Warning: Allusions to Kai and Krystal's hotel meeting.

The parking gate squeaks as it lifts to let another car into the garage and Krystal squints through the darkness, hoping to get a glimpse of the vehicle’s passenger through the tinted windows. It’s an impossible feat and her members often tell her she needs to work on facials more in the practice room mirrors if the expression she’s making is to become anything but a glare. They think she’s always at least a little angry; she thinks of the bruises across Kai's back and concludes that at the moment they would be right.

The car’s occupants alight but the man and the woman who are so entwined and sneaking such obvious glances at each other and their surroundings are not who Krystal waits so anxiously for. Her meeting is clandestine too, though for different reasons than those of the couple who can’t seem to keep their hands—or tongues—to themselves.

“I read the articles on Naver,” she tells Kai less than ten minutes later when his manager finally drives his van into the hotel garage where she’d texted frantically to meet. “They said your bunk had collapsed and that you were napping and got all banged up, but I know better and I just…” She pauses there, trails off maybe, and catches the barest tint of a blush under all the makeup caked heavily to hide the bruises that she knows mar Kai’s pretty face.

There are a lot of things she wants to ask him, a lot she wants to say, but she settles on “Let’s go swimming,” and revels a little in the fact that she manages to surprise him. “Don’t wear a shirt,” she commands almost as an afterthought, and she smiles briefly when those words surprise Kai even more.

He comes out of the men’s changing room in a pair of tiny little boxers that would leave very little to Krystal’s imagination if she hadn’t already had the whole of him pressed against her back that day at the photo shoot. As it is she can’t appreciate his beauty anyway because, likely knowing her reasons already, he’s washed his face and cleaned every bit of cover up away from his skin. It hurts to look, honestly, but then Krystal considers how painful it must have been when Chanyeol created the bruises in the first place and she steps toward him. She’s strangely glad that he doesn’t flinch or even look afraid when she wraps her fingers around his wrist and pulls him gently behind her toward the hot tub.

It’s a confusing emotion, this gladness, and a little too close to the happiness she’s forgotten she used to want to have. Krystal doesn’t know yet whether she likes it.

Kai makes to slip into the water but Krystal stops him, forces him first to sit on the steps as she enters the smaller, hotter pool and examines his body inch by injured inch. Her body is essentially trapped between his longer legs; in any other moment she’d care about the proximity—she’s not usually one to let anyone get that close—but it’s Kai’s body that she’s concerned about right now and she finds that keeping her tears at bay takes all of her concentration. That’s a strange emotion too because she’s gotten her title of Ice Queen for a reason. Krystal Jung doesn’t cry—not when her parents moved back to the US and left her in the clutches of SM; not when her sister and SNSD parted ways; not when Sulli left the group; not ever.

Yet here she is, meticulously checking each of the bruises on a fellow idol’s body and blinking furiously every few seconds because she won’t be able to see anything if she cries.

Why she’s not more concerned about him seeing the tears is a question all its own, but Krystal can’t handle thinking about that just yet.

She takes in the injuries done to his face alone—the two black eyes, the split lip, the busted nose—and focuses hard on channeling all the positivity and healing and belief she can muster into her hands as she runs the tips of her fingers over Kai’s skin. It’s been a long time since she’s needed to rely on a higher power to get her through; she does it now without thought, only knowing that she alone is not enough to make Kai better.

Kai speaks then, forms more than mere sounds of slight pain or distress for the first time since meeting Krystal in the concealing darkness of the parking garage. “I’ve had worse,” he says, the words slightly slurred around the cut on his lip that opens a little when his mouth moves. Kai winces and Krystal shushes him with a finger hovering just over his face.

She doesn’t believe him for a second and wastes no time in telling him that. “You’re such a liar,” she replies, voice breaking halfway. He gets the gist of her words despite this and surprises her this time when he raises a calloused hand to cup her cheek.

“You’re crying,” he informs her. Krystal doesn't even realize the moment when she stopped trying so hard to keep her tears to herself. “Please don’t cry for me.”

She hates that he’s the one comforting her when she’s the one who’s supposed to be there for him to lean on. She knows she wouldn't be able to do the same, not if the roles were reversed and she found herself in his place.

He says softly, “I’m not worth your tears.” She cries harder and hardly knowing what she’s doing even as she does it, turns her face towards his and kisses him.

Kai’s surprised, she can tell by the way his hand stiffens against her cheek, but his lips soften against hers and he even moans softly when her tongue swipes like the touch of a ghost over his cut. Krystal’s surprised too, didn’t even know she felt more for this broken boy than mere physical attraction, but she’s shocked enough to gasp when she pulls away and finds that Kai is also crying.

“I’m not,” he chokes out, lips slightly swollen but not from injury anymore. He takes a deep, shuddering breath as the tears on both of their faces continue to fall. “I’m not worth it.”

Krystal steps through the water, close enough for her chest to brush his where he sits, and wraps her arms around his much broader shoulders. He buries his face in her neck and his body heaves, wracked with sobs.

She doesn’t understand why yet, but Krystal absolutely means it when she holds him as tightly as she can and says, “You're worth it to me.”