Trigger Warning: Homophobia and Homophobic slurs

A/n: You guys dont have to read this chapter!! This was originally written for myself to get the background sorted out lol but im just posting it because why not? I already have the real chap 1 done so imma post tomorrow I dont even know if anyone wants to read this LMAO

thank you to k0rrin3 and exo_2017 for the help!

Prologue: “Hey, hey, hey! Don’t do that! I was gonna eat that!”

.          Sure, Baekhyun acts like an entitled sometimes; being overly sassy, cutting people off with a snap of his dainty (but deadly) fingers, and challenging men twice his size like an angry chihuahua (or as Jongdae oh so eloquently puts it “like a rat on steroids”). But in a world where he’s part of a minority society rarely empathizes with he has no choice but to step his façade of confidence up or else be pushed down, down, down until everyone steps, tramples on him like they do with everyone else like him.

But justified or not, he doesn’t think he deserves all the unwanted attention at all. Most specifically unwanted attention caused by a 185-centimetre overgrown idiot who thinks homophobia is an allergic reaction and Baekhyun is simply a disease-ridden allergen.

Baekhyun tries to ignore him, he really, really does. Right now, he’s praying to all gods for them to lengthen his patience and to forgive him in advance for any future attempts of manslaughter.  Smile Baekhyun, smile for your number one ing fan, he thinks.

Chanyeol has been up his space and terrorizing him since around 7^th grade and now they're in their 3^rd year of high school and ironically Chanyeol’s gotten a hundred times more obnoxious. It used to be because of small things (literally) like his height, sometimes because of his little fits. But ever since he came out of the closet one day and started being even more flamboyant, now wearing makeup and more daring clothes, Chanyeol’s been picking on everything and anything he does and outright bullies him for his uality. It’s like Chanyeol makes it his life goal to constantly remind Baekhyun and everybody else that the latter is gay and disgusting.

They’re in the gym locker room and he has no other choice but to change clothes for gym class in a stuffy crammed locker room with Park Chanyeol and his teammates in football. Normally he’d change in a shower stall, but the previous class was dismissed late which left him with all the shower stalls being occupied and their gym teacher forcing half of them in the football varsity’s locker room. Luckily, he knows Sehun’s passcode, so he could at least hide behind his open locker door to change.

“Hey Byun, don’t get too excited over there. This much testosterone might be bad for you.” Chanyeol’s deep taunting voice reverberates throughout the room earning a few snickers.

“Don’t want you jumping on us or something.” someone says with a high five.

Lame ing joke but both were in the football team and Baekhyun doesn’t trust any football player to have an IQ higher than their jersey number especially with all the tackling and hitting destroying their brain cells. So, no, Baekhyun will not cave in. He. Will. Not.

“Bruh, your gloves smell weird, did some shove them up his or what?” he hears someone, probably Kai, say.

“Shush man, Baek – cough –  I mean the might hear ya.” Chanyeol says loudly prompting howls of laughter from the room.

This is the last straw. He seethes and slams his locker door.

“Listen, you spineless little ,” he says in a quiet voice, like the calm before a huge storm. Suddenly they go quiet and all eyes are flitting back and forth between the two of them. Baekhyun almost regrets it. Almost.

“No way am I jumping on your useless mothering , Park. I wouldn’t want to crush the poor STD ridden little thing.” He spits in a louder voice coupled with a condescending look at Chanyeol’s crotch area. He shoulders his bag and walks across the room with his head held high.

“Well Byun—”

                “Well what?” He steps closer to Chanyeol, close enough to see the gold flecks in his eyes, “Your clapped looking better back off me for today, that or you shrink your huge ego to the size of your small and then maybe I’d give you the 3 seconds it takes for you to nut.” He shoves a smug looking Chanyeol while muttering a small ‘’ on his way out of the putrid locker room.

He hears the team’s and his classmates’ distinct ‘Ooohs’ and jeers from outside but Chanyeol’s ‘Call me for those 3 seconds, Byun! I do charity sometimes!’ rings in his ears more and forgive him god but he’s gonna choke a ing and put him under a tombstone with the name “Park ing Chanyeol” engraved on it. Oh, he ing will.

Given Chanyeol’s social status and all, everyone just brushes it off as Chanyeol “being playful” and that he’s “not really homophobic”. But Baekhyun is no idiot and no amount of false reassurance would make him just take it without some rebuttal of some sort. This usually ended up with him in a ping pong match of insults with Park Chanyeol but no matter how good of a clapback he makes victory still feels bitter on his tongue, because at the end of the day Park Chanyeol would still be looking as smug as ever as if he’s already won just by getting Baekhyun’s attention alone, like his attention was his ultimate goal and bullying him was his ty means. Or perhaps it was some spiritual victory kind of principle he went by and the dude just lived thinking every victory was a victory and every loss was just another future victory, or Baekhyun likes to think because why else would Park Chanyeol want his attention? Whatever it was he didn’t want to think about it because he just might entertain other possible thoughts and just no.

Another week has gone by since the locker room incident and Baekhyun swears he’s been seeing Chanyeol’s face more than ever. As if it wasn't enough that the jack-o-lanterns decorating the school look just like Chanyeol with their creepy grins and huge eyes.

Once he was sitting in his Advance Chemistry class when Chanyeol decided to sit in the same class when he was supposed to be in his English class. The er kept throwing crumpled love letters at him addressed as “Eunjae” aka the gross classmate they had who eats boogers for snacks, smells like roadkill, and hits on anyone or anything that remotely moves. Needless to say, Baekhyun got detention along with an unaware Eunjae who only smiled creepily at him with a laughing Chanyeol at the back.

Then the next day he was being chatty with Siwon aka the man of everyone’s dreams. Ok so maybe he was a bit more than just chatty, he might have had a wandering hand here and there but hey, it was an open secret that Siwon was gay too so why not be friendly? Apparently Park ing Chanyeol saw them and decided shoving Baekhyun to the wall after Siwon left was a smart idea. Baekhyun retaliated with a punch but Chanyeol was 50% muscle and 50% livid so maybe that wasn’t a very smart idea either.

After that was a string of verbal fights all through out the week, sometimes they get physical (but not like that). Chanyeol put him into detention twice when Baekhyun got a bit too violent and even went to said detentions just to annoy him. All in all, Baekhyun was sick of his face, it was a handsome face (he begrudgingly admits), but he was sick of it and the Chanyeol does.

“Maybe he missed you?” Jongdae, his bestfriend says while chewing a mouthful of frenchees. “I mean the guy lives on attention and the week before this week you’ve been denying him of his life source.”

Baekhyun rolls his eyes, “Wow so I just can’t win, can I?”

“No ya keng” Jongdae garbles out. Baekhyun’s face scrunches in disgust as a string of cheese escapes Jongdae’s mouth in what looks like slow-motion trajectory to him, landing on the back of his hand. “ing ew!”

Jongdae bursts out laughing and Baekhyun joins in too despite the gross crap on his hand but hey it’s Jongdae, so whatever.

“He’s face with another girl right now – Is that that Rose girl?” he squints his eyes and his straight as eyebrows do that thing again so Baekhyun throws a fry at his face.

“I don’t even wanna look.” Baekhyun says while resting a palm under his cheek while he mindlessly scrolls on his phone.

Jongdae rolls his eyes and eats the fry thrown at him.

Baekhyun does turn around to look though and makes eye contact with the er. While he faced. What the .

He turns back around, red faced and squeezing his bag of fries.

“Hey, hey, hey! Don’t do that! I was gonna eat that!”

“He’s insufferable!” He seethes.

“Ok first of all, who uses that word?” He says grabbing Baekhyun’s hands.

“And second, he’s not doing anything okay? So, lay that down and chill.” Jongdae says in a much softer voice.

“I swear to god, he likes to rub his ‘straightness’ off on my face.” He grabs a handful of fries and chucks it all in his mouth, his next words coming out garbled, “As if it’s not enough that he bathes in what’s probably testosterone scented perfume and pollutes the halls, and wears his stupid varsity jackets like some ultimate heteroual boy.”

“Ok, you’re not making sense anymore.” Jongdae scrolls on something on his phone, “Tell you what, Sehun’s throwing a Halloween Party this weekend and obviously we’re invited. Let’s hang out to that costume shop after this, yeah?”

“You mean that antique store with the creepy manager?” He asks sceptically.

It wasn’t really a costume shop, but the eccentric old man owning it sells a lot of creepy old clothes and creepy old jewellery for 2 dollars each.

Jongdae nods. “You need to get out anyway, you’re always on your phone watching gay or god knows what else.”

Jongdae gets another well-deserved fry to the face.

They both go after classes. Jongdae’s dad gave him his ty old car so it was all good because Baekhyun could barely feel his toes from the chilly October air.

“Your fault for not wearing fluffier clothes.” Jongdae says.

“I can’t compromise fashion just for a bit of heat!” he huffs.

They arrive 10 minutes later and Baekhyun honestly didn’t think he’d be so glad to be inside Mr. Ahn’s antique shop. The temperature inside was warming his mitten-less hands and the smell of old books was oddly satisfying.

There were always curious onlookers in the place, what with all the supposedly haunted or enchanted things the old man sells. As far as Baekhyun knows though, nobody ever buys them since they were only good enough for social media pictures.

“Hey Baek, look at this!” Chen is holding up what looks like an ancient ran-over, rat bitten, clown costume.

“Please don’t tell me you’re going in that.”

“Why not? It looks scary as !”

“Bruh remember that movie with that guy wearing an ancient clown costume and ended up being possessed by some demon.”

Jongdae’s face drops in horror and practically throws the thing away.

Baekhyun examines some of the costumes uninterestingly. He’d rather be a ty nurse than wear what looks like his grandparents’ clothing to be honest.

He spots the jewellery section and decides to humour himself. There were rows and rows of pretty and eccentric accessories, but one caught his eye.

It was an obnoxious necklace with a heavy stone with pastel pinks, blues, and purples swirling into a mix of colours. He turns the necklace and sees an engraving of a unicorn, it was so childishly cute, and he bursts into giggles.

He wasn’t finding anything else worthy of his 2 dollars in the store anyway so might as well buy it and make the visit worth it, right?

He goes to the counter and sees Jongdae paying for what looks like an ancient Dracula costume and rolls his eyes.

He hands the necklace to Mr. Ahn with a judging Jongdae by his side.

“Ahh… what an interesting purchase!” Mr Ahn’s says with his usual beaming face and croaky voice. “When you feel frustrated make sure you rub the stone boy and wait for the magic to come out!”

He goes out into the chilly air with Jongdae cackling maniacally beside him.

“When you’re frustrated, rub the stone and wait for the ‘magic’ to come out Baek!” he cackles while he makes suggestive hand movements.

Baekhyun just whacks him with the necklace. Well at least it’s good for something.

Baekhyun doesn’t know why but something tells him maybe his purchase wasn’t so silly afterall.