PCY - One Shot
Image uploaded by Yehet on pinterest (I found it on google lol)
Summary: PCY is salty but you’re oblivious and a stupid sh-. It doesn’t matter. He will do anything for you anyway, as long as you say thank you. 🤣
⏰4:04 AM 🌏At your place (cause you don’t have a gym membership) 🌃Just before sunrise 👥YN, Park Chanyeol, Kim Jongin (mentioned)
Notes: I personally don’t agree with changing yourself just to please a guy that you like (but I admit that I’ve once done so! Haha 😇) Not the ideal YN here, but I hope you enjoy a sulky PCY!
Words: ~2,400
💙💙💙
Do you have spare TRX suspension things? I’ll come get them now.
Such a question coming from you at four in the morning will probably give Chanyeol a start but you think that it is just what he needs, because he is surely pulling off an all-nighter at his studio again. His message comes in less than a minute. You were right.
“Tf, YN?!”
You wait longer for a proper reply but that is all he says. You answer back, mashing the send icon multiple times out of frustration. “Has no one ever told you that it’s annoying to answer a question with another question?”
You start to feel impatient because for once, you have a valid reason for texting at this hour. It may be four in the morning, but this certain insomnia you are having is finally not a pathologic process. It’s just a thrill that’s keeping you awake – a thrill from something that happened about a couple of hours ago.
James, your co-worker, who always drops by your cubicle in the morning to collect your daily report, finally shared a late night conversation with you. It was a past-midnight conversation, in fact, and that counts much more in your Does-He-Like-Me scoresheet. This is the James whose positivity and composure makes everyone desire to be around him and whose broad and muscular shoulders are talked about by your female co-workers all the time. This is the James that holds a well-coveted position despite being in the company for only about a year; James who is so brilliant and genuine and handsome and charming and everything that you and your somewhat embellished ideals could ever conceive of.
James this, James that.
You’ve been at it for eight months now and you are thankful that the ever objective Chanyeol never gets tired of your ramblings. That’s what friends are for, right? And what better friend would he be if he actually lends you the spare TRX suspension things that he must have?
The guy calls shortly after your mini daydream. He sounds exactly as you had expected. “YN? What the hell do you need TRX Trainers for?”
“Just…” You rub your face in annoyance. Again, with that question thing. It’s about an hour before sunrise. You don’t have all the time in the world. “Just tell me. Do you have ‘em or not?”
Chanyeol finally senses your impatience. “No. I don’t have–”
“Okay then! Good–”
“Yah! Don’t hang up!”
Interrupted, you heave an audible sigh just for him to hear and get the message. “I’m in a hurry, Chanyeol. You don’t understand how this is so important to me!”
“What is? TRX Trainers? You dreaming or something? Hit your head? Gone crazy?”
“Chanyeol!!!” You yell into your phone, trying your best to understand your friend’s surprise. It is true that you never bothered to work out despite Chanyeol’s repeated invitations in the past. It is known to be impossible to reject the guy once he’s decided for himself that he’s going to convince you with persistence and determination. This was – and has remained, only until now – one matter that you never gave into.
I’m an artist. I eat healthy. You would give him all sorts of excuses and at some point, you would even fake illness to make him stop asking you to join him. This time, you realise how low it must be of you to try something you’ve once sworn to never do just to impress a guy.
It is what it is. Defeated, you decide to come clean.
“It’s James. He shared me his morning a routine and…”
You wait for Chanyeol to react but he stays quiet on the line. That’s a first, you think, partly ashamed of yourself now. The guy sure knows how to use silence.
“…and I promised to try it first thing tomorrow. One of the moves needs that TRX thing,” you continue, ending with a nervous bite on your lower lip. You start to wonder if he is even listening so you check your phone only to see that the call is still ongoing. “Hello?”
“Yeah, still here,” he finally says, and you can clearly hear his mood shift. “So, what do you need me for, again?”
“…The TRX thing,” you repeat, regretting even asking for his help. You know that he makes you repeat it so you could hear yourself. He must be deeply disappointed in you. More importantly, you could not even process how disappointed you are with your audacity, too.
“Hmm..” It’s rare for you to not know what he’s going to say next and it puts you on edge. It takes him a while. “And how many moves are there?”
“Ten.”
“Just do nine moves for now. It’s fine. Just tell your James that your world famous-friend, Park Chanyeol, is still getting one for you.”
You roll your eyes. You know Chanyeol’s back to himself whenever he throws around self-praises like that. You finally share your excitement. “He’s not my James, you know!”
“But I know you’re smiling right now because you like hearing it.”
He’s not wrong. For a second, you wonder how you had gotten so close to Chanyeol. You were never like this as children, but you did grow up together, somehow. And now, for some reason, he’s become one who would listen to you talk about absolutely anything. Not even your own sister knows about James!
“I assume you’ll wait for morning then? I’m pretty sure he’s that dude who starts his day as early as five with a workout.”
“Uhuh!” You giggle, letting your imagination run with thoughts of James with tousled hair, gulping down a bottle of water on his bedside and immediately putting on his training shoes as soon as he leaves his bedroom. Workout, meditate, breakfast, and no gadgets until ten in the morning! He says that’s his formula.
“And you’ll be Queen of Productivity, just like him, huh?”
“Uhuh!”
“Then if you do good, he’ll notice you, with or without a TRX.”
“WHAT?! But you’re still getting me–”
Your slight panic makes him chuckle. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll get that spare one we have at the dorms tomorrow. It’s not mine – probably Jongin’s – but nobody uses it.”
Frankly – shameless as it is – you admit to yourself that it’s all you need to hear from your friend after all. “Yes! You’re the best!”
“I usually am.”
You end the phone call with a smile, your eyes falling on your green joggers and tank top spread on your bed where the old, potato version of you ought to be sleeping at this time. That you is gone. You’re finally taking on the morning routine of a person you look up to – and probably worship – very much.
It’s a few minutes until five and you decide to go over the workout routine, reviewing each move since it’s your first time. It dawns on you that it would have been a wise idea to ask Chanyeol for some advice, too. But you decide that you’ve bothered him enough for tonight. Besides, it shouldn’t be that difficult, right? What kind of extraordinary loser gets injured with body weight exercises anyway?
With that thought, you begin at exactly five in the morning with nothing but a piece of paper taped on the living room wall as guide. They are your messy notes that you excitedly wrote on a piece of paper while you were on the phone with James.
Squats are just like sitting on air, right? Your knees start to hurt, but as James would say, No pain, no gain. It gets you through your pushups even though your shoulders are hurting and the same mantra gets you through your planks, even though your back is begging you to stop. You don’t even know why it’s your neck hurting rather than your stomach while doing your crunches. But you keep at it all, finishing through your third set with all sorts of pain and fatigue in different places of your body. It just suddenly seems as if your body decides for itself to stop in the middle of your workout because the pain becomes too great to bear.
In the middle of your lunges, something down your leg makes a sound and soon enough, a sharp pain shoots down your foot. Losing balance, you manage to fall on the floor without hitting your head, all the while curling up in severe pain.
You immediately draw your hands to your left ankle only to regret it immediately when the pain sends you shrieking in agony. It feels like it’s going to last forever – like it’s going to make you blackout. In the middle of it all, you literally don’t know that the fuck to do with yourself, especially since your sister does not come home until mid-afternoon.
The worst part is that in the middle of it all, your phone starts ringing to a call. It rings long enough, thankfully, until you’ve given everything in your capacity to crawl to the couch and reach for it.
Chanyeol is calling.
“HELP ME!”
You scream on the phone, crying and sounding like a bear had just entered your house and your dumb brain thinks one might as well have. You are certainly being a baby, but you have never experienced such crazy sharp pain in your life. You would rather have your heart broken multiple times than suffer like this. This certainly isn’t the pain that gives gains!
You hear no answer from him, but about ten seconds later, Chanyeol shows up, walking into your place with his signature opening-the-door-while-knocking move. When he sees you, he freezes in place, probably deliberating whether or not to say something snappy before helping you out. Something along the lines of I knew you’d get yourself into trouble, trying things like this without me or This is what you get for trying so hard to please a guy. You don’t even know what the hell he is doing at your place at this hour, but you had more pressing concerns at the moment.
“Help me? Please?” You could taste the salt in your tears and hear the whine in your voice. Surely, it’s not his intention to make you beg first, right?
It takes him a second to say something. “Shit.”
And it seems to snap him back to consciousness. For a while, you had thought that he would leave you sprawled on the living room floor in pain. But he soon springs into action, tossing his duffel bag onto the couch and storming into your kitchen to fetch things you realise you need first. Wincing in pain, you watch him urgently reach for the first aid kit on the shelf above the counter and fetch a gel pack stored in your freezer. He even enters your room without asking and comes out with pain medication before filling a glass with water for you. He truly has your place memorised already.
When the sharp pain subsides and you had rubbed the tears of your face with the sleeve of your shirt, he comes back and carries you to the couch where he’s set everything near. He places your leg onto the coffee table and you whine when he finally presses the gel pack around your ankle. Chanyeol does not say anything. He just purses his lips at the sound of crying and whining.
When your breathing is even, he hands you the pain medication and you take it. “So, you injured yourself.”
Unable to speak, you roll your eyes while emptying the glass. Well if it isn’t the obvious.
He beams with a smile of someone proud of himself. “Good thing I came by, just in time, didn’t I?”
“I probably wouldn’t have tripped myself if you hadn’t called, you know!” You say it to spite him and you expect Chanyeol to know that too.
He fakes outrage – probably. “Yah! I came by just to make sure you know what you’re doing! Is that how you appreciate?”
In exchange, you decide to feign innocence. “Appreciate what?”
“Appreciate me cleaning up after your James’ shit every damn time!” he answers back with a slight raise in his voice. It makes you break eye contact but you catch him shaking his head as he storms back to your kitchen for God knows what. “Forget it.”
He keeps it brief, but you are not going to miss the undertone in the way he says it. Your eyes widen from surprise. The truth is, all this time, Chanyeol’s never shared to you his thoughts about James. You never asked, but he’s one to never hold back in the first place. He’s the guy who says what he thinks, whether you want to hear it or not. It’s this lack of pretences that makes the both of you get along so well.
Also, as much as you do not want to become an inconvenience, you’d be really ungrateful to not feel even a bit of appreciation for what he does for you. The truth is, you do appreciate it all. You just never see the need to put it out there. It’s supposed to be implicit. Or at least you think it is. You guess that you just have to say so, starting today. With the relationship you have with Chanyeol, it can be that simple, right?
A simple thank you should do.
When he comes back, he’s brought a bowl of cereal and milk this time. “Pain meds should be taken with meals. This, unfortunately, is all you have, miss.”
You manage to ignore his incisive tone and think that now’s the time. “Thank you, Chanyeol,” you tell him, taking the bowl with both hands and pronouncing every syllable with all the feelings you can muster. He doesn’t look at you. He seems really interested in the bowl of cereal that you had now placed on the table. “And I’m happy cause I appreciate what you do for me all the time. Okay?”
He groans in response to your prompt, probably not used to you saying such things. He pouts, and again, you don’t know what’s keeping his eyes glued to the bowl of cereal. It makes you stir, not knowing what he is thinking, but somehow, you get the feeling that he doesn’t know what to say either.
“Well it’s about time!” he finally exclaims, playfully tapping your nose with the spoon he’s still holding. “Not everyone gets a Park Chanyeol for a butler, you know?”
The touch of cold to your nose isn’t all that pleasant, but you manage to shrug it off, glad that you two are back to normal.
💙💙💙
- end -
