Fighting Fish (Kris/Tao), Part 2/4

[warmboys]

Fighting Fish (2/4)
Kris/Tao
~10000 words
NC-17
Kris is perpetually confused, and Zitao is the antidote.

For Joie, who is the biggest taoris fan I know and simultaneously the horniest ♥

sob I really don't want to/don't know how to tag this

‹‹

The snow came suddenly, as an early morning materialization when Kris parted the curtains to his window and found everything an indiscriminate, glaring white. Outside cars were about to be buried, already entrenched up to the door handles. In a few hours children would slide down windshields, converting the blocked streets into their personal playground.

“I’m too old for this weather,” Orfila lamented, and a scraggly-haired, flannel-clad Zitao grabbing a plate of eggs and glass of juice en route to his bedroom agreed. “Yeah, you are.”

“You see?” She said to Kris, and made to chase him down the hallway with a butter knife. Zitao’s high-pitched giggle briefly filled the apartment.

Schools were closed for a week. Kris worked on his lesson plans, grew bored, and then worked some more. Yixing was having a hell week, too busy for Skype. He finally wrote back his mother, who’d revealed in her last email that she was attending church on the regular for the first time since he started working after graduation. She’d taken his resignation better than expected, swapping in the angry sermons he remembered from childhood for express-mailed care packages, and at the time he’d thought maybe she knew that her worrying would’ve been more worrisome to him. After a certain age the roles were reversed. Kris was supposed to be looking out for his lao ma now, making sure she was treating her heart okay, taking her meds, not sleeping too late. Instead he’d hauled ass to a foreign city on the other side of the world, the furthest they’d been away from each other in two decades.

“I’m doing really well,” he wrote. “Everyone’s been extremely kind and it’s nice to see snow again.”

On the third day the heat went out. Around ten-thirty a chill began to seep into the bedroom, curling his toes under the blanket. The laptop was warming his thighs above it; he’d taken to working in bed all day, not bothering to change out of his sweats and long-sleeved university t-shirt. He waited fifteen minutes, put on his coat. Then took it off, pulled over a sweater, and put it back on. He wondered where they kept the extra comforters, if there were any. Orfila was long asleep by now.

The light under Zitao’s door was on. He rapped his knuckle against the door, pulling his jacket to himself with the other hand.

“Hey.” Zitao emerged like a slow omen from behind the door. He looked tired and sunken and his hair stood up in several directions away from his face. On his feet were panda slippers that Kris had never seen before. “What’s going on?”

“Hey,” Kris said. “Sorry to bother you, but is it cold in your-“ He didn’t get to finish the sentence-a stream of heat had suddenly coiled deliciously around his body, working its magic into his frozen extremities.

“Oh no,” Zitao said, opening the door wider. He sounded genuinely concerned. “Did the heater in that room break down again?”

This happened every year, Zitao said, looking apologetic, and was the reason for the previous tenant moving out last winter. They’d had a service technician come over several times in the past, but there was something funky about the pipes in that room, something ghostly that caused recurrent breakdowns.

“That makes me feel a lot better,” Kris joked, sitting down by the desk while Zitao leaned back in his bed. He’d also propped up his laptop on the comforter, where he was sitting cross-legged. “Now I can go to bed feeling safe and sound.”

The previous tenant was a girl. “The guys usually just stay in this room until they get it fixed,” Zitao said. “It’s not a big deal.” He looked at Kris. “You should, too.”

“Stay with you?”

“Is that a problem? I can sleep on the floor.” Zitao was already slipping out of his blankets, one foot descending over the mattress.

“No,” Kris said quickly. “I was just asking to… make sure. I mean, I could just bundle up in heavier blankets and all the other coats I brought.” The only other coat he’d brought was a light parka for jogging in the fall.

Zitao ran a hand through his hair, messing it up even more. “I don’t think we have any extras, to be honest. Wu Xin probably donated them if we did. Sorry, man. But I was serious about sleeping on the floor. I’m used to it.”

“No, no, that’s fine, I’ll take the floor-“

“I spent four months at a monastery,” Zitao said, dragging his comforter now to the floor. “No surface is too hard for my back.”

“What?” said Kris, as he got up to continue the awkward dance of polite refusal, but Zitao had already spread the comforter over the floor and was smoothing out the corners. “Four months?”

“It was like, a spiritual purification thing.” Zitao pulled down his pillow, laptop, and the rest of his blankets. “I’d gone before as a kid, one of those Shaolin temple training programs, but the second time was different.”

He waited for Zitao to elaborate, but he didn’t. “What was it like?”

Zitao creased his forehead, thinking, as he situated himself in a comfortable position in his new nest, propping an arm up on his pillow. "Cleansing myself of dirt and impurities and all those. Human burdens." His voice tripped over "burdens," rose a little higher, and then sunk again, like he hadn't gotten used to hearing himself talk about this. Kris wondered how many people he'd ever told, if it was something he did ever tell, or a common factoid, a conversation filler reserved for strangers.

"Hm,” Kris said.

"I was trying to find peace. You know how it goes. And yeah, I’m aware of how dumb this sounds right now."

"I didn’t say that,” Kris said. “I just can't imagine going for months without meat or I don't know... living up to those expectations."

Zitao looked up at him, the intensity of the look softened by how exhausted he suddenly appeared. "It was the second most difficult thing I had to do in my life."

Zitao had this way of making people want to know, want to ask. But Kris didn’t feel right asking, not yet. At least not the obvious questions.

“Was it worth it?” He asked instead.

The reply was a shrug, sleepy against the pillow. “Sometimes I think so. Times like this, when I have to give up my bed to a stranger…”

“I thought we were friends,” Kris said, pretending to be affronted. Zitao gave a smile, already half-asleep.

-

The repairman couldn’t come for another five days, stranded in his neighborhood the next highway exit over where the roads were blocked with ice and dark, too, thanks to trees that had fallen over the street wires. Well, can’t you fix those too, Orfila had joked into the phone and Mr. Lu had replied drily, “Lady, I repair furnaces.”

“His wife recently had a baby. I don’t know why he isn’t thrilled about someone giving him business,” Orfila said after hanging up. “Sorry, Kris. I should’ve mentioned this in the lease.”

“I just feel bad for intruding on Zitao,” Kris said. It was the third night. The sun was coming out a little, and some people were beginning to leave their apartments. From the living room window he’d seen movement in the courtyard below, the waddling shapes of heavily scarved and jacketed people emerging from their first floor entrances.

Orfila hand-waved the concern. “Zitao’s used to it. He’s trained himself into a constitution of steel. He’s pretty much my Iron Man.” She pulled Zitao into a friendly stranglehold as the boy walked into the kitchen.

“Iron Man wears a suit,” Zitao choked out, prying her arm off his neck. “I need an armor to protect myself from you.”

Orfila let go, wrinkling her nose. “You smell disgusting. Did you brush your teeth?”

Zitao ducked his head. He darted a quick look at Kris. “This is what a man smells like,” he said, lifting his chin.

“I’m glad I’m not a man then,” Orfila said. “But are you saying that Kris here isn’t one either? Because I don’t think he smells like something died in his mouth.”

Zitao groaned. “I literally just rolled out of bed. Give me five minutes, okay?”

Kris could testify to it. When he woke up Zitao was sprawled across the floor, mouth-breathing little snorts into his pillow. He’d stepped carefully over Zitao’s outstretched body to escape the room.

Orfila was visiting her parents, a twenty-minute walk away. She’d be gone until the next afternoon, she said, and she hoped the boys would get along in her absence. Play nice, she said.

“She’s probably paying a visit to her booty call,” Zitao said before disappearing into the bathroom.

Kris spent most of the day in the living room, avoiding the igloo that had overtaken his own room. He felt awkward in Zitao’s, and that arrangement was clearly designated for sleeping; he was thankful that Zitao had even welcomed him into his personal space.

He was in the middle of responding to an email when his phone began vibrating in his pocket.

“You’re alive!” Zhou Mi said when he picked up. “I was afraid you’d caught pneumonia and left us already.”

Kris laughed. “How’re you holding up?”

“Bored out of my mind. I think I’ve blown several thousand RMB on online shopping in the past three days. Someone please take the computer away from me.”

Kris said he knew the feeling.

“Want to come out later? Liu Chao and I are heading downtown for drinks. We’re thinking Party 98 or Sunny, maybe do dinner first around nine? C’mon, we’ll even pick you up.”

Kris hadn’t gone out since he’d arrived, aside from a few local sightseeing trips. “I’m tempted,” he said, and added, “Can I bring Zitao?”

There was a surprised pause. “Why not? We do want to get to know the guy. Raaaaging with Huang Zitao.”

“No thanks,” Zitao said. He’d just gotten out of the shower, and his hair stuck to his scalp like a rubber swimming cap. “I have other plans.”

He ducked into his room before Kris could muster up a counter-offer.

Kris texted Zhou Mi back. Rain check? Think I might be getting sick.

Boo, Zhou Mi wrote back.

Kris ordered in Thai food and watched the latest episode of his new favorite police drama online. When he left his room at half past ten to take a piss, he saw that Zitao’s light was still on.

“Come on in,” Zitao yelled after the third knock.

He was sitting cross-legged on the floor with his headphones on, the large showy ones that went over his ears. The laptop was frozen on a page with a black background and red text. Kris vaguely made out a line of skulls marqueeing across the screen.

“What’re you up to?” Kris asked casually.

“Nothing,” Zitao answered. “I mean, writing in my blog.”

“I thought you said you had plans.”

“These are my plans.”

“You know what I hear goes really well with writing?” Kris mimed a beer bottle, popping off the cap, putting it to his lips.

Zitao stared at him until he understood, and grinned.

-

“So when you say you’re going out with friends, what you actually mean is you’re going out to, like, a loser internet café or bar by yourself and then getting shwasted and then not coming home until you’re sure everyone is asleep.”

“Shwasted?” Zitao slurred meaningfully, “is not what I said.”

“I don’t know why you felt the need to lie to her.”

“She worries too much. I don’t like it.” Zitao took another swig from his bottle, which Kris noticed was nearly empty again. Again.

“That’s sweet, in a sad twisted way,” he said, reaching over to ruffle Zitao’s hair.

“Get off,” Zitao said, squealing like Yixing’s pig. “I said no touching, remember.”

Kris couldn’t remember. It felt so long ago, that night in the courtyard on Zitao’s fake birthday, when he couldn’t even get the stupid lighter to work.

“What about you then?” Zitao said, changing the subject. “Now that we’ve established my ‘sad, twisted’ life story.”

“Sad twisted life story is not what I said,” Kris parroted.

Zitao threw a bottle cap at his chest. “Shut up.”

Kris gaped as it bounced off his collar. “You could’ve maimed the money-maker.”

“Shut up.” Zitao kicked his leg with his bare foot. For some reason he wasn’t wearing socks. Kris barely recalled him peeling them off hours earlier, complaining that it was too hot in the house, too hot in his room, where they’d dumped the four cartons of beer.

“I’m serious. Tell me how you got into,” Zitao gestured vaguely, madly around the room, “all this.”

Kris leaned back onto his palms. Suddenly he understood what Zitao meant about the room being suffocating, like everything was closing in on them.

“You know, the thing about teaching… English, I mean, that kind of gets me apprehensive is what these kids are going to do with it when they grow up.” Kris rubbed the back of his head. “I think back to when I was working in the States, and those times that I tutored one-on-one-it was always rich kids, you know, whose parents could afford that-private English lessons. And it always felt like they were gonna grow up to do exactly what I was doing, which is to say… not knowing what they were doing. Or doing it for non-reasons.”

Zitao made a sound of disagreement. “You’re overthinking it. There’s nothing wrong with teaching English, or wanting to learn it.”

“Yeah,” Kris said. “I know.”

“And who’s to judge the reasons people learn anything, right? I mean, maybe some people learn English to meet the love of their life. Who happens to be a tall, blond, good-looking Chinese-Canadian guy, or something.”

Kris allowed that to sink in. “So you’re saying that I’m good-looking.”

Zitao was smirking, but his lower lip had taken on a defiant sort of stiffness. “Anyone with eyes can see that. You’re a standard shuai ge by any definition.”

“I don’t know, I was pretty lonely back in San Francisco those six months after we broke up.”

“‘We?’”

“My-“ he stopped just short of “girlfriend.” “-ex. Jess. Jessica. We met freshman year of university, then dated on-and-off for five years.”

He found himself wanting to continue talking, which was surprising, because he never wanted to talk about it. It’d become that thing his friends sidestepped in conversation, the latest piece of family gossip his relatives discussed in lowered voices, snatches of which he’d overhear while stalking past the kitchen for leftover turkey the Thanksgiving after the breakup. His mother had taken to actively Americanizing herself after the move to Boston three years earlier. “What about the pretty girl? I thought they were getting married next year,” said his oldest and now least favorite aunt, her elbow propped up on the kitchen counter, and his mom, upon seeing Kris against the doorway, quickly made a shushing sound and announced that the pie was ready. “With my signature pumpkin cream filling,” she added, with an apologetic downturn smile directed at Kris, but more than anything he just felt tired-of dodging questions, unwarranted sympathy, of being trapped in this massive vessel of blood and tissue that he wore now as a costume, a draining necessity. It wasn’t like he could step out of himself for a week and then step back in to renormalize, allow the Kris-gears to shutter into place. This wasn’t him. Kris had been the captain of his high school basketball team, earning the title of MVP for three consecutive semesters and one other dissociated from the three, which was not only as a freshman but as the first freshman to have ever been honored with the title. The team kept a burn book in Yunho’s old locker as a joke and the only insult scrawled on his page had been “too good-looking; needs to be punched every now and then” which he could tell was Jongdae from the chicken scratch and semicolon. Kris wasn’t someone who’d eavesdrop on other people talking about him and then pretend not to hear. He was doomed now, stuck with this cheap second-tier imitation of himself.

But Zitao’s prompting stare, the casualness of his body language which said, basically, I have no real investment in this, for some reason-that made it okay. Kris could talk about the breakup, and Jess, and how much he missed her and hated himself for it.

So he talked about it.

-

“The thing is, I used to be a really cool guy. No, seriously-seriously.” Zitao was doing his laughing-til-he-cried schtick again, and Kris punched him lightly in the arm. “Hey, trust me here. In high school I got voted ‘most likely to freeze you with his ice bazooka of charisma.’”

“What the, that is a lie.”

“I swear.” Kris raised his hand and held the other over his heart. “Seriously. Feel my heartbeat.”

Zitao, still crying, fumbled a hand over Kris’ sweatshirt. “I don’t feel anything. Guess your heart’s also made of ice, or did that bazooka freeze it up too.”

“Your hand’s on the wrong side, loser. Heart’s on the left. Here, lemme.”

Zitao’s hand was cold to the touch, and a little clammy. Kris guided it to hover above where he supposed his heart actually was, and he could feel it now, more distinctly than before, each ba-dump punching his ribcage like a nail through wood.

“Whoa,” said Zitao, bravely applying pressure with his palm. “It’s actually beating pretty fast. I thought if you were telling the truth I wouldn’t be able to feel anything.”

Kris noticed he was still covering Zitao’s hand with his own. “Oh. Shit, you’re right. Why did I even say-“

“No fucking clue, man.” Sometimes Zitao’s voice hit an unbecomingly high pitch when he was excited. “Are you drunk? I feel a little drunk.”

Kris most definitely was not drunk, although they did finish maybe fifteen beers between the two of them? It was unclear at the moment.

Uncl…ear.

Uncle…ar.

Uncle… ha.

“You’re the only one, kiddo,” he slurred.

“Don’t call me that,” Zitao warned, his head lolling to the side. It hit Kris’ shoulder and he went, loudly, “Ow. No changing the subject-I hate when people call me that.”

“I didn’t change the subject,” Kris said, closing his eyes now. Zitao must’ve had a bigass head, as heavy as an anchor weighing him down to sea. No buoyancy whatsoever, Kris thought, recalling inexplicably physics lessons of high school yore.

“No, you did, with your inviting manly shoulder just begging me to-“

“Shut up,” Kris said, and draped an arm around Zitao, pressing him into his chest instead, which was infinitely more comfortable than having a rock on his trapezius. His traps. Traps. He needed to work on them. Probably everything had turned into fat by now. Shit.

Zitao was shifting, squirming in his hold. “You little weasel, stop moving, you,” Kris said, eyes still closed, but peeking one open to check on the guy. Zitao had a comically stupid wide-eyed borderline-terrified look on his face, folded into himself, slightly angry, too, like the one he had when--right, Kris remembered now, which he couldn't earlier. He snorted at the memory of Zitao recoiling from him. What was so bad about being touched? Most people would be grateful that Kris touched them. The Hand of Kris… Krist.

Ha ha.

“C’mere,” he said, this time coaxingly, gesturing with the arm that wasn’t holding onto Zitao and even though the guy still had that stupid deer-in-headlights thing going on, Kris felt him unwinding, relaxing, slowly letting go.

“Alright, but only because I’m cold, and you’re a fucking furnace,” Zitao mumbled into the hem of Kris’ sweatshirt a moment later. Somehow his head had ended up on Kris’ lap.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kris said, pulling a blanket over the both of them. Over Zitao’s face, too, to shut him up.

-

Kris rolled out of bed with about five sledgehammers simultaneously slamming morning hellos into his temple and when attempting to pull on his jeans found that they no longer fit. The zipper wouldn’t budge, gaping open in a wide toothy V, and he knew logically there was no way he’d gained twenty pounds in his sleep for his waistline to have expanded this much-on closer inspection, were these jeans even his?

A loud snore sent him jumping from behind.

It was Zitao, faceplanted on the bed, a nest of wayward black hair and one visible eye. T-shirt rucked up to his ribs, stripped down to his boxers for some inexplicable reason. Maybe for the same ludicrous reason that they had both slept in the same bed together.

Without thinking, Kris began scanning for bruises.

“Stop,” he berated himself aloud. “What are you doing?”

Zitao shifted in his sleep, rolling onto his back. One arm sprawled out across Kris’ pillow, where his head had been just five minutes ago.

“No,” Kris said, and then he said it again. He quickly retraced his steps. They were having a talk. He gave the whole ex-girlfriend, tragic breakup backstory. At some point they made a trip to the Family Mart downstairs, trudged up the five flights hauling several cartons of beer. He looked at the empty green bottles strewn across the floor, and then noticed the stink in the air, the sour alcoholic afterglow.

Right. They were drinking, some drinking game had taken place, Kris kept losing, and then Zitao was touching him with his cold hands, and Zitao fell asleep on his lap, and, and, he was certain that was it.

That was all, he thought, good, and then, thank god for the snow. He couldn’t imagine going to work like this.

-

"I hope you know," Zitao said over breakfast on Monday, "the bathroom stinks the worst after you've used it. What's that stuff you spray all over yourself? It's like a French bakery in there."

It was a gift from Jessica, but Kris kept that to himself. She'd said it made him smell delicious, like her favorite donuts.

“Not man enough for you, huh?” Kris said, leering.

Orfila looked from one to the other, her eyes round and curious. When Zitao left the table to retrieve his backpack, she curled her finger in Kris’ direction. He leaned in.

“What happened? How did you penetrate the impenetrable fortress of Huang Zitao?”

Kris coughed back a laugh. “Fortress?” If anything, Zitao was more of a hut, secluded in the mountains, obscured by miles and miles of trees. But ultimately defenseless when you found your way there. “I don’t know. We had a couple drinks while you were gone.”

-

Yixing dialed him the minute he signed on. “Just checking up on you. It’s been a while. How are things?”

“It’s been snowing,” Kris said. “You’re keeping busy? What sort of stuff are you working on?”

Yixing was working on his show for New Year’s at Amsterdam, but that wasn’t the most exciting thing that had happened to him recently. The most exciting thing was-he had discovered someone online. Just a guy and a keyboard, sometimes a guitar, but he wasn’t very good. His vocals, though, were the star of this story. “This guy, I have a feeling-I get shivers, Yifan. Seriously. It’s not that he wows me with his technical proficiency but he’s got a bit of, um-“

“He’s got something that you find interesting,” Kris finished for him.

“Right. Something compelling. I need to meet him. Lend me some of your charm? I don’t want to scare him away at our first encounter.”

“I don’t think you’d scare anyone away. You’re the least intimidating person I know.”

“Huh,” Yixing said. “You think he’ll want to work with me?”

“I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t want to work with you.”

“Now you’re just pandering,” Yixing said, but he sounded happy. “I’m nervous, man. I want him to be my Emma Hewitt.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Kris said. “But I’m sure he’d love to be your Emma.”

“I’ll send you some of her stuff,” Yixing said, nodding into the webcam. “Wait. You never told me about you. Snowing? Did you catch a cold?”

“Nah, don’t worry,” Kris said. “I’m good.”

-

"I've got a problem," Zitao said after dinner, leaning his head against Kris' door, pushing it open wider, "with this hole."

Kris coughed. "What?"

"In my lobe. I can't tell if it's a blood clot or a pimple, there's a small piece of something right by the piercing, and my nail can't get into it right. Can you check it out for me?"

Zitao was already standing over his desk, bowing his head down towards Kris.

"You can't ask Orfila or something?"

"Are you kidding? She's got that old-people vision problem where they can't see near or far or anything in between."

That wasn't exactly fair, Kris thought. She was in her early thirties but still had the breasts of a twenty-year-old.

Up close Zitao reminded Kris of the veiny children he'd been friends with as a kid, skin so thin you could trace where everything went. There were stretch marks on Zitao's neck, evident as he pulled it towards the light. Kris couldn't help but think of those birds he sometimes saw on the sidewalk, not the disposable pigeons but the rarer breeds, ones he couldn't name, and how delicate they appeared but -- surprisingly resilient they actually were.

"Did you have a growth spurt recently?"

Zitao knitted his eyebrows together, thinking. "Yeah, maybe last year. Probably all that milk. Why, jealous?"

"Hey, watch who you're talking to," Kris said. "You don't want these tweezers to accidentally end up in your eye."

"Sorry, shifu. How's it look?"

It was a pimple, small and unintrusive next to the piercing. Kris rubbed his thumb once more over the lobe, silky and meaty like a baby’s. He patted Zitao's cheek. "Looks like a zit. Puberty's a bitch, kiddo."

Zitao flipped him off on the way out, closing the door with more force than necessary. Kris laughed until he heard the door click shut and then sunk into his chair, strangely exhausted.

-

It was weird, being friends with Zitao and privy to all the thoughts he had previously kept to himself.

When Zitao first admitted, "I like to put holes through myself," they were in Kris’ room-Zitao on his stomach against the floor, Kris sitting inches away-and Kris had chuckled, until he realized it was said in earnest.

"The pain is so profound," Zitao continued, "you know?"

"You're serious," Kris said uncertainly, his lips curled because he didn't know what to do with them. All his life he had been ill-prepared for moments like these.

In grade school his homeroom class's pet rabbit fell sick and while the girl he'd harbored a crush on since the second grade wept at the windowsill he loomed a few miniature classmates away, not daring to look at the small body of fur heaving its last few breaths within the cage, not knowing what to do with his hands.

Years later, his best friend was visiting him in Seoul. She shadowed him around his high school for fun and then came out to him during one lunch period. Kris dropped his spork into Wednesday's mystery soup, spent the next few seconds trying to retrieve it without dipping his fingers into the bowl while Amber looked on with a patience beyond her years and outside of the scope of her personality as he had perceived it up until now. "So," Kris said, after wiping the handle clean with a napkin he wasn't sure was his. "You were saying you, uh, I mean-you, uh... good for you, man-wo-man." Thinking about it now Amber deserved a gold star for not dodging the world's most badly-timed shoulder punch that ensued. Kris cringed, remembering.

Back in real time Zitao was observing the scowl that had formed on Kris' face while he unlatched a safety pin from his ear, and he held it below his own wrist one finger's width beneath the pulse, the head of the needle puncturing the skin lightly but not enough to draw blood. Kris didn't realize he'd been clenching his jaw until he felt Zitao's gaze on him, and then his wide teeth-baring grin.

"You wanna try?"

Zitao's clammy fingers slipped deftly under his wrist, but just as instinctively Kris recoiled, snapping his arm back until it beat against the floorboards, warm from where Zitao had been sitting earlier.

"Maybe," Kris said with a convincing display of control. He rubbed his sore palm where the bruise would bloom several hours later. "Next time."

-

He was teaching superlatives now, and past perfect tense, and his kids were constantly adding “had” into their homework essays where “had”s were not needed-it was difficult, he knew, because he remembered being that age once, being forced to internalize a second set of sounds against his tongue. He graded papers with a green pen. Red always seemed so dictatorial, demanding in a way that didn’t necessarily yield results.

Zhou Mi slipped into the table across from his and crossed his legs. “So, Mr. Wu.”

Kris looked up from his stack of ungraded homeworks. “Why are you so far away?”

“That’s what we want to ask you,” Zhou Mi said.

Kris glanced around the teacher’s lounge. It was empty but for the two of them. “There’s no one else here.”

“Me and Liu Chao. And everyone else.”

“I’m confused,” Kris said.

“So are we.” Zhou Mi made his saddest frown. “I thought I meant more to you than this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about your new best friend and the reason I don’t get to see you anymore. We miss you. Come out with us this weekend! Bring Zitao. Taozi. We don’t care. Any friend of yours is a friend of ours. We just want to see your beautiful regal face again.”

“This royal we thing is creeping me out,” Kris said. “But I’ll ask him. He’ll probably say no. Also, we’re not best friends.” Sure, he was hanging out with Zitao more than usual lately. But they lived together. Flatmates were supposed to be friends. It was normal.

“Whatever you say, Mr. Wu,” Zhou Mi said. “We’ll be waiting.”

-

Zitao said, “No,” and then, after some coaxing, worried his lower lip and said, “Fine. Okay. Let’s do it. It’s not like I wanted to be a loner this whole time.” He stopped himself, but Kris understood without meaning to. It just kind of happened that way. In the same way that Kris couldn’t be a loner even if he tried. They were doomed to each of their separate fates.

“Awesome,” Kris said.

Liu Chao was late, so they met up with Zhou Mi first inside of his favorite club downtown, Sunny. Zhou Mi’s eyes widened upon seeing Zitao in his skinnies and v-neck and then the studded knuckles, the smudged eyeliner. Kris had made an effort to not stare before they left the house, and Zitao had made it easy by pulling over his fur hood and circling his thick knitted scarf a couple times around his neck. It was like walking down the street with a mummy.

He didn’t look bad, Kris thought now, just different. He looked the way someone looked when they were out to get laid.

“Very shuai,” Zhou Mi murmured approvingly, and ordered a round of shots for everyone. “Here’s to Taozi getting lucky tonight.”

Zitao tossed it back, already flushing. Kris palmed the back of his neck. “Take it easy, yeah?” He said lightly.

But Zitao was pulling back, sharing a joke with Zhou Mi. They were laughing about something related to gymnastics. Kris couldn’t hear them, so he flickered his gaze elsewhere. All the pretty girls were out tonight, like they couldn’t stand to be cooped up this winter anymore. The snow had melted, made the ground walkable for their shiny stilettos. Fuck, he still couldn’t look at a girl’s shoes without remembering.

“Hey, sorry I’m late,” Liu Chao came into view, sweeping in the cold with him, brohugging everyone. “The party has officially arrived. What are you drinking, my man?” He peered into Kris’ glass.

Liu Chao wasn’t lying. Something changed once he got there-or maybe the alcohol was starting to settle in. Within the next half hour everyone looked 100% drunker, and soon Zhou Mi was nodding his head and drifting towards the dance floor. “Lame,” Liu Chao said, following his friend’s lead, disappearing into the crowd of bodies.

Kris was the okay kind of tipsy, but on the downer side, light-headed and a little sleepy. He nursed his drink in his hand and leaned an elbow against the counter, watched as a guy come up to Zitao and start whispering in his ear. Watched as Zitao touched the guy’s arm and began whispering back.

None of it seemed out of character until the guy, grinning, pulled Zitao out of his stool and began leading the way to the dance floor. Kris blinked, and they were already several meters away. It was dark, but he made out the general gist of Zitao moving to the song, which was fucking ancient hiphop from 2008, when hiphop was still sort of a thing, but of course Zitao would be into that. Kris licked around the acrid bitter taste in his mouth and craned his head. He wanted to get a better look at the other ladies in the club but inexplicably his eyes kept returning to Zitao and the dude, where Zitao was swiveling his hips and pressing up against the guy now, grinding up into him, and it all appeared too natural, too-

Hey, he said, sliding down a stool to the girl on his left. She smiled and halted the conversation she was having with her friend.

-

“Thanks for coming out,” Zhou Mi said, waving at their rolled-down window while propping up Liu Chao with his free arm. “We should do this again soon.”

“Maybe not soon,” Zitao moaned in a muffled voice from the other end of the car. He sounded ill. Kris wondered what Zhou Mi’s secret was. How was he still sober?

“Lots of water and vitamins. I take this energy drink beforehand,” Zhou Mi advised, reading his mind.

“You’re crazy,” Kris said. “’Night, man. Take care of your best friend there.”

“He’s not my best friend,” Zhou Mi said, with a wink.

Silence filled the air which had been previously occupied by Zhou Mi’s voice. Kris closed his eyes against the window, letting the orange lights of the night glow against the outside of his eyelids. A small headache was already beginning to pulse at his temples, the innocuous underling of a massive hangover. Beside him, Zitao spoke first.

“Now you know.”

Kris blearily looked over his shoulder at Zitao. “Know what?”

Zitao’s fur hood was back over his head, hiding his entire face. His voice seemed to emerge from a shadow, or a hole.

“You saw me tonight. With-“

“-the guy?” Kris finished for him. “Yeah. You looked like you were having fun.”

Zitao was quiet. Kris waited, but he didn’t say anything further.

They arrived at their building, and Zitao didn’t say anything. They walked up the five flights, and Zitao still didn’t say anything.

Kris let him use the bathroom first.

“G’night,” he said, when Zitao came out.

“Night,” Zitao said. He hadn’t gotten all of his eyeliner out. They deepened his already deep eye-circles.

Kris brushed his teeth, washed his face, and changed into his pajamas. He sat on the bed with his knees pulled up to his chest and thought for a moment. The conversation hadn’t ended, he knew. It hadn’t ended there. Zitao was waiting for him to say something else, but he’d been waiting too. He just didn’t know what he’d been waiting for.

He pressed his forehead against the wall, the thin wall separating them. Maybe if he could figure out what he was supposed to say. Maybe if-

Fuck, came from the other side of the wall.

Then louder, “Ugh,” followed by-Kris turned his ear now to the cool plaster of wallpaper-a series of distinct sounds, a rhythm he knew like the back of his hand.

Zitao was touching himself, getting himself off. His hand was moving fast, Kris had tuned in to the last push before the release-he was about to finish. His breathing was coming out in little pants, and Kris shut his eyes tight, trying and failing to not think about it. But his mind had no difficulty in conjuring up Zitao next door, lying on the mattress with his jeans yanked down maybe just past the dip of his hipbones, just low enough for him to work his cock free from the confines of his underwear, slipping the slick head in and out of his fist.

By instinct Kris’ own hand moved to palm the outline of his own cock where it had hardened against the zip of his jeans.

He stopped himself, but he could hear the bed creaking in the next room and imagine the shaking of Zitao’s shoulders as he jerked himself with effort, his face probably twisted into a wince. The tightening of his abdominals as he thrusted up into his fist.

“Fuck,” Kris gritted out aloud, scrambling for his zipper, and suddenly the room was silent. The room next door was silent. Only the echo of his voice hung in the air, like a punishment for his carelessness. Shit, he thought, I ruined it, disappointment spooling low and deep, but then it started again. The creaking, open-mouthed panting, the sounds Zitao’s hand made sliding up and down his dick.

Zitao finished first, with a curse he didn’t recognize, dirty and guttural and in a dialect, and Kris kept going, biting down on his lip, arching his back against the mattress, trying to think of anything but the reason this was happening in the first place, until he spilled hot and sticky into his hand.

-

January came and went in a cold but tolerable sweep-Kris took to smoking by his window, taking pains to confine the stench of tobacco to his room so that Orfila wouldn’t worry herself with it. He watched his knuckles whiten against the butt of the stick, blowing wisps of smoke away from his face, into the concrete pavement below. Sometimes Zitao joined him, lying stomach-down on his bed, clicking on his laptop and snorting from time to time at something funny he’d found, a cute comment left on his blog. “What do you have to blog about anyway?” Kris said. “Do you do, like, reviews of different cat cafes that you’ve been to?”

“You’re such a jerk,” Zitao said, elbowing him in the foot, which actually hurt. He must’ve struck a nerve ending, because the pain seared up his calf, rendered him momentarily speechless. Zitao watched Kris’ face contort and laughed, satisfied. “Serves you right, jerk.”

“I’m serious, though,” Kris said, after recovering. “Let me read something.”

Zitao pretended to think about it for a moment before snapping his laptop shut. “No way. Never.” He scrambled up to his feet, having trouble with balance on the soft mattress, his head nearly grazing the ceiling. Kris crawled over and cupped his hands around Zitao’s knees, steadying him.

“Get your dirty feet off my bed,” he said.

Zitao made a face, looming over Kris. “Get your dirty bed out from under my feet. How handsome am I right now?” He struck a pose, hands akimbo at his waist.

“Five out of ten if I count your face. Seven point five if I don’t.”

“Oh yeah? Well how about I count your face-“ which made no sense but Zitao had fallen back down, smothering Kris with his hands, dragging fingers around his neck.

At school He Jiong announced that February was peer review month, and Kris found himself deeply engrossed in a week’s worth of Liu Chao’s math lessons, more comfortable with trigonometry than he ever remembered being. Liu Chao was an engaging and entertaining instructor, patient with his kids, good at rewarding the quicker ones while still tending to those that had fallen behind. It came naturally to him, Kris saw now, but the ease with which he taught wasn’t entirely unpracticed, either. He’d honed it to perfection, timing the key points of every lesson to the students’ habitual yawns. Kris jotted down notes in the back row, where occasionally a student or two would turn to stare at him, at his accidentally ombre hair, sometimes stick out a tongue before sliding back into their seat and playing the good boy or girl to Mr. Liu’s exciting class. By the end of the week the page was full.

Halfway through the week He Jiong swapped out Liyin for Zitao-she was getting too pregnant to climb the stairs to his fourth-floor English class, she’d claimed-and Kris had to deal with Zitao’s dark flickering stare every time he glanced towards the back of the room, the smug knowing grin when he stumbled over an English phrase, silly mistakes he never would’ve committed otherwise. Zitao’s presence made him nervous, for some reason, and he ran his chalky palms down the back of his trousers enough times for one of his students to point out that it looked like he’d drawn reverse panda eyes on his buttocks.

“You’re really good,” Zitao said afterwards. “But you need to do something about that hair.” He twisted a lock of it around his pinky, pulled it taut to examine where the blonde phased into black, the lack of spectrum in between.

They insisted, both him and Orfila, that they do it for him. “Bonding scalp-time,” Orfila called it, digging her manicure into his skull and scraping her nails down, calling it a special massage.

“No happy endings here,” Zitao said from behind, mixing the dye with a brush. Orfila momentarily released her grip on Kris to smack him on the arm, the bottle of hairdye almost flipping over onto the floor.

“Look what you almost did,” Zitao whined. They parted Kris’ hair into sections and began to comb the dye through. The brush swished coolly over his scalp and he waited, palms folded, sweating through the plastic bag they’d secured around his neck with a clothespin.

“Wow,” Orfila said after he emerged from the shower. The bathroom mirror had been too foggy to see anything through; he had only their reactions to rely on.

“Holy angel of death,” said Zitao, darting a tongue over his lip.

He looked alright. It’d been a while since he’d seen himself with black hair-and he couldn’t recall it ever being this black. They’d maybe gone too far while picking the color. This was borderline goth.

“No, I like it,” Zitao said, reaching up to run his hand through it experimentally, soft now that it had dried. Kris bent his knees in compliance and then watched Zitao falter, drop his arm by his side as if he were embarrassed, as if he hadn’t spent the last hour combing through it with his gloved fingers, making sure the dye stuck. “Really, it looks nice,” Zitao repeated, sounding suddenly awkward and heavy, and coughed, cleared his throat and turned away.

-

“Whoa,” said Yixing. “He’s back.” He leaned in to get a closer look, his whole face blowing up Kris’ screen. “Nice. That’s not a wig, right?”

Kris groaned. “Does it look that fake?” He touched it, instinctively.

“No! I just haven’t seen you with your natural hair color in… how long has it been, a year?”

“It’s been a while,” Kris said.

“Nice to see it making a comeback,” Yixing said, smiling.

They talked about work, about Kris going to visit him in Beijing, even though Yixing was always traveling, flitting from one city to the next, one country to another. “Like an impatient bird,” Kris said. “Hey, how’s your muse doing?”

“My-“ Yixing looked confused. “Oh. The singer I told you about? We met.”

“Okay,” Kris said. “And?”

“It went well,” Yixing said off-handedly, and for the first time in years Kris didn’t know what that meant. There was a switch in his tone, something he couldn’t decipher. Maybe Yixing, too, had his secrets.

“Have you been on Facebook lately?” Yixing asked, out of nowhere.

“Nope,” Kris said, because he hadn’t. He just hadn’t felt the need to log in. It didn’t even occur to him until now that it’d been weeks-half the winter had gone by without him updating his status or writing on his friends’ walls. “Why?”

“No reason,” Yixing said casually. And then, less casually: “Don’t go just because I reminded you.”

So of course he went online.

Seventy-three people had congratulated Jessica Jung on her engagement to Taecyeon Ok.

Kris scrolled down. Amber’s dog was having puppies, a whole family of five now, two of the smallest sucking at her teets on a cot. Henry had checked into a steakhouse with twelve other people on Foursquare. He scrolled back up; the announcement was still there. Jess had changed her profile background to a picture of her name printed across the sky in puffs of clouds, following a “Will you marry me?” written in Korean. Pretty classy, he thought. Better than hiding the ring in a pie or the bottom of a drinking glass, which could’ve led to a choking hazard. They’d joked about it once, when marriage had been little more than an elusive idea, but still an idea, incubating in the back of their minds on the good days. “Don’t you dare,” she’d said, pretending to choke him first.

He didn’t want to think about it. It had passed. Everything had passed. It’d been a year and a half, approaching that mark. He was a different person now. He was doing something he might’ve cared about, maybe, or at the very least cared about more than what he’d been doing before. He was getting by okay. And she was, too. More than okay, apparently. But that was okay, too. That was fine. He wanted the best for her, really. He only wished the best for her, he thought, and in thinking it, realized it was the truth.

Something had lifted-untwisted the crank in his chest. He took a breath and felt distinctly the air filling him up, the air leaving his lungs. He lay on his bed and felt his body unwind, every muscle falling slack. It was the first real breath he’d taken in months, maybe longer. The thought of it was absurd, that someone could live for weeks on end knowing so little about himself. Paying no attention to himself. Going through the motions of living and somehow convincing the people around him that this was him, living. What a joke, he thought now, and a slow, stunned laugh burned its way through his throat, expelling into the air. What a fucking joke. The laugh snagged, moving his shoulders, bumping them back against the mattress. And then he was crying a little, too.

-

Orfila was sick. She’d caught the bug that was going around, sending everyone flying for tissues, constantly lowering their face masks to blow their noses. All the cold medicine in the pharmacy downstairs was out. She blamed the dirty elevator buttons for infecting her. “God only knows what kinds of people have touched those knobs,” she said, the sickness making her bitter in a way that Kris didn’t expect but found unexpectedly entertaining.

“Stay away from me,” Zitao said, nudging away as he moved to sterilize all his dishes and drinking cups.

After a week she decided on self-quarantine. “I’ve called in sick to work for the next couple of days. Nobody wants to hear me spout love advice sounding like I’ve got an anvil shoved up my nose.” She sneezed loudly into her tissue before rolling her suitcase out the door.

“Where is she going?” Kris asked. “Is this normal?”

“She’s going to get an IV drip at the hospital where her boyfriend works, is my best bet.”

Kris had thought Zitao had been joking that one time. “Wait, Orfila has a boyfriend?”

Zitao sat down at the kitchen table. “Well, it’s complicated.”

She was seeing someone, this guy Wei Jia, and had been for several years. On and off. He was older, widowed, with a ten-year-old son that Orfila babysat sometimes. “They have to take him out on dates, you know how kids are,” Zitao said. “She doesn’t really talk about him. Wei Jia. I mean, I know because I live here, but most of the time she says she’s visiting her parents or makes up some excuse so people don’t ask questions.”

That explained why Yixing hadn’t said anything. “What kind of questions?”

Zitao shrugged, but Kris detected a hint of protectiveness beneath the pretense of nonchalance. Maybe Orfila was more of a mother than an older sister to him.

“You know, like why she’s after this widower, this older man with kids, that kind of thing. If she’s in it for the money. If she’ll be cursed, like the wife, et cetera. It’s pretty sick, what people come up with when they want to bring you down.”

“Shit,” Kris said. He watched as Zitao made an effort to unclench his fists, which had been wrestling unconsciously with the tablecloth. There was something endearing in the motion, and it pinched his chest, carving a tiny hole there. He weighed his options and thought, To hell with it. Placed his hand over one of Zitao’s-wrenching his hand open until they touched fingertips.

Zitao’s head jerked up, a warm blush instantly creeping into his cheeks, up the back of his neck, coloring his ears. He opened his mouth but didn’t say anything, only looked probingly at Kris. He didn’t move away.

“Hey,” Kris said, after a moment. “Are you into karaoke?”

-

There was a place a fifteen minute walk away that Zitao used to frequent, back when he’d first arrived in Shenyang, friendless and bored, and he’d spent nights there in a booth to himself, belting out the ugliest versions of his favorite rock medleys and older rap songs, the kind of music you didn’t hear on the radio anymore. Kris smiled privately to himself, wondering what Yixing would say to the thinly veiled insult. Yixing proudly made his living off the kind of music you did hear on the radio.

The place was called Solar, the “R” flickering in and out so that at first Kris had read aloud, “Sola,” wondering if it were Latin or Spanish for something interesting until Zitao corrected him. The storefront logo was the word sandwiched between two tacky crescent moons, drawn and outlined in purple paint.

“I like it because they show you the original music videos,” Zitao said defensively, as if Kris had put his indifference on display. “And they give you free beer refills.”

The room was small, bordering on claustrophobic, and the dim lights above bounced off the ceiling disco ball to form ambiguously polygonal shapes on the walls and over Zitao, imprinting on his mouth, his eyes. Kris punched in a Nick Chou song just to get them going; he didn’t even know the melody, but Zitao did, and eventually he joined, making up the tune as he went.

“The beer,” Kris said, hours later. “Is good.”

“Yeah,” Zitao said, cradling a mic between his arms while he lay horizontal on the couch. They were both starting to reek, he could tell, but neither of them cared yet.

“I’m glad we did this. We’re. Doing this.”

Zitao crawled over with his eyes half-closed, and his head dug into Kris’ arm until he made room on his lap. “If I’d met you five years ago, man, it would’ve been dangerous.”

“Mm,” Kris agreed, not really comprehending. They were letting the music go in the background, a Wu Yue Tian song from the early days, and he was humming along, hearing himself hit the wrong notes with relish. His friends back home-Henry, especially, perfect-pitch Henry with his stupid virtuoso violining-would’ve given him such shit for it, they always had a ball whenever it was Kris’ turn to hold the mic, dimming the lights and hushing the room so they could hear each wavering note, amplified through the speakers like a douchey public service announcement. Dicks, all of them, Kris thought fondly, the memories fuzzing through his alcoholic haze. But Zitao was saying something about danger, about Kris. “Hm?”

“I mean,” Zitao said, and adjusted himself, Kris parting his legs to accommodate for this boulder that just happened to be shaped like a head. He glanced down at Zitao and found him looking-just looking, openly, unabashedly, with more than curiosity. He looked at Kris through his dark, dark eyelashes, and under the kaleidoscopic light of the disco ball above, the whole scene appeared to Kris as a premeditated vignette. Cheesy, maybe even a bit pornographic, the way Zitao’s eyelashes fanned out and cast trippy shadows on his undereye circles. Some invisible hand had maneuvered them into this scenario, the same way Kris had been transplanted in the middle of Nowhere, Shenyang, into an apartment with a woman in her thirties he’d never met and her strange young platonic male friend-all from what? From a word of Yixing’s. Right. Kris slumped forward, and below Zitao let out a yelp. When he opened his eyes again their faces were less than five centimeters apart, and Zitao’s breathing had sped up into a panic. Premeditated, huh, thought Kris, looking into the set of eyes mirroring his own, but not mirroring. They were nothing alike, except for the fear. Which crept up Kris’ back now, sure as a New England chill.

He could so easily just.

But the phone in the room was ringing. Once, twice, shrilly, and Zitao couldn’t jump up fast enough to get it. His hair was all messed up like a cockatiel in the back. Yeah, okay, got it, we’ll be right out, just after this song ends, slurring his words. Kris felt around the couch and underneath cushions for anything they might have forgotten. There wasn’t anything. Zitao held his coat while he paid at the bar, momentarily spacing out over how to sign his name on the receipt. Kris Wu? The bartender-owner tapped her nail on the dotted line with the impatient air of someone who’d cleaned one too many vomit-covered toilets in this lifetime. Zitao waited for him at the door and handed him his coat without making eye contact and walked two steps ahead the entire way home.

“Thanks for paying,” he said in a quiet, sullen voice when they turned into their building and under normal circumstances Kris would’ve wanted to ruffle his hair, say “No problem, kiddo,” but Kris said nothing at all, could think of nothing he knew how to say.

An hour, maybe two, passed, and he couldn’t sleep. He was still keyed up from the singing, from the drinking. From the cold, he told himself. He dangled his legs over the bed and leaned across the desk to turn on his laptop. No, that wasn’t it. That wasn’t what he wanted to do.

He stepped into his slippers and took a quick glance at the mirror-he looked wasted, sallow-skinned, in dire need of sleep. “Fuck,” he whispered to himself, but something had been set in motion.

The light in Zitao’s room was off, but one short knock was enough for him to respond. “C’min.”

From where Kris stood, awkwardly in the doorway, Zitao looked as small as he sounded, suddenly, as young and unnerving.

“I don’t know-“ Kris began, against the back of his hand, and stopped as Zitao pulled back the comforter and was instantly out of bed and shuffling to his feet. He pulled his t-shirt out of his bottoms where it’d been accidentally tucked in and stopped a few inches away from Kris, looking up directly into his eyes. His t-shirt had been twisted at the collar from overuse, turning in at the outline of a clavicle, and Kris, without thinking, reached over and rubbed his thumb gently against the bone.

“What are you doing,” Zitao said, hoarsely, maybe from the singing. But he didn’t jerk away; he stepped forward and pressed into it, until Kris’ palm was splayed against his neck.

“My ex is getting married,” Kris said, when no more than a finger’s length separated them. He breathed onto Zitao’s cheek, and Zitao breathed back a faint, “Oh,” sounding dimly of disappointment and something else, that Kris couldn’t pinpoint. He felt Zitao pulling away, brushing off the hand, as though the moment were over and he’d-lost a bet to himself-and instantly resigned himself to it, because that was what Zitao did best, resigning himself to sad things he deserved more than, and Kris couldn’t think as a dull pain grappled in his chest, arriving with it a warm flood of heat.

“No,” Kris said, and pulled Zitao in with both his arms, and felt him struggle, just for a bit, ineffectively, just for show. Slowly, Zitao hugged him back, his own arms coming up from behind Kris and wrapping around him, tight. His weight was foreign and unfamiliar, a heavier, boy’s weight, along with the breadth of his shoulders, the hardness of his body angling against Kris’, but he smelled like the night that had transpired before them, of booze and their own carelessness, what Kris wanted to do next.

He pressed a kiss to Zitao’s neck, aiming for gentle, because it’d been so long. But Zitao’s reaction was immediate, twisting away from him but simultaneously arching into him as he made an uncertain sound in his throat, like hunger. Kris released an arm to cup the curve of his jawline as he pressed his lips to another spot on his neck, still softly, and waited for the shudder, the silent acknowledgment that he was doing okay.

“Good?” He whispered, and Zitao gave a breathless Yeah, eyes shut, rocking his hard-on into Kris’ thigh.

He kissed along Zitao’s jaw, and then just at the corner of his mouth, and then, tentatively, full over the mouth, bringing their lips together in a slow crush. Kris meant to be thoughtful but Zitao was instantly impatient, like he’d waited long enough, and fisted the hem of Kris’ shirt as he kissed him open-mouthed, panting and tangling their tongues together. “Jesus-“ Kris began, laughing, but Zitao didn’t give him the opportunity to break away-just kept going, kissing him.

“You don’t know,” Zitao breathed out, gently grinding against him so that Kris could feel how stiff he was, the defined outline of his cock moving up and down his thigh. “Fuck. Kris.”

“Me too,” Kris gritted out, rocking into it, too. “I’ve thought about-“

He couldn’t finish. Zitao was sucking on his tongue while simultaneously stroking him through his sweats, dragging the heel of his palm over its length with painful deliberation, and Kris couldn’t help it but thrust into the teasing hand, trying to get closer. When Zitao broke the kiss, it was with a dirty quirk of his mouth, and his eyes flickered darkly over Kris as if he were admiring his own work. “You like it?” Zitao whispered with his nose against Kris’ cheek, tugging his sweats down just past his hips, and reveled in the stupid gasp that escaped Kris’ mouth when his hand made contact with his cock.

“Geez, Kris,” Zitao rasped, rutting his own erection against Kris’ leg as he jerked him from below, making a ring with his index finger and thumb that he’d wet with his own spit. It was still dry but Kris was past the point of caring, half gone already. He was desperately humping into Zitao’s hot hand, dazed with the heat and lust that’d built up inside of him, for weeks and weeks, without even his own knowing.

“I-“ he said, and his voice was embarrassingly shaky as he thrusted harder into Zitao’s fist, “-might have jacked off to you jacking off in your room once.”

“Fuck,” Zitao said, low and throaty in his ear. He had his eyes closed, now, his hand moving as frantically as the swivel of his hips against Kris’. “I thought-I wasn’t sure-but I heard you. Too.”

“That night, I-“

“I was thinking about you,” Zitao choked out and Kris felt the heat in his stomach quietly implode-and then, more violently, as he came shuddering into Zitao’s hand.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” he said, collapsing against the wall and catching his breath, while Zitao continued rutting against him, still going. “Here, um-“ he had just palmed the curve of Zitao’s cock when he came too, riding out his orgasm with his head tucked into Kris’ neck, shoulders heaving.

They stayed slumped against the wall for minutes, neither with the strength or will to move.

After some time, Zitao pulled back. Kris lifted his head, and they made nervous eye contact. Slowly Zitao grinned at him, and it was the sweetest grin Kris had ever seen. His hair was tangled; he looked like someone messed him up, in the best way. I did that, Kris thought, and kissed him again, soft and lingering.

››

Parts 3 and 4 will probably be up in the next week (I'm mostly done with 3, dreading 4 ;;)

2/4/13 edit: make that "next month"...i forgot how easily i lose steam argh