Several days go by, and Luhan’s sorrow fades away slowly, thanks to Sehun’s contagious joyfulness. For a whole month, both of them bathe in the aftermath of the two weeks they spent together, constantly laughing about sweet memories.

                The museum where Luhan remained stubbornly standing in front of a modern art piece in hopeless attempt to ‘understand what it represented because honestly it looked like a chicken nugget’. That day when they had lunch in a traditional restaurant and when Sehun and Sehyun ate for more than 400 Yuan just by themselves.

                The afternoon for which Sehun’s mother and his brother decided to go somewhere Sehun didn’t want to go, so Luhan and he stayed at home playing video games like the geeks they were deep inside. That shop where they both bought a t-shirt of their favourite band. (Well, actually it’s not Sehun’s favourite band, Luhan knows it. But he also knows that the young boy bought it to please him, and he’s thankful for that.)

                And about a thousand other things.

                Luhan feels something bloom inside him again, a little thing that he’d forgotten long ago, and it’s romanticism. While he’d grew used to the fact that love isn’t as magic and perfect as it’s said, that long-distance relationships can’t work and that seeing someone you like doesn’t always give you butterflies, now he starts believing in silly things like soul mates, harmony and passion. Luhan’s love opens its wings like a dove and takes flight.

                When they talk about the next holidays again, Sehun tells him with a wink that he should buy his plane ticket. Luhan mentions a hotel room he’s going to rent, but the dark-haired boy shakes his head. “Of course not. You’re sleeping at home,” he says. Luhan blushes in content and thanks him a thousand times, as well as Mrs Oh.

                Expertly, he visits several websites in private navigation mode to avoid paying ridiculous prices, and a few hours later, he prints his electronic plane ticket with his capricious printer that always drops little stains of ink in the corners of the sheets of paper. But he doesn’t have enough money to buy a new one (and he doesn’t want to). He shows the ticket to Sehun proudly, and they’re so impatient that they almost start bouncing on their respective chairs.

                The two weeks separating Luhan from the departure day pass awfully slow, dragging on forever lazily as if they wanted to make him die of excitement. Even if he already knows it won’t work that way, Luhan wishes the holidays would pass as slowly. He takes advantage of these two weeks though, taking his time to pack and choose which clothes to bring or not to bring with him, to make sure he forgets nothing, even if he will always have forgotten something.

                But he still tries: his iPod, his headphones, his favourite movie (he hopes shyly that Sehun will agree to watch it with him), the piece of fabric full of holes that he likes to squeeze at night (no, not at all, he’s not a twenty-one-year-old with a cuddly toy), in short, every single thing he’s attached to.

                Two days before the departure, Luhan realises he’s not ready at all, but time, of course, suddenly speeds up, and he has to rush in order to finish preparing his toiletry case. The night before his flight, Luhan doesn’t sleep. He keeps rolling in his bed, cursing himself because he’s going to have eye bags and look horrible, he’s sweating a little and it will surely cause his hair to be dirty, he’ll yawn all the time…

                But at least, he gets out of bed before the sun even sets and he can arrive at the airport on time. Well, a bit early. But four hours, that’s not really long, is it? Luhan spends his two hundred and forty minutes dozing in a comfortable seat in the middle of a large hall, with in his hand a glass of lemonade that lost its bubbles long ago.

                His heart races in his chest when a calm, electronic-sounding voice announces in the speakers that ‘all the passengers of flight 3827 will be boarding soon’. With his little backpack (he left his suitcase in the right area of the airport long ago), he rushes towards the gates, he shows his papers to a woman, and after walking anxiously in a corridor that goes down all the way, he gets on the plane.

                The flight goes smoothly, even if during more than half the two hours he spends in the plane, an annoying little girl keeps whining and calling her mother with a shrieking voice. With an apocalyptic faint headache, Luhan walks out of the plane, waits before he can get his suitcase back, and then he leaves the airport. Sehun had offered to pick him up there, but Luhan had politely declined.

                He hails a taxi and tells the driver Sehun’s address. It turns out that it’s located exactly at the other end of Seoul. The journey is going to be long. And the radio of the taxi is broadcasting piano music, so Luhan falls asleep barely two minutes later. The driver wakes him up a little awkwardly, having already carried his suitcase out of the boot. The blond boy blinks and pays him embarrassedly, then he turns around. He’s in a quiet street.

                Clumsily, he lifts up his suitcase from the pavement (one of the little wheels doesn’t turn anymore), and he walks along the street, until he finds the number twelve. He looks up at Sehun’s house. It’s pretty, with white walls and flowers here and there. Luhan doesn’t really know what to do now. Even if he looks for it, he can’t find any doorbell or entry phone, and he doesn’t dare to open the elegant black gate.

                So he shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other, glancing at the windows of the house in attempt to spot someone. After about five minutes, however, the front door opens and Sehun takes a few steps outside, walking only on tiptoes to avoid getting his socks dirty as he doesn’t wear shoes. He comes to Luhan with a smile, and stops just in front of him. The elder boy looks down, his cheeks flushing violently.

                His heart is thumping in his chest, so loud he can hear it distinctly. Once again, Sehun is next to him. Physically next to him. Luhan feels a strange sensation in his stomach, and for a second he’s scared he might puke because everything is going weird in his insides. “You should’ve come in,” Sehun says softly. Luhan keeps his head down, and clumsily mutters something about not knowing, a doorbell and flowers.

                But Sehun grabs his chin and pushes it up gently to give him a sweet kiss. Then he parts and grins. Luhan blushes. Sehun remains silent for a minute, then he breathes in deeply. “Welcome to Korea. I hope you’ll enjoy your holidays,” he says slowly, proudly. In Chinese. Luhan’s heart skips a beat. Sehun just spoke in his mother tongue, and honestly, it’s making his heart melt. Even if he has a heavy accent, that give to his words the clumsiness of a child who trips on a stone, almost falls to the ground, but regains his balance, starts running again and bursts out laughing.

                Luhan smiles, holding back tears that would have really been ridiculous, and he buries his head in the crook of Sehun’s neck. “Xie Xie.”

                They drink a cup of tea and happily eat Sehun’s mother’s soft cake while smiling silently. The end of the afternoon goes by quietly, and they play board games in Sehun’s bedroom. Sehun’s bedroom is rather wide, and it’s obvious that he spent hours tidying it too. He has a bed with white sheets, placed in a corner of the room, between the heater and the window. He explains happily that they’ll put a spare mattress for Luhan next to it. Yeah. A soft, thick, fluffy mattress. And a warm quilt.

                After they have dinner with Sehyun and Mrs Oh who, like Luhan who had cooked a Chinese meal, cooked a Korean meal, they go to the bathroom one after the other. Before they both go back to Sehun’s room, Mrs Oh tells them that tomorrow they’ll go to the city if they want to. Luhan smiles. He chats with Sehun, lying on his ‘bed’ in the dark, listening to the sound of the boy’s chuckles that are muffled by a pillow.

                However, when they decide to sleep now, he finds out that he just cannot sleep. His eyes don’t close and he doesn’t feel tired. So he remains quiet and unmoving. Sehun is apparently already sleeping. His breath is audible but delicate, like waves heard from a distance, carried by the wind. Luhan listens to it. Minutes pass. He doesn’t sleep. His eyes are glued to the fluorescent clock on Sehun’s bookshelf. One, two hours pass. He doesn’t sleep. Luhan worries. He rolls on the mattress nervously. He sobs quietly for a while.

                “Luhan? Are you okay?” Sehun whispers, sounding concerned, his voice softened even more by sleep. Luhan bites his lip.

                “Yeah… No. I can’t sleep,” he confesses. He swallows and silence falls for a couple of seconds.

                “Do you feel cold or anything?” Sehun says. “Do you want another blanket?”

                “No, no, don’t worry,” the blond boy replies. He really doesn’t want to bother Sehun. “I’m a little cold, though, yeah,” he lies, his voice all sheepish. He doesn’t feel cold at all, but he hopes that Sehun will do what he wants him to do…

                The bed sheets emit a soft noise when Sehun pushes them away and gets out of his bed. He crouches down and s for Luhan’s mattress. When he finds it, he pulls the quilt up and slips under it, just against Luhan. Said Luhan has a mini heart attack. Sehun is warm. Now he feels a little too hot, but it’s so pleasant that he doesn’t dare to move. Sehun is so much more forward than him, he thinks.

                Shyly, he snuggles up to the young boy. “Is it better now?” Sehun asks very low. Luhan nods.

                “Thank you,” he murmurs. He closes his eyes peacefully. He doesn’t fall asleep right away magically, but it would have been a shame to do so because he couldn’t have fully enjoyed Sehun wrapping his arms around him or hugging him tight. But when at last he feels his thoughts become strange and confuse, he welcomes sleep with open arms.

                Sehun’s heart is beating very close.

~

                When Luhan opens his eyes several hours later, the clock shows that it’s nine in the morning. Through the window, a tiny ray of light has managed to enter the bedroom. He looks around, and that’s then that he realises Sehun isn’t holding him anymore. Because while Luhan is lying comfortably in the middle of the mattress, Sehun is sprawled on the floor, sleeping soundly.

                Luhan holds back a giggle when he thinks that Sehun surely fell off the mattress and rolled on the floor without even waking up. He surely wanted to leave all the space to Luhan. At this, the blond boy feels a sudden urge to join him and fall back asleep on the floor too.

                But as if the Luhan’s eyes on him were enough to wake him up, Sehun’s breath becomes irregular, and he mutters a few incoherent words before blinking lazily. While he stirs and looks around, puzzled that he’s not lying on a bed but on the wooden floor, Luhan gazes at him. Until Sehun looks up. Apparently, he didn’t expect Luhan to be awake too, because his eyes widen. For a minute or two, they remain silent. Then the younger boy grins.

                “Were you able to sleep?” he asks quietly. Luhan nods, curling up into a warm ball under the quilt.

                “You’re on the floor,” he whispers, even if it’s quite obvious. Sehun chuckles.

                “Yeah.”

                “Can you come here again, please?” Luhan asks timidly. Sehun laughs and he crawls onto the mattress, before slipping under the quilt once more. Luhan looks down but he blushes when Sehun holds him. He nuzzles his shirt, inhaling the boy’s soft perfume. He wants to bottle it to keep it forever. He clumsily wraps his right leg around Sehun’s hips, and closes his eyes.

                However, the door of the bedroom opens all of a sudden right then, and Sehyun walks in casually. As he goes to the window under Sehun and Luhan’s shocked eyes and opens the curtains, he yawns lazily. “Time to get up, you little – ew,” he says, glancing at them for a millisecond, “gross gross gross, I hope you’re not under that blanket otherwise Mum will be so mad oh God you’ll be screwed, well bye bye.”

                And he leaves. When Luhan looks up at Sehun, he wonders whose cheeks are the most crimson between the two of them. “So sorry…” Sehun moans, looking incredibly ashamed of his own brother. Luhan remains silent for a minute, then he speaks quietly.

                “It’s okay. Anyway he’s right, we shouldn’t be sleeping in the same bed,” he whispers.

                “No, he’s not,” Sehun replies, hugging him all of a sudden. Luhan’s heart skips a beat. “We’re not doing anything wrong, are we?” He sounds a little panicked. “We’re not even . And – and what if we were? We’re not having , are we? We’re not! If we were I – I…we’re not and anyway I’m seventeen – oh my God – this is not okay, we’re, we’re not having , are we?”

                “I don’t know, you tell me. Are we?” Luhan whispers against his chest.

                “No. We’re…not,” Sehun says very low after a minute.

                “It’s fine then,” Luhan replies, closing his eyes. “Isn’t it?”

                “Yes. It’s fine.”

                They actually get up a whole hour later to have breakfast. They don’t talk a lot while eating, but Mrs Oh fills the silence with offers and propositions and plans and things that they could do during the following days. Luhan smiles politely.

                In fact, he’s so scared he might annoy anybody that he doesn’t dare to ask for coffee instead of tea, that he doesn’t dare to say he hates cereals (he eats the whole bowl because Sehun seems to like them), that he doesn’t dare to drink more than one glass of apple juice, to put raspberry jam on his toast or to eat as slowly as he usually does. Everyone is happy. And apparently, Sehyun said nothing to his mother. All is quiet that day.

                Sehun and Luhan spend the afternoon in Namsan Park, and drink bubble tea. It’s the first time he tastes it. The first thing he thinks is that it’s too sweet. But little by little, he gets used to it, and finds out that the taro flavour is really something. However, the pearls are weird and after swallowing four of them, he notices they make him want to puke. He leaves half of them in the cup and wonders whether he could ask for tea without pearls next time.

                Sehun shows him nice areas of Seoul, and they go back home happily. Mrs Oh is already cooking dinner. Dubstep resounds in the house, coming from Sehyun’s room. “Turn it down!” Sehun yells.

                “Die!” his older brother retorts. Luhan smiles. That night again, Luhan wants to sleep with Sehun. But this time, he sleeps in Sehun’s bed. It’s a little wider. And from then, they do it every night. Of course, they put on an act and when Mrs Oh says goodnight to them, they’ll lay each one on a different bed. Though as soon as she closes the door, Luhan will crawl off his mattress and join Sehun under the covers.

                It’s what makes him the happiest person on Earth. He falls asleep in Sehun’s arms, and can feel his chest raising and lowering slowly as he breathes. He hears his heartbeats. He feels warm.

~

                Luhan likes Seoul. He loves it. Maybe not as much as he loves Beijing, but still. It’s a great city. Honestly, he’d thought that  the only interesting thing during the holidays would be Sehun, but even is he usually prefers staying at home rather than visiting new places, he’s a little sad to leave Korea. Though, of course, he’s a thousand times sadder to leave Sehun.

                To be able to spend a little time by themselves before the two of them part, Luhan says goodbye to Mrs Oh and Sehyun first, thanks them for the thousandth time, then Sehun and him walk further into the airport, side by side, silently. Before Luhan heads towards the gates, they stop. Strangely, Luhan manages to feel a little less sad than the last time. Maybe it’s because he’s getting used to it. Or maybe it’s because he’s leaving, and it’s not Sehun who is. That’s different.

                But pearly teardrops roll down his cheeks when Sehun says ‘see you soon’. They’re not going to see each other soon. They can’t keep spending two weeks in each other’s country during all the holidays, this is impossible. Of course they would like it. But taking the plane is horribly expensive, and above all Mrs Oh and Sehyun wouldn’t agree at all. So this is the most harrowing: they haven’t planned yet when they’re going to meet again.

                Sehun reaches towards Luhan’s face and his hair, then his cheek, his neck, and his shoulder. They exchange a kiss, and Luhan wishes it were a little less awkward because Sehun’s other hand is hesitating between resting on his back or lower, and it’s definitely much too low to be just a casual hug, but again, Luhan perceives that slight clumsiness in the dark-haired boy, when his fingers tremble a little as they tuck at the hem of his shirt. It feels once more like a kid’s touch, as if Sehun were only a little boy touching his mother everywhere without any modesty, just innocent wonder.

                Luhan lets himself go. He just tightens his arms around Sehun’s neck and buries his face in the crook of his neck. He inhales. Sehun presses their bodies together a bit harder, and the elder boy thinks for a second that he rather should pull away because the closer they are to each other and the longer they hug, the harder the separation will be.

                With bitter resignation, Luhan kisses Sehun messily one last time then he courageously pushes him away. But Sehun’s arms are locked around his waist, keeping their lower bodies pressed against each other. Luhan pushes a little harder, but weakly, and he looks down at the floor.

                The floor is dirty. Thousands of people have surely walked on it countless times since the airport was built. They said goodbye too, or hello. They smiled, cried, probably. Maybe they kissed too. But one thing is sure: there has to be two people whose separation was more painful than Sehun and Luhan’s. Maybe they weren’t going to meet even again. So Luhan stops wallowing in his sadness and his misery. He pushes Sehun away with a little more conviction, even if the only thing he’d like to do is run away from the airport and stay in Seoul forever. With him.

                Sehun holds him more tightly in response. A whisper escapes Luhan’s lips. “Let me go.” He struggles a little, crying quietly. He tries to step back, but Sehun prevents him from doing so. Luhan starts to feel afraid. He keeps trying to pull away from Sehun, but the boy’s arms are too strong. “Let me go!”

                “No,” Sehun says. Luhan panics and pushes harder. Sehun clings to him for a long time, but when the blond boy raises his hand to his mouth harshly to muffle a shocked sob, because they are literally starting to fight when both want the same thing, he understands and lets go. However, his fingers brush Luhan’s hand with a delicate sadness, before, at last, breaking off physical contact. “I’m letting you go,” Sehun says with unconcealed bitterness. Luhan feels his heart shatter.

                “It’s not because I want to go – Sehun – ”

                “After all, I can’t hold you back any longer, can I? You can go now,” Sehun retorts, looking at the floor. Maybe he’s thinking about the same thing Luhan was thinking about a minute before. “Come on, you might miss your flight,” he adds darkly. Luhan remains silent, all his words taken away by horrified sadness. Sehun’s never been mad at him ever before. “Come on!” Sehun almost screams. “Go!”

                Luhan leans in and cups his face to join their lips in a deep, passionate kiss, salty tears rolling off his cheeks onto Sehun’s. His right hand leaves Sehun’s cheek, and he clenches his fingers on the tall boy’s shoulder harshly. Sehun doesn’t move an inch. Silently, Luhan parts a centimetre, panting, for a minute. He grips Sehun’s shirt, so hard he’s surely going to put it out of shape.

                Then he lets go and runs away as fast as he can.

~

                Luhan spends the whole flight cursing himself and trying not to cry in front of the other people, and when he gets back home at nine p.m., he slumps down on his bed. He’s missed it. And also his fat pillow and his mattress, which smells like him, like his own cute little stench. He stretches his hand out and s for his backpack. When he finds it at last, he opens the little pocket on its side and grabs his old piece of fabric. He nuzzles it with childlike relief, and closes his eyes. He’s tired. Without even noticing, he falls asleep quietly.

                He only wakes up four hours later, in the middle of the night. He sits up straight and looks around. Everything is dark. Luhan runs his hand through his hair, then touches his forehead. It’s awfully hot and sweaty. Sighing, the blonde boy gets up and walks to the bathroom. Too lazy to switch the lights on, he rests his hand on the walls to find his way. He sets the water really cold, as cold as when he feels too hot in summer. However, a minute later he starts to shiver, so he turns it hotter, and lazily hangs the shower head to the wall, then he sits down on the tiled-floored cubicle. He closes his eyes.

                Everything is spinning. His head hurts. He starts to doze off under the water, arms wrapped around his knees. He didn’t send a message to Sehun to tell him he was home. But Sehun…was mad at him. Luhan cannot believe they had a fight just before parting. “Come on! Go!” Hot tears mix with the burning water. Luhan stays in the shower until his skin starts to become wrinkled, and after that, he sleeps heavily in his bed until the next afternoon.

                He spends his ritual seventeen seconds noticing the horrible headache he wakes up with. Fortunately, the Doliprane is within his hand reach. Luhan gets up, and sits down five seconds later in front of his computer. Sehun is not online. Luhan is disappointed. But about an hour later, he receives a message.

                Can I call you?

                Luhan replies with a short yes, and instantly, beep beep. He accepts the call, and smiles when Sehun appears on his screen. “Hi…” the young boy says. His voice is quiet, he sounds sad. Luhan nods silently. “Look, I’m so sorry…” Sehun says, and Luhan swears he sees tears in his eyes. “I didn’t mean to shout at you like that. I didn’t mean to scare you… I really don’t know what happened, I just – panicked when you pushed me away and… I’m sorry, Luhan…” he finishes sadly.

                Luhan has a little smile. “Yeah, I was scared. But I didn’t want to leave. I pushed you away because if I had stayed any longer I would’ve never left,” he whispers. “I’m glad you’re not mad at me, though.”

                “I never was,” Sehun replies. Luhan chuckles bitterly. “Okay…maybe I lost a little control,” the dark-haired boy concedes. They smile for a minute. “Luhan, I think you’re sick,” Sehun says suddenly with too much gentleness for it to be a joke.

                “Wh – what?” Luhan replies.

                “I – I really think you’re sick,” Sehun repeats, sounding concerned. “You should look at yourself in the mirror…”

                Slightly hurt by this, Luhan gets up, wincing when the shooting pain in his head only gets more painful. He walks to his mirror slowly, and stops. And he understands what Sehun was talking about. His face is completely sallow, except his cheeks, that are tinted a vivid shade of red. His eyes are about the same colour, bloodshot, and he has such black eye bags that the red globes seem to be sunken in two dark holes.

                Luhan blinks. His forehead is glistening with sweat. Actually, just looking at his reflection is making him feel nauseous. Luhan washes his hands with cold water and goes back to his computer. He sits down and reaches for the webcam. “What are you doing?” Sehun says just in time.

                “Turning that off, I look like ,” Luhan says darkly, or rather attempts to say darkly. It just comes out as a feeble moan.

                “Luhan, you don’t look like …you look sick, that’s all. You’re still beautiful to me, you know,” Sehun adds with a little smile. Luhan laughs, but it sounds hoarse. “It’s probably the ventilation in the plane,” Sehun says.

                “Yeah, you’re right.”

                “You should sleep for a while, Luhan.”

                “I want to talk to you…” Luhan groans.

                “Hey,” Sehun smiles. “You look like a zombie.”

                “How dare you?!” Luhan exclaims. Sehun bursts out laughing and Luhan swears it makes his headache less painful. “I’m fine,” he lies.

                “Luhan.”

                “…yeah, yeah, I’m going to bed,” Luhan sighs. “Well, bye b – ”

                “Luhan.”

                Luhan forces his tired eyeballs to roll, roll in their socks, slowly, towards Sehun’s image on the screen. “What?...”

                “I love you. A lot.”

                Luhan stops moving and he breathes slowly for a couple of minutes. Sehun is smiling at him affectionately. Sighing quietly, Luhan rubs the side of his head with his index and his middle finger before smiling back. “I love you too, Sehun,” he says as delicately as he can. Sehun seems happy.

                Luhan turns the webcam off.

A/N: I have the feeling I'm not updating as often as I should ^^'

Thanks a lot for reading ♥

I hope you liked this chapter, but I'm sorry if there are any mistakes, I'm really really tired... ;__;

P.S.: This is not the last chapter~