“I’m sorry. What I said was completely uncalled for and I didn’t mean it,” Junmyeon said, lying through his teeth. The carefree, peace sign bearing 18-year-old Yixing blu-tacked to the large mirror in his ensuite didn’t seem convinced either. He took a deep breath and tried again. “I’m sorry I was such an . I shouldn’t have let my emotions get the best of me and said things that I didn’t really… I mean, I might have meant what I said but I didn’t word it very nicely. I mean, I don’t think you’re a- , what am I saying?” Junmyeon gripped onto the edge of the vanity and sighed, hanging his head low.

How many hours had he spent trying to reflect and repent? The sun had probably set behind the closed door of the ensuite and he couldn’t help feeling a niggling worry about Yixing’s whereabouts and what he was doing and who he was with and if that person was treating him well and- . The long, cold shower he just took had done nothing to alleviate the lingering instant regret he had been feeling since his mini outburst. His impromptu decision to walk home from god knows where probably didn’t do him any favours either and only made him exhausted on top of everything, and now he had frustration to add to the list of emotions he wished he didn’t feel. But problems wouldn’t solve themselves. Taking another deep breath, he started, “I’m really sor-”

Junmyeon paused when he heard a muffled voice calling his name. Unless he was imagining things, that voice sounded like the last person he wanted walking into his room. He slid the ensuite door open and started to rush out only to immediately come to a halt, biting back a curse when he stubbed his toe on the doorframe.

“Are you in here?” Yixing asked, peeking around the door. He glanced around for a second, probably wondering why the room was dark, before pushing the door all the way open when he caught sight of Junmyeon crouched down in front of the ensuite, cradling his foot. “What are you doing on the floor?”

“I stubbed my toe,” Junmyeon said, briefly doing a mental assessment of the situation despite the throbbing pain in his toe. As long as Yixing didn’t switch on the lights or look at the wall to his left, his secret shrine would still well and truly be a secret.

“Why are you sitting in the dark anyway?” Yixing felt along that dreaded wall to find the light switch.

“Do you mind waiting outside?” Junmyeon said quickly, straightening up to try to do an awkward brisk limp towards Yixing.

“Found it,” Yixing said, flicking the switch. Junmyeon could swear that time froze when the lights came on and Yixing’s gaze fell on the most glaring part of the room. Apparently time returned in waves, reaching Yixing first as he went through a shuffling deck of emotions, from surprise to confusion to doubt to suspicion to distaste, and that progression was obviously not going well by the time Junmyeon got over his shock, or rather, horror.

“I can explain,” Junmyeon said, feeling his heart going from cardiac arrest to gauge breaking speed in a millisecond as he resumed his limping marathon. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the shrine made him look like a crazed stalker ex at best. Unbrushed hair and a bleeding toe probably didn’t help his case much either.

Yixing turned to look at him. I’d love to see you try was probably what that look meant, but all Yixing said was, “I should go,” obviously forgetting what he came to do.

Junmyeon took hold of his arm and repeated, “I can explain.” He had no idea how he could explain, but maybe his brain cells would conjure something up if he repeated it enough times. The last thing he wanted was to let Yixing leave with newfound notions of him that were certainly far from favourable. “Well, this is… it’s… I mean…”

“You need therapy.”

“This is my therapy,” Junmyeon said, latching onto that explanation. What was it that had driven him to maintain that shrine? It started as an admittedly unhealthy way to deal with heartbreak, to keep moping for years while not doing anything about it, but why was it still there? Had he moved on to an even unhealthier way of dealing with heartbreak? Was it unhealthy to even still be experiencing heartbreak after all these years?

“Are those…?” Yixing trailed off and walked over to the study desk in the room to pick out two boxes clumsily wrapped with gaudy dollar store wrapping paper from the pile of professionally wrapped gifts. “You didn’t even open them.”

“The packages mean more than what’s in them.”

“They were expensive too,” Yixing mumbled, placing his Valentine’s Day and birthday gifts for Junmyeon from when they were in second year back on the desk before picking up one of the other gifts and reading the card on it. “‘Dear Yixing, happy fiftieth birthday. Love, Junmyeon.’ Are you for real?”

“I bought those when we were still together,” Junmyeon said, sitting himself down on the foot of his bed to let his injured toe rest. “I like giving gifts.”

Yixing’s expression hardened. “I know that.”

“I like giving you gifts,” Junmyeon quickly corrected.

“‘You’ meaning the world population.”

“No, just, you know, friends and acquaintances.”

“And everybody gets the same thing,” Yixing added, giving the framed photo of himself with a bouquet of purple roses on the wall a glance before looking away, obviously repulsed.

“They’re just flowers.”

Yixing tossed his fiftieth birthday gift back onto the pile before turning around to face Junmyeon and resting his weight against the edge of the desk. “Yeah, I know that too.”

“I mean it’s the thought behind it that counts. They mean different things when I give them to different people.”

“So what does it mean when you give those purple roses to that ?”

Junmyeon hesitated. “Who are you talking about?”

“The who gouged my cheeks out. Do the roses mean ‘I’m in a pseudo open relationship so let’s find a bathroom – a disabled one at that – and get busy’?”

“Wait, what?”

“Why do you think I dumped you?”

“Because you thought I was cheating on you by letting some of the Rainbow Alliance girls get handsy with me?” Junmyeon guessed. He never received an explanation, only a smack in the face with a freshly bought spinach and feta roll and an abrupt ‘it’s over.’ Only then did it struck him that they had never had a proper talk about this other than the occasional brief exchanges. That was probably his own doing, skirting around their past relationship in an effort to start over with a clean slate. All he had managed to gather over the years was that the Rainbow Alliance, girls, socialising, and lack of PDAs were all bad ideas.

“No, because you slept with that . After we left the Rainbow Alliance, after she gouged my cheeks out, after you swore that you’d have nothing to do with that lot again, especially her.”

“Wait,” Junmyeon said, confused. “I never slept with her. She doesn’t even like men in that way.”

“I saw you two,” Yixing insisted. “Sauntering into that disabled bathroom on the corner of the building beside the courtyard like it was your god given right.”

“I was probably helping her fix her dress or something. Nobody uses that bathroom anyway.”

“Fix her dress?”

“Yes, I help her out with little things like that every once in a while.”

“After you swore that you’d have nothing to do with that lot again,” Yixing repeated pointedly.

Junmyeon shifted uncomfortably on the bed. “I can’t cut off all ties with people just because of one petty fight.”

“It wasn’t a petty fight. That fake obviously had some kind of agenda throwing herself at you right in front of me.”

“She wasn’t throwing herself at me. That whole fight wouldn’t have happened if you handled things better.”

“Of course it’s all my fault. It’s not like she clawed my face first.”

“It was just a scratch, and you called her names first.”

Yixing frowned. “What do you get from defending her?”

“I've been telling her the same thing. Neither of you handled that situation well and now you’re both still ing about each other even though you haven’t met in years. I don’t even know what the issue is between you two.”

“She’s a sneaky, thieving . That’s the issue.”

Junmyeon sighed, deciding to just let that statement pass. “Did you really dump me because of an odd preconception about public bathrooms?”

“What else was I supposed to think?” Yixing snapped.

“I mean did you dump me because you thought I slept with her?” Junmyeon quickly rephrased. “Which I didn’t.”

“Among other things.”

“Like what?”

Yixing hesitated before pushing the clutter of gifts on the desk aside to clear enough space to sit on, apparently preparing himself for a long conversation. “Where do I even start?”

“What didn’t you like about me?”

“What did I like?”

“I’m sorry,” Junmyeon mumbled, unsure what he was apologising for.

“Nobody’s ever made me feel so inadequate, so defective that I wished I was everything I wasn’t.”

Junmyeon waited for an elaboration, but none came. “Why would you feel that way?”

Yixing leaned back, resting his palms on the desk. “Because I’m a man and apparently that’s a problem.”

“But it’s not.”

“You thought it was necessary to point it out every chance you had.”

“Well, I used to tell you I love you even though you’re a man not because I didn’t like it, but because I was trying to come to terms with it myself. Everything told me that I shouldn’t be attracted to you, but I was.”

“What about hand holding? All I have to do is slip my hand in yours and you’ll start ranting off a spiel about how we’re both men and men don’t hold hands and yadda yadda.”

“What if some steroid-fed, knife-wielding homophobe saw us and decided to do something about it?”

Yixing frowned. “I’ve never come across a steroid-fed, knife-wielding homophobe.”

“You never know.”

“It wasn’t just in public either. It’s like we had a no touch policy.”

“But we were always in public.”

“Yeah, and what was that about? It’s not like we live on opposite sides of the country.”

“Well, that’s-” Junmyeon hesitated. It didn’t matter how much he tried to skirt around it, everything boiled down to his discomfort of being with a man in the end. “I wouldn’t know what to do if it was just us.”

Yixing seemed to give that some thought, before giving a soft sigh. “What do you want?”

Junmyeon looked at him. “Sorry, what?”

“What do you want? If I was stupid enough to go back to you, what then? I’ll still be a man and you’ll still have no idea what to do with me.”

“But I know what it’s like to lose you now so I’ll put you before myself.”

“So it’ll be a completely one-sided relationship.”

“Getting you back is all I can ask for. I don’t need anything more than that.” Sounding clichéd was the last thing on Junmyeon’s mind, as long as he could get his point across. He didn’t realise how much he needed this; just to sit down and talk to Yixing without anyone else butting in or bitterness-unleashing alcohol in his system.

Yixing simply shook his head in response and slid off the desk. “Anyway, I came here to tell you that I found a house and apparently there was a mix up somewhere so they want me to move in straightaway.”

“I’ll help you move.”

“No, I’ll get Jongin to help me,” Yixing said, giving the shrine on the wall an uncomfortable look as he walked past it towards the door. “I think he went back to get changed or something.”

“I’ll help you carry your things downstairs,” Junmyeon offered, getting off the bed and following Yixing, favouring his injured toe even though the throbbing pain was gone.

Yixing picked up the duffel bag left in front of the room he had stayed in, and hesitated before carrying the backpack as well. “You should probably get rid of the stuff on your wall.”

“I tried,” Junmyeon said, taking hold of the remaining suitcase. “It felt like cutting off a limb.”

Yixing glanced at him before carrying the backpack and duffel bag down the stairs without saying anything.

“Do you remember that movie we watched about the guy who stalked his childhood friend?” Junmyeon asked, following after Yixing with the suitcase in tow.

“He wasn’t stalking her. He wanted to reconnect with her.”

“Do you remember what you told me after we saw that movie?”

“What?”

“You told me that if we lose contact after graduation and ten years later I rock up to your house and tell you that I’ve been stalking you all along because quote I love you unquote, you’ll marry me.”

Yixing seemed to think that over as he walked towards the front door, before coming to a stop and turning around to face Junmyeon. “Then let’s see what happens in ten years.”

a/n: I decided to skip a redundant chapter to move this along so this will end with 35 chapters and a possible epilogue if there are any unanswered questions left after the final chapters. I'm really sorry for the few and far between updates ;; I'll probably come back and edit most of the chapters when I'm not as busy like I did with A Second Existence but for now my main focus is to just get the chapters out so I'm sorry if there are any typos, choppy parts, etc ;;;