[exo] three one-shots; pg
Three short pieces for EXO
Chanyeol/Baekhyun; Xiumin/Lu Han; Kris/Lay
Song title prompts
張芸京 - 喘息 | Jing Chang - To Take a Breather | Chanyeol/Baekhyun | PG-13 | 380
Baekhyun can’t breathe.
It happens whenever he sees Chanyeol. The process starts off with a lilt; a slight interruption to the steady in-out, in-out stream of air flowing from his trachea to his lungs, a millisecond pause, and then Baekhyun exhales as usual. The next breath in is panicked, fast, rushed, and Baekhyun holds it for a moment, scared, not wanting Chanyeol to notice, but then his eyes land on the plane of Chanyeol’s nose and the slight hollow of his cheeks and the movement of his lips as they mouth the words he’s reading, and Baekhyun feels is a slow burning his chest, a fast, arrhythmic thump in the space where his heart is, off-beat, arbitrary-and he realises that he’s stopped breathing and he’s just staring stupidly at this boy, this beautiful boy in front of him.
He starts gasping for air.
“Are you okay?” Chanyeol asks, frowning as he leans forward and peers at Baekhyun’s face. Baekhyun jolts, fingers reaching up to his lips instinctively. He half-nods, half-smiles, jittery and on edge.
“I’m-I’m fine. I was just. Trying not to sneeze,” he finds himself saying lamely, looking away from Chanyeol. When he looks back, the corner of Chanyeol’s lips are curled up into a smirk.
“Was it sneezing or was it because of me?”
“Why would it be because of you?” Baekhyun mutters, pressing a hand to his cheek. It feels flushed.
Chanyeol slams the book shut and walks over to Baekhyun, stooping down in front of him. His face is two inches away, his breath hot on Baekhyun’s face-and oh god, Baekhyun’s breath hitches and he feels his chest constricting and throat closing up and his heart pounding all over again. It’s that familiar giddy feeling, that euphoric feeling that only Chanyeol can give him. He looks into Chanyeol’s eyes, defenceless, and-
Baekhyun can’t breathe-because Chanyeol’s cutting off his air supply with his lips. Those lips of his, soft and yielding, yet sharp and staccato like static electric, and, Baekhyun thinks victoriously, they belong only to him.
“Not me, you said?” Chanyeol teases, pulling away. He caresses Baekhyun’s face and pecks him on the lips again. “I think you stopped breathing for an entire minute there.”
Baekhyun grins weakly. “Well, I guess you just take my breath away.”
BOM - Take 6 녹음실에서 | BOM - Take 6 Inside the Recording Room | Xiumin/Lu Han | G | 200
“Lěng,” Lu Han says emphatically, enunciating the single Chinese word. Minseok listens on, completely lost and exhausted. He’s been in the recording room for hours now, recording, recording and re-recording his parts, and he just can’t seem to get them right. “It’s the third tone, not the fourth.”
“I’m trying,” Minseok says tiredly. “Lèng, right?” When Lu Han puts his hands on Minseok’s shoulders and shakes him, smiling sadly, Minseok knows that he’s got it wrong again.
“Cheer up, it’s not that bad,” Lu Han says when Minseok takes his cap off and buries his face in his hands. He attempts a smile, but it falls short. The frustration is getting to Minseok. He feels an uncomfortable suffocating pressure building inside him, making him restless, and he wants nothing more than to call it quits and go back to the dorm and bury himself under his blankets. It doesn’t matter that he’s the oldest in the group, that he’s the trainee who’s been here the second longest out of the EXO-M members, because at the end of the day, he’s the last one in the studio-and the only one who can’t get his lines right.
And he’s not even singing.
4cus - 단발머리+고추잠자리 | 4cus - A Bob Cut and a Red Dragonfly | Kris/Lay | PG | 1120
When Wu Fan first meets Yixing, Yixing’s hair is cut short and he’s wearing baggy shorts and an oversized t-shirt with the school’s emblem emblazoned on it. They’re in the school playground. It’s summer in China. Yixing’s seven. Wu Fan’s eight.
“Wu Fan, right?” Yixing asks, grinning as he scales a tree. His right cheek dimples. Wu Fan simply looks on, mesmerised, half in envy because there’s no way he could climb up there with those gangly limbs of his, and half because he’s scared that Yixing’s going to fall out of the tree and crack his head open. “Hey, I can see a river! Let’s go play there.”
“We shouldn’t,” Wu Fan says, wary. They might get in trouble with the teachers, after all. Yixing shrugs and leaps out of the tree, landing on all fours, and Wu Fan swears his heart almost stops.
“I’m going anyway. Keep up if you can!”
Wu Fan ends up following Yixing to the river. Yixing scuttles along the riverbanks, picking up rocks and skimming them over the water. Wu Fan sits back, content with just watching. He spots a dragonfly lazing on a stalk of grass and he catches it his hands. It’s bright red, pretty, wings fluttering energetically-and it reminds Wu Fan of Yixing.
“For you,” he says, handing the dragonfly carefully to Yixing. Yixing clamps his hands together, peeping carefully through the gap between his thumbs. He smiles.
“It’s pretty,” he says.
Wu Fan thinks that Yixing’s smile is a million times prettier.
The teacher finds them at that moment, brandishing a broom and puffing heavily. Yixing shouts, lets the dragonfly free, and then they’re running, running away as fast as their legs will take them and laughing and fearing for their lives. They don’t get very far.
Wu Fan and Yixing grow up. They graduate primary school, and go to the same high school. Yixing joins a performing arts group. Wu Fan takes up basketball. Yixing makes a home onstage. Wu Fan owns the courts below.
“Good luck on your game,” Yixing says. “New duizhang of the basketball team.” He grins the same dimpled grin Wu Fan had seen ten years ago, and raises his hands for a double high five. Wu Fan gently places their palms together. His hands are bigger than Yixing’s, almost twice their size, and he curls the tip of his fingers over Yixing’s, lingering just a bit too long.
“Yeah. Good luck with your performance, too.”
Wu Fan’s team win the championships. Yixing’s group place first at the song festival. For a while, they’re two best friends on top of the world.
Wu Fan and Yixing enter their final year. Yixing stops singing. Wu Fan puts his basketball away. They sit their final exams, cramming together and cheering each other on through the phone at one in the morning, and then they graduate, teary-eyed and surrounded by relatives. There’s a drunk night of summer celebrations, inhibitions lowering, lowering, disappearing, and Yixing’s next to Wu Fan grabbing onto him for support and giddy and drunk and smiling that smile at him again, and Wu Fan can’t help but cup Yixing’s face in his hands, bring their faces closer, back Yixing up against the wall, press his lips to Yixing’s-
It all goes awry.
Wu Fan and Yixing stop talking. The summer holidays finish. Wu Fan applies to a university in Canada, adamant to forget (or maybe it’s just running away). He doesn’t leave a contact. He doesn’t say goodbye.
Time passes. A girl confesses to Wu Fan. He dates her. She dumps him. He doesn’t care. Wu Fan finds another girlfriend and spoils her, buying her this and that. After six months, she dumps him too, saying that he’s not interested enough. Wu Fan stops finding girlfriends and focusses on his studies instead. He graduates with first class honours and gets a job in as a finance analyst for Chinese clients living in Vancouver.
He never quite forgets.
Wu Fan’s pushing thirty and living alone when the red envelope arrives.
I’m getting married next month. To Jiaqi. She’s a girl I met during music composition classes at university. Please be here. I need you to be here.
Wu Fan presses it to his chest and sinks to the floor, back pressed against the door. He sits there, barely breathing. Twice, he moves to rip the paper, and twice, he’s unable to.
Wu Fan gets on a plane.
“I’m glad you made it,” Yixing says to Wu Fan at the reception. Wu Fan downs a flute of champagne. Yixing looks just as vibrant, just as lively, even after ten years, and all without Wu Fan in his life. “Thank you, Wu Fan. This means a lot to me.”
The woman next to Yixing-Jiaqi, Wu Fan supposes-beams up at Yixing and Wu Fan. “I’ve heard a lot about you. Apparently you two were best friends for thirteen years?”
“Yeah,” Wu Fan says back, meeting Yixing’s eyes. “Just best friends. Yixing’s an…amazing person. You’re lucky to have him.”
Yixing looks away quickly. Jiaqi laughs, leaning on Yixing’s shoulder, curling in comfortably, naturally, and it’s Wu Fan’s turn to look away. “Thank you. Do you have any wedding plans yourself?”
Wu Fan smiles bitterly. “Not anytime soon,” he says. Yixing bites on his lower lip, and the stabbing in Wu Fan’s heart intensifies, and-and then it’s too much to bear, because it’s Yixing’s wedding, and Wu Fan shouldn’t be making him feel uncomfortable like this. He wishes that he could go back to their childhood, rewind time back to when both of them were oblivious and didn’t know anything but carefree days.
Wu Fan knows now, that the only person that had been in his heart all these years was the boy with the short bob in those baggy shorts-but that boy’s grown into a man and found someone to love, someone worthy of his love, and along with that, happiness. Jiaqi seems like a lovely woman. She could give Yixing love, care and a family. It’s more than Wu Fan could ever offer.
“Congratulations,” he finds himself saying. “Be happy.” He takes something out from his pockets and pushes it into Yixing’s hands. He closes his hands over Yixing’s. “For you. I'm sorry for everything.”
Yixing slowly uncurls his fingers. A smile spreads on his lips. Jiaqi looks on inquisitively. The paper dragonfly sits on his palm, wings bright red.
“Pretty,” Yixing says, smiling that dimpled smile of his, and Wu Fan knows everything is alright.
a/n: unedited u___u. was meant to r&g had writer's block so.
Chanyeol/Baekhyun; Xiumin/Lu Han; Kris/Lay
Song title prompts
張芸京 - 喘息 | Jing Chang - To Take a Breather | Chanyeol/Baekhyun | PG-13 | 380
Baekhyun can’t breathe.
It happens whenever he sees Chanyeol. The process starts off with a lilt; a slight interruption to the steady in-out, in-out stream of air flowing from his trachea to his lungs, a millisecond pause, and then Baekhyun exhales as usual. The next breath in is panicked, fast, rushed, and Baekhyun holds it for a moment, scared, not wanting Chanyeol to notice, but then his eyes land on the plane of Chanyeol’s nose and the slight hollow of his cheeks and the movement of his lips as they mouth the words he’s reading, and Baekhyun feels is a slow burning his chest, a fast, arrhythmic thump in the space where his heart is, off-beat, arbitrary-and he realises that he’s stopped breathing and he’s just staring stupidly at this boy, this beautiful boy in front of him.
He starts gasping for air.
“Are you okay?” Chanyeol asks, frowning as he leans forward and peers at Baekhyun’s face. Baekhyun jolts, fingers reaching up to his lips instinctively. He half-nods, half-smiles, jittery and on edge.
“I’m-I’m fine. I was just. Trying not to sneeze,” he finds himself saying lamely, looking away from Chanyeol. When he looks back, the corner of Chanyeol’s lips are curled up into a smirk.
“Was it sneezing or was it because of me?”
“Why would it be because of you?” Baekhyun mutters, pressing a hand to his cheek. It feels flushed.
Chanyeol slams the book shut and walks over to Baekhyun, stooping down in front of him. His face is two inches away, his breath hot on Baekhyun’s face-and oh god, Baekhyun’s breath hitches and he feels his chest constricting and throat closing up and his heart pounding all over again. It’s that familiar giddy feeling, that euphoric feeling that only Chanyeol can give him. He looks into Chanyeol’s eyes, defenceless, and-
Baekhyun can’t breathe-because Chanyeol’s cutting off his air supply with his lips. Those lips of his, soft and yielding, yet sharp and staccato like static electric, and, Baekhyun thinks victoriously, they belong only to him.
“Not me, you said?” Chanyeol teases, pulling away. He caresses Baekhyun’s face and pecks him on the lips again. “I think you stopped breathing for an entire minute there.”
Baekhyun grins weakly. “Well, I guess you just take my breath away.”
BOM - Take 6 녹음실에서 | BOM - Take 6 Inside the Recording Room | Xiumin/Lu Han | G | 200
“Lěng,” Lu Han says emphatically, enunciating the single Chinese word. Minseok listens on, completely lost and exhausted. He’s been in the recording room for hours now, recording, recording and re-recording his parts, and he just can’t seem to get them right. “It’s the third tone, not the fourth.”
“I’m trying,” Minseok says tiredly. “Lèng, right?” When Lu Han puts his hands on Minseok’s shoulders and shakes him, smiling sadly, Minseok knows that he’s got it wrong again.
“Cheer up, it’s not that bad,” Lu Han says when Minseok takes his cap off and buries his face in his hands. He attempts a smile, but it falls short. The frustration is getting to Minseok. He feels an uncomfortable suffocating pressure building inside him, making him restless, and he wants nothing more than to call it quits and go back to the dorm and bury himself under his blankets. It doesn’t matter that he’s the oldest in the group, that he’s the trainee who’s been here the second longest out of the EXO-M members, because at the end of the day, he’s the last one in the studio-and the only one who can’t get his lines right.
And he’s not even singing.
4cus - 단발머리+고추잠자리 | 4cus - A Bob Cut and a Red Dragonfly | Kris/Lay | PG | 1120
When Wu Fan first meets Yixing, Yixing’s hair is cut short and he’s wearing baggy shorts and an oversized t-shirt with the school’s emblem emblazoned on it. They’re in the school playground. It’s summer in China. Yixing’s seven. Wu Fan’s eight.
“Wu Fan, right?” Yixing asks, grinning as he scales a tree. His right cheek dimples. Wu Fan simply looks on, mesmerised, half in envy because there’s no way he could climb up there with those gangly limbs of his, and half because he’s scared that Yixing’s going to fall out of the tree and crack his head open. “Hey, I can see a river! Let’s go play there.”
“We shouldn’t,” Wu Fan says, wary. They might get in trouble with the teachers, after all. Yixing shrugs and leaps out of the tree, landing on all fours, and Wu Fan swears his heart almost stops.
“I’m going anyway. Keep up if you can!”
Wu Fan ends up following Yixing to the river. Yixing scuttles along the riverbanks, picking up rocks and skimming them over the water. Wu Fan sits back, content with just watching. He spots a dragonfly lazing on a stalk of grass and he catches it his hands. It’s bright red, pretty, wings fluttering energetically-and it reminds Wu Fan of Yixing.
“For you,” he says, handing the dragonfly carefully to Yixing. Yixing clamps his hands together, peeping carefully through the gap between his thumbs. He smiles.
“It’s pretty,” he says.
Wu Fan thinks that Yixing’s smile is a million times prettier.
The teacher finds them at that moment, brandishing a broom and puffing heavily. Yixing shouts, lets the dragonfly free, and then they’re running, running away as fast as their legs will take them and laughing and fearing for their lives. They don’t get very far.
Wu Fan and Yixing grow up. They graduate primary school, and go to the same high school. Yixing joins a performing arts group. Wu Fan takes up basketball. Yixing makes a home onstage. Wu Fan owns the courts below.
“Good luck on your game,” Yixing says. “New duizhang of the basketball team.” He grins the same dimpled grin Wu Fan had seen ten years ago, and raises his hands for a double high five. Wu Fan gently places their palms together. His hands are bigger than Yixing’s, almost twice their size, and he curls the tip of his fingers over Yixing’s, lingering just a bit too long.
“Yeah. Good luck with your performance, too.”
Wu Fan’s team win the championships. Yixing’s group place first at the song festival. For a while, they’re two best friends on top of the world.
Wu Fan and Yixing enter their final year. Yixing stops singing. Wu Fan puts his basketball away. They sit their final exams, cramming together and cheering each other on through the phone at one in the morning, and then they graduate, teary-eyed and surrounded by relatives. There’s a drunk night of summer celebrations, inhibitions lowering, lowering, disappearing, and Yixing’s next to Wu Fan grabbing onto him for support and giddy and drunk and smiling that smile at him again, and Wu Fan can’t help but cup Yixing’s face in his hands, bring their faces closer, back Yixing up against the wall, press his lips to Yixing’s-
It all goes awry.
Wu Fan and Yixing stop talking. The summer holidays finish. Wu Fan applies to a university in Canada, adamant to forget (or maybe it’s just running away). He doesn’t leave a contact. He doesn’t say goodbye.
Time passes. A girl confesses to Wu Fan. He dates her. She dumps him. He doesn’t care. Wu Fan finds another girlfriend and spoils her, buying her this and that. After six months, she dumps him too, saying that he’s not interested enough. Wu Fan stops finding girlfriends and focusses on his studies instead. He graduates with first class honours and gets a job in as a finance analyst for Chinese clients living in Vancouver.
He never quite forgets.
Wu Fan’s pushing thirty and living alone when the red envelope arrives.
I’m getting married next month. To Jiaqi. She’s a girl I met during music composition classes at university. Please be here. I need you to be here.
Wu Fan presses it to his chest and sinks to the floor, back pressed against the door. He sits there, barely breathing. Twice, he moves to rip the paper, and twice, he’s unable to.
Wu Fan gets on a plane.
“I’m glad you made it,” Yixing says to Wu Fan at the reception. Wu Fan downs a flute of champagne. Yixing looks just as vibrant, just as lively, even after ten years, and all without Wu Fan in his life. “Thank you, Wu Fan. This means a lot to me.”
The woman next to Yixing-Jiaqi, Wu Fan supposes-beams up at Yixing and Wu Fan. “I’ve heard a lot about you. Apparently you two were best friends for thirteen years?”
“Yeah,” Wu Fan says back, meeting Yixing’s eyes. “Just best friends. Yixing’s an…amazing person. You’re lucky to have him.”
Yixing looks away quickly. Jiaqi laughs, leaning on Yixing’s shoulder, curling in comfortably, naturally, and it’s Wu Fan’s turn to look away. “Thank you. Do you have any wedding plans yourself?”
Wu Fan smiles bitterly. “Not anytime soon,” he says. Yixing bites on his lower lip, and the stabbing in Wu Fan’s heart intensifies, and-and then it’s too much to bear, because it’s Yixing’s wedding, and Wu Fan shouldn’t be making him feel uncomfortable like this. He wishes that he could go back to their childhood, rewind time back to when both of them were oblivious and didn’t know anything but carefree days.
Wu Fan knows now, that the only person that had been in his heart all these years was the boy with the short bob in those baggy shorts-but that boy’s grown into a man and found someone to love, someone worthy of his love, and along with that, happiness. Jiaqi seems like a lovely woman. She could give Yixing love, care and a family. It’s more than Wu Fan could ever offer.
“Congratulations,” he finds himself saying. “Be happy.” He takes something out from his pockets and pushes it into Yixing’s hands. He closes his hands over Yixing’s. “For you. I'm sorry for everything.”
Yixing slowly uncurls his fingers. A smile spreads on his lips. Jiaqi looks on inquisitively. The paper dragonfly sits on his palm, wings bright red.
“Pretty,” Yixing says, smiling that dimpled smile of his, and Wu Fan knows everything is alright.
a/n: unedited u___u. was meant to r&g had writer's block so.