can i keep you (1/3) [for jinxbynature]
For: jinxbynature
Rating: R
Side pairing/s: miscellaneous sehun/exo pairings
Length: 19900 words
Summary: sehun might be just a little bit stuck on good times and pretty things
Warning/s: 1st pov, many many disturbing themes please heed, veered so far away from the prompt i landed on pluto, as unbetaed as they come, more notes-cum-sad-excuses at the end
As usual, he comes home at six.
The door creaks open, its rusty hinges offering some resistance before it swings to slam against the brick wall. Cold air rushes in, but the light from outside is a warm orange, and it spills into the darkness of the room.
“Baby, I’m home,” Sehun whispers as he pushes through, sliding the lock in behind him. “How are you?”
I stay mum, not rewarding him with an answer. It must be something he’d gotten used to, though, my silence: Sehun simply shrugs and sends a smile my way.
The hours, days, and weeks that I’ve been kept here can sometimes make me forget why I fell in love with him in the first place. But then he does that, and I remember.
Mostly.
Sehun walks closer towards me to sit in his favourite armchair, the one he’d dragged down some time ago to put next to the bed. He settles his briefcase down by his feet, as usual, before placing a hand over one of my own.
“I missed you today,” he says, voice still nothing more than a flutter in the dank air, thumb slowly rubbing circles around my knuckles. “It’s a hard time for everyone at work.” He kisses the bony knobs he’s touched, grimacing afterwards, as if frustrated at how they’re so much more prominent now. “I couldn’t wait to get home to you.”
Could you guess if it was the same for me, I nearly say. But I can’t. Therefore I say nothing. Do nothing. Just laid there, still as a rock, hoping that whatever it was showing on my face was pleasant enough so that Sehun wouldn’t get into one of those moods of his.
Because I don’t think I could bear it today if he does.
I try my best to look cute or pretty or beautiful, the way Sehun had ranted in the early days were the things he likes best about me. I do not want to entertain what would happen if I didn’t... present myself as such whenever he comes by. I defied him once or twice, had borne the consequences: still sends tingles down my spine every time I think about the pain.
When I’m good, he’s affectionate and lovely. He is the Sehun before all of this, the one who tells me he loves me without a shadow of a doubt in his voice, and I feel like I could go to the ends of the earth to gratify him.
For this is the Sehun who tells me again and again that he’d rather have me like this, then not have me at all.
The bell chimed incessantly for the third time in as many seconds.
“Jesus just wait a second, I’m coming!”
Sehun was annoyed. He had been in the basement toiling away, and he loathed interruptions to his work. The climb back up was steep too. He was panting by the time he pulled on the doorknob.
But when he saw the person standing there on his welcome mat, he stopped breathing altogether.
“Hi!” Came a booming voice out of a seemingly small body. “How do you do?”
The stranger was smiling brightly, eyes twinkling as he spoke.
“I just moved into the next unit,” he continued, jerking his thumb towards the midnight blue door behind. “I’m new to the area-”
There was a hand extended towards Sehun now, and despite being well aware of what the appropriate social etiquette in this situation would be, he froze in his spot. He wasn’t exactly what one would call a social butterfly. This was uncomfortable for him in more ways than he could count.
“-so I really need to have friends. I was hoping we could be.”
Friends. Sehun didn’t think he has many of those. Okay. He could do this. He wanted to.
“Come on now,” the man wheedled, fingers wiggling mid-air. “Don’t leave me hanging.”
That jolted Sehun out of his thoughts, hastily grasping the hand in front of him with his own shaky one. “Hello,” he croaked out, voice similarly unstable. “Nice to meet you.”
The curl of a smile on his new neighbour’s face stretched further, sharp canines glinting under the dull fluorescent lamp of their shared corridor.
It blinded him. He was absolutely gobsmacked by the sheer magnitude of it all.
“That’s more like it.” The man chuckled loudly, the throaty sound melodic to Sehun’s ears, but one that his guest immediately tried to muffle with his slender fingers as soon as it surfaced. “Sorry about that. I’m always told I’m too... much.” The soft pink blush on his cheeks deepened into a rich red when he grinned again. “I’m Baekhyun, by the way.”
And Sehun thought just maybe, that this whole beingfriends business. Maybe that won’t work.
Not when that familiar thrum of blood racing everywhere whenever he finds someone attractive - whenever he finds someone particularly cute - hit him with the speed of a freight train, accelerating into what is akin to lightning in his veins the longer he looked at Baekhyun.
Oh how he wanted. Perhaps like he had never wanted anything before.
Cute things have always been his weakness anyway, and so he answered, hoping against hope that it would be the start to not a friendship, but somethingmore.
“My name is Sehun.”
Baekhyun, Sehun learnt, was younger than him by several years and a graduate student at the university a few streets and avenues away from their cheap residential suburb.
Their first awkward denouement had ended as quickly as it had started, when the blare of Baekhyun’s telephone forced him to hurry back to his apartment.
“Come over when you have the time,” he had said before he rushed off. “Mom taught me to be nice to new friends, so I’ll make you something.”
By that point Sehun couldn’t bring himself to feel any more startled. He just nodded dumbly and waved at Baekhyun’s retreating back.
But in the weeks after, he also noticed that the man was largely nocturnal. He was never home when the night begins, only coming home once the sun has started peeking over the roofs of the brownstones of their neighbourhood.
Because of this, despite how much Sehun wished it to happen, he didn’t get to see him again for ages.
Until the heavens gratefully intervened and brought Baekhyun to the coffee house Sehun frequented on the way to work every morning - reuniting them by way of the former barrelling straight into him, splashing lukewarm cocoa all over his front.
“I’m so sorry!” Baekhyun blustered, wiping at the chocolate stain with a tissue. “Mister, I’m sorry, I’m- Sehun? You’re Sehun, right?”
Sehun stared down, trying to focus at how much of a mess he must look like now, but failed because the only thing he could see was Baekhyun’s hand on his chest. “Uh,” he began in his typical conversational fashion. “Yes. Hi Baekhyun.”
“Shit, I’m sorry,” Baekhyun repeated, hand working frantically again. He glanced up guiltily as he did. “I really am.”
“It’s fine,” Sehun murmured in response, eventhough in the grand scale of things, his brain told him pointedly, it really isn’t.
Baekhyun tugged at his sleeve, urging the elder to follow him. “I’ll get you cleaned up.”
He needed to say no, because dear lord, I’m going to be late, but for some reason Sehun couldn’t. He let himself be led to the restroom, the sound of the pipes leaking from above their heads the only noise in the empty space.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t looking,” Baekhyun said as he dabbed soapy water on Sehun’s workshirt. “I’m just - just tired from the night.”
Sehun cleared his throat, scratchy from not having had his routine eight a.m. Americano yet. “Why are you always out all night?” He asked quietly.
“Huh,” the other returned, tearing his gaze off his preoccupation. There was a furrow of concentration in the middle of his forehead, and Sehun helplessly thought that, oh gods he’s cute, missing Baekhyun’s elaboration whilst he was at it.
“What was that?”
“Huh,” Baekhyun said again, stopping for a while. “I said I work at the lounge on Sixth sometimes… okay, I guess most times. As the singer.” He shrugged and threw the used toilet paper into the bin. “Graduate school sucks where money is concerned. Got to earn something.”
Figures, Sehun silently agreed. Of course Baekhyun worked with music. After he moved in, Sehun had nary a weekend spared from hearing the most wonderful mixture of piano classics and moderns wafting in from the guy’s apartment. In fact he had vastly enjoyed one particular piece, one he’d discerned to be a mashup of Chopin’s and Ray Charles’s best compositions.
“What do you do, Sehun?”
“Ah that.” The million dollar question, it was. Sehun wasn’t sure if it was information he’d want to divulge just yet. “A job I’m very much late for,” he said to escape answering. He meant to be funny, but Baekhyun’s expression soured.
“Oh hell,” he swore. He had his hands together in front of him in a pleading gesture, probably a second away from kneeling to show just how very sorry he was when Sehun caught him by the arms.
“I’m kidding,” Sehun asserted, trying to placate Baekhyun. But not really. “It’s no big deal.” Shit, shit, shit, I had to leave five minutes ago.
“I have to make it up to you somehow,” the younger said, a flush of misguided relief running across his cheeks. “Don’t I owe you a meal or something? I meant to invite you last week but it’s been insane. Come over on Sunday?”
Sehun’s mind flashed to all the things he’d planned to do for that day, none of them involving his neighbour (as hopeful as he had been about seeing Baekhyun again). Should I move them around? But I have so much to do -
“Please?” Baekhyun cut in before Sehun could decide that he shouldn’t. “It’ll be wonderful to get to know you better.”
One look at Baekhyun’s blushing face and Sehun’s brain short-circuited like it never had before. “Yes,” he said against the resounding no of his conscience. “Absolutely.”
Sehun thought he might black out when Baekhyun stupidly and adorably fist pumped a little. “It’s a date.”
He did end up being late for work from the cocoa chaos, but Sehun walked into the premises with an extra spring to his step, almost levitating with how happy he was. He hasn’t felt this way since… well, just since.
“You’re extraordinarily tardy and you have something nasty on your shirt,” Zitao greeted him with, as if Sehun didn’t already know.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered anyway. He flashed his card on the check-in box by the door, cursing inwardly at how his previously flawless record would now be marred. “Got into a little… predicament on the way here.”
Zitao stopped tapping away at his calculator to give his friend a look and an easy shrug. “But it must be your lucky day. Joonmyeon isn’t in yet. Has a client to collect from all the way upstate or something similar. I don’t know, he’s the boss.”
Sehun breathed a sigh of relief, smiling a little as he did.
That threw Zitao right off. ‘Woah, you -” He paused, eyelids shuttering at breakneck speed. “You smiled. At me. Or around me. Whatever,” he stammered. “Did something good happen to you? I mean I’ve only ever seen you smile around the clients… and that’s creepy as fuck. Finally got laid, huh?
At that the curve of Sehun mouth evolved, upturning into a tight-lipped grimace, and Zitao shut up before he could breach more boundaries. “I just had a good conversation with a nice person,” Sehun explained tersely, in a tone that disinvited more questions on the matter. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a job to do.”
He turned on his heel to trudge off into his workroom, ignoring the other’s calls of apology and a hysterical I promise I’ll buy you lunch for the rest of the month!.
Sehun shut the door without a second glance back, muffling the tail end of Zitao’s whines.
With his apron on, he said hello to the client already lying there and ready, and set to work.
As he mixed the chemicals he needed in well-memorized ratios, he thought of the crinkles of laughter permanently apparent around the edges of Baekhyun’s eyes and how beautifully they add to the other features of his face. He ended up grinning to himself for the rest of the day.
Sehun had fallen hard before. Plenty of times.
There was a boy in highschool. He was a dancer, who had pretended he liked hiphop better than ballet because it was simply the safer thing to be back then.
He was also all long limbs and dark eyes, generous mouth that was seldom graced with a smile, but whenever it did he was bewitching.
When their tentative friendship - forged in the hidden creek behind their school over the common need to be alone - had bloomed into something less innocent and more dangerous, Sehun had thought that their age difference didn’t mean anything.
But he didn’t take into account that when you were that young, just a year translated into a whole lightyear, and before he knew it, Jongin was graduating and saying goodbye for good.
“I’m leaving,” he had announced one day the second he’d plopped down next to him on the riverbed.
Sehun stared at him, expecting Jongin to say he was joking and break into one of those rare cackles he had. But the boy soldiered on, heavily-lidded eyes never leaving the ground.
“Moving southwest. A company took me in. And-” He hesitated, a hand ruffling up his graduation-hat flattened hair, “- I met a girl. I like her a lot.”
To say Sehun was speechless was an understatement.
“We’ve been going out for a couple of months now. She’s a dancer too. She’s coming with me.”
What about me, Sehun wondered. What was I to you?
Jongin gathered his feet beneath him and stood up. To his credit he looked guilty, but Sehun could only begin to become infuriated as his heart shattered into pieces. “I gotta go. She’s waiting for me,” Jongin said, trying to get the other to look at him one last time. “Sehun I -”
“Just leave,” Sehun ordered, voice surprisingly calm. He hid his face between his knees. He couldn’t bear to see Jongin right now, to see how he might have looked at him then. “Thanks for having been my friend.”
He heard a long frustrated sigh, before the crunching of twigs and branches underneath feet came and went.
Sehun remained there, eyes shut tight, images of Jongin’s smiling face behind his eyelids. Moments so precious and rare, when Jongin let go of his inhibitions and was precious and carefree. They were images of when Sehun had first fallen in love. Images of when he had first felt loved in return.
These were the facets of Jongin he was determined to remember the boy by.
Sunday arrived, and not a moment too soon.
Sehun had been on pricks and needles all week long. He couldn’t sit still, hands always having to be working on something; and yet whenever he was toiling away at anything his head was never with him. He had ended up giving a client green eyebrows one day due to his constant state of distraction.
The thing is, though Sehun greatly anticipated his dinner with Baekhyun, he just as equally dreaded it too. On one hand, he was really looking forward to talk with him some more. On the other, he was afraid his overall awkwardness would scare his neighbour away indefinitely.
It happened often enough. He didn’t think he could handle another person walking away from him.
These bubbles of worry boiling away in the pit of his stomach ended up derailing his plans completely. Come Saturday he had practically abandoned everything he had so meticulously set up and promised to fulfil at the start of the week. All the work he had to do - no, must do - in the basement was put on hold.
Because of this, he was infinitely thankful for the minuscule spot of presence of mind he appeared to have left, enough to dress himself up properly that afternoon before pressing gently on Baekhyun’s music-note shaped bell.
The door opened to Baekhyun’s smiling face, a stained sky-blue apron on over a simple white button-up and jeans.
Somewhere within its cage Sehun felt his heart skip a beat.
“You’re early,” Baekhyun said over the tapering sound of his Sinatra doorbell ringtone, the back of one hand dabbing at the sweat sheening down the side of his cheeks. “I’m not done in the kitchen yet.”
Sehun noticed he looked a little flustered, and wondered if he was little too punctual. “Uh,” he began, “I’m so sorry, I could go back and come later-”
“Nonsense,” Baekhyun cut through with a laugh, ushering Sehun into the apartment. “You’re already here. Have a seat.” He gestured to the sole piece of seating furniture in the room. “I’ll just stick the darn potatoes in the oven and get back to you, okay?”
Once he was left there alone, he couldn’t help but have a peek around.
Sehun saw a tall mountain of something in one corner, covered clumsily with a large knit blanket. Curious, he lifted one corner to find boxes underneath, labelled to-be-ransacked in black marker. He realized that the other guy probably hadn’t really moved in yet. Maybe that was why the place was so bare.
By comparison, the rickety piano he had standing against one whitewashed wall looked completely broken in. Music notes were strewn all over its rack, its ivory keys yellowed by years of use. Sehun sat on its wooden bench, tested a few bars from the notes spread before him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d played; he’d probably been ten when he’s stopped, his parents having given up once they accepted that he would never be interested to become the next Tchaikovsky-esque prodigy.
So engrossed was he with navigating his way haphazardly on the piano that he almost jumped at the feel of delicate fingers pressing down on his own clumsy ones, gently prodding them into position.
“Not like that,” Baekhyun’s voice came, soft next to Sehun’s ear. “Like this.”
Even as he let himself be guided into producing a much more pleasing version of the song, Sehun remained hyper-aware of the warm press of Baekhyun’s chest against his back, the whiff of vanilla in the man’s cologne.
His heart skipped some more.
Their little lunch date was going much better than Sehun had anticipated.
Cheeks still flushed from how close Baekhyun was to him as he hovered over the piano, Sehun followed his host to the small dining table for the meal.
He quickly found out that Baekhyun was not a good cook. He ate his food to be polite anyway, and also because every time he had a mouthful the other rewarded him with a smile. How could he not?
The conversation was amazing, although Sehun made sure they kept the spotlight on Baekhyun. It was how he preferred his dates. He knew from experience that Sehun and everything he entailed did not make good first impressions.
“Why’d you choose music?” Sehun took another forkful of burnt potatoes, pausing to gather some courage to actually have another bite.
“Umm, why indeed,” Baekhyun said half-jokingly, mouth pouting and twisting as he was pondering for an answer.
Sehun couldn’t take his eyes off of it. “Parents disapproved?” He asked so that Baekhyun would stop doing that.
It backfired, when the guy started nibbling on his goddamn lips instead. “No,” he replied, with a slight shake to his head. “I know dad would have been happier if I was an engineer. But they liked that I chose piano. It’s just that-” he trailed off, glancing at the huge piano for a second, then back at Sehun. “The song I showed you? That was mine. I wrote it.”
The silence that followed was filled only with the awkward sounds of Sehun swallowing his food down.
“Composing was always something I liked doing, you know? Since I got my mini keyboard at five.” He pitter-pattered his fingers against the table in an imitation of some unknown tune. “Wrote my first at six.”
Sehun hummed as he listened, worry slowly settling in at how Baekhyun’s mood had taken a sudden left turn.
“But lately, I can’t write anymore. That’s why I came to New York,” he said, poking at his portion of jerk chicken. “This is last resort. Go back to school, get some inspiration again from the music scene here. Nothing’s happening so far though, and I can’t help but think that I’ve wasted-”
” - too much time on something that turns out to be a useless pursuit in the end?”
“….yeah.”
He put his fork down, sipped at the cheap white wine they had popped open. “Listen kid,” Sehun started, the beginnings of a grin on his mouth when he saw Baekhyun’s own twitching at the term of endearment. “That’s how everyone feels at some point. Especially when it comes to the choices they’ve made.”
“Have you?”
“Of course. Maybe not for the same reasons you do. But about many other things.” Sehun made sure to stare straight at Baekhyun when he spoke next, with a kind of conviction he didn’t know he had. “Don’t ever think of your music as a waste of time, though. That song? It was gorgeous. Most times you just need to… find that motivation again, the one that pushed you to try the first time. Like... who or what it was that inspired you to write the song. Maybe you’ll regain that little something that went missing again.”
Baekhyun stared right back, and for a while Sehun thought that maybe he had overdone it. Who the fuck was he, really, to hand out advice when his own life wasn’t shit?
But then the younger smiled, blooming with the radiance of maybe a billion full moons, and it almost blew Sehun off his seat, the food threatening to make its way back up his throat.
“Well, hyung-” he hesitated, an eyebrow quirked, “I can call you that right?” At Sehun’s muted approval, he caught one of the elder’s hand, eagerly bouncing in spot. “You know what? Maybe I will.”
Later, long after he had gotten back home, plopped on the bed after his evening shower, Sehun could still feel the ghost of Baekhyun’s fingertips on the swell of his palm. It had set the butterflies in his stomach crazy. Where they were rabid before, however, now the sensation was more subtle, almost as if it was not truly there, but palpable enough for it to make him restless.
It was a lovely sort of feeling.
For the first time in a year, he ignored the screech of the alarm he’d wind up to blare on routine to remind him of the chores needing tending to in the basement room. He turned into the cocoon of his sheets instead, the soft fluttering of wings within lulling him to sleep.
“Oh thank god you’re here,” Zitao drawled as he walked into the workroom, a steaming cup of milky tea in hand. “You might not want to hear any of this, but I want to rant.”
Normally, Sehun would be annoyed at people interrupting his sessions. Especially when, as Zitao was wont to cause, the interruption would be nothing more than a long five minutes of bitching. And Mondays are their busiest days. Sehun had a long list of clients to serve, one after the other.
But this Monday was different.
As he had set off to work, Baekhyun had barged out of his unit, shouting out his hello in his hurry to catch up with Sehun in the hallway. “I heard your door slam. The walls are thin,” he said, face red and minor creases of what seemed to have been made by rumpled sheets imprinted into the side of his face. He must have just woken up. “Thought I’d see you out.”
Sehun felt himself flushing too. How could he not, when Baekhyun was clad simply in boxers and a thin shirt? The way his heart had pumped faster as he entertained the thought that Baekhyun had taken this trouble just to say hey to him certainly didn’t help.
“Listen,” the man began, fingers ruffling through his unkempt hair. “Do you want to… come over again some day?” He paused, eyes flitting shyly up to meet the elder’s. “Like this Sunday? I had a real great time yesterday and-”
“Yeah,” Sehun exclaimed, almost too enthusiastically. “I’ll enjoy that very much. I could help you ransack those boxes indefinitely.” So that you’ll never leave.
Baekhyun looked somewhat startled, before blushing a deeper colour in embarrassment. “Ah,” he murmured. “You noticed them. I guess my methods of disguising my mess didn’t work.”
“It didn’t,” Sehun said teasingly, a little bewildered at himself. Who the hell was this person, flirting like this? But he reckoned he was grinning like an idiot anyway, and he couldn’t find it in himself to care that he did. “But let’s order takeout,” he hastily added.
The crazy fits of laughter Baekhyun went into before waving him off had boosted Sehun’s mood, so much so that here was he now, half-listening to Zitao babble about a complaint they had gotten from a client last week without snapping his typical shut it and shove it at his colleague.
“So anyway,” Zitao stopped to sigh into his tea, “Park called.”
Sehun’s hand froze in place, sharp trimming scissors opened dangerously close to his client’s temple. “Oh, yeah,” he said, trying and failing to sound indifferent. “When?”
“Last Friday. Like five seconds after you left.”
“….does he have anything new?”
“No. Quite the opposite, actually. Asked if we did.”
“Oh.” Snip, snip, the scissors go again. “Anything else?”
“Nothing of note, really.”
Sehun might actually blow the client over with the sigh of relief that could have been, but -
“Although he’s been asking after you again.”
He stuttered instead. “What?”
“Thought it was weird that he did myself. Hadn’t they already cleared you?”
“What did Park say he wants from me?”
Zitao shrugged, broad shoulders straining through his pink workshirt. “Don’t know. Told me he’d like to talk to you, if he could. Said the same thing last couple of times too.”
The grip of his fingers tightened around the thumb-rings as his throat slowly closed in. “The last couple of times?” Sehun choked.
“Yeah. Didn’t I tell you?”
“….no.”
“Sorry. Must have slipped my mind.” Zitao straightened up abruptly, tea sloshing around dangerously close to the rim of his cup. Whoops, got to go, he murmured, probably realizing at last that he has his own job to do. He paused to turn around before leaving, deep frown lines across the bridge of his nose. “I know he wouldn’t feel anything,” Zitao said slowly, pointer shifting to Sehun’s hand, “but you might want to be careful with that.”
Only then did he realize the gash he’d made in his client, at the juncture between his ear and his hairline, the tip of his scissors disappearing into the white pallor of the man’s skin.
Sehun did nothing. He just watched on as a crimson bloom began gathering around the cold metal.
When Sehun was twenty, he loved another dancer.
In hindsight, that should have been a warning for him to stay far and away. A sign that perhaps history would repeat itself, that he’d be left behind again.
But when they first met, Sehun was a struggling arts student, away from home for the first time in his life. The city was foreign; he had chosen the college precisely because he had wanted to be someplace was so far removed from the small town he was used to, but now that he was here he could only feel out-of-sync.
He had been too miserable to ignore the friendly extending of a hand, and even more so defenseless against the insistent press of Yixing’s lips on his neck, the desperate thrusts of Yixing’s body into his body.
Yixing was handsome, so adorably dimpled when he smiled. He was attentive and kind. But perhaps what was most important to Sehun was how open Yixing was about their relationship. He couldn’t have cared less about the judging looks people send him whenever he showers affection upon Sehun, and around him Sehun was never made to feel like a dirty little secret.
But Yixing was as broken as himself, Sehun came to realize, if not more so.
He was a brilliant dancer. Truly one of a kind in Sehun’s love-hazed eyes. But as good as he was, Yixing was always second best. He could make his own mixes, dance his heart out to beats he alone would know. But try as he might he never made the cut.
Yixing turned to his vices for comfort and Sehun could only watch as wonderful, sweet Yixing ironically became the one thing he had striven not to be: a shadow.
It wasn’t long before he stopped smiling earnestly. Of course, whenever he did, it was still heartbreakingly beautiful, dimples furrowing into his steadily receding cheeks. But it was stupid how this thing Sehun had loved the most about Yixing’s smile turned into a mirror image of Yixing’s soul, the most blatant reminder of the hollow shell Yixing had came to be.
Sehun buried his head between his knees again the day Yixing slipped away into a permanent sleep on that sterile hospital bed.
This fragile emaciated person was not the Yixing who had loved him.
The Yixing he remembered had been vibrant, danced with his body moving as if his life depended on it. And maybe it really had.
Sehun went home wishing he could have somehow helped Yixing stop mid-motion then. He wished he could have had that power to preserve the Yixing that had made at least that little bit happy.
Their relationship developed with all the speed of a slow-burning candle, but for Sehun it only intensified what he felt for his younger neighbour.
Baekhyun, for all his boisterousness, was surprisingly rather shy around him. He blustered when Sehun complimented him on his baby photos once they’d dug them out of one of the boxes, giggled nervously as Sehun applauded his playing of a Dean Martin tune or some other on the piano, blushed the deepest shade of red after Sehun had kissed him over a sink full of dirty dished one night out of the blue.
It only served to make him all the more desirable for some odd reason.
What a great feeling it was, this; the feeling that came with the knowledge that you have the power to turn someone into mush simply by smiling at them. Sehun has never had the upper-hand in his previous affairs before. He was always the one to crave for more.
It was no wonder then that he absolutely loved how the tables were turned with Baekhyun. It didn’t hurt that the guy was ever so cute too. So very fucking cute.
For a while, Sehun had thought that he was the one wrapped around Baekhyun’s pretty little pinky.
But as their Sunday lunches turned into every-other-day-dinners he soon realized the reality was very much the other way around. He could have Baekhyun whenever he wanted. All he had to do was ask.
He didn’t, though. He couldn’t.
Not for the lack of confidence. Sehun had long mustered enough of that to enable him to do so.
But he couldn’t, because he wanted Baekhyun to last.
And for that to happen, he decided as he mixed soft lye with water in the metal cup in his cold basement, I have to do this.
It went against every principle he had about his occupation, but he had to. Yes, he affirmed, thinking of what was hidden behind the closed casket. His imagined the most horrified look that would certainly befall Baekhyun’s face should he see what was underneath its heavy wooden cover. This is a must.
Because Sehun was sure, if Baekhyun ever found out about the skeletons in his closet, he’d never see that beautiful face ever again.
When describing what he does to support himself, Sehun always took the long route. That is to say, he would talk about it in such complicated terms that people either eventually just stop listening or stop caring.
You would think that he was embarrassed of his job.
He wasn’t. Far from it. If anything, he was too proud of it to simply assign one single word to his profession, when in his opinion it was so much more than that.
It gave him the will to stand back up on his feet after losing Yixing. It gave his life a purpose; or rather, gave him a purpose to live.
Yixing’s funeral was a quiet affair, attended by maybe a handful of the dancers from his company and closest family. Sehun fit into neither one of those groups, and for a while he thought that maybe he shouldn’t intrude. The others may have known the nature of relationship, but Yixing’s family didn’t. He didn’t want to shock them, didn’t want to explain himself.
In the end he realized that he needn’t have worried. The only thing that had mattered to them was the loss of their child.
Regardless of how well he was welcomed, Sehun stayed quiet in the back pews throughout the service to remain obscure. He didn’t move a muscle until it has ended and everyone has left. He wanted some time alone with Yixing, wanted to say his final goodbyes in peace.
That was when he saw him.
As Sehun approached the chancel of the small chapel, his heart jumped.
Yixing had been so gaunt before his passing. His skin was pallid, his hair sparse where they had fallen off. His lips were chapped and swollen, his arms bruised blue and black. The shit he’d pumped into his system had quite literally sucked the life out of him.
Truth was, Yixing hadn’t been beautiful in a long time.
But it was amazing, almost miraculous, just how beautiful he was then. His skin glowed, black hair growing full and silky on his head. His lips were smooth and pink, the way Sehun remembered loving to kiss them most. The marks of abuse from needles and god knows what else Yixing had on his arms were gone too.
And it was amazing, almost miraculous, how Yixing was truly dead, but lying there in the black casket he was made to look more alive than he had been in life.
For someone like Sehun, who strived on memories of his loved ones at their most beautiful - of when their love was at its most beautiful - it was an epiphany.
He knew what he wanted to -no. Needed to do.
part two
Rating: R
Side pairing/s: miscellaneous sehun/exo pairings
Length: 19900 words
Summary: sehun might be just a little bit stuck on good times and pretty things
Warning/s: 1st pov, many many disturbing themes please heed, veered so far away from the prompt i landed on pluto, as unbetaed as they come, more notes-cum-sad-excuses at the end
As usual, he comes home at six.
The door creaks open, its rusty hinges offering some resistance before it swings to slam against the brick wall. Cold air rushes in, but the light from outside is a warm orange, and it spills into the darkness of the room.
“Baby, I’m home,” Sehun whispers as he pushes through, sliding the lock in behind him. “How are you?”
I stay mum, not rewarding him with an answer. It must be something he’d gotten used to, though, my silence: Sehun simply shrugs and sends a smile my way.
The hours, days, and weeks that I’ve been kept here can sometimes make me forget why I fell in love with him in the first place. But then he does that, and I remember.
Mostly.
Sehun walks closer towards me to sit in his favourite armchair, the one he’d dragged down some time ago to put next to the bed. He settles his briefcase down by his feet, as usual, before placing a hand over one of my own.
“I missed you today,” he says, voice still nothing more than a flutter in the dank air, thumb slowly rubbing circles around my knuckles. “It’s a hard time for everyone at work.” He kisses the bony knobs he’s touched, grimacing afterwards, as if frustrated at how they’re so much more prominent now. “I couldn’t wait to get home to you.”
Could you guess if it was the same for me, I nearly say. But I can’t. Therefore I say nothing. Do nothing. Just laid there, still as a rock, hoping that whatever it was showing on my face was pleasant enough so that Sehun wouldn’t get into one of those moods of his.
Because I don’t think I could bear it today if he does.
I try my best to look cute or pretty or beautiful, the way Sehun had ranted in the early days were the things he likes best about me. I do not want to entertain what would happen if I didn’t... present myself as such whenever he comes by. I defied him once or twice, had borne the consequences: still sends tingles down my spine every time I think about the pain.
When I’m good, he’s affectionate and lovely. He is the Sehun before all of this, the one who tells me he loves me without a shadow of a doubt in his voice, and I feel like I could go to the ends of the earth to gratify him.
For this is the Sehun who tells me again and again that he’d rather have me like this, then not have me at all.
The bell chimed incessantly for the third time in as many seconds.
“Jesus just wait a second, I’m coming!”
Sehun was annoyed. He had been in the basement toiling away, and he loathed interruptions to his work. The climb back up was steep too. He was panting by the time he pulled on the doorknob.
But when he saw the person standing there on his welcome mat, he stopped breathing altogether.
“Hi!” Came a booming voice out of a seemingly small body. “How do you do?”
The stranger was smiling brightly, eyes twinkling as he spoke.
“I just moved into the next unit,” he continued, jerking his thumb towards the midnight blue door behind. “I’m new to the area-”
There was a hand extended towards Sehun now, and despite being well aware of what the appropriate social etiquette in this situation would be, he froze in his spot. He wasn’t exactly what one would call a social butterfly. This was uncomfortable for him in more ways than he could count.
“-so I really need to have friends. I was hoping we could be.”
Friends. Sehun didn’t think he has many of those. Okay. He could do this. He wanted to.
“Come on now,” the man wheedled, fingers wiggling mid-air. “Don’t leave me hanging.”
That jolted Sehun out of his thoughts, hastily grasping the hand in front of him with his own shaky one. “Hello,” he croaked out, voice similarly unstable. “Nice to meet you.”
The curl of a smile on his new neighbour’s face stretched further, sharp canines glinting under the dull fluorescent lamp of their shared corridor.
It blinded him. He was absolutely gobsmacked by the sheer magnitude of it all.
“That’s more like it.” The man chuckled loudly, the throaty sound melodic to Sehun’s ears, but one that his guest immediately tried to muffle with his slender fingers as soon as it surfaced. “Sorry about that. I’m always told I’m too... much.” The soft pink blush on his cheeks deepened into a rich red when he grinned again. “I’m Baekhyun, by the way.”
And Sehun thought just maybe, that this whole beingfriends business. Maybe that won’t work.
Not when that familiar thrum of blood racing everywhere whenever he finds someone attractive - whenever he finds someone particularly cute - hit him with the speed of a freight train, accelerating into what is akin to lightning in his veins the longer he looked at Baekhyun.
Oh how he wanted. Perhaps like he had never wanted anything before.
Cute things have always been his weakness anyway, and so he answered, hoping against hope that it would be the start to not a friendship, but somethingmore.
“My name is Sehun.”
Baekhyun, Sehun learnt, was younger than him by several years and a graduate student at the university a few streets and avenues away from their cheap residential suburb.
Their first awkward denouement had ended as quickly as it had started, when the blare of Baekhyun’s telephone forced him to hurry back to his apartment.
“Come over when you have the time,” he had said before he rushed off. “Mom taught me to be nice to new friends, so I’ll make you something.”
By that point Sehun couldn’t bring himself to feel any more startled. He just nodded dumbly and waved at Baekhyun’s retreating back.
But in the weeks after, he also noticed that the man was largely nocturnal. He was never home when the night begins, only coming home once the sun has started peeking over the roofs of the brownstones of their neighbourhood.
Because of this, despite how much Sehun wished it to happen, he didn’t get to see him again for ages.
Until the heavens gratefully intervened and brought Baekhyun to the coffee house Sehun frequented on the way to work every morning - reuniting them by way of the former barrelling straight into him, splashing lukewarm cocoa all over his front.
“I’m so sorry!” Baekhyun blustered, wiping at the chocolate stain with a tissue. “Mister, I’m sorry, I’m- Sehun? You’re Sehun, right?”
Sehun stared down, trying to focus at how much of a mess he must look like now, but failed because the only thing he could see was Baekhyun’s hand on his chest. “Uh,” he began in his typical conversational fashion. “Yes. Hi Baekhyun.”
“Shit, I’m sorry,” Baekhyun repeated, hand working frantically again. He glanced up guiltily as he did. “I really am.”
“It’s fine,” Sehun murmured in response, eventhough in the grand scale of things, his brain told him pointedly, it really isn’t.
Baekhyun tugged at his sleeve, urging the elder to follow him. “I’ll get you cleaned up.”
He needed to say no, because dear lord, I’m going to be late, but for some reason Sehun couldn’t. He let himself be led to the restroom, the sound of the pipes leaking from above their heads the only noise in the empty space.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t looking,” Baekhyun said as he dabbed soapy water on Sehun’s workshirt. “I’m just - just tired from the night.”
Sehun cleared his throat, scratchy from not having had his routine eight a.m. Americano yet. “Why are you always out all night?” He asked quietly.
“Huh,” the other returned, tearing his gaze off his preoccupation. There was a furrow of concentration in the middle of his forehead, and Sehun helplessly thought that, oh gods he’s cute, missing Baekhyun’s elaboration whilst he was at it.
“What was that?”
“Huh,” Baekhyun said again, stopping for a while. “I said I work at the lounge on Sixth sometimes… okay, I guess most times. As the singer.” He shrugged and threw the used toilet paper into the bin. “Graduate school sucks where money is concerned. Got to earn something.”
Figures, Sehun silently agreed. Of course Baekhyun worked with music. After he moved in, Sehun had nary a weekend spared from hearing the most wonderful mixture of piano classics and moderns wafting in from the guy’s apartment. In fact he had vastly enjoyed one particular piece, one he’d discerned to be a mashup of Chopin’s and Ray Charles’s best compositions.
“What do you do, Sehun?”
“Ah that.” The million dollar question, it was. Sehun wasn’t sure if it was information he’d want to divulge just yet. “A job I’m very much late for,” he said to escape answering. He meant to be funny, but Baekhyun’s expression soured.
“Oh hell,” he swore. He had his hands together in front of him in a pleading gesture, probably a second away from kneeling to show just how very sorry he was when Sehun caught him by the arms.
“I’m kidding,” Sehun asserted, trying to placate Baekhyun. But not really. “It’s no big deal.” Shit, shit, shit, I had to leave five minutes ago.
“I have to make it up to you somehow,” the younger said, a flush of misguided relief running across his cheeks. “Don’t I owe you a meal or something? I meant to invite you last week but it’s been insane. Come over on Sunday?”
Sehun’s mind flashed to all the things he’d planned to do for that day, none of them involving his neighbour (as hopeful as he had been about seeing Baekhyun again). Should I move them around? But I have so much to do -
“Please?” Baekhyun cut in before Sehun could decide that he shouldn’t. “It’ll be wonderful to get to know you better.”
One look at Baekhyun’s blushing face and Sehun’s brain short-circuited like it never had before. “Yes,” he said against the resounding no of his conscience. “Absolutely.”
Sehun thought he might black out when Baekhyun stupidly and adorably fist pumped a little. “It’s a date.”
He did end up being late for work from the cocoa chaos, but Sehun walked into the premises with an extra spring to his step, almost levitating with how happy he was. He hasn’t felt this way since… well, just since.
“You’re extraordinarily tardy and you have something nasty on your shirt,” Zitao greeted him with, as if Sehun didn’t already know.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered anyway. He flashed his card on the check-in box by the door, cursing inwardly at how his previously flawless record would now be marred. “Got into a little… predicament on the way here.”
Zitao stopped tapping away at his calculator to give his friend a look and an easy shrug. “But it must be your lucky day. Joonmyeon isn’t in yet. Has a client to collect from all the way upstate or something similar. I don’t know, he’s the boss.”
Sehun breathed a sigh of relief, smiling a little as he did.
That threw Zitao right off. ‘Woah, you -” He paused, eyelids shuttering at breakneck speed. “You smiled. At me. Or around me. Whatever,” he stammered. “Did something good happen to you? I mean I’ve only ever seen you smile around the clients… and that’s creepy as fuck. Finally got laid, huh?
At that the curve of Sehun mouth evolved, upturning into a tight-lipped grimace, and Zitao shut up before he could breach more boundaries. “I just had a good conversation with a nice person,” Sehun explained tersely, in a tone that disinvited more questions on the matter. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a job to do.”
He turned on his heel to trudge off into his workroom, ignoring the other’s calls of apology and a hysterical I promise I’ll buy you lunch for the rest of the month!.
Sehun shut the door without a second glance back, muffling the tail end of Zitao’s whines.
With his apron on, he said hello to the client already lying there and ready, and set to work.
As he mixed the chemicals he needed in well-memorized ratios, he thought of the crinkles of laughter permanently apparent around the edges of Baekhyun’s eyes and how beautifully they add to the other features of his face. He ended up grinning to himself for the rest of the day.
Sehun had fallen hard before. Plenty of times.
There was a boy in highschool. He was a dancer, who had pretended he liked hiphop better than ballet because it was simply the safer thing to be back then.
He was also all long limbs and dark eyes, generous mouth that was seldom graced with a smile, but whenever it did he was bewitching.
When their tentative friendship - forged in the hidden creek behind their school over the common need to be alone - had bloomed into something less innocent and more dangerous, Sehun had thought that their age difference didn’t mean anything.
But he didn’t take into account that when you were that young, just a year translated into a whole lightyear, and before he knew it, Jongin was graduating and saying goodbye for good.
“I’m leaving,” he had announced one day the second he’d plopped down next to him on the riverbed.
Sehun stared at him, expecting Jongin to say he was joking and break into one of those rare cackles he had. But the boy soldiered on, heavily-lidded eyes never leaving the ground.
“Moving southwest. A company took me in. And-” He hesitated, a hand ruffling up his graduation-hat flattened hair, “- I met a girl. I like her a lot.”
To say Sehun was speechless was an understatement.
“We’ve been going out for a couple of months now. She’s a dancer too. She’s coming with me.”
What about me, Sehun wondered. What was I to you?
Jongin gathered his feet beneath him and stood up. To his credit he looked guilty, but Sehun could only begin to become infuriated as his heart shattered into pieces. “I gotta go. She’s waiting for me,” Jongin said, trying to get the other to look at him one last time. “Sehun I -”
“Just leave,” Sehun ordered, voice surprisingly calm. He hid his face between his knees. He couldn’t bear to see Jongin right now, to see how he might have looked at him then. “Thanks for having been my friend.”
He heard a long frustrated sigh, before the crunching of twigs and branches underneath feet came and went.
Sehun remained there, eyes shut tight, images of Jongin’s smiling face behind his eyelids. Moments so precious and rare, when Jongin let go of his inhibitions and was precious and carefree. They were images of when Sehun had first fallen in love. Images of when he had first felt loved in return.
These were the facets of Jongin he was determined to remember the boy by.
Sunday arrived, and not a moment too soon.
Sehun had been on pricks and needles all week long. He couldn’t sit still, hands always having to be working on something; and yet whenever he was toiling away at anything his head was never with him. He had ended up giving a client green eyebrows one day due to his constant state of distraction.
The thing is, though Sehun greatly anticipated his dinner with Baekhyun, he just as equally dreaded it too. On one hand, he was really looking forward to talk with him some more. On the other, he was afraid his overall awkwardness would scare his neighbour away indefinitely.
It happened often enough. He didn’t think he could handle another person walking away from him.
These bubbles of worry boiling away in the pit of his stomach ended up derailing his plans completely. Come Saturday he had practically abandoned everything he had so meticulously set up and promised to fulfil at the start of the week. All the work he had to do - no, must do - in the basement was put on hold.
Because of this, he was infinitely thankful for the minuscule spot of presence of mind he appeared to have left, enough to dress himself up properly that afternoon before pressing gently on Baekhyun’s music-note shaped bell.
The door opened to Baekhyun’s smiling face, a stained sky-blue apron on over a simple white button-up and jeans.
Somewhere within its cage Sehun felt his heart skip a beat.
“You’re early,” Baekhyun said over the tapering sound of his Sinatra doorbell ringtone, the back of one hand dabbing at the sweat sheening down the side of his cheeks. “I’m not done in the kitchen yet.”
Sehun noticed he looked a little flustered, and wondered if he was little too punctual. “Uh,” he began, “I’m so sorry, I could go back and come later-”
“Nonsense,” Baekhyun cut through with a laugh, ushering Sehun into the apartment. “You’re already here. Have a seat.” He gestured to the sole piece of seating furniture in the room. “I’ll just stick the darn potatoes in the oven and get back to you, okay?”
Once he was left there alone, he couldn’t help but have a peek around.
Sehun saw a tall mountain of something in one corner, covered clumsily with a large knit blanket. Curious, he lifted one corner to find boxes underneath, labelled to-be-ransacked in black marker. He realized that the other guy probably hadn’t really moved in yet. Maybe that was why the place was so bare.
By comparison, the rickety piano he had standing against one whitewashed wall looked completely broken in. Music notes were strewn all over its rack, its ivory keys yellowed by years of use. Sehun sat on its wooden bench, tested a few bars from the notes spread before him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d played; he’d probably been ten when he’s stopped, his parents having given up once they accepted that he would never be interested to become the next Tchaikovsky-esque prodigy.
So engrossed was he with navigating his way haphazardly on the piano that he almost jumped at the feel of delicate fingers pressing down on his own clumsy ones, gently prodding them into position.
“Not like that,” Baekhyun’s voice came, soft next to Sehun’s ear. “Like this.”
Even as he let himself be guided into producing a much more pleasing version of the song, Sehun remained hyper-aware of the warm press of Baekhyun’s chest against his back, the whiff of vanilla in the man’s cologne.
His heart skipped some more.
Their little lunch date was going much better than Sehun had anticipated.
Cheeks still flushed from how close Baekhyun was to him as he hovered over the piano, Sehun followed his host to the small dining table for the meal.
He quickly found out that Baekhyun was not a good cook. He ate his food to be polite anyway, and also because every time he had a mouthful the other rewarded him with a smile. How could he not?
The conversation was amazing, although Sehun made sure they kept the spotlight on Baekhyun. It was how he preferred his dates. He knew from experience that Sehun and everything he entailed did not make good first impressions.
“Why’d you choose music?” Sehun took another forkful of burnt potatoes, pausing to gather some courage to actually have another bite.
“Umm, why indeed,” Baekhyun said half-jokingly, mouth pouting and twisting as he was pondering for an answer.
Sehun couldn’t take his eyes off of it. “Parents disapproved?” He asked so that Baekhyun would stop doing that.
It backfired, when the guy started nibbling on his goddamn lips instead. “No,” he replied, with a slight shake to his head. “I know dad would have been happier if I was an engineer. But they liked that I chose piano. It’s just that-” he trailed off, glancing at the huge piano for a second, then back at Sehun. “The song I showed you? That was mine. I wrote it.”
The silence that followed was filled only with the awkward sounds of Sehun swallowing his food down.
“Composing was always something I liked doing, you know? Since I got my mini keyboard at five.” He pitter-pattered his fingers against the table in an imitation of some unknown tune. “Wrote my first at six.”
Sehun hummed as he listened, worry slowly settling in at how Baekhyun’s mood had taken a sudden left turn.
“But lately, I can’t write anymore. That’s why I came to New York,” he said, poking at his portion of jerk chicken. “This is last resort. Go back to school, get some inspiration again from the music scene here. Nothing’s happening so far though, and I can’t help but think that I’ve wasted-”
” - too much time on something that turns out to be a useless pursuit in the end?”
“….yeah.”
He put his fork down, sipped at the cheap white wine they had popped open. “Listen kid,” Sehun started, the beginnings of a grin on his mouth when he saw Baekhyun’s own twitching at the term of endearment. “That’s how everyone feels at some point. Especially when it comes to the choices they’ve made.”
“Have you?”
“Of course. Maybe not for the same reasons you do. But about many other things.” Sehun made sure to stare straight at Baekhyun when he spoke next, with a kind of conviction he didn’t know he had. “Don’t ever think of your music as a waste of time, though. That song? It was gorgeous. Most times you just need to… find that motivation again, the one that pushed you to try the first time. Like... who or what it was that inspired you to write the song. Maybe you’ll regain that little something that went missing again.”
Baekhyun stared right back, and for a while Sehun thought that maybe he had overdone it. Who the fuck was he, really, to hand out advice when his own life wasn’t shit?
But then the younger smiled, blooming with the radiance of maybe a billion full moons, and it almost blew Sehun off his seat, the food threatening to make its way back up his throat.
“Well, hyung-” he hesitated, an eyebrow quirked, “I can call you that right?” At Sehun’s muted approval, he caught one of the elder’s hand, eagerly bouncing in spot. “You know what? Maybe I will.”
Later, long after he had gotten back home, plopped on the bed after his evening shower, Sehun could still feel the ghost of Baekhyun’s fingertips on the swell of his palm. It had set the butterflies in his stomach crazy. Where they were rabid before, however, now the sensation was more subtle, almost as if it was not truly there, but palpable enough for it to make him restless.
It was a lovely sort of feeling.
For the first time in a year, he ignored the screech of the alarm he’d wind up to blare on routine to remind him of the chores needing tending to in the basement room. He turned into the cocoon of his sheets instead, the soft fluttering of wings within lulling him to sleep.
“Oh thank god you’re here,” Zitao drawled as he walked into the workroom, a steaming cup of milky tea in hand. “You might not want to hear any of this, but I want to rant.”
Normally, Sehun would be annoyed at people interrupting his sessions. Especially when, as Zitao was wont to cause, the interruption would be nothing more than a long five minutes of bitching. And Mondays are their busiest days. Sehun had a long list of clients to serve, one after the other.
But this Monday was different.
As he had set off to work, Baekhyun had barged out of his unit, shouting out his hello in his hurry to catch up with Sehun in the hallway. “I heard your door slam. The walls are thin,” he said, face red and minor creases of what seemed to have been made by rumpled sheets imprinted into the side of his face. He must have just woken up. “Thought I’d see you out.”
Sehun felt himself flushing too. How could he not, when Baekhyun was clad simply in boxers and a thin shirt? The way his heart had pumped faster as he entertained the thought that Baekhyun had taken this trouble just to say hey to him certainly didn’t help.
“Listen,” the man began, fingers ruffling through his unkempt hair. “Do you want to… come over again some day?” He paused, eyes flitting shyly up to meet the elder’s. “Like this Sunday? I had a real great time yesterday and-”
“Yeah,” Sehun exclaimed, almost too enthusiastically. “I’ll enjoy that very much. I could help you ransack those boxes indefinitely.” So that you’ll never leave.
Baekhyun looked somewhat startled, before blushing a deeper colour in embarrassment. “Ah,” he murmured. “You noticed them. I guess my methods of disguising my mess didn’t work.”
“It didn’t,” Sehun said teasingly, a little bewildered at himself. Who the hell was this person, flirting like this? But he reckoned he was grinning like an idiot anyway, and he couldn’t find it in himself to care that he did. “But let’s order takeout,” he hastily added.
The crazy fits of laughter Baekhyun went into before waving him off had boosted Sehun’s mood, so much so that here was he now, half-listening to Zitao babble about a complaint they had gotten from a client last week without snapping his typical shut it and shove it at his colleague.
“So anyway,” Zitao stopped to sigh into his tea, “Park called.”
Sehun’s hand froze in place, sharp trimming scissors opened dangerously close to his client’s temple. “Oh, yeah,” he said, trying and failing to sound indifferent. “When?”
“Last Friday. Like five seconds after you left.”
“….does he have anything new?”
“No. Quite the opposite, actually. Asked if we did.”
“Oh.” Snip, snip, the scissors go again. “Anything else?”
“Nothing of note, really.”
Sehun might actually blow the client over with the sigh of relief that could have been, but -
“Although he’s been asking after you again.”
He stuttered instead. “What?”
“Thought it was weird that he did myself. Hadn’t they already cleared you?”
“What did Park say he wants from me?”
Zitao shrugged, broad shoulders straining through his pink workshirt. “Don’t know. Told me he’d like to talk to you, if he could. Said the same thing last couple of times too.”
The grip of his fingers tightened around the thumb-rings as his throat slowly closed in. “The last couple of times?” Sehun choked.
“Yeah. Didn’t I tell you?”
“….no.”
“Sorry. Must have slipped my mind.” Zitao straightened up abruptly, tea sloshing around dangerously close to the rim of his cup. Whoops, got to go, he murmured, probably realizing at last that he has his own job to do. He paused to turn around before leaving, deep frown lines across the bridge of his nose. “I know he wouldn’t feel anything,” Zitao said slowly, pointer shifting to Sehun’s hand, “but you might want to be careful with that.”
Only then did he realize the gash he’d made in his client, at the juncture between his ear and his hairline, the tip of his scissors disappearing into the white pallor of the man’s skin.
Sehun did nothing. He just watched on as a crimson bloom began gathering around the cold metal.
When Sehun was twenty, he loved another dancer.
In hindsight, that should have been a warning for him to stay far and away. A sign that perhaps history would repeat itself, that he’d be left behind again.
But when they first met, Sehun was a struggling arts student, away from home for the first time in his life. The city was foreign; he had chosen the college precisely because he had wanted to be someplace was so far removed from the small town he was used to, but now that he was here he could only feel out-of-sync.
He had been too miserable to ignore the friendly extending of a hand, and even more so defenseless against the insistent press of Yixing’s lips on his neck, the desperate thrusts of Yixing’s body into his body.
Yixing was handsome, so adorably dimpled when he smiled. He was attentive and kind. But perhaps what was most important to Sehun was how open Yixing was about their relationship. He couldn’t have cared less about the judging looks people send him whenever he showers affection upon Sehun, and around him Sehun was never made to feel like a dirty little secret.
But Yixing was as broken as himself, Sehun came to realize, if not more so.
He was a brilliant dancer. Truly one of a kind in Sehun’s love-hazed eyes. But as good as he was, Yixing was always second best. He could make his own mixes, dance his heart out to beats he alone would know. But try as he might he never made the cut.
Yixing turned to his vices for comfort and Sehun could only watch as wonderful, sweet Yixing ironically became the one thing he had striven not to be: a shadow.
It wasn’t long before he stopped smiling earnestly. Of course, whenever he did, it was still heartbreakingly beautiful, dimples furrowing into his steadily receding cheeks. But it was stupid how this thing Sehun had loved the most about Yixing’s smile turned into a mirror image of Yixing’s soul, the most blatant reminder of the hollow shell Yixing had came to be.
Sehun buried his head between his knees again the day Yixing slipped away into a permanent sleep on that sterile hospital bed.
This fragile emaciated person was not the Yixing who had loved him.
The Yixing he remembered had been vibrant, danced with his body moving as if his life depended on it. And maybe it really had.
Sehun went home wishing he could have somehow helped Yixing stop mid-motion then. He wished he could have had that power to preserve the Yixing that had made at least that little bit happy.
Their relationship developed with all the speed of a slow-burning candle, but for Sehun it only intensified what he felt for his younger neighbour.
Baekhyun, for all his boisterousness, was surprisingly rather shy around him. He blustered when Sehun complimented him on his baby photos once they’d dug them out of one of the boxes, giggled nervously as Sehun applauded his playing of a Dean Martin tune or some other on the piano, blushed the deepest shade of red after Sehun had kissed him over a sink full of dirty dished one night out of the blue.
It only served to make him all the more desirable for some odd reason.
What a great feeling it was, this; the feeling that came with the knowledge that you have the power to turn someone into mush simply by smiling at them. Sehun has never had the upper-hand in his previous affairs before. He was always the one to crave for more.
It was no wonder then that he absolutely loved how the tables were turned with Baekhyun. It didn’t hurt that the guy was ever so cute too. So very fucking cute.
For a while, Sehun had thought that he was the one wrapped around Baekhyun’s pretty little pinky.
But as their Sunday lunches turned into every-other-day-dinners he soon realized the reality was very much the other way around. He could have Baekhyun whenever he wanted. All he had to do was ask.
He didn’t, though. He couldn’t.
Not for the lack of confidence. Sehun had long mustered enough of that to enable him to do so.
But he couldn’t, because he wanted Baekhyun to last.
And for that to happen, he decided as he mixed soft lye with water in the metal cup in his cold basement, I have to do this.
It went against every principle he had about his occupation, but he had to. Yes, he affirmed, thinking of what was hidden behind the closed casket. His imagined the most horrified look that would certainly befall Baekhyun’s face should he see what was underneath its heavy wooden cover. This is a must.
Because Sehun was sure, if Baekhyun ever found out about the skeletons in his closet, he’d never see that beautiful face ever again.
When describing what he does to support himself, Sehun always took the long route. That is to say, he would talk about it in such complicated terms that people either eventually just stop listening or stop caring.
You would think that he was embarrassed of his job.
He wasn’t. Far from it. If anything, he was too proud of it to simply assign one single word to his profession, when in his opinion it was so much more than that.
It gave him the will to stand back up on his feet after losing Yixing. It gave his life a purpose; or rather, gave him a purpose to live.
Yixing’s funeral was a quiet affair, attended by maybe a handful of the dancers from his company and closest family. Sehun fit into neither one of those groups, and for a while he thought that maybe he shouldn’t intrude. The others may have known the nature of relationship, but Yixing’s family didn’t. He didn’t want to shock them, didn’t want to explain himself.
In the end he realized that he needn’t have worried. The only thing that had mattered to them was the loss of their child.
Regardless of how well he was welcomed, Sehun stayed quiet in the back pews throughout the service to remain obscure. He didn’t move a muscle until it has ended and everyone has left. He wanted some time alone with Yixing, wanted to say his final goodbyes in peace.
That was when he saw him.
As Sehun approached the chancel of the small chapel, his heart jumped.
Yixing had been so gaunt before his passing. His skin was pallid, his hair sparse where they had fallen off. His lips were chapped and swollen, his arms bruised blue and black. The shit he’d pumped into his system had quite literally sucked the life out of him.
Truth was, Yixing hadn’t been beautiful in a long time.
But it was amazing, almost miraculous, just how beautiful he was then. His skin glowed, black hair growing full and silky on his head. His lips were smooth and pink, the way Sehun remembered loving to kiss them most. The marks of abuse from needles and god knows what else Yixing had on his arms were gone too.
And it was amazing, almost miraculous, how Yixing was truly dead, but lying there in the black casket he was made to look more alive than he had been in life.
For someone like Sehun, who strived on memories of his loved ones at their most beautiful - of when their love was at its most beautiful - it was an epiphany.
He knew what he wanted to -no. Needed to do.
part two