when you reach the stars
Pairing: Baekyeol, Kai/Chanyeol friendship
Summary: Park Chanyeol is inspired to write murder stories when he meets the cute Byun Baekhyun whom is a photographer for newborn babies. Author/photographer AU
Genre: Fluff, Romance, Comedy
A/N: Inspired by the many hours of my life I waste away watching Criminal Minds. LOL.
When you reach the stars
“No” the man sitting in the ‘big bad chair’ objects, placing the manuscript back onto the desk. “Chanyeol, what’s wrong with you lately?”
Chanyeol gives a small characteristic twitch of his right eye, twiddling his thumbs together while looking down to the ground.
“Chanyeol, you have to answer me.” The man says stiffly, rolling his eyes at the awkward lanky curly haired young adult in front of him. Chanyeol doesn’t answer, he looks up from underneath his curly bangs.
“I - well, I’m not sure?” He offers, looking down at the plain black words on a plain white piece of paper, inked clearly ‘The Stars - a novel by Park Chanyeol’ he twitches again, this time four of his fingers, drumming against the side of his right thigh.
He feels bad, he had been tired due to his University tests and he had put next to nothing in effort for his manuscript for a cliché story of a girl and boy who fall in love underneath the starry night sky and - it’s all bullshit, he wanted to kill something for writing something so unrealistic.
But sadly killing things is called murder in this country - he thinks. No, no, he’s sure.
“Chanyeol,” the man growls warningly, finally sighing and turning around to face the window. “Cliché isn’t your style, I thought we both agreed on that.”
Another twitch, and he decides to give his boss an awkward side smile.
“Well - yeah,” he admits, pushing a curly dyed lock behind his ear, “but you asked me to write romance instead of crime.”
“You mean those stories about how people die in gruesome ways that shouldn’t be known to man?” His boss corrects, cringing. “Chanyeol, that shit is messed up.”
“Thank you” twitchy smiles, not completely realizing his boss wasn’t complimenting his writing. “I still don’t understand why you want me to write romance, it isn’t my style. Can I kill someone?”
He wanted to add a quick; in my story - not real life. He’s interrupted though,
“No!” His boss bellows, banging his fist against his desk. “Dammit Chanyeol your readers need to know you aren’t a complete whack job - people don’t like whack jobs.”
“Oh” he understands, he does. Chanyeol doesn’t want people to think he’s crazy, cause he isn’t (he hasn’t killed anyone yet; so in his book, he’s fine.) But he can only write about realistic things - things that make sense.
And the closets’ thing Chenyeol has to a romance experience is a dead bird he had poked and wrapped up and gave to a girl he had a tiny crush on during his kindergarten years.
She didn’t like the bird.
Chanyeol didn’t like her anymore.
“I’m bad at romance.” Chanyeols says while picking up the large stack of papers, the older man rolls his eyes.
“I can see that.”
“I can only write things I understand - I don’t understand romance.”
“Well,” the bald man says crossing his fingers into each other. “Go figure it out.”
And with that Chanyeol is dismissed; left into the cold romance-less world.
He drums his fingers against his study desk that’s awkwardly placed in the middle of his room, whenever Jongin comes over he’s always taunting him over it, claiming that it’s just weird.
But so is Chanyeol, so his desk and him get along just fine.
“Romance, fluff… fluffy, romance…” he mutters to himself in the darkness of his room, his laptop screen lighting his face into a light blue color that just glows. He scrolls through pages, story sites he often wanders about.
Zilch, nothing.
“Romance isn’t my thing.” He decides, while reaching for his barely touched cell phone. “But it can now be Kai’s.” He decides with a victorious smirk when he grabs his phone with the tips of his fingers, not having to get up and walk for it.
He dials up Jongin’s number from memory, not actually have had saved his best-friends number onto his phone (“if someone attacks me and I need to call you, how useless would it be to have to go through my friends list to get to your number?” Chanyeol had objected with, Jongin had replied with a clipped “I’m the only person on your friends list, Chanyeol”)
He disregards the time, knowing if he doesn’t know it’ll be better for his innocence act, even though he has his suspicions time is teetering between 3am to 5am, while so him and Jongin have a 6am class today.
He hears a few bashes and cuss words before he finally hears Jongin’s growl of; “Who and what?”
“Chanyeol” Chanyeol chirps happily, glancing towards the clock. 5:43am, Jongin would need to get up soon anyways, he’s done his friend a favor.
“Go die” Kai growls, “what now?”
“Romance, I need help writing.”
“Write two gay guys having sex, bye.”
And with that Kai hangs up,
And Chanyeol writes down the idea on Microsoft word, a frown on his face.
“Why gay guys?” He grumbles to himself as he reaches for his things for his morning class, closing his laptop.
“You just need to find yourself a hot girl, get laid and suddenly romance will seem appealing.” Jongin says as they wander the halls, eyes glancing to posters laid out perfectly for newbies to the College to see, Chanyeol frowns.
“Jongin, that won’t work.” He decides, cause most girls don’t agree with Chanyeol that he’s handsome - most claim his twitch is kind of irritating and scary, plus his writing. Most girls don’t like Chanyeol’s writing.
“True” his friend decides and he frowns, Jongin has never been his first choice of comfort. “So try finding a guy, guys have more tolerance to people who write disgusting stories.”
“I’m not gay,” he says while sending a pointed look at Kai, “like you.”
“Sure” Kai grunts when they round another corner. “You keep telling yourself that buddy.”
So he does, and it doesn’t really do him much either in his opinion.
Then Park Chanyeol meets Byun Baekhyun.
Chanyeol likes Baekhyun, Baekhyun is cute and wears a little too much eye-liner, and his hair is nice and soft, so is his facial features. Baekhyun isn’t loud, or overly quiet. Byun Baekhyun is perfect for lack of better words.
So Chanyeol does what he does best, he writes a gruesome horror story about the amazing photographer.
He writes about dead babies, and how Baekhyun is the killer and Chanyeol ends up visiting Baekhyun in jail with more than platonic feelings, Baekhyun also ends up being a woman in his stories.
His boss isn’t impressed, neither is Kai really.
“Oh well” he grumbles to himself, lowering his newspaper a bit to ogle his source of admiration lately, the baby photographer (and baby killer in his stories).
Baekhyun idly sips away at his Starbucks coffee, and Chanyeol feels his heart slipping away with the coffee.
“Yeol, remember when you gave that girl a dead baby bird?” Jongin asks slowly, eyeing his creepy twitchy best-friend. Chanyeol nods dumbly, cheek pressed into the palm of his hand as he stares at Baekhyun openly across the cafeteria. “I think this is more creepy.” Jongin says, picking up a fry.
“Like really creepy Yeol, you can be considered a stalker. Like, a legit one.”
“Not really” Chanyeol objects, he’s sure knowing where a person goes for their free time, where they work, what they do and such is all common knowledge if you like someone.
It’s not creepy or anything.
“He doesn’t even know your name.”
Chanyeol grabs the nearest object (which happens to be a pencil) and chucks it at Jongin’s forehead, frowning.
“Shut up, let me admire his prettiness.”
“Who’s prettiness?” A voice says from behind them, sending both males to turn around and stare with open mouths at the one and only Byun Baekhyun standing there, one hand on his hip as he gives Chanyeol an unimpressed look over.
Chanyeol unconsciously smoothes his curly brunet locks and offers his obsession (“no just my very pretty crush” he had objected with) a very awkward side smile.
“Uh - I’m not sure.” He says in his awkward low-tone voice that doesn’t suit his pretty face at all, but he can’t care, his brain is already over taken with thoughts of how pretty Baekhyun’s face is up close.
“You’re stalking me” pretty Baekhyun says pointedly, looking over at Jongin with a ‘Well, did you know of this?’ kind of look.
“My buddy here,” Kai says while giving Chanyeol a rather painful pat on the shoulder (revenge, Chanyeol dubs it) and smiles that charming Kai like smile. “Is a weirdo, and he has a hard time expressing himself, he just thinks you’re cute.”
“Stalking is a weird way of showing it.”
“Serial killers stalk people they find cute.” Chanyeol protests, and he immediately regrets his choice of fact because next thing is next Jongin is hitting him over the head and Baekhyun is taking a step backwards.
“Yeol,” his best-friend groans, “can you not make people think I’m friends with a whack job?”
“Sorry” Chanyeol grumbles awkwardly, smiling a bit towards Baekhyun. “Don’t worry, I won’t kill you.”
There’s a pause and Baekhyun’s taking another step back, “right… Can you um, just stop stalking me? If you think I’m -“ he flushes looking off, “cute or something just talk to me, stop being creepy. Anyways, I need to go, bye.”
And with that Byun Baekhyun left with another piece of Park Chanyeol’s awkward serial killer obsessed heart.
“Don’t worry I won’t kill you.” Jongin quotes, walking back and forth, his hands folded behind him, his hard stern stare focused on the walls.
“I thought that’s what he was -“
“Chanyeol, you are the most socially awkward person I’ve ever met.”
“We established this years ago Jongin.”
“Kai - no that’s not the problem,”
“Then what is?”
“You’ve probably just lost your one and only chance of ever getting a boyfriend!”
Chanyeol frowns, slumping over his long body. “How?”
“Oh, I don’t know, you talked about serial killers and how you were stalking him how he’s cute and how you won’t kill him. Good job, you’re probably worse than an actually serial killer! Now I’m going to go, and I want you to think about what you’ve done wrong today!”
With that Jongin steps out of his apartment and Chanyeol is left with his opened laptop.
So Chanyeol repents in the only way he knows how - he writes about Baekhyun kidnapping kids.
“Chanyeol” his boss says slowly - as if talking to a handicapped kid - “is it just me or is your stories getting more gruesome?”
“I have inspiration lately.” Chanyeol replies immediately, smiling idly at his boss. The fat middle aged man nods slowly, almost scared of what possible ‘inspiration’ Chanyeol could be receiving to write more gruesome stories.
“I thought I told you too write romance.”
“I’m working on it.” The young-adult replies, face still pulled up into a smile.
“Right,” Chanyeol turns to leave before he can go his boss stops him with a small farewell, “don’t kill anyone Chanyeol.”
The other turns, brows furrowed downwards. “But I kill people in my stories.”
“I meant real-life.”
“Oh” he pauses, and smiles again. “Okay, I won’t.”
When he’s finally gone, his boss feels an odd need if he see’s any serial killer cases on TV that he’ll call the police and have his favorite writer checked out.
“He has a few screws lose” Jongin clarifies to Baekhyun (“might as well know my stalker” Baekhyun had explained with while sitting down beside Chanyeol.)
Chanyeol twitches at Jongin’s sentence while he furiously jots down notes on how he should write Jongin’s death tonight.
“Or a lot.” Kai says slowly, eyeing the words ‘Kai dies by a gunshot to the head after intense rape and -‘ “like, a lot.”
“I can see that…” Baekhyun says, watching Chanyeol write down the notes along with Jongin. “Are you sure he hasn’t killed anyone?”
“Not yet, maybe one day though. He watches way too many CSI shows I think.”
“Which ones?” Baekhyun lights up, and Chanyeol finally feels some sort of connection towards his crush.
“Criminal minds, just Criminal minds.”
“Oh, I like CSI Miami and Criminal Minds.” Baekhyun smiles, “are you a writer?”
“Yeah, Park Chanyeol you probably never heard -“
“Park Chanyeol?” Baekhyun says his out-lined eyes going wide like moons, “are you for real? The author that writes murder stories, right?”
“You actually read that shit?” Jongin asks in disbelief, “maybe I misjudged you, you’re just as messed up as twitchy-Yeol here.”
“Of course I read his books, they’re really good.” Baekhyun says, blowing air into his cheeks and pouting slightly at the insult, “he’s one of my favorite authors.”
Chanyeol feels his fingers twitch and he can’t really write about Jongin dying anymore, he’s much too happy.
“Oh,” he says awkwardly, “thank you.”
He offers a small smile, and he swears Baekhyun is ten million times prettier when he blushes.
“I need to write a romance novel.” Chanyeol explains as he opens the door for Baekhyun and Jongin to step in.
“His boss is getting creeped out about how many manuscripts he’s handing in about serial killers killing babies and shit.” Jongin explains in his ever so helpful way, Baekhyun eyes his favorite author oddly.
“Why babies?”
“Cause you photograph babies, and I made you the killer - cause uh, I think you’re cute so you uh -“
“Chanyeol, can it.” Jongin interrupts patting the shortest person’s head in the room (Baekhyun) “don’t worry, it means he likes you, cause he always writes me getting killed, he only writes people he likes as killers.”
Chanyeol blushes and he grabs the nearest object and chucks it at his best-friend’s head, ignoring the terrified look that Baekhyun suddenly adapted as Jongin fell to the floor, tongue hanging out of his mouth.
Chanyeol ignores his possibly dead friend, feeling as if déjà vu had just happened, he swears he wrote a scenario like this with small doodles on his English note book a mere week ago.
“So” he interrupts Baekhyun’s probing to see if the pervert from hell had lived the blitz attack, “what should I write?”
“What about a type of scenario with the main characters falling in love underneath a starry sky?” Jongin says, yawning into his hand while dropping himself comfortably onto Chanyeol’s bed, apparently resurrecting himself spontaneously.
“That’s stupid.”
“Really?” Short one interrupts, innocent mascara out-lined eyes sparkling; “I really like under the night starry sky romance stories.”
“Me too.” Jongin rolls his eyes at Chanyeol’s completely caught-lying-lie, but Baekhyun merely smiles kindly, standing a bit too close for personal space needy Chanyeol’s comfort, but he refuses to complain, tapping out the ideas that his friends had just fed him.
“I’ll try” Chanyeol admits, leaning back into his swivel chair to gaze at Jongin typing on his phone, Baekhyun looking at his bookshelf.
“The healthy man does not torture others. Generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers, written by Carl Jung.” Chanyeol quotes as he throws himself onto Jongin’s small love seat in the middle of the small - but fair sized - living room.
“Ok?” Jongin - whom is worriedly enough immune to Chanyeol’s random outbursts, continues on with his coffee and tea pouring (“Cause coffee causes so many problems while tea is just - magical.” Chanyeol had complained when Kai had given him coffee one day, he never did it again.)
“I should write a story where Baekhyun is a completely normal person with a completely normal life but suddenly goes on a killing spree, cause he’s bored. And you’ll be his first victim, Kai.”
“How will I die?”
“High risk victim, male prostitute, your eyes will be torn out, just cause you stare at yourself too much.” Chanyeol decides definitely, pulling out his trusty note book and begins to jot down everything he said to make sure he won’t forget in the next hour.
“Thanks”
“Welcome.”
“So,” Kai drawls, tapping his fingers against the pretty black marble countertop, “how will Baekhyun be caught?”
“He won’t, turns out he’s framed and Tao is really the killer - you know, Tao is really creepy, like really creepy.” Says Chanyeol, drumming his fingers against his thigh in the same rhyme Jongin drums against the countertop.
“Anyone whom dates Kris willingly is messed Yeol.”
“He’s dating Kris?” Chanyeol whines while rolling over onto his stomach. “Why? I thought Kris said he likes me.”
“He moved on?”
“Oh, right, people do that.”
“Yeah” Kai yawns, handing his best friend the cup of tea. “So, why are you visiting me at,” he turns to look at the clock on the stove before looking back at Chanyeol, “2:54am telling me weird ass quotes?”
“I couldn’t sleep, bothering you helps.”
“Go die”
Chanyeol wanted to bite back a retort about how Jongin would be the one dying - because that’s only in his stories, and he can’t win an argument with that - so with Jongin’s cup in hand he wandered out of the apartment sulking.
“You seem like an idiot, a cute idiot.” Baekhyun says as he sits down again beside Jongin this time, “I like your webpage, I really do, but stop writing about dead babies.”
Chanyeol just picks at his salad, puckering his lips as he pouts. He had been scolded by Baekhyun on his webpage site last night on a private chat - a private chat - he’d been too happy to realize his cute-crush was promising him death if he didn’t stop writing Baekhyun has a serial killer who murders babies until later that night when he re-read the conversation for the fifth time.
“Fine” Chanyeol grumbles in defeat, looking back up.
“Why are you quoting Yeol’s story anyways Bacon?”
“Bacon?”
“Wait - you read my stories Kai?” says Chanyeol as he suddenly goes into shell shock.
“Didn’t you read his ‘Baekhyun and bacon’ drabble?” Jongin says, ignoring Chanyeol in general.
Baekhyun frowns, “no”
“Holy crap he really does read those things - I - uh, no, uh - “
“Yeol, me getting raped by Kyungsoo, the girly boy in Science - I will not forgive that.”
Chanyeol figured that’s all Jongin would care about. That certain fic had been dedicated to Jongin and Kyungsoo when his supposedly best-friend ditched him to do a science project with Kyungsoo, the classes loner. He’s a loner too!
“Cause I totally top Kungsoo.”
Chanyeol’s head ceremoniously hit the caf table.
When he raised his head, he realizes that Baekhyun hadn’t talked for a good 3 minutes, and he looked towards his pouting crush - Jongin followed his eye sight.
“Baekhyun?”
“Bacon?” Jongin says, voice mocking Chanyeol’s worried voice.
“I’m not bacon, you’re an asshole Kai.”
“Don’t worry about it, he used to call me curly pubes before he knew my name.” The table fell silent, and Baekhyun had choose to just eye Chanyeol weirdly, as if the whole world had been put off axis.
“He knew your pubes were - are - curly?” Silence. Silence. Silence.
“The first time we met was kinda awkward.” Chanyeol says “I guess I should’ve wore my pants to that party, even if I was dead drunk.”
“Yeol, you were 10, you weren’t drunk.”
“Oh.”
“I’m going, this is beyond my awkwardness handling.” Baekhyun grabs his tray and collecting his bag, wandering off from the ‘awkward-duo’ leaving Jongin and Chanyeol to stare at each other.
“So,” Jongin says while picking up his last fry, “are they still curly?”
“Worse than they were.” Chanyeol says, picking up one of his fries as well.
“Jongin says that I should try to make you like me.” Says Chanyeol as he plucks Baekhyun’s books from his arms, walking alongside his shorter (considerably counted as a friend now) friend. “Like me yet?”
“Chanyeol” Baekhyun says, reaching out to get his books back. “I can’t just suddenly like you cause you snatched my books from me - even though it’s a nice thought,” he blushes while shuffling forward, “it’s you know - uh, um, yeah.”
“Eh, no. I don’t know. Even though many people believe that with my giant head - which isn’t actually that big, my hair just makes it look big - that I can read people’s minds, I can’t, like the closest thing I have to human interaction is threw Jongin, and he’s not exactly normal, so I can’t understand you at all, like all I understand is that you like your coffee with two sugars and half the cup milk and eyeliner.” He rants, stopping finally with a thoughtful expression.
“You know how I like my coffee?” Baekhyun asks, surprised and a bit creeped out by Chanyeol’s sudden rant. He’s never heard Chanyeol talk so much. “That’s kinda creepy.”
“Sorry” the awkward curly haired teen mumbles softly under his breath, looking down with flushed cheeks.
“It’s fine, this is my class, see you later Chanyeol!” Baekhyun gives him a large pat on the back, smiling softly while snatching his books back, wobbling into his classroom.
Chanyeol feels another piece of his heart gone.
He buys Baekhyun coffee, well sugar and milk with coffee.
He knows Baekhyun’s schedule like the back of his hand - which he doesn’t know all too well, so, like how well he knows his laptop - so he wanders towards Baekhyun’s fifth block class, Chemistry.
“He’s so smart” he mutters mostly to himself as he pushes open the classroom door. “So smart it makes me proud to be obsessed with him.”
“Talking to yourself is considered a sign of being crazy.” Baekhyun says, jolting Chanyeol to stand a bit straighter and seem a bit more attractive
“Bac - Baekhyun.” He corrects quickly, the online pet name he had given his serial baby killer, Baekhyun narrowed his eyes for a good 000.02 seconds before moving on with life.
“Why are you here?” He asks softly, eyes gazing downwards to the two cups of coffee held awkwardly between Chanyeol’s fingers. “Did you bring me coffee?”
“Uh -“ the look on Baekhyun’s face wasn’t impressive like he had thought it would be, he had thought of how Baekhyun would be so moved and give Chanyeol a big kiss on his cheek, nothing came though, only silence and Chanyeol’s heavy breathing. “- well uh, I guess if you um, don’t want it? I bought it for Kai but he -“
He is silenced by the breath takingly beautiful smile that crosses onto Baekhyun’s flawless face.
“Thank you” his cute obsession says, holding out his slightly chubby hand to grasp the caffeinated drink.
Chanyeol says nothing, only bobbing his head like a broken bobble toy while handing the drink to Baekhyun.
Then Baekhyun does what Baekhyun does - he smiles, and Chanyeol feels his soul melt into the drink, slipping away to Baekhyun’s finger tips that he had lightly brushed.
“Why don’t you two go out on a date?” Kai suggests as he straightens the last piece of Chanyeol’s curly copper hair.
“Wah - “ he gasps, jumping up and burning the top of his head with the straightener, “ouch, fuck ow, what the fuck Kai!” He protests with a loud whine, and Jongin is scowling at his best-friend.
“You’re the one that jumped up - and is the idea really that obscure?” He says calmly, turning off the hot object before patting down Chanyeol’s hair. “See, you look hot, go ask him out.”
“This is me we’re talking about.” Chanyeol says, obviously protesting between the lines. “He’d never say yes.”
“Bacon is nice, he’ll say yes out of pity and you can use the pity as a chance to woo him.” Chanyeol feels his soul and hope flattering at the words.
“Thanks” he grumbles, he really needs new friends. “Fine, I’ll ask him, if he says no, I’m going to hang myself and it’ll be your fault.”
“I can live with that, sparing the world from a future sociopath.” Jongin says, giving Chanyeol a comforting pat on the shoulder. “Good luck.”
“I’m skewering you in my dreams tonight!” He calls after him, and Jongin just waves, closing the door behind him. Chanyeol pouts.
“So,” Chanyeol says awkwardly, giving a more awkward smile, “do you um, want to um, go to a uhhh… Movie?” He suggests with much difficulties, and Baekhyun just stares at him - as if he’d grown a second head.
“Your hair” Baekhyun says (“Your leaving me hanging!” Chanyeol whines in his head, but smiles outwardly) “it looks really good straight.”
Chanyeol opens his mouth to stammer out a ‘thank you’ but is interrupted by Baekhyun.
“But yeah sure, what movie, and is this a date?”
“yes, no wait yes but no - uh, sure?” Chanyeol coughs, face turning into a nice shade of cherry red. “Yeah, please yes. I don’t want to really hang myself.”
Baekhyun eyes him weirdly but smiles like the cute angel he is and goes onto his tippy toes to pat Chanyeol’s head.
“Alright tomorrow at 5pm, I’ll text you my address, pick me up, I’m choosing the movie.” Says Baekhyun, before giving Chanyeol an awkward wave good-bye before rushing to his next class, Chanyeol stands in the hall opening and closing his mouth for a good 20 minutes before being found by Kris, who drags him to his next class.
“He agreed to go out with me” Chanyeol mutters, still shell-shocked that the gorgeous beautiful Baekhyun would agree to go out with him of all people.
“Cool shit” Kai says, not really caring much about Chanyeol’s dilemma. Saving princess peach is a priority, then Chanyeol-weirdness. “So why are you here?”
“He agreed, Kai, do you not see something wrong with this?” Chanyeol blurts, his earlier bubble of happiness popping from his own words.
“Not really” Kai admits honestly, because really there’s no other way to be Kai.
“You’re more useless lately.” Chanyeol says, grabbing the nearest pillow and chucking it at Jongin’s PSP, pillow sneak attack is easily avoided with years of practice.
“Glad to be of use.” Jongin says dully, pausing his game before looking up. “So why the hell do I need to be here?”
“You need to do my hair tomorrow, at 3:50pm, no later, I want to be at least 40 minutes early.” Jongin eyes the curly-haired monster that has self-proclaimed itself to be his (“absolutely fucking un-gayest best friend in history”) but Chanyeol is now gay, so absolutely fucking gayest best friend in history.
“Go away” Jongin groans, forgetting the fact he’s currently residing in Chanyeol’s room. “You’re so creepy, I’ll do your damn hair. But - “ he pauses, fingers tapping against his chin. “I want to know what he said.”
“Uh - that he likes my hair, then yes I don’t understand - then about how tomorrow at 5pm, movie, he picks.” Chanyeol utters out like a high chipmunk, hands sweating from the already nerve wrecking experience he’ll experience in the near future.
23 hours and 12 minutes. He mentally reminds himself, must do my homework soon or else it’ll never get done.
Surely Chanyeol will not have any functioning brain cells after the date - doesn’t matter if it goes well or not.
“Don’t do that” Jongin finally interrupts with his obnoxious stupid voice, “stop talking to yourself in your thoughts, it’s creepy. No doing that when you’re with Baekhyun, I think it’s time for date lessons.”
“Chanyeol get your fucking hand off my knee!” Jongin protests loudly, chucking a handful of (accidentally) over buttered popcorn at Chanyeol’s face.
“You said to be touchy!”
“With him, not me, do you not have any sense of bro-code?!”
“I don’t even know what ‘bro-code’ is!” Chanyeol whines, grabbing himself a handful of popcorn to wolf down due to Jongin induced stress.
“Okay, I will disregard the bro-code for today, this is to help my bro. That code is before ‘don’t be a homosexual towards another bro’ rule.”
“What?”
“Shut up, and go brush your teeth, I refuse to kiss you when you have a popcorn full mouth.” Jongin says, and Chanyeol is already on the whole ‘spitting something in Jongin’s face’ act.
“What?” He sputters out again, for the second time, “like, what the fuck?” because the third time is the charm.
“Go. Brush. Your. Teeth.”
“Why do we need to kiss?” fuck third time’s the charm, there’s no such thing as charm when you’re Park Chanyeol. “That’s gross” he adds for the kick of it, cause desperate times call for desperate measures.
Jongin rolls his eyes, “do you want to kiss Baekhyun without any experience?”
“Oh” and maybe Jongin really is a thoughtful friend…
“I’m going to put a bag over your head before I kiss you though, I can’t kiss you knowing I’m kissing well - you.”
Scratch that, Jongin is still an asshole. He decides blandly, but he listens with wobbly awkwardly long legs, brushes his teeth till they are smiling back at him and wanders back to his bro-code following friend.
“This is going to be awkward” Chanyeol says out loud, hoping Jongin will second guess this whole thing. “Plus, Baekhyun won’t kiss me.”
“Maybe not yet. But some day someone will, and I can’t hope for anything but that they’ll handle you, so you need to be perfect in the sexual aspect -“
“I’m not having sex with you.”
“Are you stupid? I meant kissing, and hand jobs.”
“Oh, well I already gave you that.”
“It sucked.”
“Fuck you.”
“Jack me off as we kiss?” Jongin suggests and Chanyeol is reaching for his cup of tea. “Joke, I’m joking!”
Chanyeol has incredibly bad luck - and as he places down his tea cup, eyes still glaring at Jongin as they both lean into each other to kiss (mind blowingly awkwardly) the door squeaks open and there’s a small ‘eeep’
“E - eh, C - chan - Chanyeol?”
“That voice” Jongin whispers in shock, his lips millimeters from Chanyeols “Kyungsoo!”
“This is awkward, I don’t like him, I swear, he’s helping me practice kissing.” And the words are out before Chanyeol can stop them, Kyungsoo is blushing and opening and closing his mouth - and Jongin, Jongin just reaches for the cup of burning hot tea.
“Um… Okay” Kyungsoo whispers eventually, stepping back to leave the room again, “I’ll come get you later Jongin, oaky?”
“Okay, later baby.”
“He calls you Jongin? And you call him baby?” Chanyeol asks when the door is shut and Kyungsoo’s footsteps are fading into the distance. “I’ve known you since I was a kid and you don’t let me call you Jongin.”
“I don’t love you that much”
“You’re disgusting”
“What? Are you going to be jealous over the fact I don’t call you baby too?”
Chanyeol jets out his bottom lip, “yes”
“You look scared” Baekhyun points out when Chanyeol wobbles over with stiff legs and arms plastered to his sides, and the taller boy with copper hair straightened to the very crisp gulps and shakes his head.
Baekhyun merely cocks an eyebrow before shrugging it off.
“Okay, I want to watchhhh,” he drawls looking over to the board of movies currently playing, “that one”
And his slightly chubby finger is pointed towards a sign and Chanyeol just stares, then looks back to Baekhyun, then back at the sign.
“A romance movie?” He squawks nervously - because Park Chanyeol just doesn’t do romance things very well.
Damn, I was hoping for the crime one.
“Yeah” Baekhyun says blandly, arm linking with Chanyeol’s, “problem?”
“No, absolutely not.” And it’s a stutter because Baekhyun is touching Chanyeol - and Chanyeol sweats when Baekhyun is even in his breathing space, but he doesn’t want to smell because if he smells Baekhyun will never touch him (or breathe him in) ever again and -
“Yeol, breathe.”
“Y - Yeol?” He squeaks, and he tumbles forward, his legs giving out on him pathetically.
“Fail”
“Complete failure”
“Shut up Kai, Kris.”
Kyungsoo coughs awkwardly - “you guys shouldn’t be so mean”
“Don’t worry baby, tormenting good ol’ awkward as fuck Yeol here is our favourite past time.” Jongin says soothingly? While patting Kyungsoo’s hair.
“Stop being gay with Kyungsoo, you’re freaking me out Kai.” Chanyeol cringes, inching away from the couple, before looking at Kris and his new boyfriend ‘Kungfu Panda’ - Zitao, the Wushu kid that can kick everyone’s ass.
“You too, your both being disgusting.”
“Were not even touching each other?” Tao asks confused (because Tao is actually pretty naïve, and Chanyeol pities him because Kris is a horrible person - in his opinion)
“He’s stupid Tao” Kris coo’s, wrapping his arm around Tao’s shoulders and bringing the other to his side. Chanyeol cringes.
“All of you go die, I’m the only one alone here. 5th wheel” Chanyeol whines, and the door opens, Baekhyun walking in with a tray.
“Not anymore” Kai whistles out, and Chanyeol smiles awkwardly.
“You’re pretty” he blurts out, and Baekhyun smiles.
Very, very pretty.
“I’m sorry, again, for fainting and -“ Chanyeol rants, and Baekhyun laughs - interrupting the apology.
“It’s okay, I over loaded your brain, I think.” Baekhyun sounds confused - but it’s normal, he’s still getting use to Chanyeol’s odd antics.
“Yes” Chanyeol breathes.
“Can I overload it a bit more?”
“Uh - yes, sure?”
Baekhyun moves closer, his hands placing themselves onto Chanyeol’s shoulder’s to give himself leverage, pushing onto his tippy toes, their lips brushing.
“I like you Park Chanyeol” he breathes against the world’s number one awkwardest person.
“Oh” Chanyeol gasps, hands and fingers shaking. “Oh”
And Baekhyun laughs that cheery the-world-is-the-best laugh.
And Park Chanyeol falls in love all over again.
The end