Pretenses of Sophistication
Title: Pretenses of Sophistication
Pairings: Krisbaek, endgame!Baeksoo (girl!Baek)
Rating: PG
Genre: Romance, Angst (?)
Warnings: Hover
Length: ~7.5k
Summary: Floriography is pointless when no one knows how to love.
(A/N: This was written for everyone who participated in wufantastic! I actually !!!! really really liked writing this because let me tell you writing this 7.5k in 6.5 hours was actually the best thing of my life? Thank you to jesstoast who staYED UP UNTIL 2:30AM beta-ing this for me (and probably didn't enjoy it as much as I did, pmsl), like, I owe you a billion.)
In the dead of winter, Kris curls up alone in the space between two old buildings, behind a dumpster in the corner of a long since abandoned slum. He wonders when everyone left. Just this morning, they had all been packing, loading bags onto the horses and cleaning up tents, and his mother had sent him off to go play since he’d finished packing the day before. It was snowing, so he and his friends and a stray puppy he’d found on the street the week prior ran far out into the depths of the city to play in the powdery sheets of ice that coated the sidewalks. He’d played with the fair-skinned boys, too: in that moment, they were all the same, gypsy kids and city dwelling ones, rolling around in mounds of ice until they couldn’t feel their noses any longer. They played hide-and-seek.
That was probably a bad idea-especially for Kris, who, despite his abnormal height, had never been successfully sought out in a single game before, in all six years of his life.
When sunset came, and the snow had weakened until he could catch each individual flake on the tip of his tongue without missing the others, he remembered that his mother had told him that morning to be back before the sun went all the way down, otherwise they wouldn’t wait for him. But his mother, his father, his friends, and even the stray puppy-they’d all left, by the time he got back.
He could see it. There were still another two centimeters before the sun disappeared all the way. But they were gone, and he was alone. No one had passed in the area since he’d returned. He’d called for his puppy several times, which he hadn’t even named before he’d started calling for it, and he’d called for his friends and his parents and his uncles and aunts and his pony, but there wasn’t really a point. They were probably already out of the city, and he didn’t even know in which direction they had gone.
It’s cold.
He counts the flakes of snow as they fall through the gap between the buildings and land on his fingers, until they start to fall so fast he can’t count them anymore. It’s starting to weigh down on his head, he can’t feel his arms, and bits of the snow are melting down his neck. He remembers that once his mother told him that they had to move in the winter because if anyone got too cold, they might die, and the copious mountains of snow made it easy to get lost, and that if you got lost, you might die. Now, he’s both of those things. Does that mean he is going to die twice?
It’s funny to think about, but instead of laughing, he starts crying. And then he starts laughing because he should be laughing instead of crying, because it’s funny, dying twice, that’s impossible, and then he’s laughing and crying, until he can’t feel his face and he’s not sure if it’s because it’s too puffy from crying or because he’s going to die from the snow and from being lost.
“Is anyone there?”
Kris freezes in place; his crying ceases and he’s silent. He opens his mouth to say yes, but he can’t say yes, yes, I’m here, save me, before I die twice because he can’t feel his entire face, let alone his lips. The voice at the opening of the alley won’t notice him because he can’t say yes even though he wants to. He starts to cry harder. He’s going to die three times now, probably.
Suddenly, someone is brushing the snow from his nose and from the top of his head and over his arms with one of those fancy handkerchiefs his mother used to steal until she learned how to make them. It’s even softer than the one his mother stole from the rich man with the golden pocket watch for his fourth birthday.
“Hey, hey,” the voice murmurs, grabbing him by the biceps to hoist him up. “Don’t cry, shh, it’s okay, don’t cry. Are you lost? What’s your name?”
“I don’t want to die three times!” he blubbers, gripping to the man’s hand as hard as he can, “Mommy said I’ll get lost and get cold and die and I didn’t get back in time and I’m going to die!”
Chuckling, the man picks him up, drying his tears off with the handkerchief and smoothing back his hair. “Do you want to go find your mommy? Where is she?”
“They left because they didn’t want to die!”
Confused, he stops dabbing at Kris’ face and furrows his eyebrows. “What?”
“Mommy and daddy and everyone is gone. I’m never going to find mommy again! I’m going to die three times!”
“Hey, hey, no-no you’re not going to die three times! Shall I bring you with me? We’re to walk for a bit, but if everyone is gone, I can bring you with me.”
The man takes his ceaseless sobbing and wailing as a yes, and slings him over his shoulder, walking through the snow and humming the same song he learned from one of the fair-skinned boys today.
x
“Everyone!” the man bellows, simultaneously turning his key in the lock and shoving the door open with a force powerful enough to rival the snowstorm outside. The lights from the grandiose chandelier inside the house burn so bright that they hurt his eyes. He tries to jump back in surprise, kicking himself from his previous sleeping position on the man’s back and falling back-flat on the snow-covered porch steps. A little too shocked to feel pain, he blinks and rubs at his eyes until they’ve adjusted enough for him to look inside the room. The man who brought him home is a fair-skinned man, although he already knows that from the mansion before him, with the two golden-tinted staircases with the fluffy looking red carpet leading up the middle, the chandelier that hangs on the ceiling, and the paintings on the wall. Now that he can actually see, he can tell that the fair-skinned man is wearing an expensive looking tailcoat, with black satin cuffs, and a velveteen tophat. His slacks and leather dress shoes are worn down, drenched by the melted snow, but he looks incredibly grand, like the gold pocket watch his mother stole from the same man who walked by with the handkerchief on his third birthday, except even better, even shinier, like the top of his father’s head. “This boy-o here is the newest addition to the Byun household! He hasn’t told me his name, actually, so I don’t actually know what his name is, but he’s an addition! Treat him nicely.”
“Father!” A girl in a tattered pink dress and a tiara made from sticks barrels over the carpet and tackles the man with such force that he takes two steps backwards to regain his balance. “Did you bring the dolls you promised me? Those gypsies do make the best dolls, don’t they? Did you bring them?”
A smaller boy behind him follows suit, half-running to the man before standing before him and smoothing out his tailcoat. “Father, did you bring me the violin you promised?”
“I’m sorry, my sweets,” he proclaims, not sounding sorry at all as he lowers the girl to the ground and kneels in front of the two children. “I did not bring what I promised to bring you, but I brought this lovely little gypsy boy with me! Can you make dolls and violins, boy?”
The man turns back to Kris, who’s still lying in the snow, elbows propping him up as he stares in silent awe at everything. Slowly, he begins to shake his head and nod it at the same time. “I c-can, um, my m-mother taught me how to make handkerchiefs…”
“DADDY,” the little girl shrieks, suddenly rabid, lurching forward to stomp on his shoe several times, “YOU PROMISED YOU PROMISED YOU PROMISED!”
Feral, she wraps her arms around her father’s leg and peeks around, staring at Kris with eyes that seem to be on actual fire. As soon as she does so, she smiles; in the next blink, all the anger and fury is gone, and she runs out into the snow to greet him. “Hi!” she screams, bending over to shout in his face, “I’m Baekhyun! Princess Baekhyun to you. I’m five and a half. I like candy and dolls. Since daddy didn’t bring me the doll he promised, you’re going to be my doll now, okay? What’s your name, doll?”
“Um,” he says.
The little boy peeks out from behind his father as well, squinting at him suspiciously. “A handkerchief is not the same as a violin. Do you know what that means, you poopy gypsy? It means I hate you. I’m going to kill you dead. Dead as a rock. Unless you steal me a violin-”
“Luhan!” his father snaps, pushing him back by shoving his palm in Luhan’s face. “Apologize. That’s rude.”
“You not getting me a violin is rude, too,” he mumbles. Smiling creepily, he sits down cross-legged and folds his hands in his lap. “I am sorry,” he states, monotone, “Pardon my insolence.”
“Where did you learn big words like ‘insolence’?” the maid asks, dusting off the piano by the door and ruffling his hair, not noticing when he lunges forward to bite at her hand and just barely misses. “How old are you again?”
“I’m eight years, two months, and three weeks old, Chan-butthead.”
“You know words like ‘insolence,’ but you can’t even rhyme something with ‘-yeol’. Right.” She huffs and smacks the duster on his head, which sends him into a screaming fit.
Mr. Byun sighs, suddenly looking thirty years older than he did when he just opened the door, and tells Baekhyun to behave herself and show the gypsy boy to the room next to hers. “Daddy is tired,” he sighs, adjusting the tiara on her head. “Take care of the gypsy boy, figure out his name, and make sure Luhan doesn’t kill anybody. Can you do that?”
“Yes, Mr. Daddy your majesty highness!”
“You’re so stupid,” Luhan sneers, “It’s ‘your majesty,’ or ‘your highness.’ Everyone knows that.”
Grabbing Kris’ hand, Baekhyun drags him into the house and leans toward Luhan until her face is barely a centimeter away from his. She sucks in a deep breath, then lets out a shrill scream. “I HATE YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU! HATE HATE HATE. HATE. BY THE POWERS PESTED IN ME I CURSE YOU THAT YOUR HORSE WILL POOP ON YOUR HEAD TOMORROW BIG AND STINKY.”
“You can’t poop on my head,” he retorts, wiping the spit from his face with a handkerchief of his own and then using it to shove Baekhyun’s face away. “And it’s ‘vested.’”
Baekhyun squeezes Kris’ hand so tight that he hears his knuckles crack, then takes the tiara off and smashes it on Luhan’s head.
“Let’s go, gypsy doll person. Don’t worry about Luhan. The horses will all poop on him tomorrow.”
“Um,” he says. “Okay.”
x
As it turns out, the horse never poops on Luhan’s head big or stinky. In fact, it doesn’t poop on his head at all. What does happen to Luhan is much worse, and Kris loves it.
Because he’s a gypsy boy, Mr. Byun sends him to work in the stables with the other servants in the place. He helps Chanyeol around the house when Baekhyun takes her lunchtime naps, and when Chanyeol lets him off, he goes to the library to read. But Mr. Byun doesn’t really treat him like a gypsy boy, and nor does Chanyeol. Mr. Byun actually treats him better than Luhan; arguably, better than Baekhyun. When he’s working, he sneaks him chocolates and gold coins, and sometimes he excuses Kris from stable-work to teach him how to play the piano-but only when Luhan isn’t home. At dinner, Mr. Byun finds reason to accuse Luhan of misbehaving-although, also arguably, he’s always misbehaving-and excuses Kris from setting the table to make Luhan set it.
Princess Baekhyun also takes to him rather well. Some of the time, she drags him away from his self-studies to play, and to make mischief around the house. One time, she takes the watercolor set her father brings home and dumps brown paint onto the rags and sponges that Chanyeol uses to wash the dishes; another, she wakes him up at midnight and creeps into Luhan’s room with a warm jar of water and sticks his hand in it and laughs at him when he pees his pants. His favorite of all of them, however, is the Christmas eve where she wakes him a quarter to twelve and they climb up the chimney together, choking out soot and dust when they finally reach the top, then scramble over the shingles of the roof with their hands intertwined.
“Do you believe in Santa Claus?” she asks, resting her head on his shoulder as they swing their feet over the edge.
“Who?”
Baekhyun jerks away so abruptly that she nearly falls over the edge, Kris’ hands just barely catching her waist in time.
“I knew you were a gypsy boy, but Kris, you’ve been alive for thirteen years, reading in Father’s library for seven, and you don’t know who Santa Claus is?”
“Oops?”
“I’m going to push you off,” she grins, hugging his arm close. “How can you not know who Santa Claus is?”
“Well then, are you going to tell me?”
“He’s this rather… rotund, old man with a big white beard and a red hat with a giant cotton ball at the end, and he flies around on a sled on Christmas and throws gifts down everyone’s chimney. Whatever you want, he gets it for you, and throws it down your chimney.”
“Then why the heck did we take the chimney? Did you want to get a concussion or something?”
“No,” she snaps, “I just thought that he can’t throw what I want this year down my chimney, so-”
“Wait, what? Didn’t you say he could throw anything down the chimney?”
“Yeah, well, if he threw a person down the chimney, they might die, and Santa Claus isn’t a murderer. I think.”
“A person?”
Baekhyun lets out a sudden huff, pursing her lips and staring rather furiously at Kris before letting go of his arm and curling up in a ball. “YOU ARE SO STUPID.”
“What?”
“GO THROW YOURSELF DOWN MY CHIMNEY, RIGHT NOW.”
“Huh?”
“THIS WENT A LOT BETTER IN MY HEAD.”
“Um?”
“NEVERMIND. TODAY NEVER HAPPENED!” she shrieks, abruptly slapping her hand over her mouth when she realizes Chanyeol might hear and tell Father. “You’re just-you’re very stupid. Let’s do something else tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“I like you.”
“... Isn’t that already established? Don’t friends-”
“Kris?”
“Yeah.”
“Stop talking. Let’s go. I’m sleepy.”
“To bed, then, your majesty highness.”
“I will really throw horse poop on your head someday,” she mutters, glaring at him as she climbs back down the chimney. “Maybe it’ll fertilize your brain and make you smarter.”
When they reach the bottom, Kris pulls his hand away. With a whispered, “God dammit,” Baekhyun fists the collar of Kris’ shirt and pulls him into a kiss.
“What?” Kris mumbles, words awkwardly muffled, eyes widened in surprise.
Just as quickly, she pushes him away and slaps him. “I like you,” she snaps, “Okay? I like you.”
“Ohhhhh.”
“Also, we’re waking up early tomorrow, got it?”
Without waiting for a response, she dashes into her bedroom.
Blinking down the hall a few times, Kris runs his fingers through his hair and licks his lips. “Oh.”
x
The next day, Baekhyun pulls Kris out of bed at the break of dawn. She’s dressed for church, but it’s not even Sunday, and in one hand, she holds one of Mr. Byun’s old tailcoats. “It might be a little too big,” she sighs, tossing it at him casually, “But Luhan’s are all much too small for you, and he’d kill both of us as dead as rocks if he ever found out, but Father probably won’t mind.”
“It’s not Sunday?”
“No, you imbecile, it’s not Sunday. But we are going to the oh-so-elegant Do household today, and we need to dress well.”
“Why are we going there? Why should I dress well?”
“Because I want to see it! Father says they’re a lot wealthier than we are, which is incredibly hard to believe, so we’re going to sneak over and see.”
“If we’re sneaking, why do we need to dress nicely?”
Baekhyun grabs Kris’ hand and starts to whine, jumping up and down as she does so. “Because I want to, okay? Play along please? Please? Please pretty please?”
“It’s too big. I’ll trip and get us caught.”
Baekhyun exhales continuously for what feels like a full minute. “Okay. Fine.”
To get to the Do manor, Kris counts that they have to climb over four different sets of gates. Baekhyun’s dress is dirtier than the horse stables would be after a week of Kris not cleaning them up, but she still insists that she looks elegant and refined, like someone of the Do class would be. She expected it, anyway; she would have been crazy not to.
When they get to the front door, Baekhyun can hardly contain her excitement. She practically runs up the front steps, shoes clacking loudly against the marble staircase-which, Kris notes as he follows leisurely behind her, they don’t have-as she rushes toward the windows in the front. The curtains are open, and inside, the notorious Do siblings are doing what they are known best for-screaming at each other and crying.
“Dear Lord,” Baekhyun whispers, in a strange sort of contemptuous awe, “They’re so spoiled! That’s ridiculous.”
“What is it?” he replies, leaning over her to get a look inside-to which he sees the two Do siblings crying over a broken china plate, the boy screaming that she pulled it apart, and the girl screaming that he did. He snorts. “That’s incredible.”
“I would loathe to become as soft as them,” she giggles, “Look at them! They were playing tug-of-war with the plate-hey, aren’t they our age? Aren’t they older?-and then one of them let go and it dropped and broke.”
“I’m pretty sure Luhan broke one of those over my head when I was ten. I’m also pretty sure I didn’t even tell your father about it. I’m also pretty sure that I didn’t cry.”
“I think the posh has gotten to their heads.”
“Wow,” Kris responds, sarcastically, “Never would have guessed that.”
Out of the blue, a loud barking crescendos from around the corner. Two animals-presumably dogs, though they look more like bears-come barreling towards them; Baekhyun lets out a surprised yelp and grabs Kris’ hand, taking off down the marble staircase as quickly as she can. Just as the door opens, Baekhyun trips on the hem of her dress, tumbling down the steps with Kris in tow. The muddy grass splatters around them, cold and sticky from the mushy snow, and Kris rolls as far away from the staircase as he can before winding to a stop with a faint groan.
Looking toward the Do manor, he can see Baekhyun, attempting uselessly to wipe the mud stains from her dress. Quirking an eyebrow, he starts to laugh. She picked her favorite dress to go on an illicit frolicking through the property of the richest family. Now who’s stupid, he wants to shout at her, but Mr. Do is walking down the steps and the air of nobility with which he does so makes him feel like diving headfirst into the mud. Mrs. Do follows in suit, two of the household servants lifting the hem of her dress behind her.
“Byun Baekhyun, is it?” she inquires, pursing her lips as Baekhyun hastily rubs the mud from her palms and looks up at her. Eyes widening, she suddenly clutches at her chest. Kris thinks she looks sort of like she’s going into cardiac arrest. “Oh my, oh my,” she practically screams, turning to her husband melodramatically, “Isn’t she the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen? Come on now, darling, let’s go get you washed up. My goodness-sweetie, that dress-certainly you could do much better. Come now, come now, I’ll have the maids wash you up. If only I could have one as pretty as you-” abruptly, she glares at Mr. Do, lips pursed. “This is your fault.”
“Of course.”
“And what are you doing with that scummy little scoundrel over there?” she exclaims, clutching at her chest again as though she’s been shot, “A fair young lady like you should not be wasting her beauty on such garbage! I’ll need to have a talk with Mr. Byun; it seems that after Mrs. Byun took her leave things have been getting much too out of control. Oh dear. Please have the gypsy thing escorted from the grounds immediately. I feel faint.”
Too stunned to protest-or at least that’s what Kris tells himself-Baekhyun allows two of the servants to escort her into the manor, scrubbing her feet off quickly before she steps inside. The doors close behind her, and two others take him up and toss him over the main gate as though he weighs no more than one of Baekhyun’s fancy shoes.
Confused, Kris sits outside the gates and squints at the manor for hours, waiting for Baekhyun to appear again. Long after the lights in the house go down, he sits and waits for her to sneak out, maybe from the chimney, or the window, or maybe even show up behind him for a pleasant surprise so that they can go back home. Oddly enough, she doesn’t.
He waits until Mr. Byun comes to collect him personally, holding an oil lantern up to his face and yelping when he sees his state of uncleanliness. “What happened to you, son?”
“I fell off the steps, and they took Baekhyun, and she’s not come out yet.”
“Ah, well, she’s always been a princess at heart,” he murmurs, offering a hand to help Kris up. “They’ll probably pamper her in there. I’m sure she’ll come back in a day or two. I like the Do family; they’re a little prissy, but they’re good people. She’ll fare well with them, until she gets sick of not being able to wash the plates with brown paint.”
Something collects in the back of Kris’ throat. “When do you think she’ll come back?”
“A few days, maybe, maximum a week. She might like being posh and prissy but I’m inclined to say her mischievous side will win out, here.”
“What if she doesn’t?”
“I guess we’ll just collect her ourselves then, son. Or we’ll tell her we got rid of Luhan.”
Kris laughs. It’s funny, but suddenly, he feels like he’s going to cry again, and it makes him want to laugh even harder.
“Why’re you laughing so hard, boy? Don’t tell me you’re going to cry again?”
“I’m not,” he says, pressing a hand to his cheek to rub the dried mud away, but there are tears streaking down his cheeks already. “They called me a scummy little scoundrel, though. I think that’s why I’m laughing.”
Mr. Byun furrows his eyebrows and puts his arms around Kris’ shoulders. “Why? Because you’re a gypsy boy?”
He nods. He should be happy about this-not many gypsy boys will live the life he does. They’ll spend their days traveling and moving all the time, and he gets to live in the shelter of the Byun family for the rest of his life. He gets to live the fair-skinned life, where the sun won’t always beat on his back because Mr. Byun invites him to do work inside in the summer, where he gets to eat from plates of china and use handkerchiefs that haven’t been stolen. But no matter how often he stays out of the sun, no matter how fair-skinned he may begin to appear, he’ll never bleach out his origins. Most of the time, he doesn’t mind that.
The thing is, though, Baekhyun can like him all she wants. But no one, not even Mr. Byun, would let a fair-skinned girl as enchanting as her marry a gypsy from the streets.
He wonders if anything would have changed if he had said, “I like you, too.”
x
Fifteen weeks pass before Kris sees Baekhyun again, and it’s not because she chooses to come back. It’s because Mr. Byun comes down with the cold, and Chanyeol fears that in his old age, he won’t be able to make it through one. The days pass and he holds on, waiting for Baekhyun to return, but the damages are plenty visible around his greying skin, his thinning face, drooping eyelids. Eventually, Mr. Byun gives up hoping.
“Call the Do family,” he rasps to Chanyeol, coughing into his handkerchief as he rolls onto his side. “I need to see Baekhyun. Go with Luhan and Kris to retrieve her-I’m unwell.”
“Father, rest,” Luhan murmurs, pressing a palm to his forehead. “Please.”
He chuckles, triggering a large round of coughing before he can finally speak. “Bring Baekhyun first. I’m afraid to rest before she comes back.”
Dipping her head in a brief bow, Chanyeol guides Luhan and Kris from the room, offering them both freshly ironed tailcoats and dress shirts and the like. They walk together to the Do manor. Luhan stays quiet for once, and doesn’t misbehave, not even to reach over and pinch Kris’ arm or to laugh at him when he stumbles. As much as Luhan resents Baekhyun and Kris for being his father’s favorites, even though he’s the firstborn son, Baekhyun is terribly hard to not miss.
“Mr. Byun?” the gatekeeper bows, reaching his hand out for Luhan to shake. Then, turning to Kris and Chanyeol, he sighs, slightly sympathetic, but doesn’t greet them. “Right this way, please.”
They trudge across the property, now muddy with spring instead of winter, until they approach the marble staircase. Baekhyun stands at the top, wearing a sunhat with freshly picked flowers lining the rim, a cashmere shawl draped over her shoulders, satin gloves pulled right below the elbows, a flamboyant summer dress flowing in the breeze. Kris wants to tell her she looks ridiculous; this isn’t how she is, or how they are, and she’ll never get to do anything in that dress that she wants to do. They can’t climb to the roof, or run away from Chanyeol when she finds out they put brown paint in the dishwashing sponge again, or even make Luhan pee his pants in the middle of the night because she’ll trip, or the dress will get caught all over the carpet and he’ll know they were in his room.
Next to him, Luhan lets out a disbelieving scoff.
“It’s nice to know we agree on something for once,” he mumbles. Luhan scoffs again in response.
Behind her, the Do family’s son walks out the door, narrowing his eyes rather condescendingly at Luhan. “We meet again,” he states, staring him down for no conceivable reason.
Luhan scoffs for the third time in about two seconds. “Nice to see that your melodrama takes after your mother, Kyungpoo.”
“Nice to know your humor takes after your mother’s dead behind, Luhan.”
Chanyeol scolds Luhan briefly before rushing up the steps, confronting Kyungsoo before more tension builds between the two of them. Bowing to Kyungsoo, she takes Baekhyun’s hand and apologizes. “The young master is rather sensitive at the moment. He misses his sister dearly and as such I request that you pardon his brash words-”
“I will not pardon ‘Kyungpoo,’” he snaps, fuming beneath his attempt at a calm façade. Turning to Baekhyun, he smiles gently, lifting her gloved and kissing it before returning it to her side. When she smiles back at him, Kris wonders if she regrets kissing him in front of the chimney fifteen weeks ago. His lip quivers. “My love, I shall patiently await your return from the land of contemptibility. Return soon, dearest Baekhyun!”
Kissing her on the cheek, he walks back inside. Mr. and Mrs. Do wave to her from the balcony above, and she waves back. Again, Kris thinks she looks ridiculous, and Luhan scoffs. Baekhyun shouldn’t wave like that.
“Her hand looks constipated,” Luhan grumbles to himself. “That’s just stupid.”
“Kris, darling!” she coos, flinging her arms around his neck once she’s finally made it over all the steps in that ostentatious dress of hers, “How I’ve missed your company!”
Unsure of how to reply, Kris stands stiff under her embrace until she lets go, not showing a single sign of discomfort at his own. Through the window, he can see Kyungsoo watching her.
Impulsively, he takes Baekhyun’s hand and kisses her on the cheek, right where Kyungsoo did just a few minutes ago.
For a moment, he feels smug: Kyungsoo’s jaw drops in the window and Luhan looks as though he’ll throw up, and Chanyeol looks to be elated. When he looks to Baekhyun, however, he notices that her smile looks strained as her eyes dart between Kyungsoo and himself.
He lets go of Baekhyun’s hand, just as she pulls it away. “Oh.”
x
Kris tells himself that Baekhyun will be back to normal in a matter of time, but after another week, she still hasn’t changed. He keeps making excuses for himself: that it’s because of her father’s condition, that she’s learned to behave “properly,” that she’s maturing like any other human being, but it’s obvious that that’s not the case.
“I never thought she’d be like this,” Mr. Byun tells him one day, when he’s delivering chicken soup for lunch.
Kris kneels by the bed, cupping the bowl in one hand and lifting the spoon to Mr. Byun’s lips with the other.
“You know, I’m not a conventional man. I think you know best that I’m not a conventional man. In all honesty, I love you more than my biological children. I let you educate yourself. I practically want to throw Luhan off the roof most of the time. I’ve never told Baekhyun to be more ladylike, or to behave herself, or to stop causing mischief even though you and Chanyeol have to work twice as hard to recover this old mansion from her misdemeanors. I’ve always let her run around in tennis shoes and get her dresses muddy, and read books and go on adventures. I don’t understand why she wants this, all of a sudden. To be off with that Do Kyungsoo boy in his straight-jacket tailcoats that make him look like he’s perpetually suffocating in his fancy horse-drawn carriages. It feels like he’s perpetually suffocating her. I don’t know.
“You always see the other girls complaining to their fathers: ‘I want to wear pants! I want to ride a horse! I want to pee in the mud! I want to show my ankles! I want to be free from all these silly feminine restrictions!’ I gave Baekhyun that freedom. I just don’t understand because if she’d wanted it this way, I could have given her the posh life, too.”
He turns away to cough a few times before sipping from the spoon. Kris sighs, placing the bowl on the nightstand in some form of resignation. “Do you think she’d ever marry him?”
Mr. Byun spits out his soup, coughs racking his body as he nearly rolls right off the bed. “I want to say that she wouldn’t, not for the life of her,” he sighs, taking another sip from the bowl on his own.
“Want to?”
Letting his eyes flutter shut, Mr. Byun turns to face the ceiling. “Let’s not think about it.”
Kris leans against the bed, staying far after Mr. Byun starts snoring, until he hears Baekhyun’s voice down the hall.
“Father? Are you awake?”
Heaving a sigh, Kris stands up and opens the door, nearly walking into her. Without saying a word, he pushes past her, knocking her shoulder with his, proceeding straight to his own room and shutting it behind him.
After a brief hesitation, she turns around, calling after him. “Kris, darling? What’s the matter?”
“I miss you,” he states, as though it’s nothing at all. “How silly of me.”
x
After Mr. Byun passes away, it seems that nothing changes. Baekhyun cries for precisely two hours when it happens, until grief pulls her to sleep. The morning after and the night after, she cries for almost exactly one hour each. This continues for a week and a half, until Mr. Byun’s funeral, at which she cries for the whole ceremony. But in the long term, year after year, nothing changes with Baekhyun in the slightest.
Kris, on the other hand, finds himself spending less and less time with her. The time he does spend with her rots him from the inside out; the silences stretch too long, despite her apparent comfort with them, and she never says his name without adding “darling” to the end, never greets him without a dramatic draping of her arms around his neck, touches his arm a little too lightly, though it doesn’t feel tentative, looks at him a little too distantly, though she still speaks to him as though he knows her best. He doesn’t. He hasn’t for the longest time.
As master of the household, Luhan works him in the stables and fields and in the kitchen like Kyungsoo works his carriage horses. He remembers that one time after all this, he had invited Baekhyun to go tend to the horses with him like they’d used to. He’d reminded her of all the times they’d ended up throwing the oatmeal from the feeding troughs at each other, and of the one time she’d taken two of the ponies out and he’d taught her how to ride horses, after which they’d run across the wide expanse of the Byun property for what felt like miles and miles. When he’d asked, he was so sure that she wouldn’t refuse that he’d grabbed her hand before she even agreed, to run to the horse stables with her and take off across the immense expanse of empty grass again. But she’d pulled away, and said no.
Kris works until the tan fades back into his skin; the hard labor and the sun and the sweat wash away everything Mr. Byun and Baekhyun used to do to make him feel like he belonged where he was.
When the next Christmas comes around, he tries again to bring Baekhyun back. He invites her to the rooftop, to climb up the chimney with him on Christmas eve to see if Santa Claus will come down, but she tells him no, that she doesn’t want to dirty her clothing. When Valentine’s day comes around, Kris collects flowers by the stables and in the fields, only to find that Kyungsoo has taken her out on one of his silly carriage rides again. He waits until she gets back, ready to offer the meager bouquet he’s put together-but then Kyungsoo opens the back of the carriage to reveal that he’s stuffed the whole thing up with roses and tulips and daisies and orchids and, smiling kindly at Kris, wraps his arm around Baekhyun’s waist, pointing out what each and every flower means.
Kris doesn’t know what any of his own stupid flowers mean. When Kyungsoo finally finishes, leaves the flowers with Baekhyun and goes home in his dumb carriage, Kris still tries to offer her his.
“Oh, darling,” she smiles, “That’s cute!”
“Happy Valentine’s day?” he clarifies, holding them out to her.
She looks at him confused, as though she doesn’t understand, then hesitantly says, “You’re right, it’s Valentine’s day.”
Closing his eyes, he sighs, and drops the flowers at her feet. “I don’t know what a single one of these damn flowers mean,” he whispers, “I don’t even know what flowers they are. But know that they were supposed to be for you. I’ll tell you that these flowers are for all the times I wonder if I should have said, ‘I like you, too,’ that time when I was thirteen and you were twelve and a half and you kissed me in front of the chimney. And these ones are for all the times you wrapped your arms around my neck and stood so close I could smell whatever perfume Kyungsoo buys you now, but all I could think was that I missed you. And these ones are for all the times I wish I hadn’t agreed to go with you to his stupid manor that one day, because that’s when all of this idiocy happened. And these are for all the times I wish I weren’t born on the streets, and these are for all the times I wish I weren’t born at all, and this-” he pauses, breathing in deep and leaning forward to kiss Baekhyun, even shorter than their first, “is for the last time I try to get Baekhyun back, because you haven’t been her for too long now, and I’m done waiting.”
Kris watches her for the longest time, daring her, willing her with everything he has to meet his gaze, but she doesn’t. He realizes she probably isn’t even thinking about doing so.
“Happy Valentine’s day,” he repeats, a statement this time, then picks up the flowers and walks away.
He walks all the way to Mr. Byun’s grave, five miles away, on the edges of town, and leaves the flowers there. Settling down in front of the tombstone, he lets out a sarcastic chuckle.
“I think she died before you did, pops. I really do.”
x
Even after Valentine’s day, things between him and Baekhyun stay exactly the same. There is no difference between her current pity and condescension and what there was before-only now, Kris is aware of it. Both of their gestures become entirely empty. He still picks out flowers for her, just to remind her, but it doesn’t hurt anymore when she stares blankly at them before taking them and putting them somewhere neither of them will ever see it again. At noontime, he sits in her study and listens to her talk about her favorite tea, or Kyungsoo’s new satin cuffs and how they’re better than his old satin cuffs, or about how Luhan still calls Kyungsoo Kyungpoo, and she smiles and laughs and he sits and listens until she finishes, and he can leave.
One day, Baekhyun asks him to stay with her, even though she’s finished talking. “I can hardly deal with our silences anymore,” she proclaims, clutching her chest just like Mrs. Do does, except with slightly more elegance so that she doesn’t look as though she’s dying. “Do speak with me, darling, I miss your voice terribly.”
For several minutes, Kris remains silent, thinking about what he should say. He doesn’t have anything to talk about. He’s already said everything that needs to be said, and she’s never done anything about any of it.
A wry smile lifts the corner of his lips when he finally speaks. “Of course, Miss Byun,” he replies, standing up and bowing to her. “What should you like me to say?”
Baekhyun freezes in place, staring at Kris as though horrified, terrified by something monstrous towering before her and preparing to devour her. Kris holds her gaze steadily, calmly, one corner of his lips still hung in a smirk, the same corner of hers twitching down before she bursts into tears, throwing her arms onto her desk and sobbing into them.
“Oh, what have I done?” she wails, so loudly that Kris almost instinctively covers his ears. “I’ve really messed up now, haven’t I? You detest me now, don’t you? Why? What have I done wrong?”
Those questions have already been answered; he’s sure that somewhere in her jumbled thoughts, Baekhyun knows the answers. Somehow, becoming sophisticated has turned her to ignorance by tenfold. He refuses to respond, instead walking out the door, writing a note to Chanyeol that he won’t be coming back-not for a while, or maybe forever.
Just before he reaches the door, Baekhyun grabs his wrist, still a hysterical mess. “I’m sorry,” she sobs, clinging to his shirt now, “I’m sorry I left you. Please don’t go, please don’t go, I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
x
In a few years, Kris returns to the Do estate in a tattered suit with a bouquet he’s picked fresh from the Byun fields, just like before. Chanyeol had slipped him the wedding invitation. It wasn’t entirely insensitive, although Kris might have argued otherwise when he’d first received it, but they all knew, in the back of their minds, that it would happen.
Money is money, classes are classes, and still, he has none of either. Honestly, he’s not sure he wants to have any of it. Both are pretenses to anything and everything: for vapidness, for haughtiness, for obnoxiousness. Now that he’s back, he doesn’t remember why he ever wanted to fit in.
“Glad you showed up,” Chanyeol smiles, setting the final table for the reception. Kris leans over to push one of the glasses into place. “I was thinking you’d be a good help.”
“Baekhyun didn’t really invite me, did she?” he mutters, re-folding one of the napkins.
“Nope.”
“Didn’t think so. Is she still-”
“Let’s not talk about it,” she sighs, “If you couldn’t fix it, I doubt anyone else could have.”
“Oh.”
At the end of the reception, when Kris moves to take his leave without Baekhyun ever having known that he’d gone, Kyungsoo catches his eye. For a second, Kris thinks that maybe he’s a decent person. He doesn’t sneer at him, or smirk, or do that dumb thing he did with the flowers that Valentine’s day. He just squeezes Baekhyun’s hand a little tighter, and looks somewhere else.
Baekhyun notices him, and does the complete opposite. She pulls away from Kyungsoo and rushes toward him, arms outstretched: he can hear it in his head already, the pitiful, condescending “darling” appended so ruthlessly to the end of his name, vapidity in the name of sophistication. Part of him hopes to the high heavens that she’ll just say his name, like she used to, and he can take her away and leave the rest of it behind, kick out the few years of his life where he didn’t matter anymore and pretend he always did-but even if she did just say his name, throwing out more than half of his memory wouldn’t be worth it.
“Kris, darling!” she calls out, collecting him in an embrace just as insincere as their last. He shouldn’t even have thought about it.
“I’m leaving.”
Baekhyun’s smile falters, tears welling up almost immediately despite her efforts to blink them away. “Why did you leave the first time? Why did you let me go, just like that? I liked you, maybe I still like you, and you let me go. Why didn’t you fight?”
Kris has to fight the urge to laugh in her face. Pulling out the bouquet, he shoves it into her hands and smiles, starting the same speech again, the one from Valentine’s day, enunciating each and every word with so much precision that Kyungsoo can probably read his lips from where he’s standing and watching.
“I don’t know what a single one of these damn flowers mean. I don’t even know what flowers they are. But know that they were supposed to be for you. I’ll tell you that these flowers are for all the times I wonder if I should have said, ‘I like you, too,’ that time when I was thirteen and you were twelve and a half and you kissed me in front of the chimney. And these ones are for all the times you wrapped your arms around my neck and stood so close I could smell whatever perfume Kyungsoo buys you now, but all I could think was that I missed you. And these ones are for all the times I wish I hadn’t agreed to go with you to his stupid manor that one day, because that’s when all of this idiocy happened. And these are for all the times I wish I weren’t born on the streets, and these are for all the times I wish I weren’t born at all, and this-”
He shoves the flowers against her again, forcing her to take a step back, “-Is for everything you didn’t understand, for everything I tried, don’t ever tell me that I didn’t try, and-really, this time-for goodbye.”
Still smiling, he bows, ninety degrees at the waist.
“Congratulations on your wedding, Mrs. Do.”
When he leaves, he doesn’t look back.
Pairings: Krisbaek, endgame!Baeksoo (girl!Baek)
Rating: PG
Genre: Romance, Angst (?)
Warnings: Hover
Length: ~7.5k
Summary: Floriography is pointless when no one knows how to love.
(A/N: This was written for everyone who participated in wufantastic! I actually !!!! really really liked writing this because let me tell you writing this 7.5k in 6.5 hours was actually the best thing of my life? Thank you to jesstoast who staYED UP UNTIL 2:30AM beta-ing this for me (and probably didn't enjoy it as much as I did, pmsl), like, I owe you a billion.)
In the dead of winter, Kris curls up alone in the space between two old buildings, behind a dumpster in the corner of a long since abandoned slum. He wonders when everyone left. Just this morning, they had all been packing, loading bags onto the horses and cleaning up tents, and his mother had sent him off to go play since he’d finished packing the day before. It was snowing, so he and his friends and a stray puppy he’d found on the street the week prior ran far out into the depths of the city to play in the powdery sheets of ice that coated the sidewalks. He’d played with the fair-skinned boys, too: in that moment, they were all the same, gypsy kids and city dwelling ones, rolling around in mounds of ice until they couldn’t feel their noses any longer. They played hide-and-seek.
That was probably a bad idea-especially for Kris, who, despite his abnormal height, had never been successfully sought out in a single game before, in all six years of his life.
When sunset came, and the snow had weakened until he could catch each individual flake on the tip of his tongue without missing the others, he remembered that his mother had told him that morning to be back before the sun went all the way down, otherwise they wouldn’t wait for him. But his mother, his father, his friends, and even the stray puppy-they’d all left, by the time he got back.
He could see it. There were still another two centimeters before the sun disappeared all the way. But they were gone, and he was alone. No one had passed in the area since he’d returned. He’d called for his puppy several times, which he hadn’t even named before he’d started calling for it, and he’d called for his friends and his parents and his uncles and aunts and his pony, but there wasn’t really a point. They were probably already out of the city, and he didn’t even know in which direction they had gone.
It’s cold.
He counts the flakes of snow as they fall through the gap between the buildings and land on his fingers, until they start to fall so fast he can’t count them anymore. It’s starting to weigh down on his head, he can’t feel his arms, and bits of the snow are melting down his neck. He remembers that once his mother told him that they had to move in the winter because if anyone got too cold, they might die, and the copious mountains of snow made it easy to get lost, and that if you got lost, you might die. Now, he’s both of those things. Does that mean he is going to die twice?
It’s funny to think about, but instead of laughing, he starts crying. And then he starts laughing because he should be laughing instead of crying, because it’s funny, dying twice, that’s impossible, and then he’s laughing and crying, until he can’t feel his face and he’s not sure if it’s because it’s too puffy from crying or because he’s going to die from the snow and from being lost.
“Is anyone there?”
Kris freezes in place; his crying ceases and he’s silent. He opens his mouth to say yes, but he can’t say yes, yes, I’m here, save me, before I die twice because he can’t feel his entire face, let alone his lips. The voice at the opening of the alley won’t notice him because he can’t say yes even though he wants to. He starts to cry harder. He’s going to die three times now, probably.
Suddenly, someone is brushing the snow from his nose and from the top of his head and over his arms with one of those fancy handkerchiefs his mother used to steal until she learned how to make them. It’s even softer than the one his mother stole from the rich man with the golden pocket watch for his fourth birthday.
“Hey, hey,” the voice murmurs, grabbing him by the biceps to hoist him up. “Don’t cry, shh, it’s okay, don’t cry. Are you lost? What’s your name?”
“I don’t want to die three times!” he blubbers, gripping to the man’s hand as hard as he can, “Mommy said I’ll get lost and get cold and die and I didn’t get back in time and I’m going to die!”
Chuckling, the man picks him up, drying his tears off with the handkerchief and smoothing back his hair. “Do you want to go find your mommy? Where is she?”
“They left because they didn’t want to die!”
Confused, he stops dabbing at Kris’ face and furrows his eyebrows. “What?”
“Mommy and daddy and everyone is gone. I’m never going to find mommy again! I’m going to die three times!”
“Hey, hey, no-no you’re not going to die three times! Shall I bring you with me? We’re to walk for a bit, but if everyone is gone, I can bring you with me.”
The man takes his ceaseless sobbing and wailing as a yes, and slings him over his shoulder, walking through the snow and humming the same song he learned from one of the fair-skinned boys today.
x
“Everyone!” the man bellows, simultaneously turning his key in the lock and shoving the door open with a force powerful enough to rival the snowstorm outside. The lights from the grandiose chandelier inside the house burn so bright that they hurt his eyes. He tries to jump back in surprise, kicking himself from his previous sleeping position on the man’s back and falling back-flat on the snow-covered porch steps. A little too shocked to feel pain, he blinks and rubs at his eyes until they’ve adjusted enough for him to look inside the room. The man who brought him home is a fair-skinned man, although he already knows that from the mansion before him, with the two golden-tinted staircases with the fluffy looking red carpet leading up the middle, the chandelier that hangs on the ceiling, and the paintings on the wall. Now that he can actually see, he can tell that the fair-skinned man is wearing an expensive looking tailcoat, with black satin cuffs, and a velveteen tophat. His slacks and leather dress shoes are worn down, drenched by the melted snow, but he looks incredibly grand, like the gold pocket watch his mother stole from the same man who walked by with the handkerchief on his third birthday, except even better, even shinier, like the top of his father’s head. “This boy-o here is the newest addition to the Byun household! He hasn’t told me his name, actually, so I don’t actually know what his name is, but he’s an addition! Treat him nicely.”
“Father!” A girl in a tattered pink dress and a tiara made from sticks barrels over the carpet and tackles the man with such force that he takes two steps backwards to regain his balance. “Did you bring the dolls you promised me? Those gypsies do make the best dolls, don’t they? Did you bring them?”
A smaller boy behind him follows suit, half-running to the man before standing before him and smoothing out his tailcoat. “Father, did you bring me the violin you promised?”
“I’m sorry, my sweets,” he proclaims, not sounding sorry at all as he lowers the girl to the ground and kneels in front of the two children. “I did not bring what I promised to bring you, but I brought this lovely little gypsy boy with me! Can you make dolls and violins, boy?”
The man turns back to Kris, who’s still lying in the snow, elbows propping him up as he stares in silent awe at everything. Slowly, he begins to shake his head and nod it at the same time. “I c-can, um, my m-mother taught me how to make handkerchiefs…”
“DADDY,” the little girl shrieks, suddenly rabid, lurching forward to stomp on his shoe several times, “YOU PROMISED YOU PROMISED YOU PROMISED!”
Feral, she wraps her arms around her father’s leg and peeks around, staring at Kris with eyes that seem to be on actual fire. As soon as she does so, she smiles; in the next blink, all the anger and fury is gone, and she runs out into the snow to greet him. “Hi!” she screams, bending over to shout in his face, “I’m Baekhyun! Princess Baekhyun to you. I’m five and a half. I like candy and dolls. Since daddy didn’t bring me the doll he promised, you’re going to be my doll now, okay? What’s your name, doll?”
“Um,” he says.
The little boy peeks out from behind his father as well, squinting at him suspiciously. “A handkerchief is not the same as a violin. Do you know what that means, you poopy gypsy? It means I hate you. I’m going to kill you dead. Dead as a rock. Unless you steal me a violin-”
“Luhan!” his father snaps, pushing him back by shoving his palm in Luhan’s face. “Apologize. That’s rude.”
“You not getting me a violin is rude, too,” he mumbles. Smiling creepily, he sits down cross-legged and folds his hands in his lap. “I am sorry,” he states, monotone, “Pardon my insolence.”
“Where did you learn big words like ‘insolence’?” the maid asks, dusting off the piano by the door and ruffling his hair, not noticing when he lunges forward to bite at her hand and just barely misses. “How old are you again?”
“I’m eight years, two months, and three weeks old, Chan-butthead.”
“You know words like ‘insolence,’ but you can’t even rhyme something with ‘-yeol’. Right.” She huffs and smacks the duster on his head, which sends him into a screaming fit.
Mr. Byun sighs, suddenly looking thirty years older than he did when he just opened the door, and tells Baekhyun to behave herself and show the gypsy boy to the room next to hers. “Daddy is tired,” he sighs, adjusting the tiara on her head. “Take care of the gypsy boy, figure out his name, and make sure Luhan doesn’t kill anybody. Can you do that?”
“Yes, Mr. Daddy your majesty highness!”
“You’re so stupid,” Luhan sneers, “It’s ‘your majesty,’ or ‘your highness.’ Everyone knows that.”
Grabbing Kris’ hand, Baekhyun drags him into the house and leans toward Luhan until her face is barely a centimeter away from his. She sucks in a deep breath, then lets out a shrill scream. “I HATE YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU! HATE HATE HATE. HATE. BY THE POWERS PESTED IN ME I CURSE YOU THAT YOUR HORSE WILL POOP ON YOUR HEAD TOMORROW BIG AND STINKY.”
“You can’t poop on my head,” he retorts, wiping the spit from his face with a handkerchief of his own and then using it to shove Baekhyun’s face away. “And it’s ‘vested.’”
Baekhyun squeezes Kris’ hand so tight that he hears his knuckles crack, then takes the tiara off and smashes it on Luhan’s head.
“Let’s go, gypsy doll person. Don’t worry about Luhan. The horses will all poop on him tomorrow.”
“Um,” he says. “Okay.”
x
As it turns out, the horse never poops on Luhan’s head big or stinky. In fact, it doesn’t poop on his head at all. What does happen to Luhan is much worse, and Kris loves it.
Because he’s a gypsy boy, Mr. Byun sends him to work in the stables with the other servants in the place. He helps Chanyeol around the house when Baekhyun takes her lunchtime naps, and when Chanyeol lets him off, he goes to the library to read. But Mr. Byun doesn’t really treat him like a gypsy boy, and nor does Chanyeol. Mr. Byun actually treats him better than Luhan; arguably, better than Baekhyun. When he’s working, he sneaks him chocolates and gold coins, and sometimes he excuses Kris from stable-work to teach him how to play the piano-but only when Luhan isn’t home. At dinner, Mr. Byun finds reason to accuse Luhan of misbehaving-although, also arguably, he’s always misbehaving-and excuses Kris from setting the table to make Luhan set it.
Princess Baekhyun also takes to him rather well. Some of the time, she drags him away from his self-studies to play, and to make mischief around the house. One time, she takes the watercolor set her father brings home and dumps brown paint onto the rags and sponges that Chanyeol uses to wash the dishes; another, she wakes him up at midnight and creeps into Luhan’s room with a warm jar of water and sticks his hand in it and laughs at him when he pees his pants. His favorite of all of them, however, is the Christmas eve where she wakes him a quarter to twelve and they climb up the chimney together, choking out soot and dust when they finally reach the top, then scramble over the shingles of the roof with their hands intertwined.
“Do you believe in Santa Claus?” she asks, resting her head on his shoulder as they swing their feet over the edge.
“Who?”
Baekhyun jerks away so abruptly that she nearly falls over the edge, Kris’ hands just barely catching her waist in time.
“I knew you were a gypsy boy, but Kris, you’ve been alive for thirteen years, reading in Father’s library for seven, and you don’t know who Santa Claus is?”
“Oops?”
“I’m going to push you off,” she grins, hugging his arm close. “How can you not know who Santa Claus is?”
“Well then, are you going to tell me?”
“He’s this rather… rotund, old man with a big white beard and a red hat with a giant cotton ball at the end, and he flies around on a sled on Christmas and throws gifts down everyone’s chimney. Whatever you want, he gets it for you, and throws it down your chimney.”
“Then why the heck did we take the chimney? Did you want to get a concussion or something?”
“No,” she snaps, “I just thought that he can’t throw what I want this year down my chimney, so-”
“Wait, what? Didn’t you say he could throw anything down the chimney?”
“Yeah, well, if he threw a person down the chimney, they might die, and Santa Claus isn’t a murderer. I think.”
“A person?”
Baekhyun lets out a sudden huff, pursing her lips and staring rather furiously at Kris before letting go of his arm and curling up in a ball. “YOU ARE SO STUPID.”
“What?”
“GO THROW YOURSELF DOWN MY CHIMNEY, RIGHT NOW.”
“Huh?”
“THIS WENT A LOT BETTER IN MY HEAD.”
“Um?”
“NEVERMIND. TODAY NEVER HAPPENED!” she shrieks, abruptly slapping her hand over her mouth when she realizes Chanyeol might hear and tell Father. “You’re just-you’re very stupid. Let’s do something else tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“I like you.”
“... Isn’t that already established? Don’t friends-”
“Kris?”
“Yeah.”
“Stop talking. Let’s go. I’m sleepy.”
“To bed, then, your majesty highness.”
“I will really throw horse poop on your head someday,” she mutters, glaring at him as she climbs back down the chimney. “Maybe it’ll fertilize your brain and make you smarter.”
When they reach the bottom, Kris pulls his hand away. With a whispered, “God dammit,” Baekhyun fists the collar of Kris’ shirt and pulls him into a kiss.
“What?” Kris mumbles, words awkwardly muffled, eyes widened in surprise.
Just as quickly, she pushes him away and slaps him. “I like you,” she snaps, “Okay? I like you.”
“Ohhhhh.”
“Also, we’re waking up early tomorrow, got it?”
Without waiting for a response, she dashes into her bedroom.
Blinking down the hall a few times, Kris runs his fingers through his hair and licks his lips. “Oh.”
x
The next day, Baekhyun pulls Kris out of bed at the break of dawn. She’s dressed for church, but it’s not even Sunday, and in one hand, she holds one of Mr. Byun’s old tailcoats. “It might be a little too big,” she sighs, tossing it at him casually, “But Luhan’s are all much too small for you, and he’d kill both of us as dead as rocks if he ever found out, but Father probably won’t mind.”
“It’s not Sunday?”
“No, you imbecile, it’s not Sunday. But we are going to the oh-so-elegant Do household today, and we need to dress well.”
“Why are we going there? Why should I dress well?”
“Because I want to see it! Father says they’re a lot wealthier than we are, which is incredibly hard to believe, so we’re going to sneak over and see.”
“If we’re sneaking, why do we need to dress nicely?”
Baekhyun grabs Kris’ hand and starts to whine, jumping up and down as she does so. “Because I want to, okay? Play along please? Please? Please pretty please?”
“It’s too big. I’ll trip and get us caught.”
Baekhyun exhales continuously for what feels like a full minute. “Okay. Fine.”
To get to the Do manor, Kris counts that they have to climb over four different sets of gates. Baekhyun’s dress is dirtier than the horse stables would be after a week of Kris not cleaning them up, but she still insists that she looks elegant and refined, like someone of the Do class would be. She expected it, anyway; she would have been crazy not to.
When they get to the front door, Baekhyun can hardly contain her excitement. She practically runs up the front steps, shoes clacking loudly against the marble staircase-which, Kris notes as he follows leisurely behind her, they don’t have-as she rushes toward the windows in the front. The curtains are open, and inside, the notorious Do siblings are doing what they are known best for-screaming at each other and crying.
“Dear Lord,” Baekhyun whispers, in a strange sort of contemptuous awe, “They’re so spoiled! That’s ridiculous.”
“What is it?” he replies, leaning over her to get a look inside-to which he sees the two Do siblings crying over a broken china plate, the boy screaming that she pulled it apart, and the girl screaming that he did. He snorts. “That’s incredible.”
“I would loathe to become as soft as them,” she giggles, “Look at them! They were playing tug-of-war with the plate-hey, aren’t they our age? Aren’t they older?-and then one of them let go and it dropped and broke.”
“I’m pretty sure Luhan broke one of those over my head when I was ten. I’m also pretty sure I didn’t even tell your father about it. I’m also pretty sure that I didn’t cry.”
“I think the posh has gotten to their heads.”
“Wow,” Kris responds, sarcastically, “Never would have guessed that.”
Out of the blue, a loud barking crescendos from around the corner. Two animals-presumably dogs, though they look more like bears-come barreling towards them; Baekhyun lets out a surprised yelp and grabs Kris’ hand, taking off down the marble staircase as quickly as she can. Just as the door opens, Baekhyun trips on the hem of her dress, tumbling down the steps with Kris in tow. The muddy grass splatters around them, cold and sticky from the mushy snow, and Kris rolls as far away from the staircase as he can before winding to a stop with a faint groan.
Looking toward the Do manor, he can see Baekhyun, attempting uselessly to wipe the mud stains from her dress. Quirking an eyebrow, he starts to laugh. She picked her favorite dress to go on an illicit frolicking through the property of the richest family. Now who’s stupid, he wants to shout at her, but Mr. Do is walking down the steps and the air of nobility with which he does so makes him feel like diving headfirst into the mud. Mrs. Do follows in suit, two of the household servants lifting the hem of her dress behind her.
“Byun Baekhyun, is it?” she inquires, pursing her lips as Baekhyun hastily rubs the mud from her palms and looks up at her. Eyes widening, she suddenly clutches at her chest. Kris thinks she looks sort of like she’s going into cardiac arrest. “Oh my, oh my,” she practically screams, turning to her husband melodramatically, “Isn’t she the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen? Come on now, darling, let’s go get you washed up. My goodness-sweetie, that dress-certainly you could do much better. Come now, come now, I’ll have the maids wash you up. If only I could have one as pretty as you-” abruptly, she glares at Mr. Do, lips pursed. “This is your fault.”
“Of course.”
“And what are you doing with that scummy little scoundrel over there?” she exclaims, clutching at her chest again as though she’s been shot, “A fair young lady like you should not be wasting her beauty on such garbage! I’ll need to have a talk with Mr. Byun; it seems that after Mrs. Byun took her leave things have been getting much too out of control. Oh dear. Please have the gypsy thing escorted from the grounds immediately. I feel faint.”
Too stunned to protest-or at least that’s what Kris tells himself-Baekhyun allows two of the servants to escort her into the manor, scrubbing her feet off quickly before she steps inside. The doors close behind her, and two others take him up and toss him over the main gate as though he weighs no more than one of Baekhyun’s fancy shoes.
Confused, Kris sits outside the gates and squints at the manor for hours, waiting for Baekhyun to appear again. Long after the lights in the house go down, he sits and waits for her to sneak out, maybe from the chimney, or the window, or maybe even show up behind him for a pleasant surprise so that they can go back home. Oddly enough, she doesn’t.
He waits until Mr. Byun comes to collect him personally, holding an oil lantern up to his face and yelping when he sees his state of uncleanliness. “What happened to you, son?”
“I fell off the steps, and they took Baekhyun, and she’s not come out yet.”
“Ah, well, she’s always been a princess at heart,” he murmurs, offering a hand to help Kris up. “They’ll probably pamper her in there. I’m sure she’ll come back in a day or two. I like the Do family; they’re a little prissy, but they’re good people. She’ll fare well with them, until she gets sick of not being able to wash the plates with brown paint.”
Something collects in the back of Kris’ throat. “When do you think she’ll come back?”
“A few days, maybe, maximum a week. She might like being posh and prissy but I’m inclined to say her mischievous side will win out, here.”
“What if she doesn’t?”
“I guess we’ll just collect her ourselves then, son. Or we’ll tell her we got rid of Luhan.”
Kris laughs. It’s funny, but suddenly, he feels like he’s going to cry again, and it makes him want to laugh even harder.
“Why’re you laughing so hard, boy? Don’t tell me you’re going to cry again?”
“I’m not,” he says, pressing a hand to his cheek to rub the dried mud away, but there are tears streaking down his cheeks already. “They called me a scummy little scoundrel, though. I think that’s why I’m laughing.”
Mr. Byun furrows his eyebrows and puts his arms around Kris’ shoulders. “Why? Because you’re a gypsy boy?”
He nods. He should be happy about this-not many gypsy boys will live the life he does. They’ll spend their days traveling and moving all the time, and he gets to live in the shelter of the Byun family for the rest of his life. He gets to live the fair-skinned life, where the sun won’t always beat on his back because Mr. Byun invites him to do work inside in the summer, where he gets to eat from plates of china and use handkerchiefs that haven’t been stolen. But no matter how often he stays out of the sun, no matter how fair-skinned he may begin to appear, he’ll never bleach out his origins. Most of the time, he doesn’t mind that.
The thing is, though, Baekhyun can like him all she wants. But no one, not even Mr. Byun, would let a fair-skinned girl as enchanting as her marry a gypsy from the streets.
He wonders if anything would have changed if he had said, “I like you, too.”
x
Fifteen weeks pass before Kris sees Baekhyun again, and it’s not because she chooses to come back. It’s because Mr. Byun comes down with the cold, and Chanyeol fears that in his old age, he won’t be able to make it through one. The days pass and he holds on, waiting for Baekhyun to return, but the damages are plenty visible around his greying skin, his thinning face, drooping eyelids. Eventually, Mr. Byun gives up hoping.
“Call the Do family,” he rasps to Chanyeol, coughing into his handkerchief as he rolls onto his side. “I need to see Baekhyun. Go with Luhan and Kris to retrieve her-I’m unwell.”
“Father, rest,” Luhan murmurs, pressing a palm to his forehead. “Please.”
He chuckles, triggering a large round of coughing before he can finally speak. “Bring Baekhyun first. I’m afraid to rest before she comes back.”
Dipping her head in a brief bow, Chanyeol guides Luhan and Kris from the room, offering them both freshly ironed tailcoats and dress shirts and the like. They walk together to the Do manor. Luhan stays quiet for once, and doesn’t misbehave, not even to reach over and pinch Kris’ arm or to laugh at him when he stumbles. As much as Luhan resents Baekhyun and Kris for being his father’s favorites, even though he’s the firstborn son, Baekhyun is terribly hard to not miss.
“Mr. Byun?” the gatekeeper bows, reaching his hand out for Luhan to shake. Then, turning to Kris and Chanyeol, he sighs, slightly sympathetic, but doesn’t greet them. “Right this way, please.”
They trudge across the property, now muddy with spring instead of winter, until they approach the marble staircase. Baekhyun stands at the top, wearing a sunhat with freshly picked flowers lining the rim, a cashmere shawl draped over her shoulders, satin gloves pulled right below the elbows, a flamboyant summer dress flowing in the breeze. Kris wants to tell her she looks ridiculous; this isn’t how she is, or how they are, and she’ll never get to do anything in that dress that she wants to do. They can’t climb to the roof, or run away from Chanyeol when she finds out they put brown paint in the dishwashing sponge again, or even make Luhan pee his pants in the middle of the night because she’ll trip, or the dress will get caught all over the carpet and he’ll know they were in his room.
Next to him, Luhan lets out a disbelieving scoff.
“It’s nice to know we agree on something for once,” he mumbles. Luhan scoffs again in response.
Behind her, the Do family’s son walks out the door, narrowing his eyes rather condescendingly at Luhan. “We meet again,” he states, staring him down for no conceivable reason.
Luhan scoffs for the third time in about two seconds. “Nice to see that your melodrama takes after your mother, Kyungpoo.”
“Nice to know your humor takes after your mother’s dead behind, Luhan.”
Chanyeol scolds Luhan briefly before rushing up the steps, confronting Kyungsoo before more tension builds between the two of them. Bowing to Kyungsoo, she takes Baekhyun’s hand and apologizes. “The young master is rather sensitive at the moment. He misses his sister dearly and as such I request that you pardon his brash words-”
“I will not pardon ‘Kyungpoo,’” he snaps, fuming beneath his attempt at a calm façade. Turning to Baekhyun, he smiles gently, lifting her gloved and kissing it before returning it to her side. When she smiles back at him, Kris wonders if she regrets kissing him in front of the chimney fifteen weeks ago. His lip quivers. “My love, I shall patiently await your return from the land of contemptibility. Return soon, dearest Baekhyun!”
Kissing her on the cheek, he walks back inside. Mr. and Mrs. Do wave to her from the balcony above, and she waves back. Again, Kris thinks she looks ridiculous, and Luhan scoffs. Baekhyun shouldn’t wave like that.
“Her hand looks constipated,” Luhan grumbles to himself. “That’s just stupid.”
“Kris, darling!” she coos, flinging her arms around his neck once she’s finally made it over all the steps in that ostentatious dress of hers, “How I’ve missed your company!”
Unsure of how to reply, Kris stands stiff under her embrace until she lets go, not showing a single sign of discomfort at his own. Through the window, he can see Kyungsoo watching her.
Impulsively, he takes Baekhyun’s hand and kisses her on the cheek, right where Kyungsoo did just a few minutes ago.
For a moment, he feels smug: Kyungsoo’s jaw drops in the window and Luhan looks as though he’ll throw up, and Chanyeol looks to be elated. When he looks to Baekhyun, however, he notices that her smile looks strained as her eyes dart between Kyungsoo and himself.
He lets go of Baekhyun’s hand, just as she pulls it away. “Oh.”
x
Kris tells himself that Baekhyun will be back to normal in a matter of time, but after another week, she still hasn’t changed. He keeps making excuses for himself: that it’s because of her father’s condition, that she’s learned to behave “properly,” that she’s maturing like any other human being, but it’s obvious that that’s not the case.
“I never thought she’d be like this,” Mr. Byun tells him one day, when he’s delivering chicken soup for lunch.
Kris kneels by the bed, cupping the bowl in one hand and lifting the spoon to Mr. Byun’s lips with the other.
“You know, I’m not a conventional man. I think you know best that I’m not a conventional man. In all honesty, I love you more than my biological children. I let you educate yourself. I practically want to throw Luhan off the roof most of the time. I’ve never told Baekhyun to be more ladylike, or to behave herself, or to stop causing mischief even though you and Chanyeol have to work twice as hard to recover this old mansion from her misdemeanors. I’ve always let her run around in tennis shoes and get her dresses muddy, and read books and go on adventures. I don’t understand why she wants this, all of a sudden. To be off with that Do Kyungsoo boy in his straight-jacket tailcoats that make him look like he’s perpetually suffocating in his fancy horse-drawn carriages. It feels like he’s perpetually suffocating her. I don’t know.
“You always see the other girls complaining to their fathers: ‘I want to wear pants! I want to ride a horse! I want to pee in the mud! I want to show my ankles! I want to be free from all these silly feminine restrictions!’ I gave Baekhyun that freedom. I just don’t understand because if she’d wanted it this way, I could have given her the posh life, too.”
He turns away to cough a few times before sipping from the spoon. Kris sighs, placing the bowl on the nightstand in some form of resignation. “Do you think she’d ever marry him?”
Mr. Byun spits out his soup, coughs racking his body as he nearly rolls right off the bed. “I want to say that she wouldn’t, not for the life of her,” he sighs, taking another sip from the bowl on his own.
“Want to?”
Letting his eyes flutter shut, Mr. Byun turns to face the ceiling. “Let’s not think about it.”
Kris leans against the bed, staying far after Mr. Byun starts snoring, until he hears Baekhyun’s voice down the hall.
“Father? Are you awake?”
Heaving a sigh, Kris stands up and opens the door, nearly walking into her. Without saying a word, he pushes past her, knocking her shoulder with his, proceeding straight to his own room and shutting it behind him.
After a brief hesitation, she turns around, calling after him. “Kris, darling? What’s the matter?”
“I miss you,” he states, as though it’s nothing at all. “How silly of me.”
x
After Mr. Byun passes away, it seems that nothing changes. Baekhyun cries for precisely two hours when it happens, until grief pulls her to sleep. The morning after and the night after, she cries for almost exactly one hour each. This continues for a week and a half, until Mr. Byun’s funeral, at which she cries for the whole ceremony. But in the long term, year after year, nothing changes with Baekhyun in the slightest.
Kris, on the other hand, finds himself spending less and less time with her. The time he does spend with her rots him from the inside out; the silences stretch too long, despite her apparent comfort with them, and she never says his name without adding “darling” to the end, never greets him without a dramatic draping of her arms around his neck, touches his arm a little too lightly, though it doesn’t feel tentative, looks at him a little too distantly, though she still speaks to him as though he knows her best. He doesn’t. He hasn’t for the longest time.
As master of the household, Luhan works him in the stables and fields and in the kitchen like Kyungsoo works his carriage horses. He remembers that one time after all this, he had invited Baekhyun to go tend to the horses with him like they’d used to. He’d reminded her of all the times they’d ended up throwing the oatmeal from the feeding troughs at each other, and of the one time she’d taken two of the ponies out and he’d taught her how to ride horses, after which they’d run across the wide expanse of the Byun property for what felt like miles and miles. When he’d asked, he was so sure that she wouldn’t refuse that he’d grabbed her hand before she even agreed, to run to the horse stables with her and take off across the immense expanse of empty grass again. But she’d pulled away, and said no.
Kris works until the tan fades back into his skin; the hard labor and the sun and the sweat wash away everything Mr. Byun and Baekhyun used to do to make him feel like he belonged where he was.
When the next Christmas comes around, he tries again to bring Baekhyun back. He invites her to the rooftop, to climb up the chimney with him on Christmas eve to see if Santa Claus will come down, but she tells him no, that she doesn’t want to dirty her clothing. When Valentine’s day comes around, Kris collects flowers by the stables and in the fields, only to find that Kyungsoo has taken her out on one of his silly carriage rides again. He waits until she gets back, ready to offer the meager bouquet he’s put together-but then Kyungsoo opens the back of the carriage to reveal that he’s stuffed the whole thing up with roses and tulips and daisies and orchids and, smiling kindly at Kris, wraps his arm around Baekhyun’s waist, pointing out what each and every flower means.
Kris doesn’t know what any of his own stupid flowers mean. When Kyungsoo finally finishes, leaves the flowers with Baekhyun and goes home in his dumb carriage, Kris still tries to offer her his.
“Oh, darling,” she smiles, “That’s cute!”
“Happy Valentine’s day?” he clarifies, holding them out to her.
She looks at him confused, as though she doesn’t understand, then hesitantly says, “You’re right, it’s Valentine’s day.”
Closing his eyes, he sighs, and drops the flowers at her feet. “I don’t know what a single one of these damn flowers mean,” he whispers, “I don’t even know what flowers they are. But know that they were supposed to be for you. I’ll tell you that these flowers are for all the times I wonder if I should have said, ‘I like you, too,’ that time when I was thirteen and you were twelve and a half and you kissed me in front of the chimney. And these ones are for all the times you wrapped your arms around my neck and stood so close I could smell whatever perfume Kyungsoo buys you now, but all I could think was that I missed you. And these ones are for all the times I wish I hadn’t agreed to go with you to his stupid manor that one day, because that’s when all of this idiocy happened. And these are for all the times I wish I weren’t born on the streets, and these are for all the times I wish I weren’t born at all, and this-” he pauses, breathing in deep and leaning forward to kiss Baekhyun, even shorter than their first, “is for the last time I try to get Baekhyun back, because you haven’t been her for too long now, and I’m done waiting.”
Kris watches her for the longest time, daring her, willing her with everything he has to meet his gaze, but she doesn’t. He realizes she probably isn’t even thinking about doing so.
“Happy Valentine’s day,” he repeats, a statement this time, then picks up the flowers and walks away.
He walks all the way to Mr. Byun’s grave, five miles away, on the edges of town, and leaves the flowers there. Settling down in front of the tombstone, he lets out a sarcastic chuckle.
“I think she died before you did, pops. I really do.”
x
Even after Valentine’s day, things between him and Baekhyun stay exactly the same. There is no difference between her current pity and condescension and what there was before-only now, Kris is aware of it. Both of their gestures become entirely empty. He still picks out flowers for her, just to remind her, but it doesn’t hurt anymore when she stares blankly at them before taking them and putting them somewhere neither of them will ever see it again. At noontime, he sits in her study and listens to her talk about her favorite tea, or Kyungsoo’s new satin cuffs and how they’re better than his old satin cuffs, or about how Luhan still calls Kyungsoo Kyungpoo, and she smiles and laughs and he sits and listens until she finishes, and he can leave.
One day, Baekhyun asks him to stay with her, even though she’s finished talking. “I can hardly deal with our silences anymore,” she proclaims, clutching her chest just like Mrs. Do does, except with slightly more elegance so that she doesn’t look as though she’s dying. “Do speak with me, darling, I miss your voice terribly.”
For several minutes, Kris remains silent, thinking about what he should say. He doesn’t have anything to talk about. He’s already said everything that needs to be said, and she’s never done anything about any of it.
A wry smile lifts the corner of his lips when he finally speaks. “Of course, Miss Byun,” he replies, standing up and bowing to her. “What should you like me to say?”
Baekhyun freezes in place, staring at Kris as though horrified, terrified by something monstrous towering before her and preparing to devour her. Kris holds her gaze steadily, calmly, one corner of his lips still hung in a smirk, the same corner of hers twitching down before she bursts into tears, throwing her arms onto her desk and sobbing into them.
“Oh, what have I done?” she wails, so loudly that Kris almost instinctively covers his ears. “I’ve really messed up now, haven’t I? You detest me now, don’t you? Why? What have I done wrong?”
Those questions have already been answered; he’s sure that somewhere in her jumbled thoughts, Baekhyun knows the answers. Somehow, becoming sophisticated has turned her to ignorance by tenfold. He refuses to respond, instead walking out the door, writing a note to Chanyeol that he won’t be coming back-not for a while, or maybe forever.
Just before he reaches the door, Baekhyun grabs his wrist, still a hysterical mess. “I’m sorry,” she sobs, clinging to his shirt now, “I’m sorry I left you. Please don’t go, please don’t go, I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
x
In a few years, Kris returns to the Do estate in a tattered suit with a bouquet he’s picked fresh from the Byun fields, just like before. Chanyeol had slipped him the wedding invitation. It wasn’t entirely insensitive, although Kris might have argued otherwise when he’d first received it, but they all knew, in the back of their minds, that it would happen.
Money is money, classes are classes, and still, he has none of either. Honestly, he’s not sure he wants to have any of it. Both are pretenses to anything and everything: for vapidness, for haughtiness, for obnoxiousness. Now that he’s back, he doesn’t remember why he ever wanted to fit in.
“Glad you showed up,” Chanyeol smiles, setting the final table for the reception. Kris leans over to push one of the glasses into place. “I was thinking you’d be a good help.”
“Baekhyun didn’t really invite me, did she?” he mutters, re-folding one of the napkins.
“Nope.”
“Didn’t think so. Is she still-”
“Let’s not talk about it,” she sighs, “If you couldn’t fix it, I doubt anyone else could have.”
“Oh.”
At the end of the reception, when Kris moves to take his leave without Baekhyun ever having known that he’d gone, Kyungsoo catches his eye. For a second, Kris thinks that maybe he’s a decent person. He doesn’t sneer at him, or smirk, or do that dumb thing he did with the flowers that Valentine’s day. He just squeezes Baekhyun’s hand a little tighter, and looks somewhere else.
Baekhyun notices him, and does the complete opposite. She pulls away from Kyungsoo and rushes toward him, arms outstretched: he can hear it in his head already, the pitiful, condescending “darling” appended so ruthlessly to the end of his name, vapidity in the name of sophistication. Part of him hopes to the high heavens that she’ll just say his name, like she used to, and he can take her away and leave the rest of it behind, kick out the few years of his life where he didn’t matter anymore and pretend he always did-but even if she did just say his name, throwing out more than half of his memory wouldn’t be worth it.
“Kris, darling!” she calls out, collecting him in an embrace just as insincere as their last. He shouldn’t even have thought about it.
“I’m leaving.”
Baekhyun’s smile falters, tears welling up almost immediately despite her efforts to blink them away. “Why did you leave the first time? Why did you let me go, just like that? I liked you, maybe I still like you, and you let me go. Why didn’t you fight?”
Kris has to fight the urge to laugh in her face. Pulling out the bouquet, he shoves it into her hands and smiles, starting the same speech again, the one from Valentine’s day, enunciating each and every word with so much precision that Kyungsoo can probably read his lips from where he’s standing and watching.
“I don’t know what a single one of these damn flowers mean. I don’t even know what flowers they are. But know that they were supposed to be for you. I’ll tell you that these flowers are for all the times I wonder if I should have said, ‘I like you, too,’ that time when I was thirteen and you were twelve and a half and you kissed me in front of the chimney. And these ones are for all the times you wrapped your arms around my neck and stood so close I could smell whatever perfume Kyungsoo buys you now, but all I could think was that I missed you. And these ones are for all the times I wish I hadn’t agreed to go with you to his stupid manor that one day, because that’s when all of this idiocy happened. And these are for all the times I wish I weren’t born on the streets, and these are for all the times I wish I weren’t born at all, and this-”
He shoves the flowers against her again, forcing her to take a step back, “-Is for everything you didn’t understand, for everything I tried, don’t ever tell me that I didn’t try, and-really, this time-for goodbye.”
Still smiling, he bows, ninety degrees at the waist.
“Congratulations on your wedding, Mrs. Do.”
When he leaves, he doesn’t look back.