Someone is yelling upstairs. Someone is yelling upstairs and Baekhyun is trying to sleep. Whining, he rolls onto his stomach and covers his head with the soft cushion of his pillow. Perhaps he can suffocate himself. If he passes out due to asphyxiation, he won’t hear the screaming idiots anymore.

There is nothing more fantastic about living in a run down apartment on the harsher side of the city than how easily sound travels through the too thin walls. To make it all better, the glass to the window above his bed is shattered and therefore car horns and sirens make it sound like there is a medical emergency going on in his room. Baekhyun chooses to think that gunshot is a daydream.

When the tenants in the apartment above his drop something and the weight shakes the walls of Baekhyun’s bedroom, he decides enough is enough. It is almost two in the morning and Baekhyun has a lecture with a monotone professor at eight and he needs at the sleep he can get.

He doesn’t trust the elevator this late at night. The carrier box rattles and shakes as if trapped in the middle of a continuous earthquake and he has waken up plenty of mornings to people running around, screaming about how the elevator is stuck and who cares about the people inside, I’m going to be late for work. So Baekhyun takes the stairs, toes stubbing against the creaking wooden steps in his sleepy haze.

It isn’t difficult to pinpoint which door he’s looking for. The rest of the floor is relatively quiet compared to the loud ruckus emanating from this one particular apartment. As he knocks on the door, his sleepiness fades into anger. If he misses his notes or his work because of these s, people will die.

He hears the small click of the lock and someone yells out, “Can you guys be quiet so I can answer the door?” He narrows his eyes at the door while the knob turns only for his eyes to widen when he sees that it’s him.

“Oh no,” the person at the door mumbles, eyes just as large as Baekhyun’s, if not wider.

Staring at the man in the doorway, Baekhyun trails his gaze over the familiar figure. It’s when he zones in on the way the other is clutching the doorknob still, that he notices a small handgun sitting on a blue sheet covered end table just a few steps into the apartment. That isn't exactly unsual. Returning his sights to the other man, Baekhyun finally finds his voice.

“Minseok?”

“It’s Xiumin,” Minseok says hurriedly.

Xiumin? “But Lu Han—

Minseok shakes his head frantically, his hair flying around in a fashion akin to how dogs release excess water from their fur. Baekhyun opens his mouth to question his strange behavior when a person Baekhyun doesn’t recognize sidles up close to the smaller Korean male.

“Who is at the door, baby?”

If Minseok could have opened a hole to his grave with only his mind and the desperation in his eyes, he would have been dead and gone by now. Kris settles a hand on his waist and Minseok peeks at him through the veiled protection of his hair, heartbeat speeding up up at the placement of his fingers, his palm. The taller man’s lips curve into a beautiful smile and his fear mixes with his love for the man until his heart doesn’t understand how to react.

“I guess he…lives…here,” he breathes in between small kisses. With each press of their lips, Kris’ fingers dig further into his side, adding pressure to the already purpling bruise there.

 "Kris," he whines. He doesn't notice the way Baekhyun glares at the Chinese man.

"Why don't you let Kyungsoo take care of him? This is his apartment," Kris says, tightening his grip on his waist.

"I can handle it, Kris, go back inside."

"Xiumin." Minseok hears the way Kris grits out his name between his teeth and shudders. This will not end well. This will not end well at all.

"Yifan," says another voice and Minseok almost breathes a sigh of relief. "Let Xiumin do as he wishes. Kyungsoo passed out hours ago and even if he was still awake he'd be too -faced drunk to confront this poor man. Let him go and come back in."

Inhaling deeply when the pressure leaves his side and the warmth of Kris' body disappears along with his footsteps, Minseok smiles weakly at Baekhyun before facing the newcomer.

"Thank you, Tao."

Tao looks at him with pity, his expression darker than usual. "Minseok--

"Xiumin."

"Whatever," Tao continues, ignoring the correction. "This has to stop."

"It's fine, Tao. I'm fine. Go make sure he doesn't too angry." Minseok smiles, rubbing the young Chinese man's arm in what he hopes is reassurance. Tao nods and turns to disappear down the hallway but Minseok grabs his wrist at the last second. "And keep an eye on Chanyeol for me, please."

When Tao is a comfortable distance away, Minseok steps out into the outside hallway and closes the door behind him. He nods his head in the direction of the stairwell and he and Baekhyun stroll over to it in silence. Minseok tries to ignore the itchy feeling of Baekhyun's stare on his face.

Pushing open the door to the stairwell, the two take a seat on the closest step. The staircase is dirtied with dried mud tracks in the shape of small feet and stretched out used gum and ghost white cobwebs. Baekhyun shifts his body and leans on the hand rails to look at Minseok. Minseok keeps his eyes on the very bottom step, his hands holding onto his waist.

"Your boyfriend is cute," Baekhyun starts the conversation sarcastically. Minseok says nothing. "He hurt you."

That statement evokes a reaction in the form of Minseok shaking his head and staring at the ceiling. "He doesn't hurt me."

“Min —” Minseok looks at Baekhyun. “Xiumin, he knew he was hurting you…and so did that other guy.”

“He doesn’t do it on purpose,” he tries to justify, yet, for some reason, he feels his eyes get heavy with the threat of oncoming tears. Shaking his head again, he looks at the ceiling again, hoping the tears will fall back to where they’re coming from.

It’s Baekhyun’s turn to look at Minseok.

“Okay, so maybe he does do it on purpose, but…he’s just insecure. Like, he just needs to make sure he still has me. He only needs a little help.” Lifting his shirt up under his ribcage, he reveals the litter of bruises painted skillfully on his pale skin. Baekhyun gasps but Minseok ignores him, letting his shirt fall.

“He says that even though I’m damaged, I’m still beautiful like this. He says he can’t help himself, that his anger and jealousy get the better of him and he loses control, but he wants to change for me. We’ve been together for four years. He came to Korea on exchange when he was sixteen. he was enrolled in my high school but we weren’t in the same class. He fit right in; usually the exchange students are made fun of because they don’t speak our language fluently, but everyone seemed to love Kris. He wasn’t stereotypically popular, but he gained a decent amount of friends.

“I didn’t like attention. I was that kid who kept to a small group of friends and was happy with blending into the background. I hadn’t come out to anyone yet, but everything seemed to assume I was gay. Apparently, having an obvious obsession with Broadway makes you an automatic homoual. …Now that I think about it, I had one of those cheap drama-like high school experiences. I was the quiet, gay kid certain jerks liked to try to intimidate. Well, I wasn’t bullied, I could hold my own, but Kris saw me in the middle of a pretty bad confrontation and thought he would play make-believe prince and save me when I didn’t even need his help in the first place.

“I hated him so much for that. I wasn’t anyone’s pretty damsel in distress. I didn’t want or need him to hover around me like I would break my arm picking up my pencil. He wouldn’t even go away after I told him I had taken taekwondo. If someone accidentally brushed against my shoulder in the hallway, Kris tried to send them to the hospital. …He was the biggest pain the , but I guess I go used to him being around so much. We developed this strange kind of friendship. Neither of us asked the other out. He randomly kissed me after the closing night for our school play and I gave him a black eye,” Minseok laughs and his voice cracks.

Baekhyun squeezes his hand.

“Xiumin, you don’t —

“He was so sweet in the beginning, but I think I was always aware of what he was really like. He was a little rough around the edges. He would hold my hand too tight or kiss me too roughly and, suspiciously enough, I had lost all of my friends before our four month anniversary rolled around. None of that bothered me at first…but then I met Tao and he got worse. Tao was the only person I had befriended who didn’t leave me after getting to know Kris. I have no clue why he did, but Kris though I was going to leave him for Tao. He starting reading my text messages without my allowance, told me I had to get his permission to go anywhere, and forbade me from handing out with the only person I could call my friend.”

Minseok laughs again and it’s the final crack that breaks the levees holding back his grief. He continues to speak through his tears, pressing on through the soft hitches of his breath and the growing need to lean into Baekhyun and break down even if they are strangers.

“Like I said, I wasn’t anyone’s damsel in distress. I was Kim Minseok and I could do whatever I wanted. …But it turns out I had every piece of my heart stolen by him until I no longer had control of myself and I never noticed until he hit me the first time. How do you fight back against someone you’re too afraid to let go?

“For the next two weeks, he did nothing but apologize. A month after he hit me the first time he was scheduled to go back to China. I let him go. We would email each other, but after a while, I couldn’t bare to talk to him so I stopped. It hurt too much. And eventually he stopped trying to get me to respond.

“The days where I missed him until I cried myself to sleep, Tao would come over and keep me company. We fooled around a bit but it was mostly to keep me occupied as opposed to us having feelings for one another. It hadn’t even been a few months when I was walking home with Tao, and all of a sudden I was bring pressed up against the wall of some random store with a hand around my neck. Kris was in tears, I was feeling too many emotions at once, and Tao was only two seconds away from calling the police…that or knocking him out himself. He told me he was having problems back in China. He told me that he needed me. Yeah, he’s a little aggressive, but I don’t think he can help it. It’s…a little hard to explain, but we’re perfect for each other. I don’t know if I can really love anyone else but him."

Minseok smiles faintly and turns away from the ceiling to wipe his tears as he looks to Baekhyun. The latter looks pained and squeezes his hand again. Minseok politely takes his hand back.

“What about Lu Han?” Baekhyun asks, staring at the steps below.

Taking a deep breath, Minseok wets his drying lips. “Lu Han is going to get me in a load of trouble.”

“Why?”

Minseok sighs, but before he can respond his phone rings. Pulling the device from his pocket, he glances at the caller ID before pocketing it again

“Because he doesn’t want to live like this anymore and I’m too much of a coward to do the right thing.” Standing, Minseok bows. “I’m sorry for the noise all my friends were making and for wasting your time with my sob story, um…”

“Baekhyun. Byun Baekhyun.”

Minseok nods. “I’ll do my best to make sure it never happens again. I’ll be taking my leave, then.”

“Wait! Who were you talking about when you said ‘he doesn’t want to live like this anymore’?”

Bowing again, he slips into the hallway, ignoring the question and leaving Baekhyun alone in the stairwell.

Standing in front of a wedged mound of red clay, Baekhyun sighs. He’s been in here for hours and yet has come up with nothing. This is the only time he has to construct a new sculpture to show to his professor by the end of the week. If he skips another day of class to work on this sculpture, he’ll never catch up with the rest of his lessons. He has to do this now but he has absolutely no inspiration. The tragic destruction of his previous piece his artistic muse from him. Not to mention, his mind is still clouded with last night’s events, wondering if he should tell Lu Han about it, wondering why Minseok told him something so serious when they don’t know each other.

“What’s on your mind, Pancakes?” Sehun’s arms wrap around Baekhyun’s waist. The latter pinches the skin of the younger man’s arm absentmindedly.

“Get your hands off me, Sehun.” His words hold no strength or threat to them.

Sehun rests his head on Baekhyun’s shoulder and tightens his hold on the sculptor. “Only if you tell me what’s bothering you,” he says, nuzzling the other’s neck.

Prodding at the clay with his right index finger, Baekhyun allows Sehun to dot kisses up the column of his neck and along his jawline. He turns his head, his finger still enveloped by the soft, wet clay mass, and fits his lips together with Sehun’s. He tells himself he’s only doing this to take his mind off of his project and off of what Minseok told him last night. He tells himself he’s only letting Sehun le his bottom lip like a baby would a pacifier and invade his mouth with his tongue because he needs a distraction. He tells himself his heart, in fact, is not beating erratically. He tells himself a lot of things and his subconscious points out they’re all lies and Baekhyun sort of kind of wants this. Sort of kind of likes kissing Sehun with uninhibited need until their chests tighten and breathing becomes an obvious necessity again.

When they separate, Sehun smiles lazily. “I’ll buy you a coffee.”

Baekhyun nods and slips his finger from its temporary clay prison. Sehun pecks his cheek, unwinding his arms from around Baekhyun’s figure and holding his hand out, expectant.

“What?” Baekhyun looks down at the hand and then back at the younger student.

“You didn’t think I was paying for your coffee with my money, did you, Waffles?”

Rolling his eyes, Baekhyun reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet, handing a few bills to Sehun. The latter counts it, folds it, and stuffs it into his pocket. As he walks to the studio exit, Baekhyun calls out to him.

“I’m cutting off your when you get back!” he yells.

Sehun waves without turning around. “Do me a favor and it first!”

no luhan but we have minseok's story of his relationship with kris. didn't plan for this to be revealed so early but once i started writing it out i couldn't stop orz.

and yes the baekhun was necessary for certain things to happen next.

thank you for the comments/subs (ﾉ＾▽＾)ﾉ～～～～♥

@babyyoo: maybe both kris and luhan can save xiumin from the big bad chanyeol. who knows.

@tomatomc: lay is the only smart one. where there is y switchblade chanyeol, there is ;A; face

@lieslikeamonster: hey~ lol i don't think i can fit baozi and bacon babies into the story.

@lastlaughlane: i am good bb, how are you ^^ all that you want will come soon, i promise.

@harumio: i approve of stalking. and kris is always sweet. he's like ... sweet and sour. something like that OTL

@fmaxp3rt: lol when you say kris is only sweet when he wants to be, it sounds like he's fake. and remember, i already let you hit me once for the baekhun and i gave you your kryber.

@princesshimchan: can i just say i love your username? and chanyeol always brings something fun

@starkey: D: i don't think kyungsoo can do any of that. yeaaah. the abuse takes all the cute out of their relationship. oh well.

@raelin: kris has his good points haha. and at least someone still likes chanyeol.

@callisto: that's because kris deserves love not hate. he's like a baby or something (don't know what i'm talking about)

@shuukaaku: kyungsoo will show up sooner or later. when he's sober.

@soymilk149: lol you would be the perfect bodyguard for little minseok. but i can't let you cut chanyeol or set him on fire lol. i need him.

@s_koala: lay would be such a cute puppy.

@guggig0307: luhan has tough competition to win minseok from kris.

@teeheehaha-ara: chanyeollie messes everything up.