Round 22: Worth Something to Me
Title: Worth Something to Me
Team: Future
Rating: R for violence, please take this seriously
Fandom: Exo
Pairing: Jongdae/Baekhyun
Summary: Jongdae regrets two decisions that changed his life and tries to do right by Baekhyun.
Author's Note: THANK YOU JY and sorry to my team for scaring you all away the first night ;)
Prompt Used: Bohemian - Don’t Hurt
A small group of boys sits huddled on the floor in one of the empty practice rooms. The room is stuffy with the heat radiating off their nervous bodies. The feeling of sitting and doing nothing has become foreign to them, and the boys fidget with expectancy. Jongdae sits next to Baekhyun and sips at his bottle of water; he had been pulled out of singing lessons to come to this meeting. His stomach is churning, trying to anticipate what could be more important than training. They weren’t being cut, were they?
Jongdae looks around the room, dismayed to find that only twelve of their trainee group is present. Zitao and Yixing are speaking quietly to each other in Mandarin, Zitao’s eyes wide and Yixing barely hiding his edginess. Jongin’s bangs are plastered to his forehead and Sehun’s tank top is sticking to his body from sweat. Neither of them have a handle on steady breathing yet, so they must have been pulled out of dance practice. Jongdae takes another hasty swallow.
The practice room door opens, and everyone jolts at the sudden noise, quiet though it may be. A woman in a messy bun and a deceivingly expensive looking jacket walks into the room, looking down at a stapled packet of papers in her hands. She glances up for just a moment, mentally tallying the number of trainees in the room. Jongdae tenses, worried they’re going to get lectured over how many of their fellow trainees are missing, but the woman seems satisfied with her count and nods.
“Thank you for gathering, sorry for pulling you out of practice.” Her tone of voice is uninterested and her words sound prerecorded, her mind already five topics ahead of what her lagging mouth is broadcasting. Jongdae and the other trainees are used to such distant behavior. The wooden floor gives away sounds of nervous movement as the boys collectively wish her expression would give something away.
“The twelve of you have been put on to the final list for the new boy group. Congratulations.” Her tone is still far away but she rattles imaginary pom-poms in her hands with the final word. The room is silent.
And just like that, without any formal ceremony or warning of any type, the words they had all been striving for were out, hanging in the air, too good to be true. Suddenly, the Korean boys let out noisy exhales, hardly daring to believe their ears. Lu Han chokes out a sob, and the remaining three sit dumbfounded, their lips moving silently as they rehash the words in their heads, wondering if they heard it right.
Chanyeol lets out a low exclamation and punches Yifan in the shoulder, confirming what the older boy was thinking and earning him a dazed smile. The rest of the room comes out of their trance and starts cheering and laughing. Jongdae turns to Baekhyun and sees that his friend’s eyes are turning red and a slow smile is spreading across his face. Jongdae gestures helplessly and mirrors the expression, his own ears starting to tear up.
The coordinator had been watching with a tolerant smile, but she clears her throat and rattles the paper in her hands to get their attention. Kyungsoo, ever the compliant one in front of company workers, shushes a still laughing Chanyeol. Besides him, the rest of the boys are too stunned and grateful to be anything but obedient at the moment.
“As you may have heard, we plan to split the band into two groups, one for Chinese promotions and one for promotions here in Korea.” The woman flips her pages around until she gets to the one she wants. Minseok picks up on something and looks worriedly around the room. Jongdae doesn’t have the focus to do anything more than simply notice his friends distress, too concerned is he at controlling the bubbling feelings in his stomach that had so quickly replaced the nerves.
“The groups are as follows: The Korean team will be Joonmyeon, Kyungsoo, Jongin, Baekhyun, Sehun, and Chanyeol-“ Fear rises up in Jongdae’s stomach. Had he been cut after all? “-And the Chinese team will be Yixing, Zitao, Luhan, Yifan, Minseok, and Jongdae.”
Jongdae knows from his Chinese classes that the woman’s accent badly marred the pronunciation of the Chinese names, but the only name echoing inside his head is his own. He had requested to be put on the Chinese team in a moment of pride, thinking how great it would be for a Korean to still be the best singer in a Chinese group, but faced with the final decision, he wasn’t sure that was what he wanted anymore.
The woman starts listing more details, studio schedules and moving dorms, but Jongdae is too lost in his thoughts to give her words any real attention. He catches Minseok’s eyes, and thinks he sees a flicker of the same conflict that’s troubling him, but in another moment it’s gone. Minseok gives him a huge smile and a thumbs-up before turning back to the front to listen.
The woman finally finishes talking and orders them back to the dorms to pack their stuff and call their parents. The rest of the day would be spent filling out paperwork and arranging meetings with parents and managers, but the atmosphere had gone from suffocating and jittery to excited and vibrant.
Baekhyun turns to him, smiling and eyes brimming with tears of relief, and Jongdae knows what he’s thinking. They were finally going to debut. Jongdae smiles back, trying not to let his disappointment spoil this momentous occasion.
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Jongdae slid his keys into the lock, juggling to keep the bags of groceries in his hands from spilling as he pushed the door open. The door swung open slowly and Jongdae pushed it open the rest of the way as he started to step out of his shoes, determined to not have to put down the groceries until he had made it to the kitchen.
A blur out of the corner of his eye was the only warning he had before he found himself bowled over in the entryway, the groceries rolling across the floor and a head of warm, black hair nuzzling into the crook of his neck. His brain took some time to process, but by the time he went to put his arms out to reciprocate, Baekhyun was already up and stepping daintily over the groceries on his way out of the room. Jongdae stared after him for a moment before sighing and heaving himself back up on to his feet.
Defeated, Jongdae scooped up the groceries and took them to the kitchen in five trips. After the food had been put away and the plastic bags stored neatly in the pantry, he shuffled in his slippers over to the dining table. The lunch he had made for Baekhyun before he left had been eaten, mostly. Jongdae picked up the cleared dishes, each one made of brightly colored plastic with cartoon animals etched on it. He left the little blue bowl, the rice inside it undisturbed.
“Baekhyun, you didn’t even touch your rice,” Jongdae called into the next room as he took the plates to the sink. He rinsed them off and set them on the drying rack, telling himself he’d wash them properly with soap next time. Baekhyun gave no answer, even though Jongdae knew he had heard him over the low volume of the TV.
“Baekhyun,” he said, leaning his head into the living room, “you have to come eat your rice.” Baekhyun sat on the floor with his back to the television set, coloring dutifully, most of his crayon strokes going off the edge of the paper and onto the linoleum floor.
“You don’t want your medicine to upset your stomach, do you?” At this, Baekhyun’s coloring hand froze. He lifted his head slowly, aiming a wary look at Jongdae before cautiously shaking his head. He had a piece of a crayon wrapper stuck to his bangs and Jongdae sighed.
“It’s time to take your medicine. Would you rather I made you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?” A huge grin broke out across Baekhyun’s face and he nodded so enthusiastically that the crayon paper fell out of his hair and floated down in front of his face. Distracted, he watched it flutter to the ground, apparently having completely forgotten Jongdae.
“Baekhyun?” Jongdae said gently. Baekhyun looked up, startled. It seemed to take him a second to recognize him, and Jongdae felt a pang of nervousness, but soon Baekhyun was up and burrowing his face into Jongdae’s neck again, as if he hadn’t done the exact thing when Jongdae had gotten home.
Jongdae hugged Baekhyun tightly this time, enjoying the quiet humming sound the shorter man was making. Baekhyun smelled like the wax from his crayons and the dustiness of the floor, but under that he had the same scent he’d had since they were just trainees together, just perhaps a little more mature. Jongdae sighed and pulled back, holding Baekhyun still with one hand on his shoulder and using the other to guide his face.
“Baekhyun? Baekhyun, look at me. It’s time for your medicine, okay? No, no fussing, you’ll be fine. You want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich right?” Baekhyun hesitated at the word medicine and his eyes whirled, trying to avoid Jongdae’s gaze, but the promise of a sandwich eventually won out. Jongdae smiled and ruffled Baekhyun’s hair, sending him to the kitchen with clear instructions to get himself a plate and a cup of water.
When he was sure Baekhyun was all the way in the kitchen, Jongdae crouched down and ran his hands through his own hair.
At his feet was a wrinkled paper, the one Baekhyun had just been drawing on. The therapists had taught Baekhyun to draw his feelings and thoughts, hoping it would help him to keep his thoughts organized. Mostly there were only scribbles, but in the corner was a crudely drawn dog with a yellow ribbon around its neck. Jongdae stared at it and wondered if Baekhyun had seen the dog on TV or imagined it on his own.
He started sorting through the rest of the papers on the floor, all scribble drawings with the occasional recognizable figure, stacking them up and placing them haphazardly on the cluttered desk against the window. The drawings were better some days than others. Jongdae checked them all for anything significant without result.
The sunlight coming in through the barred window highlighted the dust across the surface; tiny, Baekhyun-sized fingerprints the only blemishes on the otherwise completely dirty table. Jongdae briefly considered cleaning it but the urge was gone just as quickly as it had come, instead bending down to pick up a handful of crayons off the floor.
“Jongdae-ah.”
Jongdae froze, his hand hovering over a green crayon. Deciding his ears hadn’t deceived him, he ran to the kitchen, stopping short when he saw Baekhyun sitting calmly at the kitchen table, adjusting his shirt against his collarbone. In front of him was a plate with two slices of bread, the jars of peanut butter and jelly, and a cup at least half full of water. Baekhyun looked up from his shirt and smiled at Jongdae, gesturing at the set up in front of him.
“Baekhyun…,” Jongdae started, his brain struggling for words, “Did you do this yourself?” It was a dumb question; of course he had. Baekhyun smiled back, his eyes getting swallowed up by his cheeks.
“Mhmm.”
Jongdae choked out a sob and slowly went to Baekhyun’s side. It had been so long since he’d heard the other man’s voice. He tentatively put his hand on the smaller man’s shoulder, but Baekhyun just looked up and smiled.
“Baek, you did such a good job. A really, really good job.” Jongdae felt pricks at the corners of his eyes and bit his lip to keep tears from spilling.
Baekhyun’s smile fell and he looked at the set up in front of him in wonder. He spotted the jar of jelly and a new smile broke out across his face. He reached his hand out to grab it, but Jongdae beat him to it.
“Here, let me make the sandwich for you. You don’t want to get sticky do you?” Jongdae’s shaky voice was almost drowned out by the quiet pop of the metal lid on the jar as he removed it. Baekhyun kicked his feet against his chair as he watched Jongdae spread the fruit across the bread, the look on his face torn between disgust and the overwhelming need to reach out and touch it.
The occupational therapist had said it was common for patients such as Baekhyun to grow aversions to certain textures; Jongdae couldn’t remember the last time Baekhyun had willingly eaten steamed rice. It had been a struggle at first, trying to find foods that didn’t upset Baekhyun’s new and temperamental palette.
After a few months of what Jongdae can only call pure hell, Baekhyun had been watching an American show on TV and had seen some children eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and latched on. It turned out that the stickiness of the jelly was just as problematic as rice, but since it came in bright colors and had cartoons on the label of the jar, Baekhyun had gotten over it.
Jongdae grabbed another knife from the drawer and made to cut the sandwich in half, but Baekhyun grabbed his hand and started whining. Baekhyun being so vocal surprised him, and he made a note of it in the back of his mind as he removed his hand from the knife.
“Hey! No grabbing, remember? Do you want to help me cut the sandwich?” Baekhyun, looking vaguely chastised, considered the sandwich in front of him before trying to remove the top slice of bread. Jongdae stopped him and wrapped Baekhyun’s long fingers around the butter knife and placed his over it.
“Slowly, okay? There, good job.” Baekhyun stuck out his tongue as he concentrated, trying to be in control of the cutting motion but not quite coordinated enough to overpower Jongdae’s steadier hands.
Finished, Jongdae went and dropped the knife in the sink, letting it clatter against the other dirty dishes waiting sullenly to be cleaned. He grabbed the little orange bottle of pills and shook one out into his hand, replacing the rest on a shelf above the sink as far out of Baekhyun’s reach as possible.
Baekhyun had turned around in his chair and was pouting at the thought of having to take medicine, but for once he didn’t complain when Jongdae handed him his cup of water. He watched skeptically as Baekhyun took a mouthful of water that seemed too big, but the doctors had said to give him as much autonomy as possible and not to overload the poor thing with needless scolding.
Sure enough, when Baekhyun opened his mouth again to drop in the pill, he choked on the water and ended up spitting half of it across the table. Jongdae jumped out of his seat and hovered as Baekhyun coughed all over his sandwich., his eyes squinted shut and his tongue sticking out.
Jongdae started laughing, mostly out of nervousness but also definitely because Baekhyun looked ridiculous. Baekhyun started laughing too as he got a handle on his coughing and Jongdae patted him carefully on the back to help get the rest of the water out of his lungs. Baekhyun laughed too until he caught sight of his soggy sandwich and started crying.
Jongdae sighed and got a dry plate from the cabinet and transferred the sandwich to it, making sure to flip it upside down to present the slice that hadn’t gotten wet.
“Aw, Baekhyun, don’t cry,” he said as he sat down at the table next to him. “Look, here’s a dry sandwich alright? It’s okay, just eat it before your stomach starts to get upset.”
Baekhyun blubbered for a little bit, unsure of what to do, his eyes already turning pink from the tears. Jongdae picked up the drier of the two halves of the sandwich and handed it to the other man, calmly petting his hair when he took it.
Jongdae watched silently as Baekhyun ate his sandwich. Baekhyun’s hand occasionally twitched as he ate, his long fingers trying to shake off the stickiness of the jelly. It was strange to Jongdae that the peanut butter wasn't a problem, despite Baekhyun having to stop after every bite and lick all the extra peanut butter from his lips, but he knew better than to question a blessing.
Most of the way through the second half of the sandwich, Baekhyun’s eyes suddenly unfocused and he threw his arms up and fell out of the seat. The sandwich dropped from his hand as he fell and he ended up landing on it, the jelly oozing out from between the squished slices of bread and getting in Baekhyun’s hair and on his face.
“Baekhyun! Are you okay? Did you get dizzy for a second?” Jongdae helped Baekhyun up into a sitting position, guilty for not having been able to catch him before he hit the floor. Vertigo wasn’t an uncommon occurrence; he should have been paying more attention.
Baekhyun groaned and put his hand to his head to steady himself, inadvertently spreading the jelly on his face into his eyelashes. He let out a cry and held his hand at arm’s length, trying to get away from the sticky, but there was nothing he could do about the mess on his face. Jongdae chuckled.
“It’s bath time anyway, come on.”
Jongdae turned the spigot on the tub, his hand automatically spinning it to the exact temperature Baekhyun liked. Baekhyun was sloppily washing the jelly off his hands in the sink. Jongdae wet a washcloth and made to wipe the jelly from the other’s face, but Baekhyun brushed him off with surprising certainty.
Baekhyun took the washcloth and put a generous amount of soap on it, scrubbing slowly to avoid getting the soap in his eyes, his hands no longer as clumsy as they had been just a few moments ago. Jongdae watched, fascinated, telling himself not to get his hopes up.
Baekhyun took the wash cloth and rinsed it in the sink, but he dropped it over the drain and it bubbled quietly at him. He laughed and started splashing in the now clogged drain, and Jongdae knew the moment was gone. At least he had gotten the worst of the jelly from his face.
Jongdae instructed him to remove his clothes, helping him only with the button at the collar of his shirt. Jongdae passed Baekhyun a toy, a small cat stuffed animal made out of wash cloth material. Baekhyun meowed quietly and splashed the toy in the tub as Jongdae washed his hair.
By the time Jongdae had moved on to scrubbing Baekhyun’s arms and legs, Baekhyun’s cat toy seemed to be on some special mission to rescue the soap bar from it’s ledge. The adventure was full of sly maneuvers that included splashing Jongdae with the tub water, and by the time Baekhyun was all clean, Jongdae was just as wet (if not wetter) than Baekhyun himself.
Baekhyun stood up in the tub as the water drained and chattered his teeth, the childish gesture in complete contrast with his grown figure. Jongdae realized there was no towel hanging on the rack and threw an apologetic look at a shivering Baekhyun as he went to go get a clean one from the laundry basket.
Jongdae left the bathroom and went to the bedroom they shared, a small room only really big enough for the pallet spread out across the floor. Baekhyun was hit by vertigo sometimes even in his sleep, so a raised bed had become out of the question. The room was just as cluttered as the rest of the house; Jongdae just never seemed to have time to catch up on the chores. It didn’t help that Baekhyun made two messes for every one that Jongdae cleaned up.
He grabbed a towel that only slightly smelled of mildew from the basket in the corner of the room. The outdated wallpaper on the wall looked like it might have a similar strain of mildew on it, and Jongdae filed that information away for later too.
There was a squeak of wet skin against a smooth surface, and Jongdae jolted. Suppose Baekhyun had gotten dizzy while standing in the slippery tub…
Jongdae ran back to the bathroom as fast as the corners of the walls in the apartment would allow, and he found Baekhyun standing on top of the toilet seat lid, his head buried in the medicine cabinet.
“Baekhyun! Get down! What if you fall?” Baekhyun, still stark naked, turned his head with a grin. Across his face were some squiggles radiating from his mouth out to the sides of his face: whiskers, Jongdae realized. He had even drawn a dot on the tip of his nose to make himself look like a cat. In one hand he had a stick of black eyeliner that Jongdae hadn’t seen or even thought of since he had moved out of the EXO dorm, the toiletry bag it had come from having been placed on the top shelf and promptly forgotten. The other hand held his washcloth cat toy. Baekhyun made a weak meowing noise at Jongdae and shook the toy at him.
Jongdae laughed, stepping forward to lift Baekhyun off the toilet seat and onto the floor, picking the towel up off the floor where he had dropped it and wrapping it around the other man’s shoulders.
“Who is this kitty?” Jondgae asked softly as he used a corner of the towel to start drying Baekhyun’s hair. “And where did my Baekhyun go?”
Baekhyun’s eyebrows furrowed, and he looked first at the cat in his hands, and then at his own reflection in the mirror. He turned excitedly back and put his hands on Jongdae’s shoulders, meowing urgently. Jongdae just laughed and covered Baekhyun’s whole face with the towel, starting an enthusiastic game of peekaboo.
That night, as Jongdae sang Baekhyun to sleep, he wondered if he would have ended up loving Baekhyun anyway. Baekhyun’s hands were pressed lightly up against Jongdae’s chest, his finger tips barely clinging onto the fabric of his shirt. He had continued to insist he was a cat all the way until he had fallen asleep, his face pressed into the pillow and his mouth slightly open.
His eyelashes looked soft in the darkness of the room, even though the last time they had been officially styled seemed like life times ago now. He ran his hands through the sleeping man’s hair, the black locks still coarse, but this time as a side effect of the medicine and not from constant color changes and heat treatments.
Baekhyun sighed in his sleep, and Jongdae wondered if he was happy. If either of them were happy. The doctors had told him that Baekhyun was almost lucky, in a way. If the brain damage had been even just a little bit less severe, he probably would have been able to comprehend his condition, and consequently plagued with crippling depression.
Jongdae felt tears swim to his eyes, and he carefully, carefully pulled himself out of Baekhyun’s grip. He didn’t deserve the comfort of the other man’s soft breath on his face as he slept. It wasn’t his to have and he had stolen it anyway.
He barely managed to stumble all the way to the living room before he collapsed on the floor, arm in the crook of his elbow, sobbing out all the guilt he felt towards Baekhyun.
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It is September 29th 2018. The traffic on the road they’re walking along is too noisy for how hot the air is, despite the season, and all the sounds are bleeding together into one and pounding on Jongdae’s skull.
It’s not that Seoul isn’t also noisy, or even ever any cooler than this during the summer, but Jongdae is already pissed and being in a foreign country is only making it worse. The street signs are in English and Jongdae hopes someone, anyone, knows where they’re going because the last thing he has the patience for right now is getting lost in their stage outfits.
“What’s up, loser?” Baekhyun swings his arm around Jongdae’s shoulders and smacks him in the forehead with the bottle of water in the other hand. Why were they walking to their schedule anyway?
“Get off me,” Jongdae growls, pushing Baekhyun a little more roughly than could come across as playful. Baekhyun frowns.
“What’s wrong?” He asks, suddenly focused on his friend. Tao walking beside them glances over, unable to hear through the music blasting in his headphones but blandly curious nonetheless. Jongdae focuses on walking, choosing to ignore Baekhyun’s question. He tugs at his suit. It seems unreasonable for them to be wearing wool suits in the middle of summer.
“Are you nervous about tonight?” Baekhyun offers, now sipping slowly at his water bottle, looking perfectly comfortable in his well tailored suit.
“Why would I be? M isn’t even performing,” Jongdae snaps. Kris turns around in front of them, frowning slightly at his band mate. Kris looks vaguely more affected by the combination of the weather and these suits that must have been designed for concerts in the middle of a blizzard, but not even a single hair is out of place on his perfectly hair-sprayed head.
“Don’t sweat it, at least we get to eat while they perform,” Kris jokes, and Chanyeol slugs him in the shoulder and threatens to convince the manager to keep them from eating until they can eat ‘as one’.
Jongdae doesn’t even care about the food, he just wants to perform. He didn’t sign his life away to be flown across the globe to watch someone else sing the lines he should have been given. One might think that after all these years and all the awards Jongdae has won, the company might give him the opportunities he deserved. One might think.
Baekhyun puts his hand back on Jongdae’s shoulder and sighs dramatically at the rappers squabbling in front of them.
“Chill out, it’ll be fine. I’m sure the company had a good reason to only have us perform.” Jongdae flinches from Baekhyun’s hand like he’s been shocked. Baekhyun’s remark grates against too many of Jongdae’s already sensitive nerves, the word ‘us’ implicitly not including Jongdae, and he has to take a deep breath to steady himself.
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Jongdae had stopped sobbing minutes, maybe hours ago, but he was still laying on his stomach across the cold ground. His eyes were staring out the window above the front door, stuck on the light of the streetlamp coming through the dirty window, but they were unfocused and he was too lost in his thoughts to even register where he was looking.
Baekhyun coughed in his sleep, a deep, noisy cough that he would have gotten in trouble for in their singing days. The sound dragged Jongdae out of his self pity and he realized how uncomfortable the floor was compared to his bed. While he was completely for punishing himself, the thought of trying to make it through a whole work day sore and bruised was enough to get him up off the ground and padding quietly to their room.
Jongdae could just barely make out Baekhyun’s sleeping form, the nightlight on the wall beside the bed giving just enough illumination to see that Baekhyun had rolled to his other side in the other man’s absence, his arms above his head in awkward positions and the blankets tangled around his feet. Jongdae crouched down in the darkness and instinctively placed Baekhyun’s arms at his sides before shaking out the blanket and using it to cover both of them.
Baekhyun mumbled in his sleep, bringing his arms back up above his head. Jongdae sighed and put them down at his sides again, this time hugging the other man closer and pinning his arms to his side.
“Love… Chen…,” Baekhyun mumbled. Jongdae froze momentarily, wondering why Baekhyun had used his stage name, but before he could process, Baekhyun worked his arms free of Jongdae’s hold and wrapped his arms around him. Jongdae hugged him closer and wondered what he had done in his last life to deserve this kind of punishment.
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“Kim Jongdae?” a receptionist asks, and Jongdae looks up and swallows hard.
“Yes? That’s me.”
“Can you come this way, please? The doctor has some more forms for you to fill out before the patient is released.” She smiles robotically and gestures with her clipboard towards the front desk.
He signs his name a million different times, barely skimming over the fine print in the release form. It’s familiar to him, at least. The receptionist stops him just before the last few pages, handing him a neatly packed folder of more printed papers and a book bound like a notebook.
“In cases of caring for mentally disabled patients, the hospital is willing to provide therapy for both the patient and the caretaker for a fee to be determined by how much your insurance covers. The patient, of course, is required to come in for weekly check ups and biweekly occupational and physical therapy sessions, but we also recommend you talk to a therapist also. Depression is just as common in caretakers as it is in patients.” Her voice sounds a little regretful, and Jongdae wonders if she’s been a caretaker before, or if maybe she recognizes him.
She points to the bound notebook and flips through some of the pages.
“There may be moments where the patient seems completely unreasonable, and other where the patient may function almost as if the dementia were not present, and it can be disorienting for the caretaker. This booklet helps explain what to expect, how to handle breakdowns when they happen, dangerous signs to look for, tips for combating negative side effects from the medicine, et cetera.” Jongdae nods andtakes the folder and the notebook and adds them to the stack of folder and paperwork already in his arms. The receptionist smiles and motions for Jongdae to resume signing the first stack of paperwork.
The beeps of a thousand machines and the squeaking wheels of beds being rolled down the hallway clutter his mind and he has to think hard to focus on what the she’s saying to him.
“…and sign here please so confirm that you are in fact a blood relative of the patient.”
“Wait, that’s not true. But.. I’m, I…” The woman frowns at him, automatically on alert against this body snatcher standing in front of her.
“I’m sorry sir, but we have policies against releasing intensive care patients to non-relatives.”
“No, I have to be the one that takes him. His parents…” Jongdae chokes. Baekhyun’s father had had a heart attack when he had found out. He was fine now, but Baekhyun’s parents were older and the stress of having to take care of Baekhyun in his condition would be too much for them. Undue stress could cause another heart attack in his father, and his mother had cried and apologized at Baekhyun’ bedside as she looked into homes they could place him in. Her son had still been under anesthetics from another surgery when Jongdae offered to take Baekhyun in.
SM had paid for his father’s medical bills, and Jongdae had paid for all of Baekhyun’s medical bills using what he had been saving up from his time in EXO. He knew they would never forgive him for taking their son away from them, but he thought this might help alleviate some of the burden from Baekhyun’s parents.
The receptionist stares expectantly at him, clearly ready to call the doctor and call off preparing Baekhyun for release. Jongdae blinks a few times and clears his throat, starting again.
“His parents are unable to care for him. Their attorney signed over guardianship rights. I have the paperwork.” Jongdae fishes for the right paper in his own folder of official looking forms, flipping hurriedly past the one that outlines his and Baekhyun’s dismissal from EXO and SM Entertainment as a whole.
He finds the one from the attorney and the receptionist checks it over succinctly, determining it to be valid. She has him sign the remaining three blank spaces on the page, and Jongdae wonders how many more times in his life he’s going to sign his life away on a piece of paper.
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Jongdae heard the sounds of paper ripping in the other room and sighed at his reflection in the mirror. He had planned on doing something more with his hair this morning before going to work, but Baekhyun came first.
Baekhyun was sitting in the corner, inefficiently tearing a stack of drawings to shreds, his face dark and his mouth set in a deep frown. The crayons were spilled out of their plastic tub next to him and the TV hissed static as the screen displayed snow.
Jongdae crossed the room and turned the television off. The abrupt halt of noise startled Baekhyun and he looked up at Jongdae all dressed up for work. He stuck out his bottom lip which started quivering and made to start working up some tears.
“Don’t cry, Baekhyun. You know I have to go to work.” Baekhyun eyes searched the room, as if he were looking for a reason to keep Jongdae home for the day. Jongdae had picked up a part time job as a vocal coach to help pay the bills. The money had saved from EXO was long gone, now resting in the pockets of Baekhyun’s countless therapists and pharmacists. Jongdae didn’t mind his job, except that leaving Baekhyun home alone made him nervous.
“I’ll be back before dinner time. You already ate breakfast and your lunch is on the table. Can you please try to eat your rice today?” Baekhyun looked away, dragging his fingers through his pile of crumpled paper, expressing his opinion on the matter.
“Please, Baekhyun? Try?” Baekhyun pouted at him and threw himself forward to cling to Baekhyun’s leg. He was going to be late to work at this rate. Jongdae sighed again and bent down to pet the other man’s hair, still messy from sleeping.
“Why are you ripping up your drawings? I think they’re very nice.” Baekhyun pouted again and kicked a paper with his foot, grudgingly untangling himself from the other’s legs. Jongdae grabbed a stack of fresh paper from the desk and crouched down next to Baekhyun.
“Hey, Baek. Look at me. Why don’t you try drawing things that make you happy today? Can you do that? When I come home from work, I want to see pictures of things that make you happy. How does that sound?” Baekhyun blinked but his face remained neutral. Eventually he tilted his head and leaned his whole body over until his hand reached a crayon. He started drawing on the floor next to the paper, so Jongdae slid a paper under his hands and snuck out the front door to work.
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When Baekhyun ran out of paper to draw on, he padded into the kitchen and found his lunch on the table, the warm things now cold and the cold things now warm. He clapped his hands and sat at his spot, faithfully eating all of the side dishes and none of the rice.
He saved the chicken for last, and sat chewing thoughtfully on it as he struggled to recall what Jongdae had told him about the rice. It had something to do with eating it, but Baekhyun hated rice. It stuck to his hands and the inside of his throat. Baekhyun frowned and tapped his fingernail against the rice bowl, liking the noise it made. He tapped out an unsteady beat, and was suddenly struck by an idea.
Lunch forgotten, he went back to the living room and grabbed a handful of crayons. The lack of paper stumped him for a few minutes, but wallpaper had the word paper in it so it must be okay to draw on.
He put a crayon to the wall and liked the way the crayon bumped along the uneven texture. He laughed to himself and started drawing musical notes and scribbles that represented different noises anywhere his arms could reach.
He drew a girl under the music next, her hair long and hearts around her because she also liked music. Baekhyun froze, wondering what was so familiar about the girl.
Puzzled, he drew a giant X next to her, and wondered why this made so much sense. He brought his hand up to the wall to draw a circle next to that, but stopped, his brain suddenly working overtime.
Where was he? Baekhyun looked around the room, confused. He was the singer of a popular SM group, why was he in this strange apartment? Fear rose in Baekhyun’s stomach. Maybe a fan had kidnapped him. He had to get back to the dorm before the managers noticed he was missing.
Baekhyun ran through the apartment, looking for the front door. It didn’t look like a girl lived here, and that made him more scared. He spotted the front door and struggled with the locks, bursting out onto the front patio and heading down the stairs, skipping two at a time, despite being barefoot. He reached the bottom of the stairs and went running as fast as he could away from the strange house.
----------
Jongdae felt good about today’s lessons. His students were improving steadily, and one of them was preparing to go to an audition that Jongdae knew he would pass. He remembered the feeling of nerves just before an audition and had done his best to calm the boy’s fears.
It had been two years, almost three, since he and Baekhyun had moved into the apartment together. At the beginning, Jongdae didn’t know how to take care of Baekhyun, could hardly take care of himself, the transition from being pampered and dressed to having to help Baekhyun eat and button his shirts had been hard and real. Jongdae had run away once, the first week, only to be followed by fans asking where Baekhyun was and what had happened to him. Guilt and a sinking feeling of responsibility had overwhelmed him and he had ended up going back to his new home.
The apartment itself was close enough to the SM building that the members had visited at first, but seeing Baekhyun was too hard and he knew that they didn’t really want anything to do with either of them. There was a lot of work left for the remaining members to do to try to salvage the band as a ten member group. At least each team had lost one person; the balance made it a little easier.
A few months later, SM had found a way to keep the fans away from Jongdae’s new apartment, and after that the other members had stopped coming over too. Even Joonmyeon and Kyungsoo who had visited the most frequently, suddenly found excuses to keep them busy. Jongdae didn’t mind. That chapter of his life was over and he had gotten over the denial of thinking he could ever go back to it.
Jongdae turned onto their street, the quiet concrete and chirping birds greeting him. He got to the bottom of the stairs up to their apartment and froze. The front door was hanging open. He looked up and down the street, checking to see if anyone else was around. The street was empty in the dusk light and Jongdae sprinted up the stairs, bursting into the apartment and calling Baekhyun’s name.
“Baekhyun! Baekhyun are you home? Are you okay? Oh god, please answer.” He searched every room twice, looking under the tables and noting that Baekhyun’s lunch had been eaten except for the rice, as usual, which meant he hadn’t been missing for too long. The living room walls were covered in crayon drawings, and the floor was littered with Baekhyun’s drawings.
Jongdae stopped when he saw the little girl on the wall. The hearts drawn around her and the X struck an icicle through Jongdae’s heart. He grabbed his keys and hastily shut and locked the door, sprinting back towards the main road.
Ten minutes later, Jongdae rounded the corner to the street that led to EXO’s dorm building, his phone held to his ear, power-walking to avoid undue attention when he wanted to run the whole way. Someone on the other line picked up.
“Hello?”
“Joonmyeon! It’s.. it’s me, Jongdae. Listen, have you seen Baekhyun?” There was an intake of breath, and then silence. Jongdae grit his teeth.
“What are you talking about?” Joonmyeon asked, his voice uneven.
“I got home and he was gone, I think he’s heading back to the dorms. I’ll be there in a minute, can you come down and let me in?”
“Jongdae…”
“Please!” Jongdae’s voice was desperate, and he knew Joonmyeon could hear it. “Please, just come downstairs. I know he’s around here somewhere.”
There was a pause, and then
“Fine. I’ll be right down.”
Jongdae hung up the phone and shoved it in his pocket as he sped up to an awkward half-skip, half-jog, ignoring the weird looks he was getting. He could see the building up ahead, and the usual crowd of girls standing outside seemed bigger than he remembered. There was a lot of clamoring and arguing, and Jongdae wondered if Joonmyeon was already outside waiting for him, causing this commotion.
“Leave him alone! Don’t take his picture,” one girl was shouting.
“Does anyone have the manager’s number?” another asked. The group of fans around her all sadly shook their heads, either not having it or lying about having it to avoid getting harassed into sharing it.
Their focus seemed to be centered around a bush in front of the building, and Jongdae’s stomach clenched. Just as he walked up to the crowd, screams went up in alarm at Joonmyeon coming out of the building in his sweats.
A girl spotted Jongdae, almost unrecognizable in his grown out, unkempt hair and worn out street clothes. A hush fell over the crowd as everyone turned from Joonmyeon look at Jongdae. One girl took a photo of him and another girl knocked the camera out of her hand, telling her to be more respectful.
The girls shuffled out of the way, allowing Jongdae up to the bush. Huddled in the dirt shaking and crying was a barefoot Baekhyun. Joonmyeon gasped and stepped forward, unsure of what to do. Jongdae got down on his hands and knees and slowly coaxed Baekhyun out from under the bush. When Baekhyun was standing again, leaves stuck to his hair and clothes, a fan offered her jacket, and Jongdae wordlessly took it and wrapped it around Baekhyun’s shoulders before making to leave.
Joonmyeon grabbed Jongdae’s elbow before immediately and releasing it and stepping back. Jongdae stopped gave Joonmyeon a sad look.
“Sorry for troubling you,” Jongdae said, as politely as if to a stranger.
“Jongdae, let me call the manager to drive you home…” Joonmyeon started, but Jongdae waved him off, leading Baekhyun carefully back home.
“It’s fine.”
----------
“’Us’?” Jongdae asks, incredulous. They’re stopped at a corner, waiting for the walk symbol to let them cross the road. The cars drive on the wrong side of the road here, and it would be disorienting if Jongdae were thinking about anything but the sound of his pulse pounding in his ears.
Baekhyun rolls his eyes and puts his arm back down at his side.
“Whatever, Jongdae-ah. Don’t be like this. I’ll talk to you again after we’ve all eaten.” He steps up to the curb and pulls his headphones out of his pocket, starting to untangle them with his perfectly manicured fingers.
Jongdae has had enough. He swats the earbuds out of his hands, demanding his attention. The other members take in a collective breath, immediately silent and focused on Jongdae and Baekhyun. Jongdae feels Minseok place a hand lightly on his shoulder but he brushes it off.
“You know what, Baekhyun? You aren’t better than me just because you were put on K.”
“Oh, Jongdae…” Luhan starts, sounding like an upset mother, but Baekhyun puts up a hand to quiet him. Amazingly, Luhan complies.
“Jongdae, I never said that…”
“I’m sure you’ve never said those exact words,” Jongdae interrupts, “but I can tell from how you act. Always lording over me for being the singer in the more popular of the two groups. Don’t try to deny it. We all know the M album sales are dismal and always have been.”
The group is silent, unsure of what to say. Even the manager says nothing, instead finding something to look at on his phone screen. Jongdae isn’t wrong in what he said, at least where the album sales are concerned. The crosswalk says ‘go’, but everyone is frozen to the spot.
“What is your problem? Do you seriously think fighting over something stupid in the middle of public is the best decision?” Baekhyun’s face is red, and Jongdae hopes it’s from embarrassment at being called out. His long fingers are curled into fists and the headphones dangle wildly from his right hand.
He could care less about the fans right now. Six years of regretting asking to be put on the wrong team. Six years of letting Baekhyun and Kyungsoo take the spotlight when he sang just as well, if not better. Six years of swallowing his frustration and staying longer in the practice room to prove to himself that he wasn’t subpar. And after six years, he was done, regardless of what the ‘best decision’ might be.
“My problem is that while you gallivant around Korea blowing kisses and darkening your eyeliner, I’m stuck in a country that doesn’t appreciate me, listening to fans mock my accent as if it’s not hard to sing in a foreign language that has tones, Baekhyun. My problem is that I gave up my freedom and my family and friends for fame, and I was immediately shipped away with the second string!”
Baekhyun’s eyes get impossibly wide, and Jongdae feels the rest of M bristle. Minseok takes a cold step back. The crosswalk sign flashes a ‘do not start walking’ as it finishes its countdown, but no one is paying attention anymore.
Joonmyeon slides into the spot Minseok had just been standing and clears his throat, and Jongdae knows he’s about to give a leader speech. He doesn’t want to hear it. He just wants to hear Baekhyun admit that he’s not a better singer, and that he’s sorry Jongdae’s life was ruined.
Joonmyeon lightly grabs Jongdae’s hand, and Jongdae swings his arm up violently to shake him off.
“Leave Joonmyeon-hyung alone!” Baekhyun yells at Jongdae as he raises a fist.
----------
The sun set slowly, and the streetlamps turned lazily on as they walked home; Baekhyun was silent and unresponsive the whole way home. Jongdae had given him his shoes a block away from the SM building, and Baekhyun had let him put them on without complaint.
They got back to the apartment and Jongdae unlocked the door, slowly guiding Baekhyun to sit down on the couch, letting him keep the shoes on. He went back to the front door to close and lock it, and suddenly Baekhyun stood straight up, eyes wild and tears forming.
“Baekhyun, what’s wrong?” Jongdae reached a hand out, but Baekhyun flinched from it and cried out like Jongdae had meant to hurt him. Jongdae flinched from Baekhyun’s reaction but stepped forward nonetheless to embrace him and tell him it was okay.
Baekhyun pushed Jongdae away and ran past him into the kitchen. Jongdae stood still for a moment, collecting his thoughts and willing himself not to cry. He tried to remember all the coping mechanisms the doctors had taught him, but his mind was a blur.
He found Baekhyun hiding behind his chair at the table, whimpering and crouching down on the floor. Jongdae swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to speak.
“Don’t be afraid, Baek. Baekhyun-ah, I’m not going to hurt you, please.” Baekhyun screamed at him and scooted on the floor towards the sink. Jongdae started crying in earnest.
“Why are you scared of me? Do you… do you remember what happened?” Baekhyun hissed and spit at Jongdae, swinging and arm up and bringing down the dish towel with all the dry dishes on it to the floor. Plastic plates and bowls and silverware scattered across the room.
“Baekhyun-a, please, I never meant to hurt you. It was an accident. I said mean things that I shouldn’t have because I was upset and jealous, but I never wanted any harm to come to you. I only want the best for you, Baekhyun.” Baekhyun’s hands scrambled to find solid ground, his hands landing on dishes as he tried to stand up to run away again.
Jongdae stepped forward to grab Baekhyun as he tried to run back towards the living room and the front door, and the force of stopping him almost knocked the breath out of him. Jongdae hugs him tighter and starts crying into his hair.
“Baekhyun, I’m so, so sorry.”
----------
It all happens so fast.
Baekhyun raises his fist at Jongdae. The manager starts shoving to get through the ring of members to stop them. Sehun, Jongin, Chanyeol, and Tao all start shouting at the same time. Joonmyeon tries to step between Baekhyun and Jongdae, but Jongdae is faster.
He grabs Baekhyun’s fist in his left hand, rotating his arm down and thinking that living with a martial artist had been the best thing about being exiled in China. With his right hand, he swings his own fist in Baekhyun’s jaw and knocks him off balance.
Baekhyun’s feet slip off the edge of the curb, and the group surges forward as a single being in a vain attempt to catch him. Everyone is so focused on Baekhyun that they don't see the car barreling up from behind.
The car is far from the curb, but not far enough. It tries to slow down, but Baekhyun’s head hits the rearview mirror as he falls.
Someone in the group screams, and Jongdae wonders if it was himself. Baekhyun hits the ground and slides on the asphalt. The members closest to him scramble to pick him up, but Tao screams not to touch him. The car screeches to a halt and the driver comes out of his seat already screaming in English. The manager frantically pushes Kris at the man and fumbles for his phone, asking what the emergency number is.
Jongdae is frozen. His hands are over his mouth where he supposes he must have put them when he saw the car coming. The other members all step away from him, torn between wanting to go to Baekhyun and wishing Jongdae would step in front of the next car on his own. He can see it in their faces.
Tao is crouched over Baekhyun, calling his name and dripping tears all over his face, still refusing to let the others move him in case his neck is broken. The other cars on the road slow down to see what happened, and there is much honking, but Jongdae can’t hear any of it. This isn’t what he wanted to happen; he only wanted Baekhyun to apologize for.. for what? Jongdae couldn’t remember anymore. And now he was on the ground and bleeding, and it was Jongdae fault.
Jongdae screams Baekhyun’s name, finally snapping out of his trance. He throws himself to where Baekhyun and Tao are, but the other members catch him and hold him back. He kicks and struggles and screams but the arms holding him back are unrelenting.
Someone pushes him to the ground against the ground and he sits there, sobbing and still screaming Baekhyun’s name. He would do anything to take back the last minute, the last ten minutes, all the horrible things he had just said about his team and his bandmates. He would endure hate from anti-fans for a thousand years straight if it would undo what he had just done.
The sirens come eventually, and Baekhyun is lifted into the ambulance with Kris at his side and driven away at top speed. The manager is making frantic calls and waving his arms around as he screams at the remaining members to flag down taxis to take them to the hospital.
Two members are standing guard next to Jongdae, and Jongdae wonders who they’re trying to benefit. Kai and Minseok are busy trying to distract the fans that had been following them, begging them to delete any photos they took. The other five members are still sobbing and hiccupping like he is.
“I should have been hit by the car,” he says to no one, to the universe. No one says anything to contradict him. He must be right.
----------
Baekhyun struggled in his grip, but Jongdae just grimaced and held him tighter. Crying out again, Baekhyun used a shoed foot to kick Jongdae in the shin, and Jongdae collapsed to the ground. He watched with horror as Jongdae laid on the floor, making no move to get up, instead just sobbing and clutching at his torso.
“Baekhyun, I’m so sorry, please, call Joonmyeon, he’ll know what to do.” Baekhyun watched with wide eyes as Jongdae struggled to remove the phone out of his pocket and hitting redial and sliding it across the floor. Baekhyun let out a strangled shout when the phone drags a trail of blood behind it.
Jongdae pulled the knife out of his front with a shaking hand and dropped it on the ground, letting it clatter and spin on the floor. The wound he pulled it out of started bleeding heavier, and Jongdae took an extra long blink. Baekhyun backed up against the wall and started to crying and tearing at his hair, scared of blood and scared of Jongdae and scared of losing Jongdae.
“Don’t cry, Baekhyun. I’m not mad. I deserve this. Please though, Baekhyun. Call Joonmyeon. They’ll find someplace nice for you to live, okay? You’ll be okay without me… I’m sorry I couldn’t… do better.”
“Hello? Jongdae?” Joonmyeon’s voice crackled quietly from the phone between them. Baekhyun whimpered and grabbed at the phone, yelping and dropping it again immediately when he the blood touched his hands.
Joonmyeon’s voice mumbled more urgently from the phone, and Jongdae smiled into the floor. He would send someone over to check on them and Baekhyun would be taken care of.
“Baekhyun, listen to me, okay? One last time? I’m glad I got to take care of you, even if it was my fault in the first place. I’m glad I got to meet you.” Baekhyun was shaking his head violently now, though from Jongdae’s words or the literal and figurative blood on his hands, he wasn’t sure. He chuckled and tried to ignore the pain under his hands.
The last thing he saw before his eyes closed was Baekhyun’s face, and he was glad for it.
Poll Round 22: Worth Something to Me
Team: Future
Rating: R for violence, please take this seriously
Fandom: Exo
Pairing: Jongdae/Baekhyun
Summary: Jongdae regrets two decisions that changed his life and tries to do right by Baekhyun.
Author's Note: THANK YOU JY and sorry to my team for scaring you all away the first night ;)
Prompt Used: Bohemian - Don’t Hurt
A small group of boys sits huddled on the floor in one of the empty practice rooms. The room is stuffy with the heat radiating off their nervous bodies. The feeling of sitting and doing nothing has become foreign to them, and the boys fidget with expectancy. Jongdae sits next to Baekhyun and sips at his bottle of water; he had been pulled out of singing lessons to come to this meeting. His stomach is churning, trying to anticipate what could be more important than training. They weren’t being cut, were they?
Jongdae looks around the room, dismayed to find that only twelve of their trainee group is present. Zitao and Yixing are speaking quietly to each other in Mandarin, Zitao’s eyes wide and Yixing barely hiding his edginess. Jongin’s bangs are plastered to his forehead and Sehun’s tank top is sticking to his body from sweat. Neither of them have a handle on steady breathing yet, so they must have been pulled out of dance practice. Jongdae takes another hasty swallow.
The practice room door opens, and everyone jolts at the sudden noise, quiet though it may be. A woman in a messy bun and a deceivingly expensive looking jacket walks into the room, looking down at a stapled packet of papers in her hands. She glances up for just a moment, mentally tallying the number of trainees in the room. Jongdae tenses, worried they’re going to get lectured over how many of their fellow trainees are missing, but the woman seems satisfied with her count and nods.
“Thank you for gathering, sorry for pulling you out of practice.” Her tone of voice is uninterested and her words sound prerecorded, her mind already five topics ahead of what her lagging mouth is broadcasting. Jongdae and the other trainees are used to such distant behavior. The wooden floor gives away sounds of nervous movement as the boys collectively wish her expression would give something away.
“The twelve of you have been put on to the final list for the new boy group. Congratulations.” Her tone is still far away but she rattles imaginary pom-poms in her hands with the final word. The room is silent.
And just like that, without any formal ceremony or warning of any type, the words they had all been striving for were out, hanging in the air, too good to be true. Suddenly, the Korean boys let out noisy exhales, hardly daring to believe their ears. Lu Han chokes out a sob, and the remaining three sit dumbfounded, their lips moving silently as they rehash the words in their heads, wondering if they heard it right.
Chanyeol lets out a low exclamation and punches Yifan in the shoulder, confirming what the older boy was thinking and earning him a dazed smile. The rest of the room comes out of their trance and starts cheering and laughing. Jongdae turns to Baekhyun and sees that his friend’s eyes are turning red and a slow smile is spreading across his face. Jongdae gestures helplessly and mirrors the expression, his own ears starting to tear up.
The coordinator had been watching with a tolerant smile, but she clears her throat and rattles the paper in her hands to get their attention. Kyungsoo, ever the compliant one in front of company workers, shushes a still laughing Chanyeol. Besides him, the rest of the boys are too stunned and grateful to be anything but obedient at the moment.
“As you may have heard, we plan to split the band into two groups, one for Chinese promotions and one for promotions here in Korea.” The woman flips her pages around until she gets to the one she wants. Minseok picks up on something and looks worriedly around the room. Jongdae doesn’t have the focus to do anything more than simply notice his friends distress, too concerned is he at controlling the bubbling feelings in his stomach that had so quickly replaced the nerves.
“The groups are as follows: The Korean team will be Joonmyeon, Kyungsoo, Jongin, Baekhyun, Sehun, and Chanyeol-“ Fear rises up in Jongdae’s stomach. Had he been cut after all? “-And the Chinese team will be Yixing, Zitao, Luhan, Yifan, Minseok, and Jongdae.”
Jongdae knows from his Chinese classes that the woman’s accent badly marred the pronunciation of the Chinese names, but the only name echoing inside his head is his own. He had requested to be put on the Chinese team in a moment of pride, thinking how great it would be for a Korean to still be the best singer in a Chinese group, but faced with the final decision, he wasn’t sure that was what he wanted anymore.
The woman starts listing more details, studio schedules and moving dorms, but Jongdae is too lost in his thoughts to give her words any real attention. He catches Minseok’s eyes, and thinks he sees a flicker of the same conflict that’s troubling him, but in another moment it’s gone. Minseok gives him a huge smile and a thumbs-up before turning back to the front to listen.
The woman finally finishes talking and orders them back to the dorms to pack their stuff and call their parents. The rest of the day would be spent filling out paperwork and arranging meetings with parents and managers, but the atmosphere had gone from suffocating and jittery to excited and vibrant.
Baekhyun turns to him, smiling and eyes brimming with tears of relief, and Jongdae knows what he’s thinking. They were finally going to debut. Jongdae smiles back, trying not to let his disappointment spoil this momentous occasion.
----------
Jongdae slid his keys into the lock, juggling to keep the bags of groceries in his hands from spilling as he pushed the door open. The door swung open slowly and Jongdae pushed it open the rest of the way as he started to step out of his shoes, determined to not have to put down the groceries until he had made it to the kitchen.
A blur out of the corner of his eye was the only warning he had before he found himself bowled over in the entryway, the groceries rolling across the floor and a head of warm, black hair nuzzling into the crook of his neck. His brain took some time to process, but by the time he went to put his arms out to reciprocate, Baekhyun was already up and stepping daintily over the groceries on his way out of the room. Jongdae stared after him for a moment before sighing and heaving himself back up on to his feet.
Defeated, Jongdae scooped up the groceries and took them to the kitchen in five trips. After the food had been put away and the plastic bags stored neatly in the pantry, he shuffled in his slippers over to the dining table. The lunch he had made for Baekhyun before he left had been eaten, mostly. Jongdae picked up the cleared dishes, each one made of brightly colored plastic with cartoon animals etched on it. He left the little blue bowl, the rice inside it undisturbed.
“Baekhyun, you didn’t even touch your rice,” Jongdae called into the next room as he took the plates to the sink. He rinsed them off and set them on the drying rack, telling himself he’d wash them properly with soap next time. Baekhyun gave no answer, even though Jongdae knew he had heard him over the low volume of the TV.
“Baekhyun,” he said, leaning his head into the living room, “you have to come eat your rice.” Baekhyun sat on the floor with his back to the television set, coloring dutifully, most of his crayon strokes going off the edge of the paper and onto the linoleum floor.
“You don’t want your medicine to upset your stomach, do you?” At this, Baekhyun’s coloring hand froze. He lifted his head slowly, aiming a wary look at Jongdae before cautiously shaking his head. He had a piece of a crayon wrapper stuck to his bangs and Jongdae sighed.
“It’s time to take your medicine. Would you rather I made you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?” A huge grin broke out across Baekhyun’s face and he nodded so enthusiastically that the crayon paper fell out of his hair and floated down in front of his face. Distracted, he watched it flutter to the ground, apparently having completely forgotten Jongdae.
“Baekhyun?” Jongdae said gently. Baekhyun looked up, startled. It seemed to take him a second to recognize him, and Jongdae felt a pang of nervousness, but soon Baekhyun was up and burrowing his face into Jongdae’s neck again, as if he hadn’t done the exact thing when Jongdae had gotten home.
Jongdae hugged Baekhyun tightly this time, enjoying the quiet humming sound the shorter man was making. Baekhyun smelled like the wax from his crayons and the dustiness of the floor, but under that he had the same scent he’d had since they were just trainees together, just perhaps a little more mature. Jongdae sighed and pulled back, holding Baekhyun still with one hand on his shoulder and using the other to guide his face.
“Baekhyun? Baekhyun, look at me. It’s time for your medicine, okay? No, no fussing, you’ll be fine. You want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich right?” Baekhyun hesitated at the word medicine and his eyes whirled, trying to avoid Jongdae’s gaze, but the promise of a sandwich eventually won out. Jongdae smiled and ruffled Baekhyun’s hair, sending him to the kitchen with clear instructions to get himself a plate and a cup of water.
When he was sure Baekhyun was all the way in the kitchen, Jongdae crouched down and ran his hands through his own hair.
At his feet was a wrinkled paper, the one Baekhyun had just been drawing on. The therapists had taught Baekhyun to draw his feelings and thoughts, hoping it would help him to keep his thoughts organized. Mostly there were only scribbles, but in the corner was a crudely drawn dog with a yellow ribbon around its neck. Jongdae stared at it and wondered if Baekhyun had seen the dog on TV or imagined it on his own.
He started sorting through the rest of the papers on the floor, all scribble drawings with the occasional recognizable figure, stacking them up and placing them haphazardly on the cluttered desk against the window. The drawings were better some days than others. Jongdae checked them all for anything significant without result.
The sunlight coming in through the barred window highlighted the dust across the surface; tiny, Baekhyun-sized fingerprints the only blemishes on the otherwise completely dirty table. Jongdae briefly considered cleaning it but the urge was gone just as quickly as it had come, instead bending down to pick up a handful of crayons off the floor.
“Jongdae-ah.”
Jongdae froze, his hand hovering over a green crayon. Deciding his ears hadn’t deceived him, he ran to the kitchen, stopping short when he saw Baekhyun sitting calmly at the kitchen table, adjusting his shirt against his collarbone. In front of him was a plate with two slices of bread, the jars of peanut butter and jelly, and a cup at least half full of water. Baekhyun looked up from his shirt and smiled at Jongdae, gesturing at the set up in front of him.
“Baekhyun…,” Jongdae started, his brain struggling for words, “Did you do this yourself?” It was a dumb question; of course he had. Baekhyun smiled back, his eyes getting swallowed up by his cheeks.
“Mhmm.”
Jongdae choked out a sob and slowly went to Baekhyun’s side. It had been so long since he’d heard the other man’s voice. He tentatively put his hand on the smaller man’s shoulder, but Baekhyun just looked up and smiled.
“Baek, you did such a good job. A really, really good job.” Jongdae felt pricks at the corners of his eyes and bit his lip to keep tears from spilling.
Baekhyun’s smile fell and he looked at the set up in front of him in wonder. He spotted the jar of jelly and a new smile broke out across his face. He reached his hand out to grab it, but Jongdae beat him to it.
“Here, let me make the sandwich for you. You don’t want to get sticky do you?” Jongdae’s shaky voice was almost drowned out by the quiet pop of the metal lid on the jar as he removed it. Baekhyun kicked his feet against his chair as he watched Jongdae spread the fruit across the bread, the look on his face torn between disgust and the overwhelming need to reach out and touch it.
The occupational therapist had said it was common for patients such as Baekhyun to grow aversions to certain textures; Jongdae couldn’t remember the last time Baekhyun had willingly eaten steamed rice. It had been a struggle at first, trying to find foods that didn’t upset Baekhyun’s new and temperamental palette.
After a few months of what Jongdae can only call pure hell, Baekhyun had been watching an American show on TV and had seen some children eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and latched on. It turned out that the stickiness of the jelly was just as problematic as rice, but since it came in bright colors and had cartoons on the label of the jar, Baekhyun had gotten over it.
Jongdae grabbed another knife from the drawer and made to cut the sandwich in half, but Baekhyun grabbed his hand and started whining. Baekhyun being so vocal surprised him, and he made a note of it in the back of his mind as he removed his hand from the knife.
“Hey! No grabbing, remember? Do you want to help me cut the sandwich?” Baekhyun, looking vaguely chastised, considered the sandwich in front of him before trying to remove the top slice of bread. Jongdae stopped him and wrapped Baekhyun’s long fingers around the butter knife and placed his over it.
“Slowly, okay? There, good job.” Baekhyun stuck out his tongue as he concentrated, trying to be in control of the cutting motion but not quite coordinated enough to overpower Jongdae’s steadier hands.
Finished, Jongdae went and dropped the knife in the sink, letting it clatter against the other dirty dishes waiting sullenly to be cleaned. He grabbed the little orange bottle of pills and shook one out into his hand, replacing the rest on a shelf above the sink as far out of Baekhyun’s reach as possible.
Baekhyun had turned around in his chair and was pouting at the thought of having to take medicine, but for once he didn’t complain when Jongdae handed him his cup of water. He watched skeptically as Baekhyun took a mouthful of water that seemed too big, but the doctors had said to give him as much autonomy as possible and not to overload the poor thing with needless scolding.
Sure enough, when Baekhyun opened his mouth again to drop in the pill, he choked on the water and ended up spitting half of it across the table. Jongdae jumped out of his seat and hovered as Baekhyun coughed all over his sandwich., his eyes squinted shut and his tongue sticking out.
Jongdae started laughing, mostly out of nervousness but also definitely because Baekhyun looked ridiculous. Baekhyun started laughing too as he got a handle on his coughing and Jongdae patted him carefully on the back to help get the rest of the water out of his lungs. Baekhyun laughed too until he caught sight of his soggy sandwich and started crying.
Jongdae sighed and got a dry plate from the cabinet and transferred the sandwich to it, making sure to flip it upside down to present the slice that hadn’t gotten wet.
“Aw, Baekhyun, don’t cry,” he said as he sat down at the table next to him. “Look, here’s a dry sandwich alright? It’s okay, just eat it before your stomach starts to get upset.”
Baekhyun blubbered for a little bit, unsure of what to do, his eyes already turning pink from the tears. Jongdae picked up the drier of the two halves of the sandwich and handed it to the other man, calmly petting his hair when he took it.
Jongdae watched silently as Baekhyun ate his sandwich. Baekhyun’s hand occasionally twitched as he ate, his long fingers trying to shake off the stickiness of the jelly. It was strange to Jongdae that the peanut butter wasn't a problem, despite Baekhyun having to stop after every bite and lick all the extra peanut butter from his lips, but he knew better than to question a blessing.
Most of the way through the second half of the sandwich, Baekhyun’s eyes suddenly unfocused and he threw his arms up and fell out of the seat. The sandwich dropped from his hand as he fell and he ended up landing on it, the jelly oozing out from between the squished slices of bread and getting in Baekhyun’s hair and on his face.
“Baekhyun! Are you okay? Did you get dizzy for a second?” Jongdae helped Baekhyun up into a sitting position, guilty for not having been able to catch him before he hit the floor. Vertigo wasn’t an uncommon occurrence; he should have been paying more attention.
Baekhyun groaned and put his hand to his head to steady himself, inadvertently spreading the jelly on his face into his eyelashes. He let out a cry and held his hand at arm’s length, trying to get away from the sticky, but there was nothing he could do about the mess on his face. Jongdae chuckled.
“It’s bath time anyway, come on.”
Jongdae turned the spigot on the tub, his hand automatically spinning it to the exact temperature Baekhyun liked. Baekhyun was sloppily washing the jelly off his hands in the sink. Jongdae wet a washcloth and made to wipe the jelly from the other’s face, but Baekhyun brushed him off with surprising certainty.
Baekhyun took the washcloth and put a generous amount of soap on it, scrubbing slowly to avoid getting the soap in his eyes, his hands no longer as clumsy as they had been just a few moments ago. Jongdae watched, fascinated, telling himself not to get his hopes up.
Baekhyun took the wash cloth and rinsed it in the sink, but he dropped it over the drain and it bubbled quietly at him. He laughed and started splashing in the now clogged drain, and Jongdae knew the moment was gone. At least he had gotten the worst of the jelly from his face.
Jongdae instructed him to remove his clothes, helping him only with the button at the collar of his shirt. Jongdae passed Baekhyun a toy, a small cat stuffed animal made out of wash cloth material. Baekhyun meowed quietly and splashed the toy in the tub as Jongdae washed his hair.
By the time Jongdae had moved on to scrubbing Baekhyun’s arms and legs, Baekhyun’s cat toy seemed to be on some special mission to rescue the soap bar from it’s ledge. The adventure was full of sly maneuvers that included splashing Jongdae with the tub water, and by the time Baekhyun was all clean, Jongdae was just as wet (if not wetter) than Baekhyun himself.
Baekhyun stood up in the tub as the water drained and chattered his teeth, the childish gesture in complete contrast with his grown figure. Jongdae realized there was no towel hanging on the rack and threw an apologetic look at a shivering Baekhyun as he went to go get a clean one from the laundry basket.
Jongdae left the bathroom and went to the bedroom they shared, a small room only really big enough for the pallet spread out across the floor. Baekhyun was hit by vertigo sometimes even in his sleep, so a raised bed had become out of the question. The room was just as cluttered as the rest of the house; Jongdae just never seemed to have time to catch up on the chores. It didn’t help that Baekhyun made two messes for every one that Jongdae cleaned up.
He grabbed a towel that only slightly smelled of mildew from the basket in the corner of the room. The outdated wallpaper on the wall looked like it might have a similar strain of mildew on it, and Jongdae filed that information away for later too.
There was a squeak of wet skin against a smooth surface, and Jongdae jolted. Suppose Baekhyun had gotten dizzy while standing in the slippery tub…
Jongdae ran back to the bathroom as fast as the corners of the walls in the apartment would allow, and he found Baekhyun standing on top of the toilet seat lid, his head buried in the medicine cabinet.
“Baekhyun! Get down! What if you fall?” Baekhyun, still stark naked, turned his head with a grin. Across his face were some squiggles radiating from his mouth out to the sides of his face: whiskers, Jongdae realized. He had even drawn a dot on the tip of his nose to make himself look like a cat. In one hand he had a stick of black eyeliner that Jongdae hadn’t seen or even thought of since he had moved out of the EXO dorm, the toiletry bag it had come from having been placed on the top shelf and promptly forgotten. The other hand held his washcloth cat toy. Baekhyun made a weak meowing noise at Jongdae and shook the toy at him.
Jongdae laughed, stepping forward to lift Baekhyun off the toilet seat and onto the floor, picking the towel up off the floor where he had dropped it and wrapping it around the other man’s shoulders.
“Who is this kitty?” Jondgae asked softly as he used a corner of the towel to start drying Baekhyun’s hair. “And where did my Baekhyun go?”
Baekhyun’s eyebrows furrowed, and he looked first at the cat in his hands, and then at his own reflection in the mirror. He turned excitedly back and put his hands on Jongdae’s shoulders, meowing urgently. Jongdae just laughed and covered Baekhyun’s whole face with the towel, starting an enthusiastic game of peekaboo.
That night, as Jongdae sang Baekhyun to sleep, he wondered if he would have ended up loving Baekhyun anyway. Baekhyun’s hands were pressed lightly up against Jongdae’s chest, his finger tips barely clinging onto the fabric of his shirt. He had continued to insist he was a cat all the way until he had fallen asleep, his face pressed into the pillow and his mouth slightly open.
His eyelashes looked soft in the darkness of the room, even though the last time they had been officially styled seemed like life times ago now. He ran his hands through the sleeping man’s hair, the black locks still coarse, but this time as a side effect of the medicine and not from constant color changes and heat treatments.
Baekhyun sighed in his sleep, and Jongdae wondered if he was happy. If either of them were happy. The doctors had told him that Baekhyun was almost lucky, in a way. If the brain damage had been even just a little bit less severe, he probably would have been able to comprehend his condition, and consequently plagued with crippling depression.
Jongdae felt tears swim to his eyes, and he carefully, carefully pulled himself out of Baekhyun’s grip. He didn’t deserve the comfort of the other man’s soft breath on his face as he slept. It wasn’t his to have and he had stolen it anyway.
He barely managed to stumble all the way to the living room before he collapsed on the floor, arm in the crook of his elbow, sobbing out all the guilt he felt towards Baekhyun.
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It is September 29th 2018. The traffic on the road they’re walking along is too noisy for how hot the air is, despite the season, and all the sounds are bleeding together into one and pounding on Jongdae’s skull.
It’s not that Seoul isn’t also noisy, or even ever any cooler than this during the summer, but Jongdae is already pissed and being in a foreign country is only making it worse. The street signs are in English and Jongdae hopes someone, anyone, knows where they’re going because the last thing he has the patience for right now is getting lost in their stage outfits.
“What’s up, loser?” Baekhyun swings his arm around Jongdae’s shoulders and smacks him in the forehead with the bottle of water in the other hand. Why were they walking to their schedule anyway?
“Get off me,” Jongdae growls, pushing Baekhyun a little more roughly than could come across as playful. Baekhyun frowns.
“What’s wrong?” He asks, suddenly focused on his friend. Tao walking beside them glances over, unable to hear through the music blasting in his headphones but blandly curious nonetheless. Jongdae focuses on walking, choosing to ignore Baekhyun’s question. He tugs at his suit. It seems unreasonable for them to be wearing wool suits in the middle of summer.
“Are you nervous about tonight?” Baekhyun offers, now sipping slowly at his water bottle, looking perfectly comfortable in his well tailored suit.
“Why would I be? M isn’t even performing,” Jongdae snaps. Kris turns around in front of them, frowning slightly at his band mate. Kris looks vaguely more affected by the combination of the weather and these suits that must have been designed for concerts in the middle of a blizzard, but not even a single hair is out of place on his perfectly hair-sprayed head.
“Don’t sweat it, at least we get to eat while they perform,” Kris jokes, and Chanyeol slugs him in the shoulder and threatens to convince the manager to keep them from eating until they can eat ‘as one’.
Jongdae doesn’t even care about the food, he just wants to perform. He didn’t sign his life away to be flown across the globe to watch someone else sing the lines he should have been given. One might think that after all these years and all the awards Jongdae has won, the company might give him the opportunities he deserved. One might think.
Baekhyun puts his hand back on Jongdae’s shoulder and sighs dramatically at the rappers squabbling in front of them.
“Chill out, it’ll be fine. I’m sure the company had a good reason to only have us perform.” Jongdae flinches from Baekhyun’s hand like he’s been shocked. Baekhyun’s remark grates against too many of Jongdae’s already sensitive nerves, the word ‘us’ implicitly not including Jongdae, and he has to take a deep breath to steady himself.
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Jongdae had stopped sobbing minutes, maybe hours ago, but he was still laying on his stomach across the cold ground. His eyes were staring out the window above the front door, stuck on the light of the streetlamp coming through the dirty window, but they were unfocused and he was too lost in his thoughts to even register where he was looking.
Baekhyun coughed in his sleep, a deep, noisy cough that he would have gotten in trouble for in their singing days. The sound dragged Jongdae out of his self pity and he realized how uncomfortable the floor was compared to his bed. While he was completely for punishing himself, the thought of trying to make it through a whole work day sore and bruised was enough to get him up off the ground and padding quietly to their room.
Jongdae could just barely make out Baekhyun’s sleeping form, the nightlight on the wall beside the bed giving just enough illumination to see that Baekhyun had rolled to his other side in the other man’s absence, his arms above his head in awkward positions and the blankets tangled around his feet. Jongdae crouched down in the darkness and instinctively placed Baekhyun’s arms at his sides before shaking out the blanket and using it to cover both of them.
Baekhyun mumbled in his sleep, bringing his arms back up above his head. Jongdae sighed and put them down at his sides again, this time hugging the other man closer and pinning his arms to his side.
“Love… Chen…,” Baekhyun mumbled. Jongdae froze momentarily, wondering why Baekhyun had used his stage name, but before he could process, Baekhyun worked his arms free of Jongdae’s hold and wrapped his arms around him. Jongdae hugged him closer and wondered what he had done in his last life to deserve this kind of punishment.
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“Kim Jongdae?” a receptionist asks, and Jongdae looks up and swallows hard.
“Yes? That’s me.”
“Can you come this way, please? The doctor has some more forms for you to fill out before the patient is released.” She smiles robotically and gestures with her clipboard towards the front desk.
He signs his name a million different times, barely skimming over the fine print in the release form. It’s familiar to him, at least. The receptionist stops him just before the last few pages, handing him a neatly packed folder of more printed papers and a book bound like a notebook.
“In cases of caring for mentally disabled patients, the hospital is willing to provide therapy for both the patient and the caretaker for a fee to be determined by how much your insurance covers. The patient, of course, is required to come in for weekly check ups and biweekly occupational and physical therapy sessions, but we also recommend you talk to a therapist also. Depression is just as common in caretakers as it is in patients.” Her voice sounds a little regretful, and Jongdae wonders if she’s been a caretaker before, or if maybe she recognizes him.
She points to the bound notebook and flips through some of the pages.
“There may be moments where the patient seems completely unreasonable, and other where the patient may function almost as if the dementia were not present, and it can be disorienting for the caretaker. This booklet helps explain what to expect, how to handle breakdowns when they happen, dangerous signs to look for, tips for combating negative side effects from the medicine, et cetera.” Jongdae nods andtakes the folder and the notebook and adds them to the stack of folder and paperwork already in his arms. The receptionist smiles and motions for Jongdae to resume signing the first stack of paperwork.
The beeps of a thousand machines and the squeaking wheels of beds being rolled down the hallway clutter his mind and he has to think hard to focus on what the she’s saying to him.
“…and sign here please so confirm that you are in fact a blood relative of the patient.”
“Wait, that’s not true. But.. I’m, I…” The woman frowns at him, automatically on alert against this body snatcher standing in front of her.
“I’m sorry sir, but we have policies against releasing intensive care patients to non-relatives.”
“No, I have to be the one that takes him. His parents…” Jongdae chokes. Baekhyun’s father had had a heart attack when he had found out. He was fine now, but Baekhyun’s parents were older and the stress of having to take care of Baekhyun in his condition would be too much for them. Undue stress could cause another heart attack in his father, and his mother had cried and apologized at Baekhyun’ bedside as she looked into homes they could place him in. Her son had still been under anesthetics from another surgery when Jongdae offered to take Baekhyun in.
SM had paid for his father’s medical bills, and Jongdae had paid for all of Baekhyun’s medical bills using what he had been saving up from his time in EXO. He knew they would never forgive him for taking their son away from them, but he thought this might help alleviate some of the burden from Baekhyun’s parents.
The receptionist stares expectantly at him, clearly ready to call the doctor and call off preparing Baekhyun for release. Jongdae blinks a few times and clears his throat, starting again.
“His parents are unable to care for him. Their attorney signed over guardianship rights. I have the paperwork.” Jongdae fishes for the right paper in his own folder of official looking forms, flipping hurriedly past the one that outlines his and Baekhyun’s dismissal from EXO and SM Entertainment as a whole.
He finds the one from the attorney and the receptionist checks it over succinctly, determining it to be valid. She has him sign the remaining three blank spaces on the page, and Jongdae wonders how many more times in his life he’s going to sign his life away on a piece of paper.
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Jongdae heard the sounds of paper ripping in the other room and sighed at his reflection in the mirror. He had planned on doing something more with his hair this morning before going to work, but Baekhyun came first.
Baekhyun was sitting in the corner, inefficiently tearing a stack of drawings to shreds, his face dark and his mouth set in a deep frown. The crayons were spilled out of their plastic tub next to him and the TV hissed static as the screen displayed snow.
Jongdae crossed the room and turned the television off. The abrupt halt of noise startled Baekhyun and he looked up at Jongdae all dressed up for work. He stuck out his bottom lip which started quivering and made to start working up some tears.
“Don’t cry, Baekhyun. You know I have to go to work.” Baekhyun eyes searched the room, as if he were looking for a reason to keep Jongdae home for the day. Jongdae had picked up a part time job as a vocal coach to help pay the bills. The money had saved from EXO was long gone, now resting in the pockets of Baekhyun’s countless therapists and pharmacists. Jongdae didn’t mind his job, except that leaving Baekhyun home alone made him nervous.
“I’ll be back before dinner time. You already ate breakfast and your lunch is on the table. Can you please try to eat your rice today?” Baekhyun looked away, dragging his fingers through his pile of crumpled paper, expressing his opinion on the matter.
“Please, Baekhyun? Try?” Baekhyun pouted at him and threw himself forward to cling to Baekhyun’s leg. He was going to be late to work at this rate. Jongdae sighed again and bent down to pet the other man’s hair, still messy from sleeping.
“Why are you ripping up your drawings? I think they’re very nice.” Baekhyun pouted again and kicked a paper with his foot, grudgingly untangling himself from the other’s legs. Jongdae grabbed a stack of fresh paper from the desk and crouched down next to Baekhyun.
“Hey, Baek. Look at me. Why don’t you try drawing things that make you happy today? Can you do that? When I come home from work, I want to see pictures of things that make you happy. How does that sound?” Baekhyun blinked but his face remained neutral. Eventually he tilted his head and leaned his whole body over until his hand reached a crayon. He started drawing on the floor next to the paper, so Jongdae slid a paper under his hands and snuck out the front door to work.
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When Baekhyun ran out of paper to draw on, he padded into the kitchen and found his lunch on the table, the warm things now cold and the cold things now warm. He clapped his hands and sat at his spot, faithfully eating all of the side dishes and none of the rice.
He saved the chicken for last, and sat chewing thoughtfully on it as he struggled to recall what Jongdae had told him about the rice. It had something to do with eating it, but Baekhyun hated rice. It stuck to his hands and the inside of his throat. Baekhyun frowned and tapped his fingernail against the rice bowl, liking the noise it made. He tapped out an unsteady beat, and was suddenly struck by an idea.
Lunch forgotten, he went back to the living room and grabbed a handful of crayons. The lack of paper stumped him for a few minutes, but wallpaper had the word paper in it so it must be okay to draw on.
He put a crayon to the wall and liked the way the crayon bumped along the uneven texture. He laughed to himself and started drawing musical notes and scribbles that represented different noises anywhere his arms could reach.
He drew a girl under the music next, her hair long and hearts around her because she also liked music. Baekhyun froze, wondering what was so familiar about the girl.
Puzzled, he drew a giant X next to her, and wondered why this made so much sense. He brought his hand up to the wall to draw a circle next to that, but stopped, his brain suddenly working overtime.
Where was he? Baekhyun looked around the room, confused. He was the singer of a popular SM group, why was he in this strange apartment? Fear rose in Baekhyun’s stomach. Maybe a fan had kidnapped him. He had to get back to the dorm before the managers noticed he was missing.
Baekhyun ran through the apartment, looking for the front door. It didn’t look like a girl lived here, and that made him more scared. He spotted the front door and struggled with the locks, bursting out onto the front patio and heading down the stairs, skipping two at a time, despite being barefoot. He reached the bottom of the stairs and went running as fast as he could away from the strange house.
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Jongdae felt good about today’s lessons. His students were improving steadily, and one of them was preparing to go to an audition that Jongdae knew he would pass. He remembered the feeling of nerves just before an audition and had done his best to calm the boy’s fears.
It had been two years, almost three, since he and Baekhyun had moved into the apartment together. At the beginning, Jongdae didn’t know how to take care of Baekhyun, could hardly take care of himself, the transition from being pampered and dressed to having to help Baekhyun eat and button his shirts had been hard and real. Jongdae had run away once, the first week, only to be followed by fans asking where Baekhyun was and what had happened to him. Guilt and a sinking feeling of responsibility had overwhelmed him and he had ended up going back to his new home.
The apartment itself was close enough to the SM building that the members had visited at first, but seeing Baekhyun was too hard and he knew that they didn’t really want anything to do with either of them. There was a lot of work left for the remaining members to do to try to salvage the band as a ten member group. At least each team had lost one person; the balance made it a little easier.
A few months later, SM had found a way to keep the fans away from Jongdae’s new apartment, and after that the other members had stopped coming over too. Even Joonmyeon and Kyungsoo who had visited the most frequently, suddenly found excuses to keep them busy. Jongdae didn’t mind. That chapter of his life was over and he had gotten over the denial of thinking he could ever go back to it.
Jongdae turned onto their street, the quiet concrete and chirping birds greeting him. He got to the bottom of the stairs up to their apartment and froze. The front door was hanging open. He looked up and down the street, checking to see if anyone else was around. The street was empty in the dusk light and Jongdae sprinted up the stairs, bursting into the apartment and calling Baekhyun’s name.
“Baekhyun! Baekhyun are you home? Are you okay? Oh god, please answer.” He searched every room twice, looking under the tables and noting that Baekhyun’s lunch had been eaten except for the rice, as usual, which meant he hadn’t been missing for too long. The living room walls were covered in crayon drawings, and the floor was littered with Baekhyun’s drawings.
Jongdae stopped when he saw the little girl on the wall. The hearts drawn around her and the X struck an icicle through Jongdae’s heart. He grabbed his keys and hastily shut and locked the door, sprinting back towards the main road.
Ten minutes later, Jongdae rounded the corner to the street that led to EXO’s dorm building, his phone held to his ear, power-walking to avoid undue attention when he wanted to run the whole way. Someone on the other line picked up.
“Hello?”
“Joonmyeon! It’s.. it’s me, Jongdae. Listen, have you seen Baekhyun?” There was an intake of breath, and then silence. Jongdae grit his teeth.
“What are you talking about?” Joonmyeon asked, his voice uneven.
“I got home and he was gone, I think he’s heading back to the dorms. I’ll be there in a minute, can you come down and let me in?”
“Jongdae…”
“Please!” Jongdae’s voice was desperate, and he knew Joonmyeon could hear it. “Please, just come downstairs. I know he’s around here somewhere.”
There was a pause, and then
“Fine. I’ll be right down.”
Jongdae hung up the phone and shoved it in his pocket as he sped up to an awkward half-skip, half-jog, ignoring the weird looks he was getting. He could see the building up ahead, and the usual crowd of girls standing outside seemed bigger than he remembered. There was a lot of clamoring and arguing, and Jongdae wondered if Joonmyeon was already outside waiting for him, causing this commotion.
“Leave him alone! Don’t take his picture,” one girl was shouting.
“Does anyone have the manager’s number?” another asked. The group of fans around her all sadly shook their heads, either not having it or lying about having it to avoid getting harassed into sharing it.
Their focus seemed to be centered around a bush in front of the building, and Jongdae’s stomach clenched. Just as he walked up to the crowd, screams went up in alarm at Joonmyeon coming out of the building in his sweats.
A girl spotted Jongdae, almost unrecognizable in his grown out, unkempt hair and worn out street clothes. A hush fell over the crowd as everyone turned from Joonmyeon look at Jongdae. One girl took a photo of him and another girl knocked the camera out of her hand, telling her to be more respectful.
The girls shuffled out of the way, allowing Jongdae up to the bush. Huddled in the dirt shaking and crying was a barefoot Baekhyun. Joonmyeon gasped and stepped forward, unsure of what to do. Jongdae got down on his hands and knees and slowly coaxed Baekhyun out from under the bush. When Baekhyun was standing again, leaves stuck to his hair and clothes, a fan offered her jacket, and Jongdae wordlessly took it and wrapped it around Baekhyun’s shoulders before making to leave.
Joonmyeon grabbed Jongdae’s elbow before immediately and releasing it and stepping back. Jongdae stopped gave Joonmyeon a sad look.
“Sorry for troubling you,” Jongdae said, as politely as if to a stranger.
“Jongdae, let me call the manager to drive you home…” Joonmyeon started, but Jongdae waved him off, leading Baekhyun carefully back home.
“It’s fine.”
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“’Us’?” Jongdae asks, incredulous. They’re stopped at a corner, waiting for the walk symbol to let them cross the road. The cars drive on the wrong side of the road here, and it would be disorienting if Jongdae were thinking about anything but the sound of his pulse pounding in his ears.
Baekhyun rolls his eyes and puts his arm back down at his side.
“Whatever, Jongdae-ah. Don’t be like this. I’ll talk to you again after we’ve all eaten.” He steps up to the curb and pulls his headphones out of his pocket, starting to untangle them with his perfectly manicured fingers.
Jongdae has had enough. He swats the earbuds out of his hands, demanding his attention. The other members take in a collective breath, immediately silent and focused on Jongdae and Baekhyun. Jongdae feels Minseok place a hand lightly on his shoulder but he brushes it off.
“You know what, Baekhyun? You aren’t better than me just because you were put on K.”
“Oh, Jongdae…” Luhan starts, sounding like an upset mother, but Baekhyun puts up a hand to quiet him. Amazingly, Luhan complies.
“Jongdae, I never said that…”
“I’m sure you’ve never said those exact words,” Jongdae interrupts, “but I can tell from how you act. Always lording over me for being the singer in the more popular of the two groups. Don’t try to deny it. We all know the M album sales are dismal and always have been.”
The group is silent, unsure of what to say. Even the manager says nothing, instead finding something to look at on his phone screen. Jongdae isn’t wrong in what he said, at least where the album sales are concerned. The crosswalk says ‘go’, but everyone is frozen to the spot.
“What is your problem? Do you seriously think fighting over something stupid in the middle of public is the best decision?” Baekhyun’s face is red, and Jongdae hopes it’s from embarrassment at being called out. His long fingers are curled into fists and the headphones dangle wildly from his right hand.
He could care less about the fans right now. Six years of regretting asking to be put on the wrong team. Six years of letting Baekhyun and Kyungsoo take the spotlight when he sang just as well, if not better. Six years of swallowing his frustration and staying longer in the practice room to prove to himself that he wasn’t subpar. And after six years, he was done, regardless of what the ‘best decision’ might be.
“My problem is that while you gallivant around Korea blowing kisses and darkening your eyeliner, I’m stuck in a country that doesn’t appreciate me, listening to fans mock my accent as if it’s not hard to sing in a foreign language that has tones, Baekhyun. My problem is that I gave up my freedom and my family and friends for fame, and I was immediately shipped away with the second string!”
Baekhyun’s eyes get impossibly wide, and Jongdae feels the rest of M bristle. Minseok takes a cold step back. The crosswalk sign flashes a ‘do not start walking’ as it finishes its countdown, but no one is paying attention anymore.
Joonmyeon slides into the spot Minseok had just been standing and clears his throat, and Jongdae knows he’s about to give a leader speech. He doesn’t want to hear it. He just wants to hear Baekhyun admit that he’s not a better singer, and that he’s sorry Jongdae’s life was ruined.
Joonmyeon lightly grabs Jongdae’s hand, and Jongdae swings his arm up violently to shake him off.
“Leave Joonmyeon-hyung alone!” Baekhyun yells at Jongdae as he raises a fist.
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The sun set slowly, and the streetlamps turned lazily on as they walked home; Baekhyun was silent and unresponsive the whole way home. Jongdae had given him his shoes a block away from the SM building, and Baekhyun had let him put them on without complaint.
They got back to the apartment and Jongdae unlocked the door, slowly guiding Baekhyun to sit down on the couch, letting him keep the shoes on. He went back to the front door to close and lock it, and suddenly Baekhyun stood straight up, eyes wild and tears forming.
“Baekhyun, what’s wrong?” Jongdae reached a hand out, but Baekhyun flinched from it and cried out like Jongdae had meant to hurt him. Jongdae flinched from Baekhyun’s reaction but stepped forward nonetheless to embrace him and tell him it was okay.
Baekhyun pushed Jongdae away and ran past him into the kitchen. Jongdae stood still for a moment, collecting his thoughts and willing himself not to cry. He tried to remember all the coping mechanisms the doctors had taught him, but his mind was a blur.
He found Baekhyun hiding behind his chair at the table, whimpering and crouching down on the floor. Jongdae swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to speak.
“Don’t be afraid, Baek. Baekhyun-ah, I’m not going to hurt you, please.” Baekhyun screamed at him and scooted on the floor towards the sink. Jongdae started crying in earnest.
“Why are you scared of me? Do you… do you remember what happened?” Baekhyun hissed and spit at Jongdae, swinging and arm up and bringing down the dish towel with all the dry dishes on it to the floor. Plastic plates and bowls and silverware scattered across the room.
“Baekhyun-a, please, I never meant to hurt you. It was an accident. I said mean things that I shouldn’t have because I was upset and jealous, but I never wanted any harm to come to you. I only want the best for you, Baekhyun.” Baekhyun’s hands scrambled to find solid ground, his hands landing on dishes as he tried to stand up to run away again.
Jongdae stepped forward to grab Baekhyun as he tried to run back towards the living room and the front door, and the force of stopping him almost knocked the breath out of him. Jongdae hugs him tighter and starts crying into his hair.
“Baekhyun, I’m so, so sorry.”
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It all happens so fast.
Baekhyun raises his fist at Jongdae. The manager starts shoving to get through the ring of members to stop them. Sehun, Jongin, Chanyeol, and Tao all start shouting at the same time. Joonmyeon tries to step between Baekhyun and Jongdae, but Jongdae is faster.
He grabs Baekhyun’s fist in his left hand, rotating his arm down and thinking that living with a martial artist had been the best thing about being exiled in China. With his right hand, he swings his own fist in Baekhyun’s jaw and knocks him off balance.
Baekhyun’s feet slip off the edge of the curb, and the group surges forward as a single being in a vain attempt to catch him. Everyone is so focused on Baekhyun that they don't see the car barreling up from behind.
The car is far from the curb, but not far enough. It tries to slow down, but Baekhyun’s head hits the rearview mirror as he falls.
Someone in the group screams, and Jongdae wonders if it was himself. Baekhyun hits the ground and slides on the asphalt. The members closest to him scramble to pick him up, but Tao screams not to touch him. The car screeches to a halt and the driver comes out of his seat already screaming in English. The manager frantically pushes Kris at the man and fumbles for his phone, asking what the emergency number is.
Jongdae is frozen. His hands are over his mouth where he supposes he must have put them when he saw the car coming. The other members all step away from him, torn between wanting to go to Baekhyun and wishing Jongdae would step in front of the next car on his own. He can see it in their faces.
Tao is crouched over Baekhyun, calling his name and dripping tears all over his face, still refusing to let the others move him in case his neck is broken. The other cars on the road slow down to see what happened, and there is much honking, but Jongdae can’t hear any of it. This isn’t what he wanted to happen; he only wanted Baekhyun to apologize for.. for what? Jongdae couldn’t remember anymore. And now he was on the ground and bleeding, and it was Jongdae fault.
Jongdae screams Baekhyun’s name, finally snapping out of his trance. He throws himself to where Baekhyun and Tao are, but the other members catch him and hold him back. He kicks and struggles and screams but the arms holding him back are unrelenting.
Someone pushes him to the ground against the ground and he sits there, sobbing and still screaming Baekhyun’s name. He would do anything to take back the last minute, the last ten minutes, all the horrible things he had just said about his team and his bandmates. He would endure hate from anti-fans for a thousand years straight if it would undo what he had just done.
The sirens come eventually, and Baekhyun is lifted into the ambulance with Kris at his side and driven away at top speed. The manager is making frantic calls and waving his arms around as he screams at the remaining members to flag down taxis to take them to the hospital.
Two members are standing guard next to Jongdae, and Jongdae wonders who they’re trying to benefit. Kai and Minseok are busy trying to distract the fans that had been following them, begging them to delete any photos they took. The other five members are still sobbing and hiccupping like he is.
“I should have been hit by the car,” he says to no one, to the universe. No one says anything to contradict him. He must be right.
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Baekhyun struggled in his grip, but Jongdae just grimaced and held him tighter. Crying out again, Baekhyun used a shoed foot to kick Jongdae in the shin, and Jongdae collapsed to the ground. He watched with horror as Jongdae laid on the floor, making no move to get up, instead just sobbing and clutching at his torso.
“Baekhyun, I’m so sorry, please, call Joonmyeon, he’ll know what to do.” Baekhyun watched with wide eyes as Jongdae struggled to remove the phone out of his pocket and hitting redial and sliding it across the floor. Baekhyun let out a strangled shout when the phone drags a trail of blood behind it.
Jongdae pulled the knife out of his front with a shaking hand and dropped it on the ground, letting it clatter and spin on the floor. The wound he pulled it out of started bleeding heavier, and Jongdae took an extra long blink. Baekhyun backed up against the wall and started to crying and tearing at his hair, scared of blood and scared of Jongdae and scared of losing Jongdae.
“Don’t cry, Baekhyun. I’m not mad. I deserve this. Please though, Baekhyun. Call Joonmyeon. They’ll find someplace nice for you to live, okay? You’ll be okay without me… I’m sorry I couldn’t… do better.”
“Hello? Jongdae?” Joonmyeon’s voice crackled quietly from the phone between them. Baekhyun whimpered and grabbed at the phone, yelping and dropping it again immediately when he the blood touched his hands.
Joonmyeon’s voice mumbled more urgently from the phone, and Jongdae smiled into the floor. He would send someone over to check on them and Baekhyun would be taken care of.
“Baekhyun, listen to me, okay? One last time? I’m glad I got to take care of you, even if it was my fault in the first place. I’m glad I got to meet you.” Baekhyun was shaking his head violently now, though from Jongdae’s words or the literal and figurative blood on his hands, he wasn’t sure. He chuckled and tried to ignore the pain under his hands.
The last thing he saw before his eyes closed was Baekhyun’s face, and he was glad for it.
Poll Round 22: Worth Something to Me