Work Text:
Even after rehearsal, after the studio doors have slammed shut behind them and the music has been cut off mid-loop, the beat continues in the tired thump of their feet on the stairs. The carpark is still warm from the day, concrete beneath their soles holding onto heat like it doesn’t know how to let go. Distant traffic and buzzing streetlights stitch the night together.
Chanyeol hears raucous laughter floating down from an open window, somewhere high up in SM HQ. He lags behind with the kind of heavy tension that refuses to settle down, his hair still damp at the roots (the stylists have dyed it a pastel violet this time, which he dislikes because he thinks it makes him look washed-out), his shirt still clinging at the collar. He keeps tugging at the hem as if the fabric is somehow personally responsible for how chaotic the rehearsal was.
“You saw that, right?” Baekhyun says from a few paces ahead. “You saw him change it. Again.”
Following behind with a drink bottle in one hand and his phone in the other, Chanyeol hums something that could be considered agreement, but is mostly just exhaustion.
Swinging around in a half-circle, Baekhyun walks backwards for three steps as if he can’t help following the choreography even when there’s no stage. The lid of his drink catches the streetlight, a sheen on plastic and a thin line of condensation sliding down the cup and dripping onto his long, slim fingers. Chanyeol tries not to stare at them too long.
“I swear,” Baekhyun continues, “if I have to do that turn one more time at that speed, I’m filing an official complaint. Like — hello? My knees aren’t twenty anymore.”
Chanyeol snorts and takes a long pull through his straw. Cold fruit juice hits the back of his throat like a slap; it’s way too sweet for this moment, but it’s all he’s got. He can’t seem to stop his muscles from wanting to move to a beat that’s no longer there, and he can’t stop counting in eights. If nothing else, the sickly drink helps drag him out of the rehearsal room still vibrating behind his eyes.
“You missed the cue, by the way,” Baekhyun adds, narrowing his eyes at him.
Chanyeol frowns. “I did not.”
“Yeah, you did.” Baekhyun’s grin flashes quick and bright in the streetlight. “I saw you. You did the little—” he mimics it, a clumsy half-step that would be insulting if it weren’t so ridiculous, “—and then you looked at me like you’d never met choreography before.”
“That was a creative choice,” Chanyeol says.
“Oh my God.” Baekhyun laughs, throwing his head back. For a second it’s easy, the same as it always used to be, just noise and motion and comfort disguised as bickering. They’ve spent years making a language out of this. A kind of casual collision. It’s what they do when they’re too wired to be quiet.
But Chanyeol’s smile isn’t as full or honest as it could be. It’s something he puts up instead of letting it come naturally. Something inside him catches, like a thread snagging on a nail, and Baekhyun seems to notice because his grin falters before he puts it back into place the way a skilled performer can falter but still keep the show running. When he takes a sip of his drink, the straw makes a small hollow sound.
“You good?” he asks, a bit too casually.
Automatically, Chanyeol nods because nodding is easier and it doesn’t require words. Then, because Baekhyun doesn’t look satisfied at all, he says, “Yeah,” but he says it in the way that really means: just give me a bit more time.
Baekhyun keeps watching him anyway, his eyes bright as they always are, his face schooled into lightness as if lightness can solve anything. The condensation from his cup sticks to his fingers and he wipes them absently on his thigh. “Okay,” he says. “Then explain to me why Junmyeon hyung thinks we can tighten the bridge by two counts without—”
Chanyeol hears little of it. The sentences spoken in Baekhyun’s familiar cadence fall around him like rain that doesn’t touch skin, because suddenly the cold plastic cup in his own hand has become something else — glass, a sweating beer bottle. From a different kind of night in a different place entirely. And the memory, which has been mostly buried until now, moves inside him like it’s been waiting for a crack.
He lets out a sigh without meaning to.
Baekhyun stops talking immediately; he’s clearly heard the sigh, and maybe he hears the weight in it, too.
Chanyeol stares just past his shoulder at the dark outline of the building and the door they’ve just come out of. A smear of rehearsal lights still glows gently through a high-up window. It feels, suddenly, like they’ve stepped out of a machine but the machine has not stopped.
He doesn’t want to do this here.
He doesn’t want to do this at all.
But the words are so close to the surface now, and if he doesn’t say them, he knows he probably never will. He’ll swallow them again, and they’ll settle deeper, hardening into something permanent. The last year has been weird enough, difficult enough. Maybe it’s the adrenaline he still feels after a particularly long session with the band, or maybe it’s the underlying exhaustion that’s been dogging him a lot lately, but it has to be now. It has to be. Because he misses his friend. He misses the way they should be when they’re together like this.
“Baekhyun-ah.”
Baekhyun’s eyebrows lift. “What?”
Chanyeol feels his throat threatening to close up, but he forces himself to continue. “About last summer.”
The words land in the space between them and don’t move, and Baekhyun goes very still. For once, he is anything but dramatic: the pause, the hesitation, the deer-in-the-headlights change in him so clean and sudden it’s almost funny. Any other time and Chanyeol knows he would’ve laughed his ass off, but not now. Not right now. The straw stops against Baekhyun’s lips and his shoulders go stiff under his t-shirt. Even the small, restless bounce in his knees disappears, like his body has just shut down all unnecessary functions. For a moment, his face gives nothing away at all, a blankness so practised it looks like real calm. But Chanyeol knows this isn’t calm.
Then, slowly, Baekhyun’s mouth curves up in an almost-smile. It’s what he usually wears when he needs a shield.
“That’s not a topic,” he says, voice light but a bit flat. A joke shaped like a door.
No, not tonight. Chanyeol won’t walk through it; he won’t take the easy option.
“It is,” he replies.
Blinking once, twice, Baekhyun’s eyes dart away and back again, as if he’s looking for the right expression to put on. Something easy. Something normal. Something that will pull them out of this.
“You’re just tired,” he says. “We’re all tired. Rehearsal was… whatever that was. You don’t need to—”
Shaking his head, Chanyeol cuts in, quiet but firm, surprising himself with the steadiness of it.
“I didn’t laugh because it was funny.”
The carpark seems to narrow around them; the streetlights buzz louder, an insect-like sound that reminds him of crickets in the summertime. The air feels too open, like anyone could walk past and hear the shape of what’s happening. Nearby, a sports car whizzes up a street with a screech and a growl, but Chanyeol ignores it.
Baekhyun has fixed his gaze somewhere to Chanyeol’s left, past his shoulder, as if there’s something more survivable to look at than Chanyeol’s face. He takes another sip of his drink. The straw gurgles as he reaches the end, but he keeps drawing on it two beats too long.
“Okay,” he finally says. “Cool. That’s poetic. What is this, a song lyric? Should I be honoured?”
Chanyeol lets the deflection hit him and not stick; he’s had years of practise in letting Baekhyun’s jokes slide off him like water. Even so, this one is different. This one is sharper because it’s protecting something tender.
“I was scared,” he says.
Scared. The word feels heavy and unpretty in his mouth — it doesn’t fit the version of himself that he usually offers to the world, and for a heartbeat, he considers trying to take it back. But it’s here that he realises there’s no going back now, even if he wanted to.
Baekhyun purses his lips, and something flashes across his face, something real. Surprise, maybe, or anger. Then he laughs, but there’s no humour in it.
“You’re saying this now,” Baekhyun murmurs. “Here. In a fucking carpark.”
Heat flushes through Chanyeol’s whole body. It isn’t the same as embarrassment, though. This is deeper, darker, more volatile. “I didn’t know how to say it,” he says. “Or how to be normal after. So I did nothing. And then it became…” He falters, looking for the words. “It became a sort of rule.”
Baekhyun’s shoulders lift and drop in a small shrug, a gesture that says fine, sure, whatever, but his eyes don’t match it. His eyes look tired in a way rehearsal doesn’t cause.
And before he can stop himself, Chanyeol is already thinking back to last summer and everything that led them to here.
***
The lodge was the kind of place people rented for a weekend and then romanticised forever. Thick log walls smelling of pine and old, baked-in smoke; a fireplace they didn’t use because it was summer and the night air was already too hot; a low-beamed ceiling that made everything feel closer, more contained, like the world had been politely shut out. The others had gone out earlier, loud with plans. Someone had mentioned hot springs. Someone else had mentioned a late-night shop that sold fried chicken at unreasonable hours. There had been laughter, a door slamming, footsteps on the porch, the sound of their voices sliding away into the trees.
Chanyeol and Baekhyun stayed behind because neither of them particularly wanted to move. The day had been long, and big tours always made time feel strange, cities blurring, hotel rooms forgetting their own shapes, stages repeating like mirrors. They ate dinner at the large wooden table near the kitchen, their plates scraped clean and beer bottles sweating rings into the wood. The light was soft from the lamps. Outside the windows, the trees stood tall and still and sihouetted, and the lake reflected nothing but stars.
Yawning hugely, Baekhyun kicked off his shoes and turned sideways to sit in his chair, tucking one foot under him, the other tapping idly against the rung like he had too much energy for stillness even when he was tired. He was quiet, but it was the satisfied kind of quiet you often got after a decent meal and no pressure.
Chanyeol was quiet then, too, more relaxed than he had been in days. Possibly weeks.
After dinner, they drifted to the couch with controllers, the console chiming softly as it loaded. Chanyeol watched as the screen threw blue-white light across the room, turning Baekhyun’s face into something almost unreal. The annoying thing was that Baekhyun was really good. He played like he played everything, with confidence and just enough impatience, laughing when he won and laughing when he lost like victory was never the point.
“You’re cheating,” Chanyeol accused, watching his own toon get obliterated for the fifth time.
“I’m talented,” Baekhyun corrected. He sipped his beer without taking his eyes off the screen. “It’s a gift. Some of us are chosen.”
“Some of us are obnoxious.”
“Also true,” Baekhyun said.
Hours slid away, and the lodge grew quieter. Baekhyun turned down the volume on the TV and the game music looped softly in the background. Outside, insects took up an insistent chorus, but inside, the only other sound was the soft click-click-click of buttons, the occasional curse, and the clink of glass bottles on wood. As time went on, Baekhyun seemed to melt down into the couch; he tipped his head back against the cushions, his eyes half-lidded, even prettier in the low-light, and his controller resting against his stomach.
Chanyeol moved to the floor with his back to the sofa, partly because he was feeling a bit restless, and partly so that he wouldn’t stare so much. He stretched his legs out and draped one arm over his knee, fingers tapping an idle beat while he stared at nothing. The beer made him even warmer — too warm, in fact, and he considered taking a shower, but something about the stillness and quiet made him stay where he was. Every tiny movement Baekhyun made, Chanyeol could feel through the couch; he could even feel the heat of him in the air. After a while, the game paused itself automatically, the screen dimming. A message appeared across the centre, ‘Are you still there?’
“Am I still here?” Chanyeol muttered to himself.
“Huh?” Baekhyun said.
“Nothing.” Climbing back onto the sofa as his leg started to cramp, he blew out a sigh and risked a glance sideways.
Baekhyun was staring up at the ceiling like he was listening to something above it. Then, voice softer than it had been all night, he said, “You ever think about how weird fanservice is?”
“Weird?” Chanyeol laughed quietly, but something in the unexpected question made him tense in a way he couldn’t explain. “Weird how?”
Baekhyun sat up a little straighter, the couch sighing around him. “If we weren’t this… if we weren’t pop stars and we didn’t have to do fanservice,” he said, and waved his hand vaguely between them, “ I think something would’ve happened by now.”
Something? Chanyeol took a moment to analyse it and try to come up with a light, uncomplicated explanation for what it meant. But deep down, below the bravado, below the everyday easiness that he always carefully maintained, he knew. He knew what it meant. Heat spread under his skin like he’d been caught doing something wrong, and the room seemed to tilt. Even the sound of the insects outside felt like pressure, like a gathering storm he wasn’t sure he was ready to weather.
He opened his mouth… and nothing came out. So instead, he laughed, too quick and too loud. “Don’t start,” he said. “You’re drunk.” Although he knew Baekhyun wasn’t drunk — he’d only had two bottles.
Baekhyun was staring at him, and in that moment something in his face changed. Maybe it was an illusion because of the TV screen light, but Chanyeol thought he saw a sharpness, like a split-second of pain, before Baekhyun folded it away.
And then Baekhyun grinned. “Relax,” he said, and tossed a cushion at Chanyeol’s head. “I’m joking.”
Chanyeol caught the cushion on instinct and held onto it a moment too long before letting it fall to the floor at his feet. He didn’t grin back because his face wouldn’t make the movements. That look — that second of pain, he hadn’t meant for that, but before he could say anything, Baekhyun wiggled his controller like a baton.
“Come on,” he said. “Un-pause. I’m winning.”
Without a word, Chanyeol clicked his controller and their characters sprang to life on screen. But something in the room remained paused; he could feel it, hovering around them for the rest of the match.
Later, when they finally turned in, they did it as if nothing had happened. Baekhyun wandered down the hallway with his third beer bottle in hand, calling, “Night,” as he went.
Chanyeol answered, “Night,” after a moment and went to his room next door. He lay awake for a long time staring up at the ceiling, listening to the wood lodge settling around him. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see the imprint of Baekhyun’s anguished face behind his eyelids, just that brief moment that he had been one hundred per cent unguarded. And hurt.
And Chanyeol had said nothing.
No, he’d laughed, which was definitely worse. And in that moment, an unspoken rule had been born:
They’d never talk about it again.
***
Baekhyun leans slightly away from him as if distance can save him. His straw makes that small hollow sound again, but Chanyeol knows he’s just sucking up ice water by now. Eventually, he gives up on the drink and sighs.
“So you were scared,” he says. “Of what?”
God, Chanyeol could list a hundred things. He could say: of ruining us. Of making it awkward. Of being wrong. Of wanting it. Of not wanting it. Of being seen. Of changing something I can’t change back. But he doesn’t say any of that, because even while this might hurt them both, he wants to be honest, and he can only be honest in the way he knows how: blunt and inelegant.
“Of you meaning it, I guess,” Chanyeol says with a shrug.
Closing his eyes, Baekhyun’s jaw shifts as if he’s grinding his teeth on something bitter. When he opens them again, there’s something in them that looks deeper than exhaustion.
“Yeah,” he says, and he still sounds vaguely angry, but Chanyeol begins to understand that it’s not necessarily just him Baekhyun is angry at. “Well. You don’t usually say stuff like that without meaning it, do you?”
Chanyeol looks away but says, “I guess not.”
“Why do you get to bring this up when it’s convenient for you?” Baekhyun says. “You don’t get to—” He stops and swallows and tries again. “You don’t get to leave me holding it and then act surprised when it’s heavy.”
“Yeah, I know that,” Chanyeol says, feeling defensive all of a sudden. “That’s why I wanna talk. I really do.” He shrugs again. “I just started to think there was never going to be a good time.”
The tiniest amount of tension drains from Baekhyun’s shoulders, though Chanyeol can already tell it’s not enough. “Took you long enough to figure that out,” he murmurs.
Yeah, it has. Too long. He grinds his heels into the concrete, listening to the buzz of the streetlight overhead, wondering if things will ever feel good again, worrying they won’t. But he set this train in motion, so this is on him. And it’s not like he enjoys hurting Baekhyun — the total opposite. Originally, he thought this might help clear the air, maybe even make things better. But it hasn’t. Again, that’s on him.
Shit.
“I didn’t want to break anything,” Chanyeol finally says, and he hates how it sounds like an excuse. Like a weakness.
Baekhyun stares at him, and there’s no softness in him now. “You already did,” he says simply. “You just did it quietly.”
For a long moment, Chanyeol doesn’t know what to do, what to say, so he nods because this doesn’t deserve denial.
They stand awkwardly for a long time, neither knowing what to do.
“Look, whatever. It’ll be fine,” Baekhyun says. He turns and goes to a nearby bin, dropping his cup into it. “I’m going home. Need sleep. See you.” And then he turns on his heel and walks away, vanishing between the cars.
That’s it, then. It definitely didn’t go the way Chanyeol hoped, though now that he thinks about it, he isn’t sure what he was expecting. Part of him wants to call Baekhyun back or follow, but he knows him well enough to know when he needs space, so he doesn’t.
And as he turns back to SM HQ, he can’t help but think that he’s fucked this up royally by bringing up the past, and now there’s no way to fix it.
***
Even after a full day off work, Chanyeol’s muscles are still sore. At least the adrenaline has burned down to embers. His apartment feels bigger and emptier than it ever has, and he isn’t sure why. He spends most of his evening distractedly watching TV, making up songs on the guitar, or playing single-player games, his phone facedown on the coffee table.
He can’t stop thinking about how easily last night could harden into something survivable. How Baekhyun walking away like that could become the new version of fine. How time would do what it always does if left alone: smooth out the edges, bury the discomfort, let the rule reassert itself, set things back on track. Maybe not the same track, or the track he particularly wants, but still.
It would be easy.
But the thought doesn’t sit right with him.
Earlier, Junmyeon hyung had called to check in about the week ahead, the conversation drifting as it often does when neither of them is in a hurry to hang up. At some point in the conversation, without meaning to sound profound, Junmyeon had asked, “Hey, random question. If you weren’t doing this anymore, if EXO wasn’t a thing, what would you miss the most?” Sometimes Junmyeon hyung was attentive in ways he didn’t even realise himself.
Chanyeol had snorted at first and said, “The money, obviously,” slipping into deflection because it was always simpler.
Junmyeon had laughed, taking it for the joke that it was. “I’m serious,” he’d said.
Chanyeol had known he was serious because he always was about this type of thing. So he'd given it some thought. Bright lights and screaming fans and travelling the world and fast cars and meeting celebrities. But none of it had landed.
What had landed was Baekhyun, standing beside a beaten-up Hyundai Sonata with an empty cup in his hand, saying, You don’t get to leave me holding it.
Junmyeon had filled the silence gently. “You don’t have to answer now.”
But Chanyeol had already answered. He just hadn’t said it out loud.
Now, sitting alone with the glow of the TV lighting the room, he picks up his phone and opens his messages before he can talk himself out of it. He starts typing, then stops. Types again. Deletes.
Finally, he hits send before momentum can falter any further.
CHANYEOL:
Are you awake?
After ten seconds, to his surprise, the typing dots appear. But then they vanish. Half a minute passes, and Chanyeol sits staring at the screen like it might tilt the balance of the universe.
Then:
BAEKHYUN:
Yeah. What’s up?
The casualness is controlled and a little distant. Chanyeol gets that everyone has their moments, but distance has always unsettled him most when it comes from Baekhyun.
CHANYEOL:
I’ve been thinking about yesterday.
About what you said.
The dots appear again.
BAEKHYUN:
Okay.
Chanyeol can picture him easily enough: leaning back against his headboard, phone loose in one hand, or stretched out on the sofa with one leg hooked over the armrest, the television still on low, or maybe music playing. Or maybe he’s on his balcony, leaning against the railing with the city glittering behind him.
Sitting forward and bracing his elbows on his knees, Chanyeol types:
CHANYEOL:
You were right.
I did leave you holding it.
And I don’t want to do that anymore.
This time, the pause stretches. Letting his phone rest in his palm, Chanyeol glances around without really meaning to, and notes the empty takeaway container on the coffee table and the cushion shoved out of place where he’d kicked it earlier. The room feels slack and unfinished in a way he suddenly resents.
BAEKHYUN:
That’s a big thing to drop over text.
CHANYEOL:
I know.
I didn’t trust myself to stay quiet if I waited.
BAEKHYUN:
You’re clearly bad at staying quiet.
CHANYEOL:
Earlier today someone asked me what I’d miss if all this stopped.
I couldn’t answer at first.
The dots appear, disappear, appear again.
BAEKHYUN:
And?
Now Chanyeol types more furiously, trying to get it all out because if he doesn’t, he’s afraid it’ll come out wrong.
CHANYEOL:
I kept thinking about what it’d be like if you weren’t in my life.
I don’t mean just awkward or distant. But like, gone.
He doesn’t add anything else. He sets the phone face down on his knee and keeps his hands still, as if touching it again might undo what he’s said. The reply takes a while to come.
BAEKHYUN:
That is a really terrible thought experiment.
Chanyeol’s mouth hitches up into a smile.
CHANYEOL:
Yeah.
It was pretty brutal, actually.
BAEKHYUN:
I’m not interested in doing last summer again.
I don’t want another almost.
CHANYEOL:
Neither do I.
That’s why I’m texting instead of letting it cool off.
Another long pause.
BAEKHYUN:
What do you want, then?
The question leaves him no room to hedge, and for some reason, it steadies him as he types his reply.
CHANYEOL:
I want to talk but not in a carpark with a bin between us.
Somewhere we don’t have to perform being okay.
BAEKHYUN:
In person.
CHANYEOL:
Yeah.
If you’re willing.
When the response finally comes, it’s short, but it changes the entire night.
BAEKHYUN:
Come over tomorrow. Early evening.
We’ll talk.
Nervous warmth flutters low in his stomach.
CHANYEOL:
Okay.
He stares at his phone until the screen goes dark, and then sets it down carefully beside him as if moving too fast will shake the messages loose or change them. And for the first time since last summer, Chanyeol lets himself wonder what comes next without being afraid.
***
It occurs to Chanyeol as he takes off his shoes and lines them up by the front door, that he hasn’t been over to Baekhyun’s place as much in the past few months, and a few small things have changed. The shoe rack has been reorganised, and the small dish for keys has moved from the shelf to the console table. A new, unfamiliar pair of trainers sits near the door, still stiff at the seams, their soles clean enough to suggest they haven’t quite been folded into routine yet.
Beckoning him down the hallway, Baekhyun immediately vanishes into the kitchen and Chanyeol hears the fridge open. He makes his way through, aware of his hands and how his limbs feel too long all of a sudden, of the way his body holds awkwardly even now, even after the text messages that brought him here.
Padding over from the fridge, Baekhyun carries two bottles of water, one already a quarter empty from the swig he’s taken. He hands the other over and their fingers touch, a contact that sends a flurry of heat through Chanyeol. They stand a second too long, the space charged and awake with a thousand things unsaid that have accumulated over the last twelve months.
“So,” Baekhyun says, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms loosely. “You made it.”
“I said I would,” Chanyeol replies. He takes a sip from his bottle and then sets it down on the counter without taking his eyes off Baekhyun. “Thanks. For letting me come over.” It feels so weird to thank something that used to be so natural and happen so regularly.
Baekhyun shrugs. “I figured if we were going to do this, we should do it somewhere that doesn’t stink of car exhaust.”
Chanyeol huffs a quiet laugh and nods, and then he lets the smile fall from his face. “I meant what I said. About not wanting to do last summer again.”
“Yeah, I know,” Baekhyun says, and uncrosses his arms. He rests his hands on the counter behind him, leaning back, but not saying anything else.
Damn, now that they’re here and the floor is open for him, Chanyeol doesn’t know how to start. There’s so much he could say. So much he should’ve said a year ago. Only now, he can be honest in the way you only can be when you realise what could’ve been lost.
“Look, I was scared, like I said,” he begins. “You know how it is. I’m not always the one who just says what I think. Not deep stuff. And I never thought you’d just come out with something like that. I wasn’t sure I trusted what I felt, and honestly, I was worried you didn’t mean it or you were just being impulsive.”
Watching him carefully, Baekhyun tilts his head to one side. “And now?”
“Now…” Chanyeol says. “I feel stupid.” But he knows that’s not nearly enough, so he adds, “Because being here feels right.”
Baekhyun’s face softens, and the tension eases out of his shoulders. In one swift move, he pushes off the counter and steps closer. Up this close, Chanyeol can see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes and the familiar tilt of his mouth when he’s being serious without armour.
“Yeah. You know, I didn’t say what I said because I wanted something dramatic,” he says. “It was just already there. I wanted you to see it too.”
Chanyeol nods again. “I see it,” he says. “I see you.”
“You really did come here to be sincere,” Baekhyun says with a raised eyebrow. He’s more relaxed now, his body dropping into an easier pose, and that helps to relax Chanyeol, too.
“Yeah, I promised, didn’t I?” Chanyeol offers him a smile. A sincere one. “No more laughing off stuff when it matters.” Without thinking, he reaches across and takes Baekhyun’s wrist in his fingers and holds, his skin warm and familiar and at the same time different now. His pulse is beating fast. Still, probably not as fast as Chanyeol’s own.
“Okay,” Baekhyun says, leaning in ever so slightly. Chanyeol can see the laugh lines around his eyes clearer now, lines that show how Baekhyun’s generally a happy person, lines that make Chanyeol even more determined to keep it that way instead of letting stupid mistakes from the past ruin everything. “Because I don’t want to pretend anymore.”
It’s the most natural thing in the world to stoop and press his mouth to Baekhyun’s, and Chanyeol wonders what the hell he was so worried about. All of his fears bleed out of him, because this — this also feels right. And warm. And a little damp. He tilts his head and opens his mouth, and sighs when Baekhyun sinks forward and kisses back. Hands wrap around his arms and hold, and Chanyeol brings his fingers up to the line of Baekhyun’s jaw, where the skin is smooth and real and anchoring in a way that nothing else ever has been. All at once, the kiss is a secret confirmed and a promise made, a rhythm that’s totally different from dancing and performing. Different from any other kiss Chanyeol’s had before. Their bodies aren’t strangers, but everything about the moment is brand new, and Chanyeol kisses him harder, closing his eyes, sliding his hands down Baekhyun’s back to rest at the small where he arches slightly into him. He’s been working out. Jesus, he’s been working out, a lot more than Chanyeol knew by the feel of it, muscles more defined, all the lines and ridges of him pushing firmly against Chanyeol’s own body.
Baekhyun makes a fluttery noise at the back of his throat. It reminds Chanyeol of those adorable mewling sounds he often makes before he falls asleep, only these moans are not adorable. No, no. Holy hell.
Eventually, before Chanyeol gets completely lost in the citrus and salty-warmth of Baekhyun’s mouth, they pull back, but they stay close with their foreheads touching.
“So,” Baekhyun says. “No more rules.”
“No more rules,” Chanyeol agrees , and he knows for sure there won’t be. Even when things are difficult. Even when things are awkward. Because no matter what happens, it’ll always be worse than if he doesn’t have his best friend and — what, boyfriend? The thought makes his head spin — beside him.
Baekhyun grins and pulls him in for a hug. “You’re an idiot.”
“Ah, well, you knew that all along.” Chanyeol buries his face into Baekhyun’s shoulder and takes a deep breath of him. He doesn’t laugh.
And he doesn’t go home that night.