[CONTENTID1]

Run and Hide, Hide and Seek

There was a knock at his door. No…wait…not “a” knock. A bunch of them. Over and over and they wouldn’t stop, like a drum solo that would never end at a rock concert. Kris groaned as he rolled over, sure that today was already going to be a bad one. Until he saw that it was not yet “day.” Not by his terms, or anyone else’s. It was 3 AM. So who in God’s name was out there pounding at his door?

His eyes went round at the thought of the horror movies he had watched the night before on a failed date. This was how it started. Mysterious noises in the dead of night. Kris leaned over to his bedside table to grab his cellphone. His eyes darted about the shadowed room and he took comfort in the sudden bright glow the screen gave off. The knocking wouldn’t stop, eerie, creepy. Kris felt a tremor wrack through his body as he crept slowly off the safe island of his bed.

He heard a sudden creak and he bounced to face it on the other side of his room. He screamed. Something he would never be proud of, especially when he realized it was only his cat, Frufru. His hand was at his heart as he gave a sigh of relief. While the knocking had paused briefly after his scream, it had now resumed and he picked up the cat to give himself comfort. Frufru didn’t like that, and in addition to being scared out of his mind, he now had a trio of claw marks across his cheek.

He was in front of the door now, taking deep breaths, wondering if he dared to open the door. It occurred to him that he could open the curtains and check, but the idea of seeing another face staring back at him frightened him more than the actual thought of opening the door. He didn’t have a peep hole or anything of the kind, so he grabbed a poker from next to his fire place and prepared himself. The loud knocking on the other side of his door, mere inches from where he stood, was entirely unnerving.

With one last prayer for safety he threw open the door, poker at the ready.

“APPA!” screamed someone, who bounded in, moving too quickly for him to even begin to raise the poker for defense. Someone shorter than him with a mop of auburn plowed into his body, skinny arms going about his chest and he dropped the poker in surprise, “Appa, appa, appa,” the boy snuffled, clearly getting an inordinant amount of tears and snot all over him.

“What the hell? Appa?!” the boy, while young looking just from what he could see, could not possibly have been his kid. Unless he’d somehow…yeah no. He would have been, like, three or something. He pushed the boy away from him suddenly, backing away as quickly as possible, “Look – I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here but there’s been some kind of mistake – I am not your ‘Appa,’” he informed from a distance. Lit in the moonlight, Kris could finally see the other’s full appearance. Pale skin that soaked up the moon’s glow like a magnet. Big doe eyes that seemed to fill his entire face, outlined in some strange black ink that swirled about his face in an intricate mask. Lips that were plump and pink and a slim body dressed in tight fitting leggings under a large jacket that obscured much of his upper body. Aside from the weird markings, Kris knew girls who would kill for this kid’s body.

“But Appa likes me to call him Appa,” the boy sniffled, trying to run towards him again like a tiny charging bull but Kris hopped aside.

“Stay away from me! I am not your Appa!”

“Well not yet!” he wailed, “I messed up the timing! You don’t know me yet!” he sobbed, tears leaking over his perfect skin, “I came here specifically to see you before you-“ he cut off suddenly, eyes going wide as he bit down on his own hand to keep himself from speaking.

“Before I…what?” Kris couldn’t help himself, he had to ask,

“Die!” the boy shrieked before collapsing on the group and Kris was rather confused, but the boy was continuing, “You’re going to die! Five years from now – the day you confess to me,” he whimpered, “You’re going to kiss me and then walk out into the street and that’s the end!” he was howling now like a child, “AND I’LL HAVE TO WATCH THE WHOLE THING! I’LL HAVE TO INDENTIFY YOUR BODY AND GO TO YOUR FUNERAL AND I DON’T WANNA!”  He jumped to his feet and pounced on Kris before he could move, slamming them both into the ground as the boy’s lips attached to his. Kris pushed him off, raking his sleeve across his mouth before he dashed for his cellphone lying forgotten on the living room table. This was madness, he needed the police, the psychiatric ward, the loony bin! This kid was clearly having some kind of break down. Before he could grab the phone it was gone. Sliding off of its own accord to fly into the hands of the boy.

Kris blinked. What…But then the boy appeared to have forced himself to calm down, distracting Kris in his exhaustion from the fantastical and impossible display he had just witnessed. Anything could happen in dreams, right?

“Appa…K-Kris. Please, listen. I-I’m Luhan. Lu-han. I’m your future boyfriend, the love of your life. Ooooh I don’t know how this works here,” he whispered suddenly to himself, “I’m from a parallel world. Things are different but the history is the same. I traveled here to prevent your death because this world is five years behind. Things progress differently there, we have technology beyond your wildest dreams and…and I wouldn’t have come…wouldn’t have disturbed this world if it hadn’t already been. The Luhan of Earth died a few hours ago in a plane crash over the Pacific Ocean. Well…few hours my time. In this world you lose Luhan, in mine I lose you. You don’t know it yet, but you’ll never find your soul mate. Except…I am. I’ve lost mine and you’ve lost yours...or rather, will lose yours - gosh this is so confusing! We’re the same person at heart, please K-Kris…”

Kris just had one thing to say, “So….I’m not your father?” he didn’t know what else this crazy person inside the boy’s head was saying so he went for the most understandable part of it all,

“N-no…you just…liked it. Back then. I suppose you will like it soon,” Kris gave a sigh of relief and walked over to the open door,

“Fine then, I don’t know anything else about this situation, but so long as you’re not my flesh and blood, I need you to please put my cellphone down and leave,” he gestured for Luhan to go, hoping that by some mirical this would actually work and he could go back to sleep and wake up thinking this was all a dream.

“N-no, Kris, you don’t understand. You love me – we’re meant for each other – like shoelaces are meant to be tied – together.”

“Shoes only have one lace each. If you tied them together you’d trip and fall,” Kris nitpicked, brow puckering and he tried to think of a way to get this crazy child out of his house. He should never have answered the door, that would have been the sensible thing. Should have called the police. But…the police would have taken an hour to get to his little cabin in the woods anyways. And besides he couldn’t possibly make any proper decisions at this time of night.

“Kris,” Luhan whined, “They still have to be tied together, they start out as one but then they’re separated on the way – come on, I know you’re an English major, but seriously? You’re going to nitpick over that when I’ve just burst into your home in the dead of night spouting nonsense?”

“Glad you can admit it,” Kris grumbled, feeling incredibly unnerved by the other’s display of knowledge about himself, “But Luhan…clearly this is a dream. So it doesn’t matter. I mean, if this weren’t a dream, why would you have talked about being from a parallel universe in the future? Why would you have been able to make my cellphone fly? Why would you have cat ears?” He pointed out the flaws in the logic and indicated to the other’s ears just peeking through the auburn mop, twitching. Luhan’s hands flew to his hair – ears, and pouted,

“You supported me when I said I wanted the surgery, you said they were cute…”

“Why would you call me appa?” he was onto a different subject, “I don’t remember ever being that….”

“Ah but you are,” Luhan said with a knowing nod, “No, seriously, my native language is Chinese, so when I met you in Korea I called you Appa instead of Hyung or Oppa, so…you thought it was cute..”

“I seem to have thought a lot of things were ‘cute’ that I really don’t find all that cute. Honestly, I don’t know who you are, why can’t you just leave? I’m sorry, you don’t seem all that bad, just a tad confused, but I really need sleep,” and lucidity, he added on silently. Luhan’s eyes began to tear again and Kris internally sighed, letting his eyes close briefly. He inhaled deeply, preparing himself to better face this...manifestation.

However, it was only when he opened them again that he smiled. Ah. Luhan was gone. Just vanished. Yay. That meant it was all a dream. Making sure to close and lock the door he made his way back to bed and curled up in contentment.

~~

Five Years Later

“Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return,” intoned the priest and Kris sobbed in the background as the casket was lowered into the earth. There wasn’t even anything in it, and still he cried, cried for the man he loved who had sunk to the bottom of the ocean with a 127 others. A plane crash. Such an unusual and unexpected thing to happen. But it had happened to him.

Luhan. His baby. He hadn’t wanted him to go, hadn’t wanted him to leave. For some reason he had a premonition, a vague memory as though from a dream, that he should keep Luhan within arm’s reach this particular year. And especially away from airplanes. Oh how he had begged the other, on his hands and knees on the doorstep to his cabin. But Luhan had insisted he was being silly, that nothing bad would happen. He just wanted to visit his family for the holidays, but Kris h