Warning: References to past abuse, language

Minseok gets up, to use the bathroom or get a snack or something, and his movements as he shifts Kai off his shoulder are so unfailingly gentle that Kai wants to scream. Or laugh some more—that really seemed to freak everyone out, last time he did it.

It’s not like there’s much more of him left to break, at this point; he’s not a porcelain doll and he’s tired of being treated like one.

He grumbles this, or something like it, under his breath when the space left empty in Minseok’s absence is immediately filled. Sehun’s a good cuddler, a human barnacle basically, and usually Kai likes that sort of thing, but right now, with Chanyeol half-glaring at him from across the room, Kai doesn’t want a shield. The other members mean well, he knows this, even if much of their protectiveness seems to come from guilt over not doing anything to help Kai earlier, back when he actually needed it. And he knows, too, that Chanyeol’s hardly been allowed anywhere near Kai since Kai emerged from their shared dorm room with two black eyes, a split lip, and his body covered in still-forming bruises; this is one of the first times they’ve been in the same room without their manager hovering, so if he looks at the situation from the members’ perspective, Kai supposes the current smothering makes sense.

But understanding why doesn’t alleviate how stifled he’s feeling. Pushing Sehun off and moving to sit cross-legged, alone on the floor, doesn’t help either. Honestly, Kai hadn’t thought it would. It’s the atmosphere of the room, the tension between all of them, the wary looks he gets when he walks down the SM halls—he’s suffocating under the weight of it.

Hidden somewhere under the cushions of the couch he’s just abandoned, Kai’s phone pings with a new text. Across the room, Chanyeol’s phone does the same, though his merely vibrates and the only reason Kai even knows that Chanyeol’s also gotten a new message is because he’s already watching Chanyeol when the text arrives. He keeps watching as Chanyeol reads the message, his own phone forgotten in Sehun’s outstretched hand, and shudders when Chanyeol’s expression darkens, his fingers flying as he types a response.

Sehun drops the phone into Kai’s lap and uses his now-empty hands to card his fingers through Kai’s hair and pat awkwardly at Kai’s shoulder. He thinks Kai’s afraid of the anger in Chanyeol’s expression; Kai thinks Sehun would be afraid if he knew how much Chanyeol’s darkness still leaves Kai feeling hot and ually frustrated.

That’s not to say Kai still wants Chanyeol, at least not how he used to, and it’s definitely not to suggest that Kai enjoyed the beating he got at Chanyeol’s hand, at least not on a purely physical level. But if, when he’s alone in his room in the middle of the night and he’s too exhausted even to sleep, Kai sometimes lets himself remember how good it felt to be held down by someone bigger; how freeing it was to let someone else be in charge; how affirming it was to be treated exactly the way he knew he deserved...well, that’s no one’s business but his own.

He’s not hurting anyone but himself if he lets himself enjoy those memories a little; he knows Krystal might argue otherwise but she’d understand better if she knew how pleasurable a little pain could be. Kai doesn’t think he’s the one to show her though, not real pain anyway. It’s not in him to hurt anyone outside of himself like that and with his luck he’d probably end up doing her actual damage. Unbidden his mind turns to Taemin as he remembers their sordid encounters back during their trainee days. Together they’d explored pain as a medium for pleasure, nipping and bites and bruises into hidden expanses of the other’s skin. It probably wasn't healthy, what Kai and Taemin had had together, but it didn't hold the sharp danger of Kai and Chanyeol, nor the soft distress of Kai and Krystal. They'd found a balance somehow, and Kai knows without need of confirmation that Taemin has not forgotten it.

His chest tightens and his fists clench when his thoughts of Taemin become thoughts of Taemin and Krystal. He would absolutely ruin her, Kai is as sure of this as he is of the fact that he will never, ever let that happen.

His phone pings again, reminding him of the unopened message still waiting to be read. Kai wonders, almost darkly, if Krystal’s really just a spy for SM, omnipotent with their power behind her; how else would she know to text right as Kai is thinking of her?

And also right as he and the rest of the EXO members are getting together in the living room so they can support Kai’s relationship by watching her and Taemin’s first Inkigayo broadcast together?

It's uncanny, and if he were a better man with lesser fears it would scare him. As it is Kai has been afraid of so much for so long that a little coincidence is more laughable than anything else, and that has him smiling as he unlocks his phone to finally read her message.

She wants to know what he's doing—how he's doing. He replies that he's fine, and even flirts a little, adding that he's better now that he's watching the broadcast and gets to see her face. She replies quickly, chiding him for lying about being happy to see her; his response is delayed as he watches the opening MC segment, but then he chides her in return for telling the viewers the broadcast is live.

Minseok returns, pulling rank to bully Sehun out of his previous seat and then nudging Kai with his foot to point out that Kai’s grinning at his phone like an idiot.

“Unlike some people,” he mutters, glancing toward the other side of the room and narrowing his eyes. Kai knows the comment is more for the members sitting with him on the couch, Sehun and Junmyeon, than it is for Kai. They're so careful with him when Chanyeol is involved, after all.

“Wonder what's got his in a knot,” Sehun mumbles back before shooting Kai an apologetic look when he remembers that Kai and Chanyeol’s are actually quite intimately acquainted. Or, at least, they used to be.

Kai waves a hand—he knows Sehun doesn’t mean anything by it—but Junmyeon’s quick to reprimand him anyway with a smack to the back of his head.

“Language,” Junmyeon remarks evenly as Kai barks out a laugh and Sehun pouts. It's a nice relapse to how things used to be before Kai picked the wrong person to fall in love with and messed everything up, and it's over far too quickly.

The first few groups finish their performances and the MCs come back on screen as they interview a rookie girl group whose debut broke all sorts of records. Kai couldn't care less. Krystal, apparently, couldn't care either, because when Kai texts to ask her how she managed to work so cordially with Taemin, she snarks that she didn't want to scare away the hoobaes on live, or sort-of-live, television.

He's amazed that the venom so fierce in her gaze during their joint photo shoot is totally absent as she smiles at Taemin and asks the girl group another question. He tells Krystal this in response to her sarcasm, and repeats the comment aloud to whoever's paying him enough attention to listen.

“If I didn't know any better,” he muses,” I'd almost think they were friends.”

“Or at least get along pretty well,” Sehun agrees, his hands back in Kai’s hair almost absentmindedly.

“They've got a common objective,” Chanyeol surprises them all by pointing out. Less surprising, what follows is calloused and burning: “ing you.”

Junmyeon’s tone is sharp—”Chanyeol!”—and his response, immediate, but Kai is tired of being coddled. Let Chanyeol come at him if that's what Chanyeol wants; he's running out of painful fodder to drive his late-night pleasure anyway.

“No,” Kai declares, standing upright as his phone falls from his lap onto the floor. “I want to hear this.”

Petulantly he wants to grit his teeth and roll his eyes when Sehun rises from the couch to stand behind him. Chanyeol, like Taemin, has an incomparable nose for weakness and Kai is his favorite prey.

Yet for all the fury behind his words Chanyeol’s body language screams nonchalance. He hasn't gotten up from his seat, he hasn't released his hold on his own phone, and the smile on his face, though wicked, has no tightness at its corners.

“Say what you want about the company and orders from upper management,” Chanyeol drawls on as if he would have continued to speak even with Junmyeon’s shocked disapproval and without Kai’s erse intrigue. Knowing Chanyeol, he probably would have.

“But if working together is what it takes to get you in bed with one of them, that's what they’ll do.”

Kai doesn't understand that logic and he says as much, the rest of the room forgotten as he lets Chanyeol draw him back in.

“The ice wants you to think she's Princess Peach or some like that. So she makes a point to publicly get along with someone who’s basically your ex.”

“We never dated,” Kai denies vehemently. Chanyeol, of all people, has heard this desperate denial more than enough.

“Neither did we,” reminds Chanyeol smugly. “Does it make a difference?”

He asks because he knows it doesn't. The question essentially rhetorical, Chanyeol doesn't require an answer from Kai, and so, continues.

“And, speaking of said ex, that little wants you because he can't have you anymore. Because, as far as anyone knows, you belong to her now.” He points at Krystal, still standing alongside Taemin but interviewing a solo artist now.

“But I know what they don't,” he concludes as the other members sounds of indignant protest finally reach Kai’s ears.

Chanyeol leers. “You still belong to me.”

Kai it torn between wanting to hit Chanyeol for talking about Krystal at all, and wanting to run away to the safety of his room where he knows he can lock the door so Chanyeol can no longer hurt him.

He'd thought earlier that there was nothing left of him to break. He was wrong.

He runs.