Pan's Bridle

If he clenches his teeth hard enough and holds his breath long enough, eventually, it passes. He never takes count but knows instinctively that each episode lasts a few seconds longer than the previous one. There’s no pattern to it, no foreseeing its arrival. It happens at random moments – the angle at which he tilts his head, the pitch at which he laughs, the jutting of his chin as he purses his lips in censure, consideration or self-consciousness, the glint of calculation in his eyes as he plans his latest mischief, their paining dullness when he’s depleted the resources of his mind and body with excessive labour, and the tenderness that issues from them when he observes his “brothers” in their own exhaustion – random moments wherein Byun Baekhyun causes Oh Sehun to near madness. 

It started off as a game, a play between “brothers” in indulgence of their fans’ appetite for “skinship” amongst members. Sehun would wrap his arm about Baekhyun’s shoulder; the elder would reciprocate by taking his hand. They’d smile at each other, now coyly, now brazenly, and at the end of the show laugh it all off. But with each performance Sehun would find himself clinging onto his hyung an instant longer, an inch closer, his reluctance to let go that body growing ever deeper. Awareness turned to agitation, agitation to impatience, impatience to need, need to hurt. The pain…he can scarce reason for it at times, but if he clenches his teeth hard enough and holds his breath long enough, eventually, it will pass.

“Sehun-ah, have you seen the stage-notes? It’s you and Byun-Bi tonight for the frame-freeze. So, what’s it gonna be? You gonna give his Aeries a gander at their oppa’s nutella abs or what?” Park Chanyeol’s raucous laughter rattles Sehun out of his reverie where he sits awaiting his turn at hair and makeup. He knows he ought to snigger, make some quick remark, or at least a suitably slow one to match the original, but the casting of the die this night has left him dazed with dread. To touch without touching, tug without tearing the rope...can he hold his breath that long? Clench his teeth that hard? I want to feel him. His jaws lock reflexively at the thought. 

“Why so serious?” Chanyeol squeezes his shoulder, the tension in his fingers belying the blitheness of his tone. “It was only a joke. See? Even oppa is laughing at it.” 

Baekhyun spins round in his chair to face the two younger men, his jet-framed eyes slitted in mock menace. “Yah, Maknae, careful now, you hear me?! Half an inch, that’s as far you’re going,” he in his stomach, “at least until the spread’s solidified.” Chanyeol breaks out in chortles, while Baekhyun smiles with a mixture of embarrassment and hilarity that sends Sehun's already strained pulse into overdrive.

Sehun means to join them, but instead blurts out: "Why? You're perfect as you are."

Chanyeol's mercifully-timed interjection saves him having to qualify: “Ooooh, a compliment from almighty Hun! Baekhyun-ah, I’d mark the date if I were you; it won’t happen twice," he cackles, characteristically clutching his stomach and throwing back his head. 

Sehun grasps his chance at diffusion with both hands and mouth. "Haha, so funny...not," he scoffs. "Just because some people will never hear it in this lifetime..."

"Omo, omo!" Chanyeol gasps theatrically. "Listen to this maknae! Is that any way to speak to your hyung?"

Sehun sniffs and sighs. "Do please forgive us, Chanyeol...ah."

"This little punk! Oh Sehun..."

Amusedly Baekhyun observes the two as they bicker on to kill time. The Towers, their Aeries call them - tall, lean and well-built both, but as unlike each other in essence as are cats and dogs. Oh Se-yangi and Park Chan-gae, he chuckles inwardly, the words he daren't let to the fore of his mind hovering at its back...No need for marking dates. Sehunnie...I won't forget. 

With sweat-soaked bodies they slip into their suspendered jeans and striped shirts. The "blessed" members, those who have been spared by Lady Luck from baring flesh tonight, offer their less-fortunate “brother” commiserative glances that promptly sharpen into gloating ones. Oh Sehun alone prepares in silent haste, expressionless to the last. 

“Perfect as you are, he says, and with that body, no less,” Chanyeol mutteres to Baekhyun, motioning at Sehun's half-exposed form and shaking his slivered head more in envy than in reprimand. “Cheeky brat! Baekhyun-ah, stomach in, shoulders out, yeah?! It’s the honour of our Beagle Line that’s at stake here, remember that. The honour of our Beagle Line.” He pats Baekhyun twice on the back before donning his mouse-eared hat with all the import of a soldier making ready for battle. 

"The honour of our Beagle Line," Baekhyun repeats whisperingly, then steals one final peek at EXO's youngest member as each puts on his own coward's helmet. 

"Cue, cue, cue! Hurry, everyone, you're up!" the stage-manager cries, frantically herding the members back onto the platform just in time for the music to start. Seamlessly they fall into Peter Pan's playful choreography, waving and winking and wooing the crowd, nine little elves that, much like the song's namesake, refuse to grow up. 

As they near the crucial point, Sehun's ears grow increasingly numb, the white noise produced by the ceaseless screaming of twenty-thousand fanatics dulling into little more than the muted buzzing of a single fly. Half an inch, he tells himself, that's as far as you're going, Oh Sehun, now or ever. He snaps his fingers, halting time. 

His face a mask of mischief, Sehun progresses towards Baekhyun. The elder's frozen figure seems to flinch at his advance, yet his features never stir. Tittering in time with the recording, Sehun removes Baekhyun's hat, then replaces it on his head. The elder's lips twitch but only slightly, while the others start to smile. He ought to maintain his position, shifting places isn't part of the directive, but Baekhyun's prolonged resistance spurs the younger into breaking it. Sehun comes up behind him, his long torso pressing lightly against his "brother's" back, winds both arms about Baekhyun's slim waist and slips his fingers underneath his shirt, slowly and skillfully pulling it up, just as he had promised, half an inch...at a time. So soft...how can a man's skin be this soft? Hyung...

Its sudden prickling jolts Sehun back to his senses. He looks about him to find the members laughing, the crowd roaring, the stage-crew prepping for the next performance, and realises that what to him felt like Dali’s melting clock, in reality lasted no longer than three seconds. Punctually, with a second snapping of his fingers, Sehun unfreezes the frame. The song resumes, the show goes on. Yet from that moment on and until they’ve reached the hotel, not a word, not a glance is exchanged between Sehun and Baekhyun. 

“You’ve worked hard. You’ve worked hard.” Members and management exchange the usual pleasantries before dispersing to their rooms for some hard-earned R&R. Baekhyun, as always, was set to lodge with Chanyeol, Sehun with Junmyeon, but their leader’s and main-rapper’s sudden submission to a summer cold just as they were setting off to China inevitably resulted in a couple-swap. 

Tensely, his mind a muddle of memories, misgivings and desire, Sehun follows Baekhyun into their room. He knows that he ought to forget, make as though those three seconds, that inch and a half were no more than a game, the likes of which he's played countless times in the past, but a question pests him that he cannot repress: why did it prickle? When I touched you, Hyung, why did your skin crawl?

“Hyung –“

“Wah, you really went all out tonight, didn’t you?” Baekhyun interposes, nipping the younger’s speech in the bud, and throws his jacket irately on the bed. He daren’t face Sehun, for fear he might see through the elder’s show of anger the depth of his discomfiture. He slicks back his hair that’s damp with half-dried perspiration and claws at his clammy neck. The sting of his fingernails as they sink into his flesh is a welcome relief from that of the memory of Sehun’s touch. Just leave it. Don’t say another word. Just...leave it. 

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take it that far,” Sehun concedes, aberrantly contrite. It catches Baekhyun off-guard, weakening his resolve. He wishes he could see the expression that accompanies that voice of penitence.

Don't. Don't you dare turn around. Wearily he says: "I know, I know. Just...forget about it."

"Forget about what?" Sehun pursues, carelessly defying his senior's command. After four years' working and living together, one would think his hyung would know better than to expect Sehun to do as he's told. Persistence replacing contrition, he repeats: "Hyung, forget about what?" 

Baekhyun wrings his still-made-up eyes frustratedly, wincing at the bite of the liner as it grazes his irises. I'm too tired for this. "Just leave it. I'm exhausted and my back is killing me. I just want to shower and sleep. You should do the same." 

Sehun's sharp intake of air dismisses the possiblility of his obedience out of hand. Slowly and distinctly he reiterates: "Forget about what?"

I told you, I'm too tired for this. Please... “Sehun-ah –“

"Were you cold?"

"What?"

"On the stage, when I played with you, were you cold?"

Baekhyun's brow crinkles in sudden confusion. "No. Why would you even ask that? It's like a furnace up there; you know that better than anyone." 

“Then why did your skin prickle when I touched you? Were you disgusted, is that it?” This time the sheers are in the younger’s hands, and with them he cuts short not Baekhyun’s speech but his pretence. 

He scrambles to piece it back together. “No, I’m just ticklish,” he returns with as much nonchalance as he's able to muster, while he busies himself with making his bed. The loudening creak of leather boots on ceramic tiles slows Baekhyun's movements to a crawl. Sehun's breath on his nape halts them.  

“Ticklish…” Sehun lets out a low sigh. Carefully he runs his fingers the length of Baekhyun’s inner arm. The pale pinkish skin bristles at the contact, fine, scarcely visible hairs standing to attention like so many militaries. “Look at that,” he mutters in muted triumph and rests his chin on Baekhyun’s thin shoulder. 

“That’s enough,” Baekhyun cautions, shaken by the flimsiness of his tone, its utter ineffectiveness.

But Sehun’s hand never desists. Gently, so gently it hurts, it inches up and down his arm so that Baekhyun wonders which of those might eventually drive him mad. “Oh Sehun…” he grunts, hanging onto sobriety with dear life. 

“Mm…” Sehun merely murmurs in reply, his left hand closing on Baekhyun’s chest even as his right continues to work his arm. 

Baekhyun shakes his head disparagingly, but before he can further protest, Sehun takes him by the chin and draws his face towards his own. For the first time since entering the room, the two men face one another, and for the first time in four years of cohabitation, Byun Baekhyun feels himself the younger’s inferior. A man, he marvels at the dominance of Sehun's aura that forces into submission his own. Beautiful...you always were. 

A man, undeniably, yet so impossibly soft, Sehun reflects as raptly he traces Baekhyun’s features with both fingers and eyes, his heartrate rising in chorus with their colour. Hyung, you can’t look at me like that and then ask me to stop. “I’m sorry, I can’t,” he completes the thought out loud, then presses his lips keenly into Baekhyun’s. His tongue tastes like tonic, sweetly medicinal, its textured warmth and wetness augmenting Sehun’s appetite. He kisses him ravenously, the kiss of the inexperienced. He cannot temper himself; he simply wants. He pushes Baekhyun onto the bed, himself onto Baekhyun. The elder’s body that tenses under the weight of Sehun’s causes the younger to pause. “Don’t worry. I won’t do anything. I just want to feel you.”

These three simple lines, spoken as guilelessly as any Baekhyun has ever heard, all but rend his heart. A man? Oh Sehun, you’re still a child. “Why are you doing this?”

Sehun doesn't reply, but whether because he deems the answer self-evident, or whether because he's never thought to place the question, Baekhyun cannot rightly decide. Whatever the case, the look of bemusement in the younger man's eyes serves a restorative to Baekhyun's resistance. "You don't know?" he sniffs. "Just going on instinct, is it? You're a big enough boy; shouldn't you have outgrown that type of recklessness by now?" 

Sehun's dark feline eyes turn a shade duskier. "If I say it, I can't take it back." 

The duty of age is to rein in youth, their grandfather would say to them when, as children, his elder brother would be made to pay the penalty for Baekhyun’s misdoings. At that time, being as he was a child, he could not understand the meaning behind his grandfather’s speech and actions. It seemed too cruel and unjust that he, who was in the wrong, should have gotten off scotch free, while his blameless brother was forever penalised. The duty of age is to rein in youth, Baekhyun reflects as he studies Sehun’s intently expectant face. Harabeoji, you were right. “If you think you might want to take it back, then there’s nothing to say in the first place, is there?” 

“It’s not as simple as that,” Sehun protests, his face a fusion of censure and lamentation.

Mirroring it, Baekhyun concedes: “No, it isn’t, and doing this won’t make it any simpler.”

They stare at each other in silence, unbridled youth that longs to run rampant, and unwilling age forever forced to harness it.  

“It hurts,” Sehun says at last, the cry of the conquered as they forfeit the fight. His jaws once again tauten; his breath catches in his lungs. This is as far as you go, Oh Sehun – farther than you ever thought you’d come.

His gaze averted, Baekhyun guiltily mutters: “I know. I know it does.”

“Why did you let me, then?” Sehun demands.

The childish indignation in his tone, so alike to that of young Baekhyun as he’d question his brother’s submission to their grandfather’s perceived unfairness, momentarily distracts the elder from his mission. He kisses Sehun softly, temperately, the kiss of the experienced. “If I say it, I can’t take it back.”

Sehun’s teeth unclench, his lungs unlock, his eyes slit cattishly, his lips curl up. Exultant, he presses them to Baekhyun’s ear: “I love you…Hyung.”

The duty of age is to rein in youth, the duty of youth to break the bridle.