"Yah, Sehun-ah! What the hell is taking you so long? Momo just called – the girls are waiting for us at the club. Hurry your up already!"

Sehun ruffles his thick platinum hair and wipes the corner of his plump mouth, his eyes tapering in self-admiration as they take in the handsome image reflected back at them in the bathroom mirror of the Sapporo hotel suite currently hosting them. He looks good. Better than good. Always has.

Whining whilst awaiting him on the other side of its door is the man of the hour, his best friend and hyung, singer, songwriter, producer, actor, idol extraordinaire, Park Chanyeol. This day, this night has been years in the making, not merely months – the release of Chanyeol's long-anticipated collaboration track with his own idols, Far East Movement. That it's happened to coincide with their own group's promotional venture to Japan has been to the advantage of all involved – here, in this alien country with its ever-welcoming people, they can simply delight in the occasion with little concern for the criticisms that are bound to be directed at them regardless of the quality of their work, for the mere fact of its association with the name EXO.

Watching his hyung in the process of its production, his drive and excitement, his painstaking diligence and suppressed trepidation in practicing his English rap parts, Sehun had nightly prayed for the critical and commercial acceptance of the song, curiously titled Freal Love. Now that the wait is over, Sehun finds he cannot bring himself to learn whether his prayers have been answered or ignored. Curious cat though he is, for this one night he chooses ignorance for the sake of his brother's bliss.

"Hai, ikimasu!" he cries in the native tongue, chuckling at the muffled sounds of Chanyeol's chuckling at the same. He opens the door and tuts at his senior's expectant expression. "Momoka and Yukio, is it? Tsk, zero sleep tonight and a three-hour stage tomorrow…only Freal Love, eh?"

Chanyeol merely smiles for a reply, the mischief in his wide upward-slanted eyes belying the innocence of the dimpled gesture.

Involuntarily indulgent, Sehun grunts under his breath, "Tsk, saiyaku," then motions his hyung to the exit, languidly plucking his black leather jacket and car-keys from the counter as they depart. "Park Chanyeol," he sighs internally, "you really are…the worst."

The city's ablaze. Chanyeol blinks repeatedly at the blinding glare of uncountable iridescent add screens and neon signs, the kaleidoscopic setting of night-time Sapporo, made all the more mesmeric by the hurtling movement of the vehicle as, helmed by Sehun, they speed down the road to unfamiliar freedom. Abruptly he catches the younger's reflection in the side-mirror and his lungs momentarily give out. It happens sometimes when they're too long in silence together. To keep breathing around him, Chanyeol learnt very quickly after first making their maknae's acquaintance, one must busy oneself to breathlessness at all times. I've been too idle recently, haven’t I, Sehun-ah?

They've been joined at the hip since entering the training program eight years earlier, the only partition between them Chanyeol's two years' seniority on Sehun. It should have divided them in those early days of status-seeking, when the elders had nothing but age to elevate them, but the screen, being sheer, could not keep the two from seeing each other and what they saw they inevitably loved.

Love… Chanyeol exhales aloud. The only thing quainter than the word is the feeling it describes.

"Wae ireyo?" Sehun probes, never diverting his gaze from the road as he negotiates the crowded highway with the very effortlessness he does the stage.

"Just thinking…been a while since we've done this, hasn't it?"

Sehun nods and smiles, though a little too vaguely for the elder's liking. "Mm…we've been leading a most uneventful life, haven't we, hyung?"

Affecting dismay at the allusion, Chanyeol gasps and lightly punches Sehun's arm, cutely crying: "Ecchi!"

The younger sniggers and slowly his lips, as he does raking the lower with his teeth. "Ore?" he says with a sidelong glance at Chanyeol, and the latter's lungs again stutter as, raspingly, he confirms:

"Mm…omai."

"Mo-mo-chan!"

"Chanyeollie-oppa! Hisa shiburi desuka!" the diminutive female – a pocket-sized doll of a girl – chirps at his belated appearance at the VIP section of the club that serves a hidden hangout for Sapporo's top resident and visiting public figures, her pretty features aglow with delight. That smile…so contagious, Chanyeol cannot but beam back at her, while Sehun offers her first a bow, then a wink and his signature smirk.  

"Gomen, gomen," Chanyeol apologises, his hands upraised in a gesture of mock capitulation, as she advances towards him – a menacing figure to be sure, all one-hundred and fifty centimetres of her, "been too long since we've visited these parts. You look well, Momo-chan," he says with a quick squeeze of her fragile frame that makes him feel like he's hugging a child. Sehun can't help but chuckle at the scene, the comical disparity in their dimensions. "Yukio-chan wa?" the older male inquires, his arched eyebrows dipping in wry amusement as Momo, her expression dry, points at the dance floor and the furiously bouncing figure of the female in question. "Yeokshi Yukio-chan, she never stops! I like." Chanyeol chuckles throatily as he watches her riot. 

Terada Momoka and Mizuhara Yukio, a pair of sensible socialites with shareholding fathers, introduced to the boys two and a half years previous at a company function back in Seoul and the SM headquarters. Sensible and silent. Silent and discreet. Discreet and undemanding. Born pragmatists both, they've been a periodic pastime for Sehun and Chanyeol for as long as they've known them. Bred for business, these astute females have always known to neither ask for nor offer more than either party could afford to dispense. They keep it light, keep it fun, and most importantly of all, keep it quiet.

Yukio was Sehun's first. Chanyeol was there in the room when it happened – well, for the overture at any rate. It was a time of upheaval for the group, for Sehun in particular. She knew it even before the news broke out, and knew that little else would relieve him, so she gave the thing he needed the most – perspective. He's never been the same since…for better or worse.

"That's because you're two of a kind," Sehun evaluates, throwing his arm round his hyung's ever-widening shoulder, his gaze on his petite partner's daringly dancing figure. "She could pass for your sister, your characters are so alike."

Chanyeol darts him a dirty look. "So, you've been meddling with my sister, is it?"

The younger snorts. "Lesser of two evils, wouldn't you call it, hyung?"

It jolts him – Sehun's speech, his manner, his touch – they jolt him, though he refuses to let him see as much.

The things we don't know can't hurt us; the things that hurt us we never know. This Sehun said to him one night when they were still in training. They had been practicing for hours and had finally collapsed on the rehearsal-room floor. The music kept on playing and the younger kept on staring at a small florescent light in which was trapped a little insect, its microscopic heart slowly burning away at the incandescence . "Stupid creatures," Chanyeol had scoffed, "why do they keep flying into the light when it always ends up killing them?"

With inward-looking eyes Sehun mutely sighed and said the following: "Because some things are worth dying for, but one would have to be a stupid little creature to realise."

"Huh?" was as philosophical a retort as seventeen-year-old Park Chanyeol was able to muster at the time. To which the fifteen-year-old Oh Sehun requited with a smile whose equal his elder has yet to see since and words he's only recently begun to understand:

"The things we don't know can't hurt us; the things that hurt us we never know."

You were right, Sehun-ah, but one would have had to have been a stupid little creature to have realised it, and I was just a dumb old giant.  

"There he goes with his fluttering heart nonsense…" Chanyeol rolls his round eyes at the younger man's suggestiveness. "Go. Dance. Unlike her Korean brother, my Japanese sister is a natural born mover – enjoy."

Sehun juts out his naturally prominent chin and gives Chanyeol his best sidelong smirk as he concludes, "Well, some were born to move, others were born to shake."

"What were you born to do, Sehun-ssi?" Momoka abruptly interjects, her peach-stained lips stretched into a sinister smile.

Contagious as hers is, Sehun can't help but catch it as he replies, "Break."

"Waaaaah, kakoi!" Momoka mews at the junior male's forward moving figure as he makes for the floor and his welcoming partner. "He really has grown, hasn't he, Se-kun."

"Yah, Momo-yah!" Chanyeol protests.

"Gomen, gomen," she whimpers, and putting forth her best sheepish smile, wraps her short arm round his waist, all the while assuring, "I'd rather be shaken than broken anyhow."

Chanyeol peeks at the reunited pair now slickly manoeuvring their own and each other's physiques as they dance, and whisperingly fesses, "That makes two of us."

The night passes smoothly, with intermittent dancing, chatting and drinking. Good vibes all around. These are the moments, the rarer than rare moments wherein these boys, who were into adulthood long before their time and shall be tethered to their adolescence long after it, can be themselves as they presently are. The crowd never bothers them, their names are never screamed, their pictures never snapped. In the confinement of the club, they can be free for a while, in its darkness they can be light. 

At one point, Yukio slips off, only to slip right back into their booth not five minutes later and whisper something in Sehun's ear that makes him beam like he who got the cream. He gets up from the bench, and taking Yukio by the waist, Chanyeol and Momoka by the eyes, and returns to the dance floor just in time for the song to commence.

Chanyeol gapes confusedly at his companion, who looks none the wiser, then clenches his eyes and shakes his head as the familiar, if previously un-played beat reverberates through the room. Tinashe's "Freeeeeal love," and Momoka's "Omo!" overlap one another as the latter realises the going on, and as though having herself procured the riches, gives Chanyeol a most gratified grin.

Equal parts flustered and flattered, Chanyeol carefully scans the faces of the curious clubbers as they absorb the fresh sound, debating each and all as to whether they should vote it up or down, never knowing that until they've reached a ruling, Chanyeol's halted heart cannot restart. Only Sehun seems certain – certain and satisfied. Calmly he waits for the beat to drop, his farsighted feline eyes foretelling fortune for his hyung. Somehow it frightens him, the prospect of an unknown happiness, it scares him, always has. The things we don't know can't hurt us; the things that hurt us we never know, the line replays in the elder's mind as he watches it spread on Sehun's lips – a smile seven years unseen. Why now?

Chanyeol's attention is momentarily diverted by the dropping of the beat that finally decides the crowd. "WAAAAAH!" they cheer in chorus and all at once break into rhythmic dance. Sehun closes his eyes in slow motion and, likewise languorously, starts swaying to the heady cadence. The spinning spotlights ripple bluely on his pale skin and golden hair, the radiance assaulting the elder's senses. Apa… he blinks and squeezes his eyes. When they reopen to meet with Sehun's intently staring ones, he thinks it again: it hurts. Yet this time the pain pulls not at his head but at his chest.

Unblinkingly the two men measure one another: the younger frozen where he stands amid a throng of bopping bodies, the elder where he sits by that of his sometimes lover. Trapped in Sehun's inexorable gaze like the foolish little bug in the bulb, Chanyeol feels the club and its occupants slowly fade into the dark. He sees nothing save Sehun, hears nothing save the song – the song and the line… The things we don’t know can't hurt us; the things that hurt us we never know.

"This light," he murmurs dazedly as he watches the beautiful blue-bathed boy watch him with increasing relentlessness, "if you go any closer…" He once did, seven years before, and only just escaped with his life intact.

Because some things are worth dying for, Sehun's words sound on in his mind. For these the little creatures flock to the bulb, forfeiting a slow and steady death for a swift stunning demise, a lifetime of darkness for a second lived in the light.  

The second chorus plays. It's nearly time to decide.

"I'm all yours when you really wanna take me there,

Don't let me go nowhere.

I'd give it all up for you, I swear.

Only for real love."

To the rhythm of the post-chorus Chanyeol rises from the bench and steadily moves towards the dance floor, pausing at last in front of Sehun. The lights wash over them, yet this time the elder doesn't shut his eyes. He looks head on into the brilliance, ready to be burned and blinded by it. "But one would have to be a stupid little creature to realise," he quotes at the Sehun, his speech overriding his lines…

…Hustle to win, we be livin' in sin,

Making us two of a kind

A new road

Babe, we got temples to build,

Ain't no haters can step to our grind

We got that empire mind,

Let's climb up slowly together (that be for freal)

The moment my heart reaches you

Feel it, close your eyes (that be for real)

You be the bank by my side,

Nothing but dimes

Let's make a deal

It'll slowly spread, dreams and reality

If you hold my hand, together freal.

Sehun observes him the length of the verse, impassive – a sculpture with a pulse. Chanyeol is certain he can hear it, the meter is a Morse code that spells his spite. Does it hurt, hyung? it says.

Chanyeol nods.

Good, he mouths. Then, clutching Chanyeol by the wrist, carries him out of the club, into their car and onto the road to reparation.  

Not a word is traded between them as they ride, Sehun's eyes on the highway, Chanyeol's on his quavering hands. Where are they headed? Where does it end?

He was the one who started it seven years in the past. Now, same as then, he cannot say why, what may have prompted him, once they had finished their practice, to walk into that washroom where Sehun was taking his shower, and fully dressed as he was, press himself against the younger's back and take him in his hand. He remembers the boy's drenched body going supple in his arms, his cadenced panting cutting through the splashing of the water as it cascaded over them, the horrifying beauty of his sequentially distending and collapsing chest, the sting of his fingernails' digging ruthlessly into Chanyeol's left palm the instant he came in his right. The wound got infected. Closely observed, one can still see the scar. They never spoke of it. Mutual obligation and individual selfishness kept their hands from the door behind which they locked whatever it was that took hold of them that night. Brother and friends, they resolved – the safest and slowest of deaths.

The hotel parking lot. Back to square one. Sparing Chanyeol not a glance, Sehun switches off the engine, steps out the vehicle and heads into the edifice.

Stupid little creature, the elder sneers at himself as he follows his juniors tracks.

Wordlessly they ride up the elevator and enter their suite without turning on the lights. The darkness is offset by the variegated luminescence seeping into the room from outside – the enclosing skyscrapers and their glaring facades.

His back to his senior, Sehun takes off his jacket and tosses it aside.

Chanyeol doesn't know where to start, what to say, how to approach him in any regard. At that time the younger was so much smaller and slighter than himself; embracing him may not have been normal, but it did feel natural; the balance was right. But now…his stature and bearing, his person entire have evolved so that the two are too evenly matched and Chanyeol doesn't know – what does one do with one's own likeness?

His shoulders are so wide. I can't treat him like a woman. He's not. He isn’t even a boy anymore. He's a man. I'm a man. Two of a kind.  

At length Sehun turns round. As he does, the interloping illumination mottles his irises – neon on black – the vision thwarting the elder's breathing a third time this night. He hardly looks human at all with his tourmaline lips, alabaster skin and amethyst eyes. Chanyeol's hand springs forth mechanically in his desire to ascertain the actuality of so unlikely an existence. Is this the thing that causes the insects to their death – this basic inability to comprehend such brilliancy when the knowledge of it is what they most crave in life? Chanyeol wonders as the tips of his fingers find and lose the ridges of Sehun's high-boned cheeks all at once. At the elder's unconscious advance, the younger consciously withdraws, his expression rapidly ripening into something between ridicule and incitement.

You're too cruel, Sehun-ah, always were, he inwardly accuses, his canines cutting into his thick lower lip as he watches the curve of the younger's that are slightly ajar. "God damn you, you can't be helped!" he cruses under his breath and finally motions to strike.

A second before being hit, Sehun grips his wrists, spins him round and nails him to the wall instead. Somehow it makes better sense, Chanyeol decides, his gaping eyes and shrunken heart quickly regaining their shape and size.

Sehun watches him an instant longer – watches as the stupid little creature at long last realises his ultimate powerlessness within this ultimate power struggle. Satisfied it's been acknowledged he moistens his mouth and presses it into Chanyeol's.

It's as though he were being eaten alive. His lips, his tongue, his palate – not a place is left untended, untouched. He's never heard of such a kiss, let alone suffered its like. His past experience, such as it is, feels a child's play by comparison, and he being presently played by one who is little more than a child. He bites the tip of his chin before moving on to Chanyeol's neck, inflicting on him pain but only as much as provokes the elder's pleasure. It courses from his crown to his head, softening the first and hardening the last. One by one he peels them off – Chanyeol's jacket, his shirt, his belt. He s his jeans, leaving its waist hanging off his hipbones, then runs the knuckles of his fore and middle fingers up his midriff, unexpectedly pausing at his left and lightly pinching it. Chanyeol gasps and lets out a gruff whimper. What the hell was that?! Seeing the confusion in his stare, Sehun lightly smirks and pinches him again. Another jolt – a stronger one. Chanyeol purses his mouth to keep from as the younger teases his torso, now gently, now roughly, now with his fingers, now with his mouth. It feels…it feels. He feels it everywhere, Sehun's hands, his kisses, his eyes, feels himself going supple at it a touch at a time.

 So this is how it was for you all those years ago…worse even. You were just a boy, and I just came into that shower-room and took you without the slightest warning. To do what, satisfy my curiosity? Why didn't you fight, Sehun-ah? Even if you loved me, why did you let me use you like that? You were better, you deserved better than a coward who would take you and drop without blinking an eye. I'm sorry. Do what you like. Some were born to move, others were born to shake. You were born to break…me. Do it then. Do it.

He throws back his head, his hips forth, pressing them into Sehun's similarly set ones. The constraint of his underpants is enough to drive him mad, but the pressure from the younger's lower body feels too good that he can't bring himself to stop long enough to take them off.

Take them off… Sehun-ah, I want to touch you too. He pulls at the younger's plaid shirt, unfastening its buttons as quickly as he can. The sight is nothing new, but the sensation of his skin, his slender musculature… He gulps and bites his lips, then winces as Sehun does the same, his tapered teeth scraping Chanyeol's level ones. Delicious. It's so delicious he could gorge himself to death on the boy. I want to…but it's your time. It's your time.

"Hyung…"

Chanyeol's eyes grow huge at his dongsaneg's sudden speech after so long and loaded a silence.  He levels his gaze to Sehun's that seems to command it remains so. Don't look away, his narrowed eyes say as his hands close on Chanyeol's waist, slowly slipping down his spine onto his haunches, his middle finger their centre. The elder swallows and pants. He's scared. He's never been more frightened in his life. But whether of the pain that follows this pleasure, or of the pleasure that accompanies this pain he can't decide, and it's this very indecision that most terrifies him.

He won't hurt me. Not on purpose anyway. He's kind.  

No sooner does he think it than Sehun turns and tosses him on the floor, face first. He lands, like a dog, on all fours, then flattens on his stomach as the younger hunches over him, by turns kissing and biting first his earlobe, then his nape.  He teases him forever. Chanyeol soon loses count of the kisses Sehun sprinkles all over his back, from the tip of his spine to its base. He's sure he'll be black and blue all over come morning. But that's the least of his concerns. It won't be long now before… Throughout it all Sehun never makes a sound. Only his breathing sometimes feels to shorten or altogether arrest – a sign of excitement, Chanyeol determines. Fogged as his mind is with the headiest of mixtures – fear and arousal – it's a wonder he manages to register even this much. His boxer-briefs are by now quite drenched with it. It feels disgusting. He wishes Sehun would rid him of them and soon enough his wish is granted.

A little gentler now, he kisses Chanyeol again full on the mouth, then sighs as he whispers in the elder's ear, "Turn around now."

He does.

With as much of steadiness as he can manage when his mind and body alike are a-tremor he turns on his back, his gaze averted so that he catches glimpse of a number of packets that are strewn on the wooden planks to his left. He knows the brand – grade A lubricant.

You knew this would happen tonight, didn't you, Sehun-ah? Am I really that transparent?

Seeking the answer to this last, he looks up at the younger who's propped on his knees and briefly scowls at the sight of his curiously strained visage, the air of repressed discomfiture that surrounds him.

"Sehu –"

Sehun shakes his head, his double-lidded eyes slowly reducing to two unseeing lines. Blindly he climbs onto Chanyeol, settling astride his hips, takes him in his oiled hand and gradually guides him into his body, drawing not a single breath as the elder unwittingly breaches him.

Chanyeol forgets to claim his own with the shock of the reversal. His mind is seized and stupefied. He cannot move, cannot think, cannot breathe. All he feels is pressure – in his brain, in his chest, on his flesh, a crushing sort of pressure. He wants to relieve it, but doesn't know how. He doesn't know anything. None of it makes sense. None of it adds up. Sehun-ah…how? Why? Why again? Why to me? Why?

At this unuttered question, the younger's eyes come undone and mutely give his reply: The things we don't know can't hurt us; the things that hurt us we never know. Some were born to move, others born to shake. I was born to break. Wasn’t that why you dropped me, hyung?

Chanyeol blinks and wrings his eyes. It hurts. The wetness that wells behind their lids, it burns him like a corrosive. He has to bleed it out. He pulls himself up and winds his arms round the boy inside whose body and heart he is lodged and soundlessly cries. Sehun-ah…

The younger sighs and presses his lips against his lover's brow. "Stupid little creature, have you finally realised?"

Nodding into his chest, Chanyeol kisses it and Sehun's neck as he causes him to his back. With measured movements he pushes into the boy, wincing at the tensing of his muscles as he strains to suppress his suffering. It must be borne and so he does without complaint, its only indicator the rhythm of his respiration that shifts from steady breathlessness to a hectic one.

At what point does it change? Chanyeol can't say. But his body abruptly convulses and his eyes squeeze shut. When they reopen, two glinting slits reflecting foreign lights, the elder's certain that he's found it – the younger's sweet spot. Soon Sehun's hips start moving of their own accord, heat creeping up his abdomen to his chest and cheeks, painting all three the most delicious pink. Chanyeol s into him metrically, matching his movements to Sehun's pulse. Somehow it feels better unrushed. A soft, self-satisfied smirk spreads across his lips at Chanyeol's indulgence of his pleasure – so beautiful. He never loses face, never gives in to fluster, even under such flustering circumstances. That cattishly cool façade of his, it fuels the elder as few things can. He wants to preserve it but he wants to make it crack. He wants them equal but he wants to be Sehun's only pleasure, his sole weakness and his greatest strength.

He shifts them to their sides so that they're level, and pulling the younger by his thigh, drives deeper into him. Sehun's mouth opens but no sound escapes. He s a little stronger. The boy shudders, but still in silence.

Once. Just once. Just let me hear you once, Chanyeol pleads with his gaze. Always everyone asking Oh Sehun to sing. He chuckles mutedly and holds his mouth to his lover's eager ear, awaiting his conduction. Chanyeol repositions himself a fraction and again pushes into him. Once, twice and he hits it, drawing out of Sehun a low whispered moan that all but causes him to complete.

Patience is a virtue, pleasure is a vice and pain is the price one and all must pay for it.

"Sehun-ah…" Chanyeol grunts, now feeling his endurance failing.  

"Do your worst," the younger dares where he slickly murmurs. "I'm a man. I can take it."

Chanyeol doesn't need daring twice. He hoists Sehun up as he does himself so that the pair resume their opening position, and grabbing onto his trim waist starts working as he will. The younger tautens round him with insufferable greed. He throws back his head and lets himself be fed his fill. Seeing Sehun in his pleasure, Chanyeol is fast driven to his. Rarest of the rare: they come together, and as they did that fateful night seven years past, fall together on the wooden floor, breathless, sweat-soaked and spent.   

"Sehun-ah," Chanyeol starts after a time, his mind, like his body, still seeking respite, "that night, why did you let me?"

Sehun draws in a long breath, lets out a short sigh. It's rare seeing him this serious and good thing too – a fearsome sight. "You were so brilliant, so brilliant… I knew the moment I met you I'd end up burning for it. But then I also knew that some things are worth burning for, Bul-ssi." He smiles to himself at this last – that smile, his smile, the knowing little creature's smile.

Being as he was at that time a dumb old giant, Chanyeol could not have realised it's meaning when first Sehun gifted him it. Since then, however, their heights have levelled. It's easier now seeing eye to eye. "You know, we always pity the little creatures who get burned by the light. But have you ever thought about how precious those little spots of darkness must seem to it when all it knows is brightness? How much it wishes it could keep them instead of burning them alive?"

The pair study each other a while – unnatural colour schemes in the slowly spreading natural light of dawn: tourmaline lips, alabaster skin and multi-coloured eyes. Henceforth they must always wear them, and maybe they've been wearing them all along. Who's to say being blinded by black and white?

"Am I your darkness, Park Chanyeol?" the younger asks.

"Am I your light, Oh Sehun?" the elder replies.

"Both," they both resolve at once.

"Two of a kind."