Work Text:
When one is Qiao Si-yi of the Green Dragon Gang, there is always someone who wants to take you down a peg. Some for their own glory and others for their boss. Qiao Chusheng only respects one of these types. Tonight’s fight had been brutal- three broken ribs, three stab wounds, and multiple slashes that might’ve gone deep or not. It was hard to tell with the pain. But he’d won, he’d walked away. He’d played uninjured even as he could feel a chill spread through his body as he lost blood. Never let anyone see your weakness. First rule of the streets.
The blood loss gets to be too much though, Qiao Chusheng can tell as his vision tilts and spins. He needs to get somewhere safe and fast. He remembers a set of apartment buildings that are empty nearby and makes up his mind to spend the night there. He’s not of a mind to break in, so thankfully the door isn’t locked and opens even to his uncooperative hands. The dim light of the moon illuminates the room and Chusheng swears this isn’t what the room looked like before, but he doesn’t have that much time to think about it. He stumbles forward, trying to reach the couch, but doesn’t make it before he passes out.
He wakes to the taste of cotton in his mouth- a sure sign he’s slept for a long time. One of his Lieutenants must’ve found him and taken him to the hospital, but there’s no IVs in his arms. Chusheng forces an eyelid open, groaning at the light. A headache he didn’t know he had grows even more insistent, but Chusheng can work through that.
Several things make it immediately clear that this isn’t a hospital, but the most obvious of them is the man by the window fiddling with cuff links. He looks more like the kind of man Chusheng would take home for a night of fun then a doctor.
The man looks up, apparently aware of the eyes on him. With the morning light behind him, Chusheng is very tempted to pass this off as a fever dream. “Oh, you’re awake.” The man says as he slips on his jacket. “I’m glad to see you didn’t lose too much blood, you were a bit touch and go last night. Drink some water, that’ll help with the blood loss hangover.”
Chusheng sits up and the blankets slip off his chest. His bare chest. The injuries must have been quite severe if Chusheng didn’t notice being undressed. The worst of his wounds was sealed with tight and neat stitches- he runs a curious hand over them.
“Aiyo!” The man exclaimed. “Don’t play with them. They’ll rip. Drink.” He points and this time, Chusheng actually looks at the bedside table. There’s a glass pitcher and an already poured glass of water.
He’ll drink when he gets home. “Thank you for ensuring my survival but-”
“You aren’t going anywhere.” The man interrupts smoothly, even as he finishes buttoning his coat. “Your clothes were ruined- I tossed them already. You’re shorter then me, but I put you in pants anyways. Just be careful not to trip, okay? I’ve sewn you back together once, I’m in no hurry to do it again.”
There’s no way that Chusheng can stay here all day. “I really-”
“I took your wallet and watch as collateral,” The man continued, unbothered by Chusheng’s attempted interruption. “You bled all over my Persian rug, those don’t come cheap. Plus I was up all night patching you up, cutting into my billable hours today. A man must eat, you know?”
It’s only proper that Chusheng pay the man back for the accidental damage he incurred but, there was no need to hold anything of his as collateral. “I’m Qiao Chusheng.” Chusheng introduced himself, hoping that’d get the point across.
The other man, however, nodded without a hint of recognition. “Lu Yao. I have to go to work now, but drink your water. Breakfast is on the table, don’t think about skipping out on your tab.” And with that, Lu Yao left the bedroom. A few seconds later, Chusheng heard a second set of doors close.
Chusheng gapes after him before sighing and actually drinking the water that he’d been ordered to twice. It didn’t help immediately, but it felt nice on his parched throat. That done, he carefully swung his legs off the side of the bed and stood up. The sleep pants Lu Yao had provided were both too long and too loose for Chusheng, but he had worn more ill fitting clothes. Not since working his way up in the Green Dragon Gang, but life before that hadn’t been kind. He shuffled over to the window, feeling how his body moved with his new stitches and bandages. The window was locked.
Technically, that wouldn’t stop Chusheng, but it was so absurd Chusheng stared for a while longer. A man who didn’t lock his door last night now locked the window to keep Chusheng here. As though he’d skip on repaying Lu Yao!
Chusheng wandered into the rest of the apartment and saw that Lu Yao had already rolled the presumably blood stained rug up. The chairs, couch, and table Chusheng vaguely remembered from last night were pushed into a mass off to the side. He ignored those for now, heading to the kitchen. As Lu Yao had promised, there was a plate of food. No Chinese fare that Chusheng could see, but Chusheng had lived off the streets- food was food. He sat down and ate. And then he waited for Lu Yao to come home. Escaping wouldn’t be hard, but Lu Yao had gone through all this effort to keep Chusheng here and he had to admit he was curious.
He wanted to know what made Lu Yao tick, peal back the layers around the mystery man who patched up bleeding gangsters who appeared in his living room. To know why he wasn’t afraid of Chusheng, who could’ve killed him, even as injured as he was. Lu Yao wasn’t a fighter, that much was obvious. He would’ve been easy to subdue, even without popping his stitches. But Chusheng now owed him a debt, one he must repay.