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Yibo has his phone out before he’s even properly out the door. Lele’s cleared the pavement enough for him to stand in one place without strangers pressing insistently against him. For a moment the rush of air circulating around him leaves him dizzy, and he closes his eyes, floating on the clean cool crisp nothing of it, until Xiao Zhan’s voice brings him back, always so warm and fond, in his ear.
“Baby,” he says softly. “You tired?”
“So many people, ge,” Yibo answers, forestalling the retort that over video chat Zhan-ge looks tired himself, as Chanel’s security detail ushers him into the waiting van. Once inside it, he realizes he doesn’t actually remember where he’s headed next, if it’s to the hotel or to the studio or—he lies back against the headrest. He’d probably be super easy to kidnap, he thinks. Just get a bunch of men in suits, point him towards the nearest black SUV, and whisk him away.
“You’d find me if I were ever kidnapped, wouldn’t you, Zhan-ge?” he asks.
Xiao Zhan scoffs, eyeroll undermined by the way his lips curve, the precious crinkle of his eyes. “What rubbish is this you’re talking,” he says, scolding. “I’d tell the kidnappers they can keep you, of course.” Yibo smirks, chuckling softly to himself at the way Zhan-ge always just goes along with whatever fancy enters Yibo’s head. It’s one of the things they give to each other—space to be silly and whimsical and dumb—and Yibo loves it about them, the two of them together.
“You wouldn’t,” he says, smiling.
“Would too,” Xiao Zhan says promptly, sternly, as though he’s not talking total nonsense while walking down a hotel hallway. “I’d tell them to feed and water you and walk you twice a day if they don’t want you to pee on their leg.”
“Xiao Zhan! So heartless!” Yibo says, already feeling better, already feeling the tension and anxiety of the evening leave him—those two hours of standing stiffly and making pointless small talk with Chanel bigwigs and industry movers and shakers, being subtly but firmly guided around the place by handlers and translators and bodyguards. He’d felt like a mannequin. He normally likes Chanel—likes wearing it, likes attending events, likes the whole deal. He wouldn’t do it if he didn’t. But tonight had been rough.
Now, though, Xiao Zhan is laughing at him, smiling at him. He’s okay.
“You were on hot search,” Zhan-ge says. “For being ethereal, of course.”
“Shut up,” Yibo says mildly. “So were you.”
“For being silly.”
“For being adorable,” Yibo says firmly. This is another thing he likes about them—that he gets to pamper and praise his Zhan-ge, and his Zhan-ge has to let him. Because boyfriends.
Boyfriends, partners, husbands... they’re really so far beyond “boyfriends” now that it’s an inadequate word, but it’s been three years (four if we’re counting the first time Yibo laid eyes on Xiao Zhan and went that one, oh my god, that one, which Yibo privately does) and just the idea of boyfriends still makes him feel giddy and secretive, delighted and wondrous at something that can’t possibly be real but somehow is, somehow keeps on being real.
“You shut up,” Zhan-ge says, also without heat. He reaches his hotel door and keeps Yibo on video while he thanks and dismisses his bodyguards, tips the bellhop, and drags his luggage inside. Yibo watches from his unsteady vantage point upside down in Zhan-ge’s hand as his PA rattles off info—somethingsomething scheduling, somethingsomething filming early tomorrow, what else is new. Zhan-ge, predictably, lets most of it sail over his head and asks her if she can get him some chips. Yibo snorts loudly.
“Oy,” Xiao Zhan says, looking down at his phone for the first time in a minute or two, eying him.
“No wonder your memes are trending,” Yibo says. “You’re a meme of yourself.”
This time Zhan-ge’s eyeroll is more pronounced. As his PA exits, he flops down on the sofa in his suite, heaving a dramatic sigh. “I’m so tired, Lao Wang,” he says.
“You’ve been busy,” Yibo says. “Time to rest.”
Xiao Zhan yawns. He looks like a horse when he yawns, and Yibo grins. If he were there, he’d run his fingers through the wayward strands of Xiao Zhan’s hair until the straggle of flyaways were joined by even more flyaways. He misses Zhan-ge’s longer hair. He misses his own. He misses them both being able to grab whole handfuls of each other’s hair; still misses, even after two long summers have passed and a third stretches before them, the irresistible urge to play with Zhan-ge’s wig on the set of Chen Qing Ling. He misses the warmth rushing through him whenever Zhan-ge found excuses to brush Yibo’s own wig aside, away from his shoulders, flicking strands off his forehead, tugging his long locks gently. Among the litany of ways they found to express the perpetual need to crawl into each other’s skin, the overwhelming hunger to touch and be touched, their wigs presented a constant ready excuse for a semi-public yet secret form of intimacy.
Yibo got away with so much back then, he knows. They both did. And he misses it all, a lot. But, he reminds himself, he’s still lucky. He’s still so, so lucky to have Zhan-ge here in front of him, arms akimbo, one long leg hoisted up over the back of the couch because he’s too long to fit, the other one stretching haphazardly towards the floor. He looks ridiculous. He’s still unfairly hot. Fuck.
“Can’t rest, Wang laoshi,” Xiao Zhan says, pouting at him. “I have lines to learn.”
“I’ll learn them for you,” Yibo says.
Xiao Zhan chuckles. Yibo wants to run his finger over his dimple. “Are you going to teleport here in the morning and say them for me?”
“You’re just two hours away,” Yibo points out.
“And? Are you gonna skip your fanmeet to come be at my beck and call?” Xiao Zhan’s smile is indulgent. “And when you get here are you gonna shrink yourself and fit into my pocket so I can carry you around and you can remind me of my lines?”
“You can keep me on your shoulder,” Yibo says. “A shoulder angel.”
“You’re a shoulder demon.”
“Demon who’ll say all your lines without messing up.”
“Hmm.” Xiao Zhan runs a hand through his hair, switching instantly from whiny to sultry in that way he has of changing the room temperature just like that. Yibo can feel the shift even from here, even over a phone screen. He adjusts his air pods. “Maybe I’ll sell my soul to you.”
Yibo gives him his most devilish smirk. “In exchange for what?”
Xiao Zhan considers. “Teleportation,” he says softly. Yibo tries not to physically uwu right there in the SUV with Lele nodding off in the front seat and the driver darting frequent looks at Wang Yibo, tired-ass celebrity.
“Seems like I’d win everything,” he says. “Get your soul, get you to teleport to me.”
“You could teleport,” Xiao Zhan. “You love it. Fly to me whenever. I’d get too dizzy.”
“Motion sickness? I’d nurse you back to health.”
Zhan-ge wrinkles his nose. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Only for you,” Yibo says. He considers. Hangzhou really isn’t that far. He could order the driver to just... fuck off taking him back to his hotel and drive the trip unscheduled. And probably ruin his driver’s night, stress out his bodyguard, run up a fortune, piss off Yuehua...
Still, he seriously considers it. There’s an illicit thrill in the knowledge that if he really wanted to, he could—he could strongarm his entire entourage into bending over backwards for him—upend all their carefully arranged schedules and cause total havoc, all to get half a day, or even a few hours, with Xiao Zhan. Back when this was still new, when he was still new to this level of terrifying unbridled success, he did that kind of thing more often. Back then being with Xiao Zhan as often as possible was the most important thing in the world—back before 227, before they both lived under a veil of perpetual close scrutiny, before his security detail ballooned, before Zhan-ge became a veritable ninja at dodging sisheng fans and popping up unnoticed, wedging himself into the corners of Yibo’s life whenever he can.
These days, Yibo saves that kind of bullheaded schedule-changing for the moments it seems most urgent, most necessary. Today was a long, weary, exhausting day. But he has Zhan-ge here. He’s fine. Xiao Zhan is fine. Yibo knows he likes visiting Hangzhou; he complains about the hotels but he never complains about the food, which is Xiao Zhan’s own way of rating a place five stars.
Yibo smiles. Xiao Zhan yawns again.
“Go to sleep, Zhan-ge,” Yibo says.
“It’s too early for bedtime, Wang laoshi.”
“Take a nap,” Yibo says. “Short nap. I’ll sing you to sleep.”
“What if I want to look at Wang Yibo’s flawless face,” Xiao Zhan says, making it sound like an insult rather than a compliment. “Would you deprive me of such a sight?”
“Close your eyes and see me behind your eyelids,” Yibo says, ignoring the way his driver glances up sharply. They’ve largely given up trying to keep leaks about their relationship from happening, but he’s aware he doesn’t make it easy for Yuehua to bury some of the more salacious stuff. “That’s what I do.”
There’s a moment’s silence, and he wonders if he went too far, if Zhan-ge’s about to scold him for being too overt in public. It’s an old argument, their oldest, the source of their deepest wounds, and even though they’ve been working slowly, steadily, to get to a place where they can be comfortable together in public again—maybe even work together again one day, the ultimate dream—it’s still an ever-present tension. They deal with it. And again, Yibo reminds himself: he’s still so lucky to have this, in whatever form he has it.
When he looks down at his phone, though, Xiao Zhan doesn’t look tense. He just looks soft. Contemplative.
“Okay, Yibo-ge,” he says after another moment of just looking at Yibo. “I’ll close my eyes and take a nap for you.”
“Little nap,” says Yibo. “I’ll do it too.”
“Liar, you said you’d sing me to sleep. You can’t do that and nap too.”
Yibo hums and then raps, “I want you to park that big Mack truck right in this little garage.”
“What!” Xiao Zhan’s so mortified he switches to English. “Oh my god, stop!”
“Make it cream, make me scream, out in public, make a scene—”
“Wang Yibo!” screeches Xiao Zhan, and Yibo leaves off with a wink and a pantomimed kiss. Xiao Zhan covers his face with his hands and squirms. Yibo loves him so, so much.
“Sleep, Zhan-ge,” he says. “Call me later.”
“Fine,” Xiao Zhan says, just as there’s a knock on the door. “Can I have my chips first?”
“Nap first, then chips,” Yibo orders. Xiao Zhan rolls his eyes, but concedes as he answers the door and retrieves snacks from his PA.
“Will you watch me to make sure I nap,” Zhan-ge says, yawning for the third time as he enters the bedroom. This time he flops dramatically onto the bed, drawing the coverlet over himself rather than getting under the sheets.
“I’ll have my eyes closed, remember,” Yibo says, his own tiredness finally overtaking him. Yawns are contagious.
Xiao Zhan props his phone and Yibo up on the opposite side of the huge bed. “So unfair, you won’t even let me watch you sleep,” he grumbles, settling into a pillow.
“You sold me your soul,” Yibo reminds him. “Naps are part of the bargain.”
Xiao Zhan’s nose wrinkles again but this time his eyes crinkle too; Yibo counts it as a win whenever he can reduce his Zhan-ge’s face to a flustered, embarrassed landscape of scrunches.
“I guess I’m completely under your power, then,” Xiao Zhan says. “You’ll have to be nice to me. Be gentle.” His eyes flutter shut, and Yibo can see the moment he just—sags.
“To you, I’ll be the nicest,” Yibo promises him softly. “The nicest, forever.”
This time Xiao Zhan’s eyes crinkle up happily, just as he turns his head to nuzzle the pillow. Yibo has the best view of him like that, face scrunched up and relaxed all at once, nodding off to sleep.
Flawless victory.