Baekhyun awkwardly squirms in his seat, hands gripping onto his mug of warm coffee for dear life. Opposite him, sits the woman of his dreams, craning her neck down as she watches her own fingers dance around in her lap. The atmosphere was heavy and palpable, silence louder than the volume on Baekhyun's old Ipod could have ever gone. 

“Noona I-” His softly spoken words make her look up at him and he really wished she hadn't because just one look into her glassy eyes made his throat close up. Those dark orbs looked so hollow and emotionless a while ago, now they were red rimmed and waiting for him to stop being stupid for long enough to get out a coherent sentence.

She is staring at him with expectation now, fingers unconsciously tapping along the top of the coffee table. Baekhyun freaks out and shoots his gaze down to look at his coffee mug again, not forgetting to congratulate himself on reaching a whole new level of fail-i-ousity or whatever it was. Worrying his lip with his teeth, he wishes he were anywhere else but here. 

'Ok sure, you see your goddess crying at night so you drag her into some 24 hour coffee shop and then what? Expect her to unload all her worries on you? You barely know her, you haven't spoken to her for almost 2 years. At least say something, will you.'

He clears his throat and tries again. “Noona, I know we haven't spoken much lately and we can't really call each other friends or anything...” Gathering the courage, he looks up again and almost flinches at the intensity of her gaze. It takes everything in him not to look away. “But if you need someone to talk to...I'm here? You know, since you helped me last time-- I mean...I'm not as mature as you – not that I'm immature or anything but I-”

“Baekhyun,” he visibly deflates at her interruption, hand going up to awkwardly rub at the nape of his neck. “I am really thankful that you care so much but noona is fine,” she punctuates this with a sweet smile.

He's left winded once again because of that smile, the signature one he sees in all of her album and press photos. But something seems off to him. It's a tiny voice in the back of his head that force him to notice the way the corners of her lips are slightly drooping, the way her lips seem tightly pressed together and the way her eyes are screaming the complete opposite of what had just left so calmly. His eyebrows furrow together and he wonders how he could ever have missed that. He was almost fooled. Almost. Taeyeon has fooled the world for years now but Baekhyun could always see right through her.

She's his sunbae, he really shouldn't be pushing her to stay if she doesn't want to talk to him. But it's not like Jericho's walls came tumbling down when asked “are you alright?” either.

The woman smiling in front him right now is worlds away from the one he saw a few minutes ago. It was like spotting a scratch on her soul, tiny yet big enough for him to look through and catch a glimpse of what was inside. Now that he's seen it once, he can't help but want to see more. To know more. To be one of the only people who could figure her out because Baekhyun knows there's more to her than just the perfect image she shows the world. Though it may be selfish of him, he just wants to see more of what's underneath.

Forget wanting to see Girls' Generation's Taeyeon dancing and singing on stage and shooting him smiles that send him into fanboy mode. He wants to see Kim Taeyeon, the person, how she thinks, what she dreams of, what she does in her spare time, what makes her sad, what scares her, what makes her smile. He wants to see her for who she is and not just what the media make of her. Not just what she wants the world to see. He doesn't want to see a censored version of her, with make up blurring out the imperfections, he wants to see all of her, raw and real.

“Noona,” he says once again, this time looking straight into her eyes with a determined gaze, one that tells her he won't give up until she answers him honestly. He manages to see a flash of something too fast to register before her guard is up again. “Please, talk to me. We both know there's something wrong.”

He watches as her bottom lip quivers and as she tries to swallow down the lump growing in before she's letting her head drop along with a single tear, making it's way down her pale cheeks. Without even knowing what he was doing, Baekhyun leans forward and wipes the moisture away gently with his thumb. To his surprise, she doesn't flinch or move away, she just stays there, closing her eyes and letting more tears flow freely. His heart is acheing at the sight of seeing such a beautiful, strong woman break down in front of him, but he would consider this progress. She's already breaking down her barriers for him. A thought that excites him but terrifies her.

Hesitation was thrown out the window, it didn't matter if they weren't that close, it didn't matter that they were out in public and it certainly didn't matter if Baekhyun was going to beat himself up later over the fact that he'd acted so boldly. In fact, a part of him might even be proud of himself. Without saying a word, he stays with her, wiping away each and every one of her tears, catching them with his thumbs and cursing them all individually for making his...his...whatever-she-is-to-him like this.

“I'm sorry,” she whispers out, turning her face in towards his hand, “I-I shouldn't be like this...” Alarm bells are ringing in her head again, telling her to put her guard up, telling her to bolt, but her heart is telling her otherwise. Her entire body is shaking too much for her to even think about running away, anyway. 

“It's fine sunba-” he clicks his tongue at himself before correcting his mistake, “it's fine, noona.” The elder shakes her head in his hands, tears still coming out at a constant place. 

“No,” Taeyeon manages to get out between hiccups and quiet sobs, “I'm your sunbae, I should be-”

“Noona, it's ok,” he says more firmly this time, causing her to look up at him once more. Their eyes meet and his heart breaks seeing her. Baekhyun wonders to himself just how much more pain and suffering are hidden behind those eyes that he'd always been so infatuated him. Looking into the teary pair of orbs, he sees many stories and secrets waiting to be discovered. “Just- please let me..." A sigh leaves his lips as he tries to sort himself out. "I'm here for you, alright noona? You don't have to act like a sunbae right now, just being Kim Taeyeon is fine. You're just Kim Taeyeon and I'm just Byun Baekhyun, we're just ordinary people, sometimes you have to get these feelings out.”

Those words hit Taeyeon hard. Her shoulders feel lighter, as if she'd put all the expectations and worries down for a second but the tears are still streaming down her face. It's now time to take the weight off her chest too.

“I've lost who I am, Baek.” It comes out before she can catch herself, before she could even register that she should not be here crying in front of him. She should not be out crying at all because if she was to get caught- well, they'd probably care more about the fact that she was with Baekhyun than the fact that she was crying in public. Breaking news; 'Girls' Generation's Taeyeon has feelings', is a much less appealing headline compared to 'Exo's Baekhyun caught on date', right?

She shakes her head violently, trying to get those bitter thoughts out of her head so she can stop sobbing so helplessly. It doesn't stop from moving and from all her inner thoughts from spilling out, though. Baekhyun's touch is gentle yet firm as he wipes away tear after tear, as a sign that he is listening and it's ok for her to carry on because he's here, he's with her, everything will be fine and for a second, she almost believes it will be. “Everyone else seems to have this image of me in their mind. but me? I can't even seem to grasp onto whether I'm happy or numb. My identity seems to be built up of what everyone else thinks I am. On top of that I'm so lonely I-”

Neither of them know when the younger had moved from his seat from opposite her to sit next to her on her side of the booth, his untouched coffee now deserted and cold. He himself doesn't know where all this courage has come from. She also doesn't know what possessed her to let her guard down. Regardless of all this, both of them unconsciously move closer to each other like two opposite ends of a magnet.

“You won't be lonely anymore, noona, I won't let you be,” he says, enveloping her trembling figure, letting her feel a surge of warmth she hasn't felt in years. Warning sirens are going off in her head, but she ignores them all – she'll deal with them later – and chooses instead to nestle deeper into his embrace, stiffling her sobs against his chest and finally finding the comfort she'd been looking for all these years. It felt good to voice her feelings, she wanted to stop repressing herself, she wanted to have someone she could tell these things to, she wanted Baekhyun to be the one she could tell these things to. 

In this moment, Baekhyun doesn't see the broken, helpless woman Taeyeon thought she was. He sees the woman of his dreams, the one who'd stolen his heart so long ago yet only lived in his imagination, become manifested in front of him, no pretenses, fleshed out into real life. She is so much more different from his imagination, she's not all smiles and carefree actions like she makes herself out to be. She has deeper thoughts, goes on midnight strolls and tries to act strong for the sake of others. She's nothing like he'd expected her to be, but that's what makes her so much more amazing. She is a real person with flaws and feelings. It makes her seem all the more beautiful in his eyes. This isn't a dream, this is reality.

He's always thought the frantic beating of his heart and the butterflies invading his stomach whenever she was nearby was because she was a famous personality whom he'd had a fanboy crush on for a while, but now he sees there's more to it than just that. But then again, there always is. She's not just the woman he sees on tv, she too is a real life human being who is so much more than what she seems. Her entire existence sends him into an inner turmoil, every time he sees her or speaks to her, she's showing different sides of her and one by one he takes the memories, like puzzle pieces and slots them together. He is far from seeing the completed masterpiece but he will wait until she is ready to show him all of her.  He doesn't want to be left behind so he'll adjust himself to keep at her pace. Hopefully this way she'll let him become a part of her world.  

A/N- heheh how long has it been? please don't kill me I need to finish this story lol-- bricked. So this is Baek accepting that he can't carry on loving the idol Kim Taeyeon and accepting his feelings are more than just fanboy-ish feels heh please subscribe, comment and upvote <3