and tries to chase away the shadow of regret. But when Baekhyun looks at him, his eyes filled with stars and music and flowers and the sea and every thing that Chanyeol considers beautiful in this world, he knows he’s done the right thing.
Baekhyun disappears in a flash of light and all Chanyeol has left is an old, dirty empty lamp that doesn’t sing arcane songs anymore.
(Tell me your fantasy without holding back.
I’ll show you the genie’s path.
Tell me your wish without holding back.
I, your genie, will grant them)
Chanyeol recognizes Baekhyun almost immediately, like a gem shining in the crowd of freshmen during the annual welcome tour. He’s wearing a backwards baseball cap, a graphic tee and a pair of worn out Converse.
Chanyeol doesn’t have the chance to talk to him for a few months. They don’t run in the same circles and the boy seems to disappear every time Chanyeol is in sight. They finally meet at the end of November in front of the vending machine near the southern dorms. It’s night, it’s cold and someone spiked the orange juice with vodka back at Chanyeol’s birthday party at Kris’ flat.
“Did you leave the purple silk at home, this time?” he asks, feeling bold and stupid and drunk and incredibly happy.
“Excuse me?”
The boys stares at him, looking torn between calling the police or an ambulance. Of course, he doesn’t remember. Chanyeol doesn’t care.
“I have a wish. Please become my friend.”
Baekhyun squints. He’s wearing sweatpants and slippers. He gauges the weight of the bottle in his hand to see if he can use it against Chanyeol in case things get strange.
“Are you drunk?” he asks.
“A little, but it’s my birthday. I think you owe me a gift.”
Baekhyun laughs. His laugh is the same, rich and pretty.
“You’re so strange, you know? But you really look like someone I know. This isn’t the first time we meet, right?”
Chanyeol scratches his head, a little unsure.
“You were my genie of the lamp for a whole year.”
Baekhyun laughs longer.
“You’re completely wasted. Oh, I like you. Ok, let’s do this. It’s your birthday, after all. I’m Byun Baekhyun, by the way.”
Oh, I know.
“Park Chanyeol, nice to meet you.”
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PLEASE FORGIVE ME IT'S 3AM I HAVE TO GET UP IN FOUR HOURS AND I FINISHED WRITING THIS TEN MINUTES AGO AND I HAVEN'T EVEN READ IT YET SO IT'S PROBABLY RUBBISH BUT I WANTED TO DO SOMETHING FOR CHANYEOL'S BIRTHDAY WHY AM I ALWAYS SO LATE AND LAST MINUTE AND EPIC FAIL. BYE.
i'm deleting this tomorrow in shame when i'll be lucid enough to realize what the fuck i did wrote in the last part.