Who’ll Stop the Rain (for monster)
For: monster
From: vanillatiger
Title: Who’ll Stop the Rain
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s): Tao/Baekhyun
Length: 5.6k
Summary: Baekhyun doesn’t know his name, or where he comes from, or how long he’s been here. All he knows for certain is that this guy doesn't go to his school.
Warning(s): bullying, homophobia, violence
Author’s Note: n/a
The one thing Baekhyun knows for certain is that this guy doesn't go to his school, even though he looks to be close to Baekhyun's age. He's too tall for Baekhyun to have not noticed him before. Too blond, too sharp, dressed in too many dark clothes. Everything about him stands out, which is how Baekhyun spots him that first time on his ride home after choir practice, even though he's hidden in the shade of the trees jutting out of the median strip in front of Baekhyun’s house. He's just leaning back against the trunk of one lazily, like a lion. Aeri is sprawled in the grass beside him, accepting his slow, lazy belly rubs as though he isn’t a complete stranger. His piercings-piercings-catch the scant sunlight that filters through the leaves.
The way the boy rolls his head to the side, catching sight of Baekhyun as though with a preternatural sense, sends a shiver down his spine. Baekhyun hurries hurries his bike up the driveway and off into the side yard where he dumps it. He comes in through the back door instead of the front, and immediately makes for the kitchen window. He pushes aside the lace curtains and peeks through, pleased to see that the boy isn't watching him or his house.
He's just laying there. No phone, no book, no homework. He could be sleeping, were it not for the gentle beat of his foot against the grass, tapping out some indecipherable pattern, or the smooth, gentle smoothing of his hand over Aeri’s belly. Baekhyun squints his eyes and scrunches his nose, but he can't see any earphones. The boy is just…laying there. Doing nothing. Soaking up the pleasant day like a flower. A very pointy, shiny flower.
He's gone the next time Baekhyun looks outside, only a couple of hours later as his mother is getting home. Baekhyun greets her at the front door, peering over her shoulder to the median, but there's nothing there. The sun hasn't even begun to go down, but the boy is gone without a trace. Not even the grass where he'd sat seems touched by him. Baekhyun's mother turns him around and closes the door, saying something about letting bugs in, but Baekhyun just skirts past her to the window. He finds the scene no different there. The boy is gone.
"What are you look at?" his mother asks, looking out the window over his shoulder.
"Nothing," Baekhyun mumbles, retreating to the stairs to go finish his homework.
Neither Jongdae nor Chanyeol know about any new families moving to town. Not that they're the most reliable sources, but they're all Baekhyun has. Besides, they know enough most of the time. It's not a large town, just a busy one. If a house sold, Baekhyun is certain he would know about it. Chanyeol asks about the boy, intrigued by his blond hair and copious ear piercings and desire to wear black jeans in the growing swelter of April.
"I bet he's not even real," he says at lunch, Jongdae laughing loudly at the suggestion. Baekhyun scrambles to defend himself, but it's a bit fantastic even to his own ears. Some ethereal being materializing beneath a tree, reclining for an unidentified amount of time, and then vanishing without even leaving an imprint in the grass.
"Is this an illuminati joke?" Jongdae asks, further kindling Chanyeol's lark. Baekhyun just pushes his sandwich aside and drops his head to the table dramatically. Someone pats him on the back. Nobody helps him figure out who the new kid is.
Baekhyun realizes that he could just ask, since the boy is there again that afternoon. His droopy white t-shirt and light wash jeans are a startling contrast to his previous attire, and Baekhyun has to do a double-take to make sure it's the same guy. Bleached white hair, golden skin, piercings. Aeri is draped completely across his lap today, as if she had known him her whole life. The boy lifts his eyes to meet Baekhyun's gaze, and Baekhyun realizes that the depth of it comes from the dark circles surrounding them, making him look angrier than he probably is. He looks...fluffy. Less the lion and more the cub.
Baekhyun doesn't slow as he rides by. Not because he's rude, but because he isn't even thinking about anything else other than this boy and what he's doing here. He does, however, have the presence of mind to lift his hand from the handle of his bike in a small wave. He speeds by too quickly to see if the boy waves back. When he looks through his window this time, the boy is watching. He can't see Baekhyun, but his eyes are trained on the house. It's difficult to decipher his expression from this far away.
Neither of his parents know about any new families, either. "Could be across the county line," his father suggests over dinner. Baekhyun glances out the window as he considers it, but the curtains are drawn and the light outside has mostly faded. It's impossible to see further than the bushes that line the front of the house, peeking their curled and tangled leaves up just over the sill of the window. The boy has been gone for hours at this point. Aeri is inside by now, sleeping beneath the table at Baekhyun’s feet.
"I asked Yura about the alien outside your house," Chanyeol says in homeroom the next morning. "She thinks a family might've moved in close by."
"Does she know who?"
Chanyeol screws his face up to the side. "No. She wasn't sure about it, either. She just thought she heard something about it from one of mom's friends."
It's useless to rely on them. Baekhyun thinks, instead, that he'll just talk to the boy on his way home from school today. No better information than straight from the horse's mouth. It takes a very long time to work himself up to this decision. Three periods of classes and all of choir practice, actually. He doesn't really decide to do it until he's leaving the school’s campus, thinking about what he could say, because Why do you sit outside my house isn't the most clever or engaging icebreaker.
He doesn't come up with anything good by the time he gets to his house, and the boy doesn't wave back when Baekhyun lifts his hand. Maybe he is as angry as he looks. Baekhyun rides by without looking back and he doesn't peek through the window when he gets inside, just in case the boy's intent is as murderous as his gaze.
It's not. Baekhyun lives through the night, and he lives through the night after that when he waves to the boy again. Chanyeol asks about him at lunch, but Baekhyun doesn't have anything to add. He thinks that this might just become one of those facets of his life that he can take for granted if he chooses. Riding his bike every day; lunch with his best friends; weird kid loitering outside of his house every time he comes home.
It does. For a whole week, Baekhyun rides by after practice, waving at him for no reason because all he ever gets in response is a glare. The cat is always sprawled at his side. He’ll drop his bike in the side yard, clamber through the back door, and check to see if the boy has moved. Baekhyun has never even seen him stand up before. He thinks about watching until he does because he must at some point, he can't just disappear by crawling away. But Baekhyun has two papers due next week and he thinks, I'll check on him every fifteen minutes.
He's gone by the first half hour, and Baekhyun missed him going.
May comes in a burst of sunshine. Baekhyun wears shorter and shorter sleeves until he risks breaching his school’s dress code. He exposes his shins and his calves to the constant glare of summer, and the boy who sits outside of his house is so commonplace that Baekhyun only idly takes note of how he sheds his longer layers for tank tops and tight shorts that stop above his knees. Baekhyun likes how he looks like this, but he doesn't give it much more attention than that. Just small thoughts, like Can boys have legs that nice? and I'd like to play with his hair as he rides into his driveway every day. Homework usually pushes the thoughts from his mind.
May comes with heat and exhaustion and exams, so there's always enough homework to get his mind off of the thoughts. If Baekhyun can't stop thinking about the boy's mysterious eyes, he does another problem set. If he gets too caught up with giving him fake names, guessing at what would fit a face like his, he pulls out his literature book to bite into another chapter. It's especially difficult to get his mind off of long, careless sprawl of the boy's legs and how Baekhyun is skinny enough to fit right between them. Trying to pronounce the names of different bacteria for his biology class is the only thing that has distracted him from those fantasies so far.
And he still hasn't figured out anything to say. The time has long since passed where it would be acceptable to approach the boy, Baekhyun has decided. The silent routine they have settled into so deeply is a barrier that Baekhyun could not scale were he brazen enough to even try. The boy, himself, makes no effort. Nobody at school asks about him anymore. Baekhyun thinks that Chanyeol and Jongdae have probably even forgotten about him. Baekhyun thinks he should have as well, but. Well…he has to fight to not think about him, and that. That is enough for Baekhyun to think about on its own.
Even when things do change, they don't change with any consequence. Choir practice is cancelled on Thursday and Friday one week while the director is off at an educational conference. Baekhyun leaves school at the same time as everybody else, and when he turns onto his street, he's struck with an unbearable sense of wrongness. The tree-the one in front of Baekhyun's house-is empty. Not empty, but abandoned. Not abandoned, but...alone. Where is the boy?
Not that the boy has always shown up. On rainy days or stormy days or days that were too cold to even be considered part of summer, Baekhyun knew that it would be a stretch to expect the boy to be there. But today is sunny. The temperature is upwards of warm enough, and in the shade, it's just right. But the boy is nowhere to be found. Baekhyun doesn't realize he's actually stopped to stare at the tree until he hears rattling, followed by a muffled thud. He whips his head around in time to see the boy rising from a crouch beside the neighbor's fence from across the street. The fence is still trembling; he must have climbed it.
He sees Baekhyun as soon as he stands up, and Baekhyun is surprised to see him hesitate. He should probably pedal off, leave him be, but he doesn't. The boy snaps to with an almost intentional air about it, striding forward across the street without looking. He gets to his tree, only a few feet away from Baekhyun, who, for the first time, is able to appreciate how tall he is. The boy doesn't say anything, so Baekhyun puts his foot in his mouth.
"You should look both ways."
The boy blinks. Baekhyun blinks. Neither of them were expecting that. Baekhyun knows he meant to say something, but that was probably not what he should have said.
"The...street," he tries to recuperate. "It's really unsafe. Cars go flying down here, even though the speed limit..."
The boy is just...staring at him. Fair enough. Baekhyun can feel his face heat up, and if he has to, he'll blame it on the sun. He clears his throat, offers his obligatory wave, and pushes off towards his driveway. Though he desperately wants to, he does not look out the window when he gets to his bedroom.
In bed that night, he wonders what the boy's voice sounds like, and how he'd had the perfect opportunity to hear it, if only he had thought of something more clever to say.
In the morning, Baekhyun realizes that the boy must be in high school as well, if he got out around the same time as Baekhyun. On Friday, he pedals home that much quicker, hoping to catch the boy as he's coming in one more time, and he arrives to an empty, abandoned, lonely tree. He kicks down his stand and rests against the handlebars, staring at the neighbor's fence in anticipation. He thinks, at first, that his impatience is getting the better of him, but when he checks his phone, he finds that time really has passed during his wait. He glances up towards the fence again, but nobody is coming. Reluctantly, Baekhyun steers his way into his drive, constantly glancing back over his shoulder.
The boy doesn't come that day. Not late. Not at all.
And nobody remembers him, so Baekhyun has nobody to talk to about it. Over the weekend, he goes into the city with his parents to visit his brother. When they get back, the tree is still vacant. Sunday morning, afternoon, and night, it's all the same. Baekhyun tries to mention it offhandedly in his text conversation with Chanyeol, who replies with an obtuse, who?.
Not that Baekhyun is worried. There are a lot of things that could happen. Maybe the boy found a better spot. Maybe he decided to take this Friday off. Maybe he has upcoming exams, too, and realized that he finally needed to settle down and do some of his homework. Baekhyun feeds off of these excuses, but continues to starve in the boy's absence. Monday will be better, he tells himself. Monday, he'll be back.
Monday morning starts with Baekhyun looking out his window before he realizes it. The dawn is still a short ways off, leaving the street dim in the cool, morning light. There is dew on the grass and fog in the distance; the boy is not there, and he has never come in the mornings before. Baekhyun wonders if he has become desperate for this boy's presence. His stomach twists with worry, but he reminds himself, This afternoon, he'll be back.
He reminds himself all day. Each period feels like an eternity, Baekhyun's thoughts so much further away than usual. Even Jongdae's rambunctious laughter cannot shake him. He trips and falls to the linoleum because he is too distracted to realize that Jongdae has pulled out a chair in front of him. Both Chanyeol and Jongdae help him up, concerned frowns on their faces.
"Did you ever find that guy you were looking for?" Chanyeol asks. Baekhyun cracks a smile then, for his sake.
"I'm gonna see him today after school," he declares.
"Ooh," Jongdae coos suggestively, wiggling his eyebrows as he nudges Baekhyun with his elbow. Baekhyun curls away from it uncomfortably, but he laughs along so that nobody will notice. The end of the day cannot come fast enough. Baekhyun is composed almost entirely of unmanageable energy on a good day, but this is different. This is the nervous sort, which manifests in the drumming of his fingers and the constant flicking of his eyes towards the clock. He almost gets excused from choir practice, which would be nice, if only for today. But he’s never bad enough to warrant such a punishment.
Come three-thirty, Baekhyun does not even wait up for Jongdae as he skirts through the halls, through the doors, out to his bike, and down to the main road. He whirs through yellow lights that he should heed and swerves around pedestrians who flinch back from his mad sprint until one of them catches his eye. A tall one, with a shock of white blond hair and dark skin and-and bruises, all over his face. A matching pair under his eyes, linked by a cut across the bridge of his nose. Split lip with a dark discoloration below, like a drop of blood dispersed in linen. A dark collar of bruises around his throat
Baekhyun skids to a halt so hard that he almost falls off of his bike. He barely recovers and is still unsteady on his seat when he whirls around, staring at the back of the boy who sits outside of his house most days. More than just the bruises, it’s something else seeing it like this. Today, there are no rings on his hand or bracelets on his wrists. His clothes are comparably plain to what Baekhyun has seen him wear before. His hair is unruly and unstyled. He looks awful.
And he won’t turn around, even though Baekhyun is certain he made a lot of noise and drew a lot of attention stopping the way he did. Not even a glance. His tightens his hands on the handles of his bike, boiling over with things to say but all of them lifting like steam from his head. Formless. Burning. With the boy’s back retreating more and more as each second passes, the things Baekhyun wants to say narrow down to, Wait, and in the end, he can’t even say that. There are so many thoughts in his head, so many questions, and he doesn’t feel entitled to any of them. The silent complacency that exists between them has settled in as a wall; now, more than ever, Baekhyun wishes for a ladder.
On the ride home after this encounter, Baekhyun realizes he’s only a few blocks away. He wonders if the boy stopped at the tree like usual, or if he passed it up. Where he was going, and if he always goes there, but never when Baekhyun has been able to see him. How he got those bruises; who gave them to him. Some days, Baekhyun could believe that boy is the dangerous sort, with his leather jackets and combat boots and silver rings. Other days, when he wears white and pink and light jeans and converse high-tops, Baekhyun worries that something far worse than an evenly matched street fight would leave him like that.
Baekhyun realizes, as he often does, that he knows nothing about this boy. His concern comes from his ignorance. Inevitably, he feels an all-consuming regret that he did not say anything. The sensation is so strong that it is as though he is trying to pull time back to that moment, just so he can be given another chance. The strain makes his jaw tense and his hands tighten into fists. When he gets home, he slams his bike down instead of dropping it light normal. Aeri, who is sitting on the front porch, lurches away, off into the neighbor’s yard. Baekhyun does not look out the window, even though he wants to. There will be nothing there.
In the morning, Baekhyun’s anger has washed away. He’s just tired and confused and worried. The anger came from a sense of loss, and Baekhyun just feels empty now. Empty, and a little bit helpless. Whoever could put those bruises on that boy could do a lot worse to Baekhyun, who wants to stand up and fight for him. Baekhyun, who doesn’t know how to fight at all. He sighs while he pulls his t-shirt on, frowns when he ties his shoes. The furrow in his brow deepens further when he gets to school, the buzz of chatter all centering around one theme this morning.
Fight.
In the high school just over the county line. Baekhyun thinks he’s imagining it at first, his mind still stuck on the boy’s face and whatever made it look like that. But no, when he pulls himself out of his head to open his locker and begin stowing and retrieving his books, a group of girls a few lockers down are talking about it. On the walk to his homeroom, two boys from the soccer team mention it; one of their friends got suspended for it. In homeroom, much to Baekhyun’s dismay, Chanyeol has a video of it.
“Stupid,” Jongdae scoffs. It is; the video is what got the boys suspended. Whoever took it is laughing, the image shaking in sync with his snickering. He probably isn’t laughing anymore.
“Baekhyun-ah, did you see this?” Chanyeol asks, waving him over. Baekhyun sighs and hesitates. He really doesn’t want to see it. “Come here, some fag got the crap kicked out of him,” Chanyeol says, and Baekhyun’s gut curls uncomfortably. In fact, he really doesn’t want to see the video right now. He doesn’t really want to see Chanyeol or Jongdae right now, either. He wants to see the boy, wants to make sure he’s alright. “Yah,” Chanyeol says, irritated, and he reaches out to pull Baekhyun forward. With no excuse to fight him, Baekhyun goes easily.
The video is terrible, shot with unsteady hands on an old iPhone. Whoever took it keeps accidentally putting their fingers over the speaker, so the audio muffles to silence every once in awhile. Baekhyun is about to straighten up and walk away because from what little he can see, it’s just a bunch of bullies picking on some guy when-no, it couldn’t-Baekhyun freezes, grabbing Chanyeol’s wrist to bring the phone closer to his face.
A shock of white blond hair. A glint of piercings. The video is shaking so terribly that Baekhyun can’t see his face; and besides, the boy is mostly facing away from him. But it’s him. Without a doubt, it’s him. Someone grabs him by the shirt and punches him square in the nose. The boy lets him. The video steadies just long enough for Baekhyun to see the boy’s hands tighten into fists, but he never returns the punches. Someone grabs him by his throat, and only then does the boy react, pulling at their hand until they let go.
“Teacher!” someone shouts. The sound of it is tinny, but the panic is still audible. The video swerves, capturing the pavement and the upside-down horizon before freezing. After a moment, Baekhyun realizes it’s ended. For a moment, none of them say anything. The silence amongst them is less prominent now that other students are filtering through the classroom, seeking their seats, but to Baekhyun, it feels especially poignant.
“That’s terrible,” he finally says, trying to saturate as much disgust into the words as possible. Chanyeol’s complacent shrug hurts him more than he expected it would.
“What do you expect? That school is trash. It’s just a bunch of hicks. That’s the kind of thing that they do.” Jongdae nods solemnly, and Baekhyun frowns at both of them.
“That doesn’t make it right.”
Chanyeol frowns right back at him, the downturn to his brow more confused than anything. “Geez, Baek. They got suspended. What more do you want?”
With a derisive sniff, Baekhyun brushes past him towards his desk. He drops into it with a huff, scowling down at its scratched face angrily. He wants more. He wants so much more from those bullies for what they did to the boy. Baekhyun dreads the coming day, knowing that all anybody will be talking about will be the fight. Baekhyun wants to shout. It wasn’t a fight, he thinks. It was just assault.
Today, Baekhyun doesn’t beg off from choir practice. Instead, he just forces Jongdae to swear he’ll tell the director that Baekhyun is sick, and then he leaves. He pedals fast, even running one red light on his way, and he only gets away with it because of the rain that has begun to fall. Baekhyun pays it no mind, his vision tunneling as he gets closer and closer to his street.
He turns onto it and finds the tree in front of his house. Empty. Abandoned. Alone. Baekhyun lets off of the pedals, the bike gliding through puddles towards his house. His stomach drops, the disappointment palpable, and he’s so upset that he almost doesn’t notice when he turns up his driveway. He veers towards the side yard before stopping, dropping the bike right where he is and trotting back out to the front of the house.
From the top step of his porch, the boy is watching him warily, his bruised eyes narrowed and…shining. He’s crying. Crap, Baekhyun thinks. The boy’s arm moves, and Baekhyun thinks that maybe he’ll wave or something. His gaze drops to the boy’s lap, and there’s Aeri. The boy’s hand moves behind her ears, gentle scritches to keep her complacent. Baekhyun looks back up into the boy’s face, but he finds that the boy is looking down at the cat, now.
Now or never, Baekhyun thinks. Here or nowhere else in the world. He ambles forward, slowly, relieved when the boy doesn’t so much as look up at him, let alone flinch away or flee. Baekhyun takes a seat beside him on the top step of the porch. Aeri reaches one paw out towards him, but that’s all. The boy wipes at his eyes, not even bothering to be inconspicuous about it. With the best smile Baekhyun can muster, he says, “She likes you a lot.”
The boy looks up at him then, frowning. A confused frown. Baekhyun blinks, and then points to the cat. “She likes you?” he says again, almost as a question this time. The boy glances at the cat, and then back up at Baekhyun, and he shrugs. Baekhyun watches him for a moment, but he doesn’t say anything. He decides to try again. “What’s your name?”
The boy looks up again, and after a moment, he asks, “Name?” His voice is soft and low with a noticeable accent. Baekhyun nods. “My name is Zitao,” he says slowly, like he’s practiced it. “What is…your name?”
For a moment, Baekhyun forgets to answer because all he wants to do is ask when Zitao moved here, and from where because Baekhyun thinks it might be China, which would explain his name and the accent and maybe the silence all the time. Belatedly, he comes around with a start. “Ah, Baekhyun. My name’s Baekhyun,” he says in a rush, smiling. “Do you…want to come inside?”
Zitao swallows, staring down at Aeri. He’s not petting her as diligently anymore, and she’s beginning to squirm like she might get up and leave them. Zitao glances up at Baekhyun, and Baekhyun realizes that Zitao doesn’t understand what he’s saying. Baekhyun fumbles for a moment, and then points to his front door. “Inside?” Zitao glances back at it, and then revelation dawns over his features. He pulls out his phone and activates the screen briefly, frowning at what he sees.
“No,” he says. “I…four-thirty, I practice.” Zitao points down the street, back towards town. Baekhyun follow’s Zitao’s finger with his gaze, and then looks back to Zitao.
“Practice?”
Zitao smiles proudly. “Wushu.”
Baekhyun stares incredulously. “Wushu?”
Very gently, Zitao displaces Aeri. She scampers away once she’s been set to the side. Zitao stands, descending the steps of the porch, out into the rain. On the lawn, he turns to Baekhyun. His hair is wet and sticking to his forehead. The bruises are still dark, coloring him dangerously. His shirt-god, his shirt is soaked. Baekhyun can see everything beneath it. Nervously, he jerks his eyes back up to Zitao’s face, worried that he’ll have been caught staring. Zitao’s expression is strange, but Baekhyun doesn’t get a chance to interpret it.
Zitao kicks his foot up above his head. He swings his arms out dangerously, striking the air as though he were striking an attacker. His face is serious, deathly so. His show is brief, but when he finishes, his chest is heaving from the effort. Baekhyun tries-he tries so hard not to stare at it. When he looks back up into Zitao’s face, Zitao is smiling proudly. “Wushu.”
He comes to sit next to Baekhyun once more, reaching for the cat. She skitters away from his wet hand. Baekhyun stares for a long while in silence, chewing his lip and puzzling in his head over and over and over until the words come out too fast for him to stop them. “Why didn’t you fight back?” Zitao cocks his head, his face blank. Baekhyun frowns and points to Zitao’s nose, which is cut and discolored, and then to his lip, bearing the same injuries. “Fight. Why didn’t you fight back?”
Zitao’s face pinches unhappily, and he turns his eyes down towards his lap. Baekhyun stares, needing to know. He had seen Zitao’s restraint in the video, how he’d wanted to do so much more than he did. But this is so much more than Baekhyun thought. Zitao probably could have saved himself if he’d wanted to. But Zitao doesn’t answer him. Not for a long while. When he does answer, all he says is, “Not fight,” and that seems to be the end of it.
“Why…” Baekhyun starts, but doesn’t know how to finish in a way that Zitao will understand. He points to the bruises again, and then asks, “Why?” and leaves it at that. Zitao’s face flushes, and he looks away. “Are you…do you…” The words won’t come out, much as Baekhyun has been thinking about them since Zitao started hanging around his street in the first place.
“I?” Zitao asks, turning to Baekhyun.
“Do you like boys?”
“Like…boys?” Zitao’s pronunciation is slow and unsure. “Wo xihuan-oh.” Zitao’s face flushes an even deeper pink, and he clenches his hands into fists. “No,” he says abruptly.
“Oh,” Baekhyun says, and then speaks before considering what he’s saying. “I think I do.”
Zitao doesn’t look at him at first, still staring down at his hands, but after a moment, he frowns, looking up. “You…like boys?” Baekhyun freezes up, because he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say at this point. Zitao twists his mouth to the side, and then says, “I…also…m-maybe?”
Baekhyun has so much he wants to say, his mouth wide open, ready to speak, when Zitao’s phone chimes. He picks it up, swiping the alarm to silence it. They look up at each other, Zitao smiling sheepishly. “Practice,” he says, standing. He doesn’t move at first. Baekhyun stands up beside him. Together, they descend the steps and into the rain. Zitao slips his phone into his pocket to protect it from the drizzle. “Good-bye,” he says, when it seems like that’s all there is left to say. He’s turned his back when Baekhyun thinks of something else.
“Wait-” Zitao turns, surprise on his face. “Why did you start sitting outside my house?” Zitao frowns, and Baekhyun scrambles for a way to simplify his question. “You-,” he points at Zitao, “sit,” he points to the tree. “Why?”
Zitao’s face pinches for a moment, and then he smiles. “Cat,” he says, pointing to Aeri, who watches them from the dry safety of the porch. Baekhyun glances back at her; she blinks at him lazily. He turns back to Zitao with a smile.
“See you tomorrow?” he asks.
Without hesitation, Zitao nods. “Tomorrow.”
Summer comes with heat and humidity and thunder storms. A lot of thunderstorms. Some weeks, it rains more than it doesn’t. Baekhyun would be disappointed, but he isn’t. Even when it rains, Zitao still comes over. Baekhyun buys him a nice umbrella as a belated birthday present, and Zitao always props it up on the porch to dry before ringing the doorbell. Baekhyun chides him, because he always leaves the door unlocked, and Zitao never uses it.
They always escape to his bedroom. Usually, Baekhyun is doing homework. Sometimes, Zitao will bring his homework over, too. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes, Baekhyun can be persuaded to just sit on the bed with Zitao, staring up at his ceiling fan and talking. It doesn’t take much persuasion. Such afternoons are slow, quiet. Hot. His fan can only do so much. Sometimes Zitao wears short sleeves, but usually, he wears shirts with no sleeves at all. Baekhyun wants to touch his arms, but all he ever does is hold Zitao’s hands.
Chanyeol and Jongdae don’t know about Zitao. Baekhyun’s parents know him, but they don’t about him-or more, them. Baekhyun is still trying to figure it out. He doesn’t know much, but he does know that if he rolls onto his side just close enough to reach Zitao, Zitao will turn his head and Baekhyun will be close enough to kiss him. He does it at least once whenever Zitao comes over. He’s already done it once this afternoon, but he wants to do it again. When he kisses Zitao this time, he kisses him a little bit longer, lingering for a moment before pulling away. Zitao’s eyes are wide and mystified, as if Baekhyun has done something spectacular. Baekhyun smiles at him.
When Zitao looks like that, it doesn’t feel like there’s very much to figure out at all. And if he has to figure anything out, that’s okay. Everything he needs is right here beside him. They’ll solve it together, fighting each other’s battles if they have to. Baekhyun still doesn’t know how to fight, but when he kisses Zitao slowly and tenderly, he thinks, he’ll work something out if he has to.
From: vanillatiger
Title: Who’ll Stop the Rain
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s): Tao/Baekhyun
Length: 5.6k
Summary: Baekhyun doesn’t know his name, or where he comes from, or how long he’s been here. All he knows for certain is that this guy doesn't go to his school.
Warning(s): bullying, homophobia, violence
Author’s Note: n/a
The one thing Baekhyun knows for certain is that this guy doesn't go to his school, even though he looks to be close to Baekhyun's age. He's too tall for Baekhyun to have not noticed him before. Too blond, too sharp, dressed in too many dark clothes. Everything about him stands out, which is how Baekhyun spots him that first time on his ride home after choir practice, even though he's hidden in the shade of the trees jutting out of the median strip in front of Baekhyun’s house. He's just leaning back against the trunk of one lazily, like a lion. Aeri is sprawled in the grass beside him, accepting his slow, lazy belly rubs as though he isn’t a complete stranger. His piercings-piercings-catch the scant sunlight that filters through the leaves.
The way the boy rolls his head to the side, catching sight of Baekhyun as though with a preternatural sense, sends a shiver down his spine. Baekhyun hurries hurries his bike up the driveway and off into the side yard where he dumps it. He comes in through the back door instead of the front, and immediately makes for the kitchen window. He pushes aside the lace curtains and peeks through, pleased to see that the boy isn't watching him or his house.
He's just laying there. No phone, no book, no homework. He could be sleeping, were it not for the gentle beat of his foot against the grass, tapping out some indecipherable pattern, or the smooth, gentle smoothing of his hand over Aeri’s belly. Baekhyun squints his eyes and scrunches his nose, but he can't see any earphones. The boy is just…laying there. Doing nothing. Soaking up the pleasant day like a flower. A very pointy, shiny flower.
He's gone the next time Baekhyun looks outside, only a couple of hours later as his mother is getting home. Baekhyun greets her at the front door, peering over her shoulder to the median, but there's nothing there. The sun hasn't even begun to go down, but the boy is gone without a trace. Not even the grass where he'd sat seems touched by him. Baekhyun's mother turns him around and closes the door, saying something about letting bugs in, but Baekhyun just skirts past her to the window. He finds the scene no different there. The boy is gone.
"What are you look at?" his mother asks, looking out the window over his shoulder.
"Nothing," Baekhyun mumbles, retreating to the stairs to go finish his homework.
Neither Jongdae nor Chanyeol know about any new families moving to town. Not that they're the most reliable sources, but they're all Baekhyun has. Besides, they know enough most of the time. It's not a large town, just a busy one. If a house sold, Baekhyun is certain he would know about it. Chanyeol asks about the boy, intrigued by his blond hair and copious ear piercings and desire to wear black jeans in the growing swelter of April.
"I bet he's not even real," he says at lunch, Jongdae laughing loudly at the suggestion. Baekhyun scrambles to defend himself, but it's a bit fantastic even to his own ears. Some ethereal being materializing beneath a tree, reclining for an unidentified amount of time, and then vanishing without even leaving an imprint in the grass.
"Is this an illuminati joke?" Jongdae asks, further kindling Chanyeol's lark. Baekhyun just pushes his sandwich aside and drops his head to the table dramatically. Someone pats him on the back. Nobody helps him figure out who the new kid is.
Baekhyun realizes that he could just ask, since the boy is there again that afternoon. His droopy white t-shirt and light wash jeans are a startling contrast to his previous attire, and Baekhyun has to do a double-take to make sure it's the same guy. Bleached white hair, golden skin, piercings. Aeri is draped completely across his lap today, as if she had known him her whole life. The boy lifts his eyes to meet Baekhyun's gaze, and Baekhyun realizes that the depth of it comes from the dark circles surrounding them, making him look angrier than he probably is. He looks...fluffy. Less the lion and more the cub.
Baekhyun doesn't slow as he rides by. Not because he's rude, but because he isn't even thinking about anything else other than this boy and what he's doing here. He does, however, have the presence of mind to lift his hand from the handle of his bike in a small wave. He speeds by too quickly to see if the boy waves back. When he looks through his window this time, the boy is watching. He can't see Baekhyun, but his eyes are trained on the house. It's difficult to decipher his expression from this far away.
Neither of his parents know about any new families, either. "Could be across the county line," his father suggests over dinner. Baekhyun glances out the window as he considers it, but the curtains are drawn and the light outside has mostly faded. It's impossible to see further than the bushes that line the front of the house, peeking their curled and tangled leaves up just over the sill of the window. The boy has been gone for hours at this point. Aeri is inside by now, sleeping beneath the table at Baekhyun’s feet.
"I asked Yura about the alien outside your house," Chanyeol says in homeroom the next morning. "She thinks a family might've moved in close by."
"Does she know who?"
Chanyeol screws his face up to the side. "No. She wasn't sure about it, either. She just thought she heard something about it from one of mom's friends."
It's useless to rely on them. Baekhyun thinks, instead, that he'll just talk to the boy on his way home from school today. No better information than straight from the horse's mouth. It takes a very long time to work himself up to this decision. Three periods of classes and all of choir practice, actually. He doesn't really decide to do it until he's leaving the school’s campus, thinking about what he could say, because Why do you sit outside my house isn't the most clever or engaging icebreaker.
He doesn't come up with anything good by the time he gets to his house, and the boy doesn't wave back when Baekhyun lifts his hand. Maybe he is as angry as he looks. Baekhyun rides by without looking back and he doesn't peek through the window when he gets inside, just in case the boy's intent is as murderous as his gaze.
It's not. Baekhyun lives through the night, and he lives through the night after that when he waves to the boy again. Chanyeol asks about him at lunch, but Baekhyun doesn't have anything to add. He thinks that this might just become one of those facets of his life that he can take for granted if he chooses. Riding his bike every day; lunch with his best friends; weird kid loitering outside of his house every time he comes home.
It does. For a whole week, Baekhyun rides by after practice, waving at him for no reason because all he ever gets in response is a glare. The cat is always sprawled at his side. He’ll drop his bike in the side yard, clamber through the back door, and check to see if the boy has moved. Baekhyun has never even seen him stand up before. He thinks about watching until he does because he must at some point, he can't just disappear by crawling away. But Baekhyun has two papers due next week and he thinks, I'll check on him every fifteen minutes.
He's gone by the first half hour, and Baekhyun missed him going.
May comes in a burst of sunshine. Baekhyun wears shorter and shorter sleeves until he risks breaching his school’s dress code. He exposes his shins and his calves to the constant glare of summer, and the boy who sits outside of his house is so commonplace that Baekhyun only idly takes note of how he sheds his longer layers for tank tops and tight shorts that stop above his knees. Baekhyun likes how he looks like this, but he doesn't give it much more attention than that. Just small thoughts, like Can boys have legs that nice? and I'd like to play with his hair as he rides into his driveway every day. Homework usually pushes the thoughts from his mind.
May comes with heat and exhaustion and exams, so there's always enough homework to get his mind off of the thoughts. If Baekhyun can't stop thinking about the boy's mysterious eyes, he does another problem set. If he gets too caught up with giving him fake names, guessing at what would fit a face like his, he pulls out his literature book to bite into another chapter. It's especially difficult to get his mind off of long, careless sprawl of the boy's legs and how Baekhyun is skinny enough to fit right between them. Trying to pronounce the names of different bacteria for his biology class is the only thing that has distracted him from those fantasies so far.
And he still hasn't figured out anything to say. The time has long since passed where it would be acceptable to approach the boy, Baekhyun has decided. The silent routine they have settled into so deeply is a barrier that Baekhyun could not scale were he brazen enough to even try. The boy, himself, makes no effort. Nobody at school asks about him anymore. Baekhyun thinks that Chanyeol and Jongdae have probably even forgotten about him. Baekhyun thinks he should have as well, but. Well…he has to fight to not think about him, and that. That is enough for Baekhyun to think about on its own.
Even when things do change, they don't change with any consequence. Choir practice is cancelled on Thursday and Friday one week while the director is off at an educational conference. Baekhyun leaves school at the same time as everybody else, and when he turns onto his street, he's struck with an unbearable sense of wrongness. The tree-the one in front of Baekhyun's house-is empty. Not empty, but abandoned. Not abandoned, but...alone. Where is the boy?
Not that the boy has always shown up. On rainy days or stormy days or days that were too cold to even be considered part of summer, Baekhyun knew that it would be a stretch to expect the boy to be there. But today is sunny. The temperature is upwards of warm enough, and in the shade, it's just right. But the boy is nowhere to be found. Baekhyun doesn't realize he's actually stopped to stare at the tree until he hears rattling, followed by a muffled thud. He whips his head around in time to see the boy rising from a crouch beside the neighbor's fence from across the street. The fence is still trembling; he must have climbed it.
He sees Baekhyun as soon as he stands up, and Baekhyun is surprised to see him hesitate. He should probably pedal off, leave him be, but he doesn't. The boy snaps to with an almost intentional air about it, striding forward across the street without looking. He gets to his tree, only a few feet away from Baekhyun, who, for the first time, is able to appreciate how tall he is. The boy doesn't say anything, so Baekhyun puts his foot in his mouth.
"You should look both ways."
The boy blinks. Baekhyun blinks. Neither of them were expecting that. Baekhyun knows he meant to say something, but that was probably not what he should have said.
"The...street," he tries to recuperate. "It's really unsafe. Cars go flying down here, even though the speed limit..."
The boy is just...staring at him. Fair enough. Baekhyun can feel his face heat up, and if he has to, he'll blame it on the sun. He clears his throat, offers his obligatory wave, and pushes off towards his driveway. Though he desperately wants to, he does not look out the window when he gets to his bedroom.
In bed that night, he wonders what the boy's voice sounds like, and how he'd had the perfect opportunity to hear it, if only he had thought of something more clever to say.
In the morning, Baekhyun realizes that the boy must be in high school as well, if he got out around the same time as Baekhyun. On Friday, he pedals home that much quicker, hoping to catch the boy as he's coming in one more time, and he arrives to an empty, abandoned, lonely tree. He kicks down his stand and rests against the handlebars, staring at the neighbor's fence in anticipation. He thinks, at first, that his impatience is getting the better of him, but when he checks his phone, he finds that time really has passed during his wait. He glances up towards the fence again, but nobody is coming. Reluctantly, Baekhyun steers his way into his drive, constantly glancing back over his shoulder.
The boy doesn't come that day. Not late. Not at all.
And nobody remembers him, so Baekhyun has nobody to talk to about it. Over the weekend, he goes into the city with his parents to visit his brother. When they get back, the tree is still vacant. Sunday morning, afternoon, and night, it's all the same. Baekhyun tries to mention it offhandedly in his text conversation with Chanyeol, who replies with an obtuse, who?.
Not that Baekhyun is worried. There are a lot of things that could happen. Maybe the boy found a better spot. Maybe he decided to take this Friday off. Maybe he has upcoming exams, too, and realized that he finally needed to settle down and do some of his homework. Baekhyun feeds off of these excuses, but continues to starve in the boy's absence. Monday will be better, he tells himself. Monday, he'll be back.
Monday morning starts with Baekhyun looking out his window before he realizes it. The dawn is still a short ways off, leaving the street dim in the cool, morning light. There is dew on the grass and fog in the distance; the boy is not there, and he has never come in the mornings before. Baekhyun wonders if he has become desperate for this boy's presence. His stomach twists with worry, but he reminds himself, This afternoon, he'll be back.
He reminds himself all day. Each period feels like an eternity, Baekhyun's thoughts so much further away than usual. Even Jongdae's rambunctious laughter cannot shake him. He trips and falls to the linoleum because he is too distracted to realize that Jongdae has pulled out a chair in front of him. Both Chanyeol and Jongdae help him up, concerned frowns on their faces.
"Did you ever find that guy you were looking for?" Chanyeol asks. Baekhyun cracks a smile then, for his sake.
"I'm gonna see him today after school," he declares.
"Ooh," Jongdae coos suggestively, wiggling his eyebrows as he nudges Baekhyun with his elbow. Baekhyun curls away from it uncomfortably, but he laughs along so that nobody will notice. The end of the day cannot come fast enough. Baekhyun is composed almost entirely of unmanageable energy on a good day, but this is different. This is the nervous sort, which manifests in the drumming of his fingers and the constant flicking of his eyes towards the clock. He almost gets excused from choir practice, which would be nice, if only for today. But he’s never bad enough to warrant such a punishment.
Come three-thirty, Baekhyun does not even wait up for Jongdae as he skirts through the halls, through the doors, out to his bike, and down to the main road. He whirs through yellow lights that he should heed and swerves around pedestrians who flinch back from his mad sprint until one of them catches his eye. A tall one, with a shock of white blond hair and dark skin and-and bruises, all over his face. A matching pair under his eyes, linked by a cut across the bridge of his nose. Split lip with a dark discoloration below, like a drop of blood dispersed in linen. A dark collar of bruises around his throat
Baekhyun skids to a halt so hard that he almost falls off of his bike. He barely recovers and is still unsteady on his seat when he whirls around, staring at the back of the boy who sits outside of his house most days. More than just the bruises, it’s something else seeing it like this. Today, there are no rings on his hand or bracelets on his wrists. His clothes are comparably plain to what Baekhyun has seen him wear before. His hair is unruly and unstyled. He looks awful.
And he won’t turn around, even though Baekhyun is certain he made a lot of noise and drew a lot of attention stopping the way he did. Not even a glance. His tightens his hands on the handles of his bike, boiling over with things to say but all of them lifting like steam from his head. Formless. Burning. With the boy’s back retreating more and more as each second passes, the things Baekhyun wants to say narrow down to, Wait, and in the end, he can’t even say that. There are so many thoughts in his head, so many questions, and he doesn’t feel entitled to any of them. The silent complacency that exists between them has settled in as a wall; now, more than ever, Baekhyun wishes for a ladder.
On the ride home after this encounter, Baekhyun realizes he’s only a few blocks away. He wonders if the boy stopped at the tree like usual, or if he passed it up. Where he was going, and if he always goes there, but never when Baekhyun has been able to see him. How he got those bruises; who gave them to him. Some days, Baekhyun could believe that boy is the dangerous sort, with his leather jackets and combat boots and silver rings. Other days, when he wears white and pink and light jeans and converse high-tops, Baekhyun worries that something far worse than an evenly matched street fight would leave him like that.
Baekhyun realizes, as he often does, that he knows nothing about this boy. His concern comes from his ignorance. Inevitably, he feels an all-consuming regret that he did not say anything. The sensation is so strong that it is as though he is trying to pull time back to that moment, just so he can be given another chance. The strain makes his jaw tense and his hands tighten into fists. When he gets home, he slams his bike down instead of dropping it light normal. Aeri, who is sitting on the front porch, lurches away, off into the neighbor’s yard. Baekhyun does not look out the window, even though he wants to. There will be nothing there.
In the morning, Baekhyun’s anger has washed away. He’s just tired and confused and worried. The anger came from a sense of loss, and Baekhyun just feels empty now. Empty, and a little bit helpless. Whoever could put those bruises on that boy could do a lot worse to Baekhyun, who wants to stand up and fight for him. Baekhyun, who doesn’t know how to fight at all. He sighs while he pulls his t-shirt on, frowns when he ties his shoes. The furrow in his brow deepens further when he gets to school, the buzz of chatter all centering around one theme this morning.
Fight.
In the high school just over the county line. Baekhyun thinks he’s imagining it at first, his mind still stuck on the boy’s face and whatever made it look like that. But no, when he pulls himself out of his head to open his locker and begin stowing and retrieving his books, a group of girls a few lockers down are talking about it. On the walk to his homeroom, two boys from the soccer team mention it; one of their friends got suspended for it. In homeroom, much to Baekhyun’s dismay, Chanyeol has a video of it.
“Stupid,” Jongdae scoffs. It is; the video is what got the boys suspended. Whoever took it is laughing, the image shaking in sync with his snickering. He probably isn’t laughing anymore.
“Baekhyun-ah, did you see this?” Chanyeol asks, waving him over. Baekhyun sighs and hesitates. He really doesn’t want to see it. “Come here, some fag got the crap kicked out of him,” Chanyeol says, and Baekhyun’s gut curls uncomfortably. In fact, he really doesn’t want to see the video right now. He doesn’t really want to see Chanyeol or Jongdae right now, either. He wants to see the boy, wants to make sure he’s alright. “Yah,” Chanyeol says, irritated, and he reaches out to pull Baekhyun forward. With no excuse to fight him, Baekhyun goes easily.
The video is terrible, shot with unsteady hands on an old iPhone. Whoever took it keeps accidentally putting their fingers over the speaker, so the audio muffles to silence every once in awhile. Baekhyun is about to straighten up and walk away because from what little he can see, it’s just a bunch of bullies picking on some guy when-no, it couldn’t-Baekhyun freezes, grabbing Chanyeol’s wrist to bring the phone closer to his face.
A shock of white blond hair. A glint of piercings. The video is shaking so terribly that Baekhyun can’t see his face; and besides, the boy is mostly facing away from him. But it’s him. Without a doubt, it’s him. Someone grabs him by the shirt and punches him square in the nose. The boy lets him. The video steadies just long enough for Baekhyun to see the boy’s hands tighten into fists, but he never returns the punches. Someone grabs him by his throat, and only then does the boy react, pulling at their hand until they let go.
“Teacher!” someone shouts. The sound of it is tinny, but the panic is still audible. The video swerves, capturing the pavement and the upside-down horizon before freezing. After a moment, Baekhyun realizes it’s ended. For a moment, none of them say anything. The silence amongst them is less prominent now that other students are filtering through the classroom, seeking their seats, but to Baekhyun, it feels especially poignant.
“That’s terrible,” he finally says, trying to saturate as much disgust into the words as possible. Chanyeol’s complacent shrug hurts him more than he expected it would.
“What do you expect? That school is trash. It’s just a bunch of hicks. That’s the kind of thing that they do.” Jongdae nods solemnly, and Baekhyun frowns at both of them.
“That doesn’t make it right.”
Chanyeol frowns right back at him, the downturn to his brow more confused than anything. “Geez, Baek. They got suspended. What more do you want?”
With a derisive sniff, Baekhyun brushes past him towards his desk. He drops into it with a huff, scowling down at its scratched face angrily. He wants more. He wants so much more from those bullies for what they did to the boy. Baekhyun dreads the coming day, knowing that all anybody will be talking about will be the fight. Baekhyun wants to shout. It wasn’t a fight, he thinks. It was just assault.
Today, Baekhyun doesn’t beg off from choir practice. Instead, he just forces Jongdae to swear he’ll tell the director that Baekhyun is sick, and then he leaves. He pedals fast, even running one red light on his way, and he only gets away with it because of the rain that has begun to fall. Baekhyun pays it no mind, his vision tunneling as he gets closer and closer to his street.
He turns onto it and finds the tree in front of his house. Empty. Abandoned. Alone. Baekhyun lets off of the pedals, the bike gliding through puddles towards his house. His stomach drops, the disappointment palpable, and he’s so upset that he almost doesn’t notice when he turns up his driveway. He veers towards the side yard before stopping, dropping the bike right where he is and trotting back out to the front of the house.
From the top step of his porch, the boy is watching him warily, his bruised eyes narrowed and…shining. He’s crying. Crap, Baekhyun thinks. The boy’s arm moves, and Baekhyun thinks that maybe he’ll wave or something. His gaze drops to the boy’s lap, and there’s Aeri. The boy’s hand moves behind her ears, gentle scritches to keep her complacent. Baekhyun looks back up into the boy’s face, but he finds that the boy is looking down at the cat, now.
Now or never, Baekhyun thinks. Here or nowhere else in the world. He ambles forward, slowly, relieved when the boy doesn’t so much as look up at him, let alone flinch away or flee. Baekhyun takes a seat beside him on the top step of the porch. Aeri reaches one paw out towards him, but that’s all. The boy wipes at his eyes, not even bothering to be inconspicuous about it. With the best smile Baekhyun can muster, he says, “She likes you a lot.”
The boy looks up at him then, frowning. A confused frown. Baekhyun blinks, and then points to the cat. “She likes you?” he says again, almost as a question this time. The boy glances at the cat, and then back up at Baekhyun, and he shrugs. Baekhyun watches him for a moment, but he doesn’t say anything. He decides to try again. “What’s your name?”
The boy looks up again, and after a moment, he asks, “Name?” His voice is soft and low with a noticeable accent. Baekhyun nods. “My name is Zitao,” he says slowly, like he’s practiced it. “What is…your name?”
For a moment, Baekhyun forgets to answer because all he wants to do is ask when Zitao moved here, and from where because Baekhyun thinks it might be China, which would explain his name and the accent and maybe the silence all the time. Belatedly, he comes around with a start. “Ah, Baekhyun. My name’s Baekhyun,” he says in a rush, smiling. “Do you…want to come inside?”
Zitao swallows, staring down at Aeri. He’s not petting her as diligently anymore, and she’s beginning to squirm like she might get up and leave them. Zitao glances up at Baekhyun, and Baekhyun realizes that Zitao doesn’t understand what he’s saying. Baekhyun fumbles for a moment, and then points to his front door. “Inside?” Zitao glances back at it, and then revelation dawns over his features. He pulls out his phone and activates the screen briefly, frowning at what he sees.
“No,” he says. “I…four-thirty, I practice.” Zitao points down the street, back towards town. Baekhyun follow’s Zitao’s finger with his gaze, and then looks back to Zitao.
“Practice?”
Zitao smiles proudly. “Wushu.”
Baekhyun stares incredulously. “Wushu?”
Very gently, Zitao displaces Aeri. She scampers away once she’s been set to the side. Zitao stands, descending the steps of the porch, out into the rain. On the lawn, he turns to Baekhyun. His hair is wet and sticking to his forehead. The bruises are still dark, coloring him dangerously. His shirt-god, his shirt is soaked. Baekhyun can see everything beneath it. Nervously, he jerks his eyes back up to Zitao’s face, worried that he’ll have been caught staring. Zitao’s expression is strange, but Baekhyun doesn’t get a chance to interpret it.
Zitao kicks his foot up above his head. He swings his arms out dangerously, striking the air as though he were striking an attacker. His face is serious, deathly so. His show is brief, but when he finishes, his chest is heaving from the effort. Baekhyun tries-he tries so hard not to stare at it. When he looks back up into Zitao’s face, Zitao is smiling proudly. “Wushu.”
He comes to sit next to Baekhyun once more, reaching for the cat. She skitters away from his wet hand. Baekhyun stares for a long while in silence, chewing his lip and puzzling in his head over and over and over until the words come out too fast for him to stop them. “Why didn’t you fight back?” Zitao cocks his head, his face blank. Baekhyun frowns and points to Zitao’s nose, which is cut and discolored, and then to his lip, bearing the same injuries. “Fight. Why didn’t you fight back?”
Zitao’s face pinches unhappily, and he turns his eyes down towards his lap. Baekhyun stares, needing to know. He had seen Zitao’s restraint in the video, how he’d wanted to do so much more than he did. But this is so much more than Baekhyun thought. Zitao probably could have saved himself if he’d wanted to. But Zitao doesn’t answer him. Not for a long while. When he does answer, all he says is, “Not fight,” and that seems to be the end of it.
“Why…” Baekhyun starts, but doesn’t know how to finish in a way that Zitao will understand. He points to the bruises again, and then asks, “Why?” and leaves it at that. Zitao’s face flushes, and he looks away. “Are you…do you…” The words won’t come out, much as Baekhyun has been thinking about them since Zitao started hanging around his street in the first place.
“I?” Zitao asks, turning to Baekhyun.
“Do you like boys?”
“Like…boys?” Zitao’s pronunciation is slow and unsure. “Wo xihuan-oh.” Zitao’s face flushes an even deeper pink, and he clenches his hands into fists. “No,” he says abruptly.
“Oh,” Baekhyun says, and then speaks before considering what he’s saying. “I think I do.”
Zitao doesn’t look at him at first, still staring down at his hands, but after a moment, he frowns, looking up. “You…like boys?” Baekhyun freezes up, because he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say at this point. Zitao twists his mouth to the side, and then says, “I…also…m-maybe?”
Baekhyun has so much he wants to say, his mouth wide open, ready to speak, when Zitao’s phone chimes. He picks it up, swiping the alarm to silence it. They look up at each other, Zitao smiling sheepishly. “Practice,” he says, standing. He doesn’t move at first. Baekhyun stands up beside him. Together, they descend the steps and into the rain. Zitao slips his phone into his pocket to protect it from the drizzle. “Good-bye,” he says, when it seems like that’s all there is left to say. He’s turned his back when Baekhyun thinks of something else.
“Wait-” Zitao turns, surprise on his face. “Why did you start sitting outside my house?” Zitao frowns, and Baekhyun scrambles for a way to simplify his question. “You-,” he points at Zitao, “sit,” he points to the tree. “Why?”
Zitao’s face pinches for a moment, and then he smiles. “Cat,” he says, pointing to Aeri, who watches them from the dry safety of the porch. Baekhyun glances back at her; she blinks at him lazily. He turns back to Zitao with a smile.
“See you tomorrow?” he asks.
Without hesitation, Zitao nods. “Tomorrow.”
Summer comes with heat and humidity and thunder storms. A lot of thunderstorms. Some weeks, it rains more than it doesn’t. Baekhyun would be disappointed, but he isn’t. Even when it rains, Zitao still comes over. Baekhyun buys him a nice umbrella as a belated birthday present, and Zitao always props it up on the porch to dry before ringing the doorbell. Baekhyun chides him, because he always leaves the door unlocked, and Zitao never uses it.
They always escape to his bedroom. Usually, Baekhyun is doing homework. Sometimes, Zitao will bring his homework over, too. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes, Baekhyun can be persuaded to just sit on the bed with Zitao, staring up at his ceiling fan and talking. It doesn’t take much persuasion. Such afternoons are slow, quiet. Hot. His fan can only do so much. Sometimes Zitao wears short sleeves, but usually, he wears shirts with no sleeves at all. Baekhyun wants to touch his arms, but all he ever does is hold Zitao’s hands.
Chanyeol and Jongdae don’t know about Zitao. Baekhyun’s parents know him, but they don’t about him-or more, them. Baekhyun is still trying to figure it out. He doesn’t know much, but he does know that if he rolls onto his side just close enough to reach Zitao, Zitao will turn his head and Baekhyun will be close enough to kiss him. He does it at least once whenever Zitao comes over. He’s already done it once this afternoon, but he wants to do it again. When he kisses Zitao this time, he kisses him a little bit longer, lingering for a moment before pulling away. Zitao’s eyes are wide and mystified, as if Baekhyun has done something spectacular. Baekhyun smiles at him.
When Zitao looks like that, it doesn’t feel like there’s very much to figure out at all. And if he has to figure anything out, that’s okay. Everything he needs is right here beside him. They’ll solve it together, fighting each other’s battles if they have to. Baekhyun still doesn’t know how to fight, but when he kisses Zitao slowly and tenderly, he thinks, he’ll work something out if he has to.