Fiat Lux
Title: Fiat Lux
Author: Anonymous until 1/30/14
For: printedapples
Pairing: Baekhyun/Kai
Word Count: 3,456
Summary: "You're the one they talk about. 'And then God said, let there be light.' You were the first."
Warnings: Mentions of (past) violent character death.
Rating: R
One
The first thing in his hears is the squeak of a rusty metal door, then a small whimper of pain. Baekhyun's eyes are open even before he hears the footsteps, and then -stars. Pain explodes in the right side of his ribcage, the toe of a boot digging sharply into his chest. The guard kicks him again, and Baekhyun tries not to let it show on his face. There's another cry behind him, then the clatter of metal on concrete.
Baekhyun already knows he won't touch the plate of food before the door closes. In the next cell over, he can hear Jongdae stuffing the stale bread into his mouth, tiny whines and grunts dropping from his throat.
Baekhyun will give him a few more days, at best.
÷
He's not too far off. One a cold Wednesday about one week later, Jongdae's powers are completely gone. By then, his body is too weak to resist the guards that carry him out of his cell. Baekhyun gets one last look at his face through the bars and sees that Jongdae's eyes are glazed and unfocused. What a pity, he thinks. Jongdae had so much potential.
Baekhyun gives a disinterested glance at his untouched plate of food and wonders how long he can continue to starve himself before he absolutely needs to eat again.
He figures not very long.
÷
When he wakes up Thursday morning, there's a new occupant in Jongdae's old cell. It's his helpless, pathetic sobbing that had woken him up, and Baekhyun tries to push down his irritation. He looks young, and his eyes are still scared. Baekhyun stretches, dutifully ignoring the gnawing ache in his stomach.
The boy is sitting on the floor with his knees drawn up into himself. Baekhyun clears his throat pointedly and the boy looks over with a startled whimper.
"There's no point, you know," Baekhyun tells him, and the boy-eyes red and puffing from crying-turns around in shock. "They're not gonna let you out, so just save your energy."
It's almost heartbreaking, Baekhyun thinks, watching the boy hiccuping through his tears. He sighs heavily. "What are you here for?"
"H-here for?" The boy's voice is scratchy and grates at his nerves. Jongdae was never this desolate. "I don't-"
"Clearly, you're here for a reason," Baekhyun cuts in tiredly. He feels sorry for the kid, but he's had enough of explaining when they all just get carried out in a couple of weeks anyway. "That's why they locked you up. You can do something special."
And then the boy's eyes go wide. "How do you know?"
Baekhyun grins. It's a tired grin, one that's seen one too many ribcages and not enough sleep. "Kid, that's why we're all here."
÷
The boy's name is Jongin. Baekhyun had extracted it out of him when he'd finished crying, and he was nineteen.
"So you never answered my question." Baekhyun sprawls out on his cot, watching Jongin do the same. "What are you here for?"
Jongin shifts uncomfortably under the thin blanket. It occurs to Baekhyun that he's just a teenager. The last one in here who had been Jongin's age was……
Baekhyun frowns and pushes Sehun out of his mind. That he didn't talk about. Sehun is a sensitive topic.
"I can be in places," Jongin says softly. "Like, almost instantly. If I just think hard enough, I could do it. I don't even need to try. I'll just…. bam. I'm there."
Baekhyun raises his eyebrows. Powers of the mind had not been unheard of-Lu Han's case was all too infamous. But up until now Baekhyun had never come across one himself.
He glances down at Jongin's empty plate. "I see you've been eating."
Jongin flinches. "I see you haven't."
Baekhyun snorts. "You wouldn't either, if you knew what was in it."
And when all the color drains from Jongin's face, Baekhyun smiles wryly. "Don't worry, the food's not poisoned. But it is drugged."
Jongin swallows. "Drugged? For what?"
"To weaken you. They drug you up enough so you can't use your abilities, and that's when they carry you off to experiment."
Jongin makes a face. "So what-do you just starve yourself?"
Baekhyun laughs. "Not completely. Just enough that any food I do eat doesn't take affect the way they want it to. I can still use my abilities because of it."
"What can you do?"
Baekhyun hesitates. This is something he's kept secret. Up until now, he's never let anyone know about the food, about retaining their abilities. But Jongin's face-young, curious, eager-is a rare sight in a place as desolate as this, and something in Baekhyun's heart softens, and he goes up to the bars separating his and Jongin's cells and sits down.
"Come here."
Jongin swings off his cot with an alarming agility and kneels in front of the bars. Baekhyun holds up his hand, and his palm glows with a faint little light.
It's been about two days since Baekhyun last ate, so the power is still there, but the light is weak. Baekhyun watches as Jongin's eyes grow wider and wider, his sleepy little face suddenly alive and alert.
Jongin tries to grasp his hand but Baekhyun pulls it back. "We can't touch," he says.
"Why not?"
Baekhyun sighs heavily. "'Contact is sensibility'," he says dully. "We're not allowed to have Contact because we transcend the sensible. We're not supposed to exist, Jongin. To them, we're not human."
Jongin's forehead is pressed against the bars, and Baekhyun thinks that he looks inescapably sad. "What are we, then?"
Baekhyun shrugs, fighting back the urge to reach past the cell boundary and hold his hand, because they can't do that. Not anymore. Not since Sehun…….
He stands up slowly, dusting off the pants they're all required to wear. They're yellow, which was bullshit, really. Yellow as if to make up for all the gray bleakness of the place. Baekhyun hates them.
"Toys, I guess," he says quietly, making his way back to his cot. "Experiments. We're just means to an end, in the name of science."
Jongin is still kneeling at the bars, staring at him with an expression that Baekhyun can't place. "Not to the outside, we're not. Maybe they-" Jongin nudges his head north, towards the general direction of the facility center. Baekhyun knows as much as Jongin does that they means the scientists. "-think that we're toys, but we're not. We're something more, I think." He's drawing idle patterns in the ground with his finger, and like this, Baekhyun can see the curve of his cheekbone, the bite of his lip. Jongin is beautiful, he thinks, a reminder that he too, is unnatural. People weren't just born beautiful anymore. Beauty was manufactured, given, and usually at a price.
"Before I was caught," Jongin continues, and Baekhyun lies very still, listening to the gentle cadence of his voice. "I heard things. They talk about us, sometimes. They call us gods."
This is a different they, one Baekhyun isn't as familiar with.
Baekhyun snorts and turns over. "We're not gods, Jongin."
Jongin looks at him thoughtfully. "Maybe not. But to them, we are. They talk about us, hyung. They talk about you."
Baekhyun goes quiet, craning his head to look at him. Baekhyun hasn't been outside in years, doesn't know anything of the people these days or what they've been saying. He used to try to keep up, back when he cared, back when it was only him screaming for mercy in solitude.
"They talk about me?"
Jongin's hands come up to clasp the bars, and Baekhyun's gaze goes to them. The skin of his fingers is smooth and unmarred, and he flinches to think of how that very soon might change. "They talk about you the most. I knew it as soon as I saw your hand glow-that you were the one they whisper about. I've heard, but I never would have thought….."
Baekhyun shifts uncomfortably on the bed as Jongin continues, his voice now lowered in barely suppressed awe. Or was it fear?
"'And then God said, let there be light'," Jongin whispers. "You were the first one, weren't you? You're the one they talk about, hyung. They call you the candle in the dark. They think you're going to save them."
The first one. In a way, maybe Baekhyun had been the first one whose identity was leaked to the public. There are had been others before him, others whose names the people didn't know for reasons Baekhyun wasn't aware of, or didn't care to find out. Baekhyun had no interest in the savior title. The last time he tried to save someone, they had all been punished. He didn't care what the people thought about him, his light was no saving grace.
Baekhyun remembers Sehun being pushed to his knees, his young, scared face ribboned with cuts and scrapes. "From this day on," they'd said, pressing the muzzle of a military rifle to his temple, and Baekhyun remembers sobbing helplessly from where they'd chained him to a chair, forced to watch. "There will be no Contact. Contact is sensibility, and you have none." Baekhyun had barely heard the gunshot over his own screaming.
Over his shoulder, he hears Jongin get up and go back to his own cot, and Baekhyun realizes that Sehun would have been the same as Jongin now. It hurts to think about.
In the dark, Baekhyun's palm glows faintly as he lies there trembling, hunger clawing at his stomach. He'd have to eat tomorrow no matter what, or else he'd pass out and then they'd feed him while he was unconscious. A hot, angry tear slides down his face.
And then God said, let there be light.
His hands ball up into tight fists. There was no such thing as God, and Baekhyun wasn't going to save anyone.
÷
He barely waits for the door to click shut before leaping off his cot to the metal plate placed carelessly in front of the door. The mess of food looks disgusting as it always does, but Baekhyun scarfs it down anyway. His stomach groans in protest after days without eating as he stuffs the bland tasting bread into his mouth.
Jongin watches him warily from his cell. Baekhyun ignores him.
"I thought you weren't eating," he hears Jongin say when he stands up, wiping his mouth. At the mouth of Jongin's cell lies a plate of untouched food.
Baekhyun clambers back onto his cot, wrapping the thin blankets around himself, "I only eat when I really need to."
Jongin's heavy-lidded gaze bores into him for a moment longer, before lying down and stretching. His body is long and soft looking, and it's hard for Baekhyun to imagine Jongin like him, with too many ribs showing.
His gaze moves to Jongin's plate of food, and a half-hearted snort escapes his lips. "If you're trying to starve to yourself so you can teleport out of here, it won't work. They've got something around this place-I don't know what it is, but you can't just teleport out of here. Plus, they'll know if you tried."
Baekhyun's not prepared when Jongin starts to laugh. "Who said I'm trying to teleport out?"
÷
It happens two days later. Baekhyun's woken up by a deafening crack, and his eyes fly open to find Jongin's cell empty.
He's only staring at his unmade bed for about ten seconds before there's another crack and suddenly Jongin is standing there, sweaty and shaking all over, but grinning from ear to ear.
Baekhyun leaps out of bed and rushes to the bars. "Did you-?"
Jongin lets out a breathy laugh. "Yeah. It really worked-I can't believe it-"
"You got out?" Baekhyun's knuckles are white from gripping the bars so tight.
"Not out, I told you," Jongin says, plopping down in front of Baekhyun's feet. "In."
Baekhyun frowns, sinking down as well. "In?"
"Another cell," Jongin whispers.
His breath catches in his throat. The others. Baekhyun hasn't heard anything of the others since Contact was outlawed in the facility, and that had been over a year ago.
"Did anyone see you?" Baekhyun asks him quietly.
"Of course," Jongin says. "The boy in the cell. But only for a second. I think I scared him."
Baekhyun tenses. "What did he look like?"
Jongin considers for a second. "Short. Small face, slim shoulders. And pale, very pale."
Baekhyun releases the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. The last time he'd seen Joonmyun was right before the shooting. There had been a commotion in the corridor, and Baekhyun had looked up to see the guard parading him past the door. They had made eye contact for a second, and there was something in Joonmyun's expression that Baekhyun hadn't quite understood, but then he blinked and Joonmyun was gone.
Jongin makes a noise in his throat. "I'm going to try again."
"Don't-" Baekhyun starts, but Jongin cuts him off.
"Not now, in a little while. I'm not stupid."
And nothing Baekhyun says seems to register in his brain, because three hours later Baekhyun hears another crack and Jongin's cell is empty again. He's gone for a full hour before he reappears, looking both shaken and unnerved.
"What happened?" Baekhyun asks.
"There was a bed this time," Jongin says, and this time he sounds truly disturbed. "The boy looks like he's sleeping, but he has an IV drip in his arm."
Baekhyun grits his teeth. "Lu Han."
"Lu Han?"
"Telekinesis," Baekhyun says quietly, shaking his head. "They keep him sedated. They won't risk it. Too dangerous for them."
Jongin bites his lip, clenching and unclenching his fingers in his sheets. "We could wake him up," he says slowly, "get him to help. We could get out of here, hyung."
"No." Baekhyun says, going back to his bed. He's heard enough. "You can't touch him. Don't go back, Jongin."
Jongin doesn't say anything, just sits there and looks at him sadly, and Baekhyun rolls over in his cot.
Sehun had been lonely, and he was younger then, young and scared. It had been so easy to reach past the boundary of his cell into Sehun's and hold his hand. It had been an easy kind of comfort-easy, until they made an example out of him.
Contact is sensibility. It had been drilled into his head so many times after the shooting, sometimes Baekhyun finds himself believing it.
That he has none.
÷
He's woken up against his will again two days later, but this time it's Jongin's whimpers that wrench his eyes open and make him sit straight up.
The door to Jongin's empty cell bursts open and a group of orderlies come in dragging a battered-looking Jongin in with them, before tossing him on the floor next to his cot. His face is bruised, and lip bloody, and Baekhyun presses himself as low to ground as possible next to the bars.
"Jongin," he whispers. "Jongin."
Jongin's eyes crack open a little bit. They're still puffy, and Baekhyun can see where the yellow fades into purplish red right under his eyebrows.
"I got caught," he says hoarsely, and laughs a dry, racking laugh. "I went back, hyung. I got the IV out of his arm when they found me."
Baekhyun doesn't want to think about what Lu Han waking up could mean for the facility. If what Jongin says is true, they don't have much time.
"Jongin," he says again, stretching his arm past the bars as far as it would go. Jongin's hand lies just out of reach, and something splinters deep inside him as he watches the boy struggle closer through his wincing.
"This is our chance," Jongin rasps, and there is a second in which the pain that shows on his face almost makes Baekhyun withdraw his hand, but then with a whimper Jongin drags himself closer and then-
Their fingertips touch. They stay like that for a few moments, the edges of Baekhyun's nails pressing in ever so slightly into the pads of Jongin's fingers, and Jongin wriggles even closer.
"We're going to do it, hyung," Jongin breathes, and even though his face is bloody and bruised, he still sounds so full of life. "We'll get out. You're going to be the candle in the dark."
His skin is so smooth and dry, and Baekhyun's touch is light over his palm, tracing Jongin's heart line with his fingertips.
In the distance, they both hear the alarm go off. Baekhyun links his fingers with Jongin's even as the alarms grow louder and louder, and the shouting starts up. Even after all this time, the procedure is still the same. They've broken the highest rule-Contact is sensibility, and you have none.
But this isn't the same. Jongin's hand clasped tightly in his-this isn't just Contact, and Baekhyun wonders faintly as the running footsteps echo in the corridor if it was sensibility that they'd been trying to stamp out of them.
Baekhyun thinks about wiping Sehun's tears through the bars of their cells. He thinks of the spark of something that had passed between him and Joonmyun, of the light in Jongin's eyes whenever Baekhyun's palm flickered.
Baekhyun thinks about Lu Han in his bed sleeping, adrift in dreams that he was never supposed to wake up from, and the IV pulled from his arm-it might be their only chance.
Baekhyun thinks about Jongin squeezing his hand back, and Jongin trying to smile at him even as keys clatter in the doors of their cells. Baekhyun thinks about sensibility, and he decides that sensibility was not it.
Hope. The power of touch, of connection-a caress.
He almost can't hear the sounds of the guards and orderlies shouting as they try to pull them apart, distracted by the flow of blood through his body, and then there is a odd rushing sensation towards his fingertips.
Hands wrap around his middle, force him up, and their connection breaks as Jongin's hand slips out of Baekhyun's. The rushing sensation is stronger now, and the men grabbing him force him to his feet.
On the other side of the bars, Jongin struggles against the men, using his teeth to bite one of the orderlies' arms. Another man slaps him across the face. Anger blooms in Baekhyun's stomach, hot and vindictive.
And then God said, let there be light.
Baekhyun's palm begins to glow.
A/N:
A/N: Van, I'm so honored to have written for you. I'm not sure if this is what you quite expected, but I hope you'll still like it anyway! <3 Happy Baekfest!
One
Author: Anonymous until 1/30/14
For: printedapples
Pairing: Baekhyun/Kai
Word Count: 3,456
Summary: "You're the one they talk about. 'And then God said, let there be light.' You were the first."
Warnings: Mentions of (past) violent character death.
Rating: R
One
The first thing in his hears is the squeak of a rusty metal door, then a small whimper of pain. Baekhyun's eyes are open even before he hears the footsteps, and then -stars. Pain explodes in the right side of his ribcage, the toe of a boot digging sharply into his chest. The guard kicks him again, and Baekhyun tries not to let it show on his face. There's another cry behind him, then the clatter of metal on concrete.
Baekhyun already knows he won't touch the plate of food before the door closes. In the next cell over, he can hear Jongdae stuffing the stale bread into his mouth, tiny whines and grunts dropping from his throat.
Baekhyun will give him a few more days, at best.
÷
He's not too far off. One a cold Wednesday about one week later, Jongdae's powers are completely gone. By then, his body is too weak to resist the guards that carry him out of his cell. Baekhyun gets one last look at his face through the bars and sees that Jongdae's eyes are glazed and unfocused. What a pity, he thinks. Jongdae had so much potential.
Baekhyun gives a disinterested glance at his untouched plate of food and wonders how long he can continue to starve himself before he absolutely needs to eat again.
He figures not very long.
÷
When he wakes up Thursday morning, there's a new occupant in Jongdae's old cell. It's his helpless, pathetic sobbing that had woken him up, and Baekhyun tries to push down his irritation. He looks young, and his eyes are still scared. Baekhyun stretches, dutifully ignoring the gnawing ache in his stomach.
The boy is sitting on the floor with his knees drawn up into himself. Baekhyun clears his throat pointedly and the boy looks over with a startled whimper.
"There's no point, you know," Baekhyun tells him, and the boy-eyes red and puffing from crying-turns around in shock. "They're not gonna let you out, so just save your energy."
It's almost heartbreaking, Baekhyun thinks, watching the boy hiccuping through his tears. He sighs heavily. "What are you here for?"
"H-here for?" The boy's voice is scratchy and grates at his nerves. Jongdae was never this desolate. "I don't-"
"Clearly, you're here for a reason," Baekhyun cuts in tiredly. He feels sorry for the kid, but he's had enough of explaining when they all just get carried out in a couple of weeks anyway. "That's why they locked you up. You can do something special."
And then the boy's eyes go wide. "How do you know?"
Baekhyun grins. It's a tired grin, one that's seen one too many ribcages and not enough sleep. "Kid, that's why we're all here."
÷
The boy's name is Jongin. Baekhyun had extracted it out of him when he'd finished crying, and he was nineteen.
"So you never answered my question." Baekhyun sprawls out on his cot, watching Jongin do the same. "What are you here for?"
Jongin shifts uncomfortably under the thin blanket. It occurs to Baekhyun that he's just a teenager. The last one in here who had been Jongin's age was……
Baekhyun frowns and pushes Sehun out of his mind. That he didn't talk about. Sehun is a sensitive topic.
"I can be in places," Jongin says softly. "Like, almost instantly. If I just think hard enough, I could do it. I don't even need to try. I'll just…. bam. I'm there."
Baekhyun raises his eyebrows. Powers of the mind had not been unheard of-Lu Han's case was all too infamous. But up until now Baekhyun had never come across one himself.
He glances down at Jongin's empty plate. "I see you've been eating."
Jongin flinches. "I see you haven't."
Baekhyun snorts. "You wouldn't either, if you knew what was in it."
And when all the color drains from Jongin's face, Baekhyun smiles wryly. "Don't worry, the food's not poisoned. But it is drugged."
Jongin swallows. "Drugged? For what?"
"To weaken you. They drug you up enough so you can't use your abilities, and that's when they carry you off to experiment."
Jongin makes a face. "So what-do you just starve yourself?"
Baekhyun laughs. "Not completely. Just enough that any food I do eat doesn't take affect the way they want it to. I can still use my abilities because of it."
"What can you do?"
Baekhyun hesitates. This is something he's kept secret. Up until now, he's never let anyone know about the food, about retaining their abilities. But Jongin's face-young, curious, eager-is a rare sight in a place as desolate as this, and something in Baekhyun's heart softens, and he goes up to the bars separating his and Jongin's cells and sits down.
"Come here."
Jongin swings off his cot with an alarming agility and kneels in front of the bars. Baekhyun holds up his hand, and his palm glows with a faint little light.
It's been about two days since Baekhyun last ate, so the power is still there, but the light is weak. Baekhyun watches as Jongin's eyes grow wider and wider, his sleepy little face suddenly alive and alert.
Jongin tries to grasp his hand but Baekhyun pulls it back. "We can't touch," he says.
"Why not?"
Baekhyun sighs heavily. "'Contact is sensibility'," he says dully. "We're not allowed to have Contact because we transcend the sensible. We're not supposed to exist, Jongin. To them, we're not human."
Jongin's forehead is pressed against the bars, and Baekhyun thinks that he looks inescapably sad. "What are we, then?"
Baekhyun shrugs, fighting back the urge to reach past the cell boundary and hold his hand, because they can't do that. Not anymore. Not since Sehun…….
He stands up slowly, dusting off the pants they're all required to wear. They're yellow, which was bullshit, really. Yellow as if to make up for all the gray bleakness of the place. Baekhyun hates them.
"Toys, I guess," he says quietly, making his way back to his cot. "Experiments. We're just means to an end, in the name of science."
Jongin is still kneeling at the bars, staring at him with an expression that Baekhyun can't place. "Not to the outside, we're not. Maybe they-" Jongin nudges his head north, towards the general direction of the facility center. Baekhyun knows as much as Jongin does that they means the scientists. "-think that we're toys, but we're not. We're something more, I think." He's drawing idle patterns in the ground with his finger, and like this, Baekhyun can see the curve of his cheekbone, the bite of his lip. Jongin is beautiful, he thinks, a reminder that he too, is unnatural. People weren't just born beautiful anymore. Beauty was manufactured, given, and usually at a price.
"Before I was caught," Jongin continues, and Baekhyun lies very still, listening to the gentle cadence of his voice. "I heard things. They talk about us, sometimes. They call us gods."
This is a different they, one Baekhyun isn't as familiar with.
Baekhyun snorts and turns over. "We're not gods, Jongin."
Jongin looks at him thoughtfully. "Maybe not. But to them, we are. They talk about us, hyung. They talk about you."
Baekhyun goes quiet, craning his head to look at him. Baekhyun hasn't been outside in years, doesn't know anything of the people these days or what they've been saying. He used to try to keep up, back when he cared, back when it was only him screaming for mercy in solitude.
"They talk about me?"
Jongin's hands come up to clasp the bars, and Baekhyun's gaze goes to them. The skin of his fingers is smooth and unmarred, and he flinches to think of how that very soon might change. "They talk about you the most. I knew it as soon as I saw your hand glow-that you were the one they whisper about. I've heard, but I never would have thought….."
Baekhyun shifts uncomfortably on the bed as Jongin continues, his voice now lowered in barely suppressed awe. Or was it fear?
"'And then God said, let there be light'," Jongin whispers. "You were the first one, weren't you? You're the one they talk about, hyung. They call you the candle in the dark. They think you're going to save them."
The first one. In a way, maybe Baekhyun had been the first one whose identity was leaked to the public. There are had been others before him, others whose names the people didn't know for reasons Baekhyun wasn't aware of, or didn't care to find out. Baekhyun had no interest in the savior title. The last time he tried to save someone, they had all been punished. He didn't care what the people thought about him, his light was no saving grace.
Baekhyun remembers Sehun being pushed to his knees, his young, scared face ribboned with cuts and scrapes. "From this day on," they'd said, pressing the muzzle of a military rifle to his temple, and Baekhyun remembers sobbing helplessly from where they'd chained him to a chair, forced to watch. "There will be no Contact. Contact is sensibility, and you have none." Baekhyun had barely heard the gunshot over his own screaming.
Over his shoulder, he hears Jongin get up and go back to his own cot, and Baekhyun realizes that Sehun would have been the same as Jongin now. It hurts to think about.
In the dark, Baekhyun's palm glows faintly as he lies there trembling, hunger clawing at his stomach. He'd have to eat tomorrow no matter what, or else he'd pass out and then they'd feed him while he was unconscious. A hot, angry tear slides down his face.
And then God said, let there be light.
His hands ball up into tight fists. There was no such thing as God, and Baekhyun wasn't going to save anyone.
÷
He barely waits for the door to click shut before leaping off his cot to the metal plate placed carelessly in front of the door. The mess of food looks disgusting as it always does, but Baekhyun scarfs it down anyway. His stomach groans in protest after days without eating as he stuffs the bland tasting bread into his mouth.
Jongin watches him warily from his cell. Baekhyun ignores him.
"I thought you weren't eating," he hears Jongin say when he stands up, wiping his mouth. At the mouth of Jongin's cell lies a plate of untouched food.
Baekhyun clambers back onto his cot, wrapping the thin blankets around himself, "I only eat when I really need to."
Jongin's heavy-lidded gaze bores into him for a moment longer, before lying down and stretching. His body is long and soft looking, and it's hard for Baekhyun to imagine Jongin like him, with too many ribs showing.
His gaze moves to Jongin's plate of food, and a half-hearted snort escapes his lips. "If you're trying to starve to yourself so you can teleport out of here, it won't work. They've got something around this place-I don't know what it is, but you can't just teleport out of here. Plus, they'll know if you tried."
Baekhyun's not prepared when Jongin starts to laugh. "Who said I'm trying to teleport out?"
÷
It happens two days later. Baekhyun's woken up by a deafening crack, and his eyes fly open to find Jongin's cell empty.
He's only staring at his unmade bed for about ten seconds before there's another crack and suddenly Jongin is standing there, sweaty and shaking all over, but grinning from ear to ear.
Baekhyun leaps out of bed and rushes to the bars. "Did you-?"
Jongin lets out a breathy laugh. "Yeah. It really worked-I can't believe it-"
"You got out?" Baekhyun's knuckles are white from gripping the bars so tight.
"Not out, I told you," Jongin says, plopping down in front of Baekhyun's feet. "In."
Baekhyun frowns, sinking down as well. "In?"
"Another cell," Jongin whispers.
His breath catches in his throat. The others. Baekhyun hasn't heard anything of the others since Contact was outlawed in the facility, and that had been over a year ago.
"Did anyone see you?" Baekhyun asks him quietly.
"Of course," Jongin says. "The boy in the cell. But only for a second. I think I scared him."
Baekhyun tenses. "What did he look like?"
Jongin considers for a second. "Short. Small face, slim shoulders. And pale, very pale."
Baekhyun releases the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. The last time he'd seen Joonmyun was right before the shooting. There had been a commotion in the corridor, and Baekhyun had looked up to see the guard parading him past the door. They had made eye contact for a second, and there was something in Joonmyun's expression that Baekhyun hadn't quite understood, but then he blinked and Joonmyun was gone.
Jongin makes a noise in his throat. "I'm going to try again."
"Don't-" Baekhyun starts, but Jongin cuts him off.
"Not now, in a little while. I'm not stupid."
And nothing Baekhyun says seems to register in his brain, because three hours later Baekhyun hears another crack and Jongin's cell is empty again. He's gone for a full hour before he reappears, looking both shaken and unnerved.
"What happened?" Baekhyun asks.
"There was a bed this time," Jongin says, and this time he sounds truly disturbed. "The boy looks like he's sleeping, but he has an IV drip in his arm."
Baekhyun grits his teeth. "Lu Han."
"Lu Han?"
"Telekinesis," Baekhyun says quietly, shaking his head. "They keep him sedated. They won't risk it. Too dangerous for them."
Jongin bites his lip, clenching and unclenching his fingers in his sheets. "We could wake him up," he says slowly, "get him to help. We could get out of here, hyung."
"No." Baekhyun says, going back to his bed. He's heard enough. "You can't touch him. Don't go back, Jongin."
Jongin doesn't say anything, just sits there and looks at him sadly, and Baekhyun rolls over in his cot.
Sehun had been lonely, and he was younger then, young and scared. It had been so easy to reach past the boundary of his cell into Sehun's and hold his hand. It had been an easy kind of comfort-easy, until they made an example out of him.
Contact is sensibility. It had been drilled into his head so many times after the shooting, sometimes Baekhyun finds himself believing it.
That he has none.
÷
He's woken up against his will again two days later, but this time it's Jongin's whimpers that wrench his eyes open and make him sit straight up.
The door to Jongin's empty cell bursts open and a group of orderlies come in dragging a battered-looking Jongin in with them, before tossing him on the floor next to his cot. His face is bruised, and lip bloody, and Baekhyun presses himself as low to ground as possible next to the bars.
"Jongin," he whispers. "Jongin."
Jongin's eyes crack open a little bit. They're still puffy, and Baekhyun can see where the yellow fades into purplish red right under his eyebrows.
"I got caught," he says hoarsely, and laughs a dry, racking laugh. "I went back, hyung. I got the IV out of his arm when they found me."
Baekhyun doesn't want to think about what Lu Han waking up could mean for the facility. If what Jongin says is true, they don't have much time.
"Jongin," he says again, stretching his arm past the bars as far as it would go. Jongin's hand lies just out of reach, and something splinters deep inside him as he watches the boy struggle closer through his wincing.
"This is our chance," Jongin rasps, and there is a second in which the pain that shows on his face almost makes Baekhyun withdraw his hand, but then with a whimper Jongin drags himself closer and then-
Their fingertips touch. They stay like that for a few moments, the edges of Baekhyun's nails pressing in ever so slightly into the pads of Jongin's fingers, and Jongin wriggles even closer.
"We're going to do it, hyung," Jongin breathes, and even though his face is bloody and bruised, he still sounds so full of life. "We'll get out. You're going to be the candle in the dark."
His skin is so smooth and dry, and Baekhyun's touch is light over his palm, tracing Jongin's heart line with his fingertips.
In the distance, they both hear the alarm go off. Baekhyun links his fingers with Jongin's even as the alarms grow louder and louder, and the shouting starts up. Even after all this time, the procedure is still the same. They've broken the highest rule-Contact is sensibility, and you have none.
But this isn't the same. Jongin's hand clasped tightly in his-this isn't just Contact, and Baekhyun wonders faintly as the running footsteps echo in the corridor if it was sensibility that they'd been trying to stamp out of them.
Baekhyun thinks about wiping Sehun's tears through the bars of their cells. He thinks of the spark of something that had passed between him and Joonmyun, of the light in Jongin's eyes whenever Baekhyun's palm flickered.
Baekhyun thinks about Lu Han in his bed sleeping, adrift in dreams that he was never supposed to wake up from, and the IV pulled from his arm-it might be their only chance.
Baekhyun thinks about Jongin squeezing his hand back, and Jongin trying to smile at him even as keys clatter in the doors of their cells. Baekhyun thinks about sensibility, and he decides that sensibility was not it.
Hope. The power of touch, of connection-a caress.
He almost can't hear the sounds of the guards and orderlies shouting as they try to pull them apart, distracted by the flow of blood through his body, and then there is a odd rushing sensation towards his fingertips.
Hands wrap around his middle, force him up, and their connection breaks as Jongin's hand slips out of Baekhyun's. The rushing sensation is stronger now, and the men grabbing him force him to his feet.
On the other side of the bars, Jongin struggles against the men, using his teeth to bite one of the orderlies' arms. Another man slaps him across the face. Anger blooms in Baekhyun's stomach, hot and vindictive.
And then God said, let there be light.
Baekhyun's palm begins to glow.
A/N:
A/N: Van, I'm so honored to have written for you. I'm not sure if this is what you quite expected, but I hope you'll still like it anyway! <3 Happy Baekfest!
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