The days began to tumble forward, melding slowly into one another like a trail of falling dominoes. Kyungsoo kept track of each of them- coordinated them into his memos and calendars. He jotted each event and etched out every plan he intended for Baekhyun and himself.

It was refreshing, to be honest. For once, his thoughts weren’t busied with detailed observations he filed or appointments that had to be inconveniently shifted. Every moment he dedicated to the boy- Baekhyun- seemed to somehow send a rush of satisfaction ricocheting right back. It encouraged him and made him want to go just a bit further for the young patient.

Kyungsoo assumed the spasm had triggered this sudden shift between the two. But as he thought on it, perhaps his desire to reach out to Baekhyun had existed long before that. Perhaps it first arose the moment Baekhyun threatened him. Perhaps it was the third time the boy drove him out with a scowl as a parting gift. Or perhaps the exact moment it all began was when he first peered at the boy’s frail frame, wrapped in a cottony cage of hospital sheets.

But then, perhaps it no longer mattered.

And as Kyungsoo trudged through the arched doorway, taking in the prim perfection of his surroundings, it still didn’t matter. The cherry wood flooring sung praises to his arrival at every ‘clack’ of his steps. The furnishings were arranged down to the slightest tilt of the angle and donned hues of rich velvets and molten browns. The mantels stood poised, the candelabras glistened, and every lacquer-stained vase was crowned with colorful flora.

But even then, none of this mattered… Because at the end of it all, it wasn’t the elegance of his home that occupied Kyungsoo’s thoughts.  It was white-washed walls, cheap broken glass, and the mischievous smirk of a young patient who clearly knew too much.

It was Baekhyun who unintentionally wormed his way into Kyungsoo’s being. And now he wasn’t sure if he could be rid of him so easily.

 

“Baekhyun, come with me.”

Another day had brought about another session. But instead of rolling immediately into a lecture, Kyungsoo came to Baekhyun with a casual air, a knowing glint in his eye, and the request to join him someplace new.

“The nurses know where I am…” Of course, the boy couldn’t even indulge him. “If you wanna kidnap me or something, they’re trained for this stuff.”

Kyungsoo scoffed and pulled back Baekhyun’s sheets. “Now why the hell would I want to have a brat like you?” Before he could receive a response, he dropped a pair of slippers before the cot. “Put them on. We’re going outside.”

For once, Baekhyun obeyed- out of shock probably- and followed the psychologist out of the room. Kyungsoo noted that today he wasn’t clad in his hospital gown. Instead, the boy wore pale blue pajamas that clung to him loosely.

They ventured down the hall, passing a few other patients and staff before Baekhyun just had to say something again.

“Why outside?” he frowned in disgust. “What’s out there that’s so special?” They took a hidden flight of stairs toward a narrow hall of gray cement blocks.

“Sunlight. Fresh air. Everything decent about life.” Kyungsoo was amused by Baekhyun’s distaste, but by then they were nearing a metal door at the end of the hall.

Kyungsoo wasted no time in pushing it open despite Baekhyun’s protests, unleashing a glaring curtain of sunlight. They were on the roof of the hospital, an area fenced off for the safety of the patients and open only for special cases. Earlier, it had taken Kyungsoo forty-five minutes to convince the staff that this was indeed a special case.

“You’re wasting away in that room of yours. I thought, for a change, we could-” he paused then as he noticed Baekhyun still huddled in the safety of the doorway. He shrunk back from the sun’s rays, peering at Kyungsoo with wide, worried eyes.

Immediately the psychologist was concerned. What if he hadn’t thought this through well enough? After all, the boy could have a skin condition. Maybe he even had some sort of rare, deadly disease that could kill him if he stayed outside for too long.

“What’s wrong?”

“I… I can’t, Kyungsoo.” The boy seemed to shrink back just a bit more. “If I go out there, I could…” He paused, and Kyungsoo heel to usher them both back inside. “I could tan.”

Kyungsoo stopped. This ing princess…

He reached out and wrenched Baekhyun forward by his wrist, exposing the other to the daylight. Baekhyun squeaked, but was too busy pulling down his sleeves to fight back.

“Poor thing... The struggle is real,” he scoffed and sat the boy down near the edge of the roof- just close enough to reach the chain-link fencing that surrounded it.

“I don’t understand what you have against tanning. Jongin’s not exactly pale as chalk, you know…” Kyungsoo crossed his legs, an awkward move in khaki slacks.

Baekhyun snorted. “Kai could have purple skin and goat horns, and he’d still look y.”

“Is that any way to talk about your doctor?”

“Kyungsoo, let's be honest here. You can’t argue with that.”

Kyungsoo shut his mouth then, for indeed he couldn’t really counter that.

The sun soaked into their skin, breathing life into every pore and dragging out the stale stenches of the hospital. It painted them in still-life shadows and drew their lashes lower against their eyes.

But even then, it wasn’t the day’s warmth or the thought of a monstrous Jongin that threatened a grin on Kyungsoo’s face.

It was the fact that they’d finally agreed on something.

 

In the days that followed, Kyungsoo learned quite a few things about Byun Baekhyun.

Some of what he learned was by the boy admitting it himself, like the fact that he was afraid of dogs and his favorite color was violet (not purple because apparently there’s a difference).

He learned that Baekhyun liked Italian food, despite how rare it was there, and even convinced Kyungsoo to make him kimchi spaghetti one day.

“That sounds disgusting,” Kyungsoo had said. “You’d want to destroy two dishes by putting them together?”

To that, Baekhyun merely rolled his eyes. “It’s called a culinary fusion. Food gets boring when you categorize it like that. Why not break the barriers?”

He also learned that Baekhyun had a massive- borderline unhealthy- crush on SNSD’s leader, Taeyeon. In fact, once the secret was out, he couldn’t seem to get the boy to stop gushing about her. It was cute- up until about the third hour.

Kyungsoo learned that Baekhyun liked to eat his meat rare because it seemed like only rich people did that. He also used to dream of becoming a fashion designer because of his love for brands and labels. And, if ever he could find a cure for himself, Baekhyun also desired to scale the streets of France and climb the great Alps. They were little things that proved to Kyungsoo just how human Baekhyun was- but just like his humanity, these dreams of his were fragile.

All the while, Kyungsoo also learned quite a few things just by simply watching the young boy.

For one thing, Baekhyun had a habit of glancing away from him whenever he was lying. It was a habit that Kyungsoo had no problem exploiting, much to the other’s annoyance.

Baekhyun also seemed to take a liking to his hands. He lived through them- spoke animatedly with wild gestures and intricate motions. His palms were an extension of his face, and the placement of his hands seemed to portray how the boy felt. Kyungsoo learned early on that if those hands were folded neatly into his lap, that it was a sign of discomfort. And when he was bored, he even had a habit of messing idly with his fingers. Kyungsoo couldn’t quite blame him for that, though, considering how nice those fingers looked...

But Baekhyun also seemed incredibly hesitant to reveal himself. He was opening up slowly, but even then he hadn't seen anything slip from the boy’s mask to reveal more about his true self. Kyungsoo was convinced that he was hiding something... He could see it in the way Baekhyun would sometimes waver for just a second before speaking. He could see it in the way the boy’s eyes would look at nothing at all if he were given a moment to space out.

But mostly, he could see it in the way that Baekhyun never truly gave him a real smile. There were only smug smirks and amused side-grins. But Kyungsoo was determined. One day, the boy would smile. And he wanted nothing more than to be the cause of it.

 

“So… Kyungsoo, what am I looking at?”

Again, the two had taken their session outside, as they’ve done for almost a week now. But this time, Kyungsoo was toting a black backpack and unloading a handful of photographs.

Baekhyun took each picture into his fingertips and scanned them with confusion. The one in his hands showed a small, gray hippo waddling its way into a murky pond. The next showed a group of zebras, each drawing in near one another as a quilted mesh of black and white.

“Just took a short trip to the zoo,” Kyungsoo admitted. Just a few days prior, the boy had confessed to him that he’d never been there. Baekhyun hadn’t really any lifelong desire to go, but he felt it was a rite of passage as a child to make a zoo trip at least once. “I mean, you said you’ve never been, and all…”

“So you just brought the zoo to me,” Baekhyun finished for him as he paused at a picture of a slumbering lion. Even while asleep, the beast was intimidating. Its mane caught the sun’s rays and twisted them into each golden strand. Plains of muscle rolled beneath its skin, and Baekhyun could only imagine what it was like to watch them rise and fall with each steady breath. “That’s… Wow, that’s pretty corny.”

There wasn’t an ounce of remorse in that statement, and Kyungsoo could only sigh at the boy’s disrespect. “I mean, if you don’t appreciate this, then I guess you don’t need my gift either.” He huddled the bag towards him, preparing to tuck it away.

Baekhyun’s attitude completely flipped. “NowaitIloveitgimme,” he said in a single breath.

Kyungsoo only smirked before pulling out the gift. To him, he presented a large orangutan plushie with cottony fur and brown beads for eyes. He figured it was pretty adorable. But the boy simply took the doll from his hands, eyeing it with careful scrutiny. Of course, Baekhyun was unimpressed.

“Why a monkey? Why not a lion?”

Really though, Kyungsoo had no right to be shocked at this reaction.

“Because this reminded me more of you than any lion did.”

“You trying to say something? Lions are noble and graceful. They’re jungle royalty, whereas monkeys are just…”

“Jungle foolery?” Kyungsoo not-so-helpfully provided. Baekhyun nodded.

“And really now, what’s with these pictures? You aren’t in any of them!”

Kyungsoo shot the boy a withering glare. “Cute, but I’m not an animal.”

Baekhyun vigorously shook his head and Kyungsoo saw not the slightest amount of teasing mischief in those eyes this time. “No, I mean in a few years, how will I know who took these? I could lose my mind someday from being stuck in this place for so long… But even then, I wanna look back and remember these are from you.”

The wind rushed through the spaces between the metallic fencing, stirring the ends of Kyungsoo’s hair. He wasn’t sure how to feel about the boy’s words. On the one end, it was disappointing to hear that he could be so easily forgotten by this boy. Yet all at once, he felt a strange rush of pride to see that Baekhyun actually wanted to remember him.

“Do you have something to write with?” the boy suddenly demanded.

At this, the psychologist pried open his briefcase to pluck out a pen. “You want me to sign it then?” But before he could reach for a photo from the stack, the pen was snatched from his hand.

“Not quite…” Baekhyun began scribbling furiously onto one of the pictures, rolling his bottom lip between his teeth in concentration. “There.”

The picture of the lion looked exactly the same, save for a now awkwardly-drawn doodle placed just near the animal’s head. Kyungsoo stared. Honestly, he was just waiting for that connection between his brain and his eyes to snap into place so he could understand what he was looking at.

“You added a chimp…”

Kyungsoo heard Baekhyun snort in amusement. “No, stupid. It’s you. See the resemblance?”

Now that he was looking at it in a new light, Kyungsoo could see that ‘resemblance’. The drawing had large, circular eyes that seemed to mimic his rather round ones. The hair was the wrong style and the body was merely a few uneven lines. But even then, the tiny heart placed right where his mouth should’ve been was a dead giveaway.

Baekhyun seemed to take Kyungsoo’s silence as approval, and he took back the picture to stow it into the bag with the others. “I’ll do the rest later. That’ll teach you for comparing me to that hideous thing,” he said, gutting the cotton out of orangutan with his eyes.

“Geez, Baekhyun, I’ve never met someone so ungrateful. You’re the one who’s never been to a downtown zoo. I’m just the kind soul who pitied you for it.”

“Don’t give me that . Didn’t you say you’ve only gone once in your life? And that was for a college research project!”

At this, Kyungsoo scoffed. “Yes, but I actually have a reason. I spent my childhood studying and being too busy to worry about things like dirty animals.”

He hadn’t meant it to imply anything. In fact, Kyungsoo hadn’t seen any offense in his words. But Baekhyun was quiet all the same. Clearly the silent "What's your excuse?" had been heard. A tension gathered around them like a swarm of locusts, buzzing against Kyungsoo’s ears and crawling along the fibers of his skin.

That ‘look’ was back. It seemed that Baekhyun was tangled somewhere in his thoughts, if the empty depth of his eyes were any indication.

“You know… Baekhyun, you never told me why you’ve never gone to the zoo.” He spoke carefully as to not upset the boy any further. They’d been speaking pleasantly before and relating so well to each other up until now. But Kyungsoo still had the task of unraveling Baekhyun. The painful stuff had to come eventually.

It was a while before Baekhyun spoke, and when he did, it seemed like he was calling out to Kyungsoo from the other end of some long stretch of space.

“Can we go back in? I’m starting to sweat.”

Baekhyun eased a disgusted snarl onto his face as he rubbed the nape of his neck, and Kyungsoo was certain then that the 'brat' was back.

Kyungsoo agreed and stood to his feet, allowing Baekhyun to gather the items as they were greeted by the cold, sterile hospital air. But they spoke not a word as they walked.

When they arrived to Baekhyun’s floor, Kyungsoo caught a glimpse of Jongin looking over some paperwork. The doctor met his eyes, but only after staring at the plushie in Baekhyun’s arms.

Though Kyungsoo was loathe to admit it, he and Jongin had known each other long enough to develop a certain connection. One couldn’t help but understand the other from even the subtlest of cues. It was how they spoke whenever they weren’t in a quarrel. And even then, as Jongin looked to Kyungsoo and lifted a perfectly-arched brow, not a single word was left unheard.

Jongin was doubting him now. It wasn’t so much Kyungsoo’s ability, rather it was the method that he seemed to disagree with. He was getting too close to Baekhyun now. Never before had he ever reached out so intently- almostaffectionately- to a client, and Jongin knew that. Kyungsoo was known for being stone-cold as slate- one who expects everything but gives so little. That was how he did his job so well, because he provided his clients a blankness to empty themselves on. And yet, it seemed that Baekhyun was etching too deep.

“You’re just making this harder on yourself…” Jongin seemed to convey. “He’ll just be so much harder to scrub off that ‘slate’ of yours.”

Thankfully, they made it to Baekhyun’s room before Kyungsoo could shoot a thoroughly-worded glance of his own. He watched as the young patient headed to his desk to dump the out the photographs. And as the boy suddenly turned to tuck the orangutan into his bed, Kyungsoo noted the tender way he folded the sheets beneath its chin. He chuckled then and shook his head before dismissing himself.

No matter how deeply his slate was being stained, perhaps this was something he didn’t want to erase.

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