Things Byun Baekhyun knows about his best friend: His name is Park Chanyeol. His favorite color is green. He likes pineapple on his pizza (a thing Baekhyun doesn’t understand yet but learns to like it with time). He doesn’t like chocolate ice cream but always orders it so he can share it with Baekhyun. He still hasn’t seen Star Wars but has made Baekhyun watch Deep Space 9, twice. He unironically likes One Direction but Baekhyun loves him anyway.

 

When Baekhyun is eight and Chanyeol is seven (and three quarters) they were playing in Chanyeol’s room when suddenly Chanyeol stopped breathing right, looking at Baekhyun with a much more pale lips and big scared eyes, and Baekhyun panics, everything in his vision turning black and too noisy, feeling as if he was about to die when his best friend most needed him, but he just blinked it away, holds his hand and stared to scream his mother’s name because he thought if he panicked they’d both will be lost.

 

Chanyeol’s heart is too big, and he smiles blinding bright and Baekhyun doesn’t understand how Chanyeol put up with his too-sharp fortress of wit and bony elbows and fragile knees when Baekhyun thinks he’s the sun. And the sun doesn’t settle, or at least not for a thing like him.

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When Baekhyun is nine, he’s lying in his room reading his favorite comic when he gets a call, in the middle of the night it can only be one person: Chanyeol, so he just answer waiting for him to talk first.

 

“I think he’s leaving” it’s the only thing Chanyeol whispers at the other side of the line, voice weak.

 

Baekhyun stays on the phone with him until the black Toyota pulls out of the driveway and Chanyeol’s mom comes in to kiss his forehead.

 

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When Baekhyun is twelve and Chanyeol is too old to count by three-quarters, they’re lying in Baekhyun’s bed and Baekhyun’s said how he’s never been kissed. Chanyeol looks at him and takes his face between both of his hands and presses his lips against Baekhyun’s.

 

At the age of eighteen, it’s still the best kiss Baekhyun ever had.

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“YOU’RE GOING TO KILL YOURSELF!” Baekhyun is desperate to get Chanyeol out of the tree but not strong enough to climb with him.

 

“I’ll just get him out of there, it’s going to be ok” Chanyeol is laughing, eyes on the cat just a few branches up and Baekhyun can’t help but roll his eyes, still a little bit worried despite his best friend  confidence.

 

It’s not the first time he risk himself to do something good for others, and Baekhyun thinks that this is the way he’ll die, it won’t be something selfish, and he doesn’t know if he could blame him even though he knows he’ll want to.

 

 

When Baekhyun is sixteen and Chanyeol is fifteen, Chanyeol makes him a mix cd “for your van” messily scrawled across it in black sharpie and Baekhyun’s only reply is, “my van is not a ” while Chanyeol just rolls his eyes.

 

Baekhyun rolls the windows down and turned the volume up.

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He knows it is in every little thing he says like when Chanyeol is a little bit to reckless and puts himself in another stupid situation, or in the little post it he always leaves when they’re too bored and sped too much time in Chanyeol’s room. In the little reminders he always gives Chanyeol about piano practice, and how he must eat properly and how he must remember to do math homework and write that essay about independence for history class. It the frown of eyebrows Baekhyun gives him every time Chanyeol comes with a sleepy face at class. And in the way there is always a silence when they’re about to hang up the phone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things Byun Baekhyun doesn’t know: If Park Chanyeol loves him back. Sometimes, he thinks he might.