A few weeks after the incident, Baekhyun’s side was mostly healed.  The bullet had gone all the way through him, but not hit anything terribly vital.  He was on some pretty strong pain medication, and Kris was in a near-constant state of exhaustion between running around after Baekhyun and trying to pick up the pieces of their shattered smuggling ring.  With D.O. dead and Chen, Suho, and Xiumin in jail, there was almost no one left who could run the operation. 

They decided it was time to just get the hell out of dodge.  Kris had been setting things up in Canada for years, and was only waiting for the right time to make the move.  With his current ring in pieces, it seemed like a good a time as any.  They already had Rocky in place to provide the cover.  They were simply waiting for Baekhyun to be healed enough to make the flight. 

Baekhyun insisted on going out for coffee one last time before they left.  It was his farewell to Yixing as well as a fix for his craving, for he hadn’t forgotten that he’d first met the other man after bumping into him here. 

When someone jostled him from behind, he almost smiled. 

“Oh my god,” he said quickly.  “I’m so sorry!  Are you okay?”

Baekhyun had to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment to keep the tears from showing.  Somehow, Yixing had been the key that unlocked the doors of his emotions.  They were too close to the surface these days, and he was distressingly apt to cry over everything.  He didn’t even understand the compulsion, but he had no control over it.  “I’m fine,” he murmured, and turned to see who it was.  Maybe someone to have one last fling with before he escaped with Kris to the wilds of Canada. 

The wide-eyed young man in front of him was a ghost.  There was no other explanation.

Baekhyun swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat, and took in details such as the flushed cheeks, the heaving chest, the glassy eyes.  It was no ghost, he realised.  It was Yixing.   “You’re alive,” he said, disbelief written in his voice.  As if he couldn’t help himself, he glanced down Yixing’s body, taking in the familiar curves and contours.  The flush on Yixing’s cheeks deepened. 

“So are you,” he mumbled, after a brief pause. 

“It takes more than that to end me,” Baekhyun said with a calm he didn’t feel.  This man was the cause of everything he’d suffered in the last few weeks.  Every unwanted emotion and despicable tear had been his fault.  He wanted to hate him.  He wanted to shoot him in the face. 

He wanted to drag him to the nearest flat surface and him senseless.  Baekhyun stepped out of the way of someone else who’d come up behind them, and was disproportionately pleased when Yixing followed him.  Yixing’s lips worked silently for a long moment, and Baekhyun – though he’d never have considered himself a coward before this – couldn’t stand there any longer. 

“Anon, agent,” he said, with a quick nod of his head.  He turned and fled. 

Kris found him huddled on the bed, trying to reconcile the conflicting feelings crashing back and forth inside him. 

“Jesus Christ, Baekhyunnie, what’s wrong?”

“It’s Yixing.”

Kris froze.  Baekhyun was well aware that Kris was beginning to hate the sound of Yixing’s name, and had taken pains to stop mentioning it when Kris could hear him, but there was no way around it this time.  “What about him?” he said, cautiously.

Baekhyun looked up, thankfully dry-eyed.  “He’s alive.”

Kris inhaled sharply and choked on spit.  When he’d caught his breath, he came closer.  “But you said you shot him.”

“I did.”

“How can he be alive?”

“I don’t know.”

Kris leaned in even closer.  Their noses were almost touching.  “How do you feel now?”

Baekhyun considered the question honestly.  His feelings had never come into play before in any of their discussions, but that was because he didn’t have them.  Now, with the door unlocked and the key that did it not safely buried and lost, Baekhyun felt another emotion beginning to drown out the grief.

Rage. 

“I hate him.”