2014: Blue Nocturne (for EVERYONE)
For: EVERYONE
From: ANONYMOUS until December 30, 2014
Title: Blue Nocturne
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s)/Focus: Baekhyun/Xiumin
Length: 5,760 words
Summary: There has always been something missing from Baekhyun's life.
Warnings: slightly aggressive smut (but entirely consensual)
Notes: First of all, thanks so much to the Mods for being so understanding and literally bending over backwards in the light of health difficulties, I'm so grateful to you for allowing me to participate. A big thanks also to my recipient for the lovely prompts and the chance to write a pairing I haven't written before; I hope you like this. Thanks so much to B and A and J for helping me brainstorm at the beginning, to tlist for being there, to A for beta-ing despite Christmas (and I'm so sorry for always being such a terrible writer to work with) and of course to that special person who is always there when I need someone to kick me at 3 am to keep writing and not flip tables.
This story was inspired in a small way by the music video for Jin's 너만 없다. I wrote most of this story while looping the song Transgender by Crystal Castles, if you're interested. Clark's entire self-titled album was also instrumental in the creation of this story.
There has always been something missing from Baekhyun's life. He'll be walking down the street, perfectly happy and content with his world when the faintest trickle of sound - the tone of a car horn or the sound of a melodious clink of cup against cup at a street-side coffee shop - will worm its way into his mind and his happiness will have a sliver of sadness slit out of it.
"Have you remembered yet today?" Chanyeol owns a little shop by the station on D-; he blows glass for a living and Baekhyun is secretly envious of his friend who was allowed to do what he always wanted.
(Baekhyun was a web designer and while he liked his job - he got to talk to people and create wonderful things out of tiny lines of text - he'd always wanted something different for himself. Something involving his voice, and the faintest music from a memory he couldn't understand.)
Jongdae gets it, how a music note can birth a world. He writes music for films and his symphonies have people swooning or sobbing in their seats, sometimes both.
"Do you remember anything?" he asks Baekhyun for only the thousandth time. They're sipping coffee at a little shop by the station; the barista is really nice even though he's only seen the owner once - a flash of light brown hair behind a closing door.
"He's really busy," Kyungsoo explains. He's a barista but he's actually a cordon bleu chef -
(Baekhyun always knew there was a secret lurking in the recesses of his espresso eyes but the glares he levelled at anyone who dared to ask were a terrifying deterrent: frothed milk might look light and fluffy but a macchiato would still burn-)
Baekhyun sighs. Everything is always tomorrow. For once he'd like it to be today.
☆彡
The piano room was empty and the house was silent. He could still hear the car driving away and see the red lights reflected on the glass.
He closed the music box for the last time and left it on the table, dust already gathering.
The wind was cold as he stepped out into the dark.
☆彡
"So can you stop by?" Baekhyun sighs but agrees before hanging up. He hasn't lived at the old family home for years, but his mother wants to finally clear out the house so he guesses he'd better at least make an appearance.
(He didn't have anything left at the old home, though, everything he had was divided into two suitcases as he proceeded to spend the rest of his childhood shuttled between busy parents who didn't care enough to get mad at each other. Baekhyun was secretly envious of Zitao, who was always crying because of his parents' messy divorce but at least they cared about something other than than money.)
On the subway, he hears a couple of notes strung together and it's enough to stain the clear sky with darker blue.
He wishes he still played the piano. Why did he stop anyway?
(His mom complained about piano lessons being too far away now and his dad didn't care about anything - still doesn't - and there was just a sour taste on his tongue so the keys feel slimy with conflict and he couldn't bring himself to touch them anymore.)
There's still that little bakery on the corner, the two Chinese men who speak French to each other with Parisian accents, the liquid r's heavy in their mouths. The croissant is just as buttery and smooth he remembered it, walking home from school to piano lessons, excitement fluttering in his stomach at the thought of - what? He's lost his train of thought.
The trees are thicker than before and the heavy foliage casts the yard in green shadows. The bars of the gate are rusted but it swings open easily. Baekhyun looks up but the sky is hidden and he can't see the sun.
The number keypad at the door comes as a shock; his memory has been updated without his being consulted and it's like being woken from a dream with a splash of cold water to the face.
F# A F G E F# E F#
For some reason the sound reminds him of the day he left.
(He didn't want to leave - he remembers not being afraid to cry and cause a scene until his mother's driver finally came and tossed him gently into the back seat as he flailed, trying not to crumple the man's suit. He was only mad at his mother.)
There's an abandoned exercise book on the coffee table; the white sheets draped over everything only make the house feel like a statuary or mausoleum.
His phone vibrates, a jarring sound in the thick silence. Dust floats in the air.
"Hello?" It's his mother again.
"Your things are in your bedroom, you remember the way, right?" He nods and hangs up before she can ask him to clean something.
There's nothing in his room at all, not even a photo on the wall. There's only a strange square of wallpaper, like something used to hang there once - he shakes his head. He needs another croissant or better yet, some madeleines. The leaves brushing against the window pick up a low hum and for a moment he sees a face in the window, before it dissolves into shades of green and shadow.
He doesn't bother investigating.
(Crying at night because he'd had a nightmare but no one came.)
There's only one room he hasn't gone into besides the basement, and no one can pay him to do that.
The piano room is as dusty as everywhere else but for some reason he can't understand he has to take the cover off the baby grand, dust billowing through the air with the folds of fabric.
The keys aren't sticky anymore. It was all in his head.
He stops, fingers poised over the keys before letting them fall.
Crash.
The piano hasn't been tuned in over ten years and the sound is terrible. He stumbles up from the bench, letting the cover fall closed with a dull bang. The sound of steel hitting bone.
The room vibrates and a tiny trickle of sound weaves through the air.
It's that sound. The one from his memory.
☆彡
This was not the first time he would get to play the song for his teacher but it would be his last. Claire de Lune. He had worked on it for weeks, twisting his fingers, sweat dripping off his forehead onto the keys below.
This time it had to be perfect.
He started off beautifully, the notes cascading out of his fingers to fall like the spring rain onto the black and white tiles of the courtyard.
(He called it the piano courtyard when he played outside; they played songs with their feet like an imaginary hopscotch of music. )
But one false step and suddenly his fingers were tripping down staircases, the sound like breaking bones on concrete as everything crashed into disaster.
He should have been looking for the disappointment on his teacher's face but instead he was looking at - his memory skipped and the room was empty - leaving only an abandoned music box, the tiny pink ballerina stumbling in one last sad pirouette.
☆彡
The music box.
He remembers it now, the tiny ballerina with a pink tulle skirt, tiny precise pirouettes to the melody of -
"Claire de lune," Baekhyun exhales. The memory is waiting, right on the tip of tongue, a name waiting to be spoken. Maybe if he can find the music box?
It's not in his room, his feet taking them there before he's realized it; everything here he'd just cleared out moments earlier. It's not in the nursery either, that dreaded place of lessons and tests and smuggled French macarons being discarded by his scary-faced tutor, of reading story books under the table and wondering why he didn't have friends like the little boys and girls in books did.
Except for - his memory skips and bubbles out like fire consuming old sepia photographs, the ballooning image of a face that's dissolved before he knows it.
It's not in the parlour or the dining room or the den, where the lingering smoke of cigars still impregnates the wood panelling and starts a rasp in his chest. He coughs lightly into his sleeve, knowing that he'll be coughing harder tomorrow. Finally he's standing at the foot of the stairs up to the attic. They’re not stairs really, but more of a glorified ladder - the wood slats worn bare of finish in the middle because of the traffic of little feet, and this seems like it might be the place.
He trips on the fifth rung, striking his elbow against the wall, and a small cloud of dust springs into the air. It catches an errant beam of light.
(Magic dust, they used to call it. Until they were scolded severely and made to bathe at once and sent to bed without supper.)
The trapdoor to the attic is stuck; it probably hasn't been opened since - he doesn't remember. Another hole.
It's dim, the windows obscured by thick cobwebs clinging to them and - there it is. The box. The blue of the silk cover is muffled by grey dust and there are water spots when he brushes it off gently with a steady hand.
(A child's hands clutching bright blue silk, it didn't matter that the sun was obscured by thick rain and clouds, the smile on his face was enough...)
Baekhyun later remembers holding his breath as he gently turns the key on the back of the box, one, two, three, four, five and then opens the lid of the box carefully, reverently, with two hands.
(He wasn't sure why but it felt right.)
And there's the tiny ballerina with the pink tulle tutu as she pirouettes gracefully to the tinkling strains of Claire de Lune -
☆彡
When his mother told him he cried.
"I don't want to leave!" he wailed, being carried, kicking and screaming, over the shoulder of the footman as he pounded his small fists on the main's black-clothes back, not even making a centimetre's headway.
He didn't mind leaving the house so much, and he loathed the nursery and lessons; and being cooped up in the house was tiresome when it rained. He didn't even like piano lessons so much, the endless boring repetitive drills of finger exercises and hitting the wrong note but he looked forward to it anyway because, for brief moments of time, he wasn't alone. He had someone. He had -
☆彡
"Minseok?" The unfamiliar yet deeply worn words shape themselves into his lips, a forgotten glove rediscovered and slipping on like a second skin. Laughter, smiles, crinkled eyes, a warm hand, the smell of summer.
(Red lights driving away.)
The box would have slipped through his fingers, crashing onto the floor like (why couldn't he remember) but the box is safe on the table and it's only his knees that crumble. As the tiny ballerina keeps turning, the axes of the world realign themselves. (How could he have forgotten?)
Baekhyun leaves the house with nothing but the music box cradled gently in his arms; nothing else is important. His phone buzzes in his pocket but he doesn't answer. His head is a foggy cloud of blue and pink and Claire de Lune and ("Minseok! Minseok! Minseok!" a small boy cried as the black car drove away, metal gates clanging shut behind him) and he doesn't stop for croissants at the small French bakery from his childhood or the Turkish grocery on the corner of his youth or the coffee shop by the station of his grown-up years, as he wades through the thick years, childhood in hand, back to his apartment.
He's afraid to put it down but he does anyway, because ("mysteries are meant to be solved," a smaller Baekhyun told a grinning Minseok as they wandered hand in hand through the garden, in search of a missing garden shovel) and he has to do something.
"I found the missing piece," he tells Jongdae over the phone, the nervous energy that has built up in his joints not letting him sit on the periwinkle paisley armchair that he’d only bought to match the glass sculpture Chanyeol had given him for his birthday ("I tried to shape your memory into glass," he'd said proudly, handing the hideous thing over, and Baekhyun had been too kind to contradict him) and he thinks he can hear the sound of glass breaking. "Are you okay?"
"That's - I don't even know what to say." Jongdae sounds shocked and Baekhyun isn't sure why.
"Of course I was going to find it," he pouts over the phone, secure in the knowledge that Jongdae can't see him.
"I guess I thought it was like a dream?" Jongdae sounds like he's trying to find the words, "Like a kind of false déjà vu?"
Baekhyun opens his mouth to snap back a sharp retort but then closes his mouth. He sits down and really thinks about it. And the blue swirls in his head just get bluer, the fog more opaque as he listens to what sounds like Jongdae mopping up glass and some kind of liquid.
"Baekhyun, are you still there?" Jongdae...Jongdae doesn't sound like anything now. Baekhyun thinks about Claire de Lune.
"I found the missing piece," he finally says, the silk of the music box smooth under his fingers, "but it's still lost." Jongdae laughs. This is the annoying Jongdae he was expecting. Baekhyun scowls and everything is okay again.
"You didn't find the missing piece then," he points out bluntly (Jongdae always was too blunt, telling Baekhyun that he had a great voice but if he was that conflicted about whether to make himself or his mother happy then maybe that was the answer already) and Baekhyun can hear the smirk over the phone. "You only properly remembered that there was one. What did you find anyway?"
Baekhyun sighs but he's smiling. "Why don't I just show you?" he says, picking up his jacket again and slipping the music box into one of Chanyeol's canvas totes that his glass shop always seems to give out for free on random occasions. This one has a quote from Stephen King on it: "People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk." (Not even Kyungsoo could manage to convince Chanyeol that creepy literary quotes were not the way to go about promoting a small glass shop that specialized in trinkets.)
Jongdae has already hung up.
☆彡
"You'll never leave me, right?" Baekhyun was feeling sad again, the viridian of his mood matched by the leaves scratching the window panes ceaselessly, begging to be let in out of the rain. All he wanted was to be allowed to go out, but more than that, he wanted parents who remembered he existed.
"Did your dad forget your birthday again?" Minseok looked stern, and for a moment Baekhyun was almost, not quite frightened, but rather - he nodded, eyes tracing the grain of the wood in the oak panelling.
Minseok's frown softened as he noticed the younger boy's expression, moving forward to wrap his friend in a warm hug. Baekhyun could hear their separate heartbeats gradually match up as he rested his head on Minseok's shoulder.
"I'll never forget you," Minseok whispered, his breath weaving through the Baekhyun's hair to tickle his scap. "Don't forget me either."
Baekhyun nodded.
☆彡
He waves to Jongdae, already sitting at the corner table, the sunlight cascading through the thick panes of glass to cast a hint of red onto his brown hair. It smells like coffee, which Baekhyun equates with happiness. ("Hey! My friends and I have a study group that meets at the coffee shop by the station on Mondays, do you want to join?" Baekhyun didn't know the tall, curly-haired student very well, or his two shorter friends, but he was always looking for something to fill that missing spot in his chest and friends helped, right? He swallowed his reservations and the fact that he didn't even like coffee and showed up at 7:00 pm.) There's a cup of dutch coffee waiting for him; he takes the first sip with a sigh of contentment and isn't even surprised when first Chanyeol and then Kyungsoo join them moments later.
"So what's this about a box?" Chanyeol asks curiously. There are small notes in ink pen written all over his arm, but everyone is kind enough not to point them out, although they all know now that he had corned beef sandwiches for lunch and that he needs to buy tomatoes and artichokes from the Turkish grocery on the way home.
"My mother sent me back home to clear out any of my things I wanted and I found this," Baekhyun explains, slipping the silk box out the canvas tote bag. The explanation seems too banal, too concise for something whose presence in his life is still cutting its way through his entire memory with cerulean clarity, but the suddenly sharp edge to Kyungsoo's gaze and fact that Chanyeol has stopped fidgeting in his chair entirely shows that his friends understand. Jongdae flicks his eyes to the key at the back; Baekhyun gives it a few reverent turns before gently opening the lid.
Claire de Lune fills the room, the tiny ballerina pirouetting daintily in her pink tulle tutu. Baekhyun can't help but take a shaky breath, the air catching in his throat.
"Minseok," he says to everyone and no one in particular. There's someone standing behind the counter; he can't see their face but he knows they're there.
"Minseok." His friends look at each other, the whites of their eyes bright as they trade darting glances. Kyungsoo coughs, the sound grating over the tune from the music box. Baekhyun is concerned or a moment -
"Are you oka-?" and then he stops.
The man behind the counter has stepped into clear view. Brown hair framing a pretty face. His eyes are big in the shadowy light.
Claire de Lune trickles to a halt as the ballerina does one final pirouette.
☆彡
It was his birthday and Baekhyun couldn't wait. His mother and father had both promised fantastic adventures, sea world and the aquarium, and for a small boy who never left the confines of the front gate much, it was like being promised the universe.
But standing there with Minseok, a wrapped bundle hidden behind the older boy's back, even the universe paled in comparison.
"I got you this for your birthday," he said, holding the blue-wrapped bundle out. Baekhyun didn't understand why his eyes were wet, but he thought it maybe had to do with the fact that while he could never trust his parents, he could always depend on Minseok.
He gently untied the turquoise ribbon and gently pulled apart the wrapping. Inside was a silk-covered box with a key at the back which he turned gently, one, two, three, four, five, before opening the lid.
The beautiful melody of Claire de Lune filled the room, and a tiny ballerina in a pink tulle tutu did pirouettes.
☆彡
Baekhyun doesn't know how he knows, but he knows. Maybe it's the look on his friends' faces. Maybe it's the fact that once he remembers he's damned if he's going to let himself forget again, never mind years and miles and people who (didn't wave goodbye from the back seat as the car shrank into the distance). He stands up, his knee jostling the leg of the table as brown liquid slops over the edge, staining the porcelain saucer.
"Baekhyun," Minseok says, because of course it's Minseok, it was always Minseok and no one had told him. His head is buzzing in cobalt as he's all of a sudden standing across the counter from the boy who is now a man. They're much too close. (Crimson lights red-shifting away from his galaxy.) Minseok should smell like coffee but he smells like rain and green and dusty piano keys - his mouth is pink.
Baekhyun shakes his head in surprise but his eyes still see cobalt, darkening to zaffre. It's not his imagination that Minseok's eyes are darker too. There are too many things he wants to say and the coffee shop is too big to say them; Baekhyun doesn't look back at his friends as he vaults himself over the counter and pulls Minseok into the kitchen.
It smells like sugar. The door swings shut behind them as Baekhyun faces Minseok off in what he presumes is Minseok's own kitchen and he doesn't know what to say. He has too much to convey and the thoughts won't arrange themselves in his head, tripping up over each other and falling down to be trampled on the street. Minseok's mouth is distracting and it makes him more frustrated.
It's completely an accident that when he steps forward to finally begin talking his mouth meets Minseok's mouth instead, but when Minseok wraps an arm around his back everything stops being an accident.
His mouth meets Minseok's mouth and their lips tangle along with his fingers running through Minseok's ash brown hair as fireworks burst behind his eyelids; phthalocyanine to split the dark as his fingers run pitter patter skipping over the grooves between Minseok's ribs ("Don't forget me, don't forget me") and Minseok gasps and sticks his hands down Baekhyun's pants. It feels like they belong there. Baekhyun clings to his anger, clings to the frustration of having something missing for so long but it's slipping out of his skin every time he breathes. He's somehow backed against the wall now, hands clinging onto Minseok's shirt, the first few buttons of which are somehow strangely absent - "You forgot me," Minseok says, the first thing he's said since (red lights fading away into the dark) - Baekhyun shakes his head but the gesture is lost in the skin of Minseok's neck which he somehow feels the need to take into his mouth, teeth biting down gently as he tastes the memories (playing outside in the rain, pretending to be vampires and werewolves and Minseok biting him, the feeling had tickled and he'd kicked him by accident, causing his mouth to close down a little too hard, tiny scarlet droplets decorating the skin afterwards) but now it doesn't tickle. Baekhyun’s running his tongue over Minseok's skin, sucking, nibbling, as Minseok distracts himself by bringing the hands that he still has in Baekhyun's pants around to the front, working their way over the swelling hardness there and Baekhyun doesn't understand except he does.
He lifts his hand except that's when Minseok finally finds his way under the layer of underwear and Baekhyun gasps at the contact, skin against skin as Minseok breathes into his ear - "I've been watching you for years and you never remembered!" - he sounds completely frustrated as he wraps his fingers around the velvety soft skin of Baekhyun's aching cock and squeezes and fuck ... But Baekhyun's just as frustrated - "I've been trying to remember for years and you were right here!" - and he works his lips almost angrily against Minseok's mouth, their tongues battling it out between their mouths as his hands wrap around Minseok's back. Minseok's hand is still busy teasing his twitching dick, his other hand reaching around to brush the pucker of skin and - "ow!" - it really hurts.
Baekhyun glares and Minseok’s distracting him with his hand fisting his cock, thumb pressing against the cleft and Baekhyun shivers and almost comes in his pants but Minseok is steering them backwards to somewhere, anywhere, Baekhyun doesn't care while he's blinking his vision back from the blue and he was angry, wasn't he? He can't remember anymore. But there's the sound of something snapping open and Minseok's hand is back, not the one on his cock, Baekhyun whines at the loss but there's a finger again, dipping between the puckers of skin and it's slick now, the wet smoothing out between his ass cheeks and it's so cold he shivers as the finger slips in. It's tight but as Minseok works it around, Baekhyun clings onto his shoulders and tries to remember his own name. Another finger slips in, Minseok scissoring them to work him looser and Baekhyun knows exactly where this is going; he wishes he could recover his anger because he knows he was angry about something but he also doesn't want Minseok to ever stop, as the fingers hit that spongy bundle of nerves that is his prostate and lights shoot off in his head.
He's not going to beg, he's really not going to beg, but he's pushing against the fingers, trying to fuck himself on them as Minseok slips another one and the stretch is so good but it's not enough, there's something missing and the feeling is so much like the feeling all these years of something missing, the blue too blue and the happy always sad. And he's trying to pull down his pants before his mind catches up, a small corner of his head protesting at the fact that Minseok still has all his clothes on which is entirely unfair but he works on fixing his own problem first, back against the counter and finally his pants slip down to his knees, pulling his underwear with them, lilac dotted-swiss, and his fingers are pullling at Minseok's waistband but the apron is getting in the way. His slender fingers finally manage to untangle the knot and throw the frustrating thing away as Minseok's pants come open now almost too easily.
Baekhyun would be shy except he's known Minseok since (he was so small he could barely play a chord on the black and white keys properly and looked up to the older boy who played so well) and yet he doesn't know him at all anymore and he's so frustrated he could scream. But Minseok flips him around, Baekhyun complaining about the loss of fingers as they slide out, wet and he's left clenching against air as he hears a foil wrapper being opened and then Minseok is sliding in. Baekhyun is glad to be able to rest his forearms on the counter as his knees shake; he's so deliciously full and everything is there and he's never forgotten anything in his life. He's never been forgotten, as Minseok waits a moment and then draws back out only to thrust in, movements more frustrated than gentle as he systematically fucks Baekhyun into the counter, Baekhyun holding himself up by the arms as his knees threaten to buckle, Minseok's perfect cock hitting his prostate every single time. There's a white heat building, a tensing of his muscles, and he finally clenches around Minseok and comes in white spurts all over his legs and the cabinet faces and the floor. MInseok follows only moments later and even though he's wearing a condom, Baekhyun can feel the warmth and he wishes Minseok was coming inside him, filling him up with himself so that he can never, ever forget.
For a moment their heartbeats match up, time hanging suspended in blue and breaths and memories engraved on their sweating skin.
And then Baekhyun's head clears and he realizes that he just had sex with a virtual stranger in the kitchen of a public eating establishment. And that his friends probably heard everything.
☆彡
Baekhyun liked nothing more than to watch Minseok play the piano. The faint promises of melody burst into the air like the shoots of flowers asserting their dominance over the bare spring flower beds as the sound took the still, cold rooms of the house and brought them to life.
He loved to look at Minseok's fingers dancing over the keys, white, black, white, white black, like a strange kind of alien morse code that Baekhyun had never been able to unravel, but it didn't matter. He was here for the music. The music spoke to him.
Lately Minseok had taken to playing Claire de Lune and Baekhyun was enraptured with the melody, begging the older boy to explain the meaning of the title. But Minseok only grinned and told him to practise his French.
☆彡
Baekhyun somehow manages to stumble home, leaving through the back so no one can see him and pulling up his pants roughly even though he's still covered in cum and sweat and feels disgusting. The pale blue of the sky mocks hims, "You found the missing thing but everything is ruined." Baekhyun doesn't listen. And when his pocket buzzes he doesn't answer.
He doesn't know what's worse in the huge mess of everything. Forgetting Minseok? Knowing that Minseok had known for ages? Letting Minseok fuck him in the kitchen? The fact that he had liked it?
Because he had liked it, even though walking home disgusted at himself it hadn't felt like it.
He downloads Claire de Lune on iTunes because his friends still have the music box, and listening to it makes him feel a little better. He takes a bath and puts on fresh clothes and feels more in control of the situation.
And then there's the sound of F# A F G E F# E F# and Baekhyun seriously regrets every single event in his life leading up to his giving his friends his keycode. ("I'll never regret meeting you all, never!" he toasted to his friends at the coffee shop and they had all lifted their coffee and baileys and celebrated graduating from university and moving out into the scary big wide world.)
Kyungsoo is the first in, dark eyes inscrutable as he hands Baekhyun a latte and makes himself at home on the periwinkle-striped sofa. Chanyeol is next, tote bag swinging from one hand as Baekhyun hopes above all else that that it's not the bag with the music box inside - he spots the word King and lunges at the taller man, snatching the bag with the box back to safety and setting it carefully on the coffee table. Chanyeol sulks, sitting down on the sofa beside Kyungsoo who edges very subtly away from him. Jongdae comes in last and shuts the door softly behind him, sitting on the periwinkle paisley armchair.
Baekhyun feels like he's on trial, except he already knows he's guilty and the jury were all witnesses to the crime. He decides not to volunteer any information.
"So," Kyungsoo clears his throat, "did you and Minseok manage to talk it out?" The secret lurking in his eyes today swims dark and sharp.
Baekhyun shakes his head and counters with a question of his own. "How do you all know about Minseok when I didn't know anything until today?" Kyungsoo looks at Jongdae.
"Minseok was in high school with my older brother," Jongdae explains. "And he always talked about this 'Baekhyun' from his childhood -"
"And then we met you!" Chanyeol interrupts, grinning. Minseok still remembers wondering why on earth he'd been randomly included in an established group of friends but he'd never wanted to question it. Now he knows.
Looking around the room, at the people he knows are his friends, it doesn't sting.
Baekhyun thinks about Minseok again and slumps dramatically to rest his forehead on the glass-topped coffee table with a bang. "Ouch." He doesn't want to see him again except he'll die if he can't see him again. (Red lights disappearing and a small boy who wanted to scream but nothing came out.)
"You obviously are dying to see him again," Kyungsoo points out unhelpfully, elbowing Chanyeol who is trying to steal a sip of his coffee.
"Minseok looked pretty sad after you left," Jongdae adds, slightly more helpfully.
"I don't know what happened in the kitchen there but it sure was noisy," Chanyeol throws in, and then looks taken aback when everyone glares in his general direction, until Baekhyun laughs, because it's better than crying.
☆彡
"This is Minseok." His piano teacher had one hand resting on the shoulder of a boy, maybe a few years older than him. Baekhyun frowned. He wasn't used to other children; the only ones he knew were his cousins, when they were forced to mingle on the rare joint-Christmas holidays. They loathed him utterly and he scorned them in return.
He looked at Minseok warily but the boy only smiled back.
And when he sat down at the piano, letting his fingers fall onto the keys, Baekhyun fell in love.
☆彡
It takes a few days but he goes back to the coffee shop one blue morning, the birds singing in the trees as he swings the bag with the music box. Minseok isn't behind the counter but he asks the barista, a tall gangly blond with the nametag "Sehun." Minseok ducks out of the kitchen a few minutes later, bearing a crème brûlée and a strangely cautious expression. He looks like...
"I'm not mad," Baekhyun sighs. The crème brûlée helps, spooning the velvety pudding into his mouth and rolling it around his tongue to drink up the flavours. "Are you?"
Minseok sighs and shakes his head. "No," he says. "Sad, maybe a little." Baekhyun sets down his spoon.
"I can't believe I forgot you," he says. And he can't. If you had asked him as a child whether he would ever forget Minseok the answer would have been a resounding no. And yet...
"Why didn't you say something, when you knew it was me?" Baekhyun can't help but feel aggrieved at this. All those years with something missing.
Minseok looks down at his hands, at Baekhyun's long fingers. "I guess I thought that if you'd forgotten me..."
Baekhyun scowls. "I didn't forget you on purpose," he retorts, but his voice comes out softer than he'd intended. Minseok's eyelashes are too distracting, and his fingers are creeping towards the older man's hands folded on the table.
Minseok looks down at the wood surface and laughs, reaching over to entangle Baekhyun's fingers with his own.
"I guess not." He smiles at Baekhyun across the table, sunlight filling his eyes and shining on his hair, and Baekhyun smiles back. He can hear Claire de Lune playing, somewhere.
☆彡
epilogue
He dreamed sometimes, a small boy huddling in bed, about red turning into blue, a car moving backwards through time, stars blue-shifting into his galaxy. But he always woke up.
Some dreams hurt so much they had to be forgotten.
☆彡
From: ANONYMOUS until December 30, 2014
Title: Blue Nocturne
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s)/Focus: Baekhyun/Xiumin
Length: 5,760 words
Summary: There has always been something missing from Baekhyun's life.
Warnings: slightly aggressive smut (but entirely consensual)
Notes: First of all, thanks so much to the Mods for being so understanding and literally bending over backwards in the light of health difficulties, I'm so grateful to you for allowing me to participate. A big thanks also to my recipient for the lovely prompts and the chance to write a pairing I haven't written before; I hope you like this. Thanks so much to B and A and J for helping me brainstorm at the beginning, to tlist for being there, to A for beta-ing despite Christmas (and I'm so sorry for always being such a terrible writer to work with) and of course to that special person who is always there when I need someone to kick me at 3 am to keep writing and not flip tables.
This story was inspired in a small way by the music video for Jin's 너만 없다. I wrote most of this story while looping the song Transgender by Crystal Castles, if you're interested. Clark's entire self-titled album was also instrumental in the creation of this story.
There has always been something missing from Baekhyun's life. He'll be walking down the street, perfectly happy and content with his world when the faintest trickle of sound - the tone of a car horn or the sound of a melodious clink of cup against cup at a street-side coffee shop - will worm its way into his mind and his happiness will have a sliver of sadness slit out of it.
"Have you remembered yet today?" Chanyeol owns a little shop by the station on D-; he blows glass for a living and Baekhyun is secretly envious of his friend who was allowed to do what he always wanted.
(Baekhyun was a web designer and while he liked his job - he got to talk to people and create wonderful things out of tiny lines of text - he'd always wanted something different for himself. Something involving his voice, and the faintest music from a memory he couldn't understand.)
Jongdae gets it, how a music note can birth a world. He writes music for films and his symphonies have people swooning or sobbing in their seats, sometimes both.
"Do you remember anything?" he asks Baekhyun for only the thousandth time. They're sipping coffee at a little shop by the station; the barista is really nice even though he's only seen the owner once - a flash of light brown hair behind a closing door.
"He's really busy," Kyungsoo explains. He's a barista but he's actually a cordon bleu chef -
(Baekhyun always knew there was a secret lurking in the recesses of his espresso eyes but the glares he levelled at anyone who dared to ask were a terrifying deterrent: frothed milk might look light and fluffy but a macchiato would still burn-)
Baekhyun sighs. Everything is always tomorrow. For once he'd like it to be today.
☆彡
The piano room was empty and the house was silent. He could still hear the car driving away and see the red lights reflected on the glass.
He closed the music box for the last time and left it on the table, dust already gathering.
The wind was cold as he stepped out into the dark.
☆彡
"So can you stop by?" Baekhyun sighs but agrees before hanging up. He hasn't lived at the old family home for years, but his mother wants to finally clear out the house so he guesses he'd better at least make an appearance.
(He didn't have anything left at the old home, though, everything he had was divided into two suitcases as he proceeded to spend the rest of his childhood shuttled between busy parents who didn't care enough to get mad at each other. Baekhyun was secretly envious of Zitao, who was always crying because of his parents' messy divorce but at least they cared about something other than than money.)
On the subway, he hears a couple of notes strung together and it's enough to stain the clear sky with darker blue.
He wishes he still played the piano. Why did he stop anyway?
(His mom complained about piano lessons being too far away now and his dad didn't care about anything - still doesn't - and there was just a sour taste on his tongue so the keys feel slimy with conflict and he couldn't bring himself to touch them anymore.)
There's still that little bakery on the corner, the two Chinese men who speak French to each other with Parisian accents, the liquid r's heavy in their mouths. The croissant is just as buttery and smooth he remembered it, walking home from school to piano lessons, excitement fluttering in his stomach at the thought of - what? He's lost his train of thought.
The trees are thicker than before and the heavy foliage casts the yard in green shadows. The bars of the gate are rusted but it swings open easily. Baekhyun looks up but the sky is hidden and he can't see the sun.
The number keypad at the door comes as a shock; his memory has been updated without his being consulted and it's like being woken from a dream with a splash of cold water to the face.
F# A F G E F# E F#
For some reason the sound reminds him of the day he left.
(He didn't want to leave - he remembers not being afraid to cry and cause a scene until his mother's driver finally came and tossed him gently into the back seat as he flailed, trying not to crumple the man's suit. He was only mad at his mother.)
There's an abandoned exercise book on the coffee table; the white sheets draped over everything only make the house feel like a statuary or mausoleum.
His phone vibrates, a jarring sound in the thick silence. Dust floats in the air.
"Hello?" It's his mother again.
"Your things are in your bedroom, you remember the way, right?" He nods and hangs up before she can ask him to clean something.
There's nothing in his room at all, not even a photo on the wall. There's only a strange square of wallpaper, like something used to hang there once - he shakes his head. He needs another croissant or better yet, some madeleines. The leaves brushing against the window pick up a low hum and for a moment he sees a face in the window, before it dissolves into shades of green and shadow.
He doesn't bother investigating.
(Crying at night because he'd had a nightmare but no one came.)
There's only one room he hasn't gone into besides the basement, and no one can pay him to do that.
The piano room is as dusty as everywhere else but for some reason he can't understand he has to take the cover off the baby grand, dust billowing through the air with the folds of fabric.
The keys aren't sticky anymore. It was all in his head.
He stops, fingers poised over the keys before letting them fall.
Crash.
The piano hasn't been tuned in over ten years and the sound is terrible. He stumbles up from the bench, letting the cover fall closed with a dull bang. The sound of steel hitting bone.
The room vibrates and a tiny trickle of sound weaves through the air.
It's that sound. The one from his memory.
☆彡
This was not the first time he would get to play the song for his teacher but it would be his last. Claire de Lune. He had worked on it for weeks, twisting his fingers, sweat dripping off his forehead onto the keys below.
This time it had to be perfect.
He started off beautifully, the notes cascading out of his fingers to fall like the spring rain onto the black and white tiles of the courtyard.
(He called it the piano courtyard when he played outside; they played songs with their feet like an imaginary hopscotch of music. )
But one false step and suddenly his fingers were tripping down staircases, the sound like breaking bones on concrete as everything crashed into disaster.
He should have been looking for the disappointment on his teacher's face but instead he was looking at - his memory skipped and the room was empty - leaving only an abandoned music box, the tiny pink ballerina stumbling in one last sad pirouette.
☆彡
The music box.
He remembers it now, the tiny ballerina with a pink tulle skirt, tiny precise pirouettes to the melody of -
"Claire de lune," Baekhyun exhales. The memory is waiting, right on the tip of tongue, a name waiting to be spoken. Maybe if he can find the music box?
It's not in his room, his feet taking them there before he's realized it; everything here he'd just cleared out moments earlier. It's not in the nursery either, that dreaded place of lessons and tests and smuggled French macarons being discarded by his scary-faced tutor, of reading story books under the table and wondering why he didn't have friends like the little boys and girls in books did.
Except for - his memory skips and bubbles out like fire consuming old sepia photographs, the ballooning image of a face that's dissolved before he knows it.
It's not in the parlour or the dining room or the den, where the lingering smoke of cigars still impregnates the wood panelling and starts a rasp in his chest. He coughs lightly into his sleeve, knowing that he'll be coughing harder tomorrow. Finally he's standing at the foot of the stairs up to the attic. They’re not stairs really, but more of a glorified ladder - the wood slats worn bare of finish in the middle because of the traffic of little feet, and this seems like it might be the place.
He trips on the fifth rung, striking his elbow against the wall, and a small cloud of dust springs into the air. It catches an errant beam of light.
(Magic dust, they used to call it. Until they were scolded severely and made to bathe at once and sent to bed without supper.)
The trapdoor to the attic is stuck; it probably hasn't been opened since - he doesn't remember. Another hole.
It's dim, the windows obscured by thick cobwebs clinging to them and - there it is. The box. The blue of the silk cover is muffled by grey dust and there are water spots when he brushes it off gently with a steady hand.
(A child's hands clutching bright blue silk, it didn't matter that the sun was obscured by thick rain and clouds, the smile on his face was enough...)
Baekhyun later remembers holding his breath as he gently turns the key on the back of the box, one, two, three, four, five and then opens the lid of the box carefully, reverently, with two hands.
(He wasn't sure why but it felt right.)
And there's the tiny ballerina with the pink tulle tutu as she pirouettes gracefully to the tinkling strains of Claire de Lune -
☆彡
When his mother told him he cried.
"I don't want to leave!" he wailed, being carried, kicking and screaming, over the shoulder of the footman as he pounded his small fists on the main's black-clothes back, not even making a centimetre's headway.
He didn't mind leaving the house so much, and he loathed the nursery and lessons; and being cooped up in the house was tiresome when it rained. He didn't even like piano lessons so much, the endless boring repetitive drills of finger exercises and hitting the wrong note but he looked forward to it anyway because, for brief moments of time, he wasn't alone. He had someone. He had -
☆彡
"Minseok?" The unfamiliar yet deeply worn words shape themselves into his lips, a forgotten glove rediscovered and slipping on like a second skin. Laughter, smiles, crinkled eyes, a warm hand, the smell of summer.
(Red lights driving away.)
The box would have slipped through his fingers, crashing onto the floor like (why couldn't he remember) but the box is safe on the table and it's only his knees that crumble. As the tiny ballerina keeps turning, the axes of the world realign themselves. (How could he have forgotten?)
Baekhyun leaves the house with nothing but the music box cradled gently in his arms; nothing else is important. His phone buzzes in his pocket but he doesn't answer. His head is a foggy cloud of blue and pink and Claire de Lune and ("Minseok! Minseok! Minseok!" a small boy cried as the black car drove away, metal gates clanging shut behind him) and he doesn't stop for croissants at the small French bakery from his childhood or the Turkish grocery on the corner of his youth or the coffee shop by the station of his grown-up years, as he wades through the thick years, childhood in hand, back to his apartment.
He's afraid to put it down but he does anyway, because ("mysteries are meant to be solved," a smaller Baekhyun told a grinning Minseok as they wandered hand in hand through the garden, in search of a missing garden shovel) and he has to do something.
"I found the missing piece," he tells Jongdae over the phone, the nervous energy that has built up in his joints not letting him sit on the periwinkle paisley armchair that he’d only bought to match the glass sculpture Chanyeol had given him for his birthday ("I tried to shape your memory into glass," he'd said proudly, handing the hideous thing over, and Baekhyun had been too kind to contradict him) and he thinks he can hear the sound of glass breaking. "Are you okay?"
"That's - I don't even know what to say." Jongdae sounds shocked and Baekhyun isn't sure why.
"Of course I was going to find it," he pouts over the phone, secure in the knowledge that Jongdae can't see him.
"I guess I thought it was like a dream?" Jongdae sounds like he's trying to find the words, "Like a kind of false déjà vu?"
Baekhyun opens his mouth to snap back a sharp retort but then closes his mouth. He sits down and really thinks about it. And the blue swirls in his head just get bluer, the fog more opaque as he listens to what sounds like Jongdae mopping up glass and some kind of liquid.
"Baekhyun, are you still there?" Jongdae...Jongdae doesn't sound like anything now. Baekhyun thinks about Claire de Lune.
"I found the missing piece," he finally says, the silk of the music box smooth under his fingers, "but it's still lost." Jongdae laughs. This is the annoying Jongdae he was expecting. Baekhyun scowls and everything is okay again.
"You didn't find the missing piece then," he points out bluntly (Jongdae always was too blunt, telling Baekhyun that he had a great voice but if he was that conflicted about whether to make himself or his mother happy then maybe that was the answer already) and Baekhyun can hear the smirk over the phone. "You only properly remembered that there was one. What did you find anyway?"
Baekhyun sighs but he's smiling. "Why don't I just show you?" he says, picking up his jacket again and slipping the music box into one of Chanyeol's canvas totes that his glass shop always seems to give out for free on random occasions. This one has a quote from Stephen King on it: "People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk." (Not even Kyungsoo could manage to convince Chanyeol that creepy literary quotes were not the way to go about promoting a small glass shop that specialized in trinkets.)
Jongdae has already hung up.
☆彡
"You'll never leave me, right?" Baekhyun was feeling sad again, the viridian of his mood matched by the leaves scratching the window panes ceaselessly, begging to be let in out of the rain. All he wanted was to be allowed to go out, but more than that, he wanted parents who remembered he existed.
"Did your dad forget your birthday again?" Minseok looked stern, and for a moment Baekhyun was almost, not quite frightened, but rather - he nodded, eyes tracing the grain of the wood in the oak panelling.
Minseok's frown softened as he noticed the younger boy's expression, moving forward to wrap his friend in a warm hug. Baekhyun could hear their separate heartbeats gradually match up as he rested his head on Minseok's shoulder.
"I'll never forget you," Minseok whispered, his breath weaving through the Baekhyun's hair to tickle his scap. "Don't forget me either."
Baekhyun nodded.
☆彡
He waves to Jongdae, already sitting at the corner table, the sunlight cascading through the thick panes of glass to cast a hint of red onto his brown hair. It smells like coffee, which Baekhyun equates with happiness. ("Hey! My friends and I have a study group that meets at the coffee shop by the station on Mondays, do you want to join?" Baekhyun didn't know the tall, curly-haired student very well, or his two shorter friends, but he was always looking for something to fill that missing spot in his chest and friends helped, right? He swallowed his reservations and the fact that he didn't even like coffee and showed up at 7:00 pm.) There's a cup of dutch coffee waiting for him; he takes the first sip with a sigh of contentment and isn't even surprised when first Chanyeol and then Kyungsoo join them moments later.
"So what's this about a box?" Chanyeol asks curiously. There are small notes in ink pen written all over his arm, but everyone is kind enough not to point them out, although they all know now that he had corned beef sandwiches for lunch and that he needs to buy tomatoes and artichokes from the Turkish grocery on the way home.
"My mother sent me back home to clear out any of my things I wanted and I found this," Baekhyun explains, slipping the silk box out the canvas tote bag. The explanation seems too banal, too concise for something whose presence in his life is still cutting its way through his entire memory with cerulean clarity, but the suddenly sharp edge to Kyungsoo's gaze and fact that Chanyeol has stopped fidgeting in his chair entirely shows that his friends understand. Jongdae flicks his eyes to the key at the back; Baekhyun gives it a few reverent turns before gently opening the lid.
Claire de Lune fills the room, the tiny ballerina pirouetting daintily in her pink tulle tutu. Baekhyun can't help but take a shaky breath, the air catching in his throat.
"Minseok," he says to everyone and no one in particular. There's someone standing behind the counter; he can't see their face but he knows they're there.
"Minseok." His friends look at each other, the whites of their eyes bright as they trade darting glances. Kyungsoo coughs, the sound grating over the tune from the music box. Baekhyun is concerned or a moment -
"Are you oka-?" and then he stops.
The man behind the counter has stepped into clear view. Brown hair framing a pretty face. His eyes are big in the shadowy light.
Claire de Lune trickles to a halt as the ballerina does one final pirouette.
☆彡
It was his birthday and Baekhyun couldn't wait. His mother and father had both promised fantastic adventures, sea world and the aquarium, and for a small boy who never left the confines of the front gate much, it was like being promised the universe.
But standing there with Minseok, a wrapped bundle hidden behind the older boy's back, even the universe paled in comparison.
"I got you this for your birthday," he said, holding the blue-wrapped bundle out. Baekhyun didn't understand why his eyes were wet, but he thought it maybe had to do with the fact that while he could never trust his parents, he could always depend on Minseok.
He gently untied the turquoise ribbon and gently pulled apart the wrapping. Inside was a silk-covered box with a key at the back which he turned gently, one, two, three, four, five, before opening the lid.
The beautiful melody of Claire de Lune filled the room, and a tiny ballerina in a pink tulle tutu did pirouettes.
☆彡
Baekhyun doesn't know how he knows, but he knows. Maybe it's the look on his friends' faces. Maybe it's the fact that once he remembers he's damned if he's going to let himself forget again, never mind years and miles and people who (didn't wave goodbye from the back seat as the car shrank into the distance). He stands up, his knee jostling the leg of the table as brown liquid slops over the edge, staining the porcelain saucer.
"Baekhyun," Minseok says, because of course it's Minseok, it was always Minseok and no one had told him. His head is buzzing in cobalt as he's all of a sudden standing across the counter from the boy who is now a man. They're much too close. (Crimson lights red-shifting away from his galaxy.) Minseok should smell like coffee but he smells like rain and green and dusty piano keys - his mouth is pink.
Baekhyun shakes his head in surprise but his eyes still see cobalt, darkening to zaffre. It's not his imagination that Minseok's eyes are darker too. There are too many things he wants to say and the coffee shop is too big to say them; Baekhyun doesn't look back at his friends as he vaults himself over the counter and pulls Minseok into the kitchen.
It smells like sugar. The door swings shut behind them as Baekhyun faces Minseok off in what he presumes is Minseok's own kitchen and he doesn't know what to say. He has too much to convey and the thoughts won't arrange themselves in his head, tripping up over each other and falling down to be trampled on the street. Minseok's mouth is distracting and it makes him more frustrated.
It's completely an accident that when he steps forward to finally begin talking his mouth meets Minseok's mouth instead, but when Minseok wraps an arm around his back everything stops being an accident.
His mouth meets Minseok's mouth and their lips tangle along with his fingers running through Minseok's ash brown hair as fireworks burst behind his eyelids; phthalocyanine to split the dark as his fingers run pitter patter skipping over the grooves between Minseok's ribs ("Don't forget me, don't forget me") and Minseok gasps and sticks his hands down Baekhyun's pants. It feels like they belong there. Baekhyun clings to his anger, clings to the frustration of having something missing for so long but it's slipping out of his skin every time he breathes. He's somehow backed against the wall now, hands clinging onto Minseok's shirt, the first few buttons of which are somehow strangely absent - "You forgot me," Minseok says, the first thing he's said since (red lights fading away into the dark) - Baekhyun shakes his head but the gesture is lost in the skin of Minseok's neck which he somehow feels the need to take into his mouth, teeth biting down gently as he tastes the memories (playing outside in the rain, pretending to be vampires and werewolves and Minseok biting him, the feeling had tickled and he'd kicked him by accident, causing his mouth to close down a little too hard, tiny scarlet droplets decorating the skin afterwards) but now it doesn't tickle. Baekhyun’s running his tongue over Minseok's skin, sucking, nibbling, as Minseok distracts himself by bringing the hands that he still has in Baekhyun's pants around to the front, working their way over the swelling hardness there and Baekhyun doesn't understand except he does.
He lifts his hand except that's when Minseok finally finds his way under the layer of underwear and Baekhyun gasps at the contact, skin against skin as Minseok breathes into his ear - "I've been watching you for years and you never remembered!" - he sounds completely frustrated as he wraps his fingers around the velvety soft skin of Baekhyun's aching cock and squeezes and fuck ... But Baekhyun's just as frustrated - "I've been trying to remember for years and you were right here!" - and he works his lips almost angrily against Minseok's mouth, their tongues battling it out between their mouths as his hands wrap around Minseok's back. Minseok's hand is still busy teasing his twitching dick, his other hand reaching around to brush the pucker of skin and - "ow!" - it really hurts.
Baekhyun glares and Minseok’s distracting him with his hand fisting his cock, thumb pressing against the cleft and Baekhyun shivers and almost comes in his pants but Minseok is steering them backwards to somewhere, anywhere, Baekhyun doesn't care while he's blinking his vision back from the blue and he was angry, wasn't he? He can't remember anymore. But there's the sound of something snapping open and Minseok's hand is back, not the one on his cock, Baekhyun whines at the loss but there's a finger again, dipping between the puckers of skin and it's slick now, the wet smoothing out between his ass cheeks and it's so cold he shivers as the finger slips in. It's tight but as Minseok works it around, Baekhyun clings onto his shoulders and tries to remember his own name. Another finger slips in, Minseok scissoring them to work him looser and Baekhyun knows exactly where this is going; he wishes he could recover his anger because he knows he was angry about something but he also doesn't want Minseok to ever stop, as the fingers hit that spongy bundle of nerves that is his prostate and lights shoot off in his head.
He's not going to beg, he's really not going to beg, but he's pushing against the fingers, trying to fuck himself on them as Minseok slips another one and the stretch is so good but it's not enough, there's something missing and the feeling is so much like the feeling all these years of something missing, the blue too blue and the happy always sad. And he's trying to pull down his pants before his mind catches up, a small corner of his head protesting at the fact that Minseok still has all his clothes on which is entirely unfair but he works on fixing his own problem first, back against the counter and finally his pants slip down to his knees, pulling his underwear with them, lilac dotted-swiss, and his fingers are pullling at Minseok's waistband but the apron is getting in the way. His slender fingers finally manage to untangle the knot and throw the frustrating thing away as Minseok's pants come open now almost too easily.
Baekhyun would be shy except he's known Minseok since (he was so small he could barely play a chord on the black and white keys properly and looked up to the older boy who played so well) and yet he doesn't know him at all anymore and he's so frustrated he could scream. But Minseok flips him around, Baekhyun complaining about the loss of fingers as they slide out, wet and he's left clenching against air as he hears a foil wrapper being opened and then Minseok is sliding in. Baekhyun is glad to be able to rest his forearms on the counter as his knees shake; he's so deliciously full and everything is there and he's never forgotten anything in his life. He's never been forgotten, as Minseok waits a moment and then draws back out only to thrust in, movements more frustrated than gentle as he systematically fucks Baekhyun into the counter, Baekhyun holding himself up by the arms as his knees threaten to buckle, Minseok's perfect cock hitting his prostate every single time. There's a white heat building, a tensing of his muscles, and he finally clenches around Minseok and comes in white spurts all over his legs and the cabinet faces and the floor. MInseok follows only moments later and even though he's wearing a condom, Baekhyun can feel the warmth and he wishes Minseok was coming inside him, filling him up with himself so that he can never, ever forget.
For a moment their heartbeats match up, time hanging suspended in blue and breaths and memories engraved on their sweating skin.
And then Baekhyun's head clears and he realizes that he just had sex with a virtual stranger in the kitchen of a public eating establishment. And that his friends probably heard everything.
☆彡
Baekhyun liked nothing more than to watch Minseok play the piano. The faint promises of melody burst into the air like the shoots of flowers asserting their dominance over the bare spring flower beds as the sound took the still, cold rooms of the house and brought them to life.
He loved to look at Minseok's fingers dancing over the keys, white, black, white, white black, like a strange kind of alien morse code that Baekhyun had never been able to unravel, but it didn't matter. He was here for the music. The music spoke to him.
Lately Minseok had taken to playing Claire de Lune and Baekhyun was enraptured with the melody, begging the older boy to explain the meaning of the title. But Minseok only grinned and told him to practise his French.
☆彡
Baekhyun somehow manages to stumble home, leaving through the back so no one can see him and pulling up his pants roughly even though he's still covered in cum and sweat and feels disgusting. The pale blue of the sky mocks hims, "You found the missing thing but everything is ruined." Baekhyun doesn't listen. And when his pocket buzzes he doesn't answer.
He doesn't know what's worse in the huge mess of everything. Forgetting Minseok? Knowing that Minseok had known for ages? Letting Minseok fuck him in the kitchen? The fact that he had liked it?
Because he had liked it, even though walking home disgusted at himself it hadn't felt like it.
He downloads Claire de Lune on iTunes because his friends still have the music box, and listening to it makes him feel a little better. He takes a bath and puts on fresh clothes and feels more in control of the situation.
And then there's the sound of F# A F G E F# E F# and Baekhyun seriously regrets every single event in his life leading up to his giving his friends his keycode. ("I'll never regret meeting you all, never!" he toasted to his friends at the coffee shop and they had all lifted their coffee and baileys and celebrated graduating from university and moving out into the scary big wide world.)
Kyungsoo is the first in, dark eyes inscrutable as he hands Baekhyun a latte and makes himself at home on the periwinkle-striped sofa. Chanyeol is next, tote bag swinging from one hand as Baekhyun hopes above all else that that it's not the bag with the music box inside - he spots the word King and lunges at the taller man, snatching the bag with the box back to safety and setting it carefully on the coffee table. Chanyeol sulks, sitting down on the sofa beside Kyungsoo who edges very subtly away from him. Jongdae comes in last and shuts the door softly behind him, sitting on the periwinkle paisley armchair.
Baekhyun feels like he's on trial, except he already knows he's guilty and the jury were all witnesses to the crime. He decides not to volunteer any information.
"So," Kyungsoo clears his throat, "did you and Minseok manage to talk it out?" The secret lurking in his eyes today swims dark and sharp.
Baekhyun shakes his head and counters with a question of his own. "How do you all know about Minseok when I didn't know anything until today?" Kyungsoo looks at Jongdae.
"Minseok was in high school with my older brother," Jongdae explains. "And he always talked about this 'Baekhyun' from his childhood -"
"And then we met you!" Chanyeol interrupts, grinning. Minseok still remembers wondering why on earth he'd been randomly included in an established group of friends but he'd never wanted to question it. Now he knows.
Looking around the room, at the people he knows are his friends, it doesn't sting.
Baekhyun thinks about Minseok again and slumps dramatically to rest his forehead on the glass-topped coffee table with a bang. "Ouch." He doesn't want to see him again except he'll die if he can't see him again. (Red lights disappearing and a small boy who wanted to scream but nothing came out.)
"You obviously are dying to see him again," Kyungsoo points out unhelpfully, elbowing Chanyeol who is trying to steal a sip of his coffee.
"Minseok looked pretty sad after you left," Jongdae adds, slightly more helpfully.
"I don't know what happened in the kitchen there but it sure was noisy," Chanyeol throws in, and then looks taken aback when everyone glares in his general direction, until Baekhyun laughs, because it's better than crying.
☆彡
"This is Minseok." His piano teacher had one hand resting on the shoulder of a boy, maybe a few years older than him. Baekhyun frowned. He wasn't used to other children; the only ones he knew were his cousins, when they were forced to mingle on the rare joint-Christmas holidays. They loathed him utterly and he scorned them in return.
He looked at Minseok warily but the boy only smiled back.
And when he sat down at the piano, letting his fingers fall onto the keys, Baekhyun fell in love.
☆彡
It takes a few days but he goes back to the coffee shop one blue morning, the birds singing in the trees as he swings the bag with the music box. Minseok isn't behind the counter but he asks the barista, a tall gangly blond with the nametag "Sehun." Minseok ducks out of the kitchen a few minutes later, bearing a crème brûlée and a strangely cautious expression. He looks like...
"I'm not mad," Baekhyun sighs. The crème brûlée helps, spooning the velvety pudding into his mouth and rolling it around his tongue to drink up the flavours. "Are you?"
Minseok sighs and shakes his head. "No," he says. "Sad, maybe a little." Baekhyun sets down his spoon.
"I can't believe I forgot you," he says. And he can't. If you had asked him as a child whether he would ever forget Minseok the answer would have been a resounding no. And yet...
"Why didn't you say something, when you knew it was me?" Baekhyun can't help but feel aggrieved at this. All those years with something missing.
Minseok looks down at his hands, at Baekhyun's long fingers. "I guess I thought that if you'd forgotten me..."
Baekhyun scowls. "I didn't forget you on purpose," he retorts, but his voice comes out softer than he'd intended. Minseok's eyelashes are too distracting, and his fingers are creeping towards the older man's hands folded on the table.
Minseok looks down at the wood surface and laughs, reaching over to entangle Baekhyun's fingers with his own.
"I guess not." He smiles at Baekhyun across the table, sunlight filling his eyes and shining on his hair, and Baekhyun smiles back. He can hear Claire de Lune playing, somewhere.
☆彡
epilogue
He dreamed sometimes, a small boy huddling in bed, about red turning into blue, a car moving backwards through time, stars blue-shifting into his galaxy. But he always woke up.
Some dreams hurt so much they had to be forgotten.
☆彡