Legally Bound

Chapter 1: Someone serious

"Wait...what?"

San blinks his eyes several times in rapid succession, convinced that what he'd just heard must have been a delusion, an evil trick of his wine-hazed mind. Indeed, he's so positive of this fact that the expectant smile of someone anticipating to be proposed to by the love of his life is still plastered stupidly across his face, his white teeth glinting dully in the romantic mood lighting of the restaurant.

"San," Yunho begins incredibly slowly, like a hunter not wanting to spook his prey. His expression is solemn, eyes dark, his tightly pursed lips the polar opposite of San's eager grin. "I said, I think we should break up."

As if a gun had been shot point blank next to his head, an aggressive ringing pierces San's ears, his eardrums pounding with blood. His vision begins to blur rapidly, and the table with empty plates in front of him, as well as the man on the opposite side of it, shrink away, spiraling into a tunnel. His hands tremble in front of him, nails digging into the pressed, linen tablecloth, yet San doesn't even notice, swept away by a tumultuous cascade of emotions that are tangling all of his thoughts together.

No, this can't be right. Yunho loves me, he loves me more than anything else. This is all wrong. Yunho was going to propose, he was definitely going to ask me to marry him. This must be a dream, a nightmare, it has to be.

His desperation overriding his adrenaline-driven, frozen state, San rips one of his lead-like limbs off the table and pinches himself on the opposite forearm. He winces a bit at his own touch, his fingernails digging through the cotton fabric of his light pink striped dress shirt, but, unconvinced, he pinches himself again in the same spot. Although it hurts even more the second time, no doubt leaving a mark, San doesn't even flinch, reality finally pouring over him like a bucket of ice water.

Holy shit, he's really breaking up with me.

When his eyes refocus, his vision's dizzying spiraling coming to an end, San's gaze lands on Yunho, who's looking at him with that same solemn expression, one that's now dashed with a sprinkle of what looks like pity. Yunho's now the one to appear expectant, but in a dreading way, uncomfortably watching San's reaction to his words play out in real time. His expression is too much for San to bear, a look so devoid of all the feelings that he himself is burdened with right now that it yanks San out of his silence.

San's own emotions finally spill out, permeating the silent, dead air between them with the roll of a single lonely tear down his flushed cheek.

"I tho一I thought you we一were proposing," San gasps, his lungs constricting under the weight of his shock. Tears rapidly brim his eyes, causing Yunho to swim in his vision, his handsome familiar face and brunette hair appearing like a blurry memory, a memory San is not ready to let go of yet.

"Oh pooh bear," Yunho sighs, his steady tone foreign and unnatural against San's incredibly heightened state. San feels a warm hand grip one of his own from across the table, but he doesn't shake it off and instead squeezes it in return, anger not having yet set in. "Well, I did talk to my parents about that, of course I did, but...well...you know how much they expect from me and my brother. And with going to Jude Law School next year, I'm moving across the country and一"

"Then let me talk to your parents," San sputters, interjecting with a boldness that does little to hide how frantic he is. His mind is a battlefield of confused chaos, desperately attempting to understand how this is happening to him, why the love of his life is making such a terrible decision.

But there has to be a solution. This can't just end. They can't just be over like this, San cannot accept that.

"I'm sure we can convince them, they've always liked me anyway. And...and I'll move with you! I don't一"