[fic] Dearest Friend

[ofolivesnginger]

Author ofolivesnginger
Fandom: EXO
Pairing: Kris/Luhan, Sehun/Luhan
Rating: NC17
Words: 5,524
Warnings: Death, sensitive subject matters
Summary: Listen to the old man sitting on the park bench.

a/n: have i broken my promise to never break krishan? i must ask you to decide for yourselves, gentle friends. this is not the ideal holiday present, but alas, winter

Comments

[dailuzo]

i'm back

For the briefest moment, Luhan is simultaneously bewitched and enthralled by the fleeting thought that he is what she had been years ago, but it passes before a second thought.

funny how an arranged marriage brings yifan and luhan together but is also the very thing that keeps them apart. luhan is just so resentful that her freedom was taken away. and even her attraction to sehun seemed fuelled by this, by the fact that the oh household is painfully alive whereas hers is just stiff and … dead.

The memory Luhan takes to Hell with her is the one where, in the dark of night, before her own shaking figure she witnesses Yifan’s face come alive in the purest, most sacrosanct form of rapture, pause, and then as if suddenly understanding, collapses in on itself eternally, as if she can hear the gargantuan rumble of his bones crumbling into heaps of ash, as if she can smell the burn of his distant heart on fire.

goodbye my heart. it’s all mutilated.

With a baby in his arms and two kids by his sides, Yifan watches Luhan evaporate before his eyes, and the light in his eyes slowly dies with her.

The moment he sees her he lets out a pathetic moan, hand over his eyes as if he is going to cry.

okay luhan is all confusing about this BUT DON’T YOU DARE TELL ME YIFAN DOESN’T FEEL ANYTHING FOR HER PLEASE THIS IS JUST SO HEARTBREAKING

i mean it may have been the way you describe yifan every time he looks at her. like he thinks she’s something so pretty and fragile and beautiful? D:

and them naming their kids after each other is just………… :’(

“Did you ever feel for me?” She croaks.

“Will it make a difference now, if I said?”

“I guess not.”

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

“Twenty years is a long time.”

aka twenty years is a long time to feel haunted by a mistake without harbouring resentment

but also twenty years is a long time for me to stay with you without falling in love.

twenty years is a long time BUT NOT LONG ENOUGH

Thank you for being kind.

frick. i’m done. i hate you for making me revisit this. excuse me while i wallow in my sorrow.

[ofolivesnginger]

muhahahaha i am back to NOT laugh at you instead i will wallow in pain with u bb

i guess i'll start from something i caught from what you said: "okay luhan is all confusing about this BUT DON’T YOU DARE TELL ME YIFAN DOESN’T FEEL ANYTHING FOR HER PLEASE THIS IS JUST SO HEARTBREAKING"

i never really noticed how much this whole thing does a better job explaining yifan when in my mind it was mostly about luhan?? you're right though, the little things he does and notices and says and feels (feels mostly, i didn't go much into luhan's feelings, more her actions) makes him understandable. like you pointed out, noticing her eyes, how she looks during sex, her shoulder blades, even watching over her with the kids?? he's always observing her. !!! if you gave this fic to a stranger they'd have no idea what yifan looks like b/c luhan never pays attention??? wow the things i do re: perspective...it's all unconscious...

but of course???? he felt for her. i mean he says “It’s my job to impregnate you” but the first thing he does when he undresses her is bury his face in her soft chest??? almost like he's scared...and yeah that scene where she just wants sex but he misinterprets (FRICK. YOU KNOW you were spot on, she /was/ about to say something else. “I want to touch you-” “Why?” “It’s been...a while…” i remember so clearly editing those lines so many times to get the connotations right. actually she originally was supposed to misinterpret the question "why" and respond smTH I CANT RMBR DAMMIT) but yifan always has hope and he's destroyed every time by reality (like when she says she's pregnant. ho boy) see to me yifan was stuck trying to work out their reality, where luhan has already given up on reality and began looking beyond it for some cure. yifan just instinctively doesn't understand the basis of her pain and her need for freedom. in this sense he's much less opposed to the marriage than she is because, i guess social structures, she was /assigned/ to him, he /received/, as he always did, the privilege of his family, the right to education, etc. lu's never had sovereignty so everything she does is in response to that desire to find herself, her lost self, everyone else is really just stepping stones and irrelevant...

For the briefest moment, Luhan is simultaneously bewitched and enthralled by the fleeting thought that he is what she had been years ago, but it passes before a second thought.

she saw herself in sehun, she saw her lost youth, how tall and unafraid of the cold he was like how unafraid she was the first time she met yifan, crawling out the open window for the light, cheeks flushed in the cold: "I'm not doing any of this with you", frick she saw SEHUN GETTING THE EDUCATION SHE NEVER HAD and always longed for and she wanted knowledge because knowledge is her own and she gets it when he literally fucks her on top of his textbooks...sehun is a liberation and sehun. sehun is her making love with herself. sehun is her making love with a version of herself she was finally satisfied with and could love. _(:'''3」∠)_ luhan never needed anybody...luhan just needed herself...drowns in my tears

tbqh she named their first kid out of irony LMAO, because fan (凡) in Yifan means simple and fan (繁) in her kid's name means sophisticated, and she couldn't bear how simply yifan was sometimes, how pure his intentions and beliefs, and it was so much more a prayer for her child than a favor to her husband, but ofc that went past yifan's head

[ofolivesnginger]

“Twenty years is a long time.”

i think in the end you'd be right if you said yifan felt more for luhan than she did him. but twenty years is a long time, and it's impossible for any two cold people who'd managed to stick it out THIS LONG with 2 kids not to feel anything towards e/o. 20 years brewed something alright. to me the moment yifan wrote his answer in her hand, the fact that she choked up means she did care, and she did feel, whatever that feeling was. plus they end clutching their hands together. yeah, twenty years is a long time BUT DEFINITELY NOT LONG ENOUGH. but that's why it ends on the birth of a third child...a child who is half of the original luhan, and half the luhan she wish she'd been in some fantasy, come together into the reality of a child WHO HAPPENS to carry the name of both the real father, wu shixun, and also her very important husband, wu yifan. in a sense this child belongs to all three of them collectively, and is more complete than any of her other children had been........

i dont even feel like i wrote this?????? like whoa now that i dissect everything this sounds way too layered for my brain...so much of this thought process must have been unconscious then i guess. thank you S F MUCH for writing that??? always amazingly mind opening to read your own stuff thru the eyes of someone else ;;W;;; i really do think in another lifetime luhan would have properly SEEN yifan and even fallen in LOVE with his simplicity. like you said, they miss each other, but they also missed each other all these years...((iM DEAD)) but as it is. her family has dictated her life...the butterfly should have flown out the window when she had the chance...but instead she brought the light in and looked her future in the face and resigned herself to vows in the attic...im so done oh god this is positively the most painful thing i have written i am so sorry

(((THANK U AGAIN BB!!!!!! <3 for revisiting this angst <3 i know you hate me but i love you <3)))