More Than The Air I Breathe

Chapter 17

Baekhyun waits for Kyungsoo to come and yell at him over his fainting the previous day since the moment he wakes up, remembering after a while that Kyungsoo has class that morning, and he should have attended it too, if his mother believed him strong enough to go after the incident. 

Bored, Baekhyun thinks Kyungsoo won't be there before lunch time, and he is not feeling weak or sleepy at all after the meds the doctor gave him the previous day, so he has absolutely nothing to do. He considers the idea of sneaking outside but honestly, after how scared his mother appeared to be when he woke up, at the hospital, he doesn't want to give her other thoughts. 

Instead, he loses himself in his own. His thoughts are tormented, deep and if Baekhyun admits it, a bit scary too.

When Kyungsoo finally arrives, as expected, immediately after lunch, the look on his chubby face is not worried or nervous as Baekhyun would have thought. Instead, Kyungsoo looks angry. 

After all the time spent thinking, Baekhyun speaks up before the other can anyway. "I need to talk to you, Kyungsoo."

"I need to talk to you, too." Kyungsoo says, severe, and is tone is so angry it takes Baekhyun even more off guard than his face.

"What?" he asks then, defensively "Did I do something wrong?"

Kyungsoo plops his weight besides him, on the bed, and scold him with his big eyes "You have to eat properly."

"I do eat properly."

"Then why did you faint?" Kyungsoo challenges and Baekhyun feels a smile immediately forming in his lips. That's what it is all about, then. Kyungsoo ignores his smiley face and scolds him more, his face a mix of worried and angry, and Baekhyun's heart loses a beat at the sight. "You have to take care of your health, Baekhyun."

At the loss of 'hyung' after his name, Baekhyun feels even worse but only smiles at the other, taking one of his hand in his gently.

"I am okay." he reassures, sweetly "What I have to tell you is more serious than this, Kyungsoo."

"More than your health?" Kyungsoo says "No way."

"Kyungsoo."

"Hyung, if it's because of the previous day, I-I intend to explain, really. I'm just-"

"Kyungsoo."

Kyungsoo gasps, suddenly acknowledging the other's serious tone, which he was not expecting in the first place, and falls silent.

Despite him usually always having the right words to say, for every situation, Baekhyun can't help but stumble on his words this time and it doesn't pass unnoticed to Kyungsoo. 

"You are in love with Luhan-hyung."

Unfortunately, Baekhyun thinks, there are no right words to talk about something like this and he feels sorry to be giving Kyungsoo such a sudden, deep shock. He watches as his best friend's eyes get wide and lost and he feels a grip at his stomach, only holding the other's hands in his own tightly.

After a moment of silence, Baekhyun tries to have Kyungsoo's unfocused eyes to look at him. 

"You are dying inside, Kyungsoo, trying to kill these feelings.. This is heart-breaking to watch."

As Kyungsoo's eyes get teary too quickly, Baekhyun holds tighter "You did really think I wouldn't have noticed eventually, Kyungie? I know you better than anyone else.. you can't lie to me."

Kyungsoo has always known he can't. Baekhyun reads him like an open book, even at times when Kyungsoo can't even read himself. This moment, Kyungsoo realizes bitterly, was meant to happen since the start. He just wasn't expecting it to happen now.

He doesn't know what to say. Denying it would be stupid and vile, speak up would mean to be brave enough to say aloud things he has been trying to remove from his heart, and from his mind, for too long, and he doesn't feel ready to.

Everything about Luhan and him is wrong, and Kyungsoo doesn't know how can he even express the feel of dying a bit more, waking up everyday, at the thought that they cannot be together.

As he directly reacts to his thoughts, a few silent tears fall from his eyes and Kyungsoo swallows, silent just as them. Baekhyun weeps his tears away and pulls him into a soft hug. He lets Kyungsoo rest his head on his chest, shutting his eyes close as the boy quietly cries inside his arms, and cuddles him silently until his nervous sobs slowly calm down.

"Can I tell you something?" 

Baekhyun whispers on Kyungsoo's head and although the younger boy hasn't nodded, he knows he can talk. 

"Sometimes, we feel like our feelings are so wrong, we should only erase them, let them go. I can't understand, Kyungsoo, but I think this is how you feel right now."

Kyungsoo lets out a bitter smile against the other's chest because, as usual, Baekhyun's words are simply perfect. 

"Really," Baekhyun continues "I can't even imagine how it feels.. to be in love with someone you feel obliged to forget."

"It kills you slowly everyday." Kyungsoo whispers.

The older nods.

He takes a little pause to ponder over his words but, just as before, there are no right ones to say what he wants to say.

"What if Luhan disappeared, though?" he asks, his voice already shivering at the feel of Kyungsoo's body turning into stone at his words.

Kyungsoo feels his heart stop beating at the only thought of what Baekhyun's words mean, and feels tears in his eyes again as he looks up.

"Why are you telling me this."

Baekhyun sighs heavily.

"Because I want you to be happy, Kyungsoo, and you will never be until the day you'll realize that life may be too short to let ourselves run away from happiness." with a hand running sweetly through Kyungsoo's hair, he continues carefully "I know you may feel it's wrong, when you think about it, and I know you feel tormented because you are afraid. You don't have to tell me why you are, Kyungsoo, I feel it, but.. Have you ever thought that it may be just the world being wrong, and not you? What can be wrong about love in the first place? Is taking the chance to be brave and love the man you love endlessly a worst idea than dying slowly everyday?" 

Baekhyun's words sound like something definitive, desperate. 

Kyungsoo feels a loud cry sticking in his lungs, fighting to break free just like his soul, his feelings. He wants to cry out that he can't be brave because he is Kyungsoo and Luhan is Luhan, because the world would condemn the relationship between a grown-up man and his student harshly, because his grandfather has slapped him for loving Luhan already. 

But then again, what has he done to stop feeling so desperate? He has never tried to stop the world from judging despite Kyungsoo always knowing, since he was a kid, that it has no rights to.

"Kyungsoo," Baekhyun calls then, shaking his head slowly as Kyungsoo looks up at him "Please, this friend here wants nothing if not seeing the happiest smile on your face. If the world turns its back to you, you will still have him. And me. Am I not enough?"

"You are." Kyungsoo confirms immediately "But.. My grandfather slapped me, Baekhyun-hyung."

Baekhyun freezes. "What?" 

"He slapped me." Kyungsoo repeats weakly, shivering at the memory "We fell into a discussion.. about Luhan."

It takes a moment, for Baekhyun, to realize the implication of those words. 

"On Saturday.."

Kyungsoo nods in confirmation. "He said the most horrible things, and it made me want to die. What if mom.. no, mom would probably react even worse."

The only thought makes Kyungsoo bury his face in his palms, and Baekhyun breathes angrily. He hugs the younger boy as tight as he can, trying to pass him all the strength he needs to win over this suffocating situation as he deserves to. 

"He loves you." Baekhyun says, in a soft whisper against Kyungsoo's hair, because he knows Kyungsoo has to forget about anything that's outside Luhan and him if he wants to be the winner of his own battle.

Kyungsoo shakes his head, sad tears cutting his cheeks in two that Baekhyun hurries to weep away. He rests in to Baekhyun's arms, and doesn't know if he will ever be able to quit now. 

"I'm so afraid." he whispers in the other's ear "He will get hurt."

"He is afraid, too. Probably, even more than you. You have me, but who does he have to offer him support and a shoulder to cry on? He has never had one."

Baekhyun bites his lips at his own words. Never in the world he will be able to understand how Luhan has managed to go on so lonely every day of his life. "He has had his heart broken once already, Kyungsoo. You have to be the brave one. Do you realize that for how terrified you are, he is probably three times more?"

Kyungsoo cries more because no, he has never thought about it. The only idea that Luhan could look at him and feel what he feels is enough to stab his heart more than once. 

"I only want to protect him, but I.. I will only hurt him." 

"No, not you," Baekhyun corrects "You will be the one protecting him. Think of our Chanyeol and Sehun."

Kyungsoo shakes his head. "They were different. Their story never was so.. complicated."

"It was. Simply, they cared so few about anything outside them that they managed not to make us notice." 

When Kyungsoo pulls away to look into Baekhyun's supportive eyes, he realizes there's nothing else he needs to see. 

He thinks of Sehun and Chanyeol, of the way they fought for their right to be happy together so bravely they almost seemed to have no enemies, eventually. 

If he could be as brave as them, if he could treasure their experience and his friends' words, for the first time Kyungsoo manages to think that Luhan and him could win effortlessly, too.

Even against his mother, his grandfather, Luhan's past, or the world all around them. 

'If someone can't accept the things that bring happiness into your life, his love is not true enough to deserve your worries.'

Kyungsoo remembers Sehun was only 15 when he first said this sentence. It was something the young boy had understood before everyone else and would always say, whenever someone would question his love for Chanyeol and his relationship with the older boy.

It was the sentence Sehun said to his family when they came out as a couple, the sentence that made everyone fall silent together with their protests.

Kyungsoo has always thought Sehun's words were beautiful, extremely beautiful, yet probably he has only now understood their real meaning. 

He doesn't know if he will ever be able to be as brave as Sehun and Chanyeol, if he will ever be able to look into Luhan's eyes and feel like he fits nowhere but in their reflex. He has spent an entire year telling himself to suffocate his feelings and for how well he knows he has always failed, he has never stopped.  It felt like the only right thing to do.

But, was it?

He doesn't know. What he knows is that he loves Luhan, deeply, and he has to be brave enough to at least say it aloud.

He looks into Baekhyun's soft, understanding eyes, and manages to read the silent wish held back inside them so clearly.

Be happy, Kyungsoo

There has never been a time, Kyungsoo thinks, when he has been able to say no to Baekhyun. 

-

Baekhyun watches, hours later, as Kyungsoo leaves his room with an unreadable expression on his face that makes him feel like holding his breath until an undefined time. He deeply wishes that, the upcoming morning, he will wake up to discover something has changed.

His older bother appears in sight just then, careful eyes setting on him immediately, worried, and Baekhyun is brought back to earth harshly.

"Haven't you told him?"

Baekhyun feels a hold around his heart as he shakes his head, the strength he has pulled off for Kyungsoo and Kyungsoo only quickly leaving his mind and body now.

"No," he answers "There's something Kyungsoo has to do first."