Work Text:
“Fuck!”
Xiao Xingchen raised his head from his workstation, fingers pressing down on the book spine he had been repairing. That had sounded like Xue Yang, another one of the student library workers. And Xiao Xingchen could still hear him cussing, though it was quieter now. He was out in the stacks, where he usually worked shelving books and pulling requests.
Xiao Xingchen stood up and pushed the workroom door open. “Xue Yang? Is that you, are you all right?”
“Ah! Yeah, I - fuck - what the fuck -” His voice was tight, startled.
“What’s wrong?”
“Can you not - ugh, no, of fucking course not, it’s you. The fucking lights went out!”
“Oh. Oh! It’s stormy out, I could hear the thunder. It must have knocked out the power.”
“Fucking dammit -” There was a clanking noise. He must have run into one of the shelves.
“Are there no emergency lights or anything?” Wasn’t that a thing? Xiao Xingchen felt like that was a thing.
“If there are they aren’t fucking working.” He still sounded wrong. The Xue Yang that Xiao Xingchen knew was always confident, and usually joking around. He got angry sometimes, but this wasn’t anger. Another clank, this one louder, scraping - it sounded like he’d tripped over one of those kik-step stolls, the rolling metal things that sat low to the ground. Xiao Xingchen hated those.
“Xue Yang - stay where you are.”
“What? I want to get out of here, it’s -”
“Stay. Where. You. Are. I’ll come to you.”
“No, I - you don’t - shouldn’t -”
“Xue Yang. I’m fine.”
“Oh. Right.” He must have realized the absurdity of trying to tell a blind man not to move around in the dark, because he started laughing. It was different from his usual low chuckle, a high sound, tight. It just kept going, too, rising until it was verging on hysterical. Xiao Xingchen didn’t like it, but at least it made it easy to find him among the endless rows of shelves and books.
He was only ten shelves away - Xiao Xingchen counted them as he went. In the aisle his cane hit the stool, and he stopped. Xue Yang must have heard him coming, because he swallowed down a final laugh with a sound like a hiccup. He was close by, probably just on the other side of the stool, and it sounded like he was sitting down.
“Hey,” Xiao Xingchen said, his voice gentle. “You okay? Are you on the ground?”
Xue Yang scrambled then, getting up, and cussed as he hit some extremity on one of the shelves again.
Xiao Xingchen chuckled softly. “You’re not very good at this, are you?”
“Fuck you,” Xue Yang shot back, and there was real venom in it. He hadn’t talked to Xiao Xingchen like that in a long time.
“Sorry, sorry. Do you want to get out of here? There must be emergency lights in the workroom, or out in the hall. We should probably leave the building anyway.”
“Yeah. Uh - yeah.” He didn’t apologize, but his voice had softened again.
“Okay. Here.” He pushed the stool out of the way with a foot. It clanged on the shelving and he heard Xue Yang suck in a breath. “It’ll probably be easiest if I lead you, is that okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” He almost laughed again, partially because they just kept saying the same two things to each other and partially because every part of this was absurd, from the noticeable lack of safety precautions in the stacks to him getting to act like a knight in shining armor for the guy he had been trying very hard not to admit he had a crush on for weeks. “I’m going to touch you.”
“Okay.”
He reached out cautiously. His fingertips connected with fabric - denim, with cold bits of metal. A jean jacket, maybe. He shifted his hand and found a flat expanse under it. It was Xue Yang’s chest, not the arm he’d been aiming for. Xue Yang was very still and quiet, though his breath sounded ragged. He smelled like soap and a warm body and something sweet, and Xiao Xingchen remembered that he had gotten in trouble for sneaking food into the stacks more than once. He also remembered he should move his hand, and fumbled for a moment before he found Xue Yang’s forearm. “Take my upper arm. So you’re standing behind and to my side.”
He turned around and Xue Yang shifted a little, finding his upper arm with his hand. He slipped into place neatly, like he knew just what Xiao Xingchen meant. Maybe he did. He’d probably seen the way Xiao Xingchen walked with Song Lan, after all.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Just walk behind me, we’ll go to the workroom.”
It wasn’t difficult, really. They went slower than Xiao Xingchen usually would. Xue Yang was hesitant, his fingers tight on Xiao Xingchen’s arm. He laughed softly, though, when Xiao Xingchen delivered them straight to the workroom door.
“What?” Xiao Xingchen asked, smiling back at him though he knew it wouldn’t be seen. “Impressed?”
“No,” Xue Yang shot back. He sounded like he was smiling, too. “It’s a straight shot, easy.”
Xiao Xingchen laughed and pushed open the workroom door. Xue Yang’s fingers went tight on his arm again. “What?”
“No lights.”
“Shit,” Xiao Xingchen whispered, and Xue Yang let out a small laugh, though it sounded strained. Xiao Xingchen fumbled in the general direction of where he thought a lightswitch might be. He found it after a moment, and flicked it. “Nothing?”
“No.”
Xiao Xingchen let out an annoyed hiss of breath. “Hallway.”
They crossed the room, Xue Yang bumping his hip against one of the workstations with a mumbled curse. When Xiao Xingchen tried the door, though, it didn’t budge. He pressed his access card against the reader, just in case, but there was no beep, no nothing.
“The system must have gotten knocked out - wow, that’s not safe at all -”
Xue Yang laughed, but it sounded tight and high again, and his fingers were so tight on Xiao Xingchen’s arm that it hurt, fingernails digging through his sweater. Xiao Xingchen had been thinking of heading for one of the emergency exits at the end of the stacks, but Xue Yang’s strange laugh and short breaths made him change his plan.
“Hey,” he said, and turned around, his free hand searching for Xue Yang’s other arm and gripping his elbow. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Xue Yang replied, and it was an obvious lie. “I just, it’s - fuck, it’s really fucking dark.” He took another breath, but this one was even weaker than before. He sounded like Song Lan did when he was on the verge of a panic attack, and he was shaky like that, too.
“Do you want to sit down for a second?”
“Where?” Xue Yang shot back, and Xiao Xingchen heard the same hysteria that had been in his laughter back in the stacks.
“Hey. You’re all right, you’re here with an expert, remember? Here, there’s always a chair over here.” He guided Xue Yang to an empty workstation near the door and found the chair easily, pressing him down into it. When he tried to take his hand away, though, Xue Yang caught at it, holding it tight. Even after all their proximity in the last minutes that surprised Xiao Xingchen, and he sucked in a breath, but stayed right where he was.
“You’re all right,” he said again. “Just breathe, and in a minute either the system will reset or we’ll go find one of the emergency exits. I know those will work, they’re not on the keycard system.” He actually wasn’t convinced - he’d lost all confidence in the library’s emergency systems that afternoon. But he knew how to make his voice calm and reassuring and talk someone through something like this. “You’re all right. Breathe. In and out. Mmhm, good.”
Xue Yang’s panic cleared quickly. That was different than Song Lan, but Song Lan’s situation was different, too. As soon as he was a little more relaxed, he extricated his fingers from Xiao Xingchen’s. It was only then that Xiao Xingchen noticed he only had four fingers on that hand, a fact he registered with mild interest but no real curiosity. That wasn’t any of his business. “Okay?” he murmured. “Want some water? I have a bottle.”
“Yeah, okay,” Xue Yang replied. “Is that allowed in here, Monk Boy?” He sounded more like his normal self, now. There was an edge of a laugh in the question, and a tease in that weird nickname he’d given Xiao Xingchen months ago.
Xiao Xingchen smiled back in the darkness. “It is if I’m responsible with it, I just can’t get it near the books.”
“Are you going to tell on me if I sneak candy?”
“Absolutely not, you deserve some candy.”
Xue Yang laughed once, his normal chuckle, and that made Xiao Xingchen smile, too. He heard the rustle of a candy wrapper and when he came back with his water bottle he could smell artificial strawberry. “Here,” he said, and tapped the water bottle against Xue Yang’s knee after taking a drink himself.
Xue Yang took it and messed with it for a moment before figuring out the latching mechanism on the top. Xiao Xingchen tried very hard not to think about his candy-sweet mouth being where his own had just been, but he thought about it anyway.
When Xue Yang handed back the bottle both of them fumbled a little, and Xiao Xingchen almost dropped it. It made Xiao Xingchen laugh, but Xue Yang spoke over it, the words coming out in a frustrated rush. “I don’t know how you do this all the time.”
Xiao Xingchen stood very still and considered that, fingers tapping softly on the metal of the bottle. “You get used to it.”
“You haven’t always been blind?”
“No.”
“Huh.”
If Xue Yang was going to say anything else, he was interrupted by Xiao Xingchen letting out a little gasp.
“What?”
“I think the keycard reader is back on, it buzzes a little usually.”
“Shit!” Xue Yang exclaimed. “The emergency lights just came on, fucking finally. Fuck, that hurts, my eyes got used to the dark - come on, let’s get out of here.”
His hand wrapped around Xiao Xingchen’s again, and Xiao Xingchen turned and gave him a smile. “Yeah, all right - let me get my things.”
“No, what if it goes out again?”
“Just one second, I need my bag.” He let a chiding tone slip in, and was immediately embarrassed by the familiarity of it, so he turned away.
Xue Yang let out a huff but let him go. A moment later Xiao Xingchen was back with his messenger bag slung over his shoulder. Without thinking, he held out his hand again.
Xue Yang took it. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
They didn’t fall in together like before, or like Xiao Xingchen usually did with Song Lan. Neither of them were guiding the other, they were just walking together. Walking together and holding hands. Xiao Xingchen tried to tell himself that it was because Xue Yang was still nervous about the system going dead again, but it didn’t feel like that. It felt like he was holding hands with the boy he liked, the sharp-tongued, teasing, hilarious boy who always had candy in his pockets and didn’t treat him like he was made of glass. It felt good.