Work Text:
‘Someone’s been baking,’ He Tian says, pleased, tasting sugar and rosemary on Guan Shan’s lips. The apartment smells warm and sweet, a new version of home that is crafting itself out of sense, though the space is unchanged but for the suitcase at the bottom of He Tian’s wardrobe, the cooking appliances starting to fill the kitchen surface, and Guan Shan, stretched out on the sofa and flicking through a magazine.
‘Get off me,’ Guan Shan says, head turned, the kiss broken, hands a pressure on He Tian’s chest, nails pressing into the white shirt. ‘You stink of cigarettes.’
‘People at work were smoking,’ He Tian says. ‘It’s not from me.’ But he pulls away, slightly stung, unfolding himself from where he’d rested a knee and a hand on the sofa, curved himself around Guan Shan’s repose.
He’d promised he’d give it up for his health, but Guan Shan must know it’s easier said than done; he knows He Tian holds a cigarette bracketed between his fingers like a compact life-line. Something to wrap his lips around in lieu of letting words slip from his mouth.
‘It’s not from me,’ he tells him again.
‘You’re a liar,’ Guan Shan says. His eyes widen for a second, so He Tian knows the words come out edged, fractious in a way he doesn’t mean, tinged with something acid-sharp, and it’s why, when He Tian opens his mouth to retort, he closes it again slowly. He looks at Guan Shan, even.
‘You’re in a good mood,’ he begins.
‘Don’t fucking start.’
He Tian raises his eyebrows. ‘All right,’ he says. Flippantly, ‘Want me to leave?’
Guan Shan’s standing before He Tian can move backwards, and He Tian’s vision is a flood of auburn eyes and pretty pink lips and the persisting, mulish line between Guan Shan’s eyebrows.
They’re almost touching, but almost isn’t the real thing, and there are days when Guan Shan doesn’t want to be touched at all — wants no part of the tactile warmth He Tian offers; rears from it like a beaten dog would a reaching, shadowed hand. He Tian thinks today might be one of them.
He steps back.
‘Don’t go,’ says Guan Shan. ‘I didn’t mean—I don’t want you to leave.’
He Tian can admit that there is something sweet about the words, in a way. They echo like chips on the green felt of a poker table.
He Tian’s voice comes out sounding bored. ‘You don’t want me to leave; you don’t want me to stay.’ His eyes roam the expanse of glass behind the sofa. Outside, it’s a hot, still day, the haze of a blue sky stretched gossamer-thin. The air conditioning is a prickly coldness on the back of He Tian’s neck, his bared forearms. He pushes away a shiver. He says, ‘It’s my apartment, you know.’
He knows it’s the wrong thing to say — realises it before the quiet, assailable hush settles between them. They’ve lived like this for the past year, a trembling temporality. Guan Shan stays most nights, and when he goes back to his own apartment it’s just to prove he can. To see if he can. He Tian’s always close to begging him not to leave.
He knows Guan Shan is careful; knows that the space he keeps is neat and painfully clean and that things are done with a meticulous precision that’s a beg for perfection. Shoes on the rack by the door; spice rack organised alphabetically; bed made and cleaning away evidence of a night before spent close and hot and sweet. Habitual prompts from his father, perhaps. Trying to hold the pressure off his mother, perhaps.
He Tian knows that his own space, kept messy and languid and throwaway — is not quite the same. Mugs spilling ring stains on the coffee table; towels pooled on the bathroom floor; handprints of locked fingers on the shower glass, smudged and shuddering. It’s been his since he was fourteen and there’s been no one to pander for — no one to be conscious of except himself, a solitary figure against a skyscraper window steamed with cigarette smoke and microwaved take-out.
He knows it’s the wrong thing to say because Guan Shan’s looking at him like he would have given many somethings not have heard those words pass He Tian’s lips.
My apartment. Not ours. This space was not shared; Guan Shan a traveller passing through, ready to leave when he needed to — wasn’t wanted anymore. That certainty of impermanence lingers in the cracks of Guan Shan’s open mouth, and the breathy beats of his heart that shift his skin.
He Tian wishes words were balloon strings that he could tug back and burst with a sharply apologetic needle. Regret is forcing his shoulders to round; quiet, hateful self-loathing pulls his eyes down.
‘Right,’ Guan Shan says, voice thick and rough. ‘Sorry for forgetting. I’ll get out your way. You won’t have to—to worry about me fucking things up anymore.’
‘That’s not what I meant, Guan Shan,’ He Tian pushes out, catching the hem of Guan Shan’s shirt as he moves past, the cotton soft between He Tian’s fingers.
Guan Shan stills, hovering where He Tian has caught him. That quiet, awful insecurity shadows the tilt of his neck, head bowed. Vicious anger colours the tight press of his lips. He makes no effort to move further, like the touch is a shackle of iron; like the touch is something He Tian would have made it when he was younger and bullish and threw too much of himself into too little.
‘I’m sorry,’ He Tian says, to the floor, and lets his hand drop. ‘I didn’t mean that. Of course I want you here. Of course I fucking do. You know I do.’ It’s beginning to sound ridiculous to him now — that anything other than what he’s saying should and could be the case.
How could he not want to come home everyday and see Guan Shan’s skin kissed gold in late afternoon light? How could he not want to stretch himself around the shape of him in the mornings, sheets warm, skin soft, bodies rousing, and not want that to be a forever — no longer a game of Russian Roulette that plays with empty sheets and unmarked pillows as bullets. The space of an absent body finds its mark so knowingly, every time, in the cavernous space between He Tian’s ribs.
The response doesn’t come, and when He Tian turns to look at Guan Shan, properly, his gaze falls past him, and into the kitchen. There, on the counter, perfectly innocuous.
‘Why is there a plate of my mother’s tofu rolls in the kitchen?’ He Tian asks carefully.
A muscle jumps in Guan Shan’s jaw. ‘She dropped them round. While you were out.’
He Tian sighs, long and loud. He should have known. ‘I,’ he says. And then, ‘My mother,’ and no more. Talking about his mother has a calamitous quality to it. It feels like sliding his hand along the edge of a piece of paper, the sharp sting of skin parting slow and willing. This, he knows, Guan Shan would understand. Because he feels how Guan Shan looks whenever Guan Shan’s father comes into conversation.
‘What did she say?’
Guan Shan scoffs, and rolls his eyes. ‘What didn’t she say, He Tian? I see where you get it from, you know. That thing where you say everything but what you mean, and leave everyone trying to pick up the fucking pieces.’
He Tian rubs the back of his neck. ‘I told you to ignore her. You know what she’s like.’
‘She’s your mother. I can’t ignore her, He Tian. Which, y’know, is probably the fucking point.’
‘What do you mean?’
Guan Shan makes a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. He stalks back over to the sofa and falls onto it without ceremony, expression sour and twisted, fingers locked and knuckles white where his hands hang between his knees.
‘When are you planning on getting a lucrative job, Mo Guan Shan?’ Guan Shan begins, an edge to his tone. ‘Because it’s very hard for He Tian, Mo Guan Shan. You mustn’t be a burden to him, Mo Guan Shan.’ His lip curls, eyes full with accusation that He Tian knows isn’t directed at him. He feels it, anyway. ‘Which guest bedroom do you sleep in, Mo Guan Shan?’
‘She knows we’re together.’
‘Oh, she knows. But she fucking hates it. She can’t fucking stand it.’ Guan Shan laughs, the sound hollow and mirthless. He Tian hates the sound; can’t stand it. ‘And the best bit is she doesn’t hate it because her son’s gay—that’s not it. She hates it because you’re with me. Like I’m the one who fucking—’ He breaks off, eyes darting away, the words left unspoken and laid bare. The space of the apartment honours their silences too well.
Like I’m the one who got distracted by your lips, he must mean to say. Like I’m the one who touched you and bothered you and harassed you and kissed you until you began to crave it like sugar at the corners of your mouth.
‘There’s a reason,’ He Tian says, ‘that I don’t speak to her.’
Guan Shan’s biting the inside of his cheek, head turned. Light catches the planes of his face, makes his skin a splay of shadows and sunlight trying to take hold with bright fingertips on his brow, the bridge of his nose, the fullness of his lower lip. He Tian is painfully aware that Guan Shan isn’t aware of himself—how he looks.
‘You have to,’ Guan Shan says quietly, and again, ‘She’s your mother. When you don’t call her she comes here. To me.’
‘You’re not a burden to me. That’s bullshit and you know it.’
‘She’s right, though. I barely earn a quarter of what you earn with the blog and the book might not even sell and—’
‘Guan Shan, I’m not paying to live here,’ He Tian says, for the thousandth time. ‘It’s not like I’m pulling your weight. We’re even.’
‘But I’m still living off you and your uncle. I’m—I’m taking advantage and—’
‘God, Guan Shan,’ He Tian says, exasperated with these intransigent arguments that spur so easily. ‘If you’re taking advantage of me then it’s probably because I fucking want you to. If you think I’m someone who doesn’t do what they want when they want then you really don’t know me very well.’
A pause stretches long and thin between them, truth filling in the cracks: Guan Shan knows him too well, sometimes.
The truth that reveals itself to He Tian, only, is that it’s difficult to make someone see that they’re wanted when they’ve only seen themselves a burden.
He Tian’s chest feels tight.
He walks over to the sofa with careful movements, and sinks slowly into a crouch. Guan Shan’s eyes shift to him, widen, dart away.
‘My mother doesn’t matter,’ He Tian says quietly, looking up at him, voice even. ‘You matter.’
‘Don’t—You shouldn’t talk about her like that. It’s not right.’
‘Then she shouldn’t talk to you like she does,’ He Tian says brusquely. ‘She’s given me nothing and I’ve asked her for nothing. If she thinks she has a say in who I love because she’s suddenly decided it’s not the right person, then, sorry, but she can fuck off.’
Guan Shan makes a pained sound. ‘I don’t—I fucking hate that I’m—causing all this tension—’
‘How?’ says He Tian, aghast. ‘How have you done anything but be with me, Guan Shan? Why is two people being together a problem?’
‘It’s—’
‘It’s not. It’s her.’
Guan Shan bites the inside of his cheek. ‘If I was—like you, she wouldn’t mind.’
‘Like me.’
‘Had money. Had a family name. If I was somebody.’
He Tian puts his forehead on the edge of the sofa, in the space between Guan Shan’s knees.
‘You’re somebody,’ he murmurs. ‘To your mother. To Jian Yi and Zhengxi. You’re everything to me.’ He reaches up, stands slightly from his crouch, spine curved. His lips find the hollow dip beneath Guan Shan’s ear, brush across the lithe lines of his throat, his fingers slipping through the strands of red hair cut short.
‘No one knows me like you do,’ He Tian tells him, words pressed into eggshell skin like they can reach a center, speak some truth that He Tian feels like he’s trying and failing to tell. ‘No one knows what I look like when I sleep. What food I like. What music I listen to. No one knows the ways I want to spend the rest of my life with you and that I’ll fight to keep you with me if I have to.’ He pauses, weighing the risk. Grins into the underside of Guan Shan’s jaw. ‘No one knows how to suck my cock like you do.’
‘Bastard,’ Guan Shan spits, pulling away, and then, ‘I should fucking hope not.’
It wrenches a laugh from He Tian, and after a minute he can see Guan Shan’s eyes glittering too, the sly curve of a mouth unused to smiling. But the moment fades, and he’s grown serious again, and the pressure on the both of them is a hand resting too heavy on their throats, not tight enough to cut off air, but enough that it’s constant and edged and entirely unforgettable.
He Tian sits beside Guan Shan on the sofa, cups his cheek. There’s a blissful, sated moment where Guan Shan leans into that touch in a way that he never once would have. The touch fills He Tian like a wellspring. He knows that, once, he would never have been like this with him, a softness that borders on aching tenderness. He offers that touch, his body, like an apology.
‘You’re wanted,’ he says. ‘You’re needed. I need you.’
‘You don’t need me,’ Guan Shan mutters. ‘People don’t need people.’
He Tian sighs, stares at the ceiling. ‘It’s a way of saying I hate it when I wake up in the morning and you’re gone,’ he says. ‘It’s a way of saying I spend everyday waiting for the moment I get to come home and see you. It’s a way of saying my life is … so much fucking better with you in it. And I’d … really fucking like it if you stayed.’
He Tian’s heartbeat is thudding in his throat. Guan Shan’s looking at him like he has his fingers curled around a rug, ready to yank it from beneath Guan Shan’s feet before he has time for a breath. He makes a sound that comes out hoarse and strained, and clears his throat.
‘Are you asking me to …’
He Tian nods. ‘Stay. Forever. As long as you like. Just—just stay until you decide otherwise.’
‘And sell my place.’
‘And sell your place,’ He Tian agrees. ‘I want you here. I want you mine.’ The word spills out before he can stop it. ‘Shit. Not mine just—’
‘All right,’ says Guan Shan, and He Tian pulls back suddenly. His eyes roam Guan Shan’s face.
‘You’ve been … waiting for me to ask,’ He Tian says slowly. Wondering how long Guan Shan might have been waiting for this—how much sooner he might have been able to say all right if He Tian had just asked.
‘No,’ says Guan Shan. ‘I haven’t. But it sounds like a good idea. Being here. With you.’
‘You’re sure?’ He Tian says and swallows. ‘Normally there’s—arguing. Normally I have to persuade you to agree. We fight; we fuck; you say yes.’
‘Thought we’d skip all that this time,’ says Guan Shan, reaching to brush a hand through loose strands of hair swept across He Tian’s forehead. His cheeks colour. ‘Maybe not the—’
The reluctant, stubborn blush that stains his skin is wonderful, and He Tian leans in eagerly to breath in the smell of him. Sugar and rosemary and something sharp like lemon zest. His lips find Guan Shan’s lips. His hands, the neat juncture of Guan Shan’s hips.
Guan Shan pulls away and makes a face at the careful working of He Tian’s tongue. ‘I hate kissing you when your mouth tastes like that,’ he says.
He Tian smiles, moves in, shadowing, and when Guan Shan doesn’t move his face away, says, ‘Who’s lying now?’