the last straw in the restaurant, but i don't mind sharing (i)
written for deerofdawn's lu han fic exchange, for qieeezi's prompt: college!au with roommies layhan ;; also maybe with fanxing dating at first and you can decide if it ends in krislayhan or any of the individual pairings, but roommies layhan without the extra drama is good too
the last straw in the restaurant, but i don't mind sharing
pg; 20.8k; lay/luhan, kris/lay (+ side kris/chen)
college!au; based on this post. Despite their joint insistency of having known each other since before the dawn of time itself, Lu Han actually met Yixing his first day of orientation at NYU. (ao3 mirror here)
The spring of their sophomore year, Lu Han took time when not killing himself over presuppositions and implicatures to work on a side project, complete with powerpoint presentation. It listed all the reasons why he and Yixing should move off-campus their last two years of college, to live like true hippies and ‘experience the real world’.
He sat Yixing down at their regular table in Pho Bang during lunch, and Yixing smiled at him, unquestioning. Lu Han's laptop plus powerpoint was stowed securely in the knock-off MCM bag he’d gifted himself the past Christmas. (He'd gotten Yixing a matching one because the old lady hawking them had been especially persuasive.) Yixing ordered them their normal orders-an extra big bowl of the number one combo for Lu Han, a regular forty-one for him, and a large plate of spring rolls to split between them-and Lu Han’s prepared speech fell apart before it even left his lips.
“Let me be your sugar daddy for the next two years,” was what stumbled out instead. Yixing stared blankly at Lu Han for a few moments before his eyes widened and his smile froze. Lu Han felt like crawling under a rock and dying, flushed bright maroon with embarrassment.
“Are you having one of those fantasies again?” he asked concerned, leaning forward with a hand out to feel up Lu Han’s forehead. “It’s me, Lu Han, Yixing Zhang, can you hear me?”
“Oh my god,” Lu Han groaned and smacked his hand away, opting to smother himself with the table surface. Yixing lifted his head up before it managed to touch the glass and placed a napkin down under his cheeks before pushing his head back down. “This was not how I wanted to start this conversation.”
Yixing laughed lightly. Their server came by with the customary plate of basil and bean sprouts and fish sauce, and Yixing waited until everything was placed down before responding. “You know, if you wanted me to live with you next year off campus, you could’ve just said so. That, at least, I was prepared to hear, but a sugar daddy offer? I’m gonna have to take longer on that one.”
Lu Han looked up with grunt, dismayed grimace all over his face. “You knew, and you still let me waste a month writing up that presentation? You asshole. I don’t know why everybody thinks you’re a nice person because you are literally the worst.”
Yixing’s eyes sparkled, innocent smile stretching his lips. “I wanted to wait until you finished searching for good places so I didn’t have to look myself,” he said mildly, thanking their server who returned back with their bowls of noodles. He pulled out two pairs of chopsticks from the plastic container at the end of the table and nudged Lu Han with his foot to take his pair.
“Actual worst,” Lu Han repeated with a grumble, pulling his bowl of pho towards him. “I take it all back. You can suffer in the dorms by yourself.” Yixing beamed and places a particularly big piece of pork on top of his red beef.
“Here, daddy, a reward for your hard work.”
-
Yixing gets out of class first on Wednesdays, so he usually loiters around on campus in the Starbucks right next to the Silver Building, kicking at his heels waiting for Lu Han’s dismissal from his office hours at the linguistics department so they can go for lunch.
Today, Lu Han sneaks out a few minutes early because no one comes by for the last thirty minutes of his office hours anyway, and his stomach’s already been protesting the lack of food it’d been denied the entire morning. He notes the crispness as he hits the outdoor cold, draws his light jacket closer to his body with a rueful smile. It seems like fall’s fast-fading into winter this year; he’ll need to break out his winter coats in about a week or so if this temperature keeps going.
Thankfully, the Starbucks is only a street away. Lu Han crosses onto Greene St with a perfunctory glance for errant cars, and subtly tries to look in through the glass panes of the coffee shop for Yixing’s seated figure. Today’s overcast though, but with the occasional bright glare of a beaming sun, so Lu Han mostly sees his own reflection mirrored in the windows, blocking out the groups of students and patrons in the shop. He takes a moment to study himself in the window, mindful of the audience he’s probably in front of, and swipes his bangs to the side, adjusting his knit cap.
He can hear loud laughter, even through the thick windowpane, and he moves in closer to see who it is. There’s a couple of girls sitting immediately at the window seat right before him, staring amusedly at him, and he blushes deep pink, smiling the grimace that never fails to turn up in moments of embarrassment. But it’s not them that’s laughing; sitting a few feet away from them, near the wooden plant dividers of Starbucks are Kris, Minseok, and Jongdae at a rounded table, pointing at him and snickering. Well, Jongdae’s pointing; Kris and Minseok just wave from across the shop, smirking and smiling respectively at him.
Lu Han lets out a breath of laughter and waves back, and makes his way around the building to the entrance. He swings open the door, letting an exiting girl with a violin case strapped to her back go through first, and enters into the store, breathing in deep the heavy smells of pumpkin spice and burnt espresso.
He makes a beeline for his friends’ table, punches Jongdae lightly in the neck for his obnoxious laughter, and plops himself down in the remaining open seat, a red hoodie hanging off its back, right in between Jongdae and Minseok.
“Couldn’t resist your vanity, huh?” Jongdae mocks lightly, grinning at him. Lu Han makes a face at him, but shrugs. He flicks his bangs back with a light toss of his head, which Jongdae rolls his eyes at.
“You guys here with Yixing?” he asks, turning his head back and forth for Yixing’s curly-top head. Kris nods his head while sipping down his latte and points to the bathroom doors over his shoulder.
“Yeah, he’s in the bathroom. We’re tagging along today.” He nods at Lu Han’s seat. “You’re sitting in his spot, by the way.”
“Yeah,” Lu Han says noncommittally, curling his fingers around a sleeve opening of the hoodie behind him unnoticed. “Were you waiting long then?”
Minseok shakes his head, pleasant canine grin across his cheeks. “We only got here a few minutes before you did, actually.” Jongdae leans in, conspiratorial glint in his eyes, and mock whispers at Lu Han.
“We would’ve gotten here a half-hour ago, actually, but Kris got caught up in watching Yixing play the piano in the rec room. He had us hiding behind the doors for a good ten minutes while he peeked through the windows.”
Kris chokes mid-sip on his latte, almost spills over the brim of his cup with the force of his splutter, and Lu Han brays in laughter while Jongdae looks on in smug satisfaction. Minseok huffs a small breath of amusement and pushes the pile of brown napkins at his side to Kris, who coughs out a thank you and grabs onto a fistful. Kris quickly mops up the slow dripping mess on his cup and the splash zone around him, and dabs at his dark blue button-down gingerly for any possible spillage, coughing wetly.
“That’s some reaction, Kris, you look almost guilty,” Lu Han says slyly, propping his cheek up with a fist on a dry spot of the table. Kris glares at him, still coughing, and flashes a crooked backwards victory sign at him. Lu Han grins placidly back at him, well aware the index finger is only up out of courtesy for the group of girls sitting directly in front of them, and basks in the disgruntled expression of his friend.
“I wasn’t gawking or anything, okay, it was just really good to listen to,” Kris sputters defensively in between hacking up his lung. Minseok nods sympathetically, eyes sparkling with amusement, but Lu Han tunes out.
He sees Yixing exit out of the bathroom doors first, the others facing away from doors, and tilts his head a little away from his hand to catch Yixing’s eyes. Yixing smiles back when he sees him, neutral expression blooming into something fond, and flicks his eyes to Kris’ hunched back with intent. Lu Han holds back a snort and subtly nods, propping his face back down to watch Yixing slowly creep up behind Kris with his arms at his sides.
Kris is still talking, hunching into himself further and further as Jongdae continues to needle him, but Minseok’s already caught on, having looked up and seen Yixing’s quietly approaching figure. He nudges Lu Han softly, eyebrows furrowed in a knowing expression, and Lu Han grins back.
“-not like I was stalking him or anything, okay, it’s not like that-”
Yixing stops right behind Kris’ chair and gently lays a small hand on Kris’ shoulder, index finger lifted so that it’d poke Kris’ cheek when he turned his head. “What’s all this about, hm? I leave for a few minutes, and you guys throw a party without me?”
“Well, you know,” Lu Han says cheekily, lazily fanning his fingers out for a little wave, “like the words of one of the great philosophers of our generation: ‘the party don’t start ‘til I walk in.’” Yixing snorts, hand still on Kris and oblivious to his frozen posture.
Jongdae coughs into a fist rather obviously, and Lu Han feels the movement of a scuffle under the table, Kris’ loud yelp and betrayed glare at Jongdae outing its culprit. It shakes Kris out of his paralysis, though, and he twists around with a forced grin to greet Yixing.
“Hey,” he ekes out, feigning nonchalance-a little too late, in Lu Han’s opinion, since Yixing had been there long enough to hear at least the tail-end of his petulant sulking-but Yixing just smiles down at him without bias and pats his back warmly.
“I’m glad someone enjoys my playing,” he says sincerely, and Kris’ expression spasms, visibly reining back a blanch, and his cheeks bloom like a ripe tomato. It’s not a great look for his complexion.
Lu Han pouts, screwing his lips up exaggeratedly. “Hey, I appreciate you! Just not at three in the morning when I’m trying to sleep for my chem final.” Yixing rolls his eyes, fingers resting on the breadth of Kris’ shoulders, oblivious to Kris’ transparent fluster. Lu Han hides a grin.
“Yes, Lu Han, I appreciate you too. Thank you for your loud snoring when I’m trying to study for my theory of harmonization exam, and for your unhelpful commentary when I’m practicing for my jury examination, and for all the Dorito crumbs you spew over the couch when you’re watching your Korean dramas and never clean up. Where would I be without you?” Yixing dimples, though, at the end of his mock rant, and Lu Han snickers.
Jongdae shifts away from the table, sparking the chain reaction from the rest of the table as everyone else stands up from their seats and gathers up the trash and empty cups. “Well, I know I appreciate actually eating lunch before two o’clock, so if we can hurry this along and actually go get something before I have to go cry at my econ notes?”
Kris stands awkwardly in front of his seat, back stiff and shoulders pressed out, blunted by his cracked leather jacket. Yixing’s palm lays flat against his spine, undisturbed by the movement of their tablemates, and Lu Han stares unobtrusively at it for a few seconds. There’s a question forming in the back of his skull, slowly building itself, but Lu Han blinks it away, focusing instead on the rumble of his stomach and the answering growl from Yixing’s.
“Ah yes, time to refuel this robot body of mine,” Lu Han jokes, patting his stomach, and gestures for Jongdae and Minseok to start the exodus out of Starbucks. Yixing moves away from Kris now, and goes for the hoodie draped over the chair Lu Han vacated. Kris shifts his weight uneasily, under Lu Han’s arched brows, and opens his mouth, ready to say something.
“Come on, guys, I’m dissolving into the sands of time here, let’s go,” whines Jongdae from the entrance door, Minseok standing next to him and tapping away at his phone. Yixing giggles a little. Kris snaps his mouth shut and hurries to the door, mumbling that they’ll go on first.
Lu Han watches their friends get ushered out by Kris’ large hands, and waits for Yixing to sling his hoodie on. He’s only mildly surprised when Yixing gently lays it over his own jacket instead, tugging the sleeves over Lu Han’s slouched shoulders with a stolid face.
“You’re gonna catch a cold like this,” is all Lu Han says, slipping his arms into the gifted hoodie and pulling it on, small closed-mouth smile on his face. Yixing shrugs, adjusting the string ties of the red hood, matching private smile on his lips.
“This way I won’t have to hear you whining for the next week over the cold you’re gonna get with your weak immune system. I’m doing both of us a favor,” Yixing says primly. Lu Han doesn’t comment on the thin sweater Yixing’s got on as his only layer, just knocks his shoulders against Yixing’s as they make their way to the entrance and out the Starbucks shop.
They stick close for the rest of the walk to lunch; Lu Han stays toasty warm the whole time.
-
Despite their joint insistency of having known each other since before the dawn of time itself, Lu Han actually met Yixing his first day of orientation at NYU. They hadn’t been roommates that first year, Lu Han paired with a surly looking boy who spoke in a mangled mash of four different languages in his sleep and Yixing with a guy who’d stayed over at his girlfriend’s place more often than not, but they’d been joined at the hip enough that it didn’t matter anyway.
Lu Han’s been an only kid his whole life; his dad had left way before him and his mother could come back together for a second child, so Lu Han has been on his own for the past twenty years. It hadn’t made him any more or less of a person. Standard absentee father issues aside, Lu Han grew up pretty much like any other average first-gen Chinese-American kid, if not a little more distant and detached with things like affection. He’s had his share of wanting to fit into a culture that didn’t quite know what to do with a kid who looked like an alien, but spoke better than their own kids; he came out of that numb and resigned at the world.
Yixing had been unassuming and unimpressive, to be perfectly honest, their first meeting. He was a dance major with plans to perform professionally, unexpectedly big dreams for someone who presented himself with both feet firm on the ground. But there was a sincerity in his serious words that drew Lu Han in, made him stay planted next to Yixing when he would’ve hit town otherwise, and he’s grateful he took that chance.
Yixing came into the country when he was around ten from Changsha, the alternative universe version to Lu Han’s American-born life. He spoke more fluent Mandarin than Lu Han had ever dreamt of, but he talked like he’d grown up right beside Lu Han, the next-door neighbor’s kid that Lu Han had always wanted to be best friends with. In another world, Lu Han might’ve resented Yixing for having the cultural bridge that he never did, but he’s so glad he found him in this one.
They became roommates their sophomore year, despite all the advice about not rooming with your best friends, and while it wasn’t the most idyllic of circumstances, Lu Han also never ran into the prophesied troubles that all the college guidebooks and blogs warned for. Yixing was not messy nor was he loud; whatever living tics they both had, they adjusted to each other’s quirks and made it work. Lu Han took over laundry duties when he kept finding week-old socks stuffed under Yixing’s bed when he visited his room, and Yixing did the cooking after Lu Han almost burned down the kitchen three separate times.
But it was Yixing’s waist injury that really cemented their friendship into something solid. A month into their second year in college, Yixing managed to pull his waist just weeks before his opening performance for the first of his department’s fall shows. It would’ve been all right if Yixing had just left it alone and had listened to the doctor’s orders of bedrest and no aggravating the injury. Instead, Lu Han had underestimated-or had never quite understood just how stubborn Yixing really was-Yixing’s attention to his craft, and had to be called in at four AM in the morning to drag Yixing’s prone body to the hospital from the practice room.
By then, Yixing had fucked up his back to such an extent that he literally could not walk without support, and Lu Han spent the next month in between studying for his own classes having to be Yixing’s physical crutch while he went to class. It put a strain on their friendship, Yixing constantly forcing himself to go to class even though he already had the understandings from his professors and a doctor’s note to keep him bound to bed and Lu Han having to bite back his words while he watched his best friend kill himself over this injury.
Yixing’s dance instructor forcibly put an end to Yixing coming into studio classes after a week of Yixing continuously staying after studio hours even after they begged him to go home, which Lu Han had been ecstatic about, though Yixing had only begrudgingly accepted his fate. He made sure to keep his thoughts to himself, with Yixing’s increasingly black mood most days, but it was hard not to be pleased when Yixing could finally walk without having to grab onto something after two weeks of enforced exile from dance.
The only thing that made Yixing tolerable company was when he went to his music theory and music literature classes. The days when he’d come home bouncing after those classes were the most pleasant Yixing had been since the injury had happened, and he’d bring back tidbits about how interesting composition was and how fun he’d found the keyboard. Lu Han focused on that when he engaged Yixing in conversation on the days he was supposed to be at dance, and it became enough of an interest that Yixing had continued to focus on those topics long after he’d gotten well enough to begin attending physical dance classes again. His waist never quite recovered, though, already too late and too fucked up by his stubbornness, but it seemed less of an issue after.
Lu Han heard about Yixing’s in-school transfer from Tisch to Steinhardt only after Yixing got the letter, with Yixing sitting him down after he came back from a grueling day dealing with obnoxious freshmen in his o-chem lab and apologizing for the past few months. It had been short and unexpected, but it was welcomed news considering Lu Han had dreaded an inevitable departure from Yixing with his waist too fucked to continue on with his dance major.
But, Yixing is here to stay, thankfully, and Lu Han still feels the relief of being able to keep his best friend, even presently. Yixing fixes the gaps that Lu Han’s grown up with, fills them in with his steadying presence and his deadpan humor and his infectious laughter, and Lu Han doesn’t quite know what to do without him now that he’s known Yixing. A life without Yixing would be colorless.
-
Yixing brought with him to college a year-long relationship with a girl from his high school back in Boston. Lu Han only found out because he’d accidentally entered his room once while they’d been in the middle of a Skype chat and had to awkwardly introduce himself; Yixing made him stay and talk with them for the rest of the session though.
She was a pretty girl, long hair and big brown eyes, with a delicate smile. The Skype version of her was pixelated, but Yixing’s carefully maintained photo of her in his fraying wallet proved her pristine. A good, proper Chinese girl, like Lu Han’s grandmother would say. She went to school across the country, her and Yixing in bookend states, but they’d seemed happy in their chats together, even though Lu Han only had one chat to speak from.
Yixing casually dropped their breakup during one of his and Lu Han’s cram sessions, a few days into their first reading period. Lu Han remembers this well because it had been so easily slipped into their idling conversation that he’d almost trampled past it before the words had sunk in.
“Why? I thought you guys were good,” he’d asked, capping the highlighter in his hand and looking up from his bright yellow textbook. Yixing sat across the table from him, leaning back into the uncomfortable plastic chairs the university supplied their lounges with, and looked distantly up at the ceiling.
“We were.” He offered nothing else for a while. Lu Han bit his tongue from prompting Yixing, determined to let him continue. “She wanted to wait for me.”
Lu Han stared blankly at him, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “Isn’t that a good thing?”
Yixing sat back up, small smile dimpling his cheeks. “I didn’t want her to.” And that had been the end of their conversation.
-
There’s the quiet tapping of laptop keys being pressed and the conversational tones of the DJ of the Sino radio station and his guest in the background. Yixing’s bent over the coffee table, jotting down notes as he skims through his texts, lightly humming a four-beat melody. He stops occasionally, laying down his pen, and does some fingering on a keyboard only he can see.
Lu Han’s sprawled on the couch right behind him, flicking through the pages of his phonetics textbook, staring unseeingly at the mass of miniscule type and spectrograms. He glances every few minutes at the back of Yixing’s head, tousled brown curls frizzing up in the sticky humidity of their apartment, and wonders when they’ll take a break.
He lets out a soft sigh, thumbs the page over, and drops his head into the centrefold of his text, smooshing his face in between the passages of voiced onset time and intonation types.
“It’s been only fifteen minutes, you know,” says Yixing, amused. Lu Han grunts, not bothering to lift his head off; he doesn’t have to look to know Yixing’s got his stupid judging smile dimpling out right now. “We still have another four hours to go before a reasonable break time.”
“Four hours, dear god,” Lu Han splutters, groaning muffled into his textbook. He lifts his face off finally to breathe properly and plops his chin down on the book instead. “Can’t we go get lunch now?”
“We could, but we’d still have to come back to study after,” Yixing says patiently, eyes on his books. Lu Han makes a face, but forces himself to start reading again. After a few minutes of intent reading (of the same passage, but at least it’ll be seared into his brain after this), Lu Han sighs again and presses himself back into the couch cushions, lolling his head at the top.
The ceiling looks infinitely more interesting-it looks like a corner’s starting to mold, actually. He should call the super for that soon.
The decisive snap of a book closed draws Lu Han’s attention away, not super invested in the state of their ceiling in the first place (although mold is quite a sobering matter that they should fix as soon as possible), and he finds Yixing’s gaze finally fixed on him.
“Lunch time,” Yixing affirms with a dimpled smile. “The sooner I get you out of this house, the sooner I can go back to studying in peace.”
Lu Han beams and tosses his textbook onto the cushions. “I’m glad you see it my way. Where to?”
Yixing lifts himself slowly, a little heavily from his prolonged crosslegged position, and Lu Han lays an automatic hand on his lower back, rubbing in slightly, as Yixing unfurls into a standing position. He quirks his lips in thanks, and twists his torso to and from, careful not to dislodge Lu Han’s hand.
“Bang? Noodletown? What do you feel like?” Yixing asks with a shrug. Lu Han considers his stomach for a moment, absentmindedly rubbing slow circles into Yixing’s waist.
“I want sandwiches today,” he says finally. Yixing hums, and turns around to pull Lu Han up from the couch.
“Definitely easier on our wallets,” he says agreeably, pushing Lu Han in the direction of his bedroom. “Go get dressed then.”
“We should do a grocery run while we’re out then,” Lu Han prompts, voice trailing into his room. He rummages around in his dresser cabinet for clothes. “We’re out of food that’s not hydrogenated oils and early heart attacks.” He comes back out, a clean t-shirt in one hand and a pair of shorts pinched between fingers.
Yixing laughs and runs a hand through his hair, having pulled on shoes and switched his ratty tank for a thin white tee in the mean time. “Write me down a list and remind me after we eat.”
-
Lu Han shuffles back into their apartment with a sullen expression and hard eyes.
The TV’s rattling away, a rerun of one of those old mainland dramas back in the late 90s that he vaguely remembers watching on his grandmother’s old television set in Haidian, and Yixing’s curled up comfortably on the couch with a throw blanket and a crate of clementines, already half-demolished. Yixing looks up from the clementine he has in his hands, bright orange peel in between his small fingers, and welcomes Lu Han back with a faint smile. It fades away when he registers the black cloud hanging over Lu Han’s slouched figure.
“Rough date?” he asks sympathetically. Lu Han sighs once, tries to expel all the chewed up words and hurt he’d choked down during the actual date with Joonmyeon, but it leaves him just feeling cold and uncomfortably fragile. Yixing frowns and pats the space next to him on the couch, tossing the clementine peels strewn on the seat back into the crate. Lu Han sheds his jacket and toes out of his boots, a little violently when his right heel refuses to slip off, and pads over to where Yixing’s sitting and flops down next to him.
“Relationships suck. A lot.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound good.” Yixing finishes peeling the clementine and pulls it in half, splitting the sections. He lifts a segment to Lu Han’s lips, holds it steady until Lu Han reluctantly opens his mouth, and feeds it in gently.
Lu Han chews the piece with a barely restrained pout, and opens his mouth again for another slice after he swallows. Yixing obligingly pushes the rest of the clementine half in, and Lu Han makes himself smile around the segments in his mouth in thanks.
“You wanna talk about it or you wanna watch TV with me instead?” Yixing says after a few moments of silent chewing from Lu Han. Lu Han grimaces again.
“Definitely TV,” he asserts, and lets himself fall sideways onto Yixing’s lap, brushing away any stray peels and pith before resting his cheeks onto Yixing’s sturdy thighs. Yixing lifts his hands up so Lu Han can get comfortable then lays them back down on Lu Han’s arms. “What are we watching tonight?”
Yixing lifts the remote from the coffee table and raises the volume. “A really badly subbed melodrama that Mrs. Chen from the floor below us lent me. I think it’s about lawyers and family inheritances? I went to the bathroom without pausing for a minute and came back to somebody being murdered on-screen. I’m not really sure what’s going on anymore.”
Lu Han muffles a snort into the folds of Yixing’s jeans. “Sounds like a fun show. Riveting.” Yixing flicks him on the arm, right where the t-shirt sleeve ends and skin peeks out.
“Mrs. Chen asked about you again, y’know. Wanted to know if you would be willing to help her daughter out by being her date to her friend’s wedding next week; her daughter’s quite infatuated, I hear,” Yixing says, pinching tiny areas around Lu Han’s arm where the skin shows. Lu Han groans this time.
“God, Mrs. Chen, I just got dumped by my boyfriend an hour ago. Can’t it wait?” he whines pitifully, lifting a foot in a halfhearted thump against the armrest of the couch. “I need at least a month before my broken heart can mend itself enough to go out on blind dates with your daughters.” Yixing stops his motions.
“Joonmyeon dumped you?” he asks quietly. Lu Han stills, any sort of forced lightheartedness from their earlier chatter pushed away with Yixing’s concerned tone. “Are you okay?”
Not really. Lu Han squeezes his eyes shut and buries his face into Yixing’s lap, pretends that if he hid enough, everything would snap back into place before today had happened. It wasn’t even a super big deal, to be honest; he and Joonmyeon had barely gotten out of the friends-with-benefits zone that Lu Han had staunchly stashed Joonmyeon in when they’d first met, but he thought he’d been doing good. He’d been trying with the whole boyfriends thing, go on dates with Joonmyeon, hold his hand, kiss him on the cheek in public, not kick him out of bed immediately after sex. He’d even been working up the courage this very night to ask if Joonmyeon wanted to come back to his place tonight, which is huge since Lu Han fucking hates anybody encroaching on his bed space. And he’d never really brought anyone home to meet Yixing as his significant other too; this would’ve been big.
“He said I wasn’t trying hard enough,” Lu Han croaks out in the end. “I didn’t care enough; I was too distant with him.” There’s a faint sting behind his eyelids, and Lu Han huffs noisily into his human pillow, trying to drown out the noise inside his head. Yixing says nothing, but he cards his fingers through Lu Han’s styled hair, slow and softly.
“That’s not true,” Yixing murmurs finally, barely loud enough to be heard over the loud yelling of an enraged mistress on the TV screen. Lu Han brings up a hand to grip tightly at the denim underneath him. “You did your best. I saw you try.”
“For nothing, too, seeing as he dumped my sorry ass,” Lu Han mumbles, unable to keep the self-pity from spilling out.
“Forget him, then. He doesn’t know how lucky he was to have you as a boyfriend,” Yixing says then, rolling Lu Han up so that he faced upward at Yixing’s frowning face. He grabs the hand that Lu Han tries to hide his eyes behind, and sets it down, curling his fingers around it. “I know how much you don’t like showing physical affection in public and doing all those romantic date things; you tried, though, for him. His loss for not knowing how much it actually meant.”
Lu Han averts his eyes, has to stare at the ceiling spot next to Yixing’s head instead of directly at him. The amount of scrutiny is uncomfortable, almost skin-wrenchingly so, but Yixing means well. “Thanks,” he mumbles again, hand clenching around Yixing’s grasp.
Yixing smiles down at him, gentle and small, as if aware of his discomfort, and cards his fingers through Lu Han’s hair once more before twisting away. “Okay, you’re totally checking out of this conversation. That’s fine; I know you have a heart in there, tin man. One day you’ll find someone who’ll see that too.” Lu Han grimaces, but he clings to Yixing’s words.
“Well. Now that feelings time is over, let’s watch something else other than adultery and murder, huh?” Lu Han says after a moment, confident that his voice remains steady. Yixing rolls his eyes and gestures to the screen and the DVD player with permission. Lu Han obligingly rolls off his lap and goes to DVD cabinet under the TV for a new movie to watch.
They sit together on the couch, a few minutes into the movie that Lu Han haphazardly chose and shoved into the DVD player, before Yixing breaks the silence. He touches Lu Han gently on the arm, mindful of his splayed position across the couch, his head pillowed by Yixing’s thighs.
“You remember Rebecca? My high school girlfriend?” he asks quietly, barely loud enough to hear over the chatter of the film dialogue. Lu Han stirs and tilts his head back to stare up at Yixing’s face.
“The one in California?”
“Yeah. That one.” Lu Han waits for him to continue, but Yixing seems to have drifted off, distracted by the sudden explosions on the television screen. He nudges Yixing in the ribs.
“What about her. Did you get back together or something?” Lu Han jokes. Yixing snorts and jostles Lu Han a little for the joke.
“No, shut up.” He waits a beat. “I told you she wanted to wait for me, right?”
Lu Han hums in response, eyes already drifting back to the movie. “Yeah. You said you didn’t want her to and you broke up with her. You’re a good guy, you know, Xing, you care a lot about people-almost too much, maybe.”
Yixing’s silent for a few minutes, and Lu Han thinks the conversation’s over, already settling back against the warmth of Yixing’s lap to properly enjoy the movie.
“That’s not it.”
Lu Han looks back up, fully facing Yixing this time. Yixing’s tone is firm and hard, anchored down to a conviction that Lu Han doesn’t know the answer to. It’s strange. “Tell me, then.”
“I didn’t want her to wait because I didn’t want to wait.” Lu Han frowns. “I’m selfish, you know.”
“This coming from the guy who gave up his lunch last week to a couple of crying kids on the street,” Lu Han counters with an incredulous laugh. “Okay.”
Yixing taps him on the head, and leaves his hand there, fingering strands of Lu Han’s hair. “I got scared.” Lu Han swallows back the snarky comment on his crypticism as Yixing absentmindedly strokes his hair, looking down unseeingly at Lu Han with a frown. “I didn’t want to wait to find out how long I had left in me to love her. If I’d run out of love before she did. I didn’t want to wake up one day and realize this was it; this was all I had left.”
Lu Han tries to find something to say, but Yixing just smiles, a sardonic twist of his lips.
“I don’t think it’s worth it to wait for someone.”
“That-” Lu Han clears his throat, suddenly dry and scratch. “That sounds like something I would say, not you.” Yixing shrugs, still petting his head.
“We all have our faults,” he says, focusing on Lu Han finally and then looking back at the TV screen.
But that isn’t one of yours, Lu Han doesn’t say.
-
The day outside is balmy and windy, the first dry day in two weeks and increasingly rare given the fall season. Lu Han’s been going almost stir-crazy with all his piling work and papers; deadlines are inching closer than ever and he feels like he’s going to pop out of his skin. He messages Minseok after he gets out of his morning Etymology class and whines through emoticons until Minseok finally agrees to meet him by the basketball court behind P.S. 130 after lunch. He does a little fistpump in between hurtling himself down the subway stairs when he gets the text back, and then rushes to get through the turnstiles to board the in-station B train home.
Lu Han stops by Paris Sandwich for a grilled pork banh mi and a Paris special, along with an iced coffee and a Vietnamese yogurt because Yixing’s usually home at this time. He walks back to their apartment in brisk steps, mindful of the dripping condensation of his two sealed cold drinks, and climbs up the creaky stairs lightly after letting himself in through the main front door.
He swings open the apartment door with a pleased smile and an invitation to join his and Minseok’s afternoon game on his tongue, but the air inside is uncomfortably still and empty. Only the blaring sirens of a passing squad car downstairs greet him home, filtered in through the window Yixing probably left open this morning and forgot about. He bites his lip, disappointed, but puts it out of mind. Yixing can’t be home all the time, not with the rent they gotta put up with; he’s most likely pulling another shift at the dessert cafe.
Lu Han stashes the Paris special in the fridge for Yixing to eat later, and deliberates on the yogurt drink for a moment before deciding on drinking it himself. It’ll be gross and watery by the time Yixing gets back anyway; he’s being a good friend for saving his roommate from that horror. He sets his bag down in his room and changes into looser shorts and a t-shirt for his game later before coming back out and settling at the kitchen table to eat.
He finishes lunch in about ten minutes, without the distraction of Yixing’s company around to bolster his meal, and cleans up the takeaway bag and crumbs on the wood surface of their table lest Yixing gripe about the mess later. Lu Han hovers over the table for a moment after, fingers tapping away on the wood, before he retrieves his phone from his room and shoots off a text to Yixing about the sandwich in the fridge should he come home before Lu Han. In belated afterthought, he pulls out a post-it pad and writes down the same message and goes back out into the kitchen to stick it on the table in case Yixing forgot his phone again.
Lu Han stands around and tidies up the rest of the kitchen before deciding to head out, nothing else to do. It feels a little strange, without someone to plug out the static noise; Yixing fills up a room a lot more than people think. He grabs his gym bag from his room and the yogurt drink condensing on the table, and takes a last look at the empty space before slipping on his sneakers and leaving through the entrance.
A few seconds later, he comes back in with a grumble and sets down his drink at the shoe shelf by the doorway and goes over to shut the window in the living room. He goes back to the door, takes one last look around and heads out, drink in hand.
-
Minseok’s already doing lay-ups with the ball he probably stole from Kris’ closet by the time Lu Han walks to the courtyard entrance. Lu Han watches him run up to the basket through the links of the fence and whoops when Minseok makes the basket. He yanks open the gate and strides onto the court with a challenging grin on his face.
“Ready to get your ass whooped?” Lu Han calls out. Minseok makes a rude gesture, lazily dribbling the ball back to the half-court line.
“Psh, as if you can even touch it; this ass is holy,” Minseok throws back with a grin of his own. Lu Han laughs and reaches over to smack it; he dodges the subsequent punch neatly, already used to Minseok’s response. “Hey, you know the rules: dinner and a show before you can touch the goods. Stop trying to jump the line.”
“You know you love it,” Lu Han waves off, throwing down his gear at the side of the fence and taking out a water bottle. “Besides, do you know how many people would beg for an ass-grab from me? You should feel special I do it all for free.”
“Some day, you’re gonna get punched in the face, and I’m gonna be the one laughing,” Minseok says seriously. He drops the face after, canine-grin in place. “Where’s Yixing? I would’ve thought he’d be here too.”
Lu Han shrugs, swigging down water and tossing the bottle back into his bag. “He wasn’t home when I got back; he’s probably at work or something.” He stretches out his arms, linking his fingers together and pulling until he feels the burn in his triceps. Minseok hums in response and goes to do another lay-up while Lu Han finishes warming up.
“Did you ask Kris if he wanted to join? Isn’t he usually free this time of day?” Lu Han calls out as Minseok bounces the ball against the backboard and into the hoop.
“Nah, he had a club thing this morning. I think he’s still in Kimmel,” Minseok replies, catching the ball and going in for a reverse lay-up. Lu Han does one last twist of his waist and stretches back until he feels his backbone pop, and claps his hands.
“Okay, time for some ass-kicking,” he says, putting everything else out of mind.
Minseok tosses him the ball, faces across from him at the half-court line, and Lu Han neatly catches it. He dribbles, does an in-between the legs swoop, and feints right before dribbling left and shouldering past Minseok’s defense, and their game begins.
-
Yixing’s stirring into a pot at the stove when Lu Han comes back from his date, quietly humming to himself and taste-testing the wooden spoon. He looks up when Lu Han clatters into the foyer, spoon in mouth, and waves in lieu of a verbal greeting.
“What’s cooking?” Lu Han asks, shrugging off his peacoat and unfurling the soft yellow scarf around his throat. He toes out of his shoes carefully and props them back onto the shoe shelf. Yixing pulls out the spoon and stirs it back into the pot without second thought before answering.
“My grandfather gave me another recipe while you were out last night. So we’re having his version of shi zi tou tonight. It’s red-cooked, so it’s gonna be a little saltier than our usual fare. I hope you’re okay with that,” he says with a smile.
Lu Han scratches at the hickeys Baekhyun had left scattered across his collarbone area and hikes up his sweater collar before padding over to the kitchen area. Yixing lifts back up the spoon and offers it in Lu Han’s direction.
“Tasty,” he says after licking the edge of the spoon. “I’m down with it.” Yixing beams at him and turns back to his pot.
“How was your date today? You came back surprisingly early,” Yixing asks. “I thought you’d be gone for at least another five hours and then come stumbling back at 2 in the morning.”
Lu Han makes a face at him and leans against the kitchen table. “You think so little of me, Xing, it hurts a lot to hear you say this.”
Yixing gives him a dead look. “It hurts me to get up at 2 in the morning to open up the door for your drunken ass because you’ve collapsed on the ground again and can’t get back up.”
“One time! And you never let it go!”
“And hopefully, if I keep shaming you, it’ll never happen again,” Yixing smiles cheekily and nods to the blinking rice cooker. “You can eat some rice first if you’re hungry; I have some dishes already done waiting in the microwave.”
“Nah, I’ll wait for you.” Lu Han waits a beat before blurting out what’s been on his mind the whole day. “So, I’ve been thinking.”
“Well, that’s never good.”
“Shut up, that joke’s old and dead.”
“You do always say I have a grandpa’s sense of humor.”
Lu Han rolls his eyes and taps a socked foot against the floorboards. Yixing twists over his shoulder when Lu Han doesn’t return with a wittier repartee.
“Okay, I’m sorry. Go on. What’s wrong?”
“Dating sucks ass.” Yixing blinks at the tersely said response and fully turns around to give Lu Han his full attention.
“Did something happen again? Did Baekhyun do something?” Yixing frowns, furrowing his brows worriedly. Lu Han sighs and waves him down.
“No, it’s just me. Just me and my stupid thoughts. Ignore me.”
“I like hearing your stupid thoughts. Tell me.” Lu Han bites his lip and crosses his arm, thinking how best to string his words together so he doesn’t sound like a sissy baby.
“I feel like I’ve just lost so much interest in other people nowadays, you know?” he says after a while. Yixing keeps his gaze fixed on Lu Han, wordlessly prompting him to continue. “I just. I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel fulfilling anymore. I feel like I’m forcing myself to go through the motions lately with the whole dating thing.”
“Well. Why are you forcing yourself then?” Yixing asks simply. Lu Han scoffs, but Yixing shakes his head, holding off on his response. “No, seriously. Why force yourself to do something you clearly don’t find any enjoyment in? If you don’t want to date anymore, then don’t. No one is keeping you there.”
“I. I-” Lu Han flounders for an answer. Yixing holds his hands up, their go-to gesture of waving a white flag, and turns around just in time to turn off the stove.
“I’m not trying to push you or anything, you know. I just want you to be happy,” Yixing says with finality. “Let’s eat first.”
Lu Han snaps his mouth shut and goes to grab the bowls and rice paddle from the dishwasher. He scoops up rice for the both of them and brings over the bowls to the table while Yixing carefully transports the pot of meatballs with a trivet held between his teeth. Lu Han retrieves the other dishes from the microwave, deeming them still warm enough for immediate consumption.
They eat the meal in relative chatter, staying firmly on mundane topics, as if Yixing’s trying to make up for his earlier pressing, but Lu Han still sits in mild unease the rest of the night.
-
Kris is tagging along today for Lu Han and Yixing’s Friday night dinner out. It’s not unheard of for their friends to pop in on their dinners, but usually Lu Han would’ve had more warning before he opened the door and found Kris hovering outside in the dusty hallway waiting for them.
“O-oh! You guys are ready! I was just about to knock,” says Kris hastily, patting down the sides of his jeans like he’s looking for something before coming up empty-handed. Lu Han eyes him with a raise of his brows, but lets Yixing gently usher him out the door so he can lock it.
“Y...eah, we’re going out to eat. Are you...coming with?” Lu Han says slowly, turning to look at Yixing in question. Yixing nods with a smile and pockets his key ring before stepping up to Kris with a bigger beam on his face.
“Yeah, I asked Kris to come join us tonight when we ran into each other after ensemble. He said he wasn’t doing anything fun, so I thought it’d be nice for him to hang out with us,” Yixing clarifies, patting Kris on the shoulder before walking down the hall towards the stairs. Lu Han gives Kris a deadpan look but follows after Yixing, leaving Kris to scramble behind them.
“So, uh, where are we going to eat tonight?” Kris asks, trailing behind them. Yixing looks over his shoulder and points at Lu Han.
“He usually makes the choices because he’s the pickiest eater in the world,” Yixing says teasingly, laughing when Lu Han elbows him in the gut.
“Shut up; if I leave decisions to you, you’d be dragging me to an old mahjong café for old people for all I know, and then I’d be wasting my night away watching you give all the old gramps and grannies back massages and getting their tea orders and lighting their pipes.” Yixing snorts and bumps Lu Han with his shoulder.
“What is this, the 1960s? Do I look like a gopher to you?” Lu Han laughs and gives Kris a look, inviting him in on the joke.
“He tries so hard, but you know he turns like jello for the old folk,” Lu Han says pityingly, sarcastically patting Yixing on the shoulder. Kris grins and shrugs.
“I think it’s cute,” he says simply. “My mum would kill for a son like Yixing.”
Lu Han glances at Yixing, hoping to share a judging look, but Yixing is preoccupied, playing with the curls of his hair at the back of his head and pulling at his earlobe. He narrows his eyes and looks back at Kris, who just smiles goofily and ducks his head down. It feels like Lu Han’s been just walled off from the group, suddenly the third-wheel loser in their party when it was his and Yixing’s party in the first place.
“Anyway,” he starts again, after they walk down the three flights of stairs and exit the apartment building into the chilly night air. “We’re eating cheap tonight because I don’t get paid for another week and Yixing blew his last paycheck on his second guitar.”
“It’s my money, and I’m allowed to do whatever I want with it, dad,” Yixing retorts, rolling his eyes. He shivers a little, only dressed in a light hoodie, tank, and sweats, and Lu Han frowns.
“You-” Kris’ sudden motion cuts him off, and Lu Han watches in surprised silence as Kris takes off his fur-lined jacket and pushes it on Yixing.
“Please wear my jacket. Just looking at you makes me feel like I’m the one shaking,” Kris pleads, and holds it in place around Yixing’s shoulders until Yixing begrudgingly takes it and properly slips his arms through the sleeves.
“Aren’t you gonna be cold then?” Lu Han asks with a raised eyebrow, eying Kris’ knit sweater and jeans outfit. Kris shrugs.
“I run a little warmer than most people. I’ll be fine,” he assures the both of them. “Let’s go to dinner, yeah?”
Yixing notices the expression on Lu Han’s face and pats him on the cheek. “Now you don’t have to nag me about wearing another layer, right?” Lu Han shakes his head, clearing his thoughts, and bares his teeth at Yixing.
“I wouldn’t have to nag if you just actually took better care of your body, dunce,” he says, but links his arm with Yixing’s and drags him down the street, not caring that Kris follows behind. Yixing tilts his head back in a laugh.
“Well, maybe if you bought me nicer stuff, daddy, then I’d actually think about dressing right,” he teases as Lu Han blooms pink.
“Biggest. Jerk. Ever.”
-
Monday finds Lu Han up to his eyeballs in papers and transcriptions to do for his upcoming midterms. He spends his morning and early lunch hours holed up in the library, furiously scribbling through his notes and replaying segments of speech again and again until he’s sure the sound bites are seared into his brain. He’s thinking about possibly withering away in the basement of Bobst, one of the thousand faceless casualties of NYU’s exam period, but his death is postponed by the beep of a text message from Jongdae around two, asking to eat lunch together.
Lu Han gathers up his stuff quickly and flies out of the library center, eager for sustenance and company that isn’t the pre-recorded voices of his classmates chopped up for vowel and consonant sounds. Jongdae greets him with a smile at the front door of Ennju, after Lu Han runs for the R train and rides the way up to Union Square, and ushers him in, citing hunger pangs. They sit down by the windows, next to the entrance, and bring back a dumpling udon and a curry udon to eat.
“Hey, have you noticed something weird about Kris?” Lu Han asks tentatively, in the middle of his lunch date with Jongdae. He twirls his chopsticks around in his soup broth, feeling a little silly for randomly bringing this topic up out of nowhere.
“What do you mean?” Jongdae asks through a mouthful of half-chewed udon. Lu Han makes a face and flaps his hand at Jongdae for him to swallow before talking, and Jongdae does with mild difficulty. He grabs for a napkin and wipes his mouth before repeating his question.
Lu Han shrugs and shoves a dumpling in his mouth to give him a few seconds time to think. “I don’t know, he just seems really… clingy recently?” Jongdae snorts, the force of his exhalation almost great enough to spill over the water in the cup he’s drinking from.
“You mean with you?” Lu Han makes a face.
“Ew, no, don’t even say that. I’m trying to eat here, please.” Lu Han shoves another dumpling in his mouth before continuing. “No, I mean, with Yixing. He’s been hanging around him a lot. It feels like-”
“Like he has a schoolgirl crush on your best friend? Yeah, I’d say so,” Jongdae cuts in, matter-of-factly, reaching over for Lu Han’s untouched bowl of miso. “It’s not like he’s any bit subtle about it. I’m surprised it’s taken you this long to catch on.”
Lu Han sets his chopsticks down in disbelief. “Wait, you’re serious? What the fuck? Am I the last person to know out of all of us?”
Jongdae shrugs, slurping noisily on his filched soup. “I think that’s Yixing, to be honest, given how he’s been walking around with Kris like a clueless puppy.”
“Wouldn’t the puppy be Kris in this scenario?”
“Yeah okay, nitpicker, but my point still stands.” Jongdae sets down his bowl for a moment and looks at Lu Han, no trace of his regular levity in sight. “But seriously though, if Yixing doesn’t actually like Kris like that, can you clue him in before I throw something at him. I mean, Yixing is my bro, but this is getting ridiculous.”
“What?”
“It’s actually hurting me to see Kris like this, like my very soul is aching. Tell Yixing to let him go and take his puppeteer magic somewhere else because he is messing up with my twelve-step plan right now.”
“What.” Every single time. Lu Han eats lunch with Jongdae so rarely that he always forgets how hard it is to keep up with Jongdae’s neverending tangents that only he seems to think connect.
“My twelve-step plan, Lu Han, keep up.”
“Your twelve-step plan for what?” Lu Han needs a tylenol.
“For getting into Kris’ pants, duh.” Jongdae continues eating like he didn’t just drop yet another huge bomb on Lu Han right after the other. Lu Han feels his jaw physically dropping, something he’s only ever heard of happening in fiction, but Jongdae makes him do incredible things sometimes.
“I’m sorry, can we just. Stop. Stop for a second so I can fucking process everything you just threw at me.” Jongdae waves a hand imperiously, neatly sipping down his soup, while Lu Han drops his head into his hands and massages at his temples. “Okay. So. Kris has a crush on Yixing. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“You want Yixing to stop stringing Kris along because you want Kris for yourself. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“You want Kris for yourself?”
“Didn’t we just establish this?”
“I’m sorry that my mind just refuses to accept the idea that you have a fucking boner for Kris Wu?” Lu Han sounds a little hysterical, admittedly, but this is just a little too much. Jongdae shrugs like it’s no big deal.
“It is what it is, okay. So tell Yixing to step off because he is really harshing on step six right now.”
“Step. Six.”
“Y’know, get senpai to notice me for more than just cheeky wit and great cheekbones.”
“...I’m leaving this conversation and you. Goodbye, Jongdae.” Lu Han pushes away from the table, gathering his empty bowl and used napkins, and makes to throw away his trash.
“Remember to tell Yixing, okay!” Jongdae calls out as Lu Han slips out the door.
-
NEXT
the last straw in the restaurant, but i don't mind sharing
pg; 20.8k; lay/luhan, kris/lay (+ side kris/chen)
college!au; based on this post. Despite their joint insistency of having known each other since before the dawn of time itself, Lu Han actually met Yixing his first day of orientation at NYU. (ao3 mirror here)
The spring of their sophomore year, Lu Han took time when not killing himself over presuppositions and implicatures to work on a side project, complete with powerpoint presentation. It listed all the reasons why he and Yixing should move off-campus their last two years of college, to live like true hippies and ‘experience the real world’.
He sat Yixing down at their regular table in Pho Bang during lunch, and Yixing smiled at him, unquestioning. Lu Han's laptop plus powerpoint was stowed securely in the knock-off MCM bag he’d gifted himself the past Christmas. (He'd gotten Yixing a matching one because the old lady hawking them had been especially persuasive.) Yixing ordered them their normal orders-an extra big bowl of the number one combo for Lu Han, a regular forty-one for him, and a large plate of spring rolls to split between them-and Lu Han’s prepared speech fell apart before it even left his lips.
“Let me be your sugar daddy for the next two years,” was what stumbled out instead. Yixing stared blankly at Lu Han for a few moments before his eyes widened and his smile froze. Lu Han felt like crawling under a rock and dying, flushed bright maroon with embarrassment.
“Are you having one of those fantasies again?” he asked concerned, leaning forward with a hand out to feel up Lu Han’s forehead. “It’s me, Lu Han, Yixing Zhang, can you hear me?”
“Oh my god,” Lu Han groaned and smacked his hand away, opting to smother himself with the table surface. Yixing lifted his head up before it managed to touch the glass and placed a napkin down under his cheeks before pushing his head back down. “This was not how I wanted to start this conversation.”
Yixing laughed lightly. Their server came by with the customary plate of basil and bean sprouts and fish sauce, and Yixing waited until everything was placed down before responding. “You know, if you wanted me to live with you next year off campus, you could’ve just said so. That, at least, I was prepared to hear, but a sugar daddy offer? I’m gonna have to take longer on that one.”
Lu Han looked up with grunt, dismayed grimace all over his face. “You knew, and you still let me waste a month writing up that presentation? You asshole. I don’t know why everybody thinks you’re a nice person because you are literally the worst.”
Yixing’s eyes sparkled, innocent smile stretching his lips. “I wanted to wait until you finished searching for good places so I didn’t have to look myself,” he said mildly, thanking their server who returned back with their bowls of noodles. He pulled out two pairs of chopsticks from the plastic container at the end of the table and nudged Lu Han with his foot to take his pair.
“Actual worst,” Lu Han repeated with a grumble, pulling his bowl of pho towards him. “I take it all back. You can suffer in the dorms by yourself.” Yixing beamed and places a particularly big piece of pork on top of his red beef.
“Here, daddy, a reward for your hard work.”
-
Yixing gets out of class first on Wednesdays, so he usually loiters around on campus in the Starbucks right next to the Silver Building, kicking at his heels waiting for Lu Han’s dismissal from his office hours at the linguistics department so they can go for lunch.
Today, Lu Han sneaks out a few minutes early because no one comes by for the last thirty minutes of his office hours anyway, and his stomach’s already been protesting the lack of food it’d been denied the entire morning. He notes the crispness as he hits the outdoor cold, draws his light jacket closer to his body with a rueful smile. It seems like fall’s fast-fading into winter this year; he’ll need to break out his winter coats in about a week or so if this temperature keeps going.
Thankfully, the Starbucks is only a street away. Lu Han crosses onto Greene St with a perfunctory glance for errant cars, and subtly tries to look in through the glass panes of the coffee shop for Yixing’s seated figure. Today’s overcast though, but with the occasional bright glare of a beaming sun, so Lu Han mostly sees his own reflection mirrored in the windows, blocking out the groups of students and patrons in the shop. He takes a moment to study himself in the window, mindful of the audience he’s probably in front of, and swipes his bangs to the side, adjusting his knit cap.
He can hear loud laughter, even through the thick windowpane, and he moves in closer to see who it is. There’s a couple of girls sitting immediately at the window seat right before him, staring amusedly at him, and he blushes deep pink, smiling the grimace that never fails to turn up in moments of embarrassment. But it’s not them that’s laughing; sitting a few feet away from them, near the wooden plant dividers of Starbucks are Kris, Minseok, and Jongdae at a rounded table, pointing at him and snickering. Well, Jongdae’s pointing; Kris and Minseok just wave from across the shop, smirking and smiling respectively at him.
Lu Han lets out a breath of laughter and waves back, and makes his way around the building to the entrance. He swings open the door, letting an exiting girl with a violin case strapped to her back go through first, and enters into the store, breathing in deep the heavy smells of pumpkin spice and burnt espresso.
He makes a beeline for his friends’ table, punches Jongdae lightly in the neck for his obnoxious laughter, and plops himself down in the remaining open seat, a red hoodie hanging off its back, right in between Jongdae and Minseok.
“Couldn’t resist your vanity, huh?” Jongdae mocks lightly, grinning at him. Lu Han makes a face at him, but shrugs. He flicks his bangs back with a light toss of his head, which Jongdae rolls his eyes at.
“You guys here with Yixing?” he asks, turning his head back and forth for Yixing’s curly-top head. Kris nods his head while sipping down his latte and points to the bathroom doors over his shoulder.
“Yeah, he’s in the bathroom. We’re tagging along today.” He nods at Lu Han’s seat. “You’re sitting in his spot, by the way.”
“Yeah,” Lu Han says noncommittally, curling his fingers around a sleeve opening of the hoodie behind him unnoticed. “Were you waiting long then?”
Minseok shakes his head, pleasant canine grin across his cheeks. “We only got here a few minutes before you did, actually.” Jongdae leans in, conspiratorial glint in his eyes, and mock whispers at Lu Han.
“We would’ve gotten here a half-hour ago, actually, but Kris got caught up in watching Yixing play the piano in the rec room. He had us hiding behind the doors for a good ten minutes while he peeked through the windows.”
Kris chokes mid-sip on his latte, almost spills over the brim of his cup with the force of his splutter, and Lu Han brays in laughter while Jongdae looks on in smug satisfaction. Minseok huffs a small breath of amusement and pushes the pile of brown napkins at his side to Kris, who coughs out a thank you and grabs onto a fistful. Kris quickly mops up the slow dripping mess on his cup and the splash zone around him, and dabs at his dark blue button-down gingerly for any possible spillage, coughing wetly.
“That’s some reaction, Kris, you look almost guilty,” Lu Han says slyly, propping his cheek up with a fist on a dry spot of the table. Kris glares at him, still coughing, and flashes a crooked backwards victory sign at him. Lu Han grins placidly back at him, well aware the index finger is only up out of courtesy for the group of girls sitting directly in front of them, and basks in the disgruntled expression of his friend.
“I wasn’t gawking or anything, okay, it was just really good to listen to,” Kris sputters defensively in between hacking up his lung. Minseok nods sympathetically, eyes sparkling with amusement, but Lu Han tunes out.
He sees Yixing exit out of the bathroom doors first, the others facing away from doors, and tilts his head a little away from his hand to catch Yixing’s eyes. Yixing smiles back when he sees him, neutral expression blooming into something fond, and flicks his eyes to Kris’ hunched back with intent. Lu Han holds back a snort and subtly nods, propping his face back down to watch Yixing slowly creep up behind Kris with his arms at his sides.
Kris is still talking, hunching into himself further and further as Jongdae continues to needle him, but Minseok’s already caught on, having looked up and seen Yixing’s quietly approaching figure. He nudges Lu Han softly, eyebrows furrowed in a knowing expression, and Lu Han grins back.
“-not like I was stalking him or anything, okay, it’s not like that-”
Yixing stops right behind Kris’ chair and gently lays a small hand on Kris’ shoulder, index finger lifted so that it’d poke Kris’ cheek when he turned his head. “What’s all this about, hm? I leave for a few minutes, and you guys throw a party without me?”
“Well, you know,” Lu Han says cheekily, lazily fanning his fingers out for a little wave, “like the words of one of the great philosophers of our generation: ‘the party don’t start ‘til I walk in.’” Yixing snorts, hand still on Kris and oblivious to his frozen posture.
Jongdae coughs into a fist rather obviously, and Lu Han feels the movement of a scuffle under the table, Kris’ loud yelp and betrayed glare at Jongdae outing its culprit. It shakes Kris out of his paralysis, though, and he twists around with a forced grin to greet Yixing.
“Hey,” he ekes out, feigning nonchalance-a little too late, in Lu Han’s opinion, since Yixing had been there long enough to hear at least the tail-end of his petulant sulking-but Yixing just smiles down at him without bias and pats his back warmly.
“I’m glad someone enjoys my playing,” he says sincerely, and Kris’ expression spasms, visibly reining back a blanch, and his cheeks bloom like a ripe tomato. It’s not a great look for his complexion.
Lu Han pouts, screwing his lips up exaggeratedly. “Hey, I appreciate you! Just not at three in the morning when I’m trying to sleep for my chem final.” Yixing rolls his eyes, fingers resting on the breadth of Kris’ shoulders, oblivious to Kris’ transparent fluster. Lu Han hides a grin.
“Yes, Lu Han, I appreciate you too. Thank you for your loud snoring when I’m trying to study for my theory of harmonization exam, and for your unhelpful commentary when I’m practicing for my jury examination, and for all the Dorito crumbs you spew over the couch when you’re watching your Korean dramas and never clean up. Where would I be without you?” Yixing dimples, though, at the end of his mock rant, and Lu Han snickers.
Jongdae shifts away from the table, sparking the chain reaction from the rest of the table as everyone else stands up from their seats and gathers up the trash and empty cups. “Well, I know I appreciate actually eating lunch before two o’clock, so if we can hurry this along and actually go get something before I have to go cry at my econ notes?”
Kris stands awkwardly in front of his seat, back stiff and shoulders pressed out, blunted by his cracked leather jacket. Yixing’s palm lays flat against his spine, undisturbed by the movement of their tablemates, and Lu Han stares unobtrusively at it for a few seconds. There’s a question forming in the back of his skull, slowly building itself, but Lu Han blinks it away, focusing instead on the rumble of his stomach and the answering growl from Yixing’s.
“Ah yes, time to refuel this robot body of mine,” Lu Han jokes, patting his stomach, and gestures for Jongdae and Minseok to start the exodus out of Starbucks. Yixing moves away from Kris now, and goes for the hoodie draped over the chair Lu Han vacated. Kris shifts his weight uneasily, under Lu Han’s arched brows, and opens his mouth, ready to say something.
“Come on, guys, I’m dissolving into the sands of time here, let’s go,” whines Jongdae from the entrance door, Minseok standing next to him and tapping away at his phone. Yixing giggles a little. Kris snaps his mouth shut and hurries to the door, mumbling that they’ll go on first.
Lu Han watches their friends get ushered out by Kris’ large hands, and waits for Yixing to sling his hoodie on. He’s only mildly surprised when Yixing gently lays it over his own jacket instead, tugging the sleeves over Lu Han’s slouched shoulders with a stolid face.
“You’re gonna catch a cold like this,” is all Lu Han says, slipping his arms into the gifted hoodie and pulling it on, small closed-mouth smile on his face. Yixing shrugs, adjusting the string ties of the red hood, matching private smile on his lips.
“This way I won’t have to hear you whining for the next week over the cold you’re gonna get with your weak immune system. I’m doing both of us a favor,” Yixing says primly. Lu Han doesn’t comment on the thin sweater Yixing’s got on as his only layer, just knocks his shoulders against Yixing’s as they make their way to the entrance and out the Starbucks shop.
They stick close for the rest of the walk to lunch; Lu Han stays toasty warm the whole time.
-
Despite their joint insistency of having known each other since before the dawn of time itself, Lu Han actually met Yixing his first day of orientation at NYU. They hadn’t been roommates that first year, Lu Han paired with a surly looking boy who spoke in a mangled mash of four different languages in his sleep and Yixing with a guy who’d stayed over at his girlfriend’s place more often than not, but they’d been joined at the hip enough that it didn’t matter anyway.
Lu Han’s been an only kid his whole life; his dad had left way before him and his mother could come back together for a second child, so Lu Han has been on his own for the past twenty years. It hadn’t made him any more or less of a person. Standard absentee father issues aside, Lu Han grew up pretty much like any other average first-gen Chinese-American kid, if not a little more distant and detached with things like affection. He’s had his share of wanting to fit into a culture that didn’t quite know what to do with a kid who looked like an alien, but spoke better than their own kids; he came out of that numb and resigned at the world.
Yixing had been unassuming and unimpressive, to be perfectly honest, their first meeting. He was a dance major with plans to perform professionally, unexpectedly big dreams for someone who presented himself with both feet firm on the ground. But there was a sincerity in his serious words that drew Lu Han in, made him stay planted next to Yixing when he would’ve hit town otherwise, and he’s grateful he took that chance.
Yixing came into the country when he was around ten from Changsha, the alternative universe version to Lu Han’s American-born life. He spoke more fluent Mandarin than Lu Han had ever dreamt of, but he talked like he’d grown up right beside Lu Han, the next-door neighbor’s kid that Lu Han had always wanted to be best friends with. In another world, Lu Han might’ve resented Yixing for having the cultural bridge that he never did, but he’s so glad he found him in this one.
They became roommates their sophomore year, despite all the advice about not rooming with your best friends, and while it wasn’t the most idyllic of circumstances, Lu Han also never ran into the prophesied troubles that all the college guidebooks and blogs warned for. Yixing was not messy nor was he loud; whatever living tics they both had, they adjusted to each other’s quirks and made it work. Lu Han took over laundry duties when he kept finding week-old socks stuffed under Yixing’s bed when he visited his room, and Yixing did the cooking after Lu Han almost burned down the kitchen three separate times.
But it was Yixing’s waist injury that really cemented their friendship into something solid. A month into their second year in college, Yixing managed to pull his waist just weeks before his opening performance for the first of his department’s fall shows. It would’ve been all right if Yixing had just left it alone and had listened to the doctor’s orders of bedrest and no aggravating the injury. Instead, Lu Han had underestimated-or had never quite understood just how stubborn Yixing really was-Yixing’s attention to his craft, and had to be called in at four AM in the morning to drag Yixing’s prone body to the hospital from the practice room.
By then, Yixing had fucked up his back to such an extent that he literally could not walk without support, and Lu Han spent the next month in between studying for his own classes having to be Yixing’s physical crutch while he went to class. It put a strain on their friendship, Yixing constantly forcing himself to go to class even though he already had the understandings from his professors and a doctor’s note to keep him bound to bed and Lu Han having to bite back his words while he watched his best friend kill himself over this injury.
Yixing’s dance instructor forcibly put an end to Yixing coming into studio classes after a week of Yixing continuously staying after studio hours even after they begged him to go home, which Lu Han had been ecstatic about, though Yixing had only begrudgingly accepted his fate. He made sure to keep his thoughts to himself, with Yixing’s increasingly black mood most days, but it was hard not to be pleased when Yixing could finally walk without having to grab onto something after two weeks of enforced exile from dance.
The only thing that made Yixing tolerable company was when he went to his music theory and music literature classes. The days when he’d come home bouncing after those classes were the most pleasant Yixing had been since the injury had happened, and he’d bring back tidbits about how interesting composition was and how fun he’d found the keyboard. Lu Han focused on that when he engaged Yixing in conversation on the days he was supposed to be at dance, and it became enough of an interest that Yixing had continued to focus on those topics long after he’d gotten well enough to begin attending physical dance classes again. His waist never quite recovered, though, already too late and too fucked up by his stubbornness, but it seemed less of an issue after.
Lu Han heard about Yixing’s in-school transfer from Tisch to Steinhardt only after Yixing got the letter, with Yixing sitting him down after he came back from a grueling day dealing with obnoxious freshmen in his o-chem lab and apologizing for the past few months. It had been short and unexpected, but it was welcomed news considering Lu Han had dreaded an inevitable departure from Yixing with his waist too fucked to continue on with his dance major.
But, Yixing is here to stay, thankfully, and Lu Han still feels the relief of being able to keep his best friend, even presently. Yixing fixes the gaps that Lu Han’s grown up with, fills them in with his steadying presence and his deadpan humor and his infectious laughter, and Lu Han doesn’t quite know what to do without him now that he’s known Yixing. A life without Yixing would be colorless.
-
Yixing brought with him to college a year-long relationship with a girl from his high school back in Boston. Lu Han only found out because he’d accidentally entered his room once while they’d been in the middle of a Skype chat and had to awkwardly introduce himself; Yixing made him stay and talk with them for the rest of the session though.
She was a pretty girl, long hair and big brown eyes, with a delicate smile. The Skype version of her was pixelated, but Yixing’s carefully maintained photo of her in his fraying wallet proved her pristine. A good, proper Chinese girl, like Lu Han’s grandmother would say. She went to school across the country, her and Yixing in bookend states, but they’d seemed happy in their chats together, even though Lu Han only had one chat to speak from.
Yixing casually dropped their breakup during one of his and Lu Han’s cram sessions, a few days into their first reading period. Lu Han remembers this well because it had been so easily slipped into their idling conversation that he’d almost trampled past it before the words had sunk in.
“Why? I thought you guys were good,” he’d asked, capping the highlighter in his hand and looking up from his bright yellow textbook. Yixing sat across the table from him, leaning back into the uncomfortable plastic chairs the university supplied their lounges with, and looked distantly up at the ceiling.
“We were.” He offered nothing else for a while. Lu Han bit his tongue from prompting Yixing, determined to let him continue. “She wanted to wait for me.”
Lu Han stared blankly at him, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “Isn’t that a good thing?”
Yixing sat back up, small smile dimpling his cheeks. “I didn’t want her to.” And that had been the end of their conversation.
-
There’s the quiet tapping of laptop keys being pressed and the conversational tones of the DJ of the Sino radio station and his guest in the background. Yixing’s bent over the coffee table, jotting down notes as he skims through his texts, lightly humming a four-beat melody. He stops occasionally, laying down his pen, and does some fingering on a keyboard only he can see.
Lu Han’s sprawled on the couch right behind him, flicking through the pages of his phonetics textbook, staring unseeingly at the mass of miniscule type and spectrograms. He glances every few minutes at the back of Yixing’s head, tousled brown curls frizzing up in the sticky humidity of their apartment, and wonders when they’ll take a break.
He lets out a soft sigh, thumbs the page over, and drops his head into the centrefold of his text, smooshing his face in between the passages of voiced onset time and intonation types.
“It’s been only fifteen minutes, you know,” says Yixing, amused. Lu Han grunts, not bothering to lift his head off; he doesn’t have to look to know Yixing’s got his stupid judging smile dimpling out right now. “We still have another four hours to go before a reasonable break time.”
“Four hours, dear god,” Lu Han splutters, groaning muffled into his textbook. He lifts his face off finally to breathe properly and plops his chin down on the book instead. “Can’t we go get lunch now?”
“We could, but we’d still have to come back to study after,” Yixing says patiently, eyes on his books. Lu Han makes a face, but forces himself to start reading again. After a few minutes of intent reading (of the same passage, but at least it’ll be seared into his brain after this), Lu Han sighs again and presses himself back into the couch cushions, lolling his head at the top.
The ceiling looks infinitely more interesting-it looks like a corner’s starting to mold, actually. He should call the super for that soon.
The decisive snap of a book closed draws Lu Han’s attention away, not super invested in the state of their ceiling in the first place (although mold is quite a sobering matter that they should fix as soon as possible), and he finds Yixing’s gaze finally fixed on him.
“Lunch time,” Yixing affirms with a dimpled smile. “The sooner I get you out of this house, the sooner I can go back to studying in peace.”
Lu Han beams and tosses his textbook onto the cushions. “I’m glad you see it my way. Where to?”
Yixing lifts himself slowly, a little heavily from his prolonged crosslegged position, and Lu Han lays an automatic hand on his lower back, rubbing in slightly, as Yixing unfurls into a standing position. He quirks his lips in thanks, and twists his torso to and from, careful not to dislodge Lu Han’s hand.
“Bang? Noodletown? What do you feel like?” Yixing asks with a shrug. Lu Han considers his stomach for a moment, absentmindedly rubbing slow circles into Yixing’s waist.
“I want sandwiches today,” he says finally. Yixing hums, and turns around to pull Lu Han up from the couch.
“Definitely easier on our wallets,” he says agreeably, pushing Lu Han in the direction of his bedroom. “Go get dressed then.”
“We should do a grocery run while we’re out then,” Lu Han prompts, voice trailing into his room. He rummages around in his dresser cabinet for clothes. “We’re out of food that’s not hydrogenated oils and early heart attacks.” He comes back out, a clean t-shirt in one hand and a pair of shorts pinched between fingers.
Yixing laughs and runs a hand through his hair, having pulled on shoes and switched his ratty tank for a thin white tee in the mean time. “Write me down a list and remind me after we eat.”
-
Lu Han shuffles back into their apartment with a sullen expression and hard eyes.
The TV’s rattling away, a rerun of one of those old mainland dramas back in the late 90s that he vaguely remembers watching on his grandmother’s old television set in Haidian, and Yixing’s curled up comfortably on the couch with a throw blanket and a crate of clementines, already half-demolished. Yixing looks up from the clementine he has in his hands, bright orange peel in between his small fingers, and welcomes Lu Han back with a faint smile. It fades away when he registers the black cloud hanging over Lu Han’s slouched figure.
“Rough date?” he asks sympathetically. Lu Han sighs once, tries to expel all the chewed up words and hurt he’d choked down during the actual date with Joonmyeon, but it leaves him just feeling cold and uncomfortably fragile. Yixing frowns and pats the space next to him on the couch, tossing the clementine peels strewn on the seat back into the crate. Lu Han sheds his jacket and toes out of his boots, a little violently when his right heel refuses to slip off, and pads over to where Yixing’s sitting and flops down next to him.
“Relationships suck. A lot.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound good.” Yixing finishes peeling the clementine and pulls it in half, splitting the sections. He lifts a segment to Lu Han’s lips, holds it steady until Lu Han reluctantly opens his mouth, and feeds it in gently.
Lu Han chews the piece with a barely restrained pout, and opens his mouth again for another slice after he swallows. Yixing obligingly pushes the rest of the clementine half in, and Lu Han makes himself smile around the segments in his mouth in thanks.
“You wanna talk about it or you wanna watch TV with me instead?” Yixing says after a few moments of silent chewing from Lu Han. Lu Han grimaces again.
“Definitely TV,” he asserts, and lets himself fall sideways onto Yixing’s lap, brushing away any stray peels and pith before resting his cheeks onto Yixing’s sturdy thighs. Yixing lifts his hands up so Lu Han can get comfortable then lays them back down on Lu Han’s arms. “What are we watching tonight?”
Yixing lifts the remote from the coffee table and raises the volume. “A really badly subbed melodrama that Mrs. Chen from the floor below us lent me. I think it’s about lawyers and family inheritances? I went to the bathroom without pausing for a minute and came back to somebody being murdered on-screen. I’m not really sure what’s going on anymore.”
Lu Han muffles a snort into the folds of Yixing’s jeans. “Sounds like a fun show. Riveting.” Yixing flicks him on the arm, right where the t-shirt sleeve ends and skin peeks out.
“Mrs. Chen asked about you again, y’know. Wanted to know if you would be willing to help her daughter out by being her date to her friend’s wedding next week; her daughter’s quite infatuated, I hear,” Yixing says, pinching tiny areas around Lu Han’s arm where the skin shows. Lu Han groans this time.
“God, Mrs. Chen, I just got dumped by my boyfriend an hour ago. Can’t it wait?” he whines pitifully, lifting a foot in a halfhearted thump against the armrest of the couch. “I need at least a month before my broken heart can mend itself enough to go out on blind dates with your daughters.” Yixing stops his motions.
“Joonmyeon dumped you?” he asks quietly. Lu Han stills, any sort of forced lightheartedness from their earlier chatter pushed away with Yixing’s concerned tone. “Are you okay?”
Not really. Lu Han squeezes his eyes shut and buries his face into Yixing’s lap, pretends that if he hid enough, everything would snap back into place before today had happened. It wasn’t even a super big deal, to be honest; he and Joonmyeon had barely gotten out of the friends-with-benefits zone that Lu Han had staunchly stashed Joonmyeon in when they’d first met, but he thought he’d been doing good. He’d been trying with the whole boyfriends thing, go on dates with Joonmyeon, hold his hand, kiss him on the cheek in public, not kick him out of bed immediately after sex. He’d even been working up the courage this very night to ask if Joonmyeon wanted to come back to his place tonight, which is huge since Lu Han fucking hates anybody encroaching on his bed space. And he’d never really brought anyone home to meet Yixing as his significant other too; this would’ve been big.
“He said I wasn’t trying hard enough,” Lu Han croaks out in the end. “I didn’t care enough; I was too distant with him.” There’s a faint sting behind his eyelids, and Lu Han huffs noisily into his human pillow, trying to drown out the noise inside his head. Yixing says nothing, but he cards his fingers through Lu Han’s styled hair, slow and softly.
“That’s not true,” Yixing murmurs finally, barely loud enough to be heard over the loud yelling of an enraged mistress on the TV screen. Lu Han brings up a hand to grip tightly at the denim underneath him. “You did your best. I saw you try.”
“For nothing, too, seeing as he dumped my sorry ass,” Lu Han mumbles, unable to keep the self-pity from spilling out.
“Forget him, then. He doesn’t know how lucky he was to have you as a boyfriend,” Yixing says then, rolling Lu Han up so that he faced upward at Yixing’s frowning face. He grabs the hand that Lu Han tries to hide his eyes behind, and sets it down, curling his fingers around it. “I know how much you don’t like showing physical affection in public and doing all those romantic date things; you tried, though, for him. His loss for not knowing how much it actually meant.”
Lu Han averts his eyes, has to stare at the ceiling spot next to Yixing’s head instead of directly at him. The amount of scrutiny is uncomfortable, almost skin-wrenchingly so, but Yixing means well. “Thanks,” he mumbles again, hand clenching around Yixing’s grasp.
Yixing smiles down at him, gentle and small, as if aware of his discomfort, and cards his fingers through Lu Han’s hair once more before twisting away. “Okay, you’re totally checking out of this conversation. That’s fine; I know you have a heart in there, tin man. One day you’ll find someone who’ll see that too.” Lu Han grimaces, but he clings to Yixing’s words.
“Well. Now that feelings time is over, let’s watch something else other than adultery and murder, huh?” Lu Han says after a moment, confident that his voice remains steady. Yixing rolls his eyes and gestures to the screen and the DVD player with permission. Lu Han obligingly rolls off his lap and goes to DVD cabinet under the TV for a new movie to watch.
They sit together on the couch, a few minutes into the movie that Lu Han haphazardly chose and shoved into the DVD player, before Yixing breaks the silence. He touches Lu Han gently on the arm, mindful of his splayed position across the couch, his head pillowed by Yixing’s thighs.
“You remember Rebecca? My high school girlfriend?” he asks quietly, barely loud enough to hear over the chatter of the film dialogue. Lu Han stirs and tilts his head back to stare up at Yixing’s face.
“The one in California?”
“Yeah. That one.” Lu Han waits for him to continue, but Yixing seems to have drifted off, distracted by the sudden explosions on the television screen. He nudges Yixing in the ribs.
“What about her. Did you get back together or something?” Lu Han jokes. Yixing snorts and jostles Lu Han a little for the joke.
“No, shut up.” He waits a beat. “I told you she wanted to wait for me, right?”
Lu Han hums in response, eyes already drifting back to the movie. “Yeah. You said you didn’t want her to and you broke up with her. You’re a good guy, you know, Xing, you care a lot about people-almost too much, maybe.”
Yixing’s silent for a few minutes, and Lu Han thinks the conversation’s over, already settling back against the warmth of Yixing’s lap to properly enjoy the movie.
“That’s not it.”
Lu Han looks back up, fully facing Yixing this time. Yixing’s tone is firm and hard, anchored down to a conviction that Lu Han doesn’t know the answer to. It’s strange. “Tell me, then.”
“I didn’t want her to wait because I didn’t want to wait.” Lu Han frowns. “I’m selfish, you know.”
“This coming from the guy who gave up his lunch last week to a couple of crying kids on the street,” Lu Han counters with an incredulous laugh. “Okay.”
Yixing taps him on the head, and leaves his hand there, fingering strands of Lu Han’s hair. “I got scared.” Lu Han swallows back the snarky comment on his crypticism as Yixing absentmindedly strokes his hair, looking down unseeingly at Lu Han with a frown. “I didn’t want to wait to find out how long I had left in me to love her. If I’d run out of love before she did. I didn’t want to wake up one day and realize this was it; this was all I had left.”
Lu Han tries to find something to say, but Yixing just smiles, a sardonic twist of his lips.
“I don’t think it’s worth it to wait for someone.”
“That-” Lu Han clears his throat, suddenly dry and scratch. “That sounds like something I would say, not you.” Yixing shrugs, still petting his head.
“We all have our faults,” he says, focusing on Lu Han finally and then looking back at the TV screen.
But that isn’t one of yours, Lu Han doesn’t say.
-
The day outside is balmy and windy, the first dry day in two weeks and increasingly rare given the fall season. Lu Han’s been going almost stir-crazy with all his piling work and papers; deadlines are inching closer than ever and he feels like he’s going to pop out of his skin. He messages Minseok after he gets out of his morning Etymology class and whines through emoticons until Minseok finally agrees to meet him by the basketball court behind P.S. 130 after lunch. He does a little fistpump in between hurtling himself down the subway stairs when he gets the text back, and then rushes to get through the turnstiles to board the in-station B train home.
Lu Han stops by Paris Sandwich for a grilled pork banh mi and a Paris special, along with an iced coffee and a Vietnamese yogurt because Yixing’s usually home at this time. He walks back to their apartment in brisk steps, mindful of the dripping condensation of his two sealed cold drinks, and climbs up the creaky stairs lightly after letting himself in through the main front door.
He swings open the apartment door with a pleased smile and an invitation to join his and Minseok’s afternoon game on his tongue, but the air inside is uncomfortably still and empty. Only the blaring sirens of a passing squad car downstairs greet him home, filtered in through the window Yixing probably left open this morning and forgot about. He bites his lip, disappointed, but puts it out of mind. Yixing can’t be home all the time, not with the rent they gotta put up with; he’s most likely pulling another shift at the dessert cafe.
Lu Han stashes the Paris special in the fridge for Yixing to eat later, and deliberates on the yogurt drink for a moment before deciding on drinking it himself. It’ll be gross and watery by the time Yixing gets back anyway; he’s being a good friend for saving his roommate from that horror. He sets his bag down in his room and changes into looser shorts and a t-shirt for his game later before coming back out and settling at the kitchen table to eat.
He finishes lunch in about ten minutes, without the distraction of Yixing’s company around to bolster his meal, and cleans up the takeaway bag and crumbs on the wood surface of their table lest Yixing gripe about the mess later. Lu Han hovers over the table for a moment after, fingers tapping away on the wood, before he retrieves his phone from his room and shoots off a text to Yixing about the sandwich in the fridge should he come home before Lu Han. In belated afterthought, he pulls out a post-it pad and writes down the same message and goes back out into the kitchen to stick it on the table in case Yixing forgot his phone again.
Lu Han stands around and tidies up the rest of the kitchen before deciding to head out, nothing else to do. It feels a little strange, without someone to plug out the static noise; Yixing fills up a room a lot more than people think. He grabs his gym bag from his room and the yogurt drink condensing on the table, and takes a last look at the empty space before slipping on his sneakers and leaving through the entrance.
A few seconds later, he comes back in with a grumble and sets down his drink at the shoe shelf by the doorway and goes over to shut the window in the living room. He goes back to the door, takes one last look around and heads out, drink in hand.
-
Minseok’s already doing lay-ups with the ball he probably stole from Kris’ closet by the time Lu Han walks to the courtyard entrance. Lu Han watches him run up to the basket through the links of the fence and whoops when Minseok makes the basket. He yanks open the gate and strides onto the court with a challenging grin on his face.
“Ready to get your ass whooped?” Lu Han calls out. Minseok makes a rude gesture, lazily dribbling the ball back to the half-court line.
“Psh, as if you can even touch it; this ass is holy,” Minseok throws back with a grin of his own. Lu Han laughs and reaches over to smack it; he dodges the subsequent punch neatly, already used to Minseok’s response. “Hey, you know the rules: dinner and a show before you can touch the goods. Stop trying to jump the line.”
“You know you love it,” Lu Han waves off, throwing down his gear at the side of the fence and taking out a water bottle. “Besides, do you know how many people would beg for an ass-grab from me? You should feel special I do it all for free.”
“Some day, you’re gonna get punched in the face, and I’m gonna be the one laughing,” Minseok says seriously. He drops the face after, canine-grin in place. “Where’s Yixing? I would’ve thought he’d be here too.”
Lu Han shrugs, swigging down water and tossing the bottle back into his bag. “He wasn’t home when I got back; he’s probably at work or something.” He stretches out his arms, linking his fingers together and pulling until he feels the burn in his triceps. Minseok hums in response and goes to do another lay-up while Lu Han finishes warming up.
“Did you ask Kris if he wanted to join? Isn’t he usually free this time of day?” Lu Han calls out as Minseok bounces the ball against the backboard and into the hoop.
“Nah, he had a club thing this morning. I think he’s still in Kimmel,” Minseok replies, catching the ball and going in for a reverse lay-up. Lu Han does one last twist of his waist and stretches back until he feels his backbone pop, and claps his hands.
“Okay, time for some ass-kicking,” he says, putting everything else out of mind.
Minseok tosses him the ball, faces across from him at the half-court line, and Lu Han neatly catches it. He dribbles, does an in-between the legs swoop, and feints right before dribbling left and shouldering past Minseok’s defense, and their game begins.
-
Yixing’s stirring into a pot at the stove when Lu Han comes back from his date, quietly humming to himself and taste-testing the wooden spoon. He looks up when Lu Han clatters into the foyer, spoon in mouth, and waves in lieu of a verbal greeting.
“What’s cooking?” Lu Han asks, shrugging off his peacoat and unfurling the soft yellow scarf around his throat. He toes out of his shoes carefully and props them back onto the shoe shelf. Yixing pulls out the spoon and stirs it back into the pot without second thought before answering.
“My grandfather gave me another recipe while you were out last night. So we’re having his version of shi zi tou tonight. It’s red-cooked, so it’s gonna be a little saltier than our usual fare. I hope you’re okay with that,” he says with a smile.
Lu Han scratches at the hickeys Baekhyun had left scattered across his collarbone area and hikes up his sweater collar before padding over to the kitchen area. Yixing lifts back up the spoon and offers it in Lu Han’s direction.
“Tasty,” he says after licking the edge of the spoon. “I’m down with it.” Yixing beams at him and turns back to his pot.
“How was your date today? You came back surprisingly early,” Yixing asks. “I thought you’d be gone for at least another five hours and then come stumbling back at 2 in the morning.”
Lu Han makes a face at him and leans against the kitchen table. “You think so little of me, Xing, it hurts a lot to hear you say this.”
Yixing gives him a dead look. “It hurts me to get up at 2 in the morning to open up the door for your drunken ass because you’ve collapsed on the ground again and can’t get back up.”
“One time! And you never let it go!”
“And hopefully, if I keep shaming you, it’ll never happen again,” Yixing smiles cheekily and nods to the blinking rice cooker. “You can eat some rice first if you’re hungry; I have some dishes already done waiting in the microwave.”
“Nah, I’ll wait for you.” Lu Han waits a beat before blurting out what’s been on his mind the whole day. “So, I’ve been thinking.”
“Well, that’s never good.”
“Shut up, that joke’s old and dead.”
“You do always say I have a grandpa’s sense of humor.”
Lu Han rolls his eyes and taps a socked foot against the floorboards. Yixing twists over his shoulder when Lu Han doesn’t return with a wittier repartee.
“Okay, I’m sorry. Go on. What’s wrong?”
“Dating sucks ass.” Yixing blinks at the tersely said response and fully turns around to give Lu Han his full attention.
“Did something happen again? Did Baekhyun do something?” Yixing frowns, furrowing his brows worriedly. Lu Han sighs and waves him down.
“No, it’s just me. Just me and my stupid thoughts. Ignore me.”
“I like hearing your stupid thoughts. Tell me.” Lu Han bites his lip and crosses his arm, thinking how best to string his words together so he doesn’t sound like a sissy baby.
“I feel like I’ve just lost so much interest in other people nowadays, you know?” he says after a while. Yixing keeps his gaze fixed on Lu Han, wordlessly prompting him to continue. “I just. I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel fulfilling anymore. I feel like I’m forcing myself to go through the motions lately with the whole dating thing.”
“Well. Why are you forcing yourself then?” Yixing asks simply. Lu Han scoffs, but Yixing shakes his head, holding off on his response. “No, seriously. Why force yourself to do something you clearly don’t find any enjoyment in? If you don’t want to date anymore, then don’t. No one is keeping you there.”
“I. I-” Lu Han flounders for an answer. Yixing holds his hands up, their go-to gesture of waving a white flag, and turns around just in time to turn off the stove.
“I’m not trying to push you or anything, you know. I just want you to be happy,” Yixing says with finality. “Let’s eat first.”
Lu Han snaps his mouth shut and goes to grab the bowls and rice paddle from the dishwasher. He scoops up rice for the both of them and brings over the bowls to the table while Yixing carefully transports the pot of meatballs with a trivet held between his teeth. Lu Han retrieves the other dishes from the microwave, deeming them still warm enough for immediate consumption.
They eat the meal in relative chatter, staying firmly on mundane topics, as if Yixing’s trying to make up for his earlier pressing, but Lu Han still sits in mild unease the rest of the night.
-
Kris is tagging along today for Lu Han and Yixing’s Friday night dinner out. It’s not unheard of for their friends to pop in on their dinners, but usually Lu Han would’ve had more warning before he opened the door and found Kris hovering outside in the dusty hallway waiting for them.
“O-oh! You guys are ready! I was just about to knock,” says Kris hastily, patting down the sides of his jeans like he’s looking for something before coming up empty-handed. Lu Han eyes him with a raise of his brows, but lets Yixing gently usher him out the door so he can lock it.
“Y...eah, we’re going out to eat. Are you...coming with?” Lu Han says slowly, turning to look at Yixing in question. Yixing nods with a smile and pockets his key ring before stepping up to Kris with a bigger beam on his face.
“Yeah, I asked Kris to come join us tonight when we ran into each other after ensemble. He said he wasn’t doing anything fun, so I thought it’d be nice for him to hang out with us,” Yixing clarifies, patting Kris on the shoulder before walking down the hall towards the stairs. Lu Han gives Kris a deadpan look but follows after Yixing, leaving Kris to scramble behind them.
“So, uh, where are we going to eat tonight?” Kris asks, trailing behind them. Yixing looks over his shoulder and points at Lu Han.
“He usually makes the choices because he’s the pickiest eater in the world,” Yixing says teasingly, laughing when Lu Han elbows him in the gut.
“Shut up; if I leave decisions to you, you’d be dragging me to an old mahjong café for old people for all I know, and then I’d be wasting my night away watching you give all the old gramps and grannies back massages and getting their tea orders and lighting their pipes.” Yixing snorts and bumps Lu Han with his shoulder.
“What is this, the 1960s? Do I look like a gopher to you?” Lu Han laughs and gives Kris a look, inviting him in on the joke.
“He tries so hard, but you know he turns like jello for the old folk,” Lu Han says pityingly, sarcastically patting Yixing on the shoulder. Kris grins and shrugs.
“I think it’s cute,” he says simply. “My mum would kill for a son like Yixing.”
Lu Han glances at Yixing, hoping to share a judging look, but Yixing is preoccupied, playing with the curls of his hair at the back of his head and pulling at his earlobe. He narrows his eyes and looks back at Kris, who just smiles goofily and ducks his head down. It feels like Lu Han’s been just walled off from the group, suddenly the third-wheel loser in their party when it was his and Yixing’s party in the first place.
“Anyway,” he starts again, after they walk down the three flights of stairs and exit the apartment building into the chilly night air. “We’re eating cheap tonight because I don’t get paid for another week and Yixing blew his last paycheck on his second guitar.”
“It’s my money, and I’m allowed to do whatever I want with it, dad,” Yixing retorts, rolling his eyes. He shivers a little, only dressed in a light hoodie, tank, and sweats, and Lu Han frowns.
“You-” Kris’ sudden motion cuts him off, and Lu Han watches in surprised silence as Kris takes off his fur-lined jacket and pushes it on Yixing.
“Please wear my jacket. Just looking at you makes me feel like I’m the one shaking,” Kris pleads, and holds it in place around Yixing’s shoulders until Yixing begrudgingly takes it and properly slips his arms through the sleeves.
“Aren’t you gonna be cold then?” Lu Han asks with a raised eyebrow, eying Kris’ knit sweater and jeans outfit. Kris shrugs.
“I run a little warmer than most people. I’ll be fine,” he assures the both of them. “Let’s go to dinner, yeah?”
Yixing notices the expression on Lu Han’s face and pats him on the cheek. “Now you don’t have to nag me about wearing another layer, right?” Lu Han shakes his head, clearing his thoughts, and bares his teeth at Yixing.
“I wouldn’t have to nag if you just actually took better care of your body, dunce,” he says, but links his arm with Yixing’s and drags him down the street, not caring that Kris follows behind. Yixing tilts his head back in a laugh.
“Well, maybe if you bought me nicer stuff, daddy, then I’d actually think about dressing right,” he teases as Lu Han blooms pink.
“Biggest. Jerk. Ever.”
-
Monday finds Lu Han up to his eyeballs in papers and transcriptions to do for his upcoming midterms. He spends his morning and early lunch hours holed up in the library, furiously scribbling through his notes and replaying segments of speech again and again until he’s sure the sound bites are seared into his brain. He’s thinking about possibly withering away in the basement of Bobst, one of the thousand faceless casualties of NYU’s exam period, but his death is postponed by the beep of a text message from Jongdae around two, asking to eat lunch together.
Lu Han gathers up his stuff quickly and flies out of the library center, eager for sustenance and company that isn’t the pre-recorded voices of his classmates chopped up for vowel and consonant sounds. Jongdae greets him with a smile at the front door of Ennju, after Lu Han runs for the R train and rides the way up to Union Square, and ushers him in, citing hunger pangs. They sit down by the windows, next to the entrance, and bring back a dumpling udon and a curry udon to eat.
“Hey, have you noticed something weird about Kris?” Lu Han asks tentatively, in the middle of his lunch date with Jongdae. He twirls his chopsticks around in his soup broth, feeling a little silly for randomly bringing this topic up out of nowhere.
“What do you mean?” Jongdae asks through a mouthful of half-chewed udon. Lu Han makes a face and flaps his hand at Jongdae for him to swallow before talking, and Jongdae does with mild difficulty. He grabs for a napkin and wipes his mouth before repeating his question.
Lu Han shrugs and shoves a dumpling in his mouth to give him a few seconds time to think. “I don’t know, he just seems really… clingy recently?” Jongdae snorts, the force of his exhalation almost great enough to spill over the water in the cup he’s drinking from.
“You mean with you?” Lu Han makes a face.
“Ew, no, don’t even say that. I’m trying to eat here, please.” Lu Han shoves another dumpling in his mouth before continuing. “No, I mean, with Yixing. He’s been hanging around him a lot. It feels like-”
“Like he has a schoolgirl crush on your best friend? Yeah, I’d say so,” Jongdae cuts in, matter-of-factly, reaching over for Lu Han’s untouched bowl of miso. “It’s not like he’s any bit subtle about it. I’m surprised it’s taken you this long to catch on.”
Lu Han sets his chopsticks down in disbelief. “Wait, you’re serious? What the fuck? Am I the last person to know out of all of us?”
Jongdae shrugs, slurping noisily on his filched soup. “I think that’s Yixing, to be honest, given how he’s been walking around with Kris like a clueless puppy.”
“Wouldn’t the puppy be Kris in this scenario?”
“Yeah okay, nitpicker, but my point still stands.” Jongdae sets down his bowl for a moment and looks at Lu Han, no trace of his regular levity in sight. “But seriously though, if Yixing doesn’t actually like Kris like that, can you clue him in before I throw something at him. I mean, Yixing is my bro, but this is getting ridiculous.”
“What?”
“It’s actually hurting me to see Kris like this, like my very soul is aching. Tell Yixing to let him go and take his puppeteer magic somewhere else because he is messing up with my twelve-step plan right now.”
“What.” Every single time. Lu Han eats lunch with Jongdae so rarely that he always forgets how hard it is to keep up with Jongdae’s neverending tangents that only he seems to think connect.
“My twelve-step plan, Lu Han, keep up.”
“Your twelve-step plan for what?” Lu Han needs a tylenol.
“For getting into Kris’ pants, duh.” Jongdae continues eating like he didn’t just drop yet another huge bomb on Lu Han right after the other. Lu Han feels his jaw physically dropping, something he’s only ever heard of happening in fiction, but Jongdae makes him do incredible things sometimes.
“I’m sorry, can we just. Stop. Stop for a second so I can fucking process everything you just threw at me.” Jongdae waves a hand imperiously, neatly sipping down his soup, while Lu Han drops his head into his hands and massages at his temples. “Okay. So. Kris has a crush on Yixing. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“You want Yixing to stop stringing Kris along because you want Kris for yourself. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“You want Kris for yourself?”
“Didn’t we just establish this?”
“I’m sorry that my mind just refuses to accept the idea that you have a fucking boner for Kris Wu?” Lu Han sounds a little hysterical, admittedly, but this is just a little too much. Jongdae shrugs like it’s no big deal.
“It is what it is, okay. So tell Yixing to step off because he is really harshing on step six right now.”
“Step. Six.”
“Y’know, get senpai to notice me for more than just cheeky wit and great cheekbones.”
“...I’m leaving this conversation and you. Goodbye, Jongdae.” Lu Han pushes away from the table, gathering his empty bowl and used napkins, and makes to throw away his trash.
“Remember to tell Yixing, okay!” Jongdae calls out as Lu Han slips out the door.
-
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