The first things Chen notices when he wakes up are, first of all, how gross his mouth tastes, like a weird mix of mint toothpaste and cigarettes, and, second, the unbearable pounding of his head.

The third realization is that Chen is not in his own bed, in his own apartment, cuddled next to his favorite plushie, although he would rather die than admit that he still slept with a stuffed toy.

And the final scrap of information that finally surfaces in Chen’s sluggish, sticky mind is one that makes him go rigid before he goes pliant and his mouth opens in an ear-splitting wail.

Three seconds after the noise leaves Chen’s mouth, the door to the bedroom slams open, and a familiar figure rushes in, almost immediately at Chen’s side.

Chen sniffles, tears beginning to leak from his eyes to run down his cheeks, and he looks up at Yixing pitifully, trying to bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself from crying.

Yixing doesn’t even say anything.

He just sits down next to the younger boy on the bed, reaches out, fingers of one hand wrapping around the back of Chen’s neck, the other arm coming around Chen’s lower back, and pulls him into his lap, covers and everything.

“Shhh,” he whispers as Chen struggles to swallow his sobs. “It’s okay to cry. You’ll feel better once you do.”

And Chen breaks down, huddling further into his best friend’s chest, arms moving to wrap around Yixing’s slender waist, fingers curling into the back of his t-shirt.

“H-h-he,” Chen stutters out between gasps of air, soaking Yixing’s collar with tears and snot. “H-he… ch-h-heated on, on m-me.”

Yixing hums, rocking Chen back and forth, carding comforting fingers through Chen’s hair.

“I s-s-saw him and that p-p-pompous, overgrown pre-e-e-tty boy, what’s his name-e-e?” Chen trails off, confused.

“Kim Jongin,” Yixing supplies, because he heard the whole story last night over the phone, and then again once he got Chen back to his apartment. He winces a little when Chen bolts up at the name, the top of his head hitting Yixing in the jaw.

“S-s-sorry,” Chen apologizes, wiping his nose on his sleeve, eyes red and puffy. “But yeah, K-kim Jongin, that brat. He was k-k-kissi-“

Chen chokes, trying to control his emotions as the memories from last night come rushing back.

Yixing keeps rubbing circles onto his back, waiting patiently for Chen to get it out.

“He-he was k-k-kissing-“

A few more seconds of snuffling and broken breaths tick by.

And then…

“He was kissing Sehun!” Chen finally screeches out, his fragile frame shaking even harder now that he’s finally admitted that he saw his boyfriend of almost half a year cheating on him last night in a dirty, grimy nightclub, his sobs muffled into the front of Yixing’s shirt again because the shorter boy has buried his face in the curve that connects Yixing’s neck and his shoulder, wet eyelashes brushing bare skin.

“I know,” Yixing murmurs, moving so that both of them are lying down, Chen tangled in his bed covers, tucking the younger’s head under his chin as Chen cries wordlessly for quite a few minutes, dark hair matted to his forehead and smelling of alcohol, sweat, and something else, something sweeter, that Yixing knows only Chen smells like.

It had been really late last night when Yixing’s cellphone had rung, buzzing and lighting up on his nightstand, startling him from sleep.

And Chen had been on the other end, words slurring, loud house music in the background drowning out the sound of his voice, Yixing straining desperately to hear, cellphone pressed hard to his ear because what if Chen was in trouble? What if he was hurt? What if-?

But then Yixing had caught the names “Oh Sehun”, the tall blonde that Chen had been going out with for the past five months, and “Kim Jongin”, who Yixing knew from the numerous dance classes the two shared through the university, and then Chen had dissolved into drunken tears, his voice cracking over the connection, and Yixing had just said, “Tell me where you are. I’ll come and get you.”

By the time Yixing had managed to slip into jeans and grab his keys from the kitchen countertop, he had concocted so many images of Chen crying alone in a sketchy bar that he had almost forgot to lock his door behind him in his rush to find him.

And an hour later, after Yixing had pushed through sweaty dancers and drunk couples making out as if the world were ending the very next day, in some club called Pandemonium, had found Chen slumped over the bar, annoying the out of the bartender, who was some guy named Xiumin, and had carried Chen the entire way back to his apartment, Yixing had been tired, exhaustion settling in the curve of his spine and bending his shoulders forward, weighing every inch of him down.

But the night had been far from over.

Chen had thrown up a few times in the bathroom, Yixing running for the kitchen both times so that he wouldn’t vomit himself, the cool press of a glass of water in his hands the only thing keeping his gag reflex down. Eventually the glass of water had been given to a worn-out Chen when the coast had been deemed clear, and Chen had let Yixing change him out of his dirty clothes and into something clean, a pair of too-big sweatpants and a large t-shirt that had the word, “Stud Muffin”, written across the front with a cute, cartoon-like chocolate chip muffin smiling underneath it.

“Come on Chen, it’ll take, like, a minute,” Yixing had panted, wrestling a stubborn Chen in the bathroom, trying to scrub at Chen’s teeth with a spare toothbrush he had found lying in the cabinet between a stack of toilet paper and his deodorant.

But Chen had refused to have his teeth brushed, instead wanting to tell Yixing for the third time that he had seen Sehun stick his tongue down Jongin’s throat.

“,” Yixing had exclaimed a few minutes later when Chen had jerked away so hard that the two of them had stumbled backwards into the towel rack, the metal bar leaving a painful impression between Yixing’s shoulder blades that he was sure was going to bruise the next morning.

And when mint toothpaste had been successfully smeared all over the sink and over half of Chen’s face, and then on all of Yixing’s fingers, Yixing had gently put Chen into his own bed, the latter asleep within seconds, a flash of bare skin visible from where the sleeve of his t-shirt had slid down his shoulder, dark hair mussed and falling over his forehead as he snored, and affection had curled soft and warm in the pit of Yixing’s stomach.

Even though Yixing had been tired, he had been relieved to know that his best friend was now sleeping peacefully in his bed, and he had padded into the living room, curling up on the too-small couch, comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time.

Two weeks have passed since Chen found out the truth behind Sehun’s “late-night work meetings” and the twenty-three year old is still staying at Yixing’s place, their clothes sharing the closet, toothbrushes leaning against each other in the bathroom, Yixing’s bed a place of sleep for two people now instead of one because Yixing refuses to let Chen sleep on the couch and there is no guest bedroom, and he had said a big, “hell no”, to Chen’s idea of buying an air mattress because Yixing does not want to die from tripping over it in the middle of the night and breaking something.

Besides, Chen had let Yixing stay with him and Sehun for a few days a few months ago after Yixing had lost his job making lattes and frappuccinos at the Starbucks near Times Square.

Yixing could return the favor.

“And he kept on going on about how he had been planning to tell me, and that he hadn’t wanted me to find out about it this way, as if there’s a better way to find out that your boyfriend is sleeping with someone else,” Chen exclaims, throwing his hands into the air from where he’s straddling one of the bar chairs in the kitchen.

Yixing hides his grin by turning around to watch the stove, flipping a pancake over as Chen continues to talk.

Chen huffs, crossing his arms over his chest, scowl permanently in place. “For all I care, he can sleep with the ing president. Then come tell me that you didn’t want me to find out this way Oh Sehun.”

Four weeks since the, “Night of Douchebags”, as Chen likes to call it, and Yixing has gotten so used to seeing Chen sitting on his couch when he walks in every evening that the afternoon he comes in and that spot is empty, he panics.

“Chen?” Yixing calls, dropping his bag onto the ground and wandering through the living room to the kitchen.

Chen isn’t there stuffing his face with Yixing’s precious taro bubble teas he keeps stocked in the fridge.

Back through the living room to the bedroom.

Nothing.

“Chen,” Yixing says again, deciding that the younger boy probably went out to grab something from the corner grocery store, or maybe just to get some fresh air.

But he can’t keep himself from tapping his foot against the floor as he works on planning out new choreography for his next dance lesson.

Or from glancing at the front door every time he hears someone outside.

It’s horribly quiet in the apartment.

Until finally, finally the front door clicks open at half-past five, Chen walking in, the spare key Yixing gave him two years into their friendship hanging from his fingers.

Yixing sighs internally, nodding when Chen explains that he went to the grocery store to get more milk.

And of course he doesn’t say anything when he notices that Chen doesn’t have any milk in his hands, nor anything else that he could have bought from the store.

Because Yixing isn’t going to pry where he’s not allowed.

Not even when he notices Chen’s ruffled hair or the wrinkles in his shirt or his swollen mouth.

Not even when he knows Oh Sehun just might be back in the picture, disturbing this fragile life they’ve built up over the past twenty-eight days, a schedule of two very different personalities somehow fitting together, because that’s how they’ve always been.

Chen has always been the rule-breaker, the rebel, the broken piece in the puzzle.

And Yixing has always been the sweeter one, the lingering smile, the smudge to Chen’s sharp edges.

And somehow that’s worked.

Yixing ignores Chen’s late-night phone calls, his trips out at night, sometimes not coming back until two or three in the morning, smelling of cheap alcohol and someone else’s touches.

Yixing doesn’t ask, knowing that Chen will tell him when he’s ready.

And that day comes five weeks after Yixing bruised his back against his towel rod in his bathroom, five weeks after he started mending a broken Chen, and maybe cracked himself, starting with a small bruise on the skin of his back.

“I’m seeing him again,” Chen blurts out over dinner, some kind of microwaved meal that Chen had insisted on making that night since Yixing had been working late.

Yixing pauses, fork mid-way to his mouth, and gives his friend a look.

“Why?” he wants to ask, because doesn’t Chen remember what happened last time? Doesn’t he