••••••••

            Luhan turns out to be the worst at giving directions. He causes Sehun to miss at least three turns on their way to the park because he’s too involved in talking to notice when they’re coming up, and he drags Sehun along the highway for six miles longer than he should have before looking at the numbered signs and blankly saying, “Oh, we were supposed to get off four exits ago.”

            Sehun is perturbed and well on his way to impatience, but at the same time, he doesn’t mind Luhan’s chatter much. It’s soothing, the way his voice fills up the car and makes it overflow with sound. Sehun has always functioned better with background noise, and Luhan isn’t a demanding conversationalist. He only wants to talk, regardless of lack of response, and Sehun appreciates that because he’s never been much of a multitasker. He drives as Luhan points at various things – leaves, trees, flowers, weeds – and tells long-winded stories about all of them, as if he knows exactly how each of them had come to life.

            “Are you actually friends with all these plants?” Sehun asks in between anecdotes. Luhan’s eyes flash towards him as if he’s just been provoked.

            “Of course I am. How else could I come up with this kind of stuff?”

            “Do you know anything about humans, then?”

            Luhan gets quiet. “Sometimes,” he concedes. “About some people.”

            “Do you not like them?”

            “No, that’s not it,” Luhan replies quickly, waving his hands in front of him defensively. “It’s just… Most of the people I really, really cared about sort of… Left. You know?”

            Sehun nods because he knows very well what that’s like, even if he’s usually on the opposite end. “Well. What about Minseok? He’s still around, right? You seem pretty close to him. Tell me about that.”

            Luhan snorts. “Minseok is… He’s great, he really is. He’s just a little… I don’t know. He just sort of goes with the flow, and it’s usually nice, but then things like that night happen, and you just wish he’d stand up for something, for once in his life. You wish he’d…” Sehun can almost hear when Luhan’s teeth meet his lip. It’s nearly a second nature at this point. “You wish he’d stand up for you most of all, or something like that. That’s what I wanted from him. But I guess after what I did that night…”

            “You did something?” Sehun breaks in without thinking, and he wishes that he could clamp his mouth shut because Luhan’s face looks like a maraschino cherry. “I mean… I didn’t mean to—”

            “No, it’s okay,” Luhan breathes, smiling tightly. “I did. I did something stupid that I shouldn’t have, and that’s why I don’t really want to see Minseok. I think I… I really messed up with him. Like, we’re pretty ed for next year, I’d bet money on it. So if you ever meet him, and everything is awkward…” He swallows, chipping a portion of his fingernail off with shaking hands. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you, anyways.”

            “I can deal with awkward,” Sehun assures him vacantly, coughing a little to dislodge the tension from his voice. “I’ve dealt with awkward basically every day of my life.”

            Luhan laughs a little. It’s still strained. “Yeah, sure.”

            There’s a vexing silence in the air now, and Sehun misses Luhan’s babble, so starts to prod him again. “Well…” And then he can’t think of anything to say worth talking about. Luhan regards him with expectant eyes, still overcast with Minseok, and Sehun panics for a second before blurting, “What about when you were a kid?”

            The second it comes out, he knows he shouldn’t have said anything at all. He knows he should stop him before he starts because he really, really can’t handle hearing that kind of stuff now. Hey, how about you don’t, okay? But he doesn’t. Because just the mention of childhood makes Luhan brighten, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.

            “Well, there were a bunch of kids in my neighborhood that I was close to,” he starts, and there’s a dreamy look in his eyes. Sehun wonders if he looks like that when he thinks about that neighborhood. He’s pretty sure he just resembles a kicked puppy. “Oh, man, I loved those kids. I was the oldest, so I took care of them. Like a real dad!” Luhan’s chest puffs out, and Sehun snorts.

            “Or a real mom.”

            Luhan ignores him, eyes cast somewhere over the hills, to something Sehun can’t see. “There was…Jongin. He used to run around catching everything, even stupid things. Like balls of dandelion fluff, or fall leaves that got blown off their branches. He liked animals a lot, though. I think he had to have had at least twenty jars and boxes where he kept all kinds of them.” Luhan’s chuckling now, and Sehun is right there with him because he knows for a fact that Jongin had exactly thirty-two, and he was damned proud of it. Luhan sighs then, looking more than a little pensive. “He moved out when I graduated. I was going to college, so I wouldn’t have seen him much anyways, but… I miss him a lot. I hear he went to America somewhere, to uni. He texts me sometimes, but not much. He doesn’t have much time for that kind of thing anymore.”

            Sehun remembers a Jongin who always had time. He can’t remember a single instance where Jongin was alone that he wasn’t lying on his bed, staring up at his ceiling, just waiting for Sehun to get there so they could go out and corner rats together.

            “And then there’s Tao. Good Lord, that kid is a wreck.” It sounds harsh, in concept, but Luhan says it so affectionately that Sehun finds himself nodding in agreement. Yep, that kid was a total nutjob. In the best way. “He bullied people with one of his mom’s purses. He used to fill it with rocks and hit them. He said that was what all good geologists did when their theories were brought into question—” Luhan clutches his sides, his smile so wide that it looks like it’s about to catch up with the stretch of his cheeks and jump right off his face. Sehun keeps his eyes on the road, but his heart is swelling with nostalgia. He remembers back when Tao had wanted to study rocks – right up to the point that he decided rocks were dirty and revoked his desires. “Tao…he had you convinced he was the most innocent creature to grace planet Earth one second, and by the next, he was kicking your with nothing but two stones attached to string and his soul. He’s been trying to launch a modeling career for a handful of years now.” Luhan shrugs and shoots Sehun an impish grin. “He has a pretty nice collection of hats. I’ll give him that.”

            “Better than stones,” Sehun laughs. “He sounds like the kind of person that plays with dolls and kicks your shins when you’re mean to him.”

            “Exactly!” Luhan claps his hands together. Sehun feels sort of like he’s cheated, but Luhan’s cheering makes it seem a little better. “You’re a true character analyst, through and through. Are you sure you weren’t meant to be a psychologist instead of a fast food clerk?”

            “I’m really bad at both those things, so I think I’d say I’m not either of them.” Sehun is pretty sure they’ve long since passed where they were supposed to get off – in fact, he’s completely sure because he saw a sign for a totally different city about a mile and a half back – but Luhan is so full of vitality that he’s afraid to stop him.

            Besides, he hasn’t mentioned the name he most wants to hear him say.

            “I knew a Jongdae, too. That little troll. He heard about imps stealing half of your pairs of socks once, so he decided to cut everyone’s briefs in half and say that the imps stole half of those, too. When I found out, I smeared peanut butter on mine. That punk was allergic to peanuts.”

            “You could have killed him!” Sehun accuses with a laugh. He remembers that – Jongdae had a rash along his arm for a week and a half, and Luhan had a self-satisfied smirk the size of Canada for a month longer.

            Luhan waves him off. “I knew it wouldn’t. He wasn’t all closed-lungs and red-eyes allergic to it. It just irritated his skin. And he got me back, anyways, when he emptied a can of anchovies into my backpack one day.” Luhan smiles softly. “Jongdae was my only friend in high school. He was two years younger than me, though, so my first couple years were pretty awful.” He screws up his face in thought. “I was…sort of a black sheep.”

            Sehun glances ahead of them in search for a turnaround. “A horse of a different color?”

            “Yeah,” Luhan smiles softly. “You know, my mom used to say that a lot.”

            Sehun neglects to respond that he already knows.

            Sehun gets off on an exit he doesn’t recognize. Luhan doesn’t notice. “Are you still friends with Jongdae?”

            Luhan gives him a melancholy smile. “We don’t talk much anymore,” he says. “He doesn’t exactly like what I’m doing with my life right now.”

            “What? Going to college? Getting an education?”

            “Nah,” Luhan responds. “He doesn’t like that I’m ‘wasting my education’ painting the town red. You know – partying and stuff. He thinks it’s stupid, and that you can’t possibly succeed if you do it.” He brushes his bangs out of his eyes, twisting his nose like a rabbit. Sehun finds it hard to believe that Luhan spends most of his time guzzling alcohol and still manages to look this innocent. “The kid is too pure. I don’t think he knows yet that you can be good and bad. He still thinks it’s one or the other, not both. Black and white, even though the rest of the world is in Technicolor.” Luhan waves his hand indifferently, nearly socking Sehun in the face and neglecting to apologize when he flinches out of the way. “He can do what he wants. I still make fine grades, and it’s not like I’m driving my car into walls or getting a thousand STDs or something.”

            “You did get left on the side of the road the other night,” Sehun starts cautiously, looking to Luhan to gauge his expression. Luhan’s face doesn’t really change.

            “You’re right,” Luhan acknowledges. “But that’s not because of my lifestyle. That’s because of my terrible choice in company.”

            “Maybe you should try talking to Jongdae again, then. He sounds like the better kind of company.”

            Luhan smiles at him. “Right again,” he confirms. “I’ll just need to find some excuse to.”

            “You never need an excuse for old friends,” Sehun says quietly. Luhan peers at him curiously, and Sehun wonders if the trepidation in his voice has given himself away. Pot calling the kettle black. He quickly continues, “Is that all of your friends?”

            Luhan stares harder. “No, it isn’t,” he says, not moving his gaze off Sehun. Sehun can feel his eyes traveling down his face, his neck, resting on his shoulders before continuing to his flexed fingers. Luhan clears his throat. “Did you have any childhood friends?”

            “None that I can think of,” Sehun responds passively. Luhan somehow doesn’t look convinced. “Who’re the other friends of yours?”

            “Why do you want to know?”

            “Am I not allowed to know about the tenants in my household?”

            Luhan looks troubled, but he doesn’t argue with Sehun’s reasoning. “There’s… There’s one more.”

            “What was his name?”

            Luhan reaches out and brushes the back of Sehun’s hand. He jumps and draws it back from its place on the gear change, finally glancing at Luhan. Luhan’s eyes are blazing, even as the rest of his face wrenches in distress, and Sehun doesn’t know why.

            “It wasn’t a he,” Luhan retorts, and Sehun’s stomach drops. “It was a girl. She was my best friend in the entire world.”

            Sehun remembers those same words from the night Luhan was drunk and disoriented. He’d said that Sehun was his best friend in the entire world then. He isn’t sure which Luhan to believe.

            “What was her name, then?” Sehun asks, his lips. He cautiously resettles his hand back on the stick shift, gripping the ball tightly between his fingers to keep them from shaking. Luhan doesn’t move his eyes from him, even after Sehun returns his gaze to the road stretching in front of them. He does beam at his sudden interest, however, sliding smugly back into his seat.

            “Her name was Sehun, and she was the biggest idiot I ever knew, but she was my yeodongsaeng and I loved her more than I’ve ever loved any other person.”

            Sehun makes a strangled sound that he immediately wishes he could take back. Luhan turns his attention outside of the window, and Sehun can’t tell if he’s ignoring his obvious distress or if he is too fixated by the scenery flashing by his window to hear him. This is the kind of thing people say that results in a spit take, Sehun thinks, but he can only sputter with a dry mouth. “Her?”

            Luhan doesn’t respond, and Sehun realizes that was probably not the reaction he should have had. He backtracks as fast as he can, continuing, “You mentioned a Sehun when I took you to the wrong house, but you called him a ‘him’ at the time, so I’m a little confused—”

            “You took me to the wrong house?” Luhan’s eyes are wide now, and he looks moderately perplexed. “When did that happen?”

            Relieved that Luhan didn’t entirely catch him misspeak, he continues. “Yeah. You took me to a neighborhood and tried to get into this house with a pretty cranky old man in it. It had a tree stump next to it, and the man yelled at you as if you’d been there before—”

            Luhan groans and hides his face. “Let me guess. Directly after that, in my hilariously drunken stupor, I tried to go to another house, claiming it was Sehun’s.”

            “Basically.” Sehun pauses. “Has this…happened before?”

            “Way too many times to count.” Luhan curls up, hugging his legs to his chest. “Every time. Every single time I get too drunk, I end up back there.”

            Sehun quiets, probably long enough for Luhan to think that he’d forgotten they were in the middle of a conversation. “You know, this kind of thing is exactly the reason why psychology majors exist.”

            “Are you one?” Luhan asks, not moving his face from between his knees.

            “No,” Sehun replies. “I’m a nothing major. But I know enough about it to say that that’s definitely some psychoanalytic .”

            “Undecided?” Luhan persists, and Sehun is fully aware that he’s trying to get the attention off himself. Curiosity is burning in his chest. He glances at Luhan, whose terrible posture is writing volumes about inner turmoil, and he inwardly sighs.

            “No. I don’t go to college. I finished high school and decided that I had had enough of education for one lifetime.”

            “Why?” Luhan asks with a small smile. “Was your dream getting free fast food burgers every lunch break for the rest of your life?”

            “You say that as if I actually trust the food I serve. The last time I ate there, I threw up for three straight hours.”

            Luhan snickers. “Sounds like a treat. I want to go sometime.”

            “Unless you have a stomach of steel, I can’t allow you to do that.”

            “I do. Years of near-alcohol poisoning have turned my digestive system into a god.”

            “I watched you puke your guts up on the side of the road. I don’t think your stomach is ready for sacrificial worship yet.”

            Luhan doesn’t have any comeback to that, so he sticks his tongue out, and Sehun thinks of Jongdae’s “I’m rubber and you’re glue” and wishes he could have been their best friend through high school, too. He thinks that he could have stopped Luhan from going down whatever path he’s treading now. He thinks he could have kept him from messing up with Minseok and hanging out with doucheboy in the front seat that Sehun doesn’t want to put a name to. He thinks he could have changed both their lives, if only he’d stayed. If only he’d been able to.

            But then he glances at Luhan, still basking in the glow of sunshine and fresh banter, and he decides that it’s not too late to start saving him again.

            They pull up to the park about twenty minutes later, when Luhan remembers he’s supposed to be the navigator (“Wow, we are way off course”) and directs Sehun to a proper parking place. He stretches like a cat when he steps out into the sunlight, turning his face up towards the sky and marveling at everything. He’d said that he’d come there often as a kid, but the way Luhan looks at everything makes Sehun wonder if it’s somehow new to him. He glances around, trying to find all the unfamiliar corners of it.

            The slides are dull red, the plastic floors of the jungle gym dull blue. The connecting tubes are spotted with chipping pieces of freckled yellow paint, and the rectangular fence denoting the parameters of the playground guard a mosaic of flaked brown lumber that cling to Luhan’s shoes when he hops into them. Trees surround them on all sides, an army of deep green hues met with coffee-colored bark that stand alert under the careful watch of the sky. The sun filters through openings between leaves turned up as if it’s going to rain later, and Luhan pauses every few steps to examine the places where it kisses his skin. Sehun tries to find clouds in the sky, but there aren’t any – only warm air and the damp humidity of Korean spring, lusting along the lines of a storm.

            Sehun shoves his hands in his pockets, waiting for Luhan’s attention to be diverted from the sights, and sure enough, the second they’re near enough to see the monkey bars, he makes a beeline for them. He climbs two rungs of the ladder to reach them and takes a wild leap to the second one, grinning as his body’s momentum casts him back and forth. Sehun shakes his head, but when Luhan calls him over to him, he obediently follows.

            Sehun can reach them if he stands on his tiptoes, but Luhan is still just barely short enough to swing, so they invent a game of Ape Versus Bear, where Sehun is assigned the job of roaring and Luhan pretends to eat bananas from his feet. Sehun wins due to what Luhan claims is “unfair gravitational advantage;” Sehun says bears could maul the crap out of monkeys any day of the week, get over it, it’s the will of the gods. Luhan reminds him that his stomach is a god and rules in favor of himself, and Sehun tells him to shove a banana in it.

            Around the time that they’ve deteriorated to “your mom” jokes, they’ve begun moving towards the rest of the playground. There are kids there, but Luhan’s braying frightens them off in a hurry. Sehun laughs as they tug at their moms' sleeves and point nervously. Mommy, who’s the loud man? He sounds like he’s dying. Luhan is hilariously oblivious, so Sehun starts telling bad joke after bad joke to keep him sounding like a native going into war. Luhan is drowning in his own drool, wiping spittle from his face, and when Sehun tells him to stop because it’s gross, he only giggles louder and chases him with his finger.

            Needless to say, the kids keep their distance.

            They climb up the slides, sniggering at their rebellion (“It’s like going up the down escalator!” Luhan croons, and Sehun is pretty sure it’s less hardcore but he doesn’t argue), and Luhan chastises Sehun for trying to crawl through the connecting tubes when any real adventurer would climb over them.

            “When you slide off and fall the nine feet to the ground, I’m going to leave you there with your broken ankles,” Sehun warns as Luhan sits atop the cylinder, swaying back and forth like a tree in a windstorm. Luhan gives him about the most -eating grin he can possibly manage and waves him off.

            “I’ve got ankles of pure gold, wrought in the fires of the Skyforge, and no measly nine foot fall can shatter me.” He leans too far to one side and almost loses his balance. Sehun, without thinking, reaches out over the tube and grabs his flailing wrist, to which Luhan sheepishly brushes him off after regaining his center of gravity. “I’m fine, I’m fine. You act like I’ve never put myself in perilous situations before.”

            “I’m not saying you haven’t. I’m just saying that you’re toeing the line between ‘perilous’ and ‘life-threatening.’”

            Sehun dutifully bends his body into the tunnel and shuffles forward on his elbows and knees, grimacing at the pressure. He flips out the other side onto his back (wouldn’t Tao be proud of my wushu skills), and Luhan is already there, smiling self-righteously and brushing off perfectly clean shoulders. “See? Much more efficient, taking risks every now and then.”

            “I take risks,” Sehun pouts, idly scratching his belly from under his shirt. Luhan’s eyes narrow, then widen, almost unnoticeably. Sehun immediately tugs his shirt back down, suddenly feeling all too embarrassed, and Luhan averts his eyes, shading them with a hand and pointing out into the distance.

            “Look!” he exclaims, and his voice is a little dense, but it’s easy enough to pass off as a trick of the ears. “There’s a swingset down there! Those are my favorite.”

            Sehun knows that’s not true – Luhan’s favorite has always been the spinny thing, the merry-go-round without horses – but he accepts it as a means of transition anyways. He pulls himself up into a sitting position, tucking his arms in between his legs. “Should we go, then?”

            “Duh,” Luhan replies, grabbing Sehun’s arm and pulling until he’s up on his feet and pattering down the narrow ramp of the jungle gym. As they approach the swingset, Luhan drifts unconsciously toward the diaper swings that moms use for their infants. Sehun snickers.

            “You may have bird legs, but I still don’t think they’ll fit into that,” he comments, toying with one of the holes of the swing Luhan isn’t currently clambering into. Luhan grunts in response, carefully lowering himself to a squat inside the little chair and wrapping his arms around his knees. He sits like that, giving Sehun a defiant look that dares him to shove him off.

            Sehun resists, mostly because he’s never seen something so comical in his entire life.

            “I used to be scared of falling off swings,” Luhan says defensively. “So I used the baby swings with the little leg security, just to make sure I wouldn’t die, even when I was, like, eleven.”

            “Except you’re in your twenties now,” Sehun says, taking up residence in the normal swing beside him. He absorbs himself in kicking his legs out and in, back and forth, in steady rhythm, until he’s leagues in the air. Luhan’s voice gets louder and softer as he passes him like a pendulum.

            “Not at heart,” he mumbles, fitting his legs through the holes of his diaper chair and attempting to copy Sehun. His legs are constricted, though, thighs bloated against the circular edges, so he gives up and toes at the ground with his shoe instead. “I skipped my entire childhood, anyways, so I guess I’ve sort of reverted since then.”

            “Skipped how?” Sehun calls from up in the air, turning his head in Luhan’s direction as he falls back down to earth. Luhan reaches out and grabs one of the metal chains, and Sehun yelps as he’s twisted by the impact. Luhan is dragged back, but he lets go just in time to avoid dislocating his arm, snickering as Sehun struggles to regain his fluid forward motion.

            “Skipped as in… I dunno. I grew up pretty fast, all at once.”

            Sehun skids the soles of his sneakers into the ground to slow himself, carefully straightening his line of movement as his swing crawls to a stop. “How?” he repeats, shoving his heel furhter into the playground woodchips.

            “I just…got into some rough stuff. When I was about thirteen or fourteen.” He glances down at his hands, inspecting them as if they were some kind of germ under a microscope. “It started with alcohol, and it peaked a little in my first year, but I managed to simmer down before I killed myself with it all.”

            “Why did you do it?” And Sehun isn’t sure if he’s fishing, but Luhan looks so strangely open, as if he’s prepared himself for any question Sehun can ask and is willing to answer them all. He doesn’t look scared, at least – mildly restless, but not scared.

            “I’ve been trying to forget,” he says. “Everything. Remembering . I don’t want to do it anymore.” He stares quizzically at his palms. “I’ve almost entirely forgotten his face,” he murmurs, looking a little amazed at himself. He traces some pattern on his hand. Sehun vaguely thinks that it looks sort of like a head. “I’ve almost completely forgotten what he looks like.”

            Sehun pretends he doesn’t know who he’s talking about. He changes the subject before he can be reminded. “Remembering is the only way to keep your old life, though.”

            “It doesn’t matter,” Luhan says, shaking his head. “It’s not going to come back. There’s no point in asking it to.”

            Sehun bites his lip, but he doesn’t continue. “And now you’re…reverting?” The word comes out in a wobble because Sehun vividly remembers every ounce of color that had been drained from Luhan’s face the first night they had re-met.

            “Sort of.” Luhan slides his legs back out of the holes with some effort, settling back down like a bird on its nest. “I still…do it, sometimes, but it’s college, and I’m legal now. Of course I’m going to drink.” He glances at Sehun knowingly, nodding his head towards him. “It’s not like you’re legal, anyways, and you still have beer under your bed. I see right through you.”

            “I’ve had those for months and still haven’t opened them,” Sehun muses. “They were a…going away gift. From someone.”

            Luhan shrugs. “Same difference.” He hops out of his swing, wandering over to Sehun. He tugs at the chain impatiently. “Let’s go look at the flowers.”

            Sehun doesn’t move at first. After a while, Luhan quits tugging, and his eyes drift down to the empty expanse that is Sehun’s thigh. He stares at it calculatedly, eyebrows wiggling. If he’d had a beard, Sehun is sure he’d be it by now.

            He angles himself suddenly and hops onto Sehun’s lap, settling down into the space where his knees part and pressing a cheek into Sehun’s chest. He glances up with adoring eyes, clasping his hands together in a silent plea.

            Sehun is out of the swing in an instant.

            Luhan skips ahead as Sehun brushes at his thighs, as if trying to get rid of dirt. (He’s really trying to get rid of the tingles by his knees, the electricity galloping through his blood stream, but he finally decides that it’s not something he can remove through touch alone and follows after.)

            Sehun stops when they reach an open field a couple minutes away from the park. He leans against a lone tree bent against the invisible outskirts of the expanse and watches as Luhan’s eyes widen and glimmer with awe. There are blossoms as far as the eye can see, in coral rows and tangerine bushels and periwinkle columns snaking up trees, and Sehun has been many places in his life, but he’s never seen one this radiant and full of color. Luhan takes off running, and Sehun about loses his lunch laughing because the kid is actually frolicking through the flowers. Luhan hears him and scurries back over, dragging him from the tree and whirling him around by the wrists. Sehun shakes him off several times, but each time, he grabs hold of him again and spins them with even more fervor, laugh growing into a loud shriek of excitement until Sehun finds himself crowing with him like a wild parrot and chasing him across the grass. Sehun jumps on him from behind, wrapping his arms around him, and drags them both to the ground. They collapse into giggles, and Luhan rolls over to look at the sky again, trapping Sehun’s arm under the small of his back. Sehun doesn’t mind at all, even when his entire body locks up and screams for mobility.

            Luhan lolls his head to one side toward Sehun, and at first, Sehun just stares at him. He studies the slope of his brow, thick with untrimmed hairs, and the subtle upturn of his nose. He sees the bags under his eyes, the tiredness marking his features even after thirteen and a half hours’ worth of naps, but his face is rich with youth, with energy, with spirit and exuberance that could fool even the keenest of people into thinking he was always this charged. His cheeks rise to heights unheard of when he smiles, and he has an overbite when he laughs too hard, but Sehun is too distracted by wondering how a single person’s teeth can be so perfectly lined. His neck has more surface area than any other part of his body, and the tips of his ears are soft and pressed so close to his head that Sehun almost can’t see them past tufts of shaggy hair.

            Sehun has never been so torn between the features of someone’s face. He feels his gaze reaching for all of them, trying to focus on everything all at once, memorizing Luhan’s face in every instance that it exists because even the most miniscule of differences between moments is monumental in Sehun’s mind. He can’t imagine missing a single expression, a change in the glisten of his eye or the stretch in the corner of his lip, so he watches.

            Luhan becomes aware of it all at once, though, and although only a second has passed since they met eyes, Luhan rolls his head over in the other direction. He reaches his arm out as far as he can before letting it thump to the ground, pointer finger outstretched. “There’s a group of dandelions over there.”

            “Where?” Sehun asks, propping himself up by the shoulder and leaning over Luhan’s chest. Luhan shrinks from underneath him and scrambles to his feet, plodding over in the direction of a group of flowers. He squats down and observes them, sliding a finger over their stems.

            Sehun military crawls after him. Luhan glances up only long enough to snort before turning back to his discovery. When Sehun catches up with him, he immediately reaches to pick one of the dandelions.

            Luhan promptly smacks his hand away. Sehun withdraws in amusement.

            “I’m sorry, did I hurt your friend?” he asks. “I apologize profusely to all my brethren dandelions. I meant no harm, only death.”

            “Shut up,” Luhan warns, but his tone is playful. He coasts a finger over the dandelion’s seeds, soft enough not to disturb them.

            “Don’t you ever blow them out?” Sehun asks, rolling back onto his back and folding his hands over his bellybutton. Luhan nods.

            “I do,” he says, still riveted to the dandelion. Sehun wonders if he’d signed adoption papers for it or something while he was on his way over. “But I don’t pick them to do it. You can just…blow them out as is. Like the wind.” As if in demonstration, Luhan flattens himself onto his belly, levelling his lips with the base of the dandelion. Sehun watches with keen interest because he hasn’t seen Luhan with puckered lips yet, or Luhan with his eyes crossed, or Luhan on the cusp of making wishes. He blows out, and all the seeds scatter but one, each one held suspended in air by rays of sunshine and the color of foliage. Luhan frowns at the remaining seed.

            “I don’t get my wish now,” he complains, pushing himself up onto his arms to watch the others float off. Sehun scoots closer, bumping into Luhan’s shoulder in the process. He lines up his mouth with the dandelion and blows as hard as he can, until the last seed dislodges itself and chases after its siblings. Sehun nudges Luhan, looking pleased with himself.

            “I wished that you’d get your wish,” he says, glancing up at Luhan proudly. He’s surprised to see a reflection of panic in his eyes. Luhan bites his lip and looks off after the seeds, each one slowly drifting down to be swallowed up by blades of grass and strewn pebbles. Sehun doesn’t miss how his face is overcast with bloodrush, or how his fingers are twisted in the hem of his shirt. Luhan clears his throat, so Sehun sits up beside him.

            “It doesn’t count because it wasn’t a full one anyways,” he mutters. “Nice try, dandelion boy.”

            Sehun snorts. “Why am I the dandelion boy? You’re the one who takes pictures of them and defends their honor and stuff.”

            “I can’t be the boy. I’m the dandelion.”

            Sehun his lips slowly in thought, tilting his head curiously. “So… You’re the dandelion, and I’m the boy?”

            “Literally what I just said.” Luhan flicks at him lightly, but he still doesn’t touch him. “So don’t kill me, .”

            “I’ll try my best, but no promises,” Sehun teases. “A man of such power can only hold back so much.” Luhan only smiles weakly back, looking for all the world like a child shaken by war. Sehun loops his arms through Luhan’s, making a chain out of the bend of their elbows, and Luhan looks surprisingly uncomfortable. “What’s wrong?”

            “Nothing,” Luhan says, glancing at where they interlock. “Everything is just…a little too right.”

            “Isn’t that something to celebrate?”

            Luhan shifts his weight, leaning onto the arm that isn’t tethered to Sehun’s side. “The last time things were this right, I lost a lot of my life.”

            “Well someone sounds like they’ve been listening to a little too much punk rock.” Sehun starts wailing into his fist as if it were a microphone, and Luhan finally smiles at the same time that he socks a good one into Sehun’s arm. Sehun tries to unlock himself, but Luhan squeezes him tighter between his forearm and his bicep, sticking out his tongue.

            “As long as I’m not cursing my dad into a mic, I think I’m safe from the teen angst phase of my life.”

            “You’re never safe from that. Never.”

            “Considering your swoopy hair and minimum wage, I’d say you’re the one still stuck there.” Luhan thumps his chest proudly. “I, on the other hand, am a proud almost-graduate.”

            Sehun thinks of a million comebacks right off the bat – a proud almost-SHAT-uate, haha, get it, it’s funny because you  – but he (somehow) manages to keep them to himself. Instead, he looks Luhan dead in the eyes and says, “I’m proud of you, too.”

            Luhan tries to keep his grin secret, but Sehun sees it spread the second he turns away. Sehun doesn’t think he’s fooling anyone.

            Sehun thinks he might be fooling himself, though.

            (He waits until they’re chased back to the car by the threat of an imminent rainstorm, opening the passenger’s side for Luhan and tucking him into his seatbelt as his back is shadowed by clouds rolling in overhead. It isn’t until after he closes the door that he lets himself have his own.)

            On the ride back, Sehun mentions visiting Luhan’s dorm to pick up some clothes, just in case he’s planning on staying for a while. “I noticed you rewashing your dirty underwear in my bathroom sink,” he comments, “and I don’t want it near the place I wash my face every morning. It could have gunk on it.”

            Luhan tightens up instead of taking the bait, all the mirth dissipating. He plays with the corner of a plastic water bottle, eliciting a steady crinkling sound that helps Sehun focus on both the road and the prognostic features of Luhan’s face at the same time.

            “Will you come with me?” Luhan asks unsurely, clenching and unclenching his little fists. Sehun glances over at him and notes the way he is hunched over, eyes trained on his lap.

            “I have to work,” Sehun says slowly. Luhan closes his eyes and takes a deep, silent breath that Sehun still manages to hear.

            “That’s alright. That’s fine. I understand.” He pauses, forcing a smile, but his knuckles are still white with strain. “I’ll manage. I’ll go when Minseok isn’t there, and…”

            “I can go after work,” Sehun exclaims before he can stop himself. “Or during. They don’t even care, anyways. My boss is a doormat.”

            Luhan laughs, and it sounds like a cheese grater running across a car door, but at least that means it isn’t faked. “You don’t have to skip out of work. It’s really not a big deal, I’m just…”

            “Worried?” Sehun shrugs as Luhan bites his lip in confirmation. “You always seem to be worried about something. It’s up to me to stop that.”

            Luhan smiles behind his hands. “After work, then?”

            “It’s a deal.” Sehun almost says date, but he stops himself just in time to fix his wording. His face gets hot either way. He wonders if Luhan would have even reacted at all. He wonders if he would have said yes, or pretended it wasn’t a slip of the tongue, or smiled the shy smile he’s adopted whenever Sehun says something particularly stupid.

            Sehun wonders if Luhan ever wonders at all. Luhan doesn’t notice any of it. He has already turned his attention out the window, where it has started to rain.

기억 – VI

잊다 2001-9-27

“Sometimes,
I think Tao is one of my favorite people.

I don’t think about him sometimes.
Maybe because he stays in his room
to study things
that I think are kind of dumb,
like math
and how to stay alive in hand-to-hand combat.

Then,
he kicks Jongdae’s
with nunchucks that he made out of
sticks and string,
and I decide
that he’s definitely one of my favorite people.

And I wonder
how I ever sometimes forgot.”