To say that he was exhausted was an understatement but Sehun wasn’t one to show it. Especially not after the fact that Suho had been cool enough to get them all bubble tea and some funny marshmallow sweets that were far too sugary and would have had the manager having a dickie fit at them for eating them. They were supposed to be on a diet but since they probably wouldn’t get any real food for an hour – it was going to be an debate if they were going to allow Kyungsoo to actually cook or just call in a very late take away, personally the maknae wanted it to be the later because his hyung was virtually having to be carried by the others despite his protests – it was more than likely to be a situation they could be forgiven for.

Strangely it was Chen and Baekhyun who brought up the issue of food as they got out of the vans and Minseok voted immediately for take away as Kyungsoo swayed to the right and had to be caught by Lay.

Everyone agreed but there was an argument over what people actually wanted to eat and in the end, Suho pulled the card of everyone going to get what they wanted and then just coming back to the dorm at the end of it all.

“Can someone just bring me and Tao something back?” Sehun had piqued up, slurping from his bubble tea and feeling just at ease with the world right now, “Cause I don’t want to go dragging myself around anymore.”

Rolling his eyes dramatically, Baekhyun glared, “You just don’t want to get lumbered with carrying everything back.”

“I do not,” Sehun whined, “I want a shower and no doubt that lazy panda of ours will have hogged the hot water.”

“Oh hell,” Kyungsoo said, before ing his bag at Sehun in a sudden and rather expectant movement, “I forgot about Tao being in the dorm all day. Right. All night shopping mart it is.”

“But we just agreed on take out!” Chanyeol complained before Chen started dragging him off after the pair of them dumped more bags that contained fan presents onto the maknae.

“Man but a bowl of Kyungsoo’s soup would be lovely too,” Kai said wistfully, adding to the pile with a cheeky grin as he smirked towards Sehun.

“Hey! I can’t carry all of this you know,” Sehun complained, knowing fine well that he could easily carry all of it but it was just a frustrating pain in the neck to have to do so, “I’ll spill my bubble tea.”

Suho chuckled before loading something else onto Sehun, “I’ll bring you a new one if you do.”

Pouting Sehun tried to figure a way out of this little mess that he had somehow ended up in but instead found that the others just added to the massive pile of items that he was already carrying and with a gentle pat to his head he was told to head up to the dorm and get his shower.

Sometimes it being the maknae and it was always far more difficult when his counterpart from Exo-M wasn’t there to just do the cute kicked puppy routine to get the hyungs to dwell. Sehun’s attempts at looking cute and doing aygeo were apparently quite scary and usually made his hyungs laugh at him which just frustrated him. How Tao could be mean and bad boy looking but then turn into a fluffy teddy within the space of five seconds was beyond him. It had to be something to do with the eye bags that was the only thing that it could be in Sehun’s mind.

Still with the others going off to get stuff to make a proper dinner he really couldn’t complain too much, even if it was going to be a pain to get into the dorm with everything that he was carrying right now. Huffing and quietly cursing his hyungs under his breath, Sehun set off towards the building and up towards the dorm. He tried unsuccessfully to ring the doorbell in order to get Tao to come and open up before placing down everything that he was carrying and huffing loudly once again, “Oh this is just stupid!”

Pressing the doorbell repeatedly, Sehun was surprised that there came no grumbling about the noise or being disturbed and after five minutes he just gave up all together. Maybe Tao was fast asleep and that was the reason why he hadn’t come to the door. “I’m so going to kick your panda,” he complained to himself as he used the key to open up and get into the dorm, carrying the fan presents and the nearly empty bubble tea. “Tao! You lazy arsed nitwit! Why didn’t you come and answer the door?”

There was a sudden thump behind Sehun and the maknae turned sharply, blinking and looking to find the source. He frowned when he realised that it was the photograph of Kris and Luhan which had tumbled to the floor and something stirred in his heart. Carefully putting the things down onto the nearest available table, Sehun moved back down the entrance corridor and picked up the photograph. There was no way that he could have knocked it in the slightest and gently he ran his fingers over the glass to make sure that there were no breaks or anything.

“Geeze, are you two trying to scare me now huh?” he asked the two smiling faces in the picture before letting out a sad sigh and raising to stand up. Placing the picture back in its proper place he shook his head at the pair of them, “Just after I’ve had everyone else picking on me, I have to put up with you two as well huh?”

He shot the photograph a smile before suddenly double blinking as just for a second he thought that he saw Tao reflected in the glass. But when he snapped his head around to the corridor, more than ready to berate his best friend for being a lazy sod who did not wake up only to find that the rest of the dorm was still covered in a soft darkness. He could hear the TV but the volume was turned down and only occasional flickers of light lit up the space beyond. Turning back to the photograph, Sehun scrutinised the image once again before shaking his head, “I’m way too tired for this. Tao!”

Moving away from the picture, he headed to the living room, “If you’ve fallen asleep in front of the TV Suho-Umma is going to kill you because you shouldn’t be watching TV this late at night cause it just gives you nightmares.”

Flicking the light switch, Sehun waited for just a few seconds to allow his eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness before he scanned the room for any signs of the wayward panda. A sigh escaped him as he spotted the boy lying on the couch, fast asleep from the outward looks of things and appearing to still not be paying the slightest bit of attention to him.

“Yah! Taozi!” Sehun complained, moving quickly over to the other maknae to grab his hand and haul him up, “This really isn’t funny in the slightest dude, you’ve gotta make it appear that you’ve…”

The rest of the sentence dried and turned to dust on his tongue as he felt the temperature of the others skin. It was cold. No worse it was freezing even though the room had been kept at a reasonable temperature. Actually it was boiling in here and Sehun was sweating like no one’s business right now. A cold, horrible dread began to feel his heart, causing the maknae to blink his eyes repeatedly before leaning forward as carefully as he could, “Tao?”

There was still no response and with a shaky hand, Sehun reached forward to shake the others shoulder, “No…no Tao! Wake up! This isn’t funny dude. Not in the slightest, wake up!”

Tao remained still and unresponsive and Sehun felt water trickling into his eyes before he harshly pulled the others hair, “Come on, please Tao! Just wake up! Wake up…you can’t, you’re not I refuse to…”

His shaky hand reached out to the others neck, desperately trying to find something to prove himself wrong and make it so that it was all okay. That somehow the other had just slipped into a really deep sleep and wasn’t already gone. No, Sehun wouldn’t think like that, not in the slightest despite the fact that he felt absolutely no pulse from the other and there was no breath coming out of his lips either.

Grabbing his phone, the maknae in a panic dialled the emergency services and babbled to them about his Chinese best friend, unaware of when he had started to cry like a baby which only made things harder for the call handler to understand. However within seconds, or so it felt to Sehun anyway, there was a scramble of people in the apartment and too much to really focus on what was going on. The tears kept on silently pouring out of the brown eyes as Sehun just stared blankly at Tao.

All he wanted was some form of reaction, for a cough to escape the rapidly turning blue lips and the eyes to flutter open in pain or just some sign that he could merely rush over with a cuddly toy and a hug followed by a whole load of playful berating’s for scaring him half to death.

Sehun didn’t register the fact that the paramedics had declare Haung Zitao as dead or that the others had come home and were desperately trying to find out what Sehun knew of the situation. He had sat himself down on the wall opposite the couch, clutching at the photograph of Kris and Luhan with so much force that he was physically shivering and his knuckles turned white.

The maknae seemed to just be frozen in time, staring constantly at his best friend with tears still rolling down his face and the same mantra being repeated under his breath. “Wake up, Tao, wake up, please just wake up.”

Once in a while he would glance down at the photo frame and burst into a fresh set of tears, uttering something along the lines of, “Gege…don’t, not Tao, please bring him back? Please?” before raising his head to just stare at his M counterpart and continue the same chant once again.

Chanyeol was eventually the one nominated to attempt to get Sehun away and it was no easy feat to achieve. Sehun was beside himself, not wanting to listen to what anyone said and he lashed out, scratching, kicking and punching the ever large figure but not once did Chanyeol complain. Instead he just accepted whatever Sehun was throwing at him until the point that he could quite literally wrap his arms around the slightly smaller man in a bear hug which allowed the paramedics to administer a light sedative to help calm Sehun down.

As soon as he felt Sehun go flopping, Chanyeol bent down to scoop the youngster up into a strong hold and carried him out of the dormitory with a sigh. He made a straight beeline for the vans handed the still sobbing youngster to Suho and Lay who were more than glad to be able to fuss over the youngster. Feeling his phone vibrate as he closed the door, Chanyeol was quick to answer, “Hello Appa, I’m sorry it’s so late.”

“I understand Chanyeol, we’re getting the spare beds made up, come as soon as you can,” his father replied in an even voice which he reserved for times of great need and panic, “You’re mother is making some extra thick broth with fresh bread and we’ll close up shop tomorrow.”

“You don’t need to do that Appa,” Chanyeol said as he got into the driver’s seat, preparing to start the engine whilst checking that Chen knew the direction that they were heading in as he was driving the second car.

There came a sigh, “You all need to grieve properly, son, and from the sounds of things this is going to take its toll. We’ll be here, waiting for you.”

Chanyeol allowed himself a small smile despite the situation, “Thank you Appa. We’ll be there shortly.”

Finishing the call, Chanyeol let out a long sigh and found himself looking up to the sky, wishing that he could see the stars just this once before the van thrummed into life and he carefully set off up the road. No one wanted to admit that this was a horrible feeling but there again no one really wanted to say anything anymore.

authors babling:

WAH! even i'm pretty much in tears writing this and Tao baby I am so sorry for writing this (not really cause hey it's fun in a sick and twisted way) 

But regardless I'll give everyone plushi Candy dog toys to make up for this? 

Please comment, upvote and tell me what you think of this.