Title: the thing about guppies
Pairing: Baekhyun/Chanyeol
Genre: slight!angst, timetraveler!AU
Rating: G
Summary: All he needs to do is close his eyes, and Baekhyun is back in his arms again.
A/N: AU of the movie About Time, so if you find any similarities, it's meant to be that way. I don't own anything but the words, which means the movie is to be credited for the plot.

based on *spoiler - highlight to read*  the movie About Time in which the main character is a time traveler

                It’s a lonely night. Ivory curtains drag lazily against the wall from the breeze, trickles of springtime grazing lullabies by the walls through the open window. Moonlight casts soft shadows across the room and Chanyeol studies them, blacks against whites against navy blues. The clock sitting on his bedside cabinet is blinking red digits that read 12:34 AM. It is now the 6^th of May; Baekhyun’s birthday.

               Taking a deep breath, Chanyeol closes his eyes and lets the air drift over his body. Like always, he is going to escape. In a suctioning warp, Chanyeol catapults into a null space. For the celebration, he will not be here. Instead, he will be there.

                May 6^th, 2006. That is where he is right now, in the closet of Baekhyun’s house, dressed in the same clothes he’d been wearing that day during the game of 7 Minutes in Heaven. It’s dark: no outlines, no nothings – he has just entered the room, he assumes.

                “So…” he hears a voice say. It’s Baekhyun’s. He always comes back to see one face and it’s Baekhyun’s.
 

                “Uhm,” Chanyeol replies, because he knows this is how it went ten years ago at this exact party, the night that had changed everything. It takes a moment for him to adjust to the fact that he is really here with Baekhyun by his side. He does it often, traveling back in time, but he still hasn’t gotten used to coming back to the remedy he needs.

                “Yeah, uhm… so I’m just gonna try to pound really hard on this door and tell them I’m having an asthma attack so they let us out?”

                Baekhyun is shifting in the dark: Chanyeol can tell by the sound of his clothes ruffling as he tries to get up from his position on the floor. Before he can stand on his feet, though, Chanyeol pulls him down. He’s given this scene over so many shots before, has tried to find the right words a million times. Action, cut, action, cut, rewind, rewind, then played it again. He always loses his breath, though, because his heart is rather timeless.

                “W-Wait,” he says, navigating a hand through the dark to find something of Baekhyun to hold. Surprisingly, it’s his wrist.  “Please stay? I… This is really nerve-wracking for me because you’re my senior and all, but… uhm, I… just really admire you? Like I really thought your voice was amazing at the talent show – which was quite a while ago – but I kind of want to know if you… uh….”

                Baekhyun sits down, and Chanyeol’s heartbeat quickens like it does every time.

                “Uhm, I mean… I... like you. I don’t know if you’ve heard the rumors, but they’re not true! I don’t… I didn’t like, record anything at the talent show. I swear it’s all in my head only. I mean, I love your voice and all but I’m not a creep? So… uhm, yeah. I just wanted to say that I’m kind of feeling awkward right now and that I have feelings for you even though you don’t have a clue about who I am and uhm, this whole party – I don’t really go to parties – it’s… really bizarre, and I just came because I thought you’d be here and I had no idea people wanted to shove me in a closet with you but we’re here now…”

                How is it that he manages to sound so stupid all the time? Chanyeol’s rambling dies with a dry throat.

                “I know you,” Baekhyun chuckles in the dark. He’s closer; Chanyeol can feel it.

                “… Y-You do?”

                “Yeah, kinda figured I should check out who this fan of mine was after I heard some of your friends teasing you about how flustered you got whenever I’m near. Curiosity gets the best of me all the time, you know?”

                “Oh. Oh, oh gosh. You heard them say those things about me – wow, uh, I’m really embarrassed right now?” Chanyeol squeaks out. “I’m sorr…?”

                A hand finds its way onto Chanyeol’s shoulder, and the next thing he knows, he’s kissing Byun Baekhyun: class of 2008’s heart throb, the most wonderful piece of humanity to ever grace this planet.

                “You make me happy,” Baekhyun says, and Chanyeol sits frozen as he pecks him again. “And I like your voice, too. You’re also very cute, so I don’t know what you were waiting for.”

                It had actually taken Chanyeol six different times to catch on to what Baekhyun had meant by this. He’s mastered it now, though.

                “Oh, okay, uh… Will you... I mean, I get my allowance on Friday and I’ve been saving up for a while now so – if you’re free, would you like to get some lunch with me after school? Oh god, that sounds so middle school. Just, p-please go out… with me? On a date, I mean.”

                “On a date?”

                “On a date.”

                “Thought you’d never ask,” Baekhyun says with a laugh. The younger’s face heats up in the dark. “Thanks for coming to my party, Chanyeol.”

                If Chanyeol were to be asked about his favorite day, he’d answer differently every time. He has no favorite; just any day with Baekhyun is enough to spell the word perfect. In fact, they’re so marvelously spectacular that he visits them again and again. If his life is a video, then it ends right where Baekhyun dies and starts with 7 Minutes in Heaven and then all the in-between’s, Chanyeol picks and chooses then replays them when he finds himself at the precipice of a cliff, one step from falling. When he starts to miss Baekhyun so incredibly much that he thinks he will break, he goes back to visit him. His day always consists of multiple reruns.

                “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

                This time, they’re ditching lecture and having a mini picnic in the quiet part of campus, lying peacefully in the ankle-deep grass as they talk.

                “Your husband?”

                “No, I’m serious,” Baekhyun laughs, and Chanyeol grins.

                “Really, though. I want to be your husband.”

                “That’s illegal, Park Chanyeol.”

                And Chanyeol wants to tell him that no, it isn’t, not as of 2013 when gay marriage is allowed. He wants to say that they elope under the blessing of all the people they know, that their wedding happens winter of 2014 in the hotel they’d danced in during prom of their senior year in high school. He wants to say that it snows that day and that they say the most ridiculous vows, something about forevers, and that Jongdae sings them congratulation songs – twice, because the first time, he messes up, and because Chanyeol wants the day to be perfect, he goes back in time and hands his friend a bottle of water before he goes up. He wants to tell Baekhyun that they buy two goldfish and name them Fin and Flipper because they’re not ready to adopt kids or dogs yet but they want to make some kind of family. He wants to tell Baekhyun that they die two weeks after so maybe they shouldn’t really buy goldfish but maybe buy some guppies instead, because guppies live slightly longer.

                “What if you were a guppy?” he asks, but this is not in the script. Baekhyun hits him playfully and digs his face into his arm, laughing.

                “Then maybe I’d be able to marry you, you big oaf.”

                But sometimes, Chanyeol thinks, it’s not the same. He goes back in time and then he lives these moments again, but he knows that it’s untrue. It’s true, yes, but not quite. Baekhyun does not know he’s come from the future so he can see his face again. And it hurts Chanyeol a little bit every time. But he goes back, day after day, because he cannot let go and he cannot move on.

                “Hey.”

                When he opens his eyes, it is early in the morning and Baekhyun is inches away from him, smiling a smile so bright it blinds his eyes. Or maybe it’s the sun leaking through the blinds, but Chanyeol thinks it’s Baekhyun anyway. It’s always Baekhyun.

                “Happy dreams?”

                “Happy dreams,” Chanyeol replies, and rubs Baekhyun’s warm cheek with slow circles. He feels so alive, so real. It’s here and now that Chanyeol realizes he has to stop doing this to himself, and to Baekhyun as well. A throb reappears in his left chest, then his throat, and then he’s crying. It’s not a loud sobbing or a silent streaming of tears. He’s choking on his own heart and squinting because the tears are blurring his eyes.

                “… Chanyeol, what’s wrong?”

                They fall, the droplets, and stain his pillow as well as Baekhyun’s hand. He doesn’t know what to do anymore, just knows that he wants Baekhyun back and he wants him back bad. Pain from loving someone who doesn’t love you back is a selfish kind of sadness. Chanyeol is not selfish, and Baekhyun is not selfish either. They are both stuck in time, stuck in mutual sadness, though Chanyeol knows it and Baekhyun does not.

                As the tears fall, Chanyeol thinks that it is unfair. It’s unfair that he gets to travel in time to kiss Baekhyun again but doesn’t get to save him. It’s unfair that he gets to see Baekhyun’s reaction when he gets him chocolate-covered strawberries for Valentine’s Day to find out he’s allergic, then un-buy the gift and get him couple rings instead. It’s unfair because he gets to redo and undo all these miniscule details to become the most perfect Chanyeol Baekhyun could ever have, only to lose him and not be allowed to bring him back. There are rules that come with time travel, and one is that Chanyeol cannot revive dead people. He wonders fifty times a day the same question. Why? Why, why, why, why, why?

                “I’ve got something in my eye,” Chanyeol says with a raw throat, Baekhyun’s hands on his cheeks in concern.

                “Such a guppy,” Baekhyun says then, sighing as he wipes the tears and kisses him on the lips. “You’re as dumb as a guppy sometimes.”

                Bringing Baekhyun in a hug, Chanyeol takes a deep breath and memorizes the way the older’s small arms wrap comfortingly around him, head burrowed in his chest as his hair brushes gently on his chin. “But I want to be a goldfish,” he says. He kisses the top of Baekhyun’s head, closes his eyes, and there is a spastic jolt before he is back in the same bed, only with air in his arms. The sheets are still warm and his heart is still warm, but the only difference is that this time, it will fade. Everything will fade in the end, and Chanyeol caves into himself as he lets himself cry.

                Tonight, he thinks, he will say goodbye.

feels like it's been forever since i wrote baekyeol for some reason? it's homely though, baekyeol.
i think i'm most comfortable writing this ship for whatever reason.
anyway, this thing was based on the part in About Time where the main chracter, Tim, goes back in time to visit his dead father. only difference is that his father is aware of his visits while baekhyun isn't. i  don't know, the whole movie was ok but those couple of scenes got me really sad and choked up so i wrote this;;