primary; fanxing; 2/3
unfortunately for himself, yifan is a wimp, so he doesn’t actually end up doing much other than hang around sehun and yixing’s room whenever he isn’t eating, writing, staring at his laptop with revulsion, sleeping or taking a shower. surprisingly, this can amount to a creepily large amount of time. especially when yifan just sits silently on the bed opposite yixing’s and tries to finish reading the book thief. sehun has been yelling about it for days and ignoring writing his assignment, so yifan is trying to do him a favor by reading it and telling him it’s a good book. or something. he isn’t actually reading it. he’s staring at yixing from behind the pages.
this cycle of tentative spying rolls around for precisely a day and a half before yixing looks up and catches yifan staring at him with very wide eyes. yifan is about to pee his pants, but then yixing raises his eyebrows and laughs.
this is very relieving.
both of yixing’s dimples are showing and that’s even more relieving.
“ah,” yifan musters. “hello.”
“yes, hello,” yixing grins, and everything unrelieves itself because yifan doesn’t actually know what else to say.
“i, um,” he attempts being clever. “i’m reading this book sehun’s got to do an assignment on.”
yixing nods, pencil poised mid-air. he’s waiting for yifan to go on, but the problem is such that he doesn’t actually have anything else to say. well, he does. and what’re you doing? you seem really busy, i’m curious. but that would be invading privacy. right?
“it’s nice,”he ends, lamely.
“ah,” yixing nods again, and he starts scrawling something on his notepad. he has an actual notepad, not some basic application in windows. yifan blinks, fascinated.
yixing looks up a second time, smile very small and knowing. “you won’t turn into a cockroach if you talk to me while i do stuff, you know.”
“i don’t like cockroaches,” yifan muses. “they’re very unpleasant.” his voice sounds a whole lot louder than he intended.
yixing’s smile becomes a bit smaller and a lot more confused. oops? “i feel the same way,” yixing clears his throat. “about cockroaches.”
“hmm,” yifan lapses worryingly back into the book. he tries to concentrate on a death person meeting up with a girl around three times with a book she’d stolen from somewhere but it doesn’t work out very well, because his very feet are itching with the question he wants to ask.
he takes a deep breath.
“hey,” he begins, very cautious. his toes are curling, he notes, and he can’t be bothered uncurling them because that would take precious energy away from the being cautious part. “can i ask you about your... stuff?”
at once the dimples appear. the relief yifan feels begins to mix with a slow sense of foreboding.
“you probably can,” yixing acknowledges, “but perhaps if you’d be a bit more specific, it’d be cool.”
yifan blinks at him for the umpteenth time and dives his nose back into the book. this conversation is going to proceed very slowly if he keeps this up.
“uh. what do you…do? with the paper. and pencils,” he mumbles, looking owlishly at yixing from over the book again.
“i have rubbers, too,” yixing informs him, and yifan gives a guilty start because he already knows that very well.
“yes, the rubbers. them too.” i like the green ones you keep in the back pocket of your bunny pyjamas, he thinks, and gives another guilty start. knowing this much is probably a sin. perhaps he should retire.
“well,” yixing laughs, shoulders hunching up a bit, and he looks really shy right now, insecure. “i try to write music. not very good at it!”he adds, hurriedly. “but that’s what i do. later, i might...” he trails off and frowns, then erases at something he’d written earlier.
“might?” yifan prompts.
yixing looks up at him for a second before riveting his eyes back on his paper. “i might get better. might be-- good? and maybe. write proper songs. perform. i’ve always wanted to, uh, do that.”
yifan smiles at this; yixing as someone with his own dreams. “i’m sure you will,” he says, earnestly. “i mean, you do this stuff all day! practise makes perfect, right?” and he knows it probably isn’t the most elaborate or encouraging thing to say, but yixing’s got his own motivation already.
and yixing cracks a smile, too. “right.”
yifan puts his book down and wriggles forward onto his stomach. “so,” he leans his head on his hand, excited. “how’d you start wanting to do music?”
yixing looks pleased, if a bit taken aback, and mulls over his answer for a moment before replying. “i guess always liked listening to music, of course. everyone does, right? and later in school i decided on taking music theory because, well, why not.” he makes a face at his paper again, crosses something out and then chews his pencil. (yifan tries to quell his instinct and succeeds in not telling him off.)
“but then a high school senior started helping out in class when the teacher resigned in the middle of term. he did music theory and handed out fliers twice a week-- his best friend was taking up vocal training for other kids, to save up. there were family problems, or something, i think. we talked once or twice, but i got along better with the music theory senior, you know?”
yifan nods, though he doesn’t really know. yixing sets his notepad aside, shifting so he sits cross-legged.
“so i did music theory with him, and we became such good friends that i’d go over to his house anytime i wanted and he’d do vocal training with me. that was a,” he breaks off with a fond laugh, “that was a breakthrough. i was a breakthrough. he hadn’t gotten any new friends since eighth grade. his friend-- jonghyun hyung-- he was really astonished and pleased about it. told me i should drag him around town, get him to get out of the house more often. but i’m okay with walls. open spaces are much better, but that’s all relative to the person in question. and why take someone out of their comfort zone, right?”
“right,” yifan nods again, emphatically. baekhyun should be here and feel ashamed of himself.
“as long as it isn’t making them dysfunctional, it’s their decision!” yixing states, wisely.
okay, maybe baekhyun shouldn’t be here. he’d be smirking if he were. (yifan gets dysfunctional easily.)
“and that’s…" yixing laughs a little again, although this time it sounds forced, and cut short quicky. “that’s kind of how i seriously got into this! good friends and a lot of high school stress. otherwise i’d be a hippie or something, providing all the rebels of the community with hot pink weaves.”
yifan almost chokes. “hot pink weaves!” he raises his eyebrows and tries to synthesise a knowledgeable expression on his face. “totally. they’re. they’re awesome. that’d be great, too.”
hot pink weaves turn out to be a conversation killer, though. they lapse into a somewhat comfortable silence after that; comfortable on yixing’s end, as he fiddles absently with his blue erasers, and not so comfortable with yifan staring hard at the foot of the bed.
he really, really wants to ask yixing to play something, but he can’t because that would be awful and people are protective of what they create and yixing has just told him some important things and he can’t just push it. but he really wants to hear yixing play. very much. he is finishing this train of thought when he realizes he’s just nodding into space without anybody saying anything to nod to, and this probably makes him look like a duck.
so he rolls over onto his back and jumps off the bed in what would be a cool move if it weren’t for the fact that he lands ass-first on the floor with his head head hitting the frame. he’s on his feet in shock before yixing can open his mouth, and he glares at the bed. “can you ask sehun,” yifan wheezes, “to sleep in a meadow of styrofoam. forever?”
“i…okay. you okay?”
“i am great,” yifan says, more to convince himself than reply to the question, and walks weakly towards the door.
“hey, are you going?” yixing asks, and yifan’s quite selfishly glad to allow himself to perhaps misconstrue (or just plain imagine) a little disappointment in his voice.
“i think-- i’ve taken up a lot of your time, i guess,” yifan turns and gestures towards the notepad and pencil. “you need to keep practising so you can perform, right?” and he feels very accomplished when yixing drops his gaze shyly again and smiles a little smile.
“oh, but,” yixing adds, “how’s your book going?”
generally, yifan likes people asking him how his stuff is going because it means he’s got moral support from those people. but right now the story’s going uselessly slowly so he’d rather not do question things. still, he can’t brush his new friend off, so he turns around, walking backwards towards the door now.
“it’s going…okay. not too great. i’m being slow. it’s coming out weird.”
“i’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out, though,” yixing says, enthusiastically, and yifan feels a lift in spirits. at least yixing believes in him. “how far have you reached?”
“fou--” yifan’s interrupted in his backward walking by the doorframe. first his back bumps into it, then his head. he stands still, eyes closed, defeated by the universe and the three fates. he hears a quiet giggle, feels a little indignant and a little pleased. “i, uh, fourth? chapter? i actually need to finish it quick and start the fifth, so…"
-
he’s in the midst of stuffing as many waffles as humanly possible in his face with one hand and typing a funeral scene with the other when yixing peeks in through the open door. “hello,” he tips his head, “can i come in?”
yifan strategically ups the laptop screen so it covers his atrociously open mouth with unchewed waffle in it. “yes,” he calls, thickly, and tries to lock his jaws over the carbohydrates. it works, but barely.
yixing gives a little bow and sits on the beanbag that sehun usually enthrones himself on. “hmm,” he says, quietly, and looks around.
regretfully pushing away the plate of waffles, he goes back to the funeral and deletes the entire scene before starting again. this time, he notes he’s typing faster. he’s not going over every sentence and changing his words half the time, either. that’s odd.
yixing stretches and walks over to the window, resting his elbows on the windowsill. “nice view,” he comments. “a bit different from mine.”
yifan makes a noncommittal noise, trying to place why he has a sudden feeling of deja vu. and then he recalls the last time this happened and his typing slows down. he’d been utterly wasted. at this, he stops completely, frozen with regret and some green sludge probably dripping in his stomach.
“i didn’t say anything awful, did i?”
yixing looks up. he’s in front of the bookshelf, now. “when?”
this implies that he’s said awful things multiple times, but yifan ignores this and presses on. “the three a.m. time.”
“oh,” yixing says, studying his feet. he makes his way over to yifan on the bed and sits down next to him. “that one.” his face is serious and his silence ominous. yifan is going to turn into a crawling snail and be squelched by the CEO of his internet service provider.
yixing doesn’t say much, but he presses his lips together and stares at his clasped hands.
seconds tick by. his stomach is lurching further down the abyss of unnamed horrors.
“you didn’t say anything,” yixing informs him, and bursts into laughter at the look on yifan’s face. yifan stares at him, experiencing something similar to deadness. like a tree turned to stone. “i felt like a trainwreck about to happen,” he confesses, naive and forlorn, and yixing just falls off the bed, screaming.
the green sludge in his stomach churns and rises in toxic fumes and tickles his throat. being the butt of this joke doesn’t feel too bad; yixing laughs with his shoulders and his stomach, heaving together as he shuts his eyes tightly and turns red in the face. yifan grins despite himself.
“oh,” yixing sniffs, eventually. his eyes are watering. “oh, buddha. that was wonderful. i should get into cahoots with sehun.”
no, he can’t allow this. “absolutely not,” yifan snaps, and yixing sits up, amazed. yifan regrets it already. “sorry,” he mumbles.
“it’s alright,” yixing says, although he still looks surprised.
“nothing’s alright,” sehun pops his head in. “what are you two boogers buggering on about.” and yifan’s temporary feelings of irritation with sehun fade, too. really, why’d he get like that in the first place? these kids are great.
“he wants to join your team,” yifan informs him. “and slice me in two.”
the grin that spreads over sehun’s face is one worth watching spread, if yifan is going to be honest. “zhang yixing?” sehun whispers. “are you for real?”
they’re great, yifan echoes to himself.
-
the problem is that every time he falls asleep, someone in his head hollers how much time? and he has absolutely no idea who this person is, or what they could possibly mean. he has three weeks left: twenty one days, twenty one nights. his pace isn’t awful, he can make it by the deadline, but something is grossly off.
he has a weird gut feeling to take the album out again, except he can’t risk it. he’d lost almost two days on writing with that stunt last week, and literally every second is precious. the only reason he’s not writing right now is that he’d stayed up until seven a.m., toasting the sunrise between paragraphs. and now he’s so exhausted, he can’t even sleep.
angry, he fluffs his pillow once more and drops his head back onto it. it’s still uncomfortable, so he flips it over. but he’s just done this thrice in the past five minutes, so it’s not welcomingly cold. it’s got the dent of his arm against it, unsatisfying as hell.
yixing knocks (it’s only ever yixing who knocks) and yifan groans.
“yes.”
“i’ll be out most of the day. back around three, then out again. you okay?” yixing raises his voice so it goes through the locked door.
yifan feels greatly comforted with how you okay has become something yixing says without fail at least once in their conversations.
“you truly have my back, yixing,” yifan declares, fist in the air. “your plans are imprinted in my memory! please pray i fall asleep.”
he hears a muffled “okay,” and the patter of yixing’s shoes against the floor, quickly fading away. yifan drops his fist and feels like yelling. he wants to sleep. he wants to sleep. all he wants is to sleep so he can start writing again, is that honestly too much to ask of himself?
there’s a jarring pulse in his temple, and great, he needs a budding blood pressure problem to tip off this iceberg.
he’s so upset that his eyes begin to flutter closer together, by degrees, and the next thing he knows is a sudden full stop to his thoughts mid-sentence and a familiar, exasperatingly meaningless, how much time?
-
the city’s buildings aren’t buildings anymore, they’re statues. statues carved hollow from within, as giant toothpicks with pulsing light, almost a ghostly blue, line the streets.
he feels warm and cold and then warm again as people push softly against him and pass without resistance, stepping right through his legs and torso as if he didn’t exist. so he walks along, keeps pace so he doesn’t feel clammy or feverish or made of smoke.
there’s thousands of them, all heading towards a single statue. it’s like a procession, going far into the horizon. they walk for hours, up and down the roads, under bridges and over highways. he should feel tired, yifan realizes, but he feels more like he’s floating, softly, limbs inexhaustive. the sun overhead, a bright, painful white, travels fast across the sky the dark sky, setting unbelievably quickly.
the moon comes up, and still the sky is dark. there are no stars. it seems like a year later when yifan finds himself at the foot of-- of something. he tilts his head back, squinting. the statue is of a woman, and he thinks that if he could see color in this world, she would be dull bronze.
the people begin to walk through him again, and he hurries to catch up.
there is a hall, marble and tiled with pillars and paintings. and a stairway that starts in the center and leads all the way to the top of the statue, through floors of glass and walls of sharp, glinting steel.
a guide, smartly dressed. he can only see the back of her, guesses her light hair are blonde. he doesn’t know how he manages it or why he does it, but yifan steps right behind her, first in line. he thinks, stupidly, how could a korean be blonde?
as if hair dye didn’t exist!--the afterthought hits him, but it comes at the same time someone else says it. he turns around at once, looking for the source, but there’s no one nearby to have sounded so close.
when he turns around again, the guide’s vanished. he is halfway up the structure, with the translucent tiling on the glass floor disappearing fast beneath his feet, and all around the faceless people from his dreams. it’s like they’re made of paper: thin, stark white and fragile.
he stands still amongst them, and for a small moment, the world stops. his eyelids go down once, up once, and he sees them all around, paused in position. inhale, exhale.
they move again. one of them screams something. a prolonged shriek of a vowel, and a lighter flies through the air. click. “NO!” he shouts, but they are already aflame.
he tries to help. he runs after one of them, tries to stamp out the fire, tries to pull them away.
-
yifan is exhausted and sweaty by the time he wakes up. as soon as his eyes open and the ceiling greets his vision, he rolls over to grunt into his pillow. maybe he shouldn’t sleep at all. he checks the clock. fifteen minutes past eight in the morning. did he honestly just sleep barely under an hour? experiencing mild pangs of self-hate, he sits up, frowning against the light that sifts through his curtains.
what had happened in his dream again?
he pulls on some socks and pulls off his boxers, poking about in his drawers for a clean pair.
everybody on fire, that’s right. a great big statue, everyone inside it. and one of them had thrown a lighter across the room. someone had lit it. and they were all vulnerable, made of paper.
yifan stops and blinks, hands gripping the handle of the second drawer.
made of paper. his world’s people were made of paper. faceless, mindless, fleshless. but they had minds. they had to have had minds. why? he exhales, sweat dripping down his shoulder blades and sticking his shirt to his back.
because there had been chaos. and chaos? chaos is only possible if someone’s there, ready to receive it. to channel it. unconscious or conscious, there had to be brains in those people. personalities.
he’d watched, helplessly, as a few of them had tried to stop the rest, had bent over backwards and melted, submitting to the flames. but the others -- all the others had killed themselves and each other freely, thoughtlessly, purposely.
yifan hadn’t been able to be of any use -- just like they had passed through him, his hand had passed through their arms, their hands, their heads. he couldn’t do a thing. and their fire couldn’t hurt him, so he alone stood through it all, frozen in shock, until glass floors and ceilings dripped cold white and angry black, the steel walls shivering in heat haze. only the stairs withstood change; and with the world squelching around him, there was nowhere else to go, nothing else for him to do but climb them.
they lead to the top, to the head of the statue. he stood up through the hole in the roof, saw the city laid out in full splendor, not a single soul in sight. and when he let go of the bannister attached to the last step, the city melted, like in his other city dreams. the buildings, the streets, the raw, hard sky. the statue itself shrieked to its demolition, and yifan had closed his eyes calmly, waiting for the inevitable fall, the waking.
but when his eyes opened--
yifan makes his way back to the bed and sits there, head in his hands. he doesn’t want to remember what happened next. because when his eyes opened, he hadn’t woken up just then. he’d looked on something else. and he doesn’t need to think about that. he doesn’t need to think about that. he needs to write. he looks at the clock: 8.23 a.m. he’s wasted eight minutes already, and he still needs a new pair of boxers.
yixing knocks again at seven minutes past three in the afternoon, but the door’s unlocked and open a crack, so it swings ajar. “i’m back,” yixing says, tentatively.
yifan looks up tiredly. he’s trying to use one of the mind-mapping apps on google docs and waiting for baekhyun to turn up on the chat like he’d said he would, but he’s getting a steady, pounding headache from the heavy silence and fluorescent screen. baekhyun should have come online twenty minutes ago.
“hey,” he croaks. “welcome back.”
“you okay?”
yifan makes a noncommittal noise, and yixing drums his fingers against the doorframe. the sound is a relief but also a bit unnerving. “i think i’ll cancel the going back out part,” yixing informs him. “but it’s my turn for the groceries today, you want anything? waffles again?”
honestly speaking, yifan has had it up to his throat with those waffles. if he keeps eating them, he’ll throw them up and experience pregnancy symptoms or something -- he knows from experience. he needs phases of overwhelming snacking on a new snack every week or two, when he’s writing. only the emergency ice cream stash is allowed. and sehun’s finished it this month before yifan had a chance to taste.
“not the waffles,” yifan shakes his head distractedly.
yixing tilts his head to the side. “then?”
well, he has no idea! he hasn’t gone to the grocers in ages, and he feels like a caveman. or house-arrested. “pick something you like,” yifan runs a hand through his hair in frustration. his mind’s still stuck on the dream, and this goddamn fictitious trek he’s decided to focus on. maybe he should kill everybody in the story off, as revenge for giving him endless migraines. he stares at the screen.
yixing taps on the doorframe again, so yifan is startled into adding, vaguely, “something i probably haven’t had before?”
he’s still staring at the screen a minute later, and when he looks up, yixing’s gone. yifan blinks at the empty doorway, worrying his lower lip. he feels a tiny bit regretful, though he’s not sure why.
letting his head fall back against the headboard, he considers sending a text to baekhyun.
3.10 p.m. hey3.11 p.m. hop off my dick bro
3.11 p.m. ????? we r friends???3.11 p.m. oh. its u
3.12 p.m. ok u can stay
3.13 p.m. get a pet dog 4 tht
3.13 p.m. so the story is going at an alright pace
3.14 p.m. but i hate it3.14 p.m. yeh?
3.15 p.m. yeah
3.15 p.m. oh and y arent u on the gdoc
3.15 p.m. u were supposed 2 help me thru my 1st time
3.16 p.m. ????3.17 p.m. fck u i have an actual face to suck
yifan feels a slight pang of rage.
3.18 p.m. u makin out w someone
3.19 p.m. u DIDNT EVEN TELL ME3.20 p.m. thats tru
3.21 p.m. it happnd kinda suddnly?? in my defense
3.21 p.m. ++ was hot
3.21 p.m. im only human
yifan feels the rage slide away. that was an excusable situation.
3.22 p.m. u tell me next time tho ok
3.25 p.m. will try
3.25 p.m. (jst xx’d again)
yifan is left grinning at his phone incredulously, unsure of what he’s incredulous about. it could be the fact that baekhyun, his best friend with the sexual appeal of a manx cat, is capable of being made out with -- is currently making out -- or that he actually abbreviated ‘making out’to ‘xx’. probably both.
yixing finds him eight minutes later, still giggling. “uh,” he waves a packet of stuff. “hi again?”
yifan looks up at once, and the sudden movement makes him nauseous but he’s rather excited about yixing’s mysterious choice. “what is it?”
“catch.”
yifan grabs it easily, pleased with the impressed look on yixing’s face. then he looks at the label. “croutons?” he reads out, slowly. “those dried bread things you put in soup?”
yixing shrugs. “they go well plain, too. if you microwave them in a bowl with half a teaspoon of water, they can get soft and chewable.”
“you serious.”
“absolutely.”
half an hour afterwards, yifan’s finished his packet and sehun’s in one go. he’s about to burp happily before he realizes it would stink of garlic and yixing’s right in his face, kind of. so he doesn’t. but he’s still very happy. “thanks, okay,” he says, seriously. “this is amazing.”
yixing beams.
-
it’s gotten so that sometimes yifan leaves his room, armed with laptop, charger and a bowl of croutons (this takes two trips), to huddle over on the bed opposite yixing’s, or yixing wanders into his room and reads his books -- “may i?” he’d asked, the first time, and yifan had wanted to shake him for even bothering with the question. “you can read anything you want, okay.” -- occasionally reading aloud from them, or scribbling down the parts he likes most on small chits of paper.
one day, yixing reads out something from rumi. "you are so weak, give up to grace. the ocean takes care of each wave, 'til it gets to shore. you need more help than you know." a shiver crawls up yifan, from his spine to his ribs. it feels almost as if yixing is reading it out on purpose, specifically to him. for him. yixing sends him a smile, and yifan musters one back.
did he need more help than he knew?
many, many hours later, at some ungodly hour in the morning, yixing hands him a dark red pick and clears his throat, wiggling in his seat a bit before taking a breath. he looks a bit nervous as he tightens the strings, tuning them up carefully. yifan can’t believe yixing is finally, finally trusting him with this. “you have anything specific in mind?” yixing asks, taking the pick from his open palm, and yifan hunches his shoulders into the fleeting, comforting feeling.
“you mean, to play?” he really can’t believe this.
“yeah, of course.”
yifan frowns at yixing’s wrist. it looks vaguely familiar, like he’s seen it before -- just the wrist, encircled by a similar bracelet, but somewhere else. in a photo, perhaps. but then yixing’s hand moves, trying out a few notes before relaxing, and yifan drags his attention back to the present. “anything you want,” yifan grins. “i have no idea.”
so yixing bites his lip, furrowing his brow in thought before he begins.
“close your eyes,” yixing whispers through it, so yifan does that. he leans his head back against the windowsill, closes his eyes. it starts out soft, low. and through the soft bluish white of the moonlight drenching over his eyelids, he sees colored smoke and little silver stars. purple tendrils, sparks of orange and crimson flames.
flames.
his eyes burst open and yixing keeps playing. the colors stay. the flames recede. the notes are melding together faster, and yifan swears he can see green and lilac curling over his fingertips, sees the sky outside kindle with a stubborn, dull blue flame. it’s haunting and alive, what yixing’s playing. persephone would dance, he thinks, and the trees that line the boulevards below sway drunkenly in the breeze.
yixing stops, for a second, two seconds, three seconds, and yifan can almost hear the pulse tick in his neck amidst the quiet, and at the fifth second yixing starts again, plucking the strings at first, then sinking back into the melody.
yifan turns around to look at him; he’s bent over the guitar, hair hiding his face, foot tapping, head bobbing along. and again, just like he’d felt like he’d seen a new person when yixing had told him about wanting to do music, he sees a new person now.
when the notes race up fast together, yixing frowns intently, worrying his lip as he makes sure he plays just right. the tendrils seem to seep up through the floor and grow around their feet, curling in, curling out, thorny vines catching onto their knees, and yifan feels washed over and small and somewhere familiar and old. he closes his eyes and he sees another room, another doorway. light falls on him from another window. the image of yixing playing in front of him stays, but there is also someone else in the room. she has a brown apron on and smells of bread and apples, and yifan lets his chin sink into his chest. allows, for one moment, his shoulders to heave and lungs to stutter.
and then he opens his eyes to see the petals and leaves fading as yixing’s playing slows, fading as the final arpeggio fades.
“thank you,” yifan whispers, and yixing slumps over the guitar, glancing at him through his bangs.
-
yixing takes his guitar out whenever he can, now.
in the afternoon, he starts up and sehun subsides with his grumbling about some chore or other, and yifan secretly thinks yixing does it on purpose. once he tries a different guitar, (“that’s definitely electric,” sehun breathes) but he only does a short, hair-rising riff before huffing loudly in frustration and setting it aside. late at night, with sehun probably drunk and in someone else’s apartment, yifan hears him tuning up, clearing his throat and beginning to play. it makes him smile as he types.
the story’s coming along well these days, and he might even deserve a few hours’ break sometime soon.
-
2.05 p.m. heyyyyy face sucker2.06 p.m. we goin out
2.06 p.m. we now boyfies
2.07 p.m. FCK
2.07 p.m. WATS WRONG WTIH U THESE DAYS
2.07 p.m. ALL THESE ATROCIOUS ABBREVIATIONS
2.08 p.m. ITS LIKE UR A DIFF PERSON2.09 p.m. i am
2.09 p.m. my xx techniques are much better
2.10 p.m. would offer demo but ;-)
2.11 p.m. ugh go away i cant believe u
2.11 p.m. frst xx n now BOYFIE
2.12 p.m. btw give pics
2.12 p.m. wanna see how hot
yifan’s just teasing, of course, but when he actually downloads the file three minutes later, his jaw literally drops. first off, that guy is definitely chinese. which is a bit of an insult because baekhyun’d said he was only interested in cute guys from busan or some shit. second, that guy is definitely hot. third, that guy is kind of like the bishounen sehun constantly worships in his mangas.
2.18 p.m. bishounen boyfie frm beijing2.18 p.m. hell yea bro
2.19 p.m. meanwhile u single
2.19 p.m. HA
2.20 p.m. i’ll get hitched before u
2.20 p.m. ++ i used alliteration apprec8 me
2.21 p.m. ye but
2.21 p.m. they gon back out last min
2.22 p.m. alliteration aint abt 2 help u then
2.22 p.m. HA
2.23 p.m. ur disgustin2.23 p.m. HA
-
yixing coaxes him to come outside two days later. “you need a little time to stop and think,” he insists, grabbing hold of yifan’s wrist and pulling with surprising strength. the guitar case strapped to his shoulder bobs against yifan’s knee. “yifan-- ge!-- come on.” yifan blinks at the honorary, one he’d almost forgotten, one that makes him remember of other times. it makes him quietly follow yixing out the door.
they walk over to the park that’s five blocks down from their apartment building, and only then does yixing let go of his hand. yifan brings up his own hand to absently rub at his wrist, where warm, slim fingers had just wrapped tightly around.
“so, now that i’ve gotten you out of the depths of darkness! how’s your stuff going?” yixing asks, cheerfully, and yifan chuckles.
“perhaps if you’d be a bit more specific,” he pokes yixing’s elbow, clumsily, and yixing looks delighted.
“are you quoting me?”
“a little,” yifan admits, then flushes.
“well,” yixing seems very pleased. “so how is your stuff going?”
yifan tells him: he’s on his twelfth chapter. he’s almost going at a chapter a day, and considering they have -- he has, he corrects himself hurriedly -- two weeks, that’s not too bad. there are twenty chapters in all, plus a short epilogue, so he might even be able to submit it before the deadline. for once. and he’s excited, right now, because kangjun -- that’s the protagonist -- is finally plucking up some spirit and he’s going to walk, knowingly, into the enemy’s ambush and--
“wait wait,” yixing pants, jogging to keep up with yifan’s strides. “enemy’s ambush? are you writing a war story?”
it makes yifan stutter because he’s taken having yixing around for granted so much that he’d forgotten that he’s never properly told yixing anything about his plot at all. even sehun knows a bit, from hanging around with baekhyun on wednesday ‘cousin meetups’ (baekhyun receives updates and phone calls at stupid o’clock in the morning from yifan about new developments.)
“it’s the cold war,” yifan fiddles with his fingers. “kangjun is on an espionage mission. the first few chapters, the ones i’d finished when you were around, you know,” he feels a needle-ish prick of unease on his back, mentioning it, “those were just to get a childhood picture of him. give the reader time to see him in okay surroundings, then not okay ones, and then experience first hand his motive for what goes on later.”
“oh, so something terrible happens in the first few chapters?”
yixing’s not just keeping up now, he’s gaining a bit on yifan, trying to lead them somewhere. as usual, yifan follows.
“uh, yeah,” he says, a bit uneasy and embarrassed. he supposes it’s rather the typical plot, if one’s seen enough action movies and read enough war novels. “you need someone rooting for your protagonist from the start, right? motivation comes in early.”
“that’s true,” yixing adds a hum in agreement, and sits down on the bench in front. he pats the space next to him. “sit.”
“okay.”
yifan perches precariously at the edge of the bench, then thinks it over and sits properly. “well,” he steals a glance at yixing.
“well!” yixing stretches, letting out a small squeal before leaning back. “what’s the terrible thing that happens?”
so yifan tells him, about how kangjun was born into war, born into ambushes, splattered blood stains on walls, bombardments, limbs strewn across the street, shell-shocks, basement shelters. tells yixing about kangjun’s mother, kangjun’s classmates, his favorite sweater and how he hates cold cereal and the yellow grass that used to fascinate him as a child, growing stubbornly, on the other side of the border. kangjun’s fear of water after his house ripped apart in the july heat and summer rain, typhoon thelma, nineteen eighty seven. seven years old, and then nine when typhoon judy struck, in eighty nine.
“he’s real,” yixing whispers, when yifan breaks off in the middle, for breath.
“everything’s real, ”yifan shakes his head. “i can write this and this can be fictitious and someone can read it and finish it and put it down, have an experience and say ‘oh, that was interesting’-- if i write it well enough, of course -- but it really happened. i may have thought of it out of the blue, swimming at some pool party last year and then forgotten about it the next day until a few weeks ago, but it happened, yixing. not to kangjun, but to someone else. maybe a yuri, maybe a jeongmin. but someone experienced that, someone has already experienced everything i’ve thought of, to some extent, more or less.”
yixing is very quiet, and yifan has wanted to tell someone about this for so long, this strong belief he has, and he goes on. “human lives are just so. people say just about anything can happen, but if you sit down, you can guess what. there’re supposedly infinite possibilities, right? but that’s only because that person’s so caught up in the current that they can barely see what’s in front of their nose. but what i’m,” he takes a breath, hand coming up to run through his hair. he’s frustrated; now that he gets to say what he can, he can’t word it the right way. but yixing is still looking at him, intent, turned to face him properly, arm slung on the back of the bench. so he tries again. “what i’m trying to say is, if someone can think of it, then it’s possible. if someone thinks something about time gone, there’s definitely someone there in some unwritten page of history, acting out in his present what’s the other person’s past.
“and what i mean is, the world is huge, but life and people, they’re small. everything i think is possible, has to have happened. if you get an idea, at least a thousand other people have had it, right? and if all those people have had it, then at least one has to have lived through that. if i can be inspired to think of something, what could i be inspired from? i pluck thoughts from life, and life is the same to everybody: it’s everything. if i borrow from life, then life has had to have given more of it to someone else, that’s…that’s what i think. i think.” yifan laughs nervously. “okay, that sounds pretty ridiculous, maybe i’ll explain it better another time--”
“no, no,” yixing frowns, resting his head on his arm, “it was pretty good. i almost get what you mean. i think i get what you mean.“
they stay silent for a while.
“well, anyway,” yifan waves his hand, chewing his lip, “i see you brought your guitar.”
not that it’s an uneasy quiet, but he doesn’t want some lingering echo of his words in the air, and also he wants to hear yixing play. he doesn’t think he can get enough of yixing’s music, the utter concentration he pours into playing. it makes yixing someone else, and yet solely himself. he’s fascinating.
“oh, the guitar,” yixing blinks, and sits up. “yeah, i brought it.” he turns and makes to unzip the case, then throws a glance over his shoulder. “you sure you want to hear me play?”
yifan could thunk his head dully against the bench in expaseration. “of course i do!”
carefully, yixing unzips it and lifts it up, cradles the neck and brings his right hand up, fingers flitting over the fretboard, ever nervous, before he straightens his back, then bends over, and begins.
yifan is used to the sound of yixing’s guitar, but when yixing’s voice mixes with the strings’ he jolts up, electrified. he’s never heard yixing sing before. and the language is something from the mists of his memory, something parting through from years gone unused, unheard.
it’s cantonese, and he narrows his eyes, bits of lyrics falling into place.
and as the drops fall in the ocean,
i stand, i stand, waiting to drown
to take my salvation.
yifan sees the colors in the park brighter than he’s ever seen them before, sees the green stand up and quiver in the leaves, the brown of the tree trunks mutedly give way to the red flowers and blue irises. the fountain water leaps up and sparkles...
take my salvation, here is my adoration
for you and not for you.
...touches the sunlight and turns gold, silver, mercury, falls back. yifan feels the heat on his back from the sun, looks up to greet a blinding white disc in a peacock blue sky.
the waves crash down with the weight of the rays and rain thrown heedlessly
-- what a careless sun, what ruthless clouds --
and i kneel, for you and not for you,
on the edge of the deeps,
waiting to drown.
yifan can see the waves in the sky, the rift in the clouds where a small boy stands, waiting to fall. yifan sees colors, feels fire crackling under his skin.
what a careless brother,
what a careless love
my adoration is for you.
yifan feels his breath catch, blinks and looks to the ground. yixing’s voice bleeds into his ears, smooth and light, threading through his thoughts and tightening around them painfully.
give me my salvation
so i can kneel and count the shells
while i wait to drown.
yifan swears he has never seen colors so bright and pure, so painfully honest.
-
5.06 p.m. sometimes people are beautiful.5.07 p.m. well thnx a lot
5.07 p.m. is this whr i bat my voluptuous lashes
5.08 p.m. ugh u shit
-
he’s sitting on a chair in a room with a tv screen, walls bathed in green light. the screen in front shows blue stripes, and he hears a sigh to his left. he turns his head, sees red gold and red string and rubies clinging to a thin wrist, a prince’s wrist. his eyes travel up, and he is going to see the face. he is going to see a face, he knows, this time, that this person will have expressions, will have features. this person will -
"yifan!"
yifan jolts awake with a snort. there’s drool on his mousepad and a loud whooping in the background somewhere. yixing and baekhyun are standing in the doorway, grinning ear to ear. and he dreamt something in almost full color. wait, what?
yifan squints at the people in the doorway. “you two know each other?” he mumbles, and that seems to make them realize they’re actually standing next to each other. they turn around with wide eyes and jump two feet apart, bowing profusely. it’s kind of adorable, but mostly dumb.
“yixing, baekhyun, baekhyun, yixing,” he rasps, rolling off his bed and tumbling to the floor. then he recognizes the whooping. “is sehun’s hockey team winning or has a pregnancy test come out negative?”
yixing shakes his head, confused, but baekhyun just snickers appreciatively and steps out. “just come in the living room.”
yixing, left behind, widens his eyes. “is he seeing someone?” he whispers, and, yifan can only laugh soundlessly, head hitting his drawer handles multiple times.
“he’s seeing,” he finally manages, breathless, “he’s seeing a lot of people.”
sehun is dancing on the sofas, crouton crumbs all over his shirt, when yifan finally shuffles in. “get off my furniture,” he snaps at once, but sehun pays no heed. he’s saying something over and over again under his breath.
“what’s he saying,” yifan mutters to baekhyun, used to this behavior.
“he’s saying he’s gotten on the dean’s list, plus full marks on that microeconomics exam of his,” baekhyun informs him proudly, arms folded over his chest.
“holy shit. sehun?” yifan whirls around. “OH SEHUN?”
sehun lands on the floor in front of him, grinning, arms wide open. “come to daddy,” he wiggles his eyebrows.
“little shit,” yifan pulls him in for a hug, laughing into sehun’s hair. “i can’t believe you did it, i can’t believe you did it.”
“hey,” sehun’s hand comes up to pat his ear. “have some faith in me, man. i’m not that bad.”
“shut up,” yifan pulls him away to stare at him. “dean’s list. full marks? i’m not dreaming?”
baekhyun leans over to pinch his arm.
“nah,” he says, smug, when yifan gives a pained shriek.
yixing throws some more croutons in the air.
-
yixing leaves in the middle of the night, and it’s funny how of all the nights yifan had had to not stay up through, it was that one. sehun keeps telling him that it isn’t such a big deal, that yixing left a note on the fridge saying he’ll be back in a few days, within the week at most -- and yifan tries, he really does. he writes and writes and smokes and writes and almost sets fire to his ice cream (he’s not sure how), and writes, and writes, and then he gives writing a pause.
when death’s lips left mine
he’s stuck. not another word refuses to be set down.
“i can’t,” yifan groans, wincing at how loud his voice sounds, and sehun gives him a final shove before grunting and giving up. “the hell is wrong with you, hyung?”
yifan can’t stand, can’t move. he’s tried, but it made him feel like throwing up, and he doesn’t want that to happen so he’s not going to budge.
the only word that’s making it through his head, right now, is yixing and he’ll be damned if it doesn’t sound familiar. if it doesn’t feel like an old favorite shirt or like holding an orange guitar. wait, orange guitar?
someone’s dragging him, pulling his arm around their neck uncomfortable and cursing at how they’re missing out on some date or other, and suddenly yifan can’t take it. yifan’s had enough of stepping on someone, of ignoring someone else’s needs, of being more an obstacle than a support, and with the last ounce of strength he doesn’t know he had, he retrieves his arm and stumbles by himself against the wall. he can’t do anything against this wall, so he slides against it, feels something give way, spark feebly before going out. the next thing he knows, he’s lying on the floor, huddled towards the wall. someone is cursing even more now, and there are warm hands over his chest, but not warm enough, not warm enough, and he’s being turned over and someone’s saying i’m sorry and i love you, okay, don’t be an idiot, sorry for being a jerk and he doesn’t deserve apologies so he tries to fold in on himself further but those hands have gotten a firm grip on him and he’s dragged, again.
his head hits the bedframe, sorry, man, his knees hit the bedpost somehow, sorry sorry! jeez, so sorry, and he’s finally fully assembled onto the mattress. his head’s pulled up and someone stuffs a pillow underneath it. sorry. sleep tight, okay?
yifan doesn’t know what to do. he gets draped over in a blanket before the door closes, and he doesn’t bother opening his eyes to stare at the floor. no, wait, not the floor. the ceiling. to stare at the ceiling. he doesn’t bother with that.
there’s nothing against his eyelids, no red light, no white or yellow light. there’s no sound in the room, save for his ragged breathing and occasional groans. he’s trying to stop them but they come out and he doesn’t know how. he doesn’t know a lot of things. does he know anything? he knows a song. he knows a song.
he knows a song that would make persephone dance. and it plays through his head on cue. on cue, on cue, a throat clearing, the strings tuning, a strumming, fretting, change in notes. a melody. nothing against his eyelids but he sees the tendrils climb. over the black backdrop of his mind, he sees the trees sway. he sees a wrist with a bracelet.
how much time?
the answer is coming. the answer is coming.
part iii