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It comes to him as a surprise when, on Friday, his first day of school, during the time period of lunch, Sehun gets dunked into unsanitary toilets in the Boys’ Bathroom approximately ten minutes after noon. At first, it is more than slightly unbearable because—it is the boys’ bathroom and it smells like shit, but he is a fast learner. Within three seconds of choking on toilet water, he learns when it is appropriate to inhale breaths of air so that the minimum amount of toilet water seeps into his mouth and nostrils.
When he was told that people getting dunked into toilets was real, he was skeptical because who really had the athletic abilities to heave growing boys into toilets of all things. Then he realized that he was just incredibly scrawny for a person of his height and age. When he was at his other school, things like this never happened, his flawless face and stony expression melted all the girls—here, he was known as the quiet student who probably had a disability. Sehun refuses to count his lisp as a disability because it really isn’t.
Fingers fumble around his belt and he can tell this is going to end horribly if they do steal his pants, and it will be so incredibly humiliating that he will refuse to go to school ever again. His struggle is futile, he has absolutely no muscles—except for maybe finger muscles from which he blogs and other things on the computer.
“Stop,” a commanding voice rings in the dingy bathroom despite the fact that the voice don’t reach above library noise level.
Sehun gets dropped into the toilet for the final time before letting go completely. Sehun struggles in his position a little, before his body flops backwards and he falls ungracefully to the floor. A towel drops on top of his head, and quite suddenly, everything is quiet. Sehun clutches the plain towel to his chest, and his face flushes in a combination of anger-red and flustered-pink. He is above this kind of treatment, and he cannot wait until he gets out of high school and does not have to deal with this shit. Silently, he dries himself with the towel and groans in frustration when the bell rings.
Today, he decides that he doesn’t feel like sitting through the rest of his classes smelling like shit. Sehun calls Joonmyun to pick him up during the beginning of his fifth period.
♣
Sehun is in the process of diligently color-coding his notes by order of importance, when he is stirred from his concentration. A firm hand clasps onto his shoulder, obviously meant to surprise him, creates a jagged streak of neon yellow onto his carefully written notes— how irritating. The other person has the shock of his life when his hand comes off wet, and there are mummers of disgust. There is an irreversible scar on his notes that glare at him mockingly with its searing bright color and that is just not cool.
“Your brother is here to see you.” Joonmyun stands by the door, waving to Sehun with that stupidly blinding smile and ugly argyle sweater Sehun could have sworn he chucked months ago. He shuts his textbook and notebook closed and neatly packs it away in his backpack before putting away his highlighters and pencils and pens into his pencil pouch hurriedly.
“I’m sorry to hear about your mother.” The pitying glance from his teacher makes Sehun wonder what kind of excuse Joonmyun has decided to come up with this time. His mother has been dead for several months, but if it gets him out of class then he is okay with it.
“Yeah,” he replies for lack of better words. It seems to be the appropriate response, because he’s excused from doing the assigned homework. He hunches his back slightly, and walks over to Joonmyun at a hurried pace. He doesn’t like skin contact, and his teacher is overly touchy-feely and that is just not something that Oh Sehun is okay with.
As soon as the door closes, Sehun feels like he can suddenly breathe again. Joonmyun takes one whiff of Sehun and tries to smile waveringly— Sehun is almost appreciative of the way Joonmyun tries, but he drapes his smelly clothes all over Joonmyun’s small and girly Volkswagen anyways.
“Rough day today, is it?” He scowls at Joonmyun’s attempt at conversation and grunts in reply. Sehun looks out the window as Joonmyun begins a monologue about responsibility, when Sehun thinks he’s just about done, he cuts in with
“It’s fine; just tell them my father is dead next time.”
Joonmyun’s eyes harden and his lips thin in momentary anger, and it fascinates Sehun because it’s the first time Joonmyun has shown obvious distaste for anything. Sehun almost begins to feel guilty, like his pushing his luck, and opens his mouth to apologize but no words come out, so he looks at his wet shoes and shivers.
A few minutes into the car ride, Joonmyun sighs resignedly and begins with shaky breaths, “Your father was a great man. You shouldn’t speak about him so flippantly like that; he died loving you to the very end.”
Sehun counters, “You’re absolutely right, so where is he? I could really use some of that love right now.” His voice wavers; even when he tries to keep emotions out of his voice as much as possible, resentment seems to seep through. Joonmyun stays silent; there is no answer. The ride home is the most awkward it’s been since the first time they met at the funeral.
“Go wash up, I’ll make dinner.” Sehun snorts, tugging Joonmyun away from the entrance of the kitchen before a disaster could strike.
“I’ll make dinner after I wash up.” Joonmyun gives him a look of relief; Sehun is used to cooking for men since his father was also bad at cooking.
“Sehun,” Joonmyun beings tentatively, “he really did love you.”
“I know.” And Sehun does, he knows.
The truth does not ease the heavy weight in his heart.
After Sehun showers, he makes a great show of curing the chicken. Joonmyun hovers around, fretting like a mother hen when his body mass actually only causes more trouble. It’s nice though: to have someone make the kitchen feel more full. Joonmyun ‘pretends’ to gag when Sehun pours boiling hot water down the chicken’s throat.
“You see, you have to clean the tongue with hot water or else it’ll stay dirty. And also, don’t ever forget salt.”
“It’s still gross.”
“Appealingly gross, you mean. You’re going to be eating it.” There is a flicker of apprehension in Joonmyun’s eyes and Sehun begins to feel the familiarity of disappointment before Joonmyun can even begin.
“Actually, I can’t… but I really want to Sehun. I really do. Trust me when I say this.”
“You work at the bar down the street right? It’s cool, but just remember that once I’m legal, you’re going to make all my drinks for the rest of your life,” Sehun jokes with as much emotion as he can muster—which isn’t a lot.
“Yah, do you really think I’d ever serve you alcohol?” He playfully tickles Sehun’s side, watching him shriek and wave the chicken threateningly. Sehun sticks his tongue out and Joonmyun really can’t say anything to that because he feels a swell of pride at his ability to make Sehun have that kind of facial expression.
“Sehun, someone is going to eat with you though. He’s going to come in half an hour okay? I would never want to leave you alone, ever. If I could, I would stay by your side like rice.” He mimics his words by molding himself jokingly to Sehun’s side and they laugh and giggle even though Sehun is still holding a dead chicken in his hand and he still hates Joonmyun’s sweater.
“Okay, should I leave some in the microwave when you come back?” Joonmyun ruffles Sehun’s hair and nods happily.
“I’ll be really hungry, so leave me a large portion, okay?” Whatever Sehun cooks and whatever he lays out, Joonmyun is one-hundred percent likely to eat all of it. Sometimes, Sehun forgets that they’re only half-brothers and they actually really have only met a couple months ago—but it doesn’t feel like it. He hates to admit that Joonmyun is really hard to dislike, the thought of having so much positive emotions make him want to squirm because it never leads to good things.
Joonmyun leaves the kitchen to go get ready for work while Sehun contemplates putting laxatives in the chicken just for a little bit of a chuckle, and ordering pizza for dinner. He ends up preparing the chicken carefully anyways, because Joonmyun’s friend is coming over and he’s not that heartless.
Joonmyun always wears a sleek three-pieced suit to work, and Sehun wishes he would dress like that all the time—he still needs to burn that ugly argyle sweater that is probably stinking in the laundry. He smiles sweetly at Joonmyun, with only thoughts about how to decapitate that vile sweater. Joonmyun ruffles his hair and closes the door.
It’s quiet now, with only the sound of something being cooked in the kitchen. Sehun hums to himself, watching Joonmyun turn out of sight before grabbing a lighter and dashing to the bathroom to fetch the abomination. To his surprise, Joonmyun hid the sweater pretty well. He expected it to be on top of the pile of dirty clothes, but it’s not.
Sehun huffs, before going to Joonmyun’s room to find it, because where else could it be? He has never been in Joonmyun’s room before for lack of better reasons to; it has a foreboding feeling to it. It feels like he is stepping into uncharted territories, but he goes in anyways. Once he sees bookshelves of self-help books and a collection of ugly sweaters with the familiar ugly argyle sweater on top, he wants to cry or cackle—because they are all going to burn down miserably.
Then he hears voices and thinks they must be Joonmyun’s friend, but that’s strange because he only mentioned a singular one. Then he hears crashing noises and noises of things being knocked over and he visibly pales because—holy shit, were they getting robbed? They weren’t even that rich. Sehun instinctively looks for a place to hide, squelching down the urge to find a pipe and beat the living shit out of those robbers with his nonexistent upper-body strength. He knows he’s not strong enough, so he can only wait it out. He finds a space just big enough for him to squeeze his body through, but he has difficulties closing the door of Joonmyun’s closet. It’s minuscule and only holds ugly sweaters that itch, and Sehun swears that they are all going to burn to hell once Joonmyun gets home.
The moment his heart had been thumping impatiently for, and dreaded, has come. Two strangers invade Joonmyun’s room and it feels like something sacred has been defiled—ignoring the fact that Sehun basically did the same thing.
He closes his eyes and wills himself to be invisible. At first, he thinks it works, but it doesn’t. His feet fidget and the closet door opens a crack. He prays to the high heavens that someone will not notice, but someone does, and his heart lurches outward the same time the door opens. He sees robed men first, and it scares the shit out of him because they’re the fucking black-robed version of a mass-murdering cult aren’t they, and they are going to kill him.
They take him by the throat and speak in rapid mandarin, and Sehun is just trying to take in oxygen. He’s in-between blacking out and seeing white stars when he is suddenly able to breath. He collapses on the floor, heaving out his lungs, when he sees a familiar face and hears a familiar commanding voice.
“Leave.” Something silver is thrown to a robed man, and Sehun makes it out to be Joonmyun’s ring. He doesn’t know much about Joonmyun’s ring but he knows that Dad gave it to Joonmyun like how Dad gave him his own brooch. It didn’t look like much, but it had a lot of sentimental value and made him feel better no matter where he was or how uncomfortable he felt. It must be the same for Joonmyun too, so he throws himself at the robbed man despite the fact that he thinks he will die. Then, time seems to stop, and he can only watch in suspended air as the two robbed men leave out of the fucking window of a third floor window—of course, one of them knows how to fly.
He falls down uncomfortably, crashing on his chin. The dull taste of blood invade his senses, he can feel the numbing sting from where his teeth clacked together harshly and where he bit his tongue.
He sits up when a hand is offered to him. “Sorry, I came a bit late for dinner, didn’t I? Promised 001 that I would protect you too. Fucked that up pretty badly, didn’t I?”
“What are you doing here?”
“My name is Jongin, I was supposed to come over for dinner but I saw it on the floor and kind of suspected something was up.”
He’s wearing a suit that looks similar to the one Joonmyun wears to work, except he has a hexagonal pin with the numbers 0011.
“Aren’t you a little too underaged to be a bartender?” He takes the hand, and stands up to his full height.
“Is that what he said? He’s letting you grow up to be a little too naïve.” Sehun bristles, narrowing his eyes at Jongin. Jongin looks around, grimacing at the amount of ugly sweaters.
“So, which one is his favorite?” Sehun frowns, pointing at the one on top. Jongin disappears in wisps of smoke and reappears with the sweater. He picks it apart, ripping at it until a hidden stitch rips open and a little pin falls out, similar to Jongin’s.
Sehun picks it up, it reads: 0012.
“What’s this?” He turns the pin around where the initials O.S. are engraved carefully.
“It’s yours.” Jongin kicks at the back of Joonmyun’s closet until it gives away to reveal two suit in glass casing. There are two spots, one is missing and one is pristine. Jongin presses the pin to a spot and the glass door disappears.
“That one was your dad’s. This one, this one is yours, 0012.”
“Fuck.”