An Unconventional Love Story [2/2]
When had it happened? Yixing kept trying to delve back into his memories of Wu Fan and him together, back to a time when he hadn’t even known what it was like for Wu Fan to not be at his side all the time. Even when he had cried from the heartbreak of losing his parakeet, Wu Fan had been there, his signature eyebrows shooting down in concern.
Yixing thought it may have been the time that Wu Fan had mockingly pressed a kiss to the back of his right hand when they were joking about fairy tales and then started arguing about the existence of happy endings in real life. Yixing kept saying that fairy tales do exist in real life (mostly because he was still enamored with the idea of real life unicorns prancing around ancient forests).
“If you insist, princess Yixing,” Wu Fan had relented with a cheesy, disgusting wink. Yixing’s throat had inexplicably gone dry and his heart jumped so much that he swore it reached his brain and stopped all of his processes of thought.
Once started, this kind of yearning only spread to each neuron until Yixing didn’t know what to think anymore. The unexpected quality of feeling something for his fiancé just added to the bone-crippling fall that Yixing was setting himself up for.
They weren’t meant to be, because arranged marriages didn’t work.
And there was that one memory that Yixing kept revisiting to squash any hope that he could have that Wu Fan could ever look at him like that.
It was a quiet Saturday afternoon, as Yixing tinkled with his guitar and Wu Fan pressed buttons repetitively on the television remote. Their parents had just left them in Yixing’s large living room to attend some important party and Yixing had already tossed several pillows at Wu Fan because he had already gone through several cycles of the TV channels, so he should just settle on one goddammnit.
Wu Fan just had to settle for a sappy romantic drama. Yixing felt embarrassed being in the same room with Wu Fan because his eyes were glazing over, which were indications that he was already tearing up over the protagonist’s predicament.
“And this is why we don’t watch Titanic,” Yixing grumbled as Wu Fan shakily reached for a tissue box.
“You just have no heart,” Wu Fan said. He dabbled delicately at the corners of his eyes. Yixing just shook his head and covered his face in mortification.
“I can’t believe I’m engaged to such a fucking fruitcake,” Yixing said. He looked at Wu Fan, and his breath caught.
The commercial was flashing on the screen now and for some reason, Wu Fan was looking at him with a suddenly serious expression. Yixing thought that he had actually taken offense for the fruitcake comment, but Wu Fan had been insulted by him worse than this. Maybe he had some kind of traumatic flashbulb memory over fruitcakes before?
Before Yixing could overanalyze things, Wu Fan was kneeling before him and Yixing stared warily at him.
“You’re not going to propose to me because we’re already engaged, you know that, right?” Yixing tried to joke. He stared like Wu Fan’s hands on his shoulders were wild animals escaped from the zoo.
“Xing,” Wu Fan said, and his lowered tone made Yixing’s stomach clench with unknown tension. “I want you to find someone who could love you all of his or her life. Someone who could protect you. Who could make you happy like no one else could. I don’t want this farce of an engagement to prevent you from doing that, got it?”
Yixing’s eyes were roaming across Wu Fan’s face, taking in the strained quality to his voice, that mysterious look in his eyes that made him feel like burning up like some kind of chemical experiment. He was shaking, trembling slightly, but he wasn’t sure if it was him or if Wu Fan’s hands were shaking a little, too.
It was hard to speak when he forgot how to breathe, so he just let his eyes try to say the thought that he would never say aloud anyway: What if I want that person to be you, Wu Fan?
But that would be diverging from their plan, which was to file a divorce after their parents succeeded in marrying them together. The business contract had required a marriage between the heirs, after all, and did not mention anything about what could happen after that. Wu Fan’s mom herself had sat them down once and informed them that should they want, they could separate after the wedding.
But then what was the point of being married in the first place? Yixing had protested.
Wu Fan’s mother had only taken one look at them and sighed. You know, I could tell you all these things about business technicalities and negotiations that allow the partnership to run smoothly, but… We just want you guys to be happy, she had said with a soft look on her face.
So why was Yixing agonizing over these possibilities of a future with Wu Fan when they had already planned otherwise?
“I just don’t want you to feel chained down, just because we’re in an arranged marriage,” Wu Fan said, sliding his hand from Yixing’s shoulders, leaving shivers and tingles to travel underneath Yixing’s skin. “You haven’t dated anyone lately.”
“That’s because I’m not really interested in anyone right now,” Yixing lied, his heart throbbing slightly with pain. The caring gaze that Wu Fan looked at him with made him feel like he was barely keeping his head above a water level that was rapidly rising.
“Okay,” Wu Fan said, before the drama was back on and he was taking a few tissues out for precautionary measures. Yixing went back to his guitar, hoping that the shaky twangs of the instrument didn’t reveal any of the stinging pressure behind his eyes that he was trying to hold back.
-
It was hard to take care of a moping Wu Fan when he was constantly demanding ice cream. More like, demanding to be spoon-fed ice cream from Yixing.
Yixing gave him a ‘are-you-kidding’ look, but still found himself sitting resignedly next to Wu Fan, scooping ice cream with a spoon and shoving it into Wu Fan’s mouth. He gave him a little glare seeing that Wu Fan looked a little too satisfied right now.
He was only doing all of this because this was the first ever breakup that Wu Fan had gone through and he was only being a good friend, right?
“More like a good fiancé,” Chanyeol had said after he dropped off some stinking tofu that Wu Fan apparently loved.
Wu Fan’s parents were home, for once, but they had retreated to their rooms seeing as Yixing was apparently more of a comfort than they were (they didn’t even know what Wu Fan was being all down about, anyway. The relationship between Tao and Wu Fan had been a secret).
“You don’t even look heartbroken. Why am I even here?” Yixing asked, almost rhetorically.
“I feel okay because you’re here, Xing,” Wu Fan said, his hands gripping Yixing’s hips as he tried to eat the next bite of ice cream dangling from the spoon that Yixing was holding. Yixing clenched his teeth because all he wanted to do in that one moment was to sink his hands into Wu Fan’s soft hair and mold their lips together until they no longer needed oxygen but each other to breathe. He wanted to taste the film of ice cream on Wu Fan’s tongue and replace Wu Fan’s scent with his own. Yixing could barely keep his hand from shaking as Wu Fan leaned forward to lick the ice cream almost obscenely off the spoon.
“What are you, twelve?” Yixing muttered.
“But I am heartbroken,” Wu Fan said, and in a spoiled fashion, put his head on Yixing’s lap. “Comfort me.”
Yixing smacked the top of Wu Fan’s head, and then patted him when Wu Fan said, “Ow.”
“Idiot,” Yixing sighed. Wu Fan just had to tell Tao about the engagement between him and Yixing. Wu Fan was too honest. Tao took everything well, at first, because he had explained everything and even dragged Yixing over to Tao’s side to clarify everything as well. Tao had known that it wasn’t exactly a real engagement in the sense of romantic sentiments, but his eyes started looking at them sharply more and more whenever Wu Fan was a little too clingy with Yixing.
It all kind of went downhill from there, and Wu Fan almost handled the events resignedly, as if he had known what was going to happen.
“We’re still friends, at least,” Wu Fan said, digging his chin into Yixing’s thigh painfully. Yixing tried to push him off by nudging Wu Fan with his elbow.
“Yay,” Yixing said a little too unenthusiastically. Normally, he would’ve expected the selfish part of him to be happy that Wu Fan was single, but his whole self just seemed tired, like he knew that Wu Fan was single but never available for Yixing.
Wu Fan looked at him questioningly, but Yixing shoved a spoonful of ice cream into his mouth to shut him up.
-
And that leads us to where we left off, in the engagement party where Yixing was desperately trying not to compare Wu Fan’s eyes to beautiful, distant stars.
They had both graduated from college. Different colleges, where they still somehow found the occasional time to hang out with each other and sometimes with their group of friends from high school. Both were still single, after more botched attempts at relationships with others, unless you counted their engagement a relationship of sorts. Maybe it was, just a twisted kind.
Yixing sighed again, holding Wu Fan’s left wrist up to check the time on his gold watch. Wu Fan shifted uncomfortably at the touch.
“Why is time passing by so slowly?” Yixing complained. “I bet I look frazzled and terrible right now, after standing for so long. My jaw hurts from smiling.”
Wu Fan inwardly disagreed, because Yixing looked the opposite from terrible. Sure, there was an almost wild look in his eyes, but Wu Fan associated that from being trapped inside a social event for that long. The white shirt that Yixing was wearing was a little rumpled, but the black suit that curved around his body made him look even more elegant than usual.
Watching as Yixing got fished into yet another polite conversation with some guests (Wu Fan’s face was apparently too intimidating to go near right now), Wu Fan felt that familiar flare of affection as Yixing fiddled with his pants pocket almost absentmindedly. His other hand was holding a stemmed wine glass, wrist titled in a relaxed manner that contradicted the stressed stiffness of Yixing’s shoulders. Wu Fan had the sudden urge to press his hands into the knots of Yixing’s back, because it had been a while since he had seen Yixing be truly relaxed.
A jolt of that ever familiar, yet unwanted, feeling of desire when he saw Yixing tilt his head back a little with those dimples of his had Wu Fan trying to look somewhere else desperately. These bothersome emotions always overwhelmed him like a tidal wave, retreating before drowning him again. It was only a few years ago that Wu Fan finally admitted to himself that he wanted Yixing more than he should.
He was too busy trying to lock his feelings inside to look for indications that Yixing felt the same way.
So there he was, trying but failing at not looking at Yixing. His eyes soaked in the way Yixing’s eyes squinted a little as he smiled (even his fake smile, which was endearing in its own way) and tried not to think about how much he wanted to kiss every knuckle on Yixing’s hands.
Yixing’s adam apple pulsed as he took a drink from the wine glass, and Wu Fan sighed softly in want.
It was a relief for the engagement party to be finally over and done with, and the two were left standing awkwardly, staring at each other. In a way, the congratulations that everyone had piled on them today had finally solidified the situation for them, made it real.
I’m going to marry Yixing, Wu Fan couldn’t help the thrill and the undeniable warmth blossoming in his chest. Even though it wasn’t for realreal, he couldn’t help but feel that excitement making his heart pitter-patter all over the place.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Yixing said, his long lashes hiding the swirling emotions in his eyes. They had to make decisions on what the wedding was going to look like, after all, much to the insistence of their parents.
“Okay,” Wu Fan said, and impulsively embraced Yixing. Yixing had frozen in shock for a second before melting like liquid into his hug. Wu Fan was crazy, but he didn’t want to ever let go of Yixing.
He felt cold when they parted, even though it was temporary.
-
The wedding was beautiful, and Yixing was just fucking gorgeous, and Wu Fan was just wishing that everything was for real because his throat felt like a frog had been stuck inside and he couldn’t swallow it down.
“You may now kiss the,” the priest paused, “the groom.”
Wu Fan found it almost funny that their first kiss happened when they got married, but Yixing’s lips pretty much erased every miniscule of thought in his mind.
It would’ve been a little inappropriate to pull Yixing closer, so Wu Fan suppressed the desire to lick his way into Yixing’s mouth. Yixing just looked flushed after the kiss but smiled brightly at him anyway and Wu Fan just felt like there were freaking knives sticking into his heart and floating on top of the universe at the same time.
It should be illegal to have this many emotions at the same time.
Kyungsoo, one of the guests, afterwards gave Wu Fan an almost judging look. “You’re both kind of idiots, aren’t you?” He said, and Wu Fan had no idea what he meant before Kyungsoo went back to wiping the cake off of Jongin’s pouting face. His parents (and Yixing’s), on the other hand, looked like they were in seventh heaven.
“You guys look so great together,” Yixing’s mother half-sobbed as she gripped Wu Fan’s arm almost painfully. “I’m such a proud mommy today.”
“Mooooom,” Yixing said in that way that really took Wu Fan back ten years or so. “Oh my god, you’re so embarrassing.”
Wu Fan only laughed, pushing the thought of the imminent divorce from the back of his mind, and allowed himself a few moments of possessiveness over his new husband. Yixing looked perfect, with that curling smile directed at him and his waist warm underneath Wu Fan’s hand.
-
They decided not to waste a free (paid for by their parents) honeymoon, though, and arrived at the airport with an excited tension sparking off their skins.
The flight was meant to go to Paris (Yixing’s eyes lit up at the very thought) but then their travel agent somehow switched up their information with someone else’s, and they stood in New York’s airport with confused expressions pasted on their faces.
“Okay, now where do we go?” Yixing said slowly. Personally, Wu Fan didn’t care where they were as long he was with Yixing, and he just sounded so sappy that he wanted to dramatically stab himself for all the cheesiness.
It turned out that Minseok had an apartment in Manhatten that he wasn’t using at the moment, and he graciously allowed them to use it.
“Have fun on your honeymoon,” Minseok teased through the phone, before laughing at Wu Fan’s spluttering and then hung up.
“So? What’d he say?” Yixing asked with an expectant look on his face, but Wu Fan couldn’t look at him without flushing.
“It turns out that we could stay in New York for a while,” Wu Fan said.
Sightseeing turned out to be not as hectic as they thought it would. They took their time scouring the downtown sights and twitching at the high prices of the restaurants. They went to all the places that tourists would usually go, but also detoured at random places like the Museum of National Mathematics. Wu Fan had been to New York before, on a few vacations with his parents, but every sight and sound felt magnified with Yixing next to him.
Minseok’s apartment turned out to be a one studio room with one queen sized bed. It was probably teeth-achingly expensive despite its small size, because it was located next to Union Square and the rumbling subway. They had taken one look at the bed and stared at each other. Wu Fan was about to claim the sofa as his new sleeping apparatus when Yixing shrugged and said, “We’ve done this before.”
“Yes,” Wu Fan said, “When we were small and we had sleepovers and you whined that the floor was too hard to sleep on.”
But there was no arguing against Yixing when he looked obstinate like that, so Wu Fan just flopped onto the bed at night and tried to create a make-shift boundary between them with a stuffed dragon that they’d gotten as some sort of wedding gift.
Somehow, when he woke up, Yixing’s face was right in front of him. Yixing was hugging the dragon, looking really huggable himself. Instead of jumping right out of bed, Wu Fan shifted into a more comfortable position and clutched his pillow with his heart pounding at the fact there was less than five inches separating him and Yixing.
But when everything was quiet except for Yixing’s soft snuffling in his sleep, Wu Fan found his mind straying into painful territories that he had been trying to avoid the entire trip. Something inside of him hurt when he thought about the possibility of Yixing being with someone else in the future, which was what was most likely going to happen. He really meant it that Saturday night when he had told Yixing that he shouldn’t let this arranged marriage shit get in the way of finding someone that would make him unbelievably happy.
It would probably break his heart into tiny little pieces, but he placed Yixing’s happiness as his first priority before anything else.
What a fool he was, Wu Fan thought as his eyes blurred and he felt sleepiness overtake him, to have fallen for such a gorgeous creature.
-
Miracles did happen, though.
On the morning of the fifth day of their so-called honeymoon, Wu Fan was sitting with his laptop on with his tired mind thirsting for a cup of coffee when Yixing plodded in from the bathroom. Ten cups of coffee would not have injected the same amount of adrenalin into Wu Fan’s veins that the sight of Yixing in Wu Fan’s shirt did. The buttoned stripe shirt went down and stopped a few inches past his hips. Yixing hadn’t even bothered on putting his pants on, showcasing his pale legs. Wu Fan’s jaw dropped because Yixing had no idea how tempting he looked right now.
“What are you doing so early in the morning, Wu Fan?” Yixing draped his lanky arms around the other man’s frame, eyes peeking at the computer screen.
Wu Fan had to take a sip of water before answering because his throat, all of a sudden, felt like a desert wasteland.
“Business stuff,” he said. It was true, since he was starting to be burdened with all the going-ons of his family’s business now that he was an independent adult. He knew that Yixing already had a handle on these matters earlier on, when he worked part-time in his family’s company during college.
“Fun.” Yixing nuzzled into Wu Fan’s neck like an over-starved affectionate puppy. Wu Fan was staring at the screen blankly because he forgot what he had been doing and now he just needed to remember to keep breathing like a normal human.
“Yixing,” Wu Fan gritted out. “I don’t - You’re - ”
Yixing looked up, and their eyes met, and the comfortable atmosphere morphed into something that made Wu Fan feel like having a headache because it was too early in the morning for this.
“What, Wu Fan?” Yixing asked softly, his eyes looking like dancing flames.
“You’re - ” And still he couldn’t form a full sentence. Instead, he wound an arm around Yixing’s waist so that they were facing each other fully, and almost instinctively, Yixing leaned in. “You’re insufferable.”
Then they were kissing, lips trembling against each other’s, small puffs of breaths exhaled out before Wu Fan leant in for more more more, always more. Yixing looked ethereal, with his fingers tangling up in Wu Fan’s hair like he had fantasized about this moment millions of times already, and Wu Fan felt like there was electricity traveling from the tips of Yixing’s fingers and jumping into the nerve endings of his skin.
In between their tongues tangling together, Wu Fan pulled away long enough to gasp, “I’m being selfish, aren’t I?”
Yixing pulled him back in, murmuring that if he was being selfish, then so was he.
Wu Fan couldn’t shake off the feeling that there was someone better for Yixing than himself but then Yixing erased those thoughts with the taste of his lips, and tongue, and skin until Wu Fan couldn’t think anything but how Yixing looked and felt.
-
It was until much later, when Yixing was tracing strange patterns on Wu Fan’s body that Wu Fan realized that maybe Kyungsoo was right when he said that the two of them were kind of idiots.
“This means we’re not getting a divorce, right?” Wu Fan felt anxious as he asked that, like the reply would either break or make him the happiest man on Earth, which it would.
“I hope not,” Yixing said, coy smile in place he placed a kiss to the back of Wu Fan’s hand much like Wu Fan had done years ago.
Wu Fan let out a strangled noise in response.
-
“So yeah, we’re together together now,” Wu Fan said with his heart in his throat, hand gripping Yixing’s tightly. Yixing squeezed back.
All of their friends gave them an unimpressed look.
Luhan threw his hands up. “Only to yourselves. I personally believed that you guys were pretty much together since high school.”
Everyone else made noises of varying agreement.
“Yeah,” Baekhyun practically snickered. “I mean, Kris was pretty much as whipped by Yixing as he is today.”
Wu Fan opened his mouth to protest, but then closed it and hung his head, knowing that he couldn’t protest against something that was true.
Yixing gave him a comforting peck at the corner of his lips, and Jongdae pretended to gag.
“You guys are exactly the same except for the extra PDA. Tone that down please because I just ate lunch,” Jongdae said.
Wu Fan stuck his tongue out at him.
-
Life with Yixing wasn’t perfect, because they often argued over nonsensical things, like how they argued over the amount of cheese Wu Fan had put into dinner last night. They fought often, but most of the time, they weren’t serious. And the times when there were serious fights, the longest record was three days before they started bickering normally again.
Wu Fan still felt his heart swelling at random moments, like when Yixing had flour on his nose or when he was pulling weird faces at Jongdae’s turtles, and felt the gratitude that out of everyone in the world, Yixing chose him to be with.
“I’m glad you’re happy,” his mom had told him after a family dinner. This time, it could finally be qualified as a true family dinner (instead of two totally different families that ran rival fruit companies coming together) because Wu Fan and Yixing were the glue holding all of them together.
“Me too.” Wu Fan grinned before giving his mom a sentimental hug.