so yeah

no school tl wednesday

i was hoping to get my homework done by now,

but i guess i have to do it tomorrow 

this chapter's kinda long

enjoy

    Some stolen kisses, and desperate touches later, and they were out of the shower. Baekhyun was wearing one of Chanyeol’s shirts and was told to wait there until he could borrow some of Joonmyun’s clothes.

           He returned and said “I was told that they’re in the dresser.” He went to the large, antique piece of furniture and opened a drawer. An entire, albeit small wardrobe set for him. Baekhyun looked inside and saw the clothes that his landlord had gotten rid of.

           “All the clothes you need.”

           “How?”

           “Tao is very well prepared.” Chanyeol seemed a bit concerned about the fact that Baekhyun didn’t remember his freakout involving the genie when he was last there.

           “Mm Tao… He was the blond hanging off of Joonmyun?”

           “Mhm”

           “What are your plans for today?” He asked.

           “Sort things out for the garage sale… Mow the lawn, Oh! Some new neighbours moved in next door. I was thinking of baking them some cookies.”

They knocked on the door to the house that might have been as big, if not bigger than theirs. A woman with long, pink hair and a yellow sundress answered the door. “Hi!” Baekhyun and Chanyeol sang.

“I'm Baekhyun, this is Chanyeol. We live down the street,” He pointed toward their house, “and Chanyeol, here noticed that you guys just moved in.” Baekhyun smiled.

“Apparently this house had been empty for some time.” Chanyeol added.

“Yeah. We're starting to notice that too.” A silver haired man came out of another room behind the woman, covered in dirt.

“What the hell happened to you?” The voice of the woman in the sundress turned out to be quite masculine, albeit young.

Surprise must have been evident on Chanyeol and Baekhyun's faces because he spoke again.

“Oh, where are my manners? I'm Ren. This is my husband's best friend, Hakyeon. Do you want to come in?” Ren stepped aside.

“Sure,” Chanyeol grinned. “I made these cookies for you as sort of a welcome present, but maybe, I should offer some help fixing the place up instead.” He handed Ren the basket.

“I'll take you up on your offer when you're not as busy as you seem to be at yours.” Ren said.

“What?” Baekhyun raised an eyebrow.

“One of the guys in the neighbourhood association told us you moved in pretty recently and were cleaning out your house too.” Ren pointed at a couch before flopping into a large armchair and smoothing out his skirt.

“Yay bringing up property value.” Hakyeon's disembodied voice rang out from the kitchen.

Chanyeol sat and looked around.

“What made you pick this place?” Baekhyun elbowed Chanyeol for being rude and placed the basket of cookies on a coffee table.

“It's going to look lovely once we help you with it.” Baekhyun grinned.

“You guys don't have to, I mean you guys are busy with your own place.”

“Ours is just cleaning. You guys need serious help. Just say the word and you have us.” Chanyeol grinned. Ren smirked. He kinda liked this guy.

“I gotta talk to Hyung first.”

---

           Between that morning and the garage sale, an entire week passed. They would split their time between the houses and come back home, exhausted, covered in paint and dirt.

           Every night Baekhyun went to bed, he would cry out in his sleep. Chanyeol would wake up and try his best to comfort the smaller man. Sometimes he would wake up with tears in his eyes and Chanyeol would ask what was wrong and he would just stare at him with a frown and shake his head. He would see Tao and Joonmyun the next morning and look like he was about to cry again. Every day it got worse, to the point where Chanyeol was starting to worry about Baekhyun’s health.

           “Please babe, please talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong?” He said when he woke him up from his nightmare one night. “I promise I won’t judge … I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

           “I keep having this nightmare …” He finally said after hesitating. “It’s horrible. So much blood and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t help! I can’t stop it. I can’t do anything about it and people blame me as if I could stop it but you keep waking me up before I get to see what happens.”

           By the end of the vague description, Baekhyun was sobbing and incoherent. Chanyeol squeezed him impossibly tight.

           The rest of the week, he was improving but Chanyeol still was worried for his boyfriend. He kept himself busy with finding things to sell around the house or cleaning up the other house.

           The day before the garage sale, Baekhyun found the attic and brought down the lamp.

           “Joonmyun … I found this upstairs.” He said as he left the attic.

           “That’s Tao’s. Talk to him about it. I want to say it’s very important to him.”

           They went to the genie and showed it to him. He looked terribly upset. Tao’s first thought was that Baekhyun was going to try to force him back into the lamp.

           “Joonmyun told me this was important to you and that I should talk to you before putting it into the garage sale pile. Some antique collector might like it.”

           “Y - Yeah.” Tao said.

           “How old would you think it is?” Baekhyun looked inside and tried to shine it.

           Tao looked uncomfortable as the smaller man was shining it with his sleeve.

           “It’s over two thousand years old.” Tao said stiffly.

           “Should we give it to a museum? Or should we sell it for a lot of money?” He asked as he stopped shining it abruptly.

           “Antiques roadshow here we come!” Chanyeol shouted!

           “Antique what?” Tao asked.

           “Oh that show is brilliant.” Joonmyun said. “Maybe we should just drag them here.”

           “Maybe…” Tao continued to frown at it.

           “Should we sell it?” Baekhyun asked.

           “Yeah… it reminds me of a time in my life I’d never want to experience again.” Tao had a dark look on his face.

            “There’s a bunch of stuff up there Joonmyun” The purple haired man said. “I’d think you guys were hoarding the I should have been looking for at work.”

           “I’ll look up there with Tao.”

           The two men climbed up the ladder, leaving Baekhyun holding the lamp and looking after them with a sad frown.

           In the attic, the dusty floor was covered in footprints and Joonmyun finally got a good look around the attic. There were low rafters that Tao had to keep ducking under. Joonmyun had never noticed the ladder leading even further up before.

           “I think we can sell all of this …” Joonmyun said as he looked at the typewriters, and bird cages. “Ooh! I’m keeping this” He sang when he found a moped. “Do you think it works?”

           Tao shrugged. “Not particularly sure what it is.”

           “It’s a Vespa! I’m going to fix her up and drive you around on it!”

“Ok… darling, this box has your and the beanpole’s names on it.” Tao said absently. He opened the box and looked inside in confusion.

“What's that look for?” Joonmyun asked.

“Those are the biggest eggshells I’ve ever seen,” Tao said.

“Yeah…” Joonmyun said slowly. He felt as if he was missing an important piece of a puzzle.

           “Ok. Where does this go?” Tao asked as he looked at the ladder.

           “Up?”

           Tao rolled his eyes and nudged Joonmyun with his elbow.

           Tao pushed the door open and was hit by a small gust of wind. Joonmyun made a “Gah” noise when the breeze kicked up dust in the room Joonmyun was in.

           “You ok?” Tao shouted down the stairs. “What’s wrong?”

           “I may have some dust in my eye, but I’ll blink it out or something.”

           Tao absently waved his hand in Joonmyun’s direction and Joonmyun blinked a few times. “Thanks”

           “Wanna come up too?” Joonmyun shrugged and accepted Tao’s hand.

           It was obvious that someone had tried to break into the house through one of the windows in this tower but failed. There was dry blood on the broken glass that was still in the window frame and broken glass littering the floor. There was a locked trunk on one side of the small room. The genie examined the blood on the window and Joonmyun looked around the room. It looked like the drawers in the tiny room had all been rummaged through.

           He turned to look at the inside of the door and then looked at the trunk. He noticed that there were scratches like someone was trying to get into the trunk. The same scratches were around the lock on the door.

           “Someone was looking for something in here.” Joonmyun said absently. He pulled out his phone and called Baekhyun.  “Could you come up to the attic? You might be able to play detective and figure something out for me.”

           A few minutes later, Baekhyun came up followed by Chanyeol. It was a tight squeeze with four people. “What’s up?”

           “Someone tried to break in. You think you can help us out? Or how to get into this box? Maybe we can figure out what they were looking for.”

           “I can give it a try. Can we bring it downstairs?”

           Chanyeol and Tao brought it down the ladder to the main part of the attic without tipping it over. Baekhyun ran downstairs to grab a tool kit and came back. He started fiddling with the lock.

           “You have lock picking equipment and know how to use it…” Chanyeol said with a smirk.

           “You know what I do - did, it was part of the training.” He said with a tool sticking out of his mouth.

           “It just never registered that you were essentially a burglar.” Chanyeol said with a smile. "That is so hot."

           “You make me sound more glamorous than I really am,” He smirked. “Guys! I got it open!” He flicked the release on the luggage.

           He lifted the lid to the trunk and looked inside just as the other two men came downstairs.

           “…” Tao said when he looked inside.

           “What?” Joonmyun asked.

           “These look like things required for capturing a genie.”

           “That’s bad… very bad.” The brunet replied.

           “We can’t let anyone know this exists.” Tao sounded nervous.

           “Why not?” Baekhyun asked.

           Tao pointed to his nonexistent feet.

           “What the ?” Baekhyun shrieked as he scrambled behind Chanyeol.

           “You ok babe?” Chanyeol asked.

           “H – He’s floating!” He pointed.

           “Yeah… genie.” Tao said, thoroughly unamused by the fact that it took so long for Baekhyun to notice something wasn’t quite normal especially when he noticed right away after his concussion.

           After a moment, Baekhyun crawled out from behind Chanyeol and stuck his hand out to wave his hand where Tao’s legs should have been.

           Tao giggled as if it tickled when he ran his fingers through the smoke at the bottom.

           “Why does Joonmyun have to go to work and stuff when you can supply him with everything he needs then?” Baekhyun asked.

           “That would be terrible of me to ask him for things like that.” Joonmyun said.

           “Besides, when I tried supplying him with many little things, we discovered that it makes me... faint.” The genie looked embarrassed.

           “What do we do with the box then?” Chanyeol asked.

           “We have to keep it hidden up here and make sure that door to the upstairs tower room is double bolted or something so whoever tried to break in can’t get to it.” Joonmyun said with a frown.

           Tao waved at the door upstairs and they heard a series of locks clicking into place.

           “I guess now we sort the stuff we can sell tomorrow and the stuff we should donate to a museum.” The brunet said cheerfully, trying to take Tao’s mind off of the ominous box.

           When almost everything in the attic had been brought down and sorted, they prepared for the next day's garage sale.

           Joonmyun sent Chanyeol out to hang up signs with Baekhyun. Predictably, they wasted time talking to Ren and Hakyeon. Tao helped Joonmyun set up small tables so they could display the less valuable looking of the relics that came from the house.

           There were a few people that had seen the signs from the main streets and followed it to the sale. And a few people from down the street bought some of what they had out. There was a man with red hair who had been sitting in his car down the street across from Ren’s house for some time but finally came out to look at what they had. He jotted some things down on a piece of paper and walked up the street.

           “I was wondering why that man was always there. I thought he’d been staring at the front of our house pretty much since before Baekhyun came back.” Tao said to Joonmyun. “But I guess he lives up the street.”

“So that has to be either Wonsik or Minseok,” Baekhyun replied.

A short while later, Ren came up accompanied by Hakyeon and Wonsik holding hands. Ren’s hands were loaded with snacks.

“So you must be Wonsik. I was wondering when I could finally meet you.” Chanyeol grinned, offering his hand. Wonsik shook hands with him, he had a cheeky little smirk and Chanyeol could see what Hakyeon saw in him.

“I suppose we have you to thank for the fact that the house is now habitable.”

“Baekhyun helped too, and it gives us something to do during the day.” Chanyeol shrugged. They introduced Tao and Joonmyun before Wonsik bought Hakyeon some knick knacks and Ren bought a few things his husband might like. They left promising a get together once Ren's kitchen was presentable.  

           Half way through the day, one of their neighbours came out of his house and looked at everything. Baekhyun excused himself to take a nap. He had a headache and Chanyeol followed him to see if he could help.

           The neighbour was a tall man who introduced himself as Kris. Tao sniffed the air when the man greeted himself and frowned slightly but covered it up quickly. He smelled like the blood on the attic window. Joonmyun didn’t miss the look.

           “I’m Tao and this is my -“

           Joonmyun cut in, “Suho.” When he went to shake Kris’ hand, the smaller man received a tiny shock. “Ow… sorry”

           “Don’t worry about it, it’s just static.” Kris said with a smirk. A brass glint caught his eye and he turned to look at the lamp. “Hello, what’s this?” He picked up the lamp and opened it and examined it.

           “That is interesting isn’t it?” Joonmyun said uncomfortably.

           “Do you know anything about it?”

           “It’s an oil lamp, its previous owner said that it was over two thousand years old.”

           “Then why are you selling it for…” He looked at the tag that was tied around the handle, “Five dollars?”

           “We felt that we needed to get rid of it.” Tao said stiffly.

           Kris pulled a hundred dollar bill out of his wallet and put it in Tao’s hand. “Keep the change” He smirked at the genie before walking back to his house with a happy bounce.

           Tao clenched his fist and when Kris was out of earshot he mumbled, “What an arrogant prick.”

/*/*/

           Inside Kris’ house, the man sat at his work table, stood up a moment later and returned with a rather large book.

           He turned to a page of illustrations and compared it to the lamp he just bought. He smirked because it was definitely the lamp he had been searching for with his professor. The old man had lied to him all this time.

           He rubbed the lamp and nothing happened. He looked inside, nothing. He rubbed the lamp again. Once more nothing continued to happen.

           The book was in an ancient script and Kris had to get a notebook to write down the translations and a dictionary to help him.

           The rest of that day and part of the night, Kris busied himself trying to figure out how to work the genie’s lamp.

He put his phone to his ear and a few moments later, it rang.

“What do you want?” The voice on the other end said flatly.

“Hi, Sehun. How are you?” Kris tried to be pleasant.

“Cut the bull, Kris. What do you want?”

“I need you to translate a couple pages for me.”

           The garage sale went nicely and they managed to sell almost everything.  

           That night the four celebrated with Chinese takeout and beer.

           “How’s your headache?” Joonmyun asked Baekhyun

           “Better… Yeol helped a lot.” The tall raven haired man looked smug.

           “Did anyone else think that Kris guy was a little too eager to get Tao’s lamp?” Joonmyun asked nervously.

           “Yes” Tao said.

           “Maybe he collects things?” Chanyeol said optimistically.

           “We should keep a close eye on him” Baekhyun said quickly with a frown.

           “It looked like he was looking for something specific.” Joonmyun said, “And the lamp just seemed to be an extra surprise.”

           The next day, Chanyeol left the house around midday and came back ten minutes later.

           “Where’d you go, babe?” Baekhyun asked as he wrapped his arms around the taller man and stood on his toes for a kiss.

           “I went across the street and invited Kris over for dinner.”

           “Without asking us? Yeol, he… there’s something I don’t like about that guy. And you’re cooking.”

           “I figured it would be a great way to get to know him.”

          “I need to talk to Tao…” Baekhyun mumbled quietly as he started to walk away, “We need to keep Joonmyun safe.” He thought he spoke too quietly for anyone to hear, but Chanyeol heard him and frowned as he watched his boyfriend walk away while trying to think of what to say.

           Tao materialized in front of Baekhyun in the living room. “You needed to speak to me?”

           “How did you know?”

           “I’m very good at figuring out when people need me. What did you want?”

           “I… does he know how you feel about him?” He looked at Tao with a frown.

           “I’m sure he does. Yes.”

           “Tell him. As many times as you need to. Keep him safe.” He said cryptically.

           “What is this about?”  Tao asked.

           Baekhyun shook his head. “… Just make sure he will always remember how you feel about him. Forever.”

           Tao looked confused. Baekhyun pushed him toward the stairs and whispered “Now”

           Joonmyun was in the room next to his bedroom. He had converted it into an office so he could work from home. He could always sense when Tao was near for some reason and as he clicked on his computer one last time, he turned around to see Tao float in.

           He smiled up at the other man who watched him from the doorway. Tao was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed and a dreamy look on his face.