livin la vida loca 1/2
livin la vida loca
kris/chanyeol
19005 words; pg-13
ahhh, i finally finished it! this is for mischievousb, for exoforsichuan! :D I'M SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG SWEETIE, I HOPE YOU ENJOY IT ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
if any of you are interested, this is a playlist of songs that i frequently listened to when writing this. i think it fits the mood i (tried to) set for it.
one of the things that really god this fic going was this beautiful, beautiful quote that someone in my 21 century writing class blurted out while we were discussing whether your first love is most true form or if it's naivity. something like that. regardless, this guy i never paid attention to two rows to the side and behind me suddenly said, "not only can you experience love in different ways with different people as you get older, but you can also experience love in different ways with the same people," and never in my life have i ever scrambled to write something down that fast, because i just had to keep it.
but anyway, ahh! this fic is... very close to my heart. some of it is quite personal, so i hope you all enjoy it!
and of course, an ao3 mirror for anyone who wants it!
You reflect in this heart of mine
If you ever feel alone and
The glare makes me hard to find
Just know that I'm always
Parallel on the other side
-Mirrors, Justin Timberlake
This is the biography of Kris Wu; He was born on November 6, 1990. He lived. The End.
It’s a Wednesday. It’s a Wednesday and Kris is on his way to work and Kris hates going to work on Wednesdays because Wednesdays are a black void of despair because it’s stuck in the middle of the week which means its the farthest day from the previous weekend and the upcoming weekend.
Kris also hates using the subway at ass o’clock, because he’d been called in early for some emergency with the upcoming deadline, which means one of the new interns probably messed something up and Kris isn’t going to know who it is so he’ll end up directing his anger at everyone.
It’s right in the middle of rush hour, and he feels great contempt and hatred for the world when he’s shoved against the back wall of the subway. There are two school girls standing a few meters away from him giggling and giving him occasional glances. Either his shirt is on backwards or they’re trying to sneak in a stalker picture of him to show their friends and gush about the really hot businessman they saw on the subway today.
He sighs. There’s at least six more stops to go until he gets to where he needs to be, and the subway car is only getting more and more crowded. Someone bumps into him again, and Kris spots short black hair quickly sliding past him before an accented, “Sorry,” comes out, and Kris smiles sympathetically. He stops when the schoolgirls start to squeal.
The subway car slides to a stop, and his shoulders sag with relief when all of the students start to pile out. Stuyvesant is nearby, Kris knows; he went to school there for a year before he moved back to Korea.
He finally has breathing space with all of the students gone, and now with nothing to glare at, he takes out his phone to dully note the time. It’s much earlier than it should be, and as Kris slides his phone back into his pocket, he notes the man with the accented voice from before. It’s a distinctly Korean accent - Kris would know after spending hours making business calls between Korea, China, and New York. After years of having to interchange between languages between phone calls - sentences, even - Kris can say he’s pretty good at telling where each person is from.
The other man is staring out the window as the subway car starts to pick up again, and as he turns around to look at the rest of the car, Kris is hit with an intense feeling of deja vu. That’s not normal.
He’s almost as tall as Kris is, which is already a rarity in itself, and has short black hair and large ears. When he turns around completely, Kris is welcomed with a set of big eyes and pink lips and a face that looks entirely like-
“Chanyeol?” Kris finds himself asking, and the guy with the accent perks up, and it dawns on Kris that, shit, that is Chanyeol.
He looks around the subway car, eyes wide, before they finally settle on Kris, and there is a long, silent moment where Chanyeol stares at him, with the vaguest bit of recognition in his eyes, like he knows Kris from somewhere, but isn’t sure where or when. Then, finally, his eyes widen even more, and the low register of his voice almost makes Kris jump when he asks tentatively, “Yifan?”
Yifan. He hasn’t heard that name in a very long time. The last time someone called him Yifan was in his first year of college, when he met a pretty Chinese girl named Song Qian, the only person who had been able to pronounce his name correctly amongst the fluent English speakers.
Then again, freshmen year of university was also the last time he spoke to Chanyeol.
“I-” Kris tries to find the muddled words in his head, if there are any words, and comes up with a stutter instead.
“Oh my god,” Chanyeol says in Korean, “it’s really you, isn’t it? Wu Yifan?”
Long time no see would probably be the cooler, more suave answer. Instead, Kris goes for, “What are you doing here?” and sounds like a dick.
It shows on Chanyeol’s face, because the spark in his eyes dies a little, and Kris hates himself a bit more for that. “I work in sales management for a Korean-Chinese company,” he says. “I’ve been transferred to the branch in New York City. Today is supposed to be my first day.”
Kris stares at him, brain still cloudy and way past overdrive, lost somewhere between mild hysteria and shutdown. “I work for a Korean-Chinese company,” he mumbles. “I’m the head of the telecommunications department.”
“No way,” Chanyeol breathes. “Is it the same company? Have we been working for the same company all this time and never known?”
Kris gulps and takes a look down at his watch. There’s still at least twenty minutes until his stop comes, and realizes that that’s probably Chanyeol’s stop too.
It turns out they do, except in completely different departments on different floors, and now that Kris’ brain has processed the fact that, yes, Park Chanyeol, that Park Chanyeol, the one Kris was best friends with in high school, is here in New York, standing right in front of him, he has no idea what to do.
“How’s everything?” Kris asks. “I mean, when did we lose contact? Somewhere between freshmen and sophomore year of college, right?”
Chanyeol nods thoughtfully. “Yeah, sometime before our birthdays, I think.” He laughs, and Kris can’t tell if it’s a bitter laugh or a nostalgic one. “I remember staring at the calendar on your birthday, y’know? But we hadn’t talked in a while then, so I didn’t know if it would be awkward or not to send you an e-mail.”
“E-mail,” Kris breathes. “Wow, that was a long time ago.”
Kris remembers Chanyeol’s birthday that year too. Song Qian had broken up with him that day, and his roommates were out, so it was just him, alone in their dorm, considering calling Chanyeol up and crying to him over the phone. They hadn’t spoken since August though, and Kris tries to pretend that that isn’t creepy at all, remembering the last time they spoke.
After Kris went to college in America, he lost touch with almost everyone back home. His family had packed up their bags and moved to New York with him, so there was no need to visit Korea. If they visited relatives, it was in China.
“Yeah, now we have Facebook for everything,” Chanyeol says sagely, then jokes, “Man, I should have Facebook stalked you,” and Kris grins at him brightly.
“You wouldn’t have found me,” Kris says, “I’ve gotten my name legally changed. It’s Kris Wu now.”
“Kris Wu?” Chanyeol echoes, wrinkling his nose. “I don’t like it.”
"I chose it myself," Kris says, feeling slightly put out. "I like it. What about you? Why are you here in New York, in advertisement of all things. Last time I heard, you were a music major, and you wanted to be a rockstar."
Chanyeol shrugs and runs a hand through his hair. Kris remembers their sophomore year of high school, when Chanyeol tried to dye his hair orange and was left with a bright yellow spot on the top of his head. He'd dragged Kris to his house that day, and they dyed his hair to a dark brown in his yard to hide the evidence. His hair used to be long and floppy and always get in his eyes, and Kris would always push it back out of his face.
"Time caught up, I guess," Chanyeol sighs. "One day I was eighteen, the next I was twenty two with a degree."
Time. What an interesting concept. It's never quite where you want it to be.
Kris frowns. Speaking of time-
"This is our stop," he says to Chanyeol and grabs his wrist quickly to pull him out of the subway car.
"Do you normally do that?" Chanyeol asks when they're out of the subway and walking down Seventh Avenue.
"Do what?"
"The whole hand-grabbing thing. It's like something I'd watch in a drama."
Huh. Kris hadn't even noticed. He looks down, and their hands aren't touching now, but now that he thinks about it, he had grabbed Chanyeol's arm to tug him along. “Oh,” he mumbles, trying to feign ignorance. “Not usually, but then again, I don’t usually have anyone to lead around New York?”
Good enough. Chanyeol grins at him and bumps their knuckles together. “Definitely something I’d watch in a drama. You haven’t changed a bit, Yifan.”
My name is Kris, he wants to say, but his knuckles burn, and the flare travels through his veins to the tips of his body, and he feels frozen in place under Chanyeol’s smile.
Not this, please not this, Kris begs. High school romances are supposed to die where they’re made - in high school.
His hand still burns though, and Chanyeol seems as if he knows exactly where he’s going, so Kris stays a few feet behind him, trying to calm his rapidly beating heart.
He remembers the day him and a bunch of their friends, Chanyeol included, went down to the beach. He remembers how the waves rolled after each other, how he and Chanyeol threw sand in each other’s faces and hit their beach ball so hard it popped, and he remembers the feeling of Chanyeol’s skin under his as he covered his body in sand, and how Chanyeol laughed and yelled I’m a sand angel! and how they complained about there being more sand in their sandwiches than bread.
What he remembers the most though, is the ride home, where Chanyeol and Kris had been squished together in the back seat uncomfortably, Kris against the window, and Chanyeol pressed up against his arm.
They said nothing on the way back, didn’t even look at each other, but Kris remembers the way Chanyeol took his hand in his and laced their fingers together, quietly, and looked away. Kris didn’t look back either, and instead watched as the sun soaked up the colored sky until the moon took its place.
Nervous. That’s how he felt. He and Chanyeol had walked up until the doors of the corporate building, and then Chanyeol was ushered off by someone Kris never met, and he vaguely remembers promising to take Chanyeol out for lunch later.
The first few hours of work went by between increments of extremely slow and extremely fast. It wasn’t until a quarter until his break when Lu Han, a friend slash colleague of his, burst into his office.
“You have Angsty Main Character Syndrome, what’s going on? You scared away poor Luna, you know? She looked like she was going to burst into tears when she ran into me.”
“She organized all my files backwards,” Kris groans. Lu Han laughs at him when he slumps down in his chair, and repeats for emphasis, “Backwards, Lu Han.”
“It’s her first day on the job,” Lu Han says, and pats him on the back in consolation. “She’s still learning how to speak Cantonese.”
“Then why is she here,” Kris grits out, and Lu Han gives him another sneaky smile before jumping backwards to sit on his desk. Kris sighs.
“I heard about our new Korean transfer,” Lu Han continues, as if Kris hasn’t spoken before, and crosses his legs. Kris scoffs. What is this, high school? Then he immediately takes that thought back. “Park Chanyeol, right? He’s been quite the talk. He’s so happy, it makes me happy. I like him.”
“Great.”
“And,” Lu Han says wickedly, “Mr. Happy Pants has some history with Mr. Not So Happy Pants.”
Kris suddenly feels the need to loosen his tie, or maybe fan himself. “You’re implying something that I don’t li-”
“A lot of history, in fact,” Lu Han states. “Like, enough to fill up all of your years of high school.”
“Did Chanyeol just tell you all this?”
“And you call him Chanyeol! Not Mr. Park. There’s only one other person you call by their name, and that’s me.”
Kris sighs. This has been a very long day so far. “Please cut to the point. What do you want?”
Lu Han shifts closer so that his calf is touching Kris’ knee. It makes him feel uncomfortable, like Lu Han can read his emotions by touching him. “You look really uncomfortable,” Lu Han says, smiling. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”
“A bit.”
“Good.” Lu Han has a very punchable looking face; Kris wonders how big the repercussions would be if he just reeled his arm back and- “I’ll be seeing you then.”
Kris blinks. “What?”
Lu Han shrugs. “Did you think I was going to interrogate you on your love life with Chanyeol?”
“Sort of?”
“Nah,” Lu Han says pleasantly. “We’re getting there though, don’t worry.”
“Oh I won’t,” Kris mutters. “Now please leave, there’s a report I have to read over.”
Lu Han slides off of his desk easily; his polished shoes make a slight tapping sound as they hit the floor. It irritates Kris. “Whatever you say, boss.”
I’m not your boss, Kris wants to say, but Lu Han’s already left the room. His exit is silent, and that scares Kris a lot, because Lu Han usually walks out of his office making embarrassing noises or yelling something that could get either of them fired. Lu Han only ever leaves his office quietly when he’s sad. Or when he’s plotting something.
Kris barely manages to read through half of the report when there’s a knock on his door, and he has to physically restrain himself from groaning aloud. “Come in,” he calls, not bothering to look up. The report isn’t the most interesting thing in the world, but then again, whoever’s coming in now will probably be more boring.
He’s wrong, of course.
It’s almost embarrassing how wrong he is when Chanyeol tiptoes in, then shuts the door behind him. “Um,” he mumbles, “hi? Baekhyun told me you had lunch now, so.”
Lunch? Kris takes one look at the time and nearly screams. How the hell is it one already? He was supposed to be done with this report and writing up a new proposal an hour ago. He blames Lu Han.
“Now looks like a bad time, huh?”
Kris at least has the decency to look guilty. “I’m sorry Chanyeol, I just-”
“Don’t worry about it!” Chanyeol says, grinning. It’s not a happy grin. “I should probably try to make friends anyway. Take care!”
He exits before Kris can say anything, and as soon as the door shuts, he lets out what he thinks is a well deserved groan. This is all definitely Lu Han’s fault.
Kris in the office, Lu Han will say, is very different from Kris outside the office. Kris in the office has polished suits and a glare that freezes interns where they stand. Kris outside the office is a pushover who buys bread from the street vendor on 6th Avenue and 58th Street to feed the pigeons in the park.
Kris only knows this because he walks in on Lu Han telling all this to Chanyeol.
“His apartment is very modern and has a minimalistic feel to it, but he’s got this guest room which is disgustingly different, really. It’s all pastel colored and it has a window seat, and the bed has all these stuffed animals that he claims is because his mom likes it, and-”
“Having fun talking about me?”
Lu Han doesn’t bat an eyelash, but Chanyeol jumps in his seat, looking very much like he’s just been caught with his hand down the cookie jar. “Lots, actually,” Lu Han says. “I was keeping your boyfriend company while you finished up your stupid proposal. Is it done yet?”
“Yes,” Kris replies, sighing. “You are the worst secretary ever. And he’s not my boyfriend.”
Chanyeol’s nails must be very interesting, the way he’s looking at them now. Almost eight years of separation haven’t changed him at all. His habits haven’t changed at all, and a sort of warm fuzz bubbles up inside of him. It feels like home.
“That’s just because I’m not your secretary,” Lu Han retorts. “Oh, and, since you wouldn’t, I decided to make the decision to invite Chanyeol out for drinks on Saturday.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
Lu Han shrugs. “I didn’t invite you, I invited him on your behalf.”
Kris groans. “That’s- You sure about that, Chanyeol? Lu Han’s really nasty when he’s drunk. He curses a lot and gets very personal.”
Lu Han pats him on the back. “Kris is a very good drinking partner.”
Chanyeol smiles up at them. “Yeah!” he says, and Kris pretends not to notice how the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “No problem. I’m actually curious as to what you’re like drunk, Yifan.”
Kris doesn’t bother to correct Chanyeol this time. “You shouldn’t be, I’m not very exciting.”
“He’s not,” Lu Han agrees with a solemn nod, “but that’s also because I know all of his secrets.”
Kris scowls.
They don’t go out that day, but he does promise Chanyeol to take him out for lunch in Central Park the next day. “It’s a New York classic,” he says as they come out of the subway on Columbus Circle. “My friends dragged me out here when I first came to America, so now I’m taking you.”
“It’s not even lunch anymore,” Chanyeol says. “Are we going to even get back to the office in time?”
Definitely not, Kris thinks, but he won’t tell Chanyeol that. He figures he can use his seniority card for the first time to let Chanyeol off. At most, they’ll be anywhere from half an hour to an hour late anyway. Which is a lot of time, now that he thinks about it, but it’s also too late to turn back.
Chanyeol lays out the blanket on a stone bed, and Kris puts the food down off towards the side. It’s not that far from the entrance, but far enough for a decent walk. Even though it’s a Thursday afternoon, there’s still a handful of school children running around. A golden retriever off of its leash bounds up to Chanyeol at one point and shoves his head onto his lap. Chanyeol laughs and waves him off, and ends up having his sandwich thrown in four different directions. One flustered college student and a laughing Chanyeol later, Kris is laughing alongside him as the dog is tugged away.
“She was cute!” Chanyeol exclaims as he gives the college girl a final wave.
Kris raises his eyebrows. “Who? The dog or the girl?”
Chanyeol grins. “Both, obviously. But the dog moreso.”
“Ouch.”
“It’s not that she’s not pretty!” Chanyeol says, “She’s just not my type?”
Kris takes a look at his own gyro and hands it to Chanyeol. He’s not hungry anymore, and Chanyeol’s food has been stolen by a dog, anyway. That’s a story to tell. “What’s your type?” he asks, hopefully nonchalantly. He’s not interested, of course not. This is just catching up with an old friend. Now that he thinks about it, the only girl Chanyeol’s ever claimed to have interest in is that one pop star who used to be really famous back when they were in high school. What was her name? Eugene from S.E.S. or something. Oh right, that was it.
Summer of 2002, the year that S.E.S’ Just a Feeling plagued each radio station. Kris still remembers Chanyeol pretending to be Bada and swaying his hips in the least attractive way possible. He’d threatened to tell everyone about Kris’ secret stash of VCRs if he didn’t try to dance with him at least one, and Kris, never one to let his reputation tarnish, told Chanyeol he might as well tell. Junior year of high school is not an odd time to find out Kris watches porn.
Chanyeol didn’t tell. In fact, he begged Kris to let him see, and then threw the bag of tapes back at him the next day like it was drugs and yelled, that’s disgusting! Who the hell wants to watch that?
Kris wonders if he still thinks that, and realizes that’s probably a stupid question.
“My type?” Chanyeol asks. “I don’t think I have one. Wait, no, Scarlet Johansson is really hot.”
“You would,” Kris accuses. “You’ve always had a thing for redheads.”
“She’s blonde,” Chanyeol snaps. He throws a piece of bread at a duck that’s been circling them suspiciously. It squawks angrily before realizing there’s food, picks it up, and leaves. Chanyeol takes a bite of Kris’ gyro then, and splutters. “This is so salty! And it’s bland.”
“That’s how I like it,” Kris mumbles.
“What happened to the Yifan I know who ate spicy ddeokbeokki like a pro?” Chanyeol demands. “Even I couldn’t eat it as spicy as you.”
“There aren’t many spicy things in America,” Kris says, shrugging. “Not as spicy as in Korea, at least.”
Chanyeol looks much more horrified than he should, really. It’s just food.
Kris’ mother would have hit him on the head for thinking that. So would Chanyeol’s. Maybe that’s why. “We are going to fix this problem,” Chanyeol says firmly. “I’m going to make something super spicy and you’re going to eat it.”
Kris laughs. “You can’t even cook, Chanyeol.”
“Years of living by yourself will change that,” Chanyeol states. Then he amends, “I had this really awesome roommate in college named Kyungsoo - he’s one of my best friends today - he taught me everything I know about cooking. But he was amazing. So! I, being the amazing friend I am, am going to pass down these godly cooking secrets to you.”
Kris wonders if he looks as unimpressed as he feels. “Will you really?”
“No,” Chanyeol laughs. “But I will flaunt them in your face and make you eat my food.”
“You’re a great friend.”
“Of course I am,” Chanyeol says, and stands up, showing Kris the empty gyro wrapper. “We should head back now.”
It doesn’t hit Kris until he’s back in his office that Kyungsoo was his best friend. Who’s Kyungsoo? His roommate, he said, back in Korea. When did they meet? What is he like? Does he wrap his arm around Chanyeol’s neck and pull him in a headlock like Kris used to? Does he let Chanyeol sleep on his shoulder during school breaks like Kris used to? It’s illogical to think that he could still be best friends with Chanyeol after at least five years of separation, but his chest hurts all the same.
“You are literally forty five minutes late,” Lu Han says as he walks - no, frolicks - into Kris’ office. “And you came back with Chanyeol. What did you do?”
“We ate at Central Park.”
Lu Han stares at him. “Really?"
"Really."
"Why did you go all the way up to Central Park? You could’ve just went to the High Line or something. Even DUMBO is closer, you dumbass.”
Kris shrugs. “It’s more well known.”
“Missionary is more well known, doesn’t mean it’s the best sex position,” Lu Han says, like that’s supposed to prove anything aside from the fact that Kris knows way too much about his sex life.
Kris levels him with his best professional stare. “You’re clearly not scolding me, so why are you here?”
“I’m mad at your awful wooing skills. Central Park, literally the biggest cliche there is to New York, aside from the Empire State Building. Please don’t take him up there, I beg you. On that note, don’t take a shopping spree to Fifth Avenue either, no one besides you has an interest in buying a seventy dollar wifebeater. I should just plan out your entire life, while I’m at it.”
“I’m not wooing him. We’re old friends catching up.”
“What kind of old friend goes through the effort of going all the way to Central Park just to have a picnic? When was the last time you had a picnic?”
“That’s beside the point,” Kris says, even though it’s definitely not. “Why not get all the cliches out of the way first?”
Lu Han stares at him. “For Chanyeol’s sake, I hope you really aren’t wooing him.”
Kris frowns. That’s not very nice. Kris is great at wooing people. Granted, he hasn’t had much people to woo, because he hasn’t been attracted to many people. His face is nice enough, admittedly. He’s has his fair share of one night stands, but Kris doesn’t really have to do much aside from stand there with a drink.
So maybe he is a little out of practice with this whole courtship thing, but it doesn’t matter because he’s not wooing Park Chanyeol.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” he asks after a pause.
Lu Han shrugs. “I finished early.”
“You’re Minseok’s secretary,” Kris says. “How did you finish?”
Lu Han smiles pleasantly. “One day you’ll have a secretary as efficient as me. Until then, I guess I’ll do some extra work.”
Kris wrinkles his nose. He doesn’t want to know what ‘extra work’ is, because it definitely has nothing to do with organizing his schedule or answering calls or marking down meetings. And Soojung is a great secretary. Hundreds of times better than Lu Han, probably.
There’s a knock on the door, and Soojung comes strolling in, a couple of packets in her arms. She gives Lu Han a smile and places them on Kris’ desk. “There are the folders you asked for a couple of hours ago.” She fixes him with a hard look as she says, “I tried to give them to you earlier, but you weren’t in your office.” Lu Han snickers in the background.
“Thank you, Soojung,” Kris mumbles.
“I was wrong,” Lu Han says, “I’m second best, after Soojung. Isn’t that right?”
She looks like she’s about to make a smart comment before thinking better of it and laughs. “I do my job well,” she says.
“I’m sure you do,” Lu Han says, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “Let’s go talk about Kris behind his back.”
He stares down at the stacks of portfolios sitting on his desk as Soojung and Lu Han leaves and sighs. She’s almost too good.
Friday mornings is one of the most mundane parts of the week. The girls on the subway (two of the the girls are named Melissa and Sonia, he learned last night) have early lacrosse practice on Friday mornings, so they’re not even there to entertain Kris in some weird masochistic way. He shrugs. They’re not that bad. He doesn’t exactly mind being eye candy, as long as they keep their distance.
Still. The subway ride this time is long and boring, and there’s not even that homeless person in the station that Kris always gives his leftover change to when he plays some awful rendition of Jason Mraz. He has nice stories to tell, when Kris bothers listening.
He almost never runs into Chanyeol when he works, except for once when Soojung calls in sick for the first time in her three year career and Kris has to walk around the building and find out where the coffee machine is himself. It’s down on the fifth floor. Why? Because someone is out to get Kris, because he hates walking to the fifth floor, because the stairs are shady and there’s distorted colors on the floor and wall that shouldn’t be there and Kris doesn’t want to know how they got there because this is an office building.
Unlike Kris, Chanyeol actually seems to know how to work the machine.
“Have you never made yourself coffee before?” he asks, and Kris at least has the decency to look guilty.
“There’s a Starbucks at the corner of the block I live on,” he admits, and Chanyeol actually judges him. He never did that in high school. Usually, it was the opposite.
He remembers one day, in their sophomore year of high school, their school had gotten their very first computer lab in the middle of the library. It only had about five computers in it, and they were the big block Dell monitors that took ten minutes to start up. Nonetheless, it was the gem of the school, and no one ever missed a chance to stay after school and play Flight Simulator 2000 until they got kicked off or until the computer manually shut down.
Kris, admittedly, played a lot. Chanyeol had half the attention span he did, so after awhile he would give up and give the joystick to Kris (Yifan, back then), who would try to land the plane correctly. Out of all the years they had that game, he maybe did it successfully about two or three times.
One day, he’d be on the computer for a long time, and Chanyeol, after getting tired of pestering him, finally tugged on his sleeves and whispered, “Yifan, watch out! The aliens!”
Kris stared at him, sort of in the same way Chanyeol is staring at him now.
“The aliens!” Chanyeol said again, and leaped behind a bookshelf. Kris stared at him blankly, until Chanyeol waved him over and Kris pointed at himself questioningly. Chanyeol, losing patience, nodded furiously and beamed when Kris got up. He took his time making his way over, and almost didn’t crouch down next to Chanyeol until he pulled at his pant leg.
“What are we doing?” he asked.
“We’re hiding from the aliens,” Chanyeol said, as if that was obvious. “We have to defend Earth.”
“Are you five?”
Chanyeol glared at him, then cocked an invisible space gun. “Do you want to die? Come on.” And so Kris followed.
They played invisible Space Raiders, in the middle of the high school library as the other students stared at them. One of them even cheered them on and shouted The aliens are behind you, duck!
That was always Chanyeol’s charm. Anyone could do anything, no matter how old or young they were. Was it silly? Of course it was, but who cared when you’ve never had this much fun before?
Now, Chanyeol, the twenty-six year old man standing before him making coffee has a much different charm that Kris doesn't know how to stomach. He’s taking care of Kris, a twenty-eight year old man who’s been in this office for at least five more years than Chanyeol has. And he knows how to make coffee.
“I can’t believe you’ve never made yourself coffee,” Chanyeol says incredulously, and Kris wants to respond You didn’t even know that flying squirrels couldn’t actually fly, but that sounds kind of stupid, so Kris keeps his mouth shut. “How did you survive through college?”
“Starbucks,” Kris replies meekly. “Have you seen my college?”
Chanyeol snorts and hands him a steaming cup. “I don’t want to see what pretentious American college you went to.”
“NYU is not that pretentious,” Kris defends as he takes a sip. His eyes widen. “This is really sweet,” he says, and tries to act like that isn’t exactly how he likes his coffee. His voice gives him away.
“You’re not the only one who hasn’t changed much,” Chanyeol says, and Kris stands there in the breakroom, long after Chanyeol dismisses himself. It feels like a punch to his stomach, and he doesn’t know why.
Saturdays are usually nice. Kris doesn’t have work on the weekends, unless someone screws with his schedule, which has happened a grand total of twice ever since Soojung started working under him. Before that, Kris was usually in every Saturday, and sometimes Sundays.
On Saturdays he goes jogging in Central Park in a t-shirt and sweatpants in the morning as the latest rap songs blare through his iPod.
Maybe his life is a cliche, he thinks as he buys a hot dog from the same street vendor with an extra piece of bread. He’s already eaten breakfast, but he loves tossing bits of bread at the pigeons and watching them waddle over and fly away with a piece.
“Lu Han was right, you really are a lot less cool than you look,” someone says behind him, and Kris jumps. A couple of the pigeons scatter at the sudden movement.
“You scared them all away,” Kris mumbles.
Chanyeol ignores him. “I’m glad I already knew you were really uncool, because that would’ve been a huge letdown.
“What are you doing here?”
“Exploring,” Chanyeol says. “I figured Central Park was a great place to start.”
“I already showed you Central Park,” Kris replies, a little wounded. “Why do you need to go there again?”
“I said it was a good starting point,” Chanyeol says again. “Easy location. Everyone knows where Central Park is.”
Kris doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything. Lu Han would probably hate them both right now. “Bread?” he asks, holding out half a piece of hotdog bread out.
Chanyeol laughs as he takes a piece. His eyes crinkle up at the edges and his gums show, along with the shiniest, whitest set of teeth Kris has ever seen.
If Kris had to choose a favorite mouth, it would be Chanyeol’s. His lips are the most perfect shade of rosy pink, and they look so soft, Kris wouldn’t mind kissing them.
He’s hit with the sudden realization that Chanyeol doesn’t know he’s gay.
Chanyeol seems to be oblivious to his internal freak out as he rips off pieces of bread and throws them near the ducks. To be fair, Kris himself hadn’t come out of the closet until spring of his junior year of college, and even then, he didn’t have much dating experience until his senior year. Most people could never get past his face, and those that got too caught up accused Kris of having no personality. His longest relationship was with a German boy named Michael two years after he graduated, which lasted a grand total of six months.
“Hey, you okay? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” Chanyeol says, waving a hand over his face. Kris blinks furiously, then stares at Chanyeol blankly, like he’s not really there. “Anything wrong?”
Kris pauses. Takes a deep breath. Opens his mouth.
“I think I left the stove on.”
“You told him what?” Lu Han gasps, later that evening.
“I blanked. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.”
If Kris didn’t already feel stupid, the way Lu Han is staring at him now would have done the job. “You’re buying me a drink,” he says. “To make up for how stupid you are.”
He doesn’t even know why he actually does buy Lu Han a drink. At this rate, they’ll get inebriated before Chanyeol even shows up. Maybe if he gets drunk enough, he’ll pass out and forget everything. He frowns. Twenty-eight is probably too old to drink yourself into a blackout.
He orders another beer anyway.
Chanyeol comes about fifteen minutes later, apologizing about how he took the wrong subway train. They move from the club bar to a booth in the far back, and Lu Han invites Yixing, another one of Yifan’s friends from college.
“How are you liking New York so far?”
“Exactly how I imagined it,” Chanyeol says. “Like it was taken right out of a movie.”
Lu Han shakes his head and thrusts a drink into Chanyeol’s hand. “That just means you’ve only seen the superficial side. Where are you staying?”
“I have a pretty small flat in Chelsea,” Chanyeol mumbles, bringing the glass to his lips.
“That’s pretty close to Lu Han,” Kris says. “He lives in Greenwich. I live in Upper West Side.”
“We’ll have super secret parties without him,” Lu Han fake whispers, and Kris groans before calling the waiter over for another round of drinks. Something tells him this night is a bad idea.
He knew going out for drinks with Lu Han was a bad idea. Doing anything with Lu Han is a bad idea. Lu Han is one giant bad idea, really.
Kris is about way past drunk right now, and leaning on Chanyeol’s shoulder and giggling. There’s a piece of white fluff on Chanyeol’s jacket and it’s really distracting. Chanyeol is pretty distracting himself. He’s changed so much since high school. He’s lost most of the baby fat in his cheeks, as well as the round glasses he used to wear. Kris grins to himself. He used to call him Harry Potter.
“Are you okay, Yifan?” Chanyeol asks. Kris can feel the rumble of his voice through their bodies.
“He’s a touchy drunk,” Lu Han calls out from across the table, where he's getting up to get to the dance floor. Yixing, who arrived around two hours ago, gives Chanyeol what he thinks is a sympathetic glance and follows Lu Han. “He’ll be okay.”
“I’m… fine,” he slurs. He feels great, actually.
He hasn’t drank in a really long time, so he’s probably out of practice with this spacing out thing because he grabs the next beer that’s placed on the table by a smiley waitress. “I think you’ve had too much to drink,” Chanyeol says, grabbing the bottle from him.
Kris watches his hand as the bottle is taken away, and ends up staring at Chanyeol’s face again. "Your ears," he says, lifting himself off of Chanyeol's shoulder. "They're the same."
"Are they really?" Chanyeol touches them subconsciously. "I mean, I haven't changed them or anything, but-"
"It's good," Kris mumbles. "I like them. I like that you haven't changed that much."
Chanyeol grins and drinks the beer Kris was supposed to have. "I like you," he admits, after draining most of the bottle. "I liked you, I mean."
"What?"
"Back in high school," Chanyeol confesses, looking sheepish. Kris wonders if he's only saying this because they're both drunk, although Kris moreso than Chanyeol. Maybe he thinks Kris won't remember anything in the morning. "I sort of...really liked you. Almost in a worshipping kind of way. I thought you were really cool, y'know? My best friend, captain of the basketball team, the ones all the girls - and some guys - loved."
Kris doesn't register any of that. "You're... You're gay?"
Chanyeol flushes. "I'm bi, actually. I broke up with my last girlfriend before I came to America. Surprise?"
Kris laughs happily. He's not sure why. Chanyeol looks confused. "I'm gay," he says after a moment.
There's a long, pregnant pause, in which Chanyeol stares at Kris, mouth open, and Kris grabs Lu Han's long forgotten glass to get rid of the awkward atmosphere. He's already wasted, might as well go all the way, right?
"Do you want to dance?" he asks, because that's a sure-fire way to make everything five times worse.
Instead, Chanyeol laughs. "Can you even dance? The Yifan I know can't."
Kris makes a face at him and downs Lu Han's drink. It tastes like vodka and something else. "You don't need to know how to dance to dance at a club."
He almost thinks Chanyeol is about to turn him down, especially since he's infinitely more sober than Kris is, but he gets up anyway and holds out his hand for Kris.
The moment Kris stands up, the world spins for a moment before Chanyeol's hand is on Kris' back, and he's looking at him worriedly. "Are you sure you're okay? Let's stay here."
"I haven't been clubbing in a long time," Kris whines. "I'll be fine. You're here, right?"
Chanyeol taking care of Kris feels weird, because he remembers how back in high school, it used to be the other way around. Kris used to joke and tell Chanyeol that he cared for his guitar more than he cared for himself, and that it was Kris' job to look after Chanyeol.
"You're a big baby," Chanyeol groans, but leads Kris down the stairs of the club to the dance floor. Kris' dancing, has not, in fact, gotten any better since high school. In fact, it's probably gotten worse. In an effort to hide this tiny, insignificant fact, he wraps his arms around Chanyeol's neck and stays close, breathing hot into his ear.
"If this were anyone else," Chanyeol says, cheek rubbing against his, "This would be the moment I'd ask if they wanted to leave." Kris can feel the scratchy outline of stubble against his jaw, and that's just as distracting.
"We just got here," Kris says.
Chanyeol doesn't say anything back, and Kris wonders if he's missed the point.
Being like this feels nice, and Kris doesn’t want to decide if he’s feeling this way because he’s drunk as hell or because he actually feels nice. Both probably aren’t very good options, and when he’s sober he’ll hate himself. But right now, Chanyeol smells like expensive cologne, which Kris likes, and pretends not to think about how Chanyeol would probably taste nice, too.
“We’re dancing a little slow for this song,” Chanyeol murmurs into Kris’ ear, and fuck, that feels really nice.
Kris groans. “I’m too drunk to move any quicker.”
Chanyeol pulls away from him, and Kris tries to pretend he didn’t move forward with him. “You should probably get home, then,” he says. “You’re… I think you’re really drunk?”
“I am,” he admits. “But this is nice; I don’t want to leave.”
Chanyeol laughs. “Tough luck. Come on.” He pulls Kris along with him, back towards the booth they were sitting at. “Give me your phone.”
“What?”
“Phone. Give me. I don’t have Lu Han or Yixing’s numbers.”
Kris hands it over quietly, and watches as Chanyeol punches in a This is Chanyeol! ^^ Kris is staying with me for the night, so don’t worry~ :D
“Are you really twenty-six?” he asks, wobbling. Chanyeol shoves his phone into Kris’ pocket and shoots him a glare.
“Come on,” he says, pulling Kris’ arm over his shoulders, and Kris doesn’t know why he follows.
Kris’ apartment is definitely not this bright, he thinks when he wakes up the next morning. He’s also not in his own clothing. Or his bed. Or his room. What the fuck?
He gets up, groaning at the shift in perspective, and the resulting pounding in his head. He must have drank last night, because hangovers come rather easily to Kris Wu. Some exchange for his excruciatingly good looks. Lu Han would hit him if he heard that.
His first thought is that this is another one night stand he’s managed to rope himself into, but he hates going to other strangers’ houses. And they usually don’t give him their clothes to change into. He’s wearing a dull red shirt he doesn’t own, and black sweatpants he also doesn’t own. The walls are a pale yellow, and floor is an old, but polished wood. The clock says it’s a little past ten.
Once he picks himself off of the bed, he notices the pills and glass of water on the nightstand.
Hello Yifan!! You seemed pretty out of it last night, but don’t worry! You changed into the clothes yourself. You didn’t do much, aside from sing your self acclaimed amazing rendition of I Knew You Were Trouble. It wasn’t bad, but I bet I could do better. ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ I made you drink water, but probably not enough. Hope your hangovers aren’t too bad!
-Chanyeol
Fuck. Of all things to sing drunk, why is it a teenage pop song? Last time he was out with Minseok and Henry and he belted out One Direction’s What Makes You Beautiful. At least Henry was also drunk enough to join him, but Henry likes that kind of thing.
At least it’s only Chanyeol.
Actually, where is Chanyeol?
He makes his way out of the bedroom to the living room, to see Chanyeol sleeping on the couch, blanket pulled up to his nose. Despite the racket in his head, he smiles to himself. Chanyeol does still wear glasses. They’re not round, but they’re still huge and thick-rimmed and cover half of his face.
His stomach rumbles. Since Chanyeol hasn’t woken up yet, he decides to take matters into his own hand and dig around the room for Chanyeol’s phone, since he can’t find his own.
“I thought you couldn’t cook,” Chanyeol mumbles.
Kris grins and looks up at Chanyeol’s recently awoken state. His glasses are lopsided on his face and there are tufts of hair sticking up in every direction. His chest presses up against Kris’ back, and he reaches back with a hand to pat Chanyeol on the head.
Some habits are hard to get rid of, but sleeping habits? Even harder. Kris doesn’t mind that. In fact, he likes it a lot. Kris likes taking care of people more than he likes being taken care of.
“I can’t,” he says. “So I ordered out. Do you like haejangguk?”
Kris can feel Chanyeol inhaling against his back. His head is resting on Kris’ shoulder, and he makes a content sound before smiling lazily. “Where did you order haejangguk from in America?”
Kris turns his head to meet Chanyeol’s dazed eyes. “Ktown?” he asks helpfully, and Chanyeol pouts, eyebrows furrowed together and bottom lip jutting out.
“What’s that?”
“Um,” Kris frowns, pouring some of the haejangguk into a bowl. “It’s a small area, just a few blocks long, that’s dominantly Korean? There’s an H-mart there, and a bunch of small Korean restaurants. It’s nice, I like it.” He doesn’t look at Chanyeol until he’s finished pouring the rest of the haejangguk into the second bowl, and when he does look at Chanyeol, he’s looking at him, eyes bright and glassy.
“Let’s go there,” he says.
Kris promises to take him there the next week. They spend the rest of the day together, lazing around in Chanyeol’s apartment, watching the TV shows Kris never bothered to. The TV in his apartment is mainly considered decor, except for when his family drops by. He has a niece-in-law who loves Sonic the Hedgehog and begs him to sit with her on the couch and watch together. All he knows is that there’s a Tails, a fox with two tails, and a... bat? Who wears clothes that shouldn’t be on a children’s show? It doesn’t seem to bother his niece though.
“Do all Americans do that?” Chanyeol asks, sometime after dinner, when they’re still huddled up on Chanyeol’s couch, watching B-list horror movies. Kris watches as a girl forgoes the ax lying by her foot to approach the warehouse to get a closer look at the wagon she saw tip over.
“The ones in horror movies do,” Kris says, and nearly a moment later, the door behind her slams shut, and there’s a scream before the scene changes. “Do all Koreans grab people’s arms as they walk across the street?”
“You did,” Chanyeol points out. “When we first met on the subway.”
“I’m not Korean,” he protests, but Chanyeol ignores him.
“Wu Yifan, straight out of a drama. Grabbing innocent bystander's hands and declaring his never ending love for them as the walk sign counts down.”
“I didn’t declare my never ending love for you.”
“Oh, you will,” Chanyeol says, nodding, as the guy on screen gets stabbed by the masked villain. “You’re that type.”
“You don’t even know if I like-”
“Guys?” Chanyeol finishes for him. “Last night. You mentioned it.”
Kris sighs and wraps himself up in the blanket. “I hoped you’d forget.”
Chanyeol shrugs. “You found out I’m bisexual. The world is weird like that.”
Kris laughs. It’s crazy how the people you thought you knew were nothing like you knew. The masked figure in the TV screen closes in on the protagonist’s best friend. “The world is crazy.”
Chanyeol turns to him and grins. “Look at us, living the crazy life.”
A scream punctuates the silence that follows.
NEXT
kris/chanyeol
19005 words; pg-13
ahhh, i finally finished it! this is for mischievousb, for exoforsichuan! :D I'M SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG SWEETIE, I HOPE YOU ENJOY IT ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
if any of you are interested, this is a playlist of songs that i frequently listened to when writing this. i think it fits the mood i (tried to) set for it.
one of the things that really god this fic going was this beautiful, beautiful quote that someone in my 21 century writing class blurted out while we were discussing whether your first love is most true form or if it's naivity. something like that. regardless, this guy i never paid attention to two rows to the side and behind me suddenly said, "not only can you experience love in different ways with different people as you get older, but you can also experience love in different ways with the same people," and never in my life have i ever scrambled to write something down that fast, because i just had to keep it.
but anyway, ahh! this fic is... very close to my heart. some of it is quite personal, so i hope you all enjoy it!
and of course, an ao3 mirror for anyone who wants it!
You reflect in this heart of mine
If you ever feel alone and
The glare makes me hard to find
Just know that I'm always
Parallel on the other side
-Mirrors, Justin Timberlake
This is the biography of Kris Wu; He was born on November 6, 1990. He lived. The End.
It’s a Wednesday. It’s a Wednesday and Kris is on his way to work and Kris hates going to work on Wednesdays because Wednesdays are a black void of despair because it’s stuck in the middle of the week which means its the farthest day from the previous weekend and the upcoming weekend.
Kris also hates using the subway at ass o’clock, because he’d been called in early for some emergency with the upcoming deadline, which means one of the new interns probably messed something up and Kris isn’t going to know who it is so he’ll end up directing his anger at everyone.
It’s right in the middle of rush hour, and he feels great contempt and hatred for the world when he’s shoved against the back wall of the subway. There are two school girls standing a few meters away from him giggling and giving him occasional glances. Either his shirt is on backwards or they’re trying to sneak in a stalker picture of him to show their friends and gush about the really hot businessman they saw on the subway today.
He sighs. There’s at least six more stops to go until he gets to where he needs to be, and the subway car is only getting more and more crowded. Someone bumps into him again, and Kris spots short black hair quickly sliding past him before an accented, “Sorry,” comes out, and Kris smiles sympathetically. He stops when the schoolgirls start to squeal.
The subway car slides to a stop, and his shoulders sag with relief when all of the students start to pile out. Stuyvesant is nearby, Kris knows; he went to school there for a year before he moved back to Korea.
He finally has breathing space with all of the students gone, and now with nothing to glare at, he takes out his phone to dully note the time. It’s much earlier than it should be, and as Kris slides his phone back into his pocket, he notes the man with the accented voice from before. It’s a distinctly Korean accent - Kris would know after spending hours making business calls between Korea, China, and New York. After years of having to interchange between languages between phone calls - sentences, even - Kris can say he’s pretty good at telling where each person is from.
The other man is staring out the window as the subway car starts to pick up again, and as he turns around to look at the rest of the car, Kris is hit with an intense feeling of deja vu. That’s not normal.
He’s almost as tall as Kris is, which is already a rarity in itself, and has short black hair and large ears. When he turns around completely, Kris is welcomed with a set of big eyes and pink lips and a face that looks entirely like-
“Chanyeol?” Kris finds himself asking, and the guy with the accent perks up, and it dawns on Kris that, shit, that is Chanyeol.
He looks around the subway car, eyes wide, before they finally settle on Kris, and there is a long, silent moment where Chanyeol stares at him, with the vaguest bit of recognition in his eyes, like he knows Kris from somewhere, but isn’t sure where or when. Then, finally, his eyes widen even more, and the low register of his voice almost makes Kris jump when he asks tentatively, “Yifan?”
Yifan. He hasn’t heard that name in a very long time. The last time someone called him Yifan was in his first year of college, when he met a pretty Chinese girl named Song Qian, the only person who had been able to pronounce his name correctly amongst the fluent English speakers.
Then again, freshmen year of university was also the last time he spoke to Chanyeol.
“I-” Kris tries to find the muddled words in his head, if there are any words, and comes up with a stutter instead.
“Oh my god,” Chanyeol says in Korean, “it’s really you, isn’t it? Wu Yifan?”
Long time no see would probably be the cooler, more suave answer. Instead, Kris goes for, “What are you doing here?” and sounds like a dick.
It shows on Chanyeol’s face, because the spark in his eyes dies a little, and Kris hates himself a bit more for that. “I work in sales management for a Korean-Chinese company,” he says. “I’ve been transferred to the branch in New York City. Today is supposed to be my first day.”
Kris stares at him, brain still cloudy and way past overdrive, lost somewhere between mild hysteria and shutdown. “I work for a Korean-Chinese company,” he mumbles. “I’m the head of the telecommunications department.”
“No way,” Chanyeol breathes. “Is it the same company? Have we been working for the same company all this time and never known?”
Kris gulps and takes a look down at his watch. There’s still at least twenty minutes until his stop comes, and realizes that that’s probably Chanyeol’s stop too.
It turns out they do, except in completely different departments on different floors, and now that Kris’ brain has processed the fact that, yes, Park Chanyeol, that Park Chanyeol, the one Kris was best friends with in high school, is here in New York, standing right in front of him, he has no idea what to do.
“How’s everything?” Kris asks. “I mean, when did we lose contact? Somewhere between freshmen and sophomore year of college, right?”
Chanyeol nods thoughtfully. “Yeah, sometime before our birthdays, I think.” He laughs, and Kris can’t tell if it’s a bitter laugh or a nostalgic one. “I remember staring at the calendar on your birthday, y’know? But we hadn’t talked in a while then, so I didn’t know if it would be awkward or not to send you an e-mail.”
“E-mail,” Kris breathes. “Wow, that was a long time ago.”
Kris remembers Chanyeol’s birthday that year too. Song Qian had broken up with him that day, and his roommates were out, so it was just him, alone in their dorm, considering calling Chanyeol up and crying to him over the phone. They hadn’t spoken since August though, and Kris tries to pretend that that isn’t creepy at all, remembering the last time they spoke.
After Kris went to college in America, he lost touch with almost everyone back home. His family had packed up their bags and moved to New York with him, so there was no need to visit Korea. If they visited relatives, it was in China.
“Yeah, now we have Facebook for everything,” Chanyeol says sagely, then jokes, “Man, I should have Facebook stalked you,” and Kris grins at him brightly.
“You wouldn’t have found me,” Kris says, “I’ve gotten my name legally changed. It’s Kris Wu now.”
“Kris Wu?” Chanyeol echoes, wrinkling his nose. “I don’t like it.”
"I chose it myself," Kris says, feeling slightly put out. "I like it. What about you? Why are you here in New York, in advertisement of all things. Last time I heard, you were a music major, and you wanted to be a rockstar."
Chanyeol shrugs and runs a hand through his hair. Kris remembers their sophomore year of high school, when Chanyeol tried to dye his hair orange and was left with a bright yellow spot on the top of his head. He'd dragged Kris to his house that day, and they dyed his hair to a dark brown in his yard to hide the evidence. His hair used to be long and floppy and always get in his eyes, and Kris would always push it back out of his face.
"Time caught up, I guess," Chanyeol sighs. "One day I was eighteen, the next I was twenty two with a degree."
Time. What an interesting concept. It's never quite where you want it to be.
Kris frowns. Speaking of time-
"This is our stop," he says to Chanyeol and grabs his wrist quickly to pull him out of the subway car.
"Do you normally do that?" Chanyeol asks when they're out of the subway and walking down Seventh Avenue.
"Do what?"
"The whole hand-grabbing thing. It's like something I'd watch in a drama."
Huh. Kris hadn't even noticed. He looks down, and their hands aren't touching now, but now that he thinks about it, he had grabbed Chanyeol's arm to tug him along. “Oh,” he mumbles, trying to feign ignorance. “Not usually, but then again, I don’t usually have anyone to lead around New York?”
Good enough. Chanyeol grins at him and bumps their knuckles together. “Definitely something I’d watch in a drama. You haven’t changed a bit, Yifan.”
My name is Kris, he wants to say, but his knuckles burn, and the flare travels through his veins to the tips of his body, and he feels frozen in place under Chanyeol’s smile.
Not this, please not this, Kris begs. High school romances are supposed to die where they’re made - in high school.
His hand still burns though, and Chanyeol seems as if he knows exactly where he’s going, so Kris stays a few feet behind him, trying to calm his rapidly beating heart.
He remembers the day him and a bunch of their friends, Chanyeol included, went down to the beach. He remembers how the waves rolled after each other, how he and Chanyeol threw sand in each other’s faces and hit their beach ball so hard it popped, and he remembers the feeling of Chanyeol’s skin under his as he covered his body in sand, and how Chanyeol laughed and yelled I’m a sand angel! and how they complained about there being more sand in their sandwiches than bread.
What he remembers the most though, is the ride home, where Chanyeol and Kris had been squished together in the back seat uncomfortably, Kris against the window, and Chanyeol pressed up against his arm.
They said nothing on the way back, didn’t even look at each other, but Kris remembers the way Chanyeol took his hand in his and laced their fingers together, quietly, and looked away. Kris didn’t look back either, and instead watched as the sun soaked up the colored sky until the moon took its place.
Nervous. That’s how he felt. He and Chanyeol had walked up until the doors of the corporate building, and then Chanyeol was ushered off by someone Kris never met, and he vaguely remembers promising to take Chanyeol out for lunch later.
The first few hours of work went by between increments of extremely slow and extremely fast. It wasn’t until a quarter until his break when Lu Han, a friend slash colleague of his, burst into his office.
“You have Angsty Main Character Syndrome, what’s going on? You scared away poor Luna, you know? She looked like she was going to burst into tears when she ran into me.”
“She organized all my files backwards,” Kris groans. Lu Han laughs at him when he slumps down in his chair, and repeats for emphasis, “Backwards, Lu Han.”
“It’s her first day on the job,” Lu Han says, and pats him on the back in consolation. “She’s still learning how to speak Cantonese.”
“Then why is she here,” Kris grits out, and Lu Han gives him another sneaky smile before jumping backwards to sit on his desk. Kris sighs.
“I heard about our new Korean transfer,” Lu Han continues, as if Kris hasn’t spoken before, and crosses his legs. Kris scoffs. What is this, high school? Then he immediately takes that thought back. “Park Chanyeol, right? He’s been quite the talk. He’s so happy, it makes me happy. I like him.”
“Great.”
“And,” Lu Han says wickedly, “Mr. Happy Pants has some history with Mr. Not So Happy Pants.”
Kris suddenly feels the need to loosen his tie, or maybe fan himself. “You’re implying something that I don’t li-”
“A lot of history, in fact,” Lu Han states. “Like, enough to fill up all of your years of high school.”
“Did Chanyeol just tell you all this?”
“And you call him Chanyeol! Not Mr. Park. There’s only one other person you call by their name, and that’s me.”
Kris sighs. This has been a very long day so far. “Please cut to the point. What do you want?”
Lu Han shifts closer so that his calf is touching Kris’ knee. It makes him feel uncomfortable, like Lu Han can read his emotions by touching him. “You look really uncomfortable,” Lu Han says, smiling. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”
“A bit.”
“Good.” Lu Han has a very punchable looking face; Kris wonders how big the repercussions would be if he just reeled his arm back and- “I’ll be seeing you then.”
Kris blinks. “What?”
Lu Han shrugs. “Did you think I was going to interrogate you on your love life with Chanyeol?”
“Sort of?”
“Nah,” Lu Han says pleasantly. “We’re getting there though, don’t worry.”
“Oh I won’t,” Kris mutters. “Now please leave, there’s a report I have to read over.”
Lu Han slides off of his desk easily; his polished shoes make a slight tapping sound as they hit the floor. It irritates Kris. “Whatever you say, boss.”
I’m not your boss, Kris wants to say, but Lu Han’s already left the room. His exit is silent, and that scares Kris a lot, because Lu Han usually walks out of his office making embarrassing noises or yelling something that could get either of them fired. Lu Han only ever leaves his office quietly when he’s sad. Or when he’s plotting something.
Kris barely manages to read through half of the report when there’s a knock on his door, and he has to physically restrain himself from groaning aloud. “Come in,” he calls, not bothering to look up. The report isn’t the most interesting thing in the world, but then again, whoever’s coming in now will probably be more boring.
He’s wrong, of course.
It’s almost embarrassing how wrong he is when Chanyeol tiptoes in, then shuts the door behind him. “Um,” he mumbles, “hi? Baekhyun told me you had lunch now, so.”
Lunch? Kris takes one look at the time and nearly screams. How the hell is it one already? He was supposed to be done with this report and writing up a new proposal an hour ago. He blames Lu Han.
“Now looks like a bad time, huh?”
Kris at least has the decency to look guilty. “I’m sorry Chanyeol, I just-”
“Don’t worry about it!” Chanyeol says, grinning. It’s not a happy grin. “I should probably try to make friends anyway. Take care!”
He exits before Kris can say anything, and as soon as the door shuts, he lets out what he thinks is a well deserved groan. This is all definitely Lu Han’s fault.
Kris in the office, Lu Han will say, is very different from Kris outside the office. Kris in the office has polished suits and a glare that freezes interns where they stand. Kris outside the office is a pushover who buys bread from the street vendor on 6th Avenue and 58th Street to feed the pigeons in the park.
Kris only knows this because he walks in on Lu Han telling all this to Chanyeol.
“His apartment is very modern and has a minimalistic feel to it, but he’s got this guest room which is disgustingly different, really. It’s all pastel colored and it has a window seat, and the bed has all these stuffed animals that he claims is because his mom likes it, and-”
“Having fun talking about me?”
Lu Han doesn’t bat an eyelash, but Chanyeol jumps in his seat, looking very much like he’s just been caught with his hand down the cookie jar. “Lots, actually,” Lu Han says. “I was keeping your boyfriend company while you finished up your stupid proposal. Is it done yet?”
“Yes,” Kris replies, sighing. “You are the worst secretary ever. And he’s not my boyfriend.”
Chanyeol’s nails must be very interesting, the way he’s looking at them now. Almost eight years of separation haven’t changed him at all. His habits haven’t changed at all, and a sort of warm fuzz bubbles up inside of him. It feels like home.
“That’s just because I’m not your secretary,” Lu Han retorts. “Oh, and, since you wouldn’t, I decided to make the decision to invite Chanyeol out for drinks on Saturday.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
Lu Han shrugs. “I didn’t invite you, I invited him on your behalf.”
Kris groans. “That’s- You sure about that, Chanyeol? Lu Han’s really nasty when he’s drunk. He curses a lot and gets very personal.”
Lu Han pats him on the back. “Kris is a very good drinking partner.”
Chanyeol smiles up at them. “Yeah!” he says, and Kris pretends not to notice how the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “No problem. I’m actually curious as to what you’re like drunk, Yifan.”
Kris doesn’t bother to correct Chanyeol this time. “You shouldn’t be, I’m not very exciting.”
“He’s not,” Lu Han agrees with a solemn nod, “but that’s also because I know all of his secrets.”
Kris scowls.
They don’t go out that day, but he does promise Chanyeol to take him out for lunch in Central Park the next day. “It’s a New York classic,” he says as they come out of the subway on Columbus Circle. “My friends dragged me out here when I first came to America, so now I’m taking you.”
“It’s not even lunch anymore,” Chanyeol says. “Are we going to even get back to the office in time?”
Definitely not, Kris thinks, but he won’t tell Chanyeol that. He figures he can use his seniority card for the first time to let Chanyeol off. At most, they’ll be anywhere from half an hour to an hour late anyway. Which is a lot of time, now that he thinks about it, but it’s also too late to turn back.
Chanyeol lays out the blanket on a stone bed, and Kris puts the food down off towards the side. It’s not that far from the entrance, but far enough for a decent walk. Even though it’s a Thursday afternoon, there’s still a handful of school children running around. A golden retriever off of its leash bounds up to Chanyeol at one point and shoves his head onto his lap. Chanyeol laughs and waves him off, and ends up having his sandwich thrown in four different directions. One flustered college student and a laughing Chanyeol later, Kris is laughing alongside him as the dog is tugged away.
“She was cute!” Chanyeol exclaims as he gives the college girl a final wave.
Kris raises his eyebrows. “Who? The dog or the girl?”
Chanyeol grins. “Both, obviously. But the dog moreso.”
“Ouch.”
“It’s not that she’s not pretty!” Chanyeol says, “She’s just not my type?”
Kris takes a look at his own gyro and hands it to Chanyeol. He’s not hungry anymore, and Chanyeol’s food has been stolen by a dog, anyway. That’s a story to tell. “What’s your type?” he asks, hopefully nonchalantly. He’s not interested, of course not. This is just catching up with an old friend. Now that he thinks about it, the only girl Chanyeol’s ever claimed to have interest in is that one pop star who used to be really famous back when they were in high school. What was her name? Eugene from S.E.S. or something. Oh right, that was it.
Summer of 2002, the year that S.E.S’ Just a Feeling plagued each radio station. Kris still remembers Chanyeol pretending to be Bada and swaying his hips in the least attractive way possible. He’d threatened to tell everyone about Kris’ secret stash of VCRs if he didn’t try to dance with him at least one, and Kris, never one to let his reputation tarnish, told Chanyeol he might as well tell. Junior year of high school is not an odd time to find out Kris watches porn.
Chanyeol didn’t tell. In fact, he begged Kris to let him see, and then threw the bag of tapes back at him the next day like it was drugs and yelled, that’s disgusting! Who the hell wants to watch that?
Kris wonders if he still thinks that, and realizes that’s probably a stupid question.
“My type?” Chanyeol asks. “I don’t think I have one. Wait, no, Scarlet Johansson is really hot.”
“You would,” Kris accuses. “You’ve always had a thing for redheads.”
“She’s blonde,” Chanyeol snaps. He throws a piece of bread at a duck that’s been circling them suspiciously. It squawks angrily before realizing there’s food, picks it up, and leaves. Chanyeol takes a bite of Kris’ gyro then, and splutters. “This is so salty! And it’s bland.”
“That’s how I like it,” Kris mumbles.
“What happened to the Yifan I know who ate spicy ddeokbeokki like a pro?” Chanyeol demands. “Even I couldn’t eat it as spicy as you.”
“There aren’t many spicy things in America,” Kris says, shrugging. “Not as spicy as in Korea, at least.”
Chanyeol looks much more horrified than he should, really. It’s just food.
Kris’ mother would have hit him on the head for thinking that. So would Chanyeol’s. Maybe that’s why. “We are going to fix this problem,” Chanyeol says firmly. “I’m going to make something super spicy and you’re going to eat it.”
Kris laughs. “You can’t even cook, Chanyeol.”
“Years of living by yourself will change that,” Chanyeol states. Then he amends, “I had this really awesome roommate in college named Kyungsoo - he’s one of my best friends today - he taught me everything I know about cooking. But he was amazing. So! I, being the amazing friend I am, am going to pass down these godly cooking secrets to you.”
Kris wonders if he looks as unimpressed as he feels. “Will you really?”
“No,” Chanyeol laughs. “But I will flaunt them in your face and make you eat my food.”
“You’re a great friend.”
“Of course I am,” Chanyeol says, and stands up, showing Kris the empty gyro wrapper. “We should head back now.”
It doesn’t hit Kris until he’s back in his office that Kyungsoo was his best friend. Who’s Kyungsoo? His roommate, he said, back in Korea. When did they meet? What is he like? Does he wrap his arm around Chanyeol’s neck and pull him in a headlock like Kris used to? Does he let Chanyeol sleep on his shoulder during school breaks like Kris used to? It’s illogical to think that he could still be best friends with Chanyeol after at least five years of separation, but his chest hurts all the same.
“You are literally forty five minutes late,” Lu Han says as he walks - no, frolicks - into Kris’ office. “And you came back with Chanyeol. What did you do?”
“We ate at Central Park.”
Lu Han stares at him. “Really?"
"Really."
"Why did you go all the way up to Central Park? You could’ve just went to the High Line or something. Even DUMBO is closer, you dumbass.”
Kris shrugs. “It’s more well known.”
“Missionary is more well known, doesn’t mean it’s the best sex position,” Lu Han says, like that’s supposed to prove anything aside from the fact that Kris knows way too much about his sex life.
Kris levels him with his best professional stare. “You’re clearly not scolding me, so why are you here?”
“I’m mad at your awful wooing skills. Central Park, literally the biggest cliche there is to New York, aside from the Empire State Building. Please don’t take him up there, I beg you. On that note, don’t take a shopping spree to Fifth Avenue either, no one besides you has an interest in buying a seventy dollar wifebeater. I should just plan out your entire life, while I’m at it.”
“I’m not wooing him. We’re old friends catching up.”
“What kind of old friend goes through the effort of going all the way to Central Park just to have a picnic? When was the last time you had a picnic?”
“That’s beside the point,” Kris says, even though it’s definitely not. “Why not get all the cliches out of the way first?”
Lu Han stares at him. “For Chanyeol’s sake, I hope you really aren’t wooing him.”
Kris frowns. That’s not very nice. Kris is great at wooing people. Granted, he hasn’t had much people to woo, because he hasn’t been attracted to many people. His face is nice enough, admittedly. He’s has his fair share of one night stands, but Kris doesn’t really have to do much aside from stand there with a drink.
So maybe he is a little out of practice with this whole courtship thing, but it doesn’t matter because he’s not wooing Park Chanyeol.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” he asks after a pause.
Lu Han shrugs. “I finished early.”
“You’re Minseok’s secretary,” Kris says. “How did you finish?”
Lu Han smiles pleasantly. “One day you’ll have a secretary as efficient as me. Until then, I guess I’ll do some extra work.”
Kris wrinkles his nose. He doesn’t want to know what ‘extra work’ is, because it definitely has nothing to do with organizing his schedule or answering calls or marking down meetings. And Soojung is a great secretary. Hundreds of times better than Lu Han, probably.
There’s a knock on the door, and Soojung comes strolling in, a couple of packets in her arms. She gives Lu Han a smile and places them on Kris’ desk. “There are the folders you asked for a couple of hours ago.” She fixes him with a hard look as she says, “I tried to give them to you earlier, but you weren’t in your office.” Lu Han snickers in the background.
“Thank you, Soojung,” Kris mumbles.
“I was wrong,” Lu Han says, “I’m second best, after Soojung. Isn’t that right?”
She looks like she’s about to make a smart comment before thinking better of it and laughs. “I do my job well,” she says.
“I’m sure you do,” Lu Han says, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “Let’s go talk about Kris behind his back.”
He stares down at the stacks of portfolios sitting on his desk as Soojung and Lu Han leaves and sighs. She’s almost too good.
Friday mornings is one of the most mundane parts of the week. The girls on the subway (two of the the girls are named Melissa and Sonia, he learned last night) have early lacrosse practice on Friday mornings, so they’re not even there to entertain Kris in some weird masochistic way. He shrugs. They’re not that bad. He doesn’t exactly mind being eye candy, as long as they keep their distance.
Still. The subway ride this time is long and boring, and there’s not even that homeless person in the station that Kris always gives his leftover change to when he plays some awful rendition of Jason Mraz. He has nice stories to tell, when Kris bothers listening.
He almost never runs into Chanyeol when he works, except for once when Soojung calls in sick for the first time in her three year career and Kris has to walk around the building and find out where the coffee machine is himself. It’s down on the fifth floor. Why? Because someone is out to get Kris, because he hates walking to the fifth floor, because the stairs are shady and there’s distorted colors on the floor and wall that shouldn’t be there and Kris doesn’t want to know how they got there because this is an office building.
Unlike Kris, Chanyeol actually seems to know how to work the machine.
“Have you never made yourself coffee before?” he asks, and Kris at least has the decency to look guilty.
“There’s a Starbucks at the corner of the block I live on,” he admits, and Chanyeol actually judges him. He never did that in high school. Usually, it was the opposite.
He remembers one day, in their sophomore year of high school, their school had gotten their very first computer lab in the middle of the library. It only had about five computers in it, and they were the big block Dell monitors that took ten minutes to start up. Nonetheless, it was the gem of the school, and no one ever missed a chance to stay after school and play Flight Simulator 2000 until they got kicked off or until the computer manually shut down.
Kris, admittedly, played a lot. Chanyeol had half the attention span he did, so after awhile he would give up and give the joystick to Kris (Yifan, back then), who would try to land the plane correctly. Out of all the years they had that game, he maybe did it successfully about two or three times.
One day, he’d be on the computer for a long time, and Chanyeol, after getting tired of pestering him, finally tugged on his sleeves and whispered, “Yifan, watch out! The aliens!”
Kris stared at him, sort of in the same way Chanyeol is staring at him now.
“The aliens!” Chanyeol said again, and leaped behind a bookshelf. Kris stared at him blankly, until Chanyeol waved him over and Kris pointed at himself questioningly. Chanyeol, losing patience, nodded furiously and beamed when Kris got up. He took his time making his way over, and almost didn’t crouch down next to Chanyeol until he pulled at his pant leg.
“What are we doing?” he asked.
“We’re hiding from the aliens,” Chanyeol said, as if that was obvious. “We have to defend Earth.”
“Are you five?”
Chanyeol glared at him, then cocked an invisible space gun. “Do you want to die? Come on.” And so Kris followed.
They played invisible Space Raiders, in the middle of the high school library as the other students stared at them. One of them even cheered them on and shouted The aliens are behind you, duck!
That was always Chanyeol’s charm. Anyone could do anything, no matter how old or young they were. Was it silly? Of course it was, but who cared when you’ve never had this much fun before?
Now, Chanyeol, the twenty-six year old man standing before him making coffee has a much different charm that Kris doesn't know how to stomach. He’s taking care of Kris, a twenty-eight year old man who’s been in this office for at least five more years than Chanyeol has. And he knows how to make coffee.
“I can’t believe you’ve never made yourself coffee,” Chanyeol says incredulously, and Kris wants to respond You didn’t even know that flying squirrels couldn’t actually fly, but that sounds kind of stupid, so Kris keeps his mouth shut. “How did you survive through college?”
“Starbucks,” Kris replies meekly. “Have you seen my college?”
Chanyeol snorts and hands him a steaming cup. “I don’t want to see what pretentious American college you went to.”
“NYU is not that pretentious,” Kris defends as he takes a sip. His eyes widen. “This is really sweet,” he says, and tries to act like that isn’t exactly how he likes his coffee. His voice gives him away.
“You’re not the only one who hasn’t changed much,” Chanyeol says, and Kris stands there in the breakroom, long after Chanyeol dismisses himself. It feels like a punch to his stomach, and he doesn’t know why.
Saturdays are usually nice. Kris doesn’t have work on the weekends, unless someone screws with his schedule, which has happened a grand total of twice ever since Soojung started working under him. Before that, Kris was usually in every Saturday, and sometimes Sundays.
On Saturdays he goes jogging in Central Park in a t-shirt and sweatpants in the morning as the latest rap songs blare through his iPod.
Maybe his life is a cliche, he thinks as he buys a hot dog from the same street vendor with an extra piece of bread. He’s already eaten breakfast, but he loves tossing bits of bread at the pigeons and watching them waddle over and fly away with a piece.
“Lu Han was right, you really are a lot less cool than you look,” someone says behind him, and Kris jumps. A couple of the pigeons scatter at the sudden movement.
“You scared them all away,” Kris mumbles.
Chanyeol ignores him. “I’m glad I already knew you were really uncool, because that would’ve been a huge letdown.
“What are you doing here?”
“Exploring,” Chanyeol says. “I figured Central Park was a great place to start.”
“I already showed you Central Park,” Kris replies, a little wounded. “Why do you need to go there again?”
“I said it was a good starting point,” Chanyeol says again. “Easy location. Everyone knows where Central Park is.”
Kris doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything. Lu Han would probably hate them both right now. “Bread?” he asks, holding out half a piece of hotdog bread out.
Chanyeol laughs as he takes a piece. His eyes crinkle up at the edges and his gums show, along with the shiniest, whitest set of teeth Kris has ever seen.
If Kris had to choose a favorite mouth, it would be Chanyeol’s. His lips are the most perfect shade of rosy pink, and they look so soft, Kris wouldn’t mind kissing them.
He’s hit with the sudden realization that Chanyeol doesn’t know he’s gay.
Chanyeol seems to be oblivious to his internal freak out as he rips off pieces of bread and throws them near the ducks. To be fair, Kris himself hadn’t come out of the closet until spring of his junior year of college, and even then, he didn’t have much dating experience until his senior year. Most people could never get past his face, and those that got too caught up accused Kris of having no personality. His longest relationship was with a German boy named Michael two years after he graduated, which lasted a grand total of six months.
“Hey, you okay? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” Chanyeol says, waving a hand over his face. Kris blinks furiously, then stares at Chanyeol blankly, like he’s not really there. “Anything wrong?”
Kris pauses. Takes a deep breath. Opens his mouth.
“I think I left the stove on.”
“You told him what?” Lu Han gasps, later that evening.
“I blanked. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.”
If Kris didn’t already feel stupid, the way Lu Han is staring at him now would have done the job. “You’re buying me a drink,” he says. “To make up for how stupid you are.”
He doesn’t even know why he actually does buy Lu Han a drink. At this rate, they’ll get inebriated before Chanyeol even shows up. Maybe if he gets drunk enough, he’ll pass out and forget everything. He frowns. Twenty-eight is probably too old to drink yourself into a blackout.
He orders another beer anyway.
Chanyeol comes about fifteen minutes later, apologizing about how he took the wrong subway train. They move from the club bar to a booth in the far back, and Lu Han invites Yixing, another one of Yifan’s friends from college.
“How are you liking New York so far?”
“Exactly how I imagined it,” Chanyeol says. “Like it was taken right out of a movie.”
Lu Han shakes his head and thrusts a drink into Chanyeol’s hand. “That just means you’ve only seen the superficial side. Where are you staying?”
“I have a pretty small flat in Chelsea,” Chanyeol mumbles, bringing the glass to his lips.
“That’s pretty close to Lu Han,” Kris says. “He lives in Greenwich. I live in Upper West Side.”
“We’ll have super secret parties without him,” Lu Han fake whispers, and Kris groans before calling the waiter over for another round of drinks. Something tells him this night is a bad idea.
He knew going out for drinks with Lu Han was a bad idea. Doing anything with Lu Han is a bad idea. Lu Han is one giant bad idea, really.
Kris is about way past drunk right now, and leaning on Chanyeol’s shoulder and giggling. There’s a piece of white fluff on Chanyeol’s jacket and it’s really distracting. Chanyeol is pretty distracting himself. He’s changed so much since high school. He’s lost most of the baby fat in his cheeks, as well as the round glasses he used to wear. Kris grins to himself. He used to call him Harry Potter.
“Are you okay, Yifan?” Chanyeol asks. Kris can feel the rumble of his voice through their bodies.
“He’s a touchy drunk,” Lu Han calls out from across the table, where he's getting up to get to the dance floor. Yixing, who arrived around two hours ago, gives Chanyeol what he thinks is a sympathetic glance and follows Lu Han. “He’ll be okay.”
“I’m… fine,” he slurs. He feels great, actually.
He hasn’t drank in a really long time, so he’s probably out of practice with this spacing out thing because he grabs the next beer that’s placed on the table by a smiley waitress. “I think you’ve had too much to drink,” Chanyeol says, grabbing the bottle from him.
Kris watches his hand as the bottle is taken away, and ends up staring at Chanyeol’s face again. "Your ears," he says, lifting himself off of Chanyeol's shoulder. "They're the same."
"Are they really?" Chanyeol touches them subconsciously. "I mean, I haven't changed them or anything, but-"
"It's good," Kris mumbles. "I like them. I like that you haven't changed that much."
Chanyeol grins and drinks the beer Kris was supposed to have. "I like you," he admits, after draining most of the bottle. "I liked you, I mean."
"What?"
"Back in high school," Chanyeol confesses, looking sheepish. Kris wonders if he's only saying this because they're both drunk, although Kris moreso than Chanyeol. Maybe he thinks Kris won't remember anything in the morning. "I sort of...really liked you. Almost in a worshipping kind of way. I thought you were really cool, y'know? My best friend, captain of the basketball team, the ones all the girls - and some guys - loved."
Kris doesn't register any of that. "You're... You're gay?"
Chanyeol flushes. "I'm bi, actually. I broke up with my last girlfriend before I came to America. Surprise?"
Kris laughs happily. He's not sure why. Chanyeol looks confused. "I'm gay," he says after a moment.
There's a long, pregnant pause, in which Chanyeol stares at Kris, mouth open, and Kris grabs Lu Han's long forgotten glass to get rid of the awkward atmosphere. He's already wasted, might as well go all the way, right?
"Do you want to dance?" he asks, because that's a sure-fire way to make everything five times worse.
Instead, Chanyeol laughs. "Can you even dance? The Yifan I know can't."
Kris makes a face at him and downs Lu Han's drink. It tastes like vodka and something else. "You don't need to know how to dance to dance at a club."
He almost thinks Chanyeol is about to turn him down, especially since he's infinitely more sober than Kris is, but he gets up anyway and holds out his hand for Kris.
The moment Kris stands up, the world spins for a moment before Chanyeol's hand is on Kris' back, and he's looking at him worriedly. "Are you sure you're okay? Let's stay here."
"I haven't been clubbing in a long time," Kris whines. "I'll be fine. You're here, right?"
Chanyeol taking care of Kris feels weird, because he remembers how back in high school, it used to be the other way around. Kris used to joke and tell Chanyeol that he cared for his guitar more than he cared for himself, and that it was Kris' job to look after Chanyeol.
"You're a big baby," Chanyeol groans, but leads Kris down the stairs of the club to the dance floor. Kris' dancing, has not, in fact, gotten any better since high school. In fact, it's probably gotten worse. In an effort to hide this tiny, insignificant fact, he wraps his arms around Chanyeol's neck and stays close, breathing hot into his ear.
"If this were anyone else," Chanyeol says, cheek rubbing against his, "This would be the moment I'd ask if they wanted to leave." Kris can feel the scratchy outline of stubble against his jaw, and that's just as distracting.
"We just got here," Kris says.
Chanyeol doesn't say anything back, and Kris wonders if he's missed the point.
Being like this feels nice, and Kris doesn’t want to decide if he’s feeling this way because he’s drunk as hell or because he actually feels nice. Both probably aren’t very good options, and when he’s sober he’ll hate himself. But right now, Chanyeol smells like expensive cologne, which Kris likes, and pretends not to think about how Chanyeol would probably taste nice, too.
“We’re dancing a little slow for this song,” Chanyeol murmurs into Kris’ ear, and fuck, that feels really nice.
Kris groans. “I’m too drunk to move any quicker.”
Chanyeol pulls away from him, and Kris tries to pretend he didn’t move forward with him. “You should probably get home, then,” he says. “You’re… I think you’re really drunk?”
“I am,” he admits. “But this is nice; I don’t want to leave.”
Chanyeol laughs. “Tough luck. Come on.” He pulls Kris along with him, back towards the booth they were sitting at. “Give me your phone.”
“What?”
“Phone. Give me. I don’t have Lu Han or Yixing’s numbers.”
Kris hands it over quietly, and watches as Chanyeol punches in a This is Chanyeol! ^^ Kris is staying with me for the night, so don’t worry~ :D
“Are you really twenty-six?” he asks, wobbling. Chanyeol shoves his phone into Kris’ pocket and shoots him a glare.
“Come on,” he says, pulling Kris’ arm over his shoulders, and Kris doesn’t know why he follows.
Kris’ apartment is definitely not this bright, he thinks when he wakes up the next morning. He’s also not in his own clothing. Or his bed. Or his room. What the fuck?
He gets up, groaning at the shift in perspective, and the resulting pounding in his head. He must have drank last night, because hangovers come rather easily to Kris Wu. Some exchange for his excruciatingly good looks. Lu Han would hit him if he heard that.
His first thought is that this is another one night stand he’s managed to rope himself into, but he hates going to other strangers’ houses. And they usually don’t give him their clothes to change into. He’s wearing a dull red shirt he doesn’t own, and black sweatpants he also doesn’t own. The walls are a pale yellow, and floor is an old, but polished wood. The clock says it’s a little past ten.
Once he picks himself off of the bed, he notices the pills and glass of water on the nightstand.
Hello Yifan!! You seemed pretty out of it last night, but don’t worry! You changed into the clothes yourself. You didn’t do much, aside from sing your self acclaimed amazing rendition of I Knew You Were Trouble. It wasn’t bad, but I bet I could do better. ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ I made you drink water, but probably not enough. Hope your hangovers aren’t too bad!
-Chanyeol
Fuck. Of all things to sing drunk, why is it a teenage pop song? Last time he was out with Minseok and Henry and he belted out One Direction’s What Makes You Beautiful. At least Henry was also drunk enough to join him, but Henry likes that kind of thing.
At least it’s only Chanyeol.
Actually, where is Chanyeol?
He makes his way out of the bedroom to the living room, to see Chanyeol sleeping on the couch, blanket pulled up to his nose. Despite the racket in his head, he smiles to himself. Chanyeol does still wear glasses. They’re not round, but they’re still huge and thick-rimmed and cover half of his face.
His stomach rumbles. Since Chanyeol hasn’t woken up yet, he decides to take matters into his own hand and dig around the room for Chanyeol’s phone, since he can’t find his own.
“I thought you couldn’t cook,” Chanyeol mumbles.
Kris grins and looks up at Chanyeol’s recently awoken state. His glasses are lopsided on his face and there are tufts of hair sticking up in every direction. His chest presses up against Kris’ back, and he reaches back with a hand to pat Chanyeol on the head.
Some habits are hard to get rid of, but sleeping habits? Even harder. Kris doesn’t mind that. In fact, he likes it a lot. Kris likes taking care of people more than he likes being taken care of.
“I can’t,” he says. “So I ordered out. Do you like haejangguk?”
Kris can feel Chanyeol inhaling against his back. His head is resting on Kris’ shoulder, and he makes a content sound before smiling lazily. “Where did you order haejangguk from in America?”
Kris turns his head to meet Chanyeol’s dazed eyes. “Ktown?” he asks helpfully, and Chanyeol pouts, eyebrows furrowed together and bottom lip jutting out.
“What’s that?”
“Um,” Kris frowns, pouring some of the haejangguk into a bowl. “It’s a small area, just a few blocks long, that’s dominantly Korean? There’s an H-mart there, and a bunch of small Korean restaurants. It’s nice, I like it.” He doesn’t look at Chanyeol until he’s finished pouring the rest of the haejangguk into the second bowl, and when he does look at Chanyeol, he’s looking at him, eyes bright and glassy.
“Let’s go there,” he says.
Kris promises to take him there the next week. They spend the rest of the day together, lazing around in Chanyeol’s apartment, watching the TV shows Kris never bothered to. The TV in his apartment is mainly considered decor, except for when his family drops by. He has a niece-in-law who loves Sonic the Hedgehog and begs him to sit with her on the couch and watch together. All he knows is that there’s a Tails, a fox with two tails, and a... bat? Who wears clothes that shouldn’t be on a children’s show? It doesn’t seem to bother his niece though.
“Do all Americans do that?” Chanyeol asks, sometime after dinner, when they’re still huddled up on Chanyeol’s couch, watching B-list horror movies. Kris watches as a girl forgoes the ax lying by her foot to approach the warehouse to get a closer look at the wagon she saw tip over.
“The ones in horror movies do,” Kris says, and nearly a moment later, the door behind her slams shut, and there’s a scream before the scene changes. “Do all Koreans grab people’s arms as they walk across the street?”
“You did,” Chanyeol points out. “When we first met on the subway.”
“I’m not Korean,” he protests, but Chanyeol ignores him.
“Wu Yifan, straight out of a drama. Grabbing innocent bystander's hands and declaring his never ending love for them as the walk sign counts down.”
“I didn’t declare my never ending love for you.”
“Oh, you will,” Chanyeol says, nodding, as the guy on screen gets stabbed by the masked villain. “You’re that type.”
“You don’t even know if I like-”
“Guys?” Chanyeol finishes for him. “Last night. You mentioned it.”
Kris sighs and wraps himself up in the blanket. “I hoped you’d forget.”
Chanyeol shrugs. “You found out I’m bisexual. The world is weird like that.”
Kris laughs. It’s crazy how the people you thought you knew were nothing like you knew. The masked figure in the TV screen closes in on the protagonist’s best friend. “The world is crazy.”
Chanyeol turns to him and grins. “Look at us, living the crazy life.”
A scream punctuates the silence that follows.
NEXT