[for tyreling] sepia toned memories (smile for me again)
Title: sepia toned memories (smile for me again)
For: tyreling
Pairing: one sided!Luhan/Kris, Luhan/Xiumin, Kris/Suho
Rating: G
Length: 9,352 words
Warnings: None
Summary: Somewhere between growing up and becoming an adult, Luhan loses sight of himself. Wufan guides him home, piece by piece.
Author's Note: Basically I just was spoiled for choice with your prompts and then I went and did this thing and my beta probably wanted to kill me through this writing process so haha thank you, recipient, for the great prompts and thank you, beta, for not murdering me!
They meet again where the jagged edges of what could have been caress the smooth curve of what has been. City lights of every colour beat down upon the residents of Seoul, on the witnesses of the city’s nightlife that has celebrities struggling to cover up crimes of love and lust, of smiles that linger a little too long to be considered strictly innocent.
The lights are bright and would probably blind someone if they were to stare straight at them for a minute too long, but it does nothing to warm cold hearts set in stone. People don’t give other people even a passing glance, too busy trying to get somewhere on time, to see someone important, to make more money to provide for wants that get even more ridiculous by the day.
But those are not the only kind of people who roam the streets of Seoul when the sky has long since turned a beautiful dark blue. Some are wandering souls, nursing broken hearts and carrying around with them shards of their dreams. Even the brightest of lights fail to capture their attention - they are stuck in the dark, unable to see anything but the pitch black that surrounds their hearts.
Tonight, Luhan is one of them.
The soles of his expensive leather shoes drag themselves across unforgiving concrete pavement, and he doesn’t know where they’re taking him, but he decides he doesn’t care. Echoes of the fight he’d just stormed out on resound in his skull, and all he wants to do now is to forget. He wants to forget the disappointment that shaded his boyfriend’s irises, he wants to forget the harsh words he’d thrown at the man he loves without so much as a second thought.
So when his feet stop in front of a bar tucked away in a quiet corner of the city, he doesn’t hesitate to push the door open, to let himself be wrapped up in soft rock music and the smell of alcohol lingering in the air. The place is dimly lit, a little emptier than he would expect on a Friday night, but he doesn’t care. He just wants to drown his sorrows and forget, so he saunters right up to the bar and asks the bartender to bring him a bottle of something strong. The bartender gives him a smile and a ‘just a minute,’ and Luhan nods and waits.
This is when he turns around in his stool out of habit, people-watching a pastime he’d always been fond of. This is when his eyes spot a familiar form he hasn’t seen in ages, one he thought he’d lost sight of years ago.
This is when Luhan looks up and gasps, because smiling down at him, hair neatly coiffed and suit expertly pressed - is Wufan.
‘Hello, stranger.’
They are sixteen and ever-curious as to the mechanics of the human body and the technicalities of love. Beijing is in full bloom this spring, and so are their teenagers. Other kids their age have girlfriends and boyfriends, are too busy trying to make obvious their attachment to each other to actually concentrate in lessons and get proper grades. ‘So gross,’ Luhan says, lip curled up in a snarl and Wufan has to fight back the giggle that bubbles up in the back of his throat. Luhan had declared just last week that he was a man, and as such, was not to be considered cute under any circumstances whatsoever.
‘Why are you smiling?’ Luhan demands, the last syllable escaping his lips in a high squeak.
Well. Maybe he wasn’t fully a man. Yet.
‘Nothing. Just - I mean it’s just that they’re obviously in love, or at any rate, they think they are. Just leave them alone,’ Wufan says, amusement in his voice betraying the stoic look he tries to fix on his face.
‘Still,’ Luhan grumbles, crossing his arms and pointedly looking away from their friend Zitao and his latest girlfriend. ‘Does he have to suck face with her in public? It’s like. I mean. He has a room to go into. Several, really, he just has to take a pick!’
‘Are you jealous, Luhannie?’ Wufan asks, absent-mindedly pulling his shoelace out of his shoe. ‘As long as he’s happy, what’s the big deal? It’s not as if he’s doing it in front of us on purpose.’
‘Sure feels like it,’ Luhan grumbles. ‘And don’t call me Luhannie! My name is Luhan, nothing more. Also, seriously, what if he gets caught. Like. He could get into big trouble and - WUFAN HIS HAND IS GOING UNDER HER SHIRT!’
Wufan buries his head in large hands and groans. ‘Seriously, Luhan, just - look away. Do us all a favour and shut those pretty little eyes of yours.’
‘My eyes are handsome, not pretty. Also, we can’t just stand by and let him commit this act of debauchery right in front of us!’ Luhan runs his fingers through his hair, a clear sign of agitation, distress. It’s a habit that attacks him every time he feels agitated or helpless, and it always leaves him looking more nervous than he already is. Wufan shakes his head and clamps a large hand over Luhan’s mouth.
Luhan frowns at him reproachfully.
‘In other words, you’re jealous.’ Wufan deadpans, releasing his grip on Luhan. ‘I can’t see why. You’re like. Gay. She shouldn’t appeal to you at all, unless - Lu, do you have a crush on Zitao?’
‘What? No! I mean - that’s absurd, Wufan, why would I - ’
‘You totally have a crush on him. I don’t know… wouldn’t have pegged him as your type, to be honest.’
‘That’s because he isn’t my type, I’m - I don’t have a crush on Zit - ’
‘It’s alright, Lu, I’ll find you a boyfriend. One that’s as pretty as you, and cute like you, and - ’
‘Wufan?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I hate you.’
‘Love you too, bro.’
Luhan’s fingers card through his hair for the first time in years. His first day at the firm a couple of years ago had seen him continuously running his fingers through his hair, messing it up, generally just making him look unpresentable in his boss’ eyes. He’d been told to kick the habit if he wanted to be taken seriously, and there was little that Luhan had wanted at the time than to be taken very, very seriously, so he tried.
It worked. It took him months to resist the itch, to stop himself from falling back into a habit he developed in high school, but it worked. Now, when he was nervous or agitated, all he did was press his lips together in a thin line. It was a tell nobody so far had picked up on, and the subtle change had helped him gain more clients and respect from his fellow associates in the law firm.
Now - now, with Wufan standing in front of him, years of practiced resistance fall away like a sandcastle during high tide.
Even after all this time, Wufan still had an effect on him.
‘Hey,’ Wufan greets, taking the stool next to Luhan’s. ‘Fancy meeting you in a place like this. How’ve you been?’ he asks, so nonchalantly, so comfortably as if they hadn’t spent years being countries apart. Luhan shuffles a little uncomfortably in his seat.
‘I’ve been doing good. Making a decent living, living a decent life.’ Luhan answers. He tries to will away his shaken state, tries to push away thoughts of the earlier fight he’d had and he prays Wufan can’t still read him like a book. Time and distance drive wedges into even the tightest of relationships, and Wufan has been gone for the past eight years.
Circumstance doesn’t smile down upon Luhan, not today. Wufan notices how Luhan’s fingers are trembling, probably because he’s angry, but he doesn’t comment on it. ‘So how long have you been working?’ Wufan asks.
‘Not that long. It’s only been a couple of years. Got a job at Kim & Sons, I think I talked about them before in uni. That’s where I’ve been since graduation,’ Luhan says.
Wufan smiles, small and doubtful because all he can remember is an image of Luhan ranting about the very same firm he’s working at now, back in their dorm room during university. Luhan had hated the firm - they overworked their lawyers, used money to make them stay and chances of being made partner were slim to none. Still - the money was good. Even undergraduate Luhan couldn’t deny it - getting a job at Kim & Sons would pay well for all its tortures. Wufan decides to comment on that, instead. ‘Living in a beautiful city, working a job that pays well. Living the dream, huh?’ he nudges Luhan gently, drawing a reluctant laugh from the elder.
The bartender turns up just then, a half-smile decorating his lips. ‘Our strongest beer,’ he says with some ceremony, putting a glass of ice and the bottle in front of Luhan. Luhan grimaces at them, finger coming out to drag along the peeling label of the drink.
‘Yeah. The dream.’
They are eighteen and the heavens cry along with their mothers when the boys’ graduation rolls around. Zitao is out of breath, hair somewhat mussed and uniform slightly wrinkled when he goes into the bathroom to find Wufan and Luhan. It isn’t yet his turn to don the cap and robe, he has another year, but being on the committee means he gets to attend the ceremony, and also gets to curse out whatever forces that be for making it rain on today of all days. He and his friends had had to rush out and take in whatever chairs they’d put out this morning before the first raindrop fell, and, needless to say, Zitao was not happy.
‘I mean, honestly! Talk about being inconsiderate,’ Zitao huffs, hands tangling into his hair to tease it into something that resembles its original style. ‘The photographer was really excited too, kept saying he rarely got a chance to shoot graduations in natural light. Gave us a good price too, just because he liked the challenge. And now we’re going to have to give him more, and there goes my bragging rights to becoming the first head of committee to actually stay under the budget.’ Zitao grumbles.
‘Are bragging rights really all that important? I mean - the fact that that’s why you’re mourning over the rain kind of stings, Taozi. Shouldn’t you be sad that your friends don’t get to have an outdoor graduation, instead?’ Luhan lectures, choking himself with his tie before Wufan hurries to pull it loose. ‘Thank you - And I mean, for all you know, we’ve been looking forward to being under the sun with no shade whatsoever for weeks! And here you are whining about your bloody budget.’
‘I guess you’re right,’ Zitao sighs. He swats at Luhan’s hands and the elder drops them to his sides, letting Zitao do up his necktie for him. ‘Can you believe it? This time tomorrow both of you will be off to Seoul. Seoul, home to great food and great shops and I am absolutely green with envy,’ Zitao pouts. Wufan chuckles and pats the youngest on his back.
‘You can always come and visit, you know,’ Wufan reminds him, a smile still on his lips. It’s no secret that the three of them are the best of friends - yes, Wufan and Luhan were a year older and would be leaving China for Korea the next day, but while that was true, neither would deny Zitao food and board had the younger just asked. ‘Just give us a call and we’ll give you the couch.’
‘After we actually get a couch. And a place to stay,’ Luhan reminds. He tries to fake indifference, but deep down, he’s ecstatic. Moving to a country he barely knew wasn’t the funnest thing he could think of, especially when his Korean wasn’t top notch, but it was a challenge, and he loved challenges. He was so glad when Wufan got accepted into the same university as he did - somehow, the younger always made his world seem a little less lonely.
He kind of likes that.
Zitao chuckles happily to himself at the prospect, knowing it’s a sincere offer he’s never going to take. He has his own plans for the future, one that requires lots of saving up and possibly dishonouring his family’s wishes, and they don’t know it yet, but Zitao will disappear altogether from Wufan and Luhan’s lives the moment they board their plane.
But the future hasn’t happened yet, and as of now, they are just three teenagers, eyes shining with the prospect of their future, thinking that nothing will be able to stand in their way. Their friendship was eternal in their eyes - they’d make it work, somehow.
‘Okay guys. You have fifteen minutes left. Put these on,’ Zitao hands both of his friends a box each, long and slender and very, very expensive-looking. All it takes is one look for both boys to know they’re gifts from Zitao’s family, owners of a leading franchise of martial arts academies all over China. Mr and Mrs Huang both regarded Luhan and Wufan as their sons, and it always made them laugh - three only children finding brothers in each other.
‘This - oh my god. Is this real gold?’ Wufan asks, mouth agape. He holds up the chain bracelet with two long fingers, eyeing it as if it’s the first piece of jewelry he’s ever seen. ‘All over?’
‘Actually, it’s platinum,’ Zitao says matter-of-factly, putting the thin chain on Luhan’s wrist - the one without his old watch - before Luhan can protest. ‘And my parents said they insist, can’t possibly take it back, would be mortally offended if they had to.’ Zitao says this with finality, snapping the clasp shut on Wufan’s bracelet.
‘There, you’re ready,’ Zitao says, stepping back to take a look at his best friends. He smiles proudly at them, tries to digest the thought that they won’t be around for him to skip class with next year, won’t be lazing around his house every other weekend because they got bored of their own. After tomorrow, they’d both be in a different country altogether, and the prospect of being alone scares Zitao.
But all baby birds grow up and fly away, and Zitao knows his turn is soon. Just - not now. He’ll be standing where they are next year, and he only hopes they’ll be there to watch him accept his diploma with pride.
‘Come on, guys,’ he says fondly, swinging an arm each over his friends’ shoulders. ‘Time for me to watch you become adults.’
(Six months later, this hope does not exist anymore.)
‘Heard from Zitao lately?’ Wufan asks. He throws the question at a Luhan that isn’t expecting it, and it hits him hard. Luhan shakes his head, pours himself the beer and offers some to Wufan, who refuses.
‘Nope. Haven’t heard a peep from him since we graduated high school, actually. Went back just after I passed the bar and it turns out that his parents sold their academy off. Mum said Zitao disappeared a month or two after his graduation, and nobody’s heard from him since. Mrs Huang told me not to worry, though - they get a postcard from him once a month from different countries all over. Turns out he really did get into fashion.’ Luhan says. He takes a sip of his beer and grimaces. That was strong.
‘Didn’t think he had it in him,’ Wufan admits, eyebrows raised. ‘I mean - yeah, I guess we should have seen it coming. He didn’t really take an interest in the Huangs’ business, did he?’
Luhan shook his head. ‘Nope. Although with all of those belts he used to have and those trophies in his living room, you’d think he would have at least made some use of his martial arts background.’
‘Just goes to show life isn’t always going to turn out the way we expect it to, I guess.’
Luhan slips a finger under the cuff of his shirt, runs his finger along the bracelet he hasn’t taken off for nearly ten years. It still feels smooth under his touch, still glistens every time he polishes it. But it’s tarnished with memories of a time long past, of a friend he hasn’t seen in ages.
Luhan wonders how Zitao is doing now. He wonders why it never occurred to him to just send his friend an email, to catch up on lost time and to make himself present in his friend’s life again, even if it was just through pixels and text on screen. It was so easy to keep in touch, but he didn’t. Regret hits him in the gut like a force unchallenged, and Luhan tries to divert his thoughts away from the boy he once knew.
Next to him, Wufan swings his jacket across the back of his chair and rolls his shirtsleeves up.
His bracelet is still there, too.
They are nineteen and life in Seoul, they discover, takes some getting used to. They’d both finished their first semesters, Luhan with a 3.7 GPA and Wufan - well, Wufan was passing, probably, Luhan doesn’t really know - and now was the time to loosen up. Luhan’s been thinking of the word love lately, whenever he looks at Wufan, and he tries his best to pry his thoughts in another direction.
‘Do you really want to go to a club tonight?’ Wufan asks, nose wrinkling in distaste. His long body is draped over the only couch they have in their apartment, up against the wall opposite the television in the living room. Their apartment isn’t much to talk about, just a kitchenette, living and dining area, two bedrooms, one bathroom and no atmosphere (or view) to speak of. Wufan watches as the world hangs off the ceiling of his vision, seeing everything upside down as he lets his head hang over the armrest. ‘A club? Really?’ he asks again.
‘Yes, really, Wufan. Come on - we’ve worked our asses off this semester, the least we could do is reward ourselves with a little fun.’ Luhan says. He manhandles Wufan into something that makes the taller look vaguely more attractive than he already is (in Luhan’s eyes. It’s all in Luhan’s eyes) before dragging him out into the night.
The club is bursting with people, and Luhan has to fight down his excitement so as not to look too much like it was his first time here (it was). The bouncer raises his eyebrows at the pair amusedly, a smirk on his lips. ‘You have to be at least eighteen to enter,’ he drawls, and looks back down at his clipboard as if dismissing the two.
Luhan’s temper flares up a little, anger barely contained when he realises the bouncer wasn’t talking about Wufan - it’s Luhan whose face belies his age. He quickly fishes his ID out of his pocket, presses it to the bouncer’s clipboard, index finger pushing down, dragging the stationery down so the bouncer has to look at him. Luhan smiles. ‘You can check it, it’s real,’ he says sweetly, and the bouncer just frowns and lets them inside.
Bodies are packed in like sardines, the smell of alcohol and sweat dancing in the air. Music blasts itself out of speakers from every corner of the room, and Luhan is immediately entranced. ‘Hey,’ a guy says, somewhere to his right, lecherous smile firmly in place. His body is long and lean, and he looks like a predator who’s just caught sight of his prey. ‘Wanna dance?’ he asks.
Luhan smiles, taking in the solidness of the man’s chest, the way his tank top shows off well-muscled arms. Usually he wouldn’t even give proposals like this a second thought, but - he was in a new city now, supposedly living a new life, and part of growing up, he reasons, is trying out new things.
Also, a small part of his brain nags at him to admit that he needs to let go of Wufan. The younger was clearly disinterested, never noticing how flustered Luhan got when he walked around their apartment in just his underwear, never getting suspicious as to why Luhan always stole a glance at him before rejecting a date. Wufan was as dim as a rock when it came to Luhan’s feelings for him, and really, Luhan should know better than to keep hanging on by now. He wraps his fingers around the taller man’s wrist, Wufan be damned. Tonight he wasn’t going to be tied down by the ropes of unrequited love - tonight, he was going to throw caution to the wind, let tomorrow worry about the consequences.
They dance together until their bodies are sweat slicked and overheated, and Luhan doesn’t even know the other guy’s name when he presses lips to his neck, kissing up to his jaw when Luhan doesn’t protest. It’s only when he whispers a husky ‘Do you want to take this someplace more private?’ with a roll of his hips that Luhan’s alarm bells ring. He opens his mouth to say something, anything - but before his tongue can find the syllables, he feels a large hand press itself against his stomach and pull him out of the guy’s reach.
‘There you are, babe. I was worried about you,’ Wufan says, nuzzling into Luhan’s hair as if it weren’t damp with sweat. Luhan blinks up at the younger disbelievingly, tongue still tied. ‘Do you want to go home yet?’
‘Um - ’ Luhan looks from Wufan to the guy, who rolls his eyes. ‘I - Okay,’ Luhan relents, hugging Wufan’s arm to his chest as the younger offers Luhan’s companion a small smile of parting before he fights through the crowd to the exit.
The first gulp of fresh night air does little for Luhan’s nerves, and he knows he should let go of Wufan, but he can’t. They walk on in silence for a couple of minutes, before Luhan looks up at Wufan, mouth poised in a question.
‘How did you know I was in trouble?’ he asks, red-tipped ears pricked up. It wasn’t like Luhan couldn’t take the guy on his own - he knew how to take care of himself. But the fact that Wufan had known when to come to his rescue, well - it doesn’t do much for his resolve to get over him. Wufan furrows his brow, thinking. ‘Well?’ Luhan prompts, walking on tiptoe to get to Wufan’s level.
Wufan chuckles and turns his head, face so close to Luhan’s, lips only a kiss of air away. He smiles. ‘I’ve been around you for years, Lu. I can read you like a book,’ he says, ruffling Luhan’s hair. His hand comes away slightly damp for the sweat, but Wufan doesn’t look like he minds at all.
The words hit Luhan square in the chest, and he unlatches his fingers from around Wufan’s arm, stands still as he lets the younger walk on ahead of him.
No, you can’t.
‘So have you been home lately?’ Wufan asks. He tosses the question at Luhan as if he’s unaware that he’d just thrown a live grenade into a crowd of innocent civilians, eyes trained on the glass of water in front of him instead of his companion. ‘I mean - I know you said you went back after you passed the bar, but that was - what, two, three years ago?’
Luhan grimaces, fingers lightly tracing the rim of his glass. That was the last time he’d been back to Beijing, unable to stand the look in his mother’s eyes after he told her his decision. He was to start a life in Seoul, find a job there, make a name for himself out of the remnants of his father’s shadow. His father had smiled when he’d said the words - ‘I’m going to stay in Seoul, father, mother,’ - something like pride glazed over his steely eyes, and Luhan had wished he could have wiped that look off his face.
He left under the guise of building his own reputation, of breaking into the Korean law scene and making a place for the Lu family name there - when really, all he wanted to do was escape the suffocation he’d suffered at the hands of his father.
He hated the hurt look in his mother’s eyes, the betrayal he exuded when he hugged her goodbye before his flight back. He had found an escape - but in doing so, he’d leave his mother behind. Guilt was his companion on the flight back to Seoul, and Luhan hugged it to his chest, kept it close, a reminder to himself that he had to make it. He had to make his mother proud.
His father - his father could wait.
Luhan keeps his eyes locked on his glass. ‘That was the last time,’ he murmurs, voice dolefully flat. He takes a swig of his beer and finishes it all in one shot, pouring himself another glass without hesitating. The bartender wordlessly hands him another bottle.
Wufan lets the words steep them in silence, lets the information settle in his mind. He drapes a long arm over Luhan’s shoulders, grips one tight with his hand before letting it drop. A couple more moments of silence filter through the air before he speaks.
‘I saw your mother the other day,’ Wufan says nonchalantly. He lifts his glass to his lips and takes a sip. ‘She still recognises me. Said how could she not, with these eyebrows,’ Wufan pauses to turn to Luhan, waggling his eyebrows, fishing for a chuckle. He breathes a sigh of relief when Luhan lets out a short bark of laughter.
‘You were my best friend all through school,’ Luhan says. ‘Of course she’d recognise you.’
‘Mm.’
Silence interrupted only by the occasional sip snakes its way between them.
‘Lu?’
‘Hm?’
‘I took her out for lunch,’ says Wufan, looking at the counter instead of his friend. He presses his lips together before speaking again. ‘She’s doing fine. Your father’s in better moods nowadays, and she told me,’ - Wufan pauses to angle his head in Luhan’s direction, still refusing to look at him - ‘She told me to tell you, if I ever see you again, that she misses you.’
Luhan fights back the single tear that’s threatening to spill down his cheek, grateful that Wufan isn’t looking at him. He doesn’t think he could hold it in as well if Wufan were.
‘She says to come home soon.’
They are almost twenty when Wufan finally gives up. The first years are all crowded around a cafeteria table, various laptops resting on it as they try to calm their savagely beating hearts. They’d all received the email the night before - their results would be out at 10am the following morning, and all the Chinese students are gathered in a corner of the cafeteria, faces registering various stages of panic.
A Korean med school student passes by, shakes his head with a smile when he hears waves of panicked Mandarin fighting to be heard.
‘Oh my god oh my god oh my god,’ says one girl, bitten nails on trembling fingers, struggling to type in her password. ‘If I don’t get this, I’m so screwed. So screwed, I’ll be on the first plane back to China if I get anything less than a 3.5,’ she mutters. Another girl pats her on the back in an effort to be comforting. Her own hand is shaking.
Luhan himself feels jittery, trembling fingers hovering reluctantly over his mouse. He’s too afraid to click on the red icon that says semester two results, but at the same time, well - waiting and delaying would only make himself more anxious, and he needs to get this over and done with. He takes a deep breath and glances over at Wufan. The younger is lazily staring at his laptop, and Luhan can’t help but think that something in Wufan’s demeanour suggests he just doesn’t care. Pass or fail, Wufan looked like he knew what he had to do. He knew what the next step to take would be.
Wufan feels Luhan’s eyes on him, looks up just as they dart back to the screen. He can hear the chuckle his friend breathes.
Luhan takes a deep breath. ‘You can do this,’ he whispers to himself, and his finger double clicks on the icon. He barely takes in his scores for each subject, eyes frantically scanning down the page until it reaches a large black 3.8.
His face breaks out into a grin, stress and tension washing away to make room for relief and satisfaction over a job well done. His friends notice his expression - one of them looks over his shoulder and his eyes widen, before he announces Luhan’s genius and the whole table erupts into applause. He gets heavy pats on the back and congratulations shouted at him, before one by one, his fellow students gather up courage enough to read their fate. Moments later, everyone is in high spirits - everyone is in the mood to celebrate. Living so far away from home and struggling with a culture they barely knew paid off - they’d all made their parents proud.
Which, of course, calls for a celebration, and Wufan lets Luhan tug him into the crowd as they head off to enjoy a well-deserved night out.
This is how Luhan wakes up the next day at 1 in the afternoon, head pounding with the beginnings of a hangover. He groans.
‘Wuuuufaaaaaaaaan,’ he whines, voice pitched a little higher than usual, hand gripping at his head. It feels like a child was allowed inside his brain and is happily shattering everything in sight, and Luhan wishes he could split his head open and get him out and tell him to stop.
But he can’t, so he rolls over onto his front, buries his face in his pillow.
Silence fills his room. He lifts his head and squints at his half-open door. There’s no way Wufan didn’t hear him calling, yet there’s no sign of the younger man. Luhan curses him out in his head - what kind of best friend doesn’t tend to you when you wake up with a hangover? he thinks, and when another few minutes pass without a glimpse of Wufan, Luhan groans and swings himself out of bed. He shuffles over to Wufan’s room. The door is locked.
‘Wufan! Come out, I need aspirin,’ Luhan yells, hammering on the door. No response comes, and Luhan bristles slightly. ‘Wufan! Hurry up, my head is killing me!’
The door swings open just as Luhan hammers his fist on it, and he’s surprised at how sweaty and disheveled Wufan looks. Luhan squints at him suspiciously. ‘Morning, Lu,’ Wufan greets, sliding himself as best he can out of the room, opening the door only as much as he has to. His frame hides his room from Luhan’s eyes. ‘Just give me a minute, I’ll go get you something for that hangover.’
‘Did you bring someone home last night?’ Luhan blurts, his words taking even him by surprise. Wufan’s hesitation makes air constrict in his throat - Luhan thinks if it were possible for him to look into his chest, he would be able to see his heart break, shatter into little pieces. He kicks himself on the inside, feeling betrayed at his own reactions. He was supposed to get over Wufan months ago.
But first love is about as easy to kick as smoking is for someone who chain smokes. First love is meant to give you the butterflies, to make you feel like you’re soaring, supposed to have you melt like butter under its warmth. It’s isn’t supposed to be unrequited - it isn’t supposed to destroy you from the inside out, isn’t supposed to suck your soul out from the shards of your heart.
Your first love isn’t supposed to be one-sided.
Luhan’s is.
‘No - Lu, c’mon, it’s not like that,’ Wufan says, rubbing the back of his neck. Luhan doesn’t calm down.
‘Then what is it? What won’t you let me see?’ he demands, voice rising, in stark contrast with Wufan’s tone. He doesn’t back down, chest heaving, feeling like he’s falling into a dark pit where nobody can see the bottom. Wufan never acted this weird before - were they not best friends anymore? Could the younger no longer trust him?
Wufan takes a long, hard look at Luhan before relenting. ‘Alright, alright.’ he says, large hand dwarfing Luhan’s wrist when he takes it and guides his friend to his bedroom. ‘Just - don’t freak out, alright? I know what I’m doing,’ Wufan says, and I know you won’t like it, a voice in his head adds. He waits for Luhan to nod before he pushes his door open.
Luhan takes a look inside. What he sees makes his heart plummet to the very pit of his stomach - the room is almost bare, and Wufan’s suitcases stand packed at the foot of his bed, a smaller one in the process of being filled on top of it. He frowns.
‘Where are you going?’ Luhan asks, not daring to look at Wufan. They were in this together. His best friend wouldn’t ditch him, wouldn’t leave him alone in Korea. They had the same dream, they had the same roadmap for the future. The empty shelves, the cleaned out closet - none of this fit in with their plan. None of this made sense.
‘I’m… Going back to Beijing. For good,’ says Wufan firmly. He pretends not to see when Luhan’s eyes reflect how his world is shattering around him. There’s no use trying to talk him out of this - law school just isn’t on the books for him, he can’t stomach late nights memorising case studies and statutes and all the rules for evaluating a law makes his head ache. Yes, he’d gotten through his first year with a decent enough grade - but this life, now that he’s had a glimpse of it, isn’t what he wants.
Somewhere between rushing from one law lecture to another, somewhere between being given stacks of acts and statutes to read and understand, a side of Wufan woke up. This isn’t his dream. This has never been his dream. This was just him, blindly following Luhan because that’s what he’d gotten used to doing over the last few years of their friendship. His attachment to the elder was like a life vest he never really realised he didn’t need. He wasn’t being saved by Luhan’s drive - he was being drowned by it.
And now it was time for him to come up for air.
Luhan is the quietest among their group of friends when they go to the airport the next day. He’d tried begging Wufan to stay the night before, to no avail. His ticket was bought and his mind was set. This was going to be their first goodbye.
When Wufan hugs him before going to the gate, Luhan doesn’t want to let go.
The fact remains that Luhan’s path is set in stone in Seoul, Beijing a memory he’d revisit once in a while, but never for extended periods of time. And Wufan’s heart belonged there, pined to go back to where it came from. Wufan wanted to spend his life and death in Beijing, in the comfort of a place that’s always been home to him.
This is where their paths diverge, this is where fate rips two best friends apart. Wufan looks at Luhan with hopeful eyes, a promise to keep in touch pressed between their chests as they hug. The years will not be kind to them - this promise will fade with their friendship, Luhan getting busier and busier over the years, Wufan struggling to care when he doesn’t see any reciprocation.
But that is in the future, and in the here and now, both boys still have hope.
‘See you around, Lu.’
‘See you, Wu.’
The laugh they let out is the last one they will share for years.
‘Hey, Wufan?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You remember that old cafe we used to go to, way back when you were studying here?’
‘The one a block over from campus?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah, why do you ask?’
‘You wanna go there with me sometime? For old time’s sake,’
A chuckle, a flash of teeth, broken glass sealing itself back together.
‘Okay. But you’re buying, Lu.’
‘Wouldn’t have it any other way, Wu.’
Luhan is twenty two when he first meets the man of his dreams.
He’d gone back to Beijing upon finishing his bachelor’s, watched with muted eyes as his mother took his degree with her to be framed, pride making her fingers shake. His father gives him the slightest upturn of the corner of his lips when the document is presented to him. It’s the most Luhan will get as a show of his father’s pride.
But now he is back in Seoul, and law school pulls at the threadbare fabric of his sanity. He struggles to keep up, determination on the brink of cracking every time his professors give him a new reading list. Law school demands he adjust to it better, adapt faster, and Luhan wants to rip his hair out in chunks whenever an exam comes around. His friends are no better - all of them have dark patches of skin hanging below their eyes, all of them look like they haven’t seen daylight in weeks. Luhan grows tired of them, wary of how their eyes always flit to his work when he’s done and they’re barely halfway. It’s not that he doesn’t want to help them - it’s just that he’d rather have them ask than try to pick at his brain without his consent.
Luhan starts to sit further away from them, begins to favour the furthermost self-study cubicle in the back corner of the library when the rest of his friends throw their things on the large table near the entrance. Slowly but surely, Luhan loses touch with them, and by the time their final exam nears, he has no one to talk to.
The burden that rests on his shoulders gets too heavy for him to handle, and it shows in the way that his usually cheerful face hasn’t cracked out a smile in days.
The quiet boy in the next cubicle starts to worry.
It’s all silent observation at first, on the other boy’s part - the smart Chinese boy doesn’t sit with his friends anymore, he observes, he looks so lonely, he thinks. His brain tells him to mind his own business, to fill it with the knowledge his thick textbook with lines and lines of 10-point font promises, but his conscience tells him it’s okay to worry.
The boy begins to stay at the library later and later. He looks up occasionally, steals a glance at Luhan when the latter gets up to take a toilet break, wills himself to stay until Luhan decides to pack up and leave for the night. Sometimes his eyes won’t let him - they’re aching from lack of sleep and too much reading, and as much as the boy wants to stay, he physically can’t.
On those nights, he leaves Luhan alone in the ostensibly empty library, but he always makes sure to come in the next morning to see if Luhan’s awake in time for the day’s first class.
Disappointment pokes a pointed finger at his heart whenever he comes around and Luhan isn’t there. It takes him a week to think that maybe he wants to be the first face the Chinese boy sees when he wakes up.
He acknowledges the thought the way you would a stranger you see everyday - he recognises it, watches as it passes, and proceeds to think nothing of it for the rest of the day.
Or, at least, he tries to act like it’s nothing.
It’s three weeks into their pseudo routine when the boy finally gets his chance. Luhan has fallen asleep in his usual spot, cheek pressed to the pages of his textbook. The sun has long since risen, flooding the library with light. The boy knows that Luhan likes to start his daily studying routine at exactly 10 am sharp, after a cup of coffee and a sandwich for breakfast - but it’s already fifteen minutes to ten and Luhan shows no sign of waking up.
The boy smiles to himself. He puts his things down and disappears, comes back with a paper cup of coffee and a sandwich that he’d managed to sneak in past the librarian with a smile plastered on his (seemingly) innocent face. He sets them down on Luhan’s desk and, with bated breath, tries to wake the Chinese boy up.
‘Hey - hey, wake up, it’s almost ten,’ he says, gently shaking Luhan awake. His ministrations earn him a frown that goes from angry to confused, and he has to struggle not to squeal when Luhan blinks sleepily up at him. ‘Um - I brought you breakfast. I’ve been studying next to you for a while, and I swear I’m not a stalker, but - yeah. You probably think I’m really creepy, and um. I don’t blame you. But I swear the food is clean.’
Luhan, on his part, doesn’t even digest what the stranger is saying to him. All he really hears are the words almost ten and brought you breakfast, and he reaches out, unquestioningly for the cup of coffee. He takes large gulps of it, feeling the caffeine work its way through his system, and shudders when he feels fully awake. All of this happens within the time frame of a minute or two, and the boy is still standing in front of Luhan when he’s finally awake.
The boy steals a glance at the sandwich, eyes darting back to the cup in Luhan’s hands before he dares to look into Luhan’s eyes.
‘Um - do you like it?’ he asks.
Luhan scrutinises the boy for a minute, ignoring his question. He looks to be about sixteen, but then again, Luhan’s own face wasn’t a very reliable indication of his age. He was short, had large eyes and a shy, gummy smile that made Luhan think of innocence and clean consciences. He swirls the coffee in the cup.
Nobody’s ever been this thoughtful to him, not since Wufan left. He had to admit that even he was getting sick of all the solo study sessions he was having, tired of acting like a lone wolf when all he really wanted was a small enough pack to call his own. Wufan used to be his pack, his family, his best friend in a world where people looked at other people just to see how much they could be worth - but Wufan wasn’t there anymore.
Wufan had left, and Luhan had felt terribly alone ever since that plane took off.
The boy in front of him was still smiling shyly at him, and something about this boy - something about the way he so unassumingly took care of Luhan, even if it was just a small gesture, had a new feeling growing in the latter’s chest. It wasn’t love, it wasn’t even infatuation - it was hope, a light glimmer of it, waiting to be sparked into a fire.
If Luhan was going to live in a world outside of Wufan, he needed to start now. Two years was enough of a buffer period to ready him for the challenge of properly letting someone in, and an encouraging voice in his head was telling him that this boy was the best start he could hope for.
He takes a deep breath, musters up all of his determination and lets a smile curl across his lips, small and somewhat apologetic.
‘Thanks, man. That was - really nice of you,’ Luhan says. He sets his cup down, stands up and offers his hand in a handshake. The other boy takes it with a smile.
‘No problem,’ is all he says.
‘I’m Luhan, by the way. It’s my first semester here.’
‘Oh, we’re the same! It’s my first semester, too.’
‘Yeah? What’s your name?’
The boy’s smile breaks out into a full-on grin.
‘Kim Minseok.’
A band of metal shines on Wufan’s left ring finger, catches the light and deflects it right into Luhan’s eyes. It’s a simple, unassuming band of white gold, and he’s mildly surprised to see it there. He prepares himself for a familiar pang to hit his heart, one he hasn’t felt in years, but it never comes. He smiles a little to himself, more in victory than in relief.
‘How long has it been?’ asks Luhan, casually. He faces Wufan with a half-smile and lets his eyes flit to the ring, and he watches with amusement as the younger colours.
‘A little over three years,’ Wufan answers. He can’t fight the blush or the grin that spreads on his face, and Luhan feels a tiny flutter in his heart. It isn’t anything big - in fact, it’s nothing like what he used to feel, but it’s nice to know it’s still there.
The years may have stolen a lot of things from him- some of his old integrity, his old friends, his ability to smile even during the darkest of days - but time has not been able to snatch away his affection for his old friend. Wufan used to be a big part of his life - literally and metaphorically - and it’s comforting to know that some things never change.
When we grow up, it’s inevitable that we lose sight of what used to be important to us five, ten years ago. The best friend you had in high school could be long gone by the time you set foot in college, your childhood classmate could have moved halfway across the world and you wouldn’t have noticed. Back when they were just about to graduate, back when the future was still a huge question mark, ominously veiling their vision, that used to be Luhan’s fear.
He could stand losing a whole entourage of friends - but he couldn’t stand to lose Wufan.
At age twenty, he was the first to let go.
Now, with eight years of wasted time under his belt, Luhan knows what he has to do. Fate was smiling down upon him today, granting him the chance to regain an old friend, comrade, confidante and accomplice. He didn’t have to feel so friendless anymore.
Luhan smiles.
‘So who’s the lucky guy?’ he asks, shoving his glass and bottle away. There was no need to hide anymore - this was Wufan he was talking to, after all.
Wufan drags his glass around in circles, tracing and retracing the trail of condensation that it leaves. It’s endearing, Luhan has to admit, to watch his intimidating friend lose his composure. The way Wufan smiles shyly to himself makes Luhan feel like they’re fourteen again, and Wufan’s just spotted what was destined to be his first love - Zhang Yixing. The rest of the din that filled the classroom seemed to fall away when Wufan told him about their first kiss, the words sticking thorns into Luhan’s heart, but he listened anyway.
Just like he does now, only it’s less painful, because Wufan doesn’t hold the key to his heart anymore.
‘His name is Kim Junmyeon,’ Wufan begins, adamantly staring into his drink. ‘We met at school, he was doing a semester on exchange or something. Anyway, we got paired up for this marketing assignment, and - I mean, he was really cute, you know? One thing led to another, and...’ Wufan lets his voice trail off, presses his lips together before he looks at Luhan with a twinkle in his eye, one the latter doesn’t recognise.
When Wufan talks about Junmyeon, a whole different side of him comes out, and Luhan, surprisingly, doesn’t feel jealousy creep into his veins - instead, he feels happiness. Wufan’s joy was infectious, and Luhan couldn’t help but bask in its borrowed glow.
‘We’re getting married next month,’ Wufan says. ‘You should come!’
Luhan laughs, low and quiet, and lets his fingers encircle his glass again, fixing Wufan with a smile that’s gentler, somehow, the harshness of the city he’d imbibed into his lips gone with the reappearance of the most significant ghost from his past. ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ he says. He lets a beat pass between them before he asks. ‘Would it be okay if I brought a plus one?’
Wufan raises his eyebrows, mouth dropping open in surprise. Luhan chuckles at his friend’s expression. ‘Don’t look so surprised. You’re not the only one who’s managed to snag a catch,’ Luhan says.
‘Would never have thought it,’ Wufan begins, in a tone that reminds Luhan of how sarcastic his friend could be when he wanted to. ‘Luhan, bringing a plus one to my wedding? Luhan, who never has time to so much as email me, or visit his parents back home, has the time to have gotten himself a plus one?’
‘Shut up,’ Luhan says, lightly punching his friend in the arm. ‘After you ditched me, I had to find someone else willing to put up with me. Enter Minseok.’ Luhan softens when he says the name, guilt dragging along the undertones of his voice. He’d been able to momentarily shove the thought of the older man out of his mind for a while, but now all he could think of was him.
The look in his eyes when Luhan snapped and yelled at him, the tears that welled up in them when Luhan said those things. They were all horrible, and all untrue, and Luhan knows that he should have taken them back instead of storming out of their apartment, leaving his boyfriend alone and miserable.
The shadow that settles on Luhan’s features has Wufan biting back the trouble in paradise? that hangs on the tip of his tongue, and he opts to change the mood. ‘Minseok, huh?’ Wufan says conversationally, pointedly ignoring the sadness in his companion’s eyes. ‘How long has that been going on?’
‘Six years,’ Luhan mumbles, letting himself sink back into his memories. He remembers the way Minseok blushed when Luhan had first asked him out, remembers how soft and sweet his lips were when they shared their first kiss. He remembers when they’d moved in together, the first time they made love on the floor of their empty apartment in full view of the french doors to their balcony. It was slow and intense and full of love, and Luhan is too absorbed in his guilt to register the ringing of the bell above the entrance of the bar.
‘Sometimes things get tough, Lu. We just have to work through it,’ Wufan says. His words snap Luhan back to reality, but instead of looking at his friend, his eyes fall on the person standing just inside the door, hair mussed and chest heaving. A tiny smile sneaks its way up Luhan’s lips, relief flooding his chest. Wufan sees it and takes it as a sign that the elder is feeling better. ‘So when will I get to meet this guy? You can’t bring someone I’ve never met to my wedding,’ he jokes, tone light and airy but Luhan can’t bring himself to care.
‘You can meet him right now, actually,’ Luhan says. Minseok walks towards the two tentatively, as if afraid, and Luhan hopes it’s because he thinks he’s intruding, and not because he’s scared of Luhan.
His worries fade as a grin spreads itself across Minseok’s face when Luhan holds his hand out to him.
‘Hey babe,’ he says, to Minseok, and the effect his words have on the elder is visible. Minseok seems to relax, tension lifting from his muscles at the sound of Luhan’s voice. To Wufan, Luhan smiles and says, ‘This is Minseok. He’s come to claim an apology from me, for being a royal bitch and forgetting our dinner plans for tonight and coming home way later than I’d promised.’
Minseok’s jaw drops, blush colouring his face a pretty pink. Luhan can’t help but find it adorable, even after all these years. ‘Hannie,’ he reprimands. He doesn’t see the way Wufan rolls his eyes when he hears the nickname.
‘I’ll leave you two be. I need to get home myself,’ Wufan stands up, straightens out his suit and offers his hand to Luhan, and then Minseok. ‘Nice to meet you, Minseok. And it was great catching up with you, Lu. See you again soon,’ he says, and then he leaves some money on the counter and exits.
Luhan stands there, Minseok’s hand in his, and he pays the bartender before dragging his boyfriend outside. They’re silent for a few minutes, neither really sure if they’d made up, both unwilling as ever to continue a fight they’d both gotten over. So Luhan snakes his arm around Minseok’s waist, sighing with relief when the elder lets him, smiling when he rests his head on his shoulder.
‘I’m sorry, Minseok,’ Luhan murmurs. Minseok purses his lips.
‘It’s okay. Things happen, I know how it is,’ he says. It’s his turn to smile when he feels Luhan press a kiss to the top of his head. Having gotten the chance to grow together, to become adults together - it has given them both a new take on their relationship. Love isn’t meant to be complicated, isn’t meant to feel like a chore or an obligation.
Love is meant to be simple, like it is when Luhan whispers the words in Minseok’s ear and Minseok doesn’t hesitate to say them back.
‘Who was that guy, by the way?’ Minseok asks, lifting his head so he can look at Luhan. In all his years of being friends, and then more with Luhan, he’d never seen the man before, much less heard his boyfriend talk about him. Luhan wrinkles his nose.
A few years ago, had he been asked that same question, Luhan could have launched into a three hour tirade trying to explain who Wufan was. He would have talked about the way Wufan laughed at all his bad jokes, the way Wufan rolled his eyes at each one of Luhan’s new obsessions. He would have scoured the world for the right words to describe Wufan, but that was before Minseok.
That was before he knew what it meant to love someone who truly loved him back.
Having Minseok by his side has helped him put lots of things in perspective, and the words that form his best answer to Minseok’s question come to him instantaneously.
‘He’s just an old friend.’
For: tyreling
Pairing: one sided!Luhan/Kris, Luhan/Xiumin, Kris/Suho
Rating: G
Length: 9,352 words
Warnings: None
Summary: Somewhere between growing up and becoming an adult, Luhan loses sight of himself. Wufan guides him home, piece by piece.
Author's Note: Basically I just was spoiled for choice with your prompts and then I went and did this thing and my beta probably wanted to kill me through this writing process so haha thank you, recipient, for the great prompts and thank you, beta, for not murdering me!
They meet again where the jagged edges of what could have been caress the smooth curve of what has been. City lights of every colour beat down upon the residents of Seoul, on the witnesses of the city’s nightlife that has celebrities struggling to cover up crimes of love and lust, of smiles that linger a little too long to be considered strictly innocent.
The lights are bright and would probably blind someone if they were to stare straight at them for a minute too long, but it does nothing to warm cold hearts set in stone. People don’t give other people even a passing glance, too busy trying to get somewhere on time, to see someone important, to make more money to provide for wants that get even more ridiculous by the day.
But those are not the only kind of people who roam the streets of Seoul when the sky has long since turned a beautiful dark blue. Some are wandering souls, nursing broken hearts and carrying around with them shards of their dreams. Even the brightest of lights fail to capture their attention - they are stuck in the dark, unable to see anything but the pitch black that surrounds their hearts.
Tonight, Luhan is one of them.
The soles of his expensive leather shoes drag themselves across unforgiving concrete pavement, and he doesn’t know where they’re taking him, but he decides he doesn’t care. Echoes of the fight he’d just stormed out on resound in his skull, and all he wants to do now is to forget. He wants to forget the disappointment that shaded his boyfriend’s irises, he wants to forget the harsh words he’d thrown at the man he loves without so much as a second thought.
So when his feet stop in front of a bar tucked away in a quiet corner of the city, he doesn’t hesitate to push the door open, to let himself be wrapped up in soft rock music and the smell of alcohol lingering in the air. The place is dimly lit, a little emptier than he would expect on a Friday night, but he doesn’t care. He just wants to drown his sorrows and forget, so he saunters right up to the bar and asks the bartender to bring him a bottle of something strong. The bartender gives him a smile and a ‘just a minute,’ and Luhan nods and waits.
This is when he turns around in his stool out of habit, people-watching a pastime he’d always been fond of. This is when his eyes spot a familiar form he hasn’t seen in ages, one he thought he’d lost sight of years ago.
This is when Luhan looks up and gasps, because smiling down at him, hair neatly coiffed and suit expertly pressed - is Wufan.
‘Hello, stranger.’
They are sixteen and ever-curious as to the mechanics of the human body and the technicalities of love. Beijing is in full bloom this spring, and so are their teenagers. Other kids their age have girlfriends and boyfriends, are too busy trying to make obvious their attachment to each other to actually concentrate in lessons and get proper grades. ‘So gross,’ Luhan says, lip curled up in a snarl and Wufan has to fight back the giggle that bubbles up in the back of his throat. Luhan had declared just last week that he was a man, and as such, was not to be considered cute under any circumstances whatsoever.
‘Why are you smiling?’ Luhan demands, the last syllable escaping his lips in a high squeak.
Well. Maybe he wasn’t fully a man. Yet.
‘Nothing. Just - I mean it’s just that they’re obviously in love, or at any rate, they think they are. Just leave them alone,’ Wufan says, amusement in his voice betraying the stoic look he tries to fix on his face.
‘Still,’ Luhan grumbles, crossing his arms and pointedly looking away from their friend Zitao and his latest girlfriend. ‘Does he have to suck face with her in public? It’s like. I mean. He has a room to go into. Several, really, he just has to take a pick!’
‘Are you jealous, Luhannie?’ Wufan asks, absent-mindedly pulling his shoelace out of his shoe. ‘As long as he’s happy, what’s the big deal? It’s not as if he’s doing it in front of us on purpose.’
‘Sure feels like it,’ Luhan grumbles. ‘And don’t call me Luhannie! My name is Luhan, nothing more. Also, seriously, what if he gets caught. Like. He could get into big trouble and - WUFAN HIS HAND IS GOING UNDER HER SHIRT!’
Wufan buries his head in large hands and groans. ‘Seriously, Luhan, just - look away. Do us all a favour and shut those pretty little eyes of yours.’
‘My eyes are handsome, not pretty. Also, we can’t just stand by and let him commit this act of debauchery right in front of us!’ Luhan runs his fingers through his hair, a clear sign of agitation, distress. It’s a habit that attacks him every time he feels agitated or helpless, and it always leaves him looking more nervous than he already is. Wufan shakes his head and clamps a large hand over Luhan’s mouth.
Luhan frowns at him reproachfully.
‘In other words, you’re jealous.’ Wufan deadpans, releasing his grip on Luhan. ‘I can’t see why. You’re like. Gay. She shouldn’t appeal to you at all, unless - Lu, do you have a crush on Zitao?’
‘What? No! I mean - that’s absurd, Wufan, why would I - ’
‘You totally have a crush on him. I don’t know… wouldn’t have pegged him as your type, to be honest.’
‘That’s because he isn’t my type, I’m - I don’t have a crush on Zit - ’
‘It’s alright, Lu, I’ll find you a boyfriend. One that’s as pretty as you, and cute like you, and - ’
‘Wufan?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I hate you.’
‘Love you too, bro.’
Luhan’s fingers card through his hair for the first time in years. His first day at the firm a couple of years ago had seen him continuously running his fingers through his hair, messing it up, generally just making him look unpresentable in his boss’ eyes. He’d been told to kick the habit if he wanted to be taken seriously, and there was little that Luhan had wanted at the time than to be taken very, very seriously, so he tried.
It worked. It took him months to resist the itch, to stop himself from falling back into a habit he developed in high school, but it worked. Now, when he was nervous or agitated, all he did was press his lips together in a thin line. It was a tell nobody so far had picked up on, and the subtle change had helped him gain more clients and respect from his fellow associates in the law firm.
Now - now, with Wufan standing in front of him, years of practiced resistance fall away like a sandcastle during high tide.
Even after all this time, Wufan still had an effect on him.
‘Hey,’ Wufan greets, taking the stool next to Luhan’s. ‘Fancy meeting you in a place like this. How’ve you been?’ he asks, so nonchalantly, so comfortably as if they hadn’t spent years being countries apart. Luhan shuffles a little uncomfortably in his seat.
‘I’ve been doing good. Making a decent living, living a decent life.’ Luhan answers. He tries to will away his shaken state, tries to push away thoughts of the earlier fight he’d had and he prays Wufan can’t still read him like a book. Time and distance drive wedges into even the tightest of relationships, and Wufan has been gone for the past eight years.
Circumstance doesn’t smile down upon Luhan, not today. Wufan notices how Luhan’s fingers are trembling, probably because he’s angry, but he doesn’t comment on it. ‘So how long have you been working?’ Wufan asks.
‘Not that long. It’s only been a couple of years. Got a job at Kim & Sons, I think I talked about them before in uni. That’s where I’ve been since graduation,’ Luhan says.
Wufan smiles, small and doubtful because all he can remember is an image of Luhan ranting about the very same firm he’s working at now, back in their dorm room during university. Luhan had hated the firm - they overworked their lawyers, used money to make them stay and chances of being made partner were slim to none. Still - the money was good. Even undergraduate Luhan couldn’t deny it - getting a job at Kim & Sons would pay well for all its tortures. Wufan decides to comment on that, instead. ‘Living in a beautiful city, working a job that pays well. Living the dream, huh?’ he nudges Luhan gently, drawing a reluctant laugh from the elder.
The bartender turns up just then, a half-smile decorating his lips. ‘Our strongest beer,’ he says with some ceremony, putting a glass of ice and the bottle in front of Luhan. Luhan grimaces at them, finger coming out to drag along the peeling label of the drink.
‘Yeah. The dream.’
They are eighteen and the heavens cry along with their mothers when the boys’ graduation rolls around. Zitao is out of breath, hair somewhat mussed and uniform slightly wrinkled when he goes into the bathroom to find Wufan and Luhan. It isn’t yet his turn to don the cap and robe, he has another year, but being on the committee means he gets to attend the ceremony, and also gets to curse out whatever forces that be for making it rain on today of all days. He and his friends had had to rush out and take in whatever chairs they’d put out this morning before the first raindrop fell, and, needless to say, Zitao was not happy.
‘I mean, honestly! Talk about being inconsiderate,’ Zitao huffs, hands tangling into his hair to tease it into something that resembles its original style. ‘The photographer was really excited too, kept saying he rarely got a chance to shoot graduations in natural light. Gave us a good price too, just because he liked the challenge. And now we’re going to have to give him more, and there goes my bragging rights to becoming the first head of committee to actually stay under the budget.’ Zitao grumbles.
‘Are bragging rights really all that important? I mean - the fact that that’s why you’re mourning over the rain kind of stings, Taozi. Shouldn’t you be sad that your friends don’t get to have an outdoor graduation, instead?’ Luhan lectures, choking himself with his tie before Wufan hurries to pull it loose. ‘Thank you - And I mean, for all you know, we’ve been looking forward to being under the sun with no shade whatsoever for weeks! And here you are whining about your bloody budget.’
‘I guess you’re right,’ Zitao sighs. He swats at Luhan’s hands and the elder drops them to his sides, letting Zitao do up his necktie for him. ‘Can you believe it? This time tomorrow both of you will be off to Seoul. Seoul, home to great food and great shops and I am absolutely green with envy,’ Zitao pouts. Wufan chuckles and pats the youngest on his back.
‘You can always come and visit, you know,’ Wufan reminds him, a smile still on his lips. It’s no secret that the three of them are the best of friends - yes, Wufan and Luhan were a year older and would be leaving China for Korea the next day, but while that was true, neither would deny Zitao food and board had the younger just asked. ‘Just give us a call and we’ll give you the couch.’
‘After we actually get a couch. And a place to stay,’ Luhan reminds. He tries to fake indifference, but deep down, he’s ecstatic. Moving to a country he barely knew wasn’t the funnest thing he could think of, especially when his Korean wasn’t top notch, but it was a challenge, and he loved challenges. He was so glad when Wufan got accepted into the same university as he did - somehow, the younger always made his world seem a little less lonely.
He kind of likes that.
Zitao chuckles happily to himself at the prospect, knowing it’s a sincere offer he’s never going to take. He has his own plans for the future, one that requires lots of saving up and possibly dishonouring his family’s wishes, and they don’t know it yet, but Zitao will disappear altogether from Wufan and Luhan’s lives the moment they board their plane.
But the future hasn’t happened yet, and as of now, they are just three teenagers, eyes shining with the prospect of their future, thinking that nothing will be able to stand in their way. Their friendship was eternal in their eyes - they’d make it work, somehow.
‘Okay guys. You have fifteen minutes left. Put these on,’ Zitao hands both of his friends a box each, long and slender and very, very expensive-looking. All it takes is one look for both boys to know they’re gifts from Zitao’s family, owners of a leading franchise of martial arts academies all over China. Mr and Mrs Huang both regarded Luhan and Wufan as their sons, and it always made them laugh - three only children finding brothers in each other.
‘This - oh my god. Is this real gold?’ Wufan asks, mouth agape. He holds up the chain bracelet with two long fingers, eyeing it as if it’s the first piece of jewelry he’s ever seen. ‘All over?’
‘Actually, it’s platinum,’ Zitao says matter-of-factly, putting the thin chain on Luhan’s wrist - the one without his old watch - before Luhan can protest. ‘And my parents said they insist, can’t possibly take it back, would be mortally offended if they had to.’ Zitao says this with finality, snapping the clasp shut on Wufan’s bracelet.
‘There, you’re ready,’ Zitao says, stepping back to take a look at his best friends. He smiles proudly at them, tries to digest the thought that they won’t be around for him to skip class with next year, won’t be lazing around his house every other weekend because they got bored of their own. After tomorrow, they’d both be in a different country altogether, and the prospect of being alone scares Zitao.
But all baby birds grow up and fly away, and Zitao knows his turn is soon. Just - not now. He’ll be standing where they are next year, and he only hopes they’ll be there to watch him accept his diploma with pride.
‘Come on, guys,’ he says fondly, swinging an arm each over his friends’ shoulders. ‘Time for me to watch you become adults.’
(Six months later, this hope does not exist anymore.)
‘Heard from Zitao lately?’ Wufan asks. He throws the question at a Luhan that isn’t expecting it, and it hits him hard. Luhan shakes his head, pours himself the beer and offers some to Wufan, who refuses.
‘Nope. Haven’t heard a peep from him since we graduated high school, actually. Went back just after I passed the bar and it turns out that his parents sold their academy off. Mum said Zitao disappeared a month or two after his graduation, and nobody’s heard from him since. Mrs Huang told me not to worry, though - they get a postcard from him once a month from different countries all over. Turns out he really did get into fashion.’ Luhan says. He takes a sip of his beer and grimaces. That was strong.
‘Didn’t think he had it in him,’ Wufan admits, eyebrows raised. ‘I mean - yeah, I guess we should have seen it coming. He didn’t really take an interest in the Huangs’ business, did he?’
Luhan shook his head. ‘Nope. Although with all of those belts he used to have and those trophies in his living room, you’d think he would have at least made some use of his martial arts background.’
‘Just goes to show life isn’t always going to turn out the way we expect it to, I guess.’
Luhan slips a finger under the cuff of his shirt, runs his finger along the bracelet he hasn’t taken off for nearly ten years. It still feels smooth under his touch, still glistens every time he polishes it. But it’s tarnished with memories of a time long past, of a friend he hasn’t seen in ages.
Luhan wonders how Zitao is doing now. He wonders why it never occurred to him to just send his friend an email, to catch up on lost time and to make himself present in his friend’s life again, even if it was just through pixels and text on screen. It was so easy to keep in touch, but he didn’t. Regret hits him in the gut like a force unchallenged, and Luhan tries to divert his thoughts away from the boy he once knew.
Next to him, Wufan swings his jacket across the back of his chair and rolls his shirtsleeves up.
His bracelet is still there, too.
They are nineteen and life in Seoul, they discover, takes some getting used to. They’d both finished their first semesters, Luhan with a 3.7 GPA and Wufan - well, Wufan was passing, probably, Luhan doesn’t really know - and now was the time to loosen up. Luhan’s been thinking of the word love lately, whenever he looks at Wufan, and he tries his best to pry his thoughts in another direction.
‘Do you really want to go to a club tonight?’ Wufan asks, nose wrinkling in distaste. His long body is draped over the only couch they have in their apartment, up against the wall opposite the television in the living room. Their apartment isn’t much to talk about, just a kitchenette, living and dining area, two bedrooms, one bathroom and no atmosphere (or view) to speak of. Wufan watches as the world hangs off the ceiling of his vision, seeing everything upside down as he lets his head hang over the armrest. ‘A club? Really?’ he asks again.
‘Yes, really, Wufan. Come on - we’ve worked our asses off this semester, the least we could do is reward ourselves with a little fun.’ Luhan says. He manhandles Wufan into something that makes the taller look vaguely more attractive than he already is (in Luhan’s eyes. It’s all in Luhan’s eyes) before dragging him out into the night.
The club is bursting with people, and Luhan has to fight down his excitement so as not to look too much like it was his first time here (it was). The bouncer raises his eyebrows at the pair amusedly, a smirk on his lips. ‘You have to be at least eighteen to enter,’ he drawls, and looks back down at his clipboard as if dismissing the two.
Luhan’s temper flares up a little, anger barely contained when he realises the bouncer wasn’t talking about Wufan - it’s Luhan whose face belies his age. He quickly fishes his ID out of his pocket, presses it to the bouncer’s clipboard, index finger pushing down, dragging the stationery down so the bouncer has to look at him. Luhan smiles. ‘You can check it, it’s real,’ he says sweetly, and the bouncer just frowns and lets them inside.
Bodies are packed in like sardines, the smell of alcohol and sweat dancing in the air. Music blasts itself out of speakers from every corner of the room, and Luhan is immediately entranced. ‘Hey,’ a guy says, somewhere to his right, lecherous smile firmly in place. His body is long and lean, and he looks like a predator who’s just caught sight of his prey. ‘Wanna dance?’ he asks.
Luhan smiles, taking in the solidness of the man’s chest, the way his tank top shows off well-muscled arms. Usually he wouldn’t even give proposals like this a second thought, but - he was in a new city now, supposedly living a new life, and part of growing up, he reasons, is trying out new things.
Also, a small part of his brain nags at him to admit that he needs to let go of Wufan. The younger was clearly disinterested, never noticing how flustered Luhan got when he walked around their apartment in just his underwear, never getting suspicious as to why Luhan always stole a glance at him before rejecting a date. Wufan was as dim as a rock when it came to Luhan’s feelings for him, and really, Luhan should know better than to keep hanging on by now. He wraps his fingers around the taller man’s wrist, Wufan be damned. Tonight he wasn’t going to be tied down by the ropes of unrequited love - tonight, he was going to throw caution to the wind, let tomorrow worry about the consequences.
They dance together until their bodies are sweat slicked and overheated, and Luhan doesn’t even know the other guy’s name when he presses lips to his neck, kissing up to his jaw when Luhan doesn’t protest. It’s only when he whispers a husky ‘Do you want to take this someplace more private?’ with a roll of his hips that Luhan’s alarm bells ring. He opens his mouth to say something, anything - but before his tongue can find the syllables, he feels a large hand press itself against his stomach and pull him out of the guy’s reach.
‘There you are, babe. I was worried about you,’ Wufan says, nuzzling into Luhan’s hair as if it weren’t damp with sweat. Luhan blinks up at the younger disbelievingly, tongue still tied. ‘Do you want to go home yet?’
‘Um - ’ Luhan looks from Wufan to the guy, who rolls his eyes. ‘I - Okay,’ Luhan relents, hugging Wufan’s arm to his chest as the younger offers Luhan’s companion a small smile of parting before he fights through the crowd to the exit.
The first gulp of fresh night air does little for Luhan’s nerves, and he knows he should let go of Wufan, but he can’t. They walk on in silence for a couple of minutes, before Luhan looks up at Wufan, mouth poised in a question.
‘How did you know I was in trouble?’ he asks, red-tipped ears pricked up. It wasn’t like Luhan couldn’t take the guy on his own - he knew how to take care of himself. But the fact that Wufan had known when to come to his rescue, well - it doesn’t do much for his resolve to get over him. Wufan furrows his brow, thinking. ‘Well?’ Luhan prompts, walking on tiptoe to get to Wufan’s level.
Wufan chuckles and turns his head, face so close to Luhan’s, lips only a kiss of air away. He smiles. ‘I’ve been around you for years, Lu. I can read you like a book,’ he says, ruffling Luhan’s hair. His hand comes away slightly damp for the sweat, but Wufan doesn’t look like he minds at all.
The words hit Luhan square in the chest, and he unlatches his fingers from around Wufan’s arm, stands still as he lets the younger walk on ahead of him.
No, you can’t.
‘So have you been home lately?’ Wufan asks. He tosses the question at Luhan as if he’s unaware that he’d just thrown a live grenade into a crowd of innocent civilians, eyes trained on the glass of water in front of him instead of his companion. ‘I mean - I know you said you went back after you passed the bar, but that was - what, two, three years ago?’
Luhan grimaces, fingers lightly tracing the rim of his glass. That was the last time he’d been back to Beijing, unable to stand the look in his mother’s eyes after he told her his decision. He was to start a life in Seoul, find a job there, make a name for himself out of the remnants of his father’s shadow. His father had smiled when he’d said the words - ‘I’m going to stay in Seoul, father, mother,’ - something like pride glazed over his steely eyes, and Luhan had wished he could have wiped that look off his face.
He left under the guise of building his own reputation, of breaking into the Korean law scene and making a place for the Lu family name there - when really, all he wanted to do was escape the suffocation he’d suffered at the hands of his father.
He hated the hurt look in his mother’s eyes, the betrayal he exuded when he hugged her goodbye before his flight back. He had found an escape - but in doing so, he’d leave his mother behind. Guilt was his companion on the flight back to Seoul, and Luhan hugged it to his chest, kept it close, a reminder to himself that he had to make it. He had to make his mother proud.
His father - his father could wait.
Luhan keeps his eyes locked on his glass. ‘That was the last time,’ he murmurs, voice dolefully flat. He takes a swig of his beer and finishes it all in one shot, pouring himself another glass without hesitating. The bartender wordlessly hands him another bottle.
Wufan lets the words steep them in silence, lets the information settle in his mind. He drapes a long arm over Luhan’s shoulders, grips one tight with his hand before letting it drop. A couple more moments of silence filter through the air before he speaks.
‘I saw your mother the other day,’ Wufan says nonchalantly. He lifts his glass to his lips and takes a sip. ‘She still recognises me. Said how could she not, with these eyebrows,’ Wufan pauses to turn to Luhan, waggling his eyebrows, fishing for a chuckle. He breathes a sigh of relief when Luhan lets out a short bark of laughter.
‘You were my best friend all through school,’ Luhan says. ‘Of course she’d recognise you.’
‘Mm.’
Silence interrupted only by the occasional sip snakes its way between them.
‘Lu?’
‘Hm?’
‘I took her out for lunch,’ says Wufan, looking at the counter instead of his friend. He presses his lips together before speaking again. ‘She’s doing fine. Your father’s in better moods nowadays, and she told me,’ - Wufan pauses to angle his head in Luhan’s direction, still refusing to look at him - ‘She told me to tell you, if I ever see you again, that she misses you.’
Luhan fights back the single tear that’s threatening to spill down his cheek, grateful that Wufan isn’t looking at him. He doesn’t think he could hold it in as well if Wufan were.
‘She says to come home soon.’
They are almost twenty when Wufan finally gives up. The first years are all crowded around a cafeteria table, various laptops resting on it as they try to calm their savagely beating hearts. They’d all received the email the night before - their results would be out at 10am the following morning, and all the Chinese students are gathered in a corner of the cafeteria, faces registering various stages of panic.
A Korean med school student passes by, shakes his head with a smile when he hears waves of panicked Mandarin fighting to be heard.
‘Oh my god oh my god oh my god,’ says one girl, bitten nails on trembling fingers, struggling to type in her password. ‘If I don’t get this, I’m so screwed. So screwed, I’ll be on the first plane back to China if I get anything less than a 3.5,’ she mutters. Another girl pats her on the back in an effort to be comforting. Her own hand is shaking.
Luhan himself feels jittery, trembling fingers hovering reluctantly over his mouse. He’s too afraid to click on the red icon that says semester two results, but at the same time, well - waiting and delaying would only make himself more anxious, and he needs to get this over and done with. He takes a deep breath and glances over at Wufan. The younger is lazily staring at his laptop, and Luhan can’t help but think that something in Wufan’s demeanour suggests he just doesn’t care. Pass or fail, Wufan looked like he knew what he had to do. He knew what the next step to take would be.
Wufan feels Luhan’s eyes on him, looks up just as they dart back to the screen. He can hear the chuckle his friend breathes.
Luhan takes a deep breath. ‘You can do this,’ he whispers to himself, and his finger double clicks on the icon. He barely takes in his scores for each subject, eyes frantically scanning down the page until it reaches a large black 3.8.
His face breaks out into a grin, stress and tension washing away to make room for relief and satisfaction over a job well done. His friends notice his expression - one of them looks over his shoulder and his eyes widen, before he announces Luhan’s genius and the whole table erupts into applause. He gets heavy pats on the back and congratulations shouted at him, before one by one, his fellow students gather up courage enough to read their fate. Moments later, everyone is in high spirits - everyone is in the mood to celebrate. Living so far away from home and struggling with a culture they barely knew paid off - they’d all made their parents proud.
Which, of course, calls for a celebration, and Wufan lets Luhan tug him into the crowd as they head off to enjoy a well-deserved night out.
This is how Luhan wakes up the next day at 1 in the afternoon, head pounding with the beginnings of a hangover. He groans.
‘Wuuuufaaaaaaaaan,’ he whines, voice pitched a little higher than usual, hand gripping at his head. It feels like a child was allowed inside his brain and is happily shattering everything in sight, and Luhan wishes he could split his head open and get him out and tell him to stop.
But he can’t, so he rolls over onto his front, buries his face in his pillow.
Silence fills his room. He lifts his head and squints at his half-open door. There’s no way Wufan didn’t hear him calling, yet there’s no sign of the younger man. Luhan curses him out in his head - what kind of best friend doesn’t tend to you when you wake up with a hangover? he thinks, and when another few minutes pass without a glimpse of Wufan, Luhan groans and swings himself out of bed. He shuffles over to Wufan’s room. The door is locked.
‘Wufan! Come out, I need aspirin,’ Luhan yells, hammering on the door. No response comes, and Luhan bristles slightly. ‘Wufan! Hurry up, my head is killing me!’
The door swings open just as Luhan hammers his fist on it, and he’s surprised at how sweaty and disheveled Wufan looks. Luhan squints at him suspiciously. ‘Morning, Lu,’ Wufan greets, sliding himself as best he can out of the room, opening the door only as much as he has to. His frame hides his room from Luhan’s eyes. ‘Just give me a minute, I’ll go get you something for that hangover.’
‘Did you bring someone home last night?’ Luhan blurts, his words taking even him by surprise. Wufan’s hesitation makes air constrict in his throat - Luhan thinks if it were possible for him to look into his chest, he would be able to see his heart break, shatter into little pieces. He kicks himself on the inside, feeling betrayed at his own reactions. He was supposed to get over Wufan months ago.
But first love is about as easy to kick as smoking is for someone who chain smokes. First love is meant to give you the butterflies, to make you feel like you’re soaring, supposed to have you melt like butter under its warmth. It’s isn’t supposed to be unrequited - it isn’t supposed to destroy you from the inside out, isn’t supposed to suck your soul out from the shards of your heart.
Your first love isn’t supposed to be one-sided.
Luhan’s is.
‘No - Lu, c’mon, it’s not like that,’ Wufan says, rubbing the back of his neck. Luhan doesn’t calm down.
‘Then what is it? What won’t you let me see?’ he demands, voice rising, in stark contrast with Wufan’s tone. He doesn’t back down, chest heaving, feeling like he’s falling into a dark pit where nobody can see the bottom. Wufan never acted this weird before - were they not best friends anymore? Could the younger no longer trust him?
Wufan takes a long, hard look at Luhan before relenting. ‘Alright, alright.’ he says, large hand dwarfing Luhan’s wrist when he takes it and guides his friend to his bedroom. ‘Just - don’t freak out, alright? I know what I’m doing,’ Wufan says, and I know you won’t like it, a voice in his head adds. He waits for Luhan to nod before he pushes his door open.
Luhan takes a look inside. What he sees makes his heart plummet to the very pit of his stomach - the room is almost bare, and Wufan’s suitcases stand packed at the foot of his bed, a smaller one in the process of being filled on top of it. He frowns.
‘Where are you going?’ Luhan asks, not daring to look at Wufan. They were in this together. His best friend wouldn’t ditch him, wouldn’t leave him alone in Korea. They had the same dream, they had the same roadmap for the future. The empty shelves, the cleaned out closet - none of this fit in with their plan. None of this made sense.
‘I’m… Going back to Beijing. For good,’ says Wufan firmly. He pretends not to see when Luhan’s eyes reflect how his world is shattering around him. There’s no use trying to talk him out of this - law school just isn’t on the books for him, he can’t stomach late nights memorising case studies and statutes and all the rules for evaluating a law makes his head ache. Yes, he’d gotten through his first year with a decent enough grade - but this life, now that he’s had a glimpse of it, isn’t what he wants.
Somewhere between rushing from one law lecture to another, somewhere between being given stacks of acts and statutes to read and understand, a side of Wufan woke up. This isn’t his dream. This has never been his dream. This was just him, blindly following Luhan because that’s what he’d gotten used to doing over the last few years of their friendship. His attachment to the elder was like a life vest he never really realised he didn’t need. He wasn’t being saved by Luhan’s drive - he was being drowned by it.
And now it was time for him to come up for air.
Luhan is the quietest among their group of friends when they go to the airport the next day. He’d tried begging Wufan to stay the night before, to no avail. His ticket was bought and his mind was set. This was going to be their first goodbye.
When Wufan hugs him before going to the gate, Luhan doesn’t want to let go.
The fact remains that Luhan’s path is set in stone in Seoul, Beijing a memory he’d revisit once in a while, but never for extended periods of time. And Wufan’s heart belonged there, pined to go back to where it came from. Wufan wanted to spend his life and death in Beijing, in the comfort of a place that’s always been home to him.
This is where their paths diverge, this is where fate rips two best friends apart. Wufan looks at Luhan with hopeful eyes, a promise to keep in touch pressed between their chests as they hug. The years will not be kind to them - this promise will fade with their friendship, Luhan getting busier and busier over the years, Wufan struggling to care when he doesn’t see any reciprocation.
But that is in the future, and in the here and now, both boys still have hope.
‘See you around, Lu.’
‘See you, Wu.’
The laugh they let out is the last one they will share for years.
‘Hey, Wufan?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You remember that old cafe we used to go to, way back when you were studying here?’
‘The one a block over from campus?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah, why do you ask?’
‘You wanna go there with me sometime? For old time’s sake,’
A chuckle, a flash of teeth, broken glass sealing itself back together.
‘Okay. But you’re buying, Lu.’
‘Wouldn’t have it any other way, Wu.’
Luhan is twenty two when he first meets the man of his dreams.
He’d gone back to Beijing upon finishing his bachelor’s, watched with muted eyes as his mother took his degree with her to be framed, pride making her fingers shake. His father gives him the slightest upturn of the corner of his lips when the document is presented to him. It’s the most Luhan will get as a show of his father’s pride.
But now he is back in Seoul, and law school pulls at the threadbare fabric of his sanity. He struggles to keep up, determination on the brink of cracking every time his professors give him a new reading list. Law school demands he adjust to it better, adapt faster, and Luhan wants to rip his hair out in chunks whenever an exam comes around. His friends are no better - all of them have dark patches of skin hanging below their eyes, all of them look like they haven’t seen daylight in weeks. Luhan grows tired of them, wary of how their eyes always flit to his work when he’s done and they’re barely halfway. It’s not that he doesn’t want to help them - it’s just that he’d rather have them ask than try to pick at his brain without his consent.
Luhan starts to sit further away from them, begins to favour the furthermost self-study cubicle in the back corner of the library when the rest of his friends throw their things on the large table near the entrance. Slowly but surely, Luhan loses touch with them, and by the time their final exam nears, he has no one to talk to.
The burden that rests on his shoulders gets too heavy for him to handle, and it shows in the way that his usually cheerful face hasn’t cracked out a smile in days.
The quiet boy in the next cubicle starts to worry.
It’s all silent observation at first, on the other boy’s part - the smart Chinese boy doesn’t sit with his friends anymore, he observes, he looks so lonely, he thinks. His brain tells him to mind his own business, to fill it with the knowledge his thick textbook with lines and lines of 10-point font promises, but his conscience tells him it’s okay to worry.
The boy begins to stay at the library later and later. He looks up occasionally, steals a glance at Luhan when the latter gets up to take a toilet break, wills himself to stay until Luhan decides to pack up and leave for the night. Sometimes his eyes won’t let him - they’re aching from lack of sleep and too much reading, and as much as the boy wants to stay, he physically can’t.
On those nights, he leaves Luhan alone in the ostensibly empty library, but he always makes sure to come in the next morning to see if Luhan’s awake in time for the day’s first class.
Disappointment pokes a pointed finger at his heart whenever he comes around and Luhan isn’t there. It takes him a week to think that maybe he wants to be the first face the Chinese boy sees when he wakes up.
He acknowledges the thought the way you would a stranger you see everyday - he recognises it, watches as it passes, and proceeds to think nothing of it for the rest of the day.
Or, at least, he tries to act like it’s nothing.
It’s three weeks into their pseudo routine when the boy finally gets his chance. Luhan has fallen asleep in his usual spot, cheek pressed to the pages of his textbook. The sun has long since risen, flooding the library with light. The boy knows that Luhan likes to start his daily studying routine at exactly 10 am sharp, after a cup of coffee and a sandwich for breakfast - but it’s already fifteen minutes to ten and Luhan shows no sign of waking up.
The boy smiles to himself. He puts his things down and disappears, comes back with a paper cup of coffee and a sandwich that he’d managed to sneak in past the librarian with a smile plastered on his (seemingly) innocent face. He sets them down on Luhan’s desk and, with bated breath, tries to wake the Chinese boy up.
‘Hey - hey, wake up, it’s almost ten,’ he says, gently shaking Luhan awake. His ministrations earn him a frown that goes from angry to confused, and he has to struggle not to squeal when Luhan blinks sleepily up at him. ‘Um - I brought you breakfast. I’ve been studying next to you for a while, and I swear I’m not a stalker, but - yeah. You probably think I’m really creepy, and um. I don’t blame you. But I swear the food is clean.’
Luhan, on his part, doesn’t even digest what the stranger is saying to him. All he really hears are the words almost ten and brought you breakfast, and he reaches out, unquestioningly for the cup of coffee. He takes large gulps of it, feeling the caffeine work its way through his system, and shudders when he feels fully awake. All of this happens within the time frame of a minute or two, and the boy is still standing in front of Luhan when he’s finally awake.
The boy steals a glance at the sandwich, eyes darting back to the cup in Luhan’s hands before he dares to look into Luhan’s eyes.
‘Um - do you like it?’ he asks.
Luhan scrutinises the boy for a minute, ignoring his question. He looks to be about sixteen, but then again, Luhan’s own face wasn’t a very reliable indication of his age. He was short, had large eyes and a shy, gummy smile that made Luhan think of innocence and clean consciences. He swirls the coffee in the cup.
Nobody’s ever been this thoughtful to him, not since Wufan left. He had to admit that even he was getting sick of all the solo study sessions he was having, tired of acting like a lone wolf when all he really wanted was a small enough pack to call his own. Wufan used to be his pack, his family, his best friend in a world where people looked at other people just to see how much they could be worth - but Wufan wasn’t there anymore.
Wufan had left, and Luhan had felt terribly alone ever since that plane took off.
The boy in front of him was still smiling shyly at him, and something about this boy - something about the way he so unassumingly took care of Luhan, even if it was just a small gesture, had a new feeling growing in the latter’s chest. It wasn’t love, it wasn’t even infatuation - it was hope, a light glimmer of it, waiting to be sparked into a fire.
If Luhan was going to live in a world outside of Wufan, he needed to start now. Two years was enough of a buffer period to ready him for the challenge of properly letting someone in, and an encouraging voice in his head was telling him that this boy was the best start he could hope for.
He takes a deep breath, musters up all of his determination and lets a smile curl across his lips, small and somewhat apologetic.
‘Thanks, man. That was - really nice of you,’ Luhan says. He sets his cup down, stands up and offers his hand in a handshake. The other boy takes it with a smile.
‘No problem,’ is all he says.
‘I’m Luhan, by the way. It’s my first semester here.’
‘Oh, we’re the same! It’s my first semester, too.’
‘Yeah? What’s your name?’
The boy’s smile breaks out into a full-on grin.
‘Kim Minseok.’
A band of metal shines on Wufan’s left ring finger, catches the light and deflects it right into Luhan’s eyes. It’s a simple, unassuming band of white gold, and he’s mildly surprised to see it there. He prepares himself for a familiar pang to hit his heart, one he hasn’t felt in years, but it never comes. He smiles a little to himself, more in victory than in relief.
‘How long has it been?’ asks Luhan, casually. He faces Wufan with a half-smile and lets his eyes flit to the ring, and he watches with amusement as the younger colours.
‘A little over three years,’ Wufan answers. He can’t fight the blush or the grin that spreads on his face, and Luhan feels a tiny flutter in his heart. It isn’t anything big - in fact, it’s nothing like what he used to feel, but it’s nice to know it’s still there.
The years may have stolen a lot of things from him- some of his old integrity, his old friends, his ability to smile even during the darkest of days - but time has not been able to snatch away his affection for his old friend. Wufan used to be a big part of his life - literally and metaphorically - and it’s comforting to know that some things never change.
When we grow up, it’s inevitable that we lose sight of what used to be important to us five, ten years ago. The best friend you had in high school could be long gone by the time you set foot in college, your childhood classmate could have moved halfway across the world and you wouldn’t have noticed. Back when they were just about to graduate, back when the future was still a huge question mark, ominously veiling their vision, that used to be Luhan’s fear.
He could stand losing a whole entourage of friends - but he couldn’t stand to lose Wufan.
At age twenty, he was the first to let go.
Now, with eight years of wasted time under his belt, Luhan knows what he has to do. Fate was smiling down upon him today, granting him the chance to regain an old friend, comrade, confidante and accomplice. He didn’t have to feel so friendless anymore.
Luhan smiles.
‘So who’s the lucky guy?’ he asks, shoving his glass and bottle away. There was no need to hide anymore - this was Wufan he was talking to, after all.
Wufan drags his glass around in circles, tracing and retracing the trail of condensation that it leaves. It’s endearing, Luhan has to admit, to watch his intimidating friend lose his composure. The way Wufan smiles shyly to himself makes Luhan feel like they’re fourteen again, and Wufan’s just spotted what was destined to be his first love - Zhang Yixing. The rest of the din that filled the classroom seemed to fall away when Wufan told him about their first kiss, the words sticking thorns into Luhan’s heart, but he listened anyway.
Just like he does now, only it’s less painful, because Wufan doesn’t hold the key to his heart anymore.
‘His name is Kim Junmyeon,’ Wufan begins, adamantly staring into his drink. ‘We met at school, he was doing a semester on exchange or something. Anyway, we got paired up for this marketing assignment, and - I mean, he was really cute, you know? One thing led to another, and...’ Wufan lets his voice trail off, presses his lips together before he looks at Luhan with a twinkle in his eye, one the latter doesn’t recognise.
When Wufan talks about Junmyeon, a whole different side of him comes out, and Luhan, surprisingly, doesn’t feel jealousy creep into his veins - instead, he feels happiness. Wufan’s joy was infectious, and Luhan couldn’t help but bask in its borrowed glow.
‘We’re getting married next month,’ Wufan says. ‘You should come!’
Luhan laughs, low and quiet, and lets his fingers encircle his glass again, fixing Wufan with a smile that’s gentler, somehow, the harshness of the city he’d imbibed into his lips gone with the reappearance of the most significant ghost from his past. ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ he says. He lets a beat pass between them before he asks. ‘Would it be okay if I brought a plus one?’
Wufan raises his eyebrows, mouth dropping open in surprise. Luhan chuckles at his friend’s expression. ‘Don’t look so surprised. You’re not the only one who’s managed to snag a catch,’ Luhan says.
‘Would never have thought it,’ Wufan begins, in a tone that reminds Luhan of how sarcastic his friend could be when he wanted to. ‘Luhan, bringing a plus one to my wedding? Luhan, who never has time to so much as email me, or visit his parents back home, has the time to have gotten himself a plus one?’
‘Shut up,’ Luhan says, lightly punching his friend in the arm. ‘After you ditched me, I had to find someone else willing to put up with me. Enter Minseok.’ Luhan softens when he says the name, guilt dragging along the undertones of his voice. He’d been able to momentarily shove the thought of the older man out of his mind for a while, but now all he could think of was him.
The look in his eyes when Luhan snapped and yelled at him, the tears that welled up in them when Luhan said those things. They were all horrible, and all untrue, and Luhan knows that he should have taken them back instead of storming out of their apartment, leaving his boyfriend alone and miserable.
The shadow that settles on Luhan’s features has Wufan biting back the trouble in paradise? that hangs on the tip of his tongue, and he opts to change the mood. ‘Minseok, huh?’ Wufan says conversationally, pointedly ignoring the sadness in his companion’s eyes. ‘How long has that been going on?’
‘Six years,’ Luhan mumbles, letting himself sink back into his memories. He remembers the way Minseok blushed when Luhan had first asked him out, remembers how soft and sweet his lips were when they shared their first kiss. He remembers when they’d moved in together, the first time they made love on the floor of their empty apartment in full view of the french doors to their balcony. It was slow and intense and full of love, and Luhan is too absorbed in his guilt to register the ringing of the bell above the entrance of the bar.
‘Sometimes things get tough, Lu. We just have to work through it,’ Wufan says. His words snap Luhan back to reality, but instead of looking at his friend, his eyes fall on the person standing just inside the door, hair mussed and chest heaving. A tiny smile sneaks its way up Luhan’s lips, relief flooding his chest. Wufan sees it and takes it as a sign that the elder is feeling better. ‘So when will I get to meet this guy? You can’t bring someone I’ve never met to my wedding,’ he jokes, tone light and airy but Luhan can’t bring himself to care.
‘You can meet him right now, actually,’ Luhan says. Minseok walks towards the two tentatively, as if afraid, and Luhan hopes it’s because he thinks he’s intruding, and not because he’s scared of Luhan.
His worries fade as a grin spreads itself across Minseok’s face when Luhan holds his hand out to him.
‘Hey babe,’ he says, to Minseok, and the effect his words have on the elder is visible. Minseok seems to relax, tension lifting from his muscles at the sound of Luhan’s voice. To Wufan, Luhan smiles and says, ‘This is Minseok. He’s come to claim an apology from me, for being a royal bitch and forgetting our dinner plans for tonight and coming home way later than I’d promised.’
Minseok’s jaw drops, blush colouring his face a pretty pink. Luhan can’t help but find it adorable, even after all these years. ‘Hannie,’ he reprimands. He doesn’t see the way Wufan rolls his eyes when he hears the nickname.
‘I’ll leave you two be. I need to get home myself,’ Wufan stands up, straightens out his suit and offers his hand to Luhan, and then Minseok. ‘Nice to meet you, Minseok. And it was great catching up with you, Lu. See you again soon,’ he says, and then he leaves some money on the counter and exits.
Luhan stands there, Minseok’s hand in his, and he pays the bartender before dragging his boyfriend outside. They’re silent for a few minutes, neither really sure if they’d made up, both unwilling as ever to continue a fight they’d both gotten over. So Luhan snakes his arm around Minseok’s waist, sighing with relief when the elder lets him, smiling when he rests his head on his shoulder.
‘I’m sorry, Minseok,’ Luhan murmurs. Minseok purses his lips.
‘It’s okay. Things happen, I know how it is,’ he says. It’s his turn to smile when he feels Luhan press a kiss to the top of his head. Having gotten the chance to grow together, to become adults together - it has given them both a new take on their relationship. Love isn’t meant to be complicated, isn’t meant to feel like a chore or an obligation.
Love is meant to be simple, like it is when Luhan whispers the words in Minseok’s ear and Minseok doesn’t hesitate to say them back.
‘Who was that guy, by the way?’ Minseok asks, lifting his head so he can look at Luhan. In all his years of being friends, and then more with Luhan, he’d never seen the man before, much less heard his boyfriend talk about him. Luhan wrinkles his nose.
A few years ago, had he been asked that same question, Luhan could have launched into a three hour tirade trying to explain who Wufan was. He would have talked about the way Wufan laughed at all his bad jokes, the way Wufan rolled his eyes at each one of Luhan’s new obsessions. He would have scoured the world for the right words to describe Wufan, but that was before Minseok.
That was before he knew what it meant to love someone who truly loved him back.
Having Minseok by his side has helped him put lots of things in perspective, and the words that form his best answer to Minseok’s question come to him instantaneously.
‘He’s just an old friend.’