Warning: Slight mentions of depression and past!Kray.

Kris was at a loss. He had no idea how to deal with someone as fragile and young as this Tao person. In fact, the only time he had had to deal with a passed out person was when Chanyeol tripped after a party and hit his head. And even then, he had Baekhyun and other people around so all he did was to help carry him onto a couch. Now, however, it was nearing a quarter past two in the morning and the guy hadn’t passed out from a stupid accident, he’d collapsed because of shock.

Kris didn’t know what to do.

He took a deep breath and calmed himself. The first thing to do, he figured, was to lay Tao down somewhere horizontal because, man, Tao was heavy. He figured the couch would do.

Kris half-dragged Tao to the couch and tried to gently put him down. Luckily for him, the couch was cushioned, and Tao didn’t suffer any more damages as he was somewhat dropped. Kris cursed himself for that as Tao’s body weight made the couch creak in protest.

He stood by Tao for a minute, unsure of what to do now. Was he gonna wake up himself? What if he never woke up? A sudden dead body would be hard to explain to explain to the cops. He couldn’t just say ‘Oh, this boy from the past came into my house and died of shock’. No, the police wouldn’t believe that at all.

A sudden scene from a drama Baekhyun had forced him to watch flashed past in his mind. It was of the female lead and the male lead. The guy had been waiting for the girl in her house to give her a surprise birthday party, but when she opened the door, he was waiting behind it, and she whammed it into him at full speed instead.

It was cliché as hell, but Baekhyun had loved it, squealing about how ‘cute’ they were.

So, Kris had sat and been Baekhyun’s source of squeezing while Baekhyun spazzed and wrung the life out of Kris’ arm. He’d suffered bruises. Bruises, on his arm.

The girl had, obviously, been in shock after she caused her boyfriend to have a semi-concussion, and, like all cliché dramas, taken a wet towel and laid it over the guy’s forehead. He’d miraculously woken up right after and they had had a sweet kiss and celebrated her birthday.

Kris’ eyes moved to the kitchen. Well, it’s worth a shot.

*:･ﾟ✧ﾟ･: *

Kris was gonna have to kill someone. Soon. He glared at his wet couch and filthy towel. So far, he had succeeded in getting his towel wet, but, since Tao was, to say the least, dirty, the towel had gotten all black and grimy as well. And he had apparently not wrung the water out of the towel well enough, so it had dripped down Tao’s grubby forehead, collecting dust and -was that oil- before pooling on his couch. Now, his couch was dirty, and so was his favourite white towel.

He couldn’t blame Tao though. According to him, he’d been in the middle of a mini-war in his own house, with guns and everything, when he was suddenly transported sixty years into the future.

Kris remembered when he was nineteen, before his parents had disowned him. He’d already been rebellious at that age, often sneaking out at night, drinking, going to clubs, all that stuff. His parents, especially his father, had put up with it well enough, only occasionally mentioning off-handedly that he really should stop drinking.

But they had snapped when they found out that he had gotten a boyfriend, Lay. They had yelled at him, called him a freak, had thrown him out of the house. Kris wasn’t too fazed by that; he went to Chanyeol’s so much that it was practically a second home. He was much more welcomed there anyway. It also happened to be right next to Lay’s house. In fact, that was how he had gotten to know Lay in the first place. He and Chanyeol were best friends.

But when Lay had heard that Kris had been thrown out of his house because of their relationship, he had been adamant on breaking up with Kris. I don’t want to be a burden, he had screamed, tears streaking down his face. I don’t want things to be like this.

Kris had done everything to try to tell Lay that ,damnit, he loved him, no matter what his parents said, but he’d went to his house one day only to find out that Lay’s whole family had moved, without a word.

It had taken him weeks to get over that particular relationship. The whole thing was made more depressing for him when he’d received his parents’ letter, saying that they wanted to disown him. He’d nearly sunk into depression during that period. Only the constant encouragement from all his friends, particularly Chanyeol, kept him from falling.

He had bounced back, better than before, ready to face the world again, this time with a more matured mindset and a closely-guarded heart that wasn’t easily broken now. Just a week before moving into his own house, he’d signed the papers -finally- that bound him to his past and kept him from completely letting go.

He wasn’t Li Jia Heng anymore. He was Kris. Kris, who no longer teared just because he wasn’t allowed to go to Channie’s house to play. Kris, who no longer had to abide by his parents’ rules, who didn’t have to stay at home, who didn’t have a curfew.

He was more free than he had ever felt in years.

His little reminiscing episode was brought to an abrupt end when Tao jerked up straight from the couch screaming for his parents, his grandparents, his dog, even. Kris vaguely remembered telling the construction workers to remove the doghouse at the end of the garden.

Oh .

Kris rushed over to Tao and grabbed his shoulders. Instantaneously, his arms entangled themselves with Kris’ and his fingers dug into his upper arm almost painfully.  The towel slipped off the couch and slithered to the floor sadly.

“! Tao! Tao! Wake up!” Kris shook Tao as hard, yet as gently as he could. Tao’s fingers gripped his arm tighter and his yells turned into wails, then soft whimpering. Slowly, his eyes opened. Tears clung to the black lashes and spilled over his lower eyelids to form wet smudges of grime and dust.

Tao’s eyes seemed unfocused. The dark-brown orbs were hazy as they wandered over Kris’ face. Then, something seemed to disappear in them, causing them to be sharper, more aggressive. In a split second, as he recognised Kris’ face, something else sparked, drowning out the aggressiveness and replacing it with something softer, something like…sadness?

Kris suddenly became hyper-aware of the fact that his hands were still on Tao’s shoulders, and Tao’s hands, on his arms. His eyes widened and he pulled away hurriedly.

“Oh, s-sorry.” He stuttered.

Tao’s gaze became downcast again. He rubbed his forearm as he spoke. “It’s okay.”

There was a brief, awkward silence, during which Tao rubbed away at the dirt stains on his face and tried to hide his disgust.

After five minutes, Kris could no longer stand it. He stood up, awkwardly shoving his large hands in the pockets of his sweat pants.

“Do you want to take a shower? You seem pretty uncomfortable.” Kris cursed himself as his voice cracked half-way through his first sentence.

Tao looked up, surprised. “You’re not gonna kick me out?” He asked, eyes wide.

Kris was momentarily stunned into silence by Tao’s shimmering eyes amidst his blackened face.

“Uh- well- no. Wasn’t this your house as well? I don’t know. I’d feel kinda bad if I did kick you out.” Kris fiddled with the hem of his shirt. It still was kind of a hard subject to grasp. For goodness sake, he had an actual time traveller in his house, if what Tao said was true. A time traveller.

Tao’s eyes brightened a little and a ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “Thanks. Do you have any spare clothes?” He stood up and nearly lost his balance, but regained it a second later.

Kris nodded dumbly. He felt like a stranger in his own house, next to this Tao person who had apparently been staying in the place through generations of his family. Kris felt like an intruder, remodelling the place without the original owner’s permission.

And Tao knew exactly where the toilet was. That just confirmed everything, didn’t it? Tao wouldn’t have any other way to know the layout of the house otherwise.

Kris ran a hand through his hair and sighed, deeply. He needed a good night’s sleep to ponder over everything that had happened. And the sooner the better.

He dug out a pair of baggy sweatpants and a white v-neck shirt that was a little too tight for him. Tao seemed to be of a smaller build, anyway. He half-tossed the clothes to Tao and showed him where the soap for his hair was, and where the body soap was. Tao seemed fine with everything, so Kris had simply told him that Tao could sleep in the guest room until morning properly came.

Kris pulled his own covers up to his chin. It was nearing three-thirty in the morning, but, hey, tomorrow was a Saturday, so what harm would there be?

He tried to go to sleep, really, he did. It was a valiant effort, considering that his mind was full with theories as to why Tao had suddenly time-travelled, and how. He lay in his bed, mindlessly staring at the ceiling, for almost half-an-hour, until his body finally gave way and he nodded himself to sleep.

That night, he dreamt of guns, water pumps, and, strangely, Tao.

*:･ﾟ✧ﾟ･: *

Not really happy with this asljksd'asjd;lk did I ramble too much on Kris' background? D: I hope it wasn't too boring :/ I just wanted to include more information about Krees ._. This isn't edited yet, so sorry for any mistakes that pop up, I'm typing this up at 1 in the morning on a school night ._. someone shoot meh.

Anyway, thank you all guise for subscribing and leaving wonderful, wonderful comments :D They make me happy~