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Wang Yibo sits bolt upright in bed with a wheeze, eyes wide and struggling to adjust to the dark of the room he’s in. He slides shaky hands over his cheeks as if to reassure himself that he’s actually there, then pats his chest firmly; the solid thump of it takes the edge off his anxiety.
All these years later, and Yibo still doesn’t like the dark. That is, unless…
Fumbling around, he feels for the familiar lump beside him in the bed, then sighs in relief at the warmth under his fingertips, the gentle rise and fall of breath. So Yibo is home again.
And wide awake.
“Zhan-ge—” he murmurs, nudging the lump. Softly at first, then more insistently.
“Mmmmmph,” the lump groans, followed by a mumbly, sleep-drunk reply. “What is it, Lao Wang, ah? Your - your knees bothering you again?”
“No. I - I can’t sleep.”
Xiao Zhan rolls over to squint at Yibo in the darkened room. Yibo feels his heart stutter at the sight of his Zhan-ge’s face bathed in dim moonlight, lined and slackened by the years, but still so handsome to Yibo’s eyes. To anyone’s, really. There’s a reason Xiao Zhan graced screens and stages and magazine spreads for so many decades.
“Bo-ge ahh…” he draws out as he yawns, “you want to make sure I can’t sleep either? You really are the clingiest sometimes—”
“Ge—”
“—so when you go back to sleep, maybe you will drag me with you into your dreams!”
Yibo gives Xiao Zhan a swat on the arm. There’s no force in it, a well-practiced gesture that recalls that too-short summer they spent flirting and tussling with each other on set, sparks crackling whenever they were together.
That nervous energy between them has long since matured into something more durable, the way a chemical reaction burns hot and wild and then settles into a new state, held together by a stable and unbreakable bond. What they have now is everything Yibo had wished for all those years ago.
“But this wasn’t a dream, ge,” Yibo insists, trying to contain his excitement over what he’d just experienced. “I saw you. You were there with me in Hengdian, your younger self, dressed as Wei Ying.”
Xiao Zhan snorts. “Wahh, you’re still dreaming! What nonsense are you talking? Go back to sleep, ah!” He rolls over with a huff.
“Ge, I’m not dreaming,” Yibo pouts and gently pulls on Xiao Zhan’s arm to turn his attention back on him. He’s kept all of this to himself for too long. “I - I was back on that rooftop with us, that night when I turned 21. Do you remember?”
“Of course I remember. But what do you mean you were there with us?” There’s a note of quiet resignation mixed with exasperation in Xiao Zhan’s voice, the sound of someone very used to humoring his husband. “So... you dreamt of us stargazing together that night, on your birthday?”
“No, ge!” Yibo huffs impatiently. “I was there! I went back in time to that night and talked to myself... my - my 21-year-old self! I’ve been waiting for this moment for years... I’ve always known I’d go back, because I met my older self — me — then, and—” Yibo stops and groans, hearing his own words play back in his head and realizing how crazy it all sounds.
There’s a long moment of silence, and then Yibo feels the mattress shift as Xiao Zhan struggles to sit up. Yibo winces as the room suddenly brightens and when he opens his eyes again, Xiao Zhan is peering at him and putting a hand to his forehead.
“Are you ill?” Xiao Zhan asks softly, a little teasing, but there’s genuine concern in his gaze. He purses his lips as he hums, and the little mole underneath dances, catching Yibo’s eye as it has for so many years. “Huh. You don’t feel feverish. Did you eat something funny before bedtime? I’m always telling you—”
“Aish, Zhan-ge!” Yibo protests with a soft smile, sweeping Xiao Zhan’s hand off his forehead and holding it in his own. He looks down as he caresses it between his fingers, playing with the gleaming ring on this hand he has held so often. There’s a frailty to it now that makes Yibo’s chest ache.
He thinks about the moment on the rooftop when he’d held his own hands — the hands of that bratty kid with his whole life still ahead of him. Those hands had felt so big and strong and alive in his — exuding so much youthful energy that Yibo worried his message would be lost in a whirl of hormones and bravado.
But he had listened, hadn’t he? And now Yibo is here, with his beloved Zhan-ge. They’ve done a lot of living since that night, the two of them. That much is clear from the wrinkles on their faces, the fragility of the bony hands clasped in Yibo’s lap now.
“I’m not sick or senile, Zhan-ge,” Yibo says gently. “That night was… a magical one.” He eagerly tells Xiao Zhan about how, after he’d wished on a falling star, an aged Yibo from the future had appeared to tell him that the life that he most wanted would be his, as long as he stayed strong and true in his love for Xiao Zhan.
Then Yibo explained that, while Xiao Zhan slept soundly in their bed that night, he had been magically transported back in time to deliver the same message to his younger self. Continuing the cycle to make sure that they would always be together.
Xiao Zhan is silent for a long time when Yibo has finished with his tale. Yibo waits patiently, watching him think through everything he’s heard. It’s his way, Yibo knows, and he can’t be rushed. Finally, Xiao Zhan clears his throat and speaks.
“If this happened,” he ventures thoughtfully, absently raking a hand through his silvery hair, “why didn’t you tell me, back then, that we were… fated to be together? Shouldn’t I have known? That this was the plan for our lives?”
Yibo chuckles at this. “Ge, you like to figure things out, to chart your own path as you go. You... were a normal guy — an amazingly talented normal guy! — who one day decided to be an idol, and then an actor, and then when things went sideways, you figured out your own way forward—”
“We did,” Xiao Zhan corrects, arching a dignified brow at Yibo. “We found a way forward together. But maybe - maybe it would have been easier to bear all those trials if I’d known—”
“Maybe,” Yibo muses, rubbing a palm over Xiao Zhan’s knee. There had been hard times, as Future Yibo had said there would be, but he'd also assured Yibo that they’d get through them. When Yibo had felt the most helpless, that message had settled his restless need to do something, that urge to act when what Xiao Zhan needed most from him was his steady support.
For Xiao Zhan, though, the way forward hadn’t been so simple, and couldn’t have been made clear by a few sage words shared in passing. Some things have to be experienced to be seen clearly.
“Maybe it could have helped,” Yibo allows, “but honestly, ge, if someone had told you what plan you needed to follow, or revealed to you that you were fated to do something — would you have trusted in that?”
Yibo doesn’t bother waiting for Xiao Zhan to answer, and barrels ahead with a firm poke of a finger in Xiao Zhan’s chest. “No, no you wouldn’t have, ge, because I tell you all the time how much I believe in you, about what you can accomplish, but you - you stubbornly have to figure it out on your own anyway.”
Xiao Zhan coughs and looks up sheepishly. “Ahh… you - you know how much I value your opinion, how much it’s meant to me that you’ve always had my back. I trust you more than anyone else in my life. Surely you know that by now.”
“Of course I do, ge. I get it. It’s how you do things. I mean,” Yibo smiles, suddenly animated, “I don’t think you’d fully trust a message from yourself. You’d never go back in time to tell your younger self what your future held, even if you had the chance.”
Xiao Zhan thinks on this a moment. “No, you’re - you’re right… I don’t think I would. I-I’ve always liked the journey, the joy of discovery. I wouldn’t like the feeling that it’s all pre-ordained for me, that I’m just playing out a drama. That was my job for a long time, playing a scripted role. My real life — I never wanted it to be like that.”
“I know,” Yibo nods. “But you know I’m not like that, Zhan-ge. I mean, I love to learn things and figure things out, but when I decide on something, that’s that. I’ve always liked the security of knowing where I’m going. And so I guess I just… keep going back to tell myself I’m on the right path… jiayou and don’t give up.”
“You make me sound like I’m flighty or fickle, like I can’t stick to a plan,” Xiao Zhan sighs.
“Ah, that’s not what I meant, ge—”
Xiao Zhan rubs his palms over his face, and huffs out a long breath. “I guess it feels a little like - like you’re telling me I was just a - a supporting actor in this drama — your drama — simply traveling a path that all the past and future Yibos had plotted, and—” Xiao Zhan scrunches his nose. “Well, I don’t know how I feel about that—”
“You’ve never been just a supporting actor,” Yibo snorts, his gaze fond and adoring. “You’ve - you’ve always had the starring role in my life, ge. The message I keep delivering to myself is to love you, to support you, to make you happy, in whatever you do.”
Xiao Zhan frowns. “Waaah… that’s not good either! That your life… revolved around making me happy? You’re - you’re too amazing and talented a person to have spent your life that way! What about what you want? What - what you wanted? I don’t want to - to look back on our life together and find out that - that everything you did was for me!”
“What are you talking about Zhan-ge?” Yibo asks, incredulous. “I got what I wanted in life! I’ve been happy! That’s the other thing I told myself, that if I loved you, and made you feel loved, you would love me back and support me in what I wished to do. Make me a better man. You’d make me happy. And you have, all of that! And - and here we are.”
“Yes, but—”
“Ahhh, see?” Yibo remarks with a smirk, “this is why I never told you. You would have thought I was crazy if I’d told you the story of what happened that night, and maybe I would have scared you off. Or you would have worried that you’d be a burden to me and then tried to do something stupidly noble and self-sacrificing.”
Yibo nods his head and lets out a smug puff of air. “I can tell you all this now because it’s too late for you to do anything different. You’re stuck with me.”
Xiao Zhan scoffs, but his eyes crinkle playfully. “Lao Wang really is the clingiest.” He gives Yibo a soft smile, then breaks into a wide yawn, slumping a little as he exhales.
“Ahhh, I’m sorry, I’ve kept you up too long,” Yibo sighs, and helps Xiao Zhan lie back down. Then he settles next to him and pulls the soft covers over them both.
Yibo reaches for Xiao Zhan’s hand. “I cling to you because I knew from the moment I first saw you that you were the one I would love for a lifetime.”
“Mn,” Xiao Zhan hums quietly in answer. “Back then, I had no idea that under that - that Cool Guy exterior, Wang Yibo had such a - a soft, romantic soul.”
“Only for you, ge,” Yibo murmurs, entangling their fingers together. “I couldn’t wait to kiss you, to taste that pretty smile of yours—”
“Wang Yibo,” Xiao Zhan huffs softly. “Are you—”
“—even human?” Yibo finishes with a croaking laugh.
“Hmmm — and then what did you think of that first kiss,” Xiao Zhan asks, the lazy, teasing curl of his lips making clear he knows what Yibo will say.
“Better than I imagined. Because you kissed me back.”
“Of course I did,” Xiao Zhan sighs with a breathy giggle, and Yibo’s heart does a little swoop in his chest. “How could I resist kissing the handsome and talented Wang Yibo?”
“You laugh, ge, but - but it really felt like the beginning of—” Yibo swallows heavily, struggling to put into words the weight of what he’d felt in that moment when he’d first breathed his breath, felt his lips on his. “It was everything, like my whole life clicked into place in that moment.”
“That first kiss,” Xiao Zhan muses, his voice laced with wonder. It’s not the first time Yibo has told him how he’d fallen hard for him from the first glance, the first touch, that first kiss.
“Not the kiss when you proposed? When I said yes, and promised to always be yours? That I would never want or love anyone else?” Xiao Zhan yawns again, then leans in and rests his head against Yibo’s shoulder. “Shouldn’t that have been the kiss to build a dream on?”
Yibo thinks back to that night, the giddy excitement he’d felt, the promise of forever in that kiss. “Yes of course,” he agrees, “that was a kiss to remember. Zhan-ge is always right,” he smirks.
Xiao Zhan rolls his eyes. “And did you tell yourself all this? When you went back? Some things are better lived than explained, you know.”
“Ahah,” Yibo chuckles. “I didn’t spoil all the surprises, don’t worry. I just said that we - that we’re still together and he — I mean I — would have to stay strong through all the challenges that life would throw at us.
“Mn. And what did I have to say about it?”
Yibo looks sheepish. “Oh, uh... You didn’t say anything. You were frozen the whole time we talked.”
Xiao Zhan rolls his head back a little and blinks his eyes at Yibo. “Eh? I didn’t get to talk?”
“Shhh, baobao,” Yibo coaxes, then pats Xiao Zhan’s head back against his chest. “But you were so beautiful.”
“Aiyahhh,” Xiao Zhan sighs and closes his eyes in resignation. “So that’s all that matters? Because your Zhan-ge will soon be 87 and hasn’t been beautiful in a long time.”
“Not true. Zhan-ge gets more and more handsome every year—”
“Wang Yibo—” Xiao Zhan mumbles sleepily, “Why're you like thisss...”
Yibo opens his mouth to answer, but Xiao Zhan is already asleep. He leans in tenderly and lays a soft kiss on his head.
“Because, ge,” he whispers, “there’s nothing more beautiful than the love of a lifetime.”