Luhan didn’t mind it being like this – for the most part, anyway. It was only when Sehun got older that it started to bother him, only then that he began to fear being outgrown. Then again, he’d had that same feeling of dread on multiple occasions during Sehun’s childhood, when Sehun turned his back on him every time his friends came over, but he’d come to realise that this feeling of dread – this fear of being outgrown and abandoned – was irrational. Sehun always ended up coming back to his. Sehun would always love him. Even if he turned his back on him whenever his friends were there, he always came back as soon as they left.

But Sehun wasn’t a child anymore and instead of having his friends come over to play, he went out with them to places Luhan wasn’t allowed to go to. Luhan wasn’t allowed to go anywhere at all. He did nothing but sit on a shelf in Sehun’s room. It used to be okay. Sehun used to take him down from the shelf and play with him every chance he got. It was different now, and Luhan was left sitting on the shelf months at a time. Sehun only took him down now a few times a year, and that was only to dust him off along with a few other things from the shelf. He did utter a few words to him occasionally though.

To Luhan’s distress, none of the words Sehun uttered to him were anything like the ones he wanted to hear. He was given no indication that he missed him or that he ever thought of him, no indication that he was still an important factor in his life.

It may not have been so bad when Sehun first started to drift away from him – he still played with him every few days and Luhan could cope with being alone for a short period of time – but the abandonment and the loneliness soon started to take its toll on him. He often contemplated leaping from the shelf, hoping that the impact of him hitting the floor would be enough to shatter him into a million pieces, but he never went through with it. He couldn’t. Not just because he was clinging to the possibility that Sehun might still need him, even though it felt like he didn’t, but because he physically couldn’t do it. He couldn’t move. After all, he was just a doll.

At times – the few times a year that Sehun actually interacted with him – he came close to being happy. He tried to stop himself from getting too hopeful every time it happened, because he’d known for a long time that it was inevitable that Sehun would eventually grow bored of him. It never worked. The second he saw Sehun step into the room, look at him, and start walking towards him (even if he never actually reached him or say anything to him) the memories of all the times they’d played together and all the times they’d spoken to each other about secret things no-one else understood came flooding back, filling his head with nonsense and his stomach with butterflies.

Reality hit him like a ton of blood red bricks every time. The memories faded to black and left him with the sad realism of the present; the nonsense that filled his head vanished in the space of a second and his mood rapidly deteriorated; the butterflies broke their wings and died of shattered hearts. Sehun didn’t want him. Sehun didn’t care. He was only still there because he had to be. As soon as he had the chance to leave, he would. But Luhan would never have the chance to follow him.

Luhan had been a late 8^th birthday present to Sehun, given to him by his parents. Sehun’s face had lit up when their eyes met for the first time. So had Luhan’s. It was just a shame the happiness they’d shared couldn’t have lasted longer, even though they both knew it wouldn’t last forever. It had taken Sehun years and years to get sick of him. That’s probably what had given Luhan the incentive to dream of a life where nobody wanted to give him away - the sheer time it took for Sehun to want him gone. But he always woke up. If not the look of annoyance in Sehun’s eyes or the hint of disdain in his voice, then something else would always wake him up.

Dare to dream. Luhan dared. Dreaming wasn’t something to fear; waking up was.

This time, it was another’s voice that woke him up. It was the voice of the woman who’d been the one to bring him home as a present for her son - Sehun’s mother. What she said was nothing special, nothing he hadn’t heard a thousand times before. Sehun rolled his eyes when he heard her, for exactly the reason why Luhan wasn’t surprised that she’d spoken (“spoken” wasn’t really the right word; “yelled” was probably better). He heard Sehun mutter something under his breath and then saw him begin to walk towards him, only to stop while he was still over a metre away. His mother yelled again and he sighed, glaring at the doll on the shelf.

If he’d had the physical capacity to do so, Luhan would have thrown himself off the shelf the second he saw the disgust in Sehun’s eyes. It wasn’t just disgust; it was pure, untainted hatred. He always searched hard for something other than hatred or revulsion, but he never found anything. No matter how much he hated himself for destroying Sehun’s life - even if he hadn’t destroyed it right away - he was powerless to change it. Only Sehun could end it for him. Nobody else apart from his mother ever went near him, and she was the one who refused outright to get rid of him, though why was something Luhan was never able to figure out.

“You’ve ruined everything.” Sehun’s voice oozed malice and his glare intensified. Luhan expected nothing less. “You know that, right?” Of course he knew it. Sehun wouldn’t let him forget. “You’re still ruining it all now.” He knew that too. But it wasn’t like he had the power to do anything about it.

Sehun didn’t stop insulting him until he’d finished cleaning him and was heading towards the bedroom door, presumably with the intention of disappearing through it and not returning until the early hours of the morning like he usually did. He was nearly always drunk when he came back and Luhan couldn’t help feeling responsible for it. He hated to see Sehun in such a bad way, and not just because the insults he spewed at him were more abusive after he’d had a few drinks.

Fortunately, he never made it out the door because his phone buzzed in his hand to tell him he’d just received a text message from his friend, which according to Luhan’s deduction said that the night out they were about to embark on was cancelled. Sehun didn’t look very happy about it. Luhan didn’t know how to feel - he was glad that he’d be able to spend more time with Sehun, but at the same time he wasn’t sure if he really wanted to; Sehun hated him enough already, after all.

He expected anger. He expected abuse. He expected to be thrown across the room and smashed against the wall. He expected to be broken.

And for a short while, that’s what he got. Screaming, swearing, threats. But Sehun never laid a finger on him, contrary to what he threatened. Luhan would have been happier if he had thrown him across the room. He wanted to be broken. Instead, Sehun dragged out his suffering for so long it couldn’t have been called humane, seemingly determined to make him endure as much pain as he could physically and mentally take before he naturally broke. It hurt more because it was Sehun, though Sehun didn’t seem to realise that. It hurt more because they used to be so close. It hurt more because he’d somehow managed to turn the only person who hadn’t given him away against him.

Sehun reached out and grabbed him. They both knew what was coming. Luhan had thought he’d been prepared for this moment for years, but now that it was finally happening he didn’t want it to. He wanted to break free of Sehun’s grasp and tell him he was sorry, that he never meant to ruin his life and that he loved him, hoping that Sehun would say he loved him back.

The impact he’d been waiting for never came.

“They’re always telling me not to break you, that I have to look after you. Do you know what that does to a person? No, you probably don’t. You don’t know anything. You can’t even lift a finger. Well what if I don’t want to look after you? What if I want to break you?” Sehun hadn’t said so many words to him in one go in so long that Luhan wasn’t sure if it was really happening. But instead of smashing him against the wall like he wanted to, Sehun’s loosened his grip on him and took a step back, inhaling deeply to calm himself down.

“I won’t do it, but I do want to hurt you. I want you to feel everything I’ve had to go through for the last ten years!”

But what about what I’ve had to go through?

He wished he’d been able to feel what the mattress on Sehun’s bed felt like. He imagined it was softer than the shelf, but even though he was lying on it he couldn’t feel anything below him. He was too numb to feel. Sehun was numb too. The bottle in his hand, or rather the contents, was what made him numb. He drank to forget the past and dull the pain of the present.

Luhan stared up at the ceiling because he couldn’t move to look at something else. If it had been up to him, he would have turned his head to gaze at Sehun as soon as the latter laid him down on the bed. And if he’d had the ability to speak, he would have reminded him of how it used to be and promised him it could be like that again even though he was almost one hundred percent certain it couldn’t. He wished it could. He remembered everything but Sehun seemed to remember nothing but the last few years; he didn’t appear to remember the joy and the peacefulness of his childhood at all. All he focused on was what he was missing out on.

You used to kiss me, Luhan longed to remind him. I don’t know what it was supposed to be feel like but I still want you to do it again. When Sehun was a child - before he’d developed his hatred of Luhan - he used to kiss him on each cheek every night before he went to sleep, and Luhan would always be tucked up beside him, the blanket covering both of them. That was when you used to love me. Why don’t you love me now?

Sehun’s face came into view as he leaned over, obscuring Luhan’s view of the dirty white ceiling (not that Luhan was complaining about that). “Why do you have to be so pretty?” He slurred his words so much that Luhan had difficulty understanding him, not that he could reply anyway. “You think I forgot how I used to feel? I still care… sometimes. But that doesn’t mean I don’t hate you.”

Luhan swore Sehun might have kissed him again, but he didn’t know for definite.

Sehun’s grip on the bottle relaxed and it slipped through his fingers, hitting the floor and spilling its alcoholic contents all over the carpet. Sehun didn’t care. He was already half asleep with one arm wrapped tightly around his favourite doll.