I pray no tears in your dreams (I know you’ll fly high in your life) (oneshot)

[qiguai]

Title: I pray no tears in your dreams (I know you’ll fly high in your life)
Pairing Dongwoo (CNU)/Chansik (Gongchan)
Rating: G
Word Count: ~3400
Warnings: None
Summary: "if there are ten thousand people in this world who love you, i am one of those ten thousand. if there is one person in this world who loves you, that one is me. if there is no one in this world who loves you, then that must mean i no longer exist."
Notes: I started this for a meme challenge as an excuse to try writing B1A4 despite not knowing much about them, but I ended up enjoying it enough to expand the story. Obviously my characterization is subject to doubt considering how new this group is, but I hope you can enjoy the fic anyway. :)

When the teacher's back is turned for a moment, Jinyoung leans across the aisle to toss a note to Dongwoo two rows back. The girl in front of him catches it, but hands the note off with a smile that is only slightly annoyed. We should start a band. Without another thought, Dongwoo crushes the scrap of paper and shoves it inside his desk. At least once a day Jinyoung gets one of his crazy ideas; just yesterday he'd been mapping out his plan to build an underground shelter in his backyard. They fizzle out within days, just enough time to leave Dongwoo exhausted from helping his friend make his unsuccessful attempts to bring his grandiose plans to fruition. A band is a bit small-scale for Jinyoung, but it means potentially less craziness for Dongwoo, so he's fairly relieved at this latest idea. Jinyoung already has a notebook full of scribbled ideas for songs by the time they get to lunch. Dongwoo nods as he sips his milk and Jinyoung hums a few tunes. The music, much to Dongwoo's surprise, isn't all that bad. Good, even. Maybe Jinyoung has finally found his calling, but that doesn't give Dongwoo any more hope for his friend's new dream. Outgoing as he is, Jinyoung is surrounded by friends at all hours, but when it comes down to it, Dongwoo is the only one willing to follow Jinyoung's hare-brained schemes. "Walk home with me after school?" Jinyoung asks as they go separate ways for their last classes of the day. "Yep," Dongwoo calls back with a wave. Heaven knows what Jinyoung will put him through, but Dongwoo is looking forward to it, at least a little. Sitting around Jinyoung's kitchen table, helping Jinyoung find good rhyming words and giving positive and negative reactions to certain hummed patterns, Dongwoo can't help but find it all a little tame. He'd expected to be dragged to some punk apparel store, forced into studded leather and platform shoes, and paraded around town. Or at the very least he expected Jinyoung to try and convince him to "invest" his saved allowance in a guitar. He almost cheers when Jinyoung's cell phone starts to vibrate on the table, and whatever Jinyoung sees on the screen causes a grin to slowly spread across his face. Dongwoo knows that grin. That grin means trouble. And trouble means fun. Jinyoung's eyes glitter mischievously when he looks up at his friend. Finally. "Mind if we move to the garage for a bit?" he asks with obviously fake innocence. Dongwoo yawns and nods, feigning his own indifference. Jinyong probably sees right through it, he always does, but he doesn't show it. Dongwoo is expecting fireworks, mayhem, chaos, lots and lots of bruises. He expects Jinyoung to present him such a challenge that weeks from now he'll be shaking his head and wondering why, why he let Jinyoung get him into such shit. He doesn't expect to find two boys waiting for them outside Jinyoung's garage. One is familiar, a kid who's played against their class a few times during sports events. A beanie crammed over his head, Sunwoo grins an shoves his hands in his pockets. His nose wrinkles with the smile and there's something goofy in the way his lips curl over his teeth. The other, less familiar, has kind eyes and a warm smile. He offers his hand to shake and Jinyoung accepts it. "Junghwan?" "That's me," the boy replies with another smile. "I'm glad you found your way here okay." "No thanks to your directions," Sunwoo mumbles, but he's still grinning. Dongwoo chuckles. "He's talented at many things, but giving directions isn't one." Jinyoung growls and the other two cover their laughs with their hands. "You're actually serious about this," Dongwoo says, this time to Jinyoung. He shrugs, as if not sure himself. "Looks like it." He jabs a thumb at Junghwan. "I heard about him around school. People say he's a great singer." "And you?" Dongwoo asks Sunwoo. Sunwoo sticks out his chin, thumbs hooked in his pockets. "I rap." "Do people even do that in bands?" Sunwoo is ready to retort, but a loud crash from behind them cuts him off. A little ways down the sidewalk, a boy stands hunched over a large drum. Even from this distance, Dongwoo can see his back heaving as he pants. Very carefully, he pulls the drum back onto its side and, slowly, rolls it along the sidewalk. A smile brightens his face as he gets into a good pace and he speeds up. Five seconds later his fingers slip from the drum and it goes speeding away, right past Jinyoung and into Dongwoo's shin. The sharp metal bits smart as they knock off of his leg, but he hides his wince as the boy comes running up to them. "I'm so sorry!" he cries. He gingerly picks up the drum and rests it against the garage wall before returning to Dongwoo. "Are you okay?" "You seem more concerned with your drum," Dongwoo mutters before he can stop himself. The boy's eyes go wide in apology and horror and Dongwoo chides himself. Despite being Dongwoo's height, the kid's perfectly oval, calm face makes him seem years older, while his quiet voice makes him sound barely over twelve. He's the type of boy who goes unnoticed despite his good looks only because he doesn't draw any kind of attention to himself. Jinyoung plants himself between Dongwoo and the new kid and shrugs. "Ignore my jerk of a best friend. I'm Jinyoung. You must be Chansik." The smile that bursts out on the boy's face crinkles his eyes in a way that makes him almost glow with unrestrained joy. "Yeah. Thanks for inviting me!" The slight desperation in his excitement makes Dongwoo's throat seize up a little with guilt. Chansik's face goes a little pink when his voice squeaks, looking to the ground and brushing his hands on his jeans. Jinyoung laughs and turns to return to talking to the others. Chansik stands awkwardly a moment and then turns back to head toward the sidewalk. For a moment Dongwoo worries that the kid is so embarrassed he's running for it, but then he spies a stack of drumming equipment at the corner of Jinyoung's street. Chansik must have carried all of it all the way from his house, wherever that is. Ignoring Jinyoung's annoyed shouts behind him, Dongwoo jogs off to join Chansik at the pile of drums. The boy looks utterly perturbed at Dongwoo's sudden presence, even more so when Dongwoo grabs a few pieces of the drum set and grins. "I thought you could use some help," Dongwoo explains. The blush on Chansik's face makes his smile radiate an energy of its own. "Thanks," he breathes. While Dongwoo and Chansik set up the drums in Jinyoung's garage, Sunwoo runs back to his house for his bass and Jinyoung and Junghwan discuss Jinyoung's notebook of song ideas. With Junghwan's musical knowledge, they put the notes onto paper and Jinyoung's melodies take shape before their eyes. From his seat in front of the drum set, Dongwoo tosses in a few suggestions while they work out lyrics. By the time Sunwoo gets back, their first song is almost complete. "It's pretty rough, but it has promise," Jinyoung announces. Sunwoo whoops and Chansik grins from his seat behind the drums. Jinyoung magically produces a guitar from out of nowhere. A keyboard is dragged out, too, and only then does Dongwoo realizes how long Jinyoung has been planning this. Junghwan uses his fist as a makeshift microphone and takes his place at the front. Dongwoo feels lost as Jinyoung pulls the guitar around his shoulder and Sunwoo does the same with his bass. "What do I do?" Jinyoung frowns. "For now, stand there and look pretty. I'll teach you keyboard later." "If you want, I can leave," he sneers back. "Don't be a baby," Jinyoung laughs and shakes his head. Behind them, there's a light drumroll followed by a cymbal crash. Chansik sits smirking and gives them a light shrug. Dongwoo bursts out laughing and can't stop even when Jinyoung half-tackles him in frustration. It amazes Dongwoo, though, how quickly Chansik manages to fade into the background. It worries him, too. After practice, everyone is in high spirits. Junghwan and Jinyoung sit excitedly discussing their song as well as future others. Sunwoo hovers and strums his bass absentmindedly, reminding them to include sections for his rapping. They ignore him, but he doesn't mind. He just continues to remind them. It takes Dongwoo thirty minutes to realize that Chansik is missing and he curses under his breath. Sure enough, he finds the boy starting to make his tedious way back down the street with his collection of drums. He hasn't made it very far, but his face is flushed and his chest is heaving. When he sees Dongwoo, his eyes look exhausted. Guilty and exhausted. "Sorry! Were the others looking for me?" He wipes his hands on his jeans and shuffles nervously in place. "No, just me." Chansik's mouth opens, but nothing comes out. He blushes a darker shade of pink. "I was just wondering where you went," Dongwoo quickly corrects himself. That doesn't appear to comfort the boy as he can't seem to meet Dongwoo's eyes. "I don't know anything about writing music, so I thought I'd start heading back." His eyes meet Dongwoo's for a frantic moment. "Not that I don't want to hang out. I mean I don't want to get in the way." Dongwoo sighs and rolls his eyes. He walks over and puts an arm around Chansik's shoulder, a gesture he's sure he'll have to repeat countless times in the future before Chansik won't respond with a flinch. "If we're going to be friends, there's something you need to know." Chansik gulps, shrinking in Dongwoo's grasp. Dongwoo presses his forehead against Chansik's and can feel the boy's blush, a warm aura emitted by his skin. "You're never in the way." "Are you sure?" he asks, so quietly that Dongwoo is only able to hear him because of their close proximity. "Positive." Ensuring Chansik remembers that, though, turns out to be a full-time job. Never has Dongwoo met anyone to naturally intent on being invisible as Gong Chansik. The most frustrating thing about Dongwoo's new friend is how Chansik often fades away without meaning to. The five of them will be practicing, and Dongwoo won't realize Chansik is missing until fifteen minutes later he's running around the backyard shouting his name. He finds Chansik cornered by a not-so-friendly neighborhood dog at the farthest point in the yard and has to chase away the beast to get his friend back. Chansik doesn't mean to do it; he just doesn't stand out. Dongwoo notices it at school, too, as it turns out that Dongwoo had been passing by Chansik's locker every single day all year and had never noticed the boy, though he discovers, after becoming friends with him, that Chansik is quite often in the hallway when Dongwoo is walking by. Dongwoo gets himself in the habit of stopping to talk to him, and is amazed at how no one else does the same. Plenty of people wave or shout out to Dongwoo while they chat, but no one so much as glances at Chansik. A friend will walk by and Dongwoo will will them with his mind to say something, anything to or about Chansik, but ends up introducing them to alleviate his own growing anger. In order to counter-act Chansik's invisibility, Dongwoo becomes an expert Chansik-detector. He goes out of his way to look for the boy, even when they're just hanging out. Jinyoung slaps him on the shoulder for glancing around constantly when the five of them sit down for a movie. Dongwoo can't help it; he's convinced that one day, Chansik is going to blow away in the wind and never come back. He has dreams sometimes about it. Nightmares. He'll be talking to Chansik at school, look away for a second and turn to find Chansik gone. He'll ask the students around them and they'll give him dumb looks. What boy? Dongwoo hadn't been talking to anyone. Chansik will disappear and it'll be as if he were never there in the first place. His dreams bother him. Chansik bothers him. The fact that Dongwoo is seemingly the only person in the universe who is so aware of Chansik's existence bothers him. His growing awareness of his friend bothers him. He'll know when Chansik is outside before the boy even knocks on the door. No one points it out, but Dongwoo knows that his obsession with talking to and being with Chansik is starting to garner unwanted attention. Jinyoung watches Dongwoo with a new uneasiness. There's a knowing look in Jinyoung's nervous eyes that is slightly amused in a way Dongwoo doesn't like. Meanwhile, Chansik is clueless. Clueless and constantly fading. "It just drives me crazy," Dongwoo explains with forced calm to Jinyoung on one of their rare afternoons alone. The band is practicing long hours every day. They're getting good, too. They have their first real gig in two weeks and as much as Dongwoo would like to focus on mastering hew new keyboard skills, he's distracted. "That's obvious," Jinyoung says as he continues to pour over a new song he's been working on. "I'm serious," he groans. "No one notices the kid. Even you guys. You're his best friends but you always forget he's there." "That's just how Chansik is. I think he prefers it that way." That shuts Dongwoo up a moment, because he knows it's true. Chansik has expressed several times discomfort at how much Dongwoo notices him, though over time he's gotten more comfortable. More people paying attention would probably only upset the boy. But still. "If even just one other person bothered to pay attention to him as much as I do, I'd be sane. I swear." At that, Jinyoung looks up. "How about me?" Dongwoo blinks. "What?" "How about if I try and pay him more attention? Will that make you feel better?" Shifting in his seat, Dongwoo swallows and thinks. He frowns and mumbles, "Yeah, I guess." "Then that's what we'll do." But Jinyoung isn't smiling. His mouth is a tight frown and his eyes scrutinize Dongwoo intently, as if he already knows that it's the wrong answer. Jinyoung stays true to his word. The next day, he's the first to run to greet Chansik when the boy arrives. He helps the bewildered drummer carry his things into the garage and chats him up the entire way. How was Chansik's day? Did he have a lot of homework? Did he have any input on their new song, since they'd forgotten to ask him yesterday? Chansik throws Dongwoo a panicked look over his shoulder as Jinyoung hurries him off. Dongwoo opens his mouth to call out to him, but nothing comes out. He should feel better. Relieved. But he doesn't, not a bit. Sunwoo and Junghwan arrive soon after, providing a needed distraction. They practice for a few hours before collapsing in the garage. Dongwoo instinctively moves to sit with Chansik, but Jinyoung cuts in between them and pulls the boy by the arm to go get bottles of water with him. Sunwoo asks Dongwoo something about school, or maybe their practice, Dongwoo isn't sure because he doesn't hear his friend. He's too busy watching Chansik be dragged off into the house. Jinyoung is trying to piss him off, Dongwoo is sure of it. It's an invasion. This isn't what he meant, and yet at the same time it's exactly what he meant. Jinyoung is paying just as much attention to Chansik as Dongwoo used to, but it isn't right. Chansik doesn't like it. Dongwoo can tell Chansik doesn't like it. Sunwoo snaps his fingers in front of Dongwoo and he jumps. Junghwan is watching the two of them with concern, and at that very moment Jinyoung and Chansik return from the kitchen. Jinyoung locks eyes with Dongwoo and immediately smirks. Chansik, oblivious to the tension in the room, cheerfully sets down the water bottles and begins to hand them out. When he goes to bring one to Dongwoo, they lock eyes for a moment and Dongwoo falters. "I'm going to get some air," he says, still staring at Chansik. He ignores the offered bottle and moves around the boy toward the door. "It's stuffy in here," he mutters to Jinyoung, who grins at him from the door to the house. In Jinyoung's backyard, the air is cool and the dark sky is bright with stars. Dongwoo's throat is dry and he wishes he'd taken the water bottle, but there's no way he's going back inside. Chansik's face, confused and a little hurt, always with that calm seriousness that makes him seem so much older than he is, flashes before Dongwoo's eyes and he groans. "You're an idiot." For a second, Dongwoo thinks he's accidentally spoken his thoughts aloud, but the voice is too different. Soft and gentle, but with just a hint of sarcasm this time; it's a voice Dongwoo knows too well. It's the voice he's learned to detect even at the faintest whisper. Chansik is grinning when Dongwoo turns toward him. He's flushed, but obviously happy about something. Dongwoo's stomach does a strange flip when Chansik turns his face just a little into the light. "I was about to head back in," he chokes, his throat suddenly very dry. "I was thirstier than I thought." Chansik just smiles, blocking the path back. "Just going to get my water." Chansik takes a step forward. "Really, really thirsty," Dongwoo rasps. The other boy moves and Dongwoo flinches. Chansik holds out a water bottle and holds in a laugh while Dongwoo feels a sheepish flush warm the back of his neck. "Ah, thanks." "You're welcome," Chansik sighs. He steps up beside Dongwoo to stare up at the clear sky. "I meant that, you know. You're an idiot." Dongwoo smirks. "What did I do to deserve that?" Chansik shakes his head. "Nothing, I guess, but you should know that I really hate it when people pay too much attention to me. It's embarrassing." Out of the corner of his eye he sees Chansik blush. Dongwoo's throat tightens. He should have known better. Chansik always looked uncomfortable when Dongwoo went to such great lengths to talk to him. It was none of his business, after all. "Oh?" "I hate it more than anything," he explains. "Therefore you owe me an apology." The blood pounds in his ears and he can feel a burning heat in his cheeks as he says, quietly, "I'm sorry." "I forgive you," Chansik replies immediately with a brightness that surprises Dongwoo. "I forgive you for telling Jinyoung to act so... weird." He laughs, peeking at Dongwoo. "And now I believe you owe me another apology." This time, Dongwoo frowns and gives his friend an exasperated laugh. "For what this time?" Chansik glances away, his usual nervous calm returning. "For making me not hate it." He turns and glances at Dongwoo, then back down. "For making me like it when someone paid attention to me." The laugh that escapes Dongwoo is explosive and he can't stop it once it starts. He's surprised when the others don't come running out to see what's up, though he suspects that Jinyoung told them to stay out of it. When he regains composure, Chansik's face is bright red and his eyes indignant. Dongwoo puts his arm around Chansik's shoulders, by now a familiar, easy gesture. Chansik doesn't even flinch, doesn't shrink within himself. Instead, the boy smiles and lets out a small laugh of his own. Grinning, Dongwoo presses his forehead gently against Chansik's and says, quietly, "I'm not going to say sorry for that." Chansik sighs and shakes his head, their foreheads still pressed together. He looks Dongwoo in the eye and sticks out his tongue. "I figured as much. Idiot." With that, Dongwoo downs the contents of his water bottle in three gulps and keeps his arm tight around Chansik. They head back into the garage together, where the five of them start a new song. Jinyoung's idea, of course.