Got My Heartbeat Runnin’ Away, for silchild
Title: Got My Heartbeat Runnin’ Away
For: silchild
Pairing: Luhan/Sehun
Rating: NC-17
Length: 10,376
Summary, potential warnings: Somewhere among the fondant flowers, paste food coloring, and melted chocolate and butter, Sehun finds something sweeter. Somewhere between the marshmallow fluff and the honey, Luhan finds something to love. Warning for actual copious amounts of sugar and high fructose corn syrup.
Sehun is a forgetful person. He puts his house and car keys on soap dishes and hangs his jackets on the backs of doors. Sometimes he’ll pay at the cashier and walk away without his bags of sugar and cinnamon, which is at least slightly better than forgetting to pay entirely and walking out of the store and being mowed down by security (it’s happened more than once, unfortunately).
“You forgot it was your birthday?” Baekhyun asks incredulously. “Who forgets their own birthday? Facebook doesn’t let anyone forget anyone’s birthday, and you forgot your own?”
“Shut up,” Sehun mumbles through the corner of his mouth. To be fair, he had been online until about five this morning, trying to finish his final paper for the spring semester, but he’d passed out before he had a chance to see the four million half-hearted happy birthday messages posted on his Wall by people he barely ever spoke to.
“It’s just, how do you forget your twentieth birthday,” Baekhyun says again, exasperated. Sehun glares at him from across the small workspace behind the counter as he ices five dozen chocolate cupcakes with pink buttercream frosting. Baekhyun just smiles and says, “I’m just playing with you. I made a little something for you, though. I’ll give it to you later during break.”
Sehun is a forgetful person, perhaps, because his parents do not remember him all that much either.
They are not neglectful, per se. It’s simple: they love their jobs more than they love him and his older brother, because children have needs that cannot always be satisfied. Jobs are different--do it well and there are fruitful gains.
It’s why Sehun has found his niche in Baek’s Bakery. He likes being surrounded by sugar and spice, by orders upon orders of pastries and confectioneries, as do many, but he likes simply being needed. People come here to request harder, progressively more impossible wedding cakes with Victorian lace. Quinceanera cakes and cotillion cakes with seven tiers. Jumbo chocolate chip ice cream cookie pies for that four-year-old’s first real birthday party. Orders of petit fours that need to be shipped in chilled coolers that weigh more than him and Baekhyun combined. The pressure is always weighing down upon his shoulders but he likes that there is pressure at all.
Baekhyun needs the help, anyway, and Sehun has a flair for decorating. The bakery they run is small, barely larger than the size of a boutique but reputed locally and online. Sehun isn’t passionate about pastries like Baekhyun is--married to them, practically--but there is something about the sweet smell of his double-breasted uniform with the brass buttons and floury apron that reminds him oddly of home.
Sehun’s sitting in the back kitchen next to the stock refrigerators, eating the tiny cake Baekhyun made him--red velvet and Jello with Cool Whip--when he hears Baekhyun’s high pitched shriek from the loading garage. His fork hits the cake stand with a clatter, because he’d rather not bother with another plate, and Sehun trips over his own feet dashing through the pantry and the walk-in refrigerator to get to the garage.
“What happened--?”
Baekhyun is absolutely fine, about which Sehun is initially relieved but then immediately irritated because was the shrieking really necessary. Once Baekhyun had seen a spider maybe the size of Sehun’s fingernail and threw himself onto Sehun so violently both of them were sent crumpling to the floor. He thought Baekhyun had seen a thug or something. Sehun eventually smashed the fucker with a spatula.
“I got in! I got in, I got in!”
Sehun strides over in confusion. At the top of the paper is letterhead with the telltale green text encircled by a long grain of barley wheat, and Sehun feels his own eyes widen.
"You got into the Culinary Institute of America?”
“I applied for their pastry program! I wanted to--oh my God, Sehun, I can’t believe it--”
Sehun tugs the paper out of Baekhyun as he goes into full-fledged hysterics that involve him actually dancing in circles around Sehun on the damp pavement, and his eyes fly across the words. Most of the letter is in English but Sehun does pick up things like New York City and patisserie. When he looks up, Baekhyun’s face is shining enough to chase away the rainclouds.
“When do you start?” Sehun asks numbly.
“May fifth!” Baekhyun says. “It’s a twenty-one month program with three months of externship and two months of work experience, but I can probably skip that part, all things considered.” He grabs Sehun’s hands in his own and squeezes tight. “I can become so much better, Sehun, can you imagine!”
“Yeah,” Sehun says weakly. “I sure can.”
This brings up all sorts of problems for Sehun and his not being able to run the bakery 24/7 doesn’t even begin to cover it. He doesn’t know how to manage a business, he’s shit at math and finance, and the idea of keeping up with orders by himself makes him dizzy. He didn’t miss all the late nights when he’d go back to his apartment for homework and Baekhyun would sit alone in the back kitchen counting numbers and mumbling to his calculator, pens behind both ears.
When he brings this problem up to Baekhyun’s attention, he expects a frown and a deflating of Baekhyun’s now perpetually tiny puffed-up chest. He does not expect, however, a brilliant smile and a pat on the shoulder. Sehun is really going to have to go in there and take out the screws for smiling.
“I have that planned already,” Baekhyun says. “I had a friend once at Le Cordon Bleu that I spoke to and he wants to work here. Right now he's stationed at Kris’s Konfectioneries.”
“Our sister branch in China?”
“You know the one. I called him yesterday and I asked if he was still interested in running a whole bakery while I went to school in the States and he agreed! Said he needed something to do, he’s tired of being in a kitchen with half a dozen other people. He has big ideas.”
“Kris’s Konfectioneries has eight people working at once?”
“They’re a bigger branch, they need more people,” Baekhyun says, pulling the mixing bowl out from under the beaters. He scrapes down the sides and when he notices that Sehun hasn’t yet moved, holding a full piping bag of pink icing, a look of concern graces his features for the first time.
“You’ll be okay, right? Luhan is really experienced and nice. It’ll be fine!”
This is no small achievement, Sehun knows. Getting into the Culinary Institute of America is not an easy feat and that Baekhyun managed to pull it off--swamped in orders, no less--is impressive. He’s told Sehun over many a cake layer, late into the night, about how his dream was to attend their pastry program and to become a certified pastry chef.
So he smiles and nudges Baekhyun with an elbow and says, “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay.”
He hopes.
Baekhyun must leave promptly on the night of May 1st so he can get himself situated and oriented before the start of the program. Luhan is set to arrive from China on April 29th, which Sehun, being Sehun, forgets about completely. He’s behind the counter arranging the fresh taro cakes among the cappucino-mocha ones when there’s a rush of damp spring breeze, the sound of traffic roaring briefly.
The door is not in direct sight behind the counter--there’s a welcome area that’s decorated with fake cakes and wicker chairs with floral pillows, so Sehun straightens up and wipes his hands on the towel at his waist. Baekhyun is in the back, pulling out the last birthday cake he’ll be making for a while. Sehun hates greeting guests but sometimes, it’s necessary.
“Hello, can I help you today?”
“Oh, you must be Baekhyun’s coworker, Sehun, right?” He has a soft voice and a touch of a foreign accent. “I’m Luhan.”
“I. Oh. Yeah, the coworker,” Sehun says articulately, caught off guard. Luhan is tiny--well, he’s about the same size about Baekhyun, to be fair, but he’s seen pictures of Baekhyun and Kris from their time together as classmates at Le Cordon Bleu and Kris is massive. Somehow he assumed everyone in Kris’s kitchen was the size of a truck. Furthermore, Luhan’s in street clothes and a backpack, and he looks like a freshman looking to buy something for his girlfriend.
Luhan smiles a half-smile. “Is Baekhyun in, or...?”
“Oh, he’s baking,” Sehun says, jumping, as though suddenly realizing Baekhyun was A Thing That Existed. “Right, let me get him.”
Baekhyun gives Luhan a huge, sticky hug that gets chocolate crumbs and icing on his shirt and Sehun supposes it’s the mark of a true baker than Luhan barely even flinches. They talk in excited, rapid Korean and Sehun is actually impressed by how well Luhan can speak it despite the accent. He slinks back into the corner like a slug and continues shaking moon and star shaped sprinkles over a batch of cupcakes to be sent to a school for a retirement celebration.
“Sehun, get over here, you’re being rude,” Baekhyun chides, and Sehun sulks before putting down the sprinkle shakers and shuffling back over.
“He’s technically going to be your boss for the next two years or so, you should get to know him,” Baekhyun says. “It would not bode well if you guys clashed.”
Sehun gives Luhan a look like save me and Luhan just winks.
“Are you going to miss him?”
In the past three days, Luhan has been everywhere in Baek’s Bakery, getting to know the ropes, familiarizing himself with the equipment and the tools. Baekhyun has been in and out, never in his uniform, trying to pull together all his loose ends before he leaves. Sehun has been caught among it all, quietly airbrushing fondant flowers for a three-tier birthday cake that’s been ordered for next week.
He shrugs at the question. Luhan is furiously rolling together more gum paste and fondant, fingers dipped in glycerine, and looks up just as Sehun’s shoulders are dropping. “Baekhyun is one of my best friends,” he says. “He says if everything goes according to plan, he’ll be back two years from now, in August. But I think...I’m going to miss his cheerfulness the most.”
“Anyone would,” Luhan agrees. “But I’m not a dark cloud of gloom, either, so we’re going to make this work.”
Luhan does a lame little fist pump at this and Sehun laughs in spite of himself. “Don’t do that again.”
“You seem like something’s worrying you,” Luhan says after a pause. “Are you concerned about what will happen to the business?”
“That too,” Sehun says. He stops crimping the petals of the tiger lily and drops his hands into his stained, aproned lap. “But it’s just, how could he not tell me until now? Why didn’t he say anything about his application?”
Luhan is silent. “Well, that’s his business, but he told me he didn’t want to worry you prematurely, not make it a big deal,” he says. “That’s Baek. Always worrying about your best interests even if you don’t want him to. He does too much for his own good, if you ask me.”
Sehun sighs, blowing his bangs up off his forehead. “I wasn’t ready for any of this, goddammit,” he curses under his breath.
“I don’t think any of us were,” Luhan says, dropping some pink gel food coloring into the fondant. “I think you can just make plans and hope what comes fits into them.”
Running Baek’s Bakery without Baekhyun is weird. Now that he’s done with his second year of college, and since Luhan is still a little cold with the kitchen, Sehun’s day starts at 9 am with punching down dough that’s been left to set overnight, or sliding racks of cookies--sugar, chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin--into the right ovens. A lot of responsibilities that were once Baekhyun’s, such as greeting guests, taking orders, and doing the large-scale baking, have been divided between them until Luhan gets into the swing of things.
Baekhyun’s absence does not change the customer load much, if at all. Sehun finds himself sitting down with a young woman that has a request for a baby shower cake not one day into Luhan’s new role as boss and she pushes ribbons and invitations across the table towards him.
“I wanted it to match the cardstock we printed it on, and if that’s too hard, these are the colors of the decorations,” she says, running her fingers along the satin. “She’s a girl, but I don’t want it to be all pink, you know? Maybe she’ll like blue. So I wanted both colors to be represented.”
Sehun wonders how Baekhyun can be so good at this, nodding, smiling, asking which cake flavors their customers would like. Luhan saves him by bringing out a plate of all the flavors they bake. Sehun notices that instead of the usual seven cake samples, there are nine. He glances up at Luhan almost imperceptibly, and that tiny, knowing smile flits across his lips like he knows Sehun is looking at him, though he barely gives away the fact he’s seen. It’s professionalism honed down to a science and Sehun is almost intimidated.
She ends up choosing the hazelnut and one Sehun’s never heard of before, butter pecan. When she leaves, Luhan pulls out the chair she just vacated and fills in the details of the quick sketch he drew to show her what he envisioned.
Sehun squints.
“We only bake seven cake flavors. What was the other one?”
“Chocolate mint,” Luhan says absently, brushing eraser shards off the table. “And the other you heard, of course, butter pecan. They’re two of the popular choices at Kris’s Konfectioneries, I didn’t know it was exclusive to China.” He looks up. Sehun’s eyes are still dark slits. “What? She liked them enough to pick one, right?”
“Well. I guess. I don’t know, it just seems...I guess.”
“If you’re worried about Baekhyun’s name, I wouldn’t be,” Luhan says. “Once he gets back he’ll be able to bake circles around me.”
Sehun wants to retort but Luhan looks so content with his little drawing of cake that he can’t bring himself to, and simply sighs before saying, “You’ll need to teach me the recipe for that soon.”
They get two more orders that day, and both times Luhan brings out the new flavors. Sehun is so curious that when the third customer leaves--an old couple celebrating their golden anniversary--he sneaks a bite of both. The butter pecan melts in his mouth and the chocolate mint is like the ice cream in cake form and he catches Luhan grinning at him from behind the counter like the cat that got the canary.
“Good, huh?” he says.
“Very,” Sehun admits grudgingly. “It’s mellow. Nutty, the butter pecan one. It’s a nice change because Baekhyun likes making his batters sweet.”
“The taste of China,” Luhan says, nodding. “Not the flavor, of course, but in China we use a lot less sugar so the taste isn’t really sweet, but still distinct and strong.”
“I can see why they ordered both of those even though they clash. Completely,” Sehun grumbles, shoving the rest of the chocolate mint cake into his mouth. “This just might be my new favorite.”
“I’ll make a big one for you sometime,” Luhan says. “When’s your birthday?”
“It just passed.”
“Oh. That’s a shame. Well, cakes don’t need an occasion,” Luhan says. “Maybe I’ll surprise you.”
Maybe he will, Sehun thinks as he licks his fingertips clean, Luhan swishing into the kitchen to check on the chilled cake batter. Maybe he will.
As it goes, the baby shower cake takes far longer than usual because Luhan tries to teach Sehun the recipe for a butter pecan batter. They have a small emergency in the form of Sehun nicking his finger while chopping the nuts and they have to throw out an entire cup of pulverized pecans for fear of biohazard contamination.
“How do you just...forget to move your fingers,” Luhan says, shaking his head as he beats some extra sugar and butter together with a handheld mixer.
“I’m a forgetful person,” Sehun says weakly.
“I’ll say,” Luhan says. “Don’t do it again, we can’t afford to throw out a whole serving of pecans again.”
Sehun rolls his eyes to himself and reaches across the counter for a baking pan. He barely notices the contact, but Luhan flinches like he’s been stung when Sehun’s arm presses up against him. He doesn’t acknowledge the reaction, and after a moment of staring without answer, Sehun turns back to his own workspace. Sticky butter and pecan bits frown at him.
It’s going to be a long summer.
Or, maybe not. Routine with Luhan falls together quickly and they find ways to meet in the middle. While Baekhyun was easy lenience with only the threat of real anger every once in a while (such as when Sehun forgets to change the oil in the deep fryer--another thing that has unfortunately happened more than once), Luhan is a drill sergeant, demanding conciseness and perfection, no room for mistakes. Sehun wonders where it comes from--it’s not like Luhan and Baekhyun had different schooling.
It’s one night a month into Baekhyun’s absence when Sehun finally understands a little more to Luhan than how well he can bake. It’s also after he’s done telling Sehun off for letting the fondant harden because he let it sit too long.
“I don’t understand how you can work here if you’re so damn forgetful,” he snaps, and Sehun just bites his tongue and drapes a fresh sheet of baby blue fondant over a hexgonal cake tier. “You would probably forget to bake a whole damn cake and ship it out if there wasn’t someone around to check.”
A silence thicker than cold butter settles between them and Sehun works in silence, making figurines of sea creatures out of modeling chocolate. He recedes into himself, something he used to do as a child when he returned home from school to an empty apartment. When Luhan speaks again his voice is hoarse with disuse.
“I used to be a better person.”
Sehun barely registers the words. Only after he senses the lack of movement at Luhan’s worktable does he look up.
“What?”
“I used to to be a better person,” Luhan repeats more forcefully. He’s still staring at the dough between his hands.
“Oh,” Sehun says shortly. “I don’t think you’re a bad person, though.”
Luhan scoffs. “What do you know about me other than what things I can bake?” The hard humor dies on his lips and Sehun has the bizarre urge to give him a hug.
“Luhan...”
“Never mind,” Luhan says quickly. “Forget I said anything.”
His words swirl in Sehun’s head. When he had first arrived, Luhan seemed light, lighter than the cream that Sehun spent so much of his time spreading over chocolate, vanilla, strawberry cakes. The more they worked together, though, the more sour he became, a bitter taste, like cookies that had gone without baking soda.
“We should turn in for the night,” Luhan says, throwing the dough on the counter with a thump. He unties his apron and makes for the pantry where they usually hang their uniforms. Something hits the floor with a jingle but Luhan has already disappeared, and Sehun bends down over the counter to see what it is.
He picks up the flap of leather and opens it--a beat up wallet with even more beat up card slots. In the clear plastic window there is a picture of whom Sehun recognizes is Kris, in his baker’s smock and apron, arms crossed severely with a wooden spoon poking out near the crook of his arm. Baekhyun is up in the camera lens, eyes big as they always are. His hair was still dark brown.
And then there is Luhan, laughing on the left, hands covered in icing. He looks as though he’s talking to someone off camera, and out of curiosity, Sehun slides the picture out of the pocket slightly to see if the leather is blocking someone’s face.
There isn’t. Instead there is a soft, jagged tear in the photo and all that’s left is a mysterious hand that has no owner.
“What are you doing with that?”
Sehun jumps out of his skin and Luhan strides over, swiping his wallet cleanly out of Sehun’s grasp.
“Don’t snoop around others’ belongings.”
Luhan turns away to grab his raincoat and Sehun ventures a question.
“Who was torn out of that picture?”
Luhan’s movements slow, and he doesn’t turn around until his coat sits securely on his shoulders. “It’s a long story,” he says, not looking at Sehun.
“You know I’m going to say I have time.”
“I wish I didn’t.”
“I do love storytime.”
“You’re impossible,” Luhan says, smiling ruefully. A harsh screech scrapes along the tiled floor as he pulls up a folding chair for himself and kicks another in Sehun’s direction. When he settles down the nylon of his coat rustles and when Sehun sits, a plume of flour rises from the chair.
“You know the stories,” Luhan says. “Someone works too much and the other gets tired of always being alone.”
Sehun nods. He knows all too well.
“Minseok and I were in Le Cordon Bleu with Baekhyun and Kris together, which was the only thing that was different, really,” he continues. “The four of us. The head chefs called us the Brat Squad. They couldn’t get mad, we made the best pastries, the best sugar sculptures, always passed practicals with flying colors and then some...well, almost all of us.
“They say not to chase your future for someone, but with someone. At least that’s what I told myself. As for Minseok, he never actually wanted to become a pastry chef like Kris and Baekhyun and I; that wasn’t his dream. He wasn’t doing it for himself, or with me. He was doing it for me, and while that’s amazing on his part, that he’d do something he didn’t want to for me, that it’s selfless, but only in theory. It doesn’t ever end in happiness. I don’t know if you understand--”
“--I don’t--”
“--but you don’t build your life around someone. As soon as he flinches the entire thing crumbles, and.” Luhan sighs, shrugs. “We fell out, three years into our studies there. I started off as a saucier for French cuisine before I changed to pastries. Right after I did, did he finally confront me about how I cared more about inanimate powders and chicken’s eggs than I did about him.” Luhan laughs humorlessly. “It’s not like he was wrong, but it cut deep anyway.”
He takes a breather here. Sehun shifts in his seat and the metal creaks loudly under him.
“What happened after that?”
“He left, obviously,” Luhan says. “He went after his own dream, soccer. Good for him, to be honest. He’s happy now, so...”
Luhan trails off and leans back in his chair, looking away from Sehun resolutely as if the oven dials were suddenly far more fascinating. Sehun can see the wetness swimming along the rims of Luhan’s eyes and he decides against leaning forward and taking Luhan’s hand.
“You know, it’s okay to love something a lot,” Sehun says slowly. “No one can stop you. It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay if it interferes how I interact with people!” Luhan exclaims in frustration. “The only reason Kris didn’t throw me out on the streets in China is that we’ve been friends for years and he can tolerate me. I just, I haven’t made any real new friends in ages, and I don’t think I know how anymore--”
Sehun nudges him with a sugary, floury shoe.
“Well, why don’t you start right here?”
Luhan admittedly is kind of bad at this whole making friends idea because the only thing that changes is him waving spatulas of cookie dough in Sehun’s face and insisting he taste some. Baekhyun was always stringent about not eating raw eggs and Luhan rolls his eyes when Sehun denies his offer for perhaps the dozenth time.
“If I could eat raw egg in China and be okay, you will not die of salmonella poisoning here,” he says.
“Shut up and make your wreath,” Sehun says, no real poison in his words. They have a five-tier silver anniversary cake to finish in the next several days and they’re not done making the three hundred silver sugar flowers that are going to wrap around the cake in layers. Sehun has to make sure, upon all this, that the front shelves with the small cakes and cookies are still stocked with fresh pastries. It’s backbreaking, and ever since Luhan had introduced not two, but five new cake flavors, orders have jumped through the roof.
“Leave the green tea cake rolls and give me a hand on the flowers.”
“But--”
“They can wait. We still have a lot of chocolate and taro rolls left, anyway, right? I’m bad at decorating, I always did the assembly back at Kris’s Konfectioneries.”
Sehun chuckles a little and puts down the bowl of yogurt cream he’s mixing, covering it with parchment and popping it in the fridge. Luhan holds out his miserable rose and Sehun plucks it out of his fingers, and notices again how Luhan snatches his hand back like he’s been burned.
Just to mess with him, Sehun takes a step toward Luhan, who steps back. He makes to hug Luhan, and Luhan actually backs into the work counter trying to avoid it, and Sehun pulls away.
“You’re scared to touch me,” he says, cocking an eyebrow.
“I’m not scared to touch you,” Luhan mutters.
“Because backing away like I’m an undomesticated animal with rabies isn’t scared. Yeah, okay.”
“I’m not scared of touching people!” he says. “I’m just scared of--like, being close. Being close and messing up again.”
There’s something in Luhan’s voice that makes Sehun stop teasing, and for the rest of the night the air between them is oversalted with tension.
Somewhere among the cupcakes, croissants, and eclairs; among fondant, flour, and confectioner’s sugar; among rum cake and key lime pie and chocolate hazelnut cream, Sehun understands just why love is so scary.
“Hello?”
“...who’s calling?”
Sehun makes a point of inserting an insulted silence here. “Good going, Luhan, work two whole months with me and you still don’t know the sound of my voice. It’s almost July.”
“Sorry, Jesus, princess. You sound different on the phone.”
“Don’t call me princess. Listen, I got a favor to ask.”
“Of me?” Luhan sounds surprised. “What kind of a favor would you have to ask from me? You can bake anything you want.”
“Yeah. This isn’t about baking, though.”
“Oh. Then. I’m not terribly good at anything else.”
“Can you finger-paint?”
“I--what?”
“Finger paint. Or throw paint at a wall.”
“Is this a joke right now, Sehun.”
“God, I wish it were.”
“Yes, I can finger-paint,” Luhan says dryly. “But I swear to God, if you’re tricking me into something I will cut you off at the knees.”
“Excellent,” Sehun says cheerfully. “Can you come over tonight?”
“Tonight’s the only night we have off.”
“Exactly.”
Luhan gives a long-suffering sigh, and Sehun knows he’s won.
“I’m going to cut you off at the knees.”
“It’s not even a big deal! Chill out, Luhan.”
“I’m not going to cut you off at the knees because you tricked me into doing something that was almost completely unrelated to your question,” Luhan says, “but because you’re being an idiot.”
“Hey, don’t be unfair. I can do what I want.”
“You’re already blond!”
Sehun laughs. “Who said I was going to dye my hair blond?”
Luhan is standing in Sehun’s bathroom, staring at the seven, maybe eight bottles of half-empty hair dye. His eyes flicker to meet Sehun’s in the mirror and he asks, over Sehun’s shoulder, “Who helped you do the blond, then?”
“My best friend. Jongin. He’s in like...Japan, or something, though. Also he always gets it in my eyes.”
“I don’t know, Sehun,” Luhan says.
“Come on, please?” Sehun says, grabbing Luhan’s shoulder and shaking like a kid. Luhan squints up at him before letting out a huge breath.
“Do I really have to do it like this?”
“Hair dye don’t wash off, homeskillet,” Sehun says seriously.
Like this is standing in the shower stripped down to their boxers, Luhan holding a glass dish with eight dollops of greyish hair dye, mixed into a thick paste. Sehun sits on a baby stepping stool, a beat up one from his younger days, since he’s too tall for Luhan.
“Are you sure about this,” Luhan says apprehensively, rubber gloves squeaking against the plastic handle of the brush. “Like, you don’t have a plan at all about where you want a certain color to go?”
“Playing things by ear is fun,” Sehun says. He closes his eyes. “Surprise me. Streak whatever the hell you want anywhere, just don’t mix colors and it’ll be great.”
A comfortable silence punctuated with the rustling of aluminum foil tiptoes between them. Luhan seems to become engrossed in his work, humming under his breath as he often did when he was baking. His hands are soft on Sehun’s head, and goosebumps tumble down Sehun’s spine every time Luhan tugs on a lock of hair. Distantly, stories and stories below, traffic whines by on the road.
“You’re pretty good at this,” Sehun comments when Luhan finishes painting all his hair up to his bangs, wrapping him neatly in a small envelope of foil. He flicks it back over his head and grabs a towel, rubbing off drops of dye that escaped onto his shoulders. “You didn’t get any in my eyes or anything.”
“I’m not good with aesthetics, but I’m a confectioner,” Luhan says, grinning. “God, you’re going to look crazy.”
“Good kind of crazy or bad kind of crazy?”
“Dumb kind of crazy.”
Sehun throws his towel at him and that is when he realizes he’s standing Basically Naked in a bathtub with Luhan, who is also Basically Naked, and suddenly he feels blushing erupting in his cheeks, so angry that it colors all the way down to his chest.
“Uh, I’m gonna,” he says eloquently. Luhan raises his eyebrows.
“You’re not going to do anything looking like that, are you?” he asks. “I mean I wouldn’t even go on a mail run if I were you.”
“I need to pee. Get out,” Sehun demands, and pushes Luhan by the bare shoulders. Luhan practically cracks his skull open trying to scramble out before Sehun can shove him again and he snags his pile of clothes off the floor and starts yanking them on. Sehun slams the door and locks it, stares at himself and his shiny foil-head in the mirror.
“Stupid,” he mutters, “stupid, stupid, stupid.”
It isn’t until later, when he’s standing under the hot stream of water and rinsing the dye out of his hair, that he suddenly realizes that Luhan did not flinch in the least getting into the tub to paint Sehun’s hair.
“Wow, it actually...” Luhan bites his lower lip, looking conflicted. “Looks pretty good on you.”
Sehun reaches up and fluffs his bangs as he ties his apron round his waist, beating the thickest clods of chalky flour off the heavy terrycloth. “Yeah?” Everything about his hair is loud and obnoxious; electric blue, acid green, hot pink. Somehow it doesn’t look too bad. Sehun figures that it’s because he hasn’t seen his real hair color in far too long for it to matter what color it is now.
“Yeah,” Luhan admits. He scoffs. “You really pull it off. I like it. I did a good job, didn’t I?”
“You did great,” Sehun says dryly.
“Whatever, Sass Queen. We have a cake to load.”
“Oh shit, that’s today, isn’t it?” Sehun says, smacking his forehead. “I--”
“--completely forgot, I know. Which is why I made extra flowers. We have enough, I think. Just grab the wooden support dowels and and start putting the tiers into the trunk.”
Sehun rushes to the pantry and back, then out to the garage. Luhan works fast without ever looking hurried, strangely. He moves serenely but finishes before Sehun can grab the crown tier of the silver anniversary cake.
“Slow down, we’re not late,” Luhan says when Sehun runs out panting.
“Forgetting things always makes me feel late,” he explains breathlessly.
Luhan punches him lightly in the arm. “Stop forgetting things then! One day you might leave something important behind.”
Sehun stares as Luhan climbs into the driver’s seat of the truck and runs a hand through his hair. It’s hot--July sun beats down upon like like Mayan drums--but he doesn’t move until Luhan leans out of the window and shouts, “Coming, rainbow vomit boy?”
He shouts in indignation and jumps on. He’d rather not be forgotten, either.
At least they arrive towards the end of the anniversary party, so they don’t have to wait in the truck for very long. Sehun pushes a cart loaded with tiers and Luhan carries in the tray of delicate decorations and they assemble it quietly in the kitchen of the hotel venue. It is now that they work best--putting together a piece of art, not a single detail overlooked.
Today is Sehun’s turn to wheel out the finished piece. Exclamations rain down upon them and Luhan has to pick them up like scattered flowers. It’s massive, towering far above Sehun and he looks up to the crown where there sits a huge sugar magnolia that he painted two days ago. The couple that threw the party give him and Luhan hugs, insisting they have a piece.
“You think they’re gonna last?”
Sehun blinks before he realizes Luhan is talking to him.
“What--like, their marriage?”
“Yeah.”
“They lasted this long. Silver anniversaries are pretty impressive in this day and age, what with people getting divorced left and right.”
“Well. I’m glad they’re happy. I’m glad we could make them happy.”
They’re standing at the kitchen window watching people slice into their cake and sneak bites from others’ plates--there has to be at least three or more different flavors. Sehun looks away, though, to stare at Luhan’s profile.
“You’re so scared of love,” he says, before he loses his nerve, “but you try so hard to make it perfect for everyone else. I don’t get it.”
Luhan shrugs halfheartedly, clearly unwilling to broach this topic again. “Just because I’m not a fan of it doesn’t mean it can’t be perfect for someone else.”
Heartbeat.
There is no dough in Sehun’s hands to clutch right now, as he does so often when Luhan brushes past him, no eggs to crack in nervousness, no milk to measure to keep his eyes busy. It’s just him and Luhan and too many nights skirting around each other, grains of sugar turning to flavorless malt between each other.
Somewhere among electric beaters, cream cheese, and jello powder, Sehun let himself fall in love.
“Luhan.”
Luhan turns to look at him, eyes searching. They’re dark and a little scared, a little tired, and a lot of something else--and Sehun doesn’t know what else to do but to lean in and kiss him.
It’s warm. Unbearably so, even in the stale air-conditioned warehouse kitchen of the hotel lobby, but the moment Sehun’s mouth meets Luhan’s, Luhan gasps as though he had been waiting an age for this. Sehun hasn’t kissed anyone in a long, long time; he marvels at the soft press of lips against his own. Luhan’s hands find his neck, his face, pull Sehun against him until they are so close that neither know where one ends and the other begins.
Luhan finally pulls away first, their foreheads resting against each other. He takes a harsh breath before his hand on Sehun’s neck pulls Sehun in again, kissing his upper lip like it is fragile glass one last time before he breaks away and seems to realize what he’s doing.
“I...” Luhan says, looking caught between two oncoming cars. “I didn’t...”
“Don’t run,” Sehun says, but what does he expect? In fact, he’d rather Luhan does run, to save him from whatever heartbreak he knew would come the second their lips met.
Luhan does not return to Baek’s Bakery that day, or the day after that. The counter next to Sehun’s remains impossibly quiet and he drowns in cake orders and his own self-anger.
The phone rings at half-past midnight and mechanically, Sehun picks up.
“Where the hell are you? It’s almost one AM!”
Sehun brings the phone away from his ear and stares at the caller ID. It’s a picture of Baekhyun with his mouth full of French fries.
“Oh. It’s you.”
“What do you mean ‘oh it’s’--is everything okay, Sehun? You sound really not okay.”
“Eloquence. You have lots of it.”
“Your sass seems very much intact, so I’m going to assume you’re okay,” Baekhyun says. “Where are you? You wouldn’t pick up the phone in your apartment and I got so worried.”
“I’m at the bakery.”
“Sehun. It’s half past midnight.”
“So?”
“Go home! I didn’t put Luhan in charge so you could work yourself to death.”
“I know, I know. I just had a lot of things on my mind. He’s great, hyung.”
“Is he? Oh God, I’m so relieved. He’s been emailing me recently but he’s kind of cryptic, all I gathered was that you guys are always chin-deep in orders. So business is good, right?”
Sehun eyes the growing list of cake orders that he needs to start on. Himself. His scrawl sticks its tongue back out at him and he forces cheer into his voice. It’s so hard to be happy when all he wants to be is sad. “Business is great!”
“Sehun,” Baekhyun says seriously, “are you sure everything’s okay?”
“Everything is fine, hyung,” Sehun lies expertly. “What about you?”
It’s been a week, and the list of orders that Sehun has tacked to the wall--everything from cakes for events and butter cookies for the shelves--almost reaches the floor. He gets up at 6 am every day and rushes to Baek’s, forgetting breakfast, forgetting to brush his hair, forgetting shoes and noticing only when he’s halfway down in the elevator.
The streets are quiet. The city takes a while to wake up and stretch its limbs on a Saturday morning, and Sehun seems to be the only thing moving. Baek’s smells like muggy caramel and cake batter, and he takes his time putting his apron on in the middle of the kitchen.
He rummages through the two hundred mini macarons sitting in the fridge and realizes he’s been angst-baking them for days. Dozens of tiny pastel cookies sit in ribboned boxes, ready to be shipped to a sweet sixteen. Sehun turns to look at his list of orders and his stomach flips like it does when he’s on drop-zone rides. At the bottom of a chunk of hastily crossed out orders is one that says in his messy writing, four-tier cotillion cake, princess-style, castles. It’s due to be shipped out this evening.
Sehun forgot about it entirely, and it hasn’t even been started.
He stares and stares across the kitchen, clock ticking, list mocking. Four-layer cakes can take up to three days for him and Luhan to finish--baking, assembling, decorating, even working full-speed. This one demands at least a hundred different sugar flowers.
Slowly, Sehun sinks down, down, down, until he’s crouched in a little ball and hides his face between his knees, interlacing his fingers behind his neck and trying to calm his breath. Suddenly, failure is real; and on top of that, it isn’t his name he’s going to be staining--it’ll be Baekhyun’s, and Luhan’s. He can’t afford that.
Sehun feels more than hears the walk-in refrigerator door open, sweet, icy air ruffling through his hair. For a moment he doesn’t realize the implications of this. Then he looks up.
Luhan stands in front of him, looking as exhausted as Sehun feels. They hold each others’ gazes, somewhat awkwardly because of the angle Sehun has to tilt his head, but then Luhan is yanking him to his feet by the wrist and tugging him to follow. Sehun puts up scant resistance and asks, gruffly, “Where are we going?”
This is met with no answer, unsurprisingly, and in almost the fashion of being kidnapped, Luhan shoves him into the passenger seat and climbs into the truck, gunning the ignition.
“I have a cake to start and finish today,” Sehun says blandly. Luhan ignores him. Sehun crosses his arms across his smock and glares resolutely out the window. After a while the buildings begin blurring into trees and trees turn into forest thickets. He glances out the windshield and realizes they’re far from the city. The question of where they are dangles at the tip of his tongue but he keeps his mouth shut.
Just as he’s about to start falling asleep, Luhan kills the engine and the truck rumbles into silence. The slam of the door jolts Sehun out of his doze and fumbles to unbuckle his seat belt, and is about to hop out when he see Luhan leaning back slowly on the front bumper of the truck, hands shoved into his pockets, blustery breeze tugging insistently at locks of hair. They’re parking on the side of a gravel and dirt road, a stretch of asphalt marking places for cars to park. An old wooden rail bars the sharp drop-off of the cliff below, dusky little flowers growing meekly around the rocks.
It’s a scenic park, something like a wildlife refuge. Hundreds of feet below are scattered lakes and ponds, so flat they look like shards of glass on a rolling piece of green velvet. Sehun has a feeling that Luhan has been here, and slides out of his seat.
The wind nips at his clothes immediately, clouds of flour and sugar disappearing into the air. Luhan has left an vacant, inviting space next to him on the bumper, and Sehun leans on it beside him. The city is far, far away. Tiny, but not forgotten.
“I used to come here with Minseok,” Luhan says. Sehun fights down the urge to scoff. How lovely of Luhan to bring him to a place like this.
“Okay,” he says, because that’s more socially acceptable.
“You probably don’t take me seriously right now, which I understand completely,” Luhan continues. “I wouldn’t take me seriously either. I’m a spineless person. Spineless and pretty talentless with an ego to make up for both.” He kicks a stone. “I’m not fishing, I’m not doing whatever people do to look for compliments. But it was--I know I was stupid. A lot stupid. It’s just so hard to believe and accept that someone would actually like me again. Not that I didn’t think it would ever happen again, but just, not someone as unlikeable as me.”
“Okay, first of all, cool,” Sehun says, throwing his hands up and pushing off the edge of the truck. He faces Luhan whose expression is cold, closed off. “Are you done quoting literally every single teenage girl Tumblr in existence? Good. Yeah, second of all, I have a cake order to finish like, in an hour. So unless you have any idea how to pull that off, I’m not here to listen until that happens. I wonder who’s fault that is? Huh, I don’t know, but I seem to recall he disappeared off the face of the earth for seven days. Third of all,” Sehun snaps, and now he is winded, “who the hell are you to decide if it’s okay if I like you or not? Just because you can’t see anything good in yourself, which I hope you can, or will be able to, doesn’t mean I can’t.”
Luhan blinks at him.
“Then what is it that you like about me?”
The fight goes out of Sehun like the helium out of a punctured balloon. He actually isn’t quite sure what he likes about the insecure confectioner that demands perfection and wants things to be flawless for everyone but himself. There’s one reason, but--
“It’s kind of lame.”
“We’re already here and you’re going to chicken out because your reason is lame.”
“You’ve never...forgotten about me,” Sehun says stiltedly. “Even when I forget shit for myself and fuck my life over. Which is many times, mind you. Jongin can tell you all about that. And well, my parents aren’t too hot about me either. My brother is usually AWOL. Whenever you make cookie batter you always shove some at me because you know I love it even though Baekhyun tells me not to eat stuff with raw eggs. You know?”
“Oh,” Luhan says shortly. “I. I’m good at cookie batter.”
“And you fucking suck at feelings. Just for the record.”
Something flashes in Luhan’s eyes and Sehun isn’t sure if it’s irritation or anger or relief of liberation, or if it’s a mix of all three--he doesn’t get a chance to really figure out before Luhan’s pressing up against him, kissing him hard.
To say it’s a lot better than their first kiss is a bit of a lie, because noses still bump and teeth still knock. But Luhan gives as much as he takes, sucking Sehun’s tongue into his mouth after Sehun bites down softly on his lower lip, plush between his own. Even when Sehun moves to pull back, getting lightheaded, Luhan’s hands find his jaw and pull him back in.
They kiss for lazy drags of minutes or maybe several sunlit hours. Time is strangely still here up in the hills and when Sehun finally pulls back, pieces the bits of his composure back together, his hands are laid flat against the warm hood of the truck with Luhan pinned between the bumper and his own body.
“We have a four-tier cake to finish by tonight,” Sehun whispers against Luhan’s mouth, eyes still closed. It’s literally The Least Romantic Thing to say but it’s the most pressing matter at hand.
“You know we used to play Iron Chef in Kris’s Konfectioneries?” Luhan says, nipping Sehun’s lower lip. “Watch me.”
Sehun makes the mistake of betting dinner on whoever could make fifty sugar flowers first. Luhan works so fast it’s almost as though his hands blur, and they still come out looking as though they were carefully pressed, rolled, and crimped.
“Kris disciplines us well,” he offers as an explanation when he finishes and Sehun cries over his forty-second flower. “I’m pretty sure he’d use a whip if that weren’t illegal.”
They have twenty minutes on the clock to finish this cake and it’s only barely assembled. There’s little need for decoration, thank God--the hundred or so different types of flowers are going to take care of that. Luhan starts pressing dowels into the lowest tier and when Sehun hands him the third and last, he lets his fingers linger on Luhan’s hands for a moment too long and smiles when Luhan doesn’t flinch away immediately.
He finishes decorating with two minutes to go, and they step back. In an hour they managed to put together an entire cotillion cake, complete with sugar hibiscus, daffodils, peonies, orchids. Each tier is lined with fake ribbon and pearls and Sehun has to admit that working together, they can create miracles.
“Come on,” Luhan says. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
They start on the dozens of orders that Sehun has been drowning in, mass-baking cake, cutting, rolling out sheets of fondant. They work in comfortable silence, even though Sehun doesn’t let Luhan forget for a moment how he went MIA for a week and left Sehun to suffocate under five orders of double chocolate-chip cookies, among other things.
“It’s midnight,” Sehun says, sinking his spatula into the batter and leaning on it. “You want to lock up and grab something to eat?”
“Now?” Luhan asks incredulously. “It’s late as shit.”
“I know,” Sehun says matter-of-factly. “You want to grab something to eat?”
Truthfully, the only places that are open are Jack in the Box, a couple of burger joints, and shady Chinese hole-in-the-walls with soggy men in the dark corners and cigarette smoke so thick the haze looks like something out of Silent Hill.
“This is really greasy, but,” Luhan says, swiping ketchup off the corner of his lip, “I can’t actually find it in me to be sorry.”
“Fast food must be eaten without abandon, otherwise you’re not doing it right,” Sehun says.
They don’t talk again until their trays are empty and Sehun is pushing the ice around in his cup trying to suck up the last drops of Pepsi. Luhan spins in his creaky bar chair until his knees are touching Sehun’s thigh and he says, mutters, “Thanks for. I mean. Thanks.”
Sehun side-eyes him.
“Of course,” he says, smiling slightly around his bitten straw.
Somewhere among late-night fast food dates, icing rosettes, and a burnt batch of half-moon cookies, Sehun learns what it’s like to be loved.
Sometimes when it’s late and the ovens--there are six--are full, it’s hard to keep hands off each other. Sehun learns Luhan is a fierce kisser and has a fascination with his mouth, always stealing kisses like secrets when Sehun least expects them.
Luhan doesn’t shy away from Sehun’s touch now, which is an improvement. He’s still working on not whacking Sehun in the face with a spatula when Sehun surprises him with backhugs, though.
Sometimes Sehun will sit down at Luhan’s counter, chin propped in his hands, and let Luhan teach him new mixes he learned at Kris’s. Cherry creme, Luhan’s personal specialty, marbled red syrup and whipped cream. Raspberry cheesecake, which they end up selling on the shelves, slices nestled in delicate paper cups and topped with white chocolate shavings and a fresh raspberry. Peanut butter and fudge with the perfect consistency: not too sticky, sweet enough to induce shivers but not so sweet to give headaches.
Luhan teaches like a storyteller shares tales--effortlessly, without any trace of boredom. Sehun is easily distracted by the juts of Luhan’s wrists when he cracks eggs into mixing bowls, and often he’s admonished for staring at Luhan’s face as opposed to what’s being made. Luhan panics when there are summer rainstorms because the bakery is permeated with humidity, even with the dehumidifier, and those days Sehun shows him Baekhyun’s secret recipe for the perfect caramel macaron--with permission, of course.
Somewhere among egg meringue, tropical berry filling, and Danish cookies; among Linzer cakes, Swiss almond torte, and bowls licked clean; among dried banana chips, ice cream, and coffee powder--
--somewhere among all of that, love.
During early September, just as Sehun’s gathering his things and pulling himself back together to start his third year of college, he walks into Baek’s to find Luhan sitting on the counter with his back to the door, dishtowel in his hands. Although it’s late, and Baek’s is already closed, it’s odd to see Luhan ever stop working until the clock hits midnight.
“Hey,” Sehun says. “Something happen?”
Luhan straightens up and grins, shaking his head. Sehun can tell something’s spooked him, or is on his mind, because he says, “You want to come over?”
Sehun’s been to Luhan’s many times, kissing leading to being pinned under Luhan on a bed of rumpled sheets. This time, though, Luhan’s face is tired, his eyes far away as Sehun waits for him to hang up his uniform and apron. They drive in silence, and Sehun does not press for answers. He knows Luhan won’t give them until he wants to, anyway.
Luhan doesn’t make a point of talking, though, not when he shoves Sehun hard up against the inside of his door as soon as it slams shut, mouth hot and rough on his. His hands claw at Sehun’s windbreaker and lock him there between Luhan’s body and the wood, surface hard and ridged against his back.
Sehun doesn’t speak when he pulls him into his bedroom, hands making quick work of Sehun’s jacket, and he doesn't try to question this either. It’s a little crazy how strong Luhan is, throwing Sehun into his bed and climbing over him, caging him with arms and legs.
He only seems to realize how rough he’s being when Sehun clutches shakily at the wrists on either side of his head.
“Fuck, sorry,” he curses, and moves to back off, sliding away, but Sehun tightens his hold and shakes his head.
“No, it’s okay. It’s fine.”
“I just--threw you--”
“I thought it was kind of hot.”
Irritation tinges the lust in Luhans eyes as he rolls them and Sehun has to laugh breathlessly at his own confession.
Clothes come off fast. Sehun has a feeling that Luhan’s had good practice on zippers of denim pants because he always gets Sehun naked before Sehun can reciprocate. Not that it’s a big deal, but these few seconds--where Luhan smirks at him when Sehun’s completely bare, and he is not--always make a fierce blush spread down to his collarbones.
The headiest feeling is when Luhan kneels between his spread legs, the sound of the cap of lube snapping shut the only sensation that grounds him. He shoves his own hands behind himself to fight the urge to touch himself and whimpers when he feels Luhan press up against him, hot and slick.
“It’s okay, right?”
Sehun nods, letting out a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding.
Luhan curls his fingers around the junction between Sehun’s thighs and hips, heat pressing into the pale skin there. He pulls Sehun toward him, slowly, watching Sehun’s face color with pain as Sehun’s body slides across the sheets. Hands scrabble at covers and Sehun fists his fingers into the soft cotton, the fabric tightening under him. He whimpers again, barely audible, just little puffs of breath.
Sehun doesn’t know what Luhan’s trying to prove. Not that he’s opposed to it, but he’s never been on the bottom. It’s a little scary, but he hopes Luhan can find in him whatever he seems to be so desperately searching for.
"Relax," Luhan murmurs, stroking the skin of Sehun’s hip when he’s buried deep as he can go. Sehun shifts and a burning sting shoots up his body and he cries out, but Luhan simply leans down and holds his face between his hands and kisses him hard. It’s a little strange and a whole lot weird being treated this gently. Sehun feels his fingers relaxing and he finds purchase on Luhan’s shoulders. They’re more muscular than they look under the demure baker’s uniform.
When Luhan finally moves, thrusting slow and hard, Sehun feels the pain easing off. He shoves his hips down as Luhan pushes up into him, and it’s messy and disjointed and at one point Sehun misses Luhan’s mouth when he pulls him down to kiss him and ends up pressing his lips to the corner of it instead.
But it’s okay.
Sehun comes first and tugs Luhan along right after him, and has to ease his legs off of Luhan’s hips slowly. His limbs feel locked into their positions; he hasn’t come so hard before, and Luhan hands him tissues to wipe down with. Sehun is notorious for knocking out quickly after an orgasm and he hears a fond, exasperated sigh and several insistent rubs on his tummy before sleep snatches away consciousness.
Sehun wakes later, suddenly, just before the sunrise. His nerves are still buzzing, burnt out from sex, especially after he’d pinned Luhan up against the headboard and took him from behind. His lips are bruised from Luhan turning his head around and latching their mouths together, desperate gleam in his eyes.
Luhan stares up at the ceiling with clear eyes. Sehun wonders if he even went to sleep, rolling over to face him and rubbing his sore mouth.
“Minseok called me. Said he was getting married.”
Sehun feels sleepy eyebrows knit together. “Oh,” he says. “Uh. That’s. That’s great.”
“Yeah. He asked me if I’d found anyone.”
Sehun waits expectantly, pillowing his chin in his arms.
“What did you say?”
“Said yeah, yeah I did. And he goes, ‘Can he take you for who you are? Accept you entirely? Because I couldn’t.’ Said he wasn’t going to throw away the fact we’d been friends once and told me to make sure I was happy.”
Sehun has a terrible moment of self-doubt.
“Do I make you happy?” he whispers, so quietly that it’s almost to himself.
“I think this is the time when I’m supposed to, as a confectioner, draw a repulsive analogy between you, love, and maybe sugar, but I don’t think you’d appreciate it,” Luhan says, a smile tugging on his lips. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”
That day, for the first time in ages, Baek’s Bakery doesn’t open until 9 AM.
“You’re going to leave me,” Luhan gripes, “you’re going to leave me, and knowing you, and how hot you are, someone’s going to seduce you. And you’re kind of dense, it’s not that hard.”
“I’m 9000% insulted. And also worried because like, that could happen.”
“I’m going to throw this batch of dough--”
Sehun pretends to duck exaggeratedly and Luhan squints at him as he continues rough-icing the quinceanera cake he’s been working on all afternoon. He nudges Luhan with an elbow. “Come on, really? I wouldn’t. I forget dates eighty percent of the time, even if I wanted to cheat they’d dump me after two weeks.”
It’s late August and Sehun has graduated university, due to attend a graduate program at Le Cordon Bleu in China, the same place Luhan and Kris and the others at Konfectioneries got their degrees. It’s a good beginning and maybe one day Sehun will be able to get certification at the Culinary Institute of America, but that’s a long ways away.
“Your hair needs some life,” Luhan says, flicking Sehun’s dull brown sweep of hair and leaving behind a smudge of cinnamon. “How about we bleach it tonight and throw in some color? We could do green, red, yellow. Maybe some blue. You’d look like the poster child of Google Chrome.”
“God, you’re actually Satan’s spawn,” Sehun says, laughing. There’s a smudge of Cool Whip on Luhan’s lower lip--he has a penchant for eating any leftovers when Sehun dirty ices cakes. He catches Luhan’s arm and leans in, kissing it off, tongue running across Luhan’s mouth to swipe it up. Luhan’s hand drifts to his neck to pull him in, and--
“Wait, what the fuck?”
Sehun and Luhan jump apart to see Baekhyun standing in front of the pantry door that leads in from the garage. His face is shell-shocked, his jaw slack, and he looks from Sehun to Luhan back to Sehun.
And then Sehun suddenly remembers:
It’s late August.
He says if everything goes according to plan, he’ll be back two years from now, in August.
“Oh Sehun,” Baekhyun says in a dangerous voice, “you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”
A/N:
- partially inspired by the xoxo pictures in which sehun is eating a cupcake. because everyone loves shota eating a cupcake. i think this is the part where i’m supposed to make a really salacious joke but it would be a bad idea probably.
- the other part was Way Too Many episodes of cake boss. Waaaay Too Many episodes.
- the title is indeed from nicki minaj’s superbass.
- special thanks to e for reading my longass emails about this and filling in the icing where i missed some spots and l for cleaning up all my messy frosting writing!!!
For: silchild
Pairing: Luhan/Sehun
Rating: NC-17
Length: 10,376
Summary, potential warnings: Somewhere among the fondant flowers, paste food coloring, and melted chocolate and butter, Sehun finds something sweeter. Somewhere between the marshmallow fluff and the honey, Luhan finds something to love. Warning for actual copious amounts of sugar and high fructose corn syrup.
Sehun is a forgetful person. He puts his house and car keys on soap dishes and hangs his jackets on the backs of doors. Sometimes he’ll pay at the cashier and walk away without his bags of sugar and cinnamon, which is at least slightly better than forgetting to pay entirely and walking out of the store and being mowed down by security (it’s happened more than once, unfortunately).
“You forgot it was your birthday?” Baekhyun asks incredulously. “Who forgets their own birthday? Facebook doesn’t let anyone forget anyone’s birthday, and you forgot your own?”
“Shut up,” Sehun mumbles through the corner of his mouth. To be fair, he had been online until about five this morning, trying to finish his final paper for the spring semester, but he’d passed out before he had a chance to see the four million half-hearted happy birthday messages posted on his Wall by people he barely ever spoke to.
“It’s just, how do you forget your twentieth birthday,” Baekhyun says again, exasperated. Sehun glares at him from across the small workspace behind the counter as he ices five dozen chocolate cupcakes with pink buttercream frosting. Baekhyun just smiles and says, “I’m just playing with you. I made a little something for you, though. I’ll give it to you later during break.”
Sehun is a forgetful person, perhaps, because his parents do not remember him all that much either.
They are not neglectful, per se. It’s simple: they love their jobs more than they love him and his older brother, because children have needs that cannot always be satisfied. Jobs are different--do it well and there are fruitful gains.
It’s why Sehun has found his niche in Baek’s Bakery. He likes being surrounded by sugar and spice, by orders upon orders of pastries and confectioneries, as do many, but he likes simply being needed. People come here to request harder, progressively more impossible wedding cakes with Victorian lace. Quinceanera cakes and cotillion cakes with seven tiers. Jumbo chocolate chip ice cream cookie pies for that four-year-old’s first real birthday party. Orders of petit fours that need to be shipped in chilled coolers that weigh more than him and Baekhyun combined. The pressure is always weighing down upon his shoulders but he likes that there is pressure at all.
Baekhyun needs the help, anyway, and Sehun has a flair for decorating. The bakery they run is small, barely larger than the size of a boutique but reputed locally and online. Sehun isn’t passionate about pastries like Baekhyun is--married to them, practically--but there is something about the sweet smell of his double-breasted uniform with the brass buttons and floury apron that reminds him oddly of home.
Sehun’s sitting in the back kitchen next to the stock refrigerators, eating the tiny cake Baekhyun made him--red velvet and Jello with Cool Whip--when he hears Baekhyun’s high pitched shriek from the loading garage. His fork hits the cake stand with a clatter, because he’d rather not bother with another plate, and Sehun trips over his own feet dashing through the pantry and the walk-in refrigerator to get to the garage.
“What happened--?”
Baekhyun is absolutely fine, about which Sehun is initially relieved but then immediately irritated because was the shrieking really necessary. Once Baekhyun had seen a spider maybe the size of Sehun’s fingernail and threw himself onto Sehun so violently both of them were sent crumpling to the floor. He thought Baekhyun had seen a thug or something. Sehun eventually smashed the fucker with a spatula.
“I got in! I got in, I got in!”
Sehun strides over in confusion. At the top of the paper is letterhead with the telltale green text encircled by a long grain of barley wheat, and Sehun feels his own eyes widen.
"You got into the Culinary Institute of America?”
“I applied for their pastry program! I wanted to--oh my God, Sehun, I can’t believe it--”
Sehun tugs the paper out of Baekhyun as he goes into full-fledged hysterics that involve him actually dancing in circles around Sehun on the damp pavement, and his eyes fly across the words. Most of the letter is in English but Sehun does pick up things like New York City and patisserie. When he looks up, Baekhyun’s face is shining enough to chase away the rainclouds.
“When do you start?” Sehun asks numbly.
“May fifth!” Baekhyun says. “It’s a twenty-one month program with three months of externship and two months of work experience, but I can probably skip that part, all things considered.” He grabs Sehun’s hands in his own and squeezes tight. “I can become so much better, Sehun, can you imagine!”
“Yeah,” Sehun says weakly. “I sure can.”
This brings up all sorts of problems for Sehun and his not being able to run the bakery 24/7 doesn’t even begin to cover it. He doesn’t know how to manage a business, he’s shit at math and finance, and the idea of keeping up with orders by himself makes him dizzy. He didn’t miss all the late nights when he’d go back to his apartment for homework and Baekhyun would sit alone in the back kitchen counting numbers and mumbling to his calculator, pens behind both ears.
When he brings this problem up to Baekhyun’s attention, he expects a frown and a deflating of Baekhyun’s now perpetually tiny puffed-up chest. He does not expect, however, a brilliant smile and a pat on the shoulder. Sehun is really going to have to go in there and take out the screws for smiling.
“I have that planned already,” Baekhyun says. “I had a friend once at Le Cordon Bleu that I spoke to and he wants to work here. Right now he's stationed at Kris’s Konfectioneries.”
“Our sister branch in China?”
“You know the one. I called him yesterday and I asked if he was still interested in running a whole bakery while I went to school in the States and he agreed! Said he needed something to do, he’s tired of being in a kitchen with half a dozen other people. He has big ideas.”
“Kris’s Konfectioneries has eight people working at once?”
“They’re a bigger branch, they need more people,” Baekhyun says, pulling the mixing bowl out from under the beaters. He scrapes down the sides and when he notices that Sehun hasn’t yet moved, holding a full piping bag of pink icing, a look of concern graces his features for the first time.
“You’ll be okay, right? Luhan is really experienced and nice. It’ll be fine!”
This is no small achievement, Sehun knows. Getting into the Culinary Institute of America is not an easy feat and that Baekhyun managed to pull it off--swamped in orders, no less--is impressive. He’s told Sehun over many a cake layer, late into the night, about how his dream was to attend their pastry program and to become a certified pastry chef.
So he smiles and nudges Baekhyun with an elbow and says, “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay.”
He hopes.
Baekhyun must leave promptly on the night of May 1st so he can get himself situated and oriented before the start of the program. Luhan is set to arrive from China on April 29th, which Sehun, being Sehun, forgets about completely. He’s behind the counter arranging the fresh taro cakes among the cappucino-mocha ones when there’s a rush of damp spring breeze, the sound of traffic roaring briefly.
The door is not in direct sight behind the counter--there’s a welcome area that’s decorated with fake cakes and wicker chairs with floral pillows, so Sehun straightens up and wipes his hands on the towel at his waist. Baekhyun is in the back, pulling out the last birthday cake he’ll be making for a while. Sehun hates greeting guests but sometimes, it’s necessary.
“Hello, can I help you today?”
“Oh, you must be Baekhyun’s coworker, Sehun, right?” He has a soft voice and a touch of a foreign accent. “I’m Luhan.”
“I. Oh. Yeah, the coworker,” Sehun says articulately, caught off guard. Luhan is tiny--well, he’s about the same size about Baekhyun, to be fair, but he’s seen pictures of Baekhyun and Kris from their time together as classmates at Le Cordon Bleu and Kris is massive. Somehow he assumed everyone in Kris’s kitchen was the size of a truck. Furthermore, Luhan’s in street clothes and a backpack, and he looks like a freshman looking to buy something for his girlfriend.
Luhan smiles a half-smile. “Is Baekhyun in, or...?”
“Oh, he’s baking,” Sehun says, jumping, as though suddenly realizing Baekhyun was A Thing That Existed. “Right, let me get him.”
Baekhyun gives Luhan a huge, sticky hug that gets chocolate crumbs and icing on his shirt and Sehun supposes it’s the mark of a true baker than Luhan barely even flinches. They talk in excited, rapid Korean and Sehun is actually impressed by how well Luhan can speak it despite the accent. He slinks back into the corner like a slug and continues shaking moon and star shaped sprinkles over a batch of cupcakes to be sent to a school for a retirement celebration.
“Sehun, get over here, you’re being rude,” Baekhyun chides, and Sehun sulks before putting down the sprinkle shakers and shuffling back over.
“He’s technically going to be your boss for the next two years or so, you should get to know him,” Baekhyun says. “It would not bode well if you guys clashed.”
Sehun gives Luhan a look like save me and Luhan just winks.
“Are you going to miss him?”
In the past three days, Luhan has been everywhere in Baek’s Bakery, getting to know the ropes, familiarizing himself with the equipment and the tools. Baekhyun has been in and out, never in his uniform, trying to pull together all his loose ends before he leaves. Sehun has been caught among it all, quietly airbrushing fondant flowers for a three-tier birthday cake that’s been ordered for next week.
He shrugs at the question. Luhan is furiously rolling together more gum paste and fondant, fingers dipped in glycerine, and looks up just as Sehun’s shoulders are dropping. “Baekhyun is one of my best friends,” he says. “He says if everything goes according to plan, he’ll be back two years from now, in August. But I think...I’m going to miss his cheerfulness the most.”
“Anyone would,” Luhan agrees. “But I’m not a dark cloud of gloom, either, so we’re going to make this work.”
Luhan does a lame little fist pump at this and Sehun laughs in spite of himself. “Don’t do that again.”
“You seem like something’s worrying you,” Luhan says after a pause. “Are you concerned about what will happen to the business?”
“That too,” Sehun says. He stops crimping the petals of the tiger lily and drops his hands into his stained, aproned lap. “But it’s just, how could he not tell me until now? Why didn’t he say anything about his application?”
Luhan is silent. “Well, that’s his business, but he told me he didn’t want to worry you prematurely, not make it a big deal,” he says. “That’s Baek. Always worrying about your best interests even if you don’t want him to. He does too much for his own good, if you ask me.”
Sehun sighs, blowing his bangs up off his forehead. “I wasn’t ready for any of this, goddammit,” he curses under his breath.
“I don’t think any of us were,” Luhan says, dropping some pink gel food coloring into the fondant. “I think you can just make plans and hope what comes fits into them.”
Running Baek’s Bakery without Baekhyun is weird. Now that he’s done with his second year of college, and since Luhan is still a little cold with the kitchen, Sehun’s day starts at 9 am with punching down dough that’s been left to set overnight, or sliding racks of cookies--sugar, chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin--into the right ovens. A lot of responsibilities that were once Baekhyun’s, such as greeting guests, taking orders, and doing the large-scale baking, have been divided between them until Luhan gets into the swing of things.
Baekhyun’s absence does not change the customer load much, if at all. Sehun finds himself sitting down with a young woman that has a request for a baby shower cake not one day into Luhan’s new role as boss and she pushes ribbons and invitations across the table towards him.
“I wanted it to match the cardstock we printed it on, and if that’s too hard, these are the colors of the decorations,” she says, running her fingers along the satin. “She’s a girl, but I don’t want it to be all pink, you know? Maybe she’ll like blue. So I wanted both colors to be represented.”
Sehun wonders how Baekhyun can be so good at this, nodding, smiling, asking which cake flavors their customers would like. Luhan saves him by bringing out a plate of all the flavors they bake. Sehun notices that instead of the usual seven cake samples, there are nine. He glances up at Luhan almost imperceptibly, and that tiny, knowing smile flits across his lips like he knows Sehun is looking at him, though he barely gives away the fact he’s seen. It’s professionalism honed down to a science and Sehun is almost intimidated.
She ends up choosing the hazelnut and one Sehun’s never heard of before, butter pecan. When she leaves, Luhan pulls out the chair she just vacated and fills in the details of the quick sketch he drew to show her what he envisioned.
Sehun squints.
“We only bake seven cake flavors. What was the other one?”
“Chocolate mint,” Luhan says absently, brushing eraser shards off the table. “And the other you heard, of course, butter pecan. They’re two of the popular choices at Kris’s Konfectioneries, I didn’t know it was exclusive to China.” He looks up. Sehun’s eyes are still dark slits. “What? She liked them enough to pick one, right?”
“Well. I guess. I don’t know, it just seems...I guess.”
“If you’re worried about Baekhyun’s name, I wouldn’t be,” Luhan says. “Once he gets back he’ll be able to bake circles around me.”
Sehun wants to retort but Luhan looks so content with his little drawing of cake that he can’t bring himself to, and simply sighs before saying, “You’ll need to teach me the recipe for that soon.”
They get two more orders that day, and both times Luhan brings out the new flavors. Sehun is so curious that when the third customer leaves--an old couple celebrating their golden anniversary--he sneaks a bite of both. The butter pecan melts in his mouth and the chocolate mint is like the ice cream in cake form and he catches Luhan grinning at him from behind the counter like the cat that got the canary.
“Good, huh?” he says.
“Very,” Sehun admits grudgingly. “It’s mellow. Nutty, the butter pecan one. It’s a nice change because Baekhyun likes making his batters sweet.”
“The taste of China,” Luhan says, nodding. “Not the flavor, of course, but in China we use a lot less sugar so the taste isn’t really sweet, but still distinct and strong.”
“I can see why they ordered both of those even though they clash. Completely,” Sehun grumbles, shoving the rest of the chocolate mint cake into his mouth. “This just might be my new favorite.”
“I’ll make a big one for you sometime,” Luhan says. “When’s your birthday?”
“It just passed.”
“Oh. That’s a shame. Well, cakes don’t need an occasion,” Luhan says. “Maybe I’ll surprise you.”
Maybe he will, Sehun thinks as he licks his fingertips clean, Luhan swishing into the kitchen to check on the chilled cake batter. Maybe he will.
As it goes, the baby shower cake takes far longer than usual because Luhan tries to teach Sehun the recipe for a butter pecan batter. They have a small emergency in the form of Sehun nicking his finger while chopping the nuts and they have to throw out an entire cup of pulverized pecans for fear of biohazard contamination.
“How do you just...forget to move your fingers,” Luhan says, shaking his head as he beats some extra sugar and butter together with a handheld mixer.
“I’m a forgetful person,” Sehun says weakly.
“I’ll say,” Luhan says. “Don’t do it again, we can’t afford to throw out a whole serving of pecans again.”
Sehun rolls his eyes to himself and reaches across the counter for a baking pan. He barely notices the contact, but Luhan flinches like he’s been stung when Sehun’s arm presses up against him. He doesn’t acknowledge the reaction, and after a moment of staring without answer, Sehun turns back to his own workspace. Sticky butter and pecan bits frown at him.
It’s going to be a long summer.
Or, maybe not. Routine with Luhan falls together quickly and they find ways to meet in the middle. While Baekhyun was easy lenience with only the threat of real anger every once in a while (such as when Sehun forgets to change the oil in the deep fryer--another thing that has unfortunately happened more than once), Luhan is a drill sergeant, demanding conciseness and perfection, no room for mistakes. Sehun wonders where it comes from--it’s not like Luhan and Baekhyun had different schooling.
It’s one night a month into Baekhyun’s absence when Sehun finally understands a little more to Luhan than how well he can bake. It’s also after he’s done telling Sehun off for letting the fondant harden because he let it sit too long.
“I don’t understand how you can work here if you’re so damn forgetful,” he snaps, and Sehun just bites his tongue and drapes a fresh sheet of baby blue fondant over a hexgonal cake tier. “You would probably forget to bake a whole damn cake and ship it out if there wasn’t someone around to check.”
A silence thicker than cold butter settles between them and Sehun works in silence, making figurines of sea creatures out of modeling chocolate. He recedes into himself, something he used to do as a child when he returned home from school to an empty apartment. When Luhan speaks again his voice is hoarse with disuse.
“I used to be a better person.”
Sehun barely registers the words. Only after he senses the lack of movement at Luhan’s worktable does he look up.
“What?”
“I used to to be a better person,” Luhan repeats more forcefully. He’s still staring at the dough between his hands.
“Oh,” Sehun says shortly. “I don’t think you’re a bad person, though.”
Luhan scoffs. “What do you know about me other than what things I can bake?” The hard humor dies on his lips and Sehun has the bizarre urge to give him a hug.
“Luhan...”
“Never mind,” Luhan says quickly. “Forget I said anything.”
His words swirl in Sehun’s head. When he had first arrived, Luhan seemed light, lighter than the cream that Sehun spent so much of his time spreading over chocolate, vanilla, strawberry cakes. The more they worked together, though, the more sour he became, a bitter taste, like cookies that had gone without baking soda.
“We should turn in for the night,” Luhan says, throwing the dough on the counter with a thump. He unties his apron and makes for the pantry where they usually hang their uniforms. Something hits the floor with a jingle but Luhan has already disappeared, and Sehun bends down over the counter to see what it is.
He picks up the flap of leather and opens it--a beat up wallet with even more beat up card slots. In the clear plastic window there is a picture of whom Sehun recognizes is Kris, in his baker’s smock and apron, arms crossed severely with a wooden spoon poking out near the crook of his arm. Baekhyun is up in the camera lens, eyes big as they always are. His hair was still dark brown.
And then there is Luhan, laughing on the left, hands covered in icing. He looks as though he’s talking to someone off camera, and out of curiosity, Sehun slides the picture out of the pocket slightly to see if the leather is blocking someone’s face.
There isn’t. Instead there is a soft, jagged tear in the photo and all that’s left is a mysterious hand that has no owner.
“What are you doing with that?”
Sehun jumps out of his skin and Luhan strides over, swiping his wallet cleanly out of Sehun’s grasp.
“Don’t snoop around others’ belongings.”
Luhan turns away to grab his raincoat and Sehun ventures a question.
“Who was torn out of that picture?”
Luhan’s movements slow, and he doesn’t turn around until his coat sits securely on his shoulders. “It’s a long story,” he says, not looking at Sehun.
“You know I’m going to say I have time.”
“I wish I didn’t.”
“I do love storytime.”
“You’re impossible,” Luhan says, smiling ruefully. A harsh screech scrapes along the tiled floor as he pulls up a folding chair for himself and kicks another in Sehun’s direction. When he settles down the nylon of his coat rustles and when Sehun sits, a plume of flour rises from the chair.
“You know the stories,” Luhan says. “Someone works too much and the other gets tired of always being alone.”
Sehun nods. He knows all too well.
“Minseok and I were in Le Cordon Bleu with Baekhyun and Kris together, which was the only thing that was different, really,” he continues. “The four of us. The head chefs called us the Brat Squad. They couldn’t get mad, we made the best pastries, the best sugar sculptures, always passed practicals with flying colors and then some...well, almost all of us.
“They say not to chase your future for someone, but with someone. At least that’s what I told myself. As for Minseok, he never actually wanted to become a pastry chef like Kris and Baekhyun and I; that wasn’t his dream. He wasn’t doing it for himself, or with me. He was doing it for me, and while that’s amazing on his part, that he’d do something he didn’t want to for me, that it’s selfless, but only in theory. It doesn’t ever end in happiness. I don’t know if you understand--”
“--I don’t--”
“--but you don’t build your life around someone. As soon as he flinches the entire thing crumbles, and.” Luhan sighs, shrugs. “We fell out, three years into our studies there. I started off as a saucier for French cuisine before I changed to pastries. Right after I did, did he finally confront me about how I cared more about inanimate powders and chicken’s eggs than I did about him.” Luhan laughs humorlessly. “It’s not like he was wrong, but it cut deep anyway.”
He takes a breather here. Sehun shifts in his seat and the metal creaks loudly under him.
“What happened after that?”
“He left, obviously,” Luhan says. “He went after his own dream, soccer. Good for him, to be honest. He’s happy now, so...”
Luhan trails off and leans back in his chair, looking away from Sehun resolutely as if the oven dials were suddenly far more fascinating. Sehun can see the wetness swimming along the rims of Luhan’s eyes and he decides against leaning forward and taking Luhan’s hand.
“You know, it’s okay to love something a lot,” Sehun says slowly. “No one can stop you. It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay if it interferes how I interact with people!” Luhan exclaims in frustration. “The only reason Kris didn’t throw me out on the streets in China is that we’ve been friends for years and he can tolerate me. I just, I haven’t made any real new friends in ages, and I don’t think I know how anymore--”
Sehun nudges him with a sugary, floury shoe.
“Well, why don’t you start right here?”
Luhan admittedly is kind of bad at this whole making friends idea because the only thing that changes is him waving spatulas of cookie dough in Sehun’s face and insisting he taste some. Baekhyun was always stringent about not eating raw eggs and Luhan rolls his eyes when Sehun denies his offer for perhaps the dozenth time.
“If I could eat raw egg in China and be okay, you will not die of salmonella poisoning here,” he says.
“Shut up and make your wreath,” Sehun says, no real poison in his words. They have a five-tier silver anniversary cake to finish in the next several days and they’re not done making the three hundred silver sugar flowers that are going to wrap around the cake in layers. Sehun has to make sure, upon all this, that the front shelves with the small cakes and cookies are still stocked with fresh pastries. It’s backbreaking, and ever since Luhan had introduced not two, but five new cake flavors, orders have jumped through the roof.
“Leave the green tea cake rolls and give me a hand on the flowers.”
“But--”
“They can wait. We still have a lot of chocolate and taro rolls left, anyway, right? I’m bad at decorating, I always did the assembly back at Kris’s Konfectioneries.”
Sehun chuckles a little and puts down the bowl of yogurt cream he’s mixing, covering it with parchment and popping it in the fridge. Luhan holds out his miserable rose and Sehun plucks it out of his fingers, and notices again how Luhan snatches his hand back like he’s been burned.
Just to mess with him, Sehun takes a step toward Luhan, who steps back. He makes to hug Luhan, and Luhan actually backs into the work counter trying to avoid it, and Sehun pulls away.
“You’re scared to touch me,” he says, cocking an eyebrow.
“I’m not scared to touch you,” Luhan mutters.
“Because backing away like I’m an undomesticated animal with rabies isn’t scared. Yeah, okay.”
“I’m not scared of touching people!” he says. “I’m just scared of--like, being close. Being close and messing up again.”
There’s something in Luhan’s voice that makes Sehun stop teasing, and for the rest of the night the air between them is oversalted with tension.
Somewhere among the cupcakes, croissants, and eclairs; among fondant, flour, and confectioner’s sugar; among rum cake and key lime pie and chocolate hazelnut cream, Sehun understands just why love is so scary.
“Hello?”
“...who’s calling?”
Sehun makes a point of inserting an insulted silence here. “Good going, Luhan, work two whole months with me and you still don’t know the sound of my voice. It’s almost July.”
“Sorry, Jesus, princess. You sound different on the phone.”
“Don’t call me princess. Listen, I got a favor to ask.”
“Of me?” Luhan sounds surprised. “What kind of a favor would you have to ask from me? You can bake anything you want.”
“Yeah. This isn’t about baking, though.”
“Oh. Then. I’m not terribly good at anything else.”
“Can you finger-paint?”
“I--what?”
“Finger paint. Or throw paint at a wall.”
“Is this a joke right now, Sehun.”
“God, I wish it were.”
“Yes, I can finger-paint,” Luhan says dryly. “But I swear to God, if you’re tricking me into something I will cut you off at the knees.”
“Excellent,” Sehun says cheerfully. “Can you come over tonight?”
“Tonight’s the only night we have off.”
“Exactly.”
Luhan gives a long-suffering sigh, and Sehun knows he’s won.
“I’m going to cut you off at the knees.”
“It’s not even a big deal! Chill out, Luhan.”
“I’m not going to cut you off at the knees because you tricked me into doing something that was almost completely unrelated to your question,” Luhan says, “but because you’re being an idiot.”
“Hey, don’t be unfair. I can do what I want.”
“You’re already blond!”
Sehun laughs. “Who said I was going to dye my hair blond?”
Luhan is standing in Sehun’s bathroom, staring at the seven, maybe eight bottles of half-empty hair dye. His eyes flicker to meet Sehun’s in the mirror and he asks, over Sehun’s shoulder, “Who helped you do the blond, then?”
“My best friend. Jongin. He’s in like...Japan, or something, though. Also he always gets it in my eyes.”
“I don’t know, Sehun,” Luhan says.
“Come on, please?” Sehun says, grabbing Luhan’s shoulder and shaking like a kid. Luhan squints up at him before letting out a huge breath.
“Do I really have to do it like this?”
“Hair dye don’t wash off, homeskillet,” Sehun says seriously.
Like this is standing in the shower stripped down to their boxers, Luhan holding a glass dish with eight dollops of greyish hair dye, mixed into a thick paste. Sehun sits on a baby stepping stool, a beat up one from his younger days, since he’s too tall for Luhan.
“Are you sure about this,” Luhan says apprehensively, rubber gloves squeaking against the plastic handle of the brush. “Like, you don’t have a plan at all about where you want a certain color to go?”
“Playing things by ear is fun,” Sehun says. He closes his eyes. “Surprise me. Streak whatever the hell you want anywhere, just don’t mix colors and it’ll be great.”
A comfortable silence punctuated with the rustling of aluminum foil tiptoes between them. Luhan seems to become engrossed in his work, humming under his breath as he often did when he was baking. His hands are soft on Sehun’s head, and goosebumps tumble down Sehun’s spine every time Luhan tugs on a lock of hair. Distantly, stories and stories below, traffic whines by on the road.
“You’re pretty good at this,” Sehun comments when Luhan finishes painting all his hair up to his bangs, wrapping him neatly in a small envelope of foil. He flicks it back over his head and grabs a towel, rubbing off drops of dye that escaped onto his shoulders. “You didn’t get any in my eyes or anything.”
“I’m not good with aesthetics, but I’m a confectioner,” Luhan says, grinning. “God, you’re going to look crazy.”
“Good kind of crazy or bad kind of crazy?”
“Dumb kind of crazy.”
Sehun throws his towel at him and that is when he realizes he’s standing Basically Naked in a bathtub with Luhan, who is also Basically Naked, and suddenly he feels blushing erupting in his cheeks, so angry that it colors all the way down to his chest.
“Uh, I’m gonna,” he says eloquently. Luhan raises his eyebrows.
“You’re not going to do anything looking like that, are you?” he asks. “I mean I wouldn’t even go on a mail run if I were you.”
“I need to pee. Get out,” Sehun demands, and pushes Luhan by the bare shoulders. Luhan practically cracks his skull open trying to scramble out before Sehun can shove him again and he snags his pile of clothes off the floor and starts yanking them on. Sehun slams the door and locks it, stares at himself and his shiny foil-head in the mirror.
“Stupid,” he mutters, “stupid, stupid, stupid.”
It isn’t until later, when he’s standing under the hot stream of water and rinsing the dye out of his hair, that he suddenly realizes that Luhan did not flinch in the least getting into the tub to paint Sehun’s hair.
“Wow, it actually...” Luhan bites his lower lip, looking conflicted. “Looks pretty good on you.”
Sehun reaches up and fluffs his bangs as he ties his apron round his waist, beating the thickest clods of chalky flour off the heavy terrycloth. “Yeah?” Everything about his hair is loud and obnoxious; electric blue, acid green, hot pink. Somehow it doesn’t look too bad. Sehun figures that it’s because he hasn’t seen his real hair color in far too long for it to matter what color it is now.
“Yeah,” Luhan admits. He scoffs. “You really pull it off. I like it. I did a good job, didn’t I?”
“You did great,” Sehun says dryly.
“Whatever, Sass Queen. We have a cake to load.”
“Oh shit, that’s today, isn’t it?” Sehun says, smacking his forehead. “I--”
“--completely forgot, I know. Which is why I made extra flowers. We have enough, I think. Just grab the wooden support dowels and and start putting the tiers into the trunk.”
Sehun rushes to the pantry and back, then out to the garage. Luhan works fast without ever looking hurried, strangely. He moves serenely but finishes before Sehun can grab the crown tier of the silver anniversary cake.
“Slow down, we’re not late,” Luhan says when Sehun runs out panting.
“Forgetting things always makes me feel late,” he explains breathlessly.
Luhan punches him lightly in the arm. “Stop forgetting things then! One day you might leave something important behind.”
Sehun stares as Luhan climbs into the driver’s seat of the truck and runs a hand through his hair. It’s hot--July sun beats down upon like like Mayan drums--but he doesn’t move until Luhan leans out of the window and shouts, “Coming, rainbow vomit boy?”
He shouts in indignation and jumps on. He’d rather not be forgotten, either.
At least they arrive towards the end of the anniversary party, so they don’t have to wait in the truck for very long. Sehun pushes a cart loaded with tiers and Luhan carries in the tray of delicate decorations and they assemble it quietly in the kitchen of the hotel venue. It is now that they work best--putting together a piece of art, not a single detail overlooked.
Today is Sehun’s turn to wheel out the finished piece. Exclamations rain down upon them and Luhan has to pick them up like scattered flowers. It’s massive, towering far above Sehun and he looks up to the crown where there sits a huge sugar magnolia that he painted two days ago. The couple that threw the party give him and Luhan hugs, insisting they have a piece.
“You think they’re gonna last?”
Sehun blinks before he realizes Luhan is talking to him.
“What--like, their marriage?”
“Yeah.”
“They lasted this long. Silver anniversaries are pretty impressive in this day and age, what with people getting divorced left and right.”
“Well. I’m glad they’re happy. I’m glad we could make them happy.”
They’re standing at the kitchen window watching people slice into their cake and sneak bites from others’ plates--there has to be at least three or more different flavors. Sehun looks away, though, to stare at Luhan’s profile.
“You’re so scared of love,” he says, before he loses his nerve, “but you try so hard to make it perfect for everyone else. I don’t get it.”
Luhan shrugs halfheartedly, clearly unwilling to broach this topic again. “Just because I’m not a fan of it doesn’t mean it can’t be perfect for someone else.”
Heartbeat.
There is no dough in Sehun’s hands to clutch right now, as he does so often when Luhan brushes past him, no eggs to crack in nervousness, no milk to measure to keep his eyes busy. It’s just him and Luhan and too many nights skirting around each other, grains of sugar turning to flavorless malt between each other.
Somewhere among electric beaters, cream cheese, and jello powder, Sehun let himself fall in love.
“Luhan.”
Luhan turns to look at him, eyes searching. They’re dark and a little scared, a little tired, and a lot of something else--and Sehun doesn’t know what else to do but to lean in and kiss him.
It’s warm. Unbearably so, even in the stale air-conditioned warehouse kitchen of the hotel lobby, but the moment Sehun’s mouth meets Luhan’s, Luhan gasps as though he had been waiting an age for this. Sehun hasn’t kissed anyone in a long, long time; he marvels at the soft press of lips against his own. Luhan’s hands find his neck, his face, pull Sehun against him until they are so close that neither know where one ends and the other begins.
Luhan finally pulls away first, their foreheads resting against each other. He takes a harsh breath before his hand on Sehun’s neck pulls Sehun in again, kissing his upper lip like it is fragile glass one last time before he breaks away and seems to realize what he’s doing.
“I...” Luhan says, looking caught between two oncoming cars. “I didn’t...”
“Don’t run,” Sehun says, but what does he expect? In fact, he’d rather Luhan does run, to save him from whatever heartbreak he knew would come the second their lips met.
Luhan does not return to Baek’s Bakery that day, or the day after that. The counter next to Sehun’s remains impossibly quiet and he drowns in cake orders and his own self-anger.
The phone rings at half-past midnight and mechanically, Sehun picks up.
“Where the hell are you? It’s almost one AM!”
Sehun brings the phone away from his ear and stares at the caller ID. It’s a picture of Baekhyun with his mouth full of French fries.
“Oh. It’s you.”
“What do you mean ‘oh it’s’--is everything okay, Sehun? You sound really not okay.”
“Eloquence. You have lots of it.”
“Your sass seems very much intact, so I’m going to assume you’re okay,” Baekhyun says. “Where are you? You wouldn’t pick up the phone in your apartment and I got so worried.”
“I’m at the bakery.”
“Sehun. It’s half past midnight.”
“So?”
“Go home! I didn’t put Luhan in charge so you could work yourself to death.”
“I know, I know. I just had a lot of things on my mind. He’s great, hyung.”
“Is he? Oh God, I’m so relieved. He’s been emailing me recently but he’s kind of cryptic, all I gathered was that you guys are always chin-deep in orders. So business is good, right?”
Sehun eyes the growing list of cake orders that he needs to start on. Himself. His scrawl sticks its tongue back out at him and he forces cheer into his voice. It’s so hard to be happy when all he wants to be is sad. “Business is great!”
“Sehun,” Baekhyun says seriously, “are you sure everything’s okay?”
“Everything is fine, hyung,” Sehun lies expertly. “What about you?”
It’s been a week, and the list of orders that Sehun has tacked to the wall--everything from cakes for events and butter cookies for the shelves--almost reaches the floor. He gets up at 6 am every day and rushes to Baek’s, forgetting breakfast, forgetting to brush his hair, forgetting shoes and noticing only when he’s halfway down in the elevator.
The streets are quiet. The city takes a while to wake up and stretch its limbs on a Saturday morning, and Sehun seems to be the only thing moving. Baek’s smells like muggy caramel and cake batter, and he takes his time putting his apron on in the middle of the kitchen.
He rummages through the two hundred mini macarons sitting in the fridge and realizes he’s been angst-baking them for days. Dozens of tiny pastel cookies sit in ribboned boxes, ready to be shipped to a sweet sixteen. Sehun turns to look at his list of orders and his stomach flips like it does when he’s on drop-zone rides. At the bottom of a chunk of hastily crossed out orders is one that says in his messy writing, four-tier cotillion cake, princess-style, castles. It’s due to be shipped out this evening.
Sehun forgot about it entirely, and it hasn’t even been started.
He stares and stares across the kitchen, clock ticking, list mocking. Four-layer cakes can take up to three days for him and Luhan to finish--baking, assembling, decorating, even working full-speed. This one demands at least a hundred different sugar flowers.
Slowly, Sehun sinks down, down, down, until he’s crouched in a little ball and hides his face between his knees, interlacing his fingers behind his neck and trying to calm his breath. Suddenly, failure is real; and on top of that, it isn’t his name he’s going to be staining--it’ll be Baekhyun’s, and Luhan’s. He can’t afford that.
Sehun feels more than hears the walk-in refrigerator door open, sweet, icy air ruffling through his hair. For a moment he doesn’t realize the implications of this. Then he looks up.
Luhan stands in front of him, looking as exhausted as Sehun feels. They hold each others’ gazes, somewhat awkwardly because of the angle Sehun has to tilt his head, but then Luhan is yanking him to his feet by the wrist and tugging him to follow. Sehun puts up scant resistance and asks, gruffly, “Where are we going?”
This is met with no answer, unsurprisingly, and in almost the fashion of being kidnapped, Luhan shoves him into the passenger seat and climbs into the truck, gunning the ignition.
“I have a cake to start and finish today,” Sehun says blandly. Luhan ignores him. Sehun crosses his arms across his smock and glares resolutely out the window. After a while the buildings begin blurring into trees and trees turn into forest thickets. He glances out the windshield and realizes they’re far from the city. The question of where they are dangles at the tip of his tongue but he keeps his mouth shut.
Just as he’s about to start falling asleep, Luhan kills the engine and the truck rumbles into silence. The slam of the door jolts Sehun out of his doze and fumbles to unbuckle his seat belt, and is about to hop out when he see Luhan leaning back slowly on the front bumper of the truck, hands shoved into his pockets, blustery breeze tugging insistently at locks of hair. They’re parking on the side of a gravel and dirt road, a stretch of asphalt marking places for cars to park. An old wooden rail bars the sharp drop-off of the cliff below, dusky little flowers growing meekly around the rocks.
It’s a scenic park, something like a wildlife refuge. Hundreds of feet below are scattered lakes and ponds, so flat they look like shards of glass on a rolling piece of green velvet. Sehun has a feeling that Luhan has been here, and slides out of his seat.
The wind nips at his clothes immediately, clouds of flour and sugar disappearing into the air. Luhan has left an vacant, inviting space next to him on the bumper, and Sehun leans on it beside him. The city is far, far away. Tiny, but not forgotten.
“I used to come here with Minseok,” Luhan says. Sehun fights down the urge to scoff. How lovely of Luhan to bring him to a place like this.
“Okay,” he says, because that’s more socially acceptable.
“You probably don’t take me seriously right now, which I understand completely,” Luhan continues. “I wouldn’t take me seriously either. I’m a spineless person. Spineless and pretty talentless with an ego to make up for both.” He kicks a stone. “I’m not fishing, I’m not doing whatever people do to look for compliments. But it was--I know I was stupid. A lot stupid. It’s just so hard to believe and accept that someone would actually like me again. Not that I didn’t think it would ever happen again, but just, not someone as unlikeable as me.”
“Okay, first of all, cool,” Sehun says, throwing his hands up and pushing off the edge of the truck. He faces Luhan whose expression is cold, closed off. “Are you done quoting literally every single teenage girl Tumblr in existence? Good. Yeah, second of all, I have a cake order to finish like, in an hour. So unless you have any idea how to pull that off, I’m not here to listen until that happens. I wonder who’s fault that is? Huh, I don’t know, but I seem to recall he disappeared off the face of the earth for seven days. Third of all,” Sehun snaps, and now he is winded, “who the hell are you to decide if it’s okay if I like you or not? Just because you can’t see anything good in yourself, which I hope you can, or will be able to, doesn’t mean I can’t.”
Luhan blinks at him.
“Then what is it that you like about me?”
The fight goes out of Sehun like the helium out of a punctured balloon. He actually isn’t quite sure what he likes about the insecure confectioner that demands perfection and wants things to be flawless for everyone but himself. There’s one reason, but--
“It’s kind of lame.”
“We’re already here and you’re going to chicken out because your reason is lame.”
“You’ve never...forgotten about me,” Sehun says stiltedly. “Even when I forget shit for myself and fuck my life over. Which is many times, mind you. Jongin can tell you all about that. And well, my parents aren’t too hot about me either. My brother is usually AWOL. Whenever you make cookie batter you always shove some at me because you know I love it even though Baekhyun tells me not to eat stuff with raw eggs. You know?”
“Oh,” Luhan says shortly. “I. I’m good at cookie batter.”
“And you fucking suck at feelings. Just for the record.”
Something flashes in Luhan’s eyes and Sehun isn’t sure if it’s irritation or anger or relief of liberation, or if it’s a mix of all three--he doesn’t get a chance to really figure out before Luhan’s pressing up against him, kissing him hard.
To say it’s a lot better than their first kiss is a bit of a lie, because noses still bump and teeth still knock. But Luhan gives as much as he takes, sucking Sehun’s tongue into his mouth after Sehun bites down softly on his lower lip, plush between his own. Even when Sehun moves to pull back, getting lightheaded, Luhan’s hands find his jaw and pull him back in.
They kiss for lazy drags of minutes or maybe several sunlit hours. Time is strangely still here up in the hills and when Sehun finally pulls back, pieces the bits of his composure back together, his hands are laid flat against the warm hood of the truck with Luhan pinned between the bumper and his own body.
“We have a four-tier cake to finish by tonight,” Sehun whispers against Luhan’s mouth, eyes still closed. It’s literally The Least Romantic Thing to say but it’s the most pressing matter at hand.
“You know we used to play Iron Chef in Kris’s Konfectioneries?” Luhan says, nipping Sehun’s lower lip. “Watch me.”
Sehun makes the mistake of betting dinner on whoever could make fifty sugar flowers first. Luhan works so fast it’s almost as though his hands blur, and they still come out looking as though they were carefully pressed, rolled, and crimped.
“Kris disciplines us well,” he offers as an explanation when he finishes and Sehun cries over his forty-second flower. “I’m pretty sure he’d use a whip if that weren’t illegal.”
They have twenty minutes on the clock to finish this cake and it’s only barely assembled. There’s little need for decoration, thank God--the hundred or so different types of flowers are going to take care of that. Luhan starts pressing dowels into the lowest tier and when Sehun hands him the third and last, he lets his fingers linger on Luhan’s hands for a moment too long and smiles when Luhan doesn’t flinch away immediately.
He finishes decorating with two minutes to go, and they step back. In an hour they managed to put together an entire cotillion cake, complete with sugar hibiscus, daffodils, peonies, orchids. Each tier is lined with fake ribbon and pearls and Sehun has to admit that working together, they can create miracles.
“Come on,” Luhan says. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
They start on the dozens of orders that Sehun has been drowning in, mass-baking cake, cutting, rolling out sheets of fondant. They work in comfortable silence, even though Sehun doesn’t let Luhan forget for a moment how he went MIA for a week and left Sehun to suffocate under five orders of double chocolate-chip cookies, among other things.
“It’s midnight,” Sehun says, sinking his spatula into the batter and leaning on it. “You want to lock up and grab something to eat?”
“Now?” Luhan asks incredulously. “It’s late as shit.”
“I know,” Sehun says matter-of-factly. “You want to grab something to eat?”
Truthfully, the only places that are open are Jack in the Box, a couple of burger joints, and shady Chinese hole-in-the-walls with soggy men in the dark corners and cigarette smoke so thick the haze looks like something out of Silent Hill.
“This is really greasy, but,” Luhan says, swiping ketchup off the corner of his lip, “I can’t actually find it in me to be sorry.”
“Fast food must be eaten without abandon, otherwise you’re not doing it right,” Sehun says.
They don’t talk again until their trays are empty and Sehun is pushing the ice around in his cup trying to suck up the last drops of Pepsi. Luhan spins in his creaky bar chair until his knees are touching Sehun’s thigh and he says, mutters, “Thanks for. I mean. Thanks.”
Sehun side-eyes him.
“Of course,” he says, smiling slightly around his bitten straw.
Somewhere among late-night fast food dates, icing rosettes, and a burnt batch of half-moon cookies, Sehun learns what it’s like to be loved.
Sometimes when it’s late and the ovens--there are six--are full, it’s hard to keep hands off each other. Sehun learns Luhan is a fierce kisser and has a fascination with his mouth, always stealing kisses like secrets when Sehun least expects them.
Luhan doesn’t shy away from Sehun’s touch now, which is an improvement. He’s still working on not whacking Sehun in the face with a spatula when Sehun surprises him with backhugs, though.
Sometimes Sehun will sit down at Luhan’s counter, chin propped in his hands, and let Luhan teach him new mixes he learned at Kris’s. Cherry creme, Luhan’s personal specialty, marbled red syrup and whipped cream. Raspberry cheesecake, which they end up selling on the shelves, slices nestled in delicate paper cups and topped with white chocolate shavings and a fresh raspberry. Peanut butter and fudge with the perfect consistency: not too sticky, sweet enough to induce shivers but not so sweet to give headaches.
Luhan teaches like a storyteller shares tales--effortlessly, without any trace of boredom. Sehun is easily distracted by the juts of Luhan’s wrists when he cracks eggs into mixing bowls, and often he’s admonished for staring at Luhan’s face as opposed to what’s being made. Luhan panics when there are summer rainstorms because the bakery is permeated with humidity, even with the dehumidifier, and those days Sehun shows him Baekhyun’s secret recipe for the perfect caramel macaron--with permission, of course.
Somewhere among egg meringue, tropical berry filling, and Danish cookies; among Linzer cakes, Swiss almond torte, and bowls licked clean; among dried banana chips, ice cream, and coffee powder--
--somewhere among all of that, love.
During early September, just as Sehun’s gathering his things and pulling himself back together to start his third year of college, he walks into Baek’s to find Luhan sitting on the counter with his back to the door, dishtowel in his hands. Although it’s late, and Baek’s is already closed, it’s odd to see Luhan ever stop working until the clock hits midnight.
“Hey,” Sehun says. “Something happen?”
Luhan straightens up and grins, shaking his head. Sehun can tell something’s spooked him, or is on his mind, because he says, “You want to come over?”
Sehun’s been to Luhan’s many times, kissing leading to being pinned under Luhan on a bed of rumpled sheets. This time, though, Luhan’s face is tired, his eyes far away as Sehun waits for him to hang up his uniform and apron. They drive in silence, and Sehun does not press for answers. He knows Luhan won’t give them until he wants to, anyway.
Luhan doesn’t make a point of talking, though, not when he shoves Sehun hard up against the inside of his door as soon as it slams shut, mouth hot and rough on his. His hands claw at Sehun’s windbreaker and lock him there between Luhan’s body and the wood, surface hard and ridged against his back.
Sehun doesn’t speak when he pulls him into his bedroom, hands making quick work of Sehun’s jacket, and he doesn't try to question this either. It’s a little crazy how strong Luhan is, throwing Sehun into his bed and climbing over him, caging him with arms and legs.
He only seems to realize how rough he’s being when Sehun clutches shakily at the wrists on either side of his head.
“Fuck, sorry,” he curses, and moves to back off, sliding away, but Sehun tightens his hold and shakes his head.
“No, it’s okay. It’s fine.”
“I just--threw you--”
“I thought it was kind of hot.”
Irritation tinges the lust in Luhans eyes as he rolls them and Sehun has to laugh breathlessly at his own confession.
Clothes come off fast. Sehun has a feeling that Luhan’s had good practice on zippers of denim pants because he always gets Sehun naked before Sehun can reciprocate. Not that it’s a big deal, but these few seconds--where Luhan smirks at him when Sehun’s completely bare, and he is not--always make a fierce blush spread down to his collarbones.
The headiest feeling is when Luhan kneels between his spread legs, the sound of the cap of lube snapping shut the only sensation that grounds him. He shoves his own hands behind himself to fight the urge to touch himself and whimpers when he feels Luhan press up against him, hot and slick.
“It’s okay, right?”
Sehun nods, letting out a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding.
Luhan curls his fingers around the junction between Sehun’s thighs and hips, heat pressing into the pale skin there. He pulls Sehun toward him, slowly, watching Sehun’s face color with pain as Sehun’s body slides across the sheets. Hands scrabble at covers and Sehun fists his fingers into the soft cotton, the fabric tightening under him. He whimpers again, barely audible, just little puffs of breath.
Sehun doesn’t know what Luhan’s trying to prove. Not that he’s opposed to it, but he’s never been on the bottom. It’s a little scary, but he hopes Luhan can find in him whatever he seems to be so desperately searching for.
"Relax," Luhan murmurs, stroking the skin of Sehun’s hip when he’s buried deep as he can go. Sehun shifts and a burning sting shoots up his body and he cries out, but Luhan simply leans down and holds his face between his hands and kisses him hard. It’s a little strange and a whole lot weird being treated this gently. Sehun feels his fingers relaxing and he finds purchase on Luhan’s shoulders. They’re more muscular than they look under the demure baker’s uniform.
When Luhan finally moves, thrusting slow and hard, Sehun feels the pain easing off. He shoves his hips down as Luhan pushes up into him, and it’s messy and disjointed and at one point Sehun misses Luhan’s mouth when he pulls him down to kiss him and ends up pressing his lips to the corner of it instead.
But it’s okay.
Sehun comes first and tugs Luhan along right after him, and has to ease his legs off of Luhan’s hips slowly. His limbs feel locked into their positions; he hasn’t come so hard before, and Luhan hands him tissues to wipe down with. Sehun is notorious for knocking out quickly after an orgasm and he hears a fond, exasperated sigh and several insistent rubs on his tummy before sleep snatches away consciousness.
Sehun wakes later, suddenly, just before the sunrise. His nerves are still buzzing, burnt out from sex, especially after he’d pinned Luhan up against the headboard and took him from behind. His lips are bruised from Luhan turning his head around and latching their mouths together, desperate gleam in his eyes.
Luhan stares up at the ceiling with clear eyes. Sehun wonders if he even went to sleep, rolling over to face him and rubbing his sore mouth.
“Minseok called me. Said he was getting married.”
Sehun feels sleepy eyebrows knit together. “Oh,” he says. “Uh. That’s. That’s great.”
“Yeah. He asked me if I’d found anyone.”
Sehun waits expectantly, pillowing his chin in his arms.
“What did you say?”
“Said yeah, yeah I did. And he goes, ‘Can he take you for who you are? Accept you entirely? Because I couldn’t.’ Said he wasn’t going to throw away the fact we’d been friends once and told me to make sure I was happy.”
Sehun has a terrible moment of self-doubt.
“Do I make you happy?” he whispers, so quietly that it’s almost to himself.
“I think this is the time when I’m supposed to, as a confectioner, draw a repulsive analogy between you, love, and maybe sugar, but I don’t think you’d appreciate it,” Luhan says, a smile tugging on his lips. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”
That day, for the first time in ages, Baek’s Bakery doesn’t open until 9 AM.
“You’re going to leave me,” Luhan gripes, “you’re going to leave me, and knowing you, and how hot you are, someone’s going to seduce you. And you’re kind of dense, it’s not that hard.”
“I’m 9000% insulted. And also worried because like, that could happen.”
“I’m going to throw this batch of dough--”
Sehun pretends to duck exaggeratedly and Luhan squints at him as he continues rough-icing the quinceanera cake he’s been working on all afternoon. He nudges Luhan with an elbow. “Come on, really? I wouldn’t. I forget dates eighty percent of the time, even if I wanted to cheat they’d dump me after two weeks.”
It’s late August and Sehun has graduated university, due to attend a graduate program at Le Cordon Bleu in China, the same place Luhan and Kris and the others at Konfectioneries got their degrees. It’s a good beginning and maybe one day Sehun will be able to get certification at the Culinary Institute of America, but that’s a long ways away.
“Your hair needs some life,” Luhan says, flicking Sehun’s dull brown sweep of hair and leaving behind a smudge of cinnamon. “How about we bleach it tonight and throw in some color? We could do green, red, yellow. Maybe some blue. You’d look like the poster child of Google Chrome.”
“God, you’re actually Satan’s spawn,” Sehun says, laughing. There’s a smudge of Cool Whip on Luhan’s lower lip--he has a penchant for eating any leftovers when Sehun dirty ices cakes. He catches Luhan’s arm and leans in, kissing it off, tongue running across Luhan’s mouth to swipe it up. Luhan’s hand drifts to his neck to pull him in, and--
“Wait, what the fuck?”
Sehun and Luhan jump apart to see Baekhyun standing in front of the pantry door that leads in from the garage. His face is shell-shocked, his jaw slack, and he looks from Sehun to Luhan back to Sehun.
And then Sehun suddenly remembers:
It’s late August.
He says if everything goes according to plan, he’ll be back two years from now, in August.
“Oh Sehun,” Baekhyun says in a dangerous voice, “you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”
A/N:
- partially inspired by the xoxo pictures in which sehun is eating a cupcake. because everyone loves shota eating a cupcake. i think this is the part where i’m supposed to make a really salacious joke but it would be a bad idea probably.
- the other part was Way Too Many episodes of cake boss. Waaaay Too Many episodes.
- the title is indeed from nicki minaj’s superbass.
- special thanks to e for reading my longass emails about this and filling in the icing where i missed some spots and l for cleaning up all my messy frosting writing!!!