Masterpiece Boy - part III
Part III - Salvation.
“Found things,” Baekhyun suddenly announced from somewhere distant, startling both Jongin and Kyungsoo. Soon enough, dusty cushions and rotten mattresses came flying in their direction, falling on the floor with sickening ‘plops’ and waking Chanyeol up. A cushion hit the wandering soul right on the face, positively startling him.
“What is going on?!” he shouted, sitting up so suddenly that the top of his head almost hit Kyungsoo’s chin. He fumbled with the cushion for a while until he realized it wasn’t an enemy. He then glanced around and saw Jongin. “Oh!” his eyes widened, and he smiled. “You made it! Great. Is Baekhyun here as well?”
“Right here,” Baekhyun emerged from behind a pile of discarded chairs. “You woke up! Good morning.”
“More like afternoon,” Chanyeol chuckled, stiffening a yawn. True. It was probably past lunchtime already… “How did it turn out with the hotel?”
Baekhyun smiled devilishly, his eyes, once again, gleaming in that particular way. Kyungsoo huffed, obviously disapproving of it, but Chanyeol laughed in enjoyment. “You’re great.”
“You need clothes,” Kyungsoo remarked rather bitterly. “And shoes,” he said after noticing Baekhyun was barefoot.
“Yeah, I thought about walking into town dressed like this and just grab some clothes,” Baekhyun said acidly, kicking a cushion into a favorable position before sitting down. “Get some munchies while I’m at it.”
“Don’t be silly. You know that’s not what I meant,” Kyungsoo muttered, pouting slightly.
“I can go,” Jongin offered, and he might as well have screamed at them, because they looked at him as if he had. He blinked, taken aback by the reaction. “I have some money. And a car. I can buy some things.”
They stared at him in silence for a good minute. Chanyeol seemed to think that was a good idea, but hesitated to say so. Despite not looking at each other, it was like Kyungsoo and Baekhyun were having a staring contest.
“I should-”
“No,” Kyungsoo cut Baekhyun off immediately. “He should go by himself.”
“And not come back, you mean,” Baekhyun threw back. By how Kyungsoo retreated, Jongin could tell that’s exactly what he meant, and felt a bit hurt. “It’s not gonna work. You saw how it ended up back at the hotel.”
“He’s not who they’re after,” Kyungsoo retorted. “He got caught in the middle. Since the beginning-”
“What makes you think he’s not involved?” Baekhyun interrupted him.
“Don’t play dumb with me, Baekhyun!” Kyungsoo shouted suddenly, and Jongin flinched when he heard thunder outside. “You know what they want from us! You know it really well!”
“Yes I do,” Baekhyun crossed his arms, eyes defiant, threatening to spill some kind of amused wrath. “Do you, though?”
Kyungsoo said nothing, lips pursed. He looked like he was holding some rich insults inside. He took a deep breath before saying, cautiously placid, “it’s about that, then?”
It was Baekhyun’s turn to be at a loss. He stared at Kyungsoo as if he had said something unbelievable, an almost imperceptible twitch under his eye. Jongin glanced at Chanyeol, waiting for some kind of explanation, but the wandering soul looked as lost as he was, shrugging discreetly, I have no idea either. Soon enough, Baekhyun turned to Jongin with a saccharine smile.
“Children,” he directed the same smile to Chanyeol, then got up, pulling Kyungsoo up with him. “Seems like Soo and I have some adult matters to discuss. Wait for us right here, will you? We’ll be right back.”
Before Chanyeol and Jongin could say anything, Baekhyun dragged Kyungsoo away, outside, right to the middle of raging rain. The storehouse’s door made a deafening ‘pang’ nose when closed. Chanyeol and Jongin exchanged glances.
“Do you think they’re gonna’ fight?” Chanyeol asked hesitantly. “Like, use their powers against each other?”
Jongin shrugged, slightly scared. “What kind of powers does Kyungsoo sshi have?”
“Lots of them. Flying, healing,” Chanyeol listed, counting them in his fingers. “Creating shields, breathing underwater. I mean… do angels breathe? I don’t actually know.”
Jongin didn’t know either. He was afraid they would actually fight outside, with magic and all. If they did… he’s not sure of who would win, but he’s sure it’d be a highly destructive quarrel. “I wonder what they were fighting about…”
“Same. They fight all the time, but it seemed more serious this time,” Chanyeol confessed, fumbling with a loose piece of the mattress. He then looked up, straight into Jongin’s eyes, and Jongin was startled to find in Chanyeol’s glance the same menacing gleam he often saw in Baekhyun’s. “Should we go check on them?” he suggested with a grin.
Jongin wasn’t sure that was a good idea, but, at the same time, he was really curious and anxious about them having an argument. He glanced at the door. There was no way to open it silently. “There aren’t any windows…”
“We can just…” Chanyeol seemed to have an idea, but interrupted himself. “… go through the wall. Okay, maybe not. Man, you should really consider being half-dead someday, everything becomes so more convenient.”
“My time will come,” Jongin half-joked, getting up, dusting his hands on the knees of his jeans. Chanyeol laughed heartily at that.
There were no windows, but there was an area where the wall was broken, like a bullet wound; not properly a hole, but could be perforated easily. Jongin decided not to risk attracting attention to falling debris, and simply leaned his ear against the thinner part of the wound. All he could hear was the heavy rain hitting the building.
“Can’t hear anything,” Chanyeol came back from the wall, looking displeased and a bit damp. “It’s raining buckets, and they’re almost on the road,” he complained before going back into the wall. Jongin presumed he was looking for thin spots from inside, and waited patiently. Soon enough, Chanyeol’s head emerged from the wall, fairly far from where Jongin was. “Found a thing! Hurry!”
Jongin hurried to the corner where Chanyeol stood, now outside of the wall and carefully displacing some metal structures. There it was: poorly disguised by old pipes and wet debris, a huge hole, about the size of an adult man. As soon as there was space, Jongin crawled nearer to the hole, making a face as the water pooled on the floor seeped through his jeans. Chanyeol simply kneeled beside him as if there were no objects interfering.
They could see Baekhyun and Kyungsoo rather clearly from there, despite the distance and the pouring rain. Both of them looked damp, withered, and tense; Jongin could practically hear the air cracking. They were yelling at each other, and Jongin could only make some words.
“… stop being so childish…”
“… none of your business…”
“… you owe me, you know that?”
“… nothing to do with…”
“… the masterpiece boy scheme…”
Jongin’s ears perked at that. His mind flashed back to the hotel’s hall, to the headlines. FOUND: THE MASTERPIECE BOY!
“YOU CAN’T PRETEND THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU ANYMORE!” Baekhyun screamed from the top of his lungs, so loud that it echoed a little.
“IT ISN’T,” Kyungsoo managed to scream even louder, furious. Lightning cracked, thunder roared. Jongin caught a glimpse of Baekhyun’s horns, and smelled trouble heavy in the air. “IT HAS NEVER BEEN!”
“Shit is going down, oh Lord,” Chanyeol pulled Jongin away from the hole, dragging him back to where the mattresses were. “We have to stop them before they cause the apocalypse.”
“How are we going to stop them?” No matter how much Jongin wanted to interrupt the fight, he didn’t think walking on them and yelling ‘STOP!’ was a good idea.
“I have an idea, stand there,” Chanyeol commanded, pointing to a pile of overturned tables. He himself stood pretty far away from Jongin, which gave the human man the alarming idea that he was about to do something dangerous. A grin spread on Chanyeol’s lips, a maniac grin that did nothing but confirm Jongin’s fears. “Wanna see a cool trick?”
Jongin didn’t have time to answer - didn’t even have the time to compute the perilous glint in Chanyeol’s eyes. The next second, Chanyeol was bursting to flames with a sickening hiss.
Jongin screamed. He screamed, and screamed, wide eyes fixed on the human form burning right in front of him. He hastily retreated, knocking the tables down, leading to a landslide that knocked him on the head and immobilized him to the floor.
He heard the storehouse’s door open with a bang, at the same time as he felt the tables start to dig into his ribs. A confusion of sounds: loud steps, a slap, screaming, the sound of metal scraping the floor. The tables shifted, hurting his arms and legs - and all of the sudden they were off him, and Jongin was breathing deeply as Baekhyun pulled him up.
“Jongin. Jongin, are you okay?” Baekhyun held Jongin by his shoulders, and droplets of rain flew from his hair onto Jongin’s cheek and neck. Cold. Jongin nodded.
“I’m sorry, Jongin sshi, I’m sorry,” Chanyeol whimpered, and Jongin looked for him. At the same time, Baekhyun snapped his head around to stare at him.
“You could have killed him,” Baekhyun hissed viciously, horns slightly visible under his hair. Chanyeol was standing behind Kyungsoo, one cheek red; so he had been the one slapped. Kyungsoo stood before him like a shield, drenched, small. “You almost killed him, do you know that?”
“I’m sorry-I didn’t mean to-I’m really sorry” Jongin felt sorry for Chanyeol. He was on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m fine,” Jongin reassured him, trying not to wince at the stab of pain in his ribs. “I’m okay. It was my fault.”
“Are you hurt anywhere?” Baekhyun asked him, helping him up. It was the first time Jongin saw Baekhyun that serious. Even back at the hotel, when everything had gone wrong, he had been laughing at the dangerous situation, always in a good mood: at that moment, however, he looked stern, and furious, and slightly scary.
“No, I’m fine. It’s my fault, I didn’t pay attention to where I was going,” Jongin reassured them, standing upright. He just wanted all of them to calm down. Well, at least Baekhyun and Kyungsoo had stopped fighting… “We should go to the city, Baekhyun sshi, buy you a shirt and a jacket. You must be cold.”
The silence that followed seemed to be full of confusion. Jongin was puzzled by it, until he saw Chanyeol biting back a laugh and understood - had he really said ‘you must be cold’ to a fire demon? He and Chanyeol burst into laughter simultaneously, followed suit by Baekhyun himself. Even Kyungsoo, shivering and dripping water, chuckled a little.
“Yes, sure, I’m freezing,” Baekhyun said, his jeering grin finally reappearing. It was a relief for Jongin. “We also need to grab some food for you. Anything else we might need?”
“Peace of mind,” Kyungsoo said.
“Celestial forgiveness,” Chanyeol suggested.
Baekhyun laughed drily. “Blankets, then,” he told Jongin, and the other two seemed satisfied with that. “We’ll take a while to come back, so have fun.”
“Take care!” Kyungsoo shouted as they left the storehouse, and Baekhyun rolled his eyes. Jongin, however, was happy to hear that, and answered with a wave of hand.
The rain had subsided for the time being, but the ground was muddy and disgusting. Jongin winced when the mud got all over his car’s floor, but there was no help to it. While browsing his own pockets for the keys, Jongin noticed that something about Baekhyun was off. What was it…? Baekhyun was facing forward, body relaxed, face blank and perfectly neutral. And yet… there was something weird in him.
“I think we should buy you a leather jacket,” Jongin suddenly blurted out, after fifteen minutes of horrible awkward silence. They were already on their way to the city, and Baekhyun had yet to say a word, which made Jongin very uneasy. “Don’t you think it’d suit you? Maybe we could buy leather pants as well.”
“Why leather?” Baekhyun asked politely, making Jongin even more uneasy. Jongin couldn’t look away from the road just now, but he hoped Baekhyun wasn’t looking at him with the blank face from before.
“Leather. Hm, black leather. It’s a bad boy thing. Since you’re a demon and all…” Jongin answered, licking his lips when he noticed what he said made very little sense. “It’s a hot material as well. People sweat in it and all.”
“You mean it’s a good insulator,” Baekhyun said, and Jongin is relieved to hear a hint of mockery in his voice. Maybe he shouldn’t feel good about being made fun of, but at least it indicated Baekhyun was acting normal with him.
“Yes, yes. Fire and such. It’d look good on you,” Jongin’s own words made him blush. He wished he could stop talking, but he couldn’t; it was like something had snapped loose inside of him. “Also, a sleeveless tee. Maybe an earring. A punk look would be nice. Leather boots, too, with big buckles.”
He ranted about clothes for half an hour, until his throat hurt, all while silently praying Baekhyun would just shut him up. The demon, however, rarely even interacted with him, as if he enjoyed watching Jongin go on about how big silver rings go nicely with leather bracelets. As much as it bothered Jongin, that he was making such a huge fool of himself, maybe it was Baekhyun’s pleased smirk and the jeering glint of his eyes that encouraged him to go on, to embarrass him a little further just so Baekhyun would have his share of fun on his behalf. Maybe Jongin was a masochist. Maybe. Most probably.
“So-so,” he quickly looked around when they finally arrived a commercial area of the city, searching for a parking spot. “Where should we start, huh…”
“Park here,” Baekhyun commanded, pointing to a spot on the left of a beauty parlor. Jongin failed to understand why they’re going to a beauty parlor, but complied, parked, turned off the car and waited for Baekhyun to climb off first. He didn’t. The demon kept staring forward with the blank expression from before, and Jongin didn’t like that at all.
“Jongin,” Baekhyun suddenly spoke up, licking his lips. He turned his head, looking at Jongin with a cryptic smile on his lips. “Do you like fire?”
Jongin blinked, taken aback. What kind of question was that? He hated it. He hated it, didn’t he? “I hate it,” he said, and somehow, for some reason, those words felt out of place in his mouth. “I… really hate it. I’ve hated it since I was a kid.” Wrong. Why did it sound so wrong? “I have nightmares. Me dying in a fire. I don’t like it.”
Why did it sound like he was trying to convince himself?
“You know I’m an arsonist, don’t you?” Baekhyun said. Jongin didn’t like the direction Baekhyun was leading him to. “More than that, actually. I basically am fire.” The demon tilted his head, still smiling, but that was a smile Jongin really didn’t want to see on his face. “You hate me, then, don’t you?”
“I don’t!” Jongin quickly shouted, desperate to interrupt that line of thought. “I don’t.” He repeated more firmly, lips pressed in a tight line. “I really don’t. I don’t hate you at all.”
“Oh, but you should,” Baekhyun leaned forward, smile turning cruel. His eyes were opaque, dark like bottomless pits. “I’m the thing that kills people like in your nightmares, Jongin,” he was close. Close enough for Jongin’s slightly altered breath to brush against his cheeks and lashes. “I burn houses down with everyone inside. I blow gas stations up. I blow fuses, I knock candles over. These hands,” he lifted one hand, one bony white hand, as if he was about to slap Jongin. “Have been burning people to death for centuries.”
“You protected me,” Jongin said, eyes studying Baekhyun’s face. What was it? What was about Baekhyun at that moment that bothered him so much? “At the hotel, and just now, when the tables fell on me.”
Baekhyun let out a hearty, dry laugh. His eyes were taunting. “Was I protecting you?” the words rolled from his lips slowly, but heavily. “Or was I just protecting myself?”
Jongin fell silent. What did Baekhyun mean…? He browsed his mind for something that he could refute that theory with - something, anything that could prove to Baekhyun that it made no sense for him to say that - but the idea had been planted in his mind.
“Every single time I helped you, I could be trying to save my ass instead,” Baekhyun went on, leaning away from Jongin’s personal space. “And you wouldn’t know, because you’re really that naïve.”
Jongin gaped, searching for words. There had to be something, there had to be some evidence against what Baekhyun was saying, but he could find none.
“Look at how you admire Kyungsoo, after all,” Baekhyun chuckled humorlessly. “You sure think he’s trying that hard just to save Chanyeol, right? You think he’s trying to bring Chanyeol back to life just to see him alive and happy?”
“He’s,” Jongin interrupted, slightly outraged. “He’s Chanyeol’s angel! Of course-”
“Of course he’s trying to save Chanyeol!, right?” Baekhyun chuckled again, shaking his head. His tone was incredibly distant and unpleasant, his voice icy cold. “Poor you. Let me give you some info on what Kyungsoo is actually doing,” his smile was sweet poison. “He did tell you Chanyeol is not supposed to be dead, didn’t he?”
Jongin blinked. In fact… in fact, Kyungsoo hadn’t. He hadn’t, and Jongin shook his head to say so, but he really should have connected the dots, because it was just too obvious.
“Thought so. He didn’t tell you everything, after all,” and Jongin felt unreasonably upset at that. “But it’s pretty obvious. So, let me explain. A guardian angel protects a person with negative factors until-”
“Negative factors?” Jongin thoughtlessly interrupted. Baekhyun raised his brows.
“Bad karma. Bad destiny. It’s too complicated to explain right now,” Baekhyun dismissed it with a hand gesture. “A guardian angel protects a person with negative factors until it’s their time to die. Chanyeol died in a whim of destiny, much sooner than when he’s actually supposed to die. Which means Kyungsoo failed his mission,” Baekhyun grinned, as if he took great delight in saying those words. “Do you know what happens when angels fail their mission, Jonginnie?”
Jongin’s blood ran cold. He shook his head slowly.
“They fall,” Baekhyun all but whispered, baring his teeth in a grotesque smile. He looked menacing, a living nightmare, an assassin. “Their wings get plucked, and they fall all the way down the filthiest depths of hell. Their souls are slowly, painfully crushed, until there’s no trace of their existence in the karmic map,” Jongin’s mind was blank, vacant, as all color vanished from his face. “If it were you, you’d want to save yourself, wouldn’t you? So did selfless little Kyungsoo.”
“But,” Jongin still couldn’t understand. All of that made sense, and, at the same time, didn’t make sense at all. “But-”
“So what if I only protected you not to get your blood on my shoes?” Baekhyun suddenly leaned forward again, so fast that Jongin thought - for the slightest moment, Jongin thought, and felt ashamed for thinking so, that Baekhyun was going to kiss him. “It’d be bad for me. Chanyeol’s premature death already put me in deep water. Adding you to that count would only bring me trouble.”
Jongin’s eyes swelled with tears. He didn’t want to believe that. He didn’t want to believe that he had only been a burden so far, and he didn’t want to believe that Baekhyun’s feelings towards him were so cold and indifferent. He didn’t want to believe it - and yet, there was no help to it. There was nothing else to believe.
“Don’t go back to the storehouse,” Baekhyun commanded in a steely voice, smile gone as he leaned away from Jongin and opened the car’s door to climb off. “Even if you do, we’ll already be gone. I’ll tell them you decided not to go back. Everyone will think you made the right decision.”
“Baekhyun sshi,” Jongin called out weakly as the demon left the car, still wearing nothing but worn out pajama pants. “Baekhyun sshi!” he raised his voice, and Baekhyun finally did turn around, looking annoyed and impatient. Jongin did his best to push back his tears. There was one thing he needed to know before Baekhyun left him, before his unbelievable adventure came to an end and he went back to his daily life of buying groceries and looking for a job.
“What is the Masterpiece Boy Scheme?”
It was as if he had slapped Baekhyun on the face. The demon’s eyes went wide, shocked, and all the previous impenetrableness faded. For the slightest of the seconds, he seemed to be at a loss of words - just like when Kyungsoo had started the fight back at the storehouse - but then, in the next second, he only looked angry and distant.
“Something that’s none of your business,” he hissed, and Jongin was genuinely hurt. The demon vanished in the air before Jongin’s first tear could escape from his eyes.
Just like that, he was gone.
part I | part II | part III | part IV | part V | part VI