Like My Heart Craves A Beat

The Set-Up

Author's Notes:

Have I gone overboard with my mini-theatres from this chapter onwards? Maybe. But it's my fic, so—yeah. It's super difficult to format social media on Wattpad so hopefully it's not too difficult to follow. Let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions for improvements.

I chose to do my social media posts Weibo focused. For those of you who have never been on Weibo, let me tell you—they have some crazy funny usernames on there. I love them. And because the simplified Chinese characters string together, they have full on sentences as usernames (but without the space that we have between our English words). So, I decided to do the same, but I have added the space for ease of reading.

Hashtags are generally the same as the western use of them, they just have # at the start and end, like this #JunZhe Rio#.

They also have something called super topics, which is a community space around specific topics. Unlike hashtags, super topics have their own online host and they can have an introductory text as well. Shan He Ling had one called Lang Lang Ding (which I am guessing you all know since this is the LLD Bang!) and I created a super topic named JunZhe for this fic. You can identify super topics with this icon ◊.

♪ Jay Chou – 開不了口 (Can't Speak), Isak Danielson – "Bleed out" and "Always", Lee Chan Sol – "Still Fighting It"

💔

The hangover, and subsequent headache that hits Zhang Zhe Han when the alarm on his black Honor Magic phone goes off, is luckily one of his milder ones. He still groans and wishes that he could just stay in bed, even if it's just one—or maybe two—hits of that snooze symbol. However, he has barely snuggled up under the comforter before an echo from the night before hits him like a bucket of ice.

'Let's break up.'

Something unknown flips violently in the pit of his stomach and the reaction to his system is instant. He catapults towards the bedroom ensuite whilst his whole body screams in protest with the movements, and all but hugs the toilet.

After dry heaving for a minute, he gives up, realising that his reaction is not due to the excessive amount of alcohol he had the day before. He is apparently not hungover.

Confused, he sinks back towards the tiled bathroom floor and sags over the cold porcelain as the previous day unravels in his mind. He groans into the bowl, his own misery echoing around his head, and wonders where it all had gone wrong.

Yesterday had started so great. Even though he loves spending time with his mother and extended family in Shenzhen—and he really, really does—coming back to Shanghai is a different kind of balm on his soul when he has been working hard. Because it is coming home. And yes—he is fully aware that it isn't the apartment that he considers home. Though, he admits that Lufei does make his place a bit livelier after having had his nephew climbing all over him non-stop for a week. No—it is the fact that his fiancé lives only a few blocks away and Gong Jun is his home. No matter if they are in Shanghai or Beijing. For the past years, it has always been Gong Jun. He wishes that he had told him how he felt, and now it is too late.

He had literally bounced out of bed the day before and, for the first time in a long time, had to wait for the car to pick him up in the morning to take him to the photoshoot. He had been bouncing his legs all through hair and makeup until Gong Jun had finally arrived—in all his tall and toned glory with that black hair that teased his eyelashes and hid those intense eyes—and then all had been right with the world. Because he had missed him. Missed, as in on a scale of one to ten, where one being 'I might text back within the next few days', and ten being 'I am vibrating hard to stop myself from climbing Gong Jun like a tree', he had been a solid eight.