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Kyungsoo doesn't seem to budge in his decision, no matter how much Sehun argues and wheedles and bargains. Sehun could let it drop, but it feels like he's given too much ground already. Kyungsoo could go attend the meeting, come back, and everything could hang together for months afterwards, but there's some deep part of Sehun convinced that if Kyungsoo leaves on this trip, he leaves Sehun's grasp forever. There is a final red line drawn in Sehun's mind, in the calendar pages; a finish line that, once crossed over, will mark the end of the race for him. He doesn't know how to convey this to Kyungsoo, who refuses to acknowledge that there's any problem whatsoever. Kyungsoo is content to let things proceed the same way forever, never willing to cut someone out as completely as Sehun wishes he'd cut Junmyeon out. Sehun can't live that way. He needs Kyungsoo to make a decision, and time is running out until that decision is made for him.
By the time the last day has arrived, Sehun is desperate. He follows Kyungsoo out of the bedroom that morning when he wanders out to the kitchen, silently shuffling after him while he pulls a slice of cold pizza out of the fridge for breakfast. Kyungsoo turns to look at him and his eyebrows crease together.
"What?" he asks around a mouthful of crust.
"Don't go," Sehun says.
The crease between Kyungsoo's brows gets deeper.
"I already told you, I have to."
"You said Junmyeon had to go," Sehun argues. "You never actually said you have to go."
"Well, I'm saying it now."
It's stupid to argue with Kyungsoo before he's had coffee, but Sehun doesn't have time to wait until he's had time for a leisurely cup. Kyungsoo is leaving tomorrow unless Sehun can convince him to stay.
"If you're not the one giving the presentation, why do you have to go?"
"If any of the board members have any questions about the building, they're going to want to talk to the architect," says Kyungsoo.
"Why can't Junmyeon answer those questions?" Sehun presses. "He's been in the middle of it the entire time, hasn't he? Shouldn't he know all about it?"
"They're not going to want to talk to him, Sehun," Kyungsoo sounds frustrated. "They want to talk to the person with all the information."
"Are you saying Junmyeon doesn't know what he's doing?"
"I never said anything like that," Kyungsoo snaps. "Stop making this all about him."
"Maybe it is all about him," Sehun is just as frustrated as Kyungsoo sounds now. "I don't see why both of you have to go, except to keep each other company while you're staying away at some four star hotel."
"Sehun, this is stupid," and Kyungsoo is angry now, which only reinforces Sehun's gut feeling that he's onto something. "Maybe if you stopped flailing jealously at everything I say and actually stopped to think, you might realize that maybe this is a completely stupid thing to be fighting about at all."
"So you're saying I'm stupid?" Sehun demands.
"No," Kyungsoo shoots back, "I'm saying you're being petty and childish."
They stand there and stare at each other for a moment, and the air in the room seems as thick as molasses. The words stick and hang in front of Sehun's eyes, almost visibly suspended in midair between them. Because that's the problem right there, isn't it? Sehun is childish; immature and years behind both Kyungsoo and Junmyeon in experience, constantly struggling to keep up. He knows he doesn't know things, and he is upsettingly aware of how dependent he is on Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo, who has been there through the years to guide and support Sehun, who has been the one to give him new eyes through which to view the world, who with every moment makes Sehun fall deeper in love with him until he can't bear the thought of living without him.
Which is why Sehun is perhaps more shaken by the words that come out of his mouth next than Kyungsoo is:
"If you leave with him tomorrow, don't expect me to be here when you get back."
As soon as the restaurant opens, Sehun calls in to work to say he can't make it to his shift tonight, feigning sickness. It might say something insulting about his recent appearance and performance that his boss so readily accepts this excuse, telling him to take as much time as he needs to recover, but Sehun can't really bring himself to care.
He replays the morning's conversation over and over again. Now that he's said it, Sehun thinks long and hard. He can't really say he didn't mean it, because when he turns it over and considers it, he finds that he's dead serious. That only begs the question of... is he really going to leave? Are either of them? Is Kyungsoo actually going to walk out that door tomorrow morning over all of Sehun's protests and pleas, and, if he does, will Sehun actually walk away from all this? Kyungsoo certainly hadn't seemed to think so. But the more Sehun thinks about it, the more distraught he is to realize that he has no idea what else he can do. He can try all he wants to push Kyungsoo into making a choice, but something has to bring this to an end. Sehun will fight until the last possible moment to keep Kyungsoo, with every ounce of his strength and every fiber of his being, and yet... Sehun closes his eyes, breathing shakily. If Kyungsoo won't see that he needs him to choose, what else can Sehun do?
He had almost asked Kyungsoo to let him come along on the trip before thinking better of it, instead spending the day by himself making wild plans to follow Kyungsoo undercover to win back his attention and affection with lavish public surprises. These ideas are scrapped too, the bleak reality overtaking him and smothering him until he sits curled on one end of the sofa cushions with his eyes tightly shut.
Kyungsoo spends most of that last day away at the main office to make preparations, his empty suitcase left sitting ominously on the bed. Sehun avoids the bedroom like the plague, finding that even just the sight of that suitcase fills his head with what feels and sounds like angry bees, until he has to leave the room entirely and sit quietly with his head between his knees for several minutes. He paces back and forth through the apartment, out of the open balcony door and back in, around the edge of the living room rug, through the kitchen and around the table, past the bedroom door as quickly as he can, and then back towards the balcony. All the windows and doors are left open to let in the cool air, but it's still stifling. The sun is hazy behind the thin clouds that have been gathering all day, but it's too bright. Nothing seems to fit right, including Sehun in his own skin, and he wonders if he can just start a tear in his scalp and keep peeling it away like the skin of a banana, step out of it, and become someone entirely new, someone who knows what to say and how to keep everything he ever loved from slipping out of his hands forever.
The afternoon slips away after what feels like forever and also no time at all, the sound of a turning doorknob reaching Sehun's ears where they're lying near the foot of the armchair, along with Sehun's head and, nearby, the rest of Sehun. He's been lying on the floor for the better part of an hour now, after his legs finally gave out from constant nervous pacing. He feels like he's run a marathon. Every muscle in Sehun's body has been sent through a wringer, like his limbs are sacks full of lead ball bearings, incapable of supporting him. He turns his head when Kyungsoo's feet pad across the floor, hearing the soft creak as Kyungsoo settles into the seat next to him and reaches down to card his fingers through Sehun's hair. When Sehun leans into the touch, his eyes and nose burn and he blinks down at the carpet.
"Did you eat already?" Kyungsoo asks.
Sehun shakes his head.
"Do you want to eat something?"
Another shake 'no'. Kyungsoo makes a small disapproving sound, but doesn't insist. He stands up instead, his fingers slipping out of Sehun's hair as he moves away into the bedroom. Sehun drags himself up using the chair and reluctantly follows him because no matter how much dread the sight of the waiting suitcase fills him with, the need to be near Kyungsoo is in irresistible pull. Kyungsoo is opening drawers to start packing, carefully picking up stacks of shirts, socks, and underwear like he's systematically lifting all traces of himself from Sehun's life. Sehun wants to dash the neat stacks from his hands and keep all of Kyungsoo's things permanently locked here in their home, like it will keep Kyungsoo himself locked up in Sehun's heart.
"You're really packing?" Sehun asks.
"Of course I'm packing," says Kyungsoo. "What else am I supposed to do? Live with one pair of socks for three days?"
"You should stay here," says Sehun, sitting on the bed and staring at the back of Kyungsoo's head as he slides the drawers shut. "All the socks are here."
He tries to keep his voice light, but it doesn't fool either of them.
"What do you want from me?" Kyungsoo sighs.
He's still standing near the dresser with his back turned. Sehun can see the tired slump of his shoulders from here, and it makes him want to drop the entire subject and just pull Kyungsoo down onto the bed and kiss the tension from his forehead, but he grits his teeth and pushes ahead anyway.
"I want you to fight for us," he says.
Kyungsoo runs a hand through his hair.
"You're acting like this is a war or something," he says.
Sehun wants to point out that this is a war between him and Junmyeon, and Kyungsoo is caught in the middle no matter how much he doesn't want to see it.
"If you go on this trip-" he says, "If you take this job, you're choosing him over me."
Kyungsoo turns to look at him, distressed.
"That's not true. Don't say things like that. It's just a job and I'm not choosing anyone," he says.
"That's even worse," says Sehun. He pulls his feet up onto the bed and wraps his arms around his knees, feeling his heart sink like a stone. "That means I'm not worth picking."
Kyungsoo crosses the room in less time than it takes Sehun to close his eyes and rest his forehead on his knees.
He grabs Sehun's arm, holding it tightly. "You're always worth picking."
"Then pick me," Sehun pleads. Kyungsoo's mouth is a thin line as he looks away, but Sehun drags him back with a hand on his wrist. "Don't go tomorrow. Pick me."
When he smooths a thumb over his pulse and the curve of his wrist, Kyungsoo shivers and glances back at him.
"Going tomorrow doesn't mean I'm choosing him over you."
It's a statement, but Kyungsoo still sounds like he's asking as he pushes Sehun back down onto the mattress, and Sehun doesn't know how to explain that that's exactly what leaving tomorrow means, so he lets him.
Kyungsoo kisses him with a certainty that Sehun clings to. He brings his hands to either side of Kyungsoo's face to hold him there, because he'll never be able to get enough of this. He heard a proverb once that kissing is like drinking salted water; the more you drink, the more your thirst grows. This is the best way Sehun can think to describe kissing Kyungsoo now. The weather is cooler than it has been in weeks, but Sehun is hot all over, still feeling the oppressive blanket of air covering his nose and mouth. They wrestle with shirts and buckles, and the only oxygen Sehun is getting is from Kyungsoo's warm breath in his mouth. When Kyungsoo lines their bodies up, pressing him down firmly, Sehun folds around him, molding exactly to his form. He pulls him as close as he can, even though it'll never be close enough, even though having Kyungsoo close now will make it hurt all the more when he leaves. The low moan that vibrates in Kyungsoo's chest makes Sehun lightheaded as all the blood in his body rushes to his groin. When he tries to arch up, Kyungsoo pins him down again, fingers digging into Sehun's hips hard enough to bruise.
Good, thinks Sehun blearily. Please, please, mark me up. Mark me as yours- I want that more than anything.
By the time Kyungsoo slips a slicked finger into him, Sehun's cock is already hard and leaking precome onto his stomach where it lies. It twitches sharply when Kyungsoo sucks on the side of his neck, leaving another trail of marks there as he slides a second finger in. By the time Kyungsoo reaches the third finger, Sehun is falling apart more than he ever has in the past, a garbled mixture of sobs and cries spilling from his mouth when Kyungsoo crooks his fingers at just the right spot.
"Kyungsoo- hyung, please," Sehun begs, trying to writhe in Kyungsoo's tight grip.
"Please what?" Kyungsoo prompts, somewhat breathlessly, still continuing his relentless assault. He brings his other hand to loosely encircle Sehun's dick, thumb barely brushing along the vein on the underside.
"Please touch me," pleads Sehun, ready to cry with want. "Please fuck me."
Kyungsoo's fingers tighten, sliding up to the head to run the base of his thumb along the slit, slicking the precome there down along the shaft until Sehun is trying to buck upwards into his grip. Kyungsoo gives it a few more teasing tugs before he pulls back completely, Sehun's ass clenching down on emptiness when Kyungsoo's fingers leave him. Sehun throws his head back and groans. By the time he turns his head enough to see, Kyungsoo has already grabbed the bottle of lube he'd dropped to the bed, covering his own erection as his hand moves in slow strokes. His lips look red and wet and thoroughly kissed, and they curve upwards at the needy whine that leaves Sehun's throat then. When he settles between Sehun's legs and presses slowly into him, his mouth swallows all the sounds Sehun makes. Sehun's long legs wrap around Kyungsoo, pulling him deeper in with each thrust as he moves to meet the motion of Kyungsoo's hips. His hands scrabble at the bedsheets, at Kyungsoo's back, at anything that can ground him and keep him held in some poor semblance of together. He's babbling something, but he can't tell if it's Kyungsoo's name, or "please", or "don't go." Sehun does know that when Kyungsoo reaches between them to stroke him to completion, the only word seared into his mind in a long, shuddering flash of white is "stay."
When he finds he can breathe again, Kyungsoo has also stilled, lips brushing feathered kisses onto Sehun's jaw. Kyungsoo makes as if to move, to roll off of him onto the bed, but Sehun tenses his arms around Kyungsoo's shoulders and he silently takes the hint. He stays there, shifting only enough to slide out of Sehun and into a comfortable spot, and eventually they both drift away into sleep wrapped around each other.
When Sehun wakes the next morning to the sound of raindrops beating against the window, the bed is cold and Kyungsoo's suitcase is gone. There's a note on the kitchen counter.
Sorry, I'll be tied up in meetings all trip. We can talk about it when I get back.
-Kyungsoo
Sehun stands holding the note in one hand and his phone in the other for a long moment before dialing quickly. Kyungsoo's phone goes straight to voicemail. The dim light from outside paints the apartment a cool, impersonal gray, the little shadows and reflections of the rain on the windows trickling across the floor in little races as Sehun hesitates in the doorway. It takes him another ten minutes to make a decision and some toast before he sits down at the kitchen table and scrolls through his contacts, looking for one uncalled number.
"Hello?" says a groggy voice.
"Jongin?" asks Sehun. "You said I could call you if I ever needed help."
He takes a deep breath.
"I need help now."
In the forty-five minutes it takes Jongin to borrow a friend's car and pull up in front of the apartment complex, Sehun manages to throw most of his things into boxes, bags, and suitcases. He takes his clothes, his paintings and supplies, and anything intensely personal to him - everything else he leaves to Kyungsoo to deal with. The lines between their belongings are too blurred anyway to say for certain what belongs to whom. He takes a moment to look at the mussed and tangled bedclothes before leaving them there untouched. Kyungsoo can face that when he comes back. His life takes them three trips to load into Jongin's car, and then they pull away.
The building they arrive in front of is an old three-story thing that looks like a row townhouse picked up out of the midst of its brethren and set down between two larger, hulking modern highrises, their sheets of reflective glass a contrast to the faded red brick and the olive trim around the roof and windows. When they step inside, it turns out that Jongin's place is the exact opposite of Kyungsoo's, and for a moment Sehun thinks he's walked into a thrift store instead of someone's home. The more Sehun looks around the room, the more odd objects he finds tucked into corners, his vision crowded like he's looking at a spot the differences picture. Nothing there looks like it belongs in a set with anything else. The overall effect is that of unified chaos. For Sehun, who has lived in a residence shared between two people with lives dedicated to meticulous design, it's an almost overwhelming level of visual information.
"Sorry about all the mess," Jongin apologizes. "The place belonged to my grandma before she died, and most of her stuff is still here."
"She left it to your family?" Sehun asks.
"She left it to me actually," says Jongin, sheepishly pleased. "I own the place now. No rent required. 'S pretty sweet, considering a book shop clerk's paycheck."
"Wow." Sehun is impressed, even as his brain churns to make sense of the clutter and resolve it into paintable blocks and shapes.
"Yeah, I just never really moved any of the stuff out of here, especially on this floor." Jongin joins Sehun in looking around. "I don't know it feels like bits of her are still floating around here, like her ghost would appear and tell me not to track mud across the rug if I tried to mess with anything, you know?"
He leads Sehun to a staircase out in the hall, jerking his head upwards towards the second floor.
"I mostly just live up there," he says. "All my stuff is up there anyway."
On the second floor, Sehun can see a door cracked open to show a messy bedroom, a tiny bathroom with faded blue and white tiles, and one other room almost completely empty, save for a bare table and a single bed with an undressed mattress. Jongin brings him to this last room and gestures around at the empty space.
"You can stay here if you like," he says. "No one ever uses it, so you could stay as long as you like."
He leans closer with a conspiratorial look on his face.
"It's the room she died in," he confides.
Sehun must look disconcerted because Jongin immediately steps back and waves both his hands in denial.
"That was a lie," he says quickly. "I'm lying. She died in a hospital. It- I'm shutting up now."
Sehun nods slowly, still looking at him.
"Okay," he nods. "It sounds good to me."
A beat of silence.
"Thanks," Sehun adds. "For. You know. Letting me stay."
Jongin smiles.
"I haven't even shown you the best part," he says. "Come on."
They make their way up the second staircase out into large attic room. The entire floor space of the lower levels is left open under the slanting roof with its thick support beams. The room is lit entirely by the light streaming in from the windows at the front and back, one side showing the street and sidewalk, the other looking out into a small urban approximation of a backyard - largely paved with what looks like cobblestones, but with four large garden beds full of a generous mixture of flowers, herbs, and weeds.
"I think I've been up here about twice in my life," Jongin is saying, "But when I thought about it I realized that it's probably a great place to paint. I mean it's got a lot of room and windows all over so it gets plenty of light all the time. And it's pretty nice even in the summer if you've got a fan going, but I guess I should probably get a space heater if you wanted to paint in the winter or anything-"
He breaks off, embarrassed.
"I mean. I don't know how long you were planning to stay or anything. But it's not like it's crowded here, and there's no rent to pay. You can feel free to stay as long as you like."
Sehun realizes he should say something, but it occurs to him that he doesn't have any idea of how long he plans to stay either. He had run away with no real course of action planned beyond those first few steps of "get out", for which Jongin had so kindly volunteered his help. The thought of imposing longer than he has to makes Sehun uncomfortable, but it appears that he has a roof over his head at least while he figures out where to go from here.
"Thanks," he says, since an answer of some sort seems to be expected. "I don't know how long it'll take to find somewhere else, so thanks. It looks great."
Jongin gives him a pleased smile.
"Let's get all your stuff moved in then," he says, rubbing his hands together.
It takes them a few trips up and down to move all the bags in, and Sehun carries his painting supplies up into the attic at Jongin's insistence. It seems a good place to store all his finished paintings, his spare easels working as temporary holders for some of them, while Sehun props up the rest of them along the walls. He and Jongin stand in the center of the attic, staring around at the canvases lined up all around them. Jongin taps his lip thoughtfully.
“You know,” he says, “I bet I’ve got better stuff for these downstairs than just leaving them all over the floor. Hang on, let me go take a look.”
He disappears down the stairs. Sehun is rooted to the spot, caged in by all the transplanted memories he’s brought with him, caught and pinned under layers of pigment, the last four years of his life inextricably mixed into each stroke.
Suddenly the lines twist into something unbearably ugly, the colors mottled and sloppy - the very sight of it makes Sehun feel angry and ill. He stands there in that attic, surrounded by what might as well be children's fingerpaintings covering the canvases he had been so proud of, and without thinking he grabs the bucket of paint thinner he uses to clean his brushes and splashes it all over the nearest painting. He claws and smears at it in rage until paint and turpentine run through his fingers, the red of the bricks making it look like handfuls of blood. He smudges the lines until there's nothing left but a morass of blurred colors before he turns to the next ugly canvas, kicking it over and watching it clatter to the floor. The thinner pouring down on it blends with the sound of the rain outside as it hits the canvas and splashes off into thick globules of color. The paintings arranged around the room start to run and sag off of their easels like Dali's clocks, while Sehun turns to the last man standing... "501 Main Street" sits there staring back at him, a mocking reminder. Sehun feels dizzy, but he's not sure if it's the fumes or the heavy drumming on the roof or his own failure. He raises his arm again to dash the acid in the face of the last of Kyungsoo's ghosts.
"What are you doing?"
A hand grabs his wrist. Sehun turns around to see Jongin holding him back, his other hand covering his mouth as his eyes water, coughing through the thick, chemical-filled air. Sehun looks around at the dripping paintings trailing their colors all across the floor.
"I wanted it gone," he says.
"You're so stupid," Jongin takes the dregs of the turpentine from him before moving to throw open all the windows. "An artist should know better than to work without ventilation. I thought you were supposed to know things."
Sehun laughs hollowly and sinks down to the floor.
"What have I ever done to make you think that?" he asks, and then shivers.
Jongin comes over to kneel next to him, holding something out. It's an old wooden picture frame, carved with cloud-like tufts and curved waves, with a faded brass plaque at the very bottom, on which the words were just visible, "FORSAN ET HÆC OLIM MEMINISSE IUVABIT."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Sehun mutters, turning over the frame in his hands. Jongin sits back on his heels.
"My grandma always said it meant something like 'someday we're going to look back at this and laugh'. It's an old quote, but I thought it might fit," He looks up at the surviving painting. "Even when the storms destroyed everything and he lost people he cared about, this sailor knew it was important to remember. I always liked that story."
"What story?" Sehun asks, the words on the frame blurring before his eyes.
The rain pours through the open windows and down Sehun's face. Jongin's arms creep around his shoulders and his voice is low and comforting as he tells the story of a ruined city, a headlong flight, and the rebirth of an empire.
Sehun refuses to go up those stairs again for days afterwards. Kyungsoo calls after a while, Sehun assumes when he’s returned to the empty apartment, but he lets it ring. There are fifteen calls the first day. There are ten the next day, and three the day after that. Sehun doesn’t answer any of them, deleting the messages left without listening. He can’t stay away from work more than a day, for fear of losing his job, but he stays all but locked into his borrowed room at all other times, the curtains pulled over the window, and the covers pulled over his head. He knows he’s being stupid, but Sehun thinks that if he tried to walk out there and smile and live his life like before, he might just shatter, the edges of his mouth brittle and stiff when he tries to pull them upwards. It’s Jongin who pulls him out by force when he decides he’s had enough, claiming that he’s terrified Sehun will just stop breathing in there one day and Jongin will never know until he has to go clean up the gooey mess. Sehun wrinkles his nose at the image, and it’s the first expression he’s made since he arrived that feels real. He lets Jongin drag him down onto the first floor where Jongin appears to have started a massively ill-guided dusting project. Sehun sits on a rickety three-legged stool in the corner, dustcloth held in one hand while he watches Jongin take the lid off a tiny china box and blow into it, coughing at the cloud that emerges. Jongin pulls each box out of the massive wardrobes with one hand, convinced that every single one is full of vindictive mice, probably with rabies.
“I swear, I’m going to open one of these things and like fifteen mice are going to scatter all over the place,” Jongin groans, peeling back a box flap with two fingers. “One of these boxes is going to be filled with nothing but shriveled mice carcasses. This is the worst thing ever.”
Sehun is about to point out that this was all Jongin’s plan to begin with, but before he can open his mouth, Jongin lets out what he will later claim is most definitely not a shriek, and leaps back flailing at the moths suddenly flying all around his face. The laugh that leaves Sehun’s mouth surprises him, hand coming up to cover it as soon as he realizes. It feels wrong somehow to laugh right now, even at such an absurd scene, as if a few panicking insects are enough to fix the gash that’s been torn through his psyche. His eyes flicker up to see Jongin watching him, his own dustcloth now tossed over one shoulder.
“It’s okay to laugh, you know,” Jongin says. “Even if you’re sad. It’s just something people do.”
Sehun looks down at his lap where his hands are twisted together. He feels rather than sees Jongin come sit down next to him.
“It’s like at my grandma’s wake,” he says. “When my granddad got so drunk he started to sing some old song he learned in the army, and all that that implies. I mean, some of those verses were actually filthy, and the look on some of the old ladies faces- My mom started to laugh so hard she had to sit down, and then she burst into tears but she was still laughing.”
He sees the weird look Sehun is giving him and flushes red to the tips of his ears.
“I guess my point is that even when things are really bad, it’s still okay to laugh when something’s funny,” he finishes. “It doesn’t mean you’re any less sad, or that being sad doesn’t mean anything.”
“Are you like some kind of philosopher or something?” Sehun asks. “I mean you’ve got all this weird advice all the time.”
“No.” It’s Jongin’s turn to look at his lap now. “I just have a lot of time to think about things and then I say what I mean.”
Sehun picks up a painted figurine of a fisherman and stares into the jolly little black dots it has for eyes.
“It sounds like all I do is talk about my family,” Jongin sighs. “I swear I have actual friends. I’m not completely lame.”
“Yes, you are,” Sehun says, feeling like he’s going to laugh again at the offended look Jongin gives him. “It’s okay, though. I think if it’s okay to laugh, it’s probably okay to be lame sometimes too.”
“I think it probably is,” Jongin says, and elbows Sehun off the stool.
Sehun makes a point of actually seeing the sun more over the next few days. Even though he still refuses to set foot up the attic stairs, he finds ways to occupy his time outside the restaurant, such as weeding all the garden beds behind Jongin’s building. He has no idea what plants are what, but the internet is an invaluable tool, since he can’t even tell the difference between mint and tree saplings. He does wish he had thought to look up poison ivy earlier, so that Jongin doesn’t have to make a late night expedition to the drug store in search of calamine lotion and rolls and rolls of cloth bandage, and so that he doesn’t have to show up to his next restaurant shift looking like a half-finished mummy.
Even without paints, Sehun still has plenty to do when he abandons his failed gardening project. He realizes his phone, among other things are still listed under the old address and under Kyungsoo’s name. Before he does anything else, that situation must be remedied. He stays on the line with the phone company for over an hour, trying to split his line off of the plan without changing his number, until he realizes there’s really no reason to keep the number at all. When he’s asked for a new address, he tries to give Jongin’s, but realizes he doesn’t even know it. Sehun tells the woman to hold on, and sprints out the door to look at the building number, and then further until he finds a street sign. He pushes past Jongin coming back in the door, and Jongin doubles over laughing when he finds out what Sehun’s mad dash had been about.
“You could just ask me, you know,” he wheezes.
Sehun stares before flipping him off.
The fact is that Sehun is not good at asking for help. He’d been driven to it simply because he had nowhere else to go, but the idea that there is someone there to answer any question he might have is a foreign concept in his mind. Not unpleasant, he thinks, but unfamiliar.
Jongin comments eventually that Sehun’s roots are beginning to show. Or rather, he starts calling Sehun “Neapolitan”, explaining that his roots are the chocolate, the pink hair is strawberry, and his pasty pale nerd skin is the vanilla. While Sehun beats him viciously with his fists until he surrenders, he ponders over the fact that he’s still here. He certainly never intended to stay long enough for his roots to show, and yet he has yet to even start looking for another place to stay. With some reluctance, he starts pulling up browser tabs with apartment searches. He keeps them hidden, minimizing them the instant Jongin comes into the room, since the few times he’s been too slow Jongin has worked hard to mask the disappointment on his face. Nothing affordable in the area really opens up, so his searches become more half-hearted and infrequent as time goes on. Jongin really does seem more than happy to let Sehun stay as long as he wants, and Sehun’s things are slowly spreading out across the second floor, spilling down even a bit onto the first. The other day, Sehun had found his socks under the leg of an antique side table where they’d somehow been kicked, causing him to whisper an embarrassed apology to whatever disembodied spirit of Jongin’s grandmother might still be in that room. His things will become harder and harder to gather up and move on the longer he stays here, but Sehun can’t really muster the energy to care. As long as Jongin doesn’t mind, Sehun will just stay here a little longer.
He does get fed up with his new nickname after a while though, so he ends up dragging Jongin out of the book store one afternoon to do something about it. Jongin belittles any suggestions Sehun raises of hair salons, instead leading them through the door of the same drug store where he’d gotten the poison ivy treatments and heading straight to the hair dye aisle. Sehun tries to dig his heels into the sidewalk, and Jongin all but has to pry his fingers off the doorjamb as they enter the store. Jongin claims that it’s ridiculous to spend entire paychecks on a one-time dye job that’ll have to be touched up in a month or so anyway. Sehun says it’s taking your hair into your own two hands without a professional there to gauge color balances and blending shades and what if he ends up with some kind of horrible eyesore on his head he would actually have to drown himself in Jongin’s grandmother’s bathtub. Jongin raises an eyebrow and says if he’s really that scared then sure they can go spend 40 hours’ worth of Sehun’s wages to get a human color wheel to stand over them. Sehun has always had control over the color he lets into his life, trusting only a select few people to advise or choose for him - even as a child insisting on a certain shade of green for his school backpack. When he thinks about it, though, the color he dyes his hair is a remarkably small thing to spend energy getting worked up over. Even if it turns out messy and painful, his hair will just grow out in time anyway, and his boss has yet to comment on the pink hair. Still, Sehun refuses to just give in cheerfully. He looks dubiously at the rows of boxes, over at Jongin, and then back to the boxes.
“I have no idea how to dye my own hair,” he says flatly.
Jongin scoffs.
“It’s not hard,” he says. “I’ve had to do it before for friends. Actually, the hard part will be bleaching your roots enough without snapping your hair off completely.”
“That happens?” Sehun recoils. Jongin pats him on the shoulder consolingly.
“I’ve never had it happen,” Jongin says, in a soothing tone of voice. “I’m like eighty percent sure I can do it. Like eighty-nine percent sure. What about green?”
He picks up a bottle, ignoring the hands creeping towards his neck to throttle him.
“I hate green,” says Sehun, fingers twitching. “It would look terrible with the pink too.”
“Everything’s going to look terrible with the pink,” Jongin says reasonably. “We just have to pick the best color possible.”
“And you thought that would be green? Can’t I just do it all pink again?”
“Where’s your sense of adventure? How do you feel about orange?”
“Are you trying to ruin my life?”
Sehun glares at the assorted colors.
“Let’s just do all of them,” he says.
“You mean like in streaks?” Jongin looks far too delighted at the prospect. “We can do that.”
They end up getting five different colors and Sehun is back with his head over the edge of the ancient bathtub before he can protest, the acrid bleach burning his nose for the second time in his life. This time is slightly less boring, and slightly more terrifying, since Jongin spends the entire time regaling him with tales of dye jobs gone horribly wrong. Apparently Jongin knows people who get bored with their hair color after five weeks, which has given him plenty of secondhand stories, if not personal experiences. By the time he’s finally standing in the shower, washing the dye out, Sehun has resigned himself to ending up with something resembling baby vomit on his head. Jongin stands just outside the curtain to hand him a ratty old towel when he’s done and to inspect the final product. When Sehun steps out with the towel wrapped tightly around him, Jongin’s eyes widen.
“It’s great,” he says, looking admiringly at Sehun’s hair. “It actually turned out really good. No, really, look.”
He grabs Sehun’s arm and drags him to face the mirror. The multiple colors now make Sehun resemble something like a toucan, he thinks, but the effect is not entirely unpleasant. He turns his head, noting how Jongin has blessedly managed to keep the colors from blending together into a muddy mess. It’s a good dye job, he has to admit.
“You look like a tropical bird,” Jongin grins.
His hand is still wrapped around Sehun’s arm, a fact that he belatedly seems to realize, jerking his hand back like he’s been burned. The knowledge seems to trickle over Jongin’s face that Sehun is still fresh out of the shower and wrapped in nothing but a towel. He backs quickly out of the bathroom with his face burning, amidst hasty mumbles about “clothes” and “see you after it’s dry”. The door closes and Sehun turns to a reflection that looks to be just as confused as he is.
Armed with a new hair color (or colors, technically), Sehun ventures back into the attic and back to his paints. Jongin has been back up to clean up all the paint and ruined canvases, so there’s no upsetting evidence left of Sehun’s previous breakdown. Sehun wonders vaguely what happened to all the destroyed paintings, but he finds that he doesn’t actually care all that much. His work on the clouds is intact, and this way it feels almost like a fresh start, like everything before his project has been cut off and thrown away along with the old canvases. He sets up his easel, covers the white of the stretched cotton with a layer of warm brown gray, and begins to paint.
Jongin comes up to see him occasionally when he’s not otherwise occupied. He knows absolutely nothing about painting, it turns out, and his questions often make Sehun stop to think about why he’s doing what he’s doing. Jongin tells Sehun to kick him out if he’s being annoying, but Sehun finds his presence amusing and refreshing. He finishes the painting more quickly than any of the others, so he starts a new one almost right away. In between long stretches of time in front of the easel and shifts at the restaurant, Sehun takes to going on long walks. It’s a new area to get used to, and there’s no better way than on foot. He works his way through all the little shop windows on both sides of the street and through all the little restaurants, bringing back different take-out each night and critiquing it pretentiously, until Jongin gets rice caught in his sinuses from laughing so hard.
The range of “his territory”, as he begins to think of it, grows wider and wider. One warm morning, Sehun is standing at the counter of a bustling coffee shop when he catches sight of Kyungsoo again. He freezes, hands full of drink and half-unwrapped straw, and just gapes. He must be seeing things, must be hallucinating, but no. No, there he is, alive and in the flesh and just how Sehun remembers him. And yes, there’s Junmyeon too. Sehun watches them stand up from their table. He watches Junmyeon pick up his trash and bat Kyungsoo’s hands away before clearing up his too. He watches the way Kyungsoo’s eyes follow Junmyeon to the trashcan and back, and his vision tunnels around the way Junmyeon takes Kyungsoo’s elbow as they gather their things to leave.
They’re almost to the door when Junmyeon catches Sehun’s eye, gently turning Kyungsoo away so that he won't catch sight of him. Later, when Sehun has time to think over it, he'll be grateful, knowing that having to speak to Kyungsoo and pretend that everything was okay and that his heart wasn't being ground into a fine powder the entire time would have been more than he could have dealt with. Right now, though, it hurts.
He watches Kyungsoo walk out the door with Junmyeon's arm around him. Kyungsoo turns just enough for Sehun to catch a glimpse of his profile, and the smile on his face is painfully familiar - the same one he used to give when Sehun would make an absurdly uninformed comment about some building. It's a smile full of indulgence and endearment that makes Sehun's eyes prickle so much, he has to turn away and stare into the cream carafes until he hears the chime of the bells on the door as it swings shut.
People are jostling and reaching around him to fix their drinks, and Sehun knows he can't stay here. He blinks furiously as he stumbles from the building, his vision still too blurry to really see where he's going. He's three blocks away before he realizes he's left his drink sitting back there on the counter, but he can't go back for it because the overwhelming need to be somewhere else is just too strong. Sehun doesn't know where he's going, just knows he has to keep moving away, not stopping to look back. He can't stop to think about Kyungsoo, about his smile, about the way he looked curled up against the sheets in the morning light. He can't think about the way he always sits too long with one leg tucked underneath him, so that he lets out a startled yelp when he finally stands up. The way he doesn't say anything when he sees Sehun getting frustrated with his work, but sits closer than usual, just his presence a show of support. Or the way he laughs with all his teeth showing when Sehun kicks him indignantly after a smart-ass comment about Sehun's favorite movie, and- when did he stop thinking about Kyungsoo?
Sehun's mind reels when he realizes that he doesn't even know when the switch happened, but it's true. These are all things Jongin does. Jongin's the one he targets his jokes to now, and Jongin's the one he first wants to run to and tell things. Sehun forces himself to think specifically of Kyungsoo, picturing him as clearly as he can, and it still hurts. He's still not healed from that, but when he thinks about Jongin and about how Jongin complains whenever Sehun comes to bother him at the bookstore, and yet can't hide the smile tugging the corners of his mouth... then Sehun thinks that he might be okay someday soon. His steps have led him to a building, and he looks up to see the open window with his easel there waiting, and he sees the new door sign he painted with an unflattering picture of Jongin and the words "beware of dog." Sehun knows that when he thinks about "home" now, this is what he sees. It's not perfect - not yet, and maybe not for a long while - but Sehun feels lighter than he has in months when he realizes that, for now, this is enough. This is all he needs.
The sky Sehun is painting is almost blue.