It isn't very early when Lu Han wakes up.

Everything is calm. The air, the sunshine against the sills and Sehun’s shallow breathing into his neck. Even the birds he can hear, chirping on the roofs of nearby buildings- everything is slow, steady- nobody is in a rush on Sunday mornings.

It takes time for him to open his eyes. The calm is so deceiving, it makes you think you've got all the time in the world. It makes everything go away, and in those three minutes they remain closed it seems as if everything has stopped. The only two things that defy that are Sehun’s loud heartbeat and the clock he can hear ticking from the kitchen through the open door. They’re not in sync, but it doesn't make a difference at all.

Untangling from Sehun is hard, the younger always has trouble letting him go. The way Sehun hugs the pillow after Lu Han is gone from his arms makes a faint smile flash over his lips. The floor is warm underneath Lu Han’s feet and the morning light feels slightly overbearing as he enters the bright hallway. He’s left the raven-haired boy tangled amongst his white sheets- it’s where he belongs, anyway.

It’s breezy, Lu Han realizes when he opens the window, but the sky is turquoise and clear. It’s contrasting his mood, it’s one of those heavy days for Lu Han but rain would probably overwhelm his tired eyes, so he welcomes the clarity that vivid blue skies bring.

His footsteps are inaudible as he walks towards the kitchen and back to the hallway, now with a water bottle in hand. He waters all the plants Sehun brought when Lu Han first moved into this apartment. Despite half of his belongings being here, including the plants, Sehun still lives in a dorm. “You and I both know I’d fail all my classes if I lived with you,” is the explanation he gave when Lu Han mentioned it. A corner of his mouth twitches at the memory as he’s watering the mini cacti.

Lu Han keeps the small bathroom window closed as he’s taking his shirt off along with his boxers and throwing them into the laundry bin. He lives on the fifth floor, he doubts anyone would be able to peek regardless, but it gives him an extra sense of solitude as he stands in the shower.

The first thing he does is brush his teeth while the warm spray hits his back, it’s a habit he’s picked up from Sehun in the two years they’ve been together. He’s thinking about the feeling of late spring on his shoulders and the smell of linden trees that overwhelms him whenever he steps outside. It’s June already , he thinks, and this summer he’s taking Sehun with him to China.

The knob on the bathroom door turning doesn't startle him.

Sehun’s hair is tousled, rays of sunshine from the window catching between the strands and making them glow chocolate and metallic blue. He looks a bit pale, a bit tired, two stripes of red below his cheekbone signifying that he’s just woken up. Lu Han loves Sehun always, but nothing can replace this groggy, heavy-lidded version of him that’s just gotten out of bed.

“It’s always cold there without you,” he says in a rough, husky voice, Lu Han rinsing the last bits of toothpaste from his mouth. “Good morning.”

The older boy smiles, dampening his hair. “It’s June.”

Sehun sighs whilst taking his white shirt off. His pale chest looks even fairer in here, the dip of his collarbone prominent in the milkiness of his skin. “Have you seen my toothbrush?”

“By the sink,” he answers, moving slightly to the side so there’s room for the both of them in the cabin. God knows neither of them take up much space, but everything in Lu Han’s apartment is fairly small. “I thought I’d have to wait longer for you to wake up.”

“I told you, it was cold,” Sehun says right before he starts brushing his teeth, and Lu Han’s lips curl upwards involuntarily. Sehun’s free hand comes to rest on Lu Han’s waist, in between his ribcage and his hipbone, fingers touching the skin lightly. “Besides, it’s a Sunday. There’s a thing called tradition,” he mumbles through the foam in his mouth.

Lu Han chuckles, rolling his eyes. “I don’t think eating strawberry pancakes and watching ‘The Great British Bake Off’ on Sunday mornings is something that can be called tradition, Sehun.”

Sehun swishes some water around his mouth for a couple of seconds. He’s rinsing his toothbrush out when he says, “Don’t rain on my parade.”

He grabs the shampoo from the metal shelf and squeezes some of it into his palm. The air smells like lavender when he starts massaging it into Lu Han’s scalp, strands of pink and purple hair bleeding the dye into the foam. “You’re tense,” he says gently when Lu Han’s shoulders start to relax. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s just one of those days,” he doesn’t sound very troubled, both him and Sehun are used to it. “You know me.” The back of Lu Han’s neck is violet with the foam and Sehun spreads it across his shoulders absentmindedly. His arms curl around Lu Han’s middle, wet back against a damp chest. His breath smells like toothpaste and he keeps Lu Han warmer than the hot spray that’s steaming up the room. “I’m fine now, I’m calm. Before, when I felt like this, it was loud and it was restless. Like there was nothing I could do to stay still.”

Sehun is quiet. His fingers are drawing shapes on Lu Han’s skin, they’re swirling over his stomach and thighs in pictures and letters and symbols. They might as well be painting tangerine red sunsets  across the hollows of Lu Han’s bones, or moss-green pagoda roofs and lotus flowers around the curves of his muscles. It doesn’t matter because he makes Lu Han feel like home, even though hundreds of miles away, just by touching his skin and breathing into his neck.

“I’ve watered your plants,” Lu Han says after a while. There is purple water pooling around their ankles, mixing with the midnight blue one that’s dripping down Sehun’s back. He’s turning around, facing the taller boy, eyes narrow and cocoa brown meeting Lu Han’s rounded ones. Lu Han’s hands are soft as they reach up to ruffle Sehun’s hair, and he’s smiling at the way Sehun frowns when a strand tickles his forehead.

“Don’t you always?” he queries, palms flat against Lu Han’s lower back. He pulls him in and kisses him gently, Lu Han’s fingers around Sehun’s jaw, right above the fading marks the older boy has left on his neck a few nights prior.

“I do.” Sehun tastes like warmth, cotton candy-scented chapstick and mint, lips and hands on Lu Han like sweet rain kissing the salty sea. Sehun’s arms are nothing like the orange lights of Tiananmen Square at night, they’re strong and pallid just like his anaemic self, but their embrace is equally as soothing as the humid, boiling heat of Chinese summers.

It’s easier for him to get lost in Sehun than out in the busy streets of Beijing.

*

Sehun’s strawberry pancakes are Lu Han’s favorite thing in the world.

“You might be right,” Lu Han says, taking a sip of coffee and pouring some honey onto his pancake. He’s sitting cross-legged on the counter in one of Sehun’s big band t-shirts, watching the batter sizzle in the pan Sehun’s holding with one of his hands. “This does feel like a tradition.”

Sehun flips the pancake and looks at him. “There you go. Now, give me a bite of that. This chef is way too lazy to both cook and eat at the same time.”

Lu Han chuckles into his coffee mug. Sehun is looking at him with a crescent-eyed smile, hands crossed against his bare chest. He puts some of the pancake on his fork and Sehun reaches out, but the older boy shoves it into his own mouth before Sehun can get to it.

“Lu!” he whines, and Lu Han cackles at his face expression.

“Alright, alright, here you go,” he gives Sehun the plate, shifting slightly so he can get himself another one. He watches the younger boy as he pours more batter into the pan, it makes the heat rise up in the kitchen again. The flush it brings to Sehun’s face takes him to the memory of the summer they’d first met.

It was August and it was right before Lu Han’s last year at university. He’d just come back from China and his friend Yixing introduced him to Sehun when they ran into him at the amusement park. He was all golden skin and blond hair back then- all it took was to ask Lu Han to dance and tell him the names of three constellatons in the sky, and the older fell like he was thirteen again and his crush had just kissed his cheek before running away. The late summers in Seoul have grown hotter since then, Sehun’s skin paler and shoulders just a little more broad, but he sees those three constellations whenever he looks into the younger boy’s eyes. They haven’t been out to see the stars in a while, but Sehun still asks him to dance with him sometimes, just like that sweet blond freshman did three years ago. It feels like a lot longer than that, it seems like a childhood away, and he hates to remind himself that time is slipping through their fingers. After all, Sehun is just three exams away from his graduation. “Sehun?”

Sehun looks at him, swallowing his last bite, eyebrows raised. “Yes?” Lu Han watches the empty white walls around him, he thinks about just how much this apartment feels like a stranger to him when Sehun is not around. Warmth is not something Lu Han associates with the weather anymore.

“Are you going to move in after you graduate?” He says it casually, but there is a dose of vulnerability in his voice that Sehun must have picked up on. If there is anything in this world Lu Han is sure of, it’s that Sehun knows him better than he knows himself. “Or maybe when we get back from China. Regardless, this summer I mean.”

“It’s cold,” it’s all Sehun says at first. His eyes are serious, and Lu Han sees Perseus flash in his irises. “Without you, I mean.”

Lu Han looks down at his hands, and Sehun flips the pancake before he comes closer. The air smells like coffee, strawberries and Sehun, and the way the younger leans into Lu Han is calming. Sehun looks at him again. “Is that a yes?”

Then Lu Han sees the Aries , humble in the gleam but rich in depth as it takes over.

Sehun kisses him, and the honey makes it sticky but sweet at the same time, and Lu Han knows Sehun doesn’t mind the bitterness radiating off of Lu Han’s lips. “Yes.”

And when Taurus comes along, Sehun’s eyes look like they’re in love.