Warning(s): cursing
Length: 5.5k words

Despite all the terrible things Baekhyun had done, you still found yourself underneath him, his lips pressed against yours as he held you down on the hood of his shiny red Mercedes. Your hands were in his hair, begging and pulling for him to never your lips alone again. He reciprocated wholeheartedly, so much so that you could taste the Smirnoff on his tongue. It was only 4PM, yet the two of you had already committed to bad decisions.

You wished it wasn’t so easy to forgive Baekhyun, and you wished that you had more power to hold, but when it came to him, all he had to do was say baby, and you were clay in his deft fingers.

Baby, he had left you a voicemail the afternoon after his drunken outbursts from the night prior, what’s wrong? You’re not answering my texts. And you weren’t going to answer those damned texts or even call him back, but then he showed up at your doorstep, his hair ruffled, his stupid grin lopsided, his hands holding a bouquet. Then suddenly, all he had to say was hey, baby with a little husk on the hey and a little vibrato on the baby and all your resistances fell away.

The next thing you knew, you were believing him when he said he was sorry for last night. You even went as far as forgiving him.

You told yourself you would go back to hating him after a day, but a day turned into a week, and now here you were—pinned down on the hood of his Mercedes and kissing him.

Why you forgave him so quickly was still a nebulous idea to you, but you attributed your swiftness to let bygones be bygones to the fact that you still wanted him. You still wanted him to want you, to be with you, to have you. It was a bad decision, of course, but you had debated and reasoned it with yourself, and you had concluded that even bad decisions could have good outcomes. What that good outcome was, you didn’t know, but none of it mattered—at least not in this moment.

Baekhyun pulled away after a few minutes to catch a breath, and he remained bent over you as the sun soaked him in yellow. His tongue rang over his bottom lip slowly as if to tease, and when he was done, his saliva highlighted the glinting silver of his lip piercing with a sinful shine.

“Whatcha thinking about?” he asked, your cheek. “You look distracted.”

“Nothing,” you mumbled, “just kinda tired.”

“Kinda?” Baekhyun teased. “You can’t be ‘kinda’ tired and kiss me like that, baby.” He bent down to kiss your exposed neck and extended that kiss into a wet trail down to your chest, where he pulled your lowcut blouse down to reveal your .

“Stop,” you said as you pushed him away from your body.

“Stop?” Baekhyun raised a brow quizzically. “You don’t wanna get ed on the hood of my car?”

You rearranged your blouse so that it once more covered your exposed . “No,” you murmured, shaking your head. “I’m on my period,” you lied. Truth was, you did want him to take you on his car, but not like this—not when you still wrestled with yourself back and forth about your bad decisions. “But maybe some other time.”

“Periods don’t stop me,” Baekhyun said anyways, “but words do.” He leaned his weight on one hand and looked at you with that one brow raised. “You really sure, baby?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

Baekhyun curled his lip upward in annoyance—but only for a moment. He propped himself up on one arm to look at you as a familiar smirk played on his lips. “So,” he said, “we have another hour to burn before I gotta go.” You hummed in response, and Baekhyun rolled his eyes playfully. “Chun, hanging out with me is a lot like ing.”

“It’s tiring?”

Your words caught Baekhyun by surprise, but he heartily laughed it off. “No,” he wheezed, “there has to be symbiosis.”

“Sim-by-o-sis?”

“Symbiosis,” Baekhyun repeated delicately. He begun tracing the outline of your lips with the pad of his thumb. “Say it again, baby.”

“Symbiosis,” you echoed after his pronunciation. As your lips moved, his thumb did too.

“You just can’t,” Baekhyun continued, “be around me unless you’re doing your part, Chun. You think I keep boring girls around?” He shook his head. “I don’t. That’s what symbiosis is to me, baby. Mutually beneficial.” Though he had wiped his grin off his face to say those words seriously, his face quickly broke out in a smile. “So if you don’t wanna , tell me what you wanna do cuz I don’t like waiting.”

So awful, you thought to yourself. He didn’t say it explicitly, but he didn’t have to; either you kept him occupied or he would leave. It was simple as that. So goddamn awful. But you loved it.

“Let’s talk then,” you proposed in a whisper. “I wanna know you more, Baekhyun.” Your eyes fell to the silver cross that he was wearing as a necklace. “Do you believe in God?”

 “I used to.”

Used to? You frowned at that. “What happened?” you asked.

“Stuff,” Baekhyun replied tersely. “Nothing that interesting. I just don’t think religion is doing it for me anymore. I don’t need it, I mean.”

“So why are you still wearing that cross?”

“Cuz my mom gave it to me.”

“Where’s your mom now?”

“In Korea. She lives in Bucheon.”

Bucheon. You had never heard Baekhyun say anything in Korean before despite him being Korean, and his English accent was so good that you had also never heard him mispronounce a word, but he said that—Bucheon—in what you presumed was the Korean way of saying it. Why, you had no idea, but you liked the sound of it and wanted to hear more.

“Why don’t you ever talk in Korean?” you asked curiously. “There’s a lot of other Koreans that go to our school.”

“I’m an English major,” Baekhyun said, shaking his head. “Besides, I like this language better. It has a lot of pretty words. Did you know,” he suddenly perked up, “that there’s no r-sound in Korean?” You shook your head no, and Baekhyun’s lips stretched out to accommodate his smile. “A lot of my favorite words start with R, you know. Red, rose, rage, reed, road, rove.”

You giggled at his rapid-fire pronunciation. “Where’d you pick them up from? A children’s book?”

“That’s how I taught myself English,” Baekhyun said, and after a moment he added, “Chun.”

The way he said your name was so beautiful that you blushed and had to look away. It was a short name, and therefore hardly anyone gave it a thought when they said it, but you could tell—just by looking at Baekhyun’s face—that he gave it two thoughts.

“What’s your favorite word that starts with R?” you asked after your blush had gone.

Baekhyun stared into your eyes, seemingly thinking, and you saw his gaze move from eyelash to eyelash until his mouth finally opened. “Repertoire,” he said softly, poetically.

Repertoire, you mouthed silently, and Baekhyun grinned. Though you had no idea what the word meant, you were sure that it meant something pretty.

“Are you sure you’re an English major?” you inquired with your own little mischievous grin. “You could be a linguist since you like these interesting sounding words.”

“That’s true, I could,” Baekhyun agreed, “but no. I can’t just analyze words all day trying to look for a meaning cuz some things don’t need to have one, you know?” You nodded, though you didn’t fully understand for you were focused on how the awful boy moved his lovely lips to say these things. “Some things,” he continued, “aren’t meant to be analyzed, and I think studying a language would defeat the purpose of just feeling the words.”

“Maybe you should be a philosophy major.”

Once more, you had made Baekhyun laugh, and his breaths fanned over your face warmly. “I could never,” he said, still chuckling. “I’ve never been good at that type of ‘to be or not to be’ .”

“Shakespeare,” you quipped.

“Oh?” Baekhyun’s eyes widened with genuine interest. “You know where that’s from?”

“No, but I’ve just randomly heard of it.” Your cheeks were warm in sheepish embarrassment. One of these days, you promised yourself, you were going to impress Baekhyun with a poem; it just wasn’t today. “Where’s it from?” you asked.

“Hamlet,” Baekhyun replied without skipping even one beat. “But Hamlet’s boring as . It’s just some angsty boy butthurt over his dead father.” Baekhyun rolled his eyes and patted your thigh. “You know what I like? I like The Merchant of Venice. Now that,” he whistled, “is actual art.” Baekhyun took a small exhale and closed his eyes as if he was getting ready to perform. “The quality of mercy,” he whispered to you, “is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.”

When he opened his eyes and looked down at you with those dark-browns, you knew you had forgiven him yet again.

The logical side of you said you were stupid, but the thoughtful—perhaps foolishly thoughtful—side of you said it was only right to forgive him for that terrible night and all those things that he called you. You just couldn’t believe it.

This Baekhyun—the Baekhyun lying on the hood of his car with you, talking about himself, talking about sensing over thinking, talking about Shakespeare, quoting Shakespeare—was not the same Baekhyun that had hurt you with his drunken syllables. You simply refused to believe that someone so eloquent—that someone whose favorite word was repertoire—had willingly chosen to hurt you.

He was drunk, you reminded yourself. He didn’t mean any of it.

Baekhyun kissed you again, and the cycle continued; despite every terrible thing he had done, you were still on the hood of his car. His mouth tasted like alcohol that he drank around noon, but his lips were tender, as if he’d never want to do anything but keep you there and worship your mouth with his.

- - - - -

You had purposely left your purse at Baekhyun and Seulgi’s apartment so he had to drive you back there.

“You sure you don’t want me to drive you home?” Baekhyun asked you when you got out of his car. “You don’t live that far from me.”

“But you’ll be late,” you reminded him. “I thought you had an important ‘thing’ to do for ZAP.”

Baekhyun let out an exaggerated sigh and slipped down his sunglasses so he could peek over the rims. “I don’t care about coming late when I could come in you instead.” His grin was just as awful as his joyous laugh when your cheeks burned with red embarrassment. “Kidding,” he assured you, “I’ll get going, but I’ll be thinking about you, baby.”

He drove away, leaving you standing by the street, wondering how a boy with red streaks in his hair could have so much power over you.

“I see that you’ve forgiven him.”

You whipped around quickly as your heart nearly jumped out of your chest. Seulgi. The girl had somehow crept up behind you and had folded her arms in obvious scorn for you. She had most likely condemned you when you showed up at her apartment and let Baekhyun take you out for a ride, and she had most likely seen you kiss him goodbye when he dropped you off here. Maybe it was just her dark eye makeup or maybe she truly did find you disgraceful.

“I’m that pitiful, aren’t I?” you ask numbly. “Just tell it to my face,” you said in defeat. “I’m brainless. I’m ty. I’m stupid. I’m—” You sighed and felt a lump form in your throat. “I’m nothing. Always have and always will.”

Seulgi was silent for a moment as she stared right into your eyes. You couldn’t tell if she was judging your or pitying you—maybe both.

“Let’s go inside,” she said after a moment, and you followed her back into her and Baekhyun’s apartment.

Once there, you expected her to sit you on the couch and berate you for allowing yourself to get involved with a heartbreaker like Baekhyun, but she didn’t. Instead, she led you outside to the patio where there were two patio chairs placed on opposite sides of a small table. On the table was a laptop and camera which you assumed were Seulgi’s since she was a photographer.

“Baek and I used to sit out here all the time,” Seulgi said as she motioned for you to sit on the chair across from hers. “Course, that was ages ago. We don’t really hang out the same anymore.”

“Why not?”

Seulgi looked up at you as if to say “really?” with her eyes. “He started drinking,” she explained regardless. “Like a lot. And he was never the same after he joined that stupid frat.” Seulgi huffed and continued to cross her arms as if talking about Baekhyun boiled her blood. “And now you’re here wanting to talk about his moves.”

“Well,