Sehun groans as he peels his eyes open. The light is much too harsh on his face. Mornings are, no doubt, not nice to him. Is it morning? The light seems too warm to be early morning. Yawning sends a shiver down his spine.

He rubs his eyes. "This is weird, don't you think?" Oh god, is that his voice? It's raspy; he coughs a couple times to clear it.

He hears -- and feels -- Tao laugh behind him. "Agreed."

"Tao?"

"Yes?" Goodness, Tao's voice sounds endearing, laced with a sweet fondness that he reserves only for Sehun. Even at this time of day, he's alert and awake, ready to watch over Sehun like an angel.

"Your hip bone is really tough."

Tao laughs again. "Sorry," he says as he shifts his position so that his back is against the couch cushion (the couch? Sehun thinks. Ah yes, they'd fallen asleep in the library) and Sehun is flat on top of him. "Better?"

Sehun folds Tao's hands on his stomach and wiggles a little before settling. "Better."

Tao sighs with content. "Are you really going to go back to sleep?"

"Shh...." Sehun raises a finger to his lips with closed eyes. "Don't ruin the moment."

He loves making Tao laugh, feeling his body beneath him move and breathe.

Tao slowly rises to a sitting position, bringing Sehun up with him until he is basically in Tao's lap. "Come on, let's make coffee."

Sehun holds on tightly to the fingers on his stomach and pouts. "Fine."

Pouting? He's pouting? Sehun finds himself shocked at his own attitude and quickly reverts to his normal facial stance. He mentally shakes his head, embarrassed at his own behavior. He wills the color in his cheeks to go away.

Too late though. Tao had already noticed. The older boy kisses his hair lightly and remarks, "Childish."

Sehun is too flustered to reply.

Tao's arms snake around his waist, a warm contrast to the cool skin under his thin tee, and instantaneously, his cheeks turn a shade of pretty pink. Well, pretty in Tao's eyes.

"It's so easy to make you redden," Tao says in his ear.

Sehun swears he could die at the sound of that.

"Please shut up," he says, pinching his eyebrows together in concentration. "I have a pot of hot coffee in my hands and you are very distracting."

Tao presses his smile against the nape of Sehun's neck and the latter lets out a squeak of surprise.

"Are you," Tao holds back a grin, "ticklish?"

"No," Sehun denies immediately. Just the neck, he thinks. But he would never reveal that.

Sehun walks out of Tao's hold and over to the other counter, stopping in confusion. "Did we get more sugars?"

"Yes, of course."

"But, how?"

"Either Wu Yi Fan or a servant goes out to buy more supplies every other week. The house needs to be in full stock or else it can't function properly." Sehun hears the creak of the bar stool as Tao takes a seat and spins in his chair.

He tips a sugar into his coffee without another word.

"You know," he begins. "I've been thinking.

"That can't be good."

"Don't taunt someone with hot coffee in their hands, Tao."

"My apologies. Go on."

"It's been a while since the last attack," he lets his sentence end lazily on his tongue. "Maybe it's time to let me out of the house. And go to school. Again."

There's a silence. When the pause becomes too unbearably long, Sehun turns around to glance at Tao's reaction.

Tao has his hands folded in front of his mouth, his eyebrows furrowed, his eyes boring holes into Sehun's own. Sehun gulps.

"I just... I just thought...." Sehun offers, but he can't find the words to justify his belief.

"No." Tao's voice is stern and final. "Absolutely not."

But nothing's going to happen!, He wants to say. It's lies! It's meaningless! The time spent -- no, wasted -- here in this house is taking a toll on his life. He's losing his sanity. Everything he does, says, it all shows his slowly increasing madness.

Like falling in love with his future murderer.

Sehun nods. Nothing can be said.

The man in Tao's room is not a welcoming sight.

"Get out."

"Grumpy today, dear?"

"Yi Fan, I said get out." Tao opens the door and waves his hand towards it, trying to will the butler to please leave and never come back.

"Watch yourself, dear." Yi Fan stands, glaring, and walks over to him from the bed where he'd been sitting upon. He slowly grabs onto Tao's neck with one hand, closing the door behind him with the other.

"Ah, ." Tao tries to pry the hand off of his throat, tugging at Yi Fan's fingers. But the strength drains with his oxygen.

The fingers curl tighter and tighter until Tao is struggling, gasping for breath.

"Getting rather impulsive, are we? You never like this when we raised you." Yi Fan loosens his hand just enough for Tao to breathe. "What do you think you're doing?"

"St...op," Tao says between chokes of air.

"ty." Yi Fan's eyes are mere centimeters away from Tao's; he can see the deadly instinct in those pupils. "You're bullting your assignment."

Yi Fan never swears. He's always calm, collected, sending messages through an icy voice that chills the soul down to the core. A threatening smugness that makes the most powerful of people fall to their knees.

Tao grits his teeth. "It's not...." He finally manages to tear Yi Fan's hand off his neck, having to hold it away from him to keep it from suffocating him again. Yi Fan pushes against him, but their powers are matched, bodies at a standstill. "It's not worth it anymore."

"Bull," Yi Fan growls. "Stop ing around with your make-believe romantic ideals."

"It isn't bull," Tao says through gritted teeth, unable to stop himself.

"Ha!" Yi Fan throws his head back, lips curling into a mocking smile. "Then go ahead, dear." He flings his arm to a side, out of Tao's hold, and shoves past him.

He walks out coolly, the last thing he says being, "If you can't, then I'll kill him myself."

A shiver runs down Tao's spine.

He's out the door in seconds, running to find Sehun.

It's only when his eyes hurt does he use them. Other than that, he has no reason too. His sight isn't bad, he doesn't necessarily need the prescription, but glasses feel almost natural to wear. Stylistically, or for their intended medical reasons.

He's sick of all the free time he has, not doing anything, not even work. And so here he is, sitting in the desk chair in his room with a blank notebook in front of him and the black frame glasses in hand.

He slips them on right as Tao throws the door open.

"Yes?" Sehun stutters out, shocked at the violent entrance.

Tao runs up and grabs his shoulders. "I'm not letting you out of my sight for the next day, no, week. No, I.... Are you wearing glasses?"

"Um, yes? Do you like them?"

Tao plucks them right off of Sehun's face. "Yes. I do. Never wear them again. Like I was saying-"

"What? Look, you never let me out of your sight anyway. And I need those," he picks them up and puts them back on. "My eyes are starting to hurt."

Tao gets on his knees to look closer at Sehun's face. "What? Are you okay?"

Worry. Concern.

"Huh? Yeah, I'm fine. I was reading earlier, after you said you needed to go to your room, and my eyes got tired." He stares blankly at Tao. "So, why the sudden devotion to following me everywhere? Not that you weren't before already."

Tao pauses before reaching out and hugging Sehun, giving him a squeeze and holding him in his arms.

"I, uh? Okay?" Sehun hugs back, still not quite sure what's going on.

"Don't worry about it." Tao pulls back, taking a seat on the floor and leaning against Sehun's leg. "And don't do anything without telling me first." He gives Sehun a stern look.

"All right, I suppose. Why are you sitting on the floor? You're acting like a dog. Go get a chair."

"That requires me leaving the room."

"And?"

"That means you'd be here alone, Sehun."

Sehun shakes his head with a sigh and picks up his pen. "You're so weird, you know that? So weird."

Sehun stretches his arms out with a grunt. Beside him, Tao does the same. He'd been writing, taking notes and whatnot, for about three hours now, taking the occasional break here and there.

He cracks his knuckles, a bad habit he'd picked up somewhere in his middle school days. "Tao, it's almost dinner time. Let's go downstairs."

A thought courses through Tao's mind: Poison.

"No!" He jumps up, thoroughly giving Sehun a fright. "I mean, let's not."

"Why?" Sehun asks. Not that he is hungry. The house, it seems, has numbed his senses. Staying in there all the time, he has nothing to do to use up all the energy stored in his body.

"Aren't you tired after all that?" Tao cups Sehun's face with his hands.

Sehun rubs his eyes. "I guess." Hardly. Mostly stiff, but not to the extent that he can say he's "tired". He says it for the sake of saying it.

Tao walks over to the door, closes it, and silently locks it without Sehun's knowledge. He doesn't want him asking why, doesn't want to tell him why. "Then why not stay up here for a bit?"

"Like, take a nap?"

"Why not?" Tao sits down on the bedside. Sehun walks over and lies down beside him.

"Because I might end up sleeping through the whole night."

"Is that a problem?"

Sehun turns to look at him. He wonders what's going on with his companion, all of a sudden acting strangely and telling him to do things out of the ordinary.

"Well, no."

"Then come," Tao lies down and waves him over with a hand. Sehun obliges, scooting over and letting Tao envelop him in his arms once more. He flips onto his side, Tao's chest to his back, and hands on his waist. He doesn't want Tao to see his endless blush. He must learn to stop blushing so easily, it's becoming a nuisance. To not be able to even control his own physical features makes him uneasy.

"Am I doing it right?" Tao asks softly as he rests his forehead onto the back of Sehun's neck. "The whole love thing. Social interaction?"

Sehun cracks a smile. "Just fine." He feels Tao's lips give him a light kiss on the nape of his neck, cold against hot skin.

At least he's good at hugs. Sehun can't argue with that.

Blankets fold beneath them. Fading light. Snowflakes falling outside. A winter dream in the very essence of his own room. A perfection in the midst of an icy chill. A blatant display of affection; a secret shared by them and only them. A whisper of innocence tainted with a trail of deceit, deceit for the protection of the ignorant.

He must make the sweet moments last lest they disappear before Sehun can even blink.

With a warmth in his heart spreading to the very tips of his fingers, Sehun drifts off without a care in the world, though he would never know the reason to that happiness if Tao had anything to do with it. What he’d do to keep Sehun from ever knowing Yi Fan’s role in this, the butler he’d had and trusted for all his life. The connection between the two family lines broken by an act of human greed. No, it simply couldn’t happen. He'd make sure of it.

No matter what.

Somewhere between exhaustion and the brink of consciousness in the middle of the night, Sehun mutters "you're so huggy" without even knowing it himself.

Tao chuckles, having awoken the moment Sehun had done that sharp intake of breath that he always does right when he wakes up (and that Tao had put to memory). He tightens his grip around Sehun. "I'm claiming you as my own."

In his dreams, Sehun sees roses.

It is Yi Fan's duty to loyally serve and aid the young master of the Oh house. A descendant of the Wu family, ever serving the Oh heir line for several generations and more to come.

It is, however, in his interest to do quite the opposite.

His family has done enough. With the higher-ups to back him up, he need not worry. He'd developed his own goals over time, a simple butler gone to the most twisted corners of his mind. Someone as dedicated as him has a place in the will; the butler always does.

It is always money.

Technically speaking, this should have been simple. The boy doesn't bat a suspicious eyelash at anything Yi Fan does. He's much too naive for that.

No, it should have been easier than simple. It should have been complete by now.

Yet here he is, waiting in the dining room for a young master who is, apparently, not going to show up.

Unusual for someone so used to routine.

Yi Fan has everything set up on the table in front of him. Not a thing, not a fork or a napkin or a tablecloth corner, out of place. But all is not well.

Of course, he's using the first of many methods he has stored in that malicious brain of his, and this is only the simplest one. Too many loopholes, too many possibilities. But it didn't hurt to try. After all, he could always just blame it on the "threats".

There is more than enough poison in that one dish to kill twenty grown men, not to mention a dash of it on the napkin and utensils all designated for Sehun. But the boy is alive. And another vial is wasted.

What a pity.

Yi Fan leaves the room, clenching and unclenching his fist. He has an assassin to strangle.

[Same day: morning]

Jongin goes to school with a headache.

He hadn't slept a wink last night, having thought over the whole lunch-with-Kyungsoo thing from a million different perspectives in his head. It's all very strange to him, but he doesn't know what to say to put an end to that too.

He hates being the one to end things. It's not in his nature. He starts things, not finishes them. He starts friendships, relationships. He starts projects and new ideas all by himself. He is a person who appreciates the chance of a new beginning.

His morning classes pass like a breeze. He stares out the window as per usual, only the thing in his mind isn't a buzzing nothingness, it's the face of a short, pale boy who used to feed him every day, give him lectures when he did something wrong, push him to study, reward him with light kisses and the intertwining of their fingertips.

He's thinking of the boy he used to love with all his heart, and now loves with only part of it.

And now he keeps remembering the beginning.

Do Kyungsoo was a hard spot in his easy life. Jongin had the best friend, Oh Sehun. He had the nice family, a loving mother and a working father. He had the decent grades with little to no effort. He had dancing and singing talent, a successful future ahead of him for any career he had in mind. But there he was, uptight Do Kyungsoo who never smiled at him, never looked him in the eye when he asked questions.

All in all, he simply didn't understand. Girls loved him, he was an ideal type. Sehun was a quiet boy with a unbending spine and tough expectations. Adults wanted teenagers to be kind to them, teachers wanted someone who respected their work. Hell, even dogs just wanted some sort of attention.

So then why not Do Kyungsoo? 

He eased him out of that style though. Asked Kyungsoo for his number. Texted him about a study session, possibly at his house, though he really didn't need it. Called him about a summer festival in the city, quite out of the blue. Met him outside of school to get coffee a couple times. No, Kim Jongin would not stand to have someone he could not understand. 

Over time, he found out they had a lot of the same interests. They liked watching the same shows, found school to be a much too simple activity to fill their hours, ordered the same coffee at the same time and laughed about it. 

Oh hell.

The one person Jongin couldn't understand had become the most understandable person of all, the most relatable. It made Jongin not understand himself. Wasn't he overconfident, lovable Jongin? The boy with a high-class attitude and laid-back soul? 

Do Kyungsoo gave him flutters in his stomach, gave him heartaches at night, made him smile in the middle of -- could it be? -- math class with the mere thought of a heart-shaped smile and soothing voice. 

But Do Kyungsoo was changing with him. He became more approachable, and eventually, he went up to Jongin first to ask him to get coffee one day. So Jongin confessed. 

Kim Jongin did not end things. Never. He started relationships.

The words were so easy to say once he looked into those doe eyes and plucked them out of his heart. "I really like you."

And Do Kyungsoo, the uptight, studious straight-edge, turned away from him at the speed of light to hide his oh so adorable pink cheeks and say, "I really like you too" with a squeak.

Jongin vowed that he was the happiest man alive that day.

The lunch bell rings and Jongin awakens with a start. Reminiscing, he'd fallen asleep right there with his elbow on the desk and his head in his hand. 

He awaits the coming of that presence.

The class hushes upon the arrival of uptight Do Kyungsoo, who made his way to Jongin's desk as if nothing is out of place.

The boy he can no longer understand.

Even more amazing than handing him lunch now, Kyungsoo manages to ask Jongin how his day was.

"Typical," Jongin answers. But he means nothing behind it. He must remain Kim Jongin, the undefeatable. Kim Jongin, the ever-carefree troublemaker. 

Kim Jongin, the ex, the back of his mind whispers.

So he talks. Kyungsoo's stare drags words out of his mouth, words he didn't mean to spit out. He talks about the weather ("damn cold", and Kyungsoo clicks his tongue because he doesn't appreciate unecessary swearing), talks about his dogs, talks about his new favorite food from that new restaurant downtown (and as he says that, Kyungsoo appears to make a mental note. As if to prove him right, he says to Jongin, "Why don't I try making that for tomorrow?" Jongin nods. He hadn't meant to bring it up so that Kyungsoo would make it. He didn't mean to.)

He avoids talking about Sehun. Talking about his feelings. 

He asks Kyungsoo how his day was, at last.

Kyungsoo says, "Grey."

They finish the rest of lunch in silence.

That night, Jongin hauls himself out of bed once he hears his father's snores coming from his parents' bedroom. He escapes out the window, climbs up over the fence between his and Sehun's house, up a tree and balconies to the rooftop.

He waits in his black t-shirt and flannel pants.

Waits some more.

Fights back sneezes and shivers.

Sehun does not come.

He returns home feeling indifferent.

He is Kim Jongin, the once-was and never-will-be.

A/N Hi everyone! Happy birthday to our beautiful maknae, Oh Sehun! :) May he have a wonderful birthday ^u^

I wrote this chapters in parts and had a really hard time in the middle. But, thank you sooo much to my friend, J (whom has requested that I not say her name lol), for helping me out of a huuuuge writing rut. Thank goodness to her T^T

Thank you to all the subscribers and votes! TT^TT What would I do without you all... I love reading all your comments; the support and ideas and the people who feel with the story. It's a huge reward to the time I put into writing all this. :) So thank you, I love you, and I hope you liked it :*

P.S. Wow Overdose teaser is intense ._. they look so..wow... lol expect me to use Overdose gifs for future chapters heheh