Yixing doesn’t go to school the next day. Tao isn’t happy about him skipping his classes, but he keeps all complaints to a small frown as he attempts to give Yixing a few words of encouragement.

Yixing being the good and doting cousin he is, promises to cover for Tao in return in case the boy ever decides to miss school in favor of a weekday date with Kris.

Despite the text messages sent from Jongdae and Amber, and Zitao’s awkward but helpful advice Yixing is still rather reluctant in his plan.

He’d spent the night before going over what he’d say only to come up with absolutely nothing. He kind of knew where he’d start, but even then it was such a in the moment thing that he figured he’d go off script regardless of rather or not he had one to start with.

Like the previous day Yixing finds himself standing in front of Kai’s house  in the early afternoon, part of him wanting to push forward and another, greater, part of him wanting to run back home. Unlike the previous day Kai isn’t there to appear behind him, and so he summons the microscopic bit of courage he has and continues forward.

He checks the door first, praying that it’s unlocked because if he has to ring a doorbell he’s sure it’ll take another ten minutes of him weighing the pros and cons of fleeing. Lucky for him the door is open.

He enters the house slowly, calling out a “hello” in the process. No one responds so he goes deeper, heading towards his destination.

In front of Kai’s bedroom door Yixing knocks hard, the sound thunderous in the otherwise quiet house. He tells himself to wait one minute, sixty seconds, if Kai doesn’t respond or no one appears than he’ll leave. If the fate that Kai so readily believed in wanted them to be together than this was Yixing acting upon a chance.

The call doesn’t come right away, it’s hesitant and barely there, but Yixing hears or maybe just believes he hears it because either way he pushes the door open and heads up the final steps to Kai.

Kai is sitting on the edge of his bed, eyes trained on Yixing and a look of confusion across his features. He quickly cools his appearance and stands, a small grin on his lips as he makes himself busy with something. “Why are you here so early,” Kai asks, his back to Yixing. “Sehun won’t be back for another hour or so.”

“I’m not here for Sehun,” Yixing states.

“Oh,” Kai voices turning slightly just to look at Yixing, his eyes are blank, devoid of any emotion and it makes Yixing nervous. “What are you here for then?”

“To s-see you,” Yixing says. “To talk you.”

Yixing can’t see Kai’s reaction, but when he does turn fully to Yixing, his eyes are still blank, and not even a hint of his smile rests on his face. “What did you want to talk about,” Kai asks.

“Us,” Yixing responds. He steps forward, the hesitance still there. Last night when he had been planning things out, he couldn’t figure out what he’d say in this moment. Not a thought had entered his head, even though he knew he wanted to say sorry and ask for another chance.

Now he couldn’t figure out what to say because there was so much more that he wanted to say other than sorry, and all those things were floating through his mind at the moment, and Yixing was sure he’d end up rambling if he let himself get too swept up in his thoughts.

Silence surrounds them, and when Yixing figures Kai wasn’t planning on replying, he continues. “I wanted to…” he begins only to stop. He wants to think through things properly, to be as precise as possible and get his point across without causing a misunderstanding.

“I missed you,” Yixing says only a second later. It hadn’t been what he wanted to start with, but the words slipped from his tongue faster than it should have, but he doesn’t regret it. It feels right to start that way.

“What,” Kai asks, Yixing looks back up to meet his eyes and instead of anger or amusement, he sees bewilderment in Kai’s gaze.

“I miss you,” Yixing says next, using the present tense to show that he still does, even in this moment where they’re only a few measly feet away from each other Yixing misses him.

Kai is staring at him, dark eyes searching his own and Yixing stares back, refusing to look away from the younger boy’s heated gaze. “What does that even mean? What are you doing here Yixing?”

Yixing feels his blood run cold, not because of the lack of honorifics, it would have honestly hurt worse if Kai had used an honorific with him. His tone and the way he spat Yixing’s name out was painful enough. Yixing can’t help but wonder if he maybe misread the signals, maybe Kai wanted nothing to do with him, and only told him it was okay to rejoin the group for the others.

“When we saw each other for the first time since the break-up all I wanted to say was that I missed you and that I was sorry,” Yixing explains. “I thought it was because you were my first relationship and if I could convince myself that I ended our relationship for a good reason those things would go away. Those feelings never went away, every time I see you or think about you, I miss you and feel sick with regret. Instead of convincing myself that I left you for a good reason, all those reasons ended up sounding more selfish and foolish as I repeated them to myself. We hadn’t…I hadn’t even tried to give you a chance to understand my problems.”

“You didn’t think I actually wanted to be with you,” Kai states.

“I felt insecure,” Yixing explains. “I had never been in a relationship before, and I never knew loving someone was so hard.” He stops talking after realizing what he has said. He didn’t want Kai to assume that Yixing meant loving him was hard, but love itself was what had been hard. “It’s hard to be rational when you’re in love,” Yixing says softly. “We’re really similar when it comes to talking about the hard things. It’s stupid, but because I liked you so much it was harder to tell you my insecurities. I thought you would get tired of me and leave me, if you weren’t tired already. I just… I’m here, because I just really needed to tell you that I’m sorry.”

 “For what,” Kai asks for clarification.

“For the way I treated our relationship,” Yixing admits. “I shouldn’t have ended things that way. It was cowardly at the time, I hadn’t even thought of your feelings.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kai shrugs. “It’s in the past.”

“But it’s not,” Yixing says. “I ruined everything because I was dumb and brash, and now I want…” he pauses, trailing off as he tries to think of his next words. “If you’d give me a second chance, I’ll be better, I’ll talk to you about the things that bother me if you, well if you’ll talk to me too. I know you have problems trusting people right away, and any trust you might have had in me must be gone, but I’ll try to fix that too.”

Kai doesn’t reply, so Yixing continues, “I know you probably resent me for how I acted. So, even if you don’t want to try again I’ll understand. Just know that I really am sorry, and I still care about you.”

When Kai still doesn’t reply, Yixing shuffles about uncomfortably. He can still feel his heart beating harshly against his chest, and he doesn’t know if he should stay until Kai says something or someone returns or if he should leave and contact Sehun through text message.

The moment Yixing decides that maybe it would be best if he left, he hears the sound of footsteps moving cautiously towards him, and a second later he feels arms wrapped loosely around his shoulders as Kai hugs him, head resting on Yixing’s shoulder. Yixing wraps his arms around Kai’s waist, holding him tighter than Kai had been holding him. Someone’s trembling, and Yixing’s not sure if it’s Kai, him, or maybe the both of them.

“I want to,” Kai proclaims in a whisper. “I want us to try again.”

There’s a lot of talking afterwards. Yixing had told Sulli that he wouldn’t get back together with Kai unless they were able to fix their problems, and communication was their biggest problem. Once they’re done speaking of all the things that they had been hesitant to talk about before, Yixing feels exhausted.

He feels drained and lying on Kai’s plush bed seems to make keeping his eyes open for longer than mere seconds an even harder task.

He had resigned his fight for consciousness only to hear Kai’s name being called moments later. Yixing perks up instantly, lifting his reluctant and still tired body up and out of the bed. He had been fighting sleep in hopes of being awake when Sehun returned. Yixing knew that Kai would let him remain sleeping even after the others returned, and Yixing not only wanted to see Sehun for himself, but he wanted to be there with Kai when they realized that Yixing was back.

Yixing had broken their trust as well, and had silently vowed to work on regaining that. He knew they wouldn’t interfere with his relationship, but that didn’t mean that they were in complete support of it. He had hurt them and Kai, and Yixing wouldn’t believe the group if they were distrustful of him for a while.

Despite the call being for Kai, Yixing is already out of the bed and heading towards the steps, his nerves once again on high-alert as he prepares himself for the final step in rekindling his relationship with Kai and his friendship with the others.

Kai grabs his arm, just before he descends down to greet the group, and Yixing turns towards him in question.

The look in Kai’s eyes has Yixing feeling a sudden fear wash over him. Once Kai has Yixing’s attention he drops his gaze, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. “What’s wrong,” Yixing asks.

“Nothing,” Kai says, still refusing to meet his gaze, “I just…”

Yixing does his best not to panic internally, even as they had talked about things that Kai had been visibly uncomfortable with he had never looked as vulnerable as he did at the moment. Kai finally looks up to meet his eyes, and a tiny nervous smile graces his lips, a smile different than the confident smirks and grins radiating happiness that he usually showed Yixing.

It’s still so out of character that Yixing has to nearly bite his tongue to stop him from once again asking what was wrong.

“I realized something,” Kai says, “I guess I knew since you left for China, but the night you called me it had really hit me then.”

“What,” Yixing asks, the word nearly a whisper, but inside he’s grateful it doesn’t sound as anxious as it did in his head.

“What I feel for you is different than what I’ve felt for anyone,” Kai says. “At first I thought it was because you were the first person I wanted to seriously date, but the night when we ended that call, only one phrase kept repeating in my head.”

Yixing mouth feels dry, and he can barely swallow properly as he listens to Kai’s words. Inside he’s pleading that Kai will tell him what he can’t help but assume. Kai couldn’t possibly set up such a tale, just to tell him something different, right?

“Which is,” Yixing finally asks.

Kai looks conflicted, he looks almost fearful of continuing his story, so Yixing reaches out to grab both his hands and gives the younger male a reassuring smile. “I love you.” The words are whispered, but Yixing hears them as clear as day. He has to let go of Kai’s hands when he realizes he’s holding them to tightly, instead he brings him into a hug, cheeks already hurting as lips stretch into the biggest smile he can muster.

He doesn’t question it, nor does he ask for it to be repeated. He heard it, saw Kai’s lips move as he said it, and that was enough.

“I love you too,” Yixing says. “Always.”

This isn't as short as I thought it would be (it's a bit over 2k words) but part of me feels like it's not enough and another part of me didn't want to write too much and overwhelm you. This was supposed to be done in a year's time, but thanks to irregular updates and unannounced and announced hiatuses it took about a year and six months. Initially I wanted this to be a bittersweet tale of first love with a more bitter than sweet ending but halfway through I decided I wanted a happier ending.

Anyway THANK YOU!!! To everyone that has read, commented, upvoted, and/or subscribed thank you very much for supporting this fanfic. I probably wouldn't have finished this if I didn't know that there were people looking forward to my updates.

Time to get you excited about the epilogue! It shouldn't take a month for me to post it, I already started writing it (1k words so far!) You don't have to read it, it's a continuation of something I hinted at before, but not really important to the story. Hopefully you guys will want to read it and be READY for it when I finally post it.