Chapter Text
Like clockwork, Kang Sehun’s life has always followed a strict routine.
He goes through the motions of living, but he avoids the mundane like it’s the plague. He lets his housekeeper handle shopping, cooking and cleaning, so that he can spend most of his time working.
Since every day is a workday, he starts his mornings with a jog around the neighbourhood before buying breakfast from the café that’s a five-minute walk away from his apartment. If he has some time to spare before leaving for the office, he spends it on reviewing more cases.
And, just like that, days become weeks, and weeks become months. Time cements its presence in Kang Sehun’s life as a constraint—he likens his time to money, and he calculates his losses and gains down to each minute.
He’s lived like this for a long time.
Today, however, he awakens to the pitter-patter of raindrops pelting his windows and the familiar warmth of his lover in his arms. As he listens for the content sighs he makes in his sleep, Sehun feels a wave of relief wash over him, making him close his eyes once more.
It can wait , is what he tells himself, and he pulls Yoonshin closer.
Perhaps seconds, minutes or even hours have passed since then.
The persistent pitter-patter of raindrops is nothing more than a distant memory now, and the silence that lingers in the bedroom is only interrupted by the rustling bedsheets.
Sehun maps a path along the handsome curve of his lover’s side-profile. The occasional, faint flutter of Yoonshin’s eyelashes as he inches closer piques Sehun’s interest. He watches him with visible fondness in his eyes, and resists the urge to press a kiss on his eyelids. In response, Yoonshin burrows against his side like a wild animal in search of warmth and mumbles something nonsensical in his sleep.
Biting back a smile, Sehun lifts his arm—still stiff from bearing Yoonshin’s weight as a temporary pillow—and gently cards his fingers through the younger man’s hair.
“Yoonshin-ah,” he breathes out, his voice reverent, “Are you awake?”
It’s a rhetorical question. Sehun knows he’s lost him to the land of dreams, but he asks it regardless because he’s teaching himself to live in the moment—to embrace the present, and to enjoy life’s little pleasures one step at a time.
It may be because he’s never experienced this warmth before Yoonshin, but he teeters between holding him gently and embracing him with all his might. Yoonshin snores quietly, blissfully unaware of the storm raging in Sehun’s mind.
Eventually, Sehun utters a defeated sigh and holds him against his chest. Gently, because he fears Yoonshin may crumble under his touch, and firmly, because he fears that they’ll be pulled apart. And even though he's not one for sentimental thoughts, he cradles Yoonshin's cheek in his palm and thinks of how he came into his life like the first rays of sunlight after an eternal winter.
It must be Yoonshin's influence in his life that's making him think this way. Inwardly, he can only think about how ridiculous he's being as he shakes his head and closes his eyes once more.
"Sunbae."
Even so, Sehun holds him closer than ever.
"Mhm, Yoonshin-ah. I'm here."