Chapter Text
How terribly cliché, Yixing reckons, that the most heartbreaking thing in his life should occur on a rainy day.
He has half the mind to laugh—break down in hysteric fits, even—as the movie-likeness of his situation sinks in. It’s absolutely absurd. Of course, it is.
It’s utterly ludicrous, because Baekhyun promised he won’t ever leave him, but now Yixing is all alone.
But perhaps that’s it. Perhaps that’s why. Perhaps Baekhyun left because his body got tired of keeping all the promises his lips had made. If only those promises are not dangled from every corner Yixing looked at. He’s sure reminders of those promises will come to haunt him, like ghosts in the darkness, except they also come in the light.
The reminders start with the rain, then, like how the promises had started with the rain.
“Oh!” someone exclaimed, startling Yixing who was about to unknowingly place a foot into a puddle of rainwater.
Yixing whipped his head to the side, only to get a second helping of being startled, when his gaze landed on the most stunning pair of eyes he had ever seen in his life.
Stunning Pair of Eyes also happened to own a very attractive pair of pink lips, but right now Yixing could not see it because a hand is clamped to the person’s mouth out of sheepishness.
“Sorry,” the person—a man—said hesitantly. “I just noticed that your shoes look really good. You don’t want them to get soaked in rainwater, do you?”
Yixing would have bragged about his Italian leather shoes, but then the stranger bit on his lower lip and Yixing thought, Uh, no, my shoes don’t look good because your eyes look good and your mouth too, and oh, just the entirety of your face looks good.
He must have been staring; in Yixing ’s defense, it was kind of hard not to. Not when the stranger had this rectangular shape his lips took on when he smiled and bared two rows of teeth. It looked weird; yet Yixing was fascinated by it.
The sound of the incessant drumming of raindrops hitting the pavement had become like a soundtrack to the shift in the air, or at least a shift in Yixing ’s mood.
For almost an hour now, he had been exasperated at the brewing storm—at himself too, for not bringing an umbrella when it had been forecasted that the days would be clothed in constant downpour. But now he could only look on as the stranger had opened his big-ass black umbrella and positioned himself beside Yixing to share.
It’s supposed to be hazy recollection, because the distance between now and that memory is a span of four years—a long time. Unfortunately, the details of that incident are quite lucid in Yixing’s mind, like a movie of collected memories is somehow playing in front of him right now.
He remembers the way the stranger had said his name was Byun Baekhyun, and how he smiled disarmingly, rendering Yixing mute for an extra ten seconds until he was able to gush out his own name. Remembers how Baekhyun had pulled Yixing underneath his umbrella and made him avoid all sorts of rain puddles as they walked.
“Don’t worry, Yixing-ah, I won’t let you get wet. Your shoes too! I promise.”
Cue quote.
I promise…
End quote.
He remembers the following days, too, how Baekhyun had started to pull Yixing closer to him each time he whipped out his umbrella. How Yixing would look beside him and always find the same pair of Really Stunning Eyes, and hear the same promise, and feel the warmth slowly becoming more familiar.
Clearly, he also remembers the first time Baekhyun had forgotten to bring his umbrella. What started out to be a sunshiny day suddenly turned into a gloomy dusk of medium rainfall. Yet instead of worrying about how they would get soaked to the bones by the rapidly increasing precipitation—like how he normally did—Baekhyun had pulled Yixing’s hand and urged both of them to dance underneath the pouring rain.
Yixing was the dancer, but it felt good to let Baekhyun lead for once, even though his moves were sloppy and uncoordinated and felt like his limbs were merely flailing akimbo.
It was silly, totally silly, because they’d gone home wearing water instead of clothes, and Baekhyun spent hours blow-drying Yixing’s shoes ("Baby, they might get ruined!") and repeatedly towel-drying Yixing’s hair and basically fussing over how his boyfriend might get sick. But it was worth all the trouble, Yixing reckons, because in the midst of them laughing and squinting eyes as raindrops had pounded on their faces, Baekhyun instituted a new promise—to always make Yixing happy like that.
It keeps raining. It feels weird now to be sad amidst the rain. Yesterday, the cup of hot cocoa he had made himself tasted weird too. It had been better when Baekhyun made it. For all his inability to cook, Baekhyun made the world’s best hot chocolate, even without the small marshmallows that Yixing likes because Baekhyun always said they were pointless.
"They'd melt before you could even eat them, anyway."
Yixing feels coldness seeping into him that has nothing to do with the rain. At least not directly. He remembers he hasn't brought an umbrella with him. Again.
(Of course. He had always relied on Baekhyun for that, anyway.
Because Baekhyun offered he’d do it.
No. Baekhyun promised he would.)
Several days previous, Yixing tried to stick an umbrella into his bag so his officemates won't pick on him. (Why did they think carrying an umbrella with you was unmanly again?) But when he opened it, it was too small to cover him and his backpack. And so the contraption only proved to be futile.
He chucked it into the nearest garbage can.
It seems the rain has no intention of stopping. Stopping from mocking Yixing, that is, because it only seems to rain when he is out and about. Whenever he is safe and dry within the confines of his (not their) apartment or at the office (the only other place he goes to, now), the raindrops seem to hesitate from pouring.
He's about to get off from the shelter of their office building when he reflexively turns to the space beside him. It's empty. And even when he stares at it for too long, it doesn't cease being empty.
Bugger.
Can't be expected for Baekhyun to suddenly materialize out of thin air, can it?
Of course. That's a molecular impossibility.
Just for the heck of it, he charges—umbrella-less—into the rain and deliberately lands a leather shoe-covered foot on each of the water puddles lying on his way.
Just when the sun decides to take over again, Yixing gets sick. Oh, the irony. It is not lost on him.
At least he is able to admit that the stunt he pulled the night previous was what got him into this mess. Still, that doesn't cancel out the fact that Yixing feels as if a hundred construction workers were pounding their hammers into his skull, and that underneath three mattresses he still feels cold (and hot at the same time), and that he aches all over his body (not just in his chest anymore, bollocks).
Too sick, he’s too sick that when he wakes at half-past two in the afternoon, he deems himself hallucinating.
It can't be right. He can't possibly be feeling the sensation of Baekhyun's body temperature that is lower than Yixing's own, pressed against his forehead.
Baekhyun's gentle palm. His delicate fingers push aside Yixing's sweaty fringe.
Soon enough, Baekhyun's voice starts filling his room and his consciousness. It's not possible. Or maybe Yixing has died and gone to heaven, and this is an angel who looks exactly like Baekhyun speaking to him?
But do they call someone who has recently died, an idiot when they go to heaven?
And do they berate him too? Because that is exactly what this angel is doing. He is giving Yixing a Baekhyun scolding, only sans the screaming.
Ah, but at least this doppelganger Baekhyun makes him mushroom soup with pieces of crunchy toasted bread, helps him sit up, and fluffs Yixing's pillow, even as he's looking like he wants to thwack the latter's head for being ridiculously careless. And deliberately stupid.
Funny. Even this Baekhyun clone is like the original—equipped with his variety of words with which to say Yixing is an idiot.
“Now eat, you prat.” Ah, even the British English synonym has been invoked.
They don't speak anymore, not until the soup bowl has been emptied and Yixing has been made to swallow fever medicine.
"Are you Baekhyun's twin?"
The guy who is mistaken for a twin merely throws him a confused look.
"Or maybe you're an alien who took on the form of Byun Baekhyun. Because, you know, Baekhyun broke up with me and I don't think it plausible that he'd come to take care of me anymore."
Yixing doesn't mean to be callous; only irrevocably curious. And it must be the fever fogging his brain, likely still a crack of the hallucination, because he sees hurt spill into Baekhyun's expression.
It haunts him in his dreams.
Because his appearance is an exact replica of that which Baekhyun had worn the night he asked Yixing for his freedom.
Had Baekhyun always worn this expression on his face that Yixing only noticed too late?
And had it always been because of Yixing’s doing?
But why would Baekhyun be hurting now? Surely it shouldn’t pain him whatever it is that concerns Yixing, because it was he who ended their relationship, anyway. Why is Baekhyun acting like he still cares?
He doesn’t. He didn’t care enough to stay the next day.
And it’s no matter that Baekhyun left him some breakfast with a mug of hot chocolate on his bedside table when he woke up. This is merely the product of some guilt induced by breaking up with someone you promised to love for the rest of your life.
Of course. It’s the only logical explanation.
Yixing decides he’s seen enough of Baekhyun’s ghost in his apartment. So he drags himself to the office. But not before washing the dishes free of Baekhyun’s touch.
(The bed covers can wait changing for when he gets home after work.)
Cue Baekhyun’s ghost, standing a few steps away from the entrance of Yixing’s office building, underneath the pouring rain.
(Well, no, actually his body is under his big-ass black umbrella as per usual; but the previous description makes for a more dramatic feel, no? Yixing concurs.)
It cannot get any more dramatic, however, than when Baekhyun covers the distance between him and Yixing (unhurriedly, not because of some slow motion reel, but because Baekhyun’s legs and feet are smaller than most men’s). Yixing is frozen, figuratively, by the building exit; uncaring or unaware of the people trying not to bump into his back as they make their exit too. He is still frozen when Baekhyun grabs his right hand and wraps it around the umbrella’s handle, also closing his palms around Yixing’s fist.
Then Baekhyun’s feet quickly carry him—umbrella-less—away from Yixing and into the steadily pouring rain.
The touch felt too real, tingling in Yixing’s right fist, to insist it was Baekhyun’s ghost that held him.
Still, Yixing wishes Baekhyun would stop haunting him now.
People should know that memories are infinitely scarier than real ghosts.