The Price of Privilege - Part 14 (A Kyungsoo Series)
Genre: Angst / Romance / Arranged Marriage / Royalty AU
Characters: Kyungsoo X You
Description: The time has come to marry the man your family has selected to take your hand. As royalty, these important matters are arranged for you, but when you meet your soon to be husband, he is nothing like you expected.
The Price of Privilege [M]: - part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8 , part 9 , part 10 , part 11, part 12 , part 13 , part 14, part 15
*******TRIGGER WARNING********
Mentions of Suicide.
*********TW TW TW**********
Your search this time was different.
This time, as you ran down the hallways of this palace, your feet carried you with a sense of purpose and direction.
Baekhyun had given you instructions, actual orders for where you were to go and even if you did not want to name it as such, Baekhyun had given you something else to desperately cling on to.
Hope.
Not once, in your recent memory had you felt that. Not really. Not like this. You would find Kyungsoo, because you had to. You owed him an apology and an explanation and you owed it to him to give him the evidence you had uncovered that exonerated him. You owed him so much.
Your noisy footsteps echoed around the deserted corridor that led to Kyungsoo’s kitchen and you’d laid a flat palm over the cold steel of that heavy door, poised to push it wide open — the quickest search here, and then you would move to the roof as Baekhyun had instructed you to. Only, which roof would you begin with? This palace was huge and had several levels where roof access could be reached by staircase or elevator. It didn't matter, you would begin with the access closest to you and move on to the next. You would not pause in your steps until you had caught sight of Prince Kyungsoo. Until he was safe and sound.
Your momentum paused for but a moment when the kitchen came up as empty as it had been when you vacated it hours earlier. That was before, when Ara had dropped her latest bombshell over your head and no amount of evasive maneuvering could keep you safe from it.
But everything felt different now.
You didn't have time to dwell on it. You had to find him now so he could know the truth about his mother. He had to know the truth about the queen he served so blindly. He had to know the truth about May and the baby that was alive and well inside her belly. The man had been lied to on so many different levels and by so many people — your skin prickled with the chill of the air around you as you burst through the fourth floor rooftop with the sparkling swimming pool. The water was motionless, the air here eerily quiet and windless and the reflection of the bright white round face of the moon from the surface of the water was the only face to greet you up here — you spun on your heels, ripping the door open and pushing your legs to run faster with the determination that you had inside of you for the truth you carried on your tongue. The truths you would reveal to him the moment you had a chance to look into his big brown eyes and begin your confessions.
Your legs were buzzing with the effort. Only this buzzing did not feel like your muscles complaining, this felt more external. It took you an honest-to-god second to realize the buzzing was actually outside of your body and coming from the cell phone that you had tucked into the front pants pocket of the bride-to-be pajamas you still wore.
The text notification lit up the screen, the two messages that sat heavy on the screen of your cell phone were from Baekhyun.
“Garage,” read the first message. A single word that immediately sent you away from the hallway you had just reached and spun you around toward the staircase you had just passed.
The second text message lit a fire inside of you and you pushed your legs faster than you had ever run, skipping multiple stairs at a time, paying little attention to the burning inside your lungs and and pain you felt when you stepped wrong off the bottom step of the second floor.
“Hurry.”
You did not bother opening the texts. You could see the urgency from the notifications. You could certainly feel the sinking feeling inside your guts when you read them.
As you grew closer though, to the clean white hallway that led to that garage. That place where you and May had played grand theft auto in real life, driving his fancy black car over the shrubs that lined the curvy driveway, as the memories returned to your hazy mind, something else came back to you. It was an unwelcome invader, this fear that returned to you full force and brought back the familiar trembling in your limbs and hands and fingers.
You swallowed hard and tried to push the fear down, but a sinking feeling pulled inside of you when you tried to swallow the fear. It felt like a vacuum had been turned on inside of you and despite the urgency you knew of this situation, you knew there was simply no time for your nerves or your fear to have any place right now, you still had to grip the door handle twice to get your hands to stop shaking enough to open the door.
Inside the garage was a cloud.
The garage door was open but the cloud lingered, hazy and white all around and sounds came from deeper in the large open space, around the other side of the slick black car that felt so familiar to you.
Human sounds.
The sounds of great effort touched against your ears and made the hairs on the back of your neck prickle. Dread traveled with quick spindly fingertips along the skin of your scalp. It made you shiver.
A man and his voice. A single man, cursing, grunting, huffs of breath but there was no other voice to respond to him.
You had made it around the car by now and someone was there, just there, on the ground.
Two feet.
Two legs.
A person you knew.
It was a person that you knew.
One sock, the other foot bare — but the person lying on the ground was so still, save for the occasional jostle from the man who curved his own body above him.
He — Kyungsoo...
Kyungsoo was on his back, his eyes closed, his shoes gone, where were they? You could see inside of his car, see the door still open and the engine turned off. Keys dropped where your feet stepped. You’d nearly trotted on them. You had to step over them as you moved.
You could see a pair of black Nikes carefully placed side by side onto the passenger seat only where was the driver? Why were his shoes set there so carefully? Where was his other sock?
“Is this how you fix it, you stupid fucking asshole? You spineless coward! You fucking pussy!”
Why wasn’t he answering Baekhyun? Why wasn’t he calling him nasty names back. The Prince Kyungsoo you knew would never take such insults hurled at him, and by his own brother. You’d seen plenty of their interactions in the past to know that Baekhyun would have had his neck grabbed and the back of his head slapped many times for this.
“You dumb, selfish, piece of shit. How dare you?”
But Kyungsoo...
Kyungsoo—
“God-fucking-dammit, you stupid son of a bitch, open your eyes! This isn’t how you solve it! This isn’t the way!”
Between the grunts, between the pauses in his motions with his hands pressing down onto his brother‘s chest, Baekhyun was cursing. Baekhyun was screaming. Baekhyun was yelling at the top of his lungs. Begging for the man on the floor to wake up and smack him for his insolence.
Baekhyun was talking to you.
Baekhyun knew you were here and Baekhyun was saying something to you. You could not bring your legs to move. You could not bring your ears to sharpen to the words he said to you. All you could see were the five toes on the end of that bare foot that did not move at all.
Kyungsoo was on his back on the cold concrete, his shoes sitting carefully side by side on the passenger seat of his car and now he was not opening his eyes. One sock off of his foot. It had to be so cold. He had to be very cold without his shoes on. He looked almost blue from how cold it was inside his garage with the door open.
Baekhyun bent his head down to Kyungsoo’s face and covered his lips with his own.
It looked like a kiss.
Kyungsoo’s eyes did not open. He did not lift a hand to slap his brother away from him. He did not push angrily at Baekhyun’s shoulders when their lips touched. The white cloud was clearing and you could see too clearly.
Kyungsoo’s eyes did not open. His color was wrong.
You didn't want to do this anymore.
-
You don’t want to talk about this anymore.
-
You don't want to talk about it anymore.
-
They had you all wrong.
You were a coward.
-
Baekhyun shouted at you. Calling you by your first name, not your title. You did not move and you did not look away from his bare foot.
A shove came from behind. Someone moving swiftly past you bumped against your back and the motion threw you off your balance, sending you down to your knees where they hit the concrete hard. The jolt of pain surged through you and you felt as if you’d just woken from a dream. Only in front of you, the nightmare continued.
“I found the black bag,” Ara’s voice said to Baekhyun and he motioned with his chin for her to set it down beside him and open it up for him to see inside. She didn't seem to notice you had fallen.
“Speak to him,” Baekhyun said and Ara kneeled beside her prince with her hands fisted tightly in her lap.
“Y-Your Highness?” Her voice called out softly. You could hear the tremble. You could hear the terror and grief.
“You hear that, you jerk? You made Ara cry. Open your stupid eyes already.” Baekhyun’s approach had changed now. He did not quit the efforts he made with his hands over his brother’s chest, yet his voice sounded less angry and less lively. He sounded tired. He sounded broken.
Ara turned suddenly to look at you. Her face was streaked with tears and her eyes widened as if she only now realized who you were and that you were also here, living out this real life hell with her. She crawled away from her Lord, reaching for you with outstretched hands and she gripped tightly around your forearms and she pulled. You did not fight it. She had a sudden light of determination in her eyes as she did it and you could feel the rough floor scrape against your knees through the thin fabric of your pajamas.
“Your highness, the princess is here — say something to him, hurry,” Ara’s eyes pleaded and she placed your hands on his still body.
He was warm.
He was so warm. You wanted to weep with the living temperature of his skin that you could feel below the fabric of the white dress shirt he wore. You followed the path of his arm down to reach for his hand and you held it within both of your own and you let your words free from your chest.
“Kyungsoo,” you called and you squeezed his hand inside of your own.
Baekhyun bent down to Kyungsoo’s face again, breathing into his parted lips and you could see the effect of it, as his chest lifted with the motion and you lifted Kyungsoo’s hand up to your mouth to feel the warmth in his skin with your lips.
“Kyungsoo, please wake up. Please,” you begged and you squeezed. His skin was warm. He was here, all he had to do was open his eyes and you would give anything. You would give up your title. You would give up the life you had known. You would do anything not to lose him.
“Kyungsoo, please, I can't do this without you. Please wake up.”
With the breath Baekhyun had loaned him you saw his chest lift up, and then you watched his chest fall flat again and you leaned closer to his face so he might hear your voice more clearly as you spoke against his temple.
You gave him a truth.
The first of many you vowed to give him. A truth so scary and so vulnerable, you hadn’t dared to speak of it even to yourself for fear of what it meant.
“I love you, Kyungsoo. Please know that I love you.” You whispered this right into his ear and his chest that had fallen flat remained so for a spell as your confession, your first truth, drifted over his face and soaked into his skin.
Your hands that squeezed did not waver in their grip and you gasped, you gasped out loud because you felt something in that moment. With your truth out, and it’s cleansing wave that coursed over your chest — in that exact moment you absolutely swore he squeezed your hand back.
You felt him. You felt him.
Then you heard the gasp. It was rough and painful sounding and Kyungsoo gasped loudly as his entire body shook and trembled with the effort.
Immediately after the first gasp, came a loud cough and another violent gasp for breath and Kyungsoo inhaled too hard, too desperately for oxygen. He was shaking all over his body and Baekhyun dug through his bag for something; a tiny tank with a mask and rubber tubing. He was putting something over Kyungsoo’s face and Kyungsoo was swinging his free hand out, swatting, fighting, trying to get the better of the grim reaper who had surely had most of his talons in him. You held on to his hand with both of your hands, refusing to let go of him for even a second, should that demon return and try and finish what he had started.
“Shhh,” Baekhyun called out softly, “Kyungsoo, it’s me.” Kyungsoo’s eyes were still closed, despite the fight he was putting up. He struck out once, connecting with Baekhyun’s shoulder and you heard the grunt as Baekhyun absorbed the blow.
“It’s Baekhyun, you idiot!”
Another swing of his arm went from mindless to purposeful as Kyungsoo reached for the collar of the shirt Baekhyun wore and his fist wrapped tightly around the fabric and he pulled him down to where he laid flat on his back on the floor of this garage.
“Baek—”
Kyungsoo’s hoarse voice broke through as his eyelids pulled halfway open. He rolled his eyes back into his head and closed them up again and he was reeling with the shock of it all.
Your grip around his hand was so tight, you felt like you might be squeezing him too hard so you loosened the tight grip but you felt the squeeze he gave your hand in return. With his eyes closed still you could hold him like this.
An overwhelming gratitude hit you; to hear him talking, to see the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathed in and out and you lifted that hand up to your mouth and you pressed your lips against the back of his hand again and again.
The jolt of watching him turn to face you, and the cool of being caught by him as his eyes opened and he looked at you; still blinking heavily, still fighting to keep his eyes open long enough for recognition to hit him and he gasped once, in surprise, when it did— it made you drop his hand. It made you let go of him.
His hand did not fall, for he had more strength inside of him than you had inside of you. His hand remained lifted near your face where you had let go of him and you were absolutely frozen when his hand opened up and you felt the warmth of his palm land over your cheek. You even felt a brush of his thumb over the wetness below your eye.
“Kyungsoo,” you called out to him and his eyes drifted away from you again. He’d let go of the vice grip he had on Baekhyun’s collar and slipped his hand slowly down his brother’s chest and he lifted a hand to run it down the front of Baekhyun’s chest once more.
Baekhyun was busy. Despite the small silent thanks you saw in Kyungsoo’s actions, Baekhyun was attaching things around Kyungsoo’s arm, listening with a stethoscope pressed to different parts of his arm, to his chest; shining bright lights on the end of a pen into pulled eyelids; assessing the damage, checking and measuring, formulating a plan.
“Ara,” Baekhyun called out without looking up from his cell phone where he was furiously swiping and typing, “close the garage door and remove every bit of evidence that anything happened here.”
She sprung up from where she had been curled into a nervous ball by Kyungsoo’s head and she leapt first to the button near the entry doorway to close the garage door.
Kyungsoo had given in to his closing eyelids and his hand had fallen from your face on its own as he drifted away from you again.
“Help me get him up, we have to bring him inside. He destroyed the cameras in here already but inside we will be seen. He’s just very drunk, okay? Too much partying before the wedding.”
You looked up instinctively toward the corners of the garage where you would place a camera if you wanted to get a good view of the room and sure enough, the camera there had been smashed by something heavy. Bits of broken black plastic were scattered around the floor below.
“Shouldn’t we take him to the hospital, Baek?” Your concern was cresting and he merely shook his head and you helped lift the weight of the unconscious man and draped one of his arms over your shoulder to mirror the way Baekhyun did on the other side. Kyungsoo’s legs were no help and the man was heavy, but Baekhyun was surprisingly strong and you found that he carried most of his brother’s weight for you.
“No Hospitals. I called someone,” Baekhyun said with a grimace on his face and you entered the hallway dragging Kyungsoo’s heavy weight as best as you could. “Someone. A doctor I know who can keep a uhh… a secret.”
“Baekhyun...you didn’t call him, did you? I thought he didn’t know who you really were.”
“I don't really have any other choice right now. This is beyond my skill set and he’s my brother.”
Ara followed behind, with Kyungsoo’s shoes in one hand, a long black dress sock in the other and her head bowed with a grave look on her face. Her breathing was shallow and she did not look up at you as you looked upon her from behind.
Your home was the closest to the garage and you rushed to open your door so you could help Baekhyun bring Kyungsoo into your bed.
Baekhyun disappeared to your bathroom where you heard water running and then he was back, digging through his black bag again, this time pulling out several small white packages, all marked as sterile, some larger than others. He pulled blue gloves on his hands and there were tubes and a bag filled with clear liquid, a long scary looking needle and he asked you to hold Kyungsoo’s arm out and to hold it still.
You just did as you were told; still too numbed by the trauma in the garage. Still too haunted by the cold stillness you’d seen in Kyungsoo as he laid motionless on that concrete floor. That particular shade of his skin invaded your mind’s eye again and again and you flinched when a tissue landed over the back of your hand that held on firmly to Kyungsoo’s arm so Baekhyun could put in an IV.
You had been crying. You hadn’t even realized it. Someone had just handed you a tissue to wipe your tears before they could run down your face and drip all over the bed below you.
You’d expected Ara or Baekhyun to be the deliverer. What you saw when you pulled your eyes up from the spot where the needle had been covered up with white medical tape: what stole your breath from within your lungs and replaced it with an absolute void of any sort of certainty, were two eyes watching you from the pillow of your bed.
There had been a tissue box beside the bed, easily reached by his other arm. Kyungsoo was watching you without a single word spoken on his lips and he blinked his eyes slowly as you quickly wiped away the wetness on your face.
The IV was in, more tubing was stretched across his face and inserted into his nostrils so he could breathe and his eyes closed again, only this time it looked to be more deliberate than earlier when you were carrying him out of the garage. You could make out slight movements of his eyeballs under his closed lids and he inhaled a deep breath and held it for a moment before the exhale sent him into a fit of ragged coughs that pulled Baekhyun’s face up from his ringing cell phone.
Baekhyun answered and you were handed a glass of water by Ara. You wondered at her weird standoffish behavior now. You accepted the water and moved closer to where Kyungsoo’s coughing seemed to be winding down now to help him drink.
Baekhyun was gone. You’d missed his exit with the coughing. Ara — you looked around to find her gone as well; bowed out for a moment of quiet clarity perhaps. She’d been through a lot as well, and her silent deference to you, you could not quite define, but something felt different in the way she looked into your face now.
You set the glass down and Kyungsoo’s eyes followed where you moved to the bedside table. Your focus was down on the floor beside the bed. Here you found his shoes and folded carefully and inside his shoe was that single black dress sock.
It felt like a compulsion; to put him back together the way he should have always been. He was a prince in line to the throne for fuck’s sake. He was your fiancé and future husband to be. He was the man you loved. You reached for the sock and his eyes followed you as you carefully stretched it over the skin of his bare foot, patting lightly over the top of his foot to be sure it was smoothed out and free of annoying wrinkles.
You were fussing now. Bringing his shoes off the floor and setting them on the chair beside your bed and when you were certain they were neat and tidy you moved to the blankets you kept on the bench at the foot of your large bed.
You covered him and when you brought the blanket up over his chest you saw him move before you felt the warmth of his hand grab ahold of yours and those silent eyes did not leave your face once since he’d woken back up.
Your steps froze with the contact.
Your heartbeat inside your chest was annoyingly noisy. Your own breathing, gave away how incredibly anxious you felt and you wanted to cover your mouth to keep yourself in control. You did not dare move though. Something about the intensity in his eyes kept you trapped in this.
“Stay,” he spoke, at last and you closed your eyes with the tiniest request he whispered to you. Just one word, and you felt as if your legs might refuse to keep you upright any longer.
In fact, you sat down heavily into a chair you’d pulled beside the bed.
You looked into his face again and his eyes remained on you, steadfast and urgent.
You nodded your head once and you heard the exhale from his chest. An exhale of relief.
His eyes closed again and they stayed that way as you held on to his hand long enough for his tight grip to loosen.
He was asleep when Baekhyun returned wearing a sheer head wrap around the top of his head and looped back around to cover the bottom half of his face. No time for makeup tonight. You recognized the panicky way he looked into your eyes and the way his voice changed and lifted told you that Dr. Dante, his sometimes on-again, off-again something had arrived to check on the patient.
“Baekhee, I just don't understand how you found yourself in this situation — with a member of the royal family, no less. That non-disclosure agreement you made me sign sounded very scary too. What kind of emergency are we talking about? From exhaustion?”
You heard them coming before the first glimpse of them. Baekhyun had arrived through the doorway first and motioned to his visitor behind him.
“Oh you know...royals.” Baekhyun waved a dismissive hand in the air, faking confidence as best he could but you could hear the nerves manifest with the awkward way he forced a laugh. “Anyway, he’s in here.” Baekhyun’s voice trailed off and none of Dante’s original questions were ever answered. Baekhyung had aimed for flippant and unaffected but it fell flat. You heard only desperation and fear.
Dante arrived, looking as familiar as could be without wearing his white doctor’s coat and Baekhyun hovered and fretted around the man as he went to work as soon as he saw Kyungsoo on the bed. Behind his back, Baekhyun paced and wrung his hands together anxiously as if the doctor might discover something tragic that Baekhyun had missed in his examination of his brother. For all of his nervous energy, Dante didn’t seem to notice him. His focus was on Kyungsoo; checking vitals and doing much of the same intense listening through his stethoscope that Baekhyun had done in the garage.
Dante was quiet as he finished his examination and he pulled out a small vial of medication from the black bag he’d set at his feet; injecting it directly into the IV for administration.
“Some steroids for his lungs — Baekhee, what happened to him? This seems like more than exhaustion. You know I need to know the truth if I’m going to help.”
Baekhyun stood his ground for a moment; his spine straight and his lips sealed, and you could see the debate happening inside his head as he warred with himself.
When he finally had come to some decision, he merely lifted a hand and pulled the scarf free from his head and you could see the tremble in his hands as he let go of the garment and allowed it to drift to the floor at his feet.
“Male, age 27, found in an unresponsive state after acute, intentional C.O. intoxication and asphyxiation of an unknown duration. Cardiovascular event with cardiogenic shock. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation was successful and the patient regained full consciousness, but presented with agonal respiration. Upon administration of normobaric oxygen, breathing returned to normal. No signs of cardiac dysfunction or anoxic brain injury as of yet… Dante, I‘m sorry, I have been terribly dishonest with you.”
Gone was the fake voice and gone was the pretense and lies. Baekhyun stood on his two legs and faced forward without hiding anymore and your eyes danced between their two faces as if you were watching a tense standoff where both parties had loaded guns pointed directly at each other.
The surprise was evident on Dante’s face and his eyes widened as he looked back down at Kyungsoo, asleep on the bed in front of him and again up into Baekhyun’s clear face.
“Baek...Hyun? As in Prince Baekhyun? Prince? He’s…” His index finger pointed down at Kyungsoo but his eyes remained fixed on the man standing in front of him.
“He’s Prince Kyungsoo and she’s—” He was pointing at you now as the revelations hit him harder and faster.
The shock was short lived once he processed the medical information Baekhyun had given him. He had another set of supplies out of his bag and he began to draw blood from Kyungsoo’s arm. A brand new urgency was clearly evident in this situation with the string of medical terms Baekhyun had rattled off; none of which you understood.
“He needs a hospital. He needs to be in a chamber, Baekhee.”
“I don’t have one here. You heard his heart, it sounds fine. He knew who I was as soon as he regained consciousness. He isn’t just anybody. Please — he can’t go to a hospital and besides he doesn't have time for a chamber, he’s getting married tomorrow night.”
“Oh right, I heard that on the news— Are you telling me, you are actually the Prince Byun Baekhyun? I’ve seen a lot of you on the news too—But, enough C.O. To lose consciousness— Honey, his heart may not be fine. He will need close monitoring at the very least. If these labs don’t come back clear he’s going to need a chamber. I won’t be responsible for the death of a prince just to keep some royal secret.”
Their bickering back and forth had lowered in volume as they naturally gravitated closer to each other with the heated discussion. One wanting to go by the book and leave no stone unturned and the other, confident in his gut decisions about his brother and refusing to risk the backlash from the press, or worse, from the queen, if word of this got out.
Much of their talk was quiet; hushed with heads bowed together, eyes closing and heads shaking back and forth as they disagreed and countered each other’s arguments with statistics or scary medical words. The words they used were beyond your understanding and didn't quite feel like the most important exchange happening between the two tonight.
You felt your focus begin to waiver, from the words they spoke, to something you understood easier; their body language. Baekhyun’s fingertips that tugged lightly at the sleeve of Dante’s shirt as he spoke. One or two breaths from gripping the man’s arm entirely. Dante’s hand that caressed a comforting circle lightly over the small of Baekhyun’s back and then a soft touch over his cheek, just below his eye line where a single tear must have escaped; an intimate soothing motion; a slip of affection and adoration; unconditional and undeniable.
Your conscious did not let you keep watching. Their closeness and the intimacy you felt pouring off them in waves made you turn your head from it. This wasn’t a moment for you to witness. This wasn’t your fragile relationship that was growing stronger with brand new honesty that was so raw and terrifying, it took nearly losing a brother to finally risk taking a step into. It was their moment, not yours.
You felt the slick green of envy just below the sick sadness that filled your own stomach with sticks and stones.
Your mind drifted with your eyes over to Kyungsoo who slept quite soundly on your bed. Even in his current state, with ashen skin and a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead, he was beautiful.
Beautiful and miserable.
Had you caused all of this?
Your mood —a fragile rickety thing with holes in the floorboards and a single strand of thread holding your edges together — snapped.
His breathing was shallow. His lips were dry and chapped. His eyes were closed but the sleep looked dreadful and fitful.
The wetness that ran down your face was an afterthought because—
Kyungsoo had told you something earth shattering tonight; without even saying a single word to you, the message was loud and clear. It was something that you didn’t want to accept and yet now with the evidence of it sleeping in your bed right now, you didn’t have any excuses to deny it any more. It had slapped you in the face.
He didn’t want to marry you.
He would rather be dead than marry you.
This felt somehow more than rejection. You felt like you’d been cursed by God himself for your many sins and the chasm inside of you grew.
You genuinely wondered if the pain might cave you in. You felt it deep inside your chest and every gasp for breath only made the pain grow more. It was nearly incapacitating. You labored to breathe through it. You fought to keep yourself upright through the immensity inside of your chest.
So you curled into yourself, to try and subdue it, to try and quench the fire that raged for what felt like centuries now and you pulled the back of Kyungsoo’s hand up to you as you pressed your forehead against it; and you wept. You had no other response to it, but to cry.
All other sounds vanished and the tight grip you kept on his hand felt desperate.
You did not know what would happen to you if you let go of his hand. You didn’t want to try it either.
What would become of him if you let him go?
What would become of you if you lost him?
Would he do it again?
Would he try and do it again?
You did not know how long you cried for.
You had no frame of reference for this kind of pain.
A warmth landed over the top of your head, and with long sweeping brushes, it traveled achingly slow from your crown down your temple; that warmth ran a pathway over your ear before it vanished for a moment, only to land over the top of your head and travel downward again and again and again.
It moved slowly, like a fog and you felt your senses dull under its cover. Somehow, the pain that had been so bright and powerful grew further away with each sweeping pass.
Comfort, an attempt to calm the chaos happening inside of you from someone; your exhausted mind assumed to be Baekhyun, only your senses protested that the angle would have been wrong. It could not be him.
Your surprise made a sound — a half hiccup, gasping cry — when you lifted your head from the bed enough to open your eyes and held your breath to find that he was awake, Kyungsoo was awake, and he was touching you with his other hand, the one you hadn’t held hostage. He had to reach to do it. He had to pull himself up enough to get to you. It was a struggle but he did it.
His eyes were open now, you had made such a racket with your weeping. The precious sleep his body needed to recover, you’d interrupted it with your pain, yet you felt unable to control yourself. He was awake, and he was looking at you as he struggled to reach across the distance to touch you in this way that you did not in any way deserve. After all that had happened...after all you had done.
You felt lost inside of those brown eyes. He wasn't saying anything to you and his face was blank and tired. There was nothing that you could find in that expression to make sense of how he was feeling right now and yet his silence felt significant enough that you did not dare interrupt it.
A thought dawned and it was quick to rush into your mind; he was awake! This was significant and demanded action.
You looked around the room with an urgency and his hand fell with your movement, slipping back down onto the bed and he groaned out a tired moan from within his chest.
Baekhyun was gone and so was Dr. Dante. Had they left the room to give you privacy during your breakdown? Didn’t they need to check on him again; now that he was awake? Didn’t something have to be tested, or listened to? What if his breathing got bad again or what if his heart stopped?
You began to raise to your feet and you felt the pull from his hand. He gripped harder and pulled back against you.
“Don’t,” he said through a labored breath and you allowed yourself to fall back into the chair you’d been sitting in.
Thoughts and worries flew by and you opened your lips to speak but found that no words felt right. You had so much to tell him. You had so much you wanted to apologize for and so much forgiveness to beg for but that fear that had kept you company all night long still had it’s long talons hooked deep within your guts.
He seemed to want you to stay, although you couldn’t quite grasp how that could be true. He’d gone through great lengths tonight to get away from you. He’d done some unspeakable, horrible things because he did not want to marry you; probably by all reason did not even want to see your face or hear your name ever again in his lifetime, and yet the grip he kept around your hand now felt just as strong and desperate as the way you clung to him as he slept moments before.
After a moment, when your retreat was no longer a threat, his tight grip relaxed and you noticed the wince in his face as he shifted in the bed to sit up more.
“Are you okay?”
Your voice was full of instability and you wiped at the fresh stray tears that had fallen.
The question pushed at him.
It pushed hard and it pushed him away. His reaction gave you his answer. Of course not. Of course he wasn’t okay.
He looked away from you, his focus landing somewhere on the far wall of your bedroom, clearly not seeing whatever he was looking at.
His lips relaxed and his eyes glassed over as he stared ahead at nothing and you could feel the limp grip in his hand as the demons played games inside of his head again. You wanted to destroy them all. You wanted, above all else, for this man to have peace.
You wondered if it would be better if you kept quiet from now on.
A sound in the distance, a single church bell ringing into the nighttime fog touched your ears. It was one in the morning now. Past midnight on your wedding day.
“Kyungsoo.” His name was a whisper; as quiet as you could manage, as not to disturbed the delicate stillness that settled inside the room.
“I was always going to marry you.” His soft voice popped like a bubble; a splash of cool that you felt all over your skin. You looked at him as he spoke but his eyes remained in that far away place.
“Ever since I could remember, I was going to marry you. I—”
You did not move.
You did not dare breathe, for fear of tarnishing that clear tone of his voice as he spoke, so softly, of the thoughts that were dancing inside his head.
“I thought you could be the one to save me.”
His eyes were wet and he inhaled a raspy breath during the pause in his words.
“That was one of my mistakes,” he whispered, “putting you up on a pedestal.”
“Kyungsoo, I’m so sorry.”
You could not stop the apology from leaving your lips and he was shaking his head back and forth the moment the words were released into the room.
“No— No, I understand now.”
You could feel the room around you, as if it had its own gravity and had begun to spin around you in a lazy circle with you and him trapped in the middle. He couldn’t understand, not without knowing the complete truth.
Still, he spoke to you, his head still shaking back and forth as you inhaled a breath to speak again, to stop this, to tell him once and for all the whole truth of the situation.
“I understand why you did that. I would have...I would have done something worse to you if you did what I did. If you took Ara from me, like I took May from you. I don't know what I expected. For you just to...let me?”
This had to stop. He was blaming himself for something that hadn’t even happened. Sure, you’d lost May, probably forever from your life, but she was okay, wherever she had ended up. She would live and she would have a chance to be a mother to her child. Maybe she would even get to live with the man she loved. Maybe she would even get to be happy.
“Kyungsoo, you didn’t do anything. You haven’t hurt anyone, Kyungsoo. May is alive. She didn’t die. She is alive and the baby is okay. May is alive.”
The words were out and they sunk like heavy rocks at the bottom of a lake. The spinning in the room moved faster and you felt as if you might get sick from the dizziness and then there was a moment — there was a moment before he heard you, before he really heard you and you saw it happen. His mouth closed up and his eyes focused. His focus pulled and he looked into your eyes.
“What do you mean?” With his eyebrows furrowed in genuine confusion, his eyes sharpened on your face and you gripped his hand tighter just in case he thought to get up and leave. Just in case your confessions were too much for him to take. You clung to him as you spoke, borrowing his warmth a little bit to calm the storm you felt sweeping around you.
“I’m sorry. You couldn’t know, or she might not have made it. Sehun, he...he saved her, Kyungsoo. And his baby...saved them both, they are okay.”
“But the b-body they found...the records, d-dental records were a match.”
You shook your head in denial. “It was a fake. It was all a fake, to save her life. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t know what to do. I’m so sorry, please forgive me.”
“She’s...a-and the baby? I didn’t...k-kill?”
You could only nod your head in response to his quiet questions. He’d been holding it in. He’d been holding a breath for what felt like weeks perhaps. With your reassurance he finally moved and it began with his eyes closing up. Then he leaned forward, sitting up from the laid back position he had been in and you saw the small wince of pain as he moved and he came forward, closer to where you sat within your swirling spinning storm cloud.
Your salvation arrived with an exhale.
He opened up with two arms that reached out to you and the warmth of that exhale coated you from head to toe. His arms wrapped around your shoulders, pulled you into his chest; he breathed out in relief and your world finally stopped its chaotic spinning.
After his exhale came an inhale and with that came a tremble. You wrapped your own arms around him to steady him and you squeezed.
“Thank you,” his voice was low against your ear, “for coming to find me.”
“Baekhyun saved you, Kyungsoo.” It wasn't the time for you to be claiming credit for the sacrifice and struggle of others. You’d had enough of being dishonest with this man to last a lifetime. “And Ara too, she helped so much.”
“I felt you there. I heard you.”
You pulled back at this and you searched his face; looking into his eyes from much too close a distance to really be able to focus on anything, yet familiar old habits surged.
He couldn’t have actually heard. He had been gone. You’d been desperate to call him back to you.
“You...heard me?”
It was silly and childish of you to want to hide this; your love for him. Hadn’t you told yourself already you were done with it? With hiding things?
“I meant it. I do love you, Kyungsoo.”
The spinning was back, only this time it felt more internal than before. Your own heart had decided to take you on a bender.
Kyungsoo had closed his eyes and he had leaned his head with another slow exhale of breath. This exhale was deeper, from way inside himself; he let the air out slowly through his parted lips and there was the sound of something echoing through your living room that pulled at your focus.
The deep exhale set off a spasm inside Kyungsoo’s lungs and he gasped and began to cough again, letting gravity take ahold of his tired and worn body he fell back into the pillows of your bed and rolled while coughing harder into the plush bedding.
The sound you heard from out in the living room echoed now and was rhythmic with an occasional mysterious squeak.
Wheels. Something was being pushed, or dragged through your home and it was headed toward this bedroom. Kyungsoo’s coughing had subsided enough for a shaky breath when the door to the room swung open and you saw some sort of machinery with a screen and buttons, dials, and plenty of tubes atop of a wheeled contraption.
The man pushing the device entered just behind and in his other hand, he dragged something else, a big flat white board.
“Listen up, motherfucker, because I am only going to say this once,”
Baekhyun positioned the white board squarely in front of the bed and he stuck the capped end of a marker between his teeth, pulled the top off and blew it across the room where it landed with a hollow clatter against your wooden floor.
He lifted the marker to the board and began drawing a series of emoji type faces in what appeared to be order of misery. On one end the tears were large and dramatic as was the frowny face, and on the other, an unbothered happy smile without a care in the world. There were then numbered one to five, five being the worst pain, and Baekhyun moved below the row of faces as he got to work sectioning the big board off into four areas.
“My name is Baek-hyun,” his marker worked furiously as he penned out the letters of his name in one section on the board, pausing to speak out each syllable as he wrote them down. “I am your nurse for the night.” In front of his name he wrote the word nurse and he underlined it twice. The marker squeaked noisily with each line he drew.
“You are on su—i—cide watch,” each syllable was emphasized as he read aloud and enunciated by loud squeaks as the marker moved. He wrote this out very carefully and in large block letters.
You noticed in the box below he had written a small dx which you gathered was his official diagnosis for Kyungsoo’s condition. Baekhyun moved his marker to this section of his board now and began speaking before he wrote anything down.
“Because you are a dumb asshole,” the marker squeaked out loud as he underlined the two words written down; his official record of what Kyungsoo’s current affliction was.
Each glance you stole at the man laying in the bed was met with only a flat and blank expression. You wondered at Kyungsoo’s self control again and again as Baekhyun went on, clearly on some sort of mission to teach a lesson about what happened tonight.
After he was finished writing, he tossed the marker down and lifted a hand to motion at the top section of the board where the faces had been drawn.
“How would you describe your current pain level?”
His voice had suddenly lifted with the question and you saw the passive smile he pulled to his face. This was Baekhyun in full on, petty, yet weirdly professional nurse mode.
Kyungsoo did not speak right away and you heard a rattle as Baekhyun reached into the front pocket of his bachelorette party pajama bottoms and pulled out a white bottle of pills. He shook it lightly and the sound echoed around the room.
“Umm...my ribs really hurt.”
“Nuh-uh-uh…” Baekhyun waved a scolding finger and lifted a finger to point at the faces on the board.
“Maybe...three or four?” Kyungsoo followed the rules and Baekhyun slipped the bottle of pills back inside his pocket as he crossed his arms over his chest and faced the man in the bed who was rubbing lightly over his ribcage.
“Right here, hurts bad — hurts like—”
“Hurts like you died in my arms and I had to nearly crack your ribs to restart your heart? Hurts like I nearly lost my own fucking brother forever? Hurts like that?”
Baekhyun’s words flew past you fast like piercing arrows and you inhaled sharply as they moved through you. You had to close your eyes tight to keep upright and mentally present in this.
Kyungsoo did not respond but his jaw snapped shut quickly and his eyes fell from his brother’s demanding eyes for a minute as his mind worked out a response.
After a moment he lifted his eyes and he spoke with complete sincerity to his brother.
“Thank you, Baekhyun. I mean it.”
“Are you going to do it again?” Gone was the friendly, professional nurse. This was Baekhyun’s honest and vulnerable fear speaking.
“No.”
Baekhyun looked into Kyungsoo’s eyes and he did not move. Kyungsoo held his gaze securely and did not let go and they stood their ground until someone finally gave in with a sigh of concession.
Baekhyun exhaled and reached into his pocket again for what you thought was the pain medicine and instead of pulling out the white bottle you saw him hold up two small bright orange colored tablets gripped between his thumb and index finger.
“I am prepared to offer you a single adult dose of regular strength over the counter pain relief medicine. You may have one dose now, and another in four hours. Take it or leave it.”
“Baek— it really hurts.”
“Take it or leave it,” Baekhyun lifted the pills higher into the air as he lifted his eyebrows, daring the man on the bed to challenge him on this.
“What was in the other bottle?”
“Don’t you worry about the other bottle. I guess that means you’ll leave it.” Baekhyun made a motion to stick the pills back inside his pocket and Kyungsoo lifted a hand with a hiss and a dramatic wince. “Okay. Okay. Give me the Advil.”
The medicine had been handed over and you helped Kyungsoo with the water glass so he could swallow it down as Baekhyun got to work with the other wheeled device he had arrived with.
He was turning it on and attaching stickers to Kyungsoo’s body in strategic spots. Something else with a light on it was taped to his index finger and the screen came to life with a traveling line, soft beeping and numbers on the side of the screen that told Baekhyun details that his stethoscope could not.
The spinning inside your head had shifted into a dull ache that pulled at your eyelids and you rubbed a palm over the side of your temple. You’d been too stressed today. You’d been too worried and too sickened by what you had been through and the toll was beginning to manifest into a what seemed to be turning into a killer headache.
After a few more attempts at blinking the pain away you gave in and asked.
“Baek, do you have any more pain medicine? I have a headache from today.”
Baekhyun’s focus pulled up from the monitors and he quickly nodded his head up and down as he reached into his pocket.
“I have acetaminophen only. It’s not too strong but it’ll help a bit.”
You accepted his offering with a smile and swallowed the pills down once they were placed into the palm of your hand and Baekhyun watched your face for a few seconds with a strange look developing in his eyes.
He furrowed his brows and reached into his front pocket on the other side and pulled out two white pills that he held in the palm of his hand and seemed to be looking down at very closely with his mouth moving, but no words coming out.
“Uhh…” he spoke up and you felt a sinking inside of you at this sudden and strange behavior from the man.
“What?”
“Uhh...this is,” he was pausing with his words and you heard a tone of alarm in his voice that was unmistakable, “this is in no way related to the pills you just swallowed, but how good are you with uhh...hypnotic sedatives—barbiturates, drugs like that?”
“Baekhyun what did you just give me?”
“Nothing...nothing...nothing, bad. Shit. Just...I think you might have taken my ludes.”
He was serious. He’d just accidentally given you some mystery drug from his pocket o’pills and it didn't sound like he really knew exactly which pills you had taken. He was holding a small handful of them now, all different colors and sizes, turning each one over and looking closely at the words or numbers or symbols written on the surface of each one.
“Yep. She definitely took the ludes. Okay, Princess, I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen. First you're going to start feeling very nice. And I mean nice-nice. Like you’re probably going to want to fuck someone or maybe hold something soft, do you have any stuffed animals? My point is, it's not the worst thing you could have accidentally swallowed from my stash.”
“You had ludes and you gave me Advil?” Kyungsoo sounded genuinely offended with his brother and you let go of Kyungsoo’s hand and lifted your own hands to your chest, touching around your throat with your fingers, contemplating sticking your fingers down your throat to make yourself vomit.
“Baekhyun, am I going to die?”
“Of course not. Of course you won't die. I’m a nurse and I’m going to take care of you and look, you have Kyungsoo here too in case you get excited or something. You—you should lay down.”
The Price of Privilege [M]: - part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8 , part 9 , part 10 , part 11, part 12 , part 13 , part 14, part 15
