The 12th Floor of Apartment E

Hypothetical Procedures

After their museum date, Zitao doesn't get to really see or speak to Wufan for the next two weeks. The date was fun—because, as Zitao's felt before and the feeling continues to hold, Wufan is easy to talk to and easy to listen to. But after it ends, university life picks up for Zitao (with the humongous project looming over his and his partner's head), and the hours that Zitao comes back from university clash with the hours that Wufan works.

But two weeks from then—exactly two weeks—on a Saturday night, they see each other again.

It's not a date. It's kind of an accident.

Zitao is passing through the hall, back from the university library (working on his project there with his partner, since he doesn't have the luxury of having a partner who lives in the same building the way Kyungsoo and Jongin do) and from hanging out late with Baekhyun (who then went on to stay out for a date with Chanyeol). He gets just past the elevators before he sees Wufan coming out of the emergency stairwell, hair slightly windswept and hands in his pockets.

"Ge," Zitao says.

Wufan whirls around, blinking quite rapidly in surprise as Zitao steps towards him. "Hi," he says. "Um—"

"Why didn't you take the elevator?" Zitao asks, and points at the door of the emergency stairwell behind Wufan. He watches as Wufan turns back around, glancing at the door and then back to the younger man.

"Oh—I wasn't coming up," Wufan says with a tiny smile. "I was coming down—rooftop."

Zitao tilts his head.

Wufan lets out a small, nervous breath of laughter, and doesn't quite meet Zitao's eyes. "You want to know why, don't you?"

The younger man shrugs, smiling back a little. "If you don't want to tell me, it's okay."

It's not that Wufan doesn't want to.

It's that—like—it's not really time. He doesn't think he's ready to tell Zitao yet, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to. Because Wufan is sure that he does. Just not right now.

There really isn't anything else to say to Zitao, and logically, Wufan should just thank Zitao for being understanding and then bid him a goodnight because the younger man probably has class the next day and Wufan has work the next day.

But what comes out of his mouth is something entirely different (and dumb).

"D'you want to go for a walk?" Wufan blurts.

Zitao stares, blinking slowly—blankly. "Where?"

Wufan is actually a little floored right then because it's nearly midnight on a Wednesday night and they all have things to do tomorrow morning, but instead of turning Wufan down or echoing the request back incredulously, Zitao is asking an otherwise almost irrelevant question and maybe the fact that it's so ridiculous and nearly midnight and Wufan is kind of exhausted after the day of work that he just went through—so he starts laughing right then, quietly, and feels like he's literally left his sanity on the rooftop.

"What's so funny?" Zitao asks then, confused.

"Nothing," Wufan says, and knows he should just be glad Zitao hasn't run away by now. He reaches out and taps the younger man's arm lightly. "And I don't know where—around the block maybe. We can get food and stuff."

Zitao tips his head to the side again, looking straight into Wufan's eyes. The younger man grins. "Okay then."

Yixing nearly gets a heart attack when the front door opens at (he glances at his laptop) sometime past four in the morning because no one the dancer rooms with ever comes home at four in the morning. The last time he checked, he rooms with a teacher who comes home sometime near six after supervising detentions and a reporter who comes home at five after finishing interviews—and then occasionally that reporter will go back out at ten and come back in before midnight because that reporter likes to think on the rooftop.