Final.
He IsIn their defense, they were completely hammered and at the time the whole thing seemed like a really, really good idea. Then they woke up the next morning to the annoying hiccup of KakaoTalk as Yixing’s phone blew up with picture after embarrassing picture of everything he, Yifan, and Luhan had been up to the night before.
“Dude,” Baekhyun greeted Yixing and the other two with amusement. The sounds he made slurping up his hangover soup were like literal hammers pounding into the Chinese trio’s heads. Yifan was contemplating homicide; he thought he might even get away with a self-defense plea. “I’ve never seen anyone look so good in a Burger King birthday crown.”
Yixing’s dimple appeared when he smiled proudly. He was still half asleep but he knew a Baekhyun compliment when he heard one.
“You were tripping around yelling that you were the long lost prince of Genovia.” Baekhyun laughed into his bowl before turning his attention to Yifan and Luhan. “And you two,” he snorted. “You were walking behind him and striking poses like his goddamned bodyguards or something.”
Kyungsoo collapsed into the seat next to Baekhyun. “I’m surrounded by idiots,” he commented groggily with his cheek pressed into the cool, slightly sticky surface of the campus cafeteria’s long tables. “You guys were so dumb last night.”
It seemed totally cool at the time, Luhan wanted to defend, but he was too tired to bicker with Kyungsoo and settled for nestling his face into Yifan’s shoulder instead.
Then again a lot of the stuff Luhan, Yifan, and Yixing ended up doing together made total sense in the moment but turned out to be sort of idiotic after the fact. This wasn’t just true for their drunken behavior and also included spectacular procrastination techniques right before finals. Baekhyun, Kyungsoo, and the others were too smart to get roped into Luhan’s avoidance of schoolwork, but Yixing just sort of went along with that bemused smile on his face and Yifan, of course, was happy to be wherever the other two were.
Four days before their first final—Accounting 101 for all three of them—Luhan, Yifan, and Yixing found themselves leaving a sketchy noraebang sometime around 3 in the morning. They weren’t drunk this time, per se, but they weren’t exactly sober after an entire evening of karaoke. As such it didn’t occur to Luhan not to be unnecessarily confrontational when a group of guys smoking just outside the karaoke establishment whistled obnoxiously at Yixing.
“That though!” One of the bolder men called out. He his lips lewdly and high-fived one of his friends before sauntering over to join the trio as they walked back toward their campus. He casually dropped an arm around Yixing’s shoulders and Yifan just about lost his .
“You don’t touch him,” Yifan told the unknown man. His voice was low and his posture threatening as he pulled Yixing and Luhan behind him. Or tried, at least, but Luhan was having none of that and stood defiantly at Yifan’s side, Yixing safely at his back.
“You don’t catcall him either,” Luhan added, fists clenched.
Yixing’s head popped out from the space created by the height differential between Yifan and Luhan’s shoulders. “They’re my bodyguards,” he told the guy. “I’d listen to them if I were you.”
Thankfully the guy took the hint and decided Yixing wasn’t worth the trouble. Luhan and Yifan would disagree, for obvious reasons, but they were glad to see him go and made it home without further incident. Baekhyun was slack-jawed hearing the story during a last-minute study session the next afternoon; Yixing was merely smug that he had such attractive men looking out for his safety; Kyungsoo muttered something about bodyguard being a ual euphemism, but no one heard him except for Yifan who didn’t understand anyway.
He didn't understand much of the final he and the other two took a few days later either. After it was over they walked arm-in-arm out of the lecture hall where the exam was held and whined loudly about how much college , why the hell they'd ever decided to take accounting, and what their next move should be—in terms of celebration, of course.
“You realize you have three more exams after this one, right?” Kyungsoo asked, totally unimpressed with the trio's plans for an impromptu party on such an unassuming Monday evening.
“I’m not inviting the whole neighborhood! It’ll just be the five us and anyone else you want to bring.”
This was Luhan's defense of the idea, given that it was Yixing who’d thought of it first. As such, he and Yifan were obviously quite protective of the whole plan.
“Chill.” Baekhyun rolled his eyes. “It's not like Soo just crushed all of your hopes and dreams or asked for your first-born child or something. Jeez.”
“Finals are a stressful time for him,” Yixing assuaged Baekhyun's pout with a serene nod like he expected Baekhyun to just accept his words as an acceptable apology.
“Besides,” Yifan added, sounding somewhat petulant, in Kyungsoo's opinion. “If we throw a party, or a gathering, or whatever Yixing wants to call it, no one said you had to be there.”
Baekhyun looked at the three of them and rolled his eyes once more. “I am the party,” he deadpanned.
Kyungsoo rolled his eyes then too, but when the Chinese students ended up with cheap snacks and beer in their room later that evening, Kyungsoo and Baekhyun were both in attendance with their respective significant others in tow. They had a nice time together, the seven of them, like they always did, and after the fact, as they were cleaning up the bottles strewn over the floor and the random crumbs and chip pieces that had snuck somehow into the crevices of the couch, Yixing turned to Luhan and Yifan to say, “They're nice, I think. Jongin and Minnie.”
They were nice, Kyungsoo's boyfriend and Baekhyun's crush, respectively. Still, Yifan and Luhan certainly weren't about to tell Yixing they agreed with him.
“Don't you go falling for either one of them, now,” Luhan warned, his lips a near pout as he crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Yixing accusingly. He didn’t really mean it, though, and Yixing's face broke into a dimpled grin that had Luhan sighing in defeat and returning to his clean up.
“You two are enough for me,” Yixing assured him after a while of cleaning in silence. Yifan, who wholeheartedly agreed, watched the whole exchange with a soft smile on his face that neither of the other two noticed but that Baekhyun made sure to point out obnoxiously every time he could.
“Your boyfriend is dumb,” Yifan whined to Minnie some months later after Christmas when they all got together for a little chicken and beer. Baekhyun had just poked Yifan’s smile with an annoying finger and had laughed raucously when Yifan’s expression instantly flattened.
“I think it’s cute,” Minnie defended, though she was giggling slightly and Yifan knew she agreed with him about Baekhyun, if only a little. “But really though,” she countered, “yours aren’t much better.”
“Can't help who you love I guess,” was all he said. He certainly couldn’t understand why someone as crazy as Baekhyun had managed to land someone as great as Minnie, or what the hell someone like Minnie saw in someone like Baekhyun.
Minnie smiled at him. It was like she knew what he was thinking and found his thought amusing. “And don’t worry,” she added after a moment of companionable silence. “If you’re still wanting to keep the three of you a technical secret, I won’t tell.”
Yifan shrugged. That he and Yixing and Luhan were involved in some type of way wasn't exactly a surprise to anyone. Still, Yixing was quick to point out when someone explicitly asked that no, they weren’t actually dating. Luhan, of course, had a lot to say about that.
“What do you mean we aren't dating?!” And oops, Luhan was mad again.
“I just mean we've never had the Talk,” Yixing defended himself.
Yifan didn't have to ask what that conversation was because he knew already. Sure, the three of them fooled around sometimes (read: often) and sure, he and Luhan took their jobs seriously when it came to looking out for Yixing and making sure he was protected, but they'd never actually sat down to define what they were. Hell, they hadn't even said yet if they were exclusive; they'd just fallen into bed together one night after yet another instance in which Luhan and Yifan had drunkenly come to Yixing's defense like the bodyguards they proclaimed themselves to be.
And somehow, some way, Yifan thought that maybe wasn’t all they’d fallen into. He thought, too, that he'd fallen into their hearts the same way that they’d fallen into his.
“You know I want to date you.” Luhan turned to Yixing, grabbing him by the shoulders and looking him square in the face. “And I want to date Yifan.” He turned his head a little to blow a kiss at Yifan who was standing a little behind.
“Do you really think,” Luhan continued as he beckoned Yifan closer, “that I would sacrifice this body,” he gestured downward at himself and the other two boys snorted, “for the protection of just anyone?”
Luhan scoffed. “Of course not. You're precious,” Luhan told Yifan and Yixing. And he meant it.
“Such a sap,” Yifan teased, though the way he pulled Luhan's back against his chest and gazed thoughtfully at a smiling Yixing didn't suggest that he was at all unhappy with how cheesy Luhan was acting. Yixing, it seemed, wasn't all that bothered either. He certainly had no problem stepping forward into Luhan's embrace to squeeze both of the other two tightly around their waists so he could kiss each one.
“Those three,” Baekhyun complained petulantly, “are always taking this bodyguard too seriously.” He was sitting at the bar with Kyungsoo, Jongin, and Minnie as they waited for the other three to arrive, when his eyes caught both Yifan and Luhan opening the doors for Yixing to enter.
“We're not just bodyguards anymore,” Yifan informed Baekhyun and the others smugly once he and his now-official boyfriends approached the table. “That’s what we’re here to celebrate. We're Yixing's heart-guards now too.”
Luhan and Baekhyun groaned simultaneously.
“For the love of all that is holy,” Baekhyun whined, “please stop.”
Yifan did, for a while, but his shouts of cheer were impossible to silence once he was drunk enough.
That night they all got so wasted, and were then so unbearably hungover the next morning, that Yifan, Yixing, and Luhan made a pact not to drink again until after finals were over. Minnie was sweet and told them she thought they’d succeed if they tried hard enough; Jongin seemed to care little about the three Chinese boys’ drinking habits and was neither happy nor disappointed when they actually succeeded. Kyungsoo’s disbelief was derisive, expectedly so; and Baekhyun had actually bet against his girlfriend on the matter, so he was a little put out that they managed to go without alcohol all the way through the end of the semester. For these reasons, and as a personal reward, Yifan and the other two decided that the next time they did go out for drinks, they’d go alone.
It was nice to be out as just the three of them, for once, and with the stress of finals behind them, all three were happy to just let go and have a little fun. Yifan excused himself to the restroom after a bit, and Luhan, entwined on Yifan’s lap as he was, decided to just go with him. After a couple of kisses to his cheek, Yixing found himself alone.
This in itself wasn’t unusual as Yixing was used to spending a lot of time by himself during the day when Yifan and Luhan’s class schedules conflicted with his own. But it certainly wasn’t like the other two to leave Yixing without some blatantly obvious sign that he wasn’t available.
“You get hit on too much,” Luhan had pouted to him once.
“You’ll just have to show people I’m yours,” Yixing had responded.
Yifan had chuckled, then kissed him and said, “I like the sound of that.”
They were so distracted by each other, Yixing mused from his seat at the bar between two empty stools, that they probably just forgot. The bodyguard thing was really just a joke, anyway.
But then the bartender handed Yixing a drink, gesturing toward a man a little ways off who was also sitting by himself. “No thanks,” Yixing mouthed toward the stranger, refusing to accept the drink and raising a hand in polite apology.
“But a pretty little thing like you deserves to have someone buy you a drink.” The man stood up, leering at Yixing as he slid himself down the bar to fill the empty seat that Yifan had left behind.
“Someone is sitting, there,” Yixing told the man. “My boyfriend.”
The stranger sipped his drink, unperturbed. “One of those two?” His tone was incredulous. “They were so wrapped up in each other that I figured a third wheel like yourself might like some additional attention.”
Yixing fought the urge to gag; Yifan and Luhan had literally kissed him goodbye. This man was as greasy as they got.
“My boyfriend and my other boyfriend,” he responded shortly, emphasizing the fact that the number of his boyfriends was, indeed, two. “They’ll be back shortly, and I don't think you still want to be sitting here when they return.”
“I'm not afraid of them.” The man leaned back in his chair and tried to place a hand on Yixing’s knee.
“You should be,” Yifan said from over Yixing’s shoulder. Luhan's glare was icy as he stepped up behind the taller Chinese man.
“I’m not yours to buy a drink for,” Yixing informed the man politely.
“And I believed he's not interested,” Luhan added in smug conclusion.
“You realize I can take care of myself,” Yixing teased his two boyfriends later, after the man had apologized sheepishly and practically scampered away with his tail between his legs.
“We know,” Luhan told him.
Yifan nodded, wrapping his arms around Luhan’s waist and resting his head on the shorter’s shoulder. “We just love you enough that we think you shouldn’t have to.”
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