Chapter Text
Baekhyun stares at his boyfriend. They’re currently studying in a cafe near Baekhyun’s place, and Chanyeol is oblivious of Baekhyun’s stare, fully focused on his books and equations in front of him. They’re both in their junior years, and Baekhyun can’t wait to finish his nursing degree and finally start living, but what just now got him to stop and stare at his boyfriend of two years is that Baekhyun realized he doesn’t love him like he used to. So, when Chanyeol suddenly lifts his head and suggests they could visit his grandma who lives in the countryside and spend the weekend to relax and enjoy time together, Baekhyun says yes in hopes of finding that spark they used to have.
Baekhyun has met Chanyeol’s grandma once before, soon after they started dating. Chanyeol’s grandma was one of the first people to approve of their relationship and she calls Chanyeol at least once a week, never forgetting to ask how’s Baekhyun; she also loves to joke about how Baekhyun is going to be changing her diapers soon enough. (“Granny, that’s nasty. Stop saying that! You’re making Baekhyun uncomfortable.”)
They take a morning train and when they arrive Chanyeol’s grandma has prepared a light lunch and tea for them. They chat about school and exams and about life in general, and Chanyeol’s grandma, in turn, shares the latest gossip of the town even though they have no idea who is who and who actually has the best potatoes in the town. Baekhyun finishes his tea but stops to look at the mess in the cup.
“Hey, Chanyeol? Give me your cup.”
“Why? I’m not done yet.”
“Well, bottoms up. I want to read your leaves”, Baekhyun jokes. Chanyeol snorts but does as told. He hands his cup to Baekhyun and waits as Baekhyun silently observes the black mess. Even the grandma seems to be amused. “Hmm. The placement of these leaves tells me that you are a huge pile of shit and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Wow, rude.” Chanyeol pouts and crosses his arms, faking his hurt.
“The leaves never lie, son.” However, the mood suddenly changes when Chanyeol’s grandma offers to read Baekhyun’s since she actually knows how to.
“Oh, okay. You really do know how to read the tea leaves?
“It’s been a while but let’s give it a try! This could be fun.” She says as she takes Baekhyun’s cup.
“What about Chanyeol? Shouldn’t we read his properly first?”
“I have done it once and the leaves didn’t tell us anything interesting”, she states matter of factly, eyes focused on Baekhyun’s leaves.
“Again, rude", Chanyeol mutters.
They sit there in silence, Baekhyun nervously tapping his fingers on the kitchen table. He has no idea why he’s so nervous, it’s just for fun, right? The longer she looks at the cup the deeper the frown on her face gets. After a few minutes, she opens her mouth. “Okay, this is interesting.”
She shows the mess of the leaves to them, pointing to the first separate symbol that could somehow be made out. “This one here looks like a letter E, which could symbolize an exit or a mountain, if I remember correctly. And this one here is obviously a heart”, she lifts her head to smile at them, “I doubt I need to explain the meaning of it. However, this one here, an X, could be interpreted as a warning. And unfortunately, I have no idea what this symbol here means.” Baekhyun gets a brief glimpse of the random symbol before she turns it away. It had the cleanest shape of them all but sadly Chanyeol’s grandma couldn’t make any sense of it.
It’s pleasantly warm and sunny outside and the boys don’t feel like sitting inside, although they do feel a bit tired from the journey. Chanyeol suggests they take a walk to the mountain. It’s not too far and after that, they could take a well-deserved nap. As they walk towards the tree line at the bottom of the mountain, Chanyeol places his arm on Baekhyun’s shoulders and forces Baekhyun to look up at him.
“Well, my wise old granny did say something about mountains and love.” Chanyeol wiggles his eyebrows suggestively.
“Oh, so you mean your grandma basically read that we’re going to have sex somewhere in the mountain and the letter X could be a warning for us not to actually do it?”
“Precisely.” Well, Baekhyun’s not going to lie, the idea of having sex in semi-public sounds thrilling and, honestly, it’s been a while since they last did it. As they continue walking deeper into the woods, Chanyeol all of a sudden dashes away from Baekhyun, yelling something like “Catch me and I will suck your dick first!”
Baekhyun burst out laughing, mostly because that is what Chanyeol usually does anyway, but the thought excites him nevertheless. He sprints after his boyfriend. Both squealing and screaming as they run around the trees, tripping on the protruding roots and rocks of different sizes.
Cursing, Baekhyun gets up after tripping the third time, and as he wipes the dirt off his legs, he looks around and realizes he cannot locate Chanyeol anywhere, although he can clearly hear him running nearby. He’s breathless of running and laughing at the same time, and he needs to rest for a bit, so he approaches a lone, random stone wall proudly standing in the middle of the clearing he’s at. It looks old, almost ancient, but it’s clearly man-made because of its shape and the odd location. It must have originally been black and smooth, proud and magnificent, but over the years of standing at the mercy of nature and climate, it has lost its grandeur. Something shiny catches Baekhyun’s eyes, and he leans closer to the stone. It’s a symbol. The same symbol that was clearly on the bottom of his tea cup earlier that day. Baekhyun can't be sure though, because of the moss covering it partially, so he attempts to scratch it away with his finger, but as soon as he touches the cold surface the world starts spinning and suddenly he’s falling.
Just as suddenly his body hits the ground. Baekhyun keeps his eyes closed. He’s feeling dizzy and nauseous, but oddly he doesn’t feel any pain from falling so fast. He can’t recall much from the weird fall, except the surreal feeling of weightlessness and blinding light.
Still lying on the ground, he opens his eyes and takes a deep breath before slowly helping himself up. He looks around and realizes that he’s still where he was before the fall. The place is clearly the same but eerily different at the same time.
“What the…”, Baekhyun mumbles, perplexed as he eyes the black and smooth stone wall in all its glory next to him. The symbol is shining unusually bright for a second before slowly dimming to a faint silvery hue. Something in the air changes, making the hair stand up on the back of his neck. And that’s when he runs.
Aimlessly running and walking and turning around and tripping on what feels like the same roots he had problems with earlier. He’s thirsty, disoriented and shaken, and he collapses on the ground once again, dragging himself to a tree closest to him. As he leans on the tree, focusing on breathing in and out, he remembers Chanyeol, but before he can scream for his boyfriend, he hears something moving behind him on the other side of the tree. Too scared to breathe or even blink, he sits still and wary. The sound of a twig breaking and a muffled groan bring the movement to a halt.
Baekhyun wills himself to breathe again, as slowly and as quietly as possible. The thing, or a person, behind him groans louder this time, and Baekhyun immediately realizes that whoever is behind the tree is in pain. His body acts before he even seems to understand what he’s about to do. He crawls to the other side of the tree, and the first thing he sees is a pool of blood and a wounded hand lying on it. Baekhyun eyes the arm next, then the shoulder, followed by a neck with dried up blood and mud, and finally, he sees the face. A young man with his eyes closed and mouth slightly open, his black hair wet and bloody glued on his forehead --in fact, his entire body seems to be bloodstained.
“That can’t all be his”, Baekhyun sputters in disbelief as he gathers up enough courage to drag himself closer to the man in pain.
The said man hasn’t heard or noticed Baekhyun yet. Baekhyun has no idea why he’s doing what he is, and he puts the blame on his education and the fact that he can’t not help people in need.
“H-hello?” Baekhyun starts, startling the other and making him reach for something on his belt, only to stop when his hand touches an empty sword sheath. Wait, a sword sheath? The other man doesn’t take his eyes off Baekhyun, who can’t bring himself to move under the man’s hard gaze. Baekhyun quickly scans over the man, noticing the weird costume the other is wearing, but before he can think of what the costume could represent, he notices the gaping wounds on the man’s body.
“You’re bleeding!” Baekhyun exclaims and gets into his helping mode. He ignores the frigid eyes staring at him and how this strange man was most likely going to stab him with… a sword?
“What the hell happened to you”, Baekhyun mumbles and is about to examine the hand on the ground, but the man slaps Baekhyun’s hand away with his able hand; Baekhyun is pretty sure he hears the man growling at him.
“Stop moving. I’m trying to help you, and unless you let me do it, you will die here.” Baekhyun sternly says, and without waiting for approval, he lifts the man’s shirt. He only locates two not too serious looking wounds on his stomach. Where the hell is all this blood coming from? Sure, the wounds are bleeding, and the man’s arm is in a nasty condition as well, but they do not explain everything.
Baekhyun accidentally touches the man’s shoulder, and it makes the latter flinch in pain. Baekhyun carefully moves the man so he could look at the backside, and oh. The sight is not pretty. Baekhyun takes off his hoodie and then his T-shirt before putting the hoodie back on. Using his teeth, he rips the shirt into pieces and uses them as bandages. Baekhyun has watched enough movies to know the wounds are caused by a whip.
Obviously, he has never treated wounds like that and he knows they need proper help.
“Hey? Hey? Um, sir? Can you maybe walk?” Baekhyun asks carefully. The man has his eyes closed because of the pain and he’s biting his lip, hard. “We need to find a better place for me to tend your wounds”, Baekhyun wonders out loud, looking around and trying to find a path somewhere. The man manages to push Baekhyun away, grimacing in pain as he gradually stands up.
“I can walk. Don’t need your help.” The strange man grits through the pain and stumbles forward. Baekhyun runs to his side, not touching him, but still slowly walking beside him.
“Let me at least help you until we find a place where you can be treated. You either trust me enough to help you walk, or you can just bleed out here and die.” Baekhyun says but doesn’t wait for the other to reply before wrapping his arm around the other as carefully as he can without causing too much pain on the already painful back. It doesn’t take long before they reach some sort of pathway, and Baekhyun leads them to follow it --wherever it might lead to.
Baekhyun is getting tired and he can feel the man is barely conscious anymore. Thankfully, he can spot a town of sorts not too far from them. “Hey? Sir? Just a bit longer, okay? You can do it.”
In the last few meters, he practically drags the wounded man with him. They reach a closed gate, and Baekhyun doesn’t know what else to do other than scream for help.
After the gates open, everything happens so fast. People rush to help them, taking the wounded man to a building nearby before they lead Baekhyun there as well, asking questions about the man and the origin of the wounds. Baekhyun says he doesn’t know anything and that he just found him like that. No one comments on Baekhyun’s clothing, maybe because they also are bloodstained. As he is led to the room where the man was being treated, a kind older lady asks if he wants something clean to wear and maybe something to eat. All Baekhyun can do is nod. Everything is so bizarre, it feels almost like he has stumbled across a historical drama filming but the scene was too foreign to be real, or in this case, scripted.
Baekhyun nibbles the still warm bun and stares at the man on the bed, who’s lying on his stomach because of the wounds on his back. His face had been cleaned as well, and Baekhyun eyes the man’s features now that there are no piercing eyes looking back at him. The man is young, maybe the same age as Baekhyun. Black thick brows frame his big dark eyes, strong jawline, plush pink lips, and he’s not too big in size but the aura he emanates makes up for it; everything about him screams strength.
Now that Baekhyun thinks about the man -his tan, clothes, empty sword sheath, and his well-muscled body- he realizes he must be a soldier of sorts, highly ranked too.
Suddenly the man moans, incoherently muttering something. Baekhyun swallows the piece of bread he had in his mouth and moves closer.
“Shh, hey, stop moving. You’re safe and your wounds are being treated.” He says gently. The man stops moving and focuses his eyes on Baekhyun. Again, those piercing cold eyes stare right at Baekhyun.
“Who are you?” The man manages to say, voice low but clear. Baekhyun doesn’t know whether to say his real name or not.
“I’m… Baekhyun.”
The man looks at him for a second before attempting to sit up. Alarmed, Baekhyun rushes to hold the man down. “Stop! Your wounds are not healed enough for you to move.”
“I don’t care”, the man mutters, visibly still in pain.
“You need to rest!”
“No. What I need is to reach the others as soon as possible because the information I bear with me is not something to take lightly, and it has to be given directly to my king.”
Baekhyun is speechless as he watches the man get up and look for his shirt. Baekhyun turns to eye the chair where he sat before and had placed the clothes he didn’t need, or, well, didn’t know how to put on. He gives a few of the pieces of clothing to the man, hoping the other would find something useful to wear. The man is still wary of Baekhyun but takes the first piece he touches and puts it on.
Baekhyun doesn’t know what to say or do anymore as the man walks around the room collecting things, careful not to inflict unnecessary pain on his back, but when the man reaches the door, Baekhyun is there as well.
“I’m coming with you.” Baekhyun has no other choice than to follow this strange man he found wounded in the woods. Baekhyun clears his throat before talking again. “I’m coming with you. You need someone to tend your wounds, and I’m a bit lost and need some help as well, and I also kind of saved your life so…” he rambles. The man glares at him but doesn’t oppose it.
It’s dark when they step outside and leave the town behind. Baekhyun feels bad for the people who so kindly helped them. As he slowly walks behind the man, making sure he wouldn’t fall or hurt himself more than necessary, Baekhyun realizes that he is not in the 21st century anymore or even in his own world, if that makes any sense. He is so utterly lost and fucked.