It's all Jongdae's fault. If he hadn't forced Sehun to sneak out with him almost every school night just so he could sing at bars, then Sehun's parents wouldn't have forced him to spend the summer before junior year in-

"-Siberia?" Jongdae shrieks, rolling off his bed. "Why are they making you go to Siberia?"

Sehun scowls. "I don't know, maybe it's because a certain hyung didn't want to go alone to sing in some dingy drunkard's castle." His scowl deepens as Jongdae howls. "Stop laughing, Jongdae! This is all because of you!"

"Oh my god," Jongdae hiccups, wiping at his eyes. "Siberia. How did they think of that? Where are you even going to stay?"

"At my cousin Chanyeol's house. My uncle works with Russian scientists on atoms or something, so they have a place up there." Sehun cringes to think about spending three months with Chanyeol, but he guesses that he deserves it. When it comes to Jongdae, Sehun's far too weak.

"This is gold," Jongdae croons. "Oh, man. The mighty Oh Sehun, exiled by the kingdom and forced to live with a cousin on crack."

"Shut up!" Sehun whines. "It isn't funny! I have to spend the entire summer in Siberia!"

Of course, Jongdae finds it hilarious, and he's still laughing when Sehun kicks him out of his own house.

Sehun groans and bangs his head against the top of his laptop screen. All of his social media- Facebook, Cyworld, Twitter, everything- are blocked.

Thanks, parents. Thanks, Jongdae, you ty excuse for a best friend.

It isn't the same on his smartphone though, and Sehun grins as he scrolls past a shared video of Kim Jongin breakdancing on the table of some rich kid's house with red Solo cups littering the scene behind him. Typical. Jongin is so gonna get hell for that when photos of the party pop up around school. It usually doesn't take long for school officials to figure out what's going on with the students.

Sehun kills half the battery of his phone aimlessly scrolling through his various social media sites and sighs as he turns it off. He's been in Siberia for three days and he's already miserable.

The teenager ignores Chanyeol’s offers of video games and rolls about aimlessly in his bed. He can’t imagine spending the whole summer in this misery.

“How is it over there?”

Sehun lets out a groan.

“You piece of , this is all because of you,” he hisses, jabbing the laptop screen with his pointer finger. Jongdae cackles back at him, the skin near his eyes crinkling with his smile. Sehun’s parents forgot that Skype existed and now he’s unsure if it’s a good thing or not. Jongdae rolls off his bed again in laughter and Sehun’s eyes darken. Definitely not a good thing.

“Sorry,” Jongdae pants, clambering back onto the mattress. “Just got a little carried away there. So. How is life in Siberia?”

He promptly starts giggling and Sehun slams his laptop shut.

“Go to hell, Kim Jongdae,” he mutters.

Their next Skype session a week later is considerably better and this time Jongdae looks anxious. His left elbow is propped up on his desk and half of his face is smushed into his left hand. Jongdae’s room is dark, almost to the point where Sehun can’t see him at all, save for the light spilling from the window.

“Is anything wrong?” Sehun asks after ten minutes of Jongdae’s half-hearted replies.

His best friend forces a smile. “Yeah, everything’s fine.” He moves his left hand a bit and that’s when Sehun sees it- dark, ugly bruises scattered about on his cheek, obviously not self-inflicted. Sehun swallows.

“Jongdae, what happened?” he questions calmly.

“What?”

“I can see them. The bruises, on your cheek. What happened.”

Sehun can see Jongdae’s pupils dilating as the older boy stutters, “N-nothing, I just-”

“Bull,” Sehun declares. “Did Jong come after you again?”

The way Jongdae resignedly removes his face from his palm answers everything.

Sehun slams his fists down onto the keyboard.

“Jongdae, when did this happen?”

“Yesterday,” the older boy says quietly. “They followed me home from the music store.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

Jongdae laughs. It’s different from the one he gasps out when falling out of his bed or pinching Sehun’s stomach. This laugh is sad in a strange way.

“What would you have done, anyway?” Jongdae muses. “You’re hundreds of miles away, Sehun. You have to accept that there’ll be times when you won’t be here to protect me.” He picks at his nails. “Besides,” he mumbles, “I’m too reliant on you. I keep dragging you down with my problems, don’t I?”

Sehun shakes his head. “It’s not like that, Jongdae.”

“Oh, come on,” his best friend snaps. “You haven’t had a friend besides me since freshman year. No girls want to date you because you’re by my side all the time. You walk with a tiny limp because Tao broke your ankle last year just for being friends with a , how am I not dragging you down?”

“Don’t use that word,” Sehun says.

“What? ?” Jongdae repeats, and Sehun winces.

“I am one,” Jongdae says, softer. “I’m a . God, Sehun, I’m not just dragging you down, I’m drowning you.” He looks up at the camera and Sehun swallows at the tears collecting in the corners of Jongdae’s eyes.

“Stop it,” he says. “Don’t do this to yourself, Jongdae. I don’t need anyone besides you, okay? Girls can wait until college. And Tao was expelled, it doesn’t matter.” He stares directly into the camera. “Don’t you dare call yourself a , Jongdae. Don’t let anyone else do it to you. You’re worth more than that.”

Jongdae sniffs and rubs his fingers gently over the bruises. “I’m going to put ice on this,” he says. After a moment of hesitation, he adds, “Thanks, Hun. I needed that. And sorry for losing my , I’m just stressed.”

“It’s alright,” Sehun replies. “I’ll talk to you later.”

He closes his laptop and spreads out on his bed, letting out a deep breath. He hasn’t seen the vulnerable side of Jongdae in a long time. The shorter boy had only let himself go once the first time Jongin punched him after finding out Jongdae was gay, and Sehun forgot that there were tears waiting to be shed.

“Hey.”

He glances up to see Chanyeol in the doorway.

“You wanna go to a club?” his cousin grins. “Lots of Koreans our age. I rap there sometimes, too. You in?”

Sehun frowns. It’s no secret that his nineteen year old cousin goes clubbing but it never appealed to him to join. But he’s stressed, and bored, and (usually) sensible Jongdae isn’t here to stop him.

“Okay.”

Jongdae presses a cold compress to his left cheek and sighs when he notices Sehun’s Skype status is offline. He should’ve expected it. Sehun’s probably exploring Siberia right now, and besides, Jongdae was the one who ended their awkward conversation. He shouldn’t have talked at all. He shouldn’t have moved his hand. He shouldn’t have answered Sehun’s Skype call.

Then again, it’s always been hard for him to refuse Sehun or keep anything from the younger boy. Maybe because they’ve been together for so long.

Or maybe, Jongdae thinks glumly, it’s because you’re totally in love with him.

The situation he’s stuck in is so cliche he could make a drama out of it. Best friends, right? Friend A likes Friend B, who’s too oblivious to notice. Friend A continues to like Friend B and confesses, only to get turned down. They drift apart. Friend A contracts cancer and Friend B loses his memory in a car crash. They die. Wait. Yeah. Sounds about right.

Jongdae sighs again, eyes drifting to the space above his desk where he has amassed a collection of pictures. All of them include Sehun.

Swimming at the community pool, arms around each other’s waists, sporting matching skinned knees from failed attempts at skateboarding, swinging at the playground, and most recently, the selca they took on Jongdae’s phone before Sehun got on the plane to Siberia.

Jongdae bites down on his lip as the dread washes through him.

One more year.

One more year of high school and he’ll be able to run away from his feelings.

A brochure to Cornell College in Iowa lays on his bed, and Jongdae smiles as a tear traces down his cheek.

I don’t need anyone besides you, okay?

Jongdae chuckles before picking up the brochure.

“You will.”

Grinding against a total stranger isn’t as awkward as Sehun thought it would be. Perhaps it’s because he’s kind of drunk and the strobe lights are dizzying and the total stranger is totally hot. Sehun’s never felt this free in his life, and he wonders if this is how it’s like to be Kim Jongin.

“Korean?” she purrs into his ear. Her blonde hair brushes against it.

“Yeah.”

“There are a lot of them,” she says. Her English is slurring together and Sehun tries to understand. “How old are you?”

A man comes up to her and says something in Russian but the woman waves him off.

“Seventeen,” Sehun answers.

She smirks and rests her hand on the back of his neck. “Not even legal.” She tucks a blonde strand behind her ear. “That’s okay. I’m not, either.”

He goes home with her.

A/N: i'm the angriest person in the world i s2g. the indents for each paragraph are all dumb because sometimes there are indents and sometimes there aren't and idk that really bothers me, so if it distracts you from reading i'm so sorry. i copy & paste all this from google drive so yeah

((i have a tendency to write angst whoops))

and trintrin, i think you're getting more sehun right now than jongdae //sobs. your bias will be bullied and heartbroken here ;~; oh well i can always write something else orz