Kai-Centric
Continuity: Pre-Chapter 1
Warning: Blood, attempted suicide.

#1: Please Stay

On day 257 of being stranded and alone, Kai is walking back to their makeshift camp site when he hears faint yelling. He picks up his pace, dodging through the trees and tries to focus on what is being said, but he’s so hungry and tired he can’t make himself focus. He bursts through the trees to find Sehun holding a sharp rock to his bleeding wrist and screaming at Lu Han.

“Look at me!! I know you’re in there, Lu Han! I know you can see this!!” He digs the rock into his skin and blood sprays onto Lu Han’s face.

Kai reacts automatically, dropping the firewood he was holding and running at Sehun. He smacks into him hard and knocks him to the ground, Sehun’s grip on the rock slackens and Kai knocks it away. He’s sitting on Sehun’s chest, trying to keep his balance as Sehun attempts to throw him off.

“What do you think you are doing?!” Kai screams in Sehun’s face. He grabs the younger’s wrist and inspects it carefully, assessing the damage. Of course it’s unnecessary, as Sehun cannot die. He could find all the sharp rocks he wanted and throw himself on top of them, there would be no lasting damage. Even now the wound is starting to heal, but the sight of his friend intentionally harming himself has Kai ready to pass out.

Sehun’s breath had been knocked out when Kai tackled him, but he regains it quickly and starts yelling.

“Get off! I know what I’m doing, I have to get to him!!”

Kai hits Sehun as hard as he can, which is actually not that hard because he’s shaking and weak with fear.

“Do you think this is the way? By threatening to kill yourself?”

The slap makes Sehun go quiet. He puts his hand to his face and looks up at Kai with tears in his eyes. Kai has never hit Sehun before, nor has he ever fought with or yelled at him. Not when Sehun had accidentally broken his favorite necklace, not when Sehun invited Lu Han into their Secret Club without asking him first, not even when he’d felt so alone whenever Sehun’s eyes would follow Lu Han’s every move and he felt like he was being replaced. Kai feels tears threaten to fall from his own eyes and he feels like a horrible person, but he resolves not to apologize.

That resolution crumbles when Sehun starts to cry. Sehun doesn’t cry, not in front of him.

“H-He said he couldn’t live w-without me,” Sehun stammers. “That if anything ever h-happened to me…”

Kai crawls off of Sehun and helps him sit up, since he’s crying too hard to do it himself. Sehun turns toward Kai and grabs his shirt, shaking him a little.

“I can’t do this,” Sehun tells him. “I need him. He can’t live without me, well I can’t live without him!” He grips Kai’s shirt harder, his head falls forward into Kai’s chest. When he speaks again, his voice is muffled by fabric and tears.

“I can’t sit here every day for the rest of my life, knowing he’s alive but that he’ll never look at me, or talk to me or tell me he loves me ever again. It’s killing me, Kai!” He’s screaming now, his head still down and Kai is sure he’s not getting enough air, if he’s getting any at all. Kai desperately tries to reposition Sehun so that he can breath and somehow winds up with Sehun straddling his lap, sobbing into his shoulder.

“He’s as good as dead,” Sehun cries brokenly. “Isn’t that what they say about the lost? Isn’t it?!”

Kai swallows hard and tries to keep his voice from breaking. “Yes, it is.”

Sehun laughs hysterically. “Well isn’t that ironic? Isn’t that just the worst kind of irony and torture all at once. We were supposed to be unstoppable, gifted, indestructible. We were going to live forever and always be by each other’s side, and now even though he’s alive he might as well be dead, and I can’t even join him.”

Kai’s blood runs cold and he grabs at Sehun’s arms, shaking him hard. “Don’t you dare say that, don’t you ever say that!”

“It’s true though,” Sehun insists. “You have no idea how much I want to die right now. If we were both human I’d kill myself and then when he dies, and I’d be waiting for him in the afterlife and we’d be together again and this time nothing would ever go wrong—”

“STOP IT!!!”

Sehun goes absolutely still as Kai finally loses it, breaking down and crying almost as hard as Sehun had been before.

“You. Are. So. Selfish,” Kai gasps between sobs. “How can you say that to me? To me, Sehun!! You are my best friend! What would I do if you died?!”

This is what it feels like to be afraid, Kai thinks. He’s looked death in the face, and that used to be the single scariest moment of his life, but that doesn’t even compare to this, to hearing his best friend talk about killing himself.

“How could you leave me alone like that?” Kai asks, letting all the betrayal he’s ever felt out in that one sentence.

Sehun tries to take it back. “That’s not—I didn’t—You know—”

Kai wraps his arms around Sehun’s torso and hugs him. “I do,” he concedes. “I do know that this is hard for you. I have watched you suffer every day since we got here. Don’t you think it’s been hard on me, knowing I can’t do anything to help you?”

Sehun hesitantly returns the hug. Kai lays his forehead on Sehun’s shoulder.

“I know I’m not Lu Han, and I can never be what he was to you…but please,” He looks up and takes Sehun’s face in his hands. Sehun’s face is dirty and bruised, his eyes are red from crying and he looks ten years older than he is, but all Kai sees is Sehun when he was five years old and coming to the Sanctuary for the first time, all smiles and bright eyes.

“Please,” Kai begs, “I can’t lose all my brothers and my best friend at the same time. Can’t you try to hold on for me?”

Kai thinks he is actually the most selfish person in the world at this point, begging Sehun to think of him and his needs when he’s just lost the love of his life, but part of him is screaming that both of them can survive this if they learn what it was like to just have themselves to rely on again. He loves Lu Han very, very much, he’s prepared to say that he’s Kai’s favorite right after Sehun, but he knows that the Lost can never come back. They lived without Lu Han before, maybe they can do it again.

Sehun’s lip trembles and he bites down on it so hard he breaks the skin. Kai reaches up and wipes the blood away even as the cut heals.

“I love you so much Sehun,” Kai tells him. “Maybe not the way Lu Han did but just as much. If you left I don’t know what I would…”

Sehun shuts his eyes and nods. “Okay,” he gasps, “I won’t ever do that again. I’ll stay with you.”

Kai actually starts crying from relief. He hugs Sehun tightly and they both unbalance and fall to the ground. They stay like that through the night, hugging and crying until they eventually fall asleep. When they wake up, nothing has changed. Lu Han is exactly where they left him, blood still on his face and eyes vacant as they were the night before. Kai walks him to the river and washes the blood off while Sehun rebuild the fire. When Kai gets back, Sehun takes Lu Han and guides him into the broken escape pod.

Kai sits by the fire and holds his head in his hands. He’s still tired, but it’s the kind of tired that can’t be cured with sleep. He needs food and a shower and he needs his brothers—

Sehun lays his hand on Kai’s shoulder and he jumps. He didn’t even hear Sehun come back, and he starts to say this but Sehun cuts him off with a gentle kiss.

Kai flashes back to when Sehun stole his first kiss when they were both eight. Sehun had spent the entire day with Lu Han while Kai was sick and confined to the Healers room, and when Sehun had finally come to visit at the end of the day Kai was visibly hurt.

“Where were you?” He’d demanded, and Sehun had pulled a beaded bracelet out of his pocket.

“I was making this for you,” he’d defended. Kai took one look at it and started to cry, because he thought that Sehun didn’t care about him anymore.

Sehun had smiled and ruffled his hair. “You’re so silly,” he’d said fondly. “I love you too much to forget about you.” And then he’d planted a light kiss on Kai’s lips, just like he was doing right now.

When Sehun pulled away they were both smiling. “I love you too much to leave you, silly,” Sehun told him.

Kai ruffled Sehun’s hair. “I know.”

Well, now he did anyway.

*I very much debated about including that kiss. Just to clarify, there is no KaiHun or SeKai or whatever in this AU. It was a friendly kiss, nothing more nothing less!!