#team baam

THE WINNING TEAM OF THE WORKSHOP BATTLE IS: TEAM SWEET & SOUR

There’s silence for one short moment. Then, an explosion of cheers.

Khun breathes a sigh of relief.

Finally, everything’s back as it should be.

—

There’s celebrations. Drinking, yelling, partying— Khun doesn’t really care for any of it. And from the looks of how he can hardly keep his eyes open, Baam doesn’t either.

“Baam, let’s go get some rest.” Baam blinks a few times at the proposal, likely not used to being called by that name again yet, but gives Khun a soft, grateful smile. “Okay,” he agrees simply, “please ask Rak-ssi too. He must be tired too.”

Khun clicks his tongue and rolls his eyes exaggeratedly at the mention of the gator, and it’s worth it for the bright peal of laughter it pulls from Baam. He agrees with a nod as Baam makes his way to their room.

They spread out a few blankets on the floor and gather three pillows to rest their heads. It’s makeshift and shabby, nothing like FUG’s luxury beds and the expensive bedsheets Khun can afford, and everyone’s still celebrating loudly in the other room.

All three of them are fast asleep in minutes.

—

When Baam wakes up, it’s to loud snoring and a heavy weight on his chest.

He blinks at the ceiling a few times before sitting up, gently sliding the still-snoring Rak off of his chest.

I… made it back.

He steals a glance at Khun wrapped up in his blanket. The way they both sleep suits them: Rak is splayed out and snoring open and carefree, Khun is turned away and closed into his blanket. Both of his hands are hidden under it as he holds the pillow under his head— does he still sleep with a knife in hand? His hair doesn’t look as disheveled as it should after sleeping for so long, so he must not have moved very much, which makes it possible that he does.

That... Baam feels a little twinge in his chest at that. What had Khun’s life been, before they met and these years they’d been apart, to make him so afraid? Suddenly, he wants to... Baam can’t really tell, but reach out, maybe, make Khun feel safe and happy— and wow, when did Khun get so close? Baam jerks his head back, pulling his hand from where it was about to land in Khun’s soft blue hair. Khun needs his rest, Baam decides, and he doesn’t want to wake him up.

He steps outside softly, checking his Pocket as he leans on the balcony and looks up at the false sky. He has a message from Endorsi that reads: Meet me at the gate by 2 PM. If you don’t, I’ll kill you.

Baam just laughs.

—

Shibisu and Wangnan drag everyone into the main room to play drinking games. Khun’s about to make his escape like the last time, but is dragged into it anyway when Baam asks him to stay, since it’s the last night before Shibisu’s team leaves for the next floor. That bastard knows what he’s doing right now, Khun realizes quickly: his eyes are shining with mirth after intentionally making a show of asking him to stay and play with them.

Khun sighs in defeat, sitting next to Baam on the floor in the crooked circle everyone’s formed. Baam gives him a bright, guileless smile and Khun suddenly has a very personal understanding of how much his own snark must irritate people (this, however, does nothing to curb how much he’ll be using it in the future). Khun’s not a fan of alcohol or getting drunk in general, and if he remembers right, Baam is a terrible lightweight. It doesn’t take much sleight of hand to swap the nearest bottle for a non-alcoholic substitute from Khun’s lighthouse.

Baam takes a sip and gives Khun a curious look, and Khun leans into him and whispers, “If I’m going to get dragged into this, I might as well get some good blackmail.” 

Baam giggles and nods at him in agreement when Wangnan interrupts loudly, “Viole! Khun! You want to share what’s so funny with the rest of us?”

Baam blushes down to his neck and violently shakes his head, and Khun takes the bottle from him to take a swig from it before answering, “I don’t know, have you managed to pick a game for us to play or did you gather us all here just to watch you argue until we all get drunk?” Wangnan deflates quickly and Baam has to quickly hide a snicker (“Seriously, Viole?!”) before Shibisu snarks back, “Do you have one to suggest then?” “Unlike you, I spend my time doing useful things, not drinking myself silly.” “He totally just can’t think of one,” Prince interjects with a sneer. Hatz adds, “Earrings is just too much of a coward to admit that he doesn’t have any friends to drink with.” “You want to say that to me again, Hara-kiri?” “Do your stupid earrings keep you from hearing me properly?” “If you want me to kick your ass that badly, you can just ask.” “Can’t you two just drop this for one night?”

They eventually agree on Truth or Dare, and while Khun does get the blackmail he was looking for, he (along with Goseng and Baam) gets stuck with the job of ferrying people back to their rooms for the night so that they don’t just stay passed out on the floor of the main room (at Baam’s request). Baam laughs at Khun grumbling as he’s stuffing a snoozing Endorsi in his lighthouse, and Khun delights in Baam’s yelp as he hops onto the side of his Blue Shield without warning, causing him to almost drop Prince and Ehwa. 

Khun has to admit, this was a lot of fun.

—

Baam asks Khun to help him cut his hair. Khun agrees. 

As Khun takes his long hair in hand, Baam sheepishly apologizes for not following Khun’s advice for talking proper care of his hair. It pulls a shocked laugh from Khun; he hadn’t remembered giving him that lecture at all until now, and he waves away the apology. 

“I’m sure you have plenty of good excuses,” he reassures, “but I’ll be holding you to it from now on.”

Baam smiles brightly, nodding so vigorously that Khun has to remind him to keep his head still and then stifle a laugh at his embarrassment. Baam’s hair smells like blood and screams and tears and loneliness, eight years too much of it to ever be washed out, and when Khun cuts off everything below his neck all in one go, Baam heaves a sigh of relief, one Khun guesses is the first in years.

After it’s done, Baam looks up at the false sky.

—

A month. It’s been a month since the workshop battle ended.

Baam came back to the us. We passed the test without any problems, and earned the right to go up to the next floor. Everything seems to have worked out well, but in fact, this is only the beginning. Emily disappeared from the Archimedes. Where could she be now and what is Cassano planning to do with her? And most importantly… where is FUG? They tried to set me up.

Apple, Micheal,… …and Rachel.

“I want to hear more stories about… what the Outside of the Tower is like.”

I won’t let them get away with this. Even if Baam tries to stop me, I will get her.

—

Baam’s late to the meeting Hwaryun scheduled. Khun teases him lightly about it, but Ehwa tells him later that she found him looking up at the false sky, some nonsense about a fairy tale someone told him about the sky.

“You must be glad,” Hwaryun taunts him, “Now, you have more time to find Rachel.” Khun only turns his head enough to meet her eyes.

“Did you think I wouldn’t know that you’re making a team to find Rachel, behind Viole’s back? The reason why you calmly accepted my suggestion was that you thought it would be a burden to go up the Tower with Viole right now, right?”

“You are trying to kill the girl who used to be your best friend’s everything. If Viole finds out, how will he act towards you?”

He makes an agreement to meet in a year at Train City, a smile plastered on his face. He hides his teeth, because the backs of them taste like lies. That’s to be expected: he’s been cut and carved from lies— he learned how to make and break trust before learning how to keep it, to hide the truth with locks and traps and smoke and screens until it damn well doesn’t exist anymore.

When he offers his hand to shake, it’s a calculated risk: he may be made of lies, but people trust you more if you seem non threatening and vulnerable. As Khun shakes his hand, he keeps his other hand in his pocket to keep the decks of cards he has hidden up his sleeve from slipping.

They fall anyway, because of course they do.

They always have, whenever Baam’s involved.

—

Khun feels his skin crawl restlessly like a billion tiny sweetfish swimming through all of his cells, only getting more intense with each step he takes towards his room. He looks out of the open hallway at the false sky, Hwaryun’s taunts coming to mind, and he’s filled with rage so white-hot and primal that it almost surprises him.

Baam’s still chasing after Rachel, he’s known that — he didn’t even need Baam to tell him to know that because he understands, he understands that Baam’s doing what he never did. Hwaryun’s probably allowing it because it gives her an excuse to force him to grow stronger for whatever purpose FUG needs Baam to fulfill, and she was right, he needed the extra time in order to—

She’d called him Viole, she’d called Baam her god. Khun’s almost as disgusted at her as he is at himself, but he’s never claimed not to be a hypocritical asshole.  

Khun knows that there’s forces much greater than him at play here; he’s made that mistake once: he’d believed that any floor test was simple enough to plan and slash his way through, he’d believed the Tower and all of its gods were small enough to contain in his hands.

He doesn’t care. He’d like to not ever have to hear that shit again.

False kings, false gods, false stars lighting up false skies — Khun’s sick of all of it.

—

Before they leave the Wolhaiksong resort that night, Baam checks his inventory to make sure he has everything he needs. He finds three large books he’s never seen before. They have similar fancy leather covers with elegantly minimalistic yet intricate engraving. They look like they’re very old, older than he can even imagine, he realizes on a closer look, since they look like that after being preserved with Shinsu. Out of curiosity, he opens one to a random page.

He’s faced with charts and diagrams of great clouds of light, explanations too dense for him to make sense of at the moment, but there’s lots of blue annotations in a handwriting that looks very familiar for one he’s never seen before. He opens the others to other random pages and finds that they’re all the same way, filled with the same familiar annotations in all kinds of colors, contrasting the old black print of the books. Baam realizes in awe that the books are about stars, pages and pages full of skies and stars, and they’re real.

”Stars are just a legend. Even if you go up, the only thing you’ll reach is this floor’s roof. That blue sky is created by shinsu, and the bright thing at night is just a light ball. I heard there are stars in the Outside world, but they don’t exist, at least, not here in the Tower.”

He can feel shock pricking at his eyes, and looks again at the covers of the book for a title, a name, anything—

and feels tears run down his face.