#287: Tales of a Fox

[lordchen]

Prompt: #287
Title: Tales of a Fox
Pairing: Luhan/Chen
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 21310
Summary: Everyone knew that fox spirits sucked sexual energy from young, virile males, for their spiritual cultivation. An educated Qing Dynasty scholar, Luhan should have known that.
Author's note: this fic has links to some songs, to aid your enjoyment!

“Men,” said the fox. “They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?”


"No," said the little prince. "I am looking for friends. What does that mean--'tame'?"


"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. It means to establish ties."


"'To establish ties'?"


"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ."
-The Little Prince


I want to be human


There was a fox preying on Luhan’s chickens. This morning, he awakened to find another hen lost from his coop.


“You!” Luhan bellowed. It was ridiculous – a scholar who had passed the first state examinations at the age of 18, barefooted and standing on wet dirt outside a tiny, rundown hut in the mountains, yelling in frustration into crisp morning air because of a chicken-stealer, the bane of every village peasant, the dreaded fox – Luhan gave a second, louder yell, just to feel better.


Luhan wasn’t rolling in money. He’d taken all his life savings and spent them on a flock of chickens, a goat, tea, candles, flour, a few pots, and of course his writing instruments. It was part of his grand plan, where he would live in seclusion in the mountains, immersing himself in the grand knowledge of chinese literature and statecraft for the provincial exams. If holy men and monks swore by this spartan lifestyle, it had to work for Luhan.


Put it simply, Luhan was desperate. He was a xiucai, now, but so were thousands of others across China. He had to be ready for the Shandong examinations in three years.


And this fox - of all the nonsense that could be thrown into his buns – it had to be a chicken thief.


“Come out and fight like a man!” Luhan hollered. He shook his fist at the pine trees, straining his eyes for a glimpse of white.


“Or a woman!” Luhan added, as an afterthought. This was, after all, Mt. Laoshan, where local legend had it that immortals resided. There was hui xian tai – terrace for meeting immortals – also called shu zhuang tai – dressing terrace for immortals - a precipice rising sharply off the ground, like a tower. Folklore said that fairies would come down on beams of moonlight and rest on the plateau, giggling and combing their long hair.


Luhan would not mind, he concluded magnanimously, if it was a beautiful woman stealing from him. “Come show me yourself in the pale moonlight!” he shouted. Since he was alone in the mountains – travellers rarely ventured to this side of Laoshan – he could say whatever he wanted.


--


“He said I could visit him!” Jongdae burst into laughter, almost falling off the rock he was perched on. “Should I, Xiumin? Should I?”


The owl continued sleeping, undisturbed by Jongdae’s evil plotting below.


--


“Oh god,” Luhan muttered, when knocks sounded at his door. It was the dead of night. It was an oh god that held many meanings- an oh god, someone woke me up, oh god, i’m going to be robbed, and I just bought new brushes – and funnily, an oh god, a fairy.


Cautiously, Luhan attempted to peer at his visitor through the grimy window beside his door.


“Ahh!” He yelped, staggering backwards as a pair of inquisitive eyes met his. The man – slightly shorter than Luhan – knocked on the windowpane.


Luhan rubbed his eyes. Those were ears, a pair of white, shiny ears twitching on the man’s head. One was tipped with black, matching the man’s glossy hair.


Either the man was a pervert, a nutjob, or Luhan was dreaming.


“Go back to sleep,” he patted himself on his left shoulder. “Go back to sleep, Luhan. And stop listening to all those folktales.”


There was peace, at first. Luhan stared at the ceiling and wondered if he should take a rest tomorrow, head to one of the numerous temples dotting the mountain for a quick prayer. Not Tai Qing Gong, but one of the smaller ones. Shang Qing Gong, maybe.


As though in a dream, the window panels above his bed swung open. Luhan stared, heart jumping into his throat, as a head poked in.


“Luhan,” the man said plaintively, ears flattened to his head – “Luhan, why won’t you open the door?”


A man with fox ears on his head was one arms-length away from his face, calling his name. Luhan screamed, and the fox spirit jumped, withdrawing in a hurry.


“Lu-“ he began, as Luhan bolted upright, diving for the window panels. He slammed them shut as loudly as he could, leaning against them with all his might.


“Why are you so scared?” The man asked, voice muffled, through Luhan’s thin ricepaper windows. “Luhan!”


“Go away!” Luhan shouted.


“But you invited me!” The man protested. A finger poked through the window – Luhan shut his eyes and cursed – then jerked back with a wail as the finger touched his arm.


“When did I invite you?”


“You said, come show me yourself in the pale moonlight.” A hint of slyness.


“You know I didn’t mean it!”


“I don’t care! I’m here, and you’re a bad host!”


“You steal my things – you’re a bad guest!”


“Let me in!”


“No!”


Silence, at last, silence magnificently shattered by the caterwauling of a fox.


Irritated beyond belief, Luhan flung the window open.


“Fine!” He bellowed to empty air.


Nothing, in sight. Only Luhan’s wire mesh fence, and the mountain slumbering peacefully beyond that.


A puff of smoke, drifting up from below, caught his attention. He dropped his gaze, in time to spot the last of the fox’s transformation into a man.


“Oh god,” Luhan said indistinctly. The man’s mouth was shaped exactly like a fox’s grin.


“Can I come in through the front door?”


“No,” Luhan said shortly. “I changed my mind. Stay out here, why don’t you. Better yet, go back to the forest.”


He would have felt bad if it was a person – the corners of the man’s mouth turned down, upset. His entire body seemed to shrink, from the slow drooping of his ears to the falling of his shoulders. Even his hair lost a bit of its glow.


It was kind of cute, Luhan had to admit.


“You can stay,” Luhan said grudgingly. “But sit here. I’m not letting you come into my house.”


A flash of a quick, bright smile, the man perking up like nothing had gone wrong . Luhan wondered if he’d been duped.


--


“Why is it so dark?” The fox complained. “I can’t see anything.”


Luhan was struck with the sudden, unreasonable urge to giggle. The fox was leaning over the windowsill as far as he could go, obviously standing on tiptoes. His face was scrunched up, eyes squinting, as he tried to stare into the murky depths of Luhan’s hut. It was cute and weird at the same time, like seeing a lamp grow eyes and swivel around.


“No candles,” Luhan said. He wanted light, as well, to give him more time to study at night – but candles were expensive, and Luhan was broke.


“Oh.” The fox said. “You puny humans.”


“Excuse me?”


The fox coughed. Luhan had seen cats hawk up hairballs before, so when the fox kept coughing, Luhan was prepared.


“Outside – not on my bed – “ Hastily, he turned the fox around. His shoulders quivered as he coughed.


Still coughing slightly, the fox turned back, something clutched in its hand.


“Oh god,” Luhan said. It was – shiny spit.


“It’s light,” the fox said, exasperated. Luhan took a closer look.


It was light. A small, twitching loop of light, nesting in the palm of the fox’s hand.


“You. Vomited light.”


“I called up light,” the fox said, offended. “It’s just a process. I have to call the qi up from inside.”


“Do you always have to do that?” Luhan asked. “If you’re fighting with other demons, do you go – stop, let me choke on air for a moment – “


“I’m a fox spirit, not demon,” the fox said. “With intelligence like this, you wonder why you humans live such a short life – “


“Semantics,” Luhan said. “I’m not the one begging a human to let him into his puny wooden house, by the way.”


The fox twitched. He looked at Luhan and opened his mouth wide-


Luhan just saw a full-grown man yip at him, under a full moon.


“I take that back,” Luhan said. “You must make them die of laughter.”


The fox – or man – yipped again.


“Aw,” Luhan said, tousling his hair cheerfully. “Guai (be good)”.


“It’s just not the same in human form,” the fox said morosely. He pushed his head into Luhan’s touch. “Do that harder.”


“You’re a fox,” Luhan said, redundantly. The fox nodded, giving Luhan a funny look.


Luhan knew, but this...he knows. No man would let any other man pet him like this. Shamelessly, the fox luxuriated under Luhan’s touch, eyes fluttering shut. Shamelessly.


Luhan stroked down the side of his face, just to see what he would do. The fox shivered, arching his neck. Offering.
Luhan jerked his hand away, ears burning.


“Wae –“ the fox whined, clutching at Luhan’s hand. The coil of light felt like a slippery eel, against Luhan’s skin.


“I’ll give you this!” The fox pleaded. The light slid into place around Luhan’s wrist, two ends fusing seamlessly into one another.


“What – is – this –“ Luhan scrambled to his feet, both feet planted on his mattress. The top of his head banged into the rafters, and he winced, dropping back to his knees. “Ow – I can’t take it out – “


“It’s light,” the fox said, puzzled. “You need it, don’t you? Strange human.”


“No, you see, I can’t take it out.” Luhan explained. Very clearly, he thought.


“It’s a gift,” the fox said. “Why would you want to?”


“People are going to see fox spit on my arm,” Luhan said. “What if – what if the priests from one of the temples see it? They’re going to know that there’s a spirit around, and they’ll come around and exorcise you.”


“They can’t.” The fox said serenely. He tilted his head, clearly admiring the – light – on Luhan’s wrist. “We were here before they were. They won’t touch us.”


“How old are you?”


“One?”


“One?”


“One.”


“One.”


“Yes,” the fox said. He blew at Luhan’s wrist, and the light...faded, leaving behind a ratty-looking piece of string.


“Just rub it when you need it.”


“How can you be one?”


“We turn into humans after a hundred years,” the fox said. “I’ve only been a human for a year. It’s hard.”


“Tell me about it,” Luhan agreed. He touched the bracelet, and as he rubbed it, light began shining through. With this, Luhan would not be confined to his bed each night. He could explore the mountain, and of course study at night, as well.


“Thanks,” Luhan said, not looking at the fox.


“Can I have your name?” The fox asked. “Please?”


“Luhan,” Luhan said. “Wait, are you going to use my name to control me?”


“I’m a year old,” the fox said. “No, not yet. Maybe in fifty years.”


“Oh,” Luhan said. “Do you have a name?”


The fox made a face. “I want a new name. Name me.”


“Name you?”


“Are you slow, human?” The fox asked, attentively.


“No, you’re too fast. So fast, I can’t catch up,” Luhan said, with all the sarcasm he could muster (it was a lot). “What have your fellow foxlings been calling you? The bratty one?”


“Yixing-ge calls me that,” the fox confessed. “I always make him angry.”


“Bai ge ni le (I bow down in defeat to you),” Luhan muttered. It was hard to be sarcastic when sarcasm sailed peacefully over the head of your target.


“Well? Why are you here? To suck my hapless spirit so that you can become an immortal sooner?”


“I want to be human,” the fox said. “Teach me.”


Luhan finally laughed. The fox had got the wrong end of the stick.


Luhan was no good person. He knew that, himself.


“Sorry,” he said, closing the window. “Come back in daylight!”


It was time to study, then. Luhan sucked in a tired breath, fingering the rope around his wrist. It pulsed, faintly warm.


Dirt


Luhan tripped over the fox, the next morning. It ran away, alarmed, as Luhan lay face-down in the dirt, breath squeezed out of him by the impact.


It came back, pattering close enough to lick his face with its rough tongue.


“Go away,” Luhan grumbled, raising a hand to shove it away. It felt like his nose might be broken.


It nudged his hand with its snout, then its tongue, to Luhan’s vast disgust.


“This is a nightmare,” Luhan said gloomily, clambering to his feet. The front of his coarse shirt – his one of only two shirts – was smeared with dirt.


The hardest part of life, after that year - other than missing his parents – had been the dirt. Everything that could be pawned was pawned, and Luhan had only a handful of clothes left – clothes that could not last for long, not out on the streets, not out in the wild.


He would cry and kick, and refuse to eat, last time. Luhan learned, very soon, that you had to have someone to come when you were crying. If not, you adapted – discarding crying and kicking without a word.


It was good that Luhan was a fast learner.


He patted his shirt a few times, then gave up and went to do his chores this way. It would get dirty soon, anyway.


--


The fox came nearer, white coat shimmering despite the dirt. It crawled belly-first, inching its way to Luhan’s shirt.


“If I skin you, I have a pair of gloves for winter,” Luhan warned, not looking up. He dunked another scoop of water over his hair, greedily washing away the remnants of the day’s hard work.


Bathing was the highlight of Luhan’s day; there was a small pool, clear and cool, about five hundred metres from Luhan’s wooden hut. It was an offshoot of the Beijiushui, the main river that began from Ju Peak. Luhan had followed the river, his first time on Mount Laoshan, wondering how many of the famous nine bends in the river he could find. He’d found this small stream that led into an area shaded by the overlapping branches of trees, leaving behind a rock pool that was cool even in the height of summer.


It was even colder now, because of autumn. The leaves of the forest would never turn orange or red, nor fall in heaps, but the cold fingers of approaching winter still stole summer’s robe of heat away.


The fox was licking itself busily, trying to clean the dirt from its fur.


Most foxes that Luhan had seen had coats of orange, with black socks on their feet. This fox had a stiff coat of white that glimmered, starkly leeched of color. It reminded Luhan of his hometown – the foxes around there had looked like that, as well. Luhan had liked foxes a lot, when he was younger – had even raised a few, himself.


Luhan stroked the fox’s head, its neck, its back, feeling the coarseness of its fur. The fox licked his knuckles playfully, pink tongue flickering.


“You need a bath,” Luhan said, critically. He scooped a handful of water and dribbled it over the fox’s head. It bit him, yellow canines snapping.


“Owowowowow- you little –“


The piercing yelp of a fox resounded in the little clearing, sending a flock of startled sparrows flying.


Luhan held the fox in both hands, dipping it into the water. Its claws scraped his chest, drawing lines of pain on him.


Luhan let go, and the resultant splash made him fling his hands up to shield himself.


The fox paddled for shore as fast as it could. Luhan picked it up and set it back on land.


It scuttled away from Luhan, paws moving over the pockmarked granite. The indignant, upset glare it gave Luhan made him giggle.


The fox spirit looked just like fox cubs Luhan found, years ago.


“Come back and I’ll comb your fur for you,” Luhan offered, wiggling his fingers.


It cocked its head, thinking. Pattered back suspiciously, a little ball of wet fur.


Luhan had almost fallen asleep, by then. It nudged his fingers with its snout.


Sleepily, Luhan ran fingers through its fur, untangling the knots and taking out the pieces of dirt. The fox huffed, then sprawled on the ground, ears twitching.


“You know a good thing when you see one.”


If you asked Luhan secretly – if you found that thing that used to be a conscience, and talked to it – Luhan would admit that he didn’t know whether he or the fox enjoyed that more.


It even rolled onto its back, vulnerable, faintly pink stomach and genitals exposed to Luhan. Luhan dumped two handfuls of water on the fox, instead – there were places he didn’t want to tread.


--


It came again later, at night. Luhan watched from his window, mouth wide open, as the fox writhed, fur falling apart as moonlight touched it to reveal smooth skin below.


“…come on in,” Luhan said.


He unlocked the door; the fox picked up bits of its coat, holding them in his hands.


Luhan returned to his table, halo of light from his wrist dogging his footsteps.


The fox poked around his house. Luhan let him, focused on his work – only for a while.


“Hey,” he said. “Don’t touch that – don’t touch that –“


“You put me in water.”


The accusing, upset stare of the fox made Luhan laugh.


“You said you wanted to be human,” he said. “Humans take baths. I was teaching you that.”


The fox made a flustered, disgruntled noise. “It’s so hard to be a human.”


“It is,” Luhan said. The Analects and other writings by respected Chinese philosophers all dealt with that – how to be a good human being. The entire education system had been built on that.


That didn’t mean that the people who read those were good ones. Luhan had passed the keju, the first exams, before he was twenty. He was still a person without much moral strength, he knew.


Knowledge for knowledge; knowledge for knowledge, leaving only lies. And Luhan would still continue mouthing these words for wisdom, speaking truths that he could not touch, like a parrot repeating back common words.


He used to believe in these, until his father had been accused of corruption – the same system that had raised their family up had torn it down, leaving behind a single child, sent away before his entire family was beheaded, their belongings confiscated by the Palace.


“-!” Luhan ducked away, holding the side of his face. The fox had dragged his tongue across Luhan’s skin; it tingled, still.


“I’m giving you a bath,” the fox said.


“I’m not trying to be a fox.”


The fox sniffed. “Humans.” He tugged at Luhan’s shirt. “Sorry?”


“Why?”


“I like you,” the fox said plainly. “You were sad, when you fell down. I thought I could groom you, to say sorry.”


“You like me.” Luhan’s not sure what to address first – the falling down, the grooming, or well. The like.


“You’re kind,” the fox said.


“I- hey-“


The fox licked him again, this time on his sensitive neck.


“It’s okay!” Luhan said hastily. It had been years since Luhan had had sex, and he didn’t plan on doing it with a fox. Everyone knew that fox spirits sucked men’s essence through having sex with them.


“I want to bathe you,” the fox said, against Luhan’s palm.


Luhan shivered. He could picture it, the fox naked, licking its way down Luhan, to his –


“No.” Luhan said firmly. He groped for the fox’s shoulder, made him sit down.


“I’ll groom you,” he said, running his hands through the fox’s hair. He let Luhan touch him, let Luhan’s fingers guide the tilt of his head and work through the knots in his hair.


Now, Luhan had someone to scold, someone to fuss over, someone who only wanted to be around Luhan. Luhan hadn’t had anybody in years.


Each night, Luhan would tell himself that he would study. But he grew to await the fox, and how human it made him feel.






Heights


Mount Laoshan was a place for immortals, people said. The rest of China was caught in the cycle of life, living and dying as the seasons changed. In Laoshan, it was always spring, the flowers forever rampant, the trees only wiser and higher with time passing, the water crystal clear, falling in well-worn paths over its rock beds, like laughter that never stopped.


Luhan went exploring, in the early part of the day. He would sleep the later half away, and wake up when the fox came, at night.


Chaoyin waterfall, which cascaded over rocks to crash into a pool below. From below, it looked like the sun lit the water on fire, so bright and white it was as it went tumbling to the ground. Longtan, Dragon’s pool, with water deep and green and mysterious in the centre, and light and shallow at the ends, like clearest jade.


Luhan’s favourite would still be Ju Peak. The greenery that clung to sheer rock cliffs gave the waters around Ju Peak a green sheen; mixed with the blue, from the skies above, it was a green-blue that made Luhan think of peace, of waters that were rich and contented, that were there before humans came and would be there, unchanged, after only bones were left.


At parts, there would be the water elm and the catalpa, blazing red and orange.


Today, Luhan went further than he had, before. He walked until the width of the river was no more than shoulder-length, and the path was crowded by white, towering blocks of stone, faintly marked by waves of grey.


They said that up there, right on the top of Ju Peak, clouds clung to the air, reluctant mist settling on the shoulders of people.


Luhan made it to the top. He sat in the pavilion, panting, taking in the view. The mountains were a vast expanse before him, undulating in waves, like how Luhan’s blankets made valleys and peaks when wrapped around the fox.


They had Taoist temples, down the sides of the mountain. They were warm orange among the green. Like the fox’s dark eyes, with light reflected in them.


Everything looked different, in the day. The fox had brought Luhan out, at night. He had taken Luhan’s hand and led him through the forest, to the Islet below. At night, when the tide receded, there was a row of stones left exposed; the fox had held Luhan’s hand firmly, hard enough that his legs didn’t even shake that much. They had walked across the Xufu Islet on the wet, moss-covered stones, land left behind them; only the ocean, uncovered by moonlight, and each other, real, for those minutes.


The Laoshan Luhan saw and the Laoshan he experienced with the fox, wasn’t the same. Luhan was living two lives. One was green, real and eternal, mixed with the clamour of Qingdao city, when Luhan went back to do odd jobs and get supplies. One was white, surreal, transient, breaking like waves on stone. One had purpose, a future for Luhan – become an official and get revenge for his family – the other had a fox spirit, that would cling to Luhan like he was the only person left in the world, every night.


Luhan stood up abruptly, frustrated.


--


Halfway down, Luhan slipped, off the path, into empty air.


The greenery saved him. He grabbed at it, throwing himself back at the rock surface. Even then, his hands were cut open on rock and the rough stems of plants. Even then, he only came to a stop on a thin stone ledge, not even big enough for him to lie flat.


He craned his neck, trying to see if he could climb back up. There was only the sheer rock face.


Below was a mess of broken rocks, and more forest.


It’s wasn’t even afternoon yet. The earliest the fox could come and – rescue him – was nightfall.


Luhan took another look at the drop below and closed his eyes, vertigo hitting him.


He pressed his hands to his shirt, trying to stop the blood. It soaked through, pooling on the rock below.


--


Time passed, slow. Luhan was cold and hungry and very scared, because the night was almost over, and the fox hadn’t found him. The light Chen gave him lit the area around him up, keeping his sanity held together.


An owl hooted, from above. It dropped onto the ledge, shuffling its feet.


“Tell the fox,” he said, reaching out for the owl. “Tell the fox that I’m here-“


It jumped away, alarmed. Hooting, it soared into the night sky.


Luhan cursed.


--


It got harder, the second day. Luhan was thirsty and hungry, the sun beating mercilessly down. It was still cloudy yesterday, but the skies were clear, today.


Luhan didn’t want to die, like this.

He considered flinging himself down, briefly. The drop would be fast, and he would die, almost instantly.


--


When the sun finally fell and night descended, Luhan could barely see. The string Chen gave him was the only warmth he could feel; Luhan cradled it to him, as best as he could.


He thought of his family, of growing up and being loved by them. Of losing them. Of working so hard, these years, to try and avenge them, so that they stay in peace. He wanted to see them, but he didn’t dare to see them again.


They wouldn’t like who he is, now. Luhan was self-aware enough to know how bitter he got.


He thought of the fox, of the exhilarating feeling of being alive, treading on those stones in the isle, wandering Laoshan in the faint moonlight, relying entirely on the fox. Life, short and sweet.


He would let himself fall, Luhan decided. He didn’t want to sit there and waste away, from blood loss, from infected wounds, from lack of water or food, from heatstroke; Luhan wasn't brave enough for that.


He would wait, just one more night.


--


The fox came on the third night. Luhan knew that there were hands patting him, lifting him. Cradling him, safely.


They fell, together, into that drop.


--


Sunlight


When Luhan woke, he saw the fox, in sunlight, curled beside him.


“Hey. Fox.”


The fox’s eyelids fluttered open. He watched Luhan, then lunged forward, sprawling like an octopus over Luhan.


“You’re an unsafe idiot,” the fox muttered, into Luhan’s shirt.


Luhan watched the way sunlight lit those high cheekbones, sparkled in dark eyes.


“Why – sunlight.”


His voice was unbearably raw. The fox got it, though.


“You were asleep for four days,” the fox said. “I’ll be your personal manservant, until your Royalty can walk without fainting.”


The strange ache that Luhan had in his chest, that he had thought was a broken rib, seems to be gone. He was aching, but the aches that seemed like broken bones had dissipated. Even his hands had healed, leaving faint, silvery scars.


“Healing?”


“Oh, that’s Yixing-ge,” the fox said proudly. “He can do anything.” Luhan had heard so much about this famous Yixing-ge, for months.


“Healed?”


“It’s a fox qi magic thing,” the fox said breezily.


Luhan snorted, then started coughing.


The fox lifted himself off Luhan, going for a cup of water. He helped Luhan to sit up, folding the blankets around Luhan.


“How did you find me?”


“There’s an owl shifter, called Xiumin.” The fox said. “He found you.”


“But that was the first night,” Luhan said.


“It took a while to work out a way to get you down,” the fox said. “Have some soup, Yixing-ge taught me how to cook it.”


For the next two days, the fox kept busy around Luhan. He must have injured himself, because he walked with a limp and a wince. There were red marks, as well, marks that appeared when his shirt rode up.


Luhan made the fox sleep next to him. He held the fox close, burying his face in soft black hair.


The fox sang him to sleep, using soft lullabies, in a language Luhan couldn’t understand.


--


The fox was gone, by the third day. Luhan could walk, by now. He made a slow, halting journey to Huayan Si, one of the few temples on Laoshan dedicated to Buddhism.


Peonies and camellies were in full bloom, around the temple. Pink and red, they formed fields of flowers, color in the midst of the green mountain.


It was a temple made entirely out of stone. There were trees spaced at regular intervals in the courtyard, flowers and leaves at their feet. Stone stupas lined each side of the courtyard.


Luhan crossed the outer courtyard, to the inner temple. He lit a joss stick before going in, just for respect, leaving it in the incense-holder outside.


Inside, stone steps led up to a statue of the Bodhisattva Guanyin, easily three stories high. Her face calm, she trod upon a circular ledge of stone, lotus in her hand.


Luhan went to his knees, on one of the woven cushions provided.


In the morning, people had come around, to his house. Monks, and villagers, searching for a fox spirit. They had seduced men, people said. They found the desiccated corpses six nights ago, of men clearly sucked of all their life essence.


Luhan could count. Six nights ago was the second night that he was on the ledge. The fox had cleverly dodged Luhan’s question, of why it took two nights to get him down.


Luhan could see, too. The fox maintained human form for a few days. It wasn’t a stretch to understand where the excess energy came from. It wasn’t a stretch to understand why he was limping, or the red marks on his hips.


Guanyin means, the perceiver of the sufferings of the world, Luhan knows.


“How are you?” He begun awkwardly. “I haven’t been back, in a while. The truth is-“ he blinked back images of people hunting the fox down.


“Save him, please,” Luhan begged. “He’s a fox, and he killed them, but he did it for me. Let me take all the ill-will from this. Let me do this. I know this is not the right way for prayer, but please, Guanyin. Please.”


He kept kneeling, until the monks came to chase him away.


“Young master, you’ve been here for hours,” the monk said. “Please, go.”


“Give me five minutes,” Luhan said. Luhan hasn’t heard anything, in reply.


“Please,” he said, under his breath. “You’re supposed to be compassionate, aren’t you? I need your mercy, you have given me none, none, you watched as they took everyone I loved from me. Don’t take him from me. I don’t have anyone left.”


The monks came back again, urging him to leave.


He got to his feet stiffly, joints aching, tears aching, brewing, inside of him. Yet, he still couldn’t cry.


Above, the sky was turning dark, again.


Moonlight


The fox came again, as usual. It lay on the ground, before Luhan’s house, and shook off its fur.


“You need a bath,” Luhan said.


He led the way, towards the small, shaded pool, the fox following silently behind him.


Some day, Luhan would wake up, and find that he dreamt these past months.


“Get in,” Luhan said.


It looked at him with eyes that were clear and unafraid. Stepped into water, cursing with each step. Stood there, shoulder-deep in water, waiting for Luhan.


There was moonlight, that night. It lit ripples on his dark hair, in those familiar eyes, on the water that made way for him.


“Luhan?”


Luhan cursed, himself. He’d been thinking about it.


Luhan took off his clothes, barely noticing the cold.


They said foxes would eat men, soul and all, until there was nothing left but bare bones. Luhan’s a lone scholar in the mountains. No one would miss him.


He walked down the bank, sliding on the wet grass, wearing only the light the fox gave him.


It had only been a few months. Luhan strode into the water, wincing at the cold. The moonlight rested on his skin, like the white fur of the fox.


“Are you going to eat me?”He asked, as he traced the shoulders of the fox, down his arm, into the watger, until Luhan could grip his hand in his.


“You’re too thin,” the fox sniffed.


Luhan had heard that foxes needed the essence of a man to become human. To put it crudely, they enticed humans into sex with them.


Luhan leaned in and kissed the fox. A quick, light one, lips brushing.


The fox’s eyes were sharp. Sharp, and surprised.


Luhan kept kissing him, again and again. His hands brushed the fox’s body, across his nipples, across his stomach, to the abdomen.


It was covered by water. All of it. On the surface, there was only the fox’s quivering eyelids, and the broken moonlight, eddying in cold, uncaring pieces around them.


The fox bit Luhan’s lips, drawing blood. Luhan licked at his tongue, licked at the bitterness, unsure if it was hidden in his throat, or if it came from his lips.


“Why?” The fox asked, forehead pressed to Luhan’s. Luhan kept his eyes closed.


“Don’t you want to be human?”


This time, he held the fox’s face in his hand, as he leaned in. He didn’t want to know, if the fox would choose to stay or to go.


The fox broke away first, this time.


“Don’t be stupid,” he said flatly. “Since you know, you should stay away.”


“Will you go away, if I say no?”


“Yes,” the fox said.


“Then stay,” Luhan said. “I’m young. I still have a lot of life energy.”


“You’re a fool,” the fox said. There was none of his usual playfulness; only a husk scraped clean, the hungry eyes of a fox, fixed on prey.


The moonlight suited him; clean, unsparing, cold. Only the darkness of those eyes, hidden away. Drawing Luhan in.


“I’ll give you a name,” Luhan said. “Chen.”


“Chen? Which Chen?”


“To sink,” Luhan said. “To drown in.”


The fox laughed.


“Daybreak,” Luhan said. “It also means daybreak.” Daybreak, when sunlight filtered in, and Chen had to leave.


“You’ll regret this,” Chen said.


Luhan kissed him again, as hard as he could. It seemed like they were safe, like this, untouchable by anyone else.
Chen dragged Luhan out, in the end. Picked him up in his arms and brought a shivering Luhan back to his hut.


“I’ll come back in a few nights,” Chen said. Coolly. “You’re not strong enough, yet. Each time-“ he brushed Luhan’s hair away – “each time, I take a few years of your life. The weaker your body is, the more I take.”


Luhan watched him go, water dripping from his hair, running across his eyelids, down his cheeks. It was hard to see, like this, but he still watched, as Chen melted away, leaving behind the white fox. Soon even the fox was gone.






Sky Lantern


Chen came back, three nights later. Luhan had bitten his nails down to the quick in worry.


The only relief had been the loud noises of the mob, and their ceaseless searching. Chen was still safe.


“Get out of here,” Luhan said, as Chen pushed open the door.


“They’re-“


“I will,” Chen said. “You’re so cruel, Luhan.”


He kept coming, closing the distance in seconds. Took hold of Luhan’s shirt and kissed him, hard, pushing him backwards at the same time.


It hurt, their teeth clashing, lips bruising. Luhan hooked an arm around Chen’s neck, keeping them locked together.
He stumbled over his own legs, the bottom of his stomach falling out as they fell to the floor.


“Ouch,” Luhan muttered. Chen’s eyes were wet, glinting unusually, as he crouched over Luhan.


The naked, bare way Chen looked at Luhan, had too much that Luhan didn’t want to think about.


“Don’t chase me away,” Chen said, voice strange and deep. Luhan grit his teeth and pulled Chen back down, lips crashing against his, then up against the tip of his nose.


“Luhan,” Chen said, chasing Luhan’s mouth. “Luhan, Luhan,” against Luhan’s lips.


Luhan kissed him harder, muting the words. His tongue slipped, chased, retreated from Chen’s. Swiped across Chen’s teeth, and the veins on the roof of his mouth. Interlocked, like fingers against fingers, holding tight.


Chen barely gave him time to breathe. It felt vicious, like heavy, pelting rain. Like the moonlight took on weight, burying Luhan beneath the crushing weight of a love that came and was real and yet was not, in the light of day.


He rolled them over, pinning Chen beneath him. Slid his hands up Chen, across bare skin, pulling the hem of his shirt (Luhan’s shirt) up, up over Chen’s chest, up over bony shoulders, up, slowly revealing the tip of his chin, a mouth always slyly upturned, the sharpness of the angles in his face, nose, eyes – Chen blinked, eyelids quivering open. He looked at Luhan and Luhan could see pain floating in those eyes, like moonlight shattered on the surface of a pool, like a dream that they both lived without realizing.


Luhan pulled the rest of the shirt off his head, up his arms, skimming the loose, white hairs on Chen’s arms.
Clasped fingers briefly with Chen’s, letting go before almost instantly. Chen propped himself up, fingers working at Luhan’s pants.


“Just this once,” Chen said, “please-“


Luhan held his wrists, breath stuck in his throat. Chen was going to suck part of his lifeforce out from him.


“Will it hurt?”


“Just a bit,” Chen said, “please, give me this-“


The way he said it was funny. Like desire got stuck in his throat, leaving his eyes and voice a bit hollow, but also hungry.


Chen said “Luhan,” and his voice was still funny, like a little moan.


Luhan let go of his hands. Chen undid his pants with shaking hands, yanking them down over Luhan’s hips, along with his boxers.


“-@#$,” Luhan grabbed the edge of the table for support. Chen was touching and licking him at the same time, rubbing his balls, doing small kitten-licks all over his cock. Luhan could see Chen’s face buried in his hair, his eyes closed, tracing the shape of Luhan’s cock by feel.


Chen kept making sounds, little desperate whines. It turned Luhan on and made him feel sad, at the same time, because Luhan knew how transient all of this was, how transient Chen knew it was.


Luhan cupped the back of Chen’s head, making him stop, face buried in Luhan’s abdomen. Chen was shivering, shivering so hard his legs against Luhan’s thighs were shaking as well.


“We can do this as many times as you want,” Luhan said, as gently as he could. As many times as I have left, he meant. He didn’t know what it was about Chen that made him want to give up on his dream of revenge, or at least put it on hold. Chen was like Laoshan itself, an unreal place that would always be evergreen.


Luhan knew, inside – he didn’t know how, he didn’t know why, not even now, with Chen already poised to suck out the life from him – he believed, still that Chen wouldn’t hurt him.


Chen’s response was to suck on the tip of his cock, tongue flickering against the slit. Luhan’s grip loosened, and Chen was back to business, both hands cupping Luhan’s cock, feeding it slowly down his throat.


Luhan tried to hold out, he did. But watching Chen take him in slowly, those already gaunt cheeks hollowing even further, eyes wild – he didn’t last long, Chen’s fingers digging into his hips, holding him fiercely in place as Chen’s brow furrowed in pain, as Luhan came down his throat. The feeling of hot, wet skin clamping down and letting go of his cock, as he came, made Luhan almost black out.


Luhan was still slumped on the table, as Chen got up. He felt tired, and he didn’t know if it was the orgasm, or Chen.


Chen pulled him easily to his feet. His eyes had a fuller gleam to them, and his cheeks a cloud of pink.


“Two years,” Chen said. He manhandled Luhan, stripping him of his shirt – pausing to lick a stripe up Luhan – then knelt, taking off Luhan’s pants fully.


Luhan remembered this the most, later. How Chen crouched over him, feral, nipping at every bit of his skin. How he started at his fingers and then between his fingers and then traced the grooves of his palms, with his tongue.


Luhan closed a hand over Chen’s face, said “you can touch.”


“I can,” Chen said, and this time it sounded like sadness. He touched Luhan with fingers and teeth, kissing his hairline, going down to his ears, then across his nose, then the tip of his chin. Buried his face in Luhan’s neck, quiet, pulling away when Luhan tried to hold him.


Went down to Luhan’s heart, and laid there, listening to his heartbeat. Luhan felt water, even through the sweat.


“I don’t have a heartbeat,” Chen said. He sounded awful and sad, and Luhan had nothing that could change that.
He tried to sit up, but Chen pushed him back down.


“What, you don’t think I want to touch you?” Luhan snapped.


“- you want to?”


“You silly fox,” Luhan said, throat thickening. He brought an unresisting Chen in, letting him lie on Luhan’s chest.
Kissed Chen slowly, hands cupping the sides of his face. Rolled them over so they were lying side by side.


He traced Chen’s cheekbones, like he always wanted to. Ran a finger along Chen’s lips, his own quirking as they reached the corners of Chen’s.


Ran light fingers down Chen chest, rubbing his nipples shamelessly. Chen let him, face flushing, mouth opening on an O. Luhan touched the wrinkled skin, rubbing at it hard with his fingernail. Chen curled in on himself, and Luhan pressed close, saying yes, you idiot, I want to touch you as softly as he could, because Luhan did not say sweet things. He did not.


Chen coughed, laughed. He looked good like this, and Luhan had this wild thought where he felt – two years of his life was worth this, the pink on Chen’s face, him next to Luhan.


With Chen next to him, it changed the feeling, of this moonlight. Made it easier to bear; lighter, more playful.


They pressed close together, kissing and touching, later rocking themselves to a slow, stuttering climax on each other’s thighs. Chen slid down and licked it clean, off their thighs.


Luhan’s face was bathed with sweat. So was Chen’s.


“Sleep,” Chen said, face still flushed.


“I haven’t fucked you,” Luhan said.


“That’s okay,” Chen said, smiling. “Next time.”


“How many years is that?”


“Ten,” Chen said. “Maybe a bit more.” He kissed Luhan, lightly. “Don’t worry.”


Luhan, inexplicably, didn’t argue. Maybe he was under a magic spell.


Chen hadn’t slept, yet. They had been quietly staring at one another. Chen’s back was to the window, so Luhan couldn’t tell what the expression on his face was. He could see, though, Chen’s unblinking eyes. Watching Luhan.


“You know,” Chen said. “I saw you once. When I was a young cub.”


“I did?”


“You took in a litter of cubs,” Chen said. “Clumsily, and you tried to feed us everything. But you saved me and Yixing-ge.”


Luhan remembered the litter of cubs; of taking care of them, feeding them, setting them back into the forest. He hadn’t thought of them, for so long.


“I didn’t expect to see you again,” Chen said.


What he did on a whim saved Chen’s life. Luhan lowered his head, surprised and also grateful; grateful that fate let them meet. He had found the cubs, while searching for his sky lantern that his parents had used. He’d found the lantern, next to the cubs; his parents had written, as the wish, that Luhan live a long and healthy life. Luhan had brought the cubs back because he thought that their parents must have wanted the same for them.


Now that Luhan thought about it, he missed setting sky lanterns free into the sky. He never did so, after his family was executed. Luhan had had no one to pray for, after that.


“Bamboo, candles, oilpaper,” he muttered, getting out of bed. Chen watched him curiously.


Luhan could make one. He did so, gathering the materials by the light of the string Chen gave him.


“What’s that?” Chen stood, naked, over Luhan. He was a creature meant to run bare and wild like this, as bright as moonlight.


“Sky lantern,” Luhan said. “It’s an important part of being human.”


--


“So now we send this up,” Luhan said. “Have you heard of Niulang and Zhinu (Cowherd and the Weaver Maiden)?”


“Who hasn’t?” Chen stared up at the sky. “Can this reach them?”


Luhan looked at the flimsy lantern in his hands. He didn’t even know if it could take off.


“Yes,” Luhan said. “Let’s send this up to them, and write our wishes for each other on the lantern. Maybe they can take pity on us, and let us have a better fate than them.”


“Star-crossed lovers,” Chen said. “How do they feel, being stuck on either side of the Milky Way, and only being allowed to meet for a night each year?”


“I would take that,” Luhan said, hearing the slight bitterness in Chen’s tone. “Chen, I would take anything with you.”


Chen laughed. A bit sadly.


“I mean it,” Luhan said. He looked at the sky again. Part of it was obscured by the high mountain peaks of Laoshan.


“Let’s go higher,” he said. “High enough that we can see the Milky way.”


“But you're scared of heights,” Chen said.


“You’re with me now,” Luhan said.


Chen looked down at his feet, and then laughed. It sounded better, more carefree.


--


They went up Ju Peak again, Luhan resolutely holding Chen’s arm. Up here, at night, the wind was bigger. It sang, rustling the forest below.


Above, the stars, and all the immortals, waited.


“We can watch the sunrise,” Luhan said. “It’s said that you walk through rainbows, in the morning, until the sun shines fully on Ju Peak.”


Chen slipped into Luhan’s arms, holding him tightly.


“Are you crying?”


“I want to watch the sunrise,” Chen said, voice muffled.


“Okay,” Luhan said, puzzled. “We can. I said it, Chen, I’m not leaving you.”


“I want to make a wish.”


“I’ll write it for you.”


“No,” Chen said. “You’re not supposed to know.”


Luhan snorted. “You can write?”


“I learned a few words,” Chen said, defensively.


Luhan wrote his own wish. He passed the lantern to Chen, who began writing attentively.


Chen lit the candle, with a touch of light. He smoothed the lantern with both hands, as Luhan held it.


“It’ll fly longer,” Chen said. “Up to the heavens, where both those lovers can see it. And they’ll know that people haven’t forgotten them, and people want them to keep loving each other, for years and years to come. So even if one love dies, at least some love will still be there.”


Luhan looked at the words, on his side of the lantern. As they let the lantern go, he made a quick prayer to Guanyin, again.


Chen tackled him. “I want you to fuck me now,” he said plainly.


“Shouldn’t we watch-“


“We don’t have time,” Chen said. The sun would be rising soon. In half an hour, one hour.


Luhan stripped off his clothes, shivering in the chill. Chen already had his off; he was extending fingers into his ass, painfully, eyes fixed on Luhan.


“There’s no rush,” Luhan said. “We can do it tomorrow-“


“Now,” Chen growled. Luhan laughed, his heart squeezing. He made a promise, he wrote it on the lantern. Luhan wouldn’t regret anything he gave to Chen.


It was hard to ease into Chen, but Chen was persistent. Luhan was sure that there was blood- Chen was squeezing so tightly even Luhan felt pain – but Chen kept going, and Luhan could only let Chen control the pace, as he kept bearing down on Luhan’s cock.


They fucked, face to face, Chen in Luhan’s lap. Lifting himself up and down again, and again.


Chen was crying. Luhan wiped the tears away, cursing. “We’re going slower,” he said gripping Chen’s hips. He went slow, and Chen cried even harder. He bit Luhan’s neck and said “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Luhan, go faster, please, Luhan, Luhan.”


He kept calling Luhan’s name, all the way. It was strange, this wasn’t the desire earlier. It was as desperate, but it was quieter. As though the night and stars above silenced them, drowned them, and they only had each other left in the world. Made real by each other. Them coming was a supernova, but it was but one in the vast galaxy above.


Chen slumped into Luhan’s hold. “I’m sorry,” he said. He only said that, only said that and Luhan’s name.


Luhan was crying, too. “Stop it,” he said roughly. “Stop it, I’ll always be with you, I told you. I told you that. “


The sky was turning brighter, the lantern above long vanished.


There was the morning mist, coalescing around them. It shimmered, like bits of rainbows.


Chen shone, like them. Unreal, transient.


“You’re beautiful,” Luhan said, lifting a hand to Chen’s face. Chen said “Luhan,” again, his hair black and dark like the night sky, eyes bright, the rest of him opaque and transparent at the same time, like moonlight.


Chen was still saying “Luhan,” as he vanished. The sun rose on Ju Peak, chasing away the mist, and Chen as well.
Luhan’s hand touched nothing.


“Chen?” Luhan got to his feet, looking around for the white fox. He saw nothing. “Chen?”


Chen saying he would go. Chen saying just this once. Chen saying faster, please, Luhan, before morning. Chen saying sorry, calling Luhan’s name.


His wrist tickled. Luhan looked down, to see the string Chen gave him disintegrate.


“Chen!” Luhan roared, into the silent dawn, Chen’s namesake. “Chen!”






Reparations


Luhan searched for Chen, all over Laoshan. He searched for three days and nights, before he went back to Guanyin’s temple, again.


Luhan refused to leave. He knelt through rain, thigh-deep in mud. He knelt and kept waiting, because he knew, he knew he moment he stood up, Chen would be gone from his life.


“Luhan.” Before his eyes, the Guanyin statue came to life.


“I want him back,” Luhan said stubbornly. “I prayed to you. I’ll take all his suffering, I said.”


“I heard you,” Guanyin said. “But it was not your suffering to take. He took that burden on, for you.”


She lifted her head, gazing beyond Luhan. This was a Bodhisattva, a living deity. Luhan clutched at his heart, a sense of deep sadness, a resignation, spreading.


“Guanyin.” He said again.


She was unreal, like Chen. But while Chen was transient, she was permanence.


An owl floated to the ground.


“Guanyin,” the spirit said.


"Will you tell him, Xiumin?"


“Guanyin,” the owl said. Sighed. “Yixing was the fox’s brother,” he said. “He lost all his powers for a human, years ago. The fox was tracking him, and we came along, to Laoshan, where the fox met you.”


Luhan looked down, at the silvery scars on his palm. At his body, whole and unharmed, from the fall.


“Yixing didn’t heal me,” Luhan said. Slowly. Painfully.


“You died,” the owl said. “You almost died. The fox went down the Road of Yellow Springs, looking for you. He brought you back.”


“Where is he?” Luhan had to ask, because the answer that loomed, in his mind, was too terrible.


“He gave up his years of cultivation, for you.” The owl said. “The older we get, the less our bodies are mortal. We are nothing but qi, held together. He couldn’t hold his soul apart, any longer.”


“But why would he do that?” Luhan burst out. “Why did that happen? He still took lifeforce from me, last night! And from the villagers!”


“Because everything that he had wasn’t enough,” the owl said. “He killed for you. He drained those men to save you, to heal you, after dragging you out from hell. As for last night, he came and said to me that he was too selfish, that he wanted one last night with you, even if it would cost you.”


“No,” Luhan said. “No –“ He wheeled around to Guanyin, who was looking at him with terrible compassion.


“Guanyin,” Luhan begged. “Don’t take him away.”


“This was his life to give,” she said, gently.


“Take my life! Take it all! I told him he could have it, bring him back, bring him back, bring him back…”


Luhan clutched at Guanyin’s feet, high on the pedestal. “Guanyin.” Gritting his teeth he took a step back, then kowtowed so hard the first blow made him see stars. He kept kowtowing, even as the owl took to the sky in alarm, hooting.


“Enough,” Guanyin said, and a force held Luhan in place.


She knelt, the stem of her lotus dragging on the stone floor.


Her fingers touched the blood on Luhan’s forehead, scattering it.


“Please bring him back,” Luhan begged. “Please.”


“Life and death cannot be reversed,” she said, and the kindness in her voice shattered something inside Luhan.


“The Magpie lovers can see each other once every year,” Luhan said, brokenly.


“Listen, Luhan,” she said. “Life and death cannot be reversed, but you two can still meet, in your next lives.”


Luhan sat upright, as fast as he could. “Please.”


“I do not know how far in the future it will be,” she said. “It might be in the next, it might be a hundred lifetimes later. But Luhan, that means that you have to give up your life now.”


Luhan stared at the stone pedestal. Bas-reliefs of warriors, who had her mercy, danced. “Do it,” he said, voice ragged.


“I said, death and life cannot be reversed.” Guanyin said. “You will not die, Luhan, but you will lose what was most important to you. You will never get your revenge, nor will you go any further in the exams. You will die alone, in poverty – that is the lot of this life, if you choose to take it up.”


“Yes,” Luhan said. “Yes.” He said it as quickly as possible so he didn’t have to think.


Guanyin cradled his face and wiped his tears away, along with the blood, using her robe. Luhan closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he was still kneeling in front of the stone statue of Guanyin.


As though everything was a dream. The fields and the mountain were silent, the only noise from the monks, in other parts of the temple.


Luhan gazed around, wildly. There was no blood on his forehead, when he wiped across it.


--


Xiumin flew in, through the window. Fluffing his wings, he piped out the news.


Luhan barely stirred. He hadn’t gotten out of bed, for a few days. Soon, his life would be over, and he could see Chen again.


He moved, however, as Xiumin talked. Sat up, curiosity unfolding.


“He…met a ghost?”


“That’s what his mother claims.” Xiumin said. “I took a look. She is a ghost.”


“And he’s marrying her?”


“He’s too scared to chase her away,” Xiumin corrected.


Luhan bit his lip. He thought for a while, then got to his feet, slowly.


Food, clothes, and ink. He would visit the Ning household.


--


“Who are you?” The man quavered. Luhan ran a hand selfconsciously over his hair. He hadn't shaved, or bathed in days.


“I’m human,” Luhan said. “I heard your wife is a ghost.”


“Go away!” The man said, closing the door in Luhan’s face.


“I believe you!” Luhan called. “I believe you because I met a spirit, myself!” He thought for a moment, then added, “I’m not from the temple, and I’m not here to disperse her spirit!”


“Who would believe you?” Xiumin grumbled.


The door swung open, after a while. The victorious smile on Luhan’s face faded.


“Stop bothering Caichen,” The woman said. She was beautiful – hair like the finest black silk, skin as white as snow, small and petite, like a flower in the wind.


She wasn’t human. Luhan could tell, somehow.


She stared at Luhan, then at Xiumin, perched on the cypress tree above.


“I am human, but he’s not.” Luhan said. “I know. I just want to hear your story.”


“Why?”


“Come in, Xiaoqian,” the man said, from behind her. “Just ignore him.”


“He hasn’t fully accepted you, has he?” Luhan asked softly. “He still thinks he dreamt everything. Still waiting for reality to set in, and you to be human.”


From the way the woman looked at Luhan, he could tell that he was right.


“Let me talk to both of you,” Luhan said. “I lost someone I cared about, very much. I don’t want it to happen to either of you. By Guanyin, I swear that I mean no harm, to either of you, and his family.”


“Let him come in, Caichen,” Xiaoqian said, making way for Luhan. Luhan felt his heart squeeze. Chen- his name could be read as Qian, as well. Chenchen, Qianqian. Xiaoqian.


“Thank you,” Luhan said.


Once inside, he spread his papers across the table.


“I’m a collector,” he explained. “I collect stories, about spirits and humans. Share with me yours, and I’ll tell you mine.”


“When did you decide that?” Xiumin asked. Caichen couldn’t hear him, but Xiaoqian could. She turned to gaze at Luhan.


Luhan swung open the window, so Xiumin could fly in. “I just decided that.”


Caichen started talking, first, his hand in Xiaoqian’s.


That was the first story that Luhan collected; he titled it Nie Xiaoqian.


--


Luhan passed away when he was seventy-five, having spent his life writing the collection of stories Liaozhai Zhiyi. If he couldn't have Chen, he could let the rest of the world know, that spirits like him existed. So no one would make the same mistake as Luhan again; so no one would accuse someone who loved him of being a soulsucking spirit, and lose him without realizing.


It felt like he was walking up Laoshan, up the path to Ju Peak, again.


At the top, there was a woman waiting, dressed in green and blue robes, face delicate. She held a battered sky lantern in her hand.


“Luhan,” she said, smiling. “Thank you for your wishes for us, that day.”


“Weaving maiden,” Luhan said, throat dry.


“This is yours,” she said, passing the bamboo structure to him. The paper had peeled off in places, but most of the words were still legible.


“A present,” she said, taking Luhan’s hands in hers. “From both of us. That you and Chen will remember, even past the bridge of sighs, what you had in this life – once you both have seen us in the sky above, and have waited, together, for daybreak.”


Like Chen, she faded, taken away by the wind.


Luhan held the lantern that he found, in a hand. There was no Chen to hold on to, with the other hand.


On one side of the octagon, sketched in Luhan’s best brushwork, was his wish.


我愿与君相知 山无棱,天地合,乃敢与君绝! 愿得一心人,白头不相离。


That I would have known you / until the mountains lose their peaks, and the sky meets the earth / I would not part with you! / I wish to have one in my heart, and to be with him, till death do us part.


On the other, barely legible, was Chen’s.


今生来世 只愿与你共观初晨


In this life, and next / My only desire is to watch daybreak, with you


Chen, Chen, Chen. Chen.


Luhan went on his last journey, wishes cradled next to his heart.




Exo


Kim Jongdae grew up in Daejeon, Korea.


He had a secret that he never told anyone – he kept imagining that the people around him would die, soon. He kept thinking that he would lose them, at any moment.


Because of that, he took relationships seriously. Some people were born knowing what was important to them. To Kim Jongdae, all that mattered was people.


Even singing, to him, began as another way of talking to people.


When he was nineteen, he auditioned for S.M, because he’d failed his collage examinations, and Jongdae had just wanted to sing.


They had taken him in, and he’d left his name behind, to become Chen of Exo.


--


Kim Jongdae got his stage name when he was nineteen. He’d met Luhan when he was nineteen, as well.


“Chen,” Luhan said, raising an eyebrow. It sounded more like a surname, rather than a name. “Which character is that?”


Chen shrugged, taking another bite of the éclair in his hand. They were at the small party SM threw, to introduce Chen and Baekhyun and finalise their group.


Chen’s Chinese wasn’t good. He didn’t know, honestly.


Luhan stood there awkwardly for a while, fiddling with the punch cooler. Chen chewed ferociously, and ransacked his mind for something to say, but Luhan turned around and left, retreating to the other side of the room, where the China-line was.


Luhan was pretty, Chen had to admit that. It wasn’t just the small face, and the pink complexion – it was the way he carried himself, like a cool breeze. Soft and gentle, but also with a self-assurance that came through, in his unselfconscious laughter.


If he found a girlfriend, he would want to find one just like Luhan.


--


They got closer, while preparing for their debut song "MAMA".


“Love,” Luhan said, flipping through the script, “is fiction.”


Luhan had a side to him that rarely came out; a side that was a bit lazy, and a bit hard. It was only deep in the night, the lights of the practice studio still as bright as day, that Chen got to see it.


Chen was still trying to memorize the lyrics for their first duet, "What is Love". Luhan had long finished; he insisted on staying back with Chen, and nothing Chen do could chase him home.


“This song,” he said, “is about fools in love. Saying you’ll give everything? Saying you’ll always wait? Who would do that?”


“I would,” Chen said. “You’re unromantic, Luhan-hyung.”


“No, the idea is that people will. But it’s all a big trap, in the end. People can move on and lead better lives without one another. No one knows how a relationship will turn out when they enter it.”


“Did you have a girlfrie-do you have a girlfriend, Luhan-hyung?” Chen wasn’t really thinking when he asked, so when Luhan said “yes,” Chen –


“Yes?”


“Not for much longer,” Luhan said grimly.


Chen wrote another few words on the paper, in hanyu pinyin.


“I don’t know what to do,” Luhan confessed. “We’re getting closer and closer to debut, and she waited through my trainee years, but now…”


Luhan buried his face in his arms, frustrated. Chen watched him surreptitiously. They got along, but they weren’t close. This was the most personal they had got.


Chen wondered what Luhan’s girlfriend was like. She had to be somebody with a lot of self-confidence. Brashness, as well, to make up for the sharp edges in Luhan’s personality that Luhan kept hidden away.


As much as Luhan complained about the lyrics, he believed in them. Hoped for those words to be true, even. Chen could see that.


Chen went back to the lyrics with renewed energy. Luhan laid there, like a dead fish.


--


The day that they recorded "What is Love", Luhan’s girlfriend broke up with him.

“I will do this,” Luhan said, “but I just want a drink after this, Jongdae.”


“Okay, hyung,” Chen said, hugging Luhan. It made his ears go warm, when Luhan said his name.


Luhan gripped his hand tight, under the table, as the producer spoke to them about emotion! Emotion! You’ll always be willing to wait for this girl!


“People do stupid things for love,” Luhan mumbled. They were in the Exo-M dorms, on the floor against the sofa, beer bottles on the floor. “We have this legend in China about lovers who get to see each other only once every year, because a flock of magpies build a bridge for them to cross the Milky Way. What kind of life is that?”


“Have another bottle, Luhan-hyung,” Chen said, philosophically replacing Luhan’s empty bottle with a full one. Considerately, he opened Luhan’s bottle for him.


“Why are you so polite around me, Jongdae?” Luhan asked, head lolling on the sofa seat.


Chen met Luhan’s sleepy eyes.


Chen was a sucker for Luhan’s eyes. They always glinted with a fullness that hinted of – something more, maybe tears, maybe anger. Something else that might be there, under the pretty-sweet-boy exterior.


“I learned from you, Luhan-hyung,” Chen said, smile bright.


“You little shit,” Luhan said.


Chen laughed, a gasp of laughter that escaped before he could keep it in.


“I like you better like this, Luhan-hyung,” Chen said, leaning back on the sofa as well. They were close, like this, faces not more than a hand’s width apart.


“Ow!” Chen said, voice distorted by Luhan’s hand pinching his cheek.


“Don’t do that polite thing on me,” Luhan said. “I need to get to know you better. How are we supposed to duet, if you’re going to be all bright-eyed and okay, hyung, around me?”


“Speak for yourself,” Chen said. He lunged forward, mouth open.


“Ow!” Luhan said, grabbing his hand. “You bit me!”


“You said not to be polite,” Chen said, stealing Luhan’s bottle of beer. It was still cold and wet in his hand; it went down his throat smoothly, washed by the taste of vindictiveness.


“I’m not gonna forget that,” Luhan said, pointing at Chen. He yanked his hand back as Chen’s teeth closed on empty air.


“Are you a dog, or something?”


“I prefer cats,” Chen said.


“You look like one,” Luhan agreed. He touched Chen’s lips, wiping away excess beer with a thumb. Carefully.


--


It got strange, when they were recording for "Baby, Don’t Cry." The lyrics looked familiar, like words that Chen had seen before. He sat among the rest of the Exo-M members, making his way through the Chinese lyrics slowly. Painfully, character by character.


“Love again,” Luhan said. He sat beside Chen. “It’s worse, this time. They want to sacrifice themselves for love.”


Luhan didn’t sound happy. Chen agreed. There was something uneasy inside of him, something that made him stumble over the words even more than usual.


He and Luhan were the last two left in the studio.


“Let’s try this,” Luhan said. “I’ll do everyone else’s verses. You just do yours. So you just pretend that I’m your ex-girlfriend, or something.”


Please don’t hesitate anymore / Just take away my heart / Like a ray of piercing light / even the moonlight is chased away


If it wasn’t me, if it was someone else / if this is a line from a play / when this has all burned clean, it’s the end / I would take your scars, for your love


“Chen?” Luhan took out his headphones. “Let’s take a break.”


“I’m okay, Luhan-hyung,” Chen said. His throat kept catching on the last line. Inexplicably, he couldn’t sing it, even more, with Luhan here. Luhan’s voice, drifting over soft piano instrumentals, the lyrics – it made Chen feel sad.


“Baby don’t cry, tonight – after the dark night has been lit again – “ Luhan sang.


Chen wiped the tears, laughed. “Damn, this is a sad song.”


Luhan stepped in close, hugged Chen. Chen clung to him, tears coming even harder.


Chen was just tired. That was it. Luhan patted him and make nonsensical soothing noises to the tune of Baby Don’t Cry. Chen let Luhan hold him, just for a while.


“You cried,” Chen said, astonished, when they pulled apart.


“You were sobbing,” Luhan said, defensively, wiping at his own eyes. He took up Chen’s hand, squeezing it tight.


“I know this is cheesy, but no one else is around,” Luhan said, eyes darting around the empty studio. “Okay, let’s try it again.”


This time, there was the warmth from the hug, the memory of Luhan’s smell, Luhan’s grip on his hand, that Chen put into his voice. Kindness, and strength, to balance the stark coldness of the words. Just pretend we never happened / you won’t vanish, like foam in the morning light.


Chen felt like they were standing in the middle of the ocean; the instrumentals relentless, like waves upon the shore. Luhan’s eyes clear and dark, like water.


It seems fitting, just for tonight / but this moment of passion, that’s all we’ll have / at the end, I watch you leave.
Luhan choked up, on that line. Frowned.


“I’m sorry about your girlfriend,” Chen said. He really was. Luhan waved it off.


Luhan’s voice rang, like waves on the shore. Like the cry of a gull. Your gaze overflows with moonlight –


In silence, in pain, spilling pure light. Chen liked that line of his the best, liked the lead-in by Luhan and the building instrumentals in the background. Liked it unreasonably, with a slight clenching of his heart and a defiance that rang through the words. Like everything would be fine, if you could sing about it loudly.


Watch the morning light spilling over us–
As bright, as you.


Luhan hugged Chen again, once they were done. “That’s the best take we had,” he said, pleased. “Your pronunciation was decent. Let’s go home, Chen.”


“Mm.” Chen hugged Luhan harder.


“It’ll be fine,” Luhan said breezily, patting Chen on his back. “I’ll be here, you can rely on me.”


“Thanks, Luhan-hyung.”


“Let’s go home,” Luhan said, again. Chen held on to him for a few more seconds, reluctant to let go. Terrorized by the sudden, unreasonable fear that all these would vanish, any second.


Luhan let him. Even after they packed up, and they were on their way out of SM, Luhan threaded his fingers into Chen’s, pulling him close.


--


Chen couldn’t sleep, the rest of the night. He kept having nightmares, dreams that he would forget the moment he woke.


He drew the curtains tight, the next morning, and dressed in the darkness.


--


The live showcase went well, and Chen and Luhan slipped back into their roles as teammates. Good friends, also, of course.


If Luhan walked a bit closer to Chen at airports, if he had his arm around him, protective – no one said anything.




Oranges


“Just do it,” Luhan said, through gritted teeth.


It was their turn next. They had to pass oranges from one person to the other, using their bodies.


Exo was used to fanservice, but Chen never touched for long. He gave quick hugs, was okay with handholding- but he didn’t lean in and touch, not like this.


He slipped the orange between their bodies, legs pressed against Luhan’s, hands around Luhan’s waist. Luhan was just a bit taller than him.


It was fast, for the first orange. For the second, it took too long. Chen just couldn’t get a grip on it, rubbing his face against Luhan’s chest, face burning, as he tried to get the damn orange. Luhan was lifting himself up and down on the balls of his feet, to generate friction that they didn’t need. He tried to keep his head back, but they were close – close enough that Chen was getting hard, from Luhan’s breath on Chen’s face.


They broke apart, as fast as they could, the moment it was over.


Chen held the orange in his hand, imagining smashing it.


Luhan came back with the third orange. Chen was a lot more shy, now, but he knew what to do.


Luhan could still clap, pleased, after it all. So did Xiumin. Chen rolled the orange in his hand, looking down at it.


He couldn’t look directly at the camera, for a while.


--


Everything carried on, after that. Except Chen had a secret now, a secret that made him conscious of how much he talked to Luhan, and how near they stood.


Luhan treated Chen the same as he did everyone else – well.


--


It came to a head, in Exo’s showtime. They were at the beach, waiting for the sunrise.


Luhan lingered behind Chen, face buried in his jacket. Tao was shouting, the other members were shifting around uneasily – it was bright and the sun still hadn’t rose.


“You think it’s not going to rise?” Kyungsoo asked Suho quietly, still loud enough for everyone else to hear.


“It’s going to get brighter this way,” Suho said diplomatically. Chen held back a snort.


He went to find Minseok.


“Chen-ah,” Minseok said, making space for him. Chen looked for Minseok, whenever he was cold. Like a habit.


“Let me be a better leader in 2014!” Suho shouted
, almost immediately shouted down by the other members.


“Too soft!” Baekhyun said.


“Let me be a better leader in 2014!” Suho shouted again.


“It’s coming up! It’s coming up!” Lay shouted. Luhan clapped weakly, face pale.


“It rose as I made my wish!” Suho shouted. If this didn’t make it onto the show, Chen honestly didn’t know what footage would.


“It’s really bright!” Chen shouted, excited.


He started going silent, after that, a feeling of having forgotten something prickling at the back of his mind.


Luhan was as quiet, next to him.


--


Luhan


It was a long journey, back from Busan to Seoul. Luhan sat right at the back, jacket over his face, trying hard to control his breathing.


Chen. His Chen. So much longing, so many years and years of waking up in darkness and looking around for Chen; not wanting to open the window, because it would mean going into a world where Chen could not exist.


So many years of longing, and Luhan had no idea how to deal with it. Had no idea why it seemed like the longing was at an end, with Chen before him; but at the same time it felt so far away, on the other side of life, where a fox and a scholar lived, with no one else around.


Luhan had lived a life without Chen, for twenty-one years. Chen had lived a life without Luhan, as Kim Jongdae, for nineteen.


They were both in the newest boy band from S.M Entertainment; Luhan had given up five years of his life, in this gamble. Chen had given up two, at this point.


What could happen, between both of them? Chen wasn’t the same fox spirit he was back then; neither was Luhan the same scholar.


Chen was the one who left him first. Luhan knew it wasn’t fair, to say that, but he remembered the years of waiting, as well. Of being unable to let anyone else into his heart, the long shadow of loss dogging his footsteps.


This Luhan, the one who had not met Chen, had people he loved. His ex-girlfriend had posted a message on Weibo on him, wishing him all the best.


He had loved her. He could love people other than Chen.


Luhan was scared, he knew. Scared of the weight of seventy-five years of memory, resentful of the person he was, now – changed, in a matter of hours, changed by desperation and desire deepened and darkened by all the years.


When Chen came to sit next to him, hesitantly opening his mouth to speak to Luhan, Luhan couldn’t look at him.


“Chen-ah,” he said. “I want to sleep. Let’s talk later.”


Chen was trying to see if Luhan – remembered anything, as well.


“Is there anything wrong?”


Chen looked at Luhan, and Luhan couldn’t tell what Chen was thinking. He got to his feet, making his way through the moving bus, back to his own seat.


Luhan bit his tongue, hard enough that it drew blood. Chen.


--


Nothing changed, after that. Luhan paid extra attention to Chen, but he was careful not to let it show. What would his band members think? What would Chen think?


Chen never brought it up. Luhan could not convince himself that it had all been his imagination – the hurt was too bright, too real, for that.


They filmed episode 7 at Namsan tower. This time, they had to take a cable car up.


Luhan crouched, because he was scared of heights – also because he didn’t want the cameras to capture the expression on his face. He had been stuck on the ledge for days, and Chen had died, also, because of that.


“Do we have to ride this down later?” He asked, weakly, over Baekhyun’s teasing. He glanced at the floor of the car, wondering how secure it was, and then back at the scenery again. What would Chen do, if he was here? Would he care?


They went to eat, and explore Namsan. Luhan put on his happiest, brightest face. It was his job, after all. This was his life, not – not the other one.


They had to write on locks, to make promises to people they cared about. Luhan wrote something generic, but the person he was thinking about, when he was writing, was Chen. Luhan thought about promises and how certain he was of him and Chen; about an attachment that was so strong, he knew he couldn’t put it down, if he ever took it up again.


What were locks, after all? They could be broken open, and stolen away.


Luhan didn’t stop, couldn’t stop thinking about Chen, for the rest of the day. They went through an old Korean town, and the architecture reminded him of his family home in Shandong. About how Luhan had wanted to bring Chen there, one day.


“I heard you went up Namsam,” Chen said, unexpectedly, when they were entering the Shabu-Shabu restaurant. “I thought you didn’t like heights.”


“I don’t,” Luhan said shortly. He sped up his pace, entering the room booked for them with Xiumin, instead. “Let’s sit there,” he said, pointing.


Chen came in, later, strolling to the other table. He looked fine, but there were cracks – his laughter a bit too forced, and strained.


--


Busy schedules kept them apart. Chen started giving Luhan a wide berth, after that. He would smile and talk to Luhan, but he never looked for him alone; the promise to let Luhan hear the song that he was preparing for S.M The Ballad went unfulfilled, of course. Chen was spending much more time with Exo-k, these days.


It was childish, but the more Chen stepped away from Luhan, the more Luhan wanted Chen there. He never wanted Chen to leave. He simply wanted Chen to be there, to wait for Luhan, like Luhan waited for him.


“Have you eaten?” Luhan asked. He managed to jostle his way next to Chen, all of them on their way to the practice rooms for the filming of the next showtime episode.


Chen nodded, eyes closed. Resting. Ignoring Luhan.


It was this anger – anger born out of the knowledge that Chen was moving away from him, again – that made Luhan do something spiteful. This episode was a recording session, and they asked Luhan to sing the same song that he did for audition.


So he did. He sang it, looking at Chen, as sweetly as he could. When the rain falls / and the music flows / I think of you / and the night you left. It was raining like this. He sang, finally, after so many years – sang all the waiting out, put it out in front of Chen for him to see. Today, this rain soaked me again / and I let the whole world pass by me, like that.

He relished Chen’s tight grip on his phone, the way he stared at it, wanting to turn the song off but not daring to. Oh, our love stories that were like music / turned painful because of the pouring rain.


Chen kept his composure. He suggested that they change songs, do something else. Luhan assented lazily, along with the rest.


He kept up this indirect needling, throughout the rest of the session. They sang Miracles in December in Chinese together, him, Baekhyun and Chen. Chen stared woodenly at himself in the mirror, giving as little attention to Luhan or Baekhyun as he could.


“Hyung, correct our pronunciation,” Baekhyun said. Luhan nodded.


“Ming ming ni bu zai wo shen bian (although, in reality, you’re not by my side).” Repeated that line again, clapping Chen on his shoulder.


Chen parroted him obediently, but he swung away from the cameras, after that. Luhan could sense the tenseness in his shoulders.


Hiding his smirk, Luhan went to correct Baekhyun, draping his arm around Baekhyun’s shoulders.


Chen came back, swinging his shoulders to relieve the tension. This time he stood away from Luhan, on the other side of Baekhyun.


It was this way for the rest of the session; Chen and Luhan at opposite ends of the sofa, the rest of Exo’s vocal line separating both of them.


Chen was louder and brighter the rest of the session, as though to spite Luhan.


--


“You remember,” Chen said, that night. Luhan and Chen were the last two out of the van, into the dorm.


Luhan shouldered his bag and hurried up the steps.


Chen grabbed his arm, in the stairwell. Shoved Luhan up against the wall.


“Why did you let me think you didn’t?” His voice was hushed and soft, but still fierce.


“What are you talking about, Chen?”


Chen didn’t let him go, this time. “Stop pretending, Luhan.”


“You should call me hyung,” Luhan reminded.


“Why are you doing this?”


“You left me,” Luhan said.


“So you remember?”


“How you took two years of my life? Yes.”


“No, I meant. I disappeared. I-“ Chen was tongue-tied, at a loss. That didn’t happen often.


Chen didn’t know that Luhan knew, what Chen gave up for him. Didn’t know the bargain Luhan struck on their behalf, didn’t know the years, the years that were so hard, for Luhan.


“Yes, you did,” Luhan said. He shoved his way past Chen, bolting up the stairs.


It was a while later, after Luhan had gone into his room, that he heard the front door of their dorm open.


“Where did you go, Chen?” Tao asked. Chen mumbled something, too soft for Luhan to hear.


--


Luhan got the peace he wanted, after that. But it came at the cost of Chen falling sick.


Every member of Exo had their busy periods, and this was Chen’s. He was preparing three songs for S.M the Ballad, had just wrapped up Exo’s Miracles in December promotion, and also had the Exo-M promotions in China to attend.


Luhan had seen it coming; had watched it happen, watched Chen’s uneasiness the night before they returned to China. His face, tight in the plane, glancing at the scenery outside before slipping on headphones and going to sleep. Chen trying not to look too much at the scenery in China, because that was his first time going back after he regained his memories.


He had been stiff and quiet during promotions in China, mostly because it was hard for him to catch what was going on. But that day, Chen had been unusually quiet, his already pale face even whiter. It was hard for him to even dredge up a smile.


“Just a bit more,” Yixing cajoled. Chen held the water bottle in his hand, not even pouting.


Luhan walked past the two of them without even looking at Chen. He already knew that Chen was sick.


Chen kept coughing, the rest of the night. Would check that his mike was turned off before coughing. Exo members all knew how much the fans worried about them, so for Chen to do this signalled how tired he was.


He tried not to cough, but he kept coughing, anyway. He hung out with the rest of the Exo-m members on stage, joking and joining in, but he was just that bit reserved.


It was Luhan who couldn’t take any more of it. He pulled Chen to him, letting Chen rest his head on Luhan’s shoulder. Chen laid there limply, mike dangling from his fingers. Tired. Luhan patted him, reassuring the fans that Chen was okay over Chen’s head.


“Stop being so stubborn,” Luhan said to Chen, smiling, even as his words were cold. Chen coughed, refused to look up at him.


Their managers had to help Chen offstage, later.


Luhan insisted on sitting next to Chen, on the way back. He fed him medicine and water, food, also, if Chen needed. Chen rested his head on Luhan’s shoulder, eyes closed, fingers curled in his blanket.


It seemed that Luhan couldn’t get away from Chen, no matter how hard he tried.






Ghosts


“You’re going back to China with Tao for Chinese New Year?” Chen asked, curious.


Sehun nodded, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “He sent me some pictures,” Sehun said, picking up his phone.
“Is this a tourist brochure?”


Sehun sniggered, scrolling through the pictures. “Yeah. He asked me to pick where I wanted to go.”


Luhan closed his eyes, leaning back against Xiumin. Today’s practice had been especially brutal – his legs were aching, even worse than usual.


“Wait, scroll back.” Chen’s voice was oddly serious. Luhan opened his eyes, curious.


“Laoshan,” Chen said. Luhan’s heartbeat picked up.


“Tao said it’s a famous mountain in his area.” Sehun looked curiously at Chen.


Chen’s eyes met Luhan – Luhan twisted his gaze away, fingers curling in his sweatpants.


“Tao,” Chen said, spinning around. “Where’s Tao.”


“Do you want to go, as well, Chen-hyung?” Sehun asked, puzzled, trailing after Chen.


“Foxes?” Tao said. He wasn’t standing that far from Luhan – Luhan could hear everything that they were saying. “I don’t know about that.”


“Any – historical events? Buddhist temple?”


“I could baidu it,” Tao said, dubiously.


“Home to Pu-Song ling, writer of Liaozhai Zhiyi. Scholar at the age of seventeen, but never went further…”


“Let me see that?” Chen’s voice was shaking.


“Chen? Chen?”


“Luhan-hyung,” Chen said. He came over to Luhan. Dropped to his knees, so they were at the same height.


Luhan should have lied, but Luhan wasn’t good at lying. It was written all over his face.


“I thought you would.” Chen swallowed. “I thought you would do well, after I left.”


“Don’t pity me,” Luhan said, sharply. He cast a glance at the rest of them. “Let’s talk outside.”


--


“Luhan-hyung.” Chen’s voice was small.


Luhan was an asshole. Chen…died for him. But it’s also because Luhan knows that, that he’s scared.


“Stop looking for information,” Luhan said. “Talk to me, if you want to know what happened.”


“So you remember.”


“Yes.” Luhan said, tired. “So?”


“Nothing,” Chen says. He says it defiantly. “Just. I’m sorry.”


“You saved my life,” Luhan said. Laughed, a bit. “I am an asshole.”


“Do you hate me, Luhan-hyung?”


Chen. Still as sharp.


“No,” Luhan said. It would be easier, if he hated Chen. But Luhan didn’t. Luhan just loved him too much, for too long.


There was so much that Chen wanted, from Luhan. And Chen was persistent.


Chen nodded, like he knew that all along. Like that would be enough.


--


They went filming in a haunted house, for Showtime.


Luhan was still scared. But he was more scared, he reasoned with himself, because he knew that ghosts and spirits and demons existed. They really existed.


It took all his courage to go through the house, his legs giving out from under him at certain corners. The worst part of it was that Kyungsoo went missing halfway.


When Luhan staggered out of the house, shaking, the rest of the members were waiting for him.


“Kyungsoo’s not out yet?”


“You went it together, you should have come out with him,” Chen said impatiently. The other members agreed.


He went in, only to be scared by Kyungsoo, from behind. Fucking Chen, Luhan swore, ire increased when he saw Chen marching cheerfully into the house, for his turn.


What he saw next made him speechless. Chen started looking for the ghosts, shaking hands with them and passing them heatpacks.


“You were supposed to startle me, right?” Chanyeol mimicked. Luhan snorted, gaze fixed on the monitors, ears burning from embarrassment. Chen was a fox spirit in his past life – why would anything scare him? The haunted house workers should be scared of him, instead.


Still, he was secretly proud, as Chen came out of the horror house like he’d just done community work for an hour. He grinned, at Chen’s small, secret smile.


The shared memories felt like a good secret to share, with Chen.


New Year Wishes


“Come and stay with me, for Chinese New Year,” Luhan offered, from behind Chen.


Chen jumped, beer splashing out of his bottle. He had been staring at his Samsung laptop, slowly scrolling through pictures of Laoshan. He was on a picture of a Taoist temple now.


Luhan rested his chin on Chen’s head, arms on his shoulders.


“Come back to China with me, Jongdae.” Luhan was already imagining what the fans would say; was thinking of where they could go, far enough that no one else could find them. Or he could keep Chen in his room, for the duration of the trip.


“What are we, Luhan?”


Luhan didn’t know. Had thought about it, hadn’t wanted to decide.


Both of them wanted more. Luhan knew that; so did Chen. Jongdae. They were falling together, step in step, with a synchronicity that neither wanted to disturb with words, not until today.


But Luhan didn’t want to make a decision, either. Still had too much confusion, inside him, to make one.


“We’re Exo,” Luhan said. It was a promise and a question, at the same time.


“I need to visit my family,” Chen – no, Jongdae – said. “It’s going to be busy, with S.M the Ballad rehearsals, too.”


So this was how it was going to be - how it should be. How, after months of slowly seeping into each other’s lives, relearning expressions, moods, discovering habits – there was still a barrier, after all. A line that they couldn’t cross, a line that would keep the past as the past and Chen as Jongdae, Luhan as a Beijing-bred boy.


“Think about it,” Luhan said. His voice came out a bit lower than expected. “I wish you could come.”


“I will,” Chen said, still facing the laptop. He closed it with a hand. “Did you come back with the rest?”


“I bought Jajangmyeon for you,” Luhan said.


“It’s your treat, right, Luhan-hyung?” No more Luhan – Luhan-hyung, instead. Luhan wanted to choke him with his arm, until he only called Luhan Luhan. Until he lost that politeness, again.


It was Luhan, in the end, who let Chen up. Who left the room first, closing the door behind him.


He would never know, but Chen – Chen, who had never turned to look at him, not once – his eyes were wet, from looking at the photos of Laoshan. After Luhan left, Chen remained sitting in the same position, staring into empty space, until the beer in his hand turned warm.


He wiped his eyes, once, then again and again, burying his face in his arms, fingers digging deeply into his palms – holding his breathing, for as long as he could. Waited for the door to open, and someone to touch his shoulder, to call him Chen again. Gently, like that last night in Laoshan.


But there was, and had only been moonlight, that would vanish, under the cruel light of day.


Luhan would never know, but that was not the first time, that Chen had cried for him.


--


Luhan began to feel uneasy, on his second night at home. He spent more time on his own, quietly sitting in his room. He remembered his family – the one he had in his past life – and all the years that he spent Chinese New Year without them, or Chen. Sometimes he would cook a chicken and sit at Guanyin’s feet, with Xiumin.


It was good, that Xiumin was still here, even if he didn’t remember anything. Without Xiumin, Luhan could not have made it through those years.


Chen called, two nights later. Luhan was out visiting, with his family.


“Chen?”


“Luhan-hyung?”


“I’m at a relative’s house,” Luhan said, glancing around.


“Happy Chinese New Year,” Chen said. Wistfully.


“I’m getting a cab back,” Luhan said. “I’ll call you back in an hour. Wait for me.”


He had to make his excuses, but as he got into a cab, the streets quiet and empty (everyone was with someone), Luhan was the most clear-minded, that he had been in days.


--


“You don’t have to say anything,” Chen said. “I just need to tell you, Luhan-hyung. Luhan. That I don’t want to be just friends.”


Luhan was silent, holding his breath. He stood in the middle of his living room, coat draped over his arm, Chen’s voice coming clearly over his phone.


“Don’t put down,” Chen said. “Take it that I’m begging. I don’t want to be alone in the hostels, now. I miss you, Luhan.”


“Chen-“


“Don’t say anything,” Chen said. “Take it that you’re listening to the radio, or something. Just let me – talk. Or sing. Because if you say anything, Luhan, I won’t have the courage.” A dry laugh. “I’m a coward. I never knew that, not until I met you, Luhan.”


“Why do I like you so much, Luhan?” Chen’s voice was gentle, warm, like slow-moving water. “You’re a lying, cheating person who doesn’t want me, but you’re still good to me, anyway. Why are you so nice to everyone, Luhan? Why do you have to take care of everyone, so that I can’t tell the difference between how much you like me and how much you like Xiumin? Why do you have to make me feel special, on some days, then on others treat me like everything else never happened, and I’m just your dongsaeng? Why am I so bitter and jealous, that I can’t have a special place in your heart? I’m too greedy, Luhan. I’m trying everything I can to not make you sad. I know you care. I’m trying to be happy with what we have. But I loved you, Luhan, and I don’t know how to feel anything less than that. Please keep on caring for me, the same way, even if you don’t love me.”


Luhan stood there, unable to say a word.


“I spent the past few days in the studio,” Chen said. “Can I tell you about my day, Luhan-hyung? As long as you don’t put down the phone, I’m assuming that it’s okay. See, I am shameless, when I need to be. Just- do whatever you’re doing, Luhan-hyung. Bathe. Read. Surf Weibo. Just leave the phone on, next to you. Please. I won’t talk about the past, anymore. I’m done. Please.”


Luhan spent the night curled up in bed, the phone beside him. Chen talked, talked, aimlessly. Kept talking, kept up a bright stream of chatter, until Luhan interrupted him.


“Chen,” Luhan said. “It’s late, and your voice is getting hoarse. Call me back tomorrow night, after you’ve come back from the studio.”


“Thank you, Luhan-hyung,” Chen said. He hung up, quickly, leaving the dial-tone in Luhan’s ear.


--


Chen called again, the next night.


“I feel like I’m practicing for radio, Luhan-hyung.” He said. “I think I need to rest my voice for tonight. Can we – just – listen? I want to put the instrumental for Breathe on repeat. So I’m familiar with it.”


Luhan’s cousins came into the room, later. Luhan turned the speaking function off, so Chen wouldn’t hear him.


“What are you listening to? Is that one of your new songs?”


“Keep it a secret,” Luhan said. “It’s going to be amazing, tell all your friends to watch out for it. Chen’s going to sing it.”


“Chen?” His cousin was young, like most of the exo fans. “Is it the S.M The Ballad album? He’s cute!”


“He is,” Luhan agreed. “Do you friends like him?”


“They like you more,” she said.


“I like him a lot,” Luhan said. “A lot.”


“Really?”


“A lot,” Luhan said. “He’s very caring.”


“Tell me more about him,” she said.


“He doesn’t like to let people know, when he’s sad.” Luhan said. He glanced at his handphone, at Chen on the other line, oblivious to what Luhan was saying.


“But he’s very courageous,” Luhan said. “He’ll always be sincere, with you. He doesn’t hold anything back – no, wait he does. 对别人好，对自己不好. 有时候，我都分不清楚，他到底是不是狠自己？对自己一点余地都不留，对别人却是太多的纵容。到头来就一无所有也没关系，就是死死的保留着微笑。 (He’s good to everyone except himself. Sometimes, I can’t tell if he just hates himself. He doesn’t make or accept excuses when it comes to its own stuff, but he’ll take any excuse from anyone else. Even if he doesn’t get anything in return, it looks like that’s fine with him – he’ll always have that damned smile on.)”


“Wow. I didn’t know that you two were close.”


“No,” Luhan said. “有时候，我都觉得，我是不是不应该靠近他？我对他是不是真心？在没肯定的那天，我真的没资格就一直与他接触。(Sometimes, I wonder if I should stay away from him. Do I have a sincere heart, when it comes to him? Before I’m certain of that, I have no right to get closer to him.)


“You’re so serious about relationships,” his cousin said. “But Luhan-ge, that’s the thing about you. You’re always concerned if you’re good to people. But maybe you should let people make that choice for themselves, instead of making it for them.”


The instrumental for Breathe was still playing in the background. Chen, still there, unaware of what Luhan had just said.


Luhan changed to topic to something lighter, about family. Safe topics.


Too many things, that Luhan dared not to think about, simply because he spent so many years lost in those thoughts.


--


Chen called again, and again. He kept these calls shorter, because he was back home, with his family.


He told Luhan about his brother, and his mother. About going to watch a movie with them and being unused to people looking at him on the streets, all over again.


He kept it as bright, and happy, as he can.


Luhan listened, earphones plugged in. At the bus stop, in the bathroom, in the restaurant (Chen finished before his friends came, so he didn’t have to make a choice).


--


Chen called again, the night before Luhan was due to fly back to Korea.


“Luhan-hyung,” Chen said. Then, “Luhan. You’re flying back, tomorrow, and I won’t be able to say all these to your face. Let me just talk about Laoshan, for a while. This is the last time, I promise.”


He took a breath. Luhan wasn’t breathing, tensed.


“I still dream about it.” Chen said, frankly. “But being there, with you, was like a dream itself. I stopped hunting for Yixing, or the man that left him behind. I was searching for years, before that, did you know?”


Quieter, this time. “Laoshan was the best dream that I had. I remembered you, from years ago. You thought we were cubs, when we were actually fox spirits. Yixing was so amused. When I saw you again, I felt that it was fate. That you were meant to be the first person I met, after I turned human, for some reason. You made me happy again, you strange human. You made me happy to be human.


When I close my eyes, I can see Laoshan and you me again. I can see the cypress trees, against blue sky. I can see the chickens in your coop. I can see your house, and the bed, the small table you used to eat and write and do everything on, the calligraphy art that you would do for yourself.


I can see the places we walked together, the pool you liked but was actually full of insects, until I cleared them for you. I can see the river, always in spring, you climbing painfully over the rocks. I can see Ju Peak and I can imagine how much I hurt you.


That’s it, it was all a dream, a good dream. I know I’m foolish, to hang on to it. But I’m sorry, Luhan. I was thinking about it and I’m sorry for hurting you, for so many years. You said not to search online but I did anyway and I’m sorry for being selfish and wanting you to like me again, like nothing happened.”


“Laoshan,” Chen said again. “Laoshan. Luhan, I have a song for you. I learned it by myself. I just have this one last song, for you. 可惜不是你 (it's a pity, that it’s not you).”


Chen sang without a backtrack, only his voice crackling over the phone line. His pronunciation had improved, but it was rough in places. Still, Luhan was familiar enough with the song, to understand.


He sang it calmly, without too much emotion. But the restraint, in itself, was painful to hear; worse, when resignation came through, as well.


It was familiar, and sad, at the same time. Chen sang with familiarity, like this was a song that he had sang to Luhan before; plain, like wind, barely ruffling the surface of water. Like a touch that Luhan was used to, that made his stomach clench and his throat work with guilt.


It was just about love; Chen had never kept it a secret from Luhan, how much he loved him. Too fast, without reason, not entitled to love in return. That was how the first few lines sounded, like it was a mistake that Chen had made, but it was so important that he couldn’t let it go.


This song hurt, because it was Chen, singing it to Luhan. Chen was singing, like laughing with Luhan, tears in their eyes, knowing how absurd this was, knowing how foolish they were. This song said things that they knew, brought out the reality that they didn’t want to face.


Chen was singing, saying that he had tried to change, that he had thought that being beside Luhan would be enough for him; apology in his voice, voice pressed thin, sharpened by emotion fighting to break free – love, love in good times, in the fairytale that was Laoshan, love that was too real, too bright, too soul-deep to be true, in reality. Love that promised to be enough, but fell short, making a fool out of both their promises.


The chorus hit, and Luhan knew, knew what Chen really wanted to say. Chen was making his own choice, at last, saying to Luhan: it’s a pity, isn’t it, that it won’t be you, you who I cared for so much, you who shared so much of your life me, you who walked through the hardest times in my life with me – it’s not you and it won’t be you, it can’t be you. This is life, it is always in the right.


I’m thankful, that it was you
Who held my hand
I can still feel that warmth.


Chen was apologizing, again. Saying goodbye to Luhan, saying that he was ready to give up, and move on.
The dial tone sounded in Luhan’s ear, before he could reply.


He wanted to call back, but he didn’t know what to say. I love you? Let’s be together?
Luhan and Chen. They were members of Exo, not a fox spirit, and a scholar.


Chen’s unsent letter


To Luhan:


I think the hardest part is that I don’t blame you, for anything.


I can’t blame you, for not falling in love with me, this lifetime.


I don’t want to blame myself, for not being able to give you up, and move on.


But how can you stop love, like that? It’s not a river you can divert, neither is it the fireflies above it, that are born to burn and die, leaving nothing behind.


What we had belonged in Laoshan, where the seasons never changed, and the nights were long.


I got used to you, in my life. I got used to waking up and looking for you and being able to find you. I got used to liking and hating and speaking without fear, because you would not chase me away, no matter how angry I made you.


I got used to thinking that life could always be that way. But even the most heartfelt promise cannot withstand the passing of time.


It is your kindness that hurts, and yet is the proof that I have loved correctly.


I have nothing to hate you for, and that is the worst, of all of this. That I can find someone I want to spend the rest of my life with, and have to know that I will spend the rest of my life with him caring for me. Luhan, you know me better than anyone else in Exo, you move me to tears more easily than anyone I know, but your heart’s not mine, and won’t be mine.


WIshing you a Happy Chinese New Year, Luhan, and that you will find someone that you can love, who loves you back, as well.




Breath


It seemed like everything would be fine. Luhan gave Chen space, and Chen gave Luhan space. They just needed time, that was all.


It came to a head, when Luhan heard Chen sing Breath for the first time, with Liyin at Hunan TV Festival. The eleven of them were crowded backstage, when the familiar music started, and Chen’s voice began.


Luhan knew the instrumentals, but not the lyrics. It started off rough, Chen’s voice low. Tugged by the music, his voice eddied, slowing in the right places, picking up in others.


It wasn’t fantastical. It was slow and quiet, the backtrack not fully ramped up yet, leaving Chen’s voice to trickle, like it did over the line into Luhan’s phone.


I couldn’t stop thinking of you; dialled your number / thinking of you, of how long I haven’t seen you. / The breathlessness and pain, so far away / comes back again, tied to my heart / when I let you go, I sighed, regretting you walk away alone


Liyin’s voice hit, and Luhan couldn’t hold back the shiver. Her voice was older, more mature, in contrast to the youthfulness of Chen’s voice. The beauty of this song was that it wasn’t pretentious; it was two people, talking to one another, with a honesty that was possible because it was so private – two people, sharing the same memories, regret and love coloring their voices.


Touching you / feeling the warmth of your tears / this path that we’re carrying on, even memories cannot give comfort / I can’t stop crying / we agreed not to see each other again, after we broke up / still, when I’m hurt / stay on the line, just leave me the sound of your breath


Luhan stood there, at the back of the room, eyes closed. Chen and Liyin singing together carried a truth that he didn’t, that he couldn’t have with Chen. Luhan was never truthful, with Chen.


It was ironic, how vulnerable they could be in front of someone who had hurt them before, and hurt them badly again.


There’s too much I want to say to you / why do we only have silence left, now / even if we have a lot of words, can we still return to the beginning (my heart’s in pain) / if I can return to our happy days, I would hold your hand tight / I wouldn’t let go, again


Luhan thought of Chen, calling him again and again, telling him that he didn’t need to speak. Begging Luhan to stay on the line. Breath was about one person calling another, in pain, so beaten down that all he could ask for was the sound of his lover breathing. It didn’t take a genius to see the similarities between the song and Chen calling Luhan.


Luhan’s chest was abruptly tight. Chen, always bold. Chen, always loving Luhan, with everything that he had.
Luhan, never honest.


They made their way through Wolf, as EXO, but when it came to the self-introductions, Luhan felt tears, pricking the back of his eyes.


Luhan loved Exo, there was no doubt about it. But it was heavy, at times, preventing Luhan from simply picking up the microphone and telling Chen to wait just a bit more, for Luhan.


“I wish everyone a happy Chinese New Year, and to stay happy and blissful,” Luhan said, wiping at his eyes. They passed the mike back to him again, to wish people happy new year in Beijing dialect –and Luhan couldn’t do it, he did it but he was crying. The person had said, say it in your hometown dialect.


Luhan wanted to say, which hometown? Shandong? Or Beijing, now?


For all that Luhan had tried to put his past as someone else’s, it was his own.


Yixing passed Luhan tissue, thinking it was sweat. Luhan dabbed at his eyes, glad to not have to explain.


--


Chen’s voice suited him. It was bright, and clear, with an earnestness that bordered on being painful at times.
Luhan missed hearing it; hated the way Chen cautiously avoided him. Hated the taste of loneliness, so familiar – had missed Chen in so many ways, so many forms, that he was sensitive to even a bit of it.


Six months of co-existence, and a lifetime of longing. It wasn’t that it was the happiest period of Luhan’s life. Luhan was a happy kid, most of the time, and he liked to take life as it came. It was because it was a period of time that Luhan could never go back to again; neither he, nor Chen.

Loss was the best way to remember; lack, the reason for desire.


But there had been more than loss. There was clarity, in Laoshan, in the clear air and sky above and water below, nothing hidden in Luhan’s smile, nothing kept back in Chen’s laugh. Everything real, in Chen’s mumbled strange human and his strange fox actions; everything real, in Luhan’s exasperation, in his barely passable cooking (Luhan refused to let Chen eat raw meat), in his slow, re-acceptance of kindness, and patience, because of Chen.


Chen had said to Luhan, that he wanted to learn to be human. But Chen, even though he was a fox spirit, had been more human than Luhan already; ready to love, like a child, unwilling to hate, like an old man.


It had been Luhan, who had learned to be human again, from Chen.


In their dorm hallway, Luhan lingered. Chen was trying to toe off his sneakers, but the laces were too tight. He sat down to untie it.


Luhan crouched to shelve his shoes. Chen was still fumbling with the knot.


He leaned over, his front pressing against Chen’s back, arms around him, hands reaching for Chen’s right shoe.


“I’ll do it,” Luhan said. He untangled the right knot quickly, fingers deft.


Chen offered the other shoe, pulling his left feet towards himself.


Luhan took the other knot out. Instead of taking his arms away, he hugged Chen, instead. Let Chen listen to the sound of him breathing.


“I’ll always pick up your call,” Luhan said. “You can ask for more, from me.”


“Oh?” Chen said. “Like if I asked you to kiss me now, here in the dorms? Stop being so nice, Luhan.”


Luhan nosed Chen’s ear; kissed it. Kissed his cheek, then his jawline, then his neck.


“Where else do you want me to kiss?” He asked, lowly, in Chen’s ear. He slipped fingers into Chen’s collar, touching the collarbone and heated skin below, feeling for the mole that he knew was there.


“Here?” He asked, pulling open the shirt, so he could bite it. Chen jumped.


“Here?” He asked, turning Chen’s chin around, fingers under his chin. Kissed the corner of his mouth, and his cheekbone, and his eyebrows.


“Where else?” He asked, gently.


Chen looked at Luhan like he was everything, like Luhan could give him everything he wanted.


Then it became anger.


“You think I only want sex?” He said, accent slipping. “Fuck you, Luhan.”


He shook free, bolting from Luhan before Luhan could catch him again.


The slamming of his bedroom door shook the apartment.


--


This time, even the rest of Exo noticed.


“What’s up?” Yixing asked, after a schedule where Chen had been even quieter than usual.


Luhan shrugged. Xiumin was listening; Luhan could see him pausing the music player on his phone.


“What’s up with Chen?” Yixing asked. Yixing was Luhan’s oldest friend, in this current life.


They couldn’t hear them from the front – they had tested this out, before. When they had things to say, that they didn’t want their managers to hear.


In front of Xiumin, Luhan and Yixing sat Kai, Suho and Chanyeol. The rest were in the second van. All of them had their leather trousers rolled to their knees, boxers exposed; it was too hot, in summer.


“Yixing,” Luhan said. “Do you ever find guys cute?”


Xiumin coughed, covering his hand with his mouth. Suho, Kai and Chanyeol were exchanging looks.


“You, maybe,” Yixing said, ruffling Luhan’s hair. “Our young manhwa prince.”


“Is it cute, cute, or I want to touch him, cute?”


Yixing was staring.


“What are you saying?” He laughed, uncomfortably. “Of course not.”


“What if I find Chen cute?”


“Oh.” Yixing thought about it. “You, find Chen cute.”


“What if.”


“Go ahead,” Xiumin said.


Suho’s head was bowed. Kai and Chanyeol were pretending that they didn’t hear anything.


“You’re my friend, Luhan.” Yixing said. “I said that, and I mean it.”


“Thanks, Yixing, Xiumin. Suho.”


Suho didn’t say anything, didn’t turn around to look at Luhan. But he didn’t stop Luhan, either.


--


Luhan got the lyrics for "Moonlight", his duet song with Chen for Exo’s album. He sat and looked at the lyrics, thinking.


It was one of the best set of Chinese lyrics that M had gotten, so far. Set within a house, it compared the moonlight to a lover, soaking the crevices of the house, chasing away the darkness; also, it talked about the lover, bathed in moonlight, the lover, like moonlight, spilling silvery light, unable to be held in Luhan’s arms.


Luhan thought about those nights, with Chen, with only moonlight to guide their way. Like a stone thrown into a pool, rippling waters.


“I begged Guanyin,” Luhan said.


Chen was still poring over his annotated lyrics sheet.


“Xiumin told me, about what you did, for me. I begged Guanyin, to let us meet again in our next lives. The price for that was all my money, and my ambition.”


When Chen lifted his head up to look at Luhan, there was nothing but confusion, in his eyes.


“But you didn’t want to remember.”


“I was scared,” Luhan said. “I couldn’t let go of you, but I didn’t want to take this relationship up, either. I’m scared that if we try and it won’t work out, I won’t even have good memories left.”


“You are a strange human,” Chen said. “I thought. I thought you didn’t care. I thought it was nothing, to you. You let me think that it wasn’t – you let me think you stopped, loving me.”


“Is it too late?”


“I don’t know,” Chen said. “Will you change your mind again, Luhan?”


“I don’t know,” Luhan replied, equally honestly.


Chen covered his face, with his fingers. “Then what the fuck do you want from me?”


“I just wanted us to sing this song, honestly.” Luhan said. “I want more from you, Chen. But I need some time, to get there. I want you to wait, for me.”


“You’re so cruel, Luhan,” Chen said. Just like he said so, that night, after Luhan had told him that he should go.


“Will you wait?” Luhan pursued. Chen said, hopelessly, “yes.”


They sang Moonlight together, then. Both cowards, borrowing words to say what they should but wouldn’t say. But Luhan did mean everything that he sang, though. Meant it when he said you, bathed in moonlight / I’ve never seen a sight more entrancing than this; meant it when he said, the you that I cannot touch, that I cannot hold in my arms / even when I close my eyes, I can’t find you in my dreams; meant it when he said, always smiling at me, that is your strength / vulnerability in the shaking of your white shoulder, in pain.

It had been a long time since Luhan was honest with Chen.


--


“Sleep with me,” Luhan said, one day. Chen paused, then continued eating his kimchi stew.


“Why, Luhan, are you trying to eat my tofu (a/n: Chinese saying: take advantage of someone?),” he said, scooping up a chunk of tofu and popping it into his mouth.


Luhan choked, not used to it being so roughly translated into Korean.


“I want to steal your chrysanthemum.”


Chen stopped. They all had seen fanfiction before, and the euphemisms that people used, but this was just – (a/n: um, ive seen this in Chinese fanfics, as a euphemism for…someone’s asshole...think wrinkles)


“Luhan, with each sex joke you tell, the more you can say goodbye to my ass,” he said, before bursting into incredulous laughter, loud enough that Tao poked his head out from his room.


“Is Jongdae-hyung okay?” He asked, pointing at Chen, who was pounding his spoon on the table, sending kimchi stew flying.


“He’s making fun of my life choices,” Luhan said, wide-eyed and indignant.


“He wants to be a gardener,” Chen got out, before almost falling off his chair, he was laughing so hard. “He’s going to go around stealing flowers!”


“采花贼 (literally picking flower thief – sexual predator)?”


“Yes,” Luhan said. “I’m going to peel you like an orange first of all, Chen.”


Tao was giggling, like a girl. “Luhan-ge, this is too lame, even for you.”


“I mean it,” Luhan said, seriously. Chen was still laughing – Luhan went to his knees, pulling Chen’s legs apart. He put a hand on Chen’s inner thigh, sliding it higher, and higher, until he was holding the catch of Chen’s pants, in his hand.


“Shall I start with this?”


Chen wasn’t laughing, anymore, a red flush rising on his cheeks instead. The chair squeaked across the floor as he pushed it backwards, scooting out of Luhan’s hold.


“Get a room,” Tao advised. He was blushing, a little.


“Sounds good,” Luhan said. Chen scowled.


“Back in Korea,” Luhan promised, smiling like an angel.






Overdose


Back in Korea, everything went wrong.


The promotions for Overdose, their latest album, was jinxed. The practice video for the title track had been leaked; their promotion plans had to be scraped, because of the national tragedy Sewol (though no one could have predicted it), and finally, a week before their concert, Wu Yifan had chosen to leave Exo.


Everyone had their reasons, and Luhan had known Yifan for too long, since they were both trainees struggling to speak proper Korean, to truly hate him.


It made Luhan think, as he looked at Exo again. Of what would happen if he had left; of what would happen, if any of the others would have left.


He thought of Chen, and of how their paths could have not crossed. He thought of what would have happened, if it had been Chen, not Yifan, who had not gotten on the plane with them back to Korea.


Luhan had been taking Chen for granted, for very long.


--


In that last, frantic week, there wasn’t time to think; not even enough time to worry, or panic. Every day was crammed rehearsals, rehearsals, and more rehearsals again; remembering new steps, remembering new cues, new positions. There wasn’t a night, only long days punctuated by one or two-hour naps.


Luhan usually fell asleep if he stayed in a single place for too long. That night, he was the last one to use the shower.


The apartment was dark, everyone collapsed in their own beds. Only Chen, left on the sofa, staring blankly at the ceiling.


“Luhan-hyung,” Chen said.


Luhan and Xiumin had been keeping track of Tao; Yixing had Sehun and Baekhyun, taking care of him. Chen had been doing his own parts diligently, trying his best not to be a burden.


“Why are you out here?”


“Couldn’t sleep,” Chen said, hushed. His hair was still slightly wet.


“Are you worried?”


“I’m fine,” Chen said. “Just that I used to share a room with him, back in China.”


Luhan understood. That sentence didn’t make much sense on its own, but it was the same way Luhan felt – he had this bewildering array of memories that they shared with Yifan, that didn’t offer much explanation, or reason, for why things had turned out the way they had, no matter how hard Luhan looked at them. After a while, going back into these memories became tiring.


“Sleep with me,” Luhan said.


Chen looked at him, trying to see if he was serious.


“Only sleep,” Luhan clarified. He slipped a hand under Chen’s arm, urging him to sit up. “Let’s go.”


Chen thought for a moment, then shrugged. He got up, following Luhan.


Luhan had never slept with Chen – just slept, like that, before. It took a bit of adjusting, to find a position that both of them were comfortable in – Luhan pressed up behind Chen, arm slung over his waist. Chen stole the extra pillow, to hug, and drew the blankets over both of them.


Yixing woke them up, the next day. He didn’t say anything about it.


Luhan stole a minute more to watch Chen sleep, curled around the pillow in his arms.


--


It stayed that way, for the next few nights. Chen would crawl onto Luhan’s bed, Luhan making space for him.


Maybe it was the pressure, maybe it was the rush – it sliced layers off Luhan’s life, leaving him with less space to worry. Left him more honest with himself, with what he wanted.


He wanted a life, with Chen. Luhan didn’t know if it would last till eternity, or into another lifetime, but he knew that right now, Chen was important.


Feelings didn’t go away. They built, over the years, and you could forget that you had them, but the feelings that really mattered, they were as new as the day you felt them, even decades later. They had taken up a place in your heart and couldn’t be removed; you could move on, and not go near again, but they were there, waiting to be felt again.


Luhan liked to talk about his past life, and his current life. But Luhan had only one life. The parts of him that people liked now, the parts that people called polite, and kind, and caring, were possible because he had lost Chen before, had lost with so much hurt and fear that he never wanted to lose anyone again. Had tailored himself, consciously or unconsciously, to be someone as un-offensive, as likable, as possible. Entering the idol lifestyle hadn’t been too big of a jump for him.


Luhan couldn’t outrun his past; it was alive, breathing, in the present. It was and would always be an important part of him. He could hate it, and he would hate it, but that would be hating himself, as well.


He touched Chen onstage, that day; ruffled his hair, unexpectedly. Chen’s eyelids fluttered, then he pushed his head against Luhan’s hand, seeking contact. His lips curved, in a familiar grin.


Just like that first night.


The noise of the crowd rose, in a roar. Luhan slipped an arm around Chen’s neck, the other around his waist, holding him to Luhan’s side.


Maybe they couldn’t be public about it, but this would be good enough.


Luhan did it this again, and again, in the next two concerts, for the next two nights. Chen never stopped him.


--


The third night, after all their Seoul concerts were done, Luhan jerked Chen off slowly. Chen let him watch, head flung back on Luhan’s pillow, shirt rucked up, pants off.


Chen was hot in his palm, silk in places, rough in others. He was open with Luhan, not hiding anything; not the noises, no shame. All pleasure, and a steadfastness, that waited for Luhan to stay or leave after it was over; Chen knew he loved and would wait for Luhan, for now. He wasn’t scared, of what Luhan would do.


It was whether Luhan was still scared.


He curled up, next to Chen; let Chen trace his eyebrows, his hairline, his cheek, the outline of his eyes. The rest of his face.


Just like that night.


Just like that night, there was moonlight again, warm.


They didn’t sleep, that night, not until the sun was back in the sky.


“I love you, Luhan,” Chen said. “I wish I had said it, then.”


He said it calmly, but there was a bit of regret. He didn’t shade his eyes from the sun, unbearably bright on his face.


Luhan kissed him, slowly. Let the sun heat both of them, until there was sweat beading, on them.


“I don’t have the right to say I love you and expect you to believe it,” Luhan said. “When I’ve managed to convince you, when you can take me for granted, too – ask me to say it to you.”


Chen laughed. “Strange human. Actually, humans aren’t strange. It’s just you.” Then, wistfully, “say it to me, Luhan. Say you love me.”


“I love you,” Luhan said, easily.


Chen laughed again, eyes closed. “Say it again.”


“I love you,” Luhan repeated. He wiped away the moisture, that was leaking out of closed eyes.


“I love you,” he said, again. Chen clutched at him, said, “what if you change your mind, again?”


“I loved you and I’ll continue loving you,” Luhan said, “not just in words, but also in actions. I’ll prove it to you.”


“Even if you were a dream,” Chen said, “you were the best dream I had. You’re still the best dream I have.”


“I know,” Luhan said, “I know.” He stroked Chen’s hair, softly.


“I’m scared,” Chen said. “I’m so scared, all the time. I’m scared, the better you are to me.”


“I’m not going to stop being good to you,” Luhan said. “I know you’re scared. I know I made you scared.”


“Will it kill you, to say you’re sorry?”


“But you know I am,” Luhan said.


Chen shook his head, slowly. “Luhan.”


“Go to sleep,” Luhan said. “I’ll still be here, when you wake up. Go to sleep and wake up, and then you’ll see that I’m here. And over time, you can take me for granted, and there won’t be as much fear. I’ll wait for that day.”


“Why do I trust what you say?” Chen asked. Luhan kissed him again; dropped kisses, soft ones, on his face, soothing him. Carded fingers through his hair, rhythmically, until Chen dropped off to sleep, exhausted from the week.


Luhan stayed awake, a while longer, watching Chen in sunlight. Soon, he fell asleep as well, looking forward to tomorrow, with Chen.




Chen’s unsent letter:
I don’t how long this will last, Luhan.
But I’m used to chasing after you, so used to it that I’ll take anything you give me.
I don’t know what I’ll do, if you change your mind again. I don’t know what will happen to me.
But like a habit, I’ll still wait.
It’s not a choice, it’s the only thing I know how to do.
Some days I wish I never met you, and some days, like today, everything seems worth it.
It’s not a choice, and I’ll take whatever you can give.
I believe that there will be space, for this story of ours; even if not in this lifetime, even if you get married and have kids with someone else, there’s still the next.
There must be room, in eternity, for one happy lifetime.


"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
-The Little Prince


-fin-

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