Warning(s): implications of ual assault, lots of insults
Length: 5.3k words

“Let’s go to a party.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Baekhyun looked at you strangely when he stopped at a red light. “Yeah, it’s a ing great idea. Parties are always fun—especially when I’m there.”

He grinned wildly at you, but you couldn’t give him the same amount of enthusiasm. As handsome and awful as he was, you weren’t just going to gloss over the parts of him that you liked; you were going to worry about him too, and right now your heart was racing.

“You just sped through four red lights,” you pointed out while trying to smile. Five minutes ago, you just sped through four red lights for the sake of going to a liquor store, you wanted to say yet didn’t. “Maybe we should head home.”

“And do what?” Baekhyun scoffed. “Let’s go to a party and do body shots.”

The idea of drinking vodka of Baekhyun’s body or vice versa was undoubtedly appealing, but there was nothing more appealing than getting home safe.

“No, that’s too much,” you whined. “We could just hang out and watch a movie or something.”

You were pouting and doing everything you could to appeal to Baekhyun to shut up about going to the party, but he didn’t even look at you; he merely shook his head in disapproval.

“I’m going to a party,” Baekhyun said adamantly. “It’s a ZAP party anyway.” ZAP, otherwise known as Zeta Alpha Psi, was Baekhyun’s frat, and at the end of the day he was still a frat boy with frat-y, so-called obligations. “You can get someone to pick you up,” he continued. “You don’t even have to go inside. You can go home if you want.”

“But you’re going.”

Baekhyun, with one hand draped over the steering wheel, looked at you with a lazy squint that bordered on tired-of-your- and sheer cockiness. “Just cuz I’m going,” he said, “doesn’t mean you have to.”

“Course it does,” you murmured, averting your gaze from his.

“Explain it to me then, cuz I don’t get you.”

“It’s nothing,” you waved off, suddenly shy. It sounded a lot better when you thought about it, but having to say it out loud seemed childish.

“Baby.”

“I said, it’s nothing.”

“Chun,” Baekhyun said more forcefully, his voice laced with annoyance. “Remember when I said that I didn’t like shy girls? Well, you’re being shy right now and it’s ing stupid and I hate it.”

Ouch? You were hurt—mostly offended—that he would say something as harsh as that, but you considered it as justified. You were being a little .

“I just feel like I have to go,” you finally acquiesced as you turned to him, “because,” you squeaked in a small voice, “you’re like, I don’t know… my boyfriend, I guess.”

You wanted to Baekhyun to ignore you or at least pretend that he couldn’t hear you over the sound of his car, but he heard you. He heard you and he immediately broke out in a sly grin that made you blush so hard that you once more turned your head away from his gaze. Unfortunately, you were still in his car, and he placed a hand over your thigh and squeezed lightly.

“Boyfriend?” You could hear the smile in his voice. “We’ve been on one date. Aren’t you rushing a little?”

“You ate me out on that one date, and I your ,” you retorted, frowning. “Aren’t you rushing a little?”

“Yeah, but that’s my thing. Can’t stop, won’t stop.” Baekhyun winked at you when he reached another red light. “Besides, I don’t like to put labels on things. It makes things complicated.”

You didn’t know how or what to make of that, so you kept yourself quiet until Baekhyun pulled up to ZAP’s main house. There, multiple cars were parked and lined against the curb, and the windows of the house were all , the soft hum of loud music wafting out of the open front door. Being in LA, especially on frat row, the houses were large, but ZAP was impressive with its Greek-styled pillars that were now wrapped with colorful ribbons.

Baekhyun parked his car across the street from the ZAP house and rolled the roof up. He then went over to your side and helped you out of the car—and in a moment that shocked you, held his hand out for you to hold.

“Come on,” he said. “Come on, girlfriend,” he added after a moment. He grinned and you gladly took his hand.

Girlfriend. It sounded so right. Even if he didn’t mean it, you could dream, couldn’t you?

As much as you wanted to hold onto Baekhyun’s hand for the rest of the night, he released himself from your intertwined hands when he went over to greet his frat brothers. A tinge of hurt struck you in the heart that he could leave you just like that, but confusion quickly replaced that pain when you saw one of your good friends sulking and angrily drinking from a red cup.

“Jessica?”

Jessica, quite literally standing in between two sets of couples kissing each other sloppily on the mouth, was a comical sight. Her gaze was faraway, like she was staring at some imaginary scene that made her scowl. While the party around her laughed and got drunk, she was just standing there. It was only when you called her name that she looked up.

“What?” she snapped at you when you had gotten close enough.

“Jeez,” you whistled. “What the is up with you? You were literally frowning at the floor.”

“Oh.” Jessica shook her head and took a big swig from her cup. “Nothing. I just found out that Chen has a girlfriend.”

Oof. “Oh, I’m sorry, Jess. I know you really liked him—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever,” Jessica muttered, waving you off. “I’m just ing pissed that he never told me. I mean, we’ve been hanging out and doing together, and it never came up to him to tell me that?” She faked a gag and rolled her eyes. “I hate men.”

You were about to bring up the fact that she had moved heaven and hell in order to get the professor as the Chen boy for one of her classes, but an arm had s itself around your shoulders. One glance to the side, and you saw Baekhyun’s jaw directly in your line of sight.

“Hey,” he said, greeting Jessica. It had only been a few minutes since you had come to the party, and his breath already smelled strongly of alcohol. “Enjoyin the party?”

“I will when I get drunk.” That was all Jessica said before she pushed past you and Baekhyun to presumably refill her cup.

“She’s a fun one, huh?” Baekhyun hugged you closer to him to allow a group of people to walk behind you two. “What’s her problem?”

“Oh, Jessica? She just found out that this guy she liked has a girlfriend.”

“. What’s the guy’s name?”

“I don’t know. Some dude named Chen.”

Baekhyun tensed up beside you, but you didn’t deem it as worrying or a reason to look away from Jessica. She had pushed through a group of people before angrily yanking out a can of beer from a cooler, and you had to admit to yourself that you kind of felt bad for her. You used to do stuff like that, and you knew how much it . In fact, your very first experience with drinking was because you were absolutely convinced that drinking five shots at 17 was the way—the only way—to get over a broken heart.

“Chen?” Baekhyun asked, interrupted your reverie. “Wait, really?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. It’s a stupid name. I think he goes by that because—”

“His girlfriend tried to me like two months ago.” What? Baekhyun must have heard your thoughts. “Yeah,” he continued, “I was drunk as hell, and she pushed me into a ing closet and tried to go down on me, but I think her friends stopped her.”

“Are you serious?” you gasped upon hearing the information. Baekhyun nodded, his eyes wide as if to say believe me. “Why didn’t you tell him? Isn’t he your friend?”

“I tried telling him,” Baekhyun explained, “but I was super drunk anyways, and he didn’t believe cuz he thinks Mira’s too innocent to ever wanna me.”

He shrugged like it didn’t matter to him, but it really ing mattered to you. There was a girl—a girl with a boyfriend who happened to be friends with Baekhyun—that tried to him while he was drunk. Logic told you, if it happened once, then it probably had happened multiple times before. After all, how else could someone be so aloof over a crime? An assault? Baekhyun continued to explain the situation to you, but your mind was fixated on that one thing.

“I can’t believe Chen’s still with her when she basically cheated on him,” Baekhyun rambled on. “Honestly,” he looked around the crowded room, “get Jessica. I’ll tell her tips on how to get someone to cheat cuz Mira deserves to get hurt.”

Before Baekhyun could move away to find your friend, you grabbed onto his arm. “Wait,” you said, drawing his attention.

“What?”

You almost didn’t have the courage to ask him—especially not when he looked at you with those eyes. Despite not having personally known him for long, you considered Baekhyun as relatively harmless despite his reckless actions here and there or all over the place. After hearing about how someone had pushed him into a closet and tried to commit ual acts to him, you could no longer see Baekhyun as another frat boy ringleader of dangerous stunts. The same thing had happened to you at your first college party, and it scarred you for at least week. Baekhyun’s eyes, slightly drooping at the outer corners, staring into yours with concern for you yet not for himself only made your hurt worse.

“H-Has that happened before?” you asked timidly. “Have girls really tried having with you while you were drunk?”

“Tried?” Baekhyun echoed. “No, they have.” He shrugged again. “Not like it matters that much though. Sometimes I start it.”

Sometimes?

“Yeah, but if you were drunk…”

Baekhyun tilted his head to the side and seemed to piece together what you were insinuating. “Chun,” he said, when he seemed to realize what you were implying, “it’s not that big of a deal if I was drunk or not.”

His words were enough for you. He didn’t understand completely what you were saying, and if he did, then he didn’t care.

“You can’t consent if you’re drunk, though,” you said. “That’s not how—”

“It’s not that big of a deal, though.”

“But—”

“Are you a Title Nine officer?” Baekhyun interrupted, snapping at you. His eyes were now annoyed and angry at you—again. “What the is this?” he exclaimed with a scowl. “I’m a grown man, Chun. You don’t need to be reminding me of this .” He flippantly shook your hand off his arm. “We’re literally at a party and you want to be talking about this? Are you ing serious?” He scoffed and exhaled a hot breath. “, if I knew you were going to be this annoying, I would have called you my girlfriend sooner.”

Oh, .

He didn’t have to use his hand, but he had slapped you in the face regardless.

“My friends are outside,” Baekhyun said, completely disregarding the hurt you felt that was manifesting itself on your face, “and I’m gonna go drink with them. You wanna come or you wanna stay here and lecture someone else?”

“I’ll stay here,” you mumbled, still in awe of what he had said to you.

“Chun, we’re at a party, why the are you whispering?”

“I said I’ll stay here!” you said louder, angrier. Your own outburst didn’t seem to faze Baekhyun like his did to you; he merely curled his lip upward with distaste and walked away from you.

And he didn’t even apologize.

You stood there silently for a moment as the party around you lived and breathed, but you tuned out all of it as you tried to comprehend Baekhyun’s actions. Words of warnings—or wisdom, in retrospect—particularly from your sorority sisters that had been involved with Baekhyun returned to you, and you couldn’t believe that you disregarded them almost completely. Baekhyun was an impatient jerk, and you knew that, you ing knew that, but you ignored that fact. They said he hated it when g