[♤]

PART THREE
"I N E E D Y O U"
III : VII

Baekhyun didn't know if he deserved this.

He glanced over at Chanyeol who was driving with one hand on the wheel; the other one grasping onto Baekhyun's in the space between their seats. Just the mere sight of him rendered Baekhyun breathless, and he was once again doubting whether or not he should really accept Chanyeol.

Did he really deserve something as perfect as Chanyeol?

Looking down at their connected hands, Baekhyun bit his lip, turning to stare out the window.

He was quiet for the rest of the way, from the moment that Chanyeol had to let go of his hand to change gears, to the moment the two of them stepped out into the parking lot.

Chanyeol led them up to his apartment suite, where he put water into the boiler and rummaged around for warm clothes and a blanket. Baekhyun stood awkwardly near the doorway, unknowing of how he should act at Chanyeol's place after not being there for so long. When Chanyeol came back and saw Baekhyun's discomfort, he only laughed, grabbing Baekhyun's arm and pulling him further into his place.

He handed Baekhyun some clothes to change into (considering the shorter's clothes were damp from the amount of time spent sitting on the ground outside) and watched as Baekhyun did nothing but stare at the items in his hands, as if he couldn't believe they were there.

"Baek..?" Chanyeol questioned, and Baekhyun snapped out of it, mumbling a thank you before disappearing into Chanyeol's washroom.

When Baekhyun reemerged, Chanyeol asked him if he wanted to eat anything but the brunet shook his head, saying something about being tired. Chanyeol simply smiled and followed Baekhyun when he made his way over to Chanyeol's room, dropping onto the bed instantly.

Baekhyun snuggled into the sheets while Chanyeol changed out of his own clothes, the lights flicking off shortly after.

His back was facing Chanyeol when he got onto the bed and he heard shuffling and felt Chanyeol rearranging the blankets, before everything turned silent. The brunet thought that Chanyeol would just go to sleep like that but was proved wrong when, after another couple of seconds, Chanyeol was moving over to his side.

When he felt arms wrap around his waist, Baekhyun felt an incredible sadness wash over him. His heart was confused, because it was overjoyed with the thought that Chanyeol was currently holding him again, but sad that it was himself currently in Chanyeol's arms.

Chanyeol deserved better than him, and he knew that.

The love of his life tightened the grip on his waist, and at the same time, the first few tears fell out of his eyes.

Baekhyun spent the rest of the night thinking about everything that was wrong with himself and everything that was right with Chanyeol, unable to stop the flow of tears that came with every negative thought.

Chanyeol never noticed.

~

"Wendy," Chanyeol said, his voice monotonous.

Wendy raised her eyebrow, wondering why Chanyeol looked as if he didn't want her there. Nonetheless, he moved out of the way and allowed Wendy to walk inside, the girl doing that with no hesitation.

When she took off her shoes and went to put them in the same spot as usual, she stopped short when she saw a pair of unfamiliar boots. They couldn't have been Chanyeol's, because they were sizes too small and Chanyeol never wore boots during the winter (they apparently weren't his style, as he had started to say after meeting Kris).

"Do you... have someone over?" Wendy questioned, feeling strange that someone like Chanyeol would bring over a stranger. He usually told her about everyone that he met, and if she recalled, he'd only been talking about Baekhyun.

Chanyeol paused in the middle of his activities, his back facing Wendy as he set the mug in his hand down. "Baekhyun's here," Chanyeol explained, turning to gauge her reaction.

It took a moment but she proceeded to react exactly like how Chanyeol expected her to, her eyes widening before they glared at Chanyeol harshly. "Are you kidding me?" she hissed, the volume of her voice slowly rising. "Even after everything, you're going back to Baekhyun?!"

"Keep your voice down," Chanyeol warned, "He's sleeping."

"Do you think I care?! Chanyeol, you've been through this twice already! Can you not see the next mistake before it happens?!" she exclaimed.

The second she finished, she caught sight of Chanyeol's glare and she took a step back when she saw how angry he looked.

"We're not going to talk about this right now," Chanyeol stated, seemingly setting his foot down when he had enough of Wendy's worrying.

"But you deserve someone so much better. You deserve—"

"Wendy, you're my best friend and I get that you're worried for me. But we can talk about this another time. It's Christmas. He's tired, and I know we can't do this without yelling."

She let out an incredulous breath, shaking her head as she kicked her feet into her shoes, dropping the bag of groceries and presents that she had with her before leaving out the door.

Chanyeol sighed, running his hand through his hair. He felt guilty when she left but he couldn't exactly do much about it. Wendy was against his entire relationship with Baekhyun and she seemed to always want to get him away from the other. He understood that she only cared and didn't want anything bad to happen but she didn't trust him enough when he told her that he was okay.

After thinking about it for a little longer, Chanyeol decided that he'd confront Wendy next week, when she hopefully cooled down.

He turned back around and began making breakfast, thinking about the boy currently sleeping in his room, a smile appearing on his face.

Baekhyun was, in his eyes, a perfect person. Not because he had no imperfections, but because all of his flaws came together to create him.

Chanyeol wondered how he could have ever jumped to such conclusions and accuse Baekhyun of attempting to ruin their relationship. In the end, he was the one that ruined it with his doubts. But it was okay now, because he loved Baekhyun and Baekhyun loved him, which was everything that mattered.

He heard a small sniffle in between the sound of him chopping up onions, and he turned to see Baekhyun standing near the entrance of the hallway, staring at Chanyeol with such a heartbroken stare. Chanyeol immediately put down his knife and washed his hands, approaching Baekhyun, staring at him with a gaze full of worry.

"Baek? What's up?" he questioned when he was right in front of Baekhyun.

The shorter shook his head as if to rid him of some thoughts, before speaking.

"D-Do you," Baekhyun started, his voice barely loud enough for Chanyeol to hear. He swallowed before he continued, "Do you actually want this?"

"This?" Chanyeol asked, feeling worried because of how Baekhyun was acting. He noticed that Baekhyun didn't talk much on the ride over to Chanyeol's place the other day, but he assumed it was just because Baekhyun was tired after everything that had happened that day.

"No... no. This. Us," Baekhyun specified, his hands forming fists that surely dug his nails into his palms. He refused to meet Chanyeol's eyes, his head always lowered and his voice kept at a relatively monotonous level.

"Baekhyun, of course I do—why wouldn't I?" Chanyeol questioned, taking the last steps closer and pulling Baekhyun into a hug, keeping his grip loose yet strong enough that it would comfort the shorter. "What are you even talking about?"

Baekhyun sniffled and Chanyeol briefly pulled away to place a hand on Baekhyun's cheek, assessing if he was crying or not. He wasn't crying—yet—and he was still avoiding Chanyeol's gaze, his eyes already red-rimmed as if he had been crying.

"Talk to me?" the taller coaxed, placing a chaste kiss onto Baekhyun's forehead.

Baekhyun shook his head.

He had heard Wendy, and she said exactly what he had been thinking of last night and this morning. She confirmed that it was wrong that Baekhyun was with Chanyeol, no matter how right he felt like it was.

Outside of the club yesterday, he was high on the feeling of Chanyeol loving him. Along with the alcohol mixed in with his system, he wasn't coherent enough to think about himself closely. He didn't think about how unfair this was, and he momentarily forgot about everything that had happened before.

How could he just forget about all of the bad things he had done and accept something so quickly?

He didn't deserve Chanyeol. He never had.

Chanyeol was sweet, kind, talented, gentle, compassionate, loving—and the list just went on. Baekhyun, on the other hand... believed that he was stupid.

He thought that he was idiotic. Weak-willed and rude. He was the worse kind of person in his mind and he had evidence that he kept buried inside:

He had been afraid of being alone so he mixed himself in with terrible people. His parents constantly called him incompetent for being unable to seal important deals. He pushed away everything important and ended up running into walls in the future... And the one person who had helped him through his childhood... died because of him.

Baekhyun believed that he didn't deserve Chanyeol, who could've found someone much better. Chanyeol deserved someone who wouldn't give him the doubt that he was being tricked a second, third, fourth, or fifth time. He deserved someone who didn't ruin a family simply by being born. He deserved anyone but Baekhyun.

"Baekhyun—don't do this," Chanyeol pleaded when the tears started to silently fall down the sides of Baekhyun's face, his thumbs moving to wipe them away. "Please just... tell me what's wrong, yeah?"

Chanyeol's gestures only made Baekhyun cry more, because he saw how unfair this was—he couldn't just take Chanyeol and keep him for himself when he was figuratively the rotten apple out of the bunch.

"I'm—" Baekhyun began, tripping on his words as he wiped the tears away from his eyes vigorously, only succeeding for a second or two before more tears would appear out of nowhere. "You deserve someone better."

Chanyeol's eyebrows furrowed as Baekhyun hiccuped, continuing.

"You deserve someone who can actually cook you dinner. You deserve someone who can take care of you. Y-You deserve someone who has a dog that won't give you allergies. You deserve someone who didn't lose their virginity to some punk ass piece of shit. You deserve someone who's parents will actually approve of you. You deserve someone that isn't dumb—"

"Baekhyun," Chanyeol sighed, a smile of relief on his face. Baekhyun looked up when he heard the tone of his voice and felt confused when he saw his expression, before deciding that Chanyeol was glad that Baekhyun was letting him go.

"I-I'll go—"

"Who's to say that you can decide what I deserve or not?" Chanyeol asked all of a sudden.

"W-What?"

"You don't know what I've done, Baekhyun. I don't know what you've been through and you don't know what I've been through. There's no way that you can decide if I deserve someone else or not," Chanyeol explained, running his fingers through Baekhyun's hair and tucking pieces behind his ear.

"I'm a terrible person—"

"And? What if I am, too? Aren't we a match made in heaven, then?"

"You're not seeing it from my perspective, Chanyeol," Baekhyun argued, feeling a strike of anger form in his mind. "Everything that I've done is terrible. I've said terrible things and I've done even worse things. I—"

"I don't give a shit about what you've done, Baekhyun."

The said man stared, wide-eyed, as he tried recovering from the shock that Chanyeol had just given to him in the form of two hands landing onto his shoulders. Chanyeol was staring straight at him, and there was no amusement in his eyes.

"That was all in the past," he explained, "If all people saw in others was their past, how could they ever fall in love with that person's present?"

Baekhyun opened his mouth to speak but Chanyeol quickly shut him up with a glare of his eyes, the shorter feeling intimidated because of how serious Chanyeol looked.

"I'm not trying to get the past Baekhyun to love me, I'm trying to get this one to," Chanyeol said, and the way he booped Baekhyun's nose contradicted the controlling aura that he had exuded seconds before. "Are you looking at the past me right now? Do you really still see me that way?"

Baekhyun shook his head and Chanyeol nodded along, looking a little proud.

"Do you understand, Baekhyun?" Chanyeol asked, his eyes finally softening into the melting gaze that Baekhyun was accustomed to. "I love the you that you became. I don't care about the mistakes that you made in the past—rather, I care about you, and I can see, in your eyes, that you regret hurting the people that you did. Everyone does."

Baekhyun was biting his bottom lip again and he was holding back the fresh tears in his eyes, making Chanyeol smile when he saw the sight.

"So let's stop talking about who deserves what, yeah?" Chanyeol suggested, his hand dropping from Baekhyun's shoulder to entwine his fingers with the shorter's. "I love you right now. Of course, I've been loving you for a while but the most important thing is that right now, I'm happy that it's you. No more doubts or secrets, alright?" Chanyeol asked and Baekhyun nodded. He then stared at Baekhyun and let out a deep breath. "God I'm really whipped."

"I love you," Baekhyun mumbled once he gave up on trying to hold back his tears, sniffling and sobbing without caring.

"What was that?"

"I said that I love you, you nutcase."

"Aw, thank you—"

"Now get your ferret-feeling hands off of me!"

Chanyeol laughed when Baekhyun turned and ran to the bathroom, yelling something about how Chanyeol had to get himself ready for Baekhyun to wreak havoc in his fridge.

Yeah right, Chanyeol thought as he strolled over to the kitchen with a smile on his face. He knew that Baekhyun was probably still crying and wiping his tears right about then, and the loud sniffle he heard from the washroom proved his guesses right.

He was glad that he decided to chase after Baekhyun, even after Baekhyun broke his heart all those years ago.

Baekhyun was different now.

People changed, no matter how the world kept its constant spinning and how the sun kept shining every day. A person's mistakes shouldn't be the way to describe them, but a way to acknowledge how much they've grown as an individual.

Chanyeol hoped that he could help Baekhyun understand that the only person he loved was Baekhyun and Baekhyun himself.

Not his mistakes, his faults, or any stupid choices that he had chosen in the past.

[♤]

I'm wrapping everything up now

Honestly I'm so sorry for not updating in YEARS It's just really hard to write the end like agh...

Y'all are probably done with this book now but like

I hope you enjoyed this chapter that had scarily choppy sentences

lov y'all (i also love chanyeol's character in this book agh he is so yes)

P-Nut oot.