please don't say you love me. (2/5)
PART 1
edited: 11/16/2013
2009;
“Happy new year!”
The screams and cheers are loud and Yifan almost drops his phone when all of Joonmyun’s relatives are screaming greetings to each other. He can faintly hear Joonmyun’s laugh and the cute little giggles of his nieces piling on him.
“Stop, please! You’re tickling me ahahaha---” Joonmyun’s voice is getting really high pitched and Yifan is laughing on his end of the receiver too.
“Don’t laugh at me, Wu Yifan! You’ve probably never experienced having so many cute nieces annoying you and taking up all of your time with their adorableness, haven’t you?” The chorus of giggles in the background make Yifan smile. Joonmyun really is close with his family.
“No, I have not experienced your pain, and I’m perfectly fine with that,” Yifan says matter-of-factly. The noise on the other end gets weaker and weaker until he hears a door close and Joonmyun’s alone.
“So why did you call me?”
Yifan plays with the hem of his shirt. He doesn’t know what to say to Joonmyun. “I don’t know.” Honesty is always the best policy. “If I bothered you, you can just hang up and we can talk after the holidays.”
There’s silence on Joonmyun’s side. “it’s okay. I want to talk to you.”
Yifan lets Joonmyun stay over the weekend in his dorm room. The younger boy looks frazzled, school bag heavy with clothes and books and papers that Yifan can’t understand. He hands Joonmyun a glass of water and frowns when he gulps it all down and goes straight to his schoolwork.
“Sorry if this weekend is going to be boring. There’s a festival that’s going to happen in our school and I was assigned to talk to our usual sponsors and see if they’re willing to participate in this new event,” Joonmyun apologizes as he pulls out a few papers and his cellphone.
Yifan frowns before pulling Joonmyun up from his couch. “Get changed into something more comfortable while I make coffee. Lots of sugar and cream, right?”
“And not too hot,” Joonmyun says with a smile. “Thank you, Yifan. you don’t know how much this means to me.”
Joonmyun comes out from the bathroom to see Yifan placing a cup on the coffee table, far from Joonmyun’s papers. He takes a seat on the couch and steels himself for the talking that he’ll have to do.
“You know, it’s three-thirty in the afternoon. I don’t really need coffee.” Joonmyun takes a sip anyway, loving how Yifan knew how to make his coffee perfectly. Yifan shrugs.
“You’ll need it. Trust me.”
By six-forty-five, Joonmyun’s done with almost half of the list. He still has a lot more to go, and knowing the chairman’s expectations, he’ll have to start looking for new sponsors as well. He’s also in charge of discussing how to spread the word out with the promotion team. There’s so much he has to do, and the festival’s expected to be held in a month.
“Relax,” Yifan says soothingly, massaging Joonmyun’s tense muscles. “You still have two more days to deal with the rest of the list. If you start at noon tomorrow, You’ll be done with that list before evening strikes. I know you have a lot to do, but this also a weekend and you should really get some rest.”
Joonmyun leans into his touch, enjoying the feel of Yifan’s large hands pressing at the knots in his tense shoulders. Usually it would be Joonmyun doing this to him after dance practice whenever they have the time. The role reversal makes Joonmyun smile.
“Alright, I get it. So what do we do now?”
They buy takeout from a chinese restaurant right across Yifan’s building. They sit on the floor of the living room, watching drama reruns and flinging grains of rice at each other whenever the main character says something overly cheesy or foreshadows a huge plot point without even knowing it.
“These people are so dumb. It’s obvious she’s not going to die. She’s the main character! Main characters don’t die!” Yifan yells out at the main guy who was crying over her hospital bed.
“Excuse me? have you ever watched ‘Autumn in my Heart’? Joonseo and Eunseo? Are you seriously telling me that main characters never die when the two main characters died?” The tears in Joonmyun’s eyes make Yifan laugh so hard that Joonmyun has to hit him hard just to shut him up.
“I have watched countless dramas just to learn this language, Joonmyun. ‘Autumn in my Heart’ was one of my favorites,” Yifan says with a fond memory of seeing Amber cry while they watched it together. If asked, she would deny that it ever happened, but the way her eyes became glassy would say otherwise.
Joonmyun leans on Yifan’s shoulder, and as the male lead whispers an overly-emotional speech in his true love’s ear while the antagonist watches from outside the room, he slowly falls asleep in that position. Yifan is too comfortable to wake Joonmyun up. He places Joonmyun’s head on his lap and leans his head against the couch. Joonmyun stirs a little in his position and Yifan places his hand on his head, slowly running his hand through the soft brown hair. The younger of the two makes a contented sound and both of them fall asleep.
After Joonmyun is done with his list of sponsors, Yifan calls Chanyeol up, bribing him with food and video games. Chanyeol comes half an hour later, bringing along Sehun and Jongin, both of them acting like they were forced to come before they dive into the pizza and chips that Joonmyun and Yifan bought.
They spend the night stuffing their stomachs with food and soda until all of them are lying down in the living room, too full to even move. Sehun is hugging a soda bottle to his chest, Jongin’s shirt is dirty with crumbs and Yifan and Chanyeol are too busy playing something and dying again and again. Yifan unplugs the device in frustration and they’re left in silence.
Jongin and Sehun say their goodbyes and leave as fast as possible. They stumble past things and almost knock down a table with how unstable their feet were. Joonmyun has to guide them to the elevator before they decide that holding onto each other and hoping that they won’t collapse will help.
From outside the door, Joonmyun can already hear Chanyeol’s and Yifan’s low voices in deep conversation. He enters and sits down on the couch beside them. Chanyeol is talking about debuting, his favorite topic recently. His voice is quiet but there’s so much bubbling excitement in it, so much enthusiasm for an uncertain variable that could or could not happen.
“I know I’m young and I’m probably not ready for the real challenge of it, but I’m so excited. Debuting as an idol is such a far-fetched dream for most people, and I guess that’s why it became mine. I want to exceed everyone’s expectations, I want to achieve everything that they only talk about in tv. I want to be my own idol and I want to do so well.
“Why did you two want to become idols? I mean, you would probably get a scholarship somewhere big and fancy and have a really nice life, Joonmyun. Why this? why not the safe life?”
Yifan stares expectantly at Joonmyun. He knows Joonmyun’s past, he knows Joonmyun’s desired future, but he has never figured out Joonmyun’s drive, never understood what fuels Joonmyun to stay in the present.
The younger male looks up wistfully. “I don’t want to be a lawyer.”
“What?” Yifan isn’t impressed with his answer.
“I don’t want to be a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher or an engineer. I don’t want to have a stable job that will support my family; the one I have and the one that I will have. I want to enjoy life. I’m going to enjoy life, but I’m also going to have enough money so that I won’t ever have to worry about not enjoying. My path is simple and straightforward. My means to getting there may not be as easy as that.”
Yifan is smiling to himself. Joonmyun’s answer was exactly what he wanted. He can feel a hand settle on top of his, linking their fingers together. He looks at Joonmyun and he’s smiling as well, not the typical gentle smile, but simply a smile. Yifan mirrors his expression and they hear a cough before they look away from each other.
“I know how to read between the lines, you know,” Chanyeol mutters as Yifan walks down to the lobby with him. The older of the two pretends that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about before ushering Chanyeol away. He waves goodbye before going back up to his dorm room.
Joonmyun is sound asleep on his couch, and the place is spotlessly clean. Yifan doesn’t know if Joonmyun knows how to do magic. He grabs a blanket and throws it over him. Yifan pats his head before retreating to his own room.
It’s the last day of their weekend, and Joonmyun is cramming all of his unfinished schoolwork. Yifan pities him; he doesn’t have to deal with any of that anymore. He wants to help out, but Joonmyun is probably much smarter than him and he’s not ready to get embarrassed. He settles with bringing Joonmyun food and trying to be as quiet.
Joonmyun finally finishes and he almost collapses out of pure exhaustion. “Samgyetang?” Yifan offers, and Joonmyun is instantly energized. He changes into nicer clothes and they go out, happy to finally be getting a break.
The old lady welcomes them upon sight. “It’s you two again! I’ve saved you a table because I felt like you’d stop by tonight. Sit down, sit down.”
Joonmyun’s fatigue is whisked away by the aroma of warm soup. Yifan smiles at the sparkle in his eyes, the determination to reach the end of the giant bowl. Their samgyetang meals are always lots of fun, especially when the old lady and her husband join them and they talk like one big family. The old couple treats them like their sons, the sons they’ve never had.
“I really wish you two were our children. Think about it; we must be so good-looking that we have two handsome sons taking care of us!” The old man had drunk a little too much, but his wife indulges him and they laugh all through the night.
When she finally decides that her husband is too wasted to be seen near two young boys, she closes the shop and says good night to her two “sons.” They smile brightly at her, bowing deeply before slowly walking back to Yifan’s dorm.
Joonmyun packs his things up and cleans the messy living room he’s stayed in for the past two days. Yifan looks sadly at him, hesitant to let him go home. “Come on. I’m already past the time I was supposed to go back. I don’t want my parents to get any more mad at me.”
“Fine.” before he leaves, Yifan gives him a hug and walks down to the lobby with him. They wait for the cab together and he waves goodbye even as he drove away.
He collapses on his bed with a giddy feeling and warmth in his stomach. That was a good weekend.
“Are you planning something special for Joonmyun’s birthday?”
Yixing lowers the volume of the sound system. He’s staying late to practice and Yifan is too tired to stand up. He wishes that Joonmyun could be with him to drive Yixing away and allow them to practice in peace, but Joonmyun’s been sick ever since preparations for their school festival was finalized and he could take a long break. Yifan wants to visit him, but it suddenly comes to his mind that he doesn’t exactly know where Joonmyun lives.
“Not really. I do plan on paying for everything he wants though,” Yifan says. He still has the list of everything Joonmyun wants for his birthday in his drawer. He knows he can get most of them, but the others (“ice sculpture,” “confetti machine” and “large chocolate fountains,” namely) were a little out of reach. Yifan knows he’s not serious with most of them, but he at least wants to put effort into trying.
“He wants a watch,” Yixing says coolly. Yifan perks up, clearly interested. “Nothing fancy or too big; preferably just a nice quality, brown leather watch. Joonmyun likes collecting watches, did you know that? He loves watching the hands move either completely in sync or completely apart. He thinks that every person is a watch; you can find people who are in sync with you and you can find people who aren’t. Sometimes your battery dies but it can always be replaced. Sometimes you need to reset yourself to find the right time and to be in harmony with the rest of the world and how it works.”
Yifan is in awe of what Yixing just said. Joonmyun has always been a bit philosophical, but his analogy of watches is simply beautiful to Yifan’s ears.
“Joonmyun says it better. Maybe you should ask him to tell it to you once you give him the watch.” That’s a clear sign that Yifan should start looking for a watch soon. Yifan thanks him for the (direct) hint and leaves the practice room.
“Happy birthday, son!” the old lady greets Joonmyun when she sees him passing by the stall. He bows deeply and smiles.
“Thank you!” he waves before walking at Yifan’s pace again. The taller male is chuckling, excited for the day ahead of them. He didn’t plan anything special, but he’s hoping the entire day will be special for Joonmyun.
The practice room erupts in cheers as they greet their good friend a happy birthday. Joonmyun actually gets a ton of real gifts, and even Chanyeol has something nice prepared for him. “I’m not allowed to be clever on your special day so I decided on actually getting you something.”
“Thank you, Chanyeol. I appreciate the consideration.” Joonmyun laughs. he places all of the gifts at the side. he’s surprised when Yifan is sitting in front of him, holding out a cake.
“you said you wanted lunch so we ate together. but I’ll never forget to buy you a cake.” Yifan lights the candle and places it in front of Joonmyun. “make a wish.”
Joonmyun hesitates, pausing for a good five seconds, before blowing lightly at the flame. it doesn’t go out and he pauses again, trying to blow it away but failing. he stops one more time and as he blows it away, the flame cleanly goes out.
“I guess I was wishing for the wrong things,” Joonmyun whispers to Yifan while they walk back to his dorm. Yifan doesn’t prod at him any further, not wanting to be nosy.
They finally arrive at Yifan’s dorm. Joonmyun doesn’t go inside, standing outside the doorway as Yifan awkwardly stands on the other side. They don’t know what to do so they stand there and wait.
Yifan prays for courage and he leans down and presses his lips softly against Joonmyun, relishing the contrast of his warm lips to Joonmyun’s cool ones. His hands find Joonmyun’s wrist and while the younger is still absorbed in the kiss, he puts on the watch that he bought for him. He hears a low whine from the back of Joonmyun’s throat and he pulls away.
Joonmyun is speechless as he processes all that’s happened for the past few seconds. He looks down at his wrist and gasps when he sees the beautiful watch on it. “How’d you know I wanted this? How did you know that I wanted this exact watch?”
Yifan shrugs. “Lucky intuition, I guess. and besides, I thought it would look nice on you.”
“Wow. thank you, I just…” Joonmyun trails off and he hugs Yifan instead, linking his arms around Yifan’s neck and burying his face against the crook of it. Yifan wraps his arms around his waist, enjoying how snugly they fit against each other. He can feel Joonmyun press a soft kiss against his neck before pulling away and trying to stabilize himself. Yifan holds on to his arms and they pause at the close contact.
“Happy birthday, Joonmyun. Good night,” Yifan whispers before kissing him again and backing away before he would fall into temptation and pull him inside the room. Joonmyun waves goodbye and Yifan doesn’t want to see him out because he doesn’t want to let go of this night, of Joonmyun and his cool lips and warm touch, of Joonmyun and how he didn’t even resist Yifan for even a second.
They don’t consider sneaking around in the middle of practices, kissing at empty practice rooms, leaving cute notes in each other’s clothes, spending a lot of time in each other’s dorm rooms and going on samgyetang dates more often a secret relationship. it’s not something they dwell on because they know that there is a honeymoon phase and they don’t want to break it yet, waiting for it to end by itself.
Joonmyun’s new dorm room is close to Yifan’s and they bother each other a lot. Yifan spends a lot more time in Joonmyun’s place, and it isn’t even awkward when they find themselves sleeping in the same bed. there’s a certain level of comfort that they’ve reached, a level that overlooks personal space and expected public scrutiny.
they’re under pressure, they know. they know that there will come a time that they’ll reveal themselves to everyone and they won’t be accepted as well as they want to. they know what the norm is. they know they’re breaking the norm, and they’re very well aware of how others react to people like them. no matter how happy they are, they’re both realistic people. they understand their situation, they know what they got into, and they know that their future will not be very bright if they don’t come out soon enough.
Joonmyun rests his head on Yifan’s chest. the steady heartbeat calms him down and he falls asleep in Yifan’s arms.
The first person to find out is Minseok. He catches them kissing after dance practice, alone in the empty room. Minseok doesn’t say anything, but they saw how he initially reacted. It’s not disgust they saw, just pure and utter shock. He walks away as fast as possible and they’re left standing there, praying that he won’t tell anyone else.
Chanyeol finds one of Yifan’s shirts in Joonmyun’s room, and instantly he knows. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he storms up to Joonmyun, shoving the shirt at him. Joonmyun is left sitting on the couch, staring at the fabric on his lap. He fondly recalls cuddling and hiding under sheets and silence, pregnant pauses filled with so many words unsaid.
“We weren’t planning on telling anyone,” Joonmyun mutters. Chanyeol sits down beside him, feet tapping impatiently on the floor. It’s his nervous habit, a telltale sign that he isn’t comfortable with this. He rests his hand on Joonmyun’s shoulder.
"I'm just kind of uncomfortable with this. Just a little," Chanyeol confesses. Joonmyun understands. Joonmyun understands so much.
Chanyeol pretends like nothing ever happened and Joonmyun is ever thankful for that. Yifan doesn’t know that Chanyeol knows anything. That’s why Joonmyun always trusts Chanyeol because no matter how goofy the guy is, he knows how to keep his mouth shut whenever necessary.
The secret stays a secret forever, and no one else finds out.
“Happy ‘you’re really old now’ day. I hope you enjoy your day,” Joonmyun says flatly. He and Yixing spent all night baking (and failing) while Chanyeol slept on his couch and woke up only to taste whatever flavor they tried to make.
Yifan only laughs at their eye bags and takes a bite of the cake. “This is good. I like this.”
Yixing hugs Joonmyun tightly. “We made it. He approves!”
“It lacks a little sweetness though.” Yifan’s comment halts their happy time and Yixing stares at him with wide eyes. Joonmyun hands him the jar of sugar wordlessly and runs away before the mess starts. Yifan knows what he’s going to do and he closes his eyes and braces himself for whatever’s going to happen next.
Yixing empties two cups worth of granulated sugar on the slice on Yifan’s plate, all with a bright smile. “Wish granted, birthday boy.”
Joonmyun and Chanyeol are both too busy laughing at Yifan’s “fish-out-of-the-water” expression to help him clean up the mess on his coffee table. Yifan grumpily wiped away the sugar and threw out all of the crap Yixing put on his cake.
“Not funny. also it’s my birthday, so you’re supposed to be nice to me.” Yifan crosses his arms and frowns.
“I never made that promise,” Yixing says, patting Yifan on the back. “I need to get some sleep though. bye guys!” Joonmyun walks him out and when he enters the dorm, Chanyeol’s gone too.
“He had to do something and ran away.” Yifan cleans up the table, leaving the rest of the cake on the table. He grabs two forks from the shelf and hands Joonmyun one of them. “Let’s eat?”
They spend the night eating cake and watching reruns of dramas again, laughing at all of the dumb plotlines they’ve made fun of before. This time, there’s a blanket on their lap and a lot of pillows surrounding them. Joonmyun does end up falling asleep on Yifan’s shoulder and they fall into the usual pattern of leaning on each other at all times.
PART THREE