Chanyeol woke up with his face half-buried in Baekhyun's hair, wrinkling his nose at the tickle; smiling to himself, he wrapped his arms tighter around his sleeping boyfriend’s warm body, pulling him in closer. He still wasn't quite used to it, opening his eyes every morning to find Baekhyun there, beautiful and serene in sleep; if Chanyeol awoke first, he sometimes just lay there in silence and gazed at him, feeling like the luckiest man on earth, until he woke up.

Baekhyun stirred and lifted his head at last, his eyes fluttering open at the sound of Chanyeol quietly humming ‘Tiny Dancer’ in his ear. “Morning,” he said, with a sleepy little smile that had Chanyeol’s heart melting instantly.

“Morning,” Chanyeol whispered. “How are you feeling today?” They always asked each other this same question upon waking. He began to Baekhyun’s hair, lovingly smoothing it down in all the places it was sticking up; he’d stopped dyeing it red a while ago because it was too much effort to maintain, but if Chanyeol was honest, he liked it even better in its natural black. Baekhyun leaned into his touch like a kitten, making purring sounds in jest, which made them both smile. He rolled away for a moment to stretch out his arms and legs, wriggling around with a little hum of contentment.

“Well, I can move around, so… I’d say I’m pretty damn good.” He'd managed to kick the covers off himself in the meantime, now gloriously for Chanyeol to devour with hungry eyes.

“I’m glad to hear it.” Chanyeol laughed a little, and it made him feel woozy, but only for a few seconds. He was letting himself laugh more often, and since he was safe in bed right now, it didn’t really matter anyway — he could fall as hard as he liked here. These were the good days, and he was going to enjoy them while they lasted; he and Baekhyun both knew that the love they built up in the happier times would only end up carrying them through the harder ones.

Baekhyun cuddled up closer to him, kissing his neck and whispering, “how about you, my love… are you doing okay?”

“I’m doing great.” Chanyeol pressed a soft kiss to the top of Baekhyun's head. “Sleepy, as always. But apart from that, great.” Baekhyun chuckled softly and gave him a sweet and proper good-morning kiss — morning breath notwithstanding. “You say that every day,” he whispered, and Chanyeol couldn’t argue with that.

They'd been together for six months now — the best six months of Chanyeol's life, he often said. “You mean so far,” Baekhyun always threw in at the end, in typical eternal-optimist fashion. Life had its ups and downs, but being in love with Baekhyun was easy. It was almost too easy, in fact, to the point where Chanyeol sometimes pinched himself to check that it wasn't a dream, that things really were as good as they seemed to be. They were both joined at the hip now, much to the amusement of Chanyeol's friends. But Chanyeol knew that they were genuinely happy for him, even when they gave him for it — which they did, all the time.

“What do you want to do today?” he asked, rolling on top of Baekhyun and kissing him again, feeling Baekhyun’s legs wrap themselves around him; Baekhyun had one hand on Chanyeol’s hip, rubbing slow circles into his skin, his only response a deep sigh into Chanyeol’s open mouth. They made time for this sort of thing most mornings: cuddling, kissing and playing around, which usually led to more. Dr. Kim did recommend regular exercise, after all, and as much as Chanyeol loved dancing with Baekhyun, the horizontal tango was still his favourite form of physical activity; it was important to maintain that level of intimacy, even though Baekhyun was often too exhausted to do much more than lie there, and Chanyeol himself usually fell asleep in the middle of it. Whenever this happened, they both just laughed it off and started again, and the fact that Baekhyun had a healthy sense of humour about these things only made Chanyeol want him even more. Sometimes their bed felt like their whole world, and it was easy to spend a lazy weekend morning cuddled beneath the covers, losing themselves in each other's love for a couple of hours, with a nap or two in between.

“I think you already know what I want to do today,” Baekhyun murmured between kisses. “If I had my way, we wouldn’t leave this bed until tomorrow.”

“We can’t horizontal-tango the whole day away,” Chanyeol said, although the idea was certainly tempting. “Anyway, don’t you want to go and watch Big Smokey come down? Today’s Demolition Day — or D-Day, if you prefer.”

“Exactly… today’s D-Day, the Day of the D. So you better give me what I D-serve—” and then Baekhyun could no longer speak from laughing, because Chanyeol began tickling him to shut him up. It wasn’t always the most effective weapon on someone whose body was constantly numb, but Chanyeol knew quite a few of his weak spots after several months of thorough exploration. “You’re naughty,” he whispered; one of his hands slid down over Baekhyun’s leg, hoisting it up a little higher around his waist. “I’ve never met anyone as naughty as you.”

“But you still love me, right?” Baekhyun asked, and Chanyeol leaned down to kiss him once more, whispering, “baby, I love you even more than sleep.”

Baekhyun laughed at that. “That’s a lot, isn’t it..?”

“Yes,” Chanyeol replied, smiling into the kiss. “It’s a lot.” He pinned Baekhyun down on the bed, peppering sweet little kisses over his chest, all the way down to his stomach — he was a little softer in the tummy now that he was dancing less and gradually losing muscle tone, but Chanyeol loved it, finding it cute and y just as he always had. He loved the gentle tug of his boyfriend's fingers through his hair, the smell and taste of him, his sighs of pleasure and longing when Chanyeol mouthed love-shaped bruises over his hips, kissing all the way down to his thighs. His body, gorgeously imperfect — untamed and unpredictable like Chanyeol’s own — was a beautiful dream that Chanyeol loved waking up to every morning, a dream just as thrilling as it had been the first time. Like Baekhyun's love, that dream never seemed to fade; it only got better and brighter as time went by.

But their days didn't always begin so perfectly. There were plenty of mornings when Baekhyun woke up in pain, his whole body wracked with spasms. Relapses came more often and hit him even harder, making him so weak that he could sometimes barely walk as far as the bathroom on his own; on one particularly bad day, he’d fallen over and pissed himself before he got there, leaving Chanyeol to find him crying with shame and frustration on the floor in the middle of the hallway. At such times, Chanyeol felt powerless to help him, feeling out of his depth just as Baekhyun had warned him he would; all he could really do was just be there, and once he resigned himself to this fact, the hard days seemed easier to cope with. Sometimes