[fic] Bet Your Heart On Me
Author ofolivesnginger
Fandom: EXO
Pairing: Chanyeol/Baekhyun
Rating: PG13
Words: 7122
Summary: Gambling's never about the money
a/n: Cross posting my SNCJ Secret Santa 2013 fill found here! Also unofficially and additionally dedicated to apeople ;~;.
Prompt: "a canon-verse where Baekhyun tries too hard to please and Chanyeol just doesn't try anymore."
The game begins at 10:40 PM on a Monday when Byun Baekhyun tries to give Kyungsoo a massage.
This actually goes back a week, the stem of it, to the day he first experimented on the kids. The three of them stayed late one night after practice, and Sehun was packing up his stuff when Jongin dropped to his knees and slid, prostrate, right onto the dirt wrapped floor groaning for his muscles and joints. Sehun snuck over to sit on his back, but Baekhyun pushed him off. “My mom shared a set of massage techniques on her Line, I wanna try it out on somebody, lie down.”
They had the time of their lives. When they got back, the rest of them were playing cards. Sehun almost tripped over Joonmyun’s foot on his way to the couch. “You look like a noodle,” Luhan tossed offhandedly.
“Baekhyun’s magic fingers,” he hissed.
There was business (a lot of business. Baekhyun was five star). Jongdae and Zitao first, sold on the first night, laid out like two sets of flattened clothes on Baekhyun’s bed while he pounded them into the mattress to the twisted humor of Chanyeol playing Top 10 Romantic Symphonies from the other bed. Yixing thought Baekhyun dug sweetly, a little too sweetly, whatever that meant. Luhan was moaning, and he tried really hard to take off his shirt for better contact. Minseok came out the room with a ruled expression, but Luhan told him softly the next day that Minseok hadn’t kicked off his sheets first night in weeks. Baekhyun managed to make the borderline insomniac Joonmyun fall asleep within ten minutes. Nobody knew how Kris felt about it. Chanyeol held out, observing the processions withholding his judgement-which he managed to express just as well through the nightly renewed sarcastic piano collection-and Baekhyun promptly didn’t give a fuck. It was all good, until the to-do list dwindled down to one, and he knew right away that it was going to take something to get Kyungsoo on his side, thanks to this lukewarm friendship of theirs which he’d always tentatively tried to develop but held back just enough, out of fear, a little, and a lot of admiration.
So then one day, in a rare moment when he found Kyungsoo rolled over and asleep on the couch, he’d hushed everyone and tried to pinch the top of his spine with two knuckles.
Now, though, five minutes later, he’s on his back with his injured arm out, and Chanyeol sits on the edge of the bed rolling his forearm like a strip of dough.
“What the heck did he do to you?”
Baekhyun tries to rotate his hand, and drops it back lamely and resignedly onto the bed.
“He just, uh, sort of snapped awake. He pinned me at a weird angle.” He gulps.
In Baekhyun’s peripheral vision, Chanyeol just shakes his head, small smile stretched over his lips, and Baekhyun thinks it looks less mocking than it probably should. His large hands are wrapped around the thin arm, large warm hands, rough palm brushing the skin as he massages down to the wrist. He gently picks up Baekhyun’s hand from the bed and kisses the back of it once, setting it down gently again, locking eyes with the patient, not forgetting to look pleased as fuck with himself.
“Looks like you’re losing your five star review,” he stands up and stretches. His shirt rides up. “Now I’m not sure I want to try it, might leave me with permanent casualties…”
“Screw you, I’ll break you into squares.”
So he mumbles, blinking his little eyes up at the ceiling. Chanyeol pauses though, watching him outside the door of the washroom. He brews the thought while he brushes his teeth. Beneath everything, he can sense that Baekhyun is at least a little dejected. It throws off his rhythm when things don’t go as he wishes-this time it’s got him flattened spiritless out on the bed, maybe from being turned down, maybe more because he couldn’t take a step forward in the friendship he’d wanted. When he comes out, Baekhyun hasn’t moved, arm still out, like he’s holding some invisible lover by the shoulders. Chanyeol pauses at the door with his feet crossed, watching Baekhyun roll his lips over his teeth, pull and pucker.
He walks to the foot of the bed, blocking the light from him, waiting for some decision. Baekhyun wiggles his feet at him, and Chanyeol catches his ankles, pulls his socks off for him. Baekhyun yawns, and his face scrunches, layer over layer.
“Kyungsoo doesn’t like being touched,” Chanyeol tries, “there are just people like that.”
He says with a subdued tone. Baekhyun seems lost to this kind of comfort, lost in his undying resolution, which repaired itself quickly enough to be deaf to any condolence.
“I can do this, I will convince him.”
“Well, good luck to you.”
Chanyeol ponders over it though, chucking Baekhyun’s socks into the laundry pail, pulling his own clothes off and lets it shrivel right on the floor like a pile of old skin. Some sliver of a thought passes him, the same half transpired thought he tossed around watching detachedly from the other bed every time Baekhyun did his sinful kneading with his hands, always smiling. How does this feel? Goo-oo-od. After they left, Baekhyun shut the door and dusted his hands off dramatically, like some feat accomplished, and Chanyeol can only laugh at how proud and how cute he looks with his hands on his waist. Give it a rest, he would say, extending an arm out, inviting, pushing his laptop aside. Wait, I’m like sweating all over, gotta shower.
The words toss around his mouth like pop rocks, but it’s like he just opens his mouth to take a breath and something falls out regardless of how hard he swallows.
“You know, Baek, you do have this problem too, like, you’re insatiable, always wanting things in numbers. You can’t get everyone to love ya, dude.”
At the time he said it, Chanyeol hadn’t realized it could come out sounding kind of whiney, and he realizes only belatedly. Baekhyun seems to come back to the world, propelling his body with his legs like a kayak till he dials himself around the bed, worms to the edge and kicks Chanyeol square in the ass when he bends down. “Oh yeah?” Chanyeol almost falls, but the single solitary thought in his head at the moment is that by some miracle all the loser undertones of what he said had gone over Baekhyun totally. “Wanna bet?”
They go to bed cuddling. Chanyeol wakes up early the next morning to the warmth of Baekhyun in his arms, reclined against the headboard. Chanyeol holds still, moving just his eyes to peek down and finds his lover awake, startlingly awake, staring ahead with his mouth thinned as if lost in some strenuous thought. The seconds tick on, Baekhyun blinks, but that cloudiness doesn’t leave his eyes.
Chanyeol counts, and then he sucks in a deep breath and stretches, waking for the second time that morning. Through his thinned eyes he can see Baekhyun jostled alert, see the exact moment his expression melts into something prettier, but nevertheless a little inexplicably uninviting. “Morning,” he says, and plants one on Chanyeol’s mouth. “Hey Yeol, how confident are you in my abilities to seduce?”
Days later Chanyeol would berate himself for watching the pink curve of Baekhyun’s lips half awake as he answered without even thinking, very.
In the end the conversation goes quick. Chanyeol isn’t entirely lucid throughout most of it. He only wakes up and realizes when Baekhyun bangs the door as he leaves.
-
The game is simple, but the stakes are high.
Who’re you planning on seducing? The members.
Why?
To prove you wrong. I’m irresistable.
Wow, you’re a heartbreaker. Fat chance, they’re all straight.
Yeah, wanna bet?
Chanyeol had, immediately after hearing this on that day, felt that he’d fallen into some kind of trap.
Are you serious? You’re not actually gonna seduce them, are you?
No, Jesus. Hear this: I promise you, I can get all ten of them to take me out on a dinner date within a month’s time.
Do we even have time to eat out that often?
A month, Chanyeol-
Going out alone?
Relax, Chanyeol, come if you want to.
Chanyeol was pretty sure Baekhyun could win this, maybe just from trading massages with dinner dates alone, but the competitive part of him sure as hell wasn’t going to let him have it easy. Besides, there’s some statement to be made, when he nets Baekhyun back after what’s been about a month or two now, having his fun screwing around to pass the time with comeback still some time away. It’d gotten a little quiet is all.
What do you get if you win?
I get to chop off your hair with my own hands.
What? The stylists are gonna kill you-
You know they’re hacking it short anyways, I just want my fun with some scissors
What the fuck. If I win?
You get to choose. Anything I can do, I’ll do it.
Chanyeol’s eyes had lit up. It was the stupidest thing he’d ever done.
-
Kris stands in the middle of the kitchen, blond bangs done up with a red rubber band into a little wheatstock, plaid apron around his waist, sleeves rolled, and looking cosmically lost within this foreign space filled with daunting instruments of unknown purposes. Chanyeol sits in the chair, feet propped on another, watching him.
The clock on the wall ticks by. The heater buzzes on in the frameworks. Kris looks down at the muffin tin on the marble counter, blinking at it like some sort of plea. He looks over to the recipe book, then back to the tray, then back to the book, and Chanyeol gets the sense that if he were to get up and read the instructions out loud for him, Kris would still be there nodding to himself and helplessly patting his pant seams.
“Uh, hey.”
Chanyeol looks up from his phone.
“Where are-where’s the flour?”
Looking utterly disinterested, Chanyeol points to a cupboard. Kris nods frantically, long legs marching the rest of him across the space. Chanyeol watches him sigh loudly as he pulls out more than he hoped for, flour, baking soda, baking powder, even the brown sugar. Kris flips around a few adjacent doors and the look on his face when he does, like he found God, tenderly holding a bottle of vanilla extract in his large hand like he’s scared he’ll crush it, makes Chanyeol want to leave.
He piles everything on the table, hands on his waist for a job well done. And then a few seconds later he starts to sweat.
“M-measuring cups? And the uh, the thing,” he motions, fist clenched around an invisible tool, which he rocks in circles. His eyes are screaming regret, which only fuels Chanyeol’s sour mood with a vindictiveness. Use your hands then, stupid fuck.
“Cups, there. If you want an egg beater, it’s right there on the rack, hyung. Electric mixers are in there. Get a spatula. Chocolate chips in there, we don’t have white ones, you have to make do. Don’t forget to sift your flour. Go change that butter to unsalted unless you want him to suffer. Why the shit did you agree to this?”
Why the shit did he agree to this? That’s the ultimate question. Chanyeol sits with his feet tucked in, mouth dry and bitter from the bottle he’d long ago finished. He knows why Kris would agree. He knows why he’d take a night off from group biking just to be here in this kitchen that’s going to swallow him alone, making triple chocolate cupcakes.
Because it was seven AM and Chanyeol wasn’t thinking very far ahead when he got into the bet. And because five dinner dates in a week was really starting to get on their manager’s nerves, and the game had to be cut down to strictly domestic dinners, and that ranged anything from royal turkey dinner to cereal.
If I win…you have to plan something to do on Valentine’s with me.
That’s it? Baekhyun had said. Chanyeol’s blood froze. It was the sharpest slap in the face he’d ever felt, and he couldn’t even say why.
It’s a bigger issue than some popularity contest. Chanyeol doesn’t know what it is, still hasn’t figured out why the whole proposal rubs him the wrong way, but it’d started to bother him how seriously Baekhyun began to take the whole deal a week ago, with half his allotted time gone. He kind of drowned in the idea of winning, like he was trying to prove something, when Chanyeol only wanted to do something fun for the holiday season. It was evident to himself though that ever since the first day, this fog wrapped around them, and his intuition told him it was hiding something he didn’t want to know.
-
To backtrack, Chanyeol realizes on the very first day that he’s in trouble.
There are two people in the dorm room, until there are three.
It’s dusk, and the members have left for their nightly jog around the neighbourhood park. Everybody left except himself, who was assigned a rap piece just earlier that day, and Yixing, who’s slept since the morning passed out from how tired he was composing all night, and when the group left Luhan felt too bad to wake him. About six thirty, Chanyeol’s in his room when he suddenly thinks he hears footsteps in the living room. He slumps on the bed propped with his elbow, listening.
The door to Yixing’s room opens and closes, and that’s what he thinks, that Yixing got up and took a stroll and went back. It’s not until the door opens again that he hears the laughter of who is undeniably Baekhyun, and the groggy chuckles of the clueless little angel whose nap was just strategically disrupted by this demon.
Chanyeol stretches his neck out his door in horror and ends up scaring both of the ones outside, wrapped in scarves and beanies. “Oh hey, Chanyeol, I’m taking Baekhyunnie to get some dinner, wanna come?”
Chanyeol stares into that angelic dimple on his sweet face and feels all of a sudden like the worst person on the planet aside from the other guy smirking under his snapback behind him.
“No, I’ll eat later with the others.” He glares past Yixing at the smug Baekhyun, swallowing his tongue because they hadn’t talked about whether either were allowed to breathe a word about this bet. I hope you feel so bad for this, he tries to say to Baekhyun with his eyes. “You guys have fun.”
They had fun. They had tons of fun. Baekhyun dragged Yixing into an amusement park and they stayed until most the rides were closed. Baekhyun took a billion selfies with Yixing under the bad lighting of some rides. One down, nine to go, Baekhyun says coming back into their room that night with the frost still radiating off of him. He pumps his fist with a smirk. “You have no morals, Byun Baekhyun.” Chanyeol cringes, half smiling and crying at all the pictures of Baekhyun stuffing cotton candy into Yixing’s mouth.
“No good men in gambles, Parkchan.” He throws himself onto Chanyeol’s bed, falling like a snow angel, his puffy jacket and everything still on. Chanyeol shoves him over and climbs under the blanket. He grabs the half cup of hot chocolate on the nightstand and hands it over to Baekhyun.
“It’s on, I hope you know that. I’m not letting you get away this easy from now on.”
The game begins on January 11th. On the 11th Yixing is taken off the list. On the night of the 11th Baekhyun comes back from the shower humming, wrapped in nothing but a towel. In the golden halo of the desk lamp he lies himself down beside Chanyeol, who’s curled under his blanket.
“You know what I’m going to do with your hair?” he murmurs suddenly, arms crossed behind his head. Chanyeol looks over. “You know, Chanyeol, I’ve seen where the noonas keep their curling irons. One of them had a whole box of scissors. Do you know what I’m capable of, Chanyeol?” and he goes on, whispering all the horrendous things he would do with his hair, until Chanyeol shoots up and tickles his bare sides, smothers him with his comforter until Baekhyun’s down to a gurgling mess. Chanyeol watches him with tossed hair, falls a little bit more in love with the mischievous glint on his iris, feels momentarily swallowed by the immensity of his feelings for this incredible boy, half a year older and millions of years wiser. Winter of 2012 is bitter, winter this year is a stalemate next to last year’s, when everybody couldn’t be busier preparing to face the world for the first time as idols, and Joonmyun cried watching his teaser for the first time. On January 11th Chanyeol looks at Baekhyun and knows that they’re all going to make it through okay, that there’s going to be excitement, no matter how early the sun is going to set.
-
Chanyeol makes the next move by securing his long term busing friend Kyungsoo onto his side. “Listen, Kyungsoo, Baekhyun’s going to ask you to go out with him one night in the next few weeks, and I’m-I kind of need you to turn him down. It’s nothing shady, he’s just going to get you to buy him food, but I need you to. If you can. Please.”
Ok, Kyungsoo says, looking like he half wants to ask and half just doesn’t care what the two of them are up to anymore, but either way Chanyeol knows Kyungsoo’s trustworthy, and that as long as he is here preventing Baekhyun from total victory, Chanyeol’s butt is saved. He buys him coffee as a token of appreciation.
-
Originally, Joonmyun wasn’t a target till later, but Baekhyun manages to get to Jongdae with the whole Beagles Bros thing. He pulls him aside a few days after the first victory, says something like “it’s been a year, it’s the holidays, we got in together, let’s go celebrate”, and at that time Joonmyun’s just coming out of the washroom and hears them. Unexpectedly, he gets fiercely emotional over the idea and declares that they are all in need of some warming celebration. “It’s a shame everyone else is gone. Let’s go out and eat somewhere, have a good chat, I’ll treat you guys, how about it?”
Chanyeol checks his phone on his way back from the gym, and Baekhyun tells him all this excitedly over text. He shoots back a “tell them I’m coming” before jumping into the shower. Half an hour later he shows up at the restaurant, and the table’s filled. Baekhyun passes him some chopsticks and fills a cup for him from the bottles they’ve got on the table. “Cheers, everybody.” When he bumps glasses with Chanyeol, he smiles almost unnoticeably wider, and the little motion makes Chanyeol’s heart pump fast. He watches Baekhyun while they eat, his pink tinted cheek comfortably rested on Joonmyun’s shoulder while he barks back and forth with Jongdae about dog breeds. He blows into his hands, rubs them, sits on them, shrinks them back into his sweater sleeve. You want my gloves? Chanyeol offered. “You had gloves?”
They sweep the table, and Chanyeol’s so caught up in the festivity that he almost forgets why he’s here when the bill’s passed over. “Joonmyun hyung, you’re always paying for us, we shouldn’t burden you this time.”
“Ah ya, seriously, don’t worry about it, I’m just glad you guys are happy.” Joonmyun grins so merrily his eyes thin into lines, and for a moment Chanyeol thinks he’s just so ridiculously adorable he doesn’t even have the heart to reject his good will. Jongdae drags out a “thank youuu”, and Chanyeol doesn’t catch Baekhyun leering across him.
“Chanyeol, you can pay for yourself if you want.”
Baekhyun looks like a little rascal, infuriatingly cute rascal, beanie tilted and eyes gleaming. Chanyeol kicks him under the table, and Baekhyun returns it. Joonmyun pulls bill after bill from his wallet, muttering math under his breath, and unbeknownst to them, Jongdae’s watching the little exchange with curiosity.
After dinner, they leisurely walk back to their dorms. Baekhyun’s got an arm looped in Joonmyun’s, walking ahead of the other two. Jongdae sneaks up beside Chanyeol at some point, and when Chanyeol looks over, he registers that Jongdae looks like he wants to say something.
“Hey, is...everything okay between you and Baekhyun?” He asks under his breath, peeking up at Chanyeol from the corner of his eye. Jongdae’s notorious for being the good guy to everybody, always there when he senses someone has troubles. Chanyeol was never close to him especially, Baekhyun always being the center of the beagles, but he knows Jongdae’s genuinity from habit of being concerned, so he feels okay telling him.
“Nah, don’t worry, man, we’re cool. To be honest, we’re in the middle of a bet right now. You and Joonmyun hyung unknowingly helped him win one over me, so.”
Jongdae’s eyes widen. “Whats the bet about?” Chanyeol explains the details to him, and when he looks over, Jongdae’s just staring at him like it doesn’t make sense. “...Why?”
Chanyeol shrugs. “We’re just messing around. At least I think we are, but I dunno.” He pauses a minute, chews on his lip. “Sometimes it feels like Baek takes it super seriously. Like he’s trying to prove something.”
Jongdae looks on in silence for a while. They keep walking, down on an angle now. Baekhyun takes off his beanie, smoothes his gloved hands over his hair, trying to get rid of the static and making it worse. He crowns the hat back on.
“I don’t know why he wants everyone to like him. Like, I’m sure they do, and they will, he’s just a beam of light, but...”
“You sound kind of put off by this,” Jongdae nudges him.
Chanyeol purses his lips, wetting them. “Yeah, a little. It feels like he forgets I exist sometimes.”
“Well, I can see why, considering you’re…”
“Yeah,” Chanyeol chuckles once, scratching the back of his neck. “Yeah.”
Thanks man, he gives Jongdae a firm pat on the shoulder.
-
Zitao takes him out to eat ddukbokki, and Baekhyun’s upping his game by not telling Chanyeol what kind of bribe or sweet talk he’s using. It starts to worry Chanyeol, how Baekhyun’s actually starting to treat him like the opponent, keeping his strategies secret. It cuts down on a good portion of their daily communication, not only because of this, but also because Baekhyun’s out visiting other rooms a lot more than before, practically camping there. Chanyeol hadn’t realized, hadn’t deduced thanks to how inept he is at future planning, how much this bet would drive Baekhyun into socialising with other people, and honestly speaking it was the opposite effect of what Chanyeol wanted to achieve. When Baekhyun sends him a selfie with Zitao at a picnic table and another of Zitao standing on the bank of some river, Chanyeol is not in a good mood.
His mood worsens when later that night, with a bunch of them huddled in the living room, their manager herds the two wandering kids back into the dorm like puppies on a leash. “I know it’s the holidays, but ease up on the public appearances, okay? Don’t draw too much attention. If you want food, you can always order it.”
Everyone in the room at the time pretty much heard, and Chanyeol feels bad for getting everyone unofficially grounded for the next while. Baekhyun shrugs, and Zitao sucks on his bubble tea like it’s nothing. Baekhyun steps around the people on the floor to the couch, where the maknaes are battling each other in something on their phones. “What’d you do?” Jongin mumbles, eyes on the screen. Baekhyun makes some sort of dismissive noise, and Sehun pipes in almost inaudibly. “He’s in this bet with Chanyeol.”
This gets the attention of two people in the room, Chanyeol, who’s heard his name, and Luhan, sitting across the table inattentively scrolling on his phone, shrunk so much into the cushion his chin folds against his chest. “What bet?” he says, sliding upright. “Wait,” Sehun knits his brows, watching the screen intently. Jongin laughs once, and Sehun lets out a “damn”, setting the phone on his lap.
“What bet?”
“Oh, something about Baekhyun being cheap and leaching food off everybody.”
Baekhyun’s head snaps over to Chanyeol, who’s about to stick out his tongue when he notices that Baekhyun looks genuinely kind of offended. He turns away almost immediately, and Chanyeol’s left half winded, taken off guard by the degree of coldness. “Is that what he told you?” Baekhyun asks Sehun, turned away, and then a hint of a grin creeps back, “Yeah, did he ever tell you that if you helped me win, I get to screw with his hair?”
Everything gets quiet. Yixing looks up from the letters he’s reading, Jongin’s jaw drops open. Chanyeol can pinpoint this one exact moment of death when Sehun’s eyes light up, and it seems then that the whole room is simultaneously watching himself, awestruck.
“What do I have to do?” Sehun turns to Baekhyun, this sick tone of excitement in his voice, and Chanyeol feels absolutely black on the inside. His eyes are shouting betrayal.
“I don’t know,” Baekhyun shrugs, all nonchalant, looking over now, “since we can’t go out now, how about we...make dinner? How’s that? Cook something for me, maknae.”
Chanyeol doesn’t object. He’s glaring right at Sehun, who realizes after a moment that the eyes are on him. They meet gazes, and Sehun manages a pokerface while Chanyeol is positively radiating fury. “You’re dead to me, Oh Sehun.”
“Sorry man, that shaggy mop. It just has to go. We should dye it green.”
Chanyeol rolls his eyes, trying to play it off, reminding himself that he still has Kyungsoo’s good word when his other friends aren’t worth a damn when it comes down to it. Sensing the tension, Luhan gets up and stretches. “This sounds fun, count me in.” He picks up his empty cup and heads for the kitchen. “Ok, I’m taking bribes now.”
That night, under his blanket, Chanyeol can’t stop chewing over what had happened, how Sehun could do it just for something so ridiculous. It’s the first real betrayal he’d felt up to then-Chanyeol has known Jongin and Sehun since middle school, and they grew up a good part of their childhood together. Baekhyun had always gotten along with them in a different way, some sort of mutual reliance he’d built between them. When the kids needed support they went to him, but they only trusted him so wholly because at times Baekhyun himself leaned onto the younger ones for comfort. There were moments when he revealed his own softness, his vulnerability, and this quality is something Chanyeol doesn’t have himself. He doesn't know how to be this sensitive, he doesn’t know how not to feel afraid about sharing himself like this, and a tough brotherly support on the outside, a few pats, a few games for distraction, that’s all he knows how to offer. This is something he understands for certain. He’d thought about it for years. This is Baekhyun’s magic, his mix of sensitivity and fortitude. This what he's come to depend on, and now this is exactly what’s drawn everyone around him away.
Briefly, before lights out that night, Chanyeol wants to ask Baekhyun from the other bed what this game is even about anymore, but he doesn’t get the courage. He hasn’t said a word in hours, neither of them have, and he goes to sleep with the inside of his mouth tasting sour.
-
The third week comes, and then everything sort of falls apart.
Luhan’s still holding out, trying to pull in bribes, and so they’ve both pushed him aside for a while. Kyungsoo keeps his word. There are two members who aren’t in on the details of the game, not deliberately, one Kris and the other Minseok, both missing on the night everything was explained. After their evening cycling rounds one night, Chanyeol asks to talk with him alone, and they sit on the bleachers of a basketball court, cups of coffee in their hands.
Chanyeol tells him the story, trying to gauge his response, but Minseok shows no signs in his expressions. “Hyung, I know Baekhyun’s probably going to come to you, but I think-he’s going to get the idea that he’s not dislikable. And it’s such a waste of time because-”
He’s stuck mid sentence all of a sudden, and then as if it’d just dissolved, Chanyeol forgets what it is. He knows from somewhere deep down that he’d almost caught the tail of it, of what’s bothered him so long, and Minseok waits, but he has simply forgotten. Then he just kind of looks on, scratching his ear, brows knit like a child trying to work out a math equation. “Hyung, if you’ve seen him, he’s-trying so hard, and I don’t understand why. It makes no sense to me.”
Minseok nods. He doesn’t say anything else to him, and they go home, and that’s the extent to which Chanyeol knows about anything involving him. He’s convinced he’d won him over.
That night, Minseok lay on his back, hands behind his head, with Luhan sprawled at the foot of his bed reading a magazine upside down. “What do you think?”
Luhan looks over, finds Minseok’s eyes on him and sits up. He wet his lips. “There’s only one reason someone like him would feel the need to go this far.”
“What’s that?”
“Lack of validation, maybe. Some’n’ like that.”
Minseok smiles at him, warm and amused, and a moment later Luhan smiles back.
The day he finally rolls up his sleeves and cooks, Chanyeol arrives first, crashing into the kitchen as soon as he’d heard the water running, and when he sees him there with his sweater sleeves rolled up Chanyeol feels so abandoned a pang of tears almost shoot into his eyes. “Hyung, why-”
“Chanyeol-ah, sit down, sit.”
He sits, trying to gather himself up. Minseok runs the tap to wash the spinach leaves. “Why?” Chanyeol asks again, whole body slumped against the chair. Minseok says something quiet, drowned out entirely by the water, and Chanyeol sits up. “What?” That’s when Baekhyun walks in. His eyes are sparkling when he sits down across from Chanyeol. Neither of them look at each other. When Minseok’s done making bibimbap, he gets Luhan to gather up the herd, and while everybody eats and chats, Chanyeol draws more and more into himself.
-
Back in their room that night, Chanyeol’s going over his rap with the headphones in when Baekhyun comes back. In his peripheral vision, in the chair facing the desk pushed against the back wall, Chanyeol sees him absentmindedly rub his stomach, rucking up the edge of his shirt. Chanyeol pretends he’s not aware, head down in his music, copying words into his notebook.
After fifteen minutes, Baekhyun calls across the room. “Hey Chanyeol, what was our meeting today about? I missed the first half of it.”
He contemplates pretending not to hear him, but in reality the music in his headphones is very quiet. “Chanyeol.” Chanyeol scribbles again in his notebook, lips pressed tightly together, and he sees the blur to his side a few moments before Baekhyun tugs out one of his earbuds from behind, and Chanyeol swivels around with a rage he’s desperately trying to contain in his shaking hands.
He holds them by his head, eyes closed in strain, and Baekhyun immediately takes a step back. “Whoa, calm down.”
Chanyeol doesn’t open his eyes, but he drops his hands, clenches them into fists. Baekhyun watches him trying to control his breathing, and his shoulders sink a little, face pulled serious. “Alright, I know we both feel something’s going on between us. We gotta talk our problems out.”
Chanyeol’s eyes snap open, and he looks disturbed. “Our problems? What could you possibly have problems with right now? Everything is working out like you said it would, isn’t it?”
“Can we please not-”
“What the fuck is the point of this little game? Huh?”
“You know what, Chanyeol,” Baekhyun stops. He holds out a hand, like some sort of cutoff, a cork right before the bottle blows. His face is pale. “You might not think so, but being likeable is a fucking talent. SM chose me. I’m here because they know I can do this. Don’t swear at me. I don’t want to fight with you.”
That night Baekhyun leaves. Chanyeol does too, he can’t bear being alone in there with his shame tumbling against the walls. He takes a chance, pushing open Sehun’s door, and is glad he’s taken in by Joonmyun with a sigh. The next morning he returns to find Baekhyun walking out of Kris’ door, huge bright smile on his face like nothing is the matter, and it slaughters him just like that in the shadow of the threshold.
Baekhyun flips like a switch. Chanyeol sees him sticking to the sides of Kris, at home, on stage, backstage, traveling at airports. He’d dug his own grave. To Chanyeol, the game is already over, and he’d lost so much more than what he bargained for.
-
Kris is the third last one. After him is Luhan and Kyungsoo, but it would only be a matter of time anyway. It’s a week to Valentines, and it’s enough.
Kris flounders around the kitchen, until Chanyeol can’t bear to watch it anymore, and helps Kris make dinner for all twelve of them. When they eat, he catches Baekhyun whispering “it’s good” to Kris, but he doesn’t know if he means it. Miraculously, though, that night Baekhyun moves all his stuff back into their room without any explanation, but Chanyeol’s heart still wavers wondering if Baekhyun had tasted his own hand within the dishes. They sleep one more night, practice one more day. On February 10th, one day before the bet ends, Chanyeol gives in.
-
“I made dinner”, he sends to Baekhyun. Two hours later, Baekhyun shows up.
It’s about 11:00 when he arrives back, carrying the messenger bag he brings to the studio on most days. “Grab some chopsticks,” Chanyeol ushers, reheating everything for him in the microwave. Baekhyun moves to get changed, but Chanyeol stops him. “Take a walk with me later, please.”
It’s almost midnight when they finish dinner. Chanyeol gears up for the outdoors. He offers his gloves to Baekhyun again, and after a while Baekhyun takes them. Outside, Baekhyun keeps his hood up and hands in his pockets, and Chanyeol peeking at him from the side can only see the tip of his nose pushed out past the wall of his hood. He doesn’t speak a word. Chanyeol wants to talk, but he doesn’t know where to start. The two of them wander towards the Han river, the general direction of it, and the night breeze blows against them from the waterfront. Along the path there are only silhouettes of people, walking before them, by them. Street lamps line the railings, lighting the tiled path ahead step by step. They stroll towards the bright lights in the distance, the only sense of direction either of them in the moment want to follow, until the flow of time seems absent from the way they seem to walk on forever. Out of nowhere comes again the sound of rushing traffic. At the foot of a bridge, Chanyeol stops walking.
“Baekhyun.” Baekhyun spins around, watching him, “I give in. You win.”
“I win,” Baekhyun echoes.
Chanyeol doesn’t know what should happen next, he hasn’t thought this far. The only thing he’d thought when he asked him here is that they had to fix things, and how he didn’t know, he just knew he had to. Baekhyun waits for him, until suddenly the racing of traffic slows behind them, and they both turn to see the bridge has emptied, if only for a few moments. Before he responds, Baekhyun is running right across the width, not stopping until he’s on the other side. “Baekhyun-”
Chanyeols’ throat constricts, head whipping left and right checking for cars, heart hammering. “God damn it you’re gonna get killed!”
“Come on, let’s walk.”
Along the pedestrian path of the other side, Baekhyun starts to walk up the bridge without looking over. Chanyeol can’t take his eyes off him in fear, whole body tensing up again when traffic resumes. Baekhyun takes step by step up the bridge, fighting the wind. Chanyeol almost falls, paying no attention to his own clumsy feet. When they’re near the top of the bridge, the walkway broadens into a paved path, bulging into an observatory on each side. There are thin benches here, and Chanyeol wants to catch his breath. Baekhyun stops walking. From across the motion blur of lights he sees him turn towards the river, stepping forward until he’s bathed in lamplight. Against the black water and black sky, Baekhyun is ethereal, a hologram crackling, some transient ghost painted by the brushstrokes of light streaking across his vision. Chanyeol opens his mouth and his voice croaks when he screams.
“Baekhyun!”
He waits, but the rumble of the bridge had swallowed his call. Frantically, he shouts again, with as much power as he can find within his core, “Baekhyun!”
Baekhyun’s head jerks, and he turns abruptly, locking eyes with Chanyeol, whose chest heaves in staccatos, coughing out clouds of breath like he can’t breathe. He walks to the edge of the road, hands still in his pockets, waiting.
“Baekhyun, I’m sorry!”
“Baekhyun, I-”
“What?”
Chanyeol draws back his voice, already sore, and it sounds wrecked ripping out his throat so crassly like this. Baekhyun’s waiting for the rest of his message, and Chanyeol falls into panic, suddenly patting all over himself for his cell phone. With shaky hands he dials Baekhyun and holds the phone to his ears, waiting for the ringing to end.
“Hello?”
“Baekhyun, please-please just answer me this one thing, okay? Okay?” He shouts into the phone. In Baekhyun’s silence, the roar of traffic echoes a second time from the receiver by his ear, and Chanyeol’s heart itches within him. He’s watching Baekhyun. He doesn’t know how he looks to him, whether it’s as desperate as he sounds inside his head.
“What is it?”
“Look, I-You’re good with people, okay! Baekhyun, I always knew that. I didn’t think-Jesus-I didn’t think you have to prove it. Okay? You can act cute, and you can make them laugh, and you can pull favors quick, I know all this. But what is? Why? What’s the point?”
“I just-I like having friends,” Baekhyun shouts back.
“Do you? Or do you like making friends? Getting their approval? That’s not like you, Baekhyun!”
At this speed and this distance, Chanyeol can’t see anything past the blur of Baekhyun’s facial features. He’s praying in his head when Baekhyun speaks again-
“So what?” Chanyeol freezes. “So what if it makes me feel good about myself? It’s nice when you matter to people, Park Chanyeol. Is that a crime?”
Chanyeol’s breathing heavily, and Baekhyun can probably hear it on his end. There’s a great pause, and Chanyeol thinks Baekhyun’s going to hang up, so he shouts the first thing on his mind: “Then what about me?”
“What?”
“What makes me feel good about myself?”
Chanyeol walks to the edge of the road, and the toes of his converse almost push past the ledge. He thinks that he sees, standing right across from him, Baekhyun’s eyes are wide.
“Baekhyun, knowing that I, I was enough for someone like you, is the greatest compliment I could ever have gotten.”
“Am I still enough for you, Baekhyun? I’m not smart like you are. All I know how to do is love people, love animals, and smile for people who need them, and laugh at myself for people who need it.” He sucks in a deep breath, “I can’t hide my feelings well, but I can, I can play guitar, and rap a little, and I can cheer you up, and I’m sorry that’s all I can offer!
“You deserve a hell lot better, but I’m selfish and I’m really sorry-
“You don’t need everybody to like you. I like you. I hope it’s enough!”
“My God, stop yelling, please!”
Chanyeol watches Baekhyun run a gloved hand down his face. The cars flash past, lights blink, and for a millisecond there’s a square of glimmer on Baekhyun’s cheek. He ducks out of the light and then it’s gone again. Baekhyun’s look at his feet, and he lowers the phone and holds it against his jacket, turning away from Chanyeol. His knees bent, and Chanyeol think he’s going to fall, but he doesn’t. He runs his hand over his face, over his hair, again and again. Then he brings the phone back up to his ear, and quieter this time says, “Come on, let’s get out of here, can we just get out of here-”
“Okay.”
“Wait for me on the other side, okay? Wait, okay, Chanyeol?”
“Okay, I will.”
Chanyeol watches Baekhyun go, downhill this time, with the wind this time. His legs can’t keep up that it looks like he’s skipping, almost tripping. Chanyeol tries to follow, but for some reason he can’t, not when he bucks his knees and runs, he can’t. The two of them fly by with the cars, and just for a moment while they ran they’d become the traffic, they’d become the lights. When he gets down to the bottom, Baekhyun is already there. “Took you a while,” Baekhyun says when he nears, but when Chanyeol blinks the wind away he sees Baekhyun looking off to the side with his eyes lowered and skin flushed and wonders, with casual apologies stuck in his mouth, what it is he’s referring to.
Under the light, Baekhyun’s face looks tender. Chanyeol touches it with his frozen fingers, and he can’t feel, but he knows he’s right. The chorus of the night still rings in his ears.
“Let’s go,” Baekhyun says, and this time his arms are hanging by his sides.
Chanyeol takes his gloved hand. It’s wet all over.
End.
Fandom: EXO
Pairing: Chanyeol/Baekhyun
Rating: PG13
Words: 7122
Summary: Gambling's never about the money
a/n: Cross posting my SNCJ Secret Santa 2013 fill found here! Also unofficially and additionally dedicated to apeople ;~;.
Prompt: "a canon-verse where Baekhyun tries too hard to please and Chanyeol just doesn't try anymore."
The game begins at 10:40 PM on a Monday when Byun Baekhyun tries to give Kyungsoo a massage.
This actually goes back a week, the stem of it, to the day he first experimented on the kids. The three of them stayed late one night after practice, and Sehun was packing up his stuff when Jongin dropped to his knees and slid, prostrate, right onto the dirt wrapped floor groaning for his muscles and joints. Sehun snuck over to sit on his back, but Baekhyun pushed him off. “My mom shared a set of massage techniques on her Line, I wanna try it out on somebody, lie down.”
They had the time of their lives. When they got back, the rest of them were playing cards. Sehun almost tripped over Joonmyun’s foot on his way to the couch. “You look like a noodle,” Luhan tossed offhandedly.
“Baekhyun’s magic fingers,” he hissed.
There was business (a lot of business. Baekhyun was five star). Jongdae and Zitao first, sold on the first night, laid out like two sets of flattened clothes on Baekhyun’s bed while he pounded them into the mattress to the twisted humor of Chanyeol playing Top 10 Romantic Symphonies from the other bed. Yixing thought Baekhyun dug sweetly, a little too sweetly, whatever that meant. Luhan was moaning, and he tried really hard to take off his shirt for better contact. Minseok came out the room with a ruled expression, but Luhan told him softly the next day that Minseok hadn’t kicked off his sheets first night in weeks. Baekhyun managed to make the borderline insomniac Joonmyun fall asleep within ten minutes. Nobody knew how Kris felt about it. Chanyeol held out, observing the processions withholding his judgement-which he managed to express just as well through the nightly renewed sarcastic piano collection-and Baekhyun promptly didn’t give a fuck. It was all good, until the to-do list dwindled down to one, and he knew right away that it was going to take something to get Kyungsoo on his side, thanks to this lukewarm friendship of theirs which he’d always tentatively tried to develop but held back just enough, out of fear, a little, and a lot of admiration.
So then one day, in a rare moment when he found Kyungsoo rolled over and asleep on the couch, he’d hushed everyone and tried to pinch the top of his spine with two knuckles.
Now, though, five minutes later, he’s on his back with his injured arm out, and Chanyeol sits on the edge of the bed rolling his forearm like a strip of dough.
“What the heck did he do to you?”
Baekhyun tries to rotate his hand, and drops it back lamely and resignedly onto the bed.
“He just, uh, sort of snapped awake. He pinned me at a weird angle.” He gulps.
In Baekhyun’s peripheral vision, Chanyeol just shakes his head, small smile stretched over his lips, and Baekhyun thinks it looks less mocking than it probably should. His large hands are wrapped around the thin arm, large warm hands, rough palm brushing the skin as he massages down to the wrist. He gently picks up Baekhyun’s hand from the bed and kisses the back of it once, setting it down gently again, locking eyes with the patient, not forgetting to look pleased as fuck with himself.
“Looks like you’re losing your five star review,” he stands up and stretches. His shirt rides up. “Now I’m not sure I want to try it, might leave me with permanent casualties…”
“Screw you, I’ll break you into squares.”
So he mumbles, blinking his little eyes up at the ceiling. Chanyeol pauses though, watching him outside the door of the washroom. He brews the thought while he brushes his teeth. Beneath everything, he can sense that Baekhyun is at least a little dejected. It throws off his rhythm when things don’t go as he wishes-this time it’s got him flattened spiritless out on the bed, maybe from being turned down, maybe more because he couldn’t take a step forward in the friendship he’d wanted. When he comes out, Baekhyun hasn’t moved, arm still out, like he’s holding some invisible lover by the shoulders. Chanyeol pauses at the door with his feet crossed, watching Baekhyun roll his lips over his teeth, pull and pucker.
He walks to the foot of the bed, blocking the light from him, waiting for some decision. Baekhyun wiggles his feet at him, and Chanyeol catches his ankles, pulls his socks off for him. Baekhyun yawns, and his face scrunches, layer over layer.
“Kyungsoo doesn’t like being touched,” Chanyeol tries, “there are just people like that.”
He says with a subdued tone. Baekhyun seems lost to this kind of comfort, lost in his undying resolution, which repaired itself quickly enough to be deaf to any condolence.
“I can do this, I will convince him.”
“Well, good luck to you.”
Chanyeol ponders over it though, chucking Baekhyun’s socks into the laundry pail, pulling his own clothes off and lets it shrivel right on the floor like a pile of old skin. Some sliver of a thought passes him, the same half transpired thought he tossed around watching detachedly from the other bed every time Baekhyun did his sinful kneading with his hands, always smiling. How does this feel? Goo-oo-od. After they left, Baekhyun shut the door and dusted his hands off dramatically, like some feat accomplished, and Chanyeol can only laugh at how proud and how cute he looks with his hands on his waist. Give it a rest, he would say, extending an arm out, inviting, pushing his laptop aside. Wait, I’m like sweating all over, gotta shower.
The words toss around his mouth like pop rocks, but it’s like he just opens his mouth to take a breath and something falls out regardless of how hard he swallows.
“You know, Baek, you do have this problem too, like, you’re insatiable, always wanting things in numbers. You can’t get everyone to love ya, dude.”
At the time he said it, Chanyeol hadn’t realized it could come out sounding kind of whiney, and he realizes only belatedly. Baekhyun seems to come back to the world, propelling his body with his legs like a kayak till he dials himself around the bed, worms to the edge and kicks Chanyeol square in the ass when he bends down. “Oh yeah?” Chanyeol almost falls, but the single solitary thought in his head at the moment is that by some miracle all the loser undertones of what he said had gone over Baekhyun totally. “Wanna bet?”
They go to bed cuddling. Chanyeol wakes up early the next morning to the warmth of Baekhyun in his arms, reclined against the headboard. Chanyeol holds still, moving just his eyes to peek down and finds his lover awake, startlingly awake, staring ahead with his mouth thinned as if lost in some strenuous thought. The seconds tick on, Baekhyun blinks, but that cloudiness doesn’t leave his eyes.
Chanyeol counts, and then he sucks in a deep breath and stretches, waking for the second time that morning. Through his thinned eyes he can see Baekhyun jostled alert, see the exact moment his expression melts into something prettier, but nevertheless a little inexplicably uninviting. “Morning,” he says, and plants one on Chanyeol’s mouth. “Hey Yeol, how confident are you in my abilities to seduce?”
Days later Chanyeol would berate himself for watching the pink curve of Baekhyun’s lips half awake as he answered without even thinking, very.
In the end the conversation goes quick. Chanyeol isn’t entirely lucid throughout most of it. He only wakes up and realizes when Baekhyun bangs the door as he leaves.
-
The game is simple, but the stakes are high.
Who’re you planning on seducing? The members.
Why?
To prove you wrong. I’m irresistable.
Wow, you’re a heartbreaker. Fat chance, they’re all straight.
Yeah, wanna bet?
Chanyeol had, immediately after hearing this on that day, felt that he’d fallen into some kind of trap.
Are you serious? You’re not actually gonna seduce them, are you?
No, Jesus. Hear this: I promise you, I can get all ten of them to take me out on a dinner date within a month’s time.
Do we even have time to eat out that often?
A month, Chanyeol-
Going out alone?
Relax, Chanyeol, come if you want to.
Chanyeol was pretty sure Baekhyun could win this, maybe just from trading massages with dinner dates alone, but the competitive part of him sure as hell wasn’t going to let him have it easy. Besides, there’s some statement to be made, when he nets Baekhyun back after what’s been about a month or two now, having his fun screwing around to pass the time with comeback still some time away. It’d gotten a little quiet is all.
What do you get if you win?
I get to chop off your hair with my own hands.
What? The stylists are gonna kill you-
You know they’re hacking it short anyways, I just want my fun with some scissors
What the fuck. If I win?
You get to choose. Anything I can do, I’ll do it.
Chanyeol’s eyes had lit up. It was the stupidest thing he’d ever done.
-
Kris stands in the middle of the kitchen, blond bangs done up with a red rubber band into a little wheatstock, plaid apron around his waist, sleeves rolled, and looking cosmically lost within this foreign space filled with daunting instruments of unknown purposes. Chanyeol sits in the chair, feet propped on another, watching him.
The clock on the wall ticks by. The heater buzzes on in the frameworks. Kris looks down at the muffin tin on the marble counter, blinking at it like some sort of plea. He looks over to the recipe book, then back to the tray, then back to the book, and Chanyeol gets the sense that if he were to get up and read the instructions out loud for him, Kris would still be there nodding to himself and helplessly patting his pant seams.
“Uh, hey.”
Chanyeol looks up from his phone.
“Where are-where’s the flour?”
Looking utterly disinterested, Chanyeol points to a cupboard. Kris nods frantically, long legs marching the rest of him across the space. Chanyeol watches him sigh loudly as he pulls out more than he hoped for, flour, baking soda, baking powder, even the brown sugar. Kris flips around a few adjacent doors and the look on his face when he does, like he found God, tenderly holding a bottle of vanilla extract in his large hand like he’s scared he’ll crush it, makes Chanyeol want to leave.
He piles everything on the table, hands on his waist for a job well done. And then a few seconds later he starts to sweat.
“M-measuring cups? And the uh, the thing,” he motions, fist clenched around an invisible tool, which he rocks in circles. His eyes are screaming regret, which only fuels Chanyeol’s sour mood with a vindictiveness. Use your hands then, stupid fuck.
“Cups, there. If you want an egg beater, it’s right there on the rack, hyung. Electric mixers are in there. Get a spatula. Chocolate chips in there, we don’t have white ones, you have to make do. Don’t forget to sift your flour. Go change that butter to unsalted unless you want him to suffer. Why the shit did you agree to this?”
Why the shit did he agree to this? That’s the ultimate question. Chanyeol sits with his feet tucked in, mouth dry and bitter from the bottle he’d long ago finished. He knows why Kris would agree. He knows why he’d take a night off from group biking just to be here in this kitchen that’s going to swallow him alone, making triple chocolate cupcakes.
Because it was seven AM and Chanyeol wasn’t thinking very far ahead when he got into the bet. And because five dinner dates in a week was really starting to get on their manager’s nerves, and the game had to be cut down to strictly domestic dinners, and that ranged anything from royal turkey dinner to cereal.
If I win…you have to plan something to do on Valentine’s with me.
That’s it? Baekhyun had said. Chanyeol’s blood froze. It was the sharpest slap in the face he’d ever felt, and he couldn’t even say why.
It’s a bigger issue than some popularity contest. Chanyeol doesn’t know what it is, still hasn’t figured out why the whole proposal rubs him the wrong way, but it’d started to bother him how seriously Baekhyun began to take the whole deal a week ago, with half his allotted time gone. He kind of drowned in the idea of winning, like he was trying to prove something, when Chanyeol only wanted to do something fun for the holiday season. It was evident to himself though that ever since the first day, this fog wrapped around them, and his intuition told him it was hiding something he didn’t want to know.
-
To backtrack, Chanyeol realizes on the very first day that he’s in trouble.
There are two people in the dorm room, until there are three.
It’s dusk, and the members have left for their nightly jog around the neighbourhood park. Everybody left except himself, who was assigned a rap piece just earlier that day, and Yixing, who’s slept since the morning passed out from how tired he was composing all night, and when the group left Luhan felt too bad to wake him. About six thirty, Chanyeol’s in his room when he suddenly thinks he hears footsteps in the living room. He slumps on the bed propped with his elbow, listening.
The door to Yixing’s room opens and closes, and that’s what he thinks, that Yixing got up and took a stroll and went back. It’s not until the door opens again that he hears the laughter of who is undeniably Baekhyun, and the groggy chuckles of the clueless little angel whose nap was just strategically disrupted by this demon.
Chanyeol stretches his neck out his door in horror and ends up scaring both of the ones outside, wrapped in scarves and beanies. “Oh hey, Chanyeol, I’m taking Baekhyunnie to get some dinner, wanna come?”
Chanyeol stares into that angelic dimple on his sweet face and feels all of a sudden like the worst person on the planet aside from the other guy smirking under his snapback behind him.
“No, I’ll eat later with the others.” He glares past Yixing at the smug Baekhyun, swallowing his tongue because they hadn’t talked about whether either were allowed to breathe a word about this bet. I hope you feel so bad for this, he tries to say to Baekhyun with his eyes. “You guys have fun.”
They had fun. They had tons of fun. Baekhyun dragged Yixing into an amusement park and they stayed until most the rides were closed. Baekhyun took a billion selfies with Yixing under the bad lighting of some rides. One down, nine to go, Baekhyun says coming back into their room that night with the frost still radiating off of him. He pumps his fist with a smirk. “You have no morals, Byun Baekhyun.” Chanyeol cringes, half smiling and crying at all the pictures of Baekhyun stuffing cotton candy into Yixing’s mouth.
“No good men in gambles, Parkchan.” He throws himself onto Chanyeol’s bed, falling like a snow angel, his puffy jacket and everything still on. Chanyeol shoves him over and climbs under the blanket. He grabs the half cup of hot chocolate on the nightstand and hands it over to Baekhyun.
“It’s on, I hope you know that. I’m not letting you get away this easy from now on.”
The game begins on January 11th. On the 11th Yixing is taken off the list. On the night of the 11th Baekhyun comes back from the shower humming, wrapped in nothing but a towel. In the golden halo of the desk lamp he lies himself down beside Chanyeol, who’s curled under his blanket.
“You know what I’m going to do with your hair?” he murmurs suddenly, arms crossed behind his head. Chanyeol looks over. “You know, Chanyeol, I’ve seen where the noonas keep their curling irons. One of them had a whole box of scissors. Do you know what I’m capable of, Chanyeol?” and he goes on, whispering all the horrendous things he would do with his hair, until Chanyeol shoots up and tickles his bare sides, smothers him with his comforter until Baekhyun’s down to a gurgling mess. Chanyeol watches him with tossed hair, falls a little bit more in love with the mischievous glint on his iris, feels momentarily swallowed by the immensity of his feelings for this incredible boy, half a year older and millions of years wiser. Winter of 2012 is bitter, winter this year is a stalemate next to last year’s, when everybody couldn’t be busier preparing to face the world for the first time as idols, and Joonmyun cried watching his teaser for the first time. On January 11th Chanyeol looks at Baekhyun and knows that they’re all going to make it through okay, that there’s going to be excitement, no matter how early the sun is going to set.
-
Chanyeol makes the next move by securing his long term busing friend Kyungsoo onto his side. “Listen, Kyungsoo, Baekhyun’s going to ask you to go out with him one night in the next few weeks, and I’m-I kind of need you to turn him down. It’s nothing shady, he’s just going to get you to buy him food, but I need you to. If you can. Please.”
Ok, Kyungsoo says, looking like he half wants to ask and half just doesn’t care what the two of them are up to anymore, but either way Chanyeol knows Kyungsoo’s trustworthy, and that as long as he is here preventing Baekhyun from total victory, Chanyeol’s butt is saved. He buys him coffee as a token of appreciation.
-
Originally, Joonmyun wasn’t a target till later, but Baekhyun manages to get to Jongdae with the whole Beagles Bros thing. He pulls him aside a few days after the first victory, says something like “it’s been a year, it’s the holidays, we got in together, let’s go celebrate”, and at that time Joonmyun’s just coming out of the washroom and hears them. Unexpectedly, he gets fiercely emotional over the idea and declares that they are all in need of some warming celebration. “It’s a shame everyone else is gone. Let’s go out and eat somewhere, have a good chat, I’ll treat you guys, how about it?”
Chanyeol checks his phone on his way back from the gym, and Baekhyun tells him all this excitedly over text. He shoots back a “tell them I’m coming” before jumping into the shower. Half an hour later he shows up at the restaurant, and the table’s filled. Baekhyun passes him some chopsticks and fills a cup for him from the bottles they’ve got on the table. “Cheers, everybody.” When he bumps glasses with Chanyeol, he smiles almost unnoticeably wider, and the little motion makes Chanyeol’s heart pump fast. He watches Baekhyun while they eat, his pink tinted cheek comfortably rested on Joonmyun’s shoulder while he barks back and forth with Jongdae about dog breeds. He blows into his hands, rubs them, sits on them, shrinks them back into his sweater sleeve. You want my gloves? Chanyeol offered. “You had gloves?”
They sweep the table, and Chanyeol’s so caught up in the festivity that he almost forgets why he’s here when the bill’s passed over. “Joonmyun hyung, you’re always paying for us, we shouldn’t burden you this time.”
“Ah ya, seriously, don’t worry about it, I’m just glad you guys are happy.” Joonmyun grins so merrily his eyes thin into lines, and for a moment Chanyeol thinks he’s just so ridiculously adorable he doesn’t even have the heart to reject his good will. Jongdae drags out a “thank youuu”, and Chanyeol doesn’t catch Baekhyun leering across him.
“Chanyeol, you can pay for yourself if you want.”
Baekhyun looks like a little rascal, infuriatingly cute rascal, beanie tilted and eyes gleaming. Chanyeol kicks him under the table, and Baekhyun returns it. Joonmyun pulls bill after bill from his wallet, muttering math under his breath, and unbeknownst to them, Jongdae’s watching the little exchange with curiosity.
After dinner, they leisurely walk back to their dorms. Baekhyun’s got an arm looped in Joonmyun’s, walking ahead of the other two. Jongdae sneaks up beside Chanyeol at some point, and when Chanyeol looks over, he registers that Jongdae looks like he wants to say something.
“Hey, is...everything okay between you and Baekhyun?” He asks under his breath, peeking up at Chanyeol from the corner of his eye. Jongdae’s notorious for being the good guy to everybody, always there when he senses someone has troubles. Chanyeol was never close to him especially, Baekhyun always being the center of the beagles, but he knows Jongdae’s genuinity from habit of being concerned, so he feels okay telling him.
“Nah, don’t worry, man, we’re cool. To be honest, we’re in the middle of a bet right now. You and Joonmyun hyung unknowingly helped him win one over me, so.”
Jongdae’s eyes widen. “Whats the bet about?” Chanyeol explains the details to him, and when he looks over, Jongdae’s just staring at him like it doesn’t make sense. “...Why?”
Chanyeol shrugs. “We’re just messing around. At least I think we are, but I dunno.” He pauses a minute, chews on his lip. “Sometimes it feels like Baek takes it super seriously. Like he’s trying to prove something.”
Jongdae looks on in silence for a while. They keep walking, down on an angle now. Baekhyun takes off his beanie, smoothes his gloved hands over his hair, trying to get rid of the static and making it worse. He crowns the hat back on.
“I don’t know why he wants everyone to like him. Like, I’m sure they do, and they will, he’s just a beam of light, but...”
“You sound kind of put off by this,” Jongdae nudges him.
Chanyeol purses his lips, wetting them. “Yeah, a little. It feels like he forgets I exist sometimes.”
“Well, I can see why, considering you’re…”
“Yeah,” Chanyeol chuckles once, scratching the back of his neck. “Yeah.”
Thanks man, he gives Jongdae a firm pat on the shoulder.
-
Zitao takes him out to eat ddukbokki, and Baekhyun’s upping his game by not telling Chanyeol what kind of bribe or sweet talk he’s using. It starts to worry Chanyeol, how Baekhyun’s actually starting to treat him like the opponent, keeping his strategies secret. It cuts down on a good portion of their daily communication, not only because of this, but also because Baekhyun’s out visiting other rooms a lot more than before, practically camping there. Chanyeol hadn’t realized, hadn’t deduced thanks to how inept he is at future planning, how much this bet would drive Baekhyun into socialising with other people, and honestly speaking it was the opposite effect of what Chanyeol wanted to achieve. When Baekhyun sends him a selfie with Zitao at a picnic table and another of Zitao standing on the bank of some river, Chanyeol is not in a good mood.
His mood worsens when later that night, with a bunch of them huddled in the living room, their manager herds the two wandering kids back into the dorm like puppies on a leash. “I know it’s the holidays, but ease up on the public appearances, okay? Don’t draw too much attention. If you want food, you can always order it.”
Everyone in the room at the time pretty much heard, and Chanyeol feels bad for getting everyone unofficially grounded for the next while. Baekhyun shrugs, and Zitao sucks on his bubble tea like it’s nothing. Baekhyun steps around the people on the floor to the couch, where the maknaes are battling each other in something on their phones. “What’d you do?” Jongin mumbles, eyes on the screen. Baekhyun makes some sort of dismissive noise, and Sehun pipes in almost inaudibly. “He’s in this bet with Chanyeol.”
This gets the attention of two people in the room, Chanyeol, who’s heard his name, and Luhan, sitting across the table inattentively scrolling on his phone, shrunk so much into the cushion his chin folds against his chest. “What bet?” he says, sliding upright. “Wait,” Sehun knits his brows, watching the screen intently. Jongin laughs once, and Sehun lets out a “damn”, setting the phone on his lap.
“What bet?”
“Oh, something about Baekhyun being cheap and leaching food off everybody.”
Baekhyun’s head snaps over to Chanyeol, who’s about to stick out his tongue when he notices that Baekhyun looks genuinely kind of offended. He turns away almost immediately, and Chanyeol’s left half winded, taken off guard by the degree of coldness. “Is that what he told you?” Baekhyun asks Sehun, turned away, and then a hint of a grin creeps back, “Yeah, did he ever tell you that if you helped me win, I get to screw with his hair?”
Everything gets quiet. Yixing looks up from the letters he’s reading, Jongin’s jaw drops open. Chanyeol can pinpoint this one exact moment of death when Sehun’s eyes light up, and it seems then that the whole room is simultaneously watching himself, awestruck.
“What do I have to do?” Sehun turns to Baekhyun, this sick tone of excitement in his voice, and Chanyeol feels absolutely black on the inside. His eyes are shouting betrayal.
“I don’t know,” Baekhyun shrugs, all nonchalant, looking over now, “since we can’t go out now, how about we...make dinner? How’s that? Cook something for me, maknae.”
Chanyeol doesn’t object. He’s glaring right at Sehun, who realizes after a moment that the eyes are on him. They meet gazes, and Sehun manages a pokerface while Chanyeol is positively radiating fury. “You’re dead to me, Oh Sehun.”
“Sorry man, that shaggy mop. It just has to go. We should dye it green.”
Chanyeol rolls his eyes, trying to play it off, reminding himself that he still has Kyungsoo’s good word when his other friends aren’t worth a damn when it comes down to it. Sensing the tension, Luhan gets up and stretches. “This sounds fun, count me in.” He picks up his empty cup and heads for the kitchen. “Ok, I’m taking bribes now.”
That night, under his blanket, Chanyeol can’t stop chewing over what had happened, how Sehun could do it just for something so ridiculous. It’s the first real betrayal he’d felt up to then-Chanyeol has known Jongin and Sehun since middle school, and they grew up a good part of their childhood together. Baekhyun had always gotten along with them in a different way, some sort of mutual reliance he’d built between them. When the kids needed support they went to him, but they only trusted him so wholly because at times Baekhyun himself leaned onto the younger ones for comfort. There were moments when he revealed his own softness, his vulnerability, and this quality is something Chanyeol doesn’t have himself. He doesn't know how to be this sensitive, he doesn’t know how not to feel afraid about sharing himself like this, and a tough brotherly support on the outside, a few pats, a few games for distraction, that’s all he knows how to offer. This is something he understands for certain. He’d thought about it for years. This is Baekhyun’s magic, his mix of sensitivity and fortitude. This what he's come to depend on, and now this is exactly what’s drawn everyone around him away.
Briefly, before lights out that night, Chanyeol wants to ask Baekhyun from the other bed what this game is even about anymore, but he doesn’t get the courage. He hasn’t said a word in hours, neither of them have, and he goes to sleep with the inside of his mouth tasting sour.
-
The third week comes, and then everything sort of falls apart.
Luhan’s still holding out, trying to pull in bribes, and so they’ve both pushed him aside for a while. Kyungsoo keeps his word. There are two members who aren’t in on the details of the game, not deliberately, one Kris and the other Minseok, both missing on the night everything was explained. After their evening cycling rounds one night, Chanyeol asks to talk with him alone, and they sit on the bleachers of a basketball court, cups of coffee in their hands.
Chanyeol tells him the story, trying to gauge his response, but Minseok shows no signs in his expressions. “Hyung, I know Baekhyun’s probably going to come to you, but I think-he’s going to get the idea that he’s not dislikable. And it’s such a waste of time because-”
He’s stuck mid sentence all of a sudden, and then as if it’d just dissolved, Chanyeol forgets what it is. He knows from somewhere deep down that he’d almost caught the tail of it, of what’s bothered him so long, and Minseok waits, but he has simply forgotten. Then he just kind of looks on, scratching his ear, brows knit like a child trying to work out a math equation. “Hyung, if you’ve seen him, he’s-trying so hard, and I don’t understand why. It makes no sense to me.”
Minseok nods. He doesn’t say anything else to him, and they go home, and that’s the extent to which Chanyeol knows about anything involving him. He’s convinced he’d won him over.
That night, Minseok lay on his back, hands behind his head, with Luhan sprawled at the foot of his bed reading a magazine upside down. “What do you think?”
Luhan looks over, finds Minseok’s eyes on him and sits up. He wet his lips. “There’s only one reason someone like him would feel the need to go this far.”
“What’s that?”
“Lack of validation, maybe. Some’n’ like that.”
Minseok smiles at him, warm and amused, and a moment later Luhan smiles back.
The day he finally rolls up his sleeves and cooks, Chanyeol arrives first, crashing into the kitchen as soon as he’d heard the water running, and when he sees him there with his sweater sleeves rolled up Chanyeol feels so abandoned a pang of tears almost shoot into his eyes. “Hyung, why-”
“Chanyeol-ah, sit down, sit.”
He sits, trying to gather himself up. Minseok runs the tap to wash the spinach leaves. “Why?” Chanyeol asks again, whole body slumped against the chair. Minseok says something quiet, drowned out entirely by the water, and Chanyeol sits up. “What?” That’s when Baekhyun walks in. His eyes are sparkling when he sits down across from Chanyeol. Neither of them look at each other. When Minseok’s done making bibimbap, he gets Luhan to gather up the herd, and while everybody eats and chats, Chanyeol draws more and more into himself.
-
Back in their room that night, Chanyeol’s going over his rap with the headphones in when Baekhyun comes back. In his peripheral vision, in the chair facing the desk pushed against the back wall, Chanyeol sees him absentmindedly rub his stomach, rucking up the edge of his shirt. Chanyeol pretends he’s not aware, head down in his music, copying words into his notebook.
After fifteen minutes, Baekhyun calls across the room. “Hey Chanyeol, what was our meeting today about? I missed the first half of it.”
He contemplates pretending not to hear him, but in reality the music in his headphones is very quiet. “Chanyeol.” Chanyeol scribbles again in his notebook, lips pressed tightly together, and he sees the blur to his side a few moments before Baekhyun tugs out one of his earbuds from behind, and Chanyeol swivels around with a rage he’s desperately trying to contain in his shaking hands.
He holds them by his head, eyes closed in strain, and Baekhyun immediately takes a step back. “Whoa, calm down.”
Chanyeol doesn’t open his eyes, but he drops his hands, clenches them into fists. Baekhyun watches him trying to control his breathing, and his shoulders sink a little, face pulled serious. “Alright, I know we both feel something’s going on between us. We gotta talk our problems out.”
Chanyeol’s eyes snap open, and he looks disturbed. “Our problems? What could you possibly have problems with right now? Everything is working out like you said it would, isn’t it?”
“Can we please not-”
“What the fuck is the point of this little game? Huh?”
“You know what, Chanyeol,” Baekhyun stops. He holds out a hand, like some sort of cutoff, a cork right before the bottle blows. His face is pale. “You might not think so, but being likeable is a fucking talent. SM chose me. I’m here because they know I can do this. Don’t swear at me. I don’t want to fight with you.”
That night Baekhyun leaves. Chanyeol does too, he can’t bear being alone in there with his shame tumbling against the walls. He takes a chance, pushing open Sehun’s door, and is glad he’s taken in by Joonmyun with a sigh. The next morning he returns to find Baekhyun walking out of Kris’ door, huge bright smile on his face like nothing is the matter, and it slaughters him just like that in the shadow of the threshold.
Baekhyun flips like a switch. Chanyeol sees him sticking to the sides of Kris, at home, on stage, backstage, traveling at airports. He’d dug his own grave. To Chanyeol, the game is already over, and he’d lost so much more than what he bargained for.
-
Kris is the third last one. After him is Luhan and Kyungsoo, but it would only be a matter of time anyway. It’s a week to Valentines, and it’s enough.
Kris flounders around the kitchen, until Chanyeol can’t bear to watch it anymore, and helps Kris make dinner for all twelve of them. When they eat, he catches Baekhyun whispering “it’s good” to Kris, but he doesn’t know if he means it. Miraculously, though, that night Baekhyun moves all his stuff back into their room without any explanation, but Chanyeol’s heart still wavers wondering if Baekhyun had tasted his own hand within the dishes. They sleep one more night, practice one more day. On February 10th, one day before the bet ends, Chanyeol gives in.
-
“I made dinner”, he sends to Baekhyun. Two hours later, Baekhyun shows up.
It’s about 11:00 when he arrives back, carrying the messenger bag he brings to the studio on most days. “Grab some chopsticks,” Chanyeol ushers, reheating everything for him in the microwave. Baekhyun moves to get changed, but Chanyeol stops him. “Take a walk with me later, please.”
It’s almost midnight when they finish dinner. Chanyeol gears up for the outdoors. He offers his gloves to Baekhyun again, and after a while Baekhyun takes them. Outside, Baekhyun keeps his hood up and hands in his pockets, and Chanyeol peeking at him from the side can only see the tip of his nose pushed out past the wall of his hood. He doesn’t speak a word. Chanyeol wants to talk, but he doesn’t know where to start. The two of them wander towards the Han river, the general direction of it, and the night breeze blows against them from the waterfront. Along the path there are only silhouettes of people, walking before them, by them. Street lamps line the railings, lighting the tiled path ahead step by step. They stroll towards the bright lights in the distance, the only sense of direction either of them in the moment want to follow, until the flow of time seems absent from the way they seem to walk on forever. Out of nowhere comes again the sound of rushing traffic. At the foot of a bridge, Chanyeol stops walking.
“Baekhyun.” Baekhyun spins around, watching him, “I give in. You win.”
“I win,” Baekhyun echoes.
Chanyeol doesn’t know what should happen next, he hasn’t thought this far. The only thing he’d thought when he asked him here is that they had to fix things, and how he didn’t know, he just knew he had to. Baekhyun waits for him, until suddenly the racing of traffic slows behind them, and they both turn to see the bridge has emptied, if only for a few moments. Before he responds, Baekhyun is running right across the width, not stopping until he’s on the other side. “Baekhyun-”
Chanyeols’ throat constricts, head whipping left and right checking for cars, heart hammering. “God damn it you’re gonna get killed!”
“Come on, let’s walk.”
Along the pedestrian path of the other side, Baekhyun starts to walk up the bridge without looking over. Chanyeol can’t take his eyes off him in fear, whole body tensing up again when traffic resumes. Baekhyun takes step by step up the bridge, fighting the wind. Chanyeol almost falls, paying no attention to his own clumsy feet. When they’re near the top of the bridge, the walkway broadens into a paved path, bulging into an observatory on each side. There are thin benches here, and Chanyeol wants to catch his breath. Baekhyun stops walking. From across the motion blur of lights he sees him turn towards the river, stepping forward until he’s bathed in lamplight. Against the black water and black sky, Baekhyun is ethereal, a hologram crackling, some transient ghost painted by the brushstrokes of light streaking across his vision. Chanyeol opens his mouth and his voice croaks when he screams.
“Baekhyun!”
He waits, but the rumble of the bridge had swallowed his call. Frantically, he shouts again, with as much power as he can find within his core, “Baekhyun!”
Baekhyun’s head jerks, and he turns abruptly, locking eyes with Chanyeol, whose chest heaves in staccatos, coughing out clouds of breath like he can’t breathe. He walks to the edge of the road, hands still in his pockets, waiting.
“Baekhyun, I’m sorry!”
“Baekhyun, I-”
“What?”
Chanyeol draws back his voice, already sore, and it sounds wrecked ripping out his throat so crassly like this. Baekhyun’s waiting for the rest of his message, and Chanyeol falls into panic, suddenly patting all over himself for his cell phone. With shaky hands he dials Baekhyun and holds the phone to his ears, waiting for the ringing to end.
“Hello?”
“Baekhyun, please-please just answer me this one thing, okay? Okay?” He shouts into the phone. In Baekhyun’s silence, the roar of traffic echoes a second time from the receiver by his ear, and Chanyeol’s heart itches within him. He’s watching Baekhyun. He doesn’t know how he looks to him, whether it’s as desperate as he sounds inside his head.
“What is it?”
“Look, I-You’re good with people, okay! Baekhyun, I always knew that. I didn’t think-Jesus-I didn’t think you have to prove it. Okay? You can act cute, and you can make them laugh, and you can pull favors quick, I know all this. But what is? Why? What’s the point?”
“I just-I like having friends,” Baekhyun shouts back.
“Do you? Or do you like making friends? Getting their approval? That’s not like you, Baekhyun!”
At this speed and this distance, Chanyeol can’t see anything past the blur of Baekhyun’s facial features. He’s praying in his head when Baekhyun speaks again-
“So what?” Chanyeol freezes. “So what if it makes me feel good about myself? It’s nice when you matter to people, Park Chanyeol. Is that a crime?”
Chanyeol’s breathing heavily, and Baekhyun can probably hear it on his end. There’s a great pause, and Chanyeol thinks Baekhyun’s going to hang up, so he shouts the first thing on his mind: “Then what about me?”
“What?”
“What makes me feel good about myself?”
Chanyeol walks to the edge of the road, and the toes of his converse almost push past the ledge. He thinks that he sees, standing right across from him, Baekhyun’s eyes are wide.
“Baekhyun, knowing that I, I was enough for someone like you, is the greatest compliment I could ever have gotten.”
“Am I still enough for you, Baekhyun? I’m not smart like you are. All I know how to do is love people, love animals, and smile for people who need them, and laugh at myself for people who need it.” He sucks in a deep breath, “I can’t hide my feelings well, but I can, I can play guitar, and rap a little, and I can cheer you up, and I’m sorry that’s all I can offer!
“You deserve a hell lot better, but I’m selfish and I’m really sorry-
“You don’t need everybody to like you. I like you. I hope it’s enough!”
“My God, stop yelling, please!”
Chanyeol watches Baekhyun run a gloved hand down his face. The cars flash past, lights blink, and for a millisecond there’s a square of glimmer on Baekhyun’s cheek. He ducks out of the light and then it’s gone again. Baekhyun’s look at his feet, and he lowers the phone and holds it against his jacket, turning away from Chanyeol. His knees bent, and Chanyeol think he’s going to fall, but he doesn’t. He runs his hand over his face, over his hair, again and again. Then he brings the phone back up to his ear, and quieter this time says, “Come on, let’s get out of here, can we just get out of here-”
“Okay.”
“Wait for me on the other side, okay? Wait, okay, Chanyeol?”
“Okay, I will.”
Chanyeol watches Baekhyun go, downhill this time, with the wind this time. His legs can’t keep up that it looks like he’s skipping, almost tripping. Chanyeol tries to follow, but for some reason he can’t, not when he bucks his knees and runs, he can’t. The two of them fly by with the cars, and just for a moment while they ran they’d become the traffic, they’d become the lights. When he gets down to the bottom, Baekhyun is already there. “Took you a while,” Baekhyun says when he nears, but when Chanyeol blinks the wind away he sees Baekhyun looking off to the side with his eyes lowered and skin flushed and wonders, with casual apologies stuck in his mouth, what it is he’s referring to.
Under the light, Baekhyun’s face looks tender. Chanyeol touches it with his frozen fingers, and he can’t feel, but he knows he’s right. The chorus of the night still rings in his ears.
“Let’s go,” Baekhyun says, and this time his arms are hanging by his sides.
Chanyeol takes his gloved hand. It’s wet all over.
End.