Work Text:
There was one summer returning
over and over there was one dawn
I grew old watching.
Louise Gluck, Aubade
(It goes like this. See, Xukun has the motions marked down to a science –)
TAKE #12
When Xukun turns to Zhengting, nothing changes.
“ Sorry, do I what?”
Zhengting leans forward to Xukun, head tilted as his lips purse. Even in his confusion, the way Zhengting moves is careful, emotions rehearsed a hundred times before Xukun and surely rehashed to new heights a hundred times after…
A teleprompter sparks to life in Xukun’s head. It reads Follow the script! It reads, The apology goes after [ ]
“Xukun?”
Xukun tilts his head away.
“Yes, that’s me.”
In the unforgiving brightness of the practice room, Xukun finds his own reflection. Eyes wide, expression at once too open but strangely hollow, the truth of him diluted rather than honed by repetition. But the harder you work, the better you will be, offers a voice in Xukun’s head. The voice doesn’t sound like his, though the words are still something he wants to believe.
“Okay then, you,” Xukun hears the lilt in Zhengting’s tone, an audible eyebrow raise. “What are you trying to tell me?”
Ready to rewind again, Xukun starts, “No, it’s just–”
Xukun looks up. Zhengting looks back.
The words shutter in his throat, a photo negative left undeveloped. Retake! reads a teleprompter, somewhere far away. Because despite everything, the only thing Cai Xukun has never managed to grasp is how to run away. Cameras rolling, and…Action!
“It’s not nothing,” he tries again. “I’m just…”
Afraid.
“…I worry people might hate me.”
“What.”
“I mean, do you think. Do people like me?” Xukun’s voice, progressively smaller.
“Of course people like you.” Zhengting’s voice, sharper than expected. “Cai Xukun, nation’s centre.”
And what did Xukun expect? There are no monitors here. What Cai Xukun, nation’s centre, indulgently tolerates vastly outweighs what Zhu Zhengting, perfect idol, would deem camera-ready. In Xukun’s mind, somewhere far away, the teleprompter morphs into a script of dialogue five takes ago, pages left unturned.
As if it’s obvious, Zhengting elaborates. “Who could hate you? People that do, don’t matter. And for the people that don’t…”
There’s a glint in Zhengting’s eyes, too stubborn to be dulled by anything.
“People that don’t hate you – those people, those people are everything.”
(It goes like this. See, Xukun has the motions marked down to a science –
What goes before an apology? Something to apologise for.
What’s really worrying you, Zhengting asked once.
What about me – not the nation’s centre but me, Xukun never answers.
Nothing follows, of course.
There’s no script written for the words you don’t say.)
TAKE #8
“Sorry, do I what?”
I like you.
Xukun laughs, shaky and all air. “Ah, but I forgot. Zhu Zhengting only hears what he wants to hear.”
“Zhu Zhengting occasionally misses things. As people sometimes do.” Zhu Zhengting shakes his head, exaggerated for effect. Xukun thinks, then where does that leave me?
Still talking, Zhengting finishes, “–I understand it might be shocking to process.”
Xukun blinks. “What, that you aren’t really a mortal fairy? Or you admitting to error?”
The poke doesn’t pierce – wasn’t supposed to – but Zhengting narrows his eyes anyway. Xukun is struck by a premonition of imminent embarrassment, an instinct born from direct and prolonged exposure to Zhu Zhengting’s brand of theatrical deflection. Zhengting smiles.
“So you agree I’m a fairy!”
Xukun breathes in. Zhengting continues, prodding now: “Really. What did you say?”
I like you.
“Zhengting.” Enunciating too heavily on the last syllable, Xukun skims his tongue over his teeth and swallows on nothing.
Zhengting waits. Xukun pauses, stalling, and Zhengting’s eyes focus, gaze gentling.
“No,” Xukun mutters. “No, never mind, the mood’s weird, I don’t know how to say anymore.”
“Cai Xukun–” Zhengting has always disliked being left out.
“I did your laundry with mine. Forgot you mixed whites with colour until I threw them in the wash. You have Hawaiian-printed underwear now.” Xukun contemplates making the lie a truth before figuring it won’t matter either way, since Zhengting won’t remember.
Zhengting quips, “Bastard.”
Xukun doesn’t check for the absence of cameras anymore. The two of them are already careening off-script, and Xukun hasn’t practiced spontaneous conversation yet, hasn’t finalised the transition from preparation to performance.
“My bad,” Xukun shrugs, uneasy.
I like you. I like you. Do you –
“Of course it is,” Zhengting agrees, grin friendly. Almost teasing. Nothing’s ever truly rattled him yet, as far as Xukun can tell. But Zhengting only knows as much as Xukun is willing to tell. Is able to tell.
“Of course it is,” Xukun echoes, deflection less seamless as he wanted because Zhengting is still concentrating on him, despite everything, measuring what he sees against the benchmark of Cai Xukun he remembers. Xukun wonders where what Zhengting sees of him yet knows of him align. Wonders how to calibrate the two images into something stable, a composition that won’t blur at the slightest disturbance.
It’s an incomplete honesty, what Xukun has with Zhengting. A sandcastle of a relationship, Xukun’s feelings not the sand but the tide cresting, looming over the shore, unable to moor.
(What goes before an apology? Something to apologise for.
What goes before this apology? A confession.)
TAKE #17
This time, before Zhengting moves to apologise, Xukun meets him halfway.
Sinking to the floor beside Zhengting, Xukun confesses while splaying his limbs outward like a starfish. His body the anchor to hold himself from running when inevitably Zhengting says–
“Sorry, do I what?”
And suddenly, laughter. A beat passes before Xukun registers it as his own. He turns to lie on his side, legs tucked close to his chest instead of spread out and reaching. Zhengting calls his name, but Xukun can’t stop, laughs strong enough and long enough to weigh him down, stop him from explaining, Xukun’s voice a stone in the water of, of–
“It’s not you, it’s me,” Xukun wheezes, and Zhengting’s face crinkles further.
Hands tucked between his heart and his legs, Xukun curls his fingers into fists. Stops himself from flattening out the crease in Zhengting’s facial expression. From trying to read what he can of Zhengting, of what Zhengting lets slip between the lines.
Instead, Xukun tries to explain. “It’s just, you look so. You seem so affected. You didn’t even hear what I told you.”
“Did I need to.” Zhengting flings the words at him. Huffs. “Maybe your face says it all.”
A day or twelve conversations ago, Xukun might have conceded that, felt the edges of his face and tested if Zhengting was right. Today Xukun hums, as if he’s considering it nevertheless.
“…You don’t need to know, then?”
“I didn’t say that,” Zhengting says immediately.
“You implied it.”
Xukun lifts the look on Zhengting’s face and layers it over another conversation, an episode viewed from someone else’s life: Zhengting wrangling Justin or Chengcheng into something resembling cooperation and compensating on frankness instead.
In the present timeline, Zhengting says, “Well?”
Are you going to or aren’t you! Zhengting had said, then, Justin laughing as Chengcheng ceded and told Zhengting…
“Does it matter, really? What I mean.”
The tense is wrong but Zhengting doesn’t address it, commenting instead, “It matters! What you say matters!”
Not for the first time, Xukun feels as if he’s walked into a dream, one where he says all the right things and lets Zhengting see him, really him, rather than the impression of him he knows and doesn’t correct people from seeing. Doesn’t correct Zhengting from seeing.
“…Do you want me to spoon-feed praise, is that what this is? Coddle you with sugar into being honest with me?”
But this isn’t a dream, couldn’t be. Not when Xukun is stumbling his way through it, words falling like sand between his fingers, all the parts he doesn’t want clinging to his skin. Still, Zhengting is saying everything Xukun feels like he needed. Certainly it’s something he wanted. Wants. So maybe he can keep compromising with Zhengting, too.
“If I showed you who I was – who I am,” Xukun muses, watching Zhengting. “I wonder if we could still talk together like this.”
“Don’t be melodramatic.” Zhengting sounds serious, though.
Xukun smiles, bites his lip. “I’m not.”
“Good.”
Zhengting adds, “There isn’t really anything you could say that could send me away, whatever the case.”
“Even if,” Xukun starts but Zhengting cuts in.
“No buts. We have a contract together, remember? But honestly, Cai Xukun. Unless you did something very unforgivable, like dye my underwear for fun, I wouldn’t mind. Then we might be having a different set of words.”
“Talking is good,” Xukun offers. “Better than bending your waist backwards trying anything more, anyway.”
Gravely, Zhengting says, “Kunkun. You know how I feel about what you just said.”
Xukun stops, blinks, and realises he does. Zhengting must notice, because he nods once, twice.
“Honestly,” Zhengting sighs in the end. “What even were we talking about. I feel tired just thinking of everything.”
“Maybe next time, we can cut to the chase then.” Xukun means it.
“No wasting time,” Zhengting agrees, and Xukun agrees with that, too.
(Xukun used to think of love as something like this:
Love like a dream, something to wake from instead of something to return to.
Love as the revolving door that carries you to exactly where you are, entry and exit located in exactly the same place. The end cannot approach a place time cannot touch.
Except, now Xukun thinks he believes in something else too.
If you never fail, you will never let anyone down. But if you never fail, you never stop standing still.
I haven’t shown you anything yet.)
TAKE #14
“Sorry, do I what?”
“Tell me what to say,” Xukun asks.
Zhengting blinks. “What, you want a script for just us now?”
“Please.”
“Xukun,” Zhengting’s tone is light, but his eyes are on Xukun, focused, steady. “You don’t need it.”
TAKE #18
Laughter.
Zhengting’s expression creases. “Sorry, do I what?”
Do you like me? I like you.
“Lately I’ve been wondering, about whether or not people like me. As I am, I mean. Not just as Nation’s centre.” If you like me. Zhengting waves him on.
“Zhu Zhengting,” he finishes.
“Cai Xukun,” Zhengting begins. “The matter of being Nation’s centre has nothing to do with being liked. You’re Nation’s centre because people already like you. Nobody goes to any effort for someone they don’t care for.”
Xukun waits, sensing something more.
Zhengting says, “Besides, if you don’t believe me, just listen to people. Tell them how you feel! For example, I like you, and I’m pretty sure I’m a person, too.”
And then he laughs.
Xukun doesn’t laugh. He stops waiting.
This time, when he speaks, Zhengting hears. Xukun knows because he was watching the whole time, just as he knows Zhengting was paying attention to him, too. And this time, when he confesses, there is no need for apology after.
And Xukun doesn’t run away.