Deer Luhan, With Love

34

Chapter 34 – In Which Luhan Has Not Quite Conquered His Fear of Heights

Deer Luhan,

I am oscillating between thinking you’re the most normal member of EXO or the least normal.  Most normal because of the way you’re dealing with your whole situation, but least normal because of the way you involved me in it.  Then again, the rest of EXO doesn’t exactly set a high standard for normalcy, so I’m not totally sure that being “the most normal member” is something to be proud of.  So I think I’ll just consider you the weirdest and most badass instead, because even Tao’s wushu doesn’t match up to a dramatic air rescue.

Leigh

I really had to hand it to Luhan.  For somebody with a fear of heights, rescuing a near stranger while attached to a wire from a helicopter is pretty damn brave.  I don’t think I would have been able to do it had our situations been reversed.

He threw up violently almost the instant we were safely inside the aircraft and for a while I thought he was going to pass out, but then he smiled at me, pushing away the sick bucket, and shakily managed to sit up on the ground.  I helped him into a seat and sat beside him, looking around me with curiosity.  It was my first time in a helicopter, and it was also only my second time meeting Luhan in person, and I didn’t know how not to make it awkward.  It was worse that we kind of knew each other through phone conversations but hadn’t met since December in Hyde Park.  Man, that felt like light-years ago now.

Luhan was the first to speak.

“Your cheek is bleeding,” he told me, producing a medical kit out of nowhere and opening it up.  “Here.”

Setting the kit down on his lap, he reached over with one hand and grasped me firmly but gently under the chin in the kind of manner most taller guys would use to kiss a smaller girl, and he tilted my head so that he could attack the long-gone-numb slice on my right cheek with an antiseptic wipe.

Alas, my cheek didn’t stay numb for very long.  Yelping, I tried to jerk my head away, but Luhan’s grip tightened and he frowned in concentration.

“This has got burn marks around it,” he told me in surprised Korean.  “Is it from a bullet or something?  You’re lucky it’s not deep.”

“I don’t even know,” I admitted.  “I’ve spent most of tonight running around like a headless chicken on steroids and about half that time has been with maniacs shooting at me, so it’s perfectly possible.”

He frowned more deeply, letting go of my chin and disposing of the wipe before digging out a large, rectangular white plaster.  His diligence in putting it on my face, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth and eyes staring at my cheekbones as if he had the ability to give me laser surgery, was somewhat scary.  I wondered if he perhaps had OCD and had to get the plaster absolutely perfectly aligned on my cut.  Then he turned his attention to the rest of my face.

“I don’t think any of this is going to scar,” he told me like it was the most important thing ever, taking out another antiseptic swab.  I flinched as he started dabbing away at my face.  He withdrew the wipe after a moment or so and grimaced at it.

“Ugh.  How much grit and concrete have you got embedded in your skin?”

I didn’t think I wanted to know, and I said so.  He gave me a small smile and continued cleaning me up, that disturbing look of intense concentration appearing on his face again.

After a few minutes or so, he pronounced my face clean and I happily sat back in my chair, trying to ignore how much my skin was stinging.  Luhan began to pack the medical kit away, but then paused.