[For Everyone] 幸福
Title: 幸福
For: Everyone
Pairing: broken!Luhan/Sehun, unrequited!Luhan/Chen, Luhan/Kris, friends!Luhan/Baekhyun, ex!Baekhyun/Kris
Rating: PG
Length: 2,390 words
Summary: Sometimes, at night, he can't help dialing a number that’s all too familiar.
Author's Note: Thank you to the mods, and everyone else who’s helped me.
The title is from 呼吸.
Listen to Fragment while you read this.
Sometimes, at night, Lu Han lies in bed, staring as the shadows of the leaves playing across the ceiling as the room fills with a night chill, the ghostly fingers of the wind tiptoeing across his skin, flicking at the edge of the sheet that's warm enough, on Enia, with its balmy summer weather and blue-skied beaches, but there's a chillier side to the planet, in the witching hours when only Lu Han seems to be awake.
He likes Enia, he really does.
"You need a change," Jongdae says, frowning across the coffee table, his fingers dancing over the wood grain, and Lu Han knows, instinctively, that Jongdae wants nothing more than to reach those few centimetres, rest his fingers warmly on the back of Lu Han's hand, but he doesn't. That ship has sailed, two vessels passing in the night, never meeting before they'd already turned away. Lu Han curls his fingers into his palm, warming them on the side of his coffee cup. He's cold, somehow, lately, shivering slightly as he tries not to notice the hurt that flickers over Jongdae's face before he slaps the smile back on his face. "I found a job for you."
"I have a job," Lu Han frowns, staring into the murky depths of his coffee cup.
"This one is better." Jongdae's tone of voice leaves no room for disagreement and, in a way, Lu Han is glad. He's perfectly capable of taking care of himself, but sometimes it's nice not to have to be the leader.
He doesn't think about-
But sometimes, at night, the strange witching hour when everyone else on the planet seems to be asleep, only Lu Han and his thoughts and the cold wind, he can't help but think about him.
Sehun, he whispers, exhales really; it's not even a word, just a disembodied thought.
And once he starts, he can't stop, even when he knows it's a bad idea, even when intergalactic phone calls are expensive, he's slipping out of bed to grab his phone from the charging dock, his fingers dancing over the screen-muscle memory, really-as he waits for the call to connect.
Jongdae doesn't know about this.
No one knows about this.
The funny thing, the saddest thing, is that Sehun doesn't even know about this either. He's always been a groggy sleeper, and Lu Han isn't sure whether it's fortune or misfortune that their nights always seem to sync up, that when he calls and Sehun finally picks up, Lu Han just hums slightly, waits for him to drift back into sleep, and pads back to bed where he listens to Sehun breathing, the sound grounding him as he slips into his own dreamless sleep.
It's not a good thing, even though Lu Han can definitely afford the phone bill. It's the emotional cost he can't calculate, and he knows that Jongdae would shout at him if he knew, but he's back on Briuq and he doesn't know.
He doesn't need to know.
"You look like shit," Baekhyun says as Lu Han steps out of the elevator, running his hand through his hair. He sighs. Way to state the obvious.
"I ran out of coffee," he says, instead of saying I couldn't sleep again so I made a ridiculously expensive intergalactic call to my ex-boyfriend and listened to him breathing, because when he even thinks about telling anyone else, it just sounds wrong.
It is wrong, but Lu Han does it anyway.
"Wait a sec," Baekhyun says, darting off as he weaves between the low walls that separate the desks, and-yes, there it is-the sound of Yifan's door being slammed open and a dull shout muffled by the sound of the espresso machine humming away. Lu Han just laughs, rubbing a hand over his face and letting his eyelids droop closed for a moment before he shakes his head and walks over to his office, leaving the door open in anticipation of Baekhyun barging through in a few moments, steaming cup of coffee in hand.
"Yifan needs to get that stick out of his ass," Baekhyun says after he crosses the threshold, but his eyes are sparkling and Lu Han, Lu Han will never be able to understand Baekhyun and Yifan. Baekhyun trash talks him non-stop and complains about what a shitty boyfriend he was but there's still something between them, not really romantic, more just. . .comfortable is the best description Lu Han can come up with as he reaches for the cup of coffee and takes a deep sip, despite his burning tongue.
"That's hot!" Baekhyun shrieks, outraged, but Lu Han ignores the pain and the noise and focuses on the taste of the coffee on his tongue, burning out the lingering traces of Sehun hovering at the edges of his mind, the way he'd mumbled a question when he'd answered the phone,
"Lu Han?" he'd asked, the name indistinguishable despite the garbled pronunciation of sleep, and Lu Han had thought he'd been caught out, except Sehun's breathing had immediately settled into a regular rhythm, in and out, in and out, and the only result had been that Lu Han hadn't been able to drift off to sleep quite as quickly as he usually did, the comfortable sound of Sehun breathing not quite enough, this time, to erase all the thoughts swirling through his head.
Do you dream of me? he hadn't asked.
He doesn't want to know.
"Hey!" Lu Han blinks as Baekhyun snaps his fingers, too close up in Lu Han's face. "Don't zone out on me, okay? It's only Monday!" He pries the empty coffee cup out of Lu Han's hands, frowning, and Lu Han tries to remember when he'd finished the cup.
He can't.
"Just tired, that's all," Lu Han says, running his hand through his hair again, as much to disguise the bedhead as anything else as he slides behind his desk and pulls up the schedule. Shit.
"Do you need more coffee?" Baekhyun asks, swinging the empty cup by the handle and glancing mischievously in the direction of Yifan's office.
"No, thanks," Lu Han says, eyes darting across the screen. "I just had my wake up call." Baekhyun leans over to look at the screen.
"Holy shit," he said, and rested his hand on Lu Han's shoulder for a moment before heading out. "Good luck! I’ll bring you another cup anyway, can’t let Yifan get too ahead now on his happy morning." He laughs, the sound fading down the hall.
Not really listening, Lu Han eyes the email from the editor, notifying him that his lead comic artist had been hospitalized overnight, and starts to go into damage repair.
No time for thinking about the sound of breathing.
By the end of the day, Lu Han is almost trembling with a potent mixture of over-caffeination and fatigue. Yura had said no, she absolutely couldn't rush the special one shot she'd been working on for the next month, and Lu Han had nodded and thanked her and retreated to the restroom where he'd leaned against the cool tiles and thought about calling Jongdae, who could always talk calm into him whenever things started to swirl out of control. And Jongdae liked the sound of his voice. He got as far as pulling out his phone-
"Why do you even like me?" Lu Han asks, looking up from where he's slumped in the corner of his couch, his eyes puffy from crying. "I keep talking about someone else."
Jongdae shrugs, smoothing a smile over his face.
"I don't like you because of Sehun," he says, resting his chin in his hands. "I like you because of you."
"But I can't even do anything for you!" Lu Han feels frustrated, he's told Jongdae that he's never liked him and he probably never will, at least not that way, not the way Jongdae wants, but Jongdae still comes over, still phones him, still makes sure he's okay.
Lu Han doesn't tell him about the nights he calls Sehun anyway.
"You don't have to do anything for me," Jongdae says, and Lu Han knows he means it. But it's not good anyway, because all he does is take, and that's no way to build a healthy friendship, when one person wants something the other can never give, and the other keeps taking without giving anything back.
"I could sing for you," Lu Han offers, and Jongdae blinks, a deep yearning peering out of his eyes before he looks away.
"That would be lovely," he says, but his voice is shaky.
Lu Han sings for him, because he promised, but watching Jongdae, the way his brow furrowed, the way he bites his lip as the corners of his mouth turn down and his eyes grow glassy, Lu Han also promises himself that he'll never make offers of things he can't deliver ever again.
-before he stopped, swallowing. It wouldn't be fair.
"I can do this," he told himself in the mirror, splashing cold water over his face and heading out again.
He'd thought he'd made it, saved the day, found the solution with Seungwan, a promising young artist with a series in the works. She had sounded excited, her voice vibrant over the phone, and had tentatively said yes, pausing to speak with her editor, and Lu Han had shut his eyes in relief and leaned back and breathed the slightly muggy air of the office. And then her voice had come back on the line, apologizing because her editor had told her no, had told her not to make promises she couldn't keep.
"I understand," Lu Han had said, because he really did, even if it just made everything harder right now. "Take care of yourself and we're looking forward to your series!"
And then he'd looked down at his coffee cup, finding it somehow full, and gulped a mouthful of steaming liquid.
And nothing else after that had even gotten to the maybe this will work out stage at all.
Lu Han rubs his eyes, grabbing for the cup of coffee without looking, and almost fumbles it out of his hands before managing to raise it to his mouth, the last sip thick with coffee grinds as he swallows.
He wonders, absently, how much coffee he's been drinking, and how often Baekhyun has come by to refill his cup, and how pissed off Yifan must be by now. He's almost, but not quite, too tired to care.
He might not work with Yifan-Lu Han in comics with a monthly distribution nevermind series volumes and special editions, artists who are always late for their deadlines and the endless cycling rush to make it in time only to start over on the next month's edition, and Yifan in literature, with authors who take years to write three hundred pages and the huge promotional effort leading up the release of a big ticket book-but they have to coexist under the same roof and talk to the same printing department and Baekhyun might be able to steal coffee from his friend slash ex something because he's in printing, but that doesn't mean Lu Han has the same privileges. Even if he's never asked Baekhyun for it.
That's when he notices a shadow falling over his desk. Lu Han blinks, eyes swimming from staring at the screen and looking for solutions that don't exist, and glances up, only to lean back in his seat in surprise.
Yifan is standing next to his desk, cup of steaming coffee in hand, and a frown on his face. Looking around furtively, Lu Han can't spot Baekhyun anywhere.
"I-I'm sorry," he apologizes, even though it's not really his fault, because he probably could have told Baekhyun that he absolutely wasn't to bring him any more of Yifan's coffee, and Baekhyun might have listened to that. Maybe. The espresso machine is pretty loud and maybe Yifan is almost as frazzled from the constant interruptions as Lu Han is from the constant rejections.
Yifan looks at him in silence, and takes another sip of coffee. Lu Han wonders if this is when Yifan will tell Lu Han that he's a failure and should go back to Briuq and stick to what he knows. And it's not like Lu Han hasn't thought of this before.
Yifan opens his mouth.
Lu Han braces himself to deal with a torrent of frustration and accusations that he's too exhausted to deal with right now.
"I have a friend," Yifan says, and Lu Han is so surprised that his mouth falls open, just a little bit, before he manages to close it again, "I have a friend who has a one shot he made on the side but never got around to submitting anywhere." He looks. . .thoughtful, maybe even sympathetic, though Lu Han doesn't know him quite well enough yet, and Baekhyun isn't here to translate.
"Is it-?" Yifan said it was his friend so he must have taken into account that it has to be of a certain level of professionalism, right? "Who is it?" Lu Han hopes Yifan won't be offended. He's not prepared for the frowning lines of Yifan's face to resolve themselves into a soft smile.
"He's good enough," he says, as though he knows exactly what Lu Han was too polite to ask. "He's a painter and he only did this one shot for fun."
"Oh," Lu Han hums, inhaling hopefully, almost scared to believe it might work out. "Oh, that would be-that would be wonderful." He smiles at Yifan, tired and a little shaky and very very grateful.
"I'll get his number," Yifan says, swinging around to step back to his office Lu Han presumes, "but you can look up Kim Jongin and see his art if you want." Lu Han's fingers are already tapping away on the keyboard, and wow this Kim Jongin is brilliant, when he hears a soft chuckle and looks up.
Baekhyun is standing there, grinning. "Took him long enough," he says, and winks, looking back up the hallway to where Yifan is striding towards them, paper in hand.
Lu Han glares at Baekhyun, but there's a small warm spot in his chest when Yifan smiles at him, and he doesn't even mind Baekhyun's meddling.
Not that he'll admit it to Baekhyun of course.
fin.
For: Everyone
Pairing: broken!Luhan/Sehun, unrequited!Luhan/Chen, Luhan/Kris, friends!Luhan/Baekhyun, ex!Baekhyun/Kris
Rating: PG
Length: 2,390 words
Summary: Sometimes, at night, he can't help dialing a number that’s all too familiar.
Author's Note: Thank you to the mods, and everyone else who’s helped me.
The title is from 呼吸.
Listen to Fragment while you read this.
Sometimes, at night, Lu Han lies in bed, staring as the shadows of the leaves playing across the ceiling as the room fills with a night chill, the ghostly fingers of the wind tiptoeing across his skin, flicking at the edge of the sheet that's warm enough, on Enia, with its balmy summer weather and blue-skied beaches, but there's a chillier side to the planet, in the witching hours when only Lu Han seems to be awake.
He likes Enia, he really does.
"You need a change," Jongdae says, frowning across the coffee table, his fingers dancing over the wood grain, and Lu Han knows, instinctively, that Jongdae wants nothing more than to reach those few centimetres, rest his fingers warmly on the back of Lu Han's hand, but he doesn't. That ship has sailed, two vessels passing in the night, never meeting before they'd already turned away. Lu Han curls his fingers into his palm, warming them on the side of his coffee cup. He's cold, somehow, lately, shivering slightly as he tries not to notice the hurt that flickers over Jongdae's face before he slaps the smile back on his face. "I found a job for you."
"I have a job," Lu Han frowns, staring into the murky depths of his coffee cup.
"This one is better." Jongdae's tone of voice leaves no room for disagreement and, in a way, Lu Han is glad. He's perfectly capable of taking care of himself, but sometimes it's nice not to have to be the leader.
He doesn't think about-
But sometimes, at night, the strange witching hour when everyone else on the planet seems to be asleep, only Lu Han and his thoughts and the cold wind, he can't help but think about him.
Sehun, he whispers, exhales really; it's not even a word, just a disembodied thought.
And once he starts, he can't stop, even when he knows it's a bad idea, even when intergalactic phone calls are expensive, he's slipping out of bed to grab his phone from the charging dock, his fingers dancing over the screen-muscle memory, really-as he waits for the call to connect.
Jongdae doesn't know about this.
No one knows about this.
The funny thing, the saddest thing, is that Sehun doesn't even know about this either. He's always been a groggy sleeper, and Lu Han isn't sure whether it's fortune or misfortune that their nights always seem to sync up, that when he calls and Sehun finally picks up, Lu Han just hums slightly, waits for him to drift back into sleep, and pads back to bed where he listens to Sehun breathing, the sound grounding him as he slips into his own dreamless sleep.
It's not a good thing, even though Lu Han can definitely afford the phone bill. It's the emotional cost he can't calculate, and he knows that Jongdae would shout at him if he knew, but he's back on Briuq and he doesn't know.
He doesn't need to know.
"You look like shit," Baekhyun says as Lu Han steps out of the elevator, running his hand through his hair. He sighs. Way to state the obvious.
"I ran out of coffee," he says, instead of saying I couldn't sleep again so I made a ridiculously expensive intergalactic call to my ex-boyfriend and listened to him breathing, because when he even thinks about telling anyone else, it just sounds wrong.
It is wrong, but Lu Han does it anyway.
"Wait a sec," Baekhyun says, darting off as he weaves between the low walls that separate the desks, and-yes, there it is-the sound of Yifan's door being slammed open and a dull shout muffled by the sound of the espresso machine humming away. Lu Han just laughs, rubbing a hand over his face and letting his eyelids droop closed for a moment before he shakes his head and walks over to his office, leaving the door open in anticipation of Baekhyun barging through in a few moments, steaming cup of coffee in hand.
"Yifan needs to get that stick out of his ass," Baekhyun says after he crosses the threshold, but his eyes are sparkling and Lu Han, Lu Han will never be able to understand Baekhyun and Yifan. Baekhyun trash talks him non-stop and complains about what a shitty boyfriend he was but there's still something between them, not really romantic, more just. . .comfortable is the best description Lu Han can come up with as he reaches for the cup of coffee and takes a deep sip, despite his burning tongue.
"That's hot!" Baekhyun shrieks, outraged, but Lu Han ignores the pain and the noise and focuses on the taste of the coffee on his tongue, burning out the lingering traces of Sehun hovering at the edges of his mind, the way he'd mumbled a question when he'd answered the phone,
"Lu Han?" he'd asked, the name indistinguishable despite the garbled pronunciation of sleep, and Lu Han had thought he'd been caught out, except Sehun's breathing had immediately settled into a regular rhythm, in and out, in and out, and the only result had been that Lu Han hadn't been able to drift off to sleep quite as quickly as he usually did, the comfortable sound of Sehun breathing not quite enough, this time, to erase all the thoughts swirling through his head.
Do you dream of me? he hadn't asked.
He doesn't want to know.
"Hey!" Lu Han blinks as Baekhyun snaps his fingers, too close up in Lu Han's face. "Don't zone out on me, okay? It's only Monday!" He pries the empty coffee cup out of Lu Han's hands, frowning, and Lu Han tries to remember when he'd finished the cup.
He can't.
"Just tired, that's all," Lu Han says, running his hand through his hair again, as much to disguise the bedhead as anything else as he slides behind his desk and pulls up the schedule. Shit.
"Do you need more coffee?" Baekhyun asks, swinging the empty cup by the handle and glancing mischievously in the direction of Yifan's office.
"No, thanks," Lu Han says, eyes darting across the screen. "I just had my wake up call." Baekhyun leans over to look at the screen.
"Holy shit," he said, and rested his hand on Lu Han's shoulder for a moment before heading out. "Good luck! I’ll bring you another cup anyway, can’t let Yifan get too ahead now on his happy morning." He laughs, the sound fading down the hall.
Not really listening, Lu Han eyes the email from the editor, notifying him that his lead comic artist had been hospitalized overnight, and starts to go into damage repair.
No time for thinking about the sound of breathing.
By the end of the day, Lu Han is almost trembling with a potent mixture of over-caffeination and fatigue. Yura had said no, she absolutely couldn't rush the special one shot she'd been working on for the next month, and Lu Han had nodded and thanked her and retreated to the restroom where he'd leaned against the cool tiles and thought about calling Jongdae, who could always talk calm into him whenever things started to swirl out of control. And Jongdae liked the sound of his voice. He got as far as pulling out his phone-
"Why do you even like me?" Lu Han asks, looking up from where he's slumped in the corner of his couch, his eyes puffy from crying. "I keep talking about someone else."
Jongdae shrugs, smoothing a smile over his face.
"I don't like you because of Sehun," he says, resting his chin in his hands. "I like you because of you."
"But I can't even do anything for you!" Lu Han feels frustrated, he's told Jongdae that he's never liked him and he probably never will, at least not that way, not the way Jongdae wants, but Jongdae still comes over, still phones him, still makes sure he's okay.
Lu Han doesn't tell him about the nights he calls Sehun anyway.
"You don't have to do anything for me," Jongdae says, and Lu Han knows he means it. But it's not good anyway, because all he does is take, and that's no way to build a healthy friendship, when one person wants something the other can never give, and the other keeps taking without giving anything back.
"I could sing for you," Lu Han offers, and Jongdae blinks, a deep yearning peering out of his eyes before he looks away.
"That would be lovely," he says, but his voice is shaky.
Lu Han sings for him, because he promised, but watching Jongdae, the way his brow furrowed, the way he bites his lip as the corners of his mouth turn down and his eyes grow glassy, Lu Han also promises himself that he'll never make offers of things he can't deliver ever again.
-before he stopped, swallowing. It wouldn't be fair.
"I can do this," he told himself in the mirror, splashing cold water over his face and heading out again.
He'd thought he'd made it, saved the day, found the solution with Seungwan, a promising young artist with a series in the works. She had sounded excited, her voice vibrant over the phone, and had tentatively said yes, pausing to speak with her editor, and Lu Han had shut his eyes in relief and leaned back and breathed the slightly muggy air of the office. And then her voice had come back on the line, apologizing because her editor had told her no, had told her not to make promises she couldn't keep.
"I understand," Lu Han had said, because he really did, even if it just made everything harder right now. "Take care of yourself and we're looking forward to your series!"
And then he'd looked down at his coffee cup, finding it somehow full, and gulped a mouthful of steaming liquid.
And nothing else after that had even gotten to the maybe this will work out stage at all.
Lu Han rubs his eyes, grabbing for the cup of coffee without looking, and almost fumbles it out of his hands before managing to raise it to his mouth, the last sip thick with coffee grinds as he swallows.
He wonders, absently, how much coffee he's been drinking, and how often Baekhyun has come by to refill his cup, and how pissed off Yifan must be by now. He's almost, but not quite, too tired to care.
He might not work with Yifan-Lu Han in comics with a monthly distribution nevermind series volumes and special editions, artists who are always late for their deadlines and the endless cycling rush to make it in time only to start over on the next month's edition, and Yifan in literature, with authors who take years to write three hundred pages and the huge promotional effort leading up the release of a big ticket book-but they have to coexist under the same roof and talk to the same printing department and Baekhyun might be able to steal coffee from his friend slash ex something because he's in printing, but that doesn't mean Lu Han has the same privileges. Even if he's never asked Baekhyun for it.
That's when he notices a shadow falling over his desk. Lu Han blinks, eyes swimming from staring at the screen and looking for solutions that don't exist, and glances up, only to lean back in his seat in surprise.
Yifan is standing next to his desk, cup of steaming coffee in hand, and a frown on his face. Looking around furtively, Lu Han can't spot Baekhyun anywhere.
"I-I'm sorry," he apologizes, even though it's not really his fault, because he probably could have told Baekhyun that he absolutely wasn't to bring him any more of Yifan's coffee, and Baekhyun might have listened to that. Maybe. The espresso machine is pretty loud and maybe Yifan is almost as frazzled from the constant interruptions as Lu Han is from the constant rejections.
Yifan looks at him in silence, and takes another sip of coffee. Lu Han wonders if this is when Yifan will tell Lu Han that he's a failure and should go back to Briuq and stick to what he knows. And it's not like Lu Han hasn't thought of this before.
Yifan opens his mouth.
Lu Han braces himself to deal with a torrent of frustration and accusations that he's too exhausted to deal with right now.
"I have a friend," Yifan says, and Lu Han is so surprised that his mouth falls open, just a little bit, before he manages to close it again, "I have a friend who has a one shot he made on the side but never got around to submitting anywhere." He looks. . .thoughtful, maybe even sympathetic, though Lu Han doesn't know him quite well enough yet, and Baekhyun isn't here to translate.
"Is it-?" Yifan said it was his friend so he must have taken into account that it has to be of a certain level of professionalism, right? "Who is it?" Lu Han hopes Yifan won't be offended. He's not prepared for the frowning lines of Yifan's face to resolve themselves into a soft smile.
"He's good enough," he says, as though he knows exactly what Lu Han was too polite to ask. "He's a painter and he only did this one shot for fun."
"Oh," Lu Han hums, inhaling hopefully, almost scared to believe it might work out. "Oh, that would be-that would be wonderful." He smiles at Yifan, tired and a little shaky and very very grateful.
"I'll get his number," Yifan says, swinging around to step back to his office Lu Han presumes, "but you can look up Kim Jongin and see his art if you want." Lu Han's fingers are already tapping away on the keyboard, and wow this Kim Jongin is brilliant, when he hears a soft chuckle and looks up.
Baekhyun is standing there, grinning. "Took him long enough," he says, and winks, looking back up the hallway to where Yifan is striding towards them, paper in hand.
Lu Han glares at Baekhyun, but there's a small warm spot in his chest when Yifan smiles at him, and he doesn't even mind Baekhyun's meddling.
Not that he'll admit it to Baekhyun of course.
fin.