(DAY 6: #96) THE PRICE OF FALLING (6/6)
It’s later that night, after Yixing has finally managed to calm down the elder enough for him to go to sleep, a task that took hours, and even then Yifan hadn’t been back to being fully responsive, that the healer sits on the floor of his living room, books he hasn’t looked at in weeks strewn all around him in a frantic attempt to find knowledge he had overlooked so far.
He only allows himself to lose himself like this because he knows that Yifan is dead asleep, and that the blond will stay like that for a while. Yifan is always exhausted after a fit, and after the one he experienced that afternoon Yixing is certain that the taller is knocked out straight until the morning, if not even till noon.
It’s what made him pull the books out a little less gently from the shelves, making more noise than he’d usually dare to make when he threw them on the floor as if the books are at fault for the situation that Yifan is in, that Yixing is in.
They aren’t at fault, obviously, but Yixing doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about anything but how to heal Yifan, how to finally, finally make it stop, the constant up and downs, and the tear in his heart that’s getting bigger and bigger whenever he sees Yifan suffer.
To love and to lose or to not love at all.
Yixing thinks about that phrase a lot, has been thinking about it for weeks now, but he can’t come up with an answer. He loves, and there’s no way he can change that now. He doesn’t have a choice, so he can only hope that he doesn’t have to experience either of the options the phrase offers.
But his books give him no comfort, and they might only be an excuse after all, because he has only leafed through them aggressively, leaving them open on random pages before sitting back on the floor, looking at them in desolation. He can no longer pretend that everything is okay, not after the happenings of the day, and he has to confront that he might have purposely overlooked little details because they would have destroyed his illusion that Yifan was doing well. He has been doing well, in terms of not having any fits, but aside from that he has to admit that the other hasn’t been doing that good.
There is a fear eating away at Yixing, for all the times he sees Yifan sway, all the times things come crushing back down when they had just starting looking up. Yixing is so very afraid that he might not be able to keep his promise because while he doesn’t want to let go of Yifan, the void inside Yifan might tear the elder away from him without Yixing standing any chance.
It feels as if it is only a matter of time. With every passing day the fact that he’s bound to the ground seems to chip away at Yifan, wearing his resolution, his will to hold on, thinner and thinner.
And Yixing has to bring himself to face the truth that no matter how much he wishes for it he will never be able fill the void within Yifan just with his presence and goodwill. The helplessness he feels that night is overwhelming, as if all the fears and doubts he had suppressed that afternoon-or for weeks, months perhaps-come crashing down on him all at once, tearing him apart in the most painful way. He reasons he should be researching like mad because there has to be a way to help Yifan out there, there has to be. But he feels so utterly powerless that he simply can’t get his limbs to move.
For the first time he sits on the floor of his living room in middle of a reminder of why he’s feeling so miserable and just cries, ugly sobs ripping from his mouth as he curls in on himself. He cries until his throat feels scratchy and raw and his eyes burn, until he has no more tears left.
Somewhere along the way he felt the need to scream, to just let all his frustrations out, but the emotion quickly vanished. In the end he just feels empty, empty and numb. As soon as his sobs are nothing more than silent hiccups and his tears have stopped he gets up from the floor, and heads to the bathroom, cleaning his face in the hope that in the morning the elder won’t notice that he’s been crying all night.
He then returns to the living room to sort all the books back to their rightful places. The moves are mechanical, as if he’s running on autopilot. He feels as if the connection between him and his emotions is muffled, and everything he feels is dulled.
But even snuggling against Yifan in bed eventually doesn’t bring him the calm it usually does, and he hates that thought. Holding his boyfriend just reminds Yixing that he’s trying to run a race against time, and he’s losing.
---
The day after Yifan’s breakdown Yixing calls in sick-or rather he tells Junmyeon that Yifan had a bad fit the previous day, and his boss immediately tells him to stay at home.
He and the blond go through their morning routine in unusual silence, and then wind up on the couch, simply sitting beside each other, sorting out their thoughts. Eventually it’s Yifan who starts talking, apologizing again for scaring Yixing, which the smaller dismisses because it’s not like the elder did it on purpose. The conversation almost feels like a well-practiced dance to Yixing for how often they’ve already had it, albeit rarely in the last few weeks.
They then discuss how things will go on. Yixing suggests that it might be the best if Yifan isn’t left alone after all. “It was just a one time thing, Yixing,” the elder argues, trying to sound convincing. “I’ve been good otherwise. Just because it happened once doesn’t mean it’s bound to happen again soon.”
“But what if it does?” Yixing says, and he hates that he’s trying to bring down Yifan’s optimism when he’s been the one to encourage it in the beginning all the time, but he’s scared. “I’m not saying that it will happen again, I just want to be safe rather than sorry.”
Yifan looks at him with sad eyes and touches Yixing as if the younger is the one that needs consolation. Perhaps he does. “It’s okay. I get it, Xing.” But the blond’s eyes say that in reality he doesn’t because he doesn’t want to look at the signs Yixing that can’t help but notice now.
The next few weeks he takes Yifan to the hospital with him, and the elder spends his time either at the nursing station, or in the staff room, or walking the hallways with Jongdae or Minseok or even Luhan whenever the honey-haired male gets a day off and can drop by.
He’s only complaining slightly about it, saying he feels like he’s some child Yixing drops off at daycare in the morning only to come and collect him in the evening again. But Yixing just has to cheekily answer that that’s kinda what it is, and that Yifan is a big child either way, demanding kisses from the taller by pouting to make his boyfriend cease his whining and give in.
---
Yifan says he’s fine. He seems fine.
He holds Yixing in his arms and smiles at him gently, lovingly and Yixing wants to believe him, but he can no longer lie to himself, can no longer turn a blind eye to the reality of the shadow he sees in Yifan’s eyes.
It’s small, far away, overlaid by genuine happiness. Perhaps Yifan himself doesn’t know it. Perhaps he thinks he’s truly fine.
But he isn’t.
And Yixing knows.
He sees the faint lines of exhaustion in Yifan’s face from constantly having to fight the pull of the void and he knows that Yifan will never be completely fine like this.
And Yixing just can’t come to terms with that.
---
More than a month has passed since Yifan’s last big breakdown, but it doesn’t mean that Yixing’s worries are eased. The comforting bubble of illusion has burst, and Yixing can’t help but take note of the gradual changes that add up. It’s like the last fit set something in motion, a continuous deteriorating of Yifan’s state. Not in a way that he looks more exhausted, or as if there’s a stronger pull a stronger desire.
It’s the exact opposite, and that’s what scares Yixing so much more.
He never thought that he would have loved to see longing in Yifan’s eyes when he looks at the sky. Heck, he would even take the lingering pain that doesn’t disappear for a bit after the elder has to draw the curtains closed. Anything would be better than having to watch the lack of real emotions in Yifan. It feels as if every emotion of the elder is duller, less present.
It prompts Yixing to pick up his research with newfound vigor, spending night after night over his books, the internet, in the library or really at any place that could possibly hold any information to help the healer find a way out to help Yifan.
He refuses to have another breakdown similar to the one he had in his living room, turning the desperation into fuel to keep him going, even when he can see that the emotions Yifan’s trying to display are only an act, even when he can see how the elder is at odds with himself, as if he himself is fighting against the apathy but the veil is just too impermeable.
It’s by chance, really, that Yixing ends up back with the book that started so many things, triggered Yixing’s first episode of truly fearing for Yifan, the book that made him run to Luhan and whose pages contains all the words the healer doesn’t want to hear.
He forces himself to read them again nonetheless, because he can’t miss any potential chance, and any information, no matter how small, that might be important.
When Yixing first turns the page, he almost doesn’t believe his eyes, because how could he have missed this. Except he knows exactly how he could have missed the last few pages of the book, because he had been feeling too nauseous, too suffocated after reading about the suicides of wielders who lost their power to continue reading till the end. He put the book back on his desk with shaky hands before hurrying out of his flat, and that was where the book stayed for weeks, and months, because Yixing hasn’t dared touching it again.
It’s difficult for him to decide whether he wants to cry or laugh madly at his own stupidity because perhaps this would have spared him a few weeks of despair. Then again, perhaps the knowledge wouldn’t have changed anything at any point where he wasn’t as desperate as he is now. After all, the book mainly cautions against thinking that restoring powers is as simple as destroying them, or even possible in the first place.
“It’s best to like the process of having one wielder destroy another wielder’s powers to the process of breaking a vase. Your hands have the power to shatter it, but the reverse doesn’t hold true. There are too many other influences at work in the breaking of the china the vase is made off. You might be able to use your hands, the power of your hands, to glue the shards back together, but you won’t ever be able to return the vase to its original state.
“It’s always easier to break things than it is to mend them. That applies to a wielder’s powers as well. A wielder with healing abilities might be able to restore a muted wielder’s powers, but in the few cases it was attempted, not one showed complete recovery. More often than not there was only a minimal or no improvement at all ascertainable.
“On top of that it has been observed that in all cases where a healing was accomplished, no matter how small, it always was at the expense of the healer’s powers. A healer differs from other power wielder due to the fact that their power doesn’t affect others externally, but internally by transferring their own power.
“It hasn’t been possible to find satisfactory proof for this thesis, simply due to the lack of a sufficiently sized amount of samples, but it seems the most likely that in order to heal a muted wielder the healer him/herself has to transfer a part of their own power into their patient, and when letting it bud, it is lost to themselves forever.
“There have however not been enough tests made, and it is highly inadvisable to attempt the healing of a muted wielder, since there might be unpredicted and unprecedented side effects and complications.”
Yixing repeats the last sentence in his inner mind, as if it would make any difference at all. There are hardly any risks the healer wouldn’t take at this point, and none of them concern himself. He doesn’t know when it happened, when he started feeling like this, that he’s willing to give everything, anything at all to put Yifan back together.
He rereads the page, over and over and over again, until he’s sure he knows it by heart, simply because he doesn’t want to miss anything else after having already missed such vital information for such a long period of time.
Of course no new information appears on the page miraculously, nothing to guide Yixing through what he’s going to attempt, no further warning or reassurance about the consequences of his actions.
Essentially all he can do is hope that he’ll succeed, and won’t have to find out first hand about the “unpredictable” side effects and complications.
---
In the following days after his discovery he leads many internal debates, leading to even more sleepless nights. Yifan seems to notice that there is something that’s keeping Yixing occupied more than usual, but he doesn’t broach the topic, as if sensing that the younger is unwilling to talk about it with him either way.
He expresses his comfort in other ways, as good as he can while keeping himself together, mostly through physical comfort, lingering touches, tight hugs and holding the smaller close at night. If Yixing still needed any incentive to go through with his plan, all these small gestures would have been it. But he doesn’t need any further reasons. His resolution already stands either way.
The thing he’s debating over is not the if but rather the how. He’s caught between telling Yifan about what he found out, or simply going ahead with his plan.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both options, but Yixing has been leaning towards the latter right from the beginning. It’s making him feel guilty to not include Yifan in the process of making this decision, but there are too many question marks, too many possible scenarios where Yixing will not even be able to attempt his healing.
Because if Yixing is being honest, there is no way Yifan will allow him to go through with it, no matter how severe his own pain is, and how close to the edge he stands. Knowing of the potential risks for Yixing, the elder would always chose to fight this battle alone if it means he keeps the brunette safe in the process.
The fact that this reasoning neglects however is that fighting alone might have a lot of results, but keeping Yixing safe is none of them.
Eventually the smaller forces a deadline on himself because no matter how long he procrastinates, one day he will have to make a decision, and the sooner the better. Perhaps it’s a cowardly decision to not involve Yifan, but Yixing doesn’t think he could live with knowing there is a possibility and having the elder suffer nonetheless. Thus he decides that there is no way but to heal Yifan without his knowledge.
It’s fortunate for him that the elder has a pretty deep sleep because this way he can sit up in their in the middle of the night without startling the other. He starts with his usual concentration exercises, forcing his heart-that seems to want to jump out of his chest-to calm down, and whenever he breathes in he draws onto his powers, and whenever he breathes out he pushes the powers into his fingertips.
He repeats the exercise more often than usually, wanting to collect as much power as possible. After all he has to be quick and efficient he wants to have any chance at being successful. He still remembers his contacts with the void after all, and remembers how it simply consumed the continuous stream of energy Yixing directed at it at first.
Perhaps he has a chance if he throws as much energy as he can at it. The second important reason is that there is a high likelihood that the healing will wake Yifan up. After all Yixing can’t imagine how something as severe as this should happen without the other noticing when even healing a scratch or a bruise entails a short stinging.
It’s a weird feeling of calmness that flows through Yixing when he has collected all the power he thinks he can possibly store in his hands. He has made his decision, truly made it, without any doubt, and he will stick to it.
So there is no hesitation, just caution when Yixing lowers his hands to hover over his boyfriends back-
And then he’s pushing, all of his power flowing out of him at once, concentrating it at the void, where Yifan’s powers should be.
For a moment he is dizzy from the rush, then the pain starts, first slow and barely noticeable, but then it escalates, growing stronger and stronger, until Yixing feels as if someone is dribbling liquid fire onto his right arm, all the way down from his birthmark to his hands and back up.
He holds on for as long as he can, with all his power, but eventually he has to pull away. The pain remains though, and he fights hard to push it down, to stop it from overwhelming him. There are more important things to attend to now. He’s just happy that he’s still able to hold himself together pretty well, enough of his power left within his body to prevent a recurrence of the events that had followed his and Yifan’s first meeting.
Due to the pain Yixing hasn’t been able to concentrate on the void, and he doesn’t know whether he was successful, whether he held on long enough to make the necessary difference or if the pain is the backlash, the proof that he failed.
The moment Yixing pulls away the other awakes with a gasp, as if Yixing’s healing had caught him in his sleeping state for the duration of it. His grey eyes are thrown wide open as he inhales like a drowning man making it to the surface and being able to finally breathe again. Yixing on the other hand is clutching his arm, gasping for air, out of breath while he tries to keep the pain from his face the best he can.
Yifan stares at him in shock for all of two seconds before he sits up, grabbing Yixing’s shoulders roughly, grip tight enough to hurt slightly, but that hardly even registers with Yixing. “What have you done?” the elder whispers urgently, a hint of panic in his voice, eyes still wide.
It isn’t fear for himself that Yixing reads in the way Yifan’s eyes dart wildly around, as if trying to take in every part of Yixing’s body at the same time. The reason for Yifan’s agitation is worry, worry for Yixing, and it confirms all of Yixing’s decisions a thousand times.
The decision to heal Yifan, and the decision to go ahead with it without asking for Yifan’s permission.
“What have you done?!” Yifan asks again when he doesn’t get an answer, only that this time his voice is raised to a shout, voice cracking slightly at the volume.
He draws one hand away from Yixing’s shoulder to grip the brunette’s arm instead, pulling it away from the younger’s body to expose the birthmark. It’s almost as if he knows exactly what Yixing did, without needing the other to answer, but his eyes still widen by a fraction and he gasps in shock when he catches sight of the dark symbol on Yixing’s skin.
What once was a complete unicorn shape is now barely more than a horse head with a broken stump on its forehead instead of a complete horn, and almost invisible cracking lines run through what’s supposed to represent the mane.
“What the heck were you thinking Yixing?” he shouts as his eyes lock with the younger’s again. Yifan looks downright outraged, like a wounded tiger which has been backed into a corner and doesn’t know any other way but attack. His question seems to have been a rhetorical one either way because he continues before Yixing has the chance to answer. “Have you lost your mind? That was so reckless! There are a million things that could have gone wrong. Heck, perhaps they did go wrong!”
Yixing simply stays silent throughout Yifan’s shouting. He sits the blond’s fit of anger out since he knows that Yifan needs this right now-to just let all his feeling out. The other is almost like a broken record, repeating the same phrases over and over again of how reckless Yixing has been, and that he must have gone insane to attempt something like this.
It is almost weird how much it reassures to see Yifan like this, for multiple reasons. For a few weeks it’s been difficult now to get any sort of strong emotional reaction from him. Even though Yixing has seen him happy in the last months, including the last weeks, there always was something to hold him back, something to dampen that emotion. Anger as bright and intense as Yifan is displaying it right then is such a welcome change to the apathetic state Yifan has been wallowing in for the last weeks, and Yixing accepts it with open arms. Perhaps what I managed to do was enough after all.
Most importantly though the other’s state provides Yixing with a distraction, all of his focus solely on Yifan. He observes how the tall hands on his own shoulders are shaking from the tension in Yifan’s muscles, watches every little flicker of emotion that rushes through these grey eyes that have an intensity that could have kept Yixing in place all on its own, without the need of physical contact.
By observing all these small details he can stop his mind from paying too much attention to himself, to how his arm still burns or worse, examining the cracks in his power. He feels them, even when he doesn’t focus on them. The cracks are at the edge of his consciousness, just barely out of reach but a constant itch nonetheless.
Now he understands what Yifan means with the void, with the sensation of reaching out for something but only ever grasping air, and yet trying over and over again. Where he has only cracks, Yifan had a full hole, and if Yixing would allow himself to think about it he’s pretty sure he would feel sick to the stomach from the idea of what Yifan had to endure.
But all of these thoughts, sensations, are pushed away, safely concealed behind the more pressing matters of attending to Yifan.
With Yixing just watching him attentively, Yifan eventually calms down. His anger burned bright, but that means that it also burnt out quickly, leaving behind only the worry that was the reason why Yifan raised his voice in the first place. After taking a few shallow breaths, Yifan fixes deploring eyes on Yixing. The younger can see how troubled Yifan is, all the confusion and incomprehension, together with a dash of incredulity and disbelief. When he opens his mouth this time, it’s only a single word that falls from his lips, in a much quieter tone.
“Why?” His voice almost sounds broken.
“Because you weren’t fine,” Yixing simply replies, keeping his face forcefully straight, and it seems as if that’s all that’s needed to break down Yifan’s last wall. He stills completely for a second, looking utterly lost.
“You weren’t fine, Yifan,” Yixing reiterates, perhaps more to himself than to Yifan. “And I couldn’t just sit still and watch it.”
The elder’s face goes strangely blank, as if his brain can’t decide which emotion to display because there are too many. “Do you know the consequences?”
Yixing simply nods, even though he doesn’t know the whole consequences if he’s being honest. He hasn’t found out yet how much his healing really affected himself. “A part of my power for a part of yours.”
Worded like this, it sounds like a perfectly fair exchange to Yixing, but Yifan doesn’t seem to think the same. “But then why? Why did you do it if you knew of the price?”
This time it’s the smaller’s turn to look at Yifan in incomprehension, because this much should be obvious, shouldn’t it? “Because that’s what you do in love, right?” he replies honestly, before pulling his lips into a small smile. “You give parts of yourself to make someone else whole.”
Yifan stills again at the words, and Yixing wonders what exactly it was he said this time, but then it comes crashing down on him. He had spoken of love all naturally, without giving it any second thought, and it only registers then that they’ve never used that word yet. He is sure that they both already knew that that’s what it is between them, have known it for a while, but neither voiced it.
Until now.
It seems to be too much for Yifan. Everything-the shock, the surprise, the joy, the worry-and just so much more, all crashing together. Yixing can tell from the way the elder’s face contorts, and then suddenly Yixing is being pulled forward, head crashing against his boyfriend’s broad chest. He can feel arms winding around his shoulders, holding him tight. The smaller’s hands automatically move around Yifan’s waist to return the hug.
The chest he’s leaning against is shaking, and it’s the first indication he gets before he hears the sobs, controlled and bitten back at first, as if Yifan is trying to suppress them, but eventually he gives up trying to conceal it. “You’re stupid. You’re stupid,” he grates out in between sobs. “Stupid stupid stupid.” And he keeps on muttering the same word, over and over again, as he holds tight onto Yixing, sobbing silently.
Hearing Yifan cry obviously breaks his heart a little-it always does, and he is sure that it always will-but Yixing knows that the elder isn’t crying because he’s in pain, or because he’s desperate, but because a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. The brunette can feel it even like this, pressed against the elder, how the tension has faded from his muscles.
Yixing wants to laugh at their position because Yifan is holding him like the younger’s the one in need of comfort while it’s the blond himself who is crying. He wants to laugh at the whole situation, but the sound comes out as something that is caught between a laugh and a sob. It’s hard to tell the difference between laughing and crying at times, and right then Yixing feels like doing both at the same time either way.
He is relieved beyond relief, and despite everything that he might still have to face from now on, confessing to Junmyeon and Luhan and all his friends what he did, facing the cracks in his power, and having to find out how they affect him on the long run, in that moment he doesn’t care about these things the least. All he cares about is that he can bury his face into Yifan’s chest, can cling tightly to the elder, bunch the fabric of his shirt in his hands and feel the warmth the other is emanating.
They just stay like this, holding each other while Yifan’s mumbling of calling Yixing stupid grows more and more silent, until he’s only crying quietly.
“How does it feel?” the younger eventually asks when they’ve both calmed down, albeit still caught in a hug. He runs his hand along Yifan’s back, right over the spot where the birthmark is located, to indicate what he’s talking about.
In response, Yifan tightens his hold around the smaller’s shoulders, making a sound that sounds like a cross between a laugh and a sob. “Like you,” he confesses, sounding amazed. “It feels like you.”
Yixing replies with his own incredulous half-sob-half-laugh, but overall there’s a feeling of giddiness settling in the pit of his stomach at the idea that he did it. He managed to transfer a part of his powers to Yifan. He literally gave a part of himself to the elder to fill the void, and it worked.
“It’s different,” Yifan continues, elaborating. “It doesn’t feel whole, but now there is something there at least. If I reach out, I can touch something, even if it’s fleeting, but I don’t end up with emptiness.” His voice weak and scratchy from his crying, but he also sounds as if he finally allows himself to feel the wonderment and relief instead of only anger and worry.
“That’s good,” Yixing replies, and nuzzles his nose against Yifan’s collarbone in an affectionate gesture to show his approval. Now that the first brunt of emotions has burned out, he can feel a bone-deep exhaustion settle in, and frankly Yifan’s chest is always his favourite place to sleep.
He doesn’t really notice when the exhaustion claims him, too quick and powerful for him to fight it, but even in his half-asleep state, he does notice how Yifan shifts to lie the both of them down, keeping Yixing on his chest the whole time. Just before his consciousness fades, he feels the elders press a soft kiss to his hair, right above his ear.
“I love you,” Yifan whispers, as if he realized right then that he still hadn’t responded to Yixing’s confession. The younger falls asleep with warmth rushing through him, the pain in his arm all but forgotten.
---
As Yixing expected he hasn’t managed to heal Yifan’s powers completely, but that never was his goal to begin with. If there had been a way to restore Yifan’s powers to the way there were before, obviously the younger would have done that, but he knew from the beginning that that is out of question.
The next day Yixing wakes up late, when the sun is already past its zenith and shining full-force into his bedroom. The space beside him is empty-an unusual sight because Yixing doesn’t remember a single day where Yifan woke up first.
A few seconds he simply blinks away his sleepiness, studying the ruffled sheets in confusion. Then he suddenly notices that something feels odd, but not on the outside, not more than him waking up alone is uncommon-no, it’s on the inside, something that is off and that seems to draw his attention towards it like a constant pull of gravity.
It’s then that everything that happened the night before comes crashing back down on him. Healing Yifan, the pain in his arm, the cracks all over his birthmark and his power.
Healing Yifan.
Yixing is up and out of bed so quickly that he feels slightly dizzy when his feet collide with the floor and he sways a little as his sense of balance is too slow to catch up, but he doesn’t care.
He’s incredibly grateful for the small size of his flat because this way it doesn’t take him long at all to find Yifan. Then again, the smell of food would have probably alerted him to the elder’s position in a bigger sized flat as well.
The sight if Yifan running around shirtless in his kitchen, tending to pots and pans, makes Yixing stop dead in his tracks in the doorway. It’s not as if he hasn’t seen his boyfriend shirtless before-of course he has-or that the other’s well-built frame immediately lets his thoughts wander south-okay, perhaps it does a bit, but Yifan simply has a very nice back-no, it’s rather that Yifan has never before run around shirtless in the flat, at least not while Yixing was around.
The elder even usually sleeps with a shirt on, in order to cover up the scarred and broken birthmark on his bed, not wanting it to be a constant reminder for the younger (and perhaps to himself).
“Where’s your shirt?” Yixing can’t believe his own ears when he hears the sentence fall from his mouth, because honestly, there are so many more important questions at the moment, but his brain simply doesn’t catch up quickly enough.
Yifan spins from the stove to look at Yixing, and the younger’s heart misses a beat at the brilliant, overjoyed smile the other casts him. Within seconds the taller has crossed the room, and is smashing his lips against Yixing’s in a kiss. A bit overwhelmed by the fervor of the other Yixing stumbles, but one of Yifan’s hands is immediately at his waist to hold him steady while the other cups the younger’s cheek.
Despite the surprise, Yixing finds himself instinctively kissing back, and his heartbeat elevates when he hears the elder whisper “I love you”’s between the presses of their mouths.
When the elder eventually pulls back he’s still grinning, and Yixing smiles back automatically. With the over-sized shirt he wears to sleep and no pants, hair disheveled to equal parts by Yifan’s hands and the bed, he wonders how out of it and confused he must look, but Yifan doesn’t seem to care at all.
“Well, that’s quite the good morning greeting,” the younger eventually pipes up, making his boyfriend chuckle.
“Just for you,” Yifan claims, before a spark of excitement flickers through his eyes. “I have to show you something! Put your arms around my neck.”
Yixing does as he’s instructed, and when he feels Yifan’s hands at his thighs, lifting him up, he chuckles slightly when he wraps them around the elder’s waist. “What, are you trying to get me to have kitchen sex with you?”
“That sounds very tempting as well,” the elder acknowledges with sparkling eyes and the hint of a smirk on his lips. “Perhaps we can save that idea for later.” Then his grin fades away a little, leaving only a gentle smile behind that almost looks subdued in comparison to the bright happiness of before, but it’s a soft expression, and it makes Yixing feel warm all over to have it directed at him.
“Hold on tight,” the other warns, and Yixing is about to question what exactly the other is planning, when suddenly he feels them rise up.
His eyes widen, and his mouth drops open as he looks at Yifan, shock, surprised and overwhelming happiness all together. “You can fly!” he breathes out, looking down to see Yifan’s feet hovering over the ground a little.
“I can,” Yifan replies, and his lips turn into a grin again. “All because of you.”
This time it’s Yixing leaning in to kiss the taller because he doesn’t know how else to express his feelings. And that’s how they stay for a bit, hovering barely a feet over the ground, kissing, until Yifan eventually-reluctantly-lowers them back to the ground to tend to their food.
“Well, technically it’s only hovering I can do,” the elder explains when they’re sitting at the table eating late breakfast, or early lunch, or perhaps even late lunch-Yixing still has no idea what time it is, but he also doesn’t care. “It takes a lot of effort to lift that far, and then it’s as if I encounter some invisible barrier and can’t go higher. But I can lift off the ground again, and that feeling is enough.”
Yixing feels as if the other might have added that last sentence to assure him, to make sure that the younger doesn’t think his effort was in vain, but there wasn’t any need-it only took Yixing one look to see the elation in Yifan’s eyes and know that he has succeeded, and that was more than enough.
---
It’s not all good.
The overzealous joy Yifan displays is limited to the first few days when the hovering is still new, then it cools down. He’s not healed after all, only patched. The elder still has bad days, days when he doesn’t want to go outside because it’s too taxing, or when the remains of the void draw so many of his powers that he barely talks or doesn’t have any strength left to display many emotions. But those days are few and far in between, and all the other time Yifan is able to lead a mostly normal life. He goes outside by himself, does grocery shopping and picks Yixing up from work, sometimes with a small sheen of sweat on his forehead but with a smile on his lips.
Yixing, on the other hand, has to discover the sacrifice he made, and what it means to have these cracks in his power. He has to face the consequences on the first day he’s back at the hospital, directly after having told Junmyeon all about what he did-earning him a scolding similar to the one Yifan gave him, including everything from being called “reckless” to being called “stupid” and the whole ending it with a hug thing; there only is a lot less crying involved, and no shouting.
His boss is reluctant to let Yixing get back to work, asking him at least ten times whether he’s certain he wants to do that, or whether he shouldn’t rather take a few more days off. But Yixing simply points his thumb towards where Yifan is leaning in the door frame. “It’s okay, he’s been worrying about the exact same things so he insisted on coming along. If anything goes wrong, he’ll stop me.”
A glance is exchanged between the two of them, until they both nod as if their non-verbal conversation has led to a satisfactory conclusion. Yixing rolls his eyes at all the overprotective people he’s surrounded with, but he can’t deny that he’s happy to have Yifan’s reassuring presence at his side when he enters the room where he’s usually seeing his patients.
There is a slightly queasy feeling of insecurity settled in the pit of his stomach, but he ignores it as well as he can.
His first case is nothing out of the extraordinary, a woman who broke her feet when she fell of a ladder, and Yixing sets to work the way he usually does. Gathering the power takes a bit more effort than it usually does, but the real effect of the cracks doesn’t show until Yixing guides his power to the woman’s foot. He knows that the mending means pain for his patients, and he always prepares them for it.
What he isn’t prepared for however is that a sudden, sharp pain shoots up his arm, reminiscent of the sensation he felt when he healed Yifan. He is taken off-guard by the pain, so his breath hitches in what almost sounds like a sob and a loud, pained groan escapes him as he stumbles back.
Yifan is at his side within a second, rubbing his upper arms in a comforting gesture, worry etched on his features. “I’m fine,” the younger grates out, but Yifan doesn’t look as if the words are pretty believable.
When Yixing turns to continue the healing-after calming down the slightly scared looking woman-Yifan protests a little, but the younger silences him quickly with a firm glance. The pain resurfaces as soon as he resumes his healing, but this time he’s prepared. He grinds his teeth together, and forcefully controls his breathing. Yifan presses close to him nonetheless, rubbing soothing circles into his shoulder blades. Strangely, Yifan’s presence helps, dulling down the pain a little, as if Yixing’s power from within the elder is flowing through the touches a little.
It turns out to not be a one-time thing, the pain, and it’s not something that goes away over time. Yixing has never had an idea about how his powers really work, but it seems as if there was a part in them that kept him from feeling the pain his patients were feeling while he was connected to them through healing. That part is gone now, or broken, or transferred to Yifan, he doesn’t know. But it doesn’t stop himself from continuing his healing. It might be painful, and more exhausting now, but on days when he feels weaker, he takes Yifan with him and then everything is a bit easier.
It’s not that everything’s good. It’s not that it’s perfect.
Except that, somehow, it is.
---
One night they lie under the open sky, watching the stars. They’ve come up to one of the hills surrounding the hospital, Yifan having packed a picnic basket and a blanket for them to be able to lie down on the grass. It’s been a year since they first met, and Yifan insisted that even though this isn’t their proper anniversary-which Yixing was sure the other would prepare something extraordinarily cheesy for-they’d still have to do something special.
It’s a warm night for late spring, and coming from the cold of the winter Yixing is perfectly comfortable in a simple T-shirt. He had teased his boyfriend about whether the other would come all dressed up again, but that had just earned him a-pretty immature, in his opinion-poked out tongue in his direction.
Their food has long since been consumed, and now Yixing’s lying half on top of Yifan’s chest, his head resting against the elder’s collarbones as they both face up. Yifan has his arms wound around the younger’s waist, with Yixing placing his own hands above his boyfriend’s taller ones. No noises can be heard except for the wind that’s gently ruffling the treetops, and the first insects that are starting to emerge from their hibernation.
Lifting his right arm up as if to reach for the stars, Yixing can’t help but take note of the broken birthmark on his skin. “Aren’t we so cliché?” he wonders with a small chuckle. “I can’t be whole without you anymore because I gave you a part of my power. We’re irrevocably linked now.”
Yifan hums non-committally, and sounds as if he’s close to slipping off into the land of dreams, too relaxed to keep his eyes open for too long. “Well, as long as being clichéd means I get my fairytale ending, I don’t mind,” the elder mumbles, and Yixing can basically hear the teasing smile in his voice.
He laughs in response and swats gently at the other’s hands that are within his reach because that’s what he always does when the other is being too cheesy. “What? I got my prince, and he’s got no choice but to stay with me because he gave me a part of his soul or whatever our powers are. I think that’s pretty much a fairytale ending, if I do say so myself,” Yifan argues, a bit more awake now as he nudges the smaller playfully.
Yixing loves the sight of the stars, but he loves the sight of the stars being reflected in Yifan’s eyes even more, so he turns around on the other’s chest to be able to face him. “Whatever you say,” he whispers, leaning in for a kiss, and feeling the elder’s arms tighten around his waist as he kisses back.
It’s not a fairytale ending they have. There is no “and now all problems are resolved at once” charm for them. They still have to go through days that are harder, and live with the repercussions of their cracked powers.
But at least they’re in it together.
Nothing in life comes without a price-Yixing had reasoned this a long time ago. In order for Yifan to be a bit less broken, Yixing had to break himself a little.
And with Yifan’s warm chest beneath him, the elder’s long arms draped loosely around Yixing’s waist and the vast night sky above them, Yixing thinks that it’s a price that he’d be willing to pay a thousand times over.