As always, his life seemed to change out of nowhere.

“We were just talking about the possibility of it, Yeol,” the smaller man said, shame coloring his face – embarrassment that he’d been caught. “You really don’t have to.”

“It’s not because of that, Kyungsoo. I want to,” he replied. “Jongin is right and you know it. You two have been housing me for months and haven’t asked for anything in return.”

“But Chanyeol-“

“All I’ve been doing is moping around. I’m done being 'a sad and depressing waste of space'-“

“Jongin didn’t mean what he was saying! You aren’t a bother.”

“You don’t have to worry. I’m not offended – really, I mean it - and I have nothing against Jongin. If anything, he helped me realize the state of my life… It’s time to move out - finally. It’s just time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really thankful for everything you’ve done for me the last three months. You’ve been the best friend a guy could ask for.”

Kyungsoo seemed to give up. “…Where will you go?”

“I found a small apartment near the university, and I’m looking for a part-time job.”

“Doing what?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ve been looking at loads of flyers. I’ll use what I’ve got saved up until I find a real job.”

“Yeol… You can’t just up and move like this. You don’t even have a plan.“

“It’s already done, Kyungsoo,” he smiled with a small twitch of his eye. It was fine, and he had really meant it. But he had watched as his friend’s eyebrows crinkled in concern and couldn’t help but wonder if his friend was right. Was he being too hasty? Would the job not pay well enough for him to survive alone?

But as he always did, he found solace in the daily newspaper.

Sagittarius, it read, all things new will go your way. Don’t be afraid to embrace your adventurous side. Remember that nothing great has ever been done that hasn’t involved taking risks, so pursue it. You may just find that straying from the path will open up new and exciting doors for you.

He smiled with relief after reading it again, took the clipping and refolded it gently before placing it in his back pocket as he always did. Then he picked his suitcases back up from the hallway floor and pushed into the small apartment.

He never minded that the door had a small crack next to the number that read ‘331’, nor did he mind that the wooden floor creaked lightly with each application of pressure. He certainly didn’t mind that the small and cramped apartment had no air conditioning unit - for this new experience was an adventure!

And his horoscope always told him that optimism was the key to happiness!

 

***   ***   ***

 

“Park! I told you to watch your goddamn feet around the merchandise!”

Six weeks into his job at the local convenience store and Chanyeol was starting to lose his optimism about new beginnings.

“I told you the boxes were fragile and needed to be handled with care! They’re all over the freaking ground! Do you think we can sell a single box of broken cookies to customers?”

“N-no, Sir!” he stuttered out, taking measured but quiet breaths to control his anxiety. His manager was a lot shorter than he was, but perhaps the older man’s sturdier build helped him to appear larger. In any case, Chanyeol felt a mild panic attack rearing its ugly head in the back of his mind. He couldn’t help it – he couldn’t handle being yelled at or embarrassed, especially in public.

He was feeling incredibly flustered already when he’d tripped over a broom he’d left lying around, but even more so by the cause of his clumsiness. By birth and by nature, his long legs had given him a reputation for having two left feet, but distraction was always the kicker.

He’d been returning from the bathroom to finish his duties when a customer had chimed the bell on the door. He’d looked up from wiping his hands on his jeans only to be stunned by the pretty beauty of a boy around his age, possibly younger judging by the roundness of his cheeks and the shininess of his eyes.

Chanyeol had been on the verge of memorizing and possibly recognizing the other’s face when his foot caught on a broom that had slipped to the floor. His momentum to catch himself from actually falling had sent him stumbling and eventually tumbling into some newly received shipments of Chips Ahoy, Famous Amos, and bunches of other brands of over-priced snack cookie that had been stacked precariously in the corner.

His co-worker had screamed shrilly and rushed to help him out of the pile. Unfortunately for Chanyeol, her yelp had brought his manager out to the front and placed him in his current predicament.

His social anxiety began bubbling up in the pit of his stomach as his manager continued to berate him in front of the store. Luckily, it was an off-hour and there weren’t many customers around. But of the three there, two quietly and awkwardly slipped out the front after making their purchases with his co-worker. The third, the pretty boy from earlier, had slyly ducked behind the magazine rack and had immersed himself in some trashy gossip column that could hardly be called literature.

Even so, knowing the boy was still there made the tall man feel all the more ashamed and stupid.

“Don’t make me tell you this again, Park,” his manager finished. “Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” he nodded.

“Good. Now unpack those boxes and check them before you stock the shelves. Any and all broken ones will be coming out of your paycheck, you hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

As he unpacked the boxes of snacks, he silently cursed himself after each broken package he found. The small pile of ruined snacks was only another physical reminder of his embarrassment and shame, and it caused a string of quiet curses to slip past his lips even as he worked diligently.

All the while, a pair of sympathetic eyes watched him from behind an adjacent aisle, before silently slipping away when he finished.

 

***   ***   ***

 

When he returned home in the evening it was to a messy, yet still rather unfurnished apartment. The sole window had been left open to try and get some fresh air to cool from the summer heat, but he found that the stale humid air had instead settled inside the small rooms.

It was impossible to ever feel clean during summer when the air made a simple trip outside turn anyone into a sticky mess, nevertheless he’d tried to fight it with cool showers after work. It had become routine to come home and unwind under the cool water, but it had also become a source of joy in the past couple of weeks.

Initially, he had cursed the walls of his apartment.

The landlord, upon signing his lease, had not once mentioned the noise level in the building nor the thinness of the walls. Granted, Chanyeol should have known better to ask, but it was his first time signing that kind of contract on his own and his anxiety made him feel like all his questions were stupid and would be ill-received.

So, when he heard the loud dinner conversation of his neighbors, the Lee’s, in apartment 333 he had been extremely surprised to say the least. It wasn’t too bad initially. He could easily turn on his laptop and drown out their dull mutterings with music or television. But when the Lee’s decided to get a little frisky in their living room one night, he knew the walls were a curse from hell - all because of his horrible luck.

Sufficed to say, he could not greet either of his elderly neighbors with a straight face for many mornings after that.

His neighbor on the other side was a different story, however. Not a peep was heard from that wall for a long time, but then again Chanyeol didn’t try very hard to listen. It was only by pure coincidence that he discovered his left-side neighbor in apartment 329 had the voice of an angel.

Only 3 weeks ago he had stepped into his shower, exhausted from an early morning shift at the store. It was only 6:30 AM, but the stickiness in the night air combined with an all-nighter had left Chanyeol disgusted, and he had craved the feel of the warm water to cleanse him before he crawled into bed in an exhausted stupor for some much needed rest.

He’d taken little notice of the sounds on the other side of the bathroom wall, but the vague notion that his neighbor was also showering crossed his mind. And there, under the pipes and mists of his pathetically sputtering shower he heard a faint voice float through the walls.

The rich timbre of his melody was like all things summer rolled into a sound. The low rumbles were like an approaching storm and the high notes descended down Chanyeol’s throat and made him pucker his lips like he’d tasted tangy lemonade. His neighbor belted out the cheery tune with aplomb, and without even thinking Chanyeol felt his lips curl into a small smile.

He’d gone to bed after his shower with a grin still etched across his face.

That evening was no exception. After the reprimanding he’d received, he’d gotten his hopes up about coming home to that soothing voice. He was almost disappointed until about a minute into his shower when he heard the nob on the other side of the wall squeak and the pipes give way, water coming to life. He’d always been too shy to try and get to know his neighbor, but one day he knew he would gain the courage to thank him for his songs.

That night he sang about freedom and summer dreams, walks on the beach at sunset, better days and toes in the sand.

 

***   ***   ***

 

 

It was turning out to be one of the worst days Chanyeol had of his life so far, and trust him, he’d had bad days.

It started out like any other, waking up at 10:30 PM for his 11 o’clock overnight shift. His work didn’t require much preparation, so rolling out of bed and into the store with unkempt bedhead was his usual routine for these hours, and the walk between his house and the store was only a few short blocks.

Instead of lounging about in his spare moments, he took the opportunity to leave early. Since the cookie incident a week ago his boss had been extra prickly with him, and he’d decided that between the lightning glances the former would send him and the consistent barking about his inadequacy, he’d do everything within his power to get on his manager’s good side. God knows he didn’t need to be fired.

But, like most other times in Chanyeol’s life, the things he really wanted – needed - to succeed always ended in failure because of his horrible luck.

He couldn’t help it that an evening shower began the second he made it to the bottom floor of his complex. In his defense, the weather report hadn’t predicted rain, and he ran back up the steps as fast as he could to retrieve his umbrella. And it wasn’t really his fault that the corner of it was broken, he just hadn’t used it in a while.

Having a half soaked uniform really wasn’t all that bad in the scheme of things. He was still on time when he rounded the corner of the main street, but it was just after that that things literally spiraled out of control.

It was still raining hard and he wasn’t quite sure what happened - perhaps the road was too slick. But moments after he passed the first stop light, there was a horrible screeching noise behind him that caused several girls who were walking into nearby clubs to shriek. He looked over his shoulder just in time to see headlights spinning towards him through the drops of water, and reacted quick enough only to fling himself onto another part of the cement sidewalk. The car crashed through the trashcan he’d been walking past and into the storefront.

He processed the next several minutes in slow motion. He was vaguely aware of people rushing to the scene, bright lights flashing as cops arrived, and the shouting of the paramedics as they pulled a limp body from the car. It was as if he was outside of his body looking down on the scene, and he could hardly register the woman kneeling at his side asking if he was all right.

His mind was pulled into an entirely different place. It reeled back 3 years into the past to a very similar situation. Although, it hadn’t been raining when his mother crashed.

He stood shakily to his feet and ignored the woman as anxiety and panic pushed up into his throat. As fast as his wobbly legs would carry him he stumbled away from the scene and into an alleyway, where he lost the contents of his stomach behind a dumpster.

The rain was pounding as hard as ever on his hair and his face – his uniform was long soaked through – and he sunk to the ground and curled his knees to his chest.

It was long moments of shaking before he remembered how to breathe properly and minutes more before he moved from his spot. He hadn’t had an attack in a while, so he supposed that this kind of scare after a long dry spell was sure enough the cause of the length of his attack.

It was only when he shifted and chanced a glance at his wristwatch that he realized he was over twenty-five minutes late for the start of his shift. For the sake of his job and stability, he mustered up all his strength and put it into his shaky knees, trudging to the store – his umbrella had been long forgotten.

When Chanyeol arrived at the convenience store, he learned that there was a literal reason one could describe another as being ‘red in the face.’ His manager was so angry with him for showing up late – and on top of that, soaked – that he berated him for at least ten minutes and threatened to fire him. He couldn’t get a word of defense in edge wise, and even if he had been able to he was still shaky from the slight trauma he’d just experienced. The best he could do was keep his lips sealed tight and blink back the moisture forming traitorously in his eyes.

The actual highlight of his night was the old gym clothes another coworker had left that he was able to fit into – they were slightly rank but dry – and the Hello-Kitty Band-Aid his female coworker has placed over a small cut on his forehead. He supposed a small shard of debris from the accident had hit him, but he didn’t voice his suspicions aloud.

For the rest of his shift he was under the hawk-like eye of his manager, who was quick to point out his flaws and notice his clumsiness. The whole ordeal was so exhausting that a pit formed heavily in his gut, threatening to bubble into an uncharacteristic depression that had him willing to quit his job and begin life as a bum instead.

But, he didn’t have the courage to take a stand and instead worked the entirety of his shift without complaint. He had never been so happy to see the sun rising – it meant the end was near.

 

***   ***   ***

 

Walking home there was no point avoiding the massive puddles left on the asphalt. His shoes were already soaked. A heavy cloud hung over his head and the sight of his door had never been so pleasing. All he wanted to do was cry as soon as he got indoors, but even for that he had no strength. He left his shoes and soaked socks in the entryway and trudged to his bathroom.

He watched in silence in the mirror as a lesser version of himself stripped of the old gym clothes he wore and peeled the small pink bandage partially from his head. Indeed, there was a shallow cut on his forehead and no matter how small, he was sure it required some sort of treatment. However, he realized that even though that was the case he had nothing else to cover it with and pressed the small bright pink thing back into place, smoothing his red bangs back over his forehead.

A wave of depression hit him all at once so strongly that it had him clutching himself in place against the sink. A muffled sob escaped his mouth when he thought about the sorry predicament he was in. In only three years his life had gone from promising to imposing, and if that wasn’t sad he didn’t know what was.

All of a sudden, the tell-tale squeak on the other side of the wall perked his ears to the rustle of movement, then the rush of water from the adjacent shower sprang to life. It was barely 7 AM, so of course his neighbor shouldn’t be cheery and excited, but something in Chanyeol found it rather sad to be sitting in silence on this morning.

He would not call himself particularly outgoing, nor would he call himself forward. But the machinations of his mind were currently fried from his own self-loathing, and he longed for the cheer he once had. In desperation he called out for the only thing around him he thought might help, and reminded by the sound of the shower, for the first time he sang along to a song that the other had belted out quite often in the morning hours.

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,

and I say it’s all right,

 

Little darling, It’s been a long cold lonely winter,

Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here,

 

He heard another rustle of movement on the other side of the wall, then the shower squeaked off unexpectedly. In brief seconds, he regretted his actions, wondering if the other had heard him like Chanyeol had heard the other so many times before. But like his actions couldn’t quite catch up with his thoughts he sang it out again, and as he sang the last line like a mantra the feeling eventually started to grow on him. It is all right, he thought, and he smiled slowly.

 

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,

and I say it’s all right

 

As he started into the next part, he halted quickly when his voice began to echo. Only when he stopped did he realize it hadn’t echoed, but his neighbor had begun to sing softly too. After a lapse he picked it back up, the expression on the face of the man in the mirror strikingly different than a few moments ago. The cloud over his head was dissipating rapidly.

 

Little Darling, the smiles returning to the faces,

Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here,

 

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,

and I say it’s all right,

 

“It’s all right,” he sang, and his last note faded in the air along with the other’s. Then all was silent between the walls.

He listened to the thudding of his own heartbeat, which seemed irresponsibly loud, and the soft labored breathing of his mouth. And a strange feeling bubbled up inside him. But it wasn’t anxiety that stirred him. It was new, exciting.

Without really understanding why, he wrapped a towel around his waist and marched out of the bathroom. His hand hesitated for a moment on the doorknob, but he shut his eyes and pushed away all thoughts before turning it slowly and peeking out into his apartment hallway.

For some reason, as he looked in the direction of his neighbor’s door, he expected something to happen. Instead, he earned a weird look from his middle-aged neighbor across the hall who had apparently just returned from a morning walk.

He was about to step back into his apartment with disappointment to add to his list of things that had happened that day when a small creaking sound made his head turn back to the side.

His neighbor’s door inched open slowly, and peeking out of it were two small but shining brown eyes underneath a wet mop of light brown hair.

Chanyeol paused in his tracks, hand frozen on his doorknob. “H-hey,” he breathed shakily.

“Hi,” replied the other meekly, and the pretty boy stepped tentatively into the hallway, similarly clad in a white fluffy robe.

He looked down at himself and then at the other before blushing horribly – he could feel it by the heat in his cheeks – then he stuttered embarrassingly. “I’m Chanyeol!” he said, like it was an explanation for his almost-ness.

But rather than judging him, the boy only laughed quietly to hide a blush staining his own fair skin.

“I’m Baekhyun.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A/N: The fluff piece I’ve always wanted to write is finally getting its time in the sun!

If you think you’ve seen this before it’s because you have. I unlisted this fic a few months ago because I knew I couldn’t give it the time it deserved. But that time is now!

I don’t have much else to say except that I hope you will all enjoy this story I’m writing as a contrast from The Boss. Please look forward to fluff, sweetness, a little bit of angst, and fluff again.

And as always, thank you for reading.

Love you~