pairing: BaekLay
length: 4433 words

Byun Baekhyun.

Yixing knew that name very well. Who didn’t?

It was the name of the most infamous person on campus. Even though the university had a population of around ten thousand students, which was a fair number of people, almost everyone had heard that name uttered at least once during conversation. Byun Baekhyun was a common gossip topic during kick-backs over the weekend or during mealtime in the dining halls. Although it was quite reminiscent of high school when people focused more on others’ lives than their own and such behavior was looked down upon in university, Byun Baekhyun was the exception. His life became everyone’s business and while most of them hadn’t ever met him, they all followed his life closely, as if he were a celebrity.

He was basically a quasi-celebrity at this point with the number of people obsessing over his life. More specifically, his love life.

For Byun Baekhyun was a serial monogamist and a highly proactive one at that.

Yixing didn’t know when the school body’s obsession with Baekhyun started. For all he knew, Byun Baekhyun had always been the talk of the town. If he hadn’t seen him with his own two eyes, Yixing would have thought that Baekhyun was actually an urban legend. It would have been easier if that were the case.

Then he wouldn’t have been roped into making an app called Bacon Watch.

It all started with his best friend, Song Qian. She, like almost everyone else on campus, gossiped twenty-four-seven about Byun Baekhyun’s dating life. As a statistics major, she obsessed over the various trends and connections between the heaps of people he dated every month. To her, Baekhyun was a goldmine of data and it helped that he was so public with his dating life. Anyone could glean information about his next catch by looking through his social media accounts, which had thousands of followers. Not to mention, people always managed to find time to conveniently be on-site during Baekhyun’s dates and gossip spread like wildfire through group chats about his new catch.

Last fall, Song Qian had come up with the “most brilliant” idea—her words, not Yixing’s—to make an app that would serve as the main source of all information related to Byun Baekhyun’s dating life. People could post live updates on his dates, and speculate who the person was and how long they’d last with Baekhyun. There were forums dedicated to deconstructing Baekhyun’s dating life and preferences. Users could also rate how sizzling hot the date was with bacon strips, ten being the highest. Song Qian was very adamant about how the rating system should be run when she first approached Yixing with the idea of Bacon Watch.

“We need to give enough options to give room for subjectivity,” she declared as she pushed a slip of paper detailing the rating system towards Yixing. “Five is average, not seven. Anyone who uses seven as an average doesn’t know how math works. Ten is for people who are devastatingly good-looking and deserve to make a career out of modeling everything.” She sighed dreamily as she thought of various celebrities who she’d personally rate with ten sizzling hot bacon strips.

Yixing had been apprehensive at first, since he was one of the few people who had no interest in Byun Baekhyun’s dating life. The app idea also seemed incredibly invasive and quite catty, since people were speculating on these innocent dates’ lives. They didn’t deserve to go through such scrutiny, despite Baekhyun being the main attraction.

But Song Qian, that wheedling master, had managed to entice Yixing with the promise of concealing his involvement in the app’s construction while also saying he could use the same code for his final project, albeit with a few tweaks so that this professor didn’t think he was stalking another student. And if Bacon Watch ended up being successful, that would be another project to buff up his resume when it came time to look for employment.

Thinking there was no way that Bacon Watch would catch on, Yixing had grudgingly agreed to his best friend’s crazy scheme, but on one condition: all of Byun Baekhyun’s dates had to be given anonymous code names, especially because Song Qian wanted the app to have charts that would aggregate each individual’s length of time dating Baekhyun and their bacon strip rating score.

Seeing the merit in his concerns, she had agreed and promised that any posts with personal information would be removed. Users who repeatedly broke this rule would be flagged and banned from the app.

Yixing had spent around three months’ worth of free time building the app from scratch. And he hated to admit it, but it had been an invaluable learning experience as he poured all of his coding knowledge into building a functional, user-friendly app for the tech-savvy young adult demographic. Working alone on both the front-end and back-end aspects of the app had been difficult, especially since he wasn’t as well-versed in front-end design, but Yixing had found himself enjoying the more creative, aesthetic side of app creation.

The alpha version had been full of bugs, but the two best friends had slowly worked through the kinks and occasionally asked their roommates for their opinions. When Yixing had rolled out the beta version, using Song Qian’s favorite actor as a placeholder for Byun Baekhyun, she and her roommates had obsessively used it for two weeks as they attempted to break it in every possible way in order to catch any bugs that had slipped through the cracks.

It had taken another month after that before Yixing had finally published the app on their university’s computer science department’s personal app store using Song Qian’s account. The computer science department’s app store had dozens of student-created apps for the student body’s usage alone, to create a safe environment for budding app developers to release their creations into the wild without worrying about going through Google or Apple’s bureaucratic processes. There it sat, inconspicuous with its simple icon of a strip of bacon encased in fire.

Until, somehow, the student body caught wind of it. Yixing had a sneaking suspicion that one of Song Qian’s roommates, Choi Sooyoung, was responsible for spreading the news of the app’s existence. She was a marketing major, so it would’ve been right up her alley.

Within weeks, the app’s popularity had exploded and it had over one thousand downloads when Song Qian checked after one month of Bacon Watch being on the app store. Even now, when the app had close to nine thousand downloads, she religiously tracked its usage and pored over the statistics reports that Yixing had programmed to be sent to her email every two weeks.

Bacon Watch had become a staple in virtually every student’s life and Yixing didn’t know whether to be happy that he created such a successful app or upset at himself for perpetuating the culture of cyber-stalking. Even so, he occasionally worked on patches to tighten up the app's security and add in fun, harmless features that Song Qian came up with. Bacon Watch had become his baby of sorts and having invested so much time and effort into it, Yixing couldn’t bring himself to scrap the project despite knowing that it really shouldn’t exist.

--

It was a Saturday afternoon and Yixing was at a small café near campus, working on his midterm project for his 3D Graphics and Rendering class. He was attempting to render an entire landscape of a snowy mountain landscape, which proved to be much harder than he had initially anticipated. It was certainly more difficult for him to do than it was to write up thousands of lines of code. Almost four hours had passed and Yixing had barely managed to finish rendering one mountain out of ten. With a load groan, the computer science major laid his head on the table and closed his eyes to give them a rest after staring non-stop at his computer screen.

When he lifted his head back up several seconds later, Yixing suddenly found himself face-to-face with Byun Baekhyun and the computer science student almost fell out of his chair from shock.

“Oops, careful!” Baekhyun brazenly reached forward to tug Yixing back into place.

The flustered computer science major opened his mouth to respond, but words failed to leave his throat and he ended up resembling a fish out of water. Not an attractive look, but that was the last thing on Yixing’s mind as he tried to process the fact that Byun Baekhyun, the most notorious serial monogamist of their generation, was talking to him.

“Cat got your tongue?” A trill of laughter left Baekhyun’s lips as he watched Yixing’s face burn bright red with embarrassment. “Or is there something on my face and you’re too polite to let me know?”

“N-no,” the computer science student quickly stuttered as he nervously wrung his hands in his lap under the table. “I—I just didn’t expect you here, t-talking to me. That’s—that’s all.”

Baekhyun beamed his million-dollar smile while answering, “I noticed you having a lot of trouble with your rendering project, so I thought I’d help you out.”

Tilting his head in confusion, Yixing asked, a note of wariness coloring his tone, “You’ve been watching me work?”

“You’re cute,” Baekhyun cheekily admitted, holding his hands up like he was a criminal caught in the act. “It’s hard to look away.”

Having never dealt with any form of flirting before in his life, the computer science student wasn’t sure how to respond. And since it was Byun Baekhyun, of all people, who was flirting with him, everything was a hundred times more confusing. Yixing almost wished he hadn’t left his apartment to work in the café, because this was too bizarre for him to deal with in his mentally worn out state.

And if there was one thing he learned from Bacon Watch and Song Qian obsessively analyzing the serial monogamist’s dating patterns, it was that Byun Baekhyun didn’t date just anyone.

For some reason, he only dated the presidents or chief officers of student organizations and the captains of athletic teams. Only the top dogs could dream of a chance with Byun Baekhyun lavishing his undivided attention on them, for however long he decided it was worth. Some of them—most of them, actually—only lasted a month with the serial monogamist. The luckier ones, all topping the longevity chart on Bacon Watch, managed to stay as Baekhyun’s significant other for about half a year. Whenever a new date managed to last at least three months, users would bet on how far they could go or when the inevitable break up would occur. Song Qian had asked Yixing to implement a virtual currency system in the form of bacon bits for people to bet with when she had caught wind of the betting forums popping up.

So, aside from being tired and frustrated with his rendering project, Yixing was extremely confused as to why Byun Baekhyun was flirting with him.

The computer science major wasn’t a loser by any means. He had a group of friends—mainly composed of Song Qian, her roommates, and his own roommates—and a handful of classmates he was close to. He was part of the Chinese Student Association and the Code for Change club, albeit not as actively as he could have been. Certainly not active enough to be considered for a leadership position, which Yixing was fine with. It was exhausting enough to keep up with all of his classes and maintain Bacon Watch while also making time for Song Qian, whose favorite pastime was to show up unannounced at his apartment and drag him to who-knows-where.

But Yixing also didn’t fit the profile of a standard Byun Baekhyun date. And Byun Baekhyun never broke his pattern, as Song Qian enjoyed reiterating every two weeks. She mused that he was attracted to power and leadership, but clearly not enough to stay committed to a person for more than six months. So another game she liked to play was “Guess the Deal-Breaker” in which people could speculate why Baekhyun split with his newest significant other. It was one of the most popular features on Bacon Watch, generating up to one thousand active users at a time whenever news of Baekhyun briefly becoming single again arose.

He hadn’t even realized he’d been zoning out until Byun Baekhyun waved a hand in front of the computer science student’s face, causing Yixing to jolt and flush brightly.

“Penny for your thoughts? Or perhaps a coffee, since it seems like you’re about to sleep where you’re sitting,” the serial monogamist offered while smiling in amusement.

“Sorry, I’m just really tired right now. It’s been a long afternoon and I’m nowhere close to finishing this project,” Yixing answered with a groan as he rubbed his temples.

“Why don’t I get you that coffee then? It’ll be my treat.”

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” the computer science student hastily refused, wildly waving his hands. “We just barely met and—”

Baekhyun swiftly cut in, “I insist!” while standing up from his seat. “I’ll be back in five minutes tops.” And he left Yixing gaping, his mind too sluggish to keep up with the insanity that was currently taking place. Minutes later, as promised, the serial monogamist returned with two cups of coffee and pushed one towards the other male. “It’s a vanilla mocha. I hope that’s okay. I don’t really know what you like, so I got you one of my favorite drinks.”

“Uh, it’s fine, but you really didn’t need to do that,” Yixing said as he tentatively accepted the drink before taking a sip. It was light and sweet, especially with the whipped cream that topped the cup. It was his first time having a vanilla mocha and he had to admit that he quite liked the drink. It would take some time for the espresso to kick in, but Yixing could definitely feel his brain gradually waking up.

And then it was shocked completely awake when Byun Baekhyun suddenly leaned forward, using his thumb to brush away some leftover whipped cream on Yixing’s bottom lip. “Thought I’d help you out, since you still seem to be out of it,” the serial monogamist innocently claimed as he wiped his thumb with a napkin.

An unattractive choking sound escaped Yixing’s throat while he sat frozen in place.

Baekhyun chuckled at the response. “No need to thank me. And you’d best finish that up before it gets too cold. Otherwise it won’t taste as good.” He then shifted his chair next to Yixing, giving him a better view of the computer science student’s laptop screen. “While you finish your drink, I’ll show you an easier way of rendering your landscape. I’ve taken this class before and the professor is a bit old-fashioned, so he teaches a very inefficient method, even though better techniques exist.”

“Wait, really?” That piqued Yixing’s curiosity, despite his chagrin at his own awkward reactions to Baekhyun’s flirting. “Can you actually show me how?”

Maybe he was thinking too deeply into the serial monogamist’s actions. Yixing hadn’t checked Bacon Watch in a while, having been so focused on studying for his midterm exams and working on his midterm projects, so he didn’t know any current updates on Byun Baekhyun’s love life. For all he knew, the other male could be happily seeing someone at the moment and this encounter was purely because he was a nice guy who wanted to help out. It wasn’t like Yixing knew him well enough to actually judge his motives.

Baekhyun smiled and nodded as he scooted even closer to Yixing. “It’ll be a piece of cake. Trust me.”

--

“Zhang Yixing!” a familiar female voice screeched at an ear-splitting decibel.

The computer science student sighed as he rotated his chair to face the bedroom doorway, just in time to see Song Qian barrel in and point a perfectly manicured finger at him accusingly. “What?” he asked, not bothering to mask his fatigue; too much had happened for him to care that his best friend was turning up at his place, uninvited once again. “I thought we were hanging out next weekend. Don’t you have a midterm on Wednesday that you need to study for?”

“Who cares about that?” she responded flippantly as she pushed Yixing’s rolling chair towards his bed and shamelessly dumped the bewildered male onto the mattress, ignoring his squeak of pain. “This is what’s really important right now!” Song Qian exclaimed, shoving her phone in the computer science student’s face.

His eyes were too blurry from fatigue to see what was on the bright screen. “Huh?”

“You were on a date with Byun Baekhyun!” the statistics major screeched again as she vigorously shook her phone in front of Yixing. “And you didn’t tell me!"

That woke him up; his eyes widened and he instantly grabbed Song Qian’s phone, scrolling through Bacon Watch while cursing loudly. Yixing had forgotten that Baekhyun had a dedicated group of stalker fans who went on all of his dates with him—not that their meeting at the café had been a date, but he could see why an outsider would mistakenly think so, given Baekhyun’s reputation. Now, there were dozens of posts circulating pictures of the two males together and hundreds of comments discussing the serial monogamist’s newest catch: Vanilla Mocha. Apparently, one of the users had been standing behind Baekhyun in line when he ordered their drinks, so that was Yixing’s code name on Bacon Watch. People were also commenting on his looks while rating him with bacon strips; the computer science student was too terrified to see how sizzling hot others thought he was, so he quickly scrolled past that section of his newly created profile.

“Explain yourself, Zhang Yixing. Every—last—detail.”

He gulped audibly, seeing the fire in Song Qian’s eyes, and quickly held up his arms in protest. “I swear it wasn’t a date! This is all just a misunderstanding!”

“Then what is this?!" She flicked her right pointer finger upwards against her phone screen and began reading out several post titles. “Byun Baekhyun puts his hands over Vanilla Mocha’s as they work on the same laptop. Byun Baekhyun wipes whipped cream off of Vanilla Mocha’s lips. Byun Baekhyun escorts Vanilla Mocha out of Café Noir.” Song Qian then aggressively jabbed her finger at the photo collections of the two males together. “Don’t you dare lie to me, Zhang Yixing. This is clearly a date!”

“Seriously, Qian, it isn’t! He just showed up out of nowhere while I was working on my rendering project and then offered to help me!”

“And that meant he needed to clean your lips for you?"

Yixing’s cheeks turned pink as he averted his gaze and mumbled, “That was an accident. I didn’t know I had cream on my mouth and he did it before I could stop him.”

Song Qian didn’t look convinced.

“I swear on my grades that I wasn’t on a date with Byun Baekhyun,” Yixing repeated in a pleading tone. “At least I didn’t think it was a date. It just… It just happened and I’m too tired to think about this anymore. That rendering project was killer and I only managed to finish most of it because of Baekhyun’s help. He’s surprisingly good at using 3D modeling programs,” the computer science student added with a wry smile.

“But it doesn’t make any sense! You don’t fit the mold! You’re an outlier! Yet he still treated you like any other date he’s had!” Song Qian raved, not unlike a madwoman.

“I know it doesn’t make sense. Why else do you think I’m so surprised about being on Bacon Watch?" And he was beginning to regret creating the app in the first place. Never in a million years had he imagined that he would be gossiped about, especially in relation to Byun Baekhyun.

The statistics student let out another screech while she clutched her scalp, eyes wide with frustration. A second later, one of Yixing’s roommates, Kang Minhyuk, stuck his head in the room to see what the commotion was about. “Oh, it’s you,” he deadpanned when his gaze alighted on Song Qian. His eyes then traveled to a pale-faced Yixing and Minhyuk continued, “By the way, we’re setting up a betting pool for you on Bacon Watch right now, Yixing. Qian, you want in?”

“You’re what?!"

“It was Byunghee’s idea,” Minhyuk explained with a shrug. “Junho and I agreed to it, because why not? We have a better chance of winning the pool, since we actually know you.”

“That—that doesn’t mean—” Yixing spluttered, baffled that his roommates would exploit this situation for virtual currency that he had created.

“Add me in later,” Song Qian glibly answered while shooing Minhyuk out of Yixing’s room. “I have a mystery solve right now.”

“Okay. When you’re done, you can join us for movie night. We’re watching Ready Player One,” Minhyuk called over his shoulder as Song Qian shut the door behind him.

“Sounds good!” she shouted through the closed door before turning back to her best friend. “As for you, Zhang Yixing, I demand an in-depth recap of your entire afternoon with Byun Baekhyun. Every—last—detail.”

The computer science student whimpered under Song Qian’s intense stare before nodding his head and recounting the day’s events.

--

Song Qian finally left him alone after further exhausting him with countless questions regarding Byun Baekhyun. She had taken detailed notes and drawn several diagrams while Yixing talked, in an effort to piece together why the serial monogamist had deviated from the norm. He had never broken his rules before, so she refused to drop the subject until she figured out why he did now.

“Did he give you his phone number?”

Yixing nodded, his lips pursed in a straight line, knowing where his best friend was going with this. “No, I’m not going to text him. I refuse to.”

“Fine, I’ll text him for you,” Song Qian staunchly declared as she reached over to snatch Yixing’s phone from where it sat beside his pillow.

“No! Give it back, Qian!” the computer science major yelped as he lunged for his phone. He ended up falling off of his bed and face-planting onto the carpeted floor, letting out a muffled shriek as he did.

“Oh no, Yixing, are you okay?” She pulled him up and helped him to the bed, a look of guilt painting her features.

“Ow, that really hurt,” he whined as he lightly touched his nose. It stung when he applied even the slightest amount of pressure on it, but at least it wasn’t broken. “Give me my phone back, Qian. You owe me just now.”

Seeing that the opportunity was about to be snatched away, she quickly changed tactics and threw on a pout as she pressed her palms together in a prayer stance. “Please text him, Yixing! Just once! I promise I won’t meddle or anything! I just need more data and that requires you going on another date with him! Or an actual first date with him. The technicalities aren’t important right now,” Song Qian rambled, preventing Yixing from getting a word in edgewise, “but I promise this is all for stats! Do it for the sake of stats!”

The computer science major sent her a judgmental glare. “You know that’s a rubbish reason for me to agree to this, right?”

“Pretty please, Yixing? I’ll leave you alone until next weekend if you do this. I swear on our friendship.”

“I kind of wish we weren’t friends right now,” he muttered under his breath.

“I heard that!”

After several more rounds of bickering, Yixing had finally agreed on the condition that Song Qian didn’t bother him about anything regarding Bacon Watch until their hang-out next weekend when she would treat him to dinner and dessert. She had eagerly watched as he had composed and sent a short text message to the serial monogamist. With that done, Song Qian decided that all they could do was wait for a response, so she grudgingly joined Minhyuk and Yixing’s two other roommates in the living room where they were watching a movie.

Once she was gone, Yixing felt like he could finally breathe and he collapsed face-forward on his bed. This was the most draining day of his short life, thus far, and he couldn’t wait for the next day to come. But then he remembered that he still had to finish his rendering project and a low growl of irritation rumbled in his throat. It happened at the same time his phone vibrated with a new text message and Yixing was almost going to ignore it when he noticed who it was from. Sitting straight up, he grabbed his phone and unlocked it to read the full message.

Byun Baekhyun
Hey! I wasn’t expecting a text from you so soon. I thought I would have to break the ice first, but you surprised me! No need to thank me for helping you with your project. It was my pleasure. And does this mean you’d like to see me again? To be honest, I’d really like to see you again.

And there he went, being his stupidly charming self. Yixing couldn’t handle it right now. So he quickly washed up and changed into his pajamas, letting his head cool off until he was in a slightly more coherent state. After briefly stepping into the living room to inform the others that he was going to sleep, Yixing returned to his bed and finally responded to Baekhyun’s text message.

Zhang Yixing
I’ll be at the café tomorrow to finish my project. I guess it would be nice to have your help again, but don’t force yourself to come. You already helped me a lot today and I honestly should do the rest of it myself. Anyway, I’m going to crash for the night. I’m really tired and my best friend wouldn’t leave me alone for the entire evening because of you. So good night.

He promptly set his phone on the bureau next to his bed before switching off the lamp and snuggling underneath his blankets. Within seconds, he had drifted off to dreamland, so he missed the soft buzz of his phone several minutes later.

Byun Baekhyun
Don’t worry. I’ll take responsibility for that. Hope you have sweet dreams of me! I’ll see you tomorrow.

♈♈♈