Chapter Text
Chengcheng catches him at the corner store.
“Justin!” he calls, his feet a thundering presence on the quiet Dachang road. Justin’s body jerks at the sound, and for a moment, he considers climbing to his feet and taking off again. To where, he doesn’t know, but what stops him is Zhengting’s reminder the day earlier, that there would be more and more fans waiting for them at every turn now that they were in this stage of the show, and that any wrong move could result in the worst for all of them.
Justin is a selfish person, he’s been reminded of that time and time again, most of all by the boy he’s supposed to call his soulmate, but for Zhengting, he can’t afford to be so. And thus, he stays planted where he’s sitting, on the stairs to the corner store they all buy noodles and candy at.
He watches as Chengcheng, realizing that Justin’s isn’t running anymore, slows down his pace so that he’s more so walking than running. Then, seconds later, he isn’t running at all, but rather trudging towards him, his every step wary and careful.
A part of him hates how he knows this. It’s the stupid, cursed part inside of him that insists that the boy walking towards him is the person the universe has chosen to be his one and only, that’s telling him how Chengcheng is feeling, that has always told him how he’s feeling and what he’s thinking. And similarly, he knows that Chengcheng knows how he’s feeling: confused and angry and helpless.
He wonders what it’s like to not have anyone else in his head.
“Justin?” he says, more carefully, as he moves into the yellow streetlight.
Justin rolls his head up and looks at him.
He looks, because while he could glare, and he could put all of his anger and frustration and disgust together and rip as hard as he could at the invisible string that connects the two of them, tearing and pulling in vain to sever it, at the end of the day, he’s exhausted. Chengcheng knows this too.
“Are…” he starts, then trails off. Chengcheng’s got his hands tucked in his pockets, but Justin can tell that his hands are clenching and unclenching, much like how his breath keeps catching in his throat as he tries and fails to say something else, escaping as puffs of smoke from his mouth in the cold night air. He wasn’t expecting Justin to be this quiet, perhaps, and Justin can’t blame him, with how vicious he was to him earlier. However, the thing that still strikes him the hardest is how earnest he still is, how stupidly fucking hopeful the look in his eyes are.
How he knows and feels that he’s still in love with him.
Justin hates him.
He clenches his own jaw, not angry, but shaking with a hurt that’s suddenly erupted from the cracked part inside of himself. “Am I what?”
Chengcheng blinks. His blond hair is damp still from the shower and falling over his eyes. “Are… do you want to come back now?” He shifts on the spot, uncomfortable apparently with how still Justin is.
Once, when they were still trainees, Chengcheng had been away overseas with his family on Justin’s birthday. Justin had been (almost guiltily) happy, because for once he could pass a birthday without thinking of the painful piece of invisible silver connecting the two of them, and perhaps focus on himself, and only himself. But then, Chengcheng had shown up at the end of the night, red-faced and panting heavily from flying back in the middle of the night and sprinting to the Yuehua dormitories, his eyes frantic and hurt because Justin hadn’t told him it was his birthday, but still so full of love and hope and happiness for him that he couldn’t stand it.
That’s how he feels now.
Justin lets his head roll to the side, an awful sneer plastering itself to his mouth. “Do I want to come back now? Not with you .”
Chengcheng recoils. He steps back, his eyes flashing with hurt for a second before clouding over with carefulness again. “I never said with me.”
“But I bet you wanted that though, right?” Justin goes on sneering. “I bet that you wish that you could call me your boyfriend, and tell people around here that we’re together, we’re meant to be. That we’re soulmates .” He spits the last word out.
He can see Chengcheng’s face starting to crack, losing the composed look he has each time he does this. He can also feel the words slice into him, can physically feel the damage they do. And he relishes it.
“I bet that you wish we could go back holding hands, that you could kiss me, don’t you?” He laughs harshly. “Or maybe, you want even more? Do you wish that you could sleep with me, Fan Chengcheng? Do you wish that you could fuck me, Fan Chengcheng? Hear me say your name like I belong to you?”
Chengcheng closes his eyes. His hands are out of his pockets now, shaking in clenched fists at his sides. Justin can feel his pain, because it’s mirrored in himself as well, cutting through him with a sharp ferocity that he isn’t sure he can heal himself from this time. Justin is too far gone though, so accustomed to destroying himself that he doesn’t have the means to care for the fact that his soulmate is breaking apart in front of him.
“You do, don’t you?” Justin presses harder at the wound. “I can feel how much you love me, Fan Chengcheng. You know I can. Just like how you can feel how much I fucking loathe you.”
He pauses.
“I wish it was anyone else but you. I wish I never had a soulmate.”
And like that, it shatters.
There’s an acute part inside of him that can sense it, the breaking of something deep inside of him, reverberating through him so hard that he can taste it. It tastes like broken glass, splintered in pieces across the road they’re both standing on now.
It hurts so bad for a moment that Justin’s breath lodges in his throat, and he physically can’t do anything except for wallow in the rush of pain that floods through his entire body. His eyes go blurry, and he struggles to blink around the pain, and when it finally subsides, he can tell that his own gaze has misted over.
Chengcheng is still standing there, now swaying a bit. He looks at him, and Justin feels the bond that links them together shake ever so slightly: still there, but shattered, bruised, laying where he crushed it under his feet.
He knows that Chengcheng can feel it too, how broken Justin has rendered the two of them.
He knows this so well that for a moment, he’s afraid, almost, that Chengcheng will retaliate. That he’ll open his mouth and say something that Justin knows will destroy him just as acutely as Justin did to him. It’s horribly selfish that he’s scared, he knows, but when the pain of his own doing is still so fresh against his chest, he doesn’t know if he can handle more.
Justin watches as Chengcheng makes one step towards him. He feels the mounting anger and hurt building up inside of the other boy, how he’s aiming it at the still-intact pieces of Justin’s heart, how Chengcheng realizes for the first time, maybe, how easy it is to hate your soulmate and hurt him the extent he could.
Justin braces himself, closes his eyes, and waits.
But it never comes.
When he opens his eyes again, Chengcheng has turned away from him, and he’s walking quickly back the way he came from, back to the dormitories, back to the warmth and company of the other trainees, back to where their dreams are supposed to be crafted together. He’s leaving him, dragging the remains of their bond behind him, like some sort of wounded soldier gathering the bits of dignity he has left before dying.
Justin watches him, thinking that somehow, Chengcheng not hurting him back hurts even more.
And then, just like that, he’s alone again.
He’s so tired of being alone.