Chen's POV

I knocked on the door of the bathroom and waited for a response. Nothing. Maybe Suho already left the bathroom. Checking every room down the hall and finding them to be empty, I found myself in front of that bathroom door again. I was just about to try calling out his name when I heard some loud thumps coming from the living room.

Something heavy had to hit the floor to make that kind of noise. Was it Kris again? But there had been several thumps. Was gravity dribbling him against the floor like a basketball?

Okay, that sounded far too amusing to ignore.

Deciding just to take a peek, I stepped away from the door and went down the hall just to find Lay standing awkwardly around a bunch of passed out bodies.

“Anything I should be concerned about?” I asked, looking from peaceful face to peaceful face and snickering at the bizarre sight of the bratty wind guy and angry dirt guy cuddling up a storm. I needed a picture of this!

“It's okay. I can wake them up. I've got this.” was the reply, but it seemed to be directed at himself as encouragement instead of at me.

It'd probably be fine, I reasoned. They were just sleeping. After snapping that picture of the two lovebirds, I carefully arranged one of Chanyeol's arms and one of Baekhyun's until they held hands. Call me a romantic, but they just didn't look happy they way they were. It might have been my hopeful imagination, but their expressions appeared softer.

As I walked back down the hall, I could have sworn that the air had grown a bit humid. I didn't mind the sticky feeling on my skin; it felt pretty nice not having to worry so much about accidentally causing damaging electrical shocks around me. The humidity absorbed a lot of the electrical impulses I naturally attracted.

It was weird though. Suho must have caused it, but why?

My house slipper suddenly squelched underneath me into a wet patch of carpet and I stepped back in surprise. Leading from the bathroom, was a glistening layer of water that slowly spread out down the hall, darkening the carpet as it went.

Suho wouldn't do this on purpose; wouldn't want to mess up his parents' home-

I ran up to the bathroom door, banging both fists on it hurriedly. Something was wrong. Something had to be wrong.

“Joonmyeon!” I shouted through the wood. “Open the door! Suho!” The sound of rushing water could be heard from the other side, but no friendly voice told me that everything was fine or under control.

I had to get in there. I had to. I just- I had to.

I looked back behind me, ready to get Jongin before remembering that he and everyone else was asleep. Water rushed over my socked toes faster and I got a different idea. Maybe he just needed a shock sent to him to distract him like I'd done many times before. Quickly, I tried my hardest to pull in as many charged particles in the air as possible, only to be stumped when the water in the air easily stole them from me.

Hoping he didn't kill me for frying his power cords, I reached for a nearby source of power – a built-in ceiling light that I couldn't quite touch, but could feel and harness the energy from the short distance between the ceiling and my own outstretched fingertips. I felt the spark immediately as the energy changed direction and overloaded in the bulb, exploding the glass over my head. Used to this experience, I already had an arm up to protect my head and eyes. The power flowed down through my fingers, swelling in my gut because I refused to release it until I had enough within me to really make an impact.

Perhaps somewhere along the way, I'd forgotten what this energy was for.

It was building and building, my eyes shocking open to gaze at the chaotic string of light above me. I felt drunk on power. There was so much of it reserved in this house, and even more could be found in the power lines connecting every house of the neighborhood, of many neighborhoods. An endless supply of power was waiting for me just beyond my fingertips.

A single drop of perspiration dripped down the very center of my back, caused by the humidity, a surprising and very ticklish reminder of the situation at hand. With difficulty, I tore off the connection I had to the house's power supply (I hoped this didn't run up the bills too much) and concentrated on keeping what I had contained so I could direct it all the right way. With the breaking of the connection, all the lights in the house sparked and blew out, throwing the hall in complete shadow, save for one flickering light that survived.

Keeping in all this wild energy was so tiring. My legs couldn't keep me up anymore and I fell down to my knees in the wet carpet, splashing water in all directions. I placed my hands out in front of me. They shook under the pressure I was directing towards them.

With a quick wish for this to work, I dug my hands into the puddle of water on the floor and let loose a storm like no other.

The lightning shot through the water in the floor, faster than the average guy could follow, but to me, it seemed to move in slow motion. It spread through the water on the floor all around, moving under the door with an extra push by me. I felt it make it's way across intricate tile work, every edge of the interlocking shapes becoming clear in my mind as I lost my senses to my power completely. In the bathroom, the water in the sink and the bathtub was running on high, sending cold water sloshing to the ground.

I couldn't find Suho, but that didn't mean he wasn't there.

After all, something was making the water move up.

I had to get in there-

In a split-second decision, I changed the direction of the energy I let loose, directing all that I could towards the lock on the door, hell-bent on melting the stupid thing. The last of the energy exhausted itself within the metal and water, and I stood on unstable legs. With a loud yell, I threw a kick upwards at the door right next to the melted lock, sending it flying open, the bottom edge sweeping out a sloshing wave inside that rushed back out over my ankles.

Joonmyeon really was in there, his body lying horizontal in mid-air, his head and feet leaning back as if he were suspended at the navel by cables. But there were no wires anywhere, just a rushing sphere of water encircling his body, recycling the same water over and over to continually lift, surround, and build to a greater size with incredible speed.

“Suho!” I stuck my arm towards the sphere, only to find it pushed back under the force of it's movement. The skin of my knuckles was grazed, but I didn't care. I still had to reach him and my power couldn't make sense of the way the water kept changing direction.

So I tried again, this time with desperation on my side.

I grabbed ahold of his shoulder through the chaos of sound and whirling pain and sent a quiet pulse of electricity, whatever I could muster up – I was surprised I was able to send anything out to him.

But that small little shock must have reached him. All at once, the water stopped and fell to the floor, taking me and Suho with it. We hit the ground hard with water all around us trying to find a place to go and settling on out the open door.

He coughed, and I sat up off his chest to give him room to breathe. He was coughing up a lot of water-

Had he been drowning himself?

“Suho?” I brushed his wet bangs back as he settled down and was rewarded with deep blue eyes that blinked up at me, slowly fading to their usual brown.

“Chen,” He groaned and tried to lift himself up on his arms, sliding on the wet floor, but I didn't let him fall back down. I caught him and brought him up to lean on my chest, surrounding him in a hug. Really, he deserved over a million hugs already for what he's done for me.

Not sure if I was allowed to ask what was wrong, I asked instead, “What can I do to help?”

“Just stay like this.” Suho rasped against my chest, bringing an arm of his own to wrap around my middle and grasp the back of my soaked shirt. “This is enough.”

I adjusted my grip to hold him tighter, waiting for the moment when he could talk to me about whatever it was that made him this way. "I think we destroyed your house." I said after a while, looking out the door to the flooded hallway with a single flickering light remaining. Water was still gushing from the bathtub, so I adjusted my grip to turn it off.

But he stopped me, saying, "Just leave it. I like the water."

"It's going to be an expensive clean-up; your parents won't be happy."

Suho tensed up around me. "It doesn't matter. They'll never see it." he said with a sigh, forcefully letting me go to sit slumped over in front of me. Quietly, I placed one of my hands over his own, letting him know I was still here for him, listening. "My parents aren't coming back, Chen. They sent me a text saying that they're leaving the house and the shop to me while they settle down in their dream home on the other side of the world without me." He let out a laugh that sounded more tired than anything. "They hate me so much that they can't even bother to see or talk to me before they abandon me. But it doesn't matter. Nothing matters."

I gave him a small moment to think before giving his hand a squeeze and saying, "You know, I learned something after being kicked out by my own family." Was he listening? Did he even care? It was hard to tell, but Suho's head tilted just slightly in my direction and I took that as a sign to continue. "Just like how you can't choose the name you're given at birth, you can't choose the family you start out with. But as you grow older, you're given that choice to change who you are and find out what you want. A name can be changed from Joonmyeon to Suho, from Jongdae to Chen, and-"

"And a family can be changed too." he finished for me. A warm smile peeked through his features as Suho looked up and squeezed my hand back. "I think I understand."

Nodding my head towards the dismal hallway, I reminded him, "Your real family is down there, the ones who can actually see that you are a very caring and loving guy." I coughed awkwardly at the shadows and dripping water. "That's not the most encouraging-looking hallway, but they're down there, I promise."

"Will you be my family, Chen?" he asked suddenly, studying me through water-logged locks of hair sticking to his forehead.

"Are you asking me to marry you?" I laughed.

Carefully, Suho moved a little closer. "Am I?"

"Are you?" My body moved closer too, though I couldn't remember making the decision to do so.

"I think I might be." he admitted. His arms moved upwards until his wet hands reached my neck, lightly insisting I move my head forwards to meet him.

But I hesitated. "We're too young to get married."

"So then in a few years?"

That seemed like a long time though. "A couple?" I suggested.

"Maybe just one year?" the man asked, and I let him pull me closer until our lips nearly touched. My heart was thrumming as if electricity ran through my veins instead of blood.

"Maybe just half a year?" I whispered.

"Tomorrow?"

We both laughed at that, the sound battling with the steady rush of water around us and the bathtub struggling to drain it away.

"What about Tao?" I asked when we calmed down some.

That beautiful smile of his faded. "Taozi started making his new family a long time ago." he explained, turning his head away. "I liked being his Joonma and I didn't want to ruin that, so I just let it be." Suho's arms began to slide off my neck, but I caught them and brought them back up

"You don't have to feel guilty for loving someone else. Really. You don't have to love me. Having you in my life is enough."

Suho's eyebrows furrowed in confusion and he looked up at me. "I implied that I'd marry and you think I don't love you?"

Well, now it was my turn to be confused. And happy. Really, stupidly happy. "You love me?" I asked hopefully.

"Do I?"

"Do you?" Not giving me any time to laugh or so much as smile, Suho finally closed the distance between us and brought our lips crashing together. My arms automatically found a place around his waist, as if they had been holding this man for years. It was so perfect.

But I was the one who broke the kiss first.

"No." Very, very reluctantly, I pushed him away. "No, no." I kept repeating this, more for myself than anything else.

"No?" he asked. He looked so scared. That wasn't my intention at all-

"If you don't regret that you got stuck with me, then what was that face you made while talking about Tao?"

"I made a face?"

"You looked sad." I reiterated. "What's going on, Suho? Did you lie to me? I promise you, it's okay if you love him instead-"

 "I didn't lie." Suho flicked a wrist absentmindedly in the direction of the bathtub and then the sink and both faucets turned off, leaving a gurgling sound of draining water to echo throughout the pipes in the house. He swirled the fingers of one hand in the air gracefully, slowly gathering up the water in my hair and clothes. It was a very strange feeling to suddenly feel the cloth unstick from my skin and my hair rise back into place as if it had never been drenched flat.

He was stalling for time, I could tell, as we both knew that neither of us minded the water.

The small orb of water Suho had gathered dropped to the floor with a splash as he clenched his fist and set it in his lap. "I think he knows." he said at last. "He figured it out or maybe someone told him, but I think Tao knows what I did to him. He's avoiding me like he knows. I don't know how I can face him."

"With an apology?" I suggested. "Though I don't think you'll need it; the past is in the past. Although, who knows if he truly understands that, I mean, he controls time after all."

"He does control time..." Suho agreed with a strange look of epiphany crossing his face.

So I corrected that with a quick, yet strong shock, silently delighting in the soft gasp and the way he suddenly sat up straight. "Don't get any strange ideas." I warned him.

"Fine." he laughed, making his still-soaking-wet-self comfortable in my arms again. "But you need to be careful, Chen. If you keep shocking me like that, you'll end up in my bedroom."

My heart swelled at the soft kiss he left on my lips and I couldn't help but ask afterwards, "Is that a promise?"

Suho seemed to pause and his hands slid slowly down to my chest. In the barest of whispers, he questioned back teasingly, "Is it?"

***

Author Note:

I've been getting a lot of overtime at work and I started a new fic too, so basically the time I have to work on this keeps getting cut down. gahhhhhh

I never abandon fics though, so don't ever worry about that.

Also, I came across a charity birthday project for Chen on tumblr to bring access of clean water to more places in Africa. And here's the actual post I found.