Words (TaoXChanyeolXreader fanfic)

Chapter 8: you found her

"We moved. I threw a fit but I was twelve and a half and my fit wasn't going to change my father's job. I tried to tell myself that I would find you again. Tried to come up with schemes that might work," Tao said.

"And then you found her," Chanyeol said.

"And she was everything I hadn't known I wanted," Tao said with that fond smile. "I didn't tell her about you until a year in. I told her the whole story expecting jealousy or dismissal. I was used the story about you being dismissed. Just a childhood joke, a silly crush. That's what my mother had done when I told her about Victoria. She'd told me that this was proof it wasn't you and now I could forget about you. I took it as an offense. Forget. I couldn't forget. But Vic listened to every word. She wanted to hear all my stories about you. I think that's when I could accept, entirely and completely believe that she was my match. I never really let go of you. I love her but I always held onto those memories. And now here you are again."

"My apologies for complicating your life," Chanyeol said. "I seem to be some sort of glitch in the system and it just happens to be your life I'm disrupting."

"There is no way in hell that you are a glitch," Tao said.

"I can't be your match and her match," Chanyeol said.

"Why not?" Tao asked.

"That's not how it works," Chanyeol said.

"That's exactly how it works. You say their words and they say yours. That is exactly what happened here. It just happened twice. That isn't a coincidence, Chanyeol. Life doesn't work like that, the words don't work like that. It means something," Tao said.

"And what does it mean?" Chanyeol asked.

"That you should come to ours for dinner," Tao said.

"No," Chanyeol said.

"No? What the hell do you mean no?" Tao said.

He didn't mean for the full truth to come out but for so long Tao had existed in the back of his mind as the person he could tell anything to. The little voice in his head that was half conscience and half impulse always looked like Tao when he imagined it. And so honesty was what came out.

"That would be a bad idea right now. I need time to think all this through. I can't be in the same room as her right now. I could barely keep from touching her hair in the cafe and she was a stranger. God Tao. Do you know how many times I've gone through those pictures you sent me of the great duckie massacre? It's only been a few days and I have scrolled through them a hundred times. I want to know if her hair is actually as soft as it looks. It probably gets everywhere. I want to wake up with it in my face and her curled up beside him. I can't go to dinner with thoughts like that in my head," he shook his head like he could knock the thoughts loose.

"And then there's you. You sitting there like you wouldn't mind if I did crawl into your lap and start unbuttoning your shirt. I talked myself out of you when I was thirteen and yet you're right there and your eyes are bluer than I remember them and you keep smiling. I should probably go," Chanyeol said before he could say anything else about Tao's smile.

It was a torrent of words. It poured out without his stopping to think. Once it was over he closed his eyes and pressed his lips tightly together as though so much as breathing was going to start it all over again. And he'd be talking about Victoria's feet and the way her eyes scrunched up when she was laughing or how he had almost crawled into bed beside Tao almost every night at camp but stopped himself because there were too many other people in the cabin.

He opened his eyes to find Tao too close. He had crossed the room and was leaning down in front of Chanyeol. Chanyeol's heart took off. It beat like it was trying to escape his rib cage and take flight. He swallowed and held his gaze. Incredible eyes indeed. Tao was disturbingly beautiful. Almost too pretty. His jaw line and something about the set of his cheekbones kept his face firmly masculine and Chanyeol 's hand started to drift up and he pressed it back to his thigh before he had the feel of Tao's pulse beating against his palm adding fuel to fantasies he couldn't have.

"I have thought about you almost daily for ten years. Victoria went and hunted you down just to see your face again. What are you scared of?" Tao asked in a low soft voice. That he had that kind of gentleness in him made Chanyeol flinch. It was easier to imagine that he was a little bit of an asshole. People that pretty were usually assholes but he couldn't write Tao off like that.