#disheartening But! i went n had a shower. went back to the dryer. and started up a playlist on yt of my man elton john

[zincbot]

elton john fixed my dryer

[12miraenie]

Quandary

🎃Paring: Baekhyun x Reader 

🎃Genre: Fluff, Ghost AU 

🎃Word Count: 3k 

🎃Summary: What happens when you can suddenly see the ghost who’s been living in your house longer than you have? 

A/N: Part of the Month of the Supernatural prompts, where you can request here. This is for anon, enjoy! 🎃

🎃 Link to Masterlist 

🎃Request here 

“Bye, mom!”

The forced smile on your face disappeared the moment her taxi sped past the gate of your house. You tucked both hands into the back pockets of your jeans and sighed. Seriously, what kind of mom abandons her kid when they are about to turn 20 for a business conference? For over a month you’ve been thinking about this birthday when all of your families can finally be together to celebrate you passing the legal drinking age and joining the rest of your family for a drink.

That was the plan until your brother was called in for an internship and your dad miraculously lost his passport abroad. And now, your mom too. It’s not like they don’t love you or don’t care about you, judging from the pile of gifts on the table and the brand new car in the driveway that your brother got for you. You don’t want to sound like a spoiled brat complaining about not getting enough attention, but honestly, you just wished that you can have a conversation together on the same table instead of texts and things that you probably won’t ever use.

“Right, this means…takeout.” You mumbled to yourself and shut the door behind you.

You remember the look on your dad’s face distinctively whenever you craved pizza or chicken. After he forbid you and your brother from eating junk food, you were disheartened for a while until one night you found your brother munching on a chicken leg while watching a movie at 2 am. Where did your brother hide the takeout posters? 

“Aish, this jerk!” Your fisted your hair in frustration after opening probably the tenth drawer in the kitchen.

Suddenly one of the top cupboards above the stove cranked open slowly and then shut close with a loud slam. You jumped at the sound, a small yelp came out of your mouth. Putting a hand on your heart, you could feel its rapid beating.

“What the heck?” You turned to the side only to see the tightly shut windows. You froze and listened carefully, but the house was quiet like nothing happened just now. Shaking your head, you tried to get rid of the sudden shock and opened another drawer.

Bang.

You snapped your head up only to see the same drawer being opened and closed again. You hesitated for a second but still reached up to open the cupboard. There on the side laid a bunch of takeout flyers. You let out a shaky breath and sat on one of the chairs.

Are you surprised? Not really. Since you could remember, there has always been something weird going on in the house. The cereal you put on the table would be on top of the fridge, the jacket you tossed on the couch would be in your closet the next day, or the curtain would be drawn at as early as 7am on Saturdays.

One night your brother came home and shouted from the foyer, “Yah! You finally learned to put your shoes right!”

Did you? Why did you remember kicking them off and heading to sleep the moment you came home? When your parents and brother were asked if they have similar experiences, all you got was blank looks, a sigh, and “Y/N, we are not 5-year-old children.”

Reading through articles online and scrolling through forums only got you one conclusion. You are haunted.

You laughed, as long as the moon orbits around the earth, ghosts don’t exist. You probably put the cereal back, hang your jacket, and put your shoes back in their places without noticing. And your brother must have opened the curtains to annoy you on the weekends. The more you think, the more you were convinced.

Nothing is going on. You are overthinking, Y/N.

It was an hour later the food arrived. Putting the bags down in front of the TV, you smiled as the heavenly aroma attacked your nostrils. You ran like a giddy child to get utensils from the kitchen. However, when you returned the previously tied bags were open, revealing the takeout boxes.

Right, you opened them before getting up.

You bit into a piece of the heavenly fried chicken and almost sucked in a breath. It is undoubtedly the best thing you’ve ever eaten since you were born. What your dad’s deal with it? You shook your head and turned your attention back to the Mission Impossible marathon. You thought back on your brother and parents. Their loss for missing this.

You woke up face planted in the pillow and fished for your phone on the bedstand. Turning your head to the side, you squinted at the bright screen full of Happy Birthday messages from your friends and relatives. It sucks to be born in summer when everyone’s out on vacation. You couldn’t even go out with your friends.

A yawn left your mouth as you stepped out of the shower with a towel wrapped around your body. You had the best sleep ever, without waking up to the bright sunlight from outside the window. You couldn’t even remember the last time you woke up after 10am.

You brushed your hair and plugged in the hair dryer. Humming a familiar tune, you start drying your hair and looked into the mirror. From the reflection, you could see a man was leaning on the wall behind and staring at you.

You blinked your eyes and rubbed them, fully believing that he will be gone and the only thing you would see is the bathroom wall. When you opened your eyes again, you wished you hadn’t. Because the man was still standing behind and looking at you, only this time, he had his arms crossed.

The realization came too quick for your liking, your hands started trembling as your heartbeat picked up its rate, going off the chart in no more than two seconds. Despite the stoic face, on the inside you were more scared than you ever thought you could be. Breathing through your nose deeply, you unplugged the hair dryer and hit the guy the second you turned around.

Baekhyun’s POV

He hasn’t felt anything in a long time, but the burning sensation on his left arm felt more real than anything else. Before he can even take a look, something heavy hit his head. Baekhyun yelped and shielded his head with both hands, “Aish! What-Yah, stop!” But you were calling him all kinds of colorful names in a loud voice that easily covered his. He knew things being thrown to him, but they went past him that air and he couldn’t feel them like before.

“What the fuck?” You cursed, and then it was silence.

Baekhyun dared himself to open his eyes and came face to face to you staring at his mouth and eyes wide open in shock. You had one hand clutched around the towel and the other grabbing on the dryer tightly. Baekhyun came-no, floated-one step closer and you dropped the dryer to the floor.

“You…can see me?” Baekhyun asked in a timid but hopeful voice, his eyes shined brighter than before. Finally, after thousands of years, someone is able to see him! Excitement took over him as he went even closer.

Baekhyun watched you take small steps backward until your body touched the opposite wall. A triumphant smile took over his face, “You really can see me, right?”  

“Get away from me.”  

Baekhyun’s smile faltered. “No! Please, I promise I’m not a pervert or a stranger or even a person! I can’t harm you anyway.”

Gesturing wildly, he tried to convince you that he’s perfectly harmless, which did the opposite thing that he hoped for. Baekhyun punched the wall on his side, watching your eyes bulge into the size of glass balls.

“See? I can’t touch anything, they just go through me.” Baekhyun shrugged and put on the best smile he could muster, “Now can-“

Before he could even finish his sentence, your eyes rolled to the back, and you passed out.

Your POV

“Now that we are past introductions, we can be friends! Ah, it feels good to have someone actually hear you speak.”

You had a blanket wrapped tightly around you as you slipped on the cup of hot tea, watching the man-no, ghost dancing and twirling in the kitchen happily like he just got a hundred million dollars. There is no way that you could imagine any of this is true, that ghosts actually exist, that he’s been living here longer than you have, and the fact that you can actually see them.

“I don’t even know your name, ok? Can you please just sit down so we can talk?” Being this calm in front of a supernatural creature was not what you had imagined. The fainting probably took away all the shocks and scared you got from him. Your voice isn’t even trembling.

“My name is Baekhyun.”

You bit your lip watching the man who looks like he comes from the ancient Joseon era. Discarding everything else, you can’t help but notice how good looking he is. There’s no point denying that the blue silk robe weaved with golden threads accentuated his flawless features, and the sheen of slightly shining transparency makes him look ethereal. He just seems so different from all the Joseon people you learned from history class, who all had long beards, wrinkled faces, and bad money habits. Baekhyun, on the other hand, looks more like an actor in a historical drama.

Oh god, what are you thinking?

You cleared your throat, preventing “So, umm…who are you? I mean, are you a Joseon emperor or something?”

Baekhyun shook his head, “I am more like the general type.”

You arched an eyebrow, from the way he acts like a 5-year-old kid you would never have guessed that. Maybe the doubt is your eyes was obvious enough for him to explain, “I know, my brother thinks the same too.”  

“So um…do you just roam around here? Don’t you have some kind of mission or things to do?” You thought back on the ghosts or spirits portrayed in popular media, wondering if they are true or not.

Baekhyun laughed humorlessly. “Mission? You want me to live my life? My life has been over. For centuries. I’m dead. Yes, I am stuck between life and death because I couldn’t revenge for my brother, but you kind of stop thinking about it after 7 hundred years.”

Even though his face didn’t show it, the look in his eyes betrayed him. They were filled with sadness and the kind of nostalgia and missing someone that breaks your heart even from justing looking at him.

The atmosphere was becoming too tense for your liking, it felt like all the air molecules were pushing down on you. Baekhyun looked like he had just woken up from a bad dream, but he covered up quick enough for the pain in his eyes pass in a fleeting moment.

“So…last night the cupboards….it was you, right?”

Baekhyun nodded, the silk headband moved up and down with his head.

“So I am not ill after all. You said you’ve been here for the last 21 years, so you’ve been doing this all the time?“

He crossed his arms and jumped down-no, floated closer. That’s the only thing you still can’t get used to, the fact that he has legs and doesn’t use them to walk or at least, appear walking. Baekhyun looks surprisingly real, his skin has a normal color, and the texture of his silk robe looks intricate enough to touch, and every detail of his face is clear.

“The cereal boxes?“

“Yep.”

“My shoes?“

“Yep.”

“My clothes?”

“Yep. It’s gonna be the same answer to all the other questions you have. Yes, I also breathed down your neck whenever you got a wrong answer at your history homework.”

You sighed and pinched your nose, _it all makes so much sense now._ You thought back to the times you convinced yourself that you just have a good intuition in for history, ”That’s why I always get an A in history?“

“Then why didn’t you do that to all my homework?”

Baekhyun cleared his throat, “You wouldn’t have guessed that even after hundreds of years there are people still bad at counting numbers, right?“

You burst into laughter at Baekhyun who started to blush. Different from humans, the pink on his cheeks looked more transparent, almost a jelly-like color.

“Yah! At least you had a free housekeeper for twenty years. Don’t be a brat.” Baekhyun pouted, the annoyed frown on his face made him look more adorable ever.

Baekhyun feels like the long-lost best friend you never had. The fact that he’s been with you since birth felt creepy before, but you can tell that Baehyun is genuinely nice to be around with. Well, except times he’s annoying as hell.  

“Y/N…I want that.”

You shivered when Baekhyun breathed down your neck. Turning around, you gave him a hard stare.  

“No, Baekhyun. I need to finish this paper today. Plus you already have clothes. Go away.”  

Baekhyun huffed loudly when you closed the tab on a shopping site. Just when you thought he had gone to somewhere else, the screen of your computer glitched and went black.

“Yah! Byun Baehyun!” You fisted your hair in irritation, “I didn’t even save that paragraph!“

“Is something wrong?“

Your brother’s head appeared from behind the door and the pen you threw in Baekhyun’s direction magically hit his head instead.

“You were loud enough for me to hear through noise reduction headphones.”

Your eyes darted to Baekhyun, who was standing a few inches away from your brother and watching with a satisfied smirk on his face.

“Sorry. I was just annoyed with my _nuclear proliferation timelines. _”

He shrugged, “That’s why I told you to study business in college.”

You picked up the pen on the ground after your brother left and threw it to Baekhyun again. The plan to ignore him didn’t go well the moment he looked at you with those puppy eyes. The natural downturned shape didn’t help with your resolution as well. How come that it’s so hard to refuse him?

You rolled your eyes and sighed, “Fine.”

Somehow you ended up in Gucci. Somehow Baekhyun pointed to that 600 dollar sweater you think is absolutely disgusting and said he wanted it.

You let out an exasperated sigh and turned to the shopping assistant with a forced smile.

”I’ll take this, thanks.”

Baekhyun floated next to you happily while you stared at the receipt with a painful expression.

“Do you know how much I spent on you already? You are gonna get me bankrupt in no time.”

“But you love me. And…“ Baekhyun whispered in a sing-song voice, “I help you with your tests in school.“

You sighed. There’s no way you can argue with that. Ever since Baekhyun figured out he’s no longer bound to stay in the house when he’s with you, he’s been tagging along wherever you go. And soon comes the perk of being the only one who can see and hear a ghost when Baekhyun shouts answers to multiple choice questions to you during tests in exchange for food or clothes. You still jump sometimes because of how loud he can be as if other people can see him as well.

You set up the fire in a remote spot of the riverside park, where you burn everything for Baekhyun. Tearing apart the carefully wrapped box, you dropped the sweater into the fire watching it lit on flames. You sighed, people would think you are crazy if they see you like this.

“Happy?”

You turned around to Baekhyun when everything was reduced to black dust on the ground. Your breath hitched as you took him in. 

How comes he still looks good in an ugly sweater like that? He looks more like a runway model than anyone else. Your heart started going crazy watching him under the afternoon sunlight. It made him glow even more. Your eyes caught on the details of his face, the amber of his eye, the small scar on the side of his cheek, and the strands of hair covering half of his forehead. They looked more real than usual, almost like solid colors.

You stepped closer and looked him over once again. Where did that transparency go? He should look more invisible under strong light, but  Baekhyun looked completely the opposite. 

“Is it alright? Yellow looks nice, huh?”

You pointed to one side of his body, “There’s a ruffled edge on the left side.“

“Where?” Baekhyun turned his head back and forth but couldn’t get it right. You knew that he couldn’t touch anything, but at that moment something propelled you to reach out your hands to him.

Baekhyun jumped back like he was burned by a candlestick the moment your fingers touched the now straighten sweater. When you realized it, you froze too.

He looked down in confusion, why didn’t your hands go through him like everybody else?

“You were able to touch me just now, how?”

You stared at your hand in shock, the texture of cashmere still felt real on the tip of your fingers. Did you just touch Baekhyun?

You sucked in a breath when you reached out again, but this time to his hand. The slightly cold but unmistakably real sensation of his fingers against your palm scorched you like a fire. Your hand was shaking when Baekhyun reached out, but this time he felt your hand for real.

Your head snapped up to meet Baekhyun’s when his fingers were wrapped around your wrist gently. The coldness from where the tip of his fingers met your wrists reminded you that everything is real, that you and Baekhyun are actually able to touch each other.

“Am I…becoming human?”