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Chanyeol and Sehun are at it again .

It’s been…weird, since Chanyeol decided he was going to ditch growing into being a fun and confident man in favour of becoming Korea’s #1 fuckboy. Okay, it’s actually been weird since he and Sehun stopped whatever-ing, but Baekhyun’s not totally convinced that wasn’t basically the same event. 

He tries not to think about it often, the Sehun-Chanyeol Thing: Sehun had said he was over it—a distressing number of crying nights in everyone but Chanyeol's bed later—and Chanyeol had said they weren't a thing, what was Baekhyun talking about, Chanyeol's at least mostly straight anyway—an absolutely blatant lie which he has fortunately since abandoned—and then he'dstarted going to the gym and a bunch of other people's bedrooms, so Baekhyun had decided he wasn't touching that until it exploded. 

Now they hang out and play video games, or they snipe at each other around Minseok’s dinner table, or—though this option has been on hold for a while—they get drunk and fool around, and then Sehun is miserable again. It’s awful. Baekhyun is genuinely not sure if Chanyeol actually doesn’t care about Sehun’s obviously hurt feelings or if he’s just got better at faking apathy, which should never ever happen, but. Well. They all have separate houses, now, for all that they barely do anything but sleep there. Baekhyun personally has not slept in his own bed more than three nights this month, which is how he prefers it. 

He goes to Chanyeol’s often. It’s unacceptable that currently he’s too pissed off to do that.                              

Which is why he actually lets out the thought that crosses his mind, namely: “Seriously, if you two don’t kiss and make up, I am going to bang your girlfriend—” he jabs his thumb at Chanyeol “—and your boyfriend both, so at least you have something in common.”  

Minseok rolls his eyes. “What, at the same time, or?”

“Oh, fuck you Baekhyun, what the hell is wrong with you? That’s sick, what the fuck?” Chanyeol says, and he sounds pissed, and not even yelling-and-waving-his-arms pissed, like, hiding in his room and glaring at everyone pissed. On Chanyeol, that’s worse. 

Jongin flinches. Baekhyun bites his tongue. Sehun’s hand is tight on his glass. Jongdae is looking around like he wants to ditch them all for his own house and own wife. Minseok is raising his most judgemental eyebrow at Baekhyun over a sip of wine. Baekhyun throws up his hands, but his knee finds Junmyeon’s under the table, just. Just because. Junmyeon is quiet and still, and his expression is flat in the way that means he’s deliberately not doing anything, yet. 

 “I don’t know why Sohyun puts up with you, anyway.” Sehun bites out, into the silence. 

Chanyeol stabs his chopsticks into a slice of beef. “Just because I’m not constantly talking about her doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong. It’s possible to keep that kind of thing private.”

“The fucking irony—” Sehun begins. 

“It’s not sick,” Jongin says, firmly. His face is an unsettling combination of sad and vulnerable and determined. “Not everyone does things the same way, you know? And you must know—have you even talked to Sohyun about that bartender you were seeing?”

Chanyeol's face turns a horrible shade of red-purple. “You, too? I feel like I already said I don't need your help, Jongin, but I guess no one knows how to mind their own fucking business or keep shit to themselves.” he says, with his worst sneer. 

Baekhyun's stomach is lurching. Chanyeol isn't mean—not on purpose. 

Jongin pales. They know—everyone knows—not to snap at Jongin when he's doing something that makes him nervous. “Hyung, I didn't mean it like that, and I didn't tell Taemin, I promise, he just knew anyway because, you know, he sees things," Jongin says miserably. “He said he thought you looked like you were struggling, and maybe needed some advice, I just—" 

“You think I want to talk about this with Taemin?”

“No! That's why we decided I should—”

“So you were going to go back and tell him all about this, yeah? Have a good laugh at my expense?”

“Don't take your bad decisions out on Jongin, Chanyeol,” Minseok says flatly. 

“Oh, so all of you are in on this?” Chanyeol snaps. "I didn't ask for—”

“Yes,” Junmyeon says, loud enough to cut across Chanyeol. “Because when you're being immature and unreasonable it affects everyone.”

Most of the table explodes into noise at once. Baekhyun's throat is stuck, and he can't seem to do anything except listen. He didn't mean to do it again, it wasn't supposed to happen again, he'd thought Sehun and Chanyeol would both snap at him and remember they're on the same side, but apparently everything is worse than he'd realised. His fingers squeeze Junmyeon's knee under the table, probably too hard, but he has to. He has to do something. 

“Guys, please, Minseokkie’s neighbours—” Jongdae puts in. 

“—some of us actually like hearing about someone who makes Sehun happy—” Minseok is saying to Kyungsoo and Jongin on his right side, with his left arm around Sehun’s shoulders. 

“You're a judgemental motherfucker, Junmyeon, and that's exactly why you're the last person I want to talk to about this,” Chanyeol says. 

Junmyeon's voice is cold. “I'm not judging you, Chanyeol. If I were giving you my judgement of your behaviour, you'd know.”

“Junmyeon,” Sehun says, urgently. Baekhyun realises Sehun hasn't spoken in several minutes. “Not now.”

“—Kyungsoo put in all this effort with the food, the least we could do is eat it without—” Jongin is saying, shoulders squeezed together as he sits as close to Kyungsoo as he can without toppling both their chairs.

Chanyeol turns to glare at Sehun instead. “I don't need you to defend me,” he snaps. “I don't need anything from you.”

Sehun's chair makes a horrible screech across the floor and falls over with the speed at which he stands. It stops all the conversations. He doesn't say anything, doesn't look at Chanyeol or anyone, and just stiffly walks out. 

“Sehunnie,” Junmyeon says, soft and plaintive all of a sudden, and gets up to follow him. 

Chanyeol puts his chopsticks down. “Why is it always him that everyone runs around after?” he says, lip curling with bitterness, and he stalks off through the other kitchen door. 

There's a long, miserable silence. Baekhyun looks at his hands for a long time. “Sorry,” Jongin says eventually. “I shouldn't have said anything.”

“Don't worry about it,” Minseok says. “Junmyeon will come back with Sehun, and we're leaving Chanyeol to cool off. Would anyone like a drink?”

There's a round of head shaking. Baekhyun would like a hot chocolate, maybe, but he'll get one of those when he has to go home. Jongin’s got his hoodie up and his face in his phone, now the shouting has stopped, and Kyungsoo is studiously eating. Jongdae's knee bounces agitatedly, shifting his ankle against Baekhun’s under the table.

When Baekhyun looks up properly, Minseok is looking at him. Baekhyun looks back, eyes wide in a what was I even supposed to do? expression. Minseok’s eyes flick to the ceiling. Not that—but his gaze when it rests on Baekhyun again isn’t disapproving. Baekhyun deliberately glances towards the door Chanyeol left through, but Minseok gives a small shake of his head. Jongdae sits to his left, but the chairs on his right and across from Baekhyun are empty. He nudges his shoulder against Jongdae, but it’s not what he really wants, for all that Jongdae leans back against him and ruffles his hair a little. 

Baekhyun doesn’t know what to do. Kyungsoo’s cooking is literally restaurant-quality, but he doesn’t want another bite. He wants to go and speak to Chanyeol, but what the hell would he say? He’s tried to talk to Chanyeol, obviously, but a soft approach didn’t get anywhere, and a firm one just backs Chanyeol into a corner, from more or less everyone but Minseok. And Minseok thinks they should leave him to cool off. 

It’s unsettling, that none of them have a plan. No one really knows what to do with…Chanyeol and women, especially women he’s seeing. Only Kyungsoo and Jongdae (it’s complicated) are actually straight, and Jongdae has two entire children and Kyungsoo's ability to regulate Chanyeol begins and ends at smacking him. Baekhyun himself and Minseok are both technically bi, but they're in the kpop industry,  relationships have to be discreet, and they're surrounded by queer men, so. Look. The number of women either of them have had dealings with? Not high. Jongin is also bi, and has dated more women—not that this is a high bar—but mostly women that Taemin introduced him to. No one can say that Jongin didn’t try his very best to deliver the How To Date Women Reasonably Casually And Still Basically Marry Your Best Friend 101 course. Which seems like exactly the sort of thing Chanyeol needs, but Chanyeol often actively runs away from what he needs and towards things that will hurt him.

Sehun and Junmyeon are both gay gay, although that’s not even the main reason they’re not going to be any help. Sehun has probably tried, honestly, but he’s right in the middle of this, and Junmyeon…Baekhyun would honestly rather Junmyeon didn’t say anything else to Chanyeol, either about Sehun or about sex and dating. Junmyeon is—well. He sometimes has a bit of a blind spot about Chanyeol, who seems to annoy him faster than the others, and draw out less of his softness and care. Not through anything Chanyeol does, really: just who he is, which is a lot more similar to Junmyeon, in some ways, than Junmyeon is at all comfortable with. Junmyeon’s always been harsher with himself than with anyone else. 

Sehun and Junmyeon come back, then. Sehun looks quietly miserable—again—and Junmyeon’s face is set. They’re holding hands. It’s not good, actually, when Sehun starts craving too much of a certain kind of affection from Junmyeon: it should be good and it isn’t, because Junmyeon forgets Sehun isn’t his favourite child and though everyone needs to be babied sometimes, Sehun doesn’t come out of that actually feeling strong or well or secure. There was an awkward time for them, but now Junmyeon and Sehun are usually close in the way you can be with someone who’s technically your ex and you know them incredibly intimately, but now you’re not actually dating or fucking, that intimacy is more settled. 

Look, Baekhyun tried to date a girl once, and now she’s his lesbian BFF. It happens. Sometimes the relationship you want or think you’re supposed to have with people isn’t the one that’s actually going to work. Mostly, Baekhyun is reconciled to this fact.

Sehun curls into his chair practically on Junmyeon’s lap. “Jongin,” Junmyeon says in his leader voice. “What did Chanyeol say to you?”

Baekhyun twitches. That isn’t the right question. He doesn’t know what the right question is, though.

Jongin looks up, but doesn’t unfurl or pull his hoodie down or put his phone away. “More or less the same thing but with more words. I was…just trying to help.”

“Go on,” Junmyeon says. Everyone is quiet; no one is eating. 

Jongin shrugs under the scrutiny. “Tae said, um,”—his voice does this unconscious little half-impression of Taemin’s cadence—“‘It’s not my business if he wants to break five hearts a month, including his own, but he should know there are options.’ So I said I’d try to talk to him about, you know, honest communication and expectations and that not everyone you meet even wants the sortof thing he keeps doing even though it’s making him unhappy, but he just didn’t want to hear it.” 

Minseok is doing that thing he does where he just sortof looks at you and waits for you to be done before he’ll respond. Junmyeon’s lip wants to curl. Sehun is tensely miserable, sitting back up in his own chair as if he isn’t sure whether or not he wants to be touched. Kyungsoo motions for everyone to pass their plates up to the head of the table, and they all dutifully do so. 

Baekhyun reaches across to grab Chanyeol’s. He hasn’t eaten very much, which is so fucking wrong. There’s nearly 190cm of Chanyeol, and he has hollow legs.

The doorbell rings. Jongin jumps up to answer it. Voices, muffled. Then Taemin gives the tiniest head-duck of a bow as he lets himself into the kitchen, Jongin clutching his forearm with both hands. “I wasn’t planning to intrude on your dinner, Minseok-hyung, but I finished work a little earlier than I’d thought.”

Technically true, but obviously incomplete. It doesn’t matter; everyone with eyes knows that Taemin knocked off work ‘early’ to come and pick up a sad Jongin. Which seems to be everyone’s cue to stand up and begin general end-of-the-evening motions; Jongin hugs everyone, including a stiff, blank Sehun who’s just staring at Taemin and Jongin and the way they never quite lose contact with each other even as Taemin seems to hang back and Jongin wanders around saying goodbyes. Baekhyun wanders over to give Taemin a quick hug; it ends up being not so quick, Taemin’s arm curling uncharacteristically tight around his waist. 

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, Baekhyun-hyung,” he says, and it’s only then that Baekhyun realises he is going to do something. His muscles are coiled for it; standing on tiptoe and breathing shallowly. He noses briefly into Taemin’s shoulder, then lets go. Taemin’s calm gaze lingers a little on everyone just before he turns to leave. 

Jongdae leaves on their heels. “Taemin running to fetch Jongin made me miss my wife,” he says over his shoulder on the way out. 

Kyungsoo washes dishes. Junmyeon helps for a while; Baekhyun clears the table and pets Sehun in passing as much as he can. He’d sleep next to Sehun tonight, but suspects Sehun will be crashing at Junmyeon’s. This prediction comes true only a few minutes later, as Sehun mechanically puts on his shoes while Junmyeon calls a car. Minseok and Kyungsoo lean together, hugging, in the corner of the kitchen counters. 

“Are you leaving?” Kyungsoo asks when Baekhyun comes back from the hallway.

It pulls Baekhyun up short. He—supposes he was. Had imagined Kyungsoo would leave and he’d speak to Minseok alone for a while, before…maybe leaving. Maybe taking the spare bed. Baekhyun swallows. “I—don’t know,” he says. Then, “Not right now, but yeah, in a bit.”

Kyungsoo eyes him, and nods. “I’m going to take a shower, hyung,” he says to Minseok. “May I borrow a towel?”

Minseok rolls his eyes. “Obviously. You know where they are.”

Then he just looks at Baekhyun, holding—Baekhyun notices—a cocktail of some kind. There wasn’t alcohol with dinner, not served anyway, just a general invitation to help oneself to drinks in the fridge. 

“Hyung,” Baekhyun says, thickly. “What are we going to do?”

Minseok takes a long swallow of his drink. It has one of those fancy orange slices in it, which probably means Kyungsoo made it. “I don’t know,” he says. “What are you going to do?”

Why is everyone so sure he’s going to do something? “I have no idea,” Baekhyun says. “I thought you’d have a plan.”

Minseok sighs. Drinks again. “Baekhyun-ah, I’ve already tried to talk to Chanyeol. It didn’t exactly take. And what do I know about dating?” Minseok, famously, has had heaps of sex and no relationships whatsoever, citing Jongdae and Kyungsoo as two different kinds of spouse. He seems to be only half joking about that. 

Baekhyun shrugs. “You always know what to say,” he says, plaintively. Goes to drape himself as much on Minseok as he can, looking to gauge his reaction. He’d—he almost wants to let his tired knees sink to the floor and rest his face against Minseok’s hip. Hope for hair strokes. But it’s not, he can’t relax, probably, not knowing he’s going back to his own bed, because there really is no one to sleep next to, and he’s just not accustomed to it yet. 

He doesn’t do that, but Minseok strokes his hair anyway. “I don’t think saying things is going to help,” he says quietly. “You know Chanyeol.”

Baekhyun does. And it occurs to him that the right question is: why is Chanyeol doing this?  He feels as if he knows, but—all he can really do is sortof point vaguely at Sehunnie, at Chanyeol’s identity wrestling, at how much he craves affection and approval and people looking at him and wanting him, liking what they see. It’s not an explanation, really.

Which is why he messages Chanyeol’s girlfriend on instagram later that evening. 

Chanyeol’s girlfriend, Jin Sohyun, turns out to be a former champion gymnast who now teaches and performs aerial silks, a thing Baekhyun was at best vaguely aware of until he watched an entire year of her instagram archive, most of which is pictures and short clips of her climbing and spinning around and—alarmingly—sortof falling halfway down until she lands all knotted in a pair of long strips of fabric tied to the ceiling. She can do both varieties of splits, and hang from one hand with absurd ease. In summary: how has Chanyeol not shown everyone he knows videos of her performances? Or at least photos of her? She’s also very pretty, although more in the standard straight girl direction than Baekhyun usually finds himself caught by, but there’s no accounting for taste. And she does make money from her appearance, so it makes sense for her to follow the market: maybe she’d secretly love to sport a short undercut, or a lip piercing. 

She agrees to meet easily enough—the next morning, at a sensible time to be awake, and not at 3am when he messaged her instead of lying staring at his bedroom ceiling some more—but that’s not really a strike against her. People want to meet Baekhyun. There’s no point in being coy about things: he’s just good at getting what he wants from people, because he’s hot and charming and he pays attention to how they’re feeling, Chanyeol . That’s the worst part of all of this, honestly: Baekhyun isn’t sure Chanyeol knows how Chanyeol himself is feeling, never mind anyone else. It’s not (just) selfishness, and there’s no contempt in it, and having noticed that the problem is deeper and more horrible than he’d realised—

(than he’d wanted to think about or see or admit)

—Baekhyun finds himself prodding at it, like when you’ve sprained something at dance practise and can’t quite figure out what’s wrong so instead of resting it you’re moving it at a ton of strange angles and putting weight through it because you can’t just throw on some kinesiology tape and rest it. 

 They go to dinner, one of those pay-a-lot-of-money-for-discretion places. Her wine-red dress is sharply stunning, but her face is unhappy. Huh , Baekhyun thinks as she pulls out her chair. At least she knows there’s something wrong . Baekhyun could fake it that there isn’t, but faking that hard leaves him exhausted and emotionally off in a way he isn’t keen to pursue, just now. He’s tired already. A background tick of adrenaline keeps him going. 

He knows how to do this—interact, be charming, whatever—and has known since before he knew how to talk about it. It more or less boils down to being shockingly honest with unassailable confidence, a smile, and a cheerful willingness to roll with rejection. The further you have to dig inside yourself to find the confidence and smile and cheer, the more empty it leaves you. Most of the time, Baekhyun doesn’t have to dig at all, which is why it feels right to him, and not like faking at all. He’s confident in himself at the moment, at least, and can bring out a smile even if it’s not exactly a happy one. Check, check. 

“Well,” Sohyun says, folding her arms and looking at him assessingly. “What's such bad news you have to break it to me gently?”

Baekhyun is too used to cameras to drop the wine glass he’s idly fiddling with, but it's a near thing. He wasn’t expecting—well. He puts the glass down and pours iced water into it instead. Smiles understandingly. “Oh, there's no bad news, really. I just wanted to meet you. Chanyeol hasn't been very forthcoming, and—” he winks, smiles with a flash of teeth “—I'm incredibly nosy.” Tell people something that makes you look vulnerable, that invites confidence. It's not a trick or a scam that he never picks something that makes him feel genuinely vulnerable: no one wants uncomfortable empathy with a stranger. 

Even if he decides to tell Sohyun about the cheating thing, she doesn’t want to know about the argument or Jongin or Chanyeol leaving Minseok’s house in only his socks, and she certainly doesn’t care to know how Baekhyun feels about any of it.

Sohyun's eyebrows rise a fraction, and her mouth pinches. It makes her look less pretty, and more like she could crush someone under her towering set of heels. And that's a good, honest goal he could adopt, maybe: to leave Sohyun feeling a little better and stronger than he found her. “Of course he hasn’t,” she says, combing fingers through the length of her curled hair. “He's not terribly…well. I know not to expect him to remember my birthday or anything.”

Baekhyun flicks back mentally through the instagram feed he vaguely remembers: right, yes, a birthday post just two weeks ago or so. Somehow, despite knowing that Chanyeol's been sleeping with half the female population of Korea, Baekhyun had imagined him sortof…well. Himself about it. Overenthusiastic dumbass, bad memory, limited sensitivity to other people's finer emotional states, but good , kind and thoughtful and generous and fun. Looks at people he likes as if they've hung the moon. 

Baekhyun is going to slap Chanyeol. This seems almost worse than cheating on her, but Baekhyun is aware he doesn’t feel…normal about the concept of sleeping with more than one person at a time. He, Jongin, Sehun, Chanyeol, Yixing and—though he tries to hide this—Junmyeon definitely don’t quite get monogamy, jealousy in the exclusive sense, and all that, which is probably because they were all in and out of each other’s beds in the early years. 

Baekhyun swallows more water in one go than is remotely tasteful, and looks at Sohyun. “I think,” he says, “That you'd probably be better off getting angry than wasting tears on him.”

They order food and wine; Baekhyun feels as if he could use some. It's the kind of place that serves you very fast, with tiny portions. They eat a salad and a fruit cocktail respectively. 

“Why are you giving me advice?” Sohyun asks, swirling her wine glass. Baekhyun asked her to order whatever she liked, said that his own taste ran to whatever was sweet: she ordered two expensive dessert wines. Baekhyun could kiss her. 

He takes his last bite of mango. “I'm not very pleased with him lately, either.”

She blinks at him. An understanding crosses her face—not a correct one, but close enough. Chanyeol hasn't broken Baekhyun 's heart, or he'd currently be in bed with an ice pack on his crotch. 

“Oh,” she says. “I…didn't realise.” Her face isn't shocked , though. Baekhyun thinks: Chanyeol-ah, you're not as good at playing this part as you think you are. Your girlfriend didn't know you fuck men sometimes, but it doesn't surprise her. 

Baekhyun changes track. Close enough. It's not as if he's going to even mention Sehun, and he's fucked around with Chanyeol plenty of times before. Not recently: he’s not usually in the business of pouring gasoline onto a fire, if he can possibly help it. He’s caused problems with Chanyeol before, hurt him badly before, Chanyeol and in turn the rest of the band and himself. Not intentionally: his worst mistakes have always been accidents. Careless words, like last night. He thinks he’s good at reading people, and usually he is, but Chanyeol is such a stormy sea in general that when something big is happening, it looks quieter. He’s not noticed before, and stepped on a landmine, and made it explode. A silent explosion, then, because Chanyeol couldn’t say anything about it. Baekhyun remembers his angry gesturing, frustrated face—scared, too, he realised only in retrospect—and the curled-in shoulders. 

“What’s he like, with you?” Baekhyun says.

Sohyun frowns. “Don’t you see him all the time? You must know him better than I do.”

Baekhyun shrugs, as louche and elegant as he can, trying to shake out his own tension. “You see a different side to people, when you work together compared to when they’re with a partner.” Which is true. It’s just deeply unapplicable. 

She pauses and eats a tiny round of bread. “Affectionate,” she says eventually. “Oddly—I met him at a bar, so I thought he’d like going out more, but he doesn’t. He likes to stay in and watch things, and play me bits of his music, and sometimes he sends me ten messages at once and sometimes he ignores my messages for days, but he’s always happy to see me.” A longer pause. “Grabby, even—maybe he just has such big hands, he doesn’t know quite where to put them. I’m almost relieved he doesn’t want to go out much: he’d sit on me, all two metres of him, if I let him.” She drains the wine glass.

Baekhyun nods, as if he has any idea what to do with that information. He lifts the wine bottle and waves it in her direction, offering. Refills both their glasses at her assent. “He’s like a puppy that doesn’t realise it’s too big to sit on the sofa,” he says eventually, because it has the benefit of being true. 

“Mm,” she says, taking another sip of wine. Another course arrives; Baekhyun can’t actually remember what he ordered. “I like dogs,” she continues when the waiter has gone. “But I don’t want to own one.”

Baekhyun takes these words and quietly decides he’s taking them to the grave, actually. Chanyeol…does not need to hear that. Somehow, it’s a bit of a relief: he doesn’t have to tell Sohyun anything. She’s going to break up with him soon anyway, because they’re not compatible. If you don’t love Chanyeol’s hands all over you, playful and affectionate and irritating and comforting and sensual by turns, then you don’t love Chanyeol. 

But she doesn't deserve to be messed around by him, either. Even if it almost seems like she doesn't know him. How are you supposed to love someone you don't know? Ah, Chanyeollie, how many people are you trying to be? When will you work out that the people who love you best only ever wanted you ? 

Oh, fucking hell . 

Baekhyun finishes his wine. There was a lot left in the glass. For fucking years he's been holding Sehunnie through the long, slow heartbreak of being in love with someone who doesn't love you, not in the same way anyway. Everyone else has been helping—encouraging him to be as open as he safely can, make other friends, date. All in the hope that the tension between him and Chanyeol would dissipate as they moved on from the mess that they were, that Sehun could find some way to not be cut up that what had been a first love for him had been a young adult's gay experiment for Chanyeol. 

It happens, when you're gay gay. People who are probably actually bisexual have their flings in high school and college and then go and get married. His lesbian bff talks about this bitterly. Baekhyun can't even blame them: he can't quite imagine himself falling in love with a woman, but what if there was just someone he got along with? Someone beautiful and funny and sharp-eyed and they had good sex and were friends, maybe: would he just marry her? Not wait for whatever being in love is even like? 

Probably. If she was like Jongdae's wife, and didn't mind him running around with the members and sitting on their laps. If she was like Jongin's girlfriends, chosen specifically for their open-minded approach to Jongin being bi in general and to Taemin specifically. At least he'd rarely be sleeping in an empty bed in an empty house. His parents would be relieved, at least. 

Baekhyun can't blame Chanyeol, for trying it. He can blame him for fucking it up horribly, maybe, for making Sehun and Jongin and Sohyun and the whole band and especially himself miserable, but he can't blame him for trying it. 

“I'm not that hungry,” Baekhyun says. His stomach is congealing. He's barely eaten since yesterday, and absolutely has not had a decent meal just now. 

“What if we get dessert, and get out of here?”

She presses her lips together, picks up the menu, and orders the most extravagant sundae on it. Baekhyun uses a chopstick to smear cream on her nose, and she laughs, eyes relaxing for the first time that evening. They split it, technically, although Baekhyun has only a few bites, but this part he knows. Make her laugh, ask her questions about her performances—it helps that he's genuinely interested in the answers. It helps that she's craving this kind of gentle, listening attention like a plant that needs a particularly sunny spot. It helps that she knows—based on incorrect assumptions, but still knows—that he's bi, so he doesn't have to pretend to be heterosexual. It helps so much that he knows how to moderate himself around other people, when a hand lightly on the forearm will feel comfortable and natural and not pushy, even though in his heart of hearts and with his family he's nothing but pushy, because he knows they'll push back if they want to. 

Obviously he has to make the first real move, so he courteously kisses her when they're waiting for a car in the shady, closed-to-the-public walled garden behind the restaurant. He's timed it right: there's an invitation back to her place, which he accepts without suggesting his own. She has a housemate, apparently, but she's away on tour or something. 

It's good to visit someone else's life, for a while. Sohyun has half of a cosy two-bedroom flat, a trifle cramped, tidy-ish but full of knick-knacks and photos of her and her friends and family, a closet full of costumes, a dresser covered in makeup and hairpieces and face products. Condoms, lube and a selection of vibrators in the top drawer of her nightstand which she blushes red about when he peeks. He scolds her about it, laughing: if he's close enough to need the lube and condoms, why should she be embarrassed about the vibrators? He asks her to pick her favourite. 

She's very muscular in a sleek sort of way, and her skin is very warm, and the best part of everything is that the bed is small enough that when they disentangle—quite some time later—there's no way they can sleep even side by side without touching. Baekhyun falls asleep with a shoulder pressed against his and an ankle on his calf, moments after making himself comfortable, listening to the downstairs neighbours doing laundry and watching tv. 

He spends the next two days trying to figure out if he ought to feel guilty, before realising he’s just got guilt ass-backwards, conceptually: last time he fucked up with Chanyeol he felt so much guilt it was like wearing a belt around his chest, even though arguably it wasn’t his fault, while this definitely is his fault and he doesn’t feel much guilt at all. Mostly what he feels is tired and frustrated. At himself, at Chanyeol, at the whole situation. Existentially, meeting Chanyeol's girlfriend was depressing: thinking about all the ways all of them have fucked up, the way everything has fucked them up, is depressing. The way everyone was so relieved about Sehunnie’s boyfriend,  that he seemed to be getting over Chanyeol, and now—

Well. To even the score, Baekhyun has to at least meet Sehunnie's boyfriend, maybe give him the shovel talk, take a silly photo. He has to meet Sehunnie’s boyfriend and find out if he’s treating him well, because if not, well, he’ll bring a sharp shovel. If he is—if he is. Baekhyun has no idea what he’s going to do. Be polite to him, probably, and go and scream into Minseok’s couch cushions. He has even less desire to hear any of Junmyeon’s opinions on any of this, now, even if Baekhyun would like to see Junmyeon.  

He's morose enough, setting it up, to wonder if the potential need for shovel talk for Sehunnie's boyfriend is why Chanyeol is being a more of a difficult friend and a terrible boyfriend lately.

Baekhyun actually knows things about Park Jihoon, which is helpful, because he isn’t on instagram, so he has to resort to facebook, which Jihoon seems to be mostly on for work reasons. Jihoon’s a bit…suspicious at first, but Sehun has in fact told him some relevant things about his life, like that he’s a kpop idol in a band called EXO—apparently Jihoon had heard of them but wouldn’t recognise any of them on the street even in stage getup—so Baekhyun takes a photo of himself with his tongue poking out making the peace sign with one hand, holding Sehun’s locked phone in the other. The lockscreen is a photo of Sehun and Jihoon, from the back. Smart, Sehunnie; they could be anyone, doing anything. Given their relative heights and approximate builds, that could even be Sehunnie and— 

But look, it’s not as if tall queer Korean men are a dying breed. Seoul must have tens of thousands. So. Anyway, Chanyeol hasn't had black hair in years. 

They meet in an extremely hipster cafe Baekhyun has never been to, and Baekhyun wears a hat and mask until he gets there: there’s nothing weird about EXO member and SuperM leader Baekhyun meeting with a production manager from a media company. And they’re just going to drink coffee—or, actually a vaguely coffee-flavoured blended cream/syrup thing, in Baekhyun’s case.

Jihoon greets him politely, apparently half-stuck in work mode. 

Baekhyun waves him off, and sits. “Hi,” he says, flashing his most charming smile. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Park Jihoon.” 

Jihoon flushes a little and smiles a smile that changes his whole face—plain, though not unpleasing—into something softer, cuter. “Ah, more than I have about you, I think: I’ll admit I was curious, but Sehun told me not to google you all.”

Feeling generous, Baekhyun decides to pay. He paid for the dinner with Sohyun, obviously, because the place was expensive, but Jihoon is older than him and can presumably afford a not-actually-overpriced drink, given the shaved chocolate and real whipped cream and extra syrup. So what if he feels like a pick-me-up? He hasn’t been sleeping well: Chanyeol and Sehun are right out, Jongin is never at home, Junmyeon sometimes locks his doors and isn’t a good choice right now anyway, and Baekhyun doesn’t quite have it in him to show up on Jongdae’s doorstep or try to wheedle his way into a grumpy Kyungsoo’s bed, and while Minseok lets him in and fusses in a relaxed sort of way, he makes Baekhyun sleep on the couch unless it's a real emergency. Sometimes it's worth it, just to sleep in a house with another person in it and have someone to drape over in the morning, but sometimes sleeping alone on someone else's couch just makes it worse. 

“Black, one sugar, please,” Jihoon says, and then more bashfully: “It used to be two, but I’m trying to cut down.”

Baekhyun makes a noncommittal noise, orders, pays, and collects his more-or-less-a-dessert.

They chat a bit. Jihoon politely doesn’t inquire what the fuck Baekyun is doing, but the question hangs in the air. Baekhyun wonders what the fuck he’s doing. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, really. Someone more…or less? Less something: less contained? But they’re strangers, really. Baekhyun isn’t seeing much more than his work colleagues do. He’s wearing work clothes, seems like; with his job, Baekhyun doubts a suit is daywear. There’s concealer under his eyes—expertly applied—and he’s had his eyebrows done.

Baekhyun wants to sit up and pay more attention, but he just sips his drink thoughtfully and crosses one ankle over his knee in the deep sofa. There’s something…well, that’s going to bug him. 

He seems nice. He seems like a regular guy. Well. Baekhyun will give him the shovel talk, just in case. He sucks obnoxiously loudly on his straw to see if Jihoon twitches. He doesn’t. “Jihoon-ah, all I really wanted was to make sure you’re being good to our maknae.”

Jihoon’s smile turns into a real laugh, and Baekhyun must slurp up a chunk of ice with how sudden and painful his brain freeze is. It goes all the way down to his stomach full of sugar and ice; he should have eaten something. Jihoon’s laugh is warm and deep and just a little too loud, this broad slightly undignified guffaw. It’s so much like Chanyeol that for a moment Baekhyun feels a stab of utterly misdirected affection and irritation.  

“I’m glad you’re all such good friends,” Jihoon says, laughter still dancing on his face. Baekhyun doesn’t like that he likes that face more for it. “Not everyone is so lucky in their work lives.”

Baekhyun shrugs expansively, tries to let some of the tension out. “He’s family. We take care of him.” We fucking try to , anyway.

Jihoon nods seriously, holding his coffee cup in two hands. “You don’t have anything to worry about, really. I know how important it is to be discreet—and I appreciate how careful you were about this—because it’s important to me, too. It’s becoming…less fashionable to be quiet about things, among our peers at least, but no easier to deal with work and family in that way.” He smiles ruefully. “We’re both in difficult positions, for relationships. Sehun and I take care of each other as best we can.”

Baekhyun’s used to his stomach misbehaving, and knows how to keep it off his face. But he has to move. He stands up. Bows. “I’m glad to hear that. Thank you for the coffee, Park Jihoon-ssi.” 

He walks out as slowly as he can manage, matches his strides to a song in his head. The thing is. The thing is, Park Jihoon isn’t fucking wrong. They’re all careful about this—about Sehunnie, especially—except Minseok. Minseok, who knows exactly what they can get away with. God, he has to talk to Minseok, who doesn’t like someone else in his bed, but he’s going to have to put up with it tonight because this is an emergency. 

The emergency is that he hasn’t managed a proper goddamn meal in days. Sohyun was bad enough, but something about her and Chanyeol’s obvious incompatibility was some sort of consolation, and he wasn’t not sure why it made him feel better that they’re obviously not going to last long—but he’s sure now. 

He hadn’t thought about how it’d be different, dating someone outside the industry. Half of everyone in entertainment is queer, and the other half all keep quiet about it. You can be an open secret, to your close friends and colleagues. Everyone knows about Taemin and Jongin, because Taemin is on a whole different level of knowing what he’s doing and in that regard Jongin does what he’s told, in the same way they trust their stylists to choose outfits and their manager to book stages. 

Hell, most of them barely talk to their families. 

Park Jihoon talks to his family. He probably goes for dinner every weekend.

Is it cynical or just likely that, if the relationship hadn’t already been all-but-over, Baekhyun’s little implication about Chanyeol being at least bisexual would have ended it? Sohyun might be all right with bisexual men to sleep with, but what’s the longevity on that ? Is Baekhyun the kind of guy you bring to meet your parents? Is Chanyeol?

Sehun fucking should be, but of course he isn’t—not for someone like Jihoon, anyway. 

Baekhyun knocks on Minseok’s door—he has a key, but Minseok was clear that it’s only for emergencies, which means that Baekhyun cheerfully uses it all the time and gets cuffed for it—so Minseok gives him a long, worried look when he opens the door, and lets Baekhyun in without a moment’s hesitation or a single word.   

“There’s leftover noodles,” Minseok says, when Baekhyun sits morosely on his couch. 

Baekhyun nods. “I forgot to eat breakfast.” His stomach makes a disconsolate gurgle; not exactly enthusiasm for food, but he has to eat anyway, because he hasn’t taken his levothyroxine. 

Minseok gives him a hard look, but pads away to microwave it. Baekhyun wants to follow him, flop on him while they wait for the microwave to make its strange fancy jingle, but his legs are too sad to propel him upright.

When Minseok returns, Baekhyun eats two bites, then puts the food down in favour of flinging himself onto Minseok so his head and shoulders are in Minseok’s lap, tucking his knees up. 

“What did you do,” Minseok says, absently finger-combing his hair. “Are you growing your hair out?”

“I haven’t decided,” Baekhyun says against Minseok’s soft sweater. “I…don’t think it would be any better if I hadn’t done anything.”

Minseok’s soft laugh makes him shiver a little. The memory of Jihoon’s laugh—Baekhyun just isn’t going to know what to do with himself until he goes to see Chanyeol. And Chanyeol doesn’t laugh like that as much, these days. “Tell hyung anyway,” Minseok says. “And I’ll scold you anyway.”

Baekhyun bites his finger. Not even very hard. And tells him. 

Minseok frowns when he talks about Sohyun, and his forehead wrinkle gets deeper as Baekhyun keeps talking: about how Sohyun doesn’t love Chanyeol and vice versa, about how Chanyeol hasn’t even really been giving his relationships a chance, about what he suspects is the reason for it.

He stops dead when Baekhyun, voice shaking, confesses to sleeping with Sohyun. There’s a long pause. Baekhyun clings harder. He’s so fucking tired , and he wants everyone to be okay, and they’re not even slightly, and he’s making everything worse, but he can’t stop because making everything worse is the only way he found out how bad it all was to begin with.

“Baekhyun-ah,” Minseok says, carefully. “What a mess you’ve made. What are you going to do?”

“Tell Chanyeol,” he says, miserably. “Apologise. Um. Maybe if he’s still speaking to me, I’ll try to figure out if he knows . Like, about Sehunnie, even if he doesn’t know about himself.”

Minseok’s fingers move again. “Focus on the apology,” he instructs. “Do you think you’ve done enough meddling?”

From anyone else this would be a criticism. And it is. But it’s also a real question. “No,” he says, eventually. “I have to try, hyung. If it—it was always this bad, and just no one really knew, or wanted to make a mess, but I’ve made a mess, so at least I have to try to clean it up.”

Minseok makes a thoughtful noise. Then he taps Baekhyun’s arm, and points to the bowl of forgotten noodles. Baekhyun fetches them, mildly puzzled, but sits mostly-upright when Minseok prods him, and then relaxes when Minseok seats the bowl in his lap and ushers a pile of noodles into his mouth. He’s not sick, and Minseok only does this for people when they’re really sick, but he’s not going to complain at all. 

When the bowl is empty, he continues. Minseok had frowned at the story about Sohyun: when Baekhyun finishes telling him about Jihoon’s Chanyeol laugh and 5-steps-from-an-arranged-marriage speech, Minseok looks ill .  “I don’t think there’s anything we can do about that,” he says. “Not if the relationship is going well in other respects.”

“I know, hyung,” Baekhyun says.

“People have to learn about this sort of thing the hard way,” Minseok says, but he sounds less confident about it. His hand clasping Baekhyun’s is tense and clammy.

“I know,” Baekhyun says. “But—again? When we’d all thought, maybe he was. You know. Doing better about—everything.”

Minseok chews his lip. “You have to give Sehunnie some credit,” he says eventually. “Maybe he knows already.”

There’s a long, unhappy silence. 

“Sehunnie won’t…settle, will he?” Baekhyun says. “Not for someone who doesn’t—who can’t—” 

He doesn’t really know whether he’s talking about Jihoon, or Chanyeol. 

“If that happens, we’ll tell Junmyeon,” Minseok says, sounding firmer again. “Junmyeon will tear him into very small, neat pieces.”

Their shared laughter is a rush of shuddering relief. Baekhyun leans harder into Minseok’s embrace, and they put something stupid on TV. 

He gets several hours of cuddles out of Minseok—not that Minseok is stingy with them, unless a bed is involved—before Minseok more or less kicks him out to go talk to Chanyeol.

Baekhyun can barely remember why he was angry at Chanyeol: all of it so quickly turned into just hurt and regret and the simultaneous desire to hug and shake him. Possibly give him a slap: his brain needs to be shaken loose. All this is currently twisted up with the strong urge to just see him and sit on him and prod him until he forgets about everything and laughs about something stupid. 

So Baekhyun lets himself in—he has never in his life knocked on Chanyeol’s door and he’s not starting now—and flops face-first on Chanyeol’s bed. He’s got all his stuff. Unless he and Chanyeol literally have a friendship-ending fight—which he really hopes they’re not about to have—Baekhyun is sleeping in his bed. He has no choice. This is reparations for Baekhyun’s emotional damages.

He doesn’t want to think about the possibility that Chanyeol might not let him

“You're a shithead,” he says to Chanyeol when he appears. It doesn’t come out in the slightest angry, or even teasing, which is what he was aiming for. 

“So what else is new?” Chanyeol’s tone says he didn’t hear anything off.  He pads over to the bed and sits down on the edge, because Baekhyun has taken most of the space. He wants to curl around Chanyeol with all his limbs. But. 

“Your girlfriend’s going to break up with you,” he says. 

Chanyeol lets his head thunk back against the headboard. He groans. “I'm no good at this, bro,” he says. “I dunno what girls want.”

Baekhyun smacks him on the thigh with the back of his arm. Harder than he wants to, less hard than he means to. Yeollie is awful at excuses, but really . “Girls are just people , idiot. They want people things. You just don’t like her that much.”

There’s a long pause. It’s strange: his stomach might as well be full of lead, with the words he’s going to have to say, but just seeing Chanyeol is making him feel a little better. 

“The sex is good, tho.” Baekhyun lifts his head specifically to give Chanyeol his most withering expression. Chanyeol meets his gaze, and looks away, rubbing at his already-messy hair. “But you're right! Jeez, okay, you're right. I just…don’t really know what to do, you know?” Baekhyun is about to shuffle over so Chanyeol can get on the bed properly and he can hug him, but then Chanyeol frowns. “Wait, how do you know how Sohyun feels about me?”

Abruptly, the conversation goes from normal-Chanyeol-and-Baekhyun-nonsense to an actual serious conversation. Baekhyun has tried this a few times, but he didn’t have all the information.

Fuck. No point trying to excuse himself in advance; Minseok hadn’t even made his ‘ew gross food I don’t like’ face, but a much grimmer, sadder face, so Baekhyun knows how bad this sounds. He doesn't have an explanation, but he has to explain anyway. “I took her out to dinner,” he says.

Chanyeol's expression is more puzzled than hurt. That'll change in a minute. “Why?”

Baekhyun wants to press his face into the pillow. But that won't make it any better. “Because you’re miserable, and you’re taking it out on everyone else. Mostly Sehunnie. I was trying to—I don’t know. I thought if I met her, then maybe I’d learn something. If I could figure out why, maybe I could fix it, I don’t know.” Chanyeol’s face is hardening in that godawful way that makes Baekhyun want to sit on him and kiss him everywhere until he finds the place that makes it better, but he’s tried that, and it didn’t work at all. Is it because he’s not Sehun, that that didn’t work? “Anyway, you forgot her birthday 2 weeks ago, and she doesn’t even really know you enough to love you, and I don’t know if she knows about the cheating but either way she’s going to break up with you soon—” a flinch “—and then we had sex.” He still isn’t sure, really, what he was doing. Just…reaching for another person’s body, for comfort, for the ghost of Chanyeol’s touch between them, maybe. They’d already shared that intimacy; another hadn’t seemed unusual. 

There's a long, horrible moment of silence as Chanyeol's expression goes from confused frown to horrified… something. “What the fuck , Baekhyun? What's wrong with you?” He springs up off the bed as if he can't bear to breathe the same air as Baekhyun, and paces up and down his bedroom, kicking clothes and debris out of his way.

Baekhyun watches him. He keeps his eyes on Chanyeol even as they blur a little. He did this to himself, really: he should be able to stare down the consequences. He can't roll with them, but he can at least make a decent attempt to bear them. 

“No, seriously,” Chanyeol says, stopping abruptly and turning. “I—you're not jealous, you get laid plenty, so what possible reason is there for you to pull that kind of shit other than that you're a vindictive motherfucker who likes screwing with people?”

His voice is raised but he's not exactly yelling: it's hoarse, unsteady, like he's. Oh. Crying. Baekhyun had expected some crying. 

“I'm sorry,” Baekhyun says. It's the most inadequate apology he's ever given. 

“So what are you even doing here? Did you just come to rub it in my face? Like, god, Chanyeol is just so useless at relationships that you can steal his girl in under 2 hours? Was that the plan?”

“I didn't have a plan,” Baekhyun says. He can't make words properly, and it comes out a whisper. 

Chanyeol's face is screwed up, red and tense and miserable, and he's still not yelling: tears run freely down his face. “Get out of my fucking house,” he says. “No, for real, get the fuck out, I don't wanna look at you. You're the worst friend in the goddamn world.”

Baekhyun thinks about Sehunnie, then: Sehunnie who has spent all year glued to Chanyeol when it felt like no one else was able to help him, who's gone out of his way to find some sort of way to get the hell over Chanyeol and only ended up hurting himself, who's now barely showing up for anything unless he has to and barely talking, barely making eye contact with anyone because Chanyeol is angry with him. He'd take it if it were just him, probably, but it isn't. It fucking isn't. 

It’s Jongin, flinching because he tried to help and Chanyeol threw it back in his face. It’s Chanyeol himself, the centre of a blast radius of pain, fucking up all his relationships because of something that Baekhyun thinks he knows the shape of, but he isn’t sure. He isn’t sure, and if it’s just Chanyeol being an asshole—god, he hopes it isn’t just Chanyeol being an asshole—then he has to get it through his head somehow, he has to keep trying and keep poking at it until it all falls out and he knows what to do . 

He sits up. 

“Oh yeah? It's me that's the worst? Not, say, someone who treats his girlfriend like a broken game console, cheats on her all the time then has the gall to get mad when she does the same?” Baekhyun swipes tears off his face with his sleeve and breathes. “What's your plan to fix this, Chanyeol? Why am I having to explain to you that fucking around with someone who's in love with you, ditching them in the worst possible way then rubbing your string of conquests in their face is asshole behaviour?” He’s not even talking about Sohyun anymore, because she’s fine , she’s not in love with Chanyeol, and he wishes her well but that’s not the point, the point is: “Are you just going to keep doing to a bunch of other people what you did to Sehunnie, and leaving their friends to pick up the pieces while you carry on like none of it's your fault?”

Chanyeol's legs seem to give out under him: he's standing one minute, and then he's sitting not quite cross-legged on the carpet, sobbing harder than Baekhyun has ever heard. He's not even covering his face, just wrapping both arms around his stomach, curling in like he's going to be sick. “What,” he bites out between sobs, “does this have to do with Sehunnie?”

It's then that Baekhyun's tears overwhelm him, and he ends up fisting both hands in his hair and yanking hard. Because he has to say this. He maybe is the worst friend in the world, but the only way this could even remotely be worth it is if he manages to say what he should have said all along. 

“Sehunnie’s in love with you, you asshole. And you’re wandering around just bragging nonstop about how many girls you’re getting with, cheating on them left right and centre, and he’s out there trying to fucking get over you—it’s like you’re trying to make it harder on purpose! Shouting down anyone who tries to get you to stop acting like you don’t give a damn about anyone’s feelings, or if that’s not possible at least stop talking about it.” 

He's shaking, after. He wants to bury his face in his hands, and doesn’t, makes himself look. Sehun will be angry with him, probably. Very angry, depending on how Chanyeol takes this, how he acts about it. But at least Baekhyun will know. If Chanyeol is weird and distant about it, or if he keeps doing exactly what he’s doing and making Sehun miserable, knowing he’s doing it? That’ll be an answer. If that’s the answer then Baekhyun might as well have had this fight, because he won’t want to talk to Chanyeol afterwards.

He doesn’t think that’s the answer, though.  

Chanyeol's awful, wrenching sobs stop, more out of shock than anything else. He stares at Baekhyun, big eyes puffy and red. “Sehunnie isn't in love with me,” he says.

Baekhyun just makes an impossibly frustrated noise at him, not quite a scream and not quite a sob. Tries to get himself together, wipe his face on something, but his shirt won't untuck and he doesn't want to use Chanyeol's sheets, and it doesn't really work. 

“I don't know what you want me to do,” Chanyeol says quietly, after Baekhyun doesn't manage any words in reply.

Baekhyun gives a wet laugh at that. “I want you to be happy, Yeollie. You and Sehunnie. And you're both miserable, and I hate it so much I'm going insane.” He gestures around wildly, at the room, at Chanyeol, at himself. 

“I'm fine,” Chanyeol protests, but his eyes are watering again. He does, though, drop most of the bowstring-tight tension in his body that had him curled around his stomach. Like he'd forgotten, for a few minutes, that Baekhyun only ever acts like the worst version of himself because he loves Chanyeol, because not being able to fix things for Chanyeol makes him hurt so much he's just thrashing around, helpless and stupid and just as destructive as Chanyeol at his worst. 

“You're not fine, Yeollie.” Baekhyun says. Swings shaking legs off the bed, and stumbles towards Chanyeol, half sits and half falls down next to him. Nudges their shoulders together, to see. “You haven't been fine for a long time.”

Chanyeol leans back into him, a little bit. Baekhyun, grateful beyond measure, presses his face into Chanyeol's shoulder. Chanyeol's whole body is shaking. 

“Can we order food?” Baekhyun says, patting at Chanyeol's arm. 

After a moment, the arm moves and hesitantly takes his phone out. Hands it to Baekhyun. “Ice cream?” he says. 

Baekhyun winces. “Ugh, no. I had a coffee shake when I met Sehunnie's boyfriend.”

A resigned huff. “What, did you fuck him too?” But there's no malice in it at all, as if Chanyeol can't even muster up his usual irritation at Park Jihoon. 

“No,” Baekhyun says. “Sehunnie deserves better, anyway.”

He orders all of Chanyeol's favourites, then slips the phone back into Chanyeol's pocket. Drapes himself slowly over his broad body, curling in, clinging harder than he ever does when he's not sick. 

Eventually, Chanyeol's hand lifts and rests in his hair. 

---------

Chanyeol wakes up feeling hung over even though they didn't drink anything. It takes a while to dislodge a very clingy Baekhyun, in part because he wasn't exactly trying very hard. He has to eventually, though, so he can go and see Sehun. Baekhyun's a drama queen, but he should never be this sad ever : Chanyeol's seen him crying and wailing and screaming and cackling maniacally, but “talking reasonably calmly with tears streaming down his face that he's ignoring“ is a rare, horrible sight. 

It takes actually telling him about this go-see-Sehun plan to get him to actually unlatch, pressing a final kiss to Chanyeol's cheek. That's okay: in some sense, Baekhyun being clingy means everything is basically fine, and anyway Chanyeol feels like he's been squeezed back into his body somehow. He hadn't noticed he was only mostly tethered to it. 

Sehun gives him the most suspicious look when he opens his door...probably because Chanyeol knocked which, okay, that's a bit out of character. He feels a bit out of character though, jittery and strange with the conversation he hasn't managed to rehearse at all, because he has no idea what the fuck Sehun is going to say. 

“Come in?” Sehun says. Chanyeol shuffles in, hands deep in the pockets of his sweatpants. There's an awkward negotiation of two tall guys both trying to get down Sehun's narrow entryway without tripping over the shoe rack—Chanyeol kicks off his trainers, and in a sudden burst of politeness actually puts them on said shoe rack. 

Sehun very slightly raises one eyebrow at him. 

Standing in the main hallway, Chanyeol clears his throat. Looks around. Looks at his socked feet, and then back at Sehun. “Uh,” he says. “You're not in love with me, right?”

Sehun looks away, touches the hinge of his jaw with one fingertip. “Who've you been talking to, hyung?” He looks back in Chanyeol's general direction without quite meeting his eyes. 

“Baekhyunnie,” Chanyeol says, for lack of a more useful answer.

Sehun gives a soft laugh, and finally looks up at him. That shouldn't actually be possible: they're nearly of a height.

“Baekhyun-hyung just likes to cause trouble,” he says. 

And that's true obviously, but. The worst part about the horrible fight with Baekhyun is the part where he accused Chanyeol of not caring about other people’s feelings. Like it's his fault people aren't clear about their feelings, like he's supposed to just walk around all the time trying to figure out how people feel instead of just trusting them to tell him if it's important.

But Baekhyun is probably right about some things, occasionally. Like: people have trouble when their feelings get messy, probably. It's not something Chanyeol thinks about much: he's never had anyone say they didn't understand what he was feeling, even if they then said he was being an idiot, or not making any sense. His own feelings are usually so direct a wave that it's taken him a long time to learn how not to just spill them everywhere, all over himself and everyone in the vicinity. Most of the time. It's not a good look, being that open. 

But if he really has hurt Sehun...He wouldn't know what to do or say, he'd probably just be a mess of emotions everywhere no matter how hard he tried to rein them in. Maybe it's the same for Sehun, who actually can rein himself in, does it so much that sometimes people can't tell what he's feeling. Chanyeol isn't usually "people", but. It's not as if he was looking for this. Why would he look to see if talking about sex would hurt Sehun? That barely makes any sense, because they’ve had sex a whole lot. 

Sehun likes attention, sometimes, and likes to fade into the background other times. Holds himself back too hard most of the time, then cries suddenly on the radio or when he gets drunk. Would he have let Chanyeol hurt him, then let it fade into the background instead of yelling at him a bit? Maybe.

 That's an awful thought, actually. 

So it's not out of character, for Sehun not to look at him. To not, actually, answer his question. But maybe it means something.

Chanyeol isn't actually sure what he's planning to do when he lifts his hand, but he sees Sehun's quick inhale. And it's not like Chanyeol doesn't know what it looks like when someone's attracted to him. Somehow, it’s a bit of a surprise that Sehun is. He'd kindof thought they were just—doing what everyone else was doing, what they were doing with other people, being bored horny teenagers. Two best friends hanging out and giving each other a hand (hah), though they were maybe a bit more elaborate about it than most shower blowjobs and vaguely-under-the-blankets sofa handjobs. 

 Plenty of people in the industry are all over each other, as trainees or in groups. Sometimes they're like Jongdae and go get married and have babies. Sometimes they're like Jongin and are obviously joined at the hip with someone but keep appearing with women: Chanyeol doesn't want to know exactly what's going on there but he does know Taemin is as specifically possessive over Jongin as Baekhyun is in general. A different kind of possessive: a controlling kind of possessive, Chanyeol has always thought, shivering. He wouldn’t let anyone pick out his dates for him, that’s fucking creepy. Jongin—he should talk to Jongin, really. Apologise for yelling at him, at least, even if he’s not about to take Jongin’s completely insane relationship advice.

Anyway. People bang their band members, it happens, it's not a big deal. Usually. It doesn’t even usually mean you’re into each other, it’s just—you’re all horny and you’re all hot, right. That’s part of the whole deal. People following you around trying to get you to work out and doing your hair and dragging you to dermatology appointments and making you get a nose job and all that. Not that he didn’t want his nose fixed, obviously. But it’s different, to look at Sehun’s half-lidded eyes, to see desire in them. Chanyeol wasn’t looking for that, either, but now he’s seen it—he’s always been a sucker for people who want him.

His hand sortof hovers in midair and then lands of its own accord on Sehun's face. 

Sehun's face is lightly flushed, gaze down, and Chanyeol is familiar with this brand of stupid decision, but Baekhyun's right. He's not gonna keep dating Sohyun. It feels different, knowing that. There's none of the strangely distant hollowness in his stomach that he guesses was guilt, maybe. 

When he kisses Sehun, Sehun falls into him. 

Was it always like this? Has he just forgotten? They were all so young and stupid and horny, everyone was always touching everyone, in the group and in other groups around them, that it just didn't seem like so much to kiss each other, touch everywhere, jerk each other off in the shower. How is that so different from sitting in each other's laps, grinding against each other on stage, playing not-quite-kissing games? 

Chanyeol's never really understood. He's dated people now for real, not just messed around with the other members and with other people as they passed by, and the thing he sucked at the worst was not knowing when not to touch them, how not to touch them. If they're on your lap how are you supposed to know not to squeeze their hip? If you've had sex how are you supposed to know that they don't want their thighs touched except during or before sex, or that they never want their ass smacked as they walk by? If they won't just shove you off if you're being a pain but will instead tense up and sortof let you until you figure out what's wrong? How are you supposed to know they like you and want you if they hardly ever touch you? How the fuck is he supposed to sleep with only one person forever and barely touch anyone else and remember how to breathe? Jongdae's wife, he's come to realise, is shockingly permissive, but even she has her lines and Jongdae carefully doesn't cross them these days. The one thing about Jongin and Taemin that Chanyeol understands is the way they’re not weird about that: both of them all over other people, still, and he’s pretty sure Baekhyun fucked both of them—he hasn’t asked if it was separately or together—in SuperM. 

He never gave a fuck what any of his girlfriends said about the band. As if he'd ever introduce them, as if he'd ever let them see Baekhyun sitting curled up behind him as they watched let's plays, arms around his ribs, kissing his neck and shoulder every so often. Minseok squeezing his butt and telling him he looks good in those jeans. Sehun—Sehun doing anything at all, every single time he relaxed enough to really lean into Chanyeol, and every time he couldn't relax but wanted Chanyeol to touch him anyway. Why the fuck did he ever stop? 

The only good thing about all of that, in Chanyeol's rapidly developing opinion, is that kissing now feels amazing . Kissing Sehun specifically: he's nearly as tall as Chanyeol, nearly as broad, firm under Chanyeol's hands. He can and has shoved Chanyeol off, usually just to get back the feeling in his arm or stand to fetch a drink, but occasionally for more distance than that—and isn't. One arm loops all the way around Chanyeol's neck, hand on his opposite shoulder, and the other hand is grasping Chanyeol’s hoodie tight at the small of his back. There’s something about the active effort of kissing—of sex—that makes it more and better than just lying on someone as they all often do. There’s something about the way Sehun kisses, like he has no instinct for it and can’t relax into it so he has to think about it, that’s even better. Some people can have sex with only half of themselves really there , Chanyeol has found, and he fucking hates it. Sehun’s always there.

And he’s got better at kissing, at the push-pull of it. Chanyeol has too, he hopes; Sehun’s breathing is loud in his ears, occasionally thickening to an unvoiced groan. When they were younger and stupider, Sehunnie didn’t know what to do with his hands, but they move now: squeezing Chanyeol’s shoulder, pressing into his back and rubbing up and down. Almost like they’re hugging rather than sucking on each other’s tongues. Chanyeol hadn’t known he would like this so much. He’s not normally one for this kind of foreplay—not on himself, anyway. He’ll give his partner a massage, but has no patience for getting one, will flip them over and bury himself between their thighs, press his face into their neck. Likes to be bitten, he’s found, the blunt pressure of it. The engulfing squeeze of being inside someone. 

There’s another advantage Sehun has that’ll make him feel engulfed, so Chanyeol sinks to his knees, and undoes the button of Sehun’s jeans. Runs his hand over the bulge, gets a rough gasp and full-body shudder for his trouble. He doesn’t have the urge or the patience to tease, unless there’s a particular goal in mind, and now even less so. It’s been a while since he sucked a dick; he didn’t realise he’s missed it. 

He missed it enough that he moans around the head of Sehun’s cock the moment it hits the roof of his mouth. There’s nothing like sucking off Sehunnie: it forces you to find all the tense muscles in your jaw and unhook them, at least if you want to do a good job, and Chanyeol always wants to do a good job, in general and at oral sex specifically. People have been broken up with over bad head—probably. He wants to do a good job so badly it doesn’t matter that he’s gonna drool all over his own face and neck, it doesn’t matter that his eyes will water and that he definitely looks so fucking undignified with his mouth stretched out like this.

Chanyeol looks up, and Sehun is staring at him with wide eyes, bottom lip between his teeth, and he forgets to even think about what he looks like. Lets his eyes fall closed because he knows what every part of Sehun looks like already. It’s more important to focus on swallowing around Sehun’s cock, on managing his gag reflex and jaw tension and breathing, on the twitching muscles in Sehun’s hips under his hands. Then it gets better: there’s a thunk as Sehun’s head falls back against the wall behind them and he twists his fingers into Chanyeol’s hair. Thank god he skipped the haircut. Sehun’s hand doesn’t try to pull him around or move him, just holds firmly and goes where Chanyeol does. Which is…he’d have said it was good. Did, before, teased Sehun so proudly for being a polite boy, as if Chanyeol had taught him well instead of just being another horny idiot fumbling his way through sex with a dancer’s body control and the internet’s dubious advice.  

Being shoved around in bed isn’t—he doesn’t like it, even if he does like a little more pain than is (apparently) average. How is he supposed to do a good job if he’s being interrupted and tugged around all the time? I wouldn’t like it if Sehun fucked my mouth, he thinks, and knows it for a lie, bobbing his head as if he’s being pulled. He’d say something to Sehun if his mouth wasn’t full, but it is, so he can’t. What would he say, anyway? Fuck my mouth, Sehunnie, I wanna try , maybe? The thought alone makes him shiver, and swallow Sehun’s cock a little deeper. 

Are he and Sehun close enough for him to get it, if Chanyeol—maybe. They’ve danced in sync, written music in sync, so maybe. He could try. He moves his hands off Sehun’s hips, wraps one around Sehun’s hand in his hair to fix it in place, puts the other behind his back, and opens his eyes to look up.  

Sehun freezes, eyes wide, and so Chanyeol freezes too. He doesn’t feel like he’s breathing. Then, Sehun’s other hand comes up, slow and a little tense, and ever so gently rests on Chanyeol’s cheek and jaw. 

Chanyeol puts his other hand behind his back. With an expression of concentration so deep his tense features go slack, Sehun moves his hips. Pulls his cock most of the way out of Chanyeol’s mouth—draws a moan out of him on the way—and slides back in, heavy on his tongue. Does it again. Chanyeol’s eyes water; he breathes on the outstroke, swallows saliva on the instroke. Lets his vision blur, but keeps blinking, keeps looking up at a blurry Sehun even though he can’t really see, and doesn’t need to. It’s just good to know that Sehun’s eyes are on him, and they are. 

After some time of silence in his head, he remembers he should probably do something, so he lets his tongue relax and loll out of his mouth a little, pushes against Sehun’s hold on him but only to move into the thrust of his hips, to take him deeper. Chanyeol’s throat works, trying to gag; he relaxes and lets it, and its protests stay half-hearted. It feels good, to struggle a little. To work hard at something, to coax his body into doing what he wants it to.  

Sehun curses quietly, and that’s how Chanyeol knows he’s about to come: he’s not loud, in bed, and every sound is a victory. His eyes roll up as he shudders through an orgasm that seems to roll through his body in a wave from the legs up, making an even worse mess of Chanyeol’s mouth and chin and the front of his shirt.

Chanyeol swallows ineffectively as Sehun withdraws, nuzzling into his hand so it stays. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell his legs will support him even if he could get his feet under him, so he lets the side of his head flop against Sehun’s firm thigh. 

“Your face is a mess, hyung,” Sehun says, and his voice sounds so wrecked it’s as if he got his throat fucked.

“Mm-hm,” Chanyeol says, roughly wipes his mouth and chin off on his gross t-shirt, then tugs it off and throws it somewhere. It’s strange, being hard as nails and feeling patient about it. 

After another pause, Sehun bends a little to get his hands under Chanyeol’s armpits, and hauls him upright. Chanyeol follows, keeps following as Sehun wraps a hand around his wrist—all the way around, although Chanyeol’s hands are still larger—and tugs him towards his bedroom.

They climb under the covers with most of their clothes still on, and for a moment it feels like they’re going to just curl up together and sleep, and Chanyeol, confusingly, maybe wouldn’t even mind? Or wouldn’t even mind a sleepy handjob and then cuddling up for sleep. But it’s not even 3pm, probably, past the point where naps are a good idea even, and his hands want Sehun’s skin more, so he slides them under his t-shirt, up his back and over the front of his ribs, and Sehun somewhat gracelessly shimmies out of it. It’s not necessarily what he was angling for but Chanyeol has no complaints—until Sehun takes the shirt in one hand and Chanyeol’s face in the other, dampens it with his tongue, and gently cleans the drying spit and come off Chanyeol’s face with it.

It feels like sex, and it doesn’t. The others wipe stuff off his face or shirt or rearrange his hair or pat lip balm onto his lips all the time, and it feels like that, but that’s Sehun’s come and Chanyeol’s spit that Sehun is wiping off so carefully, and Sehun’s topless and looking at him with more heat than usual as he does it, and Chanyeol’s hard against his thigh. Sehun leans down for a kiss when he’s done, slow and wet. 

It's the first thing he's really done , so how does he have Chanyeol so… so whatever this is? There's a thought in Chanyeol's head to push, to make it faster and hotter and grind their hips together, but it comes out as a slow body roll that nudges Sehun's thigh between his legs. There's something filthy about that, pouring through him like thick honey, hands resting on the sides of Sehun's face and round to the back of his neck. Chanyeol likes being strong, likes being able to pick people up, the smallness of their hands in his—and that's nearly everyone. It's doing something to him that Sehun's similar in size, something new—it turns him on in some way that he isn't used to, that doesn't come with instructions about what to do with it. 

It doesn't seem to matter. He has no idea how long they've been doing this for. He probably has work to do—not a schedule, he’d know—but for the first time in a long time, he does not care.  Time seems a stretchy, viscous thing and Chanyeol is just floating in a sortof dreamlike now , where he doesn’t want to go anywhere else and doesn’t want to do anything else.     They’ve slowly turned around, from being side by side to being where Sehun is mostly lying on top of him Chanyeol, and the weight of him there is good, he should stay. Chanyeol could still lift him off, in theory, but Sehun would just give him the most withering look and be completely unhelpful, and his knees would buckle, and they’d fall on the bed laughing. He would swear he used to laugh during sex more. Does it count as ‘during sex’ if you’re hiding in the wardrobe in Junmyeon’s room just for half an hour to not be doing stuff, laughing with your hands over each other’s mouths to muffle the sound?

The thought is so nostalgic he wants to tell Sehun, wants to hear his voice all of a sudden. “Sehunnie,” he says, pulling back an inch or two. “Remember hiding in the wardrobe? We were supposed to be at dance practice, but we were so tired everything was funny, and you got your boxers stuck in the zipper of your pants.”

Chanyeol feels Sehun’s soft huff of laughter on his lips at the same time as he hears it. “Junmyeon-hyung pretended he couldn’t find us.” 

Chanyeol’s stomach flutters with his own laughter. “He gave me such a lecture about that; did you get one?”

“No,” Sehun says. “He just told me not to let you drag me into things.” There’s a rueful note in his voice, like he’s thinking about something Chanyeol doesn’t know about. “I think. I wasn’t really listening.”

“Nothing’s changed there,” Chanyeol says, scritching Sehun’s scalp with his fingertips. They’re half talking into each other’s mouths, brushing their noses against each other’s faces. Sehun is too close to see properly; at this range it’s best to feel him. 

A snort. “Some things have. What do you even like these days?” He punctuates this with another roll of his hips. Presses his hardening cock against Chanyeol’s hip. 

Chanyeol pauses. There’s a ton of things he could say; his mouth seems to want to say, I don’t know . Strange. He knows what gets him off directly, what’s fun to do even if it’s not one of the first things, and it all dissipates into smoke when he tries to think of any of it. There’s only things from the last…hour? The warmth and weight of Sehun’s hands, feeling Sehun slowly fuck his mouth, the soft sounds of pleasure Sehun made. Fingers squeezing the meat of his shoulder, his hip, his ass. None of that’s stuff you can say, that makes sense to talk about. 

Sehun pulls back a little, and his face comes into focus. His eyes are so intense and directed, and the rest of his face is so soft, his mouth open and wet, expression quizzical—that particularly Sehunnie version of worriedly inquisitive.  

They didn’t look at each other the last time they did this, years ago—not like this. Not directly. Sehun had been so shy, had looked at basically everyone from under his lashes no matter how much taller than them he was, or was becoming. Just a hand in each other’s jeans in the dark, mostly, but they worked out blowjobs (sortof) and, a few times, he’d fucked Sehun, spooning him from behind to avoid making the bed creak. They'd tried it in the shower, once or twice, but it was slippery and awkward in there.

Never the other way around, because…because. He hadn’t really thought about it. It had just never happened, and then. It’s not as if he hasn’t always been a little curious. But the idea of letting a stranger put their fingers—or anything else—inside him was. No. If not even Baekhyun or Sehun have put their hands somewhere on him then how is he supposed to let someone he doesn’t love a tenth as much? 

Chanyeol’s mouth is dry. It’s not as if he can explain it—not even to himself, really. It’d ruin the mood, for a start. But Sehun followed him before, so maybe he’ll do it again, if Chanyeol just moves. So he does. Shimmies out from half-underneath Sehun—missing the weight, but it’ll be back—and, meeting Sehun’s widening eyes with his own, turns carefully onto his stomach until he’s looking at Sehun over his left shoulder. 

Sehun’s staring back at him, left hand curled tight against the bedsheets—caught off-guard, maybe. Does he do it this way? Chanyeol belatedly remembers some gay guys don’t switch. Then he lunges forward, fast and accurate, reaching over and past Chanyeol to the nightstand drawer. Oh, right. Lube. Chanyeol shivers, but then Sehun is properly balanced over him, kissing down his spine and sliding Chanyeol’s sweatpants and boxers down his hips. When they’re off, Chanyeol is wearing nothing but his socks, and some of Sehun’s weight is sitting on his thighs. Sehun runs firm hands down his back, finds places that Chanyeol hadn’t realised still ached from weights the day before yesterday. Down and up, up and down. Soft lips between his shoulder blades. Sehun’s hands on his ass, squeezing a little, feel familiar too, until he slides one thumb down Chanyeol’s tailbone, between his glutes, over his hole. That’s so unfamiliar it’s electric, like touching something that’s been left alone for so long it’s got static buildup. 

Then Sehun is squeezing lube over his own thumb, spreading it around, pressing in ever so slightly. It’s not totally strange; Chanyeol has fingers and google, so he’s obviously tried it, but just as it’s hard to give yourself a blowjob, it’s hard to finger yourself in the ass. More awkward than enjoyable. This doesn’t feel awkward: when Sehun shifts his weight and nudges Chanyeol’s thighs apart, it feels dangerous . Sehun isn’t leaning on him much—he must need the space for leverage—but he’s kneeling between Chanyeol’s spread legs, supporting himself on one elbow, and switching to using his fingers with the other hand.  One is a bit strange, but two has enough heft and girth to feel like something, a sensation he can’t categorise, but he thinks he—

“You like this,” Sehun says curiously, a tiny crooked Sehun smile in his voice. 

It’s then that Chanyeol notices he’s been making sounds. Just rough little huffs of breath, the occasional ‘mm’ when Sehun presses his fingers deeper. Chanyeol presses his face into the pillow for a minute, and makes an agreeing sort of noise. Lets his hips roll into Sehun's curling fingers as they seem to want to, today, a familiar motion that he hadn’t thought of as something that would work on this end of things. 

Some rustling behind him, then Sehun is nudging his side with a pillow. “For under your hips,” Sehun says, and Chanyeol lifts himself and lets Sehun arrange him. He must know the angles better. His fingers, too, are slow and firm and sure: he must have done this before, quite a lot of times. The thought does strange things to Chanyeol’s stomach muscles. 

The angle is different with the pillow. His back is more arched—not good form for weights, or really for much else, but. Sehun adds another finger, presses deep at the new angle, and Chanyeol moans into the pillow.

“You like this,” Sehun repeats, and there’s no hint of a question. Chanyeol doesn’t have a reply, anyway. He's asked people questions during sex before: apparently he should have been more considerate of their ability to answer. He didn't know it would be like this. Wouldn't more people be doing this if they knew? There's a deep ache inside him, but he's a dancer who lifts, so that's almost an advertisement. Something else is inside him too, in between the avalanche of pressure-movement-inside sensation: a place that feels especially good, that Sehun knows is there because he curls his fingers and presses against it on the outstroke. 

I can't take much more of this , he finds himself thinking. It makes no sense for a few moments, sitting there in his head that's otherwise empty of actual thoughts. Then: oh, he can't take much more of this, or he's gonna come , he's—he's been rocking his hips onto Sehun's fingers, rubbing his cock against the pillow under his hips, and somehow that's enough, like his body just isn't used to this and he's gonna have to relearn to last, like a teenage boy. 

Chanyeol's thoughts come so slowly. It seems like an age before he figures out that he should say something, and another to figure out what to say. His jaw works, throat letting out a series of sounds that definitely aren't words. "Come on," he manages roughly. Unclenches his hands to do something with them—he's not sure what—and finds that he's been grabbing the top edge of the mattress above his head, harder than he'd realised, because his hands shake. He reaches vaguely for Sehun, finds an arm. Curls his fingers around it. “Sehunnie, come on.”

Teeth in the meat at the back of his shoulder, biting down firmly but not to the point of pain. Shame, but he'll tell Sehun about it later. The fingers inside him withdraw and he feels himself let out a whine, hearing it and knowing it's embarrassing but not actually feeling any, just now. He hopes he remembers what that feels like, later: maybe he can learn to feel it more. He’s so sick of cringing away from things because embarrassment feels like a hot poker in his guts. "Hang on," Sehun says, kissing the patch skin he's left toothmarks in.

There's not much hanging on to do: a brief rustle and then the head of Sehun's cock is right there where he's—fuck, he's all wet and open, but even so he'd somehow forgotten that Sehun won the dick lottery and he's fucking big . Which isn't a problem for Chanyeol's literal and metaphorical big mouth, but sliding in achingly slowly, he feels huge. Apparently it's possible to feel totally engulfed when you're the one being fucked, not just the other way around. His body is so full of sensation it's like white noise, strangely soothing even though that doesn't help him sleep. Then Sehun's hips press against his ass, and Sehun gives a punched-out exhale and falls forward onto his forearms that sit tucked against Chanyeol's ribcage, bracketing him on both sides. 

There's a pause in which they both just pant as if they've been doing hours of dancing. Then Sehun says, in a strained voice, “Hyung, can I move?”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol manages. Then the world narrows down so nothing outside of this room is real, then nothing outside his vision, then nothing outside of what he can feel, just Sehun's body and his own, just the slow drag of Sehun's cock pulling out then sliding back in. It's insane. He can feel it from the soles of his feet to the back of his throat. It's gotta be a lot slower than Sehun wants to move, so Chanyeol tries, “You can,” and then trails off into a moan. 

“I can?” Sehun prompts. His breath blows over the back of Chanyeol's neck, at the base, and makes Chanyeol's spine want to curl. 

Chanyeol tries to have thoughts. “Yeah,” he says, “more.” The wave of his hand is more of a vague arm twitch. 

Sehun gives him more. Barely. His self control would be infuriating if it didn't feel this good. Chanyeol should maybe do something that isn't just lie here and groan into the pillow about it, but his limbs are overcooked noodles and his spine is taking care of itself, arching into Sehun, lifting his hips to push back against him. Chanyeol isn't used to being this smooshed into the bed, this—held, as if there are arms around him but more , and not at all how he’d imagined this position feeling. Trapped, he’d have guessed, or fixed in place. He doesn’t like feeling trapped.  

There'd be no need to fix him in place, anyway. He's not going anywhere that's not here for a while. Sehun's beginning to make sounds, his exhales becoming a bit voiced at the end, almost like a hum of pleasure. His hands have wrapped around Chanyeol's upper arms, thumbs pressing in as if it’s a massage. They're joined from waist to ankle—Sehun has hooked his feet over Chanyeol's spread legs just above the ankle—and there's just so much going on in his whole body, it almost feels like being in a hot tub, only he's inching closer to coming and Sehun's making sounds Chanyeol has never heard. Soft bitten-off groans, harsh breaths nearing a growl every so often, and a whispered “fuck, fuck, fuck.”

It's not enough, he's going to slowly inch over the edge of orgasm without ever really being fucked, and it'll be over faster but he wants . “Sehunnie,” he says—tries to say. He can barely get enough breath to talk, it feels like. “Sehunnie, fuck, please .” Whatever the hell he was going for, it comes out a whine. 

Sehun makes an incoherent groan and presses his forehead against Chanyeol's upper back. He doesn't pretend not to know what Chanyeol wants, what they both want—comes up higher on his elbows, moves faster and harder, and he'd be shoving Chanyeol up the bed if he wasn't holding onto his arms, if Chanyeol wasn't bracing back into him. 

“Are you gonna come like this?” Sehun asks in a strained voice, and he sounds almost surprised.

Chanyeol's breathing in gasps. Something about the tight clench of his abs and breathing muscles makes it even better. “Obviously,” he says, when he has the breath for it. Sehun's groan in reply sounds almost angry , like he's so turned on just fucking Chanyeol isn't enough, he also wants to slap him about it, and that's enough. He turns his face into the pillow and yells through a totally absurd orgasm that lasts for ages , and leaves him feeling so bleary and dopey in the aftermath that he's only vaguely aware of Sehun choking out, “Chanyeol-ah,” and following. 

Sehun is lying on top of him, all his weight flopped onto Chanyeol's back. He's very warm. Chanyeol can feel his ribcage expanding as he breathes hard. His own arms ache a little. “Sehun-ah,” he says after a stupefied minute or two. “You're kindof digging into my arms.”

Sehun releases his fingers, which were still clenched tightly in Chanyeol's upper arms, with a soft curse. His fingers are probably cramping. Chanyeol is absolutely going to have fingermark bruises. “Sorry,” Sehun says belatedly. He doesn't move, though. That's fine. Eventually he slides out of Chanyeol, along with a lot of lube and come—gross—leaving behind a pleasant ache and a slightly less pleasant feeling of absence. 

Eventually he moves off Chanyeol, too, leaving a kiss on his shoulder. Settles next to him. Chanyeol turns to the side and looks back at him. Sehun's face is…unreadable. Chanyeol knows him as well as anyone, but he's not Baekhyun or Minseok with their twisty brains, he's not Junmyeon with his watchfulness that's sometimes anxious and sometimes just cold observation: he just doesn't always know what Sehun's feeling. That doesn't bother him like it bothers Baekhyun. Sometimes other people are having thoughts and feelings that aren't his business, a thought that has never once occurred to Baekhyun. 

He shuffles a half inch closer, and kisses Sehun, following an impulse he's not looking at too hard. Sehun sighs into his mouth. They keep that up for a long time, maybe, or maybe it's just that it still feels like time is moving at a trickle. 

Chanyeol's stomach gurgles. Sehun puts his hand on it with a quiet laugh. “So…you got anything to eat?” Chanyeol says hopefully. 

Sehun rolls his shoulders. “Stay there, okay?”

He gets up and walks out, still naked, as unselfconscious as Chanyeol has ever seen him. It's a good look on him. Chanyeol hasn't really looked at him naked in a long while, though he's seen him, obviously. His butt's more muscular, his shoulders broader than his last mental image. 

Chanyeol can hear him running a tap, walking around and making the quiet sounds of people being alive nearby. He rolls over onto his back, breathing, feeling like every one of his slightly-more-than-the-official-185cm is warm and loose and satisfied. He hears the sounds of Sehun's footsteps coming back to the bedroom, and smiles to himself. 

-------

They spend more or less the whole day in bed. Chanyeol is astonishingly affectionate, in even those last little ways that he never was before—always just ‘before’, in Sehun’s head, since there isn’t another thing to really call those months where they weren’t dating but were definitely doing something , at least until Chanyeol decided he wanted to try girls, and Sehun abruptly realised the whole thing had been just, some experiment for Chanyeol, maybe a convenience thing, whatever. 

That’s how it goes, with idols. Lock a bunch of teenage boys in a house, make them share rooms and do fanservice and forbid them from dating, and of course they get close, lean into each other, burn off some hormones. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, that Chanyeol was doing that, but Sehun doesn’t really get it. You could lock him in a dorm with a group of female idols and he’d more or less turn into Kyungsoo, probably. He’d do what he was paid to do and drop it. Still, he should have known, the way Chanyeol had called it ‘fun’, as in, let’s go to your room and have fun. The way they’d kissed some, during, but never made out like Taemin and Jongin used to do when they were younger and less discreet, and if Taemin was over you just had to sortof step around them. 

Sehun wonders, now, if that was a sort of declaration. This isn’t fanservice and it isn’t convenience , they seemed to be saying. You can’t pretend we’re just messing around . It worked, on whoever it was meant to work on. Everyone who needs to know about them knows about them, and they’re still together years later even if they don’t say the words. There probably aren’t the words. They aren’t dating , not after so long and so much security in their togetherness, and boyfriends feels equally odd. They’d be married, Sehun thinks, if that were a thing two men could be. 

What, then, is he supposed to make of the soft, affectionate kisses Baekhyun gives them sometimes, that Yixing used to distribute whenever he thought he’d be allowed? That Chanyeol very, very occasionally indulges in too? Don’t think too hard about it , Junmyeon-hyung told him once. Let people be what they are, take them at their word, and find people to talk to and date who know what they want.

He didn’t exactly mean to completely ignore this sensible advice. But here he is, again, even less certain than ever. Even if looking back it’s obvious that he and Chanyeol were just for fun, what’s he supposed to make of this ? 

After they’ve cleaned up and demolished Sehun’s snack cupboard, they lie on Sehun’s bed and make out some more. Sehun has never done this: he went straight from dorm room handjobs and occasionally more involved sex to a relationship with another adult, so he’s never just put on a film and then kissed someone for an hour instead of watching it.

Sehun let Chanyeol pick. He can’t even remember what it is; there’s explosions. He twines his fingers in Chanyeol’s soft hair, holds their bodies close, and tries to let the sensations sink through his skin into his bones. 

They order pizza and eat it on the couch, legs tangled. They make out in the shower, and then undo the shower by fucking in Sehun’s bed again. Sehun rides Chanyeol, because before he was always too nervous, and he wants to see Chanyeol’s face. Chanyeol looks—

Sehun second- and third-guesses everything he sees, quietly, in the place in the back of his mind that never stops. He’s never known how to look at Chanyeol properly, to really see what’s there without even a trace of wishful thinking. But. But. This is closer to what he’d wanted, then. This day out of time that Sehun can’t deny himself. He just takes everything Chanyeol will give him, and that’s startlingly close to everything. Takes Chanyeol’s hands and laces their fingers together, kisses his palms and wrists and neck, takes his cock twice and Chanyeol’s fingers massaging shampoo through his hair as Sehun holds onto him and rests his chin on Chanyeol’s shoulder, looks and looks and looks at him. 

Waits for the spell to break, like the instant between spilling boiling water on your hands and when it starts to hurt, stretched out for hours.

It takes longer than he’d expected. Cruel, Chanyeol, to leave him suspended on a hook for that long—but Chanyeol doesn’t know that he’s cruel. Needs someone to be mean to him sometimes to show him, which is probably why he gravitates to Baekhyun and Minseok. Maybe Sehun will learn, eventually, how to be mean to Chanyeol, in that way that shocks him but doesn't hurt him the way a colder criticism always has. He’s always caved for Chanyeol, like an owner who never tells their dog ‘no’. Maybe—given the evidence of the past few months—he has learned a little.

 It’s getting colder outside, and they’re dressed again, when Chanyeol turns and says, “I gotta go break up with Sohyun, I guess.”

The way his stomach lurches is familiar, although the sentence isn’t, precisely. “What?” Sehun hadn’t thought—he hadn’t even really remembered about Sohyun. Baekhyun had left a few messages in the groupchat. Said she was nice. Made some joke about how she deserved better than Chanyeol’s forgetful ass. 

Sehun had agreed. 

“I talked to Baekhyun,” Chanyeol says, oblivious, eating from a bag of chips with his fingers despite the chopsticks on the coffee table right next to him. “He knocked some sense into me. There’s no point wasting someone’s time if I don’t like them enough to like, remember important stuff.”

Sehun’s going to be sick. He nearly is, right then: bile rises in his throat, and he has to hunch over his stomach to hold it in. How had he thought, for even a second , that Chanyeol had learned one single goddamn thing? “So,” Sehun says, feeling his voice flattening and hollowing out, “what are you doing here, then?”

Chanyeol blinks at him. “Hanging out with you?”

Sehun’s throat works a few times before he can speak. “Well, am I a rebound, or a distraction, then?”

Chanyeol frowns, having maybe worked out that there’s something wrong with this conversation, and sits up properly. “Sehunnie, don’t be—” he switches tack, fortunately for his face: Sehun isn’t totally sure he’s not going to slap him. “It’s not like that. You’re my friend.” A pause, as if he’s noticed that this is a bit of an inadequate sentence. “My best friend.”

“You’re the one who showed up at my house and kissed me,” Sehun points out, conversationally. He sounds calm, because his face and his voice are liars when he’s too poisonously angry (or anything else) to even feel it properly, and it lodges in his chest and throat, thick and stifling, so nothing else can get out. 

Chanyeol makes a frustrated noise. “So? It’s not like you’re doing any better: what about—whatever his name is, Jihoon or something?”

Sehun stands up. Paces the room once. It’s stand up or throw up, and he doesn’t want to do a bad job of cleaning up vomit on the carpet and have to ask the cleaners to fix it. He’d…forgotten. Somehow. He’d literally forgotten. Chanyeol obviously hadn’t forgotten—why he’s pretending not to know Jihoon’s name, Sehun currently doesn’t have a single spare bit of space to think about—he’d just done it anyway.  Didn’t care, didn’t think Sehun would care? Sehun doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Somehow, that’s the worst possible thing Chanyeol could do: show him that, when there’s something Sehun really wants, he’ll be just as callously careless as Chanyeol. 

He turns to look at Chanyeol, who has put down the bag of chips, looking really concerned and a bit angry now. Fuck that. Fuck him. Sehun’s ruined already; he can feel his chest caving in with a heavier, bleaker version of the confused hurt that had followed him around for months and months after Chanyeol had just walked out of his bedroom and never come back. “Do you have any fucking idea what you’re doing? Are you trying to mess with me? If it wasn’t—why did you kiss me, what was all of this for, why the fuck did you ask if I’m in love with you if you don’t give a damn what the answer is?”

Chanyeol’s eyes widen suddenly, and he opens his mouth, but no words come out.

Sehun rakes his fingers over his scalp. “Of course I'm in love with you, you absolute— garbage can !” He rips at his hair. He wants to do things he never does: he wants to scream. Throw things. Hit Chanyeol as hard as he can bear to. Anything to make Chanyeol’s face look as if he for one single day feels as torn up and broken about this as Sehun has for a long, long time. “ Fuck knows why ,” he adds, to the universe at large. 

Chanyeol, at least, looks as if he’s just missed being hit by a train by the skin of his teeth. He’s ghost-white, stock still, and his hands are shaking.

Good , some cruel part of Sehun thinks. He doesn’t give that part much airtime, because it wants Chanyeol to either be his or be miserable, be Sehun’s in all but name, keep fucking random women and screwing up his relationships if he damn well pleases, keep having Sehun be his best and most important person, and if he doesn’t want to get a clue about why any of that is happening, then it’s his own fault. 

Sehun breathes, and tries to get a handle on himself before he says anything worse.

Chanyeol sits on the floor. Knees to chest, both arms around his shins. “I didn’t know,” he tells the floor.

Sehun stuffs his hands in his pockets. He can clench them just fine in there, and then he won’t be just standing, making weird movements with his hands as if he’s maybe going to hit something. “Well,” he says, bitterly. “That makes you and literally no one else we know.” 

He hovers for a bit, after that. Just scrubbing his face and not knowing what to do with any of his limbs. It takes him a while to realise he’s waiting for Chanyeol to leave, and Chanyeol isn’t leaving: he’s got his head pressed to his knees, curled up in the tightest ball an incredibly long and reasonably fit man can make. 

Why isn’t he leaving? That’s the next line of the script, here. Chanyeol says something that he has no idea is hurtful, Sehun gets upset, Chanyeol looks baffled, and leaves. Or shouts and leaves, or apologises and leaves. It’s sortof how he goes: Sehun isn’t any good at explaining himself, or doesn’t want to explain himself. He used to pretend not to be upset, but in the last few years Chanyeol had—he’d thought—got better at reading him, and started noticing, so Sehun hasn’t bothered pretending in a while. 

But Chanyeol is just sitting there. Eventually he puts his chin on his knees and looks up, eyes like a sad puppy that doesn’t know why it’s been locked out of the garden. “Wanna get drunk, Sehunnie?”

“You're an ass,” Sehun says, without much enthusiasm: he doesn't kick puppies. He absolutely wants to get drunk, actually. It's maybe not a great idea: drunk Sehun is a capricious creature, especially if he drinks when he's miserable, about as likely to loosen up and have fun or do something daring (or stupid) as he is to sit in the bathtub and cry. He's going to do it anyway. Might as well compound his list of bad decisions for the day. Usually, he gets drunk and then fools around with Chanyeol; is it better or worse, to have done it sober this time? That they were both sober? 

He goes to fetch a bottle of vodka from the kitchen. Considers not offering Chanyeol any of the only mixer he has—orange juice—but he'd have none himself in that case, and he’s not prepared to curdle his guts that badly over Chanyeol. (Again.)

Well. Not with him in the room, anyway. Humiliating. 

He sits next to Chanyeol, glass in hand, with an awful ratio of vodka to orange juice in it, and sips it in grim silence. Back to not looking at Chanyeol, he supposes. They drink maybe a third of the bottle without talking. 

Chanyeol’s breathing turns shaky, next to him. He sniffs once, and says, “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Sehunnie.” A pause, to pour himself more vodka, hands wobbling. “I’m sorry.”

Sehun takes the bottle of vodka off him. Pours himself a sloppy few shots. “I know,” he says. 

They don't say much more for a while. The bottle drains. Eventually they give up on the cups, and the orange juice, and just pass the open bottle back and forth. Indirect kiss. The only kind he's getting, now. Sehun wants to kiss Chanyeol again, but what stops him isn't restraint—the kind of restraint he doesn't have, at the moment. He's just too fucking miserable. All he wants is to finish the bottle, and lean his shoulder into Chanyeol. In some better universe, drunk Chanyeol would be less muddled, more willing to say what he feels, and he'd curl his arms around Sehun and slur something like, “I've been so dumb” or “I want to be yours” or even—when they're at the dregs of the bottle—“I love you too”. 

None of that happens. Eventually, the bottle is done. “I'm going to bed,” Sehun says. Chanyeol mumbles something, and flops over when Sehun drags himself upright to fetch a bottle of mineral water for the bedside table. He heard once that was better. There's sports drink and aspirin there already. He goes to the bathroom, brushes his teeth, gets toothpaste all down his shirt and leaves it on the floor. 

Chanyeol's already in his bed. Sehun gets in, and sighs. Chanyeol's either asleep, or nearly: he wouldn't curl into Sehun's chest so easily otherwise. 

The room is tilting. It's always a bit like that when he's holding Chanyeol, though: this is just the feeling happening on the outside of his head, as well as the inside. He stares at the ceiling and drifts, dozes, too dizzy for real sleep. Dreams. 

Blinks awake to Chanyeol reaching clumsily across him for the water, and passes him the bottle. Takes it back when he's done, when he flops back onto Sehun's chest. A moment later, he stirs again. “It's too hot,” he complains, rolling onto his back. Sehun doesn't move, and they're lying shoulder to shoulder on their backs. “I like you so much, Sehunnie,” Chanyeol says, so slurred he must be falling asleep again. Sehun can feel his breathing even out from their points of contact. He wonders if this is a dream. Remembers Chanyeol's face, biting his lip as he looked up at Sehun. Opening his mouth to let out sounds, then closing it with his teeth, as if closing around some words. I like you so much, Sehunnie. 

Sehun gets out of bed as swiftly as he can without disturbing Chanyeol too much, then sprints to the bathroom to throw up the mostly liquid contents of his stomach. 

If anything, he feels worse afterwards. At least the nausea was distracting. His phone flashes its notification light on the sink where he must have left it a few hours earlier. 

It's just Minseok sending cat pictures to the groupchat. They're good cat pictures, in fairness. Sehun has to hold his phone in one hand and type with the other, but he manages to text Baekhyun, whose sleep schedule is unknowable to humans. 

U up? 

A few minutes pass. 

No , comes the reply. Then, I'm asleep, like you should be

Chanyeols in my bed. I cant sleep tehre 

Sehun can almost hear the sigh in Baekhyun's next text. What happened this time? 

Same shit as usual. maybe worse idk-

Baekhyun calls him. Sehun picks up, and the first thing Baekhyun says, without a greeting, is Baekhyun's unbelievably awake and clear-sounding 4am voice saying, “So what's my stupidest dongsaeng done this time?”

Sehun's whole face screws up, involuntarily. He takes a breath to try and answer, and it comes out a sob. The kind that wrench their way out of you whether you want to let them out or not, that kick and scream on the way up. “I'm not any better,” he says. “I. Cheated on Jihoon.” 

Baekhyun clicks his tongue. “Ah, don't worry, we’re all awful in this club. I fucked Chanyeol’s girlfriend on purpose, you cheated on that boyfriend who's not good enough for you, and Chanyeol has only ever been faithful for a whole relationship by accident.” He pauses for Sehun to gulp out some horrified laughter around the tears. It doesn't really seem to interrupt them. “Anyway, I met him. Didn't lay a finger on him, before you ask—just wanted to see if he was taking care of my Sehunnie properly. And, well. You must know that he's going to let himself be nudged into an arranged marriage soon.”

Sehun has known. For months. It hasn't been bothering him, really. At least Jihoon knows what he wants, even if it isn’t Sehun, not in the way Sehun wants to be wanted. At least Jihoon has never lied to him, not even really by accident, has never left him confused or guessing. Jihoon is gay, and he wants children, and obviously he wouldn’t tell Baekhyun this, but he told Sehun. He’s so honest, in his way, and so straightforward, and Sehun likes him so much.

He cries harder. Rests his back against the toilet because he's too tired not to. 

Baekhyun lets him do that for a bit. He has before many times, probably will again. Sehun's problems are boring by Baekhyun standards. But then, Baekhyun likes being needed, almost as much as he likes being wanted. Doesn't date much, either: he prefers being wanted to being had. 

Baekhyun makes a noise on the other end of the phone like a cat puking, which means he said that aloud. "Sehun-ah, you should tell him that. He might even listen to you .”

“Can’t trust anything people say when they’re drunk,” Sehun says, a horrible smile pulling its way across his face. “We were drunk, in bed after I yelled at him, and he just rolls over and says, I like you so much, Sehunnie .” It tastes bitter in his mouth to say the words. Baekhyun audibly takes a breath.

“Okay,” he says. “Don’t worry about it now. Go back to bed.”

“Hyung,” Sehun says in protest, but there isn't actually more to that sentence. He's tired. 

“Don't 'hyung' me when you're drunk unless you want me to confiscate all your booze when I come over,” Baekhyun says. He doesn't sound properly annoyed, though, with a yawn halfway through. 

“You're coming over?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Baekhyun says, firmly. “Just—don't do anything, until then. Go back to bed and hug Chanyeollie even though he's being a dick. I hug you even though you wake me up so late it's early.”

“Okay,” Sehun says, and hangs up. He stopped crying somewhere in there. He drinks water straight from the tap, blearily checks for vomit on the floor, and staggers back to bed. 

Chanyeol has moved over to Sehun's side, so Sehun has to climb over him to get to some empty bed. As soon as he's lying down, Chanyeol rolls over onto him. Buries his face in Sehun's shoulder. 

Sehun sighs. I hate you, he thinks, loudly, looking at Chanyeol's soft sleeping face. 

It only takes a few minutes to drift off into a proper, deeper sleep then, without any dreams at all.