[fic] How to Get Rich Quick (1/5)
Author: ofolivesnginger
Fandom: EXO
Pairing: Chanyeol/Baekhyun
Rating: PG-13
Words: 5082
Warnings: Adopted brothers.
Summary: Baekhyun hadn't expected Chanyeol to be so good at being famous.
A/N: Posted as an apology (oops.) Unbeta-ed and still in progress. Continuation of this drabble which was never meant to be continued but as always spun out of my control.
Part One of the How to Get Rich Quick series.
“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
I. How to Get Rich Quick
Baekhyun's nine days from turning 27 when his mom calls at four in the morning to tell him something he already knew.
"Why aren't you sleeping, mom?" he croaks out, voice hoarse. Two hours ago he'd fallen into bed half stripped, teeth unbrushed and face unwashed. He has an idea what she's about to say, knows it won't take long if he just gives the correct responses, so he doesn't turn on the light.
"Just got an email from Kris," that's Chanyeol's new agent, she's told him the first time one of these midnight greetings came, a week after Baekhyun left, "and he said he got Chanyeol onto the Strong Heart airing on the 8th."
It’s a strange choice of words. "Got him on there?"
"Well, Baekhyun, I'm sure--I'm sure Chanyeol asked for it to be arranged, I mean. Kris wouldn’t--"
Her voice thins out. Baekhyun knows a cue when he hears it, so he tells her, before she's got time to dwell, "Thanks for letting me know, mom, I'll make sure to catch it."
"It airs at 11:30, cancel your shift that day, hear?"
"Yes, got it. Get some rest, mom."
"You too, sweetie."
"Night, mom."
"Happy early birthday, boy."
Baekhyun chokes on his words. "Thanks, mom."
They hang up. Baekhyun sits on the edge of his bed for a while, in the dark. He weighs the chances of him falling asleep again, and stands up after deciding it's low. He walks to the washroom and washes up, towels off his face.
He hates him a little, a little more, for a minute, staring at his own face in the mirror. Hates the way his mom sounded so excited over this, the fact that she'll get to learn more about her son through a fucking television program. Like he really doesn't tell her anything anymore.
"My name is Park Chanyeol."
Chanyeol starts off with a little smile. He looks straight into the camera until the laughter dies down. The audience, they're quiet, because he’s quiet. Baekhyun's quiet. He holds on to his tea.
"I…I want to start by saying that I read things on the internet. Kris and I, we both read things on the internet, and there are rumors..." he leaves it there with a small laugh. "There are rumors that say I am adopted."
"And I just want to say that they're true."
The audience goes silent. Baekhyun stops breathing. He grabs for the phone and dials his mom, but he doesn't end up calling.
"When I was two months old, I was adopted by a couple from the care center, and I grew up calling them mum and dad."
"I was not aware of this until I'd turned five years old. They sat me down and we had popcorn and we watched Cars together and at the end of it they told me I came from another mummy and daddy."
Baekhyun remembers this.
"I have a brother."
"That was the first time he found out about it, too. Our parents chose five because we could still pass for siblings back then, physically, I mean. If you're watching this, Baekhyun, no offence or anything, but I kinda grew really tall and you-uh." He trails off. There are chuckles, lightening up the mood as quickly as Chanyeol wished it. Baekhyun puffs out a laugh, too, but his eyes are wide, and it sounds kind of hollow.
"We were treated like we had the same genes."
"Last time we spoke, Baekhyun was singing at a little diner-turned-bar after sundown, somewhere in Busan. He's good at singing. I used to always play guitar and he'd hum to it."
"I'd met my real parents once, when I was 13."
Everything stills. An then Baekhyun's dialing before the Chanyeol on TV takes another breath.
The phone drones, and Baekhyun's legs are shaking where his feet are badly tapping, and Chanyeol says "My mom and dad drove us across the provin--"
"Baekhyun?"
"Let me talk to him."
"-parents were expecting the three of us to--"
"He's sleeping right now--"
"Kris."
On the other end, Baekhyun hears an exhale, the wheels of an office chair. The Chanyeol on TV has his eyes averted, saying "--made tea in the kitchen, I heard footsteps running upstairs, and the voices of children."
Baekhyun wants to puke.
"Yo."
"What the fuck are you saying."
There's a pause when Baekhyun tries his best to focus on the breathing he hears on the other side of the line, the shuffle of blankets, pop of a joint and a muffled groan. The camera flashes to some girl group member holding a hand over her mouth. Baekhyun looks away as fast as he can.
"You're watching it."
"Of course I'm fucking watching it! What do you want, Park Chanyeol? Publicity? Sympathy? Is this scripted?"
"Baekhyun, I'm not lying--"
"The fuck you're not!" He spits. The cup half misses the coaster when he slams it down, and the crackle of glass on glass is loud in his empty apartment. It’s got that electrical jolt, like magnets snapping together. He can still hear Chanyeol's breaths, soft and even. "You were orphaned in an accident. That's what they told us. With the popcorn, that's what they said."
"It's not easy to explain some types of accidents to five year olds, so they generalized, Baek."
Baekhyun’s going to pass out.
"When then. Why did I not know a single thing if three-fourths of the family suddenly disap--"
"Band camp, Baek. Summer of grade 7. You were gone for three days."
Baekhyun says nothing, just breathes. Inhales and holds it. In the background Chanyeol says "--had contact until two years ago" and Baekhyun slams the mute down until all he hears is the clock on the wall and their synchronized breathing, the dead weight of the silence. And then Chanyeol says, "quick, Baek, turn the sound up, listen to this part--"
"No, Chanyeol, you don't understand--"
There's some mad shuffling, something smashing on a bamboo floor, and on comes some indistinguishable sounds from the background flickering past his ears-TV channels, he guesses--until it stops. There's some loud clatters for a moment, like a mic being set down, and then it's all quiet, save for the static voice of Chanyeol now coming through the phone to his ear, in sync with the mimes on the screen of his own TV.
"And what I wanted to say was," TV Chanyeol says through the phone, and on the screen his hands are laced, shoulders hunched. Baekhyun can't see his face. "This job, doing what I do, it sometimes gets busy."
"Baekhyun," comes a whisper, right by his ear, and Baekhyun shivers in his chair.
"And I sometimes forget to call home."
"For God’s sake-”
"Baekhyun, please."
Baekhyun's vision blurs, but he doesn't take his eyes off the screen.
"Things like asking my mother and father how they're doing, how are the puppies, what they're cooking for dinner these days."
"And…a year ago. I'd…done something very stupid, and I'd lost hold of someone else equally dear."
"My brother, and previous manager, Baekhyun. I haven't been the best family member. I don't know how else to tell you guys how guilty I feel.”
“I’m willing to bet that everyone here today unders-"
Chanyeol shuts off his broadcast then, and Baekhyun focuses on the images in front of him, blotches of colors he can’t make out clearly. People applaud in silence. Chanyeol doesn't cry, not on the screen. He hears the phone get slowly picked up again on the other end.
"Next time you’re not too busy to go home, we’re going to get together and talk about all this. But right now-"
"Baekhyun, wait."
He does. For seconds, and then a minute, holding his breath.
"Come back to me.” Chanyeol stammers out, and then “No, come back and work for me, is what I mean. Please. I know I have zero rights to ask for it, but even just for a little bit, Baek. I'm sending Kris on vacation and I could use your help. I could really use your help. Just for a little while. Please? We could go out and--have fun together. Again. We could just be brothers again, Baekhyun, if you just come home."
Chanyeol's voice cracks on the last word, and he sounds desperate like this, like he hasn't in years. Baekhyun tries to remember his face, how it looked when he wanted something this badly, but he comes up blank. He does see the rest of him in his head, though. Slumped against his sea of pillows, maybe kneeling on the floor now, still knelt beside the television set, or his surround sound system. The whole assembly is arranged to face inwards, draws the focal point to the space in the middle, makeshift stage used before when they jammed out to Guitar Hero or Just Dance 4. Maybe he's tugging his hair with the hand not holding the phone, toes clenching and unclenching in his white fur rug. If he's still beside the TV, his knees might hurt. The floorboards are hard. Slippery, too, always waxed. Baekhyun fell on it once. Almost brought the vase down with him.
"You don't understand, Chanyeol," he tells him. "I can't."
"Can't or won't?"
Baekhyun's tired. He wants Chanyeol to leave now. He doesn't think he gets it.
"G’night, Yeol."
He reaches over and slots the phone back into its holder. Baekhyun rubs his eyes, sets the mug in the sink, and goes directly to bed. Only in the morning does he realize he hasn't hung up properly.
Baekhyun doesn't accept Chanyeol's offer, but what he does do for the next month is keep a tight track of what goes down on the web under Chanyeol's name.
He Google searches "park chanyeol strong heart" and gets a bunch of articles, written the day after airing, with obnoxiously dramatized titles and he skips over all of them, just glancing the pictures of screenshots. He doesn't find anything beyond recaps until he clicks into youtube videos and reads comments.
I really hope no fans pester him or his family members...its their private lives...
+12 -0
i was one of the lucky fans that got to be insdie one of his interview recording rooms a year ago and the MC said fans were spearding the rumor that he was adopted T_T the part was cut for the airing i think but i guess it was true...
+25 -0
thank god these nice people adopted him 26 years ago
+2 -1
chanyeol ah, so strong...fighting!!
+1 -0
in reply to hotsplosh23 (show comment)
wow... his brother is really good looking too"
+0 -0
Baekhyun stops. He clicks the comment open. He finds a link to a forum post, and when the first post loads, he finds pictures of himself from middle school yearbooks he doesn't even own anymore.
He wants to figure out who this person is, holding these scans, if they were friends ten years ago, but it seems like it's just a compilation of scattered, sourceless pictures of their childhood, drifting and homeless on the web. Some of these Baekhyun can no longer remember being taken. It's like he's trying to compile the forgotten pieces of his childhood from guessing. Summer of 8th grade they both got bowl cuts, so this one must be then, two figures circled red on MS paint, both running on the soccer field. Baekhyun thinks the one labeled 찬열 is actually him, because Chanyeol's hair was lighter. He remembers this game, actually. It got too hot and everyone left. He moves on.
There are class photos. Chanyeol'd shown them to him years ago, grinning like an idiot shouting "hurry up, look--I was so fat in elementary, ha! Haven't seen these pics in ages," and Baekhyun'd frowned at the feeling that they were learning about themselves through strangers. That all the things they forgot about these two children belong to somebody else out there right now. They're the same pictures, except now there are two faces left unblurred, sitting side by side on the bench. Two smiling kids, trapped between these anonymous kindergartners, faces missing like scandals. As opposed to theirs: grade school yearbook photos, framed in circles, name, age, date of birth. Milk carton portraits of lost children.
These are all the pictures he finds of himself from years ago. He's hoping the fans would forget about it, but it hasn't even been a week yet. More things turn up throughout the next week and a half, masses of archives from fansites dusted off and re-presented, now with the focus on the blur behind the tall actor with the glasses, the one always seen clutching a Starbucks drink in one hand and wielding a phone the other. A collection thread of Baekhyun's shadows pops up, and it's the first time he sees himself from a third person perspective since he's turned 24. In some, he's PS blurred, like everything else in the background. In some he's a motion blur-sliding past the frame of the camera, figure abstracted by the haste of their movement, Baekhyun's reduced down to color palettes, some colorful apparition. Then there would be Chanyeol in the foreground, sporting some fashionable item of red-and that’s rule three, “have a mark to stand by”, Baekhyun'd told him once--vivid against the mundane colors. Clearly the focal point, he is. He does it well.
Every morning Baekhyun comes home from the bar he goes on the post and plays Where's Waldo with the new pictures while his tub fills. On the third week he gets a small fanclub of forty people in the subsection of another fan site. The day they hit 100 the first unbroadcasted video footage is released. It's 9 seconds long, featuring the two of them at some sort of a concert. There's a guy beat boxing on stage, and Baekhyun immediately knows where this is. A second later, his own face comes into the picture, and he looks stupid and horrified, jamming to the beats, and then the camera cuts to Chanyeol behind him looking even worse. Another second and the video ends. Baekhyun has the urge to send this to Chanyeol, or maybe to Kris, just to get a reaction out of the guy. He decides against it last minute.
Every evening Baekhyun leaves home to the bar and he sings for a few hours. The place is set near the edge of what downtown Bucheon encompasses, but the street it’s on holds a share of the glamour, the vibrant night life. It's a twenty minute walk from Bucheon Station, and Baekhyun's gotten used to dodging the people with his guitar case, flashing past neon department store signs until they are merely wisps of flames in his peripheral vision. He sings mostly slow songs, in a warm ambiance, to a welcoming audience. Some nights he collaborates with a group of guys some years older, fragment of a band that tried to hit it big in Seoul half a decade ago, like every other band formed in college dorms. On those nights he doesn't bring a guitar, just brings himself, live and breathing instrument under the dimmed lights of the stage. It's a classy place with lights that sooth more than they do excite. There are sofas lined along the wall and around a coffee table, right next to the fireplace. Some nights when Baekhyun isn't tired, he dodges into one of the little convenience stores on the way there and buys a stick of throat lozenges, maybe a pack of Virginia Slims menthol if it's a Friday. When he's not tired he sings right till the club closes at 3:30, or sometimes wraps up early to stay and chat, times when he takes a fancy to those watching him from the corner.
The past week Baekhyun's noticed an increase in the younger kids at this place, some probably fresh out of their teens. They're dressed just like anybody else, except it's obvious that they don't know their way well around, tending to huddle in large groups in inconvenient places. Baekhyun's also noticed the way they watch him play and sing, fixing him under a close scrutiny yet keeping a distance, hesitant to approach. Out of respect, maybe. Out of uncertainty. Dawdling about, each with a glass of hard alcohol held daintily in their fingers, yet giggling like gossiping school-children, leaned against the couches.
Baekhyun's known on the first day why they're here. The group gets larger. On the third day, he sings an upbeat love song, and catches the girls off guard when he beckons them closer, face a knowing grin. They've sat on the couches ever since, lined up in a row like beauty pageant contestants, each smiling sweetly as he sings. On Wednesday he wraps up at one, and stops them before they leave. "You girls want to stay and chat a bit?" He calls, barely off the stage. Their heads turn, eyes wide, and Baekhyun finds it cute that they don't realize how transparent they are. "You guys look like you've been wanting to have a word for days."
The bar cleans up while Baekhyun sits with the girls in sofas, arranged in a semi circle, angled towards his chair across. He drinks not so much under peer pressure, but out of simply an airiness and good humor that he hasn't felt in a long time. He's congenial, all of a sudden, carried by that easiness, the socialite slipping easily out from under his skin. One girl with chili red lipstick says Sorry if this is rude as a warning, but he knows her question. Yes, I'm Chanyeol's brother. Yes, I watched the show, it's true. I'm impressed you found me.
Tell us a story about the two of you, Baekhyun-ah. Tell us about Chanyeol when he was younger.
So he tells them. Really insignificant things anyone probably could have guessed. He knows exactly what they want from him, knows someone must be taking notes back there, so he tells him things that wouldn't be worth blogging about. He teases them, repeating things he remembers Chanyeol'd said on interviews before, things he'd wrote for him to say. "He used to play basketball for two years in high school. He failed the school dance team and never quite gotten over it. He's a huge dog person." His dog gave birth to a basket of pups last year, we know, and Baekhyun's a little tipsy so he's just hearing "his dog" when they press on. "He played guitar and joined a band in his senior year." With me, he leaves out. The girls are squirming in their seats, becoming increasingly agitated by Baekhyun's teasing, hot in their seats just as he wants them. There's a clock on a column behind their backs, and Baekhyun's watching it. He drones on, pretending to think about it. What do you want to know? Their breaths catch, and Baekhyun feels a little guilty, holding out the platter like this. Have you guys always been close? Yes, since I can remember.
Then why did you stop being his manager?
The minutes tick by. The soft background music stops part way through and nobody breathes after that. Baekhyun thinks he can end the night by hinting that the question has crossed his line of comfort, look upset as he gets up and leaves and watch them marinate in the heavy guilt afterwards. Maybe they'd be decent enough to not come back. That's what he usually would have done. Except that's not what he wants tonight, not really. Some of them have probably realized the boldness of the question by then, and the one who proposed it looks ready to launch into apologies, when a shadow of a bouncer presses against the back of the sofa and says Ladies, we're closing, it's time to go.
Baekhyun smiles at each and every one of them while they put on their coats.
Can we come back tomorrow? He nods, Yes.
They leave, and he gathers his stuff quickly from behind the stage. He pops in a lozenge and waves the staff goodnight, fumbling for the bus card in his pocket. Baekhyun feels sated, deep down in his bones. His vision's fuzzy, and it's started to rain outside. He thanks the bouncer for holding the door on his way out, and wonders for a split second what nut job wears sunglasses in a night club, and that's the last thought on his mind before he crashes face first into his mattress.
On Thursday the girls come back to watch him again, this time more reticent than before to approach him, adamantly hiding behind the cover of the sofas, large group dispersing, and Baekhyun feels himself getting back into his rhythm. Friday he doesn’t plan on staying long at first. Today only two of the girls came, two of the ones he’d pegged as the braver of the flock on the first day, ones here with clear intentions and questions for him, rather than simply enjoying the thrills of meeting their idol’s brother. During his first ballad, Baekhyun makes contact with the one with the long hair, who’s had her eyes on him the whole night like she wants to shut him up and drag him somewhere quiet. Half way through song three he starts to think it actually might not be a good idea. So Baekhyun plays along, making eye contact deliberately, tantalizing, teasing. He’s good at it.
He’s smiling in the general direction of the audience when he notices the security with the sunglasses again, standing behind the leaping flames of the fireplace, watching him, or at least head angled towards where he sat on the stool. Baekhyun sees him past the fire-elevated and exposed, crackling on the top of the cylindrical stone structure. The fire creeps up to his torso, red against the black suit and grey shirt, and from this perspective he looks like a photograph in the burning.
It’s only when Baekhyun finishes the last chord on his guitar and looks up at the girls that he realizes he’s seen that tie somewhere before. He looks back to him lurking in the shadows, except he’d stepped aside from the flames, and oh, well, shit. Baekhyun is pretty fucking sure now, no doubt that is who he thinks it is. The guy notices Baekhyun’s recognition. He smiles. Baekhyun’s good mood instantly plummets. Nobody else in the world has a smile that looks like that.
He sighs, long and slow. He bows, bids his audience goodnight, to some protest. “Sorry girls,” he tries to sound apologetic, but his eyes are focused behind them. Kris is grinning infinitely large now, and he takes off his sunglasses, smirking self-contentedly when Baekhyun purposely turns away.
He barely clasps his guitar case when he’s squeezing his way out from backstage. Kris doesn’t wait for him to catch up, just starts walking. Baekhyun follows easily, quiet until Kris’ woven their way to somewhere private enough for him. The light’s dim, and bathed in the fluorescence stands the green felt of a pool table.
“You play?”
Kris holds out a cue towards Baekhyun, picking up another from the table. Baekhyun calculates how the next few minutes or hours could play out and decides to take it, except he sits himself right on top of the table, holding his cue like a nobleman wielding a cane.
He’s not in the mood for games.
"So, when'd you cut your hair?"
Kris walks around the table, and Baekhyun almost sneers at the look he’s got on, like he thinks Baekhyun doesn’t notice his amusement, “Week ago.” He picks up the ball rack, twirls the triangle in his hands the way Chanyeol used to twirl his basketballs. No doubt, this is Kris’ game.
"It looks good on you."
“Thanks.” Baekhyun watches as Kris takes off his suit jacket. He rolls up the sleeves of his dress shirt even if the air conditioning’s cold. Baekhyun’s eyes follow him around the table, again, and again.
“Happy birthday,” Kris says quietly. He’s watching the cue tip grind away at the little chalk box he’s got in one hand. Baekhyun watches him set that on the floor, and position himself, testing the swing. He looks up at Baekhyun, who chuckles and turns away.
“Thanks,” he echoes his words. “I almost forgot,” and then clack. The cue hits. The triangle formation disperses in all directions.
Kris plays a game with himself. He doesn’t bother asking if Baekhyun means pass by the way he’s sat himself down smack dab onto the table, and Baekhyun’s mildly offended. Kris dodges him completely, sometimes nearly grazing Baekhyun’s ass with his strikes on purpose. Baekhyun tries hard not to scowl.
“You haven’t been reading my emails.” Kris says, conversationally, ramming number 11 straight into the hole beside Baekhyun’s thigh.
“Oh. Oh yeah. I’ve been busy.” Baekhyun tells him almost sarcastically, kicking his legs back and forth.
“Of course.”
Kris laughs at some untold joke. Baekhyun doesn’t like it. “What’s that supposed to mean.”
“Nothing.”
The guy’s uncharacteristically cheeky today, Baekhyun notes. Poised again, Kris strikes. The ball he aims at shoots off with a crackle, skims another one on the way and sets that one in motion. It’s two inches from rolling into the hole beside him when Baekhyun snatches it clean off the table.
Kris says nothing, just grins. Baekhyun’s tossing the ball in his hand, and Kris stares at it for a second, before moving again, settling for his next hit. That’s about enough shit for Baekhyun.
“Why are you here, Kris?” He sighs. He wants to get this over with. Baekhyun thinks he’s got an idea, Kris probably running errands for Chanyeol who’s too much of a coward to come find Baekhyun himself. Something to do with Chanyeol, at least. Baekhyun wonders how Kris tolerates being exploited like this.
Kris straightens. He probably senses the shift in atmosphere, Baekhyun’s hard no-bullshit look glaring dead at him. He puts the cue down on the table. “I’ll get to the point, then.”
He licks his lips. “We’ve been getting invitations from more talk shows, after the Strong Heart episode. They’re saying they want you on there with him. Some producers and hosts are saying they already know you from before and would like to bring you out from back stage this time, et cetera.”
Baekhyun’s quiet. He gnaws on his bottom lip for a minute, while the background music fills the silence. Kris seems patient, quiet too, though his presence is hard to ignore.
“So,” Baekhyun starts, “you’ve come all the way down here in your private jet to invite me to fly back with you, on behalf of movie star hotshot Park Chanyeol.”
“No, I’m not asking you anything. I’m just here to help you catch up on what you’ve missed, on behalf of myself.”
Baekhyun’s a little taken aback. Kris doesn’t ask outright, but it’s an obvious offer. Something passive aggressive, but Kris does leave Baekhyun with breathing space. Baekhyun’s only met Kris twice before, once when he himself signed over his old job to Kris, and once more at Christmas, driving a black limo into their middle class neighborhood, windows blacked out and everything. Baekhyun’s hated his style on the spot, but Chanyeol’d bit back at his sarcasm over dinner that it was the only thing they could get their hands on last minute, as if it was always available, parked in a garage somewhere. Kris was welcomed immediately to the family dinner, and Baekhyun never really figured out why Chanyeol brought him until he’d passed Kris in the hallway the next morning, dressed impeccably for seven, walking right into the guest room Chanyeol was staying in, and chanting in one of the fastest speeches Baekhyun’s ever heard every event on Chanyeol’s schedule from dawn to dusk, down to the minutes, simultaneously dragging the guy up and shoving clothes at him. They were gone again by noon, and that’s all Baekhyun knows about him. Doesn’t know how much Chanyeol told him, about the two of them. Doesn’t know who’s acting on whose will these days. He doesn’t know what type of manager Kris is, doesn’t know why he’s here if Chanyeol didn’t send him. It’s unsettling.
“Well, thanks for filling me in, I guess. Although you really could have just called.”
The atmosphere lightens up again. Kris smiles again-he’s smiling a lot today, weirdly. “And miss out on great drinks and great singing?”
Baekhyun cracks a laugh. “God, you’re such a cheese block.” Kris’ unrolling his sleeves, shrugging his shoulders. Baekhyun waits until he’s put his coat back on and straightened out the lapels. Then he brings up the cue stick he’d been holding, and jabs Kris dead center of his chest, keeping the tip pressed against his dress shirt. “Y’know, I miss when you were uptight. It was refreshing to be around.”
Kris unclasps his sunglasses and puts them on. “Sorry,” he says, clearly not. “Going on vacation.”
Something seems to ring in Baekhyun’s head.
“When?”
I'm sending Kris on vacation and I could use your help. I could really use your help.
“Tomorrow.”
“What’s Chanyeol gonna do then?”
Kris is walking away now, getting ready to leave, probably go back to his hotel and pack his bags for Hawaii, or the Maldives, or somewhere else with no responsibilities. Baekhyun wants to make him turn around because this question is important, dammit, but he doesn’t want to leave the tabletop. From the back he watches Kris button his suit.
Then Kris turns around, and he shrugs. “Good question,” he says, drops that on Baekhyun, really, to top off the evening with a bitter aftertaste.
It turns out that Kris had really been more of a warning for the phone call that’s to come two days afterwards. Baekhyun’s in the middle of brushing his teeth when his cell rings, and he picks up to Chanyeol on the other end of the line.
“C’mon, Baek,” he pleads. Baekhyun thinks Chanyeol sounds intoxicated, the way he slurs his speech. C’mon, Baek. Like before. Let me help you take that off-God, hurry-just, please…
This time, Baekhyun tells him, “give me three days”, despite every fiber of his body telling him to do otherwise.
Part II