(Don’t) Let Me Go: Part 1
From: fairyminseok
Title: (Don’t) Let Me Go
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 18,400
Prompt: Meraki: To do something with soul, creativity, or love; when you leave a piece of yourself behind in your work.
Warning/s: drug use, cigarette use, mentions of depression, self-inflicted emotional abuse, weird colour symbolism, angst, weird timeline. The main story is told linearly, but the italics (past) and the phone calls (random) are not.
Meraki;
- To do something with soul, creativity, or love; when you leave a piece of yourself behind in your work.
-‘๑’-
---
You put a fever inside me
And I've been cold since you left
---
“It’s like I just came to exist one day, purely for the benefit of him; an ideal formulated by his very hands, by the charcoal that never wears down. Everything I did, thought, felt, it was like I was trapped. But I couldn’t hate him, because it wasn’t his fault, it was never his fault. But at the same time, he was so fucking selfish, only seeing the perfection he thought we were, and never the pain that hid behind my eyes.
Sometimes I wish I had taken self portraits, but that wasn’t in the contract, that wasn’t in his daydream when his hands flew across paper to create my life. I only existed when he needed me, and I had never quite understood the definition of trapped; was naive, innocent, loving by nature.
His.”
---
Normally, one would see the seasonal year as beginning in Spring; where life starts, winter washing away to let blossoms burst forth.
Lu Han’s story, it begins in Autumn; with the school bells and the dropping temperatures, trees shedding their layers to become barren, rows of dead creatures swaying with the wind, but no longer vibrant.
This is when Lu Han likes to begin his portfolio, likes to take his sketchbook everywhere, draw the life, the hidden secrets, the dark corners of the season.
He likes to showcase the bright colours, cascading leaves fanning around him, falling onto the canvas of his sketchbook, only to be traced into something beautiful. He usually sits on the steps -- the ones that were once their steps -- fingers absently tracing the cracks between faded bricks, the tiniest of smiles jumping across his lips.
The thing about memories is that they never really announce their arrival, and they never tell anyone what they're bringing.
This time it’s a friendly memory, crescent moon eyes and laughter; Lu Han's scarf wound around the neck of someone else, someone who blushes furiously, hand curled into a fist to hide his face.
Lu Han's tiny smile grows into a wide grin for a short moment, an almost giggle bubbling to his surface before fading away. The thing about memories is that they're not real, they're remembered past tense for a reason; things that were, things that will never happen again.
and this memory, this particular vivid image with its rosy cheeks and dusty auburn hair, it won't ever return.
High school was along time ago, and those grown up, those weathered with the weight of their lives, can never be teenagers again, can never be shy, giggling, button nosed youth, ca never experience firsts for a second time.
For now, the steps are just steps, and Lu Han leans back against the cold concrete, reaching out with quick reflexes to pluck a leaf from the air. He holds it delicately with numb fingers -- he should have worn gloves -- tracing its golden brown edges. Its colour reminds him of the school behind him, building tall and imposing as it catches the rays of morning light glowing gently through thinning trees.
Another memory comes knocking, flinging open the front door of Lu Han's mind without waiting for an answer, and it's the first day of high school -- his first day of high school -- tie loose and hair artfully messy, an attempt to fit in with his obnoxious group of friends.
The steps hadn't been their steps yet. That would wait another two years, a place of refuge among tears, bullies, broken lenses, muttered apologies and beautiful flushed cheeks.
A bell rings somewhere above Lu Han.
It startles him, leaf falling from his fingers, sketchbook snapping closed in his lap. He hasn't gotten enough work done, but he's patient. Memories like to take their time when they visit, crashing on his mind's couch and waking up at all hours of night to create noise.
Lu Han walks across the front field, avoiding the pathway that's now filled with students, standing out, but taking his time.
He looks young enough to be a student here; golden locks and dancing eyes enough to charm any 15-year-old girl's heart, but his uniform gives him away, blazer sporting a different school's patch, colours mismatched against the ones of the uniforms passing him as he heads off school grounds.
Lu Han does to stop to give some 15-year-old girls an award winning smile, resisting the urge to wink when they respond with hushed whispers and reddening cheeks, straightening their skirts and hiding their faces.
The cracked sidewalks are littered with leaves, nearly picture perfect, oak trees towering overhead, the softest of breezes ruffling Lu Han's hair as he takes his time; heading to his own campus for his own first day.
He considers taking a photo, but another memory is leaning through an open window and chatting in his ear.
A boy, dancing down the sidewalk in front of him, brown hair shining, nearly hidden underneath his beanie -- Lu Han's beanie -- camera in his hands. He'd been shorter than Lu Han still, middle school youth still tugging at the sleeves of his oversized school blazer.
He'd taken pictures of everything; the leaves, the sky, the empty road in front of them, of Minseok in his awful rimmed glasses, and of Lu Han. Always Lu Han.
Taking photos isn't really Lu Han's thing -- he's got a barren instagram account to prove it -- so he puts his phone away and speeds up his steps, sketchbook snugly tucked beneath his arm.
He ends up at a different set of steps, good-natured grin plastered on his face, one that doesn't quite ignite the natural sparkle of his normally bright eyes.
Jongdae and Baekhyun don't notice his lack of colour, too busy goofing around, oblivious to the mildly jealous stare Minseok send in their direction; though Lu Han is never sure which one of them it's directed towards.
Minseok glances at Lu Han, smile warm and eyes sympathetic for a brief moment, one that Lu Han never fails to catch.
"How was Riverview?" Minseok asks, and his voice has that gentle tilt to it, fingers curling around Lu Han's sketchbook with a comforting hum.
"I was distracted," Lu Han says with a voice too quiet -- the quiet that arrives when one is silent for too long -- sigh parting his lips. They shine as the light hits them, pink and delicate, soft and innocent for the time being. "I didn't get much done."
"Don't you ever consider a new portfolio? With different locations?"
Minseok's question is careless, one they both know Lu Han cannot answer readily. He sighs, sketchbook back in his own lap, fingers carefully fixing his tie.
"It's tradition," Lu Han says simply, but he gives Minseok a gentle smile, tiniest of sparkles appearing in his gaze. "I appreciate your concern, but it has to be this way."
"Change is the first step in moving on," Is all Minseok says, and his palm is warm as it settles on Lu Han's shoulder. "High school has already gone into the realm of A Really Long Time Ago, and memories filled with wistful sighs won't help you pass economics."
"Fuck economics," Lu Han grumbles, but his spirits are less melancholy and more steady as he accepts the arm thrown around him, lets himself be jostled towards orientation, memories fading and mood lifted.
The thing about memories is that they often leave just as unannounced as their arrival, forgotten and neglected, slipping out while their host is distracted.
---
Minseok is always the first to tell Lu Han when he’s being dramatic, when he should stop, move on. But he can’t help it; first loves are dramatic, unstoppable, a constant haunting that comes to breathe in his ear.
And Lu Han, he's a naturally dramatic person; everything done in a way that is overdone. Too much expression, too much, a flair for tossing every feeling into art, into a reading out loud of his heart in thoughts that cease to make sense, words that flow backwards.
So here he is, sketchbook still in his lap, legs propped up and eyes on the window, staring out at the decaying trees in his college's courtyard. He's in one of his classes, and that's about as far as his brain has allowed him to go today, notebook open on the desk in front of him, page blank and waiting for the notes that will never come.
He's drawing the scene outside the window, sketching the outlines of a figure in the courtyard, a silhouette leaning against a tree. It's not him, but someone from his past, and Lu Han hums solemnly as he fishes inside his backpack for a silver felt-tip, catching a few words from his professor and hastily scrawling a title to his notes before turning back to the More Important Task.
He's in Statistics apparently, which sucks.
Lu Han shades the hair of the figure silver, enjoying the way it glints on paper next to the monotone of the scene he's created. He debates colouring it in, adding the hues of late morning and the dusky brown of the leaves, but decides that he’s always looked best when allowed to stand out.
And he does stand out, coloured a glowing silver from head to feet, like a tiny angel on Lu Han's paper, causing a tiny grin to stretch across his lips before a frown takes its place. Minseok is going to scold him for sure, say some very Minseok things about how drawing ex-boyfriends is extremely not healthy.
He's right -- of course, always -- but Lu Han continues to stubbornly draw, tracing the patterns of something that he considers putting in the portfolio. Every season would be more complete with a little backstory.
---
Lu Han skips lunch, breezes out of the school and towards the park; the one with the tallest structures and the train.
That's where he sees it, sees a familiar photo, tattered and pinned, hidden among other advertisements, other photos, lamp-post littered with artists trying to make their way. Lu Han's fingers reach out to touch the paper, to run his fingers across it's cold material surface, worn from the wind.
There are words, a date, an art gallery for an up and coming photographer, a first art show. An introduction of sorts.
Colours and Seasons.
A simple concept, a simple name. And the concept, Lu Han knows it, knows it too well, glancing to his hands, sees them shaking slightly, fingers tight around a sketchbook that contains those same words -- except different -- a sequel.
He recognizes the photo on the cover. And it hurts because of all photos he could have chosen to show himself off to the world, he chooses the one he never took.
Lu Han recognizes the photo because he remembers holding the expensive camera that captured it in his hands, remembers fiddling with the knobs, laughter soft as he asks for help, asks to be shown how to take a photo.
He knows the photo well, because he's the one who took it, the one who looked up at the owner of the camera afterwards with a puppy dog grin, ego swelling from the pride reflected back at him, the comments.
You're a natural, Lu Han.
It's just beginner's luck. I'm an artist, not a photographer.
And yet here he is, looking at that very photo, his first photo. The same photo he's tried to recreate with pencil crayons, with fine lined pens, charcoal snapped in half in his struggles.
Lu Han rips the ad straight from the post, dumps the tacks on the ground, balls of a handful of tape and tosses it at a tree, annoyed scream at the tip of his tongue.
And yet he's excited, enthralled, flood of memories rushing through him, emotion.
Colours and Seasons
A photography exhibition by up and coming photographer, Oh Sehun.
November 9th, Horton Palace Inn. Entry fee, 4$.
---
"He's back," Lu Han says, and he's breathing in short harsh gasps, hands in his knees, paper hanging limply from a hand, sketchbook dropping heavily onto the table with a loud thud, one that startles quite a few looks.
Jongdae just looks at him quizzically, eyebrows raised.
"And?" Baekhyun asks, chin resting in the palm of a relaxed hand, peering up at Lu Han with disinterest.
“You don’t understand,” Lu Han says, throwing himself into a seat next to Jongdae, paper flat in front of him. “He’s back and he’s stealing my ideas.”
“Colours and seasons?” A voice says over Lu Han’s shoulder, quiet and confused. Lu Han whips around in gratitude, stares up at Minseok with wild eyes.
“I took that photo,” He says, still staring, still wild as Minseok slips in beside him looking mildly concerned. “He’s using my photo, for his own show.”
“Why is he even back in the city?” Minseok asks in muted confusion, reading the fine print, the tiny details Lu Han hadn’t thought to peruse. “You don’t just disappear and show up like this.”
Baekhyun and Jongdae are giving them curious looks across the table, not understanding. They'd met Lu Han post-Sehun, post ... everything.
"But why would he open an exhibition with your portfolio title and with your photo?" Minseok murmurs, eyebrows furrowing.
"To get my attention?" Lu Han muses, and there's a tiny frown on his lips, a tiny stirring in his heart, a confused delayed thump.
"He's not that dramatic Lu Han," Minseok says evenly, chewing cutely on the straw of his soy milk, still staring at the advertisement. "He's not you."
"No he's not," Lu Han agrees with a sigh, and he leans back in his chair, licks his lips. "He's subtle. This is subtle. It's just small enough that there was a huge chance I wouldn't notice it. If I hadn't gone to the park I wouldn't have found it."
"And he does know you well," Minseok says slowly, and he's leaning forward now, catching on and believing. "He would know that you would go to that park to sketch. It's that time of year."
"Should I go?" Lu Han asks, and it's quiet, nearly a whisper, conspiratorial even. "I mean -- I just --"
Minseok laughs then, a quiet chuckle, hand on Lu Han's shoulder.
"We both know that you'll go anyways," He says, finally acknowledges Jongdae and Baekhyun across their table with a grin, gives Lu Han a sympathetic glance. "He did disappear on you. I think you deserve to know why."
"You're right," Lu Han says, burying his head in his arms. "I kind of- I've been whining about this for months but I never expected him to actually come back. I'm scared to go."
“You have nothing to fear but yourself.”
Minseok’s words confuse him, but Lu Han is sure in time he’ll understand.
---
Lu Han starts seeing that same piece of paper everywhere.
It's on the school bulletin board, stopping Lu Han in his early morning wanderings, coffee in hand and muffin halfway in his mouth, shocked that Sehun had been in his school and he hadn't known.
It's on a hundred more lamp-posts, a hundred more abandoned walls. And the flyers aren't big, they aren't eye catching, but Lu Han spots each one, runs his fingers across them each time, debates taking each one.
He's afraid.
Sehun is older now, probably different, and yet there's a chance that he's exactly the same, a taller, less innocent version of his Sehun. And that scares Lu Han too.
Because in a way, he hopes Sehun is the same, hopes he's malleable, joyful; the Sehun he had met, and not the Sehun that had left him. And that's kind of selfish. The thought that Sehun had left because of Lu Han, had left because something between them, something about them wasn't working, was too much. It had been perfect one day, and nothing the next.
And yet Lu Han; Lu Han is still very much the same. He ascends the steps to the gallery where the exhibition is being held, tells the owner that he’s looking for his brother’s phone number.
He’s just come back to the city and he’s holding an exhibition here, I’d like to surprise him.
The gallery owner hadn’t cared, scribbling some numbers on a piece of paper and tossing it to Lu Han, a gentle smile and words of luck on her tongue. Lu Han isn’t surprised that he’d gotten it so easily, has always been persuasive, good-looking, hair swept and tongue flicking out to lick across his lips, seductive and flirty.
He plays dirty, but Sehun is playing dirtier this time.
---
“Who are you, if not humble?”
The voice crackles over the receiver, far and yet close, so close, breathing down his neck and whispering, crawling across his skin to settle into his lungs. It fills them, causes his entire being to shake, to fear, to become concerned.
“What is the opposite of humble.”
And yet, a blank mind, one that does not absorb the shaking of radiated phone waves, one that clears his lungs, breathes in deeply, unsure of what to say; how to say it. Instead he deflects, eyebrows furrowing, straight jagged lines bending, a typical frown that the other cannot see but can probably feel, probably knows too well.
“How did you get my number?” He asks instead, a maddening change of subject; ignorance of the subject, that he knows will get a rise out of the other, that he knows will affect him.
“The receptionist, at your gallery,” There’s a smirk in the voice. He grimaces, fingers curling tighter over the black receiver, cord dangling and sliding against his skin.
An old phone, out of style. He has no need for cellphones when he rarely exists long enough to pay a bill.
“She’s very gullible,” The smirk continues, and he cannot keep his mind blank long enough when the pressure fills his chest. “Thought I was your brother when I asked for your number. It’s a good thing we nearly look alike, isn’t it?”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” A pause. The licking of lips audible with the way the white noise fades for only a moment. “I asked a question though. Or perhaps you would just like an answer. Conceit, I think it is?”
“We both know,” He starts, stopping to trail the tip of a finger across his faded bangs; once silver now grey, dead and in need of a touch up. “We both know that I am nowhere near conceited. Unless you’ve left me with more than just your memories.”
“I wasn’t the one who left, so forgive me for ignoring that last thing you said,” The voice says, and there’s no longer a smirk in his words. “You know what this is about.”
“The picture?” He asks. The pressure in his lungs deflates, smoke the colour of his hair, of the air around him. “Don’t take it too personally. I needed to let you know somehow that I was back in town.”
“You still have my number, you could have called.”
“And now you have mine,” He says with a shrug, sitting up fully to look beside him, black phone cord curling around his arm like a snake. He frowns, untangling it with a sigh that doesn’t go unnoticed by the voice on the other end.
“Sehun.”
“Lu Han.”
“Well I’m glad you still remember my name,” Lu Han scoffs. It brings a slight smile to Sehun’s lips, a dead kind of smile as he glances at his wall, the immaculately kept shelves.
Cameras collected over the years, from moments when he was conscious enough, aware enough to grip his lithe limbs around solids, around things that stay.
“Why are you back in the city Sehun?”
“There was an opportunity,” Sehun answers. It’s simple, laced with nothing else but honesty, or so he likes to present it as that.
Honesty.
He reaches a hand to a grey table, standing quiet and humble beside where he rests; fingers closing around a bottle. “Didn’t you miss me?”
“Of course I missed-“
Sehun tuts, a quiet sound that has Lu Han’s nearly stuttering voice pausing. The smirk is flying away, growing wings to disappear. Lu Han won’t smile again tonight.
“You left without saying anything. You just disappeared, of course I missed you,” Lu Han continues, and it’s with exasperation, a hurried rush of words.
Sehun can see his pupils dancing, can see his lips curling down in an upset pout and his hands, clenched around the shiniest new phone. “I-“
“And you thought?”
“I … don’t know.”
“You don’t know what you thought?” Sehun keeps some humour in his voice, tries to sound light, frivolous even.
The heaviness is there, weariness, hollowing him out and sending his insides screeching to a halt.
“I guess I just wanted to hear your voice,” Lu Han mutters through the line. It’s cute - it’s always been cute - and Sehun is affected, marginally, emptiness threatening to fight through and close him.
“Why?” Sehun asks, and he’s leaning back against the wall now, rusted metal of the cheap headboard digging into his shoulder blades. He ignores it, releases another cloud of smoke, lifeless and grey. “After all this time you don’t-“
“I don’t -- ?” Lu Han sounds confused, voice trailing off in a way that echoes Sehun’s, muted and grey. Sehun frowns. He’s always liked Lu Han’s colour, and the lack of it is heavy, weighing down on Sehun’s own dusty colours.
“You’re not angry?” He tries, and his tongue flicks out to his lips. Dry and probably losing colour, as they always do when he spends too much time in the city, too much time with a cigarette pressed against his lips, with pills glowing pretty in the palm of his hands.
Blue, colourful, nothing like the thoughts that encompass any other part.
There’s a silence now, on the other end of the line, and Sehun tenses, sits up. His panic bursts through in pretty shades of grey, but it subsides when he hears Lu Han’s breathing, shaky through his receiver.
“Just … confused,” Is the answer he finally gets, and Sehun can picture it; Lu Han’s eyes squeezing shut for the briefest of moments, bottom lip caught between front teeth and grip on his phone loosening. “Upset? Horrified, never angry though.”
Not with you”
The last part is said quietly; as if Lu Han is afraid to let the words whisper past his lips, and Sehun feels himself biting past a bitter smirk, more of a grimace in the fading Autumn light.
“Come to the exhibition.”
“Do you want me there?”
“I wouldn’t ask you to come, if I didn’t want you there.”
A pause. Sehun knows he’s right, hears Lu Han sigh, and this time the words do whisper past his lips.
“I want to be there,” He says, and he sounds firm, as if confirming it to himself and not to Sehun. “We can talk.”
“We can talk,” Sehun agrees, and the blankets feel soft, brain fuzzy and legs heavy as the blue pill swirls, works its way into his system. A sigh escapes his lips as he bids his goodbye, as the phone drops back into its cradle and Sehun can lie back on the bed, can feel the lumps beneath his back.
Flickering lights; his own. Grey ceiling, illuminated by colours that aren’t there.
It had been difficult upon his return to calculate what season it was; what season he would use. Sehun is careful though, and he knows Lu Han well, knows him too well.
He smiles, a gentle loving smile as he burrows deeper into soft, soft, soft fleecy blankets, grey trail of smoke matching his surroundings as it flies up into the air from his dying abandoned cigarette.
Lu Han will understand when they talk. Lu Han always understands, and Sehun is sure if he knew the truth he would understand, but Sehun can’t. He can’t.
Can’t.
---
"I talked to Sehun."
Minseok glances up, barely there shock on his features as he surveys Lu Han. They're in Minseok's room, sitting close together on the bed as Minseok attempts to salvage Lu Han's Economics assignment.
The way their knees knock together comforts Lu Han, even as his mind rests elsewhere, fingers twitching in anxiety from where they sit on his thighs.
"Did you see him?"
"No, not yet," Lu Han shakes his head, frowns when his bangs separate. "Just on the phone."
"How is he?" Minseok asks, and the way he reaches across Lu Han is subtle, laptop closing closing and books pushed aside. He faces Lu Han on the bed and crosses his own hands in his lap, though his posture is crooked, bent.
"Cryptic."
Lu Han's hands fall from his lap to land at his sides, worn superhero sheets comforting and familiar beneath his fingertips. Minseok is safe, years of friendship showing through in the way he stays calm, knows exactly what to say.
"Are you going to the exhibition?" Minseok asks, and Lu Han is grateful. Minseok didn't ask how he was cryptic, why.
"He asked me to come," Lu Han nods, fingers gripping Captain America's shield just a tiny bit tighter. He knows his fingers look dainty like this, hates when his fingers look dainty, but Minseok is watching his face carefully. Lu Han stills. "It was for my attention."
"And you're not angry with him?"
"No."
A shaky breath escapes chapped lips, but Lu Han sucks it back, hides his nerves, his fears, even though Minseok always knows.
"Never angry. Not with him."
Minseok gives him a sad kind of smile, leaning forward to rest his palm on Lu Han's knee.
Platonic comforts.
"Do you want to watch a movie?" Minseok asks, distracting, gentle. Not regarding Lu Han with sympathy, with judgement or held back advice such as the kind he hears from Jongdae and Baekhyun constantly.
Platonic comforts.
"Please," Lu Han breathes. He flashes Minseok an easy smile, a grateful one.
He relaxes into Minseok's side, comfort of their knees knocking together, of Minseok reaching up to ruffle his hair gently, pushing the anxiety, the obsessive thoughts of Sehun out.
Sehun can wait another day.
---
"Do you think we'll be forever?"
There's a certain naivety in Sehun's tone, a hope as he cranes his neck backwards and smiles up at Lu Han, the crescent eyed one that makes him look so beautiful, an awkward angel fallen from the sky and into his life.
"Forever is subjective," Lu Han tells him, but it’s with a smile of his own, a tweak of Sehun's nose and crescents that match his, though nowhere near as beautiful. "Who's to say forever is even a thing? We'll be a long time though."
"Something had to exist forever," Sehun insists, and he's crawling into a sitting position, arms winding their way around Lu Han's neck. He's bigger than Lu Han, taller than him now, yet he still manages to make himself a little bit smaller, fit himself into an embrace he considers perfect.
"Human beings don't," Lu Han points out, and he stares up towards the sky, only for a brief moment to catch the clouds as they pass, imprint them for later. "We can't last forever, but we could last our entire lives, and that's our forever."
"That's confusing," Sehun whines, and its his turn to tug at Lu Han's nose playfully, frown pulling the corners of his mouth down comically. "You're supposed to say 'Yes Sehunnie, we're forever'."
"I'm an honest person," Lu Han shrugs. "I can't promise something that doesn't exist, even if it's just for the sake of making someone happy."
"You make me happy either way," Sehun says, prodding his chest, and Lu Han feels warm lips on his cheek. Still innocent, even with Sehun's legs mimicking his arms as they wrap around Lu Han's waist. “I exist only for the sake of making you happy.”
Nothing exists forever.
---
"Was there someone else?"
It's late -- past midnight -- and the white of the walls is a dusty gray, dark and solemn, lifeless under the light of a dying lamp.
"Why are you asking this now?"
"It’s been bothering me, keeping me up."
A flash of light joins the dull glow of the lamp, igniting a cigarette that slides past chapped lips.
"There wasn't," Sehun says with a hollow laugh, strained from the drag of his cigarette, from the nicotine that runs through his veins and reminds him that for now, he exists. "If you're thinking that's why I left. There wasn't."
"Then why did you leave?"
Lu Han sounds drunk, voice lower, slurred over the receiver, and Sehun sighs, fingernail tapping against the worn black, eyes trained on where the paint is chipping.
"It isn't the time to discuss this right now," Sehun mutters, dragging a hand through his hair. It's oily to the touch. "I need to be up early and it's late."
"Was it my fault?" Lu Han interrupts, and he must be drunk. "I just want to know if it was my fault. You changed your mind but--"
"It was," Sehun snaps, irritated. Tired. He hangs up, receiver loud as it falls into its cradle.
Not Lu Han's fault fully. Indirectly maybe, in a fucked up way.
The walls swim from the shadows and the weight of the room, cigarette stubbed out into an ashtray that needs to be cleaned. Sehun doesn't care.
Existence is fleeting when things were created to not be forever.
---
The Cafe is quiet, as it always is at this time of day.
Lu Han is one of few customers there, seated by the window, sketchbook empty in front of him, Americano growing cold as it sits, full and untouched with his fingers frozen, curled around the ceramic mug.
The leaves have nearly all fallen, piles of colour along the ground where the trees lack it, dead brown, branches an ugly gray under the sunlight.
His portfolio is failing this year. He's drawn one, maybe two pictures, spurred on by memories, by Sehun's return.
The Americano is bitter, cold and tasting slightly like old dishwater when Lu Han brings it to his lips. He winces, pushing it away from him, across the table where it sits, a waste of money, of time.
It was.
What was his fault exactly?
Lu Han can't remember ever doing anything wrong, can't remember anything besides the petty teenage arguments, the times Sehun wasn't affectionate enough, or Lu Han was too honest.
But those had all been in the past, and nothing had lead up to when Sehun left. And it wasn't as if Sehun had said he was leaving, had argued or been upset. He'd been there one day, and gone the next.
"He's moved," Was all Sehun's landlady had said, cryptic and condescending over her glasses. Lu Han hated her.
"You need to focus," Lu Han mutters to himself, snapping his sketchbook closed, tossing it into his bag with a roughness not usually reserved for precious items. "He's here now. That's what matters. You can figure it out."
Minseok repeats those exact words when Lu Han calls him later.
---
It's unhealthy, this obsession Lu Han has with Sehun.
And it’s almost less with Sehun himself, more with the fact of Sehun. Why is here? Why did he leave? Does he still love Lu Han?
Lu Han still loves him. Maybe, partially, mostly.
He can't decide, legs curled up underneath him, head resting on his knees as he stares out his bedroom window. The window seat is comfortable, stifling, full of memories that weigh down on Lu Han's shoulder, tea cup shaking in his cold hands.
It's going to be winter soon; cold weather and brisk winds, Lu Han's least favourite season.
He'd liked it once, briefly, when Sehun had worn the cutest beanies, had done up Lu Han's jacket for him, brushed the snow from his hair, jokingly proclaimed that he felt like the hyung. They'd had a make-shift Christmas tree before Lu Han had flown back home to see his family; a plastic tree bought from a discount store and tugged down the street, a wreath of fake mistletoe hung around Sehun's neck so Lu Han would always have the excuse to kiss him.
There's a gust of wind, one that Lu Han hears against the worn window frame, and he sighs as a stray bundle of dead leaves whip up into the air and past his house. His tea is replaced with a sketchbook, familiar gray charcoal held delicately between two fingers; the only drawing material he ever uses while sketching the usual thing, the usual person
His hand hesitates today, before flying into action, tea and dropping temperatures forgotten as silver hair appears, crescent moon smiles at their old park, familiar long fingers brushing against the bark of a tree they used to sit against.
Lu Han likes to imagine Sehun misses them too. Likes to imagine he too, has gone to visit their old spots since returning, smile on his lips and nostalgia blowing gently through his hair like cooling November wind.
Lu Han has a midterm tomorrow that he hasn't studied for, but Sehun's exhibition is in a few days. Sehun's exhibition is what matters.
---
"Hey Sehun?"
There's a hum, distracted; a whirring quietly in the background and the flurry of hands, busy.
"Do you remember that time we went walking on the East Side and you decided to feed the ducks?"
"Yeah, why?"
Legs crossed on the cold gray floor, wind howling through a draft in a cracked window, film developed with a filter. Sehun's hands are cold, but the heater is warm, pouring its orange glow over him and through the crevices of his dead heart.
"I just remember," There's a pause. "I remember we were on the bridge, and it was early summer, and you gave me this look, and all I was talking about was ice cream."
"And?"
Sehun grimaces, receiver cradled with his shoulder as he attempts to listen and develop at the same time. He leans back against the metal frame of his bed, film temporarily ignored and eyes on the dusky light of late Autumn.
"I always wondered what was going through your mind," Lu Han sounds sad, has probably thought about this a lot, has probably let the doubt weave through him and consume him.
I realized that no matter how much I try, something is forcing me to love you.
Sehun wants -- he wants to tell the truth, to spit things out in a burst of hurried emotion, fingers gripping around the receiver.
"It's the moment I fell in love with you," Sehun says simply. And it's true, it was the moment, but he's holding back the truth, fabricating and creating an existence richer than his own, flickering one.
"Oh," The answer comes and it’s with a whoosh of startled breath, a silence. "But you said it---"
"Before that?" Sehun asks, hollow laughter startling itself out of him. He's losing his control; a bit, slightly, partially. "I said it because you said it to me. I was young, I didn't know what love is."
"But you do now?"
It’s a whisper, the way Lu Han asks it, as if he's afraid that Sehun may answer no. And if Sehun could, he would answer no, nails digging into his thighs as his lungs scream for another cigarette, for a blue pill to calm the nerves.
"I think so." What is real love?
“Thank you, Sehun.”
“Yeah.”
---
“Hey Sehun?”
Sehun hums from where he’s sitting cross-legged on Lu Han’s floor, head resting against the soft material of the window seat.
“I love you.”
Lu Han looks so sincere, eyes sparkling, bottom lip tucked into his teeth. His fingers twitch a tiny bit, eyes averted from Sehun’s. He’s nervous.
“I love you too.”
Sehun says it without thinking, mechanically but without real feeling. He’s supposed to say this; the appropriate response. The part of his heart he can’t control, the caged in section that suffocates him and pushes away his free will is singing, joyous, enthralled.
“I’m so lucky.”
Sehun is grey, lifting his head from the window seat to look directly at Lu Han, to see the love in his eyes and the shy smile on his lips. He’s naive, nearly innocent at age seventeen, teasing and kittenish as he places his hands on Sehun’s shoulders, kisses him gently on the lips.
“You are lucky,” Sehun smirks, joking. Right for the moment, because it has the shy smile growing into a proper grin. “I’m pretty hot.”
“True.”
Lu Han leans forward, tilts his head, kisses Sehun again. Deeper this time, more meaningful, eyes fluttering closed as Sehun forgets, relishes in his existence, seals off the sections of his heart that are free to breathe.
Lu Han is beautiful.
---
Grey.
November is a grey month, dreary. The colours of Autumn washed away by a gloom that threatens to consume the city, cloudy skies and twisted bare branches reflected in the windows of gloomy office buildings, brick worn away by years of seasons.
Lu Han imagines there are streaks of rain, wishes for the clouds to mean something, but he knows it’s too cold for that now. Too far into the realm of time that causes his nerves to seize up and thoughts to run dry.
“You’re always staring out windows.”
A voice sounds right in his ear, startling Lu Han, noise escaping from his mouth and eyes widening as he jumps in fright, hits his elbow on the glass painfully.
“Jesus Christ Minseok,” He mutters, icy gaze soft after the moment passes, relaxing. He glances back out the window once, commits the swaying tips of the taller trees to memory, to sketch down later, grin falling onto his features. “You scared me.”
“Sorry,” Minseok says with a laugh, though his eyes aren’t apologizing, a kind of mirth dancing to show Lu Han that he’s pleased with the reaction.
Lu Han makes a noise, leans against the cool glass of the window and taps his fingers on it, the noise comforting him as he memorizes more trees, a bench, imagines Sehun standing among them.
“I got a date,” Minseok tells him, sliding into the seat across from him, eyes bright and grin crooked.
“With who?” Lu Han asks, eyebrows shooting up, hands sliding across the cool surface of the table, mind preoccupied.
“Jongdae!”
“But,” Lu Han’s brows drop back down, furrow instead as he tries to understand. “He’s dating Baekhyun.”
“Yep!” Minseok says cheerfully, grin widening. “My date with Baekhyun is next week.”
“You’re kidding me,” Lu Han says, and the news startles a laugh out of him, eyes crinkling slightly. “And here I thought you were pining for one of them, not both.”
“I wasn’t pining,” Minseok whines, reaching across the tables to smack Lu Han’s arm playfully. “I was planning my course of attack.”
“Can you handle them both?” Lu Han asks, leaning back in his chair, easy smile on his lips. He feels more himself right now, mind distracted from Sehun and focus completely on Minseok. “Loud, annoying...”
“I’ll train them well,” Minseok says airily, a vague wave of his hand and his grin growing slightly more crooked.
“Gross.”
Minseok just laughs, loudly, and stands up with a sudden rush, dragging Lu Han up and out of his chair.
“Come on,” He demands, tugging Lu Han out of their school and across campus. “We’re going to go somewhere, do something. Get you out of this misery hole you’ve dug.”
Lu Han just sighs, mind back on Sehun and shoes loud on the pavement as he drags his feet. They’re meeting so soon, and it’s terrifying.
---
The gallery looks different at night.
Or perhaps it's because of the shaking of Lu Han's hands, the whipping of his head back and forth as if he expects Sehun to jump from a nearby bush and into his sight.
The entrance looms before him, but he's brave. He's always been brave.
There aren't a lot of people here, but Lu Han didn't expect there to be. A small scale exhibition leads to a small scale crowd, but he's still bursting with a kind of pride, smiling wide at those who glance at him; they mill around the lobby, lean against walls and tap their feet, hipsters from the upper west side mostly, scarves large and vans snug on their feet.
Lu Han must look strange to those around him; nervous, eager, bouncing on the balls of his feet, craning his neck over taller people and inching towards the front of the line. He looks like an excited fan at a boyband concert, trying to get in first to pounce on his lead singing lover.
He tells a curious hipster that Sehun is an old friend, and that he's just excited to finally see his friend's work up like this, for everyone to see. He's believed, and he gets a few cheers, a few jealous whispers of "wow I wish I had talented friends."
The exhibition itself is so overwhelming, so breathtaking that Lu Han nearly forgets to look for Sehun, trapped by walls and walls of familiar photos, little glass cases with familiar cameras placed inside them; what photo was taken with what?
And then he sees it.
Not Sehun, but the photos, a section of the gallery filled with candid shots of none other than himself, smiling into meals, dancing down the street after Sehun, leaning against the wall of their steps and staring into some kind of distance, sketchbook balanced where it always is.
Sehun had kept the photos, but the title of this particular piece, this particular step in Sehun's life in pictures -- Colours and Seasons, The story of how I came to be, -- has his heart dropping, confusion causing his lip to be tugged in between teeth, gnawing in nervousness.
Trapped.
The words are perched atop a glass case, hand carved font reminding Lu Han of his final project in Year 11, a tiny sculpture of him and Sehun, Minseok and Yixing as their loyal cats. He'd made the font of their names comic sans as a joke, sculpted it to perfection.
The camera, Lu Han's held it in his hands, taken photos with it even; remembers it nestled between Sehun's thighs, forgotten in the moments when Lu Han had put it aside, climbed into Sehun's lap himself to kiss the cold of winter goodbye.
Sehun hadn't seemed trapped.
---
"Hey babe."
Sehun laughs into the phone, an inappropriate response to Lu Han's term of endearment, but very Sehun.
It’s a bright day, though cold, snowy wind battering his windows. His walls are covered in photos, little hand developed shots of him and Lu Han, polaroids of their many adventures. There are some shots of Minseok in there as well, with his pudgy face and his sharp eyes, looking out for them both.
"What do you want?" His receiver is new, sleek black having just come out of its box, no need for a cellphone when the only one he ever calls is Lu Han. When the only one he ever needs to call is Lu Han.
"Meet me at the school? I want to take you somewhere."
Lu Han doesn't say where; but he's cryptic like this, fingers laced with Sehun's to drag him who knows where, to tug at the trapped section of Sehun's heart, the one created by something not himself.
"Why?"
Sehun doesn't know why he always asks, why he always hesitates; they're dating, right? Things are perfect, right?
There are no memories. Not before meeting Lu Han, not before simply existing; for Lu Han.
"Just come. I'll buy you cotton candy."
The fair.
Sehun had seen the signs on his way home to bleak gray of his apartment, had snapped a photo of the fraying advertisements. The largest traveling roller coaster in the state.
"You better keep that promise," Sehun says with a laugh. This one isn't fake, isn't lead by the hollowed out hold in his heart.
He'll have fun today.
---
"You would be here."
Lu Han whips around, fast enough to cause a sharp pain to pierce through the nerves of his neck, eyes wide, staring.
“I was going in order.”
It isn’t the right thing to say, blurted out in a panic as his irises shake, stumbling over himself though he’s standing still.
“You haven’t changed,” Is all Sehun says, and his face is impassive, a frown etched into his features that is unfamiliar to Lu Han, taller, shoulders broader, hair still silver, though windswept.
“Yes I have,” Lu Han insists, and he can’t quite figure out why Sehun’s words bring out an argumentative tone in him, squinting in a confused manner at the boy before him. “I’ve matured greatly.”
Sehun hums, and it’s the same as on the phone, yet clearer.
Lu Han is struck with the realization that he's real, he exists, standing before him, the dream boy he once drew many years ago, his Sehun,
"Your exhibition," Lu Han tries, and he steps forward; not too close, a decent distance away. Conversation distance. It’s too far. “This is wonderful, Sehun.”
“You think so?”
Lu Han sees it; the hint of a smile flash across Sehun’s face, something.
“It’s all thanks to you in a twisted sense of the word thanks,” Sehun continues, and Lu Han feels his stomach lurch, still not understanding.
“I’ll never understand.”
Lu Han looks up at Sehun, startled by how tall he is, by how the lines of his face have changed. Sehun says Lu Han hasn’t changed, but he himself, is vastly different. And yet Lu Han still feels, stuck in the memories of the past, the sudden dis-rupture of what he thought was perfect.
“And I’ll never expect you to understand.”
Sehun shrugs, steps past Lu Han and to the glass case where the camera rests, where the letters glare at Lu Han, taunt them in their confusion.
“Will you at least tell me one day?” Lu Han asks, and he knows he sounds pitiful, hears the crack in his own voice. He hopes Sehun has some humanity left in his once smiling, once youthful face to understand that Lu Han doesn’t know.
“I can’t.”
Sehun’s eyes don’t meet his, and Lu Han watches him trace his sculpture, fingers long and still so pretty as they trail over the top of the T, pause at the A. “I just can’t.”
“Can we --”
Lu Han’s breath catches in his throat and he steps back, feeling suddenly overwhelmed, surrounded by Sehun’s work, fans of the photos that feature Lu Han, that feature their old life. “Can we at least be friends?”
“We can,” Sehun says, and he’s shrugging again, turning back towards Lu Han, closer than before. Not conversation distance. “This exhibition is the last I’ll display the pictures, and the last time they’ll exist within the batteries of the cameras that took them. Past is past.”
“But the past was so beautiful,” Lu Han mutters, eyes downcast, chest constricting. “Did it mean nothing?”
“Your past was beautiful,” Sehun tells him, eyes flickering to the guests, the ones that walk past them and double take, from photos of a teenager to the young man they represent standing rigid and upset. “Mine is full of lies.”
“I should... go, shouldn’t I?”
Lu Han’s voice is quiet, subdued, unlike himself. He rings his hands together, takes a step backwards and glances once, at the exhibition around them, guests slowly filing towards the cinema room, towards the video where Sehun will explain his work, explain what makes the colours bursts and the seasons real.
“I invited you here.”
Something flashes in Sehun’s eyes, a tug of desperation that Lu Han recognizes, having mapped it out many times, having quelled it; nervousness before exams, terror at the thought of a broken camera, worry about bills that are overdue. It serves as a kind of selfish relief, a hope, a tug of Lu Han’s own that Sehun came back because he still cares and that they can be friends and that Lu Han will fucking understand.
“You can sit with me in the VIP booth for the screening,” Sehun says in a fairly normal voice, not the stilted emotional drawl Lu Han keeps hearing, and Lu Han sees a gust of weird energy, feels the gust of weird energy, following him like he always has; two steps behind and admiring, lost and in love. “I’ll feed you.”
The last part is quietly called over Sehun’s shoulder; hitting Lu Han like a promised wind, and he’s forgetful of the failed mark he’d received on his midterm, forgetful of the years of pining, the past few months of anxiety, if only for a brief moment.
---
“Does it feel natural when it happens?”
Sehun is lying in bed, arms free but trapped. Strapped to the bed by invisible cords not of his making, existence that is forced. Always forced. His arms, they allow him to take this phone call because it has been drawn, allow him to exist.
The feeling is grey.
“No.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Only my chest.”
“I drew you again.”
A pause.
“I guess you knew that.”
“Why did you draw me again?”
Sehun’s voice is hoarse; dehydration the cause of not being able to move, Lu Han’s daydream while drawing of him thinking on his bed, trail of smoke from a forgotten cigarette poisoning the air existing. Only existing for Lu Han.
“I’m sorry,” And Lu Han sounds sincere, choked up even. Sehun tries not to think of the tears that must run down his pretty cherub features, the pain that must constrict his chest. “I got curious. I had -- I had to know if you were telling the truth.”
“I exist for your benefit,” Sehun mutters. He wants to shrug, but his shoulders won’t allow it; he still has another hour of immobility before the section of his heart that consumes him will calm once more, only to become its own hollowed cavern.
“No, you don’t.”
It’s the quietest Sehun has ever heard Lu Han’s voice, a croak, whispered into the phone. A different section of his heart aches; guilt.
“Goodbye, Lu Han.”
Title: (Don’t) Let Me Go
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 18,400
Prompt: Meraki: To do something with soul, creativity, or love; when you leave a piece of yourself behind in your work.
Warning/s: drug use, cigarette use, mentions of depression, self-inflicted emotional abuse, weird colour symbolism, angst, weird timeline. The main story is told linearly, but the italics (past) and the phone calls (random) are not.
Meraki;
- To do something with soul, creativity, or love; when you leave a piece of yourself behind in your work.
-‘๑’-
---
You put a fever inside me
And I've been cold since you left
---
“It’s like I just came to exist one day, purely for the benefit of him; an ideal formulated by his very hands, by the charcoal that never wears down. Everything I did, thought, felt, it was like I was trapped. But I couldn’t hate him, because it wasn’t his fault, it was never his fault. But at the same time, he was so fucking selfish, only seeing the perfection he thought we were, and never the pain that hid behind my eyes.
Sometimes I wish I had taken self portraits, but that wasn’t in the contract, that wasn’t in his daydream when his hands flew across paper to create my life. I only existed when he needed me, and I had never quite understood the definition of trapped; was naive, innocent, loving by nature.
His.”
---
Normally, one would see the seasonal year as beginning in Spring; where life starts, winter washing away to let blossoms burst forth.
Lu Han’s story, it begins in Autumn; with the school bells and the dropping temperatures, trees shedding their layers to become barren, rows of dead creatures swaying with the wind, but no longer vibrant.
This is when Lu Han likes to begin his portfolio, likes to take his sketchbook everywhere, draw the life, the hidden secrets, the dark corners of the season.
He likes to showcase the bright colours, cascading leaves fanning around him, falling onto the canvas of his sketchbook, only to be traced into something beautiful. He usually sits on the steps -- the ones that were once their steps -- fingers absently tracing the cracks between faded bricks, the tiniest of smiles jumping across his lips.
The thing about memories is that they never really announce their arrival, and they never tell anyone what they're bringing.
This time it’s a friendly memory, crescent moon eyes and laughter; Lu Han's scarf wound around the neck of someone else, someone who blushes furiously, hand curled into a fist to hide his face.
Lu Han's tiny smile grows into a wide grin for a short moment, an almost giggle bubbling to his surface before fading away. The thing about memories is that they're not real, they're remembered past tense for a reason; things that were, things that will never happen again.
and this memory, this particular vivid image with its rosy cheeks and dusty auburn hair, it won't ever return.
High school was along time ago, and those grown up, those weathered with the weight of their lives, can never be teenagers again, can never be shy, giggling, button nosed youth, ca never experience firsts for a second time.
For now, the steps are just steps, and Lu Han leans back against the cold concrete, reaching out with quick reflexes to pluck a leaf from the air. He holds it delicately with numb fingers -- he should have worn gloves -- tracing its golden brown edges. Its colour reminds him of the school behind him, building tall and imposing as it catches the rays of morning light glowing gently through thinning trees.
Another memory comes knocking, flinging open the front door of Lu Han's mind without waiting for an answer, and it's the first day of high school -- his first day of high school -- tie loose and hair artfully messy, an attempt to fit in with his obnoxious group of friends.
The steps hadn't been their steps yet. That would wait another two years, a place of refuge among tears, bullies, broken lenses, muttered apologies and beautiful flushed cheeks.
A bell rings somewhere above Lu Han.
It startles him, leaf falling from his fingers, sketchbook snapping closed in his lap. He hasn't gotten enough work done, but he's patient. Memories like to take their time when they visit, crashing on his mind's couch and waking up at all hours of night to create noise.
Lu Han walks across the front field, avoiding the pathway that's now filled with students, standing out, but taking his time.
He looks young enough to be a student here; golden locks and dancing eyes enough to charm any 15-year-old girl's heart, but his uniform gives him away, blazer sporting a different school's patch, colours mismatched against the ones of the uniforms passing him as he heads off school grounds.
Lu Han does to stop to give some 15-year-old girls an award winning smile, resisting the urge to wink when they respond with hushed whispers and reddening cheeks, straightening their skirts and hiding their faces.
The cracked sidewalks are littered with leaves, nearly picture perfect, oak trees towering overhead, the softest of breezes ruffling Lu Han's hair as he takes his time; heading to his own campus for his own first day.
He considers taking a photo, but another memory is leaning through an open window and chatting in his ear.
A boy, dancing down the sidewalk in front of him, brown hair shining, nearly hidden underneath his beanie -- Lu Han's beanie -- camera in his hands. He'd been shorter than Lu Han still, middle school youth still tugging at the sleeves of his oversized school blazer.
He'd taken pictures of everything; the leaves, the sky, the empty road in front of them, of Minseok in his awful rimmed glasses, and of Lu Han. Always Lu Han.
Taking photos isn't really Lu Han's thing -- he's got a barren instagram account to prove it -- so he puts his phone away and speeds up his steps, sketchbook snugly tucked beneath his arm.
He ends up at a different set of steps, good-natured grin plastered on his face, one that doesn't quite ignite the natural sparkle of his normally bright eyes.
Jongdae and Baekhyun don't notice his lack of colour, too busy goofing around, oblivious to the mildly jealous stare Minseok send in their direction; though Lu Han is never sure which one of them it's directed towards.
Minseok glances at Lu Han, smile warm and eyes sympathetic for a brief moment, one that Lu Han never fails to catch.
"How was Riverview?" Minseok asks, and his voice has that gentle tilt to it, fingers curling around Lu Han's sketchbook with a comforting hum.
"I was distracted," Lu Han says with a voice too quiet -- the quiet that arrives when one is silent for too long -- sigh parting his lips. They shine as the light hits them, pink and delicate, soft and innocent for the time being. "I didn't get much done."
"Don't you ever consider a new portfolio? With different locations?"
Minseok's question is careless, one they both know Lu Han cannot answer readily. He sighs, sketchbook back in his own lap, fingers carefully fixing his tie.
"It's tradition," Lu Han says simply, but he gives Minseok a gentle smile, tiniest of sparkles appearing in his gaze. "I appreciate your concern, but it has to be this way."
"Change is the first step in moving on," Is all Minseok says, and his palm is warm as it settles on Lu Han's shoulder. "High school has already gone into the realm of A Really Long Time Ago, and memories filled with wistful sighs won't help you pass economics."
"Fuck economics," Lu Han grumbles, but his spirits are less melancholy and more steady as he accepts the arm thrown around him, lets himself be jostled towards orientation, memories fading and mood lifted.
The thing about memories is that they often leave just as unannounced as their arrival, forgotten and neglected, slipping out while their host is distracted.
---
Minseok is always the first to tell Lu Han when he’s being dramatic, when he should stop, move on. But he can’t help it; first loves are dramatic, unstoppable, a constant haunting that comes to breathe in his ear.
And Lu Han, he's a naturally dramatic person; everything done in a way that is overdone. Too much expression, too much, a flair for tossing every feeling into art, into a reading out loud of his heart in thoughts that cease to make sense, words that flow backwards.
So here he is, sketchbook still in his lap, legs propped up and eyes on the window, staring out at the decaying trees in his college's courtyard. He's in one of his classes, and that's about as far as his brain has allowed him to go today, notebook open on the desk in front of him, page blank and waiting for the notes that will never come.
He's drawing the scene outside the window, sketching the outlines of a figure in the courtyard, a silhouette leaning against a tree. It's not him, but someone from his past, and Lu Han hums solemnly as he fishes inside his backpack for a silver felt-tip, catching a few words from his professor and hastily scrawling a title to his notes before turning back to the More Important Task.
He's in Statistics apparently, which sucks.
Lu Han shades the hair of the figure silver, enjoying the way it glints on paper next to the monotone of the scene he's created. He debates colouring it in, adding the hues of late morning and the dusky brown of the leaves, but decides that he’s always looked best when allowed to stand out.
And he does stand out, coloured a glowing silver from head to feet, like a tiny angel on Lu Han's paper, causing a tiny grin to stretch across his lips before a frown takes its place. Minseok is going to scold him for sure, say some very Minseok things about how drawing ex-boyfriends is extremely not healthy.
He's right -- of course, always -- but Lu Han continues to stubbornly draw, tracing the patterns of something that he considers putting in the portfolio. Every season would be more complete with a little backstory.
---
Lu Han skips lunch, breezes out of the school and towards the park; the one with the tallest structures and the train.
That's where he sees it, sees a familiar photo, tattered and pinned, hidden among other advertisements, other photos, lamp-post littered with artists trying to make their way. Lu Han's fingers reach out to touch the paper, to run his fingers across it's cold material surface, worn from the wind.
There are words, a date, an art gallery for an up and coming photographer, a first art show. An introduction of sorts.
Colours and Seasons.
A simple concept, a simple name. And the concept, Lu Han knows it, knows it too well, glancing to his hands, sees them shaking slightly, fingers tight around a sketchbook that contains those same words -- except different -- a sequel.
He recognizes the photo on the cover. And it hurts because of all photos he could have chosen to show himself off to the world, he chooses the one he never took.
Lu Han recognizes the photo because he remembers holding the expensive camera that captured it in his hands, remembers fiddling with the knobs, laughter soft as he asks for help, asks to be shown how to take a photo.
He knows the photo well, because he's the one who took it, the one who looked up at the owner of the camera afterwards with a puppy dog grin, ego swelling from the pride reflected back at him, the comments.
You're a natural, Lu Han.
It's just beginner's luck. I'm an artist, not a photographer.
And yet here he is, looking at that very photo, his first photo. The same photo he's tried to recreate with pencil crayons, with fine lined pens, charcoal snapped in half in his struggles.
Lu Han rips the ad straight from the post, dumps the tacks on the ground, balls of a handful of tape and tosses it at a tree, annoyed scream at the tip of his tongue.
And yet he's excited, enthralled, flood of memories rushing through him, emotion.
Colours and Seasons
A photography exhibition by up and coming photographer, Oh Sehun.
November 9th, Horton Palace Inn. Entry fee, 4$.
---
"He's back," Lu Han says, and he's breathing in short harsh gasps, hands in his knees, paper hanging limply from a hand, sketchbook dropping heavily onto the table with a loud thud, one that startles quite a few looks.
Jongdae just looks at him quizzically, eyebrows raised.
"And?" Baekhyun asks, chin resting in the palm of a relaxed hand, peering up at Lu Han with disinterest.
“You don’t understand,” Lu Han says, throwing himself into a seat next to Jongdae, paper flat in front of him. “He’s back and he’s stealing my ideas.”
“Colours and seasons?” A voice says over Lu Han’s shoulder, quiet and confused. Lu Han whips around in gratitude, stares up at Minseok with wild eyes.
“I took that photo,” He says, still staring, still wild as Minseok slips in beside him looking mildly concerned. “He’s using my photo, for his own show.”
“Why is he even back in the city?” Minseok asks in muted confusion, reading the fine print, the tiny details Lu Han hadn’t thought to peruse. “You don’t just disappear and show up like this.”
Baekhyun and Jongdae are giving them curious looks across the table, not understanding. They'd met Lu Han post-Sehun, post ... everything.
"But why would he open an exhibition with your portfolio title and with your photo?" Minseok murmurs, eyebrows furrowing.
"To get my attention?" Lu Han muses, and there's a tiny frown on his lips, a tiny stirring in his heart, a confused delayed thump.
"He's not that dramatic Lu Han," Minseok says evenly, chewing cutely on the straw of his soy milk, still staring at the advertisement. "He's not you."
"No he's not," Lu Han agrees with a sigh, and he leans back in his chair, licks his lips. "He's subtle. This is subtle. It's just small enough that there was a huge chance I wouldn't notice it. If I hadn't gone to the park I wouldn't have found it."
"And he does know you well," Minseok says slowly, and he's leaning forward now, catching on and believing. "He would know that you would go to that park to sketch. It's that time of year."
"Should I go?" Lu Han asks, and it's quiet, nearly a whisper, conspiratorial even. "I mean -- I just --"
Minseok laughs then, a quiet chuckle, hand on Lu Han's shoulder.
"We both know that you'll go anyways," He says, finally acknowledges Jongdae and Baekhyun across their table with a grin, gives Lu Han a sympathetic glance. "He did disappear on you. I think you deserve to know why."
"You're right," Lu Han says, burying his head in his arms. "I kind of- I've been whining about this for months but I never expected him to actually come back. I'm scared to go."
“You have nothing to fear but yourself.”
Minseok’s words confuse him, but Lu Han is sure in time he’ll understand.
---
Lu Han starts seeing that same piece of paper everywhere.
It's on the school bulletin board, stopping Lu Han in his early morning wanderings, coffee in hand and muffin halfway in his mouth, shocked that Sehun had been in his school and he hadn't known.
It's on a hundred more lamp-posts, a hundred more abandoned walls. And the flyers aren't big, they aren't eye catching, but Lu Han spots each one, runs his fingers across them each time, debates taking each one.
He's afraid.
Sehun is older now, probably different, and yet there's a chance that he's exactly the same, a taller, less innocent version of his Sehun. And that scares Lu Han too.
Because in a way, he hopes Sehun is the same, hopes he's malleable, joyful; the Sehun he had met, and not the Sehun that had left him. And that's kind of selfish. The thought that Sehun had left because of Lu Han, had left because something between them, something about them wasn't working, was too much. It had been perfect one day, and nothing the next.
And yet Lu Han; Lu Han is still very much the same. He ascends the steps to the gallery where the exhibition is being held, tells the owner that he’s looking for his brother’s phone number.
He’s just come back to the city and he’s holding an exhibition here, I’d like to surprise him.
The gallery owner hadn’t cared, scribbling some numbers on a piece of paper and tossing it to Lu Han, a gentle smile and words of luck on her tongue. Lu Han isn’t surprised that he’d gotten it so easily, has always been persuasive, good-looking, hair swept and tongue flicking out to lick across his lips, seductive and flirty.
He plays dirty, but Sehun is playing dirtier this time.
---
“Who are you, if not humble?”
The voice crackles over the receiver, far and yet close, so close, breathing down his neck and whispering, crawling across his skin to settle into his lungs. It fills them, causes his entire being to shake, to fear, to become concerned.
“What is the opposite of humble.”
And yet, a blank mind, one that does not absorb the shaking of radiated phone waves, one that clears his lungs, breathes in deeply, unsure of what to say; how to say it. Instead he deflects, eyebrows furrowing, straight jagged lines bending, a typical frown that the other cannot see but can probably feel, probably knows too well.
“How did you get my number?” He asks instead, a maddening change of subject; ignorance of the subject, that he knows will get a rise out of the other, that he knows will affect him.
“The receptionist, at your gallery,” There’s a smirk in the voice. He grimaces, fingers curling tighter over the black receiver, cord dangling and sliding against his skin.
An old phone, out of style. He has no need for cellphones when he rarely exists long enough to pay a bill.
“She’s very gullible,” The smirk continues, and he cannot keep his mind blank long enough when the pressure fills his chest. “Thought I was your brother when I asked for your number. It’s a good thing we nearly look alike, isn’t it?”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” A pause. The licking of lips audible with the way the white noise fades for only a moment. “I asked a question though. Or perhaps you would just like an answer. Conceit, I think it is?”
“We both know,” He starts, stopping to trail the tip of a finger across his faded bangs; once silver now grey, dead and in need of a touch up. “We both know that I am nowhere near conceited. Unless you’ve left me with more than just your memories.”
“I wasn’t the one who left, so forgive me for ignoring that last thing you said,” The voice says, and there’s no longer a smirk in his words. “You know what this is about.”
“The picture?” He asks. The pressure in his lungs deflates, smoke the colour of his hair, of the air around him. “Don’t take it too personally. I needed to let you know somehow that I was back in town.”
“You still have my number, you could have called.”
“And now you have mine,” He says with a shrug, sitting up fully to look beside him, black phone cord curling around his arm like a snake. He frowns, untangling it with a sigh that doesn’t go unnoticed by the voice on the other end.
“Sehun.”
“Lu Han.”
“Well I’m glad you still remember my name,” Lu Han scoffs. It brings a slight smile to Sehun’s lips, a dead kind of smile as he glances at his wall, the immaculately kept shelves.
Cameras collected over the years, from moments when he was conscious enough, aware enough to grip his lithe limbs around solids, around things that stay.
“Why are you back in the city Sehun?”
“There was an opportunity,” Sehun answers. It’s simple, laced with nothing else but honesty, or so he likes to present it as that.
Honesty.
He reaches a hand to a grey table, standing quiet and humble beside where he rests; fingers closing around a bottle. “Didn’t you miss me?”
“Of course I missed-“
Sehun tuts, a quiet sound that has Lu Han’s nearly stuttering voice pausing. The smirk is flying away, growing wings to disappear. Lu Han won’t smile again tonight.
“You left without saying anything. You just disappeared, of course I missed you,” Lu Han continues, and it’s with exasperation, a hurried rush of words.
Sehun can see his pupils dancing, can see his lips curling down in an upset pout and his hands, clenched around the shiniest new phone. “I-“
“And you thought?”
“I … don’t know.”
“You don’t know what you thought?” Sehun keeps some humour in his voice, tries to sound light, frivolous even.
The heaviness is there, weariness, hollowing him out and sending his insides screeching to a halt.
“I guess I just wanted to hear your voice,” Lu Han mutters through the line. It’s cute - it’s always been cute - and Sehun is affected, marginally, emptiness threatening to fight through and close him.
“Why?” Sehun asks, and he’s leaning back against the wall now, rusted metal of the cheap headboard digging into his shoulder blades. He ignores it, releases another cloud of smoke, lifeless and grey. “After all this time you don’t-“
“I don’t -- ?” Lu Han sounds confused, voice trailing off in a way that echoes Sehun’s, muted and grey. Sehun frowns. He’s always liked Lu Han’s colour, and the lack of it is heavy, weighing down on Sehun’s own dusty colours.
“You’re not angry?” He tries, and his tongue flicks out to his lips. Dry and probably losing colour, as they always do when he spends too much time in the city, too much time with a cigarette pressed against his lips, with pills glowing pretty in the palm of his hands.
Blue, colourful, nothing like the thoughts that encompass any other part.
There’s a silence now, on the other end of the line, and Sehun tenses, sits up. His panic bursts through in pretty shades of grey, but it subsides when he hears Lu Han’s breathing, shaky through his receiver.
“Just … confused,” Is the answer he finally gets, and Sehun can picture it; Lu Han’s eyes squeezing shut for the briefest of moments, bottom lip caught between front teeth and grip on his phone loosening. “Upset? Horrified, never angry though.”
Not with you”
The last part is said quietly; as if Lu Han is afraid to let the words whisper past his lips, and Sehun feels himself biting past a bitter smirk, more of a grimace in the fading Autumn light.
“Come to the exhibition.”
“Do you want me there?”
“I wouldn’t ask you to come, if I didn’t want you there.”
A pause. Sehun knows he’s right, hears Lu Han sigh, and this time the words do whisper past his lips.
“I want to be there,” He says, and he sounds firm, as if confirming it to himself and not to Sehun. “We can talk.”
“We can talk,” Sehun agrees, and the blankets feel soft, brain fuzzy and legs heavy as the blue pill swirls, works its way into his system. A sigh escapes his lips as he bids his goodbye, as the phone drops back into its cradle and Sehun can lie back on the bed, can feel the lumps beneath his back.
Flickering lights; his own. Grey ceiling, illuminated by colours that aren’t there.
It had been difficult upon his return to calculate what season it was; what season he would use. Sehun is careful though, and he knows Lu Han well, knows him too well.
He smiles, a gentle loving smile as he burrows deeper into soft, soft, soft fleecy blankets, grey trail of smoke matching his surroundings as it flies up into the air from his dying abandoned cigarette.
Lu Han will understand when they talk. Lu Han always understands, and Sehun is sure if he knew the truth he would understand, but Sehun can’t. He can’t.
Can’t.
---
"I talked to Sehun."
Minseok glances up, barely there shock on his features as he surveys Lu Han. They're in Minseok's room, sitting close together on the bed as Minseok attempts to salvage Lu Han's Economics assignment.
The way their knees knock together comforts Lu Han, even as his mind rests elsewhere, fingers twitching in anxiety from where they sit on his thighs.
"Did you see him?"
"No, not yet," Lu Han shakes his head, frowns when his bangs separate. "Just on the phone."
"How is he?" Minseok asks, and the way he reaches across Lu Han is subtle, laptop closing closing and books pushed aside. He faces Lu Han on the bed and crosses his own hands in his lap, though his posture is crooked, bent.
"Cryptic."
Lu Han's hands fall from his lap to land at his sides, worn superhero sheets comforting and familiar beneath his fingertips. Minseok is safe, years of friendship showing through in the way he stays calm, knows exactly what to say.
"Are you going to the exhibition?" Minseok asks, and Lu Han is grateful. Minseok didn't ask how he was cryptic, why.
"He asked me to come," Lu Han nods, fingers gripping Captain America's shield just a tiny bit tighter. He knows his fingers look dainty like this, hates when his fingers look dainty, but Minseok is watching his face carefully. Lu Han stills. "It was for my attention."
"And you're not angry with him?"
"No."
A shaky breath escapes chapped lips, but Lu Han sucks it back, hides his nerves, his fears, even though Minseok always knows.
"Never angry. Not with him."
Minseok gives him a sad kind of smile, leaning forward to rest his palm on Lu Han's knee.
Platonic comforts.
"Do you want to watch a movie?" Minseok asks, distracting, gentle. Not regarding Lu Han with sympathy, with judgement or held back advice such as the kind he hears from Jongdae and Baekhyun constantly.
Platonic comforts.
"Please," Lu Han breathes. He flashes Minseok an easy smile, a grateful one.
He relaxes into Minseok's side, comfort of their knees knocking together, of Minseok reaching up to ruffle his hair gently, pushing the anxiety, the obsessive thoughts of Sehun out.
Sehun can wait another day.
---
"Do you think we'll be forever?"
There's a certain naivety in Sehun's tone, a hope as he cranes his neck backwards and smiles up at Lu Han, the crescent eyed one that makes him look so beautiful, an awkward angel fallen from the sky and into his life.
"Forever is subjective," Lu Han tells him, but it’s with a smile of his own, a tweak of Sehun's nose and crescents that match his, though nowhere near as beautiful. "Who's to say forever is even a thing? We'll be a long time though."
"Something had to exist forever," Sehun insists, and he's crawling into a sitting position, arms winding their way around Lu Han's neck. He's bigger than Lu Han, taller than him now, yet he still manages to make himself a little bit smaller, fit himself into an embrace he considers perfect.
"Human beings don't," Lu Han points out, and he stares up towards the sky, only for a brief moment to catch the clouds as they pass, imprint them for later. "We can't last forever, but we could last our entire lives, and that's our forever."
"That's confusing," Sehun whines, and its his turn to tug at Lu Han's nose playfully, frown pulling the corners of his mouth down comically. "You're supposed to say 'Yes Sehunnie, we're forever'."
"I'm an honest person," Lu Han shrugs. "I can't promise something that doesn't exist, even if it's just for the sake of making someone happy."
"You make me happy either way," Sehun says, prodding his chest, and Lu Han feels warm lips on his cheek. Still innocent, even with Sehun's legs mimicking his arms as they wrap around Lu Han's waist. “I exist only for the sake of making you happy.”
Nothing exists forever.
---
"Was there someone else?"
It's late -- past midnight -- and the white of the walls is a dusty gray, dark and solemn, lifeless under the light of a dying lamp.
"Why are you asking this now?"
"It’s been bothering me, keeping me up."
A flash of light joins the dull glow of the lamp, igniting a cigarette that slides past chapped lips.
"There wasn't," Sehun says with a hollow laugh, strained from the drag of his cigarette, from the nicotine that runs through his veins and reminds him that for now, he exists. "If you're thinking that's why I left. There wasn't."
"Then why did you leave?"
Lu Han sounds drunk, voice lower, slurred over the receiver, and Sehun sighs, fingernail tapping against the worn black, eyes trained on where the paint is chipping.
"It isn't the time to discuss this right now," Sehun mutters, dragging a hand through his hair. It's oily to the touch. "I need to be up early and it's late."
"Was it my fault?" Lu Han interrupts, and he must be drunk. "I just want to know if it was my fault. You changed your mind but--"
"It was," Sehun snaps, irritated. Tired. He hangs up, receiver loud as it falls into its cradle.
Not Lu Han's fault fully. Indirectly maybe, in a fucked up way.
The walls swim from the shadows and the weight of the room, cigarette stubbed out into an ashtray that needs to be cleaned. Sehun doesn't care.
Existence is fleeting when things were created to not be forever.
---
The Cafe is quiet, as it always is at this time of day.
Lu Han is one of few customers there, seated by the window, sketchbook empty in front of him, Americano growing cold as it sits, full and untouched with his fingers frozen, curled around the ceramic mug.
The leaves have nearly all fallen, piles of colour along the ground where the trees lack it, dead brown, branches an ugly gray under the sunlight.
His portfolio is failing this year. He's drawn one, maybe two pictures, spurred on by memories, by Sehun's return.
The Americano is bitter, cold and tasting slightly like old dishwater when Lu Han brings it to his lips. He winces, pushing it away from him, across the table where it sits, a waste of money, of time.
It was.
What was his fault exactly?
Lu Han can't remember ever doing anything wrong, can't remember anything besides the petty teenage arguments, the times Sehun wasn't affectionate enough, or Lu Han was too honest.
But those had all been in the past, and nothing had lead up to when Sehun left. And it wasn't as if Sehun had said he was leaving, had argued or been upset. He'd been there one day, and gone the next.
"He's moved," Was all Sehun's landlady had said, cryptic and condescending over her glasses. Lu Han hated her.
"You need to focus," Lu Han mutters to himself, snapping his sketchbook closed, tossing it into his bag with a roughness not usually reserved for precious items. "He's here now. That's what matters. You can figure it out."
Minseok repeats those exact words when Lu Han calls him later.
---
It's unhealthy, this obsession Lu Han has with Sehun.
And it’s almost less with Sehun himself, more with the fact of Sehun. Why is here? Why did he leave? Does he still love Lu Han?
Lu Han still loves him. Maybe, partially, mostly.
He can't decide, legs curled up underneath him, head resting on his knees as he stares out his bedroom window. The window seat is comfortable, stifling, full of memories that weigh down on Lu Han's shoulder, tea cup shaking in his cold hands.
It's going to be winter soon; cold weather and brisk winds, Lu Han's least favourite season.
He'd liked it once, briefly, when Sehun had worn the cutest beanies, had done up Lu Han's jacket for him, brushed the snow from his hair, jokingly proclaimed that he felt like the hyung. They'd had a make-shift Christmas tree before Lu Han had flown back home to see his family; a plastic tree bought from a discount store and tugged down the street, a wreath of fake mistletoe hung around Sehun's neck so Lu Han would always have the excuse to kiss him.
There's a gust of wind, one that Lu Han hears against the worn window frame, and he sighs as a stray bundle of dead leaves whip up into the air and past his house. His tea is replaced with a sketchbook, familiar gray charcoal held delicately between two fingers; the only drawing material he ever uses while sketching the usual thing, the usual person
His hand hesitates today, before flying into action, tea and dropping temperatures forgotten as silver hair appears, crescent moon smiles at their old park, familiar long fingers brushing against the bark of a tree they used to sit against.
Lu Han likes to imagine Sehun misses them too. Likes to imagine he too, has gone to visit their old spots since returning, smile on his lips and nostalgia blowing gently through his hair like cooling November wind.
Lu Han has a midterm tomorrow that he hasn't studied for, but Sehun's exhibition is in a few days. Sehun's exhibition is what matters.
---
"Hey Sehun?"
There's a hum, distracted; a whirring quietly in the background and the flurry of hands, busy.
"Do you remember that time we went walking on the East Side and you decided to feed the ducks?"
"Yeah, why?"
Legs crossed on the cold gray floor, wind howling through a draft in a cracked window, film developed with a filter. Sehun's hands are cold, but the heater is warm, pouring its orange glow over him and through the crevices of his dead heart.
"I just remember," There's a pause. "I remember we were on the bridge, and it was early summer, and you gave me this look, and all I was talking about was ice cream."
"And?"
Sehun grimaces, receiver cradled with his shoulder as he attempts to listen and develop at the same time. He leans back against the metal frame of his bed, film temporarily ignored and eyes on the dusky light of late Autumn.
"I always wondered what was going through your mind," Lu Han sounds sad, has probably thought about this a lot, has probably let the doubt weave through him and consume him.
I realized that no matter how much I try, something is forcing me to love you.
Sehun wants -- he wants to tell the truth, to spit things out in a burst of hurried emotion, fingers gripping around the receiver.
"It's the moment I fell in love with you," Sehun says simply. And it's true, it was the moment, but he's holding back the truth, fabricating and creating an existence richer than his own, flickering one.
"Oh," The answer comes and it’s with a whoosh of startled breath, a silence. "But you said it---"
"Before that?" Sehun asks, hollow laughter startling itself out of him. He's losing his control; a bit, slightly, partially. "I said it because you said it to me. I was young, I didn't know what love is."
"But you do now?"
It’s a whisper, the way Lu Han asks it, as if he's afraid that Sehun may answer no. And if Sehun could, he would answer no, nails digging into his thighs as his lungs scream for another cigarette, for a blue pill to calm the nerves.
"I think so." What is real love?
“Thank you, Sehun.”
“Yeah.”
---
“Hey Sehun?”
Sehun hums from where he’s sitting cross-legged on Lu Han’s floor, head resting against the soft material of the window seat.
“I love you.”
Lu Han looks so sincere, eyes sparkling, bottom lip tucked into his teeth. His fingers twitch a tiny bit, eyes averted from Sehun’s. He’s nervous.
“I love you too.”
Sehun says it without thinking, mechanically but without real feeling. He’s supposed to say this; the appropriate response. The part of his heart he can’t control, the caged in section that suffocates him and pushes away his free will is singing, joyous, enthralled.
“I’m so lucky.”
Sehun is grey, lifting his head from the window seat to look directly at Lu Han, to see the love in his eyes and the shy smile on his lips. He’s naive, nearly innocent at age seventeen, teasing and kittenish as he places his hands on Sehun’s shoulders, kisses him gently on the lips.
“You are lucky,” Sehun smirks, joking. Right for the moment, because it has the shy smile growing into a proper grin. “I’m pretty hot.”
“True.”
Lu Han leans forward, tilts his head, kisses Sehun again. Deeper this time, more meaningful, eyes fluttering closed as Sehun forgets, relishes in his existence, seals off the sections of his heart that are free to breathe.
Lu Han is beautiful.
---
Grey.
November is a grey month, dreary. The colours of Autumn washed away by a gloom that threatens to consume the city, cloudy skies and twisted bare branches reflected in the windows of gloomy office buildings, brick worn away by years of seasons.
Lu Han imagines there are streaks of rain, wishes for the clouds to mean something, but he knows it’s too cold for that now. Too far into the realm of time that causes his nerves to seize up and thoughts to run dry.
“You’re always staring out windows.”
A voice sounds right in his ear, startling Lu Han, noise escaping from his mouth and eyes widening as he jumps in fright, hits his elbow on the glass painfully.
“Jesus Christ Minseok,” He mutters, icy gaze soft after the moment passes, relaxing. He glances back out the window once, commits the swaying tips of the taller trees to memory, to sketch down later, grin falling onto his features. “You scared me.”
“Sorry,” Minseok says with a laugh, though his eyes aren’t apologizing, a kind of mirth dancing to show Lu Han that he’s pleased with the reaction.
Lu Han makes a noise, leans against the cool glass of the window and taps his fingers on it, the noise comforting him as he memorizes more trees, a bench, imagines Sehun standing among them.
“I got a date,” Minseok tells him, sliding into the seat across from him, eyes bright and grin crooked.
“With who?” Lu Han asks, eyebrows shooting up, hands sliding across the cool surface of the table, mind preoccupied.
“Jongdae!”
“But,” Lu Han’s brows drop back down, furrow instead as he tries to understand. “He’s dating Baekhyun.”
“Yep!” Minseok says cheerfully, grin widening. “My date with Baekhyun is next week.”
“You’re kidding me,” Lu Han says, and the news startles a laugh out of him, eyes crinkling slightly. “And here I thought you were pining for one of them, not both.”
“I wasn’t pining,” Minseok whines, reaching across the tables to smack Lu Han’s arm playfully. “I was planning my course of attack.”
“Can you handle them both?” Lu Han asks, leaning back in his chair, easy smile on his lips. He feels more himself right now, mind distracted from Sehun and focus completely on Minseok. “Loud, annoying...”
“I’ll train them well,” Minseok says airily, a vague wave of his hand and his grin growing slightly more crooked.
“Gross.”
Minseok just laughs, loudly, and stands up with a sudden rush, dragging Lu Han up and out of his chair.
“Come on,” He demands, tugging Lu Han out of their school and across campus. “We’re going to go somewhere, do something. Get you out of this misery hole you’ve dug.”
Lu Han just sighs, mind back on Sehun and shoes loud on the pavement as he drags his feet. They’re meeting so soon, and it’s terrifying.
---
The gallery looks different at night.
Or perhaps it's because of the shaking of Lu Han's hands, the whipping of his head back and forth as if he expects Sehun to jump from a nearby bush and into his sight.
The entrance looms before him, but he's brave. He's always been brave.
There aren't a lot of people here, but Lu Han didn't expect there to be. A small scale exhibition leads to a small scale crowd, but he's still bursting with a kind of pride, smiling wide at those who glance at him; they mill around the lobby, lean against walls and tap their feet, hipsters from the upper west side mostly, scarves large and vans snug on their feet.
Lu Han must look strange to those around him; nervous, eager, bouncing on the balls of his feet, craning his neck over taller people and inching towards the front of the line. He looks like an excited fan at a boyband concert, trying to get in first to pounce on his lead singing lover.
He tells a curious hipster that Sehun is an old friend, and that he's just excited to finally see his friend's work up like this, for everyone to see. He's believed, and he gets a few cheers, a few jealous whispers of "wow I wish I had talented friends."
The exhibition itself is so overwhelming, so breathtaking that Lu Han nearly forgets to look for Sehun, trapped by walls and walls of familiar photos, little glass cases with familiar cameras placed inside them; what photo was taken with what?
And then he sees it.
Not Sehun, but the photos, a section of the gallery filled with candid shots of none other than himself, smiling into meals, dancing down the street after Sehun, leaning against the wall of their steps and staring into some kind of distance, sketchbook balanced where it always is.
Sehun had kept the photos, but the title of this particular piece, this particular step in Sehun's life in pictures -- Colours and Seasons, The story of how I came to be, -- has his heart dropping, confusion causing his lip to be tugged in between teeth, gnawing in nervousness.
Trapped.
The words are perched atop a glass case, hand carved font reminding Lu Han of his final project in Year 11, a tiny sculpture of him and Sehun, Minseok and Yixing as their loyal cats. He'd made the font of their names comic sans as a joke, sculpted it to perfection.
The camera, Lu Han's held it in his hands, taken photos with it even; remembers it nestled between Sehun's thighs, forgotten in the moments when Lu Han had put it aside, climbed into Sehun's lap himself to kiss the cold of winter goodbye.
Sehun hadn't seemed trapped.
---
"Hey babe."
Sehun laughs into the phone, an inappropriate response to Lu Han's term of endearment, but very Sehun.
It’s a bright day, though cold, snowy wind battering his windows. His walls are covered in photos, little hand developed shots of him and Lu Han, polaroids of their many adventures. There are some shots of Minseok in there as well, with his pudgy face and his sharp eyes, looking out for them both.
"What do you want?" His receiver is new, sleek black having just come out of its box, no need for a cellphone when the only one he ever calls is Lu Han. When the only one he ever needs to call is Lu Han.
"Meet me at the school? I want to take you somewhere."
Lu Han doesn't say where; but he's cryptic like this, fingers laced with Sehun's to drag him who knows where, to tug at the trapped section of Sehun's heart, the one created by something not himself.
"Why?"
Sehun doesn't know why he always asks, why he always hesitates; they're dating, right? Things are perfect, right?
There are no memories. Not before meeting Lu Han, not before simply existing; for Lu Han.
"Just come. I'll buy you cotton candy."
The fair.
Sehun had seen the signs on his way home to bleak gray of his apartment, had snapped a photo of the fraying advertisements. The largest traveling roller coaster in the state.
"You better keep that promise," Sehun says with a laugh. This one isn't fake, isn't lead by the hollowed out hold in his heart.
He'll have fun today.
---
"You would be here."
Lu Han whips around, fast enough to cause a sharp pain to pierce through the nerves of his neck, eyes wide, staring.
“I was going in order.”
It isn’t the right thing to say, blurted out in a panic as his irises shake, stumbling over himself though he’s standing still.
“You haven’t changed,” Is all Sehun says, and his face is impassive, a frown etched into his features that is unfamiliar to Lu Han, taller, shoulders broader, hair still silver, though windswept.
“Yes I have,” Lu Han insists, and he can’t quite figure out why Sehun’s words bring out an argumentative tone in him, squinting in a confused manner at the boy before him. “I’ve matured greatly.”
Sehun hums, and it’s the same as on the phone, yet clearer.
Lu Han is struck with the realization that he's real, he exists, standing before him, the dream boy he once drew many years ago, his Sehun,
"Your exhibition," Lu Han tries, and he steps forward; not too close, a decent distance away. Conversation distance. It’s too far. “This is wonderful, Sehun.”
“You think so?”
Lu Han sees it; the hint of a smile flash across Sehun’s face, something.
“It’s all thanks to you in a twisted sense of the word thanks,” Sehun continues, and Lu Han feels his stomach lurch, still not understanding.
“I’ll never understand.”
Lu Han looks up at Sehun, startled by how tall he is, by how the lines of his face have changed. Sehun says Lu Han hasn’t changed, but he himself, is vastly different. And yet Lu Han still feels, stuck in the memories of the past, the sudden dis-rupture of what he thought was perfect.
“And I’ll never expect you to understand.”
Sehun shrugs, steps past Lu Han and to the glass case where the camera rests, where the letters glare at Lu Han, taunt them in their confusion.
“Will you at least tell me one day?” Lu Han asks, and he knows he sounds pitiful, hears the crack in his own voice. He hopes Sehun has some humanity left in his once smiling, once youthful face to understand that Lu Han doesn’t know.
“I can’t.”
Sehun’s eyes don’t meet his, and Lu Han watches him trace his sculpture, fingers long and still so pretty as they trail over the top of the T, pause at the A. “I just can’t.”
“Can we --”
Lu Han’s breath catches in his throat and he steps back, feeling suddenly overwhelmed, surrounded by Sehun’s work, fans of the photos that feature Lu Han, that feature their old life. “Can we at least be friends?”
“We can,” Sehun says, and he’s shrugging again, turning back towards Lu Han, closer than before. Not conversation distance. “This exhibition is the last I’ll display the pictures, and the last time they’ll exist within the batteries of the cameras that took them. Past is past.”
“But the past was so beautiful,” Lu Han mutters, eyes downcast, chest constricting. “Did it mean nothing?”
“Your past was beautiful,” Sehun tells him, eyes flickering to the guests, the ones that walk past them and double take, from photos of a teenager to the young man they represent standing rigid and upset. “Mine is full of lies.”
“I should... go, shouldn’t I?”
Lu Han’s voice is quiet, subdued, unlike himself. He rings his hands together, takes a step backwards and glances once, at the exhibition around them, guests slowly filing towards the cinema room, towards the video where Sehun will explain his work, explain what makes the colours bursts and the seasons real.
“I invited you here.”
Something flashes in Sehun’s eyes, a tug of desperation that Lu Han recognizes, having mapped it out many times, having quelled it; nervousness before exams, terror at the thought of a broken camera, worry about bills that are overdue. It serves as a kind of selfish relief, a hope, a tug of Lu Han’s own that Sehun came back because he still cares and that they can be friends and that Lu Han will fucking understand.
“You can sit with me in the VIP booth for the screening,” Sehun says in a fairly normal voice, not the stilted emotional drawl Lu Han keeps hearing, and Lu Han sees a gust of weird energy, feels the gust of weird energy, following him like he always has; two steps behind and admiring, lost and in love. “I’ll feed you.”
The last part is quietly called over Sehun’s shoulder; hitting Lu Han like a promised wind, and he’s forgetful of the failed mark he’d received on his midterm, forgetful of the years of pining, the past few months of anxiety, if only for a brief moment.
---
“Does it feel natural when it happens?”
Sehun is lying in bed, arms free but trapped. Strapped to the bed by invisible cords not of his making, existence that is forced. Always forced. His arms, they allow him to take this phone call because it has been drawn, allow him to exist.
The feeling is grey.
“No.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Only my chest.”
“I drew you again.”
A pause.
“I guess you knew that.”
“Why did you draw me again?”
Sehun’s voice is hoarse; dehydration the cause of not being able to move, Lu Han’s daydream while drawing of him thinking on his bed, trail of smoke from a forgotten cigarette poisoning the air existing. Only existing for Lu Han.
“I’m sorry,” And Lu Han sounds sincere, choked up even. Sehun tries not to think of the tears that must run down his pretty cherub features, the pain that must constrict his chest. “I got curious. I had -- I had to know if you were telling the truth.”
“I exist for your benefit,” Sehun mutters. He wants to shrug, but his shoulders won’t allow it; he still has another hour of immobility before the section of his heart that consumes him will calm once more, only to become its own hollowed cavern.
“No, you don’t.”
It’s the quietest Sehun has ever heard Lu Han’s voice, a croak, whispered into the phone. A different section of his heart aches; guilt.
“Goodbye, Lu Han.”