Yixing hoped Mr. Peterson didn’t pay too much attention to the way he would occasionally, over the following week and a half, come home in clothes that weren’t his. He tried to borrow from among the same few shirts each time, so that perhaps Mr. Peterson would think he’d just gone on an uncharacteristic shopping trip, but it was a difficult pretense to maintain when Baekhyun’s taste in clothing was so much wilder than his own.

Truthfully, though, Mr. Peterson seemed preoccupied these days, and didn’t seem to be noticing much at all. Often when Yixing awoke in the morning and tiptoed down to the kitchen it was to find him already neck-deep in phone calls and paperwork. Mr. Peterson always had an absent smile for him, though, and normally a half-cold pot of tea to offer with breakfast.

The following Saturday, the morning of their second-to-last performance, found Yixing cuddled up on Baekhyun’s couch, Minseok’s head in his lap and wonky little braids spilling out across his knees as his clumsy fingers worked their way through Minseok’s hair. J.D. sat next to Baekhyun on the piano stool, the two of them playing little ditties back and forth, laughing and nudging each other in the ribs as they recognised each song, until J.D. finally started a rhythmic bounce of chords in the bass that Baekhyun seemed to know by instinct as he joined in with a cheerful tune in the treble. They swayed back and forth, pushing into each other’s shoulders with each low note, the pair of them a perfect metronome.

“Key change,” J.D. said, and the song tripped through a discordant mess of sharps and flats before resolving to something higher.

“You gotta tell me what key we’re changing to!” Baekhyun protested.

“D.”

“Well I know that now-”

Syncopated with laughter, the tune became more embellished, trills and flourishes here and there as each tried to out-ridiculous the other. They challenged each other with sudden modulations, often shouting out a new key in the middle of a bar, barely resolving before moving on again, both of them giggling and shoving into each other, notes beating head against head.

“Back to the original key!” J.D. cried.

“What was the original key?”

“I don’t remember!”

They landed on different tonics, fumbling for a second before coming back into line in a highly decorated reprisal of the initial tune which lasted for a good few bars.

“I’m trying to finish it, ,” Baekhyun said, when they had repeated the same melody five times.

“Oh, are you? I thought you were just being boring.”

“Shut up- no don’t change the key again!”

J.D. laughed and elbowed him in the side. “I’m just kidding.” With a grand flourish, he brought the bass to a stampeding halt, allowing Baekhyun a high trill before punctuating a final low note to bring the song to its conclusion.

From the bedroom, the sound of applause.

“Good job!” Sehun called.

“What are you two doing in there?” Baekhyun yelled back.

“Snooping through your records!” Lu replied. “You’ve got so much good stuff here, how come you never play it?”

“Cause my player’s broken,” Baekhyun said, turning back to the piano with a sigh. “I gotta make all the music myself.”

“This is fine,” Zhixiang assured him. “You making good music. J.D. not really.”

“Why?” J.D. protested. “What did I ever do to you?”

“Never tell me what J.D. stand for,” Zhixiang grinned.

“Hey, a man is allowed some secrets in his life- don’t you dare, Baekhyun!”

Baekhyun made an indignant noise and prised J.D.’s hand away from his mouth.

“I don’t get why you’re so twisted up about it,” he said. “It’s not like it’s anything bad, it’s only J- mmf!”

“Just try it,” J.D. threatened.

“Relax, I wasn’t gonna,” Baekhyun mumbled into his hand. “Let go of me.”

J.D. obviously hesitated a fraction of a second too long, because when he leapt away it was with a cry of disgust.

“That’s what you get,” Baekhyun said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Gross.” J.D. grabbed the fabric of Baekhyun’s sleeve to rub the spit off his hand.

“Careful Baek,” Zhixiang said, “you don’t know where his hand been.”

“I have a fair idea,” Baekhyun muttered, standing up and shuffling through the sheets of music on top of the piano. “What else have I got up here…”

He pulled a sheet out of the precarious stack, and two of the photo frames balanced beside it toppled over with a clatter. As Baekhyun set them upright again, Yixing realised that the one on the left was not a picture but a piece of embroidery - and he could read it.

“Ah-” he slid out from under Minseok, scuttled across to the piano and reached over Baekhyun’s shoulder to grab the frame. “What is it?”

“Oh yeah, speaking of names,” Baekhyun leaned back against Yixing’s chest, Yixing’s arms around his shoulders so they could both look at the embroidery, “this is mine. Someone gave it to my mom when I was born. It’s my name in like. Traditional Korean characters.” He pointed to each character. “Baek. Hyun.”

“Baek, Hyun?” Yixing echoed him, then pointed at the characters again. “Bo. Xian.”

“Wait, wait.” Baekhyun sat up and took the frame from Yixing as if to examine it more closely. “Is that how you say it in Chinese?”

Yixing nodded.

“Wow,” Baekhyun breathed. “That’s so cool. I never thought about that, the same characters in different languages.”

Yixing pulled his notebook out of his pocket and flipped to the page where he’d written his name. “How do you read this in Korean?”

“Geez Louise, I don’t know. Ask J.D. - your grandma speaks Korean, right?”

“Yeah, a couple sentences,” J.D. snorted, “conversation stuff. Not reading characters. I didn’t even know Korean had characters like Chinese.”

“You learn something new every day.” Baekhyun set the embroidery carefully back in its place on top of the piano. “How was it you pronounced it?”

“Bo Xian,” Yixing repeated. “Means wise man.”

At that J.D. fell off the piano stool and collapsed to the floor in hysterical laughter.

“Wise man? Wise man? Dear Jesus in Heaven, that’s the worst misnomer in recorded human history!”

“Hey!” Baekhyun sniffed, indignant. “I’ll have you know I’m a very educated fellow.”

“Last week you forgot how to spell research,” Zhixiang pointed out. “Even I’m not that dumb.”

“Well duh, you’re a lawyer.”

“Irrelevant! English is your first language, you stupid!”

“What are we laughing about?” Sehun asked, striding through the bead curtain with Lu on his heels.

“Wise man,” J.D. wheezed, pointing at Baekhyun.

“Who?” Sehun frowned.

“Me!” Baekhyun insisted, smacking an emphatic hand against his chest.

Lu raised an eyebrow. “Says who?”

“Says Chinese,” Minseok put in from the couch, where he was still lying in his halo of lopsided braids, one careful fingernail picking at the edge of his cast.

“Chinese doesn’t know our Baek,” Lu said.

“Rewrite ancient dictionary,” Zhixiang agreed. “Baekkie, you ever see me laughing at you and you’re not sure why? This gonna be why.”

“Sit on it, Zhixiang.”

Zhixiang gave a snorting, honking laugh, doubling over to smack his hands against his knees.

-- Wise man, he chortled. -- Why did I never realise before? I could have been teasing you for years!

“I don’t know what he’s saying,” Baekhyun said, “but I’m sure it’s rude.”

“Not rude,” Yixing shook his head, hands soothing on Baekhyun’s shoulders. “Just silly.”

“Ain’t he always.”

-

Closing night brought mixed emotions. Their dance was the most euphoric Yixing had ever felt, that electric connection between him and Baekhyun crackling across the stage in the space between their brisés and strings of Baryshnikovs. Dancing with someone who knew him this well, taking that bone-deep sense of trust and using it to propel each other higher - it was the most intense performance Yixing had ever given. Nothing could compare to this.

During the curtain call, though, the fact of it became inescapable: this was their last show together.

As Mr. Peterson stepped out of the wings, microphone in hand, Yixing felt the finality of the evening as a weight on his shoulders. Acknowledgements to the audience, to the orchestra, to the patrons of the show - each one was an ending.

“I want to take a moment and say a special thank you to one of our dancers,” Mr. Peterson said, extending a hand towards them. “Zhang Yixing.”

That’s me. For a moment Yixing wasn’t sure what was happening, and it took a nudge from Baekhyun to remind him to step forward.

“Zhang is a summer student from the Beijing Dance Academy,” Mr. Peterson continued. “We’ve been very lucky to have him with us this summer, and even luckier that he was able to step in at the last minute and take over this role.” He turned to Yixing, smiling that kind, fatherly smile with which he blessed his most favourite dancers. “Zhang, thank you for all your hard work this summer. It has been a joy to have you as a student, and we wish you all the best for the future.”

Amidst applause from the cast and audience, Yixing took a bow. When he glanced over his shoulder, Baekhyun was smiling at him, but it was all lips and no corners.

I don’t want the future, Yixing thought. I want this, I want right now to last forever. Ballet had never felt so real, so joyful, as when he was dancing alongside Baekhyun. What if it never did again?

It was that sense of despair that brought him to the far side of town the next afternoon, after a long day of practising not with Baekhyun, but with the red-headed flower girl with whom he would be performing in their end-of-term show. Though she was undoubtedly talented and a dedicated ballerina, it was jarring to dance with someone who couldn’t take the slightest shift of his weight and predict it across the floor to the farthest conclusion of a jeté.

There was no answer when he knocked on the door, but it was almost six o’clock, so he crouched on the doorstep to wait. He watched the cars pass, trundling along the street below in a purr of engines and snatches of songs through their open windows, until finally a rusty orange convertible pulled into one of the crookedly-marked bays in the building’s front courtyard.

When Zhixiang looked up and caught sight of Yixing squatting on his doorstep, he grinned and waved over the windshield.

“Hello, friend!” he called. “I’m there in one minute!”

Yixing nodded and stood, wiping his nervous palms on his pants while Zhixiang collected his groceries from the passenger seat, two paper bags in each arm and his briefcase dangling from his fingers, and clattered up the metal stairs to meet him.

“You waiting long?” he asked, juggling the shopping bags around to fish his keys back out of his pocket and unlock the door.

“Not long,” Yixing said. “I sit in the sun. It’s nice.”

“It’s a lovely evening,” Zhixiang agreed. He kicked the door closed behind them and crossed the room to set his groceries down on the kitchenette counter. “What brings you here to see me?”

-- How much do you know about immigration law?

Zhixiang turned to lean against the counter and look at him, thumbs hooked into his waistcoat pockets.

-- A reasonable amount. Why?

Yixing bit his lip.

-- I don’t want to go back to China.

It felt like a betrayal to admit it, especially to Zhixiang, who, he had to keep reminding himself these days, should have been his enemy.

-- Ah. And you want to know what your options are to stay in America?

Yixing nodded.

-- Hm. Zhixiang scratched one thumbnail against his chin, and in lieu of an immediate answer turned around and began unpacking his groceries.

-- Is it possible? Yixing pressed.

-- Oh, it’s possible. Do you want a drink? He set two cans down on the counter and nodded to them.

-- What is it?

-- Sprite. Fizzes like Cola, but doesn’t taste like death.

Yixing picked up one of the cans and carefully snapped it open. He sniffed at the sparkle of bubbles that sprang out at him, then took one cautious sip.

-- Wow.

Zhixiang was right. It had all the heady fizz of Cola, but none of the mouth-twisting sourness.

-- It’s good, right? Zhixiang slotted the milk into the fridge and picked up his own can. -- Let’s sit.

When they were settled at the table, Zhixiang clasped his hands together and rested his chin on them to stare at Yixing.

-- For you, I think you have three options. He unclasped his hands and held up three fingers. -- One. You can marry an American woman.

Yixing pulled a face. He barely even knew any girls here, and with every day he spent with Baekhyun the prospect of having to devote his attention to a wife instead looked less and less appealing.

-- That one won’t work, Zhixiang said with a shake of his head. -- Option two, you can have an employer sponsor you to stay.

-- What does that mean?

-- Well, a case could be made for you being an exceptionally talented dancer, and therefore an asset to American entertainment. If a dance company - the Seattle Ballet, for instance - were willing to offer you a permanent position-

-- No. Yixing shook his head. -- I can’t ask Mr. Peterson for that. He had already been so kind, bringing Yixing here and providing him with a home for the summer; it would be the rudest possible imposition to demand more.

-- Well, then, Zhixiang spread his hands, -- the only other option that I can think of would be to defect.

-- Defect?

-- Refuse to return to China. Ask for political asylum in America.

-- But- Yixing’s heart squeezed cold inside his chest, -- my family-

-- You would not get to see them again for a long time, Zhixiang said. -- Perhaps never. If you look at defectors from the Soviet Union - Nureyev, Baryshnikov, Makarova - they don’t get to go home. I think it would be the same in China. If you leave, you can’t go back.

-- But I- Yixing shook his head. -- What would they do to my family, if I defected?

Zhixiang hesitated just a breath too long.

-- I don’t know.

Yixing closed his eyes and pressed his lips together, struggling for a loophole, for some way he could make this work.

-- But I can’t. I can’t go back. I can’t stay the rest of my life there, there’s no- I feel so-

-- Trapped.

-- Yes.

Zhixiang’s hand was cool from his soda can when it came to rest on Yixing’s wrist.

-- Yixing, my friend. It’s not an easy decision, and not one you need to make today.

There must be some other way. What if he got a job with another dance company? No, that would be as bad as defecting. Staying with the Seattle Ballet would be one thing, but searching out another company just so that he could remain in the States… there would be no way to pass that off as anything less than defection.

He could bring his family here somehow, get them to America where they would be safe and then all defect together- No. Impossible. He couldn’t even imagine how he would go about doing that. Getting them out of China was out of the question; if he wanted to see them again it would have to be there, not here. If he wanted to defect, then he would have to take responsibility for whatever happened to them as a result.

There was no way around it - his options were fixed. Yixing opened his eyes.

-- If I decide to do it…

-- Then I can direct you to another lawyer who can help. I think if I were the one to assist you… that might be a bad idea. Zhixiang’s grin was a mix of sheepishness and self-deprecation.

-- Oh. Yes, of course.

-- An American-Chinese political incident would be bad enough. Throw Taiwan into the mix and I think we could start a war.

They laughed, but it tasted cold in Yixing’s mouth. After a few seconds, the smile fell away from Zhixiang’s eyes.

-- I don’t know if I’ll do it, Yixing said.

-- That’s okay. You can take your time. If you want to talk through it some more, just let me know.

-- Thank you, Yixing murmured, bowing his head towards the table. -- I’m so grateful for your help.

Zhixiang squeezed his wrist, then leaned forward to give him a solid, reassuring pat on the shoulder.

-- Anything for you, comrade.

-

The Seattle Ballet’s auditorium. Larger than a studio, smaller than a theatre, with makeshift wings and no barrier to speak of between audience and dancers, it wasn't the sort of venue in which one would stage Don Quixote - but it was perfect for twenty summer students, their friends and families, and an end-of-term performance.

Yixing’s dance with his red-headed flower girl went perfectly. He caught her fouetté, matched her jetés, and when they came together at the end for their final spin it was smooth and easy. Even the emotion of the piece seemed right - Yixing just imagined she was Baekhyun, and suddenly falling in love with her was the simplest thing in the world.

When the two of them turned to take their bow, Yixing looked to the front row and sure enough, there they were: Zhixiang shouting congratulations, Minseok clapping his good hand against one of Lu’s, Sehun and J.D. whistling and screaming, and Baekhyun applauding so hard, so fast, that Yixing wasn’t sure which was more in danger of breaking - his hands, or the beaming smile split into his cheeks.

It was the smallest performance he had ever given; somehow, it was also the most rewarding.

Afterwards, when he was wiping his makeup off in one of the tiny dressing rooms behind the auditorium, the door burst open and the whole crew came tumbling through, J.D. leading the charge at a gallop.

“Zhang! That was incredible!”

“Awesome,” Lu agreed. “Absolutely fab.”

“My brother!” Sehun cried, throwing open his arms to envelop Yixing in a lanky hug.

“Friend!” Zhixiang crowed. “I dunno how you jump so high, like woah-” his arms spread high and low, his mouth trying for something equally as wide.

Baekhyun just grasped Yixing’s shoulder, and his smile was words enough.

“I gotta say, Zhang,” Minseok said, “it’s a huge bummer we won’t get to see you dance anymore, cause I could honestly watch you all day.”

Yixing opened his mouth, maybe intending to deflect all their praise, or thank them for coming, but his voice stuck halfway up his throat before he could even find the words.

They were happy for him, he realised - genuinely, unselfishly happy for him - and it suddenly became clear to him just how rare that sort of friendship was. Even the boys at the Academy, with whom he had trained for ten years, were not that close. They might like each other well enough, they might spend all their days and nights together, but there was still that undercurrent of competition between them, the pride in their joint achievements mixed with jealousy whenever someone received any special recognition that put them above the rest. There were too many of them, and too few roles, and too brutal a judgement from the teachers as to who was the most deserving.

But here, there was none of that. These men all cared about him and wanted him to do well. Even Minseok, who by rights should have resented Yixing for taking his role in the last show, was all smiles and encouragement. And there was a certain sadness in that, Yixing thought, because he could not expect this kind of camaraderie back home.

In fact - Yixing’s heart pressed flat against his spine with the realisation - the last time he had known that kind of selfless friendship had been before he had moved to Beijing. He had been going through the motions of brotherhood with his classmates at the Academy, holding on to the prospect of returning to the village and the real friends that awaited him there, but suddenly it hit him that the last time he’d seen them had been ten years ago. The very best friends of his childhood were half a lifetime away now, all three of them grown men, and while they might yet meet again - and might even fall back into the easy familiarity of their boyhood - their friendship was not what awaited him upon his return to China. Back to the Academy, and eventually on to the Beijing Ballet, where Yixing had no doubt it would be more of the same.

It suddenly seemed like a very lonely life.

Yixing stared at Minseok, processing this epiphany. When he returned to China - and it was looking more and more certain that he would, because the more he thought about it the more the idea of defecting set a sickening weight in his stomach - he would be leaving behind friendships like he hadn’t known since the days when he had chased Yifan and Zitao through the streets of their tiny village near Changsha. If he let it slip away now, it was the kind of friendship he might never have again.

As Minseok smiled at him, round cheeks dimpled with pride, Yixing swallowed hard against the sudden lump in his throat.

I don’t want to be alone.

Maybe he didn’t have the courage to stay here with them, but he did have the courage to leave them his heart.

“You can-” He cleared the catch from his throat. “Please call me Yixing.”

It felt right, the most natural thing even as he said it. He had already given this to Baekhyun, and Zhixiang had somehow strolled right through all his walls and assumed it with that easy familiarity of his; the others were no less deserving. These were the kind of friends who would hug him and hold his hands, who would take him not only into their homes but also to their most treasured of nightlife hiding places. The kind of friends who would protect him in a fight, and who danced with him like it was something to share rather than compete for.

Minseok tilted his head slightly, sweet and uncomprehending. Over his shoulder, the corners of Baekhyun’s smile softened into surprise.

“In China,” Yixing explained, “names are very- hm.” He tried to remember how he’d explained it to Baekhyun. “First name is family. Everybody says that. Comrade Zhang, Classmate Zhang, Student Zhang. Second name is just me. Only good friends says that. You’re all-” he looked up, found eye contact with each of them in turn: Sehun with his infectious grin, J.D. mothering and protective, Minseok’s endless patience and sweetness, Lu fiery and easy-going in equal measure. Behind them stood Zhixiang, whose eyes were a constant light of mischief, and Baekhyun. Baekhyun, to whom he had already given his whole heart and more, whom in another lifetime he would have followed to the ends of the earth.

“You’re all the best.”