CHINGUX 2014: pitch fever (1/1) for sunlit
Title: pitch fever
Author: quid
Recipient: sunlit
Pairing/Focus: chanyeol/d.o
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: n/a
Length: 2130
Summary: Kyungsoo learns to stop worrying and love the bulge bracket.
Kyungsoo’s forehead creases as he examines his reflection in the bathroom mirror. His Brooks Brothers suit didn’t have the discreet nip and tuck of a tailored suit, but it didn’t have the faint frontal crease that signified something crude from JoS A. Bank, either. The shoulder pads jutted out just slightly - as noticeable as an underbite, or an oxford comma on a memo. The bleak lighting only emphasises the dark circles under his eyes. It could be worse, he thinks, and squares his shoulders.
Two weeks after he’d accepted his internship, news of the BAML merger had nearly thrown his neat summer plans into disarray. He’d already started scavenging for options in boutique firms when HR sent out a mass e-mail: Your offer of placement at Merrill Lynch will remain valid…
It’s a solid half hour commute from his apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, a stubborn distance away from Windsor Court. At 9 a.m., the floor is only just starting to fill, interns trickling in at a steady pace. Kyungsoo logs in, watching his calendar and e-mail boot up and refresh before opening up his homework. In the relative quiet, it’s easy to roll up his sleeves and dig in. He’s halfway through it when Jongdae flags him down an hour later, breakfast coffee in hand. “Hey,” he says. “Check your messages?”
Kyungsoo‘s reaching for his phone before Jongdae’s finished his sentence. It’s from Junmyeon. My office at 10:15. Bring pen and paper. Jongdae leans against his cubicle wall, checks his watch as Kyungsoo grabs his jacket off the back of his chair.
There are five chairs crowded into Junmyeon’s office, seemingly cobbled together from nearby cubicles. It’s nicer than anything he’s seen in the office yet: relatively spacious, with glass windows and an unironic motivational rock climbing poster. The phone on the table’s lit up, and Kyungsoo edges into a seat as a rustle of paper sounds from the other end. Junmyeon’s standing, flipping through a binder. He doesn’t notice Baekhyun until he lets out a soft huh of recognition, and Chanyeol stirs in response, as if coming out of a hundred year sleep.
On the first day of training, one of the Merrill Lynch interns had looked across the room and laughed, “This isn’t Wells Fargo.” A week and they’d settled into an implicit dress code: no more cufflinks or Sperrys or Birkin bags, a monotone sea of black and charcoal greys. Privately, Kyungsoo had pegged Baekhyun and Chanyeol with the superlatives “loudest” and “most perennially underdressed” of the Bank of America interns, but at least they’d both managed to pull on a suit jacket and were currently sitting quietly, waiting without so much as a leg twitch. Belatedly, he remembers one of Junmyeon’s initial e-mails - he’d mentioned bringing some of the BA interns on board, in some kind of HR move. Junmyeon speaks up, addressing the phone: “We can go ahead and get started, Minho.”
“Great. Start by refreshing the industry comps and pulling sector specific quals,” Minho says abruptly, picking up an invisible thread of conversation, and Kyungsoo hastily starts taking notes as Junmyeon shuffles his papers around.
By the time the meeting is over, he has a half page of incomprehensible notes, followed by Junmyeon’s instructions on the pro forma adjustments. Junmyeon hands his papers off to Jongdae, who makes a face at Kyungsoo once they’re out of the room. “Say a prayer for me,” he mutters. “I think the printers here are cursed.”
Baekhyun and Chanyeol’s cubicles are just a row down from his and Jongdae’s, but Junmyeon moves them anyway - there are empty cubicles scattered throughout the floor, a byproduct of the haphazard merger and a slew of second year analysts who’d gotten full time offers elsewhere. Kyungsoo spends the rest of the morning updating files, then deleting the messages Jongdae’s sending him through the company system - “I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER” - whilst waiting for another e-mail from Junmyeon. “Stop being dramatic,” he says, without looking over. Baekhyun’s slow motion slump in his seat starts a zombie-like reverse until his phone goes off, vibrating against the tabletop. He lurches upright to turn it off, pulling up Seamless with his other hand. Immediately, Jongdae leans over. “Is that the lunch order?”
“Come one, come all,” Baekhyun grins, valiantly ignoring Chanyeol’s who died and made you czar? in favour of scrolling through the menu.
Junmyeon doesn’t circle back until after lunch. He doesn’t seem to notice Jongdae hastily minimising Minesweeper, smoothing back a flyaway lock of hair as he smiles. “Ready?” he says, barely waits for a reply before continuing: “I’ll walk you through the scrubbing, and then I’ll have you take over formatting for the presentation.”
“He’s too nice for banking,” Jongdae says in an undertone, once Junmyeon’s walked them through the Excel work at a benevolently glacial pace and left them to it. “Maybe he’s a robot.”
Kyungsoo hums. “A robot would probably have better hair,” he points out, pulling up the balance sheet. He knows without looking over that Jongdae’s grinning.
“You’re right,” Jongdae says, ruefully. He props his chin on one hand, watching Junmyeon chat with Minho through the glass windows. “Maybe he’s secretly evil.”
Kyungsoo actually stops typing. “You should have this conversation with Baekhyun,” he says, after a silence. “I think he’d appreciate it more.”
Kyungsoo’s making a dozen last minute changes to the presentation when Minho claps a sporting hand on his shoulder and says, “Do you boys have bandwidth?”
Chanyeol stifles a laugh when Kyungsoo jumps a little, though his voice wavers a little when he answers, “Sure, boss man.” He looks about a minute away from laughing as Minho fills them in: it’s an IPO pitch, slated for Monday. “Don’t tell me you’re scared of him,” Chanyeol grins, once he’s gone.
On the whole, Minho’s one of the less intimidating VPs, but the word out is that he’s terrifyingly competitive at golf. He’d apparently beat Cho Kyuhyun two weeks ago, and Shim Changmin before that. Lawless, Jongdae called it. Badass, was Baekhyun’s opinion. “I was just startled,” Kyungsoo says sourly, as he reformats a footnote.
The file permissions flood in as he works. It’s another hour before he finally sends the presentation out to print and leans over, watching Chanyeol navigate a spreadsheet for a moment before he says, “Hey, move over.” Chanyeol pushes the keyboard toward him, and he taps out: F5, Alt+S, O, X, G, E, Enter. Chanyeol stops watching him type as the spreadsheet floods with blue. “Holy shit.”
Kyungsoo flushes a little, nudging the keyboard back into place. “I picked it up from Jongdae,” he says, shifting in his seat. “Saves time.”
“Huh,” Chanyeol mumbles, scrolling through the sheet. “Thanks.” Kyungsoo shrugs, then glances back at his computer screen as it pings with a printer error.
Baekhyun’s head pops out from behind the partition, watching Chanyeol steal a glance at Kyungsoo, who’s shuffled off in the direction of the printers. He sighs. “If he had more than looks to leverage in his dating equity…”
“He’d still be way out of Kyungsoo’s league,” Jongdae finishes, laughing, and exchanges a high-five with Baekhyun. Kyungsoo turns around as if on cue, zeroing in on Baekhyun until he shrinks in his seat, hunching meekly over his computer. Man, if looks could kill, he messages Jongdae, when the coast is clear, who cheerfully replies a minute later with: you’d be dead twice over.
By mid-afternoon, Friday is a pointless exercise in trying to sleep with his eyes open. It takes him a minute to recognise the sound of Chanyeol’s voice, another to decipher the syllables of his name. “-Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo.”
He startles when Chanyeol taps his arm, blinking dazedly as his eyes refocus on Chanyeol’s expectant face. “What?”
“Let’s get out of here,” Chanyeol says, voice hushed as he jerks his head in the direction of the offices. When Kyungsoo looks over, all of them are empty. “The last one just left,” Chanyeol says, then bulldozes ahead before Kyungsoo can reply: “There’s this Korean place in the neighbourhood with really good ddeokbokki, they’re always open late.”
The restaurant’s slightly out of the way, but it’s better than any of the usual first year haunts by a long shot. “Utilitarian,” Kyungsoo comments, taking in the decor. He says it too quietly to be heard over the bar crowd, but Chanyeol looks back and grins anyway, snagging them a table in the corner.
The concentrated yellow lighting flushes the tips of Chanyeol’s ears. He musses his hair, fidgeting a little as he checks his work phone, then says: “Hey, Jongdae and I were talking about the DCF homework earlier-”
It’s easy to fall into conversation from there, drifting from work to school until they’re interrupted by the waitress setting down their plates and a round of soju. Chanyeol fishes for a sliver of rice cake, relegates it to one cheek to speak: “Baekhyun looks like he fools around a lot, but he slept with the J.P. Morgan M&A bible under his pillow for two years. For luck.”
“I’m surprised that didn’t interfere with his social agenda,” Kyungsoo says drily, but he’s grudgingly impressed - he’s seen Baekhyun’s CV, had looked it up even before they’d both been assigned to the Investment Banking group. Call it curiosity: personality alone didn’t get you far in interviews, but Baekhyun, for all his dramatics, had rebuilt the P&Ls in record time, the second day in.
Chanyeol’s face has a hint of a flush when they step outside, but he walks Kyungsoo to the subway station, both hands in his pockets. Outside, he’s a little more subdued, trailing a half-step behind. “Thanks,” he says, finally, when they reach the top of the stairs.
Kyungsoo almost asks what for. Then he stops and takes Chanyeol in, standing there with a slight slouch, top two buttons undone. His sleeves are rolled up to uneven lengths, and he still hasn’t noticed he’s forgotten his jacket in the office. It’s the last part that makes him open up his mouth and say it: “I had a good time.” He lets a smile turn up the corner of his mouth, and Chanyeol mirrors it, full-force.
He wakes up on Saturday to his phone buzzing. He fumbles to disconnect it from his charger, squinting at the screen, and groans.
Forty-five minutes later, he’s at the office. He finds Baekhyun face down at his desk, alone. He doesn’t move when Kyungsoo pulls up a chair, clears his throat. Kyungsoo casually reaches over, peels a rubber band off Baekhyun’s rubber band ball, and snaps it against Baekhyun’s thigh. Baekhyun shoots up with a yelp, then sheepishly lowers his voice. “Not a morning person, I take it,” he says, a little hoarsely. “Chanyeol’s getting the coffee.”
Jongdae shows up in another five minutes, Chanyeol in tow. Jongdae had the unique talent of looking refreshed even when he’d been up to his elbows in numbers all night, mouth quirked in a resting smile. “He’s a monster,” Chanyeol confides to Kyungsoo, as he collapses into a chair.
The higher-ups are on the conference call, for once, which makes it essentially a two-person meeting. “Oh, I forgot you were there,” Changmin says, innocuously, when Minho breaks his silence to supply a number, and Kyuhyun laughs. When Kyungsoo looks over, Baekhyun’s head is drooping over his notes and Jongdae’s intermittently jiggling a leg as he writes. In between notes, Chanyeol twirls his pen through his fingers. There’s a certain reverie to it, watching the line of his wrist jump like a pulse. Kyungsoo slips the rubber band down to his wrist, waits for Kyuhyun to finish speaking, and snaps it. The sting only lasts a second. Instantly, the three of them still. He ducks his head under the pretence of writing, has to resist the urge to laugh. A moment later, Chanyeol reaches between them and starts to slide the rubber band off his wrist. When he steals a glance over, Chanyeol’s intent on his notes, grip clumsy and infant-like on his pen. Kyungsoo grabs his hand when he’s slid it past his thumb, pinky curling over the widest point of Chanyeol’s palm, and settles there.
“You’re breaking up the band,” Jongdae bemoans. “You’re Yoko.”
“Hey,” Chanyeol says, brightening. “That means I’m-”
“Today we lose one of our best men,” Baekhyun interrupts sombrely, holding up his glass of water.
“May Kyungsoo have mercy on his soul,” Jongdae says, raising his glass to clink against Baekhyun’s.
Under the table, Chanyeol’s knee bumps against Kyungsoo’s. For a moment, the look that flits across Kyungsoo’s face is all tenderness. Then he speaks up: “Shut up and eat.”
Author: quid
Recipient: sunlit
Pairing/Focus: chanyeol/d.o
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: n/a
Length: 2130
Summary: Kyungsoo learns to stop worrying and love the bulge bracket.
Kyungsoo’s forehead creases as he examines his reflection in the bathroom mirror. His Brooks Brothers suit didn’t have the discreet nip and tuck of a tailored suit, but it didn’t have the faint frontal crease that signified something crude from JoS A. Bank, either. The shoulder pads jutted out just slightly - as noticeable as an underbite, or an oxford comma on a memo. The bleak lighting only emphasises the dark circles under his eyes. It could be worse, he thinks, and squares his shoulders.
Two weeks after he’d accepted his internship, news of the BAML merger had nearly thrown his neat summer plans into disarray. He’d already started scavenging for options in boutique firms when HR sent out a mass e-mail: Your offer of placement at Merrill Lynch will remain valid…
It’s a solid half hour commute from his apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, a stubborn distance away from Windsor Court. At 9 a.m., the floor is only just starting to fill, interns trickling in at a steady pace. Kyungsoo logs in, watching his calendar and e-mail boot up and refresh before opening up his homework. In the relative quiet, it’s easy to roll up his sleeves and dig in. He’s halfway through it when Jongdae flags him down an hour later, breakfast coffee in hand. “Hey,” he says. “Check your messages?”
Kyungsoo‘s reaching for his phone before Jongdae’s finished his sentence. It’s from Junmyeon. My office at 10:15. Bring pen and paper. Jongdae leans against his cubicle wall, checks his watch as Kyungsoo grabs his jacket off the back of his chair.
There are five chairs crowded into Junmyeon’s office, seemingly cobbled together from nearby cubicles. It’s nicer than anything he’s seen in the office yet: relatively spacious, with glass windows and an unironic motivational rock climbing poster. The phone on the table’s lit up, and Kyungsoo edges into a seat as a rustle of paper sounds from the other end. Junmyeon’s standing, flipping through a binder. He doesn’t notice Baekhyun until he lets out a soft huh of recognition, and Chanyeol stirs in response, as if coming out of a hundred year sleep.
On the first day of training, one of the Merrill Lynch interns had looked across the room and laughed, “This isn’t Wells Fargo.” A week and they’d settled into an implicit dress code: no more cufflinks or Sperrys or Birkin bags, a monotone sea of black and charcoal greys. Privately, Kyungsoo had pegged Baekhyun and Chanyeol with the superlatives “loudest” and “most perennially underdressed” of the Bank of America interns, but at least they’d both managed to pull on a suit jacket and were currently sitting quietly, waiting without so much as a leg twitch. Belatedly, he remembers one of Junmyeon’s initial e-mails - he’d mentioned bringing some of the BA interns on board, in some kind of HR move. Junmyeon speaks up, addressing the phone: “We can go ahead and get started, Minho.”
“Great. Start by refreshing the industry comps and pulling sector specific quals,” Minho says abruptly, picking up an invisible thread of conversation, and Kyungsoo hastily starts taking notes as Junmyeon shuffles his papers around.
By the time the meeting is over, he has a half page of incomprehensible notes, followed by Junmyeon’s instructions on the pro forma adjustments. Junmyeon hands his papers off to Jongdae, who makes a face at Kyungsoo once they’re out of the room. “Say a prayer for me,” he mutters. “I think the printers here are cursed.”
Baekhyun and Chanyeol’s cubicles are just a row down from his and Jongdae’s, but Junmyeon moves them anyway - there are empty cubicles scattered throughout the floor, a byproduct of the haphazard merger and a slew of second year analysts who’d gotten full time offers elsewhere. Kyungsoo spends the rest of the morning updating files, then deleting the messages Jongdae’s sending him through the company system - “I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER” - whilst waiting for another e-mail from Junmyeon. “Stop being dramatic,” he says, without looking over. Baekhyun’s slow motion slump in his seat starts a zombie-like reverse until his phone goes off, vibrating against the tabletop. He lurches upright to turn it off, pulling up Seamless with his other hand. Immediately, Jongdae leans over. “Is that the lunch order?”
“Come one, come all,” Baekhyun grins, valiantly ignoring Chanyeol’s who died and made you czar? in favour of scrolling through the menu.
Junmyeon doesn’t circle back until after lunch. He doesn’t seem to notice Jongdae hastily minimising Minesweeper, smoothing back a flyaway lock of hair as he smiles. “Ready?” he says, barely waits for a reply before continuing: “I’ll walk you through the scrubbing, and then I’ll have you take over formatting for the presentation.”
“He’s too nice for banking,” Jongdae says in an undertone, once Junmyeon’s walked them through the Excel work at a benevolently glacial pace and left them to it. “Maybe he’s a robot.”
Kyungsoo hums. “A robot would probably have better hair,” he points out, pulling up the balance sheet. He knows without looking over that Jongdae’s grinning.
“You’re right,” Jongdae says, ruefully. He props his chin on one hand, watching Junmyeon chat with Minho through the glass windows. “Maybe he’s secretly evil.”
Kyungsoo actually stops typing. “You should have this conversation with Baekhyun,” he says, after a silence. “I think he’d appreciate it more.”
Kyungsoo’s making a dozen last minute changes to the presentation when Minho claps a sporting hand on his shoulder and says, “Do you boys have bandwidth?”
Chanyeol stifles a laugh when Kyungsoo jumps a little, though his voice wavers a little when he answers, “Sure, boss man.” He looks about a minute away from laughing as Minho fills them in: it’s an IPO pitch, slated for Monday. “Don’t tell me you’re scared of him,” Chanyeol grins, once he’s gone.
On the whole, Minho’s one of the less intimidating VPs, but the word out is that he’s terrifyingly competitive at golf. He’d apparently beat Cho Kyuhyun two weeks ago, and Shim Changmin before that. Lawless, Jongdae called it. Badass, was Baekhyun’s opinion. “I was just startled,” Kyungsoo says sourly, as he reformats a footnote.
The file permissions flood in as he works. It’s another hour before he finally sends the presentation out to print and leans over, watching Chanyeol navigate a spreadsheet for a moment before he says, “Hey, move over.” Chanyeol pushes the keyboard toward him, and he taps out: F5, Alt+S, O, X, G, E, Enter. Chanyeol stops watching him type as the spreadsheet floods with blue. “Holy shit.”
Kyungsoo flushes a little, nudging the keyboard back into place. “I picked it up from Jongdae,” he says, shifting in his seat. “Saves time.”
“Huh,” Chanyeol mumbles, scrolling through the sheet. “Thanks.” Kyungsoo shrugs, then glances back at his computer screen as it pings with a printer error.
Baekhyun’s head pops out from behind the partition, watching Chanyeol steal a glance at Kyungsoo, who’s shuffled off in the direction of the printers. He sighs. “If he had more than looks to leverage in his dating equity…”
“He’d still be way out of Kyungsoo’s league,” Jongdae finishes, laughing, and exchanges a high-five with Baekhyun. Kyungsoo turns around as if on cue, zeroing in on Baekhyun until he shrinks in his seat, hunching meekly over his computer. Man, if looks could kill, he messages Jongdae, when the coast is clear, who cheerfully replies a minute later with: you’d be dead twice over.
By mid-afternoon, Friday is a pointless exercise in trying to sleep with his eyes open. It takes him a minute to recognise the sound of Chanyeol’s voice, another to decipher the syllables of his name. “-Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo.”
He startles when Chanyeol taps his arm, blinking dazedly as his eyes refocus on Chanyeol’s expectant face. “What?”
“Let’s get out of here,” Chanyeol says, voice hushed as he jerks his head in the direction of the offices. When Kyungsoo looks over, all of them are empty. “The last one just left,” Chanyeol says, then bulldozes ahead before Kyungsoo can reply: “There’s this Korean place in the neighbourhood with really good ddeokbokki, they’re always open late.”
The restaurant’s slightly out of the way, but it’s better than any of the usual first year haunts by a long shot. “Utilitarian,” Kyungsoo comments, taking in the decor. He says it too quietly to be heard over the bar crowd, but Chanyeol looks back and grins anyway, snagging them a table in the corner.
The concentrated yellow lighting flushes the tips of Chanyeol’s ears. He musses his hair, fidgeting a little as he checks his work phone, then says: “Hey, Jongdae and I were talking about the DCF homework earlier-”
It’s easy to fall into conversation from there, drifting from work to school until they’re interrupted by the waitress setting down their plates and a round of soju. Chanyeol fishes for a sliver of rice cake, relegates it to one cheek to speak: “Baekhyun looks like he fools around a lot, but he slept with the J.P. Morgan M&A bible under his pillow for two years. For luck.”
“I’m surprised that didn’t interfere with his social agenda,” Kyungsoo says drily, but he’s grudgingly impressed - he’s seen Baekhyun’s CV, had looked it up even before they’d both been assigned to the Investment Banking group. Call it curiosity: personality alone didn’t get you far in interviews, but Baekhyun, for all his dramatics, had rebuilt the P&Ls in record time, the second day in.
Chanyeol’s face has a hint of a flush when they step outside, but he walks Kyungsoo to the subway station, both hands in his pockets. Outside, he’s a little more subdued, trailing a half-step behind. “Thanks,” he says, finally, when they reach the top of the stairs.
Kyungsoo almost asks what for. Then he stops and takes Chanyeol in, standing there with a slight slouch, top two buttons undone. His sleeves are rolled up to uneven lengths, and he still hasn’t noticed he’s forgotten his jacket in the office. It’s the last part that makes him open up his mouth and say it: “I had a good time.” He lets a smile turn up the corner of his mouth, and Chanyeol mirrors it, full-force.
He wakes up on Saturday to his phone buzzing. He fumbles to disconnect it from his charger, squinting at the screen, and groans.
Forty-five minutes later, he’s at the office. He finds Baekhyun face down at his desk, alone. He doesn’t move when Kyungsoo pulls up a chair, clears his throat. Kyungsoo casually reaches over, peels a rubber band off Baekhyun’s rubber band ball, and snaps it against Baekhyun’s thigh. Baekhyun shoots up with a yelp, then sheepishly lowers his voice. “Not a morning person, I take it,” he says, a little hoarsely. “Chanyeol’s getting the coffee.”
Jongdae shows up in another five minutes, Chanyeol in tow. Jongdae had the unique talent of looking refreshed even when he’d been up to his elbows in numbers all night, mouth quirked in a resting smile. “He’s a monster,” Chanyeol confides to Kyungsoo, as he collapses into a chair.
The higher-ups are on the conference call, for once, which makes it essentially a two-person meeting. “Oh, I forgot you were there,” Changmin says, innocuously, when Minho breaks his silence to supply a number, and Kyuhyun laughs. When Kyungsoo looks over, Baekhyun’s head is drooping over his notes and Jongdae’s intermittently jiggling a leg as he writes. In between notes, Chanyeol twirls his pen through his fingers. There’s a certain reverie to it, watching the line of his wrist jump like a pulse. Kyungsoo slips the rubber band down to his wrist, waits for Kyuhyun to finish speaking, and snaps it. The sting only lasts a second. Instantly, the three of them still. He ducks his head under the pretence of writing, has to resist the urge to laugh. A moment later, Chanyeol reaches between them and starts to slide the rubber band off his wrist. When he steals a glance over, Chanyeol’s intent on his notes, grip clumsy and infant-like on his pen. Kyungsoo grabs his hand when he’s slid it past his thumb, pinky curling over the widest point of Chanyeol’s palm, and settles there.
“You’re breaking up the band,” Jongdae bemoans. “You’re Yoko.”
“Hey,” Chanyeol says, brightening. “That means I’m-”
“Today we lose one of our best men,” Baekhyun interrupts sombrely, holding up his glass of water.
“May Kyungsoo have mercy on his soul,” Jongdae says, raising his glass to clink against Baekhyun’s.
Under the table, Chanyeol’s knee bumps against Kyungsoo’s. For a moment, the look that flits across Kyungsoo’s face is all tenderness. Then he speaks up: “Shut up and eat.”