“… and then we escaped and he-hic-was carrying me bridal-style and I think there was a-hic-bit of fire involved too but I don’t know I was too-hic-scared to notice anything and then yeah here we are-hic-,” Luhan has significantly come down from his hysteria from earlier, now cradled in a cocoon of blankets and Baekhyun’s comforting koala-like limbs. 

Lay sits across on a recliner, sporting a pair of what he calls his “professional glasses for very serious matters” (he also has one for slightly-less-serious matters and serious roleplaying matters) and a lavalier mic in hand. Beside him is a filming camera on a tripod recording Luhan’s whole breakdown. “Mhmm… that’s tough honey would you mind just shifting your whole body a little bit to the right, please… just… Baek please be a babe and help our Luhan, please.”

“Lay do you really think this is appropriate for the situation?” Baekhyun complains but obediently follows anyway, rotating the whole mass of blanketed Luhan a few degrees clockwise, “is this okay?”

“Uhh, can you go back a little… like, just a teensy bit?” Lay directs as he reaches to look over the camera’s screen to make sure that the composition is right.

“Now?”

“That’s great! Oh wait sorry I nudged the camera a little bit, rotate him to the right again?”

“Now?”

“Jusssssst a li— now you just pushed him too much, go back. Back, back, back aaaanddd…“

Luhan feels annoyed. He feels wronged, in fact. He doesn’t even know why there’s a camera in the first place and now he feels like a piece of ornament being pushed back and forth to appease a couple of idiots with a serious case of OCD.

“Aw, !” Lay groans loudly as he perches on the armrest and helplessly stares at the camera on the floor, now fallen over and probably broken. Luhan inwardly celebrates but his fiesta was cut short as Lay brandishes out a handheld camcorder from nowhere. Baekhyun and Lay then returns to composing the picture and moving him this way and that.

“GUYS! Can we get back to the issue at hand? I just literally came back from the scare of my life and all you two could think about is recording me like what kind of friends are you even?!?!” Luhan screams as he regains some strength in his arms and dramatically tries to free himself from his cocoon, undergoing a manly metamorphosis of rage at his two friends. He’s pushing against his confines… gaining the manly power of a thousand suns!

The blankets were too tightly woven together though and in reality, he shuffles a manly half-an-inch and falls helplessly to the floor, hitting his manly face on the coffee table in the process.

—

Once again having calm down Luhan with promises of undivided attention and absence of any recording devices, the trio finds themselves sitting on Lay’s gigantic California King bed, looking out the window at the pitiful silhouette of Kris’s sleeping body on the pavement.

“Awww! Look at him so vulnerable and y! Luhan, this is SO romantic.” Lay gushes with an exaggerated coo of adoration. Luhan wretches.

“Yeah romantic if I squint hard enough and imagine that’s his lifeless body after I fling him out of your window.” 

Lay and Baekhyun stares at him disapprovingly for his violent imagination.

“Ugh, how about you guys stop being my mother and start being supportive best friends who sympathize with me and agree that this is the worst date in the history of life, yeah can we do that please?”

“You’re right! You go first Baekkie!” Lay pushes at Baekhyun, looking at him with eyes that say you do it.

Baekhyun deflates and stares back at Luhan, who is also staring at him with eyes saying yes tell me what i want to hear, “Uhhhh… sorry but it sounds like Kris has been a real gentleman?”

The glimmer in Luhan’s eyes dim. “What.”

Luhan is absolutely horrified. This is not how it’s supposed to go! They were supposed to laugh and collectively agree that Kris is the biggest douchebag ever and Luhan is supposed to get hugged and kissed protectively as Lay kicks him from the pavement. Maybe they could even throw eggs at him or Baekhyun could draw on his face and post his pictures online. At the very least they could have stripped him and left him lying there in his glory. He’s about to enter his third tantrum of the night and looks pleadingly at his friends with watery eyes. Do something, please.

“I mean, yeah, he brought you to a strip club but it’s not like he left you in the middle of all those s, open and vulnerable to parties,” he ignores Luhan’s puppy dog eyes, instead looking at Lay to ask for some support.

“And he saved you from being burnt AND carried you bridal-style out of a burning establishment. It’s like those epic scenes from romantic Hollywood films!”

“But.”

“And just look at him all vulnerable and y on the pavement!” Lay repeats himself, gushing twice as hard and waving his arms towards the window to emphasize his point. “Besides, it wasn’t his fault you were mistaken for a girl!”

“But Kris was the one who brought me there in the first place! And hey, I’m clearly a man! Very manly!”

“I think what Lay meant to say was,” Baekhyun interjects, “Kris didn’t bring you there knowing that all of that would happen. Clearly, his choice of a date venue was wrong, but can’t you give him another chance?”

“Absolutely not!” 

“Well, you don’t really have a choice, honey. He kinda paid $150k to go on seven dates with you,” Lay shrugs. He shrugs and Luhan is beet red furious because he was the one who signed him up for the auction in the first place! The nerve.

“Sorry kiddo.” Baekhyun gulps and he’s so close to just reaching out and hugging his friend and telling him that yes, Kris , but Lay clears his throat and whispers a whimpering stay strong.

Stay strong. It’ll be worth it.

—

“…waking up! Hurry! Hurry!”

Loud voices are his alarm signal and Luhan slowly stirs from his sleep in all the ruckus. He can vaguely register the feeling of being clumsily carried by his shoulders and ankles but before he can fully wake up, he was harshly dropped to a hard ground, a brutal flood of light and heat engulfing his body.

“Have fun!”

He groans as he quickly sits up and blinks open his eyes to confirm that Baekhyun and Lay have indeed left him on the sizzling concrete pavement outside Lay’s house at the very height of day. He narrows his eyes at the two sneaky heads that are shooting him hearts and apologies through the window. The nerve.

“H— Hi.”

Luhan jumps at the voice, almost getting whiplash from the speed at which he turns his head only to get a face full of the last thing he ever wants to see. Codename: Kris. He scowls and spits—dried saliva and morning breath and all—at Kris’ face. It’s his body’s built-in mechanism towards danger.

“What do you want?” he bites out, anger clearly not subsiding over the night.

The douchebag scratches his neck and coughs before putting his hands to the ground and deeply bowing once.

“I’m sorry,” he says apologetically, Luhan’s spit sprayed all over his face—there are even tiny bits of food clinging to his face because he didn’t bother brushing his teeth. It’s unnerving how objectively handsome he still looks.

Maybe it’s because Luhan just woke up and his brain isn’t working right, especially from that drop earlier, or maybe because he knows that there’s nowhere else to go considering that Lay locked him out and his own house is too far away for his aching limbs, or maybe because staring at Kris’s face all spit-covered really really grosses him out but he actually softens at the sight and considers that perhaps Kris really is more of a person and less like a walking battery-operated than he initially thought.

He huffs out an indignant “fine. Whatever. You saved my life after all.”

Kris smiles like a maniac in an adult store on Black Friday and quickly stands up from his bowing position to offer Luhan a hand up. Luhan accepts but jumps away from Kris as the latter starts dusting off his from all the dirt that got on his clothes.

“Hands off the prize, Wu,” he warns, and looks down as he was reminded that he’s in fact still wearing pajamas. 

“How about I buy you new clothes for our second date? You left yours back in the club last night,” Kris’s voice gradually got softer and he becomes overcome with shame again, still feeling endlessly sorry about what happened, “so I’ll buy you anything you want, I promise!”

—

“No.”

“No.”

“Nope.”

“No.”

“Babe,” Kris sighs resignedly, “that looks awful.”

Luhan’s getting annoyed with Kris walking every inch of every store with his chest on Luhan’s back. He’s practically breathing down his neck and rejecting everything he so much lay a finger on. He spins around and drills his finger at Kris’s chest instead, “I thought you’re gonna buy me anything I want?!”

“Yeah but these clothes are so tacky and…” Kris lowers his voice to a whisper, “cheap!”

Luhan rolls his eyes. (“Oh my god, is that polyester?!?!”) Admittedly, he isn’t a Baekhyun, he isn’t even a Lay but he happens to enjoy his own fashion choices, simple and… “cheap” as they are. He’s not even browsing in the sale section, slightly self-conscious now that Kris is present.

Between the leopard print aisle and the faux fur trimmed jackets and right before they enter the cut-out sandal sneakers section (memories of Kai wearing them still gives him shivers), Kris gives up and takes out his phone to call someone and impatiently taps his foot as he waits for the person to answer. His vice like grip on Luhan’s wrist forces him to stay despite his wails of but we’re just getting to the good part!!

Luhan soon finds himself in a deserted department store’s fitting room with at least three different ladies forcing him into the most mouth-watering clothing options he’s ever seen. Yes, he isn’t fashionable but he’s not an idiot to not recognize that $350 shirts feel a little more like dying children and uncured malaria than the $3 ones that he owe. He’s pushed outside between every outfit to stand awkwardly in front of Kris, feeling every bit like the paid boy toy that he is.

He’s put in jeans that were definitely more skin than cloth and jackets with studs enough for five rock bands and Kris never fails to share his opinion on every single one.

“Baby, you riding me could rip those jeans up better than any machine could.”

“Chokers like a middle schooler on his first trip to Hot Topic.”

“Optimal size of holes in your shirt for my hand to fit in. Check”

“I like that red leather! We’ll have to find matching handcuffs with that, babe.”

“Oh lala I could see someone’s ringdingdong.” (To which Luhan didn’t hesitate to kick Kris in his own “ding-y ding-y ding ding” despite his servants’ presence.)

Needless to say, their shopping blowout had to end early.

—

12 outfits in his car’s trunk and an ice pack to his balls, (“I didn’t do it that hard!”) Kris then brings Luhan to his favorite French restaurant for dinner. 

“You didn’t have to buy me 12 outfits! It’ll take my entire college tuition to pay you back!” Luhan cries when the waitress leaves with their order. He’s processing numbers in his head, estimating every item to be $300-$800 because Kris refuses to show him the receipt. Selling both his livers and for a whole year still wouldn’t be enough. ing sounds about okay right now.

“You don’t have to pay anything back,” Kris says with a smile, still a bit forced as he tries to settle his more comfortably, “although if you want, you can pay by other means.” Wink wink nudge nudge. 

Scratch out ing. I don’t really need both of my legs, right?

Luhan simply smiles and sends a foot hurtling to Kris’s right shin. “If by other means, you mean kicks and punches then I’ll be glad to give them. Wink wink nudge nudge.” He widens his eyes to a glare that even Lay can’t handle, “though I am being serious, I will pay back all that someday.”

The waitress comes back with their drinks and appetizers before Kris can even resurface from rubbing his aching shin under the table. She slips an extra piece of napkin under Kris’s coaster, bleeding ink clearly an indication of her written phone number. 

Kris finds a smirking Luhan when he straightens in his seat and he raises an eyebrow in question. “What?”

“Oh nothing.”

Kris stared suspiciously but quickly waved it off, opting to hand Luhan what he sneakily prepared while he was under the table. “For you,” he mumbles as he offers it to his crush, blushing all the way to the tips of his ears.

“I swear, Kris, if this is some or some , I will—“ Luhan gasps as he slowly opens the box to reveal what looks like a silver palm-sized pocket watch, heavily ornamented with intricate metal weaving in and around a large ‘L’ for ‘Luhan’. He presses the button on top and the cover pops open to unveil, not a watch, but a mirror.

Kris watches Luhan’s face between his fingers, ready to hide himself at the first sight of anger, or disappointment from what might be a stupid gift. I knew I should have gotten the . “D- Do you uhmm… do you- I mean if you don’t like the silver, we can- and uhhhhh…” Kris stammers, getting more and more nervous as he stares at the unchanging statue in front of him.

“Wh-“ Luhan clears his throat, effectively making Kris hold his breath in anticipation, “Why a mirror?”

Kris’s face goes even redder until his ears resemble a ripe bellpepper and he drops his eyes to fiddle with his fork. He knew Luhan would ask and he prepared an entire speech for this, even practiced saying it in front of his stoic of a cat who just yawned and slept on his head. He takes a deep breath and steals a glance from Luhan only to have everything he’s memorized jump out the window in a flaming glorious exit of hopelessness, and Kris stammers out what he thinks is the basic gist of it.

“I want you to see how hot you are like your pink lips and your eyes that trump any of the girls I’ve seen before and you’re literally a walking god but you’re so innocent and gentle and it literally pains me to look at you because I mean, ughhhhhh I would dedicate a shrine to every single part of you—not that I already have by the way—and every single thing about you is so y and it turns me on and—“

Smile slowly disappearing and his excited shoulders now slumped, Luhan stops Kris’s rant with a loud cough. He closes the box to the mirror and returns his attention to the food, eyes not once landing on Kris’s face and the latter takes that as a hint to shut up and start eating.

Did I say something wrong?

—

“UGHH!!!!” a loud frustrated groan startles passerbys on the streets of Hongdae, making hundreds of curious eyes to simultaneously direct their attention at a suspicious blue and green van parked in the alley.

“KRIS YOU MOTHERING TACTLESS BAG OF ASSJUICE!!!!”