SECOND TIME TRYING TO POST THIS my computer bluescreened on me the first time and I wanna post this chapter before the stupid harddrive goes for good, it is Important for future updates

Jongdae/Baekhyun : The Good Guys

Baekhyun can sleep through just about anything, in fact he has slept through just about anything. Loud noises don’t bother him at all, and once Suho tried to get him up by shoving an ice cube down his shirt and Baekhyun didn’t even feel it. His one weakness is light. He can’t sleep at all if there’s even the smallest bit of light in the room. So when Baekhyun wakes up and cracks his eyes open only to be nearly blinded by light, he assumes it’s midafternoon and rolls over to get up, only to see that the curtains are still shut, and the light is coming from Jongdae’s laptop. Baekhyun fumbles for his phone—it’s 2:37 in the morning.

He squints at Jongdae, hunched over his laptop with a look of total concentration on his face, brow furrowed, chewing on the nails of his left hand while his right furiously types away. Baekhyun slowly inches closer to him until he can head- Jongdae’s knee, and Jongdae jumps.

“Oh,” he says quietly, looking down at Baekhyun. “I’m sorry, I forgot about the light thing.”

He starts to get up, but Baekhyun throws out a hand and stops him. “’S okay,” he says hoarsely, “You can stay.”

Jongdae settles back in and pets Baekhyun’s hair. “I’ll be done in a few minutes, I promise.”

Baekhyun wriggles and squirms until he can rest his head in Jongdae’s lap. Jongdae continues to Baekhyun’s hair, and when Baekhyun hides his face against Jongdae’s thigh it’s almost enough to block the light out. He could probably fall asleep like this, if he wasn’t so damn curious.

“What’re you doing?”

Jongdae pauses. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“How come?”

“Bad dreams.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“…Not really. Not now.”

Baekhyun sits up and drapes himself over Jongdae’s shoulders. He’s feeling a little more awake now and he peers at the screen, but he’s not awake enough to decipher what the heck Jongdae is doing.

“So what are you doing?”

“Hacking,” Jongdae answers.

Baekhyun perks up at that. “Hacking what?”

Jongdae smiles a little, but it quickly fades. “People who download . I’m sending anonymous tips to the police, tips that look like they’re coming from someone really high up.”

Baekhyun’s not awake enough to process all of this, but he’s making an effort because it sounds absolutely heroic, what Jongdae is doing. “But how do you do that?”

“The Agency taught me,” Jongdae explains. “They even gave me a template for my anonymous tips. When I first came here I had nightmares a lot, and I would get up and just start hacking anything I could. Eventually people caught on and decided that if I was going to hack, I might as well hack something useful. And I wanted to do this, knowing that I’m helping to catch erts helps me sleep at night.”

Baekhyun cuddles against Jongdae’s shoulder and desperately tries to pay attention to the screen, memorize what Jongdae is doing. “Can I help? Can you teach me?”

But with a few more taps on the keyboard, the screen goes black and Baekhyun finds himself now struggling to readjust to the darkness.

“I’ll teach you in the morning,” Jongdae says. He puts his hands on Baekhyun’s shoulders and lowers him to the bed, and tucks him in again. “Let’s go back to sleep for now.”

Baekhyun is too tired to argue with him, so he closes his eyes and is asleep again in seconds.

Baekhyun pokes Jongdae awake several hours later.

“So you give anonymous tips to police on where erts are when you can’t sleep? Since when?”

Jongdae groans and takes a few minutes to wake himself up before he answers, all while Baekhyun worms his way into his arms and stares intensely until Jongdae answers him.

“About three years,” Jongdae croaks. “But I haven’t done it lately, and usually I go to the living room to do it.”

“So what was different about last night?”

Jongdae pauses and settles his hand on Baekhyun’s cheek, rubbing his thumb just under Baekhyun’s eye. “I was afraid to leave the room,” he admits. “Paranoia of waking up from a nightmare at 2 in the morning. I didn’t know what I would find out there.”

“I didn’t know you had nightmares.”

Jongdae nods. “That’s because I didn’t want you to. I’ve told you before that I didn’t have a loving or even enjoyable childhood, and sometimes it comes back to haunt me.”

Baekhyun snuggles closer and reaches up to pet Jongdae’s hair, the way Jongdae had done for him last night. “You can tell me about it, you know.”

“I know. But I don’t…I don’t want to talk about it.”

It’s hard not to be hurt by that, but Baekhyun tries not to show it.

“It’s not because…because of you,” Jongdae adds, “Really, it’s just personal. And it’s so hard for me to talk about it, especially with people I care deeply about. Someday I’ll tell you but right now I just can’t. I have talked about it before and people have treated me differently afterward. I don’t want to risk that with you, even if you swore up and down that you wouldn’t do anything differently, it’s already happened to me so many times that I just can’t take that chance.”

It does still hurt, but Baekhyun understands his reasoning, and that takes away most of the sting. Still, he’s unsettled.

“I love you,” Baekhyun says. It’s all he feels like he can say.

Jongdae takes Baekhyun’s hand and presses it against his cheek. “I love you too. I mean it with all my heart. And I know that you love me. This…this isn’t about how much we love each other. It’s about me being a coward. Even now I’m afraid of the people who hurt me when I was a kid and I just can’t talk about it.”

Baekhyun sighs, but decides to let it go. As much as he wants Jongdae to let him in, he knows he can’t push the topic.

“Okay. I understand.”

Down the hall, Kris lies in bed with a pillow pressed over his head, but in the silent house he just can’t block out Jongdae and Baekhyun’s conversation.

“I just can’t talk about it.”

Kris groans quietly. “I know you can’t,” he mumbles into the bed. “You only told me because you were desperate and I was there. But damnit Jongdae, as much as it hurts and as scared as you are, you can’t hide this forever.”