this is dedicated to andreea, the most amazing person that lives half a world away and tells me that my words make life better.  you make my life better.  thank you.

it is a gradual thing.

he doesn't balloon overnight with muscle softening into rounded thighs and miniscule white lines ticking off the pounds gained across his hips.  he doesn't remember ever thinking, 'maybe today i will just eat until every inch of my empty heart is full'.

it starts when his mom faints in the middle of the sidewalk outside their apartment.  one pound.  she comes home from the hospital with a sonogram of four golfball size tumors in her stomach.  two pounds.  six months later he is cramming pretzel sticks in his mouth everytime his mother's heartbeat slows until it stops and he screams for a nurse, for god, for his father drunk down the street at a bar.  three pounds.  he buries his mother.  five pounds.  he buries his mother.  ten pounds.  he buries his father who turns half a year of watching his wife battle cancer into kidney failure when he forgets he has a son left and cyphers liquor into his body instead.  fifteen pounds.

a month after sehun turn seventeen he curses the scale in the nurse's office at school while they are silently lined up for health examinations.  seventy pounds.

his collarbones are no longer broken wing sharp.  his hipbones rest beneath two inches of excess fat.  his cheeks curve instead of hollow, his fingers squeeze instead of slide, his heart is still empty no matter how much he intakes.

it is a gradual thing.

it is an empty apartment thing.  it is a 'poor kid with a dead mother' thing.  it is a 'poor forgotten kid whose father drank himself to death' thing.  it is a sneers for second glances thing.  it is a shoved and teased and ridiculed thing.  it is an overweight thing.

sehun cannot help but feel like a flightless bird.  redundant.  oxymoron.  lonely and sinking.

-.-.-.-

'teletubby!  oops, i mean, sehunnie!'

sehun doesn't slow down.

he skids clumsily around a corner in the hallway, the voice echoing agains the heavy lockers.  the boy calling tauntingly after him is nearly half his height but thrice as hateful.  sehun thought college would be different, had suffered through intensive summer school to graduate early and fulfill his mother's dream of him entering post education, chasing after a degreee that had always eluded her.  now he is simply the target of agrivated upperclassmen who blame him for the curve of their poor grades.  he is fat and too smart for his own good and the three guys in his anatomy class are just searching for the opportunity to prove themselves.

sehun is the prey.

he rounds another corner, chooses the farthest door down on the right, and enters silently.  over the steady sound of his escalated heartbeat, sehun can hear the faint strains of some sort of classical music.  when he faces the empty room, he freezes.

there is a body suspended midair, legs fluttering like inverted butterfly wings before he floats back down to the wooden floor.  then limbs stretching impossibly long, further and further.  angkles acting as postions to propel him from one side of the room to the other.

sehun can't breathe, and not from running.

he tries to remember ever seeing something so mesmerizing, so elegant, so weightless.  he loses his ability to properly think in the process and stares blankly nowhere in particular.

'i am almost finished then you can practice.'

sehun feels his heart rise in his throat at the lilt of an accent riddled voice and swivels his head until he can see a face staring at him through the mirror's reflection.  the dancing man drops his weight onto his left leg, the right suspended behind him in an arc.  dark brown eyes catch sehun's and stay as he holdholdsholds that graceful pose with confident ease.

'i-i'm not-t,' sehun stutters as the dancer finally turns to face him straight on.  there is a smile there stretching full lips that feels genuine.  sehun tries to think of the last person that smiled at him sincerely.  maybe the old woman next door to his run down apartment when he changed her kitchen lightbulb a month before.

'if you aren't here to dance then why are you in the department,' a brow arches along with the question.

sehun doesn't want to admit that even after a semester under his belt he didn't know the school even had a dance department, let alone the true reason he was there.  he wonders just how far he had run to leave the sterile halls of the science department and end up here.  he wonders-

'hey fluffy!  where did you go?!'

sehun cringes and presses his back flat against the wall beside the door with its long rectangular window revealing everything inside.

'sehunnie!  come on, we just wanted to talk about how you made an A on klein's exam,' the voice croons outside in the hallway.  two others clicking their tongues and whistling like they are calling a dog.

'yeah, you cheating fat c-' the voice is cut off by a joining animal noise and sehun knows from high school just how pissed they are by the time they start that slur.

no matter how many times he swallows, the bile stays acidic on the back of his tongue.  the dancer glances between him and the voices coming through the door until he puts two and two together.  he strides forward, brushing elbows with sehun, and yanks open the door.  sehun can imagine how he will alert the bullies of his prescence, of him directing them into the secluded room to unleash their torrent of hate among their mirrored reflections.  he doesn't expect for-

'hey, douche bag.  your precious play toy isn't here.  why don't you off before i call your dean and let him know just what you idiots are doing during study hours,' the dancer shouts roughly out the door.

sehun breathes again only after the door closes and footsteps can be heard hurrying away from the room.

'now, if you are going to stay, you have to follow the rules and rules say that practice rooms are for dancing only.  so dance,' the guy moves over to his forgotten ipod and fiddles with the screen until heavy electronica floods the air.

sehun can remembeer twirling his laughing mother around their kitchen, the one time he danced along side an old friend in public on a dare.  there is no reason for him to stay and endure what will surely be more ridicule.  he has no obligation to follow rules that don't apply to him and sound half made up anyway.  he could just walk away, but this sweat ruffled guy with eyes too dark to convey animated emotion and dimples that flashed with simple reason when he smiles at sehun as if he were as normal as any other person, makes something loosen in his stomach.

when he thinks the word stomach and doesn't feel a flood of shame associated with self doubt, sehun curls his palms protectively over his convex torso.

he is telling his body to leave but his feet drag him forward, closer to the mocking mirrors and the swell of his flesh that makes him want to close his eyes.

he is awkward at first.  his sweater twists too tight across his shoulders as he replicates the steps the dancer is suddenly producing in front of him.  he can't quite keep up with the tempo so he adds random movement into the lagging gaps of time.  the boy, whose name he has yet to learn, murmurs encouragingly, tells him with a sure voice to stepstepswerve.  the air is thick as it pulls deep into his lungs.

the one time he chances to glance at himself in the mirror he misses a step because he notices how his sweater has risen up to reveal a stripe of pale skin with even paler stretch marks that flare like red lights in his mind.  his forehead is dripping sweat when he stops abruptly, face already flushed to cover the rush of embarassment as he tries to secretly straighten his clothes.

if the dancer notices, he doesn't show it, instead spins to finish in a florish of grace that makes sehun grit his teeth until the music is shut off.

'what is your name,' the dancer asks like he hasn't already found out from a voice of taunting meant to embarrass harshly.

'sehun,' is all he can force himself to pant out in reply.

'yixing,' a hand stretches out in greeting.

sehun can't help but flinch at the feel of the thin fingers rubbing against his as they shake hands, sweaty palm to sweaty palm.

'you know, you're a pretty good dancer.  better than some of the people who have joined the extracurricular club.'

'i'm not a dancer,' sehun pales and almost misses the heat crawling under his skin.

'here,' yixing pulls a half chewed ballpoint from his sweat pants pocket.  he scrawls messy numbers and letters across the white of sehun's inner wrist.  the black ink so contrasting next to the blue veins.  'this is where i practice nearly every night.  stop by sometime.'

five minutes later when the clock in the corner ticks three minutes until he is due to a honors class with his chemistry professor, sehun is still standing in the practice room with yixing long gone.  he vaguely realizes that he skipped his habitual vending machine raid between classes.

his stomach still feels full.  inside and always out.

as he leaves, he catches his reflection in the wall of mirrors again.  he only thinks two bad things about the layer of flesh visibly protruding above his belt line before admiring the way he spins timidly on the ball of his foot.