Cursed Freedom

Wondering and Wandering

(Story under construction  🏗)

When Chanyeol opened up the kitchen pantry, he found it stuffed with a wide array of new cereals, including Lucky Charms. More of the mounting evidence that Baekyun was meant to be in the house.

Chanyeol was glad that Baekhyun hadn't asked where his food came from, because Chanyeol didn't have the answers to those sorts of queries. He simply poured a large serving of Lucky Charms into a bowl and set a carton of milk on the table in front of Baekhyun before turning back and serving himself up some muesli.

Before he sat down across the table from Baekhyun, who began munching away on the colorful cereal, he grabbed another carton of milk, and, sitting down, poured something in his bowl and finally began to eat as well.

This brought Baekhyun's crunching to a halt. He stopped spooning the food into his mouth and raised an eyebrow at Chanyeol which caused him to stop, mid-bite, and put his spoon back into his bowl.

"What?" Chanyeol asked, confused.

"What the hell are you eating and why?" He mused with a smile, gesturing to Chanyeol's bowl. (He always seemed to be either smiling or laughing and it was as contagious as it was endearing.)

"It's muesli, it's supposed to be good for you. Good for your digestion." He picked up his spoon and continued to eat. Baekhyun just shrugged and slowly returned to eating his cereal, but he giggled slightly, shaking his head.

"I watched you shove half a cake in your face last night and now you're eating muesli with soy milk on top? Do you always eat like this? Was the cake just a blip in the system? You don't sleep in, you clearly workout everday," Baekhyun gestured and glanced up and down his body, "and you won't eat the most delicious cereal ever made? Is this all part of the plan?"

"What plan?" He chuckled. "I don't... I don't have a plan. I guess I have gotten into a bit of a routine. And yes, I try to eat as healthy as possible." He twirled his spoon in his hands, "And yes, I do wake up early and workout every morning, except on weekends when I sometimes sleep in a bit and just do a bit of stretching, you know, yoga type stuff."

Shortly after he found a door in the mansion that he had never noticed before, he started working out regularly. The door had led to a basement, where he expected to find old, dusty, discarded furniture, but instead, contained a relatively modern home gym.

He had also found a guide to meditative yoga in the library when he was 15 and just starting to build on some muscle.

He shook himself out of his trance of memories and simply shrugged at the look on Baekhyun's face who just laughed to himself and continued eating his Lucky Charms, but now he began making moaning sounds at regular intervals, and pausing every now and then to say things like, "This is delicious!" And "Mmmm... It's so good! I think I might have a second helping." Although he never did have that second bowl. He was clearly, purposefully, teasing Chanyeol.

Once he was finished, Baekhyun took his own dishes to the sink to wash them and put his food away.

"Are you a fairy tale character? Hmmm?" He asked out of the blue, leaning against the kitchen counter.

"What do you mean?" Chanyeol asked as he followed Baekhyun and cleaned up after himself when he was done eating.

He mirrored Baekhyun's stance and leaned up against the counter himself, his arms folded protectively across his chest.

"Well, you're out here primping yourself into a damn Adonis all alone. Are you out here just waiting for your true love to emerge from the trees to save you? Who are you trying to look good for?" He was smirking, his head tilted to the side in curiosity.

Chanyeol's mouth started moving, his hands waving haphazardly in the air, but no sound was emerging from the poor giant, his mouth just opening and closing like a fish. He didn't think about the question that he had been asked, his thoughts were more along the line of, 'Holy shit. Baekhyun thinks I look like an Adonis.'

Finally, after having what must have looked to Baekhyun like a seizure, he just shrugged. "Actually, to be honest, I started doing all of this out of boredom."

Baekhyun narrowed his eyes, clearly not believing him, even though it was God's honest truth. He finally just nodded, accepting the explanation. "Okay... so you have a gym here?"

"Um, yeah, it's in the basement." He replied.

"Can I see it?" Baekhyun asked with a hint of excitement.

Chanyeol laughed at the smaller man. "I don't see why not." He waved at Baekhyun to follow him, peeking at the grandfather clock and then his watch as he passed through the sitting room. Was it really four thirty already? And they had just finished breakfast. Man, his schedule really had gone off the rails.

Chanyeol walked toward the staircase and then took a sharp right instead of left. He flipped on a light switch after opening a door next to a cabinet displaying antique trinkets. They went down until, at the bottom of the steps, he opened another door and flipped the light switch as he waved Baekhyun into the gym.

"So this is where the magic happens, huh?" Baekhyun teased. He winked at Chanyeol as he walked by him and Chanyeol nearly stopped breathing.

"This is where I work out, so yes, I suppose?" He replied shyly.

"Would you show me?" Baekhyun asked.

"Show you... my exercise routine? Right now? I'm not dressed for it. I usually-"

"Relax, Chanyeol!" Baekhyun laughed at him. "It's not the end of the world to break your routine! Take it from someone who's never had a routine in his life!" He chuckled again.

Baekhyun had a way about him. He had the ability to always inject humor into his, what most would call, sad circumstances.

"Just... show me something! Anything!" He asked Chanyeol with big doe eyes that made him weak in the knees.

Okay, now he was certain that Baekhyun was doing these things on purpose. 'But is he flirting with me?' Just the thought got him excited again and he decided that a few exercises would be a great way to erase the thoughts causing the tightness in his jeans, which had been happening so frequently that he hoped Baekhyun hadn't noticed.

The two of them moved from one set of equipment to the next, Chanyeol taking the lead in teaching the thin, delicate Baekhyun the correct form at each station, and Baekhyun showing how he could barely lift a few pounds, but he had a good sense of humor about it, and it seemed like he was having fun.

Chanyeol began to relax, and they started chatting again about this and that and everything in between.

Soon enough, they were no longer working out, but instead, Chanyeol was sitting casually on the weight bench with Baekhyun telling him a story about a spider that kept evading capture in that basement until finally Chanyeol snuck up on it one day and swung a dumbell at the spot where it was sitting on the floor.

He even took Baekhyun to the very spot where the showdown occurred to show him the dent in the basement floor that reminded him of the evasive spider and his mission to hunt it down.

As Baekhyun regaled him with his own story about a spider in a shed that someone had let him stay in, Chanyeol looked at his watch.

"Holy shit, Baek! It's almost eight o'clock! Come on, let's go eat dinner. Anything in particular that you're feeling this evening?" They both jumped up.

"Whatever you have is fine with me. The only thing I really don't like is cucumbers." Baekhyun replied.

"Cucumbers. Noted." Chanyeol thought hard about what to cook tonight. So, no cucumbers. Honestly, he was fascinated by every little thing about Baekhyun.

Once they were in the kitchen again, Chanyeol began to pull the ingredients for fish tacos from the refrigerator and paused for a moment when he noticed that the cucumbers had disappeared from the vegetable drawer before turning back to face Baekhyun...