47. Cozy in the Cave
Blood SisterThere was a part of Sehun that wished their time in the cave would stay forever. Or better yet, that time would stop completely. Life seemed languid and unhurried away from the rest of the world, free from emails pinging incessantly, reports that needed to be drawn up for deadlines, and clients who needed to be seen within the hour. If money wasn’t an object, he would have been more than content to spend the rest of his life exploring obscure areas of nature with Weiyi and having to make camp impromptu in a cave.
Was a couple of weeks long enough to fall in love? Sehun didn’t know, but he figured that if his main cause for alarm at her assumption she could just stay with him when everything had cleared up was I’m not sure that’ll be good for my heart rather than a sarcastic great, my flat’s about to get very cramped!, “fond of” was probably a little weak.
There was another problem. Typically, Sehun had been relatively forward if he found a lady he liked and connected well with if he was available and interested in her, but he didn’t think it was sensible to even contemplate it with Weiyi, and while he tried his best not to be awkward about it, he felt awkward, whether or not she noticed it. After her experiences, he worried that anything of a remotely romantic nature would be a bad step back and potentially very damaging.
But try as he might, he just couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Sure, she looked a lot like Luhan, but the nightmares had eased and the stress of their situation had replaced them in any bad dreams he had. Not just that, but when the Lu family features came to mind at all, it was Weiyi’s face that he saw rather than Luhans, and the positive times he associated with it. She had a truly beautiful smile, but he found her stunning even when she was frowning or pouting, which was exactly what she was doing at that particular moment.
“I’m still getting it wrong,” she announced, giving up on the monkey’s fist she’d been having a fourth attempt at. She dumped the paracord in Sehun’s lap and looked at him expectantly.
Sehun jumped. “Huh?” He’d been paying much more attention to her facial expressions as she tried to tie the knot he’d been teaching her to pass time than he had to how she was getting along with said knot. “Oh. Right. That. Yeah.”
Clearing his throat and taking a moment to calm himself, Sehun picked apart the tangle she’d made of his paracord bracelet and explained it again, demonstrating as he went. He did his best to pay attention to the way she tied the knot when she tried again, but his eyes caught on how slim and pretty her fingers were rather than watching what she was using those fingers for. They were a little grubby from their time in the wild – there hadn’t been a chance for either of them to wash – and Sehun sadly knew that he was whipped enough to consider cheesy phrases like but her hands would have looked beautiful completely covered in mud. He exhaled. He was beyond help, really.
“Is this right?” Weiyi asked, waving a mess of paracord in front of him. It untangled itself, leaving a simple knot in the middle off it. “Whoops.”
Before Sehun could offer his help, she’d started to undo the knot. A lock of hair escaped from behind her ear as she worked, and he hastily averted his gaze before the temptation to reach out and push it back became too much of a temptation. After all, that kind of movement could leave him almost cupping her face, and cupping somebody’s face affectionately like that lent itself very nicely to a kiss, and kissing Weiyi would not be a good—
“Oh!” Weiyi exclaimed in delight. Sehun looked up just in time to avoid the completed monkey’s fist that she was swinging around. “I did it!”
He grinned at her. “I told you you’d be able to do it with a bit of practice.”
“But you’re so good at it,” Weiyi replied, swinging the knot absently from side to side. “How are you so good at it?”
“Years of practice.” He caught the knot and tugged the paracord gently out of Weiyi’s grip, absently tying a couple of different knots to keep himself occupied. It didn’t really help that Weiyi watched what he was doing with rapt fascination. Fighting off a feeling of self-consciousness, he wound the paracord up quickly (tying it properly could come later) and set it aside. “How are we doing for food?”
Wrinkling her nose at the change of topic, Weiyi shuffled across to the backpacks and looked into them. Sehun couldn’t remember how much he’d packed in the way of food – he’d been more concerned with just pulling everything feasible off the shelves before they were caught.
“I don’t know,” Weiyi announced, her head almost inside the backpack that they’d been using for food, “but there’s only about half left.”
Sehun grimaced. He knew that it was in part his fault because he’d prioritised making sure they had three decent meals a day and he probably could have cut back on the amount of food they’d eaten for those each time. Depending on how long the typhoon kept up, they might actually run out of supplies. And whether or not the typhoon raged for several more days, there was also the issue that they were going to have to decide what to do, and it was better to do so while they still actually had supplies. If they didn’t want to starve themselves to death, they were going to have to find civilisation again at some point just to get more food, if nothing else. It wasn’t hunting season, and without proper equipment, Sehun wasn’t sure he could lay any proper traps to catch them food, let alone skin and gut anything that came their way. There also weren’t very many wild f
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