Words (TaoXChanyeolXreader fanfic)

Chapter 11: ballroom dance class

They got pizza, they took it back to the Tao's apartment. Chanyeol fell in love with the place almost as fast as he had fallen in love with the people. It was piled with books and soft fabrics and ikea furniture that they only sometimes managed to assemble properly. The way they laughed together seemed to have seeped into the floor boards of the place. Chanyeol wanted to spend his life wrapped in it.

The conversation about words and wants fell away again. They played pretend. They weren't anything special. Just friends. They ate pizza and then rather than going home to study, Chanyeol curled up with his notes on the sofa and did his homework there. It took more self control than he had known he had to keep from getting distracted. Victoria sat on the same piece of furniture, not touching, never touching, and did her own reading.

And that became the new normal.

For the next few weeks, he spent more evenings there than he did at home. He did his homework and his grading, he argued movies with Tao and got caught up in Victoria's bizarre spinning humour. He taught them how to make his mother's dumpling recipe and they only burned half of them. One night he helped Victoria make a lasagna from scratch and ended up with tomato sauce burns up both his arms. It was also the first time he touched her. She leaned across him, her shoulder brushing his chest to grab the bag of onions.

They both froze and retreated but they also didn't explode. After that touching got easier. She started, by degrees, to touch him like Tao did. A hand on his arm. A knee against his. Leaning in to grab something on the other side of him. It was almost accidental.

Almost.

About a week after the lasagna they were gathered in the kitchen again. They'd been skipping through radio stations when the classical station started a waltz and Victoria tried to cajole Tao into a dance. She stood there, in her bare feet, with a half a glass of wine in hand and glared. He refused until she finally turned to Chanyeol.

"I made him take a ballroom dance class before the wedding," Victoria said, "Don't believe him when he tells you he can't dance."

"I can't dance," Tao repeated from where he sat on the counter swinging his feet like a little boy. He wore a plain long sleeved shirt pushed up to his elbows and was bracing his hands on either side of his legs. There were things Chanyeol had never considered attractive before Tao and forearms were one of them.

"I can guarantee that you are better than me," Chanyeol said. Fancy ballroom dance classes were the type of thing that happened at a school like the one Chanyeol had attended but he had never gone to one.

His refusals led to a dancing lesson. Almost accidental touching was very different from waltzing. A few failed attempts at footwork were all it took before she gave up and just put her head on his shoulder and swayed. Like a middle school dance where no one moved their feet and everyone was afraid of where their hands were. Chanyeol held one of her hands and the other was on her waist. She was close and warm and smelled like home. He looked up at Tao over her head with a look on his face that was somewhere between panicked and helpless. Tao was watching them with soft edged curiosity on his face. Like they were adorable.

For a month they folded him into their lives like that. No one talked too much about it. They just shuffled around until he fit. He fell asleep on their couch and woke up with his head on Tao's knee while they talked about something they were reading over his head. He stayed over in their mess of a spare room and in morning Tao lent him clothes that hung off him all wrong but smelled too good to be worth arguing about.

There were conversations they weren't having but it didn't stop the lines from getting blurrier. Out on the little balcony at Chanyeol's, one of the few times he'd had them over, Victoria had said something that made Tao laugh. He'd responded by leaning in and kissing her. She had reached up and looped her arms around his neck as he leaned her back against the railing. Chanyeol should have turned away, given them some space but instead he had just stared. Victoria had glanced up at him first and he'd finally looked away after flushing scarlet.

"Sorry," she said.

"No, don't be, I had kind of suspected that you two were into kissing," he said trying to make it a joke though it fell flat. Victoria had held out a hand to him and he'd taken it. Helplessly. As helpless as if refusing her was a physical impossibility. Tao still had her pushed back against the bit of metal that kept them from a four story drop. He'd pulled back from the kiss to watch Chanyeol.

"You know you can ask us for anything," she said.

"Including to watch, you can always ask to watch," Tao suggested and Victoria shot him a look.