Today is the only other day Baekhyun’s father could give him a day off, knowing that it is the day his best friend would be moving in to stay with him. But his father has already made it a point to let Baekhyun know that he would have to be at the company for the rest of the week. He hasn’t told the girl yet, hoping that even though he would have to work for the rest of the week, he could at least be home in the evenings.

Presently, Baekhyun is standing next to his best friend, staring at the pile of boxes in the guestroom that would now belong to the girl. He takes another moment to be amazed at how many boxes such a small girl needs before turning to her, amused.

“That’s a lot of things,” he comments.

The girl blushes. “Most of them are clothes. I sent my kitchenware back home.”

Baekhyun raises an eyebrow. “So there should have been more boxes?” When she doesn’t say anything in her embarrassment, he merely chuckles and steps toward the boxes. “I’ll help you unpack.”

The two of them spend the next hour unpacking her boxes that seem to be mostly full of clothes. Baekhyun comes across a cute fluffy hoodie dress with bunny ears while helping her hang her apparels in the wardrobe. He raises an amused eyebrow at the girl, who hasn’t noticed it yet.

“I’ve never seen you in this before,” Baekhyun comments aloud.

From the ground where his best friend is getting out her underwear to put into the drawers, she looks up in curiosity, only to notice Baekhyun holding out the white hoodie to present it to her. She blushes but still nonetheless manages a glare at him.

“That’s because I don’t wear it out,” she mutters, looking back down quickly, though not forgetting to slap his ankle.

Baekhyun chuckles at her reaction. “Why not?” he wonders as he stows it away with her other oversized hoodies. “It’s cute.”

“It’s because it’s cute I don’t wear it out.”

“But you used to wear clothes I thought was cu—”

He stops when he picks up a very familiar looking hoodie from her box packed full of sweaters and jackets. He unfolds the navy blue hoodie slowly, staring at it speechlessly. He feels his heart pumping faster and harder. He swallows and, with slightly trembling hands, smooths his fingers over the soft material that he remembers very well since it had been one of his favourite hoodies to wear because of this very texture. His heart seem to pound a lot harder now.

Despite the embarrassment and annoyance towards Baekhyun, the girl is stumped by his sudden stop in his sentence. Lifting her gaze, she finally sees her best friend staring at a hoodie in awe and surprise. She pokes his calf to call for his attention.

“You’re being weird,” she says bluntly.

Baekhyun’s ears are roaring with the rush of blood through his veins. He takes in a deep breath and looks down at her. “Where’d you get this hoodie?” he breathes.

The girl tilts her head at the hoodie he is holding. “Your wardrobe,” she simply says. She wears a cheeky grin. “I snuck it out of your room a few years ago.”

“When?” Baekhyun breathes, wanting to know when exactly she had stolen it from him.

She hums, her eyes pointing upwards at the ceiling. “Hmm… I think… it was during your last year in college?”

He stares at her, heart stopping. She seems to understand his shocked silence. She smiles at him, so beautifully that he swears his heart will eventually explode with all the pent up adoration for her.

“It was a week after we… you know,” she tries to explain unabashedly though she has gone a little pink. She has a shy smile on her lips as she looks down, fiddling with one of her . “You were wearing it when we were cuddling. And I liked the material so much—”

“I remember,” Baekhyun murmurs softly as he reminisces back to that time when he thought he had been a fool for not keeping his best friend closer. He swallows and faces her expectant look. “You even went to sleep constantly rubbing your cheek on my chest.”

She blushes almost a fiery red in embarrassment and shock. “You remember?” she asks breathlessly.

Baekhyun keeps his eyes on her, wondering if he should be honest. He doesn’t want to lose whatever friendship they have, considering how it is already balancing on such a thin tightrope. But a bigger part of him urges him to speak the truth because it has been years since he first found out about his feelings for her, and he had kept it in secret ever since then. The longer Baekhyun looks into her expectant gaze, her twinkling brown eyes, his heart does a flip and the truth just comes spilling out of him.

“Of course I remember,” he whispers finally, quietly. Slowly, he squats down in front of her so that they are at eye level. “How can I forget the most heartwarming moment of my life?”

The girl finds that words have gotten clogged up in . She cannot find the strength to say anything, her heart pounding hard against her ribcage. They keep their eyes on each other though, just staring and getting lost in them for a moment. With Baekhyun being the one who initiated this situation, he is the first to break out of the daze. He gives her the softest of all smiles.

“Keep it,” he murmurs softly. “I want you to safekeep it for me. And wear it when you’re home so I can see you in it.”

“But I’ve never worn it,” the girl confesses.

He frowns. “Then why is it in your closet?”

He notices her ears getting red and her cheeks firing up. Her eyes are gazing at something on the ground though Baekhyun doesn’t know what. “I hug it to sleep sometimes,” she whispers, almost like she doesn’t want Baekhyun to hear her. But she can never lie to him, especially not when he is being truthful with her too. “I haven’t washed it since I took it from you.”

She doesn’t elaborate but Baekhyun’s heart is racing and a million questions he wants to ask her are running through his mind. He has lost many opportunities to say things he wanted to say, to ask questions he wanted to ask. This time, he doesn’t want to lose the chance to ask her questions when it has already been presented to him.

“Why?” he breathes the simple question yet it had felt so hard to get out.

She swallows. “Because your scent calms me.” Her answer is simple as well yet it had been as difficult to force out.

Surprised by her own honesty, the girl blinks. She feels embarrassed because of her confession. But the longer she looks into Baekhyun’s surprised expression morphing into a totally different expression, the frost that had taken over her heart melts away.

Baekhyun’s other questions die in his chest as affection blooms. He stares at the girl, his eyes twinkling and dazed. He wonders if he looks as lovestruck as he feels. If so, he must look plenty stupid. He doesn’t want to look stupid in front of such a beautiful girl.

The both of them, not wanting to drag on the silence for too long so that the air becomes more awkward, speak at the same time, horror and regret setting in when they hear each other’s words.

“Can we cuddle to sleep tonight?”

“Let’s get back to packing.”

Baekhyun is miserable. He wants to lock himself up in his room and never, ever come out again.

Why did he say that? Why did he not wait for her to ask the question before he stupidly tried to avoid the situation of looking stupid in front of his crush?

The entire day, no matter how much Baekhyun tries to make eye contact with his best friend, she always looks away, obviously embarrassed by the way things had turned out. Dinner is quiet and awkward. Even though Baekhyun tries to invite her to his room for a cuddle, he can’t seem to get the invitation out of his mouth. Which is why he is rolling around in his king-sized bed, groaning loudly into the pillow.

The entire night, Baekhyun finds himself tossing and turning, sometimes messily ruffling up his hair. Every once in awhile he doesn’t forget to self-deprecate himself by banging his head into his pillow and calling himself the biggest idiot in the world. Yet despite all that self-abuse and the monstrous state he wakes up in after two hours of fitful sleep, Baekhyun at least learns his lesson.

He can’t and won’t hide his feelings anymore, no matter how stupid he thinks he might look. Baekhyun will not be a coward anymore.

Baekhyun realises that the bridge he had slowly and carefully been building between him and his best friend has been destroyed to nothing again.

She is constantly out, never really coming home except in the mornings when Baekhyun is out to work. And she is always out of the house before he is home. To him, it is as if she is avoiding him. Yet Baekhyun knows that there is nothing he can do except give her space. He has been here before and he knows that the best course of action is basically no action. The last time he tried to get close to her, she had pushed him further so that the distance between the two of them grew even more. He doesn’t want that to happen.

So he keeps his distance. Sometimes, he would leave a note on her door before he leaves for work, telling her that he has bought her some chocolates or her favourite cake from that cafè far from town. His heart would always jump every time he goes home and sees that the note is gone, along with whatever food he had gotten her.

On the coming Saturday, Baekhyun is woken up by his phone ringing. He answers it groggily, though immediately snapping his eyes open when he hears his best friend crying through the phone.

“Baek…h-hyun,” she sobs.

The male sits up right away, his heart thudding fast in his chest. “What’s wrong? Kitten, where are you?”

“I’m—” She pauses here before slurring, not to Baekhyun, but to someone else present with her, “No, thank you. I’m fine.” She doesn’t at all sound like she’s fine, actually. Baekhyun is already getting his car keys when his best friend speaks into the speaker. “Baekhyun.”

His heart stops. “Yes?” he breathes.

“I hate you,” she says in an entirely sober voice.

Baekhyun stops in his tracks, just blinking, his body temperature rising several decimal values as his heart shatters. Whole 15 seconds passes with no words exchanged between them before the girl breaks down in sniffles and sobs again.

“Where are you?” Baekhyun manages to choke out. No matter how much she hates him, he still needs her to be safe because he is very sure she is drunk.

“I don’t want you to come!” she snaps, suddenly angry. “Don’t come look for— Hey!”

Baekhyun almost trips at his rush to run down the stairs. He wonders briefly if his ancestors ever had the history of heart attack because it is getting very hard to breathe with his heart beating so fast in his chest.

“She’s at Playground Bar and she’s drunk,” comes a low, somber voice of a man.

“Who are you?” Baekhyun manages to force out.

“The bartender and owner of Playground Bar. Are you the boyfriend?”

Baekhyun opens his mouth to respond but he shuts it instead. It makes him guilty but it feels so nice to be called her boyfriend. Not just her boyfriend, actually, but the boyfriend.

“Stop! Don’t tell him where I am!” He hears his best friend screeching in the background. “Park Chanyeol—”

“Yah, just go to sleep, you brat,” the man holding the girl’s phone hostage mutters. Baekhyun can hear the girl struggling in the background but the bartender quickly says into the phone. “Get here soon or she might burn down my bar.”

“I will—!”

The shout of his best friend is interrupted by the silence in which the owner of the bar had hung up the call. Without another moment to waste, Baekhyun tears down the stairs and makes his way as quickly as he can to his car. He keys in the name of the bar on his GPS and follows the map to get to the location that is just eight minutes away from his place.

The moment he sees the pink neon sign that reads Playground Bar, he parks by the curb and hastily locks the car before running down the stairs to the underground bar. He doesn’t even take in the interior of the bar that looks like a cross between a playground and the beach. It has the perfect summer vibe to it no matter what season it is. Baekhyun’s head might snap off his neck from looking this way and that if not for the tall guy approaching him. He wears a black cap, his wide ears prominent without anything to hide them.

“Baekhyun heart heart?”

Baekhyun looks at him like he is crazy until the other male shows him the handphone of his best friend, his contact details on the screen with his name saved as ‘Baekhyun♥️♥️’. He can only nod. The tall guy turns around then and walks to the back of the bar, beyond a door with a sign that reads Do not enter. Baekhyun stops outside, not sure if he is allowed in. But the tall man peers his head out of the door again and beckons Baekhyun in.

The guy is already climbing some stairs when Baekhyun goes through the door. He follows behind the owner of the bar carefully before finding himself in a small loft. It isn’t a studio apartment since there isn’t a kitchen, but there is a bathroom and a bed. And on the queen-sized bed, a sleeping girl is passed out, her body covered with a blanket. Baekhyun looks at the guy next to him, frowning.

“She’s been coming here everyday for the past week,” he says softly, not wanting to wake the girl up though she is too deep in her sleep to hear anything. “Reads magazines and stuff when it isn’t busy. Helps out when she sees me struggling to serve tables.” The man turns to face Baekhyun and in the light, he sees that the man has very big eyes. “It’s just me and my partner, you see. She’s been a big help when she’s not drunk. But she talks to me about her problems when she is.” He narrows his eyes on Baekhyun now, almost looking like an older brother threatening a boy who is chasing after his sister. “You’re very stupid, you know?”

Baekhyun opens his mouth, wanting to snap him for calling him stupid when they don’t even know each other. But he stops himself because he knows that he is stupid. The next thing he wants to do is ask him why he would say that. But then he shuts his mouth again because he is sure he knows the answer. So in the end, he sighs, his shoulders deflating.

“I know,” he mutters, running a hand through his already messy hair.

The other guy surveys him for a moment before patting him on the back. “Need a drink?”

A glance at the sleeping girl, Baekhyun sighs heavily and nods. “Please.”

Chanyeol, the owner of Playground Bar, is watching Baekhyun down another glass of whisky as he wipes the surface of the sticky bar counter with a wet cloth. Baekhyun holds his head in his hands, looking so miserable that Chanyeol feels terrible for him. Glancing around the raucous place filled with people, Chanyeol decides that he doesn’t need to pay much attention to them since they’d be plenty confident to shout for him if they ever need him.

“You look like a wreck, man,” the guy says honestly.

Baekhyun gives a bitter laugh. He lifts his head to look at him. “And I feel like one.”

Chanyeol purses his lips. “You know, she’s a very nice girl.”

“I—”

“Listen to me,” Chanyeol says firmly, glaring at Baekhyun. A small part of Baekhyun feels annoyed at this man who dares to speak to him like this when they don’t even know each other. “She told me she feels that you don’t care about her, or about whether or not she’s out with another guy.”

Baekhyun perks up to growl, “I care about her! So much!”

Chanyeol stops wiping the counter and leans against it instead. “I know. I can see that. But why didn’t you look for her?” Baekhyun opens his mouth to answer to that, but he is stopped by Chanyeol who continues. “Every time she hears footsteps down the stairs of the entrance, she always turns around because she thinks you would look for her.”

This time, he waits for Baekhyun to say something. But the guy only stares at Chanyeol with his mouth slightly parted at the realisation. Someone shouts for Chanyeol to serve their table, so with another glance at Baekhyun, he walks around the bar and goes to the table that had called him. Baekhyun is still staring at the spot Chanyeol had just vacated.

How could she think he doesn’t care about her? He is only protecting their friendship from breaking when the rubber band is already being pulled to its maximum. He doesn’t want to try to get into her space, only for her to get mad at him. But then again, a part of him also knows that it isn’t just that that had made him avoid looking for her. He had been afraid to look for her and see her with another man. Thinking about it again, had Baekhyun been protecting the friendship, or had he been protecting himself?

Chanyeol has returned but instead of attending to Baekhyun, he makes the drinks that the table has ordered. Deciding not to intrude on his business any longer, Baekhyun puts down three $100 bill notes, hoping it is enough to cover his drinks as well as the trouble Chanyeol and his partner had gone through when his best friend was here. Then he catches the guy’s eye and points upstairs where his best friend is. Chanyeol nods.

Baekhyun drags himself up the loft, his heart getting heavier with each step. When he reaches the small apartment, he sees another guy sitting on the other side of the bed where his best friend is sleeping. He knows that this has to be Kyungsoo, Chanyeol’s partner and also the cook.

Thinking that Baekhyun is Chanyeol, Kyungsoo complains half-heartedly, “She really needs to go home, Yeol. She was hugging me just now, I had to stop myself from pushing her off the bed.”

Noticing the lack of words, Kyungsoo looks up. His eyes widens when he sees Baekhyun. The intruder gives him a wry smile.

“Sorry she gave you so much trouble,” he apologises.

“No, no!” Kyungsoo shakes his head, now standing up. “I was just—”

“It’s fine,” Baekhyun says. “I’ll bring her home. Thanks for taking care of her the past few days.”

Kyungsoo watches him pick up the unconscious girl easily. “No problem,” he mutters. “She’s been a lot of help to us.”

Baekhyun grunts as he carries her more securely in his arms. “I heard,” Baekhyun says, a soft smile on his face. “She’s always been a very helpful girl.”

Kyungsoo opens the door for him and bids him good night. Baekhyun’s head is oddly clear despite three glasses of whiskey. He has the life of his best friend in his hands. He has to be careful. He goes down to the bar and says goodbye to Chanyeol, who yells out for them to visit again when they’ve talked over things. Baekhyun still can’t help thinking it’s unusual for a stranger to talk to him like a friend, but he concludes that he is no longer annoyed by it.

Baekhyun gets the girl into the car and drives back home safely. He changes her out into her pajamas and after a long while of contemplation in the showers, he decides to go to bed with her. For the first time in years. He wants to tell himself that it is to make up for that mistake he made her first day here but he knows deep inside him that it is more because he wants to go to sleep with her. So he does.

The next morning, Baekhyun wakes up to the two of them spooning, his arm locked around her waist, his face buried in her shoulder. He takes in a deep breath of her scent, taking a moment or two to appreciate the morning where he could wake up cuddling with the girl that has occupied his heart for the longest time. He doesn’t want things to get awkward though, so he regretfully takes his hand away from her waist, unsticking his body from hers. He is slipping on his bedroom slippers when the girl speaks up, her raspy morning voice freezing the veins in Baekhyun’s body.

“Why are you being such a coward, Baekhyun?”

Hearing no response from him, the girl turns around to glare at him. Baekhyun only dares to breathe, “What?”

She swallows and stares at him, wondering if she should say it. But the longer she looks at Baekhyun’s confused expression, the madder she is.

“Do I mean nothing to you?”

Baekhyun blinks. “You mean the world to me!” he swears.

This makes her even angrier. And when she is angry, tears always follow. She sits up and wipes her tears hastily. “How can I mean the world to you if you don’t even care about where I go every night?”

Baekhyun opens his mouth to retort but he knows that whatever he says, it wouldn’t be a good enough excuse. So he shuts his mouth and swallows.

“You thought I was with my stupid friends, didn’t you?” she accuses. “You thought I was out having and being a —”

“No, no,” Baekhyun interjects, frowning now. “I never thought you were a . I…” he sees the accusing look on her face and sighs. “I admit that I had fleeting thoughts about you spending nights with another man. And I really thought you went back to being friends with those girls…”

“And you just let me do that?”

Baekhyun now feels a bit angry too. He had been protecting their friendship by giving her space, or so he thought. “I let you do that because I don’t want to pry again!” he snaps.

Tears slide down her cheeks silently when she hears the tone of his voice. “What do you mean?” she grits out.

The both of them are mad at each other, mostly because they both feel misunderstood.

“I mean that the last time I tried to talk to you, you just completely avoided me!” He is heaving now, glaring at her.

This time, the anger seeps out of her as confusion takes over. “What?” she breathes.

Baekhyun shuts his eyes and breathes in through his nose in an attempt to calm himself. “You pushed me away when you thought I was nosy when I asked you about your friends,” he mutters.

The girl’s eyebrows furrow as she rummages through her brain to find that memory. When she finally does, guilt floods her entire body. It has been three years since then.

“That was so long ago…”

Baekhyun looks away, his jaw clenched. “Yeah, well. When someone means the world to you, you never forget.”

“For all these years?” she breathes.

He doesn’t reply her but she already knows the answer. Realisation finally dawns on her. So this is why Baekhyun doesn’t ask her about her friends whenever they spend time together. This is why Baekhyun always gives her that respectable distance, making sure that he never gets under her skin even though sometimes she wants him to. It wasn’t because he doesn’t care about her. It was because he cares too much.

“Baekhyun,” she whispers, her voice so thick and shaky that Baekhyun just can’t help but to look at her. She is crying. “Did you hate it when I called you almost every weekend to come get me?”

It is a simple question yet Baekhyun somehow knows that his answer will make or break their relationship. It all depends on his answer.

“I didn’t,” he answers softly, truthfully. “I wanted to be called by you.”

The girl’s lips tilt into a shaky, watery smile. “You know those times were the only times I was confident enough to call you?” Baekhyun stares at her, frozen and surprised by her confession. She wipes tears off her cheeks. “You thought it was because I was drunk and didn’t trust my friends. And it was because of that. But also because I wanted to see you. And have an excuse to be with you.”

Baekhyun gapes at her. For half a minute, none of them speaks. He takes in everything that she has said. his dry lips, he asks quietly, “Why didn’t you just see me when you were sober?”

“Because you wouldn’t see me,” she answers regretfully. “Because you thought I would push you away and you avoided me even when I wanted you and you only. Not my stupid friends who don’t even know what my favourite food is.”

“Sushi?”

She chuckles through tears, her voice slightly thick. She nods her head.

Baekhyun has been an idiot, and so has she. Like they always say, it takes two hands to clap. Even in this relationship where Baekhyun had initially thought was falling apart because of him, he realised that she is at fault too. And the girl also realises that Baekhyun wasn’t being a coward. He was just protecting them. She was the real coward.

Baekhyun keeps his brown eyes on his best friend who is sniffling and wiping her face with the sleeves of her shirt. He scans her messy hair and outfit, feeling an outrageous amount of love blooming in his chest. He decides to take the jump even if it might bring their friendship to an awkward place. He just doesn’t want to wait anymore and lose this perfect opportunity to voice out what is in his heart. He has done that plenty of times before and he thinks it is time for him to stop being a coward.

“I love you.”

Without missing a beat, the girl looks up and says back with a smile. “I love you too.”

Baekhyun feels frustrated. “No,” he stresses, shaking his head. “I have loved you for three years, kitten. And not as a friend.”

Her smile stretches into a gentle, loving smile that makes her even more beautiful than ever. “I know what you meant, Baekhyun,” she whispers. “I love you too,” she says again, not even bothering to explain herself.

He stares at her, barely even believing his ears. His heart stops. “Really?” She chuckles tearfully and nods her head. “Seriously?”

She laughs now. “Yes, Baekhyun. Seriously. I’m sorry— Oh!”

She is knocked back down on the mattress by Baekhyun flinging himself on her, his arms tight around her body to never let her go, his lips planted on hers to satisfy his desire to kiss her ever since three years ago. He can feel her smile against his lips though she just stays there, letting him lead. It is only when he pulls back from the kiss, the both of them staring at each other with a loving twinkle in their eyes, that she finally asks the question that has been bugging her.

“Why did it take you so long?”

“Because I thought you didn’t see me that way and I thought you didn’t want me around anymore. What took you so long?”

“Because I thought you didn’t see me that way and I thought you didn’t want me around anymore.”

The both of them laugh at each other for their stupidity. There actually never was a break in their friendship if they hadn’t had such worrying concerns. In fact, this friendship could have escalated to something much more if they had been honest with each other, and if they hadn’t thought so much about consequences.

Their names were already written in the stars a long time ago. It just took them a bit of a detour to find their place in each other.

That when the stars go out
You can rest your love on me
And when the world gets loud
Baby you can rest your love on me
When the stars go out, you can rest your love on me
Yeah you can rest your love on me
And when the world gets loud, baby you can rest your love on me
Yeah you can rest your love on me

The girl had been rejecting guys all night like she was swatting flies. She had drank a bit of course, but she wasn’t drunk. She never trusted her friends well enough to go all out with them. Tonight, she was a little more buzzed than usual when she felt a pang in her chest, wishing she was with Baekhyun instead of being in the club surrounded by sweaty bodies. Baekhyun always knew how to made the night fun no matter how boring it was.

She looked around for her friends and saw that they were all gone, probably dancing with guys. This was why she never trusted them whenever she went out drinking. She knew that they put themselves before anyone else so that if they had to choose between having fun and having to take care of a friend in need, they would undoubtedly choose the former.

Seeing how none of her friends were around her, she danced her way out of a circle of guys trying to crowd around her. The girl escaped the club and immediately called her best friend as she plopped herself down on the sidewalk. It was one in the middle of the night but she knew that Baekhyun was still awake. It took him three rings to pick up the phone.

Trying her best to sound drunk, she slurred, “Baekhyun.”

“Where are you?” was the first thing he demanded.

It made her feel slightly anxious. She hoped he wasn’t mad at her. Taking in a deep breath, she hummed and looked around her surrounding.

“Iunno,” she eventually said. “Kin you come git me, Baekhyun?” she asked, though she was sure he wouldn’t because she was definitely overdoing the whole drunk-talking thing.

But not-so-surprisingly, Baekhyun readily agreed. “Of course. I’m already on my way. Stay where you are, okay?”

Her heart lightened though now she just felt nervous about meeting him. “Okay,” she murmured, frowning slightly when she saw a group of guys conversing loudly close by.

“You still have your location shared with me, don’t you?” Baekhyun asked. She hummed, her eyes still on the group of guys arguing on where to go next. “Okay. Stay there. I’m coming,” Baekhyun instructed.

So she did. She stayed where she was. As she sat there doing nothing but wait, the alcohol started to sink into her system, making her sleepy. She didn’t know how long she had been waiting there but it couldn’t have been long when the group of boys started to gravitate towards her as though a group of hyenas jumping on a dead prey.

She really didn’t have the energy to do this. She was pleading for the guys to leave her alone but they wouldn’t stop talking to her, or touching her hair. She was getting annoyed and her hands were waving about to stop the guys from getting close. It didn’t help that they were talking so much either, making her shut her eyes in irritation, as if that would help block out the noise.

Baekhyun took a long time, or at least, it felt like a long time. A headache was already pounding against her temple and the girl was already feeling like she was floating. She only sensed her best friend’s presence when she felt some guys around her tensing up in a very hostile manner. Tuning into the voices around her again, she struggled to hear Baekhyun’s voice. The person speaking now was a guy to her right. But then she heard a very familiar Ha! that made her lift her head.

“Baekhyun?” she called.

Her best friend was quick to answer as he hurried forward. “Yes, kitten.”

The girl peeked an eye open to make sure that it was Baekhyun. Her heart skipped at the sight of him in a simple black shirt that would give her a normally good view of his chest if she wasn’t drunk, and a pair of grey Nike sweats. She held her hands out to him and he immediately took her by the arms and pulled her away from the group of guys. She rested her head on Baekhyun’s shoulder and he let her stay there.

It felt so nice even if they were walking and it had only lasted for a few seconds. But Baekhyun always smelled like a mix between honey and Ralph Lauren, and she has always adored that scent that she associated with him. This wasn’t even close to cuddling but she would still take it. It was only in her drunken state that Baekhyun would allow her to do such things because normally, he didn’t care about her. He always avoided her if he could help it.

That was the reason why she called Baekhyun every time she had a night out. Not just because she didn’t trust her friends. But mainly because he would let her in for the night, and the day following the night. That was also why she had never forgotten to kiss Baekhyun goodbye after every weekend she spent with him.

Because she knew that she could rest her love on Baekhyun, even if he didn’t.