[exo] chanyeol park and the child of gaea 4/4

Jul 26, 2013 02:36




Twenty minutes later, Jongin still isn’t over it.

“Seriously, how could you not say something?? That thing is big enough to dress up as a subway train for Halloween!”

They’re lurking on the edge of the trees, just out of sight, and Kyungsoo’s nerves are starting to get to him. “What, did you think we were traveling cross-country so Chanyeol could slay someone’s large pet snake?”

“No! Well, I mean maybe. I don’t know, it’s Chanyeol! I wouldn’t put it past him to try and kill that thing with a shovel.” The Python hiss-roars again, like bombs scraping on a chalkboard, and they all shudder. Jongin adds, “A really big shovel. Gods, you could have at least said “anaconda” or something, Chanyeol.”

Twenty minutes has helped Chanyeol hide some of the fear on his face, but he still looks pretty strained and nervous, eyes wide and staring at nothing while his fingers fiddle with his bow.

“Um, it’s okay,” Jongin says, trying to backtrack when he sees the expression on Chanyeol’s face. “Four against one, we’re bound to win.”

It’s probably the nicest thing Jongin’s ever said to Chanyeol but unfortunately, it’s overshadowed by the situation they’re in. Kyungsoo chalks it up to Jongin finally seeing how real this quest Chanyeol’s been sent on is, or something.

Chanyeol shakes his head. “It should really be me that does it. Chiron gave me the job.”

Frowning deeply, Sehun says, “That’s stupid. Why’d you even bother to ask us along, then, if we’re not allowed to help?”

He definitely has a point, and Chanyeol nods slowly after looking around at their determined faces, the blank look in his eyes clearing.

“So, our plan is…?” Sehun prompts, and Chanyeol scrubs a hand through his short black hair, reaching for a stick to draw with in the dirt around their feet.

The plan they come up with is basic and pretty risky, especially with the proximity to the unpredictable geysers, but it’s the best one they can work out with what they’ve got.

Kyungsoo gives Sehun a sword from his keychain, and Chanyeol pulls out an extra shield for him from his backpack, where it had been masquerading as a studded leather wrist cuff. For someone who had insisted he “wasn’t into all that hero stuff” when they’d first met at the train station, Sehun looks surprisingly comfortable with the weaponry, fitting right in between Jongin and Kyungsoo when they each take out their own weapons.

Chanyeol’s got his quiver slung onto his back, a mix of arrows, all with distinctive fletching, filling it, and his bow in hand. Kyungsoo can see the orange-feathered ends of the bronze-tipped arrows he’d given Chanyeol for his birthday last summer among the collection, and it would make him smile, except that Chanyeol won’t meet his eyes, and one of them might die, and the last thing they did was argue.

They’re all lined up at the edge of the clearing now, looking out at the great body of the Python. Kyungsoo can see some bison wandering around in the distance, and beyond that, the official buildings of the state park, their brown roofs rising above the tops of the tress on the opposite side of the clearing.

The Python’s skin is a dark steel gray in the sunlight, and it looks like it’s sunning itself, enjoying the heat radiating from the geyser below. There’s something completely otherworldly about it, because snakes are usually thin, even the long ones, but this one is as big around as a car, and its smooth body is circled around and around the geyser at least three times. It looks more like a sea serpent from an old sailor’s story than something that belongs on dry land.

“Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo tries, wanting to say something else, to wipe the slate clean of their argument, just in case, but Chanyeol waves him off.

“Later,” he says, eyes saying a lot more than Kyungsoo can decipher right then, and then he shouts their signal, bursting from the trees at a sprint.

Jongin and Sehun run out next, going wide to the right, closer to the Python’s head, and making a racket, shouting and banging their swords against their shields.

Jogging at a much more normal pace, Kyungsoo follows Chanyeol to the left and watches the Python’s head rise at all the noise, tongue flicking out with irritation. It probably thinks that Sehun and Jongin don’t pose much of a threat, based on their size, and watches them for a few moments, head bobbing as though it’s trying to decide whether or not it’s worth it to strike.

Out of the Python’s line of sight on the opposite side of the coil of its body, Chanyeol is close enough to touch the skin of the snake. He raises a hand, first brushing his fingers on one of the scales, and then rapping at it with his knuckles, but the Python doesn’t seem to notice, too focused on Jongin and Sehun and the vibrations all their noise is making. It’s scales must be too hard for a sword or an arrow to do much damage because Chanyeol shakes his head to himself, beginning to hoist himself up the snake’s side instead.

Their plan, the one where Jongin and Sehun (who had stubbornly refused to be left out, despite his complete lack of battle experience) act as a distraction while Chanyeol crawls up onto the Python’s back and kills it, seems to be starting out well. Kyungsoo, who has a spotty track record at close combat at best, regardless of how things had turned out during the fight on the plane, is there to help with the diversion, and to be able to pull anyone who’s injured out of the line of fire, if necessary.

Things look decidedly less promising when the Python decides to strike, body uncoiling a little more, as it lunges forward powerfully, missing Jongin by a hair. It matters little that Kyungsoo knows that regular pythons are nonvenomous, because there’s no guarantee that that will hold true to something like this, and poisonous or not, it’s teeth look frighteningly sharp.

The Python hisses angrily when it pulls back and sees Jongin still standing, and the noise is even more earsplitting up close. Kyungsoo brings his hammer down hard on the dirt under his feet, hoping the vibrations will distract the snake enough for Sehun and Jongin to be able to reposition themselves. Sure enough, the Python begins to slither in his direction instead, great body unwinding more, and Kyungsoo keeps beating on the ground until the serpent is close enough to really make him nervous. By then, Jongin and Sehun have started making a racket again, stomping their feet and alternating between crashing their shields and swords together and hitting them against the dirt.

It moves off towards them and tries to bite again, this time going to Sehun and missing. Jongin shouts, looking furious, and disappears with a poof. He reappears on the Python’s head, slicing at the thinner, more vulnerable skin there with his sword. The snake thrashes, hissing furiously, and both Kyungsoo and Sehun make a good deal of noise, Kyungsoo with his hammer on the ground and Sehun with his sword and shield against the dirt, hoping the vibrations through the ground will confuse the Python to the point of frustration and fatigue.

Chanyeol’s got ahold of the Python’s body now, clinging to the mostly-smooth edges of the scales as he works his way up the thing’s great body as it uncoils more, taking Jongin higher and high up into the air on top of its head. It’s almost all the way uncoiled by now, Chanyeol about eighty feet from the head.

At last, infuriated by the constant pounding through the ground and the bladework Jongin is doing using it’s head, the Python thrashes enough to throw Jongin off, sending him plummeting to the ground. The fall would surely hill him, and Kyungsoo runs forward, arms outstretched, even though he’s nowhere near enough to catch him, but something suddenly slows him down, cradling his head to keep it from lolling back, and making him drift down to the ground, like a falling leaf.

Sehun catches Jongin in his arms, sword and shield on the ground beside him. Kyungsoo can see him say something, probably asking if Jongin is okay, but can’t hear anything over the Python’s deafening hissing and the sound of its body moving against the rocks as it moves over the mouth of the inactive geyser to get closer to where Jongin and Sehun are.

“Look out!” Chanyeol shouts suddenly. Kyungsoo looks up, seeing Chanyeol clinging to the serpent’s upper-body, staring down at Jongin and Sehun with alarm.

Kyungsoo realizes after a moment what’s got him so freaked out: the Python has quickly surrounded Jongin and Sehun, coiling the circle tighter and tighter, blocking them from view.

Kyungsoo suddenly remembers, pythons are the ones that strangle their prey to death and then eat it whole. Jongin could teleport himself out, but Sehun is trapped.

He tries the hammer trick again, thumping out a rhythm on the stone, but the Python ignores him.

God, Kyungsoo feels fucking useless, knowing that even if he could make it over nearer to where Jongin and Sehun are hemmed in, there’s nothing he could do against five tons of Python meat.

Adrenaline is thrumming through Kyungsoo’s system, pressing his hero reflexes into gear, and he looks around, quickly taking in every detail of their surroundings.

The bison have moved off, none of them in sight, and it’s obvious now when he looks at the line of trees at the edge of the clearing that those large swathes of forest that had been crushed and flattened had been paths that the Python had used to get to and from the geyser. The geyser itself, the big famous one at least, is beginning to steam more heavily than before, and that’s when Kyungsoo sees it:

The end of the Python’s body lying squarely over the mouth of Old Faithful.

In some strange way, Kyungsoo can also feel it, the volcanic activity under the surface, can sense the slow build as water meets magma and the pressure builds up, and up, and up -

He can hear the telltale rumbles, feels something strange tingling in his fingers, and yells to Chanyeol, who is watching Jongin and Sehun helplessly as the Python hems them in, “Chanyeol, the geyser!”

Just then, the water begins bubbling up, spilling out from under the snake, unable to lift its weight. The water is hot enough to catch the Python’s attention, though, it’s head swiveling around as the geyser really gets going, the pressure behind the water causing it to spray around its body.

One glance tells Kyungsoo that Chanyeol’s taken the opportunity to scramble the rest of the way up the snake, standing atop its head as it hisses, jaw open wide as the bottom half of it thrashes in agony from the boiling water. Kyungsoo can feel the wave of heat from the geyser on the wind, and cringes as he remembers that the easiest way to kill a snake is to pour pot of boiling water on it. Crouching down, he presses his palms to the dirt, feeling the true eruption still brewing, and imagines opening the pressure releasing like opening a shaken-up soda can.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kyungsoo sees a bit of metal flash in the sun when he stands again, and watches as Chanyeol nocks one of the orange-feathered brass arrows and takes a direct shot into the Python’s wide black eye.

The effect is almost instantaneous, Chanyeol’s close proximity probably sending the arrow straight through the Python’s eye into its brain, and it burst into dust, the cloud of it surrounding Kyungsoo and making him shut is eyes as the grains assault his face. He can’t see it, but he knows Chanyeol is falling, now supported by nothing more than air.

He hears the geyser burst to life again, now unrestricted, like the earth below is letting out a deep sigh, and thinks maybe, over the noise of the pillar of water, he hears Sehun let out a shout.

The dust takes too long to dissipate and Kyungsoo covers his mouth with his sleep and squints, trying to see well enough to walk. It turns out the others aren’t far, the dust clearing finally to reveal Jongin and Sehun gathered around Chanyeol on the ground. Kyungsoo rushes over and drops to his knees. “Oh my god,” he says, voice scratchy and breathless from inhaling the dust. “What are you, insane?”

Chanyeol looks miraculously unhurt, and Kyungsoo assumes Sehun did his wind magic trick again to break the fall. He shrugs, trying to sit up. “I mean, probably at least a little? Maybe the satyrs will write a song about this, though, and call it Grudge Match at the Geyser or something. That’d be worth it.”

“I seriously saw my life flash before my eyes,” says Sehun flatly, sagging to lean back on his hands, probably tired from stopping people from falling to their deaths. “There wasn’t nearly enough sex in it. I was disappointed.”

Jongin’s ears go red, but Sehun doesn’t seem to notice. “I mean, if my life were a movie, I don’t think I’d go see it. Well, except for the past couple of days, anyway. Those were okay.”

The sad loneliness that Kyungsoo had seen in Sehun’s face when they’d saved him at Odenton Station is all but gone now, replaced by a sort of easy confidence, and softer edge to his smirks. It’s a good change, Kyungsoo thinks.

His mood sinks when he realizes that he’s gone and grabbed Chanyeol’s hand. Chanyeol’s looking up at him like a wounded animal, dust in his hair and on his cheeks, and he opens his mouth, the set of his lips uncertain -

“What have you done?” a voice demands, so loud it shakes the earth beneath them. Kyungsoo turns, and standing next to the mouth of the giant geyser, is the silhouette of a woman watching them and glittering, as though she’s made of sand.



“Wait up, Chanyeol - “ Kyungsoo pants, almost breaking into a jog so he can keep up with Chanyeol as he winds through the rows and rows of strawberries in Camp Half-Blood fields.

Chanyeol’s long legs are eating up the dirt in long strides that Kyungsoo’s legs can’t even pretend to compete with. “You said you wanted space.”

“That’s not -“

Except it is. Chanyeol has given Kyungsoo exactly what he asked for. No long stares across the tables at dinner, or evenings spent on the sparring fields stargazing while Chanyeol turned the baseball his mysterious father had given him over and over in his hands, or even early mornings, when Chanyeol used to drag Kyungsoo out of bed to take an early ride over the shore to watch the sunrise.

It’s just…

“Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo tries again, surging forward to catch the back of Chanyeol’s shirt in his fist to stop him from walking away. “I didn’t - I still want us to be friends.”

Chanyeol’s shoulders are wound up, the tension showing through the fabric of the T-shirt pulled tight around Kyungsoo’s fingers, but he’s not trying to get away anymore, so Kyungsoo pushes on. “I didn’t mean we couldn’t still talk or hang out. It’s not like I - “ didn’t want you anymore. Kyungsoo can’t make himself say it.

He remembers what the constant, dull ache of being unclaimed by a father who’d left before he could even be remembered is like, and though Chanyeol always makes light of it, Kyungsoo knows that being sent to Camp year-round by his mother has left Chanyeol feeling unwanted by the two people in the world that should have cared for him most.

Staring at the dirt under his shoes, Kyungsoo says more quietly, “I’m sorry.”

The sun is hot overhead without the cover of trees and Kyungsoo’s apology feels loud and naked as they stand together in the middle of the strawberry field.

Peeling Kyungsoo’s fingers away from his shirt one-by-one, Chanyeol wraps his hand around Kyungsoo’s wrist. His fingertips are rough from archery, calluses from nocking arrows and skin rubbing against fletching day in and day out, along with the various marks and scars they all had from sword practice, climbing, and other training, and Kyungsoo likes how the marks are different from the ones he’s gotten from his work in the forge. Their nails are both kept short, though, and it makes each of their hands look like one half of a strange pair, different but somehow matching when put together.

Chanyeol is quiet for a long time. Kyungsoo tries to figure out what he’ll do if Chanyeol tells him he doesn’t want to be friends anymore, that he’s happier without Kyungsoo around, that Kyungsoo’s really messed this up for good.

When Chanyeol opens his mouth to speak a few minutes later, Kyungsoo still has no idea.

“It’s okay, you know.” Chanyeol drops Kyungsoo’s hand and kicks at the dirt a little. “I know I can be… kind of a lot. And I get that you wanted space from that.”

“No!” The word is out of Kyungsoo’s mouth before he can stop it. Chanyeol’s shoe stops scuffing in the dirt and Kyungsoo licks his sun-dried lips before going on. “It wasn’t that. It’s - it was nothing. Forget it. It was about me, not you.”

When he looks up, Kyungsoo can’t read the expression on Chanyeol’s face and his heart clutches painfully, like a steel-gloved hand is gripping it. I really messed up, he thinks, grabbing at Chanyeol’s hand where it’s hanging against his side and insisting “I take it back” because Kyungsoo thought he could do this, thought he could hurt Chanyeol now to fix things in the long run, but he just… can’t.

“I’m sorry,” Kyungsoo says again. “Forget I said it. Please.”

Chanyeol’s pulse is hammering away under Kyungsoo’s fingers, the wind ruffling their hair and carrying the smell of hot, caked earth up from the ground. Kyungsoo can see Chanyeol considering, can feel the unevenness of the dirt under the soles of his sneakers and the tart smell of the slowly ripening strawberries rising up with the hot air, and the uncertainty is crawling under Kyungsoo’s skin, pulling his ribs too tight as the silence stretches out between them further and further.

“Okay,” Chanyeol says finally, gripping Kyungsoo’s hand back. He smiles a little, not one that shows all his teeth, but it’s something. “Besides, I need someone to help me show Zitao his own reflection in the shore and see if he falls in love with it. There’s a bet going.”

Kyungsoo allows himself to let out the breath he’s kept clutched tight inside of himself, and smiles back. “Lu Han’s idea?”

“Of course.”

And it’s - well, it’s not fixed, but it’s better, and Kyungsoo can breathe again, even if sometimes Chanyeol will look at Kyungsoo when he thinks Kyungsoo isn’t paying attention, like he knows Kyungsoo hasn’t told him the whole truth.


The woman actually is made of sand, Kyungsoo realizes, glittering and yellow in the sun, while her cloak is made up of something darker, probably dirt from deeper in the ground. It ripples as she moves towards them, reminiscent of regular fabric, and her face is blocked by a layer of dust hanging before it, like a bride’s veil.

“My son!” her voice booms again, like the grind of stone on stone, or the rumble of a rockslide. “You murdered my son!”

“The great big snake was your son?” Chanyeol blurts tactlessly, sounding disbelieving. To be fair, Kyungsoo is too, because a woman made of dirt with a giant serpent for a son, sounds pretty weird.

The woman draws herself up to her full height (or well, her full height in this form, probably) and says with a voice like an earthquake, “I am Gaea, goddess of the Earth, and you just slew my son, the great Python, that was once the guardian of the center of the Earth.”

Kyungsoo gulps. Gaea was… not someone that should be messed with, and even if they’d only been carrying out a quest for Chiron, this was probably not going to go very well.

“You will give penance for his death!” she demands, her dark robe churning violently around her, and she’s towering over them now, casting a dark shadow across Chanyeol’s body.

Her hands are delicate and long-fingered even though they’re made of sand, pointing at them all. Then she throws her arms out, like she’s conducting a symphony, and her cloak billows and streams down around as though it’s being caught by the wind, except there’s no wind to speak of.

“Penance!” The ground is beginning to shake, her voice like the tearing of the ground when mountains are formed, the shift of sand in the wind, and to Kyungsoo, it’s like he can hear death rushing towards them.

Suddenly, a bright light bursts into being between them and Gaea’s arms drop as she moves to cover her eyes. “Not this one, Earth Mother,” says a man’s voice, and when the light dims, there’s a teenager standing there, hands in the pockets of his jeans. He smiles and shakes his head at Gaea. “Not my son.”

Kyungsoo trades confused looks with Jongin, no idea what’s going on.

“A son for son would be fair,” Gaea says, the harshest of her earth-shattering sounds muted now and her cloak all smoothed out.

“Except mine won’t reform in Tartarus and yours will, so that’s a little unfair. Not to mention how Python terrorized the local mortals for sport and ate them while he sunned himself like a lazy cat.” Gaea looks as though she’s about to object when the teenager adds, smile so wide it looks almost cruel, “You remember how this story ends, Earth Mother, let it go.”

The ground beneath them shudders, angry and a little reluctantly, and the sand figure of Gaea collapses in on itself, piling at the teenage boy’s feet.

He turns to look at them all, smile back to its previous width, which is still bright enough to blind someone if they were to look directly at it. “Good to see you following in my footsteps, son.”

Kyungsoo wants to point out that he’s probably the same age as the rest of them, a slightly rumpled T-shirt hanging off his shoulders and casual loafers on his feet, and there’s no way one of them could be his son - but there’s something familiar about his face. The edges of his smile, or his cheekbones, or maybe the pretty, wide curve of his eyes.

“Apollo,” Kyungsoo breathes at the same time the teenage boy says, “Chanyeol, son, I can only stay while the sun is overhead.”

“What?” Chanyeol is still half-sitting, half-lying on the ground, staring up at the god with disbelief. “Me?”

Apollo laughs, bright and fast, like a solar flare. “Yes, you.”

Chanyeol scrambles to his feet, brushing off his pants with his mouth still open, and Apollo smirks and points to something over Chanyeol’s head: a glowing, golden lyre, his own symbol.

Something in Kyungsoo’s chest bursts, heart beating against his ribs like the frantic wings of a bird desperate to take flight.

Chanyeol is the son of Apollo.

“You’ve completed your quest and you’ve been claimed,” says Apollo, looking at Chanyeol almost fondly, “but you still must complete the payment of penance for the Python’s death. Gaea values all her children more than the world and if I just let you go, she’ll be a bitch about it for the next few centuries.” Chanyeol nods, still looking shell-shocked, and follows Apollo when he beckons for Chanyeol to follow him as he walks a little ways away, further from the geyser. “The traditional thing is ritual cleansing and silen…”

Soon, they’re out of earshot and Kyungsoo takes a gulp of oxygen like he’s never breathed before. His fingers are clawing at his chest like he can pull his heart out and calm it, and his mind is swirling down the drain.

“You okay?” Jongin asks and Sehun is staring at him.

“Is this really that big of a deal? You had to have known Chanyeol had a father somewhere.”

Jongin makes some kind of large motion with his hands at Sehun just outside of Kyungsoo’s field of vision and Sehun goes quiet. Kyungsoo looks over to where Chanyeol is talking with his father.

He’s got his lip pulled into his mouth, classic thinking face on as he listens intently to Apollo, but even that can’t hide his sheer excitement. They catch each other’s eyes over Apollo’s shoulder, and Kyungsoo’s heart finally slows to a comforting thrum inside of him. Chanyeol’s lip slips out from his teeth and he smiles, and the rest of Kyungsoo’s world dissolves into rays of sunlight.


Part of Kyungsoo welcomes the routine of school when he gets back to D.C., the familiar fit of his uniform blazer across his shoulders and the comforting way all of his classmates and teachers still seem exactly the same as they were before Kyungsoo left.

The quest had only taken a few days, but Kyungsoo came back feeling like a completely different person.

Jongin still comes over a couple times a week, but he seems much happier, bringing trashy comedies instead of trashy action films (which Jongin says are much less cool once you’ve actually lived one). Kyungsoo knows that Jongin’s keeping an eye on him, making sure he doesn’t have a breakdown or something, but it’s still nice to sit on the couch and stuff popcorn into Jongin’s mouth, laughing at whatever’s going on on-screen.

Kyungsoo can’t stop himself from asking, one day, “Are you and Sehun going to see each other again?”

“I’m not sure,” Jongin says, sounding surprisingly okay with it, “but you know that stomach thing that used to happen with Krystal? It happens with him too, only I can talk to Sehun and not worry, and he makes me laugh. It’s just nice. I don’t know.” He shrugs. “I think I’d like to see him again, though.”

On the TV screen, Lindsey Lohan has just managed to fall headfirst into a dumpster, and Kyungsoo snorts into his handful of popcorn.

Jongin shifts awkwardly on the couch next to him like he always does when he’s got something to say but doesn’t know how to say it. There’s something endearing about the fact that no matter how much he grows up, some part of Jongin will always be the shy, awkward thirteen-year-old Kyungsoo had befriended years ago.

“You and Chanyeol…” Jongin starts, but then trails off, as though waiting for Kyungsoo to fill in the rest of the sentence.

Kyungsoo chews slowly on his popcorn to keep his mouth busy, finally answering. “What about us?”

“It’s just,” Jongin says quickly, like he wants to get this out and over with, “hard seeing you make yourself unhappy. For a long time, I thought it was him that made you so sad. That’s why I was so…you know, to him, but I’m starting to think maybe it wasn’t like that.”

“No,” Kyungsoo agrees, looking down at the half-empty bowl in his lap. “It wasn’t.”

Things after Apollo had left them at Yellowstone to keep doing his job of driving the sun chariot across the sky didn’t go the way Kyungsoo had planned.

Chanyeol had come back over to them, eyes big and round. Jongin and Sehun, Kyungsoo realized as he looked around, had tactfully wandered a little ways away, leaving them alone, and the words just came tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop them.

“So you’re not - we’re not - “

Chanyeol shook his head, but Kyungsoo hadn’t been able to read the expression on his face, fathomless with too many possibilities.

Biting his lips, he said, “About what I said yesterday…”

Chanyeol just continued to stare at him, and over the years, he’s found Chanyeol harder and harder to read, but never like this. He had his eyes open, lashes fluttering down against his cheeks a few times, and he looked like he might be frowning, lips all pushed out, like there was something he had needed Kyungsoo to notice, and Kyungsoo was missing it.

Kyungsoo had begun to feel his palms sweat. Was it that Chanyeol hadn’t forgiven him for what he’d said? Or maybe that now that there was a real possibility that they could maybe be together, Chanyeol didn’t want him after all? The anxiety had begun clawing it’s way into his mouth, and his next words were the only ones he’d been able to think of that might let him salvage what was left of his heart after this.

“I should have just let it go,” Kyungsoo had said hastily, trying to look relaxed, like he wasn’t spewing a lie. “We’re brothers no matter who your father is. Always have been, always will be.”

Chanyeol’s silence had stretched out even further and Kyungsoo had been desperate to get out, to get some air before he suffocated and to wash the lie out of his mouth.

Luckily, Sehun and Jongin had rescued him then, letting him fade into the background with all their questions, and Kyungsoo had wandered off to go sit close enough to the geysers that he could feel the volcanic activity underneath them again, the movement of magma and water meeting and building up underneath the Earth’s crust a constant and comforting thing to pay attention to.

The park rangers showed up then (Kyungsoo kind of wondered where they were before, but assumed the giant snake had kept them away), and they were looking for Chanyeol for some reason.

Jongin and Sehun had come over after Chanyeol walked off with a group of rangers and Kyungsoo had stared after Chanyeol with his mouth open.

“What is he doing? Is he being arrested or something?”

“Noooo,” Jongin had laughed, “it’s the other part of his penance thing. He has to stay and help clean up the park. Apollo must have done something to the mortals so they won’t give him any trouble.”

“The rangers all think the tree damage was done by some freakishly huge grizzly bear on rampage?” Sehun had looked amazed at the power of the Mist when it came to disguising the impossible from mortals.

“What’s the first part, then?” Kyungsoo had asked, remembering what Jongin said, and Jongin had given him a weird look.

“You mean his vow of silence? Didn’t you notice how he kind of, like, wasn’t saying anything? And how not normal that was?”

“I - “ A vow of silence. Chanyeol hadn’t been giving him the silent treatment at all. “I mean, of course,” he had recovered, seeing the seriously concerned look on Jongin’s face and trying to imagine how awful he must have looked to garner that kind of reaction. “That’s what I meant. Did he want us to wait for him?”

Sehun had shaken his head. “He’ll be here a couple more days at least.”

Kyungsoo had pushed himself to his feet, taking one last look around. Chanyeol isn’t anywhere in sight. Then, Kyungsoo had sighed and said, “I’m ready to go home.”


For once, Kyungsoo thinks his mother’s new husband is actually pretty great. Alan looks kind of like Denzel Washington, doesn’t act like it’s unexpected that Kyungsoo spends his free time soldering things together out back of the house or working at the mechanic’s garage a few blocks over, and never once asks Kyungsoo to call him “dad”.

Alan’s only fault seems to be that he’s a diehard Mariners fan, which Kyungsoo wouldn’t care two straws about if they weren’t also Chanyeol’s favorite team, and he spends the whole month of May dragging around the baggage of a totally and completely broken heart in his chest.

“Hey, Kyungsoo,” Alan says, sticking his head into Kyungsoo’s room one Saturday when his mom’s been called into the office, “I was sorting through the laundry that needs to be done and found this.” He holds up the backpack Kyungsoo had taken with him on the quest. When he’d gotten home from Yellowstone, Kyungsoo had dropped everything on his bedroom floor and slept for two days solid, only waking up when his mom arrived, and after that, Kyungsoo had simply forgotten about the backpack.

“I didn’t mean to pry,” Alan says, looking a little guilty, “but I opened it because I didn’t know what it was, and I saw the glove inside. Is it yours?”

Kyungsoo almost shakes his head, but ends up doing half a shrug instead. “I made it.”

Alan pulls the leather baseball mitt out of the backpack, running his fingers along the seams. “I thought you didn’t like baseball? This mitt is way too nice for someone who doesn’t love the game.”

“It was a gift for a friend. He says he can never find a glove that fits his hand right, so I made him one.”

“Well I’m sure he’ll like it.” Alan slips the mitt back into the backpack and hands the whole thing to Kyungsoo. He can probably sense something’s off, and chooses to head back down the hallway to the laundry room instead of asking about it, which Kyungsoo is thankful for, but which leaves him alone with the baseball mitt that he’d custom made for Chanyeol, which pulls at Kyungsoo’s heart until it’s raw.

He pulls it out and sets it on the surface of the desk in front of him, studying each seam, every wrinkle in the leather.

Making this glove had been different than when he designed and made things in the forge or the workshop. Kyungsoo had had to start all the way at ground zero with textiles, letting Kwon push him so hard he thought he’d go crazy before they’d even finished the basics. He didn’t have a natural talent for it, but every time he wanted to quit, he thought of Chanyeol, who had still had every right to be upset with him, comforting Kyungsoo and saying truthfully, “Everything that you make is amazing.”

Kyungsoo isn’t sure why he waited so long to give the glove to him. Maybe because of all the work that Kyungsoo put into it, all the heart and soul, would make it mean something special, and Kyungsoo had never been ready for that.

“Kyungsoo.”

Kyungsoo knows who it is without turning from the way the joints of the ceiling creak and pop, as though trying to spread apart to make space for something, and so he isn’t surprised when he turns around to see his father standing in his bedroom. What he is surprised about is how strange it is to see Hephaestus in a room that isn’t filled with metal and a hearth crackling with a fire.

“That glove that you’re holding,” Hephaestus says, a fire kindling in his brown eyes even if there isn’t one burning in the room, “that is something true. You made it with your own hands?”

Kyungsoo nods, hardly daring to believe -

“Come work in my forge and become my apprentice.” Hephaestus might actually be smiling behind his beard, and Kyungsoo feels a little bit more like himself again, the same old excitement and yearning flooding through him, the need to get away, but his reasons are different now.

Like this, his father doesn’t seem quite so frightening, more like a bull actually managing to play nice in a china shop while it looks at the nice designs on the plates, but Kyungsoo still feels nervous.

“I’ll have to ask my mom,” Kyungsoo says, before he loses his courage, “since I’m still in high school, I mean.” His father stares at him, like that’s not the answer he expected, and Kyungsoo quickly stutters out, “But I want to. Thank you.”

Hephaestus nods, the fingers of one gnarled hand fiddling with the ends of his beard. “Your mother,” he says thoughtfully, and Kyungsoo remembers once again with a grimace that Hephaestus and his mom were once A Thing. “If she says yes, then you may come.”

As usual, his father disappears before Kyungsoo can even say goodbye, and Kyungsoo is left, holding Chanyeol’s mitt in his hand, counting down the minutes until his mom comes home.


The Hephaestus cabin is emptier when Kyungsoo moves in for his fourth summer. Minjun, Nichkhun and Taecyeon are all working grownup jobs over the summer now that they’re old and trained enough to be able to protect themselves in the real world without worrying. He, Junho and Chansung spread out a little more than usual as they unpack, both enjoying the extra room and trying to take up a little more of the space left by three absent people.

The rest of the Camp is filling up gradually as people arrive from their homes across the country for the summer, but the one person Kyungsoo wants to see is already going to be here.

Kyungsoo’s thought about what he wants say to Chanyeol when they see each other again a hundred, a million times over, but when he finally sees Chanyeol in the stable, rubbing his nose against the velvet nose of one of the ordinary colts and laughing, all the words just go flying out of his head.

“Oh,” Chanyeol says when he sees Kyungsoo, taking a step back from the stall. The colt blows a raspberry, clearing wanting more attention and unable to verbalize it like the winged horses, but Chanyeol ignores him. “I… didn’t know if you were coming back.”

This takes Kyungsoo even more by surprise. “What? How?”

“I overheard Chiron talking over an Iris message to your mom about your dad’s offer last week.” Chanyeol ducks his head. “I didn’t mean to.”

Kyungsoo waves him off with hand, glad that he doesn’t have to explain too much. “No, it’s fine. She just decided I should wait until I’ve finish school to go away.”

Chanyeol’s eyebrows go flying up towards his hairline. “And you’re okay with that?”

“Yeah, I…” Kyungsoo feels himself do that weird half shrug he’d used on Alan a few weeks before, “used to want to get away, because it hurt. You know, to be here, even though I needed to be. But now, I want to go because it’s my dream, and that can wait another year, until I’m done with school.” Chanyeol nods, eyes still rounded and his mouth open just a little. It’s so endearing that Kyungsoo’s stomach does a little flip-flop, doing a full rotation inside him at how unsure Chanyeol looks. “I made something for you. Ages ago, actually.”

Kyungsoo pulls the baseball mitt out from behind his back where he’d been hiding it, and Chanyeol’s expression just falls apart in surprise. “For me?”

“Yeah, custom for your hand. You said you could never find a glove that fits right.”

Kyungsoo had been right about one thing, anyway: there is something special about watching Chanyeol carefully take the glove out of Kyungsoo’s hands and then slide his own finger and palm inside. He’s not worried that it won’t fit - Kwon had been an amazing teacher - but he’s worried that Chanyeol won’t like it, or won’t think it means what Kyungsoo thinks it means.

“It’s perfect,” Chanyeol breathes, eyes shining, and the words flood past Kyungsoo’s lips, unable to be stopped.

“I’m sorry about what I told you at Yellowstone,” he says, in a rush. “I thought you weren’t speaking to me and I freaked out. And for McDonald’s in Cheyenne, too. For all of it.”

Chanyeol waves his arms in front of him, the new leather glove flopping almost comically on his hand.

“No! I really like you, Kyungsoo,” he says earnestly, like he’s terrified of being misunderstood again, and Kyungsoo can’t handle the reverent way he cradles the baseball glove in his hands, like it’s the most precious thing he’s ever held. “I really, really - “

Unable to help himself Kyungsoo pulls Chanyeol down to kiss him, and all the nervousness in his chest just kind of melts, warm and hot in his belly. Chanyeol frees one of his hands, fingertips skimming Kyungsoo’s collarbone, making him shiver, before settling on the back of his neck, warm and steady. Chanyeol’s mouth is still a little open, catching Kyungsoo’s top lip between them, and there’s tiny sparks collecting in Kyungsoo’s belly, and everywhere Chanyeol is touching him.

“You’re definitely not like a brother to me,” he says against Chanyeol’s chin when they part, and Chanyeol snorts into his forehead as they both dissolve into laugher, clutching the side of the stall and each other to stay upright, the noise startling the horses.

“So you’re staying this time?” Chanyeol asks, once they’ve collected themselves again, going back to trading and savoring kisses just because they’re allowed. Kyungsoo’s got his hands in the back pockets of Chanyeol’s jeans, feeling a little smug when he squeezes and Chanyeol makes a noise in the back of his throat.

“Oi! Get a room, you two,” one of the pegasi calls from down the stable and Chanyeol giggles into Kyungsoo’s mouth, pulling back to breathe.

Kyungsoo likes how their chests brush against each other when they’re this close, likes the way that their breath mingles between them and that he’s allowed to sling his arms around Chanyeol’s neck to pull him even closer. “I’m not going anywhere.”



genre: fantasy, pairing: kyungsoo/chanyeol, genre: (bro)mance, pairing: kai/sehun, genre: action/adventure, fandom: exo

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