Sehun wakes up three in the morning with something soft rubbing against his chin. He groans under his breath and rolls over, promptly smashing his face into velvet.

“Mrrfffggh.”

He sits up blearily, all too aware of the aching pain in his back from sleeping on a couch, and looks around.

The living room is dark, the night chill wafting through it eerily, and there’s something amiss that he can’t seem to place. His eyes slowly adjust to the darkness and he glances around the room. The couch adjacent to his is empty, and he realizes with a jolt that Luhan was gone.

He scrambles to turn on the floor lamp, and sure enough, the cushions are rearranged neatly and the spot where Luhan’s backpack was is empty. The blanket thrown over him is the same one he had laid over Luhan.

He hastily grabs his phone, quickly dialing Luhan’s number and glancing worriedly out the window. It was late, and who knows when Luhan had left his house.

The number you called cann—

“, Luhan, pick up,” he mutters worriedly as he presses re-dial frantically, pacing around the room.

Sehun barely registers the fact that it’s unnatural for him to be so worried for Luhan, because after all, Luhan is athletic—being the captain of the soccer team and all—but he couldn’t get rid of the gnawing feeling in his chest. It’s odd, it’s unfamiliar, and he’s just a little scared of it.

He’s calling Luhan for the fifth time when he hears footsteps on the staircase and whirls around.

“Sehun? What are you doing?” His mother asks, looking at him sternly from the banister. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping? It’s late.”

“Did you see Luhan leave?” He asks, clutching his phone tightly.

She looks at him, expression bewildered. “Luhan? Is that your friend?”

Sehun nods. “Did you see him?”

“Did he come over today? You were alone when I got home. Asleep on the couch.”

Sehun bites his bottom lip hard as he unlocks his phone again, calling Luhan once again, sighing when the dial tone runs out and the same automatic message reaches his ears. He throws the phone on the couch, face-planting into it soon after.

Luhan should be fine, he tries reasoning with himself as he shuts his eyes and breathes in the musky scent of faux leather. Yeah, he’s probably home already. There’s no need to worry.

He repeats it over and over to himself in his head, willing himself to believe it. The heavy feeling doesn’t fade way, and he briefly wonders if he is becoming afflicted with bronchitis.

A hand touches him lightly between the shoulder blades, and he flinches, surprised. He turns his face away from the couch just enough to meet his mother’s eyes.

“You should call him again,” she says, voice a little hesitant as she hands over his phone, kneeling by the couch.

“He’s not picking up,” he replies.

She shrugs. “Then go find him. It’s only proper to make sure your guest arrives home safely.” She pauses for a moment, indecision flickering between her irises, before she stands up with a resolute expression. “I’ll drive you.”

Sehun stumbles into the garage after his mother, still shocked by the offer, because when had his mother began caring about his matters? He sits shell-shocked in the passenger seat—he never sits in the passenger seat—as she drives around town in the middle of the night—lonely, disembodied headlights floating through the darkness illuminated by the moon and solitary street lights blinking into oblivion.

Sehun finds Luhan at a park three miles away from his house.

He’s sitting on a swing, backpack thrown haphazardly by his feet as he swings back and forth lightly. There’s something eerily child-like about his silhouette, silver against the night. It’s painful watching him.

“Luhan.”

It’s the way Sehun utters his name that makes Luhan look up. It’s not a question, not an angry shout, just Sehun’s characteristic murmur—soft and unassuming. The simple, unornamented word rings throughout the silent night.

“Hey.” Luhan flashes Sehun a weary smile.

Sehun takes a step towards him, feeling something in him fall farther and farther with every passing second.

“Hey.”

“It’s late.”

“Yeah.”

The entire conversation is ridiculous—Sehun knows that. He also knows that his mother is waiting mere yards behind him, probably leaning against the side of the car with her arms crossed, eyes observing him with a concerned gaze he hadn’t seen in years. But, just for this moment, nothing else matters, and the only thing he can register is Luhan—Luhan standing just a stone’s throw away from him, Luhan shivering a little as a cool breeze flits past them, Luhan smiling at him like it’s the most natural thing in the world for the two of them to be freezing in the middle of a park half past four a.m. Sehun sees the wet spots on Luhan’s coat where the snow had kissed the cotton, and the dark bags under Luhan’s eyes contrasting against his deathly pale skin, and the red tinge at the corners of his eyes that should be invisible in the dark but Sehun notices them anyways.

“Let’s go home.”

There’s something in that sentence and in Sehun’s voice—perhaps it was the promise of warmth and love and friendship and understanding and acceptance—but Luhan seems to fall apart under the words. He seems to break, shattering piece by piece like diamonds glinting under the stars, and he folds in on himself, sinking to the ground and wrapping his arm around his knees as he begins to sob earnestly.

It takes a while for Sehun to realize that , Luhan’s crying, and that he should really go over there and comfort him right now. But that simple action lies so far out of Sehun’s list of abilities, because he did not know how to comfort a human being. It takes him every ounce of energy to start a conversation and takes even more out of him to keep a conversation going—how does God expect him to comfort one?

Luhan’s sobs start out soft, a bit muffled by the material of his uniform slacks, but they gradually increase in volume until the quiet hiccupping becomes pained cries that echoes through the night. It tears Sehun’s heart in pieces, and the only thing he can do is stay rooted in place, looking at Luhan with a sort of helplessness that drowns his heart, his mind, his soul.

Finally, he turns around, searching for his mother, the desperate look in his eyes crying for help. To his surprise, she is just behind him, the wind blowing strands of her curly hair into her face. It is a rare sight, to see his mother so unraveled, and it stops Sehun’s heart for a second. She looks, for once, like a mother. The mother Sehun had lost when his father had left the house and never returned.

She gives him a reassuring half-smile and steps past him, towards Luhan. She places a hand on his back, kneeling down until she was level with him, and begins rubbing soothing circles and whispering into his ears. Luhan continues rocking back and forth, gripping his forearms tightly, nails digging into his jacket as he gasps loudly, trying to stop the onslaught of tears. She pats him a couple of times and continues to talk to him, to ask him questions and not wait for replies, to tell him that it was alright and that she was there for him, and Luhan nods, his cries diminishing, and all of a sudden, Sehun feels a bout of unreasonable jealousy, because his mother has never done something like this for him before.

But it disappears quickly, because Luhan starts to stand up, and something kicks Sehun in the brain and he runs over to quickly help him. He grips Luhan’s arm and the frailty of it scares him.

“Are you okay?” He murmurs, eyes locked to his feet as he walks Luhan back to the car, his mother behind him with Luhan’s backpack. His words catch a bit in his throat, but he forces them out anyways.

Luhan nods a little, embarrassment finally settling in but not taking great effect because he was just so, so tired. He slides in the backseat, head leaning against the window, and Sehun looks at him for a moment before closing the door and circling to the front.

He opens the door to the passenger side, but his mother gives him a stern glare, flicking her thumb towards the backseat and he stares at her blankly.

“Um.” He tries to climb in, but his mother physically s her seatbelt and leans over the seat to stop him.

“Sit with him in the backseat, for heaven’s sake, Oh Sehun.”

Sehun finds himself in the backseat next to Luhan, still stunned by his mother’s exasperation and feeling just a bit indignation, because hey, who was she to judge him?

But then, Luhan closes his eyes and drifts off, and by some miraculous of fate, his head falls onto Sehun’s shoulder and Sehun stops breathing for a second, head turning warily to look at Luhan.

A tuft of blond greets him, and he can feel Luhan’s body rise and fall in tandem with his breathing. A smile can’t help but creep onto his face, and he instinctively rearranges Luhan’s jacket so it sits neatly on his shoulders.

Sehun has never considered himself a particularly comfortable person to sleep on, but Luhan apparently thinks so, because he snuggles closer to Sehun, nearly nuzzling his neck, and slings an arm carelessly across Sehun’s midriff. Sehun freezes from the proximity and forgets the simple process of respiration until he recites his middle-school biology textbook in his head about oxygen moving into his windpipe and through his lungs or something like that.

He stares straight ahead for the rest of the ride, refusing to meet his mother’s eyes (she has somehow learned the meaning of the word amusement in the last two hours) and tries not to notice the words Luhan mutters against his clavicle until suddenly, Luhan’s arms tighten around him and he feels Luhan bury his face in his neck.

“Luhan?” He says softly, shaking him a little. “Luhan, are you okay?”

His voice is bordering hysteria, because once again, there were tears squeezing out of the sides of Luhan’s eyes, little drops escaping his lashes and skidding down his cheeks.

“Luhan, Luhan, it’s okay,” he whispers, tucking Luhan closer to his side as he leans his chin on the top of his head. “It’s okay.”

He repeats it a couple of times, until he can’t tell whether he’s saying it for Luhan, or for himself, or for his mother, or maybe for all three of them, and Luhan relaxes against him once more. He doesn’t even know what he’s saying okay to, but he just feels like it’s appropriate, and things rarely feel appropriate in his life, so he kind of likes it.

The car pulls into his garage about ten minutes later, and he’s a bit surprised to see the familiar surroundings. He didn’t know where they were going, but for some reason, he didn’t expect them to come back here.

He tries to gently wake Luhan up, and when that doesn’t happen, his mother nudges him and tells him to carry Luhan to his room, and disappears into the house.

Sehun stares dumbly at Luhan’s sleeping form, before heaving a sigh and hooking his arms underneath Luhan’s knees and around his shoulders. He lifts him up with relative ease, the lightness of Luhan’s body shocking him and frightening him once more, and kicks open the door, carrying him up the stairs and into his room.

Sehun places Luhan gently on the bed, brushing his hair away from his eyes and smiling when Luhan mumbles something under his breath and curls up. He pulls the covers over Luhan and contents himself with watching Luhan sleep for a while, just looking at the way Luhan’s eyebrows furrowed for split seconds before smoothing over.

There was something terribly pure and tragic about him.

Sehun thinks that he can make a life out of this, just looking at Luhan and never wishing for Luhan to look back at him, because sometimes, you can’t ask too much in life.