"Sehun, do you love me?" 

Luhan speaks these words too many times a day, too frequent to ignore and perhaps too much to repent Sehun; because Sehun didn't love him, not one bit. 

"Yeah, I do," Sehun would then mutter carelessly, distractedly tapping on the phone, "I do, Lu." 

Luhan would look at the younger, dejected and maybe a little angry, every pain imaginable painted across his features because they both knew somewhere in their detached hearts, the marriage was dying. 

He didn't know when it happened, how or why but it was evident every single day, Sehun was drifting a little further, caring a little less and falling a little deeper in love with someone else. Luhan wanted to scream at him, hit him, just make him feel a fragment of the pain he inflicted upon Luhan but Sehun was unfeeling. 

But still, Luhan never did any of those, for the sole reason of how irrevocably in love he still was with the younger, how helplessly he grasped on so tightly onto the thread left of their relationship; but when you grasp too hard on a thread, it snaps eventually. 

"Let's...let's go to bed, Sehun," He softly whispers, "It's been a long day." 

"Oh, Lu, you should go in first, I have business to attend to." 

Luhan knows what it meant; Sehun would stay up 'a little late, 'accidentally fall asleep on the sofa' because he never wanted to sleep with Luhan anymore.  

--- 

  Sometimes, Luhan heard fragments of his conversation with a boy he could only grasp as 'Kim' when he crosses over to Sehun's office to make a fruitless attempt at 'hey, do you wanna have lunch at the cafe and something?' but it never works out, and sometimes he never really gets past the door. Maybe the staffs think it's weird for him to not walk in the office but stand outside, eavesdropping but the way pity painted across their features and sympathy radiating from their body postures told Luhan that maybe ‘Kim’ had already visited the office; perhaps one too many times.

   Then on a day where Seoul skies were crying silver ribbons on pedestrian streets and seeping through tar roads, Luhan decides to visit Sehun’s office again, and Luhan doesn’t know this yet but the visits started as caring visits though now they’re more of a daily check to catch Sehun with his new flame; and this time Luhan hit the jackpot.

  Sehun’s office was empty except for the fact a young man, perhaps the same age as Sehun, tapping silently on his phone, sitting on the seat across what had meant to be Sehun’s desk; Luhan instantly feels the ice wrapping it’s claws on his heart and breathing quicken, but he sees how this filthy creature had managed to snatch Sehun up, with his undeniably youthful features and dark hair, sharped defined contours that lead up in perfect precision to his jaw and the body of a dancer, how could he not?

“Hello?” Luhan softly taps him on the shoulder, “Where’s Mr. Oh?”

“Oh Sehun went to—” Then he looks up and Luhan sees his lips for the first time, did Sehun enjoy pressing his lips against them? But Luhan pushes away the questions, perhaps this was just a business associate, perhaps not, “Oh, are you Sehun’s partner?”

“Yes, Luhan,” Luhan tries to smile and shake his hand, “And how may I address you?”

“I’m…Kim…Jongin,” Luhan breathes in and out slowly because he knew who Kim Jongin was; Kim Jongin, the contact on Sehun’s phone that he called one too many times, Kim Jongin, the boy whom Sehun specially picked out a Rolex watch to be gifted to him, Kim Jongin the business associate, Kim Jongin the ‘newly recruited, young and extremely talented’ associate whom Sehun would work with a lot, Kim Jong In.

But just as Luhan was about to reply, Sehun comes barging in, panting and eyes opened wide, “Oh…Lu, didn’t I tell you? I’ll eat lunch by myself, or with my business partners from now on.”

The younger thinks maybe Luhan doesn’t see his next move, but the elder does, and he sees how Sehun quickly glances sharply at Kim Jongin and how they’re gazes send a thousand frantic messages, ‘he found out’ ‘he saw you, now just lie your way out’ ‘there’s no turning back, why can’t you just tell him about us?’ ‘it isn’t the right time’, Luhan knows.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Sehun,” Luhan grins, or maybe his lips curve up in a weird fashion in attempts to push down the fact he was dying inside, or how his screams were silent but loud in his ears, “I’ll be going now, see you at home.”

And as Luhan turned and left, Sehun calls a little behind him, “I’ll be home a little late! Business stuff.”

And further that day as Luhan silently cries and screams in his small, office restroom and how he tries to stop drowning in acid betrayal or the bitter gunpowder of ‘he lied straight to your face’ , the only thing Luhan can see and hear is Kim Jongin’s rotten features and Sehun’s lies replaying on and on.

Business stuff.

---

So why weren’t they going to get a divorce?

Pride.

Luhan remembers how all his family and friends had told him, ‘It won’t work out, Lu’ ‘Do you know how it’s illegal?’ ‘For God’s sake, get a girl and start a family’ ‘It won’t work out well, it never does, just forget about it’ ‘One of you are going to realize that this was just a fling and then you’d be in trouble’ ‘Would you choose the disgusting boy or your family, Luhan? Choose.’

And Luhan had chosen Sehun; how they had moved from Incheon into Seoul, bought a little apartment and promised their little forever with each other, how they just needed each other to survive for the rest of their life, that their love would prevail and strengthened by each day, how they ignored all the bull Korea traditions and broke the rules and made their own because they loved each other.

But the love was gone.

Gone when Sehun decided that Luhan wasn’t enough.

Gone when Sehun laid his hands on another man.

Gone when it drowned in Luhan’s tears.

Gone when it dissolved in Luhan’s screams.

Gone.

And like how love turned into nothing, Luhan’s tears turned into vengeance.

Perhaps a little wrath wrapped in a lot of pain, Sehun was going to pay.

---

This time around, marriage wasn’t love and flowers; it was a game of who could find the better partner, outside.

Luhan safely knows how Sehun is still with Kim Jongin and how he checks his phone to see Jongin’s ‘I’m tired of hiding, let’s make this official’ ‘You don’t even wear your ring’ ‘Do you need me to ing tear away your marriage certificate?’.

And perhaps, Luhan’s found his partner; but it wasn’t ever, out of love. It was out of pure jealousy and the massive need for Sehun to drink, swallow and choke on his own medicine; it was the fire in Luhan that burned everything he was into ashes and everything around it.

Maybe it’s when Luhan steps into the bar and later on the night he walks out drunk and in the hands of a stranger, a stranger that’s not a stranger to him, but maybe a partner; a partner where there was no love in between or passion burning in their kisses but lust with each and wrath in the moans.

That’s who Byun Baekhyun was; that’s who Byun Baekhyun was going to be when Luhan texts him more and more each day so desperately thinking he’s fallen for Baekhyun but if he really did why would Sehun flash across his thoughts when he’s glistened with sweat and bent over against Baekhyun or the throbbing guilt his heart beats with whenever he comes home at 1am and when he feels his heart break a little more when Sehun isn’t even home yet; or how they both knew their marriage was not working out and they both were doing wrong, but no one said a thing.

Maybe it’s because Luhan wants to let go of the thread but the thread wasn’t just in his hands but tied around his heart by a dead knot.

---

Luhan could name a thousand reasons why he fell in love and still is with Oh Sehun because up till now no matter how many times Byun Baekhyun comes through his screams and moans and groans, Oh Sehun is still what’s shrieking in his heart.

  Because Oh Sehun was the only thing Luhan could love, and loved the elder, Oh Sehun was the only one he could laugh with and his heart opened up to, Oh Sehun was the only person left he loved when his parents fell out of their own marriage, and how he fell into deep depression, how the cuts across his arms won’t ever leave, how the dried tears on his cheeks kept reappearing nights after nights.

 Because Oh Sehun held him tight once and whispered urgently how ‘we won’t end up like them, your parents. We won’t, we’ll be forever, I promise’, but the promises were as empty as his heart and they did end up like his parents or worse, but at the end of the day, Oh Sehun was the only person he loved in the long run.

Somehow, everyone Luhan love’s always leaves, everyone.

---

“You know how this…isn’t working anymore?”

“It’ll work, I’ll make it work, Sehun. Stay with me.”

“No…Lu, listen, I—“

“No, you listen. Give me some time.”

Luhan tried, Luhan tried to save the marriage at one point he desperately tried to bring back the sweet kisses and warm hugs, he tried so hard to bring back the ‘I love you’s’ and ‘Never ever leave me’ but he couldn’t.

Then Byun Baekhyun came along.

“Baekhyun, you’d never leave me, won’t you?”

“You’re speaking as if we’re in love,” Baekhyun laughs coldly.

“We’re…not?”

“Luhan,” Baekhyun’s serious now, staring intently into Luhan’s eyes, “You’re damaged, broken. You’re not in love with me. You’re doing this because you’re ty husband did this, we’re not in love.”

“No, you’re wrong,” Luhan starts to shake his head furiously, “This was never about Sehun, this was us. We’re in love, we are. We were in love the moment you kissed me, Byun Baekhyun.”

But Baekhyun could only protest halfway before Luhan brought his lips upon Baekhyun’s and poured everything he felt into it; the unshed tears he so wanted to cry out but he’s run out of them, the unsaid whispers of how he was tired of every ing thing that’s going on, and maybe the false proclaims of how he was in love with Baekhyun, but really wasn’t.

That night, when Luhan lied next to Baekhyun, both their clothes on the floor, on the table and anywhere else but on them, maybe it’s a little intentional, a little purposeful and fully made to crush Sehun when he makes Baekhyun take a photo of them both, unclothed, lying on the bed, together.

Send.

Pending.

Read.

---

The games begin.

  Terribly, helplessly damaged and no longer hiding the fact they were adulterous, perhaps how Luhan comes home to a screaming Sehun, hands grasped onto his phone, a familiar photo of Luhan and Baekhyun on the bed, his mouth shrieking words Luhan doesn’t want to hear but does anyway, and maybe it sounds a bit like, ‘What the was this? Luhan, don’t you walk away now, you’re telling me what the happened when you didn’t come home for two whole days, you ’.

And that’s when Luhan turns around and stares right at the younger, “Don’t act like you didn’t do this.”

Perhaps it was guilt that injected deep into Sehun’s features when he suddenly stops screaming and instead turns and walks away after incoherent mutters of how Luhan was a bastard, a and how he knew one day it would happen which could only leave Luhan grinning; he won for this battle.

But it’s one day when Luhan comes home to hear the bedroom’s queen sized bed creaking and Sehun’s moans he’s a little familiar with and soft, grunts of someone else, perhaps, Kim Jongin, which snaps Luhan out of the game, his insanity and his damaged thoughts.

And when Sehun comes out, in a towel, with Kim Jongin around his shoulder, Luhan slaps the business associate so hard it leaves a blood red mark pulsing on his dirty cheeks, and how Sehun is quick in putting his arm around Jongin, “What the , Luhan.”

“This was what I was supposed to say,” Luhan hears the piercing sharpness of his voice as he breathes in and out, “This is too far, Oh Sehun.”

“Too far?” Sehun smirks, “You started all this.”

“You, started with this here first,” Luhan seethes.

“Why are you so mad? You knew we both did all this outside, so why not in the house?”

And something in Luhan’s eyes changes, it isn’t the wrath or the jealousy or the smugness whenever he and Byun Baekhyun wins a little battle but it’s just Luhan, just Luhan who fell in love with Sehun, just Luhan who feels like dying.

“If you thought I wouldn’t get hurt,” His voice is soft, and breaking, “You were wrong.”

---

Luhan spends one last night with Sehun; burying his face into Sehun’s chest, hearing his heartbeat, and being together.

And Luhan realizes, that it was all broken, and there was no going back.

But after everything, his heart never stopped loving Oh Sehun.

---

And as they sign the divorce papers, Sehun’s soft voice cuts through the awkward air, “Was there love in all this?”

“Were we just too in love to let go?”

---

And perhaps, a few weeks later, Sehun would’ve gotten his answer when the last fluid takes away Luhan’s breath, life and heartbeat all at once and when Sehun runs into the room an hour late to find no one there, no Byun Baekhyun crying his eyes out and feeling his heart breaking into fragments of dust, Luhan’s unmoving lips answers Sehun.

And the tears streaming down Sehun’s face also answers him, because right now, when it was all too late with Luhan lying there, unmoving, Sehun realizes for the first time, that all this while, all this that happened, he’d never stop loving Luhan.

---

“Oh Sehun?”

“Yes.”

“The…patients, last words were frantic. No one was here, not even his family, but he kept mumbling your name and a specific sentence over and over again.”

“What…was it?”

“Never let go.”