Work Text:
Baekhyeon finds himself with a stapler in hand. As per instinct, he clicks it, empty. Staple staple staple in the air. The maw of an animal. Like a crocodile, but with more capitalism. It’s not even his stapler, yet Baekhyeon entertains himself with it for the better part of night, hooking it onto his breast pocket between bites of under-roasted peanuts and regurgitated palaver.
He’s at the office Christmas party. Which takes place in the actual office. A monstrosity of forced cheer, gaudiness, and mismatched appetizers. It’s not a bad time though. Something about how improvised it is, and how everyone sort of tried to make the best of it harmonizes them in this splotchy mass of jubilation. Formalities have been dropped. Kim Jongdae from finance is drinking whiskey straight out of the bottle, lips getting kittenish-er by the gulp. At some point, he will start yowling, and Baekhyeon wants to be around to reap the amusement.
It’s not that much different from the Christmas parties in high school, Baekhyeon thinks. The desks pushed to the wall for the make space for the ‘dance floor’, a crate with a volunteer DJ embodying a discarded ream, music squeaking though borrowed speakers, and a train of paper plates filled with various mysteries.
Baekhyeon doesn’t necessarily have better people to spend time with today – Kyeongsu is all about the five-course dinner he’s preparing for his girlfriend, and while he promised Baekhyeon amazing leftovers – “pass by tonight to get them, I’m not coming to yours in the morning” – Baekhyeon was otherwise left to fend for himself.
He’s looking forward to the potato salad. Baekhyeon isn’t big on potato salad in general, he’s into Kyeongsu’s potato salad specifically. Some potato salad would be nice. There is nothing akin to potato salad here. Baekhyeon just has another chocolate-dipped sugar cookie. It has that kind of chocolate that can’t legally be named chocolate, but some chocolate product, and Baekhyeon keeps eating them. He’s wearing a looser shirt; his belly has plenty of room to fill.
On occasion, he looks towards the very centre of the room – and there is the mountain of presents.
And if he looks beyond it - there is Sehun.
Who is wearing red shirt. A red satin shirt. He had a blazer on at some point, but it’s long lost, so there’s all this red, and all this satin, and all this Sehun.
People commented on it, and Baekhyeon heard him say it’s red for the holiday spirit. Baekhyeon doesn’t need any holiday spirit, rather, he needs some holy spirit. He needs some God to stop him from focusing on all that light and lustre clinging to the contours of his shoulders and chest and waist, and how another button, somehow, probably pushed by Satan, came undone at the collar, and there is skin, there are the peaks of his collarbones blinking in and out of sight, and Baekhyeon’s life would’ve really been so much easier if Sehun wasn’t so gorgeous. Or if he didn’t exist at all. Or if Baekhyeon didn’t exist at all, since this is all his own fault, he should have never come out of the womb.
Baekhyeon swallows the chocolaty powdery cookie in his mouth, sniffles, and looks back at the pile of presents.
The ominous pile of presents. He eyes a small yellow box in particular, hallway up the peak, with white clouds on it. Which yeah, is maybe too summery. But he likes yellow. And the clouds are similar to Vivi, which Baekhyeon has seen plenty of pictures of because he stalks his Instagram every day without following him because it’s not profesh enough to just follow him, but he still wants updates. That’s Baekhyeon’s gift. For Sehun.
Because as luck, or unluck, had it, Baekhyeon is Sehun’s Secret Santa this year.
And Baekhyeon took his chance.
He drinks. A wine that doesn’t wanna be wine with bubbles that would prefer to be literally anywhere else, but Baekhyeon is in dire need of intoxication, so he gulps like he will die without it. Which is not that far off, really.
He shimmies about the room, from person to person, exchanging pleasantries and later on coupling with his cubicle-mate, Minseok, on a mini treasure hunt for which shitty chocolate cookie is actually the best. The verdict is that they’re all bad, which is what makes them good.
Which is how he stumbles into Manager-nim, crumbs all around his mouth, teeth brown, just in time to deliver as literal of a shit-eating grin as socially acceptable when Sehun looks down at him.
“Baekhyeon-ssi!” he exclaims, eyes in pleats of gladness. “I’m so glad you made it; a little birdy told me you might bail!” His voice lowers on that, as he comes into Baekhyeon, and puts an arm around his shoulders. So much contact. Baekhyeon’s eyes are nearly watering. He swallows quickly, and washes it down with some of the sparkling wine in his cup.
“Who’s that lying birdy, I would never,” Baekhyeon says, scandalized. Baekhyeon is eye-level with his…his…nipples. Which poke though that red satin shirt.
Baekhyeon, don’t look don’t look don’t look don’t look don’t look—
“I know, which is why I never believed the birdy,” he says, gorgeously jovial, as his arm drops away from Baekhyeon. “I hope you brought your present. You know it ruins all the fun when there’s people left out,” he tsks.
The present. Haha. “I did, I did, what do you take me for?” Baekhyeon sneers, side eyeing Sehun.
Sehun bursts into laughter, and it’s not the peals of biblical bells one, but the drowning hyena one, which grates his eardrums into a pulp, and Baekhyeon might just drop dead from how much he adores it.
Then somehow, he disappears - an arm appears out of nowhere, a voice, some hoots, and then he’s at the other end of the room. Baekhyeon understands an ex-employee came by, whom Sehun was pretty close with. Hugs are exchanged.
Baekhyeon wonders if the huggee feels Sehun’s erect nipples though his shirt. Then he decides he shouldn’t be wondering about that, because it’s highkey creepy and self-destructive, so he indulges in the next best self-destructive behaviour, and gulps down a whole glass of sparkling wine he picks off a table. Might’ve been someone’s. Hopefully, he doesn’t get herpes. Or something.
Still, he doesn’t look away from Sehun. It’s just hard to.
Baekhyeon has been working here for three years. Sehun was just promoted to team manager when that happened – he was present himself at Baekhyeon’s interview.
Couldn’t have Sehun just…sucked? Be a snarky and lofty and arrogant asshole?
No. Instead he is an ass only in the sense that he has a wonderful ass – yes Baekhyeon has been very much looking, no point denying it – and a wonderful plump heart too – he goes out to buy coffee for them all the time. He sends the whole team little personalized good wishes emails on Chuseok. He knows when everyone’s birthday is. He works with the door of his office open, as he wants to feel there with the rest of his team; he only closes it at the end of the day when it’s harder for him to focus, or when he has private matters to discuss. He calls cabs for everyone after they’re out at a hoesik.
He’s basically an angel incarnate. And though he knows, for an irrefutable fact, that he does this for everyone, Baekhyeon The Dumbass still feels special.
Sehun only sends him emoticons. Sehun only lets him have his pen after signing something. Sehun only lets him know of new nice places to eat. Sehun only orders his tasks for the current projects. Sehun only compliments his shirts. Sehun only smiles at him like that. Sehun only texts him to ask about certain things – it’s all work things, yeah – but they’re from his personal number, not some email ended with “Kindly, Oh Sehun”, but texts that sometimes ended with Have a good night Baekhyeon-ssi, and hell if Baekhyeon didn’t have a damn good, amazing, fantastic night afterwards. Sehun only wishes him a good night.
Baekhyeon is not delusional at all. This is preferential treatment.
And.
Sehun is single. Supposedly.
His superior often teases him about not having a girlfriend, at which he replies it’s because of you! *big smile* If only you sent your emails on time, I could’ve been on a date now with my girlfriend now! *big smile intensifies* And any other superior would be pissed to hear that, but he says it so sweetly, so innocently, that it’s simultaneously endearing and chiding in a way that can’t have anyone mad.
So Baekhyeon actually doesn’t even know if Sehun is gay. He’s leaning on the fact that he’s straight in too many other aspects to be straight in the sexuality department too. For example, his spine, which defies the laws of all spines. Baekhyeon just doesn’t understand how his posture can be of such perfection all the fucking time. It’s so straight spaghetti are jealous.
But other than this logic, which makes no sense at all, Baekhyeon has no idea of his orientation. He’s been misled before. And Baekhyeon is so heart-eyed that he doesn’t trust himself with any assumptions. Thus, he just hopes, quite desperately, that Sehun is gay. Or at least bi-curious. Or B-curious which stands for Baekhyeon-curious, haha, wouldn’t be the first time Baekhyeon was a sexual discovery device, and though it was traumatic (haha), for Sehun, he would take that role again. Haha.
Baekhyeon sneaks another glance at Sehun – he hasn’t moved from his spot at the other end of the room, where he’s prepping somaek shots like it’s the Somaek Olympics. He has a reindeer headband on now. One end of it in front of his ear instead of behind. Great. Fuck Baekhyeon huh. He’s so cute, he’s so bloody cute that Baekhyeon makes a very internal fart noise. He’s so soft for Sehun that his whole expressive intellect is reduced to mental flatulence.
Which is why, despite how horrified he is, he wouldn’t take it back. He wouldn’t take that present back. Oh hell no. It’s staying there and planting the seed of a war.
Baekhyeon was charmed from the very first time he saw Sehun at that interview. With glasses sliding down his nose - the frame thick and dark at the top, in that kinda gross hipstery fashion - while Baekhyeon was only happy to see his eye smile so clearly behind them, the climax of which being the one he gave Baekhyeon when he ended the interview with an unabashed, prominent sigh of relief, saying, “Oh I might just avoid the rain now,” when it was pointedly sunny outside. He really wanted this job. And when he was notified he got it, he actually hoped that he wouldn’t end up working with the handsome interviewer. Because that foretold trouble. Copious, heartful trouble.
He was just fresh out of a relationship that didn’t end so well, and Baekhyeon equally hated the thought of liking anyone ever again (ew, love), as he was also getting crushes left and right, his being doused in affections ready to be given away to any passing cuties. He sprouted a crush on the jjajangmyeon delivery guy for giving him one (1) extra napkin, so yeah it was a tumultuous-ass period, but point it, it was the very Oh Sehun who greeted him on the first day of work. And who showed him around, and introduced him to everyone, and told him, too warmly, to come to him if he runs into any problems, I don’t bite.
And Baekhyeon thought as that pathetic desperation wore off, and wasn’t thinking just of rebounds and of how much he misses being a boyfriend, and having a boyfriend, his attraction to his team manager would wane too.
But, bitch, it didn’t.
So Baekhyeon has been fancying Sehun for nearly two years, and it’s more than a crush now. Calling it what it is is dangerous, and would catapult into a level of dramedy he is not yet spiritually ready to experience, but yeah, it is that huge, scary sentiment. Baekhyeon won’t name it though, stop pressing it.
Now he just wants something to happen. He doesn’t want to live like this anymore. This stagnation and unsureness and desire. It’s exhausting.
Baekhyeon is exhausted of his feelings for Sehun.
So he wants that box there. Might turn out wonderful, might turn out a goddamn disaster – special forces might be involved, who knows, but Baekhyeon is ready for a change.
He remembers how he lost it over a comma once. He got an email from Sehun, and Baekhyeon didn’t even notice the mistake until a second email followed that only said: “however, they*” sorry >.<.
He sent a whole separate email to correct a comma. And that day Baekhyeon realized he was into real deep shit.
And when he calls Baekhyeon to his office. Literally everyone else dreads being called to the office, but Baekhyeon, Lord, Baekhyeon dreams of being called to the goddamn office. Baekhyeon is no perfect employee, no Excel deity, no negotiator extraordinaire, so he’s called in for fuckups like everyone else. Yet he barely manages to suppress the skip to his step when he’s called. When he sits in front of Sehun at his desk, as they both lean over some papers to discuss, and all he sees is bare forearms, and Sehun’s long lashes from behind his glasses, and hears his low, whispery tone, a bit of jollity to it, because he always scolds Baekhyeon as to motivate him, not make him feel bad, and Baekhyeon can barely tie words together when absolutely, positively drunk on Sehun’s subtle, old-man cologne.
He rolls his eyes at himself. Get a grip.
And grip he got, when he drew the secret Santa paper from that hat only to reveal Sehun’s name on it.
Now it’s a game of waiting, which Baekhyeon participates in by picking peanuts, and drinking, and nibbling on biscuits, and drinking, and having like ten some sort of spread on crackers, and more drinking, and listening to Junmyeon go on and on and on about how his car is really fucked up from when his neighbour hit it, and he needs to buy so many spare parts, but you know, I’m not even sure which ones are good? I know I’m getting at least a little bit scammed, but I’m hoping to minimize that?
“Man, that’s crazy,” Baekhyeon says for the fifth time, punctuating it with a click of the stapler. Junmyeon nods, pout flourishing. Junmyeon is a good guy. Both too mature and too innocent for his own good. Baekhyeon would normally be more welcoming towards his anguish had his nerves not been haywire over the whole Sehun ordeal. Baekhyeon really isn’t generally a jerk, in fact he is very well liked in the office, it’s just now that he’s a jerk, it’s temporary. Really.
And just then, the fanfare commences, a dozen tubes of confetti puking all over the room, and Chanyeol’s voice above them all to tell everyone to gather around the present pile.
There’s’ cheering and whistles, a train of people docking to the centre while shimming their hips. The marketing department has always been weird. But this is the main event of the night, and also once it’s over, they can go home, so Baekhyeon relates a bit to the sentiment, his own hips giving a wiggle on the way.
Chanyeol, who plays MC tonight, as well as Santa, is wearing a dollar store Santa costume, and a poorly glued together tinsel of wadding for a beard. And Baekhyeon knows all of this because he was the one who accompanied Chanyeol to the dollar store, and is the creator of this legendary beard, for which he used half a stick of his precious favourite school glue (it holds receipts together like nothing else, and there is a rumour it will be discontinued). Chanyeol owes him big time for this.
He slaps a glass with a cracker, which doesn’t make as attention-grabbing of a sound as would be desired, but it works just fine, as Chanyeol launches himself into a lengthy, boisterous ado about how exciting this is.
Exciting is an understatement. There aren’t words big enough for what Baekhyeon is feeling. He nearly feels like slapping himself. He puts his hand into the pocket of his trousers to ensure he wouldn’t ever have to explain a self-inflicted broken nose.
At last, Chanyeol sits in his Santa Chair, which is an executive’s brown leather chair, one of those sewn like it’s got washboard abs.
Sehun has abs by the way. Baekhyeon saw them once when they were on a team building trip, barbeque next to a lake, fishing rods in tow, and that lake looked too inviting, so there was some diving in. And though there wasn’t skin, Baekhyeon got a feast of seeing Sehun’s white, flimsy tee cling to his torso.
He was shredded like that fucking chair. Or even more shredded than the chair.
Sehun really is the awfulest. Baekhyeon makes a face into his paper cup, then downs the rest of it, which is a lot, and he chokes. Not enough though. He could’ve taken a bit more choking. Haha.
He’s on the outer ring of the commotion, yet he has a clear view of it. It’s already a few gifts in, some dude Baekhyeon doesn’t know sitting on Chanyeol’s knee, arms around his shoulders, as he vows he’s been a good boy and deserves his gift from Santa, pretty pleaseeee.
There is laughter. Lots of it. It’s a big party, with all their departments involved. However, they didn’t mix the names at the draw, as they wouldn’t have been close enough with people far in the company, and the gifts wouldn’t have been personal. So, though the pile is for everyone, the gifts only come from within the team. Some already spoke to each other, to make sure they got exactly what they liked, but most kept mum. Baekhyeon has no idea who is his Secret Santa is, and he doesn’t really care either. He will be happy it he gets a pair of white socks. He never has too many white socks. And his love for white socks is abundantly clear through the whole department.
It must be over a hundred of them, and while Baekhyeon tries to pay attention to it, because it is indeed quite fun, he zones out, only coming back each time a new recipient is announced, called to sit on Chanyeol’s knee and be given the gift. His heart jumps, and flips, and tumbles – a whole array of cardiac acrobatics fuelled by his unease.
The pile keeps crumbling down, and soon, soon, it will be Sehun’s turn. The yellow box is almost in Chanyeol’s reach.
Sehun insisted that presents given to higherups should not exceed the set sum. It’s about the thought, the funsies, not the monetary value of what’s inside. “And bribing is illegal,” Sehun ended the request with, just in case anyone was tempted to use this occasion for uncouth intentions.
Baekhyeon didn’t spend a lot, but he does have uncouth intentions.
He got him a nice scented candle. Baekhyeon sniffed all the candles in that huge store to find the perfect one, and though by the end of the quest he was delirious from all the scents, he thinks he picked something Sehun will like. It’s warm, but fresh, comfy, but exciting. Which fits Sehun perfectly.
And aside it, a card. And on the card, Baekhyeon wrote:
On that bridge, I wanted to kiss you.
Baekhyeon snorts to himself. It wasn’t just then that he wanted to kiss Sehun. In fact, he always wants to kiss Sehun. But it was the moment that made him the saddest. How impossible it felt. How alone in this desire he felt.
Maybe because deep down, Baekhyeon is a hopeless romantic, but that moment was the perfect setup for a long-awaited kiss.
Except it wasn’t. Him and the team were on that bridge to check out a firework show set up by a pyrotechnics company they were interested in hiring for a summit to be held in a few months. The show was for the inauguration of some hotel.
Being next to Sehun while watching it was a little too magical for Baekhyeon’s whipped heart.
He stopped looking at the fireworks only a few booms into it, as he couldn’t look away from Sehun. Sehun, whose gaze soon turned from critical business-mode, into one of wonder, sparkling brighter than the fire in the sky.
Baekhyeon couldn’t look away from him. He wanted to kiss him more than ever.
They weren’t even alone.
Baekhyeon looks about the room – a ruckus is going on. It seems someone gifted a fancy hand mixer, but only put the paddles in the box, as the whole mixer would go above the agreed sum – “You’ll get the rest of the mixer next year!”
Jongdae, drunk off his ass, is the unfortunate receiver of the mixer paddles, and he is hellbent on winning the entire appliance, voice high, and pout higher.
Does Jongdae also want to kiss Sehun. Closest to him, Seungwan, with a tinsel in her ponytail. Does she want to kiss him too. She was here. Six people were there. How many of them want to kiss him.
What about who does Sehun wish to kiss?
Baekhyeon imagines him opening the present and hopefully looking around the room to find someone who isn’t him. That is, if he isn’t horrified. Or angry. Miyeon from HR is literally in front of him.
Not like Baekhyeon isn’t some disposable hopeful, it’s fine, he will find another cubicle at another company who would have him go click tap yes, sir all day. He won’t even feel the difference.
Except Sehun. He will feel that Sehun isn’t there anymore.
He doesn’t love this job, but it pays well, and on the days when not even that motivated him to come into work, he thought of seeing Sehun. He thought of getting dressed nicely to see Sehun. He thought of maybe getting the coffees with Sehun. He thought maybe Sehun will be in one of his good moods and do rounds around everyone’s desk for a little chit-chat to unwind. He thought of Sehun asking everyone if they want to go out to dinner that night, and people pardoning themselves one by one, until only Baekhyeon was left. And they went, just them two. This has happened four times, and Baekhyeon was happy for weeks afterwards.
Baekhyeon is now so used to his overpowering state of nervousness, that when Chanyeol calls Sehun’s name to sit on his knee, yellow box in hand, Baekhyeon can’t feel any more of it. He’s full of emotion to the brim.
Sehun, even on Chanyeol’s now-shaky knee, sits with proper posture, smile so big, and foot tapping excitedly. Chanyeol asks him if he’s been a good boy.
Baekhyeon doesn’t want to witness this anymore. Sehun opening the box then and there, and frowning at the note. Baekhyeon wrote on it with a fountain pen, on nice paper – he went to a special supply store to get a textured, glossy card.
He imagines, just like in school, Sehun being the teacher and turning the card around for everyone to see, reading it aloud, and the whole hall cracks up, and Baekhyeon will have to crack up too, and boy, can he play it. It will be a whole spectacle, a perfect masquerade to cover the impending waterworks.
He can’t bear to watch this anymore. Sehun is in the midst of convincing Chanyeol that he’s been a really good boy, and the lid of the box is close to coming off.
Baekhyeon wants to leave.
Leaving is incriminatory. If Sehun has no idea who could’ve left him such a card, this gesture might give him away. If he’s paying attention to the crowd.
Maybe he isn’t.
And even if he is, screw that.
So right as Sehun opens the lid, Baekhyeon grabs his coat and leaves.
Baekhyeon is dejectedly waiting for the subway. He walked slowly from the office building to the station, breathing in and out until his nerves subsided.
Well, now they hit back full force, because Baekhyeon realizes he forgot his fucking phone at the party.
He pats his pockets over and over. No way fate would play him like this. No bloody way he is so dumb.
The fifth time he checks the same pocket, to yet again confirm that his phone is very much not there, he accepts that he must’ve pissed off the universe hella bad.
How could he have forgotten his phone though. He literally sleeps with it, eats with it, plays with it. It’s his significant other.
He can just go tomorrow to get it. Nobody will go to work for the upcoming two days, but the security staff will be there, and maybe someone will leave his phone with them.
Baekhyeon can live for a single night without his phone. He’s not going back for it. He’s really not.
His train is announced. And it comes. And when Baekhyeon should get on…he doesn’t.
It was too crowded.
He will just take the next one.
And the next one comes.
And this one is crowded too.
And the third one comes, and Baekhyeon whispers “Dammit,” to himself, and runs back to the party.
Baekhyeon thought he wasn’t gone for that long, but when he peeks his head in the room again, not even a quarter of the people are left. His gift was in the last third of the bunch, now that he thinks back on it.
He looks carefully from side to side, until he concludes that…Sehun with his sinful red silk shirt isn’t anywhere to be found. He lets out a sigh, or relief (not disappointment, of course) and tiptoes back in to look for his phone. He left it next to a cookie platter. He doesn’t remember which cookie platter, but not many of those are left either.
“Should I tell Chanyeol-ssi to put the costume back on for you?” Sehun asks from behind Baekhyeon, and Baekhyeon, embarrassingly, jumps.
Shit. Shitshitshitshit. Shit.
Baekhyeon turns around. “I can’t believe I missed him!” he laments. “Had some serious business to take care of in the bathroom,” then he leans in to whispers gravely, “stall three is out of TP, if you’re gonna go. Had to waddle with my pants down to another stall to get some. Not my proudest moment.”
Baekhyeon, stop talking.
A third button of his shirt is now undone. Baekhyeon takes his gaze up, to meet Sehun’s stare. He looks…nice. He always looks nice. He looks like the run of a whole night of laughter and jollity. And there is also a film of something enigmatic in his eyes.
So Baekhyeon looks past them as well.
With his eyebrows, he doesn’t even need a personality. But he still has a personality. And a bangin’ one at that.
He’s just not bangin’ Baekhyeon is all. He should though. Baekhyeon is ready and ripe to be banged, please.
Horny thoughts really help calming him down.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Sehun answers seriously. He looks down at Baekhyeon. “Isn’t that company propriety?” he asks, chin tipping somewhere towards Baekhyeon’s chest.
Baekhyeon looks down and – the stapler.
“Um. Yes.”
Sehun is really close, Baekhyeon realizes. Baekhyeon can smell that cologne on him. And beer, which likely comes from the round stain on his arm.
“Caught a thief,” Sehun says, tilting his head.
And then, slowly, he smiles. Baekhyeon doesn’t know what act this was, but all this solemnity didn’t fit with the atmosphere. A smile is more like it. “Give it back and I’ll give you your phone.”
“I surrender,” Baekhyeon says, taking the stapler out of his pocket, and laying it in Sehun’s outstretched hand. Sehun puts the phone in Baekhyeon’s empty palm.
Another mini group of people leave, someone else rushing after them with a plate of assorted leftover sweets to take home – you wouldn’t want those beauties to go to waste, wold you? And laughingly, they accept it, bowing to both him and Sehun on the way out.
It’s only them now and a handful of other people left. Though Baekhyeon wants to stay with Sehun more – he always does – now it doesn’t feel so great. Now Baekhyeon feels like he will throw up. And he ate a lot. He’s about to bow and leave too, when Sehun says:
“I like the candle.”
Baekhyeon looks down, intently, to find his heart flopping between his feet, squeaking in its own juices. Oh god.
“And the note.”
Oh god.
“I—” he chokes. He feels the cookies coming up. They’re coming up up up. “I’m sorry?” Baekhyeon balks.
“Baekhyeon-ssi,” Sehun says, and it’s the softest he’s ever said Baekhyeon’s name. “You think I don’t recognize your handwriting? We’ve worked together for a few years now.”
It’s quiet. The Pseudo-DJ has just gathered his things, everything’s unplugged, and Baekhyeon’s ears are ringing.
Well he didn’t take that into consideration.
“I’m not the only one with awful handwriting.”
Sehun is silent. Baekhyeon is out of language to curse himself in. This was a bad idea. This was such a bad idea. He doesn’t look away from his feet.
“Was it not you?” Sehun asks quietly. Fearfully. “Is the yellow present from someone else?”
He doesn’t sound like he would like it to be from someone else. And Baekhyeon’s heart begins climbing up his leg. He bites his lip. He doesn’t have the courage to look back at Sehun until his heart is back in its place.
“It’s…It’s from me,” Baekhyeon says, meeting Sehun’s gaze. “The candle. The…note.”
His round glasses are sliding down his nose. Baekhyeon has the urge to push them up. He always wanted to do that. He focuses on that instead of the expression on Sehun’s face. It’s saying something, but Baekhyeon is too emotionally exhausted to decipher it.
Sehun huffs, lips pulling up, and eyes going into the tightest little crescents. Baekhyeon is surely hallucinating when he sees a? blush? developing on the peaks of his cheeks.
“Let’s go then,” he says.
“Wh-what,” Baekhyeon stammers, dumbfounded. “Where?”
Sehun is already turning around, and making to take a step. “The bridge.”
“Why?” To throw me off it?
Sehun gazes at him long, warm, and with the slightest dash of good-natured impatience. “To kiss me.”
And with this, he walks away, and Baekhyeon, though petrified, goes after him. They just make it out of the main hall when Baekhyeon stops in his tracks. “I mean,” he calls out.
Sehun halts, and turns back towards him.
He looks so…happy. Baekhyeon can’t handle this. Not this kind of happiness on Sehun.
“What?” Sehun asks. Innocently. Innocently? How dare he toy with Baekhyeon’s poor feelings like this.
“It doesn’t have to be the bridge. The bridge is…far.”
Yeah, like that kiss is gonna happen. Like this is happening for real right now. Baekhyeon fell on the stairs and cracked his skull open and now he’s just dreaming. This is the only plausible explanation.
“Oh, indeed,” Sehun muses. “My office then.”
He turns directions again, walking towards the other entrance of his office. It has two entrances, one towards the main hallway, there all the other departments conjoin, and the other towards their own space with all the cubicles.
He unlocks it, and pushes it open. He looks at Baekhyeon, waiting for him to enter.
Baekhyeon obliges, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. The blinds are down. The other door is locked. It’s just them.
“Is not as nice as on the bridge but—”
And Sehun steps in close.
Despite the countless paper cups of sparkling wine Baekhyeon drank, he isn’t inebriated. He mixed it with soda a couple of times, to dilute the alcohol taste even more. He really isn’t much of a drinker.
If he’s drunk on anything, it’s his feelings for Sehun, 20% volume love or something.
He saw Sehun drink a couple of his own somaek shots. Then beer. He likes beer. But he also has the tolerance of a fucking horse – not that horses drink, but Sehun is really close, and Baekhyeon isn’t in the right state of mind (and heart) to make competent similes – and he looks pretty much sober as fuck.
His gaze is mellow on Baekhyeon. Amative. “Baekhyeon,” he says, not formal, not formal, but with…with…like he cares. “Do you only want to kiss me?”
The thing is that he sounds ready to give only that. As if that would be enough.
“No,” It’s just that’s all he started wanting. “A little more than that.”
Sehun pinches the sleeve of Baekhyeon’s shirt, right by the wrist. It doesn’t touch skin, but Baekhyeon quivers as if it did. He pulls, taking a step back, until he’s leaning on the edge of his desk. Baekhyeon steps in until his feet are betwixt Sehun’s.
“Just a little?” he asks, and Baekhyeon can’t get enough of this dulcet cadence of his voice, of the molten lustre of his eyes, of the fond tweak of at the corners of his lips.
“Well, no.”
“Then what?”
“Dinner?”
“Just one dinner?”
“Two?”
“Two dinners?”
And more than that. More than that is what Baekhyeon feels for him. I like you. I like you a lot. I like you like crazy.
“Marriage?” Baekhyeon tries. That about sums it up.
Sehun lets go of the fabric of his shirt, his fingers softly curling around the back of Baekhyeon’s hand. “Deal,” he says.
Baekhyeon’s mouth falls open. It falls and falls until he’s nothing but a hole of disbelief. Then he explodes.
“You’re bugged aren’t you!” he accuses, patting at Sehun’s chest. “This is some prank so you can have the HR rip me to shreds!” And when he thinks of that, it hurts. It hurts a lot. “Or you’re mocking me. I feel like you’re mocking me.”
Baekhyeon might’ve stepped severely out of bounds with this, and he doesn’t deserve a lot of sympathy for it, but he thought Sehun wouldn’t be the kind to just hurt him like this. He thought Sehun wouldn’t be cruel. “You’re making fun of me.”
Is that really fun. Are Baekhyeon’s burning eyes fun to see.
Sehun looks at him like he’s being silly. If anything, it confirms even more that he’s being derided. Baekhyeon is about to pull away when Sehun speaks. “You haven’t gotten your present.”
Baekhyeon doesn’t give a flying fuck about his present. He could’ve just ignored Baekhyeon. He could’ve said he’s not interested. He could’ve been silent, and went straight to reporting him. There was no need for a—
“Here,” Sehun says, pulling out an envelope from the back of his pants. He holds it out to Baekhyeon. “Your present.”
It’s a white envelope, thick, cream paper. On the front of it, Baekhyeon’s name. It’s Sehun’s handwriting. Baekhyeon stills.
“Are you my Secret Santa or is this…”
“I’m your Secret Santa,” Sehun says.
Baekhyeon lets out a huff of astonishment. “What were the chances that we’d get each other.”
“Slim to none,” Sehun answers, and there is a smile in it. “But it happened.”
Baekhyeon feels up the envelope. There is some kind of card inside, and something long and thin, a volume that he cannot define.
He opens it, and pulls the contents out.
First, it’s a bracelet. The thinnest silver bracelet, a smooth chain with no other additions.
“You usually wear dainty, simple jewellery?” Sehun says, only a whisper. Baekhyeon can feel him eyeing the barely-there necklace visible under the collar of his shirt. “I hope you like it.”
“If it’s silver, it’s above the budget,” Baekhyeon says. He sounds calm, when he isn’t. He’s anything but. He can’t believe what he’s holding in his hand.
“It is. I’ll get penalized if needed.”
Baekhyeon doesn’t say anything to that, enamoured with the flash of light bouncing off the silver string as he turns it to look at it. Jewellery is so…personal.
He puts it back in the envelope to grab the card. He thought it was part of the packaging for the bracelet, but they weren’t attached. He pulls it out.
It’s an invitation to dinner at a royal Korean restaurant. For tomorrow night. At the bottom of it, Sehun wrote I’d love to see you.
“I wasn’t as brave as you were. I didn’t even put it in the pile,” Sehun says.
It’s only a few words, but Baekhyeon reads the whole invitation a couple of times. His chest hurts even worse now.
He lowers the envelope. This is too much. It’s too much for him to handle.
Sehun’s fingers brush by his hand again, with the same softness, the same gentleness, but with a bit more confidence. “I wanted to kiss you two years ago when you went out of your way to bring me porridge when I had stomach problems for a week straight. And after that, I wanted to kiss you every morning when you came into work.”
Baekhyeon looks at their hands. They look good together. They feel good together. Baekhyeon often daydreamed about this. What it would feel like to hold his hand, to touch him, to have affections returned. He wondered and he yearned.
And now he has it. He really has it. And little by little, Baekhyeon’s giddiness returns, takes over, and blooms until he’s smiling the biggest smile he’s ever smiled.
“So you don’t send emoticons to everyone?” he asks, hopeful, so hopeful, as he properly slides his hand into Sehun’s. He squeezes, and Sehun squeezes back.
“Only to you.”
“And you don’t text everyone on their personal number?” He puts the envelope by Sehun’s side, on the desk, so he can hold his other hand too.
“Only yours.”
“You don’t get bracelets and dinner invites for everyone?”
Sehun’s smile is also the biggest, the biggest his face could hold. “Only for Baekhyeonnie,” he says.
Baekhyeonnie is so happy he could die.
They stare at each other. Holding hands. Stupid stupid smiles gigantic on their faces. It’s too soon for bigger confessions, but Baekhyeon might just slip— “So when’s that smooch happening?” he blurts instead.
Sehun laughs, and it’s both the biblical peals and the hyena one, and Baekhyeon jumps him with his lips, and tomorrow, after dinner, he will jump him with his lips again, and after that, again, and again, and again.