Chanyeol never left his side since then. He sits next to him in class, eats with him during lunch breaks, and even goes with him to the bathroom. Chanyeol is practically a leech who the inner peace out of his system that he sometimes just wants to step on his neck and cry at the corner.  His clinginess is in a whole new level of suffocating that there were times where Baekhyun regretted befriending him.

That might have been too harsh, but it’s because he is serious when he says that Chanyeol is always there; always that he can’t even hang around in the library anymore because Chanyeol can’t keep his mouth shut to save his life, nor can he even study while eating like he used to because Chanyeol is there to distract him, and he is not that bad to push the tall man away because that would make the latter sad, and a sad Chanyeol could not even compare to any annoying thing you could ever think of—a thing he had learned in a painful way.

All Baekhyun has are acquaintances; Chanyeol is his first actual friend so it’s all new to him. And by new, he meant that having someone practically glued by his side is obviously not something he could quickly get used to.

“One simple decision might weigh heavier than you expect.” is what his mom always tells him, and maybe he should have thought of this better because here he is, months after, might or might not be regretting his life choices.

Baekhyun bangs his head on the table for the nth time and muttered to himself. “I want my life back.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Chanyeol places the chicken leg that he’s holding back on Baekhyun’s plate. “Thought you wouldn’t notice since you’re busy trying to get yourself a concussion.”

He immediately lifts his head up to check on his plate. “What—why’s that with you—wait, don’t I have a piece of chicken nugget left?”

Chanyeol’s hand freezes midway and it holds something that suspiciously looks like a chicken nugget. “Oh. Sorry.” The er even had the audacity to take a bite before placing it back on his plate. “Thought you wouldn’t notice that too.”

Baekhyun presses his lips on a thin line as he looks at the boy who’s munching happily like a kid. “No, I don’t think you’re sorry.”

“You’re right—“ Chanyeol burps out loud and smugly smiles at him. “I’m not.”

Slumping over the clean side of the table, Baekhyun dejectedly bites on his chicken and sighs as he chews. “Oh my lord. I did not wish to have a pet pig.”

“Hey!” Chanyeol crosses his arms and pouts at him. “I go to the gym every weekend…”

Baekhyun’s tilts his head slightly and his lips form into a smirk when Chanyeol averted his gaze. “Oh, please do continue.”

Chanyeol’s whole face is red. “…because my uncle works in there and my mom wants me to bring him lunch.”

“Aw.” Baekhyun teasingly coos at the blushing boy in front of him. “It’s alright. That’s not something to be shy about.”

Still pouting, Chanyeol looks down on his belly that is slightly visible on his shirt when he sits and pats it. “But this is.”

He chuckles at Chanyeol’s devastated face. “Nah. Your baby bump looks fine. Second trimester?”

“You know what, you.” The right side of Chanyeol’s upper lip twitches and Baekhyun juts his lower lip to annoy him more.

“Aw. Oinky is mad at me.”

“Sweet. But can’t you give me a more endearing pet name?”

Baekhyun blinks at him twice. “It wasn’t a pet name, and it wasn’t supposed to be endearing.”

“Don’t take it back, I actually like it.” Chanyeol sticks his tongue out in a playful manner. “But wait. I just realized we don’t have nicknames for each other yet. What should I call you then?”

Oh god here we go, Baekhyun sighs and finally decides to finish his food before Chanyeol stops talking and steal his entire plate.

“Since you know, we’ve been friends for a long time now and we’re still stuck with Baek and Yeol and Hyun and Chan—”

Baekhyun stops chewing for a second just to snort because apparently, four months is already a long time for Chanyeol when they aren’t even past the second grading period yet, but it’s not that he disagrees, because it actually feels like he has known the latter for so long, which is still strange for him since he’s not the type of person who easily opens up to someone. And it amazes him that though in just months’ time, Chanyeol already seems to know him like the back of his hand.

“—and our friendship needs some leveling up and I see that almost every people share a lame pet name with their best friend and…“

Taking the last spoonful of rice, he peeks at his wristwatch and sees that lunch time ends in 10 minutes so he decides to finish Chanyeol’s food as well because seeing the way he’s rambling, he doesn’t think Chanyeol still has plans on eating it. Besides, he’s eaten half of Baekhyun’s food anyway, and he’s been with Chanyeol long enough to know that the boy has poor metabolism. He for sure wouldn’t be hungry anytime soon.

“I’ve actually thought of just ‘Hyunnie’. You know, like, Yeollie and Hyunnie? Sounds cute, right? But then you gave me ‘Oinky’ and I’ve never felt so betrayed in my entire life so your ty deserves a stinky nickname too—hey are you still listening to me?”

Baekhyun doesn’t even know what Chanyeol just said but he’s dipping his half-eaten chicken nugget on barbeque sauce and that’s all that matters so he agrees. “Hm.”

“Whatever. I think I’m also gonna go with animals ‘cause you and you look like a salivating Labrador and you’re going to agree with me since you’re not really listening, am I right?”

“Hm.” He takes Chanyeol’s empty glass and whispers a drawn-out iiice! when he sees that there’s still an ice cube left. He shoots the straw into the hole in its center and carefully lifts it up, but the plastic straw was so bendable and the ice cube just fell back down to the glass.

Chanyeol stares at Baekhyun as the latter takes the ice cube from his glass with his bare fingers and puts it inside his mouth. Baekhyun suddenly seems so bouncy as he happily chews the ice inside his mouth—

Bouncy! That’s it! Chanyeol grins to himself. “Forget I said anything about animals. I now know what to call you!”

Baekhyun is too happy to care. “Hm.”

“Boinky.”

Baekhyun finally looks at him and Chanyeol thinks that the stupid ice finally melted. Really, he still finds Baekhyun’s… obsession?—with ice weird. There isn’t a day you won’t be seeing Baekhyun eating ice cubes like it’s his favorite snack (and Baekhyun told him that it really is). He asked him once and Baekhyun, being the idiot that he is, gave him a stupid answer because he thinks he’s funny:

“They’re mouthwatering.”

Chanyeol still cringes at joke (“Really, Baekhyun, was that supposed to be a joke?” “Haha. But it made you smile.”) until now. And here he thought Baekhyun is the civil one in this relation—, he wasn’t going to say relationship, was he?

He felt his heart skip a beat and he shrugs it off by going back to their topic. “I-I’m calling you ‘Boinky’ from now on.”

He mentally cursed himself for stuttering but thankfully, Baekhyun didn’t seem to notice by the way he’s staring at him as if he said that fishes can have legs when they’re on land. “Where the did you even get that?”

“Well,” Chanyeol pauses for a second to think for a more logical explanation than ‘because you actually bounce on your seat when you’re happy boing boing’. “B plus Oinky; B, the first letter of your name, and oinky, the pet name you gave me. In short, Baekhyun and Chanyeol, because you can never live without me, yes, thank you very much.”

Baekhyun rolls his eyes at the sudden self-flattery but he nods because surprisingly, he liked the stupid nickname. “Hm, I think I like it. A bit. Like, very little.” He liked it a lot because the explanation behind it made it appealing for him, but Chanyeol doesn’t need to know that. “Kidding. I don’t like it.”

“You can’t just change your mind like that, you jerk.” Chanyeol throws him a used tissue which Baekhyun dodged with a smirk.

“Oh, watch me.”

Chanyeol pouts at him with his gross puppy eyes and it’s automatically a lost case for Baekhyun. “Alright motherer, you win.” Baekhyun says and just then, his wristwatch beeps, indicating that it’s time for their next class. He stands up and yawns. “Let’s go.”

Chanyeol is still pouting at him. “Don’t wanna. You didn’t call me Oinky.”

Baekhyun lazily walks towards him and hauls him by the arm. “We’re going to be late, you idiot.”

“Call me Oinky first!” Chanyeol looks at him with eager eyes.

Baekhyun sighs in defeat. “Oinky. There. Now come on.”

“Okay, Boinky!”