Metaphors

EXO all watch the “Tender Love” video together, making fun of whoever is on screen and laughing at their own babyish faces and cheesy actions. When Xiumin’s part comes on he chuckles with the rest, swatting at the maknaes’ heads when they tease and putting Chen in a platonic chokehold when he mentions that the oldest hyung hasn’t gotten any taller in all this time.
It’s only later, after the viewing party is long over and the spilled popcorn has been meticulously cleaned up from the floor that he returns to his room and sits down on his bed, a kind of weary sadness emptying him out on the inside. He pulls open the drawer to his desk, the one where he doesn’t keep things that he might actually need to use, and pulls out the Polaroid of Luhan that used to accompany him everywhere.
“I miss you,” he murmurs.
It isn’t a confession, or a plea. There is no future he is bargaining for or a past which he is bargaining back. He just needs to say it, just for today, just while the memories are clawing at his ribcage and snapping at his heels.
He puts the Polaroid back before he goes to sleep, but Luhan finds him in his dreams.