[selu] lights will guide you home (and ignite your bones)
lights will guide you home (and ignite your bones)
sehun/lu han; g; ~3800w
sort-of peterpan!au; where lu han is the boy who never grows up and brings sehun home. for miyoungwon :* happy birthday bb, i love you very very much <3[warning]
character death
the first time is always the most magical, not only because of the novelty of the experience but also due to the fact that it is the first, the original, and all the following times cannot compare. the first time is wide eyes and wonder and awe, undeniably precious. when four-month-old sehun first sees lu han, his first thought is nothing but want - in the back of his mind, he internalises the words for shiny want grab touch and stretches out meaty hands and thick fingers, making soft incomprehensible sounds as he screws up his eyes in concentration. it looks like a pretty speck of light, dancing just out of his reach as it laughs, and sehun frowns as he realises he’s unable to reach the pretty fairy. for that is what it must be - one of those mythical beings from the stories his appa reads to him every night, charming and beautiful and magical, and sehun’s interest is piqued.
desperately, he reaches out and crawls to and from both ends of his crib, but the fairy darts out of his grasp every time and sehun stares expectantly at clenched fists only to have his face crumple when he opens his hands and realises there is a blatant emptiness there, taunting him and reminding him of failure. because he cannot say anything else, he screws up his face to cry, hoping his umma will run in and console him, tell him it’s okay sehunnie, i’ll give you whatever you want, alright? but just as he sucks in his first deep breath to begin his wails the fairy flies over, alarmed, alights gently on his hand just long enough for sehun to gawk at him in wonder before flitting off again.
satisfied, sehun gurgles happily, hands reaching out once again in yet another futile attempt to get the fairy to return, but he receives nothing more than a soft breeze, blowing gently by his face, as well as the faintest trace of laughter resonating through the air like wind chimes, light and delicate and pretty, before the fairy disappears.
✧
the next time sehun sees lu han, he’s crying yet again, long face pinched up in the ugliest of looks as he bawls his heart out onto his sleeve. he’s alone in his room, his mother and father both out at work, while his older brother totters around in the living room downstairs playing with his own toys and entertaining himself.
“why are you crying, sehunnie?” he hears that voice again, so reminiscent and familiar, and sehun has a vague recollection of tinkling laughter so beautiful it could make you cry, make your heart twinge and breath constrict. he looks to the window, following the path of the sound, and sees a young boy perched precariously on the windowsill, leaning against the window frame so carelessly and effortlessly, sehun is immediately jealous.
“jongin pushed me down in the sandbox!” he pouts as he waddles over, seeing nothing wrong with having somebody suddenly appear at the window when laws of physics and gravity should deem it impossible. still, this boy looks older than himself, looks like he could be a hyung and guardian and playmate all rolled into one, and sehun wants - wants a companion, doesn’t want to be lonely.
“aw, that’s too bad, isn’t it, sehunnie?” the boy laughs and sehun pouts, murmuring “you’re not taking me seriously, hyung!” as he stamps his tiny foot against the wooden floor.
“maybe he was just playing, sehunnie?” the suggestion comes and sehun frowns, shaking his head vehemently.
“no, jongin is really strong! he pushed me and made me fall in the sandbox in front of all the other kids! and he said he was going to be my best friend but now he’s running around with kyungsoo-hyung and when i got mad he pushed me down!” sehun mumbles angrily, blinking back tears furiously.
“did he bully you, sehunnie?” the boy asks, concerned, stretching out a small hand towards him. “don’t worry about it, alright, i’ll protect you in the future!”
sehun claps his hands, rejoices at the fact that there are now various possibilities opening up to ensure this doesn’t happen again. “yay hyung! you look older and stronger than jonginnie so i think you can protect me well!”
the boy laughs, the same sound ringing clear and loud through the still air. “it’s my job to guard you, i won’t let you come to harm! by the way, my name is lu han, do you remember me?”
sehun stops in his tracks, sifts through four years’ worth of memories. but he does remember a certain fairy, if not only for his own frustration upon realising the limits of his body at that time. “are you that pretty fairy, then?”
lu han laughs then, eyes crinkled up and wrinkles forming at the sides of his eyes, mouth open wide. sehun thinks his new friend looks almost ugly, but doesn’t dare tell him for fear of losing a friendship even before it’s started. “yeah, i am. but i’m not a fairy any more, we stop appearing in those forms when we reach five years old. how old are you, sehunnie?”
“i’m four,” sehun replies, chest puffed out proudly. “ umma says i can feed myself now, i’ve got a proper chair at the dining table and everything! how about you, are you my hyung?”
lu han grins then, sly and mischievous. “well i’m eight, so yes, for all intents and purposes i guess i am. i’ve got to go home now though, but i’ll see you around, okay sehunnie?”
that’s all sehun hears before he blinks - and when he opens his eyes, there is no longer anyone at the windowsill.
✧
“where do you stay, lu han-hyung?” sehun asks curiously one day when he’s five, lu han perched at his favorite spot on the windowsill once again as sehun sits at his desk and marvels at the way the spring sunshine falls across lu han’s profile, slanting across the sharp planes and angles of his small face. sehun is young and doesn’t know the words for exquisite delicate beautiful but he does know pretty , and says so to lu han.
(lu han’s cheeks tinge pink, just the faintest unfurling of rose over porcelain skin, and sehun laughs.)
“ah, i stay very far away, sehunnie. it’s a place called neverland, which doesn’t exist on your maps. if you really wanted, though, i guess you could come visit some day?” lu han looks down at him with expressive eyes, hope and trepidation and anticipation blending into one medium, and sehun nods eagerly.
“i want to! you keep coming to my house, but i’ve never seen yours! i want to see your home soon, lu han-hyung, can i?”
lu han smiles gently, patting sehun’s head fondly. “maybe some day when you’re older, sehunnie, okay? it’s - it’s not time for that yet.”
sehun is by no means a patient child, but he trusts his lu han-hyung, knows that he would never lie. besides, this sounds more like a promise than anything, and sehun has all the faith in lu han that he would never break a promise made to anyone, regardless of who they are. so he nods obediently, watching the way lu han’s answering smile lights up his face in reverence.
“okay, hyung. but you can’t forget, okay? you have to keep this promise!”
“i won’t, sehunnie, you have my word.” lu han smiles gently, leaning down to pat him on his head once more. “i’ll see you tomorrow, alright, hyung has to go now.”
“alright,” sehun pouts, not really wanting lu han to leave. “goodbye, hyung!”
“never say goodbye,” lu han admonishes before he does a backflip out the window (sehun ‘ahh’s and ‘ooh’s in admiration), hovering outside sehun’s window. “because saying goodbye means going away, and going away means forgetting.”
and because sehun is only five and just a mere child, he doesn’t understand the gravity behind his hyung’s words, but he is able to make a promise of his own.
“don’t worry, hyung! i won’t forgot!” he proclaims confidently and cheerfully, not aware of the fact that he’s got his tenses mixed up (again) but lu han merely chuckles fondly, waves bye and disappears.
little does sehun know, of course, that a promise made at five years old could have everlasting impacts for the rest of his life.
✧
when he’s nine years old, sehun’s parents make the decision to move away. his father had been offered a job opportunity in another city, one that was too attractive to pass up, even if it meant uprooting their entire family and replanting them in an environment so vastly unfamiliar to the one sehun’s grown up in.
“no!” he screams when his mother delivers the bad news, causing three pairs of eyes to slant towards him in disbelief. “no, we can’t go! i can’t go!”
what about lu han-hyung, how will he find me in seoul, it’s a big city, how is he going to know where i am?
“you’re being immature again, sehun,” his mother intones sternly (she’d dropped the affectionate sehunnie when he was six). “we need to go for your father’s job, okay? it’s not about you this time, it’s about us. all of us.”
“no,” sehun merely repeats dumbly, tears already pooling in his eyes. “i can’t go, umma, i need to stay.”
she sighs in response, worry and frown lines suddenly doubly obvious in the unforgiving lighting, harsh lines running across her forehead. they look like trails leading to nowhere, random lines intersecting and diverging across a resigned, tired face. “go to your room, sehun. we’ll talk more about this tomorrow morning.”
that night, when lu han comes to visit, sehun looks at him with despairing eyes and clings on to his last shred of hope.
“hyung, they said we’re moving away because of appa’s job. can you believe it?”
lu han looks stricken for a moment, large eyes widening impossibly further as he crooks longer legs to fit into the vacant spot he used to be able to slip right into. however, the shock dissipates as quickly as it comes and he’s turning to face sehun with that trademark bright smile again, saying, “but it doesn’t matter, sehun-ah. no matter where you’ll go, i’ll always be able to find you. you know that, don’t you?”
“it’s impossible, hyung, you know seoul’s a big city,” sehun argues back obstinately, feeling like lu han’s misread the importance of the situation. “what if you lose me?”
“silly,” lu han laughs, reaching a hand out to tousle black hair. “i could never lose you, you know that.”
✧
middle school passes without much incident. lu han still continues to appear, but now he comes less often and sehun misses him, misses the boy who would slip into his room in the dead of night and talk till the early hours of dawn.
“why don’t you come so often anymore?” fourteen-year-old sehun asks one night, but now his voice has deepened and he’s shot up more than a few inches in height and it’s so difficult to connect him with the tiny boy he used to be.
“you’re growing up, sehun-ah,” lu han answers with a strangely sad, melancholic smile, even as he lounges about on sehun’s bed. (sehun had invited him in after lu han grew too tall for the windowsill, not wanting the boy to fall to his death on the unforgiving concrete thirty storeys below.) there is no cheer in it - although the fondness is still present, now there seem to be different layers, different levels of depth of masked emotion in that simple curve of his mouth. “soon you won’t believe in me any more, and i’ll stop appearing.”
sehun wants to deny it vehemently, wants to argue back against that fact, but even he can’t pretend to unsee lu han’s outlines and contours becoming fainter, almost as if the ethereal boy in front of him is fading away ever so slowly and gradually.
trying to move their conversation to safer ground, sehun looks up and sticks out his bottom lip in a semblance of the pout he always used to give his hyung several years ago. “hyung, you’ve never brought me to your home, you know? it’s been so long since you made that promise and up till now you still haven’t fulfilled it,” he chides jokingly, bumping lu han’s bony sides with an equally sharp elbow, and lu han giggles.
“one day, sehun-ah. you have so much more time to spend here, you know? it’s definitely not time for that yet.” lu han replies fondly, curling closer into sehun’s side. and for today, that is enough.
✧
lu han first begins to flicker, features uncertain and blurry, when sixteen-year-old sehun meets daeun. one night he’s telling lu han excitedly about this new girl, so unique and unabashed and utterly unafraid of what the world thinks of her. lu han just laughs and nods along whenever sehun pauses for breath. even though he hasn’t taken anything sehun has said about this girl, hasn’t internalised the fact that the little boy he’s seen grow up is in love for the first time, lu han’s congratulations are entirely sincere. and yet right before sehun’s eyes lu han begins to flicker and fade, blending in with the shadows on the wall.
“i hope she makes you happy,” lu han says softly before he leaves that night, an undecipherable twist to his mouth and a strange resignation in his eyes. yet before sehun can look closer, lu han’s out of the window, disappearing into the endless night sky.
-
lu han is also there when sehun-and-daeun ends; an unerring constant, often taken for granted. he is there when sehun mopes about the ending of something that could potentially have been love, waxes lyrical about loss and broods over shared memories of the past. sehun thinks he isn’t really as upset as he makes himself out to be, but there is still a certain sense of despair at things not working out the way he’d envisioned them to. lu han holds sehun as he experiences his first heartbreak, flickering gently all the while, though sehun can’t say whether it’s because of lu han or because of the tears clouding his vision.
“what happened, sehunnie?” lu han asks as he presses sehun closer, unminding of the fact that sehun’s taken to using his shirt as his personal handkerchief.
i realised she wasn’t you, sehun thinks. says, “i guess we just fell apart.”
✧
high school ends; university begins. sehun grows up, sharp features and hard edges of his body solidifying with the passage of time, while lu han remains caught in his youth like a wasp in amber.
“don’t you grow up, lu?” seventeen-year-old sehun asks one languid summer night as he lies in bed, lu han making himself comfortable in sehun’s desk chair. they’d dropped the honorifics a long time ago, lu han protesting that he didn’t want to seem old while sehun claimed he didn’t see lu han as a ‘hyung’ anyway. lu han had smacked him on the head for that.
“grow up?” lu han repeats softly, not looking up from where he’d been spinning sehun’s pen around with his fingertips. “nah. i won’t, not ever. i’m eighteen - i’ve been eighteen for the past three years. don’t you know, sehun-ah? haven’t you guessed who i am?”
“i’m the boy who will never grow up.” and perhaps lu han says something more, but the muggy summer wind grasps his words and flings them to all four corners of the earth before the glittering boy is gone. those few words are all sehun catches, enough to reveal the slightest thing about the mysterious circumstances surrounding lu han yet still so drastically insufficient.
after that, no matter how hard he wishes or however deeply sehun yearns, lu han doesn’t return. and even if sehun does sit every night at his windowsill gazing at the pitiful number of stars he can see, there is never that telltale flash of light that signifies lu han’s blinking into existence, nor a hint of that tinkling laughter that sounds so much like bells.
still, sehun remembers his promise to lu han, to keep him alive in his memory. sehun will never forget, and by honoring that promise he will never say goodbye.
✧
the last time sehun sees lu han (in his world) is not one of the best days. in fact, it is one of the worst - his mother had dragged him to the doctor after he had complained endlessly about pains in his chest and sides, wanting her to somehow stop the dull ache yet not wanting to blow up the incident too much. and so it is of some surprise ( not yet , the logical part of his brain notes, the shock is still too fresh ) that the doctor asks him to return for a second check-up with a grim face, shuffling sehun’s medical records in his hands ominously, and sehun’s breath catches in his throat.
“i’m alright, right?” he asks his mother on the way home, reminiscent of the times when he was six with a skinned knee or bruised arm and he would ask her the same question, and unfailingly she would pick him up and smother his long face in kisses and laugh before asking, “is it better now, you little brat?”
“mmhmm,” she answers distractedly, eyes refusing to lock with his and something in sehun’s stomach churns.
a week later, the medical report comes back and it is not good news. sehun lets his eyes fall across the thick white paper filled with incomprehensible scientific terms, words like ‘cancer’ and ‘advanced stage’ and ‘less than 10 per cent survival rate’. and before anything else, he falls face-first into his pillows and cries.
-
“sehun-ah,” he hears that night, eyes open but staring blankly at the ceiling. there are remnants of double-sided tape and blutack there, reminders of the time lu han and his twelve-year-old self had stuck glow in the dark stars and moons to the plain white surface. lu han had flown up while sehun handed him the pink, yellow and green decorations, and when they were finished they’d flicked the light switch with the delightful glee that can only come from two childish partners in crime. the dark room had come alight with bright projectiles glowing through the darkness and lu han had laughed that laugh, light and merry and melodious, and sehun had reveled in the fact that he was the one who had made his lu han-hyung laugh like that.
his eyes dart to the windowsill in the time it takes a heart to beat, for one round of blood to make its circulation around the body. in the right atrium, out the left ventricle, the familiar lub-dub of blood pushing through his veins, something he might not be hearing very soon. and there lu han is, peeking cautiously in through the open space, mournfully staring, and sehun somehow just knows he knows.
“come here, you big baby,” lu han flies in, his voice already choked with tears, and holds out arms that are still thin, but steady and firm, and sehun buries his face into lu han’s chest and cries again.
“i thought i was all cried out,” he mumbles as he surfaces for air, sucking in oxygen long and guttural as he wheezes and chokes.
“silly,” lu han admonishes affectionately. “take as long as you need.”
-
“why’d you leave?” sehun asks somewhere in the middle of his crying fit.
there is a long silence, awkward and stifling.
“i’m sorry,” lu han finally whispers, exhaling long and loud. “i… i just. i knew it was coming, but i was powerless to stop it and i didn’t want to be here when you found out. i didn’t want you to know that i’d broken my promise to protect you.”
“but i needed you, hyung.”
“i know,” lu han whispers, cradling sehun closer to him. “i know, and i’m sorry that i didn’t protect you in the end.
“i’m sorry, sehunnie. i really am.”
-
“hey,” lu han speaks up when sehun’s tears slowly come to a stop. “want to come see my home with me?” he reaches up to play with sehun’s chin, a habit he’s cultivated over the years starting from when they were eight, sehun thinks it’s insane how well lu han knows him, knows just what to say or do to make him feel better.
sehun nods eagerly, but lu han’s next words stop him. “but… there’s a catch to it, you know? if you leave, you won’t be able to come back to this life. you’ll have to leave this all behind. but one thing good is that you’ll stay young, you’ll be eighteen forever, and… and you won’t have to deal with illness or pain any more,” lu han finishes, looking uncertainly at him, and all of a sudden sehun understands .
“when you say i’ll be going home… you just mean i’m going to die, don’t you?”
“yeah,” lu han’s refusing to meet his eyes now, gaze directed at his lap as he refuses to raise his head. “and i was supposed to bring you, you know, back home, when the endgame finishes four months later. but… i guess i wanted to give you the choice of whether or not to leave, you know? because there’s still a chance that you might beat this, miracles happen every day -”
“it’s less than 10 per cent,” sehun interjects quietly. “and the hospital bills… my parents… i don’t want them to waste their money on something that might not even work, you know?” plus, if you’re there… and we have the possibility of an eternity together, young and invincible… maybe we can. maybe we can build something new together, something that isn’t as fragile as mortal life, that won’t crumble with a touch of heaven’s finger.
lu han stares at the determined eyes, so frightened yet so brave. “alright then,” he replies. “we can leave tonight.”
-
the only directions to lu han’s home are second star on the right, and straight on till morning.
“if you’re sure,” lu han says softly as they stand on the roof. sehun takes one last look around the city, glimmering lights and the distant sounds of motorcycles revving because seoul never sleeps, not really, and nods, because he knows that this is not a goodbye.
this is merely a ‘see you later’.
fin.
+ i am trash this is trash i am so sorry i hoped you liked this at least a little bit :((((