[fic] How to Get Rich Quick (3/5 part two)
Author: ofolivesnginger
Fandom: EXO
Pairing: Chanyeol/Baekhyun
Rating: PG13
Words: 8415
Warnings: Adopted brothers.
Summary: Baekhyun hadn't expected Chanyeol to be so good at being famous.
A/N: Oops long break. And also too long for one post. Enjoy!
Part Three of the How to Get Rich Quick series.
Part I | Part II
Prev
Chanyeol wakes at 4 to the shower running. When Baekhyun comes out, steam running off his body even though he’s dressed, Chanyeol is sitting on the bed, looking ahead. He’s got his shoes on and ready to go when Baekhyun sees him. While Chanyeol brushes up, Baekhyun checks his phone, learning that he has 7 voicemails without listening to any of them.
They go to the beach to catch the sunrise. There are a few people scattered here and there on the expanse, mostly couples minding their own business. Baekhyun stands on the edge of the sand, hands in the pockets of the dress pants he’d worn yesterday, watching Chanyeol run onto the beach with his dress shoes in hand and feet bare, pants rolled up to his knees. It reminds him of two things at once, the memories a few years apart. With his eyes open, Chanyeol’s dark silhouette against the vermillion backdrop, he sees the scene in the movie where Chanyeol runs after Krystal in her wedding dress. With his eyes closed, he sees through the camera’s lens, sees the first time they’d attempted a homemade MV. The band is all there, and there’s the drum set they spent two hours carrying onto the sand and Chanyeol behind it, waving his drumsticks like he’s possessed, trying to conduct a symphony with the tidal waves.
Nature heals, it really does. Against the hollow expanse of the ocean Baekhyun feels his universe has shrunken impossibly small, boxing around this strip of the beach, around the two of them. In this place where nothing belongs to nobody and nobody belongs to anything, he can finally see himself detached from all else around him. The monotonous buzz of society has been filtered, the intrinsic yearning of belonging erased, until all Baekhyun is left with is his thumping heartbeat, and Chanyeol in the little camera frame of his eyes. There’s a healing process happening inevitably, all so effortless, just as he stands here. Against his resistance, it’s piecing things back together, and Baekhyun is helpless to stop it.
Back at the house that night, Baekhyun checks all his voicemails, two from Yixing about things he’d considered monumental enough to let through the front desk filter and pass on to the manager. While dealing with some small problems, Baekhyun mentions along the call back for Yixing to decline all requests after July 8th, the last day of their planned schedules, because our superstar is going on official vacation. In his inbox there’s an invitation for Chanyeol to film a CF for an energy drink, asking for a meeting on the 10th, and Baekhyun is itching to accept at the speed of light but he stops himself ultimately, staying true to his promise.
While reaffirming their schedule, Baekhyun becomes aware that, when Chanyeol had asked him to stay till at least the start to July to decide if he wants to stay longer, he hadn’t pulled the date out of his ass. They have just crossed into July, and too conveniently Kris’ list of things is set to end in two days. Baekhyun thinks Chanyeol might have planned this all along, giving himself a warm up period ending right where his technical responsibilities end, like there’s going to be some drastic transition immediately after, but Baekhyun will have a chance to back out of whatever he’s going to suggest. Baekhyun is apprehensive, though he thinks it’s a little late to make the decision to leave. He’s simultaneously hoping and fearing the end of their schedules, holding his breath every moment, knowing that sooner or later Chanyeol is going to drop the bomb on him.
One other thing that makes it kind of impossible to leave is the three emails he finds from Kris, who apparently doesn’t understand how to take a real vacation, always worried Chanyeol might chop off a finger cooking or something like that. The first two are filled with updates and general concerns, comments on the bits of Chanyeol’s activity he’s gotten wind of over there in Canada. The third one, though, he’s back to his straightforward self again: A friend wants me to go back to China for a bit with him, and he sort of forced me to say yes. I’ll be in Beijing for about two weeks until August, so...I might need an extension to my vacation. :)) -K
No. Baekhyun types, and then clicks send. The fucker has the audacity to send a smiley as some frivolous afterthought. A friend. Not an old friend, not a good friend, just a friend. This coming from someone who hasn’t succumbed to any kind of dragging for years, from Chanyeol and others trying to save him from his degree. It’s not even hard to tell Kris met someone (and thank fuck he still feels) and has become enamored with this mystery kid. Even Baekhyun doesn’t have the heart to tear him away from this.
He looks at the reply: No. And then right under it: Sent from my ipad, that annoying auto sig which just about reduces the whole thing to a joke. He knows Kris is gonna come back and ask for it again, and hell yeah Baekhyun plans on making him work for his charity.
He’s gonna have to take another month off, by the looks of things, till the end of August. It’s not really a pay issue anyway, just that it’s hard to find people willing to fill in Baekhyun’s time slots, people good enough. He’ll have to pay Sehun more, too, to keep watering his plants. He starts an email to his boss back home, halfway through when Chanyeol walks in. Baekhyun looks up to see him looking for a book on the shelf, pulling things out and putting them back in. He turns and catches Baekhyun looking, then goes back to searching. “Hey, have you seen an old atlas in here? I think it’s falling apart, I know the cover’s taped.”
“Didn’t we move our old books into storage? Like years ago? Might be in the shelf in the downstairs washroom, actually.”
“Oh yeah, I’ll go check later, thanks,” he mumbles, crouched down to the bottom layer.
“Why d’you need an atlas? Just google whatever.”
“No, I wrote some things down.”
Baekhyun shrugs. Chanyeol starts putting everything back. “Kris found himself a sweetheart in Canada and he’s dragging him to Beijing.”
Baekhyun doesn’t bother looking up, but the clattering has stopped. “Oh my god.”
“I’m giving him the rest of July off, think that’s enough time for him to get laid?”
Baekhyun looks up. Chanyeol’s eyes go from wide to wider, and then slims when something clicks.
“Does this mean you’ll-”
“It doesn’t look like you’ll be doing much that requires managing this month, anyway.”
Chanyeol’s mouth purses a little, and he looks away like he’s ashamed. Baekhyun’s measuring his reactions. He leans back then, and crosses his arms.
“I’ll stay, though. I’ll stay for August, too.”
It’s more than Chanyeol asked for. His face shows it. “Thank you,” he says quietly, smile wide and full now. He looks so genuinely grateful before he leaves, and Baekhyun doesn’t understand why, but he wishes Chanyeol would stop thanking him like he’s doing him a favor.
The next day Chanyeol drags him out shopping. It’s ridiculous how fast his mood swings, how he can go from wanting to get away from every living thing to stepping right into the heart of it, even threatening to drive when Baekhyun didn’t budge. Apparently Baekhyun needs more clothes, if he’s gonna stay for another month. The bad thing about it is that it made sense.
On the drive downtown, Baekhyun spots a Starbucks and a lightbulb goes off. He quickly pulls over onto the side of the road, tossing his own pair of shades to Chanyeol. “Wait here,” he says, before he’s climbing out, leaving Chanyeol all by himself in the most populated part of the city, right on the side of the street where everybody passing by can see him.
“Merciless,” he whispers, shaking his head and slipping on the glasses, pretending to be occupied with his phone with his head down.
Baekhyun comes back with two drinks, one red and one yellow, both ice tea lemonades, and he puts the red one in the cup holder where his sunglasses had been. Chanyeol accepts his own and sticks the straw in his mouth. He doesn’t pay attention to how Baekhyun hasn’t touched his own drink once until he hears him ask, “Where’s the red today?”
It takes him a moment. “We’re still playing that game?” He grins, looking over at Baekhyun. “Just give me your drink later.”
Baekhyun laughs, shaking his head, “that’s trying too hard. Seriously, it’s pretty much your responsibility now to wear red. Even your photoshoots...” he drifts off, peering in the rearview, signaling a left turn.
“Why does it have to be red? I don’t even really like red. I’m gonna change my mascot color to, like,” he looks down, “blue,” gesturing at his jeans. Beside him, Baekhyun snickers.
“Yeah, watch me paint your nails red next time.”
Baekhyun as the ‘manager with Starbucks drinks’ wasn’t a part of the game, but since he’s noticed it, he wants to keep it up. To be honest, now that he’s known for a bunch of other things, Chanyeol doesn’t really need to keep wearing red anymore. Usually he does, still, and he doesn’t know if Kris is making him keep it up, but Chanyeol looks like he enjoys teasing the public with every new red accessory he latches onto himself. Baekhyun once found on online store with all the red things Chanyeol’s ever worn ever since people started noticing. Last April 1st, Chanyeol wandered onto the street decked out head to toe in neon green, and he made it to the headlines of a bunch of daily entertainment papers.
It’s a nice color to be associated with, though. Park Chanyeol, red like passion, red like fire. Baekhyun thinks he looks nice in it.
As soon as they get to the shopping district, Baekhyun drags Chanyeol into H&M, walking him out ten minutes later with the front of his t-shirt tucked into his jeans, and a bright red belt slapped across his hips. There are cameras, a few meters away, following them around the whole day, tailing them as they walk back to their car at the end. They’re so close when amidst the people calling out for Chanyeol someone calls out Baekhyun, and Baekhyun’s caught off guard enough to actually look over and have a white light flash right in his face. Before he knows it, Chanyeol’s clutching his wrist and pulling him down the sidewalk, disappearing into the car the moment they get to it.
Baekhyun’s silent, head still hurting from the flash as he drives them away, the skin where Chanyeol gripped him stinging.
As soon as they’re out the double doors, the two of them beeline for the limo on idle, waiting in the middle of the empty lot. “Fuck, quick, get in,” Baekhyun hisses past giggles, shoving at Chanyeol’s back, which was already feeling wet from the rain pounding on the two of them. Chanyeol rips the door open and slips on the ledge, banging his knee, falling face first, getting shoved by Baekhyun, and in the next few seconds the two of them generally scramble in one after the other and slam the door shut.
Chanyeol’s curled on the floor of the vehicle where he slipped on something a minute ago, panting. “It’s nice to be able to breathe,” he says, wheezing on his side. Baekhyun shakes his head down at him derisively, smiling through the ridicule a little, flopping down onto the sofa. Chanyeol picks himself up too, and settles in across him.
They’d just escaped a party. It’s three in the morning, and Baekhyun’d called for Zitao to come pick them up because he felt sick to the core for about fifteen minutes after some drink he had. He’s pretty sure it’s the blue one the producer with the goatee ordered for him, because he and Chanyeol had twin drinks the entire night save for that one and Chanyeol was okay.
He was okay for the most part. A little on the wrong side of drunk to really notice what’s going on, until Baekhyun told him his stomach was aching. Chanyeol looked so horrified it’s like he just watched his house burn down. He clutched Baekhyun like a little baby lost in a market, chanting a litany of apa, apa? Does it hurt? Please don’t cry! Baekhyun ended up actually squeezing out a few tears from laughing so hard, Chanyeol just looked so serious and confused. “What’s so funny? Are you okay?” Apa? Apayo?
While he toppled over, though, the cramped muscle in his stomach snapped the right way and left him fine again. He never let on to the fact that it fixed itself because he was dying for an excuse to get out anyway.
Across from him, Chanyeol’s whole body is splayed like a starfish, head lolled back and arms around the backrest, breathing like he just escaped a tsunami. Baekhyun gets the urge to laugh, so he does, very loudly in the distilled silence of the hour.
“God, you’re so fucking embarrassing.”
“Shut up,” Chanyeol swats at him, or at least tries with his tree branch limbs. He kicks at Baekhyun wildly like a kid throwing a tantrum when his arms don’t reach, and Baekhyun fights back, trying to catch his shin in his ankles.
“Kris must have a pit of a stomach for liquor, I can’t believe you haven’t career suicided by now.”
“God, shut up,” he groans, smacking his own puffed cheeks, trying to roll over in the seat and hide from the neon lights coming from just about everywhere.
Despite what people might guess, Chanyeol was usually a philosophical drunk, ridiculously quiet and reserved until you prompt it out of him. Once you do, his brain to mouth short circuits-back in college kids used to sit around him in a circle and listen to him tell stories. He’d start something sounding like one of Aesop’s fables, but always end it with no discernible moral of the story, leaving everyone with a bunch of animals that don’t know what to do with each other. “Everyone’s piss drunk, they’ll make up their own meanings.”
What Baekhyun realizes, belatedly, is that when Chanyeol’s drunk at home or drunk alone, he’s quiet in a whole different way, quiet in the way that makes you want to hear what he’s thinking. And then when you ask, he’ll end up telling you too much, all these things you didn’t want to know, and suddenly you’re wishing he could stop. He’s so scary, he’ll tell you everything he’s thinking, filter gone, and the honesty spilled during these rare moments is crippling.
Baekhyun’s watching him chug water right now, suddenly realizing for the third time that night in the way people just remember then forget, that it’s their last day with a schedule and Chanyeol hasn’t said anything about anything. There’s been a warmness in his stomach ever since the knot undid, and it spreads through him now, buzzing under his skin. Chanyeol doesn’t seem nearly as aware of the situation as he does, rubbing his temples, doing breathing exercises and trying to stay awake while Baekhyun’s wiping the sweat in his palms on his pants.
“I’m sick of parties,” Chanyeol slurs, quiet. Zitao has started driving, and the limo circles a roundabout, bouncing over speed bumps. Chanyeol’s slack shoulders roll with the momentum.
“This is our last one,” Baekhyun gently reminds him. Chanyeol doesn’t move for a few breaths, doesn’t blink. Then he lifts his head, and their eyes meet, and Baekhyun’s trying hard not to recoil. There’s a single rectangle of light above, incandescent and warm, and it washes over his features and mirrors right on his irises. Baekhyun’s trying to hold still and peer back at him with the same intensity in his own glance, but he knows Chanyeol’s not receiving it. He’s not even lucid, doesn’t even know how he looks right now, how he’s looking at him.
“What I said, on Strong Heart,” Chanyeol swallows, eyes glued to Baekhyun the way he can only afford to do when he’s like this. Baekhyun’s trying to think about all the things he said on Strong Heart, all the things he could be waiting to talk about. “I really did go see my parents.”
Baekhyun nods. “I know. I talked to mom.” He pauses. “How was the trip?”
Chanyeol shakes his head. He closes his eyes, and slowly presses a shaky hand over his mouth. In a trembling voice he says, “I’ve got siblings.” A single tear rolls out of the corner of his eye. “I have real brothers.”
Baekhyun feels the urge to tear up for a fraction of a second, but it’s gone as quick as it came--what echoes behind is an anomalous calmness, a detached sort of feeling, like seeing the scene from third person. It’s the state you reach when you’re falling down so far, with the wind pushing against your back so long that it starts to feel solid behind you. Baekhyun knows rationally that they can’t have two people breaking down in one conversation they both need to get out of the way. Analysis comes after the data collection. You can’t write and analyze at the same time, nothing gets done, his teacher once said.
Baekhyun shifts his feet, leans closer, and he cups his face the way Chanyeol does. There’s no fear in his voice. “Did you meet them?”
“No.”
Baekhyun nods, waiting.
“There were-” Chanyeol chokes. All of a sudden he can’t speak, breath taken right out of him, and Baekhyun on instinct reaches across and squeezes his knee and doesn’t let go. “There was this boy, and you can hear him shouting upstairs, and he sounded so young like a little kid. That was my second brother.” His breath runs out gradually like a deflating balloon, vocal cords unwinding loose until there’s no sound and just air pushing out his lungs. Baekhyun’s hearing all this like Chanyeol’s speaking a different language, he’s not understanding a word, just letting the syllables wash over him like an ocean wave, and he’s providing the appropriate body language responses. “They had another child after me.”
Abruptly, things start making sense. Baekhyun furrows his eyebrows, eyes bulging wide with a trembling anger right below the surface. “Then why were you an accident?”
“At the time I was born their business wasn’t doing so well and they couldn’t.” They couldn’t. “But then things got better and-”
And they decided they wanted more children after all. Because children just kinda come and go with the tide and if you lose a shoe one day it’ll always get washed up tomorrow. “Chanyeol, these people-”
“Wait, don’t. The whole time they looked at me like I was the manifestation of three lifetime’s worth of regrets. Mom held my hand on the couch but I was still shivering the whole time they talked to me, god it was terrifying, we all knew nothing was going to change that day, and I could hear the resignation in their words, but they way they just watched me.”
“Chanyeol, breathe.” Baekhyun leans in close, snapping his fingers in front of Chanyeol’s eyes. He can’t afford to have him seizing up while drunk, not when he doesn’t know how much he’s had. Chanyeol’s following his fingers with his eyes, breathing a little deeper now, and he seems at least lucid enough that he’ll remember this all when he wakes up.
“Ever since then I haven’t seen them in person again, but two years ago they promised mom they wouldn’t say anything and that was the last time we talked.”
Baekhyun sits back, rubbing the bridge of his nose, shaking his head softly. “You shouldn’t have gone to see them.”
“I know,” Chanyeol whispers back, head hung low.
Outside, the rain’s incessant, drumming on the windows behind their heads. The AC in the limo chills the atmosphere from the humidity of July, sharpening their minds enough that they can think. Chanyeol slowly calms again, falling back against the seat, head just an inch or two from the low roof above their heads. He looks on, fingers laced in his lap, looking inexplicably dejected.
“When you left,” he says quietly. Baekhyun snaps back to attention, but Chanyeol’s tone is steady, like he’s talking about just another life event, like moving schools, or graduating. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Baekhyun tries hard to find something to respond with, but he can only clench his teeth and listen.
“At the time, I’d just gotten everything I wanted. Everything I worked for. You remember.”
Baekhyun swallows. “You seem like you pulled through okay.” Chanyeol nods.
“Yeah, but that time I was so fuckin’ lost. You were always there to make sure I did the right things and then suddenly you weren’t. It’s like I just...forgot how to function without being told how.”
Before Baekhyun absorbs what he said, Chanyeol mumbles in a lower tone, “I was so reckless, I-I slept with Kris for comfort. Once.”
Baekhyun’s eyes widen. He’s not that surprised, to be totally honest. He’d be lying if he said he never played with the thought before, and something about the way they’re this comfortable with each other despite only being friends for a year reflects something like it. Chanyeol doesn’t seem to be looking for a response, just staring at his hands. On this train of thought, though, Baekhyun grows a little cold at where it takes him. The thing with the fling and the more than ceremonious breakup like there was nothing to lose in the first place. He speaks before he plans it, terse and icy.
“What was Krystal for then? Publicity?”
At this, Chanyeol looks up, and he stares at Baekhyun like he’s insane. Baekhyun’s glared stiff. “What do you think?” Baekhyun wishes he knew, because Chanyeol’s making it sound like the easiest question in the world. When he still doesn’t respond, Chanyeol shakes his head, completely incredulous. “I was lonely!”
A few seconds go by. They speed past a light, so bright it shows through the film on the windows. “She was right there, Baek.”
It hits him that he didn’t have to ask the question, that he already knew the answer. And then it doesn’t really just hit him, it runs right into him like a car chase, one collision after another, that deep down he never really believed Chanyeol felt a lick of attraction towards her. He hadn’t realized what it meant, that his default assumption of the whole deal was that she was some stunt. Baekhyun’s teetering on the edge of another revelation and he honestly doesn’t want to hear it right now. He doesn’t get time to properly bury the thought before Chanyeol’s speaking again. “Hey.”
“Let’s go back to Daegu.”
Something stirs at the word. A lot of things actually, by some neurological act of association. Lots and lots and lots of things fast forwarding until all these little negatives condense into this single point of blankness in a process like a Big Bang backwards. “Huh?” is what he says.
“I’ve been...planning this before you came. I couldn’t ask you before because I knew you’d-” Say no. Chanyeol’s so goddamn transparent, it makes Baekhyun want to laugh, but his nose is growing sore and his eyes are this close to stinging. Chanyeol can’t ask this, it’s not fair, Baekhyun thought he had at least this much integrity left, but he knows if there’s any time for him to ask it would be now. Something’s changing, something’s healing, they both know it.
But Daegu? By Geumho river? What, facing the sunrise again? ₩500,000 ten year mortgage with 5% interest, tenth storey, whirring old fan, a sliver of the mountain range if you peeked out from your balcony past the high-rises. Where do they go now when they’d moved everything up north? “I thought we sold the place,” he chokes out, swallowing the saliva lodged in his throat, and it all comes out too quiet.
Chanyeol looks at him. He moistens his lips, looking honest to god so ashamed, like he’s admitting to something more than this, and Baekhyun can probably guess what it means that he wouldn’t let go of the damn place, since it’s all coming together anyway. Chanyeol has been planning to take him back so he can rip him right open the moment he dialed his number in June and Baekhyun fell for it. Eyes on him, Chanyeol shakes his head, then immediately lowers it like he should since he’s been nothing but a lying fuck to someone who tried his hardest to trust him. “No, Baek. We didn’t.”
That’s what it takes, the confirmation. Every muscle in his body constricts and his heart is being clenched in fists, condensing and compressing, until suddenly Baekhyun’s supernova Big Bangs the right way, except everything’s stripped of color and he’s looking at the apartment in grayscale.
For all that it is and nothing more: there he goes through the front door, past the chain lock. There he is in the living room but he’s not actually there, it’s just the living room, with the naked couch, the coffee table, hunk of a TV set. There’s the single bedroom, the air mattress under the barren bed, but it’s deflated. There’s the washroom and the shower. There’s the little strip of a kitchen. Outside, the balcony, and outside the balcony the suffocating heat and relentless rain of August in Daegu, Gyeongsang Province. Burning so hot the sky cries on the cracking asphalt and anybody would be an idiot to dive in at this time of year, and Chanyeol might not be anybody but he’s sure still a fucking idiot. He’s leaving the AC for the whirring fans. He’s kissing goodbye the city for the outskirts. He’s still paying mortgage for a house nobody lives in.
Chanyeol looks at him, all young and shameless and desperate, and Baekhyun knows the game is over, and this kid. The one who doesn’t believe in consequences or conclusions isn’t the one that surrendered. Something’s changing, something’s healing. What this place means, what the trip means. What Chanyeol means. Come to Daegu with me. Come back with me.
He opens his mouth, breath stuck momentarily at the back of his throat before he closes his wet eyes and whispers, and the only thing he learns when he does is that this idiocy runs in the family.
a/n: aka he said yes. stay tuned! if it makes a difference, next chapter is my favorite so far in plotting and will be when i write it.
Also a gentle reminder that the best support to an author is a comment about what you enjoyed and what you didnt! just that i was really surprised people read this because nobody told me--!! thank you all <3