“Shopping with you?” you ask bewildered and Tao nods his head “Of course! Who else could you go with and wouldn’t you rather surprise your friends with your dress?” You furrow your eyebrows thinking “I guess, but Xiumin…” “Forget about Xiumin. I want to go shopping with you” Tao pleads and you can’t help but cave. “Alright, give me a half hour to get ready” “I’ll be waiting at the front door!” Tao eagerly agrees and leaves so you can get dressed. Quickly ridding yourself of your uniform and putting on simple jean shorts and t-shirt you hurry downstairs putting your hair up in a ponytail as you went down the stairs.

Tao was leaning against the wall looking at his phone and you can’t help but think that’s its unfair some people look so hot while not even trying. He looks up then and smiles making your heart skip a beat, looking down you avoid his gaze as you put on your sandals right when Kris and Chanyeol come up from the basement. “Where are you guys going?” Kris questions raising an eyebrow and crossing his arms over his chest.  “Shopping!” Tao squeals and Kris visibly flinches at the word “Well have fun” Chanyeol says and continues his way up to his room. “Yah have fun. Tao don’t spend too much” Kris warns and Tao flicks his hair to the side “Gege I’m not a child” and with that the 2 of you left hurrying to catch the bus to take you to the mall.

Upon your entrance to the mall Tao squealed in delight and before you could say anything you where dragged off to the closest store that sold dresses. Tao scanned rack after rack picking up dress after dress and your fell at the stack of dresses in his arms that you no doubt you had to try on. “Here go try these on Azalea” Tao commands dumping the dresses into your arms. You struggles to stay upright while holding the dresses getting crushed under their weight wondering how on earth Tao had been holding all of them. But then he was practically a wu shu master so it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Going into the changing room you picked up the first dress from the pile and grimance, you hated wherein dresses. The fact that you had no pants on made you feel and exposed but this dress was hideous. It was jade green with ruffles in all the wrong spots, without even trying the dress on you throw it out of the dressing room earning a surprised gasp from whoever was standing on the other side of the curtain. “What was that for?” Tao asks picking up the dress and smoothing it out. You where startled for a minute that Tao was that close and not just sitting on the couch in the center of the section designated for the dressing room.

“That dress is hideous. I am not putting that on…and could you like sit on the couch over there and not stand here. It’s disturbing” you voice and here Tao make a noise of disagreement before stomping over to the couch. You exhale a breath in relief and pick up the next dress knowing that you wouldn’t have been able to change knowing Tao was standing just on the other side of a flimsy curtain. Pulling the dress on you look at yourself in the mirror and frown not liking how you look. Just as you where about to take it off you hear Tao screech “You better show me every single dress you put on!”

Sighing you push aside the curtain and step and see Tao trying to hold in his laugh “You look like a balloon” he manages to gasp in-between chuckles and you pout. “If you’re going to insult me then you can forget about me trying on any other dressing in front of you. I’ll just come back with Xiumin” you huff feeling angry and hurt that he called you fat. Just as your about to turn around and walk away Tao grabs your wrist and pulls you towards him. Startled you gasp as your body hits his chest, with one hand still holding your wrist his other arm comes around your waist holding you in place.

“I’m sorry” Tao says sincerely but you turn away knowing as soon as you looked him in the eyes he would win and you would forgive him. Letting go of your wrist he grabs your chin and tilts it upward to you where face to face with him. “I’m really sorry Azalea” he says sincerely and from this position you could see your refection in his eyes and feel his breath hitting your face. Avoiding eye contact you pout “Fine but call me fat one more time and I’ll seriously leave.” “Deal” Tao says and smiles, your hear starts beating a million times a minute and you hastily remove yourself from his arms and hurry back into the dressing room to get out of the dress.

Tao sighed in relief as you hurry back into the dressing room mentally congratulating himself for a quick save. How could he have been so stupid and say something like that? He knew girls were sensitive about their weight and Azalea was no exception. Personally he liked the way she looks, not to skinny like a stick, not really chubby either but just right, he guessed another way to put it was that she was curvy. Dress after dress both you and Tao rejected everyone not liking how any fit you. You thought it was because you didn’t have the body for a dress and wasn’t girly enough but Tao knew it was because none of them complemented the natural curves of your body good enough.

Looking through the last couple of dresses you had one in particular caught your attention, it was a black halter top plain and simple. Pulling it off of its hanger you slid into it and you noticed something immediately, the neck wasn’t tied and your chest was exposed for the world to see. Sighing you grabbed the ends of fabric and tried to tie it in vain behind your neck but couldn’t succeed. Obviously hearing your noises of distress Tao had stood up and went to stand outside the curtain once more.

“Azalea is everything alright?” “Uh kind of, I’m having trouble with the dress” you say and Tao furrows his eyebrows “Do you need help?” He asks and suddenly imagined you asking him to pull up the zipper on your dress. Shaking his head to get rid of the image he tries to control the blush over taking his face thanks to his over active imagination. You freeze at Tao’s words and think over your options A) take off the dress and forget about it B) Have Tao come into the room and tie it for you. You so desperately wanted to pick option A but you loved this dress right now and wanted to see how it would look on you when it was on properly.

“T-Tao?” you say to make sure that he was still outside “Yes?” he replies and you take a deep breath in and make sure you where holding up the front so that it covered your entire chest. “Could you come in here and help me?” Tao froze at your words “O-Ok. I’m coming in” he croaked and slowly opened the curtains his heart beating fast not sure what to expect. Upon entrance to the dressing room Tao see’s you standing in the corner you hair sweep over to one side revealing you back thanks to the low cut dress.

“I need you to tie the ends” you say struggling to keep your voice steady while you fight off your urge to push Tao out of the dressing room. “Alright” you hear Tao says and you swear his voice was deeper than you remember. Slowly Tao steps towards you and grabs the ends of the dress hanging over your shoulders, taking a deep breath to calm himself he grabs the ends and effortlessly ties it into a perfect bow. “There” he says and steps back waiting for your next command unsure about what to do.

You knew Tao was still in the dressing room but your heart was beating to fast in your chest to allow you to do anything. “Um… Why don’t we go out now” you say and open the curtain letting Tao who was looking down out first. As soon as you step out of the curtain behind him you notice some sales lady giving you curious looks which you chose to ignore knowing exactly what was going through their heads. “So what do you think?” You ask and Tao forces his head up to look at you and his breath gets caught in his throat. The dress was perfect. It was red with black lace over top and tight around your waist emphasizing how tiny it was with a lace ribbon tied into a bow at the front. It ended just above your knee’s at the front and a little higher at the back thanks to your and was low cut at the back going right up to ribbon around your waist.

“Tao?” you ask unsure about his lack of response, the boy was just staring at you and you watch as he slowly comes back into this world and clears his throat before talking “It’s perfect.” “Great!” you hurriedly run back into the dressing room taking the dress off trying to forget about the way Tao had been staring at you. You pay for the dress and leave looking at your phone you realize it’s late and grab something eat with Tao which consisted of fries 3 burgers, 2 for Tao and 1 for you. “Hey Tao how did you know that that store would have the perfect dress?” you ask thinking back to how you 2 only went to 1 store. “I didn’t. We just got lucky” Tao says cheekily and you chuckle. Finishing up your food you leave the mall and catch a bus heading to the bus stop near your house.

Getting off the bus Tao snatches the dress from you saying that he would carry it home and as you went inside you heard the TV blaring from the basement knowing that the guys where all watching some show. “Thanks for going shopping with me Tao” you say and Tao shakes his head “No problem it was fun.” Out of impulse you kissed him on his cheek and when you realized what you had done you grabbed your dress and hurriedly ran up to your room locking the door closed and leaned against it placing a hand over your racing heart.