15,700 words

FIVE

Chanyeol is pretty observant. Baekhyun can tell. He sounds surprised to hear from Baekhyun so soon, implying that he must be well aware of the emotions behind Baekhyun’s abrupt departure last night. Saying that, Baekhyun isn’t the most discreet person to walk the earth. He probably looked like he was about to be sick when he told Chanyeol he had to get back to work and ran from the man’s house. It doesn’t excuse the repeats, though. This is the third time Chanyeol has pulled a stunt like this. Not only is he observant but he’s persistent too, and it’s definitely passed any kind of friend-only level. If Chanyeol knows how Baekhyun feels with his advances, why keep… advancing?

He ponders it all while he waits for Chanyeol to pick him up. He doesn’t completely hate it. It’s nice to feel wanted by someone for a change. Misleading Chanyeol or using him, though, is something he desperately wants to avoid.

He gets a strange sense of déjà vu when he happens a glance through his bedroom window and sees a car parked outside his house. He remembers the many times Sehun would come to pick him up for their dates, and immediately checks his phone to see if Chanyeol has texted to let him know he’s outside.

The doorbell rings instead.

Believe it or not, things aren’t awkward in the car. They don’t talk constantly but do so enough to have a pleasant conversation with a couple of laughs. Baekhyun is focused on the road ahead of them, albeit not so much that he doesn’t repeatedly catch Chanyeol stealing glances. Today he’s wearing a humongous t-shirt, a pair of branded tracksuit bottoms and a pair of those trainers that Baekhyun always turns his nose up at but thinks look rather nice on him. He’s wearing a cap too, and his huge watch, and there’s a pair of sunglasses hooked on his collar. Tattoos are on show.

Baekhyun opens the car window and blows out a shaky breath.

It’s hot today, so Baekhyun decides to leave his denim jacket in the car, shrugging it off and leaving it on the passenger seat. They’ve come to the retail park on the other side of Edgebank, out the way of the city centre where there’s a better selection of large stores.

“What was it you needed again?” Chanyeol asks as he locks up and saunters around the car to stand beside him.

“Face paint. Cheap sponges and brushes too, I guess,” Baekhyun says as he slips his wallet into his back pocket, keeping his phone in his hand.

They head to a craft store and start perusing the aisles. Baekhyun doesn’t expect Chanyeol to follow him all around the shop but he seems pretty insistent on sticking by Baekhyun’s side, give or take a few occasions. Chanyeol jokes with him frequently, hissing “Think fast” and pretending to throw things at him, and taking small pieces of furniture from the doll’s house aisle and telling him that he’s just the right size for it. Baekhyun gets his own back, finding pictures of old ladies on the front of sewing kits and likening them to Chanyeol, even hoisting up a picture frame and using it to tell Chanyeol what a sad picture he makes. They get a dirty look from a shop assistant so Baekhyun decides to actually locate what he’s looking for and get buying.

“I never knew face paint was so expensive.” Baekhyun grimaces at the price tags. Sure, he’s looking at the special effects stuff, but it’s either get that or go for the Halloween dress-up kits that’ll be impossible to work with and plainly not enough.

“Maybe the council will pay you back? If they’re for the festival and stuff,” Chanyeol interjects, folding his arms.

Baekhyun hums, distracted by the lines of a guitar that runs from Chanyeol’s wrist to his elbow. He has several tattoos randomly assigned across his skin, including a set of numbers across his wrist, cursive writing along the inner side of his arm and then a picture of a monkey sitting on the tanned side. Baekhyun gulps and has to tear his eyes away.

“They might do,” he agrees. “But three pounds a colour is definitely going to add up. I should probably get an idea book as well. Damn, I should have picked up a basket by the entrance.” He looks around, sizing up the quickest route back to the main door, when Chanyeol chirps “I’ll go get one!” and disappears before Baekhyun can say otherwise.

He starts picking colours while he waits for Chanyeol to come back, going for almost every colour of the rainbow with a few exceptions. They’re water-based paints so he won’t be able to mix them, but he thinks he can skip on the gold and the silver, and maybe he can just get one blue instead of two, seeing as he’ll need more than one of every colour. He drops them all into the basket with a clatter when Chanyeol returns, throwing in one of the inspiration books on top before grabbing a handful of different sized paint brushes and sponges meant for kids.

“That should be everything,” he sighs, dusting off his hands. His wallet feels lighter already, even though he’ll be paying on card. “Did you need to get anything?”

“Uhh…” Chanyeol looks at him blankly. “I think we’ve got everything for the scarecrow. I think?”

Baekhyun thinks in fifth gear, trying to recall if there is anything they’re short on or were planning to get. In an ideal world, Chanyeol would have written a list, but they’ve both been so busy that he can’t blame him for not thinking of it.

“I’m sure we’ll be fine.” Baekhyun waves it off, wondering whether he should free Chanyeol of the basket to carry it himself or just let him keep it. “Is there anywhere else you wanted to go? This is me done.”

Chanyeol hums as they leave the aisle and start heading to the front of the store where the tills are. There’s only one open, so they queue up behind a couple of other people to wait their turn.

“Not really,” Chanyeol says. “But we could always get tea?”

Baekhyun’s heart skips a beat, palpitating in his chest. Still, he clings onto his composure and gives Chanyeol a confident nod. “Okay. And cake too.”

Sitting across from Chanyeol at tables for two feels like it’s starting to become a regular thing. Chanyeol looking so painfully boyfriend isn’t helping much either. He does occasionally look at his phone instead of Baekhyun, but only when it lights up with a notification that must be important. Baekhyun feels a little jealous, then inwardly slaps himself.

They don’t talk a whole lot, just nattering about whatever comes to mind. In reality, they’ve spent almost all their waking hours together this week preparing for the festival, so the pool of conversation topics has dried up somewhat. Baekhyun also suspects that the barista thinks they’re a couple. She keeps looking over, trying to be discreet, probably waiting for them to hold hands or kiss or start ing on the table – whatever it is teenage girls think about nowadays. And maybe a small part of Baekhyun does want Chanyeol to reach out and hold his hand. He’s done it twice already – even if the first time was an accident, it still counts. But Baekhyun knows he doesn’t want it for the right reasons. He just wants to show people that someone wants him. That he’s desirable. He doesn’t want it because he’s proud of being with Chanyeol and would hold his hand even if no one was watching. He could, though. In the future. He doesn’t think he’d mind.

The car windows are rolled down on the way home and Chanyeol blasts the radio. They’re playing summer anthems from over the years, total classics that they both know all the words to, and it feels like one of those scenes from an American movie where the two main characters are going on a road trip to somewhere sunny. Chanyeol looks good when he drives, even though all he’s doing is sitting there.

A few hours after teatime is when Chanyeol’s scarecrow is completed. He’s not a looker per se, but he looks relatively… human-esque. Chanyeol whips out a six pack of beer to celebrate, and two bottles in, he starts begging Baekhyun to paint his face.

“As practise! When was the last time you painted on a face?” he cries, the alcohol having loosened a few screws.

That’s true. Baekhyun has never actually painted someone’s face before. Not even a toddler’s. On one hand, it would be good practise. On the other, he has to get up close and personal with Chanyeol’s face and stare at it for ten minutes plus. He considers turning him down on the grounds that the paint technically isn’t his (if the council reimburse it for him, of course) but Chanyeol has whipped out the big guns (puppy eyes) and Baekhyun finds his vocal chords locking up.

“It doesn’t have to be anything extravagant,” Chanyeol adds. “It would be cool to see you paint, though. The master at work.”

Baekhyun drops his eyes as he laughs, looking at the bag of paints lying on Chanyeol’s dining table and his teeth. “Fine,” he gives in. “But it has to be something simple, okay?”

“I want a white tiger!”

Baekhyun facepalms. Still, every cloud has a silver lining. The only colours he’ll need are black and white, and maybe a little pink for the nose, so he promptly sets up a painting station with a glass of water Chanyeol provides and has him sit down on one of the dining chairs.

“I’m just going to make this up as I go along so don’t expect anything amazing, okay?” he forewarns, Chanyeol grinning like a three-year old.

“The famous Baekhyun Byun is painting my face,” he marvels. Baekhyun pokes him with the end of his paintbrush before switching it out for a sponge.

He starts with the base, dabbing a damp sponge coated in white paint all over Chanyeol’s skin. With Chanyeol’s track record, Baekhyun should have expected him to stare into his soul but it still catches him off guard.

“You should put some music on,” he suggests, feeling like his face is being scrutinised.

Chanyeol becomes busy with his phone, opening an app and putting one of his playlists on shuffle.

“Phil Collins, huh?” Baekhyun teases at the start of the first song, laughing when Chanyeol gets defensive.

He does two thin layers of white so that it doesn’t take too long to dry before he grabs a thin brush and swirls it in the black. “How many stripes should I give you?” he thinks aloud, starting with some patterns on Chanyeol’s forehead.

“However many you think I need,” Chanyeol says back quietly, looking relaxed. The cool swipe of the wet paintbrush must be therapeutic. Baekhyun is envious of how laid back Chanyeol looks right now, eyes on the floor so that his lids are on show.

He works quietly, save for when he hums along to the songs he knows. Sometimes Chanyeol will skip a track only a couple of seconds in, and if it’s one that Baekhyun recognises he makes a pointed noise of distaste that spurs him to hit the back button.

Chanyeol actually has a really nice bone structure. All his facial features are well proportioned, his jaw is sharp and his forehead is the perfect size. He notices a few tiny moles and awry eyebrow hairs while painting, proceeding to examine the different depths of colour in Chanyeol’s eyes without realising Chanyeol can see him. He continues painting lines, the black standing out so prominently against the white background that Baekhyun only really needs his peripheral vision to see what he’s doing. Chanyeol’s eyes are blinking innocently up at him while his paintbrush roams his face, feathering the illusion of fur on his cheeks, temples and chin.

It’s weird, but Baekhyun swears Chanyeol has been flirting with him all day. He’s not even been discreet. Baekhyun thinks back to yesterday when Chanyeol was a hair’s breadth from leaning on his shoulder, from entering space that is beyond personal. He wonders if Chanyeol would have felt warm, or grounding, or comfortable. He wonders why he reacted the way he did, getting nauseous and spending the next hour or so wondering how he could leave. He wonders why Chanyeol hasn’t apologised, because Baekhyun is well aware that he probably failed to school his expression as well as he thought he did. Chanyeol must have seen. Or, at the least, guessed that something was wrong. But today he’s taken things to a whole new level and Baekhyun is breathless.

He sounded surprised on the phone this morning when Baekhyun rang to ask for a lift, pretending as though nothing had happened. And maybe that’s why. Baekhyun didn’t avoid him like he has done in the past, so Chanyeol could have interpreted that as you did nothing wrong. I liked it.

Has he actually just handed Chanyeol an invitation to flirt with him?!

Baekhyun gasps, painting hand halting. He’s been staring at Chanyeol this entire time, belatedly comprehending Chanyeol’s insistent returning gaze. Then he looks at where his paintbrush is, resting amongst dark smudges of paint he has taken across Chanyeol’s bottom lip, lips parted to make room.

.

Chanyeol looks like he’s going to kiss him. Chanyeol looks like he’s going to wrap his arms around Baekhyun neck and the air from his lungs.

And, Baekhyun? He’s not completely against it. But he’s not completely for it either.

He clears his throat, takes a small step back, and comes to see with his new perspective that during his trance he finished painting the stripes.

“Uh—J-Just the nose now,” he says, coughing again afterwards as he turns away.

Chanyeol slumps back in his seat as Baekhyun taps at his nose with another brush, no longer meeting his eyes or staring at him with intensity.

“Done!” Baekhyun chimes, dropping the brush into the glass of water and doing his best not to sound afraid. “Go look in a mirror.”

It only takes Chanyeol a couple of seconds to recover. He has to go to the bathroom to see himself properly, and his glorious cry of “I love it!” resonates through the whole house.

Baekhyun grins giddily, butterflies in his stomach, and he shakes his head as Chanyeol’s fascination with a substandard paint job as he dries his used brushes off on a piece of kitchen roll.

“If this is simple, I can’t wait to see complicated,” Chanyeol declares, utterly impressed.

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Baekhyun claps back, and believes Chanyeol would be blushing if he wasn’t now a cat. “Pub for dinner?”

It’s almost natural to ask that question now. Baekhyun is putting on weight. But in good company.

♡♡♡

Chanyeol has to leave for Hapton the next day for a meeting with his boss. Baekhyun empathises with his distaste as they talk over the phone at breakfast, both in their own homes but not feeling lonely. It’s two hours there and two hours back, or thereabouts, and Chanyeol’s meeting starts at one in the afternoon without a set end time. It happens every Friday, not that Baekhyun has noticed, but he definitely feels Chanyeol’s absence when he spends the day in front of his computer with no one to call or text or meet up in the pub with. Of course, there’s Jongin and Mrs Parker and Joe but… Baekhyun snorts at himself. He only wants to hang out with Chanyeol.

The day drags on. Baekhyun feels burnt out with his digital art and flips absently through the face paint magazine he bought from the craft shop. There are a variety of different animals and butterfly patterns, and towards the back there’s a page dedicated to superheroes. For the more mature children (and adults), there’s a selection of simple cheek art with glitter, and damn, Baekhyun didn’t buy any glitter. After a few texts back and forth, Chanyeol fixes that.

Baekhyun takes a walk in the evening, returning home just as Nessa and David pack their last belongings into the boot of their car. He hugs them both, choked up, and has to watch them drive away with the knowledge that they’re never coming back. Everything becomes unnaturally silent once he can’t hear their car engine anymore. He looks around and sees no life and kind of wants to scream. There’s a huge chunk missing from the community with their departure, but hopefully the festival will help bridge the gap.

♡♡♡

The festival begins at 10.a.m., the weather warm and dry and perfect for this sort of thing. Junmyeon opens the hotel car park for visitors, and then the overflow when things get busy just after lunchtime. Stalls have been erected all through the centre of the village. Mable is doing fortune telling on one of Mrs Parker’s outdoor tables; Rose has filled a large glass jar with sweets to see who can guess the closest amount; Jongin is in charge of the treasure hunt, disarming everyone he meets with his smiles and his manners as he hands the children a sheet with the first clue. Baekhyun is desperate to have a go but he’s busy manning his face painting stall outside the church. The Vicar set it up for him before he got here – a high, director-style chair, a few handheld mirrors and a table for his things. He also handed Baekhyun a fifty pound note on behalf of the village council, more than enough to cover for the supplies he bought.

There’s live music provided by Joe and his banjolele, a few of the village kids who have learned how to play instruments in school performing alongside him. Camilla Harvey and her daughter, Vick, are running the tombola, while Martha and Maggie are winding through the crowds getting people to buy raffle tickets. It kind of reminds Baekhyun of a page in Where’s Wally, where there’s so much going on that it’s hard to find what you’re looking for. Though that doesn’t mean to say he’s lost tabs on Chanyeol.

In between painting, while he’s waiting for the kids (and sometimes the parents) to skim the catalogue and decide what they want, he looks for Chanyeol. For most of the morning Chanyeol has been helping Mrs Parker serve customers in the tea room, but now that it’s getting into the late afternoon he’s started helping out Kyungsoo in the pub instead, collecting glasses and even delivering food if there’s no one else to do it. His car is parked in front of the church as well, the scarecrow they created together on full display to the delight of everyone. Baekhyun’s keeping an eye on it, just in case anything suspicious happens.

Chanyeol is so… dazzling. Baekhyun gets distracted by his smile numerous times, watching as he serves customers and asks them about how their day is going so far. He diligently fills in for anyone who needs a break on their stall, even manning the bouncy castle at one point when the operator needs to use the loo. Baekhyun feels proud. Awed.

“What’ll it be then?” he asks the young girl he’s about to paint, her shy smile adorable as her mother lifts her onto the chair.

She’s wriggling with excitement as she cries “Ladybird!”

“Good choice!” Baekhyun beams, turning to his little paint station and grabbing the right colours.

He’s painted over fifty faces by now, surely, his money jar slowly filling and gaining weight. Even Yixing and Rose came over at one point, and he turned them both into sheep.

He takes a break in the mid-afternoon, Chanyeol delivering him a cup of tea from Mrs Parker and a hot dog from Andy’s barbecue as a late lunch.

“How’s everything going?” Chanyeol asks, eyes raking over the mess that is Baekhyun’s supplies. He’s never been a tidy painter, as the abundance of used and unwashed brushes shows. Without being asked, Chanyeol starts to organise things.

“It’s going well!” Baekhyun says from around his food, wiping ketchup off his top lip afterwards. “People seem to be pretty impressed.”

Chanyeol grins at him over his shoulder. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

Baekhyun smiles, then his heart skips a beat when he remembers painting Chanyeol’s face the other day. He can still see where he painted the lines, though Chanyeol has washed his face since. The feeling is still there, too, in the pit of his stomach. How unexpectedly exhilarating it was to be so close to him, how quickly he got lost in his eyes. It’s also crazy, just maybe not in a bad way. Is there such a thing as good-crazy?

He gets back to work soon after, a long line of excited children (including Minseok) queueing up to be transformed. Baekhyun paints Iron Man and pirates and puppies. He paints Minseok as a kitten and gives Old Joe a small red heart on his cheek. He’s close to hitting the pan of his black by the end of the day, thanking himself for having thought ahead and purchasing more than one. He tries not to be a perfectionist either, though he still wants to rub off every line he draws with a shaky hand or too much pressure. It’s only him that can see the flaws, as is often the case; the smiles he gets when the children look in the mirror are enough to make him forget anyway.

Bunting flaps in the wind with the evening breeze, a beautiful golden sunset approaching. The air smells like grilled meat and Baekhyun can hear the gentle buzz of chatter coming from the pub and the picnic benches further down the road. There’s a puppet show scheduled for six o’clock on the village green, the time when Baekhyun closes up shop, and he watches with a grin on his face as all the children run excitedly towards the grass to see what Jongin has come up with.

“Time for one more?”

Baekhyun stops where he stands, drying the ends of his brushes off on a towel that’s marked with an array of different coloured smudges. A smile breaks his face, and he looks over his shoulder at Chanyeol looking all smug and settling into the chair.

“It’ll cost you,” Baekhyun says, picking up his money jar and waving it in front of Chanyeol’s face. He’s only teasing, but to his surprise, Chanyeol drops three pound coins through the slit and smiles triumphantly at him. Baekhyun’s chest feels like it’s about to burst from that, heart racing and stomach clenching. He almost forgets to speak.

“What would you like?” he wonders, setting the jar down and switching it for the idea book. “I can turn you into a puppy?” Baekhyun thinks that would look quite sweet. Chanyeol does resemble a puppy sometimes, with his wide eyes and the way he gets so excited that he can’t sit still – not that he can ever sit still. It’s adorable.

“How about a white tiger again?” Chanyeol suggests. “But complicated.” With that, he drops more money into the jar, Baekhyun too stunned to interfere and stop him. “I’m a paying customer.”

Chanyeol is smirking at him. Baekhyun is having a heart attack.

“Well, seeing as you paid extra…” he trails off, feigning indifference, and then pulls out his phone to google a reference image.

He starts painting just as the puppet show begins. They can hear it from here, all the kids laughing, cheering the good guys and booing the bad guys. It’s a mixture of fairy tales that Jongin has put together, including Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Cinderella, to name a few.

“You’re missing the puppet show,” Baekhyun says quietly as he dabs at the contours of Chanyeol’s face with a light grey.

Chanyeol hums. “So are you.”

They’re not the only ones absent from the village green. Others are packing up their stalls too, and Martha and Maggie are getting their prizes ready for when they announce the raffle winners. They are out of the way of everyone else though, as the only people by the church. It feels strangely private, despite being outside where anyone can see them.

“No one tried to break into my car then?” Chanyeol laughs, the apples of his cheeks swelling under Baekhyun’s hands and hiding his cheekbones from him.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Baekhyun smiles down at him, taking his sponge up to Chanyeol’s temples. “And I did try to keep an eye on it all day.”

Chanyeol looks up at him. “Thanks, Baek.”

Baekhyun disguises a gasp as a deep breath. “No problem.”

He paints more, Chanyeol’s styled hair obscuring his forehead. “You’re going to have to wear my headband,” Baekhyun decides, picking up the ring of elasticated fabric and showing it off to Chanyeol with a grin.

“You’re going to ruin my hair.” Chanyeol pouts, but Baekhyun ignores him, managing to tackle him into the headband without smudging too much of the work he’s already done.

“Boohoo.” Baekhyun grins playfully, getting back to work. “My feet ache, you know. I’ve been stood out here for eight hours.”

“Treat yourself to a bath when you get home.”

“Oh, I will,” Baekhyun groans eagerly, snickering at himself afterwards. “I noticed you’ve been helpful today.”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol perks up, “I just lent a hand when things got busy for people. I also helped people with the treasure hunt if they were stuck. There’s some really cool scarecrows around! Puts mine to shame,” he chuckles.

Baekhyun takes a step back to let his white base dry. “We’re all pretty experienced here when it comes to scarecrow making.”

“Humpty was popular, you know,” Chanyeol says, picking up a mirror to see the progress made so far. “It was a good idea to put him on the bridge over the river.”

Baekhyun preens. “Woah. I’m having a proud dad moment.”

Baekhyun hasn’t felt this at peace in a while, and all it is is him and Chanyeol talking to each other about nothing of real importance. They discuss the scarecrows everyone made, Junmyeon having done a set of three playing golf outside the church door, and some were placed in the shallow bit of the river playing with wooden boats with newspaper sails. Chanyeol also reveals that he checked out the treasure hunt and it was pretty impressive. Baekhyun laments not having time to try it out.

“How did your meeting go yesterday?” Baekhyun asks as he’s working on the stripes. Where other people’s faces took five to ten minutes to paint, he’s now been doing Chanyeol’s for a little over half an hour.

Chanyeol’s eyes flicker upwards and hold Baekhyun’s gaze. “It was… Well, meetings are never very exciting. We just talked about new clients, I presented what I’d been working on this past week, and then we all set targets. I don’t know why we can’t just do it over skype.”

“I thought you wanted to meet your co-workers?”

Chanyeol makes a noise and shrugs. “I don’t know. They all live in Hapton. My life is here now, I guess.”

Baekhyun pauses and stares at him. His stomach swoops and his breath gets caught in his throat, and for a second Chanyeol looks so inexplicably perfect. He’s gorgeous and kind and polite and well-built. He’s captivating and funny, always smiling and joyful. And he wants to be here. Live here. Maybe even stay here.

But Baekhyun is getting carried away. He drops his eyes from Chanyeol’s and looks at the end of his paintbrush, darkening his greys until he can complete the stripes. It’s still too soon for him to try a relationship again, even if it is with someone incredible like Chanyeol. What would people think of him? What if he’s just treating Chanyeol like a rebound? He will never use anyone like that, and he doesn’t want to half- a relationship either. The only way he can do this is if he has fully put Sehun behind him, and right now, he doesn’t believe that he has.

“Will you do the treasure hunt with me after this?” Baekhyun asks shyly, referring to the image on his phone again.

Chanyeol smiles, eyes soft. “Of course.”

Baekhyun feels like he’s back in college, the same innocent attraction building for this boyfriend at the time. Yes, he likes Chanyeol, but he’ll just wait a little longer to make sure it’s for the right reasons. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he used him as a way to get revenge or fix his own insecurities – not that he would do so knowingly. But there is dark in him, as there is dark in everyone. He gets jealous and angry and sometimes does stupid things that someone ten years his junior would do. It’s better to be safe than break someone’s heart, even his own.

♡♡♡

The festival is a huge success, raising just over a thousand pounds that can be put towards more community projects. The village dance will be happening in a few weeks, just before the kids go back to school again, but for now everyone mooches around enjoying the August heat.

Baekhyun catches Jongin wooing Samantha more than once and Yixing loses his dog, Sparks, only to find him drinking from the water bowl outside Kyungsoo’s pub. Baekhyun works hard on his Christmas cards in the mornings, then heads out into the village in the afternoon to see what everyone else is doing. Well, to see if Chanyeol is doing anything.

It’s like his heart lights up whenever he spots Chanyeol helping someone out, shopping in Rose’s corner shop or enjoying tea with Mrs Parker. Then his legs switch to autopilot and he’s marching over to join him. Chanyeol has also become his favourite person to gossip with. They text on and off in the day and sometimes call each other in the evening while Baekhyun is eating dinner and Chanyeol is taking a break from work, unless they’re already hanging out at each other’s houses. Baekhyun usually texts him when he’s bored of drawing and wants to complain, and Chanyeol will distract him with random funny stories – and sometimes a meme.

It’s nice. Really nice. And Baekhyun can feel more caterpillars evolving.

Prospective buyers come and go, viewing the house next door to Baekhyun’s to see if they’re interested in moving in. Baekhyun watches them all from his window if he happens to catch them, wondering what kind of people they are and if they’d fit in. If they did move in, Baekhyun doesn’t think he’d be compelled to help them out as much as he was with Chanyeol, which he has to stop and think about for a couple of minutes. Chanyeol, being the gem that he is, talks to one couple he runs into viewing the house on his way over, and Baekhyun can hear him through his bedroom window talking about what a great community there is here. Chanyeol sounds like he’s in love with this place, and Baekhyun feels warm because of it.

On the last day of August, Chanyeol is lounging on Baekhyun’s bed reading a book he borrowed from the library in Edgebank. Baekhyun is dealing with this Christmas cards again, only the last few to go, when they hear screaming outside. Upon first hearing it, Baekhyun can’t tell if it’s a scream of laughter or a genuine scream of fear, but Chanyeol has read his mind and is already shuffling across the bed towards the window to have a look.

“What’s going on?” Baekhyun asks, setting down his graphics tablet from where he had it resting on his lap. He stretches his arms above his head, hears the faint clicking of his shoulders, and turns around on his chair to monitor Chanyeol’s reaction.

Chanyeol has his elbows on the window sill, peering out. It’s a high-set window, the bottom of it the same height as Baekhyun’s hips, so it frames Chanyeol perfectly. Baekhyun feels compelled to take a picture but catches himself. That’d be weird.

“There’s a water fight,” Chanyeol replies. “The kids.”

Baekhyun smiles.

“Oh, no wait,” Chanyeol says, leaning further into the window trying to see more. “Old Joe is there too.”

“Old Joe?”

“Yeah,” laughs Chanyeol. “He’s got some kind of Super Soaker.”

Baekhyun needs to see this, so he races out of his chair and squashes in beside Chanyeol at the window. True enough, Old Joe is there striding down the middle of the road, looking around for the children Baekhyun has spotted hiding behind his own front garden wall. He doesn’t mind, of course. Instead, he breaks with laughter as he watches them distribute water balloons to each other, and then they jump up and drench Joe from head to toe. Yixing pops out from behind the church and catches them all in the act, aiming water at them as they all squeal and rush off towards the hotel.

“What is this? Adults versus kids?” Baekhyun laughs, glancing at Chanyeol and losing his breath at the sight of his smile.

“Should we join?”

They share a look that reads hell yes, Baekhyun meaning it in more ways than one.

As they join in the fight, running into Rose who s a packet of water balloons into their hands and demand they fill them up straight away, Baekhyun thinks how lucky he is to live in a place like this. Where he can leave his house but still be at home and have friends in every neighbour. Where he can join in someone’s conversation because there’s always an invite hanging in the air and people greet him without a second thought, asking him over for tea or dinner or drinks. Where else will he wake up to a sheep in his garden? Or look out the window to find the whole neighbourhood having a water fight? He wouldn’t move anywhere else even if someone paid him. But now, he’s extra lucky, because as he and Chanyeol fall about laughing trying to fill up the water balloons without bursting them, he realises that he gets to share all of this. With him.

That feeling only blossoms as the days go by until Baekhyun can’t control it anymore. It becomes so big that it refuses to be ignored, smothering Baekhyun’s airways and inflating him with helium at the same time. The sun shines on everything Chanyeol does.

Chanyeol quickly becomes the person he looks at when he laughs. He becomes the first person he calls and texts and the first (only) person he invites to join him on his walks. Chanyeol is always so composed despite being eccentric at times, and Baekhyun finds himself beaming at the pub quiz when Chanyeol excels at a particular round of questions – on Disney movies, of all things.

Despite that, they lose the quiz that week, and Old Joe jokes that they’ll have to kick Baekhyun out of the team now that he’s lost his touch. In all fairness, Baekhyun did find it hard to concentrate.

The winning team – the farmers – all get their free pints and talk soon turns to the village dance happening soon. The profits made from the scarecrow festival have been invested into new sound equipment for the hall, Yixing rubbing his palms together when he reassures everyone he’s going to make a playlist that people of all ages will love.

“Are any of our young people going to bring dates?” Mrs Parker asks with a sweet grin, eyeing Jongin and Samantha and then turning to Chanyeol. “Chanyeol?” She looks knowing, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively, and Baekhyun looks between them like a lost toddler.

Is Chanyeol bringing someone?

Something drops in his stomach. Baekhyun doesn’t understand why it hurts when he doesn’t even understand what’s going on, but for some reason, the possibility of Chanyeol bringing another person for potential romantic interest makes him feel sour. There’s nothing to justify him feeling this way outside of his own feelings, of course. He and Chanyeol haven’t done any more than stare at each other with what he thought was the intent to kiss. They’re not together. They’ve made no plans to be together, never talked about it. Chanyeol is free to take whoever he wants to the village dance. It wouldn’t be a very classy place for a date considering they usually play all the cringy old disco songs and there will be kids of all ages running around arguing over balloons, but Chanyeol has the right to do whatever he wants.

Even if that means Chanyeol doesn’t like him anymore.

Baekhyun sinks down in his chair, staring at his beer.

He left it too long.

Still, he carries on as if nothing is wrong. Leading up the dance, he still talks with Chanyeol both in person and over the phone, though there is never any mention of a date. Baekhyun would ask him outright but he’s afraid of the answer. If Chanyeol does have someone he wants to make his girlfriend (or even boyfriend), Baekhyun would rather not know. He’ll just pretend that nothing ever happened between them, pull his hand back from the bookshelf, and look for another novel instead.

He remembers Nessa telling him that he made every guy a little bit gay. It makes him smile, bitterly, as he sits in a bath that’s supposed to bring him tranquillity. His mind is turbulent, thoughts astray from positive happenings and possibilities. He adds another bath bomb to try and cheer himself up, watching the colour pink fizzle across the surface of the water. All it does is get glitter stuck everywhere that he has to spend half an hour cleaning