1 Chapter 1: Proposal

This story will be having a huge overhaul. I hope you enjoy the new storyline, the new characters and all the new fun that is going to come with it. The new story the characters are named Zhēng Yù(used to be Quintin) and Ēn Chén(used to be Kaylen), there is a previous story I got rid of on this site, it's called Tie Him To Me and it has Saint and Heart, you can read this free on Tapas or support by buying it on Amazon. TY.

This story with Ēn Chén&Zhēng Yù will be a shortish-story(By shortish I mean less than 80K more like novella length) so I hope you can still enjoy the ride, even if it is not that long or overly complicated. 

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"I am not going to marry you, Ēn Chén."

"Zhēng Yù, keep your voice down. It's not like I proposed to you super loudly." He snapped at him quietly.

"You don't have to announce it to the world." He leaned in and whispered under his breath as softly as he could.

Zhēng Yù scoffed. "Yeah, exactly."

He shook his head at Ēn Chén, feeling vehement at his attitude.

"Jeez, you are such a jerk. Did you even hear how that sounded? You know, before it exited your head and made it to your mouth? Did you hear how absolutely daft you were when you shushed me?"

"What? What did I do? Why are you acting this way? Things were perfectly fine yesterday." Ēn Chén said, confusion grappling across his face.

Zhēng Yù felt a pang of defeat berate his chest and numb his nerves.

'He really doesn't see it! My feelings mean that little to him…I…'

Heat rose through his body as he wondered just what he had done to earn himself the prize of this moment. Indignation rose inside him as the wounding ache to his hopes, his pride, his dreams, his everything throbbed relentlessly.

Zhēng Yù looked back up to Ēn Chén and stared into those daring eyes.

"You are an absolute idiot." Before Ēn Chén had a chance to say anything in return, Zhēng Yù cut him off.

"No, you are right. Why would I possibly be mad?"

"It's not like you didn't just shush me, after blatantly saying you don't want to marry me. That you are just doing this because it's expected. No, it's not like you told me to keep my voice down when rejecting you… For rejecting me. Really, such sweet moves there. Sweet, sweet moves Ēn Chén."

Ēn Chén opened his mouth as if to say something, but from the look on his face, Zhēng Yù could tell that he wouldn't want to hear anything Ēn Chén had to say.

"No, no, don't speak. I think I have heard enough for a lifetime, Kay."

Zhēng Yù turned and walked away, looking at the ring Ēn Chén had just proposed to him with over dinner.

His phone still burned a hole in his pocket. Like a ticking time bomb he pulled it out. Unable to stop staring at the text message on his phone. The one that had shattered him. The one that Ēn Chén had happily pointed at the phone while motioning to it as if he had just sent him a prize.

He willed the words to stop hurting.

But they wouldn't… They were still there, so they would hurt.

Don't say anything aloud, just nod if you want to get married. I don't want to call any attention to ourselves. This isn't forever, of course, just for a while. You know, just until both of our parents are off our backs about this whole thing. You know, they are constantly talking about our chemistry and how it was always meant to be. With the whole lifelong friend's thing. So I mean it's after college, just like we promised a few years ago. Might as well get it over with, right?

Zhēng Yù sucked back the tears that threatened to burst out of him from the hurt. 'I hate that dumb joke in high school. I hate it even though I cling to it. How dumb was I to think he had started to feel something too!'

'He wanted to go back to his innocence, back to when he had wanted to meet his forever person. Back to… when he had wanted to have Ēn Chén propose to him… This was not how he had been dreaming things would go down.'

'But then again, whoever pictured their future waited their whole life for a day like today. It was unfathomable, let alone something someone would long for with eager anticipation.'

'In his mind, he had always envisioned candles, romance, and love in the air. He wasn't even sure what that looked like for him… For them. Romance in the air…'

'What even was that? How can you achieve something you can't define… Still, he had wanted it.'

'He had just hoped that it would go something like the movies. He had never assumed… Heck, no one could have assumed that something like this would happen.'

'Who even wanted to be proposed to in silence, in secret, scared someone would hear or see them? It was mind-boggling, in the most horrible soul-crushing way.'

'Wasn't that the whole point of a proposal to let people know you wanted to be with each other? You took them to their favorite spot, and you made a scene. A scene that showed the world just how much you loved this person you wanted to spend the rest of your eternity with.'

'While eternity was as long as your last breath and different for everyone, the ache in your heart filled with effervescent love still made you want to spend those moments with them. That's what being married was. Or that's what he had always viewed it as. Maybe it was the influence of his dads and just seeing how pure and beautiful their love was. But he wanted that for himself, too. Was that kinda happiness too much to ask for?'

'No… Was that kinda happiness too much to ask for with Ēn Chén?'

'When you were that in love, the whole world knew it, and you didn't care that they did.'

'Whether the world clapped for you or hated you. You were proud, because this was your love, you could be as hapless and as air headedly daft as you wanted. Because you were each other forever, nothing else mattered.'

'No one would want to get the kind of proposal he had just gotten, especially to fake a gay marriage to get their gay parents off of their backs.'

'Just how had he ended up in such a fucked up world that he had to fake a gay marriage to the man; he had genuinely been in love with since he was thirteen years old. Just to make both of their parents happy.'

'Just who did I kill? Was I a serial killer in my past life? Why do I have to be so tortured now?'

Zhēng Yù sighed, walking down the street with a heavy ache that chewed at his insides.

Nothing had upset him this much except hearing he couldn't play Carnegie Hall.

That old saying his dads always said popped into his head.

When bad things come, they come in threes.

A fake proposal with a side of a broken heart.

A lost dream with a side of a broken heart.

And slammed in the face with just how one-sided your love has always been… 'Could you be any more pathetic, Zhēng Yù?'

Zhēng Yù's chest throbbed and tightened the empty aching feeling he had been trying to avoid for so many years, chewed at him.