Round 2: you will never sleep alone (1/2)
Title: you will never sleep alone
Team: Canon/AR
Rating: NC-17 (for brief mature scenes)
Fandom: EXO
Pairing: Suho/Lu Han
Summary: In the span of a year, Joonmyun loses two things: a co-leader when Kris asks for his contract to be terminated, and a portion of his sanity and his heart when Lu Han turns occasional late night talks into regular heart-to-heart sessions.
Prompt Used: Wax - Coin Laundry (+ supplementary prompts)
It's already past one in the morning when Lu Han shows up on the doorstep of Joonmyun's hotel room.
"Hey," comes Lu Han's slurred greeting, in his best English accent that he screws up with a hiccup. The dark curls of his bangs stick to his forehead, the tips drawing Joonmyun's gaze to the pimples on his cheeks. They're glowing a fierce, angry shade of red. His lips are too pink, chapped. There's a sliver of blood there, probably from Lu Han worrying his bottom lip too much. He smells like sweat and smoke and liquor on a Friday night he won't want to remember twelve hours after. Or even the next hour, when Lu Han passes out on the La-Z Boy instead of in the Joonmyun's bed. On a normal day, Joonmyun would fuss and worry about the very little time they had to make things right, retouch Lu Han's make up, make sure the fans couldn't smell the tequilla in his breath, but it's already past midnight. They aren't performing in front of hundreds, thousands of people until some eighteen, twenty hours after. They aren't in Korea. He isn't rooming with any of the managers. Everyone else is probably enjoying their separate lives, the last few hours they have to themselves before having to convene again at the breakfast table to be a unit. They need those, the few moments of respite to be acquainted once more with who they are, not who they're supposed to be. A base they can return to every so often just to remind themselves that they don't have to be perfect all the time.
So instead of saying man, you really screwed up this time, when will you ever learn, Joonmyun says, "You're drunk."
"Yeah," Lu Han admits, completely remorseless, then saunters forward. He makes it past the door and the fridge with very minimal effort, but ends up tripping on his own feet just a few inches from Joonmyun's luggage. He grumbles. He doesn't ask for help. It's not as if Joonmyun intended to offer a hand. Lu Han's the type of person who'd look as if he needed assistance and would be very grateful to receive it, thank you very much, but resent it once it's given. It makes him feel weak, helpless. Like the pretty princess of Beijing that some fans make him out to be.
He looks like a drunken prince right now. Joonmyun doesn't say it out loud. Instead, he asks, "Where did you go this time?"
Lu Han blinks a few times. He looks around him - the mostly made up bed, the lone luggage on the floor. At Joonmyun just a few feet away, handing him a bottle of water instead of a hand to help him get up. His body gives a tiny jerk, like it's finally caught up with him - where he is, where he shouldn't be, Joonmyun just within an arm's reach that if Lu Han ever needed someone to steady him as he tried to get back to his feet then all he had to do was to ask. At his palms burning a bright shade of red before reaching out to grab the bottle from Joonmyun's grip.
"Home. With a couple of friends." Lu Han snatches the water bottle and uncaps it. Throws the plastic wrap straight into the trash can but misses by a few centimeters. He groans. "They said they missed me, asked when they'd see me again. I mean, it's been a while since I've been home. You'd think the weekly Skype sessions would be enough, but no."
It's never enough. The week after SM broke the news to them that they're debuting in less than a year, they spent more than twelve hours a day in the same goddamned practice room. The week after that leading up to recording, they'd almost made a home out of SM already. After some time, Kyungsoo started bringing a week's worth of clothes for practicality purposes. Also, because 'that Baekhyun kid' wouldn't stop borrowing his clothes after practice. Everyone was missing someone. Joonmyun missed himself more than anything else. Those very few minutes of rest that they were given, Joonmyun used to call his parents, to talk to his brother. To ask him, "Hyung, do you think it's worth it? All seven years of hard work?" You regret pursuing certain dreams sometimes. This was one of those instances. But Lu Han always seemed to have that magic word for 'debut' dancing on the tip of his tongue, on the jut of his bottom lip. It was infectious. So instead of making that call Joonmyun stuck with Lu Han, looked at him for inspiration. Told himself, I'll be like him someday.
Jongin called it a 'serious mancrush'. Baekhyun called it 'love'. Lu Han didn't call it anything, but at one point he did shy away like Joonmyun had done more than just look at him and watch him from the sidelines. Management caught wind of it and played around that, using it as a marketing tool. After a while, Lu Han started knocking on Joonmyun's door at obscene hours, asking for a bit of his time. Joonmyun gave him two hours and a gentle squeeze on the arm. Lu Han gave him a kiss on the cheek in return. It had been a downward spiral from there on.
"So why are you still here?" Joonmyun asks Lu Han now. He asked himself that a lot, back in the day. Nowadays, he just looks at himself in the mirror and asks, who are you? "I mean, you could've just gone back tomorrow, spent the night at your friend's place or something."
Lu Han takes a deep breath. He laughs a little. He takes a long swig of the water before resufacing, like he's so close to getting rid of the alcohol in his body. It won't be going away anytime soon, though. "Figured I'd make the most out of my last day here," he says. His voice cracks somewhere in the middle. In the hollow cavity of Joonmyun's chest, he feels himself bleeding. "With you guys."
Joonmyun gulps hard. Lu Han lifts his eyebrows as if saying, go ahead, it's alright. You can say anything; I can take it. But what else is there to be said? Lu Han has already made a decision. His health situation isn't getting any better. His bottom lip is trembling from where he's caught it between his teeth. It's their last day in Beijing. It only makes sense for Lu Han to stay. So Joonmyun nods, inches away, then settles on the foot of his bed, his legs dangling off the edge.
A few seconds after, Lu Han joins him. When he looks to his side, at Lu Han, he finds nothing but a shadow of that old sparkle that was once in him. Lu Han's lips are pulled up in a tight smile. His eyes are no longer red-rimmed. And Lu Han is dancing his fingers to where Joonmyun is, drawing lazy circles on Joonmyun's thigh. Joonmyun rests his palm atop Lu Han's own, trapping it there as a last ditch effort to keep Lu Han where he is. And they link their ankles there in silence, watching the hands of the clock tick until they fall asleep.
♫
The first time Lu Han ever expressed intent to leave was a year into being with EXO. He'd said it as a joke, as he limped from one side of the practice room to another and gripped the frame of the door tight before leaving. It was another one of those six-hour dance sessions where they'd have to learn new choreography and nail it by the end of the day. On the up side, they'd graduated from promoting Wolf already. The downside was always fatigue. Kyungsoo liked to look at it as a way to salvage themselves from having to sing about having insatiable thirst for a girl while scratching their torso.
"Hey, I liked 'Wolf'," Lu Han called out after Kyungsoo, his face scrunched up. In disapproval for Kyungsoo or in pain, Joonmyun couldn't tell. Lu Han was still limping, after all, after twisting his ankle. Kris had an arm around his shoulder, his big left hand covering the jut of Lu Han's bone. To Joonmyun, Lu Han said, "If you don't kick him out, I'm leaving this group forever and I'm never seeing you guys again."
"Alright, alright. Enough," Kris had said then, and dragged Lu Han outside the room. Lu Han chased after Kyungsoo's gaze by holding up his middle finger and sticking out his tongue in Kyungsoo's direction.
The thing was, it wasn't the first time Joonmyun ever heard rumors about Lu Han wanting to leave. Jongin walked up to him before, saying he walked in on Kris and Lu Han talking about something in hushed voices. Mentioned something about contract termination and unfair treatment and 'I got an acting offer back in China and I really want to give it a shot.' Jongin said it was Kris who'd said that. Kris was even grinning from ear to ear, according to Jongin. It didn't require too much imagination. Kris was quick to excite, quick to gain everyone's respect with his commanding aura and his towering figure. Now, throw a rat in his direction and he'd scream and scurry to hide behind the person closest to him. Then he'd earn everyone's adoration, as well.
Kris may not be the best of dancers or the most confident of singers, but he had a face people would die for. Joonmyun felt that sometimes, the insane urge to rip that mask off of Kris' face to see if it would fit his own. Wear Kris' face over the one he was born with and see if he could earn love, adoration, and respect just as quickly because he was wearing Kris on the outside.
And Lu Han... Lu Han had a lot of things going for him. He was a good dancer, a great singer. He was handsome in a way that wasn't overwhelming. His charm would creep up on you and wrap itself around your heart, try to stop it from beating until you couldn't breathe anymore. And then he'd flash you that smile, the one that made him ten times more attractive than he already was. He was a complete package. He was a talent any entertainment company would want to snatch from SM. And he carried the weight of the hopes of all the Chinese trainees in SM, each and every single fiber of faith they still had in them that they'd debut someday.
That was the only thing tying him down to SM - the promises, the friendships he's made. And Lu Han wasn't exactly the type to just... try to break them at the first sign of an open door at the back of the SM building. He wasn't that kind of guy.
Lu Han and Kris returned to the practice room ten minutes after. They smelled like smoke and banana uyuu. Lu Han wasn't wearing a bandage around his ankle.
From beside Joonmyun, Jongin poked him in his side. In his most inconspicuous way, Jongin mouthed at him, 'I told you, hyung.'
Months passed. The repackage for 'XOXO' dropped. The practice video for 'Growl' was 'leaked'. Joonmyun watched as the number of views and upvotes rose by the second, with every breath he took. In a two weeks, they'd go on to win a mutizen for it. In a few months, they'd win Album of the Year and the honor of being the youngest group to win the award in years. They were riding the wave of all their hard work and the love from their fans. There was no reason for either Kris or Lu Han to leave, not with all the success they'd been getting. As an act of rebellion against the fear he once had, after delivering his acceptance speech, he reached for Kris' hand in the crowd, and then Lu Han's. Pulled them closer to him and gripped them tighter.
"Not going anywhere," Lu Han had whispered in his ear between sobs and chuckles. Kris was a sobbing mess. And Joonmyun couldn't believe he even thought these two friends of his would ever leave him - them - behind. "We're never gonna leave."
♯
Jongin was right. Kris is an asshole, was Joonmyun's first text to Jonghyun. Five minutes and a pep talk with the rest of the members after, he'd changed it to, We have an opening here. How does SHINEEXO sound?
horrible, was Jonghyun's helpful reply, followed by a call not too long after. Joonmyun had declined it, explaining that he had a lot of things to do. "Leader stuff. You know, the stuff Kris dumped on me when he decided to leave." Managing six boys was already difficult, as it was. He didn't have Kris' commanding presence, and neither did he have the capacity to give the boys a stern look that would draw out the most powerful fear from them. They knew how to show respect for Joonmyun, yes, but Kris' management style was different. He spent more time with the EXO-M kids. Joonmyun... tried to text everyone as much as he could. His Mandarin wasn't the best, but Zitao was kind enough to offer to correct his Madarin texts before sending them out. Somehow, he was always trying to reach out to the other side of the group, trying to connect with them, whereas Kris just drew everyone to him and sat them down for a nice, easy chat. No biggie.
Three soft knocks on the door, then he finally pushed himself off the chair. Maybe it was Zitao offering to translate the statement he had to give to the media in a few hours. Or maybe it was Jongin, ready to offer him a hug. He took a deep breath, then, padding to the door with heavy feet, and gave the knob a slick twist before swinging it open.
"Yo," Lu Han greeted. He had half a bottle of soju in one hand and a pack of cigarettes in the other. The smile on his lips was tense, if not forced. His bottom lip was trembling. And the shirt he's wearing looked as if it had seen better days. "We're going to draft your statement and ease those tense nerves," he said, then tucked the pack under his arm. He curled his fingers around Joonmyun's wrist. His fingers were cold. "C'mon, we don't have all day."
His phone sounded off. it'll pass. gl with leader stuff. ik how hard it can be, Jonghyun said, ending with a plethora of sad emoticons. Joonmyun replied with a quick huhuhu and couldn't get his smileys right until they reached the balcony, until Lu Han let him go and let him breathe.
There was nothing but silence for a few good minutes. Lu Han sat on the floor with his legs crossed and both the bottle and the pack resting on his thighs. From his shirt pocket, a tiny sheet of paper was peeking. Where was the pen? "I was kidding. You looked like you could use a break," he said after a while, pulling out a stick and running his thumb along the wheel of his lighter. "I mean, you've been taking calls left and right for the past two hours. I'd go crazy if that ever happened to me."
What makes you think I'm not, he wanted to ask. He didn't. Instead, he sat beside Lu Han and closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. He reached for the bottle of soju and poised his palm on the cover. "I didn't think he'd actually do it."
It was stupid to think that way, Joonmyun knew, but ever since that big fight back in 2013, Kris hadn't disappeared to Wherever Land only to resurface in the dorms the morning after like nothing happened. He was looking better. He was laughing more. He'd been getting in touch with his friends and regularly chatting with them. SM had given them a fucking break, for Christ's sake! SHINee didn't get that until two years after debut, until SM was sure SHINee had already hit ROI and was profitable enough a group. They were eating three times a day and were given the luxury of sleeping five, six hours every other day. They were luckier than most groups. Heck, they had to be the luckiest SM group in a century.
And yet they woke up this morning without a trace of Kris in the dorms but a sticky note tacked to the center of the dining table. sorry, the message read in Kris' horrible handwriting. If Kris wanted to waste a Post-it on a message like that then he should've just rounded everyone up and dropped the bomb before turning on his heel to leave.
"Same," Lu Han mumbled. He wiggled his toes. It was spring in earnest now. The winds were more tolerable than they were back in winter. "I mean, just before the concert. I didn't think-"
"-he'd be that much of an asshole-"
"-he'd give up everything we've worked hard for and leave us like that."
Same thing, Joonmyun wanted to say. Lu Han just said it in a nicer, better manner. He was saving up all his energy for the performance later and the possible - inevitable - interview after it. He could leave all the niceties to Lu Han for now. But he had to get accustomed to his old Suho suit again, start wearing it and see if the make up stains went well with the practiced smile, the steady gaze, the polite manner of speaking. He had to make sure he wouldn't screw anything up.
Still, he said, "Yeah, that," and shifted in his seat. He folded his legs under his weight and took a deep breath. "I don't know what to do. We have a week left 'til the concert and all the VCRs have been shot and everything's already in place and-"
"You still smoke?" Lu Han asked, disrupting his train of thought completely. Joonmyun could hear him playing with the lighter again. If he didn't stop then he might set himself on fire. Maybe Joonmyun should do that, instead. "Hey, answer me: do you still smoke?"
Joonmyun opened his eyes, looked to his side, looked at Lu Han. Lu Han was dangerously close, close enough that he could make out the beginnings of a stubble on Lu Han's skin, the faint markings of a pimple here and there. Battle scars in the form of dark circles under his eyes and some other blemishes on his skin. And Lu Han was leaning even closer. This was how trouble began, he mused - something bad happens and someone gets too close. You allow yourself to be a bit too vulnerable. And you allow yourself to break. The worst Lu Han could do right now was to kiss him, though, knowing that sometimes Joonmyun wondered how things would've gone differently if they were a co-ed group. If Lu Han was a girl and he wore shirts that exposed his legs half the time. If you could date anyone from the group, who would it be? They got asked those questions a lot, and Joonmyun's reply had always been consistent - that one time he saw Lu Han wearing a wig? He thought 'she' was pretty and almost got a boner from it (Jongin's words, not his).
The best Lu Han could do was stuff that cigarette stick between his lips already so Joonmyun wouldn't have to worry about not being allowed to kiss him anymore. He gulped hard. There were more pressing things to attend to, like the very little time they had left to prepare for M! Countdown, the words he had to say. Kris leaving the group a week before the concert was about to start and having to rework everything they'd already polished, try to get back on their feet again as an eleven-man team.
"Nah, I don't. Not in the past few months," Joonmyun replied after a while. He moved to his side, an inch away from Lu Han. Lu Han followed. He kept his eyes on his toes. Ditching smoking was the only way SM would give him more parts, more songs to sing. Maybe even a solo. It was hard to have to duke it out with more able, more talented singers in the group. So he had to make things easier for himself somehow. "Which is good, I guess. I've been sounding better recently. More-" More like a singer, less like a trainee fresh out of auditions. Less of the man he used to be when Lu Han wasn't getting too chummy, too close yet, and the only person who knew about his misplaced boner was himself. "Why?"
"I guess you're taking the soju, then," Lu Han replied. He poised the stick between his lips, the pink flesh wrapping around in the most obscene way possible. And here he thought Baekhyun already made everything, including doing laundry, look sensual. Maybe Lu Han was just a contender, but it wasn't as if he'd been watching Lu Han for a while already. He hadn't. Lu Han just happened to be at the right place at the right time, at the same time as Joonmyun.
Lu Han lit the stick, a sliver of smoke escaping from the tip. He took a deep breath, held it right there, at the center of his chest, where he felt fullest, then blew out the smoke in a steady stream. Sort of like how he'd run his hand up and down Minseok's back whenever Minseok overextended himself, or the way he'd nod his head to whatever Yixing was saying even if he had other things to do. "Unless you want to split? You can get a couple of puffs. Just let me know."
"Nah, I'm good," Joonmyun mumbled. He looked at the bottle. It was too tempting. He needed a temporary way to numb himself. Chugging soju down seemed like a quick fix. "Do you mind?"
"All yours," Lu Han said, laughing a little. He pressed the bottle to Joonmyun's cheek, then added, "Uh, wait. Leave me some?"
Joonmyun nodded. He reached up, giving the bottom of the bottle a lazy tug before pulling it all the way down. Lu Han's fingers were no longer cold. Or maybe they were, but Joonmyun's fingers were even cooler than that of Lu Han's. They were still wound around the bottle tightly. Lu Han wouldn't let go. If this was a euphemism for what Kris just did then fuck Lu Han, really, but his lips were drawn to a squiggly line. The tight knot of his eyebrows had eased considerably. His eyes were empty, mostly, but Joonmyun could see himself reflected in them. So maybe Lu Han was the one who needed company, was the one who needed a script. He was the de facto leader now, and pretty soon Joonmyun'd be turning over some of those responsibility shit Kris left with him to Lu Han. So he stayed there a little longer, pressed his hand on Lu Han's own until he felt Lu Han's hand twitch. It was as if everything was slowly hitting him - the burning stick between his lips, the smoke making Joonmyun's face hazy. The cool slide of their hands and the perspiration of the soju bottle dripping to their thighs pressed side to side. The very little time they had to spare before they had to step on stage again, answer questions. Be on their best idol behavior.
"Are you going to let me drink or what?" Joonmyun asked after a while.
Lu Han snorted. Blew a small puff of smoke in Joonmyun's direction before pulling away. He rested his hand on Joonmyun's thigh, tracing lazy circles on it as he flicked off some of the ash in the stick with his other hand. Lu Han's cheeks were red. He hadn't even had a drink yet. So Joonmyun took a long swig of the soju then held it up in Lu Han's direction, hoping the alcohol would help still the thumping in his chest, fizzle out the sparks setting off at the tips of his fingers. Silence the voices at the back of his head saying, he's gonna leave you, too, someday, Joonmyun. Don't take sides just yet. Don't give in.
Still, Joonmyun couldn't stop from letting a gasp slip from his lips when Lu Han leaned in too close, pressing a soft kiss to a corner of his mouth. Lu Han did that sometimes, kiss people when he was too happy or had too many emotions running through his veins that he couldn't contain them anymore. All on the cheek, though. Never on the lips. In a last ditch effort to hide the push and pull of a grin and something else surfacing on his lips, he gulped down the rest of the soju, not leaving any for Lu Han. Not giving Lu Han another opportunity to sneak in a tiny kiss as he stood from where he was and got back on his feet, slipping right back inside the dorms so he could breathe.
♯
("You're panicking. In your mind. I can hear you, hyung," Kyungsoo mumbled one time. Chanyeol was still in the living room with Jongin and Sehun, probably playing whatever game they fancied at the moment. Joonmyun could hear a small sound of triumph from Kyungsoo's phone - he was playing, too. He was the only one with nothing to do but to think. "Go on. Spill."
Joonmyun took a deep breath. There was still an unread and unanswered text on his phone, one from Lu Han dated just a few minutes ago and saying, yixing n i r drinking but he fell asleep on me already. want soju??? A year ago, he would've probably said yes in a heartbeat, slipped from under his covers and out of his room to spare some time with his bandmates. Bonding sessions with the M group were hard to come by, after all. But things were different now: Kris was gone. They were promoting as a group of 11 for the next few weeks, maybe even months. He had to keep a group of eleven together somehow, like he was a single dad working to feed his ten children. He had to face the cameras not looking like all the gods were conspiring against him. He needed to be the perfect leader not only for the group but also for himself.
And he could still feel the warmth of Lu Han's lips on a corner of his mouth, could still feel the vibrations of Lu Han's laughter on his skin. The lurching sensation in his stomach hadn't stilled yet. And the desire to ball his hands into fists in Lu Han's shirt all the fucking time seemed nigh impossible to ignore.
"I feel weird," he began. He crawled next to Kyungsoo, plopping down beside him on the bed and leaning his head on Kyungsoo's shoulder. Kyungsoo hadn't stopped playing his game - who even plays Candy Crush these days - yet. "Everything's weird. Out of place. Sort of. And-"
"And you're too hard on yourself," Kyungsoo murmured. He tilted his head to the side, resting it against Joonmyun's own. This was one of Kyungsoo's more subtle ways of letting people know that he was worried about them. "It's okay to feel things, hyung. I mean, you're human. I makes sense to feel something."
"I'm sad," Joonmyun confessed.
"Congratulations, you're normal," Kyungsoo replied. He laughed a little, then nudged Joonmyun in his side. "Is that all?"
There were legalities to deal with, press conferences to attend and statements to be given. Their tour was ongoing, they had a lot of things to do. And Lu Han hadn't stopped looking at him like he was telling Joonmyun that he remembered everything, down to that last bit where Joonmyun licked the corners of his mouth and almost touched Lu Han's lips with his tongue. Joonmyun shook his head. People did stupid things sometimes, when they were sad and lonely and afraid to be whittled down to bite-sized pieces for other people to consume. They were a bit too vulnerable that time. Lu Han was sad. Joonmyun was, too. And when you put two sad people together, they'd be the worst disaster ever. Joonmyun should never agree to drinking with Lu Han ever again.
"Yeah, that's it," Joonmyun mumbled. He took a deep breath and buried his face in the crook of Kyungsoo's shoulder. "I'm really tired."
Kyungsoo didn't say anything, but Joonmyun did feel the quick shift of his muscles, the soft kiss Kyungsoo pressed to the crown of his head. "Rest," Kyungsoo said, as if forgetting the burning sensation of Lu Han's lips brushing against his was that easy. It wasn't. Still, Joonmyun closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. "Get some rest."
Lu Han's smiling face, the gentle swell of his lips, the upward curl at the corners of his mouth burned brightly at the back of his eyelids.)
♯
Lu Han made a few more appearances at the doorstep of Joonmyun's room for the next two weeks. The first two times, he had a bottle of soju with him. The succeeding two, he brought a plushie along with him. He'd shuffle to Joonmyun's bed without another word, lay there for a couple of minutes, then start talking. At first, it felt a bit off, pretty weird - they never were close enough for late night conversations, after all - but after a while Joonmyun grew accustomed to the sudden influx of 'Lu Han encounters'. He had no qualms: Lu Han was a pretty good conversationalist if he wasn't thinking too hard of something interesting to say, when he was just drinking and dropping bits and pieces of a past he'd never shared with Joonmyun before. On one of his friends' birthday, he stole one of her Barbie dolls and cut her hair. He almost cut his finger when he tried poking the blades of a powered electric fan. Once, he crushed flower petals in a plastic bag, doused them in alcohol, then set the plastic bag on fire. He was the one who accidentally dropped the Oreos in Kyungsoo's ramyun, not Chanyeol.
And he was a pretty good kisser, too, if not a bit too shy and uncertain. He slid his hands up and down Joonmyun's sides like he didn't know where to place them. Like he wasn't sure if all these things were happening - Joonmyun had one hand tilting Lu Han's chin up. He had his fingers tangled in Lu Han's hair. And Lu Han was whimpering into the open press of Joonmyun's mouth like he'd been wanting this to happen for so long now.
Give it a rest, Joonmyun told himself. They were both a bit inebriated. They were sad, maybe still depressed. Recuperating. They were holding onto each other by a sliver of that Kris thread that might snap anytime. They were a ticking time bomb and only they knew how to defuse each other. They were radioactive. So he pulled away when Lu Han made a tiny sound at the back of his throat, when Lu Han's whimpers had turned into heavy breathing and he started balling his hands into fists in Joonmyun's shirt.
"You started it," Joonmyun murmured. He grabbed the bottle beside him, ready to use it as an excuse for - what he'd done, how he'd reacted, how he'd breathed Lu Han's name back there like he'd been rehearsing this in his mind for a while already? He wasn't sure. All he knew right now was that Lu Han was shaking his head and laughing at him silly. And that Lu Han's lips were a thick shade of red. He did that. He did that to Lu Han. "What? You were the one who-"
"No, I mean-" Lu Han pulled him closer. Joonmyun's grip on the bottle waned a little. He was more concerned about his room smelling like soju than anything else. Or so he wanted to think. Up close, he could make out Lu Han's lips trembling, like the sudden loss of warmth was making him feel too cold. The air conditioning wasn't even up too high. "I mean, why did you stop?"
I started feeling something weird, Joonmyun wanted to say. Like this thing wasn't just a knee-jerk reaction to Kris' departure or it wasn't just a channel for stress relief. Sort of like those stress balls except Lu Han had his fingers wrapped around Joonmyun's heart and he was squeezing it too hard, too much. Maybe he should tell Lu Han to stop. "It's getting late. We have a thing tomorrow."
"10 a.m.," Lu Han mumbled. He leaned closer. Their lips touched. Earlier, during practice, his voice almost cracked while he was singing 'Moonlight' with Jongdae. But he got back on track, his tone smoother, more velvety than before. That was nothing compared to the low notes Lu Han made only in Joonmyun's room, though, when he was groaning against the open press of Joonmyun's mouth. "And we have a thing right now. I need you to focus."
"I need to get off your lap and you need to go back to your room."
"I need to-" Lu Han stopped mid-sentence, lips parted and eyebrows caught in a light furrow. He let out a loud exhale. He was worrying his bottom lip he just had to scour the surface for the next string of words, the right things to say so he could express himself properly. "Just-" And then he lost them again, his hot breath tumbling into Joonmyun's mouth this time as Lu Han pulled him even closer, crushing their mouths together in an inelegant slide.
It happened a few more times, one for every time Kris tried to reach the SM management, tried to reach them. The news stung less after a while, two months after the whole tirade. Summer was fast approaching. This was their opportunity to start over, leave something behind. They could have easily dropped the whole 'kissing for convenience and for comfort' act by now, but Lu Han kept knocking on his door. And he kept opening it, kept letting Lu Han in. Over the next few months he'd be kissing Lu Han too often, too much that it wouldn't take more than a second to know when Lu Han was about to pry his lips open with his tongue, when he wanted to slip his hands beneath Joonmyun's shirt. When Lu Han was doing it out of habit or when he really meant it. Kind of like he'd want to do it again and again even if he knew separation would hit him ten times harder whenever EXO-M had to fly out of Korea to go back home. Joonmyun maintained a pattern, then, put his 100% into every single encounter, just so Lu Han wouldn't find any blind spots and capitalize on them. So Lu Han wouldn't find an opening where he could fit himself in Joonmyun's life by hook or by crook.
♯
The next time Lu Han showed up, Yixing was by his side. "I just need to get him to the hospital," Yixing mumbled. His voice was calm, dangerously still. Beside him, Lu Han took a shaky breath. Lu Han's lips were chapped; his face, the palest shade of flesh."I'll be back," Yixing promised, then pulled away with a nod of the head.
In the end, Joonmyun drove them both to the E.R.. It was ten in the evening, too early for any of his encounters with Lu Han but too late to be out in the streets when they had a 7 a.m. flight the following day. He looked at the rear mirror from time to time, trying to get a glimpse of Lu Han's features. Lu Han wasn't grimacing in pain, but his eyebrows were in a tight knot. His lips were drawn to a thin line. There was none of that usual playful smile on his lips, or even the light upward tug on his cheeks. And his chest was rising and falling without any fixed pattern that Joonmyun could pattern his breathing after. Still, he looked at Joonmyun through the mirror, gave him a tiny wink like he was saying, I'm good, I'm cool. Don't worry about me. I won't leave.
Joonmyun took a deep breath, took a left turn at the next corner. At the next glimpse, he caught Yixing staring, not one of those empty stares of him but one that brought a warning with it.
The rest of the trip was silent. Lu Han only made a sound when Yixing helped him slip out of the car, when Joonmyun wished them well and said, "I'll be back. Just have to park somewhere." Lu Han gave him a curt nod in response and Yixing shot that same meaningful look his way, like he was promising a long conversation when Joonmyun returned from trying to delay the inevitable. Like he was saying, you think I don't know what you're up to? He didn't have to tell me; you're too obvious that only stupid people won't find out.
This was the escape route he needed, he mused. There was an entire road stretched ahead of him. The night was on his side. He found it easiest to move in the dark when shadows were cloaking over his limbs tangled with Lu Han's own. Still, he got out of the car and walked back to the hospital, hands dug in his pockets, mind too deep into an argument with the better half of his senses that was saying, 'You had a chance, Joonmyun. You had a chance to get out of this mess. But you just had to screw things up again.'
they gave him some pain killers and he's kinda sleepy ryt now, came Yixing's text. Joonmyun looked up from where he had his eyes fixed on his phone, then scrolled down to the next message. think u can get us some banana uyuu??
Yeah no problem, Joonmyun replied. He slipped his phone back in his pocket and took a deep breath. Slowly, the door opened in front of him. It was only a matter of time until Yixing sat him down for a long talk.
Yixing didn't, though. They sat in companionable silence as Yixing swayed his body to the steady beeping of the machine in the room. Lu Han was sleeping, lips parted slightly as slivers of sound spilled from his lips. He was snorting in his sleep. Joonmyun laughed a little.
"He's pretty volatile," Yixing mumbled after a while. He worried his bottom lip. "He's going through more shit than anyone can ever imagine."
You don't have to tell me, Joonmyun wanted to say, but why should he? Nobody knew about their secret meetings at eleven in the evening. Nobody knew that whenever Lu Han stepped inside Joonmyun's room, he'd be backing Joonmyun up against the wall the very next minute and licking his way inside Joonmyun's mouth. He'd be telling Joonmyun about his day, how his back situation had gotten worse, the doctors told me I should probably slow down because my lungs are getting weak. But how? I mean, we're idols. Isn't it enough that I dropped smoking for this dream? And Joonmyun would be slipping his hands beneath the material of Lu Han's shirt, kiss Lu Han back until Lu Han stopped babbling and started talking with his tongue, hands, the thumping in his chest.
Lu Han was entitled to a couple of secrets. Joonmyun was his biggest secret of all.
"How's the back situation?" Joonmyun asked. He scratched the material of his jeans, pausing when Lu Han gave a particularly loud snort. He laughed a little. "Getting better?"
"Mine or his?" Yixing replied.
It was probably a trick question. Joonmyun blinked a few times. In the dim lighting, it was becoming increasingly difficult to read Yixing's features. He'd always been hard to figure out, after all. "Both."
Yixing let his gaze linger, held his breath in his chest longer than he should. His teeth began to chatter. "Worse, and even worse," Yixing answered, scoffing a bit. He shifted in his seat and slumped against it, throwing his head back in accord. He did this whenever he was too tired to dance or even breathe. He'd been doing it more frequently these days. It's almost as if he's tired all the time, lugging himself around with a broken faith and hope. "His last check up was a week after K-"
Joonmyun turned to his side. He was facing Yixing now. Yixing's lips remained parted, like he was looking another term for Kris' name. Fallen leader and former friend seemed like good options. It felt weird on Joonmyun's lips, though.
"It's alright. You can say his name," he whispered.
Yixing laughed a little. "It's been months. You'd think that after all this time, it would be easier-"
It will never be easier. The initial mold had been broken. Kris was like that unmistakable crack in the vase that sort of made the patterns on the vase weird when Joonmyun tried to haphazardly slap superglue on it. When he tried to keep things - the remaining eleven - together. He already had a hard time making sure his sanity was intact; what more if he had to look after ten other people and make sure they weren't at the brink of throwing things? Kris made dealing with all the stress easier. Kris would always use his big, warm hands to pull Joonmyun close to his chest whenever he smiled too much in the face of stress to the point that his cheeks felt numb.
I can't erase it from my face, Joonmyun told Kris one time, pointing at his cheeks. It looked like one of those patented SM faces. It made him sick. What do I do with this now? It won't go away. Make it go away-
"It won't. It never will," he mumbled. He nudged Yixing in his side a little, then dropped his hand on Yixing's own. "And I mean it: you can say his name. Things haven't been the same since Kris left but that doesn't mean we can't try to go back to the way we were. That doesn't mean we can't try to... be okay again."
Yixing cocked his head to the side. Grazed his knuckles along Joonmyun's cheeks, as well, as he said, "He always said you were the stronger between the two of you. The tiny leader who packed a lot of strength." Yixing loosened his fist, then gave Joonmyun's cheek a light pinch. Kris did that a lot, as well, whenever he couldn't come up with excuses anymore. He ran off a lot, disappeared from the group too many times that Joonmyun couldn't count them with his fingers anymore. He had an apology ready every single time. He never promised to stay forever. "He said that if EXO should ever fall and disband, you'd be the last person fighting for all of us to stay together."
"Bullshit," Joonmyun whispered. He laughed. He could taste blood in his mouth. It tasted nothing like Lu Han, or even Kris' promise that they'd bring this group together to the top, help each other every step of the way. He cracked his neck. "I'm sorry. The asshole probably said that. I mean, Kris probably- Outside the whole leaving thing, he's actually a nice guy."
Yixing snorted. It wasn't supposed to be funny. None of this - Kris' departure, Lu Han's health condition worsening, everyone hanging onto their dreams by a sliver of hope - should be funny. But Yixing just kept shaking his head, breathing out in tiny bubbles of laughter. A weak smile on his lips as he said, "That's the first time I've ever heard anyone call him that." A deep breath, then, "He knows he's an ass. I've never fallen short on reminding him that."
So you've been keeping in touch, Joonmyun wanted to ask, but soon Lu Han was groaning in his sleep and rousing from his slumber. Lu Han blinked a few times and grunted, like he'd just realized they had a flight tomorrow, he still hadn't packed his luggage, he left his instant ramyun in the kitchen and Jongin had probably already eaten it already. He stayed silent for a few more seconds, blinking at Yixing and Joonmyun a few more times before parting his lips to speak.
"How long have I been out?"
Joonmyun glanced at his wrist watch. A little over an hour, if his eyes weren't failing him. Or maybe even more than that. He had a habit of not keeping track of time whenever he was in Lu Han's company. Taking a deep breath, he answered, "An hour or so. Feeling better?" Didn't say, long enough to make you stay.
Lu Han licked his lips. A corner of his mouth pulled up in a small smile. He reached out with one hand and made grabbing motions in the air, as if gesturing for them to come closer. Yixing or himself, Joonmyun couldn't tell, so he just pulled Yixing with him, inched closer until he could rest his chin on the cushion of Lu Han's bed.
"Better," Lu Han muttered. He gave Joonmyun's cheek a poke with his toe through the sheets.
It was gross, Joonmyun mused. The lurching sensation in his stomach, even more.
Lu Han wouldn't be released until the following day, long after the rest of EXO had already flown out of the country. Doctor's orders, not his, if the look on Lu Han's face was anything to go by. It was the same image that burned at the back of Joonmyun's eyelids when he tried to get some sleep in the plane, or even after he'd roused from his light slumber once the place touched down. In lieu of Lu Han's presence in the concert, he sent everyone a text: to Jongdae, he said, don't screw up w/o me now. To Minseok., make sure chenchen doesn't push himself too hard ty ty c: He sent a plethora of smileys to the others, Yixing included. Maybe it was some code for, I don't know what to say so I'll just let you figure out my own shit.
i'll be back, he texted Joonmyun.
They had to alight the van now. They were ten minutes late.
Joonmyun took a deep breath and typed a quick 'okay'. At the back of his mind, he was chanting, don't make promises you can't keep.
Next
Team: Canon/AR
Rating: NC-17 (for brief mature scenes)
Fandom: EXO
Pairing: Suho/Lu Han
Summary: In the span of a year, Joonmyun loses two things: a co-leader when Kris asks for his contract to be terminated, and a portion of his sanity and his heart when Lu Han turns occasional late night talks into regular heart-to-heart sessions.
Prompt Used: Wax - Coin Laundry (+ supplementary prompts)
It's already past one in the morning when Lu Han shows up on the doorstep of Joonmyun's hotel room.
"Hey," comes Lu Han's slurred greeting, in his best English accent that he screws up with a hiccup. The dark curls of his bangs stick to his forehead, the tips drawing Joonmyun's gaze to the pimples on his cheeks. They're glowing a fierce, angry shade of red. His lips are too pink, chapped. There's a sliver of blood there, probably from Lu Han worrying his bottom lip too much. He smells like sweat and smoke and liquor on a Friday night he won't want to remember twelve hours after. Or even the next hour, when Lu Han passes out on the La-Z Boy instead of in the Joonmyun's bed. On a normal day, Joonmyun would fuss and worry about the very little time they had to make things right, retouch Lu Han's make up, make sure the fans couldn't smell the tequilla in his breath, but it's already past midnight. They aren't performing in front of hundreds, thousands of people until some eighteen, twenty hours after. They aren't in Korea. He isn't rooming with any of the managers. Everyone else is probably enjoying their separate lives, the last few hours they have to themselves before having to convene again at the breakfast table to be a unit. They need those, the few moments of respite to be acquainted once more with who they are, not who they're supposed to be. A base they can return to every so often just to remind themselves that they don't have to be perfect all the time.
So instead of saying man, you really screwed up this time, when will you ever learn, Joonmyun says, "You're drunk."
"Yeah," Lu Han admits, completely remorseless, then saunters forward. He makes it past the door and the fridge with very minimal effort, but ends up tripping on his own feet just a few inches from Joonmyun's luggage. He grumbles. He doesn't ask for help. It's not as if Joonmyun intended to offer a hand. Lu Han's the type of person who'd look as if he needed assistance and would be very grateful to receive it, thank you very much, but resent it once it's given. It makes him feel weak, helpless. Like the pretty princess of Beijing that some fans make him out to be.
He looks like a drunken prince right now. Joonmyun doesn't say it out loud. Instead, he asks, "Where did you go this time?"
Lu Han blinks a few times. He looks around him - the mostly made up bed, the lone luggage on the floor. At Joonmyun just a few feet away, handing him a bottle of water instead of a hand to help him get up. His body gives a tiny jerk, like it's finally caught up with him - where he is, where he shouldn't be, Joonmyun just within an arm's reach that if Lu Han ever needed someone to steady him as he tried to get back to his feet then all he had to do was to ask. At his palms burning a bright shade of red before reaching out to grab the bottle from Joonmyun's grip.
"Home. With a couple of friends." Lu Han snatches the water bottle and uncaps it. Throws the plastic wrap straight into the trash can but misses by a few centimeters. He groans. "They said they missed me, asked when they'd see me again. I mean, it's been a while since I've been home. You'd think the weekly Skype sessions would be enough, but no."
It's never enough. The week after SM broke the news to them that they're debuting in less than a year, they spent more than twelve hours a day in the same goddamned practice room. The week after that leading up to recording, they'd almost made a home out of SM already. After some time, Kyungsoo started bringing a week's worth of clothes for practicality purposes. Also, because 'that Baekhyun kid' wouldn't stop borrowing his clothes after practice. Everyone was missing someone. Joonmyun missed himself more than anything else. Those very few minutes of rest that they were given, Joonmyun used to call his parents, to talk to his brother. To ask him, "Hyung, do you think it's worth it? All seven years of hard work?" You regret pursuing certain dreams sometimes. This was one of those instances. But Lu Han always seemed to have that magic word for 'debut' dancing on the tip of his tongue, on the jut of his bottom lip. It was infectious. So instead of making that call Joonmyun stuck with Lu Han, looked at him for inspiration. Told himself, I'll be like him someday.
Jongin called it a 'serious mancrush'. Baekhyun called it 'love'. Lu Han didn't call it anything, but at one point he did shy away like Joonmyun had done more than just look at him and watch him from the sidelines. Management caught wind of it and played around that, using it as a marketing tool. After a while, Lu Han started knocking on Joonmyun's door at obscene hours, asking for a bit of his time. Joonmyun gave him two hours and a gentle squeeze on the arm. Lu Han gave him a kiss on the cheek in return. It had been a downward spiral from there on.
"So why are you still here?" Joonmyun asks Lu Han now. He asked himself that a lot, back in the day. Nowadays, he just looks at himself in the mirror and asks, who are you? "I mean, you could've just gone back tomorrow, spent the night at your friend's place or something."
Lu Han takes a deep breath. He laughs a little. He takes a long swig of the water before resufacing, like he's so close to getting rid of the alcohol in his body. It won't be going away anytime soon, though. "Figured I'd make the most out of my last day here," he says. His voice cracks somewhere in the middle. In the hollow cavity of Joonmyun's chest, he feels himself bleeding. "With you guys."
Joonmyun gulps hard. Lu Han lifts his eyebrows as if saying, go ahead, it's alright. You can say anything; I can take it. But what else is there to be said? Lu Han has already made a decision. His health situation isn't getting any better. His bottom lip is trembling from where he's caught it between his teeth. It's their last day in Beijing. It only makes sense for Lu Han to stay. So Joonmyun nods, inches away, then settles on the foot of his bed, his legs dangling off the edge.
A few seconds after, Lu Han joins him. When he looks to his side, at Lu Han, he finds nothing but a shadow of that old sparkle that was once in him. Lu Han's lips are pulled up in a tight smile. His eyes are no longer red-rimmed. And Lu Han is dancing his fingers to where Joonmyun is, drawing lazy circles on Joonmyun's thigh. Joonmyun rests his palm atop Lu Han's own, trapping it there as a last ditch effort to keep Lu Han where he is. And they link their ankles there in silence, watching the hands of the clock tick until they fall asleep.
♫
The first time Lu Han ever expressed intent to leave was a year into being with EXO. He'd said it as a joke, as he limped from one side of the practice room to another and gripped the frame of the door tight before leaving. It was another one of those six-hour dance sessions where they'd have to learn new choreography and nail it by the end of the day. On the up side, they'd graduated from promoting Wolf already. The downside was always fatigue. Kyungsoo liked to look at it as a way to salvage themselves from having to sing about having insatiable thirst for a girl while scratching their torso.
"Hey, I liked 'Wolf'," Lu Han called out after Kyungsoo, his face scrunched up. In disapproval for Kyungsoo or in pain, Joonmyun couldn't tell. Lu Han was still limping, after all, after twisting his ankle. Kris had an arm around his shoulder, his big left hand covering the jut of Lu Han's bone. To Joonmyun, Lu Han said, "If you don't kick him out, I'm leaving this group forever and I'm never seeing you guys again."
"Alright, alright. Enough," Kris had said then, and dragged Lu Han outside the room. Lu Han chased after Kyungsoo's gaze by holding up his middle finger and sticking out his tongue in Kyungsoo's direction.
The thing was, it wasn't the first time Joonmyun ever heard rumors about Lu Han wanting to leave. Jongin walked up to him before, saying he walked in on Kris and Lu Han talking about something in hushed voices. Mentioned something about contract termination and unfair treatment and 'I got an acting offer back in China and I really want to give it a shot.' Jongin said it was Kris who'd said that. Kris was even grinning from ear to ear, according to Jongin. It didn't require too much imagination. Kris was quick to excite, quick to gain everyone's respect with his commanding aura and his towering figure. Now, throw a rat in his direction and he'd scream and scurry to hide behind the person closest to him. Then he'd earn everyone's adoration, as well.
Kris may not be the best of dancers or the most confident of singers, but he had a face people would die for. Joonmyun felt that sometimes, the insane urge to rip that mask off of Kris' face to see if it would fit his own. Wear Kris' face over the one he was born with and see if he could earn love, adoration, and respect just as quickly because he was wearing Kris on the outside.
And Lu Han... Lu Han had a lot of things going for him. He was a good dancer, a great singer. He was handsome in a way that wasn't overwhelming. His charm would creep up on you and wrap itself around your heart, try to stop it from beating until you couldn't breathe anymore. And then he'd flash you that smile, the one that made him ten times more attractive than he already was. He was a complete package. He was a talent any entertainment company would want to snatch from SM. And he carried the weight of the hopes of all the Chinese trainees in SM, each and every single fiber of faith they still had in them that they'd debut someday.
That was the only thing tying him down to SM - the promises, the friendships he's made. And Lu Han wasn't exactly the type to just... try to break them at the first sign of an open door at the back of the SM building. He wasn't that kind of guy.
Lu Han and Kris returned to the practice room ten minutes after. They smelled like smoke and banana uyuu. Lu Han wasn't wearing a bandage around his ankle.
From beside Joonmyun, Jongin poked him in his side. In his most inconspicuous way, Jongin mouthed at him, 'I told you, hyung.'
Months passed. The repackage for 'XOXO' dropped. The practice video for 'Growl' was 'leaked'. Joonmyun watched as the number of views and upvotes rose by the second, with every breath he took. In a two weeks, they'd go on to win a mutizen for it. In a few months, they'd win Album of the Year and the honor of being the youngest group to win the award in years. They were riding the wave of all their hard work and the love from their fans. There was no reason for either Kris or Lu Han to leave, not with all the success they'd been getting. As an act of rebellion against the fear he once had, after delivering his acceptance speech, he reached for Kris' hand in the crowd, and then Lu Han's. Pulled them closer to him and gripped them tighter.
"Not going anywhere," Lu Han had whispered in his ear between sobs and chuckles. Kris was a sobbing mess. And Joonmyun couldn't believe he even thought these two friends of his would ever leave him - them - behind. "We're never gonna leave."
♯
Jongin was right. Kris is an asshole, was Joonmyun's first text to Jonghyun. Five minutes and a pep talk with the rest of the members after, he'd changed it to, We have an opening here. How does SHINEEXO sound?
horrible, was Jonghyun's helpful reply, followed by a call not too long after. Joonmyun had declined it, explaining that he had a lot of things to do. "Leader stuff. You know, the stuff Kris dumped on me when he decided to leave." Managing six boys was already difficult, as it was. He didn't have Kris' commanding presence, and neither did he have the capacity to give the boys a stern look that would draw out the most powerful fear from them. They knew how to show respect for Joonmyun, yes, but Kris' management style was different. He spent more time with the EXO-M kids. Joonmyun... tried to text everyone as much as he could. His Mandarin wasn't the best, but Zitao was kind enough to offer to correct his Madarin texts before sending them out. Somehow, he was always trying to reach out to the other side of the group, trying to connect with them, whereas Kris just drew everyone to him and sat them down for a nice, easy chat. No biggie.
Three soft knocks on the door, then he finally pushed himself off the chair. Maybe it was Zitao offering to translate the statement he had to give to the media in a few hours. Or maybe it was Jongin, ready to offer him a hug. He took a deep breath, then, padding to the door with heavy feet, and gave the knob a slick twist before swinging it open.
"Yo," Lu Han greeted. He had half a bottle of soju in one hand and a pack of cigarettes in the other. The smile on his lips was tense, if not forced. His bottom lip was trembling. And the shirt he's wearing looked as if it had seen better days. "We're going to draft your statement and ease those tense nerves," he said, then tucked the pack under his arm. He curled his fingers around Joonmyun's wrist. His fingers were cold. "C'mon, we don't have all day."
His phone sounded off. it'll pass. gl with leader stuff. ik how hard it can be, Jonghyun said, ending with a plethora of sad emoticons. Joonmyun replied with a quick huhuhu and couldn't get his smileys right until they reached the balcony, until Lu Han let him go and let him breathe.
There was nothing but silence for a few good minutes. Lu Han sat on the floor with his legs crossed and both the bottle and the pack resting on his thighs. From his shirt pocket, a tiny sheet of paper was peeking. Where was the pen? "I was kidding. You looked like you could use a break," he said after a while, pulling out a stick and running his thumb along the wheel of his lighter. "I mean, you've been taking calls left and right for the past two hours. I'd go crazy if that ever happened to me."
What makes you think I'm not, he wanted to ask. He didn't. Instead, he sat beside Lu Han and closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. He reached for the bottle of soju and poised his palm on the cover. "I didn't think he'd actually do it."
It was stupid to think that way, Joonmyun knew, but ever since that big fight back in 2013, Kris hadn't disappeared to Wherever Land only to resurface in the dorms the morning after like nothing happened. He was looking better. He was laughing more. He'd been getting in touch with his friends and regularly chatting with them. SM had given them a fucking break, for Christ's sake! SHINee didn't get that until two years after debut, until SM was sure SHINee had already hit ROI and was profitable enough a group. They were eating three times a day and were given the luxury of sleeping five, six hours every other day. They were luckier than most groups. Heck, they had to be the luckiest SM group in a century.
And yet they woke up this morning without a trace of Kris in the dorms but a sticky note tacked to the center of the dining table. sorry, the message read in Kris' horrible handwriting. If Kris wanted to waste a Post-it on a message like that then he should've just rounded everyone up and dropped the bomb before turning on his heel to leave.
"Same," Lu Han mumbled. He wiggled his toes. It was spring in earnest now. The winds were more tolerable than they were back in winter. "I mean, just before the concert. I didn't think-"
"-he'd be that much of an asshole-"
"-he'd give up everything we've worked hard for and leave us like that."
Same thing, Joonmyun wanted to say. Lu Han just said it in a nicer, better manner. He was saving up all his energy for the performance later and the possible - inevitable - interview after it. He could leave all the niceties to Lu Han for now. But he had to get accustomed to his old Suho suit again, start wearing it and see if the make up stains went well with the practiced smile, the steady gaze, the polite manner of speaking. He had to make sure he wouldn't screw anything up.
Still, he said, "Yeah, that," and shifted in his seat. He folded his legs under his weight and took a deep breath. "I don't know what to do. We have a week left 'til the concert and all the VCRs have been shot and everything's already in place and-"
"You still smoke?" Lu Han asked, disrupting his train of thought completely. Joonmyun could hear him playing with the lighter again. If he didn't stop then he might set himself on fire. Maybe Joonmyun should do that, instead. "Hey, answer me: do you still smoke?"
Joonmyun opened his eyes, looked to his side, looked at Lu Han. Lu Han was dangerously close, close enough that he could make out the beginnings of a stubble on Lu Han's skin, the faint markings of a pimple here and there. Battle scars in the form of dark circles under his eyes and some other blemishes on his skin. And Lu Han was leaning even closer. This was how trouble began, he mused - something bad happens and someone gets too close. You allow yourself to be a bit too vulnerable. And you allow yourself to break. The worst Lu Han could do right now was to kiss him, though, knowing that sometimes Joonmyun wondered how things would've gone differently if they were a co-ed group. If Lu Han was a girl and he wore shirts that exposed his legs half the time. If you could date anyone from the group, who would it be? They got asked those questions a lot, and Joonmyun's reply had always been consistent - that one time he saw Lu Han wearing a wig? He thought 'she' was pretty and almost got a boner from it (Jongin's words, not his).
The best Lu Han could do was stuff that cigarette stick between his lips already so Joonmyun wouldn't have to worry about not being allowed to kiss him anymore. He gulped hard. There were more pressing things to attend to, like the very little time they had left to prepare for M! Countdown, the words he had to say. Kris leaving the group a week before the concert was about to start and having to rework everything they'd already polished, try to get back on their feet again as an eleven-man team.
"Nah, I don't. Not in the past few months," Joonmyun replied after a while. He moved to his side, an inch away from Lu Han. Lu Han followed. He kept his eyes on his toes. Ditching smoking was the only way SM would give him more parts, more songs to sing. Maybe even a solo. It was hard to have to duke it out with more able, more talented singers in the group. So he had to make things easier for himself somehow. "Which is good, I guess. I've been sounding better recently. More-" More like a singer, less like a trainee fresh out of auditions. Less of the man he used to be when Lu Han wasn't getting too chummy, too close yet, and the only person who knew about his misplaced boner was himself. "Why?"
"I guess you're taking the soju, then," Lu Han replied. He poised the stick between his lips, the pink flesh wrapping around in the most obscene way possible. And here he thought Baekhyun already made everything, including doing laundry, look sensual. Maybe Lu Han was just a contender, but it wasn't as if he'd been watching Lu Han for a while already. He hadn't. Lu Han just happened to be at the right place at the right time, at the same time as Joonmyun.
Lu Han lit the stick, a sliver of smoke escaping from the tip. He took a deep breath, held it right there, at the center of his chest, where he felt fullest, then blew out the smoke in a steady stream. Sort of like how he'd run his hand up and down Minseok's back whenever Minseok overextended himself, or the way he'd nod his head to whatever Yixing was saying even if he had other things to do. "Unless you want to split? You can get a couple of puffs. Just let me know."
"Nah, I'm good," Joonmyun mumbled. He looked at the bottle. It was too tempting. He needed a temporary way to numb himself. Chugging soju down seemed like a quick fix. "Do you mind?"
"All yours," Lu Han said, laughing a little. He pressed the bottle to Joonmyun's cheek, then added, "Uh, wait. Leave me some?"
Joonmyun nodded. He reached up, giving the bottom of the bottle a lazy tug before pulling it all the way down. Lu Han's fingers were no longer cold. Or maybe they were, but Joonmyun's fingers were even cooler than that of Lu Han's. They were still wound around the bottle tightly. Lu Han wouldn't let go. If this was a euphemism for what Kris just did then fuck Lu Han, really, but his lips were drawn to a squiggly line. The tight knot of his eyebrows had eased considerably. His eyes were empty, mostly, but Joonmyun could see himself reflected in them. So maybe Lu Han was the one who needed company, was the one who needed a script. He was the de facto leader now, and pretty soon Joonmyun'd be turning over some of those responsibility shit Kris left with him to Lu Han. So he stayed there a little longer, pressed his hand on Lu Han's own until he felt Lu Han's hand twitch. It was as if everything was slowly hitting him - the burning stick between his lips, the smoke making Joonmyun's face hazy. The cool slide of their hands and the perspiration of the soju bottle dripping to their thighs pressed side to side. The very little time they had to spare before they had to step on stage again, answer questions. Be on their best idol behavior.
"Are you going to let me drink or what?" Joonmyun asked after a while.
Lu Han snorted. Blew a small puff of smoke in Joonmyun's direction before pulling away. He rested his hand on Joonmyun's thigh, tracing lazy circles on it as he flicked off some of the ash in the stick with his other hand. Lu Han's cheeks were red. He hadn't even had a drink yet. So Joonmyun took a long swig of the soju then held it up in Lu Han's direction, hoping the alcohol would help still the thumping in his chest, fizzle out the sparks setting off at the tips of his fingers. Silence the voices at the back of his head saying, he's gonna leave you, too, someday, Joonmyun. Don't take sides just yet. Don't give in.
Still, Joonmyun couldn't stop from letting a gasp slip from his lips when Lu Han leaned in too close, pressing a soft kiss to a corner of his mouth. Lu Han did that sometimes, kiss people when he was too happy or had too many emotions running through his veins that he couldn't contain them anymore. All on the cheek, though. Never on the lips. In a last ditch effort to hide the push and pull of a grin and something else surfacing on his lips, he gulped down the rest of the soju, not leaving any for Lu Han. Not giving Lu Han another opportunity to sneak in a tiny kiss as he stood from where he was and got back on his feet, slipping right back inside the dorms so he could breathe.
♯
("You're panicking. In your mind. I can hear you, hyung," Kyungsoo mumbled one time. Chanyeol was still in the living room with Jongin and Sehun, probably playing whatever game they fancied at the moment. Joonmyun could hear a small sound of triumph from Kyungsoo's phone - he was playing, too. He was the only one with nothing to do but to think. "Go on. Spill."
Joonmyun took a deep breath. There was still an unread and unanswered text on his phone, one from Lu Han dated just a few minutes ago and saying, yixing n i r drinking but he fell asleep on me already. want soju??? A year ago, he would've probably said yes in a heartbeat, slipped from under his covers and out of his room to spare some time with his bandmates. Bonding sessions with the M group were hard to come by, after all. But things were different now: Kris was gone. They were promoting as a group of 11 for the next few weeks, maybe even months. He had to keep a group of eleven together somehow, like he was a single dad working to feed his ten children. He had to face the cameras not looking like all the gods were conspiring against him. He needed to be the perfect leader not only for the group but also for himself.
And he could still feel the warmth of Lu Han's lips on a corner of his mouth, could still feel the vibrations of Lu Han's laughter on his skin. The lurching sensation in his stomach hadn't stilled yet. And the desire to ball his hands into fists in Lu Han's shirt all the fucking time seemed nigh impossible to ignore.
"I feel weird," he began. He crawled next to Kyungsoo, plopping down beside him on the bed and leaning his head on Kyungsoo's shoulder. Kyungsoo hadn't stopped playing his game - who even plays Candy Crush these days - yet. "Everything's weird. Out of place. Sort of. And-"
"And you're too hard on yourself," Kyungsoo murmured. He tilted his head to the side, resting it against Joonmyun's own. This was one of Kyungsoo's more subtle ways of letting people know that he was worried about them. "It's okay to feel things, hyung. I mean, you're human. I makes sense to feel something."
"I'm sad," Joonmyun confessed.
"Congratulations, you're normal," Kyungsoo replied. He laughed a little, then nudged Joonmyun in his side. "Is that all?"
There were legalities to deal with, press conferences to attend and statements to be given. Their tour was ongoing, they had a lot of things to do. And Lu Han hadn't stopped looking at him like he was telling Joonmyun that he remembered everything, down to that last bit where Joonmyun licked the corners of his mouth and almost touched Lu Han's lips with his tongue. Joonmyun shook his head. People did stupid things sometimes, when they were sad and lonely and afraid to be whittled down to bite-sized pieces for other people to consume. They were a bit too vulnerable that time. Lu Han was sad. Joonmyun was, too. And when you put two sad people together, they'd be the worst disaster ever. Joonmyun should never agree to drinking with Lu Han ever again.
"Yeah, that's it," Joonmyun mumbled. He took a deep breath and buried his face in the crook of Kyungsoo's shoulder. "I'm really tired."
Kyungsoo didn't say anything, but Joonmyun did feel the quick shift of his muscles, the soft kiss Kyungsoo pressed to the crown of his head. "Rest," Kyungsoo said, as if forgetting the burning sensation of Lu Han's lips brushing against his was that easy. It wasn't. Still, Joonmyun closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. "Get some rest."
Lu Han's smiling face, the gentle swell of his lips, the upward curl at the corners of his mouth burned brightly at the back of his eyelids.)
♯
Lu Han made a few more appearances at the doorstep of Joonmyun's room for the next two weeks. The first two times, he had a bottle of soju with him. The succeeding two, he brought a plushie along with him. He'd shuffle to Joonmyun's bed without another word, lay there for a couple of minutes, then start talking. At first, it felt a bit off, pretty weird - they never were close enough for late night conversations, after all - but after a while Joonmyun grew accustomed to the sudden influx of 'Lu Han encounters'. He had no qualms: Lu Han was a pretty good conversationalist if he wasn't thinking too hard of something interesting to say, when he was just drinking and dropping bits and pieces of a past he'd never shared with Joonmyun before. On one of his friends' birthday, he stole one of her Barbie dolls and cut her hair. He almost cut his finger when he tried poking the blades of a powered electric fan. Once, he crushed flower petals in a plastic bag, doused them in alcohol, then set the plastic bag on fire. He was the one who accidentally dropped the Oreos in Kyungsoo's ramyun, not Chanyeol.
And he was a pretty good kisser, too, if not a bit too shy and uncertain. He slid his hands up and down Joonmyun's sides like he didn't know where to place them. Like he wasn't sure if all these things were happening - Joonmyun had one hand tilting Lu Han's chin up. He had his fingers tangled in Lu Han's hair. And Lu Han was whimpering into the open press of Joonmyun's mouth like he'd been wanting this to happen for so long now.
Give it a rest, Joonmyun told himself. They were both a bit inebriated. They were sad, maybe still depressed. Recuperating. They were holding onto each other by a sliver of that Kris thread that might snap anytime. They were a ticking time bomb and only they knew how to defuse each other. They were radioactive. So he pulled away when Lu Han made a tiny sound at the back of his throat, when Lu Han's whimpers had turned into heavy breathing and he started balling his hands into fists in Joonmyun's shirt.
"You started it," Joonmyun murmured. He grabbed the bottle beside him, ready to use it as an excuse for - what he'd done, how he'd reacted, how he'd breathed Lu Han's name back there like he'd been rehearsing this in his mind for a while already? He wasn't sure. All he knew right now was that Lu Han was shaking his head and laughing at him silly. And that Lu Han's lips were a thick shade of red. He did that. He did that to Lu Han. "What? You were the one who-"
"No, I mean-" Lu Han pulled him closer. Joonmyun's grip on the bottle waned a little. He was more concerned about his room smelling like soju than anything else. Or so he wanted to think. Up close, he could make out Lu Han's lips trembling, like the sudden loss of warmth was making him feel too cold. The air conditioning wasn't even up too high. "I mean, why did you stop?"
I started feeling something weird, Joonmyun wanted to say. Like this thing wasn't just a knee-jerk reaction to Kris' departure or it wasn't just a channel for stress relief. Sort of like those stress balls except Lu Han had his fingers wrapped around Joonmyun's heart and he was squeezing it too hard, too much. Maybe he should tell Lu Han to stop. "It's getting late. We have a thing tomorrow."
"10 a.m.," Lu Han mumbled. He leaned closer. Their lips touched. Earlier, during practice, his voice almost cracked while he was singing 'Moonlight' with Jongdae. But he got back on track, his tone smoother, more velvety than before. That was nothing compared to the low notes Lu Han made only in Joonmyun's room, though, when he was groaning against the open press of Joonmyun's mouth. "And we have a thing right now. I need you to focus."
"I need to get off your lap and you need to go back to your room."
"I need to-" Lu Han stopped mid-sentence, lips parted and eyebrows caught in a light furrow. He let out a loud exhale. He was worrying his bottom lip he just had to scour the surface for the next string of words, the right things to say so he could express himself properly. "Just-" And then he lost them again, his hot breath tumbling into Joonmyun's mouth this time as Lu Han pulled him even closer, crushing their mouths together in an inelegant slide.
It happened a few more times, one for every time Kris tried to reach the SM management, tried to reach them. The news stung less after a while, two months after the whole tirade. Summer was fast approaching. This was their opportunity to start over, leave something behind. They could have easily dropped the whole 'kissing for convenience and for comfort' act by now, but Lu Han kept knocking on his door. And he kept opening it, kept letting Lu Han in. Over the next few months he'd be kissing Lu Han too often, too much that it wouldn't take more than a second to know when Lu Han was about to pry his lips open with his tongue, when he wanted to slip his hands beneath Joonmyun's shirt. When Lu Han was doing it out of habit or when he really meant it. Kind of like he'd want to do it again and again even if he knew separation would hit him ten times harder whenever EXO-M had to fly out of Korea to go back home. Joonmyun maintained a pattern, then, put his 100% into every single encounter, just so Lu Han wouldn't find any blind spots and capitalize on them. So Lu Han wouldn't find an opening where he could fit himself in Joonmyun's life by hook or by crook.
♯
The next time Lu Han showed up, Yixing was by his side. "I just need to get him to the hospital," Yixing mumbled. His voice was calm, dangerously still. Beside him, Lu Han took a shaky breath. Lu Han's lips were chapped; his face, the palest shade of flesh."I'll be back," Yixing promised, then pulled away with a nod of the head.
In the end, Joonmyun drove them both to the E.R.. It was ten in the evening, too early for any of his encounters with Lu Han but too late to be out in the streets when they had a 7 a.m. flight the following day. He looked at the rear mirror from time to time, trying to get a glimpse of Lu Han's features. Lu Han wasn't grimacing in pain, but his eyebrows were in a tight knot. His lips were drawn to a thin line. There was none of that usual playful smile on his lips, or even the light upward tug on his cheeks. And his chest was rising and falling without any fixed pattern that Joonmyun could pattern his breathing after. Still, he looked at Joonmyun through the mirror, gave him a tiny wink like he was saying, I'm good, I'm cool. Don't worry about me. I won't leave.
Joonmyun took a deep breath, took a left turn at the next corner. At the next glimpse, he caught Yixing staring, not one of those empty stares of him but one that brought a warning with it.
The rest of the trip was silent. Lu Han only made a sound when Yixing helped him slip out of the car, when Joonmyun wished them well and said, "I'll be back. Just have to park somewhere." Lu Han gave him a curt nod in response and Yixing shot that same meaningful look his way, like he was promising a long conversation when Joonmyun returned from trying to delay the inevitable. Like he was saying, you think I don't know what you're up to? He didn't have to tell me; you're too obvious that only stupid people won't find out.
This was the escape route he needed, he mused. There was an entire road stretched ahead of him. The night was on his side. He found it easiest to move in the dark when shadows were cloaking over his limbs tangled with Lu Han's own. Still, he got out of the car and walked back to the hospital, hands dug in his pockets, mind too deep into an argument with the better half of his senses that was saying, 'You had a chance, Joonmyun. You had a chance to get out of this mess. But you just had to screw things up again.'
they gave him some pain killers and he's kinda sleepy ryt now, came Yixing's text. Joonmyun looked up from where he had his eyes fixed on his phone, then scrolled down to the next message. think u can get us some banana uyuu??
Yeah no problem, Joonmyun replied. He slipped his phone back in his pocket and took a deep breath. Slowly, the door opened in front of him. It was only a matter of time until Yixing sat him down for a long talk.
Yixing didn't, though. They sat in companionable silence as Yixing swayed his body to the steady beeping of the machine in the room. Lu Han was sleeping, lips parted slightly as slivers of sound spilled from his lips. He was snorting in his sleep. Joonmyun laughed a little.
"He's pretty volatile," Yixing mumbled after a while. He worried his bottom lip. "He's going through more shit than anyone can ever imagine."
You don't have to tell me, Joonmyun wanted to say, but why should he? Nobody knew about their secret meetings at eleven in the evening. Nobody knew that whenever Lu Han stepped inside Joonmyun's room, he'd be backing Joonmyun up against the wall the very next minute and licking his way inside Joonmyun's mouth. He'd be telling Joonmyun about his day, how his back situation had gotten worse, the doctors told me I should probably slow down because my lungs are getting weak. But how? I mean, we're idols. Isn't it enough that I dropped smoking for this dream? And Joonmyun would be slipping his hands beneath the material of Lu Han's shirt, kiss Lu Han back until Lu Han stopped babbling and started talking with his tongue, hands, the thumping in his chest.
Lu Han was entitled to a couple of secrets. Joonmyun was his biggest secret of all.
"How's the back situation?" Joonmyun asked. He scratched the material of his jeans, pausing when Lu Han gave a particularly loud snort. He laughed a little. "Getting better?"
"Mine or his?" Yixing replied.
It was probably a trick question. Joonmyun blinked a few times. In the dim lighting, it was becoming increasingly difficult to read Yixing's features. He'd always been hard to figure out, after all. "Both."
Yixing let his gaze linger, held his breath in his chest longer than he should. His teeth began to chatter. "Worse, and even worse," Yixing answered, scoffing a bit. He shifted in his seat and slumped against it, throwing his head back in accord. He did this whenever he was too tired to dance or even breathe. He'd been doing it more frequently these days. It's almost as if he's tired all the time, lugging himself around with a broken faith and hope. "His last check up was a week after K-"
Joonmyun turned to his side. He was facing Yixing now. Yixing's lips remained parted, like he was looking another term for Kris' name. Fallen leader and former friend seemed like good options. It felt weird on Joonmyun's lips, though.
"It's alright. You can say his name," he whispered.
Yixing laughed a little. "It's been months. You'd think that after all this time, it would be easier-"
It will never be easier. The initial mold had been broken. Kris was like that unmistakable crack in the vase that sort of made the patterns on the vase weird when Joonmyun tried to haphazardly slap superglue on it. When he tried to keep things - the remaining eleven - together. He already had a hard time making sure his sanity was intact; what more if he had to look after ten other people and make sure they weren't at the brink of throwing things? Kris made dealing with all the stress easier. Kris would always use his big, warm hands to pull Joonmyun close to his chest whenever he smiled too much in the face of stress to the point that his cheeks felt numb.
I can't erase it from my face, Joonmyun told Kris one time, pointing at his cheeks. It looked like one of those patented SM faces. It made him sick. What do I do with this now? It won't go away. Make it go away-
"It won't. It never will," he mumbled. He nudged Yixing in his side a little, then dropped his hand on Yixing's own. "And I mean it: you can say his name. Things haven't been the same since Kris left but that doesn't mean we can't try to go back to the way we were. That doesn't mean we can't try to... be okay again."
Yixing cocked his head to the side. Grazed his knuckles along Joonmyun's cheeks, as well, as he said, "He always said you were the stronger between the two of you. The tiny leader who packed a lot of strength." Yixing loosened his fist, then gave Joonmyun's cheek a light pinch. Kris did that a lot, as well, whenever he couldn't come up with excuses anymore. He ran off a lot, disappeared from the group too many times that Joonmyun couldn't count them with his fingers anymore. He had an apology ready every single time. He never promised to stay forever. "He said that if EXO should ever fall and disband, you'd be the last person fighting for all of us to stay together."
"Bullshit," Joonmyun whispered. He laughed. He could taste blood in his mouth. It tasted nothing like Lu Han, or even Kris' promise that they'd bring this group together to the top, help each other every step of the way. He cracked his neck. "I'm sorry. The asshole probably said that. I mean, Kris probably- Outside the whole leaving thing, he's actually a nice guy."
Yixing snorted. It wasn't supposed to be funny. None of this - Kris' departure, Lu Han's health condition worsening, everyone hanging onto their dreams by a sliver of hope - should be funny. But Yixing just kept shaking his head, breathing out in tiny bubbles of laughter. A weak smile on his lips as he said, "That's the first time I've ever heard anyone call him that." A deep breath, then, "He knows he's an ass. I've never fallen short on reminding him that."
So you've been keeping in touch, Joonmyun wanted to ask, but soon Lu Han was groaning in his sleep and rousing from his slumber. Lu Han blinked a few times and grunted, like he'd just realized they had a flight tomorrow, he still hadn't packed his luggage, he left his instant ramyun in the kitchen and Jongin had probably already eaten it already. He stayed silent for a few more seconds, blinking at Yixing and Joonmyun a few more times before parting his lips to speak.
"How long have I been out?"
Joonmyun glanced at his wrist watch. A little over an hour, if his eyes weren't failing him. Or maybe even more than that. He had a habit of not keeping track of time whenever he was in Lu Han's company. Taking a deep breath, he answered, "An hour or so. Feeling better?" Didn't say, long enough to make you stay.
Lu Han licked his lips. A corner of his mouth pulled up in a small smile. He reached out with one hand and made grabbing motions in the air, as if gesturing for them to come closer. Yixing or himself, Joonmyun couldn't tell, so he just pulled Yixing with him, inched closer until he could rest his chin on the cushion of Lu Han's bed.
"Better," Lu Han muttered. He gave Joonmyun's cheek a poke with his toe through the sheets.
It was gross, Joonmyun mused. The lurching sensation in his stomach, even more.
Lu Han wouldn't be released until the following day, long after the rest of EXO had already flown out of the country. Doctor's orders, not his, if the look on Lu Han's face was anything to go by. It was the same image that burned at the back of Joonmyun's eyelids when he tried to get some sleep in the plane, or even after he'd roused from his light slumber once the place touched down. In lieu of Lu Han's presence in the concert, he sent everyone a text: to Jongdae, he said, don't screw up w/o me now. To Minseok., make sure chenchen doesn't push himself too hard ty ty c: He sent a plethora of smileys to the others, Yixing included. Maybe it was some code for, I don't know what to say so I'll just let you figure out my own shit.
i'll be back, he texted Joonmyun.
They had to alight the van now. They were ten minutes late.
Joonmyun took a deep breath and typed a quick 'okay'. At the back of his mind, he was chanting, don't make promises you can't keep.
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