chansoo/kaisoo tweetfic [delinquents] complied -->

so the story starts when do kyungsoo in his first year of high school moves to seoul and reunites w/ his childhood friend park chanyeol--only chanyeol isn't quite who he remembered. over four years the kid with the flubby cheeks and glasses that never fit picked kyungsoo up from the train station riding a ridiculously dangerous looking motorcycle, plush wide leather seats and all sharp, angled shines, telling kyungsoo to hurry "before kai catches up". kyungsoo has no idea who kai is until he turns around, still holding his luggage, and sees from the corner of his eyes this massive mob of people with metal bars and wooden bats storming towards them, led by a blonde guy shouting "PARK CHANYEOL, YOU FUCK."

and chanyeol turns to kyungsoo, winks, and says, "that's kai. he's kind of angry right now" and kyungsoo kind of just stares at chanyeol bug-eyed and shocked utterly out of any words. five years from now, this is how the legend will go--d.o met kai while riding on the back of chanyeol's bike, which was technically kai's (and was why chanyeol was riding it, really). and somewhere between then and now, one day kyungsoo found kai sitting alone on the rooftop during lunch and offered him his milk carton and kai didn't take it but they did talk about chanyeol, and found mutual interest in picking out all his faults and lining them in order of intolerabilit.

the next time kyungsoo found kai on that rooftop, leaning back on the railing, sunlight in his lashes, dozing off, he left the milk carton beside kai's side and this time kai took it and, after that, when chanyeol went off picking a fight and dragged kyungsoo into it, kai joined them in a blink, almost as if they'd always been on the same side.

"i didn't know you liked me," chanyeol would grin, spitting blood.

and kai would stink-eye him between punches, "fuck off, ferret club" and between them kyungsoo would laugh and laugh and chanyeol probably knew what it meant, how kai looked at kyungsoo and the way kyungsoo would let kai sling his arm around his shoulder but never chanyeol

in retrospect it should've been obvious how, when kyungsoo left chanyeol to go join kai on the rooftop, chanyeol's laugh flickered mid-way but chanyeol didn't say a word, and kyungsoo was so blinded by kai's smiles and words and the way his laughs could make him lose his grip that he didn't notice. he'd come to seoul as chanyeol's friend, because chanyeol had told him over the phone, "i'm so lonely here by myself"

but before he knew it he wasn't really chanyeol's friend any more. he was still desk-partners with chanyeol, but he never picked up on how when chanyeol smiled his eyes didn't light up the way they used to, or how chanyeol gradually stopped asking if he wanted to hang out. all he noticed was chanyeol getting into more and more fights. chanyeol picking the wars he was bound to lose, that he knew he would lose, and no longer asking kyungsoo or kai to come save him. the seat beside him began vacating for longer and longer periods of time, until one day kyungsoo looked at the graffiti chanyeol had etched onto the edge--"dong kyungsoo" -- and remembered that chanyeol used to sit there and that he's been gone for--a week, no, a month, maybe. no one knows where chanyeol had gone. kyungsoo digs through seoul, flips it upside down, and he finds chanyeol on a hospital bed, his entire head swallowed in bandages and quiet, so quiet, and he's worried and angry that he doesn't wait to see chanyeol wake up, just leaves as if he's never been there. chanyeol didn't think he was a friend any more, kyungsoo thought, because if chanyeol still took him to be his friend, he would tell kyungsoo that he needed help, he would've talked.

so this is how the notorious delinquent trio chankaisoo crack and fall apart into a chanyeol, and a kai and kyungsoo, half way into third yr. for a while it's kind of weird, fighting beside kai without chanyeol there with his lanky limbs tripping over himself, without chanyeol shouting behind them "fighting~!!" but the thing is chanyeol hadn't been there for a long time, and it's not difficult to heal a wound that had already scabbed.

first semester of senior year, kyungsoo hears from a friend of a friend of chanyeol's that he's dropped out of school. and for a second it hurts him, deep down at a place that he's long forgotten, but then kai grabs his hand and kisses it and kyungsoo forgets again. slowly chanyeol disappears from kyungsoo's thoughts--no one at school seems to remember him, kind of like he'd shot past everyone loud and bright, a shooting star, and then faded away without a word.

years later, when kyungsoo's walking to a morning class at uni, he hears behind him this voice that sounds terribly familiar, and he turns and suddenly chanyeol's all up in his face again, like when he'd picked him up that day at the train station, noisy and the brightest thing kyungsoo had ever chanced upon, wearing a flashy suit, cornering some salaryman into an alley. kyungsoo quickly follows him, unsure of what he's doing, really, because he barely even knows chanyeol anymore.

when chanyeol reaches out to strike the man, kyungsoo stops him with a kick to the knee--chanyeol was always weakest there, and he still is-after the man scrambles away, chanyeol turns to kyungsoo and stares at him, bug-eyed like how kyungsoo had been, and manages to croak out "oh, god, dong kyungsoo, is that you?" and kyungsoo punches his shoulder for calling him poop even now.

it turns out that chanyeol had started working for a crime syndicate, and has recently started handling high-interest loans. "you just wrecked my lunch," chanyeol whines at the sight of the man scrambling away, and kyungsoo knuckles him and says, "i'll treat you."

it's odd, but somehow they're friends in an instant again, as if they'd never been apart, and kyungsoo doesn't realize he's been missing chanyeol all along until chanyeol buttons his suit jacket around kyungsoo's chest and makes the lamest corndog joke and kyungsoo laughs like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard

eventually, when kyungsoo has to go to class, he asks chanyeol for his contact information and chanyeol grins and winks and says, "too poor for one," and kyungsoo asks for his address and chanyeol says, "i live in the moment," and when kyungsoo's about to get irritated, chanyeol ruffles his hair and runs off screaming with laughter. kyungsoo contemplates chasing him, then gives it up, because if chanyeol's come back to him once, he'd come back again.

after class kyungsoo comes back and tells kai about who he'd just met, only kai doesn't look nearly as surprised as kyungsoo had expected him to. it makes no sense at first, but a few days later kyungsoo sneaks a peek at kai's phone and finds a number that he doesn't recognize at all, which kai calls apparently every few days.

kyungsoo doesn't mean to pry but he's curious so he dials it and, of course, of course the voice that picks up on the other end is fucking park chanyeol's, "hello, angry child?" and kyungsoo hangs up, breathless, furious, confused, betrayed. he doesn't ask why, doesn't ask when chanyeol finds him walking home the next week. maybe it had always been chanyeol who was trying to push him away. chankaisoo hadn't fallen into chanyeol and kaisoo, but into chankai and kyungsoo. after all, kyungsoo was the last to join, and didn't know either of them like they knew each other.

during their walk, kyungsoo tries to shake chanyeol off, but chanyeol doesn't let up and just keeps wrapping his arms around kyungsoo, as if this would be the last time he'd see him again. and when kyungsoo, at the end, tells chanyeol, "i know you've been avoiding me since the beginning. you don't have to pretend to be my friend anymore," chanyeol still grins and ruffles kyungsoo's hair and hugs him.

"don't be silly, you've always been my favorite person," chanyeol says. kyungsoo shoves him and punches the lights out of him and storms off. when kai calls him, later, he doesn't pick up. then, when chanyeol calls him, he drops the phone in the toilet and refuses to answer until maybe six, maybe eight months later--time slips away when there's nothing marking the days--kai shows up at his doorstep, saying, "sorry," and kyungsoo tries to get him to go away and kai looks at him, tears in his eyes, and says, "i'm sorry," again, and leaves.

like this, second year of university, kyungsoo loses both chanyeol and kai at once, in the blink of an eye. after university, he's hired at a small newspaper company. years pass. chanyeol and kai and their high school days become a murmur of a memory on the edge of his mind at this point kyungsoo is older, has learned to accept that relationships don't hold--nothing really does. friends are made to be lost after all. then one day, well into his old age, he's flipping through the obituaries of the old papers, and it's odd, but he finds PARK CHANYEOL listed maybe sixty years too early. it's just a coincidence, he thinks, there are so many park chanyeols in korea, after all. but the year is the one when kai had showed up on his doorstep and kept apologizing and crying and apologizing, and the obituary says, and kyungsoo doesn't mean to read it, but "he was twenty-three years old and born in seoul, attended north high school and dropped out second year..."

and kyungsoo can't understand the rest because the words are turning odd and blurry and he can't breathe properly, can't think, and he thinks it over again and again, and all he can remember is chanyeol's chest like the summer's earth against his back when they ate lunch together, and chanyeol hugging him and telling him "you've always been my favorite person" and chanyeol running to catch up with him when he was trying to walk away the very last time they met. he finds jongin's number and calls it and miraculously it still connects.

"chanyeol," kyungsoo manages to croak, and then kai is beside him trying desperately not to look him in the eyes.

"when did you know?"

"a few days after you arrived," kai says.

"why didn't you tell me?"

kai bites his lip and says, "hyung said you'd be worried."

kyungsoo glances at kai, who wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand, "he said once you started worrying you wouldn't stop."

kyungsoo doesn't feel it coming, but as soon as he thinks about chanyeol telling kai to not to tell, probably grinning as if it were nothing tears well up in his eyes and the next thing he knows he's slumped over, sobbing so hard he can barely inhale, and kai's beside him saying "chanyeol said once you start worrying, you get angry, and once you get angry, you assault him," and kyungsoo punches jongin, even though there's not an ounce of energy left in him, not a shred of anger.

"that day, when you came to talk to me... was that when he died?"

kai looks at kyungsoo, and he nods, even though he's lying. that day he ran the whole ten kilometers to kyungsoo's apartment chanyeol was still alive. chanyeol was sitting in his hospital bed, readying for his last surgery, having promised kai that he would hold on one last time if kyungsoo would show up to see him through it.

but kyungsoo didn't show up. kai had begged and cried and kyungsoo stood there on his doorstep and said, hurt and betrayed, "there's nothing to be sorry for to a stranger, kai." and so kyungsoo never made it to scold chanyeol into surviving his last surgery, and by the time kai was back in the hospital, the surgeon was glancing through the waiting room for "park chanyeol's family" and the first thing kai heard after "we're not friends, kai," was "chanyeol didn't make it. i'm sorry."

kyungsoo wouldn't know, and kai won't tell him because chanyeol had made him promise, but the day they buried chanyeol it was raining and there was no one except jongin and the priest and a guy from chanyeol's work who looked like he barely cared, and all jongin could remember was how chanyeol had called him at 3am the day before kyungsoo moved to seoul and practically shouted over the phone, "you're going to be best friends with the coolest guy in the universe. like, you're going to thank me for this," and chanyeol telling him to "be nicer to my friend" and "in the future, when i'm not here, make sure to annoy him for me," and chanyeol opening his mouth about something and always closing it with kyungsoo this and kyungsoo that. he wants to tell kyungsoo this, that chanyeol had always been his friend, that he had been the dearest to chanyeol, but chanyeol had made him promise not to tell, bc "kyungsoo overthinks things, you know, he's sensitive like that"

so as kyungsoo crumbles and breaks apart before him, all kai can really say is, "he thought you'd be annoying if he told you, that was all"

in the coming days, kai and kyungsoo move in together again, begin dating again, and they don't talk about chanyeol, because kyungsoo thinks chanyeol never took him as a friend, not enough to confide in him, and kai lets him believe that, because this isn't some movie where every character dies loved, bc sometimes, when you love someone enough, you'd let them hate you if that could give them even an ounce of happiness.

and in that way, kai thinks, sometimes, that chanyeol died with all his wishes answered, and kyungsoo would never know, exactly, what a friend he'd lost. for them three, that would be an ending enough, like the way chanyeol had said, back when they had come back from a brawl with a neighboring school, bruised and bloodied, "i'm a happiness thief"

"what?" kyungsoo had laughed

"i'm only happy when you are."

[[THE END]]

Reply · Report Post