"Your home?" You ask Baekhyun.

"Huh?" He asks before he discovers what you meant. "Oh. Yeah. I'll walk you home. It's not out of my way anyway."

"Okay," you agree and follow his lead even though you now exactly where your home is. You wade in the silence, allowing the lack of sound to permeate the air and fill the spaces you can't occupy with your voice alone. You should be used to walking with Baekhyun like this, but for some reason it feels different. Maybe it's just you, and it probably is, since Baekhyun doesn't seem to be acting any differently. Which you almost hate. Because a part of you wants to see him uncomfortable. You want to see him pressured. Like he had been at the party. Pressured to go against his own principles just because his motives were tested. 

That's a crazy thing to want.

Because you were so enamored with your own thoughts, time flies by. You arrive at your home and look up in surprise. "We're here?" You ask Baekhyun. 

"Yeah?" He asks you back. "Why, are we not supposed to be here?"

"Oh, no, I just ... never mind," you say, not about to confess that you hadn't expected the walk to last so short. "Uh ... thanks for walking me home," you say, approaching your front porch and reaching for the door. 

"Yeah! Thanks for coming. Actually, thanks for letting me go to the party," he laughs, giving you a little wave with his fingers. 

"We should go again," you suggest lightly, but it turns out that's not the right thing to say, because his eyes darken.

"Yeah," he says to you rather unconvincingly. He purses his lips and looks down at the ground. "I'll see you. Later?"

"Yeah," you say, digging out your key from your purse and inserting it into the key hole. You're about to hear the lock slide open when Baekhyun speaks up.

"Wait," he says, and before you can react, he hops over the front steps, pulls you by your arm, and plants a kiss on your forehead. Every bone, every fiber, every nerve in your body freezes as soon as his lips grace your skin, and he gives you a guilty, almost sly smile before he pulls away. "Night," he says, walking away, a confident stride in his steps. You watch him until the night engulfs him in its black arms, and you turn back to the door, more dazed than you're willing to admit. After standing there for a few minutes and trying to gather your wits off the floor, you pull the front door open and step inside.

-----

You wake up fairly early the next morning. Your mind travels to the occurrences of last night, but you shake your head at the memories and unconsciously fondle the necklace around your neck. The indents of the key press against your fingers as you graze its textured surface. You look down at the key, at the silver simplicity, at the old and fading cracks that stretch and curl against its body. Getting up, you toss the covers aside and get dressed. You're going to buy Baekhyun a wallet, you decide.

You wonder if he'll think your random act of kindness as some form of flattery. You hope he doesn't. Before, you wouldn't have worried about that. You've bought him tons of things in the past without ever having these thoughts related to infatuation. But things change, and for some reason, when you like someone, everything that you or your crush does -