rustle | exo: notice me

notice me
— Baekhyun/Kyungsoo. PG-13. 22200 words.
— a fansite is supposed to be a repository of pictures, not feelings. clearly, kyungsoo still has a lot to learn.
— Written for prompt 85 for

sooenaemoured 2015! Originally posted HERE. As always, to b1 and b2, r, a, and h, thank you for the cheerleading and late night writing sessions ♥
— Note: In the part where Kyungsoo releases a compilation of his 'off-the-record' duets with Baekhyun and demos of their songs together, it might read as a bit problematic as, ideally, Kyungsoo should have asked for Baekhyun's permission before releasing the compilation. I apologize if this made some uncomfortable. :( In no way do I tolerate creepy/stalkerish behavior. Again, I apologize if this made some uncomfortable.

Kyungsoo shuffles to the farthest end of the row and sits with his back turned to the window. It's the first break they've caught in the past six hours, the first time he's ever had the chance to pull out his phone from his pocket and stare at it for longer than a few quick seconds. Normal, by most idol standards, but not any less draining. They'd spent the whole morning practicing, polishing both their dance routine and their spiels for the radio show they've just finished appearing at. The whole afternoon, they hopped from one television show recording to another, the names of which has already escaped Kyungsoo. Heck, even Joonmyun started forgetting the names of the shows and segments they had to appear in two shows in. At one point, Jongin did a double take and asked, "Wait, we're– This isn't the afternoon show–"

Kyungsoo recalls curling in his toes, recalls the way his stomach turned and lurched when white noise started creeping in. Silence doesn't bother him, not on a normal day, but during recordings it makes him feel like he's being examined from head to toe, like someone's scratching the surface for flaws he might be hiding beneath the tough idol exterior. He remembers looking at Joonmyun, Chanyeol, Baekhyun that time – for a signal, a save, for anything to bring Jongin back to this moment and ease the tight knot that his eyebrows had gotten in – but they all froze. Joonmyun gulped and licked his lips, as if in apology. Chanyeol dropped his eyes to his feet. And Baekhyun simply stared right back at Kyungsoo like Kyungsoo held the answers to all the questions in the universe in his eyes.

"Ah, this is another variety show," Jongin mumbled a few seconds after. His eyes widened with each passing second. His worsening eye bags pulled down the rest of his features. Kyungsoo felt his throat tighten, tasted a sickening mix of blood and metal in his his mouth. That was it, he thought then, that moment when EXO would screw themselves over again for being inattentive during shows. They were going to be the laughing stock of the century. EXO, SM's greatest hit, also SM's greatest disaster. The company should have warned fans for all the secondhand embarrassment they were going to get–

"Cut!" the director called out. Joonmyun let out a long and loud breath. Shifted in his seat, cleared his throat. Beside him, Sehun was tilting his head, trying to see Jongin better. Three seconds, Kyungsoo thought that time, three seconds was Joonmyun's best record when it came to bouncing back and recovering. So he counted, tapped his fingers to the voice at the back of his head counting down from three and breathed out as Joonmyun slipped into his idol persona again. Level 50, complete with the SM-patented smile and upward tilt of the chin. Copyright, SM Entertainment. All rights reserved.

"You'll want to hide that," comes a low voice from beside him now, crawling up his nape and making him shiver. "And what the hell, you have subfolders for every part of his face?"

Kyungsoo looks up from where he's been staring at his phone, then, blinking a few times to get rid of the last dregs of fatigue. It's become more difficult to focus these days, what with the little rest they get and the plethora of things they're expected to do for promotions. When they head back to the company tonight, he still has to stay in the booth for an hour to record some verses for the new material they're working on. Thirty more minutes when Baekhyun gets extra particular with certain notes and parts that he just can't let go. And then another thirty, because sometimes Kyungsoo gets these kicks where his hearing becomes hypersensitive and everything Baekhyun says about their misses and the notes they can still fix makes sense. The next thing he knows, Baekhyun is slumped against him on the couch, playing with the tips of his fingers as he whispers in Kyungsoo's ear, "This is not the reality I wanted."

Kyungsoo takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. Opens them again when he feels Chanyeol jerking his phone away from his grasp. "Cut it out," he groans in retaliation, then kicks Chanyeol in the calf. "Don't– Look, if you want to mess with someone's phone–"

"Then do it with mine," Baekhyun offers as he settles on the empty space beside Chanyeol. Jongdae comes crashing in, lying on Chanyeol and Baekhyun's warm laps and fake-snoring as he flails his arms around. "Because really, I wouldn't want to deal with a grumpy Soo during recording. He sounds so bad when he's mad. Like he's choking on something."

"Guys, please, we don't have to know about your sound booth sex escapades," Jongdae mumbles.

"I'm more concerned about the mics, to be honest," Chanyeol comments. Kyungsoo can feel Chanyeol's hold on his phone loosening, can feel the light beat Chanyeol is drumming on the back of his hand. This is a code, Kyungsoo muses. Or maybe it's just Chanyeol's way of trying to keep mum about things he isn't supposed to know but dose. So Kyungsoo capitalizes on that, yanks his phone away from Chanyeol's grasp and presses his phone close to his chest. He waits for it, the tiny (pathetic) slap on the arm that Chanyeol always gives him when he's playing the role of the killjoy, but it never comes. Instead, Chanyeol presses on, keeps talking and says, "What if Kyungsoo's actually deep throating those and Baek gets off to that?"

"Wow. No," Baekhyun mutters. He shakes his head. Or at least that's what it looks like in the dim lighting in the van – Baekhyun had died his hair platinum blond in preparation for the repackage comeback, whatever that's supposed to be. "Fuck. Now I'll never be able to get that out–"

"And it finally comes out, Baekhyunnie's kink." Jongdae shifts in his position and sits up, but slumps against Baekhyun's figure. "Orgasm denial."

Two beats, and the door to the van opens to reveal a Joonmyun with eyebrows cocked just a little. "You should've waited for me before having the orgasm convo," he mutters dryly. The smile on his lips pulls up at his cheeks, though, lightens the dark circles under his eyes a bit and reaches the corners of his eyes. "I have a lot of research material on that. Exciting stuff–"

"As I was saying, vocal practice?" Baekhyun chimes. He reaches over and wraps his fingers around Kyungsoo's wrist. "Maybe we should start vocalizing right now."

Baekhyun slides his fingers south and gives Kyungsoo's hand a light squeeze. Kyungsoo takes a deep breath. He hiccups. Baekhyun cocks an eyebrow at him but keeps his lips pressed together in a thin, thin line. One that curves on both ends, though, when he smirks and lets out a low scoff. Asshole, Kyungsoo thinks, but doesn't quite shake Baekhyun's hand off just yet. At the height of spring, in a seven-degree weather, there are only so many things that can keep him warm – the thought of plunging into his bed at three in the morning, waking up to the comfortable silence in the dorm. Baekhyun's hand finding a nice fit in his even in the dark, with their shitty eyesight, thirty minutes before vocal practice.

"Chanyeol, switch," Kyungsoo mumbles. When Chanyeol doesn't respond, he crawls over and bumps his ass into Chanyeol's side. "I said, move."

Baekhyun falls asleep on Kyungsoo's shoulder. These days, it doesn't take much for Baekhyun to fall into slumber, deep or light. Once, Kyungsoo had seen him slumped against a wall a minute after the break started and almost doze off just two minutes after. Another time, he found Baekhyun curled up in a corner of the sound booth just five minutes after he'd relinquished ownership of the 'music throne' to Kyungsoo. "Don't fuck up," Baekhyun had even said that time. The last image of Baekhyun Kyungsoo had then was one of him sitting on the couch with his arms crossed, eyebrows knit in concentration, and eyelids slowly, very slowly, closing over his irises. Fatigue, he notes – it's fatigue at work, even when Baekhyun surfaces from his nap from time to time to draw lazy circles on Kyungsoo's thigh.

He sneaks a glance at Baekhyun's sleeping figure beside him. Baekhyun has a smidgen of drool flaunted on a corner of his mouth, three stripes of red along his cheek. One of them reaches the mole just north of his lip. Then he snores. It almost catches Kyungsoo off-guard, tickling his throat enough to draw out a sliver of laughter, but he manages to push it down. This is the type of image that's both riveting and moving, one that will haunt you for days on end, with every batt of the eyelash and hitch of the breath. So Kyungsoo looks around for an audience and turns his phone over, pulling up the camera application when he hears Chanyeol and Jongdae's fitful snores soar above Baekhyun's own.

Two taps of the red button, then he breathes out. Baekhyun moves even closer and murmurs something unintelligible against his skin. He almost shivers, but he's quick enough to curl in his free hand into a fist to regain control of his own body.

Five more minutes 'til the arrive at SM, he tells himself. Five more minutes 'til freedom.

☀

Kyungsoo's fascination with snapping photos of people starred when he was twelve. Internet wasn't as good yet that time and he desperately needed reference material for his drawings, so he had to find a good way to record specific moments and movements of people he deemed interesting enough to be the subject of his illustrations.

"So take a photo of them," Seungsoo told him then, playing with his flip phone in his hand. Three twirls in and Seungsoo's phone slipped from his grasp. Kyungsoo reached out, going for the save, but didn't return the phone to his brother yet. "You have a phone. Your reaction time isn't too shabby. So why not take photos of your subjects instead of relying on the internet?"

Because I'm too lazy, Kyungsoo wanted to say that time, but it's not the kind of thing you tell your older brother who's been calling you a slow-ass turtle all your life. A slow-as-fuck-grumpy-but-actually-shy turtle. So instead, he replied, "Because my phone's camera is awful," and shoved Seungsoo's phone in his brother's chest. "And whenever you give me your hand-me-downs, the camera's almost busted already."

"Because I've been using it to its fullest potential," Seungsoo argued. Kyungsoo rolled his eyes and shrugged, wheeled himself closer to the computer desk again. It was eleven in the evening; maybe he'd have some luck with the internet now. Their connection was usually faster in the evening, after all.

Halfway through the year, Seungsoo had to change his phone because the memory card wasn't working anymore. Kyungsoo tried to repair it and sell it to one of his classmates at a competitive price. Two more months after that, he'd already saved enough from his lunch money and selling his origami pieces to his classmates to buy a Nokia N70. Bragged about it to Seungsoo by taking pretty photos of kids in the park and their neighbor's dog. Three years later, he'd receive his first touchscreen phone from his parents as a birthday present. He snapped close to a thousand photos on that phone of his before he had to start backing up his files, transferring them to his computer and sorting them into these neat little subfolders. Out of those one thousand, he'd only used around fifty images as reference for his drawings. With school work piling on top of him and the need to earn money on the side to fund his interests, he hardly had time to reach for his pencil again to do something for himself, much less breathe.

Two years after that, he'd bump into some shady character who waved at him during his last performance in his high school's charity concert. A year after, he'd bump into Baekhyun in the same fashion after one of the weekly showcases, throat still sore from singing his heart out in an attempt to secure a spot in the next boy band that SM was rumored to debut the same year. Another year, and he'd be picking up his hobby again after being asked to 'draw a little something' for their new album's cover. "Something that will add a personal touch to the whole marketing shazam," he recalls someone from the management saying. In the end, he sketched an image of a girl and a wolf.

"That looks nothing like the dog you took a pic of the other day," Kyungsoo recalls Baekhyun complaining that time. Then Baekhyun reached for Kyungsoo's phone and glossed through his camera album, stopping only when he came across a picture that Kyungsoo wished he never took. "You... take pics of me when I'm asleep?"

Chanyeol craned his neck then, said, "He takes pictures of everything – cats, dogs, feet, toenails, bruises–"

"My lip mole and my thumb mole and whoa, ew, why the hell do you keep that here?" Baekhyun groaned. He shoved Kyungsoo's phone in his chest and pulled away at once. Only then did Kyungsoo realize that he'd bee holding his breath all this time. "Who even takes pictures of cuts and scars?"

"It's for inspiration," Kyungsoo blurted out. He worried his bottom lip, shifted his attention to his feet when he saw the tight knot of Baekhyun's eyebrows ease into a gentle lift. Or when Baekhyun dropped his gaze to the generous swell of Kyungsoo's lips; the details escape Kyungsoo now, years after the whole tirade took place. "I draw gruesome stuff when I'm mad."

Kyungsoo remembers Chanyeol cocking an eyebrow at him, remembers Chanyeol humming as he said, "Hmm. Figures." He recalls too vividly, as well, the way his stomach lurched as Chanyeol nodded in what seemed to be understanding, murmuring, "Well, that makes a lot of sense..."

"His nose isn't that bad," Chanyeol comments now, stopping in his tracks when he passes Kyungsoo's hunched figure on the desk. "Your proportions are awful these days. Running out of creative juices?"

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes and tears the drawing he'd been working on for the past fifteen minutes. He crumples the sheet, balls it up and throws it in Chanyeol's direction. Snorts when he misses by a long shot and when Chanyeol twirls on one knee on the bed before collapsing into the cushions. That's the fourth time he's attempted to draw Baekhyun's side profile, the third he's tried to go full pencil sketch versus his usual black ink sketches. Maybe he should try to go back to his old, tried and tested style, but even that has been failing him recently. Two days ago, he tried to change things up, go with a dry pastel instead of his usual ink, to do a portrait of some random dude he'd snapped a picture of. The day after, he tried watercolor with very little success because he'd blotched the image even before he could get to the details of the woman's face.

"Did the sketch look like him, though?" he asks after a while. Chanyeol makes a weird, indiscernible noise. Kyungsoo shifts in his seat and lays the pencil down on the table, the pointed tip facing down, adding a nice, sharp line to define the bridge of Baekhyun's nose. That should do the trick. He picks up the pencil, then, scores a light line along the bridge of the nose, until Chanyeol clears his throat. "I mean, I'm really bad at working with pencil and I hate it so–"

"So why did you start sketching using that?" Chanyeol asks, humming. He rolls onto his stomach, but all he ever succeeds in doing is burying his face in the comforter. Kyungsoo snorts. Chanyeol flashes a heart with his hands in Kyungsoo's direction in response. "You really love making things harder for yourself, don't you?"

He doesn't really fancy making things difficult for himself. He just likes trying new things from time to time, when he feels there's nothing new that he can learn from doing just one thing anymore. It takes him one step closer to being the well-rounded artist he wants to be. It drives him crazy sometimes, sure, but it gets the job done.

He looks down at his hands, tainted with lead, then back up at Chanyeol. Maybe Chanyeol's right. Chanyeol doesn't need to know that, though.

"Someone requested for a pencil sketch," Kyungsoo grumbles. He shifts his gaze to the pad again and runs his fingers through the light markings on the clean paper. His strokes have been heavier these days. It's almost as if he's dragging his sorry ass to create things he used to love. Then again, it isn't far off – every hour he spends in the practice room feels more like torture than an attempt to polish the routine these days. Every stroke of the pen feels like trying to hard to draw a straight line even if he knows well that he's shit at drawing straight lines. "So I don't have a choice."

Chanyeol props himself against his elbows, pushing himself up but only making it halfway through. "Dude, you always have a choice," he argues, cocking at eyebrow at Kyungsoo. "Unless you're doing some, I dunno, design work for a client which would be stupid, by the way, since our schedule's–"

"Fansite goods," Kyungsoo admits. He shuts the drawing pad closed, then turns around in his seat. "They liked the mini comic I included before so they... sort of requested for a portraiture of Baekhyun and–"

Chanyeol snorts. Cackles about five seconds after, just before Kyungsoo stands from his seat to inch closer to Chanyeol's bed. "Of course, you'd find it hard to say no to your fellow – what d'you call 'em again? Starshines?" He presses his lips together in a thin, thin line, but soon a grin breaks from across his features. "Man, that doesn't get old!"

Chanyeol makes this weird, gurgling sound at the back of his throat as a last ditch effort to hold everything in then he's losing it, falling flat on his stomach on the bed. The sheets muffle his laughter, soften the blow a bit before the sound reaches Kyungsoo's senses and rings in his ears. Part of Kyungsoo wants to flip Chanyeol over, body slam him or something, maybe even kick him in the shins, but there's truth to Chanyeol's words. Cold-hearted namja 'Do Kyungsoo' is nothing but a myth; the sad reality is that he breaks too easily and over the simplest of things.

"Like really touching fan... tweets," Chanyeol mentioned a year or so ago as he gave Kyungsoo's arm a tight squeeze. "'Thank you, master-nim, for all your hard work ㅠㅠ You are the best fansite master ever!'," Chanyeol read out loud. Even added a nice little lilt in the voice towards the end of the statement. It made Kyungsoo grimace, made his body jerk. So Chanyeol gave Kyungsoo a pat on the back, then let out a long sigh that Kyungsoo knew was more out of mockery or sheer amusement than anything else. Kyungsoo had just seen the first wave of 'thank you' messages after releasing the first set of fansite goods for 'Sun and Moon'. He had every right to be a bit more touched, smile more than he should, maybe even let out a dreamy sigh.

But then Kyungsoo wasn't even supposed to release fan goods. He wasn't even supposed to put up a legitimate website for Baekhyun’s photos that he’d taken and update it on the regular. The project was supposed to be a low-maintenance, release-whatever-gross-photos-of-Baekhyun-he-had kind of thing, nothing more. Maybe for the first few months, it was, except Baekhyun had this weird ability to look decent, at the very least, in all of his photographs. Even in low lighting, Baekhyun had this weird glow about him. Sort of like he was some angel sent down from heaven (a fan's words, not his; if he'd worded it, himself, he'd have said Baekhyun was deported from heaven).

"In my defense," Kyungsoo argues now, finally giving into the urge to kick Chanyeol in the calves, "they were the ones who coined the term."

"And you let them," Chanyeol replies. He's wearing a smug smile, too tight and too certain at the corners. This is one of those looks that Kyungsoo had tried to wipe off Chanyeol's face before with the rapid swipe of his palm. He never pushed through with it, never found it necessary to use it more than once. He might just use it on Chanyeol at least five times today, though, if he feels like it. Some forms of retaliation require too much effort. "What about 'Constellations'? 'Orion'? Planets.Those are good."

Kyungsoo pauses for a moment, hovering, but soon sinks back into his seat. He shakes his head. "Doesn't quite–"

Doesn't quite capture the meaning behind the name of the site, Kyungsoo wants to say. Those are too plain, bland. Straightforward. Baekhyun is anything but. Kyungsoo knows better than to go into full detail on how he came up with the names 'Sun and Moon' and 'Starshine' for the fans, though, so he bites the inside of his cheek instead, pushes down the words knocking at the back of his teeth down his through until he feels his stomach turn. He's already halfway through the grave he'd dug for himself; he doesn't need to get himself into more trouble anymore.

That's Baekhyun's job.

"Doesn't quite what?" Chanyeol asks. He's swaying his head from side to side to a simple enough beat that Kyungsoo fills the gaps with a voice in his head. "C'mon, Soo, it's just me. Use your words."

Kyungsoo parts his lips to speak. Presses them together into a thin line again when he sees the maniacal grin breaking across Chanyeol’s features. It starts with Chanyeol flushing all of his laughter to one side of his face, usually the right cheek. Then balances it out, shifts pressure to the other side until he can't keep it inside anymore. The first bubble of laughter escapes his lips, and then it's downhill from there. If Chanyeol's feeling a bit more indulgent then he'll be laughing for the next five minutes; if not, he'll be biting the back of his hand but half of his face will still be caught between stiffled laughter and the most unabashed grin. It's this kind of familiarity that Kyungsoo can only develop from taking too many photos of people, studying them like test subjects for a project. It's the same kind of familiarity that has screwed him too many times to count.

"Not falling for that," Kyungsoo mumbles after a while. He sticks his middle finger up at the first hint of a giggle from Chanyeol. "Go to bed. We need to be up at six."

Chanyeol doesn't say more, just drags the blanket over his head and laughs into the warm cocoon he's made for himself. A few minutes after, the sound dies down, replaced instead by Chanyeol's long, drawn out snores. In another five minutes, Kyungsoo throws his last attempt at drawing something using pure pencil and shoots it into a waste basket. He watches as the balled up paper crawls along the sides of the trash can, as it lingers on certain sides for a moment, gravity working in its favor. In the past four years he's spent singing along to Baekhyun's voice, making sure to cover the low notes that Baekhyun can only dream of or sometimes just plain making sure Baekhyun’s voice doesn’t crack, he's seen this more than he's seen his parents. Thrown more things into the waste can than had enough rest. Wondered how it would be studying as a full-time art student instead of working as a world-class idol more than he's ever thought of dropping this job of his for a piece of his sanity. There’s no backing out now, though – he’s already put in too much work into trying to be the best possible version of himself, devoted too much time and effort into being a better trainee, idol, performer.

A notification comes in on his phone, an email confirmation on a pre-order of Sun and Moon’s upcoming photobook set. He laughs. He’s been doing this for close to two years already, trying desperately to get out of the grave he’d dug for himself. Part of him wants to get out and breathe better again.

Part of him wants to stay and go even deeper until he reaches rock bottom. And that, he muses as he replies to the email with a simple ’thank you c:', is the best proof that he is a fucking masochist.

☀

"So this came in the mail," Chanyeol says, waving an envelope in Kyungsoo's direction. Kyungsoo tries to reach for it, but that fucker Park lifts it even higher into the air, up until Kyungsoo can't reach even the base of Chanyeol's hand anymore. "You auditioned for another acting role?"

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes and lets his shoulder slump. More like, I've been looking for ways to distract myself or at least to de-stress, he wants to say, but then who isn't? They're all looking for a sliver of sanity in things that are so remotely connected to their nine-to-whenever job. The promotions for their comeback have already begun, which means less time to breathe and more time to spend locking oneself up in the practice room or even the sound booth. For Joonmyun, it's barring anyone else from heading to the roof top because that's where he vocalizes best. "He likes being heard," Baekhyun commented one time, wiggling his eyebrows. Joonmyun rolled his eyes and swung one leg forward, kicking Baekhyun in the most half-assed manner possible. "What? I just said you like it when people hear you being loud–"

And then there's Kyungsoo's voice getting raspier by the minute, with each second he spends holed up in the booth. It's not the nice, alluring kind of gravel, but one that makes him sound like a horse. Or a frog who's been snacking on barbed wires for the past two weeks. Tasting blood and metal in his mouth almost isn't foreign anymore, what with the sore throat that has decided to settle in his system, but that doesn't mean he gets to go home earlier than the rest, spend more time curled up on his bed, trying to nurse a cough. It just means he has to work harder, find a workaround and conquer his illness.

The last time he fell sick during promotions, Joonmyun made him take a ginormous amount of medicines. Right before they were cued to go up on stage, Joonmyun told him to take a shot of whiskey. "Just one. To help... numb your throat or kill the germs," Joonmyun had reasoned then. Joonmyun took a shot, as well, just a mickey, and passed it around until Jongin groaned at the bitter taste. Kyungsoo recalls feeling used for a minute – Joonmyun just wanted to drink, ease his nerves, make everyone feel a bit better about the toxic schedule. He didn't have to use Kyungsoo as his guinea pig.

He shrugs. What's done is done, though. It's not as if he has enough time to right whatever wrongs he'd already done. There's no blank space on his organizer, not an area of white more than one centimeter in width and height. All twenty-four hours of his day are booked, so the easiest way to try to find time to breathe in the guise of work was to get more work, sign himself up for more commitments. Try to make himself believe that those four to six extra hours he puts into familiarizing himself with his script and acting it out is the closest he can get to getting some rest.

"Whatever. Keep the envelope. I still have work to do," he mutters. He turns his back on Chanyeol and inches a few steps forward, until he feels something hitting the back of his head. "Hey!"

The good news about landing a role he'd auditioned for in another movie keeps him awake until three in the morning. Their first schedule tomorrow – or in a few hours, whatever – isn't until one in the afternoon, anyway, so he can stay up as late as he wants to. Or maybe not sleep at all, if inspiration does decide to hit him in full force. He can hear the distant sound of chopping coming from the direction of the kitchen – that's Joonmyun cutting up some cucumber for his juice tomorrow. Or maybe he's trying to come up with a new shake upon Minseok's suggestion. Then there's the sound in the living room finally coming to a halt, only to be drowned by the collective sound of cheering. Maybe Chanyeol and Jongin lost to Baekhyun and Jongdae again. Maybe Sehun promised to buy the winners boba tomorrow, before they go to the radio station.

He shifts his gaze to the wall clock a few feet away. Maybe he should rest, but then he's almost done with the last fanart he's been requested to draw. Just a few more strokes, a light brush of color here and there, and he'll be able to cross another item off his list. So he cracks his neck and his knuckles, tells himself, "Focus," in a voice so low he almost doesn't hear himself.

He looks at the figure on the paper he's sketching on and laughs a little. The Baekhyun in this illustration is looking to his left while his body is sort of twisted to the right. Split between looking in either direction or just standing still, unmoved. It's such a strange and accurate illustration of how Baekhyun is during downtime, between practices, while transitioning from one sound booth to another. This is it, Kyungsoo thinks, the closest the Starshines will get to seeing the real Baekhyun throught paper.

He should probably get the material signed. "Or maybe not," he tells himself, shaking his head as he makes light hatches to add volume Baekhyun's hair on paper. He shuns all other thoughts to the very back of his mind, then, and pours all of his attention into getting the shading right. It always takes him at least ten minutes to perfect the first layer of shadows and tones; if he spends thirty more minutes wrapping things up, finalizing the smaller details and trying to get things right, well, then, that's normal. He's just shoving his shovel into solid ground again, hoping to dig something out of his chest. No biggie.

He doesn't, though. Chanyeol barges into the room just fifteen minutes after the noise in the living room dies down, a familiar stuffed toy tucked in his arm and a bag of Combos in his free hand. "My winnings for the night," he declares as he saunters closer to his bed, then collapses on the cushions when he trips on his own steps. "Sehun promised to buy me boba tomorrow and Baekhyun's buying me a sandwich or something, so–"

"That plushie, though," Kyungsoo mutters, cocking his head in the direction of the toy. Chanyeol holds it up, waves it in front of Kyungsoo like he's taunting him or urging him to come closer. Like he's trying to bait Kyungsoo into doing something he only does when he's drunk. Kyungsoo leans back in his chair, then, furrows his eyebrows. He won't fall for this. "Isn't that from Polar Light?"

"Which set?"

"The winter 2013 one."

"Which version in particular?"

"How am I supposed to–" Kyungsoo groans, shaking his head in accord. "It's part of the limited edition winter bundle where 20% of what you pay goes to some charity or Polar Light's effort to buy a star for Baekhyun–"

Chanyeol snorts. Snickers, and then he's losing it, falling face first into the comforter and burying his face in the sheets. He flails his arms around, like his laughter has crawled to his wrists, wrapped around them and is controlling him like a puppet. So Kyungsoo does him a favor, climbs onto the bed and pins one of Chanyeol's wild limbs down with the press of his palm and jabs him in his side. "What, I just asked for details and you willingly answered! Without batting an eyelash!" Strangled laughter, then, "You are in too deep, man!"

"I am servicing the fans. I'm not 'in too deep'." Kyungsoo scoffs. He pushes himself off of Chanyeol and stretches his arms behind his back, gives Chanyeol's arm one last punch, hard enough to bruise. The stylists will hate him for it, but it's not as if they have to know. This is a mark on Chanyeol's skin; let Chanyeol receive the rage from irritable stylists. Let Chanyeol pay for his many crimes against Kyungsoo by being subject to a bad outfit for a performance and a godawful hairstyle. Besides, there are no security cameras in their room. They are safe. He gives into the urge to pinch Chanyeol's side, then, and presses his fingers together just hard enough to earn a yelp from Chanyeol. Pulls away seconds after to slip back into his seat to resume working on a new six-panel comic he'd promised to include in the bundle for those who pre-order until the end of the week. "Don't eat in bed. I won't clean your place for you."

"Not eating," Chanyeol says. He sits back up, the bag of Combos on his lap still untouched. Kyungsoo only steals a glance to confirm, then he's fixing his eyes back on the work he'd left behind when Chanyeol had entered the room. He can hear the faint rustling of something behind him – the sheets? The bag of snacks? The shuffling of Chanyeol's feet? He can't tell. He's managed to turn on a switch in himself that allows him to flush all the noise in a blink of an eye and focus on what he should be doing – finishing the second panel of the mini comic once and for all – when on a normal day it takes him at least five minutes to return to what he was doing before distraction happened.

"What're you working– Oh." Chanyeol hums this time, keeps a safe distance between himself and Kyungsoo for fear of getting hit again. "Doing your fanboy thing again, huh?"

Kyungsoo takes a deep breath and rolls his eyes. He looks over his shoulder to meet Chanyeol's gaze. Part of him wants to scare Chanyeol off, make Chanyeol leave the room so he can get the peace he so deserves, but it's ass o' clock in the morning. They're all tired. Chanyeol may look like he's just won the lottery with the way he's grinning from ear to ear while clutching the plushie close to his chest, but he knows better than to fall for that. This is another of those SM-patented looks, the only one Chanyeol had mastered way before Joonmyun did. So instead, he just shrugs it off, tells Chanyeol, "It's the last leg of production. After this, I just have to send the soft copy to the printer and I'll be done with most of the dirty work."

"And proclaim your undying love for Baekhyun, basically."

Kyungsoo stares at Chanyeol for a few good seconds and grimaces. "And I'll be swimming in cash right after," he replies, cocking an eyebrow at Chanyeol.

"You won't thank your muse first before spending all your money on a new camera for–" Chanyeol pauses, clears his throat, then grins. Kyungsoo leans back in a weird form of retaliation. "For Baekhyunnie-oppa? Ah, you ingrate... You wouldn't have been able to make so much money if it weren't for his–"

The rest of Chanyeol's speech gets drowned in the strange, gurgling noise at the back of Kyungsoo's ears. Kyungsoo feels his stomach lurching, feels the pulse in his palms thump even stronger and wilder. His throat tightens. It's been happening more frequently these days – during their ten-minute breaks between dance routines, when moving from one van to another so that the fans won't be able to follow them around. During rehearsals, when Baekhyun drapes himself all over Minseok or Zitao or Sehun more than the usual. When he bumps into Baekhyun on his way to the booth and he finds Joonmyun training the former, calling out to him to say, "Everything's going to be alright, trust me." Then he'd play hopscotch with Baekhyun along the narrow pathway. They look stupid. Kyungsoo feels even sillier. He doesn't know what to call it yet, but he does know that it leaves the most unsettling feeling at the pit of his stomach, enough to make him feel like leaning back against a wall or just anything strong and sturdy until he can feel his limbs again.

"Eh, whatever makes you happy," he hears Chanyeol say. He blinks a few times, then, and furrows his eyebrows just a little. "I mean, if doing your fanboy thing makes you happy then by all means, go with it. Just... don't overextend yourself."

Kyungsoo breathes out nice and slow, until he feels a knot in his throat graze the walls. He can taste acid on his tongue, at the back of his teeth. He grimaces. "It's not a fanboy thing," he argues, "It's a business."

"The business of falling in love?"

"Shady business," Kyungsoo retorts. He cocks an eyebrow at Chanyeol. "It's a lucrative side job. It's good business."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Chanyeol singsongs, then tosses the bag of Combos to the bedside table setting the boundary between their territories. From time to time, Kyungsoo would find one or two pairs of unused socks on his side of the room, but he doesn't call Chanyeol out on it anymore. There are other things more worth his time, like finalizing the pagination for the photobook and getting in touch with the printer on the revised production schedule. "As far as I know, though, you're supposed to invest money and time into your business, not emotions."

I am not, Kyungsoo wants to say, but too late – Chanyeol's throwing the covers overhead and sinking deep into his comforters. He can only see the tuft of Chanyeol's hair now, and the tips of his toes. Can still hear his soft murmurs, though. If years of being friends with Chanyeol is anything to go by then he knows that Chanyeol's preparing to pull down the blankets, thinking of the best way to phrase his statement so that Kyungsoo won't chuck a throw pillow at him at the first opportunity. So he waits, counts down the seconds until Chanyeol slowly peels the thin layer of defense and locks eyes with him.

"Do an audio book."

"What?"

"I said, do an audio book," Chanyeol repeats. He shifts in his position. propping himself up against one arm. He rubs one of his eyes. "Or maybe a compilation of your... demos? Practice sessions? Pretty sure Baek recorded one of your sessions before. Heard him listening to it one time when he was practicing alone, late at night."

Kyungsoo blinks a few times. "Last year?" is all that he asks, hoping Chanyeol gets it.

"Yeah, more or less." Chanyeol rubs his eyes again and yawns. "And if he has one of those then I'm dead sure you have a hundred of those."

Not true, he wants to say. He only has twenty-eight now. The original count was fifty-two, but a few days ago he deleted some of the clips, most of the recordings where Baekhyun sounded too jittery and sick. He couldn't even get past the first stanza of one of their demos because Baekhyun's voice kept cracking and he kept coughing. Kyungsoo shivers now and rubs his hands along his arms on impulse. "I don't. Don't exaggerate."

"Fifty, then?"

"Chanyeol," Kyungsoo whispers, low and breathy. He can feel the vibrations on the base of throat, crawling all the way down to the tips of his fingers. When Chanyeol parts his lips to speak again, he lifts one hand and points it at Chanyeol. "Go to bed."

"I am in bed."

He shakes his head. "Grow up."

A few feet away, he hears Chanyeol laugh a little. "Be young again. Have a little fun."

It takes only five minutes for Chanyeol to fall into a peaceful slumber, then two more minutes for him to start snoring. It's close to four in the morning now and if he hits the sack much later than that then he's sure he'll be sporting a headache for the rest of the day. He quickly rubs the eraser on the inked parts of the comic, then, getting rid of the light lines and making the solid ones pop out all the more. Tomorrow, he can get to painting over the piece, polishing it, finally making space for it in the customized fan kit he made for this particular edition of the photobook set. Three days after that, he'll finally be able to release a final preview of the set to the fans. For now, he'll just get as much rest as he can to still the strange, twisting sensation at the pit of his stomach. And he'll push down the thought of Baekhyun listening to his voice again and again just to reach the right notes, hit the right tune, to fill the white noise where Kyungsoo's voice is supposed to be.

☀

"One of the best things about being an idol?" Baekhyun begins, pausing to stuff a roll of pizza in his mouth. "The fan gifts. You get a shitton of fan gifts on your birthday. It's like Christmas, only better!"

Kyungsoo looks up for a moment from where he's been replying to emails, then drops his gaze again when he sees Baekhyun looking in his direction. With Baekhyun's birthday just around the corner, he's been receiving more orders for the photobook set. He's been getting a couple of collaboration requests, as well. Late last night, he received an email from HoneyB, asking if Sun and Moon (that some have begun to abbreviate to S&M) wanted to work on a few art pieces for a huge fan project due on the 4th. Just five minutes after, he got an invitation to join Polar Light's big circle of Baekhyun sites and an email stating that it would be great to have one of Baekhyun's best fanarists in their circle. We'll also need some donations for the group gift, if that's possible... 하하하 ㅠㅠ We look forward to your response! Then this morning, the site master of Mr. Mini got in touch with him to ask for a few pictures of D.O and our Baekhyunnie in exchange for some high-quality, never-before-seen Baekhyun photos.

Kyungsoo glosses through the email again and snorts. That can't be possible, he wants to tell the site master. The photo where Baekhyun's flicking off a single bead of sweat from the bridge of his nose? He has that in his phone, tight-cropped, in HD. That image of Baekhyun laughing his heart out when Jongin fell on his butt during rehearsals but kissing him on the cheek soon after? Kyungsoo has a footage of the whole thing, and more. He has more pictures of Baekhyun behind the camera or off-stage than any other site master he's ever come across, and no one can ever contest that.

"It's just an email," Jongin murmurs. Kyungsoo looks to his side, meeting Jongin's gaze, then gently pulls down the notifications pane from the top of his screen. "You're staring at it like someone's fighting with you about... I dunno, Battle Camp or something. One of those trashy games you play on your phone sometimes." Jongin scratches his nape and yawns. "Unless that's hate mail you're reading. In that case–"

"He's at it again," Sehun groans. He makes space for himself between Jongin and Kyungsoo, then leans his head on Jongin's shoulder. "He's about 110% sure that Polar Light's gonna outdo herself for his birthday. Last year's gift package was huge."

"Not just huge. It was out of this world," Baekhyun corrects. He slumps against his chair, but bolts right up and yelps in accord. Beside him, Joonmyun hums. Standard leader greeting at eight in the morning. It's one of those things that hasn't changed despite the many obstacles the group has already faced. Baekhyun smiles through the hint of pain, though, turning to Joonmyun to blow a kiss in his direction. "As I was saying, I just– How do they even pool all these resources to get idols those gifts? I'm not complaining, okay, I'm not complaining at all, but there are some fans who are still in school and can't save up–"

"Some are rich as fuck and are more than willing to shed a huge amount off their bank account just to see their favorites happy," Kyungsoo mutters. Beside him, Sehun tenses a bit, turns to look in his direction with furrowed eyebrows and a question in the way his lips are quirked up. Kyungsoo gulps hard. The very few times he decides to speak at the dining table, he gets himself in trouble. All the other times when he remains silent, he gets dragged into all sorts of mishaps. There's no winning this battle. Or maybe there is, just a hint of salvation in the way Baekhyun cocks an eyebrow at him and stares, stares long and hard at him until Kyungsoo hears the hands of the clock not too far away move.

"I would spare a couple hundred thousand for my favorite artist, that's all I'm saying," he explains after a while. He curls in his fingers and clenches them into tight enough fists that he can feel the tips of his nails dig into his skin. It breathes life into him, helps blood rush back to his fingers to make up for all the air in his lungs that Baekhyun has already stolen, run away with. "Any devoted fan would be willing to give up more than what's necessary for a chance to see their idols happy and successful."

Baekhyun hums. It's the same sort of sound that he makes when he's wondering, deep in thought, or when he finds something amusing. Except for the latter, he adds a bit of curl in his notes, drawls the last one and fades it out into a soft chuckle. He doesn't do that now. Instead, he nods his head and maintains that steady sound, like he's searching for clues and can't seem to decide where to begin.

"I spent a fortune just trying to complete my Bee Gees collection," Chanyeol offers when he walks into the dining area. He rests one hand on Kyungsoo's shoulder, and the other on Kyungsoo's head. He gives Kyungsoo's hair a light ruffle, just enough to loosen the knots of tension in Kyungsoo's shoulders, his nape, his throat. Kyungsoo shivers. Across the table, Baekhyun arcs his eyebrows even more, and the amused humming grows even louder.

They can make a song out of this, if they want to. Baekhyun looks like he's at the brink of bursting into song, but then it's eight in the morning and Kyungsoo hasn't finished his coffee yet. It takes him thirty full minutes from when he's had his coffee to boot up, another thirty until he can make smart decisions that he won't regret for the rest of his life. And Baekhyun's voice is hoarse. He sounds like his throat's been flushed with sand and stones and then he's being asked to sing in front of hundreds and thousands of people. A spontaneous three-minuter. No big deal. Baekhyun should be ready with a piece at any given point in time.

Baekhyun coughs. Kyungsoo locks his eyes with Baekhyun's own on impulse. This is his way of saying, whoa there, you can't get sick. We have a radio guesting tonight; no way in hell are you singing on broadcast like that. Get some rest. But Baekhyun makes no move to get to his feet and make himself some ginger tea. He just stays there, gaze fixed on nothing, no one else but Kyungsoo, like he's the only one who matters. That's it, Kyungsoo muses, the thing that draws people to Baekhyun – his ability to look at someone and make them feel like they have his full attention, all of his time. His heart, mind, and soul. It's the same thing that gets him into trouble with girls during parties big enough that anyone can get lost in it.

It's the same thing that makes Kyungsoo gulp hard, the same thing that makes Kyungsoo want to hold his phone up between them to break the eye contact and immortalize that goddamned look on Baekhyun's face, the way his eyes soften as he chuckles, the way the corners of his pretty mouth pull up into a smile.

Kyungsoo has an entire folder dedicated to just Baekhyun's mouth, its gentle curves, its wicked contours. And then there's a subfolder somewhere there where Kyungsoo keeps a record of all the times Baekhyun has assaulted people with a battalion of weird, conflicting emotions with a swipe of his tongue.

He blinks twice. Baekhyun's lips fall open into a grin. This one, he identifies as peculiar grin number eleven, one he has used in public only three, four times. It looks a lot like number twelve, though; he gets things mixed up sometimes, when the thumping in his chest has already reached the pit of his stomach, then crawls further south to wrap around his knees and make him shake all over.

Baekhyun laughs a little, then pulls away with an easy smile. "Anyway, as I was saying–" He brandishes his hand when Sehun makes a face at him, starts mimicking his lip movement like he's aiming to be Baekhyun's mirror image. Don't do it, a voice at the back of Kyungsoo's mind says. It's for your own good. "I'm excited to see what she's prepared for me this year," Baekhyun continues. He flexes his fingers, crackles his knuckles, winces a little when he presses down too hard on one knob. His eyes are still on Kyungsoo. Half of Kyungsoo's mind is still on that email; the other half, trying to peruse his catalogue of Baekhyun expressions in an attempt to properly identify this look. "She really has the best support group. I dunno how they do it."

"So take care of the gifts she gives you." Kyungsoo says. He unlocks his phone and fixes his eyes on the display again, this time pulling up an order confirmation from one of the site's regular contributors. He has the perfect reply for this crafted at the back of his mind, but all his words flush down his system when he sneaks a glance up only to find Baekhyun still watching him. Don't do that, Kyungsoo wants to say, wants to tell Baekhyun to stop, but for all Kyungsoo knows Baekhyun has just decided to stare aimlessly while thinking of other things; Kyungsoo just happened to get in the way. "Don't leave your shit lying around."

"Excuse me, I arrange my things in neat stacks," Baekhyun retorts.

"Neat stacks of shit, right," Kyungsoo answers. He shakes his head. "Show some respect for the site master. Clean your synthesizer or something. And don't get the boxers she got you for Christmas or something mixed in Sehun's pile."

Baekhyun widens his eyes for a moment and then it's gone, replaced instead with a small smile that pulls up just one corner of his mouth. Scrunches up his features a little but doesn't quite make him look unattractive. It's a sin. "Never thought you cared enough about the fan goods I get," he says after a while. "Or about me."

"I'm more concerned about the state of your room. Your mess leaks over to ours sometimes." A half truth, since Baekhyun does actually clean the room he "shares" with Joonmyun and Sehun from time to time. It's just that he does it once a quarter, and proceeds to wait for things to pile up again until he can't find the limited edition dog tag B'Spectra had given him for his birthday two years ago. "I'm not cleaning up after you."

"You're just jealous," Baekhyun says through gritted teeth. His eyes are still smiling, though, crinkled at the corners by the upward pull of his cheeks.

"Hardly," Kyungsoo mutters, scoffing. To the voice at the back of his mind laughing at him silly, he says, there are other fan groups that Baekhyun should be paying attention to, should be looking out for. All Baekhyun has to do is to move closer, lean in, until their foreheads bump and the thinning distance between them blurs all the things that don't matter – the three inches keeping them apart, the trembling of Kyungsoo's hands. Baekhyun's hot breath tickling Kyungsoo's skin. The way Baekhyun worries his bottom lip before he presses even closer–

–and the way Kyungsoo's body gives a tiny jerk, making him return to the surface of water, gasping for air.

☀

If there's one thing Kyungsoo hates about the whole 'creating fangoods to earn money from' thing, it's having to bundle the goods in nice little packages that will make the unwrapping process much more enticing. Kyungsoo can’t see the point in it – you're going to tear the wrapper, anyway, take out the stuffing and confetti and whatever else that makes the package look 70% dramatic presentation and 30% actual fan goods. So why go the extra mile and wrap the package up in fancy paper and more? Why not make your life easier and be happy with receiving fan goods in a big, brown box?

"It's the thrill of looking forward to something," Chanyeol reasoned an hour ago, during their stealthy shopping trip to Homi in Hongdae. He hooked his arm around Kyungsoo's shoulder and steered Kyungsoo to the left. Kyungsoo let out a long sigh but didn’t hold back on humming when he saw some nice scrapbooking materials. They’d suit the drawing style he’d used for the fanart and even the general design of the photobook– He shook his head all at once, trying to push the unnecessary thoughts to the very back of his mind. When they took a left turn at the next corner, he swore he heard collective gasping a few feet away. "You know that feeling when you've been waiting for something for so long and it's finally in your hands and you don't know what to expect–"

"Well, that turned out better than expected," Kyungsoo whispers now as he flattens the last strip of Magic Tape along the area where the ends of the wrapper meet. He lays the box down on the table, then, clears the desk of the materials they've used but keeps a few tools there. Two sharpies to the right, coiled ribbons to the left. A few crumpled papers just to make the composition look a bit more realistic, 'unrehearsed'. He reaches over, angling the desk lamp such that the warm yellow light just grazes the surface of the box, and lets a little sigh.

This isn't just 'better than expected' – this is unlike anything he's ever imagined. The first time he made photobook sets for Sun and Moon, he left the packaging up to the shipping company. In his defense, they were in the middle of promotion Growl that time; he hardly even had time to breathe.

He fishes for his phone deep in his pocket now and laughs a little. Snaps a photo of the set up, as well, partly to document the second to the last part of the whole process and partly to give himself a good laugh whenever he feels to drained from work to even try to draw a chuckle from deep inside him. Joonmyun has always said that Kyungsoo had great design sense, was probably the most artistic out of all of them. It’s just that he was too lazy to move his ass and wrap gifts for Christmas or maybe finish the scarf he started knitting three months ago. "Not bad," he mutters as he clicks the shutter release once, twice, thrice, stepping to the side only after he's taken at least two pictures of the set up from three different angles. "This is a pleasant surprise."

"The gold ribbon's a nice touch. And yeah, you’re right, the thin ribbon looks better. Any thicker than that and it’ll look like a Christmas present," Chanyeol comments. He still has some photo cards in his hand. Kyungsoo had assigned him to making sure the photos were arranged in the order that they'd been taken. He's been getting faster at his task and a bit more enthusiastic, if the way he's swaying from side to side is any indicator of it. "Periwinkle and gold, wow. That's not a combination you see everyday."

Because Sun and Moon's not like other fansites, Kyungsoo wants to say. It's the only fansite that gives fans a sneak peak into the real Byun Baekhyun, the same asshole who gets on Kyungsoo's nerves 45% of the time and just gets him on good days. It helps the fans connect with Baekhyun more and makes them fall a bit in love with EXO. It's for everyone’s welfare. He doesn't say it, though, biting the inside of his cheek before he can even part his lips to speak, instead.

He grunts, laughs a little, slumps in his seat as he mutters, "Yeah. It's pretty unique," in a voice so faint he could've just been whispering. Chanyeol moves even closer, squinting at the photo displayed on Kyungsoo's phone, then nods in approval. "I'm pretty proud of what we've done."

Chanyeol pulls away after a while, settling back on the floor with one leg stretched out and the other folded under his weight. He has a couple more photo cards spread out in front of him, sorted in neat little stacks that reach up to Kyungsoo's ankles. "You're getting better, by the way," he comments out of the blue. He looks up for the briefest of moments, then goes back to arranging one stack in a nice, neat line. "Well not really 'better' because you're already a good photographer, as it is, but–"

Kyungsoo settles on the empty space beside Chanyeol and leans a bit closer. He runs his gaze through the photos, then, giving them a quick scan until his eyes settle on the one at the middle. It's of Baekhyun in the airport, sporting one of his all-black get ups. He's wearing three rings in his left hand, two of them narrowly missing his ring finger. Diversionary tactics. Korean fans will never think he’s actually in a relationship with himself with the way he brandishes all the rings in his hand like he’s been tied to his girlfriend for three years. And his hair is a twisted mix of gold and ash. Starshine, a voice at the back of Kyungsoo’s mind says. That’s where the fans got their name. That’s where I got the name for them. It’s S&M’s favorite photo set, after all.

The corners of Baekhyun's mouth are pulled up into a wild smile in the photo, albeit more relaxed. More natural. Sort of like Kyungsoo had called out to Baekhyun mid-laugh and said, Hey, can you hold that pose for a bit– Actually, never mind. Let me just freeze time for you. Perfect.

“Like, look at the timing for this,” Chanyeol continues, bringing the same photo closer to Kyungsoo’s face. Close enough that Kyungsoo can make out the a trace of camera shake in the photo. He'd tried to touch that up, but realized after a while that the fans would understand. Baekhyun moves around a lot, sings with both his voice and his limbs that it's almost impossible to keep him truly still. "This isn't the type of shot you... achieve by just randomly snapping photos of the person."

"That was a snap shot," Kyungsoo replies. Chanyeol narrows his eyes at him. Kyungsoo shrugs in response. "I'm serious – that was unplanned. And my phone's camera is always in burst shot mode, so it makes my job easier."

"A job that you love, yeah," Chanyeol says, humming. "Maybe even more than singing?"

That's not true. Kyungsoo has dreamt of being where he is now for years, ever since he was five. The first time held a microphone and sang in front of a crowd, he heard all the voices at the back of his mind screaming. He shook all over. His chest felt like it would burst anytime because was this really happening to him? Little Do Kyungsoo, actually singing his heart out in the school auditorium? Winning awards and gaining respect for his talent left and right? Getting recruited by SM Entertainment and told by one of the talent scouts that, "Your voice will take you places, kid. Just keep singing. Enjoy what you're doing. Just have fun."

So Kyungsoo furrows his eyebrows. Shakes his head as he says, "No. I still love singing better." Only when Chanyeol grins, one corner of his mouth stretched north more than the other, does he realize that he's just dug level fifty-one of his grave again. He keeps doing that, getting himself in trouble without meaning to. And the strange thing is, he enjoys it. On most days, at least. It depends on the weather.

"Better. Mhmm." Chanyeol waves the photo card in front of Kyungsoo, then lays it down on top of its stack. He arranges the tower's sides when the topmost card skews a little to the side. "I dunno, man, I've seen you take pictures of Joonmyun-hyung but they look different."

"Of course," Kyungsoo mutters. He moves a few spaces to the left and returns to where he's been layering crepe paper at the base of the box for the next set. "They have different faces. I'd freak out if they looked the same."

"I mean– You asshole–" Chanyeol reaches over to hit Kyungsoo on the arm but Kyungsoo avoids that, leans to the side only to bump into the other boxes he'd stacked on top of each other and make the tower topple over. Kyungsoo looks to his side, then, casting a glance at Chanyeol, and finds his friend sticking out his tongue at him in retaliation. Very mature. "They feel different, that's what I'm saying– Shut up, let me talk. I've seen enough of your photos to know when you're really into your subject and your photos of Baekhyun? The ones you claim are oh-so-unrehearsed?" Chanyeol pauses, laughing a little. "They're amazing. It's like you... have the ability to bring out the best in him in your photos."

Chanyeol takes a deep breath and leans on his side, body propped against his arm. "You take the best pictures of him, man. He just doesn't know it yet."

I better get started on marketing, then, Kyungsoo wants to say, but he doesn't. Or he doesn't get to, because there are other words knocking at the back of his teeth, clamoring for a chance to spill from the corners of Kyungsoo's lips. All of them hoping Kyungsoo would take a break, a moment of respite. Let himself fall vulnerable to the whims of the voices at the back of his mind. He doesn't, though. Instead, he keeps his lips pressed together, only nods at Chanyeol in response before turning to his side to resume working on the packaging for the photobook set. He's only at number thirteen; there's at least a hundred more to go.

I don't bring out the best in him, he mutters at the back of his mind fifty orders in. He lays the photobook at the middle of the arrangement, shuffling the cases for the photo cards to the right, and gives the set one last look before sealing the box.

He brings out the best in me.

☀

In a last ditch effort to outdo other fansites' efforts in piecing together merchandise in time for Baekhyun's birthday, Kyungsoo comes up with an audio compilation of Baekhyun's demos. Practice pieces, as well, that will never see the light of day unless Kyungsoo puts them out there for public consumption. They're good enough to pass as real recordings, but with the crackling of light catching on the microphone and Jongdae's weird noises in the background, they're better off as shotgun recordings. Clips that can pass off as something they'd recorded at the height of boredom. And it might as well be true: half of those were done on the fly, with Baekhyun humming a tune and Kyungsoo laying down a second layer of sound, adjusting their harmonization until they found a nice blend that they found good enough to sing along to.

And then there's the other half, a series of clips Baekhyun had sent that time when they weren't recording songs together, Kyungsoo too busy with taping and Baekhyun preparing for his musical. He keeps the recordings in a neat little folder in his phone, cleverly named "Prefetch".

"Prefetch is Windows thing," Sehun muttered one time when he looked over Kyungsoo shoulder to see what Kyungsoo was doing. Kyungsoo shrugged him off, yanked his phone from Sehun's hand. "You're using an iPhone. That's an awful bluff."

"The best way to hide something is to hide it in plain sight," Yixing countered. He craned his neck to meet Kyungsoo's gaze, then gave Kyungsoo a small smile as he said, "My porn's just in my Downloads folder on my phone. But don't get ideas."

He'd changed the folder name to "DCIM" as soon as he slipped from the conversation, and made sure never to come near Yixing's phone. Since then, he'd been naming his folders after Sony's camera folder titles.

He goes through the files in the sound project now, checking if he's labeled everything properly. The spontaneous sound recordings come first; the demos come last. But he has at least fifty of the first, twenty of the second – it's almost impossible to clean everything up in a night, especially since he has to have goods sorted out by tomorrow afternoon, at the very latest, so that his contact in Pyeongtaek can take care of the shipping. Even more so when Jongdae and Chanyeol set themselves up for a fifth take of the new song they've been working on for the past hour. He'd stay in the room if he wasn't working on something he can earn a fortune from, take a video of the two just having fun while making music, but he simply doesn't have time for it anymore. It's twelve midnight and their first schedule for the day is at seven. After that, the next break he'll be able to catch won't be until twelve noon tomorrow.

"That's it, I'm getting out of here," he groans, picking up his laptop from his bed and taking the charger with him. His earphones are slung around his shoulder, Baekhyun's laughter still blasting from the speaker plate. He hits the space bar in response and breathes out to make the sudden halt much less inconspicuous. "Call me when you're done with your sexy, baby-making music."

Chanyeol's features light up, eyes widening and eyebrows lifting in accord. "You think it's sexy?"

"Jongdae makes it sound sexy," Kyungsoo bites back, offering a small smile before turning around. "I love the harmonization right before the chorus, though. Sounds as if you're about to reach your climax."

"Ooh. Too quick," Kyungsoo hears Jongdae whisper, but he's already halfway out the door. There's a burgeoning weight in his hands and his schedule in the form of an audio compilation he'd decided to include in the set oh a whim. Level fifty-two of his grave is under way. He just keeps beating his best record everyday. So he doesn't look over his shoulder and, instead, just pads over to the living room, slumping in the seat farthest from the corridor leading to the rooms and farthest from all forms of distraction.

Discounting distraction in the form of Baekhyun, at least, because Baekhyun has a way with sneaking his way into people's lives and barging through their doors without preamble. "Why are you still up?" is Kyungsoo's greeting when Baekhyun walks into the area unannounced, eyes focused on Baekhyun's hovering figure just beside him. He tries to keep his eyebrows relaxed, loosens the tight knot of the press of his lips against each other, tries to keep himself from balling his hands into tight fists on the lit keyboard of his laptop, but Baekhyun makes it nigh impossible. Baekhyun's leaning in, pressing too close until Kyungsoo can feel a sizzle of heat explode on his cheek when Baekhyun breathes out against his skin.

"Bored. Couldn't sleep. I keep thinking of the note I missed during practice. Made me sound like a frog," Baekhyun mutters. He stretches his arms overhead and yawns, then leans against Kyungsoo's shoulder. One of his hands falls on the narrow space between Kyungsoo's back and the cushion; the other finds its way to Kyungsoo's thigh, the heat of his palm seeping through Kyungsoo's thin shorts. "Why are you still up? Couldn't sleep, either?"

Kyungsoo gulps hard. He shifts his gaze to his left and tries to inch away, but Baekhyun's head feels too heavy on his shoulder. Sort of like Baekhyun's making Kyungsoo share his worries, dropping them on Kyungsoo's lap when Baekhyun presses down harder with his palm and eases the burn with the light stroke of his thumb along Kyungsoo's thigh. You don't have a choice. We're teammates, right?

"Finishing some things," Kyungsoo mutters, putting the audio on pause. He tries to switch windows, tries to keep the audio project on the down low, but all he ends up doing is pulling up a webpage on button pins and custom phone skinning for both Andoid and iOS devices. Baekhyun catches on that and hums, leaning even closer to pull out one of Kyungsoo's earphones and claim control over Kyungsoo's laptop. Screw Baekhyun's quick thinking, really. And screw him being too engrossed in what he was doing to even notice Baekhyun walking into the room even with his footsteps heavy and loud. "Baekhyun–"

Baekhyun hits the space bar faster that Kyungsoo can even attempt to yank his laptop from Baekhyun's grasp. He's fearing two things right now: one, that with the way Baekhyun's balancing Kyungsoo's laptop on his thighs, just a few more inches before they taper off to his knees, Baekhyun might drop his laptop and Kyungsoo will be caught strangling Baekhyun on the floor again; and two, that Baekhyun might actually recognize his own voice in the background despite the twenty seconds of Chanyeol and Jongdae just giggling between jamming sessions because Baekhyun's voice cracked at the most inopportune time.

"What–" Baekhyun turns to look at Kyungsoo, eyebrows furrowed and– No, it's almost impossible to see in the dark like this, with all the shadows closing in on them. But then Kyungsoo has lived with Baekhyun long enough to know, just by seeing the faint details on his features with the light from lamp post outside seeping through the windows, that Baekhyun's eyebrows are caught in a tight knot. That his lips are tugging up then down then up again at the corners, like he isn't sure of how he feels about the situation yet. That he's worrying his bottom lip and he's dropping his gaze to the gentle swell of Kyungsoo's lip because light betrays Baekhyun, catches on his eyelashes and slithers between them to score lines of light along his features. "What was that?"

What is this, Kyungsoo wants to ask when Baekhyun moves even closer, too close that Kyungsoo can see nothing but the light catching on Baekhyun's eyes, too close that he can't feeling anything beyond Baekhyun's pulse drumming a beat on his skin through the material of his shorts. Or Baekhyun's hot breath tickling the bridge of Kyungsoo's nose, Baekhyun's forehead bumping against his as Baekhyun asks again, this time enunciating his syllables more, "What was that?" There's no disgust in his tone, not in the way his voice lilts or the way Kyungsoo feels a corner of Baekhyun's mouth tug up against his skin. There isn't anything to find in the way Baekhyun hums, waiting for an answer, teasing Kyungsoo and putting him on the spot in equal amounts. This is normal, Kyungsoo tells himself – if Baekhyun really wanted to find out the he wouldn't have stopped listening to the recording. He wouldn't have unplugged the earbud, wouldn't have turned to Kyungsoo and pressed even closer. If he really wanted to know what the hell Kyungsoo was working on then all he had to do was to take a deep breath, lean in until the distance between them thinned. Pry Kyungsoo's mouth open with the gentle coax of his tongue and let the words spill from there – it's not what you think. I'm just servicing the fans. I'm your number one fan and I have a photobook set to release to the public so will you please just let me do my job and help me not think of kissing you?

"Nothing," Kyungsoo answers after a while, breathy. He sucks in his bottom lip, fearing contact with Baekhyun's own. Fearing to lose control. "None of your business."

Baekhyun takes a deep breath. Hums as if counting to three, then pulls away as he says, "Liar." He keeps one hand on Kyungsoo's thigh, though, keeps rubbing lazy patterns there even as Kyungsoo yanks the laptop from Baekhyun's grasp. Stays there long enough for Kyungsoo to just give up on trying to finish the compilation tonight and switch to a tab about button pins and stickers, the best deals that he can find. He already has two sets of the compilation ready, anyway; he can upload them just before he goes to bed, leave a link to the source on a secret page in the website for only those who have purchased the photobook set to access. So when Baekhyun reaches over to type some web address onto Kyungsoo's browser, he doesn't retaliate. Instead, he hands over one earbud to Baekhyun before the video Baekhyun had pulled up loads, watches the clip buffer, and ignores the way Baekhyun's tense touches along his thigh relax into something softer, more natural. A bit too intimate.

☀

Baekhyun falls ill smack in the middle of promotions, the week before his birthday.

"This is awful!" he groans as he takes off the mask he's been wearing since the start of the day. Or at least that's what it sounds like, because he's been on medication the whole day and he looks too drugged to even function. Make up can only do so much, can only make a bit of his usual sparkle pop out, but Baekhyun will take what he can get. So he touches up his own make up, brushes some powder on his cheeks when he notices the dark lines that have surfaced on his cheeks where his mask used to be. "What if the DJs make us sing live? How will I save us from ourselves?"

"I can cover for you," Kyungsoo mumbles. Baekhyun looks to his side, bottom lip jutted out in a small pout that makes Baekhyun look more like an eight-year-old than the twenty-something idol he's supposed to be. Only the eyeliner makes him stay true to his stage persona – mood-maker Byun Baekhyun, singer and performer, one part talent and two parts wit and charisma. Stop, a voice at the back of his mind says. He can't tell if it's asking him to stop thinking of all these silly things or if it's pleading for Baekhyun to cut the crap, act his age, they enter the booth in ten minutes so he better shape up. "We can all cover for you. You can just lipsync in the background and pretend you're straining your voice."

"Then appear in the news looking sad and terribly sick," Baekhyun replies. He hums. Even that makes him sound raspy, sick. Unable to slip back into the same old idol jeans he's already gotten comfortable wearing around. "Then EXO takes a break because you guys are bound to fuck up without me. Nice plan."

"We'll do better without you. Kyungsoo and I have a duet in the works," Jongdae comments, finishing with a wink. Baekhyun frowns at him and reaches over – to grab Jongdae and pull him closer, to punch him on the arm, to just make him stop, Kyungsoo can't tell. It's one of those indiscernible gestures again, one Baekhyun uses when he's either feeling too lazy to stick with just one decision or when he just doesn't know what to do. "Management's calling it the best duet ever. I bet your fans won't miss you at all."

"Psh. Doubt it. I have a solid following." Baekhyun sticks his tongue out at Jongdae. Jongdae mirrors him, but adds a wicked grin at the end. That's a stretch for Baekhyun who can't even open his mouth properly because the medicine's claimed full control of his body now. "And they might not miss me, but I'm dead sure they'll miss us."

Kyungsoo snorts. "We've lost three members. People have probably gotten used to it by now."

"Not us us," Baekhyun argues. He tries to jab Kyungsoo in his side, as well, but doesn't quite make it, simply resorts to landing light punches on the side of Kyungsoo's thigh. He stops three punches in, then gives Kyungsoo's thigh a light squeeze. It's so spontaneous an action that Kyungsoo isn't even able to step to the side to avoid it, doesn't even get the time to process things until Baekhyun's rubbing his thumb in lazy circles on Kyungsoo's thigh. Baekhyun's bending his wrist back too much. He'll feel sore later and not regret a thing. "I meant our duets and harmonization. We sound better together."

In broad daylight, in front of all these people who he might have trained alongside with but have never even seen him lose control, it seems like an innocent gesture, but the upward curl of Baekhyun's lips say otherwise. This is smile number forty-four, Kyungsoo muses, one of those smiles of Baekhyun's that leaves Kyungsoo feeling torn between ripping that look off of Baekhyun's features or just kissing Baekhyun senseless so that Baekhyun learns his lesson. But Baekhyun has way too many tricks up his sleeve that Kyungsoo knows neither how or when to attack, pin Baekhyun down to the floor or to the wall to keep him in place and make him stop. Baekhyun is too fucking unpredictable that all the information that Baekhyun has catalogued at the back of his mind? Those are of no use.

So he takes a deep breath, tries to scour the surface for a nice retort. Something snappy and will make Baekhyun shut up, but will keep him hanging around long enough that Kyungsoo might have start wearing a mask because Baekhyun always gets too close with people. On a normal day, he's touchy at best, but have coughs and colds bring him down and he'll cling to the person closest to him like a cute little koala.

Kyungsoo's hardly the closest thing, but he's convenient. Doesn't move around too much because that requires so much effort and because Baekhyun always smells nice. A combination of mint and cucumber and melon. With a dash of trouble to taste.

"Yeah, because I save your sorry ass all the time," Kyungsoo mutters after a while.

"You mean my glorious ass, right?"

Close enough, Kyungsoo wants to say. The 'Asshyun' folder comes a close third to his pictures of Baekhyun's mouth and his hands. "I save your ass, period," he replies, then shifts in his position to accommodate Baekhyun draping his arms all over him. "Wear your fucking mask–"

Kyungsoo starts coughing at nine in the evening, just before they leave their last radio guesting for the day and head back to the SM office for two, three more hours of vocal practice. Baekhyun makes a beeline for the window seat at the back, slumping in the cushions as soon as he finds a comfortable spot. Gestures at Kyungsoo to come, come closer, as well, even removing his mask for the briefest of moments to speak. "Sit," he beckons, then pats the empty space beside him. "C'mon, you don't want us to go around spreading germs, right? Best to isolate ourselves here."

"I'm not sick," Kyungsoo argues. He sniffles and makes sure to lock his phone. Coughs out into the cup of his hands when he feels a tickling sensation in his throat. "God-fucking-dammit, Byun, if I really do get sick–"

"Then I'll share your misery," Baekhyun chimes. He loops his arm in Kyungsoo's own and pulls him closer, more to lean his head on Kyungsoo's shoulder than anything else. "At least there's two of us now."

Baekhyun becomes quiet company on their way back. He hums from time to time, maybe already warming up his throat in his sleep, but for the most part he remains slumped against Kyungsoo at the back. Drool spills from a corner of his lips, softens the hard angles of his features and lifts some of the fatigue from the strain that was once on his cheeks. Kyungsoo's never seen this before, has never had something exactly like this in his collection, so he takes a big leap, fishes for his phone from his pocket and looks around for an audience. Everyone else is asleep, too tired to function after a long day's work. Beside him, Chanyeol's snores soar above the music playing on the radio. He takes that as his window, then, snaps one photo after another until Chanyeol's noise drops to a whisper, a steady hum, silence.

When he lays his phone face down on his thigh, he feels Baekhyun's muscles shift against his skin, like one of his cheeks is tugging up as a knee-jerk reaction to something Kyungsoo can't be bothered to figure out. Give it a rest, he tells himself. He's too pliant, vulnerable, maybe hypersensitive. Radioactive. The company's still fifteen minutes away. So he closes his eyes and rests his head against Baekhyun's own and lets Baekhyun's tiny puppy noises lull him to sleep.

☀

Eight out of ten times, Kyungsoo's glad he's in EXO. He can't imagine himself debuting in any other group – SHINee's too vibrant; Super Junior, too pop. Being in The Trax would probably be really cool – someone once told him that he'd sound good singing rock songs – but he isn't quite sure how to draw out the kind of emotion Jay sings about just yet. Of course, the dream would be to be seven, eight years older than he truly was so he could debut with DBSK, but he'd rather not spend so much time dreaming about what can never be real. Unless magic exists, of course, then he'd line up after Minseok to be DBSK's seventh member. No second thoughts.

The other two counts when he doesn't like being in EXO, he chokes up to not being fond of crowds, huge groups. He has to live with eight other people, battle it out for bathroom time with everyone but Jongin. He's had to grow accustomed to losing things and finding them in someone else's room. Once, he found his moisturizer in Joonmyun's bag, along with his lip balm. "I ran out of cream," Joonmyun reasoned out then, and offered Kyungsoo a sheepish smile. "I'll just buy you a new set?"

He went to their first schedule bare-faced that day. It was spring. The winds were blowing hard against his face. If there was one time when he needed to lather moisturizer on his face, it was that exact moment, but he was already too overcome with irritation to even stick his hand inside Joonmyun bag to retrieve what was his.

And then there's also having to get used to people invading his private time and space all the time. Case in point: Baekhyun falling asleep on his shoulder right after dinner, during their scheduled monthly movie screening at home as mandated by Joonmyun.

"Everything hurts," Kyungsoo grumbles as he draws his shoulders back for a moment, relishing in feeling his bones crack. Behind him, Chanyeol locks the door then collapses on his bed, face first. Moves around and rustles the sheets, as well, before mumbling something indiscernible that Kyungsoo guesses has something to do with them getting the chance to hit the sack early. They've been getting less sleep these past few days leading up to their double promotion period on the week of Baekhyun's birthday, so this – going to bed just minutes before midnight, the whole house being cloaked in silence for the first time in a long, long while – this is a leisure for them.

Chanyeol yowls. Presses the back of his hand to his side before massaging it in long, hard pinches. He groans again. So Kyungsoo lets out a deep breath and boots up his computer, leaves the system to start running and walks in Chanyeol's direction. "Need help?"

"Nah, I'm good. I just–" Chanyeol presses down on one area with his thumb and hums. A sign of a successful massage. Baekhyun does the same thing when Kyungsoo presses down on his lower back with his thumbs, groans in the most obscene way possible that– No.

Kyungsoo's breath hitches. He curls in his toes, sits at the foot of Chanyeol's bed while Chanyeol struggles to turn around so he could sit up. The weird thoughts have been occurring to him more frequently, at the most inopportune of times – during recordings, while Baekhyun watches him on the other side of the glass, during practice with the rest of the group, with Chanyeol around to literally kick his ass back into reality so Joonmyun won't have to walk over and ask him if he's doing fine. "Are you hurt? You're kinda... red in the cheeks. Are you sure you're not sick?"

Sick in the head, maybe, but that's not the type of illness you can cure with a pill. And Baekhyun is always infectious. There are scars on Kyungsoo's palms from curling in his fingers all the time, making his nails dig into his skin until all the can feel is the sting of the tight press, not the thumping in his chest. Not the burn in every part of his body that Baekhyun has touched. And not the lurching in his stomach that he knows is from him trying to hold back, to maintain a safe distance between himself and Baekhyun. From telling himself again and again that there's nothing going on. He isn't special. Baekhyun's just an ordinary guy.

"–phone's buzzing. Make it stop," comes Chanyeol's voice now, snapping Kyungsoo out of his reverie. Chanyeol kicks him in his side, almost gets him, but he manages to slip away before Chanyeol's foot even grazes his clothes. "Who the hell even sends texts at twelve midnight?"

"It's an email," Kyungsoo corrects. He taps the notification and watches as the message pops out, revealing an order form for the photobook set. "Oh. I guess it's not so bad that I made the printer do extra copies."

"One more order?" Chanyeol props himself against his arms and stretches out all twenty feet of his legs. He hasn't shaved in a while. Kyungsoo tosses a pillow in his direction and mouths, you're gross, cover yourself. "But it's already past twelve."

“She sent it at 11:59, though," Kyungsoo replies. He walks back to Chanyeol's bed and shows the email, donned with hearts and some emoji, while reading out loud the order details. The username doesn't sound familiar. Maybe it's one of those fans lurking in the discussion board. He doesn't take it against them; even he is finding it difficult to keep track of conversations in the mini forum, at the speed that the discussions move. It's almost like getting yourself stuck in the middle of heavy traffic and hoping to come out of it just five minutes later. It's one of those risks Kyungsoo isn't willing to take.

"Two sets for a fan named 'soobabyee_exo". With a special request to use more bubble wrap for the packaging," he announces, pausing only to scratch his nape. "She's only having it shipped within Seoul, though. I don't understand the need to have extra bubble wrap."

"For protection. You must always use protection," Chanyeol whispers in response. Kyungsoo only stares at him in passive retaliation. Chanyeol's body gives a tiny jerk, then he's slinking away and leaning back against the pillows. "But seriously, the message came in past twelve. If he really wanted to buy your merch then he should've placed an order earlier."

"What if her friend couldn't decide until the very last– Wait, what?" Kyungsoo furrows his eyebrows and checks the mail again, tries to search the order form for any clue as to the fan's gender. In the past year and a half that he's been running the site, he's only ever encountered two or three male fans. The rest are female who have the ability to, at any point of the day, wax poetic about 'Baekhyun's sunshine smile'. So there's a 90% chance that the fan he's talking to? Not a guy. Unless– "You know soobabyee?"

"That sounds so weird coming from you," Chanyeol says between light chuckles. Kyungsoo only rolls his eyes, shakes his head. Squints his eyes and focuses on nothing, no one else but Chanyeol for fear of missing an important detail. But Chanyeol keeps his guards up, locks gazes with Kyungsoo and puts on that stupid, empty look in his eyes that Kyungsoo has never quite been able to get past. "Nah, I don't know her. I just assumed–"

"Fandom studies show that 70% of the population is female."

"Which makes my 'baseless assumption’ sound because there’s still a 30% chance that your she might be a he," Chanyeol retorts. He grins at Kyungsoo, canines peeking at the corners. It makes Kyungsoo shiver a little. It's not the good kind of shake, though, unlike the one he gets from losing himself in Baekhyun’s focused gaze. "But really, you're still gonna take the order?"

Kyungsoo takes a deep breath. He can very well play the rules card, can tell the fan that sorry, set selling is already closed. You should've placed an order sooner; to hell with that other friend of yours. Don't let her drag you behind. But money is still money. Two sets is still worth over a hundred thousand won. That's close to thirty cups of quality Americano in the smaller coffee shops. And isn't S&M's ultimate goal to bring Baekhyun closer to the fans, schedules and deadlines be damned?

He lets out a heavy sigh. Stares at the email on the display of his phone, as well, and scrolls through the message with his thumb. Let it slide, a voice at the back of his mind says. Give her a chance. Do a good deed today. It sounds silly in his own voice but he listens to it, anyway, again and again until he can convince himself that bending the rules this one time isn't so bad.

"Money's still money," is the only thing he says in reply. A heartbeat, and then, "I'll do it. Go to bed. I can fix the bundle on my own."

Chanyeol looks at him, just looks at him, with a weird kind of light in his eyes and a smile tugging up the corners of his lips. "You softie," he whispers, then pushes himself off the bed. Ruffles Kyungsoo's hair on his way to where the extra goods are hidden and tosses two collapsed boxes on the floor. Who's the softie now, Kyungsoo wants to retort, but he doesn't. Instead, he shifts his attention to the mail in his inbox and types up a quick reply – 'confirming receipt of this email. thanks for purchasing two sets! c:' He tosses his phone on Chanyeol's bed after that and settles down on the floor, rolling up his sleeves to get started on the two sets that they have to finish packing before daylight. Only an hour after does he notice that his phone is blinking, the tiny dot of light the only thing that's glowing in the darkness of their room.

'so excited!!' the message says. Kyungsoo laughs a little.

can't wait c: c: c:

☀

Baekhyun celebrates his birthday at home. Nothing grand, just a simple feast for four – Joonmyun had originally planned for everyone to have a trip outside the country for his and Baekhyun's joint birthday celebration, go somewhere far away where nobody can find them, but Baekhyun's fever kicked in two days before the trip and Joonmyun asked, "Is there any way we can sneak you out of the country without going through security?"

"Floo powder," was Jongin's helpful suggestion. Sehun nudged Jongin in his side with his elbow and said, "We're past that stage. Why don't we just apparate?" Minseok and Yixing offered to make enough juk for Baekhyun to last the whole week and scribbled reminders on the calendar, saying, 'don't forget to store me in the fridge! - <3 juk' In the end, they finished all the juk before the five had to fly out of the country with the promise of bringing back 'yummy treats' for the remaining four.

"I've got the whiskey!" Jongdae calls out from the front door as he slips out of his shoes. Kyungsoo closes the door behind him and picks up the paper bag Jongdae has set down on the floor, too many different snacks tossed inside. There's potato chips, nachos, some salsa and cheese. Two packs of gum, then some bars of chocolate whose brand he can't seem to make out in the mess inside the paper bag. There's also Cass, Chamisul, and Chumchurum that Kyungsoo supposes is for Chanyeol. The poor kid can't handle the taste of the other soju. And then, slotted between the bottles, disposable masks.

"Liar. This isn't whiskey," Kyungsoo grumbles.

"You non-believer," Jongdae says, narrowing his eyes as he brandishes the bottle in front of Kyungsoo out of nowhere. Kyungsoo shrugs in response. The corners of Jongdae's eyes soften. He's a shitty liar, at best. And Kyungsoo's the biggest softie, he admits to himself, when he helps Jongdae get up from where he was untying his shoelaces earlier. "I'm not like your other friend, Chanyeol, who knows nothing about good liquor–"

"Hey, I heard that!"

"And gets too red in the face a few sips in! Hah!" Jongdae calls out just loud enough for Chanyeol to hear a few feet away. He turns to Kyungsoo after a while, expression shifting, the harsh upward pull on the corners softening as he drops his voice to a whisper. Trust Jongdae to be able to switch masks with relative ease. "I know this is, like, the moment of your dreams, but are you sure you two will be alright when we leave? You're pretty sick, as well. Do you want us to, I dunno, flush him with meds before we go?"

Kyungsoo laughs a little. It sounds a lot like a wheeze. His throat keeps tightening at the most inopportune times, like it's keeping him from saying the things he wants to say, so instead he goes with a wave of the hand. And a gentle squeeze of Jongdae's arm, as well, as he whispers, "I'll live."

Jongdae chuckles. He snakes an arm around Kyungsoo's shoulder, then reaches up a bit to ruffle Kyungsoo's hair. Kyungsoo leans in a little, lets himself melt into Jongdae's warm touch as they make their way to the living room. Familiarity, Kyungsoo muses – this is familiarity at work, Jongdae knowing exactly how to deal with Kyungsoo at the height of his flu, Jongdae knowing how to go about expressing his support for Kyungsoo's actions with a gesture as simple as this. And it's also familiarity that makes Kyungsoo's insides turn when he sees Baekhyun try to sit up on the couch, body propped against his shaking arms. It’s the same thing that makes his breath hitch when Baekhyun looks in their direction and greets them with a sneeze. "Hey. Booze. Nice."

The dark circles under Baekhyun's eyes have worsened. There are three pimples on his cheeks, all of them glowing an angry shade of red. And there's saliva at a corner of his mouth, proof that he'd fallen asleep again in the fifteen minutes that Kyungsoo has been busy in the kitchen, making sure that Chanyeol didn't fuck up Kyungsoo's kimchi spaghetti. He sort of wants to reach out to– To what? Wipe off the drool flaunted on Baekhyun's cheek? Cover those pimples with BB cream, one by one? Take Baekhyun in his arms and just tell him to sleep, just sleep, I'll wake you up an hour before your special day ends for one last toast before you go back to sleep? He knows better than to involve himself too much in things, invest too much in emotions. The last time he did, he ended up sustaining a fansite for close to two years already.

And it's still alive. It's alive and strong and there are people set to receive their photobooks today. Later, Kyungsoo will curl up in a corner and grin at his phone silly as he reads the 'thank you' tweets from fans across the globe. Later, once he's sure that Baekhyun has fallen back into a peaceful slumber and is feeling much, much better, he can snap a photo of his sleeping figure to mark the start of his compilation for the third book that he's set to release two seasons from now.

He shuts his eyes tight. There's just no escaping the trap he's guided himself to. And there's definitely no escaping the chains of Byun Baekhyun's charms.

"Soup first, booze later," Jongdae tells Baekhyun, reaching over only to give him a pat on the head. "Not gonna give you a wet and sloppy kiss today, honey. I don't want to bring germs over to my family, so!"

"So the masks are for you and Chanyeol?" Kyungsoo asks. He takes out the contents of the bag one by one on the table just a few feet away, then holds up the bottle of Chamisul in Baekhyun's direction. Baekhyun claps in response, waves his arms about. Let's out a low yaaaay as he eases the blanket off of his shoulders and tries to get back on his feet. "You promised to buy us a new set."

"I have two more in my room," Baekhyun croaks. In the few seconds that Kyungsoo has spent arranging the bottles on the table, Baekhyun has already inched closer and begun examining the bottles of alcohol. And he's already snuck a hand up to cup Kyungsoo's cheek, the other one snaking up his nape and then pulling a mask over Kyungsoo's mouth. "I'll get 'em later. Too hungry. Food."

"He's sick on his birthday. He'll be extra demanding," Jongdae groans. He cranes his neck and gestures something over Kyungsoo's shoulder. Probably calling Chanyeol and telling him to bring over the soup, stat, before Baekhyun even throws a fit. "Ugh, the things we do for friendship."

"Or love," Baekhyun chimes. He pulls his mask over his mouth just in time for Kyungsoo to look over, eyebrows furrowed as if asking Baekhyun to repeat what he's just said. Some people have more important things than to concentrate on every movement of your lips, so can you please say that again? "We do weird things for love."

Kyungsoo scoffs. Or he would have, if Baekhyun hadn't walked behind him and wrapped his arms around Kyungsoo's waist, pulling him close until they're back to chest. Kyungsoo swallows hard around the thickening lump in his throat. He can feel Baekhyun's thundering pulse against his stomach, can feel the heavy thumping in Baekhyun's chest against his threadbare shirt. And there's supposed to be at least three layers of clothes between them, keeping them warm and keeping them apart, but even through the shirt and sweater Baekhyun is wearing Kyungsoo can feel every note beating in Baekhyun's chest in the tight fit of their bodies.

Baekhyun loosens his grip, but splays one hand on Kyungsoo's stomach. The other, he slides dangerously south, three inches away from where he has his other hand and too close to Kyungsoo's crotch. Kyungsoo curls in his fingers. His hands are so cold, so numb, that he can't even feel his muscles tightening around his resolve and reminding him to not do anything stupid, but he keeps at it, anyway. He takes a deep breath, cracks his neck. Tries to brush it off as something normal because don't friends get a bit too chummy sometimes? Don't bandmates cozy up to each other like this from time to time when they're craving respite, a shoulder to lean on, a touch less impersonal than that of a stylist's or a fan's? Don't friends overstep boundaries sometimes, sneak into each other's personal space, and rub against each other for warmth? If anything, Baekhyun's just submitting into the whims of his sickness, letting people take care of him. Letting himself be a bit more vulnerable than the usual and not really thinking this though.

But Kyungsoo knows Baekhyun's aware of it. He's certain. He can feel the vibrations of Baekhyun's humming where Baekhyun has his lips grazing Kyungsoo's nape. He can feel it in Baekhyun's quickening pulse. It makes him shiver. But it doesn't deter Baekhyun from staying right there, an extension of Kyungsoo, even under Jongdae's scrutinizing gaze. And it does very little to stop Kyungsoo's insides from turning, lurching, making him too aware of the way their bodies align.

"Or when we're hungry," Kyungsoo mumbles after a while. "We do stupid things when we're hungry."

He feels Baekhyun's muscles shift against his. Baekhyun doesn't pull away yet, doesn't even loosen his grip on Kyungsoo. It's almost as if he's trying to convince Kyungsoo to give up and give in, to agree with what he's just said. But Baekhyun's resolve crumbles along with his tight hold on Kyungsoo when his stomach grumbles, loud and disruptive, in the press of their bodies.

"That's the thing about hunger," Jongdae says, nodding, slow and dramatic, and clasps a hand on Baekhyun's shoulder. His eyes are still on Kyungsoo, though, focused and discerning. Almost like he's trying to ask Kyungsoo something with the gentle lift of his eyebrows. "It demands to be felt."

Lunch dissolves into a conversation about plans for the long weekend while the others are gone. Jongdae's heading back to his province for a while to spend time with his parents and 'the kids', but promises to return on the weekend to transition back to work, try to figure out how to 'attack' a couple of songs with Chanyeol. They received word on the management liking their material and wanting to include it in their upcoming mini album just a few days back. Jongdae was ecstatic; Chanyeol, a bit dazed, but just as happy with the way he couldn't stop grinning for the next four hours. Meanwhile, Chanyeol's staying with his parents until Friday to discuss some of the plans his father has for both the live cafe and the restaurant in Garosu-gil. And Kyungsoo... has nowhere else to be at, really, unless he decides to book a hotel for himself to get his much needed alone time. Just a couple of hours away from the noise of the industry, of eight other boys, to allow the voices at the back of his mind to come screaming at him again.

Kyungsoo gives Jongdae and Chanyeol one last wave before locking the door. Maybe he should have gotten a room in the closest hotel, got himself room service massage and food and quality wine as a reward for all his hard work. The last time he pampered himself was the week before debut, and it wasn't even his idea. Chanyeol conned him into getting a full body scrub and massage to rinse the last few dregs of swear and tears from their system and prepare themselves for the idol life. Or something of that sort; the actual words elude Kyungsoo now, when the pulse in his temples throb long and hard. He blames alcohol and his colds. And he blames his stubborn self for sticking it out with Baekhyun and getting sick, in the process.

A few feet away, he hears something pop. He shifts his gaze from the knob to his left, then, craning his neck until he spots Baekhyun by the hallway to the living room. "So it's just you and me now, huh?"

Just you and me. Kyungsoo shrugs. At the back of his mind, he curls up in a corner and tells Baekhyun to shoo, scram, beat it. Go away. "I'm stuck with you for the next few days," he says, instead, stretching his arms overhead and yawning. "Don't get even sicker. We promised Joonmyun-hyung we'd be well again by the time they return."

"They return next week. You still have time to take care of me." Baekhyun draws the bottle of Cass close to his mouth and swipes his tongue along his bottom lip, all while keeping his gaze fixed on nothing, no one else but Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo feels his breath hitch. The pulse in his palms throbs in thoughtless retaliation. He presses on, nonetheless, walking over to where Baekhyun is and willing his knees to not shake. "And I have enough time to take care of you,” Baekhyun continues after a while.

Kyungsoo scoffs. "I don't need you to take care of me."

"Of course. You can take care of yourself," Baekhyun whispers. He takes a long swig of the beer, seething as his lips come off the top of the bottle. Kyungsoo tries to look away, but to no avail; Baekhyun has him hooked. "But I want to take care of you."

Kyungsoo takes a deep, deep breath. You sound like my mother. Or like someone who's a bit too concerned. You're not supposed to care, he almost says, but he doesn't. Baekhyun has every right to give a fuck about him – Baekhyun has enough trust in him to carry the group's vocals even with Baekhyun sporting a sore throat. Baekhyun isn't as heartless as half of Kyungsoo's mind makes him out to be. So instead, Kyungsoo swallows those words down, tries to summon laughter to his lips because it's the easiest, the best way to get out of a tough spot. The best way to shake off the weird, sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach brought about by Baekhyun's careless words. "Take care of yourself first," he says, then, narrowly avoiding bumping into Baekhyun's side on his way back to the living room. "You've been sick for far too long already. Management's going to throw a fit if you still sound like a frog next week."

Baekhyun snorts. Saunters closer to meet Kyungsoo halfway and looks at him with a peculiar glint in his eyes. He chuckles. Alcohol, Kyungsoo tells himself, this is alcohol at work, making Baekhyun a bit too loose-lipped and limbed. Baekhyun reeks of the scent of ramyun and soju and beer and a thousand wrong decisions that Kyungsoo doesn't regret making.

"Valid point," Baekhyun mutters. He takes another sip of his beer, then shoves the bottle in Kyungsoo's chest when the doorbell rings. "Hang on. I'll get that."

Kyungsoo beats Baekhyun to it, though, gets to the doorstep even before Baekhyun does. Baekhyun groans at him, slaps his arm, but snaps right up when the delivery man addresses him with a stare. The heat sticks to Kyungsoo's skin, stays there long after Baekhyun has already dropped his hands to his sides. Sort of like how Baekhyun leaves scars on everything he touches without so much a trace of remorse.

"Uh, I'm looking for a Byun Baekhyun?" the delivery man says. He shifts his gaze between Kyungsoo and Baekhyun, purses his lips like he's still trying to process is next course of action. Stick to the protocol, Kyungsoo wants to tell him. Without the right stage magic, they're just ordinary people, after all. "Is he around?"

Baekhyun shuts his eyes tight, then opens them wide as he nods. "That's me," he mutters, then holds his hands out. "What is it? Is there anything I have to sign?"

"Just this, sir," the delivery man replies. He whips out a sheet of paper from his back pocket and hands it to Baekhyun, together with a black pen. Then he sneaks a glance at Kyungsoo before saying, "I'll... just go get the package. It's a bit big, mind you. Pretty bulky–"

By pretty bulky, the delivery man means the parcel being two boxes, each about half a bond paper in height and a fourth of an illustration board in length. It's covered in a wrapper that's half blue, half purple – periwinkle, Kyungsoo notes, there's a nice balance between the blues and the purples, after all – and there are flecks of gold splattered on the surface. A thin gold ribbon breaks the empty space, makes the packaging a bit more regal-looking than most parcels Kyungsoo has seen get delivered at their doorstep. He can't see the corners at the moment; Baekhyun's holding it away from him as he makes sure that he's filled out everything he has to in the form.

A traitorous cold wraps around his throat, snakes up his nape and tickles his senses. He shivers. Too familiar, he muses. It's not everyday that you find a present wrapped in this particular shade of purple. The gold splatters are a nice accent to the vibrant color in the background, and, "The thin gold ribbon's a nice touch," a voice at the back of his mind says. It sounds a lot like Chanyeol from a few days ago, when they were wrapping up the last few orders of the second batch. But then maybe the alcohol's beginning to get to him. Add to that the fact that he's nursing the worst cold, and what do you get? Do Kyungsoo's senses going haywire and leading him to believe that Baekhyun's the type of guy who'd take pleasure in seeing his face on a 300-page photobook. And on a sticker set. And on photo cards the number of card in a deck.

Baekhyun tilts the box a little, trying to tuck one box under his arm, but to no avail – it's too big. And that's when Kyungsoo sees it, a familiar design that spells out the words 'Sun and Moon' in nice, chunky dark gray text. Neutraface Text Light rendered in crisp anti-aliasing. A three-pixel border in light, light gray all around.

He gulps hard this time and balls his hands into tight fists. Half of him feels like laughing; the other half just wants to curl up in a corner and get swallowed by the ground.

"So, wanna make yourself useful?" Baekhyun asks, looking over his shoulder with a tight-lipped smile Kyungsoo hasn't seen him wear in a while. The last time it happened was around the time they'd received news on someone leaving the group again. They knew about it at least three months prior – they're a team, for Christ's sake; it's almost impossible to not know the shit the other is going through – but that didn't make hearing the same news from the management any less painful. The smile… sort of looks different, though, almost like Baekhyun’s trying not to laugh, trying to keep everything in. Trying to hide something from Kyungsoo when he’s always been the most transparent person in the group.

"Take the box on top– Yeah, that's good," Baekhyun says, grunting. He gives the delivery man a bow, then he's kicking the door shut and taking small but quick steps to the living room. "Man, when the site master said this thing's hella heavy, he wasn't kidding."

"He?" Kyungsoo pipes in. He looks to his side, just keeps his gaze low and unfocused so as to not give himself away. “Aren’t site masters usually girls? I mean, there’s nothing wrong–“ Too much information, too much trouble, he tells himself. Get straight to the point and don’t go around in circles. Act normal. “How sure are you that the site master’s a ‘he’?"

Baekhyun hums. The corners of his lips curl up, easing the tightness in them and helping Baekhyun's cheeks relax. Too quick, part of Kyungsoo says – three years in and it still surprises him how some can slip in and out of idol suits so easily. It takes him five minutes to rid himself of the SM-patented smile; how can Baekhyun find it so easy to just rip the mask off and throw it away? So Kyungsoo squints his eyes, studies Baekhyun even harder. Takes in the smaller details of his face that Kyungsoo has never seen before – he doesn't have three pimples on his cheek; there are four. He has these cute yet faint freckles that soften his features. His bottom lip is chapped, bloodied and bruised. And if he just lets Kyungsoo lean a bit closer then maybe Kyungsoo can lick the blood off his lips or share the taste, whichever he so desires.

"C'mon, Soo, it's just you and me here. Are you still going to lie to me?" Baekhyun shakes his head and takes a few more steps forward, until he reaches the living room and sets the box down on the floor. “I saw some of your… unsorted photos from months ago. And then there’s the audio clip from a few days back.” Baekhyun gulps hard, but the smile on his lips hasn’t waned just yet. "Besides, the drawing style's a complete giveaway. I don't think anyone in this world can draw things the way you do."

Kyungsoo holds his breath. Keeps all the air in his lungs there, smack in the middle, and feels his heart race even quicker in his chest with each passing second. He's made sure to cover all his tracks, to password-protect the files and folders on both his phone and laptop that might give him away. And Chanyeol isn't a complete asshole that he'd tell Baekhyun about Kyungsoo's 'secret life' as a fansite master. There's nothing, nothing in this world, that could have hinted at Kyungsoo's identity as Sun and Moon's site master, founder, creator. He can still get out of this; he just has to know the right words to say–

Baekhyun leans against the couch, body facing Kyungsoo now. His head is cocked to the side; his smile, still tearing at the corners of his mouth. He looks like he's having fun just watching Kyungsoo breathe, but something about the way Baekhyun squints his eyes and drums the fingers of his right hand on his thigh leads Kyungsoo to believe that this isn't just amusement scrunching up Baekhyun's face and painting him in a different light. "So? Still not gonna come clean?" Baekhyun says after a while, then digs his hands into his pockets. He saunters closer until all that's left between him and Kyungsoo is the width of the box that Kyungsoo still hasn't let go of. "It's just me. Don't worry, I won't kick you out of the house or judge you or–"

There are a thousand ways to come back at Baekhyun right now. I'm not worried about you kicking me out. I don't think you're ever capable of judging anyone because of this because it's something you'd do. Thanks for purchasing two sets; for that, I'll send you a physical copy of the audio compilation for free! But the words escape him. His mouth feels to dry and hollow without the lines that always threaten to spill from his lips. His throat feels tight and then loose and then tight again, clenching around nothing in particular. And his stomach lurches at the sight of Baekhyun taking another step forward, kicking the other box to the side, thinning the space between them.

"Why–" Kyungsoo drops his gaze his feet and clasps his hands together. "Why aren't you weirded out?"

Baekhyun stops in his tracks. He's closer than before now, the tips of his toes popping in Kyungsoo's line of sight, but he remains rooted in his spot. Sort of like he hadn't seen it coming, hadn't expected Kyungsoo to ask something like this. "What do you mean 'why am I not weirded out'?" Baekhyun asks, voice cracking at the last few syllables. Kyungsoo winces, cringes. It's almost like listening to Baekhyun miss a note during a live performance but seeing him still wear a bright smile on stage as if nothing had just happened, like his world isn't falling apart. "Fansites are normal. Idols have 'em, whether they like it or not. I'm an idol and I happen to like people paying attention to me. Plus, S&M takes really flattering photos of me. Candid, but still flattering." Baekhyun laughs a little. "So why would I be?"

Kyungsoo... laughs. Looks up from where he'd once stared at his feet in an attempt to avoid Baekhyun's focused gaze. His breath hitches when Baekhyun's small smile greets him, relaxed at the corners. Baekhyun's lips are redder than before. He must have been biting them earlier. What's wrong with you, he wants to ask, but then what is wrong with a friend admiring a friend? What's wrong with a little idol worship, a harmless 'crush'? "I don't know. Because you're actually a private person? You get shy sometimes? Get the urge to hide from the world?" he tries, lifting his hand to scratch his nape. Massages that area as well because every inch of him feels so tense right now, with Baekhyun's eyes fixed on nothing, no one else but him. "Because I've been sharing snapshots of some private moments in your life that you might not want people to see? Because it's your bandmate sharing all these things with everyone else?" He scoffs, shakes his head. Takes a deep breath and curls his fingers into a loose fist. "And bandmates aren't supposed to do that, right? I'm supposed to know better and respect your privacy. And perform with you. And–"

"Coexist, basically," Baekhyun says, interrupting. He lets out a long and loud exhale, chuckles. Hums. Three more seconds, and he breathes out a little sigh again. It's almost as if he's lost his vocabulary, dropped it somewhere between him saying that Kyungsoo's drawing style is so distinct that it would be stupid to not find out that he's Sun and Moon's site master and Kyungsoo asking why he isn't freaking out over discovering that hey, the guy he stays in the booth with until two, three in the morning? The guy who's showered with him at least thrice already to save time and resources? The guy whose shoulder he finds most comfortable to lean on during trips from one schedule to another? That's the guy who has a website especially for him. That's the guy who snaps photos of his most unguarded moments. And that's the same guy standing in front of him right now, hands balled into tiny fists, looking at him through the narrow gaps of his bangs while asking, why have you not pushed me away yet? "And by now you're supposed to know that you don't need to build a shrine for me just to get me to notice you."

Kyungsoo furrows his eyebrows. "It's not a shrine; it's a fansite," he corrects Baekhyun, then huffs as a corner of his lips pulls down to a frown. "At least get the term right."

"And you're missing the point."

"You're missing the point," Kyungsoo argues. He digs his hands into his pockets and tightens his fists there, trying to curl his fingers in until he feels the burn of the stretch at the back of his palms. Until he feels his nails leaving marks on his skin the same way that the silly smile Baekhyun is wearing right now is leaving these nasty little scars along the shell of his heart. "Whatever. I'm just glad the packages arrived in one piece–"

"I said," Baekhyun begins, pausing only to look the other way and cough into the back of his hand. "You don't have to build a fansite for me to get me to notice you," he continues. A deep, shaky breath, and then, "But it looks like I'm the one who has to do that to get noticed."

Kyungsoo leans back a little. Baekhyun makes the most inappropriate jokes at times, so he waits for it – the catch, the punch line, the part where Baekhyun cackles at him like a banshee, an accusing finger pointed in his direction as he yells, hah, got you! But Baekhyun doesn't. Instead, Baekhyun just stands there, lips pressed together in a small smile. From where Kyungsoo is, with the dim light in the living room, Baekhyun looks so small and uncertain, vulnerable. It's not even because of the mask slinging from his right ear by its strap, or because of his nose glowing a bright shade of red. It's in the way his eyebrows furrow a little, in the way his shoulders slump and his hands just drop to the sides, rid of their usual vigor. It's in the way Baekhyun summons laughter to his lips with a heave of the chest like it's taking him every ounce of his energy just to try to make Kyungsoo understand.

"Well, maybe not just a fansite. I think I have to... go the whole nine yards or something. Photobooks, cards, posters, life-sized standees–" Baekhyun stops, chuckling, and shakes his head. He scratches the part where the back of his head and his nape meet, his long nails scoring lines along his skin. His hair's grown too long now; Kyungsoo kind of wants to reach out and thread his fingers through the strands, rest his palm on the back of Baekhyun's head to guide him forward. To see the faint blush on Baekhyun's cheeks even more. To map out the path from that topmost pimple down to the mole just two centimeters away from the gentle swell of his mouth, then further south until he can rest his finger on the cut on Baekhyun's lips. Closer. "Y'know, for the longest time I thought my flirting skills were already top-notch but man, you're a tough cookie–"

Kyungsoo takes a step forward. And then another, until he feels the tip of his toes bump against Baekhyun's own. Baekhyun's speech trails off into a gasp, words suspended in the thinning space between them. This is like one of those stories Kyungsoo has seen some of the fans post on the boards where Baekhyun silences one of the EXO members with a squeeze of the arm, a brush of the thumb against the member's cheek, and then some. Except the quick heaves of Baekhyun's chest, the trembling of Baekhyun's lips, his hot breath tickling the bridge of Kyungsoo's nose – these feel too real. So Kyungsoo changes things up, takes a leap of faith and leans even closer until their foreheads bump. "You're missing the point," Kyungsoo mutters one last time, smiling as the sound of Baekhyun's hiccups catches on his hears. "If you didn't catch my eye way, way back then I wouldn't have made a 'shrine' for you, in the first place."

A tiny 'oh' escapes Baekhyun's lips in a voice so faint he could've just been breathing. It's a sweet enough sound that it coaxes Kyungsoo to move even closer until his nose bumps into Baekhyun's own. They're close, too close, that Kyungsoo can see the slightest movement of Baekhyun's eyes, the way Baekhyun's gaze drops from the bridge of Kyungsoo's nose down to his lips. "It's a fansite, not a shrine," Baekhyun mumbles between soft chuckles. Slowly, he pulls his hands out of his pockets and rests them on Kyungsoo's hips. His fingers are cold, shaking. And he's drumming a beat on the jut of Kyungsoo's bone like he's trying to say more but just can't find the words for it yet, so he's leaving it to his fingers to let Kyungsoo know. "At least get the term right."

"You're–" Kyungsoo's breath hitches when Baekhyun snakes his arms around Kyungsoo's waist, him even closer until Baekhyun can slide his knee between Kyungsoo's legs. The brush of skin against the burgeoning weight in Kyungsoo's crotch makes him choke on a gasp, a groan. A moan when Baekhyun presses his lips to a corner of his mouth. "You're not allowed to use my words against me," he manages to say after a while, when Baekhyun shifts in his position to pull his knee away. "Not fair."

"Well, then, at least allow me this," Baekhyun whispers. He pulls away for the briefest of moments, Kyungsoo's breath hitching in response, but soon he's meeting Kyungsoo's eyes, gaze focused. "Can I– Can I kiss you?"

Kyungsoo laughs a little. "You rubbed your knee against my dick without asking but you can't surprise me with a kiss?" he asks. Baekhyun's expression falters, the corners of his lips tugging down then up again in the span of two seconds. His eyebrows are furrowed, though, still wondering, asking if it's okay to slow down for a minute, stop dancing around, and actually start looking at each other more clearly. "I'm disappointed."

Baekhyun parts his lips to speak, but soon Kyungsoo snakes his hand up Baekhyun's nape. It doesn't take much for Kyungsoo to lean into the touch, just a gentle massage of the scalp and a brush of the thumb against the sharp angle of his jaw. Kyungsoo guides Baekhyun forward, then, just a breath closer, and begins his journey, pressing a light kiss to the tip of Baekhyun's nose. Baekhyun lets out a soft giggle in response. Or maybe this is Baekhyun telling him, I didn't know you had it in you to be like this, Soo, but I'm liking it. I'm liking it a lot. So Kyungsoo presses on, tilting his head a little, ghosting his lips on Baekhyun's mole. He hears the hitch in Baekhyun's breathing, feels Baekhyun's faint gasp stick to his skin as he sinks to meet Baekhyun's top lip. Feels Baekhyun's fingers tremble against his waist when he presses a kiss to the right corner of Baekhyun's lips, then the left, before sucking on his bottom lip. Hears Baekhyun whimper a little. He chuckles, almost laughs, but soon Baekhyun surges forward and claims his lips even before Kyungsoo can move, coaxes his mouth open with light, teasing licks, leaves him wanting more when Baekhyun attacks with a gentle nibble on his bottom lip, a swipe along the back of his teeth, a gentle suck of Kyungsoo’s tongue.

"I'll get sick tonight, I can feel it," Kyungsoo mutters when they pull away, foreheads sticky with sweat. A thin string of saliva connects their kiss-swollen lips and it's gross, but Baekhyun makes it seem like less of a problem and more of a force reeling him back in when he snakes his arms around Kyungsoo's neck and whispers, 'carry me?' His knees still feel weak and every part of him that Baekhyun has touched still stings, so instead he steals a quick kiss from Baekhyun and hums a small tune under his breath as they sway from side to side, dancing to the familiar beat in the tight press of their bodies. Chest to chest, cheek to cheek. Heart to heart.

★ ☀ ★

"I can't believe you actually did the 'take a selca with Sunshine' poster," Chanyeol mutters. He shakes his head, then drops his gaze to whatever he's doing on his phone. "That was self-indulgent as fuck."

Kyungsoo leans back against the couch and closes his eyes. Sun and Moon released a poster just a few days ago where Baekhyun has his arm around a big, blank board that’s the shape of a person, because Kyungsoo had promised to release something special while 'Master-nim is still working on the third photobook. Please anticipate!'. It's like one of those things in museums where you can pop your head in a hole of an artwork and ask your friends to take a picture of the composition. Only better, of course, since the photo in the poster hasn't been released outside of the Sun and Moon network. Limited edition. Go burn in envy, other site masters. "We grossed nearly 30% of the sales for the second photobook, though," Kyungsoo argues after a while as he blindly feels for his knuckles. He flexes his fingers. He's been working on the next set of goods non-stop, sometimes staying up until four in the morning just to get things done. He has a market to please, after all; he can't leave Baekhyun's fans disappointed. "You have to admit: it's a great idea."

"Cheesy."

"And good."

Chanyeol lets out a long and loud sigh. "Fine, fine. The numbers speak for themselves," he says, surrendering, then shifts in his seat to fold one leg under his weight. "Just wondering, though, how the hell did you manage to take that picture without creeping him out?"

Kyungsoo laughs. There are a number of ways to answer Chanyeol's question: Baekhyun just loves getting photographed; ask him to pose with a cucumber between his lips and he'll say yes without a second thought. When you're friends with your idol, it's easy to play the friend card and make him do whatever you wish. It doesn't help that Baekhyun's a softie. And it's even easier to play all sorts of cards and tricks under one's sleeve when you're... more than friends with said idol. All it takes is for Kyungsoo to trace the curve of Baekhyun's face with his fingers, map out a constellation of light kisses on his cheek. Kiss Baekhyun long and hard until Baekhyun can't feel his lips anymore, then say, so there's this thing I'm planning to do for the site. You're going to work with me on this, right? If Baekhyun's not too sold on the idea then Kyungsoo can work harder, work Baekhyun up, tease him until he begs for release. And if Baekhyun agrees at once, well... Baekhyun knows there's a reward waiting for him at the end of the road. Kyungsoo isn't as heartless as most people think.

But Chanyeol doesn't need to know all those, doesn't need to know that Baekhyun has already met S&M's site master and has already stuck a hand in said site master's pants. Gotten a bit too cozy with him, as well, during downtime at work. Planned a trip with him up north, to the mountains, this coming autumn. Baekhyun's been bugging Kyungsoo to go hiking these past few months; Kyungsoo knows Baekhyun just wants to be photographed against the warm colors of fall and to finally capture Kyungsoo on film. So instead, Kyungsoo says, "Well, I have my ways," and pokes his eyes open to wink at Chanyeol and punctuate his statement.

Chanyeol narrows his eyes. "Do I want to know?"

"Do you?"

Chanyeol shifts in his seat, then sinks right back in the cushions. "I don't think I want to."

Baekhyun peeks from the corridor leading to the bedrooms and sticks out three fingers, waving them at Kyungsoo. It can mean anything – reserve three copies of the poster for me so I can sign them and you can raffle them off to 'lucky fans', I'm going to stick three fingers inside you tonight so you better get ready, I have three movies in mind for tonight's film viewing. Can I get your opinion on that? Kyungsoo can never tell. He hates it, all these surprises, so he pushes himself off the couch now, half past five in the afternoon, and begins his attempt to decipher Baekhyun's message. Baekhyun's bound to distract him with his pretty mouth and even prettier yet stranger ideas that he'll end up without any progress on his mission, but he doesn't mind. This is the brand of distraction that he likes enough to drown in, the same kind of distraction that he doesn't mind getting drunk off of. The only noise that he can sing to again and again until no other word spills from his lips but Baekhyun, Baekhyun, Baekhyun.

YOU'VE REACHED THE END OF THE FIC! Thank you so much for reading!
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