[FOR EVERYONE] 無常 (IMPERMANENCE)
RECIPIENT: everyone
TITLE: 無常 (Impermanence)
RATING: PG-13
LENGTH: ~3800 words
WARNINGS: mentions of insomnia and sleeping pills, minor character death
SUMMARY: Lu Han and Yixing drift apart as their world falls over the edge.
FINAL NOTES: Firstly, thank you to my beautiful recipient who left such gorgeous prompts; I really hope this story meets at least a tiny piece of your expectations. I owe you so much. And everyone really needs to read the poem prompt that inspired this story. Secondly, a huge thanks to B for talking to me about Holderness Coast and reading my poems at the beginning of the summer. This plot owes a great deal to you. Thirdly, a heartfelt thanks to the mods for being so understanding in the light of scheduling migraines. Last but never least, an enormous thanks to A for beta-ing despite an extreme lack of sleep, tlist for always being there for me, and of course S, the most glorious of marsupials.
then
When they were young, Baekhyun would come running over shouting, "Lay-Lay! Lu-Lu!" and they would emerge from their houses and go scramble along the edges of the cliffs that stood tall and proud, ocean lapping fiercely at their base. Lu Han would drop stones into the giant waves and they would watch the stone sink down into the water, waves undisturbed, or else create waves rippling out to bump into the bigger waves before losing their direction in the strong current. Baekhyun might drag his cousin Kyungsoo out of the library and they would all climb up and down the rocks, looking for bird eggs and catching fish in little tide pools.
This was when the cliffs were still mostly standing, small earth slides the only testament to the potential for change greater than the usual tides and seasons.
▽▽▽
In the spring they watched a small seagull get pecked to death by a hawk and the first house started to slip, garden-first, into the sea. Baekhyun chased off the hawk while Lu Han helped Yixing gather up the broken scraps of body into his shaking hands. They dug a small hole in the sand and Kyungsoo read a small eulogy over it, adjusting his glasses furiously to hide his water-bright eyes.
Lu Han heard about the house in the next town over and ran next door to Yixing's house shouting "Lay! Lay!" because he knew the place where they buried the bird was not far off from the newly eroded edge of the cliff.
He didn't expect to find the house in chaos, Yixing's mum crying on the telephone and Yixing curled in a corner, eyes bone dry and burning a hole through the heavy air with the intensity of his gaze.
His mother came to the door then and called him back, explaining quietly as they walked back up the path and the dew from the grass stuck to his shoes.
"Kyungsoo went to see the grave and apparently it was underwater because of the change in the cliffs and the tide and he waded out and got caught in the riptide."
And Lu Han understood that he would not be able to play with Kyungsoo again, run through the sand shouting and kicking grains in the air, or make fun of him for almost living at the library while secretly admiring his reading skills.
The next time he went over to Yixing's house his friend seemed back to normal, even if his eyes were a little red and it looked like he hasn't slept. When Yixing's mum called him out of the bedroom for something, Lu Han noticed a small notebook on the desk. Curious as usual, he flipped it open to the latest page.
Craters
When the fish died
They left behind
Massive holes
In the sand
Running down the beach
We tripped up
Ankle deep
The rip tide pulled us
out from
Underneath
Lu Han wasn't sure if he understood it, but somehow it made him feel sad. Hearing Yixing's steps outside in the hall, he quickly closed the notebook and put it back. Maybe he could tell Yixing about the new soccer coach at school and cheer him up.
▽▽▽
Baekhyun went away for high school after that; he lived with his grandmother in a small village far inland. Lu Han wasn't sure if it had something to do with the fact that he hadn't seen Baekhyun's mother come out of the house since the funeral. He missed Baekhyun of course but he missed Yixing more; Yixing who was allowed to go visit Baekhyun at his grandmother's house every holiday while he had to stay home with his parents and study.
"Don't you like me anymore?" Lu Han asked Yixing who was packing for yet another trip to Baekhyun's grandmother's house. Yixing only smiled.
"You know I like you," he said and turned back to his packing. Lu Han spent the rest of the afternoon pouting but gave up when no one except Yixing's father noticed, and only to inquire as to whether he had perhaps eaten something expired as he seemed to be having a stomach upset.
▽▽▽
Lu Han had to go to university in the city while Yixing finished his last year and got to stay in town. Yixing hardly ever called him but Lu Han knew everything he was up to and all the times he went to visit Baekhyun, thanks to his chatty mum.
"You should come home and visit instead of complaining about why Yixing doesn't call you," she said in affectionate exasperation after Lu Han's tenth call that week. Lu Han only sulked and hung up the phone in a huff. Let Yixing come to him.
But the seasons passed and there was still a certain name conspicuously absent from his phone call history. His mum called one day to let him know that Yixing was going to be going away to university in the fall, and wouldn't Lu Han come home for once?
"I miss you, we miss you, you haven't been home in a whole year."
Lu Han hung up the phone and looked at himself in the mirror. He was pretty cute, he had to admit, and he had no lack of potential suitors among both the male and female student populations.
"Lu-Lu," he asked his reflection, using Baekhyun's childish pet name to address himself. "What's wrong with you? Why doesn't Lay-Lay like you?" But his reflection only looked as confused as he felt.
▽▽▽
He decided to go home on the spur of the moment. He'd been walking back from picking up his final marks, all straight-A's but it didn't matter, nothing mattered because his most important person was slipping away and there was nothing he could do about it. He'd been walking through the park on campus, watching the happy couples wrapped in warm summer embraces, when he made up his mind.
"You need to finally do something about it, Lu-Lu," he scolded himself in the mirror later that evening when he was back in his dorm. "Stop sulking and grow up!" He glared at his reflection who only glared back, looking completely frustrated.
He took the night bus without telling his mother, just throwing random articles into a knapsack while running out the door, and then forgetting it on the bench at the bus terminal anyway.
Pale tendrils of pink dawn were just beginning to creep up the dark wall of the sky when he found himself standing on Yixing's front step, panting because he'd run as soon as his feet had touched the familiar ground.
"Now what?" he asked the mirror imagine of his face cast upon the glass of the front door. He raised his hand to knock, then lowered it again, and was just about to turn and slip over to his home when the door opened suddenly.
Lu Han could see his shocked face mirrored in Yixing's questioning eyes. He had no idea what to say, how to explain, but Yixing, rubbing sleepy eyes, only laughed.
"I missed you," he said.
And all of a sudden Lu Han was so angry that his voice shook.
"If you missed me," and he was shaking so much his teeth were almost shattering, "why didn't you visit? Or even call me?" Everything felt wrong, and his reflection in Yixing's eyes was mocking him.
"That's how much he missed you," the reflection seemed to be saying. "That's how much you're worth."
Yixing only looked confused.
"But you were busy..." he explained, voice matter-of-fact. "I didn't want to bother you of course." He smiled kindly and reached out to take Lu Han's arm, but Lu Han snatched it back before the slender fingers made contact with the goosebumps running up and down his arms.
Yixing's confused expression changed to one of hurt, and Lu Han felt even worse, but the words tumbled out of his mouth before he could close his lips.
"You abandoned me," he said, unable to keep the accusation out of his tone. An angry tear dropped out of one eye and disappeared into the pavement.
Yixing looked devastated. "I was always here?"
Lu Han's reflection taunted him. "You're not going to lose him," it said. "You already did."
Lu Han ignored the reflection and the empty feeling in his stomach and Yixing's emotions that he could never really understand. He thought about cliffs and things sliding off into the sea and losses that can never be replaced. Then he leaned forward to lay a gentle kiss on Yixing's mouth. Yixing kissed back.
now
"He doesn't look at you like he used to."
Lu Han is fixing his hair in the mirror, the last finishing touch, and his reflection reminds him of things he'd rather forget.
Like how Yixing always used to come and watch him get dressed, arrange his hair, and smile that dreamy smile of his that makes Lu Han glow.
"He doesn't write poems about you anymore either."
Lu Han calls a soft goodbye to his husband as he leaves for the long drive to the city. Yixing doesn't reply. As Lu Han drives away, he can hear the ocean waves slowly eating at the cliff below their house.
When he returns from the party, slightly buzzed but not tipsy, even if Yixing forgot to tell him to be safe, the light is still on.
"Yixing?"
There's no answer. Lu Han steps lightly forward to hover on the threshold. His husband is writing, crossing out words and then piecing the letters back together again.
"Are you coming to bed?" he asks, his voice hushed.
Yixing shakes his head. Lu Han glances at the bottle of pills on the shelf. It's half empty.
The bed is still cold when he wakes up at dawn, sunrise painting the white sheets red. The light from the writing room is on, and he can hear the scratching of a pen and the crumpling of paper. Doubt eats away at the cliffs.
▽▽▽
Lu Han looks at the flowchart of his newest project and sighs. If only relationships could be as easy as conquering dungeons and defeating monsters.
Lu Han designs video games. His mother still hasn't forgiven him for not taking over the family pharmacy, but Yixing has always encouraged him to do what he wants. After he permanently damaged his knee in high school his soccer dreams were over, and he'd resigned himself to med school and pills for the rest of his life.
And then Yixing had loved him back.
He looks at his face reflected against the glass of the computer screen.
"Is that still true?"
He doesn't know anymore. The hero dies and he makes another monster.
Lu Han is exhausted; another conference to endure which was just an excuse for programmers to get drunk and ruin expensive suits and sleep with sponsors.
It's foggy as he's driving home; it's fortunate that the sun hasn't set yet but he still almost gets lost in the fog, mixing up his turn off for the one to the town that doesn't exist anymore.
The town that slipped off the edge.
Yixing is in the back garden when he gets home; black hair dark against the grey sky.
He's peering over the edge into the waves. Lu Han slowly steps out of the car, door slamming shut with a muffled bang behind him. Yixing doesn't look up.
"Are you okay?" Lu Han can feel the worry swimming up again out of the dark, the worry that lives permanently at the bottom of his chest, constricting his breathing.
Yixing talks to the waves. "I was thinking about Kyungsoo."
Kyungsoo.
The cliffs only take away and nothing comes back.
"I miss him," Lu Han says. It's not exactly a lie, he does really miss his childhood friend. He just misses his husband more.
Yixing drops a stone from his hand into the water. It disappears into the dark without a splash. "Baekhyun's grandmother died."
Lu Han thinks about long summers doing homework, when Yixing and Baekhyun played together.
Yixing mentioned it several times in his published book of poetry; the one that won so many awards.
"Impermanence."
"Are you going to the funeral?" Lu Han's voice is quiet in the mist, his words thrown back to hit him in the face.
Yixing nods.
He hasn't left the house in three years now, but he'll leave for Baekhyun. Lu Han steps back from the edge, dirt crumbling under his feet.
▽▽▽
There's a woman at the gala event who won't leave him alone. He's already upset - the funeral is right now and he's Baekhyun's friend too, but work is work and as lead designer he has to play the crowd.
She has followed him to the balcony and as he looks over the ocean of lights, the city splayed out below, he thinks about other times. All the people who wanted him in university but he’d turned them down because he had someone.
He catches a glimpse of his face in the mirrored wall panels.
"Do you still have someone?" His reflection reminds Lu Han every day that he has never deserved Yixing, and maybe Yixing is starting to realize it.
The woman brushes her fingers in false chance across his chilled skin. It hurts.
It still hurts as he drives home in the dark, headlamps barely cutting through the thick blackness. The lights are still on in the house. Yixing must be back from the funeral. The waves on the rocks are louder, tonight in the dark when the moon is shadowed.
He peers into the writing room but Yixing isn't there; only a small landslide of crumpled paper and a crushed fountain pen.
"That was your anniversary present to Yixing when he got published for the fist time." Lu Han's reflection stares at him from the silvered glass of the lampshade.
There's an empty pill bottle on the desk.
Suddenly Lu Han is running.
Yixing is lying in the floor of the bathroom, fluorescent lights bleaching his skin like the lights in his father's compounding room at the pharmacy. So many sleeping pills.
Lu Han can't breathe; the ocean in his chest has overflowed the shore. He crumples onto the cold tiles, trembling fingers feeling for a pulse.
Yixing sighs softly. He's just sleeping.
They stay like that for a long time until Lu Han is able to stand again, lifting his too frail husband into his arms to carry to the bedroom and tuck into bed. He himself sits alone in the back room until dawn, staring out at the coming storm he can't see in the dark.
▽▽▽
His phone rings as he's wiping his red, sleepless eyes in the mirror.
"Hello?"
"Lu-Lu?" It's Baekhyun.
"Yes?"
"This is Baekhyun." The bubbly voice from Lu Han's childhood memories sounds stretched, too much soap spread over too much air.
"My heartfelt condolences; I feel awful about missing the funeral."
Baekhyun laughs like he used to but the sound is fragile. "That's okay. Lay-Lay explained."
Lu Han bites his lip. He wishes that he'd been the one to think of that name first.
"You wish for a lot of things," his reflection in the mirror mocks him.
There's a rustling over the phone line and Lu Han can hear a different voice. A brighter voice. "What kind of wine do you want, Baekhyun?"
Baekhyun answers, phone held away from his mouth because his voice comes back muffled. "You can pick, as long as you get muesli for breakfast and not your dumb frosted flakes."
When his voice comes back it's warmer, brighter. "I'm headed back to the city this afternoon but could we maybe meet for coffee?"
Lu Han doesn't want to face his friend but he has to go.
Yixing is writing when he closes the front door.
▽▽▽
Baekhyun isn't the only one at the coffee shop. There's a bright-eyed man sitting in the chair pulled up next to him, Baekhyun snuggled into his shoulder.
"This is Jongdae," Baekhyun says. "We're getting married next year." His eyes are red and swollen but his smile is beautiful.
Lu Han feels terrible. He has suspected Baekhyun all these years for nothing.
"Maybe Baekhyun never wavered, but that doesn't mean anything about Yixing." His reflection in the car mirror won't let it go.
Yixing is in the back garden, the wind whipping his dark hair around as the storm approaches, but Lu Han walks straight into the house. There's a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc somewhere. He's walking to the kitchen with the olive green bottle when a paper in the work room catches his eye. It's crumpled like all the other ones, but the ink spots are so heavy they're bleeding into the floor.
He's leaning down with a sigh when a word catches his eye and he unfolds the page.
it's all about me and you and everyone
that ever loved anyone i don't count
i had a dream that everything we said
was obscene and we were lonely
but we're smart and pretty lonely anyway
not like a friday before the weekend
we all know deep inside it's monday
and we all have to wake up and die
you and me and in between
we cry a lot and never die
it's sad the things we do sometimes
we laugh a lot through rain
and then there was a ghost of spring
it said the roses were the promise
and we sang a lullaby to me and you
and made a prayer so things wouldn't end
and they didn't but it isn't the same now
everything has changed and gone whichever way
we are together night and day and yet
when last we met i think was half past two
the other saturday last christmas week
and though we always speak we never say
the things that need to be said we never
touch anymore in dreams and never maybe
but we don't even know how to say goodbye
i know because i tried the other day at meal
but all that came out was a pass the cheese
and everything we say: it never means a thing
if one of us would go away it would never be
because i am a part of you and you a part of me
and yet the whole world in between
and everything is buried in between
The ink spots his fingers as he crumples the paper back into a tight ball and throws it away.
His reflection in the window doesn't have to say anything at all.
▽▽▽
He's driving toward the city; the storm has interrupted the internet and he needs to submit an important floor plan to animation.
"It's ironic that you're planning maps when you're so lost." His reflection in the side mirror is looking at him with a disgusted expression.
Maybe it's time to give up.
Yixing obviously doesn't want him anyway; the poem is proof enough.
The static on the radio dissolves into a voice.
"Emergency broadcast: the town of C- is currently in extreme danger of accelerated erosion and landslides due to the approaching storm, we repeat, extreme caution is to be exercised and those in high risk dwellings are to evacuate at once -"
Lu Han crushes the brake pedal under his foot, the tires screaming against the wet pavement.
Yixing never listens to the radio.
The cliffs are crumbling when he tears back into town, tree branches scratching the outside of the vehicle. His reflection says nothing.
Yixing is in the front garden, pen in his hand like an afterthought. Lu Han gasps silently and stumbles across the lawn, pulling his husband back from the house as it slowly, silently slips into the ocean. The front walk hanging off into the air and the neatly weeded flower bed are all that remain of their life.
There's nothing here for Lu Han's reflection. He slowly takes Yixing's hand, and his husband squeezes his fingers gently as they stand together, looking at the edge.
epilogue
They will find a new house, a sunny red brick cottage with roses over the gate and tiger lilies in the backyard beside the marigolds mixed in with the kitchen gardens.
Light will shine in the windows every morning, and one day at breakfast Lu Han will shyly hand his husband a slip of paper before blushing and leaving the room, only to peer around the doorway.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Sugar is sweet
And Lay belongs with Lu.
Yixing will smile, tucking the paper into his pocket. He's trying.
Out in the hallway Lu Han will grin shyly to himself before tiptoeing away because there's a crisis in the programming department but there always is one. He'll leave early if he has to though, because he wants to make it back in time to eat supper at home. He's trying, too.
And one sunny afternoon, gold painting the world in a summer glow, Lu Han will get up from his computer for a breather between character sketches and wander over to Yixing's work room. The garbage can will be empty, a single sheet of paper lying open on the desk.
i sit in the shadows
sipping cool water from a cracked cup
i don't know why
maybe i hope to catch on the sharpness and bleed
give the pure water a drop of reality
all our mistakes come back to me
watching the bees on the flowers
under the ozone-less sky
yet somehow life goes on
my cup is empty and i'm forced to go out into the sun to refill it
seeing a butterfly that i couldn't from the shadows
i look at it yearning
but it takes off into the burning sky and is gone
coming back with my glass full i stumble
water flies out of the cup
arching down to earth to feed a wilting flower
a bee caresses my cheek as if in thanks
on her way back to the hive with a load of pollen for the pupae
Setting the delicate piece of paper back down, he'll quietly walk through the back patio doors, open in the warm day. Yixing will be sitting on the garden bench, bathed in light, a single butterfly perched on one finger. Treading lightly over the soft grass, Lu Han will step out into the sunlight to join his husband. Their skin will tingle as they touch, and Yixing will look at Lu Han and smile, offering him the tiny fragment of orange hope alighted on his hand.
TITLE: 無常 (Impermanence)
RATING: PG-13
LENGTH: ~3800 words
WARNINGS: mentions of insomnia and sleeping pills, minor character death
SUMMARY: Lu Han and Yixing drift apart as their world falls over the edge.
FINAL NOTES: Firstly, thank you to my beautiful recipient who left such gorgeous prompts; I really hope this story meets at least a tiny piece of your expectations. I owe you so much. And everyone really needs to read the poem prompt that inspired this story. Secondly, a huge thanks to B for talking to me about Holderness Coast and reading my poems at the beginning of the summer. This plot owes a great deal to you. Thirdly, a heartfelt thanks to the mods for being so understanding in the light of scheduling migraines. Last but never least, an enormous thanks to A for beta-ing despite an extreme lack of sleep, tlist for always being there for me, and of course S, the most glorious of marsupials.
then
When they were young, Baekhyun would come running over shouting, "Lay-Lay! Lu-Lu!" and they would emerge from their houses and go scramble along the edges of the cliffs that stood tall and proud, ocean lapping fiercely at their base. Lu Han would drop stones into the giant waves and they would watch the stone sink down into the water, waves undisturbed, or else create waves rippling out to bump into the bigger waves before losing their direction in the strong current. Baekhyun might drag his cousin Kyungsoo out of the library and they would all climb up and down the rocks, looking for bird eggs and catching fish in little tide pools.
This was when the cliffs were still mostly standing, small earth slides the only testament to the potential for change greater than the usual tides and seasons.
▽▽▽
In the spring they watched a small seagull get pecked to death by a hawk and the first house started to slip, garden-first, into the sea. Baekhyun chased off the hawk while Lu Han helped Yixing gather up the broken scraps of body into his shaking hands. They dug a small hole in the sand and Kyungsoo read a small eulogy over it, adjusting his glasses furiously to hide his water-bright eyes.
Lu Han heard about the house in the next town over and ran next door to Yixing's house shouting "Lay! Lay!" because he knew the place where they buried the bird was not far off from the newly eroded edge of the cliff.
He didn't expect to find the house in chaos, Yixing's mum crying on the telephone and Yixing curled in a corner, eyes bone dry and burning a hole through the heavy air with the intensity of his gaze.
His mother came to the door then and called him back, explaining quietly as they walked back up the path and the dew from the grass stuck to his shoes.
"Kyungsoo went to see the grave and apparently it was underwater because of the change in the cliffs and the tide and he waded out and got caught in the riptide."
And Lu Han understood that he would not be able to play with Kyungsoo again, run through the sand shouting and kicking grains in the air, or make fun of him for almost living at the library while secretly admiring his reading skills.
The next time he went over to Yixing's house his friend seemed back to normal, even if his eyes were a little red and it looked like he hasn't slept. When Yixing's mum called him out of the bedroom for something, Lu Han noticed a small notebook on the desk. Curious as usual, he flipped it open to the latest page.
Craters
When the fish died
They left behind
Massive holes
In the sand
Running down the beach
We tripped up
Ankle deep
The rip tide pulled us
out from
Underneath
Lu Han wasn't sure if he understood it, but somehow it made him feel sad. Hearing Yixing's steps outside in the hall, he quickly closed the notebook and put it back. Maybe he could tell Yixing about the new soccer coach at school and cheer him up.
▽▽▽
Baekhyun went away for high school after that; he lived with his grandmother in a small village far inland. Lu Han wasn't sure if it had something to do with the fact that he hadn't seen Baekhyun's mother come out of the house since the funeral. He missed Baekhyun of course but he missed Yixing more; Yixing who was allowed to go visit Baekhyun at his grandmother's house every holiday while he had to stay home with his parents and study.
"Don't you like me anymore?" Lu Han asked Yixing who was packing for yet another trip to Baekhyun's grandmother's house. Yixing only smiled.
"You know I like you," he said and turned back to his packing. Lu Han spent the rest of the afternoon pouting but gave up when no one except Yixing's father noticed, and only to inquire as to whether he had perhaps eaten something expired as he seemed to be having a stomach upset.
▽▽▽
Lu Han had to go to university in the city while Yixing finished his last year and got to stay in town. Yixing hardly ever called him but Lu Han knew everything he was up to and all the times he went to visit Baekhyun, thanks to his chatty mum.
"You should come home and visit instead of complaining about why Yixing doesn't call you," she said in affectionate exasperation after Lu Han's tenth call that week. Lu Han only sulked and hung up the phone in a huff. Let Yixing come to him.
But the seasons passed and there was still a certain name conspicuously absent from his phone call history. His mum called one day to let him know that Yixing was going to be going away to university in the fall, and wouldn't Lu Han come home for once?
"I miss you, we miss you, you haven't been home in a whole year."
Lu Han hung up the phone and looked at himself in the mirror. He was pretty cute, he had to admit, and he had no lack of potential suitors among both the male and female student populations.
"Lu-Lu," he asked his reflection, using Baekhyun's childish pet name to address himself. "What's wrong with you? Why doesn't Lay-Lay like you?" But his reflection only looked as confused as he felt.
▽▽▽
He decided to go home on the spur of the moment. He'd been walking back from picking up his final marks, all straight-A's but it didn't matter, nothing mattered because his most important person was slipping away and there was nothing he could do about it. He'd been walking through the park on campus, watching the happy couples wrapped in warm summer embraces, when he made up his mind.
"You need to finally do something about it, Lu-Lu," he scolded himself in the mirror later that evening when he was back in his dorm. "Stop sulking and grow up!" He glared at his reflection who only glared back, looking completely frustrated.
He took the night bus without telling his mother, just throwing random articles into a knapsack while running out the door, and then forgetting it on the bench at the bus terminal anyway.
Pale tendrils of pink dawn were just beginning to creep up the dark wall of the sky when he found himself standing on Yixing's front step, panting because he'd run as soon as his feet had touched the familiar ground.
"Now what?" he asked the mirror imagine of his face cast upon the glass of the front door. He raised his hand to knock, then lowered it again, and was just about to turn and slip over to his home when the door opened suddenly.
Lu Han could see his shocked face mirrored in Yixing's questioning eyes. He had no idea what to say, how to explain, but Yixing, rubbing sleepy eyes, only laughed.
"I missed you," he said.
And all of a sudden Lu Han was so angry that his voice shook.
"If you missed me," and he was shaking so much his teeth were almost shattering, "why didn't you visit? Or even call me?" Everything felt wrong, and his reflection in Yixing's eyes was mocking him.
"That's how much he missed you," the reflection seemed to be saying. "That's how much you're worth."
Yixing only looked confused.
"But you were busy..." he explained, voice matter-of-fact. "I didn't want to bother you of course." He smiled kindly and reached out to take Lu Han's arm, but Lu Han snatched it back before the slender fingers made contact with the goosebumps running up and down his arms.
Yixing's confused expression changed to one of hurt, and Lu Han felt even worse, but the words tumbled out of his mouth before he could close his lips.
"You abandoned me," he said, unable to keep the accusation out of his tone. An angry tear dropped out of one eye and disappeared into the pavement.
Yixing looked devastated. "I was always here?"
Lu Han's reflection taunted him. "You're not going to lose him," it said. "You already did."
Lu Han ignored the reflection and the empty feeling in his stomach and Yixing's emotions that he could never really understand. He thought about cliffs and things sliding off into the sea and losses that can never be replaced. Then he leaned forward to lay a gentle kiss on Yixing's mouth. Yixing kissed back.
now
"He doesn't look at you like he used to."
Lu Han is fixing his hair in the mirror, the last finishing touch, and his reflection reminds him of things he'd rather forget.
Like how Yixing always used to come and watch him get dressed, arrange his hair, and smile that dreamy smile of his that makes Lu Han glow.
"He doesn't write poems about you anymore either."
Lu Han calls a soft goodbye to his husband as he leaves for the long drive to the city. Yixing doesn't reply. As Lu Han drives away, he can hear the ocean waves slowly eating at the cliff below their house.
When he returns from the party, slightly buzzed but not tipsy, even if Yixing forgot to tell him to be safe, the light is still on.
"Yixing?"
There's no answer. Lu Han steps lightly forward to hover on the threshold. His husband is writing, crossing out words and then piecing the letters back together again.
"Are you coming to bed?" he asks, his voice hushed.
Yixing shakes his head. Lu Han glances at the bottle of pills on the shelf. It's half empty.
The bed is still cold when he wakes up at dawn, sunrise painting the white sheets red. The light from the writing room is on, and he can hear the scratching of a pen and the crumpling of paper. Doubt eats away at the cliffs.
▽▽▽
Lu Han looks at the flowchart of his newest project and sighs. If only relationships could be as easy as conquering dungeons and defeating monsters.
Lu Han designs video games. His mother still hasn't forgiven him for not taking over the family pharmacy, but Yixing has always encouraged him to do what he wants. After he permanently damaged his knee in high school his soccer dreams were over, and he'd resigned himself to med school and pills for the rest of his life.
And then Yixing had loved him back.
He looks at his face reflected against the glass of the computer screen.
"Is that still true?"
He doesn't know anymore. The hero dies and he makes another monster.
Lu Han is exhausted; another conference to endure which was just an excuse for programmers to get drunk and ruin expensive suits and sleep with sponsors.
It's foggy as he's driving home; it's fortunate that the sun hasn't set yet but he still almost gets lost in the fog, mixing up his turn off for the one to the town that doesn't exist anymore.
The town that slipped off the edge.
Yixing is in the back garden when he gets home; black hair dark against the grey sky.
He's peering over the edge into the waves. Lu Han slowly steps out of the car, door slamming shut with a muffled bang behind him. Yixing doesn't look up.
"Are you okay?" Lu Han can feel the worry swimming up again out of the dark, the worry that lives permanently at the bottom of his chest, constricting his breathing.
Yixing talks to the waves. "I was thinking about Kyungsoo."
Kyungsoo.
The cliffs only take away and nothing comes back.
"I miss him," Lu Han says. It's not exactly a lie, he does really miss his childhood friend. He just misses his husband more.
Yixing drops a stone from his hand into the water. It disappears into the dark without a splash. "Baekhyun's grandmother died."
Lu Han thinks about long summers doing homework, when Yixing and Baekhyun played together.
Yixing mentioned it several times in his published book of poetry; the one that won so many awards.
"Impermanence."
"Are you going to the funeral?" Lu Han's voice is quiet in the mist, his words thrown back to hit him in the face.
Yixing nods.
He hasn't left the house in three years now, but he'll leave for Baekhyun. Lu Han steps back from the edge, dirt crumbling under his feet.
▽▽▽
There's a woman at the gala event who won't leave him alone. He's already upset - the funeral is right now and he's Baekhyun's friend too, but work is work and as lead designer he has to play the crowd.
She has followed him to the balcony and as he looks over the ocean of lights, the city splayed out below, he thinks about other times. All the people who wanted him in university but he’d turned them down because he had someone.
He catches a glimpse of his face in the mirrored wall panels.
"Do you still have someone?" His reflection reminds Lu Han every day that he has never deserved Yixing, and maybe Yixing is starting to realize it.
The woman brushes her fingers in false chance across his chilled skin. It hurts.
It still hurts as he drives home in the dark, headlamps barely cutting through the thick blackness. The lights are still on in the house. Yixing must be back from the funeral. The waves on the rocks are louder, tonight in the dark when the moon is shadowed.
He peers into the writing room but Yixing isn't there; only a small landslide of crumpled paper and a crushed fountain pen.
"That was your anniversary present to Yixing when he got published for the fist time." Lu Han's reflection stares at him from the silvered glass of the lampshade.
There's an empty pill bottle on the desk.
Suddenly Lu Han is running.
Yixing is lying in the floor of the bathroom, fluorescent lights bleaching his skin like the lights in his father's compounding room at the pharmacy. So many sleeping pills.
Lu Han can't breathe; the ocean in his chest has overflowed the shore. He crumples onto the cold tiles, trembling fingers feeling for a pulse.
Yixing sighs softly. He's just sleeping.
They stay like that for a long time until Lu Han is able to stand again, lifting his too frail husband into his arms to carry to the bedroom and tuck into bed. He himself sits alone in the back room until dawn, staring out at the coming storm he can't see in the dark.
▽▽▽
His phone rings as he's wiping his red, sleepless eyes in the mirror.
"Hello?"
"Lu-Lu?" It's Baekhyun.
"Yes?"
"This is Baekhyun." The bubbly voice from Lu Han's childhood memories sounds stretched, too much soap spread over too much air.
"My heartfelt condolences; I feel awful about missing the funeral."
Baekhyun laughs like he used to but the sound is fragile. "That's okay. Lay-Lay explained."
Lu Han bites his lip. He wishes that he'd been the one to think of that name first.
"You wish for a lot of things," his reflection in the mirror mocks him.
There's a rustling over the phone line and Lu Han can hear a different voice. A brighter voice. "What kind of wine do you want, Baekhyun?"
Baekhyun answers, phone held away from his mouth because his voice comes back muffled. "You can pick, as long as you get muesli for breakfast and not your dumb frosted flakes."
When his voice comes back it's warmer, brighter. "I'm headed back to the city this afternoon but could we maybe meet for coffee?"
Lu Han doesn't want to face his friend but he has to go.
Yixing is writing when he closes the front door.
▽▽▽
Baekhyun isn't the only one at the coffee shop. There's a bright-eyed man sitting in the chair pulled up next to him, Baekhyun snuggled into his shoulder.
"This is Jongdae," Baekhyun says. "We're getting married next year." His eyes are red and swollen but his smile is beautiful.
Lu Han feels terrible. He has suspected Baekhyun all these years for nothing.
"Maybe Baekhyun never wavered, but that doesn't mean anything about Yixing." His reflection in the car mirror won't let it go.
Yixing is in the back garden, the wind whipping his dark hair around as the storm approaches, but Lu Han walks straight into the house. There's a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc somewhere. He's walking to the kitchen with the olive green bottle when a paper in the work room catches his eye. It's crumpled like all the other ones, but the ink spots are so heavy they're bleeding into the floor.
He's leaning down with a sigh when a word catches his eye and he unfolds the page.
it's all about me and you and everyone
that ever loved anyone i don't count
i had a dream that everything we said
was obscene and we were lonely
but we're smart and pretty lonely anyway
not like a friday before the weekend
we all know deep inside it's monday
and we all have to wake up and die
you and me and in between
we cry a lot and never die
it's sad the things we do sometimes
we laugh a lot through rain
and then there was a ghost of spring
it said the roses were the promise
and we sang a lullaby to me and you
and made a prayer so things wouldn't end
and they didn't but it isn't the same now
everything has changed and gone whichever way
we are together night and day and yet
when last we met i think was half past two
the other saturday last christmas week
and though we always speak we never say
the things that need to be said we never
touch anymore in dreams and never maybe
but we don't even know how to say goodbye
i know because i tried the other day at meal
but all that came out was a pass the cheese
and everything we say: it never means a thing
if one of us would go away it would never be
because i am a part of you and you a part of me
and yet the whole world in between
and everything is buried in between
The ink spots his fingers as he crumples the paper back into a tight ball and throws it away.
His reflection in the window doesn't have to say anything at all.
▽▽▽
He's driving toward the city; the storm has interrupted the internet and he needs to submit an important floor plan to animation.
"It's ironic that you're planning maps when you're so lost." His reflection in the side mirror is looking at him with a disgusted expression.
Maybe it's time to give up.
Yixing obviously doesn't want him anyway; the poem is proof enough.
The static on the radio dissolves into a voice.
"Emergency broadcast: the town of C- is currently in extreme danger of accelerated erosion and landslides due to the approaching storm, we repeat, extreme caution is to be exercised and those in high risk dwellings are to evacuate at once -"
Lu Han crushes the brake pedal under his foot, the tires screaming against the wet pavement.
Yixing never listens to the radio.
The cliffs are crumbling when he tears back into town, tree branches scratching the outside of the vehicle. His reflection says nothing.
Yixing is in the front garden, pen in his hand like an afterthought. Lu Han gasps silently and stumbles across the lawn, pulling his husband back from the house as it slowly, silently slips into the ocean. The front walk hanging off into the air and the neatly weeded flower bed are all that remain of their life.
There's nothing here for Lu Han's reflection. He slowly takes Yixing's hand, and his husband squeezes his fingers gently as they stand together, looking at the edge.
epilogue
They will find a new house, a sunny red brick cottage with roses over the gate and tiger lilies in the backyard beside the marigolds mixed in with the kitchen gardens.
Light will shine in the windows every morning, and one day at breakfast Lu Han will shyly hand his husband a slip of paper before blushing and leaving the room, only to peer around the doorway.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Sugar is sweet
And Lay belongs with Lu.
Yixing will smile, tucking the paper into his pocket. He's trying.
Out in the hallway Lu Han will grin shyly to himself before tiptoeing away because there's a crisis in the programming department but there always is one. He'll leave early if he has to though, because he wants to make it back in time to eat supper at home. He's trying, too.
And one sunny afternoon, gold painting the world in a summer glow, Lu Han will get up from his computer for a breather between character sketches and wander over to Yixing's work room. The garbage can will be empty, a single sheet of paper lying open on the desk.
i sit in the shadows
sipping cool water from a cracked cup
i don't know why
maybe i hope to catch on the sharpness and bleed
give the pure water a drop of reality
all our mistakes come back to me
watching the bees on the flowers
under the ozone-less sky
yet somehow life goes on
my cup is empty and i'm forced to go out into the sun to refill it
seeing a butterfly that i couldn't from the shadows
i look at it yearning
but it takes off into the burning sky and is gone
coming back with my glass full i stumble
water flies out of the cup
arching down to earth to feed a wilting flower
a bee caresses my cheek as if in thanks
on her way back to the hive with a load of pollen for the pupae
Setting the delicate piece of paper back down, he'll quietly walk through the back patio doors, open in the warm day. Yixing will be sitting on the garden bench, bathed in light, a single butterfly perched on one finger. Treading lightly over the soft grass, Lu Han will step out into the sunlight to join his husband. Their skin will tingle as they touch, and Yixing will look at Lu Han and smile, offering him the tiny fragment of orange hope alighted on his hand.