#mafia!lay

It seemed to Y/N in her infinite wisdom that things for her had just gone from bad to worse. On top of crippling debt from student loans that now she was out of university she would actually have to pay, and boy was she feeling those payments already, she was also months behind on her rent because her shitty job didn’t pay her more than the inadequate minimum wage and when she complained about this quietly and privately on the phone to a friend she had lost said shitty job. Bad seemed to have leaped to catastrophic and there was only way Y/N knew how to deal with catastrophes; alcohol.

The bar she found herself wondering into at 3am when everything else had seemingly closed wasn’t a bar she was familiar with. It wasn’t new but it wasn’t old either, she could vaguely remember being handed a flyer to its grand opening when she’d first moved 4-ish years ago. The interior had an industrial vibe to it, with exposed brick and cast iron everywhere. Plush, crushed velvet seats were scattered around the bar and it seemed to Y/N that aesthetic may not have been the owners top priority but it didn’t much matter to her when all she needed the place for was enough booze to forget what it had looked like to begin with.

“Scotch on the rocks please” 

“Strong drink. Tough night?” Y/N looked to her left. A handsome man with a kind smile and perfect hair said next to her. She could see a half empty bottle whiskey next to him and full glass in front of him. He’d obviously been drinking for a while.

“Looks like tonight's not going so great for you either” The bartender placed the glass down and Y/N handed him some money, way more than the drink cost or than she could afford.

“My wife is divorcing me” She didn’t quite know what to say to that. Y/N always had something to say but the pretty man next to her had knocked her wit straight out of her.

“Oh.” Was all she could muster. She felt bad that that was all the comfort she could offer. The mans wife had just left him and all she could squeak was a pathetic ‘Oh’.

“It’s fine. It’s not really her I’m drinking over” There was a light chuckle in his tone, a certain levity one doesn’t expect to her when someone talks about the breakdown of their marriage.

“You shouldn’t drink to get over your problems”

“Then why are you chugging scotch like its water?” He wasted no time with his quip. Y/N didn’t even notice she’d already polished off her drink, she’d been in the bar less than 15 minutes and she’d already downed her drink. The pot did indeed seem to be calling the kettle black.

“I'm not drinking to get over my problems, I’m drinking to forget them. There's a difference” He snorted indignantly at Y/N’s answer, shaking his head as he knocked back the rest of his drink himself. He reached over to the bottle at his side to pour himself another glass. To her surprise he slid the bottle carefully down the bar to Y/N.

“I’m Yixing”

Meeting the parents was never something Y/N had to do. Her past relationships hadn’t seemed serious enough no matter how long they lasted. Ironic that a fake relationship was taking her the furthest she’d ever been. 

Yixing had given her much information, just to dress nice. Y/N had pondered on what that meant or what ‘nice’ might look like while she got ready. Did he mean something fancy? Or something casual that you could wear to a restaurant? It was probably the latter. Y/N hoped it was the latter because the only fancy dress she had was her prom dress and there was no chance that would fit her.

She chose a flowy red, floral sundress. No, she chose a pair of plaid trousers and a slights cropped button down shirt. Then she looked at the pile of clothes she’d haphazardly tossed to the floor and realised she had no time left to choose something when her phone buzzed with a call from Yixing. 

“Hey, I’m nearly ready, just getting shoes on” Y/N stumbled across her room and over mount nothing-to-wear to get to her only pair of heels that she tried in vain to shoehorn her foot into with just one hand.

“Okay, hurry up” He hung up the phone. Not that Y/N would know because she’d already dropped hers to the floor in an attempt to get the shoes on.

“Shit, shit, shit” Y/N mumbled to herself. The trousers and button down would have to do. A crop top wasn’t ideal but nor was being late. She grabbed her phone from the floor and her keys from her bag and bolted out the door. Now that she really thought about it heels probably weren’t ideal either. Nor was forgetting a jacket.

The night air was cold and the breeze the speeding cars were creating wasn’t helping Y/N’s plummeting temperature as she searched for Yixing’s car. Then she saw a man step out the drivers side of a bentley and wave to her. It was Yixing and he was wearing a suit. Fuck, it was a fancy nice.

Y/N rushed across the street, dodging oncoming traffic as she almost sprinted to meet her fake love at his expensive car.

“Nice car, didn’t know you had this much money” She did. She didn’t pay a dime for the bottles of whiskey they guzzled down a few nights prior. Per Yixing’s request he paid for everything. Each bottle was easily over a hundred each and he pissed that away like money had no value to him. Any man willing to do that had a bentley and maybe a second one.

“It’s a company car” Sure it was rich boy. “Family company car”

“What’s the family business?” He didn’t answer. Yixing had been meaning to answer that question since the night they struck their deal.

“My full name is Zhang Yixing” He knew he didn’t have to say any more. Both sides of his family’s business ran the city, Y/N would have to be dumb to not know.

“Zhang? Zhang, Zhang? As in Zhang Company ltd.? As in the Zhang crime family?” Yixing didn’t need to say anything.Y/N couldn’t. Things truly had gone from bad to cataclysmic. “And you just decided not to tell me before we made a fucking deal? You’re taking me into the heart of the most dangerous crime family in the world’s operations and you just neglected to tell me you’re the fucking HEIR to it all?”

“I can take you home. I’m sorry-” 

“So, you married her in Vegas?” Y/N and Yixing were now two bottles of whiskey deep and both sufficiently hammered. If she hadn’t been so drunk Y/N would almost feel guilty for keeping the bartender there well past when she was sure he should’ve gone home.

“I was there on business and my family had been badgering me about getting married, really just going on and on about it, so I married the receptionist at my hotel” Y/N laughed. She laughed so much her stomach started to ache. Yixing laughed with her, howling every time he would hear a quiet snort between Y/N’s fits.

“Your parents must love her” The second bottle was empty and Yixing held it up to the bartender to ask for another. Begrudgingly he obliged.

“They’ve never met her. Don’t even know I got married. I think they’d kill me if they found out.”

“I thought they wanted you to get married though?” That earned a dry laugh from the flower boy next to her.

“They do. But to the right girl. Girls for now and girls for later and all that bullshit,” He waved his glass in the air the punctuate his sentence, letting some of the whiskey tip over the rim of the glass and spill out onto the bar top. The pair burst into fits of giggles. “How about you? Why are you here drowning your sorrows?”

Y/N sighed. How could she explain in a way that kept the mood light when it was so obvious it was anything but. She knocked back her full glass and poured herself another, chugging that she finally looked at him. He was curious and she couldn’t blame him. She’d done all she could to keep the conversation on him all night, never one to dish about her life she tried her best not to talk about her woes and focus on his. However, all good things must come to an end and so she started weaving her somber tale to her new friend.

“It’s a long story, incredibly mundane and boring, kind of cliche actually, so I’ll spare you the gory details” Again herentire drink was gone in one.

“I don’t think so, spill. Gory details and all, I don’t care if it’s a Tarrantino movie, I want to hear it” He was interested now. Yixing wanted to know what her story was,what brought the pretty girl to his families forgotten bar at 3am. What made her easily sink down nearly 2 whole bottles of the finest whiskey money could buy. He wanted to know and Yixing always got what he wanted.

“I had this job,” Y/N rolled her eyes and began her tale, looking straight ahead.”It was a shitty job that didn’t pay anywhere near enough but it turns out a degree in game design and development isn’t as useful as I once thought and student loans are a bigger bitch than Jenna Song who I went to high school with and trust me that’s difficult,” Yixing chuckled at her little dig which made Y/N smile. “So I stayed at my job,earning minimum wage and struggling by, my friend called me at work and we were talking and I happened to raise my concerns about my quite frankly abhorrent employment situation and my boss just so happened to be standing behind me and then my shitty job turned to no job”

“So you’re here because you got laid off?”

“More because I’m up to my eyeballs in debt, four months late on my rent, on the verge of being thrown out, now jobless AND my mom called to say she wanted me home for my brothers engagement party” Y/N had never really said it all out loud before now it all suddenly seemed 10x more serious than it had before and she wasn’t exactly sure how that was possible.

“Why is going to your brothers engagement party so bad?” “Same reason you married your hotel receptionist in Vegas” A knowing ‘ah’ escaped Yixing and for the first time since they’d began talking the pair fell into silence, letting the weight of their respective situations sink in. 

Yixing didn’t really know Y/N all that well, he’d only met her that night but he felt a great deal of sympathy towards the girl. His families high standing in the underworld of society and the public eye meant that money had never been an issue for Yixing the same way it clearly was for Y/N who was struggling to say the least. So he concocted a plan. It was risky to involve someone innocent in his family, even if it would be fake and short term but he desperately wanted to help the beautiful girl drowning her sorrows next to him.

“I think we could help one another,” Yixing placed his glass down on the bar and turned to look at Y/N, continuing his idea “I need to get married to make my family happy and you need money, so I propose we get married.” Y/N looked at him for a second before beginning to laugh.

“You’re funny, Yixing, tell me another one” Another drink down the hatch.

“I’m being serious. I need to get my family off my back about getting married and you need money, this works out perfectly for both of us. You get the cash people give as gifts and my family leaves me alone. Win win”

“One problem, you’re already married” Y/N was sure he the alcohol had gotten to him and made him go mad.

“That’s why it would be a fake wedding, we wouldn’t actually get married” Maybe the alcohol hadn’t gotten to Y/N as well because with the addition of the last statement she was genuinely considering  his offer.

“On one condition” Y/N was facing Yixing now, just as eager about the idea as he was.

“Anything.” 

“You come with me to my brothers engagement”

“Only if you come with me to family dinner next friday” Yixing offered his hand out to shake and Y/N took it.

“Deal”