Call You Bae

The silence and serenity of the majestic Greenhouse of Xi School of Arts and Businesses is disrupted by a scream akin to a seal and Banshee's love child.

The birds that previously occupied the glass roof the Greenhouse flies away as far as they could upon sensing the incoming danger or the amount of crazy pheromones below the glass.

"What did I ever do to you?" Baekhyun cries and grasp both of Minseok's shoulder. (The person he is asking merely blinks for he has no idea why Baekhyun is crying like crazy incarnate with his smudge eyeliner and bloodshot eyes.)

Behind him, Chanyeol is grinning widely while he stands beside the other recruit, not even faze by Baekhyun's blatant show of dislike. If anything, he is ecstatic to be in the same club as him. Even though he's highly aware that Baekhyun wants nothing but to throw him to a pool of boiling oil and deep fry him good.

"I made you prett..." Baekhyun blinks. "...ier! And you repay me with this?!" He then rudely points at the red-haired standing not so far from them. "Why is he here?! I like invented you! How could you turn your back on me?!" He cries as he squeezes Minseok's face in between his hands.

Minseok says something incoherent and Baekhyun completely disregards it while he cries louder and louder.

"Can you stop quoting Mean Girls and let's get this welcoming ceremony over and done with?" Kyungsoo, whose fuse is reaching its end, grumbles and rubs his temples.

"No!" Baekhyun protests and let go of Minseok—half-throwing him to Joonmyun—and goes to face the freckled boy. "Let's not accept him! I refuse to accept him!"

"Well," The freckled boy shrugs and crosses his arms. "He's already accepted. He's the son of a famous producer and I worked with him once. We need him, Baekhyun." He says.

His cold response is then rewarded by a whine similar to a kicked puppy.

"Look at the bright side though," Kyungsoo smirks, looking like the first child of Satan himself. "We can now cover Girls Generation."

Baekhyun's frustrated scream possibly broke a portion of the glass roof but it is quickly overlooked as the President of the Performance Club goes to stand in front of the new recruits. Behind Baekhyun, Minseok leans close to his brother and gives him a look of confusion.

"Did I do something wrong?" He whispers, an adorable clueless expression on his face.

"I think you weren't supposed to allow Chanyeol in the club." Joonmyun whispers back which makes his older brother even more confused.

"But he was the only one who wanted to join..." Minseok reasons out. "Also, that girl." He motions to the short girl who is wearing a bonnet and has her hair in low twin-tails. While she look nervous, her expression visibly lightens upon noticing Minseok is looking at her. She grins widely and waves excitedly at the boy much to his brothers astonishment.

Beside him, Jongdae groans loudly. "Why do you already have a fan?" He whines as he throw his older brother a look.

Bowing his head, Minseok diverts his attention to his brother. "What are you talking about?" He questions, genuinely confused and can't see this so-called fan Jongdae is yapping about.

"Dense boys always gets the girls." Joonmyun comments as he sighs and leans his head on Zitao's shoulder. "Anime made that perfectly clear."

"That doesn't apply in real life." Jongdae grumbles while giving the new recruit a wistful look. "Ah, she's cute too. Even back home, you always gets the cute ones..." The youngest of the Kims whines as he is once again reminded of the number of girls (—and boys) who gives chocolates to Minseok every fourteenth of February.

Minseok would then in turn gives it to them because he's not a fan of sweets.

Talk about the number of egos and efforts he tramples on a regular basis.

"So everyone," Kyungsoo calls out their attention and smiles. "These are Park Chanyeol and Shin Jimin, they're going to be the new members of our humble club. Please give them a round of applause." He introduces and claps his hands excitedly. While the rest of the group mimic his actions with much enthusiasm, Baekhyun continues to sulk in the corner and even goes as far as lighting a candle for his supposedly cruel and miserable life.

"My name is Park Chanyeol!" The red-haired exclaims which makes Baekhyun go on another crying fit. "My mom teaches me the art of producing songs and I can play various instrument. I hope we all have fun!" Everyone ignores Baekhyun's continuous crying and presents the boy an applause.

"Shin Jimin here!" The girl introduces next with an overly excited tone. "I like to dance and rap and I hope I could do a lot with the duration of my stay here!" She blurts before his expression turns shy when she once again catches sight of Minseok looking at her. Smiling shyly, she intertwines her fingers behind her and makes her way toward the boy. "Also..." She continues upon stopping directly in front of Minseok.

"Can I call you Bae?"

There are, sadly, a lot of things that Joonmyun regrets in life.

Like the time when he was eight and for some absurd reason, he believed when Dongwoo—a friend of theirs—told him that putting cow on your face will give you superpowers. Joonmyun, with his tiny little brain, believed the boy and put cow all over his face.

Needless to say, he was the laughing stock of the entire town for months.

There was also this one time when he was twelve when there had been a complete blackout. Joonmyun woke up to a very dark room, and not fully understanding everything, went into hysterics because he thought he had gone blind. Only when Minseok, one eyebrow raised, flashed a flashlight on his face that he realized what was happening but still he cried louder. While he asked everyone who witnessed to not tell a single soul about it, he forgot Jongdae loves to run his big Jurassic mouth and basically announced to all social media platforms what his brother's latest idiocy was.

And now, age seventeen, Kim Joonmyun has done it again.

If he has been avoiding Yifan out of fear earlier, now he is avoiding him due to embarrassment because his idiotic thought it'd be a great idea singing 'Do you wanna build a Snowman?' in front of Yifan's door. Who in the right mind would even sing that song especially to a person's door who scares you less? Of course it'd be Joonmyun.

Clutching his books tightly to his chest, he peeks his head from the gymnasium's double door and roams his eyes along the premises.

The basketball team is having their practice and more or less he's going to see Yifan. Thanks to Baekhyun's wide as a black hole mouth, Joonmyun knows that Yifan's the captain of the basketball team and seeing him now, while his self-inflicted wound is still fresh, is like a suicide. Squinting his eyes and diverting it from one sweaty body to another, Joonmyun makes sure that the older boy isn't around before he leaves the comfort of his hiding spot.

"Hello," He greets to one basketball team member who is sitting on the bench. When the boy looks up, Joonmyun tries not to fidget under his scrutinizing gaze. "is Kim Myungsoo here?" The boy asks as he clenches his books tighter to his chest.

The other first gives him a look and wipes the sweat on his neck and biceps. After for a moment, he motions with his chin on a double door on a corner. "I think he's in the locker room." he says before standing up and returning to practice.

"Thank you." Joonmyun murmurs and walks to the door he pointed.

The sound of shoes screeching and balls bouncing on the wooden floor fills the boy's ears as he trudge his way to the supposedly locker room. He is mentally praying that he'd see no half well toned boys because he don't think his eyes could take it. He saw his crush Minho taking a shower behind the barn once, half and all his glory, and he nearly hyperventilated. He swore his nose even bleed with the fact that his eyes had been half-blessed and half-tainted by the glorious sight of nearly Choi Minho (his bulge had been so prominent that Joonmyun could die there and then but let's not get to that).

Standing in front of the metallic door, Joonmyun does a sign of the cross and knocks.

Upon not hearing a response, the boy gulps thickly before grasping the handle. "Hello?" He calls out but is only rewarded by more silence. Looking back behind his shoulder, he weighs his options down. He could turn around and go to the Greenhouse or he could go inside and look for this Myungsoo his physics teacher told him to search for. He wants his help over a report and getting Myungsoo's opinion could earn an A+ on it.

Being the good and law-abiding student that he was, he choose the latter.

Joonmyun is somewhat reminded of their school's locker room door back home when the door opens and it makes not a single noise. He remembers the old rickety thing that makes the loudest noise with just a little movement and just how much it contrast the one in XSAB.

But the real deal isn't the door.

The locker room in XSAB is more of an Olympic locker room than an High School one. Joonmyun marbles the sight of the spacious room and brand new looking bench with leather cushion. They even have flat-screen televisions placed by each top corners of the white lockers—Joonmyun subtly wonders why would they need so many but then brushes as rich people thing—and a very own vending machine sponsored by Gatorade. Closing his mouth, the boy berates himself for getting sidetracked and starts to look for Myungsoo based on his teacher's description.

Not more than three steps inside on the other hand, Joonmyun abruptly halts on his journey of looking for Myungsoo when he hears a crash followed by a curse. Gulping thickly, the boy faces the direction where he heard it. With the way he is hugging his books tightly, he wouldn't be surprised that his knuckles had gone white.

But that is not the problem here.

The problem is whether he should just drop his teacher's suggestion and go on with his life or follow the source of sound and pray to God it is Myungsoo and not two teenage boys who are making one hot homemade . (Joonmyun shivers at the thought of seeing a real life -to- action. That'd be downright traumatizing.)

Of course, being his pushover self, Joonmyun follows the source of the noise with light steps.

His heart is leaping out of his chest as he nearly ninja-crawls the tiled floor as his fail attempt of being subtle. The cursing still continues and when Joonmyun reaches the corner of the line of lockers where it is coming from, the boy did another sign of the cross before he peeks his head from the line of metal compartments.

What he sees on the other hand is no homemade .

It is not Myungsoo either.

(Well, unless Myungsoo's a six foot giant who has scary eyebrows and lives on the room next to Joonmyun's then that's a different story.)

Joonmyun has his mouth tightly closed with the sight of a very wet Wu Yifan with nothing but a white towel hanging for its dear life around his waist. The boy flushes red as he caught sight of chiseled abs and tattooed arm and shamelessly thought: "that's kind of hot." If he were a girl and he wears , his would've drop on the floor long ago.

But he isn't.

And his stops bunching upon witnessing the reason why Yifan was cursing earlier.

Kim Joonmyun watches with mouth open as the elder turns around and, almost comically, hit his feet on the metal portion of the bench. A loud groan leaves Yifan's lips as he hopped—the towel going lower and nearly giving Joonmyun a heart attack—around before the back of his knee hit the metal bench and falls backwards. He hears Yifan hisses a "" but his eyes are too occupied by the set of luscious toned thighs to even mind the beautiful language.

Joonmyun swallows thickly when the water slides lower and lower until it is absorbed by the towel that bunched along Yifan's upper thighs and crotch (what a shame! I-I mean, thank God!). It's like from a scene of an movie targeted toward thirsty teenagers who thinks Fifty Shades of Grey is cool and not obvious and indirect forced when Yifan curls forward—his abs contracting—sits down and runs his fingers through his wet dark hair (Joonmyun may or may not unconsciously his lower lip because yes, he's definitely one of those thirsty teenagers and yes, he very likey what he see). His brows furrows even more as he closes his eyes to relieve himself from the pain his stupid and clumsy self inflicted.

Even that simple gesture, the boy realizes, is so ing hot.

Yet, possibly sensing that someone is watching his unplanned display of his glorious body carved by the Gods above, he opens his eyes and looks to the side. His equally shocked ones locks down with of a pair of equally surprised ones.

Yifan abruptly stands up from his spot while Joonmyun let out an embarrassed squeak—it is kind of adorable if you may ask—and made beeline for the exit. But Yifan is quick to act as he ran after the unsuspecting boy.

The sound of books scattering on the floor is heard followed by the sound of a body hitting the locker.

Joonmyun gasps with a mild pain but the pain is quickly forgotten by a hand slamming just beside his head. His eyes widens as he caught sight of Yifan's face which is far too close to his liking. His heart feels like it's going to burst when he got a whiff of the elder's 'just got off the shower' scent and he tries his hardest to not look down and check if Yifan's still wearing his towel. (At the back of his mind, a tiny yet erted Kim Joonmyun was so ing curious if Yifan has a huge scorpion down there like the one on his arm.)

But he is a decent human being—and he don't want his to burst—so he keeps his eye sight above sea level.

"Did you saw it?" Yifan questions with a low growl.

When did growling become so y?!

"I-I'm sorry!" He manages to stutter in the midst of his hazy brain and swirling hormones. "I swear I'm not going to tell anyone on how you tripped and fell!"

Joonmyun then realizes he probably shouldn't have said that because Yifan flushes red and his brow furrows even further. He looks even scarier and somewhat reminds Joonmyun of those gangster villains on those Chinese movies he loves to watch during his free time.

Well, a hot gangster...

...but still evil.

And he could still kill Joonmyun anytime he want to.

The younger slaps both of his hands on his mouth and counters Yifan's glare with his wide fearful eyes. Mustering his courage, and his primal instinct of surviving kicking in, Joonmyun pushes Yifan with all his might. The elder is caught off guard by the action and takes a step back. Yifan is fortunately (unfortunately) wearing a black boxer and save the boy from seeing his glorious scorpion. Joonmyun runs straight to the exit and leaves his books scattered all around the floor because education! He's about to die and he'd definitely save his stupid first before those books!

Also, he could always ask Minseok to get them because he's the brave one. (Yeah, feed the brave one when you don't want to die.)

It is after class that Lu Han finally realizes that whatever it is that's happening is slowly ruining his sanity.

It started when they were in the locker room and getting ready for the practice. Chanyeol was a little late than usual and his arrival was signaled by a loud booming voice. Usually, Lu Han would ignore it and get on with his life but that afternoon the younger said something that made his mind black which later on, resulted to him being hit by the ball hard on the face.

"Captain! You know Minseok, right?" Chanyeol casually starts as he strip off his uniform. "You would not believe what happened earlier!" He giddily continues with his creepy smile plastered on his face. Lu Han is completely ignoring him at this point. He don't want to hear anything that includes Kim Minseok, or what he ate that day, or how cute he is, or how—"He got confessed to!"

And the t-shirt Lu Han is about to wear falls directly on the tiled floor together with the widening of his eyes. Almost as fast as the wind, his head snaps to Chanyeol's direction.

"Man, I never knew Jimin got that in her!" Chanyeol continues and fails to notice how his captain completely froze like he just told him they went bankrupt. "She literally went up to him and say 'Can I call you Bae?'. It was so—hey, you okay?"

No.

Lu Han is not okay.

Even when he crouches down and takes his shirt and wordlessly wears it, he is not okay.

Even when he leaves Chanyeol to awkwardly stand there as he digest the younger boy's news, he is not okay. Even when he is standing in the middle of the field with the practice officially starting, he is not okay. And when he catches the sight of Minseok on the farther part of the field, carrying a box with a girl he's familiar with walking beside him, smiling and laughing, he is not ing okay!

And he's especially—legit—not okay when the raging ball hit him straight on the face, the impact enough to cause him to fall backwards with a loud thud.

For the first time in his life, the crowd witnessed the Han of the Lu lose his poise for reason they hopefully would never know.

"I'm not okay." Are the words he says as he sat on the chair opposite to Irene's.

The other occupant of the room hastily stands up from her seat and runs out of the room. Lu Han quickly overlooks the fact that the girl legit ranaway like he's some sort of monster who would eat her alive. He is more concerned with the fact that he let himself get hit by the ball and why Chanyeol's words keeps on ringing on his head. Those simple words that is doing some unexplainable things to him.

"Okay?" Recovering from her initial shock, Irene clears and sits straight. "What seems to be the problem?" She questions and prepares the distressed boy a cup of tea because he look like he need one.

Irene watch with mouth open when Lu Han gulps down the hot beverage without even flinching, simply slamming it down when he finished. (Irene's soul silently cries because that's a limited edition tea set and having it suffer a blunt is a big no no!)

"Problem?" Lu Han hysteric, pupils blown wide like he'd just been drinking stuffs he shouldn't. "Everything is the problem!" He blurts and slams both his fist on the table, scaring the out of the girl. "Like I'm not even fine when he started invading my mind but now, I feel like my mind and heart is about to explode!" He shrieks and pulls his hair. Irene cringes at the action but says nothing and pours Lu Han another cup of tea.

"So yesterday, right? Park ing Chanyeol came in late and I, the greatest Alpha to ever exist, decided to just ignore him." Lu Han starts, this time sipping on the tea with less haste. "But you know Chanyeol, once the big opens his mouth, he ain't gonna stop. I'm used to it. I've known him since middle school and his big mouth is something that I've grown accustomed to! But yesterday never had his words had so much impact on me!"

Irene blinks a couple of times and tries to think where this conversation is going. While she'd never conversed with Chanyeol before, she heard different stories of how obnoxious he could get.

But what could have he said to make Lu Han so angry?

"You know what he said?" Lu Han questions and laughs like a deranged serial killer who is about to confess his crimes. "I quote 'She literally went up to him and say 'Can I call you Bae?' and those words continued to bug me up until now! I don't even know what's happening! So what if she asked him to be her Bae? I don't c-care! I really don't! W-why should I care? I-I don't see any reason to c-care..."

Irene sort of wonders if Lu Han is aware or if he's completely ignoring the accumulation of the tears in his eyes.

Sniffing, Lu Han looks at the girl with glassy eyes. "Do you have any alcohol?" He questions but is only responded by a shake of the head courtesy of the girl. Groaning, Lu Han once again ruffles his hair before he buries his face on his arms and takes a long deep breath. "What the is happening to me?" He whines, an action he shouldn't do because he is a goddamn Alpha for s sake.

Irene bites her lower lip and fidget on her seat. Her consciousness is screaming at her to tell Lu Han the truth and that it's going to be for the best because if Lu Han learns it from other people, she's going to be a dead meat. But there is also a part of her that's wondering why Lu Han is so confused when in reality it is so obvious what he is going through.

Even a middle schooler would be able to identify that Lu Han is jealous and whoever this Water God must be is quite an amazing person to be able to do this much to the great Han of the Lu.

(Somewhere in the school premises, Minseok sneezes loudly, cutting him mid way from telling Jimin how pretty and beautiful and smart Snow White is.)

Finally deciding that yes, she have to tell him the truth, and she's pretty much well prepared because she already transferred her bank account to a place that even Lu Han would not be able to breached, Irene clears to get the male's attention.

Lu Han looks up from his arms and gives the girl a confused yet hopeful look.

"I give you two options." She starts and raises two fingers in the air. "I could tell you the truth and put a stop to your senseless suffering." Lu Han tries to not flinch with the word 'senseless'. "Or I could lie and tell you something that you wanna hear and prolong this even further..." She says. "So, my dear Alpha, which is it going to be?"

Gulping, Lu Han tries to not waver under Irene's sudden intimidating stature. (Lu Han then realized that if you were to listen to every rich kid's woes you must have quite a strong mind. And maybe a little bit of crazy. Honestly, if you weren't, you wouldn't even try to bare your fangs to an Alpha. And Irene is obviously as crazy as people put her to be.)

"I..." He coughs. "T-tell me the truth."

The smile Irene flashes him is far from the intimidating stature she has seconds ago. "Well, Lu Han," She grins. "I think you're jealous and guarded because this girl Chanyeol was talking about could snag up your so called Water God."

A painful silence engulfs the both of them after that statement. Birds can be heard chirping out of the window and someone is singing an off-tune version of the iconic song 'Some'. Lu Han is looking at Irene with a blank expression, until, eventually, he burst into laughter.

"Are you serious?" He manages to weave through his deranged laughing. "Me? Hahahahaha! Jealous?! No ing way!" He exclaims and throws his head back, resuming on laughing at Irene's words. But when the girl didn't laughed along, his laughter dies down until Lu Han is only reduced to forced giggling.

"You're not serious, are you?" He questions but her response comes with a firm shake of the head.

"Lu Han," She firmly says his full name. "You like him." And drops the bomb just like that.

"From the first time you lay your eyes on him, to where you are currently now." Irene says and crosses her arms. "You're so jell-o that you're confused because you never felt jealous before. You get to have everything that you want because your Grandpa and parents never had a problem in doing so. You're so used to it that you feel sabotaged for everything that's happening." She grins. "And you're even more butthurt because base from the things you've told me, this Water God doesn't give a about you."

And just like that, Irene told him the things he had been refusing to admit from the moment he first locked eyes with Minseok to when he brushed passed him two days ago.

His shoulder deflates and his back hit the back rest of the velvet chair. Looking at the girl with a disbelieving expression, the word that could only define his situation left his mouth.

"."