I choked on the thick liquid seeping down my throat, sitting up to cough my guts out.  “What the hell?” I gasped in broken breaths.  I felt Jongin whack me on the back a few times before I got myself together.  I looked up and saw one of his goddamn protein shakes in his hand.  “Are you ing kidding me?  That’s disgusting.”

                He shrugged and sipped.  “I ran out of coffee.  At least I woke you up.  You were rolling around all over the place having a nightmare or something.  Damn near shoved me off the bed.”

                “I probably should’ve,” I muttered under my breath, scraping the taste of the shake off my tongue with my teeth.  I put pressure on my aching temples and squeezed my sore eyes shut.  “God, I hate parties.  I need to stop getting wasted and passing out here.”

                Jongin scoffed.  “And yet you keep coming back.  I wonder why.”

                I didn’t miss his sarcasm.  “What do you mean?”

                “Well, for one thing, you pretty much just sulked around drinking after Luhan left.  And then you kept saying his name in your sleep.”

                “I did?”

                He nodded and looked at me a little funny.  “You sounded worried.”

                And all I could see were the cuts on his wrists, the anxious way he pulled on his sleeves, his face when I questioned him.  “I am.”

                Sickened by watching Jongin and Joonmyun swap spit for god knows how long, I downed the rest of my drink and looked around for Luhan.  I didn’t really have to because he had been looking for me too.

                “Sehun.”

                My shoulders jerked a bit and I turned to see him behind me, looking a little sheepish, and sweet Jesus, he looked so good.

                “Luhan, hi.  You are how?”  I mentally kicked myself in the balls.  What are you, Yoda?  “I mean, how are you?”

                He swallowed nervously.  “I’m good.  I just—I wanted to apologize for last week.  I didn’t mean to walk off like that.”

                “No, no, that’s okay.  I asked a stupid question.”  I didn’t say anything about the fact that he was wearing long sleeves again.

                He smiled that new-Luhan-smile and I wanted to kill myself for being so goddamn attracted to him.  Oh, the ual frustration.

                We conversed for a while, and somehow we ended up on the balcony again.  He looked up at the night sky and I watched as his lips formed into a soft smile.  There was something different about it—it came naturally, involuntarily.  It was genuine.

                “You like it out here, huh?”

                He turned his gaze to me.  “Yeah, it’s… it’s…”  He looked back up at the sky.

                “It’s what?”

                He took a breath and thought for a moment.  “Right here—from Jongin’s balcony—this is my favorite view of the stars.  I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s because we’re so high up, but I feel… I feel…”  He glanced at me.  “I feel invincible.  I feel like I can reach out and grab one of those stars, like everything will be okay again.”

                Again?

                Neither of us said anything for a minute, and I looked up at the glinting stars, wondering what he meant.

                “Sorry, that was embarrassing.  I don’t know what I’m saying.”

                I looked at him and grinned at his flushed face.  “No, I think you know exactly what you’re saying.  I think… I think you are invincible.”  His face escalated three shades of red, but his face hardened after a moment.

                “No, I’m really not.”

                Silence.

                I chugged my beer, mustered up some courage, and cleared my throat.  “Hey, Luhan?”

                “Mm?”

                “Where did you move to, you know, after seventh grade?”

                He didn’t look at me.  “A lot of places.”

                Don’t push it, Sehun.  “Yeah?  Like where?”  Oh, good lord, you pushed it.

                A pause.  A really ing long pause.

                “Places.”

                “Like—”

                “I don’t want to talk about it.”

                I blame this next remark on my intoxication.  “Just like how you didn’t want to talk about your cuts?”

                He whipped his head around to face me.  “What?”

                Nothing was making sense at this point, and the look in his eye freaked me out, so I blathered out a big bunch of nonsense.  “I—I don’t know, I mean you’ve got, like, cuts on your wrists, and you’re always wearing shirts that cover them, and I mean you used to be this, like, emo kid, and you just—”

                “You don’t know anything about me.”

                “Luhan—”

                He didn’t let me finish and stalked off, the smile completely gone.  It was the old Luhan again.

                He didn’t come back for two weeks.

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Sorry for slow updates!  And thanks for reading/commenting, guys!  ^^