The Lotto comeback posters make their way around town. Baekhyun slides into his assigned seat next to Chanyeol at yet another music show, and something clicks in his head when Chanyeol slings a casual arm around the back of his seat. He's missed this. Not this specifically, because what even is this, but just... something.

Maybe it’s reflexive by now. Or maybe Chanyeol is just gearing up for their next promo cycle, which, Baekhyun knows, will involve a lot of touching, a lot of accidentally-on-purpose glances, a lot of fan videos slowed down to capture the exact angle of Baekhyun’s face as he stares up at Chanyeol and the fifth highest upvoted comment wonders if he’s really in love with Chanyeol or just a damn good actor. And the first most upvoted reply wonders if the fifth most upvoted commenter needs an extra ticket in train compartments to fit in that delusion.

“Hey,” Chanyeol says, eyes still on the stage.

(For the record; he’s not. He’s not a good actor at all.)

-

He learns that, ironically enough, a couple of months prior, on the Bobogyungsim set. Maybe this would have been handy information to have in his arsenal before he joined it. But instead, he’s stuck on his tenth retake and everyone around him is fidgeting and trying not to yell because he’s EXO’s Baekhyun. He doesn't know what it says about him that he's so bad at basically playing himself.

“Good job,” Jie-IU smiles, at the end of his first scene with her, which he’s fairly sure she’s just saying to be polite, and because she can’t reasonably tell him that he should stick to singing.

Her hair, which he thinks he may accidentally have pulled harder than necessary in their scene, is sticking out. It’s an oddly intimate thing. He’s not sure yet if he actually likes acting.

In the after-party, her heels are red, precarious almost. They make him want to reach out his hand on occasion to steady her, but she’s steady enough in them. She’s still shorter than him though- barely, but still- which he enjoys in an unstated low-key sort-of way, when he thinks about it, because he so rarely gets to be the taller one.

He remembers her last set of promotions, she’d worn red heels everywhere then, and never promoted after. So it could just be that habits are hard to break for all of them. It’s meant to be for the cameras, but you keep doing it over and over and eventually it’s just habit. Habit he can deal with.

Chanyeol’s hair is the same red now, he remembers idly, on his way back in the van, just a little drunk. The radio has started playing their old songs again.

-

When he initially got past Chanyeol’s homicidal cheeriness— yeah Baekhyun’s the mood-maker, but Baekhyun is not insanely dialled up to a hundred every single second of the day, Baekhyun is not crazy— and he’d just started missing home a little less, he’d watched Chanyeol pick his towel up from the practice room floor and bow to no one in particular, eyes unfocused, tired, and kind of thought something like: this kid isn’t so bad. I could get used to him.

And the first time Chanyeol cooked for him, hair and ears sticking out beneath his snapback, as he turned away from the gas, face flushed, far too proud of himself, a drop of sweat making its way down the hollow of his throat and disappearing inside the opening of his shirt, even though the chicken was too dry, Baekhyun thought something like: this isn’t so bad. I could get used to this.

Which, if he were counting at that point, would be his seventh mistake.

-

The thing is— it’s not— it’s not a realization exactly. He doesn’t wake up one day and wonder what it would be like to have Chanyeol him off in the wings backstage at an awards performance, the sweat still drying on his skin, running down in unhurried streaks of the metallic glitter that their stylist has a fondness for— that’s a really specific fantasy and Baekhyun is eighty percent sure he’s never had it.

It’s slower, creeping. It ambushes him in the stupidest of ways like when Chanyeol takes it into his head to be the brattiest he can possibly be without Kyungsoo murdering him in his sleep, and obnoxiously rests his elbow on Baekhyun’s head about seven times on average through the day, always in front of the cameras, and he’s really ing pissed off till he looks up, and at his angle he can see the sharp curve of Chanyeol’s jaw, as he half-smiles and determinedly doesn’t look down to avoid Baekhyun’s glare. He watches the movement of Chanyeol’s throat as he swallows.

And thinks: oh. 

-

He likes to believe it’s sort of a hobby, this— attraction or whatever. It’s nothing serious, nothing he’s going to write a song about. It’s just— this is what he spends most of his time doing, it’s what he’s coached on for god’s sake, so he may as well enjoy the fanservice. It's pretty much like acting in a drama, and if he's better at this than he is in that, it's only because he's had more practice.

The point being, he may as well fist Chanyeol’s shir