Chanyeol dropped his keys in his excitement to get into the apartment—in his eagerness to see his two lovers again after being away for so long—and maybe he should have seen it for the bad omen it was, but all he could think about was the puff of Minseok’s cheeks when he smiled and the crinkles around Sehun’s eyes when he laughed until he cried. Chanyeol had missed them terribly—he always did.

“Hello?” He called, stepping into the entry hallway of their flat and leaving his suitcase just inside the doorway as he ventured further in. “Minnie? Sehunnie? Anyone home?”

No one answered. Chanyeol shrugged and mumbled to himself that they were probably out to dinner or something; his debrief meeting with Luhan had run shorter than usual and Chanyeol guessed that his husbands probably hadn’t expected him home this early.

Well, that was alright, he mused. Let Minseok and Sehun enjoy their date; he would unpack his bag, toss in a load of laundry, and make himself a sandwich. They’d be back sooner or later and Chanyeol would be ready and waiting with gifts in his hands and a backlog of saved kisses on his lips.

The apartment was unlit against the oncoming darkness of evening, and Chanyeol, so caught up in formulating this plan, would have missed the presence of someone else in the apartment if not for the fact that he took a step toward the kitchen and promptly tripped over Sehun’s crossed ankles. Sehun yelped, loudly, and startled Chanyeol into an echo of surprise.

“Sehun?” Chanyeol whispered into the darkness.

Sehun grunted an affirmative, then groaned and shielded his eyes when Chanyeol managed to reach the lamp beside the couch and switched it on.

“You were asleep?” Chanyeol guessed, his heart nearly bursting with emotion as he took in Sehun’s mussed hair and half-lidded gaze. “I’m sorry,” he apologized when Sehun nodded. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I was waiting for you,” Sehun mumbled, then yawned and rubbed at his eyes. The action raised his shirt enough for Chanyeol to glimpse the deliciously soft skin of Sehun’s firm stomach, but it wasn’t enough to distract from the dark circles under the younger’s eyes.

“You look exhausted,” noted Chanyeol, his voice thick with concern as he moved to sit beside Sehun on the sofa.

“Minseok’s getting married.”

Chanyeol missed his seat and landed on the floor in a shocked heap.

“He’s already married,” Chanyeol reminded Sehun, who’d delivered the news with a sort of resigned sadness that made Chanyeol wonder how long Sehun’d had to process this information. “We all are.”

Sehun looked down to where Chanyeol had gotten comfortable in a cross-legged sitting position on the floor.

“Tell that to him,” he responded shortly. This time the bitterness was obvious but when Chanyeol reached out a hand to Sehun’s knee to comfort him, Sehun moved away before he could.

“Don’t,” the younger choked out. “Don’t try to make this okay. He’s gone and it’s not going to be okay.”

Chanyeol hunched his shoulders, hurt. He started to say, “I wasn’t going to–" but Sehun interrupted, disagreeing.

“You were,” Sehun told him. “You always do. But false optimism isn’t going to change anything. We tried and it didn’t work and that’s it.”

“That can’t be it!” Chanyeol cried, shooting to his feet and towering over Sehun in his despair. “There has to be something we can do, someway to bring him back to us!”

Sehun stood abruptly so that they were now face to face. “There is no us!” He yelled back, his voice cracking. “You’re never here. It’s always just me and Minseok, waiting for you to come home and trying to make it work until then in a bed that’s too big and a world that's too small-minded."

He shook his head against the tears that were beginning to mark tracks down his pale cheeks; when that didn't work he raised a hand and brushed at them angrily. “You know his parents don’t accept who he is—that they don’t understand what we had together.”

He spoke in past tense, like it truly was over, and Chanyeol hated that.

“And you know how he feels about weddings,” Sehun continued, on a roll now even as the tears started falling faster and he seemed to struggle with finding enough breath and energy to shout. “It was inevitable, really, that he’d cave to their demands for a wife and a white picket fence and 2.5 children.”

Chanyeol bitterly recalled Minseok's parents as nothing more than old and stooped from the weight of responsibility and blind prejudice. He told Sehun as much and said, quite explicitly, what they could do with their narrow-minded expectations.

"And they'll do the same to our Minseok," he added emphatically, "if we don't find a way to bring him back. They'll weigh him down and break him."

Sehun quieted, the fight going out of him with a pained sigh as he collapsed back onto the couch. "I don't think you understand, Yeol," he  said, almost apologetic.

He waved a hand toward the floor and it was then that Chanyeol saw what he'd actually tripped over in the dark: Sehun had packed a bag. Sehun was leaving. In the span of a day Chanyeol had lost the two people he loved most in the entire universe, and now he was going to be left all alone. 

Sehun began to cry again. "I'm sorry," he choked out. Chanyeol would like to believe his younger lover had at least sounded a little conflicted. "But I can't do this without him. I don't know how to live with you without him."

Chanyeol took in Sehun's tears, the scrunch of his nose as he sniffled, and the pull of Sehun's bottom lip between his teeth. "You don't–" Chanyeol ventured slowly as he realized something. "You don't know how to love me without him, do you?"

Sehun cried harder. It was answer enough.

Chanyeol flinched and staggered backward. He'd never been shot but he supposed this was what it might feel like, how much it might hurt. 

"It's always been the three of us," Sehun tried to explain. He sounded tired. "How is it supposed to work now that he's made us only two?"

"I love you!" Chanyeol cried. "Isn't that enough?"

"It wasn't enough for Min," Sehun reminded Chanyeol as gently as he could for someone who was simultaneously tearing Chanyeol's world apart.

"Or you either, apparently," bit out Chanyeol, now standing on the edge of the room over by the entrance to the front hall. As far away from Sehun as he could get, basically.

Sehun opened his mouth to respond—whether to confirm or deny, Chanyeol didn't know. "I–" he began to speak, hands outstretched toward Chanyeol unconsciously. "I–"

Chanyeol never got to hear what Sehun was going to say because suddenly there was a jingle of metal from outside the door and the unmistakable sound of a key turning in the lock.

Minseok had come home.

"Chanyeol-ah!" Minseok called as he let himself in. He started sounding frantic and Chanyeol didn't understand when Minseok started to yell his name. "Chanyeol! Yeol!"

Chanyeol's eyes flew open. He was lying on his back on the carpet in their living room and there were two blurry faces blocking his view of the ceiling. His head hurt; he blinked.

"What? Minseok?"

What was going on here?"

"You fell, Yeollie," Sehun told him, speaking slowly as if he was concerned about Chanyeol's current comprehension. Part of Chanyeol instantly recoiled, but part of him wanted to cry in relief.

What the hell was going on here?!

"You hit your head when you tripped over Sehunnie's gym duffel," Minseok added in answer to Chanyeol's unspoken question. The elder shot their youngest lover a fond look, then said, "Our Hun-ah really should learn to tidy up after himself, shouldn't he?"

Sehun grumbled and stuck out his tongue. "I'm right here."

Minseok took the sight of Sehun's tongue as an invitation and soon they were kissing, entwining themselves over Chanyeol and both making small noises of evident appreciation.

Chanyeol, for his part, remained on the floor under them, still unable to believe this was entirely real. He'd obviously hallucinated something awful when he'd hit his head, but how could he be sure that he wasn't hallucinating now? How did he know that the main of Minseok and Sehun's abandonment hadn't cracked his mind and sent him spiraling?

"Are you–?" He tried to speak but his voice was gruff with love and relief and he had to clear his threat before he tried again. "This is really happening, right?" He looked between Minseok and Sehun; they'd pulled apart and were staring down at him with concern in their eyes. "You're really here? You're not going to leave me?"

Minseok's smile was sad but not as confused as one might think. It told Chanyeol that Minseok could assume some of what Chanyeol had just gone through, and that he understood the fear. "Can't leave you," he murmured against Chanyeol's lips as he bent his head down to kiss him.

Sehun waved his hand around to get their attention, the wedding ring Chanyeol had brought for him glinting in the warm lamp light. "You married us, Yeollie. We aren't going anywhere."

Chanyeol could feel his face become suddenly wet. Was Minseok crying above him, or were those his tears? He didn't know. And then, when Sehun began to laugh, low and joyful, and Minseok and Chanyeol joined him, even through their tears, Chanyeol decided that it didn't matter who'd been crying.

Minseok pulled Chanyeol's head into his lap as Chanyeol pulled Sehun down to kiss him.

"Not even death will us part." Minseok reminded his lovers. "We wrote that because it's true."

They had indeed written those words on their post-it note wedding vows which were now framed and hung reverently above their bed.

"And I love you," Minseok continued to speak as his quiet confidence erased the very last crumbs of Chanyeol's nightmare. "Both of you. Remember that."