16: Baekhyun has obtained a lot of titles in his pursuit of Yixing, but Yixing's only ever really reacted to one: boyfriend. Pairing!BaekXing, College!AU, SlightRockBand!AU

Baekhyun knows from experience and feedback that he can be pretty obsessive when he likes someone. That's why he tells anyone who will listen that he's Yixing's manager and not just some drooling loser fan standing right in front of the stage on a Tuesday night when he'd probably be better off studying.

The bartender rolls his eyes—he clearly doesn't care—but the girls at the table to Baekhyun's left seem pretty excited about it. "He gets to hang out with Yixing-oppa all the time," he hears one of them whisper to another.

Her friend seems not to care too much though and Baekhyun soon finds out why. "He'd be cooler if he managed Chanyeol-oppa."

Baekhyun huffs at that because Chanyeol is his roommate and Baekhyun is pretty positive the girl would be less enamored if she knew what Chanyeol looked—and smelled—like when he came in drunk and disheveled on Friday nights. He shudders at the image that thought inevitably conjures, but has no problem focusing on more pleasant things because at that moment Yixing and Chanyeol's band, Bleeding Christmas on a White Sunday, emerge from behind the dark curtains and begin setting up.

Something else Baekhyun knows from experience is that it'll be at least 10 more minutes before they actually play anything, but the wait doesn't really bother him. What does bother him, though, is the man who comes up behind him to tap him on the shoulder while Baekhyun is trying to devote all of his energy to watching Yixing.

He whirls around with a glare and questions, "Can I help you?"

The man smiles, but the expression is empty and Baekhyun doesn't believe for one second that the man's next words are genuine. "We're interested in a few members of the band. Someone said you're Mr. Zhang's manager?"

Seeing that Yixing is actually close enough to overhear this conversation as it happens, Baekhyun blushes at maybe being caught in his lie. Before he can answer one way or another, though, he watches Yixing approach with a hazy smile. "Are you really?" Yixing asks Baekhyun with light interest. "Cool."

After he speaks, Yixing walks away without even acknowledging the greasy man who'd started the conversation. Taking a cue from his crush, Baekhyun does the same, and eventually the man just walks away in annoyance. Baekhyun enjoys the rest of his night without further incident, and later, once the band has packed up and Chanyeol is trying to convince them all to go out for drinks, Baekhyun's lanky roommate comments offhandedly, "I'm impressed by your efforts, Baek. Xing's manager though?" Chanyeol looks at Baekhyun skeptically. "Seems to me like a bit of a stretch."

~~~

Baekhyun learns a little from his experience with the talent scout, and takes some of Chanyeol's skepticism to heart too. Indeed, Baekhyun agrees that he looks way too young to be anyone's manager, and he's not even studying something musical at university, either, so the next time he attends one of the band's gigs, he chooses something different.

"We're high school friends," Baekhyun shares with the girl in the lawn chair next to him. She hadn't been interested and as such hadn't asked, but he felt compelled to strengthen his new cover by telling someone about it.

"That's nice," she compliments politely, probably wondering why the reddish-brunette boy was telling her this.

"I'm surprising him," Baekhyun adds, thinking of this additional detail suddenly and fitting into his storyline seamlessly.

"Sounds fun." This time, the girl turns away from Baekhyun as soon as she's done speaking, and that's that.

The band does great; everyone screams like crazy during Chanyeol's drum solo, and all of the girls, at least, jump up and down in excitement when Yixing plays and sings an acoustic original as part of their cover set. Baekhyun is understandably starry-eyed as the band thanks the crowd and bows before exiting to the back, so he doesn't really mind that the girl he'd shared his cover with leaves without telling it to anyone.

It turns out, though, that she somehow does, because Baekhyun's phone rings within 5 minutes of her departure, and it's Chanyeol because Yixing wants to know if Baekhyun really went to the same high school as him. Yixing doesn't remember and when Baekhyun doesn't answer, Chanyeol does it for him.

"It's possible," he offers to Yixing, though the call's not disconnected yet so Baekhyun hears it too. "Seoul's not that big, right?"

"Oh." Yixing doesn't sound upset or excited by the idea that he and Baekhyun might have been classmates before college—even though they totally weren't. "Cool."

Baekhyun rolls his eyes at his crush through his and Chanyeol's phone call, and wishes his roommate would have just thought to give Baekhyun's number to Yixing instead.

~~~

Yixing does eventually end up with Baekhyun's number, though not at all for the reason Baekhyun might have hoped.

The band starts gaining more popularity on campus, and what used to be chill hangouts by the picnic tables after lunch, during which time Yixing would play guitar while Baekhyun did homework and sat next to his roommate as Chanyeol drummed imaginary beats into the air with his fingers, was now a chance for fans to view a mini-concert and for Baekhyun to lament the lack of opportunities to be one-on-one with Yixing—and Chanyeol too, unfortunately.

That's how Yixing gets Baekhyun's number, actually, because Baekhyun is sitting at one of the tables when he hears a voice behind him asking if he's somehow related to Yixing because he's always around the band. Baekhyun doesn't comment that he looks more like someone in Chanyeol, or even Sehun's—the bassist's—families because the Parks and the Ohs are Korean whereas Yixing is not. But he says nothing because Yixing starts singing Baekhyun's favorite song—the acoustic original he played that other time—and that leaves the owner of the curious voice to make his own assumptions about Baekhyun's connections to Yixing.

Which he does, and it's not until two days later that Baekhyun finds out what cover he ended up with this time.

"I gave your number to Xing because he says that since you're long-lost cousins, he should probably be able to get in contact with you."

Baekhyun's head snaps up from where it was bent heavily over his calculator and he stares at Chanyeol with his mouth literally hanging open as he processes his roommate's words.

"Zhang Yixing has my number?" Is his first question, because that fact is freaking important to Baekhyun's well-being and he needs to know. The rest of Chanyeol's statement catches up to his brain pretty quickly, though, so Baekhyun's next reaction is to shriek and bury his head in his textbook.

"Wait, wait, wait," he panics to Chanyeol who's sitting lazily on his bed and laughing at Baekhyun's moment of crisis. "Why does Yixing think we're cousins? Not even I would make that one up— is illegal!"

Chanyeol's laughter brings his hands to his stomach and his body to the floor as his mirth makes him lose his balance. Personally, Baekhyun thinks any damage Chanyeol sustains from that fall serves his roommate right, but Chanyeol's inability explain further is hindered by the fact that he bites his tongue on the way down, so Baekhyun almost wishes he can take it back—but he doesn't.

As it turns out, the guy behind Baekhyun is Yixing's dance partner in their hip hop class, so it's his fault that Yixing believed he'd suddenly discovered another family member. Baekhyun utilizes the fact that Yixing now has his number to clear up the issue as soon as possible; but Chanyeol still thinks it's hilarious and laughs silently about it for days, though he's unable to tease Baekhyun with actual noise because his tongue is so swollen that he ends up not being able to talk at all for at least a week.

~~~

Baekhyun makes the most of Chanyeol's silence while it lasts. He particularly enjoys attending one of the band's concerts that next Saturday because Chanyeol is still incapable of speaking and doesn't get to make any of his annoying shouts of "Yeah!" that Baekhyun hates and only puts up with because of his crush on Yixing. It's at the usual venue and Baekhyun tries to take his place at the front like he always does, but he's had exams the past few weeks and the place is much more crowded than the last time he'd been able to come about a month ago.

He elbows one girl in the side and possibly also steps on someone's foot, but Yixing's worth it to him, so Baekhyun ignores their angry indignation and keeps pushing his way forward. Eventually, he makes it, but the girls next to him shriek loudly when the band comes on stage to set up and Baekhyun has to cover his ears because they're standing so close to him. He feels eyes on him as he watches Yixing plug in and test his electric guitar, so Baekhyun looks up, surprised to find the shrieking girls glancing at him and whispering.

"What?" He asks, almost rudely but not quite, annoyed that he always seems to get interrupted when the band plays here.

"You go to a lot of their concerts, right?" One of them works up enough courage to ask him this and Baekhyun nods as his brain immediately starts to formulate a plausible reason that wasn't "I like Yixing so much that Chanyeol basically calls me a stalker."

Another one of them clears and glances at her friends before she wonders, "Do you know if Yixing-oppa is dating anyone?"

Baekhyun does know, actually, but he denies it vehemently because he doesn't want to lie since Yixing is very single but he also doesn't want to tell the girls that—so he pretends he doesn't know and tries to leave it at that. Except fate doesn't let him because there's Yixing again, once more close enough to eavesdrop, and once more interjecting his two cents into a conversation that's actually about him.

"You don't know?" He asks Baekhyun in a way that makes Baekhyun wonder if he's missed something in his careful study of the love of his life.

Baekhyun comes up with nothing, though, so he just shakes his head and hope Yixing will elaborate because now those girls aren't the only one's who want to know about Yixing's relationship status.

Yixing swings an arm around Baekhyun's shoulders and Beekhyun almost dies right then, but then Yixing's saying something crazy and Baekhyun thinks he really has died. "He's my boyfriend," Yixing tells the girls confidently, referring to Baekhyun, of course.

"I—you—what're you—I—what?" Baekhyun's stuttering and that makes him embarrassed, but he can't help himself because Yixing's words are just that shocking.

"That is," Yixing amends, looking at Baekhyun hopefully before he says, "I'd like you to be."

Baekhyun knows he'll start stuttering again if he opens his mouth, so he doesn't say anything and just grins smugly at the girls who are now glaring angrily at him for taking their oppa away.

"I'll take that as a yes?" Yixing whispers into Baekhyun's ear, lips brushing the outer ridge of it as he does and that makes Baekhyun shiver.

"It's better than anything I've come up with," Baekhyun confesses, his smile sheepish, but also radiant.

Yixing laughs and it just about makes Baekhyun's entire life. "Those other titles weren't so bad," Yixing counters, "I jus like this one best."

Baekhyun's new boyfriend boldly kisses his forehead as he rejoins his band on the stage, and Yixing winks at him when he apparently can't close his mouth from the shock. Over the next two hours, Bleeding Christmas on a White Sunday plays the best concert Baekhyun's ever heard from them, and he smiles proudly when they do their bows because he now has a legitimately good reason to be a fan.

He's heading through the crowd toward the back room when he hears something that makes him giggle under his breath.

"One of the girls in the front said that guy's dating Yixing-oppa. I thought he was his manager."

"No, no," someone else disagrees. "They're definitely cousins."

He feels more than sees their matching looks of disgust and makes a mental note to tell Chanyeol about this later, just so he can watch his roommate try to laugh without being able to say anything. It wasn't going to be as satisfying as the girl's faces when Yixing asked him out, but it would work.