Chanyeol had gone to a bunch of houses throughout his whole life, the home of close friends and strangers alike, but he’d never particularly felt excited about it.

Perhaps it was because he wasn’t used to going into a house for something other than a party, into a house filled with no one else but its owner. Junmyeon and Jongdae’s houses didn’t count, Chanyeol felt almost at home whenever he was with them.

But this was Baekhyun’s door that he was standing in front of, with a bottle of Sprite in hand. Baekhyun hadn’t reacted to the mention of the beverage by message but there’d been lots of typos, Chanyeol figured he’d been busy while texting. Or he didn’t care and was a naturally bad typer. The former option was more reassuring, he chose to believe to that one.

Gathering all his wits, pushing down the jitter in his body, Chanyeol raised his hand and rang the bell.

It opened soon enough, opened into a pastel purple hoodie, lined eyes, and light freckles Chanyeol had never seen on Baekhyun before. He felt flustered. Because the faintness of the freckles added a new delicacy to Baekhyun’s agreeable features. Because Chanyeol was wearing a hoodie too and they matched and it was so stupid of him to get excited about such a simple thing so he raised his hand and almost shoved the bottle of Sprite into Baekhyun’s face.

"I brought your free delivery," was the most awkward, less seductive sentence Chanyeol had ever uttered in his life.

Baekhyun’s laugh was the most stellar, less ordinary sound he’d ever heard in his life.

"Thank you very much," Baekhyun said, grabbing the bottle from him. Chanyeol noticed the colorful stripes of eyeshadow on the back of his hand before all he could focus on was how adorable Baekhyun looked while hugging a bottle to his chest. "I actually wasn’t sure you’d bring it since I kind of didn’t reply to your offer there. I was a little busy and texting you in between doing someone’s makeup, sorry if I seemed too direct or aloof. Or illiterate with all those typos."

So that was why. Chanyeol had figured but he still smiled in relief.

"It’s fine, Jongdae makes so many typos I kinda read it like a new language I totally understand now," he reassured the other, moving forward when Baekhyun stepped back to let him in.

Baekhyun’s house was pretty clean and unexpectedly, pretty somber when it came to its general decoration scheme. His entrance hallway was decorated by an intricate assemblage of mirrors, shades of black and gray led him to the living room, a tall lamp in the shape of a small tree welcoming him into the room, surrounded by tiny deer-shaped trinkets on the floor. A large grey rug was the centerpiece of the room and the justification to that one drunken conversation they’d had about rugs once.

Chanyeol found it surprising. He’d expected a colorful home but what he was shown was rather sober without losing its appeal. The couches were of a dark grey, draped for protection by a cover of a lighter shade that looked like the softest, warmest blanket. He was careful not to bump his knees into the glass table when Baekhyun indicated him to sit down, although he was curious as to whether the gem-like rocks encased under the table’s surface were stuck there or not.

"Have you eaten dinner?" Baekhyun asked, putting the bottle on the table and gesturing at Chanyeol to sit on the couch.

"Yeah, haven’t you?" He’d devoured an entire pack of chips as dinner, the anticipation of seeing Baekhyun not letting him pour enough attention into cooking a full meal.

"Not yet, I just got home," Baekhyun said, tucking the sleeves of his hoodie over his hands. The fabric was too short and jumped right back up, revealing the eyeshadow lines on his skin. "I’m kinda hungry actually though," he laughed, quiet. 

Chanyeol didn’t feel any awkwardness in that sound or in the way Baekhyun stood in front of him, on the other side of the table. Just sheepishness, maybe.

"Don’t starve yourself just because I already ate. If it really comes down to it, I get hungry very quickly so I could devour a whole plate of anything right now," he admitted with no shame but with a faint jump of his shoulders. "Do you want us to cook? Or do you usually order in?"

"You can cook?" Baekhyun asked instead of replying, studying him with his arms crossed. It tugged the collar of his hoodie down a little bit.

"Why are you so surprised," Chanyeol retorted, narrowing his eyes at him but unable to conceal his amusement. Everyone was always surprised when they learned that Chanyeol not only could cook but also liked to do so. He supposed he really did look like he was clumsy, with all those long limbs.

"I don’t know," Baekhyun shrugged, actually shrugged although it looked like more of a shiver. He nodded towards him. "With the whole hoodies and ripped jeans themed fashion, I thought you’d feed yourself like a college student. Fast food and sandwiches and all that stuff."

"Hey, you’re wearing a hoodie too right now," Chanyeol protested, hand waving his laughter towards him. 

Baekhyun raised his eyebrows and shifted his weight from one leg to the other. "I won’t believe it until I see the food and deem it good enough."

That should’ve been kind of offensive. It was too direct. They weren’t close enough to joke around like that yet. But it wasn’t offensive nor upsetting. It was hot. The challenge tugging a corner of Baekhyun’s lips higher than the other was hot.

And Chanyeol accepted the challenge with the entire intention of wooing his way into Baekhyun’s stomach - and his heart, through his stomach. Or wooing his way into Baekhyun’s friendship heart. That could work too. He wouldn’t mind being friends with someone as funny as Baekhyun.

He didn’t even think he did it on purpose, everything Baekhyun did or said just seemed perfumed with hilarity. The way he looked at his own kitchen like it was his first time seeing it, standing on the threshold with his hands holding onto his own waist. His haste to put on an apron because pastel purple was a precious color and whoever stained it should be beheaded by a unicorn. The way he asked Chanyeol if he’d seen the nutmeg bottle as if this was Chanyeol’s kitchen and not his. Chanyeol’s stomach was cramping from laughing before they even started cooking.

He didn’t have that many ingredients in his fridge and Chanyeol didn’t know what Baekhyun liked so they both settled on pasta, something that they both deemed was and should be liked by everyone. He took it upon himself to do most of the cooking, just because Baekhyun had asked to be impressed and Chanyeol wanted to impress him, through something as simple as pasta and chicken sauced with lemon. Baekhyun mostly stood behind him and looked cute with his sunflower-patterned apron. Chanyeol knew because he kept looking at him over his shoulder just to make sure he looked impressed.

He truly was an easy person to amaze. He let out various forms and intonations of woah’s when Chanyeol dropped the spaghetti into boiling water and didn’t even have to snap them in half to make them fit, something that Baekhyun said he was accustomed to doing himself. Another woah when Chanyeol cut the cold chicken s without flinching. Another longer one when he cooked the dices and bounced them in the pan by shaking it a little. Chanyeol had never felt so validated before.

Baekhyun didn’t seem to like doing nothing though. He kept moving around, standing on Chanyeol’s left, on his right, behind him, on his left again as he watched him, kept moving around, jumping from one leg to the other, drumming his fingers on the counter. When Chanyeol first commented on it, Baekhyun said that he hadn’t moved a lot today, mostly circling around a chair as he did people’s makeup, and he had a surplus of energy to discharge.

Chanyeol took mercy of him and tasked him with simple things. Baekhyun pressed juice out of the lemon with as much concentration as he’d probably have were he disarming a bomb instead, made Chanyeol laugh by purposefully squirting a bit of the juice towards him but failing to aim and staining the counter instead. He was adorable. Especially when Chanyeol tasked him with stirring the spaghetti to make sure the butter he’d but in would melt evenly and properly.

He stirred a lot, stopped once it was melted, and then continued stirring at intervals of a few seconds.

"I didn’t even burn it, see," he said and when Chanyeol glanced away from where he was adding the lemon juice into the creamed pasta, he was tangled into the urge of patting Baekhyun’s head. 

He’d risen to the tip of his toes to properly look into the pan, as if he wasn’t already tall enough to do it, and was looking at the spaghetti with such a satisfied little smile, Chanyeol knew right then and there that he’d found it. Finally a human being was cuter than Toben. He kind of wanted to cry.

He gave his attention back to the chicken.

"It’s because I turned the fire off," he snorted, tapping the wooden spoon against the rim of the pan to rid it off the sauce that clung to it,

"Oh," he heard Baekhyun say and when he looked at him again, his face was as pouty as that simple sound.

Actually pouty. With his lower lip jutted out, over his upper lip, his chin held high and his eyes looking down into the spaghetti, eyes drooped by sulkiness.

Chanyeol wanted to cry and jump into the pan so he would burn down. He didn’t know why. Baekhyun was kind of so cute, it made him feel violent. But Chanyeol probably wouldn’t fit into the pan anyway so he burst into laughter instead, a bit too loud, a bit too crazy, but validated by the alliance of Baekhyun’s laughter with his own.

Baekhyun really was easy to impress. And very dramatic. He hummed at the first mouthful of pasta like Chanyeol had just cooked him a recipe he’d stolen from a luxury restaurant rated five stars. He did make Chanyeol feel like his spaghettis should be cooked in that kind of restaurant. And then he made him laugh by getting out wine glasses only to pour Sprite into them. It made him feel fancy, he said, he always drunk most of his beverages in wine glasses. 

Chanyeol was barely even surprised when, after the first glass, he got up to get a bottle of wine instead and poured it in the same glasses. He brought a new glass for Chanyeol but he turned him down, wanting to drink in the same glass too, just because it didn’t bother him that much and he didn’t want to make more dishes to wash anyway. He almost expected Baekhyun to mix in the Sprite with the wine and when he told him so, Baekhyun eagerly said that he did actually try one day and it wasn’t that bad. Chanyeol scrunched his nose at him. Baekhyun by threatening to pour Sprite into his glass of wine when he wasn’t looking. He retaliated by stealing Baekhyun’s glass and only giving it back when his lower lip sulked at him again.

He continued pouting even after Chanyeol gave him his glass back, even while drinking. Chanyeol had no idea how he did that but he figured Baekhyun was a Cuteness Bender at this point. He’d never see Avatar the same way again. 

They made up by showing pictures of their dogs to each other. Chanyeol decided Baekhyun was a man to marry when he said he wanted to play with Toben instead of looking shocked when he showed him the video of the puppy jumping around in the living, all on his own, without even playing with anything. That was the kind of cute psycho his bestest bud was.

They talked about Chanyeol’s favorite books, about the latest novel he’d been translating, about how difficult it was to translate literary works despite being fluent in the two concerned languages. Baekhyun asked him if he spent a lot of time sitting, asking him about his posture, gave him tips to rest and massage his hands when they started cramping from rushing to write too much. Baekhyun didn’t know most of his literary translations or reference but surprisingly, he said that he’d like to pick up on reading again, even if it was just fifteen minutes a day while commuting in the subway or in taxis. Chanyeol happily recommended him a novel that he’d read not long ago, Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, short but captivating enough for him to still be thinking about it a month after putting it down in his bookshelf.

Chanyeol mentioned the eyeshadow on Baekhyun’s hand, asked if he always had eyeshadow there and why he applied it there. Baekhyun laughed adorably, not mockingly as he told him that this practice was called swatching and that he did it to choose whatever color he wanted to use on the eyes afterwards. Chanyeol kind of wanted to stab himself with his fork when Baekhyun started an entire monologue about swatching and how misleading or important it could be. Passion beautified Baekhyun, magnified his loveliness, made Chanyeol gulp on his wine to choke down the coos he wanted to offer him. Tipsiness blushed Baekhyun up, energized him, dropped his eyes and raised his hands in wide gestures. He got tipsy after only two glasses. Cute.

Baekhyun loved makeup. Chanyeol could tell makeu