Kai and Kyungsoo did not hang around the apartment after that, hoping that whatever they had managed to grab would be okay for now. They chose not to tell Baekhyun about the incident when they dropped off his things, seeing no point in freaking him out even more. Anyway, the fact that Heechul had not left the apartment was a good sign, at least Kyungsoo hoped so. Now they would just have to figure out how to get rid of him for good, though it was easier said than done.

If Baekhyun noticed anything off about his two friends, or their haphazard packing, he said nothing. He was just happy to have some clean clothes that fit him; he joked about Chanyeol being a giant, but his boyfriend really was a lot taller than him, his clothes far too baggy on Baekhyun’s smaller frame. He thanked the two for their help and bid them goodnight, setting the suitcase down on the couch once they were gone to dig out some pajamas. Chanyeol was currently in the shower so Baekhyun went into the bedroom to change, flopping tiredly onto the bed once he was finished. It had been a long day following a sleepless night in his car, and he was more than ready to curl up with Chanyeol and get some rest. He could move his things out of the living room in the morning.

Chanyeol walked into the bedroom a few minutes later, dressed in his pajamas as well, and found Baekhyun already half asleep on the bed. “Are you really that tired? It’s like… ten o’clock.”

“Didn’t sleep well last night,” Baekhyun mumbled, waving an arm lazily to signal for Chanyeol to join him. Chanyeol chuckled at that, finding sleepy Baekhyun to be adorable as always. He turned off the light and climbed on to the bed, crawling up beside Baekhyun.

“Because of Heechul?” Chanyeol asked as he adjusted the covers, trying to get both himself and Baekhyun under them. The older man wasn’t helping much. “You didn’t go back there after what happened, did you?”

“No, I didn’t,” Baekhyun replied, a little more awake now as he realized what he had said. He was trying to be more open with Chanyeol, but he still hadn’t intended on telling him this.

“Then… where did you sleep?” Chanyeol frowned as he thought about it. If Baekhyun didn’t go home, and he didn’t stay here or with Kyungsoo, then where did he go…?

“Um… my car?” Baekhyun answered after a moment, cringing slightly at the look Chanyeol gave him. This was exactly why he had left that detail out.

“Your car? Idiot, why didn’t you just come here?” Chanyeol was pretty sure he knew the answer though – this was Baekhyun, after all.

“Well, I mean… it was late, and I didn’t want to bother you if you were sleeping,” Baekhyun said, looking sheepish. “In retrospect, maybe my car wasn’t the best idea, but I guess I was a little panicked.”

Chanyeol sighed, having expected this. “I know… but really, Baekhyun, you have to learn to rely on me a little more. Do you really think I care if you wake me up? I’ll always be there for you, at any time for any reason. That’s what a relationship is about, isn’t it?”

“You’re right, I just… I’m still getting used to the idea of being in a relationship, of sharing things with someone else, good or bad… it’s like I don’t know how to do it anymore,” Baekhyun admitted. He had always been like this growing up, closed off and unwilling to share his burdens, but for a time he had opened up – to one person, at least. “It shouldn’t be so hard… I used to share everything with Tao, you know? And not just him, with the others as well. Somehow that all changed when he left… it’s not like our friendship ended then, and I still had the others, but I was so focused on trying to keep my true feelings from him that I started keeping everything to myself again. Now I have you, and I want to go back to the person that I was before but it’s not as easy as it sounds… I’m sorry.”

“Baekhyun, don’t apologize. What happened hurt you a lot, and you closed yourself off as a result, I understand that,” Chanyeol said. He was honestly glad to hear it, happy that Baekhyun was at least telling him how he really felt, rather than glancing over the subject. It was definitely progress. “Just know that when you do want to, you can share things with me – I want you to share thing with me – and it’s okay. You never have to worry about bothering me or being a burden… if you need help, if you need a place to stay, if you just need to talk… whatever it is, you can come to me. I love you, Baekhyun, more than I ever thought possible; nothing is going to scare me away now.”

Baekhyun couldn’t help the huge smile that formed at those words, thankful that the darkness at least hid the color of his cheeks. “Good. Because I’m thinking that I’m going to want you around for a long time… as long as you want to be, anyway.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Chanyeol said playfully, secretly happy that Baekhyun was warming up to the idea. “You may end up stuck with me forever, in that case.”

“Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” Baekhyun replied, surprising himself a bit. It was far too early to really be talking about ‘forever,’ but that didn’t mean he hated the idea… they could get an apartment together, maybe adopt a cat or something, do couple-y things when they weren’t too busy with work and ghosts, pass out in each other’s arms every night when they were too busy… yeah, he could see it.

“I guess we’ll just have to see then.” Chanyeol thought of what a future with Baekhyun could be like as well, and he knew it was something he wanted. He had known somehow, even on that first morning in the bookstore, that his life had changed when Baekhyun entered it. It sounded cliché, but it was hard now to imagine a life without the older man, and he didn’t want to. Chanyeol wanted to spend every night like this, if he could – heartfelt words spoken quietly beneath the covers, sharing tender kisses before falling asleep, limbs tangled together in an attempt to be as close as possible – and he found himself hoping as he drifted off that maybe, if he was lucky, Baekhyun wanted that too.

When Baekhyun opened his eyes, he immediately knew this wasn’t a normal dream. After weeks of nightmares depicting the murders Heechul committed (and even a few about his suicide), he had learned the difference between a memory and a true dream. This was different though – the room he was in wasn’t the hotel room, or the jail cell, and he didn’t feel the usual anger and despair that came along with those either. He felt strangely calm and peaceful, and after a moment he realized why. He was home. Not in his empty apartment, or his grandmother’s house, but in the home that he had grown up in – the house his parents had purchased after their wedding. He wondered briefly if he was reliving one of his own memories for some reason, but it couldn’t have been. He recognized the room he was in as his nursery, except for a few details – there was no crib, or rocking chair, or any of the things that you would expect to find in a nursery. Instead there were bookshelves, a small loveseat, and a desk that was piled with books and notes; it was an office, as the room had been before his parents had converted it – before Baekhyun was born. It was only then that he noticed the man hunched over the desk, immersed in one of the books, almost as if he had just appeared there.

“Still working on that?” Baekhyun felt himself ask, though it was not his voice that came out. It was Yunho’s. Once again he was viewing the memory from the point of view of the person it belonged to, and he was grateful that this time he probably wouldn’t be killing anyone.

“There’s something here, Yunho, I know it,” the man answered, turning around to look at his friend. Baekhyun would have gasped if he could have, staring in shock at the face he hadn’t seen outside of pictures since he was four. Dad.

“You mean about the so-called curse, right?” Yunho raised an eyebrow, clearly not believing in it much. “Curses don’t actually exist, Kwangsun.”

“Then how do you explain all of the bad things that have happened to my family? Anyone who has ever owned that pendant either died young or lost everything, I have a hard time believing that it’s just coincidence,” Kwangsun argued. Before reading these journals, he would have wholeheartedly agreed with his friend, but now… he couldn’t explain why, but he was certain that he was right, that something had been plaguing his family for generations. “There is a curse, and I’m going to find a way to break it before it kills me… before it has the chance to affect my son.”

Yunho shook his head at that, smiling fondly. “Jihae is four months pregnant and you’ve already turned into an overprotective parent. If you’re that concerned then I’ll leave you to it, but I still don’t believe in curses.”

“Fine, don’t. But, promise me something anyway,” Kwangsun said, waiting for a nod from Yunho before he continued. “If I can’t figure this out… if something happens to me… look out for my son. Protect Baekhyun like he was your own, and don’t let him anywhere near this damned necklace.”

“Of course,” Yunho replied, without any hesitation. He didn’t bother arguing that Kwangsun would be fine, that there was no curse – his friend was dead serious, and if it would make him feel better then Yunho would go along with it. “I promise. So… Baekhyun?”

“Oh... yeah, I decided on a name, I think. Do you like it?” Kwangsun asked, sounding a little unsure. “Jihae does, but I don’t know… he’s my first child, I want it to be perfect.”

“I think it’s wonderful…”

The conversation drifted off, and the scene changed, the room around him warping into something else. The colors blurred into varying shades of white and gray, and he could hear a faint beeping noise in the background, like… a machine of some kind. Then it clicked – he was in a hospital room. Kwangsun lay on the bed in the center of the room, practically a ghost of the soon-to-be father that Yunho had spoken to in the bedroom. He was pale and sickly, with dark shadows under his eyes that no amount of rest would take away. His hands shook as he wrote, scribbling something on a sheet of paper as quickly as he could manage in his condition. Something gleamed from the table next to the bed – the pendant, sitting there almost tauntingly. After a moment he paused and looked up, seeming to finally notice that someone was standing in the doorway.

“I think I found it Yunho,” he said, voice quiet and raspy. “I finally found it.”

“Found what?” Yunho walked over to the bed, sitting down in the chair next to it. “What are you writing?”

“The way to break the curse,” Kwangsun replied, answering both questions at once. “I can’t… I’m too weak to do it now, it’s too late for me. But if… somehow, this thing ever finds its way to my son, then at least he can do something about it.”

“I’ll keep it away from him, so don’t worry about that.” Yunho still didn’t really believe in the curse – Kwangsun’s illness was unfortunate, but not necessarily strange – but he would do whatever he could to carry out his friend’s last wishes. “I still don’t understand why you don’t just get rid of the thing though.”

“You can’t just ‘get rid’ of it. People have tried, many times, and somehow or another it ended up back with them in the end – and they died the most gruesome deaths of them all,” Kwangsun said, shuddering at the thought. “At least if you keep it somewhere safe, away from him, rather than just throwing it out into the unknown, then maybe it will stay that way. But in the event that it doesn’t, I’ve found something that might help him.”

Before Yunho could respond, Kwangsun finished writing, setting down his pen and picking up the pendant instead. He began attempting to pry the back off, digging at a seam that Baekhyun had never even noticed was there.

“What are you doing?” Yunho asked, wondering if Kwangsun had finally lost his marbles.

“Hiding this,” Kwangsun answered, gesturing to what he had just written. “You know my father, he’s even more of a skeptic than you. All of those journals are his, and I bet he’ll take my notes too… might even try to take the pendant back. If he sees any mention of a curse in anything I’ve written, he’d probably just laugh and throw it away. I already edited my notes, but this… he can’t see it. He wouldn’t give it to Baekhyun anyway.”

“Why not just give it to me then? Or Jihae?” Yunho didn’t get why Kwangsun had to go as far as hiding the note inside the pendant. Wasn’t that a little extreme?

“Well, I’m going to assume that if Baekhyun ever needs to read this, it will be out of your control. You are supposed to be keeping it from him, after all.” Kwangsun made a quiet victory noise as he finally got the back off, and began folding the note to fit into the tiny hollow at the center of the pendant. “And Jihae… you’ve spent as much time with her as I have lately, you know how she’s being about this. She doesn’t believe I’m going to die. Telling her about all of this curse mess now, or asking her to pass something on to him when I’m gone… it would just upset her.”

Yunho nodded in agreement, watching as Kwangsun snapped the back of the pendant on again…

“Baekhyunnie…”

Baekhyun was jolted awake by the voice, eyes snapping open. He sat up in bed, breathing heavily and looking around for the source. Maybe it had just been part of his dream, but he could have sworn it sounded like… no, it couldn’t be. Baekhyun stared, wide-eyed, at the man who stood at the foot of Chanyeol’s bed. He had dark hair, long by male standards, and a face that had probably been quite pretty once. Now it was pale, with hollowed cheeks and shadowed eyes, it’s beauty ruined by death. There were bruises around the man’s neck, appearing to be from a rope, and though he had never actually seen the man Baekhyun knew who it was. Heechul stared right back at him, a smirk on his face, seeming to know just how much his presence scared Baekhyun. And then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone. It was almost enough for Baekhyun to convince himself that it wasn’t real, but then… why had he woken up? Something deep down told him that his mind wasn’t just playing tricks on him. But Heechul couldn’t really have followed him here, right? This was Chanyeol’s, this was safe.

“…mmmh… Baekhyun? Something wrong, baby?” Chanyeol asked sleepily from beside him, letting the endearment slip out in his barely awake state.

“No, it’s nothing,” Baekhyun replied, smiling at the term. “Go back to sleep, we have to get up in a few hours.”

Chanyeol didn’t argue, already drifting back off into dreamland, and Baekhyun attempted to do the same. He kept telling himself that what he had seen was just his imagination, and instead tried to focus on his excitement for the trip. The past few days had flown by, and tomorrow Baekhyun would be far, far away from this place and his haunted apartment. He would be seeing Tao, and everything would be okay. He let those thoughts comfort him and finally fell into a dreamless sleep, forgetting his previous dream completely in the moment of panic over Heechul.

Getting himself and five other people, along with all of their luggage, onto a plane at eight o’clock in the morning was nothing short of a miracle, Suho thought when he was finally seated next to Sehun near the back of the plane. He was comforted slightly by the knowledge that Kris probably had it worse; he had to get five other people into a van with a bunch of luggage AND their investigating equipment, then drive for five hours. The west coast team lived in Los Angeles, but Suho and Kris had decided that they would meet up in San Francisco – that way, it was sort of a vacation for everyone. Plus, there were some great locations for them to investigate there, and that was something they were all looking forward to. They had never investigated as twelve before, and it was sure to be interesting to say the least.

A few rows up and across the aisle sat Baekhyun and Chanyeol; due to how late they booked the flight, the group hadn’t been able to get seats together, but they had at least been able to get three pairs of seats. Kyungsoo and Kai were two rows behind them, already fast asleep. Baekhyun wanted to be sleeping as well, his head resting on Chanyeol’s shoulder, but he couldn’t get his mind off of what he had seen the night before. Had it really been Heechul? And then there was that dream… he had recalled bits and pieces of it when he woke up, something about Yunho and his father, but he couldn’t remember any details and it frustrated him. If Yunho had been trying to tell him something, then it must have been important, but no matter how hard he tried it just wouldn’t come to him.

Noticing the look on Baekhyun’s face, Chanyeol placed his hand on the older man’s where it rested on the seat between them, rubbing the back of it softly with his thumb. “Something on your mind?”

“Well… kind of,” Baekhyun replied quietly, closing his eyes and snuggling closer to Chanyeol. His boyfriend’s gentle ministrations were comforting, enough to relax him a little. “It might be nothing.”

“If you’re worrying about it, then it’s something. Tell me,” Chanyeol urged, knowing Baekhyun was probably trying to downplay whatever it was.

“I… I thought I saw Heechul last night,” Baekhyun said after a moment, seeing no point in hiding it. At least, not that part of it; the one thing he had still not revealed to Chanyeol was Yunho, and he wasn’t sure if he was going to. Even in their line of work, saying you spoke to your dead uncle in your dreams sounded crazy at best. “I mean, I can’t say for sure that it was him, or that I even really saw it. It was just for a split second when I woke up in the middle of the night – I was still half asleep, so it could have been a figment of my imagination for all I know. And I’ve never actually seen him before, I’ve only felt his presence, so I don’t know how I could even know that what I saw was him. It just… felt like him, I guess.”

“If you think it could have been him, then I believe you,” Chanyeol said, though he really hoped that it hadn’t been. “Do you think he could have followed you there?”

“I don’t know… Kyungsoo did say it was possible, but I was there for three days and he never showed himself otherwise.” Baekhyun didn’t say what was really worrying him about the incident, but he didn’t need to – they were both thinking it. If Heechul had really been there, then who’s to say he couldn’t follow Baekhyun here as well?

“Don’t worry about it for now, okay?” Chanyeol said after a moment, sure that Baekhyun was doing exactly that. “We’ll figure it out. Just try to get some sleep, I’m guessing you didn’t get much last night.”

“I got enough, considering,” Baekhyun replied, and it was mostly true, though he was still a bit tired. He appreciated the attempt at reassuring him nonetheless. “You are pretty comfy though, so I suppose a few more hours wouldn’t hurt.”

Chanyeol smiled at that, leaning his head down to rest on top of Baekhyun’s. Soon they were both asleep, waking up only an hour before landing. By that point, Kyungsoo and Kai had mysteriously disappeared from their seats, though really there was only one place they could have gone. Baekhyun and Chanyeol could barely contain their laughter as they watched Sehun have to physically restrain Suho from making a scene and dragging the pair out of the bathroom. Fortunately it wasn’t long before the ‘fasten seatbelt’ sign came on and the two returned to their seats to prepare for landing, hair and clothing only slightly rumpled.

The six of them waited for most of the other passengers to file out the door before grabbing their carry-on luggage and exiting the plane, not wanting to lose each other in the crowd. They headed for the baggage claim area to pick up the last of their belongings, then went to get their rental cars. Suho and Baekhyun had decided to get one each, since squeezing six people and all of their stuff into one vehicle just wasn’t feasible. Finally, more than an hour after their plane had landed, they left the airport and made their way to the hotel.

The others had initially wanted to meet them at the airport, but in the end decided it made more sense to check into the hotel first, so they would all be meeting there instead. Baekhyun was inwardly glad for the extra bit of time as he drove behind Suho, all of his nerves about seeing Tao again bubbling back up to the surface. Could they really go back to being friends like before? He wanted that, more than anything, but what if Tao didn’t? It’s not like they could just pretend the confession never happened… what if Tao couldn’t look at him the same way now? The thought made Baekhyun’s heart sink, and even Chanyeol’s presence by his side wasn’t enough to calm him down as they pulled up to the hotel a few minutes later. Suho had called ahead to let Kris know they were coming, and the others would all be waiting in the hotel lobby for them, Tao included.

The time it took for them to get out of the car and get their things out of the back was both an eternity and a millisecond to Baekhyun, torn between excitement and anxiety over the situation. Before he knew it he was walking through the lobby entrance with the rest of his team, and there was no more time to imagine how things might go because Tao was there, standing right in front of him.