Chapter Text
As promised, Xiao Zhan does message Yibo after his birthday dinner, but it's a polite sort of texting, with Xiao Zhan thanking him graciously for the gift he’d given him, and asking him how he’s doing.
Yibo doesn't know if he's just imagining it, the feeling that he’s intruding when he replies and replies, like he's stretching their interactions out beyond what Xiao Zhan wants, the virtual version of lingering too long in his doorway at the end of a visit.
The last time he saw Xiao Zhan, he’d just gotten a message from his boyfriend — his ex-boyfriend, Yibo recalls with satisfaction — wanting to “talk.” He'd probably wanted to try to convince Xiao Zhan to give him another chance. Surely Xiao Zhan wouldn’t have given in; he’d been the one to end things, and hadn’t he said he felt relieved to be free?
But Yibo also remembers how sad Xiao Zhan had been, pained by the end of something that had meant so much to him for so many years, and it suddenly doesn’t seem so implausible that they could have worked things out.
After all, if Xiao Zhan had really been certain that he’d made the right decision in ending their relationship, why would he take his call at all? So maybe that’s where Xiao Zhan’s DiDi took him that night — to his ex, who, if he’s not a moron, begged Xiao Zhan to take him back. And now they’re together again. That, Yibo decides, is why Xiao Zhan has seemed so distant, so slow to respond to Yibo’s texts.
He imagines Xiao Zhan lying in his boyfriend’s arms, a content smile on those beautiful lips of his. This must be why he doesn’t have the time for idle texting with Yibo anymore. He doesn’t need to talk to Yibo if he’s happily back together with his boyfriend.
“Yibo-yah,” Yixuan calls out, snapping his fingers in his face. “Are you listening?”
“Mn?”
“I asked you a question. I’m not one of your clients, I actually want a response.”
“Okay,” Yibo says flatly.
“Never mind,” Yixuan grumbles. “What's wrong with you, anyway?” When Yibo doesn’t answer, Yixuan‘s eyes go to Yibo’s phone, silent and face-down next to him on the dining room table. “Oh.”
Yibo picks up his bowl and shoves noodles into his mouth until his cheeks bulge.
“So what happened?” Yixuan sighs.
Yibo shrugs, chewing slowly and deliberately, in no hurry to have to talk about his inconvenient feelings about Xiao Zhan.
“He’s still with the shitty boyfriend?”
Yibo shrugs again. Then, when it’s clear that Yixuan is going to wait as long as he needs to get an answer, Yibo swallows his food and washes it down with a swig of beer. “I think - I think I missed my chance.”
“Oh?” Yixuan’s eyes widen with interest. “There was actually a chance?”
“Yeah,” Yibo mumbles. “Last I saw him. He’d broken up with the jerk, and I was trying to be a good friend and just listen. That - that was what Zhan-ge wanted. So I didn’t say anything, about… you know, and,” he gives a great sigh, “and then - and then the guy… He said he wanted to, you know, talk. And so—”
Yixuan hums sympathetically over Yibo's word salad. “Ah. They got back together, then?”
“I - I guess?”
“You don’t know?”
“I assume he did.” Yibo shakes his head sadly as he picks at the rest of his dinner. “Zhan-ge only needs me when things are bad with the boyfriend. It’s why he hired Tracer85 in the first place, the only reason I was ever in his life. Why - why he was even talking to me—“
“Yibo, you know that’s not—“
“Yeah, well— Now - now that he’s not really texting me as much,” Yibo says, his breath starting to heave uncomfortably in his chest, “things have to be go-going great, right?”
Yixuan gapes at Yibo. “Is that how you want to leave it? With an assumption? You don’t want to know for sure?”
“Ge,” Yibo grimaces, “what am I supposed to do?”
“Ask! Otherwise, won’t you always wonder?”
“Ask what? Ask him if he’ll leave his boyfriend for me? The guy he hired to shut up and listen to him talk about his crappy boyfriend?” Yibo drops his head to the table with a groan. What are the chances that gorgeous, accomplished Xiao Zhan, a man with a real job, would fall for Yibo, a guy who doesn’t own a proper suit, someone who literally gets paid to do nothing? It sounds utterly ridiculous when Yibo stops to think about it.
But Yixuan isn’t letting him off the hook. He’s clearly watched too many K-dramas, the Cinderella fairy tales where the good-hearted hero always wins the day. Yibo, though, knows from the stories he hears from his clients that such happy endings are rare.
“Yibo,” Yixuan prods, “at least ask what happened, whether they got back together! Don’t you want to know?”
“And what if he says they did?” Yibo mumbles morosely into the table.
“Then you’ll know!” Yixuan snaps, throwing a balled-up napkin at Yibo in exasperation. “And then you can do what you always do, just walk away, happy to be free of any lingering connection with anyone!”
Yibo sits up and glares at Yixuan. “I don’t—”
Yixuan raises an eyebrow and stares right back.
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Yibo sighs. “Fine.”
But every time Yibo picks up his phone, he finds he can’t bring himself to ask the question. He's not sure he wants to get a firm answer, to hear, once and for all, that whatever they had, whatever role Yibo might have filled in Xiao Zhan's life, is now over.
Instead, Yibo greedily hoards the friendly messages that Xiao Zhan sends from time to time, hoping that, one day, they’ll just start texting as they did before, that they can simply pick up where they'd left off without the whole uncomfortable discussion of what Yibo is to him: A friend? Maybe more? Or just Tracer85, the Rental-Ge?
As the days pass, though, Yibo has to admit that, this time, his strategy of doing nothing is getting him nowhere. And because it's been so long since they've done more than send dumb memes and bland greetings, he can't even invent a good pretext for asking how Xiao Zhan really is.
He writes and rewrites a message to Xiao Zhan, trying and failing miserably to feign nonchalance, a casual and not-at-all-suspicious interest in Xiao Zhan’s love life. In the end, after a couple of beers with Wenhan one night, he retreats to his room, taps out a hasty message, and hits “send” before he can chicken out.
Yibo cringes at the sight of his own message, at the stink of desperation that it gives off. Why did I do that? He’s about to turn off his phone and hide under the covers in his bed when he sees that Xiao Zhan is typing a response.
Yibo lets out a squeal, then bites down on his lower lip as he stares at his screen, trying to calm his hopeful heart. He didn’t take him back. He didn't take him back. Before he can overthink it, he sends:
Yibo startles when his phone rings in his hand. It’d been so long since Xiao Zhan had told him anything of consequence, he’d mostly expected him to say that it wasn’t a good time, or just insist everything was fine. He’s even more surprised when Xiao Zhan appears on his screen. He'll never get used to how effortlessly handsome he is.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Yibo demands, getting right to the point because he doesn't want to waste another moment on small talk.
“About Jingjing?” Xiao Zhan blows out a long breath. “Ah, I just felt that, well, now that we’re friends, it would be such an imposition to dump all my messy drama on you.”
“Zhan-ge—!”
“No, really! I mean, the reason I hired Tracer in the first place was because I didn't want to burden my friends with it, so—” He trails off, chewing apologetically on a lip and looking unfairly attractive in the process.
Yibo grits his teeth, then swallows down the frustration he feels at being caught in this strange purgatory: close enough for Xiao Zhan to care about his feelings, but still too far away to share in the things that truly matter.
“I’m glad you count me as a friend,” he says carefully, “but not if that means you aren’t going to talk to me about the things that are important to you.”
“No one wants to listen to me whine.”
“I do. I did!”
Xiao Zhan barks out a laugh. “Yibo, I literally paid you to.”
Yibo scoffs loudly at this, then sits back against his headboard to settle into their conversation. “Do you know how many people want to pay me to listen to them talk? I don’t accept everyone’s request, and I don’t take repeat bookings, but I made an exception to the rule for you. People complain about my policy all the time, but for you—”
“Your policy?” Xiao Zhan interrupts. “But you told me that was a company rule that I wasn’t supposed to be able to book you again!”
“What company?” Yibo wheezes, “I’m my own boss. I decide my own rules!” Yibo stops and looks as seriously as he can into his phone. “My decision. And I decided I wanted to listen to you. To be there as often as you needed.”
Xiao Zhan frowns into the phone, but his eyes are twinkling. “Yibo,” Xiao Zhan huffs. He might be trying to look stern, but it’s coming off as adorable, and Yibo already knows he’s going to push back on whatever lame excuse Xiao Zhan gives him. “I just hate to—”
“I know, I know, you don’t want to be a burden, I get it. So how about this: you could pay me again,” Yibo smirks. Then, more seriously: “Or… if - if you don’t want to talk to me, I guess you could talk to Tracer.”
Xiao Zhan is quiet for a moment. “No. You’re - you’re Yibo to me now. I don’t think I could see you as Tracer anymore. It - it would feel weird to talk to you and have you stare back at me and not say anything. It would bother me now. It’d feel… cold?”
Yibo gives him a pleased chuckle in reply. “I don’t think I can keep a poker face around you anymore anyway. But I would still just listen, if that’s what you needed. So — talk to me?”
“Yibo—”
Xiao Zhan stares at him, resolute. Maybe he really doesn’t want to share what he has on his mind about his ex, but they’re talking again, and Yibo wants to keep him talking, no matter what the subject.
Yibo cocks his head and looks into his phone. “Listen, would you turn away a friend in need? Who needed to talk something through?”
“Of course not.”
“S-so if,” Yibo says, “hypothetically, I needed a friend to talk to—”
“Then I would be there for you,” Xiao Zhan says firmly. He pauses and studies Yibo’s face through the screen. “Wait,” he says, “Is this a hypothetical, or do you actually need to talk about something?”
Yibo hesitates.
“Yibo.”
“You’d - you’d really want to listen to me?”
“I would.”
“You’d be my Rental-Ge?” Yibo grins.
Xiao Zhan laughs, and the sound of it blooms warm and happy in Yibo’s chest. He’s missed this. “If that’s what you need, then sure. You can call me… Daytoy.”
Yibo raises a curious eyebrow. “Daytoy?”
“Don’t ask. Just go with it.”
“Okay… Daytoy. I think I need some of my own medicine. Someone who will listen to me. You seem like the kind of guy who can do that for me.”
Xiao Zhan nods seriously, then looks through the screen with the faux-sincere look of a celebrity selling a product in an ad. “I can offer you a free, no-obligation initial consultation. Our specialists are standing by to take your call,” he deadpans before his face breaks into a wide, laughing smile. “Seriously, how do we do this? I don’t have an app, so just tell me. Do you want to meet at a restaurant? I - I can meet for lunch tomorrow if that works for you.”
Yibo tries to steady his breath, his pulse suddenly loud in his ears. They’re doing this. Meeting up. He thinks fast.
“Okay,” he says. “I’ve got a place in mind. I’ll text you the location.”
Yibo gets out of his DiDi at the gate of the park he’s chosen and he feels positively giddy at the sight of the tall and handsome man waiting for him. He checks his watch. By habit, he’s ten minutes early, and Xiao Zhan has still beaten him there.
“You’re - you’re early. Did I keep you waiting long?”
“Not at all. Isn’t this part of my job as the Rental-Ge?” Xiao Zhan winks, and Yibo just knows he’s blushing like a schoolgirl. “Show me the way,” Xiao Zhan says, sweeping his hand in an arc before him to let Yibo pass.
Yibo had considered asking Xiao Zhan to meet him at a restaurant, but when he tried to pick one, they ran together in his mind, all the places he’s been to with his countless clients. The places that stood out for him (besides the ones he’d visited with Xiao Zhan) had been outdoors, in the solemn quiet of a memorial, at a scenic lookout, at the edge of a sparkling pond. Any time spent with Xiao Zhan would be memorable, but there was something about being out in nature with him, just the two of them, that appealed to Yibo.
As they walk, Xiao Zhan doesn’t pressure Yibo with small talk or questions, and when Yibo peeks up at his face, he has a serene, untroubled look about him. If he’s impatient to know what Yibo has to say, he doesn’t show it. Yibo breathes out the butterflies in his stomach, and relaxes as they stroll in comfortable silence along a wooded path, enjoying the sounds of the birds and the rustling trees.
No matter what comes of their meeting today, at least there’s this moment of beauty as they walk together. It’s something that Yibo hopes they will remember fondly someday, or, if it all goes badly, that he can relive whenever he comes back to nurse his heartache.
Eventually they reach a small grassy clearing. A wordless agreement passes between them and Yibo stops and sits cross-legged in the shade. Xiao Zhan drops to the ground beside him and stretches his impossibly long legs out in the grass. He leans back on his arms and lets out a contented sigh. Yibo tries not to stare, but it’s hard to take his eyes off of him, the lean lines of his body, his handsome profile. Yibo swallows uncomfortably. His mouth is so dry.
“Oh this place is so lovely,” Xiao Zhan says as he looks around. He pauses and asks quietly, “Did someone break your heart here?”
Not yet, Yibo thinks to himself as he shrugs enigmatically to Xiao Zhan, who gives him a soft smile in return.
“So what did you want to talk about, Yibo?” Xiao Zhan asks, then immediately claps a hand over his own mouth. “Ah, I’m doing this wrong! I shouldn’t be asking you questions at all!” He scrambles to sit upright, mirroring Yibo’s position, and gestures grandly towards Yibo to give him the space to talk.
Yibo clears his throat. “Hm,” he starts, unsure of where to begin. “So. I’ve - I’ve met someone,” he says. “Unexpectedly. And I don’t know what I should do.”
Xiao Zhan’s pretty eyes widen and for a moment it looks like he might say something, but instead he purses his lips thoughtfully and nods.
“This person is so beautiful inside and out but doesn’t seem to know it.” Yibo darts his eyes around the grassy field as he talks, finding it difficult to look Xiao Zhan in the eye, to meet the attentive gaze he pins on Yibo. “And - and I think about him all the time,” Yibo stammers, picking absently at the blades of grass under his knees. “I’m sorry,” he says with an awkward laugh, “it’s really too embarrassing.”
Xiao Zhan doesn’t say anything and continues to look at Yibo, a placid smile plastered on his face as he listens.
Yibo’s heart hammers in his chest as he goes on. “He’s so talented and kind and deserves so much. But I - I don’t know if - if he feels the same way about me,” he says, then fidgets nervously as he studies Xiao Zhan’s expression, the way his smile looks more and more stiff and strained the longer Yibo talks.
“And I - I think I might be — I might be… in love. With - with him.”
Xiao Zhan’s smile freezes and then slides entirely from his face. Yibo suddenly feels sick. Oh my god, I’ve been a fool, thinking Xiao Zhan could return my feelings. Xiao Zhan had only wanted to hire someone to listen to his brokenhearted thoughts, and now Yibo has made everything so terribly awkward. He tries to smile, to hide the anguish within, but the corners of his lips keep twitching downwards, and his heartbeat is whooshing so loudly in his ears that he can’t hear himself think. “I’m - I’m sorry,” Yibo mutters in a panic as he starts to scramble to his feet.
“No wait,” Xiao Zhan says quickly, “don’t go! Please, sit. I’m - I’m listening.” He nods at Yibo with a grim kind of smile, and it’s clear to Yibo that he doesn’t really want to hear him out, but feels obligated to see this conversation through.
“It’s - it’s okay,” Yibo says through the lump in his throat, his body still coiled tight and ready to run. “You, you really don’t have to—”
Xiao Zhan must see his pain, because he reaches over to put his hand on Yibo’s and says solemnly, “Whoever this person is, Yibo, whoever has won your heart, is so very lucky. You’re such a kind and generous person. You’ve healed my heart, after all. You’ve - you’ve been such a good friend to me.”
Yibo slumps to the ground, defeated. He’s been friend-zoned.
Xiao Zhan gives Yibo another strained smile. “I’m only sorry that - that—”
Yibo braces himself for what Xiao Zhan will say next. Sorry that I only think of you as a friend. Sorry that I don’t feel the way you do. Sorry that you’ve brought me all the way out here just to have me crush your heart. The moment drags out, painfully long as Xiao Zhan keeps stammering, and finally Yibo can’t take it anymore and gets to his feet again. “No please. Please don’t say it, Zhan-ge. I - I don’t think I can bear to hear you reject me—”
Xiao Zhan looks up in surprise, in mid-stammer. “Reject you? W-why would I— Oh—”
“I know it’s crazy, I just—” Yibo mumbles thickly, desperate to fill the crashing silence as Xiao Zhan stares wide-eyed at him, but no words come. Instead, Yibo feels like he’s choking on the feeling of despair that comes on suddenly, like a fast-moving tide.
“You - you’re in love? With me?” Xiao Zhan murmurs, dumbfounded, and Yibo cringes inside at the sight of Xiao Zhan's shocked and confused face, as if the idea of being more than just friends with Yibo was something he couldn't imagine. And now, maybe they won't even be friends.
“I’m sorry,” Yibo blurts out, turning away to stare into the surrounding trees, mapping out a path for a swift and cowardly exit. But then Xiao Zhan’s hand is tugging on his, pulling him back down onto the grass next to him.
“You’re in love with me?” Xiao Zhan asks again, and when Yibo lifts his eyes to look at him, there’s a quirk of a smile on his lips, a spark of understanding in his eyes. Yibo can hardly breathe. Maybe he’s only imagining the hopeful look on Xiao Zhan’s face, but with Xiao Zhan’s hand curled around his, it’s enough.
Yibo takes the leap.
“Yes. It’s you, Zhan-ge,” he confesses. “It’s - it’s you I’m in love with.”
Xiao Zhan gasps and grips Yibo’s hand tighter, his doe eyes suddenly filling with tears.
“Oh no,” Yibo says, longing to touch Xiao Zhan’s face, to wipe away the tears that wet his cheeks. “Oh god, I’m so sorry,” he fusses, annoyed with himself that he’s made Xiao Zhan cry. It had always made him angry to see Xiao Zhan sad when he’d talk about his awful boyfriend, and now he’s the one making him upset. “I - I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“No, stop!” Xiao Zhan cries, waving a hand, “What are you apologizing for? I’m so happy, Yibo!”
“Wait, you’re happy?” Yibo’s heart is swelling in his chest, threatening to burst. “You - you like me too?”
Xiao Zhan laughs wetly, a wobbly smile breaking across his face. “So much, Yibo. I like you so much. I just… I didn’t know you liked me back!”
“Really? Did you really not know?” Yibo asks incredulously. "How could you not see it?"
“Your job is to be there for people, to offer them comfort through your presence!” Xiao Zhan protests, “so of course you’d be nice to everyone!”
Yibo lets out a surprised, croaking laugh. He almost wishes Yixuan and Wenhan were here to hear this. “But I’m not nice to everyone, Zhan-ge! I’m as polite as I need to be, but that’s it. With you, though—” he shakes his head. “Do - do you know why I never took repeat business? It’s because I kept getting these unwanted confessions from people who mistook my presence as something more—”
“Don’t lie,” Xiao Zhan snorts, wiping at his eyes, “you know it’s because you’re so handsome.”
“Oh!” Yibo says with a delighted smile, “So you have noticed!” — then ducks when Xiao Zhan playfully swats him on the arm.
“Narcissist!”
Yibo gives Xiao Zhan a mischievous grin, then heaves a big sigh. “I set up all these rules to avoid all those unwanted entanglements, and then you came along. The one time I let someone hire me again and again, I kept hoping that maybe - maybe this time I’ll get a confession from someone I like. And then it never happened—”
“Of course I liked you!” Xiao Zhan insists, “but I told myself I was being silly, pining after the handsome Tracer85 like everyone else,” he says, covering his face in embarrassment. “Why do you think I kept booking you, like one of your lovesick groupies—”
Yibo gapes at Xiao Zhan. “You what?”
“I had been so unhappy!” Xiao Zhan exclaims. “At first, I hired you because I needed some way to talk through my failing relationship, and then—” he pauses, dipping his head down, “you turned out to be so - so attractive and kind. I figured it would be harmless if I was enjoying your company as well… I never imagined—”
“You - you’ve liked me all this time?” Yibo can hardly believe what he's hearing.
“Well, it’s - it’s complicated,” Xiao Zhan says slowly, suddenly subdued again. “I knew I liked how I felt, being with you, but I’d be lying if I said that had nothing to do with how unhappy I was with Jingjing. Still, it was exhilarating to have your attention, even if it was something I paid for!”
“Zhan-ge—” Yibo says, dismayed that Xiao Zhan could think that the money was the reason for Yibo's attention, but Xiao Zhan waves him off.
“It’s okay, it’s how we met! And it was exciting to look forward to something again, whatever the reason. Then we became friends, and when that happened, I think there was a part of me that was in denial about my feelings for you… I mean, when I think about how much I was messaging you! My friends were starting to wonder what was going on… it’s embarrassing how obvious I was,” he laughs, shaking his head.
“Oh,” Yibo says, remembering how quiet their chats had become. “But then you stopped messaging me. After your birthday. I thought you’d decided to take him back. Or maybe decided you just didn’t want to see me anymore. You never said.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” Xiao Zhan says, raking a hand through his hair. “It - it was because I realized how I really felt about you. I didn’t want to complicate things even more by talking about all my breakup drama with you.”
“But why? We’d already talked so much about it.”
“Yeah, and that made things so much harder to untangle. Especially after I’d finally ended things with Jingjing. I mean, after my birthday dinner, I really thought that maybe I’d already screwed things up—”
Yibo furrows his brow in confusion. “You thought you screwed things up? How?”
“By asking you to be Tracer for me, forcing you to listen to me go on about Jingjing.”
“Zhan-ge, I was glad you asked me.” He laughs. “Trust me, it wasn’t a hardship to hear you talk about the reasons you didn’t want to be with him anymore!”
Xiao Zhan gives Yibo an abashed smile. “But it wasn’t fair to ask you to do that. I realized this when I got home that night, when I saw that you’d gotten me the Little Prince book—” He takes a deep breath, his eyes dewy with emotion. “That was such a lovely gesture… it showed me that you - you listened to me, you put such thought into what I like, what makes me happy. And I thought, if I like this guy, I need to do this right. I needed to stop looking to you to be my Rental-Ge. I wanted you to be Yibo for me, not Tracer.”
“But Tracer is me too, Zhan-ge. There’s a reason that this job suits me so well. If you need me to listen to you—”
“It just didn’t feel right, though, to ask you to help me process the breakup when—” He stops and gives Yibo a brilliant smile and sighs, lacing his fingers with his. “Yibo, I’m crazy about you. I think I’ve known this for awhile, and I foolishly thought I’d have time to get my head straight, to confess to you when I wasn’t an emotional mess… but - but then today, when you said you’d fallen in love with someone, oh my god, I thought that maybe I’d missed my chance, that you’d given your heart to someone else—”
“No, it’s yours, it’s all yours,” Yibo murmurs. "There's no one but you."
"Yeah?" Xiao Zhan lets out a breathy laugh, his fingers tightening around Yibo’s fingers as he leans in haltingly, his gaze drifting from Yibo’s eyes downward, coming to rest on his lips. “So, I’m ummm — I’m all out of practice on this dating thing—”
“What are you looking at me for?” Yibo smirks. “I’m the guy who set up a bunch of rules to keep anyone from getting this close.”
Xiao Zhan laughs softly and Yibo feels it as a puff of breath on his skin. “Looks like you messed up.”
“Guess so.”
Yibo feels a delicious tingle where Xiao Zhan brushes the tip of his nose across his cheek and Yibo turns toward the sensation, his whole body held in suspense as Xiao Zhan tilts his head just so, and— oh.
The first sweep of Xiao Zhan’s lips against his sends sparks racing down his spine. Yibo shifts his body to press closer and feels Xiao Zhan’s lips yield under his, parting with a soft sigh of his name. Yibo.
Xiao Zhan’s hand curls warm and firm around the back of his neck as he kisses Yibo back. His heart is racing so fast, he’s dizzy with it, the feel of Xiao Zhan’s soft lips, the taste of his tongue, the heady sensation of his breath in his lungs.
They kiss and kiss, until Yibo feels like he’s floating away, dreamlike. It almost doesn’t feel real after so many months of pining. He’d begun to believe that Xiao Zhan would always be just out of reach, but now he’s here, pressing Yibo back on the grass and kissing him senseless.
Yibo surrenders to Xiao Zhan’s soft lips, warm and insistent on his, sighs at the gentle drag of teeth on skin. He doesn’t know how long they kiss like this, but when Xiao Zhan finally pulls back, Yibo hears himself gasp loudly, the rush of air surprisingly cool and bracing in his chest.
And then he feels Xiao Zhan laughing, his whole body shaking with it.
“What’s so funny?” he asks, but he’s laughing too, at the way Xiao Zhan has him pinned to the ground with his body, his hands pressing Yibo's wrists firmly into the grass. Yibo isn’t quite sure how they got here, but he kind of likes it. And he hopes there is more to come.
“Sorry, I've been wanting to do that for a long time,” Xiao Zhan says, still laughing.
“I'm not complaining,” Yibo smirks.
"Not quite how I expected things to turn out when I hired you, but—" then Xiao Zhan groans, his brow knit in consternation. “Oh no!”
Yibo startles, wondering if Xiao Zhan is suddenly having second thoughts. “What is it?” he asks, his stomach tight with worry that, maybe, this has all been too good to be true after all.
“Ah, what have I done?” Xiao Zhan moans playfully. “If you’re my boyfriend now, then I’m going to have to find a new Rental-Ge.”
Boyfriend. Yibo likes the sound of that. He growls, rolling over and pushing a giggling Xiao Zhan back onto the grass. He runs a finger down his cheek, the sharp line of his jaw, the graceful arc of his neck, then rests his palm on his chest. “If I’m your boyfriend now, what would you need Rental-Ge for? To cry over a broken heart?”
Xiao Zhan clasps his hands over Yibo’s hand and lets out a dramatic gasp. “A broken heart? Wang Yibo, are you going to break my heart?”
Yibo bends down to lay a kiss on Xiao Zhan’s lips.
“No. Never.”
August, the following year
Yibo waits at the sumptuous bar at a swanky but overpriced sushi restaurant. It's not nearly as good as the buzz suggests it should be, but there's no getting around sappy sentimental feelings, it seems.
There’s a low murmur at the entrance and Yibo looks up in time to see the most beautiful man walk in. They lock eyes and the man smiles broadly and strides forward on absurdly long legs to greet Yibo.
“Wang Yibo,” he says warmly, “thank you so much for making time to meet with me for dinner tonight. I know you must be so busy on Qixi.”
“It is indeed my busiest day. You’ve got to be someone really special to make me give up paying clients,” Yibo says, flashing the man a half-smirk he's been told is annoyingly hot. “I don’t do this for just anyone, you know.”
“You flatter me, Lao Wang.”
“Not nearly enough,” Yibo says, and he means it. When he’d first met Xiao Zhan, it had been his job to just listen to him, and to keep his thoughts to himself. No more. “My Zhan-ge is the most handsome—”
“Aish—” Xiao Zhan says softly. He swats Yibo’s arm in mock annoyance, but his eyes twinkle in delight.
“—no one is more talented and funny and kind—”
“Yibo.”
“What? It’s true!” Yibo laughs. “No one’s paying me to say it,” he says, shooting Xiao Zhan a cheeky grin, “not anymore, anyway.”
“You’re the worst,” Xiao Zhan tuts. “I want a refund. This Rental-Ge is too naughty.”
Yibo gasps. “I’m still your Rental-Ge? I haven’t graduated from Rental-Ge yet? This puts what we did last night into a very different light, gege—”
Xiao Zhan bares his teeth playfully and hisses, “Naughty!” as he puts his hands on Yibo’s shoulders to push him away.
But Yibo winds an arm around Xiao Zhan’s waist and hauls him in close. “Too late. No refunds. I have the most amazing boyfriend and I won’t be letting him go.”
“Fine,” Xiao Zhan smiles, settling into Yibo’s embrace, “so long as you’re here to save me from the shame of spending today alone.” He cocks his head and lets out a breathy giggle. “Did I ever tell you what this one idol told his fans, about how not to spend Qixi alone?”
“Of course,” Yibo says. He’ll never forget that night one year ago, when he’d first met Xiao Zhan, when his life changed forever.
“The nerve of the guy, right?” Xiao Zhan scoffs. “Jiayou ba indeed.”
“Mn. We'll show that smug bastard of an idol,” Yibo promises, pulling him in for a kiss. “You'll never be alone on Qixi again.”
—Fin—