fic / (not) pretending
(Not) Pretending
lu han + lay / pg-13 / 6265 words
Lu Han is actually going out with Yixing and their friends are dumb.
Lu Han wasn’t really thinking much. The day had started off with blistering heat that had worsened over midday, harsh sun peeking through the faded flower-print curtains of his living room. Yixing had somehow managed to drag himself and his electric fan over to his house at the earliest holy hour to be awake during the summer holidays and they’d pushed aside the rug and coffee table, making just enough space to plaster themselves to the lukewarm floorboards. Lying in the middle of the room with an artificial wind blowing on them from three directions, Lu Han thought that if it weren’t his brain cells that were dying, it was him.
“Han, your floor is the most uncomfortable floor I’ve ever lain on, and I make a point to lie on the floor as much as possible.”
“Excuse yourself. This floor has been blessed by three generations of Lu. Go sit on the couch if your bony ass isn’t man enough to appreciate it.”
“Ew, no. Gross. Your couch is leather.”
Lu Han turned his head to the right and poked his tongue out at his friend. For the trouble that he went through for it, was it truly necessary to have him here? Yixing ignored his unimpressed gaze in favour of fussing with the hair stuck to his forehead, long torso arching a little to get a bit of air on his tank-covered back. After a moment of consideration, Lu Han decided that he might faint without the extra fan but it was definitely a close call.
With that he groaned, hauling himself into a somewhat-upright position and digging through the DVD cabinet with a sweaty hands. “You,” he grumbled, sending a venomous look in Yixing’s direction, “are an ungrateful asshole who is abusing my facilities to keep your body temperature within a liveable range. Where would you be without me?”
“Probably trying to sneak into Baekhyun’s,” Yixing replied with a grimace. “He has air-con, Lu. Air-con. What did he do in his life to deserve such good fortune?”
His answer was a rather passionate combination of a whine and a whimper.
Eventually, Lu Han’s hand closed around a video tape with a hand written Chinese label and it wasn’t what he was looking for - not that he had been looking for anything in particular - but he figured it would do. Shoving it into the ancient player and bending over to turn on the television, he mumbled over his shoulder, “I hope you like old-ass kung-fu movies, because that’s what’s going to distract us from this lowest-level-of-hell weather.”
“Classics, Lu. Don’t disrespect the masters.”
They ended up sprawled next to each other once again, propped up on cushions deflated from overuse and ice blocks excavated from the bottom of the freezer in hand. The video player wasn’t holding up so well - it was probably a lot older than the old-ass movie itself - and it tripped up every so often, but between the Chinese subtitles and how many nights they’d spent holed up with the lights off watching it before, they managed to relax and enjoy it.
With difficulty, that is. There were a few complaints - Why does your VCR suck so much? - Why don’t we see how yours works next time, huh? - and a few accidental shoulders to arms, which turned into elbows meeting stomachs accidentally-on-purpose, which led to very purposeful kicks and an eventual brawl in the middle of the living room.
Both of them were rather dirty fighters. They liked to tell other people they weren’t, but years of experience had taught them to keep up with each other and worn down their moral code just a little bit. A fair amount of time later, Lu Han was half-sitting on Yixing’s lower back, legs tangled so tightly together neither moved too much in fear of pulling something out of place. “Concede, Zhang. Admit I am the superior entity,” he growled, forcing Yixing into the wood with wrists caught above his head and torsos suspended close together.
Yixing’s chest heaved below him and his breaths were a little short with exertion, but there was nothing tired about the way he grinned and jerked so that they twisted yet again, balance tipped over. Lu Han shrieked but was too busy rolling into the floor so that they wouldn’t hurt themselves too much to fight when he was the one being trapped underneath this time. Leaning in close for dramatic effect, a quiet laugh escaped Yixing’s mouth and he whispered, “Never.”
Lu Han hissed in defeat. There wasn’t much he could do about Yixing bent over him, the sticky skin of his calves pressing into Lu Han’s thighs as he straddled his hips. Their chests were flush, almost uncomfortably warm, and the realisation came to him quite suddenly that they were very close together.
Puffs of humid air panned over Lu Han’s face. When he looked up Yixing’s face hovered a few centimetres from his, lips pink and parted in the slightest. A drop of sweat tracked from his hair line over his temples and his eyes were so, so dark. Lu Han wasn’t really thinking much when he let the muscles in his body relax, let himself melt into the hands gripping his forearms.
It was Yixing who moved first, leaning down to press his lips to Lu Han’s, and their first kiss was like that - chaste, sweet, and burning. When their noses bumped together he angled his head a little and moved back in, this time deeper, slower. Yixing tasted like honey dew melon and sugar, remnants from the ice blocks from earlier, and his musky scent filled Lu Han’s nose. When Lu Han reached up to hold Yixing’s cheek with sticky fingers, his sigh was contented.
There was no ‘HOLY SHIT I’M KISSING MY MALE BEST FRIEND’ moment.
It just was.
They remained that way for a while, Lu Han the first to pull away. Rather, he shoved Yixing off of him and back onto the floorboards. At some point video tape had caught again and the television screen replaying half a second of the movie over and over again. Perhaps it was about time to ditch it and get the film on disc.
“It’s too hot for you to be all pressed up against me,” he moaned, heaving his melting body off the floor, but his smile was bright when he leaned over to peck Yixing on the lips once again.
• • •
Lu Han wasn’t really thinking much when Yixing dropped his hand a block from school a month or so later. It wasn’t that he didn’t notice - it was just that thinking led to overthinking, which led to worrying, which led to people becoming upset, and Lu Han had no reason to be upset. It was still hot, even more so with the tails of his uniform’s shirt tucked into dense, dark material of his trousers, but with how blue and high the sky was that day he couldn’t bring himself to hate it that much. It was okay to let Yixing do the thinking about the small things sometimes and just feel his direction, go with the flow. And Lu Han was veryaware of Yixing.
Still, he didn’t feel the slightest bit of remorse when he walked straight by the gates while Yixing was held up by uniform check for forgetting to fix his top button before they approached.
Baekhyun was already in homeroom by the time he’d made it up the busy stairwell, moaning about something and aggressively whacking a sheepish but unamused Zitao in the arm with his pencil case. The words locker door and your fault and brain damage managed to filter through, but Lu Han was pretty sure the rest was gibberish anyway. By the time he’d dropped his first and second period books on some desk in their general vicinity Junmyeon had also walked in, death on his face and a paper cup of what was probably more sugar and milk than anything else clutched in his hand. The expression that he made upon registering what was escalating into a rather noisy slapping fight between the two other boys conveyed a very real, tangible pain.
Lu Han slumped into a seat and bowed his head backwards with lazy ease. It had already been three weeks since the term had begun, but it felt like any barely time had passed at all. Outside the windows covering half of the left wall, the thick green foliage of some overgrown tree was scraping against the glass and casting a blurry, spotted shadow over the whiteboard. All the days shuffling between classrooms, sitting at old wooden desks that only differed by who had drawn on them, hanging out with the same people the same way as ever were beginning to merge together. It was almost as if nothing had changed since last year except for the number on the end of the date.
They had, of course. Just not in front of other people.
The bell had already gone by the time Yixing drifted in. The collar of his shirt had been flipped up and he was fiddling with the loose ends of his tie without much success, heavy schoolbag hanging by one strap from the crook of his right elbow. Wordlessly, Lu Han accepted it from him and slung it around his own neck, pulling the skinny end to the middle of his chest and crossing the longer over it. He knew Yixing could tie it on his own just fine. His mother was very enthusiastic about dressing well - he probably learnt how to do it before he learnt how to hold a pen. As he fussed over a Windsor knot, Lu Han fought down a rising heat crawling up the back of his neck. Stupid weather.
There was a shuffling by his side and Baekhyun’s whining grew to unbearable - their usual - levels. “Lu Han, this is a gross display of bias and I feel discriminated against. Do my tie too. Chanyeol slipped it out yesterday and refused to fix it for me.”
In the corner of his eye, he could see Junmyeon tossing back the last few drops of his coffee with much more livelihood than he had appeared capable of a few minutes before. “I think that was to force you to learn how to do it yourself, you know,” he said, chucking the cup across the room into the recycling bin near the door. He missed, but it bounced off the door frame and landed in the rubbish bin next to it.
Yixing’s eyes smiled at Lu Han as he looped the knot over his head and pulled it into place, careful to leave an inconspicuous amount of room to spare, before smoothing down his collar. His shirt was still half untucked, white cotton stained at the bottom from a bag of cherries Kyungsoo had brought in one day last spring, and his hair was messy from a rushed morning. He looked ridiculous. Lu Han felt like his heart was suffocating.
“Too bad, Baek. I get boyfriend privileges.”
And then, well, he really was suffocating, because he was choking on his spit and an unhelpful hand was rubbing him between the shoulder blades where his muscles had tensed up. When he glanced up Yixing was wearing his regular good-natured expression, but the curve at the corners of his lips was fond, and Lu Han ducked his head again. Asshole , he grimaced, more to be difficult than anything else. We haven’t even talked about that.
Then he remembered that he had said it to their friends.
Somewhat apprehensive, Lu Han brushed his forearm against Yixing’s under the desk and sent him a questioning look. The response he received was a shy grin and a warm, calloused palm gliding against his, weaving their fingers together and squeezing for a fraction of a second. It had been a long time that they had been by each other’s sides, since they had run into each other as devious children and clicked together like two pieces of a puzzle, two halves of a duo. Sometimes Lu Han felt like they didn’t need any words, to think very much, needed only to tune into the other’s wavelength to simply know. Feeling his chest grow warm, he squeezed back.
Zitao snorted from his seat where he was graciously received the distressed, fluffy - nobody knew how - strip of striped fabric being thrust into his face. “From the way you’re attached at the hip and your gross domesticity,” he grumbled, “you might as well be.”
With a frown, Lu Han opened his mouth to correct him and at that moment the teacher hustled in late, looking harried and calling out the roll, and he was silenced.
• • •
It was rather difficult to raise the subject among his friends and it seemed to become harder as the week went by - even more so because Lu Han kind of, maybe, hadn’t even told them that he didn’t quite like girls. Not that he had said it to Yixing either but - well - that had just…worked out. In fact, looking back, he wasn’t so sure what had happened there, but he wasn’t going to complain at all. A part of him wanted to leave things as they were, just let them run their course. His friends would find out eventually. Another part was telling him that he was being a procrastinating shit.
Despite all of this, it couldn’t be said that he didn’t try at all. The second time he attempted to have that particular conversation with them it was Wednesday lunchtime and, small mercies, a light breeze was making it almost tolerable to be outside. They were all sprawled under the largest tree in the courtyard, half draped over the two wooden benches wedged into that particular corner of the school and half sagging into the almost cool pavement.
Lu Han ran his tongue over his teeth, setting aside his lunchbox from where he had been defending it from Jongdae’s sneaking hands. Yixing was sitting in a spot diagonal from him, poking Kyungsoo in the stomach with a blunt stick and not appearing to be paying much attention to his surroundings, as usual. There had been a lull in the conversation for a few minutes and if he was going to do it today, it had to be now.
He twisted his fingers together over his solar plexus in what he hoped was a casual fashion. “So,” he began, and at that moment, his mind decided to blank. His mouth continued on autopilot. “Let’s talk about penis.”
Junmyeon shot him an amused look from the ground and hurled an empty water bottle in his general direction. It missed and hit Jongdae instead who, bless the child, was too preoccupied attempting to stifle a bout of laughter at the abrupt and unprovoked mention of male genitalia to retaliate. It was Baekhyun who, with a spectacular shit-eating grin on his face, responded first. Of course it was.
“Yes, penis,” he drawled, crossing his knees with all the drama of a six-season television series and bringing his hand up to inspect his nails. Ever so slightly he tilted his chin up so that he could look down his nose patronizingly at him from his perch on the edge of the bench. Lu Han knew, the same way he knew that the sun would go down that evening, that he was going to say something vulgar and offensive. “That dangling thing we all have between our legs. Well, except when it’s not dangling. And you know, Lu Han, you’re very pretty. Sometimes I’m not so sure-”
The next sound Baekhyun made was some sort of fusion of a choked snicker and an undignified yelp, because Lu Han has his hands around his neck and was shaking him with vehemence. He was pretty. Pretty manly.
“Hey,” Yixing frowned, but the corner of his mouth was twitching and his eyes were too entertained to pass as annoyed. “Don’t mock my choice in significant others.”
At that even Zitao started laughing, and Lu Han was too miserable about his failure to try and salvage the situation.
• • •
A third attempt came sometime the week after the next, the opportunity just coming along and dropping itself in his lap. Rather, during some sort of poster-making group activity which only Chanyeol and maybe Kyungsoo were putting genuine effort into, he dropped himself in Yixing’s lap. There was a groan from underneath him but soon enough long arms were snaking around his middle and securing him in place. Yixing’s chest pressed along his back and his chin hooked over his shoulder and despite the too-cold air-con fixed into the ceiling panels above where they were sitting, Lu Han felt pleasant and warm.
Wiggling a little and sighing, he decided that this was quite nice and that he liked it considerably.
They were working in groups of five, hunched over an A2 sheet of orange cardboard lain on the bland blue carpet. It was really only cutting and gluing at this point, having already written up all their information on the computer and printed it out in easy-to-read paragraphs. There was a drawing of what was likely supposed to be Lady Macbeth in the centre courtesy of Chanyeol, and Lu Han didn’t have the heart to tell him that women of that time didn’t wear denim miniskirts. Leaning his head back instead and closing his eyes, he decided that perhaps a nap, however impractical, was in order.
Jongdae seemed to have thoughts otherwise. “You know, you guys have an uncanny resemblance to a couple during their honeymoon period right now.” There was a bit of rustling as he set the pen he had been trying to balance on his upper lip onto the floor next to his crossed legs, and he leant back on his hands with his nose scrunched up. “Ah yes, the dating vibes and love hearts can almost be picked from the air.” He made a plucking motion in their direction and let out a low snicker.
Lu Han made a face at him. He was a little over it now. “We are dating. Haven’t we said this before?”
“Yeah, keep your hands off my air hearts. They’re for Lu Han only.” Yixing received an elbow to the stomach, to which he responded by what seemed to be snuggling Lu Han’s neck. Lu Han relaxed back into him a little more, in part to make a point, but mostly because even with a body hardened from years of dancing, Yixing still managed to be incredibly comfortable. “You smell nice,” he whispered, and was shoved away in embarrassment.
Meanwhile, Kyungsoo shook with silent laughter, hands full of glue and paper. The composition of the poster was hideous - the text was small and sort of floated around the title which was written in a style more appropriate on a heavy metal band promo. Lu Han gave it a two out of ten for aesthetic appeal and was ashamed to be associated with it. “Oh yes, how could we forget?” Chanyeol asked with a smirk and a careless wave of his hand, missing Jongdae’s eye by a hair, who screeched like an offended feline.
An unpleasant weight had settled itself back down at the bottom of Lu Han’s stomach. It seemed that all of a sudden, he wasn’t feeling so considerate anymore. “I’m pretty sure even Victorian hookers didn’t wear clothes as revealing as that, Mr. Don’t-Worry-I-Know-What-I’m-Doing.”
Chanyeol sniffed. “She was a woman ahead of her time.”
• • •
Lu Han scowled, grumpy, as he watched the small saucepan of water on the gas stove of the compact kitchen. It was a Thursday afternoon and since soccer training had been cancelled due to wet weather he’d shuffled over to Yixing’s family’s apartment, practically dragging his school and sport bags along the pebbled concrete sidewalk. He didn’t actually do it - it wasn’t pouring like it had in the late morning, but there were still large puddles everywhere and he wasn’t about to go and make his day worse with water-damaged textbooks. By the time he’d reached the door, thick-soled shoes heavy on his feet and shoulders of his shirt damp, the only thing that had come out of his mouth was, “I want ramen.”
He thought he might have appreciated the weather change a bit more if it had made the heat less unbearable. Instead, the air had become humid to agonizing levels and it made him feel like he was breathing in water. It was suffocating.
As the saucepan began to simmer, Yixing came over to set a wooden chopping board with a few washed vegetables on the bench. A pair of chopsticks were fished out of the top drawer next to the sink and he stuck his head in the fridge for a few moments, taking some more things out. Lu Han gazed at him, feeling his features relax. Yixing was like that - he knew how to make things that were mediocre at best, or just horrible in general, better with little effort.
The water came to boil and Lu Han tore open the seasoning packets, hissing when the soup bubbled up the sides of the pan and turning down the fire. Yixing came up beside him, dropping the noodles in and tossing in a few other things. With a gentle nudge, he pushed him aside with his hip and tapped an egg with practised ease along the edge of the metal. “Baekhyun wasn’t very talkative in afternoon homeroom today,” he commented, setting the empty shell aside and picking up another one.
The corners of Lu Han’s mouth pulled down. He’d noticed as well. A quiet Baekhyun was a worrying Baekhyun, and the topic of his thoughts had made itself known when he had pulled him aside as they were leaving the building. He’d mentioned, in the casual way he did when he wanted something, Lu Han’s frequent sour mood as of late and Lu Han had told him he was imagining things. He didn’t want to talk about Baekhyun’s sudden perception. In any case, that wasn’t what Yixing was after.
Over the past few weeks, their friends had picked up on their repeated dropping of their relationship status. Which would be wonderful, Lu Han thought, if they were taking it seriously . It seemed that the clearer he stated that they were, in fact, going out, the more fake dating jokes were thrown in his direction. Two days ago Zitao had told him, walking back from Geography, that people were going to start thinking they were actually dating if they weren’t careful. That’s kind of the point, he had replied.
Zitao had sent him a funny look. You have a weird sense of humour, ge ge.
Lu Han didn’t say anything as Yixing split the contents of the pot between two bowls and carried them over to the breakfast bar. Grabbing a pair of chopsticks for himself and two ceramic spoons for the both of them, he shuffled over to where Yixing was standing. With a huff, he circled his arms around the other boy’s waist, resting his forehead against the back of his head. The hair touching his nose was soft and black, smelling like the honey of Yixing’s favourite shampoo.
“What do our friends not get?” Lu Han whispered, not looking up when Yixing turned around in his embrace. He wasn’t sure what expression was on his face at that moment, didn’t know if he wanted to share it. “What kind of people would pretend this much to be boyfriends for shits and giggles, anyway? I’m pretty sure that I could suck you off in front of them and someone would still say ‘When a friend is in need…’ .” He’d been channelling a lot of his feelings into anger but now that he had begun talking about it, he realised the extent to which he was also very upset. “They’re so dumb.”
With a low hum in the back of his throat, Yixing pulled him closer to where he was leaning against the edge of the bench. His hands were warm against Lu Han’s sides, tingling against his skin where his shirt had been pushed aside, and when he looked up his eyes were the same way, affectionate. “Hey,” he said, “I don’t know. But they’ll get it sooner or later, I’m sure of it. They’re just slow to catch on because we’ve never been…hands-off, so to say. Don’t be sad.” He rubbed his face into Lu Han’s cheek and Lu Han couldn’t help but let out a low giggle before sighing.
“It’s pissing me off.”
Yixing gave his hips a quick squeeze and kissed him on the nose. “It’s not the most ideal of situations, and I don’t like it either, but it’s not going to be like that forever.”
“Okay,” Lu Han mumbled, slumping. He didn’t like worrying over this. It made him distracted, irritable, and he didn’t want Yixing to feel that way either so he focused on calming his nerves. The knot in his stomach didn’t unwind in full but it seemed to loosen as he leant his entire body against the other boy, if only for a little while. It’s supposed to be too hot to be this close together, he thought.
Sliding the cutlery out of his grasp and setting them down on the bench, Yixing huffed at a bit of hair hanging into his eyes. “If it helps,” he added, “I’d probably let you suck me off in front of them.”
Lu Han snorted and pushed him, but he had him trapped by wiry arms wrapped around his waist and a smirk was spreading across his lips. “Only because you’re a kinky bastard. Get away from me.”
“Oh, my sweet little deer, so pure, so vanilla…”
“I’ll show you just how vanilla I can be, asshole. Try me.”
Yixing’s laughter rang down the hall of the apartment, and on the counter, the two bowls of ramen grew cold.
• • •
With the last two weeks before break came a cool change, and it became an almost agreeable activity to walk around under direct sunlight. There was a light breeze - nothing too harsh, but substantial enough to ruffle Lu Han’s hair as he walked around the edges of the basketball courts as he avoided a couple of half-court warm-up games. The perfect weather for ice blocks.
“You think that all weathers are perfect for ice-blocks, Lu Han. Even the dead of winter.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
Junmyeon side-eyed him around the rainbow ice cream in his mouth, held there as he tucked his wallet back into his pocket. His eyebrows were drawn in together but the corners of his mouth curved upwards. If he were in any less of a good mood, Lu Han would be a bit nicer - his friend had bought him the cold, sticky mess melting over his hands, after all - but Junmyeon was a marshmallow in the body of a teenage boy, and even Kyungsoo agreed that it was too hard to resist poking at him. He was just too cute.
“I have decided I like you the most,” he declared, licking at where the sweet had dripped onto his thumb, and Junmyeon rolled his eyes as though he felt he deserved a medal for the most put-upon human in the entire school.
“Not Yixing?”
“Well.” Pausing, Lu Han contemplated this while peering in an exaggerated fashion at Junmyeon, who was kicking up a few leaves on the pavement. The other boy seemed casual enough - outside of drama class, he wasn’t such a good actor - and he decided it wasn’t a jab at him. In any case, he’d been feeling good lately and he wasn’t sure he’d be irritated if it was. “Yixing makes me food and serenades me with songs he’s written himself, so I guess he’s pretty cool,” he said, pursing his lips before brightening, “but you just bought me an ice block. It’s a tough call, but I’ll give it to you this time.”
Junmyeon laughed deep in his chest, and Lu Han skipped back to the classroom.
When they arrived they were greeted by the image of Yixing gripped in a headlock by the circle of Chanyeol’s arm. He was whining about something, judging from the loud noises emerging from his tall body, which was not an unusual occurrence at all. It could be about anything from the hair tie he used to tie his fringe back disappearing to an interesting looking cloud that he became too passionate about. He was like a small human - excitable and short attention span and all - and on a normal day Lu Han would ignore him.
And that was what he began to do, until he glanced to his friends to find that they were all looking at Yixing as well, expectant.
Slipping into the chair next to Jongdae, Junmyeon leaned in and asked in a quiet voice, “What’s going on?”
“Joohyun called Yixing out for something ten minutes ago,” Jongdae murmured in answer, not taking his eyes off the two in front of him. Kyungsoo, next to him, nodded and tugged out the bag of lollies hanging out of Junmyeon’s shirt pocket.
For a moment Lu Han was confused. There wasn’t anything noteworthy about that, as far as he could tell. Joohyun was a girl in the year below them, but there were a number of ordinary reasons why she would have something to say to Yixing. Leaning against the edge of the desk, he bit off the last of his ice block and nibbled on the edge of the wooden stick, thinking. She was in the dance club, as well as a member of the student representative council. There always seemed to be a few people hanging around her and she was rather pretty in a way that boys usually -
“Spill, you bastard. Tell us what she wanted you for then tell us your secrets so we can have an excuse to talk to her too.” Chanyeol released Yixing, who hit him on the arm and went to sit on a table, and put his hands on his hips. He looked absurd.
Yixing leant back, lithe and measured, and shot him a look. “She wanted to know if the club’s next practice was still on. Nothing out of -”
“Lies! I overheard her and Seulgi in the corridor this morning, she was going to ask you out!”
“What? How could you keep this from me, ge?”
“You would have been too obvious!”
There was a mess of limbs as Zitao and Baekhyun floundered at each other, distracting the others enough for Yixing’s pleading look toward Lu Han to go unnoticed. Lu Han raised his eyebrows in question, drawing a helpless shrug, then reclined with his hands in his pockets. Shit happens, like having noisy, nosy friends who tend toward dramatics. There wasn’t any harm done, he should get over it soon. A lump formed in his throat and he swallowed around it, expressionless, and turned his eyes to the floor.
It wasn’t long before somebody noticed that the thread of the interrogation had been lost somewhere between a feint at someone’s crotch and an insult toward Zitao’s hair, and Chanyeol spoke up. “Shut up, guys. Yixing, speak. When is your date?”
Yixing shifted in his spot, hands gripping the table’s edge, and pressed his lips into a line. “There is no date. I turned her down.”
There was a crinkle of plastic as Jongdae pulled the lollies in front of him. Junmyeon didn’t seem too surprised, but there was a crease of confusion between Kyungsoo’s eyebrows as he joined into Chanyeol’s noises of incomprehension. “But why? Do you like someone else or something? What did you say to her?”
“I said,” Yixing replied, shoulders squaring marginally, “that I was sorry, but I’m already seeing somebody.”
Baekhyun’s eyes widened, mouth dropping open. “Since when? Who? Do we-”
Yixing’s lips were forming a flat line, as if he didn’t want to have to talk at all. “She didn’t know I was dating Lu Han.”
A moment of silence fell as seven pairs of eyes flickered toward Lu Han. He remained still, but the paddle pop stick between his teeth began to splinter.
“Yixing…” Chanyeol began, straightening from where he had been acting as a human wall between Baekhyun and Zitao on the carpet. “There’s such a thing as taking a joke too far. If you didn’t want to go out with her, you didn’t have to say that. It’s okay when it’s with us, but beyond that it’s misleading. And Lu Han, you shouldn’t encourage him to-”
“The thing is,” Lu Han uttered before his brain had the chance to catch up, “it wasn’t a lie.” A strange heat had coiled in his chest listening to them speak and his head felt disconnected from his body, as if it wasn’t his hand that tossed the battered wooden stick from his mouth into the bin. He was sick of sitting back and waiting for other people to work things out. An edge of frustration leaked into his voice as he continued.
“I don’t really know what’s up with you guys, but neither of us were ever joking when we said we were going out. We are well and truly one-hundred-and-ten-percent real boyfriends. We hold hands. We go on dates together. We look each other in the eye and seriously say gross romantic things. We kiss on starry nights when nobody is looking and also at the bus stop after bubble tea. I get into his pants on a regular basis. ” Pausing to take a breath, he struck the desk with his fist and let out one last agitated noise. “ Yes homo.”
Baekhyun opened his mouth, seeming unsure what to say, before closing it again with an aborted sound. Zitao’s eyes were wide and scandalised on his face. The plastic of the packet of lollies crackled as Junmyeon emptied the last three into his mouth.
“Ge, I never wanted to ever know about your sex life -”
“How…” Baekhyun interrupted, chewing on the inside of his cheek, “How homo are we talking?”
“Full homo,” Lu Han answered, solemn. “All the homo, Baek.”
Beside him, Junmyeon’s shoulders shook. “Wait, is this why you refused when I offered to set you up with Sunyoung last year?”
With that, Junmyeon started laughing. Kyungsoo looked at him oddly, before pushing him off the seat and hitting him where he was sprawled on the carpet. Jongdae, caught in the middle with Kyungsoo half lying across his lap, screeched and dived backwards to avoid catching collateral damage. “Hyung, you knew!”
Gasping giggles between desperately attempting to protect himself, Junmyeon stuck his tongue out. “Of course I did,” he replied, going for offended but coming off amused and smug. “They said so a million times. Plus, nobody pretends to be going out that much for a joke.”
Lu Han always knew there was a reason he liked Junmyeon most.
Over their dumb friends’ bickering, he met Yixing’s gaze. He wasn’t really thinking much about the little annoying things that they were doing, like Chanyeol’s expression at their prolonged eye contact. It was the things that they hadn’t said that made his lips pull upwards into a wide smile, unbreakable. Yixing’s answering grin mirrored his own, and the happiness in the crescents of his eyes made Lu Han’s pulse stutter. He felt warm.
Below them, Junmyeon let out a breathless conceding cry. “And in any case, Baek, Sunyoung’s been dating someone from another school since two years ago.”
“WHAT.”
• • •
“So,” Yixing began, swinging their joined hands high up between their bodies at the bus stop. Lu Han was leaning against the shelter over the benches with his eyes closed to the sun, but that didn’t stop the corners of his lips from twitching. In his other hand, the tips of his fingers gripped the edge of a half-empty bubble tea. After Zitao’s slightly teary apology after school, Baekhyun and Chanyeol had dragged the both of them over to the shop across the road to shout them, citing the reason as ‘belated congratulations’. It was partially their way of saying sorry, Lu Han knew, and he was grateful for their effort. He’d ordered a large with five toppings to make sure they were aware they were forgiven. “Kissing under the stars, huh?”
He opened his eyes to squint sideways at his boyfriend. “The sun’s a star and it’s night in some other part of the world, Xing.”
Yixing’s laughter was loud and full in his ears and he allowed himself a snort at his own lame joke. “I totally would,” Lu Han admitted. “It’s not my fault that there’s only, what, five or so stars visible in the city when it’s dark.”
A slight breeze ruffled under their untucked shirts, cooling their heated skin. The taste of lemon tea was still sweet on his tongue, even after the ice had melted it into a watered-down slosh. With a contented sigh, Yixing turned around to face him, stilling their hands stilling at their sides and lacing their fingers together. Their palms were gross and sweaty, but Lu Han didn’t mind.
“How about at the bus stop after bubble tea?” Yixing asked. He moved in close, so that their noses were almost touching.
“That doesn’t sound like such a bad idea,” Lu Han giggled against his lips, and then leant in the rest of the way.
notes:
> no_one_believes_in_layhan_and_lu_han_mad_lol.docx
> hello my name is alex and i haven't written fic in four years ☆☆☆
> everything is going to suck until i get it all together - please be patient with me!
> special thanks to sugastruck for holding my hand while I whined over this for two months and for being an exemplary human being. i love you ♡