maayacolabackup (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
maayacolabackup) wrote2012-08-06 03:06 pm
maayacolabackup) wrote2012-08-06 03:06 pm
KPop: stitch the skin together (Sehun/Lu Han, PG-13)
Title: stitch the skin together
Pairing: Sehun/ Lu Han
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Both of them have soft palms, and fingers that fit perfectly together, and Sehun doesn’t want to let go as they leave the stage. (3k)
Notes: for Jen, even if she deserves nothing for all the Baekhyun misery she puts me through.
Notes 2: I’ll take things I never thought I’d write for $500, Alex.
*
“Sehun, stand next to me,” Lu Han demands, like Sehun was going to stand anywhere else.
Sehun and Lu Han always stand together.
Sehun slides into the space beside Lu Han, and tugs on Lu Han’s sleeve. Lu Han looks up at him with a smile, and elbows him gently, and Sehun’s insides shiver just a little.
They make a heart with their lifted arms and Lu Han holds his hand. Both of them have soft palms, and fingers that fit perfectly together, and Sehun doesn’t want to let go as they leave the stage.
*
Lu Han is not Sehun’s best friend.
Sehun’s best friend, maybe, is Jongin. Sometimes he thinks it might be Tao, too. Maybe it’s both of them.
But whomever it is, it’s not Lu Han. Lu Han is something else. Lu Han is the worst thing that’s ever happened to Sehun, or maybe the best, big eyes and tiny fingers stealing little chunks of Sehun’s sanity with every mysterious smile and casually draped arm as the cameras flash.
Lu Han is someone that Sehun doesn’t completely understand, but he wants to so badly it aches. He reaches out and tries to keep Lu Han close because even if Lu Han isn’t his best friend, Sehun feels like Lu Han is his anyway.
“He’s my little brother that I want to protect,” Lu Han says, when asked to describe Sehun, and Sehun licks his lips and clenches his fists and smiles and blushes, and tells himself that he feels the same.
Lu Han isn’t an object. Sehun wants to collect him anyway, but Lu Han is so mercurial that he grins and teases and slips his way right out from Sehun’s grasping hands, and Sehun is left holding only the air.
“Why don’t you just pee on him to mark your territory,” Jongin says later, when it’s just the two of them washing their faces at the sink, make-up streaming down the porcelain bowl.
“Shut up,” Sehun says, but his hands shake, just enough that he gets a bit of soap in his eyes.
*
He’s not sure when wanting to keep Lu Han becomes wanting other things from Lu Han. Only Sehun has maybe always wanted other things from Lu Han; wanted everything from Lu Han.
The problem is that Lu Han only has so much to give, and it’s never enough.
Sehun finds his way into Lu Han’s bed more often than not, and Lu Han always smiles and scoots over to make room. Sehun doesn’t talk to Lu Han; he listens to him. Lu Han tells stories like a child; all tangents and digressions and excited faces, and Sehun wants to keep that, too. Just dig his hands into it and gather as much of it as he can, letting bits of Lu Han’s enthusiasm get trapped under his fingernails and in the wrinkles of his knuckles and in the webbed skin between his fingers.
But Sehun’s learned you can’t really do that with moments or feelings; everything slips away and Lu Han is the slipperiest of them all.
Sometimes, when Lu Han’s gone, Sehun thinks about how long it will be until they see each other again and writes the days left in the steam that forms on the bathroom mirror after his shower.
When the steam disappears, Sehun likes to pretend it takes a little bit of his desperation with it.
Sehun thinks this might be love, but he’s not sure it’s supposed to feel this terrible.
But then Lu Han smiles, and Sehun doesn’t think he’s ever seen something so beautiful, and he moves a little closer.
*
Lu Han presses his lips to Sehun's throat, briefly-- just long enough to send Sehun's pulse racing before he pulls back and smiles softly. "I'll be back before you know it," Lu Han says, throwing an arm over Sehun's waist. "You'll miss me, won't you?"
"Yes," Sehun says, and Lu Han pushes his nose into the place where Sehun's neck meets his shoulder, and Sehun can feel every exhale on his bare skin. "I will."
Sehun will reach for Lu Han whenever he closes his eyes, and he'll find nothing but empty space, and he'll be lonely, like he always is now when Lu Han's gone.
Lu Han is not Sehun’s best friend, but Sehun wants to keep him, anyway.
Sehun doesn’t want to examine the way Lu Han is every spare thought and every unspoken for moment, because then he’ll have to admit how bad it’s become.
Sehun doesn’t let himself worry a lot, about how much things come undone when Lu Han is far away. Sehun doesn’t let himself worry that he's setting himself up for a fall, because every touch means so much more to him than it should, and all that distance burns like an open wound. Sehun doesn’t let himself worry because everything isn’t supposed to feel like this, because Sehun knows that Lu Han sees him as a friend, a little brother he wants to protect, and that it's just Sehun who thinks Lu Han has hung the moon, and all the stars in the night sky. It’s only Sehun who wants to put Lu Han inside of a cage and make him sing only for him.
"I'll miss you too," Lu Han says, and as much as it aches when Lu Han leaves, it aches almost as much when Lu Han lies next to him, warm mouth whispering across Sehun's tingling skin and body a warm reminder of everything Sehun doesn’t let himself worry about.
*
“I already miss you,” Sehun says, and Lu Han laughs into the phone.
“You sound like a pining girlfriend,” Lu Han says, and Sehun burns with embarrassment even if Lu Han doesn’t seem chiding.
“It’s cold, now,” Sehun says, instead of answering, and Lu Han goes silent.
“It’s cold here, too,” he says, after a while, and Sehun’s heart trips and stumbles and crashes and burns, and neither of them talk about the fact that it’s summer, air so sticky-hot the world might melt.
In Sehun’s more masochistic moments, he lets himself imagine the longing in Lu Han’s voice is equal to the longing in his own. That Lu Han would let Sehun bind their wrists together with rope, or stitch them together skin to skin with a long thin needle and surgical thread.
Then he goes to the bathroom and throws up because wanting has made him sick.
*
Lu Han always comes back the same as he’d left. Maybe his bangs are cut differently, a bit more round about his sweet face, but his arms feel the same around Sehun’s waist, and his smile is just as wicked as he tells Sehun about Yixing and pranks and variety shows, and Sehun does his best not to tremble beneath Lu Han’s earnest, unassuming gaze.
“You’re always a little different, when I come back,” Lu Han says.
“A little taller?” Sehun asks, and fixes his eyes on a wall instead of on Lu Han’s teasing grin.
“A little more grown up,” Lu Han replies, and Sehun gulps and wishes and hurts.
*
“Stop moping,” Jongin says. “M will be back soon.”
“I’m not moping,” Sehun replies. “I’m just thinking.”
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Jongin replies, and Sehun throws an apple at his head. Jongin dodges, and cackles, his teeth white and straight against full lips.
Sehun laughs too, because Jongin is his best friend, and they don’t need words to cheer each other up.
Sometimes Sehun needs words from Lu Han, though. He checks his email, and there’s nothing. M is busy. Sehun knows that. He just wants to know where Lu Han is. What Lu Han is doing.
I miss you, he writes, and sends the mail.
When he wakes up in the morning, there’s a reply from Lu Han. It’s just a smiley face, but it’s enough to make Sehun’s heart skip a beat.
*
As far as kisses go, this is the worst one Sehun’s ever had. Lu Han is stiff and still beneath him, hands curling into Sehun’s shirt, making no effort to pull him closer or push him away. Lu Han’s lips are cold, and he doesn’t move. He lets Sehun kiss him, but he doesn’t kiss him back. Sehun pulls away, hands falling from where they’d cupped Lu Han’s cheeks, and Lu Han is looking at him with wide eyes, fingers still twisted in the material of Sehun’s tank, lips a bit shiny from Sehun’s mouth.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” Sehun says, and he swallows. “I’m so sorry.”
Lu Han doesn’t reply; just looks at him, and Sehun looks back and all he finds is a whole lot of nothing.
*
Sehun feels like a child. Maybe Sehun just is a child, because he wants to throw a tantrum until he gets what he wants.
Sehun wants to keep Lu Han, but Sehun’s heartbreakingly sure now that Lu Han doesn’t want to be kept.
*
There’s a Korean fairytale, about a tiger, the most fearsome beast of the Gumgang mountains, who was so determined to chase down these two children and eat them that he stopped paying attention and fell to his own demise.
“What a stupid tiger,” Lu Han had said, when Sehun told it to him, and Sehun had taken a deep breath.
“Haven’t you ever wanted something that much?” Sehun had asked, and Lu Han had slowly tilted his head sideways, pursing his lips in thought. His hair had fallen into his eyes, and Sehun had reached up and brushed it away.
“Maybe, “ Lu Han had said. “But part of being an adult is knowing when you can’t have things.”
“I’d rather stay a kid, then,” Sehun had replied, and Lu Han’s forehead had been warm under his fingers.
*
Of course people notice. Sehun would like to keep up the games, but he can’t even manage the other half of their heart because the entirety of his own has been crushed.
And fans notice that Sehun gravitates more towards Tao now, or Jongin, neither of whom have ever managed to make Sehun feel as completely empty as Lu Han has.
Sehun had made so much room inside of himself for Lu Han, to keep all the strange and unexplored parts of Lu Han’s smile in, that there’s nothing to fill that space.
“Sehun is okay?” Tao asks, as they squat down at the curb so Tao can smoke a cigarette while no one is looking. Moments like that are rare, nowadays. Sehun nods and looks down at the pavement, the glossy, plastic material of his purple jacket sticking to his skin in the August heat.
“Sehun is okay,” he responds, and he’s not completely sure it’s a lie.
Sehun is okay. Sehun wakes up in the morning and doesn’t reach for Lu Han beside him, and he brushes his teeth and plays video games with Jongin and goes to dance rehearsal and fucks it up as usual until Chanyeol shoves him jokingly and tells him to remember the formation.
So it’s not like Sehun is broken. Only sometimes, at night, when there’s only Junmyeon’s quiet breathing to fill the silence of their room, he can feel the hairline fractures, and they get a little bigger every time he’s unable to meet Lu Han’s eyes.
He misses Lu Han’s bed. He’d wanted to keep that, too.
“Sehun is okay,” he repeats, and Tao offers him a drag of his cigarette, and this time, for the first time, Sehun takes him up on it.
*
Lu Han has never been Sehun’s best friend.
Lu Han, for Sehun, is more like lungs than a friend.
Sehun’s living through every day, smiling and laughing and performing, and he hasn’t taken a single breath.
*
It’s a month before they speak in private. They’ve spoken in public; things like ‘turn this way’ or ‘look left’, but Sehun’s found ways to keep them apart. It’s not like SM isn’t on his side, sending M back to China whenever the latest brief stint to remind the fangirls of their unity is over.
Lu Han corners him after a rehearsal. Sehun’s just turned off the lights, so the room is dark. The light from the hallway reflects off the rehearsal room mirrors, and off of Lu Han’s light colored hair, and Sehun feels trapped.
“Why did you kiss me?” Lu Han asks, and Sehun sets down his backpack, and grips the two ends of the towel around his neck. A trickle of sweat creeps down his spine, cool against hot skin, and Lu Han steps closer. “Why?”
“You already know why,” Sehun says, and Lu Han blinks at him, eyelashes fluttering softly and he’s so pretty, Sehun knows, even if Lu Han would kill him if Sehun told him that. Sehun would never tell him that, now, even if it’s still just as true as it had been.
Lu Han’s face is the perfect size to fit in between Sehun’s palms. Lu Han’s nose is the perfect size to press into Sehun’s neck.
These are things Sehun would like to forget.
“What if I don’t?” Lu Han says, and Sehun tongue sneaks out to wet his lips, and Lu Han watches him with a heavy lidded gaze. Everything seems so much scarier in the almost-dark. How much Sehun wants to take from Lu Han feels so much less forbidden.
“It’s not obvious?” Sehun says, and Lu Han closes his eyes, and swallows.
Sehun picks up his backpack, and walks past Lu Han, toward the door. Lu Han reaches out and makes a grab for his wrist, but Sehun jerks away. “Sehun-“
“Lu Han,” Sehun says, and he takes a deep breath. “I’m okay.”
“I miss you,” Lu Han says, and his voice catches on it, and Sehun knows that the right answer isn’t ’not as much as I miss you’.
But Sehun’s the youngest, and it’s okay if he’s selfish.
He doesn’t have to turn around to know that Lu Han flinches when he says it.
“Is it easy, to walk away?” Lu Han asks, and Sehun pauses in the doorway.
“Of course not,” Sehun replies. “But what else can I do?”
*
“You’re such a dumbass,” Jongin says, leaning back and spreading his legs apart. It’s the way Jongin acts, sometimes, when he wants Sehun to think he’s completely comfortable. Sehun doesn’t have the heart to tell him he’s overcompensating because otherwise Jongin might not talk to him anymore about serious stuff.
“What?” Sehun wraps his arms around his legs, resting his chin on his knees as they stare at the television.
Jongin sighs, and searches for words. “It’s like… You. And hyung. And.”
“Wow, I totally understood that,” Sehun says dryly, and Jongin chucks a throw pillow at him.
“You did though,” Jongin says, crossing his arms over his chest. He looks over at Sehun out of the corner of his eye. “Lu Han hyung…”
“That’s none of your business,” Sehun says, and he says it lightly but he knows Jongin can hear the warning in it.
Jongin sighs, and flops his arms to the side, gnawing on his lower lip as he thinks about what to say. “It’s all of our business, kind of. It’s weird.”
“Not this. This isn’t.”
“Look,” Jongin says, and he puts his hand awkwardly on Sehun’s knee, and Sehun is wryly amused that it’s Jongin who has undertaken the task of having a talk with Sehun about his feelings. Jongin is his best friend, but words have never been his strong suit. “Lu Han is…”
“A bandmate. We aren’t fighting, so it’s not really the band’s concern.”
“I know you’re not exactly fighting but…” Jongin scratches his nose. “Lu Han isn’t used to people like you,” Jongin says, and Sehun’s stomach twists.
*
“Why did you kiss me?” Lu Han asks, when he’s slipped into Sehun’s bed. It’s four in the morning, and Junmyeon is fast asleep, slow, even, silent breathing more than enough to assure Sehun of his slumber.
“Because I’m the most foolish tiger of them all,” Sehun says, and Lu Han’s arm slips around his waist.
“What if one day I come back and you’re all grown up?” Lu Han asks. “And you start thinking you can’t have things, like me?”
“I think it’s impossible for me not to want to keep you,” Sehun says, and Lu Han’s leg slips between Sehun’s two, and runs his fingers through Sehun’s hair as his other hand digs into Sehun’s side. “I’m selfish.”
“That’s all right,” Lu Han says. “That’s all right.” And he presses a kiss to Sehun’s throat, the way he does when he’s about to leave, only this time he stays.
It’s hard to sleep like that, with Lu Han’s weight on top of him, legs twined together and fingers tight enough to bruise, but Sehun, for the first time in a long time, breathes easy.
*
Lu Han kisses him gently, like he thinks Sehun will say no, but Sehun pushes closer, sucking Lu Han’s lower lip into his mouth and tasting the moon and the stars.
Sehun’s tongue finds Lu Han’s, and the sweetness of Lu Han’s mouth is rivaled only by the sweetness of Lu Han’s hands in his hair, dragging him down closer, letting Sehun take and take as much wants. His mouth is slick and hot, and Sehun could be addicted to this; is already addicted to this, just like he’s addicted to everything else about Lu Han, who doesn’t make a move to slip away from Sehun at all.
Sehun listens, giddily, to Lu Han’s sighs and Lu Han’s gasps, and collects each and every one of them before they disappear into the night.
*
“Sehun, stand next to me,” Lu Han demands, pouting at Sehun as Sehun tries to jostle in between Tao and Kris.
Of course he does, because Sehun and Lu Han always stand together.
Sehun slides into the space beside Lu Han, and tugs on Lu Han’s sleeve. Lu Han looks up at him with a smile, and elbows him gently, and Sehun’s insides shiver just a little.
They make a heart with their lifted arms and Lu Han holds his hand. Both of them have soft palms, and fingers that fit perfectly together, and Sehun doesn’t want to let go as they leave the stage.
So he doesn’t.
*
“What a stupid tiger,” Lu Han says, and Sehun kisses him again.
Pairing: Sehun/ Lu Han
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Both of them have soft palms, and fingers that fit perfectly together, and Sehun doesn’t want to let go as they leave the stage. (3k)
Notes: for Jen, even if she deserves nothing for all the Baekhyun misery she puts me through.
Notes 2: I’ll take things I never thought I’d write for $500, Alex.
“Sehun, stand next to me,” Lu Han demands, like Sehun was going to stand anywhere else.
Sehun and Lu Han always stand together.
Sehun slides into the space beside Lu Han, and tugs on Lu Han’s sleeve. Lu Han looks up at him with a smile, and elbows him gently, and Sehun’s insides shiver just a little.
They make a heart with their lifted arms and Lu Han holds his hand. Both of them have soft palms, and fingers that fit perfectly together, and Sehun doesn’t want to let go as they leave the stage.
Lu Han is not Sehun’s best friend.
Sehun’s best friend, maybe, is Jongin. Sometimes he thinks it might be Tao, too. Maybe it’s both of them.
But whomever it is, it’s not Lu Han. Lu Han is something else. Lu Han is the worst thing that’s ever happened to Sehun, or maybe the best, big eyes and tiny fingers stealing little chunks of Sehun’s sanity with every mysterious smile and casually draped arm as the cameras flash.
Lu Han is someone that Sehun doesn’t completely understand, but he wants to so badly it aches. He reaches out and tries to keep Lu Han close because even if Lu Han isn’t his best friend, Sehun feels like Lu Han is his anyway.
“He’s my little brother that I want to protect,” Lu Han says, when asked to describe Sehun, and Sehun licks his lips and clenches his fists and smiles and blushes, and tells himself that he feels the same.
Lu Han isn’t an object. Sehun wants to collect him anyway, but Lu Han is so mercurial that he grins and teases and slips his way right out from Sehun’s grasping hands, and Sehun is left holding only the air.
“Why don’t you just pee on him to mark your territory,” Jongin says later, when it’s just the two of them washing their faces at the sink, make-up streaming down the porcelain bowl.
“Shut up,” Sehun says, but his hands shake, just enough that he gets a bit of soap in his eyes.
He’s not sure when wanting to keep Lu Han becomes wanting other things from Lu Han. Only Sehun has maybe always wanted other things from Lu Han; wanted everything from Lu Han.
The problem is that Lu Han only has so much to give, and it’s never enough.
Sehun finds his way into Lu Han’s bed more often than not, and Lu Han always smiles and scoots over to make room. Sehun doesn’t talk to Lu Han; he listens to him. Lu Han tells stories like a child; all tangents and digressions and excited faces, and Sehun wants to keep that, too. Just dig his hands into it and gather as much of it as he can, letting bits of Lu Han’s enthusiasm get trapped under his fingernails and in the wrinkles of his knuckles and in the webbed skin between his fingers.
But Sehun’s learned you can’t really do that with moments or feelings; everything slips away and Lu Han is the slipperiest of them all.
Sometimes, when Lu Han’s gone, Sehun thinks about how long it will be until they see each other again and writes the days left in the steam that forms on the bathroom mirror after his shower.
When the steam disappears, Sehun likes to pretend it takes a little bit of his desperation with it.
Sehun thinks this might be love, but he’s not sure it’s supposed to feel this terrible.
But then Lu Han smiles, and Sehun doesn’t think he’s ever seen something so beautiful, and he moves a little closer.
Lu Han presses his lips to Sehun's throat, briefly-- just long enough to send Sehun's pulse racing before he pulls back and smiles softly. "I'll be back before you know it," Lu Han says, throwing an arm over Sehun's waist. "You'll miss me, won't you?"
"Yes," Sehun says, and Lu Han pushes his nose into the place where Sehun's neck meets his shoulder, and Sehun can feel every exhale on his bare skin. "I will."
Sehun will reach for Lu Han whenever he closes his eyes, and he'll find nothing but empty space, and he'll be lonely, like he always is now when Lu Han's gone.
Lu Han is not Sehun’s best friend, but Sehun wants to keep him, anyway.
Sehun doesn’t want to examine the way Lu Han is every spare thought and every unspoken for moment, because then he’ll have to admit how bad it’s become.
Sehun doesn’t let himself worry a lot, about how much things come undone when Lu Han is far away. Sehun doesn’t let himself worry that he's setting himself up for a fall, because every touch means so much more to him than it should, and all that distance burns like an open wound. Sehun doesn’t let himself worry because everything isn’t supposed to feel like this, because Sehun knows that Lu Han sees him as a friend, a little brother he wants to protect, and that it's just Sehun who thinks Lu Han has hung the moon, and all the stars in the night sky. It’s only Sehun who wants to put Lu Han inside of a cage and make him sing only for him.
"I'll miss you too," Lu Han says, and as much as it aches when Lu Han leaves, it aches almost as much when Lu Han lies next to him, warm mouth whispering across Sehun's tingling skin and body a warm reminder of everything Sehun doesn’t let himself worry about.
“I already miss you,” Sehun says, and Lu Han laughs into the phone.
“You sound like a pining girlfriend,” Lu Han says, and Sehun burns with embarrassment even if Lu Han doesn’t seem chiding.
“It’s cold, now,” Sehun says, instead of answering, and Lu Han goes silent.
“It’s cold here, too,” he says, after a while, and Sehun’s heart trips and stumbles and crashes and burns, and neither of them talk about the fact that it’s summer, air so sticky-hot the world might melt.
In Sehun’s more masochistic moments, he lets himself imagine the longing in Lu Han’s voice is equal to the longing in his own. That Lu Han would let Sehun bind their wrists together with rope, or stitch them together skin to skin with a long thin needle and surgical thread.
Then he goes to the bathroom and throws up because wanting has made him sick.
Lu Han always comes back the same as he’d left. Maybe his bangs are cut differently, a bit more round about his sweet face, but his arms feel the same around Sehun’s waist, and his smile is just as wicked as he tells Sehun about Yixing and pranks and variety shows, and Sehun does his best not to tremble beneath Lu Han’s earnest, unassuming gaze.
“You’re always a little different, when I come back,” Lu Han says.
“A little taller?” Sehun asks, and fixes his eyes on a wall instead of on Lu Han’s teasing grin.
“A little more grown up,” Lu Han replies, and Sehun gulps and wishes and hurts.
“Stop moping,” Jongin says. “M will be back soon.”
“I’m not moping,” Sehun replies. “I’m just thinking.”
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Jongin replies, and Sehun throws an apple at his head. Jongin dodges, and cackles, his teeth white and straight against full lips.
Sehun laughs too, because Jongin is his best friend, and they don’t need words to cheer each other up.
Sometimes Sehun needs words from Lu Han, though. He checks his email, and there’s nothing. M is busy. Sehun knows that. He just wants to know where Lu Han is. What Lu Han is doing.
I miss you, he writes, and sends the mail.
When he wakes up in the morning, there’s a reply from Lu Han. It’s just a smiley face, but it’s enough to make Sehun’s heart skip a beat.
As far as kisses go, this is the worst one Sehun’s ever had. Lu Han is stiff and still beneath him, hands curling into Sehun’s shirt, making no effort to pull him closer or push him away. Lu Han’s lips are cold, and he doesn’t move. He lets Sehun kiss him, but he doesn’t kiss him back. Sehun pulls away, hands falling from where they’d cupped Lu Han’s cheeks, and Lu Han is looking at him with wide eyes, fingers still twisted in the material of Sehun’s tank, lips a bit shiny from Sehun’s mouth.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” Sehun says, and he swallows. “I’m so sorry.”
Lu Han doesn’t reply; just looks at him, and Sehun looks back and all he finds is a whole lot of nothing.
Sehun feels like a child. Maybe Sehun just is a child, because he wants to throw a tantrum until he gets what he wants.
Sehun wants to keep Lu Han, but Sehun’s heartbreakingly sure now that Lu Han doesn’t want to be kept.
There’s a Korean fairytale, about a tiger, the most fearsome beast of the Gumgang mountains, who was so determined to chase down these two children and eat them that he stopped paying attention and fell to his own demise.
“What a stupid tiger,” Lu Han had said, when Sehun told it to him, and Sehun had taken a deep breath.
“Haven’t you ever wanted something that much?” Sehun had asked, and Lu Han had slowly tilted his head sideways, pursing his lips in thought. His hair had fallen into his eyes, and Sehun had reached up and brushed it away.
“Maybe, “ Lu Han had said. “But part of being an adult is knowing when you can’t have things.”
“I’d rather stay a kid, then,” Sehun had replied, and Lu Han’s forehead had been warm under his fingers.
Of course people notice. Sehun would like to keep up the games, but he can’t even manage the other half of their heart because the entirety of his own has been crushed.
And fans notice that Sehun gravitates more towards Tao now, or Jongin, neither of whom have ever managed to make Sehun feel as completely empty as Lu Han has.
Sehun had made so much room inside of himself for Lu Han, to keep all the strange and unexplored parts of Lu Han’s smile in, that there’s nothing to fill that space.
“Sehun is okay?” Tao asks, as they squat down at the curb so Tao can smoke a cigarette while no one is looking. Moments like that are rare, nowadays. Sehun nods and looks down at the pavement, the glossy, plastic material of his purple jacket sticking to his skin in the August heat.
“Sehun is okay,” he responds, and he’s not completely sure it’s a lie.
Sehun is okay. Sehun wakes up in the morning and doesn’t reach for Lu Han beside him, and he brushes his teeth and plays video games with Jongin and goes to dance rehearsal and fucks it up as usual until Chanyeol shoves him jokingly and tells him to remember the formation.
So it’s not like Sehun is broken. Only sometimes, at night, when there’s only Junmyeon’s quiet breathing to fill the silence of their room, he can feel the hairline fractures, and they get a little bigger every time he’s unable to meet Lu Han’s eyes.
He misses Lu Han’s bed. He’d wanted to keep that, too.
“Sehun is okay,” he repeats, and Tao offers him a drag of his cigarette, and this time, for the first time, Sehun takes him up on it.
Lu Han has never been Sehun’s best friend.
Lu Han, for Sehun, is more like lungs than a friend.
Sehun’s living through every day, smiling and laughing and performing, and he hasn’t taken a single breath.
It’s a month before they speak in private. They’ve spoken in public; things like ‘turn this way’ or ‘look left’, but Sehun’s found ways to keep them apart. It’s not like SM isn’t on his side, sending M back to China whenever the latest brief stint to remind the fangirls of their unity is over.
Lu Han corners him after a rehearsal. Sehun’s just turned off the lights, so the room is dark. The light from the hallway reflects off the rehearsal room mirrors, and off of Lu Han’s light colored hair, and Sehun feels trapped.
“Why did you kiss me?” Lu Han asks, and Sehun sets down his backpack, and grips the two ends of the towel around his neck. A trickle of sweat creeps down his spine, cool against hot skin, and Lu Han steps closer. “Why?”
“You already know why,” Sehun says, and Lu Han blinks at him, eyelashes fluttering softly and he’s so pretty, Sehun knows, even if Lu Han would kill him if Sehun told him that. Sehun would never tell him that, now, even if it’s still just as true as it had been.
Lu Han’s face is the perfect size to fit in between Sehun’s palms. Lu Han’s nose is the perfect size to press into Sehun’s neck.
These are things Sehun would like to forget.
“What if I don’t?” Lu Han says, and Sehun tongue sneaks out to wet his lips, and Lu Han watches him with a heavy lidded gaze. Everything seems so much scarier in the almost-dark. How much Sehun wants to take from Lu Han feels so much less forbidden.
“It’s not obvious?” Sehun says, and Lu Han closes his eyes, and swallows.
Sehun picks up his backpack, and walks past Lu Han, toward the door. Lu Han reaches out and makes a grab for his wrist, but Sehun jerks away. “Sehun-“
“Lu Han,” Sehun says, and he takes a deep breath. “I’m okay.”
“I miss you,” Lu Han says, and his voice catches on it, and Sehun knows that the right answer isn’t ’not as much as I miss you’.
But Sehun’s the youngest, and it’s okay if he’s selfish.
He doesn’t have to turn around to know that Lu Han flinches when he says it.
“Is it easy, to walk away?” Lu Han asks, and Sehun pauses in the doorway.
“Of course not,” Sehun replies. “But what else can I do?”
“You’re such a dumbass,” Jongin says, leaning back and spreading his legs apart. It’s the way Jongin acts, sometimes, when he wants Sehun to think he’s completely comfortable. Sehun doesn’t have the heart to tell him he’s overcompensating because otherwise Jongin might not talk to him anymore about serious stuff.
“What?” Sehun wraps his arms around his legs, resting his chin on his knees as they stare at the television.
Jongin sighs, and searches for words. “It’s like… You. And hyung. And.”
“Wow, I totally understood that,” Sehun says dryly, and Jongin chucks a throw pillow at him.
“You did though,” Jongin says, crossing his arms over his chest. He looks over at Sehun out of the corner of his eye. “Lu Han hyung…”
“That’s none of your business,” Sehun says, and he says it lightly but he knows Jongin can hear the warning in it.
Jongin sighs, and flops his arms to the side, gnawing on his lower lip as he thinks about what to say. “It’s all of our business, kind of. It’s weird.”
“Not this. This isn’t.”
“Look,” Jongin says, and he puts his hand awkwardly on Sehun’s knee, and Sehun is wryly amused that it’s Jongin who has undertaken the task of having a talk with Sehun about his feelings. Jongin is his best friend, but words have never been his strong suit. “Lu Han is…”
“A bandmate. We aren’t fighting, so it’s not really the band’s concern.”
“I know you’re not exactly fighting but…” Jongin scratches his nose. “Lu Han isn’t used to people like you,” Jongin says, and Sehun’s stomach twists.
“Why did you kiss me?” Lu Han asks, when he’s slipped into Sehun’s bed. It’s four in the morning, and Junmyeon is fast asleep, slow, even, silent breathing more than enough to assure Sehun of his slumber.
“Because I’m the most foolish tiger of them all,” Sehun says, and Lu Han’s arm slips around his waist.
“What if one day I come back and you’re all grown up?” Lu Han asks. “And you start thinking you can’t have things, like me?”
“I think it’s impossible for me not to want to keep you,” Sehun says, and Lu Han’s leg slips between Sehun’s two, and runs his fingers through Sehun’s hair as his other hand digs into Sehun’s side. “I’m selfish.”
“That’s all right,” Lu Han says. “That’s all right.” And he presses a kiss to Sehun’s throat, the way he does when he’s about to leave, only this time he stays.
It’s hard to sleep like that, with Lu Han’s weight on top of him, legs twined together and fingers tight enough to bruise, but Sehun, for the first time in a long time, breathes easy.
Lu Han kisses him gently, like he thinks Sehun will say no, but Sehun pushes closer, sucking Lu Han’s lower lip into his mouth and tasting the moon and the stars.
Sehun’s tongue finds Lu Han’s, and the sweetness of Lu Han’s mouth is rivaled only by the sweetness of Lu Han’s hands in his hair, dragging him down closer, letting Sehun take and take as much wants. His mouth is slick and hot, and Sehun could be addicted to this; is already addicted to this, just like he’s addicted to everything else about Lu Han, who doesn’t make a move to slip away from Sehun at all.
Sehun listens, giddily, to Lu Han’s sighs and Lu Han’s gasps, and collects each and every one of them before they disappear into the night.
“Sehun, stand next to me,” Lu Han demands, pouting at Sehun as Sehun tries to jostle in between Tao and Kris.
Of course he does, because Sehun and Lu Han always stand together.
Sehun slides into the space beside Lu Han, and tugs on Lu Han’s sleeve. Lu Han looks up at him with a smile, and elbows him gently, and Sehun’s insides shiver just a little.
They make a heart with their lifted arms and Lu Han holds his hand. Both of them have soft palms, and fingers that fit perfectly together, and Sehun doesn’t want to let go as they leave the stage.
So he doesn’t.
“What a stupid tiger,” Lu Han says, and Sehun kisses him again.