pairing: BaekLay
length: 2729 words

Rays of sunlight hit Baekhyun’s face and he groaned as he twisted around in bed, trying to catch a few more seconds of sleep. But as he gradually drifted into consciousness, his arms stretched outwards and he yawned loudly while his eyes fluttered open. When he to his right side, Baekhyun blearily looked down and noticed that the bed sheets were a deep purple color instead of the light gray that he was used to. And then he noticed that the blanket covering him was also a solid purple color. He twisted his neck to look at the pillow that he had been clutching in his sleep and, lo and behold, it was covered with a purple pillowcase.

Baekhyun’s eyes were wide open now and alarm bells were ringing in his head. Pushing aside the blanket, his panic rose when he saw that he was shirtless. He was almost too terrified to completely move the blanket, lest his suspicions be confirmed, but when he saw a pair of black sweatpants on him, he let out a sigh of relief.

But then he realized that these weren’t his pants and the panic returned ten-fold.

“You’re awake?”

Baekhyun looked up to see an unrecognizable male walk towards him with a breakfast tray in hand. There was a giant bowl of soup on top with the utensils neatly laid out on a folded napkin; swirls of steam were rising from the bowl and gradually disappearing into the air. But Baekhyun didn’t notice the nicely arranged breakfast at all.

Instead, he shrieked and jumped backwards while clutching the blanket up to his bare chest. But Baekhyun hadn’t accounted for the bed’s wooden headboard and in his haste, his back roughly banged against it. “Oof!”

“Whoa, you okay?” The stranger quickly set down the breakfast tray on the bureau next to the bed and reached for Baekhyun. His eyebrows crinkled with worry as he helped Baekhyun, who was groaning as he rubbed his back, sit up away from the headboard. “That sounded like it hurt. Do you need an ice pack for your back? I have some pain relieving cream as well if you’d rather use that.”

“I’m fine,” Baekhyun gritted out. The other male nodded and was about to say something when Baekhyun suddenly let out a cry as his head exploded with pain at that instant. He reached up to clutch his head as the pounding sensations overtook him.

“Oh god, are you sure you’re okay? You’ve probably got a nasty hangover right now.”

“Wh-what d’you mean?” Baekhyun’s breath was raggedy as he spoke. He didn’t remember drinking at all the previous night.

The other male initially looked confused upon hearing Baekhyun’s answer, but soon realized why the shirtless male couldn’t seem to recollect the previous night’s happenings whatsoever. “I guess you were black-out drunk yesterday. No wonder you didn’t think it was weird to come over to my place, even though we’ve never met before.”

“I—what?!”

“Yeah, I guess you were so drunk that you didn’t even realize what you were saying. And I guess your friend didn’t realize you had out either.”

Dozens of thoughts were swirling through Baekhyun’s head, making it hurt even more, as he tried to make sense of whatever this stranger was saying. But the most pressing matter needed to be solved immediately and even though he knew his headache would hate him even more, he turned his face up to the other male. “Did we do anything last night?” he demanded to know while gesturing to his unclothed upper body.

The stranger looked at Baekhyun in puzzlement again before realization dawned on him as to what the hung-over male was asking. He immediately burst out laughing while hastily waving his hands. “Oh, god, no. Definitely not. Everything that happened was completely PG.”

“Then what is this?” Baekhyun pointed to his bare chest again. “And this?” He then pointed to the sweatpants that he knew were definitely not his.

“You threw up all over yourself and on me when we got up here,” the stranger explained. “I didn’t think you’d enjoy sleeping in your vomit, so I asked you to change clothes.” A playful grin graced his features as he added, “You insisted on staying shirtless, so I only lent you a pair of sweatpants.”

Baekhyun’s face immediately turned pink and he coughed loudly to try to mask his embarrassment. “Well…who are you?!”

“Wow, you must not remember anything if you don’t even remember my name.” The stranger flashed Baekhyun a bright smile, showcasing the deep dimple on his right cheek, while saying, “I’m Zhang Yixing and you’re Byun Baekhyun. We met at a nightclub last night and for some unexplainable reason, you decided that you wanted to stick to me like a barnacle.”

The name did sound familiar, but as Baekhyun tried to think harder and recall the memory of meeting the stranger, another spike of pain shot through his head and he groaned again while pressing his hands against his temples.

Yixing’s worried expression returned and he began rubbing comforting circles against the hung-over male’s back. “Let’s get some food in you first and then we can talk once your hangover is gone. Sound good?”

Although it took more energy than it should have, Baekhyun managed to nod. At this point, he didn’t think that his position could get any worse and his drunk self had already landed him in enough trouble, so his sober self couldn’t possibly do much more damage in his current situation. Fixing this hangover was his first priority.

--

“So how did I end up here?” Baekhyun was now fully clothed, having borrowed a white cotton T-shirt from Yixing, and the two males were sitting cross-legged atop the taller male’s bed.

“Well, I was with a friend of mine, Yifan, who persuaded me to go clubbing with him yesterday, and if I remember correctly, you were with someone named Jongin?”

Baekhyun face-palmed as memories of the tall male pestering him to come hang out at a nightclub resurfaced. “I was with that idiot?”

“He seemed nice when we talked,” Yixing commented mildly. “Anyway, apparently Jongin and Yifan know each other from their intermural basketball tournament, so we met and I think you had already out by that point.”

Although he wasn’t sure he wanted to know, Baekhyun tentatively asked, “How—how so?”

Yixing’s expression had become thoughtful as he stared up at the white ceiling, his right pointer finger lightly tapping his chin while his left hand cupped his right elbow to keep his arm upright. “Well, for starters, you completely came onto me and started raving about how awesome it’d be for the two of us to see my place after I mentioned that I recently bought a Nintendo Switch to play the new Mario Kart game that was released.”

Baekhyun winced.

“And then when Jongin tried to take you away, you latched onto my arm and started bawling that it wasn’t fair how you never got to do what you wanted.”

“I cried?!”

Yixing nodded in amusement. “Yup. Giant waterfalls streamed down your face.” He held up his fingers in a T shape and teasingly wiggled them by his eyes.

With another groan, Baekhyun flopped onto the bed and buried his now flushed face in Yixing’s thick blanket. “Kill me now,” he said in a muffled voice.

The taller male shrugged as he continued, “Well, I suppose it wasn’t too out of character for you, because Jongin gave up pretty quickly and asked if I could keep you company for the night.”

“I don’t cry!” Baekhyun immediately retorted, shooting up to glare at Yixing.

“You’re not fooling anyone, buddy. You were sobbing for ten minutes straight while the three of us were discussing how to handle you for the night,” Yixing easily shot back.

Baekhyun dived back down to hide under the taller male’s blanket again for several seconds before resurfacing and timidly asking, “How did you and your friend—Yifan, I think—convince Jongin to let you take me to your place? Jongin isn’t that irresponsible of a friend to let an absolute stranger take care of me, especially when I’m drunk.”

“Yifan vouched for me and I guess they’ve been friends for a few years now, so Jongin trusts Yifan’s judgment. And you threatened to spill all of Jongin’s secrets to some guy—I’m not quite sure I remember his name, but I think it was Sehun—on the phone right then and there.” Yixing snickered upon recalling the scene as he added, “Jongin paled so quickly. You have no idea.”

Baekhyun laughed along, although not as heartily, as he continued worrying about what had happened the previous night. “Okay, so then what happened? Did we leave the nightclub after that?”

“Yeah, I hailed a taxi and the cabby drove us to my place. You kept singing really loudly the whole time, but it was nice. You have a lovely voice.” Yixing beamed at the shorter male whose flushed face turned an even darker shade of red.

“Er, thanks.” Baekhyun thought then that Yixing had a lovely smile, but quickly chased those thoughts out of his head.

“You’re welcome. Anyway, I managed to haul you inside without too much difficulty, but then you started throwing a tantrum about wanting ice cream while we played Mario Kart. I didn’t have any, so I gave you some gummy worms to snack on and you seemed pretty content with that for a while.”

“Only for a while?” Baekhyun asked, wishing he could dig himself into a hole and never reappear ever again.

“Yeah. You were also pretty trash at Mario Kart,” Yixing casually recounted with a teasing smile. “You got twelfth place in every race that we played.”

The shorter male rounded on Yixing while protesting, “I did not! I’m a champ at Mario Kart! I beat Jongin every time we play!”

“I beg to differ.”

“We’ll have a rematch then! I was drunk! I didn’t know what I was doing!” Baekhyun raged, refusing to accept that he had lost—coming in at twelfth place, even—to a stranger at one of his favorite games.

“Okay, okay, we can, but don’t you want to finish the story first?”

“No, not really.”

“Well, too bad.” The taller male leaned back against the headboard before continuing, “After your abysmal losses, it was getting pretty late—I think it was two in the morning when we finished—and I was really tired from taking care of you, so I brought you up to my bedroom.”

“You promise that nothing happened, right?” Baekhyun stared accusingly at Yixing, still somewhat wary since he had woken up shirtless.

“Pinky promise,” the taller male declared, holding up his right hand with his pinky finger sticking out.

Baekhyun grudgingly hooked his own right pinky finger, briefly noticing how nicely they fit together, before letting go. “So then what?”

“You dragged me onto my bed and began shouting jumping on it like a trampoline. You even tried to do a couple of back-flips and you landed flat on your face.” Yixing stifled his laughter as he thought back to the previous night’s happenings.

Blood drained out of the shorter male’s face as he whimpered with dread. “Oh god. I didn’t.”

Yixing grinned devilishly. “Don’t worry. It gets better.”

“Wh-what did I do next?” Baekhyun asked in a strangled voice.

“You grabbed my wooden back-scratcher,” the taller male pointed to the long, curved stick that was leaning against the wall next to his desk, “brandished it like a sword, and started raving about an impending war that we needed to prepare for.”

Baekhyun wanted to die of mortification.

“You even told me to grab my own sword so that we could pretend we were enemies and have a sword fight.”

“Stop!”

“And you whacked me with the back-scratcher at least ten times when I wouldn’t grab my own sword.”

“Shut up, Yixing!”

But the taller male was on a roll. “And after declaring war, you grabbed my shoulders and threw up all over both of us!” Yixing recounted, gleefully staring at Baekhyun who was smashing his face into the soft mattress over and over again.

“I—hate—my—self—so—much.” Each syllable was promptly punctuated with a slam.

Yixing laughed at the shorter male’s dramatic reaction and reached over to ruffle Baekhyun’s hair. “Don’t beat yourself up over it so much. It was cute.”

His cheeks burned even more with that compliment and Baekhyun almost couldn’t bring himself to ask, but the curiosity to know the rest of the story—especially after already hearing so much of it—was too overwhelming. Besides, he didn’t think it could get much worse than this. “So what happened after I changed and you cleaned up my vomit? And I’m really sorry for throwing up on you, by the way. I don’t think I’ve apologized for that yet.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. I should’ve expected it to happen, due to how hammered you were,” Yixing said, waving away the shorter male’s words. “After that, I proposed that we go to sleep and I was going to leave you in my bedroom while I slept on the couch in the living room, but then you started whining about wanting cuddles.”

Baekhyun didn’t think he could hate himself even more than he already did, but clearly that wasn’t the case. “Did—did we actually—you know—cuddle and stuff?”

The taller male grinned. “What do you think happened?” When Baekhyun didn’t answer, Yixing said, “You latched onto me like a koala again and trapped me in my own bed with your body. And before I could push you off, you fell asleep. It was like a log was on top of me. So yeah, I guess we did, if you count that as cuddling.”

A scream escaped from the shorter male’s mouth as he felt his entire body cringe. If Jongin ever heard this story, Baekhyun knew that he’d never be able to live it down. It was just his luck that he’d made a complete drunken fool out of himself in front of a cute guy he had met at a nightclub. Not to mention, a decent guy who hadn’t taken advantage of him at that. The universe hated him.

“Hey, it could’ve been a lot worse, y’know,” Yixing said, trying to lift up this shorter male’s low spirits. “You could’ve chosen to glomp all over Yifan instead of me. And then you probably would’ve ended up on the streets, since he’s not as tolerable as I am.”

“Gee, thanks. I feel loads better now.”

Yixing laughed again at Baekhyun’s grumpy expression. “I enjoyed hanging out with you last night. It’s not every day that I get to have wholesome fun with someone as cute as you.”

“You… You think I’m cute?”

“Of course.” The taller male brought out that adorable dimpled smile again. “And even though you seem to think this first meeting was a disaster, although I suppose it was since you threw up on me and all, I had fun and it’d be cool to actually get to know you while you’re sober. I think I’m very well acquainted with drunkard Baekhyun now.”

“Just because you’re good-looking doesn’t mean you can tease me!” the smaller male retorted before immediately gasping and clasping his hands over his mouth.

Yixing arched an eyebrow as a smirk decorated his face. “Oh? I guess the attraction is mutual, eh?”

“Shut up.”

“Well,” the taller male swung himself off of the bed and stood up while stretching his arms, “I have a free day today and since you seemed quite upset by how you lost at Mario Kart last night, shall we rematch right now? The Switch is still set up in the living room.”

“Oh, you’re on.” Baekhyun promptly forgot his embarrassment as he slid off of Yixing’s bed as well. “You’ll regret making fun of me once I beat you on Rainbow Road.”

“Whatever you say, kid,” Yixing called over his shoulder as he began walking out of his bedroom.

Baekhyun took a moment to admire the taller male’s lean physique before quickly shaking his head and jogging after Yixing. Perhaps this mistake hadn’t been as catastrophic as he originally thought it was. “Loser buys dinner!”

“Call!”

♈♈♈

A/N: Happy Valentine's Day! And Happy Chinese/Lunar New Year to those who celebrate! I apologize for the lack of updates these past few months. December was a rough time for me and the rest of the K-Pop community, so I didn't manage to update as I had planned to during winter break. A lot of things have been happening in my personal life, so I'm generally left very uninspired and too exhausted to write these days. But today is an important day in my history as an EXO-L, so I wanted to triple update for you all to thank you guys for sticking with me this whole time. I really appreciate it and I hope to be updating regularly soon. But I am busy with elections and award applications for my club, midterms (I have one tomorrow, so I'm going to catch a few hours of sleep after posting this and then wake up at three to study until my exam at ten), lab research, and other projects, so I don't want to make any promises that I can't keep. I will try my best to update in March, but the reality is that I probably won't until EXO's debut anniversary in April. At the very least, I'll have another triple update ready by then. I hope that'll suffice and thank you again for all of your support. It really means a lot to me.

And just for something more lighthearted, since it is the Winter Olympics right now, I'm going to plug my girl, Mirai Nagasu. She's one of the figure skaters representing Team USA this year and if you aren't supporting any other countries or skaters at the Olympics this year, please support her! She's a former student from my high school (and middle school and elementary school), several of my friends personally know her, and I avidly watched her during the Vancouver games when she placed fourth as a sixteen-year-old at her debut Olympics appearance. If Kim Yuna is South Korea's Pride, then Mirai Nagasu is Arcadia's Pride (LOL sorry Mark). She recently made history as the first American woman to land a triple axel at the Olympics during the team event a few days ago and she placed second in that free skate program, which allowed Team USA to clinch the bronze medal that night. Mirai is a beautiful, powerful skater with so much talent and she's also one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. It was devastating when she didn't make the team for the Sochi Olympics four years ago (for the most unfair reason) and she's doing her very best to make up for that lost opportunity by going all out at Pyeongchang. I know the chances of her winning gold or silver are slim (because the Russians have a very strong team this year) and that a lot of EXO-Ls are supporting Evgenia Medvedeva (who is such a talented skater and a very sweet girl as well, so this support is well-warranted), but if you're watching the Pyeongchang Olympics right now, please send some love to Mirai as well! She'll be competing on February 21 in the individual womens' short program and on February 23 in the individual womens' free skate!