Final.

Yeah we knew from the beginning/That this wasn't never ending/Shouldn't stay too long/Cause we're both too young/To give into forever

- Troye Sivan, "Lost Boy"

Luhan

Adventure now? Or tea first?

The tea is rhetorical, of course, but such is the question Luhan asks himself before making any big, very important, enormously adult decision. Peter Pan is his favorite fictional character so it’s fitting somehow, this fact that Luhan relies on the J.M. Barrie classic even now when he’s practically 30 already and quite decidedly grown-up.

He considers these words like a repetitive mantra running its way through his mind as he sits alone at the bar of the club where Yixing brought him against his will and then promptly abandoned him. There’s a man across the way whose eye he catches and it’s a rare spirit of boldness that has Luhan choosing adventure for once. The man’s name is Sehun, he’s a whole four years younger, and he meets Luhan halfway, stopping at the dance floor with a challenging eyebrow raised and a sinful pull of his lip between his teeth.

Luhan is hooked, helplessly. Peter Pan would never fall in love, not even with Wendy Darling, but Luhan can’t help himself. With Sehun in his life he finds himself choosing adventure more and more often, and it’s not long before Luhan forgets what tea tastes like entirely.

Sehun

He has his eye on the soft-featured man as soon as the man’s friend drags him into the club. It’s only a matter of time before the other notices, and when he does Sehun is happy to dance the night away with Luhan’s back pressed against his chest and Luhan’s grinding up against his crotch.

Luhan is tiny, but Sehun likes that. He’s older, too, and Sehun, ever the maknae, likes dating someone who takes care of and spoils him. Luhan is also a walking bundle of nerves when he and Sehun first meet, and Sehun takes care to treat the older man gently should he someday break. They fall fast, both of them, and after that first night do practically everything together. Sehun is especially happy to drag his boyfriend to go cliff diving and paragliding, to drive fast cars and stay out late getting drunk by the Han riverside.

He’s teaching Luhan how to live—how he himself likes to live: recklessly. Sehun finds himself in love with Luhan before the year is over and frets about Christmas, whether to invite his boyfriend home to meet his parents or to keep Luhan all to himself for just a little longer. He chooses the latter and Sehun’s parents only end up hearing about Luhan long after he’s already gone.

Luhan

Sehun takes him skiing for New Year’s and Luhan promptly skis right into one of those huge lift poles. He wakes up three days later with a cast on his left leg and a frantic Sehun pacing alongside his bed in a hospital room absolutely filled to the brim with flowers. Luhan finds that he’s allergic, horribly so, but he appreciates the gestures from his friends and loved ones enough that he thanks them all graciously for the gifts and never tells anyone that he had to throw all the flowers away. This is the first time Sehun realizes he could lose Luhan and the only thing that keeps him from pulling away in fear is the steady touch of Luhan’s hand on his forearm and the quiet consistency of Luhan’s presence in his life.

Luhan pretends not to notice the subtle changes in his boyfriend’s behavior. He blushes like a teenager experiencing first love when Sehun reaches across him to buckle his seatbelt, or when Sehun makes sure Luhan walks on the inside of the sidewalk rather than the side close to the speeding cars. He lets Sehun lecture on about the dangers of red meat and undercooked chicken, and makes sure to only order his steak medium rare when he’s out with Yixing. But Luhan has to draw the line somewhere.

“I’m only just beginning to discover the joys of truly living,” Luhan tells Sehun after a particularly tense afternoon when Luhan had surprised Sehun with six weeks of scuba diving classes and Sehun had told him to return the gift. “Why won’t you let me do that?”

“I don’t want to lose you,” Sehun confesses with a whisper into the soft strands of Luhan’s hair that brush against his jaw as he rests his chin on Luhan’s head.

Luhan accepts this, revels in it even, and is too starry-eyed with love for Sehun to realize that Sehun never meant for them both to stop living dangerously.

Sehun

Sehun wonders if he should feel at least a little guilty. But it was Luhan who had refused to ask for a refund for the couple scuba lessons and Sehun couldn’t just let good money go to waste, so he ends up asking Jongin to accompany him instead. He chooses not to tell Luhan about this decision and, when asked about his occasional wet hair and the recurring appearance of his trunks in Luhan’s laundry basket, says that he’s taken up swimming. Luhan says he’s glad that Sehun’s no longer classifying lounging on the couch as exercise and mentions his hope that Jongin’s maturity growth is not far behind. Sehun does feel guilty then, but he still says nothing.

The six weeks of lessons culminate with a group trip to Jeju Island for final certification testing. Sehun says he’s going for a work trip, doesn’t tell Luhan that Jongin’s coming too, and then feels doubly horrible about the whole situation when he and his best friend get far too drunk the night before they return to Seoul and hook up.

Jongin’s single so he’s not really all that upset by this, but Sehun loves Luhan more than life and doesn’t know what he’ll do if his boyfriend leaves him. He says nothing to Luhan about this too.

In the end, he doesn’t have to; Jongin does so for him.

Luhan

He doesn’t want to believe the lies that Jongin tells him, the younger man grinning maliciously like it was his plan to steal Sehun for himself from the very beginning. Eventually, though, curiosity gets the best of Luhan and he visits the sports complex that hosted the scuba instructor. The lady behind the desk smiles at him.

“How sweet of you,” she says, “to purchase those lessons for your younger brother and his boyfriend. Those two were a joy to watch.”

Luhan smiles back at her. Or tries to, at least, but smiles are hard to conjure when your entire world’s suddenly been turned upside down.

He frets for days, goes to visit his parents in China, and spills everything to Yixing when he finally feels like it’s all too much to keep inside.

“You know what you need to do, Lu,” is all Yixing will say. Luhan’s grateful for his friend’s unwillingness to explicitly tell Luhan what his next steps should be. Yixing listens while Luhan cries over the phone and shushes his friend softly when Luhan’s tears turn to hiccups and eventually soft puffs of air to indicate he’s fallen asleep. Luhan wakes up to a text of encouragement from his best friend and flies home to Seoul the next afternoon, determined.

“You’re too young for me.” That’s what he says when he tells Sehun they should break up and Sehun wants to know why. Luhan can’t bring himself to share the real reason, to rage and cry and yell at Sehun that he knows. “We’re going different places in life,” he adds, not really meaning any of it except the part where he really is finished with this relationship.

“You told me we were forever,” Sehun accuses, eyes cast downward toward to his hands but mouth set firmly in a frown directed straight to Luhan’s heart.

“You told me there’d never be anyone else,” Luhan shoots back, hating himself a little for succumbing to the hurt. He’d never meant for Sehun to know that he knew, and now that Sehun does the younger is unbearably quick to beg forgiveness and swear it will never happen again.

It’s possible he’s sincere, but so is Luhan. He leaves the café where he’d called Sehun to meet without even a glance back over his shoulder. Luhan doesn’t ever see Sehun reach out after him; Sehun doesn’t ever see Luhan’s face again.

The next time Yixing wants to take him out to a club Luhan politely declines. Tea first, he decides. Tea only.

This wasn't never ending
We're both too young
To give into forever