THE BOOK OF EXO SHIPS

BAEKSOO

"Hey Baek, why are you so ugly today?" Kyungsoo grins madly seeing the displeased look on his hyung's face as he sighs and gently facepalms himself.

"Kyungsoo...just leave." He goes back to reading his book, trying to block out the sound of that-idiot-to-his-right and go peacefully back to his world of words and stories.

Jongin and Chanyeol, Kyungsoo's best friends, a.k.a. his "clique", also start grinning when they see Baekhyun try his hardest to ignore them. But eventually realized that he had absolutely no interest in them, the three of them walked away to go wander off and joke somewhere else. 

As the day crawls slowly by and the sun sets lower and lower, changing the lighting in the small classroom he rests in, Baekhyun begins to see that the people in room start to leave one by one. Club activities are over for everyone and the only one left is him. He looks up suddenly and black spots blur his vision. He blinks a few times and rubs his eyes, glancing around just to check one last time if everyone really is gone or not. The classroom is seemingly empty.

He gets up and reaches for his backpack under his desk. His back hurts a little from having been bent over, reading, all day. Byun Baekhyun could pay attention to lessons if he wanted to, but it wasn't particularly in his interest to learn things he already knew. He was the genius student, the one that could skip as many grades as he wanted in high school and go off to college. But he stayed back for one reason.

Baekhyun sighs when he remembers the "old days" back when Kyungsoo and him were best friends, just two kids on the park playing or talking by the pond. Back when they were the innocent children that could imagine the world was their castle and they were the magic knights out to rescue some mysterious princess. Yes, those days were the ones Baekhyun missed the most. He missed them when he was in class, he thought about them when he lies in bed in the middle of the night, he reminisces when he sits at his desk studying late in the evening. And so he reads because maybe, just maybe, if he reads his current life away, those times will magically come back and the Do Kyungsoo he knew then would be the one here instead.

If he dreams more, reads more, ignores more, maybe that beautiful white lie will become the truth.

He sighs as he stands up, closing the book he was reading, flinging the strap of his bag around his shoulder, the bag itself slapping against his back once. He puts a finger in between the pages he was reading so as to not lose his place. As he walks by it, he places his hand on Kyungsoo's desk, his fingers leaving a trail of warmth on the cool wood. He doesn't look at the desk when he walks by, no, only touches it lightly as he leaves. Little does Kyungsoo know he does this everyday, hoping a piece of his memories might be left behind on that cold desk, so that it might just sneak its way back into Kyungsoo's mind. Remind him of what used to be. 

The Kyungsoo he knew died, and now he will revive him with all the strength in his being. 

Just before he can exit the classroom, the door slams to a close in front of him, making him jump in surprise, a slight "Ah!" escapes his lips. His heart pounds from the shock, and he puts a hand on his chest to steady it. 

"Baekhyun. Why were you reading that?"

Baekhyun turns his head ever so slowly to look at the man next who was hiding behind the door, waiting for him. His usually joking face is gone, replaced with one of absolute seriousness. "That?" Baekhyun repeats in his mind as he looks to where Kyungsoo is pointing at. The book in his hand. 

Yes, if anyone who had walked by him during the day looked closely at what he was reading, they would have noticed that it looked a bit odd. For Byun Baekhyun was reading a children's book. 

"Why? Because when we were just ten years old--"

"Baekhyun--"

"--and you couldn't fall asleep at night--"

"Baekhyun plea--"

"--I would read this to you until you fell right asleep on my lap."

Baekhyun had never felt himself get this heated before. His cheeks were hot, eyes narrowed, eyebrows clinching together in the middle. He stared Kyungsoo down until the younger boy looked like he'd lost the will to fight this fight.

And then Kyungsoo had a change of face. And then he was the one that was angry. "Baekhyun, forget about it! We've all changed! We're all different so why can't you let our childhood go?!"

Despite the glare in Kyungsoo's eyes, Baekhyun didn't feel frightened. Instead, he felt cornered. "Because...because!"

"Because WHAT?" 

Baekhyun clenched his fist tightly over and over. "Because...because..." Oh what the hell? He thought. So he shouted it out.

"Because...because I love you!" And that's when he broke down. He got down to his knees, the pain of the past few years finally bringing his down. All those days ignoring the fact that maybe the past won't come back. Ignoring the fact that he was getting bullied by his ex-best friend. All those days he went through this again and again came back to him in this one moment as those words rushed out of him. "I love you I love you I love you always always always." And he just sat there on his knees, clutching Kyungsoo's pant leg with one hand, and hitting his shin with the other, feeling more frustrated than he thought his heart would allow.

He stops hitting the other boy when he feels a shiver go down his spine as someone's warm, slim fingers trace his jawline and tilt his chin up. As the knees of the other boy bend and soft lips peck his forehead. 

"Well then why didn't you say so sooner?" Is all Kyungsoo whispered as Baekhyun raised a hand to his mouth and almost laughed at himself. Then he hugged his hyung tightly promising to stop with all his mean words and "I'll never make you cry again." Except that even as he says this, hot tears flow out of Baekhyun's eyes and he smiles as he places his head onto Kyungsoo's collarbone, finding reassurance in the fact that the two of them seemed to fit together like puzzle pieces. He opens his mouth and at the same time, he feels Kyungsoo's breath on his neck as they both look up and say:

"I love you."

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Note from the author aka MEEEEE: Hi everyone! Quite a few people asked me to update the ships series (or at least, it seemed like 'quite a few people' to an amateur author like me) so here it is! Sorry it's so short OTL I hope you like it! I was really on a roll for the most part, but I was interrupted when it got too late at night for me to write...So if the ending part seems kinda weird compared to the rest, then im really sorry OTL I also updated this last because I don't like people to get too tense about the chaptered fanfics :) Thank you, everyone, so so SO much! I really appreciate all the love I get for these stories and I'll never forget everyone's kind words! I'll keep writing as long as I can! 

Let's love EXO, okay? <3