Title: (You Are the) Bravest
Pairing: Baekhyun/Sehun
Genre: family (brother!AU), tragedy
Rating: G
Summary: Sehun remembers a brother.
 

inspired by sehun and baekhyun's conversation on the radio about how
baekhyun never lets sehun leave when they're taking showers together
because he hates having to clean up after the maknae's bubbles and all
(so he lathers him with soap and sprays him with water so he can't leave!)

Sehun remembers a brother.

On hot, humid, summer days, they had played in the kiddy pool by the lawn of their grandparents’ house in the countryside and had chased each other with oversized snorkels, gurgling fits of laughter as they drowned in rubber duckies. They had washed with the garden hose after, their father chuckling as he and his older brother had wriggled under the jutting bursts of chilled water with delighted screams. When they had stripped of their swimming trunks and had run around in glee, they were but jolly toddlers, rosy bottoms cherubic as their grandparents’ clapped withered hands in joyful rhythms. The air had weaved fast through their lungs, through fields of fresh asters on the outskirts of town, through distant past and then present, then all the way back as it lifted them up impossibly higher than high.

Other nights at home, Sehun had wrestled in the bathtub with Baekhyun, bubbles painting cheeks and bellies, walls and tiles. During their dog fights their mother had always told them to be careful, to not dunk their heads into the water lest they forget to come back up, and they both had nodded, singing back a merry, “Yes, mommy” before going back to attack each other with slabs of soapy foam and slippery antics. Sehun remembers Baekhyun coughing sometimes when they'd gotten out of the shower, remembers he himself had been fine, but his brother, as his mother and father had always said, had been born a very, very fragile boy. He had always been a little sicker when the yearly colds snuck their way under the Byun household, had always recovered a tad slower than the rest. Baekhyun’s weak immune system had been the reason behind everything, had been the only answer Sehun had been given when they boarded the ambulance during silent, cold nights. He wouldn’t have understood another answer anyway.

But in Sehun’s memory, Baekhyun is a strong brother: one who has led him through countless bat-filled caves and over a thousand soaring mountains. He is the brother Sehun has always looked up to, admired, followed; he is his first and best companion, a friend no other could, or ever will, replace. There is no one as much of a fighter as Baekhyun had been, going on Digimon escapades with Sehun in the hospital ward when the nurses had clearly told them not to, zooming and crashing sound effects vibrating off pale cheeks as Agumon had stomped over crumpled sheets and metal rails.

“Go, go, go!” Baekhyun had yelled in commanding power, leading rookie Sehun on. “Let’s go, Gabumon! Let’s go save brave little Baekhyun trapped in Room 407 – onward, comrade! Time is running out!”

Sehun remembers how his eyebrows had furrowed in concentration, absorbed in the game of pretend as Baekhyun had jumped over the beds and flown his Digimon action figure across the expanse of the room, a half circle up and down before reaching the window sill.

“Listen carefully, Gabumon. Do you hear him?”

Baekhyun had squinted his eyes before covering his mouth with one hand, rendering a mock lip by his real one and speaking in a high-pitched voice, “H-Help, help me!” Then frowning, Baekhyun had brought his voice down to a whisper, a hundred eighty turn from the voice he had dubbed for the captive they were saving, and said, “Our warrior is in trouble, Sehun! We must go save him!”

Sehun had stared into his brother’s eyes, sharing a quick, firm nod.

“Shh,” the concentrated Baekhyun had shushed, creeping his hand up the window like a thief. “We mustn’t make a single noise!”

Then he had exchanged a quick signal with his little brother, determination and fire filled in his eyes. Sehun had always longed for his own to look just as fierce and solid as Baekhyun’s did. Perhaps that had been his biggest motivation to grow up.

“Warrior!” Baekhyun had shouted into the air that rushed in as he pulled back the glass windows. “Where are you?! We have come to your rescue!”

Like the other times, Sehun had understood they were to throw their mini action figures out the frames, let them fly far, far away, but in that moment, all Sehun had noted was the feeling of the autumn breeze tickling his skin, lifting the soft fringes of his brother’s forehead. It had made him worry.

“Hyung,” he had said, tugging his brother’s hospital gown. He had been afraid that the cold gust might somehow hurt his brother; their parents had said the harsh wind wasn’t good for him, after all.

“What are you doing, rookie? Come up here and launch yourself with me! Now, don’t be a coward!”

“H-Hyung, I’m scared.”

“Of what? Falling? Oh, come here dear brother, let me tell you a tale before we soar.”

Sehun had tried to tug Baekhyun down inch by inch so that he wasn’t on his tiptoes anymore, but suddenly there had been a flash of white and it wasn’t until Sehun could finally blink that he'd realized what had fallen. His brother Baekhyun was doubled over in pain on the ivory tiles, coughing and wheezing as his sides had squeezed mercilessly inward.

“H-Hyung!”

Sehun remembers realizing that something had gone terribly wrong, that this was not one of Baekhyun’s fibs he would play on the occasional school day when he didn’t want to brush his teeth. He had yelled and wept and shook until his parents and the nurses had rushed in, and he remembers that the last image of his brother had been tear-stained front and back, jagged and sharp. The final glance at his brother is one that numbs his body until he cannot remember the scent of the antiseptics in the hospital ward anymore: he had seen Baekhyun cry, had seen his first brave, yet weak, tear. And it had struck him like no other.

Sehun cherishes a memory, one of the nights Baekhyun had told him a story about pirates in a sea millions of miles away, ruthless and uncivilized with crooked teeth and stiff fingers, but daring and courageous down to their thickened, iron bones. In this memory Baekhyun is alive and well, neither in the Intensive Care Unit of the children’s hospital nor in the emergency room. Instead, he is safe home with Sehun, covered three feet two inches tall with cozy pajamas, blanket tied around his neck like a billowing cape, and a hand held up in the air like a hero, one that Sehun has always known in his heart.

“And behold, my brother. I will now tell you the secret, the ultimate treasure even Captain Scargg cannot find!”

The little soldier had leapt over their pillows and crawled over to his backpack on the floor, his excited visage shadowed orange by the lone lamp lighting their nighttime bedroom. Springing back just as quickly, Baekhyun had grabbed a rectangular object in his hand: a book; and Sehun’s eyes had opened wide in eager anticipation.

“This, my kid brother Sehun, is the secret to the life of Byun Baekhyun, the bestest older brother of this planet!”

And he remembers the giggles as they'd flipped through pages of scribbles and scrabbles from two years ago when Grandpa Byun had decided getting a toddler a notebook was a good idea, remembers his eyes shining with awe and amazement at the stories Baekhyun stores in those many margined lines, remembers smiling until his cheeks hurt because of the accurate imitations of everything and anything in the tales that emitted noise.

Canons, rockets, puppies, Superman, father, Agumon, Gabumon, Sehun.

Sehun.

Sehun.

When he flips through the notebook today, he traces his name over and over again on the soft dents of pen made from Baekhyun’s fumbling kid fingers, revisits those ungraceful limbs hanging onto wooden pencils and markers; and the illustrations, he stares at them with nostalgia embedded in his throat because there is a brother in his heart and this brother is no longer here with him.

In one drawing, they are in a space ship, jubilant faces poking out of astronaut helmets in the circle windows of a blazing rocket. His brother’s words, forever stuck in time this way, make him smile when he reads over them, tens and thousands of times repeated.

Sehun and Baekhyun have survived take-off! But what is this?! Is that an alien ship? Sehun, fire the laser guns! We cannot lose to these bad guys!

Sehun remembers a brother, and this brother never forgets him.

To Sehun (my favorite person in this world, not even grandpa or mommy!)

I am s o rr y that we can’t play anym o re but

I know Agu mon  is  s afe wit h  you, ro okie bro th e r!

One d ay I am goi ng to ge t be tter like n e ver befor e and

W e’LL p l ay agai n!

Mo mmy say s to s top  w riting bec a use I  ha ve   no  en ergy but

I th ink I have a l ot left!

I  m iss you lots, Sehun

and I h o pe you will a lways be  A-OkAy.

Love,

H yung.

Sehun has a brother he remembers, and this brother, he never, ever leaves behind.

first person to answer this question gets to request a drabble:
when and how did baekhyun die?
(comment or PM, either works)
i just felt like it was hinted too subtly and i was wondering if anyone go t it~

drabble goes to: sooxingsic