Chanyeol’s in the middle of jotting down notes on the powerpoint slide that their professor’s lecturing on when his phone quietly vibrates in his back pocket, rattling slightly against the plastic of his seat. He ignores the vibration, scratches out the last few of his hangul, and looks back up to the front where his professor paces, sternly teaching the auditorium of second-years on the importance of lipids.

His phone vibrates again after another minute, and then three times more in succession, until Chanyeol hastily snatches it out his pocket before his seatmate thinks there’s something unsavory going on in the seat of his pants. The girl next to him just gives him a wickedly scornful side-eye and shifts her books as far away as possible with their conjoined seats. He internally mourns the loss of his dignity and scowls down at his traitor phone as he swipes open the screen to check the texts.
 

fartface 10:44 AM
yoda

fartface 10:46 AM
yodaaaaaaaaaaaa

fartface 10:47 AM
u deranged elf reject answer my texts

fartface 10:48 AM
god i’m so bored this conference is Killing me ANSWeR ME

fartface 10:49 AM
i’m gonna show dara your middle-school yearbook photos if you don’t answer me

Chanyeol hastily opens up a new text and thumb-mashes a text out.
 

dara’s bae 10:50 AM
yoIUFDMufckLKaulJLKJLlkAhsol

dara’s bae 10:50 AM
i’ll ing smother you

dara’s bae 10:51 AM
and release /your/ middle-school yearbook pictures

dara’s bae 10:51 AM
you think lightswitch baek was bad? wait til your fans see u in eighth grade’s pageantry

He looks down with satisfaction as his text sends, confident that he’d manage to get the last word in, but the following text has him scowling again.
 

fartface 10:51 AM
please, we both know i Owned that competition. my legs looked amazing, i ain’t ashamed

i’m a hot piece of

Chanyeol rolls his eyes and puts his phone down, intending on getting back to his lecture. But his phone buzzes again, and he drops his pen, giving up on paying attention for the day.
 

fartface 10:53 AM
i got another appearance for the etude house today at 5

fartface 10:53 AM
try not to use flash this time it always makes me look so bloated and washed out

Another event. Great. Chanyeol mentally calculates his time schedule today and grimaces. He’s gonna have to shelf the three o’clock jam session he’d promised to have with Yixing and reschedule the tutoring session with Zitao. He grumbles to himself and texts back a snippy response and shoves his phone back in his pocket, ignoring it for the rest of the class period.

 

“Baekhyun-ssi! Baekhyun-ssi! Look over here!”

“Baekhyun-ssi, your skin looks radiant! Is it the Etude House BB Cream!”

Baekhyun laughs, tipping his head back for a hearty chuckle, and Chanyeol takes the opportunity to snap a picture of the curve of his throat, hands steady, despite the pushing among the fansite noonas.

“Well, it’s just my natural glow, of course,” Baekhyun replies back, winking at the flashing cameras. There’s a loud titter among the fangirls, and Chanyeol does his best to hold back his gagging. He snaps another few pictures, spitefully switching on his Flash and takes a few pictures of Baekhyun’s face, before tweeting those preview shots for his followers.

Within a few seconds, his tweet gets retweeted by 100 followers and notifications start pinging off as replies come in from Baekhyun’s devoted fans. At least ten of them are just users gushing over how gorgeous and handsome Baekhyun looks today, with his slicked-back hair and -sure grin. Chanyeol rolls his eyes, but tweets back with toothy emojis and ㅎㅎㅎㅎ, grinning when they reply back again with squealing emoticons.

He takes another picture of Baekhyun, this one a full-body shot because he’s fortunate to be tall enough to tower over the other fansite noonas to get it. He also tweets this preview along with a ㅋㄷㅋㄷ and a quip about how short he looks in real life. Immediately, he gets mixed responses and another 150 retweets, with fans scolding him for being rude and others making jokes about his and Baekhyun’s comfortable relationship.

Comfortable wouldn’t be the word Chanyeol had in mind for their almost thirteen years of friendship, but it works. He tweets back with a smiley, an innocent ^0^, and goes back to snapping pictures. Baekhyun’ll want to see what he got and nag him later, probably, about not capturing his best angles.

 

Park Chanyeol entered university his freshman year, with bright hopes to find a girlfriend, make connections with the other kids in his major and instantly get offers to all the top music companies in Seoul. Instead, he found himself still stuck with the same old friends from high school and a crappy part-time job at the convenience store a few streets away from campus grounds.

Then, his best friend got recruited into SM Entertainment.

He’d met Byun Baekhyun back when they’d both just come out of diapers at their neighborhood park, when Baekhyun had pompously stomped over to where Chanyeol’d been blissfully building his sandpile and suddenly smushed Chanyeol’s face into his creation with a giant smile on his own. Of course, when the startled waterworks began, Baekhyun had immediately rushed back to the swings where he’d originally been sitting on, and left the scene with no perpetrator in sight.

These had been auspicious beginnings.

(They became actual friends in elementary school when Baekhyun had ferociously defended Chanyeol and his bug eyes and glasses from a bunch of mean-faced bullies and managed to make two of them cry in the ensuing scuffle.

Coincidentally, Chanyeol has a soft spot for scrappy s with hearts of gold, but this is by no means connected at all.)

 

fartface 3:45 AM
you actual i TOLD YOU NOT TO USE FLASH I LOOK LIKE A BLOATED KEN DOLL

fartface 3:45 AM
SAY GOODBYE TO EVER MEETING DARA IN PERSON YOU WAD

dara’s bae 3:50 AM
u man it’s ing threei n hte monring

dara’s bae 3:51 AM
don’t even lie all ur fans were eating u up relax

fartface 3:51 AM
I LOOK LIKE I GOT TEN TOO MANY BOTOX INJECTIONS IN MY UPPER CHEEKS YOU DESSICATED BALLSAC

dara’s bae 3:59 AM
whatever man dont play its fine im gonanisojleepep now

fartface 4:00 AM
YOU HAVEN’T HEARD THE LAST OF ME PARK CHANYEOL I WILL DESTROY YOU

Chanyeol wakes up the next day with at least a dozen more unread messages from Baekhyun and two voicemails. The first one’s from his sister, which is a nice surprise; the message’s about the 25000 won he’d borrowed from her the other week, less nice. The other one is from Baekhyun, and Chanyeol already knows without listening to it that it’s probably at least five minutes of a probably drunk Baekhyun yelling his head off about the pictures and whatever annoying pissant got under his skin that night.

He saves it for the end of the day, and gets up to get ready for class. 

Wednesdays are Chanyeol’s easy days, just one class in the late morning and his regular English tutoring session with Wendy right after lunch, so it’s usually the day he takes stock of all the pictures he’s taken for Baekhyun’s activities since the last Wednesday (if any) and sits down and edits them all before posting them up on his fansite.

Chanyeol has a paper due today, which he managed to finish the week before in anticipation of Baekhyun’s possible events this week, and he prints it out while brushing his teeth, skimming over the paragraphs to make sure he hit every point he wanted. He’ll never tell Baekhyun, but Chanyeol’s discipline and procrastination towards his academics have really improved since becoming one of his fansite managers. It feels nice not having to scramble the night before to finish a project or a fifteen-paged paper for a class, even though having to make himself do the work almost immediately after assignment still feels like forcibly pulling toenails off one-by-one.

He grabs a yogurt cup from the fridge and a disposable spoon from the cupboard and checks one last time through his backpack before heading out the door for class. The walk from his dorm to his classes is a brisk ten minutes, and he likes to take the time to psych himself up for class—read: slap himself awake so that he’ll be functioning later on. Chanyeol makes quick work of his breakfast before tossing it in a nearby trashcan without breaking stride.

After class is an hour-long lunch with his friends, usually Kyungsoo and Jongdae because they share the same schedule with him. Every once in a while, Joonmyeon and Yixing might come and join them because their 20th-Century Chinese Literature class occasionally lets out early. Today’s just the usual suspects, though, and Chanyeol spends about half an hour eating grey cafeteria food with them before leaving early for his tutoring session with Wendy.

He was supposed to have gone over the next two chapters of the workbook before Wednesday, and Chanyeol technically did, but he’d also been half-waiting for Baekhyun’s arrival back at Incheon Airport from a recording in Changsha over the weekend, so nothing really stuck. So now, Chanyeol sits outside of their regular room in the quiet study area of the Art and Music Library, and tries to cram in what he can before Wendy arrives and trounces him for neglecting his studies.

The session goes as well as can be expected. Wendy only raises her eyebrows when Chanyeol flubs his readings, and smiles when he blushes and tells her why. The smile is innocuous enough, but the extra readings and work problems she assigns him at the end of their session say otherwise. He groans, but it’s his own fault for not having done them immediately.

(In his mind, Chanyeol childishly blames Baekhyun entirely for the extra pile of work and pictures dumping a thousand textbooks over a dancing and cackling caricature of his best friend. The cartoonish demise helps lift his mood a little, and he makes a tiny note to possibly include it in his upcoming photobook for his site.)

He gets back to his dorm after a quick pit stop at the school cafe for coffee sludge and a donut to preemptively reward himself for a long afternoon of monotony and too many pictures of Baekhyun’s goblin face.

 

Baekhyun looks bored sitting up at the table on stage while Dara cheerfully answers one of the sea of reporters’ questions. Chanyeol adjusts his focus and takes a silly picture of him in mid-blink and giggles to himself while he takes a photo of it on the camera preview display and texts it to Baekhyun. While he waits for him to look down and discreetly read his phone—which Baekhyun always does, regardless of what he’s doing at any event—Chanyeol takes a couple of profile shots of him and Dara, shifting among his fellow fansite colleagues to get a better angle. He takes a few of solely Dara, surreptitiously making sure no one’s watching him. Just as he’s pressing the shutter button on Dara’s mid-laugh, his phone buzzes, almost angrily, in succession three times, and Chanyeol has to duck his head down to hide the obnoxious smile on his face away.
 

fartface 7:24 PM
i will murder u in ur sleep

fartface 7:24 PM
i’m telling dara u pick ur nose and eat ur own boogers

fartface 7:25 PM
show her how charming u rly are

The camera’s thankfully hung around his neck on a secure strap, so Chanyeol can’t drop it like he almost does just now, trying to reply.
 

dara’s bae 7:26 PM
i iwLL ComE UP oNTO ThAT pODiUM AnD PUNchY OU OUT

dara’s bae 7:26 PM
DOnT SULLY mY REPuTATion

Chanyeol glares up at the stage and spitefully takes more shots of Baekhyun, who’s in the middle of giving a response. He scrolls through his preview in disgust, lip curling up in a sneer; of course, Baekhyun would lookperfect in these. He grumbles and takes a grudging snap of the portrait shot of Baekhyun, charming smile in place and eyes creased in laughter, to tweet for the fans. He captions it ‘how greasy’ with a string of ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ and uploads with his mouth grumpily screwed up to one side.

Up on stage, Baekhyun’s curling his lips up into a smug smile, and Chanyeol lifts his camera up to take a snap, ignoring the buzz of his phone.
 

fartface 7:40 PM
i told u ud pay

fartface 7:40 PM
a lannister never forgets

dara’s bae 7:42 PM
that’s a lannister always pays his debts u ing wannabe moron

fartface 7:45 PM
i won’t forget this either

Chanyeol rolls his eyes and checks on the notifications from his twitter that kept buzzing in while he was taking photos. Most of the notifications are just retweets of his photo, but some fans reply back with a ‘oppa looks so beautiful today’ and ‘so cool ㅠㅠㅠ.’ He tweets back to some of them with a generic ^0^, and uploads another picture of Baekhyun, this time with Dara included because the shot looks beautiful, even in preview. He shoves his phone back in his pants, and hoists up his camera, just as Baekhyun looks directly over to his side and stares straight into his camera lens.

The fansite noonas around him squeal, flashes going off and the sound of rapid shutter speeds filling his ears, but Chanyeol just heaves a sigh and takes the gift shot without fanfare. As if Baekhyun can hear the click of his shutter, he immediately smiles wide at Chanyeol, arching a groomed brow, sending his fangirls into a round of shrieks. Chanyeol just takes another picture, rolling his eyes again, and wishes Dara would look his way instead.

Unfortunately, Dara’s distracted by the reporters, so all he has is Baekhyun’s attention, and consequently, the mixed glares and wide-eyed stares from the newer fansite managers. The veteran ones laugh and snap pictures of the two of them, and Chanyeol is willing to bet his favorite snapback that they’re tweeting about how cute the relationship between Baekhyun and the borealis fansite manager is. Baekhyun just encourages them further by giving Chanyeol a cheesy wink; Chanyeol throws up in his mouth a little.

He takes out his phone again and thumbs a series of grumpy texts to Baekhyun.
 

dara’s bae 7:53 PM
you’re Disgusting

dara’s bae 7:53 PM
ur pores are literally oozing grease

dara’s bae 7:54 PM
i think that one fansite miracle beam is trying to burn me alive with her eyes

dara’s bae 7:54 PM
if i end up dead and on tomorrow’s headline news i know who to blame

fartface 7:57 PM
pls i would never be that sloppy

fartface 7:57 PM
aren’t my fans the Best

fartface 7:58 PM
u should be honored i’m even gracing ur deformed yoda face with my attention
most fans would kill to be in ur shoes

dara’s bae 7:59 PM
i’m gonna kill /u/ in a second

fartface 8:00 PM
suffer u little

The vein at his temple throbs a little in low-grade irritation, and Chanyeol manfully resists the urge to flip the bird at a smug-looking Baekhyun. He checks the time on his phone, bored with taking pictures now, and replies to a few more tweets. The conference should end in about half an hour, but Baekhyun probably wouldn’t mind if he checked out early. He’s still got another two chapters to read for his Biochemistry class tomorrow, and it’ll take at least another hour to get back to his dorm from here.

He takes a final picture of Baekhyun, this one of him in mid-speech with a serious tilt in his brows, and tweets one last time with a sardonic ‘even our beam of light can be serious sometimes’ and a matching ^0~ before turning off his camera and taking it apart to put back in his bag. The fansite noonas look at him strangely, and one hesitates before holding out an arm and stopping him.

“Are you leaving already, oppa?” This one looks particularly young—and new; he hasn’t seen her before at any of Baekhyun’s past events—and unsure, biting her lip as he inadvertently raises his eyebrows in response.

“Uh, yeah,” Chanyeol replies, scratching his head. He tries a friendly smile, with Baekhyun’s obnoxious voice ringing inside his head warning him about his creepy-as- toothiness, and hopes it’s reassuring enough. The girl doesn’t look too scared, so he thinks it works. “I have somewhere to be after this, so I gotta go now.”

She frowns, brows furrowing cutely, and Chanyeol admonishes himself for thinking that. Don’t be a ing creep, you pedo, says the Baekhyun in his head, and Chanyeol has to fight back from scowling ferociously lest he scare the girl. “But, oppa, you can’t just leave Baekhyun-oppa before the event ends! We’re supposed to stay until the very end!”

The snort comes unbidden from his nose, and Chanyeol hastily follows it up with an apology. “Sorry, uh, sinus problems.” He sniffs extra loud for emphasis. “But, uh, oppa really needs to go. Baekhyun-sshi will understand. He’s, uh, forgiving like that.”

“Oppa, you’re not a true fan if you leave before our light does,” she says sternly. “This is not a good example to set for the other fans, especially for a fansite oppa.”

Why today of all days? Chanyeol forces himself to smile again, reminding himself that the girl means well. “Sometimes, you have to put yourself first instead of Baekhyun-sshi. And that’s perfectly okay to do. Your life shouldn’t revolve around an idol, and Baekhyun-sshi especially wouldn’t want that life for you.” He pauses, gauging her reaction. It’s still not all too favorable, and he sighs. “Oppa has exams to take tomorrow, which is more important. Besides, I’ve done my duty: I’ve taken enough photos for today’s event for a good medium-sized post. A better example to set for fans is to take care of your studies before anything else, wouldn’t you say?”

In the end, it takes another fansite noona, LIGHTswitch, to pry the girl off him. He gives her a grateful smile, and LIGHTswitch just nods understandingly and ushers the girl back to the other fansites. Chanyeol sighs and finishes cramming the rest of his gear back into his backpack, and looks up one last time at the stage.
 

dara’s bae 8:15 PM
i’m heading out. exam this week. gotta finish studying.

dara’s bae 8:15 PM
tell dara noona i love her and that she’s the most radiant being on this planet bar none

dara’s bae 8:15 PM
try to get something in for dinner before your recording for cultwo

dara’s bae 8:15 PM
you know how cranky and mean u get when u don’t eat

He loiters around a second longer, not really sure what he’s waiting for, but he turns away and starts making his way through the bustle of reporters, a tired grin on his face. Behind him, Baekhyun’s ducking his head down in a matching private smile.

 

The slam of the apartment door snaps Chanyeol awake, shooting himself up from the makeshift pillow of his open biology textbook. He scrubs at the dried trail of drool down the side of his face with a pucker of disgust and stretches his arms out as his body draws out a wide yawn.

“Did you forget to take out the trash again? It smells like something died in here,” calls out Baekhyun’s voice from the living room. Chanyeol rolls his eyes and yawns again before getting up from his desk and exiting his room.

“You say that every time you come here, you . I just did my weekly clean yesterday,” he says, crossing his arms, and meeting Baekhyun’s eyes at the doorway. The normally foppishly-dressed idol is bundled up, hair under a large beanie and face covered up with thick-rimmed plastic glasses, with a woolen scarf drawn around his face. He’s already shedding the fur-lined military jacket that he’d been swimming in and tossing it onto the couch without care.

“Yeah, well, maybe you should clean a little harder then,” Baekhyun retorts, unravelling the scarf around his face. Chanyeol sighs and runs a hand through his head before heading into the kitchen area.

“Whatever, man. What time is it? I thought you’d be still out until at least 3 AM,” Chanyeol says, scratching his back and checking the time on the overhead microwave. “Wow, 1 AM. This is a new record for you.”

Baekhyun’s nestled into the couch by the time Chanyeol turns around to look at his friend. “I asked Minseok-hyung to let me go early today. Besides, my schedule’s free for the next two days, so I decided to take a small break early.”

Chanyeol snorts and starts pulling out leftover dishes that he’d made a few hours ago and shuffling them into the microwave one by one. He opens the rice-cooker and pulls out an already-filled bowl of rice and sets it on the counter along with the other dishes waiting to be reheated.

“No dance practice? No singing lessons? I’m shocked, this is like an actual break for you,” Chanyeol marvels, turning around and leaning against the counter while he waits for the microwave to finish. Baekhyun nods fuzzily, and digs his head further into the cushions, already at home with his socked feet dangling over the edge of the cushion arms.

“What’s for dinner tonight?” he asks through a mouthful of cotton, and Chanyeol chuckles.

“Maybe I should reheat these dishes in the morning. You look like you’re a breeze away from tipping over and passing out.”

Baekhyun manages to lift a middle finger up with difficulty and lets it hover a little before flopping his arm back down on the couch. “As soon as I finish eating.”

“Okay, well, we have leftover bulgogi, courtesy of Yura who came over this weekend, and some quick stir-fried greens, courtesy of moi,” Chanyeol says, pointing out each dish and making a flourished handwave at himself. “And some banchan mom sent over from last week.”

“Oh good, so many things that’ll bloat up my face. I’m so glad I don’t have a schedule,” Baekhyun says, muffled from the couch. Chanyeol sneers and plops the last plastic-wrapped dish in the microwave.

“Well, excuse me for not knowing your schedule down to the dot, Mister Diva Extraordinaire. Next time I’ll be sure to feed you grass clippings and juk for your complexion.” He gingerly pulls the plastic wrappings from the plate of bulgogi and picks it up with the tips of his fingers, moving it quickly from the counter to the kitchen table. He does the same with the other two plates, and grabs for a pair of chopsticks from the drawer.

He spares a glance at Baekhyun, and snorts in exasperated fondness. Baekhyun’s already fast asleep and softly snoring away, face jammed into the corners of the couch but turned enough that he could still breathe. His arms are crossed in a self-embrace, but he’s still hunched in, curled up into a small ball. Chanyeol silently wraps back up the dishes and stacks them all into the microwave, sitting the bowl of rice already inside off to the corner. The chopsticks he leaves on the table; Baekhyun’ll eat in the morning.

He gets a spare blanket from the closet in his room, the thick colorful quilt that his halmoni had made for him when he was still in primary school, and drapes it over Baekhyun’s sleeping form, tucking in the edges so the blanket wouldn’t slip off when Baekhyun inevitably started kicking around and shifting. When he’s done, Chanyeol steps back and stretches his back a little, massaging the lower back with a wince, and looks over to the open door where his room is. He’s still got another chapter to get through before he can justify sleeping tonight.

Chanyeol sighs, resigned, and gives Baekhyun a gentle ruffle on the head, careful not to wake him back up, and heads off to his room.

 

borealis was the result of a bet that’d gotten way too out of hand. To be honest, Chanyeol doesn’t even remember the original reasons why he’d became one of Baekhyun’s fansite managers; all he remembers is the searing annoyance and the gloating smile on Baekhyun’s face when he’d gleefully sentenced Chanyeol to a year’s worth of running a fully-dedicated fansite for him, with the stipulations of having to be present at least 75% of all of Baekhyun’s attendable events plus all airport sightings leaving Incheon. When Chanyeol thinks about that day, he still gets the urge to grind Baekhyun’s smug little troll face into the concrete.

But, as it tends to be with many of the things Chanyeol does for Baekhyun, spite became Chanyeol’s greatest motivator, and he attacked this new life with all the disdainful vigor he could muster—which is quite a lot because, well, have you met Byun Baekhyun?

Two weeks after he first started borealis, fans started flocking to him and his site, retweeting his pictures and spreading the word of a newcomer fansiter who was not only “tall and gorgeous as Baekhyun-oppa (or close to)” but also an amazing photographer with killer design chops. It did Chanyeol’s ego well, seeing all the high praises about his skills, especially since he’s not actually a designer of any sort, but at least the summer classes on web design he’d taken on a lark came in handy.

What’d been most surprising to Chanyeol, though, was the amount of devotion Baekhyun seems to draw out of his fans. Idols, in general, tend to garner quite a large amount of disdain from the public eye. Trivial matters, waste of money, eyesores—and yet, what idols do is carve out of themselves something that speaks to their fans, and in return, the fans offer up their undying loyalty. Not to say there aren’t fans that go above and beyond and toe the lines between fearsome devotion and genuine stalkery, but at least Chanyeol’s managed to limit his interactions to the tamer sides of fandom.

They love Baekhyun. It’s something to marvel at, how much these girls (and boys) eat up every word Baekhyun lets pass his lips and every action he does for the sake of his fans. Chanyeol knows how hard Baekhyun genuinely works to earn that love from the audience, how many hours he spends on his dance moves and how long he stays in the recording studio, perfecting his verses until they soar out of him effortlessly, but it’s the first time Chanyeol’s seen firsthand how much Baekhyun’s fans adore him for it.

During the long waits for events to begin, Chanyeol’s had several conversations with the other fansites and fans who’d wait alongside him for their beloved idol to come on stage, and every time, Chanyeol comes out of it with a little more respect and a little less derision for the concept of a fan’s love. Many of the girls hold Baekhyun up as a personal role model, or reasons to motivate themselves into working harder, and in turn, Baekhyun seems to take these opinions and mold himself to fit their ideas of him better. It’s such a two-way street between Baekhyun and his fans, and the more Chanyeol works behind the scenes as one of his fansite managers, the more he recognizes how much they mean to each other.

Sometimes, Chanyeol even forgets that Baekhyun is actually his friend, a person he’s known since diapers, because the person on stage is just so much more. The Baekhyun on stage is radiant, so full of life and beauty, and Chanyeol is hard-pressed to find any fault with the ethereal being that opens his soul to the world through his songs.

(Sometimes, Chanyeol finds himself falling a little in love with the Baekhyun on stage, too.)

 

Chanyeol finds himself asleep over his textbook again, this time woken up by the loud clangs in his kitchen. He’s disoriented and confused because no one else is supposed to be here besides him, but then the warbling begins, and Chanyeol remembers. Baekhyun’s back.

He groans a little and lifts himself off his abused textbook, the pages already ruffled and dried over from the pool of drool that’d escaped from his mouth overnight, and pushes himself out of his seat. His back protests at the jerk, and he cracks it until he feels the satisfying pop of bones crunching back into place and smiles sleepily. He makes a perfunctory attempt at wiping away the mess of dried saliva over his chin, smearing over it with a palm, and exits his room with a shuffle, scratching his .

“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” whistles Baekhyun, stopping his little ditty to remark at Chanyeol’s disheveled appearance.

“Shut up,” Chanyeol croaks, throat dried out, and coughs. Baekhyun tuts, but pours out a glass of water and presses it into Chanyeol’s hands before turning back to the stove. Chanyeol gratefully gulps at it until his throat feels slick enough for speech again. “What are you making? The leftovers are in the microwave.”

Baekhyun flaps a dismissive hand. “Yeah, I know. I already ate them earlier. I’m making juk for you.”

Chanyeol snorts, but slumps into a seat at the kitchen table, lolling his head onto the tabletop. “You know the last time you cooked, you ruined like four of my pots, right?” Baekhyun scowls over his shoulder at him.

“Do you want breakfast or not, you ingrate?”

“Yeah, whatever. Just don’t set off the fire alarm this time.”

“Just ungrateful,” Baekhyun mutters to himself. “See if I feed you anything next time.” Chanyeol smiles to himself, hidden by the arm that he’s pillowed his head against, and closes his eyes for a bit.

He starts back up when a bowl clacks decisively down in front of him, waking him up a second time. Chanyeol blinks owlishly at the bowl and then up at Baekhyun, who looks expectant, and then back down at the bowl.

“This would be a lot more impressive if I could actually see what I’m supposed to be eating,” he says slowly, rubbing at the corner of his eyes. Baekhyun huffs, but almost obediently goes off to find his spare pair of glasses, and leaves Chanyeol to stare down at his meal. He didn’t even leave Chanyeol a spoon. Chanyeol can’t help but laugh to himself quietly.

The juk looks edible, actually, when Chanyeol pushes his face closer to the bowl to make out the details. It’s a little more watery than what he’s used to, but given that Baekhyun’s last attempt at a meal had ended up with Chanyeol scraping off charcoal from the pans, this is almost gourmet-level. He shrugs and drinks straight from the bowl, blowing at the juk a little in between sips. It’s… a little too salted, with a somehow gummy texture, but Chanyeol downs it all without fail.

Baekhyun comes back to the kitchen just as Chanyeol sets down the bowl, and even without his glasses, Baekhyun’s satisfied beam is visible and shining bright on his face. He sets down Chanyeol’s glasses and seats himself across the table, propping his face up with his palms.

“It’s good, right? Right?” Baekhyun asks eagerly, and Chanyeol rolls his eyes a little but obliges with a thumbs-up.

“You’re the new Martha Stewart of cooking, Byun Baekhyun,” Chanyeol says with a twitch of his lips, and Baekhyun sits back in his chair with pleasure.

“You damn right I am.”

“So, what do you wanna do on your first day of freedom?” Chanyeol asks, rolling the empty bowl around in his palms. Baekhyun adopts a thoughtful expression and tips his chair back a little.

“I… haven’t actually thought about it, come to think of it,” he says slowly. “Maybe sleeping in?”

Chanyeol laughs and gets up from his seat. He brings the bowl to the sink, and sneaks a glance at the damage Baekhyun left from his attempts at haute cuisine; it’s not too bad. Just an hour or two of scrubbing should take care of the mess. Much better than last time.

“Well then, you can join me. I’m going back to bed,” Chanyeol says casually, turning on the faucet and rinsing out the bowl. He scrubs over the surface with his fingers, too lazy to use a sponge, and slips it onto the drying rack when the surface feels smooth again, without clumps. When he turns back, Baekhyun’s staring at him with an unreadable expression, and Chanyeol feels the first inklings of a defensive posture trying to set into his body. He straightens up, keeps his body language open and non-threatening.

“I call right side,” is all Baekhyun says before he flounces to the room, leaving Chanyeol to tread after him. Chanyeol snorts again and dries his hands before following after him. Baekhyun’s already made himself into a human burrito on his bed, stealing the majority of Chanyeol’s sheets, and Chanyeol just pulls before Baekhyun relents and opens up a gap for Chanyeol to slip in beside him.

As soon as Chanyeol’s situated himself, Baekhyun attaches himself onto Chanyeol, like a leech waiting for the perfect moment to dig its suction hole onto its victim. Chanyeol just lets him wriggle around until he settles down, turning his back over so that Baekhyun’s the one spooning him in bed. Baekhyun likes the control, and Chanyeol’s really too tired to argue against it. Besides, he likes the feeling, being cocooned in warm arms and protected from ever having a cold back. Baekhyun has his uses.

“Let’s get ddeokbokki after,” Baekhyun mutters into his ear, just as Chanyeol begins to slip into sleep again. “And samgyetang. I want samgyetang.”

“Alright, you giant baby. We’ll get whatever you want after I sleep. Now shush,” Chanyeol mumbles, curling his fingers around Baekhyun’s thin wrists.

“If you drool on me again, I’m sending Dara the pictures,” Baekhyun warns, and Chanyeol jabs an elbow behind him, smiling sleepily when it connects and he feels a responding expulsion of air on his ears. “You , I’m definitely sending her those pictures now.” He feels Baekhyun’s perpetually cold nose rub itself against his neck, and shivers a little.

“Shut up, dickwad, and go to sleep.”

 

Sometimes, Chanyeol finds himself falling in love with the Baekhyun on stage.

But mostly, he finds himself in exasperation over the Byun Baekhyun who whines over text messages and bothers him during classes every day while he’s doing a fansite or waiting to perform at a music show. Mostly, he finds himself annoyed and probably inches away from committing homicide on national television when Baekhyun needles him through the camera or sits extra close to Dara and deliberately whisper Things to her and pointing at him afterwards. Mostly, he finds himself amused when Baekhyun sends him stupid texts in the early morning about how much he hates having to fix his footwork for a new song or crying emoticons over how he keeps cracking on that one note in the recording studio.

Mostly, he just finds himself content to be in like with Byun Baekhyun.

That’s enough for now.