A Compliment, A Blade, A Nickname

Two times Hei catches herself simping and one time Jongdae catches her.

Set: somewhere between chapters 22 and 27.

Another throwback but not part of my rewind because it's not from Baekhyun's perspective :') I realized my last like... 7 drabbles were from his POV LOL and I wanted some Jongdae content 

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The worst part about Byun Baekhyun, Hei decided, was that he was objectively and subjectively speaking incredibly attractive. All the way from features to personality.

Sometimes, she wondered if he was even aware of it. She’d spot him on the helm, steering, looking so incredibly at ease as if the entire ocean simply belonged to him—perhaps it did, in a sense. Did he know he looked good with the wind in his hair like that? Was he purposefully commanding the wind so that he’d look like a picture straight out of a book? Then if Hei summoned up enough courage to join him at the helm, he’d turn and give her that lazy half-smile-half-smirk that reached even his eyes and she could bet her ears were at least red.

It was unfair. Byun Baekhyun as a friend, she could come to accept. He looked out for her, and was genuinely kind to her. Apart from the first night from Hua, he’d never done anything to make her uncomfortable. She did not like seeing his face and have the automatic he’s really handsome thought pop up each and every time.

Today, he was dressed in a crisp white button up tucked into black pants. He had left way too much of the collar open, and after the initial realization, Hei pointedly did not allow herself to look at said collar.

He sat down in front of her and leaned forward on the table. That meant Hei could either look down at her hands or at his face to avoid the collar. She settled with her hands.

“How’s practicing your power with Jongdae going?” he asked.

On second thought, it felt impolite not to look him in the face, so she glanced up. “He’s teaching me how to control it better,” she replied. “It’s… I think it’s working?”

“You think?” he exclaimed in mock outrage. “Is Kim Jongdae even doing his job right?”

“Are you in the position to say that if you can’t do better?” she shot back.

Instant regret filled her the moment the words were out, because he smirked. “If you want me to teach you instead, sweetheart, you can just ask. I bet I’d be better at Jongdae.”

Enough was enough. Hei looked back at her hands. “I’d rather Luhan.”

“Careful. He might accidentally hit you with a potion that turns you into a frog and then you won’t be as pretty.”

“A frog,” Hei echoed, horrified. “He can do that?”

Baekhyun shrugged helplessly. “I honestly have no clue what Luhan’s potions can and can’t do.”

Then it hit her that he called her pretty so casually that it had barely registered when he first said it. Aware of the fact that not just her ears were warm but her face, Hei reached for her glass of water. “Has Luhan turned you into a frog before?”

There was a pause. “No, but he constantly threatens me with it. Then he tells me I’m already ugly so it’s all the same.”

She glanced up at Baekhyun, opened to object, then caught herself at the last moment and didn’t say anything.

Baekhyun raised an eyebrow. “You’re not going to object to that claim?” he asked. “Not going to tell me that I’m not ugly, and say that I’m actually charming and dashing and drop-dead handsome?”

“Then Jongdae would tell me not to lie,” Hei replied with her best deadpan.

“Wow. You are cold.”

Hei took another sip of her water and hoped to God that Baekhyun did not notice how red her face felt.

***

Baekhyun’s cutlass was always stupidly shiny. Given how much Hei suspected that blade had been through, the fact that it caught the light like a perfect mirror seemed impossible.

Maybe it was because he was always polishing it. Sometimes she’d see him shining the blade with the fabric of his shirt casually—a habit, she presumed, one that had unnerved her to no end in the beginning.

It still unnerved her, she wanted to think. That, and the way he would spin it idly in his fingers as if it were nothing more than a pen, making it look so easy and graceful that Hei was half convinced that maybe she could do it as well.

It was a sunny day when Hei walked into the mess hall for lunch and saw Baekhyun lounging on one of the chairs, shining his cutlass yet again. He waved a greeting at her while Hei took personal offense over the fact that he looked really good polishing his blade. She almost wished she could go back to being unnerved by the action. That seemed like the better alternative.

“Hungry?” he called. “It’s almost midday and you haven’t eaten yet?”

“I’m here for lu