The Price of Privilege - Part 11 (A Kyungsoo Series)
Genre: ANGSTY 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
How had it come to this?
There were a few seconds when you touched him. It wasn’t that he allowed it but Kyungsoo no longer remained present inside of his own mind and simply did not fight the burden of your hands on him.
In those few seconds, when your hands ran along his trembling shoulders and his body shook with the ragged sobbing that took what was left of your heart and splintered it to match his own — in those few seconds when the sticky warmth of his skin connected with your cold fingertips your words jumped up your throat and bounced along the back of your tongue — in those seconds, you wavered.
“K-Kyungsoo...no,” you aren’t a monster — they wanted to spill out. — May is alive. The truthful words, the reality behind the lies and the tricks and the whole honest-to-god of it all. You tasted it. It tasted nice, like fresh clean water in the hot desert sun. You wanted to swallow it down and quench the thirst that raged through your body, drying up your cells and making your brain go mad with the need for it. You felt like you were dying without it.
You could stop his pain. The tears that spilled from his closed eyes and ran down his face that he made no move to dry. You could tell him the truth; May was alive and the ruse had been a ploy by Sehun to save her life; to save his baby. Kyungsoo didn’t kill her. He didn’t kill that innocent life that grew in her belly. They had only needed to trick him and the queen up to this point and now that she was alive and you would swear upon your whole life to him that her safety was the only goal. You never wanted to deceive him.
Would he buy it for a second?
Would he really believe that this convenient moment of spare honesty was somehow superior to the countless piles of lies you were now buried under?
And what of the tape.
What of the evidence you had gathered against him; evidence that could destroy him, strip him of his title, probably even be used to execute him if the tape was spun against him in the right way. A prince in line for the throne, found to have dealt the killing blow to a powerful monarch — his own mother, what kind of monster indeed — then gone through great lengths to cover it up.
The public would demand his head.
You had known of the tape’s existence because of May. You’d known of Kyungsoo’s involvement in his mother’s death for the same reason. May knew of the tape because of Sehun and Sehun had the most to gain from exposing Kyungsoo as a murderer and a traitor to the crown. With Kyungsoo out, Sehun would be that much closer. Sehun’s own flesh and blood brother Jongin would be next in line and he would gain that much more influence and power. Power was something Kyungsoo believed every single one of his brothers craved like oxygen. His mistrust in them went deep and no amount of your insisting that they weren’t out to destroy him would make him believe you hadn’t committed the ultimate betrayal.
He would not let you live. If Kyungsoo knew the truth — that he was not the monster he called himself, that he was not responsible for another death, but a victim of your lies — surely he would not let you live.
Maybe your life was easy to give him. You had never had much of one to be honest.
But all the others?
He would exact his revenge with a strong swift hand that would reach out to your family, your country at home whose government; whose people stood to lose so much if this marriage did not take place. How many would starve when the economy failed? Families would suffer and children would die. Your father, who had promised so much to his people would shoulder the blame and shame would follow your family’s name for generations.
Your honesty would spare Kyungsoo of this pain but so many others would suffer. So many innocents would die.
You had always known that this marriage was not about you. It was not about Kyungsoo. It was bigger than even the both of you combined and it had the power to crush and the power to destroy. It had the power to save lives and feed children and the lives of so many people depending on you and him just owning up to the task and doing what was expected of you — doing what you had promised.
You wavered in those few seconds. You teetered along the edge your choice. One choice to spare him and him alone of this monumental pain; a salve of honesty that would destroy everything you had been trained your whole life to protect.
His skin felt alive and raw under your comforting hands for those few seconds and your words pushed up to the tip of your tongue before you swallowed them back down and exhaled a soft cry from deep inside your body. You could feel the warm wetness of the tears that ran down your face and you let them fall as you swallowed down the honesty.
You deserved this pain for the crimes you were committing against the man you loved.
The polished marble floor felt like ice against your knees and you sank hard, ignoring the pain that shot through your limbs with the impact.
How had it come to this?
How did you come so far from the way of the righteous? How had you forsaken your own morals and abetted in the destruction of this beautiful human being?
The suffocating sobs were quieting down and Kyungsoo gasped in deeply for breath; his nose too stopped up to be of any use he gasped through parted lips and his eyes that had been sealed tight to the world opened slowly with the plea for air his lungs made.
You still touched him, shamelessly and with these disgusting traitorous hands. You ran your palms over his shoulders, down his forearms, soaking in the warmth of his skin that seeped through the shirt he wore and when his eyes opened you felt the first bit of it, the first bit of him coming alive and coming out of the grief that had nearly drowned him.
The first gasp of precious air was for his lungs but the second was for strength against your hands. He inhaled into the recoil and his arms rose swiftly, pushing hard against your hands that you dared to touch him with. Just enough to break the contact. Just enough to give him that precious space he needed away from you and the multitude of your sins against him. Some he knew of; others he did not.
And as quickly as it began; the sadness, the grief, the all consuming anguish, and the pain, that rose from deep within his chest to swell over his entire being, it stopped. You watched his face as he blinked once and then twice, the second much slower than the first, and the muscles in his face relaxed down to near nothingness as he exhaled every last bit of air from inside of his lungs.
Kyungsoo inhaled a deep breath and he stared ahead of himself into the emptiness of the room, not seeing, nor feeling, nor living - and he turned off.
His hands hung lifelessly in his lap; knuckles red with clotting blood and the rapid and complete shift in his demeanor was alarming enough for you to gasp in a startled breath.
You had no words to give him that could fix it and the touch of your hands had been the last thing he wanted; yet you felt desperate for something, for anything —
“Kyungsoo.” You whispered his name into the silence that had enveloped his existence and he did not move or blink when you called his name.
“Kyungsoo,” you said again and this time you heard the raspy inhale of air he took to inflate his lungs and you saw the gentle part of his lips with the air he pulled.
Would he speak to you? Would he have anything to say about his part in, what he believed was the death of your best friend? Would he have any more to speak about your monumental betrayal of his trust?
“I suppose this makes us even now,” he whispered with a tired hoarseness in his throat and his eyes refused to meet yours despite the desperation with which your eyes crawled over the features of his profile.
Kyungsoo stood on trembling legs and his eyes did not glance in your direction once as he left you. You could not bring your eyes to follow his retreat. His gaze would have no reason to touch upon a woman he abhorred. You had no courage to watch the back of his head, the back of his shoulders, or the stumble of unease in his legs as he left you.
Instead, you watched the broken empty space he once occupied; the dents in the wall where his fist had collided, and the red stains of his blood that painted the scene and the sound of his exit afforded you but a moment of silence before the murmur of voices absconded and strangers began to fret and fuss around you, but not necessarily about you. No. Not one of them was there for you. You had no one here.
Hushed complaints about the damage to the room and to the groom’s suit. Judgements about the precious time wasted on aired dirty laundry that could have been spent on receiving deliveries or fixing decorations or preparing for this abomination of a wedding that would take place in two days time.
Whispers and rumors.
Gossip and scandal.
Strangers’ fingers touched you no more than was necessary to dress you in your own clothing and relinquished you to other strangers who steered you with light fingertips — what you wouldn’t give for just one warm palm against your back. In the backseat of a black sedan you sat alone and gripped your own hands tightly together in your lap and you daydreamed of the warmth and pressure of May’s hand.
The rest of the contact with every other human was superficial and shallow and your chest ached for what you had lost in such a short amount of time.
When you found yourself again; when the dust around the day had settled and the sunlight began to lessen and the nagging unease inside of you that begged for something to happen grew too noisy to ignore; the pull for action led to the item you had been avoiding since it came into your possession.
Your room was as you had left it. The boutique shopping bag delivered by Jun sat beside your bedside table and you could tell by the careful placement of the tags on the garments inside that it had remained undisturbed since he had given you the device that would play the tape.
The tape. Kyungsoo’s video tape.
You’d hidden it well; inside a gap in the third from the bottom shelf on the left hand side of your walk in closet. The gap at the back, between the shelf and the wall, was small enough that one would be unable to spot anything off about it and as you reached a hand into the shelf and felt around the tiny space you felt the flat plastic edges of the small rectangle that had been the source of so much pain in your life.
You might have thought that the unknown was the hardest part about this tape. And while, yes, not knowing what could be on it was a major cause of grief and anxiety for you up until this moment, now the significant agony was the memory of the look in his eyes when he had learned exactly what you had done to him to get your hands on this little thing. The worst had already been done. It was now time to find out why. The reason why you had to do this had to be on this tape.
Your limbs worked on autopilot and you pulled out the laptop May had left behind. Below the garments in the bag sat a rectangle shaped device and what looked to be a larger version of the tiny tape you had in your hand. A center section popped out and you ignored the tremble in your fingers as you clicked the lid closed and carefully connected wires into their respective inputs until you had a rudimentary set up with a player for playing the video, software on the laptop to view and record video and wires running between the two. When plugged into the wall outlet, everything hummed to life with friendly little lights as if the secrets contained within this tape did not have the power to destroy entire worlds.
The first time you pressed play, the video player merely clicked and turned itself back off. A light knock on the side of your temple for your slight in memory was all it took to straighten yourself back out and you remembered that these old tapes required rewinding in order to play from the beginning. It was a little button and the device whirled to life, spinning fast and noisily until it reached the end of tape and another click signaled that the action had been completed.
The button was silent and waiting.
You had come this far.
You pressed play and the screen came to life before you. The software playing the video allowed you to record it as well and you hit the little red circle button as soon as the video began to play, understanding the importance of what you might witness. You knew the video would be backed up on the cloud, as May had always reminded you the importance of keeping back-ups of the really important things.
The beginning of the video was grainy. A view obstructed by a haze of blue. You could only hear bits and pieces of a voice speaking softly to someone else.
It was a woman’s voice and her words were sweet in tone.
‘I got you this to protect you,’ she said, and there was no response at first. And you heard his name, spoken louder, over the sounds of perhaps a television, although the video was still covered by a blue haze that prevented you from seeing anything.
‘Kyungsoo,’ she called again and you heard the first bits of a child’s voice. There was a sound of loud crackling that made the small speakers of your laptop pop with the volume and the video was flooded with light and with the image of him.
His smiling face; he had to be no older than 10 but he was small, and his face full of innocence and joy as his eyes widened on your screen, his gaze fell directly into yours as he looked right into the face of the teddy bear his mother had just given him.
‘You have to remember to bring it back to me once a week, Okay?’ Her voice was calling out to him and grew quieter before disappearing completely as the video turned abruptly sideways and bounced and shook wildly, occasionally catching the view of his tiny feet hitting the cobblestone and then his shoes bouncing atop bright green grass. Then you landed with a thump on your side in what could only be described as a makeshift tent hidden somewhere on the palace grounds; far away from the sounds of anyone or anything that might disturb this adorable child’s very important work.
He was a tiny chef. You saw actual pots and pans and a little boy crouched in front of them, grabbing handles and flipping up rocks and sticks; spilling the contents out onto the ground below without a care. He shouted orders out to his imaginary kitchen staff and rang an imaginary bell when his dish was perfected. He paused once to set you upright from where you had fallen over and you had a better view of the piles of mud and leaves he had carefully arranged on a stolen dinner plate. You lamented that you could not answer the many questions he asked you; his visiting teddy bear friend who had joined him for dinner this evening.
He was playing. He was happy and he was full of so much life and so much energy.
As the video played you fell into it. Giggling with the games he played and growing attached to this happy little boy who didn’t say much to others but seemed to find great comfort in talking to himself and sometimes to you, the teddy bear, who carefully watched him play. While the recording quality was low and grainy, sometimes hard to make out with great clarity what exactly was going on, you soon realized that you had been let into a substantial chunk of the very young life of Do Kyungsoo. Yet you knew, if you wanted to make any significant progress in viewing this thing before your wedding, that you would need to speed up the playback to get through it all.
You’d grown tired of sitting and waiting after the first hour watching without sound as the recording played at 5 times the normal speed and occasional images of a messy bedroom, or that empty tent flew by the screen.
Surely something would happen on the screen. Something significant enough to catch your attention. Something profound enough to signal you to slow down the playback and pay attention.
You half watched now, noting how the lighting shifted as the day turned to night and then to day again. You clicked again to speed up the playback after the two hours of watching the same bare tent wall with nothing happening.
Occasionally, and it was shocking each time it happened, his sweet face would appear — lips moving quickly with smiles that reached his eyes and some toy in his hand that flew around, attacking some other toy in his hand — and you’d slow the playback down to real time to hear the booming battle sounds he made with his mouth.
As the video played, again at super speed since the camera had obviously been left in an empty room alone for a very long time, you let the video run away with it until you saw movement again, walking away a few times to eat or use the bathroom. After long you found mind drifting and you struggled to pay close attention again, occasionally slowing the video to listen to the sounds of some video game, a child’s screaming and laughter, the sounds of play, the view of a tree blowing in the wind on the other side of an enormous window.
The change happened overnight.
The video ran for long, too long and nothing seemed to happen. Yet you sat up straighter in your seat when the sudden realization hit you. The video had been playing fast, super speed, yet the image of the little boy sitting in a ball on the floor was not moving.
With the speed it was playing at he should have been buzzing about the room with toys or running back and forth but in the video, Kyungsoo had been curled around himself on the floor by the window for hours now.
You reached for the video controls and switched to normal speed. But of course, if he did not move at five times the speed he would be absolutely motionless at normal speed.
You sped the video up again, moving even faster this time; looking to move past this stillness. You saw someone enter the room, leave some food for him which he did not touch, and the image of his tiny body curled into himself merely shifted as he fell over into the hardwood floors and fell asleep.
You moved again, maxing out the speed with which the video could play and you watched his tiny body sometimes rise to move lifelessly through his room. Occasionally eating to survive. Getting up only once onto his bed to sleep. Most times, falling asleep on the floor in front of that window. Never once touching any of the toys and games that filled his room. Never once gracing your eyes with his sweet laughter or glorious play again.
He was just gone and it had happened overnight.
Only, what the video showed you wasn’t anything substantial that could be of any use to nearly anyone. Except perhaps a therapist.
The video only showed a beautiful, once happy child changed into the broken shell of a person that you sometimes saw behind those big eyes of his.
The trance-like way he stared ahead of himself, neither crying nor raging, felt achingly familiar and you recalled the last few moments you had with him in the dressing room. After the grief had subsided and his heart and mind turned off any and all traces of humanity — to protect himself.
You saw three days fly by. Three days of this broken child sitting alone and the video ended with the bear sitting in the exact same corner of his bedroom and Kyungsoo sitting motionless by the window.
But, what had happened before this? You had seen nothing that was significant at all. A bit of a child playing, you recalled from the earlier playback, and then the bear was left somewhere without him for a while.
You replayed the day again after the video finished copying into the hard drive of the laptop, moving at twice the speed to save on time. There was some movement as the camera traveled and it changed hands. You saw different shoes and the camera moved between a few different people until it landed into the hands of someone who wore a suit — security of the house, or a butler perhaps and then the view was simply Him, in his room, shell shocked and destroyed.
This tape didn’t have any incriminating evidence against the young child and definitely didn’t show a murder. If anything it showed a complete failure on the part of any of the adults in his life to give enough of a shit about him to protect him, to protect his heart, to help him overcome the soul crushing grief of losing a parent.
What you saw was neglect.
What you saw was apathy and it was criminal.
It made you feel sick to your stomach and the image of that small child sitting alone sat in the back of your eyeballs for a long while after the tape quit playing and the screen of your laptop timed out and shut off.
The regret came to your first. It surged up fast and hot inside of your chest and you felt the tremble in your lips and the burning in your eyes a split second before you felt the wave of guilty water coat over the top of your head.
This?
Had this been it?
Had you been sent on a wild goose chase by May and Sehun to occupy you, to destroy the faith you had in Kyungsoo and to weaken the union the two of you would make?
Had you really destroyed the man you loved, for this? A video of his pain and his grief after losing his mother?
You had been so sure. It was May. Your May. You loved her, she was your very best friend and she had never once lied to you before. Sinful secrets with Sehun aside, this was May!
The image of that little boy flashed into your mind once more and you closed your eyes tight, feeling the unshed tears slip down your face.
When you opened them again, the silence of your own room bore down on you, heavy and destitute. You looked around your large and empty space and the clocks on the wall talked to each other with out of sync ticks, leaving you out of their inside jokes.
You were alone.
You’d lost May.
You’d lost Kyungsoo.
The silence was stifling.
How could you even begin to repair this?
If you spent the rest of your life apologizing for what you’d done, would he ever forgive you?
Maybe if you returned the tape. Maybe if you told him the truth about May. Maybe if you fell down to your knees and begged his forgiveness. Maybe if you vowed to sacrifice your entire life for him.
The sour mood dragged you down fast and you reached for the damned tape, angrily popping it out of the player and gripping it hard inside of your hand. This thing that had been dangled in front of your gullible face and you had fallen for every word so easily.
Your thoughts were a jumble of anger, guilt, loneliness, sadness. You wanted to scream. You wanted to cry. You wanted to talk to somebody, but you had no one. Not a single person inside the walls of this enormous palace who was on your side. No one who was a friend.
Their faces flashed through your mind and with each pass through every single member of the royal family and even through the help, even May, even Ara when you began to feel a little too desperate, one face in particular kept returning to you.
One person who felt, somehow, different than the others
One person who was closer. Who you had already cried in front of once, maybe even twice. One person who was just as lost and confused with even being alive. Perhaps you could run some of your thoughts by him. Perhaps you didn’t have to go into exact details, if you just left out some incriminating details.
You raised your hand to knock on the door.
You didn’t even have a hard time finding his place this time. Although you couldn’t be sure of his motivations with Sehun and with May, you at least trusted him enough to be your alibi. You at least had some faith in him as a friend. Maybe he would be too drunk to be any use. Maybe you could spill all of your secrets to him and he wouldn’t remember them in the morning.
When Baekhyun pulled the door open you took note of a few things immediately. He was wide awake, at three in the morning. And even though he was wide awake so late, Baekhyun was completely sober.
“Oh. Hello,” he said softly, without much of the usual fire and mischief that usually sat inside of his eyes, Baekhyun looked into your face with a little cock of his head and a tiny smile on his lips.
He looked at you for a moment and the tilt of his head straightened out as he pulled the front door of his room open further and he took a step back, clearing the way for you to come inside of his home.
“I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you,” you said softly and he shook his head just a tiny bit. His stance was inviting and you found your legs carrying you through the threshold, stepping lightly into his foyer where you slipped out of your shoes.
You didn’t understand why you felt so at ease with Baekhyun.
Perhaps it was the ultra casual way he looked at you and spoke with you. Although not an equal by any means, he was a self proclaimed bastard with no prospects. You were, down to your DNA, a rightful heir to a kingdom and he was...well, he was…
“Let me guess…” Baekhyun began speaking slowly the moment his eyes left your face and watched down at your feet as you slipped into the slippers you found there.
You looked up into his face when he didn’t immediately guess and you found his eyes tossed up into the air with a finger poised against his face, deep in thought and you scoffed out a tiny chuckle. Your first of the day.
“Umm...cold feet?” His teeth bared with the last syllable and his lips pursed into a small pout when you sighed and shook your head, inhaling a breath ready to speak, to answer him, to come up with some excuse as to why you would show up at his door in the middle of the night, two — actually, now, one full day before your wedding day.
“No, no..let me guess,” he spoke before you could get any words out and he was taking smaller steps into his home as you followed behind him.
It was clean this time. Gone was the booze filled kiddie pool that had occupied the living room the last time you came. You didn’t see a single empty liquor bottle or empty can of beer and all the rooms around you had open doors and they all looked to be unoccupied with sleeping hookers. There wasn’t a single speck of white powder on any of the shiny surfaces of the home and the place smelled as clean as it looked.
He sat down on the sofa and tucked his feet under himself, patting the seat directly beside him for you to sit down as well and you did as you were told. There was a weariness that washed over you as you sat down and you leaned against the plush sofa feeling like you might never be able to get up again if you stayed here for too long.
Baekhyun inhaled sharply and snapped his fingers in front of him, a charming smile widened across his face.
“I’ve got it!” You were pretty sure he didn’t have it, but his enthusiasm was adorable and you felt another tiny chuckle leave your chest. “You have come to the extremely correct conclusion that you have picked the wrong prince to marry and have come to take me up on my many offers.”
You had leaned your head back against the sofa and closed your eyes just for a little while and his guess made you smile right before you opened your eyes back up again to look at his face and let him down gently.
A small head shake was all it took to drop the raised eyebrow from his face and pull his wide triumphant smile into more of a thoughtful pout.
“Okay, I give up. Tell me.”
“Are all you done guessing now?” The smile remained on your lips simply because it was him. He had a power inside of him to lift your darkest moods.
“What’s the point,” he shrugged, “if you aren’t here to run away with me.” He was kidding, of course. You could hear it in the easy delivery and flippantly dismissive words. This was Baekhyun’s charm. Nothing bothered him. Nothing ever destroyed him completely. He was Prince Baekhyun. The nation’s trouble maker. The illegitimate bastard of the king and, who was it again? The rumors had been harsh. Did those words roll off his back as easily as everything else did?
The son of a whore.
“I just needed a friend, Baekhyun.” Your voice betrayed a bit of your weariness with the sigh that preceded your declaration and Baekhyun had gone quite still and quiet beside you when you said it.
Baekhyun, who was, at his very core, a fidgety person, had gone still and when you opened your eyes again he was watching you without a smile on his face and with what had to be a look of confusion in his eyes.
“A friend?” He said it so low, had he not been completely still you might have missed it.
You nodded once, not quite understanding the odd look you saw on his face.
“...and that friend is...” he was squinting at you now, with his head turned and not quite looking at you head on anymore but his hand was up again and one shaking finger was pointed toward his own chest. With his mouth he shaped out the word me but he didn’t actually say it out loud.
“You,” you said with a bit more conviction than you thought was necessary and the squinting evened out into the regular confused look he had on his face at the beginning of this friend talk.
“Do you… do you need money? Or do you maybe… need a fix of something…” he was running through the possibilities out loud now. “Or maybe…”
Was this really such a stretch to him?
“No, Baekhyun. I don’t need anything from you. Just — I just wanted to see a friend. I promise, that’s all.” He was watching your face carefully. Probably still judging your words for their honesty and after a bit of silence you felt the characteristic tremble of his legs shaking as he resumed all of his usual fidgety behavior.
While you hadn’t exactly been Miss Popular in your life, you had at least had May, but something about Baekhyun’s reaction made you a tad uneasy. Why was you offering your friendship such a far-fetched idea? Maybe he didn’t like your company. Maybe it was unwanted.
“If...that’s okay with you.” You supplied sheepishly, suddenly losing what little confidence you had in this plan. “I just thought that we seemed to get along.”
Baekhyun inhaled and exhaled a long slow breath before angling his torso toward where you offered your flawed but no-strings-attached friendship to him.
“Okay,” he said once and his head bobbed forward as if he danced to the beat of a song that wasn’t playing.
“Okay. A friend. I have a friend.”
You offered a grin in response and breathed in a steadying breath. But it wasn’t enough. You felt the strange awkwardness that coated the back of your tongue and Baekhyun cleared his throat nervously and looked away from your face now.
Perhaps this was just a little new to you. What exactly did friends do with each other anyway?
Talk? Watch movies together and play games together? Joke around and laugh together? Sit awkwardly on a sofa and avoid eye contact until one of you slips and catches the other one looking and has to cover his mouth to keep from spitting out in anxious laughter.
Baekhyun was giggling now and you bit down on your bottom lip to keep from laughing along too loudly. It took a moment for some of the awkwardness to fade and even then you felt the need to spark up some sort of conversation to ease into this new friendship.
“Baekhyun, can I ask you something?” You slipped into it a moment after his giggles died down and he looked up from the nail polish he had been scraping off of his nails.
“Oh God, you do want money,” he said immediately without missing a beat and you laughed and rolled your eyes at the question.
“Why did you help Sehun out?”
It wasn’t a selfish question to ask. Not entirely. You were genuinely curious about why someone who had nothing to gain from it, would put his life on the line by going against the queen. By lying to the throne and for the part he played in faking May’s death like that.
Baekhyun was quiet for a moment and stuck a finger inside his mouth, now using his teeth to scrape off the remains of the pink polish.
“Well, there’s a baby, you know.” He finally said with a shrug. “Somebody should take care of the baby. It’s not like they have any say in this.”
He had moved on to the next finger and bits of dried polish sat scattered all over his lap.
“Babies are innocent. And he shouldn’t lose his mother just because of who his father is.”
You nodded your head, not bringing to his attention his slip of calling the baby a he. Even though this early in the pregnancy, the gender of the baby still couldn’t be determined even with advanced ultrasounds.
You felt too exhausted to correct him and who knows, maybe Baekhyun knew something about it that you didn’t.
You looked around with your sleepy eyes, noting how every single light in this place was on and you could see a stack of boxes off toward the side of his kitchen. Close to the room you had been in the last time you visited. The only clean room in the house at the time. From what you could see from your view on the sofa, it seemed like the walls might be a different color in there.
“Why are you awake so late? What were you doing?”
Baekhyun followed your eyes and looked behind him toward the strangely pristine room that he kept in his home.
“I’m redecorating.”
He declared it with a wide smile; abandoning his quest to rid himself of the pink nail polish with his teeth. He stood up from the sofa becoming re-interested in what you had interrupted with your arrival.
“You wanna come and help me pick? I can’t decide on which curtains I want to use.”
You welcomed the distraction and rose to follow him into the bedroom which you swore had been completely brand new and unused the last time you’d seen it. You knew what packaging creases looked like on pillow cases. You even smelled the new walls back then; just a touch of fresh paint, covered with some pretty scent in a warmer on the dresser.
When you stepped inside the room, the color on the walls was indeed different and even the flooring which once had a soft plush carpeting had been replaced with polished wood.
The furniture was brand new and sitting just enough away from the walls to tell you that the soft blue he had selected wasn’t quite dry enough for anything to be resting up against it.
He grabbed two packages from atop the brand new, plastic covered mattress and held them up for you to see. One was a shade darker than the other, with a gentle striped pattern and the other was sheer bright white. Honestly, either would look perfectly fine with the color of the walls and you shrugged and pointed to the sheer curtains.
“Can’t go wrong with natural light,” you said and he flung the rejected curtains out of the door and began to rip with his teeth at the packaging around the new curtains you chose.
You noticed he still had a speck of bright pink nail polish stuck to his bottom lip and you leaned in close with your fingers outstretched to carefully pluck the pink off. He stopped moving his mouth just long enough for your fingertips to come into contact with his skin and the moment you felt the warmth of him you heard the gasp of breath from his surprise. You saw the widening of his eyes too and they crossed as he tried to look down at your hand descending on his face.
Had you made a mistake? You didn’t think that touching would be off limits but Baekhyun sure seemed surprised enough by the motion.
Nevertheless you got the bit of pesky pink off his lip and it was stuck to your finger now. You held it up for him to see what you had been after but he was staring at your face with a far away look inside his eyes
“You had some nail pol—”
Your words were cut off when he leaned into you quickly and covered your mouth with his own.
Baekhyun was kissing you on the lips. He was kissing you, why? What? It came as such a shock that you had a one second where every bit of rational thinking just stopped. It was a genuine surprise; you were frozen with it and when the warmth of his exhale, through his nose passed over your face, it signaling for you to wake up and do something about this.
You pulled yourself away from him, and you lifted both of your hands to lay over his chest. The push was slight, and the second your lips left his he took a step back and away from you.
“I’m sorry,” he said immediately and there was a look of genuine surprise in his eyes as he lifted his hand up to his own face. He covered his parted lips and you saw a trembling in his hands.
“Baekhyun, what—”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I don’t know...I’m not good at this. Shit,” the trembling in his hands was worse the more he apologized and you saw wetness inside his eyes. “You’re not going to leave, are you? I’m sorry, I fucked up. I won't do it again. Please, I’m sorry. Don't leave.”
He sounded like he was close to panicking with the shaking you saw and the first drop of wetness you saw on his cheek.
“Baekhyun, it’s okay,” you said over the rambling he was doing and he closed his eyes tightly and laid a hand over his chest in some attempt to control his reaction.
“Baekhyun, it was a mistake, it’s okay. I’m not mad at you.” You reached out your hands for him, coming just short of touching him and his breathing was fast as his face screwed together with a look of intense discomfort.
“What—” He panted through gritted teeth and his eyes were closed tightly. “—do you want from me?”
“Baekhyun, I don’t want anything. I just wanted to see you, that’s all. I promise!” There was only so many times you could say it before the frustration of his misunderstanding your intentions with him became too much.
“People want drugs, or favors, or money, or sex from me,” he raised his voice suddenly and spun on his heels to face you and his eyes were wide and red from the heightened emotions running through him.
You shook your head, insisting that you had no such intentions in approaching him tonight. But the seriousness that you saw in his eyes took away the frustration you’d been feeling. In its place, a new emotion was surging through you.
It was worry. You looked at him in a new light now. Seeing the anxious energy that was radiating off of him. The fidgeting and the rapid speech. The trembling in his hands and the tears that slipped out of his eyes even as he blinked fast, trying to dry them, trying to fight this, you softened your voice to him and reached for him, at last.
You felt the warmth of his arm and gripped a hand lightly around his bicep. He was tense and his muscles were clenched down hard, yet when you touched him, he did not flinch away from you.
“Baek, are you okay? When is the last time you slept? Did you eat today?”
With your touch, his breathing began to slow and he blinked much slower. There was a pause in his movement and you felt the weight of him lean against your arm. The signal of his acceptance of your comfort made you open your arm and pull him in, wrapping an arm around his back to rub and shush calming circles over his shirt.
“I—I have to finish this.” He signaled around the room with a free hand and on his voice was the kind of hopelessness that only came to someone who had been futilely working on something until four in the morning.
“Why do you have to finish it tonight? Can’t it wait until tomorrow, Baek?”
He looked at your face now, his nose pink and his eyes red and bloodshot. He was blinking his eyelids hard as he looked at your face for a long while before he inhaled a breath and lifted his face, suddenly focusing on your face and his expression changed into one of mild surprise.
Then he looked around the room again. It felt like you’d lost him for a moment and he suddenly realized who you were when he looked at you that way.
“I—I….don’t know, I’ve always tried to get it done as soon as possible. It has to always be ready. Every moment when it’s not ready is a waste.”
His words held so much conviction, you did not doubt that he believed this to be completely true. But, why?
“Ready for what? It was brand new before, why did you have to re-do it? What are you getting it ready for?”
His head was shaking halfway through your line of questioning and he was taking a step away from the comfort of your arms that still tried to rub gently over his back.
“No. No. Not for what. For who.”
As bizarre at this evening had become at this point you didn’t believe he could have said anything that would make today any stranger.
At least you weren’t alone. If Baekhyun wanted to repaint and decorate and entire house tonight you would be his own personal decision maker if it meant you didn’t have to go back to your place and be all alone
“She didn’t come before, and it wasn’t good enough. When she comes it must be perfect. I think the blue should be perfect this time.”
You weren’t following. Did he have an ex girlfriend that had demanded that he change something for her?
The silence on your face and the way you looked at him with a head shake to indicate that you did not understand got him moving again and he looked right into your face now.
“I’m not crazy,” he said firmly and he bit down on the inside of his bottom lip and did not let the eye contact that he held with you fall.
“Baekhyun, who is this for?” You’d had enough of the cryptics and the exhaustion of the day was smacking you against the head right now. You didn’t have time for anymore games. He had to quit this and go to sleep. He was making you sleepy with his non stop messing and fussing over the room when it was becoming increasingly evident that he just needed a good night’s sleep.
“Hey,” you tried again, reaching for his arm now. He gave it to you easily and closed his eyes when you pulled him. “It’ll be okay if you finish this tomorrow. It already looks great. I’m sure she will love it when she comes. She might even like helping you put up the finishing touches.” You felt like you were talking to a young child at this point. He moved his legs where you led him and you saw his face calm over as he sighed a long breath of defeat.
“But, what if Mom comes tonight? When I’m asleep?” He said softly and you had managed to pull him into the living room, toward what you assumed was his own bedroom.
When he said that word the exhaustion that had been coating every inch of your skin faded your focus on his face sharpened. His eyes were closed and he was swaying on his feet. He looked ready to drop and you… You were having a hard time with that word he had said because of what you knew to be an absolute fact about Byun Baekhyun.
“I’m not crazy,” he said again softly when he caught you looking at him again.
And though you hated to think of him in such a way, you were having more and more trouble with this project of his now.
Because you’d read all of the articles in the newspaper after it happened. And you heard the rumors and gossip spreading through the palace. Everyone knew it. It was a fact. There was never any doubt about what happened to her.
Worse than the hideous words they called him were the words they attached to the woman.
That’s what they all said. There was a funeral.
She threw herself into the sea. Prince Byun Baekhyun, the son of a dead whore.
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
