Baekhyun’s long fingers curled around the small, elegantly-crafted bracelet in one of the zippered pockets of his white jacket. The metal was cool to the touch, refreshing.

He felt like he was suffocating. The stage was far too small to pack twenty-one groups onto all at once. They were crammed shoulder-to-shoulder, a sea of sequins and fringe and brightly-shining satin. The fluorescent stage lights overhead were unforgiving, beating him down inch by inch until he felt like melting into a puddle on the marley.

The PD stood a few rows back in the seats, addressing all the assembled idols, explaining how the show would work. They all already knew this, but the PDs always felt more confident when they’d run things into the ground. Baekhyun sighed and allowed his mind and eyes to wander.

His grip on the bracelet in his pocket tightened as his eyes flitted from face to face, each idol looking as thoroughly miserable as he felt under their pounds of hairspray and makeup, in their too-tight and uncomfortable stage costumes.

They were crammed so tightly together that it was difficult to see very fast past anyone. Luckily for Baekhyun, the A Pink girls were standing next to EXO. None of them were very tall – and, as rookies, they were all leaning forward eagerly so as to not miss any of what the PD was saying. On the other side of A Pink was IU, who was also short enough that she didn’t prove much of an obstacle to Baekhyun’s vision.

And on the other side of IU was the one person Baekhyun wanted to see most. His grip on the bracelet in his pocket became almost unbearable, the metal digging into the sweaty flesh of his palm.

Daehyun stood between two of the members of his group, Youngjae and Jongup, a vision in all black. He had his hands casually in the pockets of his vest, head cocked to the side as he pretended to listen to the PD. Baekhyun only knew that he wasn’t really listening because his tongue kept darting out to lap at his full lower lip, a nervous habit that Baekhyun was all too familiar with.

He was still staring at Daehyun when the PD dismissed them back to their dressing rooms, wishing them good luck since they would soon begin letting guests in for the show.

Chanyeol slung an arm around Baekhyun’s shoulders as the gathered idols began to disperse, chatting amongst themselves. “I’m hungry,” the goofy giant complained good-naturedly. “Think they’ll let us go get dinner after this?”

Baekhyun ignored his best friend, glancing back at Daehyun. Though Daehyun was engaged in a conversation with Youngjae now, it didn’t stop him from glancing up at Baekhyun briefly. An electric shock went down Baekhyun’s spine when their eyes met, even if it was only for a second. Then Youngjae was leading Daehyun in the opposite direction and he was gone from Baekhyun’s sight.

EXO’s dressing room was a disaster when they arrived, but that was really no surprise. There was never really enough space for all six of them plus their coordis and manager, so there was always a bit of elbow bumping and grumbling when they came to things like this. 

Baekhyun slumped down onto one of the sagging sofas and pulled the bracelet out of his pocket. It was delicate, finely-made; simplistic elegance. It was perfect.

Or perhaps it was perfect because of the person who had sent it.

There was a knock on the dressing room door then, almost drowned in the sea of raised voices and shouting coordis. Eventually Mr. Lee put down his cell phone long enough to go to the door. Baekhyun was only mildly interested in the visitor until Mr. Lee shouted his name, gesturing for him to come over.

As he neared the door, Baekhyun could see that the person who had knocked was a fidgeting assistant holding a tiny wrapped box in their hands.

“This is for you,” the assistant said when Baekhyun approached, bowing his head and ing the gift in Baekhyun’s direction. “I’m not allowed to say who it’s from, only that it’s from a-”

“A secret admirer,” Baekhyun finished for him, accepting the gift. “Yeah, I got it.”

Having fulfilled his unwanted duty, the assistant bowed again and left, and Baekhyun shut the dressing room door while turning the little box over and over again in his hand.

This wasn’t the first gift he’d gotten from his secret admirer. It would probably be more correct to say his not-so-secret admirer, as he knew exactly who was sending them. Daehyun always managed to hide his initials somewhere in whatever gift he sent: in the wrapping, inside the box, sometimes even on the gift itself. The silver bracelet now carefully tucked back inside Baekhyun’s pocket bore the initials JDH on one of the links, etched carefully with precision and talent.

“What’s that?” Sehun asked, popping up unexpectedly over Baekhyun’s shoulder. “Another gift from your secret admirer?”

Junmyeon frowned, causing his coordinoona to sigh and try and fix the makeup he’d just messed up. “I don’t think you should be accepting gifts from an unknown person,” he said in his typical leader fashion. “You don’t know what’s been done to it. It might’ve been tampered with. There might be audio or video recording. Or something worse. You should get rid of it immediately.”

“I’m not getting rid of it,” Baekhyun rolled his eyes, tucking the little wrapped box into his sleeve. “I’m going to the restroom.”

“You mean you’re going to open that gift privately,” Jongin cackled.

Baekhyun replied with a significant hand gesture before letting himself out of the dressing room.

The hallways were blessedly quite and calm after the hectic stress of the dressing room. He was already tearing the paper off the gift before he even reached the restroom. He waited until he was safely locked away in a stall, however, before opening the little box.

Inside the box was a little keychain bearing a cartoon image of cheesecake, along with a note written in cute, loopy handwriting. Baekhyun read it to himself, mouth mumbling the words: Let’s go out for some cheesecake sometime, hyung. It was followed by the cutest smiley face Baekhyun had ever seen in his life.

He sat in the bathroom stall for a while longer, clutching both the keychain and the note in his sweaty palm.

Eventually he had no choice but to return to the dressing room. There were only six groups performing before EXO, and he needed to be ready to go to the waiting room after VIXX.

He was walking down the deserted corridor toward EXO’s dressing room when someone turned the corner and he stopped in his tracks. It was none other than Jung Daehyun, all y lips and mysterious eyes and he really was attractive.

It took him a moment to notice Baekhyun, but he also stopped as soon as he did. They stared at one another, neither knowing quite what to say.

Even though Daehyun had been sending Baekhyun not-so-secret admirer gifts for almost a year now, this was the first time they had actually met face-to-face.

Baekhyun wiped his sweaty palms on the legs of his skintight pants, heart pounding erratically.  “Uh, hi. Daehyun-ssi, right? From BAP?”

Daehyun recovered himself and bowed. “Right. I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure of officially meeting before, Baekhyun-ssi.”

“Y-you can call me hyung,” Baekhyun stuttered out, blushing bright crimson and hating himself for it.

The corner of Daehyun’s sinfully plump lips turned up in a smile. “Thank you. Please, speak informally to me as well. I’d like to think of us as friends.” There was a faint blush dusting his cheeks as well.

That, more than anything, spurred Baekhyun to do the absolute reckless. “Daehyun-ah,” he said, voice trembling. “Do you like cheesecake?”

Daehyun’s blush definitely deepened then. “Ah, yes. It’s my favorite food.”

“I really like cheesecake too,” Baekhyun said, heart pounding so hard now that he was sure he was going to faint. “D-do you maybe want to go get some sometime? With me, I mean.”

Daehyun definitely wasn’t hiding his smile now. “Sure. That would be great, hyung. I’d like that a lot.”

“Good.” Baekhyun’s hands were trembling as he drew his cell phone out of his pocket and handed it to Daehyun. “Call yourself from my phone. That way we’ll both have each other’s numbers and we can schedule a day when neither of us have schedules.”

Daehyun took the phone and quickly plugged his number in, calling his own phone and letting it ring before hanging up and handing it back to Baekhyun. He was positively beaming. “I look forward to it, hyung.”

“Me too,” Baekhyun agreed. “See you later. And good luck on your performance today.”

“You too,” Daehyun called, continuing on towards the bathroom.

“Oh, and Daehyun-ah,” Baekhyun said suddenly, turning around.

Daehyun turned back around as well, eyebrows arched in surprise. “Yes, hyung?”

Baekhyun pecked him lightly on the lips. “I love the keychain, by the way.” 

prompt: You're so near yet so far away

For: Locket_fire_blinga

I had so much fun writing this one! I love cross-pairings! 

(I actually did a lot of research for this one, too, since it's based on a real event. It takes place at the Music Bank Incheon show on August 31, 2012. I even researched the weather for that day OTL)

And the picture is actually them from this specific show ^^