merrily we fall (out of line) [1/2];;
luhan/yixing (+ baekhyun/chanyeol/sehun, onesided!yixing/jongdae) // 10,064 words / pg / romance
warning: grammar errors
→ yixing always wanted to sing with luhan as well.
a/n: thank you to Riku for reading paragraph to paragraph and helping me out when i was struck with the plot. also thank you to Ross for reading the whole fanfiction like 93474 times and always giving me feedback. this fanfiction was a prompt from lafeaux (you should take a look at her blog and follow her, bc she's kinda one of the leaders of the layhan shippers, haha). so here it is, Jamie and i finally finished it. i have to admit this was the most difficult thing i ever wrote and i had so many problems with this, i don't even know why it was so difficult but i finally managed to finish it and i'm glad. i'm not sure if this is what you wanted and i think there's not enough layhan in there, uhh, but i still hope that you'll like it.
homework
yixing’s not really one of the popular guys in school, he’s never been.
in fact, he is one of the quiet, unremarkable ones. the type that likes sitting in the library after school and reading there more than joining some random sports club. he loves spending his time in one of the music rooms, singing and playing the piano and composing songs. sometimes he just likes sitting there, because the music room has this special and comfortable atmosphere that always makes him feel at ease, balanced. it’s nice sitting there, looking out of the window to watch some of the other students play soccer, hear them shout and scream and laugh.
he’s really not into sports but he likes watching it, especially if it’s not a competition, just a match between friends. yixing likes it to see other people having fun; it kind of makes him happy.
lesson
baekhyun’s late.
like, really late. and that’s kind of unusual. (not like he’s never late, but he’s never that late.)
yixing sighs softly and flips to the next page of his book, continuing to ignore his rumbling stomach screaming for the sandwich waiting in his backpack. he’s slowly getting really hungry, but baekhyun has a tendency to get angry when yixing starts to eat lunch without him.
he looks up from his book and gives it another try, scans through the mass of students in the cafeteria, but there are way too many people anyways. no chance that he’ll catch a glimpse of his friend, especially since he’s kind of small.
baekhyun would kill him for this thought, he’s so sensitive about his height.
he turns his attention back to his book, but doesn’t even get the change to pick up where he stopped reading when he hears someone slump into the chair next to him.
finally.
“you’re late”, yixing says, while placing a used train ticket inside his book as a bookmark. but baekhyun doesn’t answer him and just crosses his arms on the table, then buries his face in the fabric of his hoodie.
concerned, yixing tugs on a few strands of baekhyun’s hair to get his attention. “hey, what’s wrong?” the other murmurs an answer, but yixing doesn’t understand one word, so he tugs again - this time a little harder - on his hair and baekhyun quickly lifts his head, brushes the hand away in the progress.
“chanyeol kissed me.”
“what?”
“chanyeol kissed me.”
“what?” yixing blinks at him. “i mean, what? he kissed-“, he almost screeches in shock, but baekhyun already covers his mouth with both of his hands, even though no one spares them a single glance, but just in case.
“be quiet!”
he doesn’t lower his hands until he’s sure yixing has calmed down again, but yixing just can’t stop staring at him, waiting for an explanation.
baekhyun sighs and yixing notices how he starts to rub his hands against his tights; a nervous habit he has since they were little.
“we were trying to find a new date for our tutor session, because I’m busy next friday and we were talking and-“, he stops to take a deep breath. “and then he suddenly got all jittery and kissed me, stammered something and… ran away?“
“you know he’s in a relationship with sehun.”
“yeah.”
“you know sehun will kill you.”
“yeah.”
“no, not only sehun. they will kill you”, yixing says and notices the slight horror that crosses his friend’s face. “in a really cruel way. ”
they both turn to look at the table in the middle of the cafeteria at the same time. the table of ‘the group’, the most popular students in school. chanyeol’s there as well - he’s always there, of course - back facing them and an arm draped around sehun’s shoulders.
he’s laughing about something, loud and bright so the whole cafeteria can probably hear him and sehun hits him on the head with an annoyed look, but then smiles a little and snuggles close to him again.
yixing shifts his eyes from the couple to baekhyun and his expression tells him, that at the moment he doesn’t want anything else more in this world than to switch places with sehun.
he sighs and grabs his bag, pulls out the box with his lunch in it.
“baek.” he doesn’t react and still watches chanyeol and sehun. “baekhyun!”
baekhyun turns around and opens his mouth to say something, but yixing already shoves the sandwich into his mouth. he chokes on it and almost spits everything on the table.
“god, yixing”, he starts and shoots him an angry look, but yixing just smiles at him with an encouraging look and instead being frustrated he can’t help but to smile back at him.
homework
baekhyun is yixing’s only close friend.
kind of.
and yixing really likes it that way. he doesn’t really need someone else.
because it’s always been baekhyun and yixing. since that time when they both were like four years old and baekhyun accidentally destroyed yixing’s huge sandcastle, causing him to brawl like a baby until they both were working on a new one ten minutes later.
they always were that kind of ‘best friends forever and ever’ - friends.
baekhyun’s not popular as well, even though he’s not as quiet as yixing. he’s yixing’s other half somehow, but still doesn’t like to draw attention on himself; what’s a little difficult since he’s the best math student among all the students of the entire year. so it’s quite normal when people ask him for help or badmouth him as a geek.
but yixing knows his friend doesn’t really care about that and in some ways he’s grateful for being that good in math, because that’s the reason why chanyeol talked to him at the first place, asked him to tutor him because he was failing one exam after the other.
and since baekhyun still tells him everything, yixing knew about the crush he had on chanyeol right from the start. now his talking about chanyeol only consists of ranting about how stupid he is, how he can’t even solve one math problem after all the studying with him, but the soft smile on his lips always tell the truth about his feelings.
yixing likes this side about him, how his face always tells the truth behind everything, no matter what his mouth speaks.
lesson
he’s still worried about baekhuyn, because even though he was able to lift his mood a little bit again before the end of lunchtime, he knows he’s still upset and about the whole chanyeol thing.
and yixing can’t really help him with that, he’s never been in love before, he’s never had strong feelings for a person, not even the few he tried to date. He doesn’t know a single way to comfort his best friend and it makes him sad as well, to see him confused and frustrated like that.
shaking his head, he hurries down the hall towards the music rooms.
such a mood doesn’t suit him, he’s not a gloomy person and he’ll definitely find a way to cheer baekhyun up. even if it means that he has to visit him with a bag full of sweets and snacks and tons of video games and his favourite movies on the weekend, like he always does when his friend doesn’t feel okay.
he nods to himself in approval and then smiles a little when he hears the sound of someone playing the piano. it’s not a melody through, there’s no pattern, just random hitting of the keys.
yixing stops in front of the door to the second music room, the one all students are allowed to use after lessons. he waits and listens for a few more minutes before he pushes the door open and enters the room.
the boy sitting by the piano stops his mindless playing and looks up, smiling.
“you should teach me how to play, xing”, jongdae says and starts to push the keys down again with his index finger.
yixing laughs and pokes jongdae’s shoulder, silently telling him to make some room for him to sit on the stool. “i’m horrible at teaching and explaining stuff”, he says while looking for the sheet music hidden somewhere in his bag.
jongdae doesn’t say anything and after a few moments he finds the sheets sandwiched between his notebook and history book. he takes them out and places them in front of him and the other, places his hands on the keys to start playing.
these one, sometimes two hours with jongdae in the music room are something yixing really cherishes. he likes playing and singing with him, they even compose songs together from time to time.
jongdae is a nice company and when they’re busy and have to cancel their plans, yixing always finds himself missing their time together. because sometimes playing and singing alone, for his own is a little boring and lonely, especially after he got the chance to practice together with jongdae for such a long time.
yixing still loves sitting in this room alone, he still loves playing the piano for an invisible, non-existing audience, but playing for them accompanied by jongdae’s beautiful voice is sort of refreshing.
homework
you could say jongdae is one of yixing’s friends as well.
they don’t meet outside school like he meets baekhyun all the time, but they talk quite a lot at school and sometimes work on projects together in classes they share together (and without baekhyun, because sometimes baekhyun doesn’t like to share yixing with other friends, even if he likes jongdae). and they meet at least once a week in the music room to sing together.
yixing wanted to sing with him since the first time he heard jongdae’s beautiful singing during the music lessons and he was so happy when he agreed to practicing together without a second thought. yixing couldn’t hide his happy smile for a while.
and being around him is quite comfortable, because jongdae likes to crack jokes all the time and laughs a lot and it’s entertaining, but still not too much, because he has his quiet moments as well.
lesson
“let’s get some coffee?”
yixing doesn’t really like coffee or coffee shops, but half of their way home is the same (jongdae just has to get out five train stations before him) and jongdae always asks if they want to grab a cup of coffee after practice.
there’s always this hopeful glint in his eyes and most of the time he can’t get himself to decline, because he doesn’t like the upset expression on the other boy’s face when he says no.
he really dislikes seeing people upset.
so he finds himself agreeing and smiling, because jongdae flashes him a short and happy grin before he pulls him into the shop. it’s crowded, but it’s always like that in the afternoon, especially if the practice of the after school clubs ended as well.
“i’ll order this time”, jongdae says and already gets in the line.
it’s annoying to wait, so they take turns with it. while the one waits, the other gets some little sugar packets from the counter, because jongdae likes his coffee with a little sugar, and yixing loves his tea with a lot of sugar.
he grabs some of the packets and two little wooden picks, so they can stir the sugar with their drinks and turns around to look if jongdae’s already far enough in the line to order, but almost gets a heart attack when suddenly someone is in front of him, almost bumping into him.
yixing looks at the person with wide eyes and the other is doing the same, equally startled. it takes him a while to realize who’s standing in front of him and it’s no other than luhan.
it’s luhan.
luhan.
luhan, the non-official leader of ‘the group’.
yixing blinks a few times, not reacting, while luhan quickly recovers from the slight fright and clears his throat.
“sorry”, he simply says, because he almost spilled his coffee over yixing, but then smirks a little and grabs the packets of sugar from yixing’s hands. “and thanks”, he adds and takes his leave. and yixing’s still confused, because, uh, this just was the first time he spoke with luhan.
no, he didn’t speak, he just stared, but it counts anyways.
homework
every school has those famous groups full of popular kids, right? there’s also such a group in his school.
their name is ‘the group’ and yixing thinks it’s stupid to give them a special name, especially one like this, but yeah. they’re the saints of the school, everyone loves them and you have to know everything about them.
usually. but yixing doesn’t really care about that.
of course he knows stuff about them, he shares some classes with some of them, and sometimes you hear about them and even if you’re not really interested in it, you pick up a few snippets of those stories and rumours.
but you never know what’s true about it.
the only thing you really, like really, have to know about them is where their table in the cafeteria is, so you never dare sit there at lunch or else you get problems.
and the members.
‘the group’ simply consists of the players of the soccer team and the basketball team. that’s quite a lot guys, but you don’t have to know who every single one of them is, but there are a few special ones you should recognize.
lesson
a frustrated sigh slips past his lips and he puts the pencil back into his pencil case next to him on the piano stool in defeat.
there’s this melody struck into his head, but no matter how often he tries and tries again, he just can’t write it down. he can play the whole tune without seeing it in front of him on the sheet music, but since he’s so forgetful he want to get it on paper, just in case.
yixing forgot so many possible songs because he didn’t write his ideas down. and this melody is so nice, he really wants to make something out of it, but maybe he should just try again another day, because it seems like he wouldn’t get this done today.
it’s no use.
he closes his eyes for a moment and thinks about the melody, places his hands back on the keys and starts playing. he plays and plays and plays, body slightly rocking together with the music as a peaceful smile appears on his lips.
he doesn’t open his eyes until he finishes and savours the moment, the silence. but then clapping suddenly fills the music room and yixing quickly turns to the entrance, startled.
luhan’s standing there, still applauding him like an audience.
yixing just blinks at him, like that time last week at the coffee shop, because he doesn’t know what to do and luhan seems to see the confusion on his face.
“i asked a teacher to reserve the room for me this afternoon, that’s why i’m here”, he explains.
“oh. oh.”
yixing immediately grabs his bag and stuffs his belongings into it, ready to disappear from the room, but luhan crosses the room in swift moves and flops down next to him on the stool.
“don’t stop, it’s fine”, he says and points to the piano. “the tune was really pretty.”
the whole situation still confuses him, because why the fuck is luhan even talking to him, but he still manages to give the boy a small smile, not knowing what to answer him.
“can you play it again?”
yixing nods, replays the tune and while he plays, luhan starts to hum with him, fingers tapping to the rhythm against his thigh.
luhan doesn’t open his eyes when he finishes. “again.”
so he plays again.
and every time he finishes, the other asks him to play it again and after a while his humming turns into the whispering of quiet words, until luhan sings to the melody and yixing is stunned at how the choice of words fits his playing, how luhan manages to do this.
homework
first of all you should know luhan.
fangirls call him the leader of ‘the group’, even though it doesn’t really seem like they have a real leader. he also got the captain of the soccer team this year and he’s really good at playing soccer, like, really fucking good.
yixing once visited one of the games and saw him playing and he was awesome. but he doesn’t know much more about him, even though they share some classes.
everyone assumes he’s a kind and gentle angel at first, because of his feminine, doll-like face, but he often hears people talking about what an asshole luhan actually is. they say he’s overly arrogant and selfish, that he likes picking on other people and looking down on them because he thinks he’s better than them.
yixing doesn’t know if it’s true, since luhan behaves well in class and he doesn’t see him much besides there or at lunch and since he doesn’t care for ‘the group’-
but there’s one thing he knows for sure.
one thing he experienced about luhan and he’s quite happy about that.
luhan’s singing is extremely beautiful. as beautiful as jongdae’s, but still a totally different kind of beautiful.
jongdae’s voice is strong and powerful and loud and manages to go straight into your bones, to shake you to the core; while luhan’s voice is more soft and gentle, maybe even a little fragile, like a light touch against your skin.
he kinda fell in love with his voice, the same way he did with jongdae’s and he always wanted to sing with luhan as well. but asking him about this wasn’t as easy as it was with jongdae, since luhan is that popular.
so he just enjoyed every moment he could hear luhan sing in music class.
lesson
“do you even study in your tutor sessions?”
“since we can’t meet outside, we have to use the short time we have so we always-“
“oh no, I don’t want to know what stuff you two do, stop”, yixing says and waves his hands around, trying to get baekhyun to stop talking about the strange affair-relationship thingy he has with chanyeol.
but he doesn’t stop and continues with this kind of dreamy ‘in love’ expression and yixing quickly covers his ears. “i’m not listening”, he says loudly and closes his eyes to blend his friend’s voice out, sings off-key lalalalala.
he doesn’t stop until baekhyun pulls on his wrist, pulls his hands away from his ears. “hey, xing-“ so he looks at his friend, who points next to him with a confused look and he turns, spotting luhan in front of their table.
“hey”, he says, giving him a small wave.
“uh, hi”, yixing answers and smiles at him.
“come and eat with us?”
yixing blinks at first, because he’s still not really used to luhan talking to him and luhan talking to him in the cafeteria during lunchtime is even more strange, since he is popular and yixing is like, uh, nothing in this school.
and usually popular guys don’t talk to people like him, to lower people.
he shakes his head, because the thought of sitting with ‘the group’ at their lunch table is a little frightening, he’s not prepared for something like that and doesn’t want to draw the attention of the other students on him because of it.
“i already ate and i’m here with baekhyun”, he says and makes a gesture with his hand towards his friend, who still looks totally confused about the whole situation.
“he can come with us”, luhan says and shrugs before grabbing yixing’s wrist, pulling him up and to the table of his friends.
yixing tries to tell him that he really can’t sit with them, but luhan doesn’t listen to him.
when they reach the table, everyone looks up and yixing wants to disappear, because the look they all give him (and baekhyun) isn’t nice and not at bit welcoming and makes him really uncomfortable. and when luhan slides his arm over his shoulders, it doesn’t help him to feel better.
in fact it makes everything worse, makes him feel even more uncertain.
yixing carefully watches them all, notices how chanyeol’s at first curious face drops to an a little pained one. it takes him a moment to realize that he doesn’t look at him and luhan, but at baekhyun who almost hides behind them.
“you can sit next to chanyeol, ah…”, luhan begins.
“baekhyun.”
“yeah, baekhyun.”
so baekhyun takes a seat next to chanyeol, trying to smile somehow, even though yixing can see how both, he and chanyeol, tense and avoid looking at each other.
“you remember the guy I told you about? the one with the amazing piano skills”, he says and drags yixing closer to his side. “here he is. this is yixing.”
yixing only voices a quiet ‘hello’ and usually he’s not a shy person, but they all don’t care anyway, they just nod and ignore him, continuing their conversations.
he sits next to luhan and does kind of nothing, occasionally he shifts his eyes to his best friend and they both send each other looks filled with screams for help, but they can’t just get up and go, it’s ‘the group’ after all.
other students are glaring at them, some with curious or confused eyes, some full of envy. yixing doesn’t like it, so he tries to concentrate on luhan, only on uhan, but even he somehow ignores him because he’s too into his discussion about something soccer related and yixing doesn’t know a thing about sports so he can’t even say something to get into the conversation.
instead he watches luhan, since he never has the time to do it when they’re in the music room, busy with singing.
luhan always has this confident smile on his lips, but this time it’s kind of arrogant and cheeky and yixing isn’t used to this, because usually it’s sort of soft and warm.
it startles him out of his thoughts, when there’s suddenly a loud bang and yixing looks up to see jongin standing up; his chair fell over because of his movement. his hands are curled into fists against the surface of the table and he looks really furious.
“what did you just say?”, he mutters through his clenched teeth.
“no need to bitch around”, luhan answers him with a smirk tugging on his lips.
yixing stopped listening to their conversation so he doesn’t know what he did to make the other that angry.
jongin already wants to reply something, but then sehun quickly gets up, the expression on his face looking annoyed. “i need something to drink, come with me, jongin”, he says and yixing hopes Jongin wouldn’t yell at him for intruding, but to his astonishment he doesn’t do anything like this.
he calms down immediately and lets sehun drag him away from the table.
yixing looks after them for a minute, before he turns to luhan, who just leans back in his chair, the grin still on his face.
his entire attitude seems to be arrogant and yixing wonders if he’s always like this when he’s around his friends, because when they’re alone luhan doesn’t behave like that.
it’s strange.
homework
then there’s sehun.
he’s the best friend of luhan and jongin and also a member of the soccer team. but since he’s kinda bad at playing it, he’s more a mascot or something like that, also for ‘the group’.
it’s a little bit like he’s just there to be cute and lovable, since he’s the youngest among them. also people say he’s really bratty and cheeky and behaves like a spoiled child.
besides the fact that sehun dyes his hair in the oddest colours every one or two weeks (at the moment it’s some kind of blonde-pink-silver thing), he’s also famous for his indifferent and blank expressions, the only emotions he shows in public sometimes being negative ones. according to some students, but they all love him anyways.
but yixing has to admit that he often sees sehun smile, even if it’s just a tiny one and most of the time it shows up if he’s around chanyeol. this smile reminds him of the one baekhyun always has on his lips when he talks about studying with chanyeol.
lesson
even if he tries to, he can’t get luhan’s behaviour out of his head. he can’t say that he really knows him, but somehow when they practice together, he feels like he’s known the other since ever. It’s different from being there with jongdae.
their time together feels like something intimate, like sharing a secret and yixing starts thinking that the way luhan is with him, full of happy glances and soft laughter, without arrogant smirks, is his own little secret, the side of him the friends from his group doesn’t know.
and it makes yixing sad, that he’s another person with people he calls his friends; he could never imagine being different around baekhyun. but maybe they all are doing it and among them no one really knows each other.
“yixing, woah, stop spacing out!” baekhyun waves his hand in front of yixing’s face and he shakes his head a little, trying to get his head back into reality. “i’m talking to you.”
“huh?”
baekhyun huffs, then sighs. “anyways, what was this?”
yixing just blinks at him.
“back then. at lunch. since when are you friends with luhan?”, he asks, and yixing finally gets his textbook out of his locker and stuffs it into his bag, then closes the it.
“he came into the music room while I was playing the piano and then asked me if I want to meet him more often to practice together”, he explains and thinks for a moment. “this was like uhm, three weeks ago?”
“what?” baekhyun punches him in the shoulder. “the fuck. why did you never tell me about this?”, he says and tries to look hurt, like a wounded puppy, but fails at it, because yixing doesn’t feel that guilty.
“i tried to tell you a couple of times, but we always got into other topics then and I kinda forgot”, yixing says sheepishly and his friend rolls his eyes and mumbles something about yixing being such a stupid airhead and how can he forget something that important.
yixing smiles.
he takes out his phone to look if he’s got any messages and when he sees one from luhan in his inbox, he already forgets baekhyun talking next to him.
from: luhan
received: 13:48
let’s meet in the music room after your class, i’ve found a new nice piece ( :
homework
another important member from ‘the group’ is jongin.
yixing wonders why he’s even friends with luhan, since they always fight with each other; or more like luhan provokes him and jongin gets pissed about it. they always were more rivals than actual friends and it got even worse after luhan pushed jongin from his role as the captain of the soccer team.
they both are really awesome at soccer, and on field they always behave and play together as a team, but away from the soccer field all they do is fighting like little kids.
but jongin is still more popular than luhan, since literally all the girls fly on him and he’s well known as a playboy, jumping from one relationship to the next one.
it’s kind of strange, because yixing used to know him back then when jongin was still in middle school and they both learned dancing at the same studio. at that time he was quiet and shy, totally different from now.
they lost contact when yixing injured his waist during practice and wasn’t able to dance anymore, when he had to quit. it’s quite sad, because he loved dancing together with jongin and sometimes he wonders if he still dances.
lesson
luhan lives in another direction, but he still always walks a little bit with yixing, accompanies him to the train station almost every time. it’s nice, because during their music sessions they don’t talk much besides about their current pieces.
it’s also really easy to talk to luhan and they never lack a topic, just talk about everything and nothing.
“i don’t feel like going home already, how about some coffee?”, luhan asks when they come across the coffee shop he always visits with jongdae.
“sure, why not?”, yixing finds himself answering without giving it a thought and he doesn’t really mind, somehow.
yixing gets himself tea and luhan gets a cup of coffee and he notices that the other uses as much sugar as he does. It makes him smile.
“you know, I always wanted to sing with you”, he suddenly says after sitting there for a while, after emptying half of his mug. he doesn’t know why he said it, but he can instantly feel heat rushing into his cheeks and it confuses him even more that this is somehow embarrassing.
luhan starts to chuckle and covers his mouth with his hand. “really?”
yixing nods and stares into his drink. “your voice is really pretty.”
the other chuckles again and takes a sip from his coffee. “sometimes i heard you and that guy singing and playing and i was really curious about your playing. i wanted to see it by myself”, he says and smiles at yixing. “so i’m happy that we started to do this as well.”
his cheeks go even redder with each of luhan’s words and his stomach flips comfortably, but he isn’t quite sure why. this never happened before when he was with him.
part 2
warning: grammar errors
→ yixing always wanted to sing with luhan as well.
a/n: thank you to Riku for reading paragraph to paragraph and helping me out when i was struck with the plot. also thank you to Ross for reading the whole fanfiction like 93474 times and always giving me feedback. this fanfiction was a prompt from lafeaux (you should take a look at her blog and follow her, bc she's kinda one of the leaders of the layhan shippers, haha). so here it is, Jamie and i finally finished it. i have to admit this was the most difficult thing i ever wrote and i had so many problems with this, i don't even know why it was so difficult but i finally managed to finish it and i'm glad. i'm not sure if this is what you wanted and i think there's not enough layhan in there, uhh, but i still hope that you'll like it.
homework
yixing’s not really one of the popular guys in school, he’s never been.
in fact, he is one of the quiet, unremarkable ones. the type that likes sitting in the library after school and reading there more than joining some random sports club. he loves spending his time in one of the music rooms, singing and playing the piano and composing songs. sometimes he just likes sitting there, because the music room has this special and comfortable atmosphere that always makes him feel at ease, balanced. it’s nice sitting there, looking out of the window to watch some of the other students play soccer, hear them shout and scream and laugh.
he’s really not into sports but he likes watching it, especially if it’s not a competition, just a match between friends. yixing likes it to see other people having fun; it kind of makes him happy.
lesson
baekhyun’s late.
like, really late. and that’s kind of unusual. (not like he’s never late, but he’s never that late.)
yixing sighs softly and flips to the next page of his book, continuing to ignore his rumbling stomach screaming for the sandwich waiting in his backpack. he’s slowly getting really hungry, but baekhyun has a tendency to get angry when yixing starts to eat lunch without him.
he looks up from his book and gives it another try, scans through the mass of students in the cafeteria, but there are way too many people anyways. no chance that he’ll catch a glimpse of his friend, especially since he’s kind of small.
baekhyun would kill him for this thought, he’s so sensitive about his height.
he turns his attention back to his book, but doesn’t even get the change to pick up where he stopped reading when he hears someone slump into the chair next to him.
finally.
“you’re late”, yixing says, while placing a used train ticket inside his book as a bookmark. but baekhyun doesn’t answer him and just crosses his arms on the table, then buries his face in the fabric of his hoodie.
concerned, yixing tugs on a few strands of baekhyun’s hair to get his attention. “hey, what’s wrong?” the other murmurs an answer, but yixing doesn’t understand one word, so he tugs again - this time a little harder - on his hair and baekhyun quickly lifts his head, brushes the hand away in the progress.
“chanyeol kissed me.”
“what?”
“chanyeol kissed me.”
“what?” yixing blinks at him. “i mean, what? he kissed-“, he almost screeches in shock, but baekhyun already covers his mouth with both of his hands, even though no one spares them a single glance, but just in case.
“be quiet!”
he doesn’t lower his hands until he’s sure yixing has calmed down again, but yixing just can’t stop staring at him, waiting for an explanation.
baekhyun sighs and yixing notices how he starts to rub his hands against his tights; a nervous habit he has since they were little.
“we were trying to find a new date for our tutor session, because I’m busy next friday and we were talking and-“, he stops to take a deep breath. “and then he suddenly got all jittery and kissed me, stammered something and… ran away?“
“you know he’s in a relationship with sehun.”
“yeah.”
“you know sehun will kill you.”
“yeah.”
“no, not only sehun. they will kill you”, yixing says and notices the slight horror that crosses his friend’s face. “in a really cruel way. ”
they both turn to look at the table in the middle of the cafeteria at the same time. the table of ‘the group’, the most popular students in school. chanyeol’s there as well - he’s always there, of course - back facing them and an arm draped around sehun’s shoulders.
he’s laughing about something, loud and bright so the whole cafeteria can probably hear him and sehun hits him on the head with an annoyed look, but then smiles a little and snuggles close to him again.
yixing shifts his eyes from the couple to baekhyun and his expression tells him, that at the moment he doesn’t want anything else more in this world than to switch places with sehun.
he sighs and grabs his bag, pulls out the box with his lunch in it.
“baek.” he doesn’t react and still watches chanyeol and sehun. “baekhyun!”
baekhyun turns around and opens his mouth to say something, but yixing already shoves the sandwich into his mouth. he chokes on it and almost spits everything on the table.
“god, yixing”, he starts and shoots him an angry look, but yixing just smiles at him with an encouraging look and instead being frustrated he can’t help but to smile back at him.
homework
baekhyun is yixing’s only close friend.
kind of.
and yixing really likes it that way. he doesn’t really need someone else.
because it’s always been baekhyun and yixing. since that time when they both were like four years old and baekhyun accidentally destroyed yixing’s huge sandcastle, causing him to brawl like a baby until they both were working on a new one ten minutes later.
they always were that kind of ‘best friends forever and ever’ - friends.
baekhyun’s not popular as well, even though he’s not as quiet as yixing. he’s yixing’s other half somehow, but still doesn’t like to draw attention on himself; what’s a little difficult since he’s the best math student among all the students of the entire year. so it’s quite normal when people ask him for help or badmouth him as a geek.
but yixing knows his friend doesn’t really care about that and in some ways he’s grateful for being that good in math, because that’s the reason why chanyeol talked to him at the first place, asked him to tutor him because he was failing one exam after the other.
and since baekhyun still tells him everything, yixing knew about the crush he had on chanyeol right from the start. now his talking about chanyeol only consists of ranting about how stupid he is, how he can’t even solve one math problem after all the studying with him, but the soft smile on his lips always tell the truth about his feelings.
yixing likes this side about him, how his face always tells the truth behind everything, no matter what his mouth speaks.
lesson
he’s still worried about baekhuyn, because even though he was able to lift his mood a little bit again before the end of lunchtime, he knows he’s still upset and about the whole chanyeol thing.
and yixing can’t really help him with that, he’s never been in love before, he’s never had strong feelings for a person, not even the few he tried to date. He doesn’t know a single way to comfort his best friend and it makes him sad as well, to see him confused and frustrated like that.
shaking his head, he hurries down the hall towards the music rooms.
such a mood doesn’t suit him, he’s not a gloomy person and he’ll definitely find a way to cheer baekhyun up. even if it means that he has to visit him with a bag full of sweets and snacks and tons of video games and his favourite movies on the weekend, like he always does when his friend doesn’t feel okay.
he nods to himself in approval and then smiles a little when he hears the sound of someone playing the piano. it’s not a melody through, there’s no pattern, just random hitting of the keys.
yixing stops in front of the door to the second music room, the one all students are allowed to use after lessons. he waits and listens for a few more minutes before he pushes the door open and enters the room.
the boy sitting by the piano stops his mindless playing and looks up, smiling.
“you should teach me how to play, xing”, jongdae says and starts to push the keys down again with his index finger.
yixing laughs and pokes jongdae’s shoulder, silently telling him to make some room for him to sit on the stool. “i’m horrible at teaching and explaining stuff”, he says while looking for the sheet music hidden somewhere in his bag.
jongdae doesn’t say anything and after a few moments he finds the sheets sandwiched between his notebook and history book. he takes them out and places them in front of him and the other, places his hands on the keys to start playing.
these one, sometimes two hours with jongdae in the music room are something yixing really cherishes. he likes playing and singing with him, they even compose songs together from time to time.
jongdae is a nice company and when they’re busy and have to cancel their plans, yixing always finds himself missing their time together. because sometimes playing and singing alone, for his own is a little boring and lonely, especially after he got the chance to practice together with jongdae for such a long time.
yixing still loves sitting in this room alone, he still loves playing the piano for an invisible, non-existing audience, but playing for them accompanied by jongdae’s beautiful voice is sort of refreshing.
homework
you could say jongdae is one of yixing’s friends as well.
they don’t meet outside school like he meets baekhyun all the time, but they talk quite a lot at school and sometimes work on projects together in classes they share together (and without baekhyun, because sometimes baekhyun doesn’t like to share yixing with other friends, even if he likes jongdae). and they meet at least once a week in the music room to sing together.
yixing wanted to sing with him since the first time he heard jongdae’s beautiful singing during the music lessons and he was so happy when he agreed to practicing together without a second thought. yixing couldn’t hide his happy smile for a while.
and being around him is quite comfortable, because jongdae likes to crack jokes all the time and laughs a lot and it’s entertaining, but still not too much, because he has his quiet moments as well.
lesson
“let’s get some coffee?”
yixing doesn’t really like coffee or coffee shops, but half of their way home is the same (jongdae just has to get out five train stations before him) and jongdae always asks if they want to grab a cup of coffee after practice.
there’s always this hopeful glint in his eyes and most of the time he can’t get himself to decline, because he doesn’t like the upset expression on the other boy’s face when he says no.
he really dislikes seeing people upset.
so he finds himself agreeing and smiling, because jongdae flashes him a short and happy grin before he pulls him into the shop. it’s crowded, but it’s always like that in the afternoon, especially if the practice of the after school clubs ended as well.
“i’ll order this time”, jongdae says and already gets in the line.
it’s annoying to wait, so they take turns with it. while the one waits, the other gets some little sugar packets from the counter, because jongdae likes his coffee with a little sugar, and yixing loves his tea with a lot of sugar.
he grabs some of the packets and two little wooden picks, so they can stir the sugar with their drinks and turns around to look if jongdae’s already far enough in the line to order, but almost gets a heart attack when suddenly someone is in front of him, almost bumping into him.
yixing looks at the person with wide eyes and the other is doing the same, equally startled. it takes him a while to realize who’s standing in front of him and it’s no other than luhan.
it’s luhan.
luhan.
luhan, the non-official leader of ‘the group’.
yixing blinks a few times, not reacting, while luhan quickly recovers from the slight fright and clears his throat.
“sorry”, he simply says, because he almost spilled his coffee over yixing, but then smirks a little and grabs the packets of sugar from yixing’s hands. “and thanks”, he adds and takes his leave. and yixing’s still confused, because, uh, this just was the first time he spoke with luhan.
no, he didn’t speak, he just stared, but it counts anyways.
homework
every school has those famous groups full of popular kids, right? there’s also such a group in his school.
their name is ‘the group’ and yixing thinks it’s stupid to give them a special name, especially one like this, but yeah. they’re the saints of the school, everyone loves them and you have to know everything about them.
usually. but yixing doesn’t really care about that.
of course he knows stuff about them, he shares some classes with some of them, and sometimes you hear about them and even if you’re not really interested in it, you pick up a few snippets of those stories and rumours.
but you never know what’s true about it.
the only thing you really, like really, have to know about them is where their table in the cafeteria is, so you never dare sit there at lunch or else you get problems.
and the members.
‘the group’ simply consists of the players of the soccer team and the basketball team. that’s quite a lot guys, but you don’t have to know who every single one of them is, but there are a few special ones you should recognize.
lesson
a frustrated sigh slips past his lips and he puts the pencil back into his pencil case next to him on the piano stool in defeat.
there’s this melody struck into his head, but no matter how often he tries and tries again, he just can’t write it down. he can play the whole tune without seeing it in front of him on the sheet music, but since he’s so forgetful he want to get it on paper, just in case.
yixing forgot so many possible songs because he didn’t write his ideas down. and this melody is so nice, he really wants to make something out of it, but maybe he should just try again another day, because it seems like he wouldn’t get this done today.
it’s no use.
he closes his eyes for a moment and thinks about the melody, places his hands back on the keys and starts playing. he plays and plays and plays, body slightly rocking together with the music as a peaceful smile appears on his lips.
he doesn’t open his eyes until he finishes and savours the moment, the silence. but then clapping suddenly fills the music room and yixing quickly turns to the entrance, startled.
luhan’s standing there, still applauding him like an audience.
yixing just blinks at him, like that time last week at the coffee shop, because he doesn’t know what to do and luhan seems to see the confusion on his face.
“i asked a teacher to reserve the room for me this afternoon, that’s why i’m here”, he explains.
“oh. oh.”
yixing immediately grabs his bag and stuffs his belongings into it, ready to disappear from the room, but luhan crosses the room in swift moves and flops down next to him on the stool.
“don’t stop, it’s fine”, he says and points to the piano. “the tune was really pretty.”
the whole situation still confuses him, because why the fuck is luhan even talking to him, but he still manages to give the boy a small smile, not knowing what to answer him.
“can you play it again?”
yixing nods, replays the tune and while he plays, luhan starts to hum with him, fingers tapping to the rhythm against his thigh.
luhan doesn’t open his eyes when he finishes. “again.”
so he plays again.
and every time he finishes, the other asks him to play it again and after a while his humming turns into the whispering of quiet words, until luhan sings to the melody and yixing is stunned at how the choice of words fits his playing, how luhan manages to do this.
homework
first of all you should know luhan.
fangirls call him the leader of ‘the group’, even though it doesn’t really seem like they have a real leader. he also got the captain of the soccer team this year and he’s really good at playing soccer, like, really fucking good.
yixing once visited one of the games and saw him playing and he was awesome. but he doesn’t know much more about him, even though they share some classes.
everyone assumes he’s a kind and gentle angel at first, because of his feminine, doll-like face, but he often hears people talking about what an asshole luhan actually is. they say he’s overly arrogant and selfish, that he likes picking on other people and looking down on them because he thinks he’s better than them.
yixing doesn’t know if it’s true, since luhan behaves well in class and he doesn’t see him much besides there or at lunch and since he doesn’t care for ‘the group’-
but there’s one thing he knows for sure.
one thing he experienced about luhan and he’s quite happy about that.
luhan’s singing is extremely beautiful. as beautiful as jongdae’s, but still a totally different kind of beautiful.
jongdae’s voice is strong and powerful and loud and manages to go straight into your bones, to shake you to the core; while luhan’s voice is more soft and gentle, maybe even a little fragile, like a light touch against your skin.
he kinda fell in love with his voice, the same way he did with jongdae’s and he always wanted to sing with luhan as well. but asking him about this wasn’t as easy as it was with jongdae, since luhan is that popular.
so he just enjoyed every moment he could hear luhan sing in music class.
lesson
“do you even study in your tutor sessions?”
“since we can’t meet outside, we have to use the short time we have so we always-“
“oh no, I don’t want to know what stuff you two do, stop”, yixing says and waves his hands around, trying to get baekhyun to stop talking about the strange affair-relationship thingy he has with chanyeol.
but he doesn’t stop and continues with this kind of dreamy ‘in love’ expression and yixing quickly covers his ears. “i’m not listening”, he says loudly and closes his eyes to blend his friend’s voice out, sings off-key lalalalala.
he doesn’t stop until baekhyun pulls on his wrist, pulls his hands away from his ears. “hey, xing-“ so he looks at his friend, who points next to him with a confused look and he turns, spotting luhan in front of their table.
“hey”, he says, giving him a small wave.
“uh, hi”, yixing answers and smiles at him.
“come and eat with us?”
yixing blinks at first, because he’s still not really used to luhan talking to him and luhan talking to him in the cafeteria during lunchtime is even more strange, since he is popular and yixing is like, uh, nothing in this school.
and usually popular guys don’t talk to people like him, to lower people.
he shakes his head, because the thought of sitting with ‘the group’ at their lunch table is a little frightening, he’s not prepared for something like that and doesn’t want to draw the attention of the other students on him because of it.
“i already ate and i’m here with baekhyun”, he says and makes a gesture with his hand towards his friend, who still looks totally confused about the whole situation.
“he can come with us”, luhan says and shrugs before grabbing yixing’s wrist, pulling him up and to the table of his friends.
yixing tries to tell him that he really can’t sit with them, but luhan doesn’t listen to him.
when they reach the table, everyone looks up and yixing wants to disappear, because the look they all give him (and baekhyun) isn’t nice and not at bit welcoming and makes him really uncomfortable. and when luhan slides his arm over his shoulders, it doesn’t help him to feel better.
in fact it makes everything worse, makes him feel even more uncertain.
yixing carefully watches them all, notices how chanyeol’s at first curious face drops to an a little pained one. it takes him a moment to realize that he doesn’t look at him and luhan, but at baekhyun who almost hides behind them.
“you can sit next to chanyeol, ah…”, luhan begins.
“baekhyun.”
“yeah, baekhyun.”
so baekhyun takes a seat next to chanyeol, trying to smile somehow, even though yixing can see how both, he and chanyeol, tense and avoid looking at each other.
“you remember the guy I told you about? the one with the amazing piano skills”, he says and drags yixing closer to his side. “here he is. this is yixing.”
yixing only voices a quiet ‘hello’ and usually he’s not a shy person, but they all don’t care anyway, they just nod and ignore him, continuing their conversations.
he sits next to luhan and does kind of nothing, occasionally he shifts his eyes to his best friend and they both send each other looks filled with screams for help, but they can’t just get up and go, it’s ‘the group’ after all.
other students are glaring at them, some with curious or confused eyes, some full of envy. yixing doesn’t like it, so he tries to concentrate on luhan, only on uhan, but even he somehow ignores him because he’s too into his discussion about something soccer related and yixing doesn’t know a thing about sports so he can’t even say something to get into the conversation.
instead he watches luhan, since he never has the time to do it when they’re in the music room, busy with singing.
luhan always has this confident smile on his lips, but this time it’s kind of arrogant and cheeky and yixing isn’t used to this, because usually it’s sort of soft and warm.
it startles him out of his thoughts, when there’s suddenly a loud bang and yixing looks up to see jongin standing up; his chair fell over because of his movement. his hands are curled into fists against the surface of the table and he looks really furious.
“what did you just say?”, he mutters through his clenched teeth.
“no need to bitch around”, luhan answers him with a smirk tugging on his lips.
yixing stopped listening to their conversation so he doesn’t know what he did to make the other that angry.
jongin already wants to reply something, but then sehun quickly gets up, the expression on his face looking annoyed. “i need something to drink, come with me, jongin”, he says and yixing hopes Jongin wouldn’t yell at him for intruding, but to his astonishment he doesn’t do anything like this.
he calms down immediately and lets sehun drag him away from the table.
yixing looks after them for a minute, before he turns to luhan, who just leans back in his chair, the grin still on his face.
his entire attitude seems to be arrogant and yixing wonders if he’s always like this when he’s around his friends, because when they’re alone luhan doesn’t behave like that.
it’s strange.
homework
then there’s sehun.
he’s the best friend of luhan and jongin and also a member of the soccer team. but since he’s kinda bad at playing it, he’s more a mascot or something like that, also for ‘the group’.
it’s a little bit like he’s just there to be cute and lovable, since he’s the youngest among them. also people say he’s really bratty and cheeky and behaves like a spoiled child.
besides the fact that sehun dyes his hair in the oddest colours every one or two weeks (at the moment it’s some kind of blonde-pink-silver thing), he’s also famous for his indifferent and blank expressions, the only emotions he shows in public sometimes being negative ones. according to some students, but they all love him anyways.
but yixing has to admit that he often sees sehun smile, even if it’s just a tiny one and most of the time it shows up if he’s around chanyeol. this smile reminds him of the one baekhyun always has on his lips when he talks about studying with chanyeol.
lesson
even if he tries to, he can’t get luhan’s behaviour out of his head. he can’t say that he really knows him, but somehow when they practice together, he feels like he’s known the other since ever. It’s different from being there with jongdae.
their time together feels like something intimate, like sharing a secret and yixing starts thinking that the way luhan is with him, full of happy glances and soft laughter, without arrogant smirks, is his own little secret, the side of him the friends from his group doesn’t know.
and it makes yixing sad, that he’s another person with people he calls his friends; he could never imagine being different around baekhyun. but maybe they all are doing it and among them no one really knows each other.
“yixing, woah, stop spacing out!” baekhyun waves his hand in front of yixing’s face and he shakes his head a little, trying to get his head back into reality. “i’m talking to you.”
“huh?”
baekhyun huffs, then sighs. “anyways, what was this?”
yixing just blinks at him.
“back then. at lunch. since when are you friends with luhan?”, he asks, and yixing finally gets his textbook out of his locker and stuffs it into his bag, then closes the it.
“he came into the music room while I was playing the piano and then asked me if I want to meet him more often to practice together”, he explains and thinks for a moment. “this was like uhm, three weeks ago?”
“what?” baekhyun punches him in the shoulder. “the fuck. why did you never tell me about this?”, he says and tries to look hurt, like a wounded puppy, but fails at it, because yixing doesn’t feel that guilty.
“i tried to tell you a couple of times, but we always got into other topics then and I kinda forgot”, yixing says sheepishly and his friend rolls his eyes and mumbles something about yixing being such a stupid airhead and how can he forget something that important.
yixing smiles.
he takes out his phone to look if he’s got any messages and when he sees one from luhan in his inbox, he already forgets baekhyun talking next to him.
from: luhan
received: 13:48
let’s meet in the music room after your class, i’ve found a new nice piece ( :
homework
another important member from ‘the group’ is jongin.
yixing wonders why he’s even friends with luhan, since they always fight with each other; or more like luhan provokes him and jongin gets pissed about it. they always were more rivals than actual friends and it got even worse after luhan pushed jongin from his role as the captain of the soccer team.
they both are really awesome at soccer, and on field they always behave and play together as a team, but away from the soccer field all they do is fighting like little kids.
but jongin is still more popular than luhan, since literally all the girls fly on him and he’s well known as a playboy, jumping from one relationship to the next one.
it’s kind of strange, because yixing used to know him back then when jongin was still in middle school and they both learned dancing at the same studio. at that time he was quiet and shy, totally different from now.
they lost contact when yixing injured his waist during practice and wasn’t able to dance anymore, when he had to quit. it’s quite sad, because he loved dancing together with jongin and sometimes he wonders if he still dances.
lesson
luhan lives in another direction, but he still always walks a little bit with yixing, accompanies him to the train station almost every time. it’s nice, because during their music sessions they don’t talk much besides about their current pieces.
it’s also really easy to talk to luhan and they never lack a topic, just talk about everything and nothing.
“i don’t feel like going home already, how about some coffee?”, luhan asks when they come across the coffee shop he always visits with jongdae.
“sure, why not?”, yixing finds himself answering without giving it a thought and he doesn’t really mind, somehow.
yixing gets himself tea and luhan gets a cup of coffee and he notices that the other uses as much sugar as he does. It makes him smile.
“you know, I always wanted to sing with you”, he suddenly says after sitting there for a while, after emptying half of his mug. he doesn’t know why he said it, but he can instantly feel heat rushing into his cheeks and it confuses him even more that this is somehow embarrassing.
luhan starts to chuckle and covers his mouth with his hand. “really?”
yixing nods and stares into his drink. “your voice is really pretty.”
the other chuckles again and takes a sip from his coffee. “sometimes i heard you and that guy singing and playing and i was really curious about your playing. i wanted to see it by myself”, he says and smiles at yixing. “so i’m happy that we started to do this as well.”
his cheeks go even redder with each of luhan’s words and his stomach flips comfortably, but he isn’t quite sure why. this never happened before when he was with him.
part 2