humbling

All Chanyeol did was take a needed breath of air, just a moment’s pause to clear his head. He intended no more but to pick up the blanket they left in the car that Junmyeon asked for. No more but a short trip outside and to return back in where he assumed Baekhyun was still asleep.

He did not, at all, expect to come back to such harrowing cries that will etch itself deep in his memory. A pain so undeniably deep.

Loud and heavy sobs echo through the door Chanyeol was standing in front of.

Not even in the times Baekhyun had broken down before him did he ever hear the young man cry like this. An anguish of almost vivid suffering. As if Baekhyun’s soul was being ripped apart out of his being, stolen and stomped on.

When he opens the door, a wave of sadness crashes onto him that tears instantly blurs Chanyeol’s sight.

Curled, into the smallest most pitiful ball he had ever seen, Baekhyun was bawling so hard on his knees he was losing breath. Sobbing like his life depended on it.

It is only now that Baekhyun’s lies wholly sink in on him. How it was far beyond just his class-standing.

"Did you really believe I was going to leave you?" Chanyeol spoke with a lump in his throat, for he was overwhelmed by the grief Baekhyun felt of losing him.

Baekhyun whips his head so quick. Confused and in utter disbelief at seeing Chanyeol there, again - back. And it hurt Chanyeol to see that. The doubt in Baekhyun’s eyes.

"This is why you kept the truth from me. This is why you were so… afraid and ashamed to tell me all that you've kept it, isn't it?"

Chanyeol shakily crouches down before him, and his voice trembles – of this other truth that never even crossed his mind to consider.

"Because you've stamped it in your head that once I find out… I would just throw you away?"

"I am offended, Baekhyun." He laughs bitterly. "I am hurt, that you believe my love for you is that shallow. That you never even thought of giving me a chance to prove you wrong?”

He smiled at the tears that were once again flowing down Baekhyun’s face. A smile he could not help because if there was anything the candle is doing in this dim night, is sparkle his lover’s irises so beautifully. That amidst the chaos of everything around them, regardless of all the truth, this is still the same man he fell in love with.

"But I understand. I am a Park, after all. I now understand how much more that alone frightens you."—

Chanyeol cups Baekhyun's face and looks straight into the eyes that are filled with insecurities, doubts and shame, and silently promises to himself that from this day forward, he will never tire of assuring Baekhyun where he stands in his life.

"But do you know what would hurt me the most, Baekhyun? It would hurt me the most to lose you."

The sheer love painting Chanyeol's stare right now had Baekhyun sobbing once more. He flings himself over to the taller practically knocking them down as Baekhyun clung onto him tight. Afraid he may leave, again.

Chanyeol cries with him. His devastation on behalf of Baekhyun's pain felt in the tremors of his tight embrace.

"You were only gone for a week, but that glimpse of not having you in my life showed me how empty it would be."

♠️

Junmyeon breathes as he looks around the room assigned to him and Minho. “This is humbling, isn’t it?”

It was nothing like they have ever seen or experienced before. For them, staying in a hotel meant a five-star treatment, in a five-star structure, surrounded by five-star interior design and service, not a room that exists merely to serve its literal purpose – an accommodation.

A small room in plain white walls, a polka dotted curtain that did not match the bed sheet patterns, not even the colors, obviously fake plastic flowers on the one table in the room, and one piece of a picture frame on the wall. That was all the interior that greeted Minho and Junmyeon when they entered their