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part eighty
EXO COMEBACK EUREUREONG
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hg: before the dawn (team cccmf)
(Anonymous) 2013-08-11 11:50 pm (UTC)(link)1895 words, continuation of http://exomeme.dreamwidth.org/23332.html?thread=100449828#cmt100449828 and http://exomeme.dreamwidth.org/23954.html?thread=102438290#cmt102438290
Re: hg: before the dawn (team cccmf)
(Anonymous) 2013-08-11 11:50 pm (UTC)(link)Re: hg: before the dawn (team cccmf)
(Anonymous) 2013-08-11 11:50 pm (UTC)(link)Yifan falls to the ground with a wet thump, landing on hands and knees. He clutches his shoulders, arms giving way as he slumps down the rest of the way. Yixing shoots Lu Han a worried look, before he kneels down next to Yifan.
Lu Han's brows are furrowed, but he obediently replaces the screen on the window and pulls it shut. With a worried look outside, he pulls the heavy curtains shut.
Yixing has his hands pressed to Yifan's shoulder, but from the crease of his brows, it doesn't look good. Lu Han places a hand on Yixing's shoulder - Yixing jerks away, his eyes wide with alarm when he looks at Lu Han.
"Don't overdo it," Lu Han reminds him. "I'm here too." The hysteria is receding now that he's pulled out of Yifan's mind. He sits back on his heels, a careful distance away from them both, as he sorts through the impression of words and images that had hit him before he'd had a chance to shield. Blood and pain, lots of it. Lots of it to sift through. Under that: flight. Under that: fear. Under that:
"Oh."
Yifan groans and struggles to sit up. Lu Han meets his eyes. "I ran into him when I was taking a walk," he says aloud for Yixing's benefit.
Yixing looks confused and drained, and stumbles to his feet.
"Poison," he says. "It's okay now. Don't catch a cold. We'll talk tomorrow. I need to go to bed."
They watch as Yixing weaves unsteadily to the bedroom, his shoulder crashing into the doorframe before he disappears inside. "I told him not to overdo it," Lu Han says to the space where Yixing had been.
Yifan grips Lu Han's arm tightly. "I'm sorry," he says. His teeth are chattering. "My fault."
Lu Han fixes Yifan with a hard stare, keeping resolutely out of his head. "We'll talk tomorrow," he says, echoing Yixing's words. He helps Yifan to his feet, the two of them staggering to the bathroom. Yifan is a good half head taller, and his clothes is soaked through.
"Poison is messy," Lu Han explains as he helps Yifan strip. "He had to draw the poison out of your body, and whatever it was got your shoulder pretty good. Tore straight through a couple muscles." Yifan is shivering, and despite Yixing's work, his face is still pale. His shirt hits the floor with a wet squelch, his socks and pants joining them in a messy pile soon after. He helps Yifan into the bathtub, making him sit down.
"The last thing I need is for you to trip and crack your head open," Lu Han says when Yifan tries to protest. "I don't care if you feel like a big baby. Fixing your split skull might finally push Yixing over the edge and I'm not hauling you to the hospital. Just be glad we have a bathtub at all. Something I insisted on, so you can thank me for that. And if you catch a cold, you can suffer through it like everyone else."
Lu Han is faintly aware that this is all nervous chatter, but when Yifan is sitting dumbly in his bathtub as warm water from the showerhead streams over him, it seems far better than the alternative of silence. Silence, after years of noise, scares him. It probably shouldn't, but it does. Lu Han has questions, and without the answers to those questions, he doesn't want to jump to conclusions. Yifan's mind doesn't make sense right now. Every time he opens to him, Lu Han only ends up with more questions, and more confusion.
Pressing his hands to his knees, Lu Han straightens. "Don't drown," he warns Yifan, before he walks out of the bathroom.
The remains of their Chinese take-out sit on the dining room table. Lu Han looks past those to his collection of small silver balls, idly picking two of them up with his mind and flying them across the room. Stress balls, for the mind, he liked to call them. Useful when he has too much to think about. Juggling them idly through the air, Lu Han pushes open the door to the bedroom. Yixing is passed out face down on his bed, still fully dressed. With a sigh, Lu Han walks the few steps over and sits down on the edge of his bed.
"What are we going to do," Lu Han murmurs. He rolls Yixing onto his back and smoothes his hair away from his face. Yixing's brows are furrowed, like he's thinking about something very, very hard. The one thing he was sure of, was that Yifan wants to go somewhere, and that he wants them to go with him.
"Your shirt is going to be wrinkled in the morning," Lu Han says. Yixing mumbles something in his sleep that Lu Han doesn't even try to decipher. He'd learnt very early on, that the mind of a sleeper was a strange, and often dangerous place to be. Before he'd been able to shield, he used to wake up in the middle of the night, terrified and overwhelmed. More than once, he'd been told by the dorm teacher that they'd found him crouched in the middle of the room, hands over his ears and whimpering like a baby. Lu Han smiles to himself at the memory. He'd been picked up by EXO soon after that - an unfamiliar lady who'd showed up in the middle of his English class, and had asked to speak to Lu Han in private. It was all a memory now.
Getting Yixing's pants off is easier, just takes a lot of wiggling because they'd gone out for groceries today (alcohol, alcohol, and snacks) and Yixing had decided to wear skinny jeans. For someone who preferred staying home and shopping for clothes online, Yixing had always been strangely picky about his clothes.
Covering Yixing with a blanket, Lu Han hesitates for a moment before he pulls it back down to reveal his bare chest. He presses his palms against Yixing's bare skin, letting Yixing's unconscious body do all the work.
He remembers the moment as much as he remembers the story. Yixing had been fifteen. They'd been playing around in one of those buildings slated for demolition and reconstruction. It was China. There were lots of those. Demolition of the block was already under way, but for fiteen year old boys, the jagged edges of concrete and steel cables spelled only adventure, not danger. Two of them had fallen. One of them had broken a leg, the other had ended up speared through the shoulder. Yixing, almost instantaneously, had healed. His friends hadn't been so lucky. When everything was over, Yixing was unharmed and healthy, and his friends lay unconscious around him.
But this, skin to skin, was far faster and more efficient. Yixing would be unhappy with him when he woke up, but that was a risk Lu Han was willing to take.
Yixing's expression has smoothed into a calm one of sleep, and Lu Han draws back, satisfied. He feels a little dizzy, and he has to blink a couple of times to clear his vision. "I told you not to overdo it, dummy."
He roots through their drawers for the largest t-shirt and and pair of sweatpants he can find, and rips open a new pack of underwear. Some sacrifices had to be made for the sake of friendship, and if that was new underwear, than so be it.
Yifan is leaning against the wall when Lu Han returns. "Big baby," Lu Han sighs. He turns off the tap, and Yifan shivers and stirs in response from the rush of cold air.
"What time is it?" Yifan asks blearily.
Lu Han snorts in disbelief. "No idea," he says. "Dinner time?"
Yifan is tall but at least he's pliant and cooperative.
"I feel like a glorified baby sitter right now," Lu Han complains. He sits Yifan down on the edge of the bathtub and starts to towel him dry.
"Shut up," Yifan murmurs. His eyes are not quite open, but he grabs for the towel anyway. Lu Han hands it to him.
"You're in trouble," Lu Han says. It could be a question, but it doesn't sound like one.
Yifan freezes for a moment, and then nods. A quiet laugh slips out from between Lu Han's lips. "I've gotcha," he says. He drops the clean clothes in Yifan's lap. "Get dressed, then go to bed."
Out of some misplaced concern over privacy, Lu Han turns his back while Yifan gets dressed. He lets his mind fall blank, an exercise he learned when he first arrived in Korea. It'd been hard at first, but he's gotten better at it, and he's a little surprised when he feels someone tap him on the shoulder. It doesn't show on his face when he turns.
"Bedroom's across the hall," he says. "Take the one that's not taken."
Yifan frowns. "What about you?" he asks. He doesn't look too steady on his feet.
Instead of answering, Lu Han grabs him by the wrist and tugs him across the hall, shoving him unceremoniously onto the bed. "Your giant ass would fall off the couch," he says.
Yifan would argue, Lu Han knows, but after everything, Yifan is clearly exhausted. He lies there, and blinks sleepily at Lu Han.
"I just have one question," Lu Han says. It could wait, but he doesn't want to wait. Lu Han has never been patient. "Are we really saving the world? Or are we saving your world?"
Yifan has no answer for him, and Lu Han doesn't need to probe at his mind to understand that from the way Yifan closes his eyes, he doesn't know either. In no time at all, Yifan is fast asleep, leaving Lu Han alone in the apartment, awake.
"Calm before the storm," Lu Han says aloud, but there's no one to hear him except for the two glinting silver balls bouncing just behind his head.
"Huh," he says, prodding one of them with his finger. It wavers in mid-air. "I forgot about you."
The silver ball, however, doesn't speak back, just lingers where Lu Han has them hovering. Sighing, he drops them carelessly onto the dresser, catching it just before it rolls off. He cleans up dinner on autopilot, his appetite entirely gone. He thinks about dumping it into the garbage, but shoves the leftovers in the fridge, just in case. Wipes down the table, and then all the kitchen counters. Sweeps the floors for good measure. Tosses Yifan's clothes into the washing machine, and then remembers the wet, sopping mess he'd left in the living room, and mops that up with a rag.
It's still raining outside. Lu Han leans against the window, hands in his pockets as he surveys the apartment that's been home for the past two years. There's a pile of newspapers next to the couch, and more chairs scattered around the room than two people need. A sweatshirt is tossed carelessly over the back of one of them, and after a moment of consideration, Lu Han grabs it as he walks past.
More questions than answers, but regardless of the answers, Lu Han has one very good hunch. That it'd be a good idea to pack.
Re: hg: before the dawn (team cccmf)
(Anonymous) 2013-08-13 03:53 am (UTC)(link)seven.
Yifan arrives on the balcony like a wet rag tossed in by the storm.
They don't even have a balcony, just one of those tiny concrete outcrops surrounded by a flimsy metal railing. He slams into the window and clings desperately to the barrier. The sound is loud enough that Yixing and Lu Han both look up in surprise from dinner.
The advantage of one person being able to slip inside another person's mind, is that they don't need a single word to pass between them before they're wrenching open the window and pulling aside the mesh screen.
"What do you mean you were attacked?" Lu Han is almost hysterical even as he pulls Yifan through.
Yifan falls to the ground with a wet thump, landing on hands and knees. He clutches his shoulders, arms giving way as he slumps down the rest of the way. Yixing shoots Lu Han a worried look, before he kneels down next to Yifan.)