Yixing pulled at the tie that was threatening to choke the life out of him. Or maybe it was just the suffocating situation he was in currently. Business acquaintances (important ones, his parents keep reminding him) peered at him with smiles that were so fake, they made him want to puke. He looked over at his companion, whose lips that were twitching downwards indicated that he was as uncomfortable as he was.

            “I feel like vomiting,” Yixing murmured, nudging the man beside him. “May I deposit all my stomach fluids over you, Wu Fan?”

            Yixing winced but hid it with a frozen smile when he felt a finger jab into his side.

            “I don’t get why you choose me to be your victim when there’re plenty of people in front of us to puke over, Xing,” Wu Fan said from the corners of his mouth, smirking a little at the twitch that was induced by his painful poke.

            “But it’s your fault,” Yixing whined, and then shut up when another crowd of people surrounded them.

            “Hello,” Wu Fan said to the Cho couple, who were incredibly influential with their kitchenware conglomerate. The two men smiled at them, and Yixing felt a tiny bit more relaxed because he’s known them his whole life.

            “Stop looking so tense, Zhang Yixing. And you too, Wu Yi Fan,” Cho Kyuhyun said with a stern tilt and mismatched mischievous glint in his eyes. “We need you both alive for your own engagement party.”

            Sungmin, on the other hand, had his amusement written all over his face. “Congratulations on the engagement, you guys. When’s the wedding date?” He said it with a tint of mockery because everyone who had dropped by the couple had said the same thing.

            “You know that this was kind of against our will. Stop making fun of us,” Yixing said, pouting a little.

            “But you two bicker like a married couple already,” Kyuhyun said with a straight face. Sungmin flashed his husband a sweet smile for going straight for the jugular. Wu Fan was scowling like there was no tomorrow, and Yixing jabbed at his side this time (revenge muahaha), because they should be used to this teasing already.

            “I think it’s time that we greet both of your parents now. Have fun with your domesticated bliss,” Sungmin said, taking Kyuhyun’s elbow and steering him away from them.

            Wu Fan’s eyebrow was still twitching (reminding Yixing eerily of a caterpillar) long after the couple left. His shoulders slumped down, letting out a small groan that only Yixing could hear. The creases on his tuxedo were showing and Yixing bet that he himself looked no better off.

            “This engagement was in no way my fault. The ones who arranged this marriage were our parents, remember?” Wu Fan said. Yixing snorted.

            “How could I ever forget? Everything is always your fault anyway.”

            Wu Fan’s terrible eyebrows scrunched down. “Even when it’s raining?”

            Yixing looked at, truly looked looked at Wu Fan since the beginning of this fiasco of a party, at the way his tie matched with the texture of Wu Fan’s nose and how the chandelier lights reflected sparks in his dark brown eyes, and swallowed. “Especially when it’s raining.”

-

            The first time they met, when Yixing was seven and Wu Fan was eight, Yixing had punched Wu Fan right in the face.

To be fair, Wu Fan did just take one look at Yixing and said, “You look like a girl.”

            Yixing was not going to take that comment lightly. Utilizing all the knowledge he had earned from what little martial arts classes he had taken so far, he socked Wu Fan pretty painfully considering his skinny and weak frame.

            Both of their families, who had been socializing with each other and leaving the two to play on the sides, freaked out when they saw sweet, innocent Yixing standing over Wu Fan with a scary scowl on his face. Wu Fan had clutched his nose and then cried for his mommy.

            To say that they got off on a good start would be far from the truth.  

            They didn’t understand, back then, what their parents meant when they had nudged the two together and said, “You guys will be married years from now. Get along, okay?”

            Of course, Wu Fan then had to go and insult Yixing. A beautiful start to a beautiful relationship, really (note the sarcasm).

            It was only much later did both of them realize what an arranged marriage meant, and why their parents had pushed them together in the first place. Both of their families ran successful, yet rivaling companies that produced “fresh, organic” fruits. Seeing as the companies hindered each other in their sales, they decided on a mutually beneficial partnership that was sealed with an arranged marriage between the heirs.

            Yixing scrunched up his nose in disgust when his mother had tears in the corners of her eyes as she gushed about what a wonderful idea it was, to complete a business arrangement with love. He had not dared to approach his mom about questions about family business matters anymore after that, because she got a little too emotionally attached to such things.

            Arranged marriages didn’t work. Yixing knew that. Sure, in the past, they might have occasionally been successful, but this was the modern times. How could an arranged marriage work when regular marriages took sweat and tears to shakily hold together?

            It wasn’t even like Yixing and Wu Fan were in love anyway.

-

            Yixing knew that Wu Fan hated having his life controlled for him. The arranged marriage was just another aspect of taking the control away from him.

Yixing tried to fit his whole mouth around his Popsicle as Wu Fan kicked at the grass of his backyard. They were eleven and twelve, respectively, sweat running down their backs yet they still refused to go back into the luxurious house that was blasting air conditioner in every room. Family dinners (more like, business dinners) were such a bore. They had them every month, and one of the worst things about them was that they were the only children there. Yixing suspected it was a scheme to get them closer together (they had mandatory play dates too, where instead of shaping the clay-doh together, they often tossed it at each other – which often escalated into all-out wars).

            Wu Fan kept droning, in different pitches and tones: “Boooooored” and Yixing had half a mind to toss his Popsicle stick at Wu Fan’s head and see if he would screech entertainingly like that time Yixing had stuffed a snowball right down his pants.

            They were both around the age where girls with tinkling laughter would catch their eyes. If not girls, then maybe pretty boys with prettier smiles. Wu Fan stopped his monotonous droning to toss a stick into the small pond. The stick created ripples in the water, scattering the startled goldfish.

            “I want to be able to choose who I marry,” Wu Fan said in a petulant tone. “It’s not fair.”

            “I don’t want to marry a stupid dunderhead like you, anyway,” Yixing said.

            “I am not!”

            “Am too.”

            “Am not!”

            “Am too.”

            And it continued for a whole minute or two, as you could probably imagine. They still hadn’t learned the infamous trick of saying the opposite of what they meant to get the opponent to say what he didn’t want to say.

            After the exhausting word battle, both of them lied on their backs (their mothers would cluck at them later for getting their hair dirty again) and watched the lazy clouds swim across the sky. Only at times like this, they were quiet, which happened rarely since chaos seemed to just erupt whenever the two were together.

            Yixing put a hand up to the sky to block out the sun’s glare and marveled at how his hand seemed to be holding the blue, blue sky up.

            “Xing?” The nickname had sprouted up a year ago, because Wu Fan had claimed that it was too exhausting to pronounce all two syllables of Yixing’s name.

            “What?”

            “Why is the sky blue?”

            Yixing scrunched up his whole face, and thought hard. “Because the sea vomited all over it.”

            “What is with you and vomiting?” Wu Fan whined, which was true, because when Wu Fan had asked him why the grass was green, Yixing had said that the trees had thrown up all over it.

            “Because it sounds more mature than saying that the sea pooped all over it.”

            “Eeeewwwwww.”

-

            In a strange sense, they were childhood friends. Sure, forcefully-shoved-together-childhood friends, but childhood friends nevertheless. Both of their parents treated Yixing and Wu Fan like they were their sons-in-law already. That was why Yixing wasn’t even surprised to see his mother and Wu Fan standing outside of his middle school.

            “Wu Fan’s having dinner at our house. His parents are overseas for a business trip,” his mother said. Wu Fan made an exaggeratedly weird face at Yixing, and Yixing returned the favor, even rolling his eyes to stare at his nose. Wu Fan pouted a little, seeing as he lost the competition to make the strangest face possible, at least for today.

            “Yixing, you forgot your pencil,” Sulli said from behind Yixing. She was holding out his favorite Little Ponies pencil, and Yixing flushed.

            “Thank you,” he said, suddenly timid, and reached out for the pencil.

            “You’re welcome,” she said, and smiled the prettiest smile Yixing had ever seen and he stared after her as her ponytail bounced when she walked away.

            Later, when they were walking home and his mom was busy talking on her phone, Wu Fan nudged Yixing with his elbow. Yixing instinctively elbowed him back. Rubbing the bruised place, Wu Fan was still grinning at him.

            “You liiiiiike her,” he said.

            “Who?” Yixing decided to play innocent.

            “You know who.” Wu Fan’s eyes narrowed. His grin got scarier.

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Yixing looked at the horrendously clipped bushes as if they were the new volumes of his favorite manga.

            “You should go for it.” Wu Fan’s voice lowered and he suddenly looked serious. “Ask her out.”

            “WHA – no.”

            “Don’t tell me you’re scared?” He looked like he was going to tease Yixing again.

            Yixing made a huffing noise. “N-no. Our parents probably wouldn’t allow it, anyway.”

            Wu Fan raised an eyebrow. “Only if they knew.”

            Yixing stopped walking. Wu Fan dragged him forwards with his hand around his wrist. “Oh my god. You’re genius,” Yixing said.

            “I am, aren’t I?” Wu Fan looked a little too smug.

            This was one of the first times that Yixing was hit by the realization that his parents weren’t omniscient creatures. After a silence in which Yixing contemplated his method of asking Sulli out (should he bring in balloons and then give them to her? He saw that on a Youtube video once) and they kept walking.

            “You could, too, you know,” Yixing said.

            “¿Qué?”

            Yixing glared at Wu Fan for his use of Spanish. As if learning Korean, Cantonese, and English weren’t enough already.

            “I meant, you could ask someone out too. If you are interested in someone right now, that is. Are you?” Yixing fidgeted with his coat buttons.

            “No. But I probably will like someone in the future.”

            “I heard there will be a lot of hot people at high school,” Yixing said, in his weird way of comforting Wu Fan.

            Wu Fan scoffed. “None as good looking as me, of course.”

            “Okay, now I’m pretty sure your narcissism will chase everyone from ever dating you.” Yixing smirked. As always, it was his job to stomp Wu Fan’s ego into tiny, little pieces.

            “If it weren’t for the food, I wouldn’t be walking home with a meanie like you,” Wu Fan said.

            A week later, Yixing finally summoned up the courage to ask Sulli out to prom. Right after, he crashed into Wu Fan’s room, dizzily repeating, “She said yes! She said yes!”

            Wu Fan stuffed his head underneath his blanket because he was napping, goddamnit, and said, “Go bother your other friends.”

            Yixing responded by sitting on top of the wriggling mound that was Wu Fan wrapped up in a blanket, and poking any squishy parts (he hoped that wasn’t his eye. It had happened before) he could find. “But they already know. You’re the only one who isn’t going to the same school.”

            “Well, congratulations. Now let me sleep.”

            “You’re no fun.”

            “Be quiet or go away.”

            Yixing fell silent, and then started flipping through all the magazines that Wu Fan had. He reached down the cabinet to shuffle through another stack when he held up a book and started laughing hysterically. Wu Fan sat up with a groan.

            “I give up. How could I ever sleep when you’re in the room?”

            “You have – ” Yixing was gasping for breath. “You have Chicken’s Soup for the Soul. Ohmygooood.”

            “Heeyyy! Handle it with care. Care, do you hear me?”

            “I bet you cry when you read this book.” Yixing stared at Wu Fan when he just shifted in his bed and didn’t deny anything. “You do. This is gold.”

            “They contain very emotional stories, okay?” Wu Fan leapt up from his bed to wrestle the book away from Yixing’s grabby hands.

            “I can’t. I literally can’t,” Yixing said, still breathless with laughter, not even trying to fix his tousled hair.

            “Dinner will shut you up,” Wu Fan said, pushing Yixing towards the door.

-

            When it came down to it, Sulli and Yixing only lasted five months. Yixing’s friends had patted him on the back consolingly, saying that it was a relatively long relationship, considering the other relationships in their school that often lasted as long as a fruit fly’s lifespan. The problem was that Yixing didn’t seem to have enough time for his girlfriend, and she complained that he had so many family dinners and spent more time with a boy called Wu Fan than with her.

            And she didn’t even know that Yixing was sort of engaged with Wu Fan, and that it was kind of a family obligation to spend time with him (by now, though, it felt like habit just to hang out with Wu Fan and talk his ears off). Only Yixing’s and Wu Fan’s closest friends knew about the engagement thing, but they’ve been sworn to secrecy.

            Going into high school was scary, but was helped by the fact that this time at least, Wu Fan and Yixing were going into the same high school. Having already experienced a whole year of high school there, Wu Fan helped Yixing to get familiar with the ins and outs of the rumor grapevine and introduced him to some of the upperclassmen.

            “So that’s Wu Fan,” Luhan said as he watched Wu Fan’s tall figure part the crowd before him like the red sea.

            “What’s with the tone?” Yixing asked.

            “You never told us that he was hot,” Kyungsoo said, and everyone stared at him. He blinked. “What?”

            “I swear, Jongin is infecting you,” Yixing said.

            “Is that a bad thing?”

            “Our poor innocent Kyungsoo, corrupted!” Luhan sobbed dramatically, hugging Kyungsoo to his chest. Kyungsoo’s eyes were wide, almost popping out of his sockets. Everyone in the hallway stared, shook their heads, and muttered, “Freshmen.”

            “Guys, guys, calm down. We’ve got class to go to,” Baekhyun said, turning his schedule upside down as if that will help him find where his classroom was.

            At lunch, Wu Fan immediately bee-lined for Yixing and his group of friends to drag him (by the back of his neck) to his table.

            “Chanyeol, everyone. Everyone, Chanyeol,” Wu Fan introduced. “The rest are not important.”

            Chanyeol, who happened to be the lank, tall sophomore, smiled slowly and widely at them. From his right, Jongdae yelped, “What do you mean, not important? Oh hi Yixing, we’ve met before. In Kris’ house.”

            “Jongdae, right?” Yixing smiled, and then raised an unimpressed eyebrow at Wu Fan. “I still can’t get over that horrible nickname you came up for yourself.”

            “It makes me sound cool,” Wu Fan said, but he was pouting.

            “Wow. Hi, I’m Minseok, and I’ve never seen Kris pout before. You’re something else, Yixing,” someone with (cute) chubby cheeks spoke up. He gave a friendly smile to Yixing, eyes tinged with a little awe.

            “Your cheeks,” Luhan said with the same kind of awe (but obviously for different reasons). “Ohmygawd.”

            Yixing immediately pitied Minseok, because he was immediately assaulted by Luhan’s suffocating presence as he begged him to just allow him to give his cheeks a little (just a little) pinch.

            Kyungsoo and Baekhyun returned with their lunch trays, also staring at Minseok in pity. “Well, that gives me freedom from Luhan, at least. A sacrifice is a sacrifice,” Kyungsoo said.

            Staring at his unappetizing food in front of him, Yixing sighed at yet another year of eating cafeteria food. He poked the chicken leg, thinking that it looked edible at least. Of course, the sliced apples in the plastic bag were emblazoned with his family’s logo. Another chicken leg suddenly plopped on his plate, and Yixing looked up to see Wu Fan’s infamous scowl.

            “You need to eat more meat,” Wu Fan said. And then a pile of broccoli followed. “And vegetables. You’re too skinny.”

            “That’s just an excuse for you to dump your broccoli onto my plate because you hate broccoli.” Yixing scowled back at him. “Not cool.”

            Meanwhile, both groups of their friends were staring at them like they were the new zoo exhibit. It was first time, for most of them, to see the two interact with each other (even though they’ve heard a lot about the other from one of the two).

            “I didn’t expect it, but Kris is actually the nagging wife,” Jongdae said with widened eyes.

            Luhan, tired from grappling with Minseok, rested his chin on his hands. “Yixing is usually very nice to everyone. I think this is one of the first times that I see him actually insulting someone.”

            “Lovingly insult,” Baekhyun added.

            “What? I heard my name.” Yixing looked at them with a suspicious gaze, tearing himself out of the argument he had just gotten into with Wu Fan. His friends greeted him back with the faces of angels.

            “Nothing,” Luhan chirped. “Nothing at all.”

            “They were just talking about how perfect you guys looked together,” Kyungsoo said, ignoring the kick he got from Luhan under the table.

            “It’s true. You guys fit very well together,” Chanyeol joined in.

            It was with horror that Yixing realized that they were going to be teasing him and Wu Fan for the rest of the school year (or maybe their entire lives, if possible). Wu Fan faced this realization by burying his red face into his hands.

-

            The whole lunch table was silent, and Yixing stopped in his tracks to stare at them because they were never, ever, quiet. It had been a year and a half since they all started eating together, and there was always someone commenting on something.

            Yixing looked up to check that the sky hasn’t fallen.

            The worst thing was that they were all staring at Yixing as if his pet had just died or something.

            “Okay, now that I’m properly freaked out, please tell me it’s April Fools,” Yixing said, sitting down. He stared at the consoling hand that Luhan put on his shoulder.

            “I’m sorry,” Luhan said.

            Minseok, sitting next to Luhan, sighed. “We’re not sure how to break it to you, Yixing, but…”

            Just then, Wu Fan came prancing over with his hands intertwined with a boy who had dark semicircles under his eyes.

            “Guys,” Wu Fan said, his eyes bright. “This is Tao.”

            “Oh,” Yixing said. Luhan’s hand squeezed his shoulder.

            Wu Fan and his new boyfriend sat down to eat lunch while Yixing was still blinking his disorientation away. So someone did come along for Wu Fan, finally, and Wu Fan met his eyes. Yixing mustered up all his strength to smile at him, because it was nice that Wu Fan found that someone that he was waiting for, and Yixing didn’t know why he felt numb, like he had stuck his fingers into the freezer for minutes before he got them out.

            The table was welcoming towards Tao (who was just the cutest thing, blinking at them nervously and squeezing Wu Fan’s hand in anxiety), and Yixing made sure to give him a warm smile.

            “So how did you two meet?” Yixing asked, because no one else in the table seemed to want to broach the subject.

            With a gentle nudge from Wu Fan, Tao spilled his guts about how he was trying to find the library when Wu Fan came along and saved him. And before he could go on about how they started dating, Jongdae jumped right into the conversation.

            “Oh, so you’re a freshie? Interesting. You haven’t heard of Freshman Friday that’s happening the end of the year, have you?” Jongdae gave him an extra evil grin as he twirled the ends of his hair with his fingers. Tao looked sufficiently terrified, and Wu Fan reassured him that it was just a school myth.

            Yixing felt a little confused, because he wasn’t sure what to say or do now that he didn’t have Wu Fan to verbally abuse right now. He turned his head to join in on a side conversation that Chanyeol and Baekhyun were having about talking pineapples.

-

            It struck Yixing by surprise.

            He was blown out of balance, shaken and he didn’t know how to get his world to stop spinning. Luhan looked at him with a worried expression when Yixing stumbled to stand next to him, eyes on the ground and lips compressed into a thin line.

            School had just ended and the students were milling about, oblivious to what had just happened.

            “What’s wrong?” Luhan asked. Yixing shook his head, smiling with a little strain.

            “Nothing.”

            That wasn’t true, really, but what could Yixing say when he was still reeling from the cracks in his chest? He hadn’t expected to catch a sight of a couple leaning close to each other, foreheads touching intimately, when he had walked out of the door. It had taken him a few seconds to recognize the dyed roots of Wu Fan’s hair and Tao’s signature jacket. Yixing had stood, frozen like a still-life painting, wondering why his hands were shaking, wondering what the sudden lashing of heat emerging from his ribs was.

            He wondered what it would be like for Wu Fan to look at him like that, with dark eyes softened by adoration.

            Without a word, Luhan tugged Yixing to his favorite bubble tea shop. Yixing closed his eyes as he sipped the tapioca bubbles from his honey green tea.

            They tasted a little bit like heartbreak.

-

            When had it happened? Yixing kept trying to delve back into his memories of Wu Fan and him together, back to a time when he hadn’t even known what it was like for Wu Fan to not be at his side all the time. Even when he had cried from the heartbreak of losing his parakeet, Wu Fan had been there, his signature eyebrows shooting down in concern.

            Yixing thought it may have been the time that Wu Fan had mockingly pressed a kiss to the back of his right hand when they were joking about fairy tales and then started arguing about the existence of happy endings in real life. Yixing kept saying that fairy tales do exist in real life (mostly because he was still enamored with the idea of real life unicorns prancing around ancient forests).

            “If you insist, princess Yixing,” Wu Fan had relented with a cheesy, disgusting wink. Yixing’s throat had inexplicably gone dry and his heart jumped so much that he swore it reached his brain and stopped all of his processes of thought.

            Once started, this kind of yearning only spread to each neuron until Yixing didn’t know what to think anymore. The unexpected quality of feeling something for his fiancé just added to the bone-crippling fall that Yixing was setting himself up for.

            They weren’t meant to be, because arranged marriages didn’t work.

            And there was that one memory that Yixing kept revisiting to squash any hope that he could have that Wu Fan could ever look at him like that.

            It was a quiet Saturday afternoon, as Yixing tinkled with his guitar and Wu Fan pressed buttons repetitively on the television remote. Their parents had just left them in Yixing’s large living room to attend some important party and Yixing had already tossed several pillows at Wu Fan because he had already gone through several cycles of the TV channels, so he should just settle on one goddammnit.

            Wu Fan just had to settle for a sappy romantic drama. Yixing felt embarrassed being in the same room with Wu Fan because his eyes were glazing over, which were indications that he was already tearing up over the protagonist’s predicament.

            “And this is why we don’t watch Titanic,” Yixing grumbled as Wu Fan shakily reached for a tissue box.

            “You just have no heart,” Wu Fan said. He dabbled delicately at the corners of his eyes. Yixing just shook his head and covered his face in mortification.

            “I can’t believe I’m engaged to such a ing fruitcake,” Yixing said. He looked at Wu Fan, and his breath caught.

            The commercial was flashing on the screen now and for some reason, Wu Fan was looking at him with a suddenly serious expression. Yixing thought that he had actually taken offense for the fruitcake comment, but Wu Fan had been insulted by him worse than this. Maybe he had some kind of traumatic flashbulb memory over fruitcakes before?

            Before Yixing could overanalyze things, Wu Fan was kneeling before him and Yixing stared warily at him.

            “You’re not going to propose to me because we’re already engaged, you know that, right?” Yixing tried to joke. He stared like Wu Fan’s hands on his shoulders were wild animals escaped from the zoo.      

            “Xing,” Wu Fan said, and his lowered tone made Yixing’s stomach clench with unknown tension. “I want you to find someone who could love you all of his or her life. Someone who could protect you. Who could make you happy like no one else could. I don’t want this farce of an engagement to prevent you from doing that, got it?”

            Yixing’s eyes were roaming across Wu Fan’s face, taking in the strained quality to his voice, that mysterious look in his eyes that made him feel like burning up like some kind of chemical experiment. He was shaking, trembling slightly, but he wasn’t sure if it was him or if Wu Fan’s hands were shaking a little, too.

            It was hard to speak when he forgot how to breathe, so he just let his eyes try to say the thought that he would never say aloud anyway: What if I want that person to be you, Wu Fan?

            But that would be diverging from their plan, which was to file a divorce after their parents succeeded in marrying them together. The business contract had required a marriage between the heirs, after all, and did not mention anything about what could happen after that. Wu Fan’s mom herself had sat them down once and informed them that should they want, they could separate after the wedding.

            But then what was the point of being married in the first place? Yixing had protested.

            Wu Fan’s mother had only taken one look at them and sighed. You know, I could tell you all these things about business technicalities and negotiations that allow the partnership to run smoothly, but… We just want you guys to be happy, she had said with a soft look on her face.

            So why was Yixing agonizing over these possibilities of a future with Wu Fan when they had already planned otherwise?

            “I just don’t want you to feel chained down, just because we’re in an arranged marriage,” Wu Fan said, sliding his hand from Yixing’s shoulders, leaving shivers and tingles to travel underneath Yixing’s skin. “You haven’t dated anyone lately.”

            “That’s because I’m not really interested in anyone right now,” Yixing lied, his heart throbbing slightly with pain. The caring gaze that Wu Fan looked at him with made him feel like he was barely keeping his head above a water level that was rapidly rising.

            “Okay,” Wu Fan said, before the drama was back on and he was taking a few tissues out for precautionary measures. Yixing went back to his guitar, hoping that the shaky twangs of the instrument didn’t reveal any of the stinging pressure behind his eyes that he was trying to hold back.

-

            It was hard to take care of a moping Wu Fan when he was constantly demanding ice cream. More like, demanding to be spoon-fed ice cream from Yixing.

            Yixing gave him a ‘are-you-kidding’ look, but still found himself sitting resignedly next to Wu Fan, scooping ice cream with a spoon and shoving it into Wu Fan’s mouth. He gave him a little glare seeing that Wu Fan looked a little too satisfied right now.

            He was only doing all of this because this was the first ever breakup that Wu Fan had gone through and he was only being a good friend, right?

            “More like a good fiancé,” Chanyeol had said after he dropped off some stinking tofu that Wu Fan apparently loved.

            Wu Fan’s parents were home, for once, but they had retreated to their rooms seeing as Yixing was apparently more of a comfort than they were (they didn’t even know what Wu Fan was being all down about, anyway. The relationship between Tao and Wu Fan had been a secret).

            “You don’t even look heartbroken. Why am I even here?” Yixing asked, almost rhetorically.

            “I feel okay because you’re here, Xing,” Wu Fan said, his hands gripping Yixing’s hips as he tried to eat the next bite of ice cream dangling from the spoon that Yixing was holding. Yixing clenched his teeth because all he wanted to do in that one moment was to sink his hands into Wu Fan’s soft hair and mold their lips together until they no longer needed oxygen but each other to breathe. He wanted to taste the film of ice cream on Wu Fan’s tongue and replace Wu Fan’s scent with his own. Yixing could barely keep his hand from shaking as Wu Fan leaned forward to the ice cream almost obscenely off the spoon.

            “What are you, twelve?” Yixing muttered.

            “But I am heartbroken,” Wu Fan said, and in a spoiled fashion, put his head on Yixing’s lap. “Comfort me.”

            Yixing smacked the top of Wu Fan’s head, and then patted him when Wu Fan said, “Ow.”

            “Idiot,” Yixing sighed. Wu Fan just had to tell Tao about the engagement between him and Yixing. Wu Fan was too honest. Tao took everything well, at first, because he had explained everything and even dragged Yixing over to Tao’s side to clarify everything as well. Tao had known that it wasn’t exactly a real engagement in the sense of romantic sentiments, but his eyes started looking at them sharply more and more whenever Wu Fan was a little too clingy with Yixing.

            It all kind of went downhill from there, and Wu Fan almost handled the events resignedly, as if he had known what was going to happen.

            “We’re still friends, at least,” Wu Fan said, digging his chin into Yixing’s thigh painfully. Yixing tried to push him off by nudging Wu Fan with his elbow.

            “Yay,” Yixing said a little too unenthusiastically. Normally, he would’ve expected the selfish part of him to be happy that Wu Fan was single, but his whole self just seemed tired, like he knew that Wu Fan was single but never available for Yixing.

            Wu Fan looked at him questioningly, but Yixing shoved a spoonful of ice cream into his mouth to shut him up.

-

            And that leads us to where we left off, in the engagement party where Yixing was desperately trying not to compare Wu Fan’s eyes to beautiful, distant stars.

            They had both graduated from college. Different colleges, where they still somehow found the occasional time to hang out with each other and sometimes with their group of friends from high school. Both were still single, after more botched attempts at relationships with others, unless you counted their engagement a relationship of sorts. Maybe it was, just a twisted kind.      

            Yixing sighed again, holding Wu Fan’s left wrist up to check the time on his gold watch. Wu Fan shifted uncomfortably at the touch.

            “Why is time passing by so slowly?” Yixing complained. “I bet I look frazzled and terrible right now, after standing for so long. My jaw hurts from smiling.”

            Wu Fan inwardly disagreed, because Yixing looked the opposite from terrible. Sure, there was an almost wild look in his eyes, but Wu Fan associated that from being trapped inside a social event for that long. The white shirt that Yixing was wearing was a little rumpled, but the black suit that curved around his body made him look even more elegant than usual.

            Watching as Yixing got fished into yet another polite conversation with some guests (Wu Fan’s face was apparently too intimidating to go near right now), Wu Fan felt that familiar flare of affection as Yixing fiddled with his pants pocket almost absentmindedly. His other hand was holding a stemmed wine glass, wrist titled in a relaxed manner that contradicted the stressed stiffness of Yixing’s shoulders. Wu Fan had the sudden urge to press his hands into the knots of Yixing’s back, because it had been a while since he had seen Yixing be truly relaxed.

            A jolt of that ever familiar, yet unwanted, feeling of desire when he saw Yixing tilt his head back a little with those dimples of his had Wu Fan trying to look somewhere else desperately. These bothersome emotions always overwhelmed him like a tidal wave, retreating before drowning him again. It was only a few years ago that Wu Fan finally admitted to himself that he wanted Yixing more than he should.

            He was too busy trying to lock his feelings inside to look for indications that Yixing felt the same way.

            So there he was, trying but failing at not looking at Yixing. His eyes soaked in the way Yixing’s eyes squinted a little as he smiled (even his fake smile, which was endearing in its own way) and tried not to think about how much he wanted to kiss every knuckle on Yixing’s hands.

            Yixing’s adam apple pulsed as he took a drink from the wine glass, and Wu Fan sighed softly in want.

            It was a relief for the engagement party to be finally over and done with, and the two were left standing awkwardly, staring at each other. In a way, the congratulations that everyone had piled on them today had finally solidified the situation for them, made it real.

            I’m going to marry Yixing, Wu Fan couldn’t help the thrill and the undeniable warmth blossoming in his chest. Even though it wasn’t for realreal, he couldn’t help but feel that excitement making his heart pitter-patter all over the place.

            “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Yixing said, his long lashes hiding the swirling emotions in his eyes. They had to make decisions on what the wedding was going to look like, after all, much to the insistence of their parents.

            “Okay,” Wu Fan said, and impulsively embraced Yixing. Yixing had frozen in shock for a second before melting like liquid into his hug. Wu Fan was crazy, but he didn’t want to ever let go of Yixing.

            He felt cold when they parted, even though it was temporary.

-

            The wedding was beautiful, and Yixing was just ing gorgeous, and Wu Fan was just wishing that everything was for real because his throat felt like a frog had been stuck inside and he couldn’t swallow it down.

            “You may now kiss the,” the priest paused, “the groom.”

            Wu Fan found it almost funny that their first kiss happened when they got married, but Yixing’s lips pretty much erased every miniscule of thought in his mind.

            It would’ve been a little inappropriate to pull Yixing closer, so Wu Fan suppressed the desire to his way into Yixing’s mouth. Yixing just looked flushed after the kiss but smiled brightly at him anyway and Wu Fan just felt like there were freaking knives sticking into his heart and floating on top of the universe at the same time.

            It should be illegal to have this many emotions at the same time.

            Kyungsoo, one of the guests, afterwards gave Wu Fan an almost judging look. “You’re both kind of idiots, aren’t you?” He said, and Wu Fan had no idea what he meant before Kyungsoo went back to wiping the cake off of Jongin’s pouting face. His parents (and Yixing’s), on the other hand, looked like they were in seventh heaven.

            “You guys look so great together,” Yixing’s mother half-sobbed as she gripped Wu Fan’s arm almost painfully. “I’m such a proud mommy today.”

            “Mooooom,” Yixing said in that way that really took Wu Fan back ten years or so. “Oh my god, you’re so embarrassing.”

            Wu Fan only laughed, pushing the thought of the imminent divorce from the back of his mind, and allowed himself a few moments of possessiveness over his new husband. Yixing looked perfect, with that curling smile directed at him and his waist warm underneath Wu Fan’s hand.

-

            They decided not to waste a free (paid for by their parents) honeymoon, though, and arrived at the airport with an excited tension sparking off their skins.

            The flight was meant to go to Paris (Yixing’s eyes lit up at the very thought) but then their travel agent somehow switched up their information with someone else’s, and they stood in New York’s airport with confused expressions pasted on their faces.

            “Okay, now where do we go?” Yixing said slowly. Personally, Wu Fan didn’t care where they were as long he was with Yixing, and he just sounded so sappy that he wanted to dramatically stab himself for all the cheesiness.

            It turned out that Minseok had an apartment in Manhatten that he wasn’t using at the moment, and he graciously allowed them to use it.

            “Have fun on your honeymoon,” Minseok teased through the phone, before laughing at Wu Fan’s spluttering and then hung up.

            “So? What’d he say?” Yixing asked with an expectant look on his face, but Wu Fan couldn’t look at him without flushing.

            “It turns out that we could stay in New York for a while,” Wu Fan said.

            Sightseeing turned out to be not as hectic as they thought it would. They took their time scouring the downtown sights and twitching at the high prices of the restaurants. They went to all the places that tourists would usually go, but also detoured at random places like the Museum of National Mathematics. Wu Fan had been to New York before, on a few vacations with his parents, but every sight and sound felt magnified with Yixing next to him.

            Minseok’s apartment turned out to be a one studio room with one queen sized bed. It was probably teeth-achingly expensive despite its small size, because it was located next to Union Square and the rumbling subway. They had taken one look at the bed and stared at each other. Wu Fan was about to claim the sofa as his new sleeping apparatus when Yixing shrugged and said, “We’ve done this before.”

            “Yes,” Wu Fan said, “When we were small and we had sleepovers and you whined that the floor was too hard to sleep on.”

            But there was no arguing against Yixing when he looked obstinate like that, so Wu Fan just flopped onto the bed at night and tried to create a make-shift boundary between them with a stuffed dragon that they’d gotten as some sort of wedding gift.

            Somehow, when he woke up, Yixing’s face was right in front of him. Yixing was hugging the dragon, looking really huggable himself. Instead of jumping right out of bed, Wu Fan shifted into a more comfortable position and clutched his pillow with his heart pounding at the fact there was less than five inches separating him and Yixing.

            But when everything was quiet except for Yixing’s soft snuffling in his sleep, Wu Fan found his mind straying into painful territories that he had been trying to avoid the entire trip. Something inside of him hurt when he thought about the possibility of Yixing being with someone else in the future, which was what was most likely going to happen. He really meant it that Saturday night when he had told Yixing that he shouldn’t let this arranged marriage get in the way of finding someone that would make him unbelievably happy.

            It would probably break his heart into tiny little pieces, but he placed Yixing’s happiness as his first priority before anything else.

            What a fool he was, Wu Fan thought as his eyes blurred and he felt sleepiness overtake him, to have fallen for such a gorgeous creature.

-

            Miracles did happen, though.

            On the morning of the fifth day of their so-called honeymoon, Wu Fan was sitting with his laptop on with his tired mind thirsting for a cup of coffee when Yixing plodded in from the bathroom. Ten cups of coffee would not have injected the same amount of adrenalin into Wu Fan’s veins that the sight of Yixing in Wu Fan’s shirt did. The buttoned stripe shirt went down and stopped a few inches past his hips. Yixing hadn’t even bothered on putting his pants on, showcasing his pale legs. Wu Fan’s jaw dropped because Yixing had no idea how tempting he looked right now.

            “What are you doing so early in the morning, Wu Fan?” Yixing draped his lanky arms around the other man’s frame, eyes peeking at the computer screen.

            Wu Fan had to take a sip of water before answering because his throat, all of a sudden, felt like a desert wasteland.

            “Business stuff,” he said. It was true, since he was starting to be burdened with all the going-ons of his family’s business now that he was an independent adult. He knew that Yixing already had a handle on these matters earlier on, when he worked part-time in his family’s company during college.

            “Fun.” Yixing nuzzled into Wu Fan’s neck like an over-starved affectionate puppy. Wu Fan was staring at the screen blankly because he forgot what he had been doing and now he just needed to remember to keep breathing like a normal human.

            “Yixing,” Wu Fan gritted out. “I don’t – You’re – ”

            Yixing looked up, and their eyes met, and the comfortable atmosphere morphed into something that made Wu Fan feel like having a headache because it was too early in the morning for this.

            “What, Wu Fan?” Yixing asked softly, his eyes looking like dancing flames.

            “You’re – ” And still he couldn’t form a full sentence. Instead, he wound an arm around Yixing’s waist so that they were facing each other fully, and almost instinctively, Yixing leaned in. “You’re insufferable.”

            Then they were kissing, lips trembling against each other’s, small puffs of breaths exhaled out before Wu Fan leant in for more more more, always more. Yixing looked ethereal, with his fingers tangling up in Wu Fan’s hair like he had fantasized about this moment millions of times already, and Wu Fan felt like there was electricity traveling from the tips of Yixing’s fingers and jumping into the nerve endings of his skin.

            In between their tongues tangling together, Wu Fan pulled away long enough to gasp, “I’m being selfish, aren’t I?”

            Yixing pulled him back in, murmuring that if he was being selfish, then so was he.

            Wu Fan couldn’t shake off the feeling that there was someone better for Yixing than himself but then Yixing erased those thoughts with the taste of his lips, and tongue, and skin until Wu Fan couldn’t think anything but how Yixing looked and felt.

-

            It was until much later, when Yixing was tracing strange patterns on Wu Fan’s body that Wu Fan realized that maybe Kyungsoo was right when he said that the two of them were kind of idiots.

            “This means we’re not getting a divorce, right?” Wu Fan felt anxious as he asked that, like the reply would either break or make him the happiest man on Earth, which it would.

            “I hope not,” Yixing said, coy smile in place he placed a kiss to the back of Wu Fan’s hand much like Wu Fan had done years ago.

            Wu Fan let out a strangled noise in response.

-

            “So yeah, we’re together together now,” Wu Fan said with his heart in his throat, hand gripping Yixing’s tightly. Yixing squeezed back.

            All of their friends gave them an unimpressed look.

            Luhan threw his hands up. “Only to yourselves. I personally believed that you guys were pretty much together since high school.”

            Everyone else made noises of varying agreement.

            “Yeah,” Baekhyun practically snickered. “I mean, Kris was pretty much as whipped by Yixing as he is today.”

            Wu Fan opened his mouth to protest, but then closed it and hung his head, knowing that he couldn’t protest against something that was true.

            Yixing gave him a comforting peck at the corner of his lips, and Jongdae pretended to gag.

            “You guys are exactly the same except for the extra PDA. Tone that down please because I just ate lunch,” Jongdae said.

            Wu Fan stuck his tongue out at him.

-

            Life with Yixing wasn’t perfect, because they often argued over nonsensical things, like how they argued over the amount of cheese Wu Fan had put into dinner last night. They fought often, but most of the time, they weren’t serious. And the times when there were serious fights, the longest record was three days before they started bickering normally again.

            Wu Fan still felt his heart swelling at random moments, like when Yixing had flour on his nose or when he was pulling weird faces at Jongdae’s turtles, and felt the gratitude that out of everyone in the world, Yixing chose him to be with.

            “I’m glad you’re happy,” his mom had told him after a family dinner. This time, it could finally be qualified as a true family dinner (instead of two totally different families that ran rival fruit companies coming together) because Wu Fan and Yixing were the glue holding all of them together.

            “Me too.” Wu Fan grinned before giving his mom a sentimental hug.