Run my chicken fingers through your hair (Lay/Luhan), Part 2/2

[warmboys]

Run my chicken fingers through your hair (2/2)
Lay/Luhan
~13400 words
R

Lu Han returns from a long sabbatical and hits up speed-dial #1.

‹‹

The ease with which Lu Han settles into the apartment is reminiscent of a lot of things that don’t seem like they’d go together but mysteriously do. Soy milk and fried breadsticks. Electronic music and hip-hop. The words “apricot juice” in Lu Han’s slanty hand under Yixing’s smaller and more precise characters making up the grocery list now stuck to the fridge under a magnet shaped like the Eiffel Tower, a long-forgotten souvenir from Sehun.

“You still have this, huh,” Lu Han had mused when he first noticed, and he grazed his thumb over the magnet with the kind of vapid expression that was often painted onto dolls.

Sehun’s Europe adventure had been his last pre-enlistment hurrah, right after Lu Han abandoned his solo career and took refuge in the city of love, suddenly not only solo but desolate. The first month there’d been WeChats and nightly QQ conversations, with “I’m bored” translating to the harder-to-admit “I’m lonely.” “Take care of yourself,” Yixing wrote back, because some things weren’t easy for him to admit, either. Then the messages grew infrequent, coming once a week, and eventually petered out altogether. That was when Sehun announced to their active email list, “I’m gonna visit Lu Han-hyung in Paris.”

Sehun’s short-lived crush on Lu Han in the year leading up to their debut had been as obvious to anyone as a gochujang stain on a freshly laundered white shirt. But like a lot of schoolboy-on-boy crushes, this teetered on the edge of idol worship, glorifying Lu Han into the big brother Sehun never had and secretly hoped he himself might become. It was hard, getting to know yourself on just four hours of sleep a day. That kind of deprivation brought people together, especially when the people were young and as malleable as fresh mounds of clay. Sehun didn’t think of himself as clay but a tall, good-looking boy with a lot of potential but not enough personality to pull it off. Lu Han, though, was all personality, with his charming joker grin which said nothing but Sehun found comforting in a way that he didn’t have the capacity to make sense of. He really liked who Lu Han was, and on a bad day he might’ve even loved him. Later, after a year’s worth of flashing lights and constantly being hounded about their friendship, he loved him differently, as he grew more comfortably into himself. When he became mature enough for introspection, he would wonder if it was just the idea of Lu Han that he thought he loved in the first place.

After the trip Sehun didn’t say much. “We went to all the famous sites, you know… Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, that famous church. It was a lot of fun.” Yixing might’ve been spacey about many things, but he noticed the way Sehun overcompensated with emoticons where they were asking for concrete details. Everyone wanted to know how Lu Han was. What was he up to these days? How did he look? “Like himself. Like he always does. Lu Han-hyung. His hair is black again.” When he received this email Yixing closed his eyes and tried to visualize what “Lu Han-hyung” was supposed to look like. Crazy eyes and a disembodied grin came to mind.

A few weeks later Sehun found himself a serious relationship, a city girl who’d never set foot outside of Seoul. Yixing saw a few selcas of them, pouting into the cameraphone with their cheeks pressed together. One year later they were engaged; the girl, Kyungmi, was three months pregnant.

“I can’t believe he’s a dad,” Lu Han says now, an undeniable note of pride and fondness in his voice. “But think about it… Isn’t it weird to commit yourself to one person for the rest of your life?”

Yixing stills his knife-wielding hand over the uncut carrots. It feels like he’s cooked more this past week than he has the entire year. “It’s not that weird, when you think about what goes into creating a family. Two people’s stable, and you need stable if you’re gonna raise a kid. Maybe more.”

“Thanks for the lesson. ‘Maybe more’? Are you planning on making an illegitimate baby in the countryside?”

“I’m just saying.” For some reason his face is hot.

“You want a dozen little yous running around? Baba, I want ice cream. Baba, I’m tired can you pick me up I don’t wanna walk anymore.” Lu Han’s switched to a higher register. His falsetto sounds like a dying animal.

It is inexplicably easy for Yixing to slip into the role of the long-suffering father.

“Baba’s tired too, son.”

“Hey, I’m a girl.”

“Oh yeah?”

When Yixing lifts his head, Lu Han is laughing. His bottom teeth are the smallest kernels of candy corn, something SM never bothered fixing. It’s nice, in a way. Yixing gets up in the morning and sometimes doesn’t know what he sees in the mirror. That part never really goes away.

“I’m the prettiest girl in my class,” Lu Han continues. He grabs a tuft of hair growing out of the back of his head and attempts to twirl it around his finger.

“I know you are. You’re mine,” Yixing manages to say without puking.

Lu Han barks out a short delighted laugh and stops twirling. “Yeah, you’d be a great dad. Sunday spankings for all. Then take them out for popsicles afterwards. Carrot and the stick. I’d be buried in parenting books still clueless and you’d just know, you sly bastard.” He pauses for a thoughtful glance. “You seeing anyone right now?”

“I’m flattered, but you forgot I can’t prioritize.”

“Really? I always thought you did it pretty well. Better than a lot of other people anyway.”

*

There was a time when leaving had been on his mind like a trickle of TV white noise for weeks. He was tired, the dangerous kind, edgy like Kyungsoo at his worst. EXO hadn't been around for long-a year, or a little over. In interviews he was constantly zoning out. They’d dyed his hair roughly the same color as the rest of him. His eyes were miniature ships, thrumming dully as the only signs of life in an otherwise vast blond sea. Sometimes Lu Han sat in the front, right before him, and sometimes he was there to his left. When they stood next to each other Lu Han would place a hand on the small of his back as a reminder. Second year is always the hardest, he'd heard; the dreaded sophomore slump. They didn't have the initial excitement to ride off anymore, here began the grueling journey of tolerance and compromise. "And every year you suffer a greater chance of irrelevance." Henry pointed at himself good-naturedly, even though “Trap” had just come out to moderate fanfare. Kris punched him in the shoulder but didn't disagree. Fans were suspicious, too, some asking when he was coming home for good. The truth was, he knew he wasn't ready. There was still a lot to work on. He couldn't depend on Xing Mis to support him the entire way. He was still paving the brick road, trying to build himself into something more solid.

His mindset was standard, predictable: work first, love later. He Jiong disagreed. "You're young. Don't be so serious." Which was about as helpful as "Just have fun" or "Live it up while you can." Lu Han said something this one time like, "Your gratification is so delayed it's probably lost by now." Zitao laughed even though he probably didn't know what they were talking about. At that point they'd stopped explaining things to him. There was only so much time in the world. It was no wonder, then, that he drifted and found willing ears elsewhere.

Going on stage alone was the single most terrifying thing he'd done in his life, even if he lived for that kind of terror. At the time he remembered thinking, how did I ever do this growing up? Watching old videos of himself was like observing a creepily animated floppy-limbed doppelganger. He still had some of the skits memorized but the script sounded like a foreign alphabet coming out of his doppelganger’s mouth in its pitchy girlish voice. "Just like riding a bicycle," said one of the PDs, patting him on the back, and maybe that was true. But he wasn't a kid anymore, didn’t have that dumb kid courage to fall back on. He couldn’t even remember being that kid. What he remembered was stuff like hurling himself onto Sehun koala-style after their first win. Joonmyun’s heartbreakingly embarrassing dry heaves punctuating the din of the crowd. When he closed his eyes, he saw Lu Han’s tragic updo, the way they blew his bangs out like crimson sun rays. Being alone was exhilarating, yeah, but those other five or eleven bodies hadn’t just been there to fill the space. They were anchors, reminding him every step he made was mirrored elsewhere in the formation; that every movement triggered another, each slight but equally significant as the last. Maybe it was brainwash, but that was the sort of believing that molded you into a person. Going solo was the equivalent of creating your own mythology. SM had that ability to make you feel special, almost god-like, even if Yixing had never had any delusions about his mortality. The lucky ones started from scratch; the less lucky ones had to tackle some past demons to get that clean slate. Yixing felt luckier than lucky to be intact at the beginning. He had his family and his Xing Mis, and a language he dreamed in. He’d use it to make something new.

*

Monday’s a good day for going into the studio. Lu Han jokes that if he squints he can sort of see the sun peeking out of the thick toupee of clouds. They weave through the dusty streets, Lu Han on a bike borrowed from the landlady’s son. “This hurts my crotch,” he complains, lifting himself off the seat at a red light. His legs pushing off the pedals, he looks like a puppet suspended in air by invisible microstrings. A couple strands of hair twist across his forehead in a sweaty arch. Yixing makes a quick swerve to his right and narrowly dodges a teenage girl crossing the street. She curses at him in a northern dialect, Tianjing or something. Lu Han shakes his head. Yixing steps off to apologize but the girl’s already gone.

Sun Le swivels from side to side in his chair. “I’ve waited a century to meet you.”

Lu Han looks at Yixing. “What?” Yixing says.

Lu Han puts on a grin. “Sorry for the wait.”

“Lu Han. Is that your real name?”

“That’s what everyone asks.”

“And what do you tell them?”

“‘Three guesses.’”

“No, yes, no,” Sun Le ventures.

“Wrong. Correct answer is, I don’t know. I’m an orphan.” He can tell that joke with a straight face now.

The unspoken rules in the studio are straight-forward. Once Yixing puts on the headphones, he’s submerged. He uses his hands, nodding at suggestions he likes, frowning at the ones he doesn’t. Lu Han messes around with the switches on the unused keyboard but for the most part keeps to the laptop, complacent like a child with a toy. Yixing takes a water break at two and comes back to Lu Han squinting into his phone, one hand digging into his hair. He lifts his head at the sound of the door. “Break time?”

“Break over.” Yixing sinks into the chair next to him.

“I’ve never seen you work like this.”

“You were busy when I was busy.”

“I’m not busy now.”

“Are you ready to come back?” Yixing asks.

“Where do you think I am?”

“To entertainment,” Yixing says. “To singing.”

He knows he shouldn’t push. “I’m good for now,” Lu Han says, with a smile.

Of course he’s thought about it, the two of them working in tandem. He has a folder on his laptop: Duets. It’s filled with unfinished guitar tabs, the last one dated four months ago.

He doesn’t notice his arms are crossed until Lu Han’s prying them open, jamming their chairs together. “What’s up with the defensive stance?” Lu Han’s seat tips dangerously forward as he pulls Yixing’s arm away from him, toward himself, and karate chops his way up the length of the forearm.

“This isn’t a massage,” Yixing mumbles, closing his eyes.

He feels Lu Han’s voice from a distance. “This is a lesson. Stop trying to hide from me.”

Which is kind of funny, all things considered.

The side of Lu Han’s hand coming down like a scythe slicing through his shoulder is less funny. “I’m serious. I’m not going to-“

The door swings open. Sun Le is carrying a stack of pizza boxes. “Lunch, anyone?”

*

In the bathroom Yixing checks his phone for the first time in what seems like days. Seven unread texts, two from his mother, the other five from concerned friends. Mostly one friend. And mostly concerned about whether Yixing’s going to ruin his weekend by bailing on another night out, yet again. i know youre probly reading this in your grandpa bathrobe right now nursing a ho

t mug of tea to your frail&brittle chest but heres one last plea you coy motherfucker are you coming out

with us tonight or not BECAUSE IF NOT I SWEAR TO GOD I’LL CUT Y

sent that too fast ILL CUT YOU** ok call me back %_%

^_^*

Jin’s actually a friend of Kris’, and immensely alive for someone who spent the last three years in rehab. He came to Beijing to teach English with the rest of the confused post-undergrad expat crowd and found solace in being chemically taken out of his own mind, at first on a monthly, then weekly, then almost-every-other-day-I-can’t-really-remember basis. It took him a good six months to sober up completely. “Non-addictive drug my ass,” he told Yixing when they first met. “That shit was the love of my life.” He lit up a cigarette and continued talking out of the corner of his mouth. “But you know, I was asking for it. Addictive personality and all. I can’t say no once I’ve said yes, and it’s always, god fucking yes. As a kid I sucked my thumb for fifteen years straight. Only weaned myself off that shit when I got into the habit of sucking dick instead. Oh. Shit. Kris told you I was-“

“Yeah,” Yixing had said, groggily, clinking Jin’s glass. “It’s cool. Bottoms up.”

Coming from an entertainment background Yixing had encountered the most repressed of them all. There were people who knew themselves, and people who didn’t. People who knew but also knew better than to show it, and people who didn’t give a fuck. Yixing hadn’t been close to Kim Heechul. Most people weren’t like Kim Heechul. Jin was the single most honest, secure person he’d ever met, out of both his celebrity and normal friends. He was “over it,” he liked to say, by which he meant “everything”-the self-deceit, the niceties of caring.

“I’m genuinely concerned for you,” Jin said. “You look like you haven’t been touched since the dinosaur days.”

For Yixing it had literally been a decade. There were women, beautiful, capable, willing ones, but after Qiqi it was hard falling in love again. In terms of relationships he felt he’d peaked at age seventeen; he’d gotten everything he could’ve and given it up for something else. A question mark. A lofty goal. Now it was as if a dust-laden Do Not Disturb sign hung loosely over his heart, which was weird, because for most of his life he’d thought himself to be hopelessly transparent. But-“You’re about as opaque as that wall over there,” Lu Han had said before. He mimicked boring holes into the brick plaster. On Idol Weekly they would’ve added all the special effects, neon lasers shooting out of his big brown eyes. Sitting there between the two of them was, instead, nothing. After five seconds of silence Lu Han poked him in the side, grinning like none of what he’d just said was that life-altering.

With Jin’s support Yixing began going on dates. Reluctantly at first, but it really was kind of a sport. The more he did it the easier it was to fish out the ones with potential.

“Don’t say ‘potential,’” Jin groaned. “This isn’t a business venture.” But wasn’t it? Didn’t he want kids someday? Soon?

Maybe not soon.

“I’m not eloquent like you,” Yixing said. “I just meant, I can see a future with her.”

“With or without squinting?”

It wasn’t like his dick had shriveled up. He still masturbated a few times a week, which he was certain was pretty standard for a guy in his late twenties. He still enjoyed a DVD every now and then. The problem came when he closed his eyes and unexpected memories floated to mind. The words Sehun had written, for instance, in an email after his trip to Paris. A really handsome guy, like someone out of a movie. He’d been describing Lu Han’s friend, the one who showed them around the entire week he’d been there. It came out of nowhere, the flashback, with the added bonus of an improvised nasal narration he heard in his head as clearly as Sehun’s adlibs in “Growl.” Weeks later Sehun had phoned him to talk about the wedding and had blurted out, “I found blond hair in his sink.”

“What are you talking about?”

“In Lu Han-hyung’s sink.” His hair’s black now.

They were short bristles, dotting the shiny ceramic. Not just hair, but hair you shaved off your face.

“Were they roommates?”

“No, he said his friend lived across the river.”

Later it felt almost like a dream, as if Sehun had never confessed to Yixing that he suspected Lu Han was dating a man. “Please pretend I never said anything. I just-I had to tell someone. I know I shouldn’t have. It’s stupid. They’re probably just friends.”

Sehun’s crush had been more than a crush, Yixing realized then, months later in the privacy of his bedroom. The force of the realization pulled his orgasm from him as if with an enormous invisible hand, and he collapsed backwards onto his pillow, still jerking himself frantically. He lay there for moments afterward, eyes shut, breathing heavily. His mind was blank, still as an unwavering sea.

The next day he called the girl he’d been seeing and made love to her in the bathroom of the upscale lounge Jin had suggested. It had over a thousand reviews on Dianping and was the first and only place he’d ever engaged in public sex. What was supposed to be a one-night-stand made a swerve into full-blown relationship territory. When she invited him over he found that he didn’t want to say no. Yixing’s mother grew more excitable with each passing month, booking three-way Skype dates on both their Outlook calendars. She brought out a stack of baby pictures, and Yixing placed his hand over the laptop screen, filling up with the kind of embarrassment people mistake for happiness. One week ago he had celebrated his twenty-ninth birthday, and while no one was pressuring him to settle down, it wouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone.

They had just witnessed the first snowfall of the season when he touched her hand and said, “I don’t think this is working.” The car cruised down the empty highway. She cried with her face turned away from him. On the radio they were playing “Wolf” in honor of Flashback Fridays. “Turn that shit off,” she spat at him. The fury of her tears was fogging up the window. “Fuck you, Zhang Yixing. As if I wasn’t good enough to you.”

The problem lay, as always, with him. He was broken inside. The once kneejerk-involuntary ability to devote himself to another human being now evaded him like an ancient Chinese riddle. Like the high school track star who never ran a mile post-graduation, Yixing was burned out. He started too early, fell too hard. It was possible, he thought, he would never love again.

Yixing’s plight made Jin contemplative. “Maybe there’s someone in your life you’ve never been able to let go of. Someone from your past.” He stretched out like a cat on Yixing’s couch, his bare toes poking out from under the wool blanket.

“Maybe what you need is closure,” continued Jin sleepily. He could’ve been talking about a sandwich.

He was talking about Kris, Yixing discovered a few weeks later. “No way,” Yixing said, nearly spitting out his drink. “You’ve completely got it all wrong.”

“Are you sure?” Jin had one eyebrow skeptically arched. “He told me he once propositioned a bandmate, but the dude didn’t have the balls to go for it.”

“Kris and I have never-“

“It’s cool, man,” Jin said, a little embarrassed himself. “It could’ve been anybody else. There was like fifty of you in that boyband.”

The conversation reminded Yixing that no matter how well Jin seemed to understand him, he still fell into the category of ordinary people. Jin had grown up worrying about real life things. But some less real, less grave things could only be understood by people like yourself. Who, as conceited as it sounded, spent their formative years under the eye of a microscope, groomed themselves into the perfect receptacles for other people’s desires, fulfilling wishes like underage drug dealers. When EXO finally disbanded, some of them were unquestionably still children. Joonmyun didn’t even know how to open a bank account, though he had at least five, each managed by a different employee of his father’s company. He had a wife and a baby on the way. The first time Jin watched an EXO video he messaged Yixing to say, “yo no offense but y’all look the same.” Twelve was the number of identical eggs in a carton. Someone like Jin could never take them as a collective seriously, couldn’t even begin to comprehend the things that kept them up at night, and he was justified in his indifference. But that was the world from which Yixing hailed and for years all that he knew.

Point being, it couldn’t have been anybody. He could narrow it down to two, but knew that realistically only one of them would’ve said no.

“You alive in there?” he hears Lu Han yell from outside.

*

“Wallet, check. Phone, check. Pocketknife, check.” Lu Han, leaning into the mirror, corrects a piece of wayward bang. “I think I’m good.”

“ID? And hold on, pocketknife?”

“You never know who you’ll encounter on the street. ID’s in the wallet. How do I smell?”

Like some expensive French cologne. “Normal,” Yixing says neutrally. “Let’s go.”

They’re in the middle of putting on their shoes when a loud crack of thunder sounds from above. Lu Han squints up at the kitchen window. “Is that … ice?”

“Fuck,” Yixing says, remembering the morning’s weather report. “Hail tonight.”

Lu Han gives him a look. “C’mon man. I thought we agreed that I was responsible for looks and you were responsible for controlling the weather.”

“I’m Storm???”

Lu Han’s hair is flat by the time they arrive at the club. It’s Jin’s friend’s birthday. “Poppin’ bottles all night,” Jin says, sticking out a hand. “Jin.”

“Lu Han,” says Lu Han. “We got caught in the rain. Sorry my hand’s wet.”

Jin coughs into his fist. He slaps Yixing on the back, already stinking of tequila. “I like this one. C’mon, let’s get you guys messed up.”

Three hours later, the birthday boy is puking in the restroom. Lu Han goes in to help, but Yixing is hopelessly dizzy himself. He watches Lu Han’s back retreat into the shadows and wonders how many times he’s seen this before. It all feels too familiar. He lies back on one of the sofas and stares at lasers flashing across the ceiling.

“You lightweight son of a bitch.” Beside him is Jin, drowsy and loose-limbed.

“Why aren’t you watching after your friend?”

“He’s got Lu Han now.” Jin leans forward. “So-“

“Don’t say it.” He doesn’t know what Jin is going to say, but his gut is telling him he doesn’t want to hear it.

“Don’t say what?”

“It’s not what you think,” Yixing says.

Jin crosses his arms behind his head and sinks back into the sofa. “Tell me how it is.”

From the dance floor below Yixing spots a head of brown hair making its way through the crowd of bodies. He can hardly keep his eyes open, but they find Lu Han immediately. Bleary, then locked in-target. Lu Han looks around aimlessly until he locates Yixing in the balcony above and makes an okay sign. It’s the perfect selca angle, and from here Lu Han is at his handsomest. Broad shoulders, the regal slope where his neck meets shoulders. Chin tilted up, the cut of his jaw. Everything feels chaotic, magnified when you’re drunk. The person Yixing would’ve once taken the hand of and introduced as, my best friend, deadpan, so that people would’ve suspected it to be a joke, so they couldn’t be entirely sure it was. Once he walked in on Lu Han looking at naked fanart of them together-2D Yixing was taller, darker, and pinning him against a bedpost. “The fuck am I so small,” Lu Han complained. “Why do you always top?” “Always?” Yixing said, because it wasn’t like he sought this kind of thing out. He was disgusted. His entire body recoiled. That was his dick, rubbing against Lu Han’s dick. Both slick with come. He looked away, smacking Lu Han on the head. “Stop checking me out,” he said. He was pretty sure Lu Han was bigger in real life; he knew what Lu Han’s orgasm face looked like, the stupid sounds he made when Maria Takagi fondled herself onscreen.

A cab appears in front of them like magic. One drunk passenger stumbles out, and the three of them pile in. Jin gives vague directions to his apartment. Lu Han talks the most when he’s sobering up, leaning forward and his knee hitting the back of Yixing’s seat every time they stop at a red light. His northern accent is thick and warbled. Jin’s asking him about Europe, about the food, the music, and Yixing quietly passes out. When he wakes up, it’s to Lu Han’s muffled yawning.

“I’m not ready to meet anyone right now,” he’s explaining to Jin. “I just came home, like, yesterday. I don’t even know what I’ve missed.”

*

The entire world is up before they are the next day. “I hear Lu ge’s in town,” writes Joonmyun. “Tell him I said hi.”

Lu Han and Zhang Yixing’s Wild Night Out, the tabloids are calling it. Little Chinese Prince Rises from the Dead (Or Europe). EXO Bandmates Reunited, Celebrate in Typical Western Style. Lu Han, Lu Gay? A low-res shot of Lu Han slapping Jin’s ass, probably during his six-minute twerking demonstration.

Yixing shuts off his laptop. “So apparently nothing happened yesterday besides you.”

“Us.” Lu Han shrugs. “That last one isn’t even legit. It could’ve been anyone’s ass, c’mon. It could’ve been a girl’s ass.”

“That was definitely Jin’s ass,” Yixing says.

“I mean,” Lu Han says. “It’s nice.”

Yixing waits, but Lu Han doesn’t continue. “Let’s stay in today.”

Lu Han says, “Sure,” and puts on his sunglasses. He looks like a douchebag, but the truth is they both haven’t experienced hangovers like this since they were twenty and drinking was still a sort-of novelty. Right now walking to the fridge hurts. Looking at the computer screen hurts. Blinking hurts. An hour into the day, they’re back in bed.

“This is so much better,” Lu Han says, crawling into Yixing’s sheets instead of his own guest bed next door. Yixing aches too much to move away. His whole body is relaxed like this, with Lu Han lined up against his back, Lu Han’s chin pressing into his neck. A moment later Lu Han’s snoring through his mouth, and Yixing wriggles his head into the comforter long enough to fall asleep.

Late afternoon Yixing’s pillow begins vibrating. He finds his phone under his head. A message from Kris reads, yeah… i know

He scrolls up. There is a whole string of texts he doesn’t remember sending. To Kris, 1:48 a.m.:

the prodgal son I;;sbck.

Kris’ reply is immediate. u drunk man? u need me to pick u up hold back ur hair

i mean lhan
lhahn
lahuan
Lu Han

o
hows he been

Yixing turns onto his side to face Lu Han, who is very still, with one arm angled over his forehead. He doesn’t even look like he’s breathing. He just looks like a man. Sleeping.

im isssd him

*

It might’ve been Shanghai, or maybe Nanjing. He and Jongin were especially keyed up that night, about to perform a remix of “Two Moons” that involved Zitao doing a backflip over their crouched bodies right before the end. Yixing rolled back his shoulders one at a time and couldn’t crack his knuckles enough. A hand pressed down at the nape of his neck moments before they were set to go out, and Lu Han’s voice said, “Hey, if Huang Zitao crushes you tonight I’m setting my MCM bag on fire.”

Yixing didn’t turn around, so Lu Han couldn’t see his first smile of the night. “I still want to be buried in mine.”

“Nope. Setting yours on fire too. The twins can’t survive without each other.”

His smile grew bigger. “So if Taozi hypothetically crushes me, you’ll hypothetically ask him to crush you, too?”

Lu Han flicked the back of his head. “I was talking about our backpacks. I still have a long life ahead of me, alright.”

No one died. The heel of Zitao’s boot just barely grazed the top of Yixing’s head, but they pulled it off. Backstage he swept Lu Han up into a breathless, sweaty hug. It was as extravagant a gesture as gestures went, if he didn’t know it at the time. They spun and spun until Lu Han slammed into a wall, and when he laughed Yixing felt it like a string vibration shaking his own lungs. “Geez, Yixing, can you at least wait until we get back to the hotel?” Yixing cleared his throat. Yes, people were watching, but mostly just the coordis, and half of them were on their phones.

Lu Han was red-faced when he pushed Yixing away. “Geez,” he said again, grinning. His brow shone with what might have been Yixing’s sweat. It should’ve been disgusting, but instead it made Yixing pull him into a second hug. He closed his eyes and realized he would never be able to hug Lu Han again without reliving this moment: the mingle of sweat and hairspray, the heat of Lu Han’s cheek against his own, the way their skinny bodies moved to accommodate the other.

“I feel really great,” Yixing remembered saying, in a lame whisper, and Lu Han probably patted his hair, maybe kissed it, agreed, “Good” or “Me too.”

Afterwards he watched Lu Han climb up the back of the stage in his white costume. Jongdae was on the other side in black, a top hat slanted over his eyes. Lu Han flashed everyone behind him a thumbs up and made direct eye contact with Yixing before he turned towards the lights. His shoulders had broadened over the last year into the breadth of a normal guy’s shoulders. Even in the dim light Yixing could make out the newly defined cords of muscle under his white t-shirt and he had the insane thought of smoothing his own hands over them, feeling them clench and quiver.

“You okay?” He remembered Zitao nudging him in the side. “You’re sweating like a pig.”

*

An old wives’ tale is that the best cure for a hangover is more alcohol.

They settle for a couple of beers from Yixing’s fridge. Yixing texts a quick apology to Jin for ignoring his thirty last frantic texts all along the lines of sorry man i hope i didn’t kill your career. Jin has no idea how publicity works. He thinks that if Yixing shows up to the supermarket in pajamas no girl in China will ever want to sleep with him again. The reality is a special feature in the “They’re Just Like Us” section of your favorite tabloid. Zhang Yixing picks watermelons by knocking on them first, just like us! above a shot of him smiling placidly at the striped green melon cradled in his arms. They even photoshopped a fuzzy night cap onto his head.

Lu Han has remote privileges and he decides on a Korean movie Chanyeol features in for about thirty seconds. He’s holding an ice pack to his forehead as they watch Chanyeol dressed up as an amusement park mascot in the scene where the main character goes on a date with her longtime crush and ends up puking on the roller coaster. He holds out a balloon and says, “For the lovely lady?” before some kids sock him in the nuts. Lu Han snorts beer up his windpipe, dropping the icepack. Yixing curls up into a ball, resting his head on the dip of Lu Han’s side, bobbing up with every one of his insidious giggles.

“Hey,” Yixing hears himself say. It’s been a few hours, and his senses are already dull again, slower than usual. “I have a question I’ve been meaning to ask.”

His mouth is moving faster than his brain. Lu Han pats him on the head. His hand stops just below of Yixing’s collar, smoothing down the back of his shirt.

“Do you,” Yixing begins slowly, trying to regain feeling in his tongue. Suddenly his lips are all heavy, like they don’t belong to him. “You and Kris.”

Lu Han’s entire body language changes. He turns to face Yixing, sits up straighter, opens his mouth. A knot forms between his eyebrows.

“What?”

Yixing doesn’t have time to think before the words come out.

“Did you guys ever fuck?”

“Are you kidding me right now?” Lu Han says.

It’s like his mouth is made of cotton. “You don’t have to tell me. It’s-I understand.”

“Nothing ever happened between me and Kris.”

“But it could’ve?”

Lu Han is massaging his forehead. “What prompted this?”

Yixing wonders the same thing. He wonders, why are they always drinking? And he shouldn’t even be that drunk. But he is. But he is. This is how it’s always been with Lu Han. In the past. They would drink, and Yixing would get drunk. And Lu Han would go along with it, like Yixing didn’t know. But Yixing knew. He wasn’t stupid.

Maybe a little stupid.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” Yixing says. “Why you guys stopped talking the way you did.”

Lu Han has on his thinking face, his panicked what-do-I-do-what-should-I-say face. This is him, pulling the emergency lever. Yixing just wants him to know it’s alright, that he’ll never judge Lu Han like Lu Han secretly believes and is afraid he will.

“Yixing,” Lu Han begins quietly. “Many years ago, I kissed him.

“We were both, like right now. Fucked up. I was - I guess, lonely, at the time. He was confused. We were both confused, and young. He kissed me back. I thought for him it’d be a phase. We weren’t, you know we were never that close. Not like you and me, or you and him. But I think… he had some stuff going on. One night he was like, ‘let’s just run away. I’m committed to this.’ And I told him, very seriously, ‘I’m not.’”

“Fuck,” Yixing says, because suddenly everything hurts and he wishes he hadn’t asked.

“I meant it, though. I wasn’t committed, wasn’t ever going to commit to him. I thought he got that. But everything was weird afterwards. We still got along in front of everyone, but we never messed around after that, and then he left. You were there.”

Yixing nods, remembering it all. The slammed door that reverberated through the entire apartment. But what he doesn’t understand is something else. What he’s afraid to ask is-

“Why wasn’t it us?”

The question that has churned over and over in his mind for the last year. Why wasn’t it him? The question that, when pushed down, bobbed up still at the most inopportune moments, like while he was in the middle of a Skype call with his mom and she asked, “How’s Lu Han, that dear?” Why wasn’t it me? Why wasn’t it them? He didn’t care, he told himself. He wasn’t jealous. Jealous was for weak, helpless people. Yixing didn’t get jealous-of Jongin’s control, of Kris’ height, of Lu Han’s beauty. He pushed it down again. And then Lu Han stupidly showed up on his doorstep like-straight out of every used up romcom in the world, except they’re both men. The world doesn’t work like that. Yixing doesn’t.

It’s a really, really ill-timed question. Lu Han keeps staring at him, a different kind of staring. Yixing can’t read this one, he’s never seen it before. It’s all new to him, like a birthmark Lu Han’s hidden from him all these years.

“What do you mean, why wasn’t it us?”

Yixing closes his eyes. He envisions an ocean and himself at the bottom of it, the fish swimming above him. Underwater you can’t hear yourself talk. The water effectively separates you from yourself.

“Why didn’t you come to me when you were lonely? Why Wu Yifan? Why not me?”

There’s a long silence, and then some shifting on the couch. A moment later, he feels Lu Han’s breath on his cheek, Lu Han’s hands holding his knees together. He keeps his eyes closed.

“Zhang Yixing,” Lu Han whispers. “I want you to think very seriously about what you just said and, if you’re positive that’s what you meant, then ask me again.”

Yixing opens his eyes. Luhan hovers before him, like a fearless star. “Why not me?” he repeats, and in an instant Lu Han’s hands are on him, touching his face, his neck. “Whoa,” Yixing says, and before he can say it again Lu Han is kissing him.

For a moment he lets him. Every touch is heated, marked with an urgency he didn’t expect. Lu Han has been wanting to do this, maybe for a long time. But Yixing keeps his lips slack, neither encouraging nor resistant. It feels like standing at the edge of a bridge looking down. Once, for a special variety segment, he climbed the Bay Bridge, chained to the person in front of him with a harness. Straight ahead he could see the rising steel peak, hear the roar of traffic below. This is not the same. His line of vision is muddled. With discomfort, with arousal. Lu Han gently pries his lips apart and Yixing is letting him. He wants to disappear into himself.

Instead he cups the side of Lu Han’s jaw and kisses him back. Lu Han groans softly into his mouth. It makes him want to laugh, but instead he ruts uncertainly into Lu Han’s thigh. He’s not supposed to feel like this, like the only parts of him that matter are the ones touching Lu Han right now.

“Since when?” Lu Han breathes against Yixing’s neck. It’s unbearably light, and Yixing jerks away from the small hot puff of air. Tell me, Lu Han’s saying, with his hand over the outline of Yixing’s erection straining inside his jeans. Yixing can’t help the hitch of his hips up toward Lu Han’s touch, and when they make eye contact, Lu Han says,

“I can’t believe this is happening. This is sick.”

It’s sick how good it feels, and how right. Lu Han’s hand is nothing like his own, clammy and tugging on his dick. Drunk, Yixing can be an impatient lover. He’ll guide a girl’s fist up and down, teach her what he likes, but the truth is-painfully-he likes this. He likes Lu Han like this, nervous, testing the cold waters. Warming up. They’ve always known each other too well, been too close, with only this undetectable kernel of tension between them. The kernel that hardened with Lu Han’s disappearance, shrank and came back as looming and inescapable as a cancerous tumor. The sickness they shared between them, the unspeakable sickness of being attracted to your best friend, a man. Someone with parts you’d recognize in a mirror as similar to your own. Someone you’ve showered with and whose stony, shining body you’d never dared allow your eyes to linger on, because that was a delicate tree branch you were hanging on to. Yixing has held back for so long. He wants-he can’t take it anymore.

“Since now,” Yixing says honestly. “Probably.”

*

They were heavy. They were the 0:55 drop, the buildup to something flammable. You didn’t know where it’d take you.

Yixing grabs Lu Han’s hand before he steps out into the road. “Watch out,” he says. “Car.”

“I wasn’t planning on going,” Lu Han says, but lets Yixing hold his hand.

thank you so much for reading ;o;