Links
Day of Challenge: Week one, challenge 3/5
Title: Links
Pairing: Sehun/Luhan
Rating: PG
Length:1091
Genre: Romance, Slight!Angst
Summary/Warnings: Incomplete; Challenge #14 for xoxocamp (write a fic where the whole thing is a flashback)
If I had to use one word to describe the entirety of my life, it’d be Lu Han. He’s been my friend for as long as I can remember. We met through a daycare program, I was five, he was already turning nine. Both of our parents had rigorous work schedules; we’d be dropped off first thing in the morning, picked up just in time for dinner. It was mere coincidence that we became friends back then. It had been art time, “draw a picture of your favorite flower. We reached for the red crayon at the same time, our fingers brushing softly before both of us jolted back. I remember how his eyes grew wide as he watched my tiny hand dive back in for the crayon. They brimmed slightly with tears, “I wanted that one!” His foot stomped twice in frustration. I looked down at the crayon in my hand, studied it, thought about the rose that I had been just about to draw, before tentatively holding it out to the other boy and saying, “Here”.
I don’t remember much of daycare after that, but somehow a friendship blossomed into a flower scribbled in with a red crayon.
-
I realized I loved him on a Tuesday afternoon when I was fifteen years old. He was nineteen. He had been begging me to play soccer with him--why he wasn’t begging his friends that were his own age I have no idea--and I had finally caved. After hours of running back and forth without even having a chance to steal the ball from him--exactly why I hadn’t wanted to play in the first place---I fell to the grass. He kicked me in the side a few times, “Get up! C’mon! One more round!” So I teasingly snatched at his feet, trying to pull him down beside me. After making a point of rolling his eyes, he laid on his back and tucked his hands behind his head. “Isn’t it strange how everything seems to spin when you suddenly stop moving. It’s like the world’s trying to catch up with you”. I looked up suddenly, at the sheep-like clouds, and he was right. Everything felt like it was slowly tilting back and forth, up and down. Dizzying. My eyes closed, the sensation increased, along with a pit in my stomach. The sun unveiled itself from under the clouds and I reached up an arm to stop it’s bright lights. There was a chuckle from beside me, then the light press of a hand covering my own before curling our fingers together. I opened my eyes, turned my head, and met a sight that I had never truly seen before.
I’d known him for years, yet somehow, he looked different. Somehow it felt different. I knew it was love when the tell-tale fluttering of wings dusted around my heart.
-
Sometimes it was hard to choose whether I wanted to laugh, cry, or curl into a tiny ball in the beige bedding that often was only half on my bed and half on the carpet. The initial sensations of falling in love had nearly faded away, leaving me with only the bitter after-taste of too much attachment and questions of why? why him? why me?
I found out then that love was not easy. At first it seems wonderful, beautiful, an overwhelming sweet nectar that I couldn’t fly away from. But it’s poisoned. One of the worlds most catastrophic drugs that keeps one’s vision swimming and swimming until they drown. It’s the vines that pull you back until they soak you in.
I blamed Minseok at first. It wasn’t his fault Luhan took a fancy to his dumpling cheeks and gummy smiles, but it felt better to tape my anger to him rather than accept the reality. They weren’t technically dating--Luhan hadn’t even outwardly expressed any romantic interest in the other man. It was in his eyes though. In both of their eyes. Some underlying affection that only a jealous other like myself could have conjured up. It may not have been real at all, I may have imagined it, but that didn’t make the bile that scraped up my throat taste any sweeter. The ache that sat upon my heart, imposed upon me like an unwanted guest, felt as real as the tears left soaking through my pillowcase. My wordless thoughts now imprinted in the fabric.
The movies, the stories, the fairy tales, why had nothing warned me about this. You have to be crazy to want to fall in love.
-
Hope is the thing with feathers as Emily Dickinson would describe. It was supposed to set you free, let you fly, give you that encouraging push off into the air. That is what I had in learned through english literature in school. What I hadn’t learned about was how overwhelming the sensation could be, just how talented it was with turning small possibilities into an entanglement of what is truth and what is lies. It is a teenagers tinted glasses that cause so many misconceptions of the real workings of the world. It was the rose-colored glass that I ran straight into.
I was 18 years old, Luhan was 22. I was barely an adult yet I felt all the power of maturity pulsating in my veins. I thought that finally I was ready, finally I was on par with the older man. Finally we were both adults, I am no longer a child.
Though, at heart I was still foolish as ever and significantly more recklessly confident.
He was driving me home--I didn’t own my own car yet--because the soccer game he made me go to with him had just ended. It was a university game that Minseok had been playing in. I barely managed to hold in a snicker when Minseok face planted into the ground and the other team scored, tying the game. I often tried to restrain myself from internally mocking the elder, but it typically failed.
We were stopped at a red light. But my mind suddenly raced forward at full speed.
“Hyung.”
“Yes?” A small glance flickered to me before going back to the road.
“I like you.”
There was a heavy silence. There was a rev of engines as the green light washed over the street. There was a soft chuckle.
“Sehun,” Luhan had begun. I already knew what was coming. My throat constricted, I felt tremors flowing through my fingers. “You’re still just a child. You don’t know what you’re saying.”