"…and then he told me they cut the best part out of the article. He’s been fighting hard to preserve it, but the editorial chief apparently wanted it out regardless of how good the wordplay was," Dr. Jeong Yongjun says, sipping his cup of coffee. It’s two in the afternoon and they just have time for a coffee break before the last of their patients. Sehun only started two days ago, so they share the patients that come into the clinic for now. Sehun has a training period of about fourteen days, but if he needs longer, Yongjun has no problem with it. The older doctor has gone above and beyond to make Sehun feel at home and he appreciates it. The friendly conversation during breaks, the ease into how things are done here and in private practice in general - Sehun couldn’t have asked for a better welcome. It’s just…

There’s a lingering feeling inside of Sehun, something the kind smile on the other dermatologist’s face, the waves of the beautiful beaches or kisses from Mikyung can’t quite seem to displace. Sehun misses his friends. He misses going to the fifth floor of Hangang University Hospital and dragging Jongin from his office. He misses bumping into Chanyeol and Jongdae in the hallways and he misses Baekhyun’s ridiculous jokes.

Sehun keeps telling himself it will go away. He just needs to settle, find his feet. It’s bound to feel strange at first in the small practice in comparison, with no colleagues even remotely close to his age. Yongjun is in his forties and the practice nurse and the receptionist are both old enough to be Sehun’s parents, and no matter how kind they are to him, Sehun will never be able to treat them with the casual ease he can the friends around his age. He hasn’t told Mikyung about how out of place he feels. It feels pathetic, when he was the one who kept telling her that he’d be fine and be able to make new friends when she’d worried about him. It’s not like he can never see his old friends again. Seoul is only a couple of hours away. Still, work is not the same without them there to brighten his day.

Besides, he’s happy. He’s happy in Busan with Mikyung. Moving in with her again has made every day a little brighter, a little easier. He loves coming home and having her there to welcome him, to talk to and share what they’ve done that day - his painfully empty apartment in Seoul just can’t be compared to that. She makes sure there’s more than ramen in the cupboards and they go surfing in the afternoon whenever the swell is good. Going to sleep with her warm body pressed up against his is everything he’s wished for in the last year.

“Sehun?” Yongjun asks. Sehun’s eyes widen a little, staring at the black liquid in his own cup. Oh , he forgot to listen. Yongjun sends him a kind smile and empties his cup. “Ready for the next patient?”

Sehun nods hurriedly. He throws the rest of his lukewarm coffee he’d forgotten to drink in the sink with only minimal regret and as they go to see the next patient, Sehun refocuses his attention on her.

She's a 52-year-old woman who has suddenly developed lesions on her arms and hands. They itch but upon closer inspection don’t appear to leave scars underneath. She tells them she has a history of autoimmune disorders, including lupus. Yongjun turns to Sehun.

“What do you think?”

Sehun leans over to inspect the woman’s hands further. It’s not something he has come upon often when he was at the hospital but given her history, they’d be foolish not to do further testing.

“I’d like to take a biopsy,” he says, and Yongjun nods his approval. Sehun is allowed to take the biopsy, but it’s no different than what he has done at the hospital, so it’s quickly done.

“We’ll call you when we get the lab results back,” Yongjun tells the patient. Sehun’s mind detaches from the situation at hand, but this time he’s not thinking of his absent friends and the halls of Hangang. He spends the next thirty seconds mentally running through a differential diagnosis, blinking himself back to the present when Yongjun and the woman stand up and the patient leaves the clinic.

“What do you think?” Yongjun asks him. Sehun presses his lips together as he momentarily doubts himself; it’s a rare diagnosis he’s come up with, and he doesn’t want to seem like he’s trying to show off or trying to impress his new boss, but it being rare doesn’t make it impossible.

“Given her history and where the lesions show up, I suspect we might see an elevation of anti-RO on the serology report,” he says. “I think it might be subacute cutaneous lupus erythematosus.”

Yongjun lifts his eyebrows, then nods.

“Interesting diagnosis. Let’s see when we get the results back.”

The last two patients are easier to deal with and with far more common diseases, and the woman with the strange lesions lingers in Sehun’s mind. The more he thinks of it, the surer he becomes of his diagnosis. He’s almost ready to bet on it when Yongjun stands up from his chair and distracts Sehun’s thoughts.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Yongjun says and Sehun realizes it’s three thirty in the afternoon and their workday is over. He’d been so caught up in his thoughts that time passed quickly. He nods and bows before Yongjun leaves him in the exam room so he can talk to the receptionist about something related to the business. Sehun slowly moves towards the room that will become his office when he’s seeing patients on his own to get his briefcase. Mikyung had bought it for him three days ago when he’d moved all his stuff into her house. It had been waiting for him on her dinner table, beautiful dark leather with a shoulder strap so he can easily carry it on his walk to and from work, with the words Oh Sehun, MD engraved on a small silver plate on the side. She had been so excited to see his face. Sehun had kissed her senseless and it had finally sunk in that it was here he was to be for the rest of his life, by her side in the southern city, but as he stares at the bag now, he doesn’t feel that excitement anymore. He shakes his head hard, hating how childish he’s being. He wanted this. Why is he whining, even if only internally, when everything has worked out just the way he wanted?

He walks down the street from the clinic. A small group of kids fly past him on scooters and BMX bikes, out of school for the summer. They’re probably headed to the skate park beside the beach. An elderly lady sweeping the entrance to her house sends him a smile and a wave, and Sehun waves back. The neighbors to the clinic already know he’s the new dermatologist and they seem to have taken a liking to him. On his left is the entrance to a walking path that snakes its way towards the beach and Sehun turns onto it. He pulls out his phone to check the swell report and the tide times, already planning to head out for a surf if it’s anything more than pancake flat. He’s still enjoying the fact that he can go surfing whenever he wants now, whether it’s at the local sandy beach five minutes walk from the dermatology clinic, or the bigger, more exciting but also more dangerous rocky breaks at the bays within 20 minutes’ drive. Either way, getting out into the water will help him clear out the stupid mixed feelings he can’t seem to stop thinking about.

As he nears the sandy beach, he hears the sound of the waves, then the high-pitched shrieks and laughter of kids. The local beach is less crowded than the popular tourist trap of Haeundae tends to be, since it’s further from the city, but the hot summer weather still draws many people out. Women and men dressed in bathing suits and shorts play in the water or soak up the sun from their beach towels and kids are everywhere, chasing each other or building sandcastles.

Sehun is overdressed for the beach in his work clothes, but he doesn’t care, just enjoying the smell of the ocean. He rolls up the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows and continues on his way, following the path as it parallels the sand. The water is a vivid blue and sparkles in the sunlight, an offshore breeze lifting the small swell enough to make a surfable wave, but there are not many serious surfers out, at least not here, mostly kids messing around on bodyboards and skimboards in the shallows. The surfers will likely have found their way to the bays, less crowded and with better topography for good waves.

Twenty minutes later, Sehun stops and moves to the edge of the path, steps onto the sand and stares out towards the ocean, eyeing the inviting peel of the waves. He’ll definitely head out to one of the reef breaks today. He wishes he could bring his friends here, to see them play in the water and try out surfing, like Jongin had. He wonders how Chanyeol would fare and decides he would probably be even worse than Jongin. He wants to see Kyungsoo in the sunlight and see if he shrivels up and hisses at anything that isn’t the light of his computer screen. A grin spreads across his lips at the thought. He turns back to the path and sets a quicker pace towards home.

“I’m home!” he calls when he opens Mikyung’s front door. The call he receives in return comes from the lounge. He slips his shoes off and gratefully peels his socks off immediately as he steps inside. Mikyung peeks out from the longue and smiles at him.

“Hey baby,” she says. “You’re home later than usual.” They meet in the hall to kiss hello.

“I went by the beach on the way home,” Sehun explains when they part. “Waves look OK. I’m going to head out later if you want to come.”

Mikyung nods. “I’m in, when do you want to go?”

“Maybe half an hour? I’m gonna eat something first or I’ll starve to death out there.” Mikyung laughs and turns to go back to whatever she was doing in the lounge. “There’s chips in the cupboard next to the oven,” she calls over her shoulder as he heads into the bedroom to ditch his gross socks into the laundry and change from his work clothes into a comfortable t-shirt and board shorts.

Once changed, Sehun finds the bag of chips in the cupboard where Mikyung had said and brings it into the lounge. Mikyung is sitting cross-legged on the couch, face scrunched up in concentration as she struggles to thread a needle. There’s coloured cloth, pins and cotton reels all over the coffee table, apparently brand new as they’re surrounded by plastic packets. Sehun feels his eyebrows lift high. He’s never seen Mikyung sew. As far as he’s aware, she doesn’t know how.

“What are you doing?” he asks. Mikyung lifts her hands to show him, one holding the needle, the other holding the thread.

“Threading a needle,” she says.

Sehun smirks. “Trying to thread a needle,” he corrects, and Mikyung pokes her tongue out at him.

“My coworker is getting married in a month and our team decided to make a quilt for her. We’re all supposed to make a square,” she says, waving the needle dangerously in the air in her enthusiasm. Sehun takes a hasty step back. Mikyung turns her focus back on the needle, but fails to thread it once again. Instead it pricks her finger and draws a tiny drop of blood. Sehun sighs.

“Give me that,” he says and carefully takes the needle and thread from her fingers. He puts them down on the table with the unopened bag of chips and sits down on the couch next to her. She turns and pokes her finger in his face, the miniscule drop of blood drying quickly on her skin.

“I’m gravely wounded,” she says pathetically and Sehun thins his lips to hold back a chuckle. “It’s not funny! What is a doctor boyfriend for if he doesn’t take care of you when you’re hurt?” Mikyung takes her finger back, protecting it with her other hand, and Sehun can’t hold his chuckle back any longer. He winds his arms around her and pulls her closer and she almost falls into his lap when her legs get twisted in her seat.

“Poor little Mikyung.” Sehun is still only barely containing his laughter. Mikyung s her finger in his face again so he can inspect the tiny drop of blood from the needle prick, but this time he grabs her finger so she can’t take it back. He turns it over and looks at it from different angles before he shakes his head.

“I think we’ll have to amputate,” he tells her seriously. Mikyung bites her lower lip.

“I knew it,” she says with a giggle hiding just underneath. Sehun lets go of her finger and reaches for the needle and thread again. As he leans back on the couch, he notices Mikyung staring at him as he deftly threads the needle in one try.

“What the , how did you do that? I’ve been trying to do that for like 20 minutes!” Sehun shrugs a little. It’s really not that hard. Mikyung watches him pull the thread through and pick up the cloth from the table. “Wait, can you sew?” she asks incredulously.

“I did go through medical school, you know. Just because I don’t suture wounds often these days doesn’t mean I don’t know how to,” Sehun tells her. He might be a bit out of practice, but he’d been good at suturing in med school. He smiles a little as he remembers how he and Jongin had bought bunches of bananas and slit the skins with a scalpel so that they could suture them up again, ending up with piles of neatly stitched-up fruit. They use tools like needle drivers and tissue forceps rather than their fingers to suture, but it can’t be all that different using a needle and thread.

He furrows his eyebrows in concentration, but doesn’t get to make the first stitch before Mikyung has gently taken the needle and the fabric from him and put it down on the coffee table again. He looks at her questioningly.

“It can wait, I don’t have to hand it in for a few weeks. You’re hungry and we want to go surfing, let’s do it another time.” She reaches out for the bag of chips, opens it and feeds him one.

“You know, we’ll soon have been together for six years,” she says. Sehun nods, grabbing another few chips from the bag and shoving them in his mouth. They survived the dreadful year of long distance and now they’re back together. “My mother thinks it’s time we got married.”

Sehun chokes on his chips. He’s coughing like a madman and Mikyung reaches over to thump his back.

“She what?” His voice is hoarse and it hurts when he’s talking. Not that Sehun has never heard it said before. His own mother thought he should have proposed to Mikyung two years ago and had given him a long lecture about how he’s being complacent and lazy, putting off taking the next big step, which Sehun had listened to without protest and then completely ignored. It’s not his mom’s business what he and Mikyung do.

Of course, Sehun has had his own thoughts about marriage every now and then, but for some reason it has always seemed like something for the distant future. He’s always been too present with Mikyung to consider the future. It’s not that Sehun doesn’t want to marry her, God no. If the past year has proved anything to him, it’s that he’s absolutely useless without her by his side.

“She thinks we should get married,” Mikyung repeats and looks up in his face. “Do you want to get married, Sehun?”

Sehun coughs a few more times to clear his throat and stares down at her. His heart is beating a mile a minute at the thought of marriage and the sudden expectations of this conversation. There are so many possibilities. What if she doesn’t want to marry him? What if marriage isn’t their thing? What if - wait, is this a proposal? Isn’t he supposed to be the one proposing?

“Are you proposing?” he asks in a stunned whisper. Mikyung’s eyes go wide, jaw dropping, before she doubles over in laughter. Confused, Sehun watches her until she reaches up to pat his cheek affectionately.

“No, silly. I was just asking, is all,” she says. There’s a twinkle in her eye that makes her look mischievous and beautiful all at once. Sehun smiles at her as his heart settles down. The expectations that were there mere seconds ago seem to have all vanished with her laughter.

“Well, do you want to get married?” he asks her. She pokes his chest with a finger.

“Oh no you don’t. I asked first.”

Sehun stares out into the lounge. The answer is an obvious yes. Being with Mikyung for the rest of his life is the only thing that has ever really mattered ever since he met her six years ago at a big surfing competition in Jeju. He had been 24 years old, shy and overwhelmed with the amount of onlookers, and he’d wiped out on his first wave, landing himself in the bottom five. Even though the competition hadn’t gone as planned, Sehun still considers himself the winner of the day. In all honesty, it was mostly Mikyung’s doing, because when he’d seen her across the dance floor at the afterparty, drinks in hand and laughter in her eyes, he’d been too awestruck to even dare hope for a chance to talk to her, let alone get her number. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off of her for the entire night, only sipping off his beer occasionally, completely drunk on her appearance instead. It wasn’t until she’d walked over with her bright smile and kind eyes and asked his name and where he’d come from that Sehun had managed to actually start a conversation with her. Mikyung had been easy to talk to then, bringing out the best of him immediately and it had only taken him a few weeks before he was completely in over his head.

“Oh Sehun!” Mikyung pokes him again. Sehun looks down to meet her eyes.

“What?”

“Do you want to get married?” There’s a smile in her eyes but a serious undertone to her voice. It sounds like she’s nervous. As if his answer could be anything but yes. Sehun smiles at her.

“Of course, if that’s what you want,” he tells her. “As long as we’re together.”

It’s the complete truth. Married or not, It doesn’t matter to Sehun what label they carry as long as they’re together. He just wants to be with Mikyung forever.

“I’d like to get married too,” she tells him under her breath, a small relieved whisper, and Sehun chuckles. To think she ever doubted him. He leans down to press his lips to hers quickly, but the position is too awkward to be kissing for more than a second so he lets go and leans back against the couch again.

“I’d rather not have a big ceremony though,” he admits after a few moments of silence. Mikyung grins at him.

“You want to elope?” she asks. Sehun blinks at her.

“Elope? Who are we running away from?”

Mikyung snorts with laughter and reaches to grab his hand and link their fingers. Sehun’s pointer finger automatically starts caressing her hand.

“My mother,” Mikyung says impishly, and Sehun’s eyes widen a little as he considers the implications. She’s right. Miyoung would want to plan a huge, glamorous, outrageously expensive wedding with hundreds of guests invited, stressing them out for months beforehand with hundreds of details for this or that. Together with his own mother’s tendencies in the same direction, it would be a total nightmare. Sehun shudders at the mere thought, and Mikyung laughs, leaning against him fondly to look up into his face.

“Let’s run away from our mothers for sure,” he agrees. Mikyung gets up onto her knees and leans over to kiss him, and Sehun closes his eyes as he reciprocates.

“Are you sure about this?” she asks when she lets go.

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