“Talk to him.” Minseok had said, as if it was that simple. “I don’t know what happened between the two of you, I don’t know what you said or did to upset him and I don’t want to know, it’s none of my business. But I know that seeing him hurting, well it’s hurting you too so just be an adult and talk to him about it.”

And Luhan wanted to talk to him, he did. He hadn’t had a proper conversation with Sehun since before he’d left for China and that had been almost two months ago. But he didn’t think talking to him was going to help, not when Sehun didn’t want anything to do with him. And that was understandable, the last conversation they’d had hadn’t exactly been fun for either of them. It had started with him saying the words ‘I think we need to talk’ and ended with an obviously hurt Sehun saying ‘Stop trying to explain yourself. Don’t worry, I get it, it’s not like what we had was anything special to begin with.’

So when he’d returned from a two week long stint in China with the rest of Exo-M to find that Sehun was still giving him the cold shoulder he hadn’t been overly surprised. Jongin refusing to speak to him unless absolutely necessary hadn’t been all that surprising either and while he didn’t like the idea that Sehun had discussed their relationship with someone else when they’d both decided they were going to keep it a secret he couldn’t really blame him for turning to his friend for support. He’d been in Sehun’s place before, had a break-up sprung on him out of seemingly nowhere and if he hadn’t had his friends around him he wouldn’t have gotten over it as quickly as he had.

But that was the thing, Sehun wasn’t getting over it. He was getting quieter and more sullen by the day. Not only that but he seemed to have lost his appetite completely and he was tired all the time so he clearly wasn’t sleeping properly either. And Luhan wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. Jongin had too and he’d cornered him a week ago and let him know exactly whose fault he thought it was.

Two days after that and it had been Zitao’s turn to pull him aside and tell him how worried he was. Thankfully he didn’t know why Sehun wasn’t talking to him, he’d just picked up on the fact that Sehun now found a reason to leave the room if Luhan happened to enter it and he didn’t think it was a coincidence. “Please, just fix it.” He’d begged, “I don’t know why he’s ignoring you or why he’s so down but if he keeps this up he’s going to make himself ill.”

Then it had been Joonmyun’s turn to stop him in the hallway. “This thing, between you and Sehun…” He’d said, voice hushed so the rest of the members didn’t overhear, “… it needs to stop, before other people start to notice. I tried talking to Sehun about it but he just told me I’m imagining things. But I’m pretty sure I’m not, whatever it is you said to him it’s obviously preying on his mind and the way he’s obsessing about it isn’t healthy. So you need to think of a way to fix things,” he’d added, echoing Zitao, “if you don’t then management are going to end up stepping in and nobody wants that.”

And that’s when Luhan had turned to Minseok. He’d hadn’t told him everything, he’d just relayed what Zitao and Joonmyun had said to him and told him that he was worried too. Because Zitao was right, if Sehun kept this up, if he kept picking at his food instead of eating it and if he continued not getting enough rest then he was going to make himself ill and he didn’t want that. And Minseok hadn’t asked him any questions, he hadn’t expected an explanation he’d just listened carefully and then told him what he thought he should do.

It was a just a shame that what he’d suggested wasn’t going to work. If he talked to Sehun about what had happened then it was only going to cause an argument and he didn’t want to make things worse than they already were. But if talking to him wasn’t an option then what else could he do? Because he had to do something. Minseok was right, seeing Sehun hurting wasn’t something he could handle. It was really starting to get to him and as a result he wasn’t sleeping properly either. That was why he knew for a fact that Sehun hadn’t had good night’s sleep in ages, for the last week he’d spent at least an hour every night listening to the younger man toss and turn in his bed while he lay staring up at the ceiling feeling guilty.

And that was what he was doing now, he was listening to Sehun huff and sigh and turn towards the wall. Then Sehun was throwing his covers back and getting out of bed, padding across the floor and slipping out the door into the hallway. Luhan frowned. That wasn’t his usual pattern. The sighing and tossing and turning usually continued for a while then Sehun would go quiet and Luhan would think he’d finally drifted off to sleep only for him to hear him exhale forcefully a few minutes later and go on to repeat the process. He couldn’t remember him once getting out of bed so he found the fact that he had this time to be a little strange. But maybe he just needed to use the bathroom Luhan thought. Yes, that made sense. He’d got up to use the bathroom that’s all it was.

Only twenty minutes later Sehun still hadn’t come back to bed and Luhan was beginning to think he should go and check on him. He was also beginning to think that Minseok was right. If he wanted to fix things he needed to talk to Sehun, he needed to make him see sense and since they were the only two people in the dorm who were awake it was a prefect chance for him to do so without being interrupted.  So he got up before he could change his mind and headed for the door.

The kitchen was where Luhan found Sehun, he was sitting at the table, his head pillowed in his arms and his eyes closed, a glass of water in front of him. And Luhan realised that he didn’t know what to say. Should he start by apologising? Should he ask how he was? Should he tell him how worried he’d been? Unable to decide he’d eventually settled on “You can’t sleep?”

Sehun opened his eyes and straightened up in his chair but he didn’t answer, he just stared at the table top his expression blank.

“I can’t either.” Luhan said. If he wanted to fix things between Sehun and himself then it was now or never. He wasn’t going to let the fact Sehun was again refusing to talk to him put him off so he steeled himself and tried again. “Sleep I mean. Do you mind if I join you? I think I’m going to grab a glass of milk.”

Sehun shrugged noncommittally and turned his attention back to his glass of water, picking it up and taking a tentative sip.

“Do you want some?” Luhan asked as he opened the door to the fridge. “It might help you sleep.”

“No thank you.” Sehun said, his voice so quiet that the words were barely intelligible.

It was the most Sehun had said to him all day though so Luhan chose to view it as progress. “Are you sure? I mean it’s got to be better than water.”

“I’m sure.” Sehun told him, eyes still focussed on the glass in front of him.

“Do you want something to eat then?” Luhan asked next. He’d poured his glass of milk now and was returning the carton to the fridge. “I can make you something if you want.” He offered, closing the door quietly and turning to face Sehun properly.

Sehun shook his head. “I’m not hungry.”

Luhan sighed. “You weren’t hungry at dinner either.” He pointed out.

Sehun lifted his head, finally deigning to look at him. “So what if I wasn’t?” He asked quietly. He didn’t seem to be upset or annoyed with him. Instead his eyes were flat, expressionless even and Luhan couldn’t help thinking that was worse.

“I don’t think you’ve been eating enough recently, that’s all.” Luhan explained. “You’ve lost weight, I swear you have and it’s not like you had any weight to lose in the first place.” There was no way he was imagining it. He wasn’t saying it because the clothes Sehun was wearing swamped him, that didn’t surprise him. Sehun liked to buy things a size bigger especially when it came to sleepwear so a lot of his clothes looked baggy when he was wearing them. And it wasn’t the fact he could see the outline of his shoulder blades through the thin fabric of his tank top that was bothering him, he was sitting slightly hunched over now with his arms resting on the table and he’d always been skinny so that was to be expected. What was really worrying him was how much thinner his face looked. His cheekbones seemed far more pronounced than they used to be and it didn’t suit him. And the bags under his eyes didn’t help. He looked washed-out, fragile even and that made Luhan’s heart break a little. That wasn’t what he’d wanted. He hadn’t broken up with him in order to hurt him, he’d done it to give him a shot at happiness. They could never have a normal relationship, one they could let their friends and family know about. It would be a breach of contract and they’d both worked so hard to get where they were that they couldn’t risk having the wrong people find out. They’d need to keep what they had a secret for years before they could even think about telling the people closest to them and Sehun deserved better than that, he deserved to be with someone who could show him off, who could tell the whole world how much they cared about him if they wanted to without having to worry about the consequences. So Luhan had decided to put a stop to things before they both got in too deep. And he’d thought Sehun would get over it soon enough. But apparently he’d miscalculated, apparently Sehun had been more invested in their relationship than he’d let on.

“Don’t.” Sehun said, breaking him out of his thoughts. “Just don’t.”

He sounded so tired that Luhan’s heart broke that little bit more. “Don’t what?” he asked, knowing that he wasn’t going to like what came next.

“Don’t pretend to care.” Sehun said, proving Luhan right.

“I’m not pretending.” Luhan argued. “I do care. Of course I do, how could I not? Just because we’re not, you know, a couple anymore” he didn’t know if couple was the right word to use or not but it was only one he could think of, “that doesn’t mean I can’t worry about you.”

“The only reason you’re worried is because everyone else is.” Sehun told him. “I’m not stupid. I know you wouldn’t be talking to me right now if they weren’t.”

Since at least part of what Sehun had just said was true Luhan was finding it difficult to think up a believable argument. “Okay, so I probably wouldn’t be talking to you if Joonmyun hadn’t asked me to.” He admitted at last. “But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been worried. I didn’t stop caring about you just because we broke up.”

“I don’t think you ever cared about me.” Sehun said next and the words were like a stab to the gut because that wasn’t something Luhan had ever wanted him to think. “Don’t try and convince me that you were trying to protect me by calling things off when you did because I don’t want to hear it. If you’d cared about my feelings at all you wouldn’t have waited until the day before you left for China to do it. You wouldn’t have been such a coward about it, you wouldn’t have run away without giving me a chance to talk things over with you.”

That’s exactly what he’d been telling himself since the day they’d broken up, that as much as telling Sehun they didn’t have a future together had hurt he’d done it for the right reasons. He’d done it for Sehun’s benefit. He’d been protecting him. But to hear Sehun say it like that had him second guessing himself. Because he was right, he hadn’t given him a chance to say how he felt about it and when you looked at it that way that did make him seem like a coward. Maybe he had been more concerned with protecting his own feelings than he had been with protecting Sehun’s. Maybe he’d been the one that was getting in too deep and breaking up with Sehun had been his way of getting out before it was too late and he ended up falling for him completely. Maybe he hadn’t been trying to prevent Sehun suffering a broken heart in the future, maybe he’d been trying to prevent his own heart being shattered somewhere down the line. But if seeing Sehun suffer was enough to make his heart ache when they hadn’t spoken in more than a month then maybe he’d left it too late. “I’m sorry.” He murmured quietly. There wasn’t anything else he could say. As much as he wanted to it wasn’t as if he could turn back time and make everything better. “You’re right. I was a coward but that doesn’t mean I never cared about you. I did. I still do. And to see you like this, not sleeping and not eating, I can’t stand it. Especially not when it’s my fault.”

Sehun shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “You’re so full of yourself. I’m not doing this for your benefit, I’m not purposefully starving myself or refusing to sleep in order to make you feel guilty. I wish I could eat like I used to and I would kill for a proper night’s sleep, I just…” and with that he broke eye contact and trailed off.

“You just what?” Luhan asked, more worried now than he’d been before. If Sehun’s lack of appetite and his inability to get a full night’s sleep weren’t down to him then something else must be bothering him and whatever it was must be pretty big. “If you want to start eating properly again then why don’t you? What’s stopping you?”

“You don’t want to know.” Sehun told him, suddenly going quiet again.

“I do want to know.” Luhan assured. “I want to help you and I can’t do that if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”

“You can’t help me.” Sehun mumbled, his eyes still fixed on the table. “There’s nothing you can do about it. There’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

“Nothing I can do about what?” Luhan asked, the way Sehun was talking he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know the answer but if he really wanted to help him then he needed a little more information from him.

“I told you, you don’t want to know.” Sehun replied.

“Come on, just tell me.” Luhan pleaded, he'd never been the most patient person and if Sehun kept refusing to answer he didn’t know what he was going to do. Start tearing his own hair out most probably.

And Sehun sighed, finally lifting his head and looking up at him. “You’re going to find out eventually…” he said, “… everyone’s going to find out eventually. It’s not like I can hide it forever. And really you should be the first person to know so…”

“Go on.” Luhan prompted when he fell quiet for a second time and Sehun squared his shoulders.

“You have to promise not to yell at me.” He said. He looked more than worried, he looked scared and Luhan found himself automatically nodding.

“I promise.” He said. He wished he would just hurry up and spit out what he had to say because the not knowing was killing him.

“Okay…” Sehun said, and he took a deep breath before continuing, “… okay… so… the thing is… well… “ he said haltingly and then he finally managed to kick his brain into gear. “The thing is, I’m pregnant.” he finished, the words perfectly clear.

“I… you…” Luhan stuttered, his eyes flickering to Sehun’s stomach. Sehun’s ridiculously flat stomach, “but I…. and we….” Oh god, he sounded like an idiot and not only that but Sehun was looking at him as if he was afraid he was about to come to his senses and do what he‘d promised he wouldn’t and start yelling. He needed to pull himself together. “You’re really pregnant?” he said at last. He didn't look pregnant. But then if it had only been a couple of months he supposed he wouldn't look pregnant, not yet. And it wasn't as if it was something he would joke about.

“Yes.” Sehun said, eyeing him warily. “And before you ask it’s definitely yours.”

“I wasn’t going to ask.” Luhan told him and it was true. The thought it might not be his hadn’t even crossed his mind.

“Good.” Sehun said sounding a little more sure of himself now. “Because I wouldn’t do that, I know what we had didn’t mean that much to you but it meant something to me and I… well I just wouldn’t do that to you.”

And there he went again, getting everything wrong. And if Luhan hadn’t still been stuck on the words ‘I’m pregnant’ he might have put him right but he was so he didn’t. Instead he said, “That’s why you haven’t been eating or sleeping properly.” Which was pointing out the obvious but it was the best his brain could come up with. He was still reeling slightly from Sehun’s confession so it was no wonder really that he was having a hard time thinking straight.

“Yes,” Sehun admitted. “I feel sick all the time. And when I say all the time I mean all the time, the feeling just doesn’t go away, which makes it kind of hard to eat. And as for the sleeping thing…”

“I get it, you’ve had a lot to think about.” Luhan finished for him. “If I were you right now I wouldn’t be able to sleep either.” He didn’t think he’d be able to function at all let alone sleep so Sehun was handling things pretty well all things considered.

“You’re taking this better than I thought you would.” Sehun said. He was still looking at him as he if he was scared he was about to explode or something. Maybe he thought the news hadn’t sunk in properly yet and that was what was going to happen when it did.

And Luhan supposed it hadn’t really sunk in properly yet. Sehun was having a baby, his baby and that was a lot for him to get his head around. But right that second all he could see was Sehun sitting in front of him, looking incredibly vulnerable and he desperately wanted to fix that. “And you’ve been dealing with this all on your own? You haven’t told anyone?” he asked.

Sehun shook his head. “No, I haven’t told anyone.”

Of course he hadn’t. Who could he tell? No one had even known they were seeing each other so it wasn’t as if he could just announce to his friends that he was pregnant. He could have told Jongin maybe Luhan supposed but then where would he have gone from there? Jongin would only have tried to convince him to tell Joonmyun or a manager and he obviously wasn’t ready to do that yet. “I’m sorry.” He said for a second time. “I’m sorry I made things so awkward between us that you couldn’t tell me. It’s not fair that you had to handle this by yourself.”

“No, no I’m sorry for not telling you sooner.” Sehun countered. “Just because you didn’t want to be with me anymore didn’t mean you didn’t deserve to know. I just didn’t know what to do. I still don’t know what to do.”

Luhan couldn’t help noticing the slight hitch in his voice, Sehun was plainly trying to fight back tears. “What do you want to do?” he asked him, hoping that the implication that he had some control over things would make him feel better.

“I don’t know.” Sehun told him, running a hand through his hair. “All I know is what I don’t want to do. I don’t want to get rid of my baby.”

“No one’s going to make you get rid of your baby.” Luhan was quick to assure him, the idea that anyone would even suggest such a thing made him feel sick to his stomach.

“Maybe not but they’re going to try and convince me that I should.” Sehun continued, the words coming out in a rush. “‘Is this really what you want?’, that’s what they’ll say. ‘You’re so young. You have your career to think about. Raising a baby is hard work, how are you going to cope when the father’s not around?’ I can hear it already. And I’ll get it from all sides, from the company, from my parents. Oh god, my parents are going to kill me. They’re going to be so disappointed. I told them they didn’t have to worry about me, that I could look after myself. And they trusted me to do that. And now look at me, I’m going to be a single parent before I’m twenty-one with no job and no money and I… I just… I know it’s going to be hard but I wouldn’t ever… you know… I just couldn’t… it’s not the baby’s fault, it didn’t ask for…. it’s my fault, I was an idiot and I… and we should never have… but we did and I… I’m not saying that I didn’t… that you didn’t… because you did... and I wanted… but I…”

The more he tried to explain himself the less sense he was making. His eyes were starting to water too, his breath beginning to come in short gasps. Sehun was falling apart right in front of him and Luhan scolded himself for not seeing it coming. Of course he was falling apart, he’d been trying so hard to keep things together and now he’d told someone and the grip he’d had on things was slowly but steadily slipping. “Calm down.” Luhan told him. He could see hysterics on the horizon and a hysterical Sehun wasn’t something he thought he could cope with. “Just stop for a second.” He said and pushed away from the counter he’d been leaning on and came forward to rest his hands on Sehun’s shoulders.

He half expected to Sehun to shrug him off, to tell him he’d meant it when he’d told him to stop pretending to care but he didn’t, he just went quiet and wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. He was obviously trying his best to keep from crying but he wasn’t having much luck. “You don’t have to do this on your own.” He told him, giving his shoulders a reassuring squeeze. “I mean it. I’ll be here for you, I promise.”

“You don’t have to promise me anything.” Sehun said, his voice still shaky.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Luhan said gently, massaging his shoulders now. He just wanted to make him feel better and it was the first thing that had popped into his head. “I wasn’t lying before, when I said that I cared about you I meant it. And I would never make you go through something like this on your own, especially not when it’s my baby you’re carrying.”

“But if we tell people…” Sehun sniffed, he was trying so incredibly hard to pull himself together that Luhan felt a rush of pride. If he’d been in Sehun’s place he’d be a complete mess by now. There was no doubt about it, he was a lot stronger than he'd given him credit for “… if we tell people the baby’s yours that’s going to affect your standing in the group as well as mine," Sehun continued, cutting off his train of thought. "Management will hate it. The company will hate it. The fans are going to hate it. They’re going to hate you. I don’t want anyone to hate you.”

“I don’t care about any of that.” Luhan told him. It was technically a lie, the idea that the group's popularity could plummet because of him wasn’t a pleasant one but Sehun had only just calmed down, the last thing he wanted to do was to push him towards another near panic attack. “All I care about is making things up to you. I got you into this mess so it’s up to me to get you out of it. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, not yet but I will. I promise.” And it was a promise he was going to try his best to keep.

~~~~~~ ~~~~~

AN: So here's some Hunhan for anncherry. I don't know if it's exactly what you wanted but it's what my brain came up with so... yeah.

Writing this was easier than I thought it would be to be honest. Hunhan aren't really my thing so I thought I might struggle but it went pretty smoothly.

As always, thank you to everyone for everything and here's the list:

Sekai for xhigoodbye
Suchan for kookiehs
Krisyeol for Alluma
Suchen for Justanotherfic
Taohun for ILuvSkyDragon
Krishan for Doyoureallynotseeme
Chankai for VanillaHeaven
Chanxing for soft-kitty
Krisbaek for Rosasaur
Baekchen for kitten83
Krisho for suddon
Xiuhun for XxAngieexX
ing for jang-yehheung
Hanho for resurrection
Xiukris for weepywillow
Baektao for parkbyun
Chenyeol for tini1kero