DAY 12: Your Lips Pressed To My Neck
Title: Your Lips Pressed To My Neck
Written by: officiallykris
Pairing: Lu Han/Lay
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language
Summary: Yixing is not so good at keeping secrets. But that turns out to be not such a bad thing.
Yixing doesn't know when it started, but he remembers the realization, the knowledge that comes to him out of nowhere and all at once, in those few seconds it takes for him to look and to want with such terrifying intensity he thinks he'll actually disappear, thinks his body will just break down to nothing and leave behind only remnants of this desire, this longing. His chest aches with it.
Lu Han fucking glows after they open for Super Junior in Indonesia.
It isn't necessarily a new thing, this post-show radiance. Everyone exudes some kind of energy afterward. Zitao laughs louder and smiles wider, Wu Fan's presence is just that much more palpable, like a forcefield around him that Yixing can't not notice. Jongdae and Minseok can forget, momentarily, that they're in a group that promotes in a country they don't call home, and they seem genuinely happy to just be part of something.
Yixing's whole body hums with anxiety, his skin buzzing and his mind stuttering from one thought to the next, mimicking the rapid beat of his heart as he tries to come down from the adrenaline high. This isn't surprising either, that he would have the hardest time coming down, that his body would be the one to react so adversely. His body may work for him in a studio, on stage, in front of a crowd, but behind a curtain, when he's not putting on a show, it's one violent struggle after another.
Lu Han, though, Lu Han is exactly the opposite. Lu Han's body seems to settle, and he moves off the stage with all the effortless grace he has when he's on it. He looks tired, fucking exhausted, but it's a contented kind of exhaustion. The kind that Yixing knows he'll feel after he's had a shower and his limbs are no longer burning from overexertion, his mind no longer racing. Watching Lu Han slide onto the long couch in the communal dressing room, sprawled out like he owns the whole goddamned venue, is like watching someone in those few minutes after they've come in your hand, in your mouth, and before they succumb fully to the deepest sleep.
It makes so much sense, that Lu Han would look like that, would remind Yixing so much of sex in those moments between screaming fans and endless movement and nothing, total fucking deprivation. Because Lu Han's voice is always so on, permeating and invading and surrounding and so, so solid. It makes sense that the feel of it hasn't quite left him yet. Yixing wears the energy of the show like a skin for hours after.
It's the watching that is Yixing's first mistake. But he watches, and he can't breathe for how much he wants to climb between Lu Han's spread legs, to just lay himself out along Lu Han's chest and tuck his head up under Lu Han's chin. He wants to bury his face in Lu Han's neck, wants to lick away the beads of sweat he knows are sliding down the tendons. He burns with the want of it, fire coiling low in his belly and making his whole body feel hot, flushed and sweating. He's fucking consumed by it. He wants to curl up in the space between Lu Han's body and the back of the couch, right where he knows he'd fit, so perfect.
He settles for being as near as he can be without actually touching. He has at least the foresight to know that it would just be another mistake. He slides down onto the floor in front of the couch, wrapping his arms around his folded legs and laying his head down on his knees. He breathes through his nose, tries to calm down, and stiffens when he feels a hand slide through his hair. It can only be Lu Han's hand, because Zitao pulled Wu Fan down the hall for some food right after they went off stage and Yixing can see Jongdae and Minseok, curled up on the floor near the door. Jongdae is laughing and kicking his legs in the air, the fucking maniac, and Minseok is rolling his eyes and saying something quietly that Yixing can't hear but that makes Jongdae laugh more. And he wishes suddenly that he'd chosen to lie down with them, wishes he'd let Jongdae's hand on his ankle pull him down. It would have been safer. He could have let Jongdae wrap impossibly strong limbs around him, and Minseok would have told him to calm down, would have slid a cool hand around Yixing's wrist and whispered soothingly until Yixing found he wasn't quite so jumpy.
"Be still." Lu Han says, and even though Yixing finds it hilarious that Lu Han could think that would help, that Lu Han doesn't know he'll be awake for hours tonight, staring over at Lu Han's bed in their hotel room, thinking about the hand in his hair and the voice in his ear and the fucking heat everywhere, inside and out, surrounding him, he feels himself relax a little, just slightly, and then a little more. He feels the tension seep from his body, his head start to clear.
And then Jongdae is singing loudly along with KRY's opening song, right in Minseok's indulgently smiling face, and Zitao is puffing his cheeks out around a mouthful of pastry as he and Wu Fan come stumbling back into the room, and it's so normal that Yixing feels the heat simmer down. His chest doesn't ache too badly anymore, and he feels like he might be able to handle this, this sort of dull burning. This could be his new normality and he could live with it.
And no one ever needs to know.
Yixing hasn't always been in love with his best friend. That's actually a fairly new development.
That's not to say he hasn't always been attracted to Lu Han. It's near impossible not to be attracted to Lu Han, in some way or another. Oh, he knows not everyone wants to fuck Lu Han, knows that there are people that don't think about kissing Lu Han or even touching him at all really. Wu Fan doesn't get caught staring like Yixing does sometimes, when they've been stuck in the studio for hours and they're all burnt out from rehearsal and their movements have gone from sharp and precise to barely there, sloppy around the edges. And while they joke about poorly concealed jealousy, Yixing is just glad they're almost finished for the day so that he can go home and try to forget about how Lu Han's hips looked more defined than normal when he'd tugged his sweats down a little, how his tongue had left a thin sheen of saliva along his swollen lips when he'd licked them. Chanyeol doesn't pull out his guitar in the middle of their days off just so he can seek Lu Han out, sit down with him on the balcony, listen to him stumble through old folk songs between secret drags off a cigarette and sips of bitter, black coffee. And when they're found a couple hours later, Yixing doesn't tell anyone about the pain in his fingers from his reforming callouses, but he does notice the look in Joonmyun's eye is chiding but amused, and nothing like the admiration Yixing knows had been present in his own gaze.
But it hasn't always been like this. They were just friends once. Yixing could go for days without speaking to Lu Han, didn't always get anxious and off-balance when he didn't hear Lu Han's voice, and he definitely didn't always leave the practice rooms hard and aching in his pants.
He doesn't know when it started. But anymore, he's not sure that even really matters.
Sometimes, a shower isn't enough. Sometimes, time and rest barely help at all. They go from city to city, get lost in countries, in cultures and languages and adventures, and still they're expected to perform and give interviews and pose for photos taken by a bunch of girls that barely give them enough room to breathe.
Fame is… exhausting.
And Yixing's body takes the brunt of the activity and sometimes he just can't seem to get it to recognize when it's all over.
It happens the most on nights overseas, when they've done show after show and he doesn't even know how long they've been on solid ground, or worse, how long they're going to stay grounded. He'd stopped trying to pay attention to their schedules a couple weeks in. It was useless, and Wu Fan always knew anyway, so Yixing let him play leader and do what he did best. Yixing danced.
But there are nights, hours after they've left the venues, when the others are busy slipping in and out of the showers and each other's rooms and passing out whenever and wherever and Yixing finds himself in one corner of the dorm, one end of the hotel room, gripping his knees and willing his heart to stop pattering away at the inside of his ribs, inhaling as deeply as he can, only to get shaky, uneven exhales for his efforts.
He's close to tears by the time Lu Han kneels down in front of him, takes his trembling hands up in fingers that are solid and steady, and whispers, "Hey, calm down."
It's almost disgusting how effective it is, how quickly Yixing feels himself loosening up, breathing easier, thinking clearer. "You don't have to do this," he says, though out of frustrated obligation or grudging appreciation, he doesn't think he'll ever know.
And Lu Han smiles like he does those mornings they're caught making music together, the one he throws at Yixing in the mirrors in the practice rooms, secrets and fatigue and genuine, easy happiness.
"Someone's gotta take care of you. Sure as hell know you aren't gonna take care of yourself."
It feels normal then. To let himself smile back, to nod and accept the hand under his elbow, pulling him up, over to his claimed bed for the night.
And if his heart still hasn't completely settled back into its normal rhythm by the time Lu Han is done in the bathroom, sliding under the sheets behind him, ignoring the other bed altogether, well.
Yixing can be good at keeping secrets.
Except, Yixing is really bad at keeping secrets apparently. Because a few weeks later, when they're gearing up to go on stage for their first concert in the states, Jongdae is smiling at him from his stool in makeup. And nothing is really making any sense right now because they're getting ready to perform with their seniors in the states and Yixing might be having a preemptive panic attack and he's definitely been bugging the stylist about finding Lu Han for the past ten minutes.
"I know," Jongdae says, and Yixing's back tenses so quick, spine going straight and shoulder blades snapping nearly completely together, that it's a wonder he doesn't break something.
Of course he knows.
"It's okay, you know," Zitao says later, because apparently everyone is on to the fact that Yixing has a crush on his best friend.
Yixing watches Zitao's hair in the dim light of the hotel lounge. It's a mass of gel and sweat that makes it look almost blue and he contemplates suggesting the color for his next set of contacts. It would go well with the red he's had in his own hair for so long it looks almost natural now. It's pretty. And he likes the way it glows under stage lights, but it's kind of making the ends feel fried again, like they had back when he couldn't afford a lot of food in his early trainee days. Before Lu Han came around and offered to share his… everything.
"Is it?" he asks, because he's not really sure what Zitao is saying. But he is sure. He has a general idea, at least, and that's all that's really needed for them now anyway. They stopped having complete conversations with each other a long time ago. He can talk to Zitao almost as easily as he can talk to Lu Han or Wu Fan.
Zitao nods, and Yixing knows that to mean much more than a simple yes.
It means, "it's okay," and, "it doesn't have to change anything."
But most importantly, it means, "I won't tell."
Yixing wasn't always been in love with his best friend.
But, see, the thing is, that doesn't matter.
Because he's kind of always been on his way to being in love with his best friend. He just never expected to stumble upon the realization so suddenly.
The great thing about being in an international boyband is that there's always a distraction. He can lose himself in the chaos of unfamiliar places and new people and after parties and the showroadshow cadence that he doesn't necessarily like but that he seems to just naturally fall into. They all fall into it, and he wonders if it is even possible that he ever considered being anything but a musician.
Some shows, he's fine. He dances, he sings, he laughs when the MCs laugh and people like him. And he can go back to their hotel and sleep at least some of the exhaustion out of his bones.
Others, he shakes and stutters his way through. He forgets his name until he hears it screamed back at him in rhythm to their music, he stumbles over a move he tries to make too sharp, and he gets so disoriented in the lights and the motion and the sound of his own voice through the speakers. Those nights, he doesn't sleep at all.
But those are also the nights that Lu Han climbs into bed beside him, and he only has the time to worry about secret feelings and his own inability to stabilize his cardiac rhythms until the next time their cells ring and Wu Fan is telling them to meet in the lobby for roll call in fifteen.
He gets a few nights off for his birthday. It should be good, should be great even.
It's not.
K is doing shows, and there are fansignings and it does nothing to help Yixing keep his mind busy. He shouldn't want it busy, though. He should want it to relax a little, to come down from the all the scripts and the routines and the gogogo that has become all but a form of normalcy for him. He should want a break from all that.
But a break from those things also means a break from the distractions he's been clinging to, gives rise to the things he doesn't want to think about, hasn't wanted to think about since he started thinking about them months ago. It's a vicious circle, and by the second night in their dorms in Korea, watching K on Minseok's almost clinically clean laptop screen, Yixing wants out of it.
He goes to the studio, down into the basements where he knows that one of the old practice rooms will be vacant, and if it isn't, the first year trainees will scatter when they see him. It's not exactly a great example of modesty, that he takes advantage of his new place, that he lets them treat him like he wasn't one of them only a year ago, but he just can't bring himself to care. He needs to be alone, and he needs to move, and he needs to watch and criticize and improve.
The floor hasn't been polished in a long time and the soles of his shoes stick in certain places when he goes through the choreography for MAMA. He hasn't stretched properly in what feels like days, so it takes almost no time for his joints to start hurting, cracking and swelling and aching. His knee feels like it's on fire, but he's danced through worse, so he just keeps going. And it helps a little, makes him feel focused and broken down and gives him just that little bit of confidence that he can build himself back up from the beginning. The music is loud, felt more than heard, like a physical 8-count that starts down in his bones and pulses out, leaving behind the muscle memory of all the twists and turns he's ever taught his body to make.
Time passes in a blur of bass and sweat and some errant melody that doesn't even sound like music anymore, until he feels like collapsing, until he's tripping to a stop coming out of a turn. His waist gives a particularly painful throb and he has to bend over to catch his breath.
The twitching starts before he's even done with his first full exhale, the shakes setting in before he's got himself back upright. It's ridiculous, that it happens even here, even after days of sleep and non-activity.
"You need to keep better hydrated."
He's not surprised by the words, even less so by the voice. He's gotten pretty used to his bandmates finding him down here after hours, when they decide, collectively, that he's been practicing long enough and one of them gets volunteered to drag him back home. That the job happens to fall to Lu Han more than anyone else isn't at all revelatory. The job of Yixing has been Lu Han's for a while now.
"It's like some kind of reverse stage fright," he responds, flicking his gaze over the gritty, dust-flecked mirror to find Lu Han's reflection. It's settled up against the back wall, all lazy sprawl and giving posture, smugly sexual. It looks back at him, like it's waiting, like Lu Han is waiting, and all it takes is one cock of Lu Han's freshly dyed head for Yixing to stumble his way over.
Lu Han is solid and steady when Yixing reaches him, a sharp relief to the trembling, sweating mess of the body that presses against him. Yixing feels ready to collapse, and so he does. He lets himself rest against Lu Han's chest and it's like falling into a brick wall. Lu Han isn't built like Jongin, like Zitao, but he's just as strong, just as unshakable.
"It'll get better," Lu Han says, "Just have a little bit of faith in yourself, yeah?"
He shakes his head, closes his eyes and allows himself to hide, from the lights and the empty room and the eyes that judge him through a layer of reflecting glass. He needs this right now, just for a minute. He's made it this far, and Lu Han is letting him, is holding him. And it can be enough. It can be normal.
"I think I'm in love with you."
Lu Han laughs, his breath hot on Yixing's already overheated skin.
"I know."
And, yeah, he thinks Lu Han really does.
Written by: officiallykris
Pairing: Lu Han/Lay
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language
Summary: Yixing is not so good at keeping secrets. But that turns out to be not such a bad thing.
Yixing doesn't know when it started, but he remembers the realization, the knowledge that comes to him out of nowhere and all at once, in those few seconds it takes for him to look and to want with such terrifying intensity he thinks he'll actually disappear, thinks his body will just break down to nothing and leave behind only remnants of this desire, this longing. His chest aches with it.
Lu Han fucking glows after they open for Super Junior in Indonesia.
It isn't necessarily a new thing, this post-show radiance. Everyone exudes some kind of energy afterward. Zitao laughs louder and smiles wider, Wu Fan's presence is just that much more palpable, like a forcefield around him that Yixing can't not notice. Jongdae and Minseok can forget, momentarily, that they're in a group that promotes in a country they don't call home, and they seem genuinely happy to just be part of something.
Yixing's whole body hums with anxiety, his skin buzzing and his mind stuttering from one thought to the next, mimicking the rapid beat of his heart as he tries to come down from the adrenaline high. This isn't surprising either, that he would have the hardest time coming down, that his body would be the one to react so adversely. His body may work for him in a studio, on stage, in front of a crowd, but behind a curtain, when he's not putting on a show, it's one violent struggle after another.
Lu Han, though, Lu Han is exactly the opposite. Lu Han's body seems to settle, and he moves off the stage with all the effortless grace he has when he's on it. He looks tired, fucking exhausted, but it's a contented kind of exhaustion. The kind that Yixing knows he'll feel after he's had a shower and his limbs are no longer burning from overexertion, his mind no longer racing. Watching Lu Han slide onto the long couch in the communal dressing room, sprawled out like he owns the whole goddamned venue, is like watching someone in those few minutes after they've come in your hand, in your mouth, and before they succumb fully to the deepest sleep.
It makes so much sense, that Lu Han would look like that, would remind Yixing so much of sex in those moments between screaming fans and endless movement and nothing, total fucking deprivation. Because Lu Han's voice is always so on, permeating and invading and surrounding and so, so solid. It makes sense that the feel of it hasn't quite left him yet. Yixing wears the energy of the show like a skin for hours after.
It's the watching that is Yixing's first mistake. But he watches, and he can't breathe for how much he wants to climb between Lu Han's spread legs, to just lay himself out along Lu Han's chest and tuck his head up under Lu Han's chin. He wants to bury his face in Lu Han's neck, wants to lick away the beads of sweat he knows are sliding down the tendons. He burns with the want of it, fire coiling low in his belly and making his whole body feel hot, flushed and sweating. He's fucking consumed by it. He wants to curl up in the space between Lu Han's body and the back of the couch, right where he knows he'd fit, so perfect.
He settles for being as near as he can be without actually touching. He has at least the foresight to know that it would just be another mistake. He slides down onto the floor in front of the couch, wrapping his arms around his folded legs and laying his head down on his knees. He breathes through his nose, tries to calm down, and stiffens when he feels a hand slide through his hair. It can only be Lu Han's hand, because Zitao pulled Wu Fan down the hall for some food right after they went off stage and Yixing can see Jongdae and Minseok, curled up on the floor near the door. Jongdae is laughing and kicking his legs in the air, the fucking maniac, and Minseok is rolling his eyes and saying something quietly that Yixing can't hear but that makes Jongdae laugh more. And he wishes suddenly that he'd chosen to lie down with them, wishes he'd let Jongdae's hand on his ankle pull him down. It would have been safer. He could have let Jongdae wrap impossibly strong limbs around him, and Minseok would have told him to calm down, would have slid a cool hand around Yixing's wrist and whispered soothingly until Yixing found he wasn't quite so jumpy.
"Be still." Lu Han says, and even though Yixing finds it hilarious that Lu Han could think that would help, that Lu Han doesn't know he'll be awake for hours tonight, staring over at Lu Han's bed in their hotel room, thinking about the hand in his hair and the voice in his ear and the fucking heat everywhere, inside and out, surrounding him, he feels himself relax a little, just slightly, and then a little more. He feels the tension seep from his body, his head start to clear.
And then Jongdae is singing loudly along with KRY's opening song, right in Minseok's indulgently smiling face, and Zitao is puffing his cheeks out around a mouthful of pastry as he and Wu Fan come stumbling back into the room, and it's so normal that Yixing feels the heat simmer down. His chest doesn't ache too badly anymore, and he feels like he might be able to handle this, this sort of dull burning. This could be his new normality and he could live with it.
And no one ever needs to know.
Yixing hasn't always been in love with his best friend. That's actually a fairly new development.
That's not to say he hasn't always been attracted to Lu Han. It's near impossible not to be attracted to Lu Han, in some way or another. Oh, he knows not everyone wants to fuck Lu Han, knows that there are people that don't think about kissing Lu Han or even touching him at all really. Wu Fan doesn't get caught staring like Yixing does sometimes, when they've been stuck in the studio for hours and they're all burnt out from rehearsal and their movements have gone from sharp and precise to barely there, sloppy around the edges. And while they joke about poorly concealed jealousy, Yixing is just glad they're almost finished for the day so that he can go home and try to forget about how Lu Han's hips looked more defined than normal when he'd tugged his sweats down a little, how his tongue had left a thin sheen of saliva along his swollen lips when he'd licked them. Chanyeol doesn't pull out his guitar in the middle of their days off just so he can seek Lu Han out, sit down with him on the balcony, listen to him stumble through old folk songs between secret drags off a cigarette and sips of bitter, black coffee. And when they're found a couple hours later, Yixing doesn't tell anyone about the pain in his fingers from his reforming callouses, but he does notice the look in Joonmyun's eye is chiding but amused, and nothing like the admiration Yixing knows had been present in his own gaze.
But it hasn't always been like this. They were just friends once. Yixing could go for days without speaking to Lu Han, didn't always get anxious and off-balance when he didn't hear Lu Han's voice, and he definitely didn't always leave the practice rooms hard and aching in his pants.
He doesn't know when it started. But anymore, he's not sure that even really matters.
Sometimes, a shower isn't enough. Sometimes, time and rest barely help at all. They go from city to city, get lost in countries, in cultures and languages and adventures, and still they're expected to perform and give interviews and pose for photos taken by a bunch of girls that barely give them enough room to breathe.
Fame is… exhausting.
And Yixing's body takes the brunt of the activity and sometimes he just can't seem to get it to recognize when it's all over.
It happens the most on nights overseas, when they've done show after show and he doesn't even know how long they've been on solid ground, or worse, how long they're going to stay grounded. He'd stopped trying to pay attention to their schedules a couple weeks in. It was useless, and Wu Fan always knew anyway, so Yixing let him play leader and do what he did best. Yixing danced.
But there are nights, hours after they've left the venues, when the others are busy slipping in and out of the showers and each other's rooms and passing out whenever and wherever and Yixing finds himself in one corner of the dorm, one end of the hotel room, gripping his knees and willing his heart to stop pattering away at the inside of his ribs, inhaling as deeply as he can, only to get shaky, uneven exhales for his efforts.
He's close to tears by the time Lu Han kneels down in front of him, takes his trembling hands up in fingers that are solid and steady, and whispers, "Hey, calm down."
It's almost disgusting how effective it is, how quickly Yixing feels himself loosening up, breathing easier, thinking clearer. "You don't have to do this," he says, though out of frustrated obligation or grudging appreciation, he doesn't think he'll ever know.
And Lu Han smiles like he does those mornings they're caught making music together, the one he throws at Yixing in the mirrors in the practice rooms, secrets and fatigue and genuine, easy happiness.
"Someone's gotta take care of you. Sure as hell know you aren't gonna take care of yourself."
It feels normal then. To let himself smile back, to nod and accept the hand under his elbow, pulling him up, over to his claimed bed for the night.
And if his heart still hasn't completely settled back into its normal rhythm by the time Lu Han is done in the bathroom, sliding under the sheets behind him, ignoring the other bed altogether, well.
Yixing can be good at keeping secrets.
Except, Yixing is really bad at keeping secrets apparently. Because a few weeks later, when they're gearing up to go on stage for their first concert in the states, Jongdae is smiling at him from his stool in makeup. And nothing is really making any sense right now because they're getting ready to perform with their seniors in the states and Yixing might be having a preemptive panic attack and he's definitely been bugging the stylist about finding Lu Han for the past ten minutes.
"I know," Jongdae says, and Yixing's back tenses so quick, spine going straight and shoulder blades snapping nearly completely together, that it's a wonder he doesn't break something.
Of course he knows.
"It's okay, you know," Zitao says later, because apparently everyone is on to the fact that Yixing has a crush on his best friend.
Yixing watches Zitao's hair in the dim light of the hotel lounge. It's a mass of gel and sweat that makes it look almost blue and he contemplates suggesting the color for his next set of contacts. It would go well with the red he's had in his own hair for so long it looks almost natural now. It's pretty. And he likes the way it glows under stage lights, but it's kind of making the ends feel fried again, like they had back when he couldn't afford a lot of food in his early trainee days. Before Lu Han came around and offered to share his… everything.
"Is it?" he asks, because he's not really sure what Zitao is saying. But he is sure. He has a general idea, at least, and that's all that's really needed for them now anyway. They stopped having complete conversations with each other a long time ago. He can talk to Zitao almost as easily as he can talk to Lu Han or Wu Fan.
Zitao nods, and Yixing knows that to mean much more than a simple yes.
It means, "it's okay," and, "it doesn't have to change anything."
But most importantly, it means, "I won't tell."
Yixing wasn't always been in love with his best friend.
But, see, the thing is, that doesn't matter.
Because he's kind of always been on his way to being in love with his best friend. He just never expected to stumble upon the realization so suddenly.
The great thing about being in an international boyband is that there's always a distraction. He can lose himself in the chaos of unfamiliar places and new people and after parties and the showroadshow cadence that he doesn't necessarily like but that he seems to just naturally fall into. They all fall into it, and he wonders if it is even possible that he ever considered being anything but a musician.
Some shows, he's fine. He dances, he sings, he laughs when the MCs laugh and people like him. And he can go back to their hotel and sleep at least some of the exhaustion out of his bones.
Others, he shakes and stutters his way through. He forgets his name until he hears it screamed back at him in rhythm to their music, he stumbles over a move he tries to make too sharp, and he gets so disoriented in the lights and the motion and the sound of his own voice through the speakers. Those nights, he doesn't sleep at all.
But those are also the nights that Lu Han climbs into bed beside him, and he only has the time to worry about secret feelings and his own inability to stabilize his cardiac rhythms until the next time their cells ring and Wu Fan is telling them to meet in the lobby for roll call in fifteen.
He gets a few nights off for his birthday. It should be good, should be great even.
It's not.
K is doing shows, and there are fansignings and it does nothing to help Yixing keep his mind busy. He shouldn't want it busy, though. He should want it to relax a little, to come down from the all the scripts and the routines and the gogogo that has become all but a form of normalcy for him. He should want a break from all that.
But a break from those things also means a break from the distractions he's been clinging to, gives rise to the things he doesn't want to think about, hasn't wanted to think about since he started thinking about them months ago. It's a vicious circle, and by the second night in their dorms in Korea, watching K on Minseok's almost clinically clean laptop screen, Yixing wants out of it.
He goes to the studio, down into the basements where he knows that one of the old practice rooms will be vacant, and if it isn't, the first year trainees will scatter when they see him. It's not exactly a great example of modesty, that he takes advantage of his new place, that he lets them treat him like he wasn't one of them only a year ago, but he just can't bring himself to care. He needs to be alone, and he needs to move, and he needs to watch and criticize and improve.
The floor hasn't been polished in a long time and the soles of his shoes stick in certain places when he goes through the choreography for MAMA. He hasn't stretched properly in what feels like days, so it takes almost no time for his joints to start hurting, cracking and swelling and aching. His knee feels like it's on fire, but he's danced through worse, so he just keeps going. And it helps a little, makes him feel focused and broken down and gives him just that little bit of confidence that he can build himself back up from the beginning. The music is loud, felt more than heard, like a physical 8-count that starts down in his bones and pulses out, leaving behind the muscle memory of all the twists and turns he's ever taught his body to make.
Time passes in a blur of bass and sweat and some errant melody that doesn't even sound like music anymore, until he feels like collapsing, until he's tripping to a stop coming out of a turn. His waist gives a particularly painful throb and he has to bend over to catch his breath.
The twitching starts before he's even done with his first full exhale, the shakes setting in before he's got himself back upright. It's ridiculous, that it happens even here, even after days of sleep and non-activity.
"You need to keep better hydrated."
He's not surprised by the words, even less so by the voice. He's gotten pretty used to his bandmates finding him down here after hours, when they decide, collectively, that he's been practicing long enough and one of them gets volunteered to drag him back home. That the job happens to fall to Lu Han more than anyone else isn't at all revelatory. The job of Yixing has been Lu Han's for a while now.
"It's like some kind of reverse stage fright," he responds, flicking his gaze over the gritty, dust-flecked mirror to find Lu Han's reflection. It's settled up against the back wall, all lazy sprawl and giving posture, smugly sexual. It looks back at him, like it's waiting, like Lu Han is waiting, and all it takes is one cock of Lu Han's freshly dyed head for Yixing to stumble his way over.
Lu Han is solid and steady when Yixing reaches him, a sharp relief to the trembling, sweating mess of the body that presses against him. Yixing feels ready to collapse, and so he does. He lets himself rest against Lu Han's chest and it's like falling into a brick wall. Lu Han isn't built like Jongin, like Zitao, but he's just as strong, just as unshakable.
"It'll get better," Lu Han says, "Just have a little bit of faith in yourself, yeah?"
He shakes his head, closes his eyes and allows himself to hide, from the lights and the empty room and the eyes that judge him through a layer of reflecting glass. He needs this right now, just for a minute. He's made it this far, and Lu Han is letting him, is holding him. And it can be enough. It can be normal.
"I think I'm in love with you."
Lu Han laughs, his breath hot on Yixing's already overheated skin.
"I know."
And, yeah, he thinks Lu Han really does.