It’s been exhausting, it’s always exhausting, but when Baekhyun comes home, he knows all will be fine. He settles himself in the corner of the couch – the spot he claimed for himself ages ago – and whisks his phone out. This morning when he woke up, he’d seen that his favorite author, cbbyforever, updated one of their fluffy stories. He didn’t have time to read, of course, because there was practice, a rehearsal, a short performance, a photoshoot – you name it – and there was little time in between. Besides, he only wants to read when he’s sitting comfortably at home, like right now.

A satisfied smile slips on his face when he opens the app, clicking the notification in-app – the one that popped up on his lock-screen was swiped off as soon as he saw it this morning. He doesn’t want any of the others to know he’s interested in reading fanfics – about themselves, no less. The second he reads the first sentence, though, he’s startled to the point he nearly drops his phone altogether.

“Hey Baek, what are you all smiley about?” Chanyeol inquires when he plops himself down next to him. A blush creeps up the small man’s cheeks, but his smile is very much intact. Still, he hides his phone from view in record time – just to appear less suspicious, of course.

“Oh! Well. You know,” he says, laughs shortly and awkwardly, “I’m just looking at our fans’ love for us. EXO, I mean,” he adds, bright smile still on his face, but he glances up at Chanyeol’s eyes a little shyly to see if he takes it the wrong way.

“Ah, of course,” Chanyeol replies and Baekhyun sees he’s teasing, “you’re always so worried about them and their opinions.” There’s a cheeky smile on Chanyeol’s face and if it was anyone else saying it, it wouldn’t have done anything to Baekhyun at all, but he feels shy and he cowers away, biting his lip unconsciously. “Aw you know I don’t mean that in a bad way,” the taller adds, lightly patting Baekhyun’s thigh – as if that makes it any better. Baekhyun laughs his awkward high-pitched laugh.

“Personal space, Chanyeol,” he says with a nervous grin, looking down at the hand that still lingers and he misses Chanyeol raising his brows with an amused smile. His thigh is squeezed instead, because Chanyeol loves to tease and Baekhyun gets flustered when confronted with skin ship. Chanyeol knows that and takes full advantage of it, too.

“Sorry,” the tall male says in his deep, rumbling voice that easily has Baekhyun clear his throat when he finally takes his hand back to himself.

“You know what, I’ll just take a shower,” Baekhyun announces, holding his phone up close to his face, to avoid Chanyeol from seeing anything, before he presses the home-button and locks the screen. The amused look on the rapper’s face is still there when Baekhyun quickly glances at him and oh how he wishes his heart wouldn’t beat so fast upon their eyes meeting.

“Sure.” When he walks away, Baekhyun’s is patted and he jumps up, hearing Chanyeol chuckle to himself and before he actually knows it, the small man is fanning his face.

“You okay?” Joonmyun asks as he passes the older male, who is just on his way to the living room. Another awkward laugh leaves Baekhyun’s lips.

“Very,” he says and though he leaves his hyung confused, Baekhyun continues on his way quickly. When he’s inside the bathroom, he closes the door behind himself with a big sigh, as if he just escaped something big – something Chanyeol. He unlocks his phone again, smiling again when he opens the app and starts reading.

It doesn’t take long before Baekhyun starts feeling fidgety on the edge of the bathtub. There’s a smile on his face, but it twitches every now and then, while a blush starts creeping up his cheeks. For the first time since Baekhyun started following cbbyforever’s stories, the author lets his main characters – Chanyeol and Baekhyun – go further than a hug or a small peck on the cheek.

The small man has to hold on tightly or he’ll actually fall in the tub, he’s reading that intensely and his heart is beating so fast. It’s not like he has zero experience – it’s just that this Chanyeol feels so real, so much like… Chanyeol, that it makes him uncomfortable. Not because he doesn’t like it – oh dear no – but because he wants it to be exactly like that. He wishes that he was more like the Baekhyun in the story, that he had the courage to step up and confess already.

But does Chanyeol like him this way? The thought is so disheartening that Baekhyun usually shies away from it. He likes living in his own fantasy’s world – or that of this Chanbaek author – and he’ll appreciate every moment he gets to spend with the tall rapper in real life, regardless of whether or not he likes him.

But then Baekhyun reaches the end of the page and there’s a short author’s note.

Ahhh that was so embarrassing I’m so sorry if it bothered you guys!

Baekhyun’s mouth goes dry and he has no idea why. Out of his utter nervousness, he tosses his phone to the other side of the washing room, but thankfully it lands in the neatly folded pile of towels. With a shaky breath, he picks up his phone again, sets it aside gently and picks up one of the towels before he rids himself of his clothing to get showering already. He has already taken up so much time in here.

When Baekhyun finishes and opens up the bathroom door, the steam rolling outside as he does so, he sees the back of someone he missed so much that he doesn’t care about anything else. He stumbles outside, making a lot of noise in the process and runs up to the friend he missed.

“Yixing-hyung!” he wails, latching himself onto the taller Chinese who has only half-way turned around at the mention of his name. There’s a soft smile on Yixing’s face when he pats Baekhyun on the head, then instead pulling him in his arms because his hair is still wet from the shower he just took. “I missed you!” The taller man chuckles because each time the two meet up, he’s just so childish – Yixing thinks it’s adorable.

“I missed you too, have you been well?” he asks, his Korean perfect, but the slight Mandarin accent makes it sound cute to Baekhyun’s ears.

“Very,” he replies, just like he said to Joonmyun earlier and the smile he shows is nothing short of real. “How about you? Your album is absolutely amazing! I can’t believe they let you compose it entirely as well! They should let you do that for our album as well, it’d be great,” Baekhyun rambles enthusiastically and hadn’t noticed consciously how the two of them have started walking into the living room. “Or you could work together with–”

“Oh hyung!” Chanyeol suddenly booms from the other side of the room, smoothly getting off the couch and stalking his way to the other two members, eyebrows of Joonmyun and Sehun raising in confusion at the abrupt action. “Come, I want to show you something,” the tallest of the lot says, pulling his hyung with him, probably in the direction of the small studio, but Baekhyun is too baffled to follow or even question them. That was… quick. He needs a while to recover from his surprise and – admittedly – disappointment.

“Do you guys know what that was about?” he then asks their leader and maknae, who sit on the couch. Both are holding their phones, but have their attention on the door the other two members just left through.

“Nope, nothing seemed off,” Joonmyun says, shooting a side-ways glance at Sehun who shrugs before he undoes the knots in his shoulders and settles back against the back-rest of the couch, quickly engrossed in his phone again.

“Hm,” Baekhyun merely comments, then finds his spot on the couch again, shifting and turning a little until he’s certain nobody can see what he’ll do on his phone. For now, he will set his thoughts on Chanyeol and Yixing aside to deal with later. He has something else entirely in mind that has him blushing a little more than he wants to and he notices his hands are a bit shaky. Baekhyun wants to leave a comment on cbbyforever’s story. He’s been a silent reader since forever because what if he gives away who he is? But then again, he has to tell this author that they have Chanyeol’s personality completely right. Or maybe even more importantly, that the scene cbbyforever wrote this time, has him on his toes and sweaty and anxious and blushing.

Maybe he even wants to tell the author of his weird interaction with Chanyeol just now, but there’s no way he can. But he wants to share it with someone anyway. From the moment the tall man patted his thigh to the whisking away of Yixing, his friend who he hadn’t seen in such a long time. But as that thought lingers for a bit – and Baekhyun still stares at the comment section of the fanfiction – he realizes that Chanyeol hadn’t seen Yixing an equally long time and it’s simply not fair to complain about it.

“Guys, I’m off to bed,” Joonmyun announces and when Baekhyun looks up at him, a little startled to hear someone speak out of the blue, he notices that his eye-bags seem a little more pronounced than usual. He frowns a little because he hadn’t noticed it before. Sehun is surprisingly quick to follow, an eye-smile that’s maybe a little too suspiciously sweet.

“Me too, ‘night Baek-hyung,” he says, stuffing his phone in his pocket and following behind their leader into the hallway.

“Goodnight guys,” Baekhyun calls after them and briefly wonders if there’s something going on between them. A smile is on his lips at the thought, he wouldn’t mind either way. It draws his attention back to his phone and the fluttery feeling he gets in his stomach while thinking about leaving a comment, returns quickly. He gathers some courage and types away.

Kya~ I loved this chapter so much! You made me blush x_x I think I might be falling in love with your Chanyeol >///< fighting, author-nim! I’ll try to stop being a silent reader

When reading over his comment with total embarrassment – though it’s the absolute truth – he feels he should delete it, but he’s startled more than a little bit when Chanyeol’s boisterous laughter sounds from the hallway, Yixing’s softer laugh following. He snaps his head towards the two, entering the living room with Chanyeol’s hands on Yixing’s shoulders. When he looks back at the screen of his phone, a bit of an awkward lump in his throat, he sees he pressed ‘Post Comment’ accidentally.

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Hehe. ^^ I hope you can tell me what you think! <3