Months passed somehow. Baekhyun learned to enjoy his job in a whole new way as he got to know everyone better, and found that he had ready companionship as well as an uninterrupted stream of sex. Tao, Chen, and Sehun – over the course of continually dragging him to noraebang and restaurants in the name of “Bottoms Night Out” – became his best friends, the people he felt he could talk to about anything. They listened to his stories about growing up without a father and didn’t judge him for his broken home life.
He continued to fall ever deeper into a vast pit of passion, desire and above all, love for Chanyeol, but it remained the one thing he hadn’t revealed to any of the others. They’d warned him in the very beginning, after all, not to fall in love. He didn’t know, and couldn’t tell, whether or not Chanyeol had feelings for him in return, and it was better to suffer in silence. Sehun picked up on it first, and brought it up during dinner one night.
“Your entire face lights up when you see him,” he said, a tad drunkenly. Baekhyun, who’d downed just as much alcohol as the other man, didn’t deny it immediately.
“I,” he began, and then Chen burst in.
“It makes you shine on camera,” he pointed out. Baekhyun felt his face heat up, and hoped they’d blame it on the soju.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he managed finally.
Tao regarded him in hooded silence for a long moment. “He shines, too,” he said, matter-of-factly just before his head lolled back. Sehun rolled his eyes.
“Lightweight,” he muttered. “I guess this means it’s time to call a cab.”
Baekhyun helped them get Tao into the back seat and waved off their offer to share the cab. Not only was it impractical with Tao taking up more space than he should have been able to, he’d never even hinted at where he lived, much less brought any of the others back. His address was on his resume, of course, but Kris was the only one who had access to it, and he would die before letting them know the kind of neighbourhood he lived in, much less what his apartment looked like on the inside.
Kris scheduled them for two or three shoots a week, and was constantly busy. Even with Tao helping him, he had a constant stream of films and shorts to edit, music to compose, accounts to manage, paychecks to disperse, and scenes to direct. Baekhyun had begun training on the proper management of a boom mic, which was actually harder than it looked, and sitting in on some of the other shoots. He practically bullied Kris into delegating some of the duties he was constantly taking on, and found himself promoted to accountant and financier in addition to boom operator and actor. The added increase to his paychecks was welcome, even though he was still funneling the majority of his money directly into the hospital bills his mother was constantly racking up. He kept back only enough to keep his bills paid and food in his fridge.
He and Chanyeol filmed a short movie in one of the bedrooms, as teenagers indulging in an awkward first time. Seeing the normally-smooth Chanyeol fumbling his way through a seduction was endearing, and Baekhyun’s heart cracked as he realised that as long as they continued like this, he was only going to keep falling deeper and deeper in love with the other man.
At some point, it wasn’t going to be enough, just sleeping with him for money.
*
“This scene is ‘Strangers in the Bar’,” Kris informed them. They were on another set, a remarkably lifelike nightclub except for the extra space all around the stage for the cameras. Baekhyun was dressed in something Chen described as ‘slutty’ – a mesh shirt with sequins sewn on over a pair of indecently tight jeans – but Chanyeol was devastating in a pair of black leather trousers and a plain white, ribbed wife-beater. Fake tattoos adorned his arms and throat, and with kohl lining his eyes and his hair neatly slicked back, he was – in Baekhyun’s eyes – sex given human form.
