heavy is the cost; krisbaek
pairing: kris/baekhyun
rating/genre: g, angst
word count: 1200+
summary: petunias mean your presence soothes me and zinnias mean i mourn your absence (victorian language of flowers)
Baekhyun always wakes up first.
For as long as he can remember, he has always woken up at eight in the morning, not a minute too late nor too soon. His mother used to tell him that it’s because he has an amazing biological clock, and so he took it as a reasonable explanation.
Yi Fan, on the other hand, would have slept through the whole day if he wasn’t up early to wake the older.
Yi Fan was a heavy sleeper; sometimes it was tiresome, especially if they had an important appointment, or when he had to go in early for work (which he rarely did because he ran his own company) but most of the time he felt it was endearing. Yi Fan would be curled into a ball, facing Baekhyun’s side of the bed, snoring rather ungracefully. He always thought it was (somewhat) adorable because Yi Fan loved portraying himself as a collected man.
(There was the one time Baekhyun took pictures of a drooling Yi Fan and sent it to their circle of friends.)
He wakes up, eyes directed at the cream colour ceiling, and the only thing Baekhyun can think of is how he should have painted the ceiling a pretty shade of blue, like Yi Fan had wanted. The only concession to Yi Fan’s wishes were the tacky glow in the dark stars arranged in constellations.
(They’d had the best day putting them up, all laughter because Yi Fan was tall enough for Baekhyun to sit on his shoulders as Baekhyun tacked the stars up. That night they’d slept on the floor, staring up plastic stars and wishing plastic dreams of forever.)
Slowly, Baekhyun reaches under the covers in search of Yi Fan’s hand. It roams so haplessly that the beats of his heart hasten. He can’t find the older’s hand-his huge oversized hand that fits so well around his; his hand, marred with callouses and scars with stories behind each of them. Baekhyun’s hand searches for Yi Fan’s with ardent intensity and determination, but doesn’t find its target.
Frantic, he turns to lie on his side, to face Yi Fan; to make sure he’s all right, to make sure he’s there.
But he isn’t.
-
The sky is a dull colour.
Yi Fan used to love days like these. While Baekhyun loves bright and delightful days (and some says they reflect Baekhyun’s smiles), Yi Fan loved dark and ominous days. He used to say he could always feel the nuances of melancholy in between each grey cloud during days like these. Yi Fan’s metaphor was that on days like this were the days he missed Baekhyun even when Baekhyun was right next to him.
Baekhyun stares heavenward, thinking about whether this just a coincidence or maybe it is some sort of cruel joke by fate, mocking and tempting. He mulls the question over a cup of tea (oolong because Yi Fan loves oolong), and settles for the former, because he believes no one can ever be that malicious to invoke such a joke.
(It’s petty, Baekhyun realizes, how he’s ruminating over the state of the sky.)
Baekhyun takes a sip of his tea, and the warmth provided by it reaches to all points of his body. For a moment, he feels as if he’s around Yi Fan again, because Yi Fan was always so warm.
But the warmth ebbs away, quickly as it had come, and it leaves him feeling hopeless. It leaves him craving Yi Fan like always.
(And so he takes another sip.)
-
There is a lone stalk of petunia on Yi Fan’s bedside table.
It began as a joke; a red petunia presented on a nondescript day during their dating years (it felt like it was only yesterday). Baekhyun joked that he was too broke to get Yi Fan a red rose, so instead he substituted it with an elegant red petunia.
Yi Fan didn’t take the petunia immediately. Instead, his eyes welled up and he cried for a solid minute. Baekhyun was stunned, it was a mere flower and here Yi Fan was, Yi Fan who never cried, crying over a flower.
Baekhyun had panicked, and went on a spiel of excuses and comforting words and sweet nothings but Yi Fan only laughed in between sniffs. His laugh was deep and throaty, cigarette raspy, and it is still Baekhyun's favourite sound in the world.
(It hurts that he’ll never hear it again.)
Yi Fan told him that red petunias were rare and it held a beautiful meaning behind it. Yi Fan wouldn’t tell Baekhyun what, even after countless persuasions (his curiosity is often remarked as the cause of his downfall one day), and thus it became a little tradition for Yi Fan.
Through all of their years of marriage, Yi Fan kept a red petunia on his bedside table, diligently replacing it every time it wilts with another one of its kin.
“Why only one?” Baekhyun had asked, the first time Yi Fan placed a vibrant petunia in a clear glass vase on their table.
“Because they are rare,” he said, looking at him with his pretty brown eyes and gummy smile.
“It also reminds me of the first time you gave me a red petunia,” Yi Fan had added, stroking one of the petals absentmindedly. “It’s a special thing, isn’t it,” he murmured wistfully.
It didn’t sound like a question, so Baekhyun did not answer.
The petunia stands limp now, barely surviving and wanting for nutrients. It’s one of those things Baekhyun just can’t possibly ignore or overlook, so more often than not, he finds himself staring at it for long minutes, because it reminds him of the good and the bad things about Yi Fan.
Baekhyun strokes a petal, just to remind him that Yi Fan used to do it too, but the pretty flower feels dead in his hands. Cold, gone, soulless. The crispness and smoothness of the petal is gone, replaced by a flaccid impersonation of it.
It reminds Baekhyun that Yi Fan's gone too, and it hurts.
(Baekhyun replaces it with a zinnia of a faded shade of red six hours later.)
-
Baekhyun goes to bed early that night, but he can’t fall asleep.
Baekhyun's curled up on his side, staring at Yo Fan's side of the bed and running his fingers all over the cold half of his-their-bed. He shifts his head, and looks at the zinnia. The petunia used to stand out, even in the dark, Baekhyun thinks, but the zinnia is mute and subdued.
He remembers those long nights when neither of them could sleep, and they stayed up to talk, or just look at each other in a silence they were comfortable with. He remembers looking into Yi Fan's eyes and tracing his fingers over Yi Fan's face despite his arguments of "what the fuck you know how meticulous my routine is."
Baekhyun would kiss him shut and they'd fall into a pattern of love making, of contours and arched bodies. Eager moans and whispered I love you's, thick in the air.
Thirty years is a long time for anybody, but for Baekhyun it feels like it is too short. Thirty years. Yi Fan always joked that he would be the first to go, Baekhyun punching him and threatening him if he died Baekhyun would go insane. And that's exactly the case. He laughs bitterly to himself.
It’s okay, a small, frail voice speaks from the back of his mind, it’s only the first day without Yi Fan. It will get better.
(Baekhyun doesn’t believe it.)