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There’s something wrong tonight; Justin can sense it even before he opens the door to check on him. There’s just something strange with all the shuffling there is behind the man’s door, and while Fan Chengcheng has never been one to sleep too peacefully, Justin can feel it down to his bones that something is amiss.
He gets his answer when he carefully creaks the door open, and sees Chengcheng hunched over, tangled in his bedsheets. He’s still in bed, and dressed in his sleeping clothes, but if Justin didn’t take another look, perhaps he’d think that the man was awake with how he has his head buried in his hands, and with how fast and loud his breaths are cutting in his throat.
Justin rushes forward. He reaches out and grasps both of Chengcheng’s shoulders in his hands, fingers pressing down his skin. “Chengcheng. Chengcheng.”
At Justin’s touch, Chengcheng jerks. His entire body stiffens, convulses for a second, his own nails digging into his scalp and forehead. Justin can see how hard he’s grabbing at himself, and tries, in vain, to pry his hands away from his own skull. “Chengcheng. Wake up. Chengcheng!”
Chengcheng stiffens again, still shaking, but fingers no longer digging into himself hard enough to bruise. He’s so different from the Fan Chengcheng he knows, Justin thinks. So different from the rich, arrogant heir to China’s largest crime syndicate, no longer icy and cold and heartless, but afraid. Small.
Justin remembers then that he left the door open to the room, and that anyone in the house could come in at any time and find the two of them like this: the young master of the house hunched over, shaking and near tears in Justin’s arms. It dawns on him that perhaps Chengcheng wouldn’t like that to happen, so before he can forget, he hastily removes himself from the man and rushes to pull the door shut again.
Chengcheng doesn’t move at all in the brief moment he's gone. When Justin turns around again, Chengcheng is still in the same position, head in hands, hunched over. He’s not shaking anymore though, but Justin can still see him tremble.
Justin takes a careful seat at the foot of Chengcheng’s bed.
“Chengcheng?” he starts gently, looking at how the boy’s soft hair is curling over his forehead. “Are you awake?”
No response.
“Chengcheng?” he tries again. “I need to know if you’re awake or not.”
To be honest, he’s expecting nothing in return again. But to his surprise, Chengcheng, after a long moment, nods his head ever so slightly.
He feels an immense relief flood through him, dispelling the tight ball of nervousness and hurt lodged in his chest. Justin lets out a breath that he’s been holding, then stands again. “That’s good. Do you want some light? I can turn on the lamp.” He reaches for Chengcheng’s bedside light.
Then, Chengcheng makes a noise. It’s a strangled sort of sound, a grunt maybe, but in Justin’s ears, it’s moreso a small groan than anything else. But more than that, Justin knows, it’s a plea. Don’t open the light.
So he doesn’t.
He sits himself back by Chengcheng’s shaking form on the bed, not saying anything else. And then he waits, because he doesn't know what else he can do for the trembling boy in front of him. Maybe he’s failed as a bodyguard in that aspect, he supposes, with how he can’t seem to protect Fan Chengcheng from whatever is haunting his dreams. But then again, maybe not. He was tasked to protect the stubborn, stony-faced, infamously hard-to-please and difficult Fan Chengcheng, not the quiet, hurt boy swaying in his bedsheets. He doesn’t even know who the person in front of him is.
Maybe Chengcheng will be angry with him in the morning for not leaving him alone as well. Maybe he’ll rile him up as he usually does, humiliate him and mock him again for the attraction that he knows Justin has for him. Maybe he’ll even try to hurt him again, purposely put himself into a difficult situation because he knows Justin will try to protect him, not only for the pledge he made to Chengcheng’s family but also because of how much he knows Justin loves him.
It’s an unfair game, Justin knows. One that he can’t help but want to play.
But then, after a long moment, Chengcheng shakes himself. Justin alerts at the movement, drawing in closer to the boy. “Chengcheng?”
He can hear him swallow.
“Are you okay now?” he says softly. He reaches a hand out again, maybe to pat him on the arm or something, before remembering who the other man is and retracting it hastily.
Chengcheng pauses, then nods.
Justin lets out another breath.
“Do you want to be alone now?” he asks him.
Chengcheng shakes his head almost violently. It’s the strongest movement he’s done so far. His hands even come away from his head for a moment, moving towards him before jerking back again. Justin sees this, and he understands.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he soothes. Justin moves himself closer to him, not touching him still but close enough so that Chengcheng can hear his breaths in the still air. “I’ll be right here.”
It’s strange to him, being in this room full of Versace suits worth thousands of dollars and multi-million artwork hanging on the walls, something that he’d be so interested in when he was still a boy struggling to find enough food to get through the week, but feeling no interest in it at all. It’s like he’s abandoned that boy with the starry eyes, always hoping for something better in the future. Or maybe it’s because he’s too used to making the person sitting in front of him the only thing that matters in his world.
“What was it?” he asks softly, knowing that he’s treading on a line that he shouldn’t be allowed to press on. “You can tell me if you think it’ll help.” He pauses. “A nightmare?”
Chengcheng trembles.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
There’s a long pause, and Justin holds his breath, afraid suddenly that he’s said the one thing that will turn everything against him.
But then, Chengcheng whispers, “My mother.”
Justin frowns. “What about her?”
Chengcheng never talks about his mother. Really, no one talks about her.
Chengcheng convulses almost violently, and even before Justin realizes what he’s doing, his arms are wrapped gently around him, his hands pressing soothing swirls in the small of his back. “Okay, okay. I won’t ask that again.”
Chengcheng stiffens in his arms, tightening up so hard that Justin can feel the tension reverberate through him as well. He wants to pull away, but something tells him not to.
But then, Chengcheng relaxes. He takes his hands away from his head. And he rests his head on Justin’s shoulder.
His hands are under his covers, far away from Justin, but his face is tucked in his shoulder, tense but there. Chengcheng is in his arms.
In any other moment, Justin perhaps would be elated. But for now, all he can think about is what he must have seen in his nightmares to warrant a response like this. He pulls Chengcheng to him closer, enveloping him in his arms.
They stay like that for a while, Justin holding Chengcheng, Chengcheng breathing into his shirt. It’s the softest they’ve ever been with each other.
“My mother,” Chengcheng whispers finally. Justin doesn’t know how much time has passed then, but he can see the bits of light on the wall opposite to them, and he supposes that it’s just before dawn. “Do you know why my father never mentions her?”
“No, Chengcheng. I don’t,” he replies truthfully. “Why?”
“Because she was a civilian,” he says. “Not part of the mafia. A civilian. And when she finally realized what the man who got her pregnant was doing for a living, she tried to kill herself and her four-year-old son.”
It’s Justin’s turn to freeze. He pulls back a bit, recovering from the shock and horror that’s suddenly filled his body. “Kill?” he repeats in disbelief.
“Kill,” Chengcheng breathes into his shirt. “She wasn’t successful though, because my father’s men got here just in time to drag me and her out of her car. She was trying to kill the both of us with carbon monoxide poisoning, they told me afterwards.”
“She’s still alive? Where is she now?”
“Don’t know. Jail? A mental hospital? Maybe my father killed her when he realized that I was his only heir.” Chengcheng laughs breathlessly into the junction of his neck.
Justin pauses, shifts his arms more securely around Chengcheng before a wave of pain for him rushes down on him.
Fan Chengcheng, the arrogant, cold, ruthless son of Asia’s largest crime syndicate, the man who could murder someone without batting an eye and force Justin to cut himself wide open for him: a boy whose mother tried to murder him when he was four.
“You know, that’s not the part that I struggle with, surprisingly,” Chengcheng says softly again. “I don’t even remember most of the details of what she was trying to do. But what I do remember is how she looked at me after we were rescued. I thought… I thought she would be remorseful. Thankful, maybe, that I was spared in the end. But instead, she looked at me with fury. Like she was angry that I had survived in the end.” He lets out a shaky breath, breathing over the wetness on Justin’s shoulder. “She was afraid of me.”
“Chengcheng,” he tries, then stops. Justin feels Chengcheng’s tears fall onto his neck now, how they trickle down his skin and soak into his shirt. He doesn’t know what else to say but to hold him. How is he supposed to respond to something like what Chengcheng just told him anyways? What is there to say that will make it better?
Justin doesn’t even remember his own parents’ faces anymore, but he thinks that maybe that’s a good thing.
So he just holds him. Holds him until Chengcheng doesn’t cry anymore and the sun is slipping through the window, sending shadows sweeping across everything in the room. He holds his entire world in his arms, making sure that it doesn’t break apart, because Justin wouldn’t have anything else left if Chengcheng was gone too.
He holds him until in the early morning, Chengcheng breaths into his neck, so quiet that it’s almost a hum. “You love me, don’t you?”
Justin holds him close. Swallows, because Chengcheng knows him too well.
“You know I do.”