Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Kai was a junior, then," he says animatedly, "a hoobae in our dance club, and basically our president's bitc–I mean, errand dog."

(Sometimes Kai is there when he tells this story, and he can usually be counted on to interject petulantly, "Hyung! Xing-Xing's my boyfriend!" Occasionally, if he's in a particularly sensitive mood about the subject, he'll add an insult, too. "And you can't even dance!"

Chanyeol always ignores Kai when this happens, but the next person to consistently correct his story definitely gets treated better than that.)

"I was our club's Social Media Coordinator, and I was in charge of—"

(Unlike Kai, Tao is always there to hear his boyfriend tell their story, and he likes to playfully interrupt at this point to tease, "I'm pretty sure Yixing-ge said your title was Web Mistress, wasn't it?"

This reminder tends to make Chanyeol blush, but he normally just silences his boyfriend with a pleading kiss and then continues. It's not that he's embarrassed by the job he did for his favorite extracurricular; he just doesn't like that 1) the title implies female, and 2) when people hear it they thing internet dominatrix and not innocent high schooler who sends out mass emails and updates SNS.

"The point," Chanyeol pouts, "is that I did the social media stuff for the dance club, I'd gotten a little behind, and Kai was bugging me about it."

From there, the story basically tells itself.)

Chanyeol had finished the poster for the dance club recital the night before, and was supposed to send it out that morning, but he ended up more than a little distracted by the new kid on his bus. Huang Zitao was beauty personified, in Chanyeol's opinion, and he was sleeping so adorably on their way to school that Chanyeol felt compelled to take a creeper snapchat of appreciation. This was captioned "HES SO CUTE" and sent on to Chanyeol's long-distance BFF, Kyungsoo—after he'd saved it to his own phone, of course.

Kyungsoo's animated text in reply was nearly instantaneous, and came in right after Kai's nagging one. Obviously, Chanyeol read Kyungsoo's first.

From D.O.: You're such a CREEP

Kyungsoo had no idea about the truth of his message, though, because Chanyeol had way more sleeping bus pictures of Tao on his camera roll than just the one he'd snapchatted.

From Chan-Chan: YOU DONT EVEN KNOW

This was sent with four additional pictures he'd taken just that morning, and then Chanyeol, content that his best friend understood how much he liked Tao, moved on to Kai's text. As he looked through his messages, though, it took Chanyeol a few seconds to realize that his text about the new kid hadn't gone to Kyungsoo at all; instead, Chanyeol had accidentally responded to lKai and sent pictures of Tao in the place of the requested poster. He tried to remedy this issue by instantly sending a few panicky messages Kai's way.

From Chan-Chan: OMO. Ignore that last text. Wrong person.

From Chan-Chan: You didn't send that to Yixing, did you? He never checks his attachments. What if he sends it out to the ENTIRE SCHOOL?!

From Kai: Dude. Chill.

From Chan-Chan: BUT WHAT DOES THAT MEAN THO?!

Kai, the dick, had his "Read" on, so Chanyeol could see that the junior had received and looked at his message, but he was forced to assume the best when the bus arrived and he'd gotten no further response. Since he didn't get an email from Yixing with any suspicious attachments, though, Chanyeol also assumed his first assumption was a good one, and proceeded to resend his first messages to the originally intended recipient as if nothing had happened.

He was in the middle of texting Kyungsoo—drafting an additional "OMO I SENT THOSE TO THE WRONG PERSON FIRST"—when he tripped down the last of the bus steps and was startled at the saving grip of a strong hand on his arm.

"Careful," a deep and richly accented voice urged him softly. Chanyeol glanced up from his phone and was amazed to see Tao staring at him in obvious concern.

"I'm fine!" Chanyeol squeaked out, too flustered to realize that probably wasn't the answer his crush was even looking for.

Tao smiled crookedly nevertheless, and once he nodded and walked away, Chanyeol felt the need to brace himself against the side of the bus so he didn't collapse. It took a while, but he regained his senses eventually—glancing at your phone to realize you have less than two minutes before the last bell can do that to you—and rushed to class while sending a few more last minute messages to Kyungsoo.

From Chan-Chan: HE JUST TOUCHED ME

From Chan-Chan: OUR FIRST SKINSHIP

From Chan-Chan: I COULD HAVE BROKEN MY LEG HE SAVED MY LIFE

From D.O.: You're too dramatic, okay. Still, WHAT WAS IT LIKE?!

Chanyeol tried his best to surreptitiously read his friend's response, and chuckled when he saw that the first half of Kyungsoo's message was pretty characteristic, but that the second was clearly his best friend's attempt to raise his enthusiasm to Chanyeol's level. The Park boy appreciated it, but ended up unable to convey that to Kyungsoo because a sharp cough and a waiting hand from above left Chanyeol's phone in the hands of his first period teacher for the rest of the school day. He didn't think he minded too much, though, because Tao was seated roughly two rows in front of him for three of the four classes that Chanyeol had before lunch, and that was a much more pleasant distraction than Kyungsoo's pouty, grammatically correct text messages could ever be.

He didn't really notice until lunch, then, that he was the unusual subject of his classmates' interest, and even then brushed it off as general appreciation for his good looks—he had done his hair differently that day, after all.

"You still look like a dweeb to me," Kai commented from where he sat curled into Yixing's side. His smile was mischievous—even more so than usual, Chanyeol thought—but he seemed normal as he pestered Yixing for attention and was a nuisance to everyone else, so Chanyeol brushed it off. As disturbed as he felt by the idea, Chanyeol actually hoped that Kai's smile was due to getting laid, and not to embarrassing Chanyeol beyond belief by forwarding those creeper shots to their oblivious president.

"Respect your sunbaes, Jongin," Yixing admonished without glancing up from the choreography video he was watching on YouTube. Almost instantly, Kai flushed and offered a half-hearted apology to Chanyeol before pouting childishly at Yixing until the Chinese senior sighed and shifted so his younger boyfriend could wrap an arm around his waist.

"But it's Chanyeol," Kai muttered under his breath, to which the senior in question stuck out a tongue in his own defense while Yixing sighed again and rolled his eyes at their bickering.

"Um, excuse me," a voice interrupted their faux argument, and Chanyeol was quick to realize it was the same which had expressed such quiet concern while saving him earlier that day.

"Tao!" His voice was a squeak yet again and it made Kai roar with laughter, at least until Yixing had put down his phone, raised an eyebrow, and gotten his boyfriend to stop.

"Are you Park Chanyeol?" Tao asked, not really knowing which of the three boys at the table was his intended target, but speaking to the one he at least could recognize from the bus. When Chanyeol's eyebrows shot to his hairline and he nodded vigorously, Tao coughed in discomfort and informed the table's occupants quite politely that he'd come to respond to Chanyeol's confession.

"My what?!" Chanyeol wished he had his phone because it felt like only Kyungsoo would be able to understand what exactly was happening. "I've never confessed to you!"

Tao looked puzzled and it was so cute that Chanyeol just wanted to gobble him up for dessert. "I have email," he replied, holding up his phone as proof. His poor Korean made Kai laugh again, but Chanyeol wasn't quite sure what the Chinese boy meant, so he nudged the club president until Yixing sighed, for the third time, and asked Tao something in rapid Mandarin.

"He says he got an email from the club that has a picture of him sleeping and the words "BUT HES SO CUTE THO" in all caps written as a caption." Yixing's words conveyed quite the amusing and interesting situation, but the Chinese senior just sounded bored and went back to YouTube once he'd said his piece. "Don't make me regret hiring you as Web Mistress, Chanyeol," Yixing added, almost absentmindedly as he pressed play to start his video again. "Whatever email he's talking about, if it's from the dance club, that's on you."

Chanyeol was gawking at that point, not sure if he'd rather strangle Kai for looking so smug, or else hide out forever in a place where no one, but especially Tao, could find him.

(Yixing is around when Chanyeol tells this story about as often as Kai is, and if Chanyeol's narrative makes it this far, Yixing likes to scandalize everyone listening by correcting nonchalantly, "Strangling Kai is only between me and him." Kai is always as red as a tomato when Yixing shares this intimate detail, but always manages to blush a little deeper when Yixing's final contribution to Chanyeol's story is "In the bedroom, of course."

"Gross," Chanyeol always comments with a shudder before he tells his audience that he didn't end up strangling or hiding because Tao had been kind enough to remove any choice at all by speaking once more.)

"It said Park Chanyeol at the bottom." Tao held up his phone again as Chanyeol contemplated an escape route. "I have email," he repeated.

Chanyeol realized their cafeteria had only one viable exit about the same moment he realized what was going on.

"Yah! Kim Kai!" He shouted, interrupting Tao right before the Chinese student was about to say something else. "You told me you didn't send those!"

"I said no such thing," Kai sniffed indignantly while Yixing tried to hide a smile but failed when his dimples made a suddenly maddening appearance.

"Why you little!" Chanyeol was furious and wanted to kill his dance club hoobae for embarrassing him like that. He would have, too, if Tao hadn't cleared his throat again and reminded all three of the others that he was, in fact, still standing there.

"Um, excuse me." Evidently Tao liked to say the same things over and over again; Chanyeol thought it was sweet, Kai thought it was weird, and as a KSL student himself, Yixing recognized it as a sign of discomfort and a chance to regroup. Whatever it was, though, Tao continued in that curling, soft, beautifully accented way of his, and said, "Can I accept the confession now?"

This he asked to Yixing, as the obvious eldest and only other Chinese of the group, but it was Kai who overcame his shock first to respond, "Wait wait!"

Tao didn't understand. "Why am I waiting?"

"So cute," Chanyeol groaned like he was in physical pain before he set an endearing gaze on his crush. "Figure of speech," he explained succinctly. "And you're serious? You want to accept me?"

Kai scoffed at Tao's shy nod. "Seriously, though, wait," he said again. He pointed at Chanyeol accusingly. "You didn't even confess!" When Chanyeol grinned happily and just sort of shrugged, Kai turned his disbelief onto their group's newest addition. "And you!" He was indignant. "You've been here for all of three weeks. You don't even know each other that well!"

This time, it was Tao who shrugged, and Yixing who answered. "Attraction has no time constraint, Jongin," he educated wisely. Kai looked absolutely mollified as his boyfriend questioned sagely, "And what does it even mean to know someone well? Do I know you well? Do you know me?"

"If we're talking in the Biblical sense," Chanyeol started to joke, temporarily forgetting that Tao wasn't yet used to Chanyeol's personal brand of hilarious, but awkward. When he suddenly remembered, though, his words caught in his throat and he turned red choking on them while Kai glanced at his boyfriend quickly, then began laughing once Yixing made no indication that Kai couldn't.

Surprisingly, Tao was laughing too. "When you turn red," he told Chanyeol with a winning smile, "so do your ears. I like it."

Chanyeol really started blushing then, and Kai, who'd stopped laughing to cling to Yixing again, rolled his eyes dramatically.

"Young love. Bleh." His tone was disdainful, even as he hung on his boyfriend and watched Chanyeol invite Tao to sit comfortably with them.

"It's your fault," Yixing informed Kai knowledgeably, hinting that he was possibly much more aware than anyone else realized, and making Kai whine that his boyfriend was never on his side. "You're right," Yixing whispered in Kai's ear as the other two lovebirds inched awkwardly closed and got to know each other better, "But last I checked, you really liked me above you, and inside you, and on top of you, and—"

("Can we not?" Kai is always flustered when Chanyeol tells this point. Yixing never seems to care, but Kai, at least, is embarrassed that Chanyeol heard their intimate little conversation. "You were supposed to be flirting with Tao!"

"Why?" Chanyeol always bickers back to restart an argument they've had many times before. "He'd already accepted my accidental confession!"

"You're welcome!" Kai shouts before collapsing into Yixing's waiting arms. Yixing usually just rolls his eyes and sighs—it's his signature response, even now—saying nothing, but nodding for Chanyeol to continue before things get out of hand. Sometimes things don't, and Chanyeol's story reaches its satisfying end. But sometimes things do, and Chanyeol and Kai end up bickering so animatedly that they don't even realize when Tao and Yixing go off together to get drinks on their own.)

"I'm sorry you have to listen to this," Chanyeol blushed as he apologized to Tao for his two friends' oblivious conversation. He added sheepishly, "I'd say they aren't always like this, but, well, they are, so..." Other than that explanation, he didn't really have anything else to say other than a quietly resigned, "If you'd like to take it back—you're acceptance, I mean—you can. I don't want you to regret saying yes, especially after hearing that. Kai was right, after all, we barely know each other."

Tao shook his head quickly, though, and the vehemency of the action gave Chanyeol hope. "I never said yes to anything," Tao countered in confusion. "Only that I accept." He glanced shyly at Chanyeol as he mumbled, "I don't know about in Korea, but in China, 'I accept' is for confession and 'yes' is for dates."

Chanyeol wasn't quite sure if Tao meant dates as in more than one, because the other boy clearly had a problem with remembering the use of articles, at the very least, but Chanyeol decided it didn't matter; he'd take what he could get.

"You want to go on a date with me?" He asked, not in the sense of actually asking Tao out, just out of shock, really.

"Yes?" For the umpteenth time, Tao was confused. "Isn't that what happens after confession? We date?"

"Or you skip straight to the good stuff," Yixing muttered, as Kai blushed and Tao scratched the back of his neck like he didn't understand. "Like we did," Yixing added.

"Yeah," Chanyeol argued back, "and now Kai's got some weird Daddy kink thing going with you. If that's even what it's called." He looked at Tao and falsely shuddered. "I don't even know."

Tao laughed, it was funny, but mostly just because there was something about Chanyeol that made him happy. When Chanyeol cleared his throat and tried looking serious, all of a sudden, before asking tentatively, "So, date?" that made Tao even happier.

Chanyeol was pretty ecstatic too, and when the time came for him to get his phone back, the very first thing he did, even before reading all of Kyungsoo's new messages, was to send some of his own.

From Chan-Chan: WHAT IS HAPPENING

From Chan-Chan: I ASKED HIM OUT AND HE ACTUALLY SAID YES

From Chan-Chan: I THINK I DIED AND WENT TO HEAVEN

Kyungsoo's response was pretty satisfyingly entertaining and still makes Kai annoyed, even to this day.

From D.O.: Was Yixing's baby boyfriend there? If yes, *singing* OO HEAVEN IS A PLACE ON EARTH *bowing*

Chanyeol thought his friend was really weird sometimes, but he appreciated the enthusiasm regardless, and laughed with Tao over the silliness of Kyungsoo's message as they sat side by side, clammy hand in clammy hand, and rode the bus home. Together.

("That song is a classic," Kyungsoo defends, if he's there, which isn't often. "And I was referring to your message about dying and going to heaven," he defends himself. "I meant that if Kai was there then it clearly wasn't heaven—"

Very, very rarely, all five of them are together while Chanyeol tells this story, and it's here that Kai will interject with yet another insulted "Yah!"

But Kyungsoo and Chanyeol are friends for a reason, and Kyungsoo ignores Kai just as shamelessly as Chanyeol always does. He never bothers finishing his explanation, though, so when Chanyeol tells his story—and on those admittedly rare occasions when he, Tao, Yixing, Kai, and Kyungsoo are all together to hear it—it tends to finish exactly where it began: with Kai.)