not a tragedy

Exultant (adj. ) – Triumphantly happy Exoltant (adj. ) – Triumphantly happy exo in other words, i write happy exo fics.

[exoltant-blog]

hi! you are really so cute writing! your sukai is beautiful, aww ~ I want to translate it into my language... would you agree with this? (*/_＼) ♡

w h a t really, you’d do that? but yes, ofc you can as long as you expressly state that it’s a translation and link it back here! ♡

[exoltant-blog]

ahh please continue Anterior ;-; it seems like it would be such a cute (mildly angsty) fic ^_^ I really enjoyed what you did write!

thanks for reading! i kinda have in mind what i’d like for the sequel~

[exoltant-blog]

[sukai] anterior

one-shot;     → suho/kai ; au ; romance ; pg-13 ; 2931w    → in which Jongin tries to right a wrong.    → a/n: wow it's been ages since i wrote anything.

"Don't think I don’t know why you asked me out,” Jongdae quips casually, on their third cup of coffee ( Jongin has latte ) that’s ‘Jongin’s treat’. “You want to know about Junmyeon.”

At Junmyeon’s name, Jongin chokes on his scone. Coming to a high-class cafe was a mistake after all. They didn’t fit in, and the coffees cost a little bit less than Jongin’s spending for an entire week. He’d had wanted to impress Jongdae, wanted to show him that Jongdae mattered to him ( he really did ) and Jongin wasn’t only using him to obtain news about his best friend.

In response, Jongdae laughs at him, his eyes thinning into crescents. “I knew it.”

“No—” Jongin defends himself. He drops the rest of his scone into his latte in distress. Jongdae eyes him unrelentingly.

“He’s coming back,” Jongdae says simply, with an easy shrug of his shoulders. “Says he doesn’t have a reason to stay any more.”

“Back… to Seoul?”

“Into your loving arms, of course,” Jongdae replies. There’s no heat to his words, no malice meant. But Jongin flinches all the same, eyeing the disintegrating scone in his latte with the guilt he’d been feeling for years. The unmistaken feeling of sinking regret, weighed down by the million and one what if we had— that plagued his mind.

“Hyung,” Jongin replies quietly. This was a mistake. This was a mistake on every level. They were finished and done, and nothing Jongin could do would bring him back. It was stupid, absurd, ridiculous. He was the one who did wrong by Junmyeon, so he would be the one to atone for his mistakes.

“Sorry,” Jongdae murmurs. He sets down an empty coffee cup. “When he comes back… I’ll get the group together, okay? Whether he wants to speak to you or not, whether you guys want to work out whatever you guys have—” Jongdae accompanies his words with a wave of his hands “—it’s up to you and him.”

⇊

Jongin’s first date with Junmyeon went back exactly 4 years ago, when he was twenty and Junmyeon was 23. It was uneventful, the by-product of Junmyeon’s fumbling confession. They’d been friends for ten years, and when Junmyeon decided to confess, Jongin didn’t know he felt. He liked Junmyeon, sure. He didn’t think he could live without Junmyeon, yes. But mostly because they had been friends for a decade. There were parts of Jongin that only Junmyeon had seen.

In the end, he’d agreed to the date only because he couldn’t stand to see Junmyeon disappointed. In turn, Junmyeon’s smile had radiated with the brightness of a million suns.

They started dating for the same reason. Jongin, with his inability to say to no Junmyeon even when he was pretty sure what he felt was pure affection for the boy he’d grown up with; nothing of lust, no. The only new element to their relationship had been kissing. The cuddling, the occasional hand-holding, waiting for each other after work, after school, after dance schedules—those things they had done before. To their friends, they were the perfect couple. And Jongin surmises, if so many people felt this way, he couldn’t be doing something wrong. Junmyeon had to be—vaguely, in the way he smiles, and the way he holds Jongin’s hand, and the way he conscientiously takes care of Jongin—”the one”.

It was only when Jongin slept with Lu Han that everything blew up in his face. Lu Han was perfect and gorgeous, all coy smiles and lithe bodies. His existence was like a shot of adrenaline to Jongin’s veins; exciting and absolutely lethal. He was the very opposite of what Junmyeon meant to him. Where Junmyeon was comfort and warm touches and loving smiles, Lu Han was sharp and stark with a tendency to bite when he kissed.

When Junmyeon found out, he stared at Jongin unblinkingly, his eyes shining with unshed tears. His cheeks were splotchy, red. Everything pointed to him being completely upset, on the verge of a yelling episode. And Jongin couldn’t wait. Jongin wanted that spark of life in their relationship, not the commonplace routine they had fallen into from Day 1 of their relationship. He wanted Junmyeon to grab him by his lapels, to tell him Jongin had severely disappointed him, that Jongin was a shithead who deserved to roll in the deepest pits of hell.

( Jongin replays this scene in his head every day for the past four years, and each time he couldn’t help thinking that he wanted Junmyeon to pin him to the wall too, and maybe fuck him until all the anger had receded and all was left was a renewed sense of their relationship.

He had wanted Junmyeon to be selfish too, he didn’t want it to be easy. He’d seen the way Junmyeon grit his teeth and accepted Jongin’s unreasonable demands, and that shouldn’t be the way it was. )

Junmyeon had said a singular sentence before he left, his arms wrapped around himself. “I hope he makes you happy.” He managed a wrangled form of a smile before he left.

⇊

It was dramatic, and Jongin still can’t help thinking how stupid everything turned out. Instead of talking it out like adults, instead of Junmyeon yelling at Jongin, or telling him exactly how he felt, Junmyeon left. Sure, when Junmyeon left his life in Seoul to move to get hitched in Los Angeles ( a marriage his parents had arranged, of course, one of those high society things that benefited everyone except the couple themselves ), he left everyone. But he left. Where there was a space in Jongin’s heart that he used to reserve for Junmyeon, there was now a gaping hole, festering with his own unhappiness.

So stupid, he was so stupid. The perfect embodiment of not knowing what he’d had until he lost it. Lu Han never called again, and neither did Junmyeon.

All their friends avoided Jongin for a little bit, even Chanyeol. Bitterly disappointed and disgusted, Jongdae left him exactly ten threatening texts, each one with an increasing amount of disdain for Jongin’s private bits.

And Jongin, who couldn’t bring himself to disappoint Junmyeon, had broken his heart into smithereens. The shards of Junmyeon’s heart recoiled, bounced, turned and pierced Jongin’s own. With startling clarity, he could see how ridiculously he had behaved.

It was too late anyway. He’d ripped a hole in his life he was never going to patch back together. Calls to Junmyeon went unanswered, and texts blatantly ignored until Junmyeon moved away and changed his number entirely.

⇊

“Are you sure he should be here?” Chanyeol asks, jabbing Jongin’s side with his elbow.

“Chanyeol,” Baekhyun says warningly, stabbing Chanyeol’s other hand with his fork. “Enough.”

Over the years, Jongin’s failed relationship had morphed into a weak joke. He’d dated scores of men and women, slept with Lu Han again ( just the once ) and still, still he couldn’t find it in himself to actually date someone. Even his friends had eventually sympathised with him, patted him on the back for his bad luck.

“Jesus, just lightening the atmosphere,” Chanyeol replies. This time he digs his fingers into the muscle of Jongin’s shoulder. “Relax, man.”

“Are you trying to kill me, or—” Jongin says, his voice unnatural even in his own ears. The napkin in his lap had been twisted into a crumpled mess. He hadn’t even apologised for the mess four years ago. Or, well, he had and it’d all fallen on deaf ears. Junmyeon must hate him. Chanyeol was right, he shouldn’t be here.

Jongin pushes his chair back, his mind scrambling for an excuse as he got up. Some work, maybe. He had to babysit his sister’s kid. Something. Anything.

“Running away?” a voice chimes from behind him. That voice. The voice that’s been haunting Jongin’s sleep for years. But before Jongin can even swivel around to see if he’s right, Chanyeol is up from his chair, a flurry mess of limbs and wild hair attacking Junmyeon’s small frame.

“HYUUUUUUNG,” he yells, loud enough to cause the other patrons to glance at them. They each take turns saying hi to Junmyeon. He’s a little skinnier, his face sharp like he hadn’t been eating well. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his hair hung in his face, unstyled and absolutely adorable. Still, his grin sits brightly on his face, giving one the impression that he hadn’t aged a day.

“How’s business?” Junmyeon asks. Chanyeol and Baekhyun ran a music store, which Baekhyun readily enthused to Junmyeon, describing their day to day business, how Chanyeol had almost burnt down what they had taken their entire lives to make with a gas stove, how Chanyeol hit on this pretty girl who was, in fact, lesbian and merely laughed at his antics. Chanyeol, determined to humiliate Baekhyun, tells Junmyeon about his escapades with a handsome chinese man named Zitao who didn’t speak a word of Korean, how they’d completely ended up at different places on a date, how Baekhyun had scattered their apartment with flowers thinking Chanyeol would be out for the night.

The anecdotes pour out by the dozens. Kyungsoo’s work stories about his practice with the new trainees at the agency.

“They sound like dying cats,” Kyungsoo says, rubbing his forehead. “They can’t sing!”

“Don’t be so cruel,” Jongdae says. Jongdae and Kyungsoo are colleagues by day, flatmates by night, and menacing at all times. “That new girl, she sounded at least like a human being. Completely off-pitch and possibly tone deaf, of course. But at least not like she’s filming a horror flick.” They squabble with what it means to be able to sing, and Baekhyun gives a startlingly amazing rendition of “My Heart Will Go On” while Kyungsoo and Jongdae pretend to stab themselves with chopsticks.

“And you?” Junmyeon says, turning to Jongin. His face doesn’t change, but Jongin swears he sees a guarded expression in Junmyeon’s eyes. Or Jongin’s been drinking too much soju and Junmyeon’s already over what happened four years ago, unlike Jongin.

“Same old,” Jongin answers curtly. His chest aches, and he wants to hold Junmyeon’s hand, just to see if it feels the same.

“Nothing new in your life? No one special?” Junmyeon asks. Before Jongin can answer, Chanyeol says loudly, “Jongin has no manners; no one wants him.”

“Hey, fuck you,” Jongin says, delivering a soft punch to Chanyeol’s arm. “I’m desirable. People want me.”

“Mmmmmmm, sure,” Chanyeol responds.

They leave it at that.

“What about you, hyung?” Kyungsoo asks, scooping a large stack of vegetables onto Jongin’s plate and telling him to eat up.

“Well, I’m divorced,” Junmyeon starts. “I’m also homeless.”

As it turns out, Junmyeon had sold off his flat when he left, thinking it was for good. He didn’t want to live with his parents; they were distraught and upset and while they welcomed him to his home, he just didn’t think it would be a good place for Sehun and him to live in.

“How’s Sehun?” Jongdae chips in, stuff cabbage in his mouth like he’d been starved for years.

Sehun. Sehun, Sehun, Sehun? Jongin’s mind drew a blank. Sehun?? That sounded like the name of a young man Junmyeon would’ve picked up from the streets and brought home. Cuddled him to sleep, maybe, whispered sweet nothings like how perfect Sehun was. Brought him lunch when he was busy, massaged his back when— Jongin was getting carried away.

“Good,” Junmyeon replies. “He’s taking the divorce better than I’d expected. Didn’t even cry once and tried to take over all the housework when I was busy.”

Kyungsoo coos, and unnatural sound coming from him. Jongin glares at him, unintentionally. He avoids catching Junmyeon’s eye.

“He likes to climb in my lap a lot these days.” Jongin drops his fish on the table. Chanyeol snatches it up to eat it. “Says he sleeps better when I hold him.”

The jealousy that bubbles in Jongin’s chest is unparalleled. He thinks that this must be the stuff volcanoes are made off, hot and angry. Mostly at himself, but that doesn’t make him feel any better. If anything, it makes him want to find this Sehun character and chuck him into an active volcano.

“Sehun?” he chokes out. Junmyeon looks to him, smiling serenely, the look of a man perfectly content. Who must Sehun be, how much of a hold he must have on Junmyeon’s affections to have Junmyeon looked like that despite the fact that his life was crumbling to bits.

“You’d like him!” Junmyeon says, grinning brightly. Too bright. “He’s a lot like you. Always sleepy and whining. But cute.” With that, Junmyeon grin dims a little, as if he realises he’s said something he shouldn’t. No one else notices as they laugh rambunctiously to Baekhyun’s comments. Something about Jongin being a kid.

Because Jongin is stupid, he offers his apartment for them to live in.

“It’s only for a while, right?” Jongin asks. Some part of him is still trying to make amends for the colossal mistake he’d made. “I live alone, it’s too big for me anyway.”

“... are… are you sure?” Junmyeon asks. He’s worried, Jongin can tell, in the lines of his face, the quirk of his mouth, the way the grip on his glass had turned into a deathlock. He’s afraid of something.

“Yeah, why not? You’d freeze if you tried to sleep under the bridge in this weather.” It’s the first joke Jongin’s cracked all night, and Junmyeon’s the one who laughs the loudest of the lot. A douse of warmth engulfs Jongin’s insides, in place of the frigid guilt. “So, it’s a deal. I’ll help you move.”

“I’ll pay for rent! Buy you groceries and all. Sehun can be a little bit messy—”

There’s an invisible something choking Jongin when Junmyeon says Sehun’s name.

“Sure. It’s fine. You know me. I’m messy too.” From the other end of the table, Jongdae eyes him questionably. But all Jongin can see is the smile on Junmyeon’s face. The same one he used to give Jongin back when they were together, if Jongin brought him a present, or kissed the tip of his nose, or took his hand in the middle of a horror flick.

Up until this moment, Jongin didn’t know exactly how much he needed that look to grace his pitiful existence.

⇊

They exchange numbers and text about stupid things. It’s a little awkward at first; they avoided all conversations to do with the past and stuck to mundane, every day topics. How many rooms did Jongin have? Was Junmyeon going to have to cook every night? Could Jongin even cook? And that turned into a spiel of who was going to cook the better meal for the other. It was ridiculous. It made Jongin smile.

He insisted on helping Junmyeon move, but Junmyeon refused.

“You’re opening your home to us,” Junmyeon says. His tone warmed Jongin, but the way he said “us” made Jongin clench his phone tighter. Sehun was like the culmination of all of Jongin’s regrets. He’d lost Junmyeon to his stupid mistakes once, to Sekyung the second time, and now to Sehun. Still, the idea of letting Junmyeon and Sehun ( he has to get used to saying that—Junmyeon and Sehun ) stay with him feels like the best decision he’s made in years. “You shouldn’t have to help me move too. Besides, Sehun’s strong now!” There’s a peal of delighted laughter that Jongin awkwardly returns.

“Dinnner’s on me tonight anyway,” Jongin says. “I’ll buy takeaway. You focus on getting all your stuff. And I..” Jongin hesitates, biting his lip so hard he almost draws blood. It’s been 4 years and he still can’t let go. Their relationship that had fallen apart because of Jongin. And within that broken relationship, a friendship that Jongin couldn’t live without. This ease he had with Junmyeon scares him, like he can finally move on because Junmyeon doesn’t hate him, doesn’t abhor him for what he did after all. “I can’t wait to meet Sehun.”

“He can’t wait to meet you too,” Junmyeon chimes.

⇊

When Jongin opens his door later that night, he finds Junmyeon towing two suitcases behind him, and no extra man in sight.

“Where’s Sehun?”

“Saying hi to the cat down by the corridor. Can I come in?”

Jongin’s been piecing together Sehun in his mind, and as he heaves Junmyeon’s suitcases in his apartment, as he breathes in the scent of Junmyeon’s scented soap, he adds cat-lover to the list.

“Hyung?” Jongin says. He wants to take this moment before he set eyes on Sehun, before the fact that they can never be together again cements in his brain, to say what he never had the chance to say. “Sorry.”

Junmyeon freezes for a moment, staring at Jongin with his fists clench.

“There’s nothing to apologise for,” he finally says, and Jongin wants to punch himself in the face, “What’s in the past stays there. Now… are you ready to meet Sehun?”

The person that pops into his doorway isn’t who he quite expects. It’s a child, Jongin realises, five seconds too late. A child that’s hugging Junmyeon’s legs, calling him dad, dad, the cat’s so cute can we have one? with a lisp edging his speech.

Jongin gapes because he realises then that Junmyeon doesn’t have a new boyfriend, a new lover, a newer, better version of Jongin. He has a son.

    ⇊     [tbc????]

[exoltant-blog]

Girl, you should have tagged tagged Krisyeol first so that people could see your updates when they track Krisyeol tag or any other pairing you write about >"< the last post of Just like yesterday didn't show up in Krisyeol tag, so i guess not many people know about your lovely update :(

… otl i didn’t know it worked like that. i’ll be sure to tag it correctly next time. thank you anon!! 

[dailyexo]

At 08:02 CST, on April 20th, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the city of Ya’an, in the Sechuan province. Various EXO fansites, as well as official relief organisations, are collecting donations for the victims of this earthquake.

EXO fansites:

ㅡ A large donation project organised by 13 Luhan...

[exoltant-blog]

[taoris] a little bit's enough

Pairing: Taoris Rating: PG-13  Summary: "Taoris' first date. Kris keeps embarrassing himself/nothing goes right for him." from here.

  The thing is, Kris knows that Zitao was a romantic. A romance extremist, if you will. He'd heard from Baekhyun, who used to date Zitao, that Zitao had bought him roses and stuck candles at a beach. It was a story that Kris would've laughed, would've brushed off as something completely ridiculous, but it became a bar set for his own first date with Zitao. It was completely ridiculous, Kris knows (and Yixing had made an effort to tell him that, and Chanyeol had made an effort to tell him that, and maybe even Baekhyun had made an effort to tell him that), but he can’t help but compare to it anyway.

  What the hell could he do that wouldn’t, a) make him a laughing stock between his friends, and b) sweep Zitao off his feet?

  In the end, Kris settled for an expensive restaurant in an expensive part of town with an expensive course meal set for them both. It wasn’t original, but it was, at least, romantic as hell right? It was a fucking candlelight dinner; it was about as romantic as Kris Wu could get, short of serenading Zitao from beneath his balcony. And Jongdae had offered to chauffeur them because neither Kris nor Zitao had a driver’s license in Korea. On hindsight, he should have known that asking Jongdae to drive them anywhere was just asking for trouble. He should have asked someone more reliable and less heartless, like Kyungsoo or Junmyeon or even Yixing. But he’d gratefully accepted Jongdae’s offer to drive instead.

  He’d planned every detail meticulously because he was nervous that he was going to get something wrong, and having the numbers at the back of his head helped him.

  And so of course, everything had to go spectacularly wrong.

  The first problem was Jongdae’s car breaking down. Jongdae had kicked and fussed and opened the boot; and Kris helped, rolling up the sleeves of his dress-shirt to poke around in the front of the car, smoke getting into his face and messing up his hair.

  "Fuck," he curses, as Jongdae gives up, calling Minseok to get the number for the towing company. "How are we going to get there now?"

  "Taxi?" Jongdae offers, looking a bit apologetic as he texts furiously. "I mean--we could flag one from the main street--"

  "We'd be late to the reservation by then," Kris mutters, mostly to himself. His schedule's all screwed now, and he doesn't quite know what to do. Maybe he should cancel. Maybe he could tell Zitao that he's down with the flu, or that Jongdae was down with the flu and Kris was taking care of him. (The real Jongdae was yelling into the phone.) Then he could restart this horrific night an--

  "Hey!" Zitao descends from the steps like a fucking angel, looking dapper in his own button-up shirt paired with pants too tight to be legal. Kris inhales. Kris exhales. Kris holds onto the side of the car so he doesn't fall down. "Sehun told me you guys were here-- he saw your car parked. Why didn't you call me?"

  In response, Jongdae yells even louder into the phone.

  "It broke down," Kris confesses, because he can't think of anything else to say. And he doesn't want to talk about how good Zitao looks, and how it actually took him years to realise it, damn. "I guess we have to flag a cab. We may be late to our reservation, though."

  "So it's a restaurant?" Zitao says gleefully, his mouth curling up into a smile. Kris hadn't told him about the plans for the night except to dress smartly. Zitao spent the entire week texting him about what dressing smartly actually meant, dropping thinly veiled hints that Kris should just tell him what they were doing. Kris didn't relent, but he thought that he should have, just to have been able to paint a perfect picture of their night together, which was about to go to ruins. "Is it expensive?"

  Kris rolls his eyes and Zitao laughs. He steps even closer to Kris, and Kris can smell Zitao's cologne through the smoke of Jongdae's car. "I'm joking! Is Jongdae-hyung okay?"

  They both turn to survey Jongdae, who shoots them an irritated look.

  "Not okay, then," Zitao says, under his breath, and Kris laughs dryly. Of course not, Kris thinks rather dramatically. He purses his lips then says, "We can't flag a cab from here-- it'll probably take an hour before we find an empty one."

  "Great," Kris says, discreetly trying to eye Zitao's legs without getting noticed. "So I guess we'll have to take a rain che--"

  "There's always the bus," Zitao points out, nodding in the direction of the bus-stop. "Do you know how to get there?"

  "... yeah," Kris says, turning the idea in his head. This date was supposed to make Zitao feel like a prince, from car to restaurant to the little walk Kris had planned afterwards to the top of the hill where the restaurant was. There, he wanted to say something, something that would make Zitao think that Kris was a person he wanted to go on a second date with. Maybe thinking those thoughts totally jinxed Kris's chances. Maybe the universe wanted to laugh at him, and this is why he and Zitao are standing on the bus on Friday night, sharing space with office workers coming home from work. They stick out like sore thumbs, with Kris in his tight dress shirt, and Zitao with his million and one piercings.

  "Sorry," Kris apologises again, when someone bumps into Zitao, sending him careening onto Kris's chest. The both of them glare at the back of the man who was already exiting the bus. "I had better things planned for tonight."

  Zitao looks up at him, his eyelashes thick with what must be make-up. Kris almost snorts, but Zitao looks too pretty, makes his heart beat too fast and ugh, Kris looks away because he thinks he might blush.

  "That's okay," Zitao says softly, and no, Kris doesn't think it's okay at all. "Do you think Jongdae-hyung will be alright?"

  "I think we should be more worried for the repairmen," Kris answers. Jongdae could get pretty biting when he was angry. "Maybe we shouldn't have left him alone."

  "He'll be fine," Zitao says in response, curling a hand around Kris's elbow for balance. His hand is warm through the thin layer of Kris's button-up. "Worry about this date instead." There's a glimmer of something in Zitao's eye that makes Kris laugh instead of feeling annoyed.

  The feeling of quiet happiness lasts until they actually start dinner. Zitao walks in and whistles, low under his breath. His fingers circle around Kris's wrist and Kris smirks, satisfied that Zitao is impressed. They take their time ordering, Kris translating the fancy English words for Zitao to understand better.

  To their right, a middle-aged couple is seated, apparently engaged in a heated discussion. The woman's face looking increasingly sour as time passed. Kris knows this because by the time their food arrives, the woman is standing up and shouting, literally yelling the place down.

  "So you think you can just take off like that, you lying bastard?!" It would really be comical if she wasn't wielding a knife in one hand, swinging it around threateningly. Kris looks at Zitao, who looks back at him with a worried expression. "I gave my best years to you!"

  Kris winces as she slams the table and the glass of wine topples over, spilling onto the white tablecloth. Zitao's foot nudge against his. He's really not trying to play footsie while an enraged woman yells at what looks like her cheating husband two metres away from them. Kris shakes his head and Zitao looks mildly disappointed. 

  They try to focus on their food, Kris cutting his steak the way he's always been taught to – against the grain – while Zitao randomly hacks away at his. It almost works. It almost seems like a normal date, with Kris inevitably tangling their legs together under the table, earning a small smile from Zitao. It almost works, but then the woman's knife comes flying from her table to theirs, hitting the center-piece and falling to the carpet with a muffled thud!. 

  Across the table, Zitao stifles a laugh into his napkin. This is so inappropriate – they were almost hit by a sharp object. Kris wants to be angry, wants to get up and complain but he can't help it either; he cracks a grin. A waiter comes bustling to their table, muttering apologies as she removes the vase and the knife. A second waiter approaches the woman only to be yelled at until he was cowering in his shoes.

  They leave before they can get dessert, Kris signing hurriedly on the bill so they can stop listening to the woman sob dramatically at the table. 

  "That was terrible," Zitao comments lightly, as Kris leads him to the door. Kris doesn't reply. It was terrible, and it was partially his fault for bringing Zitao here. For Baekhyun, Zitao had given him candles and a beautiful night at the beach. For Zitao, Kris had given him a bus ride and a dinner with an emotional woman.

  There was no way the two could measure up at all. At least, Kris thought, in a pathetic, vaguely optimistic way, it could not go any worse from here.

  The double doors of the restaurant swing open and Zitao says, "It's raining."

  He looks at Kris with this amused expression, like everything Kris does is terribly funny and adorable. Or maybe he was looking at Kris mockingly, because honestly at this point, even Kris would look at Kris mockingly. It was just sad. They had no car, no umbrella, no way to get home without getting completely soaked. 

  "Don't look so upset," Zitao comments a little laughingly. Kris's eyebrows must've been performing some acrobatic tricks again. Zitao raises a hand and presses his thumb between Kris's eyebrows, as if to smooth them out. "You look like you're going to kill someone."

  "It's raining," Kris points out. "We're stuck."

  "Welcome to the twenty-first century, Mr Kris Wu," Zitao says, pulling his phone out of his pocket, "where mobile phones exist."

  "Oh." Kris stares. How could one night go so wrong? "Oh. Right."

  "Taxi?"

  "Yes. Thank you."

  They sit on the bench outside the restaurant as Zitao searches the internet for a number to call. The view is great from here, actually, and if the rain wasn't heavy, Kris was sure it would be breathtakingly beautiful. The restaurant was built on a hill, overlooking the city. The lights were spectacular at night, even through the veil of rain. 

  Next to him, Zitao shivers and Kris drapes an arm over him. Zitao settles in closer, almost snuggling into Kris as he rests his head on Kris's shoulder. They've been friends longer than Kris has had any sort of romantic feelings for Zitao, and it's strange how things like this, just simple touching, felt a lot different now that they were, in a way, dating.

  "It says it'll take half an hour," Zitao says, as he hangs up the phone. He doesn't sound too bothered, though, and buries his nose in Kris's collar.

  "We'll wait," Kris tells him. And then, "I'm sorry for taking you on the worst date ever."

  Zitao snickers, his arm sliding around Kris's waist. 

  "I mean, this really wasn't how I envisioned anything to be."

  "If you envisioned it to be anything like this, I'd have to advice you to get your head checked."

  Kris laughs, tilting his head to rest on Zitao's. The gel is hard and sticky, but it doesn't bother him.

  "I'm glad you're laughing," Zitao continues. "You looked so constipated the entire night."

  "It's hard to be cheerful when someone is throwing knives at you."

  Zitao snorts. "I can't believe that actually happened."

  "I believe I have some wine on my pants that testify to that," Kris replies.

  "I'm sure it'll wash out," Zitao says. He lifts his head to look at Kris. "But I didn't hate this night at all."

  Kris raises an eyebrow. He's tempted to reach out and touch Zitao's face, but he doesn't. Instead he asks, "Really?

  "Yeah," Zitao says, grinning. "I spent it with you after all."

  "Do you talk like this to everyone?" Kris asks, in lieu of saying thank fucking god. He laughs again, shifting his arm on Zitao's shoulders to grip it better.

  "Only the good looking ones," Zitao answers solemnly. He blinks, and Kris leans forward to close the gap and kiss him, his other hand coming up to angle Zitao's face better. The kiss is promising, Kris surmises, as Zitao's hands curl around the sides of Kris's neck. It tells him that there's hope yet for a second date, a third date, a fourth date. One that probably wouldn't turn out as terribly as this one. 

  But then again, it wouldn't be too bad if they were all like tonight, either. 

    ▬

    extra:

Zitao smirks as he tells Kris, "Besides, I practiced Wushu for years. My balance is rock solid, even on moving vehicles. It's yours that's a little lacking."

[exoltant-blog]

[krisyeol] just like yesterday (i told you i would stay) 4/?

Pairing: Krisyeol, Kaisoo Rating: PG-13 Summary: Doctor Who spin-off wherein Chanyeol is sort of the Doctor and Kris is the unsuspecting human that becomes his companion. Timelines cross, and shit happens. A/N: A really short update to address the people who've asked me if I'm continuing with this series because the answer is yes.

one | two | three | four 

They land smack in the middle of a warzone.

The general that received them had been insistent, even when Chanyeol made thinly veiled threats, his hand around Kris’s clutching tighter and tighter. But it was useless. The TARDIS was in lockdown, some kind of mechanism even Chanyeol didn’t seem to understand, judging from the way he continued to talk to the general instead of kicking in the door and just leaving on the spot. Later Chanyeol tells him this is a doomed planet, this is the place his parents and teachers warned him never, ever, to come into. Kris feels a little guilty for being more intrigued about Chanyeol’s family than, you know, war. 

Chanyeol begrudgingly spent most of his time in the planning room. He’d struck a deal with the general: Kris stays out of sight, out of danger, and Chanyeol helps. So Kris spent endless days in the bunker room where they were given minimal food and water, just enough to get by. Kyungsoo and Jongin, on the other hand, had automatically snapped back to adjust to their new living conditions and requirements. Moreso Kyungsoo than Jongin, since Jongin sometimes spent days curled up in his bed.

“He’s remembering things,” Kyungsoo says, worrying at his lip as they talk in hushed whispers because sound tended to reverberate in the bunker in the creepiest of ways. It feels like the things Kris says now will be swallowed by the room and whispered in his ear when he sleeps. Chanyeol laughs at him for saying such things, but Chanyeol’s eyes are wide and fearful, nothing like Kris had ever seen. He tries to hide it though, burying his face in Kris’s neck and complaining of being tired, tired, tired as if all he’d done was pop out to work at a 9 to 5 job at the office. But it isn’t. It’s not. Kris had seen things, the first time they had landed. War zones like landfills for dead bodies. People shooting down their own people for fear of betrayal, for defeat. And machinery that were so massive and intimidating even Chanyeol looked at them with dread.

Chanyeol explained to him that this was an entire civilization trapped in a time loop. They were under the control of a singular man even Chanyeol hadn’t met, gone mad with reckonings of war. He’d come to possess a machine of some sort, Chanyeol doesn’t know either, and each and every time his people failed, he’d hit the button and everything would begin again.

Kris doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t expect to understand either. It feels like Chanyeol’s given up on trying to escape with the TARDIS lost to them. The general’s men had taken it away without giving a single clue in regards to its return or location.

“The people here aren’t saying anything,” Chanyeol said once, his lips pressed in a firm, angry line. “They’ve been stuck in this war for so, so long that they’ve forgotten there’s a life outside of fighting.” There’s a spark in his eye, the anger that burns underneath. Kris knows it’s because all of this, waking up to the barbaric war cries, to the stubborn higher ups, to the soldiers dying and being brought back to life when everything restarts-- all this reminded Chanyeol of home. He doesn’t have to say it; the weight sinks down heavily on his shoulders, giving him a sunken look. Kris tries to pull him above surface, but there’s nothing he can do. They’re still stuck, they’re still here, with no escape.

Instead, Kris thumbs the circles under Chanyeol’s eyes. Kris sits with Jongin, talking to him quietly about the places they’ve been to, or would have been to if they were not stuck here. In return, Jongin tells him, with his   eyes fixed on a spot behind Kris’s head, what war was like where Kyungsoo and Jongin are from. Afterwards, Kris feels infinitely grateful that Jongin is actually alive, and zapped to nothingness like most of his friends. 

It’s a slow decay, with time itself slowly wearing down with each replay--the generals grow older, the mystery man with the controls over life and death grow older, Chanyeol, Kris, Jongin, and Kyungsoo grow older, and they are forever trapped. 

One night, Kris wakes up to Chanyeol strapping a device on his wrist.

“What are you doing?” he asks, sleep causing his speech to slur. He was never one to be able to wake up fully on nights where they had to make quick escapes from inns or space hotels. Chanyeol would be the one smiling, grinning manically, pulling a shirt on Kris and taking his hand in Chanyeol’s own as they run run run away into the night. “What’s that?”

Chanyeol looks at him, apprehension coloring his expression. Despite how sleepy Kris is, he’s immediately on alert and tries to snatch his hand back but it’s too late. The device is strapped in, digging almost painfully into his skin. Kris stares and stares and stares. 

“What. Is. That?” he repeats, when Chanyeol says nothing. Chanyeol says nothing and clambers on the bed next to to Kris, a little awkwardly, clumsily, as if he’s afraid Kris might disappear in the next instant. 

“Kris. You--“ he starts, instead of giving a fucking explanation because the look on Chanyeol’s face is worrying and Kris doesn’t think he can take this. “--you have to go back.”

“What are you talking about?” Kris snaps. On instinct, he moves his arm with the device strapped to it behind his back protectively. “Chanyeol. Tell me.”

“You see, I was discussing with Jongin and Kyungsoo if they were okay with this.” Chanyeol takes a deep breath and smiles, smiles so wide despite the fact that his eyes are shimmering with things unsaid. “And they said okay. They agreed with me. They said you have a life to live whereas they were doomed from the beginning. And we, you and I, changed that when we picked them up and now they’ve added years and years to their lives they never expected to have--“ Kris tries to interrupt, but Chanyeol talks even louder, his eyes boring holes into Kris’s face “--and they’re right. You know they’re right. You were just a normal person. The years ahead of you would have been great if I didn’t get here-- and I-- maybe it’s meant to be.”

Chanyeol quiets, and Kris takes the opportunity to cut in with a, “What the hell is going on?”

“You have to forget all this,” Chanyeol says firmly, and he reaches out his hand, almost as if to touch Kris’s face, but hesitates. Stops. So unlike Chanyeol that Kris’s stomach does a backflip at the wrongness of the situation. “Forget this war, forget the TARDIS, forget Kyungsoo and Jongin and-- and-- and just leave all of this behind.” 

Kris stares at him, and Chanyeol stares back, the silence heavy with a looming disaster. 

“I got ahead of myself,” Chanyeol says finally, laughing slightly. Kris reaches out his hand to touch Chanyeol’s face, and Chanyeol leans into his touched, his eyes closing. “You. Need to leave.”

“You’re crazy,” Kris says. “All that planning, all those frustrations are eating away at your sanity.”

“What-- no-- fuck you,” Chanyeol says, pulling Kris’s hand away from his face. He reaches out to pull Kris’s arm toward him, thumbing the face of the device. “This, my poor misguided human, is a vortex manipulator. It’s going to help you get back to Earth, get back to 2011 at a time where even Zitao has not yet been given a chance to miss you. At least, I hope I set it right. Jongin looked over it too, so--“

“Wait wait wait,” Kris says, “what do you mean?”

“I meant everything I said,” Chanyeol replies, his eyes sparkling a little, “listen properly to me!”

“It’s a little hard when you’re rambling on,” Kris points out, only to receive a pout in return. It feels strange to have this version of Chanyeol back, all playful quips and smiles. But it’s a good kind of strange, the kind that Kris wants to get to know and understand and keep forever. 

“Shut up,” Chanyeol says, covering Kris’s mouth to make his point. “I’m trying to tell you something important.” Kris looks at him balefully, resisting the urge to lick a stripe across Chanyeol’s palm. “This vortex manipulator. I’ve set it for Earth, 2011, in the area where your apartment is. It’s gonna bring you back and you, Kris Wu, are going to live your life as usual.”

There must be something wrong with Kris’s ears; Chanyeol is saying things, sure, over and over again, but they just don’t make sense.

“I’m going to let your tiny human mind comprehend this now,” Chanyeol jokes, taking his hand away from Kris’s mouth, and Kris can see that under that veneer of happiness, Chanyeol is heartbroken. Completely, and absolutely heartbroken. It’s everywhere, in the hitch of his voice, in his grip too tight around Kris’s arm, in the way his eyes aren’t quite as happy as the news he’s saying sounds. Too good to be true.

“You guys are coming too, right?” Kris says unsurely, because he’s not going with them. There’s no way he’s going without them. Chanyeol’s grip on his arm tightens even more.

“I told you already,” Chanyeol says, “they’re okay with you going. Vortex manipulators don’t come easy, you know. Nothing around here comes easy if you haven’t noticed, and Jongin had to risk his stupid butt to get this for you.”

“... you guy’s... aren’t coming?” Kris feels confused now. There’s no way they’d think that he’d leave them here and just fucking resume life as normal, right? He doesn’t even think he’d know what normal is anymore.

“Vortex manipulator carries one,” Chanyeol answers, “and you’re the best one out of us all. I wanted to wake you just before I pressed the button... say something dumb to make you laugh, and send you back before you could protest but-- but you woke up so I couldn’t.” Chanyeol’s eyes widen, as if wanting Kris to understand him. And Kris doesn’t. How could Chanyeol ever think that Kris would go? 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Chanyeol says, covering Kris’s face with his hand. “I told you. I told you Kyungsoo and Jongin would be dead without us to rescue them. They’ve already lived past their expiry date, Kris. People in their home planet don’t live long, especially not people like them, at the rank they were at. And me? I lost everything Kris.” He moves his hand to clap Kris on the shoulder. “I have no home. No one to go back to. Whereas you have friends and family and a life and maybe one day you’d think of the time lords like a distant dream--“

“--no,” Kris says firmly, taking Chanyeol’s hand in his. “No, I’m not fucking leaving. Are you mad? It should at least be one of you guys to go get someone who can stop this time loop.”

“I’m offended,” Chanyeol says, shaking his head lightly, “I’m a Time Lord. If I don’t know how to fix this, no one will.”

“It just can’t be me,” Kris says, and his voice cracks slightly from having just woken up and the panic rising in his chest. “It can’t. I can’t. You can’t do this.”

Chanyeol’s expression softs and he leans in, kissing Kris on the lips. When he pulls away, his expression is sad, but firm.

“You’re going,” Chanyeol says, his voice just above a whisper. “That’s it. You’re meant for greater things, Kris Wu, and not this infinite blackhole of a time loop. You’re too good for this.” He kisses Kris, just off-center from his lips. “There’s a million other things you could do. And neither me nor Jongin nor Kyungsoo could take that away from you. And maybe this is the end. Maybe this is how we all are supposed to go.” His breath is hot against Kris’s face, and Kris feels like he’s being suspended in an alternate dimension where nothing but he and Chanyeol exists. “I’m so glad I met you. I’m so glad you found me. If there was a way for me to trade all my time with you for a way out, I wouldn’t.” Chanyeol’s choking up a little, so he kisses Kris. Kisses Kris like he’d never kiss Kris again. A man’s last meal. And Kris supposes it is fitting, and on hindsight, he should have realised that kissing wasn’t something you’re supposed to do when you’re trying to reason with someone else why you shouldn’t be the one to go off with the vortex manipulator. Chanyeol’s hand creep up Kris’s forearms, his kiss getting simultaneously sloppier and more wanting. When he pulls away, he looks at Kris with a cheerful expression, his mouth curved into that familiar smile that showed way too many teeth for him to look normal.

“Goodbye,” Chanyeol says, and his fingers slide down Kris’s arm to his wrist, fumbling with buttons that Kris can’t see in the half-lit darkness. “And promise me you’ll have a great life!” 

There’s a white light-- a sound too loud for Kris’s ears to understand-- and then, nothing.

[exoltant-blog]

-

to my readers/followers: thank you!! i can't get over the fact that people read my writing. at any rate, this is a post to say that i actually update really, really slowly.

my ask.fm is always open to any questions (fic-related or not) and prompts though! soooo. yeah.

[exoltant-blog]

they say it started with a big bang, but they say it was really just a small thing strangely I’m feeling like a big bang, ‘cause I’ve been making something out of nothing

[exoltant-blog]

[kaisoo] To The Ends Of The Earth 1/?

Pairing: Kaisoo ft. Krisyeol, and Xiutao if you squint Rating: PG-13 Summary: The return of Do Kyungsoo leaves Jongin a little more than confused.

A/N: Places are fictional. And so is that debugging device thingy.

  The curtains in Jongin’s room haven’t been touched in days, so when Sehun drags them open, the layer of dust makes him simultaneously sneeze and cough. Jongin doesn’t respond, covering his face with his pillow so the sounds of Sehun choking doesn’t bother him. He just wants to sleep, wants to bury his face into the sheets that still smell like Kyungsoo and sleep. Forever, preferably, but it seems like his friends has other plans.

  They’re currently on Day Two of the Bring Kim Jongin Back to Life mission, and Jongin isn’t taking it too well.

  “Jesus what did you do?” Baekhyun asks when he enters the room. Sehun is still too busy hacking up a lung to respond, so Baekhyun sighs heavily. He starts dragging the blanket off Jongin’s body. Jongin growls. Loudly.

  “Really, now? Are you growling at me?” Baekhyun asks. The cold air in the room reminds Jongin of precisely how many days of electricity he would soon be paying dearly for. Kyungsoo always nagged at him for leaving the air conditioning on too long on days that were really hot. Use the fan, he’d say, open the windows. They’d argue about it until Kyungsoo dragged him into the shower and turned it on full blast.

  Jongin misses the motherfucker so bad, his chest feels like it could cave in.

  “I’m okay,” Sehun manages, still wheezing as Baekhyun wrestles the pillow from Jongin’s hands. “Fucking hell it’s filthy in here.”

  “Kim Jongin!” Baekhyun admonishes, pulling the pillow forcefully away. He has the advantage of having a fully functional heart, Jongin thinks bitterly, when Baekhyun drops the pillow to the ground. Jongin buried his face into his bedsheets. “You’re ridiculous. It’s not the end of the fucking world!”

  Jongin ignores him, drowns him out by singing songs in his head, clinging to the memory of Kyungsoo’s fingers threaded through his, small and slightly cold. How easily Kyungsoo used to shiver, how much Jongin wanted to wrap Kyungsoo into his skin and keep him safe forever. And now, without so much as a word, he’s gone.

            ♜♜♜

            Kyungsoo did, in fact, make his goodbye in the form of an ambiguously worded note. Sehun was the one who found it, because the moment Jongin realised things were going wrong, he’d called Sehun.

  “Man, I need your help,” Jongin had spoken into the phone. “I think… I think Kyungsoo’s gone?”

  Sehun was his oldest friend and by default, the person who’d seen the most embarrassing shit Jongin had done. Which involved almost falling into a cesspool as a teenager, and nothing could top that. Except maybe this time, but nothing can top this, surely. Your best friend checking your cupboards, rifling your boyfriend’s drawers, and all because you were unable to bring yourself to do it. Sehun’s face as he announced that Kyungsoo had taken some of his things. His bare essentials. His favourite shirt, his favourite jacket, his favourite pair of jeans, some soap, his toothbrush, the book that was on the nightstand--

  “Okay, stop,” Jongin said, and Sehun had patted him comfortingly.

  “He also left this,” Sehun added, proffering the tidily folded paper and a small lunchbox full of cookies. On the note were the words Krongin, and Jongin’s heart actually squeezed a little. This is not a break-up. Someone must have kidnapped Kyungsoo. Or he had an emergency that he obviously couldn’t tell Jongin about. Something that was so important he couldn’t even call or drop a text.

  There must be.

  The note had gone something like this.


Dear Jongin,

  Don’t go out for the next few days. Be safe.

  Kyungsoo

  PS: I ▉▉▉▉ ▉▉▉ am so, so sorry.

  He hadn’t even signed it off with a love, Jongin thought bitterly as he pocketed the paper, determined to throw both the note and the cookies out later.

  Later became a week, then a month, then two. Fearing for Jongin’s health, Baekhyun had enlisted Sehun to chuck the cookies out. As for the note, Jongin’d gone over it so many times, trying to glean clues, that the paper was now falling apart and tearing at its creases--where had Kyungsoo gone? why did he have to go? is he in danger? is Jongin in danger? But most importantly, why did he leave?

  Jongin knows he’s not the easiest person to be around. They shout at each other, and more often than not, Kyungsoo is the one that acquiesces. Because Jongin knows that Kyungsoo loves him.

  “He loves me,” Jongin cries drunkenly into Junmyeon’s shoulder. Junmyeon pats him on the back.

  “He does,” Junmyeon assures.

  “Hyung!” Sehun protests. “Stop giving him ideas. Listen to me, Kyungsoo’s gone.”

  Jongin doesn’t quite remember the rest of that night, but he’s pretty sure it involves him wrestling Sehun onto the floor of the pub.

  It took him precisely three months to start getting over Do Kyungsoo, in which his friends had basically set up camp at his house, shouting at him in the mornings (Baekhyun) and obnoxiously making snide comments as he traipsed around in his boxers (Sehun). He marked the fourth month by packing everything Kyungsoo left behind in a box, including all his cooking utensils. He had a mild relapse in the middle of the fourth month when he realised Kyungsoo had taken a bunch of his singlets until Sehun reasoned with him that it was probably a mistake on Kyungsoo’s part. He celebrated his fifth month by sleeping with multiple complete strangers.

  Jongin learns how to re-live his life. Yixing gladly gave him his job back at the dance centre. When he wakes up in the morning, he can shower as soon as he wants because Kyungsoo isn’t there to hog it first since he seems to wake up like he has an off and on switch. Sometimes he opens the fridge, expecting to find milk or dessert from a day or two before--small disappointments that he learns gets smaller over time. He starts getting used to coming home to an empty apartment, starts turning the temperature down to a degree that Kyungsoo never liked. Grocery shopping is half as expensive because he lived off cup noodles and microwaved food. Jongin’s never realised how much he’d tailored his life to fit around Kyungsoo’s.

  And after a while, it almost feels like he can stop feeling hopelessly lost.

            ♜♜♜

            This is why Jongin doesn’t understand what he’s doing in Kyungsoo’s car. To be more precise, Jongin can’t quite believe he’s being kidnapped by his ex-boyfriend, and the one who had, in fact, dumped him.

  Maybe it’s a little confusing. He tries to think about the night from the start. He’s dancing in a club with Sehun when a small man started mirroring his moves. (And really the only reason why Jongin had deigned to dance with him was because his stature reminded Jongin of Kyungsoo, and then ironically it’d turned out to be Kyungsoo.) The man dragged Jongin to the toilet and just as Jongin assumed that this was going to be a quickie, a blow job or something, he’d been knocked out.

  And woken up here, in a car, speeding down a highway.

  “I’m sorry,” are the first words out of Kyungsoo’s mouth when Jongin is coherent enough to realise what’s happening. “I’ll explain everything to you later but for now, can you watch out for a small, black van?”

  “But you’re Kyungsoo,” Jongin says, wondering if he’s dreaming. It wouldn’t be unlikely at all. He’s dreamt of weirder things about Kyungsoo (like that one time they were both naked in a field of flowers). “Right?”

  Kyungsoo doesn’t say anything as they speed down the empty highway road at three fucking am. It takes another fifteen minutes for Jongin’s brain to fully kick in.


“Hey! Let me get the fuck off this car!” Jongin protests, glancing around at the interior. “This is kidnap, you’re going to get arrested for this.”


“Just--” Kyungsoo says, looking distressed as his eyes flickers to the mirror and back onto the road, “--just trust me.”


“Trust you,” Jongin echoes disbelievingly. “Trust you?”

  This must be some kind of a joke. A dream, at least, he’s going to wake up with a hangover and curse Kyungsoo in the morning. He’s grown accustomed to blaming Kyungsoo for most of the things that goes wrong. It’s unhealthy and probably a little creepy and obsessive, but hey, he’d dated the man for a good five years until he upped and left overnight. There’s bound to be issues (said Baekhyun as he flipped through a counselling 101 book).

  “I know it’s a lot to ask for,” Kyungsoo continues, and Jongin wants to simultaneously murder and kiss him, “but we can’t get off here.”

  “And why not? Where the hell are you taking me??”

  “Ten minutes. We’d be dead otherwise.”

  Jongin stares at him. Kyungsoo doesn’t look at all like he’s joking. In fact, with the way his knuckles are white as they grip the steering wheel, it looks like Kyungsoo is very, very serious about whatever is going on. And while Jongin used to joke that Kyungsoo was a Grade A worrywart, he’s starting to become afraid.

  “What’s going on?” Jongin asks, his voice dropping. “Did something happen?”

  “There’s a van chasing me. The one I asked you to look out for. They were coming for you, but thank fucking god I got to you first,” Kyungsoo says as he turns the steering wheel, taking a left exit. “It’s… complicated.”

  Jongin stays silent, willing Kyungsoo to fill in the awkward silence with his part of the story.

  “We’re heading for a hotel now, off the road. I stole this car from some guy at the bar,” Kyungsoo continues, and Jongin isn’t sure if he’s hearing everything properly. There must be some sort of concussion that’s preventing everything from making sense, because he’s pretty sure he just heard Kyungsoo admitting that he stole a car. “We’ll hide out there until tomorrow afternoon and then I’ll drive us down to my friend’s apartment in Ilsan.”

  Jongin doesn’t understand what Kyungsoo is talking about.

  “What are you talking about?” he asks. Kyungsoo glances nervously at the rearview mirror as he worries at his lip, a nervous habit he’s always had and never quite manage to kick as years passed.

  “Okay, Jongin, listen to me,” Kyungsoo says slowly. “We’re in danger. Remember those spy shows you kept making me watch?”


“James Bond is not just a spy,” Jongin insists.


“Yeah, okay,” Kyungsoo interrupts. “We’re going to get killed if we don’t move fast and out of sight. Because, well--” Kyungsoo looks physically pained to say it “--I’m a spy.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, don’t make me repeat it again you asshole,” Kyungsoo says. He suddenly accelerates and Jongin grips onto his seatbelt, his heart pounding in his chest. The scenery blurs past them as Kyungsoo takes a sharp left and into a different lane. Then, just as quickly as he’d started, he slows the car. They’re pulling into a carpark that Jongin doesn’t recognise.

  “It’s far out of town,” Kyungsoo explains, as if reading Jongin’s mind. Jongin doesn’t reply. Rather, he can’t reply. “We’ll stay here for the night.”


“If I go up with you,” Jongin says slowly, gathering his thoughts. The least he knows is Kyungsoo isn’t a liar. After all, it’s Kyungsoo, right? The guy he’s been living with for years. “Will you explain to me? Everything.”

  Kyungsoo reverse parks, fitting his car between two others. He shifts the gear into rest and turns to Jongin. Under the dim lighting of the carpark, Jongin can barely make out Kyungsoo’s face. But he’s as sincere as Jongin had ever seen him, his eyes wide and his mouth set in a determined, straight line. “I owe it to you,” Kyungsoo answers. “And I’m really, really sorry.”

  “Yeah,” Jongin replies. He meets Kyungsoo’s eyes. “Yeah, me too.”

            ♜♜♜

            At the lobby, Kyungsoo registers them for a room with two single beds. Jongin is disappointed at himself for feeling disappointed that he’d been rooting for a queen-sized bed. The man at the counter doesn’t even give them a second look, or ask for identification of any sort. He hands them the keys for a room on the fifth floor, and Kyungsoo thanks him with a polite bow.

  Jongin almost scoffs.

  “So this place--” Jongin starts, only to be shushed by Kyungsoo, his eyes darting across the halls. He forces the two of them to take the staircase, and Jongin, who’s barely getting back into shape with dance, is panting by the time they reach their room.

  It’s small, and sparse, equipped with a bathroom and a small television. Kyungsoo produces a mechanical box from his pocket. He adjusts the antennae and turns the knobs on it as Jongin stares, fascinated.

  After a while, Kyungsoo explains, “Bugs. They might’ve bugged these rooms. I’m tuning them to radio silence.”

  “Some time tonight you’re going to explain they to me,” Jongin says, nonplussed at the fact that he’s basically been dragged out of town with nothing on his back. Kyungsoo surprises him, though, with a set of clean clothes and underwear.

  “I popped back to the apartment. You should really have gotten the locks changed,” Kyungsoo comments, sorting through his duffle bag.

  “Because that’s what someone does when the person they’ve been living with for four years suddenly moves out, right?” Jongin interjects bitterly. He throws himself onto his bed, staring at the ceiling spotted with yellow. The sound of Kyungsoo’s ruffling stops. “Change the locks.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kyungsoo repeats, his voice steady and distant. “I really am. And I’m sorry for bringing you into this situation too.” He pauses, unclasping the pouch in the front of his bag. “But after tomorrow you won’t have to see me again. Here. Take this.” Jongin’s stomach lurches at the thought of never seeing Kyungsoo again. Kyungsoo holds out a wad of won to him, and Jongin takes it.

  “… did you rob a bank?” Jongin asks, thumbing through the money. That is a lot of money. “What--”

  “--not so loud!” Kyungsoo talks over him, making shooing motions with his hands as he darts a look at the door. Jongin, wide-eyed and stunned, follows, staring at the heavy wooden door in shock. Kyungsoo bursts out in laughter and Jongin scowls.

  “You liar,” Jongin emphasises feelingly, pocketing the money. Might as well, he thinks, all things considered. Unless Kyungsoo killed someone and took his money. In which case Jongin had a whole other set of problems to deal with. He throws himself onto the bed, slinging his arm over his eyes.

  “Sorry,” Kyungsoo says. Jongin glances over at Kyungsoo’s side of the room where he’s sitting on the bed, hands on his knees, looking truly apologetic. “I just--you know, missed you.”

  Jongin swallows. “So how did you get the money?”

  “Let me tell you a story,” Kyungsoo begins. “Once upon a time, in a small fishing town lived a kid and his parents. They were impossibly poor and while the kid was smart, his parents couldn’t afford an education for him.”

  “Are you really telling this in third person?” Jongin asks, and Kyungsoo shushes him.

  “Opportunity fell at their doorstep in the form of a company, a technology company, who were willing to pay for their son’s entire education as long as he was to stay in their headquarters and work for them,” Kyungsoo continues. “They found him through a scout that worked as a teacher in the local school. After a while, the parents agreed, so their son was shipped off to Seoul to study.” Kyungsoo’s fingers start picking at the fabric of his jeans. It’s clear he’s uncomfortable talking about this, but Jongin has never heard this story. He’d assumed Kyungsoo’s parents died in a boating accident when he was young. He’d assumed Kyungsoo grew up with a distant aunt whom he wasn’t too close with. He’d assumed a great many things. “When the kid turned thirteen, they moved him to China. At first he thought he was on some sort of special advanced programme for Math, considering all he did all day was sit around on his ass and crack strings upon strings of code. But he was wrong. He was hacking into the Chinese government’s database.”

  “Kyungsoo…” Jongin breathes out, wondering what Kyungsoo was like when he was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, alone and away from his family.

  “He continued to blindly do whatever the company told him… until a government agent approached him one day. At first he didn’t believe it. The company had been kind to him. They provided him with lodging and education and food and enough money to entertain himself.” Kyungsoo shakes his head, as if trying to convince himself otherwise. “But they were terrorists. It took him a while to understand that. And by the time he was seventeen, he’d provided the agent with enough information for them to shut down the whole organisation.

  “The government erased his entire history, gave him a basic background and sent him back to Seoul to study in a high school as a normal student,” Kyungsoo finishes. Jongin blinks, not entirely sure if what he’s just heard is something he can entirely believe, if possible.

  “You’re telling me you’re a super hacker,” Jongin repeats, as calm as he can get. He sits up, feeling the bulge in his pocket and shifting so he’s not sitting on the wad of money. “And that you used to work for a terrorist organisation?”

  “That sounds about right,” Kyungsoo confirms. He shrugs, as if to say who knows?. Jongin scoffs.

  “If this is an elaborate please take me back story, I’m not buying it.”

  “It’s not,” Kyungsoo says quickly. Jongin looks at him sharply and Kyungsoo bows his head even lower, mumbling, “I don’t mean I don’t want you to take me back. But I know we’re done… I just mean this is not fake.” He looks up, looking directly at Jongin. “I’m sorry but it’s all real.”

  Jongin blinks again. What does one say to claims like that? “But isn’t everything fine? Didn’t you come to Seoul and--”

  “--the man who put me, and a bunch of other hackers, in the protection program was killed. The paperwork destroyed,” Kyungsoo says, his tone sombre, “and now we’re all on their hit list.”

  “But why would they do that?” Jongin asks. Kyungsoo had helped, after all, if his story rings true. He’d realised his mistake and helped them and that warranted something more than a price on his head, surely.

  “To them, it seems like we’re criminals,” Kyungsoo explains. “Terrorists. Hackers who must be eliminated before we do further damage. They don’t know any better.”

  Jongin runs a hand through his hair, feeling, for the first time, the full weight of their situation. “What about me? Why would they be using me to get to you? Isn’t that… I don’t know, ridiculously unethical?”


“That’s the problem,” Kyungsoo replies. “Six months ago when I first found out they’ve ordered a hit on me, I thought that I just had to straighten things out with the government. I’d a few documents in case something like this ever happened.” Kyungsoo sighs heavily, scrubbing his face with his hand. He looks worn out under the clean lights of the hotel room, and Jongin is taken a back at how he didn't notice how frazzled Kyungsoo looked earlier. “But they didn’t recognise those documents, and I had to run for my life. That’s why I had to leave without telling you. Knowing too much is a liability, Jongin, and I didn’t want you saddled with that.”

  “A little too late now,” Jongin quips drily, the old hurt of coming home to an empty house echoing in his chest.

  Kyungsoo’s lips tighten for a moment, then he continues, “But a week ago I managed to get some information from my contacts that there were agents lurking at outside our apartment. Your apartment. I checked it out and sure enough, they were the ones that’ve been on my ass for months. I had to get you out of there.”

  “I’m on their hit list too?” Jongin gasps, sitting forward. “But--that’s not fair.”

  Kyungsoo sneers. “They don’t exactly play fair.”

  “They were going to use me to get to you?” Jongin asks, and Kyungsoo nods. He doesn’t want to think about what this means. “That’s incredibly stupid.”

  “It’s--”

  “What are we going to do now? I don’t want to die.”

  “I’m not going to let you die,” Kyungsoo says determinedly. “Or you know, captured and tortured. Whichever comes first.”

  “How comforting,” Jongin deadpans.

  “First thing tomorrow morning I’m driving down to Ilsan to meet one of my contacts. He was recruited by the same company, but dropped out when they realised he wasn’t what they were looking for,” Kyungsoo says. “You can hide out there for the next two weeks, and I’ll get the resources to give you a new identity and name. And I’m really sorry, but until I find out how to fix my fucking life, you’ll have to live under that name for a while.”

  “And where will you be?” Jongin asks skeptically. “What will you be doing while I hide out?”

  “On the road, like I’ve been for the past few months.” Kyungsoo smiles tentatively. “You’ll be okay. I’ll figure this out quickly so you can go back to living your life.”

  Jongin involuntarily thinks of the Kyungsoo who’s scared of horror movies, who clutches onto Jongin’s arm, whimpering pitifully when the ghost traipses around the screen. He thinks of the Kyungsoo who bakes cakes and plans surprise parties, who gets far too happy about eating premium meat, who lowers the temperature for Jongin even if he shivers like a tragic Kyungsoo icicle. He thinks of the Kyungsoo who wraps his arms sleepily around Jongin in the morning, nosing at Jongin’s neck as he sighs contently. Jongin groans because he is so fucking easy.

  “No,” he says decisively, and Kyungsoo looks up, startled.

  “This is not up for discussion, Jongin! You could die.”

  “But I’m not sitting around in a stranger’s home, waiting to hear news of you dying,” Jongin shoots back. “I’m coming with you.”

  Kyungsoo pauses, his mouth hanging open. When he collects himself, he says, “I don’t think you understand how much trouble I’m in. Jongin. Listen to me. Your safety is the most important thing here.”

  “You listen to me,” Jongin cuts in, his voice rising. “You want me to be safe? Take me with you!”


“But--”

  “Fuck you, you don't get a say in what I will or will not do,” Jongin cuts in harshly. Kyungsoo stares at him, clearly shocked at his outburst. “How do I know you’re not just going to leave me to die?”


“Jongin…” Kyungsoo trails off, standing up. He’s half-way reaching for Jongin when he stops, and folds his arms instead, biting his lip. “I won’t let anything happen to you. I’m not. And that’s why you have to listen to me and hide out until it’s safe.”

  “What if you never come back for me?” Jongin continues. He knows that Kyungsoo will never leave him like that. At least, not to die. But he can’t help it. He can’t help saying these things knowing that they will cut at Kyungsoo. “How will I ever know I’m going to make it out alive unless I follow you?”

  Kyungsoo squeezes his eyes shut and Jongin lets the silence bear down heavily in the room.

  “Fine,” Kyungsoo says finally. “Tomorrow we’ll drive to Ilsan so I can pick up something. We’ll spend the night there.”

  “Good,” Jongin says. He feels strangely guilty, so he avoids looking at Kyungsoo’s strained face and gestures at the clothing on the bed. “I’ll get changed.”

[exoltant-blog]

omg your hardisk was gone??? will you continue that Just like yesterday, i like it so much T__T

i’m so sorry that i’m answering this so late buT TUMBLR JUST NOTIFIED ME NOW???? anyway yeah, I’m definitely continuing doctoryeol……………. as soon as i remember what i wanted to do with it (◕‿◕✿)

ty for reading anon!

[exoltant-blog]

[psa]

[exoltant-blog]

[krisyeol] just like yesterday (i told you i would stay) 3/?

Pairing: Krisyeol, Kaisoo + a leeeetle Seho and Baektao  Rating: PG-13++++?? Summary: Doctor Who spin-off wherein Chanyeol is sort of the Doctor and Kris is the unsuspecting human that becomes his companion. Timelines cross, and shit happens.

one | two | three | four 

Kyungsoo gets excited over visiting Seoul, two thousand and eleven, in autumn. He bounces around the room, collecting and packing clothes, and various gadgets.

“We’re staying for two weeks,” Kris tells him as he shoves his fifth jacket into the duffle bag, “not forever.”

“Over-packing is Kyungsoo’s forte,” Jongin says as an explanation. “So we will have everything we need.”

“… that was a really horrible impersonation of Kyungsoo.” Chanyeol shudders, shaking his head. Jongin laughs unashamedly. 

“Better go and stop him before he tries to pack more pants with him.” Jongin gives Kris a pat on his shoulder, then exits the main room, his because that’s not what I want goes ignored.

“So, why a telephone box?”

“What?” 

“I mean, it could obviously have been anything. The one on the Orion Nebula was a boulder. Why did you pick a telephone box?”

Kris had been wondering about this (if the Time Lord were just a bunch of oddballs or truly crazy). And about Chanyeol’s home planet, if it exists or of it’s just a burning ball of fire, about the war, about Chanyeol’s family and friends and spouses thereof. He doesn’t think about it long, though, because Chanyeol is constantly there, all bouncy and wild grins. If it’s not an around around Kris’ waist, then it’s a hand wrapped around his arm, and if it’s not a hand wrapped around his arm, then it’s lips against his own.

Chanyeol laughs at the question, slapping his thigh as though it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. 

“I didn’t pick it--it’s the chameleon circuit.” Kris stares at him blankly. Slowly, Chanyeol explains, “The chameleon circuit helps the TARDIS blend into its surrounding, regardless of time or place. Useful, for example, if you don’t want to land in the middle of under-developed world with giant machinery.”

“So… a telephone box?”

“I was in London in the nineteenth hundreds. Police call boxes were every where. Plus it’s kinda cute, don’t you think?” Chanyeol asks. Then he adds, “Like me.”

Kris aims a kick at him. Chanyeol bursts into laughter, catching Kris’ leg by the ankle. 

“You are not coming to Seoul with me,” Kris declares, shaking his head. He drops his foot onto Chanyeol’s lap. “Everyone will think I’m crazy.”

Their story was going to be that Kris made new friends on his vacation, who wanted to look for a place to stay, just for the week. They were going to crash at his place for a while, and because they were all Koreans--well, one Chinese-Korean citizen, one Time Lord, and two New Republic of Korea citizens--Kris offered to bring them around town. 

He just hopes his friends don’t ask too many questions.

“Hey, I happen to be a very intelligent, very sensible--”

Kris scoffs, reaching over to cover Chanyeol’s face with his hand. “Nope. Keep quiet and I might re-consider.” Chanyeol pouts, then licks a stripe up Kris’ palm.

“You are the worst. How are you three hundred and five?”

“Time Lords are young at heart and in body,” Chanyeol boasts, and he practically preens, “be jealous.”

“Take three hundred years off your age and I’d be more inclined to believe in that,” Kris retorts, wiping his palm on Chanyeol’s chest. Chanyeol beams at him. “You don’t need me to show you around Seoul anyway.”

“What?”

“Come on. You know every planet like the back of your hand,” Kris explains. He crosses his arms and leans back onto the console. 

“I do.” Chanyeol shrugs smugly. Kris scoffs disbelievingly, but then again, what other reaction had he been hoping from Chanyeol. Chanyeol stands, caging Kris with his arms. “Just not the way you know it.”

“Who teaches you to say that,” Kris demands, rolling his eyes. “Is it Jongin? Did he have a cheesy-rom-com phase or something?”

“What’s rom-com?” Chanyeol asks.

“It’s--oh, you know what? Never mind. You haven’t been to Seoul after all.”

Chanyeol just smiles, slowly, fondly, and as he leans forward to kiss Kris, he says, “Told you. I wanna go to Myeongdong. And Hongdae. And--”

“--okay Time Lord, keep your pants on.” 

Chanyeol is about to respond when Jongin walks into the room, lugging with him three different bags.

“I tried,” Jongin declares, dropping the bags onto the floor. 

“Hey, I packed for all emergencies!” Kyungsoo insists, carefully placing his own bags onto the floor. 

“Kyungsoo, you realize that two thousand and eleven is already in the modern world, right?”

“Well--” Chanyeol starts. Kris steps on his foot. Chanyeol pouts.

“I just wanted to make sure,” Kyungsoo says, sounding smaller than he did a second ago. “In case.”

“Kyungsoo,” Jongin says. “I’ll make sure we’re prepared.” He gives Kyungsoo a small smile, and Kyungsoo, after fidgeting with the strap of his watch--at least, Kris thinks it’s a watch--smiles back. 

“Okay, two bags.”

Jongin groans.

-

“Zitao, this is Chanyeol, Kyungsoo, and Jongin.” They wave, and Zitao waves warily back, his eyes narrowing at them. 

“I met them during my vacation--”

“--we’re locals!” Chanyeol chimes in loudly. Kris winces. 

“Yeah, they’re the locals. And they want to move to Seoul next summer, so--”

“--we’re staying for the week,” Jongin adds. Kyungsoo finishes the whole thing by smiling friendlily, and Zitao nods. 

They’ve more or less unpacked, Jongin and Kyungsoo taking the spare room, and Chanyeol in Kris’ room. He texts Zitao a hey, I’m back, did you miss me? and receives one Huang Zitao on his doorstep with packed dinner for two.

“Okay, so do you want to explain?” he asks in Chinese. Kris pulls him to the kitchen. 

“Chanyeol can understand us. Just a bit.” He doesn’t explain that the TARDIS--now parked inside Kris’ closet--is translating everything Zitao is saying to them.

“So a Chinese-speaking, Korean country kid and his friends just decides to tag along and crash in your house?” Zitao puts a hand to his forehead. “Wu Fan, are you sick?”

Kris pulls Zitao’s hand away.

“They just want to explore Seoul for a bit. Introduce them to some people, so they don’t get a culture shock,” Kris lies. He drops Zitao’s hand and grins ruefully. “You’ll come along, won’t you?”

“Play tour guide to a bunch of strangers? You know them for a whole of two and a half days!” Zitao exclaims disbelievingly. “Baekhyun will have my head.”

“Baekhyun played tour guide to you before, he’ll understand.”

A loud crash comes from the outside. Zitao and Kris flinch simultaneously. 

“Okay, as long as you don’t bring them to my apartment,” Zitao acquiesces. “Jesus.”

Kris smiles at him, and Zitao looks slightly taken aback. 

“What have they done to you?” he grumbles, when Kris slings an arm over his shoulder and pulls him out into the living room. Zitao is a familiar warmth against his side, and Kris wonders, for a moment, if he could bring Zitao (and okay, Baekhyun, they come in a package now) with him.  

“How’s Junmyeon and Sehun?”

“I don’t know, having celebratory sex in their apartment,” Zitao answers monotonously. He smiles at Kyungsoo, who smiles uncomfortably back. “Haven’t seen them since graduation.”

“Tomorrow, I’ll treat you guys to lunch,” Kris declares. It’s been months since he’s seen them. He ruffles his hand through Zitao’s hair, and gets a glare in return.

“You must have inhaled some toxic country air,” Zitao says. “You’re acting weirder than usual. I’m calling Baekhyun.”

“You do that,” Kris tells him. To Chanyeol, he asks, “Now, what did you break?”

Chanyeol jumps guiltily, holding the remains of a photo frame in his hand.

“I just wanted to see,” Chanyeol explains, offering the broken shards to Kris. “Your family, you know.”

Jongin looks equally as guilty, so Kris can only assume they had a fighting match with the casualty of one framed family portrait. He pulls the photo gently out of the glass, careful not to tear it, then hands it to Chanyeol.

“Oh,” he says. Zitao looks over in amusement. “Okay, thanks. And um, I can help you clear that up--”

“You just sit here,” Kris tells him, guiding him to the sofa. He motions for Kyungsoo and Jongin to sit as well. “And don’t touch anything.”

“So, you come from the country?” Kris hears Zitao asking in his accented Korean as he goes in search for the hoover. He really shouldn’t leave the three of them with Zitao, but watching Chanyeol and Jongin squirm--and Kyungsoo smile uncomfortably--is really hilarious. So he lets them be, diving face first into his bed to smell the laundered sheets. He’s been gone for two days. Two days. All the things he’s seen and heard and experienced, purple sunsets and advanced civilizations and endless sand dunes, all compressed into the span of forty-eight hours. He feels impossibly small--a speck of dust floating in space, going on and on and on in a blue telephone box.

The next thing he knows, he’s waking up to a weight on his bed.

“Wow, thanks for bringing us here and then going to sleep,” Chanyeol’s voice reverberates in his ear. “Very nice of you.”

Kris groans in response, rolling over on his bed. He realizes, when he looks at his clock, that he’d been out for three hours and it’s already nightfall.

“Anyway I came in to tell you there’s twenty-first century food on the table outside. Kyungsoo is dying of excitement,” Chanyeol explains. He runs a hand through Kris hair, stroking his scalp. And Kris, damn his motor skills when he’s half-awake, makes a low sound in his throat. “Seriously? You’re like a--what was that, a cat?”

Kris frowns, rolling over to face Chanyeol. 

“You promised me Myeongdong,” Chanyeol complains, pouting.

“You have all of time and space and you want to visit a shopping district in Seoul?”

“Hey! I know how to appreciate the local culture,” Chanyeol protests. He pats Kris on the cheek. “Like this one.”

“I’m Chinese, you ignorant ass,” Kris retorts. But he laughs and sits up, stretching. Chanyeol’s eyes are tracing the curve of his chest, down to the skin showing on his stomach. Kris smirks. “Like what you see?”

Chanyeol averts his gaze. “Dinner time. Come on.” He leaves the door open on his way out. Kris lets the buzz of conversation wash over him--is that Sehun’s lisping he hears outside?--before taking a deep breath and rolling out of bed to join his friends.

The next morning they head out to Myeongdong.

“As promised,” Kris tells Chanyeol. 

Jongin slings one arm around Kris. “So this is what the twenty-first century is like, huh?” he says, watching Kyungsoo bounce happily next to Baekhyun and Chanyeol and Zitao. 

“Mostly, yeah,” Kris answers. He knows Jongin’s from a time of war, who never saw a day of peace until he met Chanyeol. 

“I was born in the wrong time, then,” Jongin tells Kris. He smirks lazily, shoving his other hand in his too big pants pocket. It as the only thing Kris could find that fit him. “Kyungsoo can’t stop smiling.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“… yeah,” Jongin replies. He retracts his arm. “So, Chanyeol.”

“Yeah?”

“Is he a good fuck?”

Kris almost chokes on air. 

“I mean, he is a Time Lord. And Time Lords are the stuff of legends. Back home, we used to pray for one to come and save us all. That’s got to say something about him.”

“Eh,” Kris replies. “He’s passable.”

Jongin laughs, and Kyungsoo turns, practically skipping over to grab Jongin by the arm.

“Jongin, Baekhyun said there’s a cake shop down the street.”

“As in, actual chocolate and cheesecake and--”

“--yes!” Kyungsoo cuts in excitedly. “Let’s hurry!”

They double their pace. Baekhyun falls back to grab Kris by the elbow.

“Why are they so excited by confectionery?”

“Um.”

“Cakes are frowned upon in our society,” Chanyeol cuts in, nodding solemnly. Kris rolls his eyes. Trust Chanyeol to come up with the most ridiculous explanation. “And Kyungsoo has a sweet tooth. Don’t get me started on Jongin.”

“Woah,” Baekhyun gasps, shaking his head as he proceeds to believe the giant lie that Chanyeol is telling. “That’s tragic. It’s great you guys came here this week, and--”

Baekhyun stops mid-sentence when he realizes that Chanyeol is no longer paying attention. He’s staring, mouth slightly open, at a book shop. 

“Uhh,” Baekhyun flounders, glancing between Zitao and Kris. 

“I’ll stay with him. Can you guys go after Kyungsoo and Jongin?”

“Sure,” Zitao answers, already steering Baekhyun away. Baekhyun waves back at them, then turns to snake an arm around Zitao’s waist. 

“Chanyeol?” 

Chanyeol appears to have not heard Kris. Instead, he dazedly walks into the Kim’s Books, all the while staring at the cashier. Kris quickly follows after him.

“Chanyeol,” Kris repeats. Chanyeol jumps when Kris wraps a hand around his wrist. “Is he--an alien or--”

The cashier turns to them to greet them, his face crinkling into a smile. Kris nods politely, then pulls Chanyeol behind a row of books.

“He’s a--” Chanyeol pauses, searching Kris’ face (like he’s looking for recognition, like he wants to know if Kris knows) “--he’s--he looks like someone I know. A Time Lord.”

Kris stares at him blankly. (He doesn’t.)

“What do you mean?” Kris asks him cautiously.

“Wu Fan, I--I don’t know why I--” Chanyeol trails off, looking hopelessly lost. 

“What could a Time Lord be doing working in a book shop?”

“He’s not--he turned himself into a human. After the war,” Chanyeol explains quietly. His eyes dart to the cashier again, now laughing happily with a man re-stocking the shelves. “So he could forget.”

“You can do that?” Kris asks, and Chanyeol chuckles, self-deprecating and cynical. “Do you know him?”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol replies. He turns to face the shelf, pulling onto a book at random. “You could say he was--is my best friend.”

“Oh.” Kris really doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s lost all his words of comfort for this man who’s lost his everything. “Chanyeol.”

“It’s okay.” Chanyeol turns to face him, smiling. “I helped him change into a human. Put him in this time period, watched over him until he settled down. He’s even started dating a human the last I saw him.”

“He’s happy,” Kris points out slowly, choosing his words carefully. 

“I know.” And Kris can hear the just not with me that goes unsaid. So he puts an arm around Chanyeol’s shoulder and gently removes the book from his hands. 

They head to the door together, earning a quizzical look from the cashier. They probably look like they were out to steal something, and Kris tries hard not to look suspicious as he leaves the store.

“Sorry,” Chanyeol says, looking vaguely sheepish, as they walk further away. “I just panicked because this isn’t where I expected him to be.”

“It could have been him,” Kris reasons, trying to soothe Chanyeol. “He could have moved here. Worked here.”

“I’m glad it wasn’t him,” Chanyeol replies, his words heavy and full of meaning. Kris doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but Chanyeol looks so upset that Kris wants to say something, anything, to help him.

“Chanyeol.” Chanyeol looks up to meet Kris’ eyes (and he feels stupidly, ridiculously, like he’s fallen into a romantic Korean drama--and he’s never had tolerance for those things, it was always Zitao crying over this and that--except this is one with time travel and aliens and galaxies beyond his dreams and also, this one is real). “It’s okay.”

“Sometimes I think I should find him again,” Chanyeol continues, shrugging nonchalantly. He leans into Kris’s touch. “But if he sees me, he’d probably remember he’s a Time Lord and that would kill him.”

Kris squeezes his shoulder. What do you say to comfort someone like Chanyeol?

“Sometimes I want him to remember, but that would kill him too,” Chanyeol continues, staring at his feet as they move forward. “I just--it’s not fair.”

You have me, Kris wants to say; it’s in the back of his throat, but it’s stuck. He doesn’t know if he’ll be good enough for Chanyeol, if he’ll be enough for a man who’s been through the death of his entire civilisation, if he’ll be enough for the firecracker Chanyeol, who’s brighter than all the stars Kris has seen thus far.

“You have us,” Kris says instead. “Kyungsoo, Jongin, and me.”

Chanyeol turns to look at him, a hopeful look growing slowly on his face. They stay silent for a while, before Chanyeol moans, “I just stared some poor human down.” He covers his face with his hand.

“You did,” Kris agrees, jumping at the chance to change the topic. “You should have seen his face.”

“Ugh, I am three hundred and five.”

“I feel like I should point out that I always point out you are not three hundred and five.” Chanyeol smiles, a little watery, a little shakily, hands reaching out to grab hold of Kris’ wrists. Kris lets himself be pulled forward. “Where are we going?”

“To the cake shop,” Chanyeol replies, threading their fingers together. “To get cake.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Chanyeol answers, a little too quickly. “Isn’t it a little human thing to eat themselves into oblivion?” 

“Seriously? Comfort food?”

“Cakes!” Chanyeol exclaims. His face scrunches into an almost manic grin. The one that he gave Kris so many months ago, when they stood in between aisles of food, Chanyeol trying to coax him that he was, in fact, not crazy. 

“If you throw up, I’m locking you in the TARDIS,” Kris tells him. 

Chanyeol laughs, squeezing his fingers tight.

-

“Let me get this straight,” Junmyeon says, taking a sip from his drink. “You went on a two day vacation--”

“--you locked yourself in your house with Sehun for two days,” Kris interrupts. Sehun shoots him a dirty look at being mentioned.

“--and you brought back three strangers?” Junmyeon asks dubiously. “And these three strangers, one of them gets high one cake, one of them doesn’t know how money works, and the last one keeps making eyes at your ass.”

“Okay, woah, hold up,” Kris says. “What’s this about?”

“Kris, do you know who they are?”

“Yeah, they’re a bunch of people I met on vacation, and--”

“What’s Chanyeol’s last name? What’s Jongin’s studying? Or working as? What does Kyungsoo want to do when he moves to Seoul?” 

“Junmyeon--”

“They’re strangers,” Junmyeon says, throwing his arms into the air. His cutleries clatter onto the plate. Sehun shakes his head imperceptibly in Kris’ direction. “What if you get mauled in a back-alley while they rob you blind?”

“Have you met them?” Kris defends. “Kyungsoo can’t kill a fly, let alone kill me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’m telling you that I do.”

“What hyung means,” Sehun interjects, rolling his eyes, “is that you need to be careful.”

“I would like to remind you who sends your asses home when we go drinking,” Kris says, stabbing his rice cake with more force than necessary. “I think I know what being careful means.”

“Kris, I’m not saying they’re psycho killers… but how can someone not tell the different between one thousand won and ten thousand won?” Junmyeon demands. “It’s like they come from another time--”

Kris chokes on his drink. Sehun sniggers, then pats him on the back pityingly. Junmyeon passes him a napkin. 

“Junmyeon-hyung,” Kris addresses. “Please believe me when I say I know what I’m doing. I know these people and they are not going to rob me blind.” 

Junmyeon eyes him warily. It’s only when Sehun breaks the silence (“Jesus you two need to stop. This is dinner, not an interrogation.”) that Junmyeon acquiesces with a gentle okay.

He knows Junmyeon is worried about him. Despite everything else, like the fact that Kris is the one who used to be the one Junmyeon cried on before Sehun came along, he wanted to take care of Kris. And okay, it’s a sweet gesture but the thought of Kyungsoo drop-kicking him then stealing all his valuables (some cash, his laptop, an LCD TV) is so ridiculous that he can’t help but snort.

“You should worry about introducing Sehun to your family instead,” Kris puts in bluntly. Junmyeon splutters and Sehun glares at him. “Kris-hyung,” Sehun retorts, “you should worry about the way you’ve been softening lately.”

“I haven’t!”

“You let Chanyeol wake you up in the morning.”

“He’s just less of a brat at doing so,” Kris says defensively. The truth is his body clock is just fucked. What sleeping hours is he supposed to follow, anyway? Twenty-four hours on Earth is six hundred blips on Pollux White and nothing in Second Utopia.

“Still,” Sehun insists. “Never thought the day will come that you don’t snap at someone for waking them up.”

Junmyeon nods solemnly. 

“Shut up, both of you, and eat.”

They spend the rest of the week touring Seoul. Kris calls home and tries his hardest not to cry, not once mentioning Chanyeol or Jongin or Kyungsoo. He hears the sound of his sister shouting in the background when his mother gives her benediction. He wishes he could tell her. When he hangs up, his blossoming urge to travel the universe suddenly dims. He wants to go home, wants to eat the food cooked by his mother, and play with his sister. He wants to curl up in his bed and--

“Hey.” Chanyeol interrupts his train of thoughts, sliding closer on the couch. The television is set on a random channel, volume low and unobtrusive. “Whatcha thinking about?”

“Your ass,” Kris answers easily, ducking his head so Chanyeol can rest his arm over Kris’ shoulders. Chanyeol chuckles.

“Home sick?” Chanyeol asks softly. Kris leans his head on Chanyeol’s shoulder and sighs. “Knew it. You know what curbs homesickness?”

“Tell me, oh great Chanyeol.”

“Travel,” Chanyeol answers. “Go to new places. So you can keep making new memories.”

Kris snorts. “Is that what you did?”

Kris knows he’s crossed the line when Chanyeol stays silent. He tilts his head upward, looking apologetically at Chanyeol, who smiles without any humor.

“I wasn’t going to, until you came along,” Chanyeol answers. His fingers tighten around Kris’ shoulder. Kris hates it when Chanyeol talks about Other Kris. Kris the Great, who knows how to solve temporal difficulties within the TARDIS, who knows how to make Chanyeol laugh when he’s sad, who knows how to play martyr between Jongin and Kyungsoo when they fight. Kris wonders how he’s going to get from here to there. “You’re the one who told me to try.”

“What were you going to do?”

“Fuck up space-time by trying to save my home,” Chanyeol answers honestly. “I wish you could have seen her in her full glory. EXO, the planet of the two moons. I wanted to save them, you know, save her. Everything.”

The war is not something they talk about, period, because Chanyeol gets glassy-eyed and quiet, like he is now. Kris tries to change the topic of the conversation.

“Sehun’s on to us,” Kris says. Chanyeol laughs, his finger drawing slow circles on Kris’ shoulder. “He thinks you’re going to make me fall in love with you then cheat me out of my entire inheritance.”

“How do you know I’m not?” Chanyeol teases. 

Kris glares at him.

“Okay, okay, I’m not,” Chanyeol concedes, pulling Kris impossibly close. Kris lets his eyes flutter close, concentrating on the feeling of Chanyeol’s arm around his shoulders. “Do you feel better now?”

Kris hums in response. The ache of wanting to go home subsides, replaced by a growing warmth in his gut. A feeling he’s learnt to associate with Park Chanyeol and his ridiculous antics. 

-

Soon, they leave in the TARDIS again. Kyungsoo seemed to have collected a list of places on Earth he would like to visit across time. 

“He watched National Geographic,” Jongin says, rolling his eyes. Kyungsoo excitedly hands Chanyeol the list, and when Chanyeol scans it, he bursts out laughing.

Kyungsoo nods eagerly, and they’re off, the TARDIS whirring as it dematerializes and appears in another time, another place.

Kris learns new things: how the TARDIS should be parked in places where painted wood isn’t quite the norm yet (hidden in the bushes), how to blend in with the crowd, how to run and avoid being mauled to death by a crowd when they accidentally catch Chanyeol and him making out in a shed in a time when homosexuality was evil, how to find Jongin and Kyungsoo in a city the size of Earth, how to fix the TARDIS when she’s sputtering, throwing them all into timezones that are not their intended destinations. One time, Chanyeol tells him the story of his pendant. 

“It’s the sign of the fire bird,” Chanyeol says, carefully resting his pendant against Kris’s palm. “My sign. It’s my safety charm, and it’s equipped with time lord technology.”

He learns a lot of things, many of them technical, a few historical, definitely things he never wants to forget. After a while, he realizes that the more he learns, the shorter the time he would have with this Chanyeol. Chanyeol seems to realize it too, clutching onto Kris’ arms when Kris holds him in the quiet of the room. 

Once, with harsh pants punctuating his sentence, Chanyeol asks, “You’ll find me, right?” 

Kris doesn’t hear the question until he comes down from his orgasm. He reaches out for Chanyeol, wraps an arm around Chanyeol’s waist--when had he become so familiar with this routine?--and replies, “I will.”

Chanyeol laughs, a little desperate, a little longing. 

“Without you,” Chanyeol confesses, his eyes bright and big, “I’d be lost.”

Kris doesn’t know how to reply to that. The truth is, and this is the only truth he knows, that without Chanyeol, he’d be lost. Gallivanting through space-time, with nothing holding him down but a blue box that’s barely taller than he is, on the outside. The only constant is an over-eager Chanyeol (and okay, Kyungsoo and Jongin), the one anchor pinning him to reality. 

“Without you,” Kris echoes, leaning his forehead against Chanyeol’s, “I am lost.” But I have you, he doesn’t say, right here, right now. “And I’ll always come for you.”

“Oh god,” Chanyeol says, planting a hand on Kris’ chest to shove him away slightly, “did you really just say that?”

Kris rolls his eyes, flicking Chanyeol’s forehead. “Not the way you think I did, you dirty bastard.”

“You love me,” Chanyeol says, laughing. He has the most ridiculous laughter, face contorted until he looks slightly insane, mouth open wide. Kris smiles, his heart beating quickly. 

“I do,” Kris says, because it’s true, and he wants to throw Chanyeol off. Chanyeol stops laughing, looking serious for about three seconds, before he smiles, softly this time, and says, “Me too.”

It’s only a little over a week later (nine Earth days, Kris keeps count) that they encounter something dangerous, something different.

“What’s wrong?” Jongin asks in alarm when the TARDIS starts to swing from side to side, throwing the occupants of the room (minus one Kyungsoo piloting) haphazardly around. 

“We’re being pulled in by a negative force field!” Kyungsoo yells, hitting buttons and pulling levers desperately. Kris tries to steady himself on a pillar, but before his hands can grab hold of it, gravity shifts on the TARDIS and he finds himself sliding across the room, his fall broken only because Jongin catches him.

“A what?” Jongin calls out to Kyungsoo. They cling desperately on the diagonal platform that once was the wall.

“A force field, but the opposite. Instead of keeping things out, they’re pulling things in,” Chanyeol explains. He, too, is climbing upwards, navigating from pole to pole to beam to get to Kyungsoo, who’s looking increasingly distressed. “This is not good.”

“Really, from the way the TARDIS is trying to kill us from the inside out, I couldn’t tel--” the rest of Jongin’s sentence gets cut off because he screams, lunging for the nearest solid object. That solid object happens to be Kris, and the two of them go flying to the other end of the room. “Jesus fucking christ.” 

“Can’t you stabilize it?” Kris asks, his arms around Jongin so the younger man doesn’t just go flying off. He wraps his legs around the odd, sphere protruding from the ground that he should really ask Chanyeol about.

“I’m trying,” Chanyeol says, now clinging onto the edges of the console. “It’s not co-operating, it’s not letting me stop it, it’s not even letting me divert its course.”

“I think it’s looking for us,” Kyungsoo says, pointing at a string of words on the screen. Chanyeol pulls himself up to follow Kyungsoo’s gaze.

“Its magnetic field is set on… a TARDIS.” Chanyeol stares at the screen, his eyes wide. “They’ve been waiting for us.”

“Who are they?” Jongin asks, before Kris can. The look of fear on Chanyeol’s face is telling enough, and Kris doesn’t want to know. He just wants Chanyeol to get them out of here. 

“I can’t seem to move the TARDIS?” Kyungsoo yells, bewildered, when the lights in the TARDIS start flashing ominously. “Chanyeol?”

“It’s no use,” Chanyeol says. Kris can barely hear his voice over the loud thrumming of the machinery. “We’re heading straight for the third crisis on the Dark Nebulon.”

The TARDIS ends up landing with a shaky bump. Kris’s knees seem to have turned into jelly, so Jongin helps him up. 

“Thanks,” he says, stretching his arm from where it’s cramped. Chanyeol’s already pulling forward the video feed that shows the TARDIS’s immediate surroundings. It draws up to a blank.

“They’ve killed her!” Chanyeol accuses, slamming his fist onto the console. 

“No…” Kyungsoo says, pointing to the static. “She’s fine.”

“I know… I just,” Chanyeol says, as his lip wobbles a little, “have never seen her like this before.” 

“We’re in deep shit, aren’t we?” Jongin quips, leaning over the railing to take Kyungsoo’s hand. 

“We’re in the Dark Nebulon,” Chanyeol replies drily. His expression darkens visibly but he manages a smile when he adds, “But we’ll have to see.”

Chanyeol is the one who reaches for the door first, his fingers firmly wrapped around the pendant. His other hand clutches onto Kris’s, keeping him at least a foot behind.

“We don’t know what’s on the other side,” Chanyeol says, his voice low and serious. Kris has never heard him like this before. Not when they were chased by a screaming, angry mob. Not when he was recounting the stories of his war (although Kris still hasn’t found out how Chanyeol had managed to survive). Not ever. “So be careful. And stay behind me.”

With one last squeeze to Kris’s hand, Chanyeol pushes the door open slowly.

[exoltant-blog]

[krisyeol] just like yesterday (i told you i would stay) 2/?

Pairing: Krisyeol, Kaisoo Rating: PG-13????? help I still don't know Summary: Doctor Who spin-off wherein Chanyeol is sort of the Doctor and Kris is the unsuspecting human that becomes his companion. Timelines cross, and shit happens.

one | two | three

    He wakes up when he’s thrown onto the floor. The first thing he notices is that the strange after-taste in his mouth, like he’d eaten too much chocolates or drank one too many cans of cola. Not necessarily unpleasant, but it makes him thirsty. Groaning, he rolls over to get up—

—and realizes that this is, in fact, not his room. It’s entirely too large, with too much furniture and light filtering in through the place. And it’s not a room he’s been in before. Panic rises in his chest as he pushes himself up.

He walks around, touching random things. There are tables and dressing tables and coffee tables, none of which have anything on them. Too clean, too unused. It takes him a while to gather his thoughts. Traveling through time and space, right, in a TARDIS. Except, this room is missing everything he knows about a TARDIS: the console, the whirring sounds, okay, the wild jerk from just now is getting to be really familiar, and most importantly, where is Chanyeol?

Kris pats down his clothes, straightening them, before looking for the right way out. There are approximately four doors, one of which is a double on the far left. He tries that one first, coming face-to-face with, quite literally, a brick wall.

“Okay,” he breathes to himself, patting the wall just to make sure he can’t walk through it or something. He leaves the door open, walking over to the next one. The second door is locked because no matter how hard Kris yanks at the doorknob, it refuses to budge. Sighing, he turns to the third door. The third door swings open easily, and Kris gapesat the amount of junk inside. Photo frames, stacked as tall as towers, a flower vase, bowls, weird objects he can’t quite identify, lamps, a speaker or three, circular orbs drifting mid-air. He takes a step back. This must be the contents of the room. Or used-to-be the contents of the room, now hastily shoved into a cupboard.

He wants to pry and ends up spending fifteen seconds at the messy pile, contemplating if he should grab a photo or pick up a book and read it. Chanyeol is a mystery; he speaks without telling Kris anything. And suddenly it’s all here—the things that—Kris presumes—Chanyeol wants to hide.

Kris exhales on a breath he didn’t know he was holding, steps back, and lets the door close. It’s not his place to snoop.

Instead, he tries the last door that leads him to a corridor. It would be the most ironic if he got lost here. Wherever here is. There’s no telling where each end of the corridor led to, so he went by gut instinct and turned left.

It’s only by luck, and a few repeated twists and turns—the furnishing in the corridors changed rapidly, and for a moment Kris thought he was going to fall into nothingness but realizes that his foot had, in fact, set itself on solid ground, just invisible—that Kris finds himself in the console room of the TARDIS again.

“This place,” he says, and Chanyeol springs up from his seat at the console, “is fucking huge.”

“Glad you noticed,” Chanyeol quips back, tucking something away into his pocket. Kris blinks.

“So, um,” he tries, scratching the back of his head. He last remembers sitting in a pub full of naked aliens. And that does not make for an assuring memory at all.

“You didn’t get taken advantage off,” Chanyeol starts, holding up his fingers to count, “you didn’t get lost, and you didn’t eat anything weird. At least nothing that will kill you. You did make a fool out of yourself on Herua In The Corner, though. And um, your perspiration may glow in the dark for a while.” Chanyeol finishes with a grin. Kris frowns.

“Is this the part where I punch you in the face,” Kris deadpans, as he looks at his hands. The TARDIS has the perfect temperature, he realizes, bordering slightly on cold. Just the way he likes it. But his hands have always been sweaty. And now he stares at them like they may just reach over and slap him in the face.

“Nope!” Chanyeol replies, all too bright and cheerily. “This is the part where we’re going to pick our friends up.”

“Our?” Kris asks.

“Well, I was going to pick them up. But I went to pick you up first. Anyway I had to jump back a few years to get them.”

“Wait, what?”

Kris has learned a few things in the short time he knows Chanyeol—that Chanyeol only answers questions wants the answers to—has the answers for—and everything else just sweeps past him like a breeze. This is one of the times. Kris shakes his head and steps up to the console, his thirst forgotten.

“So who are these people?”

“Kyungsoo, and Jongin.”

“And who are these people?” he repeats. Chanyeol just smiles at him, his head cocked at an angle that makes Kris wonder, if before this, if prior to this, Chanyeol already knows him. The Kris of the future. The thought makes Kris slightly nervous.

“You talk too much,” Chanyeol informs him, already sweeping around the console to hit buttons and spin dials.

“Says you,” Kris shoots back, leaning over the console to block Chanyeol’s way. Chanyeol stares at him petulantly, like a child, and Kris can’t help but laugh. Then Chanyeol wrestles him out of the way. They end up rolling on the floor with Kris’ hand smushed against Chanyeol’s face, and Chanyeol’s elbows and knees in Kris’ everywhere.

“Okay,” Chanyeol wheezes, shoving Kris to one side. Kris laughs, clutching his stomach. Nobody would ever believe me, he thinks. Traveling through time and space with a man who smiles too much. Play-fighting in his spaceship. It sounds too much like a half-dreamt story. “Enough, man, you’re like a giant.”

“So are you, twitchy,” Kris informs him, rolling to his side to face Chanyeol. Chanyeol punches Kris in the shoulder, laughing obnoxiously in Kris’ ear.

“Worst. Human. Ever,” Chanyeol enunciates, rolling over to stand up.

“So you’re not a human?” Kris asks, only half-joking. He’s been meaning to ask this ever since Chanyeol showed him the TARDIS, but he never had the chance to ask. He’d always assumed Chanyeol was from the future—a human from the future. But after seeing Herua In The Corner, he’ll take a second guess.

“Eh, depends,” Chanyeol replies, already turning to the console. “What do you mean by human?”

“Jesus, don’t pull that crap on me—”

“—I mean, humans have evolved, y’know? From apes to cavemen to people like you—” Chanyeol ignores the finger that Kris flips him “—it just depends on when, and where.”

“You,” Kris says, rolling his eyes, “are the singular most frustrating idiotI’ve ever met. And I have idiots for friends.”

“Wow, thanks,” Chanyeol quips back. “You realize you’re saying that to the man who’s guiding you through allof time and space.”

“Make that threat one more time and I’m personally throwing you out of the TARDIS.”

Chanyeol mock gasps, clutching his heart theatrically. “You wouldn’t. And she wouldn’t let you anyway.” He strokes the console lovingly. Kris rolls his eyes.

“So. Human,” Kris prompts.

“You could say that, I guess. I definitely look like a human.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Hey, fuck you.”

“Can you live longer in the future?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, scientists are always going on and on about locking your body down and waking only when you find a cure. It’s a way of prolonging your life, right? So if they’ve invented time machines, have they found out how to make humans live longer?”

Chanyeol scoffs. “I think you misunderstood me. I said I am humanoid. I look like one, possibly share similar characteristics. In no way am I actually a human. I’m—” Chanyeol pauses dramatically, swinging a lever, and the metallic grinding of the TARDIS starts “—a Time Lord.”

Kris stares at Chanyeol, then bursts out laughing at how ridiculousthat sounds.

“Did you—did you just make that up on the spot?”

Chanyeol stays silent, which is how Kris knows he’d said something wrong. Before he can open his mouth to ask what, though, the TARDIS door swings open in a flurry of snowstorm.


“You couldn’t have come earlier, could you?” a voice says. Kris vaguely hears the TARDIS door slamming shut, drowning out the sound of the snow whipping around them. “I’m Chanyeol and I have a time machine but I’m always late!”

“Wanted to let you suffer a little more,” Chanyeol replies easily, practically bounding toward the door. Kris sees, now, two figures padded in a silver material. They’re shaking the snow off, pulling their goggles off their faces. Chanyeol leaps forward to hug them both.

“Oh my god,” one of the two curses, his voice muffled in Chanyeol’s shoulder. “Really—”

“—eugh, stop trying to strangle us to death.”

When they’ve disentangled themselves, and Kris stands awkwardly in the middle of this reunion, the taller snowman asks, “So where’s Kris?”

At the sound of his name, Kris stiffens. Chanyeol turns to nod in Kris’ direction, so Kris gets a clear view of the two strangers for the first time. They look perfectly human—though whatever is hiding under their snowsuits is up to Kris’ imagination—and, in fact, very much like teenagers from Seoul.

“Um,” he finds himself stumbling over words for the first time in his life, “hi?”

“Oh,” one of them gasps, shedding his jacket. He strides over and gives Kris a hug, his hair tickling Kris’ cheeks. “Hyung!”

“Hey! Why didn’t I get a hug like that?” Chanyeol yells after the guy, and into Kris’ face. “I’m the one who came after you!”

The taller snowman, now removing his jacket and throwing it in Chanyeol’s direction, also walks towards Kris. Instead of a hug, though, Kris gets a clap to the shoulder and a smile.

“You guys,” Chanyeol huffs, crossing his arms, “suck.”

It’s clear to Kris that these two know him, even with Chanyeol’s meaningful glares. They awkwardly introduce themselves as Jongin and Kyungsoo. And Kyungsoo, bless his tiny stature, starts grumbling at Chanyeol for being a complete pig and not showing Kris how nice the TARDIS actually is.

“It’s not my fault! He just wanted adventure after adventure,” Chanyeol whines, kicking the snow Kyungsoo left in a pile like a petulant kid.

“Oh my god Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo says, “are  you five. Jongin, go get him something to play with.”

Jongin immediately strides over to the console, pulling the screen from where it laid flat against the centre. He expertly swipes his fingers across the screen, pulling out squares of information and diagrams. Kris wonders, really, really, really wonders, what the relationship between these three are. And more importantly, how the hell do they know who he is?

“So Kris,” Kyungsoo says, beaming as he picks up boxes and random bits of equipment from the TARDIS floor that Kris never quite noticed, “when are you from?”

“Earth?” Kris tries, watching Chanyeol stride over to Jongin, bickering loudly about where they are going next. But I’m the Time Lord, Chanyeol yells. Jongin shoves him in the face. “Two thousand eleven?”

“Hmm. That’s around the g—”

“—NO SPOILERS!” Chanyeol suddenly bellows at them. His eyes look a little wild around the edges. Coupled with the insane looking smile gracing his face, Chanyeol looks a hundred percent like a madman who’d kidnapped a stranger through time and space.

“KEEP YOUR PANTS ON!” Kyungsoo yells back at him. “Literally.” He throws a pair of pants in Chanyeol’s direction, one that he’s just managed to scavenge from a crack in the wall. “This is so unsanitary. How long has it been for you?!”

“Eh,” Chanyeol replies distractedly, finally letting Jongin pilot them to their new destination, “give or take a few months. A year. Possibly.”

“You’ve been gone for a year?” Jongin asks, his eyes widening. “I thought you just wanted to—you know, and then come get us?”

“I had… I had other things to do.” Chanyeol’s eyes flicker briefly over to Kris—Kris doesn’t miss it, hardly misses anything Chanyeol does because he, too, is watching the other man—before coming to a rest on the console screen.

“I am not,” Kyungsoo declares loudly, his arms full of things he’d managed to pull out from various places of the TARDIS that Kris had thought looked pretty clean, actually, “going to even imaginewhat the other rooms look like.”

“Ha,” Jongin scoffs. “He’s only in this mode because you were late, you massive jerk.”

“I told you I didn’t mean it.”

“You have a time machine.”

“And you know how I get about landings!”

“Especially when he’s around?” Jongin teases. Kris tries his hardest not to eavesdrop, opting instead to help Kyungsoo who looks like he’s having trouble lifting the massive pile of, in his words, crap by himself.

“Shut up.”

“Don’t mind them,” Kyungoo tells him. “They’re always arguing. I’m glad you’re here. It makes for one less crazy person.”

“WE’RE NOT CRAZY,” the two of them yell at Kyungsoo, and Kyungsoo winces.

“I’ll show you the rest of the TARDIS,” Kyungsoo says, then as an afterthought, adds, “If she hasn’t changed… much.”

“That’ll be great,” Kris replies appreciatively. He would like, very much, to pull Chanyeol by the collar and ask him to explain what the fuck is going on, but that can wait. He has the time.

“Hm,” Kyungsoo muses, his eyes twinkling slightly, “you’re much nicer now.”

“Wait—what—”

“Spoilers!” Kyungsoo repeats. They’re strolling down the deserted plains of an empty planet, their fourth or fifth destination, right after Globes of Eden. The ground shifts gently under their feet, moving around like pools of water.

“Is everythinga trans-solid?” Kris asks, squatting to poke a finger into the ground. He’d almost fallen from a trans-solid bridge, had Jongin not grabbed him back in time, on another planet. Chanyeol stops him with a hand to his wrist.

“Do you want to die? You do not touch unknown objects on planets until I give the go-ahead.”

“Oh, thanks for that. It isn’t like I drank half the bar on Herua In The Corner.”

“I was there then! You were in good hands!” Chanyeol exclaims indignantly. In the distance, they hear Jongin and Kyungsoo shouting at each other.

“Is there something you need to tell me?” Kris asks. He’s thought of a thousand ways to phrase this question: do you know me? do I know you?and variations thereof, but Jongin and Kyungsoo were always around the corner, eager to spend time with him. So he kept it to himself, tied these questions into a knot, swallowed it with everything else he wants to ask about.

“You’re a nuisance,” Chanyeol informs him, and Kris rolls his eyes. 

“Be serious. Tell me: why do they know me? Why do they know you were looking for me?”

“It’s a reaaaally long story,” Chanyeol replies evasively. He gets up, dropping Kris’ wrist. “And it’s boring as hell.”

“Did you know me? Before—or after—I don’t know.”

Chanyeol towers over him, scrutinizing his face. Kris stands. He, at least, has that little height vantage over Chanyeol, and he realizes if Kris were to hug him, Chanyeol’s chin would tuck nicely over his shoulder.

“There’s this thing called a personal timeline,” Chanyeol starts to explain. “In Jongin’s personal timeline, for example, I’ve been gone for over two weeks. In my personal timeline, I haven’t seen them in a year. Do you understand?”

Kris nods silently. He takes a step forward, prompting Chanyeol to continue their exploration.

“In my personal timeline, I’ve met you before. Ages and ages ago. I’m not as young as I look.” Chanyeol smiles, self-deprecating and sad around the edges. “When I met you for the first time, you knew more about me than I did about myself.”

“This is turning out to sound like a horrible korean drama,” Kris quips, trying to lighten the atmosphere. Chanyeol’s face is too serious for Kris’ liking.

“You’ve always been a dramatic asshat,” Chanyeol points out. Kris shoves at him and Chanyeol stumbles, turning around to shout an indignant hey!at Kris. Kris, in turn, grabs Chanyeol by the arm, impulsively snaking an arm around Chanyeol’s waist. “If we keep walking like this, we’re going to take a long time to get back to the TARDIS.”

“We have time, don’t we?” Kris replies—and Chanyeol shifts closer—feeling inexplicably attached to this man, “Time Lord?”

“Oh, so nowyou believe me?”

“They didn’t seem too inclined to brand you as crazy, so yeah, I guess,” Kris replies, referring to the two figures frolicking in the distance. “And I thought…”

He tries to gather his thoughts, slippery and unsure, like the ground beneath their feet. There was always, on each inhale and exhale, that uncertainty that everything had been a dream. Especially with Chanyeol’s laughter ringing in his ears. There was always an ethereal quality to reality when he stood in the TARDIS, fingers ghosting over the controls on the TARDIS. When he leaned against Chanyeol, the not-quite-human, everything seemed like a dream.

“Wu Fan,” Chanyeol says. His hand closes around Kris’ hand on his waist. “You have to trust me. You have to trust me when I say everything is real. None of this—” he gestures to the landscape, at himself, at Kris “—is a coincidence.”

“Are you saying that—”

“—what I’m saying is that I brought you along for a reason because trust me, all you have been is nothing but trouble.”

“Hey, my companionship is highly sought after,” Kris claims indignantly, pinching Chanyeol in the side. Chanyeol yelps, lunging forward. Kris grabs hold onto his arm, pulling him back so their bodies are flushed against each other’s.

“This really is,” Chanyeol says, his eyes fixed onto Kris’ lips, “like a horrible Korean drama. People of your period have no taste.”

“Hey,” Kris protests softly. Chanyeol’s arms are skinny enough for Kris’ fingers to circle around them. There’s something in the way that Chanyeol lingers in his touches, in the way that Chanyeol looks for Kris’ touch. And Kris is neither blind nor stupid. “In your personal timeline, have we ever—”

“Stop.” Chanyeol swallows.

“So we were,” Kris says, grinning smugly. Then it’s okay, he thinks, to do something like this. In the next second, he has his lips pressed against Chanyeol’s.

“We are, you mean,” Chanyeol says, when they break away to breathe. “And you’re really shit at kissing.”


“Sorry I don’t have an entire galaxy’s worth of knowledge to back up my kissing skills,” Kris retorts.

“Technically, I should be teaching you to get better.”

“Hey, you’re not that good yourself, okay?” Kris flicks Chanyeol’s forehead, and Chanyeol pouts.

“I am three hundred and five human years old,” Chanyeol suddenly announces, pushing to make a tiny space between them.

“… so much for liking older guys, then,” Kris says nonchalantly. He pats Chanyeol on the cheek. He tries imagining it, dating someone who’s three hundred and five. And then he realizes, after the wonders he’s seen, he can believe it. And that man is standing right in front of him.

Chanyeol stares at him, disbelieving, then slowly, he beams.

“Okay, then,” he says. He leans forward, tilts his head slightly, and kisses Kris again.

“Okay,” Kris echoes. A bubble of laughter escapes from his mouth and he hugs Chanyeol, whose chin tucks neatly over Kris’ shoulder, close and tight. “How did you guys meet?” Kris asks. They’re spending the day in the TARDIS. The machine had whirred jerkily to a halt before their tenth destination (“New New York!” Chanyeol exclaims. “I can’t believe I haven’t brought you there yet.”).

“You mean, me and Kyungsoo—or—us and the idiot down below?”

“Hey! Why am I the one getting abused here. You’re allsitting in my spaceship,” Chanyeol points out, voice muffled by a layer of glass. He’s fiddling with the mechanisms of the machine, with Kyungsoo occasionally flinching when he hears metal hitting metal, or when sparks go up.

“It’s the truth,” Jongin replies.

Kris chuckles at Chanyeol’s indignant huff. “The three of you… how did you—”

“SPOILERS,” Kyungsoo half-yells from across the room where he’s writing in his book.

“Oh, fine. No spoilers for you, man,” Jongin tells Kris, shrugging apologetically.

“Then about you and Kyungsoo…?” he tries instead. Kris knows they’re humans, at least, from the distant future of Earth. They’re together; all groping in the wrong places and time and Chanyeol going really you guys actually have a room.

“It’s a long, long story.”

Kris waits, raising an eyebrow. Jongin sighs in acquiescence.

“Have you watched any of those dystopian movies they have in your time? Like, the government is working against its people, brainwashing them, making up wars, and the whole time Earth is falling apart?” Jongin asks. “Well, our world was something like that.”

“Ugh,” Kyungsoo calls over, “don’t make it sound better than it actually is.”

“So I was enlisted in the war, right, and Kyungsoo here,” Jongin’s eyes flicker briefly to where Kyungsoo was now listening in onto their conversation, “he was the enemy.”

“Correct yourself, I was the enemy medic. Who saved your life, by the way.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Jongin dismisses. “He’d never let me live this down.”

“Because I dragged your skinny ass through five feet of snow until we found shelter while I tried to stop you from bleeding to death.” Jongin hops from his seat and strides over to invade Kyungsoo’s personal space.

“And I’ve repaid you in sexual favors, like, five hundred times over,” Jongin tells him, snaking an arm around his waist. Kyungsoo rolls his eyes, and Kris, involuntarily (because it sounds so much like Junmyeon and Sehun bickering), snorts.

“Ew, okay, you guys need to stop,” Chanyeol shouts from underneath them.

“Are you done?” Jongin shouts back, “Because I’m bored of hurtling through space.”

“If you would shut up and let Kyungsoo help me—”

“—no, no,” Jongin answers, “keep doing what you’re doing.”

Later, as Kris leans against a jutting piece of metal, watching Chanyeol work, he asks, “Why won’t Jongin let Kyungsoo help you?”

“Eh. The last time Kyungsoo helped me he was thrown into an infinite time loop,” Chanyeol answers dismissively.

“Wait, wait.” Kris gapes at Chanyeol, now with a smudge of luminous blue across his nose. “You threw him into a what?”

“I didn’t! It was the TARDIS. And she didn’t mean it,” Chanyeol defends, patting the bit of metal he’s been working at. “And anyway, it’s not thatbad—just a time loop that goes on forever.”

“So…” Kris prompts.

“The hard part was that the time loop threw him into right before he met me. Met Jongin.”

“The war?”

“Yeah. And Jongin went raving mad. You should have seen him go. Fix this, he yelled at me.” Chanyeol laughs, possibly at his horrible impersonation of Jongin. Kris slings an arm around his shoulders, disregarding the fact that Chanyeol is now sweaty and smells like rust. “As if it’s ever that easy to fix time.”

“How did you get him out?”

“With my brains—ouch, don’t pinch me you giant. Jongin navigated the TARDIS into the middle of the time loop. We almost broke the fabric of space and time, but it managed to stop the loop. All I had to do was fix the bugger who’d been tempering with the time vortex. Well youfixed the bugger who’d been tempering with the time vortex.”

“Chanyeol.” Kris doesn’t miss the ‘you’in the sentence. Kris leans even closer, turning Chanyeol’s head to face him. He tilts Chanyeol by the chin, and for a moment, he thinks about where he is, who he’s holding in his arms. Not even close to what he’d expected his life to turn out to be. “Did you miss me?”

Chanyeol blinks. “You’re standing right here.”

“I mean, the other me, the one who fixed space time.”

“Well,” Chanyeol drags on the one syllable, as if mulling on his answer. His gaze darts down to Kris’ lips. “Yeah. I do.”

“And I’m not, exactly, the same person you—”

“—it doesn’t matter,” Chanyeol cuts in. He turns so he’s between Kris’ legs, hands coming to a rest on Kris’ waist. “You’ll be the Kris that I know.”

“Tell me,” Kris demands, because he’s been thinking about it—that one day he’ll have to leave this Chanyeol for a younger one, a different one, one who doesn’t know him, “when do I go—”

Chanyeol shuts him up effectively by kissing him. There’s an infinitesimal moment before Chanyeol leans in that Kris catches his smile, toned down, soft and mysterious. It makes his gut twist. A Time Lord, Kris thinks, his arm pulling Chanyeol closer, he’s kissing a Time Lord. Whatever that means.

“You’re never going to tell me anything, are you?” Kris asks, when they break apart for air. Chanyeol grins, this time his eyes mismatched in size and slightly crazed.

“Spoilers.” He finds out what a Time Lord is three months later.

“Chanyeol!” Kyungsoo shouts from where he’s teaching Kris how to navigate the TARDIS. “We’re picking up signal!”

“That’s nothing new, we pick up signals all—”

“It’s another TARDIS.”

Chanyeol is crowding over Kris within the next second.

“Where?”

“Here, by the third turning in the Orion Galaxy.” Kyungsoo jabs at the screen. Chanyeol’s eyes stay fixed on the blinking dot.


“Another TARDIS?” Jongin asks.

“Yeah, I was trying to land us onto the sixth grid on Greatport, but this homing signal got us first,” Kyungsoo explains.

“You know what this means?” Chanyeol asks. He’s getting excited, Kris can tell, fingers already jumping to various controls on the console. There’s a manic grin growing on his face. “There’s another Time Lord out there.”

“Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo starts, wrapping a hand around Chanyeol’s elbow, “it might not be another Time Lord.”

“But we’ll never know unless we take a chance, right?” The TARDIS whirrs and shakes, and Kris has learnt, over these months, to hang on for dear life. He catches Kyungsoo and Jongin exchanging a look.

“You guys stay in here,” Chanyeol says, after they land, “I’ll go check it out. If I don’t come back, Kyungsoo, you know what to do.”

“I am not going to lea—”

“You have to. It’s another TARDIS. You don’t know what could happen. Pull out the camera feed and watch me from there.” He gives Kris a re-assuring smile and a kiss on the cheek before heading toward the door.

“If you’re sure,” Kyungsoo acquiesces. And this is why, Kris assumes, Chanyeol isn’t asking Jongin. Because Kyungsoo is—more—understanding, more willing to listen to what Chanyeol asks him to do. To Kris, Kyungsoo mouths, “Go after him.”

He catches Chanyeol surveying the landscape, doubt lining his face.

“Hey.”

“You shouldn’t be out here.”

“You shouldn’t go out there alone.”

Chanyeol scoffs—and Kris tries hard not to take it to heart, tries heart not to compare himself to himself—as if to say what can you do. But he takes Kris’ hand in his own, threading their fingers together. He finds that Chanyeol is shaking, just the slightest.

“Let’s go,” Kris prompts gently, taking a step forward. “Which direction do we take?”

“North-east,” Chanyeol answers easily. “We need to get oxygen masks first. Air’s not breathable.”

“Okay, oxygen masks.” Chanyeol’s fingers clench around his, and Kris smiles.

“Unbreathable air,” Chanyeol states, when he walks back into the TARDIS. Kyungsoo immediately reaches over the raised platform to rummage around for something.

“Here—and,” he pauses, throwing the oxygen masks in their direction, “be careful.”

“Don’t touch anything I wouldn’t,” Jongin puts in, giving them a thumbs up.

“That doesn’t leave for much,” Chanyeol quips, getting an agitated hey!behind him. The TARDIS door closes and Chanyeol closes the bubble over his face.

“It works like this.” He cups his hand around the back of Kris head, his other hand pushing the bubble gently over Kris nose, then mouth, then his whole head. “Take a deep breath.”

Then Chanyeol’s fingers are threading between his—he feels it before he sees it, warped by the spherical view of the bubble. Chanyeol swings their hands as they walk.

“I don’t know if I want to see another Time Lord out here, you know,” Chanyeol says, once they cover some distance from the TARDIS. The planet is cold, the ground beneath their feet barely more than dust. Kris stays silent, like the planet, the slight wind causing disturbances on the ground.

(If he talks now, Chanyeol will shut down, turn away; keep quiet because this is the wrong Kris. Spoilers, he calls them, but Kris knows he’s waiting for Kris to show that this is really, reallythe Kris he knows.

And he’s not.)

“Afraid you’ll have to share?” Kris says, when Chanyeol doesn’t continue.

“What do I have to lose?” Chanyeol jokes back. Kris drops their joined hands, and Chanyeol laughs, hurrying to thread their fingers back together again. “I’m joking, geez. It’s just that—I mean I didn’t think there would be another Time Lord out there. After the war… there was a war in my home planet. EXO, it was called, home of the Time Lords. At the end of time, watching over every other alien species, there’s EXO.

“But then, we had to face them.” Chanyeol’s voice cracks slightly. “The cy- the cyborgs.” Kris lets go of Chanyeol’s hand for the second time, opting instead to snake his arm around Chanyeol’s waist.

“I know,” Kris says softly. He’s read about them in the library, on a day that Chanyeol had been fixing the TARDIS. He’d asked Kyungsoo about them but Kyungsoo’s reply had been a sigh, a shake of his head. “With the help of technology, humans kept evolving.”

“It removed their ability to empathize. And humans, with their creativity, with their infinite ability to store information and learn, without empathy, are a force to be reckoned with. They were banded together, pushed by the idea of dominance of the known universe,” Chanyeol continues, closing his hand around the one Kris has on his hip. “As Time Lords, it was our duty to stop them before they wiped out the rest of the species across the galaxy.”

“What happened then?”

“Nobody won that war,” Chanyeol replies after a while. He laughs, the usual fare of self-deprecating and cynical. “Both species got wiped out. Collateral damage, for the rest of the lives lived amongst the stars.”

“Except for you.” How did you survive?

Chanyeol doesn’t reply, gently leaning his head against Kris’ shoulder. They walk in silence until they see a boulder, lying in the middle of nowhere. Then Chanyeol says, “Maybe not now.”

He takes a half-sprint toward the massive object, pulling out a small, square device from his pocket. He starts circling the boulder, scanning it simultaneously. Kris watches him frantically adjust dials and knobs and frequencies, his circling increasingly more desperate.

In the end, he stops. There’s an unreadable expression on his face, his lips pressed into a thin line. It’s only when he pockets the device that Kris walks over to him.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I knew it couldn’t have been another one of us.”

“So it’s not a TARDIS?”

“…  It is.” Chanyeol swallows, smiling at Kris like he didn’t just have all his hopes crushed down by a boulder in the middle of a dying planet. “It’s just been sent into grade ten lock-down. It means the owner is dead, and the TARDIS, this is one designed for war, takes it as that everything has been compromised and that it has to prevent the enemy from being able to get it. A TARDIS is really valuable, you know. And if someone got it, someone we didn’t want, it could really get disastrous. There are time agents handling these things. I personally know a few of them—”

“Chanyeol.” Kris presses his hands into Chanyeol’s bubble, cupping the sides of his face. “It wasn’t a Time Lord.”

“I—” Chanyeol inhales, closes his eyes, presses closer to Kris “—I know. I just wanted it to be. It didn’t have to be someone I knew—it didn’t even have to be someone who was good. Just—someone of my own kind.”

Kris gathers Chanyeol into his arms, whispering words that don’t mean anything. The man lost his entire planet to a war (Kris doesn’t have the heart to ask howyet), his people, his family, and his friends. Kris can’t even begin to imagine what his world would be like if his family was dead, if his friends were dead, if Chanyeol or Kyungsoo or Jongin—

And he realizes right then, with a trembling Chanyeol in his arms, that he wants to go home. He wants to breathe in Seoul, and breathe out the wonders he’s seen. Mix up home with the stars. Pull Chanyeol into his bed and wrap him in his blanket and feed him copious amounts of street food.

“Come home with me,” he finds himself saying into Chanyeol’s ear. “I’ll take you around Seoul, around China. Anything you want.”

“Wu Fan,” Chanyeol says. He pulls back, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. Kris wants to lean forward and kiss it away. Take everything that has ever hurt Chanyeol, pack it in a box, and then bury it under six feet of dirt. “I’d love to.”

“I’ll introduce you to Baekhyun; you’re both idiots so—”

“—hey!” Chanyeol cries indignantly. He gives a watery laugh, then, without quite leaving the circle of Kris’ arms, turns to face the boulder. “What should we do with this?”

“You tell me, Time Lord Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol snorts. He aims his device at the boulder and it whirrs, emitting a high-pitched sound.

“That should do it. If anyone else touches it, I’ll be the first to know.” Chanyeol scans his screen, tapping a few buttons. “I’ve also turned off the distress signal—that’s what it was, a war distress signal—so it doesn’t attract any more attention.”

“Do you need some time to—”


“—No,” Chanyeol cuts in. “No, we can go back now.”

He touches the boulder as they leave, smooth and wide in its expanse. Kris gives it one last look before following after Chanyeol, their fingers interlocked.

Later that night, Chanyeol comes to bed with him. It’s a habit for Kris to go to sleep alone, in a smaller room than the one he once woke up in. But when he gets out of the shower (which is, by the way, like a tiny waterfall in a room, and he spent two hours in the there the first time), Chanyeol is lying on his bed, dressed in one of Kris’ shirts and sweatpants, curiously poking away at Kris’ phone.

“What are you doing?” Kris asks, drying his hair with a towel.

“How do you survive with only this? It’s so—”

“—Shut up,” Kris cuts in, snatching the phone away.

Chanyeol laughs delightedly, rolling over in the bed to prop his head up on his elbows.

“Get out of my bed,” Kris orders.

“Excuse me, this is my spaceship, and therefore mybed, you free-loader.”

“I recall someone kidnapping me from a grocery store.”

“You walked in on your own free will.”

“I didn’t know the conditions didn’t include the be—mmph.” Chanyeol pulls Kris by the arms down, pressing their lips together.

“You really, reallytalk too much.”

“Says you,” Kris retorts, scoffing. He rests his palm on Chanyeol’s chest, the other propping him up on the bed. “You have a really weird heartbeat.”

“Time Lord,” Chanyeol says, by way of explanation. His hand dips down the band of Kris’ boxers. “Two hearts.”

“Wait—wait, really?”

“One dick,” Chanyeol replies solemnly.

Kris rolls his eyes and says, “You talk too much.”

[exoltant-blog]

[krisyeol] just like yesterday (i told you i would stay) 1/?

Pairing: Chanyeol/Kris, Seho, and later Kaisoo and some Xiuhan Rating: PG-13????? help idk Summary: Doctor Who spin-off wherein Chanyeol is sort of the Doctor and Kris is the unsuspecting human that becomes his companion. Timelines cross, and shit happens. A/N: I never really meant to post this here but this tumblr's looking a little dead so here, have a whoniverse!exo au wip thingy. Real ages of members are only vaguely applicable (duh). Title's from Grizzly Bear's Two Weeks. There's also probably grammar mistakes ouch.

one | two

“The cap goes this way, hyung,” Sehun insists, twisting Junmyeon’s graduation cap to the left. The tassle hits Junmyeon in the face and Sehun snickers.

“Yah!” Junmyeon huffs indignantly. He pinches Sehun by the nose. Sehun pulls at Junmyeon’s wrist, leaning forward for a kiss.

“When you guys are done,” Kris emphasizes, “your entire class can finally graduate.”

Junmyeon smiles sheepishly at Kris. They know Junmyeon’s beyond elated in having finally, finally completed his degree, in finding what he loves to do best. He slips his hand into Sehun’s and squeezes it, before exiting the backstage to get ready.

“Gonna miss him, Sehun?” Baekhyun teases, leaning forward to nudge Sehun in the side. Sehun makes a face, but waves when Junmyeon turns back to smile at him.

“Come on,” Kris tells them, ushering them out. “We need to get seated.”

Kris is twenty-one when he realises that he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. He’s too young to be having a mid-life crisis and okay, a quarter-life crisis would be more apt. But he refuses to acknowledge that. Sitting here, watching Junmyeon proudly receive his honors’ roll degree while Sehun, in a fit of uncharacteristic, embarrassing stupidity gets up to holler Kim Junmyeon!!!!, Kris doesn’t know if he’s doing it right.

It’s not like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Not at all. He’s got a plan clearly defined, in the form of credits and certificates, where he’s going to get a stable job as a translator. Find someone nice, settle down, and have two kids, maybe three. He’s thought at least that far.

The problem lies in the fact that he’s not satisfied with the idea leading this sort of life any more. He’s not particularly sure when this happened—had it always been a case of self-delusion, when he thought he’d be happier in Korea, leaving his home and friends and family to pursue his studies?—the niggling feeling under his skin, but if he had to pin it to one incident, he’d say it was the stranger at the park.

This stranger had sauntered up to him while he was waiting for Zitao to buy ice-cream, and said, “Wu Yifan, are you happy with your life now?” Kris had stared at him because what the fuck how does he know my name and he looks crazy I should move away until the stranger beamed, patted him on the shoulder, then chirped, “Soon!” before skipping away. It was too hot for the way the man dressed, black combat boots, a jacket lined with gold, and tight, leather pants. Kris chalks it up to being in Seoul in the summer. 

(But he can’t deny the fact that he thought long and hard about that question. Are you happy with your life now? It stuck to the back of his mind, springing up on him whenever he felt like he was going to suffocate under the amount of coursework he had, whenever he called home and their voices were muffled with the static caused by the distance that spanned oceans. Am I happy?)

It’s inevitable then, like every person who has a story to tell. 

Kris is twenty-one when his life changes. It’s strange, to make statements like that. His life changes, like life had been a monotonous string of nothing from birth to now. But there are no other ways to put it. 

His life changed.

“Hi.” Kris nearly drops his basket of things. The stranger leans far too close to him, his teeth perfect lines of pearly white. “Wu Yifan.”

“Wha—”

“It’s all going to be a little confusing from here,” the man explains as though he’s making a lot of sense. “But hang in there.”

The guy then proceeds to pluck the basket from Kris’s hand, offering his own. Kris stares at him, unmoving. 

“Excuse me,” Kris says when he finally finds his voice. “I think you’ve got the wrong person?”

“No, no,” the stranger says as he laughs, slapping his thigh in the process, “Kris Wu Yifan, aged twenty-one. The year is two thousand and eleven. I’ve got it all right. Haven’t I?”

“I don’t think—” Kris tries. Maybe he should just turn away now, forget his basket of food. He could always come back and pick his things out again. Another day, when a madman isn’t trying to strike up a conversation with him. But how in the world did this man know his name, his age?

“And that, my friend, is always the problem,” the stranger says. “Oh, right! I’m Chanyeol, by the way.”

“How do you know my name?” Kris asks, eyeing him warily. There’s a little old woman down the aisle in her motorized wheelchair, leisurely picking out canned food from the shelves. If Kris were to be stabbed right now, he wonders if the old woman can save him. 

“I know a lot of things about you, Wu Yifan,” Chanyeol says. He grins, one eye twitching close. It’s a little endearing and a lot unnerving. “Things you don’t even know about yourself.”

Kris scoffs at the ridiculousness of his words, and the stranger—Chanyeol—blushes, his grin dimming into a pleased smile. 

“Anyway what I wanted to say is,” Chanyeol declares, dropping to basket to thump himself on the chest, “I’m going to show you all of time and space.

“Sorry,” Kris tells him, reaching down to pick his basket from the floor, “I’m kinda in the middle of something now—”

“—aww come on. You’d sacrifice all of time and space for grocery shopping?”

“Well—”

“Exactly.” Chanyeol pulls the basket out of his hand once more. “Just a trial run. If you don’t like it, you can leave!”

Kris stares at him, weighing between completely ignoring Chanyeol, or going with him then running for it if it does turn out Chanyeol is a murderer, not just a lunatic. 

“Okay. How long is this going to take?” Kris asks warily, reaching for his cellphone. He’s going to drop a quick text to just about everybody he knows. Accosted by a madman, can't leave, call the police if I don’t text you back in half an hour. Kris always prided himself in being practical. He had people like Junmyeon (too nice for his own good), and Sehun (too stupid for his own good), and Zitao (too naive for his own good), and Baekhyun (too nosy for his own good) for friends. Someone had to be the practical one. But standing here, looking Chanyeol in the eye, he suddenly feels compelled to go with him.

He’s probably a drug dealer, or something. All of time and space. Sounds like the words of someone who was high on something.

“No time at all,” Chanyeol reassures, nodding firmly. “This way.”

Chanyeol swings the basket in his hand as they head to the back of the supermarket, to the early christmas decorations on sale. 

“What am I supposed to—”

“Hush now,” Chanyeol says, dropping the basket for the second time that day. Kris winces at the sound of beer bottles clinking noisily against each other. Chanyeol walks up to a life-size display of a telephone box that Kris had never quite noticed was there before. Fumbling in his pocket, Chanyeol produces a key that he proceeds to unlock the door with. “Wu Yifan meet the TARDIS!”

Chanyeol disappears into the telephone box that seems to, strangely enough, glow from the inside. Kris gapes at the open door for a moment. Does all of time and space have a secret sexual innuendo, or something, because Kris honestly can’t think of a reason why two grown men would want to hang out in a cramped telephone box.

“You are really—” Chanyeol says, sticking his head out of the blue box “—you think too much. Just get in here.” His fingers circle around Kris’s arm (Kris tries not to shrink away) before tugging him in.

“Jesus,” is the first thing Kris manages to say when the door swings close behind him. This is not, in any shape or form, a fucking telephone box. “It’s— it’s—”

“Say it,” Chanyeol eggs on, his creepy smile out in full force again. “Come on.”

“It’s bigger on the inside—what is—how the fuck—”

“Deep breaths, Wu Yifan,” Chanyeol says. “And welcome to the TARDIS. All of time and space at your hands. Well, just not the Dark Nebulon in the third crisis. It’s a little too, dark. Or you know, any black-holes and stuff.” Chanyeol starts fiddling with the knobs on the huge console, his combat boots thumping heavily against the glass floor.

“This is not real,” Kris breathes out. You’ve drugged me somehow and I’m completely hallucinating. Chanyeol laughs and Kris realizes he’d said the last part out loud. 

“See it for yourself.” He gestures to the door, and Kris opens it. He sees rows of tiny christmas trees and christmas baubles, and in the distance, the old lady in the motorized wheelchair is whirring her way into another aisle. 

“This is,” Kris chokes a little, “this is real?”

“All of time and space,” Chanyeol repeats, and this time his words are a little less grandeur and a little more fond, “at your hands.”

It’s really unnerving how much he believes Chanyeol, even when he shouldn’t. But there’s a room inside a telephone box in the supermarket he’s been frequenting for four years that promises him all of time and space. He’s probably left his sanity in his basket of groceries.

So Kris says, “China. Show me my hometown. One hundred years ago.” More than anything, he wants to know if Chanyeol knows.

“Wow, really?” Chanyeol asks. “Everything that ever existed in time, that will ever exist in time, and you pick your hometown, one hundred years ago? How creative.”

Kris rolls his eyes, crossing the room to get to the central console. 

“Are you showing me that or not?” Chanyeol can’t know.

“Jeez, okay,” Chanyeol replies. “Guangzhou, nineteen hundred, coming up!” Chanyeol flicks a few switches on the console, turns a couple of knobs before running over to the other side to hit a big, green button. “You might want to hold—”

The rest of his sentence is drowned out in a metallic grinding. Then the room shakes, and the next thing Kris knows he’s sliding across the glass floors, hitting his legs on the bits of debris on the floor before landing against a wall.

“—hold on,” Chanyeol finishes, when the room stops moving. “Yeah.” 

Kris groans, clutching his stomach because he doesn’t do well on rides, much less being thrown around in a giant blender. He looks up to see Chanyeol smiling at him, leaning forward to offer Kris a hand. 

“There, we’re good as new.” He smiles and pats Kris’s shirt down, and Kris is surprised by the easy intimacy that Chanyeol has. “I’ll let you do the honors.” He gestures to the door.

“Wait, do you mean to say,” Kris clarifies, “that when I open that door, I won’t see christmas trees—”

“—you’ll see China, one hundred years past!” Chanyeol exclaims. “Yes, yes, now hurry up! Why are you so slow?” He tugs Kris by the elbow, fingers cold against Kris’s bare skin. 

The thing is—as Kris lets Chanyeol pull him on the door, put his hand on the knob—that his grandfather always spoke of Guangzhou like it’s a dream. Endless fields, his grandfather, then blind and a little incoherent, had promised, and the sea, the glorious sounds of the waves. Kris hesitates, realizing that he’s hinging a little bit of stupid hope on this. That he wants to believe that Chanyeol—and the room inside the little blue box—is magic and that he is, in fact, one hundred years in the past.

“Not christmas trees,” Chanyeol assures, as if reading Kris’s mind. “I promise.”

And Kris opens the door, momentarily blinded by the light shining in. He takes his first step out—one hundred years ago—and his shoe sinks into sand.

He’s pretty sure he makes a choked sound. Chanyeol’s smile is as bright as the sun casting down on their heads. 

“Amazing, isn’t it, even if it’s just Earth?” Chanyeol enthuses, stretching his arms. His jacket rides back on his sleeves and Kris gets distracted by Chanyeol’s pale wrists.

“What do you mean, just Earth,” Kris demands, feeling oddly offended. 

“Oh, Kris,” Chanyeol says patronizingly. He pats Kris on the arm. “You can’t even begin to imagine what’s out there.”

“Watch it,” Kris says, necking Chanyeol who, insanely enough, laughs delightedly. He grabs Kris’s hand and pulls him towards the beach. 

“As long as we’re here,” Chanyeol says, stopping ten feet from the blue box to remove his shoes. “We should have fun!”

“Who are you?” Kris finally asks. Chanyeol’s face is familiar, like a friend he’d long forgotten, laughter buried within the years of memories. 

Chanyeol’s eyes crinkle in delight. “You’ll know, soon enough.”

“Are you… from the future?”

“You could say that,” Chanyeol replies, stripping his jacket and folding it into half. Underneath he’s wearing a shirt similar to Kris’s—plain white, v-neck. Just the way he likes it. 

“One last question: am I dreaming?”

Chanyeol laughs, and Kris thinks that in the last half an hour or so, he has not seen the man frown. 

“This is,” Chanyeol assures with a pat to Kris’s chest, “one hundred percent reality.”

Somehow, Kris believes that.

After China, Chanyeol leans over to tell him, “Now let me show you fun.” The saltwater is drying on his skin, and Kris’s limbs are heavy with exhaustion. Chanyeol plays like an overexcited five year old at Christmas. So much for insinuating that Guangzhou was boring.

“Ergh,” Kris groans, rolling the legs of his pants up. “Are you kidnapping me through space and time. Whatever happened to the trial run?”

Chanyeol stares at Kris, seemingly at a loss for words. 

“Uh, well, yeah. There’s that,” he concedes, avoiding Kris’s gaze as he circles the console, flicking switches and pressing buttons. The whirring sound starts as the room shakes slightly, coming to a shuddering halt. “Well. Trial’s up!”

It’s Kris’s turn to stare at Chanyeol. In the few hours he’s known the man, he hasn’t heard anything except for overwhelmingly excited. 

“I’m almost scared to open that door,” Kris jokes.

Chanyeol chuckles, turning the dial on the an overhanging screen. When the static clears, Kris sees an image of his apartment building.

“I landed us outside your house,” Chanyeol says, “aren’t I considerate?”

“Wow,” Kris deadpans. They stand awkwardly on the opposite side of the room for a while, Chanyeol staring at the image of Kris’s apartment, and Kris staring at his now bare feet. His shoes are, well, gone. He wonders the probability of having changed reality forever. And also the probability that he might be dreaming and he’s going to wake up on Zitao’s couch, day old spaghetti stuck on the side of his face. At this point, both are as likely as the other. 

“So—” Chanyeol starts, smiling awkwardly at Kris “—home?” 

“If I…” Kris trails off. He thinks of the things he could do with the rest of his life: graduate, get a job, a family, normalcy. Unlike gallivanting through time and space with someone whose face doesn’t quite deviate from a manic grin. “If I go back now—”

“—you can always call me to come get you,” Chanyeol promises. He smiles, this time warm and understanding. 

“… how?” Kris asks skeptically. He fishes around his pocket for his cellphone, now barely dry. He had had the presence of mind to wrap it in his shirt and leave it on the beach before stumbling into the blue ocean. “Using this? Does space have reception?”

“Oh the things you don’t know,” Chanyeol says mockingly, clutching at his heart. “What goes on in that tiny mind of yours?”

“Hey,” Kris warns for the nth time, because Chanyeol is rude, “forget it. I don’t need to come back.”

Chanyeol laughs as Kris scoffs, crossing his arms. “Okay, okay. Oh, Wu Yifan, don’t ever leave me. What will I do without you?” There’s something strangely sincere in his voice, something that, Kris thinks, is real. That Chanyeol isn’t a random time-traveling madman from the future. That picking Kris up in a grocery store is more like something he intended to do, and less of kidnapping humans off the face of Earth.

Without another word, Chanyeol walks over to Kris, reaching in his pocket for a pendant that’s shaped strangely like an arrow and bow, glowing a bright red.

“So you can always reach me,” Chanyeol says, grabbing Kris’s phone. He presses the tip against Kris’s phone, and a warm glow emits from both objects. Kris winces. That is an extremely expensive phone that Chanyeol is fucking around with. “And you’d better, okay?”

Chanyeol’s gaze is stern on Kris, but his lips are twitching up in a smile. And Kris can’t help it, he smiles right back. 

“That’s the Yifan I know,” Chanyeol says, patting him—condescendingly?—on the cheek. Kris swats his hand away.

“Keep waiting, asshole,” Kris bites, examining his phone. There’s nothing different from it, expect a single new text. When he opens it, it’s a string of unintelligible code. He looks up at Chanyeol, head tilted in a question.

“Just call this number,” Chanyeol says, “and I’ll be there.”

“Oh my god. Do you just go around spouting shit like this?”

“Sometimes,” Chanyeol replies, already moving away toward the console. It’s a sign. You can leave now. Kris accepts it, glancing around the room-inside-a-box once more, locking it into his memory. 

“Chanyeol?” Kris calls, standing at the door. Chanyeol smiles at him, and Kris clenches his fists. “Thanks.” 

“No problem!” Chanyeol shouts after his retreating back. Kris thinks he hears something, just before the door shuts close. A few muffled words. But by the time he turns back to enter the phone box again, a strong wind forces him to squint. The grinding sound of metal returns and Kris almost, almost puts his hand forward to touch the box. He doesn’t know why he stops himself, but when he opens his eyes, the box is gone.

“What happened?” Zitao demands later that night as Kris wonders if other planets, and that’s where he’s assuming Chanyeol can bring him, what with talk of the third nebulon or the gravitational star, has a climate. And if so, should he pack warmly, or sparsely? He ends up chucking both into his carrier bag.

“Nothing much,” Kris replies. “I’ve just decided to take a vacation. Just for… well, two days or so?”

“To where?” Zitao asks. “Baekhyun’s going to kill you when he finds out.”

“Baekhyun can kill you when he finds out,” Kris replies, shrugging sarcastically. 

“… I don’t like you,” Zitao replies, knowing how much Baekhyun’s little punches hurt. “You text us help a maniac’s got me and then a few seconds later you text nope, sorry, everybody resume with your lives, and now you’re leaving the country?”

“Just for two days, tops,” Kris promises. Chanyeol had dropped him off ten minutes after he’d gotten into the phone box. 

“That does not answer my question.”

“What was your question?” 

“What happened?” Zitao emphasizes, despair marking his voice. Kris takes pity on him.

“It’s just a little vacation,” Kris replies, injecting as much honesty into his voice. He finds he doesn’t really have to try. “All that decision-making; what are you going to do with your life, Wu Yifan, where are you going to go? Who are you going to be? I need that to stop. Just for forty-eight hours.” Or more, he doesn’t add out loud. 

Zitao’s eyes soften, and he reaches across the bed to pat Kris on the thigh. 

“Well, okay, I’ll just tell everyone you’ve had a breakdown and you need to rest for a while.”

Kris snorts. “You do that.” He continues folding, or a semblance of folding, his clothes into squares and stuffing them into carrier bags, packing for every imaginable weather. Sunglasses, he needs sunglasses. And a few jackets. And shoes, definitely shoes. Should he pack his phone charger or do phones no longer work across time? He’ll just bring it.

“But—” Zitao asks unsurely, twisting the blanket in his hands “—you’re okay, right? There’s nothing wrong. You’re not secretly going off to do chemotherapy or meeting your pregnant girlfriend or something?”

Kris really has to laugh at that one, and Zitao grins. 

“I’m good,” Kris answers, “better than ever.”

“Okay,” Zitao confirms, “great.”

Later, when Zitao leaves, Kris lies on his bed and stares at the ceiling. He thinks about the things he wants to do. Time had always been a straight line for him. A steady, forward trickle that never looked back, never any chance to turn back. Today, he finds that that’s not quite the truth. He wonders, only half-awake the possibilities of paradoxes—damn Sehun and that one time he was obsessed with sci-fi—and breaking the fabric of reality and everything else in between. He wonders if Chanyeol had ever come close to the end of the world. The last thought Kris has before falling asleep is what next? 

“You packed,” Chanyeol says, stunned. He slaps his knee when he laughs, Kris notes, and he laughs like he’s trying to squeeze his lungs out of his chest. “Jesus.” 

Chanyeol spends the next few minutes rummaging around in Kris’s carrier bag.

“Hey, this is not some free for all,” Kris calls, batting Chanyeol’s hands away. But Chanyeol shakes his head, holding onto Kris’s wrists, and shoves him away from the bag. 

“Just go there and make yourself busy. Pick a time. Pick a place. Avoid the black spots.”

Chanyeol reaches over and slams a button with his fist before resuming his treasure hunt in Kris’s bag. The oddest thing is that Kris doesn’t mind it too much. He just stares at Chanyeol, for one second, two, watching Chanyeol search for an undefinable something. Kris shakes his head after a moment, turning his attention to the galaxy of stars dotting the room. His eye catches onto a burning red in a far corner.

“What’s that?” he asks, pointing to his left. 

Chanyeol looks up. 

“That?” He sounds wistful, eyes tracking the slow movement of the red star. “That’s long gone, now.”

“Oh,” Kris says. He doesn’t push it further, ignoring the way Chanyeol’s eyes flit hurriedly back down to his belongings. “Okay, what about this one?” 

His palm hovers over a pale yellow, spotted with deep blues. It reminds him of a toy Baekhyun’s dog used to play with. Until the ball was ripped into shreds, of course, because Baekhyun’s dog was the most vicious little asshole. Baekhyun had to give it away after he found out that Zitao was allergic. 

“Herua In The Corner!” Chanyeol exclaims. He drops Kris’s bag, jumping up to clap Kris on the back.

“What?”

“Herua In The Corner,” Chanyeol repeats. He beams at Kris, his eyes crinkling into crescents. They’re currently floating in deep space—mostly because Chanyeol wanted to show off, Kris suspects, but he’s not saying that out loud. And deep space is, frankly, really astounding.

(“How am I not—”

“—choking to death?” Chanyeol asks, beaming. It’s irritating how Chanyeol seems to be completing his sentences, and Kris wishes Chanyeol would stop. “The TARDIS provides breathable air within a two two meter radius. Just don’t stick your face too far out.”)

“What the hell kind of name is Herua In The Corner?”

“Rude,” Chanyeol calls out, slinging an arm around Kris’s shoulders. Kris stiffens involuntarily, because he’s not good with personal space and strangers, and Chanyeol’s arm slips off his shoulders. “Herua would have obliterated you into the darkest pits of Women Wept.”

“Okay, so, Herua.”

“Long story,” Chanyeol replies. “But Herua In The Corner it is!”

He turns to the console, flicking switches and knobs and adjusting little sliders. Kris finds it absolutely fascinating, the way Chanyeol’s boots thump against the floor as he circles the controls, calmly reaching for the right ones. Knowing which ones brought you to China, one hundred years in the past, and which ones brought you to Herua In The Fucking Corner.

“So how does this work?”

Chanyeol snorts. 

“Hey, what does that mean?”

“It’s a very… delicate process, okay, and we don’t want to end up in the middle of a black hole.” He smiles at Kris condescendingly, and Kris flips him the finger. Chanyeol laughs. 

“You are—,” Chanyeol says, but then the TARDIS whirs nosily, and Kris watches the stars dotting the room fade as the room shakes, the rest of Chanyeol’s words drowned out as they travel through space and time.

Herua In The Corner is, suffice to say, fucking astounding. He sees humanoid creatures, parading around fully naked on a landscape that imitates Earth city-structure, except they were hovering. On grassy platforms.

“We stick out like a sore thumb,” Chanyeol complains when a citizen, a Heruite, stares at them oddly, her—his—breasts, and what Kris is sure is a dick, flapping in the breeze. Kris doesn’t quite know what to say. Or think. 

Except, “Would you rather be naked, then?”

“Hey, I’m just accompanying you and your sad human inhibitions.”

“Fuck you,” Kris answers curtly. Soon they find a bar—at least, Kris assumes it’s a bar—where Chanyeol seats them. The bartender leans over, his upper body slightly too hairy, and asks them what they need.

Chanyeol replies him easily, holding up a blank piece of paper that the bartender seems to accept as identification or money of some sort, nodding. 

“What was that?”

“Psychic paper,” Chanyeol replies. He flashes the blank paper at Kris, and Kris stares at it.

“What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“Well, currently, nothing. But the man sees money. Other people may see identification. It depends.”

“So, a fake ID, huh.”

“Much more complicated than that, okay,” Chanyeol sniffs, looking mildly offended. He leans closer to Kris, his arm brushing against Kris’s. 

Kris surveys the crowd. Everyone in the bar is naked, except for one or two with a scarf-like thing around their neck, each of their skin in a different shade of blue and yellow and red. They sit, the Heruites, in groups of twos and threes and a couple of individuals, scattering the bar. Kris inhales; the air smells slightly different, much lazier, and with each breath, he feels himself loosen and relax. He’s on another planet.

“I’m on another planet!” Kris can’t help but say. Chanyeol seems to brighten at Kris’s tone, brighter than he already fucking is, and he beams. 

“You are!” Chanyeol says to him, and he leans his body weight against Kris’s.

Their drinks slide over to them on the oddly feel-through counter. Kris can’t stop touching it. It feels like water, even if the glass sits on it solidly. 

“Trans-solid,” Chanyeol says, by way of explanation. He dips his own fingers into the surface, then rests his palm on it. “Funky, huh?”

“Did you really just say funky?” Kris teases, sticking his entire hand into the table. From the distance, the bartender shakes his head.

“First-timer?” the man grunts, and Chanyeol nods.

“A little bit of an idiot, isn’t he?” Chanyeol says, smiling that blinding smile of his. Kris scoffs, pulling his hand off the table and onto his lap. 

“Nah, just curious, maybe,” the bartender replies. He reaches for something and places it on the table. “Here, kid. Have a go at this. True Heruite stuff.”

Kris eyes the glass warily. Or, well, it seems it’s been cut from crystal. In it sat a glowing purple liquid, slightly translucent, screaming poison more than anything else. In that moment, Kris realizes that if he did get into trouble in this planet, if he got stuck or stranded or lost, he would only have one person to rely on. In the entire universe, only a single person knows where he is, and what he’s doing now: Chanyeol.

As if having read his thoughts, Chanyeol’s fingers circle Kris’s wrist—tight enough for assurance, loose enough to give Kris the chance to pull his hand away. Kris leaves it, instead turning to look at Chanyeol.

“Go on,” Chanyeol tells him. “It’s going to be a bit like—well—like post-orgasmic high.” Kris chokes on air. Chanyeol laughs and thumps him on the back.

“What’s post-orgasmic?” the bartender asks curiously, his face furrowed in confusion. 

Chanyeol speaks in a string of unknown words, and Kris stares when the bartender laughs, his hairy chest heaving. 

“Well, that’s one way to put it. I’ll leave you two to enjoy your, eh, post-orgasmic high.”

When he turns to leave, Chanyeol pushes the cup toward Kris.

“I will not be held responsible for anything that happens after you drink this, okay,” Chanyeol says.

“Then why would I drink it?” Kris asks, raising his eyebrow. He touches the cup—cool on the first touch, then pleasantly warm.

“You’d be missing out.”

“On what?”

Chanyeol laughs, moving his hand from Kris’s wrist to pat his face, again, condescendingly. Kris frowns. “You really need to try this.”

“You’re not going to just—” Kris struggles to find the right words (because what if Chanyeol is a galactic slave trader or something, and Kris is about to be sold to some alien factory forever) “—I mean—”

“No,” Chanyeol says softly. His hand comes to a rest on Kris’s thigh. “Don’t be crazy, geez, I would never just leave you here.”

Kris doesn’t stop to wonder how Chanyeol knows this. How Chanyeol can figure out what he wants to say next, what he’s thinking of. It’s unnerving and comforting all at once, and Kris doesn’t know how to act on it. So with a steely resolve, he downs the drink in one gulp.

[exoltant-blog]

in a castle far away lived the ice prince in his frost-covered rooms, filling his lungs with the cold, biting air, counting the days until someone remembers.

[exoltant-blog]

hi there again. i'm the anon yesterday- the one who ask for a request. i just wanna ask if you get my other message w/ the prompt? tumblr is being an ass w/ me & my messages so i'm kind of worried that you didn't get it..or you do?

hi~ i didn’t receive an actual prompt…?