![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
The Letter 18
Chapter 18
Hopeless
Luhan was with another client when Sehun suddenly burst in through the doors of the abandoned classroom. The client was disturbed and began to quickly pull his pants back on, walking off and grumbling about how he wanted a refund. Luhan yelled back his no-refund policy before turning his attention to Sehun.
“Couldn’t you wait until that guy got his money’s worth?”
Sehun creased his brows. “Yah. Part of the agreement was to be solely mine for the week. You can’t take in other people when I already paid for your time for seven days.”
Luhan shook his head. “I agreed to your proposition, kid, but you didn’t specify which week you wanted my services.”
“I kind of assumed that you knew I was talking about this week,” Sehun mumbled.
Luhan gave an exaggerated shrug. “I don’t know what to tell you. I’m booked this week.”
Sehun frowned at him. Booked…Sehun didn’t like the implication of the word. It meant that Luhan would be out fornicating until he was suddenly “unbooked”.
“How about next week?”
Luhan glanced around, thinking about it. He knew his schedule was free the following week. He made sure to turn down any offers for activities then to make room for Sehun. Luhan glanced silently at Sehun for a minute, making Sehun fidget. “Oh, I don’t know…”
“Please?”
He could have burst out laughing at the younger boy. “Yah, stop sounding so clingy, Flower Boy—”
“I’m not a virgin anymore. I already lost it.”
Luhan raised a brow. “Oh? Is that so?” He felt some kind of disappointment. It would’ve been a guilty pleasure to be Sehun’s first. “Well then, congratulations.”
Sehun rolled his eyes. “Okay, whatever. Back to the point. Next week?”
Luhan nodded slightly. “Sure.”
On the Monday of the following week, Sehun stood at the gates waiting for Luhan after school. It didn’t take long for him to spot the blonde making his way to the front. He waved a hand, but it was unneeded. Luhan already saw him.
“I thought I said we’d meet up at my house,” Luhan said once he was within Sehun’s earshot.
“I’m taking you to mine,” Sehun replied. “I’m giving you a ride.”
Luhan eyed Sehun’s jet black car from behind and whistled. “Fancy.” He didn’t expect anything less.
“I guess. I don’t know,” She replied, shrugging indifferently.
“It is,” Luhan sighed. “So, why your house? Mine’s perfectly fine.”
“I’m sure it is, but I’d rather have you in mine.”
“What a romantic.”
Sehun shrugged again. “Let’s go.”
Luhan reached for the door handle, but Sehun got to it first, opening the door for him. Luhan gave Sehun a look. “I can open doors perfectly fine.”
“It’s a habit.”
“Since when?”
“Since now.”
Baekhyun woke up with his ears ringing. He automatically felt nauseated, but not too much to want to throw up. He could live. He groaned as his senses came back to him. His eyes slowly fluttered open when he began to make out two voices talking to each other. Eventually, he recognized one of those voices to be Kai.
“Morning, roommate,” Kai greeted, grinning down at him.
Baekhyun groaned again as he closed his eyes, wishing he could go back to sleep. Chanyeol didn’t let him wish for long. He kicked the bed, shaking it. “Yah, get up. No going back to bed, you little vixen.”
Baekhyun wasn’t in the morning mood and launched the pillow beside him at Chanyeol. “Stop…” He paused. “What time is it?”
“It’s seven twenty-eight,” Kai replied. “They’re serving breakfast at seven forty-five and we have to be at the event area at eight.”
“It’s too early to do anything…” Baekhyun moaned. He stretched his arms, but quickly plopped them back down and pulled the covers over his body even more.
“Hey!” Chanyeol stalked over to his side of the bed and ripped the covers off. “If you just stayed with me instead of going out to drink with Lay, maybe you would’ve gotten enough sleep,” Chanyeol tonelessly pointed out.
“Gah, shut up,” Baekhyun said, covering his ears. “It’s not like I did anything bad! You drink! I know you do.”
Chanyeol rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but I’m me and you’re you. Don’t fucking get wasted. Especially that guy.”
“Whatever…” Baekhyun carelessly mumbled.
“Ok then,” Kai drawled after watching the two bicker. “Baekhyun, come on. Let’s go.”
“Yeah.” Chanyeol reached down and grabbed up Baekhyun by the forearm, pulling him up.
“Yah! Stop!”
Kai only laughed. “He’s right, Yeol. Is this how you treat someone with a hangover?”
Chanyeol snorted as he dragged a squirming Baekhyun out of bed. “This stupid kid doesn’t deserve any sympathy, Kai.” Once he got Baekhyun on his staggering feet, Chanyeol kept him steady with a hand clutching onto the back of his shirt. “Walk to the bathroom. Now.”
“Friggin...Yah! You can’t—”
“Shut up and start walking before I drag you in there,” Chanyeol warned. “You’re taking a shower. You fell asleep after you fucking told me I was a moron for not knowing that you liked me. I can still smell some alcohol on you.”
Baekhyun suddenly remembered as the memory recollected itself in his mind. He struggled and broke free from Chanyeol’s hand. He glared at him before making his own way to the bathroom, making sure to keep balance. “I can walk to the freaking bathroom on my own, moron!”
Chanyeol stood there watching his vixen make his pitiful way into the bathroom. “Now that you like me, shouldn’t you stop treating me like a leper!?” he loudly asked.
From within the bathroom, Kai and Chanyeol could hear things fall and Baekhyun’s voice yell back, “Shut up!”
Kai stretched his arms. “So this is how your relationship works, hmm? I’m sorry, but I’d go crazy if I had to keep chasing someone like this.”
“It’s not as hopeless as it looks,” Chanyeol replied, grinning.
Kai gave his a doubtful look. “I’ll take your word for it, Yeol, cause it looks so god damn hopeless to me.”
“Hopeless? Yesterday we—”
“I don’t wanna know,” Kai cut in.
Chanyeol shrugged. “Okay. Anyways, are you sure you wanna switch rooms with me now?” Suddenly, both of them heard the shower in the bathroom go on. Chanyeol glanced in the bathroom’s direction before looking back at Kai. “Cause you can’t change your mind later. Ever.”
Kai held both hands in front of him. “You have my word. Now let me get my things so I can leave you awkward-ass idiots.”
Chanyeol let out a chuckle before cocking his head over to Kai’s suitcase. “Hurry up because I don’t like having you in here when Baek’s naked in there.”
“Gross.”
Baekhyun came out of the bathroom feeling refreshed and saw that Kai was no longer there. Chanyeol was sitting in one of the chairs when he stepped in the room. He pointed over to the bed where he laid out an outfit for Baekhyun to wear.
Chanyeol tried to convince Baekhyun to slip the robe off and change in front of him, but Baekhyun only called him an idiot before taking the clothes and going back to the bathroom to change.
They didn’t reunite again until they both left the room to go downstairs to get some breakfast. Baekhyun tried to walk as far ahead of Chanyeol as he possibly could, but the giant’s long legs made it impossible to walk without breaking into a jog.
“We should have sex again,” Chanyeol said as they were in the elevator.
Baekhyun sighed. “Why…”
“So you can’t try and walk away from me like you’re trying to do right now,” Chanyeol said, smirking. Baekhyun responded by hitting his head on the elevator wall.
When the two got to the breakfast area, everyone was there. Kyungsoo was obviously being indecisive about what he wanted to eat seeing as how Kai—from what Baekhyun noticed—was tapping his foot and glancing at the clock every so often. Tao was with Suho. His head was on the table and his arms were sprawled on it. Baekhyun joined them and Chanyeol went off with his own friends with the exception of Kai, who decided to sit with Kyungsoo.
The event took place on the beach front, which was nothing less than familiar to Baekhyun. Everyone’s assigned partner for the event was their assigned roommate—much to Chanyeol’s disappointment.
Each pair would be assigned another pair. The first person would take a baton and run one hundred meters on the unstructured sand, then hand it off to another person near the waters. That person would then swim to a floating platform and hand it off to the next person, who would swim back to shore, hand it off once again, and finally, the last person would run the last two hundred meters to the finish line.
Chanyeol had his fingers crossed, hoping that Kyungsoo and he would get Kai and Baekhyun. Kyungsoo was doing the exact same wishing. Unfortunately for them, Kai and Baekhyun got paired up with Tao and Kris. This was one arrangement Chanyeol couldn’t slyly change.
When it was time to start, everyone who would be swimming took off their shirts. Baekhyun was one of them. He expected either fit-Kris or fit-as-fuck Kai to be swimming too, but to his surprise, it was Tao beside him, taking off his own shirt.
“Tao!” Baekhyun whispered. His eyes were wide open as he leaned in to the boy. “What’re you doing!?”
“I’m in charge of swimming back to shore…” Tao mumbled as he slipped his shirt off. “Kris is good at running and so is Kai.”
“Yeah, but you’re not good at swimming!” Baekhyun cried, hitting Tao on the arm. “Go to Kris and tell him this!”
“No!” Tao replied. “I don’t want that bitch to find out I can’t freaking swim well. It’ll be okay, Baek. You’ll be there anyways. You can always come in and save me,” he said, smiling.
Baekhyun didn’t smile back. He only hit him again. “Winning this stupid thing isn’t—”
“It’s fine! Really! Besides, it’s not about winning. I can’t really back out now. I don’t want to back out, either,” Tao said adamantly. He gave Baekhyun a pat on the back before walking to rejoin Kris and Kai who were stretching not too far away from them. “I’ll be fine, Baek! Watch. I’ll end up swimming faster than everyone else.”
Baekhyun grimly frowned at him. He hurried to take off his own shirt to catch up with Tao. “If you fucking drown, then I’m not saving your stupid butt!” he threatened.
“You don’t mean that,” Tao said, grinning at him. “By the way, nice hicks.”
“Wha—” Baekhyun immediately turned red. He looked on him for any red spots, but since he couldn’t see any, he figured they were unseen to him despite being public to everyone else. Fucking Chanyeol! Baekhyun turned to look for the giant. To his luck, the idiot was grinning at him. Baekhyun mouthed a few jabs at Chanyeol’s intellectual standing. Chanyeol responded by forming a heart with his fingers.
The race began with the blow of a horn. Kai had gained an upper hand in the beginning, but during the last few feet, Rome had caught up with him. Both of them handed their batons to their next partner.
Baekhyun took the stick firmly in his hand before dashing for the waters. When his legs couldn’t run against the waters anymore, he threw his entire body in and began swimming over to the floating platform. The natural order of things were against the first wave of swimmers, which included Baekhyun since they had to swim against the currents. It took a minute or two for the first person to reach the platform. Unfortunately, Baekhyun came in second, but second was better than third.
He came up from under, grabbed hold of the metal ladder and held the baton up to Tao. He then quickly pulled himself up. When he was on the platform, Tao still hadn’t jumped, causing Kris on the shore to shout at him to jump in.
“Tao—”
“I can do it, Baek.”
“Just let me do it!”
“Can’t you just be supportive!?”
Baekhyun held his breath, troubled. “Fine. Just…just don’t stop swimming until you feel the ground—”
“What’re you two doing!?” they could hear Kris yell.
“Come on, Tao!” Kai yelled.
“I’m going.”
Baekhyun nodded. “Okay then. Go. The others are coming,” he said, watching the other teams make their way to the platform.
Tao nodded. He gripped the baton, bent his knees and jumped in. When he disappeared in the water, Baekhyun immediately got on his knees and tried to see his figure in the water amongst the bubbles created by the jump. Baekhyun didn’t realize he was holding his breath until Tao came up, gasping for air, before paddling like a child to the shore. He wasn’t moving fast, according to Baekhyun, but as long as he stayed afloat he was fine…
Tao was swimming, but he was barely breathing. He didn’t know when to turn his head and take in a breath and moving his arms in an un-orderly fashion was making him tired. He wasn’t even near the shore yet. He was just in the middle. He was doing fine, until all of a sudden, in one of the few times that he turned his head to take a breath, he accidentally took in water.
Out of instinct, Tao stopped and began to cough. It was a split second later that he realized he needed to keep moving in order to stay afloat, but the waves hitting him from the back pushed him further and further into panic mode as he could barely keep his head above the water. As fear set in, air was getting harder and harder to find. His arms and his legs, no matter how much he flailed them under the water, couldn’t service him efficiently.
Finally, he couldn’t do it anymore.
“Baek!”
Baekhyun’s heart broke at the cry.
Hopeless
Luhan was with another client when Sehun suddenly burst in through the doors of the abandoned classroom. The client was disturbed and began to quickly pull his pants back on, walking off and grumbling about how he wanted a refund. Luhan yelled back his no-refund policy before turning his attention to Sehun.
“Couldn’t you wait until that guy got his money’s worth?”
Sehun creased his brows. “Yah. Part of the agreement was to be solely mine for the week. You can’t take in other people when I already paid for your time for seven days.”
Luhan shook his head. “I agreed to your proposition, kid, but you didn’t specify which week you wanted my services.”
“I kind of assumed that you knew I was talking about this week,” Sehun mumbled.
Luhan gave an exaggerated shrug. “I don’t know what to tell you. I’m booked this week.”
Sehun frowned at him. Booked…Sehun didn’t like the implication of the word. It meant that Luhan would be out fornicating until he was suddenly “unbooked”.
“How about next week?”
Luhan glanced around, thinking about it. He knew his schedule was free the following week. He made sure to turn down any offers for activities then to make room for Sehun. Luhan glanced silently at Sehun for a minute, making Sehun fidget. “Oh, I don’t know…”
“Please?”
He could have burst out laughing at the younger boy. “Yah, stop sounding so clingy, Flower Boy—”
“I’m not a virgin anymore. I already lost it.”
Luhan raised a brow. “Oh? Is that so?” He felt some kind of disappointment. It would’ve been a guilty pleasure to be Sehun’s first. “Well then, congratulations.”
Sehun rolled his eyes. “Okay, whatever. Back to the point. Next week?”
Luhan nodded slightly. “Sure.”
On the Monday of the following week, Sehun stood at the gates waiting for Luhan after school. It didn’t take long for him to spot the blonde making his way to the front. He waved a hand, but it was unneeded. Luhan already saw him.
“I thought I said we’d meet up at my house,” Luhan said once he was within Sehun’s earshot.
“I’m taking you to mine,” Sehun replied. “I’m giving you a ride.”
Luhan eyed Sehun’s jet black car from behind and whistled. “Fancy.” He didn’t expect anything less.
“I guess. I don’t know,” She replied, shrugging indifferently.
“It is,” Luhan sighed. “So, why your house? Mine’s perfectly fine.”
“I’m sure it is, but I’d rather have you in mine.”
“What a romantic.”
Sehun shrugged again. “Let’s go.”
Luhan reached for the door handle, but Sehun got to it first, opening the door for him. Luhan gave Sehun a look. “I can open doors perfectly fine.”
“It’s a habit.”
“Since when?”
“Since now.”
Baekhyun woke up with his ears ringing. He automatically felt nauseated, but not too much to want to throw up. He could live. He groaned as his senses came back to him. His eyes slowly fluttered open when he began to make out two voices talking to each other. Eventually, he recognized one of those voices to be Kai.
“Morning, roommate,” Kai greeted, grinning down at him.
Baekhyun groaned again as he closed his eyes, wishing he could go back to sleep. Chanyeol didn’t let him wish for long. He kicked the bed, shaking it. “Yah, get up. No going back to bed, you little vixen.”
Baekhyun wasn’t in the morning mood and launched the pillow beside him at Chanyeol. “Stop…” He paused. “What time is it?”
“It’s seven twenty-eight,” Kai replied. “They’re serving breakfast at seven forty-five and we have to be at the event area at eight.”
“It’s too early to do anything…” Baekhyun moaned. He stretched his arms, but quickly plopped them back down and pulled the covers over his body even more.
“Hey!” Chanyeol stalked over to his side of the bed and ripped the covers off. “If you just stayed with me instead of going out to drink with Lay, maybe you would’ve gotten enough sleep,” Chanyeol tonelessly pointed out.
“Gah, shut up,” Baekhyun said, covering his ears. “It’s not like I did anything bad! You drink! I know you do.”
Chanyeol rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but I’m me and you’re you. Don’t fucking get wasted. Especially that guy.”
“Whatever…” Baekhyun carelessly mumbled.
“Ok then,” Kai drawled after watching the two bicker. “Baekhyun, come on. Let’s go.”
“Yeah.” Chanyeol reached down and grabbed up Baekhyun by the forearm, pulling him up.
“Yah! Stop!”
Kai only laughed. “He’s right, Yeol. Is this how you treat someone with a hangover?”
Chanyeol snorted as he dragged a squirming Baekhyun out of bed. “This stupid kid doesn’t deserve any sympathy, Kai.” Once he got Baekhyun on his staggering feet, Chanyeol kept him steady with a hand clutching onto the back of his shirt. “Walk to the bathroom. Now.”
“Friggin...Yah! You can’t—”
“Shut up and start walking before I drag you in there,” Chanyeol warned. “You’re taking a shower. You fell asleep after you fucking told me I was a moron for not knowing that you liked me. I can still smell some alcohol on you.”
Baekhyun suddenly remembered as the memory recollected itself in his mind. He struggled and broke free from Chanyeol’s hand. He glared at him before making his own way to the bathroom, making sure to keep balance. “I can walk to the freaking bathroom on my own, moron!”
Chanyeol stood there watching his vixen make his pitiful way into the bathroom. “Now that you like me, shouldn’t you stop treating me like a leper!?” he loudly asked.
From within the bathroom, Kai and Chanyeol could hear things fall and Baekhyun’s voice yell back, “Shut up!”
Kai stretched his arms. “So this is how your relationship works, hmm? I’m sorry, but I’d go crazy if I had to keep chasing someone like this.”
“It’s not as hopeless as it looks,” Chanyeol replied, grinning.
Kai gave his a doubtful look. “I’ll take your word for it, Yeol, cause it looks so god damn hopeless to me.”
“Hopeless? Yesterday we—”
“I don’t wanna know,” Kai cut in.
Chanyeol shrugged. “Okay. Anyways, are you sure you wanna switch rooms with me now?” Suddenly, both of them heard the shower in the bathroom go on. Chanyeol glanced in the bathroom’s direction before looking back at Kai. “Cause you can’t change your mind later. Ever.”
Kai held both hands in front of him. “You have my word. Now let me get my things so I can leave you awkward-ass idiots.”
Chanyeol let out a chuckle before cocking his head over to Kai’s suitcase. “Hurry up because I don’t like having you in here when Baek’s naked in there.”
“Gross.”
Baekhyun came out of the bathroom feeling refreshed and saw that Kai was no longer there. Chanyeol was sitting in one of the chairs when he stepped in the room. He pointed over to the bed where he laid out an outfit for Baekhyun to wear.
Chanyeol tried to convince Baekhyun to slip the robe off and change in front of him, but Baekhyun only called him an idiot before taking the clothes and going back to the bathroom to change.
They didn’t reunite again until they both left the room to go downstairs to get some breakfast. Baekhyun tried to walk as far ahead of Chanyeol as he possibly could, but the giant’s long legs made it impossible to walk without breaking into a jog.
“We should have sex again,” Chanyeol said as they were in the elevator.
Baekhyun sighed. “Why…”
“So you can’t try and walk away from me like you’re trying to do right now,” Chanyeol said, smirking. Baekhyun responded by hitting his head on the elevator wall.
When the two got to the breakfast area, everyone was there. Kyungsoo was obviously being indecisive about what he wanted to eat seeing as how Kai—from what Baekhyun noticed—was tapping his foot and glancing at the clock every so often. Tao was with Suho. His head was on the table and his arms were sprawled on it. Baekhyun joined them and Chanyeol went off with his own friends with the exception of Kai, who decided to sit with Kyungsoo.
The event took place on the beach front, which was nothing less than familiar to Baekhyun. Everyone’s assigned partner for the event was their assigned roommate—much to Chanyeol’s disappointment.
Each pair would be assigned another pair. The first person would take a baton and run one hundred meters on the unstructured sand, then hand it off to another person near the waters. That person would then swim to a floating platform and hand it off to the next person, who would swim back to shore, hand it off once again, and finally, the last person would run the last two hundred meters to the finish line.
Chanyeol had his fingers crossed, hoping that Kyungsoo and he would get Kai and Baekhyun. Kyungsoo was doing the exact same wishing. Unfortunately for them, Kai and Baekhyun got paired up with Tao and Kris. This was one arrangement Chanyeol couldn’t slyly change.
When it was time to start, everyone who would be swimming took off their shirts. Baekhyun was one of them. He expected either fit-Kris or fit-as-fuck Kai to be swimming too, but to his surprise, it was Tao beside him, taking off his own shirt.
“Tao!” Baekhyun whispered. His eyes were wide open as he leaned in to the boy. “What’re you doing!?”
“I’m in charge of swimming back to shore…” Tao mumbled as he slipped his shirt off. “Kris is good at running and so is Kai.”
“Yeah, but you’re not good at swimming!” Baekhyun cried, hitting Tao on the arm. “Go to Kris and tell him this!”
“No!” Tao replied. “I don’t want that bitch to find out I can’t freaking swim well. It’ll be okay, Baek. You’ll be there anyways. You can always come in and save me,” he said, smiling.
Baekhyun didn’t smile back. He only hit him again. “Winning this stupid thing isn’t—”
“It’s fine! Really! Besides, it’s not about winning. I can’t really back out now. I don’t want to back out, either,” Tao said adamantly. He gave Baekhyun a pat on the back before walking to rejoin Kris and Kai who were stretching not too far away from them. “I’ll be fine, Baek! Watch. I’ll end up swimming faster than everyone else.”
Baekhyun grimly frowned at him. He hurried to take off his own shirt to catch up with Tao. “If you fucking drown, then I’m not saving your stupid butt!” he threatened.
“You don’t mean that,” Tao said, grinning at him. “By the way, nice hicks.”
“Wha—” Baekhyun immediately turned red. He looked on him for any red spots, but since he couldn’t see any, he figured they were unseen to him despite being public to everyone else. Fucking Chanyeol! Baekhyun turned to look for the giant. To his luck, the idiot was grinning at him. Baekhyun mouthed a few jabs at Chanyeol’s intellectual standing. Chanyeol responded by forming a heart with his fingers.
The race began with the blow of a horn. Kai had gained an upper hand in the beginning, but during the last few feet, Rome had caught up with him. Both of them handed their batons to their next partner.
Baekhyun took the stick firmly in his hand before dashing for the waters. When his legs couldn’t run against the waters anymore, he threw his entire body in and began swimming over to the floating platform. The natural order of things were against the first wave of swimmers, which included Baekhyun since they had to swim against the currents. It took a minute or two for the first person to reach the platform. Unfortunately, Baekhyun came in second, but second was better than third.
He came up from under, grabbed hold of the metal ladder and held the baton up to Tao. He then quickly pulled himself up. When he was on the platform, Tao still hadn’t jumped, causing Kris on the shore to shout at him to jump in.
“Tao—”
“I can do it, Baek.”
“Just let me do it!”
“Can’t you just be supportive!?”
Baekhyun held his breath, troubled. “Fine. Just…just don’t stop swimming until you feel the ground—”
“What’re you two doing!?” they could hear Kris yell.
“Come on, Tao!” Kai yelled.
“I’m going.”
Baekhyun nodded. “Okay then. Go. The others are coming,” he said, watching the other teams make their way to the platform.
Tao nodded. He gripped the baton, bent his knees and jumped in. When he disappeared in the water, Baekhyun immediately got on his knees and tried to see his figure in the water amongst the bubbles created by the jump. Baekhyun didn’t realize he was holding his breath until Tao came up, gasping for air, before paddling like a child to the shore. He wasn’t moving fast, according to Baekhyun, but as long as he stayed afloat he was fine…
Tao was swimming, but he was barely breathing. He didn’t know when to turn his head and take in a breath and moving his arms in an un-orderly fashion was making him tired. He wasn’t even near the shore yet. He was just in the middle. He was doing fine, until all of a sudden, in one of the few times that he turned his head to take a breath, he accidentally took in water.
Out of instinct, Tao stopped and began to cough. It was a split second later that he realized he needed to keep moving in order to stay afloat, but the waves hitting him from the back pushed him further and further into panic mode as he could barely keep his head above the water. As fear set in, air was getting harder and harder to find. His arms and his legs, no matter how much he flailed them under the water, couldn’t service him efficiently.
Finally, he couldn’t do it anymore.
“Baek!”
Baekhyun’s heart broke at the cry.
[[previous chapter]] [[next chapter]]