Behind Blue Eyes; baekyeol [1/5]

[aprilclash]

Behind Blue Eyes (1/5)



We’re all kind of weird and twisted and drowning.
- Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

i. BELLICOSE
(adj) aggressive, hostile

“Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed.“

“Oh, dear, your accent is awful.”

Chanyeol needs the money. Nothing else matters. Chanyeol needs the money and Mrs. Kim pays an awful lot of money and that’s everything he cares about.

“Thrice, and once the hedge-pig whined.“

“Is my mother not paying you enough? I know you can afford a tutor. It would really help, you know?”

He needs the money. He repeats the words, one by one, in his head, when things get difficult, when Baekhyun gets difficult. He realizes, at times like this, that Mrs. Kim is not buying his time, his patience or his loyalty. Mrs. Kim is buying his humiliation for her son’s amusement. That, too, is fine, as long as Chanyeol gets what he needs. He’s never been picky about the means as long as he can get to his own end.

“Harpier cries, ‘Tis time, ‘tis time.“

“Why did you slow down?”

“There’s a figure. Do you want me to describe it?”

Pink lips curl in a disdainful pout. Baekhyun wants him to describe it, but he doesn’t want to ask. Chanyeol sighs.

“The three witches are dancing around the cauldron.”

“I never asked but you sure are doing a poor job at it. You didn’t describe the witches, or the cauldron, or the background.” Baekhyun’s tone is awfully petulant and Chanyeol wants nothing more than to interrupt him, just to make him shut up, but he doesn’t think he can endure another nervous fit today. “Come on, then. At least tell me about the colors, don’t be useless.”

Chanyeol bites his lips.

“There are no colors, it’s a black and white figure.”

“You’re lying. You’re an awful liar. You really want to get fired, don’t you, Park Chanyeol?”

It’s a game, all of this. To Baekhyun, the game is how far can I push Chanyeol before he snaps? but to Chanyeol the game is how much can I endure before I kill the little wretch here and now?

But Chanyeol needs the money. He knows and Baekhyun knows and that’s why he’s here, staring at Baekhyun even though he knows it makes him mad. Baekhyun can’t stare back, doesn’t even know where to turn to stare back, but he can always feel Chanyeol’s eyes on his face. He has a sixth sense for it.

“Stop it.”

“Stop doing what?”

“Stop it, Chanyeol, I’m not in the mood for games.”

“If only, Baekhyun-ssi.”

For a moment, Baekhyun’s chiseled features morph into a mask of rage, fists tightening on the luscious fabric of the sofa cushions as anger fills his whole body. Except his eyes. Baekhyun’s eyes are always empty.

“I wish I was paying you, so I could personally dock your salary.”

“Then you wouldn’t have anyone to torment, and you’d be lonely, Baekhyun. Baekhyun-ssi,” he adds, after a moment of silence, the cold politeness hitting Baekhyun like a slap.

Chanyeol is treading on thin ice and he knows. It’s not like he doesn’t know how to win this game, but he can’t afford to deal with the consequences of humiliating Baekhyun. The last time he tried, the retaliation lasted two weeks. Two weeks without seeing Baekhyun are two weeks without money and Chanyeol can’t possibly afford to pay the bills and the rent without Mrs. Kim’s money. And yet those two weeks he felt lighter than he ever felt in the last two years. He spent his newly acquired free time in the streets of Hongdae, laughing and dancing and being irresponsible and free, drinking with friends and going out with girls and just being outside, in the sun. Away from the heavy darkness permeating the Kim estate and its foreign western style. Away from suffocating velvet curtains and satin sheets and Persian carpets and dust. From the invaluable collection of dolls Mrs. Kim keeps in her home, the most precious one being her son.

Baekhyun can’t see the dolls. He can’t see his own face either. Chanyeol wonders if someone ever told him how much he resembles one of his mother’s porcelain puppets, precious, expensive, collector’s edition. Baekhyun is blind. Not completely - not yet, at least - but enough for him to be an ass about it. He can see vague, blurry looking shapes, if there’s enough light. He walks in the thick darkness of his house like a lost spirit cursed to a limbo of fog and night.

Chanyeol loathes the house, an old, Western style mansion built in the Thirties by Mrs. Kim’s grandfather. He hates its unnecessarily expensive furniture that screams of nonchalant wealth, of old money and ostentation. He hates the owner and his employer, Mrs. Kim, her magenta-stained thin lips and her perfect perm. He hates the maids, the butlers and the security staff, but more than anyone else he hates Baekhyun, who lives in the darkness and doesn’t want to be told the truth. Baekhyun, who only has Chanyeol to talk to.

After those two weeks, Chanyeol came back, groveling and begging for forgiveness, and Baekhyun pretended not to care about him, but all the maids had a different story to tell.

“He didn’t want to eat anymore. Mrs. Kim was worried he would do something extreme. It wouldn’t even be the first time,” they said, hushed and allusive. And Chanyeol wanted to ask, he wanted to pry, maybe he even wanted to care, but he didn’t.

He can’t make it personal if he wants to keep this job. More than that, he can’t feel pity for Baekhyun. Baekhyun would know - he would know - and his revenge would be sharp, sharper than his already thorny words. Baekhyun’s defeats hurt his enemies as much as they hurt him.

Chanyeol doesn’t feel pity. He feels anger, a tiny bit of hatred, like a pin stinging his chest sometimes, and an overwhelming, boisterous fascination. He feels the same kind of destructive desire children feel in china shops, inability to handle crystals paired with careless bravery and the unstoppable need to touch shiny, pretty, fragile things. And Baekhyun is all of that. Shiny, pretty, and incredibly fragile. Quite dangerous. If he breaks, shards are bound to pierce skin and flesh until they reach Chanyeol’s heart. If he breaks, maybe he will become even prettier. (Or maybe he’s so pretty because he’s already broken.)

Chanyeol tries to remember this is still a game. Baekhyun is angry, lonely and bored. Picking at Chanyeol’s weaknesses, pulling the strings to make him dance and pushing him until he snaps are his only sources of amusement. He’s a little shit and he likes being an ass on purpose. He likes bringing Chanyeol to the breaking point, when the only thing left to do is to snap and leave. The recoil hits Baekhyun too, because Chanyeol always comes back, but, until he does, Baekhyun is the one who’s left alone. In this game, winning means losing but Baekhyun doesn’t mind the final outcome, he only cares about playing the game. Chanyeol, on the other hand, only plays to win.

“So rude, Park Chanyeol. You can watch your mouth or leave.”

Chanyeol needs the money. Only that. And as long as he gets the final prize, he doesn’t mind playing by Baekhyun’s rules.

“I apologize.”

“That’s better. Keep reading.”

ii. ELDRITCH
(n) eerie, uncomfortably weird

Chanyeol is not supposed to ask questions. Not to Mrs. Kim, not to the rest of the staff, not to Baekhyun - especially not to Baekhyun - and not even to himself. He’s not paid to question things. He’s paid to visit, three to four times every week, double fee during the weekends. Chanyeol’s job is, essentially, to keep Baekhyun company. He stays with him for a few hours, reads him books, sometimes helps him with dinner or accompanies him during his sporadic, short walks in the garden. They’re supposed to talk, have conversation, but Mrs. Kim doesn’t like it when they talk too much.

“Mrs. Kim is worried you’ll put strange ideas in her son’s head,” explained Sunyoung, one of the youngest maids, at the end of Chanyeol’s trial month. “If you want to keep the job, you should do exactly as she says.”

Chanyeol wanted to keep the job, so he stopped asking questions. That doesn’t mean he stopped wondering why a boy like Baekhyun would be home schooled when his family has enough means to send him to the best college in the country. Why they never signed him up for mobility classes, why he knows how to read braille but not how to make a phone call. Why he’s not allowed to watch television, why he doesn’t have any friends or why he never goes out.

“Don’t you have a phone?” he asked Baekhyun, once, back when they could still have been friends.

“A phone? Does it look like I can use a phone?”

“No, I mean... There are special phones for... people like you.”

That was the first time he saw something fleeting, confusion, fury and a dash of betrayal, clashing violently on Baekhyun’s face. He wondered, briefly, if Baekhyun knew there were phones for people like him. Or schools for people like him. Or opportunities for people like him. It didn’t sound like something anyone would ever tell him, so Chanyeol tried.

The following day, a maid came by and told him Mrs. Kim wasn’t happy with what he had told her son. That he was forgiven because it was only the first time, but he was forbidden from doing it again.

As today, Chanyeol doesn’t understand why a mother would keep her son trapped in an old house like this, with no television, no internet, no friends. He can’t ask - no questions Chanyeol, think about the money - and he doesn’t really care for Baekhyun enough to ignore orders and risk to be dismissed just for his sake.

Sometimes, though, sometimes he’s in a good mood and Baekhyun is in a good mood and they talk. For real. Chanyeol talks about his university, his roommates, his friends sometimes. Baekhyun is curious, but he doesn’t like when Chanyeol talks about his life outside. He’s either too jealous or too bitter, and they end up fighting afterwards, but Chanyeol feels a little better at the end of their altercations. As if, in unveiling that world Baekhyun will never be able to see, he’s doing a good deed.

“Are you telling me you’ve never eaten tteokbokki?”

Baekhyun clicks his tongue and pretends to act all high and mighty to cover the fact that he has no idea what ‘tteokbokki’ is.

“It sounds like food for peasants.”

“It is food for peasants, but it’s good.”

“I highly doubt it.”

“I’m not forcing you to eat it.”

It’s not like Mrs. Kim would ever allow takeaway food in her house.

Chanyeol jokes about it with Sunyoung on the subway.

“What is that woman’s problem anyway?” Sunyoung goes tense next to him for a moment. They’re alone in the car, surrounded by the whistle of wind inside the tunnels. Six stops left before they change to a local train to reach Mrs. Kim’s estate in the open countryside.

“You know, we’re not supposed to ask questions.”

“There’s no one here, are you really saying you don’t talk about it with the other girls? I know the maids like to gossip and it doesn’t take a genius to notice our employer is crazy.”

She shushes him, eyes going wide before she looks around warily, but they’re really alone. She still leans towards Chanyeol, whispering in a confidential tone, as if she’s afraid someone could hear even in the empty car.

“They say she’s sick. Paranoid. Sometimes she sees things that are not there. She... started having episodes after the President left her, but things really worsened after young Master Baekbom too left the house.” She sighs, lost in memories. Baekhyun’s brother is a ghost in the mansion, his absence heavier than his presence was. Chanyeol has never met him but he already doesn’t like him.

“Did you know him?”

“Yes, I arrived here a few months before he left and I got to meet him. He was a smart boy and a good brother. He asked me to take care of Baekhyunnie for him. When he was here, he always insisted to take his brother out and teach him things, but since he left Mrs. Kim is so obsessed about everyone leaving her alone that she doesn’t even let Baekhyun go out on his own. She’s ruining him.”

Chanyeol would say Baekhyun is ruining himself. He doesn’t have to stay there and listen to his mother, after all.

“He’s twenty-one. He could leave.”

“How? He’s blind. Where would he go? Be realistic. He has no friends.”

“What about his father?”

“It’s... complicated. He’s a politician.” Chanyeol nods. He didn’t really connect the dots when he started to work for Mrs. Kim, but he knows her ex husband. He works with Chanyeol’s father. “I know he is,” he says. “A very powerful one. He has the means to help his son, so why…”

“Mrs. Kim’s family allegedly collaborated with Japanese before the war. I mean, no one ever dared to accuse them of anything, but if something like that was out he would be the former husband of a chinilpa and his political career would be over. That’s why he can’t go against Mrs. Kim.” Sunyoung takes a sip of her grapefruit juice and looks at Chanyeol with big eyes. “You shouldn’t think too much about our Baekhyunnie. You’ll only get hurt.”

“I don’t and I won’t, don’t worry.”

The entire car rattles and howls as it comes to a stop. A pleasant voice announces the end of the line. Sunyoung adjusts her hat. She looks brighter in her own clothes. The grey uniform really mortifies her. It’s old and dusty like the house she works in.

Mrs. Kim spent most of her youth in Europe. That, at least, explains her taste in decor, but there’s something oppressive about that house, something eerie. It’s too dark, too heavy, too foreign. It feels like a prison.

“Why do you work there, Sunyoungie?” he asks, as they emerge from the underpass. Grass and field flowers welcome them. They’ve grown between the rails, on the platform, in the fields all around them. Sunyoung stretches like a cat in the sun.

“Same reason as you, I think. I needed the money. My family is not very well-off and university was too expensive, even with the scholarship. I thought I would do just a semester or two, because the pay was good enough to allow me to stop working until I graduated, but then I realized... Mrs. Kim was paying me more than I would earn if I were a lawyer.”

“Is it worth it?”

Sunyoung doesn’t answer. The train arrives. They talk about Sunyoung’s sister afterwards, and the daughter she’s just given birth to. Sunyoung thanks Chanyeol for accompanying her to Seoul.

“Thank you, oppa. The capital is too scary for a poor countryside girl like me. I would’ve been lost without you.”

“Whenever you want.”

They part ways at the main gate.

When he opens the door to Baekhyun’s room, he’s greeted by a cold, thin silence. Baekhyun looks positively murderous.

“You’re late,” he says. It’s dark and the armchair is too big for him. It swallows him whole and Chanyeol can only hear his voice. “What were you doing?”

Chanyeol doesn’t say he was with Sunyoung. He probably doesn’t need to. Some other maid must have told him. They all like to gossip too much. “I’m, like, two minutes late,” he murmurs.

“Still late.”

There’s a bottle of wine in his hands. Baekhyun looks like someone who only drinks expensive wine from crystal flutes, but with no one pouring for him he has to settle for drinking from the bottle. He takes a long sip, wiping his mouth clean with his fingers afterwards.

So, angry and maybe a little tipsy. The perfect combination. Chanyeol knows when he’s made a false move. For all his power plays Baekhyun is actually quite easy to read. Chanyeol can’t fool himself into believing Baekhyun really cares about him, but he knows how much Baekhyun can be possessive, in a selfish, childish way.

“I am sorry, Baekhyun...ssi.”

He holds his breath, wondering if he’s said too much. Baekhyun always demands a certain level of polite coldness from him, but honorifics, on odd days, irks him to no ends. Baekhyun’s eyebrow quirks up. It’s one of those days.

“I am sure it must be immensely satisfying to laugh at my back with one of the maids, Park Chanyeol. But it’s not what you’re paid for.”

Chanyeol coughs, trapped between another round of apologies and an explanation. He should apologize and end it there. If he tries to explain, he’ll have to spend even more time talking about it and that will make Baekhyun angrier and moodier and that’s not what Chanyeol wants.

“I wasn’t laughing at your back with one of the maids. We happened to take the same train.”

“Well, she happened to take a spare morning just to visit you in Seoul.”

“She was visiting her sister in the hospital, can’t you show a little humanity for once in your life?”

Baekhyun throws the glass against the wall with a frustrated scream. He stays there, gasping, terribly angry, blind. His chest heaves up and down and he’s at the same time pretty and ugly, sharp like a knife and cut open. Even with all the people fussing around him, Baekhyun is always alone. And he’s always angry.

“Clean everything up and send me Sunyoung.”

“Is that really necessary?” he asks. That girl likes you! Why do you do this to the people who are close to you? Why do you do this to yourself?

“Go!”

Chanyeol doesn’t give a fuck about Baekhyun and his hurt feelings. But he knows Sunyoung cares. He knows Sunyoung secretly pities him, but she also wishes something better for him. The problem is, Baekhyun can smell pity coming in waves from the people around him. He was raised in pity. There’s nothing more offensive in the world for him.

Chanyeol calls Sunyoung and he can see her pale. She doesn’t say anything. She knows she’ll cry. Chanyeol doesn’t say anything either. Everything he says will only worsen Baekhyun’s already terrible mood. He feels a little sorry for her, but not enough to lose his job in a vain attempt at defending one of the maids from Baekhyun’s whimsical attitude.

When the door closes behind him, Chanyeol rests his head against it and takes a deep breath. He can still hear Sunyoung’s first muffled words. He walks away when they become sobs. He feels sick. The air is suffocating, the darkness solid behind his eyelids. It’s the house, it must be the house. Maybe it’s cursed. A house like a doomed castle that turns everyone inside in monsters or ghosts. What will Chanyeol be?

I only need the money, I can do this.

iii. TRUCULENT
(adj) overly aggressive, eager to fight

Sometimes Chanyeol thinks about pushing Baekhyun to his knees and fucking his pink, pouty, dirty mouth until he’s choking on cock. Sometimes he thinks about prying all the layers from Baekhyun, tearing apart his coldness like silk, unfastening his poisonous words like the buttons of his shirt and peeling away his secrets and underwear in one go. He wants to see what lies underneath, he wants to bite and mouth at the tender white skin and at Baekhyun’s soul at the same time.

He thinks Baekhyun knows, sometimes. When he chews on his lips until they’re full and red, when he lies on the sofa with his shirt only half-buttoned and his legs obscenely spread, when Chanyeol hesitates, an infinitesimal moment, too lost in Baekhyun’s perfect face, and Baekhyun cocks his head and smirks like he knows, as if to taunt Chanyeol.

Chanyeol wonders if he really knows, but how can he? He can’t see Chanyeol nor himself, so how does he know exactly what face to make, what position to assume to bring Chanyeol to the brim of madness with deadly precision? For a blind boy, he is either incredibly perceptive or incredibly naive. Or maybe he’s just innocent, unaware of what he’s doing to Chanyeol’s self-control.

Chanyeol is only the last and the least important of the people Baekhyun’s mother pays to take care of her child. Makeup artists, hairdressers, stylists and even a personal trainer for blind people. They wash him, they dress him, they turn him back and forth and they make him pretty, just like a doll. Just like a doll, he lets them do whatever they want.

He only perks up, dark, hollow eyes suddenly curious, when he recognizes Chanyeol’s steps. To Chanyeol, and only to him, Baekhyun talks. To Chanyeol, and only to him, Baekhyun is human. A terrible human, maybe. He is bitchy. He is rude and obnoxious and impossibly cruel, like only children can be. But only to Chanyeol.

“When did it start?”

“When I was born, apparently. It is a degenerative disease.”

“Yes, but when did it start to...” He hesitates, hopes he didn’t say a word too much. Baekhyun hesitates too, maybe to enjoy Chanyeol’s uneasiness.

“I was fourteen. My parents were divorcing. Mother used my condition to get custody and father let her because a blind son was useless for his career. And here I am.”

He cleans an invisible speck of dust from his arm and takes the fork. Chanyeol has already cut the steak for him. In the two years he’s worked for Baekhyun he’s never seen the boy eat food that wasn’t made by his mother’s personal chef. No ramyun or kimchi jjigae or bibimbap. He doesn’t think Baekhyun can use chopsticks but he’s glad he’s not the one who has to teach him. Having him eat with fork and spoon is already difficult.

After three failed attempts, he leads Baekhyun’s hand holding the fork towards the pieces of meat and back to his mouth, hovering around to see whether Baekhyun still needs help.

“You can sit down. I can eat on my own.”

“Yes.”

“You’re still standing, Park Chanyeol. I can hear you breathing on my neck.”

“Your mother said to make sure-”

“Are you on her side or mine?”

Hers, obviously. But Chanyeol still takes three steps back and sits down, watching Baekhyun relax when he hears the sound of him flopping on the pouf.

“Do you want me to read you something else, Baekhyun-ssi?” It’s so strange to use honorifics to someone of his same age. Strange for him, stranger for Baekhyun probably. But Baekhyun likes strange and finds solace in awkwardness and Chanyeol is paid to indulge him. “Romeo and Juliet maybe, it’s been a while since the last time...”

Baekhyun shakes his head and angles his body towards the sound of Chanyeol’s voice.

“My mother has been talking,” he says. “About getting me a girl.”

His tone is purposefully neutral, as if he’s talking about a pony or a new car.

“A girl, sir?”

“A wife. She wants me to give her grandchildren and stuff. I think the novelty of having a blind son is wearing off and she wants someone else to control. But it’s too soon for a wife and so I should start with a girlfriend maybe.”

Chanyeol doesn’t answer and Baekhyun frowns and Chanyeol knows - he knows - Baekhyun would give anything to be able to see his reaction. Chanyeol is glad Baekhyun can’t see his reaction, because he doesn’t think he’d be able to hide the ugly shadow darkening his face. He imagines Baekhyun’s white, pale arms wrapped around someone else, his head buried among plush thighs, his lips, no more pink but red and bitten and parted in a moan. He wonders if Baekhyun would feel the orgasm wash over him in a different way, every other sense heightened because he can’t see. It’s an exciting, wild thought.

It’s fucked up, it’s so fucked up. Baekhyun smirks, as if he knows, as if the truth is crystal clear in the tense silence between them.

“Wouldn’t that make you happy, Chanyeol? You wouldn’t be so alone in this big house, dealing with a cruel jerk like me.”

Chanyeol doesn’t force a smile on his lips. It comes naturally. But it’s bitter. “Wouldn’t it make you happier, Baekhyun-ssi? You would have someone else paid to endure your presence, after all.” Baekhyun’s smile too comes naturally and is bitter. “Doesn’t really make a difference to me if I have one whore or two. Pour me some wine, Chanyeol, and shut up.”

Chanyeol’s hold on the bottle wavers and tightens so much he almost breaks it. Baekhyun reclines his head on the pillow and looks every inch the smug motherfucker he is. He can’t see beyond his nose - hell, he can’t even see his nose - but he can still manage to look like he could break Chanyeol in half with nothing but a smile and a carefully chosen word.

Whore. He called Chanyeol a whore. Chanyeol closes his eyes and dreams of taking Baekhyun apart with his fists, of ruining him for everyone else, of calling him a whore and watch him begging for it. It would be nice to show this pathetic, spoiled kid that money can’t buy friends, nor happiness.

But that would be too easy. Breaking Baekhyun would be easy. He’s so thin, so skinny, all skin and bones and malice. Breaking Baekhyun would be useless because Baekhyun breaks himself and puts himself back every day, more fragile and more unbreakable than before. Chanyeol wants to melt Baekhyun instead, to corrupt him, to lose him until he can never find his way back. Chanyeol wants so many things. He wants himself to remember he’s only here for the money. He wants Baekhyun to shut up. Sometimes, in the privacy of his mind, he just wants Baekhyun.

iv. QUERULOUS
(adj) complaining, whining

There’s something wrong in the way Baekhyun looks most of the time, in the orchestrated, tailored grace linen shirts fall on his shoulder and chest, in the perfect curl of his hair, in the bow of his lips, shining slightly with chapstick and parted in a silent sigh.

There’s something wrong, something dehumanizing, in the way Baekhyun’s mother has him dolled up, wearing designer clothes, hair styled and a firm, toxic smile, like a model in a grunge photoshoot. Vanity is for people who can look at themselves in a mirror the way Baekhyun never will. Vanity is useless for a blind boy.

Vanity is for his mother, and what Baekhyun has left is the anger.

“Don’t pity me,” he screams, he shrieks, he thrashes, during his worse fits. “Don’t you dare pity me, Park Chanyeol!”

Chanyeol stays with him - he’s the only one who’s allowed - until Baekhyun has run out of venom, until Baekhyun starts running in circles to purposefully lose his sense of direction in the room he’s inhabited for years. No matter how well he knows it, all it takes is two spins and suddenly he doesn’t know where he is and he can run, run and hope to crash against one of the walls and break his neck, end it there and then. Chanyeol is always there to catch him.

Baekhyun doesn’t cry. He doesn’t say he wants to die. Baekhyun sees nothing and does nothing but everything is painfully obvious, in his slumped shoulders and his empty eyes.

Chanyeol stays.

“I don’t want your pity,” says Baekhyun in the end, his words hoarse and tired in the midday night of his room. “I might have lost my sight, but I have everything else. I can have everything I want.”

Chanyeol doesn’t pity Baekhyun. The maids pity Baekhyun, his father and brother pity Baekhyun, his mother too, when she remembers he’s her son and not only her prettiest doll. Baekhyun pities himself more than anyone else can. Chanyeol is not paid to tell Baekhyun the truth.

But.

“What do you want?”

It all comes to that. What does he want?

Baekhyun doesn’t answer. He can have everything he wants but he doesn’t know what he wants? How foolish of him.

They spend the rest of the afternoon listening to the sound of Baekhyun’s ragged breaths until he falls in a nervous, restless slumber. Chanyeol doesn’t wake him up when he leaves.

v. RECREANT
(n) coward

Sometimes Baekhyun is in a good mood. It doesn’t happen very often, but it happens. Chanyeol savors those moments like candies in his mouth, feeling the sweetness spread on his tongue before he cracks them with his teeth, with words too loud, too heavy and too clumsy.

“Do you want me to tell you their colors?” he says, and Baekhyun freezes and his hold on the rose tightens to the point of crushing the flower.

“If you wish to do so,” he says, but Chanyeol already knows he’s said a word too much. He should’ve let Baekhyun enjoy the flowers in peace. They don’t go out often, but when they do Baekhyun is moody and easily irritable.

It’s easier to ignore his disability inside the house, in the dim half-light of Baekhyun’s room, cushioned by soft carpets and heavy curtains. It’s more difficult to ignore it when you can feel the sun on your skin and smell the fragrance of the roses all around you, hear the bees buzz from flower to flower unable to find the pollen among the endless petals. When you can’t help but wonder about the colors of the garden, about the lights, the shadows, the deepness of the horizon that no memory can capture.

And yet, Baekhyun loves the garden. Outside, when it’s bright enough, he sees. Not colors, but lights and shapes, out of focus, like ghosts hovering at the border of what he can and what he cannot see. It’s not much, but it’s something. Inside the mansion, in the dim, soft half-light, Baekhyun sees close to nothing, an endless night.

“So, are you telling me or not? What color is this one?”

Regretting his words is one thing but doing nothing would probably make Baekhyun even angrier, so Chanyeol kneels next to him, calculating how close can he scoot for Baekhyun to know where Chanyeol is without realizing Chanyeol is being considerate of his feelings. (There’s nothing more offensive than deliberate consideration and care, for Byun Baekhyun.)

He takes Baekhyun’s left hand and guides his fingers down, until they’re gracing the velvety petals of a red rose in full bloom.

“Red,” he says. “This one is red.”

“Red?” asks Baekhyun. He’s curious, and he’s angry that he’s curious, but he’s still more curious than angry and he leans his head on Chanyeol’s shoulder, blinks with his useless eyes. “What kind of red?” he asks.

The same red of your cheeks and ears, right now, wants to say Chanyeol but he can’t. He can’t. He still needs the money and he can’t do what he wants.

“I don’t know the names of the roses, nor all the names of the colors,” says Chanyeol, and Baekhyun’s face drops. It’s so easy to upset him. His jaw tightens and his mouth curl in a stilted, bitter way, the faint anticipation of a nasty word rippling the unnatural beauty of his features.

“It’s a deep color, and it’s intense like... like sex,” says Chanyeol, in a hurry, before the moment swims past them and Baekhyun’s rage flares up. “A cold red, very full, very dark, with darker hues. It feels velvety.”

“It is velvety,” says Baekhyun, still touching it. At least he seems satisfied by Chanyeol’s answer. “You should learn the name of the roses, at least. They’re important.”

He’s quiet and young and soft against Chanyeol for a moment.

“I planted these roses myself, back when I could see. I wanted to make my own and become famous. This one...” A pause, and he touches the rose intently. “If I’m not mistaken, the name of this one was sexy red. It was one of my brother’s favorites.”

He almost laughs and Chanyeol feels weightless. He’s still in the china shop and he’s dancing. A wrong move and everything will shatter.

“What is your favorite then?”

“Me? I love queens. Queen of Sweden, Queen of Denmark, Queen Elizabeth. My favorite was the Queen Alexandra, but you won’t find it in this garden. There used to be one, a long time ago, but not anymore.”

“I’m afraid I’ve never seen one in my life.”

He freezes, hoping Baekhyun didn’t notice his slip. It is not wise to talk about what one has seen, is seeing or will ever see in front of Baekhyun, who used to see but can’t see now and will never see again. Baekhyun doesn’t notice.

“It’s a beautiful flower, but it’s a lot like me.”

He gets up on his own with a sigh and waits for Chanyeol to offer him his arm, so they can start walking back to the house again.

“The original rose only had five petals, did you know? It was a tiny, unremarkable flower, white or pink. You wouldn’t spare it a second glance if you were to see it. The rose as we know it today is something that was created by us and for us, and it wouldn’t exist without us.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean someone found a mutation of the original dog-rose, in which some of the stamens had turned into petals, and they discovered that by forcing that rose to reproduce with a similar one they could create hybrids. So they experimented, again and again, mixing the hybrids to create the most beautiful, the most spectacular roses. That’s how the roses we know today were born. Artificial selection.”

He stops, to regain his breath. Sometimes Chanyeol forgets that, despite the long training session his mother forces him to take, Baekhyun almost never goes out. The sun is merciless on his head, the smells clog his nose and every sound pounds in his head. He leans against Chanyeol, forcing his little weight on him. He’s so light, just like a flower.

“But beauty has a price. To make those roses beautiful, to create a crown of endless petals, soft and pretty and colorful, they had to sacrifice something else. The Queen Alexandra, for all its pretty petals, for all its lush elegance, for all its delicate smells, doesn’t have any stamens left. It’s sterile. Just like me.”

Chanyeol knows his limits. He knows when he should stop. He needs the job and he needs the money and he really needs to stop.

“You’re only sterile because you want to be, Baekhyun. You’re so intent on hating everything and everyone that...”

“I didn’t really ask for your opinion.”

“Well, I-”

“You can leave, Chanyeol. It’s late and I’m tired. Sunyoung will walk me to my room.”

Chanyeol used to know when to pick his battles. He used to know, but he’s spent the last two years baby-sitting Baekhyun and Baekhyun never picks his battles. Baekhyun creates them and fights them all until the last drop of blood has been shed. He fights like he has nothing to lose until he’s lost everything - until there’s really nothing left to lose. Then, he fights some more. Baekhyun doesn’t know when to start and when to stop.

“You can’t keep living like this, Baekhyun.” He didn’t mean to make it sound so… patronizing, ut it is. It is, and Baekhyun steps back as if bitten by a snake.

“You are not allowed to tell me what I can or I cannot do, Park Chanyeol.”

“Isn’t that why you keep me around? Isn’t that why your mother is paying me? To be your friend?”

Baekhyun laughs and it’s the wrong kind of laugh. Too many teeth, ready to pull at Chanyeol’s skin.

“Friend? My mother is paying you to be my plaything. You are been paid, Park Chanyeol, to do everything I ask, no matter how humiliating and demeaning it is, because you don’t have a choice. Because you need the money. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re a friend to me. You’re just an emotional outlet for a blind, useless child. And I’m just collateral damage to you.”

Chanyeol’s fists shake. Baekhyun wouldn’t see it coming. Baekhyun wouldn’t be able to do anything. His fists shake and his lips shake and there’s rain in his eyes even under the afternoon sun. He doesn’t know if it’s raining for him or for Baekhyun.

“About one thing you’re right, Chanyeol. Only one.” The way Baekhyun says his name is soft, like the kiss of a rose hiding his thorns. Cold, like porcelain dolls dressed in silk and lace. “I can’t keep living like this. I can’t do this anymore. By the way, you’re fired.”

vi. SUSURRUS
(n) whispering, rustling

Chanyeol watches the pictures hanging from the walls in the hallways one last time before he leaves. Photographs of Mrs. Kim and CEO Byun before the divorce, the prettiest couple, smiling so hard their faces looked on the verge of breaking. Photographs of young Master Baekbom and of Baekhyunnie, like the older maids still call him. (The younger maids call him her son and nothing else.)

“He wasn’t always like this,” said Mrs. Lee, one of the oldest staff members to Chanyeol in hushed whispers. “He used to be such a bright kid, so full of life, so kind. The disease hit him so hard, but it was his mother who ruined him.”

Chanyeol has seen the photos, a tanned boy with a smile so big his entire face disappeared into it, eyes, nose, lips all gone, until only the joy remained. He’s prettier now, but he looked better before. Chanyeol could stay for him, for that kid who didn’t deserve to lose the light so soon. Chanyeol leaves because he’s not sure something of that kid remained. (He leaves because he’s already in too deep and Baekhyun is dangerous.)

He doesn’t go back. He knows Baekhyun is hurting. He knows Baekhyun is lonely. He can feel it resonate in his body and settle down in his lungs. He ignores it.

He pities Baekhyun. It’s his spiteful revenge, his petty payback. Baekhyun hates his own weaknesses, he hates showing them and he hates even more when people are aware of them.

Chanyeol thinks about it at night, revels in the way Baekhyun must be feeling and hopes Baekhyun feels even worse knowing Chanyeol knows how little and pathetic and alone he is, how human. How powerless.

He finds other jobs. Not one, not two, but three. The pay sucks but he needs to stay away from Baekhyun more than he needs the money. He moves in a cheaper area and shares a room with a bubbly engineering major. He starts working different shifts and puts university on hiatus for this semester, at least until he’s saved enough money. Until he has more leverage. He considers calling his family and asking for their help, but he’s too proud. He left home because he knew he could make it on his own and he won’t crawl back like a whiney child. Not to a father who called him a shame and a disappointment for the wrong reasons. He calls his sister at night and ignores her when she tells him to come home or to go back to Mrs. Kim’s house. He grits his teeth and doubles his efforts.

At night, when Baekhyun’s ghost whispers mean things in his ear, he thinks about kissing him senseless and fucking his pretty pink mouth to get him to shut up. He doesn’t feel guilty when he wakes up, but he misses Baekhyun deeply and acutely.

Three months later, Chanyeol comes back.

vii. VITUPERATIVE
(adj) bitter

Baekhyun’s mother is pretty, just like her dolls, just like him. There’s a spark of madness in her eyes - the first symptoms of schizophrenia, according to the rumors - and the arrogant assuredness people will always do what she wants because she has enough money to buy everyone.

She usually doesn’t scold Chanyeol, she simply orders the maids to do it, but today... Today she walks up to him and the mirrors seem to shake with the echo of a powerful slap.

“Where have you been? Where in the world have you been? You think you can play with my son’s life? With my son’s feelings?” Even on her heels, she doesn’t reach Chanyeol’s height. The slap wasn’t strong, but she was wearing golden rings on her fingers, thick shiny bands dotted with diamonds. Their imprint burns on Chanyeol’s cheek. “I should have you whipped, boy. I should have...”

“I’m here to see Baekhyun,” says Chanyeol, politely but also firmly. She’s not used to be interrupted, not by hungry, skinny Law majors, and she doesn’t know how to deal with Chanyeol’s impudence.

One of the maids comes forward with a bow, grabs Chanyeol by the arm and quickly drags him away.

“Don’t you do that ever again,” she warns. “She could really have you whipped.”

“Whipped, really? What is this, Joseon? The Middle Age? I don’t work for her anymore, she can’t touch me,” he says, shrugging.

Sunyoung stops, looks at him. “You don’t work for her? Then what are you doing here?”

Chanyeol pries her hand open, away from his sleeve.

“Like I said, I’m here to see Baekhyun.”

viii. KNAVERY
(n) a roguish or mischievous act

Baekhyun is waiting for him. Of course Baekhyun is waiting for him. Writhing with a smoldering, whimpering rage, shaking like a leaf in front of the fire, so lost, so pretty, so blind.

He recognizes Chanyeol without seeing him and he stills, waiting for an apology Chanyeol has no intention to surrender.

“Don’t you have anything to say?” he asks, and it’s impatient, too impatient. In the past, when Chanyeol did something like this, Baekhyun bid his time and waited for him to fall knees down on the ground. He waited for Chanyeol to beg. But in the past Chanyeol always came back after one or two weeks. This time Chanyeol waited three months to come back, and apparently Baekhyun, despite all his pretenses and lies and facades, can’t afford the luxury to wait for Chanyeol to apologize first.

“I have many things to say,” replies Chanyeol, and he can see the way Baekhyun angles his body towards him, like a boy following a kite, ready to snatch it back if the wind threatens to take it away. But Chanyeol is not a kite and he’s not someone who can be swayed by the wind. “But I’m not going to apologize.”

His words are met with glacial silence and Chanyeol can feel proud. He robbed Baekhyun of all his words, this time.

“You see, Baekhyun-”

“We might have a problem then. You won’t get this job back unless you apologize.”

“I’m not here to get this job back.”

More silence. He can feel the desperation coming from Baekhyun in waves. The panic. Baekhyun squints, trying to see Chanyeol with his useless eyes. He wants to look at his face, wants to read the truth in there.

“What about the money?” he asks. Only an attentive eye could spot the slight quiver of his lips.

“I found another job. Doesn’t pay like your mother does, but it pays the bills and that’s enough for me,” he answers.

“I can pay you more than them. Double the amount, thrice.” Misery seeps through his voice, sheer and strident.

“I don’t want your money, Baekhyun. I don’t need it and I don’t want it.”

Chanyeol doesn’t want the money. He wants Baekhyun, but when he looks at him, he sees a lost child. He sees a young boy, all dolled up and wearing fancy clothes, lying on the luscious sofa like a discarded toy, like a collection doll, like a flower under a glass bell. Baekhyun is mean, Baekhyun is cruel, Baekhyun is utterly and devastatingly alone. Baekhyun is going to break like crystal in Chanyeol’s hands if he’s not careful enough and it will be a bloody mess, all the shards going to his hands and to his chest, to his heart. Baekhyun is broken. And yet Chanyeol wants him, but not enough to stay.

“Then what are you doing here? Did you come to gloat? For revenge? To humiliate me? To make me feel like nothing?” His voice gets thinner and thinner with every word, until it breaks. “You’re not the first one, Park Chanyeol, and you won’t be the last. The entire world is set on making me feel like nothing, you aren’t important, you aren’t-”

He takes Baekhyun’s face in his hands and Baekhyun tries to jerk away but Chanyeol’s hold is steady, strong. He’s been Baekhyun’s eyes for more than two years and it’s the first time he touches his face. It’s soft and dusty with powder. He rubs the makeup away. Baekhyun hisses.

“If you don’t let me go immediately I’ll call the maid, I will.”

“If you call her I’ll go away.”

“Won’t you do it anyway?” hisses Baekhyun.

Yes, Chanyeol will. He only came to say goodbye and to steal something. Baekhyun is close, too close. There’s a little mole over his lips and a little fair scar on his chin. Chanyeol could touch it, if he wanted.

He leans down, slowly, to make sure Baekhyun can feel his breath on his lips. He stops holding him still, gives Baekhyun the opportunity to turn his head on the other side if he doesn’t want this. He can stop it, but he won’t.

Baekhyun is the one who closes the distance between them. It lasts only for a second, a moment of deafening silence and breath caught between moist, chapped lips. Baekhyun goes still when their lips touch, only to shy away immediately, unsure. He blinks, long lashes fluttering close and open again.

Chanyeol steals his first kiss - it’s what he came here for, after all, what he dreamed of for two long years - and then he chases him again, steals his second, his third, his fourth. He tries to convince himself that it’s not really stealing, not when Baekhyun seems so eager, so soft and pliant under him, but he knows better. He came here as a thief. He’s going to walk through that door and never come back and he’ll take these kisses with him whether Baekhyun wants it or not.

He angles his head, tilts Baekhyun’s so that their mouths fit better, so he can lick at the seam of Baekhyun’s lips, and the boy under him makes a noise that starts from his throat and ends on the tip of his tongue, and his lips part in time for Chanyeol to taste it. His lashes are still fluttering, like the wings of a mockingbird, and his chest is heaving and the hand clamped on Chanyeol’s wrist is sweaty and hot. Right here, right now, Baekhyun is not a doll, he’s not a flower or a crystal trinket, Baekhyun is a boy who wants to kiss Chanyeol. A boy whom Chanyeol wants to kiss.

Chanyeol smiles into the kiss, but it’s a small victory. Baekhyun can feel it, the way Chanyeol’s lips curl against his own. He bites him, hard enough to draw blood.

“You miserable bastard...”

It’s the first time he hears Baekhyun curse and he takes a moment, only one, to enjoy the oxymoron of such a crude word leaving Baekhyun’s pretty lips and wonder who he learnt it from, who managed to corrupt Mrs. Kim’s perfect little son under her pretty nose. Oh,, he thinks, it must have been me.

“Is this a game for you, is this-”

Chanyeol shuts him up with a last kiss, firmer and longer than the previous ones. It tastes a little like blood, but Chanyeol has just properly kissed Baekhyun like he dreamed to do since the first time he saw him. He will not complain.

When they part, they’re both breathless. Baekhyun’s eyes are wet with tears he won’t allow himself to shed.

“Is this a farewell?” he asks, and he looks so sad. So broken.

Chanyeol doesn’t need to answer that question.

“You were supposed to be only a job, Baekhyun,” he says instead. “I would’ve stayed, had you been only a job.” He touches Baekhyun’s upper lip, feels it shake. “But the more I care about you, the more you can hurt me. And you only know how to hurt people.”

“Everyone leaves me.”

“Everyone lives, Baekhyun. You should try.” Because Baekhyun is alive, but he doesn’t know how to live. He doesn’t know what he wants. He only knows the four walls of his room, the cold, shrill voice of his only parent left, the touch of the housemaids. Now he also knows the taste of Chanyeol’s lips. He will remember it forever.

“Yes, why don’t I try living for once? Why don’t I try going out or attending school or dancing or any of the things other people can do and I can’t? Why don’t I try seeing again? Why don’t I?” Chanyeol listens but there’s nothing he can say. He can’t be Baekhyun’s lifeline through this storm, he just can’t.

“Leave, just leave! I don’t want to see-” He stops, bites his own lips. He can probably taste Chanyeol and himself and the kisses. He doesn’t cry. “Just leave, Park Chanyeol.”

He hears the first sob after the click of the door. He hears it through the walls, through the main gate, through his own ribcage. He hears it in the subway on his way home, in the busy, loud streets of his neighborhood, in his room when he goes to sleep.

Get over it, Chanyeol. You’ll never see him again.

His lips still tingle with the taste of the kisses he’s stolen. Baekhyun’s first, second and third and all the ones that followed.

It’s over.

ix. NOISOME
(n) having an offensive smell

The doorbell rings thrice. Chanyeol ignores it the first time, groans the second and curses the third. The doorbell just rings again, long, shrill and damn, so annoying, and Chanyeol gets up and stares at the time, five in the afternoon, as he gets up slowly and groggily makes his way towards the entrance. It rings again while Chanyeol walks from his bed to the door. The last time, it’s with an urgency that borders on desperation.

From the peephole, he recognizes a familiar face he hasn’t seen in almost a month. He unlocks the door.

“Sunyoungie, why are you here?”

She looks different in her everyday clothes. She looks... more vivid. Not for the first time, Chanyeol wonders whether the Kim mansion is haunted, what’s the spell that makes everyone who steps inside look too worn and threadbare, on the verge of fading away. But Sunyoung right now is vibrant and bright, bristling with frenzy. She sends him an apologetic, desperate look.

“Please oppa, you have to forgive me, you really have to. I didn’t want to come here but he was throwing a tantrum and he refused to eat and he wanted to kill himself and...”

He. Baekhyun.

“Ok, I understand. Let me grab my jacket, I’ll come back with you.”

For all his good intentions about forgetting and moving on, Chanyeol doesn’t feel an ounce of conflict within himself. He hears Baekhyun’s name and he’s ready to go. Maybe he had been waiting for a reason to come back all this time.

Sunyoung stills him with a hand on his arm, not different from the many times she has steered him towards Baekhyun’s bedroom.

“He’s not at home. He’s... He’s here. I brought him here.”

“You did what?”

He runs outside the apartment and, without a doubt, Byun Baekhyun is there, sitting on the dirty emergency staircase, hugging his knees and looking really close to having a panic attack. He jumps, startled, when Chanyeol touches him, a simple touch on his shoulder.

“It’s me, ok? It’s me.”

He nods and follows Chanyeol’s touch, lets himself be dragged up on his feet and inside the apartment, in a daze. They’re both in a daze. Chanyeol gestures for Sunyoung to come inside too.

“I can’t,” she says. “I have to be back at the mansion before someone realizes he’s gone or Mrs. Kim will have me fired.”

“Wait, what are you talking about?”

He tries to stop her, but she’s already disappearing behind the corner, a last, “I’m sorry, Chanyeol!” ringing in the air behind her.

Chanyeol would chase her, force her to tell him what is happening - he sure has no idea - but there’s Baekhyun, standing awkwardly inside his apartment, blind and lost. He hasn’t taken a single step without Chanyeol there to steer him in the right direction. He doesn’t know where he is.

For the first time in a long time, Baekhyun doesn’t know where he is. He has memorized every corner, every wall, every window, everything inside his room to be able to move in complete darkness. Now, in completely uncharted territory, he doesn’t dare to take a step.

Now that Chanyeol looks at him he seems gaunt. Pale. There are dark circles under his eyes. He listen closely and waits, because Chanyeol is silent and still and Baekhyun has no clue where Chanyeol is, where he himself is, so he waits until Chanyeol clears his throat and says “Hi.”

“Hi,” he says back. A long pause. He winces, clearly tired of waiting for Chanyeol to process what is happening. In the end, he sits on the ground and crosses his legs, his tailored expensive clothes on the dusty floor Chanyeol and his roommates haven’t swept in like... three weeks.

“I’m going to help you up,” Chanyeol says, “and walk you to the couch. Is that alright with you?”

“Your floor is dirty.”

“I am aware.”

Baekhyun doesn’t flinch at the touch. He hated when he had to ask for Chanyeol’s help to walk around and that’s why he memorized the measures of his own room, counting the steps back and forth to know where to stop and where to turn and where to find his stuff. Now, he lets Chanyeol gently guide him towards the couch and he flops on it awkwardly. He grits his teeth when his leg collides with the coffee table.

Chanyeol sits in front of him, careful to make some noise so Baekhyun can know where he is. He stares. At Baekhyun’s nervous hands, the way they pick on the fabric of his pants and drum on his knees. At the stark contrast between his elegant clothes and the cheap, if not hand-me-down furniture of his own flat. At his throat, the way he gulps down the courage to say something but in the end doesn’t. He stares at Baekhyun, who looks around without really seeing anything. He’s probably feeling dazed, assaulted by the smell of spices still lingering in the kitchen, the faint tang of tobacco clinging to the curtains and to the couch and the crisp fragrance of fabric softener.

“Your place smells funny,” he says, in a little voice. Chanyeol scoffs.

“It smells like peasants, you mean.”

“I didn’t say it, you did. I wanted to say dumpster.”

Always so charming, Byun Baekhyun.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, trying to keep his voice straight and failing. Baekhyun notices, and he falters a little. (It’s only been three weeks, Chanyeol can still read his face.)

“You never came back.”

“You asked me to leave, Baekhyun, so what are you doing here?”

There’s silence as Baekhyun thinks about his answer. He crosses his arms and furrows his brow, looking for the right words in the darkness around him.

“I’m surprising you,” he says, clasping his hands together.

“You certainly are. Are you going to tell me you missed me or are we still going through the denial phase?”

Baekhyun is not wearing makeup and even his perfectly tailored clothes seem too big for him today. He looks too tiny for Chanyeol’s kitchen, for the messy counter buried under dirty cups of curry ramyun and for the cigarette butts Jongdae leaves around when he binge smokes before an exam. He looks real, more human, so different from that ghost made of roses and crystal (of porcelain and pink lips and Persian carpets and velvet curtains cocooning the rooms and turning them into layers of darkness) that Chanyeol used to know.

He looks alive under the crude light of a single bulb lamp. He looks like the boy in the photographs hanging from the hallways in his mother’s family mansion. He still doesn’t answer, but Chanyeol can answer for him.

“I missed you a lot. See? It’s easy, you can say it too. I missed you.”

“You’re an asshole,” answers Baekhyun.

“Language,” he says, a light warning. “I’m not an asshole, I’m simply talking back. It’s far more entertaining like this, don’t you think?”

Baekhyun tilts his head. He still looks lost and out of place, but in a strangely domestic way. “I liked it better when you did everything I asked you to do.”

“I like it better when I do everything I want to do myself, thank you very much. For example, now I would very much like to kick you out of my house.” Baekhyun’s breath catches in his throat. “Why don’t you do it?” he asks, and he’s scared Chanyeol will do it, but he still manages to sound defiant, fearless.

Chanyeol sighs. He should really make Baekhyun leave.

“You’re the real asshole, Baekhyun. You’ve always been nothing but an asshole to me. And now you come here, invade my house and-”

“I ran away from home.”

“- like I owe you someth- What?”

“I ran away from home,” he repeats, slower. Firmer.

“You can’t run away from home, you can’t even walk away from your home on your legs.”

“But I’m here.”

He’s here. Sitting in Chanyeol’s living room like he doesn’t care that his mother will have Chanyeol arrested for kidnapping her blind, barely legal son. No one will believe Baekhyun got here on his own and Sunyoung won’t take responsibility for what she did. All the blame will fall on Chanyeol.

“Do you realize what it means for me to have you here?”

“I can’t go back. I... I don’t want to go back. My mother doesn’t want to let me out of the house. She doesn’t let my father or brother come to visit. You were my only... It doesn’t matter, I’m not going back.”

“Why are you so selfish?”

Baekhyun gets up, his face tense, his fists tense, his shoulders tense. His legs are shaking. He takes a tentative step and almost ends up tripping on the coffee table. He swallows a curse. “Show me to the door, please.”

“What?”

“This was a bad idea, of course. You won’t help me. You always despised me, didn’t you? You just kissed me because you could and because you knew I was pathetic enough to let you do it. Was it funny, taking your revenge like that? It doesn’t really matter, I had fun too. Sorry for bothering you today.”

And Chanyeol knows, because he has spent the last two years working for Baekhyun’s mother, being with Baekhyun, taking care of Baekhyun, letting Baekhyun toy with him and his patience however he liked - he knows Baekhyun is trying to manipulate him. He also knows how much Baekhyun likes playing the victim, how much he likes to be the tragic hero, the martyr everyone hates. It pulls at the strings of Chanyeol’s heart, but there’s a reason he left. He left because Baekhyun was hurting him and Chanyeol is not stupid enough to let a childish boy play with his heart just because he can. (Just because it’s the only thing he can play with.)

“You can’t go out on your own. You’re blind, Baekhyun.”

It’s the first time he says the word to Baekhyun’s face, and if they were still in that house, in that dark, suffocating doll house, Baekhyun would probably try to hit him. (And Chanyeol would be bound, by contract, to let him. To help him, even, because of course Baekhyun would miss.)

But here, in the sunlight, in the trivial, cheap domesticity of Chanyeol’s house - no special roses, no dolls, no crystal shards, no velvet curtains and fake smiles - Baekhyun only shrinks a little.

“I can’t stay here either,” he says, matter-of-factly.

“I’ll call...”

“Who? Who will you call, Chanyeol? I don’t know how to contact my father but I already know he can’t help me. He lost the custody and he won’t risk the wrath of mother’s lawyers, not this close to the election. My brother is in the States and he probably doesn’t even remember my face!” He laughs, empty and caustic and forced. And sad and sharp, like Baekhyun often is. “There’s no one else. Even if you were cruel enough to want me back in that horrible house, and you aren’t, I wouldn’t let you call my mother.”

Little impudent brat. Chanyeol should call her, just to spite Baekhyun.

“And how would you stop me?”

“If you call her, I’ll say you brought me here. Against my will.”

Chanyeol stops, Baekhyun’s mother’s number already on the screen of his phone. He doesn’t know if he really wanted to call her, but he wanted to make Baekhyun mad. He really did. He lets the phone drop, hands shaking.

He’s angry that Baekhyun won. In this house, in Chanyeol’s house, a hostile, unknown territory, and without any leverage, Baekhyun still managed to win. And in Baekhyun’s world, in his stupid, self-sabotaging life, winning means losing.

“Ok,” he says, gritting his teeth, pushing his nails so hard into his palms they almost draw blood. “Ok, come on.” He grabs Baekhyun’s elbow, roughly, pushing him towards the door. He opens it and throws him outside. “It was nice seeing you, Baekhyun. It’s a pity you can’t say the same.”

Baekhyun smirks. He’s won and he’s lost and he’s so sad but he still smirks, and Chanyeol feels like they’ve both lost.

“Goodbye, Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol slams the door in his face.

That stupid kid, that stupid stupid kid. Colors shimmer at the corner of his eyes, the acid, washed out red of a winter sunset drowned in fog. It will be dark soon and Baekhyun wasn’t even wearing a coat. He doesn’t have a cane, or a walking dog. He can’t use a phone, he probably doesn’t have money to pay for a taxi. And where would he go?

Chanyeol starts hyperventilating. He runs to the door, opens it, almost expecting to find Baekhyun still there, still waiting for him to think things through. He hopes Baekhyun had the common sense to stay there. But it’s Baekhyun, it’s fucking Baekhyun and Chanyeol can’t expect a boy who was raised inside a doll house, under a glass bell, to know what common sense is.

Baekhyun is not there. The elevator is not there either, and Chanyeol doesn’t wait for it. He runs downstairs, hoping to catch Baekhyun before some car runs over him in his stubborn, mad quest for... He doesn’t know what Baekhyun is looking for. He doesn’t know what Baekhyun wants.

The streets are loud, colorful, dirty. And packed. Too many people on either side and Chanyeol doesn’t see Baekhyun. Doesn’t know where he went.

“Excuse me?” he asks. “Have you seen a boy my age? He’s shorter than me, dark eyes. He’s wearing formal clothes and…”

The woman in front of him, a middle-aged lady accompanied by a little girl, maybe her nephew, shakes her head. The kid, four to six years old maybe and missing a tooth, grabs Chanyeol’s pants and smiles cutely, pointing to a little tteokbokki stand on the left where Chanyeol often buys spicy rice cakes after his evening shift at the coffee shop.

The gasp of air Chanyeol takes is ice cold and full of relief. Baekhyun is there, giggling cutely at something the auntie selling street food is saying, and beaming like a child. She’s filled a paper cup with rice cakes and spicy sauce, and she carefully makes sure Baekhyun eats one, guiding his hand from the cup to his mouth.

“Is it good?” she says, and laughs when Baekhyun chokes on the spicy taste. “Maybe a little too much, for you? But, tell me,” she frowns, a little worried, a little motherly, “are you alone?”

“He’s with me.”

Baekhyun follows the sound of his voice, his smile faltering. The auntie, too, turns.

“Oh, Park Chanyeol, it’s you!” she cries, relieved. “He’s one of your friends, then? He’s so polite.”

Chanyeol puts an arm around Baekhyun’s shoulder, takes his wallet out with the other.

“How much is it?”

“Oh, don’t worry. It’s on the house. He never tried tteokbokki, can you believe it?”

Sadly, Chanyeol can. He still leaves a couple of rumpled bills. “Can you give me another, auntie? Cheese tteokbokki for me.”

“Here, dear. You shouldn’t leave your friend alone when he can’t see, and you,” she says, and Baekhyun bites his bottom lip, looking guilty and mortified, “you should be more careful next time.”

Chanyeol bows and apologizes for both of them, and when he’s done he pulls Baekhyun closer, holding him against his side, a bit afraid he’ll disappear again if he takes his eyes off him for a second.

They greet and leave, together, Chanyeol’s hands still clamped on Baekhyun’s shoulder.

“Where are you taking me?” asks Baekhyun, over the racket of a group of students waiting for the green light to cross the road. Baekhyun’s head perks up at their voices, their laughs, but his attention shifts immediately back on Chanyeol’s reply.

“Home.”

Baekhyun tenses against him.

“My home.”

“I thought you didn’t want me there.”

Chanyeol really has no answer for that.

“Let’s just go home, for now.”

part 2 ->