Sehun ended up going anyway. Despite having thrown a mountain of his belongings down the stairs in a rage. That didn’t help, and if anything it just steeled his parents’ resolve to take him away, as apprently throwing a tantrum meant he wasn't mature enough to make decisions like this on his own. They were probably right, but it rankled.

Eventually, they made a half-civilised ultimatum. Sehun had tried to coerce them into letting him bring Tao with him, but they'd completely rejected that proposal. They reasoned that he shouldn’t be taken away from his family again, which Sehun had to admit was fair, but he still fought tooth and nail to stay with him. His parents' last resort was a threat;

“Ok, if you don’t go this weekend, you’re not allowed to leave the house except for school. And we won’t let Tao past the front door,” Sehun gaped at them, affronted.

“….that’s called grounding,” he barely managed to choke out, “you can’t do that to me…or Tao!”

“Yes, actually, I can. It’s only going to be for one weekend, Sehun, it’s not like the world is ending.” And that’s where they were wrong. He didn’t know if he could survive that long with Mr Evans but without Tao to act as a buffer. Tao did a good job of keeping him calm, and Mr Evans was almost certainly going to rile him up into a huge ball of stress and anxiety, which would subsequently trigger his hormone.

But he nodded in relucant acquiescence, because at this stage what else could he do?

Sehun broke the news to his boyfriend the next day. He simpy held him, instead of trying to tell him it’d be ok, which he was grateful for. He wouldn't have believed him if he tried to say that. Every day that week he went to Tao's house after college, even though Xiao-Xing was there, and still glared at him while she limped around exaggeratedly whenever they happened to be in the same room,

“She’s putting it on when your here, I promise,” he laughed as he guided him out of the living room by the hand. She scoffed at them.

Sat on Tao's bed, both of them under the covers, they chatted about inconsequential things, like what stupid thing the other guys did in a lesson so that they could avoid talking about the important things. Apparently in maths, Luhan had a confrontation with a girl over question on the board. She left almost in tears, but Luhan won his little war, triumphantly brandishing his correctly marked sheet above his head.

After Tao finished his anecdote, neither of them really had anything to say. Sehun pulled him over so that he was sat with his back to his chest, and pressed his chin on the top of his boyfriend's head, sighing. Tao shivered in his arms.

“At least you’ll still have your phone, so we can text and call.” He murmured, making himself comfortable. Sehun hummed in agreement. Later on, after he got a peeved phonecall from his mother asking where he was, he walked home mildly mollified. He was right; he wouldn’t be totally alone. He'd still be able to talk to him using the wonders of modern technology. He felt more prepared for tomorrow now. Before going to sleep, he sent Tao a cheesy and romantic text, imagining him smiling into his pillow, and roll around. Tao reciprocated with an equally cheesy message, making him smile as he drifted to sleep.

The next morning found Sehun packed, and getting into the family car grudgingly, giving Tao a running commentary the whole time. He sent him a string of encouraging emoticons and he stopped at him, instead electing to stare out of the window and watch the houses fly past. The radio was playing nothing he was interested in listening to, and neither were his parents talking about anything he wanted to join in with, so he shoved his headphones in his ears, and pressed ‘last played’ which turned out to be some song that Tao sent him the other day.

After they got onto the motorway, he looked out of the window at the feilds and trees whizzing by. The journey to Mr Evans’ lab was just shy of five hours, and they took a toilet break at one of those service stations that are really just giant parking lots with a café and newsagent. Maybe a burger king if you’re lucky. Which they weren’t.

After using the bathroom he civilly declined his parents' offer to buy him food and instead headed back to the car with his phone to wait for them to finish. When they returned they tossed him a sandwich anyway, without a word. He shoved it to the side, glaring at them, determined to have this small, spiteful rebellion. The rest of the journey was similarly boring, as Tao was busy doing something with his mother, and as such couldn’t text him anymore. He glowered moodily out of the window, mentally insulting every single thing he laid eyes upon. It didn't help hide the burgoning anxiety in his stomach in the slightest.

The nearer they came to the city, the more compact the buildings became until there were skyscrapers towering above them every direction Sehun looked.

A text arrived from Tao,

To Sehun:

how r u doin?

To Tao:

bored but im in the city now, u?

To Sehun:

I miss u and its only been like 4 hrs

To Tao:

I miss u too <3

He immersed himself in talking to Tao, so much so that he didn’t notice when they pulled into Mr Evans’ driveway, a small unassuming house on the outskirts. Only the absence of the engine sound warned him that they'd reached their destination. Sehun dawdled getting out of the car and slowly, slowly, shuffled to the car boot to get his suitcase. He dragged it out of the car and across the gravel floor, getting it dirty, but he didn’t care.

Mr Evans’ lab was pretty big, but you couldn't see it on the outside, as a lot of it was underground. His parents harried him, trying to get him to move faster. But he didn’t, and relished their exasperation. He didn’t need to ‘be shown to his room’ because he already know where it was; they had, as a family, lived in this building for several years after all.

Dragging his belongings up the stairs to his old bedroom, he felt like the weight of this place, full of so many bad memories, was crushing him. He hated this place. He'd spent way too much time here, when he was little, all by himself. He basically had no real friends from the moment he lost control that one time.

He was permitted about ten minutes to himself, during which he spent the time pointedly not unpacking, before somebody knocked on the door to inform him that Mr Evans would see him now.

Oh will he now? He grumbled, as he got up to go visit him in his study. He knocked on the door feeling some hybrid combination of petrified and furious. His blasé call of ‘come in’ did nothing to calm his nerves, and he felt like his hormone implant might be triggered at any moment.

Sehun pushed open the door and crept inside, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible in the hope of putting off the torture for a little longer. But naturally he noticed him instantly, and beckoned him closer with one finger. Head hung, he made his way over to the chair he normally sat in for these meetings. Imagine something like a dentist chair without the light or cool hydraulic up-and-down thing.

Biting his lip, he tried to visualise himself in his happy place, before he came too close. Mr Evans picked up a stethoscope and torch, to begin the first part of the check-up, the normal part that most people experience when they visit a doctor. He measured his pulse, checked his eyes, ears, mouth- all the usual things a doctor would ordinarily do.

Then came the weird part, the part that always tired him out; he strapped him into heart monitor, and gave him a pair of bulky, uncomfortable headphones. On the screen in front of him he played videos designed to evoke some kind of emotional response. The standard clips of romantic scenes followed by murder and slaughter play across the screen, screams echoing in his ears. They had much less effect on him now than they used to.

He forced himself not to react to any of it, to just stare through the violence. The film finished playing, and he moved to take my headphones off, but Mr Evans held up a hand, and he froze.

Another clip began to play, one he was sure he hadn’t seen before, but he recognised the room. He'd thought it had burnt down.

In the video, Tao was trying to fight off four men who had him pinned down on the bed. He was screaming. A hand wielding a syringe approached from the side, and stabbed into Tao's arm, making him scream even louder.

He clenched his fists, not allowing any emotions to show on his face, because a response like that would only satisfy him. Prove that whatever theories he had were right, probably. But he couldn’t control his heart; he was sure the monitor beside him must be bleeping rapidly. He bit down hard on his lip, so hard he thought he might be bleeding, and in huge gulps of air in a last ditch attempt to stay calm, but nothing was helping. And he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the screen. The crudely filmed video was on a loop, repeating itself.

The moment Mr Evans signalled for him to leave, he threw the headphones down onto the ground and sprinted back to his room, a mockery of a safe space in this building. Once there he wiped away the tears he hadn’t noticed he had let out, and the blood from his mouth- he had cut his lip after all. He cried into his pillow which didn't smell like home, and thought about how different his life would be if he wasn't a genetic freak. 

Once he let himself calm down, a few hours later, he started wondering about how Mr Evans got hold of the video anyway. Why did he have a video of Tao being sedated?