I just wanna say to please not be mad at me if this fic is not that good?

You wanna break my heart, alright

I caught your fever, I'll be feeling it forever.

Fever, Carly Rae Jepsen

“Six o’clock then, will that be fine?”

Seated behind his office desk, Lu Han is about to say, Yes, I’ll see you then. But as he opens his mouth to reply, his attention is stolen by the sound of his office doors opening, allowing passage to the last person on earth he wants to see right now. Kim Jongin did live to appear at the most inconvenient of times, for Lu Han at least, and he should have gotten used to that. He has to rearrange his features to the picture of nonchalance at the sudden intrusion, to glance back at the person he’d been having a previous conversation with.

“Yes, I’ll see you then,” Lu Han manages, smiling, and he tries not to fidget at what he feels to be Jongin’s gaze concentrated upon him.

Kris beams, hopefulness springing into his bright eyes, and Lu Han tries not to fidget at that too. “I’ll see you.” Still carrying a very earnest smile, Kris gives him a final nod and a quick wave at Jongin before he opens the door and is out of the room.

“Wow, somebody has a date tonight?” Jongin teases, eyes not leaving Lu Han. And it’s not like it’s the first time he’s ever done it, so why is Lu Han feeling sheepish like he’d been caught with one hand in Minseok’s secret cookie jar inside one of the cupboards in their office pantry? A good reason would be that such kind of teasing should be awkward coming from an ex-boyfriend.

It’s a great feat in itself that even with how his cheeks must be tinged a slightly red color from the brewing feelings of discomfort in his stomach, Lu Han casually responds, “Yeah, well, it’s really none of your business.”

“Ah, somebody with a chance to get laid tonight shouldn’t be in such a snippy mood!”

He sighs. “What do you want, Jongin?”

There is a familiar glint in Jongin’s eyes, which is the signal for when he has yet to be done producing trouble or being playful or taunting people out of their wits. Surprising even himself however, he plops himself on one of the chairs before Lu Han’s table and gets down to business instead. “Well Sehun has pitched a really good story, which I think you should hear before the story con later, because Sehun’s a really smart kid, you know, but he’s still insecure telling people his ideas.”

Lu Han’s eyebrows rise a little. “Why didn’t you just let him come to me then?” It’s his turn to fish, which is futile, because Jongin always knows not to take the bait.

“I told you, he’s insecure about this stuff,” he rambles. “Anyway, he said we should make a segment exploring tourism a little bit. Like what do foreigners really come to our country for? Is it only because of KPop and celebrities or do they come here because they’re genuinely interested in our culture? We can have at least two guests, one who’s Asian and another from the West, maybe somebody not a native English speaker, and oh! We could give them a tour of some of the historical places that don’t appear in the dramas.”

Relaxing for the first time in Jongin’s presence, Lu Han leans his back on the chair. “That actually sounds pretty good,” he says, nodding. “You should still let Sehun present it himself later, though. I’d like him to get used to his teammates responding to his ideas. They’re usually pretty good anyway.”

“Of course!” Jongin responds enthusiastically. “We should go call everybody for the story con now so we could finish early. Don’t want to be late for your date tonight, do you?” The glint^TM in his eyes is still malevolent, of course.

If Lu Han had been a tad embarrassed earlier, now he just feels annoyed. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop pretending you’re interested in my affairs. You’ve been doing that since you came back.”

“I just never thought you’d be the type to get back at someone. You’ve never had a date in eight months, Jongdae said. Why have one now that I’ve come back? Are you by chance trying to make me feel jealous?” Maybe Jongin is interested in making him feel more than just annoyed.

 “Oh wow, you haven’t changed, have you? You still have a habit of making everything about you!” Then Lu Han will give him anger, all right. “It’s all coming back to me now, all the reasons why we broke up!”

“Can’t help but wonder, is all.” Jongin raises his hands in a feigned show of a flippant attitude, but he knows he might have displayed a look of hurt surprise. “Jongdae did say you might try to show me you’re doing better after I left, and this must be it now, ain’t it? But you might reconsider dragging Kris into the show. He seems to honestly like you. He could get hurt.”

Unbelievable, Lu Han thinks. He grits his teeth and shakes his head, turning towards the windows to calm himself. Since Jongin came back to work for their network again three weeks ago, this isn’t the first time he’d tried to rile Lu Han up. Save for this moment, he’s mostly managed to ignore Jongin’s taunts thus far. No reason to taint that record now.

He stands up abruptly, liking the look on Jongin’s face when he thought Lu Han might reach across the desk to punch. “Think what you want, but me going out with Kris really doesn’t have anything to do with you.” He goes around the desk and crosses the office space approaching the door.

After he twists the doorknob open, he says softly, not daring to turn back around, “And I’m not trying to make you jealous, I’m just… trying to move on.”

Lu Han leaves his own office feeling like he might have left something else behind too.

***

Never in a million years did Jongin think the sound of a door closing would root him to a spot, frozen in full shock, his breathing suffering for a few minutes. He slumps in his seat, all the energy draining from him. Moments later, however, he recognizes that the shock is due, not to the damned door closing, but to Lu Han’s parting statement.

Thinking back to how he’s been treating Lu Han for the past three weeks, he truly accepts now that he’s been being a huge heck of a git. But there is an explanation to all that, really—he’s just been trying to get Lu Han’s attention.

In retrospect, being a pain in Lu Han’s might not have been the best way to proceed with his goal, but he’d been lost from the start how to do it. He’s just been so surprised and absolutely hurt that he’d come back because he hadn’t been himself for a while now, only to find that Lu Han had been okay in his absence.

It was Jongin’s decision to leave eight months ago, to work for that other TV station in Singapore. He and Lu Han were already having a rocky relationship then, but Jongin’s departure meant the finality of it all.

He’d made a show of pompousness, telling Lu Han he’d be perfectly fine in that foreign country because Lu Han would not be there. But he’d never been, no. Because all the time he spent in Singapore was spent terribly missing his boyfriend. Lu Han apparently did not miss him at all.

And now Lu Han is moving on.

It must be karmic retribution, because eight months ago, he’d been the one to diminish Lu Han’s efforts to rebuild their relationship. They’d fought plenty, Lu Han instigating some, but he’d also been the one to make the smallest indication he was still willing to patch things up.

Jongin rubs a hand down his face and decides to stand up. So maybe it would be best to let Lu Han move on. Maybe it would do the world more good to instead let him be with Kris, a really nice guy, Jongin admits. Maybe it was a mistake even coming back. A lot of maybes, but one thing is certain: Jongin knows he had been the one to drive a knife into the glass of their relationship, cracking it.

Maybe it’s time to accept his punishment and move on too.

***

For probably the hundredth time in a span of a day, Lu Han sighs. He’s only 26 years of age, but he’s just so, so tired. Tonight should have been a chance to unwind, maybe let go of his troubles for a while, that’s why he agreed to go to dinner with Kris in the first place. But that just brought more trouble apparently.

When he entered the restaurant earlier that evening, he wanted to make a point to leave his heavy thoughts by the door, and maybe his feelings too. It was not good to dwell in anything regarding Jongin, especially since as he’d told the man, he was trying to move on.

But when he got to see Kris’s face light up at his arrival to their dinner table, it’s like someone punched him in the gut, and screamed Jongin’s words into his head: “He seems to honestly like you. He could get hurt.”

He could get hurt…

Kris is a genuinely good person, damn it. He’s nice to practically everyone, doesn’t ever snap even when he’s feeling pressured (which is a talent considering the industry he’s working in), and has a work ethic that Lu Han makes a point for his staff to emulate. Lu Han is totally pro-Kris not getting hurt, at least not in such a huge blow.

So he gathered himself, sat down to dinner, and made to be a pleasant conversationalist. At the end of the evening, though, he brought himself to be honest with Kris that it was probably not such a good idea to do this again, when he was still in limbo about their other co-worker.

Kris insisted that he understood the mechanics of still being in the process of moving, that he could wait (which Lu Han kind of wanted to kiss him for and throw the whole save Kris from getting hurt objective out the window). But Lu Han maintained his position, earning him the memory of that crestfallen look on Kris’s face that left Lu Han feeling like he’d kicked a very cute cat or something.

Still, before Kris left, he had given Lu Han a sincere, albeit sad, smile and thanked him for the lovely evening. And Lu Han’s thought bubble at that moment was: “Can you believe this guy??”

Lu Han sighs again at the flashback. He also returns to the shelf the pack of gummy bears he’s been holding on to, the whole time he’s been rewinding the evening’s happenings in his head. The idea of comfort food sounded good at first, but then he realized he didn’t deserve comfort after realizing he’d still upset Kris quite a bit after all.

He leaves the convenience store with his heart heavier than when he’d walked in, thinking he should just head home. He’s just about to step off the pavement and cross the street when he’s tugged back forcefully he almost drops to the floor.

“What the!?” He quite expected he’d be mugged or that someone was out to kill him. So then he is seething with anger after he recognizes who almost gave him a heart attack.

“ING HELL, JONGIN!”

And he yells and yells at the man, uncaring that passersby are giving them weird looks. “What on earth would you do that for?? You really hate me that much, huh! You couldn’t just leave alone just this one time, could you??”

He would’ve continued yelling but Jongin pushes a hand to his chest, and he has to stop talking in order to catch what Jongin shoved at him.

“What—“

“I’m sorry,” Jongin blurts out, stunning Lu Han speechless. “I’m sorry I came back. And I’m sorry I’ve been hurting you, and I’m sorry for leaving when I knew you wanted to me to stay. I’m sorry for derailing your efforts to move on. I’m just...

“I’m sorry, Lu Han. I’m sorry I came back thinking we could still have what we had then, when you don’t want that anymore.”

He looks defeated, and Lu Han is reminded of that feeling he carried in his chest for months after Jongin had left. That feeling like his heart had been hammered and crushed to fine sand and left in the wind to scatter. When they broke up, he truly believed he had the shorter end of the stick, that Jongin would be fine and dandy without him.

So when the news of their company rehiring Jongin had crashed into him like a ten-wheeler truck, he tried his best to act as though he wasn’t still a mess. He wanted to show Jongin that even if both of them knew he’d be the last to move on, at least he’d managed.

But the keyword to all the struggle is in what he’d told Jongin earlier: “I’m just… trying to move on.”

He’s still just trying.

He gawks at Jongin, who’s unable to look him in the eye after all that he’s said, gaze dropping to the ground. Looking down at the thing he’s clutching, Lu Han realizes that Jongin had given him a transparent plastic bag containing green gummy bears, lots of them. Obviously separated from the usual multi-colored pack. A couple packs, actually, since the quantity of a regular pack of gummy bears can only yield a few green ones.

It’s Jongin’s apology gift, for when they would fight in the past and Jongin knew he was in the wrong. And he’d try to make amends by eating all the other-colored gummy bears. The past… it hadn’t been all that bad, Lu Han thinks.

Because even then, the largest of their squabbles could be resolved by a bag of green gummy bears.

“You’re an idiot,” he tells Jongin.

“I know,” Jongin responds, eyes glued to the concrete.

“That being said, I’d also be an idiot if I don’t tell you right now that the truth is that I still want to have what we had then too.”

The suddenness of Jongin looking up at him then would have been hilarious if their situation wasn’t so… angst-y. Like in those Korean dramas. “You do?”

Lu Han lets out another sigh, and he finds the heaviness in his heart ebbing away with it. And he smiles. “I do, very much. To be really clear, I still want you. I love you, Jongin.”

“I love you too!” Jongin shouts, and again it would have been comical the way he abruptly grabs Lu Han in a bone-crushing hug if he wasn’t being, well, bone-crushed.

“And I would’ve said it first! I love you, Lu Han,” he sobs. “I should’ve told you that the moment I saw you instead of being a pain in your tiny all these weeks. Because I’ve known that for months, known it even when I thought I didn’t. And I’ve known that I can’t ever live without you, even when I made you think I could.”

Enthusiastically, Lu Han raises his arms to loop them behind Jongin’s back, comforting them both as he’s started to cry now as well. “I can’t live without you too.”

They stay in their tight embrace for a while, until the sound of applause rings into their ears. Turns out they have acquired a small audience from all the passersby who had stopped to witness their reconciliation. Quickly, they disentangle arms to glance around at some of the people wiping tears from their eyes, and at least one man and one woman dabbing handkerchiefs at their snot-filled noses too.

“This is embarrassing,” Lu Han mumbles breathlessly at the same time Jongin says, “Thank you, all!”

The latter blows the onlookers some kisses like a celebrity would after a good show, making Lu Han roll his eyes. With one arm, he pulls Lu Han close to him and whispers coyly, “Such a pity I didn’t initiate a makeout session instead, no?”

Lu Han hits him with his apology gift.

***

Later on at Jongin’s apartment after rounds of much-appreciated make-up (“Make-up making love!” Jongin asserts, lamely)…

“By the way, you should buy me more of those tomorrow.” Lu Han points to the pack of gummy bears perched on the night stand beside the bed where they are currently tangled.

“Aww… I’d give you all the treats in the world you want, but why the need?”

He huffs at his now-not-an-ex boyfriend. “Don’t think I’d forgotten the fact that in your apology speech, you said my was tiny!”

Jongin laughs, the cheerful sound echoing inside the room. When he’s recovered from his fits of laughter, and after he’s made sure Lu Han isn’t glaring at him anymore, he takes Lu Han’s hand, kissing his palm, and he looks into his eyes, saying, “Don’t worry, love. I plan to make it all up to you.”

And I can feel you reaching through the cracks,

A simple change of seasons and you're back.

--Roses, Carly Rae Jepsen

Hehe so do I deserve gummy bears? Hehe