Sing My Name
Sing My Name
he Weight of Dreams
The backstage air hung thick with anticipation and the cloying scent of old velvet curtains, dust, and the nervous sweat of a dozen aspiring performers who paced the narrow corridor like caged animals awaiting either liberation or execution. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a sterile pallor upon faces already drained of color by anxiety, while somewhere beyond the heavy drapery, an audience of hundreds murmured in that particular frequency of collective expectation that precedes a live performance.
Xiao Zhan stood pressed against the cold concrete wall, his back seeking support where none seemed sufficient. His hands trembled—not from the chill that permeated the backstage area, but from the paralyzing dread that had taken up permanent residence in his chest over the past seventy-two hours. Three days of rehearsing until his throat felt raw, three nights of lying awake while Wang Yibo slept peacefully beside him, three mornings of staring into the bathroom mirror and seeing a stranger who looked remarkably like a fraud about to be exposed.
"What if I forget the lyrics?" he whispered, more to himself than to the man who stood before him, though the words escaped like a prayer offered to an empty room.
Wang Yibo, his lover of four years, seven months, and approximately twelve days—not that either of them kept count, though both could recite the precise moment their lives had irrevocably changed—studied Xiao Zhan's face with an intensity that belied his casual posture. He leaned against a stack of equipment cases labeled with the names of lighting companies and sound engineers, arms crossed over his chest in a manner that suggested calm, though his fingers drummed an anxious rhythm against his bicep.
"Zhan." One syllable, spoken softly, yet it cut through the ambient noise of the backstage chaos like a blade through silk. "Look at me."
Xiao Zhan's eyes, large and luminous even in the unflattering fluorescent light, lifted to meet his lover's gaze. Dark brown met dark brown, and for a moment the corridor faded—the other contestants, the stagehands shouting cues, the distant thrum of the warm-up act's bass guitar—all of it dissolved into the background static of an unimportant world. There was only Yibo's steady gaze, unwavering and certain, the same look he had worn the night they had packed their belongings into three battered suitcases and walked out of their families' lives forever.
"I can't do this," Zhan breathed, and the words came out cracked, fragile, like ice beginning to splinter underfoot. "Yibo, I can't. I'm going to walk out there and freeze. I'm going to open my mouth and nothing will come out. Or worse—something will come out, and it will be wrong, and five thousand people will watch me fail, and—"
"Five hundred," Yibo corrected gently, pushing himself off the equipment cases and closing the distance between them. His footsteps made no sound on the worn carpet, a dancer's grace that even anxiety could not strip away. "There are five hundred seats in that auditorium, and I counted. Twice. When you were filling out your registration form, I walked through every aisle like an idiot, memorizing the exits and the sightlines."
Zhan blinked, momentarily derailed. "You... counted the seats?"
"I needed to know exactly how many people would be watching you succeed." Yibo's hand found Zhan's, their fingers interlacing with the familiarity of long practice. His palm was warm, slightly calloused from his restaurant work, grounding in a way that no amount of self-talk could replicate. "And I needed to know where I would be sitting so that no matter where you looked on that stage, you would be able to find me."
The confession, delivered with such matter-of-fact tenderness, cracked something open in Zhan's chest. He felt tears prick at the corners of his eyes—not the hot, humiliated tears of fear, but the warm, overwhelming kind that came from being seen, truly seen, by the only person whose opinion had ever mattered.
"You're ridiculous," Zhan managed, though his voice wavered.
"I'm in love," Yibo countered, and the simplicity of the statement—no embellishment, no poetry, just the plain, unvarnished truth—struck Zhan with the force of a physical blow. "There's a difference."
A stagehand rushed past them, muttering into a headset about monitor levels and feedback issues, and the moment fractured. The noise of the backstage rushed back in—the sound of someone practicing scales in a nearby dressing room, the crackle of the production manager's walkie-talkie, the distant swell of applause as the warm-up act concluded their set.
Zhan's anxiety returned with renewed ferocity, flooding back into the spaces Yibo's presence had momentarily cleared. His free hand came up to tug at his hair—a nervous habit Yibo had been trying to break him of for years, to no avail.
"What if I go off-key? What if the backing track skips? What if I forget the arrangement and start singing the bridge at the wrong time and the band can't follow me and—"
"If you forget what to sing," Yibo interrupted, and there was a playful lilt to his voice now, a deliberate lightness meant to defuse the bomb ticking in Zhan's chest, "then why not sing my name instead?"
He said it with a grin—that particular smile that had first caught Zhan's attention across a crowded university courtyard four years ago, the one that crinkled the corners of Yibo's eyes and revealed the mischievous boy who lived beneath the carefully cultivated exterior of a man who had learned to protect his heart.
For a moment, Zhan stared at him in disbelief. Then the absurdity of the suggestion pierced through his panic, and he felt something that might have been the ghost of a laugh trapped in his throat.
"Wang Yibo." His lover's full name came out as a warning, though there was no heat in it. "Did you just make a joke? Now? When I'm approximately seven minutes away from the most important performance of my entire life?"
"Eight minutes, actually." Yibo checked his watch—a battered Timex he had owned since high school, the leather band held together with superglue and stubbornness. "And yes. You needed to smile, and now you're smiling. So I'd say my timing was impeccable."
Zhan realized with a start that he was, in fact, smiling. The expression felt foreign on his face, like a garment he had not worn in years, but it was there nonetheless. He tried to summon his indignation, to hold onto the familiar comfort of his anxiety, but Yibo's ridiculousness had punctured it like a pin to a balloon.
"You're an asshole," Zhan informed him, though the words emerged closer to an endearment than an insult. To emphasize his point, he brought his free hand up and smacked Yibo lightly against the chest—a gesture that landed somewhere between affection and exasperation.
"Ouch." Yibo clutched his chest in exaggerated agony, staggering backward as though he had been shot. "Violence. In front of all these people. And after I traveled all the way across the city to support you."
"You live with me. You didn't travel anywhere."
"I traveled from the parking garage. That's a twelve-minute walk. I could have pulled a hamstring."
Zhan shook his head, but the smile remained, stubborn and warm. The knot in his chest had loosened slightly, not enough to disappear entirely, but enough that he could breathe around it. This was Yibo's gift—not grand gestures or expensive presents, but the ability to find the crack of light in even the darkest room and pull Zhan toward it.
"I'm serious, though," Yibo said, sobering somewhat. He stepped closer again, close enough that Zhan could smell the familiar scent of him—laundry detergent and the faint trace of the cologne he only wore on special occasions, which Zhan had bought for him two Christmases ago with money they could ill afford to spare. "You can do this. I've heard you sing a thousand times—in the shower, in the kitchen while you're cooking, at two in the morning when you think I'm asleep. I've heard you when you're happy and when you're sad and when you're so angry you can barely form words. And every single time, your voice does something to me that I can't explain."
Zhan's throat tightened. "Yibo..."
"I'm not finished." Yibo's hand came up to cup Zhan's cheek, his thumb brushing gently across the high arch of his cheekbone. "You have a gift, Xiao Zhan. Not a practiced skill or a learned talent—a gift. And gifts are meant to be shared. The world deserves to hear you sing, and more importantly, you deserve to let them. Not for the money, not for the car, not for any of that—though God knows we could use it—but because keeping that voice locked up inside you is a crime against everyone who's ever needed to hear something beautiful."
The tears that had threatened earlier finally spilled over, tracing warm paths down Zhan's cheeks. He tried to blink them away, embarrassed by the display of emotion, but Yibo caught each one with his thumb, wiping them away with a tenderness that made Zhan's heart ache.
"You're going to make me ruin my makeup," Zhan whispered, though he hadn't worn any makeup—couldn't afford the professional kind, and had decided that his face would have to be enough.
"You're beautiful without it," Yibo replied, as if reading his thoughts. "You're beautiful always. And in about six minutes, you're going to walk out onto that stage and you're going to open your mouth, and five hundred people are going to fall in love with you. And I'm going to be the one in the front row, already in love, watching them discover what I've known for years."
Zhan closed his eyes, letting the words wash over him. He wanted to believe them—wanted to absorb Yibo's certainty and make it his own. But the doubt was a living thing, coiled in his stomach, whispering its poison.
"And if I fail?" he asked, his voice barely audible above the backstage noise. "If I walk out there and I do freeze, and I do forget, and I do embarrass myself and you in front of all those people?"
Yibo was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped to a register Zhan rarely heard—the serious one, the one that emerged only in their most private moments, when the masks were off and nothing existed between them but raw, unfiltered truth.
"Then we go home," he said simply. "We order the cheap takeout—the one with the mystery meat that we always swear we're never getting again—and we eat it in bed while watching terrible reality television, and I hold you until you fall asleep. And tomorrow, we wake up and we try something else. Because failure is not the end of us, Zhan. Nothing is the end of us. Do you understand?"
Zhan opened his eyes, searching Yibo's face for any sign of doubt, any hint that these words were merely comfort rather than conviction. He found none. Only the steady, unwavering gaze of a man who had chosen him years ago and had never once looked back.
"I understand," Zhan whispered.
"Good." Yibo leaned in and pressed a kiss to Zhan's forehead—soft, almost reverent, the kind of kiss that spoke of promises made and kept. "Now go. Before I have to fight that sound tech for the monitor he's been glaring at all night."
Zhan laughed—a real laugh this time, surprised out of him by the non sequitur. He pulled back, drawing a deep breath that filled his lungs to capacity, and for the first time since waking up that morning, he felt something other than fear.
He felt ready.
---
The stage manager appeared at that moment, clipboard clutched to her chest like a shield, her expression the particular brand of harried that came from herding amateur performers through a professional production. She was a woman in her forties with steel-gray hair pulled into a severe bun and eyes that had seen everything and been impressed by none of it.
"Xiao Zhan? You're up in four. You need to be in the wings now."
Zhan nodded, his heart immediately resuming its frantic percussion against his ribs. He turned to Yibo, who was watching him with an expression that managed to be both encouraging and slightly smug—the look of a man who had just won an argument and was magnanimous enough not to gloat.
"Front row?" Zhan asked, though he already knew the answer.
"Front row," Yibo confirmed. "Center seat. I got here three hours early to claim it. The usher thought I was casing the place."
"You're ridiculous," Zhan said again, but this time the word carried a different weight—lighter, almost giddy, buoyed by the strange alchemy of Yibo's presence.
"I'm in love," Yibo corrected once more, and then he was gone, disappearing through the maze of backstage equipment toward the auditorium entrance, leaving Zhan alone with his nerves and the stage manager's impatient tapping foot.
---
The wings of the stage were a liminal space—neither here nor there, caught between the chaos of preparation and the exposure of performance. Zhan stood in the shadows, watching the current contestant—a young woman with a powerful voice and an unfortunate tendency to flat on her high notes—belt her way through a power ballad that had been overdone on every singing competition for the past decade. The audience applauded politely, and the judges scribbled notes on their pads with the practiced neutrality of people who had already made up their minds.
Zhan's turn was next. His name would be called in approximately ninety seconds, and then he would walk out into the blinding glare of the stage lights, and there would be nowhere to hide.
Breathe, he told himself. Just breathe.
But his lungs seemed to have forgotten their primary function, each inhalation coming shorter and shallower than the last. He pressed a hand to his chest, feeling his heart hammer against his palm like a caged bird. The song he had chosen—the one he had practiced until the lyrics were etched into his very bones—seemed to have evaporated from his memory entirely. He knew it was there, somewhere, buried beneath the avalanche of his panic, but he could not reach it.
What is the name of the song? The question looped in his mind, frantic and useless. He had sung it a thousand times. He knew it in his sleep. But standing here, in the wings, with the stage lights bleeding around the edges of the curtain and the murmur of the audience filling the darkened auditorium, he could not for the life of him remember a single word.
"Xiao Zhan," the announcer's voice boomed through the speakers, deep and resonant and utterly indifferent to the man whose name he was calling. "Please take the stage."
Zhan's legs moved before his brain could stop them. He walked—no, he floated, disconnected from his body, watching himself from somewhere above as he stepped out of the wings and into the light.
The stage was vast, far vaster than it had appeared from the audience seats. The floor was polished to a high shine, reflecting the lights in a way that made him feel as though he were walking on water. The band—a pickup group of session musicians who had probably played this exact arrangement a hundred times—watched him with bored expressions, their instruments resting in their laps as they waited for his cue.
And beyond the edge of the stage, beyond the footlights and the first few rows of seats, the audience stretched out before him like an ocean of faces. Five hundred people, just as Yibo had said, but they looked like five thousand from up here. Their eyes were on him, expectant and critical, waiting to be impressed or disappointed.
Zhan's mouth opened. No sound came out.
The silence stretched, elastic and unbearable. Someone in the audience coughed. A child whispered something to their parent. The drummer tapped his sticks together restlessly, a sound like the clicking of a countdown clock.
Say something, Zhan commanded himself. Sing something. Anything.
But his voice had abandoned him, fled to some distant corner of his psyche where it was cowering in terror. He stood frozen, bathed in light, exposed and alone.
Then he saw him.
Front row, center seat, just as he had promised. Wang Yibo, leaning forward in his chair with his elbows on his knees, his entire body angled toward the stage as though he could will Zhan forward through sheer force of attention. His face was illuminated by the spill of the stage lights, and on it was an expression of such unwavering faith, such absolute certainty, that Zhan felt something crack open inside him.
Yibo raised his hands and began to clap—slowly at first, then with increasing fervor. And then he did something that made Zhan's heart stutter in his chest: he began to whistle. A single clear note, piercing through the auditorium's expectant silence, cutting through the fog of Zhan's panic like a lighthouse beam through storm clouds.
"Sing, baby!" Yibo called out, his voice carrying across the space between them. "I'm right here!"
The audience turned to look at him—this handsome young man with the audacity to cheer like a fan at a rock concert rather than an amateur singing competition. But Yibo seemed not to notice or not to care. His eyes were fixed on Zhan, and his smile was the brightest thing in the room.
Zhan drew a breath—a real breath, deep and steady, the kind he had been unable to find for what felt like hours. He closed his eyes for a moment, blocking out the audience, blocking out the lights, blocking out everything except the memory of Yibo's voice and the feeling of his hand in his own.
You have a gift, Yibo had said. Gifts are meant to be shared.
Zhan opened his eyes, and he began to sing.
The song was called "WangXing"—a haunting melody about longing and loss and the particular ache of loving someone who existed just beyond reach. He had chosen it because it reminded him of Yibo, of all the years they had spent fighting for a love the world seemed determined to deny them, of the way Yibo looked at him sometimes as though he were something precious and impossible.
His voice emerged from his throat like a living thing, sure and clear and heartbreakingly beautiful. The notes floated upward, filling the auditorium, wrapping around the audience like a velvet embrace. He sang of starlight and separation, of hands that reached across impossible distances, of a love that refused to be extinguished no matter how many forces conspired against it.
The audience fell silent—not the restless silence of people waiting to be entertained, but the hush of people being transformed. The judges' pens stopped moving. The stagehands paused in their work. Even the band, who had played this arrangement for a dozen different contestants, leaned forward in their seats, their bored expressions replaced by something like wonder.
Zhan's voice grew stronger with each passing verse, his confidence building like a wave gathering momentum. The lyrics came to him not as remembered words but as living things, emerging from some deep well within him that he had not known existed. He was no longer singing about love; he was singing love itself, channeling every moment of joy and pain and hope and despair that had brought him to this stage.
He reached the bridge—the most vulnerable part of the song, where the melody stripped away all pretense and laid bare the singer's soul—and his eyes found Yibo in the front row. His lover was crying, silent tears streaming down his face, but he was smiling too, that particular smile that Zhan had fallen in love with four years ago and would spend the rest of his life trying to deserve.
Zhan sang the final note, letting it hang in the air like a held breath, and then he let it go.
For a moment, there was nothing—no sound, no movement, no indication that anyone in the auditorium had heard what he had just done. Then, like a dam breaking, the applause came. It started in the front row, with Yibo rising to his feet and clapping so hard his hands must have stung, and then it spread backward, row by row, until the entire audience was standing, their applause a thunderous ovation that seemed to shake the very walls of the theater.
Zhan stood in the center of the stage, bathed in light, and for the first time in his life, he felt like he belonged there.
---
The Misunderstanding
The backstage area, which had seemed so crowded and chaotic before his performance, now felt cavernous and empty. Zhan stood near the exit, still trembling with the aftermath of adrenaline, while stagehands rushed past him to prepare for the next contestant. His ears were still ringing with the applause, his heart still racing with the memory of those five hundred people rising to their feet.
But where was Yibo?
He had expected his lover to be waiting for him, to be the first person he saw when he stepped off that stage. Instead, he found himself scanning the backstage crowd and coming up empty. The front row seat where Yibo had been sitting was empty now, abandoned.
Zhan's euphoria began to curdle, replaced by something colder. He told himself not to panic—Yibo had probably gone to the restroom, or to get a drink of water, or any of a hundred reasonable explanations. But the anxious part of his brain, the part that had been whispering poison for days, seized on the absence and twisted it into something ugly.
He left, that voice whispered. He heard you sing, and he realized you're not good enough, and he left.
No, Zhan argued back. He was crying. He was happy. He wouldn't just leave.
But where was he?
The next contestant was announced, a young man with a guitar who launched into a folksy original composition that had the audience swaying. Zhan retreated further into the wings, his phone clutched in his hand, willing it to buzz with a message from Yibo. Nothing came.
Five minutes passed. Then ten. Zhan's anxiety, which had retreated during his performance, returned with renewed ferocity. He began to pace, his footsteps echoing on the concrete floor, his mind spinning out increasingly elaborate scenarios of abandonment and betrayal.
And then he saw him.
Yibo emerged from the corridor that led to the restrooms, walking with a slight stiffness that Zhan's trained eye immediately recognized. His lover's cheeks were flushed, his hair slightly disheveled, and there was something about his posture—a tension in his shoulders, a carefulness in his stride—that made Zhan's blood run cold.
No, he thought. No, he wouldn't. Not here. Not now.
But the evidence was there, or seemed to be. Yibo had been gone for nearly fifteen minutes. He had returned looking rumpled and flushed. And as he approached Zhan, his arms opening for an embrace, Zhan noticed something else—the unmistakable bulge in his lover's tight jeans, the physical evidence of arousal that had not yet fully subsided.
Zhan stepped back, out of reach, and Yibo's arms closed around empty air.
"Zhan?" Yibo's expression shifted from joy to confusion, his brow furrowing. "What's wrong? You were incredible. You were—"
"Where did you go?" Zhan's voice came out flat, controlled, the careful neutrality of someone holding back a storm.
Yibo blinked. "I... I had to use the restroom. I've been holding it since before you went on, and I didn't want to miss your performance, so I waited until you finished, and then—"
"Fifteen minutes?" Zhan interrupted, his control beginning to crack. "You were in the restroom for fifteen minutes?"
Yibo's mouth opened, then closed. A flush crept up his neck, visible even in the dim backstage lighting. His hand came up to rub at the back of his neck—a nervous gesture Zhan knew well, one that meant his lover was trying to figure out how much to say.
"I... had to take care of something," Yibo said carefully.
Zhan felt something inside him shatter. The coldness that had been creeping through his veins crystallized into ice, sharp and cutting. He heard the words Yibo was not saying, saw the implications in his lover's averted gaze and guilty posture.
"You got hard," Zhan said, and the words came out like shards of glass. "Watching me sing, you got hard, and you had to go to the bathroom to... to take care of it. And now you're standing here, looking at me, and expecting me to be okay with that?"
Yibo's eyes widened. "Zhan, that's not—I mean, yes, I got hard, but it was because of you. It was because your voice—because watching you up there—because I love you so much I can't control my own body sometimes—"
"Don't." Zhan's voice cracked, and he hated himself for it. Hated the tears that were already welling in his eyes, hated the way his voice trembled, hated that he was falling apart in the wings of a theater while somewhere out there five hundred people were still applauding for a performance he could no longer remember giving. "Don't you dare try to make this romantic."
"It's the truth!" Yibo stepped forward, reaching for Zhan's hand, but Zhan jerked away as though burned. "Zhan, listen to me. When you sing, it does something to me. It always has. Remember the first time I heard you? In the music practice room at university? You were singing that same song, and I walked past the door and I couldn't move. I stood there for twenty minutes just listening, and when you finished and walked out, I couldn't even speak. I was so overwhelmed I just... stood there. Like an idiot."
Zhan remembered. Of course he remembered. That moment had become part of their origin story, the thing they told friends at parties—back when they had friends, back when they went to parties. The shy boy in the doorway, unable to form words, who had finally managed to stammer out, "That was beautiful," before fleeing down the hallway in embarrassment.
"That was different," Zhan said, but his voice had lost some of its sharpness.
"How is it different?" Yibo pressed. "I got hard then too, Zhan. I went back to my dorm room and I—" He stopped, flushing even deeper. "The point is, this isn't new. You've always affected me like this. Your voice goes straight through my skin and into some part of me I can't control. And tonight, watching you up there, knowing that five hundred people were seeing what I've always seen... I couldn't help it. I'm sorry if that embarrasses you, but I won't apologize for wanting you. Not ever."
Zhan wanted to believe him. Every rational part of his brain recognized the truth in Yibo's words, recognized the familiar pattern of his lover's arousal and the innocent explanation for his absence. But the fear was still there, the old wound of never being enough, of being too much and not enough simultaneously, of loving so deeply that the possibility of losing that love felt like death.
"You could have waited for me," Zhan said quietly. "You could have come backstage and found me, and we could have... I would have helped you. Instead, you went off by yourself and you—" He couldn't finish the sentence.
Yibo's expression shifted, understanding dawning. "You thought I was with someone else."
It wasn't a question. Zhan didn't answer.
"Zhan." Yibo's voice was soft now, almost unbearably tender. He stepped forward again, and this time Zhan let him close the distance. "Look at me. Please."
Zhan raised his eyes, and what he saw in Yibo's face made his breath catch. There was no defensiveness there, no anger at being accused. Only hurt—the deep, genuine hurt of someone being doubted by the person they loved most in the world.
"I would never," Yibo said, and the words were simple but absolute. "I would never touch anyone else. I would never want anyone else. I have spent four years proving to you that you are the only person I see, the only person I want, the only person I will ever love. If you don't believe that by now, then I don't know what else I can do."
The tears Zhan had been holding back finally broke free, streaming down his cheeks in hot, shameful rivulets. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry. I know you wouldn't. I know. But when I came off stage and you weren't there, and I couldn't find you, and then you came back looking like that—I panicked. I thought—"
"You thought the worst," Yibo finished gently. "Because that's what you do. Because someone—your parents, maybe, or the world, or just your own damn brain—taught you that the things you love will be taken from you. But I'm not going anywhere, Zhan. I'm right here. I've always been right here."
Zhan collapsed into him then, his body folding against Yibo's chest as though his bones had turned to water. Yibo's arms came around him immediately, holding him close, one hand coming up to stroke through his hair in that familiar gesture that had calmed him through a hundred anxiety attacks.
"I'm sorry," Zhan repeated into the fabric of Yibo's shirt. "I'm so sorry. You were perfect tonight. You were perfect, and I accused you of—"
"Shh." Yibo pressed a kiss to the top of his head. "We'll talk about it later. Right now, I believe they're about to announce the winner. And I have a feeling—" His voice lifted into something almost like a laugh. "—that we're about to be fifty million yuan richer."
---
The Victory
The announcement came twenty minutes later, after the final contestant had performed and the judges had retreated to deliberate. Zhan stood in the wings again, but this time Yibo was beside him, their fingers intertwined, Yibo's thumb tracing soothing circles on the back of Zhan's hand.
The stage manager gave them both a pointed look but said nothing. Apparently, even she recognized that some bonds transcended the rules of backstage protocol.
"And the winner is..." The announcer drew out the pause, milking the tension for all it was worth. The audience leaned forward in their seats, holding their collective breath.
Zhan squeezed Yibo's hand so hard he was probably cutting off circulation. Yibo didn't complain.
"Sean Xiao Zhan!"
The name hit Zhan like a wave, crashing over him with such force that he staggered. Yibo caught him, laughing, and then they were both laughing, and Zhan was crying again—he seemed to be doing a lot of that tonight—and the stage manager was shoving him toward the stage with an expression that managed to be both annoyed and pleased.
He walked out into the light for the second time that evening, but everything was different now. The fear was gone, replaced by a joy so expansive it felt like it might lift him off the ground. The audience was on their feet again, applauding, cheering, some of them crying. The judges were smiling—actually smiling, not the practiced smiles of television personalities but genuine expressions of delight.
Zhan accepted the trophy—a crystal spire that caught the light and scattered it into rainbows—and shook hands with the judges, and waved to the audience, but his eyes kept drifting to the wings, where Yibo stood watching him with an expression of such profound pride and love that Zhan felt his heart might burst.
The prize money—fifty million yuan—would be transferred to his account within seventy-two hours. The car—a sleek black sedan that looked like it cost more than their apartment—would be delivered to an address of his choosing. And the trophy would sit on their mantle, a physical reminder of the night when everything changed.
But none of that mattered as much as the man waiting for him in the wings.
---
The Drive Home
The theater's parking garage was nearly empty at this hour, most of the audience having dispersed to their own vehicles or the nearby public transit stops. Zhan's new car sat in a reserved spot near the elevator, gleaming under the fluorescent lights like something out of a dream.
He held the keys in his hand, feeling their weight—the weight of possibility, of security, of a future that no longer looked quite so precarious. Yibo stood beside him, laden with the bags and boxes of promotional materials the production company had thrust upon them—t-shirts and water bottles and other merchandise emblazoned with the competition's logo.
"Get in," Zhan said, tossing the keys to Yibo. "You're driving."
Yibo caught them one-handed, a grin spreading across his face. "You trust me with your new car?"
"I trust you with my life. The car seems like a smaller commitment."
They settled into the front seats—real leather, heated, with that new-car smell that Zhan had only ever experienced in dealership showrooms. Yibo adjusted the mirrors and the seat position, his movements efficient and practiced, while Zhan watched him from the passenger seat, trying to memorize every detail of this moment.
The engine purred to life, smooth and powerful, and they pulled out of the parking garage and into the night.
The city was beautiful at this hour, streetlights casting pools of orange light onto wet pavement—it had rained during the competition, and the world outside smelled of petrichor and possibility. Yibo drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on Zhan's thigh, his thumb tracing idle patterns on the fabric of his jeans.
"We should celebrate," Yibo said, glancing over at him. "We have fifty million yuan. We could go anywhere. Do anything."
Zhan considered this. A part of him—the part that had been deprived for so long—wanted to say yes. Wanted to find the most expensive restaurant in the city and order the most expensive thing on the menu. Wanted to book a suite at a luxury hotel and order room service and champagne.
But another part of him, quieter but more insistent, wanted something else entirely.
"Take me home," he said softly. "I just want to go home. With you."
Yibo's hand tightened on his thigh. "Yeah," he said, his voice rougher than it had been a moment ago. "Yeah, okay. Home."
---
The Elevator
The apartment building's lobby was deserted at this hour, the night concierge dozing behind his desk. Yibo parked the car—taking a moment to appreciate the heated garage space that came with their unit, a luxury they had barely been able to afford before and would now take for granted—and they made their way to the elevator, leaving the promotional merchandise in the trunk. They could retrieve it tomorrow.
The elevator doors slid open, and they stepped inside. Yibo pressed the button for the fifth floor, and the doors began to close.
They didn't make it.
Before the doors had fully shut, Yibo had Zhan pressed against the elevator wall, his mouth finding his lover's with an urgency that bordered on desperation. The kiss was not gentle—it was hungry, demanding, a physical manifestation of everything they had both been holding back all night.
Zhan responded in kind, his fingers tangling in Yibo's hair, pulling him closer. He could taste the salt of his own tears on Yibo's lips, could feel the rapid beat of Yibo's heart against his chest, could smell the familiar scent of him—laundry detergent and that special-occasion cologne and something underneath that was simply Yibo.
The elevator stopped.
They broke apart, breathing hard, and the doors slid open to reveal a middle-aged man in a rumpled suit, his briefcase in one hand and his keys in the other. He looked at them—at their flushed faces and disheveled clothing and the unmistakable evidence of interrupted passion—and his expression shifted from exhaustion to mild disapproval.
Neither Zhan nor Yibo could meet his eyes. They stared at the floor, at the ceiling, at anything but the man who had caught them in this intimate moment. The man stepped into the elevator, pressed the button for the fourth floor, and stood in stiff silence as the doors closed again.
The ride to the fourth floor took approximately fifteen seconds. It felt like an hour.
When the doors opened and the man stepped out, he paused for just a moment. "There are cameras in here," he said, his voice dry. "In case you weren't aware."
Then he was gone, and the doors were closing, and Yibo was pressing the button for the fifth floor again with more force than strictly necessary.
"Stupid old man," he muttered under his breath.
Zhan laughed—a startled, breathless sound that turned into something almost hysterical. "He's right, though. There are cameras. We just—on camera—"
"Then let's give them a show," Yibo said, and he was reaching for Zhan again, and Zhan was letting him, because somehow the danger of discovery only made this more thrilling.
The elevator stopped at the fifth floor, and the doors opened to reveal a young woman and her daughter—a girl of perhaps seven or eight with wide, curious eyes. The woman's mouth dropped open. The girl's jaw dropped open. And Zhan and Yibo, caught once again in the act, froze like deer in headlights.
"Excuse me," the woman said, her voice strained. "This is the fifth floor."
Zhan made a sound that might have been an apology or might have been a dying gasp. He couldn't tell. He couldn't think. He could only feel the heat rising to his face as he and Yibo disentangled themselves and stumbled out of the elevator.
"Please get a room," the woman called after them, and the little girl—that terrible, wonderful, curious little girl—was still staring as the doors closed.
Yibo started laughing first—a deep, helpless laugh that doubled him over. Zhan joined him a moment later, the absurdity of the situation finally breaking through his embarrassment. They stood in the hallway, two grown men laughing until tears streamed down their faces, until their stomachs ached, until they had to lean on each other for support.
"That woman," Yibo gasped. "She said 'get a room.' As if we don't have one. As if we weren't literally on our way to one."
"Whose fault is that?" Zhan managed, though he was laughing too hard for the accusation to carry any weight. "You're the one who—in the elevator—with the cameras—"
"You kissed me back."
"Of course I kissed you back. You're you. I'm always going to kiss you back."
Yibo's laughter softened into something else, something warmer. He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind Zhan's ear, his fingers lingering on the curve of his cheek.
"I love you," he said. "In case I haven't said it enough tonight."
"You've said it," Zhan replied, and his voice was steadier now, the laughter fading into something quieter but no less intense. "But I don't mind hearing it again."
"I love you," Yibo repeated, and he said it like a prayer, like a promise, like the only truth that had ever mattered.
---
The Apartment
Their apartment was small—a one-bedroom on the fifth floor of a building that had seen better decades. The paint was peeling in the corners, the kitchen faucet dripped no matter how many times Yibo tried to fix it, and the bedroom window stuck in its frame, letting in a draft that made the winter months miserable.
But it was theirs.
Zhan had never loved any place the way he loved this cramped, imperfect apartment. He had never loved anything the way he loved the man who shared it with him.
They made it through the door somehow—Zhan couldn't have recounted the journey from the elevator to their apartment if his life had depended on it. All he knew was that one moment they were in the hallway, and the next moment they were inside, and Yibo's mouth was on his again, and the door was slamming shut behind them.
Clothes began to fall away—coats first, then shoes, then shirts. They left a trail behind them as they moved through the apartment, from the entryway to the living room, from the living room to the hallway, from the hallway to the bedroom. Neither of them could bear to break the kiss long enough to navigate properly, so they stumbled and bumped into furniture and knocked over a lamp that Zhan had bought at a thrift store three years ago.
Neither of them cared.
The bedroom was dark except for the ambient light filtering through the window—the streetlights below, the distant glow of the city skyline. Zhan felt the edge of the bed against the back of his knees, and then he was falling backward, Yibo falling with him, their bodies tangling in the sheets.
Yibo pulled back just far enough to look at him, and in the dim light, his eyes were dark and intense and full of something that made Zhan's breath catch.
"You sang tonight," Yibo said, his voice low. "You stood on that stage in front of five hundred people, and you sang, and you were the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
"And now?" Zhan asked, his hands sliding up Yibo's bare chest, feeling the warmth of his skin.
"Now I'm going to make you sing again," Yibo replied, and there was a promise in his words, a threat and a vow all at once. "But this time, you're only singing for me."
---
What followed was less a single act of lovemaking and more a symphony—a gradual crescendo of touch and taste and whispered words that built toward a climax neither of them was in a hurry to reach. Yibo took his time, mapping every inch of Zhan's body with his lips and hands, rediscovering the places that made him gasp and the places that made him moan and the places that made him cry out with a pleasure so acute it bordered on pain.
He started at Zhan's lips, kissing him slowly, deeply, as though they had all the time in the world—and perhaps they did now, with fifty million yuan in their future and nothing to do but spend it on each other. Then he moved downward, trailing kisses along Zhan's jaw, his throat, the hollow of his collarbone.
"You're beautiful," Yibo murmured against Zhan's skin, and the words were soft but fervent, worshipful. "You're so beautiful, and you're mine, and I'm never letting you go."
Zhan's hands fisted in the sheets as Yibo's mouth found his nipple, sucking gently, then harder, then with teeth. He arched off the bed, a moan escaping his lips—the first note of the song Yibo had promised to draw from him.
"Yibo," he breathed, and it was half-plea, half-prayer.
"That's it," Yibo said, his voice rough. "Sing for me."
He moved lower, trailing his tongue down the plane of Zhan's stomach, pausing to dip into his navel, to nip at the sharp line of his hipbone. Zhan's body was trembling now, every nerve ending alight, every cell focused on the point of contact between them.
When Yibo finally took him into his mouth, Zhan cried out—a broken, desperate sound that echoed off the walls of their small bedroom. Yibo's mouth was hot and wet and skilled, and Zhan's hands flew to his hair, not pushing or pulling, just holding on as though Yibo were the only solid thing in a world that had dissolved into sensation.
"Please," Zhan heard himself say, though he wasn't sure what he was asking for. "Please, Yibo, I need—"
"I know what you need," Yibo replied, and he proved it.
The preparation was careful but not gentle—Yibo knew Zhan's body too well for gentleness to be necessary. His fingers were slick and sure, stretching and preparing, finding the spot that made Zhan see stars and pressing against it until Zhan was writhing beneath him, begging for more, begging for everything.
When Yibo finally entered him, they both groaned—Zhan from the familiar stretch and burn, Yibo from the tight heat that enveloped him. They stayed still for a moment, breathing together, adjusting to the intimacy of being joined so completely.
"Okay?" Yibo asked, his forehead pressed against Zhan's.
"More than okay," Zhan managed. "Move. Please."
Yibo moved.
The rhythm they found was not frantic—it was deep and slow and deliberate, each thrust designed to draw out the pleasure, to prolong the moment. Zhan wrapped his legs around Yibo's waist, pulling him closer, and Yibo buried his face in Zhan's neck, breathing in his scent, leaving marks that would bloom purple by morning.
"Sing my name," Yibo commanded, and Zhan did—not the careful, controlled singing of the competition stage, but something raw and unfiltered, a litany of "Yibo, Yibo, Yibo" that rose and fell with each thrust.
They came together, their bodies shuddering in unison, their cries mingling in the darkness. And afterward, they lay tangled in each other, sweat cooling on their skin, hearts gradually slowing from a gallop to a canter to a walk.
Zhan traced idle patterns on Yibo's chest, his fingers following the lines of muscle and bone. "We're rich," he said, and the words still felt unreal, like a line from someone else's story.
"We're rich," Yibo agreed, pressing a kiss to the top of Zhan's head. "But more importantly, we're together."
Zhan lifted his head to look at him, at this man who had left everything behind for him, who had worked thankless jobs and endured endless indignities, who had never once complained or wavered or looked back with regret.
"I love you," Zhan said, and the words felt insufficient for the magnitude of what he felt. "I love you so much it scares me sometimes."
"Then let it scare you," Yibo replied, his hand coming up to cup Zhan's cheek. "And let it make you brave. Because there's nothing we can't do now. Nothing we can't be. We have each other, and we have a future, and we have fifty million yuan to figure out the rest."
Zhan laughed—a soft, wondering sound. "What are we going to do with all that money?"
Yibo pretended to consider this. "Well, first, we're going to fix that damn faucet in the kitchen. And then we're going to buy a bed that doesn't squeak every time we—"
"Yibo."
"And then we're going to travel. Anywhere you want. Paris, maybe. Or Tokyo. Or that little beach town in Thailand you're always talking about."
"And then?"
"And then," Yibo said, and his voice softened, losing its teasing edge, "we're going to live. Really live. Not just surviving from paycheck to paycheck, not just making ends meet. We're going to wake up every morning and choose each other, and we're going to build something that lasts."
Zhan felt tears prick at his eyes again—happy tears this time, the kind that came from a heart so full it had no choice but to overflow.
"That sounds perfect," he whispered.
"It will be," Yibo promised. "Because it's with you."
They lay in silence for a while, listening to the sounds of the city outside—the distant wail of a siren, the murmur of traffic, the occasional shout from the street below. Their small apartment, which had always felt temporary, like a waystation on the road to somewhere else, suddenly felt like a beginning rather than an interlude.
Yibo shifted beneath him, and Zhan felt the familiar stirring of his lover's body—the evidence that their night was far from over.
"Again?" Zhan asked, and his voice was already growing rough with renewed desire.
Yibo's smile was visible even in the darkness. "Again," he confirmed. "And again. And again. We have the rest of our lives, remember?"
Zhan pulled him down for a kiss, and in that kiss was everything—the past they had survived, the present they were living, and the future that stretched out before them, bright and infinite and theirs.
---
Epilogue: The Morning After
Sunlight streamed through the window—the one that stuck, the one that let in the draft—and Zhan woke slowly, reluctantly, surfacing from dreams he couldn't remember into a reality that was better than anything his subconscious could have invented.
Yibo was still asleep beside him, his face relaxed in a way it never was when he was awake, his dark hair spread across the pillow like spilled ink. Zhan watched him for a long moment, memorizing the curve of his jaw, the sweep of his lashes, the small mole near his left eyebrow that Zhan had kissed a thousand times.
The trophy sat on the nightstand, catching the morning light and scattering it across the ceiling in fragments of rainbow. Zhan's phone was there too, buzzing with notifications—missed calls from numbers he didn't recognize, text messages from acquaintances who had seen the competition on television, emails from managers and agents and people who wanted a piece of his newfound fame.
He ignored them all.
Instead, he reached out and traced the line of Yibo's collarbone, feather-light, and watched as his lover stirred.
"Morning," Yibo mumbled, his voice thick with sleep.
"Morning," Zhan replied. "We're rich."
Yibo's eyes opened—dark and warm and full of love. "We're rich," he agreed.
"And I'm going to sing your name for the rest of my life," Zhan said, and the words were not a promise but a prophecy, a statement of fact as immutable as gravity.
Yibo smiled—that smile, the one that had changed everything four years ago in a university hallway and would continue to change everything for the rest of their lives.
"I'm counting on it," he said.
And then he pulled Zhan close, and the morning light grew brighter, and the world outside continued to turn, and two lovers who had once had nothing but each other discovered that sometimes, that was enough to build everything.
---
End of Chapter One
