The early April rain is sloshing from the sky in unforgiving sheets of bone-chilling water, drenching the starless, moonless night, leaving no space to breathe. Sehun’s heart is just as cold, and still dropping deeper and deeper down into numbing ice by the second. His shoulders are sagging and his entire body is weak. He doesn’t want to sound like he’s begging, but the breaks in his voice and the sour twist in his nose gives him away completely.

                                                         

Sehun stumbles forward to catch up with Luhan, the running shoes Chanyeol had given him for Christmas soaking through to the soles with rainwater. “Hyung.” It comes out as more of a desperate cry than a word. “Don’t go, please-hyung, please, one more time, just one more time, just don’t go…don’t leave me alone again…don’t give up on us…hyung!“  

 

Luhan turns around then, his hair pressed wet to his forehead and still dripping with rain, his delicate doll-like features forming an expression of mockery. Sehun wants for him to scream again, shout, kick, anything except this unbothered mask of coldness. For a moment, Sehun thinks that this time could end like all the others again, Luhan screaming and kicking in his arms but calming down eventually, sobbing quietly into his chest, body limp and weak from his outburst.

 

But then Luhan speaks, and Sehun’s heart shatters. “Oh Sehun, haven’t we tried enough? I’m tired of babying you and I want someone more mature-do you happen to know Minseok?” Then he turns back around, steps, and takes a right into EXO-M’s dorm building. He doesn’t look back.

 

When Sehun steps into the warmly lit living room of EXO-K’s dorm building dripping cold, the K members are all there, but they don’t say anything when they see him. It’s unusually quiet as Chanyeol goes to get a towel, Baekhyun uses his hands to wipe away Sehun’s ruined eye makeup, Kyungsoo pours him a cup of hot water, Jongin sits him down on the couch, and Joonmyeon lets him cry into his shoulder. They don’t have to ask.

 

Sehun stays up all night crying, and Joonmyeon listens to everything. About how he always messes up everything with Luhan by not noticing the small things, about how Luhan gave up on him for real this time, about how Luhan is tired of taking care of him because he’s just like a little kid and sometimes that’s not a good thing.

 

Finally, Joonmyeon smiles warmly and lies Sehun down in his own bed. “Let’s sleep, Sehun-ah, we’re going to China tomorrow. We have a variety show filming.” Just like any other day Sehun would stay up late playing video games with Chanyeol.

 

In the M dorm, there’s replay of the scene only with a different cast. Luhan collapses to the floor with his head in his hands as soon as he closes the door behind him, the heels of his palms digging into his closed eyelids. The members dry him off and comfort him with soft, soothing words until their manager comes knocking at their door and yelling for them to go to bed little punks.

 

And similarly, Yixing stays up with Luhan all night, listening to him cry and talk about how if someone had found out that he and Sehun really are-were together Sehun’s idol career would be ruined and he can’t do that to him, about how he wants to spoil Sehun for the rest of his life as if he’d stay a child forever but he can’t because if he goes one day Sehun won’t know what to do by himself, about how when he had said the word “baby” to Sehun the face that popped into his head was Minseok’s (Luhan even laughs a little bit when he says this but he’s sniffling), about how it breaks his heart to do it but he knows he has to. Yixing listens, but doesn’t make Luhan go to bed until Luhan crawls under the covers himself, still a sniffling mess and whispers good night.

 

The next morning, both dorms rise early to pack for their trip to China. At the airport, Yixing turns Luhan away when an excited fan ducks under the security ropes and separates herself from the rest of the fan mob to give Sehun a hoodie with the word HUNHAN on it, and Sehun takes the hoodie carefully in his hands and whispers, “Luhan likes Xiumin, not me.”

 

The variety show filming doesn’t really change things. Neither Luhan nor Sehun play up the fanservice this time around, so while EXO-M and EXO-K divide into two teams to play tug-of-war as the emcees introduce the rules and punishments of the game, Joonmyeon has no choice but to pinch Baekhyun and whisper for him to do fanservice with Chanyeol, threatening to confiscate his favourite eyeliners if he doesn’t and no, he doesn’t care if Baekhyun is still mad at Chanyeol for eating the last cookie in the jar yesterday.

 

The M side is not much different. Yifan hisses at the first person his eyes land on, which unfortunately happens to be an innocently unsuspecting Minseok. “Fanservice. Luhan. Now. Go.” Minseok is about to protest because Jongdae is giving him this “if you say yes, I will come over there right now and smack you on the head” look, but Yifan hisses one more time and says, “Or else.” Minseok gulps and hurriedly scoots his plastic spinny chair over to Luhan and whispers, “Kris said or else.”

 

Luhan nods understandingly and smiles a little bit for the first time all day, slinging an arm around Minseok’s shoulder to pat him. “Yeah, nobody says no when Kris says or else.” Luhan sees the broken look in Sehun’s eyes, but he averts his sight because both of them are already hurting enough, he knows.

 

April the sixth is a live performance. Luhan and Sehun stand on opposite ends of the line EXO forms on the stage. After multiple of Yifan and Joonmyeon’s long lectures, Jongdae grudgingly agreed to let Luhan and Minseok act up some fanservice as long as “IT’S ONLY FANSERVICE OR I WILL PULL OUT THE KNIFE CHINESE FANS ARE ALWAYS SAYING I HAVE HIDDEN SOMEWHERE AND STAB. THE. BOTH. OF. YOU.”

 

Joonmyeon even managed to convince Yifan into pulling the Taoris thing back out. Baekhyun and Chanyeol are also doing fanservice in mass amounts, back-hugging and holding hands and Chanyeol shielding Baekhyun from rushes of people and Baekhyun stepping on Chanyeol’s foot and beaming up at him cutely every time there’s a camera around.

 

Not that they don’t cuddle until Yixing drops his iPad and chucks his slipper at their heads or make kissy faces at each other at the breakfast table until Kyungsoo stabs his fork into the tablecloth and glares up at them and threatens to starve them unless they stop when they’re back at their own dorms, but just showing for the cameras has never been this explicit.

 

April the eighth is EXO’s debuting second-year anniversary, and SM throws a party for them in the company building. Luhan and Sehun stay on opposite sides of the large room, the occasional sweep of the eye, automatically targeting each other but there are no more smiles or waves. All that’s left between them now is a dip in the spot where their hearts are supposed to be beating.

 

April the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth EXO is in Japan for a fansign. It has become an inside joke now, for the exact hundredth fan in line to write down “do you miss Luhan?” with the options “yes” and “no” under it on a sheet of paper and give it to Sehun, whether Luhan is seated right next to him, at the end of the table, or in China with EXO-M. But this time around, Sehun takes the paper and carefully writes the Chinese word “no” across the entire paper.

 

April the twelfth is Sehun’s birthday, and Baekhyun kneels down on one knee to take Sehun’s hand in his, trying to be solemn as he says, “Ah, Sehun, my girlfriend, let’s go see cherry blossoms today!” Sehun swats Baekhyun on the head, which earns a nose scrunch and frown from Chanyeol as he pulls Baekhyun into his own arms.

 

But they do end up as Sehun’s posse for the entire day, paying for his bubble teas and taking him to all the fun places they know. Luhan tries to stay in his hotel room because he “doesn’t feel well” but Yixing storms into his room and pulls Luhan out by the ear anyway.

 

They find multiple bubble tea stands and cafes over the course of their day, but Sehun’s first order had been rocky, because although simple phrases of Japanese they could speak, reading was a difficulty. Sehun tried to motion with his hands at the cashier about which one he wanted, but she hadn’t seemed to really understand.

 

Luhan takes out his wallet then, stepping forward. “One large chocolate bubble tea with extra tapioca, Cola ice cubes and whipped cream, thank you.” It’s fluent Japanese, and the young cashier seems extremely relieved as she begins to work the order. When she pushes the tall cup towards Luhan, wiping her hands on her apron, Luhan steps back again, leaving Sehun gaping at the bubble tea for a moment before grabbing it and bowing a hasty thank-you to the cashier.

 

But for the rest of the day, Luhan and Sehun stay away from each other. No one knows and no one needs to know that when Luhan was in his hotel room this morning refusing to come out, he had been looking up how to pronounce Sehun’s favourite bubble tea order in Japanese, just in case something like this happened.

 

April the fourteenth EXO is on their plane ride back to Seoul, and while most of the members are asleep, Luhan is the one who reaches across the aisle to brush Sehun’s bangs out of his eyes and wipe the drool stains from the corner of his lips. April the fifteenth and sixteenth is EXO’s comeback stage for Overdose. Luhan and Sehun sit apart from each other.

 

After Music Bank, a radio show on Young Street and Mnet, EXO-M flies to China to continue promoting while EXO-K stays in South Korea. Sehun emails Luhan every day because he figures that since M has more activities than K due to the ferry incident not too long ago, Luhan won’t have the spare time to do something like check his inbox.

 

Every email is the same: “I love you. I miss you. Good luck with promotions.”

 

But Luhan sees. He reads every email and rereads them because sometimes he needs those words to get him through nights when he misses the sound of Baekhyun and Chanyeol’s pillow fights, misses Joonmyeon’s hilariously passionate lectures ringing from the living room, misses the sounds of Jongin and Sehun’s video games, misses Kyungsoo banging pots and pans in the kitchen, making midnight snacks for whoever happens to be hungry.

 

Yifan, Yixing, Jongdae, Minseok and Zitao are all soundless when they sleep, contradictory to common belief. Sometimes it’s too quiet. He misses Sehun. But it’s for the better, he tries so hard to convince himself. It had gotten dangerous in March, how close they’ve come to being caught. He’d also seen how helpless Sehun had been when he was by himself, with no one’s arm to grip and no one to pout at. He had to grow up, although selfishly, Luhan wanted him to stay eighteen forever and not turn nineteen or twenty or twenty-one or any older.

 

This lasts through the rest of April, through May, through June, through July, even halfway through August with minimal interactions on camera and none in their privacy, but even the smiles Luhan flashes at Sehun and the hand he uses to tickle Sehun’s chin is because Luhan had sincerely felt awful for the fans’ heartbreak. He would never admit that when he does do it, a part of him melts too.

 

That’s when EXO gets their break from promotions and get to laze at home all month, which is a break they might as well make the most of because they’re starting with some scattered interviews and variety shows in the fall again. It’s also when things change again between Luhan and Sehun.

 

Some of the members go out to buy more tubs of ice cream one morning, since it’s the summer and it’s hot out and EXO is EXO so they eat a lot. Somewhere along the way, Luhan and Sehun are the only ones left behind on one side of the street while the others have already crossed. Luhan and Sehun just about make it to the middle of the road when a car comes whipping down the lane.

 

Luhan’s heart almost stops in that one moment, and all he hears is his heart pounding hard and the driver honking the horn looking as desperate as he is and the frantically calling voices of his bandmates. He finds it hard to breathe. It’s much too late to push Luhan out of the way, so the only thing Sehun can do and does do is step in front of him and pull a shocked frozen Luhan into his arms, shielding him from the car.

 

The car screeches to a stop barely an inch from Sehun’s back.

 

The driver hurriedly shoves open his door and stumbles out, apologizing profusely and bowing at ninety-degree angles, frantically explaining that he had been on his way to get the brakes of his car fixed. Sehun only nods and smiles a little bit. “It’s alright. No one got hurt.” The maturity of Sehun’s smile and deepness of his voice surprises Luhan and for a moment, he looks up at Sehun’s still-delicate features and doesn’t recognize him.

 

This is the boy who tugged on his sleeve and pouted and shook his arm around until he agreed to pay for his bubble tea? The boy who hadn’t a clue how to control his expressions and always had everything he felt written out on his face? The boy who only knew how to keep what he loved and push away what he despised and stuck to what he thought was right and didn’t give in to anything else? He is growing up, Luhan realizes. Sehun is growing up.

 

The members are checking on both Sehun and Luhan throughout the rest of the day, making sure they are really okay. That night, all the members gather in the M dorm (only because it was cleaner) to play cards, but Sehun stays in his own dorm, staring at a phone selca of himself and Luhan before everything got messed up. His phone buzzes with a text then.

 

yah, oh sehun

lets go outside

 

Sehun clenches his teeth, overwhelming waves of mixed feelings almost pushing him under the surface and drowning him. But with the beginning of tears in his eyes and a sad smile on his lips, he responds to the text, typing in every syllable slowly.

 

ne

 

When he goes outside, Luhan is already standing there, and if Sehun remembers correctly, it’s the same spot as that night. His voice breaks again when he calls for him. “Hyung?” Luhan turns around and smiles tiredly, a warmth Sehun hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed until now. “Sehun-ah.” Sehun is at a loss for words then. He doesn’t know what to say. His chest tightens though, and he thinks he might cry. So he swallows and forces himself to speak, the same good-boy tone of voice he always used when he did aegyo for the cameras. “Ne.”

 

Luhan swallows, glancing down briefly before looking back up. He doesn’t seem to know where to put his hands. “If…if I say I’m sorry now…would you…forgive me?” Sehun sees the familiar dull sparkle of suppressed hope in Luhan’s beautiful doe-like eyes. He doesn’t want to ask why Luhan had left. He doesn’t even ask about Minseok. Because at that one particular moment, he doesn’t want to know. Maybe later. But not now. Not right now. 

 

Sehun just wants to pull Luhan into his arms, hug him tight and not let him go, breathe in the familiar scent of strawberries in Luhan’s always-silky strands of hair, adjusting his arms to be able to hold onto him better. So that’s exactly what he does. And when Luhan puts his own arms carefully around Sehun’s waist, turning his head to press his cheek against Sehun’s chest, Sehun is finally able to gather the strength to stand up straight again. 

 

Softly, he whispers, “Of course.” And when Luhan stands up on his toes to kiss Sehun’s lips, Sehun feels like everything is perfectly right.