Chapter 09
Room 412 (Previously White Corridors)
Blink and they are sitting on either end of plush white couch and watching a movie playing on Kyungsoo’s massive TV. Kyungsoo looks captivated, his eyes wide with interest, lips moving along sometimes with the dialogue and Baekhyun scoffs. He yawns, pulling his feet on to the couch and stretching until his feet poke into the sides of Kyungsoo’s thighs. Kyungsoo takes absolutely zero notice of this and Baekhyun pouts. He stretches even further, letting his feet slip over Kyungsoo’s thigh and on to his lap, his toes inching their way slowly towards his crotch.
Kyungsoo side eyes him.
“What are you doing?” “
Hmm?” Baekhyun asks, innocently. “Just stretching.”
Kyungsoo lifts the offending foot in the air and looks at it as if he has never seen such a thing in his life before. He looks back up at Baekhyun with a raised eyebrow, and Baekhyun looks down at the tent forming in Kyungsoo’s lap with a raised brow in return, at which Kyungsoo blushes, and Baekhyun feels delightfully vindicated.
“Take your nasty feet away from me.” he grumbles in embarrassment, pushing Baekhyun’s feet away, but Baekhyun is already springing up where he is sitting and crawling over to where Kyungsoo is sitting.
“What is that on your lap?” he asks wickedly. Kyungsoo smacks him up the head and just looks away muttering and Baekhyun sits back, looking at Kyungsoo contemplatively.
“Why?” he asks.
“Why what?” Kyungsoo asks.
“You know. Why. I’m here. And you are here. And I have …. told you my name.”
Kyungsoo looks at him, in his quiet serious way, but says nothing.
“I know you like me. I know. You are too obvious. Your eyes, your lips, your body, you are an open book, Kyungsoo. I know you like me, so why not?” Baekhyun presses on.
Kyungsoo smiles, a little smile from the edge of his lips. “I never meant to be anything but obvious. I like you. But the question is not that. The question is that whether you like me.”
“I’m here-“ Baekhyun starts, repeating.
“Yes, you are here. Yes, you have told me your real name. But I have known you long enough to know how this can mean a 100 different things with you.” Kyungsoo tilts his head a little to look at Baekhyun, and it reminds Baekhyun of the VVIP Kyungsoo he sees surrounded by his cronies on the steps to a massive building. “I’m a businessman, Baekhyun. I was taught to only take calculated risks all my life - and with you - with you there is just the ‘risk’ part and never anything else.” Kyungsoo smiles at himself self deprecatingly. “You make it very hard for a sensible man to think with his head.”
Kyungsoo twists a strand of Baekhyun’s hair between his fingers and tugs, a little roughly. “And I’m not going to pay you to date me.”
And Baekhyun is left staring at a empty space in the sofa as Kyungsoo gets up and walks away. Without even realizing, one of his hands come up and he clutches at a little bit of his tshirt in front of his heart. Baekhyun breathes in and out roughly, strangely winded, strangely overwhelmed, strangely lost. Funny thing is Baekhyun has always been about calculated risks too, and Baekhyun had struggled and fought to reduce Kyungsoo into something calculable all this time, but he thinks he lost, a long time ago. He thinks he knows what he feels, he thinks he has known for a while now, but what next, what next, and what happens after next. He wonders whether he will always be too scared to find out.
Blink and Kyungsoo’s face peeks from beneath the bed cover. “What the hell are you doing there.”
Sometime in the middle of the night, Baekhyun had woken up feeling sweaty and breathless. He had crawled underneath Kyungsoo’s bed and only then been able to feel like he could breath again.
“I don’t really like sleeping on beds.” Beds are… unpleasant. Beds are easy places for men to throw him around on. Beds had been one of his hyung’s favorite places too, he had like pressing Baekhyun to the bed they had to share as children, covering his mouth with his hands so that the other children at the orphanage won’t hear, as he experimented with his hobby of the month, ‘what does it feel like when you are burned by cigarettes?’ he would ask Baekhyun before pressing one over the skin of his waist, ‘don't you want to know, Baekhyun?’
Kyungsoo sighs. “You have slept on the bed plenty of times before.”
“Not for long.” Baekhyun says.
Kyungsoo purses his lips. “You are just all sorts of weird aren’t you?”
Baekhyun grins at him from his hideout. “Says the man who arranges the food in the fridge in alphabetical order.”
Kyungsoo lets out a small bark of a laugh. It’s… refreshing. Baekhyun files away that smile in his folder of Kyungsoo things.
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