Dark City, Silent God [1/2]
Title: Dark City, Silent God
Pairing: Baekhyun/Luhan, Baekhyun/Chanyeol
Rating: PG-13
Genre: RPG!AU, Post-apocalyptic!AU, Sci-fi, Dystopian (?), Tragedy (?)
Warnings: Hover
Length: ~8.5k (total ~15.2k)
Summary: The cost to start a revolution always runs a little high.
(A/N: This was written for coppertears during thebaekfest! Again! We should all hope that I keep getting her prompts because seriously they're the best things. I also think I'll write some of the other prompts she gave me, (with permission?). Also, I promise a sequel, because it needs to be done. /dumps chocolate on my beta, classikai, for being cooler than life.)
The revolution begins with a small-framed boy, three days into the Forty-Ninth New Year of the so-called Second Era. This boy is small in appearance and even smaller in presence. His blueprints: bones of thin porcelain construct covered with a delicate layer of tissue paper skin and a voice too wispy to be heard if ever he speaks. He wears the same blue-and-white baseball cap too loosely on his head everyday, the words “coup d’etat” embroidered on the face in fraying scarlet threads. The visor is tipped backwards. Sometimes, it slips back so far that the rim of the cap presses against the temple arms of his glasses, and he has to reach a pale hand up to pull the cap back down and push on the bridge of his frames so he can see properly.
This is Byun Baekhyun, and the revolution begins with him.
Three days into the Forty-Ninth New Year of the so-called Second Era, nightfall brings a chilly breeze across the decrepit city streets. Baekhyun’s footsteps sound softly against the broken pavement as he heads towards the Underground. Despite having lived like this his entire life, he’s never quite gotten used to the strange looking shadows that the buildings cast on the ground regardless of how much the black deluge of clouds obscures the light of the moon; it’s dark against dark, shadow against shadow in a half-wrecked maze of cracking bricks and dusty fog.
He isn’t often up this late, but there’s been rumors going around that the Zealots are running covert operations to infiltrate the Underground and shut it down. It’s never been done, never been attempted, but Baekhyun suspects that the Zealots are finally organizing something useful. They’re going in for prevention strategy, trying to tear apart their hiding places so that they have nowhere to organize anymore.
Baekhyun hates politics; he’s not strong enough or brave enough and maybe he’s smart enough, but he swears he’ll never dare think that he’s got the guts to join the Seditionists and actually do things. But this time around, he doesn’t need courage. It’s the possibility of loss that pushes him to step past the borders, while fear takes his hand and looks him in the eye and says do it, Byun Baekhyun, for there is nothing else for you to do.
The Underground is where he lives more than eighty percent of his life. He’s not strong enough or brave enough and he isn’t sure he’s smart enough, but no way in hell is he letting a bunch of crazed religious fanatics take his home away from him.
After taking the winding, mossy stone steps down to the entrance, he stops in front of the heavy metal door that barricades those inside from prying Zealot eyes. It’s rusted over, hinges almost snapping, handle constantly jammed-capable of fending against a force no larger than a setting feather should anyone try to break in-but it hides what they need to conceal, and they've much more efficient ways to fend for themselves than the Zealots can ever keep up with. When he pushes the door open, the usual buzz of full-immersion gaming gear can barely be heard over the loud cocking of guns. Someone shoots, rubber bullet narrowly missing his shoulder and ricocheting from the wall behind him to smack him hard in the back. When he yelps in surprise and drops to his knees, he hears Luhan curse from the back of the room.
"Zitao, you fucking idiot, that was Byunbyun you just shot at. Byunbyun, you idiot, you're fucking late."
There's an awkward silence as Baekhyun rubs his back and rises again from the floor, clearing his throat and making his way over to Luhan. "Sorry."
Luhan meets him with a playful shove towards the nearest console, headgear put away neatly on the racks next to the familiar rectangular platform. "Go upload your backup data. Hurry up. They'll be here soon, I can smell their silly little rosaries already. Let's send 'em to hell, Byunbyun." With another push, Baekhyun is stumbling onto the platform, fumbling with the headgear before lying down and starting it up.
"Game, start."
“Security phrase, please?”
“...”
“Security phrase, please?”
Baekhyun sighs. Normally, when he starts up the game, he and Luhan are the first ones there. Long ago, when the two of them first decided to put passphrases into the voice recognition database, Luhan had decided it would be hilarious if he interrupted Baekhyun’s setup and changed the code. Now, with this huge crowd hovering around him in the real world, completely silent and listening for his every word, he regrets being too lazy to fix it.
The computer almost sounds annoyed. “Security phrase, please?”
“... Luhan’s... penis... is bigger than mine.”
“Phrase accepted.”
The last thing Baekhyun hears before immersion begins is Luhan’s howling laughter in the background.
City lights scintillate against the clear, starlit navy of nighttime, and a purple gossamer glow hovers above the horizon line. Like always, Baekhyun wishes he could stay in the game forever; it’s so much prettier than the post-apocalyptic disgrace of a city that exists where his real body is. Years ago, his grandfather would tell him stories of how the real city used to be that way, too, that the entire game interface was structured from the memories of the original Seditionists as a temporary simulation for escape.
“Bring the city back,” he used to say, “It was meant to stay.”
Sometimes, it’s hard to keep that goal in mind. With the exception of the occasional electrical tingle on his palms or the soles of his feet, it feels like they already have the city back with all its bright hues and fresh breezes and sharp aromas. There’s always the pressure of time; they can’t stay too long, always have to remember how much time has passed while they’ve stayed in the game right down to the last second to make sure they get out in time to maintain everything, and it always makes everything feel a little more like a lie, but it’s good enough. He wonders a lot of the time why they all don’t just stay in, because it’s close enough, and dying here is better than dying in the real world with it’s charred and broken edges, anyway.
Shaking his head, Baekhyun swipes his fingers through the air and moves to tap the “backup” button.
For a fraction of a second, the dashboard flickers in his vision. The normally smooth holograph almost fizzes, monochrome static interrupting the serene neon green of the user panel. Part of the panel disappears, and something in front of him catches his eye.
He’s seen the framed poster on the brick wall before; he’s sure he has. It’s still there, in the real world.
Under the lower left corner, an old piece of paper flutters in the wind.
Quickly, Baekhyun closes the dashboard and lifts the frame up, pulling the note out with his other hand. Something in his stomach tightens.
RUN BABY RUN, GOD CAN’T SEE YOU HERE
There’s no one around, but the scream that builds up in his throat won’t come out.
Hastily, he pulls up the dashboard again, smooth this time like it always is, and backs his user data up before tapping the logout button several times in rapid succession.
For the first time, the game has glitched.
Baekhyun hates politics. It makes his brain spin in circles around his head and pound itself furiously against his skull, clogs his thoughts with opinions that don’t make any sense to him and that probably never will. All it ever does is pick useless fights with ignorant people who cling to their convictions so blindly that they’ll never let go even when they realize that their hands are wrapped around their own throats. All it ever does is trade peace for war and bring more death to a city that has barely dragged its own corpse out of Hades' grasp.
But Baekhyun can’t feel alive in a dead city. Maybe he’s not much for fighting, but if the Zealots want to kill what’s left of twinkling stars and city lights, they’ll have to kill him first and fight for it again in hell.
Apparently, that’s what they plan to do.
When Baekhyun tears off the headgear, fully prepared to join the ranks of the other Seditionists in their strategies for guerilla warfare, he finds that he’s a little bit late. The Underground is in chaos: Luhan is standing in front of him screaming improvised blasphemies as he fires away at arbitrary silhouettes, rubber bullets are whizzing by in every direction, and suddenly there’s a cold hand grabbing his arm in an attempt to drag him from the platform. Before he can get a good look at who it is, some projectile flies right past Luhan’s side and barely grazes over his cheek, hitting his glasses and sending them flying backwards.
“I HOPE YOUR STUPID GOD SCREWS YOU IN THE ASS WITH HIS FATHER’S FAVORITE DILDO!” Luhan shouts, taking aim in the direction of the perpetrator. An exclamation of pain comes from somewhere distant, and Luhan glances back briefly to check on Baekhyun, who has been tugged off the platform and is wildly slapping at the ground in search of his frames.
"Dammit," Baekhyun curses, now completely oblivious to the cold grip around his arm. "Dammit, I need those..."
A swift tug sends Baekhyun rolling away from his original direction, tumbling across the floor and hitting his elbows and knees on every accessible surface. Someone crouches over him, shouting something he can't quite hear through his disorientation, the deep voice sending vibrations through his body.
"... you okay?" he hears, "Hey, hey, are you okay?"
"I'm sort of blind," he manages to croak out. "Does that constitute 'okay'?"
"Hold on, little buddy."
Before the deep-voiced stranger even finishes his sentence, Baekhyun has been whisked off his feet. Strong arms with hands probably bigger than his head-although maybe it's just the fact that he can't see that makes the blobs of what should be his hands seem so huge-are wrapped around his stomach and rather painfully transporting him in an unknown direction. Deep-voice stranger bends over to pick something up, and Baekhyun lurches to a stop before he finds his glasses slapped upside-down over his face.
"Thank you, I think," Baekhyun mumbles, right as the other drops him roughly onto the floor. When he looks up, he finds himself staring into eyes of the tallest person he's ever met in his life.
The other pushes the thick frames of his own, nearly identical glasses up, ruffling Baekhyun's hair with his free hand. "No problem, little buddy! Catch ya later!"
Another bullet clangs against the stone floor to his left. Turning away from the deep-voice stranger, who’s already rushing back into the crowd, Baekhyun seeks refuge in the back of the Underground, where there’s a deep crack in the wall just wide enough for him to squeeze all the way into. If he gets found, he’s done for-there’s not really anywhere to run from there-but chances are the Zealots aren’t halfway smart enough to notice the crack could fit a very thin human being in it, anyway.
For a long time, Baekhyun watches Luhan through the opening and wishes he could be like him. But he’s weak and scrawny and doesn’t have a gun because he was late, and if he tried anything he’d just get taken hostage and Luhan or deep-voice stranger or Zitao or some other Seditionist would have to waste time rescuing him, and Baekhyun withdraws to the idea that it’s better to give up helping than to be a burden trying.
By the end of the battle, there is no clear winner. The Underground has been compromised. For all its name suggests, its usefulness had been directly centered around maintenance of clandestine operations-privacy and security it can no longer offer. The Zealots, however, are in no state to claim victories. Not a single member of the invading party remains unscathed, while all Seditionists but one have made their escape.
After what feels like hours, a familiar voice rings out through the abandoned Underground. "Yo, little buddy, you in here?"
Baekhyun leans inch-by-inch towards the opening of the wall crevice he has shoved himself into, attempting to surreptitiously confirm that it is indeed the deep-voice stranger who has come back for him.
"Byunbyun, you little wimp! It's me, it's Luhan. Where are you?"
The sudden shout makes Baekhyun flinch, sending a myriad of crumbling wall bits tumbling out onto the floor. Sighing at his apparent incapability to even hide properly, Baekhyun stumbles out, legs stiff and awkward from crouching for so long.
Relief flits over Luhan's face. "Thank God," he breathes, "Dammit, Byunbyun. Idiot."
Without waiting for Baekhyun to so much as blink at him, Luhan turns his back and heads out the door. "Stop being late!" he hollers. "I swear if you're late again I'll feed you to Chan... Chan... Whatever his name is."
"Chanyeol," he calls after him, vaguely insulted. Turning back to Baekhyun, he shrugs and smiles. "Anyway, little buddy, we should probably go. Before they feed you to me."
He laughs then. It's loud and reckless and Baekhyun has to resist the urge to cover his ears because it echoes from every surface of the confined area, yet somehow, in the silliest way, it's comforting, because his face-his actual entire face-scrunches up and he looks like the handsome version of some kind of shriveling fruit, and now, somehow, they’re both smiling. When Baekhyun tries to stop, he finds that he can't.
Chanyeol guides him back. Through their mutual attempts at silencing each other's snickers and chuckles, Baekhyun notices a lot of things about his new deep-voice acquaintance. He notices that his eyes do this funny, perhaps endearing twitch when he's trying not to burst out laughing. He notices that his ears stick out a little bit, that he reaches up from time to time to press them against his head, as if it's habit to be ashamed of them. He notices that he likes to push his glasses up over his bridge before shaking them back down and repeating the process.
What Baekhyun fails to notice, though, is that despite all the time he’s spent in the Underground with a faction almost as close-knit as family, he has never seen Chanyeol until now.
Baekhyun meets Luhan in an isolated alleyway among a maze of decrepit buildings. He holds the thin fabric of his T-shirt over his nose with one hand and squints through the dirt, pausing every once in a while to wipe the grimy deposits that collect on his glasses.
“God dammit, Byunbyun, I was so worried about you,” Luhan snaps, looking threateningly close to killing him with a hug that will break his ribs and puncture his lungs. “Just don’t come to fights anymore, okay? I was stupid to even suggest that you go to the first one. You’re too skinny to hold a gun, anyway, it’ll just crush you into the floor and then there’ll be no one to repeat every day that my penis is bigger than theirs and I would be upset.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why did you take so long, anyway?” he mutters, beginning to pace back and forth while breathing air through his shirt.
Baekhyun hesitates. Luhan wouldn’t consider him a liar, ever, especially not when it’s just the two of them talking. But no Seditionist would believe that the game glitched. Especially one like Luhan, who maintains the game equipment. Luhan is only in training, and he hasn’t had much experience due to the sudden and unprecedented rise in organized anti-Seditionist activity, but he already takes pride in the little work that he does and Baekhyun doesn’t want to take it away.
“I wanted to stay,” he manages after a while. “Don’t I always?”
Luhan quirks an eyebrow and stops pacing. “But you’re not that stupid. You lay low, but I’m pretty sure you’re the smartest goddamn person in this faction, and you’re telling me that you were stupid enough to sit and want to stay in the game when we were about to have a fight with some crazy and armed Zealots? HA!” He waves his arms in the air, looking enough like a monkey to make Baekhyun smile. “HA!”
“Fine.” Baekhyun swallows, adjusts his cap. “It glitched.”
“Are you fucking kidding. Are you fucking kidding-Minseok and Jongin and I spent all night checking up game equipment and Minseok even went into the server room-which you know never gets done because revealing the server rooms would be lethal-and made sure that all the servers were working properly. Practically no one even knows where the server rooms are anymore because they’re so confidential, I’m pretty sure it’s just Minseok who knows now, actually, and you’re not even supposed to know he knows, and you’re telling me the game glitched. After all that.”
Sighing, Baekhyun tugs his cap tighter against his head and stares at his feet. “It did.”
For a few moments, they listen to the seconds pass between them, wind sweeping dirt from the cracked concrete and dust from the rotting wood around and around in circles, letting it coat their skin and settle in their hair. Luhan turns away several times, turns back several times, starts to speak several times but doesn’t until Baekhyun feels as though he might go insane. And then he sighs and turns back again, squinting through the debris at the shape of a boy in glasses and a baseball cap.
“Do you have proof,” he says, carefully challenging, but Baekhyun knows that Luhan believes him already.
They take off through countless strips of uneven asphalt between crumbling buildings until Baekhyun skids to an abrupt stop in front of the brick wall of the old movie theater. The poster Baekhyun remembers from the game is slightly slanted, and one edge of the frame has fallen off completely. The paper curls and rots beneath it, yellowing and shredding and chipping around the borders.
“I saw this,” Baekhyun rasps out, panting. “In the game, I saw the poster. I was trying to backup and then the dashboard went static on me, and there was a note behind it, under the frame.”
He pauses to catch his breath, and suddenly he notices that Luhan is wheezing. Glancing over, he sees Luhan bent over, hands on his knees, face contorted in a agonized grimace before he looks up and registers Baekhyun’s concern. He immediately straightens and purses his lips, and if Baekhyun hadn’t known better, he would have thought that nothing was wrong.
“Yeah?” His voice is demanding despite the nearly indiscernible pain in his eyes as he struggles to regulate his breaths. “What about it?”
Baekhyun starts to ask if he’s okay, but he closes his mouth just as quickly, because the question would be pointless. No matter what, Luhan would say yes. He could probably get his leg cut off and still say “I’m okay” without batting an eyelash, so with a slight pursing of his lips, Baekhyun taps the corner of the frame the note was under. “‘Run baby run,’” he murmurs, “‘God can’t find you here.’”
“So what? Are you suggesting that the note-”
Suddenly there’s a bang. Luhan curses and whips a handgun out of his back pocket before scrambling in front of Baekhyun. “Not now you goddamned idiots!” he shouts, firing three shots into the shattered windows of a building across the street and eliciting a faint cry of pain from the adversary. “THAT’S RIGHT YOU STUPID LITTLE SHIT, BLEED TO DEATH ALONE IN THE COLD. I HOPE I GOT YOU IN THE BALLS.”
Rushed footsteps come from both sides of the street; neither Baekhyun nor Luhan recognize either of the armed men rushing toward them, so Luhan takes it upon himself to fire again at the both of them.
“Do you have an extr-”
“I’ll do all the shooting, Byunbyun. You run.”
“But I-”
“The longer you stay, the longer I have to take care of you. Go.”
Baekhyun swallows his protest and spins around, but the ground slips from under his feet and he’s being swung over someone’s shoulder to be carried away, the rough rhythm of the perpetrator’s gait squeezing unnecessary amounts of air from his chest and disheveling his glasses as he bounds away from the scene.
“I got you, little buddy.”
He adjusts his glasses just in time to look up and see at least five armed Zealots swarming Luhan and dragging him away. The laughter that had been building up in his throat is immediately replaced by a strangled shout of Luhan’s name, a scrawny arm reaching out to grasp a hand already too far away to be seen clearly. Luhan is shouting something too, but Baekhyun can’t hear it over the bittersweet smack of Chanyeol’s sneakers on the floor, the bereavement that comes with panting breaths turning the corner, the clatter of a handgun against concrete resounding from every wall of the derelict labyrinth they’re running through.
“Hey, hey,” Chanyeol manages to breathe out between gasps for air, “it’ll be okay, little buddy. He’s gonna be okay.”
“I want to be useful,” Baekhyun says to no one in particular as he lies on a burlap sheet over the jagged street surface, squinting at the smoggy sky and pretending he can glimpse the stars behind the blankets of grey. Zitao laughs, Jongin coughs, Minseok makes a strange choking noise on the other side of the alley. He assumes that everyone else is asleep. “What? Is it really that ridiculous?”
“You are,” Minseok states. The reassurance in his voice is almost sickening. “You don’t need to hold a gun to be useful.”
Zitao snickers again, and Baekhyun can see the blurred outline of Jongin’s silhouette sitting up to throw something at him. “Minseok’s right,” Jongin affirms, picking up another small rock and throwing it at Zitao’s head. “You’re smart. You’re just quiet. And your grandfather was a genius, and your father was a genius, so you’re probably going to be a genius, too.”
“You’re all waiting for some kind of epiphany from me, is that it? Some brilliant eureka! that I’ll never really get. Like when my grandfather wrote up the blueprints for the Underground, or when my father designed the maintenance protocol. You call me useful because you’re waiting for me to be useful.”
All three of them open their mouths to counter, and Jongin starts to shake his head, but no one really says anything.
Wordlessly, Baekhyun rises to his feet. Minseok says something about how it’s dangerous to go out in the middle of the night like this, when he should be sleeping, but Baekhyun waves the remark away before turning out of the alley.
The thing is, it’s always dangerous. Going out in the middle of the night is just the same as going out in broad daylight. What Minseok really means to say is that it’s dangerous for him to go out without Luhan, without someone to hold a gun and babysit him and carry his burdens because he’s not strong enough to take them himself.
As if he didn’t know that already.
Baekhyun suspects he’s been walking for nearly an hour by the time he makes it to the theater. The late-night winds whistle intimidatingly through the gaps in the brick wall, and Baekhyun fights to keep himself from shivering as he stands before the framed poster, running his fingers over the dusty edges and letting them linger over the corner that the note had been in. Taking a deep, shaky breath, he widens his stance and hooks his fingers under the corner and tugs.
The frame doesn’t budge.
On instinct, he turns around to ask for Luhan’s help. Then he remembers, for all he knows, Luhan could have been thrown in a ditch somewhere to die. Luhan could be dying right now, could be really dead right now, and he hasn’t told anyone, and he doesn’t even know why. Maybe I forgot, he thinks, and then suddenly he’s laughing, and his eyes are stinging, and he knows that he didn’t forget at all; he just didn’t tell anyone, didn’t cry in front of anyone except Chanyeol because he didn’t want to seem weak. His best friend could be getting beaten to a pulp and he hasn’t told anyone because he doesn’t want to seem weak, or even more useless, or like more of a burden to someone who hasn’t borne witness to how much of a burden he’s been this whole time. He just wants to be strong and courageous like Luhan: silent in the face of hurt, always the first to say “I’m okay,” never the one to show vulnerability.
The more he thinks about it, the more he laughs, so he laughs and he laughs through the burn behind his eyelids and thinks to himself that this is the most cowardly thing he’s ever done, that he is the most cowardly person he’ll ever know.
“The hell are you laughing about, Byunbyun?”
“I don’t know,” he replies, so far into hysterics that he can no longer hold himself upright. “Luhan, is that really you? I don’t know.”
Luhan strides over from the other side of the street and catches Baekhyun, who laughs even harder once he feels Luhan’s sturdy grip beneath him. Through the tears and the shaking, he can make out smears of maroon all over Luhan’s shirt, on his right cheekbone along the left side of his jaw, around his neck, dotting his knuckles. There’s a dark bruise under his left eye, a gun-shaped stain still growing over the fabric of his back pocket.
“It’s me.” He pulls Baekhyun into a hug and rubs his back soothingly, letting out a shaky sigh and burying into the crook of his neck. “I was so worried about you. I was so worried, Byunbyun.”
Baekhyun swears he’s never hated himself so much in his entire life.
He’s still shaking, maybe with sobs now, but Luhan is still talking. With every word, Baekhyun only wants to tear himself apart more.
“What are you even doing here? Why the hell would you come back here? What if they were waiting for you to come back, huh? And who the hell is that tall guy, Chan-whatever? I thought he’d run off to bring you to the slaughterhouse or something. Why did you come back here?”
“The poster,” he manages between breaths. Disappointment, or something almost crestfallen, flashes in Luhan’s eyes before he gently pushes Baekhyun away and tucks his fingers under the same corner to tug again. It doesn’t move.
After a few bouts of sniffling, Baekhyun steps forward to inspect the edges attached to the walls, shoves his hands into the crevices and feels around for hinges or nails or bolts or empty spaces. When he doesn’t find anything, he uses the arms of his glasses, and just when he’s about to give up, Luhan grabs his glasses from him with a murmured wait a second. There’s a quiet crumpling sound, a scraping of something against brick.
“So, Byunbyun,” Luhan sighs, seemingly exasperated when he shoves Baekhyun’s glasses back onto his face. “What the hell does this mean?”
There’s a piece of paper in front of his face, covered in soot and holes and crinkles, and it takes a bit of blinking before he can make words out of the fuzziness of his vision. It’s getting worse; he’ll have to look for new glasses soon or try to carve the lenses of his current ones, but the impatient tapping of Luhan’s foot interrupts his thoughts and he pushes the concern aside.
SLIPPING PAST THE GATES OF HEAVEN, UP AND OVER, UP AND OVER
“Can you reach the top?” Baekhyun asks, “I didn’t check the top. I can’t reach over.”
Rolling his eyes, Luhan hoists himself onto the balls of his feet and reaches for the top, wincing for a brief moment as he does so. Baekhyun notices and remains silent. “I’m only two centimeters taller than you, but okay. I’ll try. What am I looking for?”
“An entrance.”
“Well yeah, so what’s an entrance going to look like?”
“A gap, maybe? A lever? A button. Or like, something to pull down. Or something to climb into. A hinge or a knob or-”
“Why don’t you just look for it?” he interrupts, squatting down and glancing over his shoulder. “I can lift you over, because that sure as hell is gonna be easier than memorizing that list of yours.”
It occurs to Baekhyun that Luhan is in no condition to do such a thing. He’s been without proper care for hours, his leg is probably injured along with various other spots on his body, and as of the sprint to the theater earlier in the day, Baekhyun suspects that he’s begun to develop respiratory problems, if not to exacerbate pre-existing ones. Then again, Luhan has always been resilient and enduring, and Baekhyun figures he’d only get angry if his strength were to be questioned.
Nodding, Baekhyun keeps his mouth shut and climbs onto Luhan’s shoulders. A faint hiss escapes through Luhan’s teeth when he begins to rise, and he has to take an unbalanced step backwards before he can half-stumble the several inches forward to the theater wall.
“Does it hurt?” Baekhyun blurts out, “We can wait until you’re better or-”
“Are you kidding me right now? I’m fine. We can’t wait until I’m better-first of all because I’m fine already, I’m already better-and you’re obviously onto something, and the Underground just got compromised and we can’t log back in, but maybe this is a way, and you know what happens if we can’t log back in? As fake as all of it is, we don’t have food, we don’t have medicine, we don’t have anywhere to go. And maybe it doesn’t matter because all of that is virtual and all it does is make us feel better without really fixing anything, but we lose the city, and that matters, doesn’t it? It doesn’t even matter if I’m not fine. I hate concern. Maybe you think I don’t notice because you keep your mouth shut but you make it more obvious than… something that’s really obvious. Think about what matters, Byunbyun, because it certainly isn’t me, and there’s no use in worrying about someone tougher than you anyway.”
It feels as though Luhan has just dumped acid all over his head, the way he spits the words like venom. Baekhyun can feel his eyes burning again for reasons that span far beyond the infinite: Luhan’s never spoken to him like this before, which means now, Luhan’s probably sick and tired of how weak he is, too, Luhan’s probably just like everyone else despite his constant companionship, just waiting for him to come up with something brilliant. He’s more than a burden, because burdens are meant to be carried, not dragged, but he’s too heavy to be carried, and Luhan probably isn’t even holding onto him. It’s he who holds onto Luhan, clasping his ankle like an iron ball and chain, forcing Luhan to slow to a tedious trudge and injuring him in the process. All he can ever do is think and worry; if not about himself, then about Luhan. Never about what matters. Maybe he’s smart, but there’s no point to being smart if he never even thinks about the right things.
He’ll never be anything more than useless, and right now, that’s the last thing anyone would want to be.
“I’m sorry.”
Luhan lets out a long sigh, squeezing Baekhyun’s calf gently before nudging him towards the wall. “I didn’t mean to snap. It’s been a long goddamn day, and it’s cold out, and I think my balls are shivering. Just look.”
Taking another breath, Baekhyun squeezes his eyes shut for a few seconds and tells himself that Luhan is right-because he is. If he wants to be useful in the slightest, he’ll have to learn from those who already are. With that in mind, he murmurs a quiet “thank you” before reaching forward and pushing a tentative hand along the top edge of the gold-plated brass frame. Several minutes pass as he inspects the junction he notices between the top edge and the right edge, then the one between the top and the left. He slips the arms of his glasses into the small gaps between the two pieces of metal and tries to move it around, but much to his dismay, there’s no space. Luhan starts to quake beneath him, and Baekhyun imagines that there could be wounds and bruises everywhere on his legs, from just above his ankles and around his calves and beneath and on top of and over his knees all the way to his upper thighs.
He’s just about to tell Luhan that he’s given up when a particularly strong gust of wind nearly knocks them over, sending Baekhyun reeling forward to catch his balance with a white-knuckle grip around the surface he had just been trying to pry apart. When the full force of his weight hits the poster, he swears that he feels something in the frame give out or shift under his palms. Without waiting for the wind to abate itself, Baekhyun digs his fingers into the gap that connects the top of the frame to the backing that’s attached to the wall; much to his disappointment again, nothing seems to give way. Beneath him, Luhan is either shaking or coughing-most likely both-and the clouds of dust swept up by the spontaneous gale sends him into a wheezing fit. Reaching down with one hand, Baekhyun tugs Luhan’s shirt up over his nose and does the same with his own, ignoring the debris that obscures his vision and pulling himself closer to the brick wall until he can just barely slip his fingers behind the poster, jagged brick surface scraping painfully against his skin as he pushes forward.
But it’s worth it. What Baekhyun first mistakes for a dent in the back of the metal surface actually traverses horizontally across the entire area. The only problem with his discovery is that there’s not quite enough room for him to reach under and shake the frame, lest he let the sharp pieces of the wall cut into his skin.
It occurs to him then that with all the dust in the air, his vision is more or less the same with his glasses than it is without, rendering his current attempts at peering down the space between the backing and the brick pointless. Squeezing his eyes shut, he pulls off his glasses once more and uses the tip of one of the arms to search once more for the crease, then shoves it in and tugs up as hard as he can.
The top of the frame comes off with barely any force. Baekhyun nearly falls off from Luhan’s shoulders, which sends Luhan stumbling backwards until he lands on his butt with a jolt on the concrete.
“FUCK!” he shouts, pushing onto his knees, shoving his hand into his back pocket and pulling something out as Baekhyun tumbles onto the ground. “GOD DAMN MOTHER FUCK MY GUN WAS IN MY BACK POCKET, HOLY SHIT, MY ASS, DEAR FUCKING GOD I THINK IT BROKE, BYUNBYUN, YOU BROKE MY ASS.”
When the gust finally dies down, Baekhyun smiles sheepishly at him. “Sorry I broke your ass.”
“My eyes are watering. Dear lord. Dear lord, Byunbyun, I hope you never experience this kind of pain.”
Several minutes pass before the gust dies down. While they wait, Baekhyun pretends to occupy himself with attempting to wipe away the powdery grime on his glasses faster than it accumulates so he doesn’t have to pay attention to Luhan’s face contorting in pain every time he moves.
Baekhyun would laugh if he could do so without filling his lungs with ashes. They’re all lying to themselves: Luhan pretends that he really believes Baekhyun shouldn’t be worried, Baekhyun pretends that he isn’t, and their entire faction pretends that they can resurrect the dead. How ironic.
He laughs at that.
When the wind subsides and Baekhyun’s done choking on air, he climbs back onto Luhan’s shoulders and feels around blindly in the new-found space behind the poster. But Luhan is only tall enough for Baekhyun to hook his elbow over the edge, and in the dim glow of the moon that peeks out through sporadic holes in the smog clouding the sky, he can see that the vague outline of his silhouette lands on a surface much deeper than the length of his forearm. “Bring me from one side to the other.”
“Can’t you do that yourself?”
“The only reason I can tell how deep it goes is because I can sort of see my shadow on it. I can’t reach far enough to feel anything, but if there’s an uneven surface for some kind of opening, you’ll need to move my shadow around for me.”
On shaky steps, Luhan obeys. The search feels much longer than it is, but about three-quarters of the way through, Baekhyun sees his shadow bend around something small.
“Stop! Go back. Sway, sort of.”
Luhan leans to the left, nearly losing his balance as he does so, and the shadow falls back onto a flat surface; as he slowly shifts his weight to the right, Baekhyun watches the dark patch bend briefly before straightening again.
“A lever,” he breathes out, gripping Luhan’s shoulders with excessive force. “There’s a lever, I think, or a button.”
“Byunbyun, did you just invent some kind of search radar. Also, I think you’re going to tear my shoulders off.”
Luhan’s words fall on deaf ears as Baekhyun begins to blather about his discovery. “I can’t reach it, I definitely can’t reach it, I have to stick my entire arm in there to reach it it’s way at the bottom but Luhan Luhan Luhan there’s a button or a lever and this is something big do you think we can get the city back what do you think they’re hiding in there Luhan there’s a button we need to press it or pull it or something, Chanyeol, get Chanyeol, we can come back tomorrow and-”
“I don’t trust him.” Without warning, Luhan lifts Baekhyun from his shoulders and sets him down on the ground, gaze almost challenging. “Who the hell is he, anyway?”
“I trust him.”
“Do you even know the answer to my question?”
“No, but I trust him. I mean, just, how can I not?”
Luhan gapes at him before furrowing his eyebrows and speaking, gesticulating wildly as he does so. “What do you mean ‘how can you not?’ Byunbyun, he never-I mean, have you ever even seen that kid around before the invasion? ‘How can you not?’ That’s the completely wrong question! The question is ‘how the actual fuck can you?’! He never even existed before the Zealots came and ransacked the Underground. I mean, okay, seriously, you know everyone in this faction like the back of your hand, or at least half as well. All of us know each other like we were in the goddamn womb together. If I asked you to, you’d be able to name Jongin’s favorite food before a bullet could reach that wall over there if I shot it right now, you’d be able to tell me what Soojung’s bra size is-okay, well, maybe you wouldn’t because you’re not really straight, but I’m sure if you were you’d be able to-you’d be able to probably point out every bald spot on Minseok’s ancient head and not miss a single one. This Chan-whatever guy? Literally waltzed in two seconds ago! Are you crazy? Are you insane? Are yo-”
“He saved my life. Twice.”
“Let’s not even try to count the number of times I’ve saved yours, Byunbyun. Two isn’t a very big number.”
“Well it doesn’t matter!” Baekhyun protests, voice rising in pitch and volume. It’s a rare enough occurrence to make Luhan hesitate to speak. Breathing in deep, Baekhyun pushes his glasses into the bridge of his nose and swallows. “It doesn’t. The city matters. That’s what you said. Maybe we shouldn’t trust him, but that doesn’t change the fact that he can help us, right? Think about what matters.”
Luhan bites his lip, purses them into a straight line, fury personified. Yet his eyes tell another story in the brief flickering of loss that crosses them, as though he’s conceded more than just a logical point. The air tenses, hardens and pushes itself into Baekhyun’s throat; he can’t say anything, not with Luhan looking at him like that.
They walk back in silence.
By the time they arrive back at the alley, the guilt Baekhyun feels for his brief contention with Luhan has grown enough to overtake every thought. It was only for a little while, everything about the disagreement seemed fleeting and sudden, and perhaps it really was. Perhaps Luhan isn’t even angry at him anymore, but he can’t stop thinking about the way Luhan glared at him with such burning, tight-lipped indignation, indignation that wasn’t as strong as he wanted Baekhyun to believe, because the flames tapered out when they reached his eyes, nothing but smoldering embers beneath the ashes of burning bridges, and Baekhyun could see it.
He labels it as part of Luhan’s strength even though he knows it’s his hurt and wonders if he wishes he hadn’t noticed.
It’s not an apology, but he lets Luhan take his makeshift bed of burlap. Maybe he does it out of concern, because Luhan doesn’t look like he can even stay up long enough to set up another, or out of guilt, or out of respect. But it’s not an apology, because he doesn’t think he’s wrong.
Luhan attempts to hide his limp as he makes his way towards the rough fabric that he’ll be sleeping on. It’s pointless, but Baekhyun can’t help but admire his attempt, his tenacity, how he still tries to straighten his back when no one’s watching, how he still looks regal doing it even though he’s painted with blood and bruises and should look like defeat.
He sways-once, twice, three times-and gives out, falling backwards onto the thin layer of burlap that protects him from the concrete beneath it. Baekhyun’s too far away to catch him in time, but he lunges forward anyway and misses. It’s Soojung who darts out and catches him, forearms straining to lower him gently to the ground as she simultaneously grips two newly filled jugs of water in her fists.
“You’re lucky I saw that,” she hisses, glaring at him with utter contempt. “You’re lucky I got back in time.”
“Yeah. Sorry. Thanks.”
With a huff, she puts the water down and sets up her own place, next to Luhan, where Baekhyun had been planning to sleep.
It doesn’t hurt how blunt Soojung is about how useless she believes him to be-in fact, it’s almost relieving. If everyone acted like Soojung, he would have been thrown away years ago. But at least they wouldn’t have expected anything from him.
It’s only after more than two hours of walking aimlessly in circles around the same block of buildings that Baekhyun finds Chanyeol tucked away near the mouth of another alley diagonally across from their own, watching him with blatant confusion and concern on his face. Upon meeting his gaze, Baekhyun feels his knees go weak beneath him, and before he knows it he’s sitting down in the middle of the sidewalk curled up in a ball, chin rested on his knees.
Chanyeol whispers, “You okay, little buddy?” and Baekhyun shakes his head no. After a while, Chanyeol waves him over, so he goes and lies down next to him and stares at the ugly, rolling black in the sky and thinks about how much he wants it gone, about how pretty the stars are, about what it would look like lying here with Chanyeol when all the twinkling lights of towering skyscrapers and ostentatious cityscapes are alive and glowing, about how little he’s done to bring any of it back, and finally, about how little he can do to bring any of it back. And by the time he’s done thinking himself into despair, there are tears pooling at the corners of his eyes and streaking down his cheeks, and by the time he notices he’s crying he’s already sniffling and it’s too late to take it back and be strong like Luhan, to say “I’m okay” and make someone believe it.
Chanyeol doesn’t offer any words of consolation this time, doesn’t try to tell him that it will be okay or call him “little buddy” again, but he does pull Baekhyun into a secure embrace, both arms wrapping tightly around him as he curls against Chanyeol’s chest. Perhaps this is why he trusts him; what Baekhyun needs now isn’t sympathy or encouragement, because he doesn’t want people to pretend to feel bad for him when they really just want him to get over it and have a moment of genius to benefit some cause or another. Rather, he needs understanding, and it’s always been Chanyeol who’s understood from the time of their meeting that all he needs is protection and dignity.
Maybe he’s absolutely irrelevant, but it doesn’t matter right now, because Chanyeol holds him like he’s worth something regardless of the fact that he’s done nothing beneficial for him. Maybe they’d only met a few days ago, but from the very first second, Chanyeol had never looked to gain anything from him, or expected the unachievable. He just protected and understood that Baekhyun needed to be protected, not as some asset to be used, but as a living, breathing person.
At that, he cries harder.
He is nothing more than a person.
“Minseok and Baekhyun are missing!”
Baekhyun awakens to the high-pitched whine of Zitao’s voice piercing through the morning air, burlap and concrete cold against his skin. Something drops in his stomach when he finds that Chanyeol has disappeared, but without a second thought to it, he runs out towards the others. When he approaches their alley, Soojung is tending to Luhan’s wounds while he sips water from one of the jugs. “I’m not missing,” he states sheepishly, ignoring Soojung’s death glare as best he can. “I was in the other alley with Ch-”
Zitao interrupts, shouting out his corrected proclamation. “Minseok is missing!”
“We can see that,” Jongin mutters, “Now stop shouting it, will you? We all know, there’s no need to let the whole world know where we are for it.”
“You what?” Luhan quirks an eyebrow, locking eyes with Baekhyun. “You were in what other alley with who?”
“That one, the one across the street, on the next block. With Chanyeol-”
Soojung looks as though she’s about to stand up and dump one of the jugs of water on his head. “Who the hell is Chanyeol?”
“Byun fucking Baekhyun, I told you not to trust him,” Luhan snarls, rising to his feet and storming toward him. “Notice that not a single other person knows who the hell you’re talking about? Is Chanyeol even here right now, or did he poof into thin-air like he always does? Do you even realize that Minseok is missing-do you even realize what that means? Baekhyun-fuck, you’re such an idiot. I’m trying to protect you. I can’t believe you.”
“Luhan, stop. Who’s Chanyeol?”
“I don’t fucking know, Jongin, why don’t you ask Baekhyun?”
“Chill. Just chill, okay? Calm down. We’re all stressed here. Now, Baekhyun, who’s Chanyeol?”
Baekhyun swallows, mumbling. “The tall guy. With the glasses like mine.”
“I have never seen a tall guy with the glasses like yours,” Jongin repeats, the slightest bit of skepticism creeping into his voice. “And why do you trust him?”
“He saved my life. Twice.”
Sighing, Jongin rakes his fingers through his hair and takes a few slow breaths. “So now you’re… sleeping with hi-”
“No! No, no, it’s not like that, I was just-”
“It’s okay. I didn’t mean it like that.”
Luhan scoffs. “You might as well have. It would be just as accurate, probably.”
“Luhan, seriously, stop. He’s fine, okay? Let him be. As long as he’s not a Zealot, honestly, he’s probably safe, and Baekhyun can trust him if he wants.”
“And how do you know he’s not a Zealot?”
“Because Zealots don’t usually, you know, like, save Seditionists? Because they’re all trying to-oh, I don’t know-kill us?”
“He could very well be a spy,” Soojung interjects, “Are you suggesting we just blindly trust everyone who isn’t trying to rip our throats out?”
“Are you suggesting that we should be picky about our allies when the Zealots are probably going to launch another attack? And since when is any Zealot smart enough or sneaky enough to engage in espionage, anyway? We knew they were coming before any of them even learned how to load a gun.”
“Well if they’re so dumb, why are you worried about finding allies?”
Jongin throws his hands up in the air, taking a step forward as if he’s preparing to slap her if she says another word. Luhan raises an eyebrow at him and grabs her hand, pulling her away. “I don’t know if you know basic math, Soojung, but they have a much larger population than we have. If they decided to link arms and walk in a straight goddamn line through these streets, they could trample us into the ground before we shoot a single one of them. They’re at the center of the city, with probably plenty of resources from various old basements, and we’re fresh out of everything. Time, food, water, medication, even oxygen, judging by the dust in the air, shelter, our illusions of all those things; you name it and we probably don’t have it. Do we really have the resources to be picky about who our allies are? We need everyone we can get, and I don’t care if it’s an ex-Zealot or a random loner or a zombie-if they’ve shown any amiability at all, I’m willing to at least try trusting them.”
There’s a brief few seconds of silence before Zitao quietly pipes up again. “Minseok is still missing.”
Luhan shoots an annoyed stare at him for several seconds before he breaks out in a short burst of awkward laughter. “All this talk about gaining numbers and we’re still missing one. Fuck it. Jongin’s right. Let’s just find Minseok. No one gave us enough time for this bullshit about trust.” Then, smiling at Baekhyun, he adds, “Trust is irrelevant. In the end, we’re all just using each other, aren’t we?”
It feels as though Luhan has just taken a chisel and chipped away a large piece of him to smash against the floor.
Regardless, he nods.
( Part Two )
Pairing: Baekhyun/Luhan, Baekhyun/Chanyeol
Rating: PG-13
Genre: RPG!AU, Post-apocalyptic!AU, Sci-fi, Dystopian (?), Tragedy (?)
Warnings: Hover
Length: ~8.5k (total ~15.2k)
Summary: The cost to start a revolution always runs a little high.
(A/N: This was written for coppertears during thebaekfest! Again! We should all hope that I keep getting her prompts because seriously they're the best things. I also think I'll write some of the other prompts she gave me, (with permission?). Also, I promise a sequel, because it needs to be done. /dumps chocolate on my beta, classikai, for being cooler than life.)
The revolution begins with a small-framed boy, three days into the Forty-Ninth New Year of the so-called Second Era. This boy is small in appearance and even smaller in presence. His blueprints: bones of thin porcelain construct covered with a delicate layer of tissue paper skin and a voice too wispy to be heard if ever he speaks. He wears the same blue-and-white baseball cap too loosely on his head everyday, the words “coup d’etat” embroidered on the face in fraying scarlet threads. The visor is tipped backwards. Sometimes, it slips back so far that the rim of the cap presses against the temple arms of his glasses, and he has to reach a pale hand up to pull the cap back down and push on the bridge of his frames so he can see properly.
This is Byun Baekhyun, and the revolution begins with him.
Three days into the Forty-Ninth New Year of the so-called Second Era, nightfall brings a chilly breeze across the decrepit city streets. Baekhyun’s footsteps sound softly against the broken pavement as he heads towards the Underground. Despite having lived like this his entire life, he’s never quite gotten used to the strange looking shadows that the buildings cast on the ground regardless of how much the black deluge of clouds obscures the light of the moon; it’s dark against dark, shadow against shadow in a half-wrecked maze of cracking bricks and dusty fog.
He isn’t often up this late, but there’s been rumors going around that the Zealots are running covert operations to infiltrate the Underground and shut it down. It’s never been done, never been attempted, but Baekhyun suspects that the Zealots are finally organizing something useful. They’re going in for prevention strategy, trying to tear apart their hiding places so that they have nowhere to organize anymore.
Baekhyun hates politics; he’s not strong enough or brave enough and maybe he’s smart enough, but he swears he’ll never dare think that he’s got the guts to join the Seditionists and actually do things. But this time around, he doesn’t need courage. It’s the possibility of loss that pushes him to step past the borders, while fear takes his hand and looks him in the eye and says do it, Byun Baekhyun, for there is nothing else for you to do.
The Underground is where he lives more than eighty percent of his life. He’s not strong enough or brave enough and he isn’t sure he’s smart enough, but no way in hell is he letting a bunch of crazed religious fanatics take his home away from him.
After taking the winding, mossy stone steps down to the entrance, he stops in front of the heavy metal door that barricades those inside from prying Zealot eyes. It’s rusted over, hinges almost snapping, handle constantly jammed-capable of fending against a force no larger than a setting feather should anyone try to break in-but it hides what they need to conceal, and they've much more efficient ways to fend for themselves than the Zealots can ever keep up with. When he pushes the door open, the usual buzz of full-immersion gaming gear can barely be heard over the loud cocking of guns. Someone shoots, rubber bullet narrowly missing his shoulder and ricocheting from the wall behind him to smack him hard in the back. When he yelps in surprise and drops to his knees, he hears Luhan curse from the back of the room.
"Zitao, you fucking idiot, that was Byunbyun you just shot at. Byunbyun, you idiot, you're fucking late."
There's an awkward silence as Baekhyun rubs his back and rises again from the floor, clearing his throat and making his way over to Luhan. "Sorry."
Luhan meets him with a playful shove towards the nearest console, headgear put away neatly on the racks next to the familiar rectangular platform. "Go upload your backup data. Hurry up. They'll be here soon, I can smell their silly little rosaries already. Let's send 'em to hell, Byunbyun." With another push, Baekhyun is stumbling onto the platform, fumbling with the headgear before lying down and starting it up.
"Game, start."
“Security phrase, please?”
“...”
“Security phrase, please?”
Baekhyun sighs. Normally, when he starts up the game, he and Luhan are the first ones there. Long ago, when the two of them first decided to put passphrases into the voice recognition database, Luhan had decided it would be hilarious if he interrupted Baekhyun’s setup and changed the code. Now, with this huge crowd hovering around him in the real world, completely silent and listening for his every word, he regrets being too lazy to fix it.
The computer almost sounds annoyed. “Security phrase, please?”
“... Luhan’s... penis... is bigger than mine.”
“Phrase accepted.”
The last thing Baekhyun hears before immersion begins is Luhan’s howling laughter in the background.
City lights scintillate against the clear, starlit navy of nighttime, and a purple gossamer glow hovers above the horizon line. Like always, Baekhyun wishes he could stay in the game forever; it’s so much prettier than the post-apocalyptic disgrace of a city that exists where his real body is. Years ago, his grandfather would tell him stories of how the real city used to be that way, too, that the entire game interface was structured from the memories of the original Seditionists as a temporary simulation for escape.
“Bring the city back,” he used to say, “It was meant to stay.”
Sometimes, it’s hard to keep that goal in mind. With the exception of the occasional electrical tingle on his palms or the soles of his feet, it feels like they already have the city back with all its bright hues and fresh breezes and sharp aromas. There’s always the pressure of time; they can’t stay too long, always have to remember how much time has passed while they’ve stayed in the game right down to the last second to make sure they get out in time to maintain everything, and it always makes everything feel a little more like a lie, but it’s good enough. He wonders a lot of the time why they all don’t just stay in, because it’s close enough, and dying here is better than dying in the real world with it’s charred and broken edges, anyway.
Shaking his head, Baekhyun swipes his fingers through the air and moves to tap the “backup” button.
For a fraction of a second, the dashboard flickers in his vision. The normally smooth holograph almost fizzes, monochrome static interrupting the serene neon green of the user panel. Part of the panel disappears, and something in front of him catches his eye.
He’s seen the framed poster on the brick wall before; he’s sure he has. It’s still there, in the real world.
Under the lower left corner, an old piece of paper flutters in the wind.
Quickly, Baekhyun closes the dashboard and lifts the frame up, pulling the note out with his other hand. Something in his stomach tightens.
RUN BABY RUN, GOD CAN’T SEE YOU HERE
There’s no one around, but the scream that builds up in his throat won’t come out.
Hastily, he pulls up the dashboard again, smooth this time like it always is, and backs his user data up before tapping the logout button several times in rapid succession.
For the first time, the game has glitched.
Baekhyun hates politics. It makes his brain spin in circles around his head and pound itself furiously against his skull, clogs his thoughts with opinions that don’t make any sense to him and that probably never will. All it ever does is pick useless fights with ignorant people who cling to their convictions so blindly that they’ll never let go even when they realize that their hands are wrapped around their own throats. All it ever does is trade peace for war and bring more death to a city that has barely dragged its own corpse out of Hades' grasp.
But Baekhyun can’t feel alive in a dead city. Maybe he’s not much for fighting, but if the Zealots want to kill what’s left of twinkling stars and city lights, they’ll have to kill him first and fight for it again in hell.
Apparently, that’s what they plan to do.
When Baekhyun tears off the headgear, fully prepared to join the ranks of the other Seditionists in their strategies for guerilla warfare, he finds that he’s a little bit late. The Underground is in chaos: Luhan is standing in front of him screaming improvised blasphemies as he fires away at arbitrary silhouettes, rubber bullets are whizzing by in every direction, and suddenly there’s a cold hand grabbing his arm in an attempt to drag him from the platform. Before he can get a good look at who it is, some projectile flies right past Luhan’s side and barely grazes over his cheek, hitting his glasses and sending them flying backwards.
“I HOPE YOUR STUPID GOD SCREWS YOU IN THE ASS WITH HIS FATHER’S FAVORITE DILDO!” Luhan shouts, taking aim in the direction of the perpetrator. An exclamation of pain comes from somewhere distant, and Luhan glances back briefly to check on Baekhyun, who has been tugged off the platform and is wildly slapping at the ground in search of his frames.
"Dammit," Baekhyun curses, now completely oblivious to the cold grip around his arm. "Dammit, I need those..."
A swift tug sends Baekhyun rolling away from his original direction, tumbling across the floor and hitting his elbows and knees on every accessible surface. Someone crouches over him, shouting something he can't quite hear through his disorientation, the deep voice sending vibrations through his body.
"... you okay?" he hears, "Hey, hey, are you okay?"
"I'm sort of blind," he manages to croak out. "Does that constitute 'okay'?"
"Hold on, little buddy."
Before the deep-voiced stranger even finishes his sentence, Baekhyun has been whisked off his feet. Strong arms with hands probably bigger than his head-although maybe it's just the fact that he can't see that makes the blobs of what should be his hands seem so huge-are wrapped around his stomach and rather painfully transporting him in an unknown direction. Deep-voice stranger bends over to pick something up, and Baekhyun lurches to a stop before he finds his glasses slapped upside-down over his face.
"Thank you, I think," Baekhyun mumbles, right as the other drops him roughly onto the floor. When he looks up, he finds himself staring into eyes of the tallest person he's ever met in his life.
The other pushes the thick frames of his own, nearly identical glasses up, ruffling Baekhyun's hair with his free hand. "No problem, little buddy! Catch ya later!"
Another bullet clangs against the stone floor to his left. Turning away from the deep-voice stranger, who’s already rushing back into the crowd, Baekhyun seeks refuge in the back of the Underground, where there’s a deep crack in the wall just wide enough for him to squeeze all the way into. If he gets found, he’s done for-there’s not really anywhere to run from there-but chances are the Zealots aren’t halfway smart enough to notice the crack could fit a very thin human being in it, anyway.
For a long time, Baekhyun watches Luhan through the opening and wishes he could be like him. But he’s weak and scrawny and doesn’t have a gun because he was late, and if he tried anything he’d just get taken hostage and Luhan or deep-voice stranger or Zitao or some other Seditionist would have to waste time rescuing him, and Baekhyun withdraws to the idea that it’s better to give up helping than to be a burden trying.
By the end of the battle, there is no clear winner. The Underground has been compromised. For all its name suggests, its usefulness had been directly centered around maintenance of clandestine operations-privacy and security it can no longer offer. The Zealots, however, are in no state to claim victories. Not a single member of the invading party remains unscathed, while all Seditionists but one have made their escape.
After what feels like hours, a familiar voice rings out through the abandoned Underground. "Yo, little buddy, you in here?"
Baekhyun leans inch-by-inch towards the opening of the wall crevice he has shoved himself into, attempting to surreptitiously confirm that it is indeed the deep-voice stranger who has come back for him.
"Byunbyun, you little wimp! It's me, it's Luhan. Where are you?"
The sudden shout makes Baekhyun flinch, sending a myriad of crumbling wall bits tumbling out onto the floor. Sighing at his apparent incapability to even hide properly, Baekhyun stumbles out, legs stiff and awkward from crouching for so long.
Relief flits over Luhan's face. "Thank God," he breathes, "Dammit, Byunbyun. Idiot."
Without waiting for Baekhyun to so much as blink at him, Luhan turns his back and heads out the door. "Stop being late!" he hollers. "I swear if you're late again I'll feed you to Chan... Chan... Whatever his name is."
"Chanyeol," he calls after him, vaguely insulted. Turning back to Baekhyun, he shrugs and smiles. "Anyway, little buddy, we should probably go. Before they feed you to me."
He laughs then. It's loud and reckless and Baekhyun has to resist the urge to cover his ears because it echoes from every surface of the confined area, yet somehow, in the silliest way, it's comforting, because his face-his actual entire face-scrunches up and he looks like the handsome version of some kind of shriveling fruit, and now, somehow, they’re both smiling. When Baekhyun tries to stop, he finds that he can't.
Chanyeol guides him back. Through their mutual attempts at silencing each other's snickers and chuckles, Baekhyun notices a lot of things about his new deep-voice acquaintance. He notices that his eyes do this funny, perhaps endearing twitch when he's trying not to burst out laughing. He notices that his ears stick out a little bit, that he reaches up from time to time to press them against his head, as if it's habit to be ashamed of them. He notices that he likes to push his glasses up over his bridge before shaking them back down and repeating the process.
What Baekhyun fails to notice, though, is that despite all the time he’s spent in the Underground with a faction almost as close-knit as family, he has never seen Chanyeol until now.
Baekhyun meets Luhan in an isolated alleyway among a maze of decrepit buildings. He holds the thin fabric of his T-shirt over his nose with one hand and squints through the dirt, pausing every once in a while to wipe the grimy deposits that collect on his glasses.
“God dammit, Byunbyun, I was so worried about you,” Luhan snaps, looking threateningly close to killing him with a hug that will break his ribs and puncture his lungs. “Just don’t come to fights anymore, okay? I was stupid to even suggest that you go to the first one. You’re too skinny to hold a gun, anyway, it’ll just crush you into the floor and then there’ll be no one to repeat every day that my penis is bigger than theirs and I would be upset.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why did you take so long, anyway?” he mutters, beginning to pace back and forth while breathing air through his shirt.
Baekhyun hesitates. Luhan wouldn’t consider him a liar, ever, especially not when it’s just the two of them talking. But no Seditionist would believe that the game glitched. Especially one like Luhan, who maintains the game equipment. Luhan is only in training, and he hasn’t had much experience due to the sudden and unprecedented rise in organized anti-Seditionist activity, but he already takes pride in the little work that he does and Baekhyun doesn’t want to take it away.
“I wanted to stay,” he manages after a while. “Don’t I always?”
Luhan quirks an eyebrow and stops pacing. “But you’re not that stupid. You lay low, but I’m pretty sure you’re the smartest goddamn person in this faction, and you’re telling me that you were stupid enough to sit and want to stay in the game when we were about to have a fight with some crazy and armed Zealots? HA!” He waves his arms in the air, looking enough like a monkey to make Baekhyun smile. “HA!”
“Fine.” Baekhyun swallows, adjusts his cap. “It glitched.”
“Are you fucking kidding. Are you fucking kidding-Minseok and Jongin and I spent all night checking up game equipment and Minseok even went into the server room-which you know never gets done because revealing the server rooms would be lethal-and made sure that all the servers were working properly. Practically no one even knows where the server rooms are anymore because they’re so confidential, I’m pretty sure it’s just Minseok who knows now, actually, and you’re not even supposed to know he knows, and you’re telling me the game glitched. After all that.”
Sighing, Baekhyun tugs his cap tighter against his head and stares at his feet. “It did.”
For a few moments, they listen to the seconds pass between them, wind sweeping dirt from the cracked concrete and dust from the rotting wood around and around in circles, letting it coat their skin and settle in their hair. Luhan turns away several times, turns back several times, starts to speak several times but doesn’t until Baekhyun feels as though he might go insane. And then he sighs and turns back again, squinting through the debris at the shape of a boy in glasses and a baseball cap.
“Do you have proof,” he says, carefully challenging, but Baekhyun knows that Luhan believes him already.
They take off through countless strips of uneven asphalt between crumbling buildings until Baekhyun skids to an abrupt stop in front of the brick wall of the old movie theater. The poster Baekhyun remembers from the game is slightly slanted, and one edge of the frame has fallen off completely. The paper curls and rots beneath it, yellowing and shredding and chipping around the borders.
“I saw this,” Baekhyun rasps out, panting. “In the game, I saw the poster. I was trying to backup and then the dashboard went static on me, and there was a note behind it, under the frame.”
He pauses to catch his breath, and suddenly he notices that Luhan is wheezing. Glancing over, he sees Luhan bent over, hands on his knees, face contorted in a agonized grimace before he looks up and registers Baekhyun’s concern. He immediately straightens and purses his lips, and if Baekhyun hadn’t known better, he would have thought that nothing was wrong.
“Yeah?” His voice is demanding despite the nearly indiscernible pain in his eyes as he struggles to regulate his breaths. “What about it?”
Baekhyun starts to ask if he’s okay, but he closes his mouth just as quickly, because the question would be pointless. No matter what, Luhan would say yes. He could probably get his leg cut off and still say “I’m okay” without batting an eyelash, so with a slight pursing of his lips, Baekhyun taps the corner of the frame the note was under. “‘Run baby run,’” he murmurs, “‘God can’t find you here.’”
“So what? Are you suggesting that the note-”
Suddenly there’s a bang. Luhan curses and whips a handgun out of his back pocket before scrambling in front of Baekhyun. “Not now you goddamned idiots!” he shouts, firing three shots into the shattered windows of a building across the street and eliciting a faint cry of pain from the adversary. “THAT’S RIGHT YOU STUPID LITTLE SHIT, BLEED TO DEATH ALONE IN THE COLD. I HOPE I GOT YOU IN THE BALLS.”
Rushed footsteps come from both sides of the street; neither Baekhyun nor Luhan recognize either of the armed men rushing toward them, so Luhan takes it upon himself to fire again at the both of them.
“Do you have an extr-”
“I’ll do all the shooting, Byunbyun. You run.”
“But I-”
“The longer you stay, the longer I have to take care of you. Go.”
Baekhyun swallows his protest and spins around, but the ground slips from under his feet and he’s being swung over someone’s shoulder to be carried away, the rough rhythm of the perpetrator’s gait squeezing unnecessary amounts of air from his chest and disheveling his glasses as he bounds away from the scene.
“I got you, little buddy.”
He adjusts his glasses just in time to look up and see at least five armed Zealots swarming Luhan and dragging him away. The laughter that had been building up in his throat is immediately replaced by a strangled shout of Luhan’s name, a scrawny arm reaching out to grasp a hand already too far away to be seen clearly. Luhan is shouting something too, but Baekhyun can’t hear it over the bittersweet smack of Chanyeol’s sneakers on the floor, the bereavement that comes with panting breaths turning the corner, the clatter of a handgun against concrete resounding from every wall of the derelict labyrinth they’re running through.
“Hey, hey,” Chanyeol manages to breathe out between gasps for air, “it’ll be okay, little buddy. He’s gonna be okay.”
“I want to be useful,” Baekhyun says to no one in particular as he lies on a burlap sheet over the jagged street surface, squinting at the smoggy sky and pretending he can glimpse the stars behind the blankets of grey. Zitao laughs, Jongin coughs, Minseok makes a strange choking noise on the other side of the alley. He assumes that everyone else is asleep. “What? Is it really that ridiculous?”
“You are,” Minseok states. The reassurance in his voice is almost sickening. “You don’t need to hold a gun to be useful.”
Zitao snickers again, and Baekhyun can see the blurred outline of Jongin’s silhouette sitting up to throw something at him. “Minseok’s right,” Jongin affirms, picking up another small rock and throwing it at Zitao’s head. “You’re smart. You’re just quiet. And your grandfather was a genius, and your father was a genius, so you’re probably going to be a genius, too.”
“You’re all waiting for some kind of epiphany from me, is that it? Some brilliant eureka! that I’ll never really get. Like when my grandfather wrote up the blueprints for the Underground, or when my father designed the maintenance protocol. You call me useful because you’re waiting for me to be useful.”
All three of them open their mouths to counter, and Jongin starts to shake his head, but no one really says anything.
Wordlessly, Baekhyun rises to his feet. Minseok says something about how it’s dangerous to go out in the middle of the night like this, when he should be sleeping, but Baekhyun waves the remark away before turning out of the alley.
The thing is, it’s always dangerous. Going out in the middle of the night is just the same as going out in broad daylight. What Minseok really means to say is that it’s dangerous for him to go out without Luhan, without someone to hold a gun and babysit him and carry his burdens because he’s not strong enough to take them himself.
As if he didn’t know that already.
Baekhyun suspects he’s been walking for nearly an hour by the time he makes it to the theater. The late-night winds whistle intimidatingly through the gaps in the brick wall, and Baekhyun fights to keep himself from shivering as he stands before the framed poster, running his fingers over the dusty edges and letting them linger over the corner that the note had been in. Taking a deep, shaky breath, he widens his stance and hooks his fingers under the corner and tugs.
The frame doesn’t budge.
On instinct, he turns around to ask for Luhan’s help. Then he remembers, for all he knows, Luhan could have been thrown in a ditch somewhere to die. Luhan could be dying right now, could be really dead right now, and he hasn’t told anyone, and he doesn’t even know why. Maybe I forgot, he thinks, and then suddenly he’s laughing, and his eyes are stinging, and he knows that he didn’t forget at all; he just didn’t tell anyone, didn’t cry in front of anyone except Chanyeol because he didn’t want to seem weak. His best friend could be getting beaten to a pulp and he hasn’t told anyone because he doesn’t want to seem weak, or even more useless, or like more of a burden to someone who hasn’t borne witness to how much of a burden he’s been this whole time. He just wants to be strong and courageous like Luhan: silent in the face of hurt, always the first to say “I’m okay,” never the one to show vulnerability.
The more he thinks about it, the more he laughs, so he laughs and he laughs through the burn behind his eyelids and thinks to himself that this is the most cowardly thing he’s ever done, that he is the most cowardly person he’ll ever know.
“The hell are you laughing about, Byunbyun?”
“I don’t know,” he replies, so far into hysterics that he can no longer hold himself upright. “Luhan, is that really you? I don’t know.”
Luhan strides over from the other side of the street and catches Baekhyun, who laughs even harder once he feels Luhan’s sturdy grip beneath him. Through the tears and the shaking, he can make out smears of maroon all over Luhan’s shirt, on his right cheekbone along the left side of his jaw, around his neck, dotting his knuckles. There’s a dark bruise under his left eye, a gun-shaped stain still growing over the fabric of his back pocket.
“It’s me.” He pulls Baekhyun into a hug and rubs his back soothingly, letting out a shaky sigh and burying into the crook of his neck. “I was so worried about you. I was so worried, Byunbyun.”
Baekhyun swears he’s never hated himself so much in his entire life.
He’s still shaking, maybe with sobs now, but Luhan is still talking. With every word, Baekhyun only wants to tear himself apart more.
“What are you even doing here? Why the hell would you come back here? What if they were waiting for you to come back, huh? And who the hell is that tall guy, Chan-whatever? I thought he’d run off to bring you to the slaughterhouse or something. Why did you come back here?”
“The poster,” he manages between breaths. Disappointment, or something almost crestfallen, flashes in Luhan’s eyes before he gently pushes Baekhyun away and tucks his fingers under the same corner to tug again. It doesn’t move.
After a few bouts of sniffling, Baekhyun steps forward to inspect the edges attached to the walls, shoves his hands into the crevices and feels around for hinges or nails or bolts or empty spaces. When he doesn’t find anything, he uses the arms of his glasses, and just when he’s about to give up, Luhan grabs his glasses from him with a murmured wait a second. There’s a quiet crumpling sound, a scraping of something against brick.
“So, Byunbyun,” Luhan sighs, seemingly exasperated when he shoves Baekhyun’s glasses back onto his face. “What the hell does this mean?”
There’s a piece of paper in front of his face, covered in soot and holes and crinkles, and it takes a bit of blinking before he can make words out of the fuzziness of his vision. It’s getting worse; he’ll have to look for new glasses soon or try to carve the lenses of his current ones, but the impatient tapping of Luhan’s foot interrupts his thoughts and he pushes the concern aside.
SLIPPING PAST THE GATES OF HEAVEN, UP AND OVER, UP AND OVER
“Can you reach the top?” Baekhyun asks, “I didn’t check the top. I can’t reach over.”
Rolling his eyes, Luhan hoists himself onto the balls of his feet and reaches for the top, wincing for a brief moment as he does so. Baekhyun notices and remains silent. “I’m only two centimeters taller than you, but okay. I’ll try. What am I looking for?”
“An entrance.”
“Well yeah, so what’s an entrance going to look like?”
“A gap, maybe? A lever? A button. Or like, something to pull down. Or something to climb into. A hinge or a knob or-”
“Why don’t you just look for it?” he interrupts, squatting down and glancing over his shoulder. “I can lift you over, because that sure as hell is gonna be easier than memorizing that list of yours.”
It occurs to Baekhyun that Luhan is in no condition to do such a thing. He’s been without proper care for hours, his leg is probably injured along with various other spots on his body, and as of the sprint to the theater earlier in the day, Baekhyun suspects that he’s begun to develop respiratory problems, if not to exacerbate pre-existing ones. Then again, Luhan has always been resilient and enduring, and Baekhyun figures he’d only get angry if his strength were to be questioned.
Nodding, Baekhyun keeps his mouth shut and climbs onto Luhan’s shoulders. A faint hiss escapes through Luhan’s teeth when he begins to rise, and he has to take an unbalanced step backwards before he can half-stumble the several inches forward to the theater wall.
“Does it hurt?” Baekhyun blurts out, “We can wait until you’re better or-”
“Are you kidding me right now? I’m fine. We can’t wait until I’m better-first of all because I’m fine already, I’m already better-and you’re obviously onto something, and the Underground just got compromised and we can’t log back in, but maybe this is a way, and you know what happens if we can’t log back in? As fake as all of it is, we don’t have food, we don’t have medicine, we don’t have anywhere to go. And maybe it doesn’t matter because all of that is virtual and all it does is make us feel better without really fixing anything, but we lose the city, and that matters, doesn’t it? It doesn’t even matter if I’m not fine. I hate concern. Maybe you think I don’t notice because you keep your mouth shut but you make it more obvious than… something that’s really obvious. Think about what matters, Byunbyun, because it certainly isn’t me, and there’s no use in worrying about someone tougher than you anyway.”
It feels as though Luhan has just dumped acid all over his head, the way he spits the words like venom. Baekhyun can feel his eyes burning again for reasons that span far beyond the infinite: Luhan’s never spoken to him like this before, which means now, Luhan’s probably sick and tired of how weak he is, too, Luhan’s probably just like everyone else despite his constant companionship, just waiting for him to come up with something brilliant. He’s more than a burden, because burdens are meant to be carried, not dragged, but he’s too heavy to be carried, and Luhan probably isn’t even holding onto him. It’s he who holds onto Luhan, clasping his ankle like an iron ball and chain, forcing Luhan to slow to a tedious trudge and injuring him in the process. All he can ever do is think and worry; if not about himself, then about Luhan. Never about what matters. Maybe he’s smart, but there’s no point to being smart if he never even thinks about the right things.
He’ll never be anything more than useless, and right now, that’s the last thing anyone would want to be.
“I’m sorry.”
Luhan lets out a long sigh, squeezing Baekhyun’s calf gently before nudging him towards the wall. “I didn’t mean to snap. It’s been a long goddamn day, and it’s cold out, and I think my balls are shivering. Just look.”
Taking another breath, Baekhyun squeezes his eyes shut for a few seconds and tells himself that Luhan is right-because he is. If he wants to be useful in the slightest, he’ll have to learn from those who already are. With that in mind, he murmurs a quiet “thank you” before reaching forward and pushing a tentative hand along the top edge of the gold-plated brass frame. Several minutes pass as he inspects the junction he notices between the top edge and the right edge, then the one between the top and the left. He slips the arms of his glasses into the small gaps between the two pieces of metal and tries to move it around, but much to his dismay, there’s no space. Luhan starts to quake beneath him, and Baekhyun imagines that there could be wounds and bruises everywhere on his legs, from just above his ankles and around his calves and beneath and on top of and over his knees all the way to his upper thighs.
He’s just about to tell Luhan that he’s given up when a particularly strong gust of wind nearly knocks them over, sending Baekhyun reeling forward to catch his balance with a white-knuckle grip around the surface he had just been trying to pry apart. When the full force of his weight hits the poster, he swears that he feels something in the frame give out or shift under his palms. Without waiting for the wind to abate itself, Baekhyun digs his fingers into the gap that connects the top of the frame to the backing that’s attached to the wall; much to his disappointment again, nothing seems to give way. Beneath him, Luhan is either shaking or coughing-most likely both-and the clouds of dust swept up by the spontaneous gale sends him into a wheezing fit. Reaching down with one hand, Baekhyun tugs Luhan’s shirt up over his nose and does the same with his own, ignoring the debris that obscures his vision and pulling himself closer to the brick wall until he can just barely slip his fingers behind the poster, jagged brick surface scraping painfully against his skin as he pushes forward.
But it’s worth it. What Baekhyun first mistakes for a dent in the back of the metal surface actually traverses horizontally across the entire area. The only problem with his discovery is that there’s not quite enough room for him to reach under and shake the frame, lest he let the sharp pieces of the wall cut into his skin.
It occurs to him then that with all the dust in the air, his vision is more or less the same with his glasses than it is without, rendering his current attempts at peering down the space between the backing and the brick pointless. Squeezing his eyes shut, he pulls off his glasses once more and uses the tip of one of the arms to search once more for the crease, then shoves it in and tugs up as hard as he can.
The top of the frame comes off with barely any force. Baekhyun nearly falls off from Luhan’s shoulders, which sends Luhan stumbling backwards until he lands on his butt with a jolt on the concrete.
“FUCK!” he shouts, pushing onto his knees, shoving his hand into his back pocket and pulling something out as Baekhyun tumbles onto the ground. “GOD DAMN MOTHER FUCK MY GUN WAS IN MY BACK POCKET, HOLY SHIT, MY ASS, DEAR FUCKING GOD I THINK IT BROKE, BYUNBYUN, YOU BROKE MY ASS.”
When the gust finally dies down, Baekhyun smiles sheepishly at him. “Sorry I broke your ass.”
“My eyes are watering. Dear lord. Dear lord, Byunbyun, I hope you never experience this kind of pain.”
Several minutes pass before the gust dies down. While they wait, Baekhyun pretends to occupy himself with attempting to wipe away the powdery grime on his glasses faster than it accumulates so he doesn’t have to pay attention to Luhan’s face contorting in pain every time he moves.
Baekhyun would laugh if he could do so without filling his lungs with ashes. They’re all lying to themselves: Luhan pretends that he really believes Baekhyun shouldn’t be worried, Baekhyun pretends that he isn’t, and their entire faction pretends that they can resurrect the dead. How ironic.
He laughs at that.
When the wind subsides and Baekhyun’s done choking on air, he climbs back onto Luhan’s shoulders and feels around blindly in the new-found space behind the poster. But Luhan is only tall enough for Baekhyun to hook his elbow over the edge, and in the dim glow of the moon that peeks out through sporadic holes in the smog clouding the sky, he can see that the vague outline of his silhouette lands on a surface much deeper than the length of his forearm. “Bring me from one side to the other.”
“Can’t you do that yourself?”
“The only reason I can tell how deep it goes is because I can sort of see my shadow on it. I can’t reach far enough to feel anything, but if there’s an uneven surface for some kind of opening, you’ll need to move my shadow around for me.”
On shaky steps, Luhan obeys. The search feels much longer than it is, but about three-quarters of the way through, Baekhyun sees his shadow bend around something small.
“Stop! Go back. Sway, sort of.”
Luhan leans to the left, nearly losing his balance as he does so, and the shadow falls back onto a flat surface; as he slowly shifts his weight to the right, Baekhyun watches the dark patch bend briefly before straightening again.
“A lever,” he breathes out, gripping Luhan’s shoulders with excessive force. “There’s a lever, I think, or a button.”
“Byunbyun, did you just invent some kind of search radar. Also, I think you’re going to tear my shoulders off.”
Luhan’s words fall on deaf ears as Baekhyun begins to blather about his discovery. “I can’t reach it, I definitely can’t reach it, I have to stick my entire arm in there to reach it it’s way at the bottom but Luhan Luhan Luhan there’s a button or a lever and this is something big do you think we can get the city back what do you think they’re hiding in there Luhan there’s a button we need to press it or pull it or something, Chanyeol, get Chanyeol, we can come back tomorrow and-”
“I don’t trust him.” Without warning, Luhan lifts Baekhyun from his shoulders and sets him down on the ground, gaze almost challenging. “Who the hell is he, anyway?”
“I trust him.”
“Do you even know the answer to my question?”
“No, but I trust him. I mean, just, how can I not?”
Luhan gapes at him before furrowing his eyebrows and speaking, gesticulating wildly as he does so. “What do you mean ‘how can you not?’ Byunbyun, he never-I mean, have you ever even seen that kid around before the invasion? ‘How can you not?’ That’s the completely wrong question! The question is ‘how the actual fuck can you?’! He never even existed before the Zealots came and ransacked the Underground. I mean, okay, seriously, you know everyone in this faction like the back of your hand, or at least half as well. All of us know each other like we were in the goddamn womb together. If I asked you to, you’d be able to name Jongin’s favorite food before a bullet could reach that wall over there if I shot it right now, you’d be able to tell me what Soojung’s bra size is-okay, well, maybe you wouldn’t because you’re not really straight, but I’m sure if you were you’d be able to-you’d be able to probably point out every bald spot on Minseok’s ancient head and not miss a single one. This Chan-whatever guy? Literally waltzed in two seconds ago! Are you crazy? Are you insane? Are yo-”
“He saved my life. Twice.”
“Let’s not even try to count the number of times I’ve saved yours, Byunbyun. Two isn’t a very big number.”
“Well it doesn’t matter!” Baekhyun protests, voice rising in pitch and volume. It’s a rare enough occurrence to make Luhan hesitate to speak. Breathing in deep, Baekhyun pushes his glasses into the bridge of his nose and swallows. “It doesn’t. The city matters. That’s what you said. Maybe we shouldn’t trust him, but that doesn’t change the fact that he can help us, right? Think about what matters.”
Luhan bites his lip, purses them into a straight line, fury personified. Yet his eyes tell another story in the brief flickering of loss that crosses them, as though he’s conceded more than just a logical point. The air tenses, hardens and pushes itself into Baekhyun’s throat; he can’t say anything, not with Luhan looking at him like that.
They walk back in silence.
By the time they arrive back at the alley, the guilt Baekhyun feels for his brief contention with Luhan has grown enough to overtake every thought. It was only for a little while, everything about the disagreement seemed fleeting and sudden, and perhaps it really was. Perhaps Luhan isn’t even angry at him anymore, but he can’t stop thinking about the way Luhan glared at him with such burning, tight-lipped indignation, indignation that wasn’t as strong as he wanted Baekhyun to believe, because the flames tapered out when they reached his eyes, nothing but smoldering embers beneath the ashes of burning bridges, and Baekhyun could see it.
He labels it as part of Luhan’s strength even though he knows it’s his hurt and wonders if he wishes he hadn’t noticed.
It’s not an apology, but he lets Luhan take his makeshift bed of burlap. Maybe he does it out of concern, because Luhan doesn’t look like he can even stay up long enough to set up another, or out of guilt, or out of respect. But it’s not an apology, because he doesn’t think he’s wrong.
Luhan attempts to hide his limp as he makes his way towards the rough fabric that he’ll be sleeping on. It’s pointless, but Baekhyun can’t help but admire his attempt, his tenacity, how he still tries to straighten his back when no one’s watching, how he still looks regal doing it even though he’s painted with blood and bruises and should look like defeat.
He sways-once, twice, three times-and gives out, falling backwards onto the thin layer of burlap that protects him from the concrete beneath it. Baekhyun’s too far away to catch him in time, but he lunges forward anyway and misses. It’s Soojung who darts out and catches him, forearms straining to lower him gently to the ground as she simultaneously grips two newly filled jugs of water in her fists.
“You’re lucky I saw that,” she hisses, glaring at him with utter contempt. “You’re lucky I got back in time.”
“Yeah. Sorry. Thanks.”
With a huff, she puts the water down and sets up her own place, next to Luhan, where Baekhyun had been planning to sleep.
It doesn’t hurt how blunt Soojung is about how useless she believes him to be-in fact, it’s almost relieving. If everyone acted like Soojung, he would have been thrown away years ago. But at least they wouldn’t have expected anything from him.
It’s only after more than two hours of walking aimlessly in circles around the same block of buildings that Baekhyun finds Chanyeol tucked away near the mouth of another alley diagonally across from their own, watching him with blatant confusion and concern on his face. Upon meeting his gaze, Baekhyun feels his knees go weak beneath him, and before he knows it he’s sitting down in the middle of the sidewalk curled up in a ball, chin rested on his knees.
Chanyeol whispers, “You okay, little buddy?” and Baekhyun shakes his head no. After a while, Chanyeol waves him over, so he goes and lies down next to him and stares at the ugly, rolling black in the sky and thinks about how much he wants it gone, about how pretty the stars are, about what it would look like lying here with Chanyeol when all the twinkling lights of towering skyscrapers and ostentatious cityscapes are alive and glowing, about how little he’s done to bring any of it back, and finally, about how little he can do to bring any of it back. And by the time he’s done thinking himself into despair, there are tears pooling at the corners of his eyes and streaking down his cheeks, and by the time he notices he’s crying he’s already sniffling and it’s too late to take it back and be strong like Luhan, to say “I’m okay” and make someone believe it.
Chanyeol doesn’t offer any words of consolation this time, doesn’t try to tell him that it will be okay or call him “little buddy” again, but he does pull Baekhyun into a secure embrace, both arms wrapping tightly around him as he curls against Chanyeol’s chest. Perhaps this is why he trusts him; what Baekhyun needs now isn’t sympathy or encouragement, because he doesn’t want people to pretend to feel bad for him when they really just want him to get over it and have a moment of genius to benefit some cause or another. Rather, he needs understanding, and it’s always been Chanyeol who’s understood from the time of their meeting that all he needs is protection and dignity.
Maybe he’s absolutely irrelevant, but it doesn’t matter right now, because Chanyeol holds him like he’s worth something regardless of the fact that he’s done nothing beneficial for him. Maybe they’d only met a few days ago, but from the very first second, Chanyeol had never looked to gain anything from him, or expected the unachievable. He just protected and understood that Baekhyun needed to be protected, not as some asset to be used, but as a living, breathing person.
At that, he cries harder.
He is nothing more than a person.
“Minseok and Baekhyun are missing!”
Baekhyun awakens to the high-pitched whine of Zitao’s voice piercing through the morning air, burlap and concrete cold against his skin. Something drops in his stomach when he finds that Chanyeol has disappeared, but without a second thought to it, he runs out towards the others. When he approaches their alley, Soojung is tending to Luhan’s wounds while he sips water from one of the jugs. “I’m not missing,” he states sheepishly, ignoring Soojung’s death glare as best he can. “I was in the other alley with Ch-”
Zitao interrupts, shouting out his corrected proclamation. “Minseok is missing!”
“We can see that,” Jongin mutters, “Now stop shouting it, will you? We all know, there’s no need to let the whole world know where we are for it.”
“You what?” Luhan quirks an eyebrow, locking eyes with Baekhyun. “You were in what other alley with who?”
“That one, the one across the street, on the next block. With Chanyeol-”
Soojung looks as though she’s about to stand up and dump one of the jugs of water on his head. “Who the hell is Chanyeol?”
“Byun fucking Baekhyun, I told you not to trust him,” Luhan snarls, rising to his feet and storming toward him. “Notice that not a single other person knows who the hell you’re talking about? Is Chanyeol even here right now, or did he poof into thin-air like he always does? Do you even realize that Minseok is missing-do you even realize what that means? Baekhyun-fuck, you’re such an idiot. I’m trying to protect you. I can’t believe you.”
“Luhan, stop. Who’s Chanyeol?”
“I don’t fucking know, Jongin, why don’t you ask Baekhyun?”
“Chill. Just chill, okay? Calm down. We’re all stressed here. Now, Baekhyun, who’s Chanyeol?”
Baekhyun swallows, mumbling. “The tall guy. With the glasses like mine.”
“I have never seen a tall guy with the glasses like yours,” Jongin repeats, the slightest bit of skepticism creeping into his voice. “And why do you trust him?”
“He saved my life. Twice.”
Sighing, Jongin rakes his fingers through his hair and takes a few slow breaths. “So now you’re… sleeping with hi-”
“No! No, no, it’s not like that, I was just-”
“It’s okay. I didn’t mean it like that.”
Luhan scoffs. “You might as well have. It would be just as accurate, probably.”
“Luhan, seriously, stop. He’s fine, okay? Let him be. As long as he’s not a Zealot, honestly, he’s probably safe, and Baekhyun can trust him if he wants.”
“And how do you know he’s not a Zealot?”
“Because Zealots don’t usually, you know, like, save Seditionists? Because they’re all trying to-oh, I don’t know-kill us?”
“He could very well be a spy,” Soojung interjects, “Are you suggesting we just blindly trust everyone who isn’t trying to rip our throats out?”
“Are you suggesting that we should be picky about our allies when the Zealots are probably going to launch another attack? And since when is any Zealot smart enough or sneaky enough to engage in espionage, anyway? We knew they were coming before any of them even learned how to load a gun.”
“Well if they’re so dumb, why are you worried about finding allies?”
Jongin throws his hands up in the air, taking a step forward as if he’s preparing to slap her if she says another word. Luhan raises an eyebrow at him and grabs her hand, pulling her away. “I don’t know if you know basic math, Soojung, but they have a much larger population than we have. If they decided to link arms and walk in a straight goddamn line through these streets, they could trample us into the ground before we shoot a single one of them. They’re at the center of the city, with probably plenty of resources from various old basements, and we’re fresh out of everything. Time, food, water, medication, even oxygen, judging by the dust in the air, shelter, our illusions of all those things; you name it and we probably don’t have it. Do we really have the resources to be picky about who our allies are? We need everyone we can get, and I don’t care if it’s an ex-Zealot or a random loner or a zombie-if they’ve shown any amiability at all, I’m willing to at least try trusting them.”
There’s a brief few seconds of silence before Zitao quietly pipes up again. “Minseok is still missing.”
Luhan shoots an annoyed stare at him for several seconds before he breaks out in a short burst of awkward laughter. “All this talk about gaining numbers and we’re still missing one. Fuck it. Jongin’s right. Let’s just find Minseok. No one gave us enough time for this bullshit about trust.” Then, smiling at Baekhyun, he adds, “Trust is irrelevant. In the end, we’re all just using each other, aren’t we?”
It feels as though Luhan has just taken a chisel and chipped away a large piece of him to smash against the floor.
Regardless, he nods.
( Part Two )