The next morning Kris runs into Luhan at the coffee shop next to the university’s social sciences building. The second he spots the blonde head bopping excitedly while talking a mile a minute to some of the students gathered there he backtracks fast and jumps behind a huge decorative pot plant near the door. Unfortunately his aim is a little off and instead of jumping behind the pot plant he ends up jumping directly at it and it topples and falls to the ground with many loud clanging and banging noises.

Kris grins sheepishly in apology as the whole café turns to stare at him. He almost wants to moan pathetically and fall to the ground in hysteria but then he is afraid that will just add to the image he has built up here so far – crazy and unstable and dumb.

Luhan spots him and a grin almost breaks his face apart as he waves and beckons at him animatedly. Kris pretends not to see this under the excuse of helping one of the café staff straighten up the pot plant that he made fall.

Quite undeterred by Kris obviously ignoring him Luhan takes matters into his own hand and weaves his way through the crowd to Kris’ side. Kris thinks that he should have never gotten out of bed that morning after he had heard the screechy noise and known this was going to be another bad day.

“Hey, Kris!”

Kris squeezes his eyes close in despair for a moment before he turns to face Luhan with a polite smile and- “Wait, How do you know my name?”

“Oh. I asked Heechul yesterday. He did a whole you-are-a-terrible-human-being-who-spilled-coffee-on-him rant and then finally said your name. good thing I had a lot of papers to mark yesterday -  I got about 20 marked while he was explaining about your general evilness.”

“Ah, I see.” Kris nods awkwardly. He has not always been the best at making small talk and right now all he can think of is how he kept calling Luhan ‘haksaeng’ yesterday.

But Luhan seemed to have already forgotten about it as he grabs Kris’ arm (PERSONAL SPACE! MY PERSONAL SPACE! Something inside Kris screams) and drags him to the front of the line in front of the cashier. “Hey, Jongin!” he waves to the kid at the cashier’s who looks like he is five seconds away from entering a REM cycle. “Jongin this is Kris. Professor Wu to you, I guess. Kris this is one of the Dancing department’s prodigies, Jongin. Jongin be a good boy and take his order Kris here looks like he is going to get premature wrinkles with all those frowns and serious looks.”

Kris frowns a little more at this comment and turns to face Jongin who smiles at him gently like he understands that the Luhan effect is a little hard to take this early in the morning.

While ordering a triple shot espresso (‘Yuk, Black coffee’ Luhan comments) he slowly extricates his arm out of Lu Han’s grip but this just seems to give Lu Han space to squish into his side tightly as he chatters away with some students and café staff around them. Kris rolls his eyes at the sky and lets him because, well, because Lu Han seems to have zero knowledge about things like personal space and polite distances and appropriate skinship and there is nothing Kris can do about it.

Lu Han keeps a constant chatter going as he walks beside Kris towards the staff room. They have to stop every 2 minutes as people go “Hey, Professor Lu!” at them and Lu Han stops to ask people about their day and their mother, their baby sister, class work load, part time jobs, foot blisters, dinner plans, boyfriends or girlfriends, and everything else under the sun and the moon.

“You actually know all these people? Like every single one of them?” Kris asks, trying but failing at controlling the awe in his voice.

“Uh huh. We are all friends.”

“But… How? You remembered that one kid’s Starcraft scores and you reminded that one guy about his girlfriend’s birthday next week!”

Lu Han shrugs. “I don’t know. They are all friends and I hang out with them as much as I hang out with the lecturers here.”

“Don’t they mind when there is a professor gatecrashing their college parties? How old are you anyway?” Kris squints at him. “You don’t look like you could be a lecturer.”

Lu Han bats his eyelashes at him and fluffs his hair, preening at Kris. “I know. My eternally youthful looks are wonderful, aren’t they?” Kris scoffs at this and Lu Han smiles back. “I’m actually 26.”

“I refuse to believe that you are actually as old as me!”

“Well, believe it old man. And be jealous.”

“You sacrifice little babies and s to the Moon God every full moon don’t you?”

Lu Han lets out a delighted smile, and it is decidedly wicked looking. “If I tell you I will have to kill you.” He tells as he bounces a little on the heels of his feet.

Kris shakes his head at him. “You are ridiculous.” He says, but he is just glad that Lu Han is treating him as is he had not ranted like an insane man at him yesterday and offended him.

“But I’m also ridiculously awesome, so it’s all good!” Lu Han replies squishing into Kris’ side again.

Minseok pokes his head out of the staff room. “Lu Han.” he says in an exasperated tone of voice. “Leave the poor man alone, he barely started here. And also Key is going to kill you if you don’t-”

Another head pokes out of the staff room. “There you are! Where the hell have you been, you were supposed to get here like half an hour ago.” Key stomps out of the staff room and starts dragging Lu Han away by his arm. Lu Han struggles briefly before letting himself be dragged away backwards as he waves vigorously at Kris and Minseok.

 “If I’m not back by lunchtime, call the police and report this!”

Minseok merely raises an eyebrow at him before he walks away and Kris scoffs again. “Ridiculous.” He repeats as he watches Lu Han make dramatic “I’m dying. Save me, help me” gestures at him.

“Hey!” Lu Han calls just before he is dragged around the corner of the corridor. “I might be ridiculous but at least I don’t think I am cursed by early morning noises!”

, he remembers.

Kris wants to hide again in embarrassment but he can’t help but smile at Lu Han and Key’s disappearing backs. 

And he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like it at all. This reminds him a little too much of how Yixing had just barged in to his life with sleepy eyes and sweet dimples and completely taken over. Three years later he was trying to get over a crush on someone who was quite obviously straight and had a girlfriend by moving to a complete different country (and even putting up with morning curses). And Lu Han…Lu Han was…he didn’t know what he was, but Lu Han was friendly and bright and too damn attractive for his own good. Lu Han also made him feel like he was always slightly off balance and dazed and they had barely even met.

So Kris wipes the smile off his face and goes to prepare for him day’s classes and decides to ignore the Lu Han-shaped cloud that seems to hang all around his thoughts.

Kris likes planning. He likes making lists and organizing things to the last detail so that everything goes the way he wants them to. So Kris had turned to a fresh page in his notebook last night and wrote a long list of things that he could do to make sure he won’t run into Lu Han more than maybe once a week. There had been bold and italic letters, colored stars, arrows pointing in every direction and flow charts by the time he had finished so he had been extremely pleased with himself.

The next morning he woke up happily when the alarm went off at 7am, free of any screechy noises and he didn’t drop anything, didn’t run into any doors, didn’t get on Heechul’s nerves and most of didn’t run into Lu Han’s brilliant smiles and continued attempts at invading his personal space that whole day.

All in all, Kris decides as he walks towards his train platform that evening, it had been a wonderful day. He is so smug that his plan is working that he doesn’t realize what is happening till he runs smack dab into Lu Han’s grinning face.

“.” He stumbles back and Lu Han clutches at him to save him from falling over his own feet.

“whoa, careful there.” Does he ever stop grinning!?

“You know, usually, normal people when they see someone walk right at them – they move away instead of grinning at them till them crash in to you.”

“Minseok would argue that I’m not normal.”

“I’m sure a lot would agree with him.” Kris mutters darkly as he fixes his tie.

Lu Han ignores this comment entirely as he steps forward to help Kris fix his tie. Suddenly Kris has a face full of Lu Han that he doesn’t know what to do with. his hair smells like some fruity, flowery thing and his skin looks  so pale that it almost looks translucent and maybe if he just bent forward the tiniest bit- “So you take this train? I do too! Isn’t it an awesome coincidence?” Kris rears back from Lu Han and pulls his tie back in the process.

“Um, no not this train. The other one-”

“Which one?”

Kris feels like he can’t breathe. Lu Han is too close – has this man no sense of space!!??!! – and he imagines telling Lu Han yes he takes this train and then having to travel with Lu Han pressed close to him in the bustling train every day. He doesn’t think it will do one tiny bit of good for his sanity.

Wind whistles in the air as another train makes its way to a stop in the opposite platform and the second Kris sees that it is the line that goes through where Chanyeol lives he takes his chances and speed walks towards it. “Well, that’s my ride. See you later.” He throws over his shoulder hastily as he gets into the train. Just before the doors close Kris sees Lu Han’s face and the expression on it make uncomfortable feelings swirl around in the bottom of his stomach. Lu Han’s usually smiling face is drawn lightly into a frown and it seems so out of place and wrong that Kris feels terribly guilty for being the reason for it.

He thinks that five minutes in Chanyeol’s exuberant company would erase all memories of it but it doesn’t. He goes to sleep that night with the smell of Lu Han’s hair and his frowning face stamped to the backs of his eyelids.

He manages to survive two weeks flitting around Lu Han’s presence - avoiding the dance department, going into the staff room only for lunch, walking past Lu Han saying lengthy goodbyes to the whole population of the university at the end of the day to catch the early train back home, and making polite excuses every time Lu Han invites him out for lunch or for coffee. He tries not to feel bad about how Lu Han’s face darkens with each one of his brush-offs. Better nip it all off in the bud that wait for it to blindside him with a huge crush on someone who is probably straight or taken. He really doesn’t want a repetition of Yixing happening again.

He manages another week putting up with the screechy noise curse and keeping his sanity and heart safe before it all comes to an end.

It had been a particularly bad day. Last night he had gotten a call from Yixing, with complains about Kris not keeping in touch and cute stories of the cute things he had done with his girlfriend. Kris had let his soft voice sink in, in, in to him, teaching his heart not to care anymore, until he felt exhausted with the effort. He had woken up at 5.30am after barely a 2 hour sleep to the familiar screeching-cat-dying noises and later some students had pulled a prank on some other student in class which left the classroom smelling like rotten eggs for the rest of the day. He had lost some important papers that the head of his department has shouted at him for and Heechul had nearly taken his head off for calling Heebum, heechul’s cat, ugly. Chanyeol had called him, drunk and lost from Hongdae and he had had to half carry an extremely talkative and touchy Chanyeol to his home. Now Kris just want to talk a shower and take some painkillers for his headache and lie down in his bed and sleep-preferably for the next 20 years.

But like always things don’t go his way and when Kris moves down the compartment to find a less crowded spot he bumps into someone. When he turns around to apologize his heart sinks at the sight of Lu Han staring at him with wide, accusing eyes. His mind flashes through memories of him practically running into another train leaving Lu Han behind and walking away pretending to not hear Lu Han’s greeting at the coffee shop.

“I thought you didn’t take this train.”

“Um… I do…. Sometimes…” lies get stuck in his throat when he sees that he is not fooling Lu Han.

“I don’t understand.” Lu Han says, carefully enunciating his words as they both sway slightly with the train standing under the dim light bulbs, people all around them in their own tired worlds. “I don’t understand. I have been nothing but nice to you, nothing but friendly and welcoming. And every time I try to get you out of this loner, emo you make excuses and walk away.”

Kris blinks at him, stunned, but Lu Han plows ahead, his voice direct and honest.

“why are you always in such a bad mood? And don’t tell me that rubbish about morning curses!”

“But-” Kris starts to protest.

“No buts! What’s wrong with smiling a little? Making a new friend? Being a little nicer to people? I had friend just like you, you know. He broke both his legs and arms and 6 ribs in an accident yesterday.”

“What? Really?” Kris asks horrified wondering whether bad moods pay off with bad karma.

Lu Han shifts on his feet. “Well, no. not really. But it totally could have happened!” Lu Han goes on like he had not just lied through his teeth. “You act like you are carrying a whole world over your shoulder but whatever all those problems you have brought over from your past you need to know that you are not the only one with a broken heart or sorrow or –or problems in general. It’s called life. So stop being such an and GET OVER YOURSELF.”

Shaken, Kris watches in silence as Lu Han’s small figure fights its way through the crowd to get far away from him. He doesn’t remember the last time anybody ever talked to him that way, except for his mother. Something burns in the bottom of his throat when he remembers Lu Han’s words ‘I have been nothing but nice to you.’

He tosses and turns that night too and Lu Han’s face haunts him at every turn. The friendly smiles, the frowns, the cheerful invasions of personal space, the way Lu Han’s back had looked walking away from him. Kris had run around in circles trying to avoid Lu Han for three weeks, but looking back he thinks he might have been too late after that first time Lu Han had turned around and asked. “Who? Haksaeng? Me?”

The next morning he makes sure to get to college extra early. He looks around as he places his stuff on his desk and spots Minseok in a corner clutching a cup of coffee and chatting with Taeyeon and Sandara from the Math department. He putters around with his papers till Minseok comes over to say hello.

“You are early today?”

“Um..yeah. have some paperwork I have to finish.” Minseok has almost turned away to his own work when Kris calls him again. “err.. Minseok-ssi, is-is Lu Han around today?”

Minseok’s brow furrow a little. He is more than used to Kris scurrying around the place avoiding Lu Han like a plague and as annoying as he thinks Lu Han can be sometimes he is not really a bad person. “Not today.. He- he had to go to the hospital.”

“Oh. Is he ok? he is not sick is he?”

“No. no, it’s not him. It’s um… it’s his sister.” Minseok looks uncomfortable and unsure whether he is supposed to go on. Heechul flicks a piece of paper at Minseok’s head.

“She has cancer. She is in a special sterilized room but he gets to see her every Friday morning.” Heechul says matter-of-factly.

“Heechul!” Minseok says, exasperated.

“What.” He shrugs. “It’s not some big secret. Everybody who has been here about a week will know that.”

Everybody except me, Kris thinks shame and guilt churning around his stomach almost making him nauseous. Lu Han had tried so hard to be his friend, Lu Han tried so hard to be everybody’s friend in fact but Kris had not even bothered. And what was his excuse? Lu Han had been overly touchy, he had made Kris’ stomach flutter and his heart stutter in ways he did not want them to but how was that even an excuse for being such a jerk to him?

Kris doesn’t see Lu Han that whole day or the next, even though he hangs out around the performing arts department and the teachers’ lounge as much as he can and he finds himself missing shinning eyes looking up at him and smug smiles invading his personal space.

The next day the screechy noises are missing so Kris’ crosses his finger for luck and hangs out at the coffee shop that morning chit chatting with Jongin the cashier. Lu Han is right; socializing is not so bad after all. He learns about Jongin’s three older sisters who torture him too much, his traineeship at a famous entertainment company as a dancer, his little hero worship of Kyungsoo from the Vocal classes. Kris finds himself laughing a along to his sleepy eyed blinks and adorable pouts that contrast with sudden bursts of confident smugness.

“Hey, Jongin.”

Kris turns back hastily to see Lu Han is standing behind him, face tired and purposefully not meeting Kris’ eyes.

“Hey, Professor Lu! The usual?”

“Yes, please.” Lu Han hands over a couple of won notes and finally turns to Kris. “Good morning.”

“Hi, Lu Han, I-” but before Kris can get any words out Lu Han waves at someone and in the blink of an eye he is across the café slinging his arm around someone’s back and having an animated conversation with them. He doesn’t come back to the counter till Jongin calls out his order and even then he just nods at Kris before walking away.

Kris suddenly understands that Lu Han brushing you off is far worse than him grinning like a Cheshire cat all up in your personal space.

For three days he doesn’t get a chance to talk to Lu Han without the other man brushing him off and walking away, and Minseok keeps giving him very disapproving looks and even Jongin scowls at him now – he just hopes Jongin doesn’t put anything nasty in his coffee.

The next morning Kris wakes up, grumpy and unsettled at four in the morning and finds that he can’t go back to sleep again. He wills the hours away by tossing and turning on the bed and then tries getting a head start on making the mid-term test paper but then he is thinking of Lu Han’s smile, and Lu Han’s hair, and Lu Han’s eyes and Lu Han’s pretty lips.  

When the screechy noise starts at 5.30am on the dot Kris is in a worse mood than ever before. Usually he would just groan and moan and toss around in bed and try to stuff his head under a pillow because he is too lazy to get out of bed but today he is already awake so he storms to the window to give the terrible person who does this to him everyday a piece of his mind.

He throws the window of his bedroom open and shouts at the balcony of the apartment in front of it.

“YAH!!”

The screechy noise comes to an even scratchier halt and Kris sees that what had been cursing his days in Korea is somebody practicing how to play the violin.

“WHAT-THE-HELL-” Kris is seconds away from launching into a long and angry rant when the person turns around and Kris splutters to a stop.

“You!”

“you!”the person says right back.

“What the hell are you doing here!?!” Kris shouts.

“I LIVE HERE!” the violin player shouts back.

“OH MY GOD, I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS! YOU!”

“WAIT A MINUTE! YOU THOUGHT MY MUSIC WAS A CURSE! THAT WAS THIS NOISE WASN’T IT!?”

“THAT CAN’T BE CALLED MUSIC! AND WHO EVEN PLAYS MUSIC AT THIS GODFORSAKEN HOUR OF THE DAY!”

“NOT MUSIC! I’M SO OFFENDED RIGHT NOW!”

“YOUR MUSIC !”

“NO! YOUS !”

“I’M SORRY!”

 “FOR WHAT!?”

“FOR EVERYTHING!”

 Lu Han goes still in the other balcony when he hears this. Kris blinks at him in embarrassment.

After five minutes of excruciating silence Lu Han puts his violin down.

“IT’S OK. I’M NOT MAD WITH YOU ANYMORE”

A smile bursts uncontrolled onto Kris’s face. He is about a shout out a reply when the window of the apartment adjoining Kris’ is thrown open and an ajhumma leans out of it. She looks beyond angry.

“WILL YOU TWO JUST SHUT UP! SOME PEOPLE WANT TO SLEEP! FIRST HE PLAYS THAT DAMN VIOLIN AND NOW YOU TWO ARE SHOUTING AT EACH OTHER! YOUNGSTERS THESE DAYS, TSK!” she shakes her fists at them threateningly.

Kris and Lu Han looks at the ajhumma and then back at each other and they burst out laughing. Something that had been holding a heavy weight on Kris’ chest loosens and he feels like everything was going to be ok.

Their first date happens roughly two hours later when they get dressed and come down to meet each other somewhere between their two buildings so that they don’t have to shout at each other.

During their second date they accidently run into Heechul at a restaurant where Heechul stops eating and laughs at them until the Chinese guy he is with lets out a long-suffering sigh and drags him away.

On their 3^rd date Kris tries to kiss Lu Han but ends up bumping his nose hard into Lu Han’s cheek. Lu Han laughs at Kris’ ever-present clumsiness and just grabs him by the collar and kisses him till they are both breathless.

Somewhere between their 6^th and 9^th date Kris buys Lu Han a set of learn yourself violin tutorials and buys himself a good pair of sound-proof ear mufflers.

A month later and Lu Han takes him to the hospital to visit his sister. Lu Han’s sister Lu Mei thinks that tall, deep voiced foreigners are the next best thing after Christmas and promptly proposes to Kris despite Lu Han’s protects and declarations of ‘but he is so lame!’. Kris whacks Lu Han on the head and gracefully accepts Mei Mei’s proposal.

 Kris buys Lu Han a new tie that day (‘you should wear a tie. So that some other poor soul doesn’t end up thinking that you are a student.’) The next day Sungmin runs away shrieking ‘My eyes! My eyes! Oh my eyes!’ from the supply closet in the staff lounge because he accidently walks in on Kris and Lu Han. The whole staff unanimously bans Lu Han from ever wearing a tie again because it seems to turn Kris into a teenager.

It takes Kris another year to get up his courage to ask Lu Han to move in together (he says this is because he will have to kill himself if he had to listen to the morning screechy noises from right inside his own apartment) and the apartment hunting is as disastrous as everyone predicts. Lu Han giggles and pops in and out of rooms excitedly exclaiming happily over everything as the owners of the houses raises the price of the place gleefully and Kris trips over more things than he can count.

It takes Kris another 2 years and one night in the university auditorium to admit that he just might be in love with the screechy noises. 11 year old Mei is sitting on his lap as they watch Lu Han perform a short piece on the violin along with some other professors. He tells Lu Han so and Lu Han leans into him with his usual smug smile and says “I knew it all along.” And Kris smiles as he thinks, quite cheesily he has to admit, that is wonderful that his morning curse turned into such a blessing in his life.

A/N : I’m so sorry for the long wait, I have no excuse really, none. I wrote this in a hurry so apologies for any and all mistakes :(

Since my last krishan fic was on the serious angsty side I want something less tense this time.

But this was supposed to be a drabble! How is 8000 words considered a drabble! :’(

Thank you, as always, for reading. *hearts and hugs*