Uncut Ties
Title: Uncut Ties
Pairing: Fanxing
Rating: PG
Warning: Feels, massive feels (This story is not fluff, but I don't know if it qualifies as angst?)
Length: ~1.5k
Summary: Out of sight sadly doesn't mean out of mind, and China isn't far enough away for Yixing to not take note of the press events happening there.
A/N: Proceed at your own risk, this is basically me writing a bunch of headcanons down (and literally a few hours after I wrote this I found out it can't have happened this way because Yixing was already in Thailand that day, BUT ALAS, CREATIVE FREEDOM. And that doesn't prevent the important parts from having happened.) The title comes from the metaphor of "cutting all ties with sb.", not from the article of clothing.
Uncut Ties
Yixing didn’t know whether he should be grateful or bitter that they didn’t have any schedule that day. He supposed bitter, because perhaps a busy day of schedule, rushing from one venue to the next with barely enough time to eat would have kept his mind preoccupied.
Instead he sat huddled into a corner in the backseat of their van as their manager drove them to practice. The light snoring around told him that the other members were asleep, using the opportunity of the car ride to catch as much sleep as they could.
It was the only reason he felt safe in cradling his phone close, earphones in so that no sounds would escape to his fellow band members. He had meant to refrain himself from using the internet today, but it had been a loosing battle right from the beginning. On his phone screen, a Miaopai video was displayed. It were mere 30 seconds, and yet he couldn’t stop himself from listening to it over and over again.
His eyes were screwed shut as means of a personal restraint. He couldn’t let old wounds be torn open again. The voice wafting from his earphones was painfully gentle. Yixing didn’t understand most of the song, only little words inbetween-me, you, love-but he never thought music was only about the words.
Taking a shallow-so as to not attract any attention from their manager-slightly shaky breath he forcefully smoothed the slightly pained look from his features. He had months of experience with quenching the uprising pain, until it was nothing more than a dull throbbing in his chest. When he started recognizing the neighbourhood of their company building passing in front of the car windows, he was half eager and half reluctant to finally pull the earplugs out and put his phone away.
----
Yixing mused it was his luck that he was generally a bit spaced out, and everyone knew it. That way he could still have hope that no one would notice that something was especially off today, his mind wandering more than usual. He didn’t think about him, he really didn’t, but the effort of keeping the thoughts away was apparently enough to occupy most of his mind either way. He was sure that the others were thinking it was just one of his usual unfocussed days, but when they took a five minutes break after their tenth run-through of Overdose, he caught Luhan’s eyes on him.
The elder's gaze was knowing, but Luhan didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything else but letting him know with his glance that he was aware of Yixing’s inner turmoil. He left Yixing alone, the same way they all didn't acknowledge how Tao, who used to be inseparable from his phone, hadn't looked at it once today. Yixing felt grateful that Luhan didn’t approach him with his knowledge, because he wasn’t sure how he would have reacted if he was confronted.
----
It was late at night-or early in the morning, depending on the point of view-when they finally returned to their dorms, completely drained by a day spend with dance practice instead of travelling for a change. They had caught the last episode of Kyungsoo’s drama at one of the common rooms in the company, together with various seniors and juniors. It had succeeded in taking Yixing mind off of Yifan for a bit, but as soon as they filed out of the van, most members making a straight run for either the showers or the fridge for a late-night snack, Yixing felt his phone like a dead-weight in his pocket again.
Slipping a hand into his pocket, he caressed it deep in thought. After all of them had gone through their nightly routine, and were ready to go to bed, Luhan stopped beside him for a moment. Placing a soothing hand on his arm, he looked Yixing in the eyes with open understanding. “If you need me…” He let the words trail of, not insinuating, just offering.
Yixing lifted his own hand to give Luhan's a reassuring squeeze, together with a small smile, that hopefully still managed to convey his gratefulness. He didn’t answer, but Yixing knew Luhan read everything he needed to know from that gesture.
Under the security of his blanket he took his phone out, turning the lighting to the minimum so as not to disturb his roommates. He opened KakaoTalk, stared at it for a few moments, then closed it again. The process was repeated numerous times, before he finally opened a new chat window. Yifan’s profile picture smiled at him almost mockingly. He knew that while they weren’t explicitly forbidden from any contact, they had been discouraged, strongly discouraged to initiate or respond to any contact. That was as direct as the company would usually get, the same way they were only discouraged from eating or encouraged to spend so much time at the practice room that only a few hours were left for sleeping.
Yixing could no longer count the times his finger had hovered over the delete option of Yifan’s contact, often enough that even if he should delete it, the numbers had burned themselves into Yixing’s mind by now either way.
In that specific moment, with Yifan's smile glaring down at him and the ghost of his gentle voice still ringing in Yixing's ears, the younger felt weak, mentally and physically exhausted, and he blamed that fact for his decreased self-control. Right then he simply didn’t want to care anymore about what the company told them, what was right for the group and what was wrong.
A few messages ran through his head, ranging from “You hurt us.”, “Why?” and “You broke your promise.” to “I miss you.” and “Why are you not here, or I am there with you?”. But in a way enduring the hours since the press conference had installed some eerily calm in him. He didn’t want to wallow in bitter feelings right now. So he focussed on the part inside of him that still furiously cared about Yifan, and that part was so happy that the other could do what he had always wanted to do-singing and acting, instead of rapping and being forced to act whichever way the management wanted him to behave.
He simply didn’t want to let all of his negative feelings lash out, he just wanted to feel some sense of connection to the man he had lived together with for 6 years.
So in the end Yixing settled for the shortest, most innocuous message he could come up with.
The little bubble appeared on his side of the chat.
Good job.
He stared at it for five minutes, wondering whether he just made a mistake. During all that time, the little number marking the message as unread didn’t disappear. Perhaps Yifan was already asleep. He didn’t have a crazy practice schedule to maintain anymore after all.Just as Yixing was about to shut the screen off and turn around to catch at least a few hours of sleep, he saw the telltale one vanish. Yifan was online, and he had seen the message.
Yixing didn’t wait until the other got a chance to answer, locking the screen of his phone and placing it on his nightstand, display down so that the light wouldn’t alert him to any potential messages. He didn’t think he could cope with an answer right now. Instead he forced himself to close his eyes and let sleep embrace him.
His phone on the nightstand was silent for a while, then it buzzed silently, silent enough that Yixing wasn’t awoken by it.
Knowing you watch me makes me want to do even better. Thank you. the screen read for five seconds, before it plunged back into darkness.
~.~.~.~.~
A/N: Originally this was posted on my Tumblr only, because it was just meant to be a quick outlet for the feels caused by the SOWK press conference back in September, but now I wrote a second installment for this series. So I figured I'd proofread it, fix it up and post it to LJ as well for completion's sake. If you're curious, this is the mentioned Miaopai video. Also I can't really seem to figure out whether I like this story or not. I hope you could enjoy it though. I'll have the next part proofread, corrected and uploaded tomorrow or the day after, hopefully. This author notes seems to be almost longer than the story OTL.