I Call them as I See Them (and Hindsight is Always 20/20)
Pairing: Baekhyun/Chen, Chen/Suho
Length: 2600 words
Rating: nc-17
Summary: Baekhyun will take what he can get, to a certain point. Written for challenge #9 at aideshou.
I Call Them as I See Them
(and Hindsight is Always 20/20)
Joonmyun rebuffs Jongdae on a Wednesday. The day sticks out in Baekhyun’s mind for a long time after because he gets a phone call from Chanyeol in the middle of composition seminar, which he answers because Chanyeol hasn’t called him since the time woke up, covered in puke, on the roof of Ewha Women’s University their first year. He excuses himself to take it, citing a call he’s been waiting for from his family, and ducks out into the hallway, jogging down just far enough that no one in the class will be able to hear him.
“Chanyeol? What’s up?”
“So Jongdae told Joonmyun at breakfast this morning and Joonmyun told Jongdae he’s straight and it’s gone about as well as you’d expect from there.”
He hears a retching noise in the background and winces. “He’s already wasted at two in the afternoon?”
Chanyeol sighs. “Yeah. I think I’ve got a handle on it for now, but can you come straight back after your class is over?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
Baekhyun hangs up and shoves his phone into his pocket. He really should go back to his seminar, but his mind needs a minute to process everything before he’s ready to tear into the section asshole’s most recent piece. He strolls down to the bathroom at the end of the hall, stepping inside and splashing some water on his face.
Jongdae has, since the second week of last semester, had a painfully obvious one-sided crush on the immaculately straight Kim Joonmyun, and Baekhyun has, since they started hanging out their first few months at university, had a very, very, very secret crush on him. He splashes water on his face again and wanders back down the hall, back into class. His professor asks him if everything is alright, and he says it is. Class goes back to normal and he forgets the brilliant biting critique he’d formulated on the piece that they’re looking at, mind still jumbled by the sudden news.
When class ends, Baekhyun starts off to his apartment, only to be cornered by Yixing halfway there.
“I’m guessing you heard,” is all he says. Baekhyun sighs. Yixing, somehow, is the only person in the entire world who knows about Baekhyun’s feelings for Jongdae. It had surprised him, at first, Yixing blurting it out one night after a couple of drinks, but he’d since gotten used to it. Yixing gave the sense of never paying attention (and he really wasn’t, half the time, like when Chanyeol was talking about his sexual conquests or Lu Han was rambling about sports), but he was sharply observant when he wanted to be.
“Yeah, Chanyeol called. He’s puking in our bathroom, apparently.”
“He went hard.”
“I mean he probably didn’t eat anything today.”
“Still. Are you going to be ok?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
Yixing claps him on the shoulder. “I can head over and help Chanyeol if you’re not ready to see him yet, you know.”
Baekhyun considers the offer. If he doesn’t head back, Chanyeol will probably realize something is up, and while Yixing’s not bad at keeping secrets, he tends to crumble under pressure, easily guilted into revealing just about anything. On the other hand, Baekhyun’s not really sure he can handle anything about the situation he’s going to come home to: he’s irrationally grossed out by vomit, Jongdae being overly drunk makes him sad, Jongdae being overly drunk on account of Joonmyun makes him sadder, and Chanyeol’s probably going to be irritating, because he’s either going to be cranky or weirdly amused and loud. He doesn’t particularly want to confront any of those things, but he also knows he’ll have to, eventually.
“Thanks for the offer,” he says, “but I think I should go home anyway.”
Yixing nods, patting his shoulder. “Well, if you want to talk just let me know.”
The scene Baekhyun comes home to is pretty tame. Jongdae is passed out on the couch, the bucket for their mop next to him just in case, and Chanyeol is pouring himself a glass of water in the kitchen.
“You missed everything, man,” Chanyeol tells him and pulls a face, “you’re lucky.”
Baekhyun laughs, trying his best to not let it sound too hollow. “How bad was it?”
“He was puking for about half an hour. So not the worst but… like you said, two in the afternoon. Also over Joonmyun. Joonmyun. I don’t get it.”
Baekhyun shrugs. He doesn’t really get it, either, but probably for more selfish reasons than Chanyeol’s. “To each their own?”
Chanyeol snorts. “Or something. He came over a couple hours ago, actually, with a bottle of rum, and I was trying to tell him to stop but he wouldn’t listen. Then I had to go to class, and when I came back he was sort of crying, and then he said he didn’t feel so well so I dragged him to the bathroom. He only puked in the toilet though. And I opened the window and sprayed some air freshener so it shouldn’t smell too bad.”
Baekhyun nods. “I don’t get it. Everyone’s already told him Joonmyun’s straight like, a million times.”
“I know. I think he just… had it in his head that he couldn’t be? Or wouldn’t be for him? I don’t know. He’s weird. He’s good at being stupidly honest with everyone but himself.”
He’s oblivious as hell, too, but I guess most people are, when it comes down to it, Baekhyun thinks as he shrugs at Chanyeol and pours his own glass of water.
A week later Jongdae has decided he is sufficiently ok to drink again, but Chanyeol still insists on going to the party he knows he’ll be at, and dragging Baekhyun along, too. Baekhyun knows it’s a terrible idea: he’s either going to be grumpy the whole time, or be grumpy and then drink himself to some state of idiocy that’ll probably encourage him to go after Jongdae.
When he starts in on the latter plan barely an hour into the party, he blames Chanyeol, because Chanyeol keeps poking at him and asking him why he looks like a wet cat, then decides to deal with his grunting replies by shoving a drink into his hand. Baekhyun downs it, and then another, and Chanyeol looks a little surprised.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asks, glaring maybe a little too intensively as he pours himself another cup.
Chanyeol shrugs. “I don’t know what’s up with you tonight man, but don’t be an idiot. I don’t want to take care of two puking friends in as many weeks.”
Baekhyun takes his now-full cup and wanders off into the crowds. He finds Jongdae easily. He’s talking to a girl Baekhyun recognizes from his piano class, and Baekhyun just sort of watches them for a while, drinking faster than he probably should, until Jongdae catches his eye and comes over to him.
“Hey, how’s it going?” he asks, already too close. Jongdae’s a clingy drunk, always has been, and Baekhyun is too. It is, he notes, the alcohol starting to sink in but not too strongly, yet, probably a recipe for disaster.
“Good. You? No puking tonight?”
Jongdae half laughs and half glares at him. “That’s not the plan, no.”
The alcohol is hitting Baekhyun fast and hard, his face getting warmer and his tongue relaxing. “Looking for a rebound?”
“Are you offering?” Jongdae asks over the lip of his cup, and Baekhyun almost chokes.
“No?”
“Oh,” he says, looking a little defeated, “guess I’ll actually have to try, then.”
Baekhyun just sort of nods. He wants to reach out and grab Jongdae’s wrist and pull him to him and kiss him, but he’s not drunk enough to be that impulsive yet. Every second that ticks by, the alcohol hits him more strongly, but he still knows what he’s doing, still knows that hooking up with Jongdae now, as an easy rebound, is not what he wants, not at all, and he’s going to need to wait everything out.
Except an hour later he’s downed three more very, very strong drinks and taken a couple of rounds of shots, and at some point Jongdae had started hanging off of him, and somewhere along the way they’d ended up shoved into a corner, lips sealed together and bodies pressed tight.
“My roommate’s at his girlfriend’s tonight,” Jongdae whispers into Baekhyun’s ear before biting into it, “come home with me?”
Baekhyun kisses him instead of nodding or saying yes or anything. He knows he’s probably going to regret this tomorrow but he doesn’t care-he likes Jongdae as a person, yes, but he has also wanted to fuck him for ever and he’s not about to give up that opportunity.
They stumble to Jongdae’s dorm room together, pausing along the way to make out in out-of-the-way alleys. They crash onto his bed, door barely shut before they’re side by side, yanking at one another’s clothes and throwing them to the floor. They make out, naked, Baekhyun sliding on top of Jongdae, hands roaming down his back and settling on his ass, pushing and pulling as he moans into Baekhyun’s kisses. Baekhyun thrusts against his hip occasionally, until he slips a hand between them and starts to jerk Jongdae off, the outside of his fist rubbing against his own cock. Jongdae moans again, long and loud, and Baekhyun leans in to kiss him, impossibly turned on because they’re both needy, even if for vastly different reasons, and Jongdae, so far, has been better in bed than anyone he’s been with in months.
“Can I fuck you?” Baekhyun asks.
“Yes, please,” Jongdae says, voice breathy but commanding, and Baekhyun sits up.
“Do you have lube?”
“Yeah, desk.”
Baekhyun gets up to rummage around in the desk before returning to the bed with lube and a condom in hand. He drops the condom at the edge of the bed, and Jongdae raises his hips to let Baekhyun start prepping him.
“Fuck me, please,” Jongdae begs once Baekhyun’s got two fingers comfortably rocking in and out, and Baekhyun nods, rolling on the condom and lubing it over before pulling Jongdae’s legs up and sliding in slowly. They’re both messes: drunk and loud and sloppy, emotions laid bare but incomprehensible to the other. When Jongdae comes, Baekhyun follows, but he pulls out and curls in on himself, Jongdae falling asleep sprawled across the other side of the bed.
Baekhyun wakes up, rolls over, and gets out of bed, Jongdae still knocked out. It's early, but he's never been good at sleeping when he's drunk. His mind wanders back to what had happened, and he's half ashamed and half turned on. Jongdae was a good lay, but he’d been interested in him for a long, long time, and he was not about to let himself become Jongdae’s fuck buddy while he continued to pine after Joonmyun, regardless of the fact that Joonmyun was entirely unattainable. His feelings for Jongdae went much deeper than sex-and while he wasn’t about to complain about fucking Jongdae, he felt awful about having let himself screw him while they were both drunk and Jongdae was trying to get over someone he cared-however irrationally-a lot for.
Baekhyun slips out of Jongdae’s dorm and heads back to his apartment. Chanyeol’s awake when he gets back, brewing a pot of coffee and staring out the window in a semi-haze.
“So. You’re gonna be Jongdae’s rebound?”
Baekhyun grimaces and doesn’t respond.
“Are you ok?”
No, Baekhyun thinks. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
“I didn’t sleep well, is all.”
Chanyeol wiggles his eyebrows, but the beeping of the coffeemaker cuts off whatever lewd comment he was about to make, and Baekhyun shuffles into his bedroom to get ready for a shower.
They hook up three more times, Baekhyun leaving earlier and earlier after each meeting. He hates himself for what he's doing, wants to stop, but finds that he can't. It's close enough to what he actually wants that he can pretend, the lines between what's going on and what he wants to be going on blurring further every time he and Jongdae have sex.
Yixing ask Baekhyun over a couple days after the third time, something about "catching up" and "doing work together". He sees through it but accepts the offer anyway, because he knows Yixing will probably just keep bothering him if he refuses.
“You can’t keep fucking Jongdae and not telling him the truth,” he says over steaming mugs of tea in the dorm room he shares with Lu Han.
“Why not?”
“Because that’s really, really bad. A little for him, mostly for you.”
Baekhyun knows this is true, knows he ought to be ashamed of his recent behavior, but he can’t bring himself to be. Whatever initial qualms he had have been shoved aside. He wants Jongdae, and Jongdae doesn’t precisely want him, but he’s better than nobody, and so Baekhyun acquiesces.
“I’m fine.”
“But you’re not,” Yixing replies and takes a long drink from his tea, “you’re not, and even Chanyeol has noticed and no one knows what’s going on, really, and everyone’s confused, but everyone can tell that whatever it is, it’s hurting you.”
“I’m going to be fine.”
“But you’re not now?”
Baekhyun glances up at Yixing, their gazes meeting and holding. There’s nothing but concern in Yixing’s eyes, and Baekhyun has to look away. He doesn’t know how to deal with that, doesn’t want to, not one little bit. He knows he'll have to, eventually, but he thinks he can deal with pretending for now.
The fourth time Baekhyun and Jongdae hook up it’s in Baekhyun’s room, while Chanyeol is out on a date. They’re not even drunk: Jongdae had booty called him and Baekhyun had agreed, because it was a Thursday night and he had nothing better to do. Jongdae is still loud, still eager, but he takes three fingers now, and Baekhyun lasts a little longer, hips snapping more regularly, kisses less sloppy.
“So Yixing told me,” Jongdae says when they’re lying together afterwards, Baekhyun too tired to get up and leave as quickly as he would like, late nights and early mornings no longer convenient excuses, “about… you.”
Baekhyun stiffens. He hadn’t expected it, per se, but it doesn’t surprise him, because Yixing worries too much and lets information slide at the slightest of pressures. Maybe, he supposes, he is bad at keeping secrets.
“What about me?”
“That you’re… interested in me. And have been. For a while.”
Baekhyun lets out a long, slow breath. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry?” Jongdae replies, getting up to pick up his clothes and put them on, “I… I don’t… I’m not…”
“It’s fine,” Baekhyun replies, even though it’s not.
Baekhyun doesn’t have sex with Jongdae again. Jongdae, in fact, fades out of his life almost completely, suddenly “too busy” to spend time with him or any of their usual friends. It doesn’t shock him at all, but that doesn’t mean it’s painless. Chanyeol supplies him with six-packs of his favorite beers, even if he doesn’t quite understand the magnitude of it all, and Yixing sits with him when he drinks, patient and comforting and just a little sad.
When Jongdae announces that he’s dating someone, Baekhyun doesn’t react. His mouth goes a little slack, maybe, but that’s about it. He’s numb to it, numb to Jongdae and his former affections, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone. He knows he’s still interested in him, that he wants him, and that he also wants to pick his brain and spend hours talking about nothing, but he knows that that’s impossible, now.
He deletes Jongdae’s number from his phone, instead, and does his best to forget. Everything is not his for the taking, even if he’s sure the few things he wants enough to go after wouldn’t mind being taken by him all that much, if they stopped to think about it.
Length: 2600 words
Rating: nc-17
Summary: Baekhyun will take what he can get, to a certain point. Written for challenge #9 at aideshou.
I Call Them as I See Them
(and Hindsight is Always 20/20)
Joonmyun rebuffs Jongdae on a Wednesday. The day sticks out in Baekhyun’s mind for a long time after because he gets a phone call from Chanyeol in the middle of composition seminar, which he answers because Chanyeol hasn’t called him since the time woke up, covered in puke, on the roof of Ewha Women’s University their first year. He excuses himself to take it, citing a call he’s been waiting for from his family, and ducks out into the hallway, jogging down just far enough that no one in the class will be able to hear him.
“Chanyeol? What’s up?”
“So Jongdae told Joonmyun at breakfast this morning and Joonmyun told Jongdae he’s straight and it’s gone about as well as you’d expect from there.”
He hears a retching noise in the background and winces. “He’s already wasted at two in the afternoon?”
Chanyeol sighs. “Yeah. I think I’ve got a handle on it for now, but can you come straight back after your class is over?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
Baekhyun hangs up and shoves his phone into his pocket. He really should go back to his seminar, but his mind needs a minute to process everything before he’s ready to tear into the section asshole’s most recent piece. He strolls down to the bathroom at the end of the hall, stepping inside and splashing some water on his face.
Jongdae has, since the second week of last semester, had a painfully obvious one-sided crush on the immaculately straight Kim Joonmyun, and Baekhyun has, since they started hanging out their first few months at university, had a very, very, very secret crush on him. He splashes water on his face again and wanders back down the hall, back into class. His professor asks him if everything is alright, and he says it is. Class goes back to normal and he forgets the brilliant biting critique he’d formulated on the piece that they’re looking at, mind still jumbled by the sudden news.
When class ends, Baekhyun starts off to his apartment, only to be cornered by Yixing halfway there.
“I’m guessing you heard,” is all he says. Baekhyun sighs. Yixing, somehow, is the only person in the entire world who knows about Baekhyun’s feelings for Jongdae. It had surprised him, at first, Yixing blurting it out one night after a couple of drinks, but he’d since gotten used to it. Yixing gave the sense of never paying attention (and he really wasn’t, half the time, like when Chanyeol was talking about his sexual conquests or Lu Han was rambling about sports), but he was sharply observant when he wanted to be.
“Yeah, Chanyeol called. He’s puking in our bathroom, apparently.”
“He went hard.”
“I mean he probably didn’t eat anything today.”
“Still. Are you going to be ok?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
Yixing claps him on the shoulder. “I can head over and help Chanyeol if you’re not ready to see him yet, you know.”
Baekhyun considers the offer. If he doesn’t head back, Chanyeol will probably realize something is up, and while Yixing’s not bad at keeping secrets, he tends to crumble under pressure, easily guilted into revealing just about anything. On the other hand, Baekhyun’s not really sure he can handle anything about the situation he’s going to come home to: he’s irrationally grossed out by vomit, Jongdae being overly drunk makes him sad, Jongdae being overly drunk on account of Joonmyun makes him sadder, and Chanyeol’s probably going to be irritating, because he’s either going to be cranky or weirdly amused and loud. He doesn’t particularly want to confront any of those things, but he also knows he’ll have to, eventually.
“Thanks for the offer,” he says, “but I think I should go home anyway.”
Yixing nods, patting his shoulder. “Well, if you want to talk just let me know.”
The scene Baekhyun comes home to is pretty tame. Jongdae is passed out on the couch, the bucket for their mop next to him just in case, and Chanyeol is pouring himself a glass of water in the kitchen.
“You missed everything, man,” Chanyeol tells him and pulls a face, “you’re lucky.”
Baekhyun laughs, trying his best to not let it sound too hollow. “How bad was it?”
“He was puking for about half an hour. So not the worst but… like you said, two in the afternoon. Also over Joonmyun. Joonmyun. I don’t get it.”
Baekhyun shrugs. He doesn’t really get it, either, but probably for more selfish reasons than Chanyeol’s. “To each their own?”
Chanyeol snorts. “Or something. He came over a couple hours ago, actually, with a bottle of rum, and I was trying to tell him to stop but he wouldn’t listen. Then I had to go to class, and when I came back he was sort of crying, and then he said he didn’t feel so well so I dragged him to the bathroom. He only puked in the toilet though. And I opened the window and sprayed some air freshener so it shouldn’t smell too bad.”
Baekhyun nods. “I don’t get it. Everyone’s already told him Joonmyun’s straight like, a million times.”
“I know. I think he just… had it in his head that he couldn’t be? Or wouldn’t be for him? I don’t know. He’s weird. He’s good at being stupidly honest with everyone but himself.”
He’s oblivious as hell, too, but I guess most people are, when it comes down to it, Baekhyun thinks as he shrugs at Chanyeol and pours his own glass of water.
A week later Jongdae has decided he is sufficiently ok to drink again, but Chanyeol still insists on going to the party he knows he’ll be at, and dragging Baekhyun along, too. Baekhyun knows it’s a terrible idea: he’s either going to be grumpy the whole time, or be grumpy and then drink himself to some state of idiocy that’ll probably encourage him to go after Jongdae.
When he starts in on the latter plan barely an hour into the party, he blames Chanyeol, because Chanyeol keeps poking at him and asking him why he looks like a wet cat, then decides to deal with his grunting replies by shoving a drink into his hand. Baekhyun downs it, and then another, and Chanyeol looks a little surprised.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asks, glaring maybe a little too intensively as he pours himself another cup.
Chanyeol shrugs. “I don’t know what’s up with you tonight man, but don’t be an idiot. I don’t want to take care of two puking friends in as many weeks.”
Baekhyun takes his now-full cup and wanders off into the crowds. He finds Jongdae easily. He’s talking to a girl Baekhyun recognizes from his piano class, and Baekhyun just sort of watches them for a while, drinking faster than he probably should, until Jongdae catches his eye and comes over to him.
“Hey, how’s it going?” he asks, already too close. Jongdae’s a clingy drunk, always has been, and Baekhyun is too. It is, he notes, the alcohol starting to sink in but not too strongly, yet, probably a recipe for disaster.
“Good. You? No puking tonight?”
Jongdae half laughs and half glares at him. “That’s not the plan, no.”
The alcohol is hitting Baekhyun fast and hard, his face getting warmer and his tongue relaxing. “Looking for a rebound?”
“Are you offering?” Jongdae asks over the lip of his cup, and Baekhyun almost chokes.
“No?”
“Oh,” he says, looking a little defeated, “guess I’ll actually have to try, then.”
Baekhyun just sort of nods. He wants to reach out and grab Jongdae’s wrist and pull him to him and kiss him, but he’s not drunk enough to be that impulsive yet. Every second that ticks by, the alcohol hits him more strongly, but he still knows what he’s doing, still knows that hooking up with Jongdae now, as an easy rebound, is not what he wants, not at all, and he’s going to need to wait everything out.
Except an hour later he’s downed three more very, very strong drinks and taken a couple of rounds of shots, and at some point Jongdae had started hanging off of him, and somewhere along the way they’d ended up shoved into a corner, lips sealed together and bodies pressed tight.
“My roommate’s at his girlfriend’s tonight,” Jongdae whispers into Baekhyun’s ear before biting into it, “come home with me?”
Baekhyun kisses him instead of nodding or saying yes or anything. He knows he’s probably going to regret this tomorrow but he doesn’t care-he likes Jongdae as a person, yes, but he has also wanted to fuck him for ever and he’s not about to give up that opportunity.
They stumble to Jongdae’s dorm room together, pausing along the way to make out in out-of-the-way alleys. They crash onto his bed, door barely shut before they’re side by side, yanking at one another’s clothes and throwing them to the floor. They make out, naked, Baekhyun sliding on top of Jongdae, hands roaming down his back and settling on his ass, pushing and pulling as he moans into Baekhyun’s kisses. Baekhyun thrusts against his hip occasionally, until he slips a hand between them and starts to jerk Jongdae off, the outside of his fist rubbing against his own cock. Jongdae moans again, long and loud, and Baekhyun leans in to kiss him, impossibly turned on because they’re both needy, even if for vastly different reasons, and Jongdae, so far, has been better in bed than anyone he’s been with in months.
“Can I fuck you?” Baekhyun asks.
“Yes, please,” Jongdae says, voice breathy but commanding, and Baekhyun sits up.
“Do you have lube?”
“Yeah, desk.”
Baekhyun gets up to rummage around in the desk before returning to the bed with lube and a condom in hand. He drops the condom at the edge of the bed, and Jongdae raises his hips to let Baekhyun start prepping him.
“Fuck me, please,” Jongdae begs once Baekhyun’s got two fingers comfortably rocking in and out, and Baekhyun nods, rolling on the condom and lubing it over before pulling Jongdae’s legs up and sliding in slowly. They’re both messes: drunk and loud and sloppy, emotions laid bare but incomprehensible to the other. When Jongdae comes, Baekhyun follows, but he pulls out and curls in on himself, Jongdae falling asleep sprawled across the other side of the bed.
Baekhyun wakes up, rolls over, and gets out of bed, Jongdae still knocked out. It's early, but he's never been good at sleeping when he's drunk. His mind wanders back to what had happened, and he's half ashamed and half turned on. Jongdae was a good lay, but he’d been interested in him for a long, long time, and he was not about to let himself become Jongdae’s fuck buddy while he continued to pine after Joonmyun, regardless of the fact that Joonmyun was entirely unattainable. His feelings for Jongdae went much deeper than sex-and while he wasn’t about to complain about fucking Jongdae, he felt awful about having let himself screw him while they were both drunk and Jongdae was trying to get over someone he cared-however irrationally-a lot for.
Baekhyun slips out of Jongdae’s dorm and heads back to his apartment. Chanyeol’s awake when he gets back, brewing a pot of coffee and staring out the window in a semi-haze.
“So. You’re gonna be Jongdae’s rebound?”
Baekhyun grimaces and doesn’t respond.
“Are you ok?”
No, Baekhyun thinks. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
“I didn’t sleep well, is all.”
Chanyeol wiggles his eyebrows, but the beeping of the coffeemaker cuts off whatever lewd comment he was about to make, and Baekhyun shuffles into his bedroom to get ready for a shower.
They hook up three more times, Baekhyun leaving earlier and earlier after each meeting. He hates himself for what he's doing, wants to stop, but finds that he can't. It's close enough to what he actually wants that he can pretend, the lines between what's going on and what he wants to be going on blurring further every time he and Jongdae have sex.
Yixing ask Baekhyun over a couple days after the third time, something about "catching up" and "doing work together". He sees through it but accepts the offer anyway, because he knows Yixing will probably just keep bothering him if he refuses.
“You can’t keep fucking Jongdae and not telling him the truth,” he says over steaming mugs of tea in the dorm room he shares with Lu Han.
“Why not?”
“Because that’s really, really bad. A little for him, mostly for you.”
Baekhyun knows this is true, knows he ought to be ashamed of his recent behavior, but he can’t bring himself to be. Whatever initial qualms he had have been shoved aside. He wants Jongdae, and Jongdae doesn’t precisely want him, but he’s better than nobody, and so Baekhyun acquiesces.
“I’m fine.”
“But you’re not,” Yixing replies and takes a long drink from his tea, “you’re not, and even Chanyeol has noticed and no one knows what’s going on, really, and everyone’s confused, but everyone can tell that whatever it is, it’s hurting you.”
“I’m going to be fine.”
“But you’re not now?”
Baekhyun glances up at Yixing, their gazes meeting and holding. There’s nothing but concern in Yixing’s eyes, and Baekhyun has to look away. He doesn’t know how to deal with that, doesn’t want to, not one little bit. He knows he'll have to, eventually, but he thinks he can deal with pretending for now.
The fourth time Baekhyun and Jongdae hook up it’s in Baekhyun’s room, while Chanyeol is out on a date. They’re not even drunk: Jongdae had booty called him and Baekhyun had agreed, because it was a Thursday night and he had nothing better to do. Jongdae is still loud, still eager, but he takes three fingers now, and Baekhyun lasts a little longer, hips snapping more regularly, kisses less sloppy.
“So Yixing told me,” Jongdae says when they’re lying together afterwards, Baekhyun too tired to get up and leave as quickly as he would like, late nights and early mornings no longer convenient excuses, “about… you.”
Baekhyun stiffens. He hadn’t expected it, per se, but it doesn’t surprise him, because Yixing worries too much and lets information slide at the slightest of pressures. Maybe, he supposes, he is bad at keeping secrets.
“What about me?”
“That you’re… interested in me. And have been. For a while.”
Baekhyun lets out a long, slow breath. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry?” Jongdae replies, getting up to pick up his clothes and put them on, “I… I don’t… I’m not…”
“It’s fine,” Baekhyun replies, even though it’s not.
Baekhyun doesn’t have sex with Jongdae again. Jongdae, in fact, fades out of his life almost completely, suddenly “too busy” to spend time with him or any of their usual friends. It doesn’t shock him at all, but that doesn’t mean it’s painless. Chanyeol supplies him with six-packs of his favorite beers, even if he doesn’t quite understand the magnitude of it all, and Yixing sits with him when he drinks, patient and comforting and just a little sad.
When Jongdae announces that he’s dating someone, Baekhyun doesn’t react. His mouth goes a little slack, maybe, but that’s about it. He’s numb to it, numb to Jongdae and his former affections, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone. He knows he’s still interested in him, that he wants him, and that he also wants to pick his brain and spend hours talking about nothing, but he knows that that’s impossible, now.
He deletes Jongdae’s number from his phone, instead, and does his best to forget. Everything is not his for the taking, even if he’s sure the few things he wants enough to go after wouldn’t mind being taken by him all that much, if they stopped to think about it.