'till his tea's gone cold (and heart, too)
'till his tea's gone cold (and heart, too)
luhan/yixing & luhan/???; pg13; au; infidelity; angst; ~2100
unbeta'd, also the result of writing after like a week or more not doing it ;n; thank you for tlist that helped me pick the pairing!
it starts off slowly.
the realization of not loving yixing, that is.
to be honest, luhan - luhan had truly loved him. growing up, watching the boy bloom alongside him. it exhilarated him, feeling the spark of a touch and those tingling butterflies on his stomach - it exhilarated luhan like no other - but gradually, like all things mostly do, it begins to disappear.
he isn’t sure where it exactly started. maybe it was three months ago, when luhan accidentally flinched away from yixing’s kiss - or maybe it started three days ago, when he refused to accompany yixing to his rehearsal, just because of his university assignments.
(“i’m sorry,” luhan had apologized, which yixing replied with a laugh and a it’s just a rehearsal, relax, not the actual thing, but luhan’s own apology seems too empty, too easy to be let out of his mouth.)
but now, watching yixing beside him - who’s deep in sleep, his hair messy and inkblots staining his fingers (from sketching or from notetaking, yixing is always full of surprise) - luhan realizes that he feels indifferent, feels detached towards the boy he had always cherished since he was young.
it scares luhan already.
so he shifts closer to yixing, wraps yixing’s warm arms around him and stays there, hoping that yixing’s warmth would cure his detachment, would heal back the love that has always stayed between them - and luhan prays that it will work, that tomorrow, he’ll feel the same surge of happiness when he sees yixing’s sleepy eyes blinking blearily at him.
luhan’s heart - for now, though - is still heavy.
---
the next day, he’s greeted by a fully-clothed yixing poking his sides, already very much awake, and guitar case strapped across his back. he’s holding a steaming cup of - something. luhan’s too sleepy to identify.
“you look dreadful,” yixing comments, not unkindly. “tea to soothe your soul?”
luhan grunts, throat constricting. “later,” he answers, and turns his back to yixing. his heart is - although feeling lighter and warmer than last night - still heavy, and he doesn’t want to face yixing when he’s like this.
(not when luhan feels like he doesn’t love him.)
he can’t see yixing, but luhan can feel a familiar weight settling on the bed. “hey,” yixing’s voice is soft and coaxing, his fingers coming from behind luhan to mess up his hair. “what happened? you seem to have a rough day already.”
i feel as if i’m starting to not love you anymore, luhan wants to scream at him, wants to whack yixing’s head and make him realize. and i’m so, so, scared about that, because i - i love you, i really do, but -
“bad dream,” he grits out instead. “sorry. nightmare.”
he still can feel yixing’s fingers on his forehead, unmoving, solid and frozen - like what he always does when he’s hesitating.
(hesitating to do something, hesitating to love something, hesitating - hesitating to believe.)
“okay,” is what comes out of yixing’s mouth, and the familiar weight of yixing’s body is gone. luhan can hear the slight shuffle of footsteps, glass softly thudding wood, and then yixing’s weight is back, his lips kissing his head.
luhan freezes, clutching the sheets tightly.
“call me when you feel better, yeah?” yixing murmurs, pushing himself out of the bed again and ruffling luhan’s hair. “and well, i can inform them that you won’t be at your classes today, if you’d like to stay-”
“no,” luhan replies immediately, and he feels guilt filling up his insides, filling up his stomach and intestines and threatening to vomit out last night’s chinese takeout. “no, i’ll be - i’ll be fine. i just need some time to - rest, yeah.”
he still doesn’t look at yixing.
there’s silence, and even though it’s not thick, not heavy (yixing can never make the air uncomfortable, it’s me, it’s always me, luhan reminds himself angrily over and over again), but luhan feels like disappearing, because the love isn’t there anymore. he doesn’t love yixing anymore. he doesn’t, he doesn’t -
“okay. rest well, luhan.”
there are hurried footsteps, the sound of the door opening and shutting a little too quickly - and yixing’s gone, just like that.
luhan stays like that after yixing leaves, in bed, curled, the words doesn’t love, i don’t love, i don’t love him anymore thudding inside his head, just like a mantra that he’s forced to repeat - until his tea has gone cold, and his heart even colder.
(no, take that opening line back. it was never slow. it starts off quickly, and luhan’s already falling out of love with yixing. luhan has always been quick, so quick - too quick.)
---
he does end up going to his classes, even though it’s already one p.m. when luhan finally goes out of his bed and dumps the cold tea to the sink.
(already one p.m. when he dumps the tea that yixing made down to the sewers.)
when he enters the class, all of them stare at him - they stare at his crinkled shirt, stares at his bedhead-styled hair, stares at his untied sneakers and the glasses sliding down low on his nose, stares at his opened messenger bag and stares at the thin line on his lips.
“i’m sorry for being late,” luhan says.
the professor frowns at him, but points at one of the tables and gestures him to sit down. he knows what this is. a privilege for being one of the smartest students in class, one of the ones who are never late, one that has never disappointed his professors. luhan knows - he knows that all his other classmates are almost always kicked out for being so late - but yet, he still takes advantage of it.
(unconsciously puts all the blame on yixing, it seems.)
when he settles down and starts taking notes of the lesson, most of them are still staring at luhan - the one who’s never late, never not there, never not perfect.
perfect, yixing’s voice whispers inside his head. stellar, amazing, beautiful, and mine.
his concentration snaps.
---
yixing comes home early tonight - an eight p.m. - and luhan tackles him in a hug.
“whoa there,” yixing laughs, a bit breathless, because luhan’s grip is strong, fingers digging on his back and his head is buried inside the crook of his neck. “what’s up?”
but luhan only hugs him tighter.
yixing laughs again and hugs him back, mind still so clueless, kissing luhan’s ear and making his boyfriend squawk and hit his arm with a pout on his face.
(thank goodness that yixing doesn’t realize the sad smile luhan has given him.)
---
and then, a mere week after, luhan meets kyungsoo.
he experiences two conflicting emotions at the same time.
first: those butterflies. those butterflies that buzz around his tummy and make him nauseous. those butterflies that eventually fly over to his ribs, threatening to make his ribcage break and let out the heart that’s beating so heavily inside his chest.
second: guilt, shame, loathing - because those are the same feelings that appeared when he realizes that he is, truly, indeed in love with yixing.
luhan smiles when kyungsoo grins at him, even though there are knives striking his stomach, even though there are blades slicing through his back and his mind screaming profanities at him.
---
concert is 2morrow at 7pm, luhan reads the text yixing has sent him. dont b late pls? its 4 u.
---
even though he has read the time of yixing’s performance for so many times, luhan still misses his performance. he misses yixing’s performance, even though he has been running so fast from the restaurant he and kyungsoo had dined in just minutes ago - even though he tried so hard to hear yixing’s voice and see him play the piano, eyes closed, because the notes already imprinted in his head.
it was already memorized in the back of his mind (“i can play them in my sleep,” yixing had told luhan with an amused head shake once).
yixing sees him when he stands up from his bow, eyes frozen and body still.
luhan rushes out of the audience to vomit everything he has eaten. guilt, shame, anger, disgust - all of them balled in one heave.
---
yixing then finally notices.
kyungsoo, that was (and is) always luhan’s reasons. studying with kyungsoo, he would text, lunch with kyungsoo, reading with kyungsoo, he would call yixing, at kyungsoo’s house, with kyungsoo’s friends, working with kyungsoo - sorry, yixing.
yixing sees how luhan’s eyes light up when yixing mentions the word kyungsoo - the sparkle that should’ve always appeared when yixing talks to him, when people talk about yixing, when yixing is there.
at first, he brushes it off. you’re just being overprotective of your boyfriend, stop it - yixing’s mind shushes him. he’s allowed to have friends other than you. it’s finally time for him to stop being a loner, anyway.
(but his heart starts to crack a little, anyway.)
---
luhan prays everyday that kyungsoo will go away and that both of them will forget each other, prays that his love for yixing to be rekindled, prays for everything will be back on its axis again, will revolve like it should be -
---
- but then he realizes it’s already too fucking late when kyungsoo presses a hot and searing kiss on the skin of his neck.
forgive me, luhan almost wants to sob. he pulls kyungsoo and their mouths connect, his fingers tangled in kyungsoo’s messed-up hair, grip strong.
kyungsoo knows, he has always knew, but they both pretend to not know, tries to ignore the feeling of self-despise crawling inside their skin.
forgive me.
---
of course, everything breaks in the end (three months, three months of luhan sobbing inside the bathroom and repeating apologies inside his head).
it’s not a big shatter, not a loud and quick and strong one, but something that started with gentle tap on the glass, and the crack is quiet, but it continues, until finally - all of it - shattering.
“i found about you,” yixing greets him on that very day, voice hollow, eyes rimmed with red and his lips chapped. “about you and kyungsoo.”
every ounce of hope that luhan has comes crashing down that very second.
---
his lips are sewn shut.
“you don’t love me anymore, am i right?” is yixing’s quiet and repeated question the hour after, luhan sitting in front of him, the hickies trailing over his skin in full view, not made by yixing - not anymore. “answer me, luhan.”
still no answer - only a head hung low in shame, and tears staining its cheeks.
“answer me,” yixing finally sighs, slumping down their couch. there are no tears - those were for yesterday, yesterday when he first even heard a mention of it - only a strange twist in his chest, and yixing guesses that this is what a heartbreak is. “you don’t love me anymore, do you?”
it’s only after three minutes - yixing counted - that luhan answers.
“no,” luhan swallows, still not looking at yixing. “no, i don’t. love. i don’t -”
he shuts up.
but yixing’s not even crying, not even mad - he’s just staring at luhan with a strange sort of understanding in his eyes, not even the slightest hint of hatred glinting in his eyes.
“why aren’t you screaming at me?” luhan asks him - finally breaking the silence (he has never liked silence) - loud and clear, looking at yixing dead in the eye and shoulders shaking. “why - why aren’t you angry with me?”
yixing rises out of his seat while he shakes his head - luhan, he says - because he doesn’t want to hear this, doesn’t want luhan to ask him to be weak and angry and foolish in front of him.
but luhan’s mouth is still moving (“why aren’t you spreading that i cheated on you, zhang yixing, perfect angel of earth -”), every word that he kept pent up for all these months spilling out like water breaking out from a damaged dam (“- lovers for six years and best friends for so many years more than that -”), his whole body shaking and lips quivering (“- why aren’t you mad at me?”).
but when yixing finally grabs hold of him, luhan starts to hit his chest repeatedly, furiously, angrily, mouth moving so quickly that yixing’s unable to catch his words - and he’s frozen, eyes going wide. his fists are familiar, luhan’s arm is familiar - but not the tears and the anger that he has, not luhan begging for him to be furious and so angry and for yixing to hate him.
“why,” luhan finally sobs, hits going weaker. “why, yixing?”
yixing almost wants to say love.
but then he remembers that it doesn't apply to luhan anymore.
[...actual ending planned, but it didn't seem quite fitting]
---
he finally packs his bags and leaves the following week.
“how - how does it feel like?” luhan asks him with a soft voice before yixing leaves, swallowing his throat thickly, a hesitant look on his face. “heartbreak?”
there is a pause before yixing finally hugs luhan, the boy freezing at the contact (still in denial about yixing not hating him, still in denial about yixing letting it go so easily - letting their love and friendship go away so easily, not trying to fix it up, not trying to heal it up).
“it hurts,” yixing replies once he lets go, a soft and reminiscent smile on his face, but he’s not looking at luhan - never again at luhan. “but i’ll deal.”
you always do, is what goes on inside luhan’s mind when yixing finally disappears from his sight, leaning on their - his, it’s his now, not theirs, yixing’s gone - doorframe. his arms aren’t crossed, but they’re hanging heavily on his sides, somehow like his heart. always do, from the day you sacrificed your hours to watch me play soccer, to comforting me when i’m down, to go to my match even though you hurt your hip that day.
the small amount of guilt that yixing had told luhan again and again to let go appears, and it multiplies - like always, filling all of his insides.
yixing’s always been so selfless - and him, so, so selfish.
(kyungsoo ended up going and tossing him away, anyway - like what he had always prayed for. it was for the same reasons, luhan thinks, as he does: guilt, shame, self-hatred.)
luhan/yixing & luhan/???; pg13; au; infidelity; angst; ~2100
unbeta'd, also the result of writing after like a week or more not doing it ;n; thank you for tlist that helped me pick the pairing!
it starts off slowly.
the realization of not loving yixing, that is.
to be honest, luhan - luhan had truly loved him. growing up, watching the boy bloom alongside him. it exhilarated him, feeling the spark of a touch and those tingling butterflies on his stomach - it exhilarated luhan like no other - but gradually, like all things mostly do, it begins to disappear.
he isn’t sure where it exactly started. maybe it was three months ago, when luhan accidentally flinched away from yixing’s kiss - or maybe it started three days ago, when he refused to accompany yixing to his rehearsal, just because of his university assignments.
(“i’m sorry,” luhan had apologized, which yixing replied with a laugh and a it’s just a rehearsal, relax, not the actual thing, but luhan’s own apology seems too empty, too easy to be let out of his mouth.)
but now, watching yixing beside him - who’s deep in sleep, his hair messy and inkblots staining his fingers (from sketching or from notetaking, yixing is always full of surprise) - luhan realizes that he feels indifferent, feels detached towards the boy he had always cherished since he was young.
it scares luhan already.
so he shifts closer to yixing, wraps yixing’s warm arms around him and stays there, hoping that yixing’s warmth would cure his detachment, would heal back the love that has always stayed between them - and luhan prays that it will work, that tomorrow, he’ll feel the same surge of happiness when he sees yixing’s sleepy eyes blinking blearily at him.
luhan’s heart - for now, though - is still heavy.
---
the next day, he’s greeted by a fully-clothed yixing poking his sides, already very much awake, and guitar case strapped across his back. he’s holding a steaming cup of - something. luhan’s too sleepy to identify.
“you look dreadful,” yixing comments, not unkindly. “tea to soothe your soul?”
luhan grunts, throat constricting. “later,” he answers, and turns his back to yixing. his heart is - although feeling lighter and warmer than last night - still heavy, and he doesn’t want to face yixing when he’s like this.
(not when luhan feels like he doesn’t love him.)
he can’t see yixing, but luhan can feel a familiar weight settling on the bed. “hey,” yixing’s voice is soft and coaxing, his fingers coming from behind luhan to mess up his hair. “what happened? you seem to have a rough day already.”
i feel as if i’m starting to not love you anymore, luhan wants to scream at him, wants to whack yixing’s head and make him realize. and i’m so, so, scared about that, because i - i love you, i really do, but -
“bad dream,” he grits out instead. “sorry. nightmare.”
he still can feel yixing’s fingers on his forehead, unmoving, solid and frozen - like what he always does when he’s hesitating.
(hesitating to do something, hesitating to love something, hesitating - hesitating to believe.)
“okay,” is what comes out of yixing’s mouth, and the familiar weight of yixing’s body is gone. luhan can hear the slight shuffle of footsteps, glass softly thudding wood, and then yixing’s weight is back, his lips kissing his head.
luhan freezes, clutching the sheets tightly.
“call me when you feel better, yeah?” yixing murmurs, pushing himself out of the bed again and ruffling luhan’s hair. “and well, i can inform them that you won’t be at your classes today, if you’d like to stay-”
“no,” luhan replies immediately, and he feels guilt filling up his insides, filling up his stomach and intestines and threatening to vomit out last night’s chinese takeout. “no, i’ll be - i’ll be fine. i just need some time to - rest, yeah.”
he still doesn’t look at yixing.
there’s silence, and even though it’s not thick, not heavy (yixing can never make the air uncomfortable, it’s me, it’s always me, luhan reminds himself angrily over and over again), but luhan feels like disappearing, because the love isn’t there anymore. he doesn’t love yixing anymore. he doesn’t, he doesn’t -
“okay. rest well, luhan.”
there are hurried footsteps, the sound of the door opening and shutting a little too quickly - and yixing’s gone, just like that.
luhan stays like that after yixing leaves, in bed, curled, the words doesn’t love, i don’t love, i don’t love him anymore thudding inside his head, just like a mantra that he’s forced to repeat - until his tea has gone cold, and his heart even colder.
(no, take that opening line back. it was never slow. it starts off quickly, and luhan’s already falling out of love with yixing. luhan has always been quick, so quick - too quick.)
---
he does end up going to his classes, even though it’s already one p.m. when luhan finally goes out of his bed and dumps the cold tea to the sink.
(already one p.m. when he dumps the tea that yixing made down to the sewers.)
when he enters the class, all of them stare at him - they stare at his crinkled shirt, stares at his bedhead-styled hair, stares at his untied sneakers and the glasses sliding down low on his nose, stares at his opened messenger bag and stares at the thin line on his lips.
“i’m sorry for being late,” luhan says.
the professor frowns at him, but points at one of the tables and gestures him to sit down. he knows what this is. a privilege for being one of the smartest students in class, one of the ones who are never late, one that has never disappointed his professors. luhan knows - he knows that all his other classmates are almost always kicked out for being so late - but yet, he still takes advantage of it.
(unconsciously puts all the blame on yixing, it seems.)
when he settles down and starts taking notes of the lesson, most of them are still staring at luhan - the one who’s never late, never not there, never not perfect.
perfect, yixing’s voice whispers inside his head. stellar, amazing, beautiful, and mine.
his concentration snaps.
---
yixing comes home early tonight - an eight p.m. - and luhan tackles him in a hug.
“whoa there,” yixing laughs, a bit breathless, because luhan’s grip is strong, fingers digging on his back and his head is buried inside the crook of his neck. “what’s up?”
but luhan only hugs him tighter.
yixing laughs again and hugs him back, mind still so clueless, kissing luhan’s ear and making his boyfriend squawk and hit his arm with a pout on his face.
(thank goodness that yixing doesn’t realize the sad smile luhan has given him.)
---
and then, a mere week after, luhan meets kyungsoo.
he experiences two conflicting emotions at the same time.
first: those butterflies. those butterflies that buzz around his tummy and make him nauseous. those butterflies that eventually fly over to his ribs, threatening to make his ribcage break and let out the heart that’s beating so heavily inside his chest.
second: guilt, shame, loathing - because those are the same feelings that appeared when he realizes that he is, truly, indeed in love with yixing.
luhan smiles when kyungsoo grins at him, even though there are knives striking his stomach, even though there are blades slicing through his back and his mind screaming profanities at him.
---
concert is 2morrow at 7pm, luhan reads the text yixing has sent him. dont b late pls? its 4 u.
---
even though he has read the time of yixing’s performance for so many times, luhan still misses his performance. he misses yixing’s performance, even though he has been running so fast from the restaurant he and kyungsoo had dined in just minutes ago - even though he tried so hard to hear yixing’s voice and see him play the piano, eyes closed, because the notes already imprinted in his head.
it was already memorized in the back of his mind (“i can play them in my sleep,” yixing had told luhan with an amused head shake once).
yixing sees him when he stands up from his bow, eyes frozen and body still.
luhan rushes out of the audience to vomit everything he has eaten. guilt, shame, anger, disgust - all of them balled in one heave.
---
yixing then finally notices.
kyungsoo, that was (and is) always luhan’s reasons. studying with kyungsoo, he would text, lunch with kyungsoo, reading with kyungsoo, he would call yixing, at kyungsoo’s house, with kyungsoo’s friends, working with kyungsoo - sorry, yixing.
yixing sees how luhan’s eyes light up when yixing mentions the word kyungsoo - the sparkle that should’ve always appeared when yixing talks to him, when people talk about yixing, when yixing is there.
at first, he brushes it off. you’re just being overprotective of your boyfriend, stop it - yixing’s mind shushes him. he’s allowed to have friends other than you. it’s finally time for him to stop being a loner, anyway.
(but his heart starts to crack a little, anyway.)
---
luhan prays everyday that kyungsoo will go away and that both of them will forget each other, prays that his love for yixing to be rekindled, prays for everything will be back on its axis again, will revolve like it should be -
---
- but then he realizes it’s already too fucking late when kyungsoo presses a hot and searing kiss on the skin of his neck.
forgive me, luhan almost wants to sob. he pulls kyungsoo and their mouths connect, his fingers tangled in kyungsoo’s messed-up hair, grip strong.
kyungsoo knows, he has always knew, but they both pretend to not know, tries to ignore the feeling of self-despise crawling inside their skin.
forgive me.
---
of course, everything breaks in the end (three months, three months of luhan sobbing inside the bathroom and repeating apologies inside his head).
it’s not a big shatter, not a loud and quick and strong one, but something that started with gentle tap on the glass, and the crack is quiet, but it continues, until finally - all of it - shattering.
“i found about you,” yixing greets him on that very day, voice hollow, eyes rimmed with red and his lips chapped. “about you and kyungsoo.”
every ounce of hope that luhan has comes crashing down that very second.
---
his lips are sewn shut.
“you don’t love me anymore, am i right?” is yixing’s quiet and repeated question the hour after, luhan sitting in front of him, the hickies trailing over his skin in full view, not made by yixing - not anymore. “answer me, luhan.”
still no answer - only a head hung low in shame, and tears staining its cheeks.
“answer me,” yixing finally sighs, slumping down their couch. there are no tears - those were for yesterday, yesterday when he first even heard a mention of it - only a strange twist in his chest, and yixing guesses that this is what a heartbreak is. “you don’t love me anymore, do you?”
it’s only after three minutes - yixing counted - that luhan answers.
“no,” luhan swallows, still not looking at yixing. “no, i don’t. love. i don’t -”
he shuts up.
but yixing’s not even crying, not even mad - he’s just staring at luhan with a strange sort of understanding in his eyes, not even the slightest hint of hatred glinting in his eyes.
“why aren’t you screaming at me?” luhan asks him - finally breaking the silence (he has never liked silence) - loud and clear, looking at yixing dead in the eye and shoulders shaking. “why - why aren’t you angry with me?”
yixing rises out of his seat while he shakes his head - luhan, he says - because he doesn’t want to hear this, doesn’t want luhan to ask him to be weak and angry and foolish in front of him.
but luhan’s mouth is still moving (“why aren’t you spreading that i cheated on you, zhang yixing, perfect angel of earth -”), every word that he kept pent up for all these months spilling out like water breaking out from a damaged dam (“- lovers for six years and best friends for so many years more than that -”), his whole body shaking and lips quivering (“- why aren’t you mad at me?”).
but when yixing finally grabs hold of him, luhan starts to hit his chest repeatedly, furiously, angrily, mouth moving so quickly that yixing’s unable to catch his words - and he’s frozen, eyes going wide. his fists are familiar, luhan’s arm is familiar - but not the tears and the anger that he has, not luhan begging for him to be furious and so angry and for yixing to hate him.
“why,” luhan finally sobs, hits going weaker. “why, yixing?”
yixing almost wants to say love.
but then he remembers that it doesn't apply to luhan anymore.
[...actual ending planned, but it didn't seem quite fitting]
---
he finally packs his bags and leaves the following week.
“how - how does it feel like?” luhan asks him with a soft voice before yixing leaves, swallowing his throat thickly, a hesitant look on his face. “heartbreak?”
there is a pause before yixing finally hugs luhan, the boy freezing at the contact (still in denial about yixing not hating him, still in denial about yixing letting it go so easily - letting their love and friendship go away so easily, not trying to fix it up, not trying to heal it up).
“it hurts,” yixing replies once he lets go, a soft and reminiscent smile on his face, but he’s not looking at luhan - never again at luhan. “but i’ll deal.”
you always do, is what goes on inside luhan’s mind when yixing finally disappears from his sight, leaning on their - his, it’s his now, not theirs, yixing’s gone - doorframe. his arms aren’t crossed, but they’re hanging heavily on his sides, somehow like his heart. always do, from the day you sacrificed your hours to watch me play soccer, to comforting me when i’m down, to go to my match even though you hurt your hip that day.
the small amount of guilt that yixing had told luhan again and again to let go appears, and it multiplies - like always, filling all of his insides.
yixing’s always been so selfless - and him, so, so selfish.
(kyungsoo ended up going and tossing him away, anyway - like what he had always prayed for. it was for the same reasons, luhan thinks, as he does: guilt, shame, self-hatred.)