Prompt: “They Meet at a Support Group”

Pairing: Baekhyun/Chanyeol

Words: ~1500

Baekhyun doesn’t want to be here. A full 360 degree clutter of ugly plastic chairs, all facing inwards so that whoever occupies one is sure to see the faces, plain as day, of all the others. One chair sits an extra 7 degrees to the right to the angles the rest of these chairs have been configured in. On top of that, there’s 17 chairs. Baekhyun hates prime numbers. Give him something that is divisible, he pleads. 16 would be better, because 16 can be divided by four exactly four times, or be divided by eight twice. Baekhyun likes multiples of two, after all. He steps across the room, places his laptop bag gently on the floor in the middle of the chairs, and sits down, absolving the chair of its unfavourable angle. He kicks the chair next to him out of the circle, and counts in his head. Yes, 16 is much better. For a support group, you’d think they’d put better care into how they structured the room for people like me, he thinks.

His eyes flicker across the room. Baekhyun first notices the beige carpet that looks unappealing, like someone put too much milk in their coffee, topped off with those green sprinkles that seem to be the modern ‘trend’ in cafes. He hates cafes because none of their walls match, both in colour and in shape. Ugly monstrosities, as he calls them. Next, he notices the tearing wallpaper by the floorboards, and he hisses before his eyes rake upwards, conscious of the crack in the white painted ceiling by the left wall that is just above the window. He hisses again, as he squints at the paintwork on the windowsill and realises that it’s full of breaks and fractures. For Baekhyun, everything has to be straight-lined, parallel, equidistant. If things are not in straight lines, then they must be circular or triangular, and they must fit a pattern. Of course, scalene triangles in many ways were out of the question.

The room slowly fills up, and Baekhyun finds himself getting more and more nervous. There are a bunch of unfamiliar faces, and he doesn’t care too much for meeting new people and learning new names. A young man comes up to him and shakes his hand, welcoming him to his posse of misfits, telling him that he and one other will be new faces, and that if he ever wants to chat his name is Jongdae and this is his mobile number. Baekhyun makes a careful observation of the clock on the wall and notices it is 3.5 seconds slower than his wristwatch. Yet another thing to hiss at. When the clock strikes 12:00 (the clock that is 3.5 seconds late, mind you), they finally begin, much to Baekhyun’s chagrin.

It’s very much a stereotypical affair. They go around the circle, with people that Baekhyun could care less about introducing themselves and mentioning why they are here. There’s a smoker, as there always is. Two to Baekhyun’s left is a shortish boy who must be similar in age to him, with a frizz of black hair, and heavy rings around his wide, owl-like eyes. The boy glances across at Baekhyun every now and then, but Baekhyun avoids his eyes. He finds out, when it is his turn, that the boy is Kyungsoo, and he is the ual deviant of the ensemble, his only statement to the room being, “I watch too much .”

It is almost Baekhyun’s turn now, and he can feel his heart racing. It’s tragic really, how scripted this whole event has come to be. A smoker, a ual deviant, and now he will attempt to explain his OCD to a room full of strangers. Of course, this would be less daunting if in fact Baekhyun believed there to be something wrong with him in the first place (which there wasn’t). It wasn’t like he was here on purpose. Minseok dragged him here after Baekhyun screamed at him for knocking one of his perfectly sharpened pencils from its perfectly parallel place on his desk. Apparently, this is not common courtesy for roommates, and neither is pedantically standing on tables and chairs to straighten picture frames with a spirit level.

When Baekhyun is about to begin his blubbering spiel on applied mathematics in the house and workplace, he marches into the room, late, as the arms of the clock swing around to 12:30. His arms are thrown around carelessly as he walks, and Baekhyun imagines anything within a one metre radius of his body is under threat to serious harm. He is tall, hideously tall, with short brown hair gelled up in the middle, and his eyebrows are furrowed. Almost tripping over Baekhyun’s bag as he squeezes his way through the chairs, this mountainous lump of a human being takes the seat to Baekhyun’s right and sits with his legs spread wide, definitely encroaching on Baekhyun's personal space bubble.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says.

“You must be Chanyeol,” Jongdae says. “It’s very nice to meet you. We were just about to hear from our other newest member, Baekhyun. I hope you two will get along.”

Baekhyun does not want to be here, and it is indubitable to him that he and this Chanyeol guy will never be friends for Chanyeol is conspicuously late. Baekhyun holds his tongue, however, as all eyes turn back to him, including this newcomer with his puppy-dog eyes. Baekhyun tuts, looking down at the ugly carpet, careful not to meet anyone’s eyes. Between this unknown Chanyeol and Kyungsoo the addict staring at him, he’s feeling very uncomfortable with this whole predicament indeed.

“I’m Baekhyun, and I have obsessive-compulsive disorder. My roommate said that I’d get better if I talked about it to random people like you. I honestly don’t think it’s a problem, but he’s pretty ticked about me doing things certain ways so I decided to come here and… see how it went.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Baekhyun,” Jongdae says welcomingly. “Do you have any examples of these things that you do that frustrate your roommate so?”

“Lining up things usually does it,” Baekhyun says thoughtfully. “And our bookshelves. Every book we own has to be alphabetical, by author last name. Books in the same series have to be the same height and all must belong to either the paperback or hardcover category, and not a mixture of both because that’s not how books should be placed together. Don’t even get me started on the sizes of bowls and cutlery in the kitchen…” A hand through hair, a sheepish laugh.

“Sometimes when Minseok knocks something of mine over or he leaves something of his out of order, I tend to freak out a bit. Like his shoes, for example. He leaves them in the walkway but he doesn’t turn them out towards the door when he’s out of them and that’s not how you leave shoes. And odd socks. I can’t even.” Baekhyun almost screams as Chanyeol slowly lifts the ends of his skinny jeans up, revealing one yellow and one purple sock discreetly to Baekhyun’s line of sight.

“ you,” he mutters under his breath. He hears a throaty chuckle from his right-hand neighbour.

“What was that?” Jongdae asks.

“Enough about me,” Baekhyun clears his throat, scowl on his face. “Can we move on please? Just talking about things that annoy me gets me really worked up.”

It was partly the truth, but more so it was that giant idiot sitting next to him with his oddly-coloured socks. Baekhyun glares at Chanyeol, but listens nonetheless as Chanyeol introduces himself to the room, his big ears poking out behind tufts of messy gelled hair.

“I’m Chanyeol, and I have ADHD,” he says. “I’m pretty much a really big slob and have the attention span of a goldfish so my organisational skills are not that great. I don’t really know what else to say, other than my mum sent me here because she wanted me to make friends. Baekhyun seems nice enough so I suppose I might as well bother him.” Oh great, Baekhyun thinks. I don’t want to deal with this crackpot. Baekhyun doesn't think he has been pleasant at all to this contemptible human being, but maybe ADHD has rendered this Chanyeol fellow dense, or he has a thing for short and very sarcastic Koreans.

True to his word, Chanyeol did, in fact, bother Baekhyun quite a bit. He decided that he would follow Baekhyun to the station, and board the same carriage as him. Then, he decided that he would get off at the same stop as Baekhyun, and use the same ticket collector as Baekhyun, and walk down the same side of the street as Baekhyun. Where Baekhyun made a conscious effort to avoid the cracks in the pavement, Chanyeol loudly stepped on every crack with a stomp, laughing his head off every time a cough or splutter exited Baekhyun’s mouth as he tried to hide his repetitive cursing directed towards the idiot behind him.

“Will you please stop following me?” Baekhyun finally yelled, spinning on his heel. Chanyeol jumped, falling into a shrubbery just off the pavement in fright. Baekhyun could see one of his incriminating sock-covered feet hanging out of the bushes. Chanyeol launched himself back out onto the concrete, one haphazard foot in front of the other. He looked at Baekhyun with interest, raising his eyebrows slightly before plowing into the smaller of the pair.

“I’m only making sure you get home safe is all,” Chanyeol stated, sheepish grin on his face, given the fact that they were still walking around in broad daylight and no one in their right mind would ever think to attack someone else in broad daylight.

“If you’re going to follow me, try not to step on the cracks. It annoys me a lot more than you realise, and I might attempt to strangle you.”

Baekhyun turned back around, continuing on his way. There was a slight pause behind him, a stumble, and then finally and trot. There were no hoots or whoops of excitement as before, and Baekhyun could see in his peripherals that Chanyeol was, in fact, following his instructions. Thoughtfully, a small smile slips onto his face.