Title: Destination Zero
Pairing: Baekhyun/Kris
Genre: slight!mystery, slight!angst, mafia!au (the game, literally)
Rating: PG-13 (murder, blood)
Summary: They are pawns in a game.
A/N: if you are not familiar with the game mafia, then you probably won't know what the heck this is.

prompt fill for anonymous on my ask.fm *spoiler - highlight to read*
"Sometimes, the person you'd take a bullet for ends up being the one behind the gun." - Tupac

                They live in a town called Mafia.

                There is a murderer, a detective, a doctor, and nine townspeople. The detective is a man by the name of Yixing; the doctor is his mate Junmyeon; and the murderer, no one knows. He is one out of ten.

                The happenings in Mafia are governed by the Narrator, the Voice that determines who the murderer kills next. So far, Jongin and Chanyeol have been murdered. The cause of death is the same both times: gunshot. The murderer is a very simple man.

                They are pawns in a game played by mirror images up above, ones magnified and much larger than them. Baekhyun plays Baekhyun, Kyungsoo plays Kyungsoo, Minseok plays Minseok, so on and so forth. There are only ten of them left, and the chance of having an assassin neighbor is one out of nine.  Or it might be out of ten; problem is, no one knows for whom this life-saving ten stands.

                “Kyungsoo, get up.”

                Baekhyun from house 703 down the road offers his sullen friend a hand. After Jongin had been the one Chosen, Kyungsoo couldn’t sleep a wink. For six hours now, he had laid blankly on his front lawn, letting the grass slowly ink through his white shirt, green bleeding into him like red had bled out of Jongin. Baekhyun sighs and makes one promise before he lowers himself down next to his neighbor when he rejects his hand.

                “One day, you’ll wake up and this will all be over.”

                Kris frequents the doctor’s house, mainly because Junmyeon seems so paranoid all the time. He says he feels guilty; like the deaths are his fault; because so many people have slipped right through his fingers when he should have been able to catch them. He blames himself for not being able to pinpoint exactly who the gun was aimed at during the Sleep but Kris thinks it’s useless; it’s not his fault, not anybody’s in Mafia – it is no one’s fault that they are stuck in a game nobody wants to play.

                The murderer, whoever it is, always brings a silent, swooping death. At night, the Narrator tells them to go to sleep and even if Kris does not want to, his body shuts down and his eyes close. The only sound that trickles into his ears is the Voice.

                “Are you sure?”

                This is the part where the murderer nods, Minseok thinks in his forced limbo. This is the part where one of us dies, Yixing thinks. Strangely, Kyungsoo is okay with that. He wants it to be him so that he can escape this hell of a game. Every fall of night is another impending horror because everything is so unexpected; the next death void of connection with the last. They are all scattered tangents of bullets, random murders, spontaneous pulling of triggers.

                The next morning, Minseok is dead.

                Through the following days, Baekhyun holds on tight to Kris wherever they go. His hands shake too much, and he’s afraid. Kris never lets Baekhyun out of his sight, and Baekhyun is thankful for that. At the market as they are shopping for groceries, Baekhyun pulls the cart and Kris wraps himself around him from behind, keeping him in a comforting embrace. He loves that they have such a great height difference; he feels safe under Kris’ arms. At night, they tangle their legs together and wait for the Voice to announce blackout. Baekhyun is sorry he cannot hold Kris in his arms like he does for him.

                “Who do you think it is?” Baekhyun asks, burrowing his face into Kris’ warm chest. He hears the low thumping of his boyfriend’s heart ringing apologies through his body: Kris always says sorry about the fact that everyone is in Mafia at all, though none of it is his doing. Baekhyun’s fingers skirt over the wrinkles of his shirt, tracing quiet patterns with them. Kris nuzzles his head into Baekhyun’s hair and takes a deep breath.

                “I don’t know,” he answers, “and I don’t want to assume, either.”

                The Voice hushes them then, and they both fall helplessly mute. The morning after, Kyungsoo is gone.

                Junmyeon disappears on a Saturday after he revives his first patient, Sehun. With no one to save them anymore, the town grows restless and worried. The pattern is so irregular it throws them all off guard: the next death is Luhan, the one after, Sehun. They are not related with each other at all. Baekhyun shrivels in the corner of his bed when night falls because he is afraid of this horrible cycle. Even if they all end up dying, the game restarts and they are back to square one with a new murderer, a new detective, a new story, a new life. He doesn’t know what’s worse: losing his life over and over again to a hypnotizing mystery or the fact that he will not be Kris’ Baekhyun in the new round. He believes in a life that is not this one, a twist of universe that creates a wormhole big enough for both him and Kris to fit snuggly in and never get caught. He wants to escape, always had, but this time, it’s desperate.

                But then he wonders if he’d felt this same feeling in the previous game, and if so, with whom. Was it Kyungsoo last time? Was it Chanyeol? Was it Yixing? As he watches the rise and fall of Kris’ chest, he feels a tear roll down his cheek.

                Baekhyun closes his eyes and waits for the gunshot to come.

                He is not allowed to kill the detective, the murderer.  The next target ends up being Jongdae, only because he wants to drag out the ending. His hands shake furiously as he pulls the trigger, and instead of drilling through Jongdae’s forehead, he misfires at his eye. The blood leaks out and the dead weight falls to the floor.  The tears come easily.

                 It’s the final night. He decides it’s the final night. Two minutes after the Voice tells them to go to Sleep, Kris finds himself awake.

                “Kris.”

                He swivels around, and there, Baekhyun is standing with a gun in hand.

                “…Baekhyun,” he says quietly.

                “Hey,” Baekhyun says, eyes welling up. The air around them is cold, but his temples are overheating.

                “I was wondering when you’d get to me.”

                “… You knew?”

                “Baekhyun, I know everything about you,” Kris says, but there is a softness to his voice. Baekhyun’s heart slowly cracks down the middle as he watches his boyfriend take slow steps toward him.

                “I’m sorry,” he chokes out, tears conquering, fate entangling. “I’m so sorry, Kris.”

                Kris just wraps his arms around him like always, runs a comforting hand through his hair and kisses his forehead. The gun in Baekhyun’s hand feels so heavy his arm will fall off.

                “Do it, Baekhyun.”

                Those are the words he wishes he’d never have to hear. The ending is coming, though, and Baekhyun has no way out. He’s tried killing himself, but the Voice tells him no. He is not allowed to. He must brutally kill the others and then get caught by Yixing the detective and start this damn ing game over again where the only escape he gets is his position as murderer. But it will be at someone’s expense: the next round, someone else will have to make the same choices as he does in this one, and they will be crying just as hard, hurting just as much. Baekhyun’s hands shake uncontrollably when Kris pulls away, waiting for the bullet to pierce him.

                “I can’t, Kris,” he whispers, voice weak. “I can’t.”

                “Please, Baekhyun. You have to, you know it,” Kris says. Baekhyun knows there is a tear rolling down his cheek, paled by the moonlight.

                “I-I know, but… Kris, how can I ever… how can I ever pull this trigger on you? You know I’m not brave enough – I’m not strong enough t-to…”

                “Baekhyun,” Kris cuts, voice catching in his throat. “I’d rather be the one to die than to be the one behind the gun, too. The one person I would never want to kill would be you. But you need to be the brave one this time around. I believe in you – you can do this.”

                “Tell me what I want to hear,” Baekhyun pleads, eyes blurring. He lifts his gun and points it vaguely at Kris.

                “I love you.”

                “No, not that one.”

                “… Baekhyun.”

                “Please, Kris, please.”

                Kris lets out a strangled sigh. The tears dampen his cheeks but he knows they are not tears of fear. They are tears of sorrow. He is not afraid of death, at least not in this game. Death is merely a reset button.

                “We’ll get out of this one day,” he says, and it’s not true but he knows there are phrases worth more than I love you, and to them, this one is it.

                The gun is trained on his heart, the small pocket on his left chest. Baekhyun’s eyes focus on Kris’, and he racks the slide before aiming again.

                “Do you believe in other universes, Kris?” Baekhyun asks, index finger sweaty on the trigger. He wants to know if Kris believes in a parallel world in which they fall in love by normal standards and die by the calling of nature. Kris looks straight at him, gives him a gentle smile with a gloss to his eyes, and Baekhyun knows.

                He pulls the trigger, bullet blasting cacophony in his ears. Kris falls to the floor in a heap, and Baekhyun crashes down to his knees.

                I do, Baekhyun. I do.