quick fix (part 2 of 2)
The mall incident is enough to make Yixing crawl out of his rut and start to look for work again. He spends a solid week working on his resume, compiling all of the accolades and achievements he has accumulated over the years. He finishes it and is ready to start sending them out to potential employees just as a letter arrives in the mail from the city government.
In a nutshell, it tells him that he is not allowed to apply for work elsewhere until the case on his old workplace is closed. It tells him that the process can take anywhere from six months to a year, and the city will provide him a monthly stipend to cover living expenses.
A stipend isn’t what he wants; he wants a job and not only because he has rent to pay and groceries to buy, but he needs to get out of his apartment and get his life back on track. Spending his days watching Kris’s girlfriend come and go and going to the club to drink and meet guys was not how he envisioned living out his twenties.
Yixing is more than let down, now; he thinks that, maybe, if he worked a little quicker and got his resume done earlier, he could have been working by now and there wouldn’t be this unfair hold on his employment eligibility. They couldn’t force him to quit his job, could they?
He laughs to himself as he answers his own question. Yes, they could. They already have and they would do it again if they needed to.
Yixing thinks he’s just going to grab a beer from his fridge and watch the morning news and spend the day drowning his sorrows, but the moment his hand graces the handle of the refrigerator, there’s a knock at the door.
“Good morning,” says Kris as Yixing opens the door.
Yixing feels his heart sink; he hasn’t been face-to-face with Kris for a long time, and after what happened at the mall he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to be again. Now he had no choice. “Morning,” Yixing replies.
“I hope I’m not asking too much, but I was wondering if you could help me paint my apartment?” Yixing notices then that Kris has paint everywhere, on his clothes, smeared on his cheek, even in his hair. “I tried doing it by myself but I realized that two heads may be better than one.”
Yixing wonders why, out of himself and Lu Han and Sehun, Kris chose him. The thought doesn’t last long; he can imagine Lu Han and Sehun sleeping soundly, spooning each other, not willing to wake up until noon. Kris probably knows that, too, and probably saw the lights from inside of Yixing’s apartment and decided that since he was awake...
“Sure, no problem,” Yixing says. “Let me just change into something I won’t mind dirtying up and I’ll be right over.” Kris smiles and nods and turns to go back to his apartment, and Yixing shuts the door.
He’d be lying if he said he didn’t just say yes because it meant being alone with Kris for a few hours.
He was a confused, confused man. One minute he was embarrassed to be seen by Kris, and then the next he would do anything to be around him.
Alone with Kris he was not.
As Yixing went through Kris’s slightly-ajar door, he took in the sight of Kris’s girlfriend, all long legs and big eyes and sharp features. She was reclined on the couch, so awkwardly placed Yixing could only assume Kris had moved it from against a wall so that he could paint, and reading a magazine with absolutely no regard for the work going on around her. She looks up as Yixing comes through the door and quickly puts down her magazine.
“Babe, if you need help, I can help you!” she says, and Kris merely glances at her over his shoulder.
“No, it’s fine,” Kris mutters. “You just sit and read.”
She purses her lips. “Why do you have to make me seem lazy in front of your friends?”
“I’m not, I’m letting you read your magazine and having Yixing help me,” Kris says. He gestures at Yixing to pick up the paint roller and rolls his eyes as his girlfriend sighs.
“That’s not fair,” she says.
“You weren’t even asking to help me before he came in!” Kris explodes, turning to look at her now. Yixing feels awkward, and he snatches a glance at Kris’s girlfriend to see her red-faced with embarrassment. “Just give it a break. We can handle it.”
Without another word, she picks up her magazine and resumes reading. Kris shakes his head and looks over at Yixing. “Where do you want me to start?” Yixing asks.
“You get that wall,” Kris says, pointing to the wall directly behind Yixing. “And I’ll finish this one. Then we’ll go over to the other side of the room and do the same thing again.”
Yixing nods and bends to coat his roller with paint. Kris is painting the room a deep royal blue, which seems almost fitting for Kris’s personality. The blue had very mellow undertones, gave off a sense of confidence and beauty, all traits that Kris portrayed. Yixing wonders if Kris chose the color for that reason, or if it was a decision purely based on his plans for the apartment’s decor.
The two paint in relative silence, the only sound being the noise Kris’s girlfriend’s magazine made as she turned the pages. Eventually she stopped reading and Yixing could feel her staring, if not at him then at the both of them, and he made sure to avoid turning around to see her. To his dismay, however, the paint can was behind him at this point, so he’d have to turn to get more - instead, he carefully backed up, making sure not to trip over the plastic protecting the floor or over the paint can itself.
He didn’t slip on the plastic or even hit the paint can, but it seemed like Kris had had the same idea because they back into each other. In surprise, they turn to face each other, miscalculating the amount of distance they’d put between themselves and finding themselves closer to each other than they’ve ever been. Shorter Yixing can feel tall Kris’s breath on the tip of his nose and it takes the sound of the girlfriend’s cell phone ringing to bring him back to reality and move away.
“I’m leaving,” she says as Yixing quietly reels in embarrassment and Kris stands still, watching him. “My sister just texted me saying she wants to have breakfast with me.” She gets up and walks over to Kris to tell him goodbye, and when she leans in for a kiss he only allows her his cheek. Visibly bothered, she gathers her things and leaves.
“Sorry for bumping into you,” Yixing says as the door slams shut.
Kris doesn’t say anything; in fact, everything is a blur until Yixing can feel cold, wet paint seeping through the back of his shirt as he’s thrown against the wall.
His eyes remain wide open as Kris pins Yixing between himself and the wall and kisses him. Yixing takes too long to register what’s going on and before he can kiss back, Kris is already moving away, walking away, trying to get away from him.
“Repaint that part of the wall I just messed up,” Kris says without looking in Yixing’s direction.
Yixing can’t even move; he feels glued to the wall due to the wet paint and his whole body is in shock, muscles and bones rigid and unmoving. He doesn’t quite understand what just happened, or why it happened, and he feels like he should leave -- instead, he peels himself from the wall, observes the damage, then dips his roller into the paint again to cover up his impression.
“He did what?” Lu Han asks several awkward, silent hours later, after Yixing has showered and tried to get rid of the deep royal blue paint fixed to his hair.
He doesn’t know why he stayed after Kris kissed him; maybe he was hoping Kris would try it again? Or was he trying to show some tact and stick around to let Kris know that the fact that he’d kissed him hadn’t bothered him in any way? It was probably the former, but for Yixing’s own sake he’d say it was the latter.
“He kissed me,” Yixing says, and he can’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. They sound so entirely foreign on his tongue, especially in regards to Kris.
“I’m shocked, yet I’m not,” Lu Han says. “I’m only shocked because he said that after the breakup with his ex-boyfriend, he’d never find interest in another guy again.”
Yixing nods in understanding, then he really comprehends what Lu Han just said. “You knew he was --”
“Why would I ask you if you wanted me to ‘introduce’ you to a straight guy?” Lu Han asked, exploding with laughter at Yixing’s stunned face.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Yixing snaps.
“You didn’t ask. You didn’t ask, so I assumed you didn’t want to know,” Lu Han replies. “Now you know, so... get off my back.” Yixing shakes his head and Lu Han shrugs. “So, tell me about this kiss - did you like it? Was he any good? Did he use tongue?”
Yixing is more than a little annoyed that Lu Han kept such pertinent information from him for so long and allowed him to struggle, wondering if his ill-hatched pursuit of Kris was all in vain, and he has no intentions of answering Lu Han’s questions.
Then he thinks about it, and he comes to the realization that he needs to talk to someone about what happened and he literally has no one but Lu Han.
“Yes, yes, and he tried but I screwed up,” Yixing spits out, and Lu Han claps his hands together in joy.
“I foresee the start of a great relationship,” Lu Han says in a sing-song voice, and Yixing can’t help but roll his eyes.
As long as Kris’s girlfriend is in the picture, there will be no such thing as a “relationship” between Yixing and Kris.
Yixing goes a few good days without seeing Kris -- at least, not in person. He dreams about him, though; dreams about painting long, endless walls with him, less-innocent dreams of Kris kissing him all over his undressed body. He wakes with a start each time and curses Kris for kissing him and forcing his subconscious to revolve itself around him night after night.
But Yixing goes almost a week without seeing him, and he’s not sure if Kris is avoiding him or if he’s avoiding Kris. On the sixth Kris-less day, Lu Han invites Yixing out for a night on the town. He says he wants to get Sehun to do something other than spend his nights trying to bed him, so he wants to introduce Sehun to the club scene.
Yixing had silently pledged after the ill-fated mall trip that he’d never be Lu Han and Sehun’s third wheel again, but something was beckoning him out of the apartment. He agreed, got dressed, and walked into town with them.
About an hour or so into the excursion, Lu Han meets up with a few of his college friends, to whom he proudly introduces Sehun as his boyfriend. He’s too busy gushing about a now-blushing Sehun to introduce them to Yixing, who is busy himself, nursing a drink and zoning out to the music. He returns to real-time as the song ends and melds into another, only to encounter that strange feeling of being watched.
He inconspicuously glances around, trying not to scare off whoever may be looking at him -- and then he sees him. Kris is on the other side of the club, sitting next to his girlfriend, loosely holding her hand as she ignored him and chatted loudly with some of her own friends. Their eyes meet until Kris moves his eyes past Yixing.
When Kris’s eyes return to him then back past him, Yixing takes that as a cue to look over his shoulder -- the only thing there is a neon sign pointing to where the men’s and women’s restrooms are. He looks back at Kris and makes a face that says, “I don’t understand,” to which Kris gestures with his head toward the restroom and suddenly Yixing gets it.
He glances at Lu Han and Sehun, who are still occupied with their conversation with Lu Han’s friends, and puts down his drink before he retreats to the restroom. Once he rounds the corner of the hallway containing the restrooms, he peers back into the club to see if Kris is coming. He is, so Yixing ducks into the men’s restroom.
Kris soon joins him, and before Yixing could ask him why he wanted him to meet him in the bathroom, Kris has him up against the wall and is kissing him hard. Yixing gets the point this time and kisses back immediately, his breath hitching as Kris’s hand unexpectedly grabs at the button on his pants. He’s waiting to see what Kris plans to do with his hand and Yixing’s pants button but Kris doesn’t make a move. Instead, he parts their lips and is breathing heavily as he looks down at his own hand, as if wondering how it even got there.
The bathroom door opens and they quickly separate, though the mutual heavy breathing probably gives away what was happening before the fellow clubgoer entered the room. The guy goes over to the urinal, probably too high or drunk to even realize Kris and Yixing were there, and Yixing breathes a sigh of relief.
That sigh is taken back in as a sharp breath as Kris leans in and whispers to Yixing:
“Let’s get out of here and go back to your place.”
Yixing is about to question why -- but the answer is obvious, he just can’t really believe it’s happening. Then he wants to ask why his place, but Kris answers that for him:
“She has a key to my place. She could walk right in and that wouldn’t be good, right?”
Yixing has his apprehensions, but the way Kris continually catches him off-guard is admittedly getting him a bit hot under the collar. He feels like he’s just wasting time now, and can only think really good, dirty things as Kris claws at one of Yixing’s back pockets and breathes hot on his ear.
“Hey, I’m going home,” Yixing announces to Lu Han.
“So soon?” Lu Han shouts over the music.
“Yeah... I’m too tired to be out right now, I think. I’m going home and sleeping,” Yixing replies.
Lu Han shrugs. “Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow then,” he says.
Yixing takes that as his all-clear and starts toward the exit, his body vibrating with nervous excitement.
“I’m gonna go have a smoke,” Kris whispers to his girlfriend. She nods and he leaves, having seen Yixing making his way out of the club. He meets Yixing outside and they follow each other home quietly, sexual heat hanging between them.
Yixing wonders how they got to this, how they went from strangers to acquaintances to this: undressing each other slowly, in the dark, kissing and feeling each other and taking their time. Yixing wonders how he went from driving himself mad over Kris and whether or not he’d want someone like him to having Kris pressed against him, in his bed, tasting his mouth that was sweet of liquor and savory of cigarette smoke. Yixing wonders how Kris went from hanging on his girlfriend’s every word to ignoring every text she sent him, probably wondering where he’d gone, because he was giving one-hundred-percent of his attention to Yixing.
Kris finally removes Yixing’s pants and tosses them aside, and Yixing is speechless as Kris pushes his legs back and almost disappears behind his hips. The sensation is foreign, hot, wet tongue splayed flat against Yixing’s opening, slow, searching strokes followed by quick flicks. Yixing arches his back off of the bed and Kris digs his fingernails into Yixing’s thighs, struggling to keep his lower half in place.
Yixing squirms, fighting back the urge to moan loud and unabashedly because that’s not his style, not something that he’s used to, but when he looks down and sees only Kris’s eyes and the bridge of his nose he can’t help but groan. Kris replaces his tongue with his finger, much to Yixing’s temporary chagrin, and pumps it in and out slowly until he’s sure Yixing is ready for another one.
As soon as Kris adjusts his hand and starts to pump his fingers again, his phone starts to ring. It makes Yixing jump in fright, which causes him to press down on Kris’s fingers and force the tips of his fingers against that sensitive spot inside of him that makes his vision flash white.
“Come here,” Yixing breathes, forgetting about the phone that’s ringing and vibrating against his bedside table. Kris removes his fingers and takes off his own pants before he crawls up toward the headboard. The phone stops ringing and makes a sound that signifies a missed call as Yixing beckons for Kris to straddle his shoulders.
Yixing takes Kris into his mouth, his hands against the back of Kris’s thighs just gently pushing his hips forward. Kris takes control and carefully, slowly thrusts into Yixing’s mouth, needing to hold onto the headboard to support himself. He almost loses control when Yixing moans around him, so he quickly stops and moves away, leaning over to kiss Yixing.
“Turn over,” Kris whispers, and Yixing does just that while Kris moves to get behind him. He raises Yixing’s hips so that he’s on his hands and knees and gently massages Yixing’s waist.
Kris puts kisses down Yixing’s spine as his phone starts to ring again, vibrating until it falls off of the table and continues to buzz on the floor. They both ignore it, as Kris is focused on entering Yixing and Yixing is focused on bracing himself, and once Kris is in and Yixing gasps the phone stops ringing.
Yixing feels the need to bury his face in a pillow as Kris thrusts into him, because he’s not at all sure he can keep on holding back the moans and whimpers begging to drip from his mouth.
Instead, Kris is positively knocking the air out of him; or maybe he’s just holding his breath because what Kris is doing to him feels so good that his brain isn’t sending signals to his lungs to tell him he needs to breathe. He can’t breathe, he can’t moan, he can’t whimper, he can’t groan -- he can only think of all the dirty things he wants to hiss at Kris. So it’s almost silent, save for the sound of Yixing trying to breathe and Kris breathing too much and skin meeting skin and the sound of high heels clicking in the hallway.
That alarms Yixing, but not Kris, who is too distracted to hone in on such minute sounds. Yixing expects Kris’s phone to ring again -- and it does, just moments later.
It rings and rings and rings and Yixing wonders if Kris’s girlfriend can hear the familiar sound of Kris’s ringtone coming from within his apartment. It appears that she doesn’t, because the call rings right through and goes to his voicemail.
“Kris, where did you go? You said you were going to have a cigarette and you never came back... call me, I’m worried about you,” Yixing hears, albeit in a very muffled manner. He looks back at Kris to see if he heard her as well, only to see that Kris is already looking right back at him.
“She’s outside,” Yixing whispers, putting a hand back against Kris’s stomach as if to tell him to stop. Kris keeps going, and Yixing’s fingers fold into an empty grasp. “What if she hears?”
“I don’t care,” Kris says, pulling Yixing by his hair up towards him. Soon, he’s almost chest-to-back with Yixing, and the position makes it easier for Kris to hit that spot again and again.
It’s almost like he wants Yixing to moan out loud for her to hear, and this is confirmed as Kris whispers for Yixing to “moan for me, I want to hear your pretty voice moaning my name.” And Yixing wants to, but he’s so worried about her hearing him --
“Ah, fuck!” Yixing shouts aloud as Kris bites into his shoulder, thrusting in staccato.
“Say my name,” Kris demands, and Yixing shakes his head. “Scream it.”
“I can’t,” Yixing whispers, and Kris bites him again. “Goddamn it, I can’t, she’ll hear me.”
“She’s probably already listening,” Kris says, clearly chiding him. “She won’t care. Scream my name.”
“Kris,” Yixing manages, quietly.
“Louder.”
“God, Kris,” Yixing groans, louder now.
“Scream it,” Kris says through gritted teeth, pounding harder and Yixing knows he’s close. Yixing can’t control it now; the speed of Kris’s thrusts coupled with the lingering sensation of his bites and the tug of his hair has Yixing moaning loud enough for it to bounce off of the walls of the bedroom. He starts to stroke himself, already close with very minimal contact to his own cock, until the room starts to spin and he feels himself getting filled with warmth, inside and out.
It’s not until he’s done milking himself and Kris dry that he realizes he’s been screaming Kris’s name on the top of his lungs for the duration of his climax. The pleasure turns into complete horror because he hears the high-heeled footsteps quickly hurry off.
“She heard,” Yixing says as Kris carelessly kisses his neck and puts his arms around him.
“It doesn’t matter,” Kris replies. “Just let it go. It doesn’t matter.”
For some reason, Yixing believes him.
“Yixing,” Kris whispers, shaking Yixing awake.
Yixing looks at him through sleepy eyes. “Hm?”
“I can’t sleep,” Kris complains.
“Why?” Yixing asks, his eyes closing again.
“It’s hard trying to will myself to go to sleep when I could spend all night looking at someone as pretty as you,” Kris says with a grin, and Yixing, try as he might to hold it in, starts laughing. “Wow, is it the first time I’ve seen you smile or something?”
“What do you mean?” Yixing asks.
“You have these cute fucking little dimples,” Kris says as if he’s mystified. “They make me just wanna --” Yixing laughs again as Kris kisses his cheek then scatters kisses to his neck and shoulder.
“You’re really something else,” Yixing mutters, letting Kris interlock their fingers under the sheets. Guilt gnaws at him, because while it’s really nice to have Kris beside him the way he is, he can’t get the sound of the girlfriend’s near-running footsteps out of his head. He sighs and Kris gives his hand a squeeze.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
Yixing looks at him again and frowns. “I know that you don’t want me to talk about it --” Kris groans as if he knows what’s coming. “-- but, what are you going to tell your girlfriend?”
“Don’t call her that,” Kris says sternly. Yixing wants to ask him what he should be calling her, but it seems like this is far too touchy of a subject for him to be doing any sort of prodding. “She’s not my girlfriend anymore than she was an experiment.”
Yixing has so many questions, but he’s unsure if he should ask them. Kris can probably sense Yixing’s confusion, because he begrudgingly continues.
“He really fucked me up,” Kris says, and Yixing instantly knows he’s talking about his ex. “He was the first man I was ever with, and I loved him even though our parents disapproved. The hardest thing I had to do was tell my parents that I was going to be with him no matter what they thought, because seeing them that disappointed made me think I was making a bad decision. Then I saw him at the airport when I flew back to China to stay with him and all of the doubts went away.” He paused and squeezed Yixing’s hand. “But the damage was done; I came back to China permanently because he kept saying we’d have to split, since he couldn’t deal with me being so far away... and even though I came back, he left me. So I told myself, after that, that I wouldn’t do something like that again. I was suffering because my parents disapproved, so maybe I’d be better off with someone they’d approve of. I thought moving away and meeting someone new, meeting a girl, would turn everything around but I was only more miserable because it wasn’t what I wanted.”
Yixing sort of regrets bringing up Kris’s girlfriend, because now the mood has shifted and he doesn’t really know how to deal with someone when they’re as upset as Kris was now. It’s a selfish feeling, and he knows that, but he decides to continue feeling that way for Kris’s sake; it’s clear Kris has needed someone to talk about this to for a while.
“In the morning, I’ll call her and let her know,” Kris says, answering Yixing’s initial question. “It’ll hurt her more than it hurts me, so I don’t really care.”
Yixing leaves it at that, because there’s nothing more Kris could really say. Kris’s grip on his hand slowly loosens, and when Yixing looks over, he realizes Kris has finally fallen asleep. He gladly follows suit.
“She’s outside,” Kris says in the morning, looking up from his cell phone. He’d received a text but Yixing didn’t ask him what it said, because he already knew it was from her and he’d rather finish washing up the plates they used for breakfast.
Yixing glances up and smiles as Kris walks over him and puts an arm around his waist. “Are you leaving?” he asks.
Kris nods. “If I don’t, she’ll probably wait out there all day until I do,” he says, and Yixing quietly agrees. Kris kisses Yixing on the cheek and rubs the small of his back. “I’ll see you later.”
Yixing dries his hands as Kris goes to the door and leaves. Once the door shuts, Yixing races over to the door and puts his ear against it.
“Can’t we go inside and talk?” he hears Kris say.
“No, I’m not going inside with you,” she says sharply. “Where were you last night?”
“I was with a friend,” Kris says.
She scoffs. “Really? How does ‘I’m going to have a smoke’ suddenly become ‘I’m abandoning you at the club to go and be with a friend,’ hm? You spent the night in there, didn’t you?”
“It’s not any of your business. I’m done with this,” Kris says.
“This conversation is far from over,” she shoots back.
“Okay, but I’m not talking about the conversation. I’m done with you.” There’s silence, and then Yixing hears a loud smack.
“How could you?” she shrieks.
“Don’t put your hands on me,” Kris says calmly.
“You’re disgusting, you know? You’re absolutely disgusting.”
“That’s fine by me,” Kris says.
“I want nothing to do with you, ever again.” Yixing hears a dull clink that sounds like a key hitting the floor. “You’re dead to me.”
“You’re better off just leaving because it’ll make you angier when you realize how much I don’t care.” More silence, and then Yixing hears her make a choked sobbing sound, followed by the sound of her storming off. Her footsteps die off, and Yixing opens the door, poking his head out.
“What the hell is going on out here?” Lu Han mumbles sleepily from his own apartment door. He’s suddenly wide awake as the girl shrieks at the elevator for taking too long to arrive.
“Nothing’s going on,” Kris says, looking over his shoulder. He smiles and waves Yixing and Lu Han off. “Everything’s fine. Go back to sleep, Lu Han.” He picks up the key that the girl had thrown at him and uses it to get into his apartment, and after he disappears inside, Yixing looks over at Lu Han.
“We have to talk,” Lu Han says matter-of-factly. Yixing nods -- they do have a lot of talking to do.
The way Lu Han stares at him, agape, makes him embarrassed and uncomfortable. Yixing wishes he would just say something and stop gawking at him, because at least words can express feelings better than a face can.
But Lu Han remains shellshocked, chopsticks frozen in midair. “That’s what you went home and did last night?” he finally says. “You skeevy little bastard!”
“Why am I the bastard,” Yixing mumbles.
“Was it good?”
“Why is that always the first question you have to ask?” Yixing snaps.
“Because it’s the most important,” Lu Han says, kicking him underneath the table. He looks up and smiles as the waitress refills their water then goes on her way.
Yixing purses his lips. “Yeah.”
Lu Han sighs contentedly and slaps his hands against the table in excitement. “Tell me more, tell me more, tell me more.”
“No!” Yixing says, trying not to laugh.
“Fine,” Lu Han says with a grimace. “Are you going to... ‘see’ him again, later?”
“I don’t know? Maybe,” Yixing answers. He shrugs. “It’s all up to him, I guess.” Lu Han raises an eyebrow. “I don’t know if any of this is what he needs right now. He told me about what happened that convinced him to move away from Guangzhou and it made me think that he needs to take care of himself before he gets involved with anyone else.”
“You’re not the one that gets to make that call,” Lu Han says, serious now. “Do I agree with you? Yeah, I do. But promise me, if he tells you he wants more than what happened last night, you won’t turn him down. I know you don’t want to do that, right?”
Yixing nods contemplatively.
“And if you did do that, it would probably hurt him more, right? He’d be hurt and you’d be stuck yearning for him and it would be all your fault, right?”
“Ah, stop trying to make me feel guilty,” Yixing says.
“I’m not. I’m just telling you like it is. If he wants you and you want him...” He shrugs. “It’s kind of like with me and Sehun. While I was mentoring him, he kept making innocent attempts at trying to win me over. He’d study extra hard the night before so that he could impress me when we met the next afternoon. One time, he had flowers sent to my apartment telling me thanks for spending an extra hour with him. Then he told me he liked me, and while I thought he was cute all I could think was he’s my student, though! He’s my student and he’s really young... but I liked him too. It would hurt him if I turned him down, and it would bother me for as long as it took that I let something like that pass me by for the most minor, temporary of reasons. Look how happy I am now.” He grins and Yixing smiles a bit, shaking his head.
“Sehun wasn’t damaged by someone from his past, though,” Yixing said.
“Yeah, but I think what’s worse is that he was - and, admittedly, still is - so young that I could have been the one that damaged him, if I’d turned him away,” Lu Han said.
Lu Han was making sense, but Yixing would never openly admit that. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to let Lu Han know he was right as much as it was that he didn’t want to admit to himself that his own logic was flawed.
Lu Hun was absolutely correct. Yixing had no jurisdiction over the choice Kris wanted to make with his life, whether they concerned him or not.
Lu Han and Yixing spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the city, window-shopping until they gave in and made a few purchases anyway. The sun was getting low in the sky as they made their way back to their apartment building with shopping bags in hand.
Yixing is mid-sentence when Lu Han slows his stride and nudges him, then gestures with his chin directly in front of them. Yixing looks to see Kris smoking outside of the apartment again, seeming to be unaware of their presence.
“So?” Yixing says, unable to tear his eyes away.
Lu Han smiles, shrugs, and starts walking again. Yixing doesn’t bother to finish the sentence he’d started prior to their stop.
“Evening, Kris,” Lu Han says, sneaking a hand behind Yixing and pushing him forward. Yixing trips forward and Kris makes to catch him, but he catches himself and glares back at a smirking Lu Han.
“You two went shopping?” Kris says, gesturing to their bags.
“Yep,” Lu Han says. “But I bought a lot more than Yixing did, so I’m going to bring these upstairs before my arms fall off. I’ll see you two later.” Lu Han walks around Kris to get to the door, and once he’s out of Kris’s eyeshot he winks at Yixing then disappears inside.
Yixing would have spewed all sorts of cuss words at Lu Han but Kris was smiling at him and it was hard to be angry or bothered when that was the case.
“How are you?” Yixing asks.
“Great,” Kris says. “I haven’t been better.”
“That’s good,” Yixing says, and then he feels particularly bold. “That wouldn’t have anything to do with me, would it?”
“How did you guess?” Kris asks, and Yixing laughs.
“If you’re happy, why are you still smoking?” Yixing asks.
Kris looks at the cigarette nestled between his index and middle fingers. “Good question,” he says, dropping it to the sidewalk and crushing it beneath his foot. He looks at Yixing and raises his eyebrows. “While I’m at it, I might as well get rid of the the rest, right?”
Yixing watches in surprise as Kris digs into his back pocket and pulls out a carton half-filled with cigarettes and his lighter. Kris snaps on the lighter, opens up the carton and lights the tips of the cigarettes on fire, then closes it and throws it onto the sidewalk as well, then stomps until it’s nearly flat. Finally, he throws down the lighter and it breaks into pieces, the lighter fluid running in all directions on the pavement.
“That... was very dramatic,” Yixing says, snorting in laughter.
“You liked it, though. Don’t lie,” Kris says, wiggling his eyebrows. Yixing laughs harder, only to stop when Kris pokes the tip of his finger into the center of his cheek. “You’re cute.”
“So are you,” Yixing says. Kris wrinkles his nose and reaches back to pull open the entrance of the apartment building.
“After you,” Kris says, beckoning him in. Yixing walks inside and Kris follows him, taking his shopping bags from his hand and replacing them with his fingers.