Chapter Text
Two lefts and a right, Sicheng repeats in his head. He cannot mess this up, he thinks as he makes his first left, careful not to let his steps be too loud as the distinctive sound will echo against the plain cement walls a little too perfectly. Then he’d have fifteen or twenty seconds max until the guards make their way into the hallway, and he would be handcuffed, pressed up against those walls. Sicheng swallows hard, no, they will not get him alive. If he runs, they will probably shoot him in the back of the head, blood splattered on the cement walls. He grimaces, that’s not how he wants to go. He turns left again.
Sicheng has been locked in this goddamn prison of a bunker for the majority of his pathetic excuse for a life, and not to mention, alone. Or perhaps not entirely alone, but in his definition, yes, very much alone. In fact, he is so alone that being cramped down here with thousands of other people still makes him feel empty, and it has taken a toll on his soul. It, the loneliness, is eating away the little sanity he has left. He must succeed this time, must succeed, must…
Sicheng shakes his head and turns right. His entire body freezes up. He is not alone.
A man is sitting on the floor; it’s not a guard, Sicheng notes right away.
The man has his knees pulled up tightly against his chest with a magazine of some sort in his hands. Sicheng is just about to turn around and make a run for it when the guy shifts his attention from the magazine right up on Sicheng. Fuck.
“What- What the fuck are you doing up here?” asks the man with a flickering gaze.
He doesn’t sound angry, but rather surprised. Sicheng sighs, this is it, he thinks, now he’s actually going to get locked up in a teeny, tiny cell for the rest of his sad depressing life. As if it could get any worse than it already was.
“Please!” Sicheng whines “can’t you just pretend you did not see me?” he can now kind of recognize the guy’s face, he has seen him before, Sicheng’s pretty certain. The guy has almost shoulder-length brown hair and is a bit shorter than Sicheng himself, but his familiar face soon becomes blurred as Sicheng’s eyes prickled with tears. The guy's facial expression softens for a short second before the corridor is filled with another presence.
“Yuta! If that is an escapee-” an angry voice threatens, this time it is a guard.
The name Yuta clicks in Sicheng’s brain. Ah, so that was his name. He remembered now. Yuta Nakamoto, the president’s son.
Fear grabs him again as the guard quickly makes his way over to the pair.
“No! No… This is my friend. I wanted to show him this but you know…” Yuta waves his magazine in the air, and it’s visibly something adult-rated, Sicheng can tell from the cover.
“Oh? Oh! Of course! Sorry.” he gives them both a slight nod before leaving.
Yuta can feel his heart race before he takes a deep breath to calm down. How did this even happen? He just wanted to read some manga and now he has lied to a person of authority. Damn. He brings himself to look at the guy again.
“Why would you do that?” The boy frantically asks him with big hostile eyes.
Yuta opens his mouth to answer, but he cannot, he doesn’t have an answer, doesn’t know why he covered for an unknown poor boy. Poor boy, wow, Yuta is extra judgemental today, he thinks. But to his defence, he does look kind of poor.
The boy in front of him has dark, neatly trimmed hair and is carrying a suspicious bag over his shoulder. Yuta sighs, so he was going to escape. He shrugs off the warm feeling that is creeping inside his chest unprovoked and clears his throat.
“Shut up! I just saved your ass! And why would you do that? Escape? Are you crazy? You would die after a day, you know that, right?” Yuta yells enraged. The guy buries his face in his hands and lets out a soft whimper.
“I know that and you know what? I’d rather die, but you would not get it? Now, would you? You ruined it for me!” he says with hurt in his voice as he slides down the wall behind him to sit on the floor. A wave of guilt washes over Yuta, and he instantly sits down in front of the boy.
“I’m sorry,” Yuta rushes to say as he brings his hand to the guy’s shoulder to console him. His hand gets pushed away.
“It is fine. I am not suicidal, or anything of the sort. I just do not want to die in here. I want to get out, see the ocean at least, It’s beautiful. Or so I recall," the dark-haired boy explains softly, he puts his shaky hands on top of his own knees and pulls them in close. Yuta hums, he finds a deep-rooted sympathy for the escapee, one he has yet to feel for anyone else. Strange.
“Continue” Yuta finds himself saying, wanting to know.
“What?” the boy looks at him, a little confused before he properly understands, “I just want to feel the ocean breeze on my skin one last time, or the sun. Is that too much to ask for?” he looks down at his feet before he continues, “God, and what I would not do to eat something other than canned food, a steak perhaps? Or a cheesecake, my god…”
“Cheesecake?” Yuta tilts his head and offers him a faint smile. “What’s your name?”
“Sicheng and I must go now,” Sicheng stands up and looks down on Yuta, wanting to say something, but decides to not. He walks off leaving Yuta on the ground, thinking. He has never encountered anyone who wants to leave. Yuta is intrigued but he knows he shouldn’t be, and he knows he certainly shouldn’t have lied to that guard to save Sicheng, yet he still did.
Sicheng brushes his teeth in front of the dusty mirror. Carefully looking around his cubicle in which he shares with a guy who never seems to be home, always comes in late and slightly tipsy off of some moonshine. But Sicheng will never complain, he remains the closest thing he has had to a faithful friend and will consistently provide him drunken advice. His roommate did not make it home last night though, Sicheng hopes that he is passed out in the janitors closet and that something worse has not happened. He spits out the toothpaste in the sink and is just about to leave when he shows up.
“Ten, what the hell? Where have you been?” Sicheng seeks his roommate who frantically grabs a half-empty water bottle and chugs it.
“I fell asleep in the freezer” Ten shrugs, "Crazy night,” He adds as he clumsily falls onto his bed.
“Why does that keep happening? Seriously?” Sicheng sits down on his own bed, so he is facing Ten’s.
“It’s fun” Ten stares at the ceiling, his head probably spinning like crazy, Sicheng looks unamused.
“You are drinking your life away, Ten,” Sicheng sternly warns before leaving their room for work.
What life? He can hear Ten shout after him, great question, Sicheng ponders.
Every day is the same. Work is the same and food is the same and sleep is the same and everything. Is. The. Same. And to undoubtedly make it worse: Sicheng works in the goddamn laundry section. He has gotten used to it, however, which makes it a lot more tolerable. For most of the day, he simply zones out while shoving clothes into the washing machines that seem to be from ancient Rome. But it is fine, nonetheless.
He makes his way into the laundry room, that for some reason, is necessary for this bunker. Well, this is a full functioning society, just underground, Sicheng reminds himself almost every day. The laundry room is empty, per usual, and Sicheng usually works alone except for some girl who comes in later at night, he rarely encounters her, though. The place where he works is not the only one in the bunker, but rather the only one placed on his floor, the floor furthest from the ground.
Nothing happens here, really, most days he just sits around and daydreams. Again, it is fine. He guesses not many people have the dying need to get their clothes washed daily, people have got more significant things to waste time on. It purely made things easier for him, he still got paid the same; and that being nothing at all. It is more of a “work or get your room taken away” kind of system.
Just a little longer, he thinks, he is leaving soon after all. He would not be here still if that guy Yuta was not reading his magazine right then and there. Sicheng sighs and sits himself on top of one of the washing machines. Speak of the devil.
“Sicheng!” Yuta walks in through the door into the room filled with bright fluorescent lights. He was wearing a sweatshirt that seemed to be very much too big for him paired with some athletic shorts. The colours even clash with each other. Awful outfit, even for Sicheng.
“What are you doing here?” Sicheng tilts his head back to stare at the ceiling, “how did you even know I work here?”
Yuta smirks and explains, “My father maintains all the files, I just spent the night looking for yours”, Sicheng feels a little uneasy knowing that Yuta likely is in possession of all his information. “Don’t worry, I didn’t look through it, just your occupation,” Yuta tells after while waving his hand in defence after not receiving an answer.
Sicheng groans, “I do not care, Nakamoto, but do let me know why you wanted to find me,” he cannot help himself from asking why in the world someone wanted to see him, voluntarily.
“I wanted to apologize for yesterday,” says Yuta, “plus, we should be friends,”
he looks down at the floor and gently kicks around some dirt with his foot.
Despite Sicheng’s refusals, Yuta stays and helps him with the laundry, for the entire workday. “I feel bad” is what he had said even though Sicheng had insisted it was fine.
Later that week Ten does come home,( to Sicheng’s surprise). His words are still slurred, and he lays down horizontally on the bed with his feet against the wall. A slight giggle bounces off the cement walls. The party had ended early, Sicheng suspected. His roommate tilts his head back off the edge of the bed to make eye contact.
“I’m sorry,” he states suddenly, the playfulness in his eyes suddenly gone, “for never being here.”
Sicheng answers only with a faint smile, but Ten’s words hitting him in a place he never expected. He suffers a pang in his chest when he realizes he never told his roommate goodbye or wished him a happy future or even showed him the slightest bit of affection one last time. Sicheng feels bitterly disappointed in himself because the thought never even crossed his mind. And he almost feels relieved, for not making it out that day. Relieved that the image in his mind of Ten coming home and wondering why his roommate's possessions are gone is just an image in his mind and not reality. Ten squirms around on the bed until his both of his feet are placed on the floor and he’s facing Sicheng now. His eyebrows furrow underneath the inky bangs like something more is bothering him and Sicheng is not daring enough to ask about it.
“No, I am sorry, Ten.” but he apologizes, and then he explains.
Ten confesses as well, that he too feels guilty for not making an effort. That they have known each other for too long.
“Will you sleep in my bed tonight?” asks Ten “It’s cold, they are cutting down the heating,” he rushes to add. Sicheng does agree to it, although he has never fancied being close, though the reason likely being that he has never experienced it in a long time.
After dinner the two of them undress and get under the covers of Ten’s bed; it is relatively cramped and has Sicheng almost falling out. Ten stops him from doing so, however, by pulling him in tightly. Sicheng cannot help but tense up, the feeling of someone else’s skin against his own merely burning him. Ten must have noticed because he assures him that it is okay and that he should not worry.
“I kind of just want you here, Sicheng, before you leave,” he goes on to admit, “I’m going to miss you terribly, and I know you don’t believe that.”
Sicheng hums, and just when he is about to fall asleep Ten mumbles something. Something he knows Ten would never dare to say if he knew that Sicheng would hear, something Ten says now that he believes that Sicheng is asleep.
“I like you... A lot, Sicheng”
Sicheng squeezes his eyes shut and pretends he is nothing but that; asleep. He understands, right at this moment, exactly how and in what way Ten likes him and it makes sense to him now. His roommate‘s statement is a truism and the air in their room feels thin.
Sicheng and Ten have a past.
He can recall how Ten would take care of him, before he got all these drinking issues going on, anyway. How he always brought him home stuff that he stole from the gift shop and how he never looked away when Sicheng got changed. Sicheng does not feel discomfort and he certainly does not fear. Ten caresses his shoulder carefully, barely letting his fingertips brush against Sicheng’s skin. His breathing becomes heavier behind Sicheng before he falls into slumber: It feels familiar. But the fancying in question is not something Sicheng returns, even if he wished to.