Take Me Home Tonight
sehun/luhan | romance, angst | pg-13 | 3.8k
Summary: Luhan is too far from home.
Note: for teatimetaemint sempai (again) :) I worked really hard up until the end, can you tell? LOL.
The blinding lights of Haidian make the city come alive during the night with a plethora of colors, beads of illumination strung through the trees to paint the picture of an interconnected metropolis that never sleeps. Beijing breaks free of its cage after the smog falls inferior to the midnight sky and the flips of switches to light signs that shine brighter than sun.
This is what the world revolves around now.
Luhan stares at the lights unblinkingly until they burn a new soul into his corneas.
Town square is bustling right around ten pm, an endless array of bumping shoulders and missing apologies because no one has time for strangers when they have somewhere in the city to be and people that actually matter to meet. The noise that rises above it all is of people talking. Incessant tones of highs and lows slowly grate on his nerves; serrated blades of voices in stark contrast to the smooth edge of the music playing from different shops.
Luhan doesn’t really know where he’s going on nights like this. He thinks maybe he's walking towards another town, maybe the popular bar uptown, or maybe to the massive digitalized faces that switch in and out.
He sees the occasional high school friend, they have the required small talk, and the repetitive words become a drone of apathetic conversation that he’s now used to having.
And when he’s done he’ll move back into the crowd, become another faceless carcass that moves among the masses in the sea of moving people.
…
Luhan smiled at the hand held in his, fingers laced tightly as they moved through the tight spaces between bodies in Hongdae. "Hold on tight!" He managed to yell back over the thousands of other sounds crowding the market-- ahjummas bartering over the price of fresh strawberries, shoe salesman hyping up their product to young teenage girls, and even lover's spats contrasting the soft whispers of others’ affection.
It all added up to the chaos that was Hongdae, only divided by the tall buildings and fat stalls between streets.
"Hyung!" The boy called back, and Luhan turned around just in time to see a mop of blond hair racing towards him, his hand falling empty before thin fingers curled around his shoulder and a hard chest pressed to his back. "I like this a lot better. Don't you, hyung?" The voice was a lot closer then.
And he couldn’t help the grin spreading across his face and the blush that stained white cheeks.
//
Every time Luhan steps into his empty apartment it’s like inhaling broken glass and washing it down with ammonia. The shadows crawl across the floor and wrap around his feet, dragging him inside and setting him to a motion that’s just as monotonous as the gleam in his eyes.
Sometimes he thinks he feels the phantoms of whispers ribboning across his skin, but they shatter to pieces as he falls back in his bed, ruffling the covers but not bothering to get under them. Sometimes he thinks the whispers are taping his eyelids open and strumming the rhythm of his heart to a fast beat, that that’s what keeps him up till the sun is rising from its hibernation.
And the whispers, well-- they hurt. They hurt because they’re not real, and he knows that once he gets home, there’s nothing waiting for him anymore.
…
The first thing Luhan heard when he walked in the door to his tiny apartment was an emphatic shush with just a tinge of lisp in the mix. He stopped just short of the doorstep where he kept his shoes, listening for anything further, but all there was was the occasional creek of the floor under the shabby carpet.
“Sehun?” He called out hesitantly, because that’s who it only ever was.
He walked forward, into the kitchen, when he only received soft snickers in reply. He didn’t see anybody, but the kitchen lights were still on, and he could hear something thumping behind the dividing wall of his kitchen and living room-- which happened to be where his sink was. Luhan silently walked over, grabbed a glass from the cabinet, and dropped it into the metal basin.
The thump of someone’s head against the overlapping countertop of the bar was absolutely satisfying. “Sehun, what are you doing?” He mused, watching as a disgruntled Sehun stood up from the floor and stilled in his spot.
“Hey, Han,” he gave an embarrassed wave and Luhan’s grin widened.
“What are you doing back there? Hiding?”
“No!” Sehun shouted, and an annoyed expression grew as he looked down. “Jongin wouldn’t shut up long enough for us to actually get everything done. Kyungsoo helped some, but he’s just as bad as that other moron.” And he waved a hand somewhere to the side of him.
“Jongin and Kyungsoo?”
“Hey!” Two faces popped up from behind the bar at once, and Luhan cocked an eyebrow when he recognized Kyungsoo’s voice.
“Hey,” Jongin said next, walking around a pouting Sehun and into the kitchen to stand beside Luhan. “I’m hungry. Are you going to share all this food with us?”
“All this food?”
“Shut up!” Sehun interrupted, and Luhan laughed at the rosy tint to his cheeks. It was always fun to see him flustered, the way he would ruffle his hair with knobby fingers and kick at the ground.
Luhan grinned once more, ignoring Kyungsoo and Jongin in favor of roping his arms around Sehun’s neck. “What food?”
The flush of Sehun’s skin traveled down his neck and he scratched nervously at the back of his head. “Well, I wanted to surprise you, so I cooked you a lot of stuff like dumplings and rice and--”
Luhan cut him off with an overjoyed kiss.
“I guess we’ll be leaving then,” they heard a muffled voice behind them right before the door slammed shut.
--
Somewhere in between the days of aimless wandering and sleepless nights, Luhan reminds himself that the past is in the past for reason.
This is not his life. To get to the present, one must leave the past behind.
He left China a long time ago-- it’s is not his home anymore. Home is not some place in the middle of Beijing without a thin-lipped boy running around his apartment and noisy friends that speak so fast he can barely understand them.
Home is Korea.
Home is Sehun.
--
They say that airports see more sincere kisses than wedding halls, but all Luhan sees and hears are blue carpet and the loud buzz of silence. It’s 2 am on a Tuesday and even the baggage area is barren, but he likes the silence and the way the night seems to slow everything down to a snail’s pace.
There’s something about the middle of the night that makes people think they’ve got all the time in the world; that they are infinite.
Luhan grabs the two suitcases on the empty conveyer belt when they come close enough, takes them in each hand, and stands outside the airport in wait of a taxi. The air bites into his skin, the thrum of thousands of body not there to smother him. By the time he arrives in Seoul it will already be 4 am. The cab driver is less than pleased to see him, obviously.
On the way there, he has enough time to gather his words to say to the one person he’d spend the rest of his life talking to. He strings them together in well thought out sentences and words that strive for hope but expect nothing in return; that don’t dance around ‘I’m desperate’, but ‘I long for you’.
Except when Luhan is standing outside his door, fingers going numb with the frigid weather and the weight of his luggage cutting into his veins, the wind wipes away the slate of characters on his tongue. He’s caught up in his own blankness when he knocks on the door and waits, and waits, and waits.
Sehun has always been always a deep sleeper.
Luhan tries the doorbell next, a sense of desperation and fear soaking into his clothes and brain until he’s all frantic movements and hectic thoughts.
“What?! What is it?!” Luhan hears before the door is even opened, and it’s unmistakably Sehun’s angry ranting. Then the door finally flings open with a soft gush of air, and there stands Sehun in light blue boxers and a white wifebeater on inside out. “Do you have any idea what fucking time-- Luhan.”
“Sehun,” he breathes out softly. He’s forgotten how much he loves the sound of his name when they’re cradled in a certain man’s mouth. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Sehun squints at him, leaning forward as if to make sure this isn’t another one of his dreams, one of his mirages he conjures up out of pure need. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in China.”
“I was,” Luhan coughs roughly, awkwardly, “Now I’m back in Korea and I need a place to stay for the night. Can we talk about it in the morning?” Maybe it’s selfish of him to assume that Sehun would altruistically invite him back into his home after what happened, but he’s pretty much homeless after selling his highrise back in Haidian and taking a one-way flight to Incheon.
“Yeah, sure, come on in,” Sehun steps to the side and he clambers inside with his bags, trying not to make too much noise in the early morning so that he doesn’t disturb the younger’s neighbors. “You’ll have to sleep on the couch because, well-- I’ll just tell you tomorrow.”
“That’s perfectly fine. I don’t want to be a bother,” Luhan toes off his shoes as he says this, letting his bags rest by the door to the kitchen. “The couch is fine.”
Sehun fetches some blankets and a pillow from down the corridor. When he speaks his voice is extremely soft, almost afraid to break himself out of the fragile state of in-between sleep and consciousness that he might be in. It’s in stark contrast to the loud and boisterous way he used to speak, but Luhan thinks that truly, the early morning changes people.
“We’ll talk in the morning,” Luhan assures him again. He lets Sehun tuck him into his blanket like he’s a sick child, but he likes it because he gets to watch the way the moonlight bends around the contours of his face.
“In the morning,” Sehun repeats, and he doesn’t look him in the eyes. “Will you still be here?”
A surge of guilt catapults a ball into the middle of Luhan’s throat, and he can only manage a nod. He knows that if he speaks his voice will crack, and the rest of his thin sheen of confidence that coat his lips might break also.
“Goodnight hyung,” he smiles, and Luhan reaches up a hand to cup his cheek. It’s brief and it’s light but it feels like the hard spark of a match against a board.
And he trails back down the hall and into room while Luhan tries not to let the anxiety eat him alive.
--
Luhan doesn’t sleep, nor does he let his demons devour him. They nip at his toes and whisper in his ear but he smiles and fights them off until the first rays of light drift into the living room and color the shadows with shades of lethargic canary.
He waits until the Sun is showing halfway over the horizon and sits up. The fatigue of the past thirty-six hours hasn’t hit him yet, so he pads down the hall and into the bathroom and gets ready for the day. It’s sure to be long.
Sehun’s place hasn’t changed at all. All this toiletries are still in the same place and his shower curtains haven’t been exchanged for new ones. The rug still sits in front of the bathtub, and the blinds are still open over the window despite the many times Luhan would complain that it was a terrible idea. The tap still drips once every ten seconds; the smell is still so rancid that his nose wrinkles.
In the kitchen, the stove still clicks twice before the gas starts up and the flames lick at the metal holders. The pots still clink loudly and the cabinets still slam shut; Luhan’s heart still races when he thinks he’s woken Sehun up already. But when he doesn’t hear the creak of Sehun’s door, he breathes out a sigh of relief and turns back to what he’s working on.
The sounds open up a Pandora’s box of nostalgia and Luhan’s heart settles contentedly in his chest. The rough bangs and the thud of the refrigerator as he pulls out eggs and cheese and milk all put a smile on his face, because this is how home is supposed to sound.
Sehun walks in bleary-eyed and deaf after he’s just put the plates full of omelettes and toast on the small dining room table. He makes his way immediately to the pot of coffee that’s already brewing, tripping over his own feet and stepping hard on the linoleum so that the cups in the cabinets rattle, and Luhan chuckles as he gently places an already full cup in the younger’s hand.
“Mm,” Sehun hums contently, holding the mug up to his lips and slowly tipping it over. That’s his early morning way of saying ‘thank you’.
"You're very welcome," he jokes, hand wrapping around Sehun's arm to lead him to his seat at the table. "I made you breakfast."
"Mm," Sehun moans again, and his head dips to smell the food up close. "Smells good." His voice is jagged against the walls of his throat, coarse from hours of sleep. Black rings line the bottom of his eyes and for a passing moment Luhan feels a surge of guilt for waking him up in the middle of the night, but he thinks that by the end of the day hell have made up for it.
They don't talk while they eat. Luhan knows he doesn't like to talk until he's mustered up enough energy for it to not physically hurt to use his voice. Sehun's eyes open around the time he finishes half his omelette and makes a grab for the toast, and there's a tiny piece of egg stuck to his cheek. He doesn't know how it got there, but the other’s messy eating habits make him smile and a laugh bounces around the cage of his ribs.
"What?" Sehun asks, bits of food rolling around in his mouth. "What are you laughing at?"
Luhan's hand comes up to cover his smile. "You have some..." He trails off, motioning to his own cheek and staring at the speck of yellow dotting Sehun’s face. Sehun doesn’t seem to get it, his mouth still open in question and his eyebrows knitted together. “Nevermind.” He laughs once more before reaching forward and flicking it off. The touch is like a shock, and his fingers instantly curl into his palm while the spark travels up the length of his arm and wraps around his muscles so that he’s frozen in place.
Somewhere amidst the buzzing and snapping of the air around them, their eyes meet, and it’s like they’ve gone back to years before and Luhan is still pushing the feelings he fears to the back of his mind and Sehun is this boy that came into his life like the calm before a storm before everything blew up in his face.
When the atmosphere settles down again, Sehun is the first to ask, “so what are you doing back in Korea?”
“I, uh,” Luhan swallows over the nervous lump in his throat. “I asked for my old job back.”
“Why would you do that?” Sehun promptly asks. There is concern written all over his face, into the creases on his forehead and the hunch of his spine.
“I didn’t like it.”
“Stop lying. You wanted that promotion for years.” His face falls further, and in a split second Luhan’s heart is jumping into his throat, words leaping from his lips before he can stop them.
“I didn’t like it because you weren’t there.”
Luhan punctuates his sentence by looking down at his lap. He is too afraid to see the imminent rejection seeping from the irises of the boy his heart still swells with affection for, because there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that that boy will still blush when he kisses him on the cheek.
Then there’s courage blooming in Luhan’s chest, because the thought of losing Sehun forever weighs over his head like an anvil. “I’m--I’m moving back to Korea, Sehun. But I need a place to stay in the meantime. Could I…?”
“Oh,” Sehun deadpans, and Luhan finally looks up to see a frown on his face. “Well, the thing is--”
“Sehuuuuun,” a deep voice bellows from down the hall, and Luhan’s heart stops just short of a beat. That voice sounds too familiar, even though it’s one he hasn’t heard in the six months he was in China. “Sehuna, what smells so good?”
Luhan’s throat closes up as Jongin walks into the kitchen without a shirt, his eyes swollen with sleep and direction headed straight towards the coffee pot, just like Sehun. He can feel tears welling in his eyes and his heart thumping in the pit of his knees, and the regret for ever thinking Sehun would take him back embeds itself in his blood.
Sehun’s eyes widen and Luhan thinks it’s out of guilt. He’s been caught red-handed. But then another person is stumbling down the hallway dressed in only a long t-shirt, and Luhan doesn’t look away as that person careens into the kitchen and into Jongin’s arms. He grabs the cup of coffee Jongin was already holding and takes a sip of it before pressing a sloppy kiss onto his mouth.
Luhan’s eyes widen as he watches Kyungsoo kiss Jongin, because six months ago he would have never thought this would happen. “Wha--” He gasps, and the pressure in his chest slowly deflates as Jongin’s arms wrap tighter around Kyungsoo.
“Yeah,” Sehun says slowly. A blush diffuses over his face, his eyes dropping to his plate and fingers wringing in his shirt. “Jongin moved in after-- you know, and, well. Soo doesn’t exactly live here, but he might as well.”
Luhan is still in a blatant state of shock, but at the same time his heart is swelling with hope. But mostly shock. “Kyungsoo and Jongin?! He practically yells, the two in the kitchen too busy with each other to pay any attention to the loud noise. “The same Jongin and Kyungsoo that spent half the time fighting and the other half competing over dumb shit?!”
“Yeah,” Sehun chuckles. His smile makes Luhan’s lips twitch into a grin also, and small twinge of homesickness swims into the marrow of his bones. “I wanted to tell you. It happened right after you left, but…”
“Yeah,” his voice drops in melancholy, “I’m sorry about that.”
“All is forgiven,” the younger smiles again, but it’s small, like he’s trying to hold it to himself. “You’re back now.”
…
Jongin and Kyungsoo go back to Jongin’s-- and Kyungsoo’s-- room without even hardly opening their eyes. The atmosphere returns to its previous silence, and a sheen of comfortability coats Luhan’s skin. Sehun is still sitting right beside him, their plates in the dishwasher and distractions flown out of the window.
“I’m--”
“You’re--”
Sehun and Luhan start and stop at the same time, their words tangled into each other’s and eyes going wide.
“You start,” Sehun says, and he points a finger to Luhan.
“No, you,” Luhan retorts, because he isn’t sure he can find the right words just yet.
“I, uh,” he stutters. He does this when he’s nervous, using ums and uhs and rubbing the back of his neck. He can’t even look Luhan in the eye, like if he did he might peel off a layer of his soul he wasn’t ready to lose yet. “I’m just really glad you’re back, Han.” A flourish of pink spreads over Sehun’s cheeks, and Luhan chokes hard on the ball in his throat when he sees the younger’s glassy eyes.
“I’m really glad I came back.” Luhan pushes his chair closer to Sehun’s, but he can’t bring himself to hug Sehun until he’s spoken the words that lay heavy on his chest. “Listen, Sehun, I am still totally and irrevocably in love with you.”
“I--”
“Please, just let me finish this.” Luhan feels like he’s gasping for breath underwater, searching for ground fifty feet in the air; coming back to the love of his life after making a mistake. The words are clogging his throat, his heart, his lungs, he can’t spit them out fast enough. “I’m still in love with you, and I know I hurt you. I left, and I shouldn’t have left, even if it was for my job. We’d only been dating a few months before I got that job offer, but we’d been friends many years before that, and these have been the best years of my life-- excluding the last six months.”
Luhan takes a deep breath. With tears brimming in his eyes and his fingers curled into his palms, he continues.
“I know I can’t ask you to forgive me, but I can make it up to you. Let me help you fall in love with me again. I know it won’t be easy--”
“Luhan.”
“-- but we can make it! We made it--”
“Luhan.”
“-- all these already, and I know my love is enough to glue us together for now--”
“Luhan!”
Luhan finally stops his monologue long enough to see the serious glint in Sehun’s eyes.
The seconds between them pass in silence, building up the anticipation for a rejection in the bottom of Luhan’s gut. Then Sehun is murmuring, “I want to be with you, Luhan. I want you in my arms at night and when I wake up in the morning, and I want your heart right next to mine on our nightstand.” And the pieces of his soul are fitting back into place the whispers of broken dreams all fade into the background of elation.
Luhan wraps his arms around Sehun’s neck, drawing him into a hug that builds the foundations of their home sets two beating hearts in sync. He is sure he is hugging Sehun so tight that he’s choking him, but Sehun isn’t complaining and Luhan just can’t bring him close enough.
Sehun only draws back to fit his mouth against Luhan’s, and it feels like the two of them singing on a Sunday morning during brunch. Sehun’s lip swipes Luhan’s bottom lip before he’s licking into his mouth, pulling at the elder until he’s fitted snugly on Sehun’s lap.
Luhan pulls back just enough to look at Sehun, his beestung lips ghosting over the other’s with a teasing drag. “Do you still love me?”
Sehun kisses him once, twice, three more times, muttering between them all, “I never stopped.”
Summary: Luhan is too far from home.
Note: for teatimetaemint sempai (again) :) I worked really hard up until the end, can you tell? LOL.
The blinding lights of Haidian make the city come alive during the night with a plethora of colors, beads of illumination strung through the trees to paint the picture of an interconnected metropolis that never sleeps. Beijing breaks free of its cage after the smog falls inferior to the midnight sky and the flips of switches to light signs that shine brighter than sun.
This is what the world revolves around now.
Luhan stares at the lights unblinkingly until they burn a new soul into his corneas.
Town square is bustling right around ten pm, an endless array of bumping shoulders and missing apologies because no one has time for strangers when they have somewhere in the city to be and people that actually matter to meet. The noise that rises above it all is of people talking. Incessant tones of highs and lows slowly grate on his nerves; serrated blades of voices in stark contrast to the smooth edge of the music playing from different shops.
Luhan doesn’t really know where he’s going on nights like this. He thinks maybe he's walking towards another town, maybe the popular bar uptown, or maybe to the massive digitalized faces that switch in and out.
He sees the occasional high school friend, they have the required small talk, and the repetitive words become a drone of apathetic conversation that he’s now used to having.
And when he’s done he’ll move back into the crowd, become another faceless carcass that moves among the masses in the sea of moving people.
…
Luhan smiled at the hand held in his, fingers laced tightly as they moved through the tight spaces between bodies in Hongdae. "Hold on tight!" He managed to yell back over the thousands of other sounds crowding the market-- ahjummas bartering over the price of fresh strawberries, shoe salesman hyping up their product to young teenage girls, and even lover's spats contrasting the soft whispers of others’ affection.
It all added up to the chaos that was Hongdae, only divided by the tall buildings and fat stalls between streets.
"Hyung!" The boy called back, and Luhan turned around just in time to see a mop of blond hair racing towards him, his hand falling empty before thin fingers curled around his shoulder and a hard chest pressed to his back. "I like this a lot better. Don't you, hyung?" The voice was a lot closer then.
And he couldn’t help the grin spreading across his face and the blush that stained white cheeks.
//
Every time Luhan steps into his empty apartment it’s like inhaling broken glass and washing it down with ammonia. The shadows crawl across the floor and wrap around his feet, dragging him inside and setting him to a motion that’s just as monotonous as the gleam in his eyes.
Sometimes he thinks he feels the phantoms of whispers ribboning across his skin, but they shatter to pieces as he falls back in his bed, ruffling the covers but not bothering to get under them. Sometimes he thinks the whispers are taping his eyelids open and strumming the rhythm of his heart to a fast beat, that that’s what keeps him up till the sun is rising from its hibernation.
And the whispers, well-- they hurt. They hurt because they’re not real, and he knows that once he gets home, there’s nothing waiting for him anymore.
…
The first thing Luhan heard when he walked in the door to his tiny apartment was an emphatic shush with just a tinge of lisp in the mix. He stopped just short of the doorstep where he kept his shoes, listening for anything further, but all there was was the occasional creek of the floor under the shabby carpet.
“Sehun?” He called out hesitantly, because that’s who it only ever was.
He walked forward, into the kitchen, when he only received soft snickers in reply. He didn’t see anybody, but the kitchen lights were still on, and he could hear something thumping behind the dividing wall of his kitchen and living room-- which happened to be where his sink was. Luhan silently walked over, grabbed a glass from the cabinet, and dropped it into the metal basin.
The thump of someone’s head against the overlapping countertop of the bar was absolutely satisfying. “Sehun, what are you doing?” He mused, watching as a disgruntled Sehun stood up from the floor and stilled in his spot.
“Hey, Han,” he gave an embarrassed wave and Luhan’s grin widened.
“What are you doing back there? Hiding?”
“No!” Sehun shouted, and an annoyed expression grew as he looked down. “Jongin wouldn’t shut up long enough for us to actually get everything done. Kyungsoo helped some, but he’s just as bad as that other moron.” And he waved a hand somewhere to the side of him.
“Jongin and Kyungsoo?”
“Hey!” Two faces popped up from behind the bar at once, and Luhan cocked an eyebrow when he recognized Kyungsoo’s voice.
“Hey,” Jongin said next, walking around a pouting Sehun and into the kitchen to stand beside Luhan. “I’m hungry. Are you going to share all this food with us?”
“All this food?”
“Shut up!” Sehun interrupted, and Luhan laughed at the rosy tint to his cheeks. It was always fun to see him flustered, the way he would ruffle his hair with knobby fingers and kick at the ground.
Luhan grinned once more, ignoring Kyungsoo and Jongin in favor of roping his arms around Sehun’s neck. “What food?”
The flush of Sehun’s skin traveled down his neck and he scratched nervously at the back of his head. “Well, I wanted to surprise you, so I cooked you a lot of stuff like dumplings and rice and--”
Luhan cut him off with an overjoyed kiss.
“I guess we’ll be leaving then,” they heard a muffled voice behind them right before the door slammed shut.
--
Somewhere in between the days of aimless wandering and sleepless nights, Luhan reminds himself that the past is in the past for reason.
This is not his life. To get to the present, one must leave the past behind.
He left China a long time ago-- it’s is not his home anymore. Home is not some place in the middle of Beijing without a thin-lipped boy running around his apartment and noisy friends that speak so fast he can barely understand them.
Home is Korea.
Home is Sehun.
--
They say that airports see more sincere kisses than wedding halls, but all Luhan sees and hears are blue carpet and the loud buzz of silence. It’s 2 am on a Tuesday and even the baggage area is barren, but he likes the silence and the way the night seems to slow everything down to a snail’s pace.
There’s something about the middle of the night that makes people think they’ve got all the time in the world; that they are infinite.
Luhan grabs the two suitcases on the empty conveyer belt when they come close enough, takes them in each hand, and stands outside the airport in wait of a taxi. The air bites into his skin, the thrum of thousands of body not there to smother him. By the time he arrives in Seoul it will already be 4 am. The cab driver is less than pleased to see him, obviously.
On the way there, he has enough time to gather his words to say to the one person he’d spend the rest of his life talking to. He strings them together in well thought out sentences and words that strive for hope but expect nothing in return; that don’t dance around ‘I’m desperate’, but ‘I long for you’.
Except when Luhan is standing outside his door, fingers going numb with the frigid weather and the weight of his luggage cutting into his veins, the wind wipes away the slate of characters on his tongue. He’s caught up in his own blankness when he knocks on the door and waits, and waits, and waits.
Sehun has always been always a deep sleeper.
Luhan tries the doorbell next, a sense of desperation and fear soaking into his clothes and brain until he’s all frantic movements and hectic thoughts.
“What?! What is it?!” Luhan hears before the door is even opened, and it’s unmistakably Sehun’s angry ranting. Then the door finally flings open with a soft gush of air, and there stands Sehun in light blue boxers and a white wifebeater on inside out. “Do you have any idea what fucking time-- Luhan.”
“Sehun,” he breathes out softly. He’s forgotten how much he loves the sound of his name when they’re cradled in a certain man’s mouth. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Sehun squints at him, leaning forward as if to make sure this isn’t another one of his dreams, one of his mirages he conjures up out of pure need. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in China.”
“I was,” Luhan coughs roughly, awkwardly, “Now I’m back in Korea and I need a place to stay for the night. Can we talk about it in the morning?” Maybe it’s selfish of him to assume that Sehun would altruistically invite him back into his home after what happened, but he’s pretty much homeless after selling his highrise back in Haidian and taking a one-way flight to Incheon.
“Yeah, sure, come on in,” Sehun steps to the side and he clambers inside with his bags, trying not to make too much noise in the early morning so that he doesn’t disturb the younger’s neighbors. “You’ll have to sleep on the couch because, well-- I’ll just tell you tomorrow.”
“That’s perfectly fine. I don’t want to be a bother,” Luhan toes off his shoes as he says this, letting his bags rest by the door to the kitchen. “The couch is fine.”
Sehun fetches some blankets and a pillow from down the corridor. When he speaks his voice is extremely soft, almost afraid to break himself out of the fragile state of in-between sleep and consciousness that he might be in. It’s in stark contrast to the loud and boisterous way he used to speak, but Luhan thinks that truly, the early morning changes people.
“We’ll talk in the morning,” Luhan assures him again. He lets Sehun tuck him into his blanket like he’s a sick child, but he likes it because he gets to watch the way the moonlight bends around the contours of his face.
“In the morning,” Sehun repeats, and he doesn’t look him in the eyes. “Will you still be here?”
A surge of guilt catapults a ball into the middle of Luhan’s throat, and he can only manage a nod. He knows that if he speaks his voice will crack, and the rest of his thin sheen of confidence that coat his lips might break also.
“Goodnight hyung,” he smiles, and Luhan reaches up a hand to cup his cheek. It’s brief and it’s light but it feels like the hard spark of a match against a board.
And he trails back down the hall and into room while Luhan tries not to let the anxiety eat him alive.
--
Luhan doesn’t sleep, nor does he let his demons devour him. They nip at his toes and whisper in his ear but he smiles and fights them off until the first rays of light drift into the living room and color the shadows with shades of lethargic canary.
He waits until the Sun is showing halfway over the horizon and sits up. The fatigue of the past thirty-six hours hasn’t hit him yet, so he pads down the hall and into the bathroom and gets ready for the day. It’s sure to be long.
Sehun’s place hasn’t changed at all. All this toiletries are still in the same place and his shower curtains haven’t been exchanged for new ones. The rug still sits in front of the bathtub, and the blinds are still open over the window despite the many times Luhan would complain that it was a terrible idea. The tap still drips once every ten seconds; the smell is still so rancid that his nose wrinkles.
In the kitchen, the stove still clicks twice before the gas starts up and the flames lick at the metal holders. The pots still clink loudly and the cabinets still slam shut; Luhan’s heart still races when he thinks he’s woken Sehun up already. But when he doesn’t hear the creak of Sehun’s door, he breathes out a sigh of relief and turns back to what he’s working on.
The sounds open up a Pandora’s box of nostalgia and Luhan’s heart settles contentedly in his chest. The rough bangs and the thud of the refrigerator as he pulls out eggs and cheese and milk all put a smile on his face, because this is how home is supposed to sound.
Sehun walks in bleary-eyed and deaf after he’s just put the plates full of omelettes and toast on the small dining room table. He makes his way immediately to the pot of coffee that’s already brewing, tripping over his own feet and stepping hard on the linoleum so that the cups in the cabinets rattle, and Luhan chuckles as he gently places an already full cup in the younger’s hand.
“Mm,” Sehun hums contently, holding the mug up to his lips and slowly tipping it over. That’s his early morning way of saying ‘thank you’.
"You're very welcome," he jokes, hand wrapping around Sehun's arm to lead him to his seat at the table. "I made you breakfast."
"Mm," Sehun moans again, and his head dips to smell the food up close. "Smells good." His voice is jagged against the walls of his throat, coarse from hours of sleep. Black rings line the bottom of his eyes and for a passing moment Luhan feels a surge of guilt for waking him up in the middle of the night, but he thinks that by the end of the day hell have made up for it.
They don't talk while they eat. Luhan knows he doesn't like to talk until he's mustered up enough energy for it to not physically hurt to use his voice. Sehun's eyes open around the time he finishes half his omelette and makes a grab for the toast, and there's a tiny piece of egg stuck to his cheek. He doesn't know how it got there, but the other’s messy eating habits make him smile and a laugh bounces around the cage of his ribs.
"What?" Sehun asks, bits of food rolling around in his mouth. "What are you laughing at?"
Luhan's hand comes up to cover his smile. "You have some..." He trails off, motioning to his own cheek and staring at the speck of yellow dotting Sehun’s face. Sehun doesn’t seem to get it, his mouth still open in question and his eyebrows knitted together. “Nevermind.” He laughs once more before reaching forward and flicking it off. The touch is like a shock, and his fingers instantly curl into his palm while the spark travels up the length of his arm and wraps around his muscles so that he’s frozen in place.
Somewhere amidst the buzzing and snapping of the air around them, their eyes meet, and it’s like they’ve gone back to years before and Luhan is still pushing the feelings he fears to the back of his mind and Sehun is this boy that came into his life like the calm before a storm before everything blew up in his face.
When the atmosphere settles down again, Sehun is the first to ask, “so what are you doing back in Korea?”
“I, uh,” Luhan swallows over the nervous lump in his throat. “I asked for my old job back.”
“Why would you do that?” Sehun promptly asks. There is concern written all over his face, into the creases on his forehead and the hunch of his spine.
“I didn’t like it.”
“Stop lying. You wanted that promotion for years.” His face falls further, and in a split second Luhan’s heart is jumping into his throat, words leaping from his lips before he can stop them.
“I didn’t like it because you weren’t there.”
Luhan punctuates his sentence by looking down at his lap. He is too afraid to see the imminent rejection seeping from the irises of the boy his heart still swells with affection for, because there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that that boy will still blush when he kisses him on the cheek.
Then there’s courage blooming in Luhan’s chest, because the thought of losing Sehun forever weighs over his head like an anvil. “I’m--I’m moving back to Korea, Sehun. But I need a place to stay in the meantime. Could I…?”
“Oh,” Sehun deadpans, and Luhan finally looks up to see a frown on his face. “Well, the thing is--”
“Sehuuuuun,” a deep voice bellows from down the hall, and Luhan’s heart stops just short of a beat. That voice sounds too familiar, even though it’s one he hasn’t heard in the six months he was in China. “Sehuna, what smells so good?”
Luhan’s throat closes up as Jongin walks into the kitchen without a shirt, his eyes swollen with sleep and direction headed straight towards the coffee pot, just like Sehun. He can feel tears welling in his eyes and his heart thumping in the pit of his knees, and the regret for ever thinking Sehun would take him back embeds itself in his blood.
Sehun’s eyes widen and Luhan thinks it’s out of guilt. He’s been caught red-handed. But then another person is stumbling down the hallway dressed in only a long t-shirt, and Luhan doesn’t look away as that person careens into the kitchen and into Jongin’s arms. He grabs the cup of coffee Jongin was already holding and takes a sip of it before pressing a sloppy kiss onto his mouth.
Luhan’s eyes widen as he watches Kyungsoo kiss Jongin, because six months ago he would have never thought this would happen. “Wha--” He gasps, and the pressure in his chest slowly deflates as Jongin’s arms wrap tighter around Kyungsoo.
“Yeah,” Sehun says slowly. A blush diffuses over his face, his eyes dropping to his plate and fingers wringing in his shirt. “Jongin moved in after-- you know, and, well. Soo doesn’t exactly live here, but he might as well.”
Luhan is still in a blatant state of shock, but at the same time his heart is swelling with hope. But mostly shock. “Kyungsoo and Jongin?! He practically yells, the two in the kitchen too busy with each other to pay any attention to the loud noise. “The same Jongin and Kyungsoo that spent half the time fighting and the other half competing over dumb shit?!”
“Yeah,” Sehun chuckles. His smile makes Luhan’s lips twitch into a grin also, and small twinge of homesickness swims into the marrow of his bones. “I wanted to tell you. It happened right after you left, but…”
“Yeah,” his voice drops in melancholy, “I’m sorry about that.”
“All is forgiven,” the younger smiles again, but it’s small, like he’s trying to hold it to himself. “You’re back now.”
…
Jongin and Kyungsoo go back to Jongin’s-- and Kyungsoo’s-- room without even hardly opening their eyes. The atmosphere returns to its previous silence, and a sheen of comfortability coats Luhan’s skin. Sehun is still sitting right beside him, their plates in the dishwasher and distractions flown out of the window.
“I’m--”
“You’re--”
Sehun and Luhan start and stop at the same time, their words tangled into each other’s and eyes going wide.
“You start,” Sehun says, and he points a finger to Luhan.
“No, you,” Luhan retorts, because he isn’t sure he can find the right words just yet.
“I, uh,” he stutters. He does this when he’s nervous, using ums and uhs and rubbing the back of his neck. He can’t even look Luhan in the eye, like if he did he might peel off a layer of his soul he wasn’t ready to lose yet. “I’m just really glad you’re back, Han.” A flourish of pink spreads over Sehun’s cheeks, and Luhan chokes hard on the ball in his throat when he sees the younger’s glassy eyes.
“I’m really glad I came back.” Luhan pushes his chair closer to Sehun’s, but he can’t bring himself to hug Sehun until he’s spoken the words that lay heavy on his chest. “Listen, Sehun, I am still totally and irrevocably in love with you.”
“I--”
“Please, just let me finish this.” Luhan feels like he’s gasping for breath underwater, searching for ground fifty feet in the air; coming back to the love of his life after making a mistake. The words are clogging his throat, his heart, his lungs, he can’t spit them out fast enough. “I’m still in love with you, and I know I hurt you. I left, and I shouldn’t have left, even if it was for my job. We’d only been dating a few months before I got that job offer, but we’d been friends many years before that, and these have been the best years of my life-- excluding the last six months.”
Luhan takes a deep breath. With tears brimming in his eyes and his fingers curled into his palms, he continues.
“I know I can’t ask you to forgive me, but I can make it up to you. Let me help you fall in love with me again. I know it won’t be easy--”
“Luhan.”
“-- but we can make it! We made it--”
“Luhan.”
“-- all these already, and I know my love is enough to glue us together for now--”
“Luhan!”
Luhan finally stops his monologue long enough to see the serious glint in Sehun’s eyes.
The seconds between them pass in silence, building up the anticipation for a rejection in the bottom of Luhan’s gut. Then Sehun is murmuring, “I want to be with you, Luhan. I want you in my arms at night and when I wake up in the morning, and I want your heart right next to mine on our nightstand.” And the pieces of his soul are fitting back into place the whispers of broken dreams all fade into the background of elation.
Luhan wraps his arms around Sehun’s neck, drawing him into a hug that builds the foundations of their home sets two beating hearts in sync. He is sure he is hugging Sehun so tight that he’s choking him, but Sehun isn’t complaining and Luhan just can’t bring him close enough.
Sehun only draws back to fit his mouth against Luhan’s, and it feels like the two of them singing on a Sunday morning during brunch. Sehun’s lip swipes Luhan’s bottom lip before he’s licking into his mouth, pulling at the elder until he’s fitted snugly on Sehun’s lap.
Luhan pulls back just enough to look at Sehun, his beestung lips ghosting over the other’s with a teasing drag. “Do you still love me?”
Sehun kisses him once, twice, three more times, muttering between them all, “I never stopped.”