Baekhyun stares down at my hand clasped around his for a moment before wriggling out of my grip. I quickly retreat my arm and meddle with my hands in my lap. It’s almost as if Baekhyun’s hand left an invisible residue on my own, leaving a trace of himself on my hand, reminding me of what once was. Maybe I had my own motives, but I couldn’t just let him leave so easily after witnessing something that’s probably forever embedded in his mind.

“’You don’t have to waste a hundred dollars on a hotel room, just stay the night and you can decide what you want to do tomorrow,” I try reasoning.

“It’s okay.” I glance at him with concern, and he tries to reassure his decision. “Really, it’s fine-”

His cell phone on the coffee table vibrates and we both fall completely silent. The rumbling of the phone shuts him up right away and his eyes become cold. I squint my eyes and focus on the screen. The caller ID reads “Minkyung” but he makes no move to answer it. I move my eyes back to Baekhyun and I watch as his ears start to glow a bright red.

The vibrating stops momentarily before starting again. This time Chanyeol’s calling. This goes on for a good few minutes, with nonstop calls and voice mails left in between. After maybe the tenth call or so, I reach for the phone in attempt to turn it off, but Baekhyun’s quicker than me and snatches it right before I grab it.

He storms to the door and slams it open. I stand up, thinking he’s leaving, but before I can fully process anything he just chucks his phone out the door and onto the wet concrete. It bounces a few times, pieces of the phone shattering off every time it hits the ground. It settles its way into a puddle of rain water in the street gutter.

He turns around. “Sorry, I didn’t know how else to shut them up,” he says sheepishly as he closes the door and walks past me. I turn around and tentatively watch him. “I’ll sleep on the couch,” he says with a curt smile and I can’t help but let out a relieved sigh and smile in return.

I offer Baekhyun spare clothes that belong to Jongin. I don’t know why, but I let him know that the clothes I was giving him were never really worn by Jongin. He probably would have complied anyway, considering his clothes were damp with rain, but it felt necessary to say for reasons I can’t fully admit.

He asks if he can take a shower and I try to restrain the sip of water I had just swallowed and nod my head, incapable of replying at the moment. “The towels are in the cupboard above the toilet,” I let him know.
 

I turn up the volume on the television to try to drown out the sounds of the shower (and maybe also the thoughts of Baekhyun).
 

I struggle to focus on what I thought was my favorite drama, but apparently it couldn’t even keep my attention for more than maybe a minute at a time before my mind easily wandered back to Baekhyun. I end up going to the kitchen to finish washing the dishes I said I was going to do a few days ago. Thankfully the clatter of dishes is loud enough to distract me.

I place the last dish in the dish rack and turn around to find Baekhyun adorned in Jongin’s old clothes with dripping wet hair that leaves dark spots of dampness along the collar of hoodie I had loaned him. I smile in content. I’ve never really seen Baekhyun in anything other than suits and ties. He was always dolled up, and I don’t mind a man that likes to keep up his appearance, but it’s nice to see him in such a raw form. I wondered what he thought of me in sweats, no makeup and a bun…

I become a little perplexed with this whole situation. The fact that Baekhyun and I couldn’t see each other in these normal forms was what made our relationship work. Sure, that one time in New York, he saw me without makeup, but that was different. We didn't think anything was there between us. But other than that, we never went past the superficial surface, because that’s all our relationship was built off of. But everything’s completely stripped down to its most normal, boring form and if anything were to ever be kindled in these basic forms, well that… That would be trouble.

“Are you tired?” I ask, walking to the hall closet to pull out a spare pillow and blanket.

He nods. “Yeah a little bit.”  

I place them on the long couch and toss the throw pillows to the other couch. “Um, I hope this is comfy enough for you… I’ll be in my room down the hall if you need anything,” I say to him, getting in one good last glance at this never before seen Baekhyun. He just nods absent mindedly before I disappear into my room.

I collapse onto my bed facedown and hold in a scream. When my head surfaces from the goose feather pillow, I’m met with the picture of Jongin and me on the nightstand. It’s the happiest picture with the happiest smiles on our faces and the cutest couple ears on at the happiest place on earth. Why would I ever want to give up so much happiness?

I’ve been asking myself this question for as long as Baekhyun and I have been doing this, but what is worrying me the most, is that I’m finally able to come up with answers.

Or I’m finally letting myself come up with answers.

Baekhyun’s not only this daring and exciting guy that happens to be amazing in bed. He’s stupid and annoyingly funny and he makes me laugh even if I don’t want to humor him. He’s clever and intuitive and smart enough to have climbed his own way up the chain in a cubicle chain of work. I thought he had this huge wall built up, but he let me through it and let me see that he’s so much more than some douche coworker on the same floor. He’s braver than I have ever been with my own feelings and he’s open with me and doesn’t lie and is so different from what I thought he was.

I place the picture of Jongin and me face down and the nightstand with a light sigh and roll over to face away from it. I must’ve been so engrossed in my thoughts because Baekhyun is in front of me, and I don’t let it cross my mind that he’s in Jongin’s spot in the bed. I don’t let Jongin cross my mind at all in this moment.

“You must have a lot on your mind, you didn’t even flinch at all when I opened the door or when I inched in or when I slipped into the bed…”

“It’s one of those fancy memory foam mattresses,” I mumble as I gaze at him in an almost dream like state.

His mouth forms an ‘O’ and he keeps his eyes on my own. “That makes sense.”

We just lay there in silence for a while staring at each other and it’s surprisingly not uncomfortable. It’s as normal as the state we're in, which is weird because I've always liked to think of Baekhyun and I’s relationship as complex and outrageous. I’d never think the term, ‘normal’ would ever cross my mind when I thought of us, but I kind of like it.

If Baekhyun and I had never been in such extreme circumstances, that’s what we’d be right now. Normal. No Jongin, no Minkyung, no cheating on him, no cheating on her. This would be completely normal. And I think I really want that.

I do want that.

“Are you excited to get married?” Baekhyun asks. I look for sadness and contempt in his voice, but there’s none. It seems as though he’s only genuinely curious.

“Yeah of course. It’s what every girl dreams of when they’re little. We pick out our wedding colors and venues and dress shapes before we’ve ever even loved. It’s funny. This whole concept of a wedding. Those things aren’t even that important. All you need for a good wedding is love. The other things are nice, but I guess they don’t really matter if I think about it…” I sigh. “But here I am spending a hundred grand on all of that stuff…”

“It’s not just ‘stuff’, it is important,” Baekhyun adds. “Sure, love is definitely a main ingredient but it takes a little work and a bit of cash to make it that much more special. You love the color black, it’s only fitting that it’s at your wedding. And you love the outdoors and romantic lights strung across trees. And your wedding dress is exactly like you. Uptight until you get downstairs and it lets up a little.”

I scoff and roll my eyes while Baekhyun chortled away. “I was expecting beau-”

“I was getting there,” he interrupts. “You didn’t let me finish,” he says sheepishly. “Your dress is tight and intricate and extravagant at the top, but it flows out simply and delicately. A little bit of everything. Just like you.”

I smile at him and it feels like the first time in a while that it felt so natural and genuine to smile. Smiles you give to those who pass you in the streets or in the office can be genuine, but they’re mostly done out of curteousness. It takes a bit of effort in the other end to have a smile unconsciously appear on a face. And Baekhyun was able to do just that.

We’re stuck in that normal silence again that I seem to like so much and it’s so comforting I don’t want it to ever end. It’s almost as if every worry evaporated into the air and all that was left was a comforting, airy, cloud-like silence.

“Are you guys writing your own vows?”

“Jongin wants to, but I’m going to be so nervous, I don’t know if I can write and memorize my own vows…”

“I think you should. You gotta milk everything out of this night that you can. You only get married once.” Hopefully. “It’ll be a nice twist. No one likes to sit through a boring, cookie cutter wedding.”

“I guess…”

“I can help you write them.”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “That’s kind of weird. Are you in love with my fiancé?”

He chuckles. “I think you’ve been through enough plot twists. But really, just listen and tell me what you think.”

I nod my head and my ears burn with anticipation.

“It took a lot of fate for our paths to cross. We had decided years ago when we were still teenagers about what we wanted to do with our life. We had to make it through applications, school, and job interviews and that’s not even the half of it. We had to be in the same hemisphere, the same time zone, same country, same city, same area code, same company, same building, same floor.

“So much had to have happened just for each other to have graced each other’s presence. But once fate had finally forged our paths together, its work was done. Fate knew all it had to do was to get us in the same place and the rest would do the work for itself. So I’m doing fate a favor by writing these vows for you.

“I promise to love you when you’re right and I’m wrong—even though I'll never admit it outloud, and when I’m so mad at you I can’t even look you in the eye, and when you’re down with the most contagious virus, and when you’re dressed up and dolled up, and when you’re plain and natural, I promise to love you because I know how much it took to get us together and I promise I won’t let anything split us apart.”                 

There are tears in my eyes by the time Baekhyun’s finished. But I notice one detail. “That’s not how Jongin and I met,” I say through blurry tears.

“I know.”

It’s how we met.

“Do you know what today is?” he asks faintly. I shake my head, and a tear pooled in my eye finally spills out.

“It’s day 31.”

“Day 31?”

“You gave me a month to get you to fall in love with me. Today’s the last day.” He rubs at his neck and finally turns away from me and readjusts on the bed and stares at the ceiling. “I was planning to give you that speech on this very day a while ago… but I didn’t think it’d be like this.”

I had chills.
 

“Did he succeed?”

Oh my god.

It’s here.

The moment I had been dreading for who knows how long is here.

Oh, maybe I had chills for a reason different than I had originally thought.

I shot up from my position in bed, and so did Baekhyun, but he completely blurred from my mind. All I could think right now is the mess that was standing in front of me.

Jongin’s standing at the door, stiff, rain soaked through his tousled hair, and dripping along his coat. His luggage is still in his hand and the other is clenched in a tight, white knuckled fist. I can only wonder how long he had been standing there. Just how much had he heard of Baekhyun’s speech?

Just how much damage cleanup was I going to have to do?

Jongin’s suitcase hits the floor with a loud thud and I flinch not only from the sound, but from the look that suddenly resides on his face. There was so much anger and hurt filled in one pair of eyes. It didn’t even seem possible.

“Well?”

um this is awkward. how long has it been like almost two months omg OTL IM SORRY DECEMBER IS ALWAYS A BUSY MONTH. BUT THINGS ARE KIND OF INTENSE RIGHT NOW IT WOULD BE CRUEL TO KEEP YOU WAITING ON THIS NOTE SO I'LL HURRY WITH NEXT UPDATE LMAO. also im on break so we should be ok lol.
Besides theres all this exo activity to keep you busy nowadays omg (too much if you ask me how many new gifs can i reblog everyday till my hands fall off jfc) ok ok ok i hope you all had a nice holiday and have a happy new year ok ^o^

and no im not thanking you serene

lol if you're not already following me on twiter maybe you should it explains a lot of what im doing between updates lmao (@rolling_baek) let me know youre from here i'll follow you back ^-^