Sleep didn't always come easily to Sehun these days. It was a running joke between them that it was actually Jongin who slept like the dead, while Sehun tossed and turned, sometimes denied sleep by flashes of the car accident that had claimed his life, and sometimes by memories of those first awful moments afterwards, when he'd felt his bones mending and crushed organs rebuilding themselves. Worse yet were the nights where he only half-believed he'd wake up the next morning, afraid to close his eyes in case he never opened them again. For all his teasing, he believed in the strength of Jongin's magic, but that tiny bit of doubt always remained. He had no right to be here. What if one day, he wasn't?

This time, however, the only thing keeping him awake was anticipation. Sehun couldn't imagine what kind of training Lu Han had in mind, but it was unlikely to be pleasant and painless.

"I told you to sleep well," Lu Han said to him the next morning, as Sehun yawned over his cereal. "You're not very obedient, are you?"

"He's never obedient," came a voice from the doorway. "But who are you and why is that any of your business?"

Sehun looked up from his breakfast. "Lu Han, this is my boss, Kim Jongin. Please forgive anything stupid he says or does, because he's really bad with strangers. Also hopeless, did I mention hopeless?"

"Sehun, if you don't want to be wearing that bowl of cereal-"

"And this is Lu Han," Sehun interrupted his boss. "He's my guest. He's also a demon who way, way outranks your boyfriend, so watch your step."

Jongin sat down at the table, looking confused and only half-awake himself. "Is this some kind of revenge thing because you're jealous of me and Kyungsoo?"

"I'm dead, not desperate," Sehun shot back. "Who would be jealous of your sickeningly fluffy relationship with that marshmallow?"

"Hey!" Lu Han waved his hands between the two of them. "Still here? But don't let me interrupt your little spat or anything. It's not like I've got anything better to do than watch."

That was precisely the wrong thing to say to Jongin, who hated having an audience when he wasn't working magic. "Would someone like to tell me what's going on?"

Sehun sighed. "I was trying to call a cat, and ended up with a Destroyer-class demon instead."

"I'd like a pet too, but I don't think demons qualify," Jongin said. He turned to Lu Han. "I'm so sorry about Sehun. I think he means well, sometimes, but then the rest of the time he's kind of obnoxious..."

Lu Han grinned. "I'm no one's pet, but I'm going to be his familiar for a bit. He needs help."

Jongin gave him a shy smile in return. "Definitely."

"Not that kind of help," Sehun interjected. He didn't want them ganging up on him. "Lu Han's going to fix my little magic problem." He tried to make it sound like a slight technical hitch, rather than a complete inability to work magic properly.

Over breakfast, he caught Jongin up on yesterday's events, while Lu Han proceeded to rummage through the kitchen cupboards in search of more sugar.

"I hope it works," Jongin said quietly to Sehun, "but are you sure he knows what he's doing?"

They watched in silence for a moment as Lu Han accidentally hit himself on the head with a cupboard door.

"Not entirely," Sehun said.

##########*****##########

Jongin had work of his own to do, so Sehun and Lu Han were left alone to start the 'training'. Sehun was happy not to have an audience. (He and Jongin made a point of not letting each other get any potential teasing material if they could help it.) They made use of one of the many empty rooms after Lu Han set up wards around the walls, since Jongin needed his workroom back.

Although cut off from his own home, Lu Han had no problem using magic to create himself changes of clothing. At least, Sehun assumed that was the case, because neither he nor Jongin owned a ludicrous blue-green tracksuit, which is what Lu Han currently wore. He had a whistle around his neck and carried a clipboard that, when Sehun peeked at it, proved to contain nothing more useful than sketches of he and Jongin as a pair of birds squabbling over a worm.

"I'm setting the scene," Lu Han told him. "One word about the tracksuit and I'm making you do twenty laps around the castle as a warm-up."

Sehun favored Lu Han with his best unimpressed glare. In the spirit of the thing, he'd traded in his usual fancy suits for sweatpants and a tank top, unsure what form the training would take but certain it would somehow ruin his clothes.

"My familiar's giving me orders?" he said.

"Your familiar with over half a millennium of magical experience more than you," Lu Han retorted. "Let's get started."

He blew the whistle. Sehun waited for something to happen. "Also setting the scene?" he guessed when nothing did.

"Right!" Lu Han set his clipboard down and presented Sehun with a deflated red balloon. "Easy warm-up for you. Inflate the balloon without popping it."

Alive, Sehun could've accomplished the task in mere seconds. Undead, matters weren't so simple. He placed the balloon on the floor and dropped down next to it. All he had to do was push air inside without providing it from his own lungs. He'd always had an affinity for Air. Perhaps that would help.

Sehun invoked his magic and raised his hands before him, palms spread. The pushing motions were as easy as magic ever got; the tricky part was directing the air exactly where he wanted it to go. For that, he outlined a funnel with his fingers, weaving the shape with his power. He imagined the funnel stretching the neck of the balloon, ready to pipe air inside.

And then he pushed.

The balloon exploded. Sehun brushed shreds of rubber from his sweatpants, not at all amused.

"I thought that might happen." Lu Han handed him a replacement - a yellow one, this time. "Try again."

The second balloon fared no better. The third, instead of blowing up, sank into the floor, never to be seen again.

"Remind me never to ask you to help me decorate for a party."

"Are you actually going to do anything other than hand me balloons and laugh?" Sehun asked.

"I've been doing something the whole time," Lu Han said. "Watching you."

Sehun now understood why Jongin had been so unnerved by having a demon's undivided attention. He shuddered, thinking about Lu Han's eyes on him, tracking every movement he made. Dangerous, but sort of...thrilling, too.

Not that he was going to admit it. "That's creepy," he said flatly.

"But necessary. I've been getting a feel for when things start to go wrong."

Lu Han shuffled across the floor to seat himself behind Sehun, wrapping all four limbs around him. Sehun squawked in alarm when legs appeared beside his own and arms locked into place around his chest.

"Jongin's the one who enjoys getting up close and personal with demons, not me!"

"It was this or lie on you," Lu Han said dismissively. "Take your pick."

"Why?"

"Because the more contact we have, the easier it'll be for me to run interference for you and keep your boss's magic from getting in the way. The trick will be not intervening so much that it stops working altogether and I end up holding a corpse."

"You're holding one now," Sehun said with a grimace. He tried not to think of himself that way too often, but that didn't make it any less true. "A walking corpse."

"A sitting brat with a smart mouth and a teeny little life problem," Lu Han corrected. "Which we are going to work on. Next balloon."

Sehun dreaded to think what might happen to this one with the demon's assistance. Turn into a giant rubber monster with enormous fangs, perhaps? Lu Han's presence was distracting enough he wasn't sure he could even invoke magic at all. The warm, fluffy tracksuit top tickled his mostly bare shoulders, as its owner tickled the back of Sehun's neck with his breath.

Just ignore him, Sehun told himself. You can do this.

This time, when he created the funnel he felt an odd prickling all over his skin, first on the surface and then sinking deeper, forcing its way through his pores. Lu Han's magic. He did his best to ignore it. He wasn't used to having someone else's magic running through his body - Jongin's was always there, but he couldn't detect it, it was so much a part of him now.

He noticed it when he began to inflate the balloon, however. A single puff of air made its way inside, producing a momentary swelling, but Sehun couldn't focus on being gleeful. Not when he felt like he was being torn apart, piece by piece. His body went rigid in Lu Han's arms, everything clenched, everything taut and tensed in an effort to keep it together.

"Good." Lu Han sounded pleased. "It's working. Picture my magic as thousands of little soldiers with shields, getting between your magic and Jongin's. I'm giving you room to work."

"Then why don't I have any space?" Sehun forced out through clenched teeth.

Lu Han leaned in, words tickling Sehun's ear. "When I do that, death tries to claim you again. You have to fight back, make your body your own again with your own power."

Sehun had no idea how to go about doing that. He tried increasing the intensity, using hand gestures to reinforce the path of the spell. All he got in return was a painful tightness in his chest, like someone had his lungs in a vice and was slowly tightening it up. He attempted a deep breath; gave it up when a fierce stab in his upper back took it away. It wasn't Lu Han. Sehun's own body was betraying him.

Lu Han nuzzled his cheek against Sehun's own, increasing the contact. "You're doing it - look!"

As Sehun watched, the balloon swelled with sudden puffs of air - jerky and irregular, but enough to give it shape. Despite the pain Sehun felt elated. Even if it was only something as simple as blowing up a balloon, this was the most success he'd had working magic since his resurrection.

"Just a little longer," Lu Han encouraged him. "You can finish this."

"If it doesn't finish me first," Sehun wheezed.

"It won't," Lu Han promised him. "I won't let it. That would mean we'd both failed."

And that couldn't be allowed. Sehun struggled to keep his arms up and holding their shape; when Lu Han's hands relinquished his chest to prop up his wrists, the effect was immediate. The balloon swelled to capacity and exploded with a bang.

Sehun slumped back, the tension no longer holding him upright, as Lu Han's magic slowly withdrew.

"Not a bad start." Lu Han wriggled backwards, letting Sehun slide down until his head rested on the demon's legs. "If we can get you stabilized, you might have a chance."

"Did one of your little soldiers pop the balloon with his sword?"

"You did that yourself." Lu Han poked Sehun's cheek with his index finger. "It's a good thing I have a lot of balloons."

By the time they stopped for the day, the room was littered with rubber scraps and Sehun felt like he'd been tortured for hours on end. They'd made progress, the two of them. The final balloon had held steady at maximum capacity without popping, deflating instead when Sehun had lost concentration (and very nearly his grip on consciousness) due to the magical conflict within his body. At that point, he'd put his foot down, and Lu Han had agreed that they could continue tomorrow.

"But no more balloons," Sehun said. "I can still hear them popping in my head."

"Same. We'll try something quieter tomorrow." Lu Han added slyly, "Then maybe we won't make your boss jump so much."

Jongin had inquired, when he'd stuck his head round the door earlier, whether anyone had been shot. Sehun had advised him to soundproof his workroom or consider working in the gardens.

"He got startled by a confetti machine at a friend's birthday party once," Sehun said. "Not very dark wizard-like."

"His mentality does seem to be a little off for the role. Not like you..." Lu Han's devious smile made a reappearance. "You'll be unstoppable."

"That's the idea," Sehun said, and swanned off for a long, luxurious bubble bath.

##########*****##########

After a day spent fending off death, Sehun expected his night to be filled with horrors. On the contrary he slept easily, worn out by the supposedly simple task of blowing up balloons, and when he awoke the previous day's aches and exhaustion had left him.

"Today we try something more challenging," Lu Han informed him. "Balloons were a nice warm-up, but they're not dangerous."

"You try having two dozen blow up in your face and say that again."

"Worried your pretty face might sustain damage?"

"Always," Sehun deadpanned.

"Then you'll love today's task." Lu Han produced a slender white candle from out of nowhere and set it down in a candlestick holder. "All you have to do is light the candle - without setting the room on fire. The more real the risk, the more motivated you'll be, right?"

"And if I accidentally set the room on fire?" Sehun asked warily.

"Then we stand here until you put it out."

Demons made tough teachers, Sehun decided. Lu Han might as well have been standing over him with a whip in his hand. (Which was not a position in which Sehun had ever seen himself, to be honest, and if there was any whipping to be done, he wanted to be the one to do it.) Still, they'd managed to produce results yesterday, doing things Lu Han's way.

"Do you have to cling to me again?"

"Not if you're going to set yourself on fire."

"The only thing I'm going to set on fire is that candle," Sehun said, determined to make it the truth. "Does that mean you didn't need to yesterday?"

"I did - for a while. Your body's gotten used to my magic now, though. I should be able to do the same thing without climbing you."

True to his word, Lu Han confined himself to the corner, as far from the candle as he could get. Sehun felt a little strange, working magic without the demon wrapped around him. (But there was something to be said for not having Lu Han mischievously blowing in his ear to distract him at the worst possible moments - a test of his concentration, apparently.)

Jongin would never forgive him if he burned down the castle, and Sehun didn't relish the thought of making them homeless. He couldn't afford to let the fire get out of control. Lighting a candle with his power, in the past, had been simple enough that he'd barely had to think about it before it was done. He had to be more careful now.

He woke his magic with a gentle nudge and went back to basics, the way he'd learned in school, directing it through his fingertips as he held them in an open cage around the candlewick. The motion of his fingers mimicked the kindling of a fire with wood and many a young student had singed his fingers by being overly enthusiastic.

The candle remained stubbornly unlit, but drops of water began to drip from Sehun's fingertips instead.

"I'm going to step in now," Lu Han said. "Don't lose your focus."

Sehun rolled his eyes in response. As if he would.

Lu Han's power slipped, light yet strong, into Sehun's body, finding those places where Sehun's and Jongin's magic clashed and acting as a barrier between the two - a barrier between life and death, for where Jongin's power retreated, Sehun could feel the ghosts of cracked bones and torn flesh, blood gushing from his veins, and dread taking root in his heart. Lu Han was simultaneously helping him and killing him all over again.

But there was the slightest flicker from the candlewick: a tiny orange glow, winking in and out.

"Steady," Lu Han cautioned. "You won't get much light from that. Keep going." He waved a hand and like that, the heavy velvet curtains slammed shut across the windows, blocking out all the light, leaving them in near darkness.

That made it easier for Sehun to see the change in the candle's flame, but harder to keep track of Lu Han, whose footsteps he could hear from behind.

Pain arched Sehun's back; he bit his lip to keep his agony to himself. (Couldn't have his familiar thinking he was a wimp, after all.) Although his hands shook terribly, he held them in place over the candle, desperately trying to keep a safe distance between himself and the tiny little flame. Breath caught in his chest. Fire blazed behind his eyes, far brighter than the one before them.

When Lu Han's hands found their way to Sehun's hips, fingers curling around the bones, holding him in place, the pain only intensified. For a second, the candle split in two, Sehun's vision wavering from the torture.

"Enough," Lu Han murmured, and Sehun let the fire go.

The flame winked out, the room fell into darkness, and Sehun fell too - partly on Lu Han, but mostly on the floor.

"I can do better." Sehun couldn't manage more than a groggy mumble. "After I take a nap..."

"You'll do better now," Lu Han told him. "You're warmed up, you're ready."

"And you sound like this basketball coach I had back in school."

"Your coach has nothing on me, I guarantee it." The curtains drew back, revealing a smug-looking Lu Han. "I eat basketball teams for breakfast."

"Liar," Sehun said. "I've watched you raiding the kitchen for the sweetest cereals you can find."

"Well, only once," Lu Han admitted. "And I was drunk at the time. They were kind of stringy..."

Sehun didn't want the gory details. He happened to enjoy food, and this story sounded like it could potentially put him off meat forever. He rolled over and pushed himself up from the floor. "If it's a choice between listening you talk about eating people, and trying to kill myself lighting a candle, I'd rather get back to work."

The second attempt fared slightly better than the first in that Sehun was able to create a marginally larger flame. Unfortunately, he couldn't hold it steady and with a whoosh, it engulfed the candle. Sehun panicked but before he could even try to extinguish it, the fire vanished.

"I thought you were going to make me put it out?"

Lu Han shrugged. "The way things are going, you'd probably have knocked yourself out trying. You get the next one, though."

There wasn't a 'next one'. Sehun used the experience to help him gauge how much power he had to be pouring in to work against Jongin's magic, and managed to keep the stream steady enough to avoid any further flare-ups. It still took him the better part of the day to have a strong, stable flame burning brightly atop the candle, however, and he didn't feel any closer to reclaiming his body from death and other people's magic. Having a familiar was a lot tougher than he'd expected.

But there were benefits, too.

Jongin had summoned Kyungsoo for a dinner date in town, leaving the castle entirely under Sehun's control (as if it wasn't anyway), and sitting down to eat with Lu Han was much more fun than eating alone. Lu Han had a lot of stories to tell, most of them amusing, and some of them were probably true. He didn't seem to mind Sehun's reactions ranging from 'unimpressed' to 'faintly amused', either.

But then, Sehun supposed that was life for a demon. Always going your own way, secure in the knowledge that you were untouchable. Contracts were only a guarantee of cooperation if they were signed, and Sehun didn't have one with Lu Han. He wasn't afraid of that anymore. Lu Han was bound to him until such time as he could successfully open a channel and send the demon home again, which meant Sehun was safe. Probably.

"Geography works differently in the Netherworld," Lu Han explained over ice cream. "I'm from Beijing, originally."

"A Chinese demon stranded in Korea. How quaint," Sehun said.

Lu Han flicked a chocolate sprinkle at him. "You're lucky I spent time here before. Just think what fun you'd have had if I couldn't speak Korean. How's your Mandarin?"

"Only usable in restaurants."

"And since I'm not a waiter, I'd probably have taken offense and..."

"Killed me?" Sehun suggested.

"I usually give people a chance to prove to me whether or not they deserve to live first."

"And do I?"

"Hmm..." Lu Han considered it for a moment. "If you can steal your life back from death, then you deserve to keep it."

Sehun enjoyed the mental image of himself skulking around the universe in a black mask and cape, stealing the unstealable. "I guess that makes you my sidekick."

"That makes me your older and wiser mentor who must be obeyed."

"You look good for a guy so many hundreds of years old."

Lu Han burst out laughing. "You will too, if we fail. The undead don't age."

Jongin had insisted on celebrating Sehun's birthday, but he'd accepted that they wouldn't be able to celebrate together forever. Jongin would grow older, and one day he'd pass on, while Sehun stayed young and handsome forever. Alone.

He wondered how Kyungsoo dealt with that possibility, or maybe they hadn't discussed it yet, still too caught up in each other to think about the long-term issues. Demons didn't age, either, and if there was any way they died of natural causes, Sehun didn't know about it. It could be Sehun and the demons at the end of the world.

"Will I start aging again if we succeed?" he asked tentatively.

"You should. If you don't...call me back some other century and we'll smite villages together, ok?"

Whatever else Sehun thought of Lu Han, the man knew how to enjoy himself. "You're on."