Warning: Has not been beta'd. You have been warned!

At dinner, Xiumin chooses to sit beside Victoria at the restaurant.

“I heard you’ve seen Krystal.” Xiumin smiles gently at her.

Victoria nods.

“Is she pretty?” He asks.

Victoria nods again, “Very pretty.”

“Krystal and her sister look nothing alike,” Xiumin laughs, “however, you and her sister… there’s definitely a bit of a resemblance sometimes.”

Hearing a slight groan, Kris glances up from his phone to the man sitting across from him. Xiumin is glaring at Luhan, who is glaring right back at him.

A little amused by their small argument, Victoria chuckles and says, “It’s alright Luhan, no need to get violent with Xiumin.”

She supposes that explains the reason why Krystal seemed so surprised when they met at the company back in Beijing. Sighing and shaking his head, Luhan returns to reading the menu.

“The account records weren’t too hard to decipher, I hope,” Xiumin continues, changing the subject. “I’m thinking about hiring a new accountant; our current accountant doesn’t seem to be doing a very good job.”

Victoria shakes her head. “A few mistakes here and there can throw off several columns at a time but no, it wasn’t too hard to find the errors. I have a few accountant friends that may be interested in the offer; I’ll send out some notifications and have them email their resume to you if they’re interested.”

“You’re really not going to consider joining our team?” Xiumin asks. “Luhan and I would love to have you working with us.”

A knowing smile finds its way to her lips. “XURREAL is your accomplishment with Aiden and Luhan; I had no place in the company from the start.”

“But you can be here with us until the end,” Luhan says.

Victoria laughs. “There won’t be an end,” she tells him, “the two of you will only make XURREAL become better and better. I’m sure that’s what Aiden thinks, too.”

Speaking of Aiden brings up a new light in Xiumin’s eyes. Kris notices that Xiumin seems to want to say something more but becomes cautious of Luhan who is sitting beside him.

Apparently, Victoria notices the small notion, too.

“Xiumin, I remember you warned me a long time ago, when Aiden and I first started dating, if you accept Aiden, you’ll have to accept that you may just be a replacement. Do you remember?” Victoria asks.

Luhan bites down on his lips when Xiumin nods and looks Victoria in the eyes.

She smiles and turns to face Xiumin. “Do you remember how I answered?”

“You said that you and Aiden were both seeking comfort in each other, so whether or not you were a replacement didn’t matter,” Xiumin repeats to her.

Victoria nods as the memories of her own words come back to her. “Back then, I found what I once lost to my childhood in Aiden and nothing else mattered—at that time, what I needed wasn’t exclusive love, it was comfort and affection. However, I don’t want to be a replacement anymore and you don’t need to find a replacement for Aiden in your life, either. Luhan is enough, isn’t he? Isn’t Luhan more than enough?”

“Victoria…”

“When Luhan told me about Krystal, I instantly understood. Both you and I were hurt very deeply when we lost Aiden and the fact that you found Krystal almost immediately after his departure explained a lot. Aiden meant a lot to you, just like he meant a lot to me, right? But I haven’t searched for a replacement, Xiumin, because Aiden can’t be replaced.”

Xiumin nods tentatively, his eyes not once diverting away from hers.  
 

“Tonight, you’ve helped me understand. I always wondered why Aiden wanted to buy me everything in the world—a necklace, a bracelet, earrings and other accessories, but never a ring. It wasn’t because he couldn’t hold a promise to stay beside me for forever, it was because he wasn’t confident that he loved me as more than a replacement.” Victoria continues.

Luhan furrows his eyebrows. “Aiden loved you, Vic. Never forget that.”

“I know,” Victoria chuckles a little bitterly, “how could I ever forget?”

Xiumin reaches over and takes both Victoria and Luhan’s hands in each of his. “I owe the two of you a lot.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Victoria tells him, “but you owe Luhan an explanation.”

The young man nods with a smile. “I wish I could make up for what Aiden couldn’t give you, Victoria. As his best friend, as your friend, there was more that I could have done to make things better but I was always afraid of taking that step.”

Victoria squeezes Xiumin’s hand. “You did the best you could.”

After dinner, Luhan takes Victoria by the hand and guides her outside. The two friends take a stride along the street, Victoria now having linked an arm with Luhan’s.

She says, “That’s the reason why you left for New Zealand, right?”

Luhan lowers his eyes to the ground with a weak smile. “You’ve always known me best.”

“Between you and me,” Victoria answers, “I just want to remind you that first love doesn’t fade away easily. Xiumin took Aiden’s death a little harder than I did but I know that the one he cares for the most is you. He’s just still stuck on that damn first love complex.”

Luhan pauses, shifting slightly to look into her eyes. Her smile is forced, eyes a little damp and red. “Between you and me, you don’t have to act so strong. It’s okay to cry.”

She hugs him, burying her face into his shoulder. “I don’t want to cry,” she whispers, “but I suddenly really miss him again. I thought that by now the longing would be gone.”

And then he wraps his arms around her, fingers woven into her long hair, soothingly patting her back.

“You trust Xiumin, don’t you?” Victoria asks.

Luhan nods.

“Good,” Victoria sighs, “then even if it becomes hard for us to meet in the future, at least I know you have someone standing by your side that you and I can both trust.”

“Luhan said you’re interested in Victoria.”

Kris is taken aback by the sudden English. His sleepy eyes groggily meet with Xiumin’s more firm ones and he clears his throat. “Umm…”

“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” Xiumin asks again.

“I don’t—“

“Victoria brought you and another girl out to a fashion show held at the venue Aiden and I worked at in college. Chanel, wasn’t it?” Xiumin interrogates. “I sensed something from you back then but I can’t believe you’ve made it until now.”

“What does that mean?” Kris furrows his eyebrows.

Xiumin smiles and shrugs. “Victoria is a really nice girl. She’s the type of girl that will forgive you, even if you’ve tried to hurt her before.”

“Have you?” Kris wonders.

Thinning his lips, Xiumin takes a deep breath and leans back against the door of his car. He’s glancing at Victoria and Luhan in the distance, the two walking peacefully away from them, kind of like siblings, kind of like a couple.

“Did it make you feel good?” Kris asks.

Xiumin shakes his head. “Victoria is the type of person that makes you feel no sense of accomplishment after hurting her, because she doesn’t show her pain. In the end, it backfired and I was the one with the bad end of the stick.”

“You and Luhan are together, right?”

“How can you tell?” Xiumin laughs.

Kris shrugs and leans against the car as well. “The two of you don’t really show it, but anyone could see it in Luhan’s eyes.”

“We try to hide it,” Xiumin confesses.

“In an effort to protect him or yourself?”

Xiumin laughs. “I like to believe that keeping it underground protects the both of us because of the society we live in, but maybe I’m still simply being selfish.”

“Luhan doesn’t seem the type to care about such things,” Kris says.

“Do you think you’ll be able to win her over?” Xiumin asks him.

Kris crosses his arms over his chest, clearing his throat again. It’s a habit of his when he’s nervous, Xiumin comes to notice. “What do you think?”

Lazily, Xiumin shifts his head to the side and gives Kris a brief once over. “I think you might,” he slurs, yawning, “Victoria said that she doesn’t need a replacement for Aiden—she seems to know exactly what it is that she needs now, she just doesn’t seem to realize how much she needs it. Is it you? Or maybe it’s someone else she knows—maybe our friend Yunho? Or someone else she met in Beijing? I don’t know, but there’s a possibility it might be you. You’re nothing like Aiden, so that instantly makes you a likely candidate, no?”

When they glance over at Victoria and Luhan again, they are hugging intimately. Xiumin bites down on his bottom lip. Something in his heart clenches.

“I really don’t understand why they’re both so likeable.” Xiumin grits through his teeth.

Kris can’t help but laugh a little on the inside. “You’re a really bitter person, aren’t you?”

“I’ve heard that a few times,” Xiumin admits. “Does it show?”

The other young man nods. “Just a little bit.”

A little while later, Victoria and Luhan finally return and they both head off towards their own homes. Once home, Victoria makes a cup of tea and brings out a few pills for Kris.

“When are you planning on returning to Beijing?” She asks him.

Kris swallows the pills obediently. “When are you?”

“I’ll probably be another few more weeks.” Victoria tells him.

He smiles. “I’ll wait for you.”

“Don’t you have to work?” She frowns.

Shrugging, Kris grabs a pillow off the space beside him on the couch and hugs it to his chest. “My bosses are really lenient with time, as long as I get work done.”

“Maybe you should head back first,” Victoria tries to convince him.

“Why?” He replies, pursing his lips.

Victoria doesn’t really have an answer. “I just—“

She’s interrupted by sudden hands that wrap around the back of hers. Victoria was standing behind him, supporting herself by placing both hands on the back of the sofa seat that Kris was sitting in, and his larger hand is now sitting right atop hers, gentle and warm. He says, “I really want to be here with you. Really, that’s it; I’m not expecting anything more.”

His words make her breath stagger and his sharp eyes make her heart skip a beat.

“I’ve never wanted to be with someone so much before,” Kris admits sheepishly, “but I really want to be with you.”

Victoria suddenly really wants to know why, so she asks.

What answers her is the softening of his sharp eyes and a smile that branches from his lips to his dark, dark gaze. Kris chuckles and stands and though they are separated by the sofa between them, he reaches over and pats her on the head.

This gesture is so unfamiliar to her.

“Because you’re worth it,” Kris says, “and no one else has been able to make me think the same of them.”

Victoria tells him that they’ve only just met. There is too much that Kris doesn’t know about her and there is too little that she knows about him.

On a personal basis, it’s impossible for them to begin a relationship and be able to maintain it long term. She’s always believed in romance blossoming from friendship; that’s how Aiden and Victoria started dating, anyhow. Not to mention, Kris is nearly three years younger than her—there’s both a maturity and physical .

Kris asks her how long she needs to get to know him before she’s willing to give him an opportunity.

She says she doesn’t know.

Having never been in a particularly serious relationship before, Kris isn’t sure how to handle the situation at hand. He doesn’t want to come off as pushy but, honestly, a man at his age is at their prime of energy and waiting for the woman they like is probably one of the hardest things to do.

So, Kris says he’s willing to give her time, but even if she doesn’t come to understand him a lot more than she does now, she has to promise to give him a chance.

“Three months,” Kris compromises, “after we return to Beijing and get to know each other for three months, we’ll start dating.” Not a suggestion, but a demand.

Alright, so maybe he is a little pushy.

Both a little helpless and a little flabbergasted, because Victoria has never met such a demanding man before, she becomes speechless. Even Yunho, her boss_, has never spoken to her in that tone.

Kris isn’t sure where he found that kind of courage, but a fire has been ignited in him and even he can’t put it out. Maybe it had to do with the whole and maturity thing—his pride was in question, after all.

They do, however, end up staying in Paris for another week and a half before Victoria finally tidies up all of her most immediate issues on clock and the two of them head back to Beijing.

Luhan and Xiumin see her off at the airport, with a few tears and gifts in tow.

“Take good care of her,” Xiumin says with a hand over Kris’s shoulder.

Kris nods, “Of course.”

“Don’t let him get too close,” Luhan warns Victoria. “I’ve always had a bad gut feeling about him.”

Victoria laughs and presses a kiss to Luhan and Xiumin’s cheek before heading for the gate. Just before the plane lifts off, Yunho sends her a text message.

See you on the battlefield.

She laughs and replies, once my boss, always my boss.

I won’t go easy on you. Business is all about stepping on the dead bodies of other people to get to the top. Yunho writes back.

Shaking her head, she turns the phone off and tucks it away into her purse. Sitting beside her in the middle seat, Kris looks past Victoria and stares outside the airplane window.

“Do you like this city?”

Kris shakes his head. “That’s not it. Every time I leave this place, I feel like I’m forgetting something important.”

“Isn’t this only your second time here?” Victoria asks.

He shifts his eyes from the window to her, a smile on his lips. “That’s right.”

“What could you be forgetting then?”

With his smile growing wider, Kris reaches for her hand. “Maybe… you?”

An unexpected confession—eyes that are both too gentle and too hot at the same time. Kris leans forward, his other hand wrapping around the back of her head and holding her still as his lips meet with hers. The kiss is calm, quiet, and almost too peaceful.

In the war field of love, Victoria has always seemed to be the loser. She lost to Krystal’s sister, she lost to Xiumin, she lost to a fortune teller and she lost to fate who had stolen her mother away.

However, there’s one person Victoria has never lost to and that is herself. Kris has seemed to lose against her, too.

So, maybe they’ve actually won.

“You said you’d give me three months.” Victoria frowns, her cheeks so red that she knows she must look like a tomato.

Kris nods. “I lied.”

“You—“

Reaching over her, Kris closes the window and leans back against the seat, closing his eyes as well. His one hand is still holding hers, tightly and securely, and he’s grinning like a winner.

Yes, maybe they’ve won—maybe this tingling in her chest is what she can look forward to, for the rest of her lifetime.

...END...

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A/N: Another story completed! Woohoo! If you like this Kristoria couple, then please do keep an eye out for my new upcoming Kristoria story [Forsake to Foresee]! [Wing to Wing] is also pretty much nearing its wrapping up stages too so I think I'll be working on a new Luhan/Victoria fic for my next project. Thank you for everyone's support and I hope you've enjoyed [Maybe We Won]~ Until next time! ♥Xue