Chapter Eight
 

  "Alright.  What in the hell was up with Baekhyun today?" Kyungsoo grilled purposely the moment he stepped across the threshold into Chanyeol’s bedroom later that night.  He wore his uniform still, likely having taken the subway over directly after Jongin's last minute meeting with the school’s performance dance team, and Jongin, himself, followed behind, carrying his own backpack on one shoulder and Kyungsoo's on the other.  He was a good boyfriend like that, even if he seemed to like playing it off.  “We all know it had something to do with you, Park.”

     Chanyeol, who had been studying for his upcoming history test at his desk, or attempting to anyways, turned towards his two best friends in question.  There were two textbooks open on his desk.  So was his laptop, which was much more telling of what he had been doing.

  "What do you mean?” he asked.  “I didn't do anything to him, as far as I know.  Is he okay?"  Chanyeol's eyebrows furrowed.  His lips stretched into a thin, straight line that was a far cry from his usual, self-proclaimed happy virus smile.

  "Stop making that face, would you?  It'll get stuck like that.”  Kyungsoo made a gesture to his own forehead with a finger.  “And Baekhyun’s fine.  ing dandy, actually, and yes.  You did do something to him.”  He plopped down haphazardly into the bean bag chair sandwiched between the wall and Chanyeol’s bed, which was unmade and largely covered in dirty gym clothes and junk food wrappers.  Now, Kyungsoo wasn't necessarily a picky person - or at least that's what he told others - but Chanyeol wasn't the tidiest person, either.  Jongin, who honestly couldn't care less (because he was considerably worse in his own home), flopped down right in the middle of the bed, basking in its soft linens and filthy goodness.

  "What he means to say is,” Jongin reiterated, “we think you might be the reason for Baekhyun's recent change in attitude.”  A small smirk tugged at the corner of his lips while he filtered his boyfriend’s choice of words good-naturedly.  Kyungsoo was an acquired taste, he had decided years ago.  Not everyone got his brusque attitude quite like he did, and reinterpreting his idiosyncrasies into something perhaps more palatable was akin to an automatic response for Jongin by this point.  Chanyeol had always found it amusing, given how crass Jongin could be in his own right.

  "No.  What Jongin means is, you're the reason for Baekhyun smiling like an imbecile all day and wigging out the entire ing council."

  "Taemin asked me at lunch if I thought he could be on drugs," Jongin added for the benefit of the conversation, flicking a recently emptied package of honey crisps to the side and shifting his weight back onto his palms.

  "And... why do you think that has anything to do with me?” Chanyeol questioned skeptically, flitting his narrowed gaze evenly between the pair.  “Maybe something good happened to him.  Maybe he got a good grade back this morning.  We don't know.”  He leaned back in his own rolly, leather backed chair, seeming reasonably content with the fact he wouldn't be returning to his studies anytime soon.

  "News flash.  Byun always gets good grades.  That's beside the point," Jongin said, rolling his eyes in an exasperated motion.

  "So-"

  "So, you two were texting last night, weren't you?"  Kyungsoo grinned devilishly, situating himself in the bean bag.  It looked large enough to swallow him up whole, just like when Chanyeol’s little sister sometimes napped in it while he worked at his desk.  The thought very nearly made him snort, but he didn't figure Kyungsoo would appreciate being compared to a little girl and maintained a relatively neutral expression, just barely.

  "Yes, we were.  But I don't see… wait.  How did you know that?"  Chanyeol looked down at Kyungsoo, one eyebrow raised pointedly.  He knew full well that it wasn't Jongin who had obtained that information, and he didn't imagine that Baekhyun just happened to mention it over the student council meeting.  As far as he could tell from the last few days, Baekhyun didn't share anything personal without the other person really working to get it out of him, and never anything he didn't want to share.

  "I don't reveal my sources."

  "He overheard Baekhyun and Lu Han talking after the meeting."

  "Damn it, Jongin.”  Kyungsoo grunted, lifting himself up just enough from his seat to place a well deserved swat to the back of his boyfriend's head, though without any real heat behind it.  "I don't reveal my sources."

  "But you didn't reveal your sources.  I did."  Jongin smirked, reaching out to ruffle the hair of a very pissed off Do Kyungsoo.  Of course, once he noticed the boy's adorable scowl, he also went in to pinch his cheek, only to nearly be bitten in the process.

  "Feisty," Jongin mumbled, scooching slightly away from Kyungsoo, who was still posturing threateningly.

     With a small sigh, Chanyeol glanced between the two parties of the quarreling couple.  How did he become best friends with these two, anyways?  Not by choice, he preferred to think.  No, it had to have been by force, or with the aid of blackmail or some powerful form of persuasion or drugs, maybe.

  "So, we were talking about Baekhyun..." Chanyeol started, using his hands to make a universal kind of 'get on with it' gesture.  Time was wasting.  Time that he could be using to study, or pretending to study while he secretly plays video games on his phone.  The latter, they were all aware, was the much more likely option.

  "Fine.  But first, hand over your cell phone," Kyungsoo demanded, sticking his hand out to Chanyeol expectantly.

  "What?  Why do you need to-"

  "Chanyeol," Kyungsoo growled.  For him, it was more than he usually offered as a warning.  He generally did not need to repeat himself.  He was a very no-nonsense kind of person, and he got what he wanted, when exactly he said so.  You could call it a courtesy to their friendship that he was so much more forgiving with Chanyeol.

  "Alright.  Aish," Chanyeol grumbled.  He turned back to his desk, taking a second to locate his phone before pressing it into Kyungsoo's palm, as ordered.

  "Good boy," Kyungsoo remarked.  He immediately unlocked the touch screen and, against his better judgement, stood and took a seat next to Jongin on Chanyeol's pigsty of a bed.

  "Here let me do it," Jongin insisted, reaching out to take the device from Kyungsoo's small hands.

  "No, you're terrible with technology.  You'll break it," Kyungsoo replied plainly without even looking up from the screen.  "Ah, messages."

     Chanyeol sighed.  He didn't have to be told to know that the two had found the texts he had exchanged with the class president the night before, which they appeared to think were incriminating in some manner.  If he had known last night that talking to Baekhyun would be such a big deal, he might not have done it at all.  But then he immediately felt a pang of guilt over such betraying thoughts, because he had really enjoyed talking to Baekhyun, even though the other must have been busy.  And there was something satisfying to Chanyeol in knowing that Baekhyun had been busy but still decided to spend so much time talking to him.

  "Ah, what the hell?  These are all family-friendly!" Kyungsoo muttered after a few minutes, tossing the phone down on the bed with a huff.  It landed somewhere amidst a pile of pumpkin biscuit wrappers.  He sneered.

  "Were you expecting pics?  I barely know him," Chanyeol asked, having the audacity, Kyungsoo thought, to appear affronted.

     Granted, Chanyeol wouldn't mind receiving risqué photos from Byun Baekhyun (he would probably, in fact, drop dead from his own fulfillment), but he also wasn't too keen on the idea of sending them to a boy he had just met.  Not that he was ashamed of his body or anything, because, arrogant or not, Chanyeol was very well aware of his own attractiveness.  He just didn't want to scare his future-boyfriend-or-at-least-close-male-friend away.

  "Don't be an idiot-"

  "No, Kyungsoo.  Maybe he's onto something there."  Jongin paused thoughtfully.  "Well, I mean, what do you have to work with in that department?"  He took the opportunity to carefully examine Chanyeol, raking his eyes over him thoroughly from head to toe.  He was wearing clothes, so the best Jongin could do was estimate, which wasn't much help at all.

  "Would you stop eye-ing him?  He's not sending pics to Baekhyun.  The poor guy would have a heart attack," Kyungsoo stood up, moving back towards his own chair where he could actually relax.

  "Now, I really wasn't expecting pictures, but you could have at least flirted with him a little bit more-"

  "I wasn't flirting at all," Chanyeol replied defensively.

  "Yes, you were, just not very well."  He shook his head.  "Come on!  Who talks about Star Wars with their crush for twenty minutes straight?" Kyungsoo questioned, almost desperately, because really, he couldn't possibly think of anyone else that was that dense.  Well, except for Byun Baekhyun, evidently.

  "Point A,” he held up a solitary finger in the air, “he’s not my crush.  And Point B,” a second finger joined it, “Star Wars is an all-time classic, that just so happens to be one of our shared favorite movies," Chanyeol retorted, crossing his arms over his chest with a pout.

  "Because he can speak English.  Did you leave out the part where you have to watch it all with subtitles because you refuse to pay attention in class?"

     Chanyeol paused and looked down for a moment.  "I don't know why I'd bother telling him that.  He could probably guess, anyways."

     That was a low blow, Chanyeol considered.  His ineptness in that area wasn't even his fault, really.  He hadn't been there for his first year like Kyungsoo and Jongin had, or even the second.  He didn't have the same seemingly endless flow of funds to pay for that kind of tuition, and his family hadn't known about all of the scholarships and sponsors back then.  Not that it would have mattered.  The income scholarship he received now only paid a portion of the shot, and he hadn't been good enough back then to receive the rest of it in the form of an athletic scholarship.  His grades had never been good enough for an academic scholarship, either.

     The thing was, some aspects of the whole school experience at Joowon - like being able to grasp English enough to understand certain programs and classes taught exclusively in the language, being that it was an international school - had never come as easily to him as they did for Kyungsoo, so he didn't understand why Chanyeol struggled sometimes.  Jongin understood though, Chanyeol thought, which is where the two of them differed.  Transferring his final year hadn't even been the plan, to begin with, but his mother had been insistent on providing him with the best opportunities for the future that she could.  All he had to do to make her happy in that regard was to it up and muddle his way through.  And both Jongin and Kyungsoo did help him with it all, to be fair, but it always reminded him of the fact that he shouldn't have even been at a place like Joowon, wouldn't have been if not for the kindness of strangers to give him the money.  But he wasn't like Kyungsoo or Jongin in those terms, and he definitely wasn't like Baekhyun, who had been groomed for wealthy living his entire life.

  "Oh, Kyungsoo.  Leave him alone.  Clearly Baekhyun likes his stunted nerd talk,” Jongin said, both of them oblivious to Chanyeol’s actual problem with that statement.  “It's young love," he added cutely for effect, drawing a heart in the air with his index fingers.

     Kyungsoo hummed noncommittally.  "You're right.  It must be love.  He sounds just like you with your dogs."

  "Yah!  I treat you better than my babies," Jongin defended.

  "Oh, I'm sorry.  I forgot.  You let me drink out of a cup instead of a bowl on the ground when I'm at your house.  You must love me more," Kyungsoo replied dryly, inspecting his nails with what could best be construed as a certifiable face.

  "Pabo.  You know I love you more."  Jongin grinned sweetly before standing and bridging the gap between them.  He pulled Kyungsoo up out of the bean bag (with difficulty, since Kyungsoo was so incredibly stubborn) and nearly smothered the smaller male in an overly affectionate embrace.

  "Ew.  Get off."  Kyungsoo grumbled against Jongin’s broad chest.  If they were anywhere else, otherwise alone, Kyungsoo would have used other types of advances to get Jongin to loosen his grip.  But he wasn't quite in the mood to scar Chanyeol at the moment, no matter how much the idea appealed to him.

  "No.  I'm showing you how much I love you.  Let me show you my love!"  Jongin snuggled in closer, nuzzling his nose against Kyungsoo's cheek.  “Just like how much I love your squishy cheeks, Soo.”

  "I'm warning you, Kim Jongin."  Kyungsoo said, his voice still muffled slightly by the fabric of Jongin’s t-shirt.  His fingers curled up at his sides.

  "Oh hell," Chanyeol murmured from his seat across the room.

  "Oh, relax Kyungie.  I'm not afraid of you."

     Wrong choice of words.  It wasn't even a second after they had left his mouth that Kyungsoo was bringing his small fist up to Jongin's chest, grabbing and twisting where he knew it would hurt.  The dreaded purple nurple.  Jongin let go, screeching like a scalded cat as he tried to yank away from Kyungsoo's grasp, only succeeding after Kyungsoo willingly decided to release him.

  "Hmm.  You're not afraid of me."  Kyungsoo observed as his boyfriend dropped to his knees and pressed a hand over a now extremely sore .  "That's a shame.  You should be."

     Chanyeol watched the two for a moment, more in amusement than in shock, and disregarded his previous thoughts with a simple shake of the head.  "He used your full name, dude.  You should have seen that one coming."

     Kyungsoo smirked as he dropped back down in the bean bag resolutely.  He playfully nudged Jongin with his sneaker, but that was the absolute extent of his sympathetic gestures.  Chanyeol was right.  He really should have seen it coming.

  "Yeah, I should've."  Jongin said weakly as he clamored back up to the bed.  But rest assured, he would have his payback later.  He had an entire list of ways to torture Kyungsoo without any physical pain at all.  They would be used.

  "Back to the original topic at hand," Kyungsoo started.  "Baekhyun was giddy because you two were texting, even though it was completely innocent and trivial, and you know what that means?  It means you should ask him out."  Kyungsoo stated simply, as if it was the easiest thing in the world.  Though, to him, it might have been that easy.  It was that easy when he first met Jongin.  It may have been junior high school, but Kyungsoo knew what he wanted, and he damn well knew how to get it.

  "I'm not just asking Baekhyun out!" Chanyeol suddenly shouted, his eyes wide and his mouth agape.  What were they thinking?  Telling him to just confess like that.  They hadn't even been talking for a week yet, and practically everyone in school wanted to be with him.  Every girl in school wanted to be with him.  Girls that came from families like Baekhyun's.  And while he usually trusted Sehun's judgement, the boy had also mentioned later that Baekhyun never out-right said the words "I'm gay” to Sehun, even if the words were always heavily implied.  He needed a lot more than speculation to fully throw himself at another guy, especially if that guy was the esteemed Byun Baekhyun.

  "Well, at least he's not denying the fact that he likes Byun anymore," Jongin said halfheartedly, receiving somewhat of a glare from the giant.

  "Okay, okay.  What do you suppose we do then?" Kyungsoo questioned, choosing to ignore his boyfriend in favor of Chanyeol’s personal crisis.

  "Nothing!  We're just friends-" Chanyeol was cut off by a small knock at the door, just before his mother opened it with a warm, matronly smile.  Sometimes he swore that she had the worst timing.

  "Oh, boys.  I didn't know you were here.  What were you talking about?"  She opened the door a bit further, stepping all the way into the room and setting down a filled plate of chocolate chip cookies onto the dresser.  His mouth watered.  His mother baked the best cookies in all of South Korea.  Well, second to his grandmother.  He always thought that it was how she got him to talk about things he told himself he didn't want to.

  "Hi, Mrs. Park.  We were just talking about-"

  "School!" Chanyeol shouted, cutting Jongin off before he could delve any further.  His cheeks were dusted with a shade of light pink, and his hands were clasped together in his lap awkwardly.  Stealthy, Chanyeol was not.

  "Mhmm.  Sure."  She hummed, not in the least bit convinced.  She took a large, round cookie off the top of the pile and dangled it (not the least bit subtle) in front of him.  He took it, begrudgingly.  "Tell me.  Is this really about school, or a boy at school?" Chanyeol's mother asked, smiling in an informed sort of way.

     It was during the summer before his first year that Chanyeol finally confessed his true feelings to his parents.  Though, if you ask them, both had known for quite a while before that - maybe even since he was a kid - and never once had they judged him for it.  As far as the Park's were concerned, they were happy as long as their children were happy.  And frankly, Mrs. Park was happy as long as she was getting grandchildren one day, blood related or otherwise.

  "Omma, I-I," Chanyeol began nervously.  He appreciated his parents' tolerance, but boy-talk with your mother is a different matter entirely.  Though, that's not to say that he wanted to talk about girls with his mother, either.

  "It's a boy," Kyungsoo supplied helpfully, throwing a y smirk Chanyeol's way.  Chanyeol supposed it was payback for something.   Payback for what exactly, who in the hell even knows?  Then again, ing with people seemed to be a shared hobby for both Kyungsoo and Jongin, so maybe he didn't do anything that deserved retribution at all.

  "Seriously, why am I friends with you two?" Chanyeol asked bitterly.

     Seemingly ignoring her son and his apparent death glare, Chanyeol's mother let out a sharp, gleeful sigh.  She turned to her son with a enthusiastic smile, her eyes swimming with something suspiciously similar to the look she got at the checkout of a really good sale, or before the anticipated final episode of a quality drama.  "I've been waiting for this day."

     Disregarding her previous task of leaving early for work, she took a seat on the edge of the bed beside Jongin.  Work be damned, she thought.  This was important.

  "Omma, what are you talking about?" the boy questioned, his cheeks turning an even darker shade than before.   Chanyeol shifted uneasily in his seat as he glanced over at his mother.  Judging by the wide grin on her face, maybe he didn't want the answer to his question, after all.

  "Honey, it's about time.  You're already on your way to graduating.  You should be dating, and kissing, and of course I want a son-in-law soon.  And grandkids!" the woman exclaimed happily, her wide eyes crinkling around the edges from her large smile.

     He really didn't want to talk about kissing, or dating.  Or really anything beyond that.  “Uh, Omma-”

  "Tell me!  Is he cute?" she questioned, this time turning to Jongin and Kyungsoo for her answers.  She figured he was cute, at least by the obvious blush on her son's cheeks, but she knew that Chanyeol would be too embarrassed to answer that question directly.  She couldn't push him too far on the matter just yet.

  "Super cute," Jongin replied without hesitation.

  "The object of every student's affection," Kyungsoo added.  He ignored yet another glare from his best friend.  The type of glare that just screamed, why the are you telling my mother this?

  "Oh my God, Channie.  Do I know him?"  His mother clapped her hands together excitedly, all traces of her former seriousness long gone.  If Chanyeol were to tell anyone that this woman was actually his thirty-nine year old mother and not some emotionally unstable school girl, they would probably laugh right in his face.  Who knew what it would be like when Chanyeol actually did get married some day?

  "Yes, you do.  It's Class President Byun Baekhyun," Kyungsoo stated, a bit overly dramatic for his taste.  If Chanyeol didn't know any better, he might assume that his friends were really the ones after the guy.

  "Byun Baekhyun?  The Byun Baekhyun?  Seriously?  This can't be true.  I didn't even know he talked to you."  Mrs. Park yelped, still oblivious to her son’s scowl.

  "Thanks for the vote of confidence there," Chanyeol grumbled lightly.

  "So you do know him then," Kyungsoo observed.  The boy really was that popular.  Who would have thought?

  "Of course I know him!  He was the boy that gave Chanyeol’s father and me a tour of the school when we first thought about transferring him.  Such a sweet boy.  Gorgeous, too.  I bet he could be a model!  Isn't he at the top of your class?  Channie, sweetie, I approve!  This Baekhyun boy was meant for you.  Just think of how beautiful and smart my grandbabies will be!"

  "She does know that guys can't have babies, right?" Jongin whispered to his boyfriend as Mrs. Park continued to ramble on in excitement.

  "Don't," Kyungsoo warned.  Whatever made the woman happy, he thought.  Besides, if male pregnancy was ever possible, he had to assume that Baekhyun was the perfect candidate.  Simply put, the boy had to have some kind of magical capabilities in order to get that many admirers.

  "Does he like my Channie too?"   The woman clasped her hands in front of her chest hopefully.  She looked at Kyungsoo, then at Jongin, then back to Kyungsoo, obviously, and quite impatiently, waiting for an answer.

  "Oh yeah.  Big time."  Jongin answered confidently.  Kyungsoo nodded his confirmation.

  "It's true.  You should see the way they look at each other."  He snorted.  It was ridiculous when he thought about it.  In all the time they had known Chanyeol, which happened to be years before they even started going to the same high school, Kyungsoo had never seen the other look at someone that way, so love sick.  It was adorable, in a clueless younger brother kind of way.

  "Really?  So what's the problem then?  Why aren't you together?"

     This time, Chanyeol did decide to answer.  "It's not that simple!  We don't even really know if he's gay."  And that wasn't really the only problem there, but Chanyeol decided that he wasn't quite up for broaching the topic at the moment.  One problem at a time.

  "Baekhyun.  Is.  Gay."  Jongin annunciated, looking directly into Chanyeol's eyes, as if he could somehow get his point across more clearly that way.  How was his best friend so freaking stubborn?

  "How can you be sure?"

  "Oh, please.  We're a gay couple.  We have awesome gay-dar.  And I've known your little buddy there for years now.  No way he's straight," Kyungsoo informed, nonchalantly standing up to grab a cookie off of the plate on the dresser.  Biting into the desert, he let out a small hum of approval.  "These are really good, Mrs. Park."

     Beaming, Chanyeol's mother reached over and gave the boy's hand a small pat.  "Thank you, sweetie, but I told you two to call me Omma."

  "Alright.  Alright." Kyungsoo offered a small half smile, taking another chunk from the cookie.

  "So what are you going to do about this Baekhyun boy?" she redirected back at the ridiculously stressed giant, stewing in his desk chair.  He was clearly deep in thought.  No surprise there.

  "W-what can I do?  I mean, even if he likes me, which I doubt, everyone wants to date him.  And he's not exactly out of the closet."  Chanyeol continued to pout, his head dipped forward and his bangs loose and falling across his face.

  "You can ask him out, or I don't know, try getting closer to him," Jongin deadpanned.  It's the same thing he'd been saying for days now.  Maybe repeating it one more time might have some kind of effect.  Hell, he didn't know.

  "I don't know if I can get closer to him in that way.  I mean, what if-"

  "Chanyeol," his mother cut him off, knowing full well that once he started with his what-if questions, he wouldn't be able to stop.   "Honey, I'm going to say this as delicately as possible.  Grow a pair."

(Edited August 20, 2017)