an unfashionably late secret santa exchange
rookie mistake
lu han/sehun, 1500w
Sehun has a wet dream. And friends who give terrible advice.
for niyaowo, my ideal type of kpop fan. I'M SORRY THIS IS SO LATE; I don't even have any acceptable excuse apart from my over-all disappearing act from fandom. :( remember, even if/when it's time to throw selu away like trash, I would never give you up ♥ (jk on the trash part.... maybe)
A month before EXO's scheduled debut showcase in Seoul, Sehun surfaces suddenly from a vivid dream in the middle of the night starring Lu Han's mouth, lush and accommodating, and a growing wet spot on his sheets. Shit, he thinks, his pulse fast enough to break speed limits.
Then the full weight of what it means hits him like a sledgehammer to the face.
-
He flags Jongin down after their music lesson, glancing hurriedly over his shoulder before shoving him into an empty recording booth. "Don't tell anyone else," he warns, which of course means that Chanyeol knows by the end of lunch.
"Are you sure it wasn't a girl in your dream who just happened to have Lu Han-hyung's face?" Jongin suggests. The three of them are huddled together in a corner of the company cafeteria, their trays of kimchi and half-eaten fruit long forgotten. Sehun picks at a discarded tangerine peel, the smell of citrus sharp on his fingers. Nausea claws away at his stomach.
"That's just as weird!" Chanyeol interjects, tugging the hood of his zip-up sweatshirt over his head, because it's hard to look street with a mop of curly orange hair.
"Either way, you should give up," Jongin says with a shrug. "You're too young, anyway."
"I'm only four months behind you," Sehun retorts, pushing back his chair and grabbing his tray. "Both of you are useless."
Chanyeol stops him with a firm hand on his arm. "Patience, maknae," he soothes. "Maybe you just need to put some distance between you and him. You two spend a lot of time together."
"You think that's it?" Sehun licks his bottom lip nervously, flashbacking to his dream again. How steady Lu Han's hands had felt on his thigh, the warm imprint of a thumb smoothing circles along his hip, the outline of his mouth, stretched and full. A flush creeps up Sehun's neck, and his legs abruptly go slack, saved only by stumbling back into his chair. Across the table, Jongin's already lost interest in the crisis, occupying himself instead by making vaguely obscene shapes with his leftover carrot sticks.
Chanyeol takes large self-satisfied bite of his apple and throws up a peace sign. "Would hyung ever lead you wrong?"
-
Turns out, ignoring Lu Han is easier in theory than in execution. Sehun purposely brushes past him after a joint dance practice, avoiding eye-contact as he makes a break for the exit. He can't resist a look back after he's safely out the door, and his stomach twists at the confusion on Lu Han's face before he falls in line next to Jongin.
Chanyeol comes up behind him, bending over to dig around in his pocket and discreetly pull out a pink elastic ring. "I got you something."
Sehun stares at the rubber band and makes no move to take it from Chanyeol's proffered hand. "That's okay," he says. "You can keep it."
Chanyeol sighs and elbows him hard into the wall, ignoring the affronted complaint. "It's to help you with Lu Han-hyung," he says impatiently. "Snap it against your wrist whenever you think about him. That way, your body will associate pain with Lu Han-hyung instead of- other things."
"Looks like someone's been reading Kris-hyung's self-help books," Jongin jeers, which earns him an elbow into the opposite wall.
Sehun is still skeptical when he eyes the band again, but he stretches it over his fingers, rolling the elastic over his knuckles until it fits snugly around his pulse point. He gives it an experimental snap, wincing at the sharp sting.
"It's worth a try," he finally says.
-
By the third day, Sehun can barely feel the inside of his wrist, and the pain doesn't do much to deter the waves of guilt whenever he ignores a text message or averts his eyes after practice or quickens his steps in the hallways when Lu Han rounds the corner. Chanyeol helpfully tosses him notes in language class when the teacher's back is turned filled with short platitudes that say "the first week is the hardest!" and "manly desires are totally normal". There's a close call on the fourth day where Lu Han nearly traps him in the changing room of a broadcast company that Sehun manages to escape thanks to a set of back stairs, and he only lets himself relax after he climbs into the K van.
"Hey, Chanyeol?" Lu Han's voice floats through an open window. Sehun immediately stiffens. Next to him, Chanyeol's in the midst of what could be a dance but looks more like a convulsive attack to the beat of whatever's blasting through his earbuds. Lu Han drums his fingers on the glass and, when that fails to get his attention, turns to Baekhyun. "Do you mind switching vans with me for this ride?"
Baekhyun wastes no time hopping out of the side door just as Chanyeol rips off an earbud and protests, "Wait, I didn't know that's what you wanted to ask! I'll switch with you!"
"Too late!" Baekhyun calls out, already sliding open the door to M's van and scaling over a disgruntled Jongdae to claim the seat next to Kris.
Lu Han maneuvers himself to Sehun's other side and waits until the van pulls out of the parking lot before bluntly asking, "Did I do something to make you mad?"
Sehun swallows and focuses on Lu Han's hands, anywhere but his face. "No," he says, more brave than he feels.
"So you're not avoiding me?"
The van rolls over a speed bump, pitching Sehun against Lu Han's chest, and his hands scramble to find purchase before landing on his thighs, the body heat only matched by the burn spreading across Sehun's cheeks. "No," he repeats, wetting his lip.
"So if I ask you to wait for me after practice today so we can walk back to the dorms together, you'll be there?"
At this point, Sehun can see that one of Chanyeol's earbuds has fallen off with no intention of getting put back, letting the ending strains of "Warrior" drift into the air like a drama soundtrack setting the scene. Jongin doesn't even pretend to offer them privacy, visibly leaning forward in his seat to better hear. Junmyeon looks bewildered.
"Yes," he answers meekly.
Lu Han cheerfully claps his hands together. "Great!" he says, satisfied. "I'm glad we had this talk."
Behind him, Jongin tugs on Sehun's shirt and whispers, "I told you not to go after someone older. You'll just get schooled every time."
Sehun doesn't even need to turn around to roll the rubber band off his wrist and snap it at Jongin's head in one fluid movement.
-
A hundred opening lines fly through Sehun's mind during practice, and all of them evaporate like mist on a cold morning when he catches sight of Lu Han waiting at the door as promised, jacket already zipped up, hands stuffed deep into his pockets, as natural and unaffected as if the past few days never happened. Unexpectedly, the first reaction is relief, because Sehun has spent so much of the week running circles around the inevitable that he's forgotten what made the separation difficult, why the separation was needed. Lu Han brightens when he sees him, and they slip into step the same time a comfortable silence slips over them, actions made familiar by months of habit.
"Are you sleeping okay?" Lu Han asks after a few minutes, touching a concerned finger under Sehun's eye where he's sure is lined with dark rings. "You've looked pretty out of it lately."
"You were in my dream last week," Sehun blurts out. "The kind of dream that my mom told me not to talk about in public."
Lu Han's hand hovers in the air before falling away, his mouth opening into a soft circle of surprise, the look dangerously close to the image that started the mess in the first place. "Is that why you've been so weird these days?"
"It was Chanyeol's idea!" Sehun says hotly and wonders if it's possible to disappear into his jacket, if he could stop time and close his eyes and will the ground to open to swallow him whole, to come out on the other side no longer a teenage boy with inappropriate dreams about his best friend. To emerge as someone who didn't just spend the past week avoiding the one person he actually wanted to see, the only person worth seeing. He's measuring how many paces it'd take to run out the front doors of the building to freedom when he feels two hands pushing his shoulders back until Lu Han's face magnifies in front of him.
"This is a problem-," Lu Han says thoughtfully, and Sehun faintly registers that the slow pressure of Lu Han's fingers splayed over the exposed skin of his collarbone is real, that this time there are two speeding heartbeats against his chest, but nothing in his dreams prepares him for Lu Han's mouth curving into a bold grin, and then: "-but I think it's a problem we should work through together."
lu han/sehun, 1500w
Sehun has a wet dream. And friends who give terrible advice.
for niyaowo, my ideal type of kpop fan. I'M SORRY THIS IS SO LATE; I don't even have any acceptable excuse apart from my over-all disappearing act from fandom. :( remember, even if/when it's time to throw selu away like trash, I would never give you up ♥ (jk on the trash part.... maybe)
A month before EXO's scheduled debut showcase in Seoul, Sehun surfaces suddenly from a vivid dream in the middle of the night starring Lu Han's mouth, lush and accommodating, and a growing wet spot on his sheets. Shit, he thinks, his pulse fast enough to break speed limits.
Then the full weight of what it means hits him like a sledgehammer to the face.
-
He flags Jongin down after their music lesson, glancing hurriedly over his shoulder before shoving him into an empty recording booth. "Don't tell anyone else," he warns, which of course means that Chanyeol knows by the end of lunch.
"Are you sure it wasn't a girl in your dream who just happened to have Lu Han-hyung's face?" Jongin suggests. The three of them are huddled together in a corner of the company cafeteria, their trays of kimchi and half-eaten fruit long forgotten. Sehun picks at a discarded tangerine peel, the smell of citrus sharp on his fingers. Nausea claws away at his stomach.
"That's just as weird!" Chanyeol interjects, tugging the hood of his zip-up sweatshirt over his head, because it's hard to look street with a mop of curly orange hair.
"Either way, you should give up," Jongin says with a shrug. "You're too young, anyway."
"I'm only four months behind you," Sehun retorts, pushing back his chair and grabbing his tray. "Both of you are useless."
Chanyeol stops him with a firm hand on his arm. "Patience, maknae," he soothes. "Maybe you just need to put some distance between you and him. You two spend a lot of time together."
"You think that's it?" Sehun licks his bottom lip nervously, flashbacking to his dream again. How steady Lu Han's hands had felt on his thigh, the warm imprint of a thumb smoothing circles along his hip, the outline of his mouth, stretched and full. A flush creeps up Sehun's neck, and his legs abruptly go slack, saved only by stumbling back into his chair. Across the table, Jongin's already lost interest in the crisis, occupying himself instead by making vaguely obscene shapes with his leftover carrot sticks.
Chanyeol takes large self-satisfied bite of his apple and throws up a peace sign. "Would hyung ever lead you wrong?"
-
Turns out, ignoring Lu Han is easier in theory than in execution. Sehun purposely brushes past him after a joint dance practice, avoiding eye-contact as he makes a break for the exit. He can't resist a look back after he's safely out the door, and his stomach twists at the confusion on Lu Han's face before he falls in line next to Jongin.
Chanyeol comes up behind him, bending over to dig around in his pocket and discreetly pull out a pink elastic ring. "I got you something."
Sehun stares at the rubber band and makes no move to take it from Chanyeol's proffered hand. "That's okay," he says. "You can keep it."
Chanyeol sighs and elbows him hard into the wall, ignoring the affronted complaint. "It's to help you with Lu Han-hyung," he says impatiently. "Snap it against your wrist whenever you think about him. That way, your body will associate pain with Lu Han-hyung instead of- other things."
"Looks like someone's been reading Kris-hyung's self-help books," Jongin jeers, which earns him an elbow into the opposite wall.
Sehun is still skeptical when he eyes the band again, but he stretches it over his fingers, rolling the elastic over his knuckles until it fits snugly around his pulse point. He gives it an experimental snap, wincing at the sharp sting.
"It's worth a try," he finally says.
-
By the third day, Sehun can barely feel the inside of his wrist, and the pain doesn't do much to deter the waves of guilt whenever he ignores a text message or averts his eyes after practice or quickens his steps in the hallways when Lu Han rounds the corner. Chanyeol helpfully tosses him notes in language class when the teacher's back is turned filled with short platitudes that say "the first week is the hardest!" and "manly desires are totally normal". There's a close call on the fourth day where Lu Han nearly traps him in the changing room of a broadcast company that Sehun manages to escape thanks to a set of back stairs, and he only lets himself relax after he climbs into the K van.
"Hey, Chanyeol?" Lu Han's voice floats through an open window. Sehun immediately stiffens. Next to him, Chanyeol's in the midst of what could be a dance but looks more like a convulsive attack to the beat of whatever's blasting through his earbuds. Lu Han drums his fingers on the glass and, when that fails to get his attention, turns to Baekhyun. "Do you mind switching vans with me for this ride?"
Baekhyun wastes no time hopping out of the side door just as Chanyeol rips off an earbud and protests, "Wait, I didn't know that's what you wanted to ask! I'll switch with you!"
"Too late!" Baekhyun calls out, already sliding open the door to M's van and scaling over a disgruntled Jongdae to claim the seat next to Kris.
Lu Han maneuvers himself to Sehun's other side and waits until the van pulls out of the parking lot before bluntly asking, "Did I do something to make you mad?"
Sehun swallows and focuses on Lu Han's hands, anywhere but his face. "No," he says, more brave than he feels.
"So you're not avoiding me?"
The van rolls over a speed bump, pitching Sehun against Lu Han's chest, and his hands scramble to find purchase before landing on his thighs, the body heat only matched by the burn spreading across Sehun's cheeks. "No," he repeats, wetting his lip.
"So if I ask you to wait for me after practice today so we can walk back to the dorms together, you'll be there?"
At this point, Sehun can see that one of Chanyeol's earbuds has fallen off with no intention of getting put back, letting the ending strains of "Warrior" drift into the air like a drama soundtrack setting the scene. Jongin doesn't even pretend to offer them privacy, visibly leaning forward in his seat to better hear. Junmyeon looks bewildered.
"Yes," he answers meekly.
Lu Han cheerfully claps his hands together. "Great!" he says, satisfied. "I'm glad we had this talk."
Behind him, Jongin tugs on Sehun's shirt and whispers, "I told you not to go after someone older. You'll just get schooled every time."
Sehun doesn't even need to turn around to roll the rubber band off his wrist and snap it at Jongin's head in one fluid movement.
-
A hundred opening lines fly through Sehun's mind during practice, and all of them evaporate like mist on a cold morning when he catches sight of Lu Han waiting at the door as promised, jacket already zipped up, hands stuffed deep into his pockets, as natural and unaffected as if the past few days never happened. Unexpectedly, the first reaction is relief, because Sehun has spent so much of the week running circles around the inevitable that he's forgotten what made the separation difficult, why the separation was needed. Lu Han brightens when he sees him, and they slip into step the same time a comfortable silence slips over them, actions made familiar by months of habit.
"Are you sleeping okay?" Lu Han asks after a few minutes, touching a concerned finger under Sehun's eye where he's sure is lined with dark rings. "You've looked pretty out of it lately."
"You were in my dream last week," Sehun blurts out. "The kind of dream that my mom told me not to talk about in public."
Lu Han's hand hovers in the air before falling away, his mouth opening into a soft circle of surprise, the look dangerously close to the image that started the mess in the first place. "Is that why you've been so weird these days?"
"It was Chanyeol's idea!" Sehun says hotly and wonders if it's possible to disappear into his jacket, if he could stop time and close his eyes and will the ground to open to swallow him whole, to come out on the other side no longer a teenage boy with inappropriate dreams about his best friend. To emerge as someone who didn't just spend the past week avoiding the one person he actually wanted to see, the only person worth seeing. He's measuring how many paces it'd take to run out the front doors of the building to freedom when he feels two hands pushing his shoulders back until Lu Han's face magnifies in front of him.
"This is a problem-," Lu Han says thoughtfully, and Sehun faintly registers that the slow pressure of Lu Han's fingers splayed over the exposed skin of his collarbone is real, that this time there are two speeding heartbeats against his chest, but nothing in his dreams prepares him for Lu Han's mouth curving into a bold grin, and then: "-but I think it's a problem we should work through together."