12. PIECE (Tao)

When Tao was younger, his favourite parts of the day were his journeys to and from school.

They weren’t spectacular - to anyone else, in fact, they’d be treated as nothing more than a menial necessity –, but Tao had always relished in them, and how bitter-sweet they were in nature.

In those short, eight-minute journeys he would be happy, for the first half, leaving behind a place he hated, and then, just as suddenly, apprehensive, in the second half, walking towards another. Those eight minutes of his life were his in-betweens of peace. He'd wished, so many times he couldn’t even count it, to be able to just pause at those moments, trap himself in a time lock where he could enjoy such an effervescent sense of calm for as long as he wanted, but nothing ever works by pure wish-work alone.

The first couple of years after he'd entered high school he recalls as vividly as if they had only been days ago (and that had always been the terrible thing about memories - it's the difficult ones that stay strong the longest.).

At that time, there wasn't a place where he fit. He was a puzzle piece with a bend in it, forced into a place he should belong but to which he no longer did. He couldn't pretend any differently - that was what school was for him, after people began questioning his uality; somewhere he shouldn't have been.

But the bend in his piece held a weight far harsher than the loss of school.

Where the board of education was no longer liveable, the home board (if he could even call it that) fared much worse. One day, a day so sudden that Tao couldn't have seen it from miles away, his puzzle piece snapped clean in a jagged half. The two pieces, though they fit, were pressed apart by splinters and rough curves. His mother, though it shouldn't have happened, stepped into the wrong corner shop at the wrong time in the wrong moment and it was all just so hysterically wrong that it couldn’t not be real. He lost the figure who had kept him sane as easily as if someone had plucked her name from a book, and decided to have some fun.

Life went on, which seemed strange, and cruel, when Tao's life had felt like it stopped. A ten-year-old boy, living, learning, remembering how to smile again - not because he felt it worthy, but because he couldn't for the life of him find anything else to do. 

People, Tao thinks, underestimate children so easily. They see immature liveliness, glowing happiness upon bright skin - they think foolish ignorance, not yet tainted by the world. 

If this is true, Tao has never really been a child, and he should never really have been treated like one.

-

Tao doesn't live alone, but he may as well for how long he spends only in his own company. After his mother's death, his father had changed - turning stricter, more protective, but more intent too on Tao becoming independent earlier. He'd leave for a while, some 'business trip' or another, maybe even just to test how Tao has grown, and Tao would never know for sure when he'd be back, or what he'd done during that time. He broke, in so many ways - only the way he shattered was different to how most others tend to in the circumstances. 

He didn't become a drunk. He didn't find comfort in the arms of willing women. He didn't neglect, per-say - teach was a better word, only if Tao's father taught, he'd be that teacher who went through content three years in advance, and Tao the student who struggled along. 

But, for a person so lost and torn, his partner stolen so abruptly from his grasp, he held himself together far better than most would've.

With his strict nature and hard-set core traditions, he wasn't the most comforting of presences when he did happen to be around.

His rules are stern, because he wants the best.

His beliefs on what is right are dated, because that's all he's ever known.

He pushes Tao for academic excellence, for a well-built, manly person, strong and aboding, tough, chivalrous, someone he can be proud of, someone who can make one woman very happy in the future.

This, Tao thinks, is where the divide began.

Tao's always known he's gay, even from a very early age. In playgrounds and behind equipment sheds, where girls and boys stole kisses as they grew in school, Tao stood in the backgrounds, trying to pretend he fit, even if his disinterest - or, rather, his interest in the wrong pairs of lips - made him sure he didn't. Whilst he's always known this, he's also always known what his father thought of those 'types'. 

And so on the first day Tao got punched, for a gaze which lingered too long on a boy in his class, he had no explanation for his father. That time, his father stayed for nearly a year without leaving once. He made it his duty to 'fix' Tao, to bulk him up, make him stronger, less weak, a man, ready to fight back the next time it might come to it. He never asked Tao if that was what he wanted. He never looked close enough to see that behind his stern demeanour, there was a gentle and kind heart, belonging to an even more caring boy, the type who would catch a spider and let it out because we don't have to hurt it, the type who wouldn't lay a hand on another if it were only to protect someone as small as himself. 

He went to the extra Wushu classes anyway, the morning workout sessions before school, a ripe age of thirteen, doing what his father told him. He should've minded, he should've cared, he would've cared, but that one day – the day where he turned into the wrong corridor; the day that he’d let himself break – changed everything.

Remembering it now is like searching for someone through the mask of a heavy fog. He had been tired from school, and had walked straight on to his Wushu class, eyes drooping with fatigue. It really hadn't been difficult when he'd gotten lost - the centre's design so spiralling and intricate, a maze in clear sight. It had taken him far too long to realise his mistake, and at that point he didn't care much. He was so tired, so tired it almost hurt. He had walked a few more steps and then he'd fallen against a wall by a pair of clear doors, and sunk heavily to the ground. 

So many thoughts had swarmed at him in that moment. His wary mind, his soft heart not wanting to disappoint, and his weak limbs, strained from continuous stress, were too much of a deadly combination.

He'd started crying, though he hadn't given himself permission - wallowing, exhausted cries, a litany of them - and he had felt so damn helpless at that moment, wanting, just wanting so badly to pause his life and let himself be weak, for once, let himself be vulnerable.

Through his tears he hadn't heard the glass doors beside him opening and closing, hadn't felt a new presence in the corridor in which he wept until the moment where a hand reached out to rest over his shaking elbow, and a soft voice, a soothing voice, had said, "tell me why you're crying."

And Tao had, because no one else had ever asked that. He told him everything, this caring stranger, who let him speak and speak and speak - about his worries over not being enough, his worries over already being something his father despises, his worries, his worries, his worries.

Tao even now can't know for sure what he had said that night. Everything, like the blur of tears shielding his eyes, was inexplicably vague. He remembers the things which mattered. He remembers dimpled smiles, healing words, coaxing movements. He remembers, "there's this group I think can help you...", and he remembers Yixing wiping his tears, and guiding him inside to listen. 

He can never resent his father for giving him all that extra pressure, because he shudders to think what he'd be without that day in his memory, and the group which he grew to need more than anything else in his life - a place where he could be vulnerable, but where he finally learnt how to be strong. 

-

Tao gets the phone call in the prime of school lunchtime, as succinct and sharp as always.

"I'll be back today," his father had said. Even as a disembodied voice, Tao had straightened up immediately, crouching in the corner of the school's courtyard, making himself small.

"Yes, father." Tao had responded.

"Come straight home after Wushu." And then the line had went dead.

Tao sighs now, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the wall behind him. School is over, but his last two periods had passed by in a blur, and he hadn't been able to keep his focus. 

He hasn't seen his father in a couple of months now, a longer period of time than what is usual. They've kept in contact through the phone, though their conversations never drag. His father has always found prolonged phone conversations menial and inefficient, and Tao doesn't try to disagree.

He's been through this routine enough times to know what will happen. His father won't talk about what he's been doing, Tao won't ask. He'll ask about his Wushu practices, the ones Tao's stopped going to since he found the group to replace that plot of time, and Tao will have to lie. 

Even thinking about it is making Tao's head pound like hard drums. He lets out a shuddering breath, leaning heavily against the fence behind him, and his eyes fall shut.

Everything is calmer like this, he's always thought. All he hears at this moment sounds busily peaceful - rustling wind against his ears, the steady inhales and exhales from his lips, soft footsteps from passer-by’s. He can feel his chest, rising and falling, and the wood against his back, a refreshing cold he hasn't taken the time to appreciate before then. It smells fresh, for each slow breath he takes, therapeutically natural. 

Tao's favourite part of the day changed three years ago. It has been, for a long time now, the moments he spends with the support group, sunk into the safe atmosphere it offers, but, God, these moments - where he can be still and untouched, simply live, from something as seemingly tedious as taking in air - are more than enough to cherish.

"You've been biting your lip." A voice calls out, making Tao's eyes snap open. He knows who it is already, knows who it always is, but when he sees Kris stood in front of him he still feels that pleasant surprise boil up within him. 

"It's a nervous habit," Kris goes on, taking a couple of steps closer. "You do it whenever you're worried."

Tao's heart has always been traitorous. It goes warm for a gender which many believe it shouldn't. It lacks warmth, conversely, for a parent who he thinks he should care more for. It skips a beat here, at the thought of Kris, his best friend, noticing these things - at the way the elder must observe him, from afar, keying in all his little habits and learning his traits like they're his own -, and it turns a tempo of erratic that Tao shouldn't give in to. 

He parts his lips, dangerously dragging his teeth over them to feel the gnawed-at-skin, and let's himself watch Kris' eyes follow the movement.

"I never realise," Tao says abruptly, pushing himself up off the fence and stepping towards the elder boy. 

Kris blinks a few times, and then gives him an appraising look, but Tao only turns away, starting the walk off towards the centre. 

Tao doesn't know exactly when or how it was decided that they'd always walk to the group together, but it's been that way for a while. He hears, immediately, how Kris' steps fall along beside him, and it feels so natural by now for them to make this journey together that (for a moment) it is stranger to walk in silence. 

"What's made you nervous?" Kris questions, no doubt in his tone that he's asked the right question.

"He's coming back today," Tao responds after only a split second's hesitation, "my father." Kris doesn't need the clarification, but Tao's so used to using it. He sees how the boy beside him visibly tenses at the spoken words, jaw setting in a hard line.

"It's okay, Kris. It's not like I haven't handled this situation before." He says, because it's true. Greeting his father after the times he spends away has almost become a habit. Tao reckons he could go through the whole process with his eyes taped shut. "Anyway, my problems are nothing compared to-"

"Don't." Kris instructs, voice turning deadly fast. "Don't say that, don't ing-"

He doesn't finish. Tao stares, knowing not to speak, and soundlessly gaging the situation. Kris avoids his eyes, breathing in so heavily through his nose that Tao thinks, for a moment, about what response fits best, and when he drags his gaze down and locks upon Kris' shaking hands, the answer is simple. 

Before Kris has the chance to move away, Tao trails a hand down and presses fingers against his wrist, making the taller boy slow to a stop in his tracks. Tao takes the easy compliance as a good sign, and he doesn't even hesitate when he moves to stand before the elder, leaning to meet his eyes. 

"Go on," Tao says, because he knows Kris will be able to say it this time, and he isn't wrong. 

"Tao," Kris breathes, defeated, voice soothing into that soft, shaky tone he so rarely lets show through. "Even if you aren't the most pained person in the world, that doesn't mean you aren't in pain." He glances down, staring into the space of their hands, and when he speaks again his voice is muted in quiet care. "Kyungsoo has his problems, but that doesn't mean you should pretend you don't have any of your own." 

His hands twitch here - Tao feels the movement against his own fingers -, like he wants to reach out and touch, and god it's so dangerous what they do, so dangerous.

Tao blinks up at Kris, and he's so, so juxtaposed - so soft and gentle and warm and careful, so cautious and slow and steady and in love; so opposed to what he should be. So far from anger, so far from harshness, far from spite, and from hatred, that you couldn't even imagine what he was fighting in his head.

"You can be vulnerable sometimes too, Tao," Kris breathes, and Tao hears what he means to say as clear as pure water. You can rely on me sometimes too, Tao. 

Whatever Kris has been saying ebbs out into a desolate whisper, stolen by the winds around them. He's calm enough now for Tao to know he can speak more freely, though he's never once feared what the doctors say could happen.

"Have you been taking your medication?" Tao questions anyway, and Kris immediately tenses, shoulders rigid and taut and drawn together like he wants to run.

Tao does it without preamble now - touches Kris. He just stretches arms up and cups the boy's face in his hands, and tried to soothe him with the contact as he speaks.

"I know you don't think you need to," Tao starts, because Kris has said it so many times - "what medicine can manage anger, Tao? What pill can possibly control a feeling?" - and Tao has never been able to come up with a response. "It's prescribed for a reason Kris. It should help, even if only a little."

"You're better than any medicine," Kris says without an ounce of hesitance. In any other circumstance, for any other two people in the world, it might be considered a line. But Tao knows that Kris is simply being earnest at this moment, and is trying to relay a truth he has always believed since almost the exact day they became friends. "You calm me down best."

Tao can’t help but to smile at that, a small, private smile, except when he looks into Kris' eyes the elder is staring back at him with so much affection that he's almost breathless from it. 

It makes Tao's heart swarm. It makes his head light, and his stomach flutter. For a moment, he wonders about what could happen if either of them decided to confess, like they've held on their tongues more times than they can count. He forgets about the fears he has, he forgets about the horrible likelihood that he'll never be able to introduce Kris to anyone as more than just his friend. The life he covets, buzzing like a taunt in front of his eyes, and it's not enough, not nearly, but when has it ever been?

"We should keep walking," Tao says eventually, but he makes no move to do so, and Kris shows no sign of hearing what he's just said. What he does instead is trail his gaze over Tao's features - carefully, like he's mapping out a masterpiece -, his eyes swimming with such a prevailing show of captivation, that Tao forgets, for a moment, how to breathe. Slowly (like Tao is too delicate to be handled in any other way), he ducks his head and leans in close, the pull like a moth to a flame, and his breath marks a scorch path over Tao's skin.

"We should really..." Tao trails off - struck, suddenly, by how fast his heart beats when Kris lets himself get near. It's the closest they ever get to letting themselves go - these moments; stood still, breathing each other in like oxygen. 

Things would be so different if Tao's father was a different man, and Kris had enough trust in himself. Things would be so different if Tao's mother had never died, and Kris could deal with his anger like any other person. Things would be so different if, and the list went on so far that the end of it was weighted underground. 

Tao pretends anyway, like he sometimes does. He presses in closer, and his breath comes out much warmer, and Kris crowds around him like he'll never find someone more worthy of protecting than Tao. It is ironic, Tao thinks, that he feels safest in the arms of a man who thinks of himself as a danger. 

"Excuse me," a voice makes itself known.

Tao flinches back almost immediately, an embarrassed flush flooding his cheeks as he notices the stern-looking woman glaring avidly at the two of them. He bows his head in apology, and she opens as if to chastise them, but then Kris tilts his head and stares at her with his hard, angered eyes, and she falters. Tao, before things can get out of hand, curls a hand around the cusp of Kris' arm and he feels how the smallest amount of tension seeps out from there.

"Let's go," Tao says once more, his voice softly insistent.

Kris has to breathe a few more times before he can finally get himself to listen. 

-

Tao can't focus in the group today. It's usually his time to relax and unwind like he can never seem to do at home or at school, but there is so much he finds himself worrying over. Kyungsoo's absence in the seat beside him (for one) has unnerved the part of him that needs to protect like the heart needs oxygen, and the implications of his father's return (for another) weighs heavily upon that side of him that relies on being protected. They don't usually coincide, these versions - so opposing in their nature. That they are today, and indefinitely so, is like the proof of Tao's frazzled mind laid out on a platter.

There was something different about the phone call today. There was something off about it, he realises belatedly, but he can't figure out what it is, and he has a feeling that the change, whatever it may be, is significant. 

Had his father sounded happier? Had he sounded harsher? It's all become so vague - Tao can't pinpoint what happened, but the thoughts won't let him go.

He's so zoned out that he doesn't respond when Yixing asks him a question, and it takes Minseok poking at his shoulder for a good few seconds for him to finally lift his head.

"Oh- I..." He trails off, meeting Yixing's gaze.

The beautiful thing about having mutual trust in someone, is that you can end up knowing each other, in a short amount of time, to the same extent as you would if you'd spent ten years together. Yixing probably took a year to gauge Tao, and the past two have been used to stack more blocks up on the tower. 

So when Tao looks at Yixing, and Yixing looks back, Tao knows immediately that Yixing understands that whatever is on Tao's mind today is something he doesn't want to share. 

"Clear your head, Tao," Yixing says, not is something bothering you?, because he already knows the answer, and he also knows Tao will lie if he speaks it aloud. 

"You too, Kris."

He too knows that Kris, as the only one who Tao ever tells, is the only one who might be able to help.

"What happened?" Kris asks as soon as the glass doors are shut behind them, such ill-restrained worry embedded in his tone that Tao's head, for a moment, clears. "Is it your father?"

Tao lays a gentle hand on Kris' shoulder. "I'm fine, Kris. Stop worrying so much. I'm just thinking mindless thoughts - nothing new there," he chuckles, trying to ease the scrupled furrow to Kris' brow, but the elder's expression doesn't falter.

Tao, after struggling through a smile for another few seconds, finally releases a sigh. Kris' eyes burn at the motion, and Tao gently coaxes him backwards, further into the corridor and away from prying eyes. 

"Something was different about him, Kris," Tao says, voice hushed as he stares up into the elder's eyes. "I can't figure out what it is, but I just- I have this feeling that it's something... Bad," he finishes, a weight dropping heavily to the bottom of his stomach straight after, like saying the words aloud has made his instinct that much more undeniable. 

Kris must sense the worry emanating off Tao like heat from the Sun, because he suddenly has a hand at the bottom of Tao's chin, forcing the shorter boy to look up at him. 

Tao meets the elder's warm, russet-toned eyes, and he breathes easier for the shortest of seconds, watching as the boy opens his mouth to speak, but a whisper of movement from behind Kris' head makes Tao's blood run cold.

"Oh, God." Tao breathes before Kris can speak a word, and the taller, by instinct, twists around. 

The source of their break in conversation, much like it has been for the past few situations, is Kyungsoo. More specifically than that even, a Kyungsoo who looks far weaker and smaller than he has ever let himself appear to be as his crutches falter at the end of the corridor he has just turned into. With dark eyes crusted around the edges from the whispers of fresh past tears and his tightly pressed mouth plastered up in firm desolation, Kyungsoo has never looked more resolutely in need of control than he does in this moment.

It is also this reason that makes him look more fragile to Tao than he has ever looked before.

"God," Tao repeats, and then, "Kris,", invoking both names in the same, breathless fashion. 

Tao reaches Kyungsoo, assured by the firm steps of Kris just beside and behind him, like they always are. "Kyungsoo, what- what happened?"

For every time Tao has seen Kyungsoo recently, the boy has appeared in a progressively worsened state than the time before. There were the days before Jongin came back - drained and sombre -, and then the day that his bullies followed him to the group - withdrawn and scared -, but today, oh, today. The only word Tao can think to describe it as is exposed. That is what Kyungsoo is, in that moment - the clear embodiment of exhaustion, dimmed like a bulb, with a fresh, undisguised terror glittering behind his eyes. 

"Where's Jongin?" Is what Kyungsoo asks instead, voice vacant and hoarse, like he's been crying so hard for so long that only the shell of his core remains.

Tao breathes out and in heavily, the air shaking as he lets it pass. "Kyungsoo," he says, "Kyungsoo."

"Jongin," Kyungsoo repeats, "Jongin, has he..?"

"Kyungsoo?"

Before Tao can turn to see who has spoken, there is a blur of movement from between his and Kris' bodies. He looks back, meeting Jongin’s eyes for the briefest of moments, but Kyungsoo’s haphazardly-fast approach steals Jongin’s gaze away.

"Kyungsoo- what-?" He starts to question, as outwardly stricken by the boy's appearance as Tao had been, but he isn't given the chance to finish.

"You- were- were you the one-" Kyungsoo gasps out, voice cracked and breathless when his crutches finally still before the other, and the way Jongin's face drops is just further affirmation that Kyungsoo has begun to cry again. 

Tao, even without seeing, feels his heart lurch uncomfortably in his throat.

He's always been that person who can't stand to just walk by sadness, like so many others are comfortable enough to do, but when he takes an instinctive step forward - needing so wholly to make things better - a hand halts his movements.

"Zi Tao," Kris murmurs, and Tao's chest aches, "no."

Before Kris and Yixing, Tao hadn't been called Zi Tao since his mother's death. His father and the rest all used the shortened version - Tao - and the very first time either had said it, he had been filled with the warmth of his mother's sweet and unrestrained smile, and the way it stretched so wide every time she'd uttered the words, "Zi Tao," when they had been together. It has the same effect now - it calms him down enough to realise that he needs to breathe, and he stays in his place.

"What?" Jongin asks, and Tao watches Kyungsoo's form shaking around his crutches, telling himself he doesn't need to interfere. "Kyungsoo, what do you-"

"Was it you?" Kyungsoo questions, and his voice - it's that terrifying guise of control again, driven and firm, and it must be without doubt the most heart-breaking tone Tao has ever heard the elder boy use.

The question, whatever it refers to, is one Jongin clearly can't make sense of, like a half-truth spoken without a hint of context.

"I don't-" he starts, trailing off into silence, like he doesn't know how he's supposed to go on. “It’s not – I- what are you-“

"Oh," is what happens, and then Kyungsoo slumps forward, like he doesn't want to exercise the effort of standing up straight any longer, and before Tao has the chance to panic, Jongin has closed their distance and hooked arms beneath Kyungsoo's in a soft but calculative movement, so that when Kyungsoo's crutches slip down, Jongin is there supporting him.

Tao barely has a moment to be grateful for the elder boy when Kyungsoo suddenly cries out, and it's such a jarring cry, even muffled into the fabric of Jongin's shirt, that Tao can't avoid the way he jolts forwards as if to try to help.

"I don't want it to happen again," Kyungsoo cries, and even if the words make no sense, Jongin holds him even tighter. "I don't want- I don't want- Jongin, please. Make sure it won't happen. Please, Jongin, Jongin, I-"

"Shush," Jongin soothes, his voice low and soft as he presses a tentative hand to the top of Kyungsoo's head. "Kyungsoo, I won't let it happen again." He promises, such resolve in his tone for a promise he can’t understand, and the words make the smaller boy melt.

"Kyungsoo." A new voice calls, and of course it's Yixing, as prompt and focused as he's always shown himself to be in these situations.

Yixing reaches Kyungsoo, not wasting time any time in gently peeling the boy back a bit and, closely, like the doctor within him grants, inspects the state he is in. His fingers trail very briefly over Kyungsoo's neck and the boy abruptly sneezes, tear marks trailing down that area, making Yixing tut like a worried mother hen.

He looks a little longer - more than Tao would have if he'd been doing the same thing - and when he eventually pulls back, Tao's fingers have moved to rest in the palm of Kris' hand.

"Panic attack?" Yixing guesses, and it seems to be spot on by the way the boy curls into himself at the label. Jongin, Tao watches, parts his lips at the words in a slow and breathy exhale, and Tao feels his own heartbeat thunder so loud in his chest he wonders how no one can hear. 

Yixing's voice is calmly assertive now. "Tell me about it." 

Kyungsoo does with only the smallest amount of hesitation. The people around him, Tao realises, must be those he is comfortable with because the things he is saying, the things he is divulging to them all.

It must terrify him, Tao thinks. And then he realises that the concept of not getting helped, for maybe the first time ever, must terrify him even more. 

Tao has never had panic attacks; things have never really gotten that bad for him. For it to happen to Kyungsoo then, someone older than himself but whom he has unwittingly become protective over - it sticks to him uncomfortably, like wool in the back of the throat. His urge to fix bursts and overflows like no other time before. His fingers, by his side, curl in an action to touch, and Kris' hand squeezes him back in place.

"The person who helped you..." Yixing says now, and Kyungsoo glances Jongin's way. Yixing, seeing the movement, says, "whomever it may be," and Kyungsoo's head ducks, "knew how to handle the situation perfectly. This was, most likely, not their first time dealing with a panic attack," he states, sending a contemplative look in Kyungsoo's direction. "That, however, isn't what's important right now. What's important is that, if - and I'm only saying if, Kyungsoo, but if it does happen again, the people around you have to know exactly what to do to help. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

He must, even if Tao doesn't, because his face - like someone has hitched the level up on a dial - falls even more than it already has. A resigned look stretches across his features, and all he does is nod his head in solemn understanding.

"I'll phone tonight," Yixing informs, "but it'd be better if you tell her in advance," he says, giving the boy a firm and pointed look. "Otherwise... Who, that you're comfortable with, would be around you at school?"

The question, though innocently contemplative, makes Kyungsoo flinch.

"I-um," he starts, "there isn't really any-"

"Me," Jongin interrupts, something firm enough in his tone that Kyungsoo's mouth only falls shut. "Me, I can be- I will be."

Tao feels, by his side, the way Kris bristles at the statement. An almost-soundless scoff reverberates from the back of his throat, thick with livid disbelief. It’s harsh enough to his ears that Tao squeezes the fingers clasped between his own. Kris still remains restless, wired by his suppressed emotions, but Tao knows that he's calming the elder down by the way he grants a soft squeeze back.

Its moments, like these, that make Tao’s heart warm. He looks at Kris, with eyes he knows give too much away, and Kris tenses from the stare, his focus on Jongin slipping through his fingers like quicksand.

Tao smiles to himself.

It's exhilarating.

Just then, Tao's phone starts to vibrate, a distinctive tone across his chest. The smile slips so fast off his face it's almost funny. Kris, ever-observing, doesn't miss the change.

"What is it?" He asks aloud, tone hushed as the conversation between the three others in the hallway continues. 

Tao knows the ringtone. He's set it as only one contact for a reason, and when he finally gets the will to slip the phone out of his pocket, he isn't surprised to see what blares on the screen.

"I have to take this," Tao says, speaking soothingly because he knows Kris knows who it is. "Don't worry. Stay here."

He gives Kris' hand one more soft squeeze, lips tugging up into a reassuring smile, and he walks off and turns down the corridor - pressing the green button on the screen of his phone as soon as he's out of earshot. 

"Father," he says, and the lies start swarming when he automatically makes his breathing sound heavier, like he's been kicking at the air and twisting his arms and 'building himself up' for the past hour or so in Wushu practice.

"Tao," his father's voice is stern. "I thought Wushu practice only lasted an hour. Where are you?"

It had completely slipped Tao's mind - how the support sessions last a full half hour longer than the Wushu practices would usually have. Before, whenever his father had come back, Tao would leave the sessions early to keep suspicion down, but he hasn't been thinking straight enough today. And he knows he only has seconds to explain himself.

"Oh," he exhales, mind swarming until- "Yes, I- well I've started staying longer after, just for half an hour or so, to practice some more on my own. It's kind of a habit now - sorry, I- I should've-"

"It's okay, Tao," his father says, cutting him off with his steady words. "It's a good thing. You must be working very hard."

It's at moments like these where Tao feels the most guilty. For lying, for not being the son his father wants him to be. For not being good enough, or not being just right enough. For not being straight, and for not being strong enough to pretend any differently.

He stays silent on the line, but his father never suspects on the other side.

"Let's talk when you get home. I'll see you there."

Just like always.

-

“Promise me you’ll text me after. Even if you think you’re okay.”

Tao dances fingers over the palm of Kris’ hand.

“I promise.”

-

The house isn't quiet when Tao gets home, and that's the first sign he gets that something is wrong. 

"Father?" He calls as he's taking off his shoes. He knows where the sound is coming from now - the television his father has always thought to be a waste of space, but has always kept because his dead wife was the one who bought it. Tao hasn't even touched it in weeks - it's stayed as this trophy, this debacle of a memory they both try so hard to keep intact. 

It was always only Tao's mother who relished in it. It had always remained untouched by his father, like a sick form of a gravestone, and the fact that it's come alive today-

"Father-" Tao says again, but he's cut off by a sound, just before he can step into the living room, that makes him freeze in his spot. 

Slow and curious, he peeks his head around the room's doorway, a cloud of apprehension building fast in his head. He sees his father, the back of his head from the couch, and on the television some comedy sitcom is playing - such an alien image to the one Tao is used to.

And then it happens again.

His father, absorbed, throws his head back in laughter, a trilling but booming rumble propelling from his throat like waves by the wind, and ringing through the living room like it hasn't done for years. Tao, shocked by the action, is only stood stock-still when his father finally notices his presence and twists his head around to meet his eyes. 

"Tao," his father says, a smile still gracing his features, so alien-looking, so alien. "Tao, come in. How was Wushu practice?"

Tao tries not to show his hesitance as he takes steps forward, and tries to sound nonchalant when he finally answers.

"It was good," he says, the lie so swift on his tongue it only barely feels uncomfortable. "What did you want to talk to me about, father?"

The words, for whatever reason, startle another short chuckle from Tao's father's lips, and Tao has to suppress the urge to flinch. 

"'To the point," his father laughs again, and Tao's head spins. He mutes the television, like he's just thought this is important enough for silence, and then he says, like it isn't going to turn Tao's life on its head: "Tao, son, I'm staying from here onwards."

And Tao stops breathing.

There are so many things capable of changing someone's life. Menial decisions; halted, epiphanic realisations in the middle of the night; death - and life, and everything in between; people, meetings; love. The list is so endless. 

If Tao had to do that, if Tao had to pinpoint every single major change he has experienced in these sixteen years of living, he'd have four.

The first is the day his mother died. 

It'll always be the first. It'll always be the most prominent change, and it'll always be the thing which hurts most to recall. If there's any Tao he will never be able to get back, it's the Tao he was before he lost the person he cared most strongly for in his life. 

The second, soon after, is the day he first got punched. It serves like a symbol of his bullying, encompassed in that one, ever-lasting moment. No one forgets unjustified pain. No one forgets something so wrong.

The third is the day he met Yixing, and the fourth is day he met Kris. If he had to pick a fifth, it would be the day he fell in love, but he isn't sure he could pinpoint it.

Today though - today, he thinks, he might just have found his next biggest change. 

Tao remembers now, what was different about the phone call, as belated as it is. His father never specified how long he'd be staying this time.

It makes sense, suddenly. No one specifies permanence. 

"You're... Staying?" Tao mouths aloud, and his father must really be in a good mood if the way he only nods his head in affirmation means anything. 

"Why?" Tao questions before he can stop himself. He almost flinches when, as a response, his father suddenly jolts to life in a boisterous fit of laughter again, eyes squinted into crescent curves and cheeks risen like Tao has told the best of jokes. Tao is too discerned to make even the slightest of moves, body tense and rigid as his father loses himself in a joyous bout of carefree happiness - so, terribly, unrecognisable.

"Tao, son," his father finally gets out, mirth in his eyes. "It's all over, now. It's all over, I tell you." And then he laughs again, like he's said the funniest thing, and Tao's too unnerved to ask why. 

He thinks, in the back of his head, that this should be nice: the sound of his father's laughter. It should make him happy to hear that they'll be spending more time together, and it should make him happy that his father seems as excited by the prospect as Tao feels in the form of dread.

This shouldn't be a situation which Tao wants to run from. This shouldn't be a situation, even, where Tao thinks a stern and brooding father is more comforting than a light and joyous one. It's so backwards - the way they interact with one another. It's so sick, how Tao tries to think back to all that had once been good between them, and how, like it’s inevitable, he still wishes his father wouldn't stay.

Perhaps he'd always been a broken puzzle piece, in the end. 

-

A/N

(can ye tell I m thirsty for Taoris tho)

So I'm probably going to have a chapter like this for almost every character in this fic, but otherwise this fic is still Kyungsoo's viewpoint.

Hope you guys liked it ^~^

ALSO, AS exams are coming up *sweats nervously* less than 2 months away now *-* Trying not to stress, but it basically means my updates might be late for a couple months.

I'll spend my breaks writing and any spare time I have though, so hopefully updates will still come ^~^

Wish me luck guys *weakened smile*

Please comment your opinions below ^~^ <33333