43: "A work of art is a confession" - Albert Camus Pairing!Kray, HighSchool!AU

Yifan always ate his vegetables first. His mom used to tell him that the green things on his plate would make him grow up big and tall. She'd been right, extremely so. Yifan still hated the taste of broccoli, but when it was part of a meal, he ate that stuff religiously.

Yifan never left his house for school in the mornings without setting Ace on his bed with a nice view out the window and kissing his stuffed llama goodbye. The animal had been an apology present from Yixing when they were four and the other boy had accidentally ripped the head off Yifan's stuffed dragon. Logically, Yifan knew he was too old for stuffed animals, but Ace was special. He was alive in Yifan's heart, okay?

Yifan sometimes liked to draw, even though his artistic genius was so high level that most of his work was incomprehensible to anyone other than, well, Ace. Eventually, Yifan got tired of telling his mother, "No, Mama, that's not a turtle. It's a butterfly!" and kept his art to himself.

That is, until recently.

Yifan always had a crush on Yixing. For as long as he could remember, his next door neighbor slash best friend slash partner in crime had features in any and all of Yifan's fantasies...romantic and otherwise.

But Yifan never, not for a single moment, thought that Yixing might feel the same way. He grumbled through a slew of boyfriends and girlfriends, trying to be supportive and not too obvious. It was hard, but if Yifan could stomach Brussels sprouts for the sake of his height, he could survive this too.

Except Yifan sometimes had moments of weakness. Despite being inexplicably awesome, he was human too. In those weak moments, when his feelings were too strong to ignore, Yifan drew. And in those very, very rare moments when creating penciled masterpieces wasn't enough to steady Yifan's heart, he used them to confess.

Well, sort of.

Yifan always got to school on Mondays a little earlier than everyone else. He tried to claim model student status, but Yixing knew that Mrs. Wu always took the car in to get washed on Monday morning before work at the start of the week. He let Yifan pretend anyway. And on those Monday mornings when Yifan was alone in the long and empty hallways of his school, he left a drawing or two in Yixing's locker, to confess.

Yifan never expected Yixing to say anything about the drawings. He hadn't before. But they were seniors now, and he'd been leaving pictures for his crush for nearly four years. Even Yixing was probably curious by that point.

"What is this?" He asked Yifan, out of the blue—which, to be honest, was how Yixing did most things anyway. To Yifan's horror, in his best friend's hand was one of the secret art confessions. And it was upside down. "I mean," Yixing continued, turning the paper to the right and holding it up to the light to study it further, "is that an animal, or what?"

Yifan sometimes felt like the world was against him. This was one of those times.

"It looks kind of like a flower to me," he offered, trying to sound nonchalant. That's what the drawing was, anyway. A rose from Yifan to Yixing.

"Huh," was all Yixing said. He carefully slipped the drawing into his backpack and turned to Yifan with a grin. "Lunch?"

Yifan grinned back, relieved. His heart was safe.

Yifan always forgot to learn from his mistakes, so it was with some strange sort of short term memory loss that he dropped a new drawing into Yixing's locker that next Monday morning.

"Chimpanzee?" Yixing hazarded a guess, looking concentrated but completely at a loss. "It is that an apple?"

Yifan never understood why people couldn't interpret his artwork properly. Were they all blind to perfection, or what?

"Try a heart." He paused, nerves making him shy. "Maybe one of those heart-shaped boxes with chocolate in it?"

"Huh," was all Yixing said. Again.

Yifan sometimes wondered how he could possibly like such a Neanderthal. But then Yixing pulled out a bag of cookies Mrs. Zhang had made for them to share, smiled so that Yifan was awed by his dimples, and offered kindly, "Want one?"

I want you, Yifan wanted to say. But he didn't. Thank God. That would have been embarrassing. Instead, he daydreamed about the amazingness of one Zhang Yixing, then wallowed at the realization that such awesomeness plus his own would be an awesomeness of truly epic proportions, but was unlikely to occur. Probably ever. That's what gave him the confidence to draw and confess again, for the third Monday in a row.

In the past, Yifan had always tried to draw something romantic when he confessed. Not this time.

"Is that," Yixing hesitated, unsure. "Is that Ace?"

Yifan never anticipated that Yixing would be able to comprehend the subject of this latest drawing. He never had before.

"I...erm..." He didn't know what to say. It was obvious and embarrassing. Yixing wouldn't look at him, and that was upsetting too. "Maybe it's just an ordinary llama? There's no guarantee it's stuffed. Or named Ace. In fact, it's totally not. My Ace is special."

Yifan sometimes applauded his own genius. But when Yixing continued to stare hard at the drawing and said nothing, not even "Huh," Yifan decided that this was not one of those times.

That week Yifan discovered that school was no fun without a cheerfully forgetful best friend to get him through the days, and without the bliss of a crush to get him through homework laden afternoons of boredom. In short, it .

Yifan always pictured him and Yixing together against the world until the end of time.

He never imagined they would spend an entire seven days without speaking, without making dumb faces at each other in Calculus, or without sharing a seat and a single pair of earphones on the bus ride home.

For that reason, Yifan sometimes regretted confessing so recklessly. Why couldn't he have just suffered through his one-sided first love gracefully? Why did it have to be Yixing, of all people, that he fell in love with? Most importantly, why couldn't Yixing love him back?

Why, why, why?

Yixing always wondered if there would be a day in his future when Yifan finally returned the feelings Yixing had harbors since probably the early days of Ace. But that was merely wishful thinking on his part, so when that day finally came, Yixing didn't know what to do. And for nearly a week after, he avoided his best friend because of it.

Yixing never looked back with "what ifs" or regret after he made a decision. That was more Yifan's thing. No, once Yixing chose a path in life, he followed it forever. And Yifan, Yixing finally realized, was that path.

Yixing sometimes considered himself a musician, maybe even a good one. He could dance like a god and play the guitar too. What he didn't really feel comfortable doing was singing, but Yifan needed to know how Yixing felt. That was more important than a few wrong notes, wasn't it?

When Yifan came early that next Monday morning, he'd expected the same emptiness as always, and dreaded braving the coming week without Yixing, in any capacity, by his side. Indeed, the hallways were deserted still, but Yifan's locker was not empty. Inside it, Yifan found three slips of paper, one with a rose, one with a heart box of chocolates, and one with Ace.

There was a brief, and terrible moment, in which Yifan understood the true pain of rejection. But then the crackle of the intercom sounded overhead, and Yixing began to sing.

"Ni shi wo baby," Yixjng crooned into the intercom's mic as Yifan thundered into the media center.

"Ni rang wo crazy," Yifan sang back to him gruffly. He'd recognized the words to one of Yixing's own compositions instantly.

Yixing's head snapped up in surprise and he blushed brightly. The boy held Yifan's gaze as he finished the song to the end, but as soon as it was over he turned away fast enough to break his neck.

"Do you," Yifan stopped to breathe deeply for courage before continuing, "maybe like me?"

Yixing nodded. Yifan thought his heart might explode.

Yifan's mother often told him to avoid using absolutes. They made him look dumb if they came true, she said. But Yifan always secretly hoped Yixing would like him back, even when he pretended not to. And he never wanted to let Yixing go, not now that he had him.

Sometimes, though, Yifan did look back over his drawings and wonder how oblivious his boyfriend must be to not realize that Yifan had been using them to confess. A rose look like an animal and a heart of chocolate like a chimpanzee? Ha! Some people just had no eye for ability, that's all.

PalmerPie, this one was for you! <3