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There was a time, a time that lasted eight years or perhaps more, during which Yixing only saw Seoul in greyscale. His range of experiences narrow and his focus narrower, he woke up with a mental checklist for the day, another for the week, another for the month, and a last one for an unspecified time labeled ‘future’, and he went to bed typically having added to rather than subtracted from all of them. Staring at the photographs on Baidu now, though, looking at which to buy or maybe print or maybe order a giant mural of, all he sees is an abstract painting whose shapes only he can make out. They tell him you lived there you walked through there this was once your life and Yixing is as baffled as he is sad as he is relieved to have escaped the feeling of homesickness.
Beijing, on the other hand, is always in neon. It's not home except when it is. Somewhere along the line the suitcase weighing twenty point eight kilograms carried up the elevator to the hotel room became the backpack weighing five point five kilograms and the laptop bag weighing two that walk right along with him to his complex and through the door with his own keys. Now he can discover that the flip-flop he forgot with the yellow lettering that has faded from wear has actually been right by the bathroom door and the strap is full of bite marks from where Luobo decided it is his new plaything in his absence and not shrug and type an extra 'to buy' note on his phone.
So if Beijing is neon then it stands that whatever it is he’s doing with Lu Han also is, because this was his city long before it was Yixing’s. His colours bloomed and shone brighter than Yixing’s ever have. Lu Han once walked and the path was left purple and indigo and sky blue and gold. Yixing walked and the path had traces of burgundy if the light hit just right, which was fine, really, because what he was seeking to see shine was his creations far more than it was himself, and was fine, really, because at least he could see himself in the colour of the wine in his glass.
“Plan to stay for long?” Lu Han asks from where he’s seated across him, elbows on the filthier than it should be table in a corner of the city that Yixing wasn’t even aware existed prior to an hour ago. The window to his right is open but it might as well not be because the air outside is probably about ten percent worse to breathe than the air inside this- bar? Cafe? Hole in the wall that served and did not ask questions because Lu Han knew the owner from before, except the wall was on the third floor and he’s not even sure if they’re on the after now or the after-after. Maybe this was 2022 anno domini or the year of the water tiger or 5 after-after fame for Lu Han or 1 A.A.F. for him.
Yixing puts his phone down and wrinkles his nose. You know I won’t, he wants to say, but. Maybe he will. His last trip before this one was five days ago but the one before that was two months and that has to be some sort of record. “I think so,” he says slowly, as if testing the words. He has a few classes in person and a lot more online and he’s starting to regret signing up for more than one of those supposedly short courses because his mind is trying to figure out the calculation of coefficient of determination in the regression of Y on X2 when he thinks it should be remembering what his financial advisor last told him or what the budget report for Chromosome was or realising that there’s an implication that Lu Han actually cares for how long he’ll be there for in that sentence.
Lu Han’s eyes follow a line from the edge of his mouth across his smile line all the way up to his left eye. Yixing wonders what he sees. Probably a smudge from him not removing the eyeliner completely. With the end of winter approaching they both have opted to lay low, him doing his best to run a company and leave a company and tie up loose ends and Lu Han actually enjoying life. He looks like he wants to say something, but when he opens his mouth he starts talking about football and that is definitely not what put the expression on his face. Yixing wants to say something about that. Yixing lets it drop. They talk about everything except entertainment or the entertainment industry or music, although Yixing skirts around the topic a little by mentioning dancing competitions and the crews he works — worked, who knows when the next opportunity will arrive — with.
They restarted this, whatever this is, with the entrance of the new year. Yixing saw some ad of Lu Han while drunk off his ass and reminiscing because it was a day of celebration and sent a picture of it with an accompanying text that to this day refuses to reread and thinks included some metaphor about finger stains. A bad decision on all counts, his lack of tolerance for his liver for the calories for the way the fitness trainer would and did yell at him for agitating his already becoming-more-sensitive-by-the-day stomach for spending a day meant for work becoming good acquaintances with the toilet bowl, except for the fact that he actually got a response and they held a conversation after what felt like years. Was years. And it felt, feels—
Good.
For lack of a better word. In the middle of all the stress and the unknowns it feels good to have something familiar. The Lu Han of 2022 might not be familiar, and he bets the Yixing of 2022 is even less familiar to him, but they, Lu-Han-and-Yixing, are familiar. Sending stupid jokes is familiar. Avoiding talking about their professional lives like they’re happening to different selves is familiar. Sneaking around his mum to go kiss a boy that he’s not even sure he likes is familiar, too, because no matter how old he grows his emotional and social life stay put around his teenage years, apparently.
“Should we head out?” He asks. Lu Han’s mouth quirks and scans the code for both of them. The glasses remain mostly untouched on the table and for a moment Yixing feels a pang of regret for not having downed the wine.
Lu Han isn’t there when his contract with SM ends. He doesn’t call or text and Yixing stares at his personal phone for half-minute stretches several times that day but doesn’t try to be the one to reach out either. He wonders if Lu Han even remembers.
It’s fine. Yixing has a lot to do as always and a song to release and half of the whiteboard that serves as the weekly schedule on his wall is just taken up by ‘wait for reactions’ and he’s lost his lilac beanie, all of which are more important and pressing matters than an ex friend. An ex almost-partner. An ex… Something.
For someone as borderline unhealthily into love as he knows himself to be, he sure is completely shit at figuring out just what kind of love it is that he felt. Feels, present tense. It takes him approximately three hours and twenty seven minutes for buried affection to resurface, he knows from experience.
He remembers the second time they had met up. It was at a club and Yixing had, for once, gone unattended, and had learned that no matter which variable he changes in the equation what he finds on the other side is himself feeling strange and awkward and alternating between coming off too strong or standing in some place that’s not quite the complete-loner corner but isn’t among the loose-limbed and tight-lipped either.
Lu Han had been and still is among them, brighter than the flashing lights. Of course he was.
He found him in the bathroom afterwards. Yixing had barely exited the stall and started rinsing his mouth when Lu Han had entered, shot a look at him, then at the still open door of the stall, then back at him but pointed this time. Grabbed his wrist and after a second of digging in his pockets placed a small, travel sized bottle of mouthwash on his palm.
Warmth sadness disappointment shock had filled Yixing in equal measures. “Thanks,” he’d croaked, not sure why he had been surprised. Lu Han had been there for his first too-soon-but-oopsie-errosion veneer replacement, after all. The disappointment, at least, he’d known had both been directed at Lu Han for seeing him the same way he had been when they were in their early twenties in a foreign country and at himself for actually being as he had been when they were both in their early twenties in a foreign country.
“If you want to make it up to me for making my back pocket bulge unattractively carrying that around, you can,” Lu Han had said cheerfully, turning the pointed look back to the stall.
Yixing had followed, a newborn barely-standing animal always as far as Lu Han was concerned.
Halfway through a guy could be heard pissing at the stall next to them and Yixing had known his own expression hearing that was as pinched as Lu Han seemed fine. He hadn’t even acknowledged it.
‘What the fuck,’ he’d mouthed, because oh, heavens, was this part of the sapidity of the whole thing? Did Lu Han think it added flavour? Yixing had stared. Then stared some more.
Somehow the only thing he could focus on past that was the fact that he’d heard the sound of flushing and the door opening but not the tap running. Unhygienic on top of everything else. What the fuck.
Neither the car nor the hotel are as old as the bar. The room is spacious and the bed is huge and the jacuzzi is right next to a floor-to-ceiling window. He can’t tell if the choice of establishment was for him or for Lu Han himself.
Lu Han staring at him from the corner of his eye, he thinks, answers that question.
“It’s pretty,” Yixing says, after he’s inspected everything.
“What, are you into interior decoration now?”
He brightens. “A little, actually. Moving was hard work.”
Lu Han is moving towards him now, slowly backing him up. “Does it count as moving if there are no things to be moved?”
“There were plenty,” Yixing replies, half breathless and half anxious. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to this. “At least seven things. Maybe even ten. And you’re not allowed to distract me, you started this conversation, Lu-ge. Now you have to sit through me explaining how I chose my blankets to match the curtains-”
“Because it’s the first thing you had to do all by yourself since forever?” Lu Han grins.
It’s not mean. Not said meanly, at least. He’s right. That was a big part of why Yixing felt so accomplished at the final product, beyond finally having a place that is his and his alone from which only he can leave and not the reverse because inanimate objects and inanimate walls can’t help but stay stagnant. He had done that all on his own. He managed to get back some responsibility. It will never not be a sobering thought, how much this lifestyle coddles them.
Or coddled, maybe.
“I’m frowning at you,” Yixing says.
Lu Han laughs as he succeeds in pushing Yixing far back enough for his calves to hit the — not very high from the ground, come to think of it — bedframe. “Where? The top half of your face can barely move. Was the botox recent?” He asks, climbing on top, knees on each side of Yixing’s hips.
“Two weeks ago. And I know. That’s why I’m telling you I’m frowning at you.” He touches the outer corner of Lu Han’s eye, where the skin is all bunched up from the smile. “When was your last time?”
“Long time ago.” Lu Han rolls his hips down, and suddenly it feels like he’s not talking about muscle paralysing injections anymore. His lips trace the same mouth-nasolabial line-eye corner path his eyes did before.
Huh. That’s new. A giggle escapes. “Thought you were supposed to be the one who’s got game between the two of us.”
Lu Han looks at him like a screw got loose, hand on his fly. “I’ve spent the past cultivating the perfect settling down boyfriend image. I’m not supposed to have game.”
You also spend a lot of time clubbing and in VVVVIP rooms, Yixing thinks but doesn’t say, because one just doesn’t admit to actually looking at what paparazzi catch and his professional network barely overlaps with Lu Han’s and it will be obvious he’s not nudge-nudge inside-the-celebrity-life laughing as much as he’s casually gossiping and perhaps also casually judging a little bit.
They don’t talk much after that. Yixing wants to think it’s because they don’t need to, and if he were as few as three years younger he’d believe it. It’s harder to maintain the illusion that he himself crafted in his mind as the time goes by.
It’s not just Lu Han’s silence that hurts on the faithful final exit day, but it’s the only one whose sting distracts him. The other wounds aren’t older, exactly, but they’re scabbed over except for one tiny part that just keeps bleeding and bleeding endlessly and marks a myriad of X spots on his skin for the bloodhounds to find, whereas this one is reopened and raw and throbs with his every breath.
He wants to get on a plane and land in some city and enter the first psychologist office he can find where he can be sure nothing will be leaked from. That’s progress, probably. He wants even more to call his doctor and say oh my back hurts so much I can barely move would you mind being the one doing the injection? It would hardly even be a lie.
Yixing misses them, the rest of his ex friends ex almost-somethings in the vague sense, but also the very concrete one. He misses them and also misses Lu Han and they don’t miss him. It would be funny, he thinks, if this was slapstick comedy and he was the current butt of the joke, it would at least bring joy to others.
Yixing misses them. They don’t miss him. It’s just another fact of life that he's accepted long ago like the sun rises in the east and the sky is full of stars. There are a few workbooks for analysing his thoughts on his desk.
One of his staff members walks in with a rather large glass of iced coffee that he’s meant to be avoiding and Yixing says thanks and doesn’t move his hand at all until the staff member smiles and exits back out and his gel pen leaves a dark splotch of ink on the page.
The clock reads 23:47, the day is almost over. First day of the rest of his life. He can do anything and everything and it all rests on his own shoulders and he has waited for this for far too long and the path that’s drawing itself in the sand in front of him is movable and uncertain and Yixing can be sure of one thing: he will continue to miss them.
Lu Han calls a few days later when Yixing is in the middle practicing the same dance moves for the hundredth time. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Sorry I didn’t call, man, life’s been hectic-” — Yixing snorts — “It has, shut up. I’ve been a full time dog walker.”
“A very important job,” Yixing nods. “Why are you calling now?”
A beat of silence. “Well.” A second beat. “Well, uhm. What are you wearing?”
Yixing waits for a third beat. When no punchline comes, he just says, “no.” And hangs up.
It’s unlike him to be flippant. He wishes he could say it was self-respect that drove his refusal, but he just doesn’t want to say I’m not good with words and I’ve never done this before. Make it awkward and ruin it.
Another month passes in a blink and all he has to show for it is— Actually, he has quite a lot to show for it, if one were to look in on his business. As a musician, as an artist, though, all he’s done is a few flights to Haikou.
He dreams of big white empty spaces. In the middle a bright red box that is a little taller than him. In the event of a failed career, it says, break glass. He can’t see anything on the other side past his own reflection.
As a rule, Yixing avoids dwelling on the past. Too many things to do and too many things to plan and even more things to do, thinking of the has beens eats up his time and his mind. Yet the meetings with Lu Han are based on just that, the past, a loop of the part of him that desires so badly to recreate whatever magic they held in their hands and between them over a decade ago.
Tonight, in an apartment Lu Han’s family owned, Lu Han throws a controller at his head as a greeting.
“Warn a guy,” Yixing says, even though the movement was too slow for him to not have seen.
“Yeah, yeah.” Lu Han grins. “I hope you enjoy being a loser.”
Yixing drinks him in, can’t not do that. Some of the skin on his face is punctuated by light freckles, suggesting he’s been seeing way more sun lately than Yixing has, perhaps even without the amount of foundation typically needed to appear anywhere near a camera. There are times when he hates how easily the word pretty fits Lu Han, even so many years of bad decisions down the line. It’s not a hatred born from envy, Yixing doesn’t think. He does not know what it is born from.
I do enjoy being a loser, he registers distantly.
They play. It’s not one of the newest games, even someone not keeping up with all the latest developments like Yixing can see that, but the buttons are easy to push. He hasn’t touched a controller in ages. He never quite got over his enjoyment of mobile games. He loves this.
Lu Han knows all that and this, here, the ease with which he can sit on a couch that’s not his in a place he’s not familiar with in a city that is and will always be Lu Han’s- it’s why he stays in the past willingly. The air almost pulses with the decade-old magic in his mind.
Yixing wins five of the seven rounds they go. The grin stays on his face long enough to hurt a little.
He texts Lu Han a congratulations and a how have you been when the corner of his eye catches that Manchester United won a game. His mother is next to him, going over papers and numbers that his accountant has sent them. A lot of goals do not seem to be getting met. “No phones on the table, pay attention,” she snaps.
He almost opens his mouth to tell her it’s Lu Han — he remembers her, so many years ago, when he’d asked her opinion of him, saying oh, Lu Han? So sweet, good manners, really, and he remembers her telling him to just cut him off, ignore him, you can’t keep doing this, after the third time a public extension of an olive branch went ignored, her wanting to be his rock, him feeling too old for it — and closes it again.
“Sorry,” Yixing says, and puts the phone under his seat.
It pings a few times, later. It takes a lot more than he’s willing to admit from him to not check it.
When he does, it’s two screens worth of a non-answer. Lu Han embodies half of what makes Yixing perceive himself as never-a-proper-celebrity — the ease with which he treats every interaction as an interview, vague answers meant to keep the attention, keep a spark of wonder running through the whole conversation, keep him in the spotlight. It should be jarring at best, aggravating at worst. Instead, a small part of the stress of the day the month the year seeps away.
How Yixing misses being with the same people nearly twenty four hours per day. When you spent that much time in each other’s pockets there were no words needed.
They don’t talk for a week, and then Lu Han sends him a list of some of his contacts. Directors, mostly, but videographers and artists and two music producers too. Yixing smiles.
His passion lies in music. His best way to express himself lies in music, too. Inner thoughts externalised in notes, any bewilderment it causes left for once for others and not him to puzzle through. It allows him to divest himself of order, partially of reason, of the expectations of others around him; but, beyond that, it accepts his resolve. Yixing doesn’t regret everything else he’s taken on, not for a moment, but he wishes he could split himself into two and four and eight and ten. Apply all that is and isn’t into creation until he can insert himself into his own eternity instead of drifting along everyone else’s.
Lu Han doesn’t get that, not fully, but he tried all those years ago, and, well. Tries still, evidently. Yixing’s fingers lie motionless on the desk. The unfairness of his view of Lu Han and of 2022 Yixing-and-Lu-Han is upsettingly muted but it’s there, heading towards him, train on the tracks. Through the stained glass of his admiration he envisioned Lu Han as just moving, breathing, existing for enjoyment and not much else.
But here the list was, proof of living. Proof of a taste cultivated through years as much as the satin bindings over the raw edges of tablecloths in his place were. As much as proof of industry standing. It’s easy to see Lu Han and not see Lu Han, not fully, not really. Easy to forget that, on some level, he cares as much as Yixing does.
Easy, too, to see this as the push it is for him to get back in the swing of things as a person in front of the camera instead of the backseat looking at numbers.
Is this you trying to say goodbye? He texts.
The reply is almost instantaneous: Not forever.
Not for so long this time, Yixing translates. I expect to see you during awards season.
;-), he gets back.
It is outright and silent. It is enough.