Sehun is in a good mood.

He sticks his phone between his teeth and juggles around the shopping bags in his arm to press his floor button on the elevator. He had gone shopping today and bought all sorts of stuff to please his shop-aholic heart. One purchase in particular is wrapped carefully in a separate bag – a baggy tshirt that reads ‘swagger’ that he thinks will match right in with the other ridiculous band tshirts that a certain somebody always wears.

He tries to whistle, fails miserably as his phone falls from between his lips to the ground the back cover cracks in two.

“.” He swears as he scrambled to pick up the pieces, it was a gift given to him by Chanyeol a few weeks back. The lift pings open as he picks up the pieces and he looks up just in time to see Sejung giggling and standing up on her toes to kiss Chanyeol who staggers back in surprise as his hands lift automatically to Sejung’s waist to stop her from toppling over. Chanyeol's eyes have almost doubled in size but Sejung is still giggling and reaching out for Chanyeol making playful aegyo noises.

Sehun stumbles out of the elevator and the noise alerts the two to his presence. For a fraction of a second his eyes meet Chanyeol's widened eyes and this time there are no puppies frolicking in his stomach, just jagged-edged stones dropping heavily to his stomach, weighing his soul down.

“Hey, baby cousin, why are you home early?” Sejung smiles at him, as if nothing has happened, as if those stones aren’t rubbing so painfully against the walls of his stomach.

Sehun looks down and takes a deep breath before he walks towards them resolutely, stepping in between them for a second and jostling them apart as he reaches for the handle of the their door.

“Well, don’t let me keep you from your fun.” He says acidly before he steps in through the door.

“We won’t.” Sejung calls after him, her voice full of mirth.

Sehun is no longer in a good mood.

He slams the door to his room in Dino’s face and Dino yips in surprise on the other side. He dumps the bags haphazardly on the floor and flops on to the bed. For so many years of his life he had enjoyed the luxury of a calm stomach, no feelings made it tumble around, no confusing emotions threatened to eat its way out of him and in his own way he was happy. But this reminds him of being 4 years old and the kids in his day care center making fun of him for not having a mother and making cruel comments about how scary the expression on his face looks and maybe that’s why his parents left him. Only this time it’s worse.  So much more worse.

He gets up in a fit of rage and hurls the broken pieces of his phone cover across the room, where they flop unsatisfyingly on to a pile of clothes and lie still. Sehun hates not knowing what he feels like, he hates feeling anything at all even more. He picks up a sock from the top of his pillow stares at it unseeingly, blankly. But his esophagus is strangely tight and compressed and his head is full of images of Sejung and Chanyeol.

“Sehun! Sehun-ah, come out for dinner, aegi*1”

Sehun peeks out of his room to see his aunt bustling around the dining table.

“Sejung got drunk with her friends at some noreabang and poor Chanyeol just dropped her off. He is putting her to bed right now. That girl.” She shakes her head and she brings out the plates and at that moment Chanyeol steps out of Sejung’s room.

His eyes still wide, Chanyeol smiles at him. Tentative and uncertain and slightly fearful, like he is expecting Sehun to strike out at him or burst in to tears. But no, if anything that smile just rattles a jumble of memories in Sehun’s mind that, he realizes, were never even his to begin with. Playing games in bideobangs*2, knees knocking against knees under tables, wide smiles, they were all rightfully Sejung’s from the beginning. So Sehun smiles back and politely declines the invitation for dinner, he already ate, he will just be going to bed early, and carefully closes the door to his room to avoid Chanyeol's gaze.

From: Chanyeol 11.52 AM

you are avoiding me -_-

From: Chanyeol 11.52 AM

why :(

From: Chanyeol 11.52 AM