sonder (1/2) [for fallaciesoffate]
FOR: fallaciesoffate
RATING: R
WARNINGS: Mentions of mature contents, character deaths.
WORD COUNT: 10,766 words
SUMMARY: It’s another static, just like the smoke that always colors his mouth.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I would like to thank fallaciesoffate for the prompt. It's wonderful and I might have taken a bit of liberty as to where it leads but I hope you'll enjoy it nonetheless! Special thanks to everyone who's read and hold my hand during the process, a lot of smooches and love. This fanfic wouldn't happen without you! <3
Sehun travels through cities.
Sehun lives in cities.
He doesn’t quite know if there’s any difference between them, but all that he knows is how the tendrils of smoke that billow from his mouth stay the same, like a static that glues him to his core, reminding him of Seoul. It doesn’t matter where he is, but he always carries the same brand of cigarettes, the same shape of lighters. He makes friends with the corners of the streets, of alleys, and reminds himself of the city that vaguely smells like home.
(Or what’s left of it.)
These days have felt like a solid blur. Some of them are spent on the most discreet crannies of a country, those tucked between the whispers of secrets exchanged among the street rats. Some of them are squandered on the places glorified on the maps, shimmering with specks of the brightest lights succulent with the ripest juice of glam.
All that he knows is, wherever he is, he always ends up being caught by someone’s teeth, all marks and bruises when the night crawls into the burn of the morning.
It’s another static, just like the smoke that always colors his mouth.
The taste of London air is thick and musty against Sehun’s tongue, rusted with the flavor that he often attains when he’s standing still in a foreign country, no matter how many times he’s placed this country’s air among his teeth. The crowd rushes around him, constantly swarming that it almost becomes a white noise in the background, his thoughts swimming into its private vortex to drown the sound. At the back of his mind, someone’s tongue, hot as it grazes across his jugular. At the back of his mind, someone’s hair, soft as the strands are tangled amidst his fingers.
Between his chapped lips, a cigarette, its apex smoldering orange with absolutism.
He’s washing off someone’s scent that clings stubbornly to his skin and coat, hoping to cleanse the inklings of their last hug off his head before he enters the airport. The smell of tobacco has been his favorite perfume since months ago, identifying it with himself when the fragrance that he wears is always mixed with someone else’s at the end of the day.
He takes another drag as he shoves his free hand into the fleece-lined pocket of his leather jacket, eyes scanning his surroundings with indolence until they come to a stop at the sight of someone familiar.
A stranger, but not quite.
Another static.
Maybe it’s their tenth encounter. Maybe it’s their thirteenth. Sehun has lost count.
He stares a second too long. The stranger’s gaze catches his and Sehun freezes. A deer in the headlight.
Sehun swears he sees the stranger smiling at him.
It’s thin, the smile. Just a slight curve on the lips. Sehun exhales the fumes and the smile is gone with the haze. The stranger turns his back on Sehun and walks away.
Sehun wonders if having an imaginary friend is still prevalent among people his age.
Seoul. Seoul. Paris. Seattle. Osaka. Los Angeles. Seoul. New York. Moscow. London.
Sehun might have lost a city or more in the equation. He doesn’t always board the plane with his focus intact. Most of the time, he loiters in the airport like a lost boy that it reminds him painfully of his adolescent years, except these days he has tickets slipped between the pages of his passport.
He swears they’ve had more than just what he can recall. Maybe the stranger has been a gauzy shadow within his peripheral view. Maybe the stranger has been a passing figure that his subconscious managed to catch.
Maybe the stranger has been nothing but a figment of his imagination.
A figment of his imagination that comes with an impressive amount of details, if Sehun must say so himself. It’s peculiar, because he’s never one to fantasize that well, his life a carbon copy of what he’s read, what he’s absorbed, what he’s practiced.
Their encounters have been a series of volatile evolution, as though the stranger grows up and old with Sehun.
The first time he truly clutched the image of the stranger in his weary palm, the stranger was a remnant of crushed composure, anxiety gnawing at the corners of his being that Sehun couldn’t help but lock his gaze on the stranger for a moment longer. The stranger was pale, sunken cheeks framed with hair too black, a contrast too stark. It was two years ago-Sehun remembers because he met Lu Han just two weeks prior. He found the stranger while he was wandering in the airport aimlessly because that was how he satiated his lust for travelling.
Three months later or so, the stranger seemed calmer, sitting outside the airport and blowing smoke rings that dissipated into the balmy summer air. It was around the first time that a customer taught Sehun to smoke he could almost imagine the tar plaguing his own teeth. Sehun passed him by a little too closely he caught the crumbling façade that the stranger donned, located at the tips of his trembling fingers as he filled his lungs with smoke.
There was a year of gap spanning between Seoul and Paris. Sehun was cold, wrapped in the coat he’d purchased with his freshly obtained salary. The stranger walked past him this time, his coat was exactly like Sehun’s that Sehun’s attention was captured for a brief period. When the stranger settled himself five seats away from Sehun, though, the surge of dusty memories rushed in. Sehun almost failed to recognize him at first with the amount of confidence (or nonchalance) dousing the stranger, hair colored dark red. Maroon, one of Sehun’s clients would insist.
The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh encounters that he can remember, albeit vaguely, were a distant recollection for Sehun. Maybe they were sitting in the same café. Maybe they happened to bump into each other in the toilet. Maybe it was the good old passing each other by without noticing much of it. Sehun had been too lost in his own world to mind them.
New York was far too bright for Sehun, too blinding.
At the corner of a night, when he still had hours to spare before his flight, he was left to nurse the lingering headache that caused him to pick at the end of his frayed sweater, back pressing against the cool of a toilet stall. There was a rumble of nausea at the pit of his stomach but nothing would come out.
He waited for another five minutes or so before staggering out of the cubicle, feet knocking against each other until they came to a halt in front of another stall. The stench of alcohol beat the one coating Sehun’s sweater, pungent as the reek of vomit followed. Sehun stood still, eyes set on the other’s legs, straight as the male’s back was bent towards the toilet bowl. He remained that way until the stranger finished emptying his bowel, and Sehun recalls croaking, “Are you all right?” before the stranger turned around. Disheveled blonde hair, kohl-stained cheeks. Apart from that, he was too recognizable for Sehun’s liking.
There was a quick thud and click of the door, but the stranger’s anxiety echoed in Sehun’s mind for days.
They nearly collided against each other in Moscow, shoulders brushing against each other harshly that Sehun muttered an apology in English, only to be met with a pair of eyes too dark compared to the silver strands of bangs resting just above them. The stranger tore the eye contact first while Sehun was still gaping, tailing the stranger’s motion with his gaze. The image of the stranger’s back was scorched against the back of his eyelids.
It’s the airport, always the airport. Sehun scolds himself inwardly every time he scans the crowd for a familiar face whenever he steps into one.
Last time in London is a ghost in Sehun’s mind, along with stories that for Sehun sounded like desperate pleas, spilling from Jongin’s mouth carelessly as though Sehun had been an old friend. He’s ignored Jongin’s calls, and when there’s another incoming one, he’s been staring at his phone screen too intensely that he doesn’t notice the seat next to him is recently occupied. The flare of tobacco scent is the one that notifies him, just right when the phone call flickers into a missed call notification.
“It’s getting cold.”
The comment seizes Sehun’s attention, unsure if the stranger is talking to him but he’s looking at Sehun when Sehun turns his head. His eyes are rimmed with the blatant indifference (one of the two expressions that Sehun has ever seen him donning), tinted with little amusement. There’s a smile dancing on the tips of his lips, a subtle one.
It disappears when Sehun blinks.
“It’s almost winter,” Sehun replies, too tentatively that he nearly winces at his own tone.
“You’re right,” he muses, and another smile blossoms across his face. It grows wider and wider within a split second, and when Sehun finally digests it, the smile has turned into a grin, the eyes crinkling.
Maybe Sehun has imagination slightly too wild.
Maybe he’s gone a little insane.
“An imaginary friend?” Lu Han echoes the words carefully, as though weighting them on his tongue, tone laden with laughter. Lazy grace, languid curl of lips. Sehun has always wondered why Lu Han would ever see him as a competitor.
Sehun welcomes the amusement scribbled across Lu Han’s delicate features, expected it. Still, he’s nervous, fingers wrung together on his lap, under the table. A hesitant curl of lips follows, measuring whether or not the topic is worth continuing. (It’s not.)
Maybe it’s despair, maybe it’s obstinance.
“Yeah, like... like the one you often heard occurring to children.” He shrugs, feigning indifference. “Do you think it might happen to us, adults?”
Lu Han shakes his head, but it doesn’t indicate that he doesn’t think so. It’s an extension to his amusement, smile bleeding across his face further. “Why the sudden inquiries?”
Sehun takes a sip of his coffee and winces, swallowing the bitterness. “I was thinking of it in the middle of reading a book,” he reasons. Lying doesn’t seem too natural on his tongue when it’s directed at his mentor.
“A book. You sound too intelligent for college dropouts like us.”
Sarcasm. Sehun knows too well the innumerable amount of books that Lu Han has devoured to keep up with his clients’ conversations; yet another reason why Sehun is no match for him.
Lu Han taps his chin twice with an index finger. “I don’t think madness is exclusive to children. Or adults.”
The words sink under his skin. Sehun hums, agreeing.
“Do you have an imaginary friend?” Lu Han’s voice is relaxed, loaded with mischief.
“No, no,” a practiced, smoothened answer releases itself almost too immediately. “I read it in a book.”
“Sure,” he chuckles. “That’s a very basic lie. A code for asking things that would otherwise remain discreet. Come on, you and I know that we’ve met enough people to notice.”
With the warmth pooling on his cheeks, Sehun is certain that his blush gives him away.
“You’re saying I’m insane,” Sehun concludes, fatigue bleeding in his tone. There’s a gaze weighted on every twitch of Lu Han’s facial muscles, but he knows too well than to expect to read Lu Han.
“I’m not saying that. Yet,” he clacks his tongue against the palate of his mouth, “I’m not saying otherwise either.”
Sehun is scrubbing the back of his hand with a thumb, ironing the creases with the heat from the frictions. His tongue is heavy with uncertainty, knowing that he’s made this awkward for him-there’s nothing more to say without dissolving the little secret that he’d like to keep tucked in safety, yet changing the topic midway doesn’t seem a viable option either. He opts for silence.
“If it’s any consolation, none of us are really sane.” When Lu Han speaks, there’s always this magnet that renders attention gravitating towards him, but this time Sehun is more captured by the content than the speaker. “We’re made of at least a bit of madness. Besides, haven’t you been told? Sanity is optional, especially in our field of work. Sanity is boring.”
At that, an involuntary smile inscribes itself along the seam of Sehun’s lips. Maybe it’s one of those nights where Lu Han shares his tricks again, eclipsing them with undertones.
Still, while madness has its special place in his field of work, Sehun doesn’t know how having an imaginary friend would fall into the brackets of advantages. Still, he doesn’t stop himself from indulging what little madness resides within.
This time, the stranger takes the seat across Sehun, and Incheon airport feels a bit different compared to the last time they met. Setting: inside. Setting: warmth. Setting: closer.
Sehun’s hands stay around his mug, cupping the porcelain to avoid any indicative nervous gestures as he watches the male settle on the seat. He tries not to stare too much, but he’s attracted to the simplest of the stranger’s everything-from the lines rimming his stoic eyes to how seemingly fragile his wrists are. Soft, slender fingers are intertwined on the tabletop before Sehun and he can’t stop looking at those as well, nails trimmed to perfection that Sehun wonders if it’s a subtle sign for him to step up the game, spend more money on beauty services.
“You’re not being exactly surreptitious with your staring,” the stranger points out, beads of chuckle escaping his thin lips.
“S-Sorry,” Sehun sputters almost instantly, cheeks specked with the spreading blush. “You’re... suddenly sitting in front of me.”
“Oh, right. How impolite of me to suddenly claim the seat while remaining a stranger. I’m Baekhyun.” He offers another grin, one which Sehun is determined to catch in his memory. “And I don’t know your name, but I think I’ve known you better than I do many of my friends.”
Sehun doesn’t reply right away but he’s loosening up, gradually relaxing albeit distantly aware of how calculative Baekhyun appears; how composed and impenetrable.
“Sehun.” His name a whirring sound of static, announced in dozens of different cities. “It’s Sehun.”
“Sehun,” Baekhyun nods, tasting the name on the tip of his tongue. “Finally, a name to complement all these attributes.”
“Attributes?”
“Your... habits, quirks. Let’s see. You smoke Esse Classic, always sitting as close as possible to the ashtray. You blow smoke rings in cold days. You tap your fingers a lot when you’re bored, mostly when waiting for a check-in. Never bring more than a suitcase. Not a backpacker, for sure-you’re too expensive-looking for that-but you travel frequently.” He raises his eyebrows. “Like I said, I think I’ve known you better than I do many of my friends.”
It doesn’t take much to make him flustered when he’s not donning the façade of a confident escort, and with more warmth pooling on his cheeks, he shoots a look of confusion at Baekhyun.
At that, a smile splinters Baekhyun’s lips. “I’m sorry. That might come off as creepy.”
“That’s... yeah... a bit,” Sehun stammers, averting his gaze from Baekhyun.
He grins apologetically. “So many people have told me that I’m not too well-versed in the art of making a conversation-I come off as too blunt sometimes. I should’ve done some practice first before approaching you, but sometimes my curiosity is too much to handle.”
Sehun only nods, unsure of what to say. The pause allows his bewilderment to die down a little, and he takes a moment to spare his surroundings a glance, just to ensure that he isn’t being watched for possibly talking to himself.
“I’m sorry,” Baekhyun repeats, recapturing Sehun’s focus. “Would you... prefer to be left alone, then? I might have disrupted your alone time.”
“No, no.” Sehun is startled by how fast his own tongue reacts. “It’s okay.”
“I hope you’re sure about that,” he chuckles. “I can be a bit of a nuisance with my curiosity. I might ask a lot of questions-just tell me if I ever invade your privacy. I don’t mind being told off.”
Sehun mouths an okay and remains tongue-tied. For some reason, carrying a conversation with a stranger who isn’t a customer proves to be trickier than expected. Sehun wonders if it’s due to his lack of real social exposure save for the nights out with Lu Han and some high school friends with whom he manages to keep in contact.
“Quiet, aren’t you,” Baekhyun comments, humming. “But I might be talkative enough for two, and there are actually so many questions that I want to ask you. Like, what do you do for a living, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Sehun’s stomach drops at the question, although that’s somehow expected, especially when Baekhyun has caught him travelling more than most. Possibilities swirl in his mind-his job wouldn’t be the first to spring towards the forefront of one’s mind when travelling is being brought up, so there’s definitely a room to evade it.
A businessman would be the most common idea that Sehun would have-the easiest, the simplest. But saying that he is one, as derived from his experiences in dealing with those businessmen who have left their fingerprints on his skin, is going to be one hell of a task without any supporting background. He isn’t Lu Han, who might be one of the smartest people Sehun has ever encountered-one night Lu Han would absorb everything a customer says, and the next day he’d be able to ramble on it without much of a problem.
“I... don’t work,” he replies, accentuating his tone with intentional tentativeness. Not everyone would be too comfortable with sharing the fact that he’s living off his parents’ riches, after all. “I just travel.”
“A traveler, then,” Baekhyun confirms. “That’s nice. Do you make any documentary of the places you visit?”
Baekhyun is sharp, that’s for sure, and Sehun has to curb the urge from swallowing as to not emit the subtlest hint of unease. “No, I don’t,” he admits, for hard proof would be harder to fake, and Sehun doesn’t think he has the channels to help him if he wanted to try. “I mostly travel for the atmospheres instead of the landmarks. There’s nothing that can preserve it but the mind.”
Another curve of lips, almost too familiar for Sehun’s liking. It’s laden with satisfaction, like the first smile that he saw perching on Baekhyun’s lips.
“That’s a good way of thinking.” There’s a pause wedged before he sighs. “I need to learn more from you. I’ve been travelling a lot. Too frequently, even. But it’s merely for work.”
“Work?”
“I work for my father. It’s cliché, really,” he shrugs. “He kind of placed me as a negotiator on his behalf, which was quite a big mistake, if I must say so myself. I mean, good communication skills and Baekhyun don’t really merge well in a sentence, let alone in reality. Most of the time I just let my assistant do it and then I sign the paper.”
“That’s a way to deal with it.”
There’s terse laughter spilling into the space between them and Sehun can’t help but smile a little, finding that Baekhyun is easily amused.
Another thing that he realizes, though, is that when Baekhyun’s smile splits his cheeks from ear to ear, his mouth is almost in the shape of a rectangular, and Sehun is determined to commit that in his memory.
It’s peculiar that Sehun feels the loss when they have to part ways upon entering the gate, this time with knowledge about Baekhyun heavy in his luggage. He watches the other intently as Baekhyun walks past the door, disappearing into the aisle that leads him to the plane heading to Toronto. Tokyo is waiting for Sehun; all fallen petals and heavy expectations, but as he boards the plane Sehun cannot seem to shake off the idea of a specific businessman out of his mind.
Somewhere between Tokyo and Seoul, Sehun finds himself under someone named Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo is quiet, lined with the lust that Sehun tries to satiate but it’s difficult when his head is occupied by someone else. Kyungsoo is quiet, but he bites particularly hard, leaving dents of thin dashes along the rim of Sehun’s neck. Kyungsoo is quiet, and he likes it when Sehun moans his name out loud, filling the silence enough for both of them.
Somewhere between Tokyo and Seoul, Sehun finds himself waking up in the middle of the night, catching himself wishing that the body pressing against his arms is someone else’s. That’s already too much of an improvisation for the night. He closes his eyes and sees that back and those shoulders again, slowly vanishing into the darkness of his own mind, swallowed by the constant differences in destinations.
There are three whole weeks wedging itself between them before Sehun hesitates at the mouth of a café in LAX, eyes fixated on the way Baekhyun’s lips close around the straw as he sips his cold coffee, throat suddenly parched. It takes him a few seconds more to dither, fingers picking at the end of his sweater, until Baekhyun looks up from his tablet, face lit up along with the ecstatic wave directed at Sehun. At that, Sehun forces a smile even when his stomach roils with nervousness, steps a little jagged as he approaches Baekhyun.
He settles on the seat across Baekhyun and masks the gesture of fixing the collar of his sweater as a habit when it’s anything but, ensuring that he doesn’t expose the trail of purple that Chanyeol left earlier in the car. If it was too late and Baekhyun has caught the sight, he doesn’t say anything to Sehun.
“Why hello,” Baekhyun greets. “You haven’t forgotten about me, have you? I saw you standing there for so long.”
“Oh, no, no,” Sehun shakes his head almost immediately, blood suffused to his cheeks. “I was... um, unsure if you’d want me to approach you.”
“That’s quite an excuse,” Baekhyun says, seemingly nonchalant. “Would you like to order something? Some drink? Cappuccino with one sugar?”
“How-“Sehun blurts out, stopping himself before the question spills entirely. “That... That would be nice.”
Baekhyun chuckles knowingly, getting up to his feet to order the drink for Sehun. Sehun finds himself staring, again, despite the fact that the image of the back has been too embedded in his mind.
When Baekhyun occupies his seat again and Sehun is nursing a paper cup filled with his favorite beverage, there’s an ongoing conversation that consists of Baekhyun telling him about his days (meetings here, meetings there-there are several stories about his father’s putrid ambitions clinging to Baekhyun’s spine like an anchor, and that leaves Sehun with longing that he knows is insatiable, along with a dollop of guilt and discomfort), followed by Sehun stringing another set of lies.
Still, Sehun would like to think that it’s not entirely lying when he slips truths about himself in-between. His brother, leaving home when he was twelve. His mother, working to the bone to forget the fact that his father left them.
His family, never to be seen, never to be heard.
It’s been long since the last time Sehun saw eyes laced with pity wrung from that chapter of his life.
Sehun starts scanning through the naked streets of the cities, foreign or not, hoping that Baekhyun would be a form in the sea of faces.
Coincidences, however, remain adamantly within the confines of the airports.
This is the first time Sehun is more than just certain over the fact that Baekhyun is apparently not a figment of his imagination. He’s pressed against the wall of a cubicle, the place small enough to induce claustrophobia since it’s not meant to contain two people, but Sehun’s head is too hazed to think. It’s a few hours past midnight, the scarcity of visitors at this hour bringing its own perks.
There was nobody to witness them when Baekhyun shoved him into the cubicle, right after an innocent conversation taking place in front of the basins. There’s nobody to listen to Sehun as he moans into Baekhyun’s mouth, hot and insistent, tongue swiping against Sehun’s in a manner that Sehun doesn’t recall experiencing for a long stretch of time.
Baekhyun smells like the residue of his bitter coffee and decaying smokes, but he tastes more sweet than acidic. His hands are resting on Sehun’s hips, too gentle for the same pair which just pushed Sehun roughly against the stall. Sehun’s own are claiming the spots on Baekhyun’s shoulder and cheek, a thumb caressing the prominent cheekbone as he continues returning the gesture, the same amount of persistence exuded from his mouth.
When they part for air, Sehun is wide-eyed, wondering if it’s a right decision to kiss and be kissed by someone whom he’s just officially known as of two months ago, without salary and with emotional baggage.
Then again, his life is already littered with wrong decisions.
(And Baekhyun doesn’t taste like one.)
“I’m sorry. Was I being too... rash?” Baekhyun’s voice is husky, breath brushing Sehun’s philtrum. He sounds almost too apologetic that Sehun tightens his grip on Baekhyun’s shoulder, fingers digging sharply into the skin hidden beneath the sweatshirt.
Instead of answering, Sehun presses a soft kiss against the corner of Baekhyun’s mouth, hoping that it’s enough as a substitute of one.
Sehun can’t remember the last time he spent a good expanse of period with someone just kissing and kissing and kissing until their lips are swollen and their mouths so full with each other, until he cannot tell if the remnants that linger in his mouth are his or Baekhyun’s.
Lu Han decides to reply his confessional message about how he apparently doesn’t have an imaginary friend with ㅋㅋㅋ , and Sehun spends his short-lived nights in Seoul dreaming about a man whose tongue clashed against his own.
Entering February is a stale reminder of how Baekhyun hasn’t shown up for the last month, and Sehun fidgets with his cigarette before taking another deep drag, letting the smoke pool in his lungs as long as possible before exhaling the residue. He recalls spending nearly thirty minutes of his working hour sitting in the bathroom of Jongin’s vast apartment, staring at his phone screen. It’s a vain attempt; Baekhyun doesn’t know his number, although he’s wished that by the twist of fate which has enabled their meetings, an unknown number would suddenly pop out, asking him how he’s doing, where he is now.
There are days that he has slowly left behind. These are the days when he would enter the airports with anticipation blossoming in his chest. These are the days when he reminds himself of the child that would walk into the premise with no passport in his hand, heart swelled in dreams of travelling.
(These days, the airport is just another gateway to another routine. His life starts becoming a dull slate of alternating cityscapes again.)
His steps into Incheon are sluggish, eyes canopied with the weight of lethargy from those nights of staying up too long. From smoking too much his lungs smolder with the wafts of fumes; he’s hoped to burn the discomfort that settles in his chest with it, but it doesn’t work.
He smokes and smokes. The world is a motion behind the sheet of fogged window that the tendrils of grey create. He fails to register that his cigarette has been snatched from between his hovering fingers, only realizing it when he looks up, watching as the stick wedges itself between thin lips. Heart jumps to the throat, eyes widen to a solid scale.
An inhale, an exhale. When the wall of smoke dissipates to embrace the night breeze, Sehun shivers.
“Been missing me?”
If someone asks Sehun why he’s so infatuated with someone who remains a stranger even with his small trinkets pocketed in Sehun’s mind, he would have no answer. There’s no simplicity in this.
But Sehun would like to think that there is, and it would remain that way until they bring whatever that they have now outside the confines of these airports.
It only dawns on him when they stumble into the airport hotel room they rented ten minutes ago, his own feet staggering backwards as Baekhyun guides him, lips locked and eyes shut. His head is heavy with Baekhyun’s tongue in his mouth, the aftertaste of the cigarette clinging to their teeth. He only stops when the back of his knees hit the corner of the bed, and he falls backwards onto the plane, pulling Baekhyun with him.
There are layers and layers between them, and Sehun is suffocating from the cultivating lust. His fingers are uncharacteristically clumsy, scampering across Baekhyun’s coat to push it off the other’s frame. He stares at Baekhyun as he starts lifting Baekhyun’s sweater, exposing skin. Baekhyun hovers over him with a soft smile resting on his lips, long fingers brushing against the skin of Sehun’s hips. A shudder runs through Sehun.
A reminder comes to him a little late, but not too late.
“Hyung,” his voice is laced with too much uncertainty, blood rushing to his cheeks. “Would you... mind turning the lights off?”
When darkness falls into the room, Sehun feels safer. What Baekhyun doesn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
When the night ends in the rhythmical breathing on both ends, Sehun knows that he’s missing his plane. But instead of scurrying out of the bed and rummaging through the room to locate his phone and subsequently book the next flight to Dublin, he presses the side of his head against Baekhyun’s chest. The thud, thud, thud against his ears is serene, static.
Maybe he would learn to discard the cigarettes one day and replace them with someone whose presence becomes a routine for him.
Another fortnight dribbles into the gutter with the absence of a coincidental rendezvous but Sehun can still feel the echo of Baekhyun’s cadence in his bones. It doesn’t disappear even after three nights spent in strangers’ beds, after burying his nose against someone’s pillow in hopes that it would start smelling like a specific businessman. It doesn’t disappear even after those moments before sleep, squandered on staring at his stark ceiling, worries gnawing at the periphery of his senses.
Another fortnight and Sehun thinks that insanity is no longer an option. It’s a necessity, sleeping under the wrap of his skin and flesh.
When he met Lu Han a week earlier it seemed that Lu Han knew. A smile splayed on his lips still haunts Sehun, and if that impression Lu Han etched wasn’t a figment of Sehun’s imagination, he’d bet his money on how Lu Han knows that this time, it’s not about an imaginary friend.
His insanity has turned more real than just that, and it manifests itself in the face among the swarming crowd.
The day is bleak and discolored after long hours spent on roping himself with faux hopes, staring at the phone screen that never notifies him of a much expected message. He’s filled with the residue of nicotine up to the neck, head swimming in the haze of memories replayed over and over again as he inhaled the carcinogen. It took him another hour to convince himself to walk out of that decrepit apartment. A change of atmosphere wouldn’t hurt.
He finds himself on the sidewalk littered with too many pedestrians and too little of a comfort zone. Feet knocking against each other in lazy strides, he wanders aimlessly, occasionally looking up from watching his tattered sneakers to ensure that he isn’t involving himself in a classic gaffe of bumping against a stranger.
The umpteenth time he looks up from the pavement, he swears he sees a glimpse of a familiar face. Silver hair. Kohl-rimmed eyes.
He doesn’t wait for his brain to digest the scene, meandering through the crowd as quickly as his clumsy feet can bring him. He mutters hurried apologies upon colliding narrowly with strangers, only to find that once he reaches the opposing sidewalk, the man has become nothing but a billowing shadow among the ever-moving passersby. A null.
Sehun is nothing but a defeated slump of his shoulders at the end of the day. At the base of his tongue, the inclination to shout a name withers.
part two
RATING: R
WARNINGS: Mentions of mature contents, character deaths.
WORD COUNT: 10,766 words
SUMMARY: It’s another static, just like the smoke that always colors his mouth.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I would like to thank fallaciesoffate for the prompt. It's wonderful and I might have taken a bit of liberty as to where it leads but I hope you'll enjoy it nonetheless! Special thanks to everyone who's read and hold my hand during the process, a lot of smooches and love. This fanfic wouldn't happen without you! <3
Sehun travels through cities.
Sehun lives in cities.
He doesn’t quite know if there’s any difference between them, but all that he knows is how the tendrils of smoke that billow from his mouth stay the same, like a static that glues him to his core, reminding him of Seoul. It doesn’t matter where he is, but he always carries the same brand of cigarettes, the same shape of lighters. He makes friends with the corners of the streets, of alleys, and reminds himself of the city that vaguely smells like home.
(Or what’s left of it.)
These days have felt like a solid blur. Some of them are spent on the most discreet crannies of a country, those tucked between the whispers of secrets exchanged among the street rats. Some of them are squandered on the places glorified on the maps, shimmering with specks of the brightest lights succulent with the ripest juice of glam.
All that he knows is, wherever he is, he always ends up being caught by someone’s teeth, all marks and bruises when the night crawls into the burn of the morning.
It’s another static, just like the smoke that always colors his mouth.
The taste of London air is thick and musty against Sehun’s tongue, rusted with the flavor that he often attains when he’s standing still in a foreign country, no matter how many times he’s placed this country’s air among his teeth. The crowd rushes around him, constantly swarming that it almost becomes a white noise in the background, his thoughts swimming into its private vortex to drown the sound. At the back of his mind, someone’s tongue, hot as it grazes across his jugular. At the back of his mind, someone’s hair, soft as the strands are tangled amidst his fingers.
Between his chapped lips, a cigarette, its apex smoldering orange with absolutism.
He’s washing off someone’s scent that clings stubbornly to his skin and coat, hoping to cleanse the inklings of their last hug off his head before he enters the airport. The smell of tobacco has been his favorite perfume since months ago, identifying it with himself when the fragrance that he wears is always mixed with someone else’s at the end of the day.
He takes another drag as he shoves his free hand into the fleece-lined pocket of his leather jacket, eyes scanning his surroundings with indolence until they come to a stop at the sight of someone familiar.
A stranger, but not quite.
Another static.
Maybe it’s their tenth encounter. Maybe it’s their thirteenth. Sehun has lost count.
He stares a second too long. The stranger’s gaze catches his and Sehun freezes. A deer in the headlight.
Sehun swears he sees the stranger smiling at him.
It’s thin, the smile. Just a slight curve on the lips. Sehun exhales the fumes and the smile is gone with the haze. The stranger turns his back on Sehun and walks away.
Sehun wonders if having an imaginary friend is still prevalent among people his age.
Seoul. Seoul. Paris. Seattle. Osaka. Los Angeles. Seoul. New York. Moscow. London.
Sehun might have lost a city or more in the equation. He doesn’t always board the plane with his focus intact. Most of the time, he loiters in the airport like a lost boy that it reminds him painfully of his adolescent years, except these days he has tickets slipped between the pages of his passport.
He swears they’ve had more than just what he can recall. Maybe the stranger has been a gauzy shadow within his peripheral view. Maybe the stranger has been a passing figure that his subconscious managed to catch.
Maybe the stranger has been nothing but a figment of his imagination.
A figment of his imagination that comes with an impressive amount of details, if Sehun must say so himself. It’s peculiar, because he’s never one to fantasize that well, his life a carbon copy of what he’s read, what he’s absorbed, what he’s practiced.
Their encounters have been a series of volatile evolution, as though the stranger grows up and old with Sehun.
The first time he truly clutched the image of the stranger in his weary palm, the stranger was a remnant of crushed composure, anxiety gnawing at the corners of his being that Sehun couldn’t help but lock his gaze on the stranger for a moment longer. The stranger was pale, sunken cheeks framed with hair too black, a contrast too stark. It was two years ago-Sehun remembers because he met Lu Han just two weeks prior. He found the stranger while he was wandering in the airport aimlessly because that was how he satiated his lust for travelling.
Three months later or so, the stranger seemed calmer, sitting outside the airport and blowing smoke rings that dissipated into the balmy summer air. It was around the first time that a customer taught Sehun to smoke he could almost imagine the tar plaguing his own teeth. Sehun passed him by a little too closely he caught the crumbling façade that the stranger donned, located at the tips of his trembling fingers as he filled his lungs with smoke.
There was a year of gap spanning between Seoul and Paris. Sehun was cold, wrapped in the coat he’d purchased with his freshly obtained salary. The stranger walked past him this time, his coat was exactly like Sehun’s that Sehun’s attention was captured for a brief period. When the stranger settled himself five seats away from Sehun, though, the surge of dusty memories rushed in. Sehun almost failed to recognize him at first with the amount of confidence (or nonchalance) dousing the stranger, hair colored dark red. Maroon, one of Sehun’s clients would insist.
The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh encounters that he can remember, albeit vaguely, were a distant recollection for Sehun. Maybe they were sitting in the same café. Maybe they happened to bump into each other in the toilet. Maybe it was the good old passing each other by without noticing much of it. Sehun had been too lost in his own world to mind them.
New York was far too bright for Sehun, too blinding.
At the corner of a night, when he still had hours to spare before his flight, he was left to nurse the lingering headache that caused him to pick at the end of his frayed sweater, back pressing against the cool of a toilet stall. There was a rumble of nausea at the pit of his stomach but nothing would come out.
He waited for another five minutes or so before staggering out of the cubicle, feet knocking against each other until they came to a halt in front of another stall. The stench of alcohol beat the one coating Sehun’s sweater, pungent as the reek of vomit followed. Sehun stood still, eyes set on the other’s legs, straight as the male’s back was bent towards the toilet bowl. He remained that way until the stranger finished emptying his bowel, and Sehun recalls croaking, “Are you all right?” before the stranger turned around. Disheveled blonde hair, kohl-stained cheeks. Apart from that, he was too recognizable for Sehun’s liking.
There was a quick thud and click of the door, but the stranger’s anxiety echoed in Sehun’s mind for days.
They nearly collided against each other in Moscow, shoulders brushing against each other harshly that Sehun muttered an apology in English, only to be met with a pair of eyes too dark compared to the silver strands of bangs resting just above them. The stranger tore the eye contact first while Sehun was still gaping, tailing the stranger’s motion with his gaze. The image of the stranger’s back was scorched against the back of his eyelids.
It’s the airport, always the airport. Sehun scolds himself inwardly every time he scans the crowd for a familiar face whenever he steps into one.
Last time in London is a ghost in Sehun’s mind, along with stories that for Sehun sounded like desperate pleas, spilling from Jongin’s mouth carelessly as though Sehun had been an old friend. He’s ignored Jongin’s calls, and when there’s another incoming one, he’s been staring at his phone screen too intensely that he doesn’t notice the seat next to him is recently occupied. The flare of tobacco scent is the one that notifies him, just right when the phone call flickers into a missed call notification.
“It’s getting cold.”
The comment seizes Sehun’s attention, unsure if the stranger is talking to him but he’s looking at Sehun when Sehun turns his head. His eyes are rimmed with the blatant indifference (one of the two expressions that Sehun has ever seen him donning), tinted with little amusement. There’s a smile dancing on the tips of his lips, a subtle one.
It disappears when Sehun blinks.
“It’s almost winter,” Sehun replies, too tentatively that he nearly winces at his own tone.
“You’re right,” he muses, and another smile blossoms across his face. It grows wider and wider within a split second, and when Sehun finally digests it, the smile has turned into a grin, the eyes crinkling.
Maybe Sehun has imagination slightly too wild.
Maybe he’s gone a little insane.
“An imaginary friend?” Lu Han echoes the words carefully, as though weighting them on his tongue, tone laden with laughter. Lazy grace, languid curl of lips. Sehun has always wondered why Lu Han would ever see him as a competitor.
Sehun welcomes the amusement scribbled across Lu Han’s delicate features, expected it. Still, he’s nervous, fingers wrung together on his lap, under the table. A hesitant curl of lips follows, measuring whether or not the topic is worth continuing. (It’s not.)
Maybe it’s despair, maybe it’s obstinance.
“Yeah, like... like the one you often heard occurring to children.” He shrugs, feigning indifference. “Do you think it might happen to us, adults?”
Lu Han shakes his head, but it doesn’t indicate that he doesn’t think so. It’s an extension to his amusement, smile bleeding across his face further. “Why the sudden inquiries?”
Sehun takes a sip of his coffee and winces, swallowing the bitterness. “I was thinking of it in the middle of reading a book,” he reasons. Lying doesn’t seem too natural on his tongue when it’s directed at his mentor.
“A book. You sound too intelligent for college dropouts like us.”
Sarcasm. Sehun knows too well the innumerable amount of books that Lu Han has devoured to keep up with his clients’ conversations; yet another reason why Sehun is no match for him.
Lu Han taps his chin twice with an index finger. “I don’t think madness is exclusive to children. Or adults.”
The words sink under his skin. Sehun hums, agreeing.
“Do you have an imaginary friend?” Lu Han’s voice is relaxed, loaded with mischief.
“No, no,” a practiced, smoothened answer releases itself almost too immediately. “I read it in a book.”
“Sure,” he chuckles. “That’s a very basic lie. A code for asking things that would otherwise remain discreet. Come on, you and I know that we’ve met enough people to notice.”
With the warmth pooling on his cheeks, Sehun is certain that his blush gives him away.
“You’re saying I’m insane,” Sehun concludes, fatigue bleeding in his tone. There’s a gaze weighted on every twitch of Lu Han’s facial muscles, but he knows too well than to expect to read Lu Han.
“I’m not saying that. Yet,” he clacks his tongue against the palate of his mouth, “I’m not saying otherwise either.”
Sehun is scrubbing the back of his hand with a thumb, ironing the creases with the heat from the frictions. His tongue is heavy with uncertainty, knowing that he’s made this awkward for him-there’s nothing more to say without dissolving the little secret that he’d like to keep tucked in safety, yet changing the topic midway doesn’t seem a viable option either. He opts for silence.
“If it’s any consolation, none of us are really sane.” When Lu Han speaks, there’s always this magnet that renders attention gravitating towards him, but this time Sehun is more captured by the content than the speaker. “We’re made of at least a bit of madness. Besides, haven’t you been told? Sanity is optional, especially in our field of work. Sanity is boring.”
At that, an involuntary smile inscribes itself along the seam of Sehun’s lips. Maybe it’s one of those nights where Lu Han shares his tricks again, eclipsing them with undertones.
Still, while madness has its special place in his field of work, Sehun doesn’t know how having an imaginary friend would fall into the brackets of advantages. Still, he doesn’t stop himself from indulging what little madness resides within.
This time, the stranger takes the seat across Sehun, and Incheon airport feels a bit different compared to the last time they met. Setting: inside. Setting: warmth. Setting: closer.
Sehun’s hands stay around his mug, cupping the porcelain to avoid any indicative nervous gestures as he watches the male settle on the seat. He tries not to stare too much, but he’s attracted to the simplest of the stranger’s everything-from the lines rimming his stoic eyes to how seemingly fragile his wrists are. Soft, slender fingers are intertwined on the tabletop before Sehun and he can’t stop looking at those as well, nails trimmed to perfection that Sehun wonders if it’s a subtle sign for him to step up the game, spend more money on beauty services.
“You’re not being exactly surreptitious with your staring,” the stranger points out, beads of chuckle escaping his thin lips.
“S-Sorry,” Sehun sputters almost instantly, cheeks specked with the spreading blush. “You’re... suddenly sitting in front of me.”
“Oh, right. How impolite of me to suddenly claim the seat while remaining a stranger. I’m Baekhyun.” He offers another grin, one which Sehun is determined to catch in his memory. “And I don’t know your name, but I think I’ve known you better than I do many of my friends.”
Sehun doesn’t reply right away but he’s loosening up, gradually relaxing albeit distantly aware of how calculative Baekhyun appears; how composed and impenetrable.
“Sehun.” His name a whirring sound of static, announced in dozens of different cities. “It’s Sehun.”
“Sehun,” Baekhyun nods, tasting the name on the tip of his tongue. “Finally, a name to complement all these attributes.”
“Attributes?”
“Your... habits, quirks. Let’s see. You smoke Esse Classic, always sitting as close as possible to the ashtray. You blow smoke rings in cold days. You tap your fingers a lot when you’re bored, mostly when waiting for a check-in. Never bring more than a suitcase. Not a backpacker, for sure-you’re too expensive-looking for that-but you travel frequently.” He raises his eyebrows. “Like I said, I think I’ve known you better than I do many of my friends.”
It doesn’t take much to make him flustered when he’s not donning the façade of a confident escort, and with more warmth pooling on his cheeks, he shoots a look of confusion at Baekhyun.
At that, a smile splinters Baekhyun’s lips. “I’m sorry. That might come off as creepy.”
“That’s... yeah... a bit,” Sehun stammers, averting his gaze from Baekhyun.
He grins apologetically. “So many people have told me that I’m not too well-versed in the art of making a conversation-I come off as too blunt sometimes. I should’ve done some practice first before approaching you, but sometimes my curiosity is too much to handle.”
Sehun only nods, unsure of what to say. The pause allows his bewilderment to die down a little, and he takes a moment to spare his surroundings a glance, just to ensure that he isn’t being watched for possibly talking to himself.
“I’m sorry,” Baekhyun repeats, recapturing Sehun’s focus. “Would you... prefer to be left alone, then? I might have disrupted your alone time.”
“No, no.” Sehun is startled by how fast his own tongue reacts. “It’s okay.”
“I hope you’re sure about that,” he chuckles. “I can be a bit of a nuisance with my curiosity. I might ask a lot of questions-just tell me if I ever invade your privacy. I don’t mind being told off.”
Sehun mouths an okay and remains tongue-tied. For some reason, carrying a conversation with a stranger who isn’t a customer proves to be trickier than expected. Sehun wonders if it’s due to his lack of real social exposure save for the nights out with Lu Han and some high school friends with whom he manages to keep in contact.
“Quiet, aren’t you,” Baekhyun comments, humming. “But I might be talkative enough for two, and there are actually so many questions that I want to ask you. Like, what do you do for a living, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Sehun’s stomach drops at the question, although that’s somehow expected, especially when Baekhyun has caught him travelling more than most. Possibilities swirl in his mind-his job wouldn’t be the first to spring towards the forefront of one’s mind when travelling is being brought up, so there’s definitely a room to evade it.
A businessman would be the most common idea that Sehun would have-the easiest, the simplest. But saying that he is one, as derived from his experiences in dealing with those businessmen who have left their fingerprints on his skin, is going to be one hell of a task without any supporting background. He isn’t Lu Han, who might be one of the smartest people Sehun has ever encountered-one night Lu Han would absorb everything a customer says, and the next day he’d be able to ramble on it without much of a problem.
“I... don’t work,” he replies, accentuating his tone with intentional tentativeness. Not everyone would be too comfortable with sharing the fact that he’s living off his parents’ riches, after all. “I just travel.”
“A traveler, then,” Baekhyun confirms. “That’s nice. Do you make any documentary of the places you visit?”
Baekhyun is sharp, that’s for sure, and Sehun has to curb the urge from swallowing as to not emit the subtlest hint of unease. “No, I don’t,” he admits, for hard proof would be harder to fake, and Sehun doesn’t think he has the channels to help him if he wanted to try. “I mostly travel for the atmospheres instead of the landmarks. There’s nothing that can preserve it but the mind.”
Another curve of lips, almost too familiar for Sehun’s liking. It’s laden with satisfaction, like the first smile that he saw perching on Baekhyun’s lips.
“That’s a good way of thinking.” There’s a pause wedged before he sighs. “I need to learn more from you. I’ve been travelling a lot. Too frequently, even. But it’s merely for work.”
“Work?”
“I work for my father. It’s cliché, really,” he shrugs. “He kind of placed me as a negotiator on his behalf, which was quite a big mistake, if I must say so myself. I mean, good communication skills and Baekhyun don’t really merge well in a sentence, let alone in reality. Most of the time I just let my assistant do it and then I sign the paper.”
“That’s a way to deal with it.”
There’s terse laughter spilling into the space between them and Sehun can’t help but smile a little, finding that Baekhyun is easily amused.
Another thing that he realizes, though, is that when Baekhyun’s smile splits his cheeks from ear to ear, his mouth is almost in the shape of a rectangular, and Sehun is determined to commit that in his memory.
It’s peculiar that Sehun feels the loss when they have to part ways upon entering the gate, this time with knowledge about Baekhyun heavy in his luggage. He watches the other intently as Baekhyun walks past the door, disappearing into the aisle that leads him to the plane heading to Toronto. Tokyo is waiting for Sehun; all fallen petals and heavy expectations, but as he boards the plane Sehun cannot seem to shake off the idea of a specific businessman out of his mind.
Somewhere between Tokyo and Seoul, Sehun finds himself under someone named Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo is quiet, lined with the lust that Sehun tries to satiate but it’s difficult when his head is occupied by someone else. Kyungsoo is quiet, but he bites particularly hard, leaving dents of thin dashes along the rim of Sehun’s neck. Kyungsoo is quiet, and he likes it when Sehun moans his name out loud, filling the silence enough for both of them.
Somewhere between Tokyo and Seoul, Sehun finds himself waking up in the middle of the night, catching himself wishing that the body pressing against his arms is someone else’s. That’s already too much of an improvisation for the night. He closes his eyes and sees that back and those shoulders again, slowly vanishing into the darkness of his own mind, swallowed by the constant differences in destinations.
There are three whole weeks wedging itself between them before Sehun hesitates at the mouth of a café in LAX, eyes fixated on the way Baekhyun’s lips close around the straw as he sips his cold coffee, throat suddenly parched. It takes him a few seconds more to dither, fingers picking at the end of his sweater, until Baekhyun looks up from his tablet, face lit up along with the ecstatic wave directed at Sehun. At that, Sehun forces a smile even when his stomach roils with nervousness, steps a little jagged as he approaches Baekhyun.
He settles on the seat across Baekhyun and masks the gesture of fixing the collar of his sweater as a habit when it’s anything but, ensuring that he doesn’t expose the trail of purple that Chanyeol left earlier in the car. If it was too late and Baekhyun has caught the sight, he doesn’t say anything to Sehun.
“Why hello,” Baekhyun greets. “You haven’t forgotten about me, have you? I saw you standing there for so long.”
“Oh, no, no,” Sehun shakes his head almost immediately, blood suffused to his cheeks. “I was... um, unsure if you’d want me to approach you.”
“That’s quite an excuse,” Baekhyun says, seemingly nonchalant. “Would you like to order something? Some drink? Cappuccino with one sugar?”
“How-“Sehun blurts out, stopping himself before the question spills entirely. “That... That would be nice.”
Baekhyun chuckles knowingly, getting up to his feet to order the drink for Sehun. Sehun finds himself staring, again, despite the fact that the image of the back has been too embedded in his mind.
When Baekhyun occupies his seat again and Sehun is nursing a paper cup filled with his favorite beverage, there’s an ongoing conversation that consists of Baekhyun telling him about his days (meetings here, meetings there-there are several stories about his father’s putrid ambitions clinging to Baekhyun’s spine like an anchor, and that leaves Sehun with longing that he knows is insatiable, along with a dollop of guilt and discomfort), followed by Sehun stringing another set of lies.
Still, Sehun would like to think that it’s not entirely lying when he slips truths about himself in-between. His brother, leaving home when he was twelve. His mother, working to the bone to forget the fact that his father left them.
His family, never to be seen, never to be heard.
It’s been long since the last time Sehun saw eyes laced with pity wrung from that chapter of his life.
Sehun starts scanning through the naked streets of the cities, foreign or not, hoping that Baekhyun would be a form in the sea of faces.
Coincidences, however, remain adamantly within the confines of the airports.
This is the first time Sehun is more than just certain over the fact that Baekhyun is apparently not a figment of his imagination. He’s pressed against the wall of a cubicle, the place small enough to induce claustrophobia since it’s not meant to contain two people, but Sehun’s head is too hazed to think. It’s a few hours past midnight, the scarcity of visitors at this hour bringing its own perks.
There was nobody to witness them when Baekhyun shoved him into the cubicle, right after an innocent conversation taking place in front of the basins. There’s nobody to listen to Sehun as he moans into Baekhyun’s mouth, hot and insistent, tongue swiping against Sehun’s in a manner that Sehun doesn’t recall experiencing for a long stretch of time.
Baekhyun smells like the residue of his bitter coffee and decaying smokes, but he tastes more sweet than acidic. His hands are resting on Sehun’s hips, too gentle for the same pair which just pushed Sehun roughly against the stall. Sehun’s own are claiming the spots on Baekhyun’s shoulder and cheek, a thumb caressing the prominent cheekbone as he continues returning the gesture, the same amount of persistence exuded from his mouth.
When they part for air, Sehun is wide-eyed, wondering if it’s a right decision to kiss and be kissed by someone whom he’s just officially known as of two months ago, without salary and with emotional baggage.
Then again, his life is already littered with wrong decisions.
(And Baekhyun doesn’t taste like one.)
“I’m sorry. Was I being too... rash?” Baekhyun’s voice is husky, breath brushing Sehun’s philtrum. He sounds almost too apologetic that Sehun tightens his grip on Baekhyun’s shoulder, fingers digging sharply into the skin hidden beneath the sweatshirt.
Instead of answering, Sehun presses a soft kiss against the corner of Baekhyun’s mouth, hoping that it’s enough as a substitute of one.
Sehun can’t remember the last time he spent a good expanse of period with someone just kissing and kissing and kissing until their lips are swollen and their mouths so full with each other, until he cannot tell if the remnants that linger in his mouth are his or Baekhyun’s.
Lu Han decides to reply his confessional message about how he apparently doesn’t have an imaginary friend with ㅋㅋㅋ , and Sehun spends his short-lived nights in Seoul dreaming about a man whose tongue clashed against his own.
Entering February is a stale reminder of how Baekhyun hasn’t shown up for the last month, and Sehun fidgets with his cigarette before taking another deep drag, letting the smoke pool in his lungs as long as possible before exhaling the residue. He recalls spending nearly thirty minutes of his working hour sitting in the bathroom of Jongin’s vast apartment, staring at his phone screen. It’s a vain attempt; Baekhyun doesn’t know his number, although he’s wished that by the twist of fate which has enabled their meetings, an unknown number would suddenly pop out, asking him how he’s doing, where he is now.
There are days that he has slowly left behind. These are the days when he would enter the airports with anticipation blossoming in his chest. These are the days when he reminds himself of the child that would walk into the premise with no passport in his hand, heart swelled in dreams of travelling.
(These days, the airport is just another gateway to another routine. His life starts becoming a dull slate of alternating cityscapes again.)
His steps into Incheon are sluggish, eyes canopied with the weight of lethargy from those nights of staying up too long. From smoking too much his lungs smolder with the wafts of fumes; he’s hoped to burn the discomfort that settles in his chest with it, but it doesn’t work.
He smokes and smokes. The world is a motion behind the sheet of fogged window that the tendrils of grey create. He fails to register that his cigarette has been snatched from between his hovering fingers, only realizing it when he looks up, watching as the stick wedges itself between thin lips. Heart jumps to the throat, eyes widen to a solid scale.
An inhale, an exhale. When the wall of smoke dissipates to embrace the night breeze, Sehun shivers.
“Been missing me?”
If someone asks Sehun why he’s so infatuated with someone who remains a stranger even with his small trinkets pocketed in Sehun’s mind, he would have no answer. There’s no simplicity in this.
But Sehun would like to think that there is, and it would remain that way until they bring whatever that they have now outside the confines of these airports.
It only dawns on him when they stumble into the airport hotel room they rented ten minutes ago, his own feet staggering backwards as Baekhyun guides him, lips locked and eyes shut. His head is heavy with Baekhyun’s tongue in his mouth, the aftertaste of the cigarette clinging to their teeth. He only stops when the back of his knees hit the corner of the bed, and he falls backwards onto the plane, pulling Baekhyun with him.
There are layers and layers between them, and Sehun is suffocating from the cultivating lust. His fingers are uncharacteristically clumsy, scampering across Baekhyun’s coat to push it off the other’s frame. He stares at Baekhyun as he starts lifting Baekhyun’s sweater, exposing skin. Baekhyun hovers over him with a soft smile resting on his lips, long fingers brushing against the skin of Sehun’s hips. A shudder runs through Sehun.
A reminder comes to him a little late, but not too late.
“Hyung,” his voice is laced with too much uncertainty, blood rushing to his cheeks. “Would you... mind turning the lights off?”
When darkness falls into the room, Sehun feels safer. What Baekhyun doesn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
When the night ends in the rhythmical breathing on both ends, Sehun knows that he’s missing his plane. But instead of scurrying out of the bed and rummaging through the room to locate his phone and subsequently book the next flight to Dublin, he presses the side of his head against Baekhyun’s chest. The thud, thud, thud against his ears is serene, static.
Maybe he would learn to discard the cigarettes one day and replace them with someone whose presence becomes a routine for him.
Another fortnight dribbles into the gutter with the absence of a coincidental rendezvous but Sehun can still feel the echo of Baekhyun’s cadence in his bones. It doesn’t disappear even after three nights spent in strangers’ beds, after burying his nose against someone’s pillow in hopes that it would start smelling like a specific businessman. It doesn’t disappear even after those moments before sleep, squandered on staring at his stark ceiling, worries gnawing at the periphery of his senses.
Another fortnight and Sehun thinks that insanity is no longer an option. It’s a necessity, sleeping under the wrap of his skin and flesh.
When he met Lu Han a week earlier it seemed that Lu Han knew. A smile splayed on his lips still haunts Sehun, and if that impression Lu Han etched wasn’t a figment of Sehun’s imagination, he’d bet his money on how Lu Han knows that this time, it’s not about an imaginary friend.
His insanity has turned more real than just that, and it manifests itself in the face among the swarming crowd.
The day is bleak and discolored after long hours spent on roping himself with faux hopes, staring at the phone screen that never notifies him of a much expected message. He’s filled with the residue of nicotine up to the neck, head swimming in the haze of memories replayed over and over again as he inhaled the carcinogen. It took him another hour to convince himself to walk out of that decrepit apartment. A change of atmosphere wouldn’t hurt.
He finds himself on the sidewalk littered with too many pedestrians and too little of a comfort zone. Feet knocking against each other in lazy strides, he wanders aimlessly, occasionally looking up from watching his tattered sneakers to ensure that he isn’t involving himself in a classic gaffe of bumping against a stranger.
The umpteenth time he looks up from the pavement, he swears he sees a glimpse of a familiar face. Silver hair. Kohl-rimmed eyes.
He doesn’t wait for his brain to digest the scene, meandering through the crowd as quickly as his clumsy feet can bring him. He mutters hurried apologies upon colliding narrowly with strangers, only to find that once he reaches the opposing sidewalk, the man has become nothing but a billowing shadow among the ever-moving passersby. A null.
Sehun is nothing but a defeated slump of his shoulders at the end of the day. At the base of his tongue, the inclination to shout a name withers.
part two