Oh Sehun just wants to catch another glimpse of his host.

It all began one day with his stupid best friend Jongin suggesting that they go on a trip to Jeju Island. They had just graduated from high school and were in the midst of preparing for their entrance exam but a brief moment of hesitance had Sehun agreeing to Jongin’s idea of escaping to Jeju for a week.

Since the two of them are jobless high school students that cannot afford to stay in the pricey Haevichi Hotel & Resort, they ventured into the next best plan: AirBNB.

Sehun thinks the pictures look quite promising. Soft yellow lighting, cosy beanbags, pastel coloured walls... the only sore point he has are the flowery bedsheets. They are just so... girly. Maybe it is a good thing he does not have any plans to hook up with a Jeju native (or god forbid, Jongin) because those bedsheets will definitely kill his libido.

Their first steps to freedom happen on a cold Friday morning. After two hours of getting themselves tricked by some Jeju boys their age and subsequently, getting lost, Jongin and Sehun finally find themselves at the ground floor of the apartment they are going to be staying at.

“The neighbourhood looks safe at least,” Jongin says optimistically, bending down to search for the house key the host had hidden underneath a Welcome Home mat. Sehun merely hums under his breath, already judging what kind of a dumb person their host is for leaving the key in such an obvious area.

He cautiously enters the apartment behind Jongin, messily kicking off his sneakers and dumping his backpack on the ground when a whiff of freshly baked cookies floats to his nose.

“Woah. He made us cookies!”

Sehun makes sure Jongin isn’t about to die from consuming the cookies before he tentatively picks one up to eat because his life is precious and Jongin is unofficially his food taster. His mouth freezes in mid-bite.

“Thish ish gewd,” he sputters in surprise, snatching the entire plate of cookies from a whiny Jongin and hurrying away before the other can take it back. Sehun trudges down the hallway before arriving at a room with creamy peach-coloured walls.

“My room!” he declares, and flops down on the bed, messily spilling cookie crumbs all over it on purpose so Jongin will give him that look of disgust and leave him alone. Totally not Sehun’s fault he likes peach walls better than that green one.

It also doesn’t hurt that this bedroom happens to come with a bathroom. 

Sehun does not realise how evil the flowery bedsheets are until he falls asleep for most of the morning. Aish. The bedsheets must have held him hostage. He stifles a yawn and crawls out of bed, when he hears a quiet ripping sound and looks down to see a piece of paper with Jongin’s illegible handwriting under his foot.

You pig. I’m going sightseeing. Call me when you wake up.

How ironic that Constantly Sleepy Jongin is actually the one forgoing sleep to walk around the island.

Rubbing his eyes tiredly, Sehun walks out of the room like a dead zombie and is about to sit his perky on a beanbag when he realises that holy mother of god he isn’t alone and that figure standing by the dining table is too short to be Jongin.

“WHO ARE YOU??” he shrieks, jumping up on the beanbag, except beanbags are not meant to be jumped on because they just slide all over the floor and Sehun just barely misses hitting his head against the wall when he slips on that stupid yellow beanbag.

To Sehun’s credit, the thief looks as startled as him, so much so that he accidentally drops the porcelain plate he was holding and it breaks into a dozen pieces on the floor.

“Are you stealing plates? There are plenty more in the kitchen. Take them all and go and I’ll not call the police,” rambles the high school student.

The stranger blinks at him for a moment, then breaks out into loud boisterous laughter. Sehun shoots him an affronted look (because he was serious okay), his eyes shooting daggers at the stranger when he catches sight of the most fascinating thing on the side of the stranger’s face.

“You have a hole in your cheek,” he says cleverly.

The stranger answers him with a chuckle and disappears into the kitchen before reappearing with a broom and a dustpan. “Hi. You must be Jongin,” he says pleasantly as he sweeps up the shards of porcelain on the floor. “My name is Yixing. Your host.”

Oh. “You’re young. And not Korean,” Sehun observes, and sniffs. “I’m not Jongin. He’s the ugly one. I’m Sehun.”

“I’m 22,” Yixing replies conversationally, disappearing into the kitchen again with the dustpan. “And yes, I’m Chinese. I’ve been living here for a few years though. Work.”

Sehun breathes quietly through his nose in an attempt to calm his racing heart. Okay, random stranger here is not a thief. He isn’t about to get robbed. Random stranger is also pretty cute… even though he is old.

Not that Sehun is interested. He’s straight.

“Anyway. I need to go,” Yixing calls from the kitchen. “I just came to make sure you guys found your way here.” He flashes Sehun a grin as he walks back out to wear his shoes. “My number’s on the table if you two need anything. Also. That room you came out from has a pack of condoms. Stay safe, yeah?”

It takes Sehun several seconds before he realises in horror what Yixing has implied. Ew. Him and Jongin? Ew.

“I’m straight!” he screeches, but Yixing has already left.

The next time he sees his ridiculously attractive host is when his bed frame breaks. In Sehun’s defense, the bed looks sturdy enough to hold the weight of both him and his elephant of a best friend. Okay, so he got a little overexcited during that pillow fight with Jongin and he jumped a little too much on the bed when he was trying to get away from that idiot. How is he supposed to know the bed will break like that?!

“Some vigorous activity you must have had last night,” comments Yixing’s incredibly tall friend (boyfriend?) as he squats down to inspect the damage. He gives Yixing an indescribable look.

“Sehun can’t control his own strength,” Jongin adds helpfully, to which the bushy eyebrows of Yixing’s friend shoot up but Sehun does not notice because he is too fascinated by the splash of red on Yixing’s cheeks.

Yixing clears his throat and pulls his friend up from the floor. “Uh… this is Yifan. He’ll fix the bed so stay out of the room this afternoon okay?” Flashing Sehun and Jongin a smile that can only be described as awkward, he rubs the back of his neck and ushers the two out. “Sorry about that. I’ll give you back a day of rent.”

This is, of course, good news for students as poor as them but as Jongin lights up happily and takes the ₩80,000 to them, Sehun cannot bring himself to smile after seeing the dejected look on Yixing’s face.

No dimple flashing at him today.

Jongin and Sehun go for days without seeing their host. They spend their time doing touristy stuff – visiting the folklore village, the lava-tube, the trick art museum, etc – but Sehun draws the line at hiking up Mount Halla.

“I am not going to waste my time climbing up there and coming back down,” Sehun tells a disappointed Jongin. “You go and take some photos for me.”

After pouring steaming hot water into his mug of deliciously sweet chocolate, Sehun lazily makes his way to the living room to watch some silly cartoons to pass the time when he hears a crash and a rock flies in the broken window to hit him on the forehead, causing him to drop his mug.

“I’m so sorry,” says a horrified Yixing when he appears within ten minutes of Sehun calling him. Yixing drags him to the beanbag and pulls out a first aid kit, carefully dabbing at Sehun’s cut on the forehead with a cotton bud. “The neighbourhood’s usually safe… but occasionally some kids will come and disturb Yifan and I because we’re Chinese.”

Sehun frowns, not because of the stinging pain on his head (even though he admits he can be a princess sometimes when it comes to his pain threshold) but because his very adorable host has to endure such harassment.

“You live here with that giraffe?” he asks instead, his frown deeper at the memory of tall Yifan.

A slight smile curls on Yixing’s lips.  “Yeah, for what, 2 years? He knows Jeju better than I do.”

“So are you, like, gay lovers – ow!”

Yixing drops the cotton bud hastily and sticks a Pororo plaster on Sehun’s forehead before he can protest how unmanly it is to have a penguin on his forehead (never mind that he was actually planning to watch cartoons the entire day).

“We aren’t lovers,” Yixing says slowly, training a cautious gaze on Sehun. “Do you have something against homouality?”

The hairs on the back of Sehun’s neck stand at the look Yixing gives him. Suddenly, he feels nervous for saying the wrong stuff. He does not want to be the cause of a No Dimple Day.

“Um. I don’t. I just,” he stammers. “I never met someone who’s gay?”

Sehun does not quite like how his host arches his eyebrow at him. He chews his lower lip as Yixing moves away to keep the first aid kit and to sweep the glass off the floor.

“So. Uh. Do you want to have dinner with me tonight?” Sehun asks, feeling like he should make up to his host for being an insensitive child even though he isn’t sure how he had offended Yixing. “Jongin ditched me for some mountain and I really, really don’t want to eat by myself.” Sehun feels a glimmer of hope when Yixing pauses in his actions. “I’ll pay?”

He nearly has a mini heart attack when Yixing flashes him a dimpled smile.

“You don’t understand. He has these humongous eyes that makes him look a permanently startled owl. And his lips, wow, I don’t think I ever saw such perfect lips—”

Sehun rolls his eyes at Jongin’s ramblings, nodding indulgently as the other boy continues to talk about the perfect stranger he has met on the mountain. He has more important things to think about, like how their host’s smile causes Sehun’s heart to freeze, his legs to turn jelly and his brain to stop functioning.

His eyebrows furrow. They will be returning to Seoul tomorrow afternoon. Sehun isn’t going to see Yixing anymore. So he may as well just not think about how his insides lurch around him right?

“… He also gave me this super cute disco ball to remember him by,” Jongin continues excitedly, waving the mini ball in Sehun’s face. He fumbles with the tangled cables a bit before plugging it into the socket. “It’s supposed to shoot out 5 different colours.” Jongin holds his breath in anticipation as he flicks the switch on –

–  and all the lights in the apartment went out.

“Let’s call Yixing!” Sehun says automatically, scrambling blindly for his mobile phone on the coffee table and ignoring his best friend whining about why the disco ball didn’t work.

It takes Yixing five minutes to reach the apartment this time.

“I’m so sorry,” is the first thing he says when he arrives. “This is embarrassing. Don’t worry; it’ll just take a minute to get it back on.”

No, Sehun wants to scream, take many minutes!

Leaving Jongin to moan at his disco ball in the room, Sehun follows closely behind Yixing as the latter searches for the electricity switchboard in the living room.

“So,” Sehun starts to say, “How was dinner?”

A soft laugh escapes Yixing’s lips. “The same as yours?”

The tips of Sehun’s ears turn red, but good thing they are in a blackout and Yixing cannot see how embarrassed he is right now. “I mean. How was it for you?”

Yixing pauses for a moment too long (Sehun panics, wondering if he has said the wrong thing again) and fumbles with the torchlight, before he scans the wall for the electricity switchboard. “I enjoyed it,” he murmurs quietly. “A lot.”

A broad grin spreads on Sehun’s lips. Of course. He is good company after all.

Too busy contemplating what to say next, he walks right into the back of Yixing when the older man stops in front of the switchboard. “Oops—”

Sehun forgets the rest of his sentence because how cute is it, watching Yixing struggle to reach the switchboard that is clearly too high up for him. “Here, let me.” Placing one hand on Yixing’s waist, Sehun reaches for the master switch and is about to flip it on when he feels soft, moist lips over his.

Ahasdfkghasg gah.

“What are you doing!” Sehun exclaims just as the lights in the apartment come back on. He shoves Yixing away in repulsion, scrubbing his lips vigorously as if to erase the kiss.

Yixing’s eyes grow wide. “Sorry, I thought—”

“I’m straight!” Sehun spits in disgust. “God, that was my first kiss. Get out, y-you homo.”

He doesn’t miss the hurt expression in Yixing’s glassy eyes as the latter stumbles out of the apartment.

Sehun is surprisingly silent the next afternoon when they return the apartment key to Yifan. He avoids the piercing glare the taller man shoots him, opting to stare at the ground instead.

“Where’s Yixing hyung?” Jongin whines. “I want to say goodbye to him.”

“No can do,” Yifan replies, eyeballing the quiet Sehun. “He’s at the airport.”

Airport?

“Is he going somewhere?” Jongin asks the question Sehun is dying to know the answer to. 

Yifan hums under his breath. “He said something about leaving Jeju and never coming back. Is there anything else? Anything you left behind? Wouldn’t want you to have any regrets after you leave the island,” he says pointedly to Sehun.

Sehun looks away as Jongin assures Yifan that they have gotten everything. He follows Jongin out the door, but not before he hears Yifan say his name with a bunch of curses tagged to it.

He feels a twinge of guilt out of nowhere and finds himself wondering if his host is alright. His insides clench at the memory of Yixing’s teary eyes last night. Sehun really doesn’t mean to make Yixing upset. He likes that hyung. He is just surprised by the kiss that’s all.

Funnily, his heart skips a beat at the thought of the kiss. Sehun touches his lips gingerly.

“You were a little harsh on Yixing hyung yesterday.”

Sehun jerks up to find Jongin frowning at him. “What do you know!” he snaps agitatedly.

“I saw him kiss you last night.” Jongin shrugs. “You know, I thought it was amusing at first how you were like an overexcited puppy whenever Yixing hyung comes around. After last night… not so much.”

“What are you talking about,” Sehun retorts. “I’m straight.”

“You must be kidding. Remember in our sophomore year we had that Chinese substitute teacher and you followed him around so much everyone called you a teacher’s pet?” Jongin wrinkles his nose. “That was way humiliating for me, having a teacher’s pet as a friend.”

“What? I just idolise him! Mr Lu is a great teacher!”

“What about that time you joined the editorial committee in junior year because dear sunbae Junmyeon complained about not having enough juniors onboard and you didn’t want to disappoint him?”

“… I needed extra credit.”

“The top student needs extra credit? Bull.” Jongin rolls his eyes. “It doesn’t matter anyway right? Yixing hyung will just become like them – someone you’ll never see again. Maybe he’ll find a nice guy back in China and forget you so cruelly stomped on his heart.”

 Is Jongin right? He liked hanging around Mr Lu because the other man always talked to him as if he was his equal and it didn’t hurt to have Luhan’s attractiveness rub on to him. Sure, Sehun admitted that he liked the teacher’s laughter because it sounded like music to his ears so he often did sillier things than usual just to make him laugh.

With Junmyeon sunbae, Sehun grew an unhealthy obsession to see his angelic smile. He felt that his day brightened and nothing could possibly go wrong as long as he could make him smile. He had listened to Junmyeon complain about the editorial committee for months so Sehun decided to put him out of his misery and just joined it, even though most of his friends knew how much he disliked covering events on weekends when he could just sleep.

Yixing is a mix of them both. His laughter has the ability to make Sehun join in (even if they have different standards of humour) and his dimpled smile is something Sehun can easily get addicted to.

The revelation has Sehun stop breathing for a second.

Did Sehun really break Yixing’s heart? He thinks about Yixing and his new faceless man in China and his lungs constrict painfully.

“I am an idiot,” Sehun breathes, quickly whipping out his mobile phone to dial Yixing’s number, only to get an answering machine. Ignoring Jongin’s shouts, Sehun sprints down the street and into a cab.

“Yixing hyung! Yixing hyung, where are you!?”

His obnoxiously loud shouts have been drawing attention from the several small groups of tourists at the Jeju International Airport the past ten minutes but Sehun has always been good at ignoring people he do not want to talk to. The only person he does want to see is nowhere in sight.

Fear creeps up his spine slowly. What if Yixing has already boarded the plane to China? What if he has his phone deactivated for that reason? Sehun swallows the lump forming in his throat. What if he never sees Yixing’s dimple again?

“Sehun? What are you doing here?”

Sehun perks up. That voice.

“Hyung!” he cries, throwing himself at Yixing and wrapping his long arms around the older man’s shoulders tightly. “I’m sorry, I’m such an idiot, please don’t go.”

“Why are you here? I thought you were taking the ferry?” Yixing asks slowly, patting Sehun’s back awkwardly as the confusion shows on his face. He glances past Sehun’s shoulder at the flight information flap board. “I have to check in. My flight’s in half an hour.”

“Nooooo,” whimpers Sehun, tightly clutching the back of Yixing’s shirt. “I like you, Yixing hyung. I really like you.”

Yixing’s eyes dart around. “Is this a hidden camera?” he asks suspiciously. “Because it’s not f—”

The older man does not get to finish his sentence because Sehun lost patience trying to persuade him that he does like him so the simplest method is for Sehun to plant his lips on Yixing’s and kiss the breath out of him.

“I need to go,” Yixing murmurs breathlessly as an announcement plays over the speaker. Sehun’s face falls – because hey, he just gave him his second kiss so shouldn’t he be obligated to stay?? – until Yixing moves in to drop another kiss on him. “I’ll see you in Seoul. Call me when you reach okay?”

“Huh?” Sehun blurts out intelligently. “Aren’t you going to China?”

Yixing shoots him a bewildered look. “Says who? I’m starting a new job in Seoul.”

Oh. Oh.

“Will you stop looking at his photo,” Jongin huffs, leaning into his shoulder as he steals a cookie from his lunchbox. “You’re going to see him in fifteen minutes – would it kill you to not stare at your freaking wallpaper?”

He sticks his tongue out childishly at his best friend and scoots away from Jongin with his box of handmade cookies, pretending not to hear the other man’s complaints as he unlocks his phone and beams at the smiley Yixing on the screen.

Hey. Don’t judge him.

Oh Sehun just wants to catch another glimpse of his boyfriend, that’s all.

A/N: Happy Valentine's Day!