Archive of Our Own

"The break up actually wasn't that bad," Chanyeol explains, "but I fucking hate Baekhyun’s guts."

“Is this the fifth or the sixth time?" Sehun asks, already bored with the conversation. He and Chanyeol are playing finger football with an old eraser they found from the depths of his backpack, and Chanyeol keeps getting walloped.

“The last time,” Chanyeol sniffs, just as Sehun sends the eraser sailing between his finger goalposts. Jongin claps politely.

“Why are you guys even here?” Joonmyun asks. He’s been helping Kyungsoo with a sample mathematics midterm for the last two hours, and his eyes are going wide and dark with the wrath of a wronged deity. The room is probably too small for all five of them, which doesn't help. Kyungsoo’s honestly just doing his best to emulate a rock. His face has gone completely blank and Chanyeol isn’t really sure he’s breathed in the last half hour.

“Kyungsoo said he’d make me comfort food,” Chanyeol whines, “because I’m heartbroken.”

“Again,” Sehun adds, unhelpfully.

“Wait, so how do I do question four?”

“Kyungsoo, this is high school trig,” Joonmyun explains, doing his best not to be extremely irritated, even though he is clearly extremely irritated. His smile is very, very thin. “Have you tried reviewing the identities?”

“Right,” Kyungsoo replies mildly. “I’ll do that next.”

“Didn’t you fail high school math?” Jongin asks absently, flicking the leftover eraser shavings at Chanyeol’s chest. He’s got weirdly sharp accuracy and keeps aiming for the nipples. Kyungsoo stares at him with the force of a laser beam until he notices, which makes him wince and mumble, “Sorry hyung."

"I cooked once for you guys," Kyungsoo frowns. "In first year. Why are we still talking about it?"

"Probably because it was the most remarkable thing about you," Chanyeol grins. "In first year, I mean."

"I want to eat crabs," Jongin helps. "In soy sauce."

"Oh yeah, I found this super funny video of a crab on Naver last night, can I borrow someone's phone? Who still has data?" Sehun's already trying to reach inside Joonmyun's jacket pocket. The poor guy's almost vibrating with anger. Kyungsoo has made himself very, very small by hunching real close over the table.

Suddenly, Joonmyun finds zen. He clears his throat and says: “You know, I heard from a certain source that another certain buddy of ours might be interested in you, Chanyeol. Long lashes, tiny frame, cute smile—the whole nine yards. You might be able to catch him at choir practice if you leave now.”

Chanyeol's brows scrunch down, as if he's solving the world's greatest mystery. Sehun leans over and whispers a name in his ear, and he immediately brightens. Chanyeol blows a grateful kiss at Joonmyun, drags Sehun and Jongin up by the collar, and flits out the door. Peace finally fills the room. Joonmyun exhales, and gently sweeps the remaining eraser bits into an empty coffee cup they left behind. The clock tower tolls in the distance.

"You failed high school math?" Joonmyun asks, suddenly remembering the small pebble struggling with cosine waves next to him.

"I don't remember that," the pebble mumbles.

After a week of will-they-won’t-they and one day of the-betting-pool-is-what-now, Kim Jongdae and Park Chanyeol start dating. Joonmyun wins big money. Everyone else suffers three weeks of nonstop pranks and extremely obnoxious cackling. Chanyeol’s not really sure if toilet papering someone’s doghouse really counts as a good first date, but it works for him. Not much changes between them, except sometimes they grab each other’s crotches, and not just in the changing room after a workout to compare sizes.

Jongdae’s actually a pretty great boyfriend, especially after the year he’s had with Baekhyun. He notices when the corners of Chanyeol’s mouth are chapped and leaves little bullets of lipbalm in his jeans. When they’re watching funny movies together (and it’s always a funny movie), Chanyeol cackles and slaps Jongdae’s arm, hard, while Jongdae usually sits back and laughs deep from his belly and absently rubs his palm all over Chanyeol’s thigh. He leans against Chanyeol when he gets sleepy, even in public. He never cuts in line. He signals before every turn. He lets little old ladies get on the bus before him (who does that?). Chanyeol doesn’t really know what to do with all of Jongdae’s tenderness, sometimes. He still confuses himself by doing all the things he used to do when he was still with Baekhyun, but gets surprised each time when the reaction's different. Jongdae hugs and smiles at him a lot. It makes him feel guilty.

"Am I a rebound?" Jongdae asks one day, in the middle of kicking Chanyeol's ass at Mario Kart.

Chanyeol’s thumb slips and he runs into a sandpit, helplessly spraying yellow pixels all over the screen. "Um, probably," he admits, caught off guard.

"Okay," Jongdae replies, calmly invoking the wrath of Zeus onto a spinning Toad, "I think I deserve better than that, so we should break up."

"Uh." Chanyeol’s stunned, not sure of how to disagree, or if he should. That problem will probably plague him until he dies. “All right.” Jongdae zooms past the finish line and the crowd cheers. Princess Peach winks at Chanyeol, preening on the podium while Toad wails his heart out on the bottom step.

“Wanna go for one last round?” Jongdae asks, stretching his arms above his head.

“Of Mario Kart?” Chanyeol asks, shakily.

“Of break up sex, stupid.” Jongdae’s leaning back on his arms, smiling sunnily at his now ex-boyfriend. Princess Peach opens up an umbrella to shield herself from Toad’s tears.

Chanyeol, of course, nods.

Beenzino’s already finished his second set when Chanyeol finally notices Baekhyun on the other side of the room. He's straddling an amp pushed up against the wall, his legs spread open as he leans over the fulcrum of his hands. Some girl is leaning up to whisper something that makes him widen his eyes at first, then throw his head back and laugh, throat bobbing in the dim light. The sound is fogged over by conversational din, but the memory alone turns Chanyeol's throat into shredded paper, curled up and dried.

It's not that Baekhyun has something special that lets Chanyeol spot him from across a room—some useless, obsolete reflex like hitting up speed dial number two when his head is in the toilet or getting out from the left side of his bed, because Baekhyun always takes the right and he sleeps like an octopus. Chanyeol's never been good at recognizing him anyway, can't count the number of strangers with curved necks and red snapbacks he's goosed.

It's that jacket, that fucking leather jacket that cost more than half of Chanyeol's budget for the month: creamy black leather so dark it seemed to absorb light and beam it back out through its decorative silver studs. He had to live off of canned soup and kimbap for three weeks to afford that thing, the result of some blissful promise after a monumental session of make-up sex. They'd just made it past the nine month mark and things were looking up: Baekhyun was finished cryptically asking everyone what they thought happiness really was and Chanyeol had marathoned his way through every early-2000s Jun Jihyun movie, emerging an expert on grand romantic gestures and meaningful glances out frosty winter windows.

Before he decided that they were worth a sixth shot, Baekhyun asked, "Don't you ever think of the future? Like, are we serious? Aren't we too young to be settling down? Where are we headed?"

Chanyeol blanked, then tried: "Sometimes, kinda, probably, and hopefully towards some make-up sex?"

Baekhyun gave him A Look, the kind Chanyeol couldn't read, and slowly put his chin onto his tucked up knees. But when Chanyeol leaned in, he tilted his head up so Chanyeol assumed it meant things were okay. Chanyeol could totally start thinking about their future more, and then they could be solid gold again. Sehun kept sending him really obnoxious snaps of him making out with some Chinese guy and Chanyeol needed an actual boyfriend so he could retaliate.

"For our one year anniversary," Chanyeol said later, in a moment of inspiration, switching his mouth over Baekhyun's dick for his fist, "we should do something really special."

Baekhyun had grunted something that was either "sure" or "fuck" or "that sounds like a wonderful idea, Chanyeol, tell me more," so Chanyeol continued.

"Like we should get each other something crazy, something we would never buy ourselves, y'know? Like a new sound system or the latest Samsung Galaxy or really nice cologne or a jacket from 87mm or Mackage—"

"For fuck's sake, Chanyeol," Baekhyun finally said, pulling his face from the pillow and staring down at him incredulously, which Chanyeol took to mean buy me a Mackage jacket in three months when it really meant put your flapping mouth back on my dick you noisy piece of shit. They kind of knew they had communication problems, but they were working on it.

They broke up two more times, Chanyeol bought the jacket, and Baekhyun excavated a box of unopened of couple rings from his brother's room. He forgot to take out the small card that read to my baekbeommie, who made my first time the best time!!!, hearts dotting the exclamation marks, but Chanyeol would discover that later, over dessert.

Chanyeol stormed out of the fancy French restaurant, leaving Baekhyun with a monstrous bill and a grudge that never really went away. He drove a quick odyssey around Seoul, trying to find anybody that would still take him in after a full year of breakup rants, and ended up in Kyungsoo's room with his laptop and one long night of getting his ass kicked at League.

Right after, Baekhyun took a road trip with some choir clubmates and Jongin and didn't come back until the new semester. He brought the leather jacket with him. Chanyeol found out through an update to his KakaoStory, which he saw on Kyungsoo’s phone. Last he heard, Baekhyun found the love of his life in Busan, but that just turned out to be Jongdae in a women’s hanbok.

In any case, he wore the jacket around the summer roads of Korea’s countryside and he’s wearing it here, in this dingy excuse for a club. Chanyeol’s staring at him from across the room, still not sure what he should do next, until Baekhyun finally notices. He stares Chanyeol straight in the eyes, then, without a change in his expression, keeps his gaze moving around the room, as if he’d never seen him in the first place. Chanyeol’s organs drop a metre, then turn to lead.

A whole posse of snapbacks and Air Jordans emerges from the darkness, surging around Baekhyun like an ocean tide. The girl he was with before notices Chanyeol staring, and she starts to smile in recognition. She touches Baekhyun’s shoulder to catch his attention; she's probably whispering something like isn’t that the guy who let you do that sex thing he wasn’t really into? The real MVP of boyfriends? into Baekhyun’s ear. But Baekhyun just shrugs and walks away, so she looks back at him, confused, and follows after the receding crowd.

Chanyeol really fucking hates Baekhyun’s guts.

When they were good, they were really good. Baekhyun made Chanyeol feel invincible at its best, reckless at its worst. He could take Chanyeol’s playful boredom and amplify it back, every good idea turned into a glittering, drunken memory and every bad one into a mark on his permanent record. They built Fort-Knox-level pillow forts and impromptu tire swings from the university president statues. Baekhyun never backed down, from anything, which made Chanyeol want to do the same. Chanyeol could groan about setting his exams on fire and Baekhyun would make it happen, organizing a massive post-finals campfire for everyone to throw in their semester’s work. Once, Chanyeol slowly reupholstered all the chairs in the main theatre over the summer so that they would spell Baekhyun's name, right before the fall matriculation. Another time, Baekhyun art-attacked the K-block dormitories with an eerily accurate depiction of Chanyeol’s cock using old towels and board games parts. They made the campus newspaper a lot.

But neither of them had the grace nor patience to forgive each other when it counted, and a shared taste in t-shirts and dick jokes could only take them so far.

This is how their last break up goes:

"For fuck's sake," Chanyeol explodes. He’s driving Baekhyun home, it’s a weird hour of the night, he can’t remember why they're out. Maybe they were catching the late screening of a cheap thriller movie, maybe they were coming back from a study session. It doesn’t matter. Baekhyun's face is stony, from what Chanyeol can see in the rearview mirror. He's staring out the window, palm folded up against his mouth. "You never tell me what's wrong and when you finally speak up, it's always about how I've fucked up again. So I change, because I’m trying, and then you say that I’m trying too hard? What the fuck does that even mean?" Baekhyun doesn't respond, and it makes him even angrier, that he can't even elicit some kind of reaction from him anymore.

"You want me to give up on us, is that it?" Chanyeol demands, and immediately regrets it, because Baekhyun's entire face tightens up and his gaze finally shifts to where Chanyeol is looking at him through the mirror. It's worse, when Baekhyun is looking at him, all that apathy and polite distance focused onto him, or maybe right through him. He almost wants Baekhyun to get angry, have another one of their infamously loud, window-shaking fights, but Baekhyun has locked something up and Chanyeol is only just seeing that now.

A streetlight flashes past and Baekhyun's face lights up again, blank as lightning.

"Are you threatening me?" Baekhyun finally asks into the silence of the car.

"If all you can take from that is some misguided assumption that I’m threatening us, if you really fucking think that—" Chanyeol starts, already defensive, but Baekhyun starts speaking again in that same soft voice and Chanyeol jaw claps shut.

"I think," Baekhyun says slowly, "that you should stop the car so  I can take the bus home. I think that I’m done having this conversation, and all other the ones we've had just like it. I think we've both been trying too hard at something that should be easy." But Chanyeol can't find the will to shift his foot to the brake, doesn't dare interrupt what he thought was perpetual motion.

Baekhyun ends it: "I can't see myself growing old with you. Can you?" and Chanyeol stops the car. For a moment, nobody moves. Baekhyun is still looking at Chanyeol in the rearview mirror and Chanyeol is looking back. Out of kindness, or something like it, Baekhyun drops his gaze first and steps out of Chanyeol's car without a word of farewell. Chanyeol watches him go, and then can't.

"Baek," Chanyeol yells hoarsely out the window, something cold weakening his throat. "Byun Baekhyun! I’m sorry, all right?" But he doesn't even react, doesn't flip him off like he did when Chanyeol walked away from him two months ago. He just takes out his phone and leans against the bus sign, he's dialling someone, and when he starts talking, he's smiling then laughing, as if he hadn't just broken up with Chanyeol for the last time.

And the worst part is that Chanyeol recognizes that laugh from when they'd first started dating, the kind of laugh Baekhyun used to save for Chanyeol's cheesy morning serenades and that time he got Chanyeol a new soundboard for his birthday and Chanyeol tried to kiss up his arm like he was the Morticia Addams to his Gomez.

It was genuine, that laugh. Baekhyun’s genuinely happy. He’s walking away from Chanyeol for the last time and somehow, he’s all right.

The realization punches through him. Winds him. His body kicks into overdrive against his will, magnifying everything: his chest feeling carved out but pounding too fast, his temples throbbing in response, the sound of his own shallow breathing, a bitter retch at the back of his throat. He grips the steering wheel with both hands, counts to ten, twenty, sixty, still can't catch his breath; so he touches his foot to the gas and heads for the only place he can think of.

“Hey,” Chanyeol mumbles.

“It’s two am,” Kyungsoo cuts in, his hair sticking up like a saiyan’s. His voice is raspier than usual. “This better be really good.”

“So Baekhyun and I broke up,” he starts, shoving his foot into the jamb when Kyungsoo starts to close the door on him. “For good.”

Kyungsoo peers up at him, and Chanyeol can’t meet his eyes, can’t play this game of Is this really it? Did Chanyeol finally fuck up for real? Is the poor little boy calling wolf again or is he bleeding out on the forest floor? because this time the answer’s yes. Kyungsoo lets him in.

“Minseok’s already sleeping, so don’t be loud.” He shuffles Chanyeol into the tiny living room and takes the grocery bag from him, which has nothing but two onions and a pack of Hite. He stares into it for a while, then peels out a can and passes it to Chanyeol.

"If you wanna cry," Kyungsoo offers slowly, like they're fifteen again and Chanyeol has just been heckled for the first time at his first big rap battle and he’s facedown on Kyungsoo’s comforter in Goyang. Seven years later, Chanyeol's facedown in Kyungsoo's furniture again, this time a sofa. They're in a different city, for a different reason, but the feeling's the same.

"No," he says into the cheap upholstery. Everything smells like Minseok's air freshener. His eyes are stinging. "Fuck. Why would you even say that, now it’s on my mind. If I actually cry, it’s gonna be your fault. Or Minseok's. Minseok's fucking obsession with the smell of citrus fresh all over your damn apartment."

“Sorry," he apologizes, even though Chanyeol knows it’s not his fault and that he’s taking it out on the one guy who opened his door to him, the one guy who still opens his door to him.

"Fuck," Chanyeol says again, "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck." His head is on fire. Naked, he confesses everything: "I was serious about us, you know, like maybe I didn't think about marrying the fucking guy but why does that mean I wasn't serious? And I tried, like really fucking hard, and I don't know why he didn't see or care, but I did, so isn't that good enough?"

Kyungsoo is very quiet from where he's sitting, and Chanyeol can't find the strength to lift his head. Maybe Kyungsoo's judging the hell out of him. Maybe Kyungsoo already left the room. His mouth barrels on without him.

“Whose side are you on? Mine, right? Jongdae's probably gonna take Baekhyun’s side because I was a shitty ex, I forgot our 100 day anniversary or something. Fuck I'm gonna lose all my friends, who do you think Minseok likes more?” He can’t stop asking shitty questions.

"Are you twelve?" Kyungsoo deadpans, reaching over to slap the back of Chanyeol's head. He winces and finally sits up. "I'm not picking sides, you're both my friends and anyway, Baekhyun and I have a Christmas duet to rehearse for. Since when do you care what Minseok thinks?" Something must change on Chanyeol’s face, because Kyungsoo suddenly looks guilty and awkwardly reaches over to pat Chanyeol’s knee. "But, you know, Minseok does like you, I think." Kyungsoo is so bad at comforting people, why couldn’t he be as generous as Jongdae? Chanyeol just saw him check in at Baekhyun’s favourite restaurant, so he knows they’re definitely having a good time. Come to think of it, why didn’t they go there for their one year anniversary? Why did they eat snails? Why didn’t Baekbeom wear his girlfriend’s rings? Why is the Byun family so shitty?

“You guys were friends first and boyfriends second,” Kyungsoo interrupts the bulldozer in Chanyeol's mind. “You know how to be around each other without sucking each other’s necks or whatever. Chanyeol, you liked him before you loved him, so you know you can do this.”

And Kyungsoo’s right. Chanyeol eats onions and drinks beer for another month or so, takes up yoga, goes on a lot of walks, and eventually weans himself off short boys with big voices. Their friend group reassembles. He’s only kind of bitter when Jongdae and Baekhyun make it past the three month mark in uninterrupted bliss, but they work, better than Chanyeol ever did with them separately.

He still feels like crap when he finds out though.

He shows up to Kyungsoo’s dorm with a massive bag of chips, two bottles of makgeolli, and a hard drive full of torrented material. They make it through most of Full House before Chanyeol feels drunk enough to talk, which begins with yet another detailed overview of his and Baekhyun’s relationship, how Jongdae was so weirdly nice that he probably secretly hated him, and ends with how he’ll open a ferret farm in Gangwon-do to live the rest of his days. Kyungsoo mostly eats the chips and pipes in with suggestions on how to maximise ferret comfort.

A grainy Jung Jihoon is cradling Song Hyekyo’s face with both his hands and staring deep into her eyes, the night sky dark behind them. He tried that with both Baekhyun and Jongdae before, and it ended up with a burp in his face or a really loud laugh. Chanyeol still wonders if he just didn’t try hard enough back then. He still wonders what he should've changed, should've done, should've forgiven. How much he should've given up to make them happy.

"Hey, I'm just, I’m feeling kinda shitty and it's okay if you lie,” he begins hesitantly, and his voice isn't half as drunk as he thought it would be, “but between me and Baekhyun and Jongdae, who do you like more?"

Kyungsoo looks up into Chanyeol's eyes and reaches over for his closest hand—quiet, honest—and says: "You."

Chanyeol's heart stops. He leans in

just as Kyungsoo leans back. Chanyeol pauses, confused and hurt, like a struck child.

"No," says Kyungsoo, but he still hasn't let go of Chanyeol's hand and his mouth gets shy, then almost smug. "Not like this," he says, but Chanyeol doesn't feel disappointed at all. He settles back against the wall, squeezing Kyungsoo’s hand and wrapping his arm around his shoulder to cocoon Kyungsoo against him.

"All right then,” he shrugs, “you tell me how and when you'd like it and I’ll be sure to deliver."

The side of Kyungsoo’s mouth involuntarily moves up—Chanyeol’s heart mirrors it, a silver fish leaping out of a silver lake—then smoothes into a pleased curve. He settles back against Chanyeol’s side and they finish the rest of the movie, then finish the rest of the night.

Chanyeol spends one long month wooing him with big matching plushies, spontaneous serenades, and very public proposals with tissue paper roses proffered in his fist. Kyungsoo mostly ignores him and walks away, and Chanyeol flings the flowers at his retreating back, both of them badly hiding grins against their shoulders.

One day, Chanyeol wakes up to find a little Anpanman keychain hanging from his backpack. There’s a little post-it attached to the rubber figure’s nose that reads ur welcome  —cupid (눈ε눈). He makes a mental note to take Jongin to lunch or finally show up to one of his dance recitals. When he walks into lecture later that morning, Kyungsoo has a matching keychain dangling from his backpack.

“We are super cute,” Chanyeol grins, sliding into the seat next to him.

“We’re okay,” Kyungsoo mutters. He doesn’t even bother to look away from the professor or stop taking notes, but he can’t hide his grin when Chanyeol takes his little rubber superhero and presses it to the mouth of Kyungsoo’s keychain.

“Hey handsome, how was your day?” Chanyeol’s lounging on the bed with his socked feet dangling over the bedposts, tablet balanced on his chest. He’s been growing cartoon vegetables all afternoon, and he glances away at a very grumpy Kyungsoo in the doorway. Kyungsoo drops his bag at the door and nosedives straight into Chanyeol, grumbling about group presentations and public speaking. Chanyeol takes a break from his animated farm to rub consolingly at Kyungsoo’s shoulders.

“Wait, why are you in my room?” Kyungsoo suddenly asks, pushing himself up onto Chanyeol’s chest with his elbows, which are super boney and make Chanyeol yelp in pain. He is ignored.

“Minseok let me in, he’s going home for the weekend and said I could stay over.” Chanyeol does his very best to sound very cool and casual, despite the heavy weight of Kyungsoo's body pressed against his. His body feels weirdly hot, but Kyungsoo has great access to his jugular in this position, so Chanyeol starts counting prime numbers and sheep and special edition Fender guitars in his head. Dick, I know boyfriend-dick is really close to you right now, Chanyeol reprimands, but boyfriend-dick is currently very grumpy and startled. Don't be weird about this, man, just be cool.

“Did I say you could stay for the weekend?” Kyungsoo does that thing with his eyebrows where he either looks really distressed or really confused. Chanyeol tries not to focus on Kyungsoo’s crotch squirming over his own and makes his eyes as wide as possible. Maybe if he looks cute enough, Kyungsoo won't notice him getting hard. His puppy face only worked on Yura until he turned eight but still works on Joonmyun sometimes. Never did anything for Kyungsoo, but that's all he has right now. That, and the serial number of a 1960s Stratocaster on Daum Market that he lost the bid for.

“Yes? I brought my guitar. We could jam,” he offers. Kyungsoo’s body is still really warm and heavy over his. His thigh keeps slipping between the gaps of Chanyeol’s legs. Probably not on purpose.

“Minseok’s gone for the weekend?” Kyungsoo’s face becomes either more distressed or more confused. Chanyeol isn’t even sure if he should answer anymore. Kyungsoo still hasn’t stopped squirming. “You brought your guitar? Are you playing on my Farmville account? Are you getting turned on?”

“Wa—I mean—what? No.” Cartoon eggplants start dancing and spraying stars at him. Chanyeol flips the tablet over. “Yes? Jesus, I don't know. Am I allowed to?”

Kyungsoo sits all the way up on Chanyeol's crotch and stares at him and he's thinking and thinking and eventually he says, "We can share a Farmville account," and unclasps the little plastic button at his throat. Chanyeol's blood pressure could burst a sphygmometer.

And because this is Kyungsoo, who always wears his dress shirts with the top button closed and large hoodies that hide his shape, the thin cotton of his shirt sliding up his sides already has Chanyeol's heart doing flips in his throat. He puts his hand against Kyungsoo’s hip, under the fabric, then slowly moves his way up before opening his palm against the place on Kyungsoo’s chest where his heartbeat feels the strongest.

His body is nothing really special, pale, thin, a trail of constellatory pinpoints down his side; but this is Kyungsoo, and Chanyeol could've taken off his shirt to find a third arm coming out of his chest and still gotten hot and bothered.

He just sits with his waist curved so the front of their jeans are pressed together, an unmoving, heavy, acknowledge-me weight like anxiety on the chest. He's looking at Chanyeol's bare shoulders in the tanktop, his neck, the question of his mouth. Answering, he leans in, holds Chanyeol in his mouth like it’s something precious. Chanyeol can feel his heart thump against their mouths. And then Kyungsoo inhales and pulls back and looks straight into Chanyeol's eyes.

"Whoa," Chanyeol croaks, low like a felled tree. He watches the tops of Kyungsoo's ears turn dark pink, can't fucking believe that something as banal as his voice can do that to him. He feels like a fucking rockstar.

The pressure in his chest builds, then releases as Kyungsoo descends onto him again, a dry kiss landing. A mile long nerve connecting his tongue to his umbilical reverberates, his whole body is a plucked string.

Everything stills while Kyungsoo finishes taking off his shirt, then starts up again.

Maybe the best sign that this is going to work out is that things do change between them, in the smallest, sweetest ways. Chanyeol stops feeling the manic need to impress the entire student body. He taps Kyungsoo’s opposite shoulder and waits for either the flash of a fist aiming for his appendix, or the soul-withering glare, or—sometimes—the surprised laugh that turns his spine into syrup. Chanyeol takes a lot of selfies that Kyungsoo ignores. He discovers the video option on his smartphone and spends every waking moment filming close-ups of Kyungsoo’s face, which all mysteriously disappear from his cloud one day. They go grocery shopping at night and stop in the street stalls for bright kimchi tteok and long skewers of sesame chicken. When they pass each other on the way to class, Chanyeol holds out his hand, and Kyungsoo low-fives him.

“You tamed Park Chanyeol,” Jongdae says, slow-clapping in awe. “You’ve done the impossible.”

“You just have to administer a firm but gentle tug to the ear when he gets excited,” Kyungsoo explains. “Maintain eye contact. Use direct commands.”

“Woof,” grins Chanyeol.

Kyungsoo smiles involuntarily a lot, which always makes Chanyeol feel like he's ten, and he’s playing that game where you stand face to face with someone and try to make each other laugh, and whoever laughs first loses, except Chanyeol is playing it every second of every day.

He usually wins, but sometimes Kyungsoo does too.

They break up exactly once.

Chanyeol can't remember who starts it, but he knows who ends it, him storming out of the flat with his car keys in his fist. He's halfway down the stairs before he realizes his mind's been trying to plan the fastest route to Kyungsoo's apartment, even though he's already there, a compass magnetizing north. His body shuts down on him, trapping him in the fire escape. He just fought with Kyungsoo and already the only place he wants to be is back in Kyungsoo's room, the soft stone of Kyungsoo's shoulders under his arm, or in the kitchen, listening to him slice ssangchu on the counter. Kyungsoo's mile zero, and Chanyeol has always measured himself in distances from wherever he is.

He's still standing there when the firedoor opens above him, and then it's Kyungsoo's thin, quiet voice free-falling three stories to reach him, a trust exercise: "You didn't leave, right?"

For a moment, Chanyeol thinks he's not going to say anything at all, let the guy wonder, be scared he's lost him. But then he thinks of Kyungsoo coming after him, his hand hovering over the knob like the heat of Chanyeol's anger could bite right through the industrial metal, and then opening it anyway. Kyungsoo looking into the dark concrete spiral and getting nothing back but his own echo and radio silence and Chanyeol can't finish the thought, his body stepping backwards on its own until he sees Kyungsoo's face searching for his, a pale smudge of a lighthouse against the grey drywall sea. Kyungsoo meets his eyes, and then looks away, and then very forcibly makes himself look back. Something in Chanyeol's chest crumbles loose.

"C'mere," Chanyeol says, and Kyungsoo obeys. Chanyeol is thinking of every meaningless romance movie he's watched over the last five years for the perfect soundtrack as Kyungsoo gets closer and closer of his own volition, the Kyungsoo who rarely wants for anything, because Kyungsoo has some things that he doesn't want to lose either. But this is real life, and there is no soundtrack, just the hesitant squeak of Kyungsoo's sneakers on the cold concrete. Chanyeol's mind reel: a plane finding its runway, a hushed and smiling crowd, a figure in white approaching a tuxedo.

He stops, just one pace away from Chanyeol's reach, and Chanyeol closes the gap between them. They're just breathing, and then they're looking at each other and not touching but that's okay, for now. Kyungsoo is the only person in the entire world.

And he looks so young and hopeful, like he could still believe in blanket forts or fairytales or forests made of singing trees or whatever it is that exists between them, that when he looks up at Chanyeol and strains, "I want to keep trying," Chanyeol can't help but say, “All right.”

Because, Chanyeol knows, he believes in the thing that exists between them too, that buzzing, glowing, spinning space of air that expands to encompass them both each time.

Chanyeol used to think it was weird that the human heart wasn't at your centre, under the thickest shield of bone in your body. He thinks now that maybe it was intentional, that maybe the heart has to be a little vulnerable and out of place, pulled towards the kin that calls for it.

The bedroom faces south, and sunlight streams in—warm, bright, weightless. The clouds outside are as big as buildings, but they're safe, here.

Kyungsoo is sleeping on Chanyeol face down, his left arm flung over Chanyeol's opposite shoulder. He shifts, and their chests align, a single beat across two bodies.

So: over the last few months, Park Chanyeol really did break up with the love of his life, the best he'll ever have, and his best friend, in that order. But somehow, he has a feeling he'll be all right.