“Did you see that?” Chanyeol’s laughter was wild and uninhibited. Kris almost envied him a little.

“How could I not?” Kris snorted, hiding his grin with his sleeve.

“Jongdae just skidded across the ice without stopping - and WHOOMP! He went splat on his face and crashed into Minseok! And Minseok never even saw it coming, he just - Hah...” Chanyeol was laughing too hard to continue, and then he took in a quick gasp of air. “He just clung to Luhan and Luhan looked like it was his best day on Earth. Oh God this is too funny.”

“You were the only one who burst out laughing right then and there.  Everyone was staring at you.” Kris took ahold of Chanyeol’s elbow when he was about to head the wrong direction. “The train station is that way.”

“Oh, right.” Chanyeol was still chuckling to himself. Kris had to involuntarily smile at the sight. “I don’t know, I think we should help Luhan along or something. Watching him pine after Minseok for two plus years or something is getting to me.”

“I don’t know.” Kris shrugged. “His desperation is kind of cute.”

“Only you would find it endearing.”

The tracks rumbled with the force of the incoming train. Kris was about to put his hand on Chanyeol’s lower back when he withdrew it in the middle of the action. He winced at his slip-up and followed the other into the train car. Bad habits were hard to break.

“But really, we should just set the two of them up.” Chanyeol’s eyes were almost lit up at the idea, and when he got like this, not even a speeding truck could stop him. “Make it easier on all of our lives.”

“So we don’t have to see Luhan wither away in his old age before he finally gets a date with Minseok?” The train jolted as it left the station. Chanyeol stumbled a little against his chest, familiar weight resting there for a moment before it was gone.

“You have to help me even though you obviously think this idea is dumb.” Chanyeol was looking up at him with his patented puppy eyes, wicked gleam in them.

“I think all of your ideas are dumb,” he pointed out. He didn’t think about how close they were, or how easy it would be to pull him closer.

“But everything always turns out okay in the end.” Chanyeol started nodding to himself in that stubborn, cute determined attitude he adopted whenever there was a goal that he had to reach. “I mean, how bad could it be anyway?”

“Luhan will forever hate you if you ruin his chances.”

“I’m cute enough, he’ll forgive me.”

Kris shook his head, mockingly sighing. “One day, you’ll wake up and look at your aged self in the mirror and realize that you wouldn’t be able to trick anyone with your wiles anymore because of your face.”

“I don’t know.” Chanyeol started pouting, and exaggeratedly fluttering his eyelashes. “I thought you would always think I’m cute, even if I’m a rotting moldy senior citizen on a nursing bed.”

Kris pinched his sides, partially to get him to stop. This was straying a little bit beyond his comfort zone. This reminded him a little of how they used to flirt with each other. “You’re just deluding yourself.”

Chanyeol gave him a playful look before plastering his face all over the window, hoping to see one of those flashy ads Beijing was known for. Kris stared out in the opposite direction, content with the warmth radiating from Chanyeol even though it was 90 degrees out.

“Although, I don’t know how to even get Minseok to agree to a date with Luhan in the first place,” Chanyeol’s voice snapped him out of his daydreams.

“Blind date?” Kris offered, because he knew Chanyeol would bother him until he gave him an answer.

“Ohhh, that’s genius, Wu Fan! Why didn’t I think of that?” Chanyeol had to lower his volume after a few people glanced at them, raising eyebrows at the foreigners.

“You can’t do anything without me, can you?”

“I don’t know. Where would I be in life without you?”

“Staring at turtles in the pet store everyday like how I met you?” Kris’ lips twitched, half-remembering that snowy day he found a tall stranger to talk with about the life habits of turtles and how they mated.

“I still go there sometimes. The turtles are different though.” Chanyeol’s eyes were glazed over as his teeth absentmindedly tugged at his lower lips. Kris’ heart gave a little jolt at the action before he averted his gaze, trying to remind his traitorous body that he wasn’t supposed to react like that to Chanyeol anymore.

Chanyeol was ridiculously touchy even after they broke up. It made Kris’ soul feel like shriveling up and dying somewhere because every time Chanyeol reflexively reached out to grab one of Kris’ limbs (it didn’t matter which one to him), Kris couldn’t reciprocate like he did before. He couldn’t easily reach out the same way Chanyeol did, because it meant something different to him than to Chanyeol. To him, it meant ridiculously romantic moments spent together looking at the sunsets, fingers laced together. It meant the way Chanyeol used to look at him like he was the center of his ing world. It would go back to the days when his heart was still whole and terribly full with Chanyeol’s smiles.

That was why no matter what, Kris did his best not to initiate any skin contact with Chanyeol.

“Why don’t you just put some distance between you two?” Kyungsoo always said, squinting at him.  Kris would sigh, because not even the friend that has known him since his grade school days would understand.

“The last time I went on an overseas trip, Chanyeol called me in a panic because he almost burned his own apartment down because somehow his laundry machine caught on fire. Tell me now, am I going to leave such a hazard to mankind alone?”

“This isn’t helping you get over him, you know that.” Kyungsoo gave him his trademark judging look.

Kris tiredly pushed his bangs away from his face. He sipped at his coffee. “I know.”

But what could he do? Him and Chanyeol had somehow, through their failed romance, nurtured a relationship in which they were kind of best friends. In which Chanyeol always looked to Kris for advice and had became painfully dependent on the other for everything. He was seriously like a big child sometimes. Although Kris might be more dependent on Chanyeol for just his existence than anything.

Maybe he was using the argument that Chanyeol couldn’t take care of himself without him as an excuse to just hold onto him just a little more, even though it was a lost cause and he knew it.

“I’m still in love with you,” Kris told Chanyeol five months later, just to get this over with.  Chanyeol was sitting on the hotel bed in the room they booked in for this trip to Beijing.

Chanyeol looked down on his hands helplessly. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Kris ruffled Chanyeol’s locks of hair (they were short now, unlike the days in which he could tug at it when he pulled him in for a hot mess of tangled tongues). “You’re not supposed to do anything about it, idiot. You can’t. I thought that this would fade after five months, but I guess I should just give it more time.”

Chanyeol looked at him with his guilty puppy eyes. He whimpered, “But it’s my fault.”

Kris sighed and knelt down, looking at him in his eyes. “Chanyeol,” he said slowly, “It’s not your fault that you fell in love with someone else. No one can dictate their own hearts.”

Oh great, was Chanyeol sniffling now? Horrified, Kris could only hold him as Chanyeol collapsed in his arms. “But Kris,” he wailed into his shoulder, “It must hurt a - (a hiccup) - a lot.”

Kris looked incredulously at the man in his arms. Was he seriously crying for him? One of his many charms, Kris guessed, another thing to add onto the infinite list of why he had fallen for him a long time ago, between drunk games of truth and dare with the others and moving into an apartment of their own.

Kris would be lying if he said that he didn’t dream about a day where Chanyeol ran back to him and admitted that he had fallen in love with Kris all over again. Was this why he was torturing himself like a love-struck fool?

No. That wasn’t really why. All he really needed was for Chanyeol to stay by his side.

Sometimes, Chanyeol really hated himself. He hated himself for inflicting so much pain on the man he loved so much. Who he still loved, but just... Not the same kind of love as before.

And he knew he was being a selfish piece of for not letting Kris go, for giving him the necessary distance to find someone else to love and adore. For someone more deserving of his love to receive it. Not him.
But he couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried. There was like some kind of internal alarm system that went off whenever Kris was too far away from him. It was like he couldn’t breathe properly, like the most ordinary things no longer made sense without him. They had dated for 7 whole years. Without Kris in his life, he wasn’t sure who Park Chanyeol was.

I know u____u i'm a terrible person. idek i just like making wu yifan suffer.