Sehun runs a finger over Jongin’s gills, little slits of pink peeking from behind tanned skin. Jongin bats his hand away, head coming to meet his shoulder, exposing the other side of his neck. Sehun’s hand darts forwards, , softly, once, fingertips rippling as Jongin inhales, breathing in Sehun.

“Don’t,” Jongin mumbles, lips pursing, sea-dark eyes gazing reproachfully at him through a fringe of coal black lashes, “That tickles.”

Sehun smiles, leans back, hands sinking into cold sand, slipping like water between his fingers, bleached white in the darkness. “I know,” he responds, same as he’s always done, half smile on his lips.

Jongin sighs, and in a breath as his gills fuse, leaving nothing but faint white tracings at the junction between neck and shoulder.

Sehun stands up, dusting off his shorts. “Come on,” he says, reaching down, reaching out. “Let’s get you home.”

Jongin studies him for a moment before reaching out, grasping his hand, pulling himself up, bare chest stumbling against Sehun’s plaid shirt as he slips in the sand, unsteady on two feet after so long.

“When did you get so tall?” he grumbles as Sehun slips an arm around his shoulder, pulling Jongin flush against him.

Sehun’s smile turns a bit sad. “I did a lot of growing since you last came,” he tells him as Jongin slips an arm around his waist, and Jongin thinks he means something more than the fact that Sehun is now all long legs and skinny hips.

But, he muses, he hasn’t grown so much that they don’t still walk in tandem, legs mirroring each others, fingers tight on bony hips, pointy shoulders, the same as they always had. Or maybe it’s just that Jongin’s done some growing himself.

 

 

 

They get to the beach house, and Jongin is surprised to see the lights out. It’s been two years but still, he’s hard pressed to remember a time when there wasn’t light and music and laughter like white noise spilling out of the windows.

“Where is everyone?”

Sehun looks at him for a long moment, twirling his keys around his fingers, and Jongin notices that they’re speckled with new scars, just whiter than Sehun’s skin, glinting like sea foam in the moonlight.

“You really have been gone for a while, haven’t you?” his voice is far away and his gaze is even further, and Jongin feels something a little like guilt settle in his gut.

 

 

 

 

The next morning, the house seems a bit more familiar. He wakes up feeling dizzy, the sound of the waves in his ears. Sehun tightens his arm around Jongin, mumbling in his sleep, and the world stops spinning as Jongin wonders if this is what it feels like to come home.

He twists slightly, cranes his neck to get a better look at Sehun. In the morning light, he seems, strangely, more alien than he did in the moonlight. He’s all grown up, Jongin supposes, the cheekbones that always ghosted under the surface of his skin had finally come in, his chin is sharper, and his jaw more defined. Jongin feels himself pull loose again; maybe this isn’t the Sehun he remembers. He turns over completely, so that he’s facing Sehun.

Sehun opens his eyes, the way he always did—squinting a bit, turning to perfect crescents. “Morning,” he says, voice deep with sleep. And Jongin runs a finger over the faint scar on his cheek, remembering the water swirling red with blood as they laughed, clinging to the rocks just off shore, too high on adrenaline and each other to realize the cliffs were razor sharp and shredding their skin.

“Morning, Sehun,” he replies, a bit hesitant. And Sehun gives him one of those perfect smiles, eyes curving down, softening at the corners, and Jongin convinces himself that the Sehun in front of him is the Sehun he’s always known.

 

 

 

 

As Sehun makes breakfast, Jongin shifts restlessly behind him, picking up boxes, reading labels, hopping from foot to foot. Sehun finally turns around, pointing the spatula at him.

“Will you sit down?” he asks pointedly, more command than question.

And Jongin drops down, letting his perfect en point fall. “Sorry,” he says, a bit sheepish. Sehun just rolls his eyes and turns around, starting slightly as he feels Jongin’s arms slip around his waist, back pulled flush against the older boy’s chest. “I just missed you is all.” His voice is softer, muffled into his shoulder, and Sehun relaxes.

“I missed you too,” is what he says back, voice full of something just shy of love.

 

 

 

 

Sehun watches Jongin dance on the back patio, overlooking the ocean, lines long and clean and sharp against a backdrop of endless blue. He’s never really understood how Jongin ever learned to dance. He’d asked him once, and all he’d gotten was a mysterious smile and a cryptic “It’s easy, and pretty. Like swimming.”

He never quite knew what that meant and Jongin never told him anything else, so Sehun eventually stopped asking. All he knew for sure was that he was glad Jongin had picked up ballet somewhere along the way.

 

 

 

 

They stroll into town—Jongin wants to pick up some fish and Sehun is not in the mood for fishing.

“Sehun!”

Sehun turns, stumbling backwards as someone barrels into him, bleached hair getting into his mouth, laughter warm against his skin as arms wrap tightly around him.

“Tao?” His voice is a bit incredulous.

“The one and only,” Tao pulls away with a wink, letting Sehun go.

“What are you doing back here?”

Tao shrugs, “I had a vacation, so I thought I’d come back see everyone, see the beach, you know how it is.”

Sehun just smiles at him not really knowing how it was, seeing as he’d never left. “How long are you back for?”

“Not long, only a few days.”

“Oh.” Sehun feels a bubble of something like happiness deflate in his chest.

Tao’s glance shifts past Sehun, eyes widening as they land on Jongin. “Hi—it’s Jongin, right?”

Jongin nods, surprised that the skinny boy in front of him remembers him when he’d only seen him a handful of times. “Hi.”

Tao glances at his phone as it beeps angrily at him, “Hey I gotta run—promised Luhan I’d get lunch with him, see you around!” He waves once, over his shoulder, as he jogs away, and Jongin feels something tighten in his stomach at the way Sehun’s gaze lingers on Tao’s back.

 

 

 

 

Jongin is back in Sehun’s room, changing into Sehun’s clothes, glad that they still wear the same size, when he sees something flash on the desk, the color of sea ice, iridescent and the shape of a half moon. He picks it up, turning it over in his hands as he wanders into the living room. He falls, graceful, onto the couch, so close to Sehun that the cushion gives way, rolls them ever so slightly into each other.

“I didn’t know you still had this,” he says, grinning at the way Sehun flushes red just over his cheekbones, blooming color that dissapates down his cheeks like the edges of a watercolor painting.

Sehun snatches it out of his hands. “Yeah, well, you gave it to me, so...”

“I know,” Jongin says, remembering being eleven years old, and wanting to ignore the tide calling his name so that he could stay with Sehun, if only for a day longer. “You thought it was gross though. Said it was like keeping one of my fingers.”

Sehun shrugs, brushes his fingers across the glossy surface, “But it’s the only part of you I can keep.” His voice is almost a whisper, and for some reason Jongin wants to pull him so close that their heartbeats sound in each other’s chests.

Instead he lifts Sehun’s chin so their eyes meet. “Even if I’m not always here,” he tells him, “you still have me. You’ve always kept me. Since that first night we met.” Sehun laughs, fist knocking lightly against Jongin’s chest.

“You’re so cheesy.” He tells him, but Sehun lets his head fall against Jongin’s shoulder anyway.

Jongin grins and shrugs. “You love me anyway.”

“Yeah,” Sehun sighs, “I guess I do.”

 

 

 

 

Jongin is coming back from a walk, humming to himself, admiring the shells he had found for Sehun—perfect, white, twisting into opaque spires in a way that maybe reminds him of Sehun’s laugh—when he sees Sehun standing with another boy on the patio. He’s laughing in a way that used to belong to Jongin alone, and he feels, suddenly, alone in a way that’s he’s never felt on land. And he wonders if this time he was gone too long.

At dinner he’s introduced to this stranger.

“Luhan’s new here,” Sehun tells him, grinning, eyes going soft at the corners.

“I’m not that new,” Luhan scoffs, and Jongin tries to force a smile. That’s what people do, after all, and besides that it’s Sehun’s birthday, and today was supposed to be perfect.

“A year and a half is new for a town where people live and die without leaving,” Sehun laughs, slinging an arm around Luhan’s shoulders in a way that is all too easy.

Luhan just grins, “Yeah, I guess. What about you, Jongin? Sehun says you’re visiting from somewhere else?”

“Yeah, I used to come by all the time.” His gaze goes to Sehun, but he’s just smiling down at Luhan, and Jongin never knew sunset could feel this lonely.

It’s half past nine, and Jongin keeps glancing at the door. “Expecting someone, Jongin?”

Sehun’s voice comes from beside Luhan, lazy, tired, happy. Jongin shakes his head, “No, not really. I was just wondering when your parents were coming home.”

He feels Sehun tense from across the room, stares in horror as tears, salty and hot blur Sehun’s eyes.

Luhan immediately puts a hand on Sehun’s arm. “Sehun,” he starts, but Sehun’s already up, tearing past them both. Jongin reaches out a hand to stop him, but just misses, his best friend slipping through his grasp, running out the door.

 

 

 

 

Luhan tells him what happened, and Jongin listens quietly, heart growing heavier with every word, until he feels it ache like a bloody hole in his chest. Words slip past him, settling in his bones—there was a car crash, both of his parents died, Sehun had to be dragged from the burning car, there was nobody left, you know. There was nobody left for him. I pulled him out; I figured I had to take care of him. I had to be there for him.

Luhan leaves afterwards, giving him a pat on the shoulder and a sympathetic look. Jongin walks out, feet tracing the familiar path that he knows Sehun must have taken, until he reaches the bluffs where they always used to meet. He can see Sehun, sitting, curled into himself, arms wrappeed around the long legs folded up against his chest.

Jongin feels something he thinks might be misery pulse in his blood. He hesitates before walking to his side, dropping down beside the boy he’d know all his life.

Sehun doesn’t look at him, chin propped on his knees, eyes staring at a star hovering somewhere on the horizon.

“Why didn’t you come, Jongin?” His voice is quiet, miserable, cracking on his name. Jongin doesn’t say anything, biting his lower lip, eyes tracing tear stains on Sehun’s cheeks, glimmering in the starlight. “I stood at the beach, every night, and screamed for you.” He closes his eyes. Jongin lets his lip go as he feels blood, salty and hot, against his tongue, “Every night, until my voice was shot and the sun rose and I couldn’t even whisper the silence in that house away.” He turns his head, looks at Jongin, eyes a bit puffy, tears glinting like diamonds in his lashes. “Why didn’t you hear me when I need you most?” He sniffs and Jongin thinks that he’s achingly beautiful in the way that a winter storm is, cold and angry, setting his heart pounding in his ears.

Jongin doesn’t say anything for a long moment, letting his gaze turn to the sea, waves crashing, exploding into mist against the rocky outcroppings that scattered the coast.

“I wanted to come back,” his voice is soft, hesitant, “I wanted to come back so badly, Sehun. But I couldn’t, no matter how much I wanted to.”

“So you did hear me?”

Jongin shakes his head, regret bitter on his tongue, “No. I wasn’t anywhere near land.” His eyes flutter shut, eyelashes sweeping his cheekbones as he shudders, “I was in the darkness, Sehun, in the blackest seas and the coldest waters.” Jongin’s head turns as he peeks at Sehun from under his lashes, thinking Sehun looks like moonlight on the water, still and calm and reflecting his loneliness back at him.

“Why,” Sehun asks, voice flat.

“I was fighting a war, Sehun. My people were attacked, under siege.” His gaze turns fully to Sehun, fingertips lifting to ghost over the scar on Sehun’s cheek. “We’re not the only ones down there.”

Sehun catches his hand, fingers curving into Jongin’s, palms warm against each other’s. “Jongin,” his voice is soft, mouth fitting around his name like a caress.

“And…” Jongin hesitates, “and I met someone.” He feels Sehun’s hand stiffen in his for a moment, and he feels like maybe he’s the worst person in the whole world.

“Who was he?” his voice is somewhere above a whisper, strained, and Jongin wonders if this is how Sehun sounded after he screamed himself hoarse, calling for the man who loved him the most.

“Kyungsoo.” Jongin feels pain stab at his heart when he says the name, dull and worn, more like a scar than anything else, “He was smaller than me, with big eyes, heart shaped lips, and a red tail.”

“Red?” Sehun asks, fingers going to his own lips, and Jongin feels tears strain at the back of his throat and he wants to tell Sehun not to compare himself, that he’s perfect the way he is, always has been.

Instead, he nods, “Yeah, it looked like fire in the water.” He smiles a bit, remembering.

“What happened to him?”

Jongin looks down at their hands, colors stark in the darkness, so that it almost looks like a shadow holding hands with a ghost. “He died.”

Sehun in a breath, sharp. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok, it’s not your fault. It happened all the time, people got swallowed by the abyss, never managed to climb out.”

For a moment, there is nothing between them but night air and the hush of the sea. “Would you have come back if he hadn’t?” They question is fragile, soaring on paper wings through the gulf between them. Jongin looks at Sehun, studying the way the other is studying the ground, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. Both of them can hear the unspoken “would you come back to me?” that lodges somewhere in between their ribs.

“I don’t know.” Jongin’s whisper is terrified, guilty. Sehun nods once, and Jongin is rushing to fill the silence, “It’s not that I didn’t want to Sehun, it’s just—we were young, and Kyungsoo was there, with me, and it was all like a fever dream, you know? We never knew when our last time together was going to be, when one of us might…” he trails off for a moment before continuing, slower than before, wanting to get this part right, “And Kyungsoo, he was always going to be there, and we could have a future. I would have gotten to keep him, all the time. Not just when the tide was right.” He swallows, hard, fighting down the butterflies that threaten to rush out of his mouth into the sea breeze, “I never had to worry about him not being there when I came back.”

Sehun looks up, meeting his eyes. “Stupid,” he mutters, “Why do you think I never left, even when there was nobody that stayed for me?”

Jongin feels his heart stutter, before it soars, cresting a wave of something he’s pretty sure is love.

“Did,” Sehun’s voice is shaky but determined, “did you love him?”

“Maybe. Do you love Luhan?”

“Sometimes,” Sehun tells, him, but Jongin finds he doesn’t quite care because even though Luhan was there for Sehun when Jongin couldn’t be, it’s Jongin’s name that he whispers when they lean in towards each other, eyelids fluttering shut.

 

 

 

 

The next morning, he wakes up in Sehun’s arms. Cold toes pressed to the back of his calves, nose breathing into the back of his neck, arm tight around his waist. He smiles, breathing in the cottony scent that was Sehun’s sheets and wonders if maybe this is what forever feels like.

He laces his fingers through Sehun’s, thumbs tracing over the new scars on the backs of his hands. He can’t help but think if he had been there, been here, been with Sehun, the crash would never have happened, his parents would be laughing over coffee downstairs, and he wouldn’t have lost a piece of Sehun to Luhan.

 

 

 

It’s lunchtime when Tao comes over, scarf blowing in the wind, shoulders hunched against the autumn cold.

Jongin lets him in, not entirely surprised that he’s here. Tao watches him as Jongin moves around the kitchen, waiting for Sehun to come downstairs.

They make small talk and Jongin realizes, maybe for the first time, that Sehun’s the only friend he’s had in land.

When he finally walks into the kitchen, he slips an arm around Jongin, smiling a hello to his old friend. Tao smiles back, eyes glinting as his gaze turns knowing.

And Jongin feels something like happiness settle in his bones.

 

 

 

 

“How long can you stay?” The question falls into the darkness, and for a moment Jongin wonders if he can pretend to have never heard it at all.

“Jongin?” the arm tightens around him, forehead touching lightly to the back of his head.

“I don’t know.” Sehun doesn’t say anything but Jongin can feel his eyes flutter shut against his nape. He turns over, rests his forehead against Sehun’s, so close that their breath mingles, lingering in the space between them.“But I’ll stay as long as I can.”

“I wish you could stay forever,” Sehun mumbles, lips shivering against Jongin’s. And Jongin feels his heart breaking in Sehun’s gaze, because more than anything he wishes that he could give the rest of his eternity to Sehun.

“I wish I could tell you I could.”

“I know,” Sehun’s whisper is dripping with unshed tears and Jongin wants to rage against the sea and the tide and the way it was a siren call to his heart. Instead he leans into the space between their hearts, wishing that they lived in a fairytale and their problems could be solved with a kiss.

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning, he wakes to an empty bed. He stumbles downstairs, restless, something dark stirring in his blood. He stops cold when he reaches the living room, feeling jealousy snake around his lungs, squeezing tight, when he sees Sehun leaning over Luhan’s shoulder, laughing as he reaches an arm around him to turn the page of the book they are looking at.

He feels, for a moment, breathless. I’m going to lose him. And he wants to run to Sehun, hold him close, never let him go.

“I’m going for a swim,” he announces, fingers already on the doorhandle, without so much as a good morning to either of them.

“What?” Sehun’s voice sounds a little desperate, “No, no you can’t.”

Jongin turns, surprised when he gets an armful of Sehun. “You can’t. Not yet.”

It suddenly clicks into place, “Sehun, it’s just a swim. I’m not leaving you, not now.”

Sehun bites his lip, steps back with a nod, trusting him. And Jongin feels something crack between his ribs because he’s not sure that he trusts himself.

 

 

 

 

“Don’t you have work?” Jongin’s question is abrupt, breaking the fragile silence that shrouded their dinner table.

Sehun twirls his fork nervously. “Yes, but…I don’t want to go.” He looks down at his plate, fish bones long and thin and pearlescent, blending into the background of his plate.

“Why not?”

Sehun shrugs, picks at his food.

“Is it because of me?”

Sehun sighs. “Yes,” he admits, “It’s just, well, I don’t want to come back and find you gone. Find out I’m the only one left in this house. Again.” The last part is mumbled, soft words landing somewhere between fish bones and paper plates.

“I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t do that. Not to you,” Jongin tells him but Sehun doesn’t respond, looking at him with sad eyes, fork scratching absently on the dishes. And Jongin can feel the lie fall flat, breaking between them.

“Sehun,” he says suddenly, desperately, “you know…you know that I, well, that I’m…”

“I know.” Sehun’s smile is warm, eyes going soft at the corners. “Me too.”

And Jongin feels like maybe he’s lost his heart to the boy that sat across from him, all moonlight and shadows, but he doesn’t mind, not really; after all, Sehun was offering him his heart in return.

 

 

 

 

Jongin can feel his heart breaking. Slow crack right down the middle, the halves falling away jagged at the edges, bleeding out sadness, slow and warm and thick until it fills him up, fills him up, fills him up.

“Sehun,” his voice is a whisper, hushed in the autumn morning light that streams through their window. He tightens his arm around Sehun’s waist, fingertips ghosting patterns into his skin.

“Hmmm?” Sehun is quiet, voice still thick with sleep. He curls back into Jongin, so they're pressed against each other, the seams of their bodies stitched together by the beating of their hearts.

“Can we go away?”

“Away?”

Jongin nods, nose brushing against the nape of Sehun’s neck. “Far, far away.”

“Seol?” Sehun asks, deciding to humor him.

“Further.” Jongin’s voice is a whisper against Sehun’s skin.

Sehun shivers, feels something warm stir somewhere in the pit of his stomach. “Japan?”

“I was thinking more like Switzerland.”

Sehun laughs, voice bright, “Okay, Jongin. Switzerland. I could use a week or two away from here.”

“No,” Jongin’s voice comes, hesitant, “I was thinking maybe forever.”

Sehun frowns, scared suddenly by the undercurrent of fear that drags at Jongin’s words, foreboding creeping into his chest. He turns around, so he’s laying with his forehead pressed against Jongin’s, palms pressed against his chest.

“What is it, what’s wrong?”

“I can’t stay Sehun.” His confession is drowning in sadness and anger and fear, pulling against the inevitable.

Sehun’s hands curl into fists, and he wants, for a moment to rage against the world. Why can’t I just have this?

“How long?” he whispers, half hoping that Jongin won’t tell him.

Jongin shakes his head, hair tickling along Sehun’s face, “I don’t know, exactly, but I know it's not long at all.”

Sehun feels his throat close up, chest filled with something that’s halfway between anger and fear. And he can’t breathe, drowning in sorrow.

Jongin closes his eyes, eyelashes turned black with tears, leaving salty tracks snaking across tanned skin.

“You can’t fight it? You can’t stay, just a little longer?”

“I’m trying.” Jongin’s words are strained, turned husky with grief, “I’ve been trying. But the sea always takes back what it owns.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry Sehun, I’m so sorry, I wish…” he trails off because they know its useless; wishing never could do anything to change the lines of fate.

So instead Sehun kisses him, hard, fingers tangling in hair, bodies pressed so close he can’t tell where one stops and the other begins.

He kisses a line of fire down Jongin’s neck, bruising the skin, hoping that his kisses work like magic and every mark is another day Jongin will spend with him. Jongin is whispering his name like a spell, and Sehun wants to weep.

“Mine,” he whispers against Jongin’s skin. “You’re mine.”

“Yes,” Jongin’s voice is a gasp, or maybe a sob, “Sehun, yes.”

 

 

 

 

Sehun could never really hate the ocean. It gave him Jongin, gave him his childhood best friend, his first, and if he had anything to do with it, his last love. His toes curl into the sand, standing at that line where the beach just meets the sea.

Of course, he reflects, it also takes Jongin away every time, letting him escape just long enough for them to fall together, then dragging him under with the tide, always leaving Sehun feeling like he’s in too deep, darkness swallowing him whole until the moon shifts, bringing him back to the light.

His fingertips brush, soft, against the paper in his hands. He could never really hate Jongin, not even after he left him with nothing but this letter and a promise to return.

He glances down at it, black ink stark against the page. He doesn’t have to read it again to know what it says; the words are etched against his heart, branded onto his ribcage, bleeding into his lungs.

I have to go. I couldn’t say goodbye, couldn’t watch you disappear as I fell beneath the waves.

Sehun wraps his arms around himself, closing his eyes, pretending it’s Jongin’s arms around him.

I’ll come back. I promise, as soon as the sea lets me. As soon as I come back from the black.

Sehun should have known, the night before. Jongin had been so sweet, so tender. Desperation lingering between his kisses. He fell asleep in Jongin’s arms, the older boy whispering stories of a witch in the darkness, of exchanges and magic and loss.

He should have known Jongin was leaving. He just wished that he could have said goodbye, could have held him one last time. Could have told him he loved him.

Cold water washes over his feet, sea foam lingering beside him on the sand, gone dark with salt water.

“Send him back.” Sehun’s plea is broken, hopeless. “Please, I need him. More than you do. More than you ever could.”

The ocean, of course, remains silent, indifferent to his supplication. How cruel it was, Sehun thought, to give him something he could never keep.

 

 

 

 

It’s summertime, and beach is alive, surging with people. But Sehun feels a slow dying in his heart.

He wonders, idly, how sunset could feel so lonely.

“Jongin,” he whispers, just like he always does, “come back to me, I’m not done with you yet.”

 

 

 

 

That night he remembers Jongin in his dreams. The first time they met, darkness wrapping around them, as he shakes the boy lying in the sand, curled in on himself, wracked with tears. Six years old, and terrified, he brings him home, only to find him gone the next day.

He reappears the next week, wearing the clothes Sehun lent him, telling fantastic stories and somehow Sehun believes him.

They’re fourteen, and fallen into a friendship so easy it’s like breathing. Jongin slings an arm around his shoulder, laughing as Sehun hisses in pain, skin flaring from red to white, sunburn like blush across his cheekbones. And they walk in tandem, like they always had, Sehun’s arm around Jongin’s waist as he wonders if this is what it feels like to fall in love.

Seventeen and they’re whispering secrets on the bluffs, pointing at stars and lying all too close, feet pointing in different directions, cheeks a hairs breadth apart, heartbeats pounding like waves in his eardrums.

Twenty one and feeling like he’s drowning because he loves Jongin more than most anything and he never told him, and he doesn’t know if it’s too late.

The next morning he wakes up exhausted, rolling onto the other side of the bed, imagining he can still smell Jongin’s scent on the pillow next to his.

 

 

 

 

It’s winter again, and the sea looks like magic, snow falling and melting into its waters. And Sehun wishes that life were more like a fairytale; maybe that way he’d be guaranteed a happy ending.

 

 

 

 

 

The new year dawns bright, violet night bleeding into pale blue sunrise, shining the lightest emerald on the water. Sehun thinks that being bound by strings of fate is perhaps the worst thing in the world. They pull too tight, cutting into skin and fragile capillaries, slicing straight to the bone, staining white strings red with pain.

He sees a figure picking its way across the sand, and he is frozen, fixated. He wonders for a moment, if he’s gone mad. And then he’s running, tripping across the sand and falling into strong arms, nose pressed against skin that smells night air and salt water.

“You came back.” His voice breaks on the words, tears burning in his eyes, blurring the world into a watercolor painting.

“I came back.” Arms tighten around him, and he feels like the undertow’s caught him, dragging him back into the sea that is Jongin’s eyes. “This time forever.”

“Forever?” The word is whispered; as if saying it too loud would shatter the promise, send Jongin back into the still waters.

“I promise.”

Sehun bites his lip remembering Jongin’s words the night before he left. “What did you have to trade?”

“It doesn’t matter, I’d trade the whole world if it meant one more day with you.”

And he kisses Sehun, soft and sweet, and it for the first time there’s no desperation or sadness, and he thinks that maybe this is what it means to live forever.