Baekhyun’s always thought of Jongin as something special.

He has, since the very first time he’d walked into that small dance practice room that was to be Exo's own private sweatshop until they would be released to the wild wild world for debut.

The air was so dense with the scent of wet socks and desperation that Baekhyun had had a few minutes of internal crisis on whether he'd made a mistake by agreeing to all this, how much singing and performing had seemed the only calling he'll ever have in life be damned. He had been ready to bolt.

Just then his eyes were drawn to the lone, reedy thin teenager in the middle of the dancefloor, pirouetting to a song that didn’t sound like it would accommodate a pirouette, beads of sweat catapulting off his forehead and onto anyone within reaching distance.

But the kid – Kim Jongin is his name, he learned quickly – had made it all work, and quite honestly, Baekhyun never wants to shut up about how awesome he is.

Especially not now that Baekhyun knows he could turn Jongin into absolute putty every time he so much as begins his sentences with 'Kai is'.

The only effort he has to put into it is to maybe pitch his voice that much higher, school his face into something that much cuter, and say something nice.

Which Baekhyun finds a terribly easy thing to do, because he has so many praises for Jongin stored involuntarily in some part of his brain that when the time comes for him to use them, his mouth just sort of… blurts them out.

It’s such a great power to have, though, to be able to cause the red flaring of Jongin’s cheeks with just a simple word.

Well, there’s that. But what’s even better is to have Jongin send adoring glances his way afterwards, onstage and even more so once they’re on their way home.

Baekhyun thinks it’s cute, really, this thing called Jongin.

It used to bother Baekhyun, the fact that he had all these thoughts about Jongin just floating about in his head. He kept on having brain-to-mouth filter malfunctions quite often too, and would say the worst kinds of things at the most inopportune times. Like you’re hot that one time Jongin stepped out of the shower with just a towel on. Or  nice  that time Jongin wore pants.

It was becoming a problem. Until it wasn’t.

“Do you notice,” Chanyeol had begun one day during another one of their Xbox sessions, “how Jongin only gets flustered around you?”

Baekhyun’s fingers stopped twiddling the control knobs for a second as he tried to digest this piece of information. “What,” he asked intelligently.

“You know, like, he blushes and when you say nice things about him.” Chanyeol shrugged. “When I do it he just looks annoyed.”

“Everybody gets annoyed when you do things. That’s not new info—owwww!”

Chanyeol returned to his console as if he hadn’t just scuffed Baekhyun in the head. “No no, the way he reacts when it’s you is different. He just thanks the rest of us, with you he goes all googly-eyed and almost…. lovestruck.”

Baekhyun was a second away from bursting into giggles from disbelief when he realized Chanyeol was being serious. “W-well that’s ridiculous. Lovestruck my !” he spluttered instead, just as the front door clicked open and the other boys spilled in.

“Look,” Chanyeol whispered conspiratorially, throwing his head in the direction of the incoming crowd. “Just say something, anything to Jongin when he passes by later. You’ll see what I mean.”

Baekhyun took in the lean figure striding around the corner to where he and Chanyeol were, tight jeans encasing long legs, shirt body-hugging enough to reveal the small muscles underneath. His eyes travelled further upward, landing on Jongin’s head.

It must have been comeback-haircut day for him. Oh, poor baby, Baekhyun thought. The concept for Jongin was to be greasy-dead-animal, apparently.

But then he caught Jongin’s gaze, and the boy mumbled a hi hyung with that stupidly cute smile on his face, and there was only one thing Baekhyun could have said, really.

“You look gorgeous.”

Chanyeol snorted non-subtly next to him, but nothing could have distracted Baekhyun away from the way Jongin visibly lit up and burned red at the same time as he hurried off into his room.

Not before turning around one last time to send Baekhyun another one of those grins, of course.

“Wow, you’re right,” Baekhyun said once the cat has finally given him back his tongue. “He’s—” fantastic wonderful out-of-this-world “—ed for me.”

(Baekhyun was still too much in a daze to hear Chanyeol snorting, “well, that makes it the two of you.”)

The thing is, Baekhyun enjoys it so much, whatever this special thing he has with Jongin is.

He craves it. Couldn’t believe that out of all the attractive and talented people of their group, Jongin likes him best.

No no, Baekhyun reprimands himself as they all got into their positions onstage during rehearsal, eyes on Jongin twirling and in the centre. He doesn’t like you, you idiot. He just—

The Kai in Jongin emerges then and takes over his body movements as he practices his opening steps, and it makes Baekhyun die just a little bit inside.

—just something, Baekhyun lets his brain die instead, because he couldn’t really do it himself. He just somethings me.

Amidst it all, he picks up screams from the fangirls. You’re handsome, they shout out at inhuman decibels. You’re so ing handsome!

And see, no matter how straightforward Baekhyun appears to be when it comes to sprinkling praise upon Jongin, he is never brave enough to truly say what he wants to.

Sometimes, he hides them behind less-than-tasteful teasing.

Such as basically referring to the boy as a human water sprinkler as he described that initial encounter with a dancing-Jongin Baekhyun had had during their trainee days, only to follow up with a quiet I could fall for him, because he really could.

Like calling Jongin a dark-skinned--god eventhough he knows how much the younger dislikes bringing skin tone to forth, when the only point he wanted to make was you’re so ing y and your skin looks like caramel syrup and I just might feel like running my tongue all over you sometimes to see if you taste as sweet. But no biggie.

Or always pointing out Jongin’s obvious physical attributes like his and his body if asked what’s so great about him, when what Baekhyun found most beautiful about the boy is his smile. But then that would be a lie too. In his sappier and therefore most honest moments, Baekhyun has no doubt he’d word-vomit something cheesy as all hell about Jongin’s amazingly pure heart instead.

So he jumps at these opportunities to conceal how he really feels.

Today is no different.

“You’re handsome,” he shouts from the sidelines, in a weak imitation of their fans. The girls scream even louder, so he does it again. “You’re really handsome!”

Jongin, now sitting in the middle of the stage, looks bewildered for a second, but catches on soon enough.

His face blooms around a smile.

Then he’s looking at Baekhyun like that, and Baekhyun couldn’t help his own face from ing blooming too.

(Baekhyun didn’t hear Minseok grumbling “you both are so ed” from somewhere behind him.)

Then Japan happens.

Statistically speaking, Baekhyun thinks hysterically as he tries to calm himself down, this is bound to happen sooner or later. I mean, what are the odds of living with nine other guys in close quarters and not ever walking in on one of them wanking, anyway?

Of course, it’s one thing to catch a mate wanking to .

That’s the type of situation where you could just sort stare at each other awkwardly for a long few seconds, after which the ideal thing to do is to back away from the door slowly as if retreating from nuclear waste, then never speak to each other about it ever again.

Or where Baekhyun’s concerned, it’s typically the sort of situation where he’d shriek with laughter at you and never let you forget about it for as long as he shall live.

But it’s another case altogether when the person he catches is Jongin, reclined on the hotel bed, hot and sweaty and an absolute vision, fingers tight around his and mouth open around what sounds an awful lot like Baekhyun as he comes in thick spurts all over the sheets.

Things stop being very cute, very quickly.

Should he be that surprised, though? It’s not like he hasn’t noticed the change in Jongin’s behaviour over the past couple of weeks.

He thought he was just being extra observant, because he was the only one who picked up on anything. When he’d tried to talk to Joonmyun about it, the guy just gave him a weird look.

“Maybe it’s you who’s been acting weird,” he said, all unsupportive and unhelpful. “Maybe you’re imagining things because you’ve been paying a little too much attention to him.”

Baekhyun spewed toothpaste foam all over the mirror of the bathroom, but he didn’t nearly manage to spit out enough to retaliate before Joonmyun’s gone off to leave him to stew alone in his paranoia.

But who needs Joonmyun's opinion anyway? Baekhyun was pretty sure he was right about Jongin's sudden... wariness around him.

It was there, just underneath the surface of how they’re used to acting around each other.

They’re close. Baekhyun gets along with everyone, really, but over the… eventful year that’s past he’s gotten closer to Jongin.

Baekhyun’s the type to drive himself into the ground the more stressed he becomes. His coping mechanism wreaks havoc on his body; that was a sure thing. But more than that it isolates him from everybody, the way he would push himself harder and harder until he could numb everything that was around him.

If it weren’t for Jongin insisting to stick around as Baekhyun spent all night in the dance studio – trying to be better, to deserve the kind of love he’d been showered with before again – he probably wouldn’t have made it through.

“An eye for an eye,” Jongin had answered when Baekhyun asked him why.

“What does that mean,” Baekhyun whined through (though he would never admit it) teary eyes. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Do I need a reason to be nice to you, hyung, I–“ Jongin stopped to collect his wits, and when he spoke next the frustration in his voice just a moment ago had disappeared. “An eye for an eye,” he said again. “I teach you dance. You teach me singing. Alright?”

And that was that. If both of them have been more liberal with the fawning and the touching since then, it was only out of an immense sense of mutual gratitude and camaraderie. Baekhyun insists.

But he couldn’t help but feel that something was… off.

Now he gets why.

He gets, why Jongin was so worried when Baekhyun had those stomach pains, fussing over him and making sure he ate well, then nagging on him on national radio about how he stresses himself out like a mother hen.

He gets, why Jongin’s hands seem to linger on his waist or his shoulder that much longer whenever he has a chance to. Which is seemingly all the time.

He gets, too, why Jongin ironically shies away from Baekhyun’s own bouts of touching him, why he was such a cute- bashful wallflower of a motherer on Cultwo when Baekhyun leaned towards him, and why after the fanmeet tonight – where he basically made a love confession unto Baekhyun’s person – he couldn’t even look the elder in the eye.

And god help me, Baekhyun thinks, finally having regained his senses and now acutely aware of the fact that his own is pretty much alive and very well in his boxers. I get why.

He tries to act normal the next day.

But as ‘normal’ and ‘Baekhyun’ don’t really go together, the plan fails spectacularly.

Through meals and the redundant rehearsals (because why would you need rehearsals to meet fans?), Baekhyun keeps to himself and clams up. That in itself, isn’t normal.

“I was right. You’re the one being weird,” Joonmyun hisses at him just before the event starts. He could feel Jongin watching their exchange, the same way he’s felt Jongin’s eyes on him throughout the entire morning. “Snap out of it.”

Baekhyun does. He’s a professional, after all. Did Jongin not say so? Somehow, he manages to be the crowd-pleaser that he naturally is from the get-go.

The only minor mental breakdown he had was when Jongin shoved a piece of marshmallow from his ing mouth onto Baekhyun’s lips, waiting expectantly for him to eat it. Baekhyun does, but only because it’s a reflex reaction to being given food. His head was more occupied with the hand that was feeding him, and how that hand had been on Jongin’s .

Which is stupid. Whose hand would otherwise be on Jongin’s , Baekhyun muses, only to be horrified a split second later when his hand twitches as if to say I volunteer!

He’s doubly horrified and a hella confused, when a flare of jealousy singes through him at the mere suggestion of sharing Jongin (and his ) with somebody else.

Baekhyun shuts any further thoughts about Jongin (and in general) down and steers clear of him for the rest of the night.

“Are you okay?” Kyungsoo asks him over breakfast.

It takes Baekhyun a while to process that Kyungsoo is concerned about his wellbeing. “Yeah,” he says cautiously, afraid that there’s a catch somewhere. “Are you?”

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I’m good.” His thumb busies at his phonescreen, then he ventures, “Slept well?”

Baekhyun nods stiltedly. This is unsettling.

“Good, good,” Kyungsoo hums. “Now…. have you been eating?”

Baekhyun blinks, then looks pointedly down at the plate of sashimi and rice he’s scarfing down. “Yeah,” he answers anyway, in disbelief over the conversation they’re having. “Have you?”

“Just one more question and I’m out,” Kyungsoo barks, scrolling through his mobile before asking a final time, “have you taken the herbal medicine for your tummy?”

“Yes I have, I’m actually an adult, I can take care of mys— wait.” Realization sets in, and Baekhyun reels around at Kyungsoo. “Did Jongin put you up to this?”

Kyungsoo has his hands up as if saying I have nothing to do with it, although he clearly has. “Yeah, the kid ambushed me as soon as I woke up this morning. Did something happen between the two of you?” he enquires, one strong eyebrow raised up to his hairline. “He’s usually the only one who really cares.”

“Well I— hey, don’t be mean to me!” Baekhyun pouts. Everyone cares. He thinks. Anyway, “where is he?” Is he okay? Did he sleep well? Has he eaten? Is his waist hurting today—

“He’s in our room pretending not to mope. at it, though.” Kyungsoo spears a slice of fish off Baekhyun’s plate with a chopstick that’s materialized out of nowhere. “Since you’ve been behaving pretty the much the same way and you guys have this weird… symbiosis thing going on, I’m gonna assume you’re the crux of the problem.”

Baekhyun’s head snaps up. “Did you say ‘crotch’?”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“What.”

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes again so much only the whites remain visible. It’s kind of ing frightening.

It’s also code for Kyungsoo is done with this .

The restrain from throttling his friend is clear as day in his voice as he chokes out, “what I mean is fix it.” He sticks his chopstick into the rice, and gets up to leave. “Whatever happened couldn’t have been that bad.” The underlying message of couldn’t be as bad as what I’d do to you if Jongin’s still upset when I see him next is obviously there.

But you don’t understand, Baekhyun wants to whine. You’d be like this too if you’d seen what I’d seen.

In fact he’s pretty sure that if Kyungsoo were in his position, he’d castrate the unfortunate fella before castrating himself.

Which is not a good space of mind to be in. Baekhyun’s head is already occupied by thoughts of , and castrating involves , reminding him of even more.

Of one  in particular.

It gets him thinking; is it really that bad a thing, after all?

If Jongin likes him that way, then… why is he complaining?

Is the feeling not mutual?

The realization that it very much is finally gets through to Baekhyun’s thick head, and his heart nearly palpitates right out of his chest.

He could do this. He wants to. He wants Jongin.

Sweet, lovely, incredible Jongin.

I could fall for him, he’d said once.

Truth is, he probably had a long time ago.

So no more running away, he decides. No more.

The problem now is that Jongin’s hellbent on running away.

Okay, so maybe if Baekhyun had gone straight up to his and Kyungsoo’s room, he would have been able to confront Jongin about the wanking incident, and then proceed to bare his own bleeding heart that, hey, I might kinda love you like you, so instead of doing it alone why don’t we wank together from now onwards?

But it took him too long to psych himself up for the job, pacing up and down the stairs of the hotel’s fire escape. By the time he’d finally reached Jongin’s floor and door, sweaty and altogether unattractive, the younger had gone on ahead to the venue on the earlier shuttle meant for staff.

Baekhyun only got another one of Kyungsoo’s demonic eye rolls for his trouble.

Jongin avoided him throughout the fanmeeting, too.

He didn’t respond with anything more than a weak smile to Baekhyun’s blatant propositions of Kai’s ! My hand! Which, quite frankly, Baekhyun thought were genius.

Jongin even went as far as making sure he wouldn’t be on the same team as Baekhyun, cheating his way around during the draws so that they'd end up on opposite sides.

Which was a pity.

Baekhyun thought he’d sneak in a conversation as they wait their turn. Or he figured that if push comes to shove, he’d just force one upon Jongin as they’re crotch to crotch in that ridiculously fanservice-y balloon popping game they’re forced to play.

But alas, matters didn’t get any better on the plane home the next day, and nor did they for the weeks that followed.

Jongin's distance, however, did force Baekhyun to acknowledge more revelations about the nature of their relationship.

Somewhere along the line it seems he’d grown to be partial to having long talks with the younger during breaks from dance practice. Jongin’s wiser than he looks. Baekhyun appreciates the always-surprisingly profound advice he could expect to get from him regarding his problems (though Baekhyun appreciates him, period).

He’d also gotten used to that fuzzy feeling of having Jongin’s hand grasping onto his waist or shoulders or back – and sometimes curiously all three places at once.

And he’d become fond of having Jongin’s eyes following his every move and gesture during broadcasts. Drew confidence and assurance from it too, evidently, as he deflates for the umpteenth time in this one interview alone because Jongin is pretending he isn’t there and acting indifferent towards him and it perplexes Baekhyun because Jongin is supposed to adore him, dammit.

The thing is, if Jongin wants to continue on being this immature, Baekhyun thinks, two can play that game. He’s the King of Immaturity in Exo. He could one-up Jongin, no problem.

He has been trying to, anyway. Couldn’t help it, because well, it’s not like Baekhyun has a shortage of people to be flirty and erse with. Which is why he’s extra touchy with Sehun lately.

It works. Sometimes he’d glance quickly to catch Jongin frowning in their direction, a muscle in his jaw jumping as he looks away.

So effective the tactic is, in fact, that by the end of the week the only person who hasn’t noticed anything is wrong is Sehun. The little ’s obviously too busy enjoying being mollycoddled. Especially now that the other members have decided to join in the Sehun-free-for-all--fest as a means of teasing Baekhyun over his childish ways of getting Jongin to pay attention to him again.

But as the days go by, Baekhyun could no longer ignore that this needs to stop, and stop now. Sehun’s head is big enough as it is. With the amount of compliments and affection he's being fed, Baekhyun’s scared it would soon be too big to fit through their front door.

He’ll confront Jongin tonight if it kills him.

Baekhyun has The Confrontation planned out to the tee.

Step One is a twelve-hour self-motivational pep-talk which, truthfully, just involves a lot of pacing around in the recording studio at the company and rehearsing what to say. He throws in an optional chicken-out time of maybe another several hours after that to allow himself to grow some balls.

Maybe I should nap for a while, Baekhyun reasons when balls were nowhere to be seen even then. Since, you know, you grow as you sleep.

Needless to say, Jongin beats him to it.

“Hyung.”

Baekhyun’s stirred awake from his nap in his not-a-room-living-room-room by a gentle weight draping all over his body.

“What,” he murmurs, still too asleep to be shocked when he looks down to see a tuft of brown hair on his chest and along with it, Jongin.

“Hyung,” the boy repeats, looking at Baekhyun warily, if not sadly. His mouth opens, then shuts, as if hesitant to say something else; then he sighs and says it anyway. “I missed you.”

And isn't it truly anti-climactic, that this is how things get resolved? Baekhyun wanted the fireworks and the heart on his sleeve moments, but.

It feels so much more natural to just run his fingers through Jongin’s soft hair and to say, “I missed you too”. And it’s a no brainer, really, to drag Jongin’s face up to his and kiss him gently on the lips.

He catches himself after a while and pulls away. Not because he regrets it, but because he’s said all he wanted in that kiss, and now the ball’s in Jongin’s park. Their relationship has never been based much on words to each other, only about. It’s unconventional, but it works. It’s easy, and if this is… whatever Baekhyun hopes it is, then it should be easy.

But it is, and could only be, what he makes it to be as well.

When Jongin appears dazed for a tad too long, Baekhyun’s heart begins a slow drop to the bottom of his stomach.

Just as he is about to push Jongin off and make a beeline straight to the bathroom to maybe drown in the tub, Jongin smiles his infuriatingly happy-making smile, and it says more than words ever could.

Baekhyun dives in for another kiss.

"On behalf of the team," Joonmyun practically shouts as he enters through the curtains, "I have to ask you two to please, for christ's sakes, keep it down." He stares at his own face in the group picture Baekhyun has hanging above his bed--sofa because he knows that it's definitely more preferable than the going-ons under it.

There's a rustle and a whine, and then Baekhyun appears. Joonmyun resolutely keeps on scrutinizing his own face on the wall (and damn he really needs to stop making those y faces because they are decidedly the uniest faces one could make but it he just can't help it) because eventhough Baekhyun's just a floating head in his line of sight he doesn't need brains to know that the guy is, at best, topless.

"Why hyung," Baekhyun says, eyes blinking rapidly in the way they do when he's trying to appear all innocent, "whatever do you mean?"

Joonmyun sighs heavily, index finger scratching at the spot in between his eyebrows as if it'll help calm the impending Baekhyun-induced headache. "You do realize," he complains, "that this is not actually a room? And that fabric doesn't absorb sound half as well as you obviously think it does?" 

"Yeah!" Jongdae barges in out of the blue. "You people are horrible most times but goodness gracious the we had to endure last night gave me hives. I mean," he pauses to shudder for effect, "was that even ?"

"Not that you guys don't already have disturbingly sappy ," Sehun interjects as he makes a sudden appearance. "'You're so beautiful, Jongin, nnghh!'" he exclaims, voice pitched high and tilted head resting on clasped hands, presumably in an imitation of Baekhyun in the throes of lovemaking. "'You make me want to be a better person, Jongin, nnngggghhhhhhhhhhh!'"   

Baekhyun snorts. Jongin whimpers from beneath the mass of bedsheets.

"And now," Jongdae flails as he tries to convey the ridiculous nature of the situation, "you have to throw in some absurd, what, spanking kink too?

"Well," Baekhyun starts, picking up the red hammer he might've-sorta-kinda scooped from his and Kai's gig the day before, "I wouldn't call it a spanking kink per se." He shrugs and turns around to nuzzle into the sheets and into Jongin, not caring that he's probably flashing the others the full monty. 

And really, he couldn't care less — couldn't hear the shocked "Jesus, give a man a warning", nor the amused "wow hyung, what a great you have!" — not when a blushing, mortified Jongin is underneath him, the red on his cheeks made even more pronounced by the pink of his hair.

Because what a stupidly cute thing it is, his Jongin.