#30: Maybe, baby
Prompt: #30
From: whatsehun
Title: Maybe, baby
Rating: G
Word Count: 4,200
Summary: Luhan signs up to be a camp counsellor for a beautiful stranger.
It is a cold January morning, and Luhan’s the only person in the street, decked out in about 6 layers of clothing and tripping his way because he can’t see really clearly over Jongdae’s Pororo scarf that’s wrapped about his neck and half his face. “Deer of the dawn,” he chants to himself as if it was his destiny to be up and about at 5am every day- “I am the fucking deer of the shitty dawn, damn it.”
None of this was supposed to happen, by the way. Luhan is a rich, eligible bachelor- but South Korea was his choice, and he had stubbornly argued his way into freedom and launched himself head first into a poor man’s life. Mummy Dearest sends him a cheque once a month for his expenses, but she rudely writes it from the Bank of China, which makes it take ages for the money to be wired into his own pocket since there’s only one branch in the whole of Seoul and Luhan’s too busy between university and his barista job to cash it in. When he does, it’s to pay off his months’ worth of rent back to Jongdae and also his hefty school fees. It’s tough, but he loves his freedom more than anything else, so he doesn’t really mind it.
He usually takes the ungodly timings of the morning shift over at Chanyeol’s dog café, since he’s packed his tutorials mostly in the afternoons to match with Minseok, whom he also spends the evenings with, usually on soccer or cycling. It’s also in his favour since the café isn’t crowded in the mornings at all, and most of his duty just involves filling up the shelf with the day’s cakes and sandwiches, making breakfast for the resident dogs and playing with the slightly younger puppies. The few people who come in are either lonely elderly or housewives with their children. Luhan isn’t that hot about the latter group of people- toddlers tend to make a major mess and scare themselves till they pee (hence a greater mess) or till the dogs start a barking rampage at the crying babies. But on good days where no one enters at all, he gets to enjoy his own cup of latte and use Monggu’s tummy as an armrest while he types away at his assignments on his laptop at one of the café’s tiny tables. Monggu is by far Luhan’s favourite, because the tiny thing sleeps like a log and looks at him with the cutest puppy eyes ever when Luhan calls out his name (it boosts his self-confidence to think that Monggu loves him back too).
Luhan has no idea whether Lady Luck was smiling on him with a dagger behind her back because life decides to throw a curveball when this Really Pale Handsome dude with such a pretty face walks into the café on that cold and unlikely January morning with not one, not two, - hold on- three babbling children in tow and oh dear isn’t he just perfect.
In a blink of an eye the children then turn into satan’s ambassadors and start screaming and clamouring at the boy to “Save me from the bad doggy! Hyung carry me, carry me!” once Honggik, their most tame and gentle husky, comes nosing curiously at the three wild young things, and Luhan just stands there and watches the love of his life trying his best to calm them down, sweeping two of the children up at the same time and being helpless about the last one, whom promptly ran and hid under the furthest table. He shoots Luhan a look of despair, and that was their first eye contact- Luhan hopes his barista apron doesn’t look too tragic- then remembers that he’s a human being capable of rendering assistance to Pale Dude and he almost falls limb over limb the counter while trying to cross over to help. Honggik turns his head over at the crash Luhan makes and shoots him a face saying, “Even I can be more graceful than that,” then softly pads back into the dogs’ pen, without as much as letting out a small snort.
“Manse ya… Manse!” the guy calls out to the little boy under the table, who scampers right out and then suddenly all 4 of them are out of the café in the blink of an eye, leaving nothing but the soft tinkle of the windchimes hanging on the glass door.
There used to be two parts to Luhan’s life, pre-Korea and post-Korea, and perhaps when the skies and the grounds were one of legends-too much of that dumb boyband exo was mushing up his brain, thanks to Chanyeol who only knows how to play their songs in the café 24/7, because one of the guys named Suho came into the café before and signed on their walls- but well, maybe a new world had opened up today anyway.
It was only about 2 weeks after that that he met up with Jongin, who tells him of this childcare extraordinaire who’s babysitting Jongin’s younger cousins, and also happen to be “Really hot and is probably should be a model but still not my type” (directly quoted).
“His name is Oh Sehun,” Jongin brandishes a piece of fry in his left hand at Luhan’s face, and proceeds to bite on two more in his right.
“And?”
“And one plate of fries is only going to warrant you one piece of information, Mr Lu. Why are you so curious anyway?”
Luhan wordlessly and very much reluctantly pushes his dish of winglets across the table, because his gut feeling tells him that it’s the same handsome boy? man? who came into the café with the kids that day, and Jongin raises an eyebrow.
“Well. He’s a regular camp counselor. Can’t stop talking about this brunch of triplets who’s signed up for his camp this year. It’s sort of a trending place for toddlers? Like adventure hikes and trips to Pororo land. That kind of camp.”
And then again, Luhan’s life should have never amounted to as much adventure as the puts on the issued jacket with “Sunshine Playland” emblazoned across the back, fluffs up his bangs with his fingers and then stations himself at the main gate to welcome their adorable little campers. He’s signed up as a temporary camp counselor at the place where the limited edition Oh Sehun was said to be working at for the next three weeks or so, and being an active and the manly man in their future blossoming relationship Luhan takes up the challenge and vows capture his heart blahblahblah - but love at first sight sucks because it is embarrassing, as Luhan admits, he falls too quickly, it’s a trust fall where he knows no one will catch him and he will just end up face planting the ground- he’s uselessly shallow this way but Luhan just gets really really attracted to physical appearances? And it gets worse because he’s not that young anymore, this whole stint in Korea is probably the last summer dreams he can afford, before going back to China and being a proper, tax-paying, office-working, regular young Chinese adult.
So Luhan promises himself that this is the last time that he really goes bonkers, signs his life away to this camp thing for an absolute stranger, and is currently hanging out with toddlers and two other same mushy brained counselors who seem to fit the roles of assassins better. The tall one is luckily Chinese and named Tao and the tiny one called Do Kyungsoo, who are currently busy with registration, which leaves Luhan with the duty of welcoming everyone and also ensuring that the kids do not inhale any small toys even before camp’s begun.
Oh Sehun materializes as suddenly as he’d leave the café that day- with a crying tiny human in his embrace and a quiet, “Could you carry her for me?” Then Luhan realizes that his arms are packed with a crying baby and whoops, she’s kinda upside down and lopsided but hey, it’s basically his first time holding a child, and Luhan stands stunned and probably very uncomfortable for the baby. Sehun drops his bags off in an inner room and runs back, takes a total of 8 seconds to judge Luhan and wonder how on earth did he land this job and finally, finally, with a bright laugh, takes the baby back.
“I’m uh, new. Yeah. I’m Luhan.” Luhan starts, but he’s basically lost for words because there’s nothing for them to talk about right now, really.
“You’re the barista, aren’t you? The dog café that day? Sorry if the babies scared the dogs, I didn’t exactly plan that trip there…” Sehun’s voice trails off as he smiles softly, with his eyes turning into pretty crescents and maybe Luhan has really gone nuts because he feels his legs give way just that tiny bit, and Sehun turns away suddenly because another kid is vying for his attention (stupid little suckers that’s what they are) and Luhan catches an intense whiff of that rather strong cologne. He’s tall, with beautiful proportions head to toe with that set of broad shoulders. No chance, no way, he wouldn’t say he’s in love.
Luhan is thrown head first into Childcare 101 as Kyungsoo hits the back of his head not so gently and tells him to get the children into formation and they will be “Setting off to their first initiation!!!!!” The huge smile on Tao’s face is eerily distracting because of his really thick eyeliner on his cat-like eyes but it was something that wasn’t going to deter parents from letting their children sign up for the camp, because of the really holistic and hands-on curriculum developed by a major child development company that the camp was under. They’re the Myeongdong branch, aimed to help busy city parents take care of their children for the holidays or weekends. Each camp over the holidays lasts for 5 days, and there are only about 12 children under the 4 counselors. The average age of the children were about 6, but Luhan’s brain categorizes them all into ‘babies’ anyway. And the triplets are here- same three as the ones he saw with Sehun that day, and once they’ve stepped into the place they ran over and casually draped themselves all over Sehun. Luhan wasn’t jealous when they took turns to give him a kiss on the lips, with the cutest giggle from each child. Luhan swears wasn’t even looking when Sehun kisses them back all over their chubby faces- something which the second-born triplet, Minguk, seemed to like the best as he hugs onto Sehun’s head tight and demands him to do it again. It was lethally cute to a point that Luhan was positive he was getting diabetes just by standing within 2 metres radius.
Unexpectedly, the eldest triplet comes up to Luhan and tugs on a corner of his shirt, signaling for the counselor to squat down, and whispered into his ears, “Ahjusshi, are there bad doggies here?”
Luhan couldn’t hide his smile even though he’s just been called an ahjusshi. “Nope”- he glances a bit at the kid’s nametag- “Nope Daehannie, no bad doggies here.” Daehan still seemed a bit unsure about it, so Luhan takes his hand and leads him in a mini tour around the place, and Daehan seemed pretty satisfied with their facilities (especially their jungle theme playroom!!) and dog-less environment that they'll be in for the next few days.
Feeling more at ease with the kids, Luhan sets off to prepare for the first activity ever, their initiation hike. They’ve got to take a bus to Bukhan Mountain, a national park within Seoul itself, and Luhan was paired with Sehun (it was rigged, Luhan picked that piece of paper he saw Sehun threw onto the table when they all drew lots). The 2 teams take 5 children and a backpack each, hoards into the bus together.
Fast forward 2 hours and Luhan is about to die. Luhan is about to die from hitching one kid on his right hip (he thinks this boy is called Seoeon) and holding his twin brother's hand (maybe that one is Seoeon?). It feels like carrying a moving sack of potatoes, and he’s got to constantly make sure that the little one who’s walking doesn’t trip over rocks or twigs or anything. There is nothing romantic about bringing kids out on a treacherous walk in a forest, and he doesn't even have hands to wipe off his sweaty forehead. Maybe Sehun will do it for him and they will have eye contact and fall in love but no, Mr Oh himself is completely enthralled with the idea of being on a nature hike and generally making unecessary noises: Woooaaaaaaah, Manse! Manse, look at that! Daehan ah, there's a yellow bird, come here and hold my hand, don't let go of hyung-- wooooaaaaahhhhh woah ah ah ah. Minguk, don't eat that!!!
Luhan would gladly surgically attach his own hand into Oh Sehun's palm but that will probably not happen in a million years at this rate, because Sehun loves, adores and pampers on children and not crazy rich Chinese men (maybe Luhan was more of a "crazy, rich Chinese man". The comma is crucial.) Luhan pauses to adjust Probably Seoeon higher up his hipbone, and then the kid suddenly stuffs his own tiny hand into his mouth, and begins to struggle with saying words. "Food," the twin who has been walking (Maybe Seoeon) helpfully supplies, and pats his own round tummy at the same time. "Food, fooood."
"Sehun? Sehun, I think the kids are hungry?" Luhan looks concernedly at Probably Seoeon and hopes he doesn't get the saliva on Luhan's shirt - and there he goes and wipes his hand across the counselor's polo. Great.
Sehun stops his gay, jaunty walk with the triplets and announces snack time, bends over to tap on the kids’ heads and Luhan checks out his ass and-
"Hyung, where's our backpack?"
Luhan stops in his tracks and oh dear, sweet baby jesus, they've left their backpack of food and diapers in the bus. Now what.
"Food, Sehun hyung, Manse's crackers, Manse's crackers!"
Luhan watches Sehun's face fall into one of guilt, and honestly Sehun looks like he's about to cry any time now. The end of the trail is probably another hour away, and Maybe Seoeon is stomping his feet and making screechy noises and Minguk copies him, while Daehan and Manse both squat sadly on the floor together, and damn those sad fluffy cheeks and shining eyes- if they don't get food soon both of them are probably getting sued and sent to hell for making these precious children hungry.
"Hyung, what are we gonna do? What are we gonna dooooo, oh my god." Sehun starts wringing his fingers together and looks all around them, but there's not a single soul in sight. Luhan wishes he was Katniss for a moment and start hunting rabbits or something. But he isn’t because he knows nothing about forests and doesn’t have boobs. Sehun is disintegrating into a pile of mental breakdown and he cuddles each kid, telling them that hyung is really sorry, it's his entire fault, let's get up and continue walking, alright?
The kids refuse to listen, and Manse promptly bursts into tears because he really wants his crackers, and he flops over, leaning onto his eldest brother and crying the life out of himself. Daehan tears up as well and the younger twins look visibly shocked at the waterworks display. Minguk attempts to soothe his brothers but his own tummy rumbled out the loudest. This was going nowhere, with 5 whiny kids and a depressed Sehun, they're not going to make it out of the forest trail within the next hour. So Luhan does what he thought was the best solution.
“CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, OH SEHUN. LAST ONE TO THE END IS A FAT PIG.”
Luhan sweeps up Maybe Seoeon and Daehan into his arms and does a mad sprint down forest trail, with Sehun hot on his heels along with 3 other kids in tow. He could hear them screaming, and it sounded like mostly Sehun making that noise - but nonetheless they’re up and about again, dashing down the forest path and on their way to the rest area at the end. In fact it was much nearer than they thought, and finally he sees a speck of Tao in the distance, waiting for them.
Luhan pauses to look at the children in his arms and realise they were laughing- they loved the speed of the run and the breeze in their faces, and with their minds momentarily taken off their hunger, Daehan claps and urges Luhan to run, “Again, again!” Luhan laughs and complies, hurtles through the last 100m or so of the trail, then ungraciously plonks the children onto one of the benches at the rest area.
Sehun turns up puffing and panting about 5 minutes later, “Hyung, hyung you didn’t even wait for me, Manse couldn’t catch up and I don’t have enough hands to carry him, why did you have to scare me like that!”
Luhan grins, chucks him a bottle of water he got from Tao and remarks as casually as he could: “You’re really cute, Oh Sehun.” He doesn’t want to give Sehun any ideas yet, but Luhan wouldn’t allow himself not to jump at the chance of basic flirting.
Perhaps it was the flush of red that was the result of the stupid run- but Sehun never looked at him directly in the eyes for the rest of the day.
The next 4 days were trips to hell and back, which involved a lot of food, naps and a top-secret marathon Robocar Poli session, which the parents were not supposed to know about. And over the course of time Luhan finds out that he likes the children, especially Seojun out of the 5 cutie pies (Luhan’s got his name right now), because he babbles nineteen to the dozen and Luhan often beams at his attempts to make a conversation. Seojun earned the right of being the only one who gets to call Luhan “Lulu”, pretty much because he can’t get his H’s properly yet.
The triplets were Sehun’s pride and joy, and Luhan loves to watch them do the activities together, with Sehun’s long arms wrapped around them as the squeeze at a tiny table to make sandwiches, or Manse requesting him for piggybacks and he would give one right away, or letting Daehan fuss over his hair and run his tiny hands all over it. He cares for them from the bottom of his heart, and honestly, Luhan knows that Sehun will definitely be a wonderful father in the future.
Sehun is a really nice, really sweet but shockingly young man-child, and Luhan’s mother taught him that everything before a ‘but’ is a lie. They have a 4 year age gap, and it feels like Luhan is watching his ideals fizzle out as Sehun childishly flings an unwanted piece of cabbage at him, his rather high pitched laughter ringing out as the cabbage shot misses and lands on Seoeon’s head instead. Sehun makes fun of his height, his baby face, and his grammar, but they’re comfortable now, he likes the way Sehun smiles and endearingly calls him hyung all the time. Sehun helps him when the kids become hard to handle, because he’s more experienced anyway, and they both find out they dance- and pester Kyungsoo until time is set aside each day for their “Disco session”, which involved a truck load of lightsticks that Sehun went out to buy with his own money and blasting of girl group songs. And Sehun makes sure to tuck Luhan in for nap time as well- while making lame excuses that “baby lulu has to sleep while hyung finish up fighting the war of calculus” (Luhan gets up and helps Sehun with his homework anyway.)
Math has always been Sehun’s worse subject ever, and he looks troubled and stressed out. Luhan plops to the floor and their arms brush as Luhan wriggles closer, since their tables are really small around here, and suddenly Sehun jerks away as though he’s been burnt, and quickly shuts his book with a soft mumble, “I can do these myself, thanks hyung.”, and moves on to the dinner table where Kyungsoo is preparing the materials for their next activity.
Luhan does notice the signs- Sehun not willing to come too close, the blushing, because Sehun’s pale skin betrays him so frequently, and he knows that it’s terrible- stringing Sehun along like this- because he’s quite sure that he has sort of given up on a relationship. It is great the way things are right now, and Sehun is actually becoming more and more like a younger brother to him. Luhan doesn’t want to play anymore, because suddenly he knows he can’t do it, there’s no real end to this and Sehun is precious to him, no one should get hurt. What would his parents even say if he brings Sehun home to meet them?
His parents aren’t homophobic- but the stereotypes and consequences of society- Luhan couldn’t bear to start on them. It was the one big reason why he’d cross the ocean and decide to live in South Korea by himself- he couldn’t stand his aunts’ chatter about the degenerate men and whatnot- he hated that people felt he had no right to love.
Maybe Luhan should kick himself in the face because he decides to run, to escape, to get away from Sehun as far as possible. He rips the summer dreams at the seams with his own hands, and on that day itself he tells Kyungsoo that he has a family emergency back in China, picks up his bags and vows never returns to the centre again.
Things go downhill and Luhan does mope in the café, and makes Minseok rearrange their schedules so he never takes the morning shift at the café anymore, even considered working at another new place but Chanyeol had pleaded that it was difficult to find another worker who’s good with the dogs. So Luhan now has to suffer an irregular schedule and too little sleep, and making sure he doesn’t go as close to the Myeongdong district as he can manage.
A month later the door of the café jerks open angrily, and Luhan doesn’t need to turn around, because the wind carries in Sehun’s scent. He looks a bit taller, and somehow gaunter than Luhan remembers. The café is not empty, and Sehun chooses to sit at the corner-most table and wait while Luhan fumbles and muddles up orders throughout the night. It was only after everyone else has left and Luhan shuts the dogs in for the night, that the younger man stands up and approaches him.
“Hyung,” Sehun’s tongue darts out and wets his lips, and he’s not looking at Luhan, “Hyung, I know I’m really stupid and all, but I miss you? I missed you so much? Luhan hyung.”
Luhan gives a small smile, “I had an emergency, didn’t Kyungsoo tell you?”
“He did. But that’s another thing isn’t it? I just miss you. I wish you’d come back after things settled but you didn’t. I thought that maybe the camp meant nothing you know? That you never thought of us. That I don’t mean anything. Maybe I wish I was something? The kids were probably in the way, but I don’t think you really looked at me, hyung. Or you probably did so you ran, huh?”
Sehun finally, finally, takes a tiny step closer, and Luhan wants to run again, but his legs stay so firmly rooted to the ground that he can’t really feel them anymore.
The long arms embrace him and Luhan is faint- maybe he’s been thinking about this, maybe he wants and needs it, to bury his face into Sehun’s broad chest and just letting the Sehun hold him, and hold him tight. Or perhaps he’s dreaming again and still in denial, because he can’t like Sehun, there’s no future for them, there’s nothing to look forward to-
“I can hear you thinking, hyung. But I’m going to say it, okay? I think I like you? Like, like you?”
~
They take things at baby steps, little things at a time, it’s Sehun’s first relationship, and mostly because they don’t know what to expect of each other and what to do. Dates sometimes turn into study sessions, Luhan falls asleep whenever they watch movies that don’t involve Iron Man, Sehun embarrassingly buys a huge bouquet of roses for no reason at all and Luhan doesn’t have a single vase at home. It’s weird, it’s sloppy, because Luhan is still so scared and Sehun stubborn, and slowly they tell each other that it’s okay, they’ll take the time and be okay. Parents will have to wait, and somehow they will get there.
They do go back to the camp together, and it makes things better because they pretend the children to be their own as they plan for the future, maybe they will be something, or maybe nothing, Sehun and Luhan, Luhan and Sehun, maybe?
Author’s Note: I don’t really know how a camp works……………. I probably butchered this to the moon and back sobs
From: whatsehun
Title: Maybe, baby
Rating: G
Word Count: 4,200
Summary: Luhan signs up to be a camp counsellor for a beautiful stranger.
It is a cold January morning, and Luhan’s the only person in the street, decked out in about 6 layers of clothing and tripping his way because he can’t see really clearly over Jongdae’s Pororo scarf that’s wrapped about his neck and half his face. “Deer of the dawn,” he chants to himself as if it was his destiny to be up and about at 5am every day- “I am the fucking deer of the shitty dawn, damn it.”
None of this was supposed to happen, by the way. Luhan is a rich, eligible bachelor- but South Korea was his choice, and he had stubbornly argued his way into freedom and launched himself head first into a poor man’s life. Mummy Dearest sends him a cheque once a month for his expenses, but she rudely writes it from the Bank of China, which makes it take ages for the money to be wired into his own pocket since there’s only one branch in the whole of Seoul and Luhan’s too busy between university and his barista job to cash it in. When he does, it’s to pay off his months’ worth of rent back to Jongdae and also his hefty school fees. It’s tough, but he loves his freedom more than anything else, so he doesn’t really mind it.
He usually takes the ungodly timings of the morning shift over at Chanyeol’s dog café, since he’s packed his tutorials mostly in the afternoons to match with Minseok, whom he also spends the evenings with, usually on soccer or cycling. It’s also in his favour since the café isn’t crowded in the mornings at all, and most of his duty just involves filling up the shelf with the day’s cakes and sandwiches, making breakfast for the resident dogs and playing with the slightly younger puppies. The few people who come in are either lonely elderly or housewives with their children. Luhan isn’t that hot about the latter group of people- toddlers tend to make a major mess and scare themselves till they pee (hence a greater mess) or till the dogs start a barking rampage at the crying babies. But on good days where no one enters at all, he gets to enjoy his own cup of latte and use Monggu’s tummy as an armrest while he types away at his assignments on his laptop at one of the café’s tiny tables. Monggu is by far Luhan’s favourite, because the tiny thing sleeps like a log and looks at him with the cutest puppy eyes ever when Luhan calls out his name (it boosts his self-confidence to think that Monggu loves him back too).
Luhan has no idea whether Lady Luck was smiling on him with a dagger behind her back because life decides to throw a curveball when this Really Pale Handsome dude with such a pretty face walks into the café on that cold and unlikely January morning with not one, not two, - hold on- three babbling children in tow and oh dear isn’t he just perfect.
In a blink of an eye the children then turn into satan’s ambassadors and start screaming and clamouring at the boy to “Save me from the bad doggy! Hyung carry me, carry me!” once Honggik, their most tame and gentle husky, comes nosing curiously at the three wild young things, and Luhan just stands there and watches the love of his life trying his best to calm them down, sweeping two of the children up at the same time and being helpless about the last one, whom promptly ran and hid under the furthest table. He shoots Luhan a look of despair, and that was their first eye contact- Luhan hopes his barista apron doesn’t look too tragic- then remembers that he’s a human being capable of rendering assistance to Pale Dude and he almost falls limb over limb the counter while trying to cross over to help. Honggik turns his head over at the crash Luhan makes and shoots him a face saying, “Even I can be more graceful than that,” then softly pads back into the dogs’ pen, without as much as letting out a small snort.
“Manse ya… Manse!” the guy calls out to the little boy under the table, who scampers right out and then suddenly all 4 of them are out of the café in the blink of an eye, leaving nothing but the soft tinkle of the windchimes hanging on the glass door.
There used to be two parts to Luhan’s life, pre-Korea and post-Korea, and perhaps when the skies and the grounds were one of legends-too much of that dumb boyband exo was mushing up his brain, thanks to Chanyeol who only knows how to play their songs in the café 24/7, because one of the guys named Suho came into the café before and signed on their walls- but well, maybe a new world had opened up today anyway.
It was only about 2 weeks after that that he met up with Jongin, who tells him of this childcare extraordinaire who’s babysitting Jongin’s younger cousins, and also happen to be “Really hot and is probably should be a model but still not my type” (directly quoted).
“His name is Oh Sehun,” Jongin brandishes a piece of fry in his left hand at Luhan’s face, and proceeds to bite on two more in his right.
“And?”
“And one plate of fries is only going to warrant you one piece of information, Mr Lu. Why are you so curious anyway?”
Luhan wordlessly and very much reluctantly pushes his dish of winglets across the table, because his gut feeling tells him that it’s the same handsome boy? man? who came into the café with the kids that day, and Jongin raises an eyebrow.
“Well. He’s a regular camp counselor. Can’t stop talking about this brunch of triplets who’s signed up for his camp this year. It’s sort of a trending place for toddlers? Like adventure hikes and trips to Pororo land. That kind of camp.”
And then again, Luhan’s life should have never amounted to as much adventure as the puts on the issued jacket with “Sunshine Playland” emblazoned across the back, fluffs up his bangs with his fingers and then stations himself at the main gate to welcome their adorable little campers. He’s signed up as a temporary camp counselor at the place where the limited edition Oh Sehun was said to be working at for the next three weeks or so, and being an active and the manly man in their future blossoming relationship Luhan takes up the challenge and vows capture his heart blahblahblah - but love at first sight sucks because it is embarrassing, as Luhan admits, he falls too quickly, it’s a trust fall where he knows no one will catch him and he will just end up face planting the ground- he’s uselessly shallow this way but Luhan just gets really really attracted to physical appearances? And it gets worse because he’s not that young anymore, this whole stint in Korea is probably the last summer dreams he can afford, before going back to China and being a proper, tax-paying, office-working, regular young Chinese adult.
So Luhan promises himself that this is the last time that he really goes bonkers, signs his life away to this camp thing for an absolute stranger, and is currently hanging out with toddlers and two other same mushy brained counselors who seem to fit the roles of assassins better. The tall one is luckily Chinese and named Tao and the tiny one called Do Kyungsoo, who are currently busy with registration, which leaves Luhan with the duty of welcoming everyone and also ensuring that the kids do not inhale any small toys even before camp’s begun.
Oh Sehun materializes as suddenly as he’d leave the café that day- with a crying tiny human in his embrace and a quiet, “Could you carry her for me?” Then Luhan realizes that his arms are packed with a crying baby and whoops, she’s kinda upside down and lopsided but hey, it’s basically his first time holding a child, and Luhan stands stunned and probably very uncomfortable for the baby. Sehun drops his bags off in an inner room and runs back, takes a total of 8 seconds to judge Luhan and wonder how on earth did he land this job and finally, finally, with a bright laugh, takes the baby back.
“I’m uh, new. Yeah. I’m Luhan.” Luhan starts, but he’s basically lost for words because there’s nothing for them to talk about right now, really.
“You’re the barista, aren’t you? The dog café that day? Sorry if the babies scared the dogs, I didn’t exactly plan that trip there…” Sehun’s voice trails off as he smiles softly, with his eyes turning into pretty crescents and maybe Luhan has really gone nuts because he feels his legs give way just that tiny bit, and Sehun turns away suddenly because another kid is vying for his attention (stupid little suckers that’s what they are) and Luhan catches an intense whiff of that rather strong cologne. He’s tall, with beautiful proportions head to toe with that set of broad shoulders. No chance, no way, he wouldn’t say he’s in love.
Luhan is thrown head first into Childcare 101 as Kyungsoo hits the back of his head not so gently and tells him to get the children into formation and they will be “Setting off to their first initiation!!!!!” The huge smile on Tao’s face is eerily distracting because of his really thick eyeliner on his cat-like eyes but it was something that wasn’t going to deter parents from letting their children sign up for the camp, because of the really holistic and hands-on curriculum developed by a major child development company that the camp was under. They’re the Myeongdong branch, aimed to help busy city parents take care of their children for the holidays or weekends. Each camp over the holidays lasts for 5 days, and there are only about 12 children under the 4 counselors. The average age of the children were about 6, but Luhan’s brain categorizes them all into ‘babies’ anyway. And the triplets are here- same three as the ones he saw with Sehun that day, and once they’ve stepped into the place they ran over and casually draped themselves all over Sehun. Luhan wasn’t jealous when they took turns to give him a kiss on the lips, with the cutest giggle from each child. Luhan swears wasn’t even looking when Sehun kisses them back all over their chubby faces- something which the second-born triplet, Minguk, seemed to like the best as he hugs onto Sehun’s head tight and demands him to do it again. It was lethally cute to a point that Luhan was positive he was getting diabetes just by standing within 2 metres radius.
Unexpectedly, the eldest triplet comes up to Luhan and tugs on a corner of his shirt, signaling for the counselor to squat down, and whispered into his ears, “Ahjusshi, are there bad doggies here?”
Luhan couldn’t hide his smile even though he’s just been called an ahjusshi. “Nope”- he glances a bit at the kid’s nametag- “Nope Daehannie, no bad doggies here.” Daehan still seemed a bit unsure about it, so Luhan takes his hand and leads him in a mini tour around the place, and Daehan seemed pretty satisfied with their facilities (especially their jungle theme playroom!!) and dog-less environment that they'll be in for the next few days.
Feeling more at ease with the kids, Luhan sets off to prepare for the first activity ever, their initiation hike. They’ve got to take a bus to Bukhan Mountain, a national park within Seoul itself, and Luhan was paired with Sehun (it was rigged, Luhan picked that piece of paper he saw Sehun threw onto the table when they all drew lots). The 2 teams take 5 children and a backpack each, hoards into the bus together.
Fast forward 2 hours and Luhan is about to die. Luhan is about to die from hitching one kid on his right hip (he thinks this boy is called Seoeon) and holding his twin brother's hand (maybe that one is Seoeon?). It feels like carrying a moving sack of potatoes, and he’s got to constantly make sure that the little one who’s walking doesn’t trip over rocks or twigs or anything. There is nothing romantic about bringing kids out on a treacherous walk in a forest, and he doesn't even have hands to wipe off his sweaty forehead. Maybe Sehun will do it for him and they will have eye contact and fall in love but no, Mr Oh himself is completely enthralled with the idea of being on a nature hike and generally making unecessary noises: Woooaaaaaaah, Manse! Manse, look at that! Daehan ah, there's a yellow bird, come here and hold my hand, don't let go of hyung-- wooooaaaaahhhhh woah ah ah ah. Minguk, don't eat that!!!
Luhan would gladly surgically attach his own hand into Oh Sehun's palm but that will probably not happen in a million years at this rate, because Sehun loves, adores and pampers on children and not crazy rich Chinese men (maybe Luhan was more of a "crazy, rich Chinese man". The comma is crucial.) Luhan pauses to adjust Probably Seoeon higher up his hipbone, and then the kid suddenly stuffs his own tiny hand into his mouth, and begins to struggle with saying words. "Food," the twin who has been walking (Maybe Seoeon) helpfully supplies, and pats his own round tummy at the same time. "Food, fooood."
"Sehun? Sehun, I think the kids are hungry?" Luhan looks concernedly at Probably Seoeon and hopes he doesn't get the saliva on Luhan's shirt - and there he goes and wipes his hand across the counselor's polo. Great.
Sehun stops his gay, jaunty walk with the triplets and announces snack time, bends over to tap on the kids’ heads and Luhan checks out his ass and-
"Hyung, where's our backpack?"
Luhan stops in his tracks and oh dear, sweet baby jesus, they've left their backpack of food and diapers in the bus. Now what.
"Food, Sehun hyung, Manse's crackers, Manse's crackers!"
Luhan watches Sehun's face fall into one of guilt, and honestly Sehun looks like he's about to cry any time now. The end of the trail is probably another hour away, and Maybe Seoeon is stomping his feet and making screechy noises and Minguk copies him, while Daehan and Manse both squat sadly on the floor together, and damn those sad fluffy cheeks and shining eyes- if they don't get food soon both of them are probably getting sued and sent to hell for making these precious children hungry.
"Hyung, what are we gonna do? What are we gonna dooooo, oh my god." Sehun starts wringing his fingers together and looks all around them, but there's not a single soul in sight. Luhan wishes he was Katniss for a moment and start hunting rabbits or something. But he isn’t because he knows nothing about forests and doesn’t have boobs. Sehun is disintegrating into a pile of mental breakdown and he cuddles each kid, telling them that hyung is really sorry, it's his entire fault, let's get up and continue walking, alright?
The kids refuse to listen, and Manse promptly bursts into tears because he really wants his crackers, and he flops over, leaning onto his eldest brother and crying the life out of himself. Daehan tears up as well and the younger twins look visibly shocked at the waterworks display. Minguk attempts to soothe his brothers but his own tummy rumbled out the loudest. This was going nowhere, with 5 whiny kids and a depressed Sehun, they're not going to make it out of the forest trail within the next hour. So Luhan does what he thought was the best solution.
“CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, OH SEHUN. LAST ONE TO THE END IS A FAT PIG.”
Luhan sweeps up Maybe Seoeon and Daehan into his arms and does a mad sprint down forest trail, with Sehun hot on his heels along with 3 other kids in tow. He could hear them screaming, and it sounded like mostly Sehun making that noise - but nonetheless they’re up and about again, dashing down the forest path and on their way to the rest area at the end. In fact it was much nearer than they thought, and finally he sees a speck of Tao in the distance, waiting for them.
Luhan pauses to look at the children in his arms and realise they were laughing- they loved the speed of the run and the breeze in their faces, and with their minds momentarily taken off their hunger, Daehan claps and urges Luhan to run, “Again, again!” Luhan laughs and complies, hurtles through the last 100m or so of the trail, then ungraciously plonks the children onto one of the benches at the rest area.
Sehun turns up puffing and panting about 5 minutes later, “Hyung, hyung you didn’t even wait for me, Manse couldn’t catch up and I don’t have enough hands to carry him, why did you have to scare me like that!”
Luhan grins, chucks him a bottle of water he got from Tao and remarks as casually as he could: “You’re really cute, Oh Sehun.” He doesn’t want to give Sehun any ideas yet, but Luhan wouldn’t allow himself not to jump at the chance of basic flirting.
Perhaps it was the flush of red that was the result of the stupid run- but Sehun never looked at him directly in the eyes for the rest of the day.
The next 4 days were trips to hell and back, which involved a lot of food, naps and a top-secret marathon Robocar Poli session, which the parents were not supposed to know about. And over the course of time Luhan finds out that he likes the children, especially Seojun out of the 5 cutie pies (Luhan’s got his name right now), because he babbles nineteen to the dozen and Luhan often beams at his attempts to make a conversation. Seojun earned the right of being the only one who gets to call Luhan “Lulu”, pretty much because he can’t get his H’s properly yet.
The triplets were Sehun’s pride and joy, and Luhan loves to watch them do the activities together, with Sehun’s long arms wrapped around them as the squeeze at a tiny table to make sandwiches, or Manse requesting him for piggybacks and he would give one right away, or letting Daehan fuss over his hair and run his tiny hands all over it. He cares for them from the bottom of his heart, and honestly, Luhan knows that Sehun will definitely be a wonderful father in the future.
Sehun is a really nice, really sweet but shockingly young man-child, and Luhan’s mother taught him that everything before a ‘but’ is a lie. They have a 4 year age gap, and it feels like Luhan is watching his ideals fizzle out as Sehun childishly flings an unwanted piece of cabbage at him, his rather high pitched laughter ringing out as the cabbage shot misses and lands on Seoeon’s head instead. Sehun makes fun of his height, his baby face, and his grammar, but they’re comfortable now, he likes the way Sehun smiles and endearingly calls him hyung all the time. Sehun helps him when the kids become hard to handle, because he’s more experienced anyway, and they both find out they dance- and pester Kyungsoo until time is set aside each day for their “Disco session”, which involved a truck load of lightsticks that Sehun went out to buy with his own money and blasting of girl group songs. And Sehun makes sure to tuck Luhan in for nap time as well- while making lame excuses that “baby lulu has to sleep while hyung finish up fighting the war of calculus” (Luhan gets up and helps Sehun with his homework anyway.)
Math has always been Sehun’s worse subject ever, and he looks troubled and stressed out. Luhan plops to the floor and their arms brush as Luhan wriggles closer, since their tables are really small around here, and suddenly Sehun jerks away as though he’s been burnt, and quickly shuts his book with a soft mumble, “I can do these myself, thanks hyung.”, and moves on to the dinner table where Kyungsoo is preparing the materials for their next activity.
Luhan does notice the signs- Sehun not willing to come too close, the blushing, because Sehun’s pale skin betrays him so frequently, and he knows that it’s terrible- stringing Sehun along like this- because he’s quite sure that he has sort of given up on a relationship. It is great the way things are right now, and Sehun is actually becoming more and more like a younger brother to him. Luhan doesn’t want to play anymore, because suddenly he knows he can’t do it, there’s no real end to this and Sehun is precious to him, no one should get hurt. What would his parents even say if he brings Sehun home to meet them?
His parents aren’t homophobic- but the stereotypes and consequences of society- Luhan couldn’t bear to start on them. It was the one big reason why he’d cross the ocean and decide to live in South Korea by himself- he couldn’t stand his aunts’ chatter about the degenerate men and whatnot- he hated that people felt he had no right to love.
Maybe Luhan should kick himself in the face because he decides to run, to escape, to get away from Sehun as far as possible. He rips the summer dreams at the seams with his own hands, and on that day itself he tells Kyungsoo that he has a family emergency back in China, picks up his bags and vows never returns to the centre again.
Things go downhill and Luhan does mope in the café, and makes Minseok rearrange their schedules so he never takes the morning shift at the café anymore, even considered working at another new place but Chanyeol had pleaded that it was difficult to find another worker who’s good with the dogs. So Luhan now has to suffer an irregular schedule and too little sleep, and making sure he doesn’t go as close to the Myeongdong district as he can manage.
A month later the door of the café jerks open angrily, and Luhan doesn’t need to turn around, because the wind carries in Sehun’s scent. He looks a bit taller, and somehow gaunter than Luhan remembers. The café is not empty, and Sehun chooses to sit at the corner-most table and wait while Luhan fumbles and muddles up orders throughout the night. It was only after everyone else has left and Luhan shuts the dogs in for the night, that the younger man stands up and approaches him.
“Hyung,” Sehun’s tongue darts out and wets his lips, and he’s not looking at Luhan, “Hyung, I know I’m really stupid and all, but I miss you? I missed you so much? Luhan hyung.”
Luhan gives a small smile, “I had an emergency, didn’t Kyungsoo tell you?”
“He did. But that’s another thing isn’t it? I just miss you. I wish you’d come back after things settled but you didn’t. I thought that maybe the camp meant nothing you know? That you never thought of us. That I don’t mean anything. Maybe I wish I was something? The kids were probably in the way, but I don’t think you really looked at me, hyung. Or you probably did so you ran, huh?”
Sehun finally, finally, takes a tiny step closer, and Luhan wants to run again, but his legs stay so firmly rooted to the ground that he can’t really feel them anymore.
The long arms embrace him and Luhan is faint- maybe he’s been thinking about this, maybe he wants and needs it, to bury his face into Sehun’s broad chest and just letting the Sehun hold him, and hold him tight. Or perhaps he’s dreaming again and still in denial, because he can’t like Sehun, there’s no future for them, there’s nothing to look forward to-
“I can hear you thinking, hyung. But I’m going to say it, okay? I think I like you? Like, like you?”
~
They take things at baby steps, little things at a time, it’s Sehun’s first relationship, and mostly because they don’t know what to expect of each other and what to do. Dates sometimes turn into study sessions, Luhan falls asleep whenever they watch movies that don’t involve Iron Man, Sehun embarrassingly buys a huge bouquet of roses for no reason at all and Luhan doesn’t have a single vase at home. It’s weird, it’s sloppy, because Luhan is still so scared and Sehun stubborn, and slowly they tell each other that it’s okay, they’ll take the time and be okay. Parents will have to wait, and somehow they will get there.
They do go back to the camp together, and it makes things better because they pretend the children to be their own as they plan for the future, maybe they will be something, or maybe nothing, Sehun and Luhan, Luhan and Sehun, maybe?
Author’s Note: I don’t really know how a camp works……………. I probably butchered this to the moon and back sobs