If you miss this train I'm on,

You will know that I am gone.

You can hear the whistle blow

A hundred miles. 

"Zhang Yixing."

Luhan likes saying that name. He likes the brown head that turns at the sound of it. He likes the dimpled smile that follows and the cheeky, 

"Lu ge," that comes at the end with a slight tilt of the head. 

They've been neighbors since the day Yixing was born (having arrived in the world two years later than Luhan) and friends since then.

"Yixing come away with me." The smile turns into a frown. 

"What are you talking about?" 

"I need to get out of this place… There's nothing to be done here… There's no future if I stay." 

There probably isn't much of exaggeration in Luhan's words. Their town, as dear as it is, is small and with no prospects of doing anything that your parents aren't doing. 

"Lu, I can't leave ma and baba here… And I still have school." 

"But come with me!" Luhan's eyes are full of hopes and dreams and visions that Yixing can't begin to grasp. 

"I'll just wait here," Yixing smiles.

"I'm not coming back Xing. Never." 

There is something akin to hurt in Yixing's eyes but he pulls Luhan into a long hug. Yixing is warm, steady and when he pulls away, Luhan looks into the crescents of his eyes, feeling a tug at his chest.

"I'll still be here." 

When the last of Luhan's luggage makes its way onto the train and all the goodbyes are said, he pulls Yixing aside, sheltered between a pillar and the broken awning of an empty shop. He places his hands on Yixing's broad shoulders and brushes his lips softly against the other's. Yixing's eyes flutter open a second later. 

"Come with me," Luhan begs. Yixing smiles something that is so Yixing that it almost hurts Luhan's heart to be leaving it behind. 

"Go Lu, I'll be here." But he runs after the train on a childish impulse, waving till he can see nothing but the smoke billowing out in the distance. 

Luhan watches Yixing and his smile recede into the distance, pressing his nose into the glass in the fervrent hope of seeing him for a little longer, but the town and Yixing become nothing but matchsticks in the distant. Something inside Luhan wants to jump off the train, run back and kiss Yixing again, never letting go but he sits back down on his seat, shrinking into the corner. 

"You okay there, lad?" A kindly gentleman opposite Luhan asks and it's only then that Luhan realizes that he has thick salty tears rolling down his cheeks. He doesn't know if he is okay or will be so he smiles at the man and doesn't trust himself to speak thereafter. 

Lord I'm one,

Lord I'm two,

Lord I'm three,

Lord I'm four,

Lord I'm five hundred miles

Away from home.

Luhan doesn't think there's any life in being an accountant. He wants to be a singer. Or a dancer. Or any performer. He wants to be known. Sadly no one wants to know him and his pretty face lands him work as a bar singer, with a host of other nobodies that no one has ever heard of. Nor will ever hear of. 

"You're kinda pretty." 

There's a voice, heavy in slurred tones behind Luhan in the darkness. The alley behind the pub is dark and crawling with all the wrong kinds of people. This person is tall, his face boyish in the light coming from the crack in a window shade. 

"Thanks… and you are?" 

"Kim Jongin." 

Jongin is staggering, reeking of liquor, underage and suddenly pinning Luhan against the nearest wall, pushing his lips against Luhan's roughly. It's the first time in months Luhan has kissed someone. But as Jongin's hands rove over his back and find their way under his shirt, Luhan wishes it was someone else instead. Someone with soft smiles and cheeky dimples. 

Luhan has a fling with Jongin, and the with a boy called Sehun who works at the bar, making the first move himself one day after his shift is over. 

Sehun is poker faced. Sehun barely smiles. But Sehun is a good kisser. He follows Luhan around like a puppy. He isn't leaving Luhan or letting Luhan leave him. Somewhere between a kiss in the dressing room and one in between Luhan's bedcovers, he realizes that Sehun's compliance is not something he can take without feeling choked by the other's constant proximity and desire to please Luhan. Still, he continues to press his body flush against the younger yet taller boy, and press hungry kisses against his mouth, leaving little room for breathing. Even with all the people around him, Luhan doesn't feel right. He feels empty. Every greeting, every heated kiss, everything that he does doesn't make him feel any less hollow. 

Not a shirt on my back,

Not a penny to my name,

Lord I can't go back home 

This a-way. 

The pub goes bankrupt in the second year that Luhan works in it. He's now without work. His home goes next, once he stops paying the bills, the landlord kicking him out to the streets with whatever he calls his belongings. Sehun is nowhere to be found. No one wants to take him in anymore. Twenty two is too old. They want younger faces. His pretty face isn't so pretty anymore. His eyes darkened, cheeks sunken, lips pale— a far cry from the deer Yixing had once called him. 

Zhang Yixing. 

Luhan traces his name out on the mud on the side of the desolate street. He wonders if Yixing ever thinks about him. He wonders if Yixing is eating, or sleeping, or if he's staring at the skies and thinking of Luhan too. 

"Gi-give me your money!" 

Luhan's voice comes out shaking, ashamed, disgusted but the sharp pains in his stomach egg him on, forcing him to brandish his knife at the young man in front of him. The man in question raises his hands rather dubiously. Something in Luhan snaps at the unafraid look on the man's face and he lashes out, hitting the other on the jaw, throwing him to the ground and pinning him to it by the shoulders. 

"Give me your bloody money!" The growl that he hears hardly sounds like his own voice anymore. The man beneath him, is now considerably afraid. 

"Please, please I have a sister at home and… please… Take my money… Let me go..." 

What would Yixing think….?

Luhan jumps off the man, rolling away to the side, sitting with his head between his knees, sobs escaping him in gasps and shaking him to the core. 

"Hey… Uh…" Luhan doesn't want to look him in the eye. "You have a name?" 

"Luhan," he mumbles. "I don't want your money… I'm sorry…" He expects to be carted off to the cops or at least beaten back.

"I'm Kim Minseok. I'm guessing you want money, even if it isn't mine? I manage a law firm, you any good at accounts?" 

Luhan can scarcely believe his ears, placing a muddy hand in Minseok's ones and looking into his beaming face.

This a-way,

This a-way,

This a-way,

This a-way.

Lord I can't go back home,

This a-way,

Luhan slowly builds his life back up, working in the law firm Minseok manages, filled with a few lawyers, and some in training, the best of whom, Kim Jongdae, takes a liking to Luhan immediately. He spends his time between the office, and Minseok's spare room or the floor beside Jongdae's bed, in turn, until he has enough to pay for rent at a small one room apartment. 

"I'm going home!" Minseok exclaims, one Christmas. Luhan hasn't seen him this ecstatic in a while. Jongdae throws an arm over the other man's shoulder. 

"Good, then drinks on you tonight?" Strangely enough Minseok is happy enough to agree. 

"Aren't you going home Luhan? Someone must be waiting for you," Minseok asks, as they get ready to close office. 

Home.

Zhang Yixing. 

He hasn't had time to think of that name in four years, not since the day he met Minseok. He wonders if Yixing remembers him at all after all these years. 

Go Lu, I'll be here.

It's a strange feeling, to be lonely amongst the throngs of Christmas shoppers and couples, holding each other's arms, happy and bursting with exuberance. He has lived in the city for six years but never once called it home. He needs to go back to it. Even if it just for a while. Even if is just to see Yixing.

A hundred miles, 

A hundred miles,

A hundred miles,

A hundred miles.

You can hear the whistle blow

A hundred miles. 

"Zhang Yixing." 

"Luhan?" 

There's a wonder in Yixing's voice, and the confused look on his face as he freezes behind the counter at his diner, that makes Luhan's heart sink. Yixing never uses his full name. 

"Long time no see…" 

"Yeah." Yixing's face relaxes into a smile and Luhan breathes again. Yixing is still the same. Unchanged, beautiful, smiling… a hard lump forms in Luhan's throat.

"Xing, I—"

"XingXing, where do I put these boxes?" A loud, gravelly voice emerges from the storeroom, and the owner exist a few seconds later. He's a behemoth. Luhan is probably exaggerating but he wants to punch the perfect features of his face off.

"Leave them here, Yifan, and oh! This is Luhan, the childhood friend I told you about." 

Now Luhan wants to punch off the gummy grin on Yifan's face as he regards Luhan with a loud hello. 

Luhan feels stabbed when he sees Yixing lift himself up on his toes and kiss Yifan on the corner of his lips, earning him a wide, rather stupid grin, before leading Luhan out of the place. 

"So you two…" Luhan begins awkwardly. There's a clear flush on Yixing's face that has nothing to do with the beer in their hands as he nods. "Wow." It couldn't feel any less wow at the moment. He feels betrayed. Betrayed by himself for having believed that Yixing might wait all these years without a word from him.

"It's been a year now… you?" 

"Me?" Luhan thinks of Kim Jongin, then Oh Sehun and then the possibility of a faint crush on Minseok but nothing really feels real anymore. "No one…" 

"Oh." 

Luhan wants to be twenty against. He wants to run off the train and into Yixing's arms. He wants to kiss someone because he loves them. He wants to tell him he's been missed. He wants to hear he's been missed. He wants Yixing. He's several years too late. 

You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles.

He's finally home, beside Yixing, but he's never felt further away from it. 

You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A/N- thank you for reading :D

I swear I started it intending to be fluffy.... ._.