What the – Chanyeol starts and scowls as he enters the dorm, his newly-bleached brows knitting together at the head-splitting volume of the music that booms through its every nook and cranny, further plaguing his already overburdened brain. He tosses his jacket, shades and mobile on the closest counter and makes towards the stairs. As he goes, the song – Lana Del Rey's West Coast – draws to an end and a momentary silence settles on the house, though in his barraged ears it still reverberates. No sooner does he take the first step than the tune starts afresh, louder now, as he draws nearer the source of its playing. His face further contorted, he covers his ears and continues his climb. It's his own room, he's certain, that's the epicentre of this unnatural disaster, and since it is and since it's struck, this hurricane could have but one name.

He reaches his room and there it awaits, lying face-down atop his bed. His slim feet and slimmer upper body are bare, the lower clad in low-hanging, loose-fitted ripped jeans that cling to his rounded hips but only just, his small head cushioned by his left hand, his right hanging off the edge of the bed, his soft dark hair tousled, if a little too neatly, his smooth cheeks at once flushed and drained of colour, his naturally drooping eyes dully distressed – they seem to look at nothing, and yet he knows they perceive everything. And his lips…they move in time to the music, mouthing words they cannot properly pronounce...

I can see my baby swinging, his Parliament's on fire and his hands are up, on the balcony and I'm saying 'Ooh, baby, ooh, baby, I'm in-love'…

Without a sound of complaint at the noise, the intrusion, the liberty taken by the other in sprawling on his bed and in such a state, without the least hint of puzzlement at this most puzzling behaviour on the part of his uninvited guest, Chanyeol walks over to his sound system. But rather than cutting off the music entirely, he merely reduces its volume to a sufferable intensity, then turns, crosses his long arms in front of his chest and markedly exhales. He needn’t ask Baekhyun after his presence nor present state-of-mind – this happens, has been happening periodically since they decided to break up. Or rather, since Baekhyun decided they must.

They loved one another at first sight and ever more so with every subsequent glance exchanged between them. Like the heroes of most histories of forbidden romance, they fought it, acted upon it and ended it when it grew too burdensome to maintain. Baekhyun did, and Chanyeol, despite his devastation, accepted his elder's decision with the reluctant understanding of his being right – that to drag on a relationship they could never solidify, one whose very existence posed a constant threat not merely to themselves but to their members, their families, their present and future, was to play with such fire as would inevitably consume them all.  

Their love affair they cut, yet kept their friendship, if a somewhat more guarded one. Baekhyun turned to Minseok for moral support and as much of comfort as their oldest hyung could provide, Chanyeol to Sehun – eldest and youngest, between them, they kept the two afloat, never minding their will to drown.   

Still, these episodes of rueful longing will invariably occur at times of heightened stress, when their work becomes too much both for their bodies and their minds to suffer.  And when they do, when it does, Baekhyun… Recently Chanyeol has felt a change in him, felt his gaze too often on himself. At their latest EXO'luXion, during their Peter Pan time-freeze, habitually orchestrated by Sehun, the youngest for the first time in a long time paired Chanyeol with Baekhyun, even going so far as to force them into an embrace, which he couldn't bring himself to accept in full. It felt so odd, the way Baekhyun reached out to him, his willingness to hold him and be held, in spite of their circumstances – the stage and its back. Chanyeol was flustered, frustrated, quite lost. He isn't one for half measures. If it's love, let them be lovers, even if it means lying and skulking and suffering for the safety of their own skins as well as those of their brothers. Otherwise let them be just that – HyungSaeng – best beagle buddies.

"How many times have you played this already?" he asks in a mildly berating baritone.

Baekhyun sighs, his expression otherwise unaltered. "Don’t know; it's looped."

"Yeah, I've noticed. The entire house has noticed. The walls are melting around us as we speak."

The elder lets out a soundless snort, the right crook of his peculiarly protuberant mouth spiking slightly – as minute a gesture as would escape the notice of most, yet never that of the younger. "Melting… The walls are my friends; they follow my lead."

Chanyeol smirks, faintly shakes his head, at once irked and charmed by Baekhyun's theatricality. "Melodrama this time, is it? Do you even understand a word she's singing?"

"I understand 'love'."

The younger's chest constricts in involuntary resentment and with it his large elfin eyes, yet his tone retains its equability as he retorts, "Is that so? Could have fooled me."

As though pinched by the words, Baekhyun flinches. He turns on his back and slowly lifts himself up to sit, at last seeking Chanyeol's gaze with his own. "I know. I don't have the right to do this. I don't have the right to love you…never did."

"That's cheap. You usually come up with better lines. You been drinking, is that it? Go to your room then, sleep it off. We've a flight to catch in the morning."

The elder snorts and blinks in slow-motion – as bitter a gesture as any Chanyeol has seen him produce in the six years of their acquaintance.

You've changed, Baekhyun-ah. Why did you have to?

"Hmm… I haven't, but I should – drink and sleep." He rises from the bed and starts to leave the room. As he passes by Chanyeol, the younger grabs his wrist:

"No drinking. Just sleep."

Another snort, another smirk, if slightly sweetened with self-contentment. "I can't unless I drink, not when I get like this. You know that better than most. Why make such a fuss over it?"

There. There you go setting your trap…again. Again, Byun Baekhyun, again and again, Chanyeol sourly reflects, his resentment directed more at his own inability to evade it than at the elder's laying it in the first place. "I don't like it when you drink," he says, knowingly stepping into danger anew, "it makes you…overly tactile."

Baekhyun sniggers liltingly – a Siren's song to the younger's helpless blood. How many times has he crashed against the rocks for it, for that wickedly sweet laughter, those sweetly wicked eyes? "Don't worry, your baby isn't here – out with his eomma. You really hate it when I touch him, don't you? So possessive…but of whom – me or Sehunnie?" 

Chanyeol bristles at the mention of their maknae's name, so incitingly uttered by he who most incites his proximity, and yet dares begrudge the younger's doing the same. "Don't mess with him, Baekhyun," he warns in a low rumble, menacingly composed, then smiles in allusive indulgence as he completes, "Leave him to his mother – he knows how to take care of him."

Simultaneously the elder slits his eyes and spikes his brows, his tone as he ripostes acerbically saccharine. "Omo, omo, such Tender Love – our maknae sure is Lucky."

Brazen bastard. "As I recall, you didn't like it when I loved you tenderly," Chanyeol bites back and promptly bites his tongue at the sudden drooping of Baekhyun's eyes. "Alright, let's stop it here. Go to your room, go on."

"What if I don't want to…in my room?" he asks in a mutter, all the while surreptitiously edging towards the younger, the heat from his bare upper body a constant augmenter to that of Chanyeol's.

"Then you can sleep here."

"Where will you sleep?"

Impishly Chanyeol replies, "Where else? With my baby." He turns and makes towards the door, wondering how on earth he'll survive the night in the cluttered confinement of the room shared by their leader and youngest member.

"Don't. Don't go," the elder urges, the muted desperation in his voice checking Chanyeol in his stride, turning him on his heels.

"Baekhyun-ah –"

"I hate it when you touch him. I hate it when you smile at him. I hate it when you call him Sehunnie in that low cloying tone – Sehunnie…Sehunnie…"

"Byun Baekhyun –"

"I know," he interjects so that Chanyeol has little choice but to play audience to his soliloquy, though it's one he could recite, having heard it so many times over the past year and a half. "I know this is all my doing, I know it's all my choosing, I know I act worse around him, and you know I do it to spite you, though you don't deserve it. I'm stupid and stubborn and petulant and stupid –"

"You already said stupid," the younger interposes, at once impatient and long-suffering.

"I'll say it again – stupid, so bloody stupid. I don't know what I was thinking. Chanyeol-ah…" He charges towards Chanyeol, but checks at the younger's retreating, his expression growing sorer by the stride. 

"You were thinking about us – all of us – what's best for us all. We tried, but we couldn't hide it, could we? Not well enough. It was becoming too obvious and I wasn't going to stop, so you did it for me. I'm grateful every day. Thank you, Hyung."

Baekhyun jolts at the address. "Don't call me that." 

"You hate that too?" Chanyeol asks, inwardly slating his own meanness.

"The most," admits the elder, "even though I am."

"What should I call you then?" Chanyeol chases as, sneeringly, he sings, "Baby, Baby, too-too-too-too, say my name…"

Baekhyun is neither amused nor deterred. He draws as near Chanyeol as forces the younger's back against the wall, looks him dead in the eye, his own frightfully resolute. "Yours," he commands, calling for support upon the seniority he so resents. "Call me yours."

It's all Chanyoel can do to steady his voice as he replies, "They'll hear me if I do, and then what?"

Murmuring, Baekhyun returns, "Whisper it then. Whisper it so that only I can hear." 

"Byun Bae –" He presses the tips of his tapered fingers to Chanyeol's lips before the latter can complete, his small eyes similarly narrowed with supplication, his cheeks ripening appetisingly at the contact. Chanyeol wants to kiss them, to kiss him, as he has done so many times in the past. He wants to have him, hold him, push him down, cherish and abuse him…love him. He wants to love him and he can't. We can't. We can't keep doing this. You can't keep doing this to me, Baekhyun-ah. Gently he removes the elder's hand from his mouth and puts it to his ear instead. "Yours," he whispers loud enough for him alone to hear. "Always have been, always will be. Go to sleep now – here, there, anywhere, just go to sleep. Stop listening to silly love songs you can't even understand and go to sleep. Good night." Without meeting his gaze, he turns and starts again towards the exit, knowing that to face it now would entrap him in full.

"You push it hard, I pull away. I'm feeling hotter than fire. I guess that no one's ever really made me feel that much higher. I crave you, my darling. Boy, it's you I desire – your love, your love, our love. Did I get it right? Isn't that what she's saying? It's you I desire – your love, our love. Chanyeol-ah, look at me…"

He does, and at his glare, the paralysing weight of it, the elder petrifies. Unblinkingly, his tone as solid as his stare, Chanyeol spits, "You know how this ends. Every time we start this, you know how you end it. You know what it takes to wake up the next morning and smile and make as though we're nothing more than friends. You hate it when I touch Sehun? I hate it when you touch anyone, I hate everyone who touches you, I hate it that you let them, I hate it that you make them just to reassure yourself I still love you when you were the one who asked me not to. Don't do this, Baekhyun – don't cut me down to the size of whatever little box you're weak enough to carry. Don't come into my room half- and lie on my bed with that part tragic, part take-me-break-me look on your face just to see if I still want you when you're the one who wouldn't let me. It's me you desire? My love? And yet I'm the one who's swinging and swaying on the balcony, while you're safely tucked inside.  Go – go to your room, go to sleep. In the morning come down, sit on Sehun's lap, hang onto Minseok-hyung's shoulder, hug Jongin's back – make love to everyone, but don't talk love to me."

Baekhyun stands unmoving a moment, on his face the same apathetically anxious expression he was wearing at Chanyeol's arrival. He looks worn, wilted, the fragility of his half-exposed form an extension of his inner brittleness. Chanyeol grits his teeth to keep from crying at it, from crying out loud words he dares only think…

This much. It takes this much to shut you up, to push you out. Go on, then, go. Tuck your tail between your legs and go, you bloody coward! I can't stand the sight of you. I can't stand you, I can't! I was a proper person before you. I was a proper person. I had no fear. If you weren't going to keep me, why did you have to take me in the first place? Why, you bloody bastard? Why?! Why do you keep looking at me like that, like I just cut you in half, when you're the one holding the knife? Go. Let me go. Get out. Get the hell out of my room, get the hell out my head, get the hell out of my – GET OUT!

He does. With leaden feet, he trudges to the exit, each step relieving by an ounce the younger's leaden heart. Yet, as he comes upon the threshold, Baekhyun suddenly turns and cuts across the room to its window. Hanging onto its frame, he settles on its sill and promptly starts swaying in time to the song that's still playing in the background. I can see my sweet boy swaying, she sings and he swings, on the balcony and I'm saying: 'move, baby, move, baby, I'm in-love...'

"YAH! BYUN BAEKHYUN!" Chanyeol roars and races towards him, clutching his waist and crushing him against his chest just when it looks as though Baekhyun will let go the frame and drop to his death. "What the hell are you doing?!" he bellows breathlessly, his long limbs quaking with horror at the prospect. "Are you out of bloody mind?!"

The elder never dithers but locks his arms about Chanyeol's neck, so tightly, they disrupt his respiration. He doesn’t care – not for air, not for anything. Baekhyun is safe, safely in his grasp, that's all that matters, all that ever could, all that ever has. He carries him to his bed and sits him on its edge, scowling at the latter's reluctance to release him.

"Let go," he says, but at this Baekhyun only tightens his hold on him further. "Let go of me," Chanyeol repeats, bitterness resurging up his chest like so much bile and flooding him entire as the elder sinks his nails into his nape in insistence. "Let me go…please." Deeper, he digs them in deeper – so deep, Chanyeol is certain they'll have soon drawn blood. At last he grabs him by the wrists and forcibly frees himself from his clutches. Or so he think, until he reencounters the elder's eyes…

"If you drop me now, I'll fall. If I fall, I'll break. If I break, you'll break along with me," Baekhyun prognosticates, the pitch and pace of his speech a disarmer to the younger's determination.

"I won't," Chanyeol icily protests. Yet at Baekhyun's answering leer, the cruel conviction in his stare, he feels his forced frigidity dissolve into a thing he knows too well, a thing between distaste and desire – the constant state of his being since first they met.

"You will. I'll make you. You know I can," Baekhyun assures, his manner ominously pleasant. 

Inwardly the younger shudders at the threat, yet somehow manages to retain his outward composure as he warns, "Let me be."

"Never," Baekhyun's eyes grow wider, wilder, his voice lower, rounder as he rejoins. "You're mine, Park Chanyeol. I marked you the day we met and you'll wear that mark until the day you die. Mine. This heart," he holds his hand to Chanyeol's chest, "mine. This body," he sweeps his fingers gently down the younger's frame – gently, yet they feel to rip him apart, "mine. If I tell you to love me – love me. If I tell you to take me – take me. If I tell you to break me – break me. If I tell you to move – move. Move, Park Chanyeol. Move."

He does. With nigh on brutish force he pins the elder down, panting through teeth painfully clenched to keep from biting the triumph off Baekhyun's maddeningly smirking mouth. He wants to hurt him, punish him, brand him so that, unlike the younger's that is visible to them alone, the world entire can see his mark on Baekhyun. Three scarlet letters engraved into that pretty porcelain skin: PCY. "I hate you," he hisses at the elder. "I hate you so much I could die."

Baekhyun grins, tears glazing over his sable-coloured irises. "Hate me then…I'm telling you," he murmurs and lightly his lips, inviting the younger to taste them. But rather than kiss, Chanyeol bites – so keenly, he draws the elder's blood. Baekhyun never flinches; instead he laughs, the brine in his eyes spilling onto his cheeks and the backs of Chanyeol's hands that are placed at either side of his head. It burns. That wetness burns his skin, that laughter burns his ears, this bruised and bloodied boy burns his heart. Why did I? Baekhyun-ah… Gently he laps at the wound, taking in the elder's essence, and Baekhyun lets out a muted whimper, his body tautening curiously at the touch.

As they kiss, the cut keeps seeping warmly into Chanyeol's mouth. He drinks it all, he'd drink him dry if he could, every last drop. At length the elder turns aside his face, the gesture signaling his readiness to be held, had, loved. Chanyeol grazes at it, breathing in Baekhyun's inimitable scent – the natural sweetness of the flesh he's gone so long without – and feels himself harden at it all at once. He rises to his knees, removes his shirt, peels off Baekhhyun's trousers and underpants and stutteringly sighs at the changeless softness of him that so provokes his want. He sinks his fingers into the elder's milky collar and claws at his torso from clavicles to hipbones, his excitement rising at the redly glowing pattern of his nails against the pallor of the skin of his once and future lover. Mine, this body – mine to love, mine to take, mine to break, mine to move. Move, Park Chanyeol. Move. He wets his puckered lips and promptly wraps them round the elder's , his hands about his thighs, securing them in place where he spreads them widely apart. Baekhyun gasps and gapes at the suddenness of the act, in staccato as Chanyeol begins to work his lower body as only he knows how. If it's movement he desires, resolves the younger, he shall move Baekhyun quite mad.

Blindly he reaches for his bedside-table and fumbles till he comes upon a tube of lotion – not a lubricant, but as near one as they're likely to procure under such strained circumstances – and generously anoints his fore and middle fingers with the salve. As they breach him, the elder bites back a cry, never minding his already injured lower lip that start to bleed anew at the attack. Chanyeol, whose own are wholly occupied, follows the crimson trail with greedy eyes, wishing he had mouths enough to feast on Baekhyun's entire being all at once. 

Gaspingly the elder pleads, "N-No more," his hips pushing forward in defiance of his speech, as do the younger's hand and mouth.

You're close now, aren't you, hyung? But I want you closer. Fall. Break. I'll break alongside you, match you piece for piece. You know I can.

As abruptly as he took him, Chanyeol lets go Baekhyun, and more abruptly still drives into him so that the latter at last can't help but cry aloud, his body curling and contorting in pain-tainted-pleasure as the younger finds and fixes on his prostate. Of all the elder's pretty postures none is more palatable to Chanyeol: his knitted brows and pleading eyes, his lips engorged and trembling as he pants, his cheeks aglow with heat – he looks so…edible. And so he feeds, indulging in the elder's body as never in the past. He neither weighs nor counts his morsels; he doesn’t care how badly it might hurt him afterwards; he'd rather die of fullness than slowly starve to death as they have done all this long and miserable while. Baekhyun allows him, invites him, spurs him on. How many times? How many times do they repeat the act before it's done? He doesn’t know. Like the song in the background, their love is looped – on it plays, on they melt, men and walls alike.

"Tomorrow morning what will you do?" Chanyeol asks of the elder where they lie spent half unconscious, their bodies slick with sweat, their blood still sweltering in their veins. "Will you sit on Sehun's lap, hang onto Min-hyung' shoulder, back-hug Jongin?"

Baekhyun purses his eyes, sighs and faintly nods, his face a mask of ruefulness that paints the same over the younger's. "I will. I have to. They'd ask too many questions if I didn’t. It can't be you alone, Chanyeol-ah. I have to love them all so that you and I can love each other."

Suddenly embittered, the younger gulps and grimaces. It's true and must be swallowed, however tart the tablet. "You make it sound like some great and noble sacrifice. Should I bow and give you thanks?" he retorts, deciding that sourness shared is sourness sweetened.

The elder flashes him a similarly seasoned smile – a smile that salts his heart, softens and preserves it like so much brine. "Give me thanks, give me anything, I'll gladly have it all. Just don't take away from me."

"What?"

"You."

Chanyeol huffs and shakes his head, knowing himself utterly entrapped and no hope of escape. "You're bad for me, you know that? It's better when you turn your back on me."

No sooner does he state this last than Baekhyun rolls onto his right to offer him his better side. His smile the stuff to turn the holy lay, the lay base, the base brutish, he bites his swollen lips and chirps, "Like this?"

With a muted chuckle Chanyeol pulls Baekhyun into a firm embrace, alternately nuzzling and nibbling at his neck as he confirms, "Yeah, like that."

The elder laughs exultantly, the song of the triumphant, then suddenly falls silent and silently sighs. "Chanyeol-ah, one day we'll have to marry."

"Mm."

"Have children, families."

"Mm," Chanyeol repeats in his soberest tone, his darkest. He can't deny it, can't promise that day will never come. It's true and must be swallowed, however tart the tablet. "Those women," he adds a little sweetener to force the dosage down, "they may wear our names, our rings, but they'll never wear our marks."

Wincingly Baekhyun pursues, "But they'll see them, and then what?"

"If they're smart, they'll close their eyes."

"And if they're stupid?"

"We'll close ours."

Over his small, shoulder, Baekhyun glances at Chanyeol and smiles – a smile to turn the brutish base, the base lay, the lay holy, the holy godlike. "You always have the best lines," he says, tears pooling at the corners of his small eyes and doubling them in size.

Right before they brim over, Chanyeol laps them up, scrunches his nose, shakes his head, and grins with all the puckishness that's earned him his place in their famous Beagle Line. "Nah, Sehunnie does."

.