hi jade. i kind of never want to look at this fic ever again. not edited at all. sorry, i'll be spamming you for a bit. :c
when the weight of dreams becomes too much; pre-slash Kris/Chen, ~3k, PG, AU.
His door bell rings at twelve past eleven. Jongdae looks up from his book in alarm - it’s nighttime on a Wednesday, and all the people who know where he lives should be tucked safely in bed, dreading the next work day.
The bell rings again, with another quickly following. Jongdae trips on his sheets as he runs out, and he has to brace himself on his nightstand. “Damnit. Who the fuck is it, this late at night?” There is little he can do besides answer the door, and if the person ringing the bell is someone he knows, Jongdae is utterly willing to yell until his ears ring, as a form of punishment for making his ears ring. The bell sound isn’t one that he likes, but he puts up with it because he doesn’t know how to change it.
When he opens the door, Yifan is leaning on the side, looking completely exhausted and a little bedraggled, if not a lot of dusty. His eyes open at the door’s open, and he says, “Hi, Jongdae.”
-
It’s been almost a year since the last time Jongdae or their group of friends have seen Yifan. They’re used to the little disappearances, the passing of a week or three, and they’re well aware they shouldn’t ask questions. But this time, Jongdae refuses to keep quiet as he grabs hold of Yifan’s hand and drags him inside, tugging him to the couch before he runs to turn on the heater. It’s snowing outside, and Yifan is barely holding himself together, gripping his elbows as he does his best not to shake from the melting snow on his body.
“Yifan-hyung,” Jongdae says when he returns with two mugs of tea and hands one over to him, sitting quietly in front of the coffee table. “Where have you been?”
By the way Yifan’s eyes flash up at him, Jongdae knows he might have crossed the invisible boundary Yifan had set four years ago. “I don’t care, hyung,” he says firmly. “If you didn’t want to answer questions, you would’ve went to Yixing-hyung or Lu Han-hyung’s place. But you came to mine, and you know me well enough to know I’m not the type to sit quietly and just wait for you to choose the right time to open up. Not when you never do.”
There is a moment of silence before Yifan sighs, and brings his hand up to rub his eyes. “Let me think for a while,” he says. His voice is hoarse, almost as if scratchy from disuse. “I promise I’ll answer your questions.”
Jongdae eyes him skeptically, and Yifan must’ve caught the look, because he smiles and glances over to squeeze Jongdae’s knee, pressing warmly into the cotton pants he wears to sleep. It’s a quiet reassurance.
He makes a face before getting up from the couch to get his book again; Yifan takes longer than most people to arrive at decisions - he turns every little detail over in his mind, examining it from this and that perspective, before moving on to the next. By the time he finishes, staring blankly at nothing all the while, an hour or two might have passed.
The slight rustling in the corner of his eyes draws Jongdae’s attention, and he looks up to find Yifan taking off his jacket and pushing up his sleeves. “What are you doing?” he asks curiously. Yifan never shows his arms.
Yifan glances at him, and there is a wry smile teasing at the corner of his lips. “Preparing to give you your answers.”
Jongdae blinks when he finally sees the reason Yifan always wears long-sleeved shirts: black ink spirals up his forearms, sometimes curling into itself to form primitive designs, sometimes meshing with carefully placed slashes of red and blue to become marks of aggression. He swallows when he notices the tilted hourglass placed on Yifan’s inner right wrist, pieces of sand dotted blackly into the skin to mimic a true hourglass - it reminds him of gang brands, and it’s even more disturbing when he realizes the hourglass isn’t as old as Yifan’s other tattoos, is still somewhat new. The skin around the mark is red, slightly raised, and shows off the black of the design even more strongly. It’s a compelling new discovery. But it doesn’t explain anything to Jongdae. Not really. “What does this all mean, hyung?”
“Go ahead and guess,” Yifans says, slight smile still on his lips.
Jongdae blows out a breath. “I don’t know,” he says hesistantly. “I don’t want to assume…”
“Assume that I’m in a gang?” The amusement in his voice deepens Yifan’s voice until Jongdae can feel it reach inside him, touching parts of him he’s never expected to be touched by Yifan.
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m not in a gang. Or at least not in the kind you’re thinking of. I guess I should call it more of a group?” Yifan raises a finger and places it on the hourglass. “We work in teams, but not for violence. We have one person we call leader, but he doesn’t control us. Not all of us wanted to join.” He presses down onto the skin at the corner of the hourglass, right where it meets the palm of his hand, reddened skin disappearing into white as the pressure builds. “Once we get this mark, it means half of our contract is done. But it also means we’re falling even deeper into the world, and the chance to back out is disappearing.”
Jongdae has to stand up and pace. Yifan is making no sense at all. “You make no sense, hyung. What world? What contract? And the chance to back out of what? If you’re trying to reassure me that you’re not working in a gang, you’re actually failing quite miserably.”
Suddenly, Yifan’s phone rings, and a quick look of despair crosses his face, almost too fast for Jongdae to catch. They stay still for a moment, before Yifan squeezes his eyes shut and reaches for his phone in his pocket, other hand clenched into a fist. “Yes.” There is no sound other than for Yifan’s loud breaths for a minute, and then Yifan murmurs, “I understand,” and snaps his phone shut.
“Do you need to go?” Jongdae asks.
“Not yet. But soon.”
-
Yifan asks to take a breather, and so Jongdae gives one to him, eyebrows creasing as he mulls things over in his head. “Hyung,” he says, softly. “When you say you have a leader… was the phone call him?”
Yifan turns around from the window. “You’re quick, Jongdae.” This time, it’s a full smile.
“Well, of course,” Jongdae says, almost archly. “Who do you think I am?” He startles a laugh out of Yifan, and the laughter warms him, just a little, even though the rest of him has grown cold at the thought of Yifan being under the direct orders of some unnamed person.
But Yifan soon quits laughing to rubs his eyes, tattoos catching Jongdae’s eyes. He hasn’t bothered pulling his sleeves back down after showing the entirety of the marks to Jongdae. Yifan notices Jongdae staring, and takes a few step forward. “Would you like to touch?”
A quick glance up, and Jongdae is reaching out, one hand to wrap around a wrist and the other to explore. He’s fascinated. No one around him owns tattoos, and so he’s never had the chance to fully discover what it’s like to have one’s body marked so permanently. He thought the thick bands of black would feel different from the rest of Yifan’s skin, but that’s not quite true - when he traces the designs, the skin feels no different, just as warm and smooth and covered with fine hair as the unmarked areas. When Jongdae’s finger reaches the hourglass, Yifan jumps a little, so slight as to be almost imperceptible if Jongdae hadn’t been touching him. He pretends he didn’t notice, and quickly moves to follow the red line running up into the blue of Yifan’s shirtsleeve; Yifan draws away at that, right when Jongdae is about to push the sleeve up further.
“No,” Yifan says quietly. “Everything else is mine. I don’t want anyone else to see them.”
Jongdae nods, to say he understands, he’s okay with that.
-
“Where do you think I’m from, Jongdae?” Yifan asks randomly. It’s been almost three hours since Yifan’s walked inside the door, and they’d spent the last half hour simply sitting silently, each lost in their own thoughts. Jongdae’s book lies forgotten on the floor.
“China?”
Another laugh from Yifan. “Well, yes, my grandparents were. But I wasn’t born there, or anywhere else in Asia. I was born in Canada.”
That explains the accent Yixing had noticed in his Chinese. “Then why did you come to Seoul when you were 19?”
“I didn’t exactly have a choice.” Yifan’s mouth twists.
Jongdae has suddenly had enough. He’s tired of having to pry answers out of an even more reticent than usual Yifan. He’s tired, he has to work tomorrow, and it’s already almost 3AM in the morning when he has to be up at 6. “Hyung,” he says, hands coming up to press against his knees. He can still feel Yifan’s fingers on his skin when he touches his knee. “I’m tired. You said you’d answer things, so can you just… fully answer them? Without having to wait for me to ask you follow up questions?”
Yifan’s eyes blink wide, clearly surprised at the curt tone Jongdae used. He gives a quick, short nod.
Jongdae sighs. “Why didn’t you have a choice when you came to Seoul, hyung?”
“I ran away from home, Jongdae. My parents were getting divorced, and I had no desire whatsoever to stay and watch my family be split apart by the very people inside it.” He nods at Jongdae’s noisy gasp. “I know I’ve never talked about my parents before, and that’s why. I ran away from home, and I had to do a number of weird jobs as I traveled my way around Canada. Jobs I hope I never have to go near again.”
“But hyung,” Jongdae interrupts. “At 19, wouldn’t you be in university by then? You didn’t have to stay at home. You should’ve been at university.”
“That’s what I thought I would do too, when my parents first started fighting when I was 15. But my grades started slipping, one by one, until all I had left to offer universities was my basketball career, and when even that was taken away from me… I had nothing, Jongdae. Nothing left.” Yifan stands up to walk around the room. “So since I knew I wasn’t going to be accepted into any university at all, I decided to run away. It was the only choice left, because even if I started working right out of high school, I’d still need to be around my parents and watch them self-destruct -- the only way I could keep myself together was to run away.
“But then I reached Montreal. I ran away when the week I turned 18, and by the time I reached Montreal, it’d been almost a year to the day since I first crawled out my window in Vancouver. The sun was shining, the city was beautiful, and I thought I couldn’t be happier, since I’d just applied for a visa to enter the United States and the person in charge said there was a high chance of me being approved. But I was new, barely two days into the city, and I didn’t know my way around - I got lost when I turned into the wrong alleyway. The next thing I remember is waking up in a basement, my arm throbbing. I was tattooed for the first time that day.” Yifan pushes his left sleeve up a little, to show Jongdae the tiny x inked into the crook of his elbow. After four years, it looks almost faded compared to the bold black and red and blue of his other marks.
“Hyung.” Jongdae bites his lip to keep the rest of his questions from spilling out. He doesn’t want to take Yifan out of wherever he went in his mind. There is a look in his eyes Jongdae has never seen before, and it’s scaring him, the way it blanks out the Yifan Jongdae is used to seeing, turning him into someone he doesn’t recognize. Four years, and Jongdae is scared he’s never truly known who Wu Yifan is.
“I’ll skip over what happened after I woke up, because that’s a story for another day, when I have more time, and when I’m with everyone. It’s a story I only want to tell once. But Jongdae -- a week after I entered Seoul, I wanted to go home. I wanted to go home so badly, I didn’t even care what I’d find once I reached home.” The blankness in his eyes retreats when utter bleakness comes to fill in the void. “That’s how desperate I was to stop what was happening. So I went to the leader, and begged him; I ended up selling myself for the chance to go home.”
“But wait, once you were in Seoul, couldn’t you just leave? Buy an airplane ticket and leave? I know you’re still carrying a Canadian passport,” Jongdae says, confused. He doesn’t see how anyone could have such a hold that he could prevent a boy from returning to the place he’s actually a citizen in.
But then Jongdae has always has a safe life, almost mundane in the way he went to university straight after high school, then found a decent job after graduating. He hasn’t had to risk anything in the progression of his life, when everything is laid out, prepared for him by his parents ever since he was born. Expectations of solid performance have weighed him down since he could remember, and so Jongdae has never run wild.
“I tried that,” Yifan says. “But when it came time for me to leave, the airline said they never received my booking, when I was clearly holding the booking ticket in my hand.”
Jongdae stares. He’s never heard of that happening. “This was before you went to the head?”
“Yes. After I got over my shock, I went straight to the man, and told him I’d do anything for the chance to go home.”
Realization strikes Jongdae, and he says, completely filled with disbelief, “And you spent the past four years working for him? And you said you only finished half of your bargain?”
“Not bargain, Jongdae. Contract.”
Jongdae has to drop his head back against the sofa. “That means you have another four years to go before you’re done, and you can go home.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what it means.”
Jongdae is speechless, and it seems like Yifan knows it, by the way he’s looking over and sadly smiling from where he’s leaning against the wall, almost as if he knew that’s the kind of reaction he’d get. But Jongdae suddenly shakes himself, and lightly slaps himself on the face with both hands, before he stands up. He takes the three steps needed to end up in front of Yifan and gingerly takes his right wrist with both his hands. He turns it to face up, and he stares at it for a moment, trying to take in the weight of such a mark. It holds all of Yifan’s hopes and dreams, taunting the chance of going home every time Yifan looks at his wrist. No wonder Yifan will only wear long-sleeved shirts. Jongdae would’ve scratched himself bloody. “What do you have to do, hyung?” he asks gently. “Can I help, in any way?”
“No, you can’t. I have to do all my tasks by myself. But --“ Yifans pauses. “-- if you don’t mind, is it all right if… I could move in with you? I barely live in my apartment, so I don’t want to constantly be wasting money every month paying the rent. I wouldn’t be around much anyway, so even if I do move in, it’s not like you’d really notice me anyway.”
He’s nodding his head yes before Yifan is finished speaking. Jongdae sees the relief in his eyes chasing away the slight loneliness and worry Yifan tried to hide, because he didn’t want to pressure Jongdae; but he’s known him for too long, and even if there was such a big part of his life Jongdae didn’t know about, he was always best in gauging Yifan’s moods. He’s relieved to note that his talent hasn’t changed.
Jongdae has yet to let go of Yifan’s hand, so he looks down, and smiling, decides to take hold of it. He fits his hand into Yifan’s much larger one and deliberately rests his wrist right on top of the hourglass, hiding the mark from Yifan’s gaze. “I look forward to the few times you’ll be showing up in here, new apartment mate,” Jongdae teases.
Tension easing from his body, Yifan swings their hand straight into the wall he’s leaning on - at Jongdae’s yelp, he grins. Jongdae pretends to glare at him, and pretends he didn’t notice Yifan dodging his question of what he’s required to do.
The clock clicks 4:30, and Yifan suddenly lets go, as he jumps to his jacket and pulls it on, looking around frantically for anything he might’ve left. “Hyung?” Jongdae asks in alarm.
“Shit, shit, I forgot I needed to be somewhere by 5, now it’s already 4:30, shit --“ Yifan grabs Jongdae’s arm to catch his attention, and he says, hurriedly, “I’ll finish telling you everything else the next time I’m back, I promise. Call everyone next time, will you? You can help me with the running away part while I dig up the courage to tell you guys what I’ve been doing.”
“I promise, I promise,” Jongdae says as Yifan runs out the door, backpack thrown haphazardly across his back. The two-fingered salute Yifan raises above his head is the only sign he heard Jongdae’s reply.
Jongdae looks for Yifan everyday for the next few months, and he waits, patiently, for the next time Yifan will show up.
UGH YOU ARE SUCH A TEASE BUT I LOVE YOU AT THE SAME TIME (((CONFLICTING FEELINGS))) huhu part of me wants more (tease!!) but the other part is really satisfied with it as a whole cry thank you so much for this ;;;; ♥ /crawls to a corner and sobs
YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH I CACKLED WHEN YOUR KEYSMASH FIRST APPEARED IN MY EMAIL.
i already told you i was going to tease, since the fic... exploded... and i was not going to sit there the entire night and finish it lololol. i'm glad it works for you as a whole though, i was wondering if it would stand by itself \o/
((although i bet you're curious about yifan and what he's up to n__n))
when the weight of dreams becomes too much; pre-slash Kris/Chen, ~3k, PG, AU.
His door bell rings at twelve past eleven. Jongdae looks up from his book in alarm - it’s nighttime on a Wednesday, and all the people who know where he lives should be tucked safely in bed, dreading the next work day.
The bell rings again, with another quickly following. Jongdae trips on his sheets as he runs out, and he has to brace himself on his nightstand. “Damnit. Who the fuck is it, this late at night?” There is little he can do besides answer the door, and if the person ringing the bell is someone he knows, Jongdae is utterly willing to yell until his ears ring, as a form of punishment for making his ears ring. The bell sound isn’t one that he likes, but he puts up with it because he doesn’t know how to change it.
When he opens the door, Yifan is leaning on the side, looking completely exhausted and a little bedraggled, if not a lot of dusty. His eyes open at the door’s open, and he says, “Hi, Jongdae.”
-
It’s been almost a year since the last time Jongdae or their group of friends have seen Yifan. They’re used to the little disappearances, the passing of a week or three, and they’re well aware they shouldn’t ask questions. But this time, Jongdae refuses to keep quiet as he grabs hold of Yifan’s hand and drags him inside, tugging him to the couch before he runs to turn on the heater. It’s snowing outside, and Yifan is barely holding himself together, gripping his elbows as he does his best not to shake from the melting snow on his body.
“Yifan-hyung,” Jongdae says when he returns with two mugs of tea and hands one over to him, sitting quietly in front of the coffee table. “Where have you been?”
By the way Yifan’s eyes flash up at him, Jongdae knows he might have crossed the invisible boundary Yifan had set four years ago. “I don’t care, hyung,” he says firmly. “If you didn’t want to answer questions, you would’ve went to Yixing-hyung or Lu Han-hyung’s place. But you came to mine, and you know me well enough to know I’m not the type to sit quietly and just wait for you to choose the right time to open up. Not when you never do.”
There is a moment of silence before Yifan sighs, and brings his hand up to rub his eyes. “Let me think for a while,” he says. His voice is hoarse, almost as if scratchy from disuse. “I promise I’ll answer your questions.”
Jongdae eyes him skeptically, and Yifan must’ve caught the look, because he smiles and glances over to squeeze Jongdae’s knee, pressing warmly into the cotton pants he wears to sleep. It’s a quiet reassurance.
He makes a face before getting up from the couch to get his book again; Yifan takes longer than most people to arrive at decisions - he turns every little detail over in his mind, examining it from this and that perspective, before moving on to the next. By the time he finishes, staring blankly at nothing all the while, an hour or two might have passed.
Might as well finish his book while he waits.
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The slight rustling in the corner of his eyes draws Jongdae’s attention, and he looks up to find Yifan taking off his jacket and pushing up his sleeves. “What are you doing?” he asks curiously. Yifan never shows his arms.
Yifan glances at him, and there is a wry smile teasing at the corner of his lips. “Preparing to give you your answers.”
Jongdae blinks when he finally sees the reason Yifan always wears long-sleeved shirts: black ink spirals up his forearms, sometimes curling into itself to form primitive designs, sometimes meshing with carefully placed slashes of red and blue to become marks of aggression. He swallows when he notices the tilted hourglass placed on Yifan’s inner right wrist, pieces of sand dotted blackly into the skin to mimic a true hourglass - it reminds him of gang brands, and it’s even more disturbing when he realizes the hourglass isn’t as old as Yifan’s other tattoos, is still somewhat new. The skin around the mark is red, slightly raised, and shows off the black of the design even more strongly. It’s a compelling new discovery. But it doesn’t explain anything to Jongdae. Not really. “What does this all mean, hyung?”
“Go ahead and guess,” Yifans says, slight smile still on his lips.
Jongdae blows out a breath. “I don’t know,” he says hesistantly. “I don’t want to assume…”
“Assume that I’m in a gang?” The amusement in his voice deepens Yifan’s voice until Jongdae can feel it reach inside him, touching parts of him he’s never expected to be touched by Yifan.
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m not in a gang. Or at least not in the kind you’re thinking of. I guess I should call it more of a group?” Yifan raises a finger and places it on the hourglass. “We work in teams, but not for violence. We have one person we call leader, but he doesn’t control us. Not all of us wanted to join.” He presses down onto the skin at the corner of the hourglass, right where it meets the palm of his hand, reddened skin disappearing into white as the pressure builds. “Once we get this mark, it means half of our contract is done. But it also means we’re falling even deeper into the world, and the chance to back out is disappearing.”
Jongdae has to stand up and pace. Yifan is making no sense at all. “You make no sense, hyung. What world? What contract? And the chance to back out of what? If you’re trying to reassure me that you’re not working in a gang, you’re actually failing quite miserably.”
Suddenly, Yifan’s phone rings, and a quick look of despair crosses his face, almost too fast for Jongdae to catch. They stay still for a moment, before Yifan squeezes his eyes shut and reaches for his phone in his pocket, other hand clenched into a fist. “Yes.” There is no sound other than for Yifan’s loud breaths for a minute, and then Yifan murmurs, “I understand,” and snaps his phone shut.
“Do you need to go?” Jongdae asks.
“Not yet. But soon.”
-
Yifan asks to take a breather, and so Jongdae gives one to him, eyebrows creasing as he mulls things over in his head. “Hyung,” he says, softly. “When you say you have a leader… was the phone call him?”
Yifan turns around from the window. “You’re quick, Jongdae.” This time, it’s a full smile.
“Well, of course,” Jongdae says, almost archly. “Who do you think I am?” He startles a laugh out of Yifan, and the laughter warms him, just a little, even though the rest of him has grown cold at the thought of Yifan being under the direct orders of some unnamed person.
But Yifan soon quits laughing to rubs his eyes, tattoos catching Jongdae’s eyes. He hasn’t bothered pulling his sleeves back down after showing the entirety of the marks to Jongdae. Yifan notices Jongdae staring, and takes a few step forward. “Would you like to touch?”
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“No,” Yifan says quietly. “Everything else is mine. I don’t want anyone else to see them.”
Jongdae nods, to say he understands, he’s okay with that.
-
“Where do you think I’m from, Jongdae?” Yifan asks randomly. It’s been almost three hours since Yifan’s walked inside the door, and they’d spent the last half hour simply sitting silently, each lost in their own thoughts. Jongdae’s book lies forgotten on the floor.
“China?”
Another laugh from Yifan. “Well, yes, my grandparents were. But I wasn’t born there, or anywhere else in Asia. I was born in Canada.”
That explains the accent Yixing had noticed in his Chinese. “Then why did you come to Seoul when you were 19?”
“I didn’t exactly have a choice.” Yifan’s mouth twists.
Jongdae has suddenly had enough. He’s tired of having to pry answers out of an even more reticent than usual Yifan. He’s tired, he has to work tomorrow, and it’s already almost 3AM in the morning when he has to be up at 6. “Hyung,” he says, hands coming up to press against his knees. He can still feel Yifan’s fingers on his skin when he touches his knee. “I’m tired. You said you’d answer things, so can you just… fully answer them? Without having to wait for me to ask you follow up questions?”
Yifan’s eyes blink wide, clearly surprised at the curt tone Jongdae used. He gives a quick, short nod.
Jongdae sighs. “Why didn’t you have a choice when you came to Seoul, hyung?”
“I ran away from home, Jongdae. My parents were getting divorced, and I had no desire whatsoever to stay and watch my family be split apart by the very people inside it.” He nods at Jongdae’s noisy gasp. “I know I’ve never talked about my parents before, and that’s why. I ran away from home, and I had to do a number of weird jobs as I traveled my way around Canada. Jobs I hope I never have to go near again.”
“But hyung,” Jongdae interrupts. “At 19, wouldn’t you be in university by then? You didn’t have to stay at home. You should’ve been at university.”
“That’s what I thought I would do too, when my parents first started fighting when I was 15. But my grades started slipping, one by one, until all I had left to offer universities was my basketball career, and when even that was taken away from me… I had nothing, Jongdae. Nothing left.” Yifan stands up to walk around the room. “So since I knew I wasn’t going to be accepted into any university at all, I decided to run away. It was the only choice left, because even if I started working right out of high school, I’d still need to be around my parents and watch them self-destruct -- the only way I could keep myself together was to run away.
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“Hyung.” Jongdae bites his lip to keep the rest of his questions from spilling out. He doesn’t want to take Yifan out of wherever he went in his mind. There is a look in his eyes Jongdae has never seen before, and it’s scaring him, the way it blanks out the Yifan Jongdae is used to seeing, turning him into someone he doesn’t recognize. Four years, and Jongdae is scared he’s never truly known who Wu Yifan is.
“I’ll skip over what happened after I woke up, because that’s a story for another day, when I have more time, and when I’m with everyone. It’s a story I only want to tell once. But Jongdae -- a week after I entered Seoul, I wanted to go home. I wanted to go home so badly, I didn’t even care what I’d find once I reached home.” The blankness in his eyes retreats when utter bleakness comes to fill in the void. “That’s how desperate I was to stop what was happening. So I went to the leader, and begged him; I ended up selling myself for the chance to go home.”
“But wait, once you were in Seoul, couldn’t you just leave? Buy an airplane ticket and leave? I know you’re still carrying a Canadian passport,” Jongdae says, confused. He doesn’t see how anyone could have such a hold that he could prevent a boy from returning to the place he’s actually a citizen in.
But then Jongdae has always has a safe life, almost mundane in the way he went to university straight after high school, then found a decent job after graduating. He hasn’t had to risk anything in the progression of his life, when everything is laid out, prepared for him by his parents ever since he was born. Expectations of solid performance have weighed him down since he could remember, and so Jongdae has never run wild.
“I tried that,” Yifan says. “But when it came time for me to leave, the airline said they never received my booking, when I was clearly holding the booking ticket in my hand.”
Jongdae stares. He’s never heard of that happening. “This was before you went to the head?”
“Yes. After I got over my shock, I went straight to the man, and told him I’d do anything for the chance to go home.”
Realization strikes Jongdae, and he says, completely filled with disbelief, “And you spent the past four years working for him? And you said you only finished half of your bargain?”
“Not bargain, Jongdae. Contract.”
Jongdae has to drop his head back against the sofa. “That means you have another four years to go before you’re done, and you can go home.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what it means.”
Jongdae is speechless, and it seems like Yifan knows it, by the way he’s looking over and sadly smiling from where he’s leaning against the wall, almost as if he knew that’s the kind of reaction he’d get. But Jongdae suddenly shakes himself, and lightly slaps himself on the face with both hands, before he stands up. He takes the three steps needed to end up in front of Yifan and gingerly takes his right wrist with both his hands. He turns it to face up, and he stares at it for a moment, trying to take in the weight of such a mark. It holds all of Yifan’s hopes and dreams, taunting the chance of going home every time Yifan looks at his wrist. No wonder Yifan will only wear long-sleeved shirts. Jongdae would’ve scratched himself bloody. “What do you have to do, hyung?” he asks gently. “Can I help, in any way?”
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“No, you can’t. I have to do all my tasks by myself. But --“ Yifans pauses. “-- if you don’t mind, is it all right if… I could move in with you? I barely live in my apartment, so I don’t want to constantly be wasting money every month paying the rent. I wouldn’t be around much anyway, so even if I do move in, it’s not like you’d really notice me anyway.”
He’s nodding his head yes before Yifan is finished speaking. Jongdae sees the relief in his eyes chasing away the slight loneliness and worry Yifan tried to hide, because he didn’t want to pressure Jongdae; but he’s known him for too long, and even if there was such a big part of his life Jongdae didn’t know about, he was always best in gauging Yifan’s moods. He’s relieved to note that his talent hasn’t changed.
Jongdae has yet to let go of Yifan’s hand, so he looks down, and smiling, decides to take hold of it. He fits his hand into Yifan’s much larger one and deliberately rests his wrist right on top of the hourglass, hiding the mark from Yifan’s gaze. “I look forward to the few times you’ll be showing up in here, new apartment mate,” Jongdae teases.
Tension easing from his body, Yifan swings their hand straight into the wall he’s leaning on - at Jongdae’s yelp, he grins. Jongdae pretends to glare at him, and pretends he didn’t notice Yifan dodging his question of what he’s required to do.
The clock clicks 4:30, and Yifan suddenly lets go, as he jumps to his jacket and pulls it on, looking around frantically for anything he might’ve left. “Hyung?” Jongdae asks in alarm.
“Shit, shit, I forgot I needed to be somewhere by 5, now it’s already 4:30, shit --“ Yifan grabs Jongdae’s arm to catch his attention, and he says, hurriedly, “I’ll finish telling you everything else the next time I’m back, I promise. Call everyone next time, will you? You can help me with the running away part while I dig up the courage to tell you guys what I’ve been doing.”
“I promise, I promise,” Jongdae says as Yifan runs out the door, backpack thrown haphazardly across his back. The two-fingered salute Yifan raises above his head is the only sign he heard Jongdae’s reply.
Jongdae looks for Yifan everyday for the next few months, and he waits, patiently, for the next time Yifan will show up.
♥ goes to hide in a corner
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UGH YOU ARE SUCH A TEASE BUT I LOVE YOU AT THE SAME TIME (((CONFLICTING FEELINGS)))
huhu part of me wants more (tease!!) but the other part is really satisfied with it as a whole cry
thank you so much for this ;;;; ♥ /crawls to a corner and sobs
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i already told you i was going to tease, since the fic... exploded... and i was not going to sit there the entire night and finish it lololol. i'm glad it works for you as a whole though, i was wondering if it would stand by itself \o/
((although i bet you're curious about yifan and what he's up to n__n))
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