hey, joonmyun’s in the local hospital. he told me he hurt his ankle. we have practice in an hour.

Yifan nearly runs out of the classroom after reading the text message. The teacher is still in the middle of her lesson, but he ignores her when she calls after him.

The way to the local hospital is familiar; over the years, they’ve visited often, from ordinary things like yearly check-ups to getting shots to survive after losing sleep for several consecutive days. But it’s been a long time since something like this has occurred.

This is like a flashback to the night after their debut, Yifan thinks, except this time, he wasn’t even there to see Joonmyun fall. He runs through the crowds in the subway, murmuring apologies with his eyes fixed on the exit. The text message hadn't been that serious, but Yixing wouldn’t text him in the middle of class if it wasn’t something worth worrying about.

“What are you doing here?” Joonmyun asks, the moment Yifan stumbles through the door, breathless. “I texted Yixing,” he says.

Yifan doesn’t reply to his question. “What happened?”

“It was during gym.” Joonmyun lifts his foot slightly. “I tripped during soccer. It’s just a sprained ankle.”

Just a sprained ankle. Yifan sits down in the chair by Joonmyun’s bedside, staring at him closely. Joonmyun seems to be okay now, but he looks so fragile lying on the hospital bed. It makes Yifan want to hold his hand, but both of Joonmyun’s hands are under the blanket.

“What are you doing here? Don’t you have class?”

“It’s fine,” Yifan mumbles, even if it probably isn’t. “Why didn’t you text me about this?”

“Because I knew you had class.” Joonmyun looks up at him, his gaze calm and steady, like he can’t understand why Yifan is making such a big deal out of this.

Yifan runs a hand through his hair, aware that he might be overreacting, but he can’t help it. His heartbeat still hasn’t quite calmed down yet, and he exhales heavily, hand dropping down onto the arm of the chair. “You should tell me next time.”

“Why? Are you my parent or something?” Joonmyun’s tone is unusually sharp. Yifan blinks at him, trying to formulate a response, but Joonmyun continues, “You know, the idea of me going to another country was to escape my parents, so they wouldn’t have to be in my life every day. I don’t need…”

I don’t need you here, too. But that’s not true. Yifan’s seen how much Joonmyun misses his parents, knows that Joonmyun knows that he can depend on Yifan. Knows that if Joonmyun didn’t trust him so much, he wouldn’t be telling him this. Knows that a few minutes of anger can’t wipe away years of friendship. “You’re lying,” he says, and doesn’t take his words back even when he sees Joonmyun flinch.

“Go away.” Joonmyun turns his face away from Yifan, his breaths sharp and irregular. He’s angry, Yifan can tell from the way he clenches his jaw, but Yifan still doesn’t understand why. “I’m just tired. It’s not a big deal.”

“Then why is it such a big deal for me to be here?” Yifan can feel his phone vibrating in his pocket with an incoming notification, but he ignores it as he stares at Joonmyun.

“Because you assume that just because your feelings…” Joonmyun stops, pressing his lips together tightly.

“Because what?” Yifan asks. His throat feels too tight, like he’s suffocating slowly. It’s like there’s an invisible person smoking in here, slowly stealing the oxygen in the air and replacing it with dark smoke.

“Stop treating me like a child.” Joonmyun turns his head so he’s looking in Yifan’s eyes. They’re flat, emotionless. “I’m nearly as old as you are. I can take care of myself. I don’t need you rushing over every time something happens.”

“But that’s what friends are for,” Yifan says, his words too soft, too weak.

Joonmyun smiles. It’s not his usual eye-catchingly bright smile; this one’s forced, just a slight twist of his lips. “Friends don’t do this,” he says, and this scene is familiar, too familiar.

Yifan swallows. “I want to.”

He knows the part that comes after this—the line that follows Joonmyun’s next intake of breath. Joonmyun never says it, though, since at that moment, the room to the door opens and Yixing steps in.

“Hey, the manager told me…” He stops, staring at Yifan and Joonmyun with a faintly puzzled expression on his face. “I’m sorry, did I interrupt something?”

Yifan doesn’t look at Joonmyun as he shakes his head. “No, it’s fine. Go on.”

“He told me that we still have a concert this weekend,” Yixing continues, hand still resting awkwardly on the doorknob. He has one foot in the room and the other one just outside of the doorway, like he’s still contemplating whether or not to enter. “Joonmyun, you don’t have to attend.”

“It’s okay, I can still do it.”

“You,” Yifan begins, but he remembers what Joonmyun said just minutes ago and closes his mouth, cutting off the rest of his words. Yixing gives him a weird look.

“I can just sit down and sing my part,” Joonmyun says. “I’m sure the fans will understand. It’s the least I can do.”

“Okay. I’ll tell the manager. We have practice now,” he adds, directing the statement at Yifan. “We might have to do a little rearranging with the choreography. Get some rest, Joonmyun.”

Yixing walks out without bothering to wait for Yifan. There’s an odd tension in the room, the kind that makes Yifan want to throw something just to attempt to break it. It shouldn’t feel like this between them; they’ve practically grown up together, they can read each other’s feelings through the smallest actions, but right now, he has no idea what Joonmyun is thinking.

“I’ll see you,” Yifan says, and Joonmyun just nods.

They end up performing that night onstage. Joonmyun sits in a chair, his leg in a cast, and Yixing and Yifan dance around him. It requires them to change their choreography a little, but it’s easily adjusted. The moments when Yixing and Yifan do falter go unnoticed, for the most part.

Joonmyun still sings as confidently as ever, his voice steady and unwavering as he smiles out into the crowd. There’s such emotion in his voice that Yifan nearly trips over his own feet just staring at him.

Yixing catches him before he can, though, slipping the touch into the choreography and somehow managing to shoot Yifan a knowing look as he sings the next verse.

It’s all a little disconcerting, so Yifan focuses on performing. They’re only singing a handful of songs tonight. Before long, they’re bowing as the stage lights dim overhead.

“That went pretty well,” Yixing says, brushing back his bangs from his sweaty forehead. “Better than I thought, anyway.”

The fans had been shocked, at first, when they saw that Joonmyun had injured his ankle. The company hadn't released any news beforehand, since the injury had occurred so suddenly. But for the most part, they’d been supportive.

“Yeah,” Yifan says softly, and Joonmyun doesn’t reply at all.

The tense silence between them lasts even when they get into the car. Yixing ends up helping Joonmyun into the car, sitting between Joonmyun and Yifan.

The manager asks Joonmyun why he’s being so quiet, but Joonmyun’s only response is, “I’m just tired.”

Yifan knows that it’s not the only reason. He finds himself worrying for Joonmyun, even though Joonmyun had specifically told him not to. It’s almost become a habit, one that he can’t get rid of just because Joonmyun had said him that he didn’t want Yifan’s concern.

Yifan wants to apologize, to dismiss their argument as simply stress from their responsibilities as students and idols, but he can’t help thinking that it goes beyond that. There had been a kind of implication in Joonmyun’s words that still bothers him.

“What happened?” Yixing whispers, when the manager engages Joonmyun in a conversation about his ankle.

Yifan shakes his head. “It’s nothing.” Maybe if he repeats those words enough, he’ll begin to believe them.

Although they live together, it’s surprisingly easy for Yifan to avoid Joonmyun. It’s not like he’s doing it on purpose, but he does want to avoid the awkward tension between the two of them whenever they’re in the same room alone. It helps that Joonmyun doesn’t seem to want to see him much, either. Yixing gives them weird looks every once in a while, but he doesn’t say anything.

But confrontations are difficult to avoid when they’re so close. They’re public figures, so it won’t be long before the fans know that they’re not on speaking terms.

After a week of the silence, Yifan walks up to Joonmyun in the laundry room. It’s not the best setting, with the washing machine on and the barely-there space between the two of them, but it means that Joonmyun can’t escape easily.

“I’m sorry,” Yifan blurts out, the moment he walks into the room. Joonmyun looks up at him, his expression unreadable, as Yifan drops the dirty laundry he’d been carrying onto the ground. He takes a step forward, speaking so that his voice can be heard above the sound of the washing machine but not too loud that Yixing can overhear them. “I’ll give you space. I didn’t mean to…”

“Can we go into my room to talk?” Joonmyun asks, interrupting him as he picks up Yifan’s laundry and sits it on top of the washing machine. “My clothes won’t be done for another thirty minutes.”

Yifan nods, following Joonmyun into his room. It’s much quieter in here, the silence almost oppressing. He sits down on the edge of Joonmyun’s bed as Joonmyun closes the door.

“It’s not your fault,” Joonmyun says, taking a seat opposite Yifan in a chair. “I was annoyed that day, so my brain to mouth filter must have been turned off.”

“But I should have—”

“Hey, can you stay here tonight?” Joonmyun interrupts him abruptly. “My bed’s big enough, and if you don’t move around too much, there should be enough room.”

Yifan blinks, caught off guard by the question. “Sure.” He opens his mouth to say more, but Joonmyun turns his back to him.

“Okay. I still have homework to finish, so you should come back in an hour.”

An hour is enough time for Yifan to put his clothes in the washer, get ready for bed, and receive a look from Yixing that tells him the other had definitely overheard the conversation. Yifan throws a towel at him, rolling his eyes as Yixing mouths, Have fun, on his way back to his room.

Joonmyun’s door is barely open. Yifan tries to peek through the crack before giving up and knocking. The door opens almost immediately.

“What are you being so formal for?” Joonmyun asks, stepping aside to allow Yifan to enter. “You take the right side. I’m not falling off the bed tonight.”

He turns off the light when Yifan gets into the bed, making his way onto the mattress with relative ease. Yifan stares up at the ceiling when Joonmyun gets into the bed beside him. It shouldn’t feel this awkward, considering how many times they’ve shared a bed before, but at this age, Yifan is the very definition of awkwardness, if Yixing’s jibes are anything to go by.

“You’re not asleep, are you?” Joonmyun asks.

Yifan turns his head to look at Joonmyun. The moonlight slipping through the blinds over the window illuminates Joonmyun’s face, tracing the soft curve of his cheekbones and the steadiness in his gaze. “I’m not.”

“Sing me a song,” Joonmyun says.

“I’m tired,” Yifan says, closing his eyes.

But Joonmyun grabs onto his hand insistently. “Come on. It’s been so long since I’ve heard you sing like this.”
 

It’s hard to say no like this, so Yifan agrees. He hums the beginning notes of an old Cantonese song that his mother used to sing to him at night.

“I love you. I’m downtown shouting, ‘I need you.’
You’re causing my heart to beat crazily with joy.
I can’t bring myself to care about these forty other interferences.
Hear what I’d say.

I say, ‘I love you.’ I’m downtown shouting, ‘I need you.’
I want to let everyone I meet in the streets know
I’m crazily and deeply in love with you. I’ll be happy till I die.”

Yifan foregoes the chorus, repeating the verses again softer this time, taking the song out of its original tempo and letting the notes trail off in the end. Joonmyun seems to be asleep already, his eyes closed and his breathing even. Yifan smiles as he lays a hand on top of Joonmyun’s hand. He really couldn’t be happier right now.

A/N: This chapter took incredibly long to write, especially considering all the rewrites that I had to go through. My only excuse is life being life, but that's not really an excuse, so. Also, this is the song that Yifan sang. I'm sorry if the translations are inaccurate; I'm not fluent in Cantonese.