Behind Blue Eyes; baekyeol [4/5]
Behind Blue Eyes (4/5)
<- part 3
“Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it.”
- Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
xxiii. DESUETUDE
(n) a state of disuse
Chanyeol knew it was a terrible idea. Yura’s ideas are always terrible by default.
He sends a quick glare to his sister - congratulations, you’ve surpassed your usual level of stupidity this time, to which she answers with an eye roll that probably means she thinks he’s the stupid one, since he keeps following her advices. Chanyeol keeps frowning, but he focuses on the diplomatic mess in front of him.
“I haven’t seen your mother in a while. I hope her health is well.”
Baekhyun shakes and Chanyeol’s mother smiles. He can’t see her, of course, but he knows she’s smiling. He’s always been so perceptive. Chanyeol stares at him, as intensely as he can, hoping his boyfriend can feel the weight of the gaze resting on him and know he’s not alone in this.
Chanyeol wishes he hadn’t come. There’s a reason he left his house and sure, he’s the only son, he’ll always be welcome here, he is welcome here, but his boyfriend is not. He knows, Baekhyun knows, Yura knew it too when she invited Chanyeol and his new boyfriend at home.
“It’ll be funny,” she said. “Mom will love him,” she said. Yura is always too hopeful, a born optimist. (Chanyeol is the pessimist of the family, but he likes to call himself the realistic one.)
Baekhyun licks his lips and clasps his hand together. Sunyoung combed his hair back and made him wear a nice shirt. He looks lovely and cold, like a boy Chanyeol once knew.
“Oh, I’m sure my mother is well. I will send her your regards, Mrs. Park.” He nods, the perfect embodiment of elegance and politeness, but there’s something in his face, in his smirk, that makes the smile in Mrs. Park’s eyes turn sour.
Chanyeol’s mother has no love for Baekhyun. She agreed - not that Chanyeol had asked her opinion on this matter - to their friendship only when she knew the boy was not only rich but also the son of one of her husband’s associates, but she opposed to their relationship fiercely when she realized it was more than a friendship.
“I don’t really care what you think, Mother,” Chanyeol had said, over the phone, ignoring her high-pitched threats. He hadn’t cared when he had left home and he sure won’t start caring now, but he needs to set some boundaries. “You are free to think whatever you want of my choice, but if you try to meddle in my business with this person I will not forgive you. You can welcome another son or lose the one you already have, it doesn’t matter to me. I have already proved myself I’m perfectly able to survive without you or Father’s help.”
“Then bring him home and let me meet him,” was her reply, the words stinging through the headphones. “Let me bring this person who turned my only son into a-”
“Mother!”
Chanyeol had refused, in the beginning, but his mother got also Yura involved and Chanyeol has never been able to say no to his sister.
He should’ve realized it was a trap.
His mother makes him sit at her side, as if to show Baekhyun who’s in charge. She’s trying to stake a claim, to intimidate an opponent. She’s going to fight a war. The saddest thing is that she can’t win, not against Baekhyun. Not in Chanyeol’s heart. He’s already left her even before Baekhyun came into the picture, when he realized he loved his parents, but he would never be able to marry the daughter of an associate and give them grandchildren. Not when he dreamed of rough edges, of lean bodies and muscular chests and cocks. His mother had slapped him when he had told her. It took him three days to pack his stuff and leave. It was the first time. It would take another three years before he was really able to leave that house. (It took him four to finally come back, holding Baekhyun’s hand as he walked through that door. In the end, Park Chanyeol didn’t bend. His parents did.)
“More tea, my dear?” Chanyeol refuses with a curt gesture and waits for her to ask the same to Baekhyun. When she doesn’t, his scowl only deepens.
The saddest thing is that Baekhyun can’t even see how well Mrs. Park’s plan played out. He can’t admire her perfect house, be jealous of her modern, expensive furniture. He can’t admire her son - her son and not his boyfriend - sitting next to her like a knight attending to his queen. He can’t admire her, think she looks younger than she is or wonder about the value of her jewels, her clothes, her smooth face.
It’s the triumph of the culture of appearance, thinks Chanyeol, and its greatest fall at the same time. Appearance has no appeal on a blind boy. And any display of wealth would be lost on the son of a woman who can blackmail the future Prime Minister. Maybe Byun Baekbom is his father’s son, but Baekhyun, in the good and in the bad things, is definitely his mother’s son.
“Chanyeol never told me how you got to know my mother,” he says, delicate, falsely curious, the most charming liar. Chanyeol sits back and wonders what kind of game Baekhyun is trying to play here.
“We shared a few classes in college, I think. We weren’t even friends, just passing acquaintances,” Mrs. Park replies, the teacup shaking slightly in her hands until she puts it back on the coffee table with an audible clink.
“Oh, I see. It’s not difficult to believe it, considering she never named you among her friends.”
Oh, there it is. Neat cut, pretty, without blood. Baekhyun would’ve been a perfect hunter. It’s a pity he can’t see Mrs. Park’s face assuming a delicate shade of plum.
Yura coughs. “More tea, Baekhyunnie?”
They drink tea and talk about roses. Baekhyun surprised Mrs. Park and Yura with his knowledge of the language of the flowers. Chanyeol’s mother doesn’t mention Baekhyun’s mother again.
Later, while the conversation moves onto arranged marriage, offspring and the future of the family, boring and at the same time dangerous topics, Chanyeol gets up and takes Baekhyun’s hand. He sends a quick apology to his mother before pulling his boyfriend up and leading him towards the room at the end of the corridor. Baekhyun follows him without hesitation, but his hand clamps around Chanyeol in uncertainty.
“Where are we going?” he asks.
“My room,” explains Chanyeol, “kind of.”
It’s the only empty room of the house and it’s not empty at all. There are boxes, boxes everywhere. When he left, he only packed the essentials, leaving everything else behind. An entire lifetime enclosed in big, small, grey boxes. He opens them, telling Baekhyun what he finds. He talks about that time in third grade when he wanted to become an astronomer and his mother bought him a telescope. He talks about his ferret, fourth grade, and the medal he won in mathletics in fifth grade.
“We would’ve met, eventually,” says Baekhyun, suddenly. He’s sitting on a box of books, stable enough to hold his weight. “My mother wanted me to go to the same middle school you mentioned. There were talks of sending me there. I could still see, back then. It took years to get to the point where I couldn’t see almost anything.”
“Why didn’t she send you?”
“She didn’t want me to get used to that kind of life before it slipped out of my fingers.” He says it, like it’s obvious. Like how can’t Chanyeol understand?
“That’s the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard.”
Baekhyun smiles.
“Isn’t it?” He hugs his knees. “I wished I had gone. I would’ve seen you, at least once.”
“I was an ugly kid,” confesses Chanyeol. “Quite unimpressive.”
“It’s not like it matters to me.”
There’s nothing he can say to that, so he keeps going through the boxes, while Baekhyun hums a popular song under his breath to fill the silence. Something tiny tugs at his heart. It might be melancholy and it might be happiness. He wishes he had a real room to show Baekhyun, with memories hanging from the walls and secrets hidden under his bed, but this room doesn’t even have a bed. Chanyeol’s memories are collecting dust inside paper boxes.
“Oh, found it!” he says, extracting his old acoustic guitar from a big yellow box at the end of the room.
“What?”
Chanyeol doesn’t answer, he just plucks the strings once and Baekhyun jumps in his seat, excited. “You also know how to play it?”
The guitar is old and out of tune, but Chanyeol never forgot how to play it.
“So, you can still surprise me, Park Chanyeol,” says Baekhyun, amused and fond and terribly soft like he’s only recently learned how to be.
Chanyeol plays a soft song, random keys blossoming into music. In the silence of the room, with the sun cascading from the windows, turning the dust into floating gold and Baekhyun’s dark hair into a shining halo, the notes turn into gold too.
“I was a terrible kid. No one wanted to play with me because I was always winning, but I always managed to convince someone only to beat them and have running away in tears later.”
“I suppose I was the opposite. I didn’t care about competition when I was younger. I guess I just got bitter with age.” In the old photos back at Mrs. Kim’s house, Baekhyun shone the brightest. A pure, undiluted glow, the biggest smile. Chanyeol would die to go back in time and see that again, but there’s something else now. This Baekhyun, splintered and broken, this Baekhyun who put himself together out of sheer will, has gold flowing through the cracks of his soul. This is the Baekhyun Chanyeol fell in love with.
Baekhyun tilts his head to the side, following the echoes of the music, and suddenly says, “You didn’t change, though.” Chanyeol’s fingers slip and the note that comes out is too long and out of place. “You still hate to lose.”
“I don’t mind losing,” he says. It’s not a lie, but it’s not the truth either. He just never thought Baekhyun would notice something like that.
“You only don’t mind losing at the things you don’t care about. If you want to win, you simply win. It’s always been like that, with me too.” It’s incredibly accurate and incredibly merciless of Baekhyun to expose him like this.
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you play with me like that, since the beginning? You let me boss you around because you didn’t care about me in the slightest. But when you actually liked me, you pretended to be my friend for months instead of doing anything, just because you wanted me to go crazy about you.”
Chanyeol stares, openly. He stops playing. His silence must have surprised Baekhyun, because the boy just snorts.
“You didn’t think I would realize? Chanyeol, you’re so silly. I think about you all the time. In the darkness, among the many things I can’t see, you’re the only one that shines bright.”
Chanyeol has stopped playing, but the sun is still shining and Baekhyun still looks like an angel, humming the song under his breath.
“I knew since the beginning,” he says, “since the first time you came to my house, that you didn’t like losing. I didn’t want to lose to you, either.” Baekhyun smiles. “It took me a long time to realize that you winning didn’t mean I was going to lose.”
Chanyeol puts the guitar down. Baekhyun’s analysis was painfully accurate. “In the end, you’re the one who surprised me,” he says, accepting his defeat, and Baekhyun’s smile is not soft, but sharp and bright like a blade of gold.
“You should take it back,” he says. “The guitar, I mean. We could play it, in my apartment, sitting on the floor, the next time you get drunk. I’m exceptionally good at drunk-singing.”
Chanyeol doesn’t say anything but folds the guitar in its custody and straps it around his shoulders.
“Shouldn’t we go back? Before your mother starts looking for us.” He extends a hand and Chanyeol takes it, intertwining their fingers together before he scoops him in his arms for a kiss.
“There you are, ready for another terrific talk with my mother. She’s such a sweet lady, isn’t she?”
“Come on, Park Chanyeol. Have you seen my mother? Yours is a true piece of cake for me.”
He lets Chanyeol take him back to the living room, still humming the song softly under his breath.
xxiv. OBLOQUY
(n) harsh public condemnation
It’s sudden, unexpected and totally planned.
The door opens and Chanyeol’s father walks in. He looks at his wife, at his daughter, then at his son and at his son’s boyfriend. They’re all drinking tea. It’s a beautiful morning of spring and the cherry trees are in blossom. The view outside is beautiful, a dream of pale pinks and washed out greys. He pretends to be surprised.
“Chanyeol-ah, you should’ve told me you were coming. I would’ve cleared my schedule.”
Chanyeol looks at his mother, confusion swirling in his eyes. Baekhyun just looks in the direction the new voice came from, his lips already forming a polite greeting.
“You all don’t mind if I take care of a few things with my friend here?”
He doesn’t wait to hear their answer before he takes off his jacket. The door is still open. Someone else enters after him, a thin man who looks a lot like the CEO of one of the biggest chaebols of the country and Seoul’s next mayor. Chanyeol’s heart drops.
President Byun looks a lot like Baekbom. A shark wearing a suit. He’s tall and elegant and he looks older than he is. He looks like a face on the glossy cover of a popular magazine. He looks like someone who’d leave his sons behind to protect his political career. (In that, too, he looks like Baekbom. Except Baekbom came back. He didn’t.)
He steps inside the room and he searches the room, as if looking for someone. His eyes find Chanyeol’s for a moment - an unreadable stare that lasts less than a moment - before he finally looks at his son. Baekhyun still doesn’t know. He’s starting to look a little uncomfortable with the tense silence wrapped around the parlour, but he has no idea his father is just standing there, on the other side of the room, his eyes still unreadable even now that he’s watching his own son.
There’s no way this wasn’t planned. Chanyeol doesn’t need to see the quick glance his parents are exchanging to realize it.
“Excuse me if I intrude,” says President Byun, his eyes still focused on his youngest son. Baekhyun’s face twists as he takes in the voice. For a moment his features look lost, as if they don’t know which path they should take. He opens his mouth, closes it, furrowed brow and confusion swirling in his every gesture. He runs a hand through his hair, taking a moment to find himself again. When he lays it down on his knees, his face has gone back to a cautious, neutral expression. But, for someone who knows where to look, it’s easy to spot the slight shake of his knees, or the way his hands hold the fabric of his pants a little too tightly. For someone who knows where to look, Baekhyun is so hopelessly transparent and clear.
Chanyeol gets up, suddenly, startling everyone in the room. “Father, what a nice surprise! I’d gladly wait for you and your friend to be done, but I’m afraid we’re leaving soon. It’s a pity we can’t stay more.” He keeps talking. From the corner of his eyes, he sees Baekhyun snapping out of the confused daze he was in and turning his face to follow Chanyeol’s voice. That’s right, he thinks, focus on my voice, come on. I’m getting you out of this.
“Oh, but I insist,” says his father. “I haven’t talked to you in so long. And since Baekhyun is here too, maybe you two could stay for lunch.”
Chanyeol ignores him and takes Baekhyun’s hand. “I’m afraid it’s impossible. But thank you for the offer, maybe next time?”
“Chanyeol, don’t be rude, you just arrived,” says Mrs. Park. She doesn’t lose her smile but there’s a clear warning behind her politeness. Chanyeol doesn’t care. About her warnings, about her plans, he doesn’t care what the deal between his father and Chanyeol’s father is. He’s taking Baekhyun away from this... from this ambush.
“Your mother is right, Chanyeol.”
He stops in his tracks. Baekhyun’s face has gone back to a neutral, cold look that reminds Chanyeol of the old colonial house in the outskirts of Seoul, of dolls and dust and soft roses.
“We should stay a little more, if you don’t mind.” He puts his teacup back on the table. The movement is elegant and firm, only a tiny clink of porcelain against glass betrays the clumsiness behind it. “Since your father’s guest went to great lengths in order to meet me, the least I can do is listen what he has to say.”
“It’s been a long time, Baekhyun,” says President Byun. “You were a lot less reasonable the last time we talked.”
Something quirks at the corner of Baekhyun’s mouth. It could be an aborted laugh. It’s bitter and tiny and ugly. “You mean when you decided to leave? Yes, I guess I wasn’t all that happy with that decision. You’ll find out I can be quite pleasant when you’re not trying to get rid of me, Father.”
Chanyeol’s mother gasps and Yura chokes an incredulous laugh behind her hand. President Byun’s eyes harden. “I will not accept such nonsense from you, boy. I didn’t accept it back then and I won’t accept it now.”
“It’s a bit late to show some backbone now, isn’t it?” He sighs theatrically. “You should’ve acted like a father when I really needed one. But I suppose saving your own career was more important than your own son.”
“Byun Baekhyun, I’m not going to repeat myself…”
Chanyeol knows a warning when he sees one. He knows what happens when Baekhyun’s lips curl inwards and almost disappear, when he bites his bottom lip and smiles, wicked.
“Who knows what your electors would say if they knew the man they trust to run this city couldn’t even take care of his own child. You should be careful that the story doesn’t come out. The public can be very harsh sometimes.”
It’s like going back in time. This is not the Baekhyun of chicken and beer, of instant ramyun and blueberry soju to drink under cherry blossom and rain. (He can’t see them but he can feel them fall, on his face, on his open hands and on his puckered lips. He tried to catch them once, “Because in a drama I heard that if you catch a falling petal in your hand you’ll meet your destined one.”) This is not the Baekhyun who sings Arirang from the balcony when he’s drunk while Chanyeol plays the guitar.
This is the Baekhyun of red roses and porcelain dolls. The Baekhyun of red wine, dust and loneliness. He has his mother’s laugh and he uses it, just because he knows it would offend his father more. He has her loneliness and a speck of her madness and a lot of anger.
The need to pull Baekhyun away from this conversation, from the past that keeps coming back to drag him down with greedy hands, grows stronger, but there’s nothing Chanyeol can do if Baekhyun wants to stay here and fight.
Baekhyun’s father turns towards Chanyeol’s father. “May I borrow a room? I need to talk with my son, alone.”
Chanyeol says no, but Baekhyun says yes. Baekhyun gets up and goes for the door without hesitation. He’s been in the house enough times to know where to go without help, but he still stops in the middle of the room and waits for Chanyeol.
“My office will be fine,” says Chanyeol’s father, ignoring his son’s furious face. President Byun too pretends not to see it the glare of pure venom Chanyeol sends him.
“Are you sure it’ll be alright?” he asks to Baekhyun in hushed tones, ignoring the cold eyes of both their fathers. Baekhyun shrugs. “Not really, but it’s not like I can ignore him forever.”
Chanyeol nods and steps closer, his lips gracing Baekhyun’s ear so that the two older men on the corridor can’t hear. “Don’t let him get to you. You’re stronger.”
He leads Baekhyun his father’s personal room, making him sit on the couch.
“I’ll be right here, on the other side of the door, if you need me,” he whispers in hushed tones.
“We’re just talking, Chanyeol. There’s no reason to worry.”
Oh, but Chanyeol worries. He worried so much he calls Baekbom, because it’s not fair that he’s the only one who’s worried.
“About time,” Baekbom says, disgruntles and sleepy, in his best 3AM voice. “He’s been hinting at a possible meeting with Baekhyun for a while, but I always refused to help him.”
“He’s an asshole, just like you.”
“And you, Park Chanyeol. Don’t forget you’re an asshole too. Anyway, don’t worry.”
“How can I not worry? He’s in there, alone...”
“If I were you I’d worry for my father, not for Baekhyun. He has quite a lot of pent up frustration to release. But the old man had it coming and they both need closure.”
“Yes but...”
“You can’t do this for him, Park. You can only trust him.”
m
Chanyeol doesn’t trust anyone. He doesn’t trust himself, he doesn’t Baekbom and he doesn’t trust Baekhyun. He especially doesn’t trust Baekhyun’s father, but there’s really nothing he can do but wait, until the door opens and Baekhyun comes out slowly, following the wall with his hands.
“Chanyeol, are you here?”
“Yes,” he says, rushing to his side.
Baekhyun takes a deep breath. “I think we can go now.”
Baekhyun doesn’t tell him what the conversation was about and Chanyeol doesn’t ask. They go to the park together and Chanyeol treats Baekhyun to sannakji and records the way Baekhyun squirms and shivers in disgust.
“What the fucking hell did you make me eat?” he asks, on the verge of retching. Chanyeol laughs and pats his back. “You should finish it all, it’s really expensive.”
“The hell, it’s alive, take it away I’m just going to throw up.”
He takes Baekhyun to an art museum later, to watch an exhibition of sound art. Baekhyun hides it well but he’s quite pretty when he’s satisfied.
“I can’t believe you can actually be a decent boyfriend, Park Chanyeol.” He beams and red flourishes on his ears and the bridge of his nose.
“At least one of us has to be,” he says, and Baekhyun pretends he’s offended.
“At least I didn’t forget our one hundred days anniversary. Unlike you.”
“What are you? A high schooler? One hundred days anniversaries are for kids.”
Baekhyun’s nails dig into his wrist in revenge and he retaliates with a pinch on Baekhyun’s side.
On their way home, they buy odeng, because it’s still cold enough to enjoy fish cakes in spicy broth, and blueberry soju, Baekhyun’s favorite.
“Let’s get drunk,” Baekhyun says.
“I can play the guitar, but you have to sing,” says Chanyeol.
xxv. FANTODS
(n) state of extreme anxiety, distress; ‘feeling so attacked right now’
The cherry blossoms bloom, wither and finally fall, together with silver rain, one foggy day of April. Baekhyun stops playing with the remote control of Jongdae’s television to sit in front of the window and listen to the sound of the rain.
“You’ll get cold if you stay there without a jacket,” calls Chanyeol from the kitchen.
“I’m not cold. I like the sound of the rain.”
Chanyeol puts a blanket over him and drags the heater closer. “Be careful, I’ve put the heater in, front of your feet. Can you feel it?” Baekhyun wiggles his feet in contentment. “Hey, don’t knock it down!”
“I won’t forget it’s there, calm down.”
The sky cries and throws a tantrum like a whining child, stomping his foot on the ground in the form of blinding white lightning and rumbling thunders.
“Can you see it? The lightning I mean?”
Baekhyun shrugs. “I’m not sure. It could be just my imagination. Sometimes I want to see things so much I make them up in my mind. Baekbom took me to the doctor last week. He said I will probably lose my eyesight in my left eye completely in less than a year.” He hides his face against his pajama pants and breathes in the smell of cotton and fabric softener. He sighs, soundlessly.
“I don’t want to lose my eyesight,” he says. He doesn’t cry - he never cry - but the sound of the rain washing away the pollution of the city, hitting the ground, the wall, the glass of the windows, sounds like the sky is crying for him. “It’s stupid, isn’t it? I can barely see anything. In the strongest light the best I can see is grey shadows moving, but I still don’t want to lose it.”
“It’s not stupid, Baekhyun. It’s not...”
“When you first came to my house, the maids said you had red hair, and I tried my best to look at you, but I couldn’t even see exactly where you were. I felt so stupid. I feel so stupid every time you smile at me, because I know you’re smiling. You have like... a smiling voice. And I know you’re smiling but I can’t see you, no matter how hard I look. I can’t imagine your smile.”
The rain washes away the cherry blossoms and Baekhyun’s unshed tears. He doodles on the hazy surface of the glass, swirls and little, drunken stars.
“I know you’ve talked with your parents. I know they want you to come back home. And I know you’re thinking about it.”
Oh, so it’s about that.
“I’m their only son, of course they want me to come home.”
“They don’t like me,” he sulks.
“They don’t know you, it’s different.”
It’s a lie and they both know it. No father would want his only son to be gay. No father would want his only son to be gay and in love with a blind man. But Baekhyun is his father’s son and his mother’s son and they can’t really say anything about him. That, and they both know where Chanyeol’s loyalty resides. The problem is… does Baekhyun know?
Baekhyun turns his head towards the ceiling, exposing his neck, his throat, the line of his clavicle. The light hits his face through the raindrops, fractured in tiny little luminous shards. He looks beautiful and a little broken, like the boy Chanyeol first fell in love with.
“Even if they knew me things wouldn’t change. I still would be the jobless blind kid who can’t give you an heir, can’t accompany you at charity events and impress people with his knowledge of politics or art or music. I’m useless in their eyes.” His words are thin and cold. They fall, like raindrops, like teardrops, one after another. They sound like defeat. “You know what the funniest thing is, Chanyeol? I’ve probably spent months running away from that house, from my own mother, only to end up just like her.”
Chanyeol stops him with a finger on his lips. He stops him because he, too, has a limit.
“And what about me?” he says. He tries to keep his rage at bay, to leash it and hide it but there’s no way to hide this to Baekhyun, who’s too clever and too defenseless to ignore it. “After all of this, after everything I’ve done for you, you’d really think I’d choose my family over you?”
Baekhyun’s lips are thin now, from anger. If Chanyeol kissed him, he would find them chapped and dry. If Chanyeol kissed him long enough, he would make them soft and tender, shiny with spit, bitten-red, like fresh strawberries in April.
“Your father is a politician, Chanyeol. If you come back home and start working in his big company, in the end he’ll want you to take the same path. He’ll want you to have a decent wife and sons and a family, and you’ll want it too.”
“Baekhyun-”
Baekhyun pushes his hands away, puts some distance between them the way he always does when he’s mad, when he’s afraid, when he has lost and when he is lost.
“You think my father didn’t love my mother? He did. But he left her anyway, and here you are telling me you love me, promising me you’ll take me to see the roses in May, but I’m blind and I won’t be able to see them. I won’t be the person you want and you’ll leave me and I’ll be alone, again, with memories of a moment I couldn’t even see!”
There’s a limit to how much bullshit Chanyeol can hear. There’s a limit to how much he can refrain himself from physically lunging at Baekhyun, not when Baekhyun wants to fight so much.
“If you say another word, I swear Baekhyun…”
“You’re a liar, just like him-” Chanyeol yanks his collar and shoves him, trying to get him to shut up. Baekhyun is ready. He knew, he was expecting it. He shoves Chanyeol back. Chanyeol yanks his arm to keep his balance and they fall together, a knot of limbs, of teeth and nails and screams, so tangled and messy that even the only advantage Chanyeol has in a fight against Baekhyun, his sight, becomes completely useless. Baekhyun bites and scratches and kicks wherever he reaches, hissing like an angry cat.
Chanyeol rolls them over, using his weight to pin Baekhyun down, and Baekhyun knees him in the balls, hard. He whimpers and hits back, blindly, fat tears in his eyes, and now he’s hurt and angry and dangerous. He doesn’t think about Baekhyun’s smile, his soft lips, the tender flesh of his face surrendering to a smile, red blossoming on his cheeks and ears. He doesn’t think about Baekhyun’s pretty hands, made to hold a brush or hit the keys of a piano, made to turn pages and explore Chanyeol’s body.
Chanyeol thinks about Baekhyun’s eyes and they’re not empty but full of ice and fire, they’re cold and angry. He thinks about nails, digging under the skin, about Baekhyun’s poisonous tongue. He thinks Baekhyun wanted this. He wanted violence, he wanted fists and bites. Baekhyun is not a doll or a flower, Baekhyun is a boy, all adrenaline and testosterone and hunger for victory. Baekhyun wants to be treated like a boy - like a normal boy, not like Chanyeol’s blind pet. Chanyeol, probably, doesn’t think at all. He only hears the smash of his fist against Baekhyun’s face, the sickening feel of blood, viscid and thick and so wet, against his hand, between his fingers, running down Baekhyun’s face. Baekhyun cusses and moans in pain and he probably coughs. Chanyeol feels hurt all over.
He rolls away from his boyfriend and watches, with a cruelty he usually doesn’t feel, as Baekhyun has a mini freak-out about being left alone, unable to see where Chanyeol is, but still stubbornly refuses to call Chanyeol back.
“I know you’re here,” says Baekhyun, the words a little muffled with all the blood running down his face. “I can hear you breathe.”
Chanyeol doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything for a long time.
“Are you freaking out because you hit a blind person?”
“You’re an asshole. You’re a fucking asshole,” he says, voice breaking, his hand still slick with Baekhyun’s blood.
“You hit back.” Baekhyun replies, spitting the words out. He’s lucky he’s not spitting out a tooth or two, too. Chanyeol punched him with every intention to break his face.
“You wanted me to do this! You...”
“You hit back,” repeats Baekhyun, and Chanyeol punches the wall and curses, hard and loud, resisting the urge to punch Baekhyun again.
“I don’t care if you’ve never experienced being punched in your face and you wanted to try, next time you try to make me do something like this, I’ll leave. You understand me? I’ll leave!” He’s screaming and feeling like an idiot, the awareness that he could’ve really hurt Baekhyun - and he still doesn’t know exactly how much damage he did - bubbles hysterically in his chest.
“You could’ve left today too, but you stayed! I didn’t make this mess alone so stop trying to push all the blame on me when you threw the first punch! And you’re not even angry because you’ve hurt me, you’re angry because you feel manipulated.” He breathes heavily through the red on his face. “Well, welcome to my world, Park Chanyeol, where everyone is trying to manipulate me into doing something and I literally have no leverage to fucking do anything. So yes, I was angry! I was angry when I talked to my father too. I wanted to punch him hard enough to break his nose, but I couldn’t do it. I wanted to punch my brother the first time he came to visit me here, and I couldn’t do it. I wanted to punch you, when you started working for my mother and many other times. You don’t understand how it is, how powerless I feel sometimes, and there you are complaining that I made you do something, as if I had any power over you to begin with!”
Baekhyun pushes himself upwards and walks to the counter. He grabs a cloth from the drawer and pushes it to his face, moaning softly. He looks wrecked and tender and full of sharp edges like this. Chanyeol probably looks the same. Everything comes back full circle.
“You have power over me, Baekhyun. You’re probably the only one who can rile me up like that.” He doesn’t try to reach for Baekhyun. He still wants to punch him. “What you did was dangerous and stupid.”
“I just want you to see me as an equal.”
“I see you as an equal.”
Chanyeol will count his bruises tomorrow. Baekhyun put them on him, purple and red on his skin. This is Baekhyun’s doing. A poor attempt at saying you’re mine. He’s so stupid. And an asshole. Chanyeol doesn’t know what to do with him.
“Am I really an equal for you? I’ll never be able to make you proud. Sometimes, talking with your friends, or with your sunbae at work, you’ll wish the topic of me will never come out because it’ll be embarrassing. Because you’ll be ashamed.”
“Would you have rather been a different person? A person like my mother? Like your mother?” Slaves of their jewels, their houses, their beauty, of their sons, to the point they would go crazy without them? “Did you really want to be like them? You would’ve never been my equal, then.”
Had Baekhyun not lost his sight, where would they be now? What kind of person would he have grown up to be? Chanyeol can almost imagine him, wearing a tailored suit, holding a flute of champagne, a secret smile tugging at the corner of his lips. Strong, charismatic. Would Chanyeol’s parents have accepted him more easily, then? Would Chanyeol have fallen in love with him anyway? He’s not sure. He’s in love with this scared, bruised man who can’t see but feels too much, who keeps making mistakes and hurting himself, like a fish caught in a net, struggling endlessly and only tangling himself in it more and more. Baekhyun and his beautiful contradictions. Baekhyun and his nonsense logic.
Chanyeol takes Baekhyun’s face in his hands, to clean the blood Baekhyun can’t see properly, but Baekhyun slaps them away, although weakly. He’s waiting, for Chanyeol to finish his piece, for the curtain to fall.
“Don’t you think, Baekhyun, that maybe, just maybe, I wanted something different? If I had wanted to become a politician and to marry a girl who could talk about art and literature, and to take her to parties so that everyone could envy me and my mother could brag about it with her friends at the club, I would’ve just stayed home. From the beginning. But I didn’t want that. I didn’t know what I wanted, but now I know. You might not know, you might have doubts, but I know.”
Baekhyun doesn’t have an emergency kit at home and it’s too late to ring at Sunyoung’s door. Chanyeol ends up going to the closest convenience store and getting stared at by the young employee. He ignores the curious gaze resting on his swollen eye and bruised lip as he buys antiseptic and bandaids.
When he comes home, Baekhyun is standing on the balcony. Chanyeol opens the sliding door as loudly as he can, hoping he doesn’t startle him, and calls him inside.
Baekhyun shakes his head.
“You’re overreacting. And you’re cold. Come here, Baekhyun-ah.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I will kiss you if you do.”
And maybe it’s his promise of not being angry, despite everything that happened, that lures Baekhyun inside.
Baekhyun’s lips are chapped, a little dry. He traces them with his thumb first and then with his lips. Carefully. Slowly. Baekhyun is so cold and he tastes like blood and rain. When he lets go, Baekhyun only tastes like Chanyeol.
“It was your father, wasn’t it?” he asks, before Baekhyun can fall asleep. The bed seems impossibly big, with all the empty space stretching wide between them. Chanyeol wants to cross the distance but he doesn’t dare. “Did he tell you I would leave you?”
Baekhyun thinks hard about the answer.
“He told me I reminded him of my mother. He told me I was just like her. I don’t want to make the same mistakes she did. I don’t want to find myself alone in that big house. She’s going crazy. I don’t want you to leave me like he did with her.”
Chanyeol doesn’t make empty promises. He builds his trust day after day, with facts and not with words. He hugs Baekhyun. Today he’s here, with Baekhyun. Tomorrow he’ll still be here with Baekhyun. In twenty years he doesn’t know where he’ll be, but he really really hopes Baekhyun will be there too.
xxvi. LISSOME
(adj) thin, graceful
“Are the roses in bloom?” asks Baekhyun. The taxi slows down and comes to a halt in front of the huge gate. Mrs. Lee, the oldest maid, is waiting for them at the entrance, holding the lateral door open.
It’s too early for the roses. The siege of the winter has lasted too long this year, with the last snow sprinkling the mountains white only a few weeks ago. The roses are still sleeping, but other flowers have made their appearance. Pink peonies, lilac freesia and delphimium, white lilies and callas.
Chanyeol leads Baekhyun through the garden, making his way through a daedalus of vines, of bushes and hedges who are only now starting to dress up with new leaves and blossoms. The grass is soft. The first bees are already buzzing. Baekhyun’s smile widens.
Mrs. Kim wears red on her lips and on her body. She looks tinier than Chanyeol remembered her, older. There’s a trail of silver starting from her forehead and ending in the austere chignon behind her head and new wrinkles around her eyes and lips. She has aged ten years in only a few months, but when she speaks her voice is just as sharp.
“I thought you weren’t coming back,” she says, as greeting.
“Hello, mother.”
She nods quickly at Chanyeol, as if to dismiss him, but he ignores her and sits next to Baekhyun under the trellis.
“I see you both decided to defy my will in my home.”
“It’s been a few months, Mrs. Kim,” says Chanyeol, respectfully. He doesn’t really like this woman, despite her striking similarities with Baekhyun. (Or maybe it’s because of her striking similarities with Baekhyun. He got his worst sides from her, soaked up all her flaws one by one when he was a child.) But she is Baekhyun’s mother, and Baekhyun desperately wants to be with her.
“I can’t leave her alone,” he told Chanyeol, only a few days ago. “I want to visit her. I know it wasn’t her fault. I know she’s not well and she needs me. If I don’t go, I will be just like my father, won’t I? But I’m so scared. That could be my future.”
And Chanyeol couldn’t let him come alone in the lair of the witch. So they came, together, and together they will leave, regardless of what Mrs. Kim wants.
“It’s been a few months since you stole my son, again,” she says, finally acknowledging Chanyeol’s presence.
“I haven’t been stolen, Mother. I’m here. And you can talk to me. Chanyeol is not my caretaker.”
“No, your brother is your caretaker. To think both my sons would betray me like this.”
“I am my own caretaker, Mother. I am almost twenty-five years old,” says Baekhyun, with a light frown.
“Who is paying for your expenses? The rent? Groceries? Clothes? If you can’t provide for yourself you can’t consider yourself independent. You should’ve stayed here and I would’ve given you everything you wanted.” Her lips are tight. Maybe they tremble. Chanyeol can see, how frail and tiny she is, how alone. He wonders if Baekhyun can feel it too, or if in his imagination she’ll always be the beautiful, unbreakable woman she was in his childhood.
“You’ve already done it. You raised me after that man left, you took care of me. But I can’t be your child forever.”
Baekhyun is not a child. He hasn’t been for a long time. Chanyeol wishes they could see, both his parents, what kind of man he’s going to become. He’s kind of weird and twisted and most of the time he sounds like he’s drowning, but there’s a hidden beauty in him, the ability to fill the cracks with gold, to get up and move forward, even in total darkness. Baekhyun is undeniably beautiful.
“You are still my child, Baekhyunnie. You’ll forever be my child. You’re mine.”
“Funny how father said the same thing,” Baekhyun says, lost and melancholic, and that hits her harder than everything else.
“Did you meet him?” she asks. Her voice doesn’t shake but her everything else does.
“I did. A few weeks ago. He has a new family, you know? A daughter and two sons who will be ready to tear themselves to pieces when it’s time to inherit the company. He told me he was willing to support me.”
(“Quite preposterous of him. I hope you refused,” had said Chanyeol after Baekhyun told him, unable to keep the venom out of his voice, but Baekhyun had just hummed, nuzzling him like a big, sleepy cat. “Of course I did. Who needs that old man anyway?”)
Baekhyun’s mother loses a beat. She closes her eyes, flustered, to avoid Chanyeol’s gaze. In this too she looks like Baekhyun. She doesn’t want to be pitied.
“Will you accept his help?” she asks, once she’s regained control of her voice.
“I don’t need his help,” explains Baekhyun. “I don’t need his help or your help and soon enough I won’t need Baekbom’s and Chanyeol’s help either. I’ve accepted a job at a school for visually impaired people. The pay is not good. It doesn’t cover the rent of the flat where I’m living, nor most of my expenses, but it’s a start.”
He pauses, unsure, and it’s so clear to Chanyeol that he’s waiting to be praised. Baekhyun is one of the most transparent and obvious people in the world. He wears his feelings on his face, on the nervous tics of his hands, on the way he squares up or hunches his shoulders. He can’t control his body language at all. He can’t see how much he’s showing so he ends up showing too much. Chanyeol hopes Mrs. Kim is watching. He hopes she understands because this time Baekhyun needs her praise, and he won’t settle for anything else.
“I didn’t raise you to work, my son.”
“That too, was something Father said. I told him he didn’t raise me at all. He wasn’t happy.”
That makes her smile, a flash of amusement. “I guess.”
“He think he knows what is right for me, but he doesn’t. Nor do you. I will never deny your right to call me your son, mother, but I’m not going to stay here and let you keep me under a crystal bell forever.”
There’s nothing she can say back to him without admitting defeat, so she doesn’t say anything at all. She asks for more tea and she questions Baekhyun about what kind of job he’s doing, how much he’s being paid, how he’s managing his money.
“I don’t understand why you’re working. You’re my son, you could have everything you wanted.”
“At your conditions, mother. But I don’t want to live here.”
His words hurt her. But he doesn’t apologize. She never apologized either, so they’re somehow even.
When Baekhyun leaves with Mrs. Lee to take some personal effects from his old room, Mrs. Kim turns towards Chanyeol.
“He has his father’s mind,” she says. “He would’ve liked him, had he actually put some effort into getting to know him.”
“He has a lot of his mother too,” he says, respectfully, and she just snorts at his fake politeness.
“I didn’t like your mother in university,” she says. “Cheap and vulgar. She doesn’t know what class and elegance are. And she raised an arrogant son.”
“She raised a son who can survive without her help.” Can you say the same about yourself?
“You won’t last. You’re like my husband, Park Chanyeol. One day you’ll break his heart and he’ll come back to me.”
“We’ll see. Until that day, let’s get along well.”
The sun sets beyond the horizon, painting the vines of the trellis gold and red. They stay at the house until the only color left is blue.
When their car leaves, Baekhyun sags against the car seat and finds Chanyeol’s hands.
“Thank you,” he says, intertwining their fingers together.
xxvii. INDELIBLE
(v) to make marks that cannot be erased, removed, or forgotten
It’s a strange creature, the dog-rose. A flower of the wild, growing in ditches, woods and fallow fields. If you groom it, if you raise it right, choosing and mixing the best-looking flowers, through centuries of careful and planned selection you could obtain the most beautiful rose in the world. Hundreds of petals of peerless grace. A queen, unspeakable and invaluable. It lasts a few days. Then, it dies.
But the dog-rose doesn’t care about scentless hybrids and the softest colors. It’s an unassuming, humble flower. It grows everywhere and never really withers. It endures It resists. The dog-rose, with its thorns and its tiny petals, tinier leaves, with its hypnotic, melancholic scent and its pastel pink crown, is the true miracle.
Chanyeol could’ve chosen between thousand of roses, but he didn’t want to give Baekhyun a corsage, beautiful and elegant and destined to perish in less than a week. He bought a flower pot, the biggest he could find, and asked the florist to plant a dog-rose inside.
“It’s very simple to manage this kind of plant. Just keep it in front of the sunlight, water it now and then, especially during spring and summer. Easy, right?”
It’s not easy, not for Baekhyun who can’t see. But he can touch and he can smell and he can smile. He smiles when Chanyeol tells him, “Happy birthday!”
It’s not the first birthday they spend together, but this one it’s special. Not only because this time they’re together, but also because for the first time since he was ten years old Baekhyun decided to throw a party. Sunyoung comes over and they bake a cake together. They invite Jongdae and his girlfriend Joohyun, Baekhyun’s coworkers and friends from the school and Chanyeol’s sister. Baekhyun’s mother sends a flower bouquet and Baekhyun’s father sends money and a card. Baekhyun asks Chanyeol to read the card.
(“He could’ve at least chosen a braille card,” complains Chanyeol later. “Would you just read it?” asks Baekhyun. He puts the flowers in a vase and the card in an old shoebox. He keeps the money and doesn’t really care.)
Baekbom flies from New York alone, having broken up with his last girlfriend to Sunyoung’s delight. His gift for Baekhyun is a karaoke system and it takes three hours and the combined effort of Chanyeol, Jongdae and Do Kyungsoo, one of Baekhyun’s coworkers, to make it work. Baekhyun sings only the lyrics he remembers and promises to study hard for the next karaoke session. His voice is blunt and untrained, it breaks when he goes for the high-pitched screams but he still laughs. Chanyeol sings rap songs and easy ballads. When the party is over, after everyone else has left, he picks up his guitar and plays famous Western songs, whispering the lyrics in his terrible English and waiting for Baekhyun to tease him.
Baekhyun kisses him instead, and it’s bold, sneaky and urgent. He forces Chanyeol to lay the guitar on the floor and slides onto his lap.
“I have a wish,” he says, between open-mouthed kisses.
“I already got you a birthday present.” Chanyeol pouts. “Besides, your birthday is already over.”
“It is not over until I say it is,” says Baekhyun, and this could easily evolve into their usual banter, into more kissing, into Chanyeol putting Baekhyun to bed and lying next to him until tomorrow, but there’s a hint of uncertainty in Baekhyun’s voice. Shyness maybe, so different from the quality of his kisses. It makes Chanyeol curious.
“What do you want?” he asks, and it feels like he’s done nothing in the past few years but asking this question to Baekhyun. The most important question. Chanyeol always knows what he wants, but he never really knows what Baekhyun wants.
Baekhyun breaths tight and shakes, a leaf ready to fall. Into the fire.
“I want to do it. Sex.”
And it’s like saying the magic word, like opening Pandora’s box and watching all the shadows run away into the night. Chanyeol has him pinned on the couch before he can say anything else, kissing him deeply, thoroughly. It’s pure instinct, the only thing he can do to quench the fire burning inside him. Baekhyun is the falling leaf, but Chanyeol... Chanyeol is the fire.
Baekhyun melts under his kisses, lets Chanyeol mold him into something softer, something warmer, something prettier. Chanyeol’s hands wander on Baekhyun’s chest and he thumbs his left nipple over the fabric, feeling Baekhyun tense and arch into his touch. Baekhyun doesn’t know, he has no idea. How much Chanyeol has wanted to do this. For how long. Since the first time he saw him, probably. But that was only blind desire, tainted by spite, by arrogance, by that tiny stain of pride Chanyeol will always deny to have in his heart. That was before the game started and before it ended.
That was that and this is... This is important. This is one of the moments, the ones that will matter when everything else is forgotten. When the sky is dark and silent and the stars are the only light. This is what Chanyeol wants, and now Baekhyun wants it too.
Reluctantly, he parts from Baekhyun’s lips. He doesn’t want to ask but he needs to ask. He needs to make this right.
“Do you really want to do it?” Baekhyun’s answer is breathless and excited and impossibly fond.
“Yes.”
“Are you really sure, Baekhyun?”
And Baekhyun looks annoyed for a moment and Chanyeol can’t blame him. The things he wants to do to him, Baekhyun doesn’t know, can’t even imagine... But there’s only one first time and Chanyeol wants it to be the best.
“I love you,” he says, and Baekhyun flinches at the word, and then shudders, releasing all the tension in one single, breathy moan that travels right to Chanyeol’s chest, where his heart is beating. He swells with pride when he sees Baekhyun’s blush, red on his ears and on his nose, blossoming on his neck and chest. He’s doing this, his words can do this to Baekhyun’s body. It’s marvelous. He says it again, only to see the shiver that runs through Baekhyun’s body, impossible to stop and impossible to ignore.
“I love you and I want you to know that I would wait for you, my entire life. You don’t have to force yourself to open up to me if you don’t feel comfortable or...”
“You’re rambling. You never ramble. I can’t believe I made you so flustered just by asking you to have sex.”
It’s the laugh creeping behind Baekhyun’s words that makes something shift inside of Chanyeol. He grabs the boy by the butt - oh, Baekhyun’s startled moan - and pulls him closer, makes him feel exactly how much Chanyeol is flustered. Baekhyun’s face darkens in hot, red embarrassment.
“Do you know what you just asked me?” Baekhyun bites his lips when Chanyeol’s teeth scrape his jugular, biting hard enough to leave a bite. “Do you know how much I’ve wanted to do this?”
It seems a little preposterous to ask questions and even demand an answer when he’s still playing with Baekhyun’s nipple, this time without the barrier of the shirt - closer, hotter, the friction between their bodies still unbearable - and Baekhyun’s entire core seems to be focused on squirming and wiggling. His legs spread on their own, a sad attempt to lift some of the pressure off his cock, and when he realizes how exposed he is he closes them again only to moan at the lack of friction.
“I know you want it,” says Baekhyun, between tiny little whimpers that become real cries every time Chanyeol rolls his hips against him. “I’ve heard you jerking off, in the bathroom. In the morning. Every time you slept with me in this apartment.”
“So you knew? You listened? Baekhyun-ah, you’re naughtier than I thought. Did you touch yourself too while I came with your name on my lips?”
Baekhyun doesn’t do flustered. He doesn’t deal well with teasing either. His lips curl as he tries to scowl, but Chanyeol thrusts up against him again and the facade shatters like thin glass. He moans loudly and tries to cover his mouth with his hands, but Chanyeol stops him with a kiss.
“Don’t tease,” he says, when he can speak again.
“Don’t tease, he says, when he’s done nothing but tease me for months.”
“I did it,” says Baekhyun, breathless, and even now he is teasing. “I... touched myself thinking about you. And every time we were together, when it looked like things could go this way, I never wanted to stop you but...”
Chanyeol hopes he’s washing away all of Baekhyun’s insecurities, all his doubts, with this kiss. He makes it longer, deeper. He covers as much as he can of Baekhyun’s body, wanting Baekhyun to feel all of him.
Baekhyun touches him too. The curious, insistent press of his fingers at the waistband of Chanyeol’s boxers is a constant distraction, driving Chanyeol insane.
“I’m going to take these off.”
He pulls at his pants until they’re sliding on the floor and takes off his shirt too. Baekhyun is already skimming out of his own clothes.
“There’s lube in the first drawer of the nightstand,” he says, and Chanyeol shakes his head, surprised.
“Who bought this for you?” he asks, incredulous.
“I did.”
Of course he did. He really thought about this, after all.
Chanyeol thought about this too, about taking Baekhyun, about ruining him for everyone else, about fucking him until he cried. Once, a long time ago, he dreamed of calling Baekhyun a whore.
Now he can only watch the rise and fall of Baekhyun’s chest, the column of his neck, tender and exposed, the line of his hips, jutting out, highlighted by the lights of the city entering from the open window. He wants to cover Baekhyun’s skin in kisses and fuck him like no one else will ever fuck him. He wants to be the first and the last, the best, not for lack of terms of comparison but because he’s the only one who can make Baekhyun feel like touching the sky. He wants to own, not Baekhyun but this moment.
A long time ago, Park Chanyeol stole Baekhyun’s first kiss. This time, he doesn’t need to steal anything. He can take what is willingly offered. He can unravel Baekhyun’s defenses one by one. Except there’s no coldness to tear apart like silk, the poisonous words to unfasten like the buttons of his shirt have turned into sweet moans and words meant only for Chanyeol’s ears and all the secrets have already been peeled away, together with Baekhyun’s clothes. Chanyeol can already see all of Baekhyun and he’s sure, he’s more than sure, that Baekhyun can see him too. He wouldn’t be smiling so hard otherwise.
“So, aren’t you going to take me?”
Chanyeol smiles back and Baekhyun, like always, like always, can feel it. He can’t see it but he knows Chanyeol is smiling at him. He knows Chanyeol is looking at him.
A click echoes in the silent apartment.
Chanyeol turns off the lights.
part 5 ->
AN: I'm still trying to reply all the comments I've received because I was on a trip and I didn't even have internet, but to all of you who took time to leave a few (or more) words I can only say thank you very much. You made me the happiest and gave me great motivation to go on. You're the best, thank you ;;
Also, as you might have noticed, there's one more part to be posted. I hoped to finish with part 4 but... too bad. One more part next week <3
Leave a comment if you liked it and, if you want, visit me on twitter too @/aprilclaws. Thank you again, I hope you all enjoy this <3
<- part 3
“Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it.”
- Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
xxiii. DESUETUDE
(n) a state of disuse
Chanyeol knew it was a terrible idea. Yura’s ideas are always terrible by default.
He sends a quick glare to his sister - congratulations, you’ve surpassed your usual level of stupidity this time, to which she answers with an eye roll that probably means she thinks he’s the stupid one, since he keeps following her advices. Chanyeol keeps frowning, but he focuses on the diplomatic mess in front of him.
“I haven’t seen your mother in a while. I hope her health is well.”
Baekhyun shakes and Chanyeol’s mother smiles. He can’t see her, of course, but he knows she’s smiling. He’s always been so perceptive. Chanyeol stares at him, as intensely as he can, hoping his boyfriend can feel the weight of the gaze resting on him and know he’s not alone in this.
Chanyeol wishes he hadn’t come. There’s a reason he left his house and sure, he’s the only son, he’ll always be welcome here, he is welcome here, but his boyfriend is not. He knows, Baekhyun knows, Yura knew it too when she invited Chanyeol and his new boyfriend at home.
“It’ll be funny,” she said. “Mom will love him,” she said. Yura is always too hopeful, a born optimist. (Chanyeol is the pessimist of the family, but he likes to call himself the realistic one.)
Baekhyun licks his lips and clasps his hand together. Sunyoung combed his hair back and made him wear a nice shirt. He looks lovely and cold, like a boy Chanyeol once knew.
“Oh, I’m sure my mother is well. I will send her your regards, Mrs. Park.” He nods, the perfect embodiment of elegance and politeness, but there’s something in his face, in his smirk, that makes the smile in Mrs. Park’s eyes turn sour.
Chanyeol’s mother has no love for Baekhyun. She agreed - not that Chanyeol had asked her opinion on this matter - to their friendship only when she knew the boy was not only rich but also the son of one of her husband’s associates, but she opposed to their relationship fiercely when she realized it was more than a friendship.
“I don’t really care what you think, Mother,” Chanyeol had said, over the phone, ignoring her high-pitched threats. He hadn’t cared when he had left home and he sure won’t start caring now, but he needs to set some boundaries. “You are free to think whatever you want of my choice, but if you try to meddle in my business with this person I will not forgive you. You can welcome another son or lose the one you already have, it doesn’t matter to me. I have already proved myself I’m perfectly able to survive without you or Father’s help.”
“Then bring him home and let me meet him,” was her reply, the words stinging through the headphones. “Let me bring this person who turned my only son into a-”
“Mother!”
Chanyeol had refused, in the beginning, but his mother got also Yura involved and Chanyeol has never been able to say no to his sister.
He should’ve realized it was a trap.
His mother makes him sit at her side, as if to show Baekhyun who’s in charge. She’s trying to stake a claim, to intimidate an opponent. She’s going to fight a war. The saddest thing is that she can’t win, not against Baekhyun. Not in Chanyeol’s heart. He’s already left her even before Baekhyun came into the picture, when he realized he loved his parents, but he would never be able to marry the daughter of an associate and give them grandchildren. Not when he dreamed of rough edges, of lean bodies and muscular chests and cocks. His mother had slapped him when he had told her. It took him three days to pack his stuff and leave. It was the first time. It would take another three years before he was really able to leave that house. (It took him four to finally come back, holding Baekhyun’s hand as he walked through that door. In the end, Park Chanyeol didn’t bend. His parents did.)
“More tea, my dear?” Chanyeol refuses with a curt gesture and waits for her to ask the same to Baekhyun. When she doesn’t, his scowl only deepens.
The saddest thing is that Baekhyun can’t even see how well Mrs. Park’s plan played out. He can’t admire her perfect house, be jealous of her modern, expensive furniture. He can’t admire her son - her son and not his boyfriend - sitting next to her like a knight attending to his queen. He can’t admire her, think she looks younger than she is or wonder about the value of her jewels, her clothes, her smooth face.
It’s the triumph of the culture of appearance, thinks Chanyeol, and its greatest fall at the same time. Appearance has no appeal on a blind boy. And any display of wealth would be lost on the son of a woman who can blackmail the future Prime Minister. Maybe Byun Baekbom is his father’s son, but Baekhyun, in the good and in the bad things, is definitely his mother’s son.
“Chanyeol never told me how you got to know my mother,” he says, delicate, falsely curious, the most charming liar. Chanyeol sits back and wonders what kind of game Baekhyun is trying to play here.
“We shared a few classes in college, I think. We weren’t even friends, just passing acquaintances,” Mrs. Park replies, the teacup shaking slightly in her hands until she puts it back on the coffee table with an audible clink.
“Oh, I see. It’s not difficult to believe it, considering she never named you among her friends.”
Oh, there it is. Neat cut, pretty, without blood. Baekhyun would’ve been a perfect hunter. It’s a pity he can’t see Mrs. Park’s face assuming a delicate shade of plum.
Yura coughs. “More tea, Baekhyunnie?”
They drink tea and talk about roses. Baekhyun surprised Mrs. Park and Yura with his knowledge of the language of the flowers. Chanyeol’s mother doesn’t mention Baekhyun’s mother again.
Later, while the conversation moves onto arranged marriage, offspring and the future of the family, boring and at the same time dangerous topics, Chanyeol gets up and takes Baekhyun’s hand. He sends a quick apology to his mother before pulling his boyfriend up and leading him towards the room at the end of the corridor. Baekhyun follows him without hesitation, but his hand clamps around Chanyeol in uncertainty.
“Where are we going?” he asks.
“My room,” explains Chanyeol, “kind of.”
It’s the only empty room of the house and it’s not empty at all. There are boxes, boxes everywhere. When he left, he only packed the essentials, leaving everything else behind. An entire lifetime enclosed in big, small, grey boxes. He opens them, telling Baekhyun what he finds. He talks about that time in third grade when he wanted to become an astronomer and his mother bought him a telescope. He talks about his ferret, fourth grade, and the medal he won in mathletics in fifth grade.
“We would’ve met, eventually,” says Baekhyun, suddenly. He’s sitting on a box of books, stable enough to hold his weight. “My mother wanted me to go to the same middle school you mentioned. There were talks of sending me there. I could still see, back then. It took years to get to the point where I couldn’t see almost anything.”
“Why didn’t she send you?”
“She didn’t want me to get used to that kind of life before it slipped out of my fingers.” He says it, like it’s obvious. Like how can’t Chanyeol understand?
“That’s the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard.”
Baekhyun smiles.
“Isn’t it?” He hugs his knees. “I wished I had gone. I would’ve seen you, at least once.”
“I was an ugly kid,” confesses Chanyeol. “Quite unimpressive.”
“It’s not like it matters to me.”
There’s nothing he can say to that, so he keeps going through the boxes, while Baekhyun hums a popular song under his breath to fill the silence. Something tiny tugs at his heart. It might be melancholy and it might be happiness. He wishes he had a real room to show Baekhyun, with memories hanging from the walls and secrets hidden under his bed, but this room doesn’t even have a bed. Chanyeol’s memories are collecting dust inside paper boxes.
“Oh, found it!” he says, extracting his old acoustic guitar from a big yellow box at the end of the room.
“What?”
Chanyeol doesn’t answer, he just plucks the strings once and Baekhyun jumps in his seat, excited. “You also know how to play it?”
The guitar is old and out of tune, but Chanyeol never forgot how to play it.
“So, you can still surprise me, Park Chanyeol,” says Baekhyun, amused and fond and terribly soft like he’s only recently learned how to be.
Chanyeol plays a soft song, random keys blossoming into music. In the silence of the room, with the sun cascading from the windows, turning the dust into floating gold and Baekhyun’s dark hair into a shining halo, the notes turn into gold too.
“I was a terrible kid. No one wanted to play with me because I was always winning, but I always managed to convince someone only to beat them and have running away in tears later.”
“I suppose I was the opposite. I didn’t care about competition when I was younger. I guess I just got bitter with age.” In the old photos back at Mrs. Kim’s house, Baekhyun shone the brightest. A pure, undiluted glow, the biggest smile. Chanyeol would die to go back in time and see that again, but there’s something else now. This Baekhyun, splintered and broken, this Baekhyun who put himself together out of sheer will, has gold flowing through the cracks of his soul. This is the Baekhyun Chanyeol fell in love with.
Baekhyun tilts his head to the side, following the echoes of the music, and suddenly says, “You didn’t change, though.” Chanyeol’s fingers slip and the note that comes out is too long and out of place. “You still hate to lose.”
“I don’t mind losing,” he says. It’s not a lie, but it’s not the truth either. He just never thought Baekhyun would notice something like that.
“You only don’t mind losing at the things you don’t care about. If you want to win, you simply win. It’s always been like that, with me too.” It’s incredibly accurate and incredibly merciless of Baekhyun to expose him like this.
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you play with me like that, since the beginning? You let me boss you around because you didn’t care about me in the slightest. But when you actually liked me, you pretended to be my friend for months instead of doing anything, just because you wanted me to go crazy about you.”
Chanyeol stares, openly. He stops playing. His silence must have surprised Baekhyun, because the boy just snorts.
“You didn’t think I would realize? Chanyeol, you’re so silly. I think about you all the time. In the darkness, among the many things I can’t see, you’re the only one that shines bright.”
Chanyeol has stopped playing, but the sun is still shining and Baekhyun still looks like an angel, humming the song under his breath.
“I knew since the beginning,” he says, “since the first time you came to my house, that you didn’t like losing. I didn’t want to lose to you, either.” Baekhyun smiles. “It took me a long time to realize that you winning didn’t mean I was going to lose.”
Chanyeol puts the guitar down. Baekhyun’s analysis was painfully accurate. “In the end, you’re the one who surprised me,” he says, accepting his defeat, and Baekhyun’s smile is not soft, but sharp and bright like a blade of gold.
“You should take it back,” he says. “The guitar, I mean. We could play it, in my apartment, sitting on the floor, the next time you get drunk. I’m exceptionally good at drunk-singing.”
Chanyeol doesn’t say anything but folds the guitar in its custody and straps it around his shoulders.
“Shouldn’t we go back? Before your mother starts looking for us.” He extends a hand and Chanyeol takes it, intertwining their fingers together before he scoops him in his arms for a kiss.
“There you are, ready for another terrific talk with my mother. She’s such a sweet lady, isn’t she?”
“Come on, Park Chanyeol. Have you seen my mother? Yours is a true piece of cake for me.”
He lets Chanyeol take him back to the living room, still humming the song softly under his breath.
xxiv. OBLOQUY
(n) harsh public condemnation
It’s sudden, unexpected and totally planned.
The door opens and Chanyeol’s father walks in. He looks at his wife, at his daughter, then at his son and at his son’s boyfriend. They’re all drinking tea. It’s a beautiful morning of spring and the cherry trees are in blossom. The view outside is beautiful, a dream of pale pinks and washed out greys. He pretends to be surprised.
“Chanyeol-ah, you should’ve told me you were coming. I would’ve cleared my schedule.”
Chanyeol looks at his mother, confusion swirling in his eyes. Baekhyun just looks in the direction the new voice came from, his lips already forming a polite greeting.
“You all don’t mind if I take care of a few things with my friend here?”
He doesn’t wait to hear their answer before he takes off his jacket. The door is still open. Someone else enters after him, a thin man who looks a lot like the CEO of one of the biggest chaebols of the country and Seoul’s next mayor. Chanyeol’s heart drops.
President Byun looks a lot like Baekbom. A shark wearing a suit. He’s tall and elegant and he looks older than he is. He looks like a face on the glossy cover of a popular magazine. He looks like someone who’d leave his sons behind to protect his political career. (In that, too, he looks like Baekbom. Except Baekbom came back. He didn’t.)
He steps inside the room and he searches the room, as if looking for someone. His eyes find Chanyeol’s for a moment - an unreadable stare that lasts less than a moment - before he finally looks at his son. Baekhyun still doesn’t know. He’s starting to look a little uncomfortable with the tense silence wrapped around the parlour, but he has no idea his father is just standing there, on the other side of the room, his eyes still unreadable even now that he’s watching his own son.
There’s no way this wasn’t planned. Chanyeol doesn’t need to see the quick glance his parents are exchanging to realize it.
“Excuse me if I intrude,” says President Byun, his eyes still focused on his youngest son. Baekhyun’s face twists as he takes in the voice. For a moment his features look lost, as if they don’t know which path they should take. He opens his mouth, closes it, furrowed brow and confusion swirling in his every gesture. He runs a hand through his hair, taking a moment to find himself again. When he lays it down on his knees, his face has gone back to a cautious, neutral expression. But, for someone who knows where to look, it’s easy to spot the slight shake of his knees, or the way his hands hold the fabric of his pants a little too tightly. For someone who knows where to look, Baekhyun is so hopelessly transparent and clear.
Chanyeol gets up, suddenly, startling everyone in the room. “Father, what a nice surprise! I’d gladly wait for you and your friend to be done, but I’m afraid we’re leaving soon. It’s a pity we can’t stay more.” He keeps talking. From the corner of his eyes, he sees Baekhyun snapping out of the confused daze he was in and turning his face to follow Chanyeol’s voice. That’s right, he thinks, focus on my voice, come on. I’m getting you out of this.
“Oh, but I insist,” says his father. “I haven’t talked to you in so long. And since Baekhyun is here too, maybe you two could stay for lunch.”
Chanyeol ignores him and takes Baekhyun’s hand. “I’m afraid it’s impossible. But thank you for the offer, maybe next time?”
“Chanyeol, don’t be rude, you just arrived,” says Mrs. Park. She doesn’t lose her smile but there’s a clear warning behind her politeness. Chanyeol doesn’t care. About her warnings, about her plans, he doesn’t care what the deal between his father and Chanyeol’s father is. He’s taking Baekhyun away from this... from this ambush.
“Your mother is right, Chanyeol.”
He stops in his tracks. Baekhyun’s face has gone back to a neutral, cold look that reminds Chanyeol of the old colonial house in the outskirts of Seoul, of dolls and dust and soft roses.
“We should stay a little more, if you don’t mind.” He puts his teacup back on the table. The movement is elegant and firm, only a tiny clink of porcelain against glass betrays the clumsiness behind it. “Since your father’s guest went to great lengths in order to meet me, the least I can do is listen what he has to say.”
“It’s been a long time, Baekhyun,” says President Byun. “You were a lot less reasonable the last time we talked.”
Something quirks at the corner of Baekhyun’s mouth. It could be an aborted laugh. It’s bitter and tiny and ugly. “You mean when you decided to leave? Yes, I guess I wasn’t all that happy with that decision. You’ll find out I can be quite pleasant when you’re not trying to get rid of me, Father.”
Chanyeol’s mother gasps and Yura chokes an incredulous laugh behind her hand. President Byun’s eyes harden. “I will not accept such nonsense from you, boy. I didn’t accept it back then and I won’t accept it now.”
“It’s a bit late to show some backbone now, isn’t it?” He sighs theatrically. “You should’ve acted like a father when I really needed one. But I suppose saving your own career was more important than your own son.”
“Byun Baekhyun, I’m not going to repeat myself…”
Chanyeol knows a warning when he sees one. He knows what happens when Baekhyun’s lips curl inwards and almost disappear, when he bites his bottom lip and smiles, wicked.
“Who knows what your electors would say if they knew the man they trust to run this city couldn’t even take care of his own child. You should be careful that the story doesn’t come out. The public can be very harsh sometimes.”
It’s like going back in time. This is not the Baekhyun of chicken and beer, of instant ramyun and blueberry soju to drink under cherry blossom and rain. (He can’t see them but he can feel them fall, on his face, on his open hands and on his puckered lips. He tried to catch them once, “Because in a drama I heard that if you catch a falling petal in your hand you’ll meet your destined one.”) This is not the Baekhyun who sings Arirang from the balcony when he’s drunk while Chanyeol plays the guitar.
This is the Baekhyun of red roses and porcelain dolls. The Baekhyun of red wine, dust and loneliness. He has his mother’s laugh and he uses it, just because he knows it would offend his father more. He has her loneliness and a speck of her madness and a lot of anger.
The need to pull Baekhyun away from this conversation, from the past that keeps coming back to drag him down with greedy hands, grows stronger, but there’s nothing Chanyeol can do if Baekhyun wants to stay here and fight.
Baekhyun’s father turns towards Chanyeol’s father. “May I borrow a room? I need to talk with my son, alone.”
Chanyeol says no, but Baekhyun says yes. Baekhyun gets up and goes for the door without hesitation. He’s been in the house enough times to know where to go without help, but he still stops in the middle of the room and waits for Chanyeol.
“My office will be fine,” says Chanyeol’s father, ignoring his son’s furious face. President Byun too pretends not to see it the glare of pure venom Chanyeol sends him.
“Are you sure it’ll be alright?” he asks to Baekhyun in hushed tones, ignoring the cold eyes of both their fathers. Baekhyun shrugs. “Not really, but it’s not like I can ignore him forever.”
Chanyeol nods and steps closer, his lips gracing Baekhyun’s ear so that the two older men on the corridor can’t hear. “Don’t let him get to you. You’re stronger.”
He leads Baekhyun his father’s personal room, making him sit on the couch.
“I’ll be right here, on the other side of the door, if you need me,” he whispers in hushed tones.
“We’re just talking, Chanyeol. There’s no reason to worry.”
Oh, but Chanyeol worries. He worried so much he calls Baekbom, because it’s not fair that he’s the only one who’s worried.
“About time,” Baekbom says, disgruntles and sleepy, in his best 3AM voice. “He’s been hinting at a possible meeting with Baekhyun for a while, but I always refused to help him.”
“He’s an asshole, just like you.”
“And you, Park Chanyeol. Don’t forget you’re an asshole too. Anyway, don’t worry.”
“How can I not worry? He’s in there, alone...”
“If I were you I’d worry for my father, not for Baekhyun. He has quite a lot of pent up frustration to release. But the old man had it coming and they both need closure.”
“Yes but...”
“You can’t do this for him, Park. You can only trust him.”
m
Chanyeol doesn’t trust anyone. He doesn’t trust himself, he doesn’t Baekbom and he doesn’t trust Baekhyun. He especially doesn’t trust Baekhyun’s father, but there’s really nothing he can do but wait, until the door opens and Baekhyun comes out slowly, following the wall with his hands.
“Chanyeol, are you here?”
“Yes,” he says, rushing to his side.
Baekhyun takes a deep breath. “I think we can go now.”
Baekhyun doesn’t tell him what the conversation was about and Chanyeol doesn’t ask. They go to the park together and Chanyeol treats Baekhyun to sannakji and records the way Baekhyun squirms and shivers in disgust.
“What the fucking hell did you make me eat?” he asks, on the verge of retching. Chanyeol laughs and pats his back. “You should finish it all, it’s really expensive.”
“The hell, it’s alive, take it away I’m just going to throw up.”
He takes Baekhyun to an art museum later, to watch an exhibition of sound art. Baekhyun hides it well but he’s quite pretty when he’s satisfied.
“I can’t believe you can actually be a decent boyfriend, Park Chanyeol.” He beams and red flourishes on his ears and the bridge of his nose.
“At least one of us has to be,” he says, and Baekhyun pretends he’s offended.
“At least I didn’t forget our one hundred days anniversary. Unlike you.”
“What are you? A high schooler? One hundred days anniversaries are for kids.”
Baekhyun’s nails dig into his wrist in revenge and he retaliates with a pinch on Baekhyun’s side.
On their way home, they buy odeng, because it’s still cold enough to enjoy fish cakes in spicy broth, and blueberry soju, Baekhyun’s favorite.
“Let’s get drunk,” Baekhyun says.
“I can play the guitar, but you have to sing,” says Chanyeol.
xxv. FANTODS
(n) state of extreme anxiety, distress; ‘feeling so attacked right now’
The cherry blossoms bloom, wither and finally fall, together with silver rain, one foggy day of April. Baekhyun stops playing with the remote control of Jongdae’s television to sit in front of the window and listen to the sound of the rain.
“You’ll get cold if you stay there without a jacket,” calls Chanyeol from the kitchen.
“I’m not cold. I like the sound of the rain.”
Chanyeol puts a blanket over him and drags the heater closer. “Be careful, I’ve put the heater in, front of your feet. Can you feel it?” Baekhyun wiggles his feet in contentment. “Hey, don’t knock it down!”
“I won’t forget it’s there, calm down.”
The sky cries and throws a tantrum like a whining child, stomping his foot on the ground in the form of blinding white lightning and rumbling thunders.
“Can you see it? The lightning I mean?”
Baekhyun shrugs. “I’m not sure. It could be just my imagination. Sometimes I want to see things so much I make them up in my mind. Baekbom took me to the doctor last week. He said I will probably lose my eyesight in my left eye completely in less than a year.” He hides his face against his pajama pants and breathes in the smell of cotton and fabric softener. He sighs, soundlessly.
“I don’t want to lose my eyesight,” he says. He doesn’t cry - he never cry - but the sound of the rain washing away the pollution of the city, hitting the ground, the wall, the glass of the windows, sounds like the sky is crying for him. “It’s stupid, isn’t it? I can barely see anything. In the strongest light the best I can see is grey shadows moving, but I still don’t want to lose it.”
“It’s not stupid, Baekhyun. It’s not...”
“When you first came to my house, the maids said you had red hair, and I tried my best to look at you, but I couldn’t even see exactly where you were. I felt so stupid. I feel so stupid every time you smile at me, because I know you’re smiling. You have like... a smiling voice. And I know you’re smiling but I can’t see you, no matter how hard I look. I can’t imagine your smile.”
The rain washes away the cherry blossoms and Baekhyun’s unshed tears. He doodles on the hazy surface of the glass, swirls and little, drunken stars.
“I know you’ve talked with your parents. I know they want you to come back home. And I know you’re thinking about it.”
Oh, so it’s about that.
“I’m their only son, of course they want me to come home.”
“They don’t like me,” he sulks.
“They don’t know you, it’s different.”
It’s a lie and they both know it. No father would want his only son to be gay. No father would want his only son to be gay and in love with a blind man. But Baekhyun is his father’s son and his mother’s son and they can’t really say anything about him. That, and they both know where Chanyeol’s loyalty resides. The problem is… does Baekhyun know?
Baekhyun turns his head towards the ceiling, exposing his neck, his throat, the line of his clavicle. The light hits his face through the raindrops, fractured in tiny little luminous shards. He looks beautiful and a little broken, like the boy Chanyeol first fell in love with.
“Even if they knew me things wouldn’t change. I still would be the jobless blind kid who can’t give you an heir, can’t accompany you at charity events and impress people with his knowledge of politics or art or music. I’m useless in their eyes.” His words are thin and cold. They fall, like raindrops, like teardrops, one after another. They sound like defeat. “You know what the funniest thing is, Chanyeol? I’ve probably spent months running away from that house, from my own mother, only to end up just like her.”
Chanyeol stops him with a finger on his lips. He stops him because he, too, has a limit.
“And what about me?” he says. He tries to keep his rage at bay, to leash it and hide it but there’s no way to hide this to Baekhyun, who’s too clever and too defenseless to ignore it. “After all of this, after everything I’ve done for you, you’d really think I’d choose my family over you?”
Baekhyun’s lips are thin now, from anger. If Chanyeol kissed him, he would find them chapped and dry. If Chanyeol kissed him long enough, he would make them soft and tender, shiny with spit, bitten-red, like fresh strawberries in April.
“Your father is a politician, Chanyeol. If you come back home and start working in his big company, in the end he’ll want you to take the same path. He’ll want you to have a decent wife and sons and a family, and you’ll want it too.”
“Baekhyun-”
Baekhyun pushes his hands away, puts some distance between them the way he always does when he’s mad, when he’s afraid, when he has lost and when he is lost.
“You think my father didn’t love my mother? He did. But he left her anyway, and here you are telling me you love me, promising me you’ll take me to see the roses in May, but I’m blind and I won’t be able to see them. I won’t be the person you want and you’ll leave me and I’ll be alone, again, with memories of a moment I couldn’t even see!”
There’s a limit to how much bullshit Chanyeol can hear. There’s a limit to how much he can refrain himself from physically lunging at Baekhyun, not when Baekhyun wants to fight so much.
“If you say another word, I swear Baekhyun…”
“You’re a liar, just like him-” Chanyeol yanks his collar and shoves him, trying to get him to shut up. Baekhyun is ready. He knew, he was expecting it. He shoves Chanyeol back. Chanyeol yanks his arm to keep his balance and they fall together, a knot of limbs, of teeth and nails and screams, so tangled and messy that even the only advantage Chanyeol has in a fight against Baekhyun, his sight, becomes completely useless. Baekhyun bites and scratches and kicks wherever he reaches, hissing like an angry cat.
Chanyeol rolls them over, using his weight to pin Baekhyun down, and Baekhyun knees him in the balls, hard. He whimpers and hits back, blindly, fat tears in his eyes, and now he’s hurt and angry and dangerous. He doesn’t think about Baekhyun’s smile, his soft lips, the tender flesh of his face surrendering to a smile, red blossoming on his cheeks and ears. He doesn’t think about Baekhyun’s pretty hands, made to hold a brush or hit the keys of a piano, made to turn pages and explore Chanyeol’s body.
Chanyeol thinks about Baekhyun’s eyes and they’re not empty but full of ice and fire, they’re cold and angry. He thinks about nails, digging under the skin, about Baekhyun’s poisonous tongue. He thinks Baekhyun wanted this. He wanted violence, he wanted fists and bites. Baekhyun is not a doll or a flower, Baekhyun is a boy, all adrenaline and testosterone and hunger for victory. Baekhyun wants to be treated like a boy - like a normal boy, not like Chanyeol’s blind pet. Chanyeol, probably, doesn’t think at all. He only hears the smash of his fist against Baekhyun’s face, the sickening feel of blood, viscid and thick and so wet, against his hand, between his fingers, running down Baekhyun’s face. Baekhyun cusses and moans in pain and he probably coughs. Chanyeol feels hurt all over.
He rolls away from his boyfriend and watches, with a cruelty he usually doesn’t feel, as Baekhyun has a mini freak-out about being left alone, unable to see where Chanyeol is, but still stubbornly refuses to call Chanyeol back.
“I know you’re here,” says Baekhyun, the words a little muffled with all the blood running down his face. “I can hear you breathe.”
Chanyeol doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything for a long time.
“Are you freaking out because you hit a blind person?”
“You’re an asshole. You’re a fucking asshole,” he says, voice breaking, his hand still slick with Baekhyun’s blood.
“You hit back.” Baekhyun replies, spitting the words out. He’s lucky he’s not spitting out a tooth or two, too. Chanyeol punched him with every intention to break his face.
“You wanted me to do this! You...”
“You hit back,” repeats Baekhyun, and Chanyeol punches the wall and curses, hard and loud, resisting the urge to punch Baekhyun again.
“I don’t care if you’ve never experienced being punched in your face and you wanted to try, next time you try to make me do something like this, I’ll leave. You understand me? I’ll leave!” He’s screaming and feeling like an idiot, the awareness that he could’ve really hurt Baekhyun - and he still doesn’t know exactly how much damage he did - bubbles hysterically in his chest.
“You could’ve left today too, but you stayed! I didn’t make this mess alone so stop trying to push all the blame on me when you threw the first punch! And you’re not even angry because you’ve hurt me, you’re angry because you feel manipulated.” He breathes heavily through the red on his face. “Well, welcome to my world, Park Chanyeol, where everyone is trying to manipulate me into doing something and I literally have no leverage to fucking do anything. So yes, I was angry! I was angry when I talked to my father too. I wanted to punch him hard enough to break his nose, but I couldn’t do it. I wanted to punch my brother the first time he came to visit me here, and I couldn’t do it. I wanted to punch you, when you started working for my mother and many other times. You don’t understand how it is, how powerless I feel sometimes, and there you are complaining that I made you do something, as if I had any power over you to begin with!”
Baekhyun pushes himself upwards and walks to the counter. He grabs a cloth from the drawer and pushes it to his face, moaning softly. He looks wrecked and tender and full of sharp edges like this. Chanyeol probably looks the same. Everything comes back full circle.
“You have power over me, Baekhyun. You’re probably the only one who can rile me up like that.” He doesn’t try to reach for Baekhyun. He still wants to punch him. “What you did was dangerous and stupid.”
“I just want you to see me as an equal.”
“I see you as an equal.”
Chanyeol will count his bruises tomorrow. Baekhyun put them on him, purple and red on his skin. This is Baekhyun’s doing. A poor attempt at saying you’re mine. He’s so stupid. And an asshole. Chanyeol doesn’t know what to do with him.
“Am I really an equal for you? I’ll never be able to make you proud. Sometimes, talking with your friends, or with your sunbae at work, you’ll wish the topic of me will never come out because it’ll be embarrassing. Because you’ll be ashamed.”
“Would you have rather been a different person? A person like my mother? Like your mother?” Slaves of their jewels, their houses, their beauty, of their sons, to the point they would go crazy without them? “Did you really want to be like them? You would’ve never been my equal, then.”
Had Baekhyun not lost his sight, where would they be now? What kind of person would he have grown up to be? Chanyeol can almost imagine him, wearing a tailored suit, holding a flute of champagne, a secret smile tugging at the corner of his lips. Strong, charismatic. Would Chanyeol’s parents have accepted him more easily, then? Would Chanyeol have fallen in love with him anyway? He’s not sure. He’s in love with this scared, bruised man who can’t see but feels too much, who keeps making mistakes and hurting himself, like a fish caught in a net, struggling endlessly and only tangling himself in it more and more. Baekhyun and his beautiful contradictions. Baekhyun and his nonsense logic.
Chanyeol takes Baekhyun’s face in his hands, to clean the blood Baekhyun can’t see properly, but Baekhyun slaps them away, although weakly. He’s waiting, for Chanyeol to finish his piece, for the curtain to fall.
“Don’t you think, Baekhyun, that maybe, just maybe, I wanted something different? If I had wanted to become a politician and to marry a girl who could talk about art and literature, and to take her to parties so that everyone could envy me and my mother could brag about it with her friends at the club, I would’ve just stayed home. From the beginning. But I didn’t want that. I didn’t know what I wanted, but now I know. You might not know, you might have doubts, but I know.”
Baekhyun doesn’t have an emergency kit at home and it’s too late to ring at Sunyoung’s door. Chanyeol ends up going to the closest convenience store and getting stared at by the young employee. He ignores the curious gaze resting on his swollen eye and bruised lip as he buys antiseptic and bandaids.
When he comes home, Baekhyun is standing on the balcony. Chanyeol opens the sliding door as loudly as he can, hoping he doesn’t startle him, and calls him inside.
Baekhyun shakes his head.
“You’re overreacting. And you’re cold. Come here, Baekhyun-ah.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I will kiss you if you do.”
And maybe it’s his promise of not being angry, despite everything that happened, that lures Baekhyun inside.
Baekhyun’s lips are chapped, a little dry. He traces them with his thumb first and then with his lips. Carefully. Slowly. Baekhyun is so cold and he tastes like blood and rain. When he lets go, Baekhyun only tastes like Chanyeol.
“It was your father, wasn’t it?” he asks, before Baekhyun can fall asleep. The bed seems impossibly big, with all the empty space stretching wide between them. Chanyeol wants to cross the distance but he doesn’t dare. “Did he tell you I would leave you?”
Baekhyun thinks hard about the answer.
“He told me I reminded him of my mother. He told me I was just like her. I don’t want to make the same mistakes she did. I don’t want to find myself alone in that big house. She’s going crazy. I don’t want you to leave me like he did with her.”
Chanyeol doesn’t make empty promises. He builds his trust day after day, with facts and not with words. He hugs Baekhyun. Today he’s here, with Baekhyun. Tomorrow he’ll still be here with Baekhyun. In twenty years he doesn’t know where he’ll be, but he really really hopes Baekhyun will be there too.
xxvi. LISSOME
(adj) thin, graceful
“Are the roses in bloom?” asks Baekhyun. The taxi slows down and comes to a halt in front of the huge gate. Mrs. Lee, the oldest maid, is waiting for them at the entrance, holding the lateral door open.
It’s too early for the roses. The siege of the winter has lasted too long this year, with the last snow sprinkling the mountains white only a few weeks ago. The roses are still sleeping, but other flowers have made their appearance. Pink peonies, lilac freesia and delphimium, white lilies and callas.
Chanyeol leads Baekhyun through the garden, making his way through a daedalus of vines, of bushes and hedges who are only now starting to dress up with new leaves and blossoms. The grass is soft. The first bees are already buzzing. Baekhyun’s smile widens.
Mrs. Kim wears red on her lips and on her body. She looks tinier than Chanyeol remembered her, older. There’s a trail of silver starting from her forehead and ending in the austere chignon behind her head and new wrinkles around her eyes and lips. She has aged ten years in only a few months, but when she speaks her voice is just as sharp.
“I thought you weren’t coming back,” she says, as greeting.
“Hello, mother.”
She nods quickly at Chanyeol, as if to dismiss him, but he ignores her and sits next to Baekhyun under the trellis.
“I see you both decided to defy my will in my home.”
“It’s been a few months, Mrs. Kim,” says Chanyeol, respectfully. He doesn’t really like this woman, despite her striking similarities with Baekhyun. (Or maybe it’s because of her striking similarities with Baekhyun. He got his worst sides from her, soaked up all her flaws one by one when he was a child.) But she is Baekhyun’s mother, and Baekhyun desperately wants to be with her.
“I can’t leave her alone,” he told Chanyeol, only a few days ago. “I want to visit her. I know it wasn’t her fault. I know she’s not well and she needs me. If I don’t go, I will be just like my father, won’t I? But I’m so scared. That could be my future.”
And Chanyeol couldn’t let him come alone in the lair of the witch. So they came, together, and together they will leave, regardless of what Mrs. Kim wants.
“It’s been a few months since you stole my son, again,” she says, finally acknowledging Chanyeol’s presence.
“I haven’t been stolen, Mother. I’m here. And you can talk to me. Chanyeol is not my caretaker.”
“No, your brother is your caretaker. To think both my sons would betray me like this.”
“I am my own caretaker, Mother. I am almost twenty-five years old,” says Baekhyun, with a light frown.
“Who is paying for your expenses? The rent? Groceries? Clothes? If you can’t provide for yourself you can’t consider yourself independent. You should’ve stayed here and I would’ve given you everything you wanted.” Her lips are tight. Maybe they tremble. Chanyeol can see, how frail and tiny she is, how alone. He wonders if Baekhyun can feel it too, or if in his imagination she’ll always be the beautiful, unbreakable woman she was in his childhood.
“You’ve already done it. You raised me after that man left, you took care of me. But I can’t be your child forever.”
Baekhyun is not a child. He hasn’t been for a long time. Chanyeol wishes they could see, both his parents, what kind of man he’s going to become. He’s kind of weird and twisted and most of the time he sounds like he’s drowning, but there’s a hidden beauty in him, the ability to fill the cracks with gold, to get up and move forward, even in total darkness. Baekhyun is undeniably beautiful.
“You are still my child, Baekhyunnie. You’ll forever be my child. You’re mine.”
“Funny how father said the same thing,” Baekhyun says, lost and melancholic, and that hits her harder than everything else.
“Did you meet him?” she asks. Her voice doesn’t shake but her everything else does.
“I did. A few weeks ago. He has a new family, you know? A daughter and two sons who will be ready to tear themselves to pieces when it’s time to inherit the company. He told me he was willing to support me.”
(“Quite preposterous of him. I hope you refused,” had said Chanyeol after Baekhyun told him, unable to keep the venom out of his voice, but Baekhyun had just hummed, nuzzling him like a big, sleepy cat. “Of course I did. Who needs that old man anyway?”)
Baekhyun’s mother loses a beat. She closes her eyes, flustered, to avoid Chanyeol’s gaze. In this too she looks like Baekhyun. She doesn’t want to be pitied.
“Will you accept his help?” she asks, once she’s regained control of her voice.
“I don’t need his help,” explains Baekhyun. “I don’t need his help or your help and soon enough I won’t need Baekbom’s and Chanyeol’s help either. I’ve accepted a job at a school for visually impaired people. The pay is not good. It doesn’t cover the rent of the flat where I’m living, nor most of my expenses, but it’s a start.”
He pauses, unsure, and it’s so clear to Chanyeol that he’s waiting to be praised. Baekhyun is one of the most transparent and obvious people in the world. He wears his feelings on his face, on the nervous tics of his hands, on the way he squares up or hunches his shoulders. He can’t control his body language at all. He can’t see how much he’s showing so he ends up showing too much. Chanyeol hopes Mrs. Kim is watching. He hopes she understands because this time Baekhyun needs her praise, and he won’t settle for anything else.
“I didn’t raise you to work, my son.”
“That too, was something Father said. I told him he didn’t raise me at all. He wasn’t happy.”
That makes her smile, a flash of amusement. “I guess.”
“He think he knows what is right for me, but he doesn’t. Nor do you. I will never deny your right to call me your son, mother, but I’m not going to stay here and let you keep me under a crystal bell forever.”
There’s nothing she can say back to him without admitting defeat, so she doesn’t say anything at all. She asks for more tea and she questions Baekhyun about what kind of job he’s doing, how much he’s being paid, how he’s managing his money.
“I don’t understand why you’re working. You’re my son, you could have everything you wanted.”
“At your conditions, mother. But I don’t want to live here.”
His words hurt her. But he doesn’t apologize. She never apologized either, so they’re somehow even.
When Baekhyun leaves with Mrs. Lee to take some personal effects from his old room, Mrs. Kim turns towards Chanyeol.
“He has his father’s mind,” she says. “He would’ve liked him, had he actually put some effort into getting to know him.”
“He has a lot of his mother too,” he says, respectfully, and she just snorts at his fake politeness.
“I didn’t like your mother in university,” she says. “Cheap and vulgar. She doesn’t know what class and elegance are. And she raised an arrogant son.”
“She raised a son who can survive without her help.” Can you say the same about yourself?
“You won’t last. You’re like my husband, Park Chanyeol. One day you’ll break his heart and he’ll come back to me.”
“We’ll see. Until that day, let’s get along well.”
The sun sets beyond the horizon, painting the vines of the trellis gold and red. They stay at the house until the only color left is blue.
When their car leaves, Baekhyun sags against the car seat and finds Chanyeol’s hands.
“Thank you,” he says, intertwining their fingers together.
xxvii. INDELIBLE
(v) to make marks that cannot be erased, removed, or forgotten
It’s a strange creature, the dog-rose. A flower of the wild, growing in ditches, woods and fallow fields. If you groom it, if you raise it right, choosing and mixing the best-looking flowers, through centuries of careful and planned selection you could obtain the most beautiful rose in the world. Hundreds of petals of peerless grace. A queen, unspeakable and invaluable. It lasts a few days. Then, it dies.
But the dog-rose doesn’t care about scentless hybrids and the softest colors. It’s an unassuming, humble flower. It grows everywhere and never really withers. It endures It resists. The dog-rose, with its thorns and its tiny petals, tinier leaves, with its hypnotic, melancholic scent and its pastel pink crown, is the true miracle.
Chanyeol could’ve chosen between thousand of roses, but he didn’t want to give Baekhyun a corsage, beautiful and elegant and destined to perish in less than a week. He bought a flower pot, the biggest he could find, and asked the florist to plant a dog-rose inside.
“It’s very simple to manage this kind of plant. Just keep it in front of the sunlight, water it now and then, especially during spring and summer. Easy, right?”
It’s not easy, not for Baekhyun who can’t see. But he can touch and he can smell and he can smile. He smiles when Chanyeol tells him, “Happy birthday!”
It’s not the first birthday they spend together, but this one it’s special. Not only because this time they’re together, but also because for the first time since he was ten years old Baekhyun decided to throw a party. Sunyoung comes over and they bake a cake together. They invite Jongdae and his girlfriend Joohyun, Baekhyun’s coworkers and friends from the school and Chanyeol’s sister. Baekhyun’s mother sends a flower bouquet and Baekhyun’s father sends money and a card. Baekhyun asks Chanyeol to read the card.
(“He could’ve at least chosen a braille card,” complains Chanyeol later. “Would you just read it?” asks Baekhyun. He puts the flowers in a vase and the card in an old shoebox. He keeps the money and doesn’t really care.)
Baekbom flies from New York alone, having broken up with his last girlfriend to Sunyoung’s delight. His gift for Baekhyun is a karaoke system and it takes three hours and the combined effort of Chanyeol, Jongdae and Do Kyungsoo, one of Baekhyun’s coworkers, to make it work. Baekhyun sings only the lyrics he remembers and promises to study hard for the next karaoke session. His voice is blunt and untrained, it breaks when he goes for the high-pitched screams but he still laughs. Chanyeol sings rap songs and easy ballads. When the party is over, after everyone else has left, he picks up his guitar and plays famous Western songs, whispering the lyrics in his terrible English and waiting for Baekhyun to tease him.
Baekhyun kisses him instead, and it’s bold, sneaky and urgent. He forces Chanyeol to lay the guitar on the floor and slides onto his lap.
“I have a wish,” he says, between open-mouthed kisses.
“I already got you a birthday present.” Chanyeol pouts. “Besides, your birthday is already over.”
“It is not over until I say it is,” says Baekhyun, and this could easily evolve into their usual banter, into more kissing, into Chanyeol putting Baekhyun to bed and lying next to him until tomorrow, but there’s a hint of uncertainty in Baekhyun’s voice. Shyness maybe, so different from the quality of his kisses. It makes Chanyeol curious.
“What do you want?” he asks, and it feels like he’s done nothing in the past few years but asking this question to Baekhyun. The most important question. Chanyeol always knows what he wants, but he never really knows what Baekhyun wants.
Baekhyun breaths tight and shakes, a leaf ready to fall. Into the fire.
“I want to do it. Sex.”
And it’s like saying the magic word, like opening Pandora’s box and watching all the shadows run away into the night. Chanyeol has him pinned on the couch before he can say anything else, kissing him deeply, thoroughly. It’s pure instinct, the only thing he can do to quench the fire burning inside him. Baekhyun is the falling leaf, but Chanyeol... Chanyeol is the fire.
Baekhyun melts under his kisses, lets Chanyeol mold him into something softer, something warmer, something prettier. Chanyeol’s hands wander on Baekhyun’s chest and he thumbs his left nipple over the fabric, feeling Baekhyun tense and arch into his touch. Baekhyun doesn’t know, he has no idea. How much Chanyeol has wanted to do this. For how long. Since the first time he saw him, probably. But that was only blind desire, tainted by spite, by arrogance, by that tiny stain of pride Chanyeol will always deny to have in his heart. That was before the game started and before it ended.
That was that and this is... This is important. This is one of the moments, the ones that will matter when everything else is forgotten. When the sky is dark and silent and the stars are the only light. This is what Chanyeol wants, and now Baekhyun wants it too.
Reluctantly, he parts from Baekhyun’s lips. He doesn’t want to ask but he needs to ask. He needs to make this right.
“Do you really want to do it?” Baekhyun’s answer is breathless and excited and impossibly fond.
“Yes.”
“Are you really sure, Baekhyun?”
And Baekhyun looks annoyed for a moment and Chanyeol can’t blame him. The things he wants to do to him, Baekhyun doesn’t know, can’t even imagine... But there’s only one first time and Chanyeol wants it to be the best.
“I love you,” he says, and Baekhyun flinches at the word, and then shudders, releasing all the tension in one single, breathy moan that travels right to Chanyeol’s chest, where his heart is beating. He swells with pride when he sees Baekhyun’s blush, red on his ears and on his nose, blossoming on his neck and chest. He’s doing this, his words can do this to Baekhyun’s body. It’s marvelous. He says it again, only to see the shiver that runs through Baekhyun’s body, impossible to stop and impossible to ignore.
“I love you and I want you to know that I would wait for you, my entire life. You don’t have to force yourself to open up to me if you don’t feel comfortable or...”
“You’re rambling. You never ramble. I can’t believe I made you so flustered just by asking you to have sex.”
It’s the laugh creeping behind Baekhyun’s words that makes something shift inside of Chanyeol. He grabs the boy by the butt - oh, Baekhyun’s startled moan - and pulls him closer, makes him feel exactly how much Chanyeol is flustered. Baekhyun’s face darkens in hot, red embarrassment.
“Do you know what you just asked me?” Baekhyun bites his lips when Chanyeol’s teeth scrape his jugular, biting hard enough to leave a bite. “Do you know how much I’ve wanted to do this?”
It seems a little preposterous to ask questions and even demand an answer when he’s still playing with Baekhyun’s nipple, this time without the barrier of the shirt - closer, hotter, the friction between their bodies still unbearable - and Baekhyun’s entire core seems to be focused on squirming and wiggling. His legs spread on their own, a sad attempt to lift some of the pressure off his cock, and when he realizes how exposed he is he closes them again only to moan at the lack of friction.
“I know you want it,” says Baekhyun, between tiny little whimpers that become real cries every time Chanyeol rolls his hips against him. “I’ve heard you jerking off, in the bathroom. In the morning. Every time you slept with me in this apartment.”
“So you knew? You listened? Baekhyun-ah, you’re naughtier than I thought. Did you touch yourself too while I came with your name on my lips?”
Baekhyun doesn’t do flustered. He doesn’t deal well with teasing either. His lips curl as he tries to scowl, but Chanyeol thrusts up against him again and the facade shatters like thin glass. He moans loudly and tries to cover his mouth with his hands, but Chanyeol stops him with a kiss.
“Don’t tease,” he says, when he can speak again.
“Don’t tease, he says, when he’s done nothing but tease me for months.”
“I did it,” says Baekhyun, breathless, and even now he is teasing. “I... touched myself thinking about you. And every time we were together, when it looked like things could go this way, I never wanted to stop you but...”
Chanyeol hopes he’s washing away all of Baekhyun’s insecurities, all his doubts, with this kiss. He makes it longer, deeper. He covers as much as he can of Baekhyun’s body, wanting Baekhyun to feel all of him.
Baekhyun touches him too. The curious, insistent press of his fingers at the waistband of Chanyeol’s boxers is a constant distraction, driving Chanyeol insane.
“I’m going to take these off.”
He pulls at his pants until they’re sliding on the floor and takes off his shirt too. Baekhyun is already skimming out of his own clothes.
“There’s lube in the first drawer of the nightstand,” he says, and Chanyeol shakes his head, surprised.
“Who bought this for you?” he asks, incredulous.
“I did.”
Of course he did. He really thought about this, after all.
Chanyeol thought about this too, about taking Baekhyun, about ruining him for everyone else, about fucking him until he cried. Once, a long time ago, he dreamed of calling Baekhyun a whore.
Now he can only watch the rise and fall of Baekhyun’s chest, the column of his neck, tender and exposed, the line of his hips, jutting out, highlighted by the lights of the city entering from the open window. He wants to cover Baekhyun’s skin in kisses and fuck him like no one else will ever fuck him. He wants to be the first and the last, the best, not for lack of terms of comparison but because he’s the only one who can make Baekhyun feel like touching the sky. He wants to own, not Baekhyun but this moment.
A long time ago, Park Chanyeol stole Baekhyun’s first kiss. This time, he doesn’t need to steal anything. He can take what is willingly offered. He can unravel Baekhyun’s defenses one by one. Except there’s no coldness to tear apart like silk, the poisonous words to unfasten like the buttons of his shirt have turned into sweet moans and words meant only for Chanyeol’s ears and all the secrets have already been peeled away, together with Baekhyun’s clothes. Chanyeol can already see all of Baekhyun and he’s sure, he’s more than sure, that Baekhyun can see him too. He wouldn’t be smiling so hard otherwise.
“So, aren’t you going to take me?”
Chanyeol smiles back and Baekhyun, like always, like always, can feel it. He can’t see it but he knows Chanyeol is smiling at him. He knows Chanyeol is looking at him.
A click echoes in the silent apartment.
Chanyeol turns off the lights.
part 5 ->
AN: I'm still trying to reply all the comments I've received because I was on a trip and I didn't even have internet, but to all of you who took time to leave a few (or more) words I can only say thank you very much. You made me the happiest and gave me great motivation to go on. You're the best, thank you ;;
Also, as you might have noticed, there's one more part to be posted. I hoped to finish with part 4 but... too bad. One more part next week <3
Leave a comment if you liked it and, if you want, visit me on twitter too @/aprilclaws. Thank you again, I hope you all enjoy this <3