Yi Fan was skeptical of the thought that he and Minseok could remain friends after the break up. He loved Minseok so much that the thought of only being his friend seemed impossible. He couldn’t be his friend because he didn’t want to be. He wanted to be his boyfriend, his partner, just simply his. And it was hard for him to deal with the fact that Minseok didn’t want that. At one point, he even kept Minseok prisoner in his apartment because “if you leave, you won’t come back, and I will never see you again.”

Minseok didn’t call the police or anything, thankfully, but all he said was, “I have to leave, Yi Fan, I have a life out there. But that doesn’t mean I won’t come back. We’re still friends, you know?”

He didn’t want to accept that, but he knew that he had too, or Minseok really wouldn’t come back.

~

“I heard that you had met someone,” Minseok opts to start the conversation with that, since Yi Fan was just sitting there with his feet moving back and forth in the water. “Is he nice?”

Yi Fan just shrugs and tries to probe at some tiny fish that are swimming around his feet, “more or less.”

“You make that sound like something is wrong with him…”

“There is something wrong with him,” he says, continuing when Minseok raises and eyebrow at him, “he isn’t you.”

“Yi Fan, we’ve been through this,” he sighs, bringing his feet off of the dock and placing them in the water. “This can’t happen every time we meet up; especially when I come so far to see you and you I. And you know that I'm with Luhan now.”

“Well, what do you want me to say,” he asks rhetorically, moving his feet to scare the fish away. “That I’m doing great, and the person that I am currently seeing is just so great, is that what you want to hear? I can’t bring myself to lie to you, okay? I can’t bring myself to say things that I don’t mean, with emotions that I don’t feel.”

Minseok just sighed and looked up at the clear blue sky. He noticed a bird flying in one direction, stop for a split second, and continue back in the direction in which it came. “You’ve said the exact same thing when we first started dating,” he chuckles, and leans back on his arms. “Do you remember?”

Yi Fan nods slightly, and glances over at Minseok, “I remember.”

♦

It was mid-December; the weather called for a drastic drop in temperature and a bad ice storm. It was a rare thing for South Korea, but not unexpected. It gets bone chilling cold here sometimes, so you learn to expect something as bad as an ice storm. The only thing, rather person that worried Yi Fan was Minseok.

They had just had a fight before the storm warning, over the fact that Yi Fan had been ignoring him for the past few weeks, and Minseok left Yi Fan’s house in a fit of anger. After he had seen the storm warning on the news, he didn’t waste a second in going after Minseok. Minseok wasn’t one to drive, so he walked everywhere, and this made Yi Fan wish that he would take up driving lessons to ease his mind.

When he had found Minseok, he was sitting at a bus station, curled up in a little ball on the bench, freezing so badly that Yi Fan could have sworn that the bench itself was shaking. This made him feel even worse because Minseok wasn’t wearing a coat. He had made him so mad that he ran off without anything to save him from the bitter cold. Luckily, Yi Fan thought to bring a thermal blanket just for extra warmth, and he walked up to Minseok, immediately wrapping him in the blanket.

“You should really pay attention to the things that you are leaving behind before you actually leave,” he says, and brings Minseok up off the bench to stand on his feet. “You could have frozen to death.”

“And you could have lied about why you were avoiding me for a week,” Minseok retorts, shaking off Yi Fans arms. “Who drops like that on a person?”

“Well, what did you want me to say? Did you expect me to lie and give you another reason? I don’t have the heart to lie to you, okay? I can’t bring myself to say things that I don’t mean, with emotions that I don’t really feel.”

♦

“I had to unthaw my hair when we went back to your house,” Minseok says, and laughs again. “We got so sick after that storm and our parent’s gave us the yelling of a life time.”

“My mom beat my for carelessly going after you,” Yi Fan corrects him, only to laugh afterwards. “I literally thought that I was going to die that day.”

“How is your mom by the way? I heard from Zitao that she wasn’t doing so well.”

“She just has a rough cold that put her in the hospital. She is getting better really fast though, thanks to the medical treatment that she is receiving.”

“I would expect that from the doctors here in Canada. How is your dad?”

“He actually passed a couple of months ago,” he answers softly, “from a .”

Minseok’s heart hurt for him, it really did. A man not having his father around is a big deal. “I’m sorry, Yi Fan,” he says sympathetically. “I can’t even begin to imagine what it would feel like without having my dad around. Is your mom dealing with it okay?”

Yi Fan wanted to be spiteful about it, but he decided that it wouldn’t be fair to Minseok. So he just shrugged and bit off some of his sandwich that Minseok was so kind to supply for their little meet up. “I guess that she is handling it better than I did. At least she had friends to help her through it.” And out came spiteful before he could stop it. But honestly, it felt great to be the one to hurt feelings this time. He found it more relieving than he probably should have, but he didn’t care. Does anyone really care who they hurt when they are in a period of mourning? “People brought her pre-made dinners, so that she didn’t have to cook. Other friends and even family called via phone to see how she was and she was never left alone, she always had someone staying with her when I couldn’t. I was thankful for everyone for that. For being there when she really needed them.”

“If you would have told me, Kris, I would have been there. I would have dropped everything to be there for my best friend; to comfort him when he felt like absolute . I would have been there.”

“You called me Kris,” Yi Fan mumbles, not bothering to hold back a boyish grin.

“What,” Minseok asks, dumbfounded.

“You called me Kris,” he repeats. “Do you know how long it’s been since you’ve called me that?”

“It was college, wasn’t it?”

“Do you even remember why you called me Kris?”

Minseok lowered his head in shame and mumbled a low, “no.”

Yi Fan just laughs, “you had transferred into the same Chinese class that I was taking, the same day that we first met.”

♦

“Hey,” a new student whispers at Yi Fan, “do you know what the professor is like?”

He pulls his eyes away from the said professor to look at the short, tousled hair boy that didn’t even look old enough to be in college, let alone this class. “She’s stern, extremely strict about how we do the work, but she’s a decent woman overall. She’ll help you personally with some assignments if you ask and if she has the time. She really isn’t as horrible as some people make her out to be.”

“That’s a relief,” he sighs, and bows slightly. “I’m Kim Minseok, by the way.”

Yi Fan bows in return, “Wu Yi Fan.”

•

Yi Fan sits in the campus library; reading up on something’s for one of his classes. He has his ear phones in to keep the distracting noises out, but the music isn’t loud enough to keep him from noticing the chair across from him being taken by the new student: Kim Minseok.

“There are at least fifteen other tables in this library,” he whispers, not pulling his eyes from the page in his book, “why are you sitting at this one?”

“I was wondering if you could help me with my Chinese; like, my pronunciation,” Minseok says softly, but the hurt in his voice echoed.

“Why? Is it because I’m Chinese?”

“Well, yeah…”

“That’s quite an assumption for something that is in the very class that I am taking.”

“I’m sorry,” Minseok stammers, “I’d just thought-”

“Relax,” Yi Fan chuckles, and pushes his book to the side. “You aren’t the first person to ask me for help on pronunciation. And to answer your question: I am taking Chinese because it’s been a while since I’ve needed to speak it and it’s a little rusty. I’m also taking it so that my parents don’t have to stress themselves to speak in a language that isn’t comfortable for them.”

“Does everyone ask you that?”

“Like I said, you aren’t the first person. Now, to start simply, try to say my full name.”

And Minseok does, well, tried. “Wuh Yee Fanne” is how it comes out.

“No,” he says calmly. “It’s Wu as in Dongwoo, Yi as in see, and Fan as you would say ah, but with f and n added.”

“Can I just call you Kris,” he asks tiredly. “It’s a lot easier.”

“Why must it be Kris?”

“It’s because you look like a Kris or maybe because I think of Kimchi, rice, ice cream, and steak when looking at you.”

♦

“I had refused to tell anyone why it was spelt as Kris and not as Chris.”

“Well,” Minseok pouts, “I did stop calling you that when I had learned how to pronounce your real name. That counts for something right?”

“Maybe in a different time,” Yi Fan sighs, swallowing down the last bit of his sandwich with a gulp of water. He sets his water bottle back down beside him and looks back out at the glistening water in front of them. He missed spending time with Minseok like this; just the two of them, not doing anything extravagant. It was nice, he thinks, to just sit on a dock with their feet in the lake. “You know what sounds good right now?”

“I don’t know, what sounds good?”

“Frozen yogurt.”

The corners of Minseok’s mouth turn upwards, forming a childlike grin, “then let’s go get some. We can even share like the last time we had frozen yogurt.”

And that was enough to get Yi Fan up and moving. Just that excitement in Minseok’s eyes, and the grin that turned into a toothy smile, “then to a frozen yogurt shop we go.”

•

Yi Fan felt sick. Not in a literal sense, but maybe in a metaphorical sense, he really didn’t know. It was like he could eat until he breathed food, but he also felt like the sight of the smallest speck of food would have him blowing chunks. Maybe it was because of the way Minseok ate around the little bits of mochi just so that Yi Fan could have them. Or maybe it was the way Minseok would feed him too without caring how it looked to the people around the pair of them. Or maybe it was the way Minseok let him hug him from behind and continued on walking down the street like that.

All of the considerations, all of the old habits rising to the surface, even all of the touching that was going on between the two of them, rekindled a fire within Yi Fan. It was a fire that scared him, a fire that will never again be shared by the very person in his arms.

“Kris,” Minseok says with a hint of a whine in his voice, “open your mouth.”

And so he does; parting his lips far enough for the small pink spoon to pass through them. Minseok drops the bit of mochi and vanilla flavored yogurt onto his tongue, pulling the spoon back out shortly after. Though, he didn’t much care for vanilla, or even strawberry mochi for that matter, he didn’t have the heart to tell Minseok that. It’s because both vanilla flavored yogurt and strawberry flavored mochi were his favorite that he didn’t bother to say anything.

And just in that very moment, he remembered what his friend- Henry had told him a day before Minseok arrived in Canada.

♦

“Don’t make a fool of yourself, Yi Fan.”

The older man with loud caramel colored curls puts bluntly. He looks around the coffee shop to make sure that he isn’t heard before he continues.

“The last thing that you want to do is bombard Minseok with all of the feelings that you have for him; feelings that he has said many time before that he doesn’t feel in the same way anymore. If you continue you push unwanted feelings onto a man that doesn’t want them, all you are going to do is push him away even further, and you don’t want that.”

“But it’s not like I can hide them either.” Yi Fan inhales deeply and exhales slowly, sipping at his iced tea. He leaned back in his chair and sunk down in it, “I mean every time that I talk to him over the phone, my heart flutters like a teenage girl, talking to her first crush. When I video chat with him, I can’t help but stare at every part of him. And when we meet up in person-”

“I get it, I get it,” he exclaims, his face contorting with disgust. “Please spare me the details, huh? It’s bad enough that I have to talk to you about your boy problems. It’s just awkward for me.”

“Since when did you become homophobic?”

“I haven’t become homophobic, Yi Fan, give me more credit. I just feel awkward when people ask me about relationships.”

“Don’t you do that for a living,” he asks with much confusion. “Aren't you a therapist for couples?”

“I’m a marriage counselor that occasionally counsels non-married couples too,” Henry corrects. “But that’s not even the point here, Yi Fan. You can’t force your feelings onto that man. He is going to feel suffocated, like it is impossible to be around you because of how much you are forcing these feelings for him onto him. This will cause the bond that the two of you have to be severed and he will stop coming around. You won’t see him, he won’t call, and he will separate himself from you because you’ll be seen as too emotionally unhealthy for him. No matter what habits he may fall into, no matter how badly you want to hold him in your arms, Yi Fan, you cannot force that man to love you again.”

♦

Those words killed him to hear, but Henry was nonetheless right. He couldn’t push the feelings that he never stopped feeling for Minseok onto him. No matter how badly he would want to try, he can’t ever get the man that he fell in love with to fall in love with him again, he just couldn’t.

And he could cope with that. He had to cope with it. Or he would lose the man that he loves.

So as much as it pained him, and ripped at his heart, he pulled himself away from Minseok, and stopped in his tracks. He reached a hand out to grasp lightly at Minseok’s arm, causing him to turn around abruptly.

The look that Minseok had seen on Yi Fan’s face had worried him and so he stopped walking, his eyes fixed on the others. “Yi Fan? Is there something wrong?”

He nods slightly, “I don’t think we should visit each other anymore. Or talk, video chat, text, none of that.”

“W-What?” Minseok stammers, not quite sure of what Yi Fan was implying. “What are you t-talking about?”

“Just let me finish, Minseok, please. If I don’t say this now, I may not ever see you again.”

Minseok nods with uncertainty.

“I’ve been thinking about this, only for a short time, but I’ve thought about it well. These feelings that I can’t seem to get over, the same feelings that I seem to force on you… I need to get over them, or at least bury them somewhere before they chase you away. And for me to do that, I need to stop talking to you- stop seeing your beautiful face for a while. Not indefinitely, just enough to detoxify myself from the drug that is you- your existence and what you mean to me. I know that things have changed between us; I'm finally beginning to accept that all chances of us getting together again is shot, but Minseok- Minseok, I am asking if you could just give me some time. I need to get some straight- I need to be able to be around you without wanting to kiss you breathless. I need to do this, not for just me, but also for you. It’s because I don’t want to lose you- the greatest thing to ever happen in my life. Do you understand that, Minseok? Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

Minseok nods again, tears falling without being able to stop them. “I do understand what you’re saying, Yi Fan,” He breathes, and wraps his arms around him without hesitation. “I don’t care how long you have to take, but just know that if months or years pass, I’ll be waiting. I’ll be waiting for that phone call, asking me when a good time for a trip to Canada is. I will wait.”

Author's note:

Finally finished~ Wow.. I didn't think that I would finish this before Christmas, but I did. 

Merry Christmas by the way, for those that celebrate anyway. If you don't, Happy holidays?

I hope you like this and thanks for reading~