Take me out [prompt #1]
Title: Take me out
Prompt: #1
Length: 5,916 words
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: none
Summary: Yixing delivers lunches.
Notes: hello lovely prompter! so, i basically took your prompt and ran far away with it. initially, i was going to do something like top chef: fanxing edition! but it came out so. bad. this… isn’t much better. it’s loosely based on a documentary about dabbawalas, india’s lunch delivery squad. i hope you enjoy! ♥
Yixing delivers lunches for a living. He tells himself it’s just a part time job that he takes between his morning and afternoon classes at university, biking around with boxes of bentos and thermoses strapped to his basket to reward office workers with a home-cooked meal. In reality, it’s a favor for his friend and roommate, Zitao, whose culmination project for his entrepreneurship requirement is to carry out his own business model. Yixing gets a meager salary at best, despite Zitao’s frantic number crunching, but at least it gives him a chance to get some fresh air and exercise during the day, maybe a few extra tips to stop by 東方新天地 for a bowl of noodles for his own lunch.
Since Zitao’s put him in charge of the touristy area along Wangfujing Street, Yixing gets a lot of calls for hotel concierges or shop owners, too harebrained to remember their own lunch, too wary of Chinese sanitation (gutter oil, eugh) to order takeout. In his three months of delivering, though, this is the first time he’s ever gotten a call for the hospital.
It’s a particularly busy shift, so Yixing bounds his way up the hospital’s stairwell once the service concierge directs him to the OR’s nurses’ station, a warm bento in his hands. The station is nearly dead in the lunch lull except for a pair of young doctors huddled around a computer screen, discussing what sounds like patient imaging results. Yixing clears his throat loudly.
“Excuse me?” he hedges, leaning over the counter, and the doctors give a start before twirling around in their seats. “I’m looking for a Dr. Wu Yifan, chief resident in neurosurgery at this hospital? Would you by any chance know where I could find him?”
The doctor to Yixing’s right with thick brows and a small mouth blinks owlishly before raising his hand in silence. His partner, a man with stick-out ears and rounded cheeks, hits him hard on the arm, as if prompting him to speak.
“Ah, yes,” the doctor yelps, rubbing at his arm and shooting his partner a nasty look. “I’m Wu Yifan. May I help you?”
Yixing sighs in relief. “Your roommate, Chen? Near Fuxingmen Station? He said you forgot your lunch at home today and he wanted to make sure you had something to eat.” He holds out the bento as proof. The doctor, Yifan, just stares blankly at Yixing’s hands before the man with the stick-out ears pinches his arm in exasperation.
“Oh. Ah…” he mumbles, and Yixing frowns, seriously wondering if the doctor is impaired. His face is flushed a light pink from exertion.
“What this dumbass means to say is ‘thank you,’” the other doctor interrupts, rolling his eyes. His Mandarin is accented in a way that Yixing can’t put his finger on. “Do you need any money for the delivery?”
Yixing shakes his head. “Just a tip, if you’d like.”
The doctor promptly shoves his hand into Yifan’s coat pocket, pulling out a fifty-yuan bill. Yixing’s eyes go wide.
“Here you go. Maybe Yifan should leave his lunch at home more often. We’d love to see you again.” And the doctor - Dr. Park, Yixing reads from his nametag - gives a greasy wink as he presses the bill into Yixing’s hand. He turns to face the computer screen again, leaving Yifan to stare at Yixing with something akin to shock and mortification on his face, the bento clutched tightly in his hands.
“O…kay…” Yixing says, brow furrowed at Yifan’s frozen expression. His skin’s still crawling from Dr. Park’s full-toothed grin. “I guess… enjoy your lunch then.” And with a last backward glance, he quickly retreats back down the stairwell to the first floor, shaking his head the whole way. He had never seen a doctor look so stupid in his life.
--
“Hey, I’m sorry man,” Chen says sheepishly a few days later as he opens the front door to his and Yifan’s apartment building. His Mandarin is accented in the same way Dr. Park’s is. “I can’t believe Yifan-ge managed to leave his lunch at home again this week. I’d go give it to him instead, but I have to go to class in a few minutes.”
Yixing shrugs. “It’s no problem, that’s my job.” He accepts the money and lunch box Chen hands to him and is about to leave before he pauses in thought.
“Is your roommate… socially awkward?” Yixing muses aloud, and almost slaps his hand across his mouth. His goddamned tongue.
Chen, thankfully, laughs instead of shuts the door in Yixing’s face. “Kind of,” he admits. “Yifan-ge’s a bit of an idiot around new people, but he’s a real mood maker once you get to know him. I wouldn’t be so worried, if I were you.”
There’s a kind of knowing glint in the man’s eyes that Yixing doesn’t want to contemplate. He flushes and ducks his head in farewell, mounting his bike and speeding down the street, away from Chen. Humming ballads under his breath, he drops off a few packages at a strip of boutiques in his usual good-natured daze before stopping at the hospital.
“You again!” Dr. Park calls delightedly when Yixing makes it up to the nurses’ station, struggling to pin the visitor’s badge to his lapel. The doctor waves forcefully before he jogs down a hallway to his right, and Yixing can hear him shout around the corner, “Yah, Yifan-ge! He’s here!” Yixing blushes as some nurses shoot cursory glances in his direction. Before they can titter behind his back, Dr. Park returns with a disgruntled Yifan in tow, looking extraordinarily satisfied with himself.
“Words, Yifan. Use them,” Dr. Park reminds in a singsong voice, and he winks at Yixing. “Well, I’ve got clinic duty this afternoon. I’ll just leave you here to chat ~ “
“Wait, Chanyeol - ”
But the other doctor’s already gone with another wink and wave. Yifan opens and closes his mouth like a fish in the direction where Dr. Park disappeared, and when he turns back to Yixing he looks very much like a deer caught in headlights. There’s a pregnant silence.
“So,” Yixing tries to begin casually, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Chanyeol, eh? That’s not a Chinese name.” For a moment, he wants to slap himself. God dammit, Yixing, he thinks in anguish, what kind of conversation starter is that?
“Uh, no it’s not. It’s Korean,” Yifan says absently, staring at a point beyond Yixing’s shoulder. He refocuses, and looks Yixing right in the eye. He’s taller by a few inches at least, and he’s pretty handsome with his tousled hair and sharp eyes and defined jaw.
“Look - ah…” Yifan finally says, fumbling a bit with his hands, “I’m sorry about the other day. I’m not normally that, ah, awkward with other people.”
“You weren’t. Awkward, that is,” Yixing lies easily with a small quirk of his lips.
Yifan seems to sense that and rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I was. Anyway, I’m sorry. And thanks, you know, for doing this.” He waves vaguely at the lunch box sitting on the counter. “Things have been really busy lately, since I’m in my last year as a resident, and I tend to forget about things like, uh, eating.”
“You can forget more often,” Yixing says with a wink. “It’s good for my wallet.”
This seems to make whatever tension Yifan feels drain out of his stance, and he throws his head back and laughs. It’s a startling shift from his cool, serious demeanor.
“You’re good at this people thing,” he says, eyes crinkling easily at the corners. “What are you, a communications major? Law?”
“International business grad. Peking University.”
Yifan gives a little crooked smile, and it’s good to his features. “Even better.”
Yixing forgets himself for a moment at the distracting peek of gum above Yifan’s teeth, but then he jumps and checks his watch; he’s running late for his next delivery, and if he wants to make it to his Integrative English course on time he has to leave now.
“Sorry,” he tells Yifan, “but I have to run. I’ve got class in an hour and a few more workers left to feed.”
“Ah…” Yifan falters and drops his smile, looking almost crestfallen. “Well… don’t be a stranger. Oh, wait.” He pulls a bill out of his pocket and holds it out for Yixing to take. “Don’t forget this.”
Yixing waves his hand away. “You gave me a fifty last time,” he says. “More than enough. And if you really want to give it to me…”
“I’ll probably need your help pretty often these next few months while I finish up here,” Yifan finishes with a weak curl of his lips.
“I’ll consider that a promise,” Yixing says, waving, and he backs away toward the stairwell. Yifan waves too, clutching his folder of charts to his chest. He looks, oddly, like a forlorn child.
He’s cute, Yixing thinks as he jumps down a flight of stairs, humming in amusement. When he’s three floors down, he hears a door bang open above him.
“Wait!” Yifan calls. Yixing pauses mid-leap. “I never got your name!”
Yixing grips at the handrail, taking a moment just to laugh. This careless doctor, really.
“Zhang Yixing!” he finally shouts back, and hops down another flight.
Instead of a reply, Yixing hears a low chuckle, and the door to the stairwell shuts. He makes his way down to his bike and finishes his rounds before bolting to class, grinning to himself all the while.
--
It turns out that Yifan does keep his promise very well, because over the next month he makes Chen - who, like Chanyeol, is a Korean exchange student - send him his lunch at least three times a week, sometimes four if he’s particularly forgetful. Much of the time, Yifan is truly busy in surgery or doing rounds, so Yixing hands his lunch off to Chanyeol instead, chats for a bit if he has time before his next delivery.
“Neurosurgery normally doesn’t get many trauma patients,” Chanyeol explains with a shrug, “but if there are huge accidents and emergency surgery needs more hands, they take Yifan as our department’s assistant.”
“He must be good at what he does then, if they pick him over everyone else.”
Chanyeol snorts. “He is,” he says. “His giant hands are good for something, at least.”
Yifan does have very nice hands, Yixing finds himself thinking every so often when he’s biking along Wangfujing. Wide palms and long, tapered fingers. He has to mentally shake himself once in a while, because he’s spent too much of his life these past weeks just thinking about Yifan’s hands.
Yifan warms up to Yixing in increments. It takes a full month of Yifan wringing his fingers around his clipboard or staring at Yixing with that deer-in-the-headlights expression for Yifan to smile more freely, laugh louder than just a chuckle. Another month before Yifan cracks a lame joke about Chanyeol’s bony butt, making Yixing giggle out of sheer incredulity. It’s a bit of a waste of time, talking to Yifan some days; Yixing finds it adorable.
“You’re kind of ridiculous,” he comments one day, and is satisfied to see Yifan’s eyes widen to half-dollar coin size and the tips of his ears turn red. The doctor mumbles something unintelligible and shuffles off to do his rounds, leaving Yixing to shake his head fondly at Yifan’s back.
Although Yixing attributes Yifan’s quietness to his awkward and self-conscious state of being, there are truly times when he’s so tired he can barely keep his eyes open, let alone keep a conversation going. On a hot early April morning, a bus flips over on the freeway (because Beijing traffic is a thing of hell during rush hour) and causes a twenty-car pileup. In the chaos, Yifan is whisked away by the Chief of General Surgery to perform ligations on several of the victims, some in critical condition. After stabilizing his third patient, he takes a break and smiles wanly at Yixing when he stops by.
“Today was the first time I was the primary surgeon without supervision,” he tells Yixing. “It feels like I’m a real doctor now.”
There’s a muted pride behind the strain of exhaustion in Yifan’s voice. It’s boiling hot in the hospital, and Yixing sees a drop of sweat trickle down Yifan’s temple. He wants to wipe it away, along with the dark circles of tiredness underneath his eyes. Yixing takes a gulp of the ice water that Chanyeol (who is, admittedly, not as creepy as Yixing initially thought) had offered him earlier, feeling an overwhelming warmth prickle at his skin.
Yixing learns a lot about Yifan during these brief, stilted chats, like how he grew up in Guangzhou only to move to Canada for his secondary school education (“Please help me not fail English,” Yixing begs shamelessly). Yifan has a soft spot for his mother, whom he hasn’t visited since he finished residency. He bites his lower lip when he’s nervous, taps nonsense rhythms on his thigh as he waits for test results. Buries his face in his hands when he’s second handedly embarrassed, rolls his eyes like a pro whenever Chanyeol’s around.
Yixing likes Yifan. Likes Yifan in a way that makes his skin prickle warm and his hands grow cold. It’s nothing groundbreaking, just wholly real because Yifan is kind, and he’s smart, and he’s handsome. Yixing likes the way that he treats his patients with a quiet, genuine care; to Chanyeol, being a doctor is just a job that his parents wanted him to take, but for Yifan taking care of others is his entire life.
But as much as Yixing bats his eyelashes and makes his small talk, in the nearly four months that he has been delivering lunches to the hospital, he and Yifan have never met outside of nurses’ station, not even for a coffee in the cafeteria downstairs. They’ve never talked more than a few minutes at a time. Yixing has Chen’s number programmed into his phone, for crying out loud, not Yifan’s.
Is he uninterested? he wonders sometimes, and then scolds himself. Yixing is a delivery boy still in school, no career in sight. Yifan is the chief resident at one of the biggest teaching hospitals in the country, a client who occasionally enjoys Yixing’s company during the neurosurgery wing’s downtime. He doesn’t have to be interested at all.
Yixing is angry sometimes, at himself, at Yifan. Angry that an absentminded, awkward turtle of a doctor could make him feel so much. Angry that he’ll never be more than the lunch delivery boy worth only a few moments of Dr. Wu Yifan’s time.
--
“You know,” Zitao says when Yixing gets home one day after classes, “you should be a shareholder if this business ever takes off on its own. You make me more profit than all of my other deliverers combined.”
“That’s because you give me half the salary I deserve,” Yixing says lightly as he watches Zitao pencil numbers into a notebook. Zitao looks up and gives a sheepish grin.
“But on the bright side,” he chirps, closing the notebook and standing to stretch, “today I found a guy who lives near Wangfujing! So you don’t have to go out of your way to do deliveries there anymore.”
Yixing freezes where he’s unpacking his books, mild panic welling up in his stomach.
“No!” he half-shouts, and scrambles when Zitao gives him a funny look. “No, it’s fine, I like doing deliveries along Wangfujing. I get to see, uh, Tiananmen Square all the time,” he decides wildly.
“You enjoy seeing a historical landmark where up to one thousand young students were massacred,” Zitao deadpans. He crosses his arms. “Okay, what’s up.”
Yixing deflates helplessly. “So, there’s this guy…” he begins. Zitao groans.
“No wait, listen to me!” Yixing says hastily. “He’s a doctor at the hospital. I talk to him sometimes. It doesn’t get in the way of business.”
“Doesn’t get in the way of business my butt!” Zitao exclaims. “No wonder you were late coming home from deliveries the whole winter.”
“He’s saving lives, Zitao, I think his lunch can wait half an hour,” Yixing retorts, but Zitao quells his sarcasm with an appraising look. It seems like he finds what he’s searching for when Yixing turns his head away.
“You like him,” Zitao realizes, eyes wide, making Yixing splutter.
“Yes, I like him,” he hisses back. “I like him, so please don’t take me away from my post.”
Zitao suddenly throws his hands above his head, waving them around in exasperation. “You like him and you’re standing here with me?” he shouts, flailing. When Yixing doesn’t answer, he gives a long-suffering huff and gathers Yixing’s bag, shoving it into his arms. Then he proceeds to make little shooing gestures towards the door.
“I’m not letting you back into the room until you bring this doctor with you,” Zitao announces as he nudges (shoves) Yixing out of the room. He grins devilishly as he shuts the door in Yixing’s face.
“Huang Zitao!” Yixing shrieks when he hears the door lock with a click. After attempting to bang down the door with his fists, he slides down the wall to put his head in his knees with a heavy sigh. Zitao’s pretty single-minded in his decision-making, so Yixing resigns himself and drags a heavy book out of his bag to read for the time being.
True to himself, Zitao only lets him back in long after the dinner hour, just so Yixing doesn’t catch a cold sleeping in the hall.
--
Visiting Yifan becomes so routine that Yixing ends up trying to find excuses to go to the hospital, regardless of whether it’s for a delivery or just a chat. Chen rolls his eyes whenever Yixing stops by his apartment unannounced, looking for an extra bag of biscuits or a thermos of tea for Yifan’s lunch.
“You idiot,” Chen complains. “He likes seeing you. You don’t need an excuse. Now quit disturbing my sleep, or else.”
Yixing learns to heed the warning; Chen almost manages to bite Yixing’s pointer finger off when Yixing knocks on his door particularly early one morning.
So, when a week passes without Chen’s call for a delivery, Yixing worries. He tries stopping by the hospital to ask Chanyeol what the heck is going on, but he only finds an unhelpful and rather nasty scrub nurse who tells him to get lost, the doctors aren’t around. He ends up jumping at every phone call he gets, hoping that it’ll be Chen, hoping that Yifan is okay, hoping that he hasn’t done anything wrong. When his mobile rings on the tenth morning and shows an unfamiliar caller, Yixing pounces.
“Hello?” he says into the phone, breathless.
“Yah, Yixing-ge, where are you?”
Yixing doesn’t recognize the tinny voice over the phone, but the familiar accent makes him gape.
“Chanyeol? How did you get my phone number?”
“Jongdae-ah gave it to me!”
“Jongdae…ah?”
Yixing can almost hear Chanyeol roll his eyes. “I mean Chen, Yixing,” he says. “But anyway, where the hell have you been? Yifan is sick!”
Yifan?
Sick?
Yixing gulps, and takes a deep breath. He doesn’t have the heart to respond.
“Not that sick, you idiot,” Chanyeol finally says after a moment with another audible eye roll. “He’s got the flu. Jeez, and I thought Yifan was the dramatic one.”
Yifan? Dramatic? Yixing’s head spins, and he lets out a low breath through his teeth.
“Where is he?” he asks. “Can I see him?”
“He’s been waiting to see you, man. He’s at his apartment. Chen’s taking care of him.”
“Thanks, Chanyeol! Talk to you later!”
“Wait, Yixing - !”
Yixing hangs up before Chanyeol has a chance to finish, and he bolts to his front door to grab his bike lock key off of the hook.
Is it impolite to go without taking something with me? he thinks wildly, and glances around his living room to look for something to bring. Finding nothing, he stumbles to the kitchen, scanning the counter and searching the refrigerator until he finds -
Yixing almost bangs his head against the refrigerator door. It’s better than nothing, he supposes, and snatches the box before running out of the door and down the stairs, mounting his bike and pedaling as fast as he can to where Yifan is waiting for him.
--
Yixing hesitates before knocking on Yifan’s door, wondering if he really belongs here in front of Yifan’s apartment with a sketchy box in his hands, looking like some kind of thug in a hoodie and ripped jeans. He bangs his head loudly against the door.
He’s been waiting to see you, man, Chanyeol had said. Yeah, Yixing, you idiot.
Yixing’s internal debate is cut short when the door abruptly opens, and he has to do a fast twist of his torso in order to save his face and the box in his hands from the floor. Chen follows the movement with a look of incredulous concern.
“You’re here?” he says. “Now? Where have you been for the last week?”
Yixing gapes, and straightens the rips in his jeans. “You almost bit my finger off the last time I came on my own, Chen,” he says.
“Pssh, Yifan-ge could have sewed it back on,” Chen says and waves a careless hand.
“You could have told me that Yifan was sick,” Yixing also points out. “You have my phone number.”
“Oh.” Chen grins too wide, showing all of his teeth, eyes curling at the corners. “I guess I could’ve. But where’s the fun in that?”
Yixing mutters something dark underneath his breath about reliability, and pushes past Chen into the apartment. The place is sparse, just like it has been the other times Yixing has come by; the only thing that indicates Yifan’s existence is a neat pile of patient charts on the coffee table in the living room next to a used mug and notebook.
“Yixing? Is that you?”
He and Chen jump and whirl around to see a door creak open at the end of the short hallway leading away from the lounge. Yifan pads unsteadily out of his room, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He’s got his hair tied into a tiny ponytail, and there are thick white socks on his feet. And he’s wearing glasses. Glasses. Yixing kind of wants to flail with his arms, but then remembers the box in his hands.
“Oh. Hi, Yi - er, Dr. Wu. Uh…” he flails verbally instead as Yifan peers at him blearily. “Dr. Park told me you had the flu, so I, uh, wanted to drop by and wish you well, or something. I couldn’t find a chicken soup place on the way here, but I have this instead.” He holds out the box, chagrinned.
Yifan takes the box and opens it with a sharp eyebrow raised. He sniffles. Yixing can see the remnants of the flu in the flush of the apples of Yifan’s cheeks, and there’s a crease mark from a pillow running across his forehead. He looks so adorably ruffled that Yixing’s insides flail a little bit, too.
“You couldn’t find chicken soup,” Yifan says slowly after a moment, staring down at the contents of the box, “so you brought… an apple pie.”
Yixing nods fervently. Yifan sighs.
“Apple pie,” he repeats.
Yixing shrugs helplessly. “Delivery?”
Yifan takes a breath as he sets the box on the coffee table. “Chen, will you excuse us for a moment?” he says in a level voice. Chen rolls his eyes (this seems to be a habit that he and Yifan picked up from each other), but obeys and shuffles to his room, swinging his arms childishly at his sides. Yifan watches his retreating back, turning back to Yixing when a door slams shut.
“Yixing,” he says in the same tone of voice, and the seriousness of his expression is actually kind of frightening. Yixing gulps.
But then Yifan breaks out in such explosive peals of laughter that Yixing actually jumps.
“What the fuck, Yifan!” he yells.
Yifan honest-to-god giggles and wipes tears from the corners of his eyes. “Sorry,” he says. “But by god, Yixing, you’re really, really cute.”
Yixing is so surprised that Yifan could actually make a noise that loud that it takes a few moments for him to catch that last comment. Cute? Yifan thinks he’s cute?
“You think I’m cute?” he echoes, dazed.
Yifan chuckles. “God, Yixing, you’re the cutest grown man I’ve ever met,” he says, and from the peek of gum in his smile it seems he’s genuine about it. And that, for some reason, makes Yixing angry.
“So, I’m cute enough to deliver your lunch every day, but not cute enough for you to like me,” he mutters under his breath.
Yifan’s humor falters. “Like you?” he says, brow crooked in confusion. “Of course I like you, Yixing.”
“Of course you like me, but you don’t like me,” Yixing echoes miserably. “You like me enough to tolerate me a few times a week, enough to laugh and joke with me, but you don’t like me enough to get a coffee with me, or talk to me for more than a few minutes at a time, or give me your goddamned phone number.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Yixing hears shrieked from behind a closed door down the hall.
“Kim Jongdae, take ten large steps away from that door right now!” Yifan hollers over his shoulder. There’s loud footsteps and muffled mumbling, something like I can’t believe I live with such a fucking retard, before it’s quiet again. Yifan turns back to Yixing, a soft look in his eyes. Yixing feels heat rush to his face; his loose tongue, really.
“Yixing,” Yifan says gently, and Yixing can’t look him in the eye. “Are you suggesting that you… like me?”
Yixing’s head snaps up. “Of course I like you!” he gapes, somewhat horrified. “I like you and your habit of speaking too fast when you’re excited, I like the way you’re so serious when you read off test results, I like the awkward turtle way you spoke to me when we first met because it was endearing as much as it was fucking annoying. I like your giant-ass hands. I like your eyebrows for crying out loud Yifan, of course I like you.”
“My nickname actually was dragon in high school,” Yifan says absently, and he shushes Yixing before there’s another outburst.
“Did you really think, Zhang Yixing, that I would leave my lunch at home three times a week completely by accident?” Yifan says. “If so, I suppose that that means that you didn’t think that that was just an excuse to talk to you, hm?”
It takes a few moments for him to completely digest this new information. Yixing, strangely, feels like a child who’s just been berated by his parents.
“Do you mean to tell me,” Yixing articulates very, very slowly, “that you’ve been courting me for the last six months through lunch deliveries?”
“You know, you have a pretty blank look yourself when you speak,” Yifan reproaches without heat. “How could I have known that you like me?”
“I’m - ” Yixing opens his mouth, but can’t seem to find a brutal enough retort. It’s not the first time he’s been scolded for his lazy eyes. “- subtle?” he finishes lamely, and deflates. Yifan gives him a look.
“It seems we both need some help when it comes to talking,” he says matter-of-factly, and he smiles. “What do you say about working on it together? Maybe for lunch on Monday?”
Lunch, together with Yifan. That’s all Yixing’s wanted in these past few months.
“Yes!” he half-shouts in earnest. “Yes.”
“Meet me in the hospital’s lobby, then, so Chanyeol can’t interfere,” Yifan says. His words are light, and his expression is soft. Yifan is full of unpredictability, Yixing thinks, with his gargantuan hands and tiny wrists and angry eyebrows and gummy smiles.
“Hey,” Yifan says suddenly, and Yixing blinks back into focus. “Do you want a piece of this pie? There are only Jongdae and me here, so…”
Yixing’s eyes follow where Yifan is pointing to the box on the table. Oh, he thinks in embarrassment.
“No, I think I’ll save all of my charm for our date,” Yixing replies, trying to be coy about it by winking but failing when half of his face spasms instead.
“A date, is it?” Yifan muses, and his mouth curls at the corners.
“Our first,” Yixing replies archly. “Deal?”
Yifan smiles, giving a full view of his gums. Yixing swears his heart doesn’t flutter.
“Deal.”
--
Come Monday morning, Yixing rocks back and forth on his heels as he waits for Yifan, humming distractedly to himself. The nurses at the information desk keep shooting him glares and raised eyebrows, as though he doesn’t belong. He had tried to spruce up a little bit this morning with a button down and dark jeans, but he’d had to make twice as many deliveries in the morning in order to take the lunch break, and the front of his shirt is irreparably wrinkled.
After a quarter of an hour, Yifan comes bursting out of the stairwell down the hall with a paper bag in his hands, running towards Yixing with his doctor’s coat flying behind him. His eyes are bright, and there’s a flush of excitement high in his cheekbones. Even like this he looks like a fucking model, Yixing thinks with a huff.
“Yixing!” Yifan calls breathlessly, doubling over when he finally reaches where Yixing is waiting with an unimpressed expression. He straightens after a moment, grinning.
“Follow me, I’ve made reservations somewhere,” he says, and Yixing has to bury his face in his hands when Yifan attempts to wiggle his eyebrows. He oddly knows where this is going from the bag in Yifan’s hand. Yifan tugs him by the wrist towards the cafeteria, and yeah, Yixing knows where this is going.
This is different, though. The touch, that is, of Yifan’s long fingers on Yixing’s wrist.
“You’re bold today,” Yixing muses aloud.
“You like me,” is all Yifan says in return as he drags Yixing through the crowded cafeteria. He is not a straightforward man, Yixing surmises amusedly. He lets Yifan to pull him around visitors with trays of food or cups of frozen yoghurt until they reach the doctors’ seating section.
“Ta da!” he says, waving at the table in the far corner. It’s quieter here, only a few nurses and interns huddled by the wall, but on the far table is the most obnoxious display Yixing has ever seen.
First Date!!! the sign boasts, and Yixing imagines Chanyeol with shining eyes as he plays with construction paper and crayons behind the nurse’s station. There’s a bundle of heart-shaped balloons weighed down by a lead thyroid protector, candles, a white tablecloth, a single rose nestled in a graduated cylinder.
“I would have gotten reservations at a legitimate restaurant,” Yifan explains apologetically, opening the paper bag to spoon take-out pasta onto paper plates and gesturing for Yixing to sit, “but I’m on call, unfortunately, and my supervisor is a jerk. When I’m fully licensed I don’t have to kiss his ass anymore.
“Not actually kiss his ass,” Yifan says slyly when Yixing gives him a look. “He’s not my type.”
“If you’re trying to get me to ask what your type really is, I will hurt you,” Yixing deadpans as Yifan leans across the table, smirking.
“Humor me.”
Yifan is bolder, more open than before now that they’re alone. He tells Yixing about his day with pasta sauce smeared at the corner of his mouth, and he pulls at Yixing’s fingers under the tablecloth. His gums make an appearance more than once when he tells Yixing that he’s a romantic.
Yifan likes Yixing, and Yixing can see it in the way Yifan’s ears turn red when their hands touch and the way he begins slurring his words as he talks too fast.
Yixing likes Yifan. Likes Yifan for all of his quirks, for the way his nose scrunches when he laughs, for the way he takes huge, quick bites of food but makes sure to chew and swallow before he talks, for the way he throws a piece of garlic bread across the room when Chanyeol tries to intrude, for the way that he’s simple and single-minded in what he wants: a good job, a nice home, Yixing.
“You know,” Yixing murmurs when they’re finished polishing off a piece of apple pie for dessert (“Oh my god,” Yixing had said when Yifan took it out of the paper bag.) and are just looking at each other, fingers interlocked under the table, “for as much as this was absolutely terrible, it was actually really, really nice for a first date.”
Yifan tilts his head slightly, rests his cheek in the palm of his free hand. “Does that mean you’d like a second? A third?” he asks with feigned seriousness.
Yixing rolls his eyes; he’s rapidly turning into Chen in this way. “You want me to humor you again,” he accuses, disgruntled.
“Is that such a bad thing?” Yifan replies, and his mouth twitches.
Yixing sighs, rolls his eyes one more time, and tugs Yifan up to stand. “Come on,” he says. “Since you didn’t give me a proper date, you have to at least walk me to the door.”
Yifan allows Yixing to drag him away from the mess that they made with a dumb haughty, smitten expression on his face. Yixing colors and just looks straight ahead until they stop at the entrance.
“Well… um… have a nice day? I hope your supervisor doesn’t eviscerate you,” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck. What’s he supposed to do with his hands? Hold Yifan’s? Caress his cheek? Pull him down for a kiss?
Yifan answers that by taking a step back; it’s not a rejection, it’s courtesy. Of course Yifan is a gentleman as well.
“Have fun in class,” he says, and squeezes Yixing’s hands briefly before waving goodbye.
“Yeah. Thanks. See you.” Yixing’s chest feels oddly torn as he steps away. Yifan’s got that forlorn child look he wore so long ago, even though Yixing sees how he steels his face, hardens his eyes in order to hide it. Yixing turns, and it’s harder to leave now, after all this time.
“Hey, Yixing!” Yifan calls. Yixing pauses with his hand on the door. “Come by tomorrow too, if you have time. I’ll make sure to get reservations at an actual restaurant.”
Turning, Yixing gulps, hopeful. “Really?”
“You can come every day, if you want.” It’s a little awkward, it seems, for Yifan to say this so openly now as people stream in through the entrance, but Yixing’s heart swells; at least he’s trying.
It’s May already; the lunch delivery business has been prosperous in the past month, and Zitao’s got more than enough workers so that he no longer needs to rely on Yixing’s good will. That means more time in the afternoons. More time with Yifan.
So Yixing nods fervently. Yifan. I like Yifan. I like spending time with Yifan, he thinks, and it makes his heart clench in his chest.
“I’ll consider that as a promise,” he says, voice strong and sure, and Yifan’s sigh of happiness, the brightness in his eyes, tells Yixing just the same.
Prompt: #1
Length: 5,916 words
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: none
Summary: Yixing delivers lunches.
Notes: hello lovely prompter! so, i basically took your prompt and ran far away with it. initially, i was going to do something like top chef: fanxing edition! but it came out so. bad. this… isn’t much better. it’s loosely based on a documentary about dabbawalas, india’s lunch delivery squad. i hope you enjoy! ♥
Yixing delivers lunches for a living. He tells himself it’s just a part time job that he takes between his morning and afternoon classes at university, biking around with boxes of bentos and thermoses strapped to his basket to reward office workers with a home-cooked meal. In reality, it’s a favor for his friend and roommate, Zitao, whose culmination project for his entrepreneurship requirement is to carry out his own business model. Yixing gets a meager salary at best, despite Zitao’s frantic number crunching, but at least it gives him a chance to get some fresh air and exercise during the day, maybe a few extra tips to stop by 東方新天地 for a bowl of noodles for his own lunch.
Since Zitao’s put him in charge of the touristy area along Wangfujing Street, Yixing gets a lot of calls for hotel concierges or shop owners, too harebrained to remember their own lunch, too wary of Chinese sanitation (gutter oil, eugh) to order takeout. In his three months of delivering, though, this is the first time he’s ever gotten a call for the hospital.
It’s a particularly busy shift, so Yixing bounds his way up the hospital’s stairwell once the service concierge directs him to the OR’s nurses’ station, a warm bento in his hands. The station is nearly dead in the lunch lull except for a pair of young doctors huddled around a computer screen, discussing what sounds like patient imaging results. Yixing clears his throat loudly.
“Excuse me?” he hedges, leaning over the counter, and the doctors give a start before twirling around in their seats. “I’m looking for a Dr. Wu Yifan, chief resident in neurosurgery at this hospital? Would you by any chance know where I could find him?”
The doctor to Yixing’s right with thick brows and a small mouth blinks owlishly before raising his hand in silence. His partner, a man with stick-out ears and rounded cheeks, hits him hard on the arm, as if prompting him to speak.
“Ah, yes,” the doctor yelps, rubbing at his arm and shooting his partner a nasty look. “I’m Wu Yifan. May I help you?”
Yixing sighs in relief. “Your roommate, Chen? Near Fuxingmen Station? He said you forgot your lunch at home today and he wanted to make sure you had something to eat.” He holds out the bento as proof. The doctor, Yifan, just stares blankly at Yixing’s hands before the man with the stick-out ears pinches his arm in exasperation.
“Oh. Ah…” he mumbles, and Yixing frowns, seriously wondering if the doctor is impaired. His face is flushed a light pink from exertion.
“What this dumbass means to say is ‘thank you,’” the other doctor interrupts, rolling his eyes. His Mandarin is accented in a way that Yixing can’t put his finger on. “Do you need any money for the delivery?”
Yixing shakes his head. “Just a tip, if you’d like.”
The doctor promptly shoves his hand into Yifan’s coat pocket, pulling out a fifty-yuan bill. Yixing’s eyes go wide.
“Here you go. Maybe Yifan should leave his lunch at home more often. We’d love to see you again.” And the doctor - Dr. Park, Yixing reads from his nametag - gives a greasy wink as he presses the bill into Yixing’s hand. He turns to face the computer screen again, leaving Yifan to stare at Yixing with something akin to shock and mortification on his face, the bento clutched tightly in his hands.
“O…kay…” Yixing says, brow furrowed at Yifan’s frozen expression. His skin’s still crawling from Dr. Park’s full-toothed grin. “I guess… enjoy your lunch then.” And with a last backward glance, he quickly retreats back down the stairwell to the first floor, shaking his head the whole way. He had never seen a doctor look so stupid in his life.
--
“Hey, I’m sorry man,” Chen says sheepishly a few days later as he opens the front door to his and Yifan’s apartment building. His Mandarin is accented in the same way Dr. Park’s is. “I can’t believe Yifan-ge managed to leave his lunch at home again this week. I’d go give it to him instead, but I have to go to class in a few minutes.”
Yixing shrugs. “It’s no problem, that’s my job.” He accepts the money and lunch box Chen hands to him and is about to leave before he pauses in thought.
“Is your roommate… socially awkward?” Yixing muses aloud, and almost slaps his hand across his mouth. His goddamned tongue.
Chen, thankfully, laughs instead of shuts the door in Yixing’s face. “Kind of,” he admits. “Yifan-ge’s a bit of an idiot around new people, but he’s a real mood maker once you get to know him. I wouldn’t be so worried, if I were you.”
There’s a kind of knowing glint in the man’s eyes that Yixing doesn’t want to contemplate. He flushes and ducks his head in farewell, mounting his bike and speeding down the street, away from Chen. Humming ballads under his breath, he drops off a few packages at a strip of boutiques in his usual good-natured daze before stopping at the hospital.
“You again!” Dr. Park calls delightedly when Yixing makes it up to the nurses’ station, struggling to pin the visitor’s badge to his lapel. The doctor waves forcefully before he jogs down a hallway to his right, and Yixing can hear him shout around the corner, “Yah, Yifan-ge! He’s here!” Yixing blushes as some nurses shoot cursory glances in his direction. Before they can titter behind his back, Dr. Park returns with a disgruntled Yifan in tow, looking extraordinarily satisfied with himself.
“Words, Yifan. Use them,” Dr. Park reminds in a singsong voice, and he winks at Yixing. “Well, I’ve got clinic duty this afternoon. I’ll just leave you here to chat ~ “
“Wait, Chanyeol - ”
But the other doctor’s already gone with another wink and wave. Yifan opens and closes his mouth like a fish in the direction where Dr. Park disappeared, and when he turns back to Yixing he looks very much like a deer caught in headlights. There’s a pregnant silence.
“So,” Yixing tries to begin casually, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Chanyeol, eh? That’s not a Chinese name.” For a moment, he wants to slap himself. God dammit, Yixing, he thinks in anguish, what kind of conversation starter is that?
“Uh, no it’s not. It’s Korean,” Yifan says absently, staring at a point beyond Yixing’s shoulder. He refocuses, and looks Yixing right in the eye. He’s taller by a few inches at least, and he’s pretty handsome with his tousled hair and sharp eyes and defined jaw.
“Look - ah…” Yifan finally says, fumbling a bit with his hands, “I’m sorry about the other day. I’m not normally that, ah, awkward with other people.”
“You weren’t. Awkward, that is,” Yixing lies easily with a small quirk of his lips.
Yifan seems to sense that and rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I was. Anyway, I’m sorry. And thanks, you know, for doing this.” He waves vaguely at the lunch box sitting on the counter. “Things have been really busy lately, since I’m in my last year as a resident, and I tend to forget about things like, uh, eating.”
“You can forget more often,” Yixing says with a wink. “It’s good for my wallet.”
This seems to make whatever tension Yifan feels drain out of his stance, and he throws his head back and laughs. It’s a startling shift from his cool, serious demeanor.
“You’re good at this people thing,” he says, eyes crinkling easily at the corners. “What are you, a communications major? Law?”
“International business grad. Peking University.”
Yifan gives a little crooked smile, and it’s good to his features. “Even better.”
Yixing forgets himself for a moment at the distracting peek of gum above Yifan’s teeth, but then he jumps and checks his watch; he’s running late for his next delivery, and if he wants to make it to his Integrative English course on time he has to leave now.
“Sorry,” he tells Yifan, “but I have to run. I’ve got class in an hour and a few more workers left to feed.”
“Ah…” Yifan falters and drops his smile, looking almost crestfallen. “Well… don’t be a stranger. Oh, wait.” He pulls a bill out of his pocket and holds it out for Yixing to take. “Don’t forget this.”
Yixing waves his hand away. “You gave me a fifty last time,” he says. “More than enough. And if you really want to give it to me…”
“I’ll probably need your help pretty often these next few months while I finish up here,” Yifan finishes with a weak curl of his lips.
“I’ll consider that a promise,” Yixing says, waving, and he backs away toward the stairwell. Yifan waves too, clutching his folder of charts to his chest. He looks, oddly, like a forlorn child.
He’s cute, Yixing thinks as he jumps down a flight of stairs, humming in amusement. When he’s three floors down, he hears a door bang open above him.
“Wait!” Yifan calls. Yixing pauses mid-leap. “I never got your name!”
Yixing grips at the handrail, taking a moment just to laugh. This careless doctor, really.
“Zhang Yixing!” he finally shouts back, and hops down another flight.
Instead of a reply, Yixing hears a low chuckle, and the door to the stairwell shuts. He makes his way down to his bike and finishes his rounds before bolting to class, grinning to himself all the while.
--
It turns out that Yifan does keep his promise very well, because over the next month he makes Chen - who, like Chanyeol, is a Korean exchange student - send him his lunch at least three times a week, sometimes four if he’s particularly forgetful. Much of the time, Yifan is truly busy in surgery or doing rounds, so Yixing hands his lunch off to Chanyeol instead, chats for a bit if he has time before his next delivery.
“Neurosurgery normally doesn’t get many trauma patients,” Chanyeol explains with a shrug, “but if there are huge accidents and emergency surgery needs more hands, they take Yifan as our department’s assistant.”
“He must be good at what he does then, if they pick him over everyone else.”
Chanyeol snorts. “He is,” he says. “His giant hands are good for something, at least.”
Yifan does have very nice hands, Yixing finds himself thinking every so often when he’s biking along Wangfujing. Wide palms and long, tapered fingers. He has to mentally shake himself once in a while, because he’s spent too much of his life these past weeks just thinking about Yifan’s hands.
Yifan warms up to Yixing in increments. It takes a full month of Yifan wringing his fingers around his clipboard or staring at Yixing with that deer-in-the-headlights expression for Yifan to smile more freely, laugh louder than just a chuckle. Another month before Yifan cracks a lame joke about Chanyeol’s bony butt, making Yixing giggle out of sheer incredulity. It’s a bit of a waste of time, talking to Yifan some days; Yixing finds it adorable.
“You’re kind of ridiculous,” he comments one day, and is satisfied to see Yifan’s eyes widen to half-dollar coin size and the tips of his ears turn red. The doctor mumbles something unintelligible and shuffles off to do his rounds, leaving Yixing to shake his head fondly at Yifan’s back.
Although Yixing attributes Yifan’s quietness to his awkward and self-conscious state of being, there are truly times when he’s so tired he can barely keep his eyes open, let alone keep a conversation going. On a hot early April morning, a bus flips over on the freeway (because Beijing traffic is a thing of hell during rush hour) and causes a twenty-car pileup. In the chaos, Yifan is whisked away by the Chief of General Surgery to perform ligations on several of the victims, some in critical condition. After stabilizing his third patient, he takes a break and smiles wanly at Yixing when he stops by.
“Today was the first time I was the primary surgeon without supervision,” he tells Yixing. “It feels like I’m a real doctor now.”
There’s a muted pride behind the strain of exhaustion in Yifan’s voice. It’s boiling hot in the hospital, and Yixing sees a drop of sweat trickle down Yifan’s temple. He wants to wipe it away, along with the dark circles of tiredness underneath his eyes. Yixing takes a gulp of the ice water that Chanyeol (who is, admittedly, not as creepy as Yixing initially thought) had offered him earlier, feeling an overwhelming warmth prickle at his skin.
Yixing learns a lot about Yifan during these brief, stilted chats, like how he grew up in Guangzhou only to move to Canada for his secondary school education (“Please help me not fail English,” Yixing begs shamelessly). Yifan has a soft spot for his mother, whom he hasn’t visited since he finished residency. He bites his lower lip when he’s nervous, taps nonsense rhythms on his thigh as he waits for test results. Buries his face in his hands when he’s second handedly embarrassed, rolls his eyes like a pro whenever Chanyeol’s around.
Yixing likes Yifan. Likes Yifan in a way that makes his skin prickle warm and his hands grow cold. It’s nothing groundbreaking, just wholly real because Yifan is kind, and he’s smart, and he’s handsome. Yixing likes the way that he treats his patients with a quiet, genuine care; to Chanyeol, being a doctor is just a job that his parents wanted him to take, but for Yifan taking care of others is his entire life.
But as much as Yixing bats his eyelashes and makes his small talk, in the nearly four months that he has been delivering lunches to the hospital, he and Yifan have never met outside of nurses’ station, not even for a coffee in the cafeteria downstairs. They’ve never talked more than a few minutes at a time. Yixing has Chen’s number programmed into his phone, for crying out loud, not Yifan’s.
Is he uninterested? he wonders sometimes, and then scolds himself. Yixing is a delivery boy still in school, no career in sight. Yifan is the chief resident at one of the biggest teaching hospitals in the country, a client who occasionally enjoys Yixing’s company during the neurosurgery wing’s downtime. He doesn’t have to be interested at all.
Yixing is angry sometimes, at himself, at Yifan. Angry that an absentminded, awkward turtle of a doctor could make him feel so much. Angry that he’ll never be more than the lunch delivery boy worth only a few moments of Dr. Wu Yifan’s time.
--
“You know,” Zitao says when Yixing gets home one day after classes, “you should be a shareholder if this business ever takes off on its own. You make me more profit than all of my other deliverers combined.”
“That’s because you give me half the salary I deserve,” Yixing says lightly as he watches Zitao pencil numbers into a notebook. Zitao looks up and gives a sheepish grin.
“But on the bright side,” he chirps, closing the notebook and standing to stretch, “today I found a guy who lives near Wangfujing! So you don’t have to go out of your way to do deliveries there anymore.”
Yixing freezes where he’s unpacking his books, mild panic welling up in his stomach.
“No!” he half-shouts, and scrambles when Zitao gives him a funny look. “No, it’s fine, I like doing deliveries along Wangfujing. I get to see, uh, Tiananmen Square all the time,” he decides wildly.
“You enjoy seeing a historical landmark where up to one thousand young students were massacred,” Zitao deadpans. He crosses his arms. “Okay, what’s up.”
Yixing deflates helplessly. “So, there’s this guy…” he begins. Zitao groans.
“No wait, listen to me!” Yixing says hastily. “He’s a doctor at the hospital. I talk to him sometimes. It doesn’t get in the way of business.”
“Doesn’t get in the way of business my butt!” Zitao exclaims. “No wonder you were late coming home from deliveries the whole winter.”
“He’s saving lives, Zitao, I think his lunch can wait half an hour,” Yixing retorts, but Zitao quells his sarcasm with an appraising look. It seems like he finds what he’s searching for when Yixing turns his head away.
“You like him,” Zitao realizes, eyes wide, making Yixing splutter.
“Yes, I like him,” he hisses back. “I like him, so please don’t take me away from my post.”
Zitao suddenly throws his hands above his head, waving them around in exasperation. “You like him and you’re standing here with me?” he shouts, flailing. When Yixing doesn’t answer, he gives a long-suffering huff and gathers Yixing’s bag, shoving it into his arms. Then he proceeds to make little shooing gestures towards the door.
“I’m not letting you back into the room until you bring this doctor with you,” Zitao announces as he nudges (shoves) Yixing out of the room. He grins devilishly as he shuts the door in Yixing’s face.
“Huang Zitao!” Yixing shrieks when he hears the door lock with a click. After attempting to bang down the door with his fists, he slides down the wall to put his head in his knees with a heavy sigh. Zitao’s pretty single-minded in his decision-making, so Yixing resigns himself and drags a heavy book out of his bag to read for the time being.
True to himself, Zitao only lets him back in long after the dinner hour, just so Yixing doesn’t catch a cold sleeping in the hall.
--
Visiting Yifan becomes so routine that Yixing ends up trying to find excuses to go to the hospital, regardless of whether it’s for a delivery or just a chat. Chen rolls his eyes whenever Yixing stops by his apartment unannounced, looking for an extra bag of biscuits or a thermos of tea for Yifan’s lunch.
“You idiot,” Chen complains. “He likes seeing you. You don’t need an excuse. Now quit disturbing my sleep, or else.”
Yixing learns to heed the warning; Chen almost manages to bite Yixing’s pointer finger off when Yixing knocks on his door particularly early one morning.
So, when a week passes without Chen’s call for a delivery, Yixing worries. He tries stopping by the hospital to ask Chanyeol what the heck is going on, but he only finds an unhelpful and rather nasty scrub nurse who tells him to get lost, the doctors aren’t around. He ends up jumping at every phone call he gets, hoping that it’ll be Chen, hoping that Yifan is okay, hoping that he hasn’t done anything wrong. When his mobile rings on the tenth morning and shows an unfamiliar caller, Yixing pounces.
“Hello?” he says into the phone, breathless.
“Yah, Yixing-ge, where are you?”
Yixing doesn’t recognize the tinny voice over the phone, but the familiar accent makes him gape.
“Chanyeol? How did you get my phone number?”
“Jongdae-ah gave it to me!”
“Jongdae…ah?”
Yixing can almost hear Chanyeol roll his eyes. “I mean Chen, Yixing,” he says. “But anyway, where the hell have you been? Yifan is sick!”
Yifan?
Sick?
Yixing gulps, and takes a deep breath. He doesn’t have the heart to respond.
“Not that sick, you idiot,” Chanyeol finally says after a moment with another audible eye roll. “He’s got the flu. Jeez, and I thought Yifan was the dramatic one.”
Yifan? Dramatic? Yixing’s head spins, and he lets out a low breath through his teeth.
“Where is he?” he asks. “Can I see him?”
“He’s been waiting to see you, man. He’s at his apartment. Chen’s taking care of him.”
“Thanks, Chanyeol! Talk to you later!”
“Wait, Yixing - !”
Yixing hangs up before Chanyeol has a chance to finish, and he bolts to his front door to grab his bike lock key off of the hook.
Is it impolite to go without taking something with me? he thinks wildly, and glances around his living room to look for something to bring. Finding nothing, he stumbles to the kitchen, scanning the counter and searching the refrigerator until he finds -
Yixing almost bangs his head against the refrigerator door. It’s better than nothing, he supposes, and snatches the box before running out of the door and down the stairs, mounting his bike and pedaling as fast as he can to where Yifan is waiting for him.
--
Yixing hesitates before knocking on Yifan’s door, wondering if he really belongs here in front of Yifan’s apartment with a sketchy box in his hands, looking like some kind of thug in a hoodie and ripped jeans. He bangs his head loudly against the door.
He’s been waiting to see you, man, Chanyeol had said. Yeah, Yixing, you idiot.
Yixing’s internal debate is cut short when the door abruptly opens, and he has to do a fast twist of his torso in order to save his face and the box in his hands from the floor. Chen follows the movement with a look of incredulous concern.
“You’re here?” he says. “Now? Where have you been for the last week?”
Yixing gapes, and straightens the rips in his jeans. “You almost bit my finger off the last time I came on my own, Chen,” he says.
“Pssh, Yifan-ge could have sewed it back on,” Chen says and waves a careless hand.
“You could have told me that Yifan was sick,” Yixing also points out. “You have my phone number.”
“Oh.” Chen grins too wide, showing all of his teeth, eyes curling at the corners. “I guess I could’ve. But where’s the fun in that?”
Yixing mutters something dark underneath his breath about reliability, and pushes past Chen into the apartment. The place is sparse, just like it has been the other times Yixing has come by; the only thing that indicates Yifan’s existence is a neat pile of patient charts on the coffee table in the living room next to a used mug and notebook.
“Yixing? Is that you?”
He and Chen jump and whirl around to see a door creak open at the end of the short hallway leading away from the lounge. Yifan pads unsteadily out of his room, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He’s got his hair tied into a tiny ponytail, and there are thick white socks on his feet. And he’s wearing glasses. Glasses. Yixing kind of wants to flail with his arms, but then remembers the box in his hands.
“Oh. Hi, Yi - er, Dr. Wu. Uh…” he flails verbally instead as Yifan peers at him blearily. “Dr. Park told me you had the flu, so I, uh, wanted to drop by and wish you well, or something. I couldn’t find a chicken soup place on the way here, but I have this instead.” He holds out the box, chagrinned.
Yifan takes the box and opens it with a sharp eyebrow raised. He sniffles. Yixing can see the remnants of the flu in the flush of the apples of Yifan’s cheeks, and there’s a crease mark from a pillow running across his forehead. He looks so adorably ruffled that Yixing’s insides flail a little bit, too.
“You couldn’t find chicken soup,” Yifan says slowly after a moment, staring down at the contents of the box, “so you brought… an apple pie.”
Yixing nods fervently. Yifan sighs.
“Apple pie,” he repeats.
Yixing shrugs helplessly. “Delivery?”
Yifan takes a breath as he sets the box on the coffee table. “Chen, will you excuse us for a moment?” he says in a level voice. Chen rolls his eyes (this seems to be a habit that he and Yifan picked up from each other), but obeys and shuffles to his room, swinging his arms childishly at his sides. Yifan watches his retreating back, turning back to Yixing when a door slams shut.
“Yixing,” he says in the same tone of voice, and the seriousness of his expression is actually kind of frightening. Yixing gulps.
But then Yifan breaks out in such explosive peals of laughter that Yixing actually jumps.
“What the fuck, Yifan!” he yells.
Yifan honest-to-god giggles and wipes tears from the corners of his eyes. “Sorry,” he says. “But by god, Yixing, you’re really, really cute.”
Yixing is so surprised that Yifan could actually make a noise that loud that it takes a few moments for him to catch that last comment. Cute? Yifan thinks he’s cute?
“You think I’m cute?” he echoes, dazed.
Yifan chuckles. “God, Yixing, you’re the cutest grown man I’ve ever met,” he says, and from the peek of gum in his smile it seems he’s genuine about it. And that, for some reason, makes Yixing angry.
“So, I’m cute enough to deliver your lunch every day, but not cute enough for you to like me,” he mutters under his breath.
Yifan’s humor falters. “Like you?” he says, brow crooked in confusion. “Of course I like you, Yixing.”
“Of course you like me, but you don’t like me,” Yixing echoes miserably. “You like me enough to tolerate me a few times a week, enough to laugh and joke with me, but you don’t like me enough to get a coffee with me, or talk to me for more than a few minutes at a time, or give me your goddamned phone number.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Yixing hears shrieked from behind a closed door down the hall.
“Kim Jongdae, take ten large steps away from that door right now!” Yifan hollers over his shoulder. There’s loud footsteps and muffled mumbling, something like I can’t believe I live with such a fucking retard, before it’s quiet again. Yifan turns back to Yixing, a soft look in his eyes. Yixing feels heat rush to his face; his loose tongue, really.
“Yixing,” Yifan says gently, and Yixing can’t look him in the eye. “Are you suggesting that you… like me?”
Yixing’s head snaps up. “Of course I like you!” he gapes, somewhat horrified. “I like you and your habit of speaking too fast when you’re excited, I like the way you’re so serious when you read off test results, I like the awkward turtle way you spoke to me when we first met because it was endearing as much as it was fucking annoying. I like your giant-ass hands. I like your eyebrows for crying out loud Yifan, of course I like you.”
“My nickname actually was dragon in high school,” Yifan says absently, and he shushes Yixing before there’s another outburst.
“Did you really think, Zhang Yixing, that I would leave my lunch at home three times a week completely by accident?” Yifan says. “If so, I suppose that that means that you didn’t think that that was just an excuse to talk to you, hm?”
It takes a few moments for him to completely digest this new information. Yixing, strangely, feels like a child who’s just been berated by his parents.
“Do you mean to tell me,” Yixing articulates very, very slowly, “that you’ve been courting me for the last six months through lunch deliveries?”
“You know, you have a pretty blank look yourself when you speak,” Yifan reproaches without heat. “How could I have known that you like me?”
“I’m - ” Yixing opens his mouth, but can’t seem to find a brutal enough retort. It’s not the first time he’s been scolded for his lazy eyes. “- subtle?” he finishes lamely, and deflates. Yifan gives him a look.
“It seems we both need some help when it comes to talking,” he says matter-of-factly, and he smiles. “What do you say about working on it together? Maybe for lunch on Monday?”
Lunch, together with Yifan. That’s all Yixing’s wanted in these past few months.
“Yes!” he half-shouts in earnest. “Yes.”
“Meet me in the hospital’s lobby, then, so Chanyeol can’t interfere,” Yifan says. His words are light, and his expression is soft. Yifan is full of unpredictability, Yixing thinks, with his gargantuan hands and tiny wrists and angry eyebrows and gummy smiles.
“Hey,” Yifan says suddenly, and Yixing blinks back into focus. “Do you want a piece of this pie? There are only Jongdae and me here, so…”
Yixing’s eyes follow where Yifan is pointing to the box on the table. Oh, he thinks in embarrassment.
“No, I think I’ll save all of my charm for our date,” Yixing replies, trying to be coy about it by winking but failing when half of his face spasms instead.
“A date, is it?” Yifan muses, and his mouth curls at the corners.
“Our first,” Yixing replies archly. “Deal?”
Yifan smiles, giving a full view of his gums. Yixing swears his heart doesn’t flutter.
“Deal.”
--
Come Monday morning, Yixing rocks back and forth on his heels as he waits for Yifan, humming distractedly to himself. The nurses at the information desk keep shooting him glares and raised eyebrows, as though he doesn’t belong. He had tried to spruce up a little bit this morning with a button down and dark jeans, but he’d had to make twice as many deliveries in the morning in order to take the lunch break, and the front of his shirt is irreparably wrinkled.
After a quarter of an hour, Yifan comes bursting out of the stairwell down the hall with a paper bag in his hands, running towards Yixing with his doctor’s coat flying behind him. His eyes are bright, and there’s a flush of excitement high in his cheekbones. Even like this he looks like a fucking model, Yixing thinks with a huff.
“Yixing!” Yifan calls breathlessly, doubling over when he finally reaches where Yixing is waiting with an unimpressed expression. He straightens after a moment, grinning.
“Follow me, I’ve made reservations somewhere,” he says, and Yixing has to bury his face in his hands when Yifan attempts to wiggle his eyebrows. He oddly knows where this is going from the bag in Yifan’s hand. Yifan tugs him by the wrist towards the cafeteria, and yeah, Yixing knows where this is going.
This is different, though. The touch, that is, of Yifan’s long fingers on Yixing’s wrist.
“You’re bold today,” Yixing muses aloud.
“You like me,” is all Yifan says in return as he drags Yixing through the crowded cafeteria. He is not a straightforward man, Yixing surmises amusedly. He lets Yifan to pull him around visitors with trays of food or cups of frozen yoghurt until they reach the doctors’ seating section.
“Ta da!” he says, waving at the table in the far corner. It’s quieter here, only a few nurses and interns huddled by the wall, but on the far table is the most obnoxious display Yixing has ever seen.
First Date!!! the sign boasts, and Yixing imagines Chanyeol with shining eyes as he plays with construction paper and crayons behind the nurse’s station. There’s a bundle of heart-shaped balloons weighed down by a lead thyroid protector, candles, a white tablecloth, a single rose nestled in a graduated cylinder.
“I would have gotten reservations at a legitimate restaurant,” Yifan explains apologetically, opening the paper bag to spoon take-out pasta onto paper plates and gesturing for Yixing to sit, “but I’m on call, unfortunately, and my supervisor is a jerk. When I’m fully licensed I don’t have to kiss his ass anymore.
“Not actually kiss his ass,” Yifan says slyly when Yixing gives him a look. “He’s not my type.”
“If you’re trying to get me to ask what your type really is, I will hurt you,” Yixing deadpans as Yifan leans across the table, smirking.
“Humor me.”
Yifan is bolder, more open than before now that they’re alone. He tells Yixing about his day with pasta sauce smeared at the corner of his mouth, and he pulls at Yixing’s fingers under the tablecloth. His gums make an appearance more than once when he tells Yixing that he’s a romantic.
Yifan likes Yixing, and Yixing can see it in the way Yifan’s ears turn red when their hands touch and the way he begins slurring his words as he talks too fast.
Yixing likes Yifan. Likes Yifan for all of his quirks, for the way his nose scrunches when he laughs, for the way he takes huge, quick bites of food but makes sure to chew and swallow before he talks, for the way he throws a piece of garlic bread across the room when Chanyeol tries to intrude, for the way that he’s simple and single-minded in what he wants: a good job, a nice home, Yixing.
“You know,” Yixing murmurs when they’re finished polishing off a piece of apple pie for dessert (“Oh my god,” Yixing had said when Yifan took it out of the paper bag.) and are just looking at each other, fingers interlocked under the table, “for as much as this was absolutely terrible, it was actually really, really nice for a first date.”
Yifan tilts his head slightly, rests his cheek in the palm of his free hand. “Does that mean you’d like a second? A third?” he asks with feigned seriousness.
Yixing rolls his eyes; he’s rapidly turning into Chen in this way. “You want me to humor you again,” he accuses, disgruntled.
“Is that such a bad thing?” Yifan replies, and his mouth twitches.
Yixing sighs, rolls his eyes one more time, and tugs Yifan up to stand. “Come on,” he says. “Since you didn’t give me a proper date, you have to at least walk me to the door.”
Yifan allows Yixing to drag him away from the mess that they made with a dumb haughty, smitten expression on his face. Yixing colors and just looks straight ahead until they stop at the entrance.
“Well… um… have a nice day? I hope your supervisor doesn’t eviscerate you,” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck. What’s he supposed to do with his hands? Hold Yifan’s? Caress his cheek? Pull him down for a kiss?
Yifan answers that by taking a step back; it’s not a rejection, it’s courtesy. Of course Yifan is a gentleman as well.
“Have fun in class,” he says, and squeezes Yixing’s hands briefly before waving goodbye.
“Yeah. Thanks. See you.” Yixing’s chest feels oddly torn as he steps away. Yifan’s got that forlorn child look he wore so long ago, even though Yixing sees how he steels his face, hardens his eyes in order to hide it. Yixing turns, and it’s harder to leave now, after all this time.
“Hey, Yixing!” Yifan calls. Yixing pauses with his hand on the door. “Come by tomorrow too, if you have time. I’ll make sure to get reservations at an actual restaurant.”
Turning, Yixing gulps, hopeful. “Really?”
“You can come every day, if you want.” It’s a little awkward, it seems, for Yifan to say this so openly now as people stream in through the entrance, but Yixing’s heart swells; at least he’s trying.
It’s May already; the lunch delivery business has been prosperous in the past month, and Zitao’s got more than enough workers so that he no longer needs to rely on Yixing’s good will. That means more time in the afternoons. More time with Yifan.
So Yixing nods fervently. Yifan. I like Yifan. I like spending time with Yifan, he thinks, and it makes his heart clench in his chest.
“I’ll consider that as a promise,” he says, voice strong and sure, and Yifan’s sigh of happiness, the brightness in his eyes, tells Yixing just the same.