Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"I miss you so much it feels gross. It feels wet. It feels nauseating. I want to rip out my heart and shake it like a magic eight ball.“Is this okay, is this okay, is this okay or does it make me weak?”" [X]

 ☾

When Baekhyun wakes up, he wakes up alone.

Which isn’t unusual --not by a long shot-- hasn’t been unusual for a while now. Months, years, maybe? It’s hard to recall when it had been exactly that Jongdae had stabbed him in the back --literally and figuratively-- because most of the time that has passed since then has just been a blur of motion and static, like Baekhyun has disconnected from his body and has just been watching it carry out all the actions everybody expects of him, while the rest of him withered away somewhere unseen.

No, waking up alone isn’t the strange part; the sky is.

Not that Baekhyun hasn’t slept outside before, or woken up to a sky --as kids he and Jongdae had become accustomed to sleeping outside in the cold, of course, and there are often times in the present that require a distinct lack of shelter. It isn’t the presence of the sky that’s disconcerting, so much as it is the colour.

Blue.

A sort of blue Baekhyun had never really imagined, before now, the sort of blue that seems soft and loving and entirely… otherworldly. It’s that distinct otherworldly sensation that has him sitting up suddenly, still blinking at the sky, rubbing at his eyelids as white clouds seem to travel across it, wondering if they’re just spots in his vision instead. Yet no matter how hard Baekhyun rubs at his eyes, the sky remains a bright blue dotted with white, and the sharp feeling that something is wrong sinks through him like molten lead.

The realisation wakes him up immediately, and Baekhyun begins to notice everything is wrong. Not only is the sky blue but the trees are green --no, not green, they’re alive, covered in leaves and shivering in the wind, light blinking between the gaps of branches in fragments like stained glass. The ground beneath him is soft, damp, and everything smells like life; it’s the sort of place Baekhyun had imagined would only exist in fairy tales and old books from before the war, the sort of things he and Jongdae used to only dream about.

Is this what this is? Did Jongdae finally win? Is this some… crude reconstruction of far-off memories in order to torture him?

Baekhyun closes his eyes, and feels his power welling deep inside him as he nudges it; no, Jongdae hasn’t won, Baekhyun still has his powers, which means the world around him here isn’t an illusion made from his manifest, it’s real.

Which raises the question… where exactly is here?

Baekhyun’s head seems to feel like holo-monitor static, which also isn’t a rare occurrence these days, but he sort of wishes he could remember anything past… well, the last thing he registers is another run in with the Red Task Force, with Jongdae at the helm, of course, when he and Jongin had intercepted one of their delivery trucks in the inner city for some... core, or something. Baekhyun had made hopeless eye contact with Jongdae over a hoard of soldiers before Jongin had grabbed his hand and--

And what? And what?

Baekhyun can’t remember, it blurs and fizzles out, nothing but a vacant space. Irritated, he stands, flexing his muscles. Nothing hurts, nothing is bruised, there isn’t even the distinct nausea Jongin’s leaps usually attach to any passengers; Baekhyun is as untouched as he last was in his memories. He still has all his gear, too --knives and grenades, communicator, watch, even Jongdae’s pendant is still around his neck, when Baekhyun’s fingers raise quickly to brush over it. He’s entirely unharmed, which only further supports his hypothesis that where he is can’t be a result of the RTF getting to him… it just can’t be.

Baekhyun touches the communicator in his ear. “Junmyeon?” he calls. “Junmyeon, do you copy?”

Nothing but static, the fizzle of a lost signal.

Pursing his lips, Baekhyun decides he won’t get any answers standing around, and just in case the RTF is involved --or intending to be-- standing around won’t help either.

It turns out the forest Baekhyun had woken up in is hardly a forest at all, just a sparse cluster of trees until Baekhyun finds a dirt path, surrounded by lush grass nearing a wide pond, where a marble fountain shaped like a large fish sits in the middle, spouting a stream of clear, glittering water. It’s unlike anything Baekhyun has ever seen before, raising his hand up to shadow his eyes from the light coming above. Light, he realises, and when he looks up, sees a sun, completely unshadowed and burning. Is this another planet entirely?

It hurts to look at almost as soon as he does, even if Baekhyun is lost in wonder and wishes to stare forever, he can’t. He appears to be in some sort of… park, maybe? If parks had plants and fountains instead of asphalt and steel, but it’s hard to tell. It’s completely empty, until something round and circular whizzes past his head.

Baekhyun snatches it mid air immediately, one split-second away from eviscerating the thing until he realises it’s just… plastic? Round and bright yellow with various words printed on its surface decoratively. What is this?

“Dude, there you are,” somebody says, and Baekhyun immediately swivels around to face the newcomer, hand not clasping the strange disk poised to strike. “Decided to actually show up, huh?”

Except it’s just Chanyeol, looking a little startled by Baekhyun’s aggressive posture, gingerly taking the disk, who immediately relaxes upon seeing a familiar face.

“What’s with the costume?” Chanyeol asks, wrinkling his nose as he snorts and runs his eyes over Baekhyun’s body, rubbing Baekhyun’s head with an inappropriate amount of affection. Baekhyun frowns. “Did you dye your hair again?”

“Shouldn’t I say the same to you?” Baekhyun's eyebrows pinch as he takes in Chanyeol’s bizarre silver hair, tank top, and shorts, decidedly a lot more revealing and flashy than his usual combo. Then again, Chanyeol has always liked being flashy, so maybe Baekhyun shouldn’t be so surprised. He frowns at him. “Where is this place? How did we get here? Why--” Baekhyun gives Chanyeol a pointed once-over, not bothering to hide his disgust. “--are you dressed like that? What happened to the sun?”

“Uh.” Chanyeol blinks at Baekhyun, confused. “Our… campus? I assume you just walked over from the dorms dude.” He snorts, and pushes Baekhyun’s shoulder hard enough for him to stumble back, unused to the gesture. “Was geometry so bad you really blacked out hard enough to get amnesia?”

“Geometry? What?” Baekhyun struggles to make sense of Chanyeol’s words, wondering if the gap in his memory is really just that big. “What’re you talking about?”

Chanyeol’s smile diminishes. “Are you… okay?” he asks worriedly, biting his lip and looking at Baekhyun with wide, nervous eyes. “Oh shit Hyun, you know I hate pranks. Cut it out.”

Pranks? Hyun? “You’re not Chanyeol,” Baekhyun states in realisation, stepping back in shock.

“I said cut it out,” Chanyeol replies sharply, a mixture of aggravated and nervous. “I really hate shit like this, it’s not funny.”

But he looks so much like Chanyeol it’s impossible to imagine he’s anyone else, sounds like him, smiles like him, even looks nervous like him. Baekhyun has seen the RTF pull off some fucking astounding feats, but they don’t… they can’t recreate a person like this, let alone a whole world, not so accurately. Baekhyun would be able to spot the differences, he just knows it.

“Where’s Junmyeon?” Baekhyun asks instead. “Seungwan? Jongin?”

“What? Who?” Chanyeol’s face scrunched in familiar confusion, nose wrinkling. “Are they your teammates or something? Hey! Aren’t you meant to be at practice right now? Isn’t that why you blew us off originally?”

Practice? Practice for what? How could Chanyeol not know who his own family are?

Something is very, very wrong.

Already Baekhyun’s brain, wired for war that it is, is narrowing down the possibilities. Taking the RTF out of the equation doesn’t leave him with much to work with, but all he can seem to work out is that everything in this world is as different as it possibly can be, everything apart for Baekhyun himself.

No. No, that isn't the case at all. Everything in this world is as it should be, it’s just Baekhyun who’s different.

There’s one thing left he has to test his theory. Swallowing as he feels his heart pound and mouth go dry, Baekhyun asks weakly, “Where’s Jongdae?”

Chanyeol blinks at him, tilts his head, gives him an amused look. “Probably at the practice you’re skipping waiting for you, dumbass.”

No hatred, no flash of pain, no sadness, just the simple amicable tone Chanyeol once might’ve referred to Jongdae with years ago. It makes Baekhyun’s blood freeze.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Chanyeol repeats worriedly, wide eyes nervous and flighty like a wild deer, if such a thing still existed. Maybe they do, in this world.

And boy if that doesn’t contribute to Baekhyun’s quickly rising panic attack.

“Do you want me to call Jongdae?” Chanyeol places a caring hand on Baekhyun’s shoulder. Now that’s familiar enough to ground Baekhyun somewhat, quickly numbing his fear. “I can get him to take you home.”

“NO.” Baekhyun squeezes Chanyeol’s wrist hard enough that he yelps and pulls back, frightened. Baekhyun cools his breathing. “No…” he repeats, exhaling steadily. “No, do not let Jongdae near me at all costs….”

“Are you guys fighting again, seriously?” Chanyeol sighs frustratedly. “You know I keep telling you, if you just told him how you felt--”

Told him what? What is going on in this world, and if this Chanyeol knows Baekhyun, or at least, clearly, some version of him… then where is his counterpart?

“I need you to take me back to--” what did Chanyeol call it again? “--my dorm. Right now.”

“You’re seriously so hopeless with directions I swear--”

“Now, Chanyeol,” Baekhyun snaps, watching the way Chanyeol stares at him confusedly before shrugging it off and jogging to a small group of people behind him, handing them the plastic disk Baekhyun had caught before and saying something with a shrug. He returns to Baekhyun and glares at him, then begins walking down the dirt path, Baekhyun following a few steps behind, intent on keeping Chanyeol in front of him where he can see him. Chanyeol glances backwards at him confusedly, evidently annoyed, but doesn’t say anything, giving Baekhyun the silent treatment, just like Baekhyun’s Chanyeol normally would anytime he’s mad. Fine, whatever, this Chanyeol can be as mad at Baekhyun as he’d like; wouldn’t affect Baekhyun in anyway. Not this version of him.

And that’s another dizzying thought, but Chanyeol taking him to a strange compound building filled with doors to apartments doesn’t help, each one decorated with a whiteboard drawn on with coloured markers. Chanyeol stops outside a door labelled 04 and Baekhyun has to resist the urge to laugh sharply; of course his mutant ID tag is his fucking room number. Unbelievable.

The whiteboard on Baekhyun’s door loudly declares BAEKHYUN in bold black marker, with a smaller + Sehun!! Beneath in green. The whiteboard is positively littered with messages, ranging from numbers to small phrases and something from somebody who calls themselves their RA, reminding them that inspections are coming up. Half of the messages are rubbed out and a little faded, but there’s one in the corner that says skip practice and i’ll kill you - JD . Baekhyun shivers reading it, turning pale.

“Are you going to open it or just stare?” Chanyeol asks impatiently, folding his arms and tapping his foot, clearly irritated by Baekhyun’s demanding attitude. Baekhyun tries the doorknob and it’s locked, making Chanyeol arch an eyebrow at him. “Don’t tell me you forgot your keys, dude. I swear to Christ.”

Baekhyun looks at him impassively, before turning back to the door and this time pulling the knob swiftly enough that it snaps, breaking it off completely and removing the lock. Chanyeol stares at Baekhyun’s hands with wide eyes, but Baekhyun doesn’t care, stepping into the room.

It’s positively littered with... things: bright posters with equally as bright neon words in big bubbles, post-it notes and polaroids with small fairy lights strung around them. There are framed photos on nearly every surface, the bookshelf by the door --pictures of Sehun with people Baekhyun doesn’t recognise-- the desk on each side of the room, the nightstand by each twin bed. It doesn’t exactly feel like something Baekhyun would ever live in, rather a crude, childish imitation of somebody pretending to be him, eccentric and frivolous. Baekhyun could never afford to own so much when he lives his life on the run, to be so messy, be so… free.

He steps towards one of the single beds, and picks up the photo frame sitting on the desk. It’s a picture of Baekhyun and Jongdae, Baekhyun’s arm slung around Jongdae’s shoulder, his hair a shoddy yellow, Jongdae’s face squished against his throwing up a lazy V with two fingers. They’re young and baby-faced, smiling like idiots all the same, but Baekhyun suddenly can’t see the photograph anymore as his vision blurs. If he wasn’t certain about being in another world before, he is now.

“Woah are you crying?” Chanyeol says suddenly, startled as Baekhyun quickly wipes at his eyes with the back of his arm and places the photo down. He can’t even remember the last time he cried, it appears the knowledge that he’s maybe travelled between dimensions is getting to him. “Seriously, what is up with you today, man? You’re cooked.”

“This isn’t my life,” Baekhyun states slowly, shaking his head.

“What?” Chanyeol's face twists.

“This isn’t my life,” Baekhyun repeats, stronger, this time, and with clear eyes picks up the photo of him and Jongdae, pointing to his own face. Or rather, the imitation of his face --another version of it? “This isn’t me. I’m not Baekhyun, Chanyeol, or rather… I’m not the Baekhyun you know.”

“What?” Chanyeol seems blatantly bewildered, by this stage. “What’re you talking about?”

The last thing Baekhyun remembers is Jongin. It has to be something to do with Jongin, Junmyeon has always warned that controlling space is no easy feat, and that Jongin shouldn’t overload himself or he’ll risk tearing a hole in the space-time continuum… maybe… maybe he did. Maybe he did tear a hole in it, and Baekhyun fell through --or at least, something along those lines. The RTF has an insane amount of power and resources, but even they can’t turn the sky blue.

Even they can’t make Baekhyun and Jongdae ever smile like that.

“I don’t… I don’t think I’m the Baekhyun from this universe.” It sounds ridiculous even to his own ears, but, well… if Baekhyun can be the super mutant descendant of a race of aliens, then why can’t he travel dimensions? It’s not completely out of the question, in fact, Jongin’s power relies on dimensional travel, slipping into the cracks between universes in order to navigate his own quickly enough to pull off what essentially looks like teleporting, it’s not that far-fetched.

“This has got to be the worst prank you’ve ever pulled,” Chanyeol remarks, incredulous. “Ever. And that’s including the time you and Jongdae put hot sauce in my underwear.”

“This isn’t a joke,” Baekhyun snaps, tone evidently surprising Chanyeol, who looks a little taken aback. “In my world, the sky is black.” He points to the window, outside, to where the sun can still be seen clearly. “In my world, your hair is red, and you know who Junmyeon is, and you… you would never speak Jongdae’s name so easily. Not around me.”

“What the fuck are you going on about dude, seriously.” Chanyeol huffs his silver bangs out of his eyes. “Are you high?”

Baekhyun controls his breathing and subsequently, his temper. “I’m not lying,” he grits out. He needs to find some way to prove his existence he just-- can’t think of one--

Chanyeol shakes his head. “Whatever dude. I’m done with your shit, seriously. Jongdae’s the only one who’s willing to put up with it, not me.” And like that he walks out, grumbling beneath his breath, pointedly slamming the broken door closed behind him, although it slowly swings open again, unable to be shut.

Baekhyun, now abandoned in the silence, tries to gather his thoughts, and make sense of this bizarre world presented to him. Chanyeol called this campus, and these the dorms, so… it appears to be some sort of? Boarding school?

The amount of thick books stacked on Baekhyun’s desk would indicate as such, and he moves towards it, skimming over the titles. Architectural detailing, Geometry 3, Roman Empire & Arts … each one is thicker and heavier than the last, and covered in colourful tabs poking out every second page. The sticky notes above the wall of the desk have various flashcard-esque reminders, some written in Baekhyun’s handwriting, some not. There are more photos, too, pictures of Baekhyun as a child with people he doesn’t recognise, pictures of Baekhyun with Jongdae, Chanyeol, Sehun, Kyungsoo… Jongdae again. In fact, if anything, the one thing constant in all the photos seems to be Baekhyun and Jongdae, always next to each other, always smiling.

It seems to be a more poignant reminder that this isn’t Baekhyun’s world than he would have liked.

Whatever life this world’s Baekhyun lives… it’s entirely different to Baekhyun’s, so much so that he can’t even fathom it. How much is similar? How much is different? Does Baekhyun risk upsetting… something… somewhere in the universe, if he remains here? If he tells the truth?

And more than that; if Baekhyun is here, now... then where is his counterpart?

☀

“Um,” Baekhyun says, since it feels like the only appropriate response to the oddly handsome dude looking down at him, eyebrows pinched together and his body on top of Baekhyun’s. Honestly, kudos to Baekhyun’s brain for finally having a fantasy that doesn’t involve some image of Jongdae to some capacity; Sehun is going to be thrilled.

“What… happened to your clothes?” The man on top of him asks, completely unbothered by the fact that he is very much in fact straddling Baekhyun, who turns a little red at the thought. “Your… hair….. what…”

The man’s skin is brown but his hair is a bright blonde, almost white, the sort of colour Baekhyun once tried to get but miserably ended up with yellow until Jongdae bought him toner from the drug store and fixed it. Jongdae is always doing shit like that, fixing Baekhyun’s mistakes. There’s a large scar running diagonally across his face, but Baekhyun definitely doesn’t stare, since that’d be rude.

“Don’t hurt me please,” Baekhyun starts casually, because that feels like the best thing to say when a pretty six-foot dude is sitting on his dick. And not in the fun, non-clothed way. “But… um. Who are you?”

The man blinks, staring at Baekhyun. Baekhyun tries to recall if he’d had one too many drinks, or at least, enough drinks that he could actually hook up with someone and not know their name… he knows his universe kind of revolves around Jongdae but that doesn’t mean he’s like... that much of a cliche asshole.

The stranger pulls off Baekhyun quickly, who sits up, glad to be a little more freed, and winces at the sudden nausea rolling in his stomach, deciding that he might just lie back down for the time being. At least he cranes his neck around, taking in his surroundings, and is… very startled to examine the room, all silver and metallic and sleek, futuristic, with Baekhyun apparently lying on a bed with pristine sheets, the halogen lights flickering every now and then. Weird.

The pretty man touches his own ear. “It’s me,” he says to no one, making Baekhyun’s eyebrows furrow together in confusion. “I’m at the safehouse with Baekhyun but. Er-- well--” He casts a glance over his shoulder at Baekhyun worriedly, who frowns at him in return. “There’s been a problem.”

☾

Baekhyun spends so much times rummaging through the things of his other self he makes himself sick; the closet filled with soft, clean clothes, the trunk at the bottom miraculously lacking any weapons, a bed that’s comfortable and well slept in, a sleek computer covered in stickers with a surprisingly outdated screen made of glass, rather than a holo-monitor pop-up… There are countless possessions, all equally as loved and cherished, and it makes Baekhyun want to puke.

He jumps, startled and caught off-guard, a rare occurrence, when the front door opens, surprised to see Sehun standing in the entryway, his hair a soft brown.

“Okay, what the fuck happened to our door?” Sehun asks, glancing around at the ransacked room. Half of the things Baekhyun had found, he’d decided, don’t belong to him, and he’d mostly left them in their place on Sehun’s --this Sehun’s-- side of the room, but Baekhyun’s half looks like Sehun --Baekhyun’s Sehun-- had thrown a tornado through it. “And what the fuck happened to our room!?” Sehun looks appropriately shocked. “What the hell is with your outfit and your hair and-- why aren’t you at practice? Jongdae is going to kill you!”

“Jongdae often tries to kill me,” Baekhyun says disinterestedly, wiping his runny nose on the back of his arm and sniffling, once. “He has yet to succeed.” And not for a lack of trying. It’s almost comforting to know the Jongdae of this world is just as murderous.

“Why are you... talking like that?” Sehun frowns as his eyebrows pinch. “What’s going on?”

Baekhyun just sighs, hands falling even as they hold a framed photo of him and Jongdae grinning, placing it aside.

“I’m not your Baekhyun,” Baekhyun repeats. “This is not my world.”

Sehun stares at him flatly for an entire minute.

“Oh good,” he says, high-pitched and strained. “I was worried you’d finally decided to have natural coloured hair again. That’s way more scary.”

Baekhyun frowns; it’s hard to tell if this Sehun is joking or not, although he does look a little distant, sitting on his own bed with a vacant expression.

“So what? You’re from another universe? An alternate reality?”

“Yes,” Baekhyun answers, sitting up straighter, relieved that at least someone is finally listening to him. “I believe so.”

Sehun scoffs.

“I have to say, you and Jongdae play a lot of shitty pranks, but this one really takes the cake.” He shakes his head in disbelief, as Baekhyun slumps again. “You really think I’m going to fall for this?”

Baekhyun just stares at him, wondering how to convince somebody of something so unbelievable if they haven’t experienced Jongin’s manifest firsthand and-- oh, of course. They’ve never seen anything like Jongin’s teleportation because the people of this world don’t have mutants; can’t, in fact, given by all its prevalent serenity.  

“Don’t… don’t panic,” Baekhyun warns carefully, before reaching inside himself and inhaling contentedly at the familiar surge of power that greets him.

“What--” Sehun cuts off as he spots the light that gathers between Baekhyun’s fingertips, white and glowing. His eyes widen comically.

“In my world--” Baekhyun bends and stretches the light in ways that no one other than somebody with this manifest could. “--we have manifests, like this--”

“Superpowers,” Sehun blurts, staring at Baekhyun.

A crude way of putting it. “--I suppose…" Sehun is still staring but his pale face does, at the very least, look convinced. Baekhyun places a quick damper over his power instinctively, not wanting to alert the RTF before realising… they probably can’t be. Not between realities. Jongdae can’t find him here.

“Okay well, you definitely couldn’t do that before, so this isn’t a prank. Wow.” Sehun looks like he may have ascended out of his body, standing up slowly and re-closing the broken door that won’t shut, keeping it in place with a stray shoe and then sitting back on the bed, zombified. “Wow, this is really hard to process. But also, surprisingly easy to process?”

Baekhyun laughs, despite himself, quiet and breathy. Sehun has always been good at making him smile.

“Yep okay, that was the quietest noise you’ve ever made in your life, you really aren’t this world’s Baekhyun, huh?” Sehun is blinking at Baekhyun rapidly like maybe if he tries hard enough Baekhyun might be replaced with the proper version.

“No,” Baekhyun replies dryly, confused as to whether he’s meant to be insulted or not. Sehun is still staring.

“Okay so… how did you get here? Should that be my first question? Where’s actual Baekhyun?”

Baekhyun smiles crookedly. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing.”

☀

Hot Stranger --who introduces himself as ‘Jongin. I’m Jongin. You’re sure you don’t know who I am?’-- just tells Baekhyun to make himself comfortable and not touch anything while they wait for 'the others' to arrive.

“How about instead of doing that I just like, go home?” Baekhyun suggests casually, still confused as to whether he’s meant to be panicked about the weirdly nice hot stranger who has seemingly kidnapped him.

“Home?” Jongin cocks his head, staring at Baekhyun for long enough that he grows uncomfortable, wrapping his arms around his middle defensively. “You don’t have…… Ugh.” Jongin slaps his own forehead. “I fucked up big time.”

“Fucked up big time? How?”

“I shouldn’t have let you slip. Jongin hits his own head over and over. “I shouldn’t have let you slip but I couldn’t hold on but then-- I swear I grabbed you, Baekhyun. I swear.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Baekhyun asks, then laughs nervously because his instinctual reaction to any form of panic is to make humour of it. Typical.

Jongin just looks at him with pity, then mutters, “Junmyeon is going to kill me.”

“Junmyeon?” Baekhyun repeats. “What, is this like, hazing or something?” Again, he laughs nervously, even louder than the one from before. “I’ve been on the team for a whole semester already, isn’t this kinda delayed?”

Jongin stares at Baekhyun like none of the words coming out of his mouth make any sense. Maybe they don’t.

Baekhyun decides to be quiet, after that.

It takes a little while --or a long while, minutes of excruciating silence where Baekhyun just sits on the bed and fidgets, refusing to start conversation with Jongin to bother him any further and squeezing his eyes shut in hopes that it’ll all go away-- before the doors slide open like something off of Star Trek and sure enough Junmyeon is in the entryway, panting, frazzled, and staring at Jongin.

“What?” he asks imploringly. “What is it? What’s the problem?”

Jongin bites his bottom lip, and points at Baekhyun on the bed, who waves at Junmyeon.

“Hi Junmyeon!” Baekhyun greets cheerily. “Literally what the fuck is going on!”

Junmyeon looks at Baekhyun with confusion, then turns back to Jongin. “What happened to Baekhyun? I thought you leaped out. Where are his clothes? Why is he--” Junmyeon assesses Baekhyun quickly. “--a brunette.”

“I’ve had brown hair for ages, what the hell,” Baekhyun mutters, offended, hands raising to brush over his silver-brown bangs. If Junmyeon hated his hair so much he didn’t have to like, actually tell Baekhyun that? It’s not really Junmyeon’s place to give unsolicited opinions? “Seriously guys, what the fuck is this? Can I go home now?”

It’s at the word home that Junmyeon’s attention snaps back to Baekhyun, staring at him with affronted eyes.

“Jongin,” Junmyeon says slowly, turning to Jongin with cold, concealed fury. “Where’s Baekhyun?”

“Err.” Jongin rubs behind his ear, swallowing. “Technically I think that is Baekhyun. Just… not this world’s Baekhyun.”

Baekhyun stares at the two men in front of him, the rest of their conversation drowning out as Jongin’s words registers, alongside their strange outfits, littered with weapons, and the bizarre futuristic sheen to the room Baekhyun is currently in.

“Toto,” Baekhyun says aloud to no one. “I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore…”

☾

“So in your world… everything is fucked, basically,” Sehun summarises, after Baekhyun gives him a rundown of the past half a century or so of politics.

“More or less,” Baekhyun comments wryly, making Sehun hum in acknowledgement.

“No sun… no sky… no life? Just? Darkness and evil big brother governments? Like in 1984?” Baekhyun doesn’t know what 1984 is, but he nods nonetheless. Sehun lets out a large breath in muted shock. “Then what am I in your world?”

“An ally." Baekhyun hesitates. “...A friend.” Family.

“Do I have superpowers too?” There's a childish hope in Sehun's eyes, the sort of light Baekhyun hasn’t seen in a long time. It throws him off, delaying his answer.

“...Yes." He shifts in place to push away some of the discomfort. “Your manifest is the ability to control air.”

“Wind?” Sehun repeats. “You shoot lasers from your fingers and I get fucking wind?” He scoffs. “So glad I can control people’s farts, if nothing else. Could really use that living with your lactose intolerant ass that insists on eating ice cream all the time anyway.” Baekhyun continues staring at Sehun, which seems to make him uncomfortable, Sehun quickly clearing his throat and glancing anywhere that isn’t Baekhyun. “Soooooo… Who else is in your world? What’s the same?”

“Chanyeol,” Baekhyun answers, because that’s the only one he’s certain of, as of yet. “His manifest is fire.”

“Fire,” Sehun quotes. “And I still get fucking wind…” He huffs, finally looking at Baekhyun. “What about Kyungsoo? Yixing? Jongdae?”

Baekhyun winces at all three names, breathing steadily to control himself, His fingers fly to Jongdae’s pendant before he can stop himself, curling around the cool metal. It’s a bad habit he’s yet to unlearn, relying on a part of Jongdae to comfort him like that.

But it’s also a bitter reminder.

“They all exist in my world, yes,” he answers obscurely, divulging no further details. Sehun gives him a quizzical look, but doesn’t push.

“Ooooo-kay then." Sehun drums his fingertips on the mattress. “I’m still just trying to reconcile with the fact that alternate universes are real, what the fuck? Jongdae’s going to lose his shit.”

Baekhyun’s entire body tenses immediately. “You can’t tell Jongdae,” he snaps harshly, causing Sehun to look a little affronted.

“...Why not?” His face pinches in confusion. “He’s this world’s Baekhyun’s best friend, you can’t avoid him forever or he’ll get suspicious.”

Baekhyun shivers at the thought. “You can’t tell Jongdae,” he repeats firmly. “You can’t let him near me.”

“What? Why? Will that like, break the universe or something?”

“No,” Baekhyun replies. This isn’t a matter of time travel, so much as it is Jongin being a piece of shit. Baekhyun is so going to kick his ass when he gets back… if he gets back…

Silence persists; Sehun evidently has more burning questions as he attempts to take in the reality of this situation, but he’s thrown off by Baekhyun’s refusal to answer any of them, mouth pinched in a straight line.

There’s one thing Baekhyun is desperate to know, though, eyes wandering to the framed photo his other self keeps of him and Jongdae on the nightstand.

“In this world…” Baekhyun begins slowly, warily, knowing he’s walking on thin ice but refusing to stop. He has to know, it itches inside of him and he needs it scratched. “...What is Jongdae, to me?”

“Jongdae?” Sehun repeats, looking at Baekhyun in confusion. “Like I said he’s uh, your best friend. You guys have known each other since forever, he’s--” Sehun clears his throat. “--also the love of your life.”

All three of those statements could have been applied to Baekhyun’s world, except--

“We’re together?” Baekhyun questions, and wonders why his gut rolls at the thought, almost as if in jealousy. Ha.

“Oh god no.” Sehun snorts at the suggestion, like it’s that amusing to him. “You refuse to confess because ‘Jongdae’s straight’ and you don’t want to ‘ruin the friendship’.” Sehun mocks him in a high-pitched tone Baekhyun takes to be his other’s self voice.

“But we’re still…. Friends?” Baekhyun repeats slowly. “It’s… amicable? Our relationship?”

“Uh, yeah.” Sehun arches an eyebrow. “Amicable is kinda an understatement. You guys are like--” He raises his fingers, twined together. to demonstrate, and Baekhyun’s stomach sinks, exhaling shakily. So in this world, everything is different, other than the fact that Baekhyun is in love with Jongdae.

Except that in this world, Jongdae didn’t stab Baekhyun in the back and kill his closest friend for the government’s mutant-hunting task force. Great.

In fact, if anything, this Jongdae seems to be relatively harmless, other than the inevitable heart stress he presumably puts this world’s Baekhyun under. It’s unbelievable. In Baekhyun’s world, he and Jongdae never got anything close to happiness, and in this world, they’re denying it from each other out of fear of nothing. Ridiculous.

“Are you… in love with the Jongdae in your world?” Sehun asks, startling Baekhyun. “I mean uh. You’re not-- you’re not the Baekhyun I’m used to but. You guys have the same lovesick expression. It’s really gross.”

Baekhyun has a lovesick expression? He had no idea.

“I was in love with Jongdae,” Baekhyun admits, something he’s never once voiced aloud in his own world, of course. Not even to Jongdae back when they were still technically in love --it had always been too dangerous. But in this world it’s easy to, safe enough too, there are no consequences because of it, and part of him still clings onto the comforts of Sehun from his world that this one recreates, the kind that would know Baekhyun loves --loved -- Jongdae whether Baekhyun says it aloud or not. “But then he turned against his own kind for power and greed.”

“Woah woah woah, wait, slow down.” Sehun holds up his hands. “When you say turned against his own kind you mean-- Jongdae is a mutant too, right? And he what? Joined that… Red… Force, or whatever?”

“The Red Task Force,” Baekhyun corrects. “And yes. Mutants under their rankings are promised not to be persecuted. Now, Jongdae hunts us to persecute us.”

Sehun just starts laughing.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry just--” He wheezes a little. “Jongdae is? An evil traitor? Jongdae. Kim.” Baekhyun nods slowly, confused as to why Sehun finds this amusing. “The Jongdae who would probably die for you if you had the guts to ask him for it. The dude who refuses to kill spiders and thinks babies are the best thing in the world. That Jongdae?”

“No,” Baekhyun replies coldly. “My Jongdae.”

Sehun gulps at that, slumping.

“I just can’t imagine it,” he says quietly, curling into himself sheepishly. “Jongdae, being evil. That’s like… that’s like the sun not rising each morning.”

But Baekhyun can imagine it, because the sun doesn’t rise in his world.

“It’s the truth,” Baekhyun says, detached. His heart aches familiarly, but that’s nothing new.

“So, if you were in love with him…” Sehun begins, then trails off. “... Oh. No wonder you’re kinda badass.” Baekhyun frowns at that; Sehun just snorts. “If this Baekhyun got his heart broken he’d probably become all emo and gothic too.”

“I am not emo nor gothic,” Baekhyun replies petulantly, frowning harder.

“Yeah, sure thing bud.” Sehun speaks in a way that tells Baekhyun he doesn’t believe him. Baekhyun doesn’t cease frowning. “So that’s why you don’t want to see Jongdae? Because you have trust issues?”

“I do not have--” Baekhyun grunts in frustration, thinking that explaining that having the one good thing in your life turn his back on you doesn’t equate to trust issues so much as it does an aching, gaping void of nothingness in your chest, is kind of fruitless. The people of this world have never experienced hardship, have never felt anything close to it; this Sehun could never begin to understand. Baekhyun inhales slowly. “I do not want to see Jongdae. That is final.”

“Okay okay fine, sheesh.” Sehun huffs out a breath of air. “But like I said, Baekhyun… you can’t avoid him forever. You guys don’t spend more than an hour apart, and since your counterpart didn’t answer his phone and therefore has evidently traveled dimensions… Jongdae’s gonna notice, and he’s Jongdae --so he’ll come find you no matter what.”

The thought just makes Baekhyun’s head feel dizzy.

“Then help me avoid him,” Baekhyun urges. “I need to find a way back, I need to…” if Jongin got him here, then maybe Jongin could get him out. “Jongin,” Baekhyun says suddenly, in realisation. “Where’s Jongin?”

Or rather, who’s Jongin --in this world, at least.

“Jongin?” Sehun questions. “Who’s that?”

Is he the variable between the two universes? The one thing that doesn’t consistently exist?

Or does Sehun just not know who he is…

“The reason I’m here,” Baekhyun answers, standing up and heading towards the broken door. “We have to find him maybe... maybe there’s a chance he got put in this world too.”

They’d leaped together, after all; if Baekhyun had fallen through a hole into another dimension, then maybe Jongin did too?

But if he had… wouldn’t he have already leaped to Baekhyun and gotten them out of this mess?

The realisation that Baekhyun is completely and utterly alone in this is startling. You’d think he’d be used to soloing his burdens by now, but he isn’t.

“Wait, hang on--” Sehun urges, putting a hand on baekhyun’s shoulder to keep him in place. “--you can’t go out there, you don’t know a single thing about blending in, evidently.” He gestures to Baekhyun’s body.

Baekhyun looks down at his clothes, a black jumpsuit and navy thermal, designed to keep him warm and unseen in a world without a sun and… relents. Sehun is probably right.

“Also, as your best friend --the one you’re not in love with--” Baekhyun frowns. “--I’m like, legally obligated to make sure you don’t fuck up Baekhyun’s life while you’re taking his place. No more than he already has.”

“What?”

“That means going to his classes, acting normal--” Sehun pales. --Oh god, you’ve procrastinated every assignment since the cretaceous period. We’re screwed.”

“What’re you talking about?” Baekhyun reiterates, frustrated with this Sehun’s obscurity. His Sehun is far more straight to the point, because their world doesn’t allow roundabout answers.

“Class attendance, passing university, the whole reason you’re here?” Sehun laughs dryly at Baekhyun’s bewildered expression. “Seriously, you --other you-- have already fucked up college once. He can’t afford to do it again.”

“So all I have to do is attend some classes to remain unnoticed?” Baekhyun asks. He’s never been to school, only the rich are ever given such a privilege, although he did secretly dream of it, once upon a time… “Fine,” he relents, given that Sehun is obviously adamant about the topic. “How hard can it be?”

“Oh boy.”

Baekhyun furrows his eyebrows, but they’re swiftly cut off by a knock at the door, freezing them both in place.

“Baekhyun?” A familiar voice says, and Baekhyun’s blood runs cold. “Are you in there? I swear to god if you’re sleeping in again I’ll murder you.”

It’s a pretty instinctual reaction at Jongdae’s voice for Baekhyun to tap into his power and immediately bend the light around him so he can no longer be seen, all things considered.

Sehun squeaks in surprise. “Of course,” he whispers harshly, high-pitched and nervous. “Of course you can turn invisible.”

Baekhyun pointedly pushes him, and dazedly Sehun stumbles to open the broken door while Baekhyun remains frozen, stuck in place. It swings open lamely.

“Hey, Sehun-- what happened to your door?” Jongdae asks, frowning at the lack of handle and smiling at Sehun a little crudely. He’s as beautiful as he is in Baekhyun’s world, his dark hair straighter and a little shorter, parted neatly at the top of his forehead, dressed in a large lettered jacket and sweatpants.

“Yeah it just kinda… broke…” Sehun laughs nervously. Jongdae frowns at him.

“Okay… Have you seen Baekhyun?”

“Nope.” Sehun swings the door wide open, gesturing into the room. “As you can clearly see, Baekhyun isn’t here.”

Jongdae obviously finds Sehun’s strange demeanour amusing, if not a little odd, given by the quizzical quirk of his eyebrows. Baekhyun would know all of Jongdae’s expressions even across universes, it seems.

“Well, do you know where I can find him? He skipped practice again... coach is going to have his head if I don’t get it first.”

Sehun just swallows. “I think he said he was going to the library to study? I dunno.”

Jongdae sighs, running a hand through his hair. “He’s going to work himself to a burnt crisp, seriously. I don’t know why he tries to be in the team on top of school.”

“Well, you know him, always conquering everything.” Sehun’s voice is strained. “Haha.”

Baekhyun slaps an invisible hand against his own forehead.

Jongdae looks unconvinced. “Right… well if you see him, send him my way for an ass-kicking, yeah?”

Sehun smiles crookedly. “Of course.”

Jongdae leaves with a curt wave, and Sehun shuts the broken door behind him, putting the shoe door stopper back in place, exhaling in relief.

“You’re… still here, right?” Sehun asks timidly, and Baekhyun reveals himself by dampening his power, making Sehun jump and hold a hand against his chest. “Jesus Christ.”

Baekhyun has no idea who that is and why Sehun would say their name, but it doesn’t matter. Sehun sighs.

“Okay first of all, you need to wear… normal clothes." Sehun walks over to the closet and pulls out a myriad of items, all of which he tosses at Baekhyun’s chest, who catches them easily. “Second of all, no freaky superpowers in front of anyone but me, okay?” Baekhyun nods slowly. “You have class this afternoon and attendance is mandatory, so you’ll be going to that, but not before I teach you how to not be a fucking freak.” Baekhyun opens his mouth, but Sehun holds a hand up, forcing him to snap it shut. “I’ll help you find this… Jongin or whatever, okay? But you need to help me keep Baekhyun’s life normal. Fair deal?”

Baekhyun nods, unsure of what else he can say. His Sehun is certainly never so chatty --albeit equally as stubborn. Baekhyun wonders if he's ever going to be able to stop drawing all the comparisons between them. He doubts it.

Sehun exhales all over again. “This really would be so much easier if we just told Jongdae, y’know? He knows everything about the other you’s life, he’d be able to help.” Baekhyun’s expression sours immediately. “Okay I get it, touchy subject just-- get changed, would you?”

Baekhyun obliges, immediately peeling off his clothes and switching into the ones Sehun had given him, as Sehun just stares at his naked body. The hoodie is soft and smells like mint, worn in and comfortable. It’s so loose-fitting Baekhyun feels like he could fit another person in there.

“What?” Baekhyun asks, because Sehun is still staring.

He opens his mouth, closes it, lips pressed together. Then, he sighs.

“I am so not cut out for this."

☀

“What? You guys don’t have The Wizard of Oz in your world?” Baekhyun jokes, laughing nervously. “What the fuck?”

This is a lot to process, so naturally Baekhyun isn’t, just kind of dissociating as his brain supplies an endless list of shitty jokes. Yay.

“What’s the last thing you remember before waking up here?” Junmyeon --or rather, this world's Junmyeon-- asks.

“Ummmm…” Let’s see… Baekhyun’s face scrunches as he struggles to remember. “I’d slept past my alarm so I was scrambling to get to practice on time, and then…” He juts his bottom lip out in thought. “... I just. Woke up here with a hot boy on top of me.” He shoots finger guns at Jongin.

“Did you just call me hot?” Jongin asks, aghast

“Did you just use finger guns?” Junmyeon adds, even more aghast. His skin looks ghostly. “You really aren’t our Baekhyun.”

“What? What sort of iteration of me doesn’t use finger guns?” Who even is Baekhyun if not an amalgamation of ways to make awkward situations humorous?

“The one from this world, I guess,” Jongin answers noncommittally, rubbing behind his ear. “You’re... taking this surprisingly well. Is it common, where you’re from?”

He almost looks a little hopeful, like Baekhyun himself might be able to fix this mess.

“Um, not really, I just read a lot of comics and dissociate in times of panic,” Baekhyun replies matter-of-factly, wringing his hands together nervously. Anxiety is good like that, sometimes, filling him with so much adrenaline in a new situation he’s almost too wired to actually be panicked about it.

“Comics?” Jongin tilts his head to the side.

“Yeah y’know like. If Batman can handle a version of him dressed like an owl and evil, I guess I can come to terms with the fact that there’s a me out there that doesn’t use finger guns.” Blank looks on both Jongin’s and Junmyeon’s faces. “You guys… have no idea what I’m talking about, do you.” It’s not a question, not really, but Jongin and Junmyeon both nod slowly in confirmation, exchanging concerned glances. “Wait-- am I evil in this world? Am I Batman and the other me from this place is Owlman?”

“What are you talking about?” Junmyeon asks, completely exasperated.

“The you of this world isn’t evil.” Jongin frowns. “You’re one of the only good things left.”

Baekhyun blinks at that, taken aback. It’s reassuring to hear in a way, because yay for good guys, but the implication that he’s one of the only good guys is...

“Then again you’re not exactly all sunshine and rainbows.” Jongin snorts while Junmyeon gives him a dirty look. Baekhyun can live with his other self being a little gloomy so long as he’s not evil, he supposes.

“How did this happen, Jongin?” Junmyeon sighs, apparently done entertaining Baekhyun’s comic book theories.

“He slipped,” Jongin explains, biting his lip. “Err, well, actually it felt more like Baekhyun… let go?” He rubs his shoulder sheepishly. “I swear I reached back in to grab him, but--” he turns to Baekhyun. “--I’m guessing I grabbed the wrong one.”

“What,” Baekhyun starts, “the actual fuck are you talking about?”

Jongin grunts in momentary frustration. “I can teleport,” he says, as if that’s just information Baekhyun should take first hand without question. “It involves slipping into the gaps between realities and using the warped space-time continuum--”

“Jongin,” Junmyeon scolds, having seen the vacant expression Baekhyun has no doubt he’d been wearing.

“--basically Baekhyun --er, the one that’s not you-- was leaping with me. Since he let go of me mid-leap, though, he must have fallen further into the space between realities.”

“What?” Baekhyun blinks, trying to make sense of the words he’s hearing. No wonder this world doesn’t have superheroes if people here are superheroes. Teleportation? That’s fucking awesome. “Then… what happened to the me you lost?”

“The continuum was upset. Unbalanced,” Jongin continues, hand under his chin as his eyebrows pinch in thought. “So... when he slipped away, it must have taken out you to fill his space, and he must've filled yours.”

The actual fuck.

“So… gloomy me is currently where I’m supposed to be?” 

“That’s right,” Junmyeon confirms.

“Fuck me,” Baekhyun remarks, exhaling slowly as he stares into space. His eyes widen in realisation. “Jongdae is going to kill me for skipping practice to go alternate reality jumping.” He quickly adds, “Especially without him.”

It seems to have had the effect of flooding the room with ice water, as Jongin and Junmyeon stare at Baekhyun like he’s grown a second head. “What?” 

Jongin and Junmyeon exchange a glance, communicating wordlessly in a way Baekhyun doesn’t understand.

“Nothing,” Junmyeon quickly answers, forced enough that Baekhyun knows there’s something. Junmyeon clears his throat. “How exactly did it pull somebody out of their dimension if you’re not touching them?” he asks, directed at Jongin.

“I don’t know, it’s the void. The will of the universe.” Jongin snorts crudely. “It doesn’t exactly follow logic. I try not to interact with it as a principle beyond travelling through but…” he and Junmyeon turn to Baekhyun simultaneously.

“How come I don’t remember entering a giant hole between realities, then?” Baekhyun questions. One second he’d been cutting through north court gardens to get to the football field on time,  the next he’d woken up here, without ever having fallen asleep to begin with.

“Your mind can’t comprehend it. Took my brain ages to adjust before I could remember what I was doing between leaps.”

“...Huh,” Baekhyun says, because he’s pretty sure his mind can’t comprehend any of this, but he doesn’t say that. “So does… other… me have superpowers too?”

Junmyeon’s face twists at his choice of words. “Yes, your --our Baekhyun’s-- manifest is light.”

“It’s one of the most powerful mutations ever recorded,” Jongin adds. “Which is why I have to leap with him all over the place to keep him from the RTF.” He gives a dry snort.

“RTF?” 

“Red Task Force,” Jongin supplies. “Government division of mutant hunters. We’re generally pretty hated by society, so.”

Oh, not superheroes then. Vigilantes, maybe. “Uh. That... sucks? I’m sorry,” Baekhyun offers, because he’s not sure what else to say. Jongin and Junmyeon just look at him like he’s grown a third head.

“...Right, well, on top of kind of being one of the most powerful mutants around, you’re also a key player in the rebellion,” Junmyeon explains.

“A rebellion that’s currently coming to fruition…” Jongin mumbles, then pales. “Oh god, without Baekhyun, how are we meant to get inside the city walls? How are we meant to get inside the Vault?”

“I don’t know.” Junmyeon grimaces, looking suddenly saddened. “But if we don’t get those orbs back before Eclipse…”

“Then we’re all screwed,” Jongin concludes, falling back against the wall.

“Ummmmmm you lost me,” Baekhyun cuts in, blinking rapidly. “Orbs? Eclipse?”

“They have-- ways of extracting our powers,” Junmyeon explains. “Taking the power source from us, and storing them in these… orbs.”

“O-gene Restriction Blockage and Storage units,” Jongin adds. “Most of our allies have had their powers taken." He shifts in place, almost guiltily. “Just because I couldn’t get to them in time.”

“It’s not your fault,” Junmyeon reassures gently, placing a hand on Jongin’s shoulder, who relaxes under the touch. He looks a little sad and far-off, and Jongin looks riddled with guilt, so Baekhyun wonders if Junmyeon is one of the people missing his powers. Junmyeon turns back to Baekhyun. “Eclipse signifies the dawn of a new era. The changing of governments.”

“Um, that’s a dramatic way to refer to an election."

“There wasn’t an election.” Jongin frowns. “The RTF destroyed the reigning government subdivision in a coup. Eclipse is when their new cabinet will finally be put into official effect.”

“And until then, the city is weakened. Haphazard after the coup,” Junmyeon continues. “It’s the perfect time to overthrow them and save as many mutants as possible.”

“... Until now,” Baekhyun finishes for them. “Because I’m here instead of the Baekhyun you need.” He can’t say he’s not used to being generally useless and a burden on everyone, but it still kinda sucks even across dimensions. Baekhyun sighs.

“In a world where everyone is watched,” Junmyeon starts slowly. “A man with the ability to be invisible is incredibly powerful.”

“And incredibly dangerous,” Jongin adds. “We needed Baekhyun to get mutants in and out of the city walls and past the cameras… but more than that, we needed him to get inside the Red Vault and steal those orbs. Without him to get through the security unnoticed… there’s just no way.”

“But you can teleport.” Baekhyun's face scrunches together in confusion. His head hurts, the sort of pain he used to get in physics class back in high school before Jongdae would sit down and patiently go over every concept until Baekhyun understood a bit better. God Baekhyun could really use Jongdae right now, just his presence is soothing enough in and of itself. “Just like. Pop in and grab ‘em?”

Jongin shakes his head solemnly. “I can only teleport to places where I have an anchor,” he explains, holding up a small, rough, cheap wooden carving of a bear not much bigger than a pinky fingernail, then pointing to a similar one sitting on the table in the far corner of the room. Cute. “Part of the plan was having Baekhyun plant them throughout the Red Vault.”

“Jongin,” Junmyeon says sternly.

“What?” Jongin asks, pointing. “He’s still Baekhyun.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s trustworthy,” Junmyeon replies pointedly as Baekhyun withers a little. “We know nothing about him. Who’s to say he won’t turn us in?”

“Well, for starters, I have no idea how to,” Baekhyun jokes, but it doesn’t fly too well considering the expression on Junmyeon and Jongin’s faces. Seriously, he doesn’t even know where he is right now. How does one turn in an entire rebellion? Is there like a hotline number? “And um-- I have no reason to? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’m kind of stranded in an alternate dimension and literally the only face I recognise is yours.” He points at Junmyeon. “I’m not very keen on finding out how many I don’t know, or turning against you for… any reason, in a world where I don’t even exist that has an evil government that will probably want to dissect me.” He slumps lamely.

“He has a point,” Jongin tells Junmyeon, who just sighs.

“Look, I’m not saying I don’t trust you,” Junmyeon relents. “But the RTF still has… ways of making you say things, if they catch you.”

An obscure way to refer to torture, but Baekhyun nods shakily in understanding.

“That’s cool, you guys keep your secrets then.” He clears his throat hastily, voice still wobbling no matter what he does. “I’m kind of more interested in getting home? Or just like. Anywhere in my own dimension would be a start.” Dump him in the middle of the Savannah for all Baekhyun cares, so long as he’s somewhere on earth it’s bound to be better than this. “Also the sooner I’m home, the sooner you can have awesome world-saving invisible man Baekhyun back, so.”

“It’s not that simple.” Jongin sighs. “I have no idea how to travel between dimensions or to swap you back and even if I did, it’d take a whole lot of energy I don’t have right now after the leap that got us here.”

“Well then after you’ve slept or whatever,” Baekhyun says, waving his hands dismissively. “Just? Reach into the void again?”

Jongin’s face twists uncomfortably. “I told you, I don’t interact with the void as a principle. Reaching between layers of realities in search of Baekhyun might just start a chain reaction of alternate Baekhyuns swapping with each other, or could just leave a hole in the entire space-time continuum. I can’t risk that.”

Baekhyun swallows. “Then how am I meant to get home?”

Jongin and Junmyeon exchange a nervous glance. “We’ll find a way,” Junmyeon assures. “I promise.”

“If there’s a way to get you here, there’s a way to put you back,” Jongin says quietly. “It just-- it will take some time for me to work it out. I hardly understand my manifest as is.”

Baekhyun nods slowly, a little dazed.

“Are there… are there people we should tell about what happened?” Baekhyun suggests. “Like um, my parents or something?”

“You’re an orphan in this world, Baekhyun,” Junmyeon says softly. “Sorry.”

“Most of us are,” Jongin adds. “Ever since the war…”

Oh. It’s a sad thought, but a strange feeling too --Baekhyun finds himself partially mourning his parents, and partially mourning the life other him never got to have. God he feels terrible, lightheaded and dizzy and still a little nauseous, truth be told, and Baekhyun doesn’t even realise he’s hyperventilating until he hears his breaths coming in too short and forces himself to slow them down. He can almost feel Jongdae’s hands on his shoulders, his face in front of Baekhyun, telling him in and out, Hyun. In and out.

Baekhyun’s heart sinks, he misses Jongdae so much, it’s almost kind of weird, but Baekhyun is scared and alone and he’s pretty good at being neither of those two things when he has Jongdae with him. Fuck, is he going to be stuck in this mutant hating world for the rest of his life? Miserable and lonely?

“What about Jongdae? Does he exist in this world?” Baekhyun asks, and there it is, the ice water effect, confirming that yes, he probably does. “Can I see him?” Baekhyun is so desperate for any form of comfort he’ll take even the shitty, edgy version so long as it’s just some form of familiarity in a sea of bizarreness.

“Err,” Jongin says, clearing his throat. “Not quite.”

“...Is he dead?” 

“No,” Junmyeon sighs, as if it’s a bad thing. “Unfortunately not.”

Baekhyun’s eyebrows scrunch. “What?”

“Maybe we should take him to Sehun,” Jongin suggests to Junmyeon, casting Baekhyun a wary look. “I feel like he might be able to explain things better.”

“You’re probably right.” Junmyeon’s body relaxes. “Also because I refuse to do it,” he mumbles.

“Sehun exists in this world too?” Baekhyun asks. At least if he gets home, he’s going to have some awesome things to tell all his friends about. He perks up hopefully. “Sehun’s good. I’m good with Sehun. Sehun works.” If he can’t get his parents or Jongdae, then his other best friend is definitely his second choice.

“I can take you to him now,” Junmyeon suggests, as Baekhyun nods vigorously. He gives Baekhyun a once-over. “But you… may want to get changed.”

Baekhyun looks down at his ratty naruto pyjama tee and sweatpants, flushing as he realises he’s in his workout gear for practice. Jongin leaves through the Star Trek door and comes back in with a bundle of clothes that he hands to Baekhyun, who fumbles with the pile, one of the thermal skins dropping.

He lays them out on the bed, then stares at Junmyeon and Jongin, who are simply watching him.

“Um,” Baekhyun starts awkwardly. “Some privacy would be nice?”

“What?” Jongin asks, looking bewildered, then blinks. “Err. Sure.”

“We’ll just be right outside,” Junmyeon adds quietly as he and Jongin leave the room, looking perplexed. Baekhyun exhales as soon as they’re gone, trying to make sense of the strange dark clothes Jongin had handed him. It takes a while to work out which body part goes through which hole and in which order, but Baekhyun eventually gets it, transferring the contents of his pockets --phone, which he switches off to conserve precious power, figuring no one in an alternate dimension will have an iPhone 5 charger around, wallet, keys-- across. The clothes are way too big and bunch up at the ends as they stick to his skin, warm and uncomfortable. They’re probably Jongin’s clothes, if Baekhyun could harbor a guess, and they feel like a poignant reminder that Baekhyun has really stepped into something bigger than himself.

But at least it isn’t permanent, he consoles with himself.

Or so Baekhyun hopes.

☾

Baekhyun is going to kill Sehun.

That’s the first thing Baekhyun decides, blinking at the projector in front of him and trying to make sense of the words it’s showing. Baekhyun, unlike Jongdae, has never felt any inclination to murder his friends, but Sehun’s lack of warning and insistence that Baekhyun attend this class is currently putting him through hell, so maybe Baekhyun really will turn out just like Jongdae.

And god, the thought makes him blink. Baekhyun has never made a joke out of Jongdae’s betrayal before.

He shakes the thought away, refocusing on this… professor’s voice, and wondering how he’s meant to understand any of this. So many numbers and figures and things that don’t make sense… why would Baekhyun ever need to double differentiate (whatever that means) the sin of an unknown angle (whatever that means) in a triangle. Literally what use does that have for him who, according to Sehun, was studying to be an architect. Baekhyun doesn’t get it, but any far-off dreams he’d once had about going to school have quickly been quashed.

No wonder his other-self struggled with this stuff.

And struggling with this stuff had apparently meant dropping out for two years to try and pull himself together, as Sehun had explained, although not in great detail beyond that. Baekhyun can’t really imagine himself giving up on anything, but after one hour of this stupid two hour class, he’s ready to quit life altogether.

It finally ends, and Baekhyun sighs in relief, rubbing at his temple because his head is positively pounding. It had been more excruciating then any sort of pain Jongdae had put him under during battle before Jongin could save him, and Baekhyun thinks he could almost single-handedly reform the RTF to be even more powerful and menacing if he taught them the benefits of lecturing their prisoners on mathematics. God.

He walks out pale and a little shaken, gripping his books and mentally summoning the image of the map of campus Sehun had brought up on a laptop to show Baekhyun how to get around. Years of blueprints and recent weeks memorising the layout of the Red Vault ensure Baekhyun had almost instant recall when it comes to directions, but this campus is big, and after being destroyed by geometry 3 it’s hard to remember if the dorms he’s looking for are east or west.

“Hey, Baekhyun, wait up!” Baekhyun startles at the sound of the familiar voice, turning to see Yixing and just. Staring at him. Baekhyun hasn’t seen Yixing in months, and the sight of him in this world wearing a loose-fitting green jacket with blonde wavy hair makes Baekhyun’s chest cave in on itself.

“Yixing…” Baekhyun says slowly, and feels a deep sadness well up in his chest. The Yixing of his world has been imprisoned and powerless and lost for over a year, seeing the one of this world just seems like a pointed reminder of Baekhyun’s failures.

Yixing gives him an amused look. “Who else?” he asks, bumping their shoulders together. “I can’t believe you didn’t sit next to me when you came in. You just walked straight past me.”

Mostly because Baekhyun had been instructed to keep quiet, keep his head down, and talk to no one.

“I didn’t see you,” Baekhyun tells Yixing, but he still looks like he’s waiting for more. “... Sorry...?”

“I was sitting where we always sit,” Yixing replies amusedly, then shrugs. “But it’s okay. Man, I didn’t understand a single thing though.”

Baekhyun grimaces. “That makes two of us.”

Yixing laughs, although Baekhyun doesn’t get the joke, and the sound of it makes Baekhyun soften. When was the last time he heard Yixing laugh like that? Baekhyun could barely remember the last time he’d heard anybody laugh like that, not since Jongdae left. The weight of the world on your shoulders and stab wounds in your back tend to take away things like that.

“We could revise this Thursday, maybe?” Yixing suggests. It’s only a Monday today, not that Baekhyun understands this world’s incessant need to tell the time. In his world, there are only hours and days, but they’re not differentiated from each other by useless names. It must be a ‘we actually have a sun’ thing. “Before the test.”

Baekhyun stares at Yixing, and realises this seems to make him uncomfortable, quickly looking away.

“The test?” 

“Yeah, y’know. The quiz we have every four weeks…” Yixing gives Baekhyun an amused glance again. “Did you hit your head? You’re usually the one that insists we study to stay on top of things, even though they’re like... Two-percent of our grade.”

Baekhyun blinks. “I’ve been sick recently,” he excuses lamely as Sehun had instructed, avoiding Yixing’s eyes because he’s always been terrible at lying to Yixing. Another thing that holds up across dimensions, it seems. “Hard to…” what did Yixing say? “...stay on top of things.”

“Oh, well, feel better soon!” Yixing replies cheerily, placing a hand on Baekhyun’s shoulder, then jabbing his thumb the other way down the hallway. “I gotta go to my next class but. How about we meet up Thursday at the library say… five?”

Baekhyun nods dumbly, afraid to do much else, and then walks down the hallway with his head down hoping no other duplicates from his world decide to stop and say hi; he’s not sure how he’s meant to deal with it. Other than the fact that he endures the pain of mathematics, the other Baekhyun seems to live such an easy life, filled with nothing but friends and laughter, no burden of saving his people on his shoulders, no threat waiting behind every corner. The sort of life Baekhyun has never even been able to imagine.

And it makes his stomach coil, in jealousy, partly, and in shame. There’s a small part of Baekhyun that almost never wants to go back if it means he can stay in this peaceful world, where nobody looks at him like he’s their chance at salvation and he’s not kept awake at night wondering when Jongdae is going to track him down again and kill him. And that’s a horrible feeling, subsequently, because Baekhyun has essentially run away, and he can’t abandon his friends like that.

Not that he’d run away by choice, but maybe choosing to stay is its own sort of running.

Not that-- not that Baekhyun is choosing to stay, because he needs to find Jongin and fast, but Sehun had promised to help him with that.

It takes a decent half an hour before Baekhyun can locate his dorms, getting lost on campus several times and pointedly walking back to a map he’d found pasted on a steel board on one of the paths each time to try and work it out. Eventually he gets back to the broken door, swinging it open, and collapses on the other him’s bed face first with a grunt.

“Yeah, geometry be like that,” Sehun offers apathetically from where he’s sitting at his desk, licking his fingers before turning the page of the textbook in front of him.

“Why didn’t you tell me I was walking into hell?” Baekhyun snaps as he pulls his head up, irritated.

“Because I’m a piece of shit,” Sehun answers matter-of-factly, although he’s grinning, which suggests it’s some form of joke or tease. Baekhyun doesn’t know, grunting all over again as he slams his face back into the pillow. “‘How hard can it be?’” Sehun mocks, in what Baekhyun assumes to be an imitation of his voice.

“Shut it,” Baekhyun hisses, scowling. Usually that would have the Sehun of his world apologetic and wary, but this Sehun just seems indifferent.

“What? Would the other me really miss out on an opportunity to say ‘I told you so’?”

“Not… exactly…” Baekhyun is slowly coming to realise that both Sehun’s have an odd amount of similarities. “But he’s certainly less obnoxious about it.”

Sehun just grins like he’s been complimented, and Baekhyun realises one thing he can say about this world is that everyone is seriously twisted.

“Well, anyway, I looked into that Jongin kid and found like… fucking nothing,” Sehun admits. “No facebook, no instagram or anything. He either doesn’t exist in this world, or he’s a cryptid.” Baekhyun doesn’t know what any of those things mean, but he nods anyway. He already feels like he’s been reminded by the universe enough today that he’s an inferior idiot no thanks to differential geometry, he’s not keen on having Sehun remind him too. “But I checked the dorm registry, and found he lives in this building. His roommate said he’d been acting weird all day and spending all his time at the arcade.”

“Acting weird?” Baekhyun echoes, and sits up straighter in something that almost feels like hope.

“Yeah, my thoughts exactly.” Sehun snorts and picks up his books. “We can go in a sec, once I finish my readings. How did blending in work out for you, anyway?”

“Fine,” Baekhyun replies, a little snide at Sehun’s accusatory tone, as if pretending to ‘not be a freak’ is difficult. On the contrary, Baekhyun’s whole life kind of revolves around making illusions --both with his manifest and both with the persona of bravery he wears around his fellow mutants-- this one is no different. Blending in doesn't seem to be difficult, but geometry definitely is. “Yixing even invited me to study with him on Thursday.”

“What?” Sehun asks quickly. “You can’t study with Yixing on Thursday, Thursday is Jongdae day.”

Baekhyun gives an insufferable look, tired of his other self’s stupid schedule. “It’s what?”

“Jongdae day,” Sehun reiterates, standing and moving to a small stand-up calendar on Baekhyun’s desk, gesturing to the way that each date underneath the THURS column has a small face shaped like ('-ω-’) on it, as if that’s meant to have significance. “Every Thursday you guys are insistent about hanging out, since college likes to keep you apart. You could be in a fucking coma and Jongdae would still come visit your hospital bed on a Thursday to make you rewatch superhero movies with him.”

Like most things relating to the Jongdae of this world, Baekhyun’s heart hurts, withering into a small shrivelled lump and then rearing its ugly head. The Baekhyun of this world gets to be happy with Jongdae, and perhaps that’s the part that angers Baekhyun the most.

“If you skip out on a Thursday, Jongdae’s gonna know something’s up, and then he’ll track you down no matter what.”

“Fine.” Baekhyun shrugs. Not like Jongdae hunting him constantly is any different to what Baekhyun is used to, at least in this world Jongdae won’t try to kill him once he’s found. Hopefully. (Then again, he did say he wanted Baekhyun’s head, although the people of this world seem to say a lot of statements they don’t actually mean.) “He can enjoy trying to find someone who can turn invisible.”

Sehun stares at him. “Oh my god,” he says. “Was that statement almost… humorous? ”

Baekhyun gives him a flat look.

“No, it’s the truth.”

“No no no,” Sehun insists. “I almost laughed. It was kind of funny.”

Baekhyun frowns at him. “I’ve never made a joke in my life.”

“Oh my god that was another joke.” Sehun sounds completely amazed. Baekhyun rolls his eyes, although feels his lips quirk up slightly. “I can’t believe it!”

“Are you done with your reading yet?” he asks, instead of humouring Sehun any further. Baekhyun has only been here for half a day and already this universe’s light is simply… contagious. It’s strange, not having to worry about glancing over his shoulder every three seconds, it’s like a weight has been pulled off his chest. One he hadn’t even realised was there.

Sehun waves his hands. “Nearly. Promise.” He smiles. “Good to know you’re as pushy and stubborn in both worlds.”

Baekhyun throws a pillow at his head.

☀

Baekhyun is going to die here.

That’s the first thing he realises, as Junmyeon and Jongin lead him outside the strange safehouse and into the snow and darkness. It’s cold, it’s gloomy, it’s pitch black, and it’s begging for Baekhyun’s seasonal depression to kick in on top of his anxiety. Great. Exactly what he needs right now.

And to think it’s fall back in his home world. Baekhyun sighs.

“Why didn’t you just teleport us straight to the main hub?” he asks Jongin, repeating their lingo, who he finds somewhat more approachable than Junmyeon, unsure if that’s because he’s thrown off by the dissonance caused from knowing the Junmyeon back in his world, or if it’s because Jongin is simply easier to talk to in a reality that seems it forges its people out of coldness and bitterness, just like its weather.

“When mutants use their manifests, we emit a strong bio-electromagnetic pulse from our internal power source,” Jongin begins explaining. “The RTF has a way of detecting that, and tracing it back to our location.”

Baekhyun’s eyes widen. So many big words. “Woah.”

“I have to leap away from the hub to not alert them to our location,” Jongin adds. “Jong-- the RTF knows my pulse well, and won’t bother tracking me down because they know I’ll leap away.”

“No wonder it’s hard for you to beat them,” Baekhyun mumbles. “They must feel any attack coming before you’re even there, right?”

“Right,” Jongin agrees. “They’re… especially attuned to Baekhyun’s pulse. Maybe more than any other mutant in the world. Anytime he activates his powers, they know, and they adjust for it.”

It’s a lot to take in, and Baekhyun can almost feel the desperation sink into his body alongside theirs, and he’s not even technically a part of this great big battle. Or maybe he is. Will Baekhyun be persecuted for his other self’s actions, even though he’s not a mutant?

It’s a worrying thought, and he gulps nervously, pushing himself closer to Jongin just to feel a little more warmth in the darkness. He can make out an odd look of surprise on Jongin’s face through the grey shadows, but he covers it up quickly. Something tells Baekhyun his other self isn’t exactly the touchy clingy type. Ah, what Baekhyun would give to be emotionally independent. It’s nice to know he’s capable of it in at least one universe.

“So… how would a surprise attack work, then?” Baekhyun asks, instead of succumbing to the shadows creeping even into his thoughts. Talking is good, keeps him distracted, there’s an odd morbid sort of curiosity he has about this whole world, despite everything. “If they always know when I --the other I. Um. Other Baekhyun is using his powers?”

“Activate enough manifests and it overloads their sensors. We can hide Baekhyun’s amongst the interference.”

“But won’t they realise it’s just a distraction?”

Jongin shakes his head. “Not if it’s disguised well enough.” He gives a tiny, almost animalistic grin at that, and Baekhyun gulps. Oh.

The main hub, home to every wayward mutant --or so Baekhyun gathers-- is, like most other things in this world: gloomy, a giant metal warehouse covered in snow. Inside, the lights flicker and it smells damp, there’s no heating, but Baekhyun can spot ten, maybe twenty bodies all huddled together, talking in low voices, all wearing the same dark, thick clothing Baekhyun adorns.

“Junmyeon,” somebody says suddenly, standing up, and Baekhyun is surprised to see Chanyeol with red hair and a stern expression. “You’re back.”

Junmyeon nods. “Our safehouse inside the the eighth sector was compromised.”

“Another inner city location?” It’s fucking Soojung from Baekhyun’s Roman Empire class, the extremely hot girl he’s pretty sure doesn’t know his name even though they’d had a group project together last semester. Baekhyun’s jaw drops open. “How many do we have left?”

Junmyeon’s face looks grim. “Not many,” he admits quietly, and Baekhyun feels the way dark shadows begin to hang over the room, shivering. “But Baekhyun is safe, at least.”

“Technically,” Jongin mutters. Baekhyun has a feeling they’re not talking about him specifically.

“Did you manage to get the core?” Chanyeol asks, this time looking at Baekhyun with wide, hopeful eyes.

“Ummmmmmmm,” Baekhyun stalls, high-pitched, frantically looking to Jongin and Junmyeon for help.

“He did,” Jongin confirms, and Baekhyun blinks. He did? “We have it here.”

At that he pulls a strange round metal device out of his pocket, glowing a soft green like something from a movie, the sort of shit only Tony Stark ever builds.

“Awesome,” Baekhyun blurts, because he can’t help himself. Chanyeol and Soojung both shoot him a strange look.

Chanyeol breathes out slowly, hopefulness filling his frame as he inhales. “So now all we need is for Baekhyun to finally get in and drop an anchor to get the orbs back, right?”

“It’s not that simple,” Junmyeon replies, mouth pressed together. “Without that safehouse we have no way into the inner city since they destroyed Jongin’s anchor, and there are…” Junmyeon pointedly looks at Baekhyun. “...other complications.”

“Other complications?” Chanyeol parrots. “Like what?”

“Not here,” Junmyeon mutters, low enough that the tens of unabashed eyes in the room farther away won’t hear. Chanyeol looks worried, but nods all the same.

“Get Sehun,” Junmyeon tells Jongin, then grabs Baekhyun suddenly enough that he squeaks when he does so, roughly being pulled into a room upstairs. He’s pretty sure he catches a few questioning glances sent his way, but he’s not sure if that’s because of the embarrassing noise or Junmyeon’s hand around his wrist.

“What’s going on?” Chanyeol asks as soon as he enters, Jongin, Sehun, Soojung and Seungwan --one of Jongdae’s friends from the science society-- in tow. Baekhyun stares at her longer than necessary; is there anyone in this world that isn’t a duplicate?

“Other complications,” Junmyeon repeats dryly, tugging Baekhyun forward.

“Hi,” Baekhyun says sheepishly, waving.

The silence is tangible.

“... What the fuck happened to him?” Soojung asks. “Jongdae zap him one too many times?”

“Huh?” Baekhyun looks back at Jongin. “Why would Jongdae zap me? Zap me with what?”

Jongin grimaces. “I made a mistake,” he states cleanly.

As Jongin explains how awesome ass-kicking Baekhyun got replaced by useless anxiety-ridden Baekhyun who had to drop out of uni for two years because he couldn’t handle anything, apparently, Baekhyun zones out and tries to make sense of the familiar faces in front of him, a game of spot the difference. Other than hair colour and a few scars here or there, it’s next to impossible; this world really is a mirror image, at the surface level, at least…

“What the fuck?” Chanyeol remarks, which is a pretty appropriate response. “Then get Baekhyun back and him--” he points at Baekhyun, who feels uncomfortable under the negative attention. “--out of here.”

“It’s not that simple,” Jongin replies exhaustedly, evidently tired of repeating the fact.

“How is it not that simple?” Chanyeol snaps, gesturing angrily to Baekhyun. “Without Baekhyun we’re fucking screwed. And this-- mistake won’t help!”

Baekhyun doesn’t know what it is that cracks him so badly, but suddenly that hole in his chest opens up and everything feels hopeless and having one of his own friends--or rather, a mirror copy of one-- call him a mistake, doesn’t help. Baekhyun tells that to himself enough as is.

He can feel tears springing to his eyes, so it’s only Baekhyun’s rampant fears of showing explicit weakness that force him to storm out of the room, running down the stairs and outside of the hub into the cold darkness. It’s just fucking depressing, to sniffle and look up at a pitch black sky, thickened by clouds. At least it’s snowing, but even that’s black too.

It sucks. Baekhyun wants to go home, but he’s not sure how to get there and if he’ll ever be able to. The amount of sudden despair is breaking him. He curls up in the dirty snow, leaning against the hub wall away from the light spilling through the large doors. He hears footsteps, eventually, crunching through gravel and ice, and he jumps when he finds Sehun looking down at him, frowning.

“Oh, hey dude,” Baekhyun greets, sniffling lamely as he wipes his nose on the back of his hand. “You can go back inside to discuss important mutant things, y’know. I’m just…” he gestures to all the snow. “Chillin’.” Literally.

Ha.

Sehun sits down next to him, and Baekhyun relaxes at the familiar press of a bony shoulder against his own. Fuck, the carbon copies even feel the same, and it causes a weird clash in Baekhyun’s chest, instinct to slump on Sehun versus the logic that tells him this Sehun is very much a stranger.

“Are you okay?” This world’s Sehun asks, oddly soft-spoken, compared to Baekhyun’s usual.

“Yeah I’m fine,” Baekhyun lies, and Sehun gives him a pointed look that tells Baekhyun he probably doesn’t believe him. “Okay so I’m not fine, but I woke up in an alternate dimension where everything sucks and me being here ruins lives. Am I meant to be fine?”

“No.” Sehun at least smiles at that as he cranes his neck to the sky. “I guess not.”

Silence passes between them, and although it’s pretty comfortable, Baekhyun --being himself-- still itches to break it. “So we’re… friends in this world too, you and I?”

Sehun nods. “Yes.” Talkative bunch these mutants, huh?

“In my world we’re roommates,” Baekhyun adds helpfully, just to fill the quiet. He wrinkles his nose when a dirty snowflake lands on it. Sehun looks a little perplexed. “It’s like friends but in hard mode because if you can actually stand living together then you’re probably platonic soulmates.”

Sehun just chuckles, an oddly bizarre sound, coming from someone Baekhyun has never in his life once heard chuckle. “You truly aren’t our Baekhyun.”

“Great observation,” Baekhyun remarks dryly, and finds himself smiling when Sehun rolls his eyes and bumps their shoulders together comfortably. It’s… relaxing, Sehun is the most familiar face yet, and this Sehun seems to have the same sort of emotional sensitivity Baekhyun’s Sehun back home does.

“Don’t let it get to you,” Sehun says suddenly, stunning Baekhyun. “What the others say. They’re… stressed, in the midst of a mutant war, and worried for our friend.”

“I get it,” Baekhyun replies, because he does, really, but intense self-loathing is a bitch, and he’s kind of stressed about this too, but nobody seems to particularly care about that fact; other than this Sehun, maybe. Plus Jongin. “I just-- I want to go home. Your world is kind of depressing.”

“What’s your universe like?” Sehun asks, and Baekhyun soon finds himself rambling in his descriptions, drawing comparisons, and it's kind of comforting to. He mentions the fact that the sky is blue, for starters, and Sehun seems like he can’t even fathom the idea. All Baekhyun learns is that this world is shitty and sucks, humans destroyed nature, and now nature tries to destroy them, with black snow and no sun and pollution-caused darkness; the population is tiny, the world is isolated, and the government is paranoid and corrupt because half a century ago they found out some people are descended from an alien race beyond the clouds and thus have superpowers. It’s fucking ridiculous, Baekhyun isn’t quite sure how he’s meant to take it all seriously.

Except then Sehun talks about the riots, the war, the coup, and the wackiness of aliens with superpowers drowns out in the face of so much outright despair.

“Is there anything good about this world?” Baekhyun asks, incredulous.

“Of course there is,” Sehun replies stubbornly, a little defensive.

“Nope, don’t believe you,” Baekhyun says, partly just to piss Sehun off. “Man, I think even Jongdae would feel depressed by this place. And he’s like… the literal sun.”

Jongdae radiates positivity and happiness the same way the sun radiates UV radiation and the way Baekhyun radiates anxiety, which is a little more poetic than Baekhyun probably should have gotten, but sue him. He’s used to being lame, gay and sappy about Jongdae around Sehun, and he’d naturally defaulted to that with this one too.

Except Sehun looks at Baekhyun like he’s grown another head, and Baekhyun is so fucking tired of being looked at like that.

“Okay seriously,” Baekhyun says, sighing. “What the fuck is Jongdae in this world? Why does saying his name make everybody do that?” He gestures to Sehun’s face, who goes cross-eyed watching Baekhyun point a centimetre away from his nose. “If he’s not dead then what the hell happened?”

Sehun looks conflicted, obviously torn between telling Baekhyun and not telling him, but he eventually relents, shoulders slumping.

“In this world, Jongdae betrayed us,” Sehun explains, and Baekhyun’s eyes widen. “Joined the RTF mutant squad, and now hunts us down to kill us, imprison us, or steal our manifests. Sometimes all three.”

“... Woah,” is all Baekhyun can seem to say.

“Our community is built on trust,” Sehun continues to explain. “Any one of us at any moment could turn the rest of us in, but we don’t, because at the end of the day, being the government’s pet is worse than being their hunting prize.” Baekhyun gulps. “Jongdae.... Didn’t agree, I suppose.”

“So what?” Baekhyun asks, almost afraid of the answer. “He turned you all in?”

“He, Baekhyun and Kyungsoo were on a mission together, trying to rescue a few captive mutants kept in one of the outer cities.” Sehun’s face hardens over the longer he talks. “Jongdae betrayed them --lead them into a trap-- killed Kyungsoo and attempted to kill Baekhyun, too, before he managed to get away. Jongdae had joined the RTF and had been selling them our secrets for a while, and now he’s just been hunting us down ever since, being their little lap dog that cleans up the government’s mess.” Sehun scowls, and Baekhyun can’t even begin to comprehend any of this.

“Jongdae… Kim. Like. Jongdae-Jongdae. Betrayed… everyone? That’s why everyone acts like his name is an offensive slur?”

“There’s more to it than that,” Sehun replies quietly, shifting in his place. Baekhyun seriously can’t fucking handle how whack this world is. Jongdae is like… the most loyal, loving, kind person on the planet --in Baekhyun’s world-- how could this reality fuck him up so badly? “You-- other you-- and Jongdae were… close. Bringing him up around you is… not a suggested activity.”

“Close like what?” Baekhyun asks dumbly. “Best friends? Because we kind of have that going for us back home too.”

“No.” Sehun swallows. “Like……… close.”

Oh.

Oh.

“Ooooooohh,” Baekhyun says in realisation, trying to process the fact that in this world Jongdae is apparently evil but hey, at least he’s not painfully heterosexual! Luckily for this world’s Baekhyun, who apparently has the being-in-love-with-Jongdae thing in common with Baekhyun, if nothing else. Except that being with Jongdae ended up with a near-death experience for him; fuck, are they star-crossed in all realities or what? “So that’s why everyone is weird about it...”

Sehun nods slowly. “You and Jongdae-- well, you were never the leaders, but you were the heroes. You grew up together. Everyone looked up to you both, half of the people in that room wouldn’t even be there if not for you two.” Okay it’s seriously weird to have Sehun refer to the other-Baekhyun as you, but calling him Baekhyun might just freak Baekhyun out, so he guesses he should just roll with it. “You asked me if there was anything good left in this world. Well... I’d say love is probably one of them.” Sehun’s eyes soften, filled with an unquantifiable amount of sadness. “When Jongdae betrayed us…”

“I turned sad, emo, incredibly gothic and distant?” Baekhyun suggests.

“... Yes,” Sehun replies, squinting. “How did you…”

“Because that’s exactly what would happen to me if my Jongdae ever fucked me over like that,” Baekhyun says solemnly, although he can’t even imagine it. He and Jongdae have been through everything together, from kindergarten to high school to Baekhyun’s weird limbo years of being a drop-out, and by the sounds of things, it’s the same in this world, so why would Jongdae suddenly trade decades of history over for some government-supplied luxury? It just doesn’t make sense, Jongdae isn’t that type of person.

But this world doesn’t have the same Jongdae. Baekhyun frowns at the snow in front of him; he wonders what he’s like and at the same time, with good reason, really hopes he never finds out.

“... You’re in love with Jongdae too, aren’t you?” Sehun says suddenly, making Baekhyun jump. “The one in your world.”

“Pshh what?” Baekhyun tries, with fake nonchalance, feeling his face heat up. “That idiot? No I would never--” Sehun’s look is flat enough to roll dough over and make a nice pizza. Oh, Baekhyun already misses pizza. Damn. “--okay maybe a teenie weenie bit.” Baekhyun pinches his index and thumb together with a miniscule gap between. He sighs. “Damn you see through me in any reality, huh?”

“You’re transparent.” Sehun shrugs. “The same can’t be said for the you of this world. You’re deceptively easy to read in comparison.”

“Um,” Baekhyun replies. “Thanks?”

Sehun goes quiet then, expression slightly pinched in conflicting thought.

“What is he like?” Sehun asks quietly. “The me of your world.”

“Oh,” Baekhyun replies. “Um… really nice? Like, kind of a brat and a piece of shit on a bad day, but… underneath all that, he’s one of the best people I know.”

Sehun is silent. “And Jongdae…?”

“Jongdae?” Baekhyun repeats, swallowing. “Jongdae is…” he swallows, nervous, licking his dry lips. “... Well, he’s my best friend. I love him more than anything.” And not just in the ‘I kind of want to make out with him’ way, Baekhyun wholeheartedly loves Jongdae as a friend and then some.

“You’re… together, then?” Sehun asks. “In your world?”

“What?” Baekhyun says, and feels his face heat up. “Oh-- oh , no. No. Jongdae is painfully heterosexual. Like, a plays-on-the-football-team-and-dates-cheerleaders heterosexual and everything.” The same football team Baekhyun ended up joining just to have an excuse to spend even more time with Jongdae despite his (now ex) cheerleader girlfriend but, semantics.

“What’s a… ‘heterosexual’?” Sehun questions eventually, blinking cutely.

“Oh holy shit you’re right,” Baekhyun remarks. “This world is fucking great.”

Superpowers and no homophobia definitely seems like a fucking bonus for dealing with all the other doom and gloom --and the evil Jongdae part; that bit sucks too.

Not a bonus enough to be okay with staying, though. Baekhyun frowns into the air.

The silence persists, but something bothers Baekhyun.

“Are you sure Jongdae is evil?” He starts suddenly, startling Sehun. “I just mean… in my world, it feels like Jongdae would never hurt his friends like that. Not without good reason.”

“There’s no room for doubt,” Sehun says quietly. “He has done horrible things... I’m not sure any of us could ever learn to forgive him.” His expression hardens, like steel, and Baekhyun lets the topic drop. Something in his gut still feels… off, about the entire thing, but he doesn’t push it. He can’t compare this world’s Jongdae to his own when they’re obviously so different, he just… can’t.

☾

The arcade, as Sehun had explained, isn’t actually an arcade, but a ‘bar-restaurant type place that has a bunch of arcade machines out the back, hence the name’ (his words, not Baekhyun’s.)

It is, in Baekhyun’s opinion, mostly a dump, but he doesn’t say that, taking in the brick building for what it is. Baekhyun doesn’t know what an arcade machine is, but when Sehun leads him to the back of the building and he finds a bunch of electronic boxes with buttons and joysticks sticking out of them with really outdated electronic screens displaying colourful pixels, he assumes that’s what Sehun had meant. But then he sees Jongin bending over one and cursing under his breath, and forgets all about the tacky machine.

“Jongin!” Baekhyun calls, filled with hope, because it’s the same blonde hair, the same broad shoulders, the same--

--smooth face, no scar. Baekhyun frowns.

“Uh. Do I know you?” This Jongin asks, glancing between Baekhyun’s hand on his shoulder, Baekhyun, and Sehun, looking a little panicked. The machine behind him buzzes. “Oh shit! My high score!”

“No,” Baekhyun says, slumping with disappointment. “I don’t suppose you do.”

“But man you are seriously a cryptid,” Sehun adds, giving Jongin a once-over. “What sort of millenial doesn’t have any social media?”

“Social media is a toxic waste pool,” Jongin replies matter-of-factly, turning back to his machine in greater interest.

Sehun snorts. “Can’t argue with that.”

Dejected, Baekhyun frowns, and Sehun gives him a sideways glance before tugging him back into the restaurant section, sitting him down and ordering some food.

“You haven’t eaten here at all, have you?” Sehun asks, and Baekhyun nods, although it doesn’t matter. In his world he’d be lucky to eat once a day, Baekhyun is used to going without food, ever since he and Jongdae grew up on the streets and Baekhyun would give Jongdae his portion of whatever they could find…

Baekhyun curls one hand’s fingers into the sleeves of his hoodie while the other fiddles with the pendant around his neck absentmindedly. Ah, memories… do they ever stop hurting so much?

The food is strange, long noodles dumped in a red sauce, and Baekhyun takes Sehun’s cue of using the fork to twirl the strands around it and put it in his mouth, brightening at the taste. He’s never had something that tastes this good before.

“Blegh, too salty,” Sehun remarks quietly, although he keeps eating. He looks up at Baekhyun. “So, what now?”

Baekhyun, preoccupied with eating the delicious food, stares at him.

“As in, that plan fell through pretty quick, so what now?” Sehun clarifies. “How are you going to get back?”

“I don’t know…” Baekhyun replies, frowning as he slowly twirls his fork. “I’m not sure what else I can do, now.”

Sehun presses his lips together in worry. “I’m scared for the other you, y’know? Your world sounds terrible and he’s not like you, he’s… soft.” Baekhyun slumps a little at the assumption that he's cut out for his own world. “He’s not cut out for any place that doesn’t have the sun. We have to get him back.”

“He’ll be safe,” Baekhyun assures. “My friends would have found him and kept him protected.” That much he is sure of; Sehun nods in acknowledgement, grateful for the reminder.

“I hope so…” he mutters. “But what else can we do? Without any physics-defying mutants or convenient multiverse dimension portals around, how do we get you back home?”

Home. What a strange word to hear. Baekhyun has never had a home before, not really, and even if he had... he lost it a long time ago.

“I’m not sure,” Baekhyun says, and feels himself slip back into an old illusion, the one he’s used to keeping up around the Sehun back in his world, a brave face. “But we’ll work something out and fix this. I promise.”

Sehun opens his mouth to reply, but they’re cut off by somebody saying, “Baekhyun! What're you doing here?”

Baekhyun tenses, power flooding through his veins in response, ready to disappear, but Sehun’s hand around his wrist keeps him in place, reassuring him.

“Is this where you’ve been instead of working?” It’s fucking Minseok, one of the RTF’s mutant dogs, and Jongdae’s partner, having walked over from another table in the restaurant to come yell at Baekhyun, apparently. “I know I don’t pay you but-- god, Baekhyun. You can’t just not show up. I called you six-thousand times!!!”

“... I lost my phone,” Baekhyun replies, which is partly the truth, not that he lost it so much as his other self is carrying it in another reality. He quickly remembers Sehun’s other lecture on what his list of excuses would be. “And I’m sick.”

Minseok’s expression turns worried at that, and it’s strange, because Baekhyun has never in his life seen the government’s ice king show… any sign of remorse, let alone at Baekhyun. It’s bizarre.

“I hope you feel better then, but at least email or something next time, okay?” Minseok exhales. “It’s really hard to handle the shelter without you.” He glances over his shoulder, back to his table. “I’ll leave you alone to recover but. When can I expect you back?”

“Not for a while,” Sehun helpfully inputs. “He’s… very very very sick. But I’ll make sure that he lets you know.”

Baekhyun nods as if to say, what he said.

Minseok frowns. “Okay… enjoy your meal, you two.” And walks back to the other table, sitting down and rejoining his group on the other side of the restaurant.

“Well that was a fucking awkward run-in,” Sehun mumbles.

“Who is he, to me, in this world?” Baekhyun asks, eyes still watching Minseok’s back, like at any second he might turn around and lob a pointed icicle at Baekhyun’s throat. He rubs his neck as he turns back around.

“The deadliest thing known to mankind,” Sehun answers, forcing Baekhyun to tense up because he fucking knew it. “Your boss.”

What.

At Baekhyun’s flat look, Sehun snorts. “You volunteer at his animal shelter, Minseok is actually like, the best person ever.” Baekhyun is unconvinced, even though he’d just witnessed his kindness. “He was a vet, but then he changed his clinic into a shelter, and you’re like, his only helping pair of hands. He’s… like an older brother to you, I think. He’s been looking out for you since even before you dropped out.”

Bizarre. “In my world, he’s one of my greatest enemies,” Baekhyun replies flatly, making Sehun’s eyes widen.

“What?” He remarks, in disbelief. “Why is every good person in this world evil in yours?”

Baekhyun shrugs. “Perhaps that’s the difference between them.”

Sehun looks unconvinced, but lets the topic drop at Baekhyun’s obvious defensiveness, not keen on anymore Jongdae talk, not again. He finishes his serving of this... ‘pasta’ much quicker than Sehun does, and then fidgets.

“Are you still hungry?” Sehun asks amusedly, and Baekhyun nods hurriedly, perhaps too eager. “We can order more, if you’d like. Or you could just get dessert.”

“What’s... ‘dessert’?” Baekhyun asks, tilting his head.

“Holy shit,” Sehun says, sitting up quickly and waving at one of the servants that work in this restaurant. “Prepare to have your mind blown.”

☀

They’ve decided to keep Baekhyun’s little swapping mishap a secret from most of the other mutants, apparently, because Junmyeon and the others don’t want to cause mass panic with their main beacon of light --literally and figuratively-- missing.

Which totally isn’t pressuring at all, as Baekhyun has to pretend to be some gothic mutant badass with emotional constipation while slowly drowning in more and more despair as time passes and Jongin makes no progress on getting him home and getting the real Baekhyun --the one that actually can help all these people-- back.

It fucking sucks, they don’t have food, they barely have water, and mutants can’t live in the actual cities due to DNA scanners, apparently, that can check for the mutant gene. Most mutants who are discovered are captured and imprisoned if not brainwashed into being pets for the government, which means all the ones that get away are stuck to the barren outskirts of the wasteland that is this earth, trying to get by on very little resources. Other Baekhyun’s job as a hero seems stressful, but Jongin is stretched thin too, their only way in and out of the city and thus their main provider of any supplies. He’s tired and wrung out everytime Baekhyun sees him, which is a shame because he’s one of the only people Baekhyun isn’t horrendously intimidated by, and also sort of his ticket out.

So Baekhyun spends the next few days --if you can even call them that, time is impossible to keep track of without a sun-- clinging to Sehun, mostly, because he’s about the only other person Baekhyun finds comforting, both of them existing in some weird relationship where they cling to what they have with their respective alternate selves and re-shape it to fit their new dynamic. This Sehun is a lot sadder than Baekhyun’s usual Sehun, but just as soft and compassionate, and it’s a relaxing presence, if nothing else, to have around, while the rest of Baekhyun is in Extreme Fear Mode™ due to… literally everything. He still hasn’t processed most of this, but he’s working on it. Kind of. He’s almost afraid of processing it, in hindsight, because processing it makes it real, and part of Baekhyun is still hoping that at one stage he’ll wake up from Jongdae scolding him for being late for practice, and this will all wash away like a forgotten dream.

Jongdae… Baekhyun frowns as he helps Seungwan prepare food for everybody in silence --she’d been startled, when he’d offered his help, just for the distraction, but accepted it nonetheless-- a pretty easy process consisting of heating water and adding tasteless nutrition-filled mush to it, then spooning it out into wooden bowls. (It turns out Seungwan is Chanyeol’s fucking wife in this world, which is hilarious; when Baekhyun had heard as much, he’d said I can’t believe there’s a world where Chanyeol is actually straight, and pretended he hadn’t said anything at all when Seungwan said what? ) Is it weird to miss Jongdae so much? Most of Baekhyun’s other friends are here, Junmyeon and Lu Han from the team, Sehun, obviously, Chanyeol --even though this version of him is a complete asshole-- Seulgi and Sooyoung.... The only faces Baekhyun hasn’t managed to find duplicates of is Yixing, Minseok and Sunyoung. They’re the only other people he can think of who are regularly in his life, but everyone else just seems to be somebody who’s present in it regardless, like Joohyun, his advisor from first year who told him it’s okay to drop out if he needs time to take care of himself, apparently being one of the runaway mutants. Baekhyun kind of wants to find out what happened to everybody’s counterparts, but after the revelation of Jongdae being evil… maybe not.

Baekhyun sniffles in the darkness, nose constantly running in the cold, as he washes one of the large metal pots by the old-fashioned water pump, watching the unclean water splash into the equally as unclean snow. It’s hard work, helping Seungwan make sure everybody has enough food and water and warmth, bandaging their wounds like he would an animal at Minseok’s shelter, and he can’t help but wonder if his other self can like… actually handle this. Baekhyun is terrible with responsibilities, but he also has a penchant for overworking himself, a mixture of trying to prove himself to nobody in particular and everybody else and blatant need for distraction --without Jongdae to keep him grounded or anyone else telling him that it’s okay to rest for a while, Baekhyun kind of just throws himself into everything uninhibited, and it’s… weird. All Sehun and the others --the ones that know the truth, anyway-- seem to do is point out the differences between Baekhyun and his other self, and even the people who don’t know the truth keep mentioning all the ‘weird’ things about him and thinking he won’t hear them just because they’re said while he’s doing something else. Everyone just keeps reminding him that he’s different to his other self, and yet all Baekhyun can do is think about how they're the same.

They both obviously love Jongdae, after all, even if this version of Baekhyun’s love has died out no thanks to the big Judas Jongdae has pulled. They both seem to do too much at once. They both have a lot of crippling responsibilities --granted, Baekhyun’s version of crippling responsibilities is trying to pass university without breaking down, this Baekhyun’s version is saving the entire population of mistreated alien descendants. They both seem to like helping people. They’re both… hurting, in their own special ways. Baekhyun doesn’t know the full extent of the other Baekhyun’s orphan street-rat life before discovering his powers and running away or whatever, but he has kind of been living in his shoes literally over the past few days while pretending to be him, and it’s fucking hard. Everyone looks at him with adoration and light in their eyes, like he’s a hero, and even regular old Baekhyun is feeling pressured to keep some sort of front for them, pretending to be more put-together than he actually is. If other Baekhyun is anything like him, then he probably isn’t put-together at all --even more so if he doesn’t have Jongdae around to ground him.

It’s an alienating thought.

Baekhyun is so deep in his reverie he almost misses the glimmer of something in the corner of his eye, head craning to catch it through reflex as something far off in the darkness seems to… flicker, on and off, moving through the shadows. Huh. Baekhyun has never seen light like that before.

He walks back inside to ask Sehun about it, the only person who seems to tolerate his incessant questioning, only to find Junmyeon and Jongin arguing in the upper room above the main hub instead.

“Hey--” Baekhyun starts, but it goes unnoticed.

“--still haven’t worked out what this fucking core does,” Junmyeon says, scowling. “And now you’re more focused on trying to get Baekhyun back than keeping us alive?”

“Um, guys,” Baekhyun tries.

“What do you want me to say, Myeon?” Jongin sighs exasperatedly. “We need Baekhyun back as soon as possible, we can’t just--”

“Is light normal?” Baekhyun blurts, unfazed by them talking about getting rid of him and getting the good Baekhyun back. Again. “Because like, I saw this light in the darkness--”

“What is it, Baekhyun?” Junmyeon snaps, causing Baekhyun to shirk into his shoulders a little, feeling like a kicked puppy.

“Just um. I saw. A far away light, in the mountains…” he trails off, swallowing. “Is that normal?”

“You saw light?” Jongin asks, and his eyes widen in panic. “No,” he reveals. “No, that isn’t normal.”

He and Junmyeon exchange frantic looks. “We need to get out of here,” Junmyeon demands. “Now.”

It’s a pretty frantic rush after that, Baekhyun yelping as he’s pulled downstairs by Jongin and everyone is quickly told to evacuate outside and into the wilderness. A mess of whispers and half-screams as Chanyeol rushes outside to switch off the generators and plunge them into darkness. Jongin and Baekhyun are halfway into the forest alongside everyone else when Jongin pales and says, “Shit, the core. I left it inside.”

“What?” Baekhyun says. “Who cares! We’re all running away!” For some reason he doesn’t really know, but he’s too swept up in the panic to question it. Jongin gives him a lingering look before turning on his heel and sprinting, and Baekhyun worriedly glances at the group moving in front of him before stupidly deciding to follow, just to make sure Jongin stays safe. Stupid mutants, what’s the point of having somebody who can teleport if he can’t even fucking teleport no thanks to some stupid Professor X tracking device shit they’ve got going on. Goddamn.

Baekhyun is terrible at running, but maybe all that benched member football practice is actually paying off as he follows Jongin to make sure something terrible doesn’t happen to him. He stops at the edge of the trees, surprised to see a fucking hovering car parked outside the main hub, only to scream when something hits him on the back of his neck with enough force to shove him forward, and Baekhyun falls to the ground on his knees, gasping for breath.

“Well, well, well, look who it is,” somebody says, and when Baekhyun looks up, his eyes widen at seeing Minseok --or, the version of his from this world-- wearing all white with plastic on top and smiling a little maniacally. “The saviour of light himself.” Minseok’s fingers hook under his chin, examining Baekhyun’s face, and they’re just so… cold. “What? Not even trying to escape?”

Shit.

“Leave him alone, Minseok,” of course it’s fucking Sunyoung, of course she’s also evil. In Baekhyun’s world she’s one of Jongdae’s closest friends --therefore Baekhyun’s by proxy-- and sort of the nicest, loveliest person in the world. Of course she’s fucking evil in this world. Her grin looks wrong on her face, beneath her dark, short-cropped hair. “You know he’s not our toy to play with.”

Right, well, sadistic crazy government agents, check. Baekhyun wanted to know what happened to them and here they are! Curiosity killed the cat after all... Baekhyun is so fucking done with this universe.

“Where is Jongdae, anyway?” Minseok remarks, looking back to the main hub, Sunyoung doesn’t give him a response. Baekhyun decides his best bet is to remain silent and hope for a fucking christmas miracle to suddenly send him back to his homeworld or something, while sitting there in the ground with what he can only assume to be a gun against his neck. Reality hopping is just so fun.

Eventually, another group of the white clad soldiers and somebody in the clear plastic like Minseok and Sunyoung walk out towards them, Baekhyun barely able to see their faces as his head is forced to look down at the dirt snow.

“The core is gone,” a familiar voice says, and Baekhyun feels his heart drop. “I felt the teleporter’s pulse a second too late. He was out before we could catch him.”

“And the other mutants?” Minseok asks.

“Gone, too. God only knows where.” There’s a dry huff, and suddenly silence, as Baekhyun’s skin prickles when he feels the attention redirected to him.

“Well, at least we caught Baekhyun.” He can hear Minseok’s predatory grin. “He was straggling in the woods. The captain will be happy.”

There’s silence, a lack of response, and Baekhyun catches the way Minseok’s feet shift anxiously, left then right, before warm, calloused fingers are hooked under his chin, and jerking Baekhyun’s face up.

Jongdae is as beautiful in this world as he is in Baekhyun’s, although his hair is longer, curled over the tips of his ears, and his skin more pale, his eyes dark with heavy shadows beneath them. He doesn’t particularly look evil, so much as he just looks… tired, sort of wrung out in a manic way. Frazzled, even.

“Jongdae,” Baekhyun breathes out, taken aback.

Jongdae’s eyebrows furrow together. “You’re not Baekhyun.”

☾

The days here pass so strangely when the sun exists to actually mark the passage of time, Baekhyun finds. He has a surprising amount of free time when he only attends the classes that Sehun insists he attend because of the roll call, or whatever, and Baekhyun spends most of it exploring the university campus. Invisible, of course, to prevent any unwanted encounters, but enjoyable all the same. Walking under the sun, breathing in the scent of grass, seeing people so careless and free… it’s intoxicating, and the longer Baekhyun remains in this world, the less he wants to return to his own.

It’s fucking relaxing, which is a bizarre state of mind Baekhyun has never experienced before now, not having to watch over his shoulder, not having to watch out for anybody but himself. One afternoon Baekhyun just lies in the sun and falls asleep, right there in the middle of the day, completely uncaring. It’s the best thing in the world.

Second only to the food, maybe, which Baekhyun finds out is pretty much unlimited here --within economic constraints. (However, it’s very, very easy for an invisible person to ignore those constraints. Not that Baekhyun tells Sehun that --stealing is illegal in Baekhyun’s world too, he’s not an idiot.)

The food is beyond delicious, and Baekhyun keeps trying and enjoying all of it, eating to the point of making himself sick. Sehun gets back to their room one day, door still broken, sees all the empty packaging on the floor and across the bed, and just says what the fuck.

Baekhyun is eating even now, chewing on some sticky sweet thing that stretches in his mouth and clings to his teeth as he walks towards the library, trying to find Yixing. It’s five p.m, according to the watch Sehun gave Baekhyun, so Yixing should be here, but the entire building is huge --where is he going to be?

It takes half an hour before Baekhyun finds him after combing the entire place, sitting by a corner table on the fifth floor. He looks up when Baekhyun stands in front of him expectantly.

“Hey, I was wondering when you were going to show up,” he smiles and clears a space for Baekhyun, who pulls out the books Sehun had told him he’d be expected to take.

“I couldn’t find you.” Baekhyun frowns. “This building is very big.”

“We always study up here, though.” Yixing gives him an amused look. “You could’ve just texted to ask.”

“... I lost my phone,” Baekhyun admits. It’s one of the excuses he finds himself repeating a lot, which makes him wonder how much the people of this universe rely on these… phones. (Which seem to be some sort of? Communicator device? Baekhyun hasn’t really worked it out yet, Sehun showed him his phone, one night, but Baekhyun was far more interested in the pizza they were eating.)

“You haven’t gotten it replaced yet?” Yixing asks, as Baekhyun nods in confirmation. “And you’re not dying without it? Woah who are you and what did you do with Baekhyun.” Baekhyun tenses up before Yixing laughs, realising it’s just a joke. He relaxes accordingly. “I thought you’d die without getting your daily rewards in Love Live.”

“... Somehow, I manage,” Baekhyun says dryly, which just makes Yixing laugh all over again, and Baekhyun softens. God he’s missed Yixing so much, and this Yixing isn’t even his Yixing; that Yixing is still imprisoned in the Red Vault, powerless and being experimented on, all because of Baekhyun. When Jongdae had first betrayed them, Baekhyun didn’t believe it, and tried to save him… Yixing was the only person willing to believe Baekhyun, and when they went into the city, only Baekhyun got out, meaning another person’s life got put at risk because Baekhyun was too much of an idiot to see Jongdae’s true colours.

A sobering thought, but at least Yixing is far more interested in the bizarre amount of numbers written in front of him than analysing Baekhyun. Baekhyun slowly copies his layout, pulling out the same textbook and one of the notebooks, then he sits and waits, wondering when the revision will happen. Perhaps Yixing just needs to finish his own work, first?

It leaves Baekhyun plenty of time to sit with his thoughts, wondering what his life would’ve been like if he’d grown up in a world like this, like the other Baekhyun, fiddling with the pendant around his neck as he does so --the same one from the matching pair he and Jongdae had stolen together as children because they could, giggling, the same one Jongdae had torn off his own neck disinterestedly when he told Baekhyun he’d never loved him. It’s hard to imagine, living in a world like this, how Baekhyun would have ended up… would he and Jongdae have been happy together, here? Like their counterparts?

Baekhyun doesn't know. Baekhyun doesn't want to know. It would only be salt in the wound.

It takes approximately forty minutes before Yixing looks up and says, “Hey, what did you get for question fifteen--” he stops and looks at Baekhyun’s notebook. “... Have you done any work at all?” he asks, eyebrows pinching as he scrutinises Baekhyun’s face.

“... No?” Baekhyun offers hesitantly, not sure what else to say. “I was waiting for you.”

“Waiting for me to what?” Yixing looks bewildered. “Wow, you really weren’t kidding when you said you understood nothing. Do you seriously want me to teach you this entire chapter?”

“... Sure?”

It takes a long fucking time, and even once Yixing is done relaying concepts Baekhyun lies and pretends he understands them just to make him stop. By the time they’re done it’s past seven, and Yixing teases Baekhyun for the ‘productive’ study session (sarcasm, if Baekhyun could guess) before excusing himself to go home since it’s late and he’s hungry. Baekhyun readily agrees, happy that it’s meal time because eating, and watches Yixing leave the library before beginning to pack up his own books and shove them into his backpack.

Baekhyun tenses when he feels somebody sneak up behind him and wrap their arms around his waist.

“I can’t believe you,” a familiar voice mumbles, and Baekhyun’s heart beats in double time as panic floods his body. “Why are you so mad at me that you’re avoiding me? What did I do?”

Baekhyun gulps before slowly turning his head to glance over his shoulder, heartbeat pounding in his ears, only to catch a head of straight dark hair, which glances up suddenly, meaning Jongdae’s face is right in front of his.

Baekhyun inhales sharply. “Jongdae.”

Jongdae’s straight eyebrows pinch together. “You’re not Baekhyun,” he blurts, then steps back, sudden and shocked, pulling away from Baekhyun and leaving the distinct feeling of warmth against his back as he blinks at him, rubbing at his eyes. “Who-- Who the hell are you?”

Baekhyun’s entire body is trembling. “I am Baekhyun,” he reiterates.

“No, no you’re not I know Baekhyun and you’re not--” Jongdae cuts off, laughing nervously, devoid of any humour in it. “--What the fuck is this? Baekhyun have a long lost twin or what?”

Baekhyun swallows, licks his lips. “I am Baekhyun, just-- just not your Baekhyun.”

It’s so strange, to see Jongdae like this, dressed in the casual clothes of this world and looking so… human, not wearing all white, not scarred on every inch of skin, not looking at Baekhyun with utter disgust. His hands won’t stop fucking shaking, so Baekhyun shoves them into the pockets of his hoodie. Fuck, Sehun warned him Jongdae would try to find him, Baekhyun didn’t think…

“What the hell is going on?” Jongdae asks, eyes wide with fear. “Where’s my Baekhyun?”

Painstakingly, Baekhyun explains everything that’s happened, from leaping with Jongin to ending up here, and suspecting that the other Baekhyun may have taken his place. Jongdae just goes paler by the second, completely silent, and Baekhyun hates making him look like that, even as his voice grows more sure as he continues. Jongdae doesn’t call Baekhyun crazy or accuse him of making it up, if anything, he seems to believe it maybe more easily than even Baekhyun did when he’d first woken up here.

“God this sounds like a fucking Batman comic,” is all Jongdae says once Baekhyun is done, leaning against the wall with a head against his forehead, faint. “I mean-- I’m not surprised the multiverse theory is correct I just. Didn’t think traveling between dimensions was possible.” Baekhyun doesn’t have anything to say to that, simply staring at Jongdae. It’s so hard not to when he’s this close, because as a duplicate he even has all the same moles --the ones in his eyebrows and by his hairline, under his jaw. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Baekhyun snaps out of his trance. “What?”

“I wouldn’t have been like, mad or anything, you know. Why avoid me instead of telling me? I could’ve helped.” Jongdae frowns. Baekhyun hates the sight of it --hates anything that makes him do anything but smile.

“I…” how does he begin to explain, exactly, that seeing Jongdae like this, happy and normal and whole, hurts Baekhyun more than anything in his own world ever could? That his feelings for Jongdae are already so complicated, that presenting him with a version of Jongdae that doesn’t want to stab him in the back won’t help, and Baekhyun was worried that being near Jongdae would tear him in half between part of him that wants to kiss him and the part of him that wants to kill him. Both halves which he is currently fighting right now, his brain trying to fight over his instincts. It’s infuriating. “... In my world, we are not friends.” Baekhyun decides on instead. “In fact, we are enemies. I don’t trust you.”

And if he thought Jongdae frowning was bad, then making him have that expression of hurt is far, far worse. This Jongdae has never done anything to warrant being punished for Baekhyun and his Jongdae’s sins, he has no right to take it out on him, and suddenly guilt settles in Baekhyun’s chest, alongside shame. He looks away, unable to stand looking at Jongdae any further.

“We’re not friends… really?” Jongdae asks quietly, searching Baekhyun’s face. He exhales slowly. “I can’t believe it.”

“We were friends, once,” Baekhyun tells him. “And then you betrayed me.”

“Okay so, I don’t inspire trust for you, got it, really,” Jongdae assures, holding up his hands. “No need to rub it in…” He rubs the back of his neck. “But I-- I want to help get my Baekhyun back. I have to.”

Baekhyun frowns at Jongdae, examining his expression, a mixture of hurt and confusion and desperation, trying to make sense of it. The answer is obvious.

“You’re in love with him,” Baekhyun states.

Jongdae’s face turns red immediately. “What?”

“This world’s Baekhyun believes you only have an interest in women,” Baekhyun squints at Jongdae. “And yet, you are in love with him.”

“I’m not-- I’m not in love with him!!!” Jongdae quickly denies, frantically looking around as if someone might overhear. “I just-- I don’t-- I don’t know what I am, okay.” Baekhyun does not think Jongdae’s cardiovascular system can afford for any more blood to go into his face. “He means a lot to me and I… It’s confusing.”

Baekhyun laughs in disbelief, bitter and grating. “In my world Jongdae chose to abandon what we had,” he says, more to himself than Jongdae. “And in this one, I see you have done the same.”

“Hey,” Jongdae snaps, angry, and pushes Baekhyun’s shoulder, startling him as he has to put a foot out to balance. “There’s a difference between me being a traitor and me not knowing my own fucking feelings. It’s not like Baekhyun has said anything either!”

“Oh please,” Baekhyun rolls his eyes. “I haven’t even met him and I know it’s obvious. If you're anything like my Jongdae, you have known for a long time.”

Judging by the expression on Jongdae’s face: bullseye. His face contorts uncomfortably, and he steps back guiltily, looking down to the floor. It had been Baekhyun’s Jongdae who had made the first move in their world, too, the night as teenagers when they’d discovered Baekhyun’s powers through an unfortunate run-in with the police and fled into the outskirts; when they’d stopped, gasping for breath, Jongdae had pulled Baekhyun in and kissed him, promising that they’d make it through all of this together, no matter what.

Baekhyun’s fists clench, as if he can still feel Jongdae’s fingers intertwined through his. It had only been later, that they’d discovered Jongdae’s manifest too --Jongdae had been ecstatic to be able to help Baekhyun, Baekhyun had felt nothing but devastation knowing Jongdae would be in just as much danger as him.

“It’s not that easy, okay?” This world’s Jongdae tries pathetically, slumping.

Baekhyun shakes his head, smiling twistedly. “I see you’re just as weak in both worlds.” He scowls, then picks up his backpack, and leaves. Jongdae doesn’t follow him out.

☀

Silence passes as Jongdae stands.

“What?” Minseok responds.

“This isn’t Baekhyun,” Jongdae reiterates, stepping back as his eyes search Baekhyun’s face imploringly.

“Of course it is, look at him,” Minseok argues, pulling Baekhyun’s head up by his hair as Baekhyun yelps. “Who else could it be?”

Jongdae shakes his head firmly. “It isn’t him.”

“Well it can’t be an illusion,” Sunyoung snaps. “They’re never tangible.”

“It’s obviously him, you’ve just lost your mind.” Minseok scoffs, and Jongdae narrows his eyes at him, a cold, sinister look that appears wrong on his face, before pulling some sort of gun out of his belt and holding it against Baekhyun’s arm.

He yelps as the gun injects a needle into him and withdraws blood, and a holo-screen pops up, a picture of other Baekhyun’s face and what looks like a bunch of genetic code with one line beneath it: ID #04: MATCH.

“See?” Minseok says, gesturing. “You’re crazy.”

But then there’s a small ding as a red exclamation mark pops up, and when Jongdae taps it, the words are clear to read in the darkness. DISCREPANCY: MISSING MUTANT O-GENE. SCAN AGAIN?

“What?” Sunyoung asks. “The mutant gene? That’s impossible.”

“Not even when the power source is taken does the gene disappear,” Minseok mumbles, snatching the DNA scanner thing from Jongdae’s hands and furiously fiddling with its settings before slumping. He looks at Baekhyun with wide eyes. “What the hell are you?”

Jongdae’s hands are weirdly gentle as they hook beneath Baekhyun’s face and force him to look into his eyes, just as warm and brown in this world as they are back home.

“Where’s the real Baekhyun?” he asks firmly.

“Why are you doing this?” Baekhyun questions instead of replying, soft enough that only Jongdae might hear, while Minseok and Sunyoung continue staring at the DNA scanner a few steps away in shock. “Why are you hurting him?”

He doesn’t have to clarify who he’s talking about, Jongdae’s face turns into a snarl immediately.

“Answer the fucking question, impostor,” he spits out, and when Baekhyun looks into his eyes he just sees how tired Jongdae is, how much pain he’s clearly in, that same desperation and… and something almost like worry. Does he care for the other Baekhyun enough to worry about his disappearance? That certainly clashes with the heartless monster everybody has painted him out to be.

“I don’t know,” Baekhyun bites out sardonically, because he has no self-preservation, and seeing Jongdae be so stupid, picking the wrong side and becoming evil, just makes him so fucking angry. “Maybe if you didn’t stab him in the back you would, though.”

Jongdae’s eyes narrow, and Baekhyun watches with wide eyes as he raises one hand and small blue lightning bolts dance between his fingers, suddenly beginning to regret his choice to be a smart-ass piece of shit, but then Jongdae seems to pause, suddenly, before spinning around and jabbing his hand into empty space.

No, not empty space, it’s just where Jongin materialises, reeking of ozone, having caught Jongdae’s wrist with his hands just before it could land.

“Ah, you’re too slow Dae,” Jongin says cockily. “Won’t get me with that trick again.”

“Give me the core, and I’ll spare your life,” Jongdae threatens lowly, Jongin just smirks.

“I’ll think about it,” he says in a way that implies he most definitely won’t think about it, and then evaporates again behind Jongdae, kicking him firmly in the back. Minseok and Sunyoung spring into action immediately, but Jongin already has his arms around Baekhyun. “Hold on tight, okay?” Baekhyun nods hurriedly.

When he opens his eyes again, Jongin is on top of him, urging him to stand, and Baekhyun sways with the dizziness and sudden nausea.

“I think I’m gonna puke,” he says to no one.

“Yeah that’s normal,” Jongin tugs him by his wrist through the darkness, giving Baekhyun no recovery time at all. “What the hell were you thinking following me like that? You should have stayed with the others.”

“I didn’t want you to go back in alone,” Baekhyun frowns. “I had to make sure you were okay.”

Jongin just sighs, stopping shortly, and flashes him a small smile. “You really are Baekhyun, huh?” His shoulders slump, and he shakes his head in exasperated fondness. “Either way, you’re lucky I got there in time like I did, and you’re lucky I left an anchor in the hub. God only knows what Jongdae might have done to you to get answers... You didn’t tell him anything, right?”

“Of course not.” Baekhyun scoffs, scowling at the mere implication of letting Asshole Jongdae get anything out of him. “I’m not an idiot.” Jongin gives him a pointed look. “... Not that much of an idiot,” Baekhyun amends.

“Good,” Jongin relaxes, tugging Baekhyun forward again. “I had to leap us a few hours away from the rendezvous point, we need to get there quickly before Jongdae tracks my pulse down.”

Baekhyun nods in dazed agreement, and maintains pace with Jongin as they hike through the darkness. When they finally reach the rendezvous point, a clearing in the forest, Junmyeon heads towards them immediately.

“What happened?” Junmyeon asks worriedly, Sehun and Chanyeol in tow. “Why didn’t you follow us?”

“I had to get the core,” Jongin says, pulling that same weird glowing green thing out of his pocket. “Baekhyun here is as stupidly idiotic and heroic as his counterpart and followed me. Nasty run in with our favourite trio.”

“How did they know we were there?” Chanyeol asks quietly. “Do you think somebody--”

“No,” Jongin states clearly. “I don’t think it was a mutant. I think it was this.” He jostles the glowing green thing --the core-- between them in gesture. “I think they have a way of tracing its signal.”

“Then we should hide it,” Sehun suggests.

Jongin just shakes his head. “We can’t. If they can track it, then they can get it back no matter where we put it. It’s safest with me.”

Solemn silence passes between the small group, and Baekhyun’s eyebrows furrow together.

“But… if they’re always tracking it, then you can’t… stay here…” he says slowly, and realisation dawns on him as the others look away. Oh, they'd all realised the same thing.

Jongin just gives him a sad little smile. “It’s okay,” he reassures. “It’s worth it.”

“What does the core even do?” Baekhyun asks. “Why is it worth making yourself a target like that?”

“We don’t know what it does,” Chanyeol answers, frowning at the thing in Jongin’s hands. “We intercepted a radio signal that anticipated its delivery, and figured that if it’s something that they want that badly, it’s worth having.”

“We think it’s some kind of a power cell,” Sehun adds. “We just don’t know for what.”

“Sounds ominous,” Baekhyun replies, and they all grunt in agreement. Something else bothers him. “... How are we going to get other me back if you’re busy running away from Asshole Jongdae?” he asks Jongin.

“... I don’t know,” Jongin answers quietly, and Junmyeon frowns.

“It’s certainly a problem,” he inputs. “We need you here if we want any hope of finding a way to get Baekhyun back and undo your mistake.”

“But we also need you to keep the core,” Chanyeol rebuts, lips pressed together. "You need to make a choice." Jongin just looks down guiltily, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Oh my god,” Baekhyun remarks. “Can you guys like, lay off of him for like? Three fucking seconds?”

Junmyeon looks taken aback. “What?”

“Cut Jongin some slack!!” Baekhyun argues, he’s tired and frustrated and adrenaline is still flooding his body from Asshole Jongdae’s friendly visit and he just… he just really fucking hates it when people blame others for things that are out of their control, and then act like they’re meant to fix it all on their own. It’s how he was treated the entire period dropping out of college, and he loathes it. “All you guys do is just shoulder huge piles of blame onto each other because you’re too fucking cowardly to do it yourself! Fuck! No wonder other me thought getting lost in the void would be better than coming back here!!!” Baekhyun huffs. “I’ve pretended to be him for less than a week and all I can understand about his life is that the entire fucking world rests on his shoulders and no one seems to wonder if that’s going to be hard on him! What have you done to infiltrate the RTF, huh?” he asks Junmyeon. “I don’t see you sacrificing yourself to carry the core halfway across this shitty earth.”

“That’s different,” Junmyeon replies, scowling. “I lost my manifest.”

“Yeah well, I’m powerless too but I’m still trying to help!” Baekhyun counters. “Where were you when Seungwan was cooking? When Joohyun was handing out blankets? Where were you when Jongin fucking jumped right back into the hands of the enemy to get the core and save me? Either fucking staying in your room arguing about frivolous shit or running away like cowards. God!!!” He laughs loudly in bitter disbelief. “Some leaders you guys are,” he jerks his chin at Junmyeon and Chanyeol. “All you do is whine that other me isn’t here to pick up your shit for you. Have you ever considered? What that pressure might be like for him? Have you ever even thought about it?” Baekhyun runs a hand through his hair. “I mean! Jesus Christ! The guy’s other half, the love of his life, the only person who has ever been there for him betrayed him and you all just expect him to be okay with that! Just want him to carry on and be done with it! Wash his hands clean, it’s ridiculous!!!! All anyone here does is remind him of how fucking terrible Jongdae is and how what he did was awful and how they’re lucky that Baekhyun is still here to help them and do everything and be the most powerful mutant saviour ever but guess fucking what, guys!!!!” Baekhyun inhales frantically to catch his breath. “If he’s fucking anything like me than he probably hasn’t just stopped magically loving Jongdae at the drop of a hat and is probably destroying himself from the inside out to please you all because none of you have ever given a single shit about his well being!”

The group is silent, staring at Baekhyun with wide eyes as he just pants, calming himself down. Slowly, Baekhyun exhales, and stands up straight.

“Great,” he says decisively, nodding shortly in acknowledgement as he speaks at a normal tone. “Glad I got that off my chest. C’mon Jongin.”

Jongin blinks at him, startled. “Err. What?” He blurts.

“I’m coming with you,” Baekhyun says. “Obviously.”

“Wh-- why?” Jongin asks.

“Because I at least want to do something proactive like, you know, help keep the power cell of some probably giant mega super death weapon laser away from the enemy.” Baekhyun huffs. “And you shouldn’t have to be alone.”

“Wait,” Sehun says. “I’m coming too.” He steps forward then, filling Baekhyun’s chest with pride. “He’s right, Jongin. You shouldn’t have to do this alone. If there’s three of us then it’ll be easier.”

Baekhyun expects Chanyeol and Junmyeon to say something, but they don’t, just wear matched pinched expressions of guilt and shame as Baekhyun, Sehun and Jongin pick up their things, and walk away into the eternal darkness.

☾

Baekhyun wakes up in his other self’s bed to a knock at the door, which is stupid, because the handle is still broken so whoever is on the other side can just walk in.

Such politeness alerts Baekhyun that it can only be one person, and he’s disappointed to open the door and find out he’s right, Jongdae looking guilty on the other side of the threshold.

“What are you doing here?” Baekhyun seethes, not making any move to allow Jongdae in.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Jongdae says, rubbing at his eyes. “I was up all night thinking of how to help and--” he pauses, suddenly. “--is that my shirt?”

Baekhyun looks down at the tattered shirt in question, something he’d pulled from the bottom of the closet simply to sleep in. It’s bright yellow and has a picture of an egg with a face on it. Baekhyun does not understand this world’s affinity for cute things.

“How would I know?” Baekhyun asks, a little petulant.

“I-- nothing, it’s fine. Looks good on you anyway.” Jongdae rubs the back of his neck as he swallows nervously, adam’s apple bobbing. “But like I said, I came here to help, Baekhyun. I’m sorry for what the other me did to you, but you can’t blame me for that.” He juts his chin out a little, false bravado. It’s kind of cute, a part of Baekhyun distantly thinks, this Jongdae is so different to the one he’s used to. “And what exists between me and my Baekhyun is… none of your business either.”

They hold eye contact for a few seconds, Baekhyun enjoying the way Jongdae positively squirms, before feeling exhausted and giving up.

“You’re probably right,” he relents, reluctant, and Jongdae seems shocked by his acquiescence too. It’s enough to make Baekhyun smile, despite everything. “What was your idea to help?”

Jongdae’s ‘help’ involves hiking halfway across campus to the physics department, where they can talk to a few of the professors and friends he had around there who might have some sort of insight as to how to get Baekhyun back. It’s certainly a better plan than the fruitless internet search ripe with jargon words neither of them could understand that Sehun tried, so Baekhyun agrees.

Except he clearly didn’t think it through very much, because it involves walking with Jongdae in a very, very uncomfortable silence for an amount of time that seems to stretch on forever. Baekhyun doesn’t break it, for obvious reasons, and Jongdae also doesn’t break it, for other obvious reasons, but they both seem to be lost enough in the bizarre situation that they’re acutely aware of how bizarre it is.

Jongdae’s phone keeps quacking, at one stage, as they’re nearing the physics building, and Jongdae apologises lamely.

“Sorry, it’s probably just Chanyeol spamming me with shitty memes again and Kyungsoo yelling at him for it,” he mutters, flicking a switch on the side of the small device that makes it cease. Jongdae smiles nervously. “Are they as annoying in your world as he is here?” He jokes hesitantly.

“Chanyeol is a hero,” Baekhyun replies coldly, making Jongdae wince. “To many more than just me. He has saved lives more times than I can count.” Granted he’s been a little less active without his manifest, these days, seeming to have joined Junmyeon in the ‘We Depend On You More Than Anyone Else’ movement. Not that Baekhyun has any lingering grudges about it or anything. “And Kyungsoo is dead.”

Jongdae pales. “What?”

“Kyungsoo is dead,” Baekhyun repeats bitterly. “You killed him.” That first night when Jongdae had cut Baekhyun down… it’s Kyungsoo who paid the true price. Kyungsoo, who wouldn't have even been there if Baekhyun had told him to stay behind...

“Okay I get it, lesson learned,” Jongdae holds his hands up in surrender, stepping back. “Everyone in your world is either a dead saint or a living one, apart from me, who’s just fucking Satan. Great.” Jongdae runs a hand frantically through his hair. “This doesn’t make me feel like shit at all.”

“You said it yourself,” Baekhyun replies coolly. “I cannot blame you for other self’s crimes.”

“Okay yeah, sure, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel weirdly guilty about it,” Jongdae mumbles, shuffling uncomfortably, and Baekhyun has to admit… he’s kind of enjoying it, hurting Jongdae like this, not even a fraction of the same way his Jongdae has hurt him, but he can recognise he’s being too harsh.

“You are not even close to being similar,” Baekhyun offers softly, forcing himself to relax. “Don’t concern yourself with somebody else’s flaws.”

“I don’t believe that,” Jongdae replies, making Baekhyun look at him suddenly, confused. “I mean… you’re so much like my Baekhyun, you know? It makes it hard to believe that the… evil me isn’t like me, too.”

Baekhyun gives him an amused look. “I’m nothing like your Baekhyun.” If there’s anything he’s learnt living in this world… it’s that.

“Really?” Jongdae asks, frowning. “I mean, you’re just as kind. You’re just as observant. You even have the same smile.” Baekhyun blinks at him, taken aback, and pointedly pushes his lips back into frowning. “You have the same ‘I’m going to do everything myself’ mentality and everything, you’re just as stubborn, and you’re… well, I technically don’t know you at all, but you’re just as comforting to be around.” Jongdae’s face has gone a little pink as he swallows, staring ahead pointedly.

“How can you possibly know any of those things about me?” Baekhyun asks, frowning harder.

“Well, you tolerate me even though you have all the right in the world to hate me,” he lists off on his thumb. “You’re insistent about not ruining my Baekhyun’s life and trying to blend in without asking anybody other than Sehun for help.” Index. “And you seem… pretty intent on finding a way to return my Baekhyun back, even though you technically don’t have to help him at all.” Jongdae shrugs stiffly, and Baekhyun feels his heart… swell. It’s not a good thing. “I dunno, I guess I’m just good at reading all Baekhyun’s across all universes, huh?” He gives a small boyish smile.

“I guess so,” Baekhyun mumbles noncommittally, and follows Jongdae through a pair of glass doors.

“Multiverse theory?” The first person Jongdae leads Baekhyun to --fucking Heechul, another mutant, of course-- repeats. He smiles wryly. “I don’t remember putting that in the syllabus.”

“It isn’t,” Jongdae answers smoothly. “It’s for a personal project. I remember you mentioning you and your PhD students did a study on it.”

“With respect to the duality paradox,” Heechul clarifies. “That’s dealing with particles at the fundamental level, not… entire organisms.”

“Duality… paradox?” Baekhyun parrots.

“Every quantic entity can act as a wave or a particle, it just depends on who’s watching it,” Heechul explains. He’s certainly not this smart in Baekhyun’s world. “Well, in layman’s terms anyway. When you observe a particle, its dual properties narrow down into one possibility, indicating that there’s an alternate reality where it exhibited the other.”

So Baekhyun’s world is fucking miserable just because a photon decided to be a wave instead of a particle? It’s a little hard to believe.

“So say just-- theoretically, if you wanted to travel between those universes…?” Jongdae tries.

“It’s just not possible,” Heechul waves his hands with an amused smile, and Baekhyun and Jongdae exchange knowing eye contact. (It’s an instinctual response, really, and Baekhyun doesn’t even register he’s done it until Jongdae looks away, second guessing himself.) “You’d have to firstly tear a hole in the space-time continuum, and then find some way to turn your body into particles so that you aren’t torn apart by whatever the fuck happens when you leave your reality.”

So that’s how Jongin’s power works? Baekhyun blinks, stupefied. Huh. No wonder he feels so nauseous when his body gets put back together particle by particle after every leap.

Heechul gives them both a skeptical look. “What sort of personal project is this, anyway?”

Jongdae grins sheepishly. “Just trying to get around a plot hole in a webcomic we’re thinking of writing.” He rubs the back of his neck --it’s a disturbingly believable lie. Heechul gives an amused look.

“Don’t worry about the details so much in a story, Jongdae,” he puts a hand on Jongdae’s shoulder. “I’m sure the comic will be great regardless.”

“Thanks anyway, professor,” Jongdae says, nodding gratefully before tugging Baekhyun outside the office and back into the hallway. Jongdae slumps. “Well that was a dud. Sorry.”

Baekhyun shakes his head softly. “It’s not your fault,” he reassures, and hates the way Jongdae is frowning, as if it somehow is his fault. Baekhyun’s Jongdae had been like this too, once upon a time, always trying to fix every problem and blaming himself when it couldn’t be. It’s almost a flaw, in a way, believing everything has a solution to begin with. Baekhyun softens fondly, then catches himself and tenses, again --he’s slipping back into the old muscle memory of loving Jongdae when this one has done nothing to hurt him, and that’s not good.

This world’s Jongdae, well… looking at him is like looking into the past, and it hurts so fucking much.

Jongdae still has a distant expression though, his thoughts obviously wandering off, and Baekhyun hates the way something that has been lying dormant inside him for so long just reawakens again to comfort him, reaching out and curling his fingers around Jongdae’s wrist in reassurance.

“Your Baekhyun may be in my world,” he tells Jongdae, squeezing, once. “But he is also with my friends. I have no doubts they'll be helping him return to you as soon as possible too.”

Jongdae looks up at Baekhyun, smiling softly. “You’re right,” he relents, relaxing, and a part of Baekhyun relaxes alongside him. Fuck, his heart aches with old memories that being with Jongdae resuscitates, and this is exactly the sort of shit Baekhyun had been afraid of to begin with. “He’ll come home. I know it.”

Baekhyun nods, pulling his hand away. He shoves his fingers into his hoodie pockets just to stop them from doing anything stupid, again. Something that might mean more than simple wrist-holding.

“Hey, are you hungry?” Jongdae suggests suddenly. “I mean, it’s like, still breakfast time.” He bites his lip nervously, and Baekhyun sees the peace treaty for what it is --it appears this Jongdae is just as desperate to have everybody like him as much as Baekhyun’s Jongdae once did. “We could grab something to eat, if you want? I can show you all of my Baekhyun’s favourite places, and maybe you’ll like them just as much.”

He looks so unsure, so nervous, that Baekhyun doesn’t know how to say no. Has never known how to say no to Jongdae, no matter what iteration of him, apparently. He smiles hesitantly. “Sure.”

☀

Baekhyun really misses the sun.

“I don’t know how you guys do it,” he says, sighing, staring at the endless black sky, blotted by clouds. “The darkness,” he clarifies. “Just... Constantly.”

Jongin and Sehun look at each other across the fire between them, then shrug.

“We don’t know any alternatives,” Sehun suggests softly, and Baekhyun shifts guiltily, pitying. He swallows, focusing on the way Jongin whittles a stick he’d snapped from a dead tree instead.

“Why are you doing that, anyway?” he asks, distracting from the topic of how much worse and inferior and miserable this world is compared to his own, Sehun and Jongin have already gone through enough shit as is, they don’t need to hear about how there’s another universe out there where they can live without fearing for their lives. It would probably be salt in the wound, at this rate.

“I’m making more anchors,” Jongin explains, pulling out a handful of wooden bears from his pocket. “I’m running out. Figured I’m going to need to start dropping a whole lot more if we’re on the run until we can work out what to do with the core.”

Baekhyun nods dazedly, picking up one of the small bears. “Why bears?” he asks. The carving is pretty bad and rushed but they’re so… cute. So non-badass, for a super mutant.

Jongin shrugs awkwardly. “I like bears, I dunno. There has to be emotional attachment between my anchors for it to work, when I make pairs of something I like myself they just… work.”

Baekhyun blinks. “So like… anything could be your anchor? It doesn’t have to be a tiny wooden bear?”

“Not necessarily, yeah.” Jongin shrugs. “I can use any object I have emotional attachment to, as long as it has a counterpart that I’m carrying. There’s just err, not a whole lot of those lying around. I kinda need them to be disposable.”

Baekhyun nods, distantly, staring at the anchors, and wondering if there’s some way to get one of those into his home world so Jongin can teleport them there. It has to possible, right? There has to be some way.

“Hey,” Baekhyun says, perking up. “You said you need to have strong emotional attachment to the object but-- what if it you’re not the one with strong emotional attachment to it? Like, y’know, mooching off your neighbour’s wifi or something? Using somebody else’s connection?”

“Well… in theory, maybe,” Jongin offers offhandedly, giving Baekhyun hope. “But like I said, my anchors have counterparts. Even if there’s something in your world with a crazy emotional attachment strong enough to pull us over there… you’d have to have a counterpart you’re equally as attached to with you here.”

Baekhyun deflates, predictably. All he has is his wallet phone and keys, the usual sort of combo, none of which he has any particular strong emotional attachment to. His phone like, maybe, but he cares more about what it can do, rather than what it is. About the most sentimental thing on his person right now is the Bleach keychain Jongdae gave him for his thirteenth birthday, but it’s not like that has a counterpart.

“Well, what about the other me?” Baekhyun asks, still clinging onto his last few scraps of hope. “Did he have like, a favourite pen he always carries with him but might have left the pen lid here?”

Sehun and Jongin exchange skeptical glances. “Baekhyun was like the rest of us,” Sehun replies curtly. “We don’t really get the luxury of having possessions…” he trails off, a somber mood falling over them. Damn, just as Baekhyun thought they were getting somewhere, he's plunged back into despair. Lovely.

Sehun straightens suddenly in realisation. “Wait,” he urges, causing Baekhyun and Jongin to quickly look at him. “There is…. There might be something but. It’s a gamble. I can’t promise Baekhyun is carrying it, and I can’t promise we’ll find the counterpart either but. It’s something.”

“What?” Baekhyun asks, frantic. “What is it?”

Sehun swallows, wincing. “You’re not going to like it.”

☾

“No.”

“Come onnnnn,” Jongdae whines. Baekhyun regrets ever letting this Jongdae be a part of his temporary life on this earth, because now he won’t leave Baekhyun alone. “You have to. You promised not to ruin my Baekhyun’s life!”

“I don’t even know how to play,” Baekhyun hisses, trying to wrench Jongdae off of him, to no avail. “Can’t we just tell this coach I’m sick, or something?”

“Without a medical certificate he won’t believe you,” Jongdae pouts. It’s infuriatingly endearing. “He’ll kick you off the team if you don’t play, and then my Baekhyun will be devastated.”

If he ever makes it back, Baekhyun thinks, but of course, doesn’t say. The more time he spends around this Jongdae, the easier it is to pretend it’s just… the old Jongdae, and the harder it is to refuse him.

“Fine,” Baekhyun relents. “Then I’ll come to this… ‘Football match’.”

Jongdae’s grin is positively blinding.

Baekhyun is already uncomfortable going to his other self’s mandatory classes and dealing with a few small waves and nods of acknowledgement here and there, going into a locker room is just absolutely daunting. Men keep yelling, people cheer at Baekhyun as he walks through, Junmyeon’s duplicate says nice for you to show up, Byun, and they’re all half-naked and wearing skin-tight clothing. It’s fucking bizarre, this world never ceases to perplex Baekhyun.

“You won’t even have to play because you just get benched every match anyway,” Jongdae reassures for the umpteenth time, a comforting hand on Baekhyun’s shoulder that he doesn’t shrug off. “You’ll be fine.”

Baekhyun tries to believe him, but he’s witnessed firsthand how oddly good this world’s Jongdae is at lying, which doesn’t help is inherent Jongdae trust issues given to him by his Jongdae. Regardless, he follows his instructions of getting dressed into the team uniform (once Jongdae opens the locker door for him) stripping down naked.

The entire room wolf whistles immediately, cheering at his nude body; Baekhyun glances around.

“Why are they celebrating my nudity?” he asks Jongdae, who is pointedly not making eye contact with Baekhyun, cheeks a little red as he stares ahead into his locker.

“Um, because we don’t really just. Go commando all the time and then show it off?”

Baekhyun glances down at his body, wondering if he’s meant to be ashamed, given by Jongdae’s embarrassment. “How strange. We all look the same underneath clothes, do we not?” Baekhyun only wears clothes to keep warm  that’s why everyone does. There’s no shame to be found in nudity.

“I-- I guess,” Jongdae squeaks, and Baekhyun narrows his eyes at him.

“You claimed your feelings were confusing, yet clearly you are attracted to the other me if I cause this reaction,” he points out, causing Jongdae to let out a small noise of suffering.

“Okay but attraction doesn’t equal feelings and my Baekhyun isn’t buff and can you please put some clothes on oh my god.”

Baekhyun smiles, despite himself, having always enjoyed making Jongdae flustered, and tugs on the strange, tight-fitting pants that this football uniform insists upon. Jongdae seems to relax, somewhat, once Baekhyun’s genitals are covered, but flusters all over again as Baekhyun watches the way Jongdae takes off his pants only to reveal a second, much smaller pair of pants he wears underneath, barely even covering the tops of his thighs. Bizarre.

“Even my Baekhyun is a little more subtle about watching me undress,” Jongdae mumbles bitterly, giving Baekhyun a sideways glance, but he stops, suddenly, as his eyes take in Baekhyun’s chest, inhaling sharply.

A hand raises up and brushes over a scar on Baekhyun’s shoulder, fingertips warm against his skin. Baekhyun feels the chills elicited in response.

“That must have hurt a lot,” Jongdae mumbles absentmindedly, fingers moving down Baekhyun’s abdomen to another scar, just above his kidney.

“Laser bullet wound,” Baekhyun explains, and watches Jongdae touch the scar above his navel. “Icicle slash.” He then touches the one on Baekhyun’s shoulder, Baekhyun feeling the way his body pushes into the touch. He exhales, trying to keep himself composed. “Fell out of a moving hover-truck.”

The last one has Jongdae’s fingertips tracing out the ridges of Baekhyun’s spine, until they stop at the scar in the centre of his back, the one Baekhyun knows is the most noticeable, and the most distinct. It’s bright red and still not fully healed, the distinct slash of a knife through his spine surrounded by thin, raised bumps of skin spreading out across the lower half of his back like Lichtenberg figures.

“Stab wound with an electrified knife,” Baekhyun says quietly, fingers touching the pendant around his neck at the memory. “Courtesy of yours truly.”

“... I did that?” Jongdae asks softly, aghast and pale, and Baekhyun nods, watching the way Jongdae’s hand quivers as he pulls back.

“The night you betrayed me and killed Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun continues coldly, feeling the way his heart disconnects itself all over again as it has a habit of doing whenever he relives the bad memories.

“Jesus Christ,” Jongdae breathes out. “I’m really an asshole, huh?”

Baekhyun laughs quietly, despite himself. “Yes.”

They’re interrupted by the high-pitched shrill of a whistle. “Game time boys!” A chubby man in a pinstriped tee Baekhyun can only assume to be the coach yells, everyone bustling to huddle in a circle which Baekhyun joins in, watching them throw their hands into the middle and then let out a loud cheer, Jongdae included.

“Enjoy warming the bench!” Jongdae tells him, slapping one of the stupidly large shoulder pads Baekhyun has been forced into wearing, which he grunts at before doing exactly that, taking a seat behind their loudly yelling coach.

Football is incredibly boring to witness, is what Baekhyun decides, watching the different coloured members run up and down a large green field while the audience in the stand goes absolutely nuts…. He doesn’t really get the point. In his world, people enjoy simple ball games, like throw and catch and pin-knock, this just seems like an unnecessarily large version of a game with too many rules, like the sort of games Jongdaae invented when they were children, adding more and more rules as time went on to ensure he’d win. Stupid.

It is, at the very least, interesting to watch Jongdae, with a giant 21 plastered on his back --of fucking course his mutant ID tag is his jersey number the same way Baekhyun’s is, the multiverses love irony-- run very very quickly up and down the field, avoiding all the people that try to tackle him. It’s amusing to see; Jongdae is surprisingly nimble, despite his obvious lacking size.

By half time, the group has huddled again, and it’s only Jongdae’s incessant, frantic come here gesture that makes Baekhyun get off of his sufficiently warmed bench to gather.

“We’re doing well boys,” the coach says, and Baekhyun idly wonders why the teams are male only. Surely it would be beneficial to have more women? The only women on the field Baekhyun has spotted as of yet have been the ones in tiny skirts chanting incessantly by the sidelines. Soojung would scoff. “But just keep an eye out for that number six. He’s nasty.”

They do the same huddle-hand-yell thing and Baekhyun returns to the comfort of his bench, eyes returning to Jongdae subsequently. He seems to be quite good at the game, transporting the ball far as required of him, and it makes Baekhyun kind of… proud? Which is weird, because a positive emotion isn’t something he’s associated with Jongdae in… a very long time, but this Jongdae is comforting. Familiar. They’ve spent almost every hour of every day together ever since visiting Heechul, and they seem to have some sort of strange friendship, a balance between what Jongdae and his Baekhyun have mixed with what Baekhyun and his Jongdae once had.

Very jarring indeed.

Baekhyun is so busy watching Jongdae run, he completely fails to spot the enemy team member heading straight towards him, barreling into Jongdae hard enough that he’s knocked into the air before falling onto his back.

A whistle is blown, and Baekhyun is on the field before he can even register it, sprinting towards Jongdae and pulling off his helmet to assess the damage. Jongdae groans.

“I’m okay, Hyun,” he reassures, but this time Baekhyun sees through his lie. Jongdae tries to push him off weakly, and fails, cursing as he looks down at his ankle.

“You’re bleeding,” Baekhyun says, and touches Jongdae’s forehead wound, where his helmet must have knocked against his skull. Jongdae smiles at him.

“Eh, I’ll live, don’t worry about it,” he takes Baekhyun’s wrist, pulling his hand down, and the coach finally catches up to them.

“Are you alright, Kim?” he asks, kneeling beside Baekhyun.

Jongdae shakes his head. “I think my ankle is sprained.”

“I told you to watch out for that number six--”

“How can you possibly blame him for this?” Baekhyun snaps, fingers tightening around Jongdae’s, feeling his power surge a little inside him, ebbing alongside his irritation. Well. That’s not good.

The coach gives Baekhyun a disappointed expression, then hoists Jongdae up. “C’mon Kim, you can ice it from the sidelines. Byun--” He points at Baekhyun. “--You’re up. No jewelry on the field, though. It’s dangerous”

The coach reaches for the necklace above Baekhyun’s 04, but he steps back in time, hissing.

“This stays with me,” Baekhyun mutters lowly. The coach gives him a lingering look, but relents, using the hand that isn’t around Jongdae’s waist to point at the grassy field as an order, and Baekhyun blinks, a little startled, while Jongdae just gives him a helpless expression and hobbles away. Great.

The enemy team’s leader shouts a string of numbers Baekhyun doesn’t understand as he stands on the grass (and then is pointed exasperatedly to a different position by Lu Han's counterpart) taking everyone else’s cue and crouching over, and then suddenly a buzzer goes off and everyone starts running.

Bizarre.

It’s the enemy team that has the ball, and Baekhyun steps back to adjust his bearings, vaguely hearing the coach in the background yell what the hell are you doing Byun but paying it no mind. He narrows his eyes to locate the enemy with the number 06 on his jersey, and smiles to himself accordingly. There.

Lucky for him, 06 is headed straight his way with the ball and everything; Baekhyun sprints towards him in an instant, and easily knocks him over.

A whistle is blown, somebody claps Baekhyun’s shoulder in congratulations, they restart.

Baekhyun waits for 06 to get the ball before tackling him down again.

The restart after that, the ball is given to a different player, so Baekhyun knocks that person over instead. Rinse and repeat. By the fourth time, the whistle is blown loudly, and this time, it’s Baekhyun’s team that ends up with the ball. How strange.

Junmyeon yells out another string of incomprehensible numbers, and then Baekhyun finds the ball being thrown into his hands. Huh.

He stares at it, it’s weird, oval shaped and made of leather, a dark brown, it’s kind of big and he can barely hold it.

“What are you doing Byun run!” Junmyeon calls, as Baekhyun frowns at him while walking forward and side-stepping one of the enemy players that attempts to tackle him effortlessly.

“What am I meant to do with this?” he asks, approaching Junmyeon, who seems to be almost wrestling with an enemy player. “Can I give this to you?”

“BAEKHYUN,” Baekhyun hears suddenly, turning to face the loud shout and seeing Jongdae on the sidelines standing with his hands cupped around his mouth. “RUN.”

Jongdae knows best, Baekhyun figures, shrugging before taking the ball and running. The enemy team retaliate accordingly heading for him immediately, but they were raised in this world, where running is a pastime and nothing chases at their heels; Baekhyun is much, much faster than all of them, and dodging their tackles is even easier when he’s not doing it in the eternal darkness of his own world. It’s almost nothing compared to trying to block his Jongdae’s lightning quick strikes, and before Baekhyun knows it he has run as far as the white lines painted in the grass indicate he can, and the crowd is roaring in his ears.

“TOUCHDOWN!!!!” A voice booms over the speakers, and Baekhyun is a little overwhelmed by the way his teammates tackle him --this time, in a hugging manner-- cheering his name and hoisting him onto their shoulders. The buzzer sounds, and the countdown clock is at all zeroes. Given by the points indicated on the same board, Baekhyun assumes they’ve won.

“You were so-- amazing!!” Jongdae remarks as Baekhyun walks back towards his coach and is quickly enveloped in a hug by Jongdae, who’s laughing incredulously. Baekhyun has barely even registered the last five minutes of his life, perplexed. “I’ve never seen anybody move like that, what the hell?”

Well, his Jongdae taught him well, it seems, but Baekhyun doesn’t say that. He feels a little warm under this Jongdae’s praise.

“Well done, Byun,” the coach nods sagely. “I… really didn’t think you had it in you.” He looks almost insultingly surprised. Something tells Baekhyun his counterpart isn’t exactly an athletic legend. “Hit the showers, boys! You smell like my socks.”

The team grumbles in agreement, more congratulations given to Baekhyun before he offers Jongdae an arm who accepts it with mumbled gratitude, hobbling along. He doesn’t seem to be too hurt, now that he’s put ice on his ankle, just a slight limp.

Baekhyun showers the dirt and sweat off his body, grateful to be out of the constricting oversized football uniform, and sighs beneath the hot water spray --yet another thing to love about this world. He spends a lot longer underneath the shower than he probably should, because when he comes out the locker room is empty save for Jongdae sitting on the bench in normal clothes again, scrolling through his phone in the quiet. When he looks up and sees Baekhyun emerging, he smiles. (Baekhyun, having taken Jongdae’s cues, has at least wrapped a towel around his waist, this time.)

“Hey,” Jongdae greets. “Enjoying your special you-time in the shower?” He’s waggling his eyebrows, implying there’s a joke somewhere in there, but if there is, Baekhyun doesn’t get it.

“Showers are enjoyable,” Baekhyun shrugs, inputting the code to his locker. “Most things in this world are enjoyable.” Even playing football had kind of turned out to be fun, if not horrendously boring to watch and a little too easy. This world has hardly any cons in it at all.

“If you like showers just wait ‘till you see the post-game diner Hyun and I always eat at,” Jongdae’s grin, as always, is blinding, but Baekhyun commits it to memory all the same. Can’t help himself, really. “Two words man: unlimited fries.”

“That certainly does sound enjoyable…” Baekhyun muses. The last time Jongdae had taken him out to eat, Baekhyun had tried almost everything on the menu --under Jongdae’s insistence, of course-- and now he’s pretty sure Jongdae just enjoys watching him eat anything in sight, even if he complains about Baekhyun’s freakish mutant body not putting on a single pound. “I like fries.”

“Most people do,” Jongdae replies with an amused smile, looking away suddenly once Baekhyun drops his towel and turning red. Baekhyun smiles. “... Asshole,” Jongdae mutters as he turns back around, seeing Baekhyun’s smirk.

“I can’t help it,” Baekhyun teases. “You’re too easy to embarrass. It’s cute.”

Jongdae looks at Baekhyun like he’s grown a second head as Baekhyun just smiles to himself and pulls out his clothes from before, tugging them back on. They’re so much more comfortable and soft than the stupid football uniform, god forbid he ever wear that again.

Jongdae still looks unbelievably flustered, so Baekhyun decides to show him mercy, smiling down at him. “My Jongdae was always the one embarrassing me,” he admits, remembering the way Jongdae used to tug him aside during group meetings, press him into the shadows and whisper terrible things into Baekhyun’s ear with his lips at his throat--

“Before he turned into the worst human alive,” Jongdae says flatly, and Baekhyun feels all the warmth from before turn to ice again, fingertips absentmindedly brushing beneath his own jaw as if he can still feel the ghost of Jongdae’s lips, fingernails dragging over the chain of his pendant.

“Yes,” Baekhyun replies flatly, slamming the locker door shut. “Before that.”

Jongdae looks down guiltily, but then swallows before saying, “You don’t have to go back to him, you know. You can stay here. With me.”

Baekhyun’s head snaps towards him immediately, eyes narrowing.

“You would abandon your Baekhyun?” he asks, wondering if maybe his Jongdae and this one do have a lot more in common than what appears on the surface.

“What? No,” Jongdae quickly replies. “No no no no no I just-- you know, we could find a way to bring him here and you could. Stay.”

“And third-wheel an alternate version of myself with the alternate version of my ex-lover?” Baekhyun suggests amusedly, tilting his head. “I don’t think any of us will enjoy that.”

“You don’t have to stay with us but you could still… get a job… go to school... live here… I dunno, it can’t be impossible.” Jongdae curls into himself a little, embarrassed, knees tucked to his chest with his feet on the bench, scratching at the edge of the bandage taped to his forehead. “I just… I don’t really... Want you to go back to a horrible other dimension where a version of me tries to kill you all the time? I guess I’m being selfish, but I’m not sure how I’m meant to sleep at night knowing that I let that happen.”

Baekhyun softens, heart aching at a classic Jongdae brand of kindness, and he smiles. No one has ever tried to give him a home before, certainly not one in a world filled with more light than he deserves.

“I don’t really want to leave either,” Baekhyun admits, sitting down in front of Jongdae, who mirrors his positions, knees on either side of the narrow bench. “I… like this universe. A lot.”

It’s bizarre and stupid and doesn’t make sense most of the time, but it’s peaceful and filled with light and laughter and happiness and it’s just so easy, so easy to attend class and eat food all day and walk amongst society without worrying about being caught for being a mutant, or worse, being caught for being himself. Even worse than that, this version of Earth has an iteration of Jongdae who isn’t evil, who isn’t twisted, who’s exactly like the man Baekhyun once knew --if not softer-- and who’s hopelessly in love with Baekhyun --even if it’s not Baekhyun Baekhyun. It’s kind of a dream come true, all things considered.

“Then stay,” Jongdae insists firmly, and Baekhyun leans forward and kisses him.

Temptation, that all it takes, a little pinch of temptation and Baekhyun succumbs, it seems, unable to fight the urge to kiss this Jongdae when he brings back muscle memory of another life where Baekhyun had never learnt to fight the instinct to kiss Jongdae. It isn’t even his Jongdae, and Baekhyun isn’t even Jongdae’s Baekhyun, but apparently that means nothing as their mouths touch, softly, caring only that they are Baekhyun and Jongdae, and then Baekhyun pulls back, briefly, searching Jongdae’s face.

It’s Jongdae who leans back in, hungrier and desperate, having tasted something he wants to taste again, and Baekhyun lets him, heart sighing in contentedness at having something that has been deprived from him for too long --even if this isn’t the Jongdae Baekhyun first fell in love with, he is still Jongdae, and it appears his body knows this well as he bites Jongdae’s bottom lip and elicits the same moan as always, sucks on his tongue and gets the same feeling of nails digging into his biceps.

Jongdae arches into Baekhyun, kneeling on the bench for a better angle, and Baekhyun retaliates instead by picking him up altogether, hoisting Jongdae’s legs around his hips and slamming him back into the locker doors with a metallic thump. This Jongdae doesn’t even kiss like Baekhyun’s Jongdae, but his mouth has the same taste to it, the same warmth, kisses back with the same fervor. Baekhyun’s heart has been drowning for too long and this Jongdae is air, refreshing and clear to breathe in as his lips brush along his jaw, his throat, beneath his ear.

“Baekhyun,” Jongdae moans, fingers winding through Baekhyun’s hair, and it’s the way he says it that just makes Baekhyun… stop. Pause. Mouth clamping shut before he draws back slowly, and lowers Jongdae to the ground again, who blinks at him, dazedly, trying to make sense of this after the sudden whiplash of lust turning to regret.

“I can’t stay here,” Baekhyun says quietly, the words he’s always known but hasn’t dared voice. “And we-- we are not replacements for our other selves.” This time he looks up at Jongdae, meeting his lust-blown eyes and the way he searches Baekhyun’s face before lowering his gaze in guilt.

“You’re right,” Jongdae mumbles, slamming a fist into the lock behind him. “Fuck, I--” he doesn’t say anything more, just cuts off, slumping dejectedly.

“I’m sorry for kissing you,” Baekhyun apologises. “I was caught up in old memories and well, I find it… difficult. To forget you are not the person I once loved.”

“I’m sorry for kissing you back,” Jongdae offers with a timid half-smile. It’s infuriatingly attractive, but so is most Jongdae-related things. “I guess you and I have the same sort of problem.”

Baekhyun nods, both torn from the ones they love, both seeking to heal the hurt left behind. Except Jongdae has merely been presented with the situation of having potentially lost his opportunity to be with his Baekhyun, and is using Baekhyun to make up for his mistakes; Baekhyun lost Jongdae long ago, and has no excuse for acting the way he did.

“Let’s just… let’s just go grab those fries, okay?” Jongdae offers, diffusing the tension as always with a genuine that smile that helps Baekhyun relax. “And uh. Not mention that once my Baekhyun gets back.”

Baekhyun returns the smile, despite everything, laughing softly. “Good plan.”

☀

Baekhyun stares at the steel wall in front of him, and gulps.

Mutants can’t enter the city walls though, Jongin had pointed out, when Sehun had suggested his ridiculous plan.

“Good thing I’m not a mutant,” Baekhyun mutters to himself at the memory, walking through the walls with ease. The genetic scanners only check for the mutant gene at its odd absorbance wavelength --an entire DNA scan takes too long, requires too much high tech, and costs too much money-- according to Jongin, so Baekhyun has easy access through the grim, desolate city.

And god, what a grim, desolate city it is, with tall steel towers that loom like shadowy figures beneath the black clouds and dirty snow. The Red Vault stands out in the centre of the city, a pillar of crimson glass and iron as if forged in blood, but that’s not what Baekhyun is interested in. Well, not exactly.

Baekhyun inhales slowly as he touches the tiny wooden bears in his pocket for reassurance, knowing Jongin can leap in and leap out at anytime if he’s in trouble, communicator static fizzling in his ear. According to Sehun, Jongdae --who it turns out, is the sole person who can sense mutant EMPs, woah-- will be occupied tracking down the threat of Jongin’s pulse near the outer walls, which gives Baekhyun maybe a twenty-minute window to sneak into his apartment and try and steal some stupid necklace that probably won’t even be there. Great.

Baekhyun keeps his hood up, sure to shy away from any cameras when he spots them, and follows the little holographic map popped up on Sehun’s communicator that he’d borrowed, leading him to the known location of Jongdae’s residency. Apparently, all the mutant pets are kept to one building like livestock, disconnected from the city out of fear --the thought makes Baekhyun shudder.

Baekhyun arrives at the door to the building rather anticlimactically. It’s depressingly quiet, and he has a feeling that has to do with the fact that nobody in this city goes outside if they can avoid it, and that all the mutants are currently responding to Jongin’s unknown threat.

“Okay I’m here,” Baekhyun breathes out. “What now?”

“You still got that key I gave you?” Sehun asks, and Baekhyun gives him a quick affirmation before pulling out the small electronic device, really more of a USB key than like… a door key. "There should be a buzzer panel in the wall to your left. Rip it off and find the red wire, then connect it to that .”

“Okay…” Baekhyun tries. Easier said than done, but he does as he’s told, eventually. There’s a pointed silence on Sehun’s end, and then the door clicks open. “Oh holy shit.”

“You taught me how to do that, actually ,” Sehun explains as Baekhyun steps through, following Sehun’s quick directions to take the elevator to the twentieth floor. "The other you."

“And how the hell did I learn how to do that?” Baekhyun mumbles, while impatiently waiting for the elevator to go up. The camera swivels to his face and wiggles --fucking Sehun.

“Well, I think Jongdae probably taught you. He’s freakishly good with technology. ”

“More talented than me in all universes,” Baekhyun mumbles, without any bitterness, and steps out into the hallway. “Okay, which door am I looking for?”

“First one on your right,” Sehun tells him. “You don’t have much time. I can only stall the firewall on the security system for so long before I lose control and your presence is detected .”

“That’s okay,” Baekhyun reassures, although his heart is pounding wildly and he feels he might just have a panic attack at any moment. He swallows the anxiety down. “I only need a few minutes.”

Under the assumption that Baekhyun could even be successful, of course. Sehun had warned that this would be a huge gamble, and he’s right, because they’re currently running under three assumptions here: 1) that Jongdae still has a fraction of good left in him and therefore has actually kept the necklace, 2) that he actually has any attachment to it, maintaining a strong enough bond for Jongin to tap into, and 3) that Baekhyun can find it. Baekhyun isn’t sure which of the hypotheticals is the hardest one to accomplish, as of yet.

But he’s beginning to think it’s the third, because Jongdae’s tiny apartment is fucking spotless, polished white floors and ceiling with burning halogen lights, nothing but a crisply made bed in the centre and a small white table with a white desk. Cool.

“Didn’t you all say Jongdae turned on you for wealth and power?” Baekhyun mumbles, and finds it hard to believe, because this feels a lot more like a prison cell than it does an apartment, like maybe Jongdae is as oppressed by the government working for them as everyone is running away. It’s so completely plain and alien, so wholly un-Jongdae, that Baekhyun feels his gut curl just looking at it.

“The necklace, Baekhyun,” Sehun pointedly reminds Baekhyun as he stands there and stares. “Find it.”

“Right,” Baekhyun blurts, finding the room oddly daunting, and looks for any places where something could be hidden. He can’t feel anything in the single pillow, nothing under the bed or the table or in the vents… he pulls up the thin mattress to similar results, pausing only when he hears the distinct crinkle of paper, feeling under the fitted sheet before finding a tiny folded square tucked into where the sheet elastic meets the plastic. Paper. Baekhyun hasn’t seen any of this stuff in this world, everything done on their fancy holo-tech shit, but when he unfolds the paper his eyes widen at what he sees.

Blueprints. Blueprints for the fucking Red Vault, with a circle drawn around a small room in the centre, where it has been annotated with orbs? Another room, just above that, has been circled vigorously with one word above it: Eclipse. 

Jongdae's handwriting is the same in this universe.

“Did you find the necklace? ” Sehun asks.

“No,” Baekhyun replies. “But I found… well, I’m not sure what. Why would Jongdae be keeping blueprints for the Red Vault hidden in his room?”

“What? ” Sehun asks. “What are you talking about?”

Baekhyun doesn’t answer him, reaching for his communicator and wondering if it has a camera function --surprisingly, he can’t see a lens, and if it does have one, Baekhyun has no fucking clue how to use it, so he reaches for his own phone instead, switching it on  and waiting as the tiny apple symbol mocks him.

“Come on you piece of shit,” Baekhyun knocks the cracked screen against his leg, as if that will make it turn on any faster.

“Baekhyun, you’re running out of time,” Sehun warns. “The key is losing charge.”

“I’m nearly done, okay?” Baekhyun argues, as he slides open the lock of his phone screen and thumbs in his passcode, 2109, to get past the lockscreen selfie of him and Jongdae . He opens the camera app and snaps a pic of the blueprints in front of him, before folding it back up and putting it where he found it, with a small wooden bear alongside it, so that Baekhyun can come and search for the necklace later. “I just need to--”

The door opens, and Baekhyun blinks at the other Jongdae, who stares at him.

“You,” he says, accusatory, and the door slams shut behind him as he presses a button against the wall, clicking as it locks. “What are you doing here?”

Jongdae is positively fuming, and Baekhyun whimpers pathetically.

“Um,” he says. “Looking for some jewelry?” He swallows nervously. “Hey did you decorate this room or what--”

“What happened to Baekhyun?” Jongdae snaps, cold and so so scary, but also, still sort of Jongdae? So Baekhyun finds it hard to be threatened. “The real Baekhyun.”

“Baekhyun, stall,” Sehun urges in his left ear. “ Jongin needs time to recharge before he can leap to save you.”

Great. “I don’t know, what happened to you?” Baekhyun asks, stepping back at the same time Jongdae steps forward. “I mean, you know. My Jongdae is a lot less of an asshole.”

Jongdae's fingertips are crackling with electricity now as he raises his hand in threat, eyes narrowing at Baekhyun. “Your... Jongdae?”

“Yeah,” Baekhyun replies, gulping nervously. Come on Jongin, Jesus fuck. “My Jongdae… I’m um. From an alternate dimension?”

That at least makes Jongdae’s hand fall, staring at Baekhyun, and then he just laughs, a grating crackle that doesn’t sound like Jongdae’s laugh in the slightest.

“Oh please.” He rolls his eyes, scowling. “You expect me to believe that?”

“I’m not lying,” Baekhyun huffs, puffing out his chest. Fuck, he needs to buy more Jongdae-not-murdering him time. An idea strikes. “Look.”

Baekhyun pulls out his phone from his back pocket, and holds it up, displaying the selfie of him and Jongdae set as his background. Baekhyun had taken it, of course, squished Jongdae’s cheek against his as they’d both thrown up lazy peace signs, and had set it as his lockscreen just to piss off Jongdae as he’d whined that the photo looked bad. (Also partly because looking at it made him smile, every time.)

The look on Jongdae’s face is myriad of expressions Baekhyun can’t pinpoint, shock, reluctance, pain… jealousy? But at least his hand falls, no longer crackling with blue electricity.

Jongdae regards Baekhyun coolly. “You’re from another timeline.”

Baekhyun shrugs. “More like another reality.” At least sating this Jongdae’s curiosity stops him from fucking frying Baekhyun on the spot and turning him into electrocuted dust, if nothing else. “And now I’m trying to get back. Hence why I’m here.”

“Oh?” A single eyebrow arches, and Jongdae smiles bitterly, almost cruelly. “And how will this help you return to your reality, exactly?”

At that he reaches beneath the collar of his white shirt, and pulls out a small silver pendant, dangling on a metal chain. Baekhyun gasps.

“The necklace!” He says. “You did keep it!”

Jongdae’s eyes narrow. “So what if I did?” He cocks his head, almost robotic. “It’s useful for messing with Baekhyun, every now and again. The real Baekhyun.”

“Give it to me,” Baekhyun insists, thrusting out a hand. “Give it to me and we can get your Baekhyun back.”

Jongdae laughs, a sharp cackle, clashing with dissonance against the sweetness of his laugh recorded permanently in Baekhyun’s head. “My Baekhyun?” He repeats, and it would almost sound daunting, if Baekhyun couldn’t see the way it cracks against Jongdae’s skin. “And why would I want him back? All he is is a thorn in my side.”

Baekhyun grits his teeth together. “Because if you’re anything like my Jongdae, you love him,” Baekhyun states firmly, and finds weird satisfaction in the way Jongdae’s composure fractures, if only just, entire body tensing as if bracing for a strike. “And you… you are like my Jongdae, I know it. I can feel it.” Baekhyun places his hands over his heart, searching Jongdae’s face. “You want him back, don’t you? You want to help. That’s why you keep blueprints under your bed, that’s why you keep the necklace--”

Baekhyun is cut off by the blaring of sirens, and the sound of footsteps rushing down the hallway, banging on Jongdae’s bedroom door.

“Shit, Baekhyun! He was stalling too!”

“Fuck,” Baekhyun lets out, but when he steps back he thankfully collides into a solid chest, Jongin’s hands steadying around his arms. There goes any hope of this Jongdae actually wanting his Baekhyun back, he was only biding his time all along--

“Perfect timing, right?” Jongin says, with a cheesy little grin, and Baekhyun swallows before shoving him off, launching himself into Jongdae, and using every football skill he has to knock Jongdae to the ground and disorient him, reaching for the chain and tugging.

Jongdae’s hand wraps around his wrist as it pulls, keeping him in place, and Baekhyun braces himself for electrocution or to be thrown off, but it never comes, only finding Jongdae’s broken desperate face searching his, so completely different to the sadistic mask of before.

“Take me with you,” Jongdae begs, as Jongin leaps in and snatches the necklace off his neck. Jongdae’s hand tightens around Baekhyun’s, who’s frozen in place, unable to move. “Please.”

“Baekhyun I-- I can feel it!” Shouts Jongin, but all noise drowns out as Baekhyun and Jongdae stare at each other, Baekhyun looking into Jongdae’s eyes and seeing… seeing his Jongdae beneath it, if not a little broken and desperate and frightened. “There’s an anchor I can feel it, I can make the leap, c’mon!” Jongin holds out a hand, waiting for Baekhyun to take it, and he pulls off of Jongdae slowly, still staring at him as something silent passes between them.

Jongdae said please.

The door to his room slides open, revealing a group of armed soldiers pointing guns their way as Jongin hands clasps around Baekhyun’s wrist, but the bullets pass through them, already beginning to dissipate into smoke and particles of nothing as Jongin’s manifest pulls them into the void.

Baekhyun can never say no to Jongdae, especially when he says please. No matter which universe he's from

“Jongdae--” Baekhyun shouts finally, reaching out with a disintegrating hand. Jongdae reaches for him immediately.

Their fingertips brush.

The world goes black.