Broken whimpers spilled from Luhan’s lips, his fingers curling like talons where they tightly gripped the headboard as he arched sharply, caught in the throes of wild lust.

There were times when Sehun made love to him, slowly and thoroughly, when he kissed every inch of his body until he was flushed pink and vibrating with need, his gaze caught in the beam of Sehun’s love-filled eyes, awestruck at the depth of Sehun’s feelings for him.

But then there were times when Sehun took him like this, giving into his primal urge to mate, to claim, his fingers branding where they dug into Luhan’s hips, his s quick, rough and bordering on deliciously painful. There was a lot to be said for lovemaking, the gentle caresses and tender words, but this…this, especially with Sehun…he would highly recommend it to anyone interested. Except…it was all his. Sehun was his and his alone.

Sehun slammed into him then, deep and hard and he moaned loudly, eyes squeezed shut, teetering on the verge of . He was so hard, so achingly hard. Just a little bit more and…

Luhan awoke with a spasm, back arching off the bed as he his hips upward into open air. His pajama-covered hips, he realized when the soft cotton brushed against his sensitive, swollen head.

It had happened again, he thought with a sigh, dropping back down to the bed and rolling over onto his side with a groan. His sleep was plagued with dreams of Sehun of late, ever since…

Sighing forlornly, he flipped onto his back once more.

It wasn’t a surprise, honestly, given all that had happened and how twisted up inside he was about it, but he wished the dreams would offer more variety. There seemed to be only two types available: either passion-filled dreams like the one he’d just awoken from or dreams where Sehun’s hurt eyes and broken voice called to him over and over, begging him not to leave.

“Don’t do this. Stay here. I’ll leave, I’ll go stay in a hotel or at my parents’ house. Anywhere, I don’t care. Just…don’t go with him.”

Don’t go with him. Don’t leave me. Please, don’t leave me.

There were nights when those words haunted him, when guilt gripped his heart, squeezing it like a vice, and he found himself breathless and twisted in agony, tears burning his eyes. Those were the nights where he wondered most if he’d made the right decision. He knew in his heart, though, that there was no right decision. One way or the other, he would have ended up hurting one of the two people he cared about most. But in that moment, with the pain from his fall shooting through his body and the fear and anxiety that Sehun and Jongin’s fight had wrought within him, all he could think about was getting out. Out and away from them both. But he couldn’t leave Jongin there. Who knew what would’ve happened if he’d left them to release their unbridled anger upon each other?

“No,” he muttered to himself. It was too early in the day to go there. There was time for self-chastisement and what-ifs later.

Closing his eyes, he slipped his hand into the waistband of his pajamas and palmed himself, holding onto the last vestiges of his dream as he his , alternating between quick flicks of the wrist and languid pulls, in time with the snap of dream-Sehun’s s. Before long, his hips were rising off the bed again, pumping into the air as his pace quickened, his grip tightening as dream-Sehun pounded into him mercilessly.

He came with a sharp cry, back arching, heart racing unsteadily in his chest, his hips grinding upward into nothingness as he spilled all over his hand, soiling his pants. Afterward, when his heartbeat was closer to normal and full brain function returned, shame colored his cheeks.

“You are a walking cliché, Luhan,” he muttered, wiping his hand on his pants and swinging his legs over the side of the bed, rising to make his way towards the bathroom. There was an American song that aptly detailed what he’d just done, he thought. He’d heard it before but the terminology was unfamiliar to him so he never recalled it exactly but it had been explained to him and he’d never forgotten, having thought it ridiculous and far-fetched. Apparently it wasn’t so far-fetched after all.

Stripping out of his clothes, he the shower and stepped into the warm spray, washing away the evidence of his shame.

Thank God Jongin isn’t home, he thought belatedly.

Speaking of… Things had been strained between them ever since that day. He’d expected…Well, truth be told, he wasn’t sure what he’d expected when he’d come home with Jongin. He’d seen the alarm in Jongin’s face when he’d realized that he’d hurt Luhan and he’d appreciated the care he’d shown when he’d taken him to the doctor to get checked out – which had resulted in a brace for his wrist, loads of ice-packs and a week’s worth of painkillers – but once that had passed, he’d expected Jongin to be angry and mean, rightfully so given Luhan’s betrayal. If ever there was a time for Jongin to lash out at him and treat him harshly, it would be now. Instead…nothing. No questions, no accusations, no insults or cold words. Jongin had brought him home from the doctor, seen him comfortably settled in their bed and that had been the end of it. He’d gone back to work in his office downstairs as if nothing was amiss.

Luhan had waited, walking on eggshells day after day, expecting Jongin to blow up at him. It was sure to happen eventually…right? Or so he’d thought. While Jongin wasn’t being his most friendly self, certainly not as warm and loving as he’d been after their dinner at his parents’ house, he also wasn’t being true to form. It left Luhan confused and adrift, unsure of what to do, what to think, how to feel. He didn’t know if he should risk broaching the subject. If Jongin was angry and wanted to talk about it, certainly he would have by now. Two weeks had passed already, he’d certainly had more than enough time. No, he seemed determined to forget about the incident and Luhan was coward enough to accept the reprieve for what it was. Still…he wasn’t sure where he stood with Jongin and, guilt aside, it wasn’t a comfortable place to be in. Now that he’d left Sehun, and subsequently his job, he was once more dependent on Jongin. If Jongin decided to kick him out tomorrow, there was nothing he could do about it. He didn’t think Jongin that wicked but he’d have no ground to stand on if Jongin did seek revenge in such a fashion. It was the least he deserved for his infidelity. He had some savings, courtesy of Sehun’s generosity, but it wouldn’t last him long in Seoul.

Sighing, he leaned his forehead against the cool tiles, shutting his eyes as the water sluiced over his body, the heat seeping into his weary bones.

He would give Jongin another week, he decided. If he didn’t bring it up by then, Luhan would go ahead and apologize anyway. If nothing else, it would help assuage some of his guilt, guilt that wasn’t entirely a result of his infidelity.

A small smile turned up the corners of his mouth as he thought about his computer and what undoubtedly awaited him there.

The emails had started a week ago.

In the first few days after he’d walked out of Sehun’s life, his phone had rung non-stop causing Jongin to cast hard glances at the instrument if it happened to go off in his presence. Neither one needed to look at the display to know who was on the other end: it was quite obvious by the frequency of the calls. It had been torture for Luhan, resisting the temptation to give into the urge to hear Sehun’s voice one last time, to hear that he still loved him, to tell him in return that he missed him, ached for him with every fiber of his being. He couldn’t, though. He’d made his choice.

Eventually the calls stopped and Luhan had feared that Sehun had given up on him. Jongin would cast suspicious glances at his phone from time to time, as if expecting it to ring or wondering if Luhan and Sehun were still communicating in private, but he never posed any questions to Luhan and he’d never made any attempts to check Luhan’s phone himself, that Luhan knew of any way.

Then, just as he’d thought he would go out of his mind waiting for Sehun to call again – just so he’d know he was okay, he’d told himself – he’d received an email. It had come to his work email, which he’d made the habit of checking once a day just in case any of Sehun’s customers contacted him thinking that he was still an employee. Imagine his shock when he’d opened his mail to find a message from the man himself. He’d stared at it for long minutes, trying to convince himself that he wasn’t seeing things, before finally mustering the courage to open it. He hadn’t been sure what to expect but upon opening it, he’d initially thought it empty, immediately assuming that it was spam or an accident. Then, just as he’d been about to close it, he’d realize that there was a file attached: a song.

The strains of the guitar were the first sounds to greet his ears and the melody had wrapped around his heart, wrenching it painfully and causing tears to spring to his eyes. He missed sitting on the bed while Sehun sang to him, or simply watching him idly pluck the delicate strings while he folded the laundry or tidied up. It had become such an important part of their routine.

By the end of the song, he’d been a blubbering mess, tears streaming down his cheeks while he struggled to breathe through his snot-filled nostrils. He’d held himself tightly, rocking to and fro, the only comfort available to him since Sehun’s arms would never surround him ever again.

The next day, he’d checked his mail as usual but this time, he’d been half hoping, half afraid to hope that there would be another email from Sehun. Sure enough, there had been. Like the first song, the second one had swept him up in Sehun’s emotions once again, his tortured voice piercing daggers into Luhan's very soul. On the third day, he hadn’t been surprised to see yet another email, another song attached, this one no less effective.

Every day onward, a new song arrived. Some were sung and performed by Sehun himself while others were the artists’ original recording. He noticed that Sehun favored the guitar-heavy songs for his live performances, which was understandable he supposed. Those also happened to be the ones with the most soul-destroying lyrics, in Luhan’s opinion. It was a sweet kind of agony, relishing Sehun’s love for him while literally listening to just how much it, he, was hurting him.

Still, it had become the highlight of his day, the one thing he still had to look forward to. It hurt to wonder just how much pain Sehun was in because of him, how difficult it must be for him to put aside the betrayal he must feel at Luhan’s departure to do what he was doing, but it helped, in some measure, to know that Sehun missed him, that he loved him, that he hadn’t just moved on and forgotten him. It was petty and ridiculous and he was ashamed to even think it since he knew Sehun so well, new that his love wasn’t a transient thing, but there would always be a part of him that believed that Sehun could do, deserved actually, so much better than him. Why he would go to such lengths for Luhan… Well, there was nothing he could do about it and he was content not to do anything because a love like Sehun’s was rare and it was probable that once it was gone, which was undoubtedly an eventuality, he would never find anything remotely close to it again.

Concentrating on his shower, he soaped, rinsed and toweled quickly, throwing on the first T-shirt and pants that his hands landed on before hastily making his way to his small, commandeered office down the hall. He always kept it locked, not because he feared that Jongin would go snooping but because he considered it his personal space, like Jongin’s office, an area where even Magda wasn’t allowed to clean. It was his own little sanctuary in this mausoleum of a house.

He rapped nervous fingers on the desk while his laptop booted up, butterflies swarming about in his stomach as his excitement grew. What musical delight would Sehun unleash upon him this day?

As he logged into his email, a gray cloud drifted across his thoughts. This was wrong, oh, so wrong. He had chosen. He’d chosen. There was no going back for him now. Jongin was it. He should let Sehun go, he shouldn’t hold onto him like this, shouldn’t give him hope for something that could never be. Sehun deserved better. Jongin deserved better. Jongin deserved Luhan’s best and Sehun…Sehun deserved what Luhan could never give him. Everything that Luhan could never be.

When he opened the email, however, and cued up the song, those thoughts were once again chased away by the melodic plucking of Sehun’s guitar, followed by his soft, husky tenor.

“My voice broke in the third verse :$,” a little note in the email said.

Luhan’s smile widened and he listened out for it, chuckling to himself when he heard the minor flaw. They did this sometimes, exchanged short words or smiley-faces. They had yet to bring up what had happened, both making a concerted effort to keep things light. It could never replace what Luhan had lost, though. An emoticon was a poor substitute for the warmth he had grown used to basking in whenever Sehun smiled at him. A little teasing line was nothing compared to the softness of Sehun’s skin when he used to poke and pinch him for his insolence or lay an encouraging hand on his thigh when he performed for him. Luhan missed the way Sehun’s eyes would curve when he smiled, his adorable lisp, the feel of his arms wrapping around him from behind, pulling him into him as if he wished he could absorb Luhan into himself and keep him there for all eternity.

These exchanges paled in comparison to what Luhan had become used to over the past eight months. They would never, could never, be enough.

And yet, he thought as he typed a quick reply, his smile turning sad as he hummed along to today's tune, now, they would have to be.

A/N: A short chapter but a necessary one, I think.

And guys, of course Sehun doesn't play guitar or sing perfectly, certainly not in perfect, unaccented, unbroken English but he does the best he can, quite capably, and Luhan finds it adorable, okay??