2/2: Baekhyun

Warnings: implications of (no ), mentions of blood

Length: 9.9k words

Baekhyun doesn’t sleep. Technically, he doesn’t need to sleep. He’s a god, and sleep is unnecessary. Only after a few decades of practice has he mastered closing his eyes and forcing his human body to take a rest, but even then, he finds it difficult to lay still when he can’t stop thinking about Haru. She lays by his side now, exhausted after hours of conversation resulting from his revelation. While she fell asleep around 3 in the morning, his mind continued to churn, and he just can’t close his eyes and pretend.

If only you really knew… Baekhyun thinks to himself as he looks at Haru fast asleep.

The two of them have been sprawled out in the living room of his Manhattan apartment, atop a lengthy couch and buried in mountains of pillows. Baekhyun had been explaining—or trying to explain—himself to Haru, but she only grew more and more curious with every statement, consequently leading into many more questions. Finally, she fell asleep when he had finally convinced her that other gods and mythical creatures really did exist.

Baekhyun wants to get up and do something, but he doesn’t dare to move. Edinger’s Fifth Law of Soulmates is a real, observed phenomenon. The little things, even while playing pretend, all add up; they should be treasured. And he doesn’t know when he’ll get this chance again, so he stays by Haru’s side and closes his eyes. He has never been able to dream in his sleep but lying beside her is a dream enough for him.

- - - - -

“You still don’t remember?” Baekhyun asks softly, his heart breaking yet again.

“I’m sorry,” Haru answers as she shakes her head. “I believe you and all—after you showed me everything, but…” She trails off, looking somewhere to the distance. Her eyes are a little puffy from having woken up a few minutes ago, but she looks as sweet as ever, just a little tired. “I don’t remember you at all. I just—I know you from somewhere, but I can’t remember.”

“That’s alright.”

“Baek—”

“No, it’s alright, really,” Baekhyun assures Haru.

Although he had been hopeful that she somehow remembered all the hundreds of past lives that they have experienced together, it’s clear to him that she doesn’t remember any of it. His heart can’t be any more broken, though; he’s all too familiar with the sensation to be surprised.

“I told you,” he stresses. “This is the thousandth time we’ve met. You can’t disappoint me any further.”

“Is it really the thousandth time?”

Baekhyun lowers his gaze to reminisce. Gods have perfect memory. They remember every detail down to the grain of every moment. All the years with Haru in all her forms don’t just blur together into one. He still remembers.

“Yes,” Baekhyun confirms. “Quite a lot of years, isn’t it?”

Haru is silent, probably unsure of how to comfort him, but she places a hand over his and squeezes it gently. The small gesture is enough for Baekhyun. She may not remember, but he does, and on some days, that’s enough. No one can take that away from him—that these memories are real, have happened, and have been felt.

- - - - -

Haru goes to bed early on Monday evenings, leaving Baekhyun to the cold embrace of the city. Luckily, he’s not lonely in a city like New York. A few hundred years ago, he tried his hand at farming in a remote town while traversing through the Italian country, and that lonely life did not suit him. Too much quiet. Not enough noise to drown his thoughts. At least in New York, life is vivid and undying. Nothing stops, ever. Everything moves 24/7. It also happens to be his closest friend’s city of choice at this point in time.

Sehun and his soulmate Dalena frequent the New York jazz nightclub scene, inviting Baekhyun every night for classy festivities and saxophone solos topped with martinis. While Monday nights are never busy, it’s perfect for the Godly Ones—or other gods and immortals in passing.

On that particular night, Baekhyun heads towards the hazy atmosphere of the Carnation Club on foot, dressed in only his finest clothes. Godly Ones have to wear special pins to gain entry into the exclusive club, so Baekhyun checks again to make sure his magical golden lotus is pinned on his lapel. A hundred years of visiting the club at least once, Baekhyun has never forgotten it, and Chanyeol—the bouncer and god of storms—always allows him entry.

Upon stepping foot into the near-empty nightclub, Baekhyun finds Sehun immediately because he always sits in the same place: at the tables in the very back, where the lighting is the dimmest. Dalena is on the stage, looking like she walked out of a different decade; her dark hair has been curled into a short bob style popular in the 60s, and her dress appears to be covered in little sequins that reflect light all around. Even Sehun adds to the anachronism of the nightclub; he’s dressed in a white James Bond-esque tuxedo with a red boutonnière on the lapel.

“Care for a vieux carré?” Sehun asks, not once lifting an eye towards Baekhyun who only shakes his head. “Are you sure? You seem unwell.”

“I met my soulmate again.”

“What a piece of a bad luck.”

Sehun takes his eyes off the stage where his soulmate Dalena is singing a softer version of Peel Me a Grape while the band plays behind her. He looks at Baekhyun knowingly. They’ve been friends since the beginning of time, long before the first incarnation of Haru.

“So this…” Sehun takes a sharp intake of breath. “This is the thousandth time, no?”

“It is,” Baekhyun confirms. He crosses his arms in contempt. All the other gods and goddesses have their equally immortal soulmates—except for him.

“Have you spoken to Mother about it?”

“Why would I?” Baekhyun scoffs at the absurdity. She—the All-Mother, the Creator—is the reason why he has been doomed to such punishment. “The last time I discussed the matter with Her two millennium ago, She reiterated the same point as when I spoke to Her about it three millennium ago.”

“Perhaps She’ll change Her mind this time around.”

“And when has Mother ever changed Her mind?”

“You never know,” Sehun muses. He takes a sip of his drink and sets it down gently. “She changed Her mind about you once before. She might change it once more.”

“She won’t,” Baekhyun states adamantly. “And I won’t either.”

Dalena’s version of Peel Me a Grape ends to a small round of applause from other godly patrons, and she takes a curt bow to the audiences. Sehun catches her eyes and raises his drink to her, and she returns the gesture with a wink. When Dalena spots Baekhyun sitting next to Sehun, she smiles and raises her brows as if surprised that he was really there. Shortly after greeting some of the patrons, Dalena heads to their table in an elegance only lounge singers from the 1960s can carry.

“You performed beautifully, my Doll,” Sehun says to Dalena when she seats herself next to him.

“Call me ‘doll’ one more time, and I’ll spill your drink on you,” Dalena says with a laugh.

“As you wish, Doll-ena.”

Although Sehun and Dalena mean no harm with their affectionate behavior, seeing the two of them together leaves Baekhyun with a bitter taste in his mouth.

“You look lovely,” Baekhyun tells Dalena. “Your voice was even prettier.”

“Thank you.” Dalena grins even if Baekhyun has been giving her the same compliment for decades now. “So what brings you here tonight?”

“He met his soulmate again,” Sehun answers for Baekhyun.

Dalena is quiet. Like Sehun—like every immortal there is, she knows what the implications are when Baekhyun meets another reincarnated version of his soulmate. In the first few hundred years of his predicament, no one pitied him and found it to be a just punishment. However, after 30,000 years of this tiring cycle, other Godly Ones have found his ordeal to be draconian. There is no punishment as severe as having to bear witness to the death of your soulmate—and having to live through it time after indefinite time.

“You should speak to Mother about it,” Dalena proposes after some time. “This has gone on too long.”

“She won’t do anything about it,” Baekhyun dismisses. “I’m doomed to my punishment for an eternity.”

“Surely,” Dalena reasons, almost pleading, “Mother would do something to ease this torture. We are Her beloved creations.”

“Perhaps you speak of yourselves,” Baekhyun quips enviously. He looks at Sehun and Dalena who continue to serve as stark reminders of what he can’t have. “Maybe the two of you—and the rest of the Godly Ones—are ‘beloved,’ but I am anything but that.” Baekhyun remembers his fatal misdeed from those millenniums ago and with a subtle, deviant shake of his head, lowers his gaze to the floor. “I’m not beloved,” he restates. “If I were as loved as you were, Mother would have killed me instead of sentencing me to this punishment.”

“Don’t say that. That’s not true,” Dalena says, and Baekhyun knows that she means well, but she will never understand.

From the beginning of time, from the conception of soulmates and all that is present in the current world, Dalena has always had Sehun. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be alone.

“I’m on fire,” Baekhyun murmurs. “Except I could drown in the ocean, and an inferno would still ravage my body and set my skin alight.”

Dalena and Sehun remain silent at that statement. The band goes about playing through a gentle version of Duke Ellington’s Black and Tan Fantasy, and Baekhyun has never felt more heartbroken. Mother’s punishment has always been unescapable—even for a so-called god like him.

“When was the last time you saw Mother?” Sehun queries after a while.

“I told you many times before. Mother won’t—”

“Not to negotiate your terms,” Sehun interrupts, drawing Baekhyun’s attention. Sehun sounds earnest in the delivery of his statement. “But… Just to see Her. Talk to Her.”

Baekhyun thinks about it for a moment. After Mother bestowed such a punishment on him, he had no intentions of ever speaking to Her again. The only times when they spoke were for very brief instances, by accident, when in passing of one another. He has never sought Her presence—at least, he can’t remember the last time that he has.

“It was a while ago,” Baekhyun answers after a thought. “We saw Her in California. In that party where I drove a red Mercedes.”

“That was more than 50 years ago,” Dalena remarks. “Maybe it’s time you see Her again.”

Although Baekhyun is stubborn, he has his own limitations. No matter what Mother has done to him, She is still the Creator. All roads lead back to Her. Resistance is futile. Conceding defeat is easier.

“Maybe,” Baekhyun agrees quietly.

The band starts to play John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. They start at Part One: Acknowledgement.

- - - - -

“If you’re a god, then you can do anything, right?”

“Well, there are certain parameters—”

“Can you turn back time? Can you teleport me to work?”

Baekhyun raises his brows at Haru’s inquiries. In the weeks following the revelation of his true nature, she has become more open with him about her thoughts and wonders. It’s a slow step, but it’s a step forward in attempting to repair their strange, fractured relationship.

“I cannot do anything and everything,” Baekhyun says slowly, “if that’s your true question.”

“Really? You’re not, like, all-powerful or anything?”

“If I was, you wouldn’t be mortal,” Baekhyun mutters.

“Why do you say it like that?” Haru asks, tilting her head to the side.

“What do you mean?”

“You say ‘mortal’ like it’s a dirty word,” Haru clarifies. She continues with that confused head-tilting and peers closely at Baekhyun like he’s a specimen. “What’s wrong with being mortal?”

Baekhyun had been comfortable where he was seated. Haru was painting something on a large canvas. He was sitting in the chair in front of her easel. He was typing away on a laptop and updating museum archives with new artifact photographs. It had been enjoyable, but his soulmate now brings up one of the only subjects he hates to discuss: humanity.

He’s a god. An immortal. Humans and their mortality do not please him.

“Do you think humans are less than gods?” Haru continues to ponder.

“Of course, I do,” Baekhyun answers carefully. “Gods have the power to raise seas and siege fire. Humans are weak. One wrong move, and their necks are broken, and a funeral procession is already in the works.”

Baekhyun thinks of the Mongols. The Greeks. The Ottomans. He has seen those empires rise and fall with a blink of an eye, and he remembers their thousands of soldiers. Their kings and queens. No matter how powerful they may all have been, they are all dead now. Their existence has resulted to nothing but names on stone tablets, chapters in history books, or cautionary tales of wanting too much. All of their glories, and where are they now?

“Mortals are…” Baekhyun’s gaze moves across the room as his mind moves through different periods of time. “Mortals are unimaginably powerless.”

“Aren’t you powerless in a way too? You said you can’t do anything and everything.”

“Perhaps, but I’ll always have more power than any mortal could ever imagine.”

“So you think you’re better than every mortal there is.”

Haru says that like it’s a fact—which of course, it is—and she seems to ponder the implications of this truth. She sets her paintbrush down and slowly makes her way towards Baekhyun. He smells the perfume on her neck and the paint on her fingers as she nears and sits next to him. His eyes are on nowhere but as they open and utter such delicate words.

“Does it bother you that your soulmate is mortal?” she asks softly.

“Yes,” Baekhyun confesses just as tenderly. “A god such as myself should not be…” He pauses; he must be especially careful of his words here. “I should not have to find my salvation in something so breakable. So physically fragile,” Baekhyun says. “And yet here I am. Loving you. Tragic, isn’t it?”

Haru is still unaware of how much Baekhyun truly loves her. She’s a human, after all. All that she can perceive is mortal. The clothes that she dons now will fade away. The cars that she drives will break. The people that she knows will die. Even the ground that she steps on is not forever. Nothing is forever. Except for him. He’s a god, and his love is as everlasting as nothing that she knows about. This is all incomprehensible to her, and he will never be able to articulate his true emotions because of that.

“What happened?” Haru asks, breaking the silence. In this life, she loves the color black and enjoys painting her lips in the dark shade, but her face is bare now. Her emotions lay in front of Baekhyun, showing him genuine distress. “This doesn’t seem normal,” she says, “that a god would end up with a mortal for a soulmate. I read a lot too. I know all about Edinger’s Laws of Soulmates and the Theory of Past Lives. I’ve never heard of a physically immortal person being with a mortal soulmate.”

“It’s not particularly common.”

“Baekhyun,” she says his name like it’s a plea. “I’m serious. What happened? Why are you soulmates with me? A mortal?”

Not even gods are immune to the connection they have with their soulmates. If anything, their connections are stronger. Baekhyun can hear the slight shift in the air if Haru’s heartbeat slowed down or sped up. It’s sensitivity turned up by a million. No wonder even a mortal being like Haru is so intuitive about realizing that Baekhyun’s predicament is especially strange.

“I was punished,” Baekhyun answers solemnly. “I am punished. To the very worst punishment there is.”

Haru’s brows furrow inwards. “Why?” she asks.

“How else? I committed atrocities.”

“What kind of atrocities?”

“I betrayed someone,” Baekhyun answers tersely. He gazes about his feet for a second in thought and decides that Haru deserves a better answer. “My Mother,” he murmurs. “I betrayed my Mother.”

Haru frowns at first, unsure of what to make of the revelation, but then she seems to understand—or understand in the human way she knows.

“That shouldn’t matter,” Haru says surprisingly. She shakes her head to make a point. Her eyes shine like the fires that Baekhyun trailed across the sky some lifetimes ago. “Baekhyun,” she murmurs, “I can feel you hurting.”

“You don’t know half of it.” Baekhyun scoffs at the inherently naïve nature of humans. “One thousand lifetimes,” he mutters. “You can’t even fathom a fraction of it.”

Baekhyun’s heart breaks when Haru’s does. Of course, he can feel her hurting for him. It all becomes a cycle of hurt whenever he tells her of his fate. Unfortunately, there is never anything that the two of them can do about it.

But then Haru does something unexpected. She reaches out to him, his cheek with her thumb, and cups his face with her hand. She stares into his eyes like she’s the only one that can see into his darkness. And she is. She does. He breathes softly under that gaze, utterly mesmerized like the first time they saw each other. Baekhyun’s heart feels like it’s breaking again, but she leans into kiss him, and he meets her halfway there, capturing with his.

Haru may not be a divine being or an immortal, but she is as powerful as any other goddess. With just a kiss, she has Baekhyun in her palm. She could tell him to set fire to the world right now, and he’d do it.

“Help me remember,” Haru whispers after they’ve pulled away from their kiss.

“I’ve tried.” Baekhyun glances down at Haru’s lips and recalls the first time his gaze ever fell upon her.

He was sitting in the dark, of course, observing some of the very first mortals in their celebration of the rain. It was late in the night when this occurred. No one was supposed to see him there, sitting in the trees and covered in a blanket of darkness—but she saw him through the shadows. And it was cursed. From the moment Haru’s eyes met his, he was cursed to fall in love. In an instant, Baekhyun felt his strength fade away. The walls around his heart fell, and he was never the same again.

“I have tried so many times,” Baekhyun says again to shake the memory from his recollection. “If I have ever been successful, I do not have knowledge of it. I may be a god, but I am not all-powerful.”

“So that’s it?” Haru sounds indignant. Unlike him, every iteration of her past lives has always been adamant about change and progress. “There’s nothing you can do?”

Baekhyun remains silent. If he could do anything, they wouldn’t be having this conversation.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Baekhyun says.

- - - - -

Perhaps one of the most worthwhile things Baekhyun has experienced in his life is seeing Haru fall in love with him again.

It always hurts in the beginning, though. She refuses the idea of a soulmate, hating the notion of fate. However, destiny works in its ways, or as the humans know it, Edinger’s Five Laws of Soulmates. Meaning, Haru will always fall headfirst into it—into him. Eventually, her cold shoulders are made warm by Baekhyun. She’ll call him once a week at first, then she’ll call every other day, and then they can’t go a day without seeing each other. Dinner on the weekends, if not a movie. Dancing in his living room, and he’ll tell her about Patsy Cline and The Shirelles. She’ll lace his fingers through his, and she’ll make him feel small. Held.

It all happens very quickly when you’re soulmates. One day, you’re fine, and the next thing you know, you can’t feel peace unless you’re with the one.

At the back of his mind, however, Baekhyun knows that their time is limited. Haru doesn’t know this, though, and Baekhyun keeps it that way because he’d never want to rush her. He wants every moment to come as it does: slowly and surely.

“You listen to a lot of old music,” Haru says to him one day.

She’s leaning her head against his chest as they lie on the rooftop of his apartment building. Manhattan offers no stars on its own, so Baekhyun extends his godly powers to Haru, enabling her to see the world without the city lights. As a result, the stars are both present to them tonight.

“What can I say?” Baekhyun whispers. “I’m from another time, sweetheart.”

“I thought men only called their soulmates by ‘sweetheart’ in old movies from the ‘60s.”

“Perhaps that’s when I found the habit.”

Haru lifts her head slightly to look at Baekhyun. “Really?” she asks.

Baekhyun closes his eyes, relinquishing himself into the nebulous darkness within his eyelids. “Really,” he answers. “Well, you liked it.”

“I did?”

“We were having a picnic at Griffith Park,” Baekhyun resumes with the story. “It was 1959. Californian sunsets looked good on you. And you knew that.” Baekhyun finds himself smiling at the memory. Haru wore her hair in a single French braid that day. Her lips were red, like Mercedes that Baekhyun drove at the time. “You were wearing a white dress with a cherry print.”

“Sounds exactly like me.” There’s a hint of sarcasm in Haru’s voice, but she has no idea. Maybe in this life, she adores wearing the color black too much, but she used to love wearing other colors too.

“It was you,” Baekhyun asserts. “You asked me, aren’t I the sweetest girl you know? And I said, yes, you were.” He opens his eyes and turns to face Haru. She waits for the continuation of the story, and he gives it to her slowly. “I called you sweetheart for the first time,” Baekhyun continues. “And I’ve called you that since then.”

“It’s nice that you still do.”

“Of course. I would do anything at your request.”

Baekhyun means this with all of his being, and Haru smiles because she can see right through him. Her eyes sparkle even in the dark, reminding him that she’s not just his sweetheart; he’s her stargirl.

“Do you remember when we first met?” Haru asks.

“Thousands of years ago,” Baekhyun replies vaguely. He turns his head and looks at the crescent moon directly above their heads. “The concept of ‘dates’ had yet to exist, but I’ve always said May 6.”

“Isn’t that when we first met in France?” Haru alludes to their first meeting six months ago. “And that’s your birthday too, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Baekhyun confirms.

It’s worth noting that gods like Baekhyun don’t have birthdays. Baekhyun only considers May 6 to be his birthday because that’s when he first meets every reincarnation of Haru. It’s always May 6, always the first day of his life. No other day matters to him but May 6. He never feels more alive than on the day when he meets Haru again.

Of course, it’s always the day he loses her too.

This is Edinger’s Fifth Law of Soulmates. Soulmates are never guaranteed a fruitful life together.