Chapter Text
“I’m kinda seeing someone right now.”
The sound of the coffee machine. The jazz playlist from Spotify playing softly in the background. A college student buried in thick textbooks. Mango cheesecake on the counter and the smell of cinnamon rolls, freshly baked and wafting through the air. Baekhyun focuses on anything but Chanyeol.
He didn’t know how those 6 measly words could inflict that much pain on a person, yet the dull throb in his chest was a clear sign of a heartbreak. Baekhyun takes a deep breath, willing himself not to cry because the only thing worse than rejection is breaking down in front of the one who rejected him. Chanyeol, the wide-eyed giant whose ears stick out too much and is always somewhere in the middle of laughing and talking, who he’s trying not to look at, trying to look anywhere but his big brown eyes spilling with unspoken apologies and barely repressed confusion. He’s nowhere near smiling or talking now.
“Congrats!” It comes out weak and broken, sounding the opposite of what the word meant. Baekhyun winces and tries again, “I’m happy for you.”
“I’m sorry.” Baekhyun feels his heart sink, weighed down by Chanyeol’s deep voice and the unfamiliar familiarity of being in the café he’s established a home in with his favorite giant and feeling nothing but the cold settle in the bottom of his spine and the chill that shot straight to his heart instead of the warmth from the vanilla latte before him and Chanyeol’s sweater that he always stole because “you’re a giant, you have more body heat than I do so be a good friend and let me steal your sweater”
Baekhyun looks at Chanyeol properly for the first time that evening. He’s met with confused and lost eyes looking for the puzzle pieces to a picture he’s never seen before. “Ah no, I guess I was just too late.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“Hey,” Baekhyun reaches across the table and places a cold but steady hand on top of Chanyeol’s warm and shaky one comfortingly, as if he was the one getting his heart broken. “Don’t be. None of this is your fault.”
“When?”
“When what? The playlist? I made it a week-“
“No,” Chanyeol clears his throat, taking his hand from under Baekhyun’s hand and rubbing the back of his neck. He doesn’t meet Baekhyun’s eyes. “The feelings.”
The playlist Baekhyun made was his way of confessing to Chanyeol because he knows he’s never been good with words, always stumbling and stuttering his way through them. He has thought of writing it in a letter or maybe even something as ridiculous as sending him a meme but even thinking about his feelings for the taller always gave him palpitations and his trembling hands always got the best of him.
Baekhyun knows Chanyeol isn’t stupid. There were times that he knew his actions we’re a little more than subtle and maybe the lack of a reaction from the other end should have been enough of a sign that maybe Baekhyun shouldn’t confess his feelings. But it’s been long enough, he thinks, and he’s had enough of never knowing his place in Chanyeol’s life and if Chanyeol even thinks of him as something more than the witty, loud-mouthed (“I’m opinionated!” Baekhyun likes argue) friend who has spectacular taste in music and likes all the same movies and tv shows and likes to spend all his money on coffee. Which probably explains why he even named it ‘the im-confessing-my-feelings playlist’ in case Chanyeol didn’t get the gist and thought it was just another one of those playlists Baekhyun usually makes him listen to.
Baekhyun doesn’t reply immediately. He doesn’t really know when he started falling for Chanyeol either. All he knows is that by the time he realized he should do something, it was too late. “It’s been awhile.”
“Awhile? We haven’t seen each other in almost two months.”
“What, do you want a specific time and date?” Chanyeol laughs at this, the sound a little strained and forced. A feeble attempt to ease the slight tension in the air.
“The month would be fine.”
Baekhyun groans in frustration, throwing his head back a little for the theatrics. “I don’t even have an answer to that.” He shakes his head at Chanyeol, a small grin making its way to his face.
He’s dying on the inside, itching to grab his jacket and hail a cab home where he’ll probably spend the rest of his night binge watching Friends and drinking beer while laughing at all the jokes at the right time and acting like everything is completely fine and life is beautiful and he didn’t just get rejected by his favorite person slash potential love interest. As if his heart isn’t crumbling to pieces and all he wants to do is cry.
Baekhyun is good at multi-tasking.
Instead, he plays it cool. Drumming his fingers on his thigh to relax his nerves, playing a tune that suspiciously sounded like the song he’d ugly cry to as soon as he got in the cab on the way home. He sneaks a glance at Chanyeol who’s sipping his iced Americano with his brows knotted together, looking knee-deep in his thoughts, as if looking for the right words, the safe words to continue the conversation at hand.
Chanyeol clears his throat, breaking the silence and Baekhyun can’t find it in himself to meet the younger’s eyes. He settles on the latte he bought half an hour ago, now neglected and ice cold.
“Remember when I called you that one time last month? When you said you were at Chef Kim’s?”
Baekhyun takes a tiny sip from his cup, making a sound of acknowledgement at the back of his throat. Chanyeol takes this as a sign to continue.
“I was going ask if you were busy. I wanted to invite you home since my schedule’s been pretty lax and I’m wasn’t drowning in school work. I haven’t had any bookings for a shoot either.”
Eyes stubbornly trained on his latte, he takes another sip. “Ah well I was having dinner with Jongdae and Kyungsoo that night.”
“No, not that night exactly. But anytime you weren’t busy.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Can I ask?” Baekhyun is hesitant and careful. He sets his latte down and he’s looking Chanyeol in the eyes. “When did you start seeing someone?”
“Just this June.”
June. It hasn’t even been that long yet, only a little over a month. It was around late June that he made up his mind to confess his feelings for Chanyeol and it was around that time that he couldn’t wrap his mind around the thought of it. Baekhyun wasn’t scared of many things but having built up a wall around him all his life, baring his emotions to someone was pretty terrifying and he let it get the best of him.
It was probably because he’s gotten so used to Chanyeol always being there for him that he took Chanyeol for granted and thought he would be there to catch him when he finally tore those walls down and tossed himself from the emotional tower he’s kept himself in for too long. Because no matter what happened, through the years of piano lessons together and bumping into each other again on the first day of highscool in the school hallway on their separate ways to the cafeteria to the last few days of senior year where they spent it cutting classes to hang out at pizza parlors to watch Game of Thrones or whatever show they (Baekhyun) felt like watching, it was always Chanyeol and Baekhyun before.
But that was before.
The Chanyeol before him is taller now, with a deeper voice. He doesn’t cut classes anymore to watch whatever show on his laptop with Baekhyun because they’re in college and it’s stupid to cut classes in college even if Baekhyun really wants to. The Chanyeol before him still watches basketball and soccer matches in his university but he goes with different people now- a big group of people and there’s no space left for Baekhyun. He still plays the piano and stills plays basketball but he’s putting more interest into guitar and drums and soccer now. They still listen to some of the same music and watch most of the same shows but Baekhyun has grown in his own way too, choosing to invest more time in piano and neglecting basketball for writing and art. The Chanyeol in front of him looks a little more mature and has dark under eyes (he likes his coffee a bit stronger too) and Baekhyun knows there are nights that Chanyeol’s throws himself down on his bed the minute he steps a foot in his dorm, too tired to do his night skin routine.
Baekhyun thinks back to all those drunk calls and late night parked car talks and doing their night skin routine together over the phone- it’s mostly just Baekhyun washing his face and putting on serums and Chanyeol brushing his teeth while chattering away to pass the time. The midnight run to McDonald’s when they both got too hungry that time they were cramming their term papers. How they set up camp in Junmyeon’s café for midterm and finals week, studying for hours on end and unconsciously befriending all the baristas. The tiniest and unimportant things that shouldn’t really matter are the things he remembers the most and he knows it’ll be awhile before he can step foot inside this café without feeling all the sadness and nostalgia rushing back.
“All that aside, this is a pretty good playlist. You should keep making these.”
“I’m putting ‘the im-moving-on playlist’ as the title next time.” Baekhyun jokes, trying to keep the conversation light.
Chanyeol laughs for real this time. Not one of those fake, awkward, fill-in-the-silence type of laugh he usually reserves for people he’s not comfortable with. It’s loud and uninhibited, his laughter, his right eye twitching the slightest bit and he’s slapping the table in glee.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”
“I am”
“See? It’s a good thing I didn’t make one of those playlists where the titles make up a sentence.”
The younger chuckles in agreement, “I can always count on you to plan ahead.”
It’s roughly an hour later when they leave the coffee shop and Chanyeol offers to drive Baekhyun home to which the older declines politely.
The conversation that followed after his confession was just like any of their past conversations, light and teasing and consisted of Baekhyun making Chanyeol listen to SNSD’s latest comeback for fifteen times straight while singing along to it, ultimately being shushed and glared at by fellow university students in study groups trying to work on group assignments and not losing their shit and ending up crying over chicken pot pie.
“Promise nothing changes after this? We’ll still be friends?” They’re standing outside the coffee shop waiting for Baekhyun to hail a cab. But he’s stalling, opting to have small talk instead, trying to drag the night out for as long as he can because he doesn’t know if things really will be the same after tonight or if this conversation would be the last one they’ll have before they start treating each as strangers.
Chanyeol laughs and it almost sounds like a scoff, as if the thought of them not being friends anymore was as ridiculous as Jongdae not having the biggest crush on Junmyeon's best barista, Minseok. “Of course, my dearest friend. I promise.”
“Thank you, my bestest friend.” A cab stops just as Baekhyun replies and he turns to Chanyeol to say goodbye and good night but the look on the latter’s face was something that didn’t sit well with older and he knows he’ll probably regret not knowing what it was later tonight but for now he’ll settle on having the last words to preserve the moment, “I’ll get going now,” he says opening the car door and slipping inside, not giving Chanyeol the chance to respond and he lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and feels his heart clench a bit tighter.
It’s 2 am and Baekhyun lies awake in his bed, the coffee he drank still taking its toll on his nervous system. The tears on his cheeks have dried and the weight in his chest gone, only to be replaced by numbness and maybe hunger from all the crying he’s done. A particularly good playlist comes up and he immediately thinks of Chanyeol- even though he knows he shouldn’t. It’s too soon, he tells himself as he goes on the messenger app and sees the bright green dot, a telltale sign that Chanyeol is active now and he sends it. His cold hands are slightly shaking and he’s blaming it on the caffeine he drank over 3 hours ago when he counts up to 100 before Chanyeol sees it.
Baekhyun falls asleep at 61.