IX

Happiness

Baekhyun isn’t a fan of cooking, and cooking with Jongdae just makes it worse. Actually, cooking with Jonghui hadn’t been bad at all — however, her brother is a completely atrocious cook and is probably worse than Baekhyun himself.

Jonghui often claims that Jongdae can’t cook to save his life, though Baekhyun hadn’t really understood how much she actually meant it until he witnessed Jongdae making food for the first time. Just by opening the sack of flour has made the kitchen basically unrecognizable. He’s not sure how much flour they even have left, seeing that Jongdae had basically spilled half of the bag. The front of his shirt is covered in white.

“We’re going to make the cookies and then we’re going to make the icing,” Jongdae tells him determinedly, apparently unfazed by his small failure with the flour. Then, like reading off something, he recites, “We’ll use confectioners sugar for the icing. We’ll ice the cookies and then we’ll be writing ‘Happy Birthday Jonghui’ over them with another color of icing. Suho will bring the cake and we’ll put the cookies onto the cake’s top. Does that make sense so far?”

“It’s kind of a dumb idea,” Baekhyun says, but he really is just being honest.

Jongdae gives him a murderous look. “It’s not dumb,” he growls lowly. “It’s her birthday and I want to do something she appreciates isn’t a dumb idea and I don’t see you trying to actively do something.”

“I’m helping you right now,” Baekhyun points out. “So yes, I am actively trying to help. Technically speaking.”  

“Do you really think this is a dumb idea?” Jongdae repeats, each word accentuated.

Baekhyun looks at Jongdae’s hands. They’re lying on the countertop, dangerously close to where the knives lie. He gulps. “It’s not,” he grits out.

“Good.” Jongdae looks at the piece of paper in his hands. “Now that we’ve had that cleared up, let’s start.”

Baekhyun glares at Jongdae but doesn’t say anything more. Not that Jongdae will really stab him with a kitchen knife, but Baekhyun can never fully trust Jongdae and he still finds the other slightly scary. Without Jonghui here to pacify Jongdae, he decides that it’s better to be safe than sorry.

“Pass me the sugar,” Jongdae finally says, “I’m going to need a cup and a half.”

“Sugar?” Baekhyun asks. He doesn’t know where the sugar is.

“Look in the cupboard,” Jongdae says, a tinge of impatience and sarcasm laced into his voice. “You know, sugar? It’s white, and they’re very, very small. It’s in one of the see-through glass jars so that you can see it’s white and very, very small.”

Baekhyun tells himself to ignore the sarcasm (it’s very hard) and looks for the sugar.

An hour later, there’s spilled batter all over the countertop, half of the ingredients of the cookies absolutely everywhere and Baekhyun is beating the icing sugar and glaring at the opposite wall. There’s a streak of something white across his cheek (and a lot of white on the front of his shirt) and his hands are still sticky from the batter. Jongdae is trying to unstick the recipe paper from his hands.

“The cookies smell weird,” Baekhyun notes as he drops the chopsticks back into the bowl and lets go. The eggbeater is broken and there’s nothing left they can use to stir. “Are they supposed to smell like that?”

Jongdae raises his hand to his face and seems to remember at the last moment that he has cookie batter on his hands. “How am I supposed to know what it smells like?” he snaps, irritated. “Just mix the batter, Byun.”

Baekhyun scowls back at Jongdae. “Why aren’t you doing anything?”

“Because I’ve already done stuff. I’m also the only one that works in this house and it’s my money that provides for you and those are my clothes you’re wearing while you sit your in this house and eat my sister’s food.”

He scowls again. “If you hate me so much, why haven’t you kicked me out yet? I don’t understand you.”

“Then don’t,” Jongdae snaps, looking even more irritated. “I have my reasons. You’re not going to understand.” He reaches for the sink, leaving a smudge of batter on the handle when he turns it on. Vigorously, he scrubs his hands under the water, eyebrows drawn together in an expression that doesn’t really suit him. Baekhyun can’t tell what Jongdae’s thinking, but it’s one of those moments that he doesn't dislike Jongdae as much as he normally does because the other looks absolutely worn out, and perhaps even slightly sad.

“Then why don’t you explain to me so I can understand?”

Jongdae closes his mouth. His gaze is fixed on the sink, faraway and unfixed. His hands are frozen under the sink. “I don’t think you even want to understand,” he mutters.

“I’m not going to know if I want to understand until you tell me what there is to understand.”

Jongdae closes the tap. His hands are free from the batter, but he looks absolutely despondent and Baekhyun feels a strange pang of pity in his heart. Something is definitely wrong for someone like Jongdae to wear such an expression on his face. “Look,” Baekhyun tries again, “I don’t know what’s wrong, but if it’s going to make you feel any better, why don’t you just tell me? Whether or not I understand or not.”

“Do you know the feeling of losing someone?” Jongdae finally asks.

No, Baekhyun’s tempted to say. Because he hasn’t, not that he can think of. I know of losing something, he thinks. I’ve lost things. My wings. My power.

“It’s painful,” he says instead. Losing his wings had been painful. Physically, too.

“Painful.” There’s a grim sort of smile on Jongdae’s face, a haunting look. “Isn’t that sort of an understatement? Losing someone is different from losing something. Knowing that you’ll lose someone is even worse.”

Baekhyun stares at Jongdae’s face and tries to decipher the look. He can’t. Losing someone is different from losing something. What is the difference? Losing his position and his wings and his status had hurt. Losing someone would probably hurt, too. Baekhyun wonders if he had lost anyone in his past life. Maybe he had. Maybe it had been the reason he wanted to forget it all. Unless Chanyeol decided to tell him one day, he's not sure if he's ever going to figure it out. 

Jongdae stares at the door, gaze still fixed on a place where Baekhyun cannot pinpoint or see. “Painful,” Jongdae repeats quietly under his breath. He lets out a sad sort of chuckle.

There’s a sense of dread in Baekhyun seeing Jongdae like this. Who in the world does he have to lose? he wonders quietly. 

***

“Jonghui,” Jongdae says, “Happy birthday.”

She stares at the ruined kitchen with a look of both surprise and horror on her face.

“Happy birthday?” she echoes, eyes wide. “Did you guys try to kill each other here?”

“Well, neither of us are dead,” Jongdae says dryly. He steers her away from the kitchen. “Baekhyun and I will clean that up later on.”

Sehun, Jongin and Joonmyeon pile in after Jonghui. Joonmyeon eyes the kitchen and makes and O with his mouth, though Jongdae ushers him into the living room where they cannot see the kitchen.

The cake is set on the table, Baekhyun and Jongdae’s cookies spread on top with the words ‘Happy Birthday Jonghui,’ written on top. Jonghui lets out a laugh that sounds a little like a sob. “Now I’m twenty five,” she says, “Baekhyun, I’m the same age as you now.”

“How old are you?” Baekhyun counters.

She laughs. “Twenty four.”

“I’m twenty five.”

There’s a strange pang in Baekhyun’s chest when he reminisces it. It seems to be so long ago, yet only yesterday. He hadn’t exactly put much thought into it before because he didn’t care, but now he wonders how Jonghui would react if she ever heard of his true story. If he even got to telling her about it one day. If there’s anyone in the world that Baekhyun would tell, he thinks that it’s possibly Jonghui. Even if no one else knows the reason that he’s there, even if Jongdae thinks he’s some wanted criminal in another country or in a gang — if he gets to tell Jonghui about it one day, Baekhyun thinks that perhaps that’s all he needs.

Not that Baekhyun really knows much anyways either. He doesn't know his own past. He supposedly